#and she starves and hurts herself bc she doesn’t know how to cope with it

[bookofmirth]

So sorry for the long and ranty essay especially right after turning your asks on again, but I want to push back on your response to whether locking Nesta up in the HOW is similar to Feyre/Tamlin.

Did something need to change for Nesta? Yes. 

But was locking her up what was needed? Maybe, but definitely not yet. 

The books literally leap from inviting her to a few parties… to locking her up. And so I obviously agree with you that cutting her off was needed. That should have been the next step. 

The fact is, SJM didn’t follow through on Nesta’s self-destruction. Nesta essentially was fine, at least physically, when she went to the House. That makes locking her up look really bad with the text we have. And that’s what we have. Ifs don’t matter when you are making a comparison here between the two situations. 

But the reason why I actually think it’s in some ways worse, is that, imo, they pulled her from one bad situation and put her into another. 

First off, the whole intervention came from a place of them being embarrassed of her. No one once stated that they were worried about her. I’m pretty sure the first time Nesta hears those words are from Elain when she visits her. And no, Amren’s look of worry doesn’t count bc we see that from Cassian’s POV. It should’ve been one of the first things she heard walking into that room, not Feyre making a bad joke that puts Nesta immediately on the defensive.

Nesta since after ACOWAR has been very vocal about not wanting Cassian around. Cassian knows she wants nothing to do with him, and we can assume so does everyone else. And YET, they lock her up with this man. Rhys and Feyre have an inkling their mates, Cassian also has a feeling they are. They locked someone up who has been using sex to cope, with her potential mate? That’s really bad. Like so bad. It’s such a disrespect to a boundary she set up for herself. And I know SJM was going for the forced proximity trope here, but its a disgusting take on it.

And all this talk about Cassian’s patience, and I’m like where? During that first breakfast scene, Nesta is willing to eat. She says give me toast, I’ll eat that. (Which btw if SJM has followed through on Nesta going through withdrawals and the fact she had been essentially starving herself, toast would probably be one of the only things she would be able to stomach. That girl ate oatmeal AND eggs and didn’t vomit it all up? Ok Janet.) But he says she can have only porridge with no sugar and, oh btw, not eating won’t bring your dead dad back. Like wtf? And he consistently degrades her and lusts after her—and she’s uncomfortable. I mean she literally says this: “Does that mean you’re done panting after me as well? Because what a relief that will be, to know you’ve finally taken the hint.” Yikes, not a good look Cass. 

And before someone is like, well she’s a bitch to him. I agree she’s hurt him before, but he chooses to go back. And he agrees to help her knowing that’s how she is. At some point, its on him. She’s not forcing him to go back to her. 

Nesta falls down the stairs, hurting herself because she wants out. Cassian doesn’t help her, but brushes it off and and essentially laughs about it. Mor shows zero concern for Nesta’s beat up appearance when she takes her to Illyria that morning. Like you’re not gonna ask her if something happened? If she’s okay? Idc how much you trust Cassian and how much you hate Nesta, you make sure nothing happened. He’s a big dude with literal killing power. 

During her “healing journey”, she’s manipulated into going on dangerous missions where she almost dies each time. Something she wasn’t being asked to do before. Honestly, she seemed safer when she was living in her apartment fucking and drinking than she was during this book, and once again, that’s the writing to blame. I can’t honestly say she would have died if they didn’t intervene bc SJM didn’t set it up like that in ACOSF. But she definitely could have died at the Bog or in the Prison. And then you have to start asking yourself is one worse than the other? Is dying at the Bog okay because it’s for a cause but her self-destructing bad? Obvs the goal wasn't for her to die on those missions, but the threat and possibility were there just like the possibility was there when she was self-destructing.

Also it is stated in text no one likes staying at the HOW. Feyre gets Elain and Nesta out of there in ACOWAR. Nesta gets attacked in the library, and she does express fear of what lives in the bottom of the library. I know Clotho reassures her that Bryaxis is gone and its all safe, but Nesta was concerned, and yet she’s forced to work there.

Cassian openly drinks around her. The whole ‘you can leave if you can make it down the stairs" is a lie bc the first time she does, Feyre just tells her to go back to the House and then she’s immediately snatched by Cassian to the mountain. It’s all just one big manipulation.

