#(it made her very concerned that she had become even more irrelevant than her worst fears)

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Hey if you had to put some tvs characters into the rws who would you pick? I can see emily and salty working well in rws but what about other characters? Also do you have any headcanons about how they would fit into rws canon?

Haven’t thought it through extensively yet. I’d like to integrate them into a full headcanon timeline a la @feigeroman, but I also know a lot less about rail than he does so I’m a long ways away. 

Emily is the easiest, though. My thoughts for her are that she was a modern, optimized new build—the Tornado of Stirling Singles. (I first got this idea from FutureRust and became irrevocably attached after reading a bit of discussion about it on SiF.) 

However, her building (a long process) was completed at a pretty bad time as far as finding much demand for her. The original buyers realized that, with steam ending, and preservationists focused on saving ‘real’ engines at the time, she wasn’t going to serve well in her intended role as an attraction. Several other prospective buyers made the same calculations; also, she is significantly heavier than the original Stirlings, to the point where her axle bearing was too much for the one or two heritage lines at the time that did made inquiries about trialling her. 

She was in real danger of being turned static display before logging scarcely a couple hundred miles before the North Western took an interest. Add some brand-new motive power to their fleet for effectively nothing? Right up their alley. And she made a good impression when scouted, not at all caring that she was not being sought out with much any idea of tourism in mind, and expressing eagerness when the more strenuous demands of being in N.W.R. service were explained to her. So her lease was a no-brainer… for them.

(Emily’s owners were far more ambivalent. But they also knew that a lonely, stored engine is an unhappy engine, so that tipped the scales in favor of giving this arrangement a chance. She was so excited and you would have had a heart of stone to say no.)  

Emily’s past experiences as a ‘new build’ had been plenty discouraging enough to help convince her that on Sodor she had better keep her build date a secret and try to pass for the ‘real thing’. 

On her first day, Emily was sure everyone was staring and glaring at her because THEY. KNEW. (Emily can be more than a bit dramatic.) They didn’t, yet. But she was right that everyone’s reaction was just as much them going ‘wtf’ at seeing such an old-fashioned model as the Annie and Clarabel thing… and in the end rather few Sodor engines were long fooled by her ‘hello, I’ve been around forever and I know everything’ act. 

Though there was bafflement at first, seeing such a model, and then also seeing her handle ‘60s-style main line work! 

Anyway, as her fellow main line engines soon put the pieces together, they definitely had some fun over the years toying with the new arrival a bit. Gordon and Henry were especially good at putting her on the spot, with bland innocent faces, and then watching her efforts to brazen through it with great amusement. 

These games never got too severe, though. For one thing, Donald and Douglas took a big brotherly interest in their fellow Scotsengine almost at once. So their scowls kept a good lid on some of the others' baser instincts. For another thing, entertained though they were when making Emily squirm, she showed such sheer stubbornness and 'resource' in keeping up this ridiculous ruse long past the point anyone had imagined she would. The others had to respect her tenacity. 

Besides, despite her mule-headedness and refusal to acknowledge that she needed help, she *did* somehow learn a lot, very quickly. 

To be sure, when Emily was leaning in hard on her guise, she could be very bossy and high-handed, in those early years. Still, only some engines took her seriously. The rest just found it mildly but-no-more-than-average irritating. 

(Gordon once made the mistake of griping about who ‘that child’ thought she was, telling everyone their business… with Thomas and James in earshot. They opened up the history books to section ‘G’ cross-ref ‘1920s’ and had a field day week.) 

Anyhow, the time finally came when, for Reasons, after years of much guilt and internal agonizing, Emily began to seriously explore the merits of opening up and telling her friends the truth. So she sent out a bit of a ‘test balloon’… only to at once find everyone affectionately rolling their eyes at her. 

Talk of bafflement. 

“Of course you don’t know, flower child,” said Henry, tolerantly. 

??? 

“You weren’t around for that!” 

Emily noticed everyone starting to grin, and after a moment found her voice. It was in the ‘high-pitched squeak’ locker. 

“You… you all know?” 

“That you were made in the ‘60s—” 

“Nineteen-sixties, mind you.” 

“—right you are, Bear—or that you’re a fraud, or that you’re the funniest liar on the island?” 

The words really rocked Emily, but the mildly teasing tone was the same as yesterday and the day before. “How—how—” 

Everyone present had good fun quoting the highlight reel. 

“ ‘What is a... ‘zep’?’ ” asked James, going in for mimicry of both gender and accent (and making an utter hash of both). 

“ ‘Oh, yes, of course I’ve pulled an evacuation train before,’” said Duck. “ ‘Scores of them!’” 

“ ‘Full to the brim, they were,” agreed Donald, attempting to flutter his eyelashes. “Aye, of, ahhmm… vacs.’”   

This had evidently been her greatest hit, judging by the laughter. Which was straight out of Emily's nightmares... 

... but Percy, grinning next to her, murmured something so sweet and encouraging that she took stock again, and realized that she actually had—nothing to worry about? 

Possibly hadn't for quite some time? 

She managed to gasp How long? Only to get a few more sniggers. 

“Uhhh... summer '71?”

“Th-Th-That’s when I arrived!”

“Aye, Emmy. We recollect. What d'ye think we are, stu—?… ach,” Donald interrupted himself, with a resigned sigh, and looking perhaps too obviously at James and Henry. “Dinna answer that.”   

Realizing that she had already been accepted completely, long ago, Emily wound up both joining in the laughter and crying (on the latter of which the others, with more tact than might have been expected from them, didn’t comment). 

This is one of the best moments of her entire life. 

Another grand day was when her owners finally caved and allowed her to participate in the TV show. Which brings up another point, and one that is perhaps worth getting into, because this is hardly unique to her—it applies to quite a few of the North Western engines, especially some of the lesser-knowns. Emily has never been owned by the N.W.R. She is owned by a trust who has (with more than a little reluctance) leased her to work on Sodor. 

Originally, their reasoning was that they really had no other offers, except for not-particularly-prestigious museums. (There is the occasional engine that has the temperament to spend all their life sitting still. Emily isn’t one of them!) Besides, there was some hope that a) this way they could generate at least a little revenue from her and b) the experience would make her more attractive to future business partners. 

With A, they completely forget—or had heard, but underestimated—what a hard bargain the Hatts can drive. The lease was cheap to begin with, but the North Western also won the right to charge Emily’s maintenance against the account. Emily’s owners never actually had to pay the N.W.R., but overall this turned into a losing business prospect for them as the N.W.R. basically got her services for free. Their immaculate, unique engineering masterpiece of an engine suffered wear and tear, and for years they never really made a cent off their partnership with Sodor, which was something they long regarded as temporary. They were sure that one of these days “the political climate” would change, and the time would be right to deploy a replica Stirling Single on the proper sort of heritage railtours. In the meantime, they were very persnickety about her privacy, and would not give the North Western any rights to use her for publicity purposes… while then also turning around and being almost as reluctant to agree to any other sort of expansion in her duties. It was a very slow process before Emily was officially allowed to do anything but take local passenger trains. (Officially!) 

After a while, FC3 had to start cutting them significantly more generous deals or have them withdraw Emily from his service altogether. (It was very lucky that this wasn’t FC1. He had a bit of a weakness for sucking a good business relationship dry, and lost quite a few engines in his time because pride in his own masterful haggling skills sometimes rendered him stupidly inflexible about such things.)

Nevertheless, although better compensated, the New Stirling Trust was generally quite unhappy about the arrangement… especially with Emily increasingly ‘shunting trucks and hauling freight’… including in scrapyards… on Hallowe’en! (WTF, quoth the Trust.) On one surprise winter visit they found her not only fitted with a snowplough that they hadn’t authorized, but specifically sent out on line-clearing duty. The resulting blow-up was dramatic… not least of all because Emily had stronger feelings about this than her owners and the Fat Controller combined. Being literally a teenager, she had a massive shouting match with her designer about his overprotectiveness that was heard by everyone in the yard. (Yes, this was still during Emily’s “I’m keeping my origins a secret” years, and yes, she completely missed the fact that she had given up her own game during the course of that very public strop.)

It’s important to note that, for all their fussiness, Emily’s owners were the last thing in the world from hard-hearted. Emily’s pleas to not be withdrawn from Sodor were usually the only reason that they didn’t do just that… for decades. This concession was particularly pronounced by the ‘90s, when the “political climate” really had changed, and they were starting to find other venues for her. But by that point, it would have broken Emily’s heart to leave (and she indeed spent much of the decade quite afraid it was inevitable). 

She had also been begging for years to be allowed to participate in the TV series publicity, with its associated Sodor events. When they finally caved, it was largely for financial reasons. The Trust found this business very distasteful… but the licensing allowed them to finally make some serious revenue from their charge. (Emily was ecstatic, and to this day is probably the engine who is the biggest fan of the show. Incidentally, while this ‘new-build’ idea allows Emily to actually be of some use on Sodor’s main line, ‘As Good As Gordon’ and plenty of other improbable episodes are still complete fiction.) 

However, in exchange Emily also had to agree to occasionally leave Sodor and do some preservation circuit work. This led to a bit of a double life, as the New Stirling Trust’s strategy was that she was Emily, Just One of the Guys, while on Sodor, and Patricia, ‘No. 1010’ Stirling-Merriweather Single while on tour, and never the twain must meet. The Trust really thought that most people would never make the connection. To be fair, the family/tourist casual crowd generally did not. The real question is why they were so convinced that this was their best play. It came down mostly to a good deal of snobbery on their part—they remained ashamed that they had ’sold out’ and ‘commercialized’ engineer Merriweather’s masterpiece. Anyway, Emily of course had plenty of practice in this sort of charade and was by that point the consummate actor. Although she would have rather been at home with her friends, she sportingly made the most of it and had as much fun with it as she could (though the double life only exacerbated some of her insecurities). 

Only in 2019 did the N.W.R. and the Trust (both being led by some fresh blood) come to an agreement where Emily and Patricia could be publicly acknowledged as one and the same, and the N.W.R. had rights to have Emily’s real history publicized, have her run railtours, and carry a North Western number. (A third ‘best day ever,’ in her books.) 

Yes, that’s right. The Trust finally fully caved and acknowledged that ‘Patricia’ was a real true total Sodor engine… long after RWS had puttered to a slow death, and right in time for the TV reboot. 

These people are so bloody smart.

#... naturally Emily is forced to deal with being called 'Granny' for the rest of her life whenever someone wants to annoy her #chatter #ttte #ttte headcanon #ttte emily #thomas the tank engine #the railway series #sorry for slow posting (physical) health problems continue #sorry also to those waiting on other asks #Salty is a darling i agree w/ you Sodor can’t get along without him #i don’t know i think most of the TV characters are fine in theory #it’s the crap storytelling and typical lack of backstory that is the problem #(admittedly when the show DOES provide a backstory i hate it) #… Hiro i can’t make any goddamn sense of. i think i would memory-hole him if i chose just one to leave out of my HCs. #Molly incidentally was on Sodor long before Emily #she was acquired in ’39 after a trial where she helped fill in during Gordon’s overhaul #(she thought she was being sent to cover Gordon but was surprised and abashed to find that) #(she was REALLY there to cover *James and Henry’s* duties when they were filling in on the Express) #(she is not haughty or proud but her lowly assignments were still a shock to her) #(it made her very concerned that she had become even more irrelevant than her worst fears) #then she was purchased and around for WWII #following the NWR’s usual pattern of #‘we don’t acquire the engines when the class is withdrawn’ #‘somehow we have an unerring sense that allows us to do it *approximately 5-10 years before that starts to happen*’

[vaalthus]

Words cannot express how much I love this scene...but Imma try anyway

Everything about this was just amazing to see. It's so compelling for Uaanta as a character because for all intents and purposes, as I've seen pointed out, this is in a way her last attempt to hold onto her faith in the Avatars, her Makers.

Throughout the entire Malerous saga, she's been forced to confront an image of her gods that was quite different from what it was when she was living in Lhe'Shyiac. Slowly at first with our introduction and Sinnocence, a little bit more in her realization that not everywhere on Lore viewed her Makers as Lhe'Shiyan's did when we first encountered Remthalas.

Later on its the questionable, but reasonable, actions with Sally being placed in danger when Remthalas entered the picture again. Concerning, but still nothing too heavy to fracture her faith in them.

Then came Voyna, and a crack, albeit a very small one formed. In that she was able to recognize the fact that the Avatars were being too secretive with the information that they had and their panicked state when trying to teleport us around certainly helped to cast away their godliness a little.

And then came the Myalos event and when we first encountered Notha. Uaanta had already long understood that Lore was imperfect and despite its many issues, it was the best her gods could do. Yet, here comes this masked stranger shrouded in black drapes who would still dare to look upon all of that and call them fools that need to know their place? A heresy that cannot be allowed to stand. The cracks are still trying to form bigger but the structure remains firm and impenetrable.

Until our war with Notha for Myalos that is. Uaanta is forced to then confront the face of the woman that had threatened the sanctity of the Holy Throne once before. A face that reveals potentially concerning possibilities of the Avatars. But still Uaanta won't have any of it, at least not in front of her. More cracks of doubt start to follow but she can still hold to her convictions, her devotion.

A note made harder to deal with however until The Reckoning begins. Notha reveals perhaps one of most shattering truths to Uaanta, in telling her past, that her gods didn't create her or anything save for the balance they used to maintain order in the world. And worse she has to hear the truth from the Avatars themselves, to know that her and her people were little more than one small tool used to achieve a semblance of balance on Lore. Something like that would certainly hurt to the very core. Yet she still trusts them, becuase one, the alternative is the chaos Remthalas desires and maybe what Notha herself wants and two, Uaanta still wants to be able to hold on to the idea that the Avatars are good in nature.

In Respite, we see Uaanta still conflicted by all that she learned, of the Avatars and later the Celestials and Infernals. Her comment stating that we were not made to understand the workings of the gods feel more of an outcry than a defense at this point, but still she can find it in herself to hold strong to her faith in the Avatars.

And then it happens, the Avatars are forced to use all their might defend against Myalos' assault. And they succeed, in not being utterly annihilated. They are reduced to the most basic and tangible state imaginable. And worst they're vulnerable to whatever machinations Notha could have planned for them.

Uaantaa won't let that happen of course and she will stand against her as she did Ly'Vhil so many decades ago.

But what she did not account for was us, the hero, turning on her in favor of Notha's logic all in the sense that there must be another way.

She's lost us, and Lock and Key intend to observe.

She stands utterly alone, but she still has her Makers and her sword. So, in one final act to display her devotion and trust in her gods, she merges with the very will and embodiments of the Avatars to call on them for strength. An act that I believe was meant to mirror the time they had imbued her sword with her power to kill Ly'Vhil but this time Uaanta's body was empowered as well.

Fitting considering Notha is more Uaanta's villain/antagonist than she is ours.

The state Uaanta undergoes is not unlike the elemental unity trinket we can use but because the Avatars themselves were being merged with, instead of mere orbs, it would appear a bit of Uaanta's individuality was lost as a result. Quite literally allowing her gods to guide her hands so to speak. That's all irrelevant however, if she can beat us here than all that faith, all those prayers, will be worth something.

What follows next is an epic boss battle between us and her with music and mechanics that made me feel a sense of awe I cannot adequately describe. I absolutely loved how Uaanta started in darkness mode first to show off how Lhe'Shiyans have an affinity for the darkness.

Unfortunately for Uaanta though she loses, not even allowing herself to be used by her gods was enough to stop us and Draco alone. With that failure her faith is shattered and the sight that follows is depressing. There's something heartbreaking to see Uaanta so lost and unsure of where she should go from here as well as those in Lhe'Shyiac.

Choosing Notha's side may not have been the popular choice, but I certainly believe that of two choices available it is perhaps the most emotionally compelling narratively speaking, if nothing for the scene with Uaanta becoming an Avatars

I guess all I can say is...BRAVO DEVS!

#dragonfable #Uaanta Fayt #Elemental unity #lore translating into the narrative #She was their champion #their....well #a faith laid bare #Notha is Uaanta's villain but Remthalas is ours #Must of hurt to realize this wasn't going down like Ly'Vhil #Depressing but written so well #I don't know where the writers will take either choice #but i hope they can find a way to incorporate them both #weird that the hero just fights against Uaanta but it wouldn't be the first time a video game did that #I also imagine this choice is more of prelude to 'that' choice down the line in the story when we get to it #df lore #notha ly'ehr #artix entertainment

[ardenttheories]

i think to me one of the worst things about epilogues davekat is that in context it makes them both seem like horribly self-absorbed creeps. their lack of visiting their extremely depressed and isolated BEST FRIEND, john, is played as a joke at the start of candy, but like... that’s terrible? candy dave regrets not dating karkat more than his brother’s suicide (that he could have prevented and chose not to?) fucked UP

The Epilogues make light of every damn mental illness there is, and it’s deeply frustrating, especially when you consider how many of these kids are mentally ill or have trauma. 

Like, an interesting point of depressed John could have been the reasoning behind why people didn’t go to check in on him. 

Why would Dave, someone who was stifled for years and kept inside a very small apartment filled with traps and danger, not want to spend more time outside with his friends? Why would he, who only spent time with one person for 13 whole years, not want to experience life with other people? Why would Dave, who repressed his own trauma so much that he was more concerned about Jade seeing his dead body than he was with touching it, completely blank that the same thing is happening in someone else? Why would Dave, who understands the importance of being able to open up to someone about your struggles and have them validated, not immediately check in on someone who clearly struggles post-game?

Does he just want to spend some time for himself? Is he being selfish because he was never allowed to be before? Is he hesitant or even scared to face what he never acknowledged while in the game, and talking to John would make him have to face that? Is he unwilling to see his childhood hero at his worst? Or does he just genuinely think that John can’t be struggling, because John never struggles, and his own impression of John is blinding him?

Like, there’s so many things that could have made Dave’s lack of interest in John’s welbeing interesting - or having Dave go to visit John in and of itself would’ve been amazing to see. They’re fucking friends. If one of your friends doesn’t come out for a few months, you don’t just not check on them, or take their “I’m okay!” at face value. 

And I think a lot of this is what I mean when I say that they lose a lot of their individuality when they get together. Dave, for some reason... stops being Dave. He stops existing outside of Karkat. They become weirdly reclusive, existing only with each other, like none of the people around them really matter. They spend so much of their time trying to get people to leave in the Epilogues? It’s actually pretty bad, all things considered. That’s not what a healthy relationship looks like. It’s not even what a healthy friendship looks like. 

It’s also frustrating how little Dirk’s suicide is actually acknowledged in the characters who loved him most. Dirk dies, and that’s just sort of it. I get that it’s Candy, and that things are made irrelevant all the time, but Dave literally gets one speech to mourn Dirk and it pretty much never comes up again.

People don’t just get over loved ones. Even to this day, ten years after my granddad died, I can still remember one of his favourite poems and sometimes cry thinking about it. Four years after I lost a good friend of mine, I still break down over how unfair it is that they got taken from me. It’s not easy to just accept that someone is dead. It’s not easy even years later to be okay with it.

You definitely don’t just move right the fuck on after a funeral with little to no other thoughts on it. Like. Geeze. What a way to be insensitive to the people who’ve lost those to suicide and to suicidal people who saw how few people cared about Dirk when he was dead. But also, just how infuriatingly unrealistic that depiction is?

Do they really think that out of everything, Dave's biggest regret would be Karkat? Someone who’s still alive and who he can actively chase after and mend things with? That he’d think of Karkat over his own brother who he actively went to seek help from, who he felt actively lost without the guidance of? Like. You can regret things at equal capacities. If nothing else, they could’ve had Dave regret losing both Karkat and Dirk. Loss does that to you!! If you lose one person, losing another stacks on top! It doesn’t override it, especially if the second person is still alive! 

DaveKat shouldn’t overwrite everything else that Dave and Karkat live for or have going for them in life. DaveKat shouldn’t stop them from spending time with their friends, shouldn’t make them recluses, shouldn’t erase their own friendships for each other. It shouldn’t stop Dave from caring as much about Dirk as he clearly does. 

It’s frustrating and I completely agree with you. They just lose so much of who they are for this weird unity that they become, I assume because the writers can’t be arsed to write a good, healthy MLM relationship for once. 

(On a side note, and going back to John for a sec, because man does it frustrate me: Even Rose was shit at this. Rose, who only calls John when she actively needs him, despite being a Seer and likely Knowing that he’s struggling. Rose, who is struggling herself, and didn’t think to tell John that she’s sick, despite him being her friend. Rose, who is into psychology, and probably would have known that John was struggling to reach out. Did they just forget everything about her character, or?). 

#long post// #homestuck^2 critical #ardenttheories #amityli

[astrologista]

Kristoph Gavin Character Analysis I

Part 1 of... fucking infinity, I hate this bitch so much lmao.

Well, it's Halloween time and I just thought, why not. So let's answer this question.

What makes Kristoph Gavin a scary character/villain? A soft spoken gentleman with a deadly secret... the Devil, who lives in his hand, that crazy evil scar thing, his creepy music theme... damn, he’s a scary dude. But scariest of all? His psychology, as we all know. (This is mostly gonna be headcanons. but ya know what, I have a license (hands you a piece of paper that says ‘i can do what i want’))

Kristoph seems like a person who is very aloof, particularly when it comes to personal relationships. At first he kind of just seems like the typical anime glasses guy whose main emotion is like whooa he does the glare thing with his glasses sometimes. But... what is he really about?

You know, let me digress for a moment, what's really interesting to me about the AA characters is how much depth they have in their writing. Case in point, Adrian Andrews. There's a character who you assume is just going to be the typical "anime glasses girl" who is a career woman who don't need no man, and is very aloof, cool, and as she says, not concerned with irrelevant topics or things. Later you learn about the true depths to her personality. The fact that she is codependent, that she needs other people telling her what to do in order to survive. Just because she masks these emotions doesn't mean they don't exist. I felt that really gave a lot of depth to her character and added another dimension that stories in this genre don't often address as boldly or fully (especially when it comes to a female character). So the quality of the writing is always really top notch with only a few exceptions. Take this as context...

Now getting back to Kristoph Gavin. Typical anime glasses dude, right? But no, though. One of the reasons why he's so interesting to me is how his emotional understanding of personal relationships really works. Or seems to, anyway. Based on the endgame testimony and his crimes, Kristoph Gavin is extremely dangerous because, should you get involved with him in any way, he will never, ever let go of you, ever. Once you are entangled with him he wants you to stay entangled, not unlike an overbearing parent who refuses to let you go. It's partly that he thinks he knows what's best for you (that is, to stay completely loyal to him). And also partly... because he is pretty dependent on what other people think of him. So he needs to keep them around him closely.

Kristoph's biggest fear was his lying being exposed for what it was. That Phoenix was really the honest, straightforward attorney, and not him. Kristoph would do anything to perpetuate his own false reality. He kept it going for seven years. His absolute worst fear of all was losing his reputation. Being seen for what he truly was in front of others. He could never accept that. That fear drove all of his murders. Fundamentally, he sees himself as benevolent... when nothing could be further from the truth of how he was hurting everyone who had the misfortune of crossing his path.

Kristoph has a need to perpetuate this false identity of himself above all else. A very adjacent second goal to that is to keep all of his personal associates very close and under his control in order to keep the first goal intact.

Reject him and he will stalk you until you are dead. By his hand, or otherwise. Slight him, and he will get you at the first opportunity, case in point, Zak Gramarye. (He only had to get a quick glance at the guy and his fate was sealed. Turnabout Trump is a chilling case.) Replace him, and he will tear your life and livelihood up into little itty bitty pieces. He will then continue to stalk you aggressively for seven years while pretending he is your best friend. Case in point, Phoenix Wright.

Create false evidence for him and you become a loose end. So does your daughter. Like I said, just don't get involved with him. If he feels threatened, Kristoph Gavin will not hesitate to end you. It's definitely an obsession. I mean the first word that comes to people's minds when it comes to Kristoph usually isn't "obsessed", because he gives off the aura of being calm and uninterested. But he is, he's obsessed. You have to be obsessed to do what he did. This shit consumed his every waking hour, and that's what he won't admit. That he was so sick, he completely lost the plot. Phoenix was already living in his head rent free the day he ordered the forgery. And even though Phoenix wasn't physically present at the Misham trial and was only watching everything by video camera, you can bet Kristoph was seeing Phoenix. Hallucinating him, images of him. Probably multiple images of him. That's how obsessive. Imagine letting something or someone control you to that extent. Imagine thinking that you're so important, that Phoenix taking Zak Gramarye's case at all was meant to be a slight against you personally. (It's funny because Phoenix mentions not even knowing Kristoph at all until after the disbarment. So Kristoph's own logic in thinking that Phoenix was just out to shame him absolutely doesn't track. Ob-sessed, dude.)  

It's actually pretty astonishing that someone like Apollo made it out alive. On a side note, I really think Kristoph enjoyed having someone to mentor. He sought someone like Apollo out. Someone naive and new to the field for him to indoctrinate. And maybe I have a post about that later, cuz that's a whole 'nother barrel of monkeys right there. (It kind of involves Apollo’s naivete (also, daddy issues, hello.) being a huge reason why he would gravitate towards having a mentor known for having a “caring” personality. And I think Apollo genuinely liked that about him, which makes the end result so much more awful for Apollo to deal with because to him, that was real.)

But now think of Klavier, right. Being forced to grow up with that. To live with that your entire life. To have a familial relationship that is that smothering, that suffocating, that strangling. That controlling, to criticize every single thing that you do or say right down to the way you say it. And remember... He's never letting you go. I would go on a world tour as a rock star, too. Anything to be anywhere he isn't. This is horror movie tier stuff. (now im imagining a horror movie trailer for aa4 focusing on gavins stuff... eep!)

