#THEY EVEN FOUND THE TIME TO GIVE THEM ALL INDIVIDUAL NUANCED BACK STORIES NOT ME OUT HERE BEING EMOTIONAL ABOUT THEIR LITTLE SLEEPOVER | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

danddymaro · 2 years

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A Day out in Morioh |Rohan Kishibe x Reader

The second part to [[[ Sweet annoyance ]]] because I like La drama.

Includes A run in with a dangerous man, a worried Rohan, and a lot of interaction with Josuke.

Word count: 5,979

A Day Out In Morioh

The young woman had gone about her day with a rather unperturbed expression that inclined more to budding wonder as she walked along the neighborhood that soon lead into a more populated area with different shops and streets.

Sure, she had an unpleasant moment with Rohan, but after she was able to walk outside and get some fresh air, she realized that maybe she was suffocating him.

'he's used to working alone,' she thought to herself, having to remind herself of that. 'And here I come... and he has to stop everything for me,' she added with a grimace.

It was regrettable, but she'd become something of nuance for a man that was not only used to being to himself, but that needed that solidarity to complete his work.

She understood that, and yet, it still hurt to be at the end of his frustrated outburst.

The little incoming thoughts that related to him wouldn't stop, and helplessly, she shook her head to somehow scramble her brain just a little bit to wash them away as though her mind worked like an Etch A' Sketch.

As time progressed, (f/n) silently walked along the sidewalk, idly staring at the lively crowd that had slowly formed with concerned, (light/dark) eyes.

The good mood she'd been in, and that had only seemed to go up with the more of Morioh she was introduced to, suddenly sank as she realized her current predicament.

She'd blinked once, and after that single second of distraction, it seemed like all of Morioh had simultaneously decided to fill out the streets to where it was not long before everything seemed to melt together.

The already unfamiliar surroundings seemed completely alien to her, every direction she looked in not convincing her they'd lead her home.

"Sorry!" she breathed not once, but countless times as people bumped her on each shoulder, lame apologies being said in return by individuals who hadn't actually bothered to spare a quick glance of acknowledgment back at her during their route home.

- And then there were those that truly brushed her entire existence aside, not even uttering a word, their eyes not shifting from their place forward to glance at the person they'd bumped into.

She then scurried through a couple of passing people that chatted with each other, presumably coworkers that decided to spend just a little bit more time with each other based on their matching uniforms.

Her (e/c) colored eyes tried to find familiarity in her surroundings as she continued to follow the direction she'd already been turned to, but in the midst of her growing alarm, she couldn't quite remember exactly what way to turn back home, and it frustrated her greatly.

'Think!' she commanded herself, 'Just think!' she continued to inwardly cry as she tightly shut her eyes, her two hands flying toward her cheeks as she tried to wake some part in her that had the answers she needed.

It was in there, she knew it.

However, she was fed back nothing, no street names, or even recognizable landmarks that could give her a clue. Instead, the only thing she could possibly think of was the teal-eyed man and the pestering question of whether or not he'd actually found himself something to eat.

That, and whether or not he'd managed to finish up on the new week's chapter he'd diligently worked on and had been somewhat stuck on story-wise.

Had he even bothered to make his way out of his study?

She asked herself that, knowing that it was possible he hadn’t.

much more, had he even noticed she was gone?

"Ah...." she let out a soft, sad breath, "Rohan..." she then airily murmured, growing warm over the possibility of him noticing and showing the slightest concern, eventually saving her from more aimless walking and worry by finding her.

It would be a stroke of luck.

However, as much relief as the thought brought her, she couldn't help but feel even more ashamed as she realized that yet again she'd found a way to be a little pebble in his shoe.

A sudden bump in with a new person had her thoughts shaken, her body jolting at the contact.

Her upturned eyebrows quickly rose high as her body bumped into another, and while the impact wasn't powerful enough to make her fall back onto the concrete floor, it was enough to make her stumble back a few steps.

Her hands both clutched close to her chest in surprise, the brisk, frigidity action done just before her fingers tightly curled into the fabric of her top and held onto it like a lifeline.

At that very moment, her puff of air was caught in her throat, the inhale of oxygen halted for a few seconds as she acted upon her shock.

The shuddered breath she released was audible, and it had the man before her actually stop to glance down at her, acknowledging her in the midst of his monotonous day.

Blue eyes so profound and solemn that they were darkened down to near indigo stared down at her with an itching annoyance that was paired with a slight curl to his upper lip before his gaze zeroed down to her clutching hands that, by then, as a result of his stare had become shaken.

Rebellious strands of waved gold fell forward from behind his left ear, and silently, his matching hand rose to draw them back, long, slim fingers that were accented by overgrown nails raking down the blonde hair during the process.

"I'm...I'm sorry," she finally managed to say, her words both soft and stunned, matching her startled demeanor. She managed to muster up a smile, one that was as equally quavered as she was, though kind and definitely touched by an apology of its own.

Gradually, the rather unkind expression he bore shifted, and a welcoming smile warmed his cold features, matching the sparking interest that melted the ice in his deep blues.

"I'm sorry..." she breathed again, her knees nearly buckling as his stare made her feel shamefully bare, enough that her expression faltered, the shy smile dying down.

Maybe it was that she wasn't used to anyone else besides Rohan.

Briefly, she reasoned that perhaps it was that she was overwhelmed by someone else's attention.

However, A boy named Koichi came by once during her stay, and she hadn't been nearly as fearful.

Instead, she'd been delighted to meet someone else, in fact, she'd been disappointed when his visit had been brief, one where they'd only exchanged pleasantries after he'd talked to Rohan about something in secrecy.

They'd been in his study, talking about something serious based on how sour Rohan seemed afterward.

And she wondered what it was.

She'd also met the delivery man that Rohan had hired to run errands, and he'd been a pleasant guest as well, one she'd made idle talk with for just a moment before he'd been practically swatted away by the flustered manga artist after the elder man had innocently asked about who she was to him.

The word 'girlfriend' had been thrown around and it had made Rohan choke, waving off the man with a notable bother.

"And what are you laughing at?" Rohan asked as he turned back to her, his eyebrow raised as he looked down at her, and while he tried to seem annoyed, she couldn't take him seriously with how much color his face had been filled with. Rouge touched his cheeks and even crawled down his neck, making her shake her head quickly, a hand pressed over her mouth as she tried to hide her smile.

She hadn't thought anything of it, becoming too enthralled at the sight of such an expression from the great Rohan Kishibe.

(f/n) had met new people, few, but none like this man.

-this man who had her so fretful.

Everyone around her seemed to pass with disinterest, only having the politeness to move around them, and it made her feel even more exposed to the man because they were left in a little bubble of their own.

And that bubble was slowly thickening with tension that nearly suffocated her, making the air almost hard to breathe.

" You're in quite the panic," he noted, the statement making the hairs on the back of her neck stand, alarmed.

His voice was somehow warm, yet icy all the same, and she couldn't understand why the man made her feel so strange, so afraid.

'Rohan can be cold too, ' she tried to reason, swallowing thickly. 'Sometimes he has a sharp tongue...but I never feel this way,' she added.

'I never feel so afraid,' She thought with alarm.

' A pretty thing like you...so stiffened and in need to be held,' The man silently mused while watching the little hands before him anxiously squirm.

'This must be fate...Right?' he continued to contemplate as warmth blossomed within his chest, a fluttering feeling festering in his stomach as well, and it all felt so remarkably sweet and familiar.

‘As they say...Love at first sight,’ he mused.

The air smelled sweet, and his skin burned to have hers brush over it.

'For you to run into me...’ he started, ‘- to awaken this feeling in me again,' he thought with giddiness, quickly forgetting his former love's name.

There was a blank space left there, and there was an urge to have the loveliness before him fill that opening.

'Looking at you my dear...finding you...I've already forgotten her name...her touch...Her warmth...' he mused with a touch of mischievousness.

'- You look so warm my dear, ' he inwardly commented, knowing that any more thoughts to feel that graceful touch would force him to do something brash.

At that moment, the hand that held his briefcase curled harshly,

"...Quite careless," he murmured lowly, speaking to her, but also addressing himself and the beast that festered within him.

' - To want to take you now, right in the middle of this crowd,' he went on, nearly shaking with anticipation.

"You're aimlessly wondering," he stated, softly chiding her.

" It'll get dark soon you know," he informed her, and she nodded in agreeance, wishing she were already home, wishing she never would have stepped foot out.

'I can't wait to have you alone,' he started as during then, he took a small step closer.

She inched back at the seemingly harmless step, doing so upon instinct, something she hadn't thought of until he commented on it, unafraid to use his voice, unlike her.

"Why so fretful?" he questioned her, speaking almost teasingly.

Her mouth moved, and she practically gaped, not knowing what to say or respond with.

"I..." she swallowed thickly, and slowly her vision began to blur, tears welling inside them, against her will bubbling at the edges of her eyes as she stood frozen.

Why couldn't she move?

"You're shaking," he observed, not at all one to stay silent at what his eyes captured, especially when the reactions he received were pleasing.

"Aren't you a shy one..." he mused, and she shivered even more, her knees buckling.

He started to speak again but before he could utter another word, a different voice rang, his attention tearing from the woman before him to find another approach.

"Mr. Kira!" she said while soon standing near him, her long legs straining to reach him as quickly as possible, having run from the building they worked to him in a quick, desperate sprint, "Mr. Kira, I know this might be inappropriate..." she started, but it became background noise to him as his eyes trailed back to where the (h/c) haired young woman had stood before him, the space now empty.

It had taken just a moment, a single opening for her to make a quick escape, taking the chance the second it presented itself. She was not only greatful for the chance but for the fact that her brain's message had finally reached the rest of her, propelling her into a sprint.

Through the openings that fell between the walking people, he watched his darling retreat, aggravation festering within him while the fleeting woman, in turn, felt flooding relief as she drew farther.

She turned back once, and as she did his dark eyes found hers, and yet again she felt helpless.

It was as though wherever she went, she would never escape, and the feeling stayed with her even while the distance between them became greater.

Yoshikage bit his tongue, swallowing down a nasty snarl as he turned back to his coworker who looked up at him with large, dark eyes that had hope shining within them.

She batted her eyelashes, coyly hoping to persuade him, accomplishing something no one else had been able to, and that was to get Yoshikage Kira to hang out after work.

It wasn't the first time he'd been approached, and like every other time he put on a friendly face, a faux kindness returned to people he truly could care less about.

――――――――――――――――

'I don't know where I'm going,' (f/n) started as she continued to move in the opposite direction.

'- But I want it to be away from him! ' she thought with determination, the sickly feeling he flooded her with far too unbearable to even recall.

She'd started to run, her legs not giving out by exhaustion, but by a numbing pain that stilled her, the scalding ache far too unbearable to withstand.

Her right hand rose to her chest, and to her horror blood oozed from her left bosom, the color coating the extremity before her flesh came in contact with a sharp, scarlet-drenched tip.

In disbelief, her eyes went down to see the red-adorned, golden point that had sprung from her.

She wanted to scream but was silenced by a shock that had made her grow cold.

In spite of the numbing pain, she continued to walk forward, her feet slowly shifting, the energy she had similar to that of a wind-up that was on its last round.

She could feel thick trickles travel through her fingers, blood being left behind where she moved in red little specks.

As she continued to walk along the road, aimlessly, with no destination, her body slumped forward into something that was warm.

Latching, she cradled whatever had come near, needing its support, hoping to somehow have its warmth transferred to her, and simultaneously, she looked up to the hazy figure of the color blue.

Her voice was caught within her throat, but her lips moved, forming each syllable with need, pleading for help.

- And that's how she found Josuke.

" Josuke Higashikata?" She repeated back, a genuine smile gracing her as she tried out the name for herself, already saying it with fondness.

"Yep, nice to meet you," he said back, a very kind smile gracing him, the teen being just the opposite of the other male she'd encountered.

Josuke was nice and pleasant and she mellowed around him, eased by his presence alone, trusting him after the terrifying incident that she still didn't quite understand.

He'd made her pain go away, and she wouldn't have believed him if she hadn't watched him hold the arrow that pierced her.

She also wouldn't have believed him if she hadn't caught sight of what seemed like a ghosting figure behind him, the outline of it visible, but barely.

Her eyes were squinted as she looked over his shoulder, trying to get a better look of what it was that was there, looming. There wasn't anything wrong with her sight. She could see everything perfectly clear, all except that one large patch of something that hovered above and seemed to have the outline of a person.

The blue eyed male noticed, and he pulled up a soft smile, understanding.

"Can you see it?" he asked her, watching as at the question, she seemed to concentrate harder, trying to find what ‘it’ was.

"I don't know..." she breathed. " What am I looking at? ... if anything," she added with confusion.

"I see something but it's like that one spot is blurry like it's a blind spot," she explained, and Jojo nodded.

It occurred to him that perhaps things would come gradually to her. Koichi's stand hadn't manifested immediately, perhaps her own abilities and stand itself needed time to be lured out.

' I should get her to Jotaro...' he thought to himself, ' and the arrow to-'

"Huh?" he whipped around, turning over in every direction as he searched for the cursed thing.

He'd set it aside for a moment as he asked her questions, and now it was gone.

"Oh shit..." he breathed, his teeth clenched in annoyance.

"What's wrong?" (f/n) asked him, her right hand's palm pressed over her temple as she tried to soothe down the persisting thick pules that bothered her.

Her flesh was coated by a thin sheet of sweat, and she felt like she was coming down with something.

The highschooler's thick brows inched down, frustration knitted in between them as he murmured out his response,

"It's nothing..." he told her, making sure to keep the woman close, not confident in leaving her by herself.

She seemed entirely too clueless, holding a sense of vulnerability he could see someone taking advantage of, especially in her disoriented state.

Besides... he needed to ask her more.

He needed to know what her stand was.

He had to know her name, everything he could.

" So… You're new here," he said back as a statement, hearing her out as he looked up at the sky, focused on the cute puffy clouds that decorated the atmosphere.

She silently nodded, "Yeah," she added, gently smiling.

'You could say so,' she thought with halfhearted amusement, not really going into too many details aside from that.

It wasn't that she didn't trust him, but she reasoned that it was quite a bizarre story to tell, even more bizarre than being shot with an arrow that had magically been healed by some ghost thing he'd called a stand.

"- So I don't know my way around Morioh," (f/n) said embarrassed, her eyes strayed far, heat rising over her cheeks.

'I don't know how to get back to Rohan's….' she thought to herself, not bothering to mention that she'd been completely lost.