At the end of the day, I as a reader have to accept that this whole “rehab situation” worked and that Nesta is healed in the next book (although that’s flimsy bc she ends the book still kinda feeling underserving of love) just bc SJM needed it to or else, it would have been a pointless book. But how she got there is awful, and honestly shouldn’t have really worked.

I, and many others, felt there was little to no concern for her actual wellbeing and that it felt more like a power play. That’s a failure on SJM as a writer, but that’s why the comparison to Tamlin/Feyre and Nesta and being locked up is a valid way of reading it. SJM slapped she’s healed at the end of this book when the whole book she spent it being ripped apart essentially. So to me, good intentions don’t matter here because of that, just like Tamlin’s intent to protect doesn’t matter either bc it still hurts Feyre. 

I still don't agree that the situations were similar. I just don't. Clearly we won't agree on that and that's fine. The causes and effects of those situations were vastly different to me. Some of what you said here, especially about how Nesta was treated after actually going to the HoW, wasn't mentioned in the original post so I'll put that aside as separate issues.

I'll just talk about the initial act of locking Feyre in the manor and taking Nesta to the HoW, because after that point, there is no comparison. The situations are vastly different because Feyre was in that situation for like a minute before Mor came and got her. It's apples and oranges. My original comparison was just about the initial choice to help, protect, however we want to classify what Tamlin did with Feyre, and what Feyre and the IC did with Nesta.

Tamlin's intention to protect does actually matter; what I was arguing is that his intentions matter because his intentions were not pure, as he said they were. He said he was trying to protect Feyre, and he wasn't. He was being emotionally manipulative because he did love Feyre, but he was using his love against her, to justify his restriction of her movements. The IC (I mainly mean Feyre but they were supporting her and it's faster to type the IC) were concerned about Nesta, but it was an actual legitimate concern. Tamlin wanted Feyre to stay under lock and key, despite what was good for her. It was all about control with Tamlin. If it were about control with the IC, then they wouldn't have let her act the way she did for over a year. They wouldn't have let her live on her own, and pay her rent, and pay her bar tabs. That's actually the biggest problem I see with what they did. They enabled Nesta's self-destruction for far too long.

I highly disagree with the idea that people didn't actually care about Nesta. If they didn't care, they wouldn't have been worried about her this whole time. They left her alone for a year or so because she pushed them away so they thought "okay, we'll try it this way if that's what she wants". That was actually shitty of them because they ended up enabling her, and it hit a breaking point where they felt like they couldn't just let her wallow in self-hatred and self-destruction.

It's a huge part of Nesta's journey to accept that not only is she worthy of being loved, but she is already loved. She saw other people getting along as a betrayal of her - that's super immature! And she needed to realize that Feyre and Elain aren't taking sides, they all love one another, and Nesta is worthy of that love just as they are.

The thing with the situation that Nesta was in, is that there are no good choices. I genuinely have never seen an alternative that makes everyone happy - that leads to Nesta finding healing, while also keeping the IC out of her business, while also proving to Nesta that Feyre and Elain care about her. They left her alone, and it didn't work. They intervene, and Nesta is pissed. In that sense, I think sjm got it right. When someone is self-destructing, you don't just sit back and watch it happen.

I have very complex feelings about Nesta's boundaries, because Nesta's boundaries were literally "everyone stay the fuck away". She has no actual healthy boundaries. It's not like she says, "Okay, I'm done with this conversation" because she never allows conversations to start. It's not like the intervention could have begun in a way that would have put Nesta at ease, because she's always on the offensive. Like it's hard to understand someone's boundaries when they would rather disappear off the face of Prythian. Her boundaries are "never, fuck you". So what does that leave the people who care about her with? Just fucking off for eternity? They have to cross that boundary at some point or else they will cease to have a relationship.

Feyre was struggling in acomaf, but she was never self-destructive. She didn't need to be protected from herself. Nesta did. Whether sjm took it all the way in the way that it seemed like she was going to, when we see Nesta's inner dialogue, we know that she has some seriously fucked up thoughts about herself and that way of life wasn't sustainable.

Tamlin was emotionally manipulative and abusive in an attempt to control Feyre against an imagined threat. The IC let Nesta live her life until she hit a breaking point and they had to intervene because she was self-destructive.