And Kristoph Gavin markets himself as someone who simply doesn't care. He's the coolest defense in the west and he doesn't care for what you may think about it. Except... he does care. It totally consumes him. Your perception, your opinion, is everything to him. He has shitty self esteem, deep down, because he knows Phoenix is better than him. And tries to mask it with narcissism as the two duke it out. Appearances are everything, evidence is everything. What people think is true is the only thing that matters, truth doesn't. And it makes sense that his closest contacts and associates are the targets for his constant narcissistic abuse and gaslighting. Their opinions matter even more than the common crowd - of course, Kristoph hates them. Which makes it even worse for him when the jury decides unanimously that Vera is innocent (and by implication, he is therefore guilty). The jury verdict was kind of like the ultimate confirmation that guess what, the evidence doesn't matter. The common and boorish masses have passed judgement, no matter how "mindless, emotional and irrational" they are, even they can see behind his crappy little facade. Even a blind woman like Lamiroir can see that insecurity; even a common person can understand it just by looking at the facts. That's what absolutely wrecks him... that his “poker face” couldn’t hold a candle to Phoenix’s. And he loses the “hand” again (because of his “hand”... get it??).

The identity that he needs to maintain is part of how he sees himself in his mind. As Phoenix's protector, not as his stalker. As Klavier's benevolent big brother, not as his abuser. As Apollo's teacher and mentor, not as someone guiding him into ruin. He lives in a false reality.

Try to bring this up in any way, shape, or form and he will write it off. You're just imagining things...

Because at some level, Mr. Black Psyche Locks himself doesn't even realize. (I feel like that might just be basically canonical fact, based on Pearl’s explanation of how black psyche locks are supposed to work.) That’s pretty freaking terrifying.

At the end of the day this is a big part of the reason I think his character is just so interesting. In a very messed up way, Kristoph is one degree away from being such a good person. He could've been obsessively protective of Klavier - the way a big brother is supposed to be - instead of abusive, could've actually been very caring of Phoenix instead of manipulative. Terrible people can have good traits, just as good people can have awful traits. His attention to detail and understanding of psychology (like getting Vera those gifts she would like so much) could've been used for genuine good. He could've been someone who cares deeply about other people because he does care deeply about other people. But only in terms of their relation to himself, what do they think of him, how are they useful to him.

Maybe this is why I kind of like his character. Intelligent, semi-neurotic protective characters are just my ish. But, no, he has to have a narcissistic bent that skews everything into complete abuse. That’s what makes him awful... that he’s devoid of a moral compass or true compassion for other human beings.

So in closing, fuck off, Kristoph Gavin.

Postscript, he's also such a good foil for Phoenix for this reason. Kristoph does everything for himself. Phoenix does everything for Trucy, because he's a dad and he understands the weight of what it means to really care for someone. Kristoph couldn’t understand motives like that. And Phoenix can't help it if he's an order of magnitude smarter and more mature than Kristoph is. He was just born like that. Classy as fuck. You know what, Kristoph Gavin is like the dollar store version of Phoenix Wright as an attorney. Has many of the same functions but actually doesn't have a leg to stand on and will fail you when you need it. And is revealed to just be a cheap knockoff of the real thing.

#kristoph gavin #aa4 #apollo justice ace attorney #im just thinkin thoughts here #dont know why im in such a creepy mood right now #maybe halloween has something to do with it #srsly i need to do some analysis on some other characters lol #and ignore this rat man #btw im totally up to analyze specific characters and interactions #lmk #maybe nahyuta? #or phoenix and trucy #or phoenix and apollo...aaa

[sophiamcdougall]

I keep thinking that the immortals give Nile a lot of authoritative-sounding information about how being immortal works, and yet their sample size is never more than six and frequently it’s one.  Including Nile, there have only ever been seven of them ... that they know of. Obviously, there might have been near-immortals who lived and eventually died before Andy was even born, but also, until encountering Quynh, Andy had no way of knowing that new immortals inspire clairvoyant dreams in each other. Even after the dreams and meeting Quynh in real life ... if I were in her shoes I think I might have read the situation as “destined to find my soulmate” more than “all immortals come with a sort of built-in homing beacon which broadcasts equally to all other immortals.” Not for centuries would either encounter any further evidence either way. And even now -- having dreamed of, and then found, Lykon, Joe, Nicky and Nile, how do you know you’re dreaming of the world’s entire population of immortals, rather than a random selection? Or those Destiny or whatever particularly wants you to meet? Nicky and Joe can only ever have had this experience once before, relatively recently, and Booker can never have had it at all. I guess it doesn’t matter, as acknowledging the possibility that there might be others out there wouldn’t practically change very much, but it’s part of a pattern of jumping to conclusions.  

“Eventually you stop healing.” This has only happened once (that they know of, see above) and only one member of the current team was there to see it. “Immortality has limits and in time, this will happen to all of us” is a good theory, but it should only be a theory. How do they know that something hadn’t happened to Lykon, and only Lykon, to rob him of his immortality? What if he got a defective dose of immortality in the first place? Or, given that their own existence proves the existence of the supernatural, is it out of bounds to think that he might have pissed off some other form of supernatural being? Now, I don’t exactly mind them jumping to conclusions on this one, because they all have good reason, actually, to want this to be true -- Booker and Andy because depression and grief and burnout, Nicky and Joe because wonderful as it is to share centuries with your true love, you’d probably rather not stick around for the sun boiling away the oceans. And in fact bearing in mind that they couldn’t truly have known this was coming adds tension and urgency to the scenes after the revelation of Andy’s mortality. But I kind of wish it had been expressed, because it makes the possibility that this might be happening to all of them now - when they’re surrounded by enemies -- even more compelling. It’s somewhat implicit in the acting choices but imagine if they were explicitly grappling with the possibility that Lykon was an outlier in a different way - the rest of them were always supposed to run out of immortality juice now, today.  “Your family will reject you.” This is the one that actually bothers me,  because Christ, NILE’S POOR MUM. And this isn’t a statement about how immortality works anyway, it’s a statement about anyone who happens to be related to an immortal. The whole team seem to offhandedly agree that Nile is better off not going back to her family, but the only person who actually explains why is Booker, and ... why is anyone accepting Booker’s experiences as representative of anything? Especially after discovering the betrayal! Booker is suicidally depressed! Obviously he thinks the world is terrible, interpersonal problems are insurmountable and every bad thing that’s happened to him is a universal law of nature! You don’t have to believe him! Especially since his situation, as described, has pretty much fuck all in common with Nile’s and there’s little reason to think it has anything much in common with the others, either. And yet even when Nile has her “refusal of the call” moment, she doesn’t say argue with Booker’s predictions, she merely says that she can defer the moment she must vanish from her family’s lives until her immortality becomes impossible to hide. But why? Booker does not mention parents, only his children. There’s no indication any of the others had offspring, but even if they did, it’s largely irrelevant to Nile who clearly doesn’t. She’s concerned about her mother and brother. Nile discovers her immortality a lot younger than the rest of the team, in a period with a much longer average life expectancy. All the rest appear to be in their mid thirties to mid forties. Given how far back in time their origins are, it’s unlikely that all of them had living parents when they discovered their immortality, and any that  they did have would have been decidedly elderly by the standards of the time. So how plausible is it that any of the others experienced any version of what Booker describes? I’d say not very, and it’s downright implausible that they experienced it with a parent. Children are supposed to outlive their parents. Booker’s situation was agonising specifically because it was a tragic inversion of that rule. Booker’s son had to die in pain while his father now looked younger than he did. But Andy, Joe or Nicky’s parents, even if they were around to witness anything, would have seen ... what? Their 45-year-old son still passing for 35?  Even if they knew about the immortality ... how exactly would they have wanted/expected their child to pass it on? Wouldn’t an 11th century parent have been far more likely to take up the unequal distribution of miracles with God rather than their kid? So why should Nile accept that her mother will behave like Booker’s son? Isn’t it enormously more likely that a woman who, like every mother, has always wanted and expected to be outlived by her daughter, and yet has been living with the daily terror of losing her in combat, will be enormously relieved to know that she’s not going to die prematurely? Is it even vaguely likely that the pain of not benefiting directly from your daughter’s magical healing powers, decades from now, is worse than the pain of losing her at 20? OK, so then there’s the brother. Outliving a brother isn’t like outliving a child either, but it’s at least somewhat easier to believe there could be jealousy and conflict there eventually. But is that possibility of pain worth inflicting absolutely certain agony now? Is it impossible to talk through potential issues now just because it didn’t work out that way for Booker? OK, but for argument’s sake, let’s accept your family will inevitably ask you to share your immortality with them. Booker says that of course you can’t pass it on, yet his entire freaking arc is predicated on the possibility that maybe you can. (Which is cool, actually! But it has unexplored implications!) One thing that I actually really liked about film is it made “getting kidnapped and vivisected” a convincing threat, whereas many sci-fi shows vaguely invoke it as a reason that superpowered characters must keep their abilities secret, without ever bothering to show how that would play out in practice. I mean, people with unusual abilities exist! Michael Phelps produces less than half the usual amount of lactic acid! And has twice the normal lung capacity! Which we know, because researchers have studied him! Yet nobody has ever carted Michael Phelps off to a secret laboratory and if they did he would have various legal options!  It works here, but part of the reason it works is that Copley raises the obvious objection - why should being a subject of medical research mean anything more than donating some blood, a cheek swab and maybe at absolute worst some bone marrow? That would be enough to map their entire genome ... what else does even the maddest scientist even want? The Old Guard is the first show I can think of which actually had a decent answer, and it’s that Merrick is a greedy hypercapitalist psychopath who doesn’t want to share. Which is brilliant, but acknowledges it isn’t actually the science that’s the problem. But none of that was available in Booker’s time! He not only had to deal with an apparently unique situation among the immortals, he also was caught at a unique moment in history: far enough advanced that his family was less likely to accept “miraculously chosen by god/gods/fate” as an answer, far enough advanced to contemplate the possibility that medical science could replicate his immortality, but nowhere near advanced enough to meaningfully try. But if you’re immortal now and your dying relative is freaking out ... wouldn’t you at least agree to giving them a blood transfusion? They’d know you tried. It’d probably calm them down. It might even work!  What is the wider significance of this? Basically fuck all, but it feels like it’s been years since I got to nitpick something that I genuinely enjoyed for the sheer, innocent love of being an insufferable killjoy rather than because I thought it was Problematic.  

#The Old Guard

[kitsbookshelf]

The Twilight Saga: a detailed review of why I can’t stand them and love them in (almost) equal measure

Before I start this borderline scathing review, I just want to let you know that it's full of spoilers, so if you haven't read the books, look away now. This is your only warning.

Now that that's out of the way... I can't stand the Twilight saga. Twelve-year-old me is cringing at my hatred for it, and Twilight fans are waiting to set me on fire, but it's true. I think they're poorly written, and there are soooo many parts of every book that just...missed the mark, at least for me. Let's start at the beginning, with the first book: Twilight.

Bella, our darling main character, moves in with her dad, Charlie (let's take a moment to appreciate perhaps the only normal, mentally stable person in this entire saga), in the rainy small town of Forks, Washington.

Bella is quite a bland character, but that just makes her easier to project yourself onto when you're reading the book if that's how you immerse yourself. For me, I found her obsessive and definitely not emotionally stable, and it did honestly feel like reading the diary of a manic and very unstable 17-year-old. On one hand, that's good--I'm reading from Bella's perspective, and it's written exactly how I'd expect her to write--but on the other hand, the writing feels...cheap? I completely blame my own taste in writing style for my opinion on this one, but I just couldn't enjoy the very boring storytelling happening here. It was all very 'tell-tell-tell' instead of the 'show-tell-show' way of writing I prefer.

Now here is where my adoration for this book comes in: Edward Cullen. Specifically, the interactions between him and Bella. They have conversations, and banter, and it's a fun little human-vampire-friendship that isn't awful to read (I will never never forgive the films for leaving some of the dialogue out, it's pure gold and possibly the only saving grace of this book). The characters felt like teenagers here, but it was only for the few short pages we got of them interacting without the overly-exaggerated brooding that our sweet Ed is known for.

The romance between Bella and Edward is...concerning. For me, I couldn't find a single bit of actual romance between the two of them beyond Bella's obsession with him and Edward's bloodlust and weird self-control thing he has for her. It felt really unhealthy, and I couldn't wrap my head around how people actually think there's romance there.

The whole James thing...I don't know about anyone else, but it felt really random. Yes, it added a conflict to the book, but I felt like there wasn't really any good development to make it more relevant. That all seemed to happen later with Victoria, but James didn't really feel like he fit into the story very well. I think I would have preferred it if he was gradually brought in through the book, or if there was some sort of lead up to the conflict instead of just--WHAM! Tracker dude wants to kill Bella because Edward got protective and now only the final section of the book has any action.

Twilight completely had the potential to be a good vampire-human romance novel. There was no real need for the James-Victoria storyline, even in the later books. What did they add? Only the entirety of Eclipse, but that book could be taken out completely without disrupting the story all that much.

New Moon feels like a completely different book, and I actually really liked it. The writing style still got on my nerves and made it more difficult for me to enjoy the book, but the content was so much better.

Bella's spiral in New Moon really added something to her character. Instead of another book of her constant Edward-Cullen-is-the-most-beautiful-man-to-ever-exist inner monologue, we got a whole book of her.

Jacob Black was introduced, and he was a genuinely likable character (the one thing I will say is that his inability to take 'no' for an answer really did put me off him for a large portion of the book and the next one) who brought some more normality into the book. It didn't feel like I was reading an overly-exaggerated supernatural romance, and I enjoyed it. The banter between the two of them was so realistic, and I actually really loved how Meyer explored Bella's coping mechanisms and her dependency issues when Jacob phased and Bella was left without him again.

The conflict here was much more well-executed than in Twilight, with the Volturi having been mentioned before and now becoming established properly in the saga. They're the perfect villains, and I enjoyed reading about them much more than I enjoyed the rushed few chapters of James's story in Twilight. I loved how Meyer kept Bella awake the entire way home from Italy. You really got to see the sort of wild relief that she felt when getting Edward back, and I think it was well-written and made me feel like there was slightly more going on here than the forced romance in Twilight.

I really do feel like the subject of them being mates should have come up a lot sooner. Maybe some questions on how a human could be a vampire's mate, or exploring the complications of it, because then maybe Bella's obsession would have been far more understandable earlier in the saga, and it might have felt more 'organic' than the relationship I read until Bella became a newborn later on.

And now we reach Eclipse... Eclipse, Eclipse, Eclipse... I hate it. There isn't a single part of this book that I can honestly say I enjoyed. I felt like it could have been taken out completely, and it wouldn't have made a difference to the story.

The whole book felt like a filler, purely there to resolve the issue of Victoria before moving on to Bella's pregnancy and vampirism in Breaking Dawn. It didn't feel like any part of it was important, or really memorable.

Victoria's whole storyline could have been erased without destroying the saga. The only interesting thing about the whole conflict with her was that she managed to orchestrate it without Alice seeing her, and that was the one thing that kept the book rolling on instead of it being a handful of chapters of the newborns being defeated.

The one thing that this book set up was the truce between the werewolves and the vampires, and I definitely think that could have been done in another way if James and Victoria had never existed (if you can't already tell, I really don't see the point to James and Victoria, and they don't add anything to the books except for a tiny, irrelevant bit of drama).I enjoyed how Meyer wrote the love triangle, and how she made Bella love them both. It felt, to me, more realistic that Bella would feel something for Jacob after everything we read in New Moon and how much she cared about him.

Beyond those things, though, this book really did feel completely useless to me, and I couldn't wait to stop reading it and get back to something that felt like it had a decent plot.

Okay, last one (I commend you for surviving this far). Breaking Dawn.

I...didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. I think it's a good conclusion to the saga, and I like how the characters all got a happy ending, but I can't say I think it's amazing or even close.

Bella becoming a mother felt strange and disjointed to the rest of the books--she'd never said she wanted to have a baby, and had even stated that she didn't mind not having a child if it meant being a vampire with Edward. Then suddenly she's pregnant and will let herself die to give birth to the baby? It doesn't fit with what we've read of her character up to this point, and it irked me.

And the baby name...Renesme... Can we take a second to appreciate how stupid that sounds? There were so many other options--honestly, I'd have taken literally any other option--and Bella chose to mash their mothers' names together in the worst possible way. Renesme. Ugh.

Don't even get me started on Jacob imprinting on a baby. The whole thing of imprinting makes perfect sense, but why, why, why did he have to imprint on a baby? A half-vampire baby? Surely his wolf-y instincts would be telling him to get away from her, not throw him right into her tiny little arms and have him fall in love with her. I don't get it, it creeps me out, and that's all I'm going to say about it.

As for everything else... I think it was good, it just sort of felt flat to me. All of the good parts seemed to happen intermittently through the book, scattered between barely tolerable sections and parts that, in my opinion, were shoddy. It made for a difficult book to get through, but the conclusion to the saga was almost worth the trouble.

#twilight #bookreview #book recommendations #twishite #twilightsaga #twilightbooks #booktok #honestreview #renesme

[iwriteforthetincanman]

Mandoctober Day 14: Helmet

A/N: brought to you by angst, depression, a small hot chocolate, the tense feeling in my shoulders as I’m typing this and of course the source of almost all of my writing: the mixture of insomnia and a f**ked up sleep schedule.

p.s. I am trying to take care of myself, October is just a tough time of the year for me and Mandoctober is helping me cope. I refuse to give up any possibly writings/drawings at this point.

Also this is loosely based off of headcannons from @dindjarindiaries​ blog and this is for @leo-moon​ ‘s Mandoctober!

TW: mentions of abuse (both descriptive, non-descriptive, mental, emotional and physical but only for a two, three paragraphs) Refusal to eat or sleep (Din refuses to do these things for two seconds and Reader isn’t granted them) minor character death, themes of slavery (NOT RACE SPECIFIED) (not a trigger warning) pronouns of a gender neutral partner and of course, lastly, hurt/comfort and fluff. (Also personally because I wrote this and I can shout it into the void, I’m gender fluid with she/her pronouns so I’d like to imagine reader is too, BUT THAT’S JUST ME SO IMAGINE THIS HOWEVER YOU WANT, once again requests are open for any sexuality/gender, as long as you give me brief description of what you want, nothing NSFW)

Time. Aboard the Razor Crest with no specific moon, sun or stars to guide you, time easily became irrelevant. What you learned very quickly was that with this discovery, you realized Din knew that too. 

Or it had gotten to a point where he learnt it a long time ago and just...forgot all about it.

Sometimes he would just sit there in the pilot’s seat, without even doing anything and he would just stare into oblivion. You wondered if his eyesight was okay. Now that you think about it...when was the last time he ate something? Does he ever take that helmet off?

“Din? Are you okay?” For a moment you thought he might be asleep. 

“Sorry...did you say something?” Okay, now you knew he at least needed some sleep. 

“Come on tin can. You need some brain food and maybe even an ‘extended nap’.” You joked.

“Isn’t that just called sleeping?” You couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not...or if that helmet was squeezing his brain too.

“Come on!” Grabbing his hand unexpectedly, Din flinched a little before you dragged him to his feet. 

“I-I can’t.” This admission had you stopping in your tracks as you reached the hull. 

“Is...everything okay?” You were concerned before but now you were starting to think he was hiding a wound from you. He’s done it before. Waiting until you were asleep to tend to it so you wouldn’t worry. Little did he know you had been wide awake with worry for a while and could hear him hurting himself with that blasted cauterizer. 

It was understandable that as a Mandalorian medical supplies weren’t cheap. Even with all the bounties Din brought in, currency rates were going up around the universe. It was difficult to keep up with. Which is why you never broached the subject with him.

It wasn’t your place to pry. 

Not with him anyway...he was silent, reserved, it was like he didn’t trust you. Yet you of all people understood that, you understood that it took you a long time to trust him. Like really trust him with your life...rather than just your role to him as the child’s ‘caretaker’.

It blind sided you when you realized how deeply you cared for him...Mando. 

Gods, you didn’t even know his own name.

“My creed. I can’t...eat in front of other people.” This was a touchy subject. You knew that. But you underestimated how stressed out he really was. He wasn’t wounded...he was just bone tired.

“Well, I can make some food-”

“DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP!”

“...ok.”

He hadn’t seethed the words out from his teeth as loud as you had heard them.

But...the look on your face as your eyes met the floor, undoubtedly filling with tears.

It cut Din deeper than any vibroblade could.

---

“I don’t know what to do Ad’ika. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t dream without thinking of her. And now...now I’ve gone and done the worst thing I could ever do to her...I hurt her without even touching her.” 

The sigh was small before it reached a crescendo out of his lungs, erupting out of his head like it was a volcano. That was what it felt like to breath again. When he was alone Mando had the freedom to take his helmet off on the Crest as much as he wanted. As long as he was in space, his privacy was unlimited. 

But that all changed when he met the child and then eventually...you. 

“I just wish...I knew more about her. Knew her likes and dislikes. Knew what her favorite food was. What makes her laugh...her favorite kind of music…I’ve gone and ruined everything haven’t I? Not just for me but for you too. I can’t just let her go...and if she does leave I can’t just hire someone new. She’s...really burrowed her way into my heart, little one.” 

Din’s soliloquy fell into the little creature’s ears like a fly trap. The child knew his father was hurting, he could feel it, not just in the force but in his tiny little heart. It was the kind of hurt he couldn’t fix with his own hands...he had to find another way. He had to make his buir feel whole again. 

Determined, the little creature climbed onto his father’s chest as his breathing started to relax. 

“Ad’ika, I’m not in the mood for games right now…” The dark circles under Din’s eyes became more and more pronounced as the hours dragged on. The good thing about being a father now meant that he had someone to talk to at any time if the baby was also struggling to sleep. 

Din never thought he would become a father. He thought a lot of things wouldn’t happen before he died a warrior’s death. He definitely thought he wasn’t going to fall in love too...but that happened before he could even think about it. 

Multiple chirps and coos echoed from the child’s lips as Din continued to massage his temples. 

“Ad’ika did you not hear me?”

Opening his eyes, Din found himself utterly and completely alone. 

“Ad’ika!” Startling upwards, he launched himself onto his bear feet as he searched the dark air around him for either you or the child. 

“Y/N!” Screaming your name into the void he began to run, not caring about his bare feet, his sleep wear or the fact his helmet was completely missing. 

A fact that had not gone unnoticed by the child.

---

Abruptly, Din was launched into the scorching blazes of a desert sun. 

The sand hurt as he fell down the dune he wasn’t gonna lie. 

But in some weird, twisted way, it felt good to feel the sand under his skin. 

“Girl! You get back here! Wretched creature!!” The sudden yelling came from a small village not too far away from where Din stood. Flinching, he hid behind the sand. He felt naked without the beskar. It was almost embarrassing how scared he was right now.

Peering over the sandy hill, he saw a young child with Y/H/C hair, rosy cheeks and bare feet run straight towards him. Not considering the strange events that had occurred before this, Din, although he’d never admit it, attempted to run away from her. Except, when she caught up to him, she ran right through him.

Din couldn’t decide whether this was some wicked form of a dream or that he had died and was now wandering the nearest planet.

Oh Maker, what if he was dead? There was no way you could pilot the Crest on your own...and what about Ad’ika.

That was when he heard it, the baby cooing in his head. 

“Ad’ika?”

That’s when it clicked. He wasn’t in some hellish figment of his imagination or dead…the child had used his powers to do this since he wasn’t wearing his helmet. But then again...where the hell was he?

“Y/N! YOU UGLY THING! IF YOU DON’T GET BACK HERE I WILL THROTTLE YOU!”

Whipping around to face you, all Din was met with was the familiar sight of you hunched over yourself, right near his feet. Crying. This had happened before but…not like this.

Was this...one of your memories? 

Oh no...Din was in your head. Somehow, the baby had managed it.

“I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK THERE! AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!” Din turned back to face the furious woman, she looked like a cursed school teacher, her hair flying all over the place. But what stood out to him were the nail marks on her cheek. 

He couldn’t picture it but somehow this woman had distressed you so much you had decided to hit her. The next thing that happened confirmed it…

SLAP!

“YOU EVER HIT ME LIKE THAT AGAIN GIRL I WON’T BE AS CONSIDERATE TO KEEP YOU!”

Keep you? Oh...you weren’t a school child.

You were a slave.

That’s why when you had first met you had been so skittish, so fearful...and yet so brave. 

Somehow it all made sense.

Din couldn’t help reaching out for you as your head sagged on your shoulders, a purple and pink mark blossoming across the side of your face as the evil woman clawed her hand around your wrist. 

“You will make my children their supper and you will go straight into the cellar with no dinner. Do you understand me child?” She spoke with a gentle tone...yet the venom dripped from it with the force of a thousand sandcrawlers. 

“...Yes Ma’am.” 

Your submission startled Din. Then again, you were only a child, and if Din hadn’t been taken in by the Mandalorians at your age...who knows what could’ve happened to him. From what little he had heard about of slaves...they didn’t often make it to see their teenage years. 

Yet, somehow you did. 

Din couldn’t help being grateful that, from what he could see of you, those were the only things that cruel woman had done to you. 

---

Stumbling into a new landscape, Din shook his head in an attempt to gain his bearings. 

“Look Y/N, it’ll be a quick job, all you have to do is listen to what I say and we’ll be gone as soon as you can say ‘bantha fodder’.” 

This was a new voice. A teenager from what Din could guess. They spoke in a kind tone but at the sound of the way they said your name he couldn’t help the feeling of jealousy welling up in him. 

Shaking his head once again, he looking around the jungle planet to spot you and this person.

