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punksocks · 3 days

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Warning Signs That You May Have A Toxic/Karmic Significant Other

Hey everyone, you may have seen my recent post about breaking up with my ex partner after 5.5 years. If not, I’ve been deep in reflection after ending this relationship. My reasons for ending it were that he refused to seek professional help to manage his anger which would come out in constant outbursts of violence (not physical ab*se but hitting walls, kicking furniture, scarring my dog, etc) and his mental health in general. After breaking things off I analyzed our relationship and all the red flags became crystal clear in hindsight. This blog is not only my emotional space to reflect, but also a place to give out advice to make sure you guys feel less alone in the world. So I’ve compiled a list of behaviors that made it clear that in hindsight the relationship was destine to be toxic and could not continue. It’s important to take lessons from painful experiences in order to continue to grow, and that’s what I hope I can help with by sharing my experiences here:

(TW Manipulation, Distressing Themes, Emotional Ab*se)

- They hate your intuition: (they work to make you doubt whatever means you have of self guidance. Whether that’s tarot/astrology, or spirituality in general, or therapy, or your simple gut feelings/reactions to things. They hate them because they know that they’ll be singled out at some point by them so they work to make you not believe in yourself through manipulation/gaslighting. My ex would constantly say the tarot is going to tell me to break up with him, but he never really changed he’d just belittle it and say I was getting weird about spirituality and he’d try to make me doubt myself or choose between the tarot and him. When I asked him to go to therapy he would also say that he was worried the therapist would tell him to break up with me-implying I was the problem. When I would ask him to go anyway he would find a way to avoid it- saying it’s too expensive, too hard to find, he doesn’t have time, etc)

-They constant give you advice that puts you in harm’s way: (My ex always told me I was too quick to cut off people that threw me under the bus and that I was paranoid. When I found out my former business partner was being shady and stealing from me, he told me to keep working with her. I said I had to take things over. He said I had no chance of covering the expenses on my own and that he wasn’t going to help me at all even though he was working a consistent 9-5. I rationalized this as putting too much pressure on him to support me through my apprenticeship over the previous few months, even though by the time we were having this discussion I had picked up a seasonal 9-5 to compensate for starting the business. I still felt guilty because I was asking him to cover the rent at home while I built this business up. I ended up wracking up debt over trying to cover everything myself and he was telling me I was going to fail every step of the way. When I didn’t fail and the business remained open over a year later, he said he had always believed in me every step of the way.)

- They rewrite history (that’s the other thing- when I broke up with him he said it was his idea to open the studio in the first place. This was a lie. A bold one at that. At the time I would have had to become self taught due to dealing with several egotistical mentors (wow thematic) and I looked for positions in other studios and there were none. My ex told me I should “pause” my goals. I told him I’ll open up my own space with another artist. He had a long talking down to me about how we couldn’t afford any of that, and how impossible it was, etc. But I went through with it anyway, effectively doing all the work on my own. He constantly told me what I was doing was crazy. But I made success out of it, thank God. Now my ex is trying to take credit for the whole thing as if I don’t remember what happened. Audacious.)

- Instead of having their own dreams they focus on wearing yours down (I have so many big dreams I want to accomplish and every other idea I shared with my ex was pushed back on or breadcrumbed. I wanted to live abroad, he’d say it’s too expensive but maybe he could find a way to make it work if I stopped putting so much pressure on him. I took over my own business, he told me I shouldn’t do it and should quit while I’m ahead. He would always try to counter every idea I had with a “logical reason” of why it wouldn’t work. He would try to control me by doubting me and in turn trying to get me to doubt myself. I never actually listened to him in hindsight, and when I pushed through successfully he would pretend to have been on my side the whole time.)

-They always compare you to their exes, in bold ways (My ex would always go out of his way to bring up his past relationships. The examples and instances were never appropriate. But one of the first worst early examples was when we were at a show. My friend’s band was playing. In the middle of the set he decided to look up his ex on social media. I was clearly uncomfortable but he continued. Then when we’re talking he brought up a nickname she used to call him that was inappropriate. When I was upset by this he threw a shirt (merch gifted to him by my friend’s band) in the booth almost hitting me with it and he stormed off. He made himself seem like the victim in a situation where he was trying to bait me into starting a public argument and yet made me soothe him afterward.)

- The betrayal of not ever being believed (early on this was another giant red flag in hindsight. I’m black and I tried to explain colorism to him, while I was having a bad experience with it. He’s white and should have been listening and understanding with open ears. Instead he tried to argue me down for being “mean” to light skinned black people. In the experience I was talking about how a mixed femme at work established a boundary with our white bosses to try to avoid racist harm. They let the femme do this without any pushback. I tried to establish the same boundary in the same meeting and those white bosses accused me of actively refusing to do my job. I told my ex this was colorist and that’s when he argued with me about this. He didn’t believe my experiences until he googled “the right articles”. When I brought this up in the future he would say he was just trying to see all black people as equal. It was a pretty disgusting defense.)

- Throwing insults in your face about past trauma (I told my ex about how emotionally abusive my mother was (wow there’s that pattern again) and he would throw this in my face and blame me or compare me to her at the slightest provocation in several arguments. When I was disrespected at work, he would blame me for misinterpreting things. Complaining about how I used him for money whenever I had asked him for help managing the business’ expenses. And so many deep cuts of things he should never said to me and names he shouldn’t have called me if he ever cared about me. He always wrote it off as me misremembering or him meaning it as something else or a distraction tactic of whataboutism -‘what about when you complained that I left dirty clothes on the floor?’ For example. All ways he tried to manipulate me from seeing this pattern of messed up behavior. Every argument he would make us talk in circles until I would have to give up from frustration and exhaustion.)

-They’re full of hot air, and if they seem like they aren’t they’re probably mirroring you (when I broke up with him I stopped hanging out with him pretty much immediately. Although I had to coordinate moving out still, I started keeping my head down to focus on my work. Essentially I had already moved on. I thought we had had deep discussions about the world and life but when I had less to say he had nothing to add. He would just keep filling up the air with anecdotes about nothing and commentary on anything just to keep crossing my boundaries and to try to force me to pay attention to him when it was clear I neither interested or comfortable doing so.)

- They try to force you to become as cynical and jaded as they are (I was never antagonistic per se, but when we were together I had unconsciously started looking/preparing for the worst in every scenario and every person I’d meet. Because of my ex’s toxic influence. Getting along with coworkers? They must be just “kissing up to you” according to him. Like that tv show most people are fond of? No way that has to be trash. Want to try something new? No there can’t be anything good about that. He was a very stuck person that refused to find the joy in almost anything. Unless it was too impressive to ignore —but even then he had to nitpick it apart. I would wonder why his compliments would feel so hollow- it was because he really had trouble seeing the good in anything. Like a day or two after we broke up I was already feeling lighter and more optimistic. When people were kind to me I embraced it easier and in turn every aspect of life got a little brighter. The contempt for others was palatable. Because he expected everyone to be ready to undercut him like he was ready to do to them.)

- Before you know it, they’ll have you romanticizing breadcrumbing behavior (I asked my ex to get on meds for his mental health and to find a therapist so many times over the course of 5 years. 4-5 months before I broke up with him he got on medication. Then after a peace period of a month or so, we were back in a cycle of petty arguments and he was saying the meds don’t work. He didn’t even try to go to therapy until I broke up with him. he got an appointment the next day because he “was trying to win me back” Essentially, he’d never work on himself or actually actively improve things. He’d always make one or two half steps to placate me then complain about how it was too hard and completely impossible to put the work in. Even with the therapy example, he wanted to display that he could make progress in order to win me back. Don’t worry, I had seen this tactic before and knew he would just fall back into toxicity. So, it didn’t work.)

- When you do leave they get cocky about how you’ll have nowhere to go (I leaned on my ex to support me when I became overwhelmed by figuring out my business on my own. I worked several temp jobs in addition to the business but it was stretching me thin. So I needed his help several times and only had so much saved up by the time I broke up with him. After begging me to take him back the entire night and pretending to be supportive, the next day he was scoffing and boasting about how “[he] didn’t even know what [I] was going to do.” He did this over everything from buying my own detergent-even though I always bought the detergent- to managing my bills on my own-even though I usually managed most of my bills on my own- until I finally was able to move out and leave him behind.)

- They never defend you and always make it seem like it’s your fault if you get attacked (My ex was always siding with abusive people and gaslighting me when I noticed that behavior. As many of you may know, my mom was a terror throughout my childhood. I confided in my ex about how much of an impact this had had on me. Before I went no contact with her we all got dinner when she came in town to see me. Despite all my warnings and preemptive begging to be supported through the difficulty of meeting with her my ex threw me under the bus immediately. He laughed at her jokes at my expense and didn’t stop her at all from singling me out. I shutdown in this moment and began to draw to cope- I’m neurodivergent so that’s one of the things I default to doing when I’m overwhelmed. They continued to make fun of me together and when I asked him why he didn’t have my back afterward, he blamed me for “not being friendly enough” and “not interacting with [my] mom enough”. This pattern of doubting and failing to help me would continue through our entire relationship.)

- They’ll have -self aware- moments that aren’t quite what they seem (I truly cannot count the number of times my ex would start an argument just to talk me in circles then try to get me to believe I was in the wrong too. It was truly maddening. He would always push to say he “understood” how we had gotten there. Then ramble on and on and on saying that I was attacking him and he was the victim of things. I asked him to do the dishes? I’m “criticizing [his] housework and putting too much pressure on [him]”. I ask him not to throw things when he’s upset? I’m “overly criticizing [him] and making [him] so anxious he can’t help but hit things”. And on and on and on it went. He would always tidy it up by saying he forgave me because we were “both wrong” and he just “would try to be better next time and [I] should too”.)

-They have underlying personality issues that need to be addressed (and when you bring a hint of these up, they lash out about how you’re attacking them and they throw personal attacks back at you because of their fragile ego. If you -somehow- get them to see a mental health professional you may find them lying about what feedback they got. After I broke up with him he said he’d go to anger management class and find a therapist “to win me back”- funny how it’s after you leave them and set the ultimate boundary they do the work to show you they can hypothetically change and it’s never one of the times you’ve begged before in the midst of madness. Before I moved out I overheard his therapy appointment and she asked about his bipolar diagnosis and he said he was just anxious despite the mood swings. When he came to me to tell me the good news of him finally going to therapy he left that out. When I asked if the therapist knew if he had another disorder he manipulated that. He said the therapist asked if it could be anything else but it was just a brief thought. He framed it that way instead of the consistent behavioral issue it was.)

- Usually they attract drama and chaos but blame you for it as their partner (He always kept his ex around in boundary crossing ways. In hindsight I wouldn’t be surprised if he had cheated in any way with any of them because of how murky he was about spending one on one time with them. They also will always encourage you to keep other toxic people in your life so they can keep flying under the radar/blaming the other toxic people when you feel drained/etc. When I decided to go no contact with my parents, he second guessed me. When I decided to go no contact with my friends that were harmful, he second guessed me. He went out of his way to call me paranoid and picky and every other name in the book he could. Even after I broke up with him he went out of his way to tell me I was paranoid and should quit tarot reading “because [he] knew it would turn [me] against [him] one day”. I told him his opinion meant less than nothing to me.)

- Whenever you set a boundary they try to undermine it and take it as an attack (When we met, all of my ex’s small circle of friends was made up of people he had dated or slept with. Once his friend, who had flirted with him multiple times, asked to stay in his apartment while she moved out of her place. He offered her his bed. She even had a boyfriend at the time but she went to my ex first. I told him this made me very uncomfortable. He screamed and yelled about how he’ll always choose his friends first and I have to understand that and that she didn’t want to sleep in his bed while he was in it. It was crazy but the whole time he called me dramatic and made me feel insane for being so uncomfortable with it.)

- They may often act out in public over the littlest things (my ex would get absolutely infuriated when there were lines in places. Insane right? Especially living in cities? with other people? And yet whenever we went out I’d have to prepare my mental for the possibility of him getting angry and breaking down because people were waiting ahead of him in line. In hindsight the entitlement he had was overwhelming in itself. The last time we went out to a movie -which was a whole scheduling fiasco in of itself with him during our entire relationship, he was obsessed with movies. I like movies but spending 6-9 hours in a theater? Every week? On top of hours of mandatory movie viewing at home? It was exhausting. He also made me pay for my own monthly movie pass even though it was his thing. Even in covid, although I’m immunocompromised I had to negotiate with him to wait to get vaccinated before he went back to the theater. And to wear a mask in the showings. He would huff and fuss about those small courtesies the entire time. Anyway the last movie we went out to see had a long line but we bought tickets ahead of time. He pitched a fit and kept storming off away from me and threatening to leave over the line. I kept following him foolishly, and coaxed him into staying. Of course there were enough seats and of course he enjoyed the movie. He apologized after for “getting overwhelmed by the line” but that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.)

- It’s all or nothing for them but breadcrumbs for you (I’ve always been clear that I have no plans of staying in the country I’m from. From the start I’ve understood I’m not meant to stay here. And yet I stayed in a city I hated so he could suddenly finish his associates degree. We moved back to my hometown but we lived in the most stressful neighborhood because he “wanted to be downtown with a pool.” He would always complain about every single idea I had to leave the country. I’m thinking about doing a language school or artist residency? He “did long distance with [his] ex who cheated and it would be too hard”. I want to study this language and go to this -easy-place for a visa? He “kept forgetting to study and had no idea how we would ever afford the move.” And on and on it went until I simply gave up on trying to get him to step up.)

- They twist everything to be about them even grief (my grandma was like a mother to me, so it hit me hard when she died. She even told me she was going and thanked me for my friendship at the end. It was still a very difficult period and I couldn’t accept it until it just happened. When I got the call and burst into tears my ex said “I’m so sorry… do you blame me because we stayed here for me to go to school and you couldn’t be home with her?” It hadn’t even been 20 minutes since I learned she was gone. The extent of his selfishness would shock me until I cut him off.)

- They make you bury things they don’t like about your self expression/goals (I’ll use a simple example. I love fairy lights. When we met I had fairy lights and my ex had no complaints. But when we moved in together they ‘would always bother him and give him headaches’. So I took out the lights. Then he got me a glowing lamp I wanted for my birthday but never allowed me to turn it on when we were in the room. I brought the lights I love to my work and my ex would complain about them there too. He’d say he didn’t know why he “just didn’t like spending time at the studio” and then use the lights as an excuse, and then hed complain all day about how exhausting it was to be there. He’d only offer to come to the studio more if I turned them off just for him. All this time later and all of a sudden I don’t have any lights I like up. This didn’t happen for everything, but there were a lot of little things he was so controlling about just to be authoritative about something I liked.)

- They hate it when you have positive things happen to you (and instead of seeing your success as a good thing they see it as you one upping them, so they often express jealousy and then disguise it as a joke. He would “joke” about how I was going to fail so often I lost count. When I had a great day there would always be a hint of disappointment in his voice. He would always undermine it in anyway he could. “Oh you made X amount that’s nice, but that’s not enough to cover the rent”. I got a lot of compliments on my outfits, so he’d say “no one ever compliments me”. Always something to bring me down and try to get me to focus on a worry.)

- They downplay your trauma (I’m a burn survivor. My dad burned me through hot water and neglect as a baby on around 20% of my body. For that and many other reasons I became sort of a local legend for my time in our local child protective services. In a city of well over a million people. Doctors thought I wouldn’t be able to walk again and it was a miracle when I did. My grandmother had to wrap my scars everyday, twice a day for 3-4 years afterwards. She would tell me the pain would make me cry random throughout the night until I went to kindergarten. All that to say, my scars had a BIG impact on my health and my life. When I told my ex about my insecurity he said “sorry that happened, but it’s not that big of a deal.” Crazily at 21 I took that as flattery. It was not, it was severely downplaying the trauma I went through because my ex didn’t care for that part of my life. I even remember thinking I should tag a post as a burn survivor and he said “isn’t that like advertising your burns, why warn people about it?”. I got better and embraced my scars all through my own healing but damn it was all severely fucked up.)

- They usually have a Fatal Flaw they try to make you contend with (My ex had explosive anger where he would hit something (a wall, the couch, his desk, etc) or throw things at any slight provocations, and he would disguise it as a reaction of low self esteem instead. I didn’t realize how bad the conditioning had got until I broke up with him and I wasn’t getting jumpy from him coming home anymore or my dog wasn’t hiding from him anymore. I was walking on eggshells all the time and I only knew it subconsciously. He would also curse at me and call me the meanest names from the smallest arguments, he would get belittling. It’s their signature style to make you feel small and to desensitize you to truly nightmarish behavior.)

- That’s the other thing- most people and sometimes animals can tell they’re off (I would always wonder why my ex never seemed to make a good impression on others. They could tell he was off from the start.)

- They start trying to love bomb you after you give up or when they sense you are finally giving up (I always asked my ex to pay more attention to my business/endeavors/art/etc when we were together, to respond to texts I sent him at work-within reason-, to give me some support or feedback. His replies were always blasé. “That’s nice.” Or “I will.” As soon as I broke up with him. He was complaining that he always missed texting me at work. Then he started getting more involved on my social media pages. Then for the first time in months he watched my story on Instagram completely unwelcomed and unprompted. It was how fake the performance of interest was that really struck me after everything.)