I know this response is probably a lot, and I know that people won't all agree with me, and that's fine! Me saying this stuff is purely my opinion, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm just trying to explain my POV more because I had actually saved that ask for a few weeks because I knew it was complex, and I still have a lot of thoughts about Nesta and the "intervention". I've already mentioned it briefly so it's not like I agree that the IC's actions towards Nesta were great, despite the fact that the story had it all work out. I just really disagree that we can compare Nesta/Feyre and Feyre/Tamlin, while also thinking that Nesta + alcohol + self-destruction were not handled well or thoughtfully by sjm.

(sorry for the wonky link, FUCKING TUMBLR)

#nesta #ask #anon #long post tag #acotar #acofas #acosf #sjm critical

[transmasc-malleus]

Hey uhhhhh rant time

Sorry I’m on mobile so no read more

Living in this house is literally killing us. I didn’t think it would be this bad but we’re both sinking into a depression. My gf never goes downstairs and would rather starve herself than interact in any capacity with my grandma. I don’t blame her. I’m at the point where I’m resenting HER for things my grandma caused. I’m bitter that I’m the one who has to deal with it all, who has to fight her to eat, who has to cook and clean and beg her to leave the house. But I know it’s not her fault. This is her way of coping with an impossible situation, a situation she moved half a country away from when she left home. And here she is dealing with it again, except she’s actually afraid to speak back bc she fears the rest of the house will hate her. And I feel the same. It’s not worth my mental and emotional well-being to argue with my grandma or even just try to shut her down. It’ll just cause more problems. But having to sit there as she TRIES to rile me up, tries to get me to fight, tries to hurt me with what she says....is almost worse. The manipulation and the hurtful things she says, the way she aggressively dismisses me and acts like I’m an idiot. I just can’t anymore.

I don’t even want to hang out with my dad anymore bc all I talk about is how I can’t deal with her and it’s not fair to him when he KNOWS all this. But his only solution- one that only works for him cause she actually respects him somewhat- is to ignore her or shut it down. But unless I lose all of my self control, which I will one day, I’ll never be able to get the words out bc I’ve been conditioned not to through abuse. But now she’s threatening things that have no way of understanding her. Angrily suggesting I declaw my cat bc she acts like a living being instead of a stuffed cat. Yelling at my cat at every turn. Blaming every small thing on my cat bc I’m never around enough for her to blame things on me. Having her act like we don’t contribute to the household bc in her eyes “we’re selfish” for not always cooking dinner for everyone, or for wanting certain food to be ours only. I’m at my fucking wits end with her. But my gf is becoming too depressed to even leave the house. And it fucking infuriated me that she feels trapped in this tiny room because my grandma can’t learn to give us even a hint of respect. The fact that the woman I love has to stay confined and starving bc it’s too triggering for her to listen to the shit my grandma spews. The fact that the woman I love is having psychotic breakdowns again bc of the stress being in this shit hole causes her. It makes me want to pack up our shit and tell my grandma to go fuck herself and never talk to me again.

But we don’t have the money, we don’t have the means. So we’re stuck here. We’re stuck here and no one understands why we want to move out so desperately. I just want to scream that it’s all her fault and that I wish she had never had the chance to even interact with me as a child. I want to get angry and MAKE her understand that this has nothing to do with my gf and I. It’s not that we’re “too sensitive” or think we’re “special snowflakes” it’s HER and her fucking inability to give a single shit about anyone but herself. It’s her and her beef with us bc we don’t agree on anything. It’s her and her narcissism. Her and her abuse. Just like it was HER fault that I wanted to kill myself- I was just too blind and too manipulated by her to truly see it. She always blamed me so it must’ve been my fault. It must’ve been my selfishness. I must’ve wanted to tear the family apart. But not fucking anymore. Im not going to let ANYONE on this fucking house tell me how to deal with her. I’m not gonna let them tell me that I’m being unreasonable or passive aggressively act like I’m the bad guy. Im not gonna let my uncle make me feel bad for treating her with the same respect she gives me. I’m not gonna let my dad tell me “he wishes I could just learn to ignore her”. I’m fucking done I’m over it. We pay rent. There is not fucking reason we should be treated like children getting a free pass through housing.