“Iarren...I don’t know about this. I know we’ve done stuff like this before but we’re not resistance fighters. Those are imperial troops. What if...what if one of us doesn’t come back from this?” 

A much older version of you appeared like a vision from behind the leaves. You were much older now, Din could only guess that you had only just recently come of age. You had grown into your features well. He could see more of the fierce woman he had come to know. 

“Babe, you worry too much. Imps are stupid, plus what we are after is right next to the door practically. If you’re so concerned you can cover me from here and I’ll be right back to kiss your worries away...alright?” Din could tell just by the way you shared a glance that you were absolutely taken with this person. 

In a way Din respected them...but in the back of his mind he knew there was a reason he was seeing this particular memory. Bracing himself, he could only watch as you shared a tender kiss with your lover. It shocked him how passionate you were with them. Gripping them like a vice as if you knew what was about to happen. 

Din’s heart broke for you as he watched you sob over their corpse later that very night. 

---

“Cyare?” 

Din thought he had finally made it back to you just by looking upon your face. Much older now, age similar to the one when he met you. Looking around, he realized...this was that exact moment. 

“Excuse me.” 

Now Din knew for certain he wasn’t dreaming...there was no way he could dream about himself in this much detail. It was like having an out of body experience...in a way he was.

“Can I help you?” The first thing Din noticed about you was that you were too kind to have been on a planet as rough as Andos. Imps were everywhere nowadays and it was the one time Din had to wear a proper cloak so no one could spot him. 

“I need to hire someone to help me with a child. I was wondering if you could help me find a person that is trustworthy?” Being a Mandalorian was so difficult that day. Meeting you made him realize that you were kind enough to suggest yourself, admitting that you were tired of the constant trail of dead bodies this planet had shown you. He flinched when you mentioned the blood you found leaking through your front door one morning. 

He accepted your offer immediately. Offering payment for a job you had been doing for years without none. 

Din had no clue he had saved you from slavery for the second time in your life. 

---

Waking up in a cold sweat, Din knew this was reality. 

All your memories, it felt like a dream. 

That’s when he felt his son sag against his chest, heaving long tired breaths. 

Din was scared he had over exerted himself. 

“Ad’ika...why did you do that?” 

All the child could do was reach for his father’s face, bringing it towards his own. 

“Da.” This one, simple word, brought Din’s walls crumbling to the ground as he began to cry. 

“Thank you...Ni kar’tayli gar darasuum Ad’ika.”

The overwhelming joy he felt caused his thoughts about you to skyrocket. He knew he had to share this information with you. 

Startling from his bed, Din shot out of his room with the sleepy child tucked against his vest clad chest. 

“Y/N! Cyare come quick!” 

The sound of his unmodulated voice scared you more than anything else he had said to you that night. What you didn’t expect when you opened the door was to find a complete stranger shouting your name. 

“WHO ARE YOU? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH DIN?!” You practically screamed, ready to throw hands with this strange practically half naked man that had appeared before you.

That’s what you spotted the child in his arms, half asleep and staring admiringly up at the man. 

“...He called me da. I...had to share that with you Cyare...I didn’t even think twice about my creed.” The watery smile he gave you was enough to convince you that the man before you was none other than Din Djarin himself. 

“...just like that? You...you threw away your creed, being a Mandalorian...just so you could tell me he spoke his first word?” Din thought you were upset, in a way you were. 

When he turned to find your eyes filled with the happiest of tears he had ever seen, the overwhelming urge to kiss you kept slamming into his head, bleeding through his heart. 

“Cyare...Father’s always share the first word their child speaks with their Mother.” 

When you began to sob, Din refused to hold himself back as he curled his fingers through your hair, cradling your son between the two of you as he tilted your head back. 

As his lips brushed against yours for the first time…

You both had never felt so free.

#ngl this one makes me tear up #I'm so proud #Like honestly guys #mando x reader #mandoctober #the mandalorian x reader #mando x reader fanfic #mando x reader fanfiction #the mandalorian #the mandalorian fanfic #the mandalorian fanfiction #mando x fem!reader #mandalorian x female!reader #mandalorian x fem!reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin fanfic #din djarin fanfiction #din djarin x reader fanfic #din djarin #pedro pascal mandalorian #pedro pascal din djarin #pedro pascal #helmetless!din content alert #iwriteforthetincanman writes #star wars fanfic #star wars fanfiction #star wars fandom #star wars #I had a bad day today but writing this made me feel better somehow #also thank dindjarindiaries

[iwritethat]

Tim Drake: Sister, Sister

Tim Drake x Sister!reader

A/N: This beautiful idea was all down to @comicsgirlimagines who is truly wonderful and an incredible writer also (check them out), credit goes to them for their support and talks when writing this.

Thank you @comicsgirlimagines ♥️

>>>>——————————>

It was ironic, everything around was designed to perfection, to be exactly what you wanted and needed to maintain a positive existence as a reward for your past choices on Earth.

Yes, Heaven may've been perfect and brought you endless happiness but you were conscious enough to find the faults, for a start your brother was absent - which of course was a blessing, you didn't want him to join you for as long as possible, he had his whole life to live after all. It was entrancing, tuning in to the life events of Tim Drake on occasion, your little brother had certainly taken an interesting path - currently he fought with his new brothers, the League of Assassins were after Damian again and it automatically became a family emergency.

They hopped from rooftop to rooftop, battling various members with each vigilante fighting their own battles yet managing to lend assistance when able. However as you watched on, Red Robin seemed to be doubled down - more assassins were upcoming and he was the first standing in their way. You began to panic, was there even a way to get down there?! You'd looked into such things before as soon as you learned of his hobby, sure you were dead but people constantly connected with the spirit world - such a phenomena should work both ways. Or at least it was a theory under construction at the moment.

———

Another down, then another, and another. It became routine, but with repetitive strain came exhaustion and before Tim could react he'd made what was soon to be a fatal mistake, he should’ve ducked the blade gunning for his throat but instead was a millisecond too late to react. His body falling short of available counters and it was then he realised, this was it - after everything, this was finally how he’d go out. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, he’d aided more people than he ever thought possible but surely there were things he’d miss out on like having the opportunity to become a father, get married or even see Gotham make progress as a city. Regardless, he had made his peace with that and he’d closed his eyes in acceptance ready for whatever awaited him in the afterlife.

It was a split second - he never thought the white light actually existed but it flashed behind his eyelids rather sporadically and suddenly the breath was knocked out of lungs and it felt as though his head collided with concrete.

"Jeez I'll be back soon, don't worry." His sister gave an exasperated sigh, hands on her hips as her little brother tugged at her backpack.

"But (Y/n)! Please let me come with you!" Tim pleaded, successfully halting her in her tracks.

"No way kiddo, you'll probably fall off of the mountain. But hey, no matter how far apart we are, I'll always look out for you. Okay?" She smiled, tousling his hair as he accepted her justification.

"You promise?"

"I pinky promise."

"Hmm, see you when you get back loser." Tim mischievously commented, his sister rolled her eyes with a sarcastic "Oh haha." before heading off on her rock climbing trip.

That was the last time he'd laid eyes on her, unbeknownst to him at the time. And yet, this light, this warm familiar presence brought back such memories - of that day, of the news, of the funeral...

So then, how is it that he could hear her voice so clearly?

"Get up Tim! C'mon loser, I don't know how long I've got!" It was dangerously loud, demanding almost and it made him consider how things hadn’t changed much.

Tim was coming to, clenching his eyes shut in order to adjust to the bright glow that shrouded the area as he sat up with a squint.

"Argh, (Y/n) what the-?"

The figure kneeling down beside him was easily recognisable, having not aged in the years that had passed without her but the concerned expression she wore was contagious.

"No time to explain, magic spiritual existence or whatever but please get up. Here's your staff." You pulled him to his feet, albeit Tim remained dazed with these developments and stumbled against your figure with a groan. His staff was pushed into his chest and it was only now - dream or not - he spoke his true feelings.

"I missed you, so much..."

“I know...” The sincerity in his voice only made you feel guilty, the accident wasn’t your fault but you still left him and that was a weight you’d carried since you’d died.

Tim was slowly adjusting, finding what seemed to be a brief flash of wings behind you but that must’ve been from hitting his head so hard considering he now stood on the opposing rooftop to previously. Recalling the last moments his hand shot to his throat, more than shocked when his fingers remained absent of blood and his breathing was perfectly normal ignoring the quickness of it, next he looked back to where he was standing beforehand only to find bodies of assassins littering the roof and battles continuing over the street.

“Am I dead?”

“What? No. I’m dead, you’re alive.” You quickly corrected with furrowed brows and a sigh, flicking his forehead as he pushed your hand away in retaliation.

Although he paused, the familiarity of sibling like antics hitting him with an unwanted wave of nostalgia and he looked at you again - really looked. Saw past the golden glow, saw past the perfect skin and any evidence of scathes or aging. It was you but ethereal, you weren’t alive, you weren’t staying and you definitely weren’t coming back to life. That was what made him embrace you, arms wrapping around your torso so tightly that if alive then breathing would be a problem but you didn’t care, his face buried in your hair whilst you held back emotional whimpers. For however long you had been gifted, you’d say goodbye properly this time.

“I’m sorry for breaking my promise, so sorry, please please forgive me Tim -“

“Yo-you didn’t break it idiot.” It was such a soft whisper, an attempt to comfort you even if he didn’t understand your reasoning for profuse apologies.

“I didn’t come home, I left you alone and that’s the worst thing I could’ve done as your sister!” You defended, justifying your beliefs and pulling away from Tim who offered a soft smile amidst his watery eyes.

“You promised that no matter how far apart we are, you’d always look out for me and you have. (Y/n) you saved my life just now - how many people have the willpower to come back from the grave to do that? But you did that for me, you kept your promise.” Tim assured, wiping your tears away before hugging you once more.

“I’m proud of you y’know, kicking names and taking ass.” You weakly laughed, parting to punch his shoulder once regaining your composure.

“So you keep up with the times in the afterlife huh?”

“It gets boring up there okay? Speaking of, you should get back to fighting beside your family - who I love by the way.” You happily informed, gesturing over time the members of the Batfamily fighting various battles with a sad knowing smile.

Tim noticed the sorrow in your irises, the way you turned back to him like it was the last time you’d be with each other and it probably was but he simply sighed and placed a reassuring hand on your shoulder.

“You’re still my favourite sibling and as such I guess I should take your advice.” Tim softly commented and with an understanding nod a bright light engulfed his form once more.

This time he’d landed in the most heated area of the fight, landing executed perfectly with an immense rupture of light knocking out every enemy on impact. Tim stood, his family turning to him awestruck at the amount of unfathomable controlled power that originated from his form and how exactly he’d seemingly beamed over out of thin air.

“Later Timbers, and by the way I think you should stop crushing on Steph and ask her out already.” Your voice remained, albeit fleeting, as was your figure standing beside him overlooking your handiwork.

“Wha- you can’t know all of my business zombie!” He went to knock your upper arm, fingers phasing straight through your body and you both mirrored sympathetic expressions, a knowing and meaningful exchange enough to say what words couldn’t.

“I’m so happy for you Tim, stay alive okay?” And with that your figure faded into blissful golden stardust that spiralled into wind up toward the matte sky until they’d disappeared from Tim’s line of sight.

“Goodbye (Y/n)...”

——

“What was that out there Tim? A new gadget?” Bruce questioned his former partner once they returned to the Batcave whilst Tim got out his phone with an absentminded smile.

“My sister.”

“You have a sister, why didn’t you ever mention it?” Dick now inquired, walking in step beside him.

“Because you’d want to meet her and that’s, that’s impossible but her name was (Y/n). Here, this was us a few years ago.” Tim answered honestly, the implications easily read by his family who remained respectfully quiet until Tim handed Dick his phone which displayed a picture of the two of you. The others gathering around out of curiosity.

“Damn she’s hot.” Jason casually commented, reviving a facepalm from Cass and chiding from an irritated Damian.

“Todd, that’s completely irrelevent!”

“She has standards Jay sorry, but, she really likes you guys.” Tim smugly replied, his last words laced with underlying gratitude whilst Jason received over dramatic ‘ooohs’ from the rest of the family after that smart burn. Although Tim saw the contentment on each of them, that despite not knowing you, they had your blessing as his new family which was a very sacred thing in their opinion.

Once he’d regained his own space, he began typing a message he never thought he’d write until after your encounter.

Tim: [Hey Steph, I’ve been told I need to act on things so I was wondering if you wanted to go out this weekend? Not in costume, just as you and I.]

Stephanie: [About time Tim, who do I have to thank for your sudden confidence haha?]

Tim gave a relieved smile at the positive reply, looking up to the sky before asking with a proud yet considerate tone.

“You happy now?”

He would’ve said the sun broke through the cloudy sky of Gotham for a few seconds, golden rays bathing the Manor grounds and his skin - but that was probably unrelated coincidence...

#tim drake imagine #tim drake #tim drake x reader #dc #dc imagine #red robin #red robin imagine #red robin x reader

[calacuspr]

Calacus Weekly Hit & Miss – Gregg Popovich & Leeds United

Every Monday we look at the best and worst communicators in the sports world from the previous week.

HIT – GREGG POPOVICH AND BECKY HAMMON

San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon made history by becoming the first woman to serve as a head coach in an NBA regular season game against Los Angeles Lakers on New Year’s Eve.

Hammon has been working with San Antonio since the 2014-15 season, but her in-game move to Head Coach – due to Gregg Popovich’s ejection – became national news with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris tweeting about it.

While Hammon deserves all of the credit for continuing to be a key role model for women throughout America in helping to remove gender barriers in sport, Popovich should also be praised for his comments on the topic which were a testament to the environment that he has created in his 25 years as head coach in San Antonio.

“As you all know, we’re very participatory. I like to have my coaches coach. The Lakers were her scout team. It made total sense for her to take over. That’s what we’ve done for decades. That’s nothing new,” Popovich said.

“But on the bigger question of her having taken over a NBA game, to me, it’s not a big surprise. To a lot of other people it meant a lot. I can understand that. She’s somebody who’s very skilled and could very easily fulfil the duties of a head coach in the NBA. That goes without saying.

“There are women in every other endeavour in the world, whether it’s government, science, technology, aviation, it doesn’t matter what it is. Women do the same jobs as well and better than men. That’s a fact. There’s no reason why somebody like Becky and other women can’t be coaches in the NBA.

“On a larger scale, that’s why it wasn’t a big deal to me — because I know her. And I know her skills, and I know her value and I know her future is very, very bright. I understand the attention it got, but in all honesty, I assumed that most people already knew that she was qualified to be a head coach in the NBA.

“We didn’t hire Becky to make history. She earned it. She is qualified. She’s wonderful at what she does. I wanted her on my staff because of the work that she does. And she happens to be a woman, which basically should be irrelevant but it’s not in our world, as we’ve seen as it’s been so difficult for women to obtain certain positions. It was business as usual for us.”

Popovich could’ve taken the chance to praise the organisation or even himself for providing Hammon with such an opportunity, but he was right to put all of the emphasis on her credentials and why she was so deserving.

As Popovich stated, the hope is that this story will cease to be news as more women are able to showcase their abilities in high-profile sports roles, but it’s important to shine a light on role models like Hammon to inspire the next generation of female athletes, coaches, and officials.

MISS – LEEDS UNITED PROVOKE PUNDIT PILE-ON

Official football club social media accounts have evolved from simply posting results and links to an official website to a two-way communications channel with fans.

Leeds United have won a lot of plaudits after returning to the top flight for the first time in 16 years this season, playing a dynamic form of football.

After beating West Bromwich Albion 5-0, TV pundit and former England international Karen Carney observed that the Leeds’ style and promotion owed something to the rest players had during lockdown.

She said: “They outrun everyone, and credit to them. My only concern would be, will they blow up at the end of the season like the last couple of seasons? I actually think they got promoted because of Covid in terms of it giving them a bit of respite. I don't know if they'd have got up if they didn't have that break.”

It was a fair comment and Carney’s opinion rather than being stated as a fact, but the Leeds official Twitter account then shared the clip, prompting thousands of trolls to target and abuse Carney.

Targeting an individual is never appropriate on social media, much less so when by an organisation, but sometimes, mistakes can be made.

The key, as with any sort of crisis, is to recognise the error and fix it quickly: in this case, that means deleting the tweet and offering a full apology for the consequences it provoked, which were obvious to anyone who has ever used social media, particularly in the public eye.

But Leeds owner Andrea Radrizzani, who has overseen such progress at the club since he took over in 2017, doubled down and endorsed the tweet.

“I take the responsibility of the Club tweet,” he said on Twitter. “I consider that comment completely unnecessary and disrespectful to our Club and particularly to the fantastic hard work of our players and coaches whom were understanding on the pitch for the last two championship seasons by all stats.”

The tweet and the club’s official response to it led to widespread outrage, with Women in Football echoing the sentiments of many when they said: “Whether you agree with the comment or not, singling out & ridiculing an individual on an official club account is not what we’re here for. Karen Carney is a well-informed pundit. This tweet is inciteful & inappropriate. Not a good look now, or at any time.”

The story has gone global, with USA Women’s World Cup winner Megan Rapinoe tweeting: “Shame. Shame. Shame. Thicken up that skin y’all. Also, don’t come for @karenjcarney she’s a National treasure.”

Leeds had many opportunities to realise the damaging consequences of their tweet, and they subsequently issued a statement – notably NOT on Twitter – in response to the abuse Carney has suffered: “Leeds United completely condemns any abuse received by Karen Carney on social media following last night’s Premier League game with West Bromwich Albion.

“Everyone at our club respects Karen greatly for all she has achieved in the game, as well as her work in the media and the charity work she undertakes.”

Given the abuse, it was too little, too late.

Carney, meanwhile, has deleted her Twitter account and the tweet remains live as of January 4, almost a week after it was first posted.

According to The Athletic, Leeds have spoken to Carney’s representatives and invited her do a TV report at their Thorp Arch training ground before their televised FA Cup third-round match against Crawley Town.

This situation is a case study in how a lack of empathy or understanding can create a crisis that affects reputations and individuals. Certainly Leeds have lost some goodwill as a consequence.

Rather than inviting her to their training ground, their staff, from the top down, need education into the daily challenges that women in football face to avert problems like this occurring again in future.

#Karen Carney #Leeds United #Andrea Radrizzani #The Athletic #Megan Rapinoe #Women in Football #West Bromwich Albion

[go-gently-please]

cherry ~ vampire!au (part 3)

~ pairing: human!BTS x vampire!OC

~ genre: vampire!au, smut, angst, sprinkles of fluff

~ summary: life with the seven boys proves to be more complicated than you thought, and you struggle to combat your selfish desires along with their advances.

~ warnings for this chapter: profanity, blood, subby Jimin, fellatio, dirty talk, mentions of BDSM

~ a/n: i’m not super happy with this chapter, but i really hope you like it. please tell me what you think, i would love to see how i could improve :)

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 (coming soon)

links in masterlist!

You’d decided that it’d be best to take a break from Jimin. It wouldn’t be difficult, considering that there were six other perfectly good men to choose from, but it was clear early on that Jimin wasn’t about to make things easy for you.

You weren’t sure if it was on purpose, but he had started wearing more revealing clothes, ones that accented his collarbones and showed off his muscular arms. The elegant dips of his neck and chest were always fully on display for you.

He wasn’t stupid, he knew something was bothering you. Ever since you ran out of his room, leaving him sitting there looking like a kicked puppy, his mind had been plagued with dark thoughts of doubt and self-deprecation. These thoughts only multiplied when you continued to ignore him.

You’d gone three whole weeks without feeding on him, which was unusual since your sweet tooth made Jimin one of your most popular choices. Out of the seven of them, you fed on Jimin, Hoseok, and Jungkook the most.

Jimin immediately assumed that he was the problem. He must’ve done something wrong, must’ve upset you somehow. Was it his blood? Did it not taste good anymore?

The thought of his blood disgusting you made Jimin’s stomach lurch.

He tried confronting you, but every time he asked you simply brushed it off, claiming that you just “weren’t hungry anymore.”

He knew that was bullshit. Your pupils had been so dilated that your eyes were almost black. You’d looked like a panther ready to pounce.

You felt bad for ignoring him, especially because it was Jimin. He was the most needy for praise out of all of them. That was one of the reasons why you had a soft spot for him.

After feeding, you would always shower him with pets and compliments, telling him how good he tasted, how sweet he was. Jimin’s face would turn that pretty mochi pink, his head ducking away shyly like a turtle in its shell.

You loved the way you could make him crumble. Jimin’s flirtatious nature made him come across as confident, maybe even cocky, but once you praised him, he would melt into a gooey mess of blushing and giggling.

So, naturally, ignoring him was one of the worst things you could ever do. But it had to be done...right?

“Charlie?” A soft, tinkling voice made you look up from the cutting board.

Jimin stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, looking casual and slightly sleepy in a grey cap and sweater. He was barefaced, letting you see the faint spots and freckles on his glowing skin, his eyes free of any makeup.

You wanted to squish his cheeks and tell him to skip class that day to stay here and cuddle with you instead.

“What?” You forced your voice to come out harsh, slicing through the air and creating an immediate, palpable tension. Yoongi, who was sitting at the bar with a cup of coffee, looked between the two of you like he was about to witness a cat fight.

“I was just wondering if you were free later this afternoon?” He sounded so hopeful, speaking in a low tone as if he was afraid you’d snap at him.

It wasn’t an unusual occurrence for you and the boys to hang out one-on-one. You would often go out for coffee, peruse around a bookshop, or sometimes they would tag along while you ran errands. Nevertheless, the question made you snap your head up to stare at him.

“What?” You said sharply.

Jimin visibly gulped.

“I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go to that new cafe during your lunch break. I know you wanted to check it out.” He said.

You were endearingly surprised that he remembered. Looking back down at your cutting board and continuing to chop spinach, you pretended to sound disinterested.

“I’m probably going to end up skipping lunch today. It’s been really busy at work lately. Maybe next time.” You mentally cringed at how blunt you sounded.

Jimin’s shoulders sagged.

God, I am being such a bitch.

“Okay…” He said sadly, turning to leave you alone.

Yoongi eyed you up and down as you started to arrange the spinach and eggs on a plate.

“Did Jimin do something to you?” He asked.

You glanced at him very briefly.

“No, why would you think that?”

“Because he’s sulking and you’re avoiding him.”

“I’m not avoiding him! I’ve just been busy, that’s all.” You pushed the plate towards him and crossed your arms.

“Can you eat the whole thing for me?” You said, gaze softening with the question.

Yoongi raised an annoyed eyebrow.

“First of all, I hate spinach. Second of all, would you stop pestering me, please.”

“I’m sorry! It’s just...you’re so skinny.” You said as you squeezed one of his bony arms.

You felt like an old witch preparing a child for the boiling pot, fattening them up with sweets and sugary words. Here, little boy. Eat up so you can become nice and tender. Would you like to be served with butter or gravy?

You were just worried about his health! Every time you fed on him there was always the concern that he might faint in the middle of it.

“Trust me, Charlie, I eat plenty.” Yoongi insisted.

“Yeah, but how much of that is pure garbage?” You said. 

He didn’t have an answer for that.

“Why are you so hell-bent on this?” He whined.

“Because I don’t want to have to worry about you collapsing every time I suck you!”

He quirked an eyebrow.

That came out wrong.

“Every time I suck your blood.” You corrected.

The sound of the clock chime broke you out of your thoughts, which may or may not have turned inappropriate at the mention of sucking. You sighed in relief, glad to have an excuse out of this conversation.

“Gotta go.” You grabbed your bag and hurried to the door.

“Finish that!” You called back over your shoulder, pointing at his breakfast.