- They always ask for one more chance when you’ve given them at least a hundred chances (Evem when I broke up with him he kept saying “you cut off other people (for being toxic) but I never thought it would be me!” I feel like I’ve already put plenty of examples of this, so I’ll just say this points to the fact that at their base motivation they don’t really respect you or care about you. If someone actually cares about you, they’re going to go out of their way to make you comfortable, to care about your opinions and feedback, from the very start)

- Even when it’s over, they still always try to blame you for their bad behavior. (My ex painted himself as an introvert when he was in a relationship. I had always asked him to make -newer, healthier- friends and to make a social effort. Since the beginning. After we broke up he made an effort to go out to social events. After he went out one day he came back and said “I was such a girlfriend guy, I never went out and socialized!” In turn I said you’re not a girlfriend guy you never cared about what I had to say, if you were a girlfriend guy I wouldn’t have had to break up with you for literally never taking me into account. So that ended that.)

- When it’s over the relief hits you in waves (I didn’t even realize how much I was doing to cope with the hostility and boredom of the relationship until it was over. I stopped overeating, I actually lost my appetite for days. I went from taking edibles every week to not even craving the ones I had. I wasn’t the most indulgent but I was shocked by how immediately I was fine with going cold turkey. My time with myself became even more peaceful. Even before I moved out, I was more creative and productive. I felt the beauty and the optimism of all the little moments deep in my spirit and my glow was brighter than ever before. My ex kept turning to me in despair and asking “how can you be so okay with this??” I answered him indifferently because he wasn’t worth entertaining. But obviously my spirit had been restored, I wasn’t wasting love on anyone that didn’t deserve it anymore. My energy was finally all mine. And I had faith in God that everything would be alright. And it was.)

You slowly but surely realize that you were formed to be a victim of a narcissistic/antagonistic person due to being raised by narcissistic parents and in an environment full of enabling emotionally and verbally abusive behavior. When we met I was so vulnerable. I had moved to a new city on my own, I was in a financially precarious place. The city was The Worst for Black people (tm). I was so desperate for an ally, I caught an energy vampire instead. I’ve healed and learned a lot from this. To be much more deliberate about who I let into my life. To be unafraid of purging and moving on when someone shows you they’re incapable of growth. To not accept crumbs of affection and appreciation. To pour my love into myself first before I let anyone else do the same. So I write all this to say, it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault that some people are so corrupted to the core that they’d rather destroy you than heal themselves. So… forgive yourself for this experience. Forgive yourself for being a person that just loves and cares about others. That believes in cultivating a world full of warmth and compassion. Don’t let one (or a dozen- ugh the people I’ve had to move on from oml) toxic ass person ruin you and your compassion. I had to forgive myself for believing in a lot of disappointing, inept, bad people. But I won’t stop being kind and compassionate because of those losers. I’ll continue to shine my light on those who need it whenever I’m supposed to. I mean I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to rely on anyone again without fear of their self interest but one step at a time, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Anyway, wish me luck on this fresh start. Buy a reading if you want to support me. But yeah, thanks for reading y’all.

#astro observations #astroblr #astro notes #astro community #astrology #lilith astrology #healing #karma #life lessons #false soulmate

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mykoreanlove · 1 day

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i need skz angst like rn??😭

hyunjin x female reader, and they maybe decide to go out to like a club or something, and some guy hits on the reader and hyunjin is like “you were flirting back!” and the reader is just very confused bc they tried to let the guy know as kindly as possible that they are taken, but hyunjin is still really mad and it results in them fighting

and then maybe hyunjin decides to go home but not like a shared apartment thing like he goes somewhere reader doesn’t know about

and then a day passes and he’s like “oh no i fucked up” and comes to readers apartment to apologize

happy ending? tysmmm🎀

I was like sure, let's writing something short and quick but somehow it turned into 6 pages lol. hope u enjoy it :)

The pros of being an insanely hot couple? A lot of sex and affection, a lot of people wanting to be like you and a lot of praise and admiration.

The cons of being an insanely hot couple? A lot of people trying to take your place, a lot of jealous envy and a lot of insecurity.

“Baby, you look incredible”, Hyunjin whispered into your ear as he hugged you from behind. You were standing in front of the mirror, admiring your look for the night. “I wanted to look good for you”, you shyly admitted as you leaned into him. “There is absolutely nothing you have to do to accomplish this, y/n. Nothing, you hear me?”

Ever since you met Hyunjin a couple of weeks ago your whole world turned around. You were used to dating a lot and having fun, but this was different. He was different. Both of you fell for the other rather quickly, a romance that revealed a hidden side within you.

“I want to kiss you so badly”, you whined.

“Why don’t you?”

Instantaneously, you pointed to your lips covered in deep ruby red.

“Ah”, he nodded understandingly. “Is it okay then if I do this?”, Hyunjin asked before kissing every inch of your collarbone, slightly sucking to mark his territory.

Hyunjin was a confident guy, knowing damn well that he was good looking and talented and still he felt conflicted at times. What if this was not enough? What if he was not enough for you? Since you were in your early dating stages, he never had vocalized his concerns, but his body did. His need to be near you, touch you and possess you was evident from the start.

“Jinnie, stop”, you giggled as you pushed him away.

Irritation grew on his face, not understanding why you were distancing yourself.

“I’m gonna be covered in marks that everyone is going to see”, you teased.

He felt his chest tighten. Did you not want others to see them? Did you want to be perceived as single? His own sparks of insecurity got ignited again, waiting to turn into a full-size fire.

The club was crowded with people of all kinds – dancers, jocks, hot models, a real feast for the eye. You were used to people turning their heads, especially when you were together with Hyunjin. It never bothered you that much since you knew how devoted he was to you.

“Can I tell you something?” You were laying on his chest, watching him breathe calmly. “Sure.” “I found your old DVDs in the basement, and I started watching them while you were at work. Binging them, really. And I saw something that really stuck with me”, he explained silently. “What was it?” “Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours”, he explained softly. You turned your head and gazed into his teary eyes. “We haven’t been together that long, I know. But this is exactly how I feel, y/n. I can’t imagine my life without you anymore. Cannot. Do not want to. Impossible.” You started tearing up as well, finally feeling at home with another soul. You placed a soft kiss on his plush lips and whispered: “I’ll be your Carry, baby.”

“Come dance with me”, you shouted as you pulled him to the dance floor. It was hot and sticky, but you didn’t mind, in fact you loved it like that. The music was energetic and vibrant, filling the whole room with energy and life force. You only had eyes for Hyunjin, watching his body move gracefully to the music. When he danced, he became one with the tunes, one with the movements. He smirked as he caught you staring, knowing damn well that you were weak for his dancing. As the song changed into a slower, sexier one you found yourself in front of him, grinding on his muscular body. All the other people were forgotten as you swayed your hips on him, feeling him getting hard behind you. His hands on your body and his hot breath on your neck was all you needed to know.

Hyunjin however was more prone to your surroundings. He enjoyed having you like that, but he hated sharing you with others. He was too aware of the other pair of eyes that was set on you. Like a reflex, he pulled you closer, grabbed a bit harder and provoked your surrender, demonstrating whom you belonged to.

“Fuck, baby, if you keep this up, we have to go”, you moaned into his ear.

“Let’s do that”, his whole face lit up. “Let’s get out of here, y/nnie.”

“But we just came?”, you whined in annoyance.

Hyunjin’s eyes darkened as his gaze pierced through you. Just like that, goosebumps formed on your skin, electricity cursed through your body making you feel all hot. He knew exactly what he was doing to you.

“I’m going to the bathroom really quick to fix this situation right here”, he said as he nodded to his crotch, “and when I come back, we leave, you hear me?”

You swallowed and nodded, already anticipating the night ahead.

“Good girl.”

He placed a kiss on your forehead and turned around, quickly looking for the bathroom.

You walked over to the exit and leaned against the cold wall, waiting for your boyfriend, already picturing him doing unspeakable things to you. You were so engulfed in your naughty daydreams that you didn’t even notice the guy from the dancefloor approaching you.

“Hey!”

“Oh, hi”, you replied politely.

“I saw you dancing earlier, damn you got moves!”, he complimented you.

“Thanks”, you replied drily.

“So uhm, would you like to have a drink with me?”

“No”, you shook your head.

“Why not?”

“Well, if you saw me dancing earlier you must have seen my boyfriend behind me, right? That’s why.”

“Shit, sorry. I kinda hoped that he was just another guy hitting on you.”

“Far from that.”

“He’s that great, huh?”

“Y/N”, Hyunjin called out angrily while glaring at the other guy.

You were taken aback by his tone, feeling anxious so you followed him without saying a word.

Fumingly, he marched to the car, while you were trying to keep up. Hyunjin placed both of his hands on the cold metal of the vehicle as he was trying to calm himself.

“Jinnie”, you called out softly.

“Don’t fucking call me that, y/n.”

“What?”

He turned around and faced you, his pupils were dilated, and his nostrils flared – he was angry as fuck.

“Don’t fucking call me that when you were flirting with some dickhead behind my back!”

“Are you serious right now?”

“Of course, I am. That bastard was eye-fucking you while we were dancing, and I left you alone for 5 minutes and you were already cozying up to him?”

“Cozying up to him? Cozying up to him? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“What? I know what I saw!”

“Enlighten me, then. What did you see?”

“I saw you all smiley and giggly, you were practically shooting heart eyes emojis at him! Is that why you hated me giving you hickeys on your collarbone? So, everybody could see you were available?!”

You felt the punch to your stomach, making it harder to breathe. Every single word of his was laced in the most painful accusation, one that you had been familiar with way too often.

“Yeah, you’re right. I was flirting back and shooting heart eyes emojis at him. It was so much fun! And I was damn grateful that my body was free of your damn hickeys!”, you retorted angrily.

Hyunjin was about to explode, not being able to differentiate between your lies and his perceived reality.

Wordless, he turned around and got into the car. You looked at him one last time, hoping that he would come to his senses – but he didn’t. The loud sound of his engine disturbed the quiet of the night and not seconds later he was gone.

What should have been a fun night out for a young couple turned into a vicious disaster. One was crying hiding in the dirty toilet of a club, while the other was crying racing down the highway. Promises of forever love turned into accusations of unfaithfulness, painting your rosy world of adoration into black loneliness.

You had no idea how you made it back home, nor did you care. The following day was torture – you were ruminating over everything, trying to understand what had happened yesterday. Deep sadness filled your whole being. Hyunjin did not call, nor text. He vanished out of your life, just like he vanished into the night air yesterday. Was that it? Was it over?

“Damn, you look like shit. Why are your eyes so puffy?”

Hyunjin pulled the covers over his head, trying to dissolve into thin air.

“Hey, come on. Talk to me”, his friend encouraged him.

“I may have made the biggest mistake of my life yesterday.”

“Oh my god, did you cheat on y/n?”

“What? No. Of course not. I would never do that”, he explained.

“What did you do then?”

“I accused her of cheating on me.”

“Shit, sorry.”

“Don’t be. This was the last time I let my demons take over”, he mumbled as he left his room.

By evening, you felt better – at least good enough to go for a walk and clear your head. Minutes after you left Hyunjin appeared at your door – holding a giant bouquet of flowers in his trembling hands. He rang your door hundreds of times, knocked on it until his knuckles were swollen and called out for you until his throat was sore. But nothing.

Defeated, he slid down to the ground and thought of what to do.

“Y/N, I made a big mistake yesterday. I am so sorry. I should have never accused you of shit like that.”

He was wiping away his tears again, the thought of loosing you made his heart break every single time.

“You see I’m not perfect. Far from it. Yet somehow you seem to think that way. And I just… I just wait for the shoe to drop. For you to finally realize that I’m nothing special.”

“Jinnie”, you called out his name while stopping in front of your apartment. His eyes widened in surprise, immediately followed by relief. “You didn’t open up because you hated me but because you weren’t home…”

“Don’t flatter yourself, hate is on the top of the list right now”, you glared angrily.

He lowered his head in defeat.

“Are those for me?”, you nodded to the bouquet of flowers.

“Yes.”

You opened the door and passed by him. “Put them in a vase, then.”

Surprised, he got up on his feet and followed you inside.

“Can we talk?”

You sat across from him, giving him the cold shoulder.

“Talk.”

“Y/N, I am sorry. Please believe me, I am so sorry. I was seeing things, I let my insecurities win and I accused you of shit you didn’t do. Please, forgive me.”

“What did you think happened there?”

“I saw you guys talking and then I saw red. Like, you were smiling from ear to ear, practically shooting heart eyes emojis at him. I just, I just saw red.”

You sighed deeply, finally understanding where he was coming from.

“You’re right. I was shooting heart eyes emojis at him.”

“What?” Hyunjin’s heart was about to explode.

“But only because I was talking about you, Jinnie. He asked me out for a drink, and I explained to him that I already found the greatest guy on earth. I was gushing over you, like a freaking fan girl.”

“He’s that great, huh?” “Oh my god, yes. He is the greatest. No really, he is great at everything. Dancing, painting, loving? The best. He is also the kindest and loveliest guy I ever met. Always caring for the ones he loves. Never a dull moment with him. He makes me laugh so much. I swear I got abs because of him. And did you see how handsome he is? Fuck me, it’s like God created him himself and brought him to earth, so we could adore him. Fucking masterpiece, that man.” “Okay, okay, I got it”, the guy gave up. “Must be one hell of a lover.” “One hell of a lover. One hell of a soul. My soul, actually.”

“I feel like the biggest idiot right now”, he admitted ashamed.

“Yeah, you should feel like that.”

“I’m sorry, y/nnie. Can you forgive me?”

Silence lingered between the two of you, only for a moment, until you got up and walked over to him. You put your arms around his lean torso and hugged him tightly, willing to put this past you.

Hyunjin’s body finally relaxed, as he hugged you back. His lips landed on the crown of your head, simply resting there, and holding you close.

“Jinnie, wait. There is something else you need to know.”

He released you from his grip and looked at you anxiously.

“What is it?”

“When I was younger, I got bullied for hickeys. My first boyfriend always left them on my neck and the others harassed me for it, calling me slut and all sorts of names. So, it’s true, I don’t like them being visible.”

Hyunjin’s heart broke once more – for one because you had to endure this harassment, but also because he bullied you himself.

“I’m sorry, y/nnie. I won’t do that ever again.”

“Wait, no. I love your hickeys. I love your lips on me, I really do. But can we, maybe, agree to leave hickeys in places only we can see?”, you asked shily.

Hyunjin chuckled and pulled you in for a kiss, promising to do just that.

“I really meant what I said. I can’t imagine my life without you. I really can’t.”

You grabbed his hands and squeezed them, agreeing you felt the same way. “I feel like we should talk about your insecurities, but I’m drained from last night.”

“Let’s relax for now, baby.”

“What do you want to do?”

Hyunjin’s lips turned upwards, forming the loveliest yet sneakiest smile.

“Okay, fine. I get the popcorn and you switch on the TV. Sex and the city marathon it is”, you rolled your eyes at him teasingly.

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flight0fthenavigat0r · 1 day

Text

A Goodbye to The Bad Batch

I don’t even know what to say first. Because this is goodbye, but it is also everything but. But I suppose I should start at the beginning.

Just a couple of years ago I found my love for Star Wars. My entire life, as far back as I can remember, my dad has tried to get me into the fandom. Now, he’s not a fan the exact same way some of us are, he’d only watched the saga and the Mandalorian, funnily enough I was the one to introduce him to The Clone Wars and beyond, but it’s been a joy in his life for a very long time. I was never interested in it when I was little, but then I got a little older and Star Wars started to capture my interest.

One random weekend, I believe in 2021 or 2022, I decided that I was going to watch all nine saga movies in those forty-eight hours, and then start on my goal to watch every show and the additional movies.

This is, without a shred of doubt, one of the greatest decisions I have ever made, and one that I will never regret. I would not be the person I am had I not given Star Wars a chance.

It would sound ridiculous to anyone anywhere else, but this has become such a safe place for me that I know I can be honest.

Everyone finds that one thing that makes them happy like nothing else. A person, a hobby, a place, a fandom. Mine is the galaxy far, far away that lets me escape from my life whenever I need to.

The Star Wars fandom has its faults, and there is so much hatred.

But more than anything, there is love like no love I have ever experienced before. The love between fans and our love for these movies and shows is something I never expected to have in my life. But somehow, for some reason, it has all found a permanent place in my heart, and I couldn’t be happier.

At this time, the first season of The Bad Batch had just been released. I was branching out, watching The Clone Wars and then jumping to The Book of Boba Fett, though I’m not sure why I chose to watch everything in such a completely random order.

But then I started The Bad Batch.

I had no idea what Crosshair, Tech, Wrecker, Hunter, Echo, and Omega would come to mean to me.

I have dealt with a lot in the last few years. Nothing compared to others, but depression finds a way to wedge into your life. I love to be alone, but I don’t like to be lonely, and I have managed to isolate myself to a point of misery.

I found more comfort in The Bad Batch than anything else in my life, and I will never forget the joy The Bad Batch brought me in these last few years.

I began to write when I found Star Wars, and I was inspired to do so by The Bad Batch. Before, I had never felt so compelled by any one piece of media to add my own part of it to the world, until this. Writing has become another escape, one that gives me an outlet to continue the stories of characters left behind.

What I already knew has been reaffirmed, the lessons I have learned remain with me, and will even after this is over.

That it’s okay to feel afraid, because everyone does, and to make mistakes, provided you learn from them.

That feeling out of place for one reason or another does not make you unworthy of love, and having limitations with affection isn’t something you need to apologize for.

That being goofy, having fun, finding joy in the dark places, is just as vital a part of life as anything else, if not what we need more than anything.

That taking time for yourself, to make sure you don’t fall apart, even while taking care of others, is important.