There’s no reason I should have to shut my mouth and clench my fists to suit her needs. No reason I should have other people shut down what I’m saying bc “I just wanna start shit.” I should’ve gave to seeth in anger and start shaking from anxiety just to keep the peace. Why should I placate her when she starts every. Single. Thing. Why should I be the one to suffer because she can’t fucking shut her mouth for one fucking second if people aren’t paying enough attention to her. Why should I just let her call me fat and sensitive and just take her abuse? Why do I have to feel like I should be ashamed? Why am I ashamed to stand up to her? I just don’t know how much longer until I snap and then I really become the bad guy because I’ll go at her without any restraint. How much longer until I can’t take it anymore and I scream and cry in her face laying out everything she’s done to hurt me and keep me in my place only to have her call my a snowflake and go running to my dad? How long until I’m the one whose asked if it was worth it and I’ll feel too afraid to say yes. Dad said to my gf that he would choose me over him mom every time. He would kick her out before he would ever dream of kicking me out. But honestly. I don’t know if I believe that. I don’t know if I can trust my dad to have my back. And that fucking hurts. It hurts to feel like I’m always the bad guy by default. That I’m always the one escalating. It hurts that I get blamed for my reaction to her. That it’s ok for her to act this way bc she’s old and she won’t change. I don’t deserve this. My gf doesn’t deserve this. And I’m fucking done. I won’t placate anyone’s feelings. I won’t let her stomp walk all over me bc she knows I won’t do anything. I don’t care anymore. If I’m seen as the bad guy, if I’m seen as the instigator. I don’t fucking care. I’m doing this for me. I’m the only one whose gonna stand up for myself in this house. And if that causes tension? Fuck it. I don’t deserve to live in constant fear and anxiety. If that makes everyone else uncomfortable they can go fuck themselves for letting it get this far. I’m not gonna take it anymore. From now on I’m not fucking around. Im gonna take that anger and I’m gonna let her feel it. Let her know that she’s a monster that made me like this. I don’t deserve this.

#rant #vent #delete later #tw abuse #long post

[artlessictoan]

Do you have any more detailed headcanons on the life before the orphanage of the sand sibs 2.0?

yes I absolutely do! potential spoiler warning for breakingthe cycle?? I’m honestly not sure how much of this is actually gonna come up inthe fic, since I haven’t really got any set plan for it, I deliberately wantedto keep Shinki’s past in particular kinda vague bc I wanted to depict a characterwho doesn’t have to disclose alltheir trauma, even to those closest to them, and have that decision respectedby their loved ones, so I guess if you’re really curious about him then thiscould be the background that helps you understand the parts of his characterthat will only be hinted at within btc? Yodo and Araya’s bits are the mostlikely to actually be explored in the fic, so yeah maybe kinda sorta spoilers ifyou’re willing to wait 500 years for me to get my act together kjdfhg

(tw for child neglect, homelessness and physical abuse)

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Araya

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Araya had the most normal and healthy childhood of thethree, he had loving, low-ranking ninja parents and was a sweet – if very shy –boy, money was always a bit tight and he had some anxiety to deal with, but atthat age neither really affected him much.

That changed a few months after his he turned six, when afire started in his home; his parents managed to get him out, but not before hereceived severe burns, in the process they both inhaled significant amounts ofsmoke and both died later in hospital, Araya himself survived, though he had extremescarring across much of the right-hand side of his body – and particularly onhis face – and was left partially blind in his right eye (can just see coloursand unfocused shapes). No one in his extended family was either willing or ableto take him in, especially with the medical care he still needed, so, after he’drecovered as much as he could, he was sent to Suna’s orphanageand we know what happened from there

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Yodo

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She had a much more.. complicated childhood. She wasabandoned at birth, left in an alley in an area where Suna’s homeless tended tocongregate, she was discovered and taken in by a kind man before she starved,though she was already weak and quite sick. He cared for her for a short time,but died before her first birthday, she drifted around between various carers andhad a few short stints in the orphanage though she quickly learned how to lookafter herself and never stayed in one place very long before she was eitherabandoned or ran away herself (to pre-empt the inevitable abandonment she’dcome to expect), the times she was sent to live with foster parents endeddisastrously, as she’d become accustomed to living on the streets, stealing toget by and fighting for herself, so she spent most of her early years homeless,living in harsh, poverty-stricken places.