“I’ll think about it!”

~~~

You weren’t really busy at work. That was a lie. Actually, you kept the place running rather smoothly. You were good at your job, you had to be as the person in charge. As editor in chief of GENIUS magazine, you held the highest position in the editorial department.

Today was a particularly slow day. Your afternoon meeting had been canceled, which opened up the bulk of your schedule. You were absentmindedly wondering what you’d have for lunch when your phone buzzed.

12:54 — Hobi: hey :)

An instant smile crossed your face.

12:55 — You: hi sunshine

The three tiny dots appeared and disappeared several times. You smirked, picturing him blushing at your nickname and fumbling for the right words to say.

12:57 — Hobi: you free for lunch?

12:58 — You: you just read my mind. Where do you wanna go?

12:58 — Hobi: that new cafe that you were talking about?

Wow. How do they all remember these things about you?

12:59 — You: sounds good. Meet you there in fifteen minutes.

You killed time by scanning over some of the articles for the next issue. After glancing at the clock, you gathered up your coat and bag, walking through the glass doors of your office.

“I’m going out to lunch with a colleague. I’ll be back in an hour to talk with the associate publisher.” You announced as you passed Melody’s desk.

“Okay, boss.” She replied.

“You know, you don’t have to call me boss.” You said with a crooked grin.

“I know. I just do it to tease you.”

The corner of your mouth quirked as your eyes ran over her. She was wearing a cute little pencil skirt that accentuated her petite frame. Not that she was super skinny, her build was medium, but she was a tiny person. She had short legs and was barely five feet tall.

Melody was very sweet and gentle, always right by your side, ready to do anything in her power to help you. She had an innocence about her that was almost childlike.

You were very fond of her.

The walk to the cafe was short. It was only five minutes away, that was why you’d been so eager to check it out. Hoseok was already there waiting for you when you arrived. He was sitting at a table by the window, wearing an oversized sweatshirt with his black face mask pulled down to his chin.

At the sound of your heels, he looked up from his phone. His face broke out into that beaming heart-shaped smile, making your lips immediately curl up in return.

“Hi, Noona.” He said cheerfully.

“Hey, Hobi. How's your day going?”

“Good! Even better now that I get to have lunch with my favorite vampire.”

“I'm pretty sure I'm the only vampire you know.”

“Mmm irrelevant.”

The waiter came, and Hobi ordered a sandwich while you ordered a coffee and a slice of strawberry cake.

“Skipping right to dessert, I see.” He said as you picked up your fork, licking your lips.

“Of course. My main course is still eating his lunch.”

A blush flowered on the plump apples of his cheeks. Yet, he still managed to flash you a sly grin.

“I guess I better hurry up then. Wouldn't want to keep my favorite vampire waiting when she so clearly needs me.”

Hobi smirked.

Something about the way he said it, the way he claimed that you “so clearly needed him,” made something in your stomach jump. He was suggesting that you needed something from him? Cocky little bastard.

Hoseok was...interesting. He was a little bundle of energy, that was true, a total ball of sunshine, but he challenged you in a way that none of the other boys did. He wasn’t afraid to poke and prod and push your buttons. It was almost like he was trying to see how much he could get away with, how much authority he could get you to give up.

You saw the way he treated the other boys, too. He was one of the older ones, so he had a natural air of dominance, especially over the maknae line. It wasn’t uncommon to see him ordering them around, jokingly manhandling or threatening them to get them to submit to his little games.

He was definitely different, you thought as you sipped your coffee, leaving behind a stamp of red lipstick on the rim.

“Nom nom nom.” You said around a mouthful of food, closing your eyes in bliss.

Hoseok chuckled, making you divert your attention away from your plate.

“What?” You asked with your cheeks stuffed.

“I can’t get over how you put off a badass vibe when you’re actually goofy and adorable as fuck.” He said in amusement.

You raised an eyebrow.

“Excuse you, I am a badass.” Your voice was sarcastic as you puffed your cheeks out even further, trying to give yourself a cute appearance.

Hobi laughed.

“You’re still a badass, of course. You’re just adorable as fuck while being one.”

Despite your efforts to suppress it, you blushed. When was the last time a boy made me blush?

Looking satisfied by your reaction, Hobi returned his attention to his food.

You bristled, suddenly feeling uncharacteristically small in his presence.

“Wipe that smirk off your face.” You said in a voice that would’ve made Jimin and Jungkook shiver and comply immediately, but only made Hobi smile wider.

“Oh, did I strike a nerve?” He teased you.

You pursed your lips together, trying to fight another rush of heat to your cheeks.

“Your face is heating up. Was it something I said?” Hobi quirked an eyebrow.

Leaning back in your chair, you exhaled as you stared him down.

“You better watch yourself, boy. Do I have to remind you who’s in charge?” You tilted your head to the side in mock confusion.

“Boy?” He said, challenging the title you’d just given him.

“I am hundreds of years older than you.”

“I don’t believe that, you don’t have the personality of a century-old great great great grandmother.” He said with a playful smile.

“Of course I don’t. We adapt to the times. It’s how we stay hidden. Don’t you think it’d be a dead giveaway if I still spoke like a character in a fucking Shakespeare play?”

He scoffed.

“Please, you weren’t alive at the same time as Shakespeare.”

“Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t.” You said as you nonchalantly sipped your coffee.

“How old are you anyway?” He asked, genuinely curious.

You gasped, putting your hand over your heart in exaggerated shock.

“Villain! I am sick when I do look on thee. Don’t you know to never ask a lady her age?”

Hobi rolled his eyes.

“Thou crusty batch of nature! The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes!”

“Alright, you’re being dramatic.”

“Zounds! You rogue! You rascal!”

“Now you’re just quoting Othello.”

“Away you three inch fool! More of your conversation would infect my brain.”

Hobi sighed deeply, giving up.

“Finish your cake.” He said.

You smiled in victory, popping a strawberry in your mouth.

~~~

You slid another square of chocolate past your lips as your eyes scanned over the outline board. This was your second bar; it sat there on your desk with the gold wrapper peeled back, curling around the edges. You just couldn’t seem to satisfy your craving for something sweet.

Sighing, you picked up your phone to try to distract yourself.

2:42 — You: hey yoongles.

2:44 — Yoongi: afternoon, charles.

2:45 — You: whatcha doin?

2:47 — Yoongi: editing. You? Working hard, I presume.  

2:48 — You: ugh. Trying to. This one copy editor is pissing me off.

2:49 — Yoongi: describe them, exactly.

2:50 — You: bitch. Grade A bitch. You’d hate her.

2:51 — Nice. I love hating people.

You chuckled to yourself. Yoongi always managed to make you feel at ease.

2:53 — You: I made you lunch and left it in the fridge. Did you eat it?

2:55 — Yoongi: it had spinach in it.

2:56 — You: Yoongi!

2:57 — Yoongi: yessss?

2:58 — You: EAT LUNCH.

2:59 — Yoongi: I DID.

3:01 — You: CRACKERS AND ALCOHOL DOESN’T COUNT.

The three dots appeared and disappeared.

3:05 — Yoongi: I don’t like spinach.

3:07 — You: you don’t like anything.

3:08 — Yoongi: I like sleep and you.

A big goofy smile crossed your face. Coming from him, it meant a lot. He even put you in the same category as sleep, which he valued almost more than air.

With a newfound fuzzy feeling in your tummy, you set your phone down and tried to get back to work.

Pacing back and forth in front of the editorial board, tapping a pen on your chin, your analytical mind churned and ticked like a whirring machine on full power.

A soft knock came at your office door.

“Yes?” You called.

Melody shyly stuck her head in.

“Darling, I’m in the middle of being fantastic, can it wait until later?” You said.

“A package came for you.” She said, blushing a bit at your nickname.

You averted your eyes back to the board, waving your hand dismissively.

“Just leave it on my desk.”

You didn’t see as Melody responded with a curt nod, disappearing back into the hall to return a few moments later with her arms full.

Instead of cardboard on wood, you heard the crinkling of wax paper. Puzzled, you turned your head. Instead of a box, a big, beautiful bouquet of bright red tulips sat on the tabletop.

You looked at Melody with confused eyes, but she only smiled knowingly and ducked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Approaching the vibrant bundle, you picked up the card tucked between two of the buds.

Have a nice day, Charlie. Hopefully I was able to make it a bit better.

— Jimin

You read it over three times. Staring unbelievably at the vibrance of the flowers, you stroked the petals, plush and soft against your fingertip. This must be what his lips feel like.

You immediately shook the thought from your head.

He is such a sweetheart! He went through all this trouble for me? And here I’ve been ignoring him for the past three weeks.

A surge of vicious guilt stabbed you in the gut. You cursed at yourself for believing that distancing yourself and turning into a frigid bitch would solve anything. The only thing it did was hurt Jimin and leave you hungry.

Suddenly rigid with determination, you hurried to gather your things.

“Should I block off the rest of your day, then?” Melody asked as you stormed out of your office, your face masked with the purposeful expression she knew so well.

“Yes, please.” You said as you adjusted your jacket. “I’ve gotta get some shit done.”

“Okay, I’ve penciled you in for one day of excess drinking and general ass kick-ery.”

You smiled at her.

“What would I do without you?”

~~~

The front door slammed. A dozen different shopping bags hung from your arms, most of them filled with groceries.

Jungkook was sitting on the couch, controller in his hand, eyes glued to the TV. When he heard you come in, he looked up and smiled, showing his adorable front teeth.

“Hey Charlie.” He greeted.

“Hey bunny.” You set the load on the kitchen counter.

“What's for dinner?” He asked, popping up from his seat to inspect the contents of the bags.

“Beef and veggie stir fry.”

It was Jimin's favorite.

“Jimin's not here, right?” You asked.

You wanted it to be a surprise. After being so mean, you were determined to make it up to him. You’d planned something special, and after he’d had his dinner, you would have yours.

Just the thought of it made you lick your lips.

“No, he's got a class tonight.”

You nodded, excitement bubbling as you set to work chopping vegetables.

Just as you were finishing up, you heard the front door. Jimin came into the apartment, hair damp with sweat, workout clothes rumpled. He dropped his dance bag by the door and inhaled deeply.

“Stir fry?” He called out after identifying the scent.

“Hi Chim!” You said cheerfully as he stepped into the kitchen.

He blinked. You'd barely even acknowledged him in the past few weeks, let alone called him by his nickname, and he was a bit taken aback.

“H-Hi Charlie.” He said as his cheeks flushed. You flashed him a pearly smile, outlined in freshly-applied red lipstick.

“Hungry?” You were in the dining room now, setting the table.

“Ye-Yeah, just let me shower first.”

Once he was gone, you grinned to yourself.

Perfect. You’d snuck up to his bedroom right before he got home and placed one of the shopping bags (a Chanel bag, to be precise) on his bed.

You were just about to set the last bowl on the table after tidying up when you heard footsteps pattering down the stairs.

Jimin was fresh out of the shower, fluffy hair hanging in front of his eyes. He was wearing a soft white sweater; the symbol on his right lapel was two overlapping, back-to-back red C’s. Even with the designer piece of clothing, Jimin’s smile was by far the prettiest thing he was wearing.

You remembered every word of the note you’d written him, you could picture it nestled in the folds of the tissue paper.

Jimin, I’m sorry for being so cold to you lately. It wasn’t your fault. Thank you for the flowers. You always make my day better.

— Charlie ♡

Heart fluttering at the memory, you busied yourself with distributing the silverware. After everyone was seated around the table, you started to pass around the rice.

“So, Charlie, tell us about the eighteenth century.” Hoseok said with a teasing look in your direction.

“Is this your attempt at making dinner-appropriate conversation?” You replied, swirling your tongue over a cherry-flavored lollipop.

Jimin was watching your every move with hawk-like intensity. You were perfectly aware of how he gulped and clenched his jaw every time your lips wrapped around the red orb, and you were deriving a great amount of pleasure from it.

“What were you doing in the eighteenth century?” Namjoon asked, genuinely curious.

“Hell if I know. I spent half of that century in an opium den. And the other half saying “what the fuck is happening?” When you've been alive for as long as I have, the years start to jumble together. Like, one time back in 1904...or was it 1914, wait what year is it now?”

Everyone rolled their eyes and gave up on trying to get any coherent information out of you.

Once everyone was finished eating, everyone but you, obviously, the table was cleared. You were about to load all the plates into the sink when Jin stopped you.

“Don't worry, we got it.” He said with a wide smile.

You glanced into the kitchen to see Namjoon, Taehyung, and Yoongi starting on the dishes.

“Are you sure? I can do them if you—”

“Come on, Charlie. You cook almost every meal. Let us do this for you.” Jin said, putting a warm hand on your shoulder.

The small gesture sent your whole body tingling with heat.

You and Jin got along very well. He was tidy, something you appreciated, and you both valued hard work and organization. You would think that the two of you would get along partly because he was the oldest, but Jin was one of the most childish out of the group, along with Taehyung.

Not to mention he was devastatingly handsome. It was very distracting.

“Alright, thank you.” You said, proud of yourself for keeping your voice steady.

He nodded, flashing another radiant smile, and patted you on the back.

You turned towards the living room, eyes searching for one specific person.

“Jimin.” You called, causing the boy to snap his head up to look at you.

“Yes?”

You beckoned him towards you with one finger, and led him to the screen doors that opened out to the balcony. He eagerly followed behind you as the two of you stepped outside, night air sweeping past your faces. The light filtering through the windows plus the twinkling stars illuminated the wide space. You walked past the fire pit up to the patio table against the railing.

The building towered over the city, overlooking the skyline, glittering against the sea of lights. The view only added to the value of your top-floor apartment.

“Did you like your gift?” You asked.

He nodded vigorously, smiling so big his eyes turned into two thin crescents.

“Thank you.” He said.

“Don't thank me yet, there's more.”

Coming up behind him, you placed one hand over his face.

“Close your eyes.” You whispered, your mouth right by his ear, close enough to kiss.

You felt his lashes flutter against your palm as he obeyed, smiling to yourself as you felt a shiver run through his body.

Jimin felt the cool touch of metal against his skin. Once you'd permitted him to open his eyes, he saw that you had fastened a silver YSL necklace around his neck.

His mouth fell open. First Chanel, now Saint Laurent?

“Like it?” You asked.

“Y-You really didn’t have to do this.”

“I wanted to, Chim. It’ll make up for the way I’ve been acting lately.”

His gaze was locked on you as you stepped closer. You and Jimin were the same height, so your eyes were perfectly level. Even so, your commanding energy often made you seem and feel taller, especially if you were wearing heels.

“Now that you’ve had your dinner,” You began, reaching up to stroke the smooth slope of his neck.

“Can I have mine?”

You were expecting Jimin to blush, to shrink under your piercing stare, but to your surprise, his mouth twisted in a smirk, looking at you through hooded lids. Instead of those big brown puppy eyes you were so used to, he regarded you with a sultry, sexy expression.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for you to ask me that question.” He said, his voice low and resonant.

You smiled.

“Come here.” You said.

Jimin obeyed. Taking his hand, you pulled him over to one of the patio chairs and pushed him down. You climbed into his lap, straddling him.

“You have no idea how hard it was to stay away from you.” You muttered, barely loud enough for him to hear, staring at the bulging veins in his neck.

“Then why did you?” Jimin asked. You could hear the slight hurt in his voice, making your throat contract with guilt. Your gaze lowered, avoiding his eyes, as you swallowed hard.

“I...I didn’t want you to think this was turning into something it isn’t.”

He stared at you, then looked down with disappointment clouding in his eyes.

You gently held his chin, tilting his head up to look at you. Fingers tracing the line of his jaw, you ran your thumb over his plump bottom lip. His mouth felt just as you predicted, soft as rose petals. You sat there playing with his lips, rubbing, brushing, feather-light, tugging them between your fingers.

There was that blush you were looking for. Jimin’s gaze was focused solely on your face, looking at you like you were the only other thing in the universe.

“If this isn’t what I think it is,” He said. “Then why are you doing that?”

With your breath quickening, you abandoned his mouth to slide your hand down his neck.

“Because I’m selfish.” You muttered.

“No you’re not. You’re the most giving person I know.” He replied immediately.

You just smiled weakly, shaking your head.

“If I was smart, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

But you didn’t stop. You ran your hands over his shoulders, pulling the sweater aside to reveal more skin.

Jimin paused, studying you.

“Who says you always have to be smart about everything?” He said.

That made you look up.

“When was the last time you did something because you wanted to?”

He was looking at you hopefully again, the puppy eyes were back. Jimin had such a sweet face, you wanted to smother it in kisses until he was completely covered with your lipstick.

After a moment of consideration, you made up your mind.

You leaned forward in your position on his lap, hands drifting down to glide over his back. You dragged your long red nails up and down, making him shudder.

“If I did, what would you want me to do to you?” You asked.

Jimin’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

“I would want you to kiss me.”

You quirked an eyebrow.

“Is that all?”

“Anything more is up to you.”

He was right. Jimin wasn’t going to push you. You were the one who cut him off, if things were to go further it had to be your decision.

Your hands grazed down his spine, arms sinking low to cradle his body closer. Anticipation gripped Jimin’s limbs as he hung onto your every move. Slowly, teasingly, you angled your body over his, and moved to close the gap between your mouths.

He could still taste the lingering sweetness of the lollipop on your tongue.

All the tension corded in his muscles seemed to release as you melted into him, like sugar dissolving in water. He finally moved, as if he’d been waiting for permission, and kissed you back eagerly, gripping your waist and digging your hips into his.

The kiss was sweet, gentle, and hot all at the same time.

The pressure you exerted on him was light, barely enough to keep your lips connected. You wanted to tease him a bit, see how much it took to get him desperate.

Jimin chased your lips with his own, seeking friction, seeking you, but you denied him. Drawing back, you disconnected your mouths with a loud, wet sound that was more melodious in your ears than music.

You ran your tongue along his bottom lip.

Immediately, obediently, he opened up, granting you access. But you just continued to tease.

You traced the outline of his big, beautiful lips, sucking on the upper, taking the lower between your teeth and tugging until eventually letting go and allowing it to snap back into place.

Jimin sat there, motionless except for his heaving chest, eyes closed, with his mouth hanging open as you explored its every nook and cranny. The dip of his cupids bow, the sensitive corners, every swell and seam.

“You taste like fucking candy.” You sighed, brushing the lightest of touches along his jaw, then his cheek, then coming back to his mouth to seal it with a kiss, firmer this time.

This kiss was a mess of heat and desperation, all wet and sloppy.

Jimin’s hands slid up to creep under your shirt, drawing you closer by the small of your back. He was gasping now, fighting for breath while still refusing to break away from you. He moaned against your mouth when you rolled your hips on his growing bulge.

Your hands were tangled in his hair, tugging on it like you knew he liked, drawing out more strangled noises of pleasure.

At the sound of a particularly wanton moan, you pulled back, making him whimper at the loss of contact.

“Don’t stop.” He whined, eyes still closed as he leaned forward, trying to find you.

You placed a hand on his chest to keep him at bay. He finally looked at you, a confused expression on his flushed face.

“Are you sure you want this?” You asked. “Once we start, I might not be able to stop.”

The last thing you wanted to do was to scare him. It was no secret that vampires were natural predators, and that ravenous energy often translated into more...intimate aspects of their life. In all your years, you’d only met a few vampires that took on the role of submissive, and you didn’t consider yourself to be one of them. Of course, you liked to be dominated occasionally, but it took a very special person to be able to handle that position.

Jimin was gazing up at you with those wide, docile eyes. He licked his lips.

“I’m sure. I want this. I want you.”

You smiled.

The panther and the prey. The lion and the lamb.

Something inside you snapped. Snaking your hand between his legs, you palmed him through his jeans.

Jimin tensed, screwing his eyes shut as his head fell back.

“You’re already this hard just from a kiss? Dirty boy…” You teased, rubbing him with more friction.

Jimin bit his lip to try to keep in any noise.

“Is this all for me, hm? You get this worked up just for me?” Your voice was high and lilting.

Jimin could only manage a nod.

You chuckled to yourself, grabbing a handful of him and squeezing lightly.

“Tell me what you want me to do to you.” You whispered, looking down at your hand as you continued to play with him.

“T-Touch me,” Jimin breathed out. “Skin to skin.”

You made quick work of his zipper, sliding the waistband down low enough to reveal most of his underwear.

“Can I take these off? I want to see those gorgeous thighs.”

Jimin nodded.

You slid off his lap, dragging his pants down with you until they pooled at his ankles. Settling on your knees, you leaned forward to place a soft kiss on his clothed dick. You ran your hands over his muscular, god-like thighs, and his skin immediately broke out in goosebumps.

“You want my mouth?” You asked.

He nodded frantically.

“Speak up, sweetheart. I want to hear you loud and clear.”

“Yes! Yes, I want your mouth. Please...please, Charlie.” He whimpered. Oh God, just the sound of his desperate voice was making you wet.

You hooked two fingers in the elastic of his underwear and yanked them all the way down. They joined his pants on the floor. Grabbing each knee, you spread his legs wide.

Jimin wasn’t super long, but he was thick, and you licked your lips as you wrapped your hand around his cock.

He let out a hiss of relief.

“I like you begging.” You said, pumping him up and down. “Do it again.”

Jimin sucked in a breath of air through his teeth, jaw clenched. He was panting like a dog on a hot day.

“P-Please...please, Charlie. I’ve waited so long…”

“Have you now?” You purred.

“Ever since we first moved in.”

He was being far more submissive than you expected. Jimin was a tease, you’d known that for a long time, you were expecting a little more brattiness. Maybe he was holding back, giving you what you wanted. He was a sucker for praise, after all.

“You’re being so good for me.” You said, fondling his balls.

The small, shy smile that crossed his face made your heart flutter.

“Are you getting off knowing that anybody could walk by right now? That anybody could see you like this, all spread out and helpless.” You teased his slit to emphasize your point.

A choked groan caught in Jimin’s throat as he threw his head back.

“You’re such a needy boy. It must’ve been torture for you. Sorry I made you wait so long.” You said in an overly sweet voice, jerking him off at a faster pace.

Scooting closer, you leaned forward to lick a slow strip up the underside of his shaft.

Jimin let out a long, breathy “ooohhh.”

You wrapped your lips around his tip and started to suck him like one of your lollipops.

He was squirming now, clenching his fists at his sides, trying to control himself, trying to keep quiet. You were right when you said that anybody could walk by and see you.

Jimin moaned pathetically through pursed lips.

You released him with a pop, only to wet your lips and dive back down, taking his entire length. You bobbed up and down a few times, and then you heard something.

There was movement at the sliding door.

Moving faster than Jimin’s eyes could follow, you yanked his pants back up and shot to your feet.

Jimin blinked, disoriented, as Taehyung opened the sliding door and stuck his head outside.

“Charlie, Jin has challenged you to a game of Mario Kart.” He said.

“I'm a little busy, Tae.” You said, trying to keep your voice steady.

Taehyung just sighed.

“Great, now I owe Jin ten bucks.” He said.

“What?” You replied, interest peaked.

“Well, Jin bet me that you would chicken out, so now I have to—”

“Where is the cocky bastard?” You snapped suddenly, stomping towards the door.

“He's on crack. The headass can't even beat Rainbow Road.” You mumbled.

Taehyung smirked in victory as you slipped past him, even Jimin was laughing at the situation.

Taehyung moved to follow you, but the obvious bulge in Jimin's pants did not go unnoticed by him.

~~~

You came to regret fooling around with Jimin after your head was clear. It must’ve been the guilt of ignoring him, or maybe the fact that you hadn’t been fucked in a while, whatever it was, it wasn’t right.

This realization only filled you with even more guilt. It wasn’t fair to Jimin, your inability to control yourself was only giving him false hope. You needed to come to a decision and stick to it. Either vow to be responsible and only treat him as a friend, or go with your gut and follow your desires.

Of course, you couldn’t make yourself come to a decision right away, so you decided to spend some time alone.

You were lounging in one of the oversized armchairs in your bedroom, fresh out the shower, sipping coffee, when your highly-tuned ears heard the doorbell ring from downstairs. Still in your bathrobe, towel wrapped around your head, you hurried down the stairs.

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it, I’ll get it.” You chanted as you ran towards the front door.

When you re-entered the apartment, your arms were full of pizza boxes. You set them down on the kitchen counter, all of them except one, and then skipped back up the stairs. Now that the boys’ dinner was taken care of, you had the rest of the evening to yourself.

You shed your robe, snuggled into your top-quality silk sheets, and opened your favorite show on your laptop.

You had to order a whole different pizza for yourself because the boys hated your favorite flavor: pesto and white sauce with spinach and mushrooms. Eh, guess you couldn’t blame them.

“Nom nom nom.” You mumbled to yourself as you ate practically half a slice in one bite.

The next few hours were pure bliss, just you, food, a glass of wine, and some mindless TV. You hadn’t done this in a while, since before the boys moved in.

Back when you lived alone, you didn’t have to worry about anyone walking in on you lying naked in bed (you liked the way the expensive silk felt on your bare skin), but now you had to make sure everyone was sufficiently occupied before you tried to go around without any clothes.

You were just about to top off your third glass when a knock came at your door.

“Hang on,” You called, slipping back into your robe.

Taehyung stood there holding a loaded laundry basket. He flashed you a boxy smile.

“Special delivery.” He said.

You chuckled, opening the door wider for him to come in.

“Just set it in the closet.”

He was slightly taken aback. You were very private about your bedroom, and none of the boys had ever seen the inside of it.

You ran a hand through your still-damp hair, turning towards the bed to wipe off the crumbs.

Seeing that you were serious, Taehyung hesitantly took a few steps inside, looking around in awe.

Since it was the master bedroom, it was twice the size of any of the guest rooms. A beautiful king size bed was pushed up against the center of the wall, the frame decorated with swirling gold designs and a mountain of pillows. One wall was entirely dedicated to a large set of shelves, stuffed full of books, leather-bound journals, and what looked like hundreds of vinyl records, all frayed and worn at the edges.

There was a desk crowded with papers and magazines and dirty coffee cups, a heart-shaped ashtray sitting on top of the clutter.

But the thing that immediately stole his attention was the wall unobstructed by any furniture.

It's entire surface was covered in photographs, not a speck of white was visible. Old Polaroids, faded prints, pictures that looked like they were taken decades ago, torn and yellowed with age.

Some of them had you in it, but they were mostly of other people, family members and friends and their children and grandchildren, they were all displayed proudly on your wall.

He saw pictures of weddings and funerals, reunions and holidays. There were a few recurring figures in the photographs, alternating between younger and older versions of the same face, but you always looked the same. No matter how far back the pictures went, you always looked the same.

Taehyung snapped out of it, tearing his gaze away from the hoard of memorabilia to take care of the laundry.

While your back was turned, you didn’t see Taehyung approach the closed door next to the desk, thinking it was the closet. You heard the wood creak, then the sound of the laundry basket hitting the floor.

Turning in confusion, you were about to ask what the matter was, but a gasp of pure horror instantly replaced whatever words you were planning to say.

The door Taehyung had opened wasn’t the closet. Yes, there were shelves and drawers and hooks, but they weren’t for storing clothes.

Taehyung stood there with his eyes blown wide, jaw dropped. He stared at the contents of the small room in pure shock.

Hanging on various hooks on the inside of the door were bundles of different colored rope, varying in texture and material. Underneath that was a rack of nothing but cuffs, leather, metal, fur-lined. There was a large set of drawers, transparent so you could see everything inside, that contained a wide assortment of vibrators, plugs, beads, rings, dildos, and every other toy you could think of. Hanging on the wall behind that was whips, paddles, leashes.

Taehyung could hardly believe his eyes.

Gags, blindfolds, harnesses. Everything he had ever fantasized about was right here.

“I-I...it’s not-I mean, y-you weren’t…” You could barely stutter out the words. You were mortified.