That our worst moments can be one of two things, what consumes us, or what we grow from.

That being a young woman is not a detriment to your worth, intelligence, talent, or any other aspect of life, but is in fact what makes you strongest.

That what makes us unique and our faults are a part of who we are, but they do not define us, and we are so much more than the ideas people have of us.

My only regret is not making friends when I had the chance. I’m bad at that, opening up and putting myself out there, and I shy away from talking to new people because it makes me uncomfortable. But I wish I had been able to put that aside before it was too late and found people who love The Bad Batch the way I do to continue talking to, even after the show ends.

But to all the people who have supported me and who I have supported, thank you for being part of my Bad Batch experience.

It's very difficult to believe that this is it.

Though The Bad Batch has not been around long, it feels like it has, because as long as I have been watching Star Wars, The Bad Batch has been in its active run, and I’m so grateful I got to be here when it was.

I know that even when the credits roll for the final time, when the greater fandom forgets the show that they never really understood the way we have, I’ll be here, and hopefully, so will all of you. I think that the family brought together by The Bad Batch will endure, even if we go quiet for a while.

We’ll stick around, for the day the Batch comes back. Because I know they will.

Thank you Clone Force 99, the Bad Batch fandom, Dee Bradley Baker, Michelle Ang, the Kiners, and everybody who played a part in telling this story.

The impact The Bad Batch has had on my life has been profound, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. It’s been a wild ride, and I have enjoyed every second of it. It has been a privilege to be a part of this piece in the ever growing history that makes up Star Wars.

Goodbye, Bad Batch. Until next time.

“Change takes getting used to. You’ll see. Just give it time.”

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i-hate-accidents · 2 days

Note

Would you ever consider writing the conversation Anthony had with Benedict in his bedchamber? When he scolded Ben for being alone with Y/N?

the author would like to share that upon reading your message, they immediately said, out loud, to no one but for herself to hear, "that is a BRILLIANT idea." she offers many thanks for your idea and your generosity in sharing it. <3

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i hate accidents: a drabble

femme!reader x benedict bridgerton, femme!reader & the bridgerton family, femme!reader & penelope featherington

summary: the adventures of a working class femme who befriends a fellow writer, a boisterous family, and a bewitching second eldest son

sections: I. the beginning / II. the between / III. the ball

y/n: bipoc, she/her, afab, nonbinary femme, queer, working class, of immigrant parents

content warnings: brief description of grief from losing a parent

word count: 623

author’s note: the character of y/n, whilst heavily talked about, does not appear in this drabble. the author hopes you enjoy these bickering brothers~

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anthony turns towards him, quiet fury simmering in his eyes.

"brother," begins benedict, "i—"

"have you lost your fucking mind!" booms anthony.

"if you just let me explain—"

"have you compromised y/n?"

"what!"

"i said! have you compromised y/n!"

"how can you even insinuate that! of course i have not!"

"and why should i trust what you say?"

"because i am your brother!"

"precisely! you are my brother! you lie to me as naturally as you breathe!"

that is something, benedict admits to himself, i cannot deny.

"well! i have no reason to lie now!" he declares aloud.

"and you expect me to believe that? when i saw your mouth and her mouth mere breaths away from one another?"

lightning shoots throughout benedict’s body and butterflies erupt in his stomach at the memory. the two of you were, indeed, mere breaths away from—— from—

"see," anthony interrupts, "you have nothing to say. are you finally admitting to your guilt?"

"we were discussing my art! that is all!"

"i am not a fool, benedict!"

"you look like one!"

"and you act like one! alone! in your bedchamber! with a lady! our friend! how do you think our family will react when they hear of your impropriety?"

"you make it sound as if this were some, some— devious scheme!"

anthony shakes his head.

"brother, i know you are in love with y/n—"

it would have been kinder if anthony shot him point blank in his chest.

benedict gapes at him, but his brother merely responds with an expression that makes him feel like a naive child.

"benedict, please. your affection for y/n is deeply apparent to everyone in this house. mother, kate, our siblings, the servants, penelope. good god, francesca, daph, and hastings even know, and they are not even here. you," anthony states simply, "are in love."

"i have not said anything of the sort!"

"so what do you mean to say? that you do not love y/n?"

benedict freezes. he feels the swell of his heart and its collapsing all in a mere breath.

of course i do. of course i love y/n.

he swallows.

"it matters not what i feel. it matters what she deserves."

y/n deserves someone good. someone who will not hurt her. someone who is not me.

anthony’s face softens, and it would be an expression that would be kind if benedict didn’t feel as though he was on the receiving end of its pity. still, it reassures him. anthony’s gentleness seemed to have passed when their father had. it seemed to no longer have existed as a possibility within him; and then kate entered their lives. whenever he sees evidence of its restoration, benedict cannot help but feel gratitude—even, as in this moment, at the cost of his own pain.

anthony sighs.

"did you two have to be in your bedchamber?"

benedict rolls his eyes.

"this is where all my art is! but it shan't happen again."

"oh, that i will make certain."

he furrows his eyebrows.

"what is that supposed to mean?"

"did you truly think i would let you get away with this indiscretion? you have completely disgraced y/n!"

"nothing! happened!"

"bedchamber! together! ALONE!" anthony checks his pocket watch and, with its closing, resumes a dignified composure. "i am done with this conversation. we have kept y/n waiting long enough. we must go to her promptly, offer our deepest apologies, and ensure that she is safe and well after this event. we will be most fortunate, indeed, if she chooses to absolve us from your transgression."

benedict puts his hands over his face. of all the people in the world, why did his elder brother have to be anthony bridgerton?

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psychesalcove · 1 day

Text

WE WANNA TALK ABOUT SEX BUT WE'RE NOT ALLOWED

college au!percy jackson x fem!reader

⚠️: reader has anxiety, percy being too obvious for his own good, shitty writing (im sorry guys 😭), mentions of sex, cursing, emotional cheating (on percys end), not proofread at all, mentions of an anxiety attack, insecure reader

IN WHICH: you and percy have been dating for around a year. however, you feel like he is always choosing annabeth over you, even if he isn't aware of it. tonight, you decided to confront him about it, ending the night not knowing where your relationship stands with him.

requested: yes, by anon

a/n: GUYS IM SO SORRY IM KIKE NOT GOOD AT WRITING ANGST BUT I TRIES 😭😭 JUST MESSAGW ME ABAIN AND ILL REWRITE IT IN A DIFFERENT WAY BUT I HOPE YOU ENJOY!!😔

you knew this talk had to happen at some point. it was inevitable. there was this unspoken tension between you and percy, and you weren't even sure if he was aware of it. for a while, you thought it was just your anxiety driven brain making you feel the tension—but you soon realized it was there and not made up.

percy and you had been dating for around a year, beggening right before your freshman year of college started. before that, percy had been in a relationship with annabeth. you were on neutral terms with her;you weren't best friends, but you also didn't hate eachother. but lately, that feeling of neutrality with her was slipping away.

you knew percy and her were close, but you didn't understand why they were as close as they were. you knew percy would never cheat, but you figured he didn't understand not being there for his partner.

anytime you wanted to be around him, he would say that annabeth needed him for something. reviewing notes for class, wanting help with decorating her condo, helping her with a new recipe she was doing, anything really.

at first, you didn't mind that much. you knew they weren't sleeping with eachother or anything, but as time went on, going into the last quarter of the school year, you knew that he would go back to annabeth sooner rather than later. his mind was always occupied with her, somehow managing to bring her up in every conversation you have with him.

ᝰ

you sat on the beige couch that you and percy had bought at Ikea last summer, looking out to the balcony area, waiting for percy to arrive. as much as you didn't want to talk to him about this, you knew the longer you put it off the harder the talk would be. you assumed he would be getting back in around 5 minutes, knowing the route he takes in his car to get to the condo from campus.

suddenly the old wooden door creaked open, disturbing the silence that blanketed the room. you sighed lightly, still wondering how to even start a conversation with percy.

percy soon came into vision, dropping his jansport backpack onto the floor before turning to you. "hi, pretty," he hummed. "how was your day?"

you decided to ease into a normal conversation between the two of you before asking the inevitable question that could determine the future of your relationship. "it was fine, english has been kicking my ass recently though, how about you?" you asked, moving around so you were in a more comfortable position.

"it was also fine, but if your having trouble with english, i could ask annabeth—" you cut him off with a sigh, knowing that was your que to steer the conversation in another direction.

"could you sit down percy, please?" you say, making eye contact with him for the first time since he came home. "we really need to talk,"

"uhm.. yeah of course" he says looking around the room quickly before sitting down on the sofa. "if this is about those mint cookies, i did eat them, didn't mean to though, promise." he explains quickly, looking at you with a small smile.

you press your lips into a thin line, knowing how different of a conversation this is going to be than that. "percy, where do you see our relationship going?"

there it is. the idea is out there, in the open, for percy to do anything with.

you watch his eyes widen slightly, looking at you with a questioning look. "what do you mean? i mean, obviously we're going to keep living together, maybe get a better place for next year, we could even make our new kitchen like annabeths–"

"there you go again talking about annabeth!" you said, raising your voice slightly. "i know that the two of you are friends, and i'm fine with that, but not if it's getting in the way of our relationship. almost every conversation you bring her up:annabeth this annabeth that. i know you two are exs, and again, i'm fine with that, but that also means you could have romantiic feelings about her still. i really don't think we should even be doing this if you do, percy."

he sat up straighter at the tone of your voice and what you said to him. "why would i still have feelings for a annabeth? that's why we chose to end our relationship, because neither of us had feelings for eachother!" he exclaimed, attempting to keep a calm voice.

"percy, i really just don't think you're in the mental place to be in a relationship with me, or maybe anyone right now. i don't know what to do—"

percy cut you off, "what do you mean you don't know what to do? i'm the one being told by my girlfriend of a year that she doesn't know if she wants to continue our relationship!" he sat up from the couch and started motioning with his hands. "I'm the one that doesn't know what to do. it's not like i'm going around and having sex with annabeth. you know i wouldn't do that to you!"

"there are other ways of cheating than that percy, and im not saying your cheating on me, I'm just saying that your mind is still on annabeth, which means I don't know if we should be a thing or not." you said. "and honestly, with the reaction your having, i wouldn't be surprised if you were cheating." you also sat up from the couch and moved to stand by him.

"i understand that, but like i said, i'm not going over there to have sex with her or kiss her or anything like that. all im doing is spending time with her, can i not chose who i spend my time with now?" percy spat at you, giving you a look that made you know he was starting to get pissed off.

"that's the problem percy! your spending time with her, which would be okay, if you weren't canceling on me, your girlfriend!" you said, continuing to raise your voice.

he scoffed at you. "name one time that i cancel—"

"last week, when we were supposed to go the cafe to study for an exam together. i was waiting for you at the door when you were grabbing your backpack, and then you come up to me and say that you can't go because annabeth had finished reviewing your notes. and, for some reason, you had to go to hers that moment to get your notes instead of saying that you could later and go to the cafe, with your girlfriend!" you rambled, getting more mad remembering the memory.

you saw a small flash of guilt in percys eyes, but you didn't let him speak. "every single week percy! its the same fucking thing! you cancle last minute to go to annabeth, even dates you've canceled. and i know that your not sleeping with her or anything, but you're still putting her first instead of me. and that hurts. it really hurts." your voice became softer, cracking when you finished speaking.

your eyes filled with tears, and you started blinking rapidly to keep them at bay. "so yeah, percy, that's why i'm wondering what's going to be our relationship in the future. because right now, i'm not seeing one at all."

you shook your head as you saw his mouth open, still wanting to talk and get through to him. "i love you, so, so much. and it hurts, knowing that i'll always be out second to annabeth. if you want to continue our relationship, you're really going to have to change, percy. and i don't know if you're willing to do that for me." your tears starting openly falling down your face, your brain thinking of what it'll be like to not have percy in your life.

you saw percys mouth open, so you quickly looked down, knowing whatever he was going to say will make you go over the edge and into an anxiety attack. "...why didn't you tell me you felt like that?" he asked with a soft tone to his voice. you shook your had again, knowing you didn't fully get through to him.

"if you were feeling like that, you could have told me and i would have stopped," percy explained, opening his arms to hug you.

you quickly stepped back, not wanting to touch him. "you know what percy? i shouldn't have even had to talk to you about it, because it shouldn't have been a problem. i would have talked to you about it sooner, but i knew it was going to go the way this is going." you said as you wrapped your arms around yourself.

"your not understanding what you did wrong, just saying that i should have done something. which i should have, but i was to nervous, i know that you're too good foe me, gods, i get reminded every single day! so i didn't bring it up to you because i knew that i could've lost you by talking about this!" you let out your first sob as you finished, now thinking of how your going to have to move all your stuff out and stay at your friends condo until you can find a new one.

"hey—hey, let's have you calm down first before we talk. i promise I'm not going anywhere unless you want me to," he said, attempting to make eye contact before you looked down again.

"can, can you just leave? just for a while, please? I–I need to think and it's just really hard being around you right now." you said through your sobs, feeling guilty of practically kicking percy out of his own home, even if just for a while.

you didn't hear what he said, but you watched through your blurred vision as he walked away twords the front hall, heard him grab his keys, and then heard the door close behind him. you quickly walked into your shared bedroom, taking a seat on the edge of your queen size bed.

you look over at percys nightstand, seeing a framed picture of the two of you on your 6th month anniversary. then, your eyes quickly go to a polaroid in front of the framed picture. you sobs grew louder as you grabbed the framed picture and threw it out of anger, sending glass shards across the carpeted floor.

the polaroid was of percy and annabeth, sitting at the campfire back at camp half blood, both having matching smiles on their faces.

you could never compete with annabeth, even in the form of a picture.

#percy jackson #percy jackson x reader #percy pjo #percy jackson x you #pjo x you #pjo x reader #percy jackson x y/n #percy jackson x reader angst #percy jackson x you angst

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ach-sss-no · 11 hours

Text

someone asked why i loudly asserted that the stewing rabbits bit of lotr is the opposite book vs. movie and i think it is time to move off of the giant reblog chain i'm making

The Premise: Sam, Frodo and Gollum are all doing the opposite of what they are doing in the book in some fashion or another

(first off: in the movie they abandon the stew and don't eat it. the book takes a lot longer with all of this, and they do in fact eat the stew, and I definitely understand the movie couldn't be as expansive with the pacing but it's just. funny to me. they don't eat the stew vs. they do eat the stew, there's your first opposite)

now. THE SCENE: Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit

(Small disclaimer/disclosure: I referenced the script instead of a movie clip for this, so there may be some nuance missed in visuals or whatever but I don't think it would be enough of a difference to matter and hopefully you will soon see why not)

Frodo

Starting with him because this is simplest.

In the movie, Frodo is just sitting there minding his own business when Gollum dumps dead rabbits in his lap. (Then he doesn't interact with the ensuing conversation at all)

In the book he's asleep when Gollum brings the rabbits and does not participate in the scene. Okay, so he's awake vs. asleep. Easy.

(Also, book Frodo didn't witness the conflict between the other two characters and had no opportunity to intervene, which creates an interesting 'what could have been', but I am digressing. We are only 10% of the way in. buckle up)

Sam

In the movie, Sam is passive and reacting. Gollum dumps dead rabbits in Mr. Frodo's lap oh no what do I guess we'll cook them

In the book, Sam is active and orchestrating events.

Sam decides of his own accord that he wants to address their dwindling supplies:

Sam had been giving earnest thought to food as they marched. Now that the despair of the impassable Gate was behind him, he did not feel so inclined as his master to take no thought for their livelihood beyond the end of their errand; [in case you forgot. Earlier on Sam was like 'we won't have enough food for the way back' and frodo essentially responds with 'the way back. oh you sweet summer child'] and anyway it seemed wiser to him to save the waybread of the Elves for worse times ahead.

Note: This is all very good reasoning by Mr. Samwise and an excellent example of why he's so necessary to the quest! Yes, staying alive is step one.

But Where to get food? In both movie and book Sam is taking advantage of his resources (dead rabbits acquired via gollum), but in the book he's way more proactive about it:

An idea struck him and he turned to Gollum. Gollum had just begun to sneak off on his own, and he was crawling away on all fours through the fern. 'Hi! Gollum!' said Sam. 'Where are you going? Hunting? Well see here, old noser, you don't like our food, and I'd not be sorry for a change myself. Your new motto's always ready to help. Could you find anything fit for a hungry hobbit? ' 'Yes, perhaps, yes,' said Gollum. 'Sméagol always helps, if they asks-- if they asks nicely.' 'Right!' said Sam. 'I does ask. And if that isn't nice enough, I begs.'

In this point in the book Sam has now:

Decided of his own accord that he has a problem and that he wants to actively solve it

Arrived at a solution to the problem without any outside help or suggestions

Commanded Gollum to go hunt

In the point in the movie Sam has done:

Nothing

I'm not exaggerating. In the movie the scene hasn't started yet.

In both book and movie, rabbits are acquired a little while later. In the book this is a nonevent because Sam requested and expected rabbits. In the movie, the rabbits unexpectedly appear, and Gollum says they are for the hobbits to eat (Sam doesn't even come up with the idea to eat them on his own!)

They are young. They are tender. They are nice. Yes they are! Eat them! Eat them! [He bites and tears into the raw meat.]

GOLLUM SHOWED HIM HOW TO EAT THEM LIKE A MOTHER CAT.

Anyway, in the movie, we just cut to Sam stewing the rabbits after that.

