#but having lived through all that nonsense ‘‘not like other girls’‘ discourse I really like seeing girliness celebrated and uplifted | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wordslikesilver · 2 months

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Seeing the discourse lately on transmisogyny and coming across new terms like tme and tma being used more than I think I’ve ever seen before because of everything going on had me uneasy, not gonna lie, I always do when I find new terminology from the alphabet mafia because I’m thinking to myself oh boy, more stuff to explain to cis people. Looked into it, it all seems pretty reasonable to me tho for including nonbinary femmes and femme intersex people I’ve sorta just always by default assumed “Trans Femme” was really good given the whole “it’s a spectrum and transmisogyny by definition is talking about the people on the femme side of it who didn’t start there” so admittedly I’ll probably be a grump about changing my vocab soon.

But then I see some new shit in the wake of all this TERF nonsense and bigotry being used against trans women? Detransitioned cis women calling themselves trans women and saying WE don’t understand the concept of gender well? The audacity? Look, changing the labels of a community to be less offensive is something I support so loudly and love and adore. This isn’t that. This is people encroaching on our pride and our identities and pretending the flag we nobly fly, the icon of bravery and unifying love in the face of oppression that it is, isn’t clearly “ours” enough. That it’s something they’re allowed to say belongs to them too so we need to come up with something new to call ourselves when we discuss the pain we face in our lives. Erasing and rewording the definitions of who we are til our identity is gone altogether. Moving the goal posts and telling us to teach everyone a whole new set of labels when the average layman still doesn’t even know that “Cis” isn’t a fucking slur, let alone what it means. Never forget that at your core when you fight against this new bigotry and they try to dance circles around you with their words and misdirect the conversation to stupid shit. Alienation from an already unified identity is a classic means of making it so much fucking harder for the oppressed to have their pleas for basic rights be acknowledged. Never let your people’s pain be silenced by someone pretending to they’re too stupid to know who you’re talking about.

To the TERFs and bigots who find this, and I fucking hope you find this, Trans Woman is not yours to fucking claim just because “gender is a construct and complicated” you will NEVER know the pain people like me have been through. I refuse to acknowledge a claim on my people’s identity because someone managed to misunderstand a concept hard enough and it’s now snowballed into a new form of complicating discussions of deserving basic and equal rights. I have felt the pains a cis woman has felt, I have felt sexist and awful treatment from men, I have been catcalled, I have been stalked, I have been made unsafe, I have been expected to be a mother for no other reason than “all women want them one day” and I have been assumed to be less than a man for some imagined frailty of the fairer sex. I am a woman. We can share that label, I WANT to share that label. We can bond over sapphic love and feminine experiences and hardships we both suffer under a cruel patriarchy. In just the same way, I have never known the pain of period cramps. I don’t have a vagina. I will never have a pregnancy scare and I will never feel the side effects of birth control. I wasn’t catcalled by gross men walking home when I was in high school. I was never sexualized by the media when I was in middle school the way cis girls would see happen to them. I am NOT a cis woman and I will never be one. I grew up as a boy, I lived and I loved as a young man, I saw the world through masculine eyes and was raised being treated as one, I will never pretend I know what it’s like to be a young girl being preyed upon and used by an older man. I will never touch that label because it’s simply not correct at the most fundamental level. I am a trans woman and that made me who I am. After all the people I’ve met and all the experiences I’ve shared, it took time to be so proud of calling myself a trans woman. Holding up the sky would’ve taken less strength of the heart, but now I feel the deepest pride knowing I’ve done something inconceivably harder.

But you, you people cannot take that from me and my sisters. I draw the fucking line at saying you think you have the slightest notion of what it’s like to be transfeminine. To be born in a body that makes people see you as a man from the very first glance, to hear you wrong from the first whisper of your voice. To spend the rest of your life working tirelessly in a fight against your own biology and/or the perception of the entire world whenever it casts its ugly eye upon you. Some of us don’t even have the privilege of fighting those perceptions or the things or own bodies have been programmed to force on us. Some of us don’t even want to have to do anything about how we look because it’s bullshit to have to fight for that basic respect from our peers in the first place and their standards just don’t align with who we are deep down in the first place! Gender is complicated but this isn’t. Have you EVER held your breath in the women’s public washroom and tucked your feet in because you were scared you’d make other women uncomfortable, because you’re not sure if you’re in an accepting space? FEARED what might happen if you step into the women’s change room to put on a bathing suit or your work clothes? Have you EVER been threatened with physical violence and called slurs in front of your own mother on public transit? Have you ever had to tell your doctor you’re ready to drop out of school to show how “sure” (re: fucking desperate) you are to be prescribed HRT? Sure, lots of cis women are on HRT, I treat them as patients all the time. Have you ever had a hot flash at the age of 21 because you were late on your injection? Did you pierce your skin with thin metal once a week for years and years to get the breasts you have? Did your body do irreparable things to your bones and your voice that make it so no one will ever see you as a woman at first glance without thousands of hours of effort, of tears, of sheer fucking focus and fixation on achieving the ideal self you see in your mind and dream of being one day? DID YOU HAVE TO BEG YOUR GOVERNMENT TO LET YOU HAVE THE BODY YOU LITERALLY ALREADY HAD AT BIRTH OR DID THEY NEVER EVEN SO MUCH AS TRY TO GET IN THE WAY OF JUST BEING CALLED MISS ON YOUR GOD DAMN LICENSE? Cis women can’t even begin to imagine the feelings I have felt, building my wings of feather and bones and wax, day after day, dreaming of flying beside my sisters who were born with wings they’ll never fear will melt, all the while remembering the last time someone born in a body like mine flew too close to the sun. Maybe they’ll perhaps know what it’s like to bind them to their back and hide them beneath their shirt, maybe they’ll even have sheered and ripped the bones from their sockets and one day wish they could have them back and sing with the rest of the angels like they used to, but they will NEVER fly on wings like mine, fear the heat from the light that makes life worth living the way I do, fear the same slings and arrows screaming up through the air from down below and even at times from above my head to let me know loud and clear they wanna knock me outta this sky, this sky that’s so beautiful and holy I cry when I touch it, the very first chance they get.

Transphobia won’t ever take the sky from me. My Icarian Wings are made on the foundation of generation after generation of my people who dreamed and yearned to touch the sunlight blue skies and the infinite glittering nights, each of us telling each other, telling ourselves we’ll never fear the light again one day, lifting each other when we fall, soaring higher each time than the ones whose wax melted before we could save them could, warmly teaching each other how to fix our broken wings and freely gifting each other the love it takes to make them stronger for the next flight. Holding each others hands as we dance and show each other how to fly, hand in hand and heart in heart with the angels who call us sister angels. A cis woman having the audacity to flap her never melting wings and saying hers are just like mine, that the name of my people is just a construct so she can say she she’s just like Icarus too, makes me wanna vomit. Pretending she knows what it’s like to watch in terror as all the feathers fall out suddenly in a moment of weakness making her break her bones upon the rocks, listening to everyone around her say “I knew it, I knew his wings were fake, look at him crawl along the ground in the dirt and the mud where he belongs.” Pretending that if two people both have skin, even of a different colour, that since the labels are made up, the sun and society itself will surely treat them the same if the white one calls themselves black.

Transphobia won’t ever take the sky from me. Come and fucking try to take these wings from me and see what happens.

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cafedanslanuit · 3 years

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♡ — pairing: kazutora x reader

♡ — summary: after a long day at work, you want nothing but to spend a calm night with your boyfriend. however, you have no idea this is the night were all his demons finally get the best of him.

♡ — tags/warnings: female reader, angst, breakups, hurt feelings everywhere, mention on mental illnesses and nightmares, based on ben platt’s song ‘carefully’, mention of tora’s job in one of the future timelines.

♡ — a/n: i enjoyed writing kazutora so. damn. much. also, i’m quite proud of this one and the small details i added~ thank you @ofoceansandtombstones for being my lovely beta <3

♡ — masterlist

And all this time you've had a gentle way of holding me

So could you please release me that way too?

— “carefully” by Ben Platt

“It’s open, come in!”

The first thing Kazutora sees when he opens the door of your apartment is you, kneeling on the kitchen floor and picking up pieces of a broken baking dish. Red sauce has splattered everywhere and his mind betrays him for a second, imagining an accident far worse than what has truly happened. He blinks twice and starts to notice the small details that finally slow down the fast beating of his heart. There are pieces of chicken breasts next to the open oven door and what he thinks are sliced carrots next to your right knee.

You hiss when you pick up a piece of the shattered glass, the sharp end pinching your finger. Kazutora comes back to his senses, widening his eyes as he realizes he’s just been standing there.

“Hey, let me. You’ll cut yourself,” he warns, walking up to you. Grabbing both your hands, he eases you into your feet and then guides you to the living room. “I’ll take care of it,” he promises as he goes back to the kitchen and starts cleaning up the mess.

You let yourself fall on the sofa with a loud thud and let out an exasperated sigh.

“I just had the most awful day,” you whine, taking off your apron and leaving it on the arm of the sofa. “Work was hell, I got scolded by something that I didn’t do— like always, only this time my boss was all like: ‘You gotta be more careful, we wouldn’t want to lose such a valuable employee’. Like he was going to fire me over someone else’s mistake?!”

Your voice is getting louder by the minute and you take advantage of the fact Kazutora is in another room to keep the volume. You have been waiting the entire day to see him and vent about what a trainwreck you day had been. Just as always, he listens intently, the only noise coming from the kitchen being a soft scraping sound as he picks up everything and throws it to the trash.

“Then, I went to the store and of course they had run out of basil. Tell me, how does a store that big run out of basil?” you ask. There’s no answer from the kitchen so you continue. “I mean, yeah, I could have gone to another store but my feet were killing me. I’m just not meant to work in heels the entire day,” you sigh tiredly, swinging your feet.

You reposition yourself, now sitting cross-legged on the sofa. Putting your right hand on your left shoulder, you stretch your neck, feeling your sore muscles releasing a bit of tension with a small ‘pop’.

“I ended up preparing something entirely different than I had planned for dinner. I tried to let it go but just as I was going to put it in the oven, it slipped my hands and—”

“I think we should break up.”

Words die in your lips the moment you listen to your boyfriend speak. The silence becomes loud and abrasive as you struggle to understand what was happening. Why was Kazutora breaking up with you with such a small voice? What had triggered him to come to that conclusion? Why had he decided to bring it up now? You turn your head to the kitchen door and watch him slowly make his way towards you, doubtful steps as he takes a seat on the other side of the sofa, avoiding your eyes at all costs.

“What?” you ask, your voice hoarse. His lips form a tight line and you see him swallowing nervously.

“I’m not doing okay— haven’t been for a while. I— it’s been two years since I left prison and I still haven’t— I don’t— I don’t know what I’m doing,” he explains, looking down at his hands.

You nod slowly, trying to comprehend where he’s coming from. Turning your body towards him, you take a deep breath before speaking.

“It’s okay not to know,” you assure him in a soft voice. “Just… take it slow. One day at a time and then I’m sure you’ll—”

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Kazutora confesses and you notice his voice wavering a little. “I— I keep having nightmares about— about that day and— and also about the motorcycle shop. Those two mix up and…” he takes one of his hands to the side of his head, his fingers grazing his temple. “And I’m hitting Baji in the head. And there’s so much blood— so, so much blood and—”

Leaning forward, you take his hands. They’re shaking and extremely cold and you rub your thumb over his knuckles, trying your best to soothe him.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now, Tora, you’re—”

Kazutora pulls his hands away hastily, leaving a tingling sensation on your palms.

“I can’t!” he says as he shakes his head. You spend a moment looking at your empty hands, never before having felt your boyfriend’s rejection. “I feel like I’m drowning and— You know what? I think relationships just aren’t for me,” he shrugs, his hands moving in exaggerated gestures. “That’s why I never cared for dating, never got myself involved in that kind of shit, not until—”

He finally looks at you and, fuck, you wish he didn’t. You’re not sure if you have the strength to deal with such hurtful discourse. You lick your lips and take yet another deep breath, deciding to ignore his hurtful remark.

“I’m… so sorry you’re feeling this way,” you say, slowing down your words, trying your best not to show how hurt you were. This isn’t him, you tell yourself. So no need for that tightness in your throat. “But you have to understand it’s not because of me. It’s because of everything that you’ve gone through and how hard it’s to deal with them. I don’t blame you, it is hard. But this… us,” you gesture to the both of you. “This is a good thing. Despite all the pain and hurt we’ve both been through, we—”

“Please, stop,” he says, raising his hand and pressing his eyelids together. “I can’t be with you anymore. That’s it, that’s all—”

“So you don’t love me anymore?” you counter. You scoff in disbelief, shaking your head. Kazutora’s eyes shoot open and you notice his pupils shaking in fear, like a deer caught in headlights.

“I love you,” he breathes out, and for a moment you see the boy you fell in love with in his amber eyes that are quickly filling with tears. “I do love you but it’s killing me. I feel like I’m dying,” he chokes out. He looks away from you once more and starts tugging at his fingers. “I’m rotting inside and I don’t know what to do to make it better. I just want it to stop. I want it to stop and— I don’t want you around when I’m like this. I want to figure out what the hell is happening and—”

“But if you love me and I love you then why—”

“I’m not happy with you!”

Kazutora widens his eyes, scared by his loud outburst. He parts his lips, silently muttering nonsense as he tries to come up with words that can make it better. You lower your head and he wants to punch himself over it. He doesn’t want to make you cry, not after everything you’ve done for him. Is he really going to be the person that hurt the one that made a home for him in her embrace? Is he going to hurt the only person that was brave enough to pick up the pieces of his shattered soul?

“I’m…” he babbles, in a soft voice. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

You snort. “No, you really did mean it, Tora.”

He can sense the hurt and sadness in your voice, even if now you’re the one that won’t look at him. He watches helplessly as you stand up and walk towards the living room window in complete silence. The apron you took off is still on the couch and the vast memories of all the times he embraced you while you were wearing it quickly fill his mind.

He wishes there was a way he could keep you. But no matter how much he wants to, he knows there really is no other way. He’s thought about this countless times. He has gone to work without getting proper sleep, stared at his blank tv screen for hours on end, trying to come up with a plan where he could keep you. Was staying with the person he loved the most too much to ask?

No matter in how many shades of light or with how much care he handled the memory of you, the only way he could spare you the greatest amount of pain was to leave you— even if he knew he’d end up shattering your heart as well.

Kazutora notices the way your fingers tightly close around the edge of the window, your knuckles turning white. He had come to terms that he’d lose you today, yet he never expected for it to be this way. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. If hating him would mend your wounds faster, then he’d take it. Anything that would make the heartache he was causing you a little bit lighter. He knew you were the last person on Earth that deserved to go to bed carrying that much pain in her soul.

Looking out the window, you focus on a small girl walking her dog on the street. It’s a brown labrador and by the size of it, it’s barely a puppy. Rather than walk, it jumps on its four legs, his little head looking back at the girl every chance he has as he happily wags his tail. The pet shop Kazutora and Chifuyu work at immediately comes to mind. Would it be like this from now on? Small things eliciting memories of your days together without your consent and leaving a sour taste in your mouth?

You will need to find a new commute, you think, as you had been stopping by the pet shop on your way home for the past year. Is there another bus that you could take? As you try to remember the lines and their respective routes, you’re engulfed by the memory of the first time Kazutora dozed off with his head resting on your shoulder as you rode the bus together. You close your eyes and you can clearly see his peaceful expression and slightly parted lips as he slept, his fingers tightly intertwined with yours. His breathing is slow and his hands are cold and you wish you could go back, even for a minute and place a kiss on top of his head, since you wouldn’t be able to do so from now on.

Where exactly had you failed? You had just been complaining about your day when he dropped the bomb. Did you complain too much? Did you talk too much? Or was it you the one that was too much? You tried your best and supported him as much as you could but as it turns out, it hadn’t been enough. Good intentions were nothing but useless as you were now saying goodbye to the man you had loved the most.

You didn’t realize you were crying until you felt Kazutora’s cold knuckles against your cheek, wiping your tears. You gasp, startled by his touch and take a couple steps back until your back hits the wall. It takes a few seconds for him to bring his hand now, unsure on what to do next.

He looks so scared and small— it fills your heart with frustration. Your whole body is screaming to take a step forward and comfort him, cradle him in your arms like so many times before, assure him he’s safe with you and that he doesn’t have to worry anymore. That, if you can still go home to each other at the end of a bad day, you can take anything life throws at you.

But that’s the thing. You’re not each other’s home anymore. You don’t get to bury your face in his neck and hum happily when his perfume reaches your nose. You don’t get to have him take a nap on your lap as you watch a series or feel his lips ghost against yours seconds before colliding in a kiss.

You hate it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, crossing his arms in front of his chest and looking down at his feet. “Please, don’t cry.”

“You know what, Kazutora?” you say, wiping your tears with the back of your hand. You taste venom in your words, yet that doesn’t stop you. “If you’re not happy with me, then what are you doing here?”

He flinches at your words. Biting his inner cheek, he nods, still incapable of holding your gaze.

“Yeah, okay,” he mutters. “I’ll go. I really am sorry.”

Kazutora turns on his heel, walking towards the door. Maybe it’s the way you know he’s not coming back this time that makes your desperation afloat. You don’t want him to go and you also know you can’t make him stay. And even if somehow you could find a way to keep him by your side, it would be worthless.

He’s just not happy with you.

“Are you happy somewhere else, though?” you ask, your words leaving your mouth before your head has time to process them. He stumbles on his feet and stops. “Because if you just can’t manage to be happy, then it’s not on me.”