None of them were ever supposed to see that. None of them were ever supposed to know about all your kinky tendencies.

It felt like a nightmare come to life. This would ruin everything. Now every time he looked at you he would remember the mini sex dungeon you had in your bedroom.

Your face felt white hot. The silence rang in your ears. Every muscle in your body was stiff as a board as you waited for Taehyung’s reaction.

His face was unreadable as he reached out to touch one of the collars, the tag hanging from the leather strap detailed with the word Pet in pretty cursive letters.

“Have you used any of these on Jimin?” He asked suddenly.

Your eyes widened.

“I-what?” You watched with anticipation as he ran his fingertip along one of the leashes, a peculiar look in his eyes.

“I saw you with Jimin the other night. Have you used any of this on him yet?” His voice was surprisingly clear and calm.

Your eyes darted back and forth along the floor, desperately trying to string together a coherent sentence.

“We haven’t...we never…” You sighed. “No, I haven’t used anything on him. No one knows about this but you.”

You didn’t know, but Taehyung felt a swell of pride at that. He was pleased that he was the only one who knew about this side of you.

His eyes raked over your form, still in your bathrobe, making you fidget.

“Does it bother you?” He asked. “That I know this about you?”

“Well...it doesn’t exactly make things easier.”

He tilted his head to the side like a confused puppy, something he knew drove you crazy.

“What do you mean?” He knew exactly what you meant.

“How am I supposed to act normally around you now?” You replied.

He was staring you down with those dangerous eyes of his.

“I don’t want things to be normal between us.” He said.

Shit. There it is.

You couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Taehyung. No more games.” You commanded as you crossed your arms.

You saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.

“Seeing you and Jimin together…” He began. “Made me think about all the feelings I’ve been having towards you, and it made me realize something.”

You shifted your weight to one hip, urging him to continue.

“I want you too.” He said.

Your heart jumped in your chest.

“I don’t care if you’re fooling around with Jimin, just as long as I can have you too.”

A heavy silence stretched between you, the only sound being the pound of Taehyung’s rushing blood in your ears.

You had to come to a decision now. Either reject him and establish your relationship as strictly platonic, or give in to the desires you’d been entertaining ever since you laid eyes on him.

It didn’t take long for one side of the argument to prevail.

Taking a few slow steps towards him, you let your hands fall back at your sides, your eyes slinking seductively.

You couldn’t wait to see how that collar would look on him.