But in the book, Sam isn't done arranging things:

He thought for a bit, while he took out his knife, cleaned and whetted it, and began to dress the rabbits. He was not going to leave Frodo alone asleep even for a few minutes. 'Now, Gollum,' he said, 'I've another job for you. Go and fill these pans with water, and bring 'em back! '

'Sméagol will fetch water, yes,' said Gollum. 'But what does the hobbit want all that water for? He has drunk, he has washed.' 'Never you mind,' said Sam. `If you can't guess, you'll soon find out. And the sooner you fetch the water, the sooner you'll learn. Don't you damage one of my pans, or I'll carve you into mincemeat.'

So now Sam has:

Decided of his own accord that he has a problem and that he wants to actively solve it

Arrived at a solution to the problem without any outside help or suggestions

Commanded Gollum to go hunt

Lovingly watched Frodo sleep

Collected rabbits after they were provided and begun skinning them

Assigned Gollum to fill his cook-pans

Gollum leaves to do this new errand and Sam starts building a cook fire.

He was just stooping over his fire, shielding it and building it up with heavier wood, when Gollum returned, carrying the pans carefully and grumbling to himself. He set the pans down, and then suddenly saw what Sam was doing. He gave a thin hissing shriek, and seemed to be both frightened and angry. 'Ach! Sss -- no!' he cried. 'No! Silly hobbits, foolish, yes foolish! They mustn't do it!' 'Mustn't do what?' asked Sam in surprise. 'Not make the nassty red tongues,' hissed Gollum. `Fire, fire! It's dangerous, yes it is. It burns, it kills. And it will bring enemies, yes it will.'

Sam has just been given a completely sane and rational reason why a fire is a bad idea (they are in a dangerous area and can't risk attention!) (as well as a reason that is less pertinent- it looks like Gollum is afraid of fire, and he may have sensible reasons to be afraid of fire because it is dangerous, but this is not Sam's problem)

Sam addresses the 'it will bring enemies' thing

'I don't think so,' said Sam. `Don't see why it should, if you don't put wet stuff on it and make a smother. But if it does, it does. I'm going to risk it, anyhow. I'm going to stew these coneys.'

And Sam is like, nah.

Now Gollum gets upset that he's 'ruining good meat' by cooking it

Now Sam de-escalates

Now, now! ' said Sam. 'Each to his own fashion. Our bread chokes you, and raw coney chokes me. If you give me a coney, the coney's mine, see, to cook, if I have a mind. And I have. You needn't watch me. Go and catch another and eat it as you fancy -- somewhere private and out o' my sight. Then you won't see the fire, and I shan't see you, and we'll both be the happier. [He still managed to slip in a 'get out of my sight'] I'll see the fire don't smoke, if that's any comfort to you.'

In the movie he just insults the quality of the meat:

SAM What's to ruin? There's hardly any meat on 'em.

...which I suppose is fair in this alternate universe where the rabbits were just dumped in his lap, unwanted.

Then in the movie they skip to the taters conversation, but in the book, there's more!

Back to the book:

Gollum withdrew grumbling, and crawled into the fern. Sam busied himself with his pans. 'What a hobbit needs with coney,' he said to himself, 'is some herbs and roots, especially taters -- not to mention bread. Herbs we can manage, seemingly.' 'Gollum!' he called softly. 'Third time pays for all. I want some herbs.'

Gollum says no.

'Sméagol'll get into real true hot water, when this water boils, if he don't do as he's asked,' growled Sam. 'Sam'll put his head in it, yes precious. And I'd make him look for turnips and carrots, and taters too, if it was the time o' the year. I'll bet there's all sorts of good things running wild in this country. I'd give a lot for half a dozen taters.'

Now Gollum asks what taters are, gets a cryptic answer, and is offered a kind of food he has just expressed he does not want (cooked food) and again ordered to fetch herbs. Gollum declines.

'You couldn't say no to that.' 'Yes, yes we could. Spoiling nice fish, scorching it. Give me fish now, and keep nassty chips!' 'Oh you're hopeless,' said Sam. 'Go to sleep!'

The movie finally has some of the same words in almost the same place:

SAM PO-TAY-TOES! Boil 'em. Mash 'em. Stick 'em in a stew. Lovely big golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish…. SM�AGOL [i'm not fixing it blah] [Sticks out his tongue in disgust] Pbbbttt!! [so now he's just devolved into making fart noises] SAM Even you couldn't say no to that. [He takes a sip of the stew] SM�AGOL Oh yes we could! Spoil nice fish... [scrambles up close to Sam] Give it to usss rrraw... and wrrriggling! [That line is not in the book. every time i see it quoted i age a year] [Makes sickeningly happy face.] You keep nasty chips. [Hops away] SAM You're hopeless.

The scene here ends in the movie.

In the movie, Sam has:

Watched rabbits be thrown at Frodo

Started cooking them after being all but commanded to eat them

Had some banter with Gollum

Left the scene without eating his stew

Sam is a passive character who is not orchestrating events, but rather reacting to them. A character being passive is not in and of itself a bad thing. I am only pointing it out because it is different from the book and a big change to this specific character (wanted to mention that because some people really don't like passive characters in general, I think they have a place. Frodo is rather passive in this scene but he obviously has a purpose.)

...In the book, Sam stews the rabbits for an hour and then eats the stew with Frodo

Frodo yawned and stretched. 'You should have been resting Sam,' he said. 'And lighting a fire was dangerous in these parts.

Wow! Was it? I feel like someone mentioned that earlier.

'Gollum! ' Sam called and whistled softly. 'Come on! Still time to change your mind. There's some left, if you want to try stewed coney.' There was no answer. 'Oh well, I suppose he's gone off to find something for himself. We'll finish it,' said Sam. [...] We don't see eye to eye, and he's not pleased with Sam, O no precious, not pleased at all.'

Whyever not?

To sum, book!Sam has:

Decided of his own accord that he has a problem and that he wants to actively solve it

Decided he's going to assign Gollum to the problem (This also demonstrates Sam's interpersonal intelligence. He notices what Gollum's capable of and understands intuitively how it can be turned to something industrious and useful) (Sam has made some missteps in other areas which are in the next section)

Commanded Gollum to go hunt

Collected rabbits after they were provided (according to his request), and began skinning them

Watched Frodo sleep

Assigned Gollum to fill his cook-pans, specifically because he does not want to leave Gollum and Frodo alone together, which is sensible

Threatened to carve Gollum into mincemeat, while holding a knife

Watched Frodo sleep and reflected on his poor health

Skinned the rabbits and put them in stew

Been told a cook fire is a bad idea and declined to stop what he's doing. A character being told to stop doing something & continuing with it anyway is another way for that character to show agency.

Asked Gollum to fetch herbs and potatoes (was refused)

Foraged a few herbs himself

Eaten lovely stew (while lamenting that there are no onions in it, and no bowls to put it in ;_;)

Offered Gollum stew long after (hours after) Gollum got angry and left

...all because Sam initially decided he wanted to acquire and cook food, and then took every necessary step to make that happen of his own accord.

Sam is an active character with high agency.

He is also showing more care for Frodo here (watching him while asleep and fretting over his health, lamenting that he somehow made rabbit stew from nothing by using his resources (which do here include another character- people are also resources!) but he can't put it in a nice bowl for mr. frodo- there's just a lot more here, which is natural because prose is a more detail-rich medium. Not all of this would have fit in the movie and I'm not saying it should have.

Even allowing for time, however, I do think there would have been a way to collapse this scene to the needed time requirement and still have Sam in charge of it instead of Gollum.

The scene finally ends on:

Then he noticed a thin spiral of blue-grey, smoke, plain to see as it caught the sunlight, rising from a thicket above him. With a shock he realized that this was the smoke from his little cooking-fire, which he had neglected to put out.

Did anyone foresee this?

Gollum

In the movie, Gollum is foisting a gift on Frodo and forcing social interaction that he doesn't want.

In the book, Gollum wants to go away somewhere so he can eat and is pressed into reluctant manual labor instead

Gollum is a little different from the other two characters in that his personality and motivations are also completely different here. (Where as Sam at least still has the same goals of looking after Frodo and making food.)

The scene is in Sam's POV so what Gollum is thinking and feeling has to be inferred from his actions/words/tone, but he's not exactly subtle.

The movie scene starts off with Gollum turning up with rabbits. He dumps them in Frodo's lap. He makes a spectacle of himself. He starts mauling the corpses.

The book scene starts off with Gollum trying to slip away somewhere to eat in private.

That's another thing. Gollum doesn't demonstratively bite into things Gollum always slips away somewhere to eat in private. Earlier:

It was actually not long before Gollum returned; but he came so quietly that they did not hear him till he stood before them. His fingers and face were soiled with black mud. He was still chewing and slavering. [He didn't bring food back on purpose. He's still chewing because he only has six teeth.] What he was chewing, they did not ask or like to think. 'Worms or beetles or something slimy out of holes,' thought Sam. 'Brr! The nasty creature; the poor wretch! ' Gollum said nothing to them, until he had drunk deeply and washed himself in the stream. Then he came up to them, licking his lips. 'Better now,' he said.

(Emphasis added.. Imagine you just recruited a serial killer to your D&D-party-in-real-life and he silently turns up covered in mud and won't talk to you. It looks like he's been eating bugs. He won't speak. he won't tell you what he's eating.)

Back to the scene in question: Gollum's leaving. Sam flags him down and asks him to hunt.

'Hi! Gollum!' said Sam. 'Where are you going? Hunting? Well see here, old noser, you don't like our food, and I'd not be sorry for a change myself. Your new motto's always ready to help. Could you find anything fit for a hungry hobbit? '

He asks in an insulting and confrontational way. ('old noser' + 'Your new motto's always ready to help' reeking of suspicion)

To be clear, I'm not criticizing Sam whatsoever for disliking and being suspicious of the known murderer he's traveling with against his will. but the way he talks to Gollum does have consequences.

'Yes, perhaps, yes,' said Gollum. 'Sméagol always helps, if they asks -- if they asks nicely.'

Gollum is reluctant and asks to be treated politely. I don't find this response disproportionate or unreasonable. Consider what would happen if anyone talked to LOTR-era Bilbo Baggins the way Sam just talked to Gollum. The ash would still be falling from the sky.

Anyway Sam's response is to mimic the way he talks.

'Right!' said Sam. 'I does ask. And if that isn't nice enough, I begs.'

Gollum leaves, and is gone a long time. While he's gone, Sam gazes lovingly at Frodo, and - this is not directly relevant but I wanted to note it:

Gollum returned quietly and peered over Sam's shoulder. Looking at Frodo, he shut his eyes and crawled away without a sound. [Seeing that Sam and Frodo are occupied, Gollum slips away without interrupting, which is also a different vibe from 'assaulting Frodo with rabbits while he's just sitting there.'] Sam came to him a moment later and found him chewing something and muttering to himself

Look! There's a character arc happening in the background [but not in the movies] It will reach fruition at Cirith Ungol [in the books]

Anyway, Gollum is chewing on something so he's clearly taken time out to hunt for himself as well (note for context: He's disastrously underweight and has been complaining of hunger).

On the ground beside him lay two small rabbits, which he was beginning to eye greedily. 'Sméagol always helps,' he said. `He has brought rabbits, nice rabbits. But master has gone to sleep, and perhaps Sam wants to sleep. Doesn't want rabbits now? Sméagol tries to help, but he can't catch things all in a minute.'

Gollum has brought rabbits on command, and he's reluctant to hand them over. This is the direct opposite of bringing rabbits of his own accord out of nowhere and forcing them onto somebody.

'Now, Gollum,' he said, 'I've another job for you. Go and fill these pans with water, and bring 'em back! ' 'Sméagol will fetch water, yes,' said Gollum. 'But what does the hobbit want all that water for? He has drunk, he has washed.' 'Never you mind,' said Sam.

That was a reasonable question, asked politely and prefaced by 'yes I'll do it'. There's no call for a 'never you mind' and there's certainly no call for this:

`If you can't guess, you'll soon find out. And the sooner you fetch the water, the sooner you'll learn. Don't you damage one of my pans, or I'll carve you into mincemeat.'

Gollum does the work and is careful with the pans as requested.

He was just stooping over his fire, shielding it and building it up with heavier wood, when Gollum returned, carrying the pans carefully and grumbling to himself.

He set the pans down, and then suddenly saw what Sam was doing.

Gollum discovers that 'Never you mind' meant 'I am going to do something you find dangerous and terrifying' i'm pretty sure this is what he's seeing in his POV

He gave a thin hissing shriek, and seemed to be both frightened and angry. `Ach! Sss -- no!' he cried.

Gollum gets angry.

At this point in the movie, Gollum has:

Dumped rabbits in Frodo's lap

Told him to eat them

Played with the dead animals in front of Frodo

there's a cut to Sam cooking the rabbits- Gollum makes no comment at all on the safety or feasibility of a fire, but gets right up close to it to peer into the cookpot, so he must not be too scared of it.

In the book, Gollum has:

Tried to slip away, presumably to eat, because he's hungry. Or maybe he just wants alone time! Shelob is not in visiting range. He's not being dastardly. Leave him alone

He's been flagged down to do additional work, and interrupted from whatever he wanted to do

Went off somewhere. Caught two rabbits (with his bare hands, I assume??) Also caught at least one other thing, because he's chewing something when he comes back

Came back with rabbits

Left Sam to his tender moment with Frodo and went off for more alone time

Gently floated the idea that perhaps Sam doesn't want these rabbits anymore, surrendered the rabbits when asked

Agreed to another errand that is probably difficult for him to do, after hunting down at least two rabbits Up to this point Gollum has been called 'old noser', had his speech patterns parroted at him in a mocking way, had a polite question refused, and been told he will be 'carved into mincemeat' if he damages the cooking pans (does Gollum even know what a cooking pan is? When was the last time he's seen one? Was he just handed some foreign object and told 'put water in it and don't break it' 'of course! why?' 'stfu') Gollum has a whole long complicated history that would reasonably make him very prone to difficulties with emotional regulation. Severe trauma and centuries of social isolation are involved.

He only just now gets angry, now that he thinks Sam is going to start a forest fire and summon orcs and the first word out of his mouth is a relatively restrained 'Ach!' a word that doesn't even start with an F!

Gollum says fire is harmful and will draw enemy attention. Sam says essentially 'probably not but if it does that's too bad'.

Another bit of context is that Gollum has been presenting himself as the 'wilderness survival guy' and has obvious pride when he's talking about finding his way through the marsh. Sam isn't just being dismissive of Gollum, he's particularly dismissing something Gollum has real knowledge of and takes pride in that has nothing to do with being a corrupted evildoer.

Then Sam says he's going to cook the food.

'Stew the rabbits!' squealed Gollum in dismay. `Spoil beautiful meat Sméagol saved for you, poor hungry Sméagol! What for? What for, silly hobbit? They are young, they are tender, they are nice. Eat them, eat them!' He clawed at the nearest rabbit, already skinned and lying by the fire.

After all of that, we are at 'They are young, they are tender, they are nice. Eat them, eat them!' In the movie, the scene started with this line, apropros of nothing, and it's just. Yelled at Frodo. It's an invitation.

In the book: The same line is a cry of frustration. This isn't a non sequitur, this is a last straw! Gollum is hungry. He's been chronically hungry for a long time. The rabbits are exactly the kind of thing he likes to eat. They must smell amazing to him because now they're skinned. He had to turn them over to Sam after going to the work of hunting them (he didn't have to do this, he could have just not come back, or pretended he didn't find anything- whether or not his motives are pure, and they probably aren't, he's doing what he promised).

In return: Sam told him to do more work, and then started a fire- which Gollum seems to genuinely think is idiotic and puts his own safety at risk because he's stuck with these hobbits for the time being- Sam won't listen to reason and put it out, and to add insult to injury, that meat he insisted on?

HE'S JUST GOING TO RUIN IT

Imagine you were hungry and you brought someone an oreo (also you had to wander around in the woods and find the oreo and then surprise it from behind and break its neck), and that person just! scraped off the cream filling and replaced it with spray cheese! after that person called you a jerk and set a fire in a trash can! Maybe that person loves spray-cheese oreos! Maybe everyone but you loves them! I think you'd still be frustrated! (If you're the person who loves spray cheese oreos, pretend it's something else.)

On my first reading of the book this is where I got that sinking 'I am feeling a mite sympathetic to the horrible murderer that I know is just going to stay evil and die in the end' feeling. Gollum is being dreadfully annoying, but he's been pushed past his ability to self-regulate. It feels like the dynamic of antagonizing someone until they melt down and then criticizing them for melting down (Sam is not intending to do this, and doesn't even seem to notice that's what's happened, but the result is the same.)

Sam smooths things over and lets Gollum leave! until

Until

'Gollum!' he called softly. 'Third time pays for all. I want some herbs.' Gollum's head peeped out of the fern, but his looks were neither helpful nor friendly.

WHYEVER NOT?

'A few bay-leaves, some thyme and sage, will do -- before the water boils,' said Sam. 'No! ' said Gollum. `Sméagol is not pleased. And Sméagol doesn't like smelly leaves. He doesn't eat grasses or roots, no precious, not till he's starving or very sick, poor Sméagol.'

(Gollum was retching at the scent of flowers earlier. He may be annoyingly dramatic but I have no cause to doubt that they really did make him feel ill)

(also, I'm out in the weeds speculating now, but I just noticed Gollum is starting to spout off talking about himself and how he feels after Sam pooh-poohed his fretting about the fire, and it feels like a bid for recognition, did you notice Sam has not been calling him Sméagol? Sam isn't using his real name.)