Of the people who helped raise and teach her, the one who affectedher the most was an older boy who let her hang around when she was about five,he was in his mid-teens and the youngest of her street friends and he wassimilarly cynical and distrustful of adults and the world at large, so sheautomatically felt a bit of kinship with him. They didn’t ever intend to becomeclose, they just happened to be squatting in the same building and wouldoccasionally do each other a solid without being asked, sometimes one or theother would disappear for a while, but they’d eventually come back to a (relatively)warm welcome, playing card games, teaming up for big thefts, etc.

After a few months of getting to know each other, they’d startedto open up about all the people who’d hurt or left them and Yodo started tothink of him as her big brother, but when he was caught by a local thug who they’dstolen from, he ran away, leaving her to take the beating meant for him, afterthat, she found a new place to sleep and decided that absolutely no one was everworth trusting. She saw him a few times afterwards, always flying into a rageat him, but she didn’t really blame him at the time, it’s just the law of thestreets to always look out for number one after all.

She soon found herself back at the orphanage though.

---

Shinki

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Ok so I’ve mentioned before that my version of Shinki isactually related to Gaara? First cousin once removed to be exact, not thatGaara knows that (Shinki is vaguely aware but prefers not to think about it).

The kage line is a lot more lineage-tied in Suna than othernations, and the council tends to be rather conservative, so when the third Kazekagehad a child with a mistress, they ‘encouraged’ him to disown the boy, not evenallowing him to support him or his mother; the son in question was always incrediblybitter about that and, when the third eventually went missing and was officiallydeclared dead, he vied with the legitimate son (Rasa) for the kage title, butlost, partly because of his birth but also because he didn’t inherit the magnetrelease, something he had tried and failed to activate since he was a child.

When Rasa came into power, he pushed his half-brother’s familyfurther and further into destitution, until they were completely powerless. Unableto reach the position of Kazekage, the son eventually married and had a childof his own, but remained an unpleasant, cold man to everyone around him.

When Rasa died, he once again tried to claim the title, thenwhen that failed pushed his daughter to compete against Gaara for it, she hadat least a modicum of self-preservation and didn’t bother – though she was alwaysone of Gaara’s most persistent detractors, not agreeing with his pushes forpeace and internalising a fair bit of her father’s old grudge against the kage family.Some time after the last great ninja war, she had a son, Shinki.

His parents were always quite cold with him, broken peoplefrom broken families themselves, neither one was really interested in having achild, so outside of basic care, they just left him to himself. When he turned three,his father died while out on a mission, unable to cope with the loss, hismother tracked down his killers to get revenge, but ultimately only got herselfkilled; with no other family to take care of him, Shinki was sent to live withhis maternal grandfather, Rasa’s half-brother.

At first there was very little difference between livingwith his parents and his granddad, they were all distant and had little interestin him, but when Shinki one day stopped a metal pan falling off the countermid-air, his grandfather lost it, inhis youth he’d been denied the position of kage in part because he hadn’t inheritedthe third’s abilities, but this strange, silent boy who could hardly even walkup and down stairs was exhibiting the magnet release? All his deep-seated rageand inadequacy came out and he hit Shinki. Then it happened again a few dayslater. And then it kept happening,every time he showed any sign of moving metallic objects, then any time he wasa bit too loud, or got in the way, or was just in his line of sight on a badday.

It continued through the ages three to seven, when hisgrandfather finally grew ill and died (natural causes, he was getting very old).He hadn’t bothered to inform the hospital staff that he had a child in hiscare, so eventually when the food left at home ran out, Shinki went out to buysome more, attracted the concern of a shopkeeper who, after being unable to geta word out of him, took him to the authorities. When it became clear that noone was looking for a missing child and Shinki didn’t seem at all concernedabout finding his parents, he was sent to the orphanage, to eventually meet Araya,Yodo and Gaara and discover what family reallyis.