Gradually his eyes fell from the sky, his attention drawn down to her as he heard the somewhat pathetic tone she had spoken with.

The dark-haired teen remained silent for a few seconds, simply watching the shame that flooded her features, and as he did, his pleasant smile lifted up more, and his eyes softened at the sight,

"You're new around here," he easily concluded. " You're not expected to know your way around so easily," he said with a comforting tone.

"I get lost around certain spots of this town, and I've lived here all my life," he added, making her sullen expression lighten.

"- If you want, I could show you around," he offered (f/n).

"Josuke..." (f/n) then started, her voice alone holding gratefulness.

"Could you please?" she asked him.

"Sure," he said in happy chirp. "-But," he then said while suddenly stopping, standing before her and raising two fingers.

"Two conditions," he said, and she nodded quickly, attentively listening.

"First, " he started, "You and me," he said while pointing the finger in between themselves, "We stick together. After all this, I have to keep an eye on you," he said with certainty, taking on the responsibility without question.

Who's to say that the person who struck her had any good intentions?

Besides, a killer was out there, and if anyone made a good target it was her.

"And two, after this, we go and see Jotaro," he said, and the name struck her.

"Kujo?" she said suddenly, seeming excited she might know who he was talking about, and that took the teen back.

"Eh?! Hold on you know him?" He said with wide eyes, and (f/n) then seemed more lively, her hand taking his as she jumped up and down happily.

"I Do!" she cheered.

'Yes. Yes Yes,' she inwardly cheered.

Jotaro was someone that Josuke seemed to respect, and it happened to be the same Jotaro Rohan knew too and had made a few calls to before.

What if they all knew each other?

"josuke! Josuke!" she then said with the same happiness, "Do you know Rohan Kishibe?!" she asked, and that had the boy's kind expression sour.

he looked like he tasted a lemon, as he huffed out a low, "Yeah."

'Well...looks like they do know each other... personally,' she thought with a little cold sweat falling down her brow, seemingly less enthusiastic.

"Hold on, Hold on," Josuke then said while his hands slipped out of her hold, the two flying to his head where he held then pressed the tips of his fingers to the sides of his skull.

"Don't tell me you're his girlfriend," he muttered with both annoyance and partial disbelief.

"- Koichi told me about you," he added as it all clicked.

"He'd said Rohan had a pretty girl staying with him, that he'd called her his girlfriend.

- Ah, no...he said that she was special to him," he then corrected himself.

The sudden knowledge had the woman stunned, and she quickly turned away, chuckling softly, too nervous to ask more.

‘Special,’ she thought to herself, her heart racing.

Special how?

Special as in he liked her... or special as in, ‘I found this person wandering in my property, and we can’t find nay records of her anywhere?’

She didn’t have the nerve to ask, so instead she moved on,

" - yeah, we can go see Jotaro!" she then said, moving past everything else the guy beside her had said.

“But then you take me back home,” She said as her own condition.

“You don’t know how to get back , huh?” the Joestar descendent guessed smugly.

Hanging her head she released a shamed, “yeah.”

“You in a rush to get home?” he then asked her, to which she shook her head.

“Why?” she asked him, curious.

" ‘ cause, I know this cool café," he informed her, pointing ahead with a grin, " It's just a street away, wanna go? " he asked, "My treat," he added just as they were cleared to cross. He’d been paying attention to her to notice the sign change, but luckily she’d been sharper.

She nodded fastly, happy to join him for a treat, sit down and maybe talk more about stands, and whatever the arrow had to do with them.

She noticed the sign for them to go, and hurriedly, she took his hand, pulling him behind her, "Come on!" she said while he stumbled to catch up after the sudden yank.

"Come on Jojo!" she said happily as he caught up with her, managing to lead for just a few seconds.

"You don't even know where you're going!" he said in a long breath.

"I know!" she said back, “ that's why I need you to hurry!" she laughed.

'I really like him,' she thought to herself, thinking that she'd made her first actual friend in Morioh.

It wasn't some meet and greet that had them gone soon after, but rather a little connection that made her optimistic about more relationships.

During their run, they'd been spotted by a frantic, green-eyed man whose steps slowly lost their hurry as he found the one person he’d been in desperate search for.

"Josuke...Higashitaka..." Rohan snarled, and he couldn't help but say the name in a way he'd only ever said curses.

"Ughh, I can't believe it!" Kishibe heard a familiar voice whine, the rasp of it unmistakable, so he had no reason to turn his neck and look.

Okuyasu walked with slumped shoulders as he plopped down on the seat next to his shorter, white-haired friend on the public bench.

"What's the matter Okuyasu?" Koichi asked with concern, and Rohan only barely eyed him, more annoyed with the fact that his conversation with his acquaintance had been interrupted.

He was curious as to whether or not Koichi had seen (f/n) anywhere, and if not then he’d been ready to ask if he could lend a hand finding her.

"- Josuke's out on a date," Nijimura explained.

"he's out with this girl,” he stated, " - They were by the park, and they were holding hands," he added lowly.

“Josuke’s got a girl and he didn’t even say anything,” he lamented.

"- It's not fair" he exclaimed while crossing his arms, pouting.

"You and Yukako are goin' out, and Josuke's got his own girl now too," he said with clear envy.

"- When am I gonna find someone?" he whined, and Rohan scoffed at the ridiculous ‘problem’, as though there weren’t more important things in life.

Teenagers and their ridiculous issues.

- Their relationships.

“Hey,” Koichi started, “You’ll find someone, I'm sure of it,” he assured his friend.

“You have nothing to worry about,” he added.

“Easy for you to say,” the dark haired male grumbled. “You have nothing to worry about,” he added enviously before breaking down,

"I just don't want to end up alone like him!" Okuyasu said with teary eyes, a finger pointed to the elder male whose nostrils flared at the attention.

“Excuse me?!” Rohan huffed. "I'll have you know I'm perfectly fine alone!" The mangaka exclaimed.

'- I don't need anyone,' he reminded himself.

“Of course you’d say that,” the dark eyed male said with pursed lips, and it took Hirose a good minute to mediate, deescalating things when he offered to help Rohan in his predicament, prompting Okuyasu to also offer his own aid.

'- I don't need anyone,' he told himself again, walking by himself, having split up with Koichi and Okuyasu to cover more ground.

'So, It doesn't bother me,' Rohan thought with a long exhale, the breath released through his nose, the air hot and burning as he’d found who he was looking for.

she was safe and sound, having the time of her life, so it seemed.

And he couldn’t stop his rueful shaking as he watched them.

'I don't care...' he added, watching as Josuke pushed his dessert plate to (f/n), offering her a bite of his slice of cake. He had his own fork in his hand, suspended as it held a little piece while he insisted she take her own share.

And (f/n) took little convincing, picking at a corner with more icing, happiness flooding her features before she pushed her own towards Josuke, doing just as he had.

. . .

"Go ahead!" she urged him, “ it's not as good as yours, but it's really spongy,” she assured him. “ oh man...next time I come I'll order that one," (f/n) said while eyeing his share longingly.

she wanted to ask for more, but she held back.

"Next time trust me!" Josuke said while grinning because he'd suggested the dessert and she’d gone with a different one instead. By then, he'd had everything on the menu, and had told her that the one he ordered was the best.

"Ok, but I take care of the bill," she said, letting him know that when they came back, it'd be on her.

"Sounds like a plan," he said, "There's also this place on the edge of town. It's run by this really nice Italian chief." he went on.

"I really recommend it because if anyone puts their heart into what they make, it's him." he praised.

Nodding, (f/n) took another piece of her desert, attentively listening.

"Next time you go... can I tag along?" the young woman asked.

" Of course!

You know, the first time I went was with my friend Okuyasu, and since then it's been our own personal getaway, " he mused. " So he'll tag along, I hope you don't mind," he said sheepishly.

" I know he'd be a little hurt if he knew I went with someone else," he said sounding a little embarrassed.

He knew it sounded a little dumb, but he also knew his good friend too.

"That's great," she said without bother, "That's just someone else I get to meet, and if he's friends with you, he must be a good person." she complimented.

"I'm sure we'll get along just fine," she assured him just as the waiter brought them a specialty drink.

Both of their hands reached for it, blindly moving before they accidentally touched.

simultaneously, they jumped, immediately breaking out into a fit of little nervous chuckles.

"My bad," he said.

"Yeah, sorry," she said too.

"You can have it, " he said kindly, not wanting to argue about it. " we ordered the same drink." he reminded her. " I can wait for the next one. It should come out soon," he assured her.

" Thanks," she smiled, " If that's the case Then I'll wait till yours is out," she said calmly, "I'd feel rude just taking it, and having you watch me enjoy it alone."

if he could stop the interrupting blossoming warmth that touched his face, he would, but instead, he lived with it finding it strangely nice.

Seriously,

'What's she doing with Rohan?' he wondered, genuinely curious as to whether or not she was actually with him.

"Girlfriend?!" Josuke exclaimed, "That jerk?" he said aloud.

"Who could stand him for that long?" he asked out loud.

Silently, the elder Jojo listened, Jotaro's mouth quirking up subtly because when he'd been younger, and much more of a jerk, and even then he'd been an annoying lure for girls.

As he silently sat there, he mused over how anyone could have put up with who he was before either.

"Well, she was in his house. and it looks like she's staying there." Koichi informed them.

"He talks about her sweetly. Well, as sweet as he can be," he added.

“I think he really likes her,” the blue eyed male said softly chuckling.

"- And she's real friendly, I can see why he’d like her so much.

I wouldn't have minded staying longer and getting to know her better, but my mom had sent me on an errand, so I was a little stretched for time," he explained.

'Opposites attract,' Josuke started, ' but this much?' he added, curious.

"Josuke " Rohan exhaled like a bull ready to charge, and he even stomped his foot one good time before charging.

"Josuke Higashikata…." Rohan hissed, "You little punk," He said with the same spite.

" Josuke Higashikata..." he bellowed, "YOU GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF OF HER THIS INSTANT!" He called out, long legs in a quick stride towards the pair, ignoring the traffic light that beamed red.

He didn’t even care that the touch had lasted for even a second.

Both people flinched, startled at the roaring voice, and the outcry of fury was strong enough to startle a few other people on their peaceful afternoons.

Josuke froze while (f/n) had the opposite reaction, jolting from her seat, and springing up.

" Hands off Because she's mine you got that?!" Kishibe barked, the possessive claim stopping even more onlookers.

The cafe's other customers looked on with surprise too, trying to pretend they didn't notice a thing as they hid behind their menus and servings, none being convincing.

But it's not like Rohan had any mind for them now.

"R-Rohan?" (F/n) sputtered, her eyes widely peeled as she jumped out of her chair, suddenly standing pin straight.

- And it was all she could think of saying before he continued,

"And you!" he then said while shooting his sharp eyes at the young woman,

"I've been looking for you everywhere!" Kishibe spoke, letting her know how half of his day had gone, the terrible stress he'd been under making him imagine the worst.

He'd pictured that she'd been dragged away to some dark corner, scared and alone, left at the hands of some villain.

He could only consider that he'd never see her again, that he'd be stuck having to remember her as a sweet memory that had slipped through his fingers because he’d been such an idiot.

And then that idiot Okuyasu Nijimura would have a point.

He would have had too many regrets, too many nights to ponder over what he could have done to change it all.

And that apology he was holding onto and thought she would have to beat out of him ?

It had so easily slipped out the second he thought of such a scenario.

"I've been so worried," he admitted, and he felt a burning embarrassment as the words just left him before he could consider them.

" It tormented me to imagine you'd run off...hurt by my words..." he said, admitting it with a wounded chest. " I was worried before...but now... now that I find you

- it burns me to know you've been out with someone else...entertained by... HIM," he hissed at the last bit.

His hand then pressed over her waistline, his other hand grabbing hers and pulling her close, pressing her to him, “ you!” He said again with the same furiousness that hadn’t deterred.

“ You think you can just run off like that!?” He said with brewing annoyance escaping as he leaned down.

He was a mess right now, and it was all because of her.

" I was worried sick, my heart racing, my mind a haze," he said before darting his emerald eyes to the dark-haired male with them, " and then I see you're hand in hand with this...delinquent.." he spat.

'This...guy,' Jojo thought irritated.

"Dude..." Josuke said flatly, finally settling down, staring at the man with a halfhearted glare.

"We're just eating cake," he said with a low sigh, gesturing to the table.

" And If anything you should be thanking me," he added with tightly knit brows as he stood up, pressing his palms to the table with his own frustration.

" I had to use my Crazy diamond to heal her," he let the other man know.

"Heal her?" Rohan suddenly said with wide eyes, Looking down at (f/n) with worry, questioning her.

Her eyes strayed, "There was an arrow" she recalled before one of her hands ghosted over her chest, above where the sharp end had escaped her.

Rohan shifted, holding her close again before the hand that held hers let go, moving to grip her chin, holding it sweetly so he could properly gaze at her.

She suddenly melted, and Rohan noticed it, his face becoming awfully mellowed into a tender expression that showed he was terribly lovesick.

“ You’re okay now, right?” he asked (f/n), his tone almost too kind to sound like it could ever come from him, it almost made Josuke gag.

She nodded, entranced by his eyes as she breathed out a soft, “ yes.”

“I’m glad...” he voiced, the words breathed out before he leaned down, his eyes slowly closing as he met her in a little kiss, one that was short lived, yet blissful.

Meanwhile, her arms both found a path that started at his chest and ended behind his neck,

“Rohan, “ she then asked, batting her eyes at him, still surprised, “- you...you care?” she asked him, her heart fluttering.

It seemed that the press was not enough for her and he shook his head,

“Of course I do you silly girl. Of course I care... “ he said.

Had she not listened to word he said? Could she not see what a mess he was?

Did she not feel the envy that he’d sweated at thinking she was with someone else?

“ (f/n), I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I lost you,” he confessed.

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theresawritesstuff · 9 months

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1, 6, 7, and 9 about your current fave fic of yours (I'm not familiar with what midgexlenny is, but tell me about it if you want to!)

Lol oh I do sometimes feel bad for my poor Sherlolly mutuals putting up with me while I lose it over a different ship ❤️ they're different but the venn diagram of pairings does overlap in places.

First off, this is Midge and Lenny from Amy Sherman Palladino's The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. They're two foul mouthed stand up comedians in the late 1950s/early 1960s and they're soulmates.

If you enjoy Gilmore Girls level fast paced dialogue but with more f bombs and so so so many pretty dresses I definitely recommend at least bits of the show.