The response:

'Sméagol'll get into real true hot water, when this water boils, if he don't do as he's asked,' growled Sam.

Gollum is here under duress and is cooperating with a quest that is in every way opposed to his personal interests and survival.

'Sméagol won't go, O no precious, not this time,' hissed Gollum. 'He's frightened, and he's very tired, and this hobbit's not nice, not nice at all. Sméagol won't grub for roots and carrotses and -- taters. What's taters, precious, eh, what's taters?

He hasn't had any rest because he was immediately sent off to hunt. I'll bet he is tired

Gollum is still willing to stop being angry because he saw a shiny new word, let's see how this goes

`Po-ta-toes,' said Sam. 'The Gaffer's delight, and rare good ballast for an empty belly. But you won't find any, so you needn't look. But be good Sméagol and fetch me the herbs, and I'll think better of you

Sam gives a cryptic answer and demands more work. 'I'll think better of you?' Lies! Gollum just did two errands and received nothing but more verbal abuse. Sam did not even thank him. This was where on my first reading I was saying to myself 'oh no Sam is mishandling this really badly and doesn't even notice'

I'll cook you some taters one of these days. I will: fried fish and chips served by S. Gamgee. You couldn't say no to that.' 'Yes, yes we could. Spoiling nice fish, scorching it. Give me fish now, and keep nassty chips! ' 'Oh you're hopeless,' said Sam. 'Go to sleep!'

Gollum doesn't understand what chips are. He just said he doesn't like plants or cooked food. He's tired and hungry and has been ordered around all day. He did everything asked up to now and in return he gets called hopeless.

Sméagol willingly, nonconfrontationally, successfully did two out of the three tasks, and when he refuses a third task after being demeaned and dismissed, he's called hopeless.

So Gollum leaves. That's the end of his involvement in this scene. he didn't hit anyone, bite anyone, or call Sam anything worse than 'not nice', 'silly' and 'foolish' (He does not call Sam a 'stupid fat hobbit', that appears to be a movie invention as well)

In the movies, he threw dead animals at frodo and some of this dialog was said without any of the context. haha funni.

The takeaways from the book version are that Gollum can understand and follow verbal commands and do errands (this is important because Gollum needs to be somewhat sane and lucid in order to satisfyingly be held accountable for his crimes), will cooperate when asked, communicates poorly, has trouble controlling his temper, and may at any time be in physical distress and not show it. (He doesn't give outward signs of fatigue.)

The takeaways from the movie version seem to be that Gollum is hyperactive, doesn't understand facial expressions, and finds cooking to be an alien custom. No one tried to ask him to do anything, so I have no idea whether he can understand requests and do tasks or not. May or may not be lucid.

Can we at least agree that Sam saying 'You're hopeless' after this:

Give it to usss rrraw… and wrrriggling! [Makes sickeningly happy face.]

is a different vibe from Sam saying 'You're hopeless' after hearing this?

'[Sméagol]'s frightened, and he's very tired, and this hobbit's not nice, not nice at all.'

Summary

Why is this scene the opposite?

Frodo has gone from being asleep but serving as an emotional anchor (both Sam and Gollum look at him and have some kind of emotional revelation, although the latter has his in private and we don't ever know what it is, the cad) to being awake but doing nothing and leaving. (He does go and find Faramir when the scene ends, but at that point, we are moving on to the next scene. so I don't count it.) Frodo has gone from affecting events while asleep to having no effect while awake

Sam has gone from being in charge of what's happening to passively reacting to a chaos gremlin

Gollum has gone from following orders until he can't take it anymore and suffering to being a chaos gremlin who does whatever he wants and seemingly having a good time? he's dancing around

The stew goes from eaten to uneaten

The overall purpose of the original scene appears to have been mainly to establish character and relationship dynamics. The movie scene... is doing the same, I suppose, but it's so brief and stripped of context that it almost feels like an homage more than a real scene, like it's there because they couldn't get away with entirely cutting it. And as every character is behaving contrary to what they used to in one form or another, the overall effect is:

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Ask me about the waterfall scene next

#long post #never ask me about the waterfall scene

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who-knew-a-sheep-can-write · 2 days

Text

Siren Songs: Arthur Morgan x Siren!Reader

You sneered at the outlines of the men before you, your nails scratching faint lines into the thick glass. Your tail thrashed in the water, kicking up the dirt that sat thick at the bottom. The water tasted odd, like metal had been rusting in it for years, it didn’t taste clean. It made your skin start to ache.

You missed the taste of the sea.

Even in your deepest of dreams, you could still taste the salt on your skin and smell the brine that pooled beneath your body. How long had it been since you and your friends were snatched up from the sea? Years?

You glared at the men who had their backs to you, making sure to avoid eye contact as they laughed and regaled at how much money they had made off of you all. You could still feel the eyes of what looked to be thousands of people staring at you from beyond the thick glass and murky water you were all kept in.

They always made sure to keep the lid on tight, lest another “accident” happens and you all drown and maim another one of their men.

They had made a stop for the night, settling in some little town riddled with filth if the water they had rehomed you in was any clue. They had stashed your tanks in a stable amongst the four-legged beasts they call horses. Your heart tugged; Some of them were in the same shit show you were in: Forced to perform for the masses because of how different you were from humans. At least they could taste fresh air and even fresher waters.

Your eyes remained pinned on the men before you, narrowing your eyes and wrinkling your nose when one would turn to look at you before laughing with his “pals” only for them all to erupt in laughter.

“Come away from there,” one of your friends called. “It’ll do you no good just staring at them like that.”

A bitter taste settled at the back of your throat as you finally let go of the glass.

Just as you turned to swim towards your friends, the stable doors suddenly were yanked open.

“Dutch, are ya sure ye know what yer doin’?” Arthur didn’t even look over to the other men to his side.

He drew his bandana over his nose and unholstered his revolver as the older man just chuckled.

“Arthur, my boy, think of how much money we’d be gettin’ from this! In no time, we’ll be off in T-”

“Arthur’s right,” Hosea piped up. Dutch shot him a look. “They are dangerous creatures. They’ll think we’re just like their captors. One wrong move and we’re all goners.”

“It’s too late to back out now.”

Dutch unholstered his own revolver and started towards the stable that shockingly wasn’t very guarded.

Arthur followed close behind, eyeing the carts holding dangerous wild animals who eyed them all like they were walking hunks of meat ripe for eating. A shiver ran down his spine at the memory of that damned lion for Margaret that nearly took him down for good. Arthur snuck around the carts with Lenny and John while Dutch, Hosea and Micah took to the front.

A few shots rang out before Arthur and the others raced towards the front doors, already seeing a few bodies on the floor while Dutch had the rest getting on their knees.

“What is it? Money? We can give ya money!” one of the men pleaded.

They were all dressed nicely, better than anyone he��s ever seen in Saint Denis. They had to be from somewhere like New York City with clothes like that; Rich silks that were getting dirty from kneeling on the grimy floorboards covered in horse dung and God knows what else.

“Although ‘m honored for the offer, you fellows have somethin’ else I’ve had my eye on for awhile now,” Dutch smirked.

“Take it! It’s yours! Just let us go!” another of the men pleaded.

“Where are you fellows keepin’ the sirens?”

All of their eyes widened at the question.

“Wh- You can’t! They’re our star attraction!”

Dutch cocked the revolver and pressed it against the man’s forehead, the poor bastard was sweating through his expensive linens to the point where he could smell that pompous aftershave and cologne from where he stood.

“I ain’t askin’ again, gentlemen. The sirens?”

“There’s a wagon there,” Micah sneered, motioning towards the back of the stable with his gun. “What’s in it?”

Just the look on Micah’s face made Arthur want to silence him. Hell, everything Micah did made him want to shoot him dead where he stood.

“Arthur, go check it out,” Dutch motioned to the wagon.

Arthur swallowed thickly but slowly peeled away from the rest of the group. He was careful to step towards the wagon, noticing right away on how huge it was and especially how odd-looking it was. It was the same maroon wood with gold accents and wheels locked into place, but instead of large iron bars to keep whatever is in, it was thick glass.

With a lot of scratches on the inside.

Arthur stepped closer, noticing how murky the water was and how it was pushed back into the darkest corner of the stable away from the horses. The water must have felt so cold and disgusting.

At first, he didn’t see anything in the large tank.

And then he saw multiple pairs of eyes cutting through the darkness. Various shades of colors, but the pair of yellow eyes in the front stuck out to him the most. They were judging him, eyeing him up on whether he was prey to them or a predator. He couldn’t blame them, especially after how long those poor things have been in captivity. It made his heart twist in his ribs.

Dutch had been following this entire thing since Blackwater. It was his next big thing besides all of the other “plans” he had in that odd head of his. He was going to steal the sirens from this traveling circus and pawn them off to the highest bidder.

Dutch came up behind Arthur with a lantern in hand and gun ready in the other. His eyes widened at the sight of multiple eyes glowing the in the murky water and raised the lantern to the glass.

The entire pack of them flinched away from the light, but he really only got a good look at the one in front with the yellow eyes. Their scales had started to lose their color so long ago, there was just a faint trace of blue in the dull scales. Overgrown claws that had been neglected, a long tail curled and twisting the water, a wide fin that had little tears at the ends. He could only imagine how the others looked.

It was cruel to keep them in such disgusting conditions.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Dutch gawked. “Let’s get ‘em outta here and back to camp.”

It was late at night when Arthur left the confines of his tent, staring at the tank wagon at the edge of camp and started towards it with a lit lantern in hand. He saw the bodies in the water all huddled together, clinging to the edges on the tank fast asleep. Except for you.

Upon feeling eyes on the tank, your own parted and stared Arthur down as he walked up, a fire lit under his ass and burned him with determination. He saw you tail thrash a bit in the water, your claws sank a bit into the lip of the tank, the gills on your throat flared. You were trying to intimidate him, to drive him away; Yet you didn’t use your voice to do so.

“Why are you here?” your eyes narrowed.

He mulled over his words, his eyes pinned to yours in a hypnotic trance.

“‘M sorry.” Your eyes widened just a bit, your grip on the edge of the tank lessened. “I know you all’ve been through a lot. Made out to be some monsters, gettin’ looked like yer freaks. It ain’t fair to you all.”

He doesn’t know how long the silence enveloped you both. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours; But you softened up and finally let go of your death grip on the tank and freely floated on the water’s surface.

“You’re not… afraid of me?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

Arthur’s throat bobbed as he swallowed thickly. The way your inhuman eyes searched his, the way the sun shimmered off of your dull scales. It made his stomach flutter in an odd way.

“‘M gonna get ya out of this mess.”

#red dead redemption #rdr #arthur morgan #arthur x reader #arthur morgan x reader

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thefourchimes · 3 days

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okay, just gonna say this now before i start this post: i have absolutely no problems with alternate universes, go ham with them, go wild, you can have fun, etcetc, they're called alternate universes for a reason, after all

however. HOWEVER.

i have a problem when people say something should have happened in canon, when canon itself disproves or goes against whatever these people want

the reason why im bringing this up?

the whole thing with how some people keep saying mirabel should have [insert the usual things people say here, hate, slap, punch, left, get revenge, etc, take your pick, there's unfortunately a lot to choose from] the family. in the canon movie.

again, i have no problem with alternate universes and seeing them in fanfics or whatever, you do you, could be interesting to see even

but when you start saying this should have happened in canon, its just. no. no.

god, it just frustrates me so much whenever i see these posts and comments, the ones that said she should have gone evil or villain or hate the family and all that stuff

because mirabel herself loves her family. she literally said it outright in the movie!!! its not in her personality and character to just go against them and hate them and want revenge. there will be hurt and hesitance and some resentment after everything she'd gone through, yes, but outright hate to the point where she'll hurt them?? absolutely not.

not with her character, her love and empathy and understanding, the traits we see her show in the movie.

like my friend once said: mirabel "he loved this family. i love this family. we all love this family" would NEVER hurt her family

say it louder for the people at the back!!

and thats not all i want to rant about tbh...the real kicker on this one?

whenever this statement is added on top of it all: "if i were mirabel—"

well, news flash people who keep saying these things, mirabel isnt you. mirabel is her own character who has her own experiences and her own feelings. maybe you'll be able to relate to her, especially with similar experiences, but that doesn't mean you can just copy and paste your own feelings onto her and say this is what she should have done in canon because thats what i would have done!!

we all project onto our favorite characters in various ways, which is completely fine, go at it and definitely not surprising for a story about family issues, but when you start to project so much that you throw away the character's actual personality and characterization in favor of said projection? yeah...no.

thats not mirabel madrigal anymore, that's a completely new character...or dare i say, a self-insert for some people... 💀:////

yeah, im just so frustrated with this AAAAAAA 😭

but anyway yes.

thats it, really. again, AUs are absolutely fine but if someone starts yapping about how canon should have [insert whatever those people keep saying here] instead while disregarding actual canon and proper characters and personalities, im going to become violent

anywho...thats my thoughts on this, went on a bit of a tangent but

yeah

anyway bye—

#encanto #mirabel madrigal #kept going through some comments and posts in the past and i felt violent #and decided to rant #uhhhh hope this makes sense #and that im not being insane or something #but yeah #whoop—#overthinking and doubting again but #i will prevail aaaaaaaaaaaaa #but anyway yes #this is all for the people who had comments on how “canon should have ended like this!!!”#im so done with them pls

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scoobydoodean · 2 days

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what the FUCK is wrong with sam fans . this is kind of a genuine question .

I mean for some of them it's definitely connecting your personal life experiences with the experiences of a character from a TV show to a degree that is not healthy.

Identifying with fictional characters is completely normal and intended—it's what makes certain stories stick out to us over others. Using fiction to cope with and work through ones own personal trauma is not an inherently bad thing either—it can be therapeutic and perfectly healthy. But you can take this too far and reach a point where you totally lose perspective on a story being a story and can no longer interact in fandom spaces without being harmed emotionally. This emotional harm happens because you have begun to believe that the character is actually you. Not only does this make you feel as if others speaking with authority on the character in a way that challenges your own perceptions is an invalidation of your own emotions and experience... it means you begin to receive any criticism of a fictional character as a criticism of yourself, and that is not a position you ever want to place yourself in.

Art is art. There are objective aspects to it (the medium, the colors, what it literally depicts) but what it means is subjective. Art can be personal to you, but it's also personal to everyone else who observes it and likes it. It does not exist just for you to interpret and identify with or to suit your sole sense of its meaning. You cannot impose the personal meaning you place on a piece of art on everyone else and demand they view it through your personal lens. To do so is to misunderstand the purpose of publicly shared and experienced art.

We all have moments where we find our feelings about art are so incongruous with someone else's that it isn't enjoyable to view that art side by side with them. However, if you have reached a point where you find yourself claiming that those people's perceptions of art literally cause emotional harm to you, and that the onus is on them to censor their thoughts and feelings about art to protect you, you should not be viewing that art publicly. In fact, you should really be questioning whether you have a healthy relationship with the art itself and whether you actually like it. Life is too short to spend it fixated on something that you think you like, but that is actually slowly sucking you into a pit of despair.

#mail #dont feed the stans after midnight

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zhoufeis · 10 hours

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What just bothers me simply about the discussion of TTPD being all so great is neither the fact that some reviewers literally ignore some of the very gruesome lyrics this album has to offer nor the fact that the whole album has the same tune and I could not tell apart these tracks even if I wanted to, no. After all, we can always argue that tastes are different... arguably. It's something utterly different that's bothering me.

It's three things entirely different.

1) The fact we pretend 31 break-up tracks, written entirely out of the perspective of victimhood, of some love stories are worth calling "The Tortured Poets Department". Mind you, Swift, I like love songs, I like break-up songs, I like them poetically, I like when they touch me. But writing 31 break-up songs (not entirely, right, more like 25 or so) for one album makes me wonder if there is anything deeper... more touching to write about. You stay on the surface describing relationships (romantic as well as parasocial) in which you come out as a victim. But the self-reflection is missing entirely. And if I learned one thing in language classes it's that it's poetically dull if we only ever stay on the surface. We gotta dig deeper. And I'm not referring to some poetic lines to make a song sound more beautiful. I'm talking about true depth, true self-reflection, something that makes you defenseless. Cause all this woman does is writing songs out of the perspective of defense - and victimhood. Never does she actually draw herself as defenseless or vulnerable, always knowing how to use the right words to make her fans defend her.

2) Which leads me to that other thing that really bothers me. Her PR team was more involved in this album than the persona of Taylor Swift could ever be. Or maybe Taylor Swift is only PR at this point. Maybe there is no actual person behind all of this. Cause if there's one thing that's utterly apparent, it is that this album hinges SOLELY on any media drama she was involved in. Everyone out there trying to decipher which song is about whom - is this storytelling? Is this poetry? If I only care about songs and judge them by who they are about? The beauty of music is that it binds people together, makes people feel heard or seen through the text and voice of another person. What she's doing isn't that. She is not binding people together by selling her songs as something that could happen to anyone, no, all of it is always only about one person's story - her own. She also doesn't create fictional stories to write about, things to further the limits of our imagination and tell a story that doesn't even exist, and never will. She doesn't use imagination, she doesn't try to connect to other people, she's trying only to connect people to HER. Can this album even be judged neutrally if everyone just knows about her relationships and is guessing who the songs are about? Is there one person out there like "I have never seen any of the TS relationship drama and the like, and I only like to review this album lyrically and sonically by the lyrics and tune within"? Because she is SO present in everyday media press, it is impossible to miss her relationship drama. So are we actually still reviewing Swift's album as a standalone media for its sound and lyrics? Or are we actually just reviewing TS's terrible love life which she apparently has no responsibility for? And mind you all - she knows exactly what she's doing. Don't even think for a second she doesn't know that you all are following her every footstep. Don't think she doesn't use it to her advantage. (Aside from that, she has been considered a storyteller for so long, but she seems to have a lack of stories she can come up with if the only ones she writes about are her own...)