“Well then, I guess I just added one more toy to my collection.”

~~~

a/n: thank you so much for reading! please tell me what you think and what i can improve on! next chapter will be focused on taehyung, hoseok, and jimin ;)

if you want to be tagged just let me know!

@rainbow-pandacorn @boononx @vannilacake @i-am-always-famished @oxymirror @bangttaeng @baekthecupcake​ @sleepysavya @kclaerhout @lilacbaby11​ @ceciann​

#bts #bts vampire au #bts ot7 #bts fanfction #park jimin #jeon jungkook #bts hosoek #jung hoseok #BTS jin #min yoongi #kim namjoon #kim taehyung #sub!bts #dom!bts #bts x oc #bts smut

[bellamygateoldblog]

best and worst relationships?

There’s a lot of varables to consider here, and I’m feeling sick and bored out of my mind, so i’m going the long way round. This is a nightmare to read on mobile, im so sorry.

‘Best’ and ‘Worst’ labels depend on a number of things:

— Story of the pairing

— General intrigue and how enjoyable their dynamic is to watch

— Chemistry of the two (or more) characters

— Presence (or lack of) valuable relationship qualities (is this relationship healthy according to the world it exists in?)

and the importance of each of those differs from person-to-person.

Note: Sticking to popular relationships. I’ve blocked names, but I’m also throwing it under a Read More because it’s long and negative. It’s largely anticlarke because she’s a terrifying character and her mere existence derails most of her dynamics. Ship and like whatever you like, I hate fandom gatekeeping. But you asked so let’s go.

There’s also no order to this. Welcome to chaos land.

Best ‘Best’ List: objectively good relationships

— Linctavia

— Marper 

— Spacekru

— David and Nate Miller

— Raven and Sinclair

Unconditional love, mutual respect and support, found family, would die (and live) for the other. I can’t find fault in them.

Memori

I had a bit more to say about this one because there’s something so highly romantic in two people abandoned by their clan, cast out, finding each other in a literal desert wasteland. Like they’re each other’s oasis. In meeting Emori, Murphy finally found acceptance after spending far too long alone, and being told he was worthless by people who’s approval meant something. And Emori having someone prepared to do whatever it takes to protect her and make her happy is everything I could’ve wanted for her. They’re so deeply in love.

Best List

Becho (pre-season six)

Your local enemies-to-lovers. partnership over co-dependency. Compromise. Affection and emotional support from both sides. Willing to throw themselves right into line-of-fire for the other. A cut ‘i love her’ scene which i’ve personally decided wasn’t cut. I LOVE THEM.

Arguments against:

- ‘killed’ Gina (moreso she aided her death) while acting on orders from her superiors

- ‘killed’ Octavia while acting on orders from her superiors

- killed Ilian/ attempted to help Roan win conclave over Octavia

- almost killed Clarke (season five)

- happened offscreen

Arguments to discredit previous arguments because I’m sick and tired of seeing them in the pro tags:

- Echo was Bellamy’s enemy through those first three listed events. Bellamy had no reason to expect loyalty or respect, or anything else from her. She was always looking out for her people just as Bellamy was his own. That was quite clear.

- In fact she actually tried to help Gina because she was important to Bellamy, apologised that she couldn’t and did save Bellamy’s life despite their enemy status.

- ‘killing’ Octavia was not in cold blood. It was actually an accident.

- This one is nonsense. She wanted to kill Clarke during season five “even though she’s important to Bellamy”…after she just left him to brutally die and held Echo and her family at gunpoint and threatened to kill them. Context matters.

- not a fan of the time jump either, but if you’re able to accept the Madi-Clarke relationship which also developed offscreen, you can deal with this one.

Hard to talk about this one without defending it. Echo deserves better than season six Bellamy, who would abandon her in order to chase a woman he knew for 6-ish months 6 years ago. I say it’s his loss.

Jonty

It was a beautiful relationship and then a beautiful breakdown of one. I really enjoyed their dynamic. About to get controversial and suggest Monty could’ve taken a different approach with Jasper. I’ve never committed genocide and had to learn to live with it while watching my best friend suffer from the decision, but I do have clinical depression and somewhat relate to Jasper. There was this scene, where in the background you see Jasper go to hug Monty goodbye and he avoids it. It was such a small but sad detail. I felt Monty wanted Jasper to deal with his grief in a certain way and got frustrated when he didn’t. Sometimes he could be insensitive and blaming, and i think had there been more communication their friendship could’ve been very healing for the both of them. I think we learn at one point Jasper actually thought Monty was “fine” and didn’t even realise or understand that Monty hurt too. Jasper had this tendancy to only consider his own feelings, and this put a rift between them. Tough love doesn’t work for everyone, and I think Monty’s sometimes cold approach held that rift in place. The simple fact that both sides are so easy to understand and empathise with, and that this gradual undoing of what was once an incredibly strong bond was inevitable, made watching it all wonderfully bittersweet.

Zaven

This was good, but it was so rushed it made me bitter towards them. While it was Raven being thrown with yet another random guy, this did strike me as much more meaningful than her fling with Wick and I think it would’ve been a lovely relationship had it been able to continue. I think this was that love Raven deserved. It’s a damn shame it was used as just another level of torture for her. I think if they had let it develop more naturally and not been so full-on so soon, and of course if the actor hadn’t opted to leave the show, this would’ve been up on my best ‘best’ list.

Dropping this here: being intelligent isn’t actually important when pairing Raven up. Fandom acts like she needs someone “on her level” or “at her speed” (shudders), someone to challenge her, which has always come across as very demeaning of characters with less intellectual capacity, as if they’re less than Raven because of this when they are absolutely not. This mentality also denies Raven of partners that can value her and treat her well just because they aren’t Stephan Hawking. A romance isn’t a competition or a class project. Shaw was good for her, not because of what his brain could do, but because of who he was.

Bellamy and Octavia

This bitch toxic, YEET. I adore it. I really do. It’s such an intriuging and complex dynamic. The poisonous nature of their relationship is neither of their own faults, they’re both a victim of their own circumstances and, in Octavia’s case, a lack of socialisation and, by extension, non-understanding of grey area is also intrinsicaly linked to it. They truely love one another, but aren’t learned in how to show this in healthy ways. Makes that back-and-forth an entertaining watch.

Main grievance:

Beating your brother bloody while he’s chained down and unable to defend himself against you is disturbing and inexcusable in any context, and whether or not you’re grieving is irrelevant.

Neutral List

C//exa

Placing this one here just because i don’t care about this relationship, but did like bits and pieces. I think this one ended before it even started. For me most of it’s appeal is in the gradual moulding of the dynamic and the many phases it went through. I did find intrigue in that journey. However the fact the show reminds me at least a few times a season that Lexa was the one has me digging my heels in. I hate being told what to think.

I don’t really remember it all that well so I don’t necessarily have strong opinions. I know some people do. At this point in the show I was growing more and more annoyed with Clarke, and eventually i went from liking Lexa to being indifferent to her, so a dynamic consisting of them both was the least interesting thing in the world to me by the time it started heating up.

I will say this is probably one of the only significant relationships Clarke has where she doesn’t ultimately have more power than the other half. There isn’t a mechanism there that allows one to use to do harm to the other to advantage themselves; Lexa is the commander, but Clarke is constantly pushing back and Lexa respects and listens to what she has to say. There is literally a shot of Clarke backing the most powerful person on the ground into a table. I think Clarke was a positive influence on Lexa, but during this time Clarke was slipping into worse and worse versions of herself.

Some thoughts:

I found it was innappropriate for Clarke, as a leader of her people who’s primary concern is supposed to be what’s best for them, to have become romantically involved with the commander of the people they hadn’t a stable relationship with, and who ultimately has the power to strip them of all freedoms. It’s so easy for those romantically and sexually charged feelings to cloud and confuse what are extremely important considerations to be made about the people back home. It wasn’t a very responsible relationship.

On the flipside of that, from this relationship Lexa was convinced to grow into peace. Which is quite obviously a positive affect. Though I found it was odd that Clarke, just a random teenage girl from space, would be (successfully) telling the commander how to manage her people when she herself was not at home overseeing the climate of her own. It just has some very weird implications.

Lexa’s betrayal at mount weather, actually a very silly and counter-productive decision, was what forced Clarke to lose her humanity in what was the most traumatic event of her entire life. The fact it was forgiven so easily was hard for me to get over.

M//rphamy

Season five was good for them. It seemed as if they’d grown, were much closer, more respectful, and more affectionate. Then season six happened, and Bellamy was back to treating Murphy like he was beneath everyone. He started again to talk about how therapeutic it would be to hurt him, as he has, physically, many times in the past. Just tearing open old wounds at this point. In season five he reminded Murphy he wasn’t worthless, that he did belong with the group, but in season six he went back on all that, and put Clarke ahead of him at every turn, and prioritied her feelings over his very real pain. They’ve had a complicated history of violence, usually coming from Bellamy’s more hot-headed side.

I put this here because it’s an immensely compelling dynamic. These characters work well together, there’s heaps of chemistry and allure in each of their interactions. It’s just an entertaining time whenever they share scenes. But despite that, I don’t know where I stand with them and I don’t know where they stand with each other as of season six.

Worst List

Be//arke

There is a mess of negative thoughts inspired by this relationship about proportionate to the amount it’s shoved in my face. Clarke is just no good for Bellamy. Is the concise way of putting it.

Here’s a list of some of them which I usually like to bury deep inside my head for sanity purposes:

Ignoring whether or not actions were for the people/the only option and focusing solely on how the relationship is affected by them regardless

- Clarke has a tendancy to view the most important person (pre-season five) in Bellamy’s life as necessary collateral damage. She has brought/almost brought harm to Octavia on multiple occasions, the two most notable being TonDC and the conclave. Both while being on the same side as Bellamy from a political standpoint, and both while his friend who he had reason to expect affirmation, consideration, and loyalty from. Clarke betrays those key values. This happens again in season five when Clarke’s Plan-A solution is to “take her out.”

( this is also what sets her apart from Echo, who was never in the position to make her own choices. Clarke has that agency and control that Echo’s superiors had, but never Echo. )

- and saying that, I think it’s incredibly hard for Clarke to maintain any meaningful relationships being in the position she’s in. How do you have friends when you have to always put them second?

- speaking of the conclave, Clarke held Bellamy at gunpoint in order to prevent him saving his sister’s life. She said she “didn’t pull the trigger” and that was that. All is forgiven. However she did pull the trigger in what was an attempt to scare him into submission so I really don’t even know what to say here. The writers kinda forgot?

- they aren’t equal. They haven’t been co-leaders since season one. He was demoted almost immediately to second-in-command beneath Clarke. Clarke is the leader, the literal head. She makes the choices while Bellamy gets her out of the trouble she usually gets herself into, risking himself and others in the process. It’s a racist trope. It’s the ‘white princess and her brown knight.’ She has agency and power and he’s her loyal soldier, subordinate. Inequality isn’t inherently a bad thing but this power imbalance between them is utilised in harmful ways.

- speaking of “the good knight by his queen’s side,” this comes across as codependency. Clarke relies on Bellamy’s support, validation and loyalty, while ‘the heart needs the head to tell it to beat.’ That’s paraphrased from season six, that’s an actual line in the show. Bellamy needs her to guide him, to “keep [him] centred,” that’s another line from the show. That’s still not enough? He literally tells us in season six that he needs her, and has needed her in the past if his psychosis episode is anything to go by. He has impeccably low self esteem and views himself less than. I mean if you need further convincing of they’re inequality, just look to their places on the ark which are quickly reinstated once it reaches the ground. Clarke is upper class, she’s later the daughter of the chancellor, she comes from a loving family, from one of (if not, the) more well-off stations, she’s educated and she has passions, but Bellamy? From the poorest ark station, raised by an emotionally abusive mother, a janitor, his whole motivation his entire life has been to love and protect Octavia. I think a lot of this devotion he has for her comes from a place of idolisation, of seeing something in her he wants for himself.

- now this ugly trope could also come from an absense of Octavia. The moment they get to the ground Octavia is on a journey of self-discovery. And eventually, she becomes her own protector, and she finds a home in Lincoln. So naturally Bellamy looks for the closest relationship he can find that resembles that old one. It’s Bellamy and Clarke. Now, instead of Octavia, he’s driven by and found purpose in protecting Clarke. In fact, the Clarke-Bellamy dynamic has so many similarities to the Octavia-Bellamy one I can absolutely see the sibling like quality to Be//arke.

- Clarke abandons Bellamy after mount weather. She leaves because she can’t bare the reminder of “what [she] did to get them here.” So she leaves and instead Bellamy is the one forced to see the faces of the 48 every day, reminding him of what he did to get them there. Clarke comes across as completely oblivious in this entire situation. Bellamy and Monty are both written using the word “we” to refer to the mount weather genocide, but Clarke? It’s “I” and “me” every time. It’s as if she truely believes she’s the only one suffering from it, she’s bearing it so they don’t have to, except that isn’t true at all and that fact is so painfully clear. Later she tells him she knew she could leave because the people had him, but who did Bellamy have? He dealt with that weight and that grief alone because the only other person who could possibly understand, the one who pulled the lever with him, ran away. After she had convinced him not to in season one. She then comes back informing him she’d been acting on behalf of her people in Polis, without the people’s own knowledge or consent, but i digress, and he’d just ruined everything. So much for co-leaders. And he blows up at her, and we see how badly this action hurt him.

- In season five she leaves him to die out of spite and took her daughter to the people he saved her from at the beginning of the season. It could’ve been avoided, but she decided to punish him. That’s all it was. Don’t give me none of that “I had to!!!” she screams in season six to mindspace!Octavia. Bellamy was forced into role of father at just 6 years old and has proved time and time again he was prepared to risk it all in order to protect his child, there was nobody more equipped to handle Madi than him and her yelling in his face that he couldn’t understand was perhaps the biggest betrayal of them all.

- In season five she tortured and almost murdered his entire family. After switching sides again at the end of the season, all this pain inflicted was meaningless. You can talk all you want at me about Clarke’s *reasons* but all she did was take the path of most destruction towards the same end-point. It was just unnecessary violence caused because she had this desperation to take the wheel.

- all of this works because the writing is always in Clarke’s favour. The show is framed in a way that makes Clarke sympathetic, emphasises how much causing others pain hurts her, and that means that she’s never held to any of these actions, she might get a stern talking to but she’s forgiven insanely easily and allowed to go on with no actual change.

Pr//ncess M//chanic

Unfortunately, from what i’ve gathered, there’s a lot of racism in this one just as there is in Be//arke. I mean the entire nature of the relationship relies on the elevation of Clarke and the narrative power to demote Raven to ‘second best’ and prop over and over again. Raven, a girl who works her ass off to make most of the victories in the show possible, actually spoke the words “she saved us again” after launching a pod from an exploding planet into space and fixing the ark while space walking. It’s mindblowing. Raven’s (and others’) successes are handed to Clarke on a silver platter and we’re just meant to eat that up and blindly accept that Clarke is our one true saviour. I’m not going into this because it makes me feel sick and Raven deserved better.

Unrelated thoughts:

I don’t see their relationship as friendly at all post-season two. I got the impression Raven actually didn’t like Clarke, but it was all very complicated.

I also think it’s terribly convinient Raven never found out the true nature of Clarke’s relationship with Lexa because I don’t believe she would’ve ever been okay about Clarke again if she had (if the writers were going for realistic).

Madi/Clarke/Abby

Clarke strapped a torture device around her daughter’s neck for means of control and activated it under the guise of protection and that isn’t okay in any world or any context. Madi is a little girl who is dependant on Clarke and Clarke betrayed that trust. Those shock collars were used on her early in the season, she experienced the torture herself and still used it on her child. A lot of Clarke’s more unfavourable and/or unhealthy behaviours and characteristic are also present in Abby, which leads me to believe those are a product of her upbringing. Like mother like daughter, Abby also electrocuted Raven. Abby and Clarke have this strange rival-like relationship and I find it particularly cold, maybe because they’re so similar.

Abby and Raven

Abby has physically harmed Raven more than once. Out of anger and spite, or out of desperation. People hurting each other on this show is pretty standard and while this isn’t as overwhelming a mistreatment compared to others, her hitting Raven while she was acting chancellor was a pretty gross abuse of power. Its a visual display, with Abby’s imposing figure looming over a sitting and emotionally vulnerable Raven. We’re supposed to view this, i think, as mother-daughter. Abby says very early season one that Raven reminds her of Clarke, but she’s never shown treating Clarke in the way she does Raven. I liked the relationship during season one. From then and with Abby’s slow descent into villainy, not so much.

Ontari and Murphy

*She raped him. Next.

Cl//phy

Clarke is a cause/reason, whether direct or indirect, of a huge chunk of Murphy’s suffering, all of which she’s never been held accountable for due to Murphy’s position as undesirable. I, along with Murphy, had to be told she cares about him in season six because her otherwise complete disregard for his life has been pretty apparent.

Notable mention:

Chaining up him and Emori like dogs and promising to sacrifice the woman he loves, against her will, for the greater good after he saved her life. He has to beg her, plead with her and her almighty god complex, and it’s all quite uncomfortable and eery. (She later draws a picture of this event in her sketchbook which is…kinda weird.) And, in true Clarke fashion, she refuses to accept responsibility for this action and hides behind the same old trend of gaslighting and screaming “i had to!!!” I can’t root for a friendship between these two no matter how fun their back-and-forth can be. Especially since I can’t recall a single time they’ve shared a nice moment. Oh, and here’s a post about why Clarke and Murphy will never bond over isolation and survival.

*The clashing of Ontari and Murphy’s personalities was hilarious and I enjoyed watching them on screen together.

#the 100 #anticlarke #antibellarke #anti princess mechanic #anti bellarke #finally free of this question #the100meta #tw; child abuse #tw; rape #ro.answers

[lailaliquorice]

I still hide you in my poetry

since parrlyn hurt/comfort seems to have become my brand, I bring you more parr-based parrlyn angst at nearly 3am! I didn’t feel like sleeping so ended up writing instead. and it’ll probably be back to boleyn angst next time but this is honestly so soft and these two are so cluelessly in love it’s adorable. this makes a few references to ‘one more chance’ but you don’t have to read that to read this

also cathy still writes like she’s a tudor lady lol

When Cathy was struck by writing inspiration, it was common that she wouldn’t set her pen down until her idea was fully formed in her notebook regardless of when or where it was. More than once she’d been struggling to scribble the last few words down when the 15-minute call for the show came and she was still in her own clothes, deaf to Jane’s complaints that Cathy was giving her grey hairs due to stress. Time became irrelevant when there were words in her head and a pen in her hand, often working until 3 or 4 in the morning just in case she forgot a crucial detail overnight if she decided to finish it in the morning.

Their Sundays off were Cathy’s dedicated research days, where she would open all the bookmarked articles and wikipedia pages she’d accumulated over the week and spend the entire day working through them for as long as she liked. Normally she wouldn’t leave her bedroom-turned-study until Jane sent someone to drag her down for dinner, too intent on taking advantage of her day off to spend it any other way.

But today the writing was slow. Painfully slow.

‘Writing has been my life’s work. My lives’ work in fact – the lack of grammatically correct ways of saying that is probably related to how rarely a person has two lives to dedicate to something. It’s what I’m good at, what I do. I don’t know why I’ve been so distracted this week, since that bad night I’ve found myself wanting to be alone less and less even during the day. It’s inconvenient at the least and I don’t understand myself at all.’

Cathy let out a groan as she rested her head on the page; there had been a headache pulsing behind her eyes for the last hour or so, and as much as she’d been trying to ignore it and keep working it had only been getting progressively worse. She’d given up on writing anything academic and was instead working on her journaling; in her old life she’d kept a diary, but this time around her journal was more of a place where she could write down what was on her mind and elaborate on deep thoughts that occurred to her. But even though she wasn’t trying to write anything worthy of publishing, she could still pinpoint where she’d started talking in circles rather than making any sort of sense.

Wondering if a change of scenery could help, after picking up her journal and pen she found herself walking up the staircase towards Anne’s bedroom. It was always cooler up there thanks to the skylights which made it nice to work in, or that was the excuse she told herself. The question of whether Anne was in or not when the door opened before she’d even knocked, revealing a hopeful looking Anne in her comfy clothes. “Thought it might be you heading up here again,” she said, her smile brightening as soon as she saw Cathy.

“Yep, me again,” Cathy replied with a half-hearted laugh, too out of sorts to respond with any more enthusiasm though Anne’s cheery face did brighten her up a little. “Would I be bothering you if I worked in here for a little while? I think I need a change of scenery?”

Anne nodded, holding the door open and beckoning for Cathy to come in. “Course not, make yourself at home. You ok though?

She was surprised yet touched that Anne could read her well enough to ask that. “I’ve got a bit of a headache but I’m fine, promise,” Cathy said, meeting Anne’s concerned eyes with a reassuring smile.

“If you say so,” Anne teased, shutting the door before sitting back down at her desk. From the papers strewn everywhere it looked as though she’d been writing too, and clearly having more luck than Cathy had been.

They fell into a comfortable quiet as Cathy sat on Anne’s bed with her back leaned against the headboard, leaning her journal on her knees as she kept on writing. But she was still frustratingly distracted, finishing a lengthy sentence with ‘and my head hurts’ before her pen stilled.

That was when she noticed the flash of colour in the corner of her vision, on her right hand side where the pain was currently sitting. Very slowly, very carefully, she crossed her legs and sat up properly as if she was moving a bomb which could explode at any moment.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Cathy almost flinched at how loud Anne’s voice sounded. She didn’t turn her head to look over at her but the worry in her tone was obvious, and even if it had been worth Cathy pretending nothing was wrong she wouldn’t have considered lying to her. “I think I have a migraine coming,” she said quietly, trying not to acknowledge the growing feeling of dread in her chest.

The mattress dipped beside her just before she felt Anne’s hand on her knee. “Can I do anything?” she asked softly, clearly having noticed Cathy’s sensitivity to sound.

“I don’t know,” Cathy murmured honestly. “It doesn’t happen often but I just have to ride it out when it does. I can go back to my room if you want me to.”

“What? No!” Anne said, grabbing Cathy’s hand from where she’d already been about to shuffle off the bed. “Please stay, you shouldn’t be on your own while you’re in pain. Nothing I’m doing is that important.”

Cathy smiled faintly. “Thanks,” she said, sitting back down. Even though there was nothing she could do to prevent the oncoming storm, it was a comfort to know that she wouldn’t have to endure it alone. Taking stock of how she was feeling, she paused a moment before adding “I’m ok at the moment. It’ll probably be about half an hour before it starts to get really bad.”

“Gotcha,” Anne nodded, a look of intense concentration on her face. “What will you need? I can go get everything now before you need it. D’you want me to get Jane or anyone else?”

Anne’s endless slew of questions was endearing, showing that she really did care and want to help in whatever way she could. The last few weeks since Cathy had first spoken to her about her trauma and particularly the aftermath of Cathy’s own night terror had unveiled a softer side to Anne which Cathy hadn’t quite expected but was honoured to know. “Some ibuprofen would really help, thanks. And something cold for my head if you can find anything,” she said, but shook her head at the last question as she added “and no, it’s ok. I trust you to look after me.” She smiled wryly at that, leaning over to nudge Anne’s knee with her elbow and ordering herself not to blush.

The wink and finger guns that Anne sent her way did little to stop Cathy’s heart from fluttering, and if it wasn’t for her headache and the persistent flashing in her vision she would probably have matched Anne’s smile with a giddy grin. “Gotcha,” she repeated, sliding off the bed and heading for the door.

Cathy watched her go, then her gaze turned to the journal that had fallen off her lap. Feeling safe enough to write one more sentence, she hesitated for a moment while twiddling her pen between her fingers before she scribbled a few words down on the final line of the page.

‘I think the cause of it all might be that I’m a little bit in love with Anne Boleyn.’

The sound of footsteps thudding up the stairs made Cathy jump like a child caught with their hand in the sweet jar, accidentally dropping her journal before she fumbled quickly to close it before Anne arrived.

“Jane sends her love,” Anne said as she walked through the doorway, carrying Cathy’s water bottle in one hand and a glass bottle of coke in the other with a box of pills tucked under her arm. “Got you a stash of painkillers, and figured this might be nice and cool for you. Aragon wouldn’t let me take the frozen peas because she’s cooking and Kat’s using the ice pack because she took a frisbee to the head about five minutes ago. Apparently it was Anna’s fault. I dunno, it was all going on down there.”

Cathy laughed softly, easily imagining the chaos that was going on in the kitchen as they spoke. After downing a dose of pills with a quick sip of water she pressed the coke bottle to her forehead, closing her eyes and humming quietly at the soothing relief it provided. “This is perfect. Thank you so much,” she said, opening one eye to look up at Anne.

Anne shrugged modestly, sitting back down and knocking her shoulder lightly into Cathy’s. “S’alright,” she said, looking slightly embarrassed by the praise. “Just doing my bit to help. Got to live up to you trusting me and all that.”

Despite her worsening headache, Cathy still found it in herself to smile.

She wasn’t able to for much longer though. An hour later found her lying down with one arm covering her eyes and the other hand resting on her stomach, attempting without much luck to breathe through the nausea that had worsened along with her now agonising headache. It was one of the worst migraines she’d ever had, proven by the tears that flowed silently down her cheeks. Her head felt like someone was trying to crack open her skull with a blunt chisel.

The light dimming behind her closed eyelids made her crack open one eye and lift her arm a little to see that Anne had drawn the curtains to leave the room in darkness. “Hey you,” she whispered as she noticed Cathy watching her, kneeling down beside the bed so they were at the same height and placing a hand atop the one on Cathy’s stomach. “Stupid question I know but how’re you doing?”

Lacking the energy to answer her probably, Cathy just gave a lifeless hum.

Anne nodded, seeming to understand. “You feeling sick?”

Another affirmative hum.

“Want me to grab a bucket or something?”

“Mhm.” The noise was intended as a ‘yes please’, as Cathy couldn’t see herself making it down the stairs from the attic to the bathroom if she did end up needing to throw up.

Anne’s departure left silence in her wake, until there were quiet footsteps on the staircase and the sound of something being placed on the floor next to her. “Waste paper bin,” Anne explained without Cathy needing to ask, the mattress shifting as Anne carefully crawled over to sit next to her. A cool flannel on her forehead replaced the coke bottle that Cathy had long since given up on, a soothing distraction from the throbbing pain on the right side of her skull.

Movement from Anne prompted Cathy to reach out blindly with her closest hand, desperately not wanting to be left alone. She relaxed with a sigh when Anne caught it in hers, squeezing gently as she readjusted her position then making no effort to take her hand back when she settled down again.

They stayed like that for a while, Anne dampening Cathy’s forehead with the flannel while holding onto her hand as a constant reassurance she wasn’t going anywhere. Anne could admit it was more than a little unsettling to see her friend laid out so helpless and vulnerable, possibly more so than when she’d been so shaken after her night terror. At least Anne had known what to do then because she knew what Cathy would do for her; she didn’t have quite the same maternal streak as Jane, Aragon, and Cathy herself did, meaning all she could do was make a few guesses and try her best.

When Cathy lurched forwards Anne wondered at first if she’d fallen asleep and had another nightmare, but caught onto what was really happening in time for her to hold Cathy steady as she threw up into the bin. “It’s ok, I’ve got you,” she said softly once Cathy had finished and she fell limply into Anne’s arms, wiping her mouth with the flannel before dropping it next to the bin.

“Sorry,” Cathy croaked in a fragile voice, but made no attempt to move from where she’d collapsed with her head in Anne’s lap.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Anne said, threading her fingers through Cathy’s curls and noting how she relaxed under the touch. If Cathy was feeling her usual self she probably would have stopped there, but Cathy’s disoriented state meant that Anne could get away with saying things that she didn’t want her friend to remember. “You’ve helped me enough these last few weeks. It’s the least I can do to show you I’m more than grateful.”

Cathy gave no indication that she’d heard anything, just curling her legs up towards her chest as Anne continued to play with her hair. Anne’s mind was racing with thoughts questioning what she’d got herself into and how small the woman in her lap looked when all her walls were beaten down, but there was one that spoke louder than all the others:

‘Boleyn, you have fallen so hard it’s fucking unreal.’

#six the musical #six the musical fanfiction #six the musical fanfic #parrlyn #anne boleyn #catherine parr #laila's writing

[ellynneversweet]

Ok, so I’ve finished Normal People and I have ... thoughts. Mostly about whether it succeeds or fails as a text, and what the relative metrics are by which success should be judged (it’s succeeded in getting me to think about it, for sure). This got long and a bit ranty, and does discuss the mental illness aspects of the book, so I’ve put it below the cut. Spoilers etc.

I haven’t watched the show or read any of Sally Rooney’s other books (book?) or reviews yet, because I wanted to get down what I took away from the book by itself, rather than what other people thought about it. I did see the headline of like, one review that seemed to think it was all about capitalism, which struck me as a significant stretch as a primary theme, but hey. My take was that it was primarily concerned with (many and various) degrees of mental illness and unwellness experienced by various characters, the causes and effects thereof, etc etc, and it’s really because of that that I don’t know whether or not I actually liked the book.

Ultimately I think my ambivalence comes comes down to how the narration is structured, and the way Rooney doesn’t at any point step in explicitly prompt the audience in one direction or another.

So what took me a hot minute to realise was that the book’s written in a very close third person narration, alternating between Connell and Marianne’s perspectives.The thing is, however, that this close third person isn’t immediately obvious, because Rooney subverts the whole ‘show don’t tell’ advice. There’s a lot of phrasing given as ‘she felt good’ ‘he felt anxious’ ‘then they had sex’ etc.  The most personal aspects of the plot are constantly elided with this flat, clinical, definitive language that sounds almost like a witness statement in a criminal case. That’s especially the case with Marianne, who disassociates a lot, and slightly less so with Connell, who’s anxious, but the flat description is pretty present throughout. There are moments when the narrative dips into describing sensation, but that seems to occur only with regards to things that are irrelevant and impersonal, like drinking a glass of (insert carbonated beverage here), or feeling the breeze from an air conditioner. The book is all about this very intimate, arguably co-dependant and unhealthy relationship between these two intermittently sexually involved characters, so the aforementioned flatness struck me as an odd choice initially.

However. There’s two things that this does. The first, and IMO more significant, is that is creates an illusion of the narrative voice as omniscient and impartial, rather than biased and unreliable as it actually is. The seeming authority of the definitive statements in the narrative is emphasised by the stock filler phrases that the each of the dual protagonists uses in direct dialogue, and which inevitably mean the opposite of what’s actually said — in the case of Marianne we get ‘okay’ (I disagree but I want this conversation to end) and ‘I don’t know’ (i believe this to be profoundly true but it makes me unhappy), and in the case of Connell we get ‘obviously’ (I’m not sure at all, what do you think?). So the upshot of this is that especially in the earlier parts of the novel the audience is led into thinking the description of a particular plot point is what objectively happened, rather than the biased viewpoint of one of two people who keep talking past each other (I’m thinking particularly of the part in which Connell moves home because he can’t make rent, and each of them was waiting for the other to propose his moving into her flat instead).

So it is really interesting on that level of language structure. I do feel that the section headings (‘two weeks later,’ ‘six months later,’ ‘five minutes later’) were a bit of a red herring — especially towards the climax of the book, when things became violent, I was frankly expecting it to take a schlocky turn towards one or both of the main characters being maimed or killed in a domestic violence and/or drunk driving accident, à la Jodi Piccoult.

It didn’t, which was a relief, but I didn’t subsequently find the ending satisfying, and I think that’s because the way that it ended — a breakup that’s not really a breakup, just a breather — felt like something that had occurred at least three or four times already in the text. It’s always tricky to write a satisfying ending when all the main characters are alive and young and (presumably) going to continue their lives. Why stop the narrative here, rather than there? I think for that sort of ending to work, a story does need to feel like it’s shifting into a different stage of the characters’ lives, one that can be inferred, however dimly, but is distinct enough from the part described in the text to form a natural break. This didn’t feel like a break from what had gone before. It felt like a groove in an emotional cycle that had already been repeated, that had been shown as being repeated, that gave every sign of being repeated again and again, forever and ever amen.

This leads into the part where I talk about what I didn’t like, fyi, and fair warning, mostly what I didn’t like was the characterisation of Marianne. Sorry if she’s your fave.

So Marianne gets the last word of the narrative, in which she thinks about how ‘they’ve [Marianne and Connell] been so good for each other’. And i would argue two things, which is that 1) unreliable narrator or not, this being the last part of the text gives weight to this being read as a true statement 2) this is, uh, pretty clearly not the case. Marianne’s still fundamentally the same, teetering on the edge of self-destruction, and Connell is still anxious (and being made more so by Marianne’s reaction to his small successes).

Now, neither character is perfect. They’re also not bad people -- but they are struggling people who use maladaptive coping strategies and don’t ever really appear to move past those.

At first glance, on a scale of quantifying unhappiness, Marianne gets the raw end of the stick. She’s a character who’s sympathetic and pitiable, because she starts out as the smart, bullied kid who turns out to have an abusive home life and who is brutally dumped by her first boyfriend. So far, so sad. Connell, by contrast, is much less upfront about the things that cause him trouble (although they’re very much there) and has the initial upper hand. Connell also comes off as much more self-aware than Marianne — the part where he’s lying on the floor in a post-shower depression slump reminds me of that piece that goes around tumblr occasionally, about lying on the floor sobbing about the state of the world, and simultaneously noticing that the last time you painted, you didn’t do a good job with the brushwork in the corner you’re looking at, and thinking about how you should re-do it once you finish crying.