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#ictoan answers #team shinki #araya #yodo #shinki #naruto #sand fam is best fam #ok i'm gonna be straight up with you the ages in this are kinda inconsistent with the ones in btc #bc as much shit as i like to give kishi i'm not really any better at Children or Math iudfbgiudfgs #i'll probably go back and make some minor edits to btc at some point #if i remember #wow this made me sad! #but i suppose that Tragic PastsTM is the naruto way..... #in all seriousness though don't take the warnings lightly #tw child abuse #tw child neglect #tw abuse #Anonymous

[grammarkid]

can you rant about Jennifer's body plz? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on it

oh, my dude.. my dude, ur rly gonna regret asking me this. like, i legit wrote a paper on this film. i analyzed it for a month straight and did research. for ur own sake, i’m so sry. for everyone else, i’m gonna put it under a cut, bc.. it’s a lot.

ok, i just want to preface this by saying that i know that the movie is objectively just bad. tbh, the writing is terrible, and diablo cody? thought she could tap into the hip cool teen lingo™️? but she was rly just pulling words out of her ass, so i always get torn between finding the dialogue laughable and cringe-worthy.

but i love the movie to death and i actually got the chance to write a big paper about it in college. long story short, i took this english/social studies class that was all about monsters – vampires, werewolves, zombies, cyborgs, etc. – and how they were representations of society’s fear of those who transgress social norms. so, basically we spent an entire semester studying ‘monster culture,’ a way of reading texts that parses the social anxieties from within their monster stories, bc the word ‘monster’ comes from the latin ‘monstrum,’ which literally means “that which reveals or warns.” so in monster theory, a monster always signifies something other than itself. & our final assignment was to analyze a monster film that we hadn’t discussed in class and explain the issues behind the film’s monster – but i won’t get into all that, bc that’s kind of a diff story.

but without going into all the social anxiety stuff about teenage sexuality, simply put, the film is an allegory for the ways in which sexuality and one’s self-esteem are intertwined. literally, jennifer gets turned into a demon, and the only way she can remain healthy and beautiful is to kill/feed off the guys at her school – but, rly, the story behind that is about jennifer’s insecurities. 

listen. jennifer slept with a lot of guys, even before she was transformed into a demon. needy said that jennifer lost her virginity in junior high. did u know that adolescents who have sex earlier are more likely to be depressed and to have issues with their self-esteem? (i told u, i did the research.) and teens with high levels of “sexual permissiveness” are often low in self-esteem in comparison to those who abstain. (no judgment at all, that’s just what the studies say. and let’s talk about the word ‘permissiveness’ here – it’s explicitly stated that jennifer’s already done anal. i’d say that’s permissive for a teenager.) and studies have also found that ppl who do participate in sex will often experience a temporary boost in self-esteem afterward, bc it makes them feel desirable – shocking!! 

so, ok, the point is, what jennifer does with boys after she becomes a demon is rly not that different from what she did with boys before she was a demon – she uses them to improve her self-image. (the only difference now being that she.. u know.. kinda eats them.) bc as confident and pretty as jennifer is, she has a lot of problems with her self-image. she’s peppy and vivacious whenever she looks pretty, but rude and mean when she feels ugly. & like, the biggest fuckin’ insult needy could use against her was that she was insecure?? literally nothing else that needy said had any effect on her, but she rly cracked when needy accused her of being insecure. i mean, she literally starts crying as she’s putting on her makeup for the winter formal bc she can see herself in the mirror and she’s ugly, and the only way she can fix that is to, u know, eat a guy – and it’s not just any guy, ok? she’s not just going around murdering the random 65y/o dude in the mcdonald’s drive-thru or the lady running the convenience store. they’re all young guys, around her age, who very obviously find her attractive. 

hmm. deteriorating demon eats boys who are attracted to her to regain beauty vs. human teenage girl with deteriorating self-worth and self-esteem sleeps with boys who are attracted to her to feel beautiful again. and uh let’s not forget that girls who regularly use guys are often called ‘man eaters.’ like, it literally could not be more obvious?? yet so many ppl i’ve talked to about it are oblivious.

but the thing that rly gets me about this movie? it’s the relationship between jen and needy. and i’m not just talking about the fact that they made out in bed for thirty seconds – although that does play a factor. i’m talking about how the film is rly an exploration of how these issues literally destroy their relationship.

bc jennifer is detrimentally obsessed with being pretty and popular and ‘socially relevant’ but she can’t let go of needy. needy even says that it’s to the point that kids at their school literally can’t understand why jen hangs out with her?? and i think that reason is pretty obvious.