Being that Lenny is a fictionalized version of real life comedian Lenny Bruce (originally intended to only appear in the pilot but they brought him back as part of the show because the chemistry was just too good. The actors are friends in real life and the joy in working together comes through in some really beautiful performances) the final canon of the show was a bit handcuffed on just how far the creators decided they could let the ship sail but that's where the fanfic comes in 😂

Which brings me to my fic Guess Who's Coming to Yom Kippur!

*What is your favorite thing about this fic?*

This was my first dive into writing for this fandom and it has been so much fun. Truly delightful! So many things I've enjoyed with this one. But my favorite thing I think is that it really is an ensemble piece. The characters of the show are all very nuanced, often delightfully flawed, sometimes wacky individuals and I love giving them all a seat at the table and getting to know them. Sometimes quite literally within the fic (it centers around a big family dinner for several chapters). I've had to think of scenes cinematically and it's stretched my dialogue writing in a really enjoyable way. There's at least one scene I wrote visualizing it as a long tracking shot with characters moving in and out, very high energy and lovingly chaotic. It's a fic that has a lot to do with family both found and blood related and how love can show up and show through in a lot of humorous ways.

*Were there any alternative versions of this fic?*

Yes! I originally came up with the idea a season prior to my actually getting around to writing it (wrote it after watching season 4, thought of it watching season 3). The original vague concept for it was much shorter and ended with Midge and Lenny in more of an ambiguous but hopeful "maybe someday" where as the current fic has them very much endgame. And I'm quite happy with that. I feel like I discover more about the story and the characters the longer I work on it. I'm eventually going to write a sequel because I'm having so much fun (another first for me!)

*Favorite line of narration/ Favorite bit of dialogue*

So this fic is currently sitting at over 62k words and counting (it comes with trying to emulate Amy Sherman Palladino levels of dialogue) Easily the longest thing I've written 😅😅😅 I'm not sure I could pick any specific favorites without reading through the whole thing again. And maybe not even then. There's a lot of moments I'm very fond of. Though most probably require more context than would make it easy to share. I'll include a snippet of the tracking shot arrival scene I mentioned since that doesn't require a ton of context from the show other than knowing the names mostly.

In this bit they're arriving at a party hosted by Midge's ex in-laws and Lenny is meeting her older brother Noah and his wife Astrid for the first time. Esther is Midge's two year old daughter. Noah is canonically a secret agent. Lenny is known for getting arrested for things he says in his stand up (a proponent of free speech in a red scare era).

They arrived at the Maisel residence as dusk began to settle in over the sleepy suburb.

"Hi everyone! Sorry we're late. Esther needed to make a pit stop," Midge called out as they let themselves through the front door.

"Us too! We just got in," Noah said from somewhere deeper in the house.

Midge set the kids loose and made her way towards the kitchen. "Mama, Shirley, what can I help with? Oh, Esther sweetie, I don't think Grandma wants you touching that."

"Hi Midge," Astrid greeted, coming in holding little Chaim.

"Hey Astrid! One second," Midge called over her shoulder, rushing to corral Esther away from the more breakable tchotkes. "Esther. Esther put that down!"

Lenny smiled, collecting the kids discarded shoes into a pile by the door.

"Oh hi! You must be Midge's friend." Astrid gave him a welcoming smile.

"Lenny," he supplied.

"Lenny. So nice to meet you. I'm Astrid. This is Chaim." She held her son out for him to hold, passing him off. "Would you mind?"

"Oh I–" Lenny took Chaim in hand on reflex as Astrid didn't wait for a yes or no.

"Thanks."

She gave him another quick smile before dashing out the front door and wretching over the porch rail.

Lenny held Chaim at arms length, both too stunned by the transfer to know how to proceed.

"Hello…" he attempted, looking the child in the eye.

"Astrid, honey?" Midge's brother's lanky limbs carried him into the foyer in search of his wife.

Midge returned with a rescued porcelain figurine in hand. "Hey Noah, how was traffic–oh my god."

She stepped out immediately to check on Astrid the moment she saw her, leaving Lenny with Noah and his offspring.

"Yours, I believe," Lenny said finally, handing Chaim to Noah.

"Yeah…" Noah replied, taking his son while glancing after his wife and sister in concern.

The two men stared each other down for a moment, neither one quite sure how to react to the other.

"I'm Lenny."

"I know."

#Writer things #Fic asks #Thanks for letting me ramble!

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triptychgardener · 1 year

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What made you decide to linger with the meat timeline peeps after they had accomplished their goal of cracking younger junes egg?

Hoo boy! Well thank you for asking that question, because it is kind of THE question to a lot of my thoughts and philosophy for how I've been tackling the theming for Early June in my head.

(This is gonna be a long one, brief mention of suicide and longer discussion on kinda heavy transition-related things under the cut)

First off, the most honest answer is that, when I started this fic, I planned out the story. It was originally going to be something like twenty chapters, following pretty much entirely the younger crew. However, I am terminally unable to stop writing and expanding on things. So, I decided to write what their plan would be and their particular thoughts and reservations about it.

The second has to do with the premise of Early June as a whole, whose entire core conceit was perhaps... founded on an unhealthy impulse on Older!June's part. And of course, kind of on my part.

I think a lot of trans people, obviously not all, imagine what it would have been like if they had come out younger. At the very least, I certainly have. And that's kind of the core premise of the damn thing: "what would happen if June came out during the game, and was therefore more "awake" in a personal sense, and can therefore maybe prevent the Meat-adjacent timeline from happening in the first place." That was the set premise with the goal put in place.

But! Most importantly, when this essentially became the largest creative project I have ever put time into, I started to question that premise on a philosophical level. On a practical level, yes, June has absolutely changed things in the timeline that could construed as making the whole thing better. But on Older!June's part, she isn't seeing it at the start as "helping another group of younger players win the game and create a better tomorrow," she is seeing it as herself doing it. Which, due to the passage of time and the deviance between the timelines, isn't really true!

The Ultimate Self as a concept is something I've been ruminating on a lot, as most postcanon-adjacent works tend to do. In a way, I can see it with its intention to both A.) Consolidate the MANY different versions of a character that Homestuck Proper presents and B.) give some weight to them. Even the doomed versions will, in the Ultimate Self, have some influence on who the core of that person is.

But! Like Roxy says to June, to intentionally erase yourself just to add to the ultimate self is kind of tantamount to destroying the "You" that is an individual. And in Early June specifically, I think a lot of characters balk at the idea of essentially being boiled back down to some core concept of who they are as a collective narrative presence. Jake and Roxy at the start, Dove and DS, all of them want to keep their individuality as people and be able to actually choose which parts of themselves they want to keep, discard, or remake, and not just lend cosmic weight to the Ultimate. And therefore, that's why Roxy comes to essentially talk June out of, essentially, deleting them once they've fulfilled their "purpose," which is also me finding out through my own writing that their plan was kind of fucked up, and how I can take these characters much farther. Plus, it is just fun to write these characters as older, and give them some more nuanced positions that they gained as they aged.

Now that's obviously the "In-Canon" reason, which leads to the more personal reason of "someone who regrets not transitioning earlier wants to lose themselves in the idea of a life they, fundamentally, could not have had in their current state." Older!June's life isn't over, even if she feels it is, because, first off, the age you transition at has literally no bearing on your validity as your chosen gender, and secondly, even if you feel like you did all the most important things you've ever done before you transitioned and after that everything's just been a disaster, there is still more life for you to live. Obviously, this is a fictional world that does not conform to our reality, but the author is, as usual, stuck in reality, and given that fiction is often used as a way to process reality through metaphor, Older!June's arc is about learning to salvage what's there instead of starting anew, because this her only has one life to live. Aaaand that of course can very easily be a message applied to people who transition later in life.

This actually WAS going to be partially explained/explored more explicitly in the fic, towards the end of the conversation between Callie and Calliope, (i.e. the [DATA LOST] part), but I decided to omit that conversation between the author figure and them (though I can't promise there won't be any meta/author shenanigans in the future) because A). It got. Really personal at times and even though I'm not opposed to that, B). it was causing me genuine consternation over whether or not I was supposed to include it and I figured that my hobby should probably not be causing me more psychological distress and C). This story is not about me, it is about the characters who I very heavily project onto.

My one regret is that Ado didn't get to make an appearance in the fic proper. Ah well, there's always next time. Thanks for asking, sorry this was kind of a long one!

#q&a #asks #anon

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ssssssssssssss123 · 2 years

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The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions

"Let's drink to the old faggots who were there and helped make this happen just by being there."

Written by Larry Mitchell and illustrated by Ned Astra, The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions is a poetic Queer fairytale and manifesto of love and survival. Mitchell and Astra were founding members of the Lavender Commune, outside of Ithaca, NY, during the 60's/70's and their friendship at the Commune helped to birth this manifesto. Their book was published in 1977 by Calamus Press, a publishing company they created after no one else was willing to publish their work.

This book is a mashup of a children's story and a deep piece of poetic fiction (that reminded me of Muriel Rukeysers novels and poems in that they are equally as hard for me to understand). Mitchell provides an in depth analysis of power - how it forms, how those in power maintain it, and what we would need to do to topple the current power structure.

He does this by splitting society into groups and defining them like so: the Men (those in power and who act to keep power and who are blind to beauty), Queers (those who pose as men but are gay), Faggots (those the men hate on and can not pose as Men and are beautiful), Fairies (the Friends of the Faggots), Women (those who the Men have sex with and who were in power before the Men), The Women who love Women (Those who live separately from the Men and share community with the Faggots and Fairies), and the Queens (probably the most hated by the Men and the most Harrased). All of these people live in Ramrod's Empire, an Empire in collapse "...as the men lose more and more things they never owned in the first place." pg 4

As a sad Queer who is still struggling with identity and community this book is also really powerful. Hearing the character Heavenly Blue struggle:

"It was the madness of looking inward and being afraid. There had never been enough love and warmth around him and he thought he had gradually dried up inside. He wanted out but he did not know where out was." pg 80

who then goes on to be held in his friends arms as he cries for days is incredibly powerful to read about when you are still in pain yourself.

It is also a reminder that even the deepest personal things are and can be inherently political when you live in a world that wants you to dictate all parts of who you are, not just what appears on the surface.

Admittedly the flowery language gave me a hard time. Parts of the book reminds me of how people talk about horoscopes (not a bad thing). I think its very worth a first read, and I think I will have to give it a second to truly understand the context and nuances. The only thing that really scratched my brain in a bad way was that this book tends to centers one form of Queerness, sure it mentions the Women, and the Queens, and the Women who love Women, but it centers gay men for the most part. (And I think I can go as far to say, in particular, a White 'Family Money Having' Gay-ness.) It also has an interesting take on Gender as it feels like there are more variants for what you can be (A Queen, A Faggot, A Fairy) for Men than there are for Women (A Woman and a Woman who loves Woman).

Which is fine, and a-okay, but personally bc of my identity I am really looking to pick up a book that is outrageously gay and see more than a few pages of someone like me reflected back. I might also be reading these gender defined line too strictly when they might not be meant to be.

Another important thing to note when discussing the narrative lenses of the Author is that the way you move through the world has a lot to do with how you see it and how you reflect it back in your art. So, while it is not a bad thing that this book centers mostly White Gay Men, it is important to note because a White Gay man is going to move through the world and understand power structures differently than a Black Gay Man and that is going to affect the narrative each individual tells. This book still has a lot to offer, but if you don't consider where the author came from you might miss things, or be led to believe some things are universal when they are in fact not.

I think it is important as a young Queer person to see how those before lived and were. This book is a great connector from the past to the present as 1977 was a few years before (google says) the AIDS crisis really swept over the United States and decimated our Queer elders. Considering our current situation and the ever growing tension of late stage capitalism's collapse (lol) maybe its a good time to read a book that can give you hope that there will be a revolution, and that in the in between still tells us Queers that we can survive and that we will be loved. What we need right now is a radical call of love and action, and that is what this book gives.

"The men's needs are strong and overwhelming. They need the faggots and their friends in order to know who they are not. But the faggots and their friends will no longer need the men. They can sit and produce high invisible love energy or they can do anything. But they will not need. And when the faggots and their friends cease being the faggots and their friends, the deathly dance of the men will begin to wane and a new dance will begin to emerge. Then the third revolutions will engulf us all." pg 110

Anyways, those are my thoughts. Stay Safe xx

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dangermousie · 3 years

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Mousie’s absolutely subjective, very biased Top 10 web novels list

Please note that this is hardly aiming to be objective, if one can even be properly objective about a work of fiction. It is 110% based on my preferences, which means this list is heavy on the angst and has nothing set in the modern day. It is also heavily danmei-centric, even though I read way more het romance than danmei, because for whatever reason, most of the danmei I’ve read has been insanely good.

10. Return of the Swallow - one of the two non-danmeis on this list. Smart and nuanced and with a large cast of characters. Our heroine is a long-lost daughter of the family that is brought back in and has to cope with familial struggles, crazy royals, court intrigue, invasion et al. It’s SO GOOD! There is romance with the sexy smart enemy general but honestly, it’s the heroine that is the main selling point for me.

9. Transmigrator Meets Reincarnator - the only other non-danmei novel on this list, this was my very first web novel and what drew me into this insanity. This is just a ton of fun, probably the lightest novel on this list, not an ounce of angst to be found. But it’s hilarious and features competent heroine and tsundere hero and I will always love it for opening a new world to me. Anyway, our heroine transmigrates into the novel as the female lead. Unlike the original lead though she doesn’t want to seek adventures and angst - she just wants to comfortably live with the wealthy, nice husband heroine has. Alas, said husband is no longer nice since he has previously lived this story where he was betrayed by FL and then transmigrated/reincarnated into the past. Oh well, the heroine opens up businesses and makes friends. And eventually, her husband realizes his wife is way different this time around. This actually doesn’t have much romance, not until close to the end, but this is so fun I don’t care.

8. Lord Seventh - I am only partway through this so far, but it’s already on the list because it’s smart and somehow intense AND laid-back (not sure how this works, but it does) and is honestly just a really really solid and smart period novel, with the OTP a cherry on top of a narrative sundae. Plus, I love the concept of MC deciding he is not going for his supposedly fated love - he’s tried for six lifetimes, always with disaster, and he’s just plain done and tired. When he opens his life in his seventh reincarnation and sees the person he would have given up the world for, he genuinely feels nothing at all. (Spoiler - his OTP is actually a barbarian shaman this time around, thank you Lord!)

7. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS) - oh come on, how are you even on this tumblr if you don’t know MDZS/The Untamed? This was my very first danmei and it’s so much fun! I love everything about it - the unreliable narrator, the looping structure, the main OTP, Wei Wuxian’s laidback, traumatized insouciance, everything. Anyway, the plot in the event you somehow transported here from 2005 is that the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Wei Wuxian, was defeated by the righteous sects over a decade ago and fell of a cliff to his death. Only now that same Wei Wuxian opens his eyes in another body and everything that was supposed to stay in the past starts again.

6. Heaven Official’s Blessing (TGCF) - people either love its meandering narrative, picaresque structure and cast of thousands, or find it a detriment compared to much more compact MDZS. I love it even more than MDZS for those very qualities. It does have a rock-solid, darling OTP, but what really elevates it to me are the MXTX trademark combo of snarky/light tone hiding a ton of trauma underneath, the insanely intricate world-building, and what it has to say about the nature of grace and goodness. Xie Lian is one of my top 5 web novel characters and probably in top 10 from anywhere. Oh, and while MXTX’s stuff is not as angsty for me as Meatbun’s or even Priest’s, there are always exceptions, and there is one chapter in this novel that pretty much broke me and sometimes I still flashback to it and feel unwell.

Anyway, what is it about? There is a commotion in the heavenly realm - Xie Lian, the Crown Prince of a long-destroyed kingdom, has ascended to Godhood. That in itself is not so exciting. However for Xie Lian this is the third time (!!!!) as he’s ascended and lost his godhood twice prior. And now, the biggest joke of the divine realm is back, throwing the heavenly realm into chaos. And elsewhere, Hua Cheng, one of the four most powerful demons of that Universe, sits up and takes notice.

5. Golden Stage - my perfect comfort novel. Probably the least angsty of any danmei novel on this list (which still means plenty angsty :P) It also has a dedicated, smart OTP that is an OTP for the bulk of the book - I think you will notice that in most of the novels in this list, I go for “OTP against the world” trope - I can’t stand love triangles and the same. Anyway, Fu Shen, is a famous general whose fame is making the emperor antsy. When he gets injured and can’t walk any more, the emperor gladly recalls him and marries him off to his most faithful court lackey, the head of sort of secret police, Yan Xiaohan. The emperor intends it both as a check on the general and a general spite move since the two men always clash in court whenever they meet. But not all is at is seems. They used to be friends a long time ago, had a falling out, and one of the loveliest parts of the novel is them finding their way to each other, but there is also finding the middle path between their two very different philosophies and ways of being, not to mention solving a conspiracy or dozen, and putting a new dynasty on the throne, among other things. It always makes me think, a little, of “if Mei Changsu x Jingyan were canon.”

4. Sha Po Lang - if you like a lot of fantasy politics and world-building and steampunk with your novels, this one is for you. This one is VERY plot-heavy with smart, dedicated characters and a deconstruction of many traditional virtues - our protagonist Chang Geng, a long-lost son of the Emperor, is someone who wants to modernize the country but also take down the current emperor his brother for progress’ sake and the person he’s in love with is the general who saved him when he was a kid who is nominally his foster father. Anyway, the romance is mainly a garnish in this one, not even a big side dish, but the relationship between two smart, dedicated, deadly individuals with very different concepts of duty is fascinating long before it turns romantic. And if you like angst, while overall it’s not as angsty as e.g., Meatbun stuff, Chang Geng’s childhood is the stuff of nightmares and probably freaks me out more than anything else in any novel on this list, 2ha included.

3. To Rule In a Turbulent World (LSWW) - gay Minglan. No seriously. This is how I think of it. it’s a slice of life period novel with fascinating characters and setting that happens to have a gay OTP, not a romance in a period setting per se and I always prefer stories where the romance is not the only thing that is going on. It’s meticulously written and smart and deals with character development and somehow makes daily minutia fascinating. Our protagonist, You Miao, is the son of a fabulously wealthy merchant, sent to the capital to make connections and study. As the story starts, he sees his friend’s servants beating someone to death, feels bad, and buys him because, as we discover gradually and organically, You Miao may be wealthy and occasionally immature but he is a genuinely good person. The person he buys is a barbarian from beyond the wall, named Li Zhifeng. It’s touch and go if the man will survive but eventually he does and You Miao, who by then has to return home, gives him his papers and lets him go. However, LZF decides to stick with You Miao instead, both out of sense of debt for YM saving his life and because he genuinely likes him (and yet, there is no instalove on either of their parts, their bodies have fun a lot quicker than their souls.) Anyway, the two take up farming, get involved in the imperial exams and it’s the life of prosperity and peace, until an invasion happens and things go rapidly to hell. This is so nuanced, so smart (smart people in this actually ARE!) and has secondary characters who are just as complex as the mains (for example, I ended up adoring YM’s friend, the one who starts the plot by almost beating LZF to death for no reason) because the novel never forgets that few people are all villain. There is a lovely character arc or two - watching YM grow up and LZF thaw - there is the fact that You Miao is a unicorn in web novels being laid back and calm. This whole thing is a masterpiece.

2. Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - want the emotional hit of 2ha but want to read something half its length? Well, the author of 2ha is here to eviscerate you in a shorter amount of time. This has the beautiful world-building, plot twists that all make sense and, at the center of it all, an intense and all-consuming and gloriously painful relationship between two generals - one aristocratic loner Mo Xi, and the other gregarious former slave general Gu Mang. Once they were best friends and lovers, but when the novel starts, Gu Mang has long turned traitor and went to serve the enemy kingdom and has now been returned and Mo Xi, who now commands the remnants of his slave army, has to cope with the fact that he has never been able to get over the man who stabbed him through the heart. Literally. This novel has a gorgeously looping structure, with flashbacks interwoven into present storyline. There is so much love and longing and sacrifice in this that I am tearing up a bit just thinking of it. If you don’t love Mo Xi and Gu Mang, separately and together, by the end of it, you have no soul.

1. The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha/erha) - if you’ve been following my tumblr for more than a hot second, you know my obsession with this novel. Honestly, even if I were to make a list of my top 10 novels of any kind, not just webnovels, this would be on the list. It has everything I want - a complicated, intricate plot with an insane amount of plot twists, all of which are both unexpected and make total sense, a rich and large cast of characters, a truly epic OTP that makes me bawl, emotional intensity that sometimes maxes even me out and so much character nuance and growth. Also, Moran is my favorite web novel character ever, hands down.

Anyway, the plot (or at least the way it first appears) is that the evil emperor of the cultivation world, Taxian Jun, kills himself at 32 and wakes up in the body of his 16 year old self, birth name Moran. Excited to get a redo, Moran wants to save his supposed true love Shimei, whose death the last go-around pushed him towards evil. He also wants to avoid entanglement with Chu Wanning, his shizun and sworn enemy in past life. And that’s all you are best off knowing, trust me. The only hint I am going to give is oooh boy the mother of all unreliable narrators has arrived!

The novel starts light and funny on boil the frog principle - if someone told me I would be full bawling multiple times with this novel, I’d have thought they were insane, but i swear my eyes hurt by the end of it. I started out being amused and/or disliking the mains and by the end I would die for either of them.

#cnovel #2ha #yuwu #to rule in a turbulent world #lsww #sha po lang #golden stage #return of the swallow #transmigrator meets reincarnator #lord seventh #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #heaven official's blessing #the dumb husky and his white cat shizun

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marmarparadoxa · 3 years

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Hi, I just saw a sorta controversial take on twitter and I really wanted to know your opinion over this- "Isayama only ever saw Hange as a comic relief character and never bothered giving them any sort of depth throughout the story." This was said in reference to how Hange was never seen venting off their frustation about Levi's decision in serumbowl(which they were clearly against), how they never expressed their anger and how this shows that Levi and Hange's dynamic supposedly turned bitter because of this. While its clear that post ts Hange was very heavily sidelined and we barely got much of their pov as compared to many other characters, but reducing them to a comic relief when they're so nuanced and layered just seems so off. What do you think? thank you so much for answering!

Hello! Hmm, I’m having difficulty picturing what exactly Hange “venting off their frustration” and “expressing anger” over Levi’s decision would have to do with them being given depth as a character...but more than anything, I don’t see what they could have to do with their character at all. Why would Hange, a grown-up mature soldier, vent off their assumed frustration and anger like some sort of vacuous resentful teenager?

As you said, Hange was clearly against that decision - they didn’t hold back from stating it. In front of Levi and everyone else, they unambiguously said they thought they should have chosen Erwin. But, immediately after, they also made clear that they respected Levi’s decision nonetheless. It was Erwin to entrust that choice to Levi, and Hange’s readiness to accept it was a sign of their respect for the military command chain, and for Erwin’s judgement in assigning the serum bowl to Levi.

It would have been interesting if Isayama had explored a bit more Levi and Hange’s feelings after that moment, how did they coped with the loss of their friend, after the serum bowl. Whether Levi ever told Hange why he chose like he chose. After Levi made his decision, I think Hange might have felt disappointed, and confused. Most of all, I think they were grieving, because they lost another friend, because they lost their guide. They were starting to realize that new responsibility which had fallen upon them. But I don’t see Hange holding any grudge against Levi afterwards. I think they always trusted him, and I think they respected, and eventually accepted his decision on that occasion too.

"this shows that Levi and Hange's dynamic supposedly turned bitter because of this" Hmm yeah, I guess that Levi and Hange being always together and by each other's side post time-skip, Hange risking their life without hesitating to save Levi’s, or their goodbye can all be taken as unmistakable evidence of how their dynamic turned bitter after the serum bowl lol

"its clear that post ts Hange was very heavily sidelined and we barely got much of their pov as compared to many other characters" I only partially agree with this. Yes, with the exception of chapter 123, Hange (and Levi) disappeared from the story from chapter 116 till the end of 125, and that’s quite some time. But I wouldn’t say they were sidelined post time-skip. If anything, their new role as commander, their new burden and struggles, the (ideological) position in which they found themself throughout the story provided Hange character with a new focus, new challenges, and an interesting development, which, even though a lot of fans didn’t appreciate, was something that, in my opinion, other characters from Paradis lacked, which gave Hange’s character new insights. If you’re interested, you can read my thoughts about Hange’s role post time-skip here.

And of course Hange was not only a comic relief character; they represented so much more than that. In a world dominated by hate and prejudice, they represented the value of learning, curiosity and understanding, of the wonder at the unknown. They embodied the spirit of the SC, and they also were a profoundly human individual. They were strong-minded, resilient and an idealist. They were brilliant and creative. Under a surface of apparent flippancy and their chaotic personality, Hange was tremendously serious about their fighting, unwaveringly determined, and yet still vulnerable. They suffered incredible losses like everyone else in their world, but they didn’t let this harden their heart. They gave strength to other people, they helped them stand up for themselves, and live with dignity in their lives. In spite of every defeat, in spite of all the grief, they always kept on being kind, trying to overcome hostilities, and never losing hope. They gave hope to themself, and donated it to other people too. In a story such as SnK, it was so important to me that a character like them existed.

#hange zoe #levi ackerman #where's the fun in trashing hange character if you don't involve their relationship with levi too I guess haha #hanji zoe #erwin smith #snk meta #levihan

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highsviolets · 3 years

Text

INTERVIEW NO. 1: RACHEL @djarinsbeskar

hello hello! i am so happy to announce that rachel — aka the immense talent that is @djarinsbeskar — has agreed to be my first interviewee for this new series! thank you to rach and to each one of you for all of your support. to read more about the project, click here, and to submit an author, click here.

| why rachel? |

Rachel captured my imagination from the first time we interacted as mutuals-in-law. She’s bursting with energy and vivaciousness, with a current of kindness just underneath everything she does. Her work is no exception. Oftentimes gritty, raw, and exposing (in … ahem…more ways than one), Rachel challenges her readers to dig deeper into both the story and themselves. Her smut brings a particular fire as it’s laced with need, desire, and mutual trust that leads us deeper into the characters’ identities and how physical affection can mimic other forms of intimacy. She’s a tour de force in this fandom and an absolute joy.

| known for |

Engaging with and encouraging other authors, cultivating inspo posts, attention to world building & character development

| my favorites |

Stitches

Boxer!Din

Full Masterlist • Ko-Fi

| q & a |

When did you start writing? What was that project, and what was it like? Has that feeling or process ever changed over time? Why?

I can’t remember a time I wasn’t writing. I was an avid reader, as I think most writers are—and I remember, after picking up Lord of the Rings—that I could live so many lives, experience so many things, all from the pages of a book. I could make sense of the world through words and ink and paper. And it offered me a level of peace and clarity I wanted to share with others. So, I started writing.

My first project I remember to this day, was a short story about a dog. I had been so heartbroken when I learned that dogs were colourblind. I must have been about seven or eight at the time, and I was fixated on this idea that dogs couldn’t see the vibrant hues that made the world beautiful. It was something I wanted to change—and with all the righteous anger of a child not getting their own way, I sulked over the fact that I couldn’t. Until I wrote it down.

“How do dogs see colour?”

And much like my writing today, I answered myself.

“Dogs don’t need to see colour. Dogs smell colour.”

And so, I wrote a story, about a puppy being brought on different walks by its owner. And with every new street it walked down—colour bloomed with scent. Colours more beautiful and vibrant than we could ever hope to see with our eyes. And it gave me solace and helped me work through an emotion that – granted was immature and inconsequential – had affected me. To this day, I still smile seeing dogs sniffing at everything they pass on their walks. Smelling colour. It gave me the key to my favourite thing in life. I don’t think my process has changed much since then. Much of what I write is based on a skeleton plan, but I leave room for characters to speak and feel as they need to. I like to know the starting point and destination of a chapter—but how they get there, that still falls to instinct. I think I’ve found a happy medium of strict planning and winging it that suits me now—and hopefully it will continue to improve over time!

When did you start posting your writing, and on what platform? What gave you the push to do that?

I mean, fanfiction has always been part of my life. I think anyone who was growing up in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s found their way to fanfiction.net at some time or other. The wild west compared to what we have now! My first post was for the Lord of the Rings fandom on fanfiction.net. It was an anthology of the story told through the eyes of the steeds. Bill the Pony, Shadowfax—it was all very innocent. That was probably in 2010 when I was fifteen. I had been wanting to share writing for a long time but was worried about how it would be received. I didn’t really have a gauge on my level or my creativity and – one of the many flaws of someone with crippling perfectionism – I only ever wanted to provide perfection. That was a major inhibitor when I was younger. By wanting it to be perfect, I never posted anything. Until that stupidly cute LOTR fic. It was freeing to write something that no one but me had any interest in, because if I was writing for myself then there was no one to disappoint, right? And that was all it took. I had some pauses over the years between college and life and such, but I’ve never lost that mindset when it comes to posting.