But the thing I can’t get my head around with Marianne is how Rooney feels about her, and it boils down to this: what level of awareness and intentionality is Rooney operating at when writing about Marianne’s mental health arc? Does Rooney agree with Marianne’s self-assessment of herself as ‘better’ and ‘normal’ (ie still acting in more or less the same way as she did throughout the text, but no longer a subject of gossip) at the end of the book, or does she not?

As I mentioned, I haven’t seen the adaptation, but I’ve seen a gif or two, and what struck me as I was reading was that the way that Marianne is described as looking (and styled in the show) is reminiscent of the pop-culture caricature of Sylvia Plath — increasingly thin, indie-fashionista, bangs, statement lipstick, weird but precociously brilliant, magnetic, male muse and male victim, mentally ill in a way that is complex but always sexy and sexualised (of course she developed a cute, posh eating disorder that involved eating half an expensive sugary pastry and a sugarless black coffee every day. Of course she did).

Basically, what I want to know is, is Marianne someone Rooney wrote based on that image of Plath, or is Marianne someone cosplaying as that image of Plath, whom Rooney is consciously deconstructing?

See, I think writing Marianne as someone (possibly unintentionally) cosplaying Plath is interesting. The myth of the hot, damaged girl is pretty pervasive (Harley Quinn, the suicide girls, etc etc) and writing Marianne as a character who has legitimate issues that she has trouble facing, who then instead focuses her self-awareness into this trope of ‘acceptably damaged’ has potential. I feel like there’s an opportunity there to examine the line between struggling with a mental illness vs self-consciously performing that struggle in a way that’s socially acceptable, which is a topic that suits the period when the novel’s set.

Unfortunately though, I think Rooney is probably buying into that myth rather than  examining it, because the fact that no-one, in a book that starts in 2011 ever sits Marianne down and goes, ‘yes, I get that people have told you you’re mentally unwell as a tactic to bully you, and that was shitty, but you pretty clearly have a raging case of ptsd which is NOT YOUR FAULT, please accept some help’ — that is frankly hard to believe. Not Connell who seeks out therapy and takes some dubiously successful medication? Not Joanna, who is by all accounts well adjusted and who makes a point of caring in a friendship where she’s doing a lot the heavy lifting? Not Lorraine, parent of the decade? Not some random teacher or professor, looking out for an obviously promising student?  Really, no one?

Marianne is supposedly brilliant and a tireless researcher, but she apparently never becomes aware of the possibility that there might be ways to process her past experiences in a way that would allow her some measure of peace. Never wants it, even in the worst of times. Never ceases to wallow in her own unhappiness. And it’s relevant, I think, that in the period of the novel where Marianne is (kind of) happy, when she’s making a success of things at uni, the focus of the book is on how she’s making Connell jealous by dating an abusive man. The closes she comes to self-awareness is recognising her proclivity to seek out unhealthy relationships and decide to lean into that, in what is consistently the least unhealthy romantic relationship she has. That feels like a cop-out.

Like, I’m not suggesting that every story that features mental illness as a theme needs to show recovery. That’s, unfortunately, not always the case. Some people never get better. Some people can’t bring themselves to believe in the possibility of getting better. It’s not even the case that recovery is a straight line, when it happens. I know that. I’ve seen people I care about it struggle with a whole range of problems, I’ve struggled myself. But this felt like 13 Reasons Why for adults, like depression-porn, and I just...am a bit angry, I think, that I can’t tell if that was the intention, it that wasn’t the intention but was the outcome, or if that’s just my take and I’ve misread the thing entirely.

Obviously people can write whatever they want in fiction, but I do think that when you’re dealing with a topic that has impacted a lot of people, that’s been poorly handed in fiction in the past, you do have a responsibility to treat it sensitive and thoughtfully, and not glamorise something that is ultimately destructive under the guise of ‘this is interesting and cool, and a good way to treat yourself and others, actually.’ And I don’t know if that’s the case here.

#textual analysis I guess #ranting about writing #normal people #i'm aware there are five thousand 'i' statements here #but I can't be bothered going back to remove them

[trashforgubler]

Hold On

Word Count: 2,466

Summary: You try to kill yourself and Spencer (your boyfriend) is left to deal with the aftermath

Extra Info: This fic was inspired by the song “Hold On” by Chord Overstreet and as always I 11/10 recommend you listen to it. Also, I would like to note that this is an extremely sad and dark piece so please please please do not read it if you know it will trigger you. I promise not all my stuff will be this dark but because I watch too much criminal minds I am a little bit “dark and twisty” so this kind of stuff will come up every now and then.

Warnings: Light swearing, cutting, self hatred, suicide, dark humor, literally if it’s depressing its probably in here

Requests: Open pls send

Feedback pls and thank

masterpost 

This was it. You were done. You couldn’t do it anymore. You breathed.

Inhale.

Exhale.

As you looked around the room, your eyes fell upon a photograph. It was taken on the day you and Spencer went ice skating together, and he pretended to not know how just so he could hold your hand. A smile made its way onto your face for the first time in a while, but you hated the bitter sweetness of old memories. On the one hand, you loved thinking back to times when you were happy. Truly happy. Oh, how times had changed. Now thinking about those memories made you cry, because you knew there was no way to go back to how things had been. How was it possible to want to cherish something and forget about it at the same time? You sighed and stared at the blade sitting on your desk. Your hands rested on its cool surface as you learned up against it, head hung low as a million thoughts flew through it.

I can’t do this to him. He won’t survive.

Thoughts swarmed your head like a hurricane. You wracked your brain, trying to think of a way out that wouldn’t kill you both. And then it came. You opened the desk and took out a flimsy piece of notebook paper and a pencil, as if a note explain yourself would make it all better. Maybe it wouldn’t erase his pain, but you hoped it spare him some. You heard somewhere that the not knowing is the worst part for the people left behind. After a while, they could grasp the fact that you were gone, that was easy. It was not knowing the reason why that eats at them for an eternity. Spencer had to know he wasn’t a reason. You picked up a pen and held it against the paper, watching as the dot of ink grew larger and larger. Nothing had ever prepared you for this moment. English class had taught you how to write a 2,000 word essay in one night, but you couldn’t ever recall “how to write a suicide note,” being on a syllabus. You figured if you didn’t think about the words to much, they would just come to you.

Dear Spence,

I don’t know how to say this. I’m sorry. I’ll miss you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you.

You were planning on something a little more extravagant than that. That’s what always happened in books in movies. Characters writing big long letters to their loved ones, explaining every detail of their decision. A play by play to the exact moment they decided they were going to cut their life short. But in that moment, you couldn’t even bring yourself to think what you felt. Trying to put your reasoning on paper was impossible, as if you had to have a good enough reason to kill yourself. Almost as if there was a court that approved your application for suicide. “Oh, you hate yourself and you think you’re a burden to everyone? Sorry, Mike over here just overfed his goldfish and killed it. Please try again in 20 years.” Realizing the fact that you couldn’t even figure out what you were feeling suddenly frightened you. If you couldn’t even understand your own brain, how could Spencer? Words started floating through your head as you attempted to put a label on what you felt. Sad? No, not really. Depressed maybe, but not necessarily sad. Angry? Angry at the world? Yes. Angry enough to die? Probably not. Guilt? Guilt. That was it. You probably felt guilty because that you were leaving an innocent man to suffer while you got to be free. But you couldn’t help it. You were trapped.

You placed the note on the counter and undressed yourself. As you walked into the bathroom, blade in hand, you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Cringing, you studied each and every part of your body. The body you had despised your entire life. You were too big, had too many stretch marks and too many scars. The cuts covered your body. Your eyes strung with tears as you realized this is the last time you would ever look in a mirror. You didn’t know whether those tears are of happiness or sadness. It was all irrelevant anyways, none of it mattered anymore. In a few minutes you would be dead, completely useless to the world as you always had been. You never had a purpose, you had just become tired of pretending that would ever change. The water stung the cuts on your thighs as you stepped into the bath. Slowly, you sank down into it. The coldness seeped into your veins, leaving chills across your skin. The blade in your hand stared at you, taunting you, daring you to cut.  You bit your lip, but you weren’t sure why. You had no doubts, no fears. This is what you wanted to do.

“I’m in complete control”, you reminded yourself, although you knew it was bullshit. You weren’t the one who decided to do this. The monster that has slowly been possessing your body for the past three years was. The person you once were was gone. She died the day you put a blade to your small wrist for the first time. Just as you were about to do for the very last time. Inhaling, you plunged the blade into your arm despite your shaking hand. You drug down your arm, following the blue vein that ran down it like a map. A map to death.  Blood began pouring out of you and mixed in with the bath water, turning it a murky red color. Black dots began to appear in front of you as your head spun. The cold water seeped closer and closer to your face as you sunk down into it, slowing losing conscious. You were so close to death that you didn’t even hear the front door open. The last thing you saw before you blacked out completely was Spencer leaned over the bathtub, tears cascading down his red face as he wrapped his arms around your limp body, trying to pull you from the tub.

Spencer’s POV

Your lifeless body stared at Spencer from the bath mat, your blood staining the once white fabric. He couldn’t take his eyes off you, even as he fumbled to reach for his phone.

“911 what’s your emergency?”

“My girlfriend is bleeding out.”

The words, “my girlfriend tried to kill herself in our bathtub with a blade she got from a broken pencil sharpener,” refused to come out of his mouth, but he assumed it didn’t matter. All he knew was that you were probably dead. Time was nonexistent. The next thing he knew he was riding in the back of the ambulance as he watched you slowly fade further and further away from him. He felt like he was dreaming. This couldn’t be real. Everyone else who fell in love got to be happy. They got to give each other valentines and go out on movie dates and kiss each other whenever they please. His stomach twisted when he realized he might not get to kiss you ever again.

As soon as he arrived at the hospital, a nurse pulled him away from you as you were whisked off to surgery. He stood there, in the middle of the ER, completely helpless. His pulse racing and could hear his heartbeat in his ears as it echoed loudly inside his chest. His head was swimming with a million thoughts all at the same time, and he couldn’t get them to stop. God, he just wanted them to stop. The nurse asked if he wanted to call anyone. All his concentration was put into trying to remember anyone’s name. “J- Jennifer Jareau,” he finally stammered out. The nurse nodded and lead him to a waiting room and then left him. Alone.

The ticking of the clock was starting to drive him insane. Why was there so much noise? He put his head in his lap and clamped his arms over his ears, trying to block it all out, but it persisted with no avail. The clock, the crackle of the AC, they sound of people shoes as they walked outside the door. It was too much.

“Spence.”

The sound of a soft voice startled him. His arms fell from his ears and dangled at his sides, but he kept his head down, to embarrassed to look up. JJ was standing before him, tears in her eyes as she said his name. “Spence?” she asked, bending down to look at him. She brushed a loose curl out of his face and looked him in the eye, eyebrows furrowed in concern. Spencer felt a tear trickle down his cheek and land on his cardigan. He sniffed as he pursed his lips and shut his eyes, still not believing any of this was happening. She was fine. He told himself. I thought she was fine. The more he thought about her, the more he began to cry. The now bitter sweet memories of seeing her smile when he woke up every morning or hearing her laugh when he complained about being referred to as a “pipe cleaner with eyes,” tore at his heart. “Aww Spence.” JJ said, wiping away a tear. She didn’t know how to help him. How do you help someone who was waiting to see if the love of there life was alive or not? She didn’t know. “Spence did you cut yourself?” JJ asked with motherly concern, seeing the jagged tear in his jeans that was seeping blood.

Spencer shrugged, “probably just the blade she dropped,” he said plainly.

The words made JJ’s heart ache. Here he was, slumped in a hospital chair, crying because he didn’t know what was going to happen, and she knew it killed him knowing that he couldn’t fix it.  Whenever there was a problem, Spencer made fixing it his number one priority. He couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t bring you back to life, or make your pain go away. He was so caught up in it that he hadn’t even noticed that he hurt himself on the blade you tried to take your life with.

“What can I do?”

“Just…” Spencer started before having to stop to compose himself, “Be here,” he finished, voice breaking as he did. He bit the inside of his cheek, trying to contain his emotions.

“Okay.” JJ nodded, sitting down in the chair next to him. He tilted his head to rest on her shoulder and collapsed further into her as he felt her arms wrap around him. “Okay.” She repeated. “Okay.”

Hours passed. Or maybe it was only a few minutes, Spencer wasn’t quite sure, but before they knew it, the doctor had come out to talk to them. “Are you Y/N’s family?” She asked them.

“Yes.” They both said in unison.

“Okay, well she’s stable for now, but we’re not sure when she’ll wake up. We had to suture her wrists and replace a lot of her blood, but she should be fine, with the expectation of lots of therapy of course.”

Spencer let out a sigh of relief as he allowed a small smile to appear on his face. JJ thanked the doctor as they both head into your room. They made themselves comfortable in chairs by your bed. Spencer took your hand in his as he learned back into his chair, falling asleep to the sound of your steady breathing, and the beeping on the heartrate monitor. He loved that sound. It meant you were alive. That you were okay. That he would be okay.

 Your POV

You woke up to the sun streaming in through the window pane, casting a warm glow onto your face. You almost smiled at the feeling. It reminded you of carefree summer days spent at a neighborhood block party, eating red, white and blue popsicles with your friends. It just made you happy. You could hear soft snoring coming from the person next to you.

Spencer.

Oh shit, Spencer. Had he been there all night? Had he been there more than one night? You quickly realized that this question would be a lot easier to answer if you knew what day it was. You squeezed his hand gently to wake him. He opened his eyes, which were red from either sleep deprivation, crying, or both. You didn’t know. Another pang of guilt stabbed you the more you looked at him. His messier than usual hair, the crescent shaped circles under his eyes. You did this to him, and you didn’t even know why.

“Hey beautiful,” he said groggily, rubbing sleep from his eyes. You managed to give a small smile in return. He brushed your forehead with the edge of his thumb and you relaxed at the feeling, as if all your problems and this giant mess you’ve gotten yourself into were now gone because of the way his hands felt up against your skin. Not in a sexual way, but in a pure way. The way only Spence could make you feel. He made you feel safe.

“How long have I been here?”

“Just a day.” He responded.

“And you?”

“Just a day,” he repeated, looking down at your hand as he smiled. His eyes then wandered over to your wrists, which were covered in big white bandages, but they did nothing to hide the other cuts up and down the upper part of your arms. “I love you,” he started, bringing an edge of seriousness you’ve never heard from him before. He looked up at you with those big brown eyes. “You know that, right?”

“Of course, I do, Spence.” You dreaded where this conversation was heading.

“You know you can talk to me about anything.”

“I know.” You said quietly, breaking eye contact as shame consumed you.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked in a low voice, leaning towards you as he said it. You promptly shook your head. To say you have zero interest in talking about it would be the understatement of the year. You know that you can talk to him, but you don’t want to cause him any more pain than you already put him through.

“Okay.” He said, understanding. “Not now, but eventually we need to talk about it okay?”

You nodded in agreement. As much as you hated to admit it, he was right. As always. He bent down and placed a gentle kiss on your forehead, and you felt a small tear drop trickle off his face. “I love you Y/N.” he said. “Sleep.”

#Criminal Minds #criminal minds angst #criminal minds fluff #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #criminal minds fanfic #spencer reid #criminal minds imagine #writing #writer

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 3.10

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, as chapter 3’s trial reached its, uh, “climax”, the usually-irrelevant intermission contained delightful foreshadowing, Tenko finally posthumously got through to Himiko for good, Keebo did not remotely singlehandedly save everyone oh my god, and everything was kind of boringly predictable because Kiyo is the worst. (You can tell how relatively bored I was from the fact that Kaito wasn’t even relevant enough for me to have a reason to mention him in this summary bit, until I did so just now anyway. 

Now for Kiyo to continue to be the worst in the post-trial wrap-up until we can be rid of him for good.

Monokuma:  “Wow! Seriously!? You’re correct again!”

Don’t sound so surprised, Monokuma. This one was boringly obvious.

Himiko:  “I haven’t… heard his answer yet. Kiyo… why? Why did you kill Angie and Tenko?”

Ugh. I totally get Himiko wanting answers to get herself some closure, but knowing the reason Kiyo did it isn’t going to make anything better at all.

Tsumugi:  “Did your motive have something to do with the transfer student who was resurrected? Even if it did, though… How did that trigger a murder?”

That sure is a good fucking question now, isn’t it, Tsumugi?

Kiyo:  “Because we’re friends, I’ll tell you…”

NONE OF US ARE FRIENDS WITH YOU. FUCK OFF.

Okay, Kiyo does not deserve Moon on the Water, aka the BGM piece that is presumably named that as a reference to Clair de Lune, for his goddamn backstory.

Kaito:  “So to see this lover of yours, you had to escape…”

Kaito is trying to fit his mental picture of Kiyo’s character into someone who had somewhat sympathetic reasons for doing this. Even after learning he killed two people and seeing him show no remorse, Kaito’s giving him the benefit of the doubt and trying to understand him instead of just writing him off as a bad person. Kaito is so good.

Kiyo:  “The one I love is… inside.”

Shuichi:  (Inside?)

…

Maki:  “…Is it really one of us?”

Not sure why it isn’t immediately obvious to everyone that the person he’s talking about is his other personality who began to show up towards the end of the trial.

Kiyo:  “That is why… for my beloved sister… I had to—”

Kaito:  “Y-You had to escape from here, right?”

Kaito is still trying to understand and see Kiyo as someone vaguely reasonable! I’m sorry, Kaito, but you should just give up on this asshole. He isn’t worth your time.

Kiyo:  “Even if I could be her little brother and her lover, I couldn’t be her friend.”

THIS IS ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT, by the way. Of course you can be those things and also someone’s friend! If you are those things with someone without even being friends, then your relationship is shallow as fuck and doesn’t mean anything.

I could maybe sort of slightly kind of sympathise with Kiyo’s grief at losing his sister driving him to madness like this if his relationship with her was presented as a genuine, touching relationship. But instead they just shove in this unnecessary incest angle and present it like it’s all about all the sex they had and apparently they didn’t even care about each other platonically and I just… ugh. Why.

(I can sort of see that there could be an argument here that Kiyo’s sister was actually abusive and manipulating him and that’s meant to be the point, but, eh. I just don’t personally care enough about Kiyo to think thoroughly about how much sense that may or may not make.)

Kiyo:  “For Sister’s sake… I’ve killed many! To send her 100 friends!”

I should also add that, even accepting the fact that Kiyo truly believes spirits exist, this is still a ridiculous motive. First off, if his sister’s spirit is inside him, then how would all of the people he’s killed even be able to meet her and become her friend? Second, and far more importantly, how in the fuck does he think any of the girls he’s killed would want to become friends with someone whose brother murdered them and tore them away from their own still-living friends just to make them befriend someone they’ve never met and have no reason to care about? That’s not how friendship works, what the actual fuck. Kiyo is the absolute fucking worst and I don’t understand why the writers thought this was a remotely good character to include in this story.

Kiyo’s sister:  “That’s wonderful, Korekiyo. Your love made the impossible, possible.”

NO. SHUT UP. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY THOSE WORDS.

Kaito:  “A-Are you… serious!? Is this… really a spirit!?”

Aaand Kaito’s given up on understanding him. Though I think he probably would have done so by now even if he didn’t happen to have a phobia about this.

Maki:  “He’s just delusional…”

Kiyo’s sister:  “Hmhmhm… What a sad girl who can’t even believe in the power of love…”

Maki:  “…”

…Ugh. The writers probably intend this to be foreshadowing, given the romantic feelings towards Kaito that Maki is going to develop. As if they’re saying that she was so cold and closed-off from everyone because she didn’t understand romantic love, and her opening up and becoming more trusting and co-operative towards everyone is all due to the power of the romantic love she awakens to! Which is absolute bullshit, because that happens due to the friendship and trust she feels for Kaito and Shuichi, and while the romantic feelings are also there and also contributing, they are absolutely emphatically not the main factor, and most of this story’s writing is able to understand and appreciate that.

Kokichi:  “You said you killed a lot already, right? So it wasn’t just the two you killed here?”

Himiko:  “Wh-What?”

Kokichi:  “Nee-heehee… Seems like he was already crazy before he got here…”

Yes, and that’s exactly why this is such a terrible case! One of the main draws of a Danganronpa game is seeing what it takes to drive an otherwise decent person to murder. If a case’s culprit was already a serial killer in the first place, then it completely defeats the entire fucking point! Why would you even have this?!

…Though I should point out that the wording of Kokichi’s line here implies he’s aware of the notion that being stuck in here can drive a person crazy, which might be him subtly referring to what being in here has done to him, while not remotely admitting it to himself, of course.

Kiyo:  “I spent my time evaluating all the girls here… And besides Maki and Miu, they were all worthy!”

Well then you can’t be very good at evaluating people, because if you were a good judge of character you’d have been able to tell that Maki is a good person too. What, is your problem with her that she’s killed people?

Himiko:  “Then… the second victim… could’ve been me? Tenko… died in place of me?”

Ugh, let’s just heap even more survivor’s guilt onto poor Himiko, shall we? This sucks for her so damn much.

Kiyo:  “Her noble, earnest heart made her a perfect friend for Sister.”

Yeah, and if Tenko’s spirit actually does exist, then her noble, earnest heart is also exactly why she would absolutely fucking refuse to become friends with someone whose degenerate brother murdered her, oh my god.

Kiyo:  “Though… I was planning on having you become Sister’s friend too… eventually.”

Does it work if someone else kills them? He can’t possibly see it that way, or else there’d be no point killing people himself. So, no, he couldn’t have been planning on that, because if he got away with it in the class trial then everyone else would have been killed by Monokuma and not him.

Kokichi:  “You were interested in The Caged Child just so you could use it to kill someone, right?”

Kiyo:  “It interested me as an anthropologist, of course. But more than that…”

See, on my first time through I somewhat suspected that the entire seance was just something Kiyo made up to have an excuse to use it for his murder plan, since all of the details were just way too convenient. But then there’s this here, which confirms that Kiyo believes it was a genuine thing, when he has no reason to lie any more. So instead it’s just way too convenient because Tsumugi is kind of a lazy writer (especially in this chapter).

Kaito:  “…”

Shuichi:  “Kaito, are you okay? You look… kinda pale…”

Kaito:  “D-Don’t worry about it… Let’s focus on Kiyo right now.”

Hang in there, Kaito, this spirit bullshit is almost over. I enjoy Shuichi noticing and being concerned even though Kaito really isn’t the focus right now. And Kaito continuing to insist that they shouldn’t worry about him, of course.

Kiyo:  “I did not plan to kill both of them. I knew I would have plenty of chances after escaping this place.”

No, you wouldn’t! They would already be dead if you escaped! Did you not read the fucking rules or something?

Himiko:  “It’s not fair! Why did Angie and Tenko have to die for something so unfair!?”

Right? This is so fucking unfair. I mean, the killing game is unfair in general, but this one just takes the cake. It’s so pointless.

Monokuma:  “Why do you think news stations get such high ratings when they’re reporting about death? Because… everyone likes unfair deaths.”

As someone who is basically in the same position as the in-universe audience to your killing game that you’re secretly referring to, I sure fucking don’t when it’s only unfair because it’s narratively meaningless, Monokuma!

Kokichi:  “Well if you look at it like that, this whole killing game embodies that philosophy, right? Gifted high school students forced to play a killing game… Man! If people were watching this, they would get a kick out of it!”

Yeah, Kokichi’s not even being subtle about having figured that out by now. The fact that he definitely knows by this point that this is being watched is going to be extremely important going into next chapter.

Also, it sure would be nice if he actually told everyone, “hey by the way I’m certain that this game is being shown to people for entertainment, maybe we could use that knowledge to our advantage to escape,” instead of just hinting about it. Buuut of course not.

Kokichi:  “Hell yeah! If I wasn’t in this killing game, I would have so much fun watching!”

That I can believe, even if there’s no real fourth wall and actual people were dying. It’s all good so long as nothing bad’s happening to him.

(He is also very indirectly implying here that he’s not having fun because he’s part of it. Which makes his statement that he’d enjoy it if he was just watching it more likely to be the truth, since this isn’t part of his lie to himself.)

Kiyo:  “As your friend, I will watch over you!”

YOU’RE NOT OUR FRIEND SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE HOW FRIENDSHIP WORKS

I’m weirdly fond of the taiko drum elements in Kiyo’s execution music.

I should, uh, probably also talk about the part in the execution with the spirits. I still don’t buy that spirits actually exist in this universe which is otherwise very sci-fi-focused, what with Flashback Lights and robots and such. So my interpretation is that everything from the moment Kiyo’s “spirit” appears is just special effects, to let the in-universe audience see Kiyo getting the karmic retribution that most executions usually have. (Plus, even if Kiyo’s spirit were real, his sister’s spirit would still have to be somehow faked, since his sister never existed.) It would be satisfying to think that Kiyo actually experienced getting melted with salt by his sister’s spirit and spent his last conscious moments in despair instead of thinking he was going to meet her, but, no, I believe he just straight-up died and that was it for him.

Monokuma:  “I’m gonna take back this here Necronomicon. Seems like a waste, though. You guys sure you don’t wanna use it?”

Even if it would have worked, I still don’t see how it would have been a motive. Especially now, now that Kiyo’s dead and nobody else is going to try and propose a murder-seance if the resurrection doesn’t work. Maybe that’s why Monokuma takes it away now.

Kaito:  “Sh-Shut up! How long are you gonna keep talking about that?”

Maki:  “Ignore him. The whole resurrection ritual is obviously a lie. He’s just trying to shake us mentally to get us to panic.”

…Well, mostly to get Kaito to panic. Good thing Monokuma seems to have finally decided there’s no point doing that any more.

Kaito:  “What people believe in is up to them, but… Living people shouldn’t have to suffer because of the dead! The living are more precious than the dead! No matter what!”

Putting aside the fact that Kaito obviously doesn’t like thinking about the dead as still being “alive” in some sense because it creeps him out, this is along similar lines to what he said at the end of the second trial, about how life is infinitely valuable and living things should never be ashamed of wanting to live. Of course he would think of those who are still capable of living as being worth more than those who sadly can’t anymore. He’s not just saying this because of his phobia.

Maki:  “…That’s not something a coward like you should say.”

Kaito:  “Sh-Shut up… Leave me alone.”

Apparently Kaito has finally reached the point of not even trying to deny his phobia and just wishing Maki would stop teasing him about it. Which really, you should, Maki. You’re just making him beat himself up even more over something that isn’t his fault.

Shuichi:  “Well, that’s why we have to work together, right? Face it together. Our Ultimate talents are the best weapons we have.”

Mostly yours, though, Shuichi. And some others. Some people’s talents are not particularly useful in this situation. Still, this shows Shuichi’s becoming proud of his talent and happy that he’s able to use it to help everyone, which is progress!

(Other talents that are extremely useful for figuring out and escaping this killing game: Kokichi’s and Miu’s. Shame neither of those people are capable of co-operation.)

Maki:  “…I’ll work hard, until everyone trusts my Ultimate talent.”

Kokichi:  “Huh?”

Maki:  “It may not be possible now, but I’ll put in the effort so everyone can trust me. I… I won’t run away anymore… I want to survive and escape this place with everyone.”

Maki Roll! Look how far she’s come already! She’s outwardly admitting that she wants to earn people’s trust and work together with everyone!

Honestly, that in itself should be enough to earn everyone’s trust. I don’t think anyone except for Kokichi really distrusts her any more at this point – after all, she’s kept her word about not killing anyone.

Kokichi:  “I seeee… I wonder how long that’ll last. What if your true calling as a killer shows?”

Yeah, fuck you, Kokichi. We’ve been over how she would only ever have a reason to kill someone if she gets ordered to do so by her assassin cult which she has no contact with in here. He’s still just convinced that she’s inherently the kind of person who would turn around and kill someone with no provocation, because obviously she’s got to be the worst possible person.

(And okay, fair enough, he’s not completely wrong and this line may well be foreshadowing of what Maki tries to do in chapter 5. But that’s still entirely Kokichi’s fault for painting a huge target on his forehead and setting himself up as the kind of person that Maki has been raised to believe can only be effectively dealt with by being “removed”, so well done Kokichi for making that a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

Kaito:  “Don’t underestimate her! Maki Roll’s one of my sidekicks!”

Maki:  “I don’t remember being your sidekick. Also, didn’t I tell you to stop calling me Maki Roll?”

Being Kaito’s sidekick isn’t something you agree to, Maki. It’s something Kaito decides. It’s entirely about how Kaito views you and not the other way around. In that sense, Maki’s been his sidekick since the moment she agreed to train with him; he’s just only mentioning it now.

(I believe this is also the last time she ever complains about being called Maki Roll.)

Kokichi:  “Ooohhh, you guys are so close now. This must be the powerful bond of friendship.”

That’s exactly what it is, Kokichi, no matter how hollow and meaningless you’re trying to make it sound.

Kokichi:  “But I would’ve preferred it to happen sooner. Especially not after losing seven people.”

Gragh, and even when Kokichi does pretend to care about the notions of friendship and trust, he brings it up in a way that’s all “but you guys haven’t been good enough at friendship!”, still trying to act high and mighty above everyone else. Well maybe if you really thought friendship and bonds would have helped avoid some of those seven deaths, you could have contributed to that yourself, Kokichi.

Kokichi:  “Humans are like weeds – too numerous to count. Seven of us dead doesn’t mean much in the end. …That’s totally what the heartless robot is thinking! Right, riiiight!?”

No, Kokichi, that’s clearly what you were thinking to try and deflect some of your basic-human-decency-driven guilt and pain at the deaths – and then you go and even deflect that justification of yours by trying to project it onto someone else.

Kaito:  “I know we’re all gonna escape! I’m not gonna rely on a god, spirits, or the dead. Just you guys! I believe in all of you!”

As much as I adore your optimism, Kaito, you… probably shouldn’t believe in Kokichi or Miu. (Or Tsumugi, of course, but she hasn’t given any reason not to be trusted so far.) That said, Kaito is probably making this statement about how much he believes in everyone to try and encourage them all, even the ones less inclined to co-operate, to trust him back and work together. And it also goes to show that, even though Kokichi and Miu are unco-operative as hell, Kaito still believes that they’re fundamentally decent people who don’t want to kill anyone, which is true, very deep down.

Shuichi:  (It seems like… everything is settled for now. Even though we’re missing her…)

It’s not entirely clear which “her” Shuichi’s talking about. The obvious answer would be one of the two girls who died most recently, but then you’d think he would specify which of them or refer to both of them. So I think that Shuichi’s actually referring to Kaede here, and he’s saying that even though Kaede isn’t here to encourage everyone and rally them together like she was trying to do at the beginning, everyone’s still managing to band together and keep going.

(That’s at least partly because of Kaito. Have I ever mentioned he and Kaede are similar.)

Himiko:  “…”

Gonta:  “Himiko… You okay? Anything Gonta can do to help? You can tell Gonta.”

Gonta is so good. He’s still just trying to help as much as he can, and right now the most obvious way he can see to help is by helping Himiko with her sadness.

Shuichi:  “I think… we should let her have some space for now. That might be best for her. …I remember how I felt…”

And then Kaito punched you in the face (which didn’t help) and then encouraged you to go to Kaede’s lab and let your memories of her support you (which did help). So maybe Himiko does still need something other than to be completely left alone to wallow in her sadness right now.

Kokichi:  “God, Himiko is such a liar!”

Kokichi’s about to do a thing. Hold this thought, we’ll get back to it in a second.

Kokichi:  “Personally, I don’t think lies are exactly a bad thing… Let’s face it, you wouldn’t have any free will if the world was comprised with just the truth.”

Um, no? That’s not how free will works? Sure, I can completely understand how you could say that the world would be more boring if it was only comprised of the truth, but people would still be able to make choices! There are more choices in life than just “do I lie or do I tell the truth?”.

If anything, the world being full of lies makes it have marginally less free will, since lies can be used to manipulate people and make them think they only have one choice when they actually have several. This is even part of the point of this story! Tsumugi tries to insist during the final trial that everyone’s actions were all completely scripted and according to her outline, meaning they never really had any free will. While most of that claim is blatantly wrong and oh boy am I going to talk about that when we get there, it’s true that she did manage to manipulate some events to fit with her plans, and she did so using Flashback Lights, which contain lies.

Anyway, that was a Kokichi’s-philosophy-is-bullshit interlude, now back to what he’s doing for Himiko.

Kokichi:  “But even then… I don’t think it’s good to lie to yourself, y’know?”

Himiko:  “…”

Tsumugi:  “What are you saying!? Think about Himiko’s feelings a little bit—”

Kokichi:  “I only said this *because* I thought about it. Himiko has been lying to herself about her own feelings, so she’s been holding back. Hey, what are you repressing? Why are you trying so hard to hold back?”

This… is actually Kokichi helping Himiko out, in a being-cruel-to-be-kind sort of way. Himiko did need to hear this.

But the thing is, this is pretty much the only time in the entire game that Kokichi does something that’s apparently genuinely helpful. So I cannot in good conscience assume that that’s really Kokichi’s only reason for doing this, because if he were actually a person who wants to help people, even if it’s in a cruel-to-be-kind way, he would do this more often. Plus, the game goes on to flash back to Tenko’s final words to Himiko about expressing her feelings, which Kokichi was witness to. If Kokichi had really taken that speech to heart and genuinely cared about helping Himiko fulfil Tenko’s final wish, then he wouldn’t have tried to argue during the trial that obviously Himiko’s only pretending to care about Tenko now because she’s the culprit and trying to protect herself. He would have been able to actually comprehend the notion that she cares now because she regrets not listening to Tenko’s words before and now it’s too late.

So there has to be some reason Kokichi’s doing this other than because he wants to help, and it’s really not that hard to figure out. Kokichi’s words about lying to yourself about your true feelings are a perfect description of what’s going on with him. He’s being a gigantic hypocrite by telling Himiko this. So I think the main reason he’s doing this is that, just like he does so many other times, he’s deflecting and projecting his own feelings onto someone else. He’s saying this about Himiko so that he can tell himself it’s only Himiko who’s lying to herself about her true feelings, because obviously he wouldn’t be giving this advice if it was something he’s incapable of following himself, right?

It’s also apparent that this is really about Kokichi’s own issues and not about him helping Himiko because he’s not actually framing this correctly at all. Himiko is not lying to herself about her feelings. She knows she’s feeling sadness and pain over this; the only problem is that she’s struggling with how to express that and deal with it. She is not pretending that she’s fine like Kokichi always does. She used to, when she was hiding behind Atua, but that’s not what’s happening now. If Kokichi was really only doing this to help her, he’d understand that and phrase this differently. He says he thought about her feelings, but the conclusion he came to as a result of that thinking is that she’s obviously doing exactly what he does, because he deflects his issues onto everyone.

Regardless of his intent behind it, Kokichi is one of the few people who’d even have been able to help Himiko right now, since everyone else is too busy tiptoeing around her feelings to be blunt enough to tell her what she needs to hear. But Kokichi shouldn’t be the only one – Kaito should have been capable of it, too. Kaito had no qualms about bluntly telling Maki that she’s a coward and she’s running away in order to get her to finally start facing up to her issues earlier this chapter. It’s a little surprising to me that Kaito isn’t also the one to try and do something similar for Himiko here; you’d think he would have got there and done so before Kokichi said anything. I wonder if the reason he doesn’t is that, since Himiko’s pain is being compared to Shuichi’s at the end of the first trial, Kaito is still feeling awkward and guilty about the time he unhelpfully punched Shuichi in the face. That could be why he’s also tiptoeing around Himiko’s feelings more than he normally would right now – because he doesn’t want to make a similar mistake.

If Kaito had been the one to help Himiko here, then he wouldn’t have made it about her lying to herself. It would have been more about how it’s okay for her to feel this way but she needs to face those feelings head-on, like he was saying to her earlier in the trial. Which would also have been somewhat hypocritical of Kaito given what’s going on with him, but hypocritically deflecting his own issues would not have been the point of him doing it. He’d be framing it that way simply because it’s a perfectly reasonable way to frame it, since he understands her actual problem.

Himiko:  “Tenko… Angie! I’m so lonely! I’m so lonely… without you two! But… I gotta survive! I… still can’t go to where you are! But… I’m lonely! I’m so lonely without the both of you!”

I enjoy how this is Himiko being really raw and open and direct with her emotions, repeating herself and contradicting herself and stating how she feels with no filter. It’s just what she needed to do.

I still think that Angie never really truly cared about Himiko as a person and doesn’t really deserve to have Himiko remember her this way. But the fact is, she’s dead, so Himiko can never get confirmation of how she felt any more – and given that, the only thing that matters is what Himiko wants to believe. If believing that Angie cared about her helps her more than the truth, then let’s let her believe that.

Shuichi:  (Before we knew it… As if lured by her doing so… we began crying.)

Shuichi’s narration doesn’t specify who exactly is part of this “we” who join in with Himiko’s crying. The implication is that it’s everybody, but it can’t include Keebo, and I kind of doubt it includes Maki either, since there’s a big point made at the end of chapter 5 about that being the first time she’s cried that much in a long time. If it includes Kokichi, his are probably mostly overexaggerated fake tears, to lie to himself about the fact that his basic human decency is making him somewhat genuinely upset. But one person it definitely does include is Kaito.

Kaito’s face isn’t visible here, but the way his shoulders are hunched makes it clear that he’s crying too. That stance of his is the most in-focus thing in this shot other than Himiko herself, even. And his line just a little bit before the illustration shows up…

Kaito:  “D-Damn it!”

…rather sounds like it could be his reaction to realising that he’s about to start crying and can’t stop it.

Anyway that’s just a fun fact that I wanted to point out even though the narrative doesn’t draw attention to it.

Shuichi:  (The tears we shed… I can’t even describe it. We were crying about what we had been through, and what was to come… Sadness, hatred, frustration, discord, anger, love… Tears filled with emotion. But at the very least… they weren’t tears of submission. They were tears to push us forward.)

My inordinate focus on Kaito aside, I do really like this moment in general. It’s nice to have a moment to really let us see just how torn up everyone is by this awful situation they’re in, even though they usually try to put on a brave face and not show it. There’s no adequate words for everything they’re feeling, but just by sharing in this emotional outburst together, it feels like a bonding moment for everyone.

Gonta gives Himiko a piggyback ride back to the dorms after she falls asleep in exhaustion from all the crying. He is the absolute sweetest bestest gentleman.

Maki:  “…She probably felt better after letting it all out, don’t you think?”

This means a lot coming from Maki, whose own issues that she’s been starting to work on involve having supressed her own emotions about the awful things she’s been through.

Shuichi:  (While we were heading back to the dorms, I suddenly noticed… Kaito had stopped in his tracks.)

Kaito:  “…”

Shuichi:  “…Kaito, what’s wrong?”

Kaito:  “Hm? Oh… Nothing. I just… wanted to get some night air. Don’t worry about me. Go on ahead.”

It’s definitely not that he’s about to cough up some blood or anything. He’s fine.

Maki:  “Anyway… don’t do something like this again, okay? If you dislike scary things, then you should’ve said so earlier. I thought you were sic—”

Kaito:  “You worried about me?”

She was worried about him! She’s saying this because she wishes he hadn’t worried her over something she thinks was so unnecessary!

Except for the fact that she has even more reason to be worried about him now, which is exactly why Kaito cuts her off right there. He can’t have anyone worrying about him, especially not when Maki’s just made a point about how she wishes he hadn’t worried her so much.

Maki:  “Yeah… worried about your stupidity.”

As you should be! He is going to continue to be incredibly more stupid with regards to not letting you two know that there’s something wrong with him that you should be worried about!

Kaito:  “Hah! Still haven’t warmed up to me, huh?”

Oh, she definitely has, Kaito. That’s why she’s worrying about you.

Kaito has to know that she only appears so cold here because she’s frustrated that he made her worry. But he hates having done that, so instead he’s pretending that her response to his question totally proves she’s not worried about him at all.

Shuichi:  “Maybe not… but I feel like the walls we had up are coming down a little, you know? Perhaps those walls were her enemies… It seems like she doesn’t want to wait anymore.”

Kaito:  “Yeah! Cuz of me!

Shuichi:  “…Yeah, maybe, but you sound like you’re bragging, Kaito!”

Her walls are coming down and it is because of Kaito and he should be proud of himself about that! (Especially as it’s the only thing he managed to achieve this chapter next to Shuichi effortlessly saving everyone in the class trial yet again.)

Kaito:  “But like I said, I’m… gonna get some air before I go back. You can go on ahead.”

Shuichi:  “Sure… got it. See you tomorrow.”

Kaito:  “Yeah, see ya tomorrow!”

He’s wearing one of his usual casual smiles for that last line like nothing’s wrong. For the most part, Kaito is genuinely really good at pretending that he’s completely fine when he is absolutely not. I’m going to be joking about it a lot, but that’s only because I find it delightful how absolutely goddamn stubborn he is about keeping up this façade.

Shuichi:  (I didn’t notice what was going on with Kaito…)

Here’s another rare instance of Shuichi’s narration suddenly being from a future Shuichi who knows everything that’s going to happen, rather than just being told from the present. At least this time what he’s saying is right, but I really don’t think this is necessary since we’re about to see what’s wrong with Kaito for ourselves. It’d have been much more fun if they’d ended this with the present Shuichi innocently thinking something like how he’s relieved that Kaito’s feeling better now, only to immediately whiplash it with the following scene.

Kaito:  “I… don’t have time to be dying…”

I love how, even though this is presumably the moment Kaito properly realises that oh god, he’s dying, he phrases it like this. The idea that he’s going to die and there’s nothing he can do about it is so terrifying that he can only acknowledge it in this way that’s full of defiance and denial. He’s going to find something better to do with himself than this bullshit thing like dying that his body has apparently decided is a priority, dammit! Accepting his impending death just like that would be giving up, and that’s inconceivable to Kaito.

Kaito:  “I still haven’t gone into space yet.”

Fourth reminder that KAITO CANNOT DIE BEFORE HE’S GONE TO SPACE. This is still very, very important, and it makes the knowledge that he’s dying even harder to bear. Everyone wants to keep living, but Kaito has a specific thing he wants to do more than anything and has been working so hard towards that he’s never going to be able to reach if he dies here.

Kaito:  “Damn it… No way am I gonna die here! No way…”

Even though he’s being as stubborn and defiant about this as he can, you can hear his voice wavering a little in that final “No way…”, betraying how scared he really is, and I love it.

I also just generally love the fact that the writers made this chapter-end stinger be “Kaito is dying”. Every chapter except the first and the last has an ending stinger like this that isn’t strictly related to what just happened in the trial: Maki is an assassin, Kaito is dying, Kokichi is plotting to end the killing game, Keebo has gone rogue. Of those, most are more of a plot-related hook, to keep the players interested in the overall goings on in the story. But this one is only relevant to Kaito’s character arc. I am delighted that the writers saw Kaito’s character arc as an important enough part of the story that they felt it deserved a stinger like this anyway, something that helps you understand what’s going on with him now, while it’s happening, rather than only retroactively realising it later. You’d have been able to appreciate what’s going on during a second time through even if this stinger didn’t exist, but apparently the writers thought that a sense of dramatic irony and painful infuriation at Kaito hiding what he really should be telling his friends should be the only way to experience chapter 4, and, yes. Yes, it should be.

So anyway chapter 4 is one of my favourite chapters particularly in terms of the type of things that this commentary exists to talk about and I am very excited that I’m finally going to get into it next time.

---

[Chapter-end bonus ramble] [Next post]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 3 #class trial #commentary

[preserving-ferretbrain]

The Death of the Reader

by Wardog

Tuesday, 14 August 2007

Wardog joins the Harry Potter free-for-all~

I shall begin, like every other Harry Potter article on Ferretbrain, by saying that Harry Potter 1-3 are above average children's books. They're well edited, tightly plotted, action-packed children's books with just enough depth and darkness to appeal to adults as well but their primary audience is definitely children. The world presented is a child's world in which school is the most important place in the universe and the Headmaster of a school is unquestioned in his role as one of its most politically powerful figures. Defeating evil is, essentially, equivalent or, in fact slightly less important, than winning the house cup. For the first three books, Draco Malfoy - socially powerful bully that he is - has a far greater impact on Harry's world than Voldemort.

From an adult's perspective, of course, this is all complete madness. Why does Voldemort, Dark Lord of the Sith...err..., why does he never go to war during the school holidays? And why does his plan for taking over the galaxy involve becoming Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Yes yes, I know, so he can recruit a juvenile army of dark wizards but seriously, aren't there grown up people he'd be better off corrupting? And if somebody told you that your son's Head of English had decided not to be Prime Minister and instead came to work at Scumville Comp, you'd laugh in their face. But the point is, these are children's books and they were marketed as children's books. They're even delightfully short. Books 4 onwards, however, are a very matter indeed.

It can be argued that this has been the point all along and that the power of the later books derives from the brutal overturning of the all sources of adult authority Harry previously thought he could trust - in essence, that the process of growing up must mirror a parallel process that amounts to the loss of innocence. Thus all the people Harry idolised are revealed to be flawed (Sirius, Dumbledore, James, Remus), the people in power turn out to be corrupt (Fudge, Umbridge etc.), places of sanctuary rapidly become places of restriction (Hogwarts, in Book V) and so on. Intelligent readers (aka my friend David) have occasionally tried to argue me out of my frustrations with the later books by claiming that much of my resentment springs from their failure to deliver what I was looking for i.e. a jolly romp with comically named characters and cool magical items.

But, ultimately, attempts to argue for darkness, depth and disillusionment in the Harry Potter universe always ring hollow to me because they never quite fit within the established terms of the books. If a text suddenly demands that you start questioning the assumptions of the world and the characters in it, then the text has to be strong enough to withstand such questioning. As Dan is fond of pointing out, this is one the weaknesses of Season Six Buffy; the show seems to forget, suddenly, that Buffy is a metaphor for growing up and instead asks the viewer to treat her like she's a real person with real concerns such as how she's going to pay the rent on her house. This is not only much less interesting than watching her kick vampire ass it just draws attention to trivia you might otherwise not have questioned, for example if the Watcher's Council has a fund for over the hill watchers, why doesn't it also have a fund so that the Chosen One can get on with saving the world instead of having to get a job in fast food.

In Harry Potter, by asking its readership to start questioning the world established in the first three books, JK again only draws attention to how actually stupid it is when you stop and think about it for a moment. If we're expected to cringe and shudder at Umbridge's methods, are we also meant to question what the hell Dumbledore was doing employing a complete incompetent to teach Divination and didn't the Board of Governors have anything to say about it? I know she made one prophecy once but the fact of the matter is that I can't imagine any of the Hogwarts teachers getting onto a PGCE course without difficulty. And if, in fact, we are meant to view Dumbledore's repeated failures as a headmaster as foreshadowing the fact that he was once a little bit tempted by the pleasures of world domination then it is only fair that we also question why the hell he got the job and wasn't there somebody on the interview panel who thought being a powerful wizard and being a decent headmaster were perhaps not similar skills. Again, Umbridge's "I will not tell lies detention" is genuinely terrifying but the fact she can get away with it leads one to wonder why previous detentions involved jolly romps in the hilarious named forbidden forest full of monsters with an irresponsible half-giant and was that, in fact, any more appropriate.

Perhaps it has as much to with the changing nature of the media, increasing communication between authors and fans, the immense power of the internet to foster fandoms and bring obsessive compulsives together, and Jk's forthcoming, teasing style of interacting with her (vast) public but I think she must be of the most talked to and talked about authors I have ever encountered. And, by encountered you understand, I mean read about on the internet. But it's not like people were chasing James Joyce down the street asking to know about the lanky galoot in the brown mackintosh at Paddy Dingam's funeral and was he, perhaps, Ron from the future. The endless alternate worlds of fandom aside, JK's communicativeness and her public's willingness to listen to her and ask her for her arbitration on matters of no consequence seems to have granted her an unheard of amount of authority in her position, not so much as author, but as creator and even as God.

JK has always encouraged fan speculation but speculation and interpretation are very different indeed. Speculation, like guessing the murderer in an Agatha Christi novel, is an intellectual exercise with a "right" and unquestionable answer. You can't turn round and say "no, Poiret got that wrong, it was actually this guy who did it." Similarly, you can't turn round and say RAB is Rupert Addlepate Bungstock, once the text has established RAB is Regalus A-whatever Black. Speculation can always be controlled and, like a particularly inflexible GM, JK has always carefully directed her audience towards the questions they should be asking of the text. Who is RAB? Why does Petunia flush? What's the deal with the Half-Blood Prince (and was a disappointing deal that was). But, ultimately, the succession of tantalising small mysteries are there to distract the reader's attention from other things they might be thinking about, specifically their own interpretations of the text.

To take an example at random, some time last August, JK and some other less rich, less famous people attended a charity event at Radio City Music Hall in New York. During the course of the evening, an audience member brought up a matter of trivial detail ("Aunt Petunia is said to be oddly flushed when Dumbledore announces that Harry will be returning only once more to Privet Drive") which JK praised as an excellent question. Later Salman Rushdie introduced himself and his family, explaining on behalf on his young son that they did not believe Dumbledore was truly dead, citing quite specific textual "evidence" from the 6th book: "Our theory is that Snape is in fact still a good guy from which it follows that Dumbledore can't really be dead, and that the death is a ruse..." Now, looking specifically at the events of the 6th book this seems at least plausible to me, especially if you decide that Snape's moral hokey-cokey will ultimately put him on the side of the good guys and we know, from book 4, that killing curses require a certain amount of conviction.

I don't actually subscribe to the theory but then I'm not a young child and I don't care if the irritating, sherbet-lemon sucking coot is dead. However, most of the "evidence" that Dumbledore is probably very definitely dead comes from knowledge and assumptions drawn from outside the text. I know, for example, that JK likes to think she's dark and, therefore, she's likely to make a point of death being final. I also know that, even though in these sorts of genres death isn't quite the handicap it used to be in the olden days, having an actual corpse is generally considered proof of lasting deaditude. And, finally, I know that JK is all about her seven book arc and that it is an important part of the hero's journey to lose the mentor figure. It's, like, the rules.

But, as it turns out, the clash of titans represented by Kyra Versus Random Kid, was irrelevant because JK's response was this: "But I see that I need to be a little more explicit... and say that Dumbledore is definitely dead." It's a slightly awkward example because whether Dumbledore is dead or not is very much something that can be true or false within JK's imagined world (it is, essentially, a fact) but until the its veracity has been thoroughly established by the text itself then it is certainly not JK's place to explain, justify and interpret her own books for her readership. I would even go so far as to say that, perhaps for a young child fond of Dumbledore, part of the experience of reading book seven is hoping for a miracle that will bring him back or hat his death was nothing but a clever ploy all along. That very personal experience of hope, resignation and, finally, a sense of loss akin to grief can teach someone far more about death than JK's constant over-written references to the cold, unfeeling stars looking down on the arbitrarily massacred secondary characters lying below them. In fact, one of my (many) frustrations with the final book is that being "definitely dead" didn't in any way prevent Dumbledore turning up an giving one of his interminable plot explanations. Talk about the worst of all possible worlds.

In the flurry of interviews (

this

is a good example) JK has given following the release of the seventh book she has repeatedly been called upon to explain, not only the events of the book but the actions of the characters within it. Does Neville end up with Luna, clamour the fans. Was Snape redeemed? No and yes, replies JK Rowling, saving everybody the trouble of actually having to think about it for a second. I'm not a rabid deconstructionist, I don't believe there is nothing outside the text but I certainly do believe that JK Rowling shouldn't be standing there on the text's doorstep, telling her readers precisely how to interpret and respond to it. In bald terms: it is the writer's job to write. It is the reader's task, and the reader's pleasure, to interpret what is written. If you can dig up enough textual evidence to support a Neville/Luna tendre then it has the potential to be there. Although why you'd want it to be eludes me.

Similarly, in the epilogue of the seventh book, Harry offers us Rowling's final evaluation of the characters of Snape and Dumbledore. Snape is the "bravest man" Harry ever knew and, despite having essentially raised him to be a sacrificial lamb, Dumbledore has been re-instated as a beloved mentor figure. This is not explicitly stated in the text but if Harry had really come to a mature understanding as Dumbledore as a flawed control freak capable of sending a seventeen year old boy to his death he wouldn't be naming his child after him. Readers usually think what protagonists think, it's the way it works, especially in books where there is relatively little deviation from the protagonist's point of view so Harry's attitude to both Snape and Dumbledore in the epilogue becomes a statement of authorial authority.

The rather-late-in-the-day revelation of Dumbledore's moral ambiguity is irritating in a book that should have been concentrating on the final climatic battle between good and evil and love and death. On the other hand if you take it to its logical conclusion, not, in fact, that Dumbledore raised a hero but that Dumbledore deliberately and callously created a martyr then it becomes rather interesting. Or it would be if the epilogue, and the book in general, allowed the reader any such space in which to manoeuvre. Dumbledore is not, actually, open to interpretation because Harry's love and admiration for him remain unchanged, as demonstrated by the fact he named his child Albus. And I don't think at that stage we're meant to be questioning Harry's psychological health.

Snape, also, suffers a fatal loss of complexity. Although the fact that Harry stiles him brave probably suggests he has not entirely forgotten how entirely horrid Snape was to him for seven books but, in JK's world view, being mean and petty and traitorous and selfish is less important than having been in love when you were sixteen. Changing sides because the bad guy suddenly threatens a girl you want to boink is significantly less morally sophisticated than changing sides because you suddenly realise you've joined the Nazis With Superpowers but, regardless, I could tolerate the Snape Loved Lily revelation because, as far as I was concerned, it didn't make Snape one jot more sympathetic. This isn't to say I don't like Snape (he and Gilderoy Lockhart are my two favourite characters) but I have always liked him because he is unattractive and unsympathetic and petty. The disaster at the end The Order of the Phoenix occurs not because Kreacher betrayed Sirius for treating him like shit but because Snape couldn't get over himself for five minutes to teach Harry occulemcy and because Snape always seemed so untrustworthy a spy that Harry dares not trust him to alert the Order when he blurts out his fears about Sirius. However, the idea that love can be selfish is not a possibility in JK Rowling's world and Snape's infatuation with Lily Potter redeems him so completely that even the boy he ruthlessly bullied for seven years is willing to immortalise him in the naming of his children.

JK herself admits that Snape is, basically, kind of horrible (not her words) but she insists that he is brave and, in her rather simplistic worldview, bravery - that irritating Gryffindor virtue - is an attribute so overwhelmingly laudable that it eclipses all others. It is depressing beyond belief that it essentially transforms Snape - the only remotely admirable Slytherin - into a Gryffindor-at-heart. Furthermore, although acting as a double agent for a half-mad, unpredictable mass murdering psychopath is quite brave, it strikes me as being rather less brave to do it because you've been manoeuvred into it for the price of saving someone you happen to fancy. On the other hand, acting as a double agent for a half-mad, unpredictable, mass murdering psychopath because you decide that your conscience can't countenance working for him any more is bloody brave. It's a very personal decision with only nebulous and general benefits, whereas doing it for an individualis directly related to your own desires.

The Harry Potter books are not written to be read in any sense that I would understand it. They're there to be passively received and carefully cross-checked against the author's (externally established) intent. It's like a hundred and fifty years of literary theory never happened. I'm unsurprised that JKR's next work is to be an encyclopaedia because it's obviously what she wanted to be writing all along. I'm not, by any means, saying she's deliberately being sinister and trying to oppress her readership but as the books have progressed there's been an increasing preoccupation in establishing a set of approved readings. An encyclopaedia, even of one relating to an imaginary world, is still a way of introducing sources of absolute truth into something that should be as fluid and incalculable as the differences between my imagination and yours. What astonishes and horrifies me is not that JK is trying to do it but that everyone keen for her to do so.

I think this is the major reason the epilogue of the seventh book offends me as much as it does. I mean, there are others, of course, most related to the fact it stinks. But by establishing her characters, precisely as she wants them, nineteen years on from the events of the book, JK pins them down in perpetuity. I would like to think that the characters went on to pursue lives not entirely and absolutely determined by what they did (and who they did) at school. Oh foolish me. Also it strikes me as particularly low thing to do for a writer who owes so much to her fandom. It's the equivalent of those girly posters on Sirius's wall (he was never even the slightest bit gay ever!); a rather petty attempt to establish enduring canon relationships exactly the way she wants them: Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione. And Scorpius and Albus-Severus. Obviously.Themes:

J.K. Rowling

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Books

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Young Adult / Children

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Wendy B

at 22:02 on 2007-08-15Excellent points. Bravo.

In my opinion, Jo wasted a tremendous opportunity. She should have written the 7th tale from both Harry and Snape's perspective. After six years of a Harry-filtered world, it would have been so illuminating if she had allowed Snape a real voice so we could understand what drove him, besides the fact that his boss offed his fantasy girlfriend. I believe Jo dislikes the character of Snape as she certainly begrudges fandom's interest in him. Instead she gives us a confusing answer to the question of whether Snape was good or evil. Answer: he was good, evil, AND in it for himself. If she hopped off her precious Harry filter and just let go of the narrative misdirection writing techinque (which had limited value in the final book) it could of been a great tale. Instead...blech.

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Arthur B

at 22:23 on 2007-08-15Rowling is never going to give up narrative misdirection. It's her one and only trick, and ever since she was able to steamroller her editors into publishing whatever she writes she's even got sloppy at that. The next two books she's got planned after the Potter encyclopedia - the new children's book and her project for grown-ups - are going to be terrible.

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Wardog

at 10:32 on 2007-08-16Many thanks, Wendy - I think there's my original review knocking around in the archives somewhere, but Dan's is much better because I was still in a weird state of denial that the book was as bad as I suspected it was.

I didn't realise JKR begrudged fandom their interest in Snape; I thought she certainly hated the popularity of Lupin because books 5 onwards are basically a character-assassination piece on the poor guy, which is a shame because I always rather liked Lupin and I thought his flaws (his desperation to be liked, his inability to stand up to his more confident friends, his general sense of divided-identity) were rather cool. I sometimes wonder if interest perhaps peaked when it became impossible in everyone's minds for him to look like anybody other than Alan Rickman :)

But the books have *always* been about Harry so I suspect offering a new perspective and point of view in the final book would be massively jarring, not that I wouldn't have welcomed anything that stage! I think one of the reasons that Snape worked so well was because he was elusive and, therefore, seemed infinitely more complex than JKR actually thought he was. I quite liked the fact he was in love with Lily Potter but I wish he'd been allowed at least one other character trait.

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Wardog

at 10:34 on 2007-08-16Hmmm...Arthur...your reference to narrative misdirection now has me imagining some kind of bastard-monster consisting of bits of JK and bits of Joss Whedon. The pain!

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Arthur B

at 12:32 on 2007-08-16As far as Lupin goes, it's pretty clear to me that he was meant to show up in

Prisoner of Azkaban

, be a red herring ("It's always the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher!"), and go away again. Then the collective howling of fandom when he didn't have a bigger role in book 4 prompted Rowling to drag him out in book 5, only to commence running him down and emphasising his essential irrelevance.

It's strange how the Harry Potter books seem to have been shaped in some places by JK's response to her fans - even when she doesn't give the fans what they want, she ends up doing things precisely

because

it's not what the fans want (witness Sirius's girly posters). It'd be interesting to see how the series would have turned out if Rowling had been completely isolated from the fandom.

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Wardog

at 14:19 on 2007-08-16Dan pointed out a while back that since JKR wrote the prologue eighty years ago (or whatever) and Teddy Lupin is in it, Lupin's arc was probably always pretty much the same. Although I think in interviews she talks about how important it was to her to kill parents so ... who knows the hell is going on? Also, is it me, but do you think he dies at the battle of Hogwarts just so he can show up with the Suicide Club?

But then I suppose books have always been shaped to *some* extent by fans and fan demands - look at Sherlock Holmes.

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Arthur B

at 14:33 on 2007-08-16I'm not convinced that the epilogue we got is, in fact, the epilogue she wrote way back when and put in a safe in case she died before writing book 7 or something, simply because there's a nigh-total lack of exposition: I suspect she scrapped or heavily rewrote the old one since it was no longer necessary.

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lessofthat

at 01:14 on 2007-08-28"What astonishes and horrifies me is not that JK is trying to do it but that everyone keen for her to do so."

You're right to be horrified, but not to be astonished. Look at the screechy, barely sane arguments in the various fandoms about what is and is not canon. Or the existence of Star Trek and Star Wars technical manuals. Fans (I mean the word in the geeky, semi-stalkery sense, not the generic one) don't want literature, they want an alternative universe they can buy maps of.

"bravery[..]is an attribute so overwhelmingly laudable that it eclipses all others"

Susan Sontag said, correctly, that courage was a morally neutral virtue. She was talking about the 9/11 hijackers at the time.

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Wardog

at 15:03 on 2007-08-28I know I shouldn't be astonished but it's necessary for me not degenerating in a pile of embittered, contemptuous goo that I am.

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Whenmarshmallowssnap

at 20:47 on 2007-08-28I didn't appreciate all the 'fluff' Rowling put in that should have been good narrative. I thought most of the Dumbledore backplot was kind useless and didn't really add to the story. Also, it was so unlike for Team Potter (as Dan likes to call them) to sit in a tent twiddling their thumbs, that I wondered vaguely if JK Rowling didn't have anything remotely interesting to write and settled for the trio wasting their time pointlessly. Plus, I fell through so many plot holes, I broke both my ankles.

"...a rather petty attempt to establish enduring canon relationships exactly the way she wants them..." Thank you for that. I did not like the fact that she controlled every single aspect of the characters' lives so that nothing is left to the readers' imagination. I wish Harry ended up with Cho Chang, and became an ex-convict. It would have added spontaneity to an otherwise boring and disappointing finish of the epic (read:really long and ingratiating) Harry Potter series.

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Arthur B

at 14:29 on 2007-10-20Have you seen

this

? Not content to pull the rug out of the "Sirius is gay" crowd, Rowling has now declared that Dumbledore was gay all along, and was dating Grindlewald until that whole "Wizard-Hitler" thing caused them to split up.

Now, let's see what's objectionable about this...

- Author assigning attributes to a character which they never even hinted at during the actual books? Check.

- The one canonical gay relationship in the entire series being a terrible mistake on Dumbledore's part? Check.

- A homosexual, who was previously evil (or at best a collaborator) and in a relationship, is now unquestionably good and rigorously asexual. Implications that gays are better off living a celibate life? Check.

- Rowling jerking the fans around like puppets, and them applauding her for it anyhow like Winston Smith at the end of

1984

knuckling under and loving Big Brother like all the rest of the beaten-down herds?

Check.

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M Harris

at 06:09 on 2007-10-21Also this:

The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think ti's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.

[Loud applause.]

This entire interview is quite... freaky/weird.

The website it is on is this (I don't know how to make it into a link like Arthur B did):

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/20/j-k-rowling-at-carnegie-hall-reveals-dumbledore-is-gay-neville-marries-hannah-abbott-and-scores-more

[Linkified by webmaster]

You might want to read the answer to the question about Nazi parallels.

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M Harris

at 10:30 on 2007-10-21Oh no, I'm reading comments about this on Mugglenet and I want to kill people.

"anyway i think you choose to be gay or straight. i don't think ur born gay. and since ppl. are judged by their actions/choices, i don't think gay ppl. are all that great. don't jump on me now, just sayin wat i think."

"It has to be a joke. The Harry Potter fandom would have been much smaller otherwise. Personally, I would not have read and loved the series if one of the main characters had been gay. What kind of "children's book" would that be? That type of "lifestyle" may be acceptable in Britain, but its not viewed so favorably everywhere (like the entire Southern United States). While there are exceptions here, they are the extreme minority."

And then these idiots:

"JKR is genius! A gay Harry Potter character....wow. That takes true guts. This proves JKR is God. :D"

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Arthur B

at 13:35 on 2007-10-21So, Rowling says

...I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.

which I agree with, and I think it's a shame that that message doesn't actually come through in Harry Potter. The most frequently-appearing authority figure in the books is Dumbledore, who is basically 100% right all the time. True, he isn't actually massively important in the grand scheme of things, but he's the supreme authority in Harry's world, and it turns out that all of his plans are for the best even when they involve convincing Harry to go get himself killed. The bad guys in the establishment and the press, meanwhile, are always quite obviously bad guys, and Harry usually finds what they have to say objectionable from the get-go.

The lesson seems to be "Trust your instincts: if the person in authority seems nice and trustworthy and is saying things you want to hear, they're probably good. If they seem harsh and unfair and are saying things you don't want to hear, they're bad." That's not exactly a helpful anti-authoritarian message.

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Wardog

at 09:47 on 2007-10-22God, I genuinely tried to rise above this and not think about it. But, no, I'm pissed off. I'm fucking pissed off.

"If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

If it was in any way relevant or important you should have included in the goddamn books!

I was re-reading my Roland Barthes for school the other day and I found myself asking myself whether he was really still relevant or his conception of the Author-God actually exsisted - and JKR has proven the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. I genuinely can't quite believe this. It's not the way books work. It's not like Dickens turned up at his famous lecturers and started giving extra information about the life of Tiny Tim after the end of A Christmas Carol.

Also Dumbledore's sexuality is completely irrelevant, just like his brief flirtation with nazi-ism is completely irrelevant. He's presented as a 2D mentor figure and all the backplot in th world can't change that.

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Dan H

at 18:54 on 2007-10-23

"JKR is genius! A gay Harry Potter character....wow. That takes true guts. This proves JKR is God. :D"

If the internet hadn't destroyed my faith in humanity many years ago, I'd actually assume that one was a joke.

I find it utterly hilarious the way that JKR's "prolonged argument for tolerance" is so hidebound by her middle-class value-system that she genuinely can't see how - well - completely intolerant it is for, for example, the one canonical homosexual relationship in the entire series to have been a colossal mistake that wound up causing the wizarding equivalent of the second world war.

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Melissa G.

at 18:51 on 2009-12-08This is a really late comment, but I've been HP-obsessed the past few weeks. And I just want to say that what bothered me most about the "plea for tolerance" aspect was actually that she had a slave race that actually enjoyed being slaves and if we took that away from them, they'd turn into sobbing drunks. The idea that slaves like being slaves and they'd have nothing without slavery is so archaic and horrific an idea that it pains me to see it played for laughs with Winky.

#Ferretbrain #J.K. Rowling #Harry Potter #Wardog #Death of the Author