3) Which leads to the entire capitalist thinking behind the release of this album. Not only did she publish 19 different versions of this album to be acquired, no, she also literally had millions of fans pre-ordering her (normal-length) album, only to drop an extended version right after its release. Which means that all these fans had to buy yet another album. And don't think she meant this as a surprise for her fans - she did that cause that's how you make money. Cause that's how capitalism works. And she's part of the problem.

#anti taylor swift #taylor swift #tagging with TS too cause it's valid criticism and no hate #(fyi tho i couldn't stand her since i first saw her in 2009 :D)#mischa for ts

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gogandmagog · 2 days

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Guys! Yesterday I had a book-shaped piece of mail, and inside of it was my copy of Children and Childhoods in L.M. Montgomery: Continuing Conversations being returned, from another very dear user here! I bring this up only because some-months-ago I promised to copy out a particular article from this book, for yet another user here, who was interested! Interested because it’s on the the subject of a Fan Favourite thing... fan fiction. And better still because some of our (basically famous) mutuals here are mentioned by name! If you’ve ever wondered if the Montgomery scholarship is reading your fan fiction... the answer is yes, they are! They totally are. More than that, they also have some thoughts to share… as well as recommendations of their faves too! This article even covers the F/F and M/M fan fiction presented by fans in LMM’s universe, and I’m personally super excited to be able to begin reading these works, as soon as I can find them all. I’ve done my best to link what I could immediately find, but some of the mentioned stories were unavailable... potentially due to changes in usernames? (That said... if anyone knows of the works indicated here, that I haven’t provided a link for, please do share!) This article, by the way, was written recently... in 2020! It’s very current, and it covers a few stories that were still being actively updated during the pandemic. The focus of this article is less so on canon (or really just the Anne/Gilbert pairing), though, and seems to prefer demonstrating the versatility of mixing relationships (Anne and Emily, for one!) and the wider more general universe-building aspects (the entanglements of future generations/Anne’s grandchildren) that fans have been expounding on for nothing less than decades.

Okay, here we go! xx

Continuing Stories: L.M. Montgomery and Fanfiction in the Digital Era by Balaka Basu

Fanfiction – the recreational (re)writing of texts – is a literary genre of rapidly growing significance. Abigail Derecho in her brief history of fanfiction identifies it as “a genre that has a long history of appealing to women and minorities, minorities, individuals on the cultural margins who used archontic writing as a means to express not only their narrative creativity, but their criticisms of social and political inequities as well.”

Insightfully defined by Francesca Coppa and Mary Ellen Curtin as “speculative fiction about character,” fanfiction can be even more precisely understood as fantasies about the diegetic positioning of characters in the context of various settings, communities, relationships both textual and paratextual, and eventually all manner of cultural mythologies.

Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson describe the production of fanfiction as “part collaboration and part response to not only the source text, but also the cultural context within and outside the fannish community in which it is produced.”

They point out that the shift in the method of dissemination of fanfiction from newsletters and zines to internet archives means that “ever-younger fans who previously would not have had access to the fannish culture except through their parents can now enter the fan space effortlessly; financial resources have become less of a concern because access to a computer is the only prerequisite; and national boundaries and time zones have ceased to limit fannish interaction.”

The nature of fanfiction allows participants to cross-generational and socio-economic boundaries in an ongoing exchange of responses to a source text with which they share a fascination, developing new texts that in turn elicit their own responses. While the creation of fanfiction is evidence of an affective, loving, communal relationship with the source text, this genre of writing is still dismissed in many quarters as overly emotional, purely erotic, and even perverse, a type of amateur and immature engagement with popular texts that produces writing necessarily divorced from literary significance. Produced in staggeringly vast quantities by subcultures with complex vocabularies and traditions that can intimidate the casual reader, fanfiction is perceived by many to be more of a cultural practice than a literary genre, variously denigrated for its pornographic potential and its lack of originality. However, close examination reveals that fan writers are able to create a critical dialogue with the originating author in acts of communal storytelling that incorporate allusions and reference points to which other dedicated fan readers and writers may respond.

In this chapter, after examining how L.M. Montgomery and her writer heroine Emily themselves engage in practices now associated with fanfiction, I survey four forms of fanfiction that remove Montgomery’s novels from her seemingly idyllic and timeless island settings, contextualizing her characters and plots within history and other genres: the sequel set during the Second World War, the modern AU (alternate universe), the gap-filler, and the slash fic, all of which allow the young readers who grow up with her novels to engage in dialogue with the stories they love, a type of literary conversation that Montgomery herself models within her texts. Emily’s reading, which is active rather than passive, resembles twenty-first-century fans’ ownership of the texts they love, provoking creative responses. For instance, after reading works by Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Matthew Arnold, Emily writes, “Teddy lent me 3 books of poetry. One of them was Tennyson and I have learned The Bugle Song off by heart so I will always have it. One was Mrs. Browning. She is lovely. I would like to meet her. I suppose I will when I die but that may be a long time away. The other was just one poem called Sohrab and Rustum. After I went to bed I cried over it. Aunt Elizabeth said ‘what are you sniffling about?’ I wasn’t sniffling – I was weeping sore … I couldn’t go to sleep until I had thought out a different end for it – a happy one.”

The reactions Emily catalogues are those of the fan; they are viscerally felt in the body and attempt to dissolve the boundary between author and reader, producer and consumer. She inscribes Tennyson within her heart in order to possess the poem she loves; she creates a relationship between Barrett Browning and herself; and, most significantly, she interjects her own desired happy ending into Arnold’s tragic narrative, a corrective desire that is at the core of many works of fanfiction. Emily’s diaries and her story reflect Montgomery’s own experiences from childhood to adulthood as reader, writer, and reader-turned-writer discussed in the introduction to this volume. Depicting Emily as a voracious reader and a life-writer like herself, Montgomery places the child Emily’s voice in conversation with that of the narrator through Emily’s letters to her dead father in Emily of New Moon and through her diary entries in Emily Climbs and Emily’s Quest, creating a form of joint authorship that is referenced explicitly in “Salad Days,” the second chapter of Emily Climbs: “book is not going to be wholly, or even mainly, made up of extracts from Emily’s diary; but, by way of linking up matters unimportant enough for a chapter in themselves, and yet necessary for a proper understanding of her personality and environment, I am going to include some more of them. Besides, when one has material ready to hand, why not use it?”

The narrator’s willingness to use the “material” that is “ready to hand” reflects Montgomery’s and Emily’s practices, and also validates other writers’ use of the material Montgomery places at their disposal. As with many fans, Emily’s reading frequently makes itself felt within her writing.

Like Montgomery, Emily learns her trade through mimicry, from her first poem in blank verse inspired by James Thomson’s Seasons to her unwitting imitation of Kipling that is pointed out by her teacher, Mr Carpenter, in his review of her work. Like Sara Stanley of The Story Girl, whose compelling and fascinating stories are rarely if ever original, Emily is a fan of the oral traditions of her community, incorporating and building upon them in her own writing, transforming and recreating, for instance, the story of “The Woman Who Spanked the King” in Emily Climbs.

The retelling and versioning that Emily practises signal her immense admiration for the source texts she adapts, just as the creation of fanfiction does for Montgomery’s readership and fans. The possibilities inherent in versioning and adaptation are illustrated in Emily’s Quest. When Montgomery depicts Emily undertaking the reworking of someone else’s narrative, she is adapting an episode from her own experience while working for The Echo in Halifax, which she records in her journal. Montgomery, like Emily, was asked to create an ending for a serialized story, “A Royal Betrothal,” after compositors had misplaced the original text.

Like Emily, she claims that her “knowledge of royal love affairs [was] limited,” and that she was unaccustomed “to write with flippant levity of kings and queens.” Nevertheless, Montgomery manages to create a conclusion that passes muster, since “as yet nobody has guessed where the ‘seam’ comes in.” She is, however, curious about the original author’s reaction to her unauthorized adaptation, and while she never discovers this in real life, she does imagine it in her fiction when she introduces Mark Greaves, who is horrified by Emily’s new ending for the story but enchanted by its author. Neither Montgomery nor Emily engages in this sort of writing from a place of fandom; they have no previous attachment to “A Royal Betrothal,” and both are writing professionally. Nevertheless, the ability to solve the puzzle of the story and the weaving of their work into an already extant text are the very project of fanfiction: ludic narrative composition that recalls the way children play make-believe with the narratives they love, reworking and extending them. It is telling that Montgomery uses the metaphor of the “seam” to describe this particular craft. Jane Dawkins, writing about her fanfiction, which is inspired by Jane Austen, describes her fan novel Letters from Pemberley as “an old-fashioned patchwork quilt, where in place of the scraps of fabric reminding one of the favorite frocks or shirts whence they came, there is a line or a phrase or a sentence from one of [the original] books or letters stitched alongside the lesser scraps of my own manufacture.”

Montgomery’s final book, framed by the two world wars, is just such a patchwork sequel, albeit providing only brief glimpses of the characters that readers met as children and who have now grown older. When a version of the book was published in 1974 as The Road to Yesterday, these glimpses, lacking the interstitial materials, became even briefer, mirroring the more forced insertion of beloved characters that the two earlier collections, Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea, display. Only two of Anne’s grandchildren – Gilbert Ford and Walter Blythe – are obliquely referred to, in the story “A Commonplace Woman,” where an unpleasant young doctor reflects on both of them as potential rivals for the affection of a beautiful girl he himself hopes to pursue.

However, the full novel, The Blythes Are Quoted, published in 2009 and comprised of short stories about the people in Glen St Mary and over the harbour, is interspersed with poetry by both a young Walter and an adult Anne. The poems are cut with tiny slices of dialogue that suggest the continuing lives of fans’ favourite characters and how they might have developed. In “‘Dragged at Anne’s Chariot Wheels’: L.M. Montgomery and the Sequels to Anne of Green Gables,” Carole Gerson notes the mixture of feelings from pleasure to frustration that Montgomery records in her journals as she prepares to write her first sequel.

While Montgomery wrote the first installments of her various series out of inspiration, she was certainly aware of what her market desired from subsequent installments. She often regretted the necessity of marrying off her characters, but was aware that her fans demanded this conventional outcome for the characters they had come to love; these traditionally romantic endings, when not offered by Montgomery herself at the instigation of her publishers, are regularly deployed by contemporary fanfiction authors building on the source texts.

Indeed, long before the original structure of The Blythes Are Quoted was revealed to readers in Benjamin Lefebvre’s afterword, fanfiction writers were spinning off lengthy narratives that included a third generation of young Blythes, Fords, and Merediths dealing with the onslaught of the Second World War. While earlier installments in the Anne series – such as Anne of Green Gables and Anne’s House of Dreams – depict the deaths of Matthew, Anne and Gilbert’s first daughter (Joyce), and Captain Jim, Walter’s death in Rilla of Ingleside is somehow more striking. Unlike Matthew and Captain Jim, he has not yet had time to grow old; unlike Joyce, readers have had opportunities to get to know him as a child in Rainbow Valley and as he grows into young adulthood in Rilla of Ingleside. His death is unnatural and, therefore, all the more horrifying. These two aspects of Rilla of Ingleside – the evocation of history by a nostalgic fictional world that is still tied to real time and the use of high drama, tragedy, and romance – provide fanfiction authors with a model they can use to appeal to the emotions of those readers who are immersed in the next generation of Montgomery characters.

The Second World War, then, provides an entry point into the series for fanfiction authors, who can deploy real history coupled with beloved characters to create a tale that feels absolutely authentic. One example of this is a short story, “The Pen and the Sword,” written in 2007 by MarnaNightingale. Here, mimicking the style of Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Wimsey Papers (a series of Spectator articles published between 1939 and 1940, which interestingly also continue the story of First World War–era characters during the Second World War), MarnaNightingale employs epistolary excerpts and newspaper articles to tell the story of a family going through the horrors of war for a second time. Grounding her fragmented story – like The Blythes Are Quoted, a mixture of genres – in the accounts of novelist Mollie Panter-Downes (1939) and war correspondents Ernie Pyle (1940) and Ross Munro of the Canadian Press (1941), whose articles are attributed to Kenneth Ford, she offers a story that, like Rilla of Ingleside, is anchored to the historical moment, while also nostalgically focusing on the character development that comes from Gilbert Ford’s death, Rilla’s and Faith’s reactions to the war, and the lives of their children. Here war also serves as an opportunity for new experiences, particularly for women and children: Rilla takes a factory job as a machinist, liking it better than working in Carter Flagg’s store; one of Anne’s grandchildren, Susan, plans to be a doctor; and Faith, who worked as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in the First World War, mentions how she can sympathize. As well, the daily tidbits that flavour the pages of Rilla of Ingleside are there: one article, attributed to Anne, includes the recipe for Susan Baker’s war bread, reminding readers of the problems of wartime rationing, even in the Americas. Real life events – like the Canadian forces trying (and failing) to make a beachhead at Dieppe – arouse the passions of the reader. Unlike Austen – who also famously wrote of three or four families in a country town, but kept the Napoleonic wars firmly in the shadows – Montgomery brings the passions and high drama of the world stage into the sleepy villages of Prince Edward Island, which inspire fanfiction spinoffs.

The long novel Cecilia of Red Apple Farm, by a fan author who posts under the pseudonym ruby gillis, also directly reworks passages and scenes from the whole range of Anne books, set in the late-nineteenth century, to The Blythes Are Quoted, set in the early years of the Second World War, to highlight the similarity between her new generation of characters and their ancestors. Cecilia is the daughter of Una Meredith and Shirley Blythe (characters often married off in fanfiction). Like MarnaNightingale, ruby gillis provides period flavouring in the styles of dresses and behaviour and in references to 1940s popular films and songs. Simultaneously, this setting offers new opportunities to her female character: Cecilia wants to be a doctor, and rather than staying in Canada, she joins up to be a nurse in England. She has a series of romances – one with Sid Gardiner (before he marries May Binnie), and one with her cousin Blythe Meredith, who is this generation’s poet – before finally ending up with Marshall Douglas (the son of Mary Vance). Just as Anne initially refuses Gilbert Blythe in favour of Roy Gardner’s resemblance to her ideal man in Anne of the Island, ruby gillis’s Cecilia is fooled by the allure of Sid and Blythe as Roy Gardner–like romantic heroes into believing that she does not truly love her fun, practical, “Gilbert-esque” friend. Published in 2004, Cecilia of Red Apple Farm further illustrates the opportunities presented by reusing and reworking a body of texts through its incorporation of Montgomery’s poem “I Wish You” as the work of Blythe Meredith. Montgomery includes this poem and attributes it to Anne in The Blythes Are Quoted, although ruby gillis could not have known this when writing. The repetition of names and circumstances might seem derivative, but for readers who have read and reread the original books so many times, the extension of the story world is prized, even if – perhaps even because of – its callbacks to the original text. Due to the tendency of fans to fixate on “the good bits” in a reread, these parts can be taken for the whole.

Austen fanfiction demonstrates this aptly. Indeed, Helen Fielding’s second Bridget Jones novel, Bridget Jones and the Edge of Reason (1999), illustrates just such a reading of Pride and Prejudice: she shows Bridget, a fan, watching the scene from the 1995 mini-series in which Darcy, dripping in a wet see-through shirt, exits the lake, and then rewinding and rewatching the scene multiple times. How many times might a similar fan reread Walter’s letter from Courcelette? This repeated reviewing of selected portions can replace the amplitude of the original novel. With this delimited focus, narrative is no longer seen as a progression, but as a single moment of pleasure, sustained as long as possible. Reading the Second World War as a repetitive sequel to the First World War further highlights this possibility.

Even Montgomery seems to do so, as demonstrated in The Blythes Are Quoted, with its new generation of characters confusingly named after the old: Walter, Jem, Rilla, Di, Anne, and Gilbert. A variation on Marah Gubar’s kinship model, this kind of continuation highlights the blurred boundaries between child and adult characters who are literally related to one another and whose adventures mimic one another.

In a third example of fanfiction set during the Second World War, Weeping May Tarry, a long novel by ElouiseBates, Meggie, the heroine, is Shirley’s daughter (and also, surprisingly, Paul Irving’s granddaughter). In this story, which like Cecilia of Red Apple Farm is an installment of a longer series, Meggie is sent off to a conservatory of music to study singing, aptly combining the traditions of the nostalgic boarding-school novel with “Girl’s Own” wartime fiction. Following the tradition of Magic for Marigold, which explicitly suggests in its second chapter that the Murrays of Blair Water and the Lesleys of Cloud of Spruce exist in the same universe, @e-louise-bates (like many other fanfiction authors, including ruby gillis) suggests that all of Montgomery’s characters exist in a single universe: Meggie partners briefly with the grandson of Sara Stanley (The Story Girl and The Golden Road) and is close friends with Jane Stuart (Jane of Lantern Hill).

Going even further, @e-louise-bates introduces the grandchildren of the What Katy Did series as friends for Meggie and includes Betsy from Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Understood Betsy as Bruce Meredith’s wife, creating a world where all the characters of early-twentieth-century girls’ fiction seem to have truly lived, where their descendants must cope with victory gardens and dances with soldiers at the Exhibition Grounds, and where kisses are much more commonplace than they once were.