What your favorite work of yours that you have ever written? Why is it your favorite? What is more important to you when considering your own stories for your own enjoyment — characters? fandom? spice? emotional development? the work you’ve put into it? Is that different than what you enjoy reading most in other people’s fics?

I don’t think it’ll come as much of a surprise when I say Stitches. While not original, I mean—it follows the plot of the Mandalorian quite diligently, it is the piece of work I really hold very close to my heart. Din Djarin as a character is what got me back into writing after what must have been five years? He inspired something. His manner, his personality—he resonated with me as a person in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. And gave me back a creative outlet I had been missing.

It’s funny to say out loud—but I wanted to give him something? I spent so long thinking about his character that half my brain felt like it belonged to him—how he reacted and responded to things etc. and of course, like every dreamy Pisces—I wanted to give him love and happiness. So, Stitches came along. Personally, when writing—it’s a combination of characters, emotional development and spice (I can’t help myself) and when we can follow that development. With Stitches, it’s definitely the spice that is the conduit for development—but I adore showing how the physical can help people who struggle to communicate emotions too complex for words.

I don’t usually read for Din, as most people know—but I do enjoy reading the type of work that Stitches is. Human, damaged—but still with an undercurrent of hope that makes me think of children’s books.

You said, “much like writing today, I answered myself.” Could you talk about that in relation to Stitches?

So, I’m endlessly curious, it has to be said. Especially about why people are the way they are. Why people do A instead of B. Why X person’s immediate thought went to this place instead of that place. And I’m rarely satisfied with superficial explanations. One of the most exciting parts of writing and fanfiction especially, is making sense of that why. There can be countless explanations, some that are content with what is seen on the surface and some that go deep and some that go even deeper still.

Stitches is almost a – very long winded and much too long – answer to the questions I was so intrigued by about Din Djarin, about the Mandalorian and about the Star Wars universe as a whole. I often wondered what happened to people after the Rebellion, the normal people who fought—the people in the background. What did they do next? Did some of them suffer from PTSD? What was the galaxy like right after the Empire fell? That first season of the Mandalorian answered some of those questions, but I wanted to know more. So, I created a reader insert who was a combat medic—and through her, I let myself answer the questions of what happened next.

Regarding Din as a character, I wanted to know what a bounty hunter with a code of honour would do in certain situations—what made him tick, what made hm vulnerable. I wanted to explore the discovery of his identity. Din Djarin didn’t exist after he was taken from Aq Vetina. He became a cog in a very efficient machine of Mandalorians—and it was safe there. I wanted to see what – or who – might encourage him to step into his own. Grogu was that person in a familial sense, but what about romantically? What about individually? There’s so much to explore with this man! So many facets of personality and nuances of character that make him so gorgeous to write and think about.

Talk to me about the Din Djarin Athletic Universe. How does Din as all of these forms of athlete play off who you see him as in canon?

The Athletic Universe! How I adore my athletes. Despite being in a modern setting, I have kept the core of Din’s character in each of them (at least I hope I have!). I like to divide Din’s character into three phases when it comes to canon because he’s not as immovable as people seem to think he is. We discussed this before, how I see Din as a water element—adaptable, but strong enough that he can be as steadfast as rock. But I digress, the first phase is the character we see in the first episode. Basically, before Grogu. There’s an aggressive brutality to Din when we see him bounty hunting. He works on autopilot and isn’t swayed by sob stories or promises. He has the covert but is ultimately separate. Those soft feelings he comes to recognise when he has Grogu are dormant – not non-existent – but they haven’t been nurtured or encouraged. This is the point I extracted Boxer!Din’s personality and story from.

Cyclist!Din on the other hand—is already a father, a biological father to Grogu. And his personality, I took from that moment in the finale of Season two where I believe Din’s transformative arc of character solidified. He was always a father to Grogu, but I do believe that moment where he removes his helmet is the moment, he accepts that role fully in his heart and mind. And that is why I don’t believe for a second, that removing his helmet was him breaking his Creed. In fact, I believe it was the purest act he could do in devotion to his Creed—to his foundling, to his son. The Cyclist!AU is very much the character I see canon Din having should Grogu have stayed with him. This single dad who isn’t quite sure how he got to where he is now—but does anything and everything for his child without thought. It’s a natural instinct for him, and I like exploring those possibilities with Cyclist!Din.

You also said, “he has the covert but is ultimately separate.” What does it take for him — and you — to get to that point of being ‘not separate?’

I mentioned this above, but one of the biggest interests I have in Din as a character is his identity. He’s a Mandalorian, he’s a bounty hunter, he’s the child’s guardian but those are all what he is, not who. I think Din is separate while being part of the covert because he doesn’t know. I don’t think anyone can really be part of something if they don’t know who they are or, they struggle with their identity. It’s curious to me—how you can deceive even yourself to mimic the standard set for the many. In the boxer verse, he identifies himself in relation to his boxing—and every part of his outward personality exhibits those qualities. But when he’s given a softer touch—an outlet of affection, and comfort—we see the softer side of him surface. It’s very much the same with Stitches Din. Identity is like anything, emotions—relationships, bodies. It needs nurturing to thrive, an open door—a safe space. At least, that’s what goes through my mind when I think of him.

Who is your favorite character to read?

Frankie because there are so many ways his character can be interpreted and there are some stellar versions of him that I think of at least once a day. Javi because he reminds me of kintsugi-- golden recovery, broken pottery where the cracks are highlighted with gold. I also adore reading for Boba Fett, Paz Viszla and the clones!

Is there anything else you want your readers to know about you, your writing, or your creative process?

Hmm... only that I am quite literally a gremlin clown who is always here to chat Din, Star Wars, literature, book recs and anything else under the sun! I like to hear people's stories, their opinions etc. it helps me see things from alternative points of view and can truly help the writing process! Other than that, I think I can only thank readers for putting up with my ridiculously long chapters and rambling introspection. Thank you for indulging me always! ❤️

#pedro pascal #din djarin #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin x f!reader #the mandalorian x f!reader #the mandalorian x you #din djarin x you #djarinsbeskar #chat with cris #author interview series #tuserdaniela #userastrid #usernobie #userhai #pedrostories

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Why do people get hung up on whether a gay person in media is a good or bad representation of them? I'm gay and I can tell you we aren't all the same? Being gay is our 1 common trait. So as long as they're gay then you've done it. Gay people can be kind, mean, racist, open, kinky, reserved, shy, outgoing, sexist, and literally anything else under the human experience.

Because I am perpetually hungry, let's tell a story about cookies.

You are a bright-eyed, optimistic, baker in the making. Your goal is to wow the world with your culinary skills, so of course you head to The Best Baking School for your degree. Over the course of your studies you learn how to perfect a thousand different cakes, an equal number of pies, and more versions of brownies than most would even assume exist. But cookies... oh, cookies are your passion! You can't wait to learn about the wealth of cookies you can make too. Then, sure enough, that part of your education finally arrives.

Funny thing is though, it's just chocolate chip.

Surely there's been some mistake? The cookie experience is vast and nuanced! Why in the world are your instructors — supposedly the best in the world — reducing cookies to a single class about baking chocolate chip and chocolate chip alone? Hell, why are cookies so sparse in the curriculum as a whole? You're never asked to bake them as a demonstration, or practice with them, and they're definitely not a given across everyone else's baking experience. Cakes, pies, and brownies... they're the default. Cookies are comparatively rare and when you do get to study them, everyone is super focused on the chocolate chip.

Then you graduate and head out into the world, only to find that pretty much everyone is as cookie-blind as your school. A few years back you never would have found cookies in the average grocery store and yeah, the fact that there's a cookie section now is great, but it's, uh... all chocolate chip! Many bakeries still don't carry cookies at all, but when they do it's - again - chocolate chip. Chocolate chip out in restaurants. Chocolate chip at the bake sale. Your friend invites you over and proudly presents a massive sweets tray that includes a single, sad looking, chocolate chip cookie. They beam at you in pride. Isn't it so great?

"Uh..." you say. "Well..."

Every once in a while someone will switch out milk chocolate for dark chocolate, or add nuts alongside chocolate chips. One bakery was even crazy enough to exclude chocolate chips entirely! Crazy according to the press, anyway. Because for years now you've been shaking your head, wondering what exactly is so progressive about realizing that sugar cookies exist. You've found other bakers interested in cookies and, by god, there are thousands. So many flavors! Gluten free and allergy conscious! Someone even made a sweets tray that was predominantly cookies, can you believe it? The problem is, almost none of them are mainstream. Your friend baking cookies out of their personal kitchen is doing fantastic work, but their baking doesn't have the impact that those grocery chains and established bakeries do. Their work isn't going to fix your school's curriculum. Too many people still think that cookies are exotic somehow. They're not the default. And when they do acknowledge their existence, it's chocolate chip over and over. Until one of them adds those nuts and suddenly the whole country is losing its mind about how inspired, creative, progressive their baking is. Meanwhile, you're ready to scream because that baker doesn't even know that something as "exotic" as a gingersnaps exist!

The worst part? Most of these cookies are... bad. Like they exist, yeah, but good god most don't taste good. And that's the whole point of a cookie?? What is the point of buying cookies if the cookies themselves are awful? You go to these bakeries, these restaurants, your friend's house, and you try the very limited cookies on offer, only to find that they've been sloppily baked. Doesn't anyone care that the baker burned their cookies to a crisp? That another straight up forgot to add sugar? This one dropped his on the floor and still tried to serve it to you! But the overall sense is that you should be grateful for getting any cookies at all. "That cookie is an offense to my taste buds," you say and people shake their head at you, disappointed. "I liked the taste of it," one says. "If you don't like it, go buy a different cookie!" Well... easier said than done. "It's not that bad," another says, shrugging in defeat. "I mean yeah, I don't really like it, and the baker stopped making them two years ago... but I'm just happy to have had any cookie at all, you know?" You do know, but that doesn't mean it's any less frustrating. You look at the hundreds of cakes available, these bakers spending decades perfecting their recipes, and wish cookies had even a fraction of that work put into them. You find people who agree with you, absolutely, but there's this this prevailing sense that a cookie is a cookie. Any cookie will do. Supposedly.

Except go long enough and you feel like you're ready to lose your mind. You take some poor person by the shoulders and go, "Doesn't this bother you? Doesn't this make you furious? There is more to the cookie world than these three flavors, 90% of which is chocolate chip! And we deserve well-made cookies, not the crap they've been upholding as the next culinary masterpiece!"

But this person just shakes their head. "Well of course there's more to cookies than three flavors. There's a huge variety of cookies! I know that."

"Yes, but the world isn't selling that variety."

"Of course they are! Just last week I had an oatmeal raisin. That's amazing!"

"Yeah and how many years did it take you to find that?"

"Well..."

"And how did that oatmeal raisin cookie taste?"

Your prisoner pulls a face. "Ugh, not good. Oatmeal raisin is definitely not for me. It's hard as a rock! I really don't understand why someone would want to eat that on a regular basis."

"But it's not supposed to be hard as a rock!" you cry, waving your arms. "That's the problem! Oatmeal raisin is so goddamn rare and then the one time we get it, it was badly baked. Of course people are turned off by it. Everyone who already loves oatmeal raisin is getting pissed because their favorite cookie is misrepresented, they're unlikely to see more of them now, and everyone is still serving the most tasteless chocolate chip cookies I've ever had, acting like this is the pinnacle of cookie baking! Do you even know that a macron exists?"

The person pats your hand consolingly. "Of course I do. My roommate's sister's boyfriend used to bake macrons, you know. I don't know why you're so hung up on this. Cookies can be whatever the baker wants them to be. Provided they're a flat-ish sweet cake, they're still a cookie!"

You hang your head, giving up. "Yes, they can be so many things, but they're not. Let me know if you ever find a bakery actually making the variety you keep acknowledging exists. Bonus points if those cookies are edible. My soul if they're delicious, as a cookie should be."

"You know," they say, still patting your hand. "There's a bakery making chocolate chip with dark chocolate next year. Everyone is talking about it. You should think about buying one before they take it off the menu!"

You contemplate just walking into the ocean.

Now, incredibly long metaphor concluded... switch out "cookies" for "queer rep"! The representation matters because no, just making them gay isn't enough right now. You're right that queer people can be anything under the sun, but right now media isn't providing us with that variety. It's not enough to acknowledge that such variety exists, it actually has to make it into our books and onto our screen. Taking just characters who identify as gay and putting aside the HUGE variety of other identities for a moment (of which we are mostly lacking in terms of rep), where are the gay asexuals? The gay people of color? The disabled gays? Trans gays? Did your gay character appear for just a handful of episodes? Were they killed off? Are they nothing more than a stereotype or comic relief? Is this the only gay character in your entire story? We need to ask questions like this because though gay people can be anything under the sun, our media landscape has only shown a miniscule portion of that variety.

Today, even in 2021, our representation of gay people is still pretty limited to:

You are only coded as gay and evil

You are only coded as gay and queerbaited

You are canonically gay, but a cis, ablebodied, white person

You are canonically gay, but were written terribly/killed off/punished by the narrative/generally making the real gay people watching you feel awful about their identity

You are canonically gay, but you're not human. Gotta other the queerness by making you an alien/robot/fantasy being

You are canonically gay and that's your entire existence. There is one (1) narrative of how you knew by the time you were four, never questioned your identity after that, suffered through a family that rejected you, and now all your major arcs revolve around being gay. You are gay and that is it.

Despite being a list of six, that's still incredibly limiting. Are there exceptions to such a list? Always, but that doesn't mean the list isn't still dominating. We can look at any individual gay character and say, "Of course they can be evil/white/killed off/a joke/etc. because gay people can be anything at all," but when we look at the trends, when we look at ALL the media together, we see that gay people aren't actually depicted as being anything... they're depicted as being these handful of things, severely limiting how gayness is represented. Bad rep. If you hit up the bakery and question why there's only versions of chocolate chip available yeah, the baker can go, "But cookies can be any flavor! Including chocolate chip!" They are not, technically, wrong. The problem is not that chocolate chip exists, but that chocolate chip dominates and other flavors are rare, ignored entirely, or baked so badly it's actively damaging to that flavor as a whole. Yeah, your gay character can be mean. Or kinky. Or murdered by the story. But when so many gay characters are mean and kinky and murdered by their stories — when you're not getting other versions to balance that out and gay characters are still rare enough that it's just 1-2 characters trying to carry representation for an entire franchise — you start realizing that the claim of "Gay people can be anything else under the human experience" is an easy way to shut down the conversation of whether that variety actually exists in our storytelling yet.

It's not enough for the baker to acknowledge that yeah, of course there are hundreds of cookie flavors and of course cookies taste great! They've actually got to learn how to bake them properly and fill up their store with them.

#queer #mymetas

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tsarisfanfiction · 2 years

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For the Fanfic Writer asks, could I please request D, T, and Z please?

D: What’s the most personal fanfic you’ve written?

@gaviiadastra also asked this one.

Considering how much I've written, the answer to this is a lot easier than I thought it would be. Two fics immediately sprang to mind; both are ventfics I wrote while life was tough about a year ago (it's amazing how you just don't see how low your psyche's got until you're out of the situation and can look back on it in horror), and both of them I was blessed by other authors adding to, which felt genuinely like a personal reassurance and hug that people saw me and wanted to help me.

The first of these two is Bloodbath, which @gumnut-logic wrote an amazing part two for. It's one of the darker things I've written, in terms of imagery, I think, which tracks with my mood at the time.

The second of the two is Easier, which @gumnut-logic and @thunderbird-one-ai both added to, which prompted me to be able to round it off with a concluding chapter where everything started looking up again.

The sheer love I got from the fandom in response to these very personal ventfics was humbling, and pulled me out of somewhere that was a lot darker than I think I realised at the time.

T: Any fanfic tropes you can’t stand?

I am reasonably open to most things, but if it gives me second-hand embarrassment then it's absolutely out. Misunderstandings often falls into this category, especially in ship fics. I love emotional angst, as I'm sure all my followers are aware, but I don't do so well when it stems from that sort of plot, for some reason.

Romance fics in general I tend to get a little side-eye-y at. Romcom stuff is a no, coffee shop AUs etc. are normally a no, and high school AUs are something I've gained less and less tolerance for over the years. ABO fics are very rarely done in a way that appeals to me (I have found one or two with fantastic worldbuilding and character dynamics, but more often than not they're thinly-veiled excuses for terribly characterised porn fics, and I'm an adult who will read some nsfw but terrible characterisation is a fast way to get me to hit that close tab x). This also goes for things like genderbending, which can be done well so I occasionally brave them, but often I find myself bored or worse by them and back the hell away.

Z: Is there a story you’ve written that doesn’t seem to get much love?

There are several, but that comes with the territory of writing as much as I do, honestly. If you separate out all of my collective-works into their individual stories rather than the collection story I post them as on AO3, I've got somewhere in the region of a thousand stories out there, and of course as I've written for lots of fandoms over the years, I have to take into account fandom size and activity.

For example, my TAG and TOA stuff doesn't get much interaction compared to, say, my Detective Conan works, but the fandom sizes are barely comparable - and let alone when you then look at my One Piece stuff, where I often write for a popular character in a huge fandom. Crossovers also tend to have a notable drop in engagement, presumably because most readers (like me) tend not to bother with them if they don't know all the involved fandoms.

My Lord of the Rings drabble collection Vulnerabilities is probably top of the list, though; it's the only one that got so little interaction that I gave up even trying to get to the one hundred chapters I aimed for with the other fandom drabble collections, and yet the fandom itself is huge and very active. It's also intimidating and terrifying to write for because the fandom seem to be so well-versed in the nuances of lore I could never grasp (I still haven't been able to get through The Silmarillion, for example), and I can only assume my writing and interpretations simply wasn't up to par. Was that a little disappointing? I won't lie, it was. But was it unexpected? Not very, honestly. A little, because I'd thought a fandom that huge would still have something to give me and I got almost nothing, but not so much that it surprised me.

Fanfic Writer Asks

#ask me #thunderbirds are go #lotr #fanfiction #alexthefly #gaviiadastra

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nerdygaymormon · 3 years

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uhhhh david have you gotten the liahona yet bc idk how to feel about an article i found in there yesterday. it was pretty comforting and basic, but did use ssa the whole time. BUT the youth one was pretty crappy, it used ssa to the max and gave no real hope, was pretty bland and annoying about oh itll be find just believe and jesus and get hatecrimed <3 i would like to hear your thoughts on it, its the first time ive seen any queer topics in church magazines

Thanks for bringing these to my attention.

"Same-sex attraction" (SSA) is the preferred term of Church leaders. They say it's a way of not making it your identity, that this isn't part of who I am but rather is something I'm dealing with. In other words, people "have" same-sex attraction, not that they "are" gay or lesbian or bi.

There have been a few leaks from behind-the-scenes where the apostles say they use "same-sex attraction" because it's the term that people like least. People like it less that same-gender attraction or gay/lesbian. SSA includes the word "sex" and I guess the idea is it gets people to think of sexual acts and feel queasy.

SSA is the term normally used in Church magazines because they follow the lead of the First Presidency and apostles.

There's 3 items in the Church magazines this month about queer people! That's a lot for one month.

————————————————————

The first is a bishop talking about how to understand and include LGBT people at church. After becoming bishop, 3 sets of parents contacted him distressed that their child is gay or transgender (I note that the parents used "gay." He also mentions contacting someone who 'identifies as gay").

His first recommendation is to follow the living apostles. (which explains why the bishop uses "SSA" even though everyone else around him used "gay"). It's a good idea for a local leader to find what the current leaders are saying because it's changed. He also says to read the Church's websites titled “Same-Sex Attraction” and “Transgender.” He provides two lovely quotes from those pages about diversity at church and being loving to people who are different.

His second recommendation is to not be afraid to talk to people who identify as gay, but instead try to have love for them and then let the Spirit guide you in what to say. We're just people, it shouldn't be scary to talk to us, that shows how different he thinks we are from the other people he interacts with in his ward.

The bishop's third suggestion is to speak to people who are familiar with LGBT "issues," share your testimony, and apologize for hurtful things you say. His list of people to contact for help understanding was a little disheartening because he starts with his stake leaders, ward leaders, other bishops, and so on, actual queer people were the last people on his list.

He continues by saying to pull aside members who are saying homophobic or transphobic things and give them some personal guidance, don't share private information that a member shares with the bishop, and just because someone has these "attractions" doesn't mean they're acting on them, and if they aren't "acting" on them then you can let them have a calling.

I have a few comments about the last few things. If no one corrects the homophobic/transphobic comments in public but instead privately suggests the person do better, every one who heard those comments thinks they stand unchallenged. The atmosphere created by the comments is unchanged. Especially if the bishop was present to hear those words, if they go uncontested then people think this is what is acceptable.

You'd think bishops know not to share private information a member shares with them. I've been around long enough to know that when a bishop is unsure what to do, he starts contacting his network (stake presidency, other bishops) asking for advice. Some bishops are discreet when doing this and others name the individuals.

While it seems basic, I recently had a counselor in a bishopric who didn't think gay people could get a temple recommend, that there's a zero-tolerance policy. That is an attitude that is outdated by a couple of decades, but it shows that people need to learn that simply existing as a gay or trans person doesn't automatically mean we are committing great sins.

I do find it interesting there appears to have been quite a few queer individuals in his ward, at least 4 or 5, and reading between the lines it seems they all stopped attending.

The bishop's heart is in the right place. I get he's following the Church leaders and that limits some of what he can do for queer people in his ward. I think his perspective primarily is of making the parents feel more welcome in the ward and not ostracized for having queer kids.

————————————————————

The second article in the Liahona is written by a person with same-sex attraction and his work to overcome the shame he felt.

It's a much better article than the one written by the bishop. This person shares about the shame they felt at having gay feelings and working with a therapist to overcome that shame. He shares 3 lessons that helped him with this process.

1) God and Jesus love and accept him as he is. This is a message that doesn't often get conveyed to queer members and it's important they know this.

2) The Atonement of Jesus Christ offers healing. At first he was wanting the Atonement to cure him of being gay, but instead it helped him be healed of the shame he felt. I hear so many members who think the Atonement can change us from gay to straight, and that's not true. I'm glad he made this distinction. Our Heavenly Parents don't view being gay or trans as something that needs to be cured. I wish that message was taught more openly in the Church.

3) Build deeper connections and show compassion. Loneliness and feeling like you don't belong at church are two of the most troubling aspects an LGBTQ+ person has to deal with if they are active in the LDS Church. Developing close friendships will help with that. Also, queer people tend to be more compassionate than the average person and I believe it's because of the experiences we had to deal with of living in a heteronormative world that isn't made for us.

He includes a few useful tips at the end on how to engage with queer people.

All in all, a much better story than the one written by the bishop. He shared part of how it feels to be a gay member of this church, the idea that he should be ashamed for who he is, that being gay isn’t a burden, that he doesn't fit in.

I appreciated he said this is part of his layers of identity and at the core of his identity is that we're children of heavenly parents. That's more nuanced than the apostles who reject being gay has anything to do with identity and our only identity should be a child of God.

————————————————————

The final story is from For the Strength of Youth. This piece seems like it's written by a queer person, but it's anonymous and given as general advice to show that people with same-sex attraction belong at church.

This article makes 3 main points. The first is that God loves you. That's true, although accompanying quotes to back up this principle aren't specifically about queer people.

The second point is "you belong." All sorts of people attend church, and God is no respecter of persons. Then they have a quote from Elder L. Whitney Clayton that people with same-sex attraction are welcome to come to church. To me, he's an odd choice to give this message as he led the Church's fight in California on Prop 8 to make gay marriage illegal again. Words aren't enough. Saying I'm welcome is not the same as making a welcoming climate.

The third point is that God will help you. They include a quote from Laura F. who experiences same-sex attraction. She writes about prayer, scripture study, temple and church attendance. However, she also says she doesn't know what her life will look like in 20 years, she seems to be leaving open the possibility her journey with God will lead her to romance and out of the church. I thought that was very honest and important.

————————————————————

I found it noteworthy that nowhere in these 3 articles does it say being alone and celibate is good and what God wants.

I appreciate the idea that we can make our local congregations less homophobic/transphobic. The suggestions from the bishops shows that the bar is pretty low and it doesn't take much to make an improvement from how things are now.

The voices of the two gay members was important, what they shared was useful but nuanced, didn't make commitments to staying in the church long-term or testify that what the church requires is what God wants for them.

Even so, it's clear the publisher is very careful. They use "same-sex attraction" so often, I think readers would be surprised the preferred term of most same-sex attracted people would be gay, bi or lesbian. While they addressed some things, like homophobic/transphobic comments, feeling shame & not fitting in, I think they largely skated past the things that make queer people decide that this church isn't for them.

There's a part of me that says I'm glad we're having this conversation in the Church magazines, but another part that says this is too sanitized and doesn't get at the heart of things. These are very hopeful messages that make it seem that queer people could easily choose to stay in church if a few adjustments were made and if they only understood God loves them, which avoids the "doctrine" that excludes queer people from the highest blessings and joys and makes us essentially second-class citizens in the kingdom of God, at least according to our church.

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aspoonofsugar · 3 years

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The Maidens: The Cycle of Life and Death

This post is inspired by @hamliet’s alchemy metas... I know nothing about alchemy, but after discussing it with her, this idea came up and I am sharing it on her behalf too.

In short, in alchemical stories (which RWBY apparently is) there are 3/4 phases. Each phase is linked to a specific color:

1) Nigredo (black)

2) Albedo (white)

3) Citrinitas (yellow)

4) Rubedo (red)

That said, often the yellow phase ends up being fused with the red one, so in most alchemical stories there are only three phases. Now, for each phase there is a major death, so there are usually 3/4 key deaths, each one linked to a specific phase.

For example, in Harry Potter there is

a) Sirius BLACK dying

b) ALBUS Dumbledore dying

c) Harry dying and being carried by RUBEUS Hagrid

Let’s highlight that each one of these deaths is especially resonant and important for the story. Sirius dies when Harry discovers about the prophecy. Dumbledore’s death leads to Harry leaving Hogwarts to look for the Horcruxes and finally Harry’s own death leads to Voldemort’s defeat.

What I mean is that the deaths linked to each phase must be resonant and meaningful either in terms of plot or in terms of themes. They must have weight and be felt both by the audience and by the characters.

So far, in RWBY we have had two such deaths:

Pyrrha’s death is linked to Nigredo, while Penny’s to Albedo. Interestingly, both deaths happened to two (supposed to be) Maidens.

This is interesting on multiple levels.

First of all, I have been asked about the Maidens in RWBY here and here. However, Penny’s death helped me gain a new perspective of their overall meaning.

In the first meta I have written this:

In a sense, the story keeps repeating. Salem kills Ozpin, he is reborn and his daughters are victims of the conflict between them.

Because of this, the four Maidens have become one of the many symbols of this endless cycle, which is clealry breaking its protagonists more and more.

This is well conveyed by the Maidens having a season theme. Seasons are in fact linked to the repetition of time aka one of Ozpin’s motifs.

I still think it is a part of the truth, but as for now I think the framing of the series over the cycle is more nuanced. It is a cycle of death and rebirth:

Goodwitch: The Maidens have existed for thousands of years. But much like in nature, the seasons change. No two summers are alike. When a Maiden dies, her power leaves her body and seeks out a new host, ensuring that the seasons are never lost, and that no individual can hold on to that power forever.

Seasons live and die, but new ones are born. It is a death that leads to a new life and that protects life itself since the Seasons are supposed to be Guardians.

This fits with the actual cycle of seasons where “no two summers are alike”, but that also accompanies humans’ lives and makes many human activities possible.

Secondly, both Pyrrha and Penny’s deaths have to do with the theme of choice, which is central to the series:

Ozpin: Maidens choose themselves.

In particular, Pyrrha and Penny’s final choices are two different declination of this idea. At the same time, they are linked to the theme explored by their respective relic as well (in Pyrrha’s case it means that her link to choice is twofold).

1) As the (supposed to be) Maiden of Choice, Pyrrha is given a choice in the Vault of Choice:

Ozpin: You, Miss Nikos... have a choice to make.

(...)

Ozpin: Are you ready? I... I need to hear you say it.

Pyrrha: Yes.

Ozpin: Thank you, Miss Nikos.

She is given some time to think about it and in the end she chooses to accept her new duty. Still, the power is stolen from her and the choice she was given is negated to her:

Pyrrha: But I can help.

Ozpin: You'll only get in the way.

However, this does not stop her:

Red-Haired Woman: She understood that she had a responsibility... to try. I don't think she would regret her choice, because a Huntress would understand that there really wasn't a choice to make. And a Huntress is what she always wanted to be.

Pyrrha’s death is about doing the right thing even if it comes with a high personal cost. She is able to make the choice to keep fighting against an enemy impossible to defeat an arc before our protagonists are strong enough to make it.

This is why... even if she never receives the powers.. Pyrrha is the true Maiden of Choice of the Vale arc. She does not need the powers because deep down being a Maiden is something deeper than that.

Pyrrha embodies the idea that Maidens choose themselves because she chooses to be a Maiden at Heart and dies true to her choice:

Pyrrha: Do you believe in destiny?

2) As the Maiden of Creation, Penny is created anew in the Vault of Creation:

As I have stated in previous metas Creation as a concept is linked to free will. Creations are free to develop and to change independently from their “creators”. This fits Penny’s transformation, who ultimately gives her back the free will that the virus had stolen:

Penny: I...I must...open the Vault. I, I do not want...Ah!

And in the end she uses her free will to make a specific choice:

Penny: Let me choose this one thing.

I have actually a lot more to say about Penny’s death and final choice, but I will write a longer meta about it, so for now let’s just say it has to do with self-actualization.

Penny embodies the idea that Maidens choose themselves because she chooses who she wants to be and how she wants to live.

What is more, her choice has to do with Creation because she saves Winter’s life and also (symbolically) makes her a whole person as well:

Winter: No, Penny, you were always the real Maiden at heart. I was just a machine. Just... following orders.

Penny: You’re my friend.

Winter: Perhaps, but I’m choosing it now. I’ve made it my own. And I take great pride in it.

Winter: You chose nothing. This was a gift.

At the same time, Penny’s sacrifice also saves the people of Atlas and Mantle who are stranded in Vacuo. If Cinder had stolen the power, they would have all died.

As a final note, we are directly told the themes linked to both Pyrrha and Penny’s death back in volume 5:

Ruby: When Beacon fell, I lost two of my friends: Penny Polendina and Pyrrha Nikos. I didn't know them for very long, but that doesn't change the fact that they were two of the most kind-hearted people I have ever met. But that didn't save them. Pyrrha thought that if there was even the smallest chance of helping someone, then it was a chance worth taking. And because of that, she died fighting a battle she knew she couldn't win. And Penny... was killed... just to make a statement.

Pyrrha died to make the right thing.

Penny died the first time as a result of her being objectified, so the second time she herself chose how to end her life in a way she found meaningful.

In short, Pyrrha and Penny’s deaths can be read as the two deaths linked respectively to Nigredo and Albedo. What is sure is that they are meant to be compared and foiled.

All this leads to a question... will we have other two (or one) major death(s) that will be linked to (the yellow and) red phase(s)? Will they be other Maidens?

As for now, I think it is possible, even if not sure obviously.

First of all, I do not know if we are gonna have a death for Citrinitas since from what I understood usually the yellow phase gets conveyed as a part of the Rubedo one. Moreover, if we have it, it might not be linked to a Maiden. After all, another pattern one could find is that both Pyrrha and Penny died at Beacon and so did Ozpin, so maybe he will be the one to die (once and for all?) in the yellow/red phase. However, as for now, I don’t think so and I am gonna theorize that the yellow and red deaths, if they happen, will have to do with the Maidens and will be other declinations of the themes explored above.

As for now, we know nothing of the Maiden of Destruction, so I am not considering her.

Still, there is another Maiden whose arc was left unsolved and who needs to come back in the story:

3) As the Maiden of Knowledge, Raven is told the truth about herself in the Vault of Knowledge:

Yang: Oh, shut up!! You don't know the first thing about strength! You turn your back on people, you run away when things get too hard, you put others in harm's way instead of yourself!! You might be powerful, but that doesn't make you strong.

And it is possible that this self-knowledge will eventually lead her to make a choice, which is what she has failed to do up until now.

If she chooses to sacrifice herself, her death will be a redemptive one and it might come to embody that Maidens choose themselves because they can always change and become true Maidens.

Finally, there is the Rubedo phase, which is the last phase. If we are gonna have a red death, it should be a key one for the whole series and one which leads to its resolution. As for now, I think there is only one character who can pull it off:

4) Cinder is a key character for the whole story. Personally, I think this volume was a turning point for her, but she failed to learn the lessons she needed to learn. What she did was to take these lessons and to twist them in a hypocritical way:

Cinder: I suppose I have only you to thank for one last lesson… Sometimes, if you want to win…you simply can’t do it alone.

And this has made her even more similar to Salem:

Salem: Why....do...you...keep...coming...back?!

Yang: Why do you?!

Penny: Why did you come back?! Why couldn’t you just learn your lesson?!

I would also like to highlight that so far Cinder has failed to learn the lesson of each relic.

In the Vale Arc, it is implied her concept of Destiny and Choice is different from Pyrrha’s. She wants to be “worthy” and to be chosen. Moreover, her idea of agency is linked to stealing others’, just like she stole the Maiden’s power and Pyrrha’s destiny.

In the Mistral Arc, she receives a warning about her Shadow Hand:

Raven: Aura can't protect your arm, it's Grimm. You turned yourself into a monster just for power.

But she chooses to ignore it.

Finally, in the Atlas Arc she manages to make herself anew. She recreates herself, but fails to truly change.

I am expecting all these failures to come back at her with the Vacuo Arc, which is about Destruction and will probably lead to everything coming together to crush Cinder (the people she used, the Shadow Hand, Salem’s true plan).

Once this happens, I think Ruby will save her with her eyes and will offer her that pity she was never shown as a child. This will lead to Cinder’s final choice which might be a synthesis of all the choices made by the Maidens she killed.

It will be a selfless choice, like Pyrrha’s, in contrast to the selfishness she displayed throughout the series.

It will be a self-actualizing choice, like Penny’s, which will free her from Salem’s shadow and influence

It will also be a redemptive choice, where Cinder finally lives up to her name and becomes the true Fall Maiden.

I am also expecting this choice to somehow solve the conflict or to be a part of the reason why the conflict is solved.

It would also be interesting if the Maidens’ sacrifices become progressively more effective in solving the conflict.

Pyrrha’s death is the most pyrric (obviously). She did not manage to stop Cinder, but barely gained enough time for Ruby to arrive and wound the villain. Still, it is a choice who clearly inspired her friends and I think that in the end it will inspire Cinder as well:

Cinder: You know, Neo, someone once asked me if I believed in destiny. And I'm happy to say I still do.

Penny’s death is framed as a sad, but powerful conclusion to her arc and saved both Winter and the people of Atlas and Mantel. It still did not prevent Salem from taking the relics and did not save the Kingdom.

So, maybe Cinder’s death, if it happens, will be key in saving the world.

This would also fit with the idea that we are going through a journey where we are getting to know the four gifts the Gods gave humanity.

Pyrrha sacrificed herself even before our protagonists received Knowledge, Penny did so after both Knowledge and Creation, while Cinder perhaps will do so after the characters have aquired all the four gifts.

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby vol8 #rwby meta #rwby theory #pyrrha nikos #penny polendina #raven branwen #cinder fall #my meta

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auburnflight · 3 years

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Jeanne, Vanitas and Agency

From the little I’ve dipped my toes into it, the VnC fandom seems pretty heated regarding Jeanne as a character. In drastic situations, I’ve seen accusations of misogyny based solely on someone’s comments on their feelings about Jeanne... a single character. And while yes, critiques can certainly be rooted in misogyny (must women be strong all the time? must they be submissive?), I think it’s important to consider not just the character herself, but how the story treats her and why we’re making the critiques we are.

Given that points of view in the fandom are so polarized, I’m going back to canon--to the text itself--to orient this essay. In particular, I’m going to focus on the point of agency--the freedom to make one’s own decisions about one’s self and one’s course of action. This goes beyond just Jeanne’s background as a borreau, trained to fight and follow orders. Agency is also consequential in her relationships with other characters and with the story as a whole.

(Content warning for discussion of abuse dynamics, and brief mentions of sexual assault.)

It’s natural to start off with Jeanne’s first appearance in the story: alongside Luca, she’s introduced as a new agent of conflict with Noe and Vanitas’s budding alliance. In fact, she is the one who initiates the physical altercation with Noe and Vanitas, while Luca is still trying to talk them into giving him the Book of Vanitas:

Aesthetically and conceptually, she’s introduced as an active element of the story. At this point, the “forced kiss” scene during the initial fight seems more like a fluke, a comment on Vanitas’s personality (and willingness to do despicable things to get what he wants) rather than Jeanne’s.

That brings me to why I found it so jarring when colored art of her that was subsequently revealed: that agency fell away to portray a visually more passive air.

In the existing full-color art we have of Jeanne, she’s more static in her environment, looking towards the viewer but with a face that looks rather blank, even meek. Specifically I want to point out this wallpaper, which I obtained from the official site fairly early on in Vanitas’s serialization (December 2016), in contrast to another piece of official art that was released of Noe and Vanitas with Memoire 11, around the same time:

In both cases, the characters are posed intentionally, rather than actively doing something. And, they’re aware of the viewer’s gaze to some extent. However, Jeanne has her back turned to the viewer, and her expression is more idealized and ambiguous. Meanwhile, Noe and Vanitas are rather assertive: their expressions are more intentionally focused, and they seem to know their situation in the artwork. Jeanne is simply passive, very nearly objectified.

...Yeah, maybe this is just my art background speaking. But I also notice something similar happening in other official colored pieces of Jeanne, such as the cover of volume 4.

By this point in the story, lack of agency has become an even more significant element in Jeanne’s character arc: we learn that she’s been cursed. Not only is she unable to speak of the curse, it’s also in direct opposition to one of her primary character motivations, to protect Luca and those she cares about. Due to her uncontrollable urge to kill and drink blood, Jeanne fears that she’ll unintentionally hurt the very people she’s trying to protect.

Jeanne’s involvement with Vanitas also unfortunately comes with a sacrifice of her own agency. Seeing that she’s been cursed, Vanitas demands that she drinks blood from no one but him in exchange for keeping her secret. He further establishes her sense of reliance on him by promising that if he ever does see her lose control, he’ll kill her (so that she doesn’t harm Luca). Whether he’s simply a smitten 18-year-old who doesn’t yet know how to conduct healthy relationships, or whether he’s crafty and intentionally drawing Jeanne in further--or even whether it’s a mix of both--this idea of Vanitas’s control over her is reflected in the cover art for volume 4.

At this point, considering the literal events of the story, Jeanne’s passiveness is not only visual, but symbolic. In this illustration, Vanitas’s hand is grabbing Jeanne by her bow, and functionally by her neck: she’s being dragged along against her will, with little means of escape. And she looks at the viewer with a surprisingly similar expression to the previous illustration: one that communicates little say in the situation.

This matches up with their literal relationship in the story itself. Knowing she’s cursed, Vanitas is establishing her exclusive reliance on him, in exchange for keeping important secrets from others with whom she’s close (i.e. threatening to drive a wedge into their relationship). He’s already pushed himself upon her physically with clearly no warning or enjoyment from her. Yes, he’s been kind. And when Dominique trails Vanitas and Jeanne on their date, she notes that Jeanne is “terribly weak against any sort of kindness.” But in spite of some more “cute” and candid moments, the overall dynamic between Jeanne and Vanitas is far from genuine kindness. Returning to how Vanitas garnered an edge over her in their initial fight--with taunting, carefully chosen words--I would phrase it more as that Jeanne, a borreau trained to kill and inexperienced with matters of feelings, is particularly susceptible to emotional manipulation. (There’s more than a little irony in this internal comment from Jeanne, at the beginning of her date with Vanitas:)

Jeanne’s relationship with Vanitas becoming important isn’t, in isolation, inherently an issue. In most cases, it’s fun to see how a character who usually appears unshakeable is rounded out when we see them at their more vulnerable times. What makes me feel squicked out and worried on Jeanne’s behalf is how it’s executed, considering how it works in opposition to how she was introduced as a character, and how Jeanne and Vanitas’s relationship harkens back to known dynamics of abuse.

In other words, my discomfort is not at Jeanne herself for falling for Vanitas and his tactics. It’s at how she’s introduced with a promise of agency in her own story, and that agency is subsequently taken away in how she’s portrayed in official art, and in plot points as the story progresses. It’s at how their relationship begins to fall into a harmful template perpetuated by rape culture, where a man forces himself upon a woman at first, but she is shown to eventually enjoy those advances even when unwanted. I had high hopes for Jeanne as a character developed with her own agency, motives (and yes, for cool fight scenes that WLW like me can admire), and so far, Vanitas’s effect on her has threatened to overshadow these. This is where I think sections of the fandom throwing accusations back and forth of each other being misogynistic, on the grounds of criticizing Jeanne and her relationship with Vanitas, fail to see the wider issue.

Of course, eliciting this sort of discomfort may even be the whole point. Jun Mochizuki is known for putting her characters through tragic and painful situations, and her previous work Pandora Hearts is rife with unstable, imbalanced, and otherwise less-than-perfect relationships. But even without this background knowledge, a decisive scene that convinces me of the intentionality of this purpose is one I’ve written about before: Jeanne’s internal fantasy as she’s left unattended by Luca and loses herself in a storybook.

Here, Jeanne fantasizes about being the agent in her own story, a position that, the art reminds us, is often occupied by a male character such as a prince. Ultimately, this progression looks innocent and could serve to remind us of Jeanne’s more vulnerable, innocuous side. But including it here in the story could also serve as foreshadowing, a contrast to what Jeanne’s situation is like for her in reality. (If you want to read more on this panel specifically, my analysis is in the source link of this post!)

Essentially, critiquing Jeanne as a character requires more nuance than simply judging her individual characteristics. It’s necessary to also take into account the way that the story treats her and her relationships with others and other forces in the story. Not just is she allowed to be soft and emotional, but what consequences does this have for her, and how do the story elements lead the reader to feel about her being soft?

Personally, I think she’s very likeable as a character--her situation just seems unfair, and I feel like she deserves so much better than Vanitas and his schemes. I mean, she could easily destroy him with her gauntlet, and he knows it! But, then, it’s Jun Mochizuki. We should probably expect to be feeling pain and pity for her characters. Still, the relationship between Jeanne and Vanitas has always kinda rubbed me the wrong way, and I think this pretty much sums up why.

#vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #vanitas no shuki #aki likes analyzing things

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tobi-smp · 3 years

Text

Context: [Link]

@maryqueenofmurder said: ok this is so totally nitpicking and probably incredibly irritating to see buuuuuut… “here’s the truth that a lot of dream apologists don’t like acknowledging: it’s Both true that no one deserves to be tortured And that dream’s actions lead him to the position that he’s in now.”

Actually, a lot of us acknowledge it. Being put in prison is a direct response, pretty much, to the things he’s done. But so many people use ‘karma’ and 'it’s his fault he’s in prison’ to excuse/justify the abuse he was/is put through. it leaves a kind of sour taste in my mouth to see it now because it’s usually followed with the sentiments mentioned above.

dream “apologists” are very, very, very rarely people who think what dream did was okay/excusable. Maybe a few see it from a slightly more justifiable perspective. but most of us are aware that dream has caused harm, and that he did bad things. I don’t know how many dream apologists you’ve heard from, but most of us are aware of the fact that he’s brought a good deal of what’s happening to him down on his own head.

I personally think that even if Quackity was furious over what Dream did to Tommy, he’s still doing something very wrong. And what I’m about to say is going to sound even more irritating than the previous rant but, Practice what you preach. It’s both true that Quackity didn’t deserve a lot of things he got/will get but they’re also the inevitable fallout of his actions.

And if Dream apologists paint Quackity as the villain? It’s because they’re seeing/writing from Dream’s perspective. I’m not saying Quackity is some one-dimensional villain. I’m saying he’s definitely an antagonist in Dream’s perspective. It’s just that us Dream Apologists don’t talk about his motivations because they’re irrelevant to the story we’re telling. Plenty of other stories/takes are written like that. And if he is OOC or does things that don’t match his motivations in canon? it’s just a h/c i guess. or he has motivations you just don’t know them. [End Transcription]

So before anything else, I’m gonna have to ask that if you send me a response this long that you don’t put it in the replies. I’ve never had to ask that before but I’ve also never had to choose Not to include screenshots of what I’m responding to for length before. moreover, it’s much harder for me to know when you’ve finished your point if you’re sending 6 replies in a row as opposed to one reblog (for instance, several more replies came after I’d initially seen that you’d responded). if you’re trying to engage in a direct conversation with me that can’t fit in a couple of replies then just reblog or make your own post and @ me in it, anything but this would be better fadsjkljlkfds.

secondly, you’re right ! this wasn’t an appropriate response to the conversation in question and I’m not certain why you sent it to me.

The first post that I wrote was about how ridiculous I found it that people dance around, ignore, or straight up deny that dream designed and commissioned the prison as it is to hold tommy, and how that fact leads into the prison arc (and the thematic significance of that for both characters and the arc in general).

an anon fixated on a line from those posts wherein I point out the fact that the disc war finale was dream’s downfall stemming from his own actions. the anon disagreed, insisting that what’s happening now is only down to quackity’s desire for the revival book and not anything that dream has done. I got annoyed (because I’ve seen this argument in many forms often used to reduce quackity and his motivations down), so I decided to expand on how dream’s actions lead him to this point and influenced quackity’s actions towards him.

that’s the context of the post that you’re responding to, and you almost acknowledge it too. you point out the fact that I Explicitly stated that Nobody Deserves To Be Tortured, and yet you act as if I’ve excused everything that quackity has done by pointing out the reasons that lead him to take those actions. “practice what you preach” you say, while you insist that dream apologists don’t Excuse his actions while in the same breath making the assumption that I Don’t think quackity deserves comeuppance for his actions based solely on the fact that I insisted that he’s a complex character with motivations driven by revenge for him and his friends.

I think if dream fights back against quackity and sam, if he kills them even, when he inevitably escapes then that’ll be in his right to do so. I also think that las nevadas is going to blow up in his face some day, that the people he manipulated into joining him are probably going to play a part in that, that technoblade and phil are probably going to become a problem very shortly, etc etc etc.

my post was not about how quackity is going to eventually face the consequences of his actions (or how he already very much so has), it was about how dream is Already doing that. I Explicitly condemned quackity’s actions Twice, so why do I have to go in more detail now to appease you? why did you react to a criticism of dream’s actions by demanding that I criticize a different character too When I’d Already Done So?

and while I Am bothered by quackity being misrepresented in fanworks, what that post was in response to is the Overwhelming mischaracterization of quackity in the fandom’s consciousness as a whole. not just for Fun but in serious discourse, meta, and character analysis. he is Chronically stripped of his nuance All The Time. which is what gives value to pointing that nuance out. again, you tell me to “practice what you preach” and yet you’re telling me that I should just suck it up when I character I like is misrepresented while you actively identify with and push for the label of a character apologist.

finally, while it’s easier to use shorthand to refer to a general collection of ideas (and people with similar ideas) within a specific space, that shorthand becomes insufficient when you try to apply hard definitions to it. “us dream apologists wouldn’t do that,” no You haven’t done that. there are plenty of people who self identify with the label who Do excuse his actions, who Do vilify other characters and infantilize his character. they’re straight up common, especially on twitter and youtube. but those things (apparently) don’t reflect You or the people that you associate with.

which is fine, but the problem comes in when we drop nuance. I’ve attributed an action to a group that you don��t agree with, therefore this is read as an attack on you and your standing in that group. which just isn’t true. “dream apologists” are not a monolith, they’re people. and while there are trends that can be observed those trends are going to look different depending on what angle you look at them, and individual people are going to Still Be individual people with unique experiences and opinions.

“dream apologist” is not an identity, it’s not a set of beliefs. it’s a vague group of people that enjoy the character dream from the hit minecraft roleplay “dream smp” who are defensive of his character in one way or another. different people are going to have different associations with that term depending on the different people they meet because those people are going to believe and do different things. making assumptions about the people that you’re talking to based on labels Without a solid definition is not conductive to productive conversation.

you don’t have to defend yourself if I criticize behavior that you don’t do, and you Certainly don’t have defend the honor of a subsection of a subsection of a subsection of minecraft youtuber fans.

#discourse #long post #this is a bit messy but what are you gonna do

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jonsa101 · 3 years

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Yes, There’s Only 14 Episodes in Season 3 But Sharpwin is On Track and Progressing How They’re Supposed To.

There has been so much talk about this season’s writing and the lack of Sharpwin scenes that I thought I would just address everything in this post.

First, the writing this season is NOT BAD! In my honest opinion I actually think this season has some of the best writing in the series. Compared to season two, the writing is head and shoulders above what we got last year. More than ever before we are diving into these characters stories, seeing friendships form, getting a better look into their home life and seeing secondary characters shine! This is a good thing! These were the things that were so desperately needed in season 2 but we didn’t see this play out. I’ve said this before in my infamous season 2 rant and I’ll say it again, a show can’t solely depend on a ship! It has to have great storytelling and good character development for all of it’s main characters. This is what New Amsterdam failed to do in season two and they’re now making it up for it in season 3. The only area I would say the storyline suffered was the Cassian, Helen and Max “love triangle.” There was definitely more intent with that plot before the pandemic. Cassian was not only supposed to be a catalyst for Jealous Max and Sharpwin but he was also supposed to come in and challenge the way Max did things. Cassian’s whole thing was self care first=great patient care which was the complete opposite of Max and the two of them were supposed to clash. Obviously this completely changed due to the pandemic. You can’t have a storyline about a doctor prioritizing himself first for “better patient care”in the midst of thousands of doctors globally throwing themselves on the frontlines and even loosing their lives to COVID-19. It would have been a terrible look to have that storyline so they clearly scrapped it! What we saw was probably them trying to salvage whatever was left from the original plot while they still had Daniel Dae Kim in the limited amount of episodes for season 3.

Apart from that, I think the writers are doing a fantastic job in terms of character development this season. Arguably I would say that Iggy probably has the best storyline so far and that’s incredible for his character. Tyler Labine is acting his ass off and Iggy’s scenes with Lauren, Vijay and Martin were top tier!!! We are finally getting a Max and Reynolds bromance that was teased in season one but literally know where to be found in season two! It’s great seeing them bond on screen and I hope we get more moments with these two. We’re also seeing Reynold’s “life plan” blow up in his face and we finally have some closure with Bloom. They kept us in limbo for so long! We didn’t know if him and Bloom were truly over but now we finally know. Also, it seems like he and Evie are officially done as well and he might have a new love interest on the horizon. For Lauren, she’s clearly seems to be having a coming out story which is something I didn’t see coming at all. I’m really curious how they’re going to play this out for her and can’t wait to see it unfold. Last but not least, for Max and Helen they are both going through massive character development phases which leads me to my second point.

I love a good Max and Helen scene as much as the next person. To me they’re the ultimate ship and I want to see them thrive and flourish but just because we don’t see Max and Helen interact doesn’t mean that the show isn’t properly developing or investing in their relationship!!!!!!!!The relationship between Max and Helen is so nuanced that their relationship doesn’t hang in the balance because they don’t have more witty, flirtatious, or emotional dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, I adore those moments. Those scenes between them make us the passionate sharwpin shippers we are. At the same time though, we have to truly take a look at why the state of their relationship is where its at now and why from a narrative perspective their current interactions make sense. In order to do this, we have to take a look at where Max and Helen left off last year.

At the end of season 2, Max made a move on Helen and almost kissed her in her office. After this moment occurred he never addressed it and at the time he was still dating Alice. There’s no doubt in my mind that this was the catalyst for why Helen started dating Cassian in the first place. She had practically laid her feelings out there and told Max he was the reason she gave up half of her department. After this revelation and the massive, intimate moment he initiated in her office, he didn’t even have the decency to address it. He swept it under the rug and wanted to keep the same relationship that he had with her like nothing ever happened. Even though Helen was aware about Alice, we now know from season 3 that Helen felt a type away that Max never “officially” told Helen that he was dating her. This is IMPORTANT!!! Max and Helen did not end on a high note in season 2. In fact, the very last scenes we see of season 2 is Helen blowing off Max to go on a date with Cassian and Max breaking off things with Alice. I know this wasn’t intentional due to the season being cut short but it definitely contributes to where they are now.

Fast forward a year later, and not only do we still have a massive almost kissed elephant in the room between Max and Helen but also the trauma of being on the frontlines of a pandemic and going through the biggest social justice movement the world has seen. This is something I’ve said many times over but I’m not sure the fandom recognizes how much these events have permanently altered these characters and changed the dynamics of this show. COVID-19 changed everything. The Black Live Matter Movement for the first time grabbed the attention of the world and changed everything too! Max and Helen are in the process of trying to heal and rebuild their lives the best they can as individuals after such a tumultuous year. At the same time, they are acutely aware of the feelings they have for each other and the UST between them and are carrying the weight of that as well. Naturally guys, the combination of all this is going to change most dynamics in a relationship. Things are awkward and distant because Max and Helen are awkward and distant!! They have a lot of shit that they’re going through as individuals and subconsciously as a “couple.” They are clearly not in a healthy place to be as vulnerable as they once were to each other. And how can they be when their feelings have literally been eating at them for over year?! It’s hard to ignore that and try to force yourself to go back to the way things were. Especially when their feelings have “technically” been out in the open since the end of season 2. They both know what it is! They were steps away from unleashing years of built up sexual tension between them and they went on with their lives like it never even happened. Max walking in on her and Cassian kissing in HER OFFICE and subsequently having that convo with Helen was not for shits and giggles. It triggered the BEAST of his feelings that he had fought so hard to suppress. There is no doubt in my mind that when he saw them in her office kissing, he was having some serious dejavu to their almost kissing affair last year. He‘s in love with her and she’s in love with him but this what happens when you continuously try and run away from those feelings and let it fester instead of trying to deal with it head on. The dynamic were seeing between them now is a result of their unresolved issues and it absolutely plays into Sharpwin’s story. It doesn’t take away from it. It makes sense for where they are NOW!

If we look at season three holistically, you’ll realize that a momentum for something significant happening for Sharpwin has been set through the acting and writing. I got to give it to Ryan Eggold. He has that fire and desire, Mr. Darcy type level acting down to a tee so far. It is so satisfying seeing Max so overcome with his feelings that you can tangibly see it in his body language and hear it in his voice. We have seen Max taken aback by Helen before but we have NEVER seen him like this. I keep on saying it but this is different guys. Something has shifted and it seems like Max is on the verge of exploding. His feeling are burning hot right underneath the surface and it’s a beautiful thing to behold. Last night’s episode was ripe with this type of content and Ryan was in his acting bag! It wasn’t an overtly “Sharpwin” episode but the writing and the acting is so clever and methodical, it will have you thinking otherwise. At the beginning of season 3 Max told Helen that he wants to build something better for Luna and something better for her. Was last night not a beautiful reflection of that? One question asking Max if he has ever loved a black woman put him in the shoes of his patient’s husband and had Max advocating for his wife like he would advocate for Helen if it was her! If that’s not fucking romantic I don’t know what it is and if the alarm bells aren’t going off that there is something deeper at play here with a huge payoff around the corner I don’t know what to tell you! Another moment that sticks out to me like a sore thumb is when Helen was telling Cassian that her brother died. I wrote about this in a previous meta of mind but Helen at her most vulnerable telling Cassian that she feels like she’s running out of time is SO SIGNIFICANT guys!!! It’s not only tell us that she fears that she’s missing out on the windows of opportunities for the wants and needs in her life but it literally sets the pacing of how quickly Sharpwin is going to progress. It is the beautiful freudian slip that tells us exactly where things are headed for these two. To me this is equivalent to Max telling Helen “I love my doctor” and “what if I want you?” in season 1. This episode had no interaction between Max and Helen but it was a MASSIVE Sharpwin indicator through and through! These are just a couple of examples but even their respective journeys in parenting is so Sharpwin driven. So in all I’m not mad in the direction the show has taken to showcase their relationship this season because Sharpwin is deeply interwoven in the storyline this year even if it’s not overtly obvious through emotional dialogue/ interactions.

Also, one thing you have to realize is this, season three is wrapping up a lot of loose ends from season 2 and when it comes to Max and Helen these two points will be/ have to be addressed in the next six episodes.

The Almost Kiss

Whether or Not They Want To Be Together

The showrunners know without a shadow of doubt that the resolution for these two points is owed! If Sharpwin is talking about their almost kiss, there is no way that they aren’t talking about what they mean to each other and what their future looks like together. Both solutions literally go hand in hand and I promise you they are not delaying the resolution for that till season 4. It’s not happening fam. We will see this play out within the next six episodes. So in hindsight, more Sharpwin interaction are on the horizon.

When I was making predictions about this season I wasn’t aware that this season would only be 14 episodes. I’m sad that season 3 is so short but that still doesn’t change my mind for where I think the story is going. Call me crazy but I’m sticking to my guns. There is something about how Ryan is portraying Max that is signaling something huge. Also I just trust the context clues that i believe the show is giving. I trust it! Anyway y’all! If you have any sharpwin question just DM here or message me on Twitter! my username is @oyindaodewale.

Love you guys! ❤️

#sharpwin #new amsterdam #max goodwin #helen sharpe #max x helen #sharpwin meta #new amsterdam meta

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