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ajollybirdcollector · 2 years

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HOTD: Succession is messy and Alicent has a point

I’ve seen many takes all over the internet that Alicent is power-hungry and wants to usurp the throne from Rhaenyra in favour of her own kids. That the Greens have no rights, that Rhaenyra is the heir, that it doesn’t matter that her kids are bastards because they have their claim to the throne through their mother, etc... And I wholeheartedly disagree.

I do not think Alicent necessarily wants the throne, actually, we are given quite clear indications in the earlier episodes that Alicent did not want Aegon to be named heir ahead of Rhaenyra but she quickly becomes to understand that things are not going to unfold smoothly and it’s mainly due to the patriarchal system of Westeros but also how Rhaenyra behaves as an individual. Early in the show, Alicent is made aware by her father of how ugly the situation could turn out, she also understands that Viserys is not willing to clean up the mess (much of it of his own making), that Rhaenyra is going to act however the fuck she wants and that Alicent can trust neither with her own safety and the safety of her children. Alicent knows shit is going to go down regardless and that she and her kids will die if her side loses.

* DISCLAIMERS: I just want to make it clear that I am pro-absolute primogeniture, I do not agree with the male preference within the patriarchy and overall misogyny of Westeros. This post is not about justifying Rhaenyra being passed over or anything like that. It is more about highlighting that Alicent does have a point and that viewers are short-sighted and unfair when they bash her and judge her action with their 2022 worldviews, completely ignoring the different social structure of this fantasy world and the implication it has for how the characters within it behave. Personally, I am neither really on Team Green nor Black when it comes to who has a right to the throne because... It should be Rhaenys Targaryen, she should have be Queen instead of Viserys... so Team Queen Who Definitely Should Have Been? Or even better, Samwell Tarly’s idea of I don’t kow... democracy? Like a government chosen by the people and not some random dude who happens to be the son of some other random dude but hey... We are a couple of centuries too early for that in this world. Furthermore, this post is mostly sticking to a political cost-and-benefit analysis of the situation and won’t got to much into details about how those characters’ personal feelings and traumas obviously affect their decisions.

Alicent has every reason to be fearful of what will happen once Viserys dies. It was already the case before Rhaenyra had children and it only got worse once she gave birth to obvious bastards. You may think what you want about Otto but he puts out a very fair assessment in the show when he says that most lords won’t easily accept a woman as the Queen, especially when there is a healthy dragon-riding male heir (Aegon) available. There are rules of succession in Westeros but nothing is set in stone and many scenarios can unfold. The judicial system is really more like a set of loose customs rather than organized laws that are rigorously enforced like in our world. The laws of inheritance are not clear cut. George R.R. Martin says himself that they are “vague, uncodified, subject to varying interpretations, and often contradictory”. So yes... succession gets messy when several people have a claim.

The ideal situation in this world is to have a strong, healthy and adult legitimate first-born male as heir but when you can’t have that, what is chosen instead? If you know about the lore of ASOIAF, you will see that there are many instances of succession crisis when a choice must be made between different pretenders that all have a claim but none has the absolute best claim (ideal situation above). So what do we choose? The female heir (daughter) or a more distant male relative (half-brother, uncle, cousin, etc), the infant heir who can’t rule or go to war on their own or an adult relative who can, a sickly/insane heir or a healthy relative, the heir with dubious parentage or the relative who is undoubtedly legitimate, etc... There are quite a few messy successions in ASOIAF’s history like the succession of Beron Stark, of Walder Frey, of Aenys I Targaryen, of Aegon IV Targaryen, of Donella Hornwood, of Jeyne Arryn, of Jaehaerys I Targaryen, etc... And most succession disputes involve a lot of people dying. People pick sides and start scheming and fighting and it quickly turns into a bloodshed (the Dance of the Dragons is the most famous one).

In HOTD, there is no first-born male heir to Viserys. So what would the lords of Westeros choose? A first-born female heir (emphasis on the first-born) or a second-born male heir (emphasis on the male)? Viserys might think he settled the matter by naming Rhaenyra his heir, but it doesn’t really mean anything. The lords are technically subservient to the king but in reality, their collective opinion matters more than his individual one, especially once he is dead. I believe Jaehaerys knew that and it’s why he had the lords choose the future heir at the Great Council of 101 rather than declare an heir himself.

And while I’m mentioning the Great Council, the characters in the show are right to say that it sets a precedent. Rhaenys and her children (which included a boy) were passed over in favour of the next male in line, Viserys. By the very precedent that put her father on the throne, Rhaenyra and her children should be passed over in favour of the next male in line who is Aegon. Without that precedent, Rhaenyra would not even be in a position to be heir to the throne or to fight over it with Aegon because Rhaenys would be Queen and Rhaenyra would be way down the line of succession behind Laena, Baela, Rhaena, Laenor and their “Strong” children (although in a world where Rhaenys became Queen instead of Viserys, Laena and Laenor probably would not have married Rhaenyra and Daemon). If you go against that precedent, then what would stop Rhaenys and the Velaryon to start their own war for the throne since Rhaenyra becoming Queen would nullify the precedent set and actually make Rhaenys the person with the best claim to the Iron Throne. Without that precedent, the Iron Throne ‘rightfully’ belongs to Rhaenys. Now, this could have been solved by the marriage of Rhaenyra and Laenor Velaryon. Rhaenys compromises. She forgoes her claim to the throne and in return her son becomes consort and her grandchild will be the monarch after Rhaenyra. She, Rhaenys, never becomes queen but at least her descendants do eventually get the Iron Throne and a war is avoided. Except... Rhaenyra and Laenor do not have children. Worst than that, Rhaenyra passes off bastards as Laenor’s children as well as Rhaenys and Corlys’ grandchildren (in the world of GOT, it doesn’t matter that Laenor is on board with it, especially since Corlys is still the head of House Velaryon and not Laenor). Because of that, both the Iron Throne (Rhaenys’ birthright) and Driftmark (Corlys’ birthright) will go to the bastard sons of their daughter-in-law (Jacaerys for the throne and Lucerys for Driftmark) who are blood-related to neither of them (in a feudal, patriarchal world like ASOIAF in which bloodlines, ancestry and houses are the most important social institutions, it doesn’t matter that Laenor liked those boys as if they were his, it doesn’t even matter if Rhaenys and Corlys like the boys, they are still bastards that aren’t related to them. Equal rights for adopted/non-bio kids do not really stand in such a social system like it does in our world in 2022). And this is why the betrothal of Jacaerys and Lucerys to their cousins Baela and Rhaena was essential to keep House Velaryon on Rhaenyra’s side. Through those marriages, the Iron Throne still goes to Rhaenys’ descendants through Baela and Driftmark still goes to Corlys’ descendants through Rhaena.

Coming back to what the lords would choose between the two claimants (Rhaenyra or Aegon)... Well, every house is going to take a side based on what they think is “right” but mostly according to which side they believe they stand to gain the most on and which side won’t upset the social hierarchy for everybody else (how many succession disputes would break out all over the kingdom if it becomes acceptable for women to have a claim as strong as their younger brother? Most lords will want to avoid that). And it doesn’t matter if Alicent and Aegon do not want to throne (which was made pretty clear that they indeed don’t really want it). It doesn’t matter if they are perfectly fine with letting Rhaenyra become Queen.

Daenerys said it quite accurately to Jon in the last season of GoT which is (roughly): “It doesn’t matter what you (Jon) want. What will happen went they (the lords) demand you press your claim and take what is mine (the throne)? [...] It will take on a life of its own (the truth about his ancestry) and you won’t be able to control it or what it does to people.” She knew that it didn’t matter that Jon had bent the knee to her and that he didn’t want the throne. The lords and ladies who had something to gain (or even just had a preference) from Jon being on the throne instead of Daenerys will plot to get him there and to get her out of the picture. Similarly, Alicent knows very well that many lords (because of misogyny and because of how recklessly Rhaenyra behaves) will force a war on her sons against Rhaenyra.

Furthermore, she knows that if she lets Rhaenyra take the throne before a war can be forced on all of them, her sons will still most likely die. For the Blacks, Alicent’s sons will always be a threat to Rhaenyra’s rule and they will have them killed even if the order to do so doesn’t come from Rhaenyra directly (it would probably be from Daemon or Corlys or any other advisors who will make sure “accidents” happen to ever prevent Aegon, Aemond and Daeron, or anyone else on their behalf, from pressing their claim to the throne.)

Rhaenyra does propose marrying Helaena to Jacaerys to ‘reunite’ the Green and the Black but that is also not a feasible option and Alicent refusing it makes sense. As I mentioned above, Jacaerys and Lucerys must marry Baela or Rhaena if Rhaenyra hopes to keep the support of Rhaenys and House Velaryon. Furthermore, Alicent must have known that if anyone still tries to use her sons to take the throne from Rhaenyra, such a marriage would have condemned her daughter and her grandchildren by her to most probably die (see Elia Martell and her children, they had to be killed even after Robert had won the throne because they will have always been a threat to him).

Really, the only way the Dance of Dragons could have been avoided would have been either to marry Rhaenyra with Aegon (best solution as they would have ruled together and the throne would have passed down to their legitimate son who should have then been married to a daughter of Laena Velaryon, effectively making both Rhaenyra, Team Green and House Velaryon happy) or have Rhaenyra and Laenor actually have a legitimate son that would have married Helaena (different combination, about same result).

Alicent was put in a difficult position in which her life and that of her children would have been on the line no matter what. She could either let everybody uses them as pawns, or take charge of her own side as much as she could and try to get the best deal out of it because everybody else in her life (her father Otto, her husband Viserys, her best friend Rhaenyra) made it clear by their words or actions (or inactions) that she and her well-being are not their priority and that she would always come after them and their interests. She is not a man, she is the daughter of a second son who might be Hand of the King (a title that can be given or taken away on a whim of said King) but is no lord and has no army (unlike say Margaery and Cersei who were the daughters of great lords and had the red cloaks/green cloaks in King’s Landing to protect them as well as brothers in the Kingsguard), she has no power of her own and unlike Rhaenyra she doesn’t have a dragon, she is the Queen but that is really just an honorary status because her husband is the King and it only lasts as long as Viserys is alive. She is in survival mode and it is understandable that she is going to be as ruthless as need be. For all that I support this woman’s rights and this woman’s wrongs (mostly).

* English is not my first language, please forgive my poor grammar and convoluted sentences.

#team green #team black #house of the dragon #alicent hightower #team alicent #team rhaenys #rhaenyra targaryen #rhaenyra #alicent #aegon #targaryen #dance of the dragons #iron throne #hotd

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calliecopper · 1 year

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Been getting back into Stranger Things recently and this is probably a hot fucking take but Nancy and Steve works 100x better than Nancy and Jonathan romantically in my humble opinion.

Stranger Things is clearly a show that leans heavily into 80's archetypes and cliches. One of the classic cliches is the popular/smart girl dating the jock guy, but then she falls in love with the loner underdog. I feel like season 1 definitely hinted at this being a possibility, but what I really loved was that they didn't actually do it. At the end of the season, Nancy gives Jonathan a kiss on the cheek, and then he walks away, and Nancy goes to sit next to Steve. It felt almost like a final goodbye to the potential romantic feelings that could've been there. It directly goes against what you'd expect the series to do, like season 1 actually does a lot, especially with the teens.

Two teenagers having sex? They should die while the smart "not like other girls" girl lives to fight the monster, right? No. The teenagers live, and the smart friend dies without anybody there to witness it.

The loner dude and the smart/popular girl are sharing a bed? There should be some tension there, right? Nope. Nancy is fucking traumatized, and she just doesn't want to feel alone; she's bonded with Jonathan through trauma, and in that moment romantic and sexual feelings are nowhere near her mind, she's simply seeking out comfort in somebody who made her feel safe in a moment of need.

There are more examples of this, how the show both honors 80's cliches while also subverting expectations. But then season 2 rolls around, and things change.

Obviously, Steve, as a character, subverts the typical 80's jock douche cliche that he very easily could've been. He has undergone the most character development and change of any character in this series, and it's clearly served well as he's now a fan favorite. This process did begin in season 2.

But season 2 also gave us the beginning of Nancy and Jonathan's romantic arc. Now I'll admit, 14 year old me was SCREAMING for them to kiss back in 2017, but as I've grown older I feel more and more icky about it. It plays right into what fans were expecting to happen, even when the characters themselves - to me - seemed to display little to no romantic interest in each other until Murray outright says it.

Nancy and Jonathan are victims of a very cheap trick to build romantic tension between two characters- outside influences and characters.

The woman after Jonathan is arrested who says that only love can make somebody be so crazy, even though Jonathan was completely justified in beating the shit out of Steve because he was being an asshole, and was not at all implied to be an act of jealousy based in feelings for Nancy.

Mike asking Nancy if she likes Jonathan, which is a question that really seems to come out of nowhere and feels like a very unlikely thing for Mike to have asked given the current situation.

Then, the most egregious of these examples, Murray telling the two characters that they have romantic tension. This breaks the very basic writing rule of "show don't tell" in the most literal way.

The only reason Nancy and Jonathan ever had tension is because of that 80's cliche, and outside people telling the characters they liked each other.

Then, you have Nancy and Steve. I find their romance in season 1 to be incredibly compelling in multiple complex and fascinating ways.

These characters are never TOLD to have tension with each other. They're never INFLUENCED to like each other. From before the show starts, they're already seeing each other. It's clear that both characters actually like each other just because they like each other, and not because of shared trauma or outside influences. A fascinating aspect of this is Steve's typical jock douche demeanor that has Nancy questioning Steve's intentions with her.

The show sets up the idea of Steve "corrupting" Nancy through Barbara. "This isn't you," she tells Nancy, right before Nancy goes upstairs to sleep with Steve, which has been set up as something she's hesitant to do. It's very clear that Nancy is petrified that Steve is only interested in her for sex, and after she does sleep with him it's clear that she feels a sense of shame or upset. With the 80's cliche, this probably would be the case. Steve would've only used her for her body, then she would run into Jonathan's arms and be treated with the respect and love she deserves. But then, Steve is still interested in her. He actively defends her against his friends when they're teasing her about Barbara. He's shown to be worried about her multiple times between Barbara's disappearance and when he finds her with Jonathan.

Steve is given redeeming qualities that show how much he genuinely cares for Nancy, even if he is somewhat consumed with his own woes. Then, on the flip side, we see genuine conflict that feels a little less forced than that between Nancy and Jonathan. Steve is self-consumed and more concerned with getting in trouble than giving the police valuable information about Barbara's disappearance. This is incredibly believable for his character at this point. Then, when he thinks Nancy is cheating, he's a complete douche to both Nancy and Jonathan, and rightly gets his shit kicked in for it.

But then he shows genuine remorse for his actions in helping clean up the theater, and then going to apologize to JONATHAN. Not only to Nancy in order to get back into her good graces, but to the other person he GENUINELY hurt because he GENUINELY wants to right that wrong.

Now this isn't a "Jonathan is a horrible character" party, he definitely is a good character, and Steve is not "better" just because he's a fan favorite.

I have a difficult time articulating my thoughts clearly and stringing them together to make them coherent, but my point is:

I feel like Nancy and Jonathan would've worked way better as platonic best friends bonded through trauma. I feel like this would've allowed Jonathan to operate more as his own character instead of being turned into "Nancy's sidekick" for most of the series. It also would've allowed Nancy to just have a friend even after Barbara's death.

I also feel like Nancy and Steve would've worked better as a sort of "slow burn, right person wrong time" romantic relationship. Nancy is no doubt traumatized and feels guilt for Barbara's death, which happened to take place while she was with Steve. The basis of the Nancy/Steve fight that ultimately ends their relationship is that Nancy doesn't feel like she can just move on. To paraphrase, Nancy is saying "Pretending like we're in love, like we're just dumb teenagers at a dumb party, like we didn't kill Barb, is bullshit." Then Steve, still being a bit of the self-consumed guy he is, focuses only on the "like we're in love" piece. "You don't love me?" he asks. And I think that this just pisses Nancy off. I'm telling you that we killed Barbara, that I can't live with myself and this guilt, and you're worried about our relationship? "It's bullshit."

I don't necessarily think that Nancy didn't love Steve. I think that she simply wasn't in the right place to love ANYBODY. And I think he was still too immature for Nancy to maintain a relationship with him.

Nancy can't be with Steve because she's simply too consumed with her guilt, and Steve is too consumed with maintaining a sense of normalcy to confront that guilt head on. She NEEDED Jonathan in that moment, because he shared that guilt in feeling responsible for Will's disappearance. He had just as much a desire to burn Hawkins Lab to the ground. It wasn't until Steve was FORCED to grow up in order to protect Dustin, Max, and Lucas that he finally let go of that desire to be normal.

I think both Nancy and Steve needed those two-ish seasons to grow and heal for them to even consider reigniting that flame. Then, in season 4, when Nancy sees Steve as somebody finally willing to do the hard thing and be an adult, I think she finally starts to consider allowing herself to love him again.

So, in my ideal version of events, Nancy and Jonathan would've been really close platonic friends, and Nancy and Steve would've been tragic lovers who simply couldn't find the right time for each other.

Anyways that's my word vomit. Don't take this as a ship war thing cause that's stupid I think everything is good I just wanted to express my preferences

#stranger things #steve harrington #nancy wheeler #jonathan byers #stancy #jancy #anyways im ready for the hate of jancy stans :)#i accept that jancy is endgame i just think its the weakest endgame romance #but this isnt meant to start ship wars cause i dont have time for that shit

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 1 year

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hoping this isn't a ~weird request but i would love to read your takedown/opinions of the failures of TRC as someone who was also reaaaally underwhelmed with how it handled an interesting setup/cast of characters and was left feeling very blah about the whole experience, and i'm having no luck poking thru your tumblr archives if it already exists :) no pressure ofc, enjoying your opinions on the new series regardless! (i personally deleted the ebook after struggling thru the first chapter oops!)

i was going to say "you have caught me on a day when i am crazy exhausted even after sleeping 12 hours so sure why not" but tbh i think that's giving myself too much credit re: my ability to resist this particular flavor of haterade, although it provides a nice justification. disclaimer that i haven't read anything from the original series since right after the raven king came out so i don't remember it super well. but like basically the problems with the raven cycle are two-fold: (1) the first three books are not very good (2) the raven king is the dumbest and most hateful piece of shit masquerading as a novel i have had the misfortune to encounter in my life. like you have to understand i went into this series having had it pitched to me but Dumb But Fun and for the first three books i was having a good time. i was often like "lol this is stupid" but i would say equally often i was like "aw my kids :')" in particular i remember that something clicked for me with BLLB where the books didn't get better but i suddenly like legit loved and cared about the characters and was invested in their relationships in a way where the flaws jumped out a lot less and i appreciated a lot of things stief had done and i made a pynch playlist and started drafting some fic and blah blah blah. and then the raven king came out and it was just, i can't emphasize enough, the worst book in the history of the printed word.

on point the first: the books are not great. stief comes up