These particular continuers of Montgomery are also desirous of membership in the community of her fans, seeing their literary endeavours as productive of approval from a fellow readership. Likewise, the novels are notable for their sociality – they seem to offer the reader not only a fantasy friendship with the characters themselves but also the very real society of fellow readers of the works. Thus, these fan authors attempt to diversify their stories so that they represent contemporary beliefs regarding multiculturalism; ruby gillis, for instance, introduces into the family by way of marriage a French girl who has had to flee the Nazis due to being Jewish, a situation Montgomery and her contemporaries might have had some difficulty accepting, considering early-twentieth-century attitudes toward interreligious marriage and Montgomery’s othering of the German-Jewish peddler who sells Anne green hair dye.

The Second World War thus offers writers of Montgomery fanfiction the loom on which to weave new, more diverse stories, even as The Blythes Are Quoted, which also traces the characters’ reactions to this new war, demonstrates how these readers-turned-writers followed Montgomery’s own trajectory, not knowing that they were doing so. On the subject of fanfiction, young-adult author Patricia C. Wrede writes: “The thing that fascinates me about fanfiction, though, is the way that it models the decision tree that writers go through (whether consciously or unconsciously) to get to their final product. For those of us who do this part mostly unconsciously, it can be interesting and instructing to see the multitude of alternate paths that a story could have taken, all laid out more-or-less neatly in different authors’ fanfics [… taking a slightly different fork in the road] resulting in the plot veering in a completely new direction. Friends become enemies; enemies become friends; goals and objectives and results shift and change.” Within these pieces of fanfiction, then, fan writers are able to follow these decision trees with subsequent generations of characters as well.

Another avenue of access occurs when fan authors transpose historical narratives into the contemporary moment. Perhaps the best-known example of this modern alternate universe [AU] conversion is the television program Sherlock, which takes Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian detective into the twenty-first century. While new cultural contexts appear, the essence of character is meant to be retained. Just as Sherlock uses text messages and blogs to substitute for telegraphs and handwritten journals, fans of Montgomery reimagine the relationships between her characters as if they were taking place online.

For instance, “Work in Progress” (2012) by verity postulates a friendship between Montgomery’s most famous heroines, Anne and Emily. In this piece of fanfiction, Emily circumvents Aunt Elizabeth’s injunction against fiction during her time at Shrewsbury High by becoming a blogger who is restricted to the “truth.” The story’s online summary, a part of which reads “Anne rolls her eyes. ‘Is your aunt really going to know if you cheat on your nonfiction with some hot prose on the side?’” shows how the story preserves the character qualities that Montgomery laid out, complete with references to the Murray pride and Anne’s orphanhood. Mr Carpenter’s admonitions are spelled out at the beginning of the story:

“Emily Byrd Starr has a sticky note on her desktop. It reads:

ITALICS

CAPITALS

!!!!!

“just”

“really”

CTRL+F!

It is almost like having Mr Carpenter in the room with her.”

Verity creates humour through the juxtaposition of contemporary social media and allusions to Montgomery’s source text. Another story by verity detailing Rilla’s romance with Ken Ford and her friendship with Una Meredith, “Rilla of Toronto,” takes place mainly through instant messages. In this story, Rilla reflects on her life from eighteen to twenty-five, tracing a continuum from her child self to her new adulthood, underscored by verity’s translation of Montgomery’s work into contemporary millennial language.

A third type of fanfiction narrative, the gap-filler, focuses on and expands the implications of the source texts. Moira Walley-Beckett’s Netflix/CBC series Anne with an “E,” as Laura Robinson shows in chapter 12 of this volume, is somewhat fanfictional in and of itself: as Robinson points out, the show fills gaps by bringing to the fore the darker currents that have always been beneath the seemingly untroubled waters of Anne of Green Gables, including Anne’s potential post-traumatic stress disorder from the disturbing life she led before coming to Green Gables. This kind of versioning and adaptation tacitly permits fan authors to feel that their versions are just as valid as those produced by professionals. Gap-fillers frequently expand on romantic pairings and in fandom are often referred to by portmanteaux of characters’ names that perpetuate some inside joke or work as puns. “Shirbert” – a moniker for Anne and Gilbert – is the latter, and demonstrates how fans posting on sites like Archive of Our Own (Ao3), Fanfiction.net, and Wattpad (this last generally populated by younger fans) develop their own language to identify their stories within the community for which they write.

One such story, “You caught me staring, but I caught you staring back,” by Anuka, clearly inspired more by the television series than the novels, begins with an author’s note that reads, “I decided to write some fluff for these two, because I need more Shirbert moments, and season 2 is so far away. I added gifs to make it more vivid.” Here, the romance between Anne and Gilbert as depicted by Montgomery and Walley-Beckett is not sufficient for the reader-turned-writer. Anuka wants the gaps in the narrative to be more fully explored than they are on either page or screen and to be made more “vivid” by the inclusion of images that help make the story come alive.

Similarly, “Rilla Blythe’s Wedding: A Not Entirely Comprehensive Account” by Scylla also fills a gap: Rilla and Ken’s wedding day, a scene that Montgomery leaves to the reader’s imagination at the end of Rilla of Ingleside. Modelled upon other accounts of weddings within Montgomery’s fiction, the story also suggests that accounts of Walter’s death have been gravely exaggerated, as he makes a stunning appearance at his sister’s wedding. In order to align her work with Montgomery’s novel, Scylla ensures that Little Dog Monday’s awareness of Walter’s death remains, but makes it only a technicality, writing, “His heart had stopped for a full ten seconds – long enough for his Captain to feel for his empty pulse and for Dog Monday to be jolted with the fullness of his death. Little dogs, after all, can only have tender dogs’ hearts. Grief to Dog Monday was an all-consuming thing, and when Walter’s heart began to beat once more, he was deaf to its spark of joy.” After meeting with his eldest sister, Joyce, in heaven – which is, as he had always hoped, Rainbow Valley, Walter is returned to life so that he may write of peace as well as war (as he did when he was a boy), marry Una, and repair the broken hearts of readers who did not want to lose him.

While heterosexual pairings are the most prevalent in Montgomery fandom, there is room for queer imaginings as well.

This very popular genre of fanfiction, known as “slash,” is generally defined as stories that centre on samesex romances between characters, particularly between men. Montgomery slash fiction usually stars Walter Blythe.

One slash story, “but i don’t know who you are” by @freyafrida, imagines a bisexual Walter. Told in an enduringly popular sub-genre of fanfiction often referred to as Five Things Plus One (which involves a series of thematically linked but not necessarily chronological scenes), the story is summarized by @freyafrida as “Five people Walter thought he wanted, and one person he didn’t notice until it was too late.”

This last person is original to Montgomery’s text: Una, whose apparently unreturned attraction to Walter is woven through Rilla of Ingleside. The other five potential partners are all alluded to as Walter’s close friends, beginning in childhood with Alice Parker from Anne of Ingleside and Pat Brewster from The Blythes Are Quoted and then carrying on through adolescence and young adulthood with Faith Meredith, Ken Ford, and finally Paul Irving from Anne of Avonlea. While his feelings for Faith and Ken are clearly unrequited, Alice, Pat, and Paul all express their own desire for Walter. The inclusion of the famous poet and Walter’s “model” uncle, Paul Irving, in particular, particular, illustrates how traits of sensitivity and aesthetic appreciation that challenge traditional ideas about masculinity are frequently interpreted as queer by fan readers and writers.

In another slash fiction, cero_ate’s “The Moving Finger Writes, and Having Writ Moves On,” Walter discovers his homosexuality while fighting in Europe:

He wrote half truths and lies once more, when he wrote his Rilla that he could not form poems of the depths of the war. For who could write his sister of the phallic love he had found? He had found his reason in a tow-headed American boy. He meant so much more to Walter than mere friendship could explain. He wanted to write, as sweethearts write, of the tempest of joy in the darkest night. But how would they understand? How would they even try to understand he sought not the Dark Lady of Shakespeare but the youth, fair and Wilde? When he was presented with Una’s faithful heart, he spurned it. When his tow-headed darling presented his own, Walter took it, greedy for him. His grecian style love, the boy who’s [sic] eyes danced, even in the darkest of days. He would do anything to keep him safe. But he could not present him to his family, for their scorn or pity. War had broken him, but made him as well.

While male/male pairings are generally the most popular stories in fandoms, Montgomery’s novels, peopled as they are by communities of girls and women, require that readers who want to queer the text must explore what is called femslash (that is, slash fiction featuring two female characters).

Such relationships have been explored within the academic setting. For instance, Laura Robinson remarks in “Bosom Friends: Lesbian Desire and the Anne Books,” that the relationship between Anne and Diana uses “the language that readers associate with adult romantic love rather than girlhood affections,” even as it is expressed through the heterosexual paradigm of marriage.

One fanfiction author, ArcticLava21, makes it clear that such fan written stories are not speculation but instead address key issues of representation. The author’s note to ArcticLava21’s short Anne/Diana story, “Nature,” reads, “Hello everybody! Hope your [sic] having a wonderful day. Before anyone yells at me for ‘sexualizing platonic friendships’ please note that this is for all those queer kids who grew up pretending. Pretending that he ended up with him instead of her, or desperately wanted representation. Are we good? <3 Enjoy yourselves lovely people.” The intended audience of the story, “queer kids who grew up,” again establishes the transgenerational kinship between Montgomery’s child and adult fans.

All fan fiction, shared on the Internet, exist in dialogue not just with Montgomery’s fiction but with the author herself, and between the fans who read the novels as children and adolescents and the adults that these readers become.

Whether fan writers extend the narrative or fill gaps, transpose chronology or to queer the text, these pieces of fanfiction allow fans not only to insert themselves into the narrative, but also simultaneously to revivify the original novels, published a century ago. In performing interventions to the text, Montgomery’s young fans grow up to reply to the discussions that she began long ago in the pages of her journals and stories, ensuring that all three – author, reader, and text – are continually reborn into a conversation that will never end.

#any typos here are all mine 😑#apologies because i’m sure there’s so many… i’m just bleary-eyed from the screen time it took to type this guy up!#like #why didn’t i just get the kindle version #lucy maud montgomery #fan fiction #anne of green gables #emily of new moon #too many individually referenced characters to tag here really!

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mogai-headcanons · 3 days

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May i ask, why do you support endo-systems? (Coming from someone with did themself)

i've talked about this before (can't remember which blog it was on) but can't find it so i'll just run down my reasons again:

above all else, i do not have the right to tell anyone what is actually going on in their own brain. the only time that might be acceptable would be if i was a doctor treating them for a psychological issue, and even then, it's not often a good idea to outright tell someone that their brain is Wrong. this applies both to fakeclaiming endogenic systems and to telling them that they're actually traumagenic but have repressed their trauma; neither is good form.

secondly above all else, we NEED to have solidarity among plural folks. this is coming from a psychology major and a system — there is a large number of psychology practitioners and researchers who straight up do not believe plurality exists in any form. there is also a large number of them who believe systems are far rarer than current diagnoses show, and therefore most diagnosed and suspected systems are not real. i have had to write an essay on why did is fake for a grade before. there are extremely prominent psychologists (ex: allen frances, the literal chair of the team who developed the dsm-iv) who believe did is a fad (allen frances has stated that he wanted to outright remove it from the dsm-iv). if we are fakeclaiming each other in our community, this only makes us more susceptible to the people who want plurality to be seen as entirely fabricated.

on that point, we also need to have solidarity against non-psychologist singlets who fakeclaim systems. things like the r/fakedisordercringe subreddit can be legitimately damaging to the people who are posted, scrutinized, and ridiculed, and we should be protecting each other from that, not shoving endogenic systems into the line of fire.

there is scientific evidence of non-traumagenic and non-disordered plurality (there are some interesting studies linked on this page), especially in spiritual communities.

though not all endogenic systems are disordered, they Can be; having experienced trauma is not a diagnostic criteria for did or osdd-1 in the dsm-5 tr or the icd-11. though it's obviously highly common for did/osdd systems to have experienced trauma, a non-insignificant portion of diagnosed disordered systems (something like 4% iirc) are not traumatized.

to go with the above point, many endogenic systems don't claim to have a dissociative disorder or that their system is disordered. if you're worried about people 'appropriating' or 'faking' your disorder, they largely are not, since plurality can and does exist outside of disorders.

as a traumagenic system, i feel unwelcome and threatened by anti-endogenic folks. i've been fakeclaimed by anti-endos before, either because they mistook me for an endogenic system since i support them or because they decided the behaviors i perform on the internet are evidence i'm faking. i'm not the only traumagenic system this has happened to.

i think that's the main points, i may have more idk

#long post #discourse #syscourse ment #*comes out of hiatus for this* lmao

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hannahssimblr · 15 hours

Text

“I have to say, this is an impressive body of work.”

I shift in my seat, “By impressive do you mean that it’s good, or that there’s a lot of it?”

This gets a laugh. “Both,” says the man, Paul, flicking through a sketchbook with tattooed hands, fingers stained from nicotine. I notice things like this now. Hands. I notice their lines and their bones, all their interesting details, and perhaps Paul himself could gauge this now as he pours over my figure studies where there are pages upon pages of hands, old and young, my friends, my sisters at the piano, an old woman clutching at a handrail on the train, and my own, a hundred times in different ways, blisters, plasters, hangnails and bruises from the rugby pitch.

The woman, Ida, shuffles through a stack of watercolour paintings I did last summer, mostly seascapes, the beach and the rushes, the whitewashed houses and rusted iron of the Wexford coast. Just looking at them I can recall the grit of sand under my bare feet as I warmed them on the deck of our holiday home behind my portable easel. In three months I’ll return again for one last summer, and after that I expect I’ll miss it there.

“And you said you didn’t do a portfolio preparation year?” She says, peering over the rim of her glasses.

“No, I’m still at school.”

“Highly unusual for a sixth year,” her eyebrows climb up her forehead, “You've clearly dedicated a lot of time to this.”

I shrug, “Yeah, I like making art, I don’t know.”

It’s difficult to tell what this woman is thinking. Everything about her is harsh, dramatic, from the sharp fringe that sits straight and neat above her brows to the slash of her mouth, thin lips, pointy chin, hard eyes, but I have to assume for the sake of my own self esteem that she doesn’t positively loathe my portfolio. She spends some time looking through my work, slowly, methodically, sometimes leaning closer to frown at something, maybe some proportion that’s off, bad composition, a clumsy attempt at ambient occlusion that doesn’t hit the mark…

“It’s beautiful,” she says simply, and I exhale.

“Oh look, a familiar face,” Paul holds a portrait to Ida, “That’s the girl that we were interviewing a few people before this, what was her name again?”

“Michelle,” I say, “My girlfriend.”

Paul nods, “Michelle, right! Good likeness,” and places the notebook back onto the table. Leaning back in his chair, he cracks his knuckles, “Look, Jude, there’s no two ways about it here, your work is outstanding. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a portfolio that hits every mark, every requirement and goes beyond, I mean,” he lets out a puff of air and gestures to the table, “this is nuts. And for a sixth year? Come on. This stuff would blow some of our third and fourth year college students out of the water.”

I feel like I could melt off the chair with relief, but try to suppress my utter delight so that they don’t think I’m too hungry for validation.

“Cool.”

“It’s the sensitivity,” Ida adds, “Your observation skills, your sense of weight, movement, knowledge of anatomy. It’s rare to see this kind of work from a secondary school student. Your efforts are just… so impressive.”

“And look, we know it depends on your Leaving Cert points, and yeah, that’ll be a contributing factor when it comes to acceptance, but, like,” Paul looks over the table again, tossing his hands up conclusively, “as far as I’m concerned, we’ll see you in September.”

Ida’s mouth curls into a smile, “We hope. If you choose us.”

If I choose them? Am I dreaming? How have I become the kind of person who is coveted by an art school? Surely not. Surely soon I’ll wake up and discover that this whole interview has been a product of my dreams. Too much time spent stressing out over art, the requirements, the brief... Almost certainly I’ve fallen asleep somewhere and none of this is real.

“That’s really kind of you to say. I’m glad you liked my stuff.”

“Blown away,” says Paul, and he leaps to his feet to shake my hand like I’ve just won a prize, “all we need is a pass in the Leaving Cert, you can surely manage it.”

“Yeah, I’ll make sure I do.”

They’re smiling at me as I gather up my work, and still smiling as I give them one last sheepish wave from the door, and I realise I am still smiling too as I face the hallway of waiting students, staring at me with portfolios rested against their knees. I probably shouldn’t look too overjoyed, it might knock their confidence, so I try to look very bored instead as I pass by, though I may explode from the inside out.

Beginning // Prev // Next

#lucky boy 2010 #he's back baby #looking cuter than ever #I love hipster era Jude so much??#and c'mon #y'all know what's coming this summer #anyone recognise Ida?

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raccoon-eyed-rebel · 2 days

Text

Part 31 - The bathroom equation

Masterlist

Series Masterlist

Part 30 -- Part 32

Summary: The guys (and girls) take to the group chats to discuss some serious issues

Warnings: Post contains generalizations. Please don't murder me for that.

Word count: Exactly 3k!!!!

**A/N: **SO! The guys joined me in the shower yesterday (not as sexy as it sounds, unfortunately) and as @geralts-yenn and I had had a discussion about what the house groupchat would look like (including very necessary shadow-group with just the girls, and a group chat with everyone who regularly spends time at that house...) this is what I came up with.

[The guys' chat is 179CS🏡, the girls are 179CS🧠🧠, and the everyone-group is 179CS Full🏡]

@geralts-yenn @deandoesthingstome @summersong69 @livisss @sillyrabbit81

@ellethespaceunicorn @ylva-syverson @poledancingdinos @thelastsock @wa-ni

@proud-aroace-beastie @totalwool

Mike:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Story2cats (@story2cats)

instagram

Sherlock: Great, she’s asking me what I’m laughing at.

August: If you value your life, don’t show her.

Sherlock: And if she steals his phone and sees it anyway? Xoxo Elena

Marshall: Paramedics or police?

Charles: Both.

August: Both.

Leon: Both.

Marshall: 👍🏻

Sherlock: They’ll never get here in time 😈

Mike: Nice knowing you, buddy ❤️

Elena: Dani, get your man in line.

Dani: What he do?

Elena: [video]

Ange: I mean…

Sol: He’s not… wrong…

Dani: He sent me that 🙊

Lexi: Is he okay?

Dani: Was he okay to begin with? 😂

Ange: Not that we know of…

Sy: Speaking of showers… We need rules.

Mike: Eh, why?

Sy: Because I was late for my date yesterday.

August: Which is our problem… how?

Leon: It’s not.

Charles: 👆🏻

Sy: In a house shared by eight guys there’s no excuse for a line for the bathroom!

Mike: Some of us have ✨girlfriends✨

Mike: You should try it sometime

Sy: 🦆🫵🏻 ❤️

Mike: Aww ❤️

Charles: He has a point, though.

Charles: Don’t appreciate getting yelled at for taking a shit in my own damn bathroom.

August: Not to mention the hair.

Sherlock: I don’t see the problem there? Just ask them to clean the drain when they’re done?

Leon: Spoken like a man who has never once in his life watched a woman clean a shower drain…

August: Good luck and farewell, Holmes

Sherlock: ?

Mike: Tears will be cried. Drains will be cleaned — by you.

Mike: Murder may be committed.

Sherlock: Surely, it can’t be that bad?

Geralt: No, he pretty much nailed it.

August: As much as I hate to admit it, the man is right.

Sy: So. New rules?

Leon: House meeting?

Mike: Sure. We’re all home, right?

Sy: Nope.

Mike: What? Why?

Sy: … sometimes when a date goes well, you end up staying over.

Sy: Are there other questions you need answered, bud?

Mike: I think I’m good…

Charles: Ladies, enough with the gossip

Leon: Right. Some of us have work to do.

Charles: Exactly

Sherlock: I highly doubt he was referring to you, Brandon.

Mike: Oooh, mad shade!!! xoxo Dani

Charles: Thanks. Sy, the complaint?

Sy: I had to wait in line to take a shower because the bathrooms were overrun by women.

Leon: Noted. The proposal?

Sy: I’m just pointing out the problem. Someone smarter than me can worry about the solution 🤷🏻‍♂️

Sherlock: Am I right to assume asking the girls to just… spend less time in the bathroom would result in murder, as well?

Sherlock: Never mind, Elena is nodding violently next to me right now.

Mike: What do you want us to do? Assign all the girls to one bathroom?

August: That might work, actually.

Leon: Doesn’t sound like a terrible idea.

Charles: Yes?

Mike: Wow, the one time I have a good idea, I don’t even realize it’s a good idea…

Mike: Wait, no.

Mike: I’m not permanently sharing a bathroom with seven of you because we sometimes have girls over.

August: Kid has a point.

Mike: I’m on a roll today! 😎

Sherlock: That leaves us with the question of how many women would have to be present to necessitate giving them their own bathroom, correct?

Marshall: If you desperately want to make it sound like math, then yes.

Sherlock: Not math. Logic.

Sherlock: And I find myself compelled to point out that I understand and enjoy logic.

August: Dealing with women is an aggravating experience, then, isn’t it?

Sherlock: Absolutely mystifying. But I’ve found that thus far the benefits outweigh the costs.

Mike: You know, for you… That’s actually kinda sweet 😂

Marshall: Romantic 👍🏻

Leon: Don’t tell her that…

Charles: Guys, seriously!

August: Right. Sol and Ange together never caused any problems.

Sherlock: Neither have any… liaisons of a fleeting nature

Mike: Hookups. You mean hookups.

Sherlock: You couldn’t pay me to say that.

Charles: Moot point. The average walk of shame happens before the shower.

Leon: It’s not like they stay for breakfast…

Leon: Beat me to it 😂🤜🏻

Charles: 🤛🏻

Geralt: The both of you are unbearable.

Geralt: August is right.

August: But…

Geralt: Sol and Ange don’t cause problems because Sol doesn’t take forever in the shower.

August: Right. But Angel is a nightmare, and so is Elena. Those two alone are enough to cause traffic.

Sherlock: Correct me if I’m wrong, but ‘Elena and Anjelica together, or either of those combined with any two others, or neither of them but a minimum of three others’ sounds like the kind of rule that will ensure we won’t even need it for the foreseeable future.

Sy: It also gives me a headache.

Mike: I don’t think I even understood enough of it to get a headache…

Sherlock: Minimum of 3, then ask me and Angie to not occupy both bathrooms at the same time. 🙄🙄🙄 Problem solved. You’re all still in trouble for even talking about this ❤️❤️❤️

Ange: They’re giving us what now???

Elena: Bathroom rules…

Dani: Tell me you’re kidding 🙃🙃

Elena: Dead fucking serious 🙄

Sol: Why?

Elena: Apparently 🙄🙄🙄🙄

Elena: We caused a traffic jam last night and made Sy late for his date???

Elena: Fairly sure Alicia didn’t mind because he’s still over there 🙄🙄🙄

Ange: What are the rules?

Elena: I don’t know. I’m glaring at Sherlock from a distance now.

Elena: I’m pleased to report he looks terrified every time I do 😈😈

Elena: They’re considering a girls’ bathroom.

Ange: I’m considering permanent occupation of all bathrooms.

Elena: Your boy called us both nightmares, by the way 😇😇

Elena: Apparently we take too long to shower, idk

Sol: You both take your time, sure…

Elena: Okay, fine. But he doesn’t have to point that out 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

Ange: Funeral invitations to follow…

Ange: No but seriously

Ange: He thinks I take too long in the shower?

Ange: Fine!

Ange: I’ll take shorter showers!

Dani: He really said that? 💀

Ange: Let’s see how he feels about that in a week or two.

Ange: Enjoy flossing, August 🙃🙄

Dani: 👀👀 [the agonizing scream you just heard was brought to you by me spitting my drink over Mike’s keyboard]

Lexi: 🙊 Mike and keyboard both okay?

Dani: Keyboard fine, Mike hyperventilating. He’ll be alright, back to you Ange.

Ange: I might have to rescind this attitude…

Ange: As much as I want to get back at him for this, I don’t want him to run…

Sol: You really think he’d care? Ange… he loves you…

Ange: Not that much…

Lexi: Girl, please?? Have you seen the way that man looks at you?

Ange: … He’s never seen me, like… untweezed and unshaved and whatever

Dani: Never?

Ange: Never ever ever.

Sol: 👀👀

Sol: But why?? I only shave when I feel like it – which is almost never – and Geralt has never said anything??

Ange: Girl, you’re a blonde 👀👀

Ange: I don’t wax this stache, 2 weeks from now you’ll be confusing me for August. I swear.

Lexi: Okay there’s literally no way that’s true.

Dani: And even if it was, he’d still love you.

Ange: Yeah but I’m not about to find out, thanks.

Lexi: It’s your body, obviously

Elena: Do what feels comfortable

Dani: But if you do ever miss a day and he does say something nasty…

Elena: I’ll grab the shovels 😇😇

Leon: Ladies and gentlemen — mostly ladies. A little PSA regarding an update in the house rules at 179th Crescent Street. It was recently brought to my/our attention that the addition of a number of regular overnight guests has created a somewhat unmanageable situation in the realm of bathroom use. Therefore, the new policy is as follows: When three or more of the girlfriends are staying over, the upstairs bathroom is all yours! Management is currently unavailable for negotiation.

Charles: TLDR: take your long-ass showers on the second floor. Please.

Ange: This message was deleted.

August: I saw that.

Elena: Oh, I’ll say it with my chest

Elena: You all suck.

Sherlock: No…

Mike: Whatever you do, man, don’t finish that thought 😂

Sherlock: I think they got the message regardless.

Ange: Oh, we got it alright…

Dani: You’re lucky you’re cute, Sherlock 🙄

Mike: Hey!

Lexi: I’m so sorry to say this but… Over my cold, dead body am I walking up a flight of stairs in the middle of the night to pee.

Charles: @Leon Told you the ‘not up for negotiation’ thing wasn’t going to work.

Leon: It was worth a try.

Geralt: We’re not banning anyone from the house for using the ‘wrong’ bathroom

Sol: Then why the pointless rule?

Sy: Because yesterday BOTH bathrooms were occupied for well over two hours!!!

Sy: Seriously, what do you do in there?

Mike: Elaborate satanic rituals?

Sol: Occasionally.

Ange: Let’s see… Do we actually enlighten them?

Mike: Please do, I’m curious now…

Charles: I know what happens when I’m also in the shower… 😏

Ange removed Charles

Ange: Any other takers?

August: Angel…

Ange: Don’t tell me I’m overreacting!

August: I didn’t say a word 😑

Ange added Charles

Ange: Behave.

Charles: 🤐

Elena: Good boy.

Leon: Do you say that to Sherlock, too? 😏

Ange removed Leon

Marshall: Jesus, Ange…

Ange: Ugh, fine.

Ange added Leon

Mike: Seriously, girls… Other than summoning the occasional demon — what are you doing in there?

Sol: I’m gonna let Elena and Angie handle this one…

Ange: Alright. So first I check if I have all 4059834 items I’m going to need. Then at some point you’ll have to get naked, unfortunately…

Dani: Look at everything you hate about yourself for a solid 5 minutes until you’re nice and depressed

Elena: Didn’t come here to be called out like this, but thanks 🙄🙄

Sol: Poke your boobs and watch them jiggle because it’s funny until you’re less depressed

Mike: Getting jealous…

Ange: Then you turn on the shower and wait for the water to warm up

Lexi: To those ungodly temperatures from the pits of hell, you know? 👀👀

Mike: I’m not apologizing for that video, just so you know.

Lexi: That’s actually useful time to make sure you find the right playlist ✨✨

Sy: YOU DON’T NEED A PLAYLIST FOR A SHOWER

Lexi: Hard disagree

Elena: Yes, we do.

Sol: … Am I supposed to listen to my own thoughts in the shower?

Ange: I’d never be able to suppress my homicidal tendencies ever again, holy shit…

Dani: Then we actually get in the shower and warm up because the bathroom is cold, just like our souls.

Marshall: I’m genuinely learning more than I’ve ever wanted to know…

Mike: This is already taking longer than my whole entire shower…

Ange: And we’re not even close to being done.

Elena: @Ange Especially us…

Leon: Okay, fine, I’ll bite… Why is it different for the two of you?

Sol: Because they have curls?

Charles: That makes a difference?

Sy: So?

Mike: Why does THAT matter?

Marshall: Is that… important??

Elena: You’re all so clueless, it’s almost cute 🥺

Ange: @Marshall you actually might want to pay attention to this…

Ange: Alright. By the time I’m warm, my hair is usually wet all the way through

Ange: Massively heavy, by the way.

Ange: It’s hair-washing time! Which, idk about @Elena, but I have to do this in at least 4 sections if I don’t want to miss half of it.

Elena: I can get by with 2, but 4 is better.

Elena: Of course, 9/10 times I fucking forgot to section it before getting in the shower.

Ange: Obviously. So now you’re wrangling your wet hair into submission

Elena: Which is damn near impossible.

Ange: Exactly. But when that’s finally done, you can get to washing it.

Elena: And rinsing it until there’s absolutely no way there’s still any shampoo left.

Ange: Which takes a long ass time, BTW.

Ange: Then it’s ✨deep conditioner✨ time!!! Like… it’s always deepco time. I don’t even use regular conditioner anymore because my hair thinks it’s pointless. So like. That.

Elena: Mood.

Ange: And that stuff needs to sit in your hair for like 15-30 minutes

Mike: That’s like… 3 whole showers…

Charles: I don��t even spend this kind of time on my schoolwork 👀

Geralt: That’s not something to be proud of.

Sherlock: Imagine what you could do if you did.

Ange: Either way, it’s okay, because next… We exfoliate.

August: For those who haven’t been keeping count, we’re on step 12 or something. Jesus.

Charles: @Leon what the damn hell does our water bill look like?

Sol: Pay attention! Exfoliate! Then shave. Which, when you’re 6 feet tall in the showers here… damn near impossible, by the way.

Elena: (Cut yourself at least twice no matter how long you’ve been doing it…)

Lexi: Ohh! Cubicle yoga while holding a razor!!!

Dani: And while wet and slippery…

Ange: We’re superhuman 💃🏻

Sy: You’re nuts is what you are. All of you!

Dani: Anyway, when we reach baby dolphin status…

Dani: Which doesn’t happen until we’ve checked at least three times if we haven’t missed any spots…

Dani: I personally squeeze in brushing my teeth and skincare before rinsing my conditioner.

Elena: 👆🏻

Ange: Same! If I’m paying like 30 dollars for a hair mask that’ll barely last me two weeks, I’m gonna at least spend some time with it 👀✨

Sol: So that’s teeth and face wash in the shower. Then rinse that conditioner.

Ange: Which — again — takes a while if you have curly and/or a lot of hair.

Ange: Also, before I rinse my hair, I spend an ungodly amount of time detangling it with my fingers, which I have to do while the mask/conditioner is in. So…

Marshall: And at this point you’re finally nearly done, right?

Sherlock: … please, for the love of God, let it almost be over!

Ange: Oh, my precious little babies ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Lexi: At this point we’re slowly considering getting out of the shower, yes.

Dani: But the rest of the bathroom is cold, so we take our time gathering the courage to get out.

Leon: 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

Sherlock: The entire bathroom is hot enough to steam salmon at this point!

Mike: And yet, they manage to emerge from Mordor absolutely freezing…

Sol: When we do finally manage to make it out, we wrap ourselves in the biggest towel we can find…

Ange: By the way, ladies, you can thank me and Sol for the presence of the big towels in this house.

Sol: Oh GOD I remember the first shower I ever took here.

Geralt: The towels were fine.

Sol: …………. Geralt, I love and respect you, but you’re wrong and also stupid. ❤️

Ange: You’ll pay for that…

Sol: Looking forward to it 😈😈

Mike: Please continue…

Dani: We’re left with the rest of our skincare. So; toner, 1-3 serums, moisturizer. Sunscreen or oil, for me, depending on the time of day.

Ange: But the mirror is fogged up from the shower, so you have to deal with that…

Leon: YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR FACE IS, DON’T YOU?

Ange: Yes, but it’s also very pretty so I wanna look at it. Thanks.

Lexi: How can I meticulously study all the imperfections in my skin if I can’t see my face???

Dani: Exactly! (To both of those things, simultaneously)

Dani: So, after that, it’s time to moisturize everything you’ve exfoliated and/or shaved.

Elena: Which is… pretty much everything.

Sol: Cue deep sigh because this is where you find out you actually did miss a spot somewhere.

Ange: And then it’s back to the hair for the curly girls!

Elena: Leave in ❤️❤️❤️

Marshall: What?

Sy: ??

Mike: Wut?

Ange: It’s like conditioner, but you don’t rinse it out.

Sherlock: @Elena the stuff that smells good?

Elena: Yes 😂😂😂

Dani: Which reminds me; @Elena, is that your Quench in the bathroom or mine? I can’t remember…

Elena: Oh, God, me neither…

August: Settle this in the shadow group, ladies.

Lexi: You know about that, huh? 😂

Dani: Shit, they figured it out…

Sol: Not surprised… They’re not completely clueless…

Ange: Just mostly…

August: Thanks. Enough of that.

Ange: Okay daddy 🥺❤️❤️

August: 🙄

Ange: Anyway. After the leave-in and maybe two or three other products, I wrap my hair up in my hair-towel — or hair-tshirt.

Charles: Another towel? Why in the fuck?

Ange: Boys. I understand that you don’t give a fuck about this, but…

Ange: Regular towels are actually not good for your hair.

Elena: 👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻

Lexi: Besides… You can’t dry long hair and your body with 1 towel…

Sol: What she said.

Sol: What they both said, actually.

Leon: Are we finally at the end of all of this?

Leon: I’ve literally never been more glad to not have a girlfriend, jesus fucking christ…

Dani: Yeah, pretty much… You get dressed, dreading the cold of the hallway, and then we quickly go find a boy to snuggle up to who can then tell us we smell nice and are very soft, so we can convince ourselves we didn’t just spend an unholy amount of time doing all of that for absolutely nothing.

August: All of this is… insane.

Ange: Hey! I can stop doing half of this, if you think it’s so unnecessary 🙄🙄

Elena: Now that I think about it… It wouldn’t even save any time, because you still need to let the conditioner sit, so…

Charles: Right, ladies, this was very interesting…

Charles: I’m going to take a shower now.

Charles: Talk to you in about… 10 minutes 🙄

Sy: Remind me to never ask any of you any questions literally ever again…

#henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill characters #mike hellraiser #sherlock holmes #walter marshall #august walker #napoleon solo #charles brandon #captain syverson #college au #fluff

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