like, ppl have their opinions, but i feel like there is clearly something between jennifer and needy beyond just friendship? jennifer is constantly sizing needy up, flirting with her, touching her, etc. jennifer even says that they used to play ‘boyfriend-girlfriend’ when they were younger. like, idk, that doesn’t seem like something friends do to me?? & it definitely doesn’t seem like something needy would suggest. no, that had to have been jennifer’s idea. but why? bc she has feelings for needy. hint: jennifer didn’t go after anyone in the film other than ppl she could use to her advantage – she explicitly mentions wanting to sleep with ahmet, jonas is the quarterback so ofc sleeping with him would be a boost to her esteem, colin asked her out on a date despite her lackluster appearance, and she also mentioned finding chip attractive. (if she could get him to choose her despite his loyalty to needy, wouldn’t that be a rush? why do u think she was so adamant when she said ‘tell me i’m better than needy’??) she doesn’t even attempt to approach anyone else in that way except needy. immediately after jennifer’s transformation, she goes back to needy. she’s the first person jennifer thinks of, and the first person we see jennifer approach in that way. and the scene definitely isn’t lacking sexual tension?? but ultimately it just suggests that needy could, in fact, give jennifer the same thing she got from the boys – i would even go so far as to say that, as a whole, the film suggests that needy is the only one who could give her that – but she can’t bring herself to do it. she cares too much about her to hurt her, to use her like that, and she even admits that later in needy’s bedroom. she literally says “i couldn’t hurt you.”

like omg the real tragedy of the movie is that needy and jen are torn apart by their missed opportunities. they’re constantly reaching out for one another, but they’re never in sync. after jen’s transformation, needy tries to be there for her, asks her questions, wants to be sure she’s okay, but jen can’t let her in bc she can’t even cope with the truth herself. after she kills colin, jen goes to needy’s room and tells her what happened to her bc it’s taking its toll on her and she’s desperate for needy’s support and validation, but needy is already convinced that she’s evil and her aggressive questions make jennifer retract. and without needy, jennifer has nothing. that’s why she goes after chip, bc it will hurt needy the same way needy hurt her. & personally, i don’t think jennifer was ever truly attracted to chip – i think she was attracted to his loyalty. & she was jealous of needy’s relationship with him bc it was steady and respectful and jen had no way of obtaining that for herself. and at that point in the film, she’s got nothing left to lose. honestly, like, with the others? jen didn’t hesitate. she made out with them and tore them apart at the first available opportunity. with chip? she took him to the pool and they just.. fucking sat there?? she tells him “i feel so empty” and yea most ppl probably take that to mean that she’s hungry, but if she was starving, then she’d just have her way with chip and be done with it, wouldn’t she? but she didn’t want to. she feels empty bc it’s all catching up to her and she doesn’t even have needy to help her through it. needy pushed her away. 

which is why i personally think that jennifer looks her absolute worst in the final scene with needy in her bedroom. she fed a bit off chip, obv, bc it was enough to kill him, and enough to completely heal the giant gaping hole in her stomach – which she plainly says to needy only happens ‘when she’s full.’ and yet she’s still so ugly. her skin is pale and her eyes are yellow and bloodshot, why? bc her physical state is a literal representation of her self-image and she feels terrible about herself so she looks terrible. ok, another hint: immediately after jen dies? she’s beautiful again. you literally watch it happen. & yeah, bc the film is about demons and the occult, u could say that the demon left her body, blah blah, but i think she becomes beautiful again bc that’s what she looks like when it’s not being distorted through the lens of her own self-view. all her insecurities aren’t killing her anymore, bc there’s nothing left. (and, just one last note about this final scene. what allows needy to kill jen? she tears off her bff necklace. and then jen literally loses all her power. she falls out of midair. it’s like everything stops, bc she still wore the necklace, she was still holding on to needy, even tho needy pushed her away. that was the last thing holding her together and needy took that too. and i think, rly, that’s what ultimately killed her. sure, the boxcutter had something to do with it, but there’s a reason that moment took up so much screen time, why it had such an impact, whereas the knife going in and that stupid ass ‘my tit’ line were so rushed in comparison.)

ugh, gosh. ok, i rly need to stop now. all that is already all twisted up and it hardly makes any sense bc i was rushing. i could literally go on for days about this movie, but this has already taken up like an hour of my day?? and i’m sure no one has even read this far anyway. but yeah. i have a lot of feelings about jennifer’s body, because imo it’s rly a tragedy disguised as a horror film.

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