Kazutora doesn’t have to turn for you to know he’s second guessing himself. The next seconds feel like years as he just stands there, mid-way to the front door, thoughts so messy and loud you can almost hear them.

“That doesn’t matter,” he finally says with his back to you. He closes his fists and you see his shoulders rising and falling as he takes a deep breath. “This way you don’t have to deal with... with the mess I am and—”

“Oh, please, I knew what I was getting into when I started dating an ex-convict.”

The weight of your words fall onto you the moment they leave your mouth. You squeeze your eyes shut, muttering a curse. It takes no time for you to walk towards Kazutora, standing between him and the door.

“Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Tora, I didn’t— you know I didn’t mean it that way. Fuck, I’m so sorry,” you whimper, tears flowing free down your cheeks. Your wave your shaky hands, desperate to make your point across. “I just wanted to say I knew things would be difficult but I loved you— I love you and I—”

Kazutora shakes his head, a gentle yet sad smile on his face as he takes your hands in his. He holds them in front of his chest, squeezing them gently as they don’t stop trembling.

“Stop, it’s okay,” he assures you. “That’s what I am.”

“It’s not,” you protest. “I mean— yeah, but you’re more than that. You’re so much more than that. You’re caring, you’re noble— you’re so tender with the animals at your shop. You’re so sweet with me, always checking if I’ve eaten and offering to help me out if I have chores I need to do. You always come pick me up if I’m working late. You— you’re so fucking special to me.”

Kazutora’s lips form a tight line. “I wish I could see that,” he whispers.

“Then just— let me try. Let me try until you can look at yourself the way I do,” you almost beg. You let go of the hold he has on your hands to gently cradle his face. “I’ll do anything, but... don’t patronize me. I’m not a little girl. Whatever life throws at me, I’ve always been able to handle it. No— we’ll handle it. Together. Like it’s always been, you and me, I just— please, I don’t want you to go,” you cry. “We were going to be happy together, you were going to live with me and I’d give you half my drawers and half my closet and half… half everything. Please, don’t go. Don’t go, Tora.”

The sadness in his amber eyes only confirms what you’ve been fearing this whole time. You sob, your thumbs softly stroking his cheeks as you feel the world crumbling around you. This time, he doesn’t stop you, letting you cry as you hold his face, coming to terms with the fact he’s really leaving after all.

Your hands move to his hair, gently threading your fingers across his long, dark locks. Tracing the outline of his face, you push one of the dyed streaks away, only for it to fall back right where it was before. You can’t help the small smile that forms on your lips. He’s so pretty, you think, as the pads of your fingers gently caress his face. Your thumb grazes the space between his bottom lip and his chin and you dream of a world when he’s not saying goodbye, but rather falling asleep under your touch on your shared bed. You never knew loving someone as much as you loved him was possible-- yet the way your heart was crumbling in pieces was evidence of how much your soul was aching by being separated from the person it belonged to.

Sniffling, you rub your cheek against your shoulder to wipe your tears. You swallow before raising another question.

“Is this a… temporary thing? Or for good?” Your voice comes out in a whisper as you place down your hands on his shoulders.

“I don’t know,” he answers. He wants nothing more than to put his arms around your body like so many times before, but he’s aware that it will only make things more difficult. “But I don’t want to keep you waiting in vain. You should move on.”

Kazutora realizes how much he hates the idea as it leaves his lips. The idea of you starting over with someone else rots in his tongue. He doesn’t want you to hold anyone’s face the way you were just holding his. He wants to keep you all to himself, to go to endless visits to the grocery shop, to watch you fall asleep during movie night and then pretend you didn’t, to massage your hands as you tell him about his day.

But you don’t deserve the guck that’s forming inside his mind. He knows it’s only a matter of time before it comes out pouring and reaches you. And he’ll be damned if he lets himself ruin the one good thing he’s had in his life for many years. He promised to himself he wouldn’t let his ill state of mind touch his loved ones. Never again.

He watches you nod and feels his heart shattering, even if everything is going just the way he intended. You rub his shoulders and look into his eyes, a sad smile on the pretty lips he would never get to kiss again.

“Okay,” you sigh. “We’ll end this but… when you leave, never doubt how loved you were. No— how loved you are. I don’t know what is coming for either of us but… I do know a part of my heart will always belong to you, no matter who I hold hands with. I will always love you, Tora.”

Your words are enough to finally break him. Kazutora clutches your body tightly against him as he loudly sobs against your shoulder. You hold him, tears flowing free once again as you try and soothe the man you love, leaving small kisses on the side of his head and whispering soft reassurances that it’s okay. It’s not, you tell yourself. It’s never going to be okay. But it has to be.

Carefully, you move him back to the sofa, helping him sit down while he refuses to let go of his hold on your body. You lean on the back pillows, both your arms cradling him while he whimpers like a small child. Kazutora clutches the fabric of your sweater with desperation, wishing there was a way he could stay with you.

Why does he have to give up the person that had put a smile back on his face? He can’t quite remember a time when his stomach had hurt out of laughter before he ever met you. Or when he’d experienced such peace as the night he stayed at your apartment and got to see your sleeping face first thing in the morning. He’s never loved anyone as much as he loves you and, for all he knows, he may never love like this again.

But he could never risk tainting you. He would never be able to forgive himself.

Kazutora softly pulls away from your embrace. His eyes are blotchy and red and you’re sure yours look the same or even worse. His nose is red, like it always does when he cries. It’s endearing, you think. Everything about him, from his hair, to his eyes, his hands— you’ve come to love every part of Kazutora. And that’s exactly why it’s so hard to let him go.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says in a whisper, resting the side of his head on the back pillows of the sofa.

“Like what?” you ask, gently pushing his hair away from his face and behind his ear.

“Like I matter to you. Like I’m making a huge mistake.”

You take a deep breath. Imitating him, you rest your head on the back pillows as well, so you’re both facing each other.

“I don’t— I don’t fully understand what you’re going through,” you admit, your eyes locked on his. “But if you need to… get away, then you should. You’ve been nothing but loving to me. All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy, whether it’s with me or not. You deserve to fully experience all the beautiful things life has to offer.”

Silent tears fall from both your cheeks and his.

“I should be thankful I got to love you for this whole year. Because even if it ends this way… God, I loved you so much,” you sniffle, letting out a small laugh. “And I felt so loved. Isn’t that magical in itself? That we got to love each other at the same time?” you wonder with a sad smile.

Kazutora parts his lips, yet the doorbell interrupts him before he can even speak. You look at the front door, your eyebrows furrowing for a moment before you realize who’s probably there.

“Food’s here,” you say, wiping the tears from your face.

“Food?” Kazutora asks, confused.

“Yeah,” you sigh. “Didn’t I tell you? The baking dish broke so I called that restaurant, the one with the burgers we like.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t really listening back then,” he admits with a pang of guilt. He sits up on the couch and turns his head at you. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

You sit up as well. “I ordered for the two of us. C’mon, stay for dinner. Let’s… remember us this way, okay? Without so many tears and sadness,” you offer, tilting your head towards him. “I even ordered your favourite one.”

Kazutora rubs his face with his sleeve, erasing the trail of the tears he just shed. Looking at you, he nods, drawing a small smile on his lips.

“Okay. I’ll get it.”

He only walks a few steps towards the door before he feels you tugging at the back of his shirt. Turning around, he notices you’re standing right behind him. Your eyes look up to him, biting your bottom lip and not even a ghost of the smile you previously offered him.

“Before that, uh— I want you to know I… I mean it,” you firmly say, taking in all his facial features, loving how they soften every time he looks at you. “I’ll always love you. No matter how many years go by or if I ever stop being in love with you— I’ll still love you.”

“I’ll always love you too,” he replies, taking your hand and squeezing it softly. “I don’t think I could stop even if I wanted to.”

You finally let out a soft chuckle and squeeze his hand back. The doorbell rings again and you walk around Kazutora to get to it. This time, he’s the one that stops you, not letting go of the hold of your hand. Looking back at him, you notice the soft pout in his lips and how they softly tremble, looming more tears.

“It’s okay,” you assure him, and you know you’re saying it to yourself as well. “Who knows, we might get together again someday. Have our own Casablanca moment. We’ll always have the pet shop,” you joke, trying to fight back to tears that threaten to fill your eyes as well.

It’s Kazutora’s turn to chuckle, only this time he does it along with you. You let go of his hand only to hold his face tenderly, a soft smile as you look at the man you love. Standing on your tiptoes, you press your lips against the beauty mark under his right eye. You feel his hands setting on the small of your back and watch his smile widen when you fall back on your heels.

Locking your fingers with him once more, you open the door.

#tokyo revengers x reader #tokrev x reader #tr x reader #kazutora x reader #hanemiya kazutora x reader #kazutora hanemiya x reader #kazutora hanemiya #hanemiya kazutora #tokyo revengers #kazutora angst #tokyo revengers angst #kazutora x you #kazutora x y/n #hanemiya kazutora x you #hanemiya kazutora x y/n

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erazonpo3 · 3 years

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WOWM

so What Once Was Mine came out and I read it.

My General Thoughts are that this book was something of a rollercoaster but in like a pop up carnival with dubious safety regulations and diseases in the DIY log flume water kind of way. I had some fun reading it but I also feel like I picked up a rash.

If you're like me and you enjoy picking a book apart for morsels of interesting concepts then you might enjoy it, if you think holy shit why the fuck is a literal real historical serial killer in this book I need to see this then you might enjoy it, if you care about engaging plots and character beats then you probably won't.

If you want to ask me anything specific go ahead, but otherwise for more in depth thoughts: spoilers ahead

Basic Summary of the Plot

Okay so here's the deal. The story has the framing device of two siblings in a cancer ward, where one tells the other a story. I'll get into that later, but that's how it starts. Our actual story starts with a pretty long prologue: We learn that the King & Queen got the Moonflower thinking it was the Sunflower, Rapunzel was born with silver hair, and then baby Rapunzel kills a maid who accidentally hurt her when brushing her hair.

Oh, by the way, Max is a human man named Justin Tregsburg. Yeah.

Anyway, the royal family puts out feelers for legit witches who can safely take care of Rapunzel because the baby is too dangerous, and Gothel shows up to take her away. Queen Arianna visits Rapunzel once (but is only allowed to watch through a peephole) and decides watching another woman raise her child is too painful and throws herself into restoring the kingdom's orphanages instead.

Now we're in the present. Rapunzel is nineteen and she wants to go and see the lanterns (a mourning tradition of the Dead princess in this story). She tries to argue with Gothel but gets shut down, and Gothel makes her kill a chicken to prove the point that she can't go outside because she's too dangerous. However we as the audience already know Gothel plans to sell Rapunzel off as a bride or a servant or a weapon to some other nobles, because she's evil.

Also by the way Gothel still has access to our Sundrop Flower and is using it to live forever that's just a thing that happens in the background.

When Gothel is gone Rapunzel watches as a man (Flynn) stores a satchel in a tree outside of her tower, and that motivates her to leave the tower for the first time. Then she goes back inside the tower with her prize of a crown, and a skink she found and named Pascal. Rapunezl and Gothel have another spat, and Rapunzel decides she will run off to see the lanterns and she will find Flynn and make him her guide.

She ends up at the Snuggly Duckling and she doesn't find Flynn but she does find Gina, a young career criminal girl looking to break the glass ceiling. Gina agrees to help her find Flynn. They find Flynn, and he agrees to help guide Rapunzel to see the floating lanterns for a split reward of the crown with Gina.

The Snuggly Duckling gets burned down by Countess Bathory (yes that Elizabeth Bathory) and the Pub Thugs are pissed about it and also they're helping Rapunzel even though she didn't sing the I've Got A Dream song don't worry about it. We learn that the nobles that wanted to buy Rapunzel are now hunting her down so she can go to auction.

Gina takes them to her adopted mother's cottage. Gina's mother is a white witch, who goes by the name of Goodwife. She doesn't get an actual name she's just The Goodwife. Anyhow, the cottage is a magic safe space (for now) and Goodwife teaches Rapunzel that her hair isn't inherently evil and may not even be all that deadly! Rapunzel learns that her hair has other powers too, like the ability to turn skink Pascal into a sentient Chameleon. Yeah.

Also Goodwife tells Rapunzel she's the dead princess but this isn't like, an immediate call to action. Not a lot happens until we get this story's version of the Mother Knows Best Reprise where Gothel finds Rapunzel again but has to flee, but this Rapunzel has a bigger support network and isn't buying it. Flynn and Gina decide the safest course of action is to bring Rapunzel to the castle, but along the way she gets kidnapped by the Countess.

Gothel is pissed because she still wants the money for Rapunzel, so she rallies the armies of all the opposing bidders. Flynn and Gina convince Max the Man to send for his troops, and he joins them in going to the enemy castle. Flynn tries to sneak in, gets caught, and meanwhile there's a bloody battle out the front between the noble armies. Max jumps into the fray, Gina turns around and rallies the Pub Thugs.

Rapunzel uses her shrinking magic (!) to disappear half the castle and escape with Eugene, and the Pub Thugs arrive and basically end the battle. The Captain is dying but it's okay! Rapunzel turns him into a horse :) Also Rapunzel sees Gothel and tells her to fuck off.

The story ends with a tearful reunion between Rapunzel and her parents, Eugene and Gina are implied to be biological siblings, and things are good but of course in direct parallel to Cass Gina leaves at the end to become an adventurer. The end.

(There are a few other smaller plot beats, but you get the idea.)

MY THOTS

So here are my thoughts™.

Framing Device

I'll just state that I didn't like that the story was told via the vehicle of an older brother telling his 16 year old sister a different version of the Tangled Movie in a cancer ward. From what I've heard it also isn't normal for the Twisted Tales series to use a framing device for the AUs either.

I sympathise with the author's personal story, of course I do. That doesn't mean I'm stirred with compassion every time the flow of the story is interrupted to remind you to be sad because this is a story being told to a girl sick with cancer. It feels more than a little tragedy-porny rather than emotionally touching, and maybe that's because I'm too burnt out on real life tragedy to waste emotional energy on fictional cancer patients but we don't need to do Fault In Our Stars discourse again.

Real World References

This story goes heavy with Real World references. And another issue with the framing device as above is that you do feel like this is a story being told by someone namedropping every historical figure they know which makes it harder to get into the story.

There's like... a lot of references to Christianity, particularly in the prologue. There's a priest that thinks Rapunzel's hair is the work of the Devil or whatever. It's a lot. The Patriarchy is a thing. And that's not even getting into the Countess. I put it very succinctly in my notes so I'll paste it here:

I wish she’d just been an OC who could exist to chew scenery because the fact that she was a literal historical serial killer is super. Off putting. Like, she could have been an obvious reference to Bathory, but it feels like Miku Binder Hamilton levels of uncomfortable to me.

I miss Lady D.

Which basically sums up my problem with trying to take the setting of Tangled and put it somewhere in the Real World and somewhere on the Timeline. Who thought this was a good idea.

Misc. Thoughts

So, I used the five highlighter colours my ipad allows to organise my thoughts and organised them accordingly: Yellow for out of place IRL references, Blue for worldbuilding/character points that aren't plot relevant but still interesting, Pink for when something I find personally amusing happens, Purple for when the story feels like it's trying to 1-up the movie in some kind of way and Green for Heterosexual Nonsense. I'll touch on those last two in the Character sections but be prepared.

Also: for a book about giving Rapunzel killer hair, her hair isn't very dangerous. I wanted to see Rapunzel kill someone, and I'm disappointed that I didn't.

Characters

I'll do a deep dive into my thoughts about the characters before wrapping it up. I'm starting with Gina because she's honestly the easiest to get through.

Gina

Gina is a new character introduced for the story. She's a young woman trying to make it as a career criminal but keeps hitting that glass ceiling. So here's the down low, for all those who want to know: Gina is basically Cass, only not really. She's implied to be Eugene's biological sister, as previously mentioned, but you can imagine she's Cass the entire way through without breaking your immersion because if you imagined Cass if she were adopted by a Goodwitch rather than the Captain and had a looser, more wilderness survivor than trainee guard upbringing then you get Gina.

I liked Gina! I think she's fun as her own character too, and her best moments are when she's interacting with her mother Goody Goodwife, and she of course picks up a natural sibling rivalry with Eugene, but I was disappointed with how little she really bonded with Rapunzel because she needed to make room for Eugene and Rapunzel's romance.

Rapunzel

Okay, here's our protagonist. There's a notable effort to make Rapunzel more active in her destiny and whatever, and sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't. I was worried they'd try to go full butt-kicking girlboss with her but I was pleasantly surprised that Rapunzel was pretty useless in most scenes, genuinely love to see it.

With a more intimate look into Rapunzel's psyche through the medium of prose, we see Rapunzel really questioning Gothel's behaviour even before she leaves the tower, and while I appreciate that she can develop her own cynicism I feel it starts unnecessarily early. This is my purple colour; the movie needs to be "fixed" by showing the readers that this Rapunzel is quicker to distrust Gothel. She's also quicker to hatch a plan to go outside of the tower on her own, and she makes a plan to make Flynn her guide for the lanterns even though he never stumbles upon her in the tower- and even though she has a perfectly rational reason not to trust him which is that he is a stranger and a Wanted Thief.

In the moments where it does work is when Rapunzel is surrounded by her new support network: Flynn, Goodwife and Gina, who encourage her to question Gothel's sincerity, and Rapunzel comes up with her own defences for Gothel so that she can poke through them herself.

I have some other thoughts about Rapunzel's hair and her powers, like how the story provides the interesting concept that her hair gets different powers with the different phases of the moon, but a lot of the powers are uhhh stupid and also I feel like it really robs the story of the whole gripping conflict of "Yes I'm Rapunzel Yes my hair kills people what of it".

In as far as just Rapunzel herself though, she still felt pretty in character nonetheless, and maybe that's all I can ask.

Flynn Rider / Eugene Fitzherbert

My boy I am so sorry. They neutered my boy.

Long story short: Eugene in this story is the sexy lamp. He contributes nothing to the plot except to be there for Rapunzel to drool over. And of course because he won't get any character development, he starts from the very beginning as a sweet soft boi with none of the Flynn Rider characterisation from the movie because we don't have time for that, he needs to be husband material stat.

His whole character is the colour green for Heterosexual Nonsense.

So, here's the problem. In the movie, there's not a lot of time for ~friendship~ between Rapunzel and Eugene because they kind of immediately see each other as a romantic prospect. And whatever, it's a movie and there's only so much time. But this book had the opportunity to take things a bit slower and instead chooses to make Rapunzel get jealous whenever Eugene and Gina interact and for her to be constantly wishing he was holding her hand.

Say what you will about Lost Lagoon, but it tells a good romance story just by virtue of not intending to be a romance story, because the author is trying to convey a strong bond between Rapunzel and Cassandra without using "and they kiss" as a cheatcode. What Once Was Mine says "he was a boy, she was a girl, could it be any more obvious?" and leaves it at that.

Now as for how this all pertains to Eugene's character? Well, it just robs him of any flavour. In the movie there's a clear distinction between Flynn and Eugene, when we learn Eugene's real name about halfway through. We see a clear difference between the Flynn we knew- kind of an asshole, wanated to drop Rapunzel off at the Snuggly Duckling and get rid of her- and Eugene, who is sincere and chooses Rapunzel as his New Dream in opposition to his Old Dream of living alone on an island with a bunch of money.

This version of Eugene is basically Eugene all the way through, because the plot doesn't really need Eugene there but he has to be there because it's a Tangled AU so there's no Rapunzel rescuing Flynn from the guards and healing his hand scene, he just loves her immediately and that's that. They have a little spat at one point but it's cleared up later and not because they actually communicate but because they kiss.

Rapunzel only learns Eugene's real name at the very end of the story, and gives a speech about how Eugene is the real him, but it's just so flat because 'Flynn' has been sincere this whole time? Anyway he does nothing of value for the entire story except be there for Rapunzel to lust after. Eugene I'm so sorry.

Gothel

Gothel's sort of the Big Bad and is characterised as an abusive asshole, the usual. I wish there were a bit more nuance to her character but then again in this story she's not just being passively evil- taking care of Rapunzel for selfish reasons but nevertheless maintaining the status quo- she's being actively evil in trying to sell Rapunzel off.

It's notably funny that Gothel sees the Countess Bathory and is like "what the fuck".

Anyway Gothel in this story also feels very weak in part because this Rapunzel is more critical and in part because this Rapunzel has a new support network. It's for that reason the Mother Knows Best Reprise scene doesn't really work, because the original has Gothel pit Rapunzel against Eugene, whereas she can't do that here so it remains a Gothel vs Rapunzel thing.

She gets a boring death as an epilogue addendum that someone rips out the Sundrop flower, which tbh? lame. It would be a lot more fun if it were open ended but I am also preferential to Rapunzel actually using her killer hair to kill someone. Please

Captain Justin Tregsburg

It's Max. He was a human but then he got turned into a horse. what the fuck you guys

#how did you spend your day

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fiddlepickdouglas · 3 years

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Hi - firstly, I hope you’re doing good! 💕

Second, thank god you are positive towards Portwell! I’ve had to avoid the hsmtmts tag since there’s so much discourse and just generally negativity, so I love seeing you put positive hsmtmts content on my dash!

Thank you! Sorry it took me a bit to respond to this! And after writing this I'm sorry it turned into a rant/essay, but I can't help but share my thoughts.

Honestly, with what I've seen of EJ and Gina, they're so cute! I will put the disclaimer that I don't interact a ton with the fandom, but on occasion there's some good stuff I find.

I remember during the first season, the focus on Ricky and Nini was so strong and EJ and Gina seemed to stand in the way of that and that's all they were there for as far as I could tell. Understandable! The writing was so obviously pushing for Rini to be endgame, and Josh and Olivia worked great together to make that happen. As far as Caswen or Gini, I can see the appeal, but not remotely enough content for anything to be addressed in canon.

It's been a minute since I've watched the season, but I never truly understood where EJ's feelings for Nini came from other than that she was cute and talented (which, not the worst but very surface level). Gina's chemistry with Ricky was already nice and fresh. I don't blame her for catching feelings. Anyone who's gonna go after her character for that after she established such a no-nonsense personality needs to understand the nuance of it. To quote Hadestown, "she fell in spite of herself." It was easy for her to be soft for someone who seemed to just get her. Gina is the one who is under pressure to always look put together and never giving up. Ricky is literally the embodiment of *not being that* and she found charm in his ability to be that expressive. Their moments felt personal because everything else to her was forced to be impersonal. Also, heaven forbid a girl falls for a guy, it's not a sign of weakness! Even more when it's a WOC falling for a white guy.

EJ just needed to wake up to a world where he couldn't control everything perfectly and the breakup with Nini did that. He went from being a classroom globe spinning on its axis to just some guy being held to the Earth with gravity like everyone else. Fallible, embarrassing, not the first pick. He wasn't exactly the self-centered jock like many stereotypes would've had him be, but he didn't have a hard time stepping into the role of Gaston for a reason.

Ricky and Nini, despite their challenges, still chose each other, for better or worse. I don't mind that this plot still went sour because it's such a realistic thing. They really cared and made so much effort! They were flawed and in different places and they couldn't truly blame each other for not working out in the end. I thought it was such a healthy thing to depict, them admitting that they just didn't work no matter how much they forced it.

Gina's falling out with Ricky sucked. They had good potential, but you can't force someone to take anything they don't want. She offered up what she had for him and it was like he played with the food on his plate before walking away from the table without taking a bite. It's genuinely upsetting.

Gina's arc includes how all the kids at East High are her friends and becoming her found family and her insecure attachment style is slowly breaking down into a more secure one. This is the first time she's had an opportunity to stretch and breathe and I am here for seeing her go from the mean girl to a protective bestie. It's what sets up why she's so good with EJ to me. She's very good at grounding herself - only before she would put down roots in defense instead of in vulnerability.

EJ is not used to being this grounded. He flies and he's good at it (okay WE'RE SOARIN', FLYIN', THERE'S NOT A STAR IN HEA- sorry I did this to myself). He and Gina thrive in opposite territories, but are currently living in the spaces they're weakest in. The middle ground for both? Theatre. That's where they begin their relationship as acquaintances and eventually move on from there. But after the respective fallouts with Ricky and Nini, they're slowly helping each other navigate what to one is hostile territory and the other is home.

That's really the point I wanted to make here. Everything they've been through created a natural environment for them to get together and have a shot at happiness in that. Why be mad? They deserve it.

#wow this is long #it looks like i care a lot more than i thought lmao #portwell #hsmtmts 2 #answered #stupidlittlenemo #ej caswell #gina porter #ricky bowen #nini roberts

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afreakingdork · 4 years

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Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006 & 2009)

So I decided to rewatch Haruhi for the first time since my original watch in ‘07. I was taking @friendtired along for the ride as he’s never seen any Haruhi media before. I was a definite enigma during my early anime years. In another case of mysterious circumstances (one phenomena being that I somehow only watched the second season of Code Geass without ever realizing there was a first), I found that I only ever watched the 2006 series and never even realized another season or even a movie ever came out! I even cosplayed as Haruhi to my second or third convention, but I digress. Revisiting something so many years later is almost a new experience so I decided to jot down my thoughts:

The 2006 season holds up without question. After some deliberation (for the record, I originally watched it in broadcast order and then again in chronological order back in ‘07), we decided to tackle the chronological order for Mason’s sake. Minus a few sexual harassment suits that unquestionably should have been filed against Haruhi with Mikuru as the plaintiff, the season delightfully trounces from kooky hijinks to deep philosophical info-dumps giving the watcher a delicious case of whiplash like no other show can. I was really glad to find the show I once worshiped in my early days really holds up, but the praise ends there as we began to intersperse episodes from season 2:

Now, I lived in a bubble of my own design back in the day. I never interacted with communities and enigmatically only liked what I liked so as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never heard of the 2009 season or subsequently the endless eight. I had a fun time hitting up search boxes during the watch to see the discourse years later removed from the subject all together. Overall I was pretty unaffected by the endless eight. I can’t say how I would have felt had I watched it coming out, it’s hard to remove your prior knowledge as opposed to going into something blind, but I thought it was an interesting concept. I like how they uniquely animated and dubbed every single episode and picking out the differences was amusing enough. For the non-neighsayers, that supposed huge pay-off after having to suffer through the eight didn’t really feel as big as I think it was touted to be. I guessed it was Kyon’s homework in the second of the eight and watched with increased boredom as my prediction came true. It’s really an arc that could have been condensed down to four clean episodes, but I digress because that is not my real issue here.

My real issue is I absolutely loath The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya. They are a complete mockery of the series and a larger waste of time than watching the same episode 8 fucking times. Haruhi becomes an absolute demon hell spawn, losing all her character development she should have garnered from the first half of the series (chronologically, not just broadcast order). Kyon comes to his breaking point and there is absolute zero release on all this built up tension. It would be one thing if Kyon had followed Koizumi’s advice to apologize because that is a trope in anime that the ‘man’ should apologize even if the ‘woman’ is being unreasonable, but instead you have a fight where neither apologizes and they both just bury the hatchet and go back on as if nothing ever even happened. Haruhi fucking tricked Mikuru into drinking sake! She also physically abused her far worse than she ever has before and the scenes were so beautifully orchestrated that I could feel my chest winding into a painful wad as I watched this girl who is unknowningly a god throw her weight around. My rage ebbed with Kyon, even if I don’t agree that he should have smacked her. Even if I were to set aside my feelings on character development to instead applaud a wonderful manipulation of emotions, it makes you feel dirty inside when the whole thing just deflates like a leaking balloon. It didn’t feel good in the slightest. I can say I thought it was really creative to give an entire backstory to a single ‘movie’ episode from 2006, but that is basically where any good feelings end. After the bullshit fight, there is drivel trudged up in Koizumi’s idea on how they should handle Haruhi’s director god complex that is in direct contradiction to what he stated in the previous season. The 2009 episodes even go so far as to poke fun at the error, but I assure you that this is not in jest. It is some needless nonsense created so that they can create bad blood between Koizumi and Mikuru. It’s this kind of manufactured drama that happens when a good story gets conflated because an author continues to try to 1UP themselves in an attempt to heighten the stakes. I will never be able to repair the chip on my shoulder that I carry for every good story that collapsed under the weight of increased lore just because they were asked to continue a good series. Rule number 1 of writing should be remember your lore and don’t fucking break it.

Though they should really take the 2009 opener and combine it with the 2006 closer cause that’s a combined bop.

So anyway, watch season 1 of Haruhi, never watch season 2 and I’ll get back to you when I watch the movie, but don’t forget kids:

#The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya #haruhi suzumiya #haruhi #Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu #review #me #anime review #anime

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shirtlesssammy · 4 years

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15x07: Last Call

Then:

In case you forgot, Dean and Cas are f i g h t i n g.

Now:

Texhoma, Texas

It’s bar time at a lonely little dive bar and two friends are stumbling to their car. Well, one is helping the other. Sally needs to vomit and runs to the bushes. Her friend, Angela, gets in the car instead of holding her hair back. I’m side eyeing your level of friendship here, ladies. Sally turns around from her puke-athon to find Angela and car gone.

Cut to Angela tied to a chair in a basement. There’s a line slowly draining blood from her arm --and a monster feeding on it behind a door!

At the bunker, Dean continues his nihilistic spiral by drinking all the beer in his room and surfing the internet for cases. He finds one!

Cut to Dean wandering into the kitchen where a very cozy Sam and Eileen are making all the breakfasts.

Dean knows when he’s a third wheel and decides to check out the case on his own. Sam and Eileen are living their best lives. He doesn’t want to get in the way.

Dean arrives at the Texhoma sheriff’s office and meets Sheriff Dillon. He asks about the disappearance of Angela. The sheriff isn’t convinced she’s gone. Her car went with her. He suggests that maybe she ran away to LA. Kids do that. They usually return within the week. He boasts that he stayed for a month.

Ok, I can’t recap this with a straight (*wink*) face anymore. WHAT THE WHAT was happening here? There is SO much staring and awkwardness. I loved it but also wanted to hide under a rock.

In any event, the sheriff admits that Angela’s friend has issues that usually keeps her at Swayze’s Bar 24/7. Before Dean can head out though, the sheriff tells Dean that he could go to LA and look for Angela. He could give showbiz a try himself. Cue camera zoom and, “You’ve got the look.”

Dean is confused.

That night Dean arrives at Swayze’s Bar. Dancing, drinking, and live music greet him. Also, a flirty waitress asks for his phone. This is a No Phones Allowed bar (guns are ok #AmericaYouAreTheWorst -and what’s even worse? As an American, I didn’t think twice about this line until international fans vomited on Twitter. Sigh.) Dean, who’s currently on a case, just drops it in the basket. I guess he won’t be calling Sam if he needs anything. He asks about the friend, Sally. The waitress, Lorna, hasn’t seen her yet. She does slap Dean’s ass as she walks away though. Sigh. <Insert discourse on all the times Dean’s been sexually assaulted and harassed throughout the years.> He turns around to watch the waitress walk away when he notices the lead singer of the band.

“Lee Webb.”

They’re old friends and ecstatic to see each other. Lee owns the bar. I wonder if they watched Swayze movies together in their youth?

Back at the bunker, things are snoozeville in Research Land. Eileen suggests they stop to do something fun. ooooOOOOOooooo. Sultry looks and awkward glances ensue. Sam takes her hand, she looks expectantly towards him, he leans forward, and...CAS INTERRUPTS! Bless the angel and his timing. Sam deserves it after 12 years of doing it to Cas and Dean. Cas and Eileen meet. Yay!

*Classic SPN Dialog Alert*

Cas: I thought your were…

Eileen: Dead? Yeah, I got...better.

Then Cas asks the important question in life: “Where’s Dean?” Lol, you two are divorced, remember? Anyway, Cas comes with ideas. He thinks that Sam and God are connected through their wound.

At the bar, Dean tells Lee that John died 13 years ago. Damn, when you put it like that, it’s overwhelming to think about how much of their lives we’ve watched. Lee’s sorry to hear it. They toast to his memory. They talk about the last time they saw each other. (A cult thing in Arizona.) Lee did one more case and hung up his hunter spurs. Dean asks if he regrets walking away. Nope.

At the bunker, Cas is going to probe Sam. Well, his wound really. Cas does his angel magic and that leads to Sam getting tossed against the wall. Ooops.

Cas calls and leaves a message with Dean (on all his many, many phones it seems.) Cas growling directly into the phone is all kinds of wonderful.

Dean’s busy reminiscing about orgies Lee and him had with triples. Yeah, they split triplets up “fair and square.” Um? <Insert lady doing complicated math gif here>

Cut to Sergei. Remember him? He sold Cas “archangel” grace back in the day. Cas needs his help. Cas goes all BAMF on him and we collectively swoon. Cas also makes another phone call.

For Hand Porn Science:

At the bar, Dean tells Lee all about Ghost Sickness (ah, that very funny episode, until it wasn’t. Andrew Dabb’s first episode. Lilith makes an appearance.) Lee asks about his current case. Dean shows him a picture of Angela. Lorna sees it and is surprised Lee doesn’t recognize her. She’s in the bar all the time. WHERPS. Someone’s a lying liar. Anyway, the conversation moves on and Lee tells Dean he could have this life. (*crying Rocky’s Bar noise*) Dean wants to know who’ll kill the bad guys? “You deserve a break, bro.” Ok, fair.

Lee then gets the band to play “Good Ol’ Boys” AND convinces Dean to join him on stage. Dean takes another shot and joins his friend. Dean’s on stage, but HE IS FREAKED OUT. Poor boy. He starts singing though.

And he can sing?? Ok. I will accept. Because I have to. Why would he pretend to not be able to sing for all these years? I mean, I guess, why does Dean pretend to be something he’s not is the main question we have about this poor soul in general.

A fight breaks out in the back - Blondie’s getting harassed. “Road house rules?” Dean asks, invoking our lord and savior, Swayze. Hell yeah. Dean and Lee make quick work of the bullies and Dean discovers that Blondie’s actually Sally Anderson, the best friend of the girl who disappeared.

Cas lets Sergei into the bunker. Sergei is positively ENAMORED by the bunker and all the delightful treasures within. Cool your jets, man! “You’re here for a reason,” Cas growls.

“Aren’t we all?” Sergei replies, and my eyebrows go WAY UP high in the air because that is some straight up authorial intent nonsense. They head in to the infirmary and Sergei uses a crystal to scan Sam like it’s a medical tricorder. Sam’s dying, according to Sergei.

Sally spills the details, including the disappearance of the car. “You can’t rapture a car,” Lee protests.

“It was a good car,” Sally tells him and I am definitely not now thinking about the Impala getting sucked up to her eternal rest in Heaven. Nope. Not thinking about that at all.

Instead of Heaven, Lee suggests that the car may have gotten dumped in the lake. Lorna, who is probably a TRUE CRIME enthusiast, suggests the scrapyard, though. Dean marks that as his first stop.

Sergei delivers some truth about Sam’s wound. It’s a soul-deep wound and connects his soul to something that wanders the world. When Castiel probed it, Sam’s soul was squeezed out of his body. Please be like me, and envision Sam’s soul as the toothpaste in a half used toothpaste tube squeezed by Castiel’s fist. If Sam’s soul wanders too far, he dies. Or, as in my analogy, the toothpaste tube of the soul explodes. Soul toothpaste everywhere!

In the junkyard, Dean discovers the victim’s car and more appallingly, her body hidden in the trunk. A gun is cocked behind him. It’s Lee! He knocks Dean out cold.

Sergei smears a potion on Sam’s wound. Sam begins to thrash violently while Sergei chortles to Cas about deliberately hastening his death with his “cure.” Wherps. Shockingly, trusting the villain who cheerfully harmed Jack has backfired! Sam flashes on Chuck’s conversation with Amara - particularly on all the bits where they discuss Chuck’s current weakened state. While Sam flashes, Eileen drives Sergei into the wall and chokes off his airway. FANS SELF.

Sergei demands the “Key to Death” in exchange for saving Sam’s life. It’s a key with a skeleton handle which can open the door to Death’s library. OKAY GUYS THIS IS NOT A DRILL I am very excited! First: a trip to the library! Second: it’s a SKELETON key, pardon me while I savor this pun with all I’m worth. Please, please can we visit Billie with a magic key? PLEASE????

Um. Anyway. Castiel isn’t taking any of Sergei’s bullshit. He pulls out his phone and shows a photo of Sergei’s niece, under surveillance by Bobby. At Castiel’s order, Bobby will kill her. This takes all the wind out of Sergei’s sails.

Cut to Sergei chanting over Sam just before Sam wakes up, mostly intact. “We good?” Sergei asks. Sure! BFFs.

Dean wakes up tied to a chair in a basement with an IV in his arm. “You awake, Buddy?” Lee asks, and isn’t that just an improper endearment to use at this time? Lee heads downstairs to deliver his villain monologue to Dean’s face. No sense in killing him while Dean was knocked out, right?!

Lee reveals that he had a very bad hunt that caused him to despair ever winning against the evil in the world. When he did his last hunt in this town, he found the monster who is now locked up in the cage in the bar’s basement. “As long as you feed it, it gives you money. It gives you health. It gives you anything you dreamed of.” Lee feels that the world owes him for his many monster kills from his younger days. The world isn’t divided into good or bad, nor does it care for anybody’s moral high ground. “But I do,” Dean says, and it’s like a rallying cry for our poor hot-dog-pantsed hero.

Lee releases the blood and it begins to travel up towards the monster’s cage. “Dean Winchester, the righter of wrongs. You’re gonna keep digging. You’re gonna figure me out.” Lee pats him on the shoulder one more time, bro-like, and heads up the stairs again.

Dean sizes up the situation, rocks the chair and shatters it on the floor like he’s made out of granite, and pulls out the needle. It’s monster fightin’ time!

Upstairs, Lee hears the commotion. It’s basically a lot of loud snarling and banging. Just a typical Friday night for Dean Winchester, amirite? Footsteps climb the stairs…and the monster’s head is thrown through the doorway.

They engage in a good ol’ fashioned shootout before confronting each other face-to-face. “I am you,” Lee tells Dean. But he’s a version that realized the world was broken and bought into it.

“Then you fix it,” Dean insists. “You don’t walk away. You fight for it.” And, as it turns out, they fight for justice, I guess. They fight and Dean skewers Lee with a broken pool cue.

“I’m glad it was you,” Lee says about his death which is twenty flavors of fucked up. Look, I know there’s all this meta about how this is Dean’s unrealistic fantasy and it shows him his true calling isn’t tending bar. That is all ABSOLUTELY accurate. But GUYS this also reads like another lesson from Chuck to poke Dean back into hunting and eventual fratricide again. Hot dog pants don’t kill people (EVEN THOUGH they straight up murdered fandom a few weeks ago). What parts of these episodes are meant to be Chuck and what are meant to be “free will”? I have no idea and I’ve never been more in love with this show!

!!!

Um. Anyway.

Dean returns to the bunker. Castiel, just striding innocently through the war room, is ASSAULTED by Dean’s surprise presence. “Dean,” he says, so very softly. GAAAAAH.

Dean asks after Sam. Castiel delivers the good news and can NOT maintain eye contact. WHEN WILL MY SUFFERING END? Castiel strides away and Dean follows him to check on Sam.

Sam, bless this poor clueless bean, is ecstatic with his new knowledge from his near-death visions. He realizes he saw Chuck’s memories, and knows he is weak now. Sam’s ready to take the Team Free Will monster truck and just rollllll it right over Chuck. Easy peasy!

________________________________

Gimme a Bro-Quote, Bro:

Duke? Like put up your dukes?!

I need a break and so do you. Why don’t we do something fun?

Livin’ the dream!

Can’t just keep lip syncing Eye of the Tiger while no one’s watching

You can’t rapture a car

Best friends don’t just leave without saying goodbye

I like this you, Castiel. It’s very…Russian

Good or bad. The world doesn’t care. No one cares, Dean.

________________________________

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#supernatural #spn recap #spn 15x07 #last call #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #cas #eileen leahy #supernatural season 15

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j-morgan-fly · 4 years

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Fandom Discord, GOT/ASOIAF

You know what’s messed up? That I can’t even find someone to do commission of Jonsa with their four children from a story I’m writing because of the discourse in the Game of Thrones fandom between Jonsa/Sansa Stans and Jonerys/Dany stans.

Like seriously?

And by the way, I completely understood and respected my commission being turned down for the reason that the wonderful artist did not want to draw attention to themselves that would make them a target of ridiculous and unnecessary hateful criticism for choosing to draw that particular couple for me.

To the fandom:

I understand where both fans are coming from, I get what makes the couples and characters appealing and also what makes the couple and characters unappealing. But the fact that we give others so much crap over who we like is nonsense. There fictional characters in fictional relationships that we like to read, write and draw but that is all they are. If they helped you get through a tough time, that is awesome, for others these couples and characters might make them think of more upsetting times are people they knew in real life that hurt them or they see troublesome parallels with historical figures or events in which are controversial and dangerous. I know that happens a lot with Dany, but guys, be respectful, fight that urge to stand up for your fave if you think it’s going to end badly between you and the other person. I do it all the time.

No one is telling you(or they should not be telling you if they are) who you should like but everyone is allowed to explain why or why not they like certain characters. If they think a character is racist, thats valid, that is their perspective and we need to learn from why they see it that way and bring that into our own lives and fix the way we see and treat people. If someone thinks a character or relationship is abusive, the same as the first point should be applied.

Also, we don’t have to like a pairing or a character to appreciate amazing talent and art. I see Jonerys art posted all the time and I appreciate how beautiful and skilled the artist is even if that is not something I personally ship.

Honest to God, I don’t even really ship Jonsa. I don’t really ship either, I don’t think I’ve ever put much effort into writing a Jonsa romantic fic. I’m doing it now to learn how to get out of my comfort zone, to expand my writing skills and after I want to try my hand at writing Jonerys but ya’ll need to fucking lay off while I make my attempt and let me try without shitting on it because it’s not exact to how you see your faves. The same is applied for art. Do not EVER give shit to an artist for the basic ass reason that you just don’t like the pairing they have drawn/painted.

Like shit, I know we can’t make everyone happy, that really sucks but it’s life. We all got to live on this planet together, we are all on this god forsaken sight for some reason still, so lets me tolerant of each others ships and faves and keep our thoughts to ourselves if we got nothing constructive to say and the same goes for people responding. If you don’t like someone making a counter point or pointing something out that is in disagreement with your fave/ship and you can’t bring yourself to respond back maturely then fucking ignore it. Keep going, move on with your next thing. If you feel that you are just going in circles, no one is learning anything from each other and it’s just a roast then stop, don’t type another thing and move on.

This is not an attack on one or the other, I am speaking out to both sides!

Damn, can’t believe I even had to write this.

And if you guys want to give me shit about picking sides, point out all my ant-Dany rebloggs go ahead. I’m allowed to reblog, I’m allowed to agree with certain issues pointed out about their character mostly because their aren’t as many about Sansa not that the anti-Sansa force is not strong in that group. It is. And both sides usually have the same arguments over and over, at this point I think I’ve learned all I can about why people hate both and why people like both.

Shit, these girls are super flawed, we don’t need to pit them against each other but it’s also misogynistic to just think because they’ve been through similar trauma and are women they have to be best friends. They don’t. I also don’t believe either has to just accept and kiss the others ass either. They can be at odds, some people just don’t get along and sometimes it’s justified and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you just have a gut feeling, sometimes you just butt heads, your unable to see eye to eye and that can lead to really, really bad conflict or it’s something that just means their will always be a huge distance between these two people.

Thanks, that is it.

#danereys targaryen #sansa stark #jon snow #jonerys #jonsa #daenerys x jon #sansa x jon #what the fuck people #game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #fandom #stop being jerks #not anti #just my observations

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astharoshebarvon · 5 years

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vampire knight

Will this be a rant? Of sorts, maybe.

It seems now there is another discourse in VK fandom, this time about whether Ren and Ai will be a romantic couple or not. Firstly, Hino is drawing them in a suggestive way, that’s true.

Do I care if they end up together or not? Not really. She has drawn Kaname and Zero in a suggestive way many times, hell, even in recent covers Zero is literally all over Kaname. Not to mention Zero/Kaname has way more fanfictions and incredible fanarts than either of the canon straight couples. It’s true, just check it.

Think what you want, above illustration is pure Zero/Kaname and Yume.

And, in the below one, Zero’s hand...Sorry, two rivals and enemies just don’t do that.

Look at the above illustration, that’s not how two guys stand if they are enemies, they just don’t.

Secondly, both Ai and Ren have an intense need of another’s blood. Now, many people say their relationship is creepy…

Sorry, but many shoujo mangas and mainstream novels have the same crap. The girl is obsessed with the boy and also ends up with him. Yikes. Gross.

And, those stories are celebrated. So, why be against these two? Oh, wait, it’s because they are not hetero.

Hino is not doing anything great even if they do come out as a couple, Clamp has done it many times and Clamp works are way more popular than Hino’s can ever be.

X, a shoujo genre manga has Kamui and Fuuma.

They loved each other, don’t even try to argue with me about it.

Seishirou and Subaru, the most tragic couple of manga and anime are also in it. CCS has Yue with Clow Reed, Yukito/Yue and Touya, Sakura and Tomoyo, some of these feelings are one sided, but none of them are hated.

These couples are way more popular than whole VK manga. Rg Veda, another shoujo has Amaterasu and Souma, Taishakuten and Ashura-ou, Yasha and Ashura can also be interpreted as an M/M couple. Oh, wait. That’s canon. They are together in Tsubasa.

And, don’t get me started on Fai and Kurogane. There you go people, these are shonen and shoujo mangas which have same sex couples.

And, the readers know there was something going on between Fai and Kurogane even if it’s not stated explicitly.

Clamp literally said,”do not call Fuuma and Kamui brothers”. They are soulmates. They don’t even mention the obsessed fangirl, kotori.

Arina Tanemura, whose stories are a perfect example of a fangirl ending with the guy they were after, also has a single M/M couple in one of her works. Mostly in her stories, the main girl likes one guy, but in the end, that guy never ends up with her. He ends up with one of the obsessed fangirls.

Am I still bitter about how dirty the mangaka did Itsuki Otomiya? Yes. The sweetheart doesn’t even know Haine was his daughter, and the whole bloody cast had coloured illustrations, a freaking artbook is there for the series, but not a single illustration for him. Yikes.

I hope she redeems herself and makes Tokita and Chikage a couple in 31 Ai dreams. The only series of hers which didn’t have this cliché was Sakurahime Kaden and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne.

And, let’s be honest, Eiichi would have have ended up with another fangirl if he wasn’t dead in Full moon. Thank god he was spared that bullshit. But, then again, he dies. That’s not good either.

Gentleman’s alliance cross, Nekota are just bad. Yes, the art is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean the males of her series deserved to end up with obsessive fangirls.

The one with underage relationship, Nekota or whatever [thank god that was never picked up by Viz.] In this, the blue haired dude, Serizawa, who the main girl liked from the beginning didn’t end up with her, he ended up with a fangirl. Ugh.

And, it is incestuous, the girl has feelings for her underage cousin. Right.

Her art is beautiful, but damn it, her stories are so annoying.

For her only M/M couple in shinshi doumei cross, she had to make one half of the MM couple a cross dresser.

The guy, Maora was wearing woman’s clothing every time he and Maguri were shown together. He was never once shown as his real, tall self with Maguri.

And, she has said she isn’t comfortable with yaoi, but is okay with shonen ai.

Right.

But the point is, it’s been done many times.

In Hana Kimi, one of the protagonist’s elder brother is gay. He was the school’s physician if I am not wrong. So, Hino is not doing anything new.

Kyou Kara Maou is a shoujo manga, but it has Wulfrum and Yuri, two guys as a main couple. Granted, nothing happens, but they are engaged.

The manga was published in Asuka, a shoujo magazine.

Same goes for uraboku, Luka loves Yuki, regardless of the fact whether he is a female or a male. Senshirou and Kuroto were together, Hotsuma and Shusei were married in previous lives and they were very much together in the present as well.

Do I think Ren and Ai will end up together, I dunno. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But I don’t think she will show them as a couple. If she will, fine. If she doesn’t, then also fine. They have an intense desire to be with each other, and their relationship is not parallel to Kaname and Yuuki’s or Haruka and Juri’s.

One can say they are like Rido, Yuuki’s uncle, not like the above two couples.

There are many differences between them and the two couples.

And, let’s not forget the harem Sara created, in fact she even kissed one of the girls.

Do I care about Ren and Ai ? No.

My sole reason for reading this manga is: Yume. Just bring Yuuki back and show Yume happily ever after. I really don’t care who ends up with whom.

But some reasons regarding Renai are hypocritical. This manga has incest, why are you being bothered by it now? Hell, she drew Ichiru and Zero in suggestive way too, and Zero’s care for Ichiru could also be questioned in that case.

I am not sure if the above is Zero and Ichiru or Zero with another personality of his, I don’t want to see my artbook right now, but it can be seen as Zero and Ichiru.

We don’t like yuri and yaoi.

Well, in that case I really hope it happens so it’ll tick off the people who make this statement. Yes, it’s a derogatory statement.

If the mangaka wants to do it, she can, it’s her choice. Hate her for it, plenty do. Zekis and yumes do for their reasons. I dislike the way she does things too, I hate many things she has done. But, hey she still did them.

Read Yona of the dawn in that case, that’s the only series which isn’t “problematic”

But, Kija and Jaeha can be shipped in that too. I do ship them. And, the author has drawn shonen ai doujinshi’s.

And, Yona was in love with Su-won in the beginning, who is her cousin. Incest is incest, whether it’s between siblings or cousins, they are family.

I really don’t think Hino will show Ren and Ai as a couple. Siblings who are weirdly close, yes. Romantic couple, I don’t think so. If I am wrong, fine.

Just give me my Yume happy ending, and Takuma and Seiren scenes. I literally don’t care about the kids relationship. I just don’t. First, I had to suffer through that traitor’s crap with the stupid bint, Sayori, now this.

Edit : Finally I read this chapter…

I don’t understand how anyone can even compare whatever crap that is going on between Ai and Ren to Yume and Haruka / Juri. The Kuran couples never looked so fucking weird with each other.

I was absolutely right in thinking their feelings for each other are reminiscent of what Rido felt. Just because Ai is Yume’s daughter doesn’t mean she’s a perfect character. Give me a break. Then again she had a crush on Zero as well.

And, she was raised among people like Ruka and Aidou, traitors and obsessed idiots. It’s no wonder she turned out idiotic.

She looks weird when she says, “she had her sister with her” to Youko.

I am not going to post the image cause its just bad.

Yume and Haruka/Juri were never so fucking creepy. Never.

Ren is just so bland and sad in everything that I don’t know what to think. Youko was the only one who wasn’t weird in this Ch.

The author should just wrap this up, it’s neither interesting nor is evoking any feelings in readers. It’s as bad Sayori/Aidou crap. Just stop with the useless story arcs, show Kaname and Yuuki together and end this shit.

I really don’t think the two girls will end up together. Their scenes aren’t sweet, and if she wants to show them, just do it and move on. They are both boring and least interesting. They are so bad it will not matter whether are together or apart.

They are as bad as other creepily obsessed M/F couples in novels and shoujo manga where the obsessed fangirl ends with the boy. This trope itself is gross. Who even cares about them?

They are only being hyped because they are two girls. When people thought Ren was a boy there wasn’t much reaction. I know there wasn’t. But now that they are two girls…

Hate them because they are stupid, no point in saying we don’t like them because its FF relationship. That’s just bigotry. Or maybe the author should be honest and say I wanted Zero and Kaname to fuck but Yuuki kept on getting in the way. So, I decided to pair their daughters together. because according to the author incest is fine in VK. Just drop this crap already Hino.

I mean what the hell is up with this boring arc ?

I don’t even understand why stupid shit like this is overlooked in MF couples but if same happens in same sex, everyone is like, looks its unhealthy. Incest, age difference, obsessed idiots/ fangirls, they are all bad.

I love Clamp, but that Rika and Terada thing was just plain gross. Same goes for Rin and Sesshoumaru.

I kept on telling myself about the latter one, no they are a parent child relationship. But at one point, I had to accept it was anything but family love. I love Sesshoumaru and always will. But I can’t get behind Rin/Sessh or whatever nonsense it was. Sessrin is celebrated, it’s a fact. It’s creepy, don’t deny it.

I know some of their artists and Sesskag [yuck] kept on leaving rude comments on SessKik fanworks, my favourite ship.

And Terada/Rika thing is overlooked because, let’s be honest CCS is fucking awesome. I overlook it and concentrate on yue yukito/ touya, syaoran/sakura.

I just want this RenAi thing to go away. I can’t stand either of them. Just show Kaname and Yuuki together and end this series. Hino should wrap it up and start a new one. VK will not gain the popularity it had at one point no matter what. The author is just coming off as desperate.

#Vampire Knight #vampire knight memories #shoujo #manga

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bonnie-barstow-of-flag · 4 years

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The Not So Lonesome Knight Part 6

Parts 1 X, 2 X , 3 X , 4 X, 5 X

Where in the Devil were his employees? He can’t help but wonder. They were certainly long overdue!

When they finally arrive at the restaurant, the Foundation’s salt and pepper haired Patriarch is waiting and had apparently been doing so, for a good allotment of time. Devon Miles cast a vexed glance down at this wristwatch. His marvelous topaz eyes radiate impatience which, was tempered by a more merciful nature. His lips are pulled tight into a frown though the relief is evident upon his countenance upon catching sight of the distinctive hard-top taxiing to a stop.

“Kitt, you know the drill.” Michael cheerfully states, shifting the gears into park. They’d been through this routine more than a hundred times by now. Plus, he had every confidence that Kitt would go into surveillance mode as they discussed the case. While, it felt like overkill, Michael really didn’t want to lower his guard. Especially, if someone was preparing to strike out at the Foundation. His detective instincts knew it was a very real possibility.

He exits the cabin and skids his way over Kitt’s hood so that he can promptly open the door for Bonnie. Sure, the day hadn’t been off to the best of starts. Though, he really did enjoy the kiss. Gazing at her now, with that same embarrassed flush upon her face, made him all the more certain that he wanted to be with her or alone the rest of his life. But he can’t imagine upsetting her. He had already come dangerously close to provoking her while they were getting dressed. So it is with earnest that he feels compelled to show her how he felt without the assistance of fancy words.

Flattery and chivalry weren’t things Bonnie was fully accustomed to. So her hand instinctively had flown to the door handle but before she can grasp it, the door is swung wide open before her. She stares long at hard for a second at his proffered hand before allowing her own fingers to graciously curl around it. The grasp parts when she rises to stand upon her own two feet. “Thanks.” The gracious word is imparted, just a hint louder than a whisper. The brunette can feel the tropical scorch rising back into the curves of her cheekbones. Internally, her heart gives a petitioning thud. Tell him, tell him. Her mind chants to no avail. Her tongue was unready and unwilling to gift any such nonsense a voice.

As they walk she can feel the reassuring pressure of his palm residing over the small of her back. He’d always done that for as long as she could remember. For some reason today it felt different. Dare she consider it a loving gesture? No. It had to be a silly trick of her sentimental imagination! Besides, when Michael had learned that she was the one he had been kissing, his azure orbs had almost vacantly searched her. She had interpreted that as Michael showing a polite indifference. Who was she trying to kid by fancying that last night would have any significant impact? Michael was notoriously allergic to attachments. He moved from one girl to the next in pursuit of the next hot fling. Bonnie didn’t want that. She didn’t want meaningless relations. Even more so, she didn’t desire a lowly unimportant place in his life. Still, with his hand pressed against her, the mechanic allows herself to cling to a tiny shred of hope that she may still earn something more than his passing affections.

“My heavens,” the elder gentleman starts, the very minute Bonnie and Michael were seated. The richness of his purely English accent slipping into every syllable. “I was beginning to think you two weren’t going to show.” His gracefully veiled reproach was well deserved given they were definitely more than one hour late. Fidgeting, he readjusts the cuffs of his tailored suit jacket before he picking up the menu to give it another once over. “What in the Devil kept you? I trust you have a good explanation.”

He is met with bashful glances and two definitive apologies. Michael is the first to clear his throat. “It’s my fault, Devon. There was a mix-up at the hotel.”

“Oh?” Devon questions. His graying brow quirking just enough to show that his curiosity had been piqued.

“Well you see,” Michael commences, ready to launch into the whole spiel when Bonnie interjects.

Bonnie, never really one to slouch, allowed herself to sink lower in the comfort of the booth. “It’s a long and uninteresting story, Devon. Let’s just say the front desk made the phone call to the wrong room.” The excuse sounded plausible enough. Didn’t it? She cast a worried glance at the two from over her own menu.

Michael looked as if he had been physically struck. His tongue was ready to dispute part of her explanation when he thought the better of it. Maybe, just maybe, she was right. Undeserved shame compels his head to droop. His mind considers the potential that he wasn’t the great company he thought he was. Try as he might to focus on the menu, he couldn’t. Her words kept rolling like a bowling ball down an endless lane, over and over in his mind. What had she meant by her statement? Why did it feel like she had been speaking in some kind of code? Or was he simply too unintelligent to decipher any message she was trying to get across? Why was it so hard to communicate with her?!

Bonnie snagged a glimpse of Michael. Her heart sinks inside of her chest as his expression bordered on the precipice of offended and angry. Had it been something she said? Worry grips tightly around the slowly thrumming muscle. Each of its beats dredged up fear that he loathed her. How could she backtrack now? Swallowing sharply she feels her appetite fleeting.

Devon, who to this point is still blissfully unaware, cheerfully prompts, “so what will you to be having?” He suspects that his lovely mechanic would resort to ordering something health-conscious and wise while, his haphazard agent would opt for something bathed in grease. His topaz orbs linger with considerable interest upon them.

Bonnie and Michael both had the misfortune of locking each other in the cross-hairs of their gazes when they went to answer. Immediately, they both allow their eyes to falter downwards.

“Well? We don’t exactly have all day.” Devon prods. He was beginning to suspect that something is amiss. They had been getting along so splendidly the other day and now they could barely stand to look at each other.

“Go ahead, Michael.” Bonnie coolly states, in an effort to take some of the pressure off of herself.

Under his breath, he bitterly grumbles, “why don’t you just tell me what I’m allowed to have and what I’m not.” He thinks that it is said in a soft enough tone that it wouldn’t be audible over the other lively conversations around them but it’s not. She always criticized his choices. Particularly, when they came to food and women.

Bonnie’s menu flops down onto the table with a click. “What is that supposed to mean?!” It was her turn to have confusion and offense tattooed to her countenance. Honestly. She can’t even believe he said that!

Small sparks of repentance flicker through his gaze but are quickly snuffed out to something colder than ash. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, its just that you...” The unfinished accusation sits like bricks in his tone. Catching a peripheral view of Devon, whose face clearly bespoke disapproval, he recants. “It’s nothing.” Like an admonished child he ducks behind the cover of his menu and he dwells there for several minutes in silence. “Guess, the double cheeseburger looks good.”

“Nothing?” Bonnie prods, not fully willing to let it go. “Michael, if it was nothing you wouldn’t have mentioned it. And now, I want to know.” Want definitely was not a strong enough term.

The curly-haired agent’s menu is dropped beside her discarded one and he leans across the table. His hands fold together like a shuffled deck of cards. “Well, you apparently know what’s best for me. What was it you said a while back, you anticipate my every need?” Every yearning but one. The most important one. The one that revolved around her. “And everythin’ I tend to order is considered junk or trash.” He doesn’t even remember where the hell he was going with his statements so he abruptly ceases. In the undercurrent of his discourse lay a deeper meaning. One he had tried to impart to her that morning. But it lodges stubbornly and quite painfully somewhere inside of him. It changes form and escapes as an unintentionally harsh rebuke that he immediately wishes he could erase.

Her words had been taken so far out of context it was hard to piece them back together. Where was all this coming from? She is so taken aback by his commentary all she can do is glower. In a low grievous tone, she quips, “it’s none of my business if you want to poison yourself.”

In that instant, Devon’s suspicions were confirmed. Something had gone on between them since they had parted ways. Whatever it was, it didn’t appear to be good. Astonished by the cruelty of their banter and wishing to save face for both of them Devon interrupts. “Yes. Well, to each their own. I’m sure you’ll both make the appropriate selections.” He only gives a pause long enough for their orders to be placed with the waitress before directing their attention back to the case. “About Kent Stevens...”

#the Not So Lonesome Knight fan fic #The Not So Lonesome Knight part 6 #my fanfic #knight rider 1982 #bonniebarstowofflag #read more just because it's super lengthy

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milkshakedoe · 5 years

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le thoughts

something that bothers me about lesbian discourse i’ve seen, and a large part of why i’ve stopped really self-identifying as a “lesbian”, is how even among very well-meaning trans-positive groups or groups of lesbians who are trans themselves (at least online), a major problem always remains IMO not fully resolved: how to deal with closeted and questioning amab trans people, or people with nonstandard gender lacking the language to articulate it, without seeing them as Men in some degree.

it’s not that many don’t try, and i’m certain there are (and i know) very many lesbians who would (rightly) affirm in a heartbeat that such people are not "men”. but i’ve never seen a satisfying argument that really lays our anxieties to rest. as much as the idea that political lesbianism inherently supports transfems as a function of “centering women” or “the lesbian” may feel validating to transfems laboring to define themselves as clearly as possible as “not a man”, within the political framework often assumed by lesbian feminists i don't think this is a problem that ever can be really resolved.

----

in popular discourse about oppression there is the idea that oppression is a sort of relationship of individual wrongdoing, the “responsibility” for which ultimately lies at the feet of individuals, even if those individuals are seen as a “structural” group. in this worldview it is “men” who, as a collective of responsible parties, for their own self-benefit and pleasure, commit violence against women and those who aren’t men.

it’s controversial perhaps, but contrary to what you may hear on this site, there is no ‘secret cheat code’ for women to liberate themselves from patriarchal society when it’s all around them. it’s good and necessary to understand that you don’t have to date men, but the truth is that regardless of whether or not you date men we live in a misogynist society and trying to separate from it by divesting ourselves from Men - even where we don’t explicitly call it “separatism” or even “divesting” - isn’t going to save us, and the idea that we can become more or less liberated or more or less revolutionary or what have you by refusing Men and relationships with Men on the basis that Men are the source of oppression by virtue of being “Men” rests on flawed assumptions about gender that cause problems for transfems, and all of us.

the idea that “men” simply oppress women out of a kind of individual self-interest that either they are individually born with, or is somehow transmitted to them by their social man-ness (or their “privilege” makes pursuing their interests inherently detrimental to others, to put it another way), is not really compatible with an understanding of transness that goes further than saying that trans people were “born this way”. although many people, especially trans feminists and lesbians, are aware by now that thinking of trans people as being “born” trans is as mistaken as saying people are “born gay”, those that (rightly!) try to help defend transfems from accusations of “male privilege” still tend to latch on to narratives that essentially say the same thing.

that is, even if we recognize that babies can’t have gender, we say that transfems at least had decided their gender more or less from the point where they could first make conscious social decisions, and as such must be seen as having always been girls or non-men. therefore, when transphobes yammer that all people in patriarchal society are subject to “socialization” which corresponds exactly to assigned gender and defines their gender, we can answer: no, transfems were subject to transfeminine socialization, which decisively qualifies them as always having been feminine.

----

but the problem with this idea is that it takes “socialization” entirely at face value and ends up performing the same function: peoples’ gender largely isn’t decided by them; it was locked in once before a person’s social being really came to exist, and can’t change again. it denies the possibility that anyone who considers theirself to have been a “man” at any point in their life could ever be something different. it takes away trans peoples’ agency - and more importantly, it denies the possibility that patriarchal gender could ever really be transcended, since if cis peoples’ genders and interests too are basically locked in at toddlerhood if not at birth, then how can we ever envision doing away with it all?

so to be clear: it’s not “socialization” that makes peoples’ gender. if there is anything to be said about socialization, it is that gender is constituted not by socialization but by individual agency in response to that socialization, struggling against the conditions imposed upon them and what they've been told to accept.

but ultimately, the problem with all of our attempts to grapple with closeted and questioning people lies in the privilege framework itself. so long as we still take the idea of “privilege” seriously - that there are these identity categories to which people “belong” and which essentially determine their self-interests or the effect that pursuing their interests has on others (”mens’ privilege means that their benefit inherently comes at others’ cost”), which amounts to the same thing - then men can only be understood in such a way that ever being associated with men or seeing one’s self as a man (up to and including being attracted to and dating men, “gaining privilege” by becoming a “collaborator” of sorts) makes one inherently tainted with privilege and therefore wrongdoing for which one must be “held accountable”, that is, they must “pay for their crimes”.

----

when we see gender and oppression this way, yet try to understand transfemininity in a way that doesn’t give credence to “male privilege”, we run into irresolvable problems: we end up having to define all transfems as effectively always having been feminine as long as they were conscious, which may be the case for some - but thinking this is how it always works makes cis society seem inevitable and impossible to dismantle in the end. and because the privileged must always be “held accountable” for their privilege we have to say that, well it’s unfortunate but good feminists must treat “men” as inherently guilty of the sins of being men until they can prove otherwise that they are not really men. because if we try not to see people who call themselves men in this way, then the entire framework of resistance to patriarchy built on privilege starts to break down.

paradoxically, in defining privilege as a relationship of individual wrongdoing flowing from the social category to which one allegedly belongs, “privilege” sees people not really as people, but as mere representations of abstract categories: individual “men” become really mere physical appendages of the abstract category of Men, and become individually defined as oppressors, while non-men in turn likewise become defined as personifications of their position within gendered oppression. but there is a way out of this mess. i find it more useful and compelling to see people first as individuals who are potentially involved in structural dynamics but not inevitably so. while abstract social structures really do exist, and often dominate us, compel our actions, and structure our spontaneous consciousness (our understanding of the world before any analysis), again, it is our individual agency struggling up against the conditions imposed upon us that defines who we are, and defines our structural relationship to the world in turn.

furthermore, punishment is the logic of capitalism. as the Soviet legal scholar Evgeny Pashukanis wrote, the idea of equivalent punishment to an equivalent “crime” can only arise in the context of capitalism and the commodity fetish. capitalism is a society where we relate to other people first and foremost as owners of commodities and where we obtain almost everything we need to live and enjoy life through buying and selling. in capitalism, the underlying logic of commodities - the logic of value, where two objects are socially held to be equal in trade regardless of their concrete properties that actually make them useful to humans - comes to seem like the primary natural property of all commodities. and because commodity owners always interact first through the comparison of their commodities, and not through a direct social relationship, it comes to seem as though all human relationships are really properties of commodities themselves which can be exchanged: the legal commodity of “rights”, or “dignity” as David Graeber might put it.

the logic of punishment knows no concept of healing and problem-solving, only a very simple math equation: so long as the offender has not served their sentence and “paid their debt”, justice remains unserved, and so the sin of privilege which makes one harmful regardless of one’s intent must always linger with those who were supposedly tainted by it. even if we can define all transfems who’ve realized their gender as having been always women, we find ourselves failing on a collective basis to help those who still lack the language or confidence to articulate themselves.

we can do away with all of this horrible nonsense. if we are really to do justice to transfems in a way that doesn’t frame us as in some sense "privileged” or “men” or a natural aberration within cis society or see cis society as inevitable, we can and urgently need to abandon notions of privilege and punishment.

#q #trans #critecon #theory

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janiedean · 5 years

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Why do you think the SW fandom is so knee-deep in SJ Calvinism? Because I understand wanting representation or being upset because a movie didn’t fulfill your expectations, but the “if you don’t ship X you’re racist” “if you don’t stan Y you’re bigoted” and the harassment over a disappointing movie is surprising just because of how pervasive it is. I was trying to find some St*rmpilot blogs to follow and the amount of hate is Yikes, especially the hate for Rose and the stans of a Certain Ship

eeeeeeh I think it’s because ep. 7 came out at the height of the... well, reaping the seeds the social justice calvinism had sown since 2014 so to speak? I mean, SW is hardly the one fandom where it happened (*cough* voltron and SU *cough*) but as SW is way broader in audience than those other shows that certainly didn’t help, but like, if you think on it, since 2013-ish (but I think before as well, I mean, I’ve been here since 2011 and already when I got here I felt like something was going very wrong when it came to politics-in-fandom-attitude), basically people on tumblr have progressively, when it came to fandoms:

pushed the idea that you have to over-analyze everything you consume through political lens;

pushed the idea that what you like and how you like it also has to be pushed through political lens and what you like says things about who you are as a person or your political leanings;

pushed the idea that if you care for something *problematic* just because you like it you’re excusing it;

pushed the idea that if you were problematic once you can’t ever not be problematic, you can’t change your mind and you can’t learn also because ‘it’s not my job to educate you’ so people either learn themselves or idek what but again, calvinism.

now obviously those politics are tumblr-politics which are also US centric like woah and are also high-school petty like woah, and since more or less then people have:

continuously other-ed lgbt people from *straight*/heterosexual people pushing a narrative where straight = bad and therefore putting it before anything automatically makes it a valid insult which added to the above means that if you ship het you’re already problematic regardless of whether you’re straight or not (and if you are.. lol);

pushed the performative feminism of Doom TM that says men and women should be equal but is like, an excuse to shit on men and on women who like men (see the rampant biphobia around and the whole ‘straight girls are so stupid if they’re into men they should try women’ discourse);

pushed the US terminology when it comes to the POC discourse, in the sense that everything works on the US-centered context where white people = white anglosaxon protestant, poc = everything else without realizing that in the rest of the world white does not equal wasp, that poc = black people only in most of europe (and no one who’s actually black or not white who lives in africa or asia and so on would describe themselves as poc because why the hell would you when your skin color/ethinicity is the norm where you live?), which also goes with the whole white passing debate which where I live would not exist but in that context is a mess because again, oscar i*saac is schroedinger’s poc (as in, he’s poc automatically for american standards because he’s latin-american but like he has the same skin tone as my mother and my mother in italy is white same as 90% of us, which means endless confusion) and assumed that all of us have to accept that terminology/context regardless of whether it’s valid in our countries;

kept on progressively putting minorities against each other in an endless loop of WHO HAS IT WORST/oppression olympics;

kept on progressively split hairs on issues that aren’t exactly, like, that important if there’s more urgent stuff to deal with because 90% of the activism here is performative;

made the 180° turn for which headcanons and shit are seen as, like, doing representation instead of, you know, supporting what rep is there never mind when people decide *one* ship is the right one and if another is canonized and it’s rep it gets thoroughly ignored;

pushed on a mindset for which if something isn’t perfect at the get-go then it’s canceled.

and so on.

like, all of that shit has been continuously not criticized because criticizing it especially if you don’t belong to a minority means that you’re out of line/discussing things that don’t concern you, but if you’re a minority and you criticize it then it’s suddenly YOU BETRAYED OUR CAUSE *INSERT SLUR HERE ABOUT PANDERING TO THE MAJORITY*, and the result exploded in toxic af fandoms, but like... if you look at the issues of the SW sequel trilogy fandom it’s all of that in a nutshell because:

k/ylo ren is automatically the worst because he’s white (horrible), a man (even worse), not canonically attractive (I didn’t touch on that topic bc I’m honestly not up for it mentally but lmao that counts too) and presumably heterosexual (or well, no one said he’s not but you know, since he’s a white dude on the bad side [supposedly] then we don’t give him the benefit of the doubt that he might be bi), so if you like ky/lo ren or relate to him you’re automatically problematic;

shipping re/ylo because automatically problematic because it’s a *straight* (evil) ship made of two white people (when there’s options to ship them both with people that aren’t white, so IT’S RACIST), they have an age gap (BAD BECAUSE POWER IMBALANCE) and it’s enemies to lovers, so it’s a context where people who don’t conceive redemption or that people can become better are basically crying problematic all the time, and the fact that people decided it’s *abusive* when it has like nothing that can equate it to a really abusive relationship says all;

ky/lux being the most popular slash ship immediately means that it’s the fault of the horrible straight (white) women fetishizing the (white) men on the dark side (when it’s most likely because for a while ky/lux was literally the only side of that fandom where people were chill/there wasn’t wank every other moment);

st/ormpilot has been declared The Right Ship because it’s two non-white men and it’s not straight which automatically turns into what I said before about hating other ships that would be rep anyway and feeds into the lowkey oppression olympics racism, because like if finn/rose becomes canon it’s still a mixed/biracial ship because he’s black and she’s asian....... except that it’s not the right ship for people who decided that finn has to be either with rey or poe (and guess what rey is white and poe is... schroedinger’s poc because oscar isaac in europe wouldn’t pass for *poc*), which to me has stank of lowkey racism since tlj came out because sorry but if ‘finn deserves better than rose’ or ‘finn should be with rey because if he doesn’t get rey then it’s unfair’ and the various other bullshit I read on the topic basically says that the white woman is *worthier* than the asian woman or that rose is a downgrade from rey which is fucking bullshit, rose isn’t even a bad character all the contrary. and that’s for the het side of it, but like then it’s not as good as stormpilot because it’s a straight ship (NOOOO THEY MADE FINN STRAIGHT/THEY’RE NOT MAKING THEM GAY THIS IS SUCH BULLSHIT = stuff I legit saw on the tag) and ngl I’m 100% sure that the fact that daisy is Standard Attractive and kelly marie t/ran is lovely but doesn't conform to the usual beauty standard western-viewers apply on asian women did play a role in there, but: what did I say before? the slash ship is automatically better than the het ship never mind that they’re both biracial and rose is actually a rep (asian girls who don’t adhere to stereotypical body shapes - and like, the rep for all body types and shapes should be valid for all women, not just white) that isn’t exactly popular especially in mainstream cinema, so people should be happy.... but since rose is Not A Dude and Not Rey and Not The Right Kind Of Representation For That Crowd, automatically rose is a shit character and deserves to be viciously hated on. and this is a thing done by people who most likely then turn on the other side and talk shit about horrible straight women who hate the only female character for getting in the way of their slash ship without realizing that their rose hate is exactly that. and of course since sto/rmpilot is the two good guys, if you ship that then you also have to hate re/ylo because how can you, a person who ships The Good Ship On The Light Side, support such a problematic enemies to lovers thing? yeah, right, hahaha.

this also tbqh also pairs up with how on tumblr people only recognize mental health issues/abuse victims when the narrative suits them - like, being a bad victim automatically means you lose sympathy and mental health issues are only valid if you aren’t ***privileged*** otherwise why would you have them, which shows transparently in how a lot of people absolutely deny that ky/lo ren is a) an abuse victim, b) obviously mentally ill however it is that he deals with it, but no, he has to be The Most Horrible In Existence Because Otherwise We Should Have Empathy For A Bad Guy Who Also Might Get Redeemed And Redemption Is Not Happening Ever Because Bad People Don’t Deserve it.

like, all of the issues sw sequel trilogy has when it comes to the fandom are direct consequences of the nonsensical social justice calvinism climate on tumblr dot com that no one took care to put a stop to since 2013 and of its ridiculous oppression olympics and pitting people against each other and that was my take. cheers.

(ps: I also ship sto/rmpilot like woah and it’s my otp but there’s a reason why I unfollowed most SP blogs I followed and why I don’t go into the tag anymore - I’m not here for the anti-rose racism dressed up as performative wokeness, I’m not here to get lectured about as a white person I fetishize poc gay men if I ship it - yes I read that too - and I’m not here to read a bunch of meta about how re/ylo is a bad ship and blah blah blah, so yeah. I feel you.) (pps: ky/lo ren isn’t even my favorite character and I care relatively but gdi the way the fandom approaches him is honestly mindboggling in that sense, and I don’t mean people who actually dislike him because fair reasons, I mean people who can’t recognize his abuse victim status and the precarious status of his mental health. like, not all abuse victims and mentally ill people are the right victim or come from the right background and you can be cool motive still murder and still recognize that he’s like that because he has issues, not because he was drawn that way. /bye)

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #i said my piece bye #reylo for ts #kylo ren for ts #sw wank for ts #i don't mean ppl shouldn't be uncomfortable with re/ylo or ky/lo btw #but like........... this level of vitriol is ridiculous #and the rose hate is dumb af #bye *shrug*#social justice calvinism #the first person whining about straight people feeling left out as last time this happened #is getting automatically blocked bye #Anonymous #ask post

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dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram · 5 years

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oh my god do start the discourse about how much you hate the mythic interpretation, I’ve been SALIVATING

Hi anon,

Thanks so much for this ask - I would probably would have written something this weekend anyway, but it’s great to have an excuse.

I didn’t find any of it very convincing, but that’s OK. Other people’s song interpretations seldom are. But there were four things about this particular post that made me go beyond ‘I guess that’s possible, but I’m not convinced’ (which is my usual response to song interpretations). The first two are about the way the interpretation was made - the grand claims about the status of their interpretation and the treatment of Ever Since New York. The second two are about the interpretation itself.

‘The’ Literary angle

The introduction makes pretty bold claims - including that the angle this post is coming from is ‘the literary angle’ as well as talking about ‘the mythic foundation’. As far as I can tell - when they talk about literary traditions they are only talking about using women as symbolic figures and when they talk about ‘mythic’ they mean a ring structure (which as they acknowledge the album that exists does not follow - but more on that later).

Despite this hype - I think it’s a really badly done literary interpretation. Nothing about the interpretation was convincing to me - there was no effort to demonstrate that the claims were true - just statements that this is what the author thinks. When talking about SoTT they say: ‘But I do believe this [1D’s early success] was at least the initial inspiration for this song. This is the interpretation that works in context of the album/story as a whole.’ That’s circular reasoning - they’re using assumptions they’ve already made to support their interpretation.

There’s also some really sloppy arguing, which suggest a very limited worldview and lack of understanding of possibilities. When talking about Carolina they dimiss the idea that the song could be about Townes: ‘If he’d liked her that much, he would have seen her again’. As if it’s unthinkable that a one night stand (by a touring musician no less!) can include great sex and real connection. When discussing Medicine, they make a weird detour to the possibility that Harry and Louis met at the Script concert (which I didn’t know that anyone actually believed) - because once they were living together ‘they wouldn’t have had to go out to hook up’. As if the idea of a couple going out to a club together to enjoy each other in public doesn’t make any sense.

The post about ‘Only Angel’ suggests in passing that the song is a story of an abusive relationship and that the narrator is the one being abused. Which is wrong and upsetting.

None of this matters that much (except the Only Angel nonsense - that matters), and I’m not going to go into all the arguments and interpretations that I disagree with or I think are unfounded. But the combination of the grand claims ‘the literary angle’/’the mythic foundation’ and the inept arguing does really get to me.

The Treatment of Ever Since New York

The most ridculous part of the whole work is the declaration that Ever Since New York and Woman were in the wrong order, because the order they were in didn’t fit the interpretation this person was trying to make. It’s quite a vivid demonstration of exactly how bad of a literary analysis these posts are.

But that’s not actually what bothers me most with the way Ever Since New York was discussed. Because Harry has talked about some of the inspiration for this song and he’s talked about being in a pool with no water when he got bad news about a family member’s health. Now I don’t think people have to include this statement from Harry in their interpretation of the song, but I think it shows how limiting (and dehumanising) the author’s view of Harry is. According to these posts the only people and experiences that Harry could have any desire to express himself about in his first album are his experience in the band and his bandmates. The exact things that the author is most interested in.

I find it arrogant in general to assume that the only things Harry would want to express in song are parts of his life and feeling that we can access from watching him. But I think it’s worse, because we do have a sense of some of the pain, loss and fear that Harry was dealing with in the year before the relase of his album. This post left no possibility that experiences like Robin’s diagnosis or Matt’s death had any impact on Harry’s songwriting.

The Western literary tradition of not writing about women as people

The Introduction claims “To understand the deeper meaning of this album, the most important thing to recognize is that not one of these songs is about a woman. Literary tradition has a long history of using female stand-ins and pronouns to represent a wide variety of life’s experiences”.

I am agnostic on the question of whether and in what sense Harry intended any of the songs on his album to be about a woman. And it is true that Western literary tradition long history of using female stand-ins and pronouns to represent a wide variety of life’s experiences. But that tradition is wildly misogynist and based in a fundamental denial of women’s humanity.

Ever since ‘Harry Styles’ was released fans have been arguing that the misogyny doesn’t count, because Harry was talking about cocaine, or fame, or his time in 1D rather than women. That the virgin/whore dynamic of ‘good girl/feels so good’ and the angel who is a devil in the sheets or the nasty controlling elements of ‘Woman’ don’t count, because Harry wasn’t really talking about women.

These defences never spell out why it’s OK to use misogynist tropes about women if you don’t actually talk about women. I would argue the opposite - the fact that it’s woman, and not men, who get used as a literary stand in for whatever the author actually wants to talk about, is in itself misogynist and denying women’s humanity. I also think that it’s worse to perpetuate misogynist tropes as a way of communicating your true feelings about fame than just in a song about an actual or imagined woman. There’s a second level of misogyny, because it means there’s no space in literarture for women to exist as people.

Or on a more fundamental level - does the impact that these songs have on the world suddenly change, because Harry didn’t mean them like that? Woman still normalises controlling behaviour by men for the vast majority of people who listen to it. Women and girls are still hearing that they have to be both good and feel good.

What does this interpretation add to the work?

Finally, I disagree with the most fundamental of the author’s assertions - that the Harry Styles album as they imagine it is interesting.

There’s a lot of claims, throughout the post, that this interpretation reveals what a great work of art ‘Harry Styles’: “Viewed through the right lens, it is actually quite an extraordinary piece of art—one that draws from ancient mythic and literary tradition to tell an emotionally rich and cohesive story.”

I disagree - I think the version of ‘Harry Styles’ that this person thinks exists is boring and basic.

#Anonymous #The original author literally said that the misogyny melts away when you don't think of the songs as being about women #and I totally disagree #I think the misogyny hardens and thickens #I may extract that section #and make a seperate post of it #because I feel it so strongly

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writesbatty · 6 years

Text

days 14-29

complete with unedited content notes from the facebook group i’m in

29/30

i love to rewrite the classics

to make persephone send hades running

(keep that 'rewriting the story of persephone as a love story’ shit several hundred miles from me, thanks.)

to give echo back her voice

to let arachne weave her tapestries once more

rewrite pride and prejudice so lydia bennet does not marry a rapist

get jane eyre out of her aunt's home sooner rather than later

find ophelia a therapist

remind everyone that tragedy can still have a happy ending

28/30 content warning: mentions/discussions of sex and consent. this is very vulnerable and im uncomfortable and DOING IT ANYWAY rip

i tell my boyfriend i think we should start scheduling sex

but that this is not some indication of failure in our relationship

i know he worries that my complicated relationship with sex is some reflection of how attractive i find him

(it doesn't help that the past few years seem to have taken my ease of flattery away from me

i don't know when it got so hard to tell the love of my life he looks good in tank tops

and black jeans like the ones he wore when i met him)

but it's not that

it's that i don't think about it, the same way i don't notice i am hungry till i'm starving, don't notice i'm thirsty till my head aches and spins, don't notice i am anxious until i am already in the middle of panic

it's that i was in a relationship where i never thought about the word no, it never occurred to me as an option, and now i end up consumed with pointless worry that i do not really want this

i try to talk to my therapist about these things, but i never really know what to say

how to explain my ex never set out to hurt me and half of it was my fault, but i am still feeling the aftershocks years later

without sounding like i am making excuses

(maybe i am, i don't know, i have always had a hard time with blame, with holding others accountable)

but at the same time i never want to imply what happened was more serious than it was

nothing like a genuine violation, nothing that should label me victim or survivor

nothing like what others have gritted their teeth and fought through

maybe some of it is the meds

it's hard to tell

how much is the meds and how much is the trauma and how much is just me

and why has it been six years and i still can't

-casually tell my boyfriend he has a nice ass

-sit in my boyfriend's lap

-fearlessly messily uninhibitedly make out with my boyfriend

because some paranoid corner of my mind is afraid to say 'no'

(nothing would happen if i said no, because everything would stop happening, it's not fear that makes me question, it's the idea of disappointing someone i love, and that's all on me, not on him)

my boyfriend is an angel with a nice ass

(seriously, i am not overstating this, he has a very nice, round butt)

and when i tell him

i think we should start scheduling sex

he kisses the top of my head

and talks about how bob and linda on bob's burgers schedule sex, and they have like, the best marriage on television, so clearly we're in good company

and pulls me over to the couch to feed me ice cream and scratch my back

27/30 warning for like. harry potter/jkr 'discourse' or something i guess?

listen, we all should have known jk rowling was going down in flames the moment she made harry james potter a fucking MAGICAL COP at the end of the series

i have a list of problems with the deathly hallows epilogue that is longer than the actual epilogue and this is at least three of them

will somebody cut harry a fucking break?

why on earth would someone punish this abused, traumatized, exhausted person by giving them a career that will repeatedly remind them of every bad thing that has ever happened, which is most things that have happened to harry potter

harry potter should have been the defense against the dark arts instructor

harry potter has intimately seen both sides, every inch of light and dark

and he saw them as a child, he grew in them like a weed in brackish water, an in between neither fresh nor salt

(but he chose good, he always chose good, and it was always a choice, and it wasn't always easy)

let him teach other children to protect themselves

let him eat lunch with neville longbottom so they can discuss their students and make sure no teacher ever treats kids the way snape treated his students

the way snape treated harry and neville

let harry spend his weekends in hogsmeade with friends both old and new remembering only the light spots in the dark days of his schooling

let him know the joy of helping a struggling student

(this is how he will carry on remus lupin's legacy; that and the bar of honeyduke's finest chocolate in his desk)

let harry potter retire and spoil the ever loving shit out of all of his grandchildren

let harry potter put the past behind him

consider the fact that we don't all want to devote our lives

to fighting the demons we met in childhood

26/30

nightmare at 20,000 feet is the most terrifying episode of the twilight zone

and what an apt title

what an apt metaphor

because what could ever be more nightmare then knowing the worst is just outside the window

but no one else can see it

25/30 this ends like super abruptly but idk how to end it Properly and i need sleep so. shrug emoji.

it's like a bad joke, this harmless word that never stops following me

you know those tasteless reddit posts about trigger warnings? how there's 'no way' someone could be traumatized by something so normal

so small

that's me. i am that joke.

a man at the aquarium calls his young daughter pumpkin and i–

i swallow a wave of nausea

i try to ignore the way my skin begins to crawl

and my heart speeds up

and i can hear the sound of his voice

it's like time travel

it's like a curse

just say 'pumpkin' and i fly back in time and it's like my body does not know that he is dead

that he hasn't called me pumpkin in nearly a decade

you would think it would be the mocking, the insults, that would ring like shots through my echo chamber brain

but

it's that fucking petname

it's 'i'm sorry, pumpkin' in his voice and the look in his eyes as he digs the hole in my chest just a little bit deeper with another fake apology

an apology all for him

when he came to my high school graduation there were rules

-he could not drink

-he could not apologize

-he could not call me pumpkin

24/30

it's funny

this disconnect between the me i know and the me other people know

at home i pace the floor, building up the courage to call for a cab

at work they tell me i am good with people, that i am no nonsense

at home, i twist my hair in my fingers as i struggle to tell my partner of nearly six years i need something to eat

at school they called me confident, self assured

i wonder where this other me is when i need them most

where is this confident and self assured version of me when something actually happens?

when someone is in trouble?

when someone gropes me in the street?

when someone needs them?

when i need them?

23/30

weirdly specific sections i wish i could find at the bookstore:

unconventional sci written by women and queer people

dystopian fiction that ends hopefully

non-ableist romance novels with disabled protagonists written by disabled people

young adult romance novels about lesbians and magic with happy endings

poetry for queer girls who really like artemisia gentileschi's art

collections of personal essays about hospital waiting rooms

college kids from dysfunctional families getting their shit together and falling in love

narratives about found families of misfits

young adult novels about queer romance and theatre kids

the exact novels you needed to read at 15 when you were scared and alone and will still make you cathartically sob while reading in a public park

(this last section is real except it's just the francesca lia block shelves in the young adult section)

how to guides on how to be a person when your body and the world you live in are crumbling to pieces rapidly

advice on how to make your best friends move out of state to be closer to you

novels where the protagonist goes through hell but they come out the other side and are still an essentially good and optimistic person despite their trauma because the world is a terrifying place and we need fiction and narrative to remind us of the potential for hope

22/30

edit: i just word vomit typed this directly into the comment box and it got weirdly long so Be Aware

elle woods is my personal hero

i'm blonde

'yes sarah'

i'm sure you're thinking

'i know, i have seen you'

but it's more than that, okay? i am blonde on the inside. my heart and soul are blonde. i talk to people and they say 'i can't imagine you not blonde' because the concept of me any other way is absurd

maybe because its the one thing everyone always loved about me. when i was a kid, everyone wanted to play with my hair. i had barbie hair, disney princess hair. long blonde waves like strands of gold.

i grew up telling blonde jokes, so everyone would know i was Smart and Cool. i got teased for being a nerd and a four eyes and for awhile everyone called me 'dictionary' because i knew how to spell zombie. smart was more important to me than cool, but i still told blonde jokes. the blonde swims ninety percent of the way to the other shore, gets tired, and swims all the way back, and god if that isn't a metaphor for my life. god if i haven't spent 25 years fighting not to be the blonde who turned back.

when i almost failed math in my freshman year of high school my father told me i should give up and become a playboy bunny because i didn't have a future. a childhood friend asks when i will grow out of the color pink.

i am a blonde the way i am pink. spiteful. elle woods walking malibu barbie through the halls of harvard. elle woods taking notes in pink sparkling pen. elle woods handing in her scented resume printed on pink paper.

elle woods saying

'what, like it's hard?'

i tape my thesis pages to the wall with glitter tape and pin my blonde hair back with a flower clip and i wear baby pink leather heels with bows on them.

'what, like it's hard?'

21/30

why do the aliens always want to kill us?

why do we always build a giant weapon?

why can't the aliens come to earth to help us?

why aren't scifi movies about healing?

20/30

ode to vestibular stimming

i do not like metal music

i'm sorry, it's just not my thing

but good god do i understand why people head bang

and why people mosh

when i was a kid i loved jumping on the trampoline, and the way it made my heart and brain jump and soar and bounce

now i can't jump on trampolines anymore but

i can listen to british pop music in my living room and laugh and feel that soar and jump and bounce as i swing my head from side to side and up and down and sometimes, for extra fun, twist my torso around a little

like i am so much energy and so little body but finally it has somewhere to go as my hair swishes against my face and an unstoppable grin spreads across my face and

don't you ever wanna just let go?

don't you ever wanna shake your head until the dizzy chases everything else away?

19/30

i like to talk to the creatures in the tanks when i do my aquarium rounds

the old man of an octopus in the floor tank i call gramps

my favorite sea star, a purple velcro star in the touch tanks, i call zippy

mostly i just call everything 'buddy'

'hey buddy, how ya doing today?' or 'come on buddy, scootch down from the top of the glass'

i apologize to the anemones when they close up because people have touched them too much

and i apologize to the jellies when it takes me more than one try to scoop them out so i can change their water

in middle school i noticed a rip on my baby doll's neck so i made her a neck brace from the sash of a build a bear robe and propped her up on pillows every night, so she wouldn't rip anymore

i am nearly 25 and i still feel guilty when my stuffed animals fall to the ground

i am nearly 25 and i keep multiple stuffed animals in the bed i share with my boyfriend of nearly six years

a common misconception of autism and other similar social disorders is that people on the spectrum do not experience empathy

and in some cases this is true

but an often ignored aspect of these disorders is that anything you could lack, you can also have too much of

hyper-empathy is when you are so receptive to others feelings they become your own

they become so much your own it causes you physical distress

and everything

everything

has feelings

i once got sad about throwing away a pair of pants because i had them for just... so long

i once cried on an apartment balcony because my neighbors i had never met, never even SEEN, were fighting

today i watched a young boy scare simon, a seagull who hangs out by the aquarium, by screaming at him

and it broke my heart a little even though i not especially fond of birds and am, in fact, kind of afraid of them

sometimes i sit and think about the things my dad experienced and my aching too big heart thinks

maybe it was okay

maybe the things he said were okay, because of what happened to him

my aching too big heart always forgets

things happened to my mother, too

things happened to me, too

and neither of us turned out like that

articles on the internet talk about hyper-empathy like a super power

call it 'being an empath'

to me it has always felt more like a bruise

like my aching too big heart just can't stop pumping blood to the tender surface of my skin

18/30

a very angry letter to a lady who came into the aquarium yesterday. less poem and more just 'complaining' but wow, i am still mad like 36 hrs later

for the love of god, lady

what is your fucking problem?

you are a grown adult. you have multiple children, some of whom are teenagers, and this is how you behave, in public, in front of your family?

are you incapable of basic human decency? did no one ever teach you manners?

yes, there is a disabled person and their caretaker in this aquarium, and yes the person is making noise. people make noise. you are in a fucking public place. children scream in here literally all the time. the seals scream. parents scream. sometimes the people who work here scream, because it is the only way you can hear us over the damn seals.

so why, lady, do you feel the need to make some rude ass comment about a person you don't even know, and look at me like

you expect me to play along

i wish i could say something to you but i am an employee and that is not polite but

if i was just a person i would tell you to shove it

but i wish i could have been a staff member AND told you to shove it

so i could have told you, hey, lady

this person helping you, telling you all this information about sea stars, is also fucking disabled

and your rude as hell eye roll and 'oh great, here we go' and 'really?' and loud scoffing is not appreciated

and frankly you can kiss my autistic ass and get the fuck out

17/30

capitalism is broken

and the reason i know this is because of jurassic park

not the franchise but the canon, the universe it exists in

every time i complain about the jurassic park universe

demanding to know why, for the love of GOD, do people keep opening these parks full of dangerous dinosaurs

someone always tells me 'the money, obviously'

as if capitalism was a reasonable excuse for making a super t-rex that eats people

as if money were an excuse for making yet another death trap

yet another super dinosaur that's going to –inevitably– escape and eat and/or traumatize someone

the idea that the people who built jurassic world looked at the events of jurassic park and thought

the money is worth it

we won't fuck up this time

is completely fucking baffling to me

i suppose maybe i am meant to see this as a heartwarming representation of the american refusal to fail

if at first you don't succeed, try try again, after all!

but i think about the news article i read last night

about how insurance companies worry curing diseases is not profitable

and i think about all the lives lost and therapy needed because everyone in jurassic world refused to learn from john hammond's mistakes

and i don't think any of this is saying americans refuse to fail

it's just saying we don't care how many times we kill people if there's good money to be made

16/30, inspired by how affectionate the characters on new girl are with each other

all through high school i did theatre, and i don't know if this is a universal theatre kid thing, or just something we all did

but we were all about physical contact

we were a bunch of misfit touch starved pets

piling seven teenagers on one sofa, every part of you touching somebody, every part of you warm

and i miss that

all that platonic but physical affection

i am a very affectionate person, and i find myself fighting to seem 'normal' in social situations

reminding myself not to wrap my arms around people, or rest a hand on someone's leg, or call casual friends babe, or offer people bites of food

this is how i lived all of high school

sitting in laps, holding hands in the halls, kisses hello, shared drinks and forks

i miss it

i don't understand our desire as a society to deem intimate touch romantic

why shouldn't i kiss my best friend on the cheek? why shouldn't friends hold hands?

we are social creatures, after all

we don't start out like this

we sleep in heaps at slumber parties, we play doctor, we play house, we do each other's hair

why does all that stop because we get old enough to want to kiss people?

doesn't that seem silly?

15/30 write more love poems about your friends guys. love your friends tell people you love them. i love telling people i love them. i love u. all of u. here's a poem about my best friend aka the greatest human on earth, the guildenstern to my rosencrantz

so i've known my best friend since 9th grade

except

except actually i met her in 3rd grade and didn't know it until 10th grade

and she wasn't my best friend until college

except

except she was, i think, maybe the whole time and we just didn't know it

on my fifteenth birthday she came with me to get my nose pierced and gave me a hand drawn birthday card that quoted my favorite green day song

once we spent six hours on skype drawing bad caricatures of celebrities

and when i left to grab a snack she yelled after me

"don't you go where i can't follow"

our senior year we read "rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead" for ap english and we started calling each other rosencrantz and guildenstern

and when she gave her senior project speech on william faulkner she cried, not because she was nervous, but because she loves faulkner and she got emotional

she is exactly 12 days older than me, and a taurus, and she plays a bunch of different instruments and one day we're going to start a folk punk band called the rebel amish

last summer we went to the deyoung together and laid in a shag covered bean bag chair watching the light show in the summer of love exhibit for like an hour

and we took a selfie in some giant gold antique mirror

and when i picture my future, she is as much a part of it as my boyfriend

this other love of my life, this girl with the bright eyes and the once broken nose and who is always willing to sit and talk about books

or the shitty people we went to high school with

or weird titles for potential memoirs

this amazing person, who is the only person i would trust to drive me through marin county while eating a mcdonalds cheeseburger

it is a different kind of love, sure

but it is a love story

and it is ours

14/30 which i wrote but forgot to post because i was playing video games

i wish my own mysteries were this easy to solve

just look for the spot that glows

and unearth what's hiding

no crying

no years of therapy

no buried memories

just point and click

#napowrimo #National Poetry Month #National Poetry Writing Month #LONG AS FUCK im sorry

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youswiminmywater · 3 years

Text

checking out

for the better part of my twenties, i’ve been wrestling a lot with this concept of checking out. not playing the game, never winning, never losing. not joining the rat race. in a way, it’s almost been my mantra, like my motivation for a lot of the decisions i make. and i don’t really know how i feel about it, you know, whether it’s the right way to live life, or whether it will lead anywhere. it definitely insulates me from a lot of suffering, sure. it’s also incredibly isolating, just by the nature of what it is.

what the heck am i talking about anyway? it’s kind of a combination of a lot of things. i’ve been having conversations with my roommate, mostly swapping old stories, that have dug up a lot of who i used to be and why i am the way i am today. like (and i’m not sure how many people know this about me) i used to be kind of sexually rampant online throughout all of my teens, and a good chunk of my twenties. i was soliciting for cybersex, making lewd videos, swapping photos, writing and wooing and trying my hardest to try and impress girls, steal their attention away from other guys, yada yada. i often felt pretty guilty too, like for whatever reason, i was terrified of using people for my own pleasure, even if we were on the same page and they were in it for the same reasons i was. so i made a conscious effort to like, never hit and quit, smash and dash, whatever, i always tried to stick around after my coomer brain switched off and take an interest in the person i had just fucked around with. it was like, my way of making it okay, eliminating guilt. it didn’t always work, like oftentimes i would still dash eventually, especially because people who do that kind of stuff have a tendency to get attached to each other, and that really terrified me. but i did make a few fickle friends, people i was never on bad terms with and just sort of drifted from.

but it was still an exhausting cycle; it felt like something approaching compulsion and i was just building up a small reserve of guilt and self-loathing through the years. not just from the people i rejected, but from the people i reached out to and never got a response from. i know like, when they teach how to approach women, they emphasize not to fear rejection, but rejection DOES prick something after a while. not necessarily a “why am i not good enough?” but sometimes a “why do i want to be good enough?” why am i doing it in the first place, chasing girls and competing and trying to dig out my own niche in the animal kingdom? it just felt sometimes like i was trying to evaluate my own worth based on where i could manage to land when i tried to court people.

this kind of bleeds over into my whole dating life, but i won’t really get into that. i checked out there too. i don’t ask people out anymore, as much as i fantasize about having a partner and having my head rubbed after work and going hiking and sharing music and...all the things two people do when they want to learn each other and love each other for what they are. for some reason, i just can’t tolerate the steps you’re supposed to take to get to that point. i always see it as putting on a facade, like showing your best self and then slowly easing the person into learning your real self. that’s probably a real problem, looking at it that way. or, you know, just the idea of proving your worth to someone so that they choose to stick with you instead of with someone else. it’s always bothered me. i know love doesn’t just spring out of nowhere but... i think i’ve had a hard time figuring out what it DOES spring out of. i try to love so many people unconditionally and it’s never been reciprocated, so i know that’s not the way. it’s a dang enigma.

until recently, i was also sharing a house with this married couple that i was friends with, and being exposed to their lives and their friends also really shaped my willingness to “check out.” why? i can’t really explain it very well, but i felt like i was surrounded by people who were living by a script. like people who expect to be at certain places in their life at certain ages, you know, graduated by 22, married by 25, buy a house and have kids before 30, and an office job and a 401k plan buried somewhere within. not just the couple i was living with, but ALL of their couple friends, they all had the exact same lives. it was a real “keeping up with the jones’” vibe and i was having none of it. i knew they were looking down on me, 28 and single and piggybacking on my married friends’ lives. they sometimes introduced me as their “live-in pastry chef,” sort of a joke to explain why my life was the way it was. but so fucking what? life doesn’t follow a script, and it doesn’t mean that i’m stuck. i know it’s a little malicious, but i hated how they were stuck believing life had to be a certain way or else they were failures.

want an anecdote? we were having a birthday party for the husband, his 30th birthday, new years eve. with the ball dropping and champagne and yada yada. i remember leaving my bedroom and his sister was upstairs crying, being comforted by one of her friends. i asked what upset her, and she told me she expected her boyfriend to propose to her that night and he hadn’t. i don’t mean to be cruel, but it just seemed a little bizarre to me; or it was just something that wasn’t in my field of vision, that New Years Eve was just a night where certain things were Supposed To Happen when you reach a certain point in your relationship. i can only assume she was upset because she felt like maybe she was wasting her time with this guy, because it didn’t seem like it was leading to the right conclusion. i’m sure they’re engaged or married or whatever now, or maybe she’s engaged to somebody else. that’s the only logical assumption i can make, even if it’s a little judgmental.

i cracked open my first joan didion book today too, “play it as it lays.” i didn’t really read any of it yet, only the introduction, and that still had my mind swirling. i had the thought, man, i would really love to write a novel and never publish it. it seems silly. it’s not really how Novelists work, like, a professional that needs to make money, but i don’t want to write professionally. i want to write something grand and free and not be bothered by where i’m inserting myself in The Discourse. basically, i was reading the introduction to this book and thinking to myself “i hope nobody ever writes any introduction to any book i’d ever write.” i don’t know why, but i don’t want to be deciphered. the intellectual back and forth really bugs me: people discussing my book, people recommending my book, people praising it, people ripping it to shreds, people comparing this book to my last book, and looking forward to my future books. i’m repulsed by the idea and i don’t know why. if only i could write a novel and just give it to one or two people, or publish it and have nobody read it, as nonsensical as that sounds. i suspect this isn’t an original impulse; in fact, i know plenty of authors have felt this way and lived this way, just written and written and not tried to publish anything (emily dickinson comes to mind). but i also recognize that many authors publish because they’ve already taken the exit and can’t really afford to turn back, they’re banking on success (”the starving artist” thing). and some people straight up just crave the fame and recognition, which i respect too. they’re both fine, and i’m lucky to indulge in great works from both of these kinds of authors.

even when i read a book, i just want to soak it in and let it do its thing, not wave it around like a bible or anything. sometimes i don’t even want to know who the author is, or what their accolades are. i was comforted by joan’s bio on the back cover, it just said she is “the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction.” good. that’s enough for me. it’s hard to appreciate something when you expect greatness from it.

this all coincides with me thinking more and more about...meditation, as corny as that sounds to some people, or just letting life happen and living in the moment. trying my best not to look forward or look back. my mind sometimes seems to translate that as never striving for anything, which i’m not sure is exactly the same concept. but it seems comfortable, nonetheless. and i still don’t know if it’s the “right” move. all i know is that it’s the move i’ve made and what’s the use of wondering? it just is.

bleh, this was going somewhere, but i’ve forgotten my conclusion. i haven’t written really long form in a while, and i know i don’t have readers anymore anyway, so i guess it’s not much of a sin to leave this with a dot dot dot.

#blog #personal

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shannaraisles · 6 years

Text

A Rose By Any Name

Ten years on the throne, with no heir in sight, King Alistair has finally run out of excuses. Arl Eamon has him cornered in Denerim Palace, with ten extremely eligible ladies of suitable rank and birth from all over Thedas. He has one month to make a decision, or the Landsmeet will make it for him. Ferelden must have an heir. Post-Inquisition, Pre-Trespasser. Alistair x OFC. Cross-posted on AO3.

My contribution to @alistairappreciationweek, Day 2.

Chapter 1

The streets of Denerim were alive with gossip. After all these years, King Alistair was finally going to be married! Arl Eamon had finally convinced him to make a decision. Ladies and princesses were coming from all over Thedas to vie for his hand. Yes, they were going to vie for his hand. Their king was the most eligible bachelor in the world! After a decade trying to recover from the Blight, this was glorious news indeed.

Money changed hands as bets were placed between friends and professional gamblers. Who would the king choose? Would he be guided by the arl? Many hoped not - Eamon had married an Orlesian, and look how that had turned out. Or would the king be guided by the Warden-Commander, the Hero of Ferelden? No one could say for sure - Arlessa Tabris hadn't been seen for a good few years, off chasing some Warden secret miles away from her lands and the country she had saved. Perhaps Teryn Fergus Cousland would have some influence. He was well regarded in most circles, though he, too, was unmarried. He had some cause to be, though, made a widower through the actions of the treacherous Arl Howe during Loghain's downfall. But perhaps the king himself had a few ideas. He certainly wasn't going to lack for choice.

The streets were thronged as the carriages began to arrive, bearing noble ladies from all lands to the great gates of the palace in Denerim. Three from the Free Marches; two from Orlais; two from Ferelden itself; and three others, one from Rivain, one from Antiva, one from Nevarra. King Alistair was going to be spoiled for choice ... but the mood of his people might well make up his mind on certain of the ladies before he ever met them.

The booing filtered in through the window of the king's study, interrupting the discourse of the day. Arl Eamon scowled, marching toward the window to close it sharply.

"Let me guess," Alistair drawled, stretching as he sat back. "The ladies from Orlais have arrived."

Eamon's brows drew together in a stern frown. "They are fine women, Alistair," he said sternly. "You should not dismiss them out of hand simply because of their place of birth."

"Oh, you mean my loyal subjects won't turn on me with rotten tomatoes if I go out on that balcony and announce that their queen is going to be from a country that occupied and oppressed ours within living memory?" Alistair asked with a curiously biting touch to his easy voice. "Say what you like about Loghain - and I have - he was right about that, at least."

"Sweet Maker, I never thought I'd hear you say you agreed with Loathsome Loghain," a voice interrupted from the doorway.

Alistair looked up, his face splitting into a boyish grin that cast off the years of care laid over him by his place as monarch to a trouble land. "Dem!" he declared, pushing his seat back to rise and greet his old friend. "What are you doing here?"

Demelza Tabis, Warden-Commander and Hero of Ferelden, and Arlessa of Amaranthine, grinned back at her human friend, pushing out of her lean by the door. "You didn't really think I was going to miss this, did you?" she asked with a wicked chuckle. "Seeing you performing for all those ladies like a mabari on a leash? Wouldn't miss it for the world."

She clasped his arm with her hand, letting him pull her into a rough embrace as the two of them laughed to see one another again. Arl Eamon watched disapprovingly - though he was grateful to the elven Grey Warden for saving his life, for saving the lives of his wife and son, he had never fully approved of her close friendship with Alistair. She had too much influence over his nephew, in his opinion.

"Warden-Commander," he greeted her with a stiff bow. "May I ask how you got in? The door is guarded."

Dem raised a brow, noting the cool reception with a smirk. "Do you know many people around here who would stop the Hero of Ferelden walking through a door?" she asked, deliberately not using his name or his title. "Besides, I can get in anywhere. I can even surprise Leliana when I concentrate."

Alistair's jaw dropped open. "Oh, I would pay to see that," he chuckled delightedly, and abruptly blushed as his old friend looked him over with a pointed look.

"No, I really don't think you would," Dem teased him, reaching up to chuck his chin as though he were not a full foot taller and several pounds heavier than she was. "Seeing as there's a lot of nakedness and lamp-post licking involved."

"But it's not winter," Alistair managed, a little flustered by the mental image of two good friends entangled with one another. It had been years since he'd overheard that first encounter between them, and the memory of those noises still made his ears burn.

"I still haven't licked a lamp-post in winter," Dem admitted impishly. "I'm much more a summer kind of girl."

Fighting through his laughing blush, Alistair shook his head. "Are you staying for all this, then?"

"Like I said, wouldn't miss it," she assured him. "Honestly ... did you really think I wouldn't hear about you inviting women from all over the world to compete for your hand in marriage? What are you going to do - stand in the Landsmeet, drop your pants, and marry the last one standing?"

Alistair roared with laughter, leaning back against his desk as the tension bled out of his shoulders. It had been far too long since Dem had been around, with her blunt humor and utter lack of the appropriate. He'd spent years buried in protocol and etiquette, in politics and diplomacy, to the point where he had almost learned not to blurt the first thing that came into his head ... and here came Dem, who didn't care whether her words were offensive or not. She spoke her mind, and everyone else just had to deal with it.

"They'd run for the hills if I did that," he chuckled eventually, shaking his head as Eamon scowled and left the room. "Oops."

Dem watched the door close before turning back to him. "All right, 'fess up, Longshanks," she told him, the old nickname she'd planted on him rolling easily off her tongue. "This is all his idea, isn't it?"

Alistair sighed, the laughter gone from his face as he reached up to rub his forehead. "It's not as though I can leave the throne to Morrigan's boy, is it?" he said wearily. "I heard she disappeared from Skyhold again, anyway." He leaned back on his hands, tipping his head back to examine the iron chandelier above his desk absently. "You know as well as I do the chances of actually having a child are slim to none. But Eamon's right; I can't pretend forever that everything is fine."

"Alistair ..." Dem crossed her arms over her chest, eyeing him with a resigned expression. "You don't have to do this. You're the king, not that dried up old crumpet."

There was a long pause. Alistair didn't need to meet his friend's eyes to know her expression - that defiant mixture of concern and affection and outrage on his behalf that once he had toyed with the possibility of encouraging into love. He was glad he had not tried to do that; for one thing, he didn't think the boy he had been could have weathered her laughing rejection as well as Zevran had done. For another, he didn't feel that way about her. For all their differences, Dem was the closest thing to a sister he had; far closer than Goldanna had ever even tried to be, and always there when he most needed her. Like now, when he was going to need someone to keep reminding him that he was Alistair, and not just a prize with a crown on his head.

"I could have said no," he said quietly, lowering his eyes from the chandelier to meet her gaze with raw honesty. "It's been ten years, Dem. Ten years with nothing but work and worries and war. And no one to talk to. Eamon only ever talks politics and advantages; Teagan is busy enough with Redcliffe and his family; Fergus doesn't come in from Highever all that often. Shianni isn't comfortable enough to relax and treat me like a person. At least if I get married, there'll be one person in the palace who will talk to me, and not the crown on my head. And if I’m lucky enough to have a child ..."

"You're lonely," she translated gently, an understanding light warming her eyes. "I can understand that. Just ... don't let anyone talk you into choosing a wife you're not sure about, all right? Most of these women won't see you. They're here to be a queen, not to be a wife."

He sighed, rubbing his forehead wearily once again. "It doesn't help that I'm running out of time," he admitted. "At best, I've got twenty years before I hear a true Calling. That doesn't feel long enough to raise a child. If I can even conceive one."

"If I find what I'm looking for in Tevinter, you might not need to worry so much about that," she assured him.

Alistair stared at her. "You found something?"

Dem smiled faintly. "A hint, but it's the best I've got right now," she told him. "With Leliana on the Sunburst Throne, I don't need to worry about her so much, and if you find the right woman in this marriage faire nonsense, I can leave you without too much concern. The Inquisitor has put me in touch with ... I think she called him an altus ... who might be able to help me out when I get there, and she's working with someone called Fiona, who used to be a Grey Warden but isn't any longer, to try and isolate what made that happen." She reached out to pat his hand almost teasingly. "You might live long enough to see your children married, your majesty."

"Do kings walk princes down the aisle?" he asked, a mild grin illuminating his face. "I could change the tradition. Me in the dress and him holding the sword."

She laughed, glad to see his good humor returning. "I am definitely not missing that," she declared cheerfully, moving over to the window to look down as yet another carriage arrived to disgorge its noble occupant. "So how does all this work, then?"

Alistair groaned quietly. "I've got a month to decide which one I like enough to marry," he informed his friend, grimacing when she snorted with laughter.

"One month to lick all those lamp-posts?"

"If only ..." Alistair let out a hopeful sigh. "Something tells me no one wants to see the King of Ferelden choose his queen by licking ten women in turn."

"They do call us dog-lords," Dem pointed out cheerfully.

"Apparently I've got more manners than a mabari," he responded dejectedly. "Speaking of which ... where did you leave Monster?"

Dem's grin widened. "Oh, he's in your kennels," she assured her friend. Monster, the mabari that had imprinted on her at Ostagar whether she wanted him to or not, was her constant companion wherever she went. "Something tells me you're going to have another batch of puppies in a few months."

"It'd be so much easier if I was a dog," he mourned playfully. "I don't suppose the ladies would like it much if I tried to mount them in public."

"Some of them might like it in private," she pointed out.

Alistair winced. "Eamon's got views on that sort of thing," he told her. "I have to dance with them and be a gentleman."

"You are a gentleman," Dem reminded him. "Just because you get tongue-tied around pretty women doesn't mean you're completely incapable of being nice to them."

"What if they're all pretty?" he asked, his expression suddenly aghast. "I can't ask a pretty princess to play shadow puppets with me."

"What about an ugly princess? Could you ask her to play puppets with you?"

"I'm not playing puppets with anyone!" Alistair protested laughingly.

Dem rolled her eyes. "Why not?" she asked him bluntly. "Longshanks, this is your life you're planning out here. Whoever you choose should at least be able to play along with the things you enjoy. So use the month to test them."

The king sighed. "You're not seriously saying I should take a bevy of noble ladies down to the city on market day and make them watch the puppet show?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." She nodded firmly. "Look, they want to be queen, right? So expose them to Ferelden. If they can't handle the people, they definitely won't be a popular queen."

Alistair's expression slowly creased into a familiar smile. That was entirely doable, and a better suggestion that Eamon's attempts to get him to agree to some of the more ridiculous noble pastimes.

"We could go on a hunt with the mabari," he mused. "Camp out. Spend a day in the library. Spar."

Dem snickered quietly. "Noble ladies camping and sparring?"

"Some of them might," he defended his choice, though he was grinning at the thought. "I wonder how muddy I can get them before they start leaving?"

"That's my boy." She patted him on the shoulder fondly. "Weed out the weak. Make them eat the most Ferelden thing you can think of."

His eyes went wide with longing hope. "Pork pies ... beef stew with dumplings ... cheese ..."

"Proper cheese, not that runny Orlesian snot," Dem added with a grin. "Let Eamon have his feast and his ball and whatever else he has planned to make you uncomfortable, but you've got a whole month to show these ninnies what they're letting themselves in for. I say you should go for it. I bet the castle would be right behind you."

"The court wouldn't," he predicted with a snort of laughter.

"Did I say anything about the court?" She chuckled. "I was talking about the actual people who live and work in this drafty monstrosity."

To her delight, Alistair blushed, glancing away as he rubbed his jaw. "About that ..."

"Was I not supposed to know about you washing the dishes when you make a decision you think won't be popular?" The elven woman laughed. "Shianni knows everything."

"Maker's breath, does everyone talk to you about what I'm doing?" he demanded in embarrassment.

"Pretty much." Dem nodded, her eyes crinkling as she grinned back at him. She was willing to lay money on guessing well ahead of time who he was going to choose, probably before he knew himself. She loved her awkward human brother. "Anyway, you can always come and hide behind me if the kissy-kissy gets too much. I'm that terribly uncouth elf-woman who has to be tolerated because she's a hero, don't you know."

"Oh yes, how dare you save all their lives and then insist on showing up when you're invited?" he countered, though his smile was a little half-hearted. He didn't like the way the members of the Bannorn had a tendency to talk down to Demelza, just because she was an elf. It was funny watching her forcing them to look her in the eye as she insulted them to their faces, though.

"I know!" she exclaimed teasingly. "Didn't even have the decency to die saving them from the Blight!" She eyed him with a gentler smile. "You know I don't care what they think of me, right? You're my friend. They're just a bunch of shemlen."

"And I have to make nice with nobles from all over Thedas for a month." Alistair's sigh was decidedly put upon. He glanced at his friend worriedly. "What if they don't like me?"

Dem was wise enough not to tease him about that. "Then they're bigger fools than even I think they are," she told him in a firm tone. "You've got a choice of ten. One of them is bound to laugh at your awful jokes."

"Hey!"

The protest was so familiar to both of them, such a throwback to the year they had spent slogging around Ferelden, just them against the world, that they both laughed, king and commander together. Alistair pushed off his lean at the desk, laying a hand on her shoulder.

"It's good to see you, Dem," he told her sincerely. "Don't let me make too many mistakes?"

She offered him a warm smile. "Mistakes maketh the man," she informed her friend, patting his hand. "But apparently I can't show myself at your fancy feast in armor, so I'm off for a bath. Save me a dance, your majesty."

"Only if you promise not to trip me over on purpose." He chuckled, watching her on her way to the door.

"I never make promises I can't keep," was her parting shot, the door closing behind her to seal him in his study with nothing but his own thoughts once again.

It was good to have Demelza back in Denerim, even if she was only here to laugh at his fumbling attempts to court ten different women at the same time. At least there would be someone he could talk to like a person for a month. And if he was very lucky, he'd have a fiancee at the end of that time who might actually see him as more than a crown. It isn't even a very pretty crown, he reflected, turning toward the window. Ugly heavy thing with knobs on. Quite why anyone would actually want to wear its mate was beyond him at times.

He sighed, looking out over the rooftops of the palace and Denerim beyond. Dear old drizzly Ferelden, he mused, drumming his fingers against the thick glass pane in front of him. Nobles and darkspawn and criminals, elves and humans, and no one laughs at decent jokes. Well, no one laughs at my jokes. Ten years he'd been king of a kingdom struggling to maintain itself, sat on a throne he'd never wanted, forced to deal with people he would much rather never give the time of day to. He'd stepped up because Demelza had asked him to - she'd given him the choice, and he had not wanted to disappoint her. She'd been so sure he could be a good king. But was he?

Alistair wasn't so sure. Those first years had been difficult - so much to learn, to handle. It had been a relief to discover that Fergus Cousland was on his side, that Anora couldn't get the support she needed to engage in a new civil war, that Demelza had Amaranthine under control. Well, sort of under control. They must have rebuilt the city by now. Eamon had always been at his side, and for a long time, his uncle's advice had been sound. He'd guided the young king through political pitfalls and diplomatic traps that could have ended in disaster. But then the appeasement had started to creep in, the encouragement to strengthen ties with Orlais, the badly-disguised implication that marrying Celene would put an end to all his problems. Alistair had stopped trusting Eamon the day his uncle had suggested they offer the Empress use of the Ferelden army to put down her own civil war troubles. He had enough domestic troubles of his own; he wasn't going to invite the enmity of his entire kingdom by doing something as stupid as that. It was bad enough there were two Orlesian ladies in the cattle show he was going to have to navigate for the next month, but at least having them there meant he only really had to pay attention to eight of the women still arriving. Not even Alistair was fool enough to marry an Orlesian and make her queen.

Still, that left him with eight names to consider. Eight faces to put those names to. Eight women of varying ages who were all likely to be stunningly gorgeous and know it. He could feel his stomach tying itself into knots already. His eyes drifted down to the latest carriage in the courtyard, where a red-cloaked figure was stepping down onto the cobblestones. Which one is that, he wondered, squinting through the thick distortion of the glass. He could just make out dark hair curling from beneath the hood, and was that a green dress, or a blue one? Whoever she was, she paused to look around the courtyard for a long moment, only taking the seneschal's hand when she was ready to be guided inside. What he wouldn't give for confidence like that ...

A knock sounded on the door behind him, his voice automatically answering with an injunction for the knocker to come inside.

"Your Majesty?"

Alistair turned away from the window, his brown eyes focusing on the familiar shape of Cormac Sarrin, his personal secretary.

"Your valet has drawn a bath for your majesty," Cormac told him as gently as possible. Those closest to Alistair knew their king was not looking forward to being the meat at this meat market. "Arl Eamon has asked me to remind you that you must be present in the feasting hall before the ladies may be announced."

Alistair sighed. "He must be beside himself with joy," he drawled, moving away from the window. "All right, Cormac, I'll go and make myself beautiful for the ladies. Make sure the Warden-Commander is seated between myself and Bann Shianni Tabris this evening - if I must go through this, I will at least have friends on hand."

"As you wish, your majesty." Cormac bowed, a faint smile playing at his lips as he slipped away again, no doubt to tell Eamon where he could shove his seating plan. Alistair almost wished he could watch that.

But no, duty was calling. Time to go out and be beautiful for the beautiful people. And he didn't mind it so very much, really. By the end of the month, he would at least have someone else about to live in his gilded cage with him. So why did it feel like he was being dressed up like a royal rabbit, being sent out to rut for his country?

#a rose by any name #Alistair Appreciation Week #day 2 #King Alistair #alistair theirin #alistair x oc #warden tabris #arl eamon #chapter 1 #arranged marriage au #sort of #ten women #one man #bride-finding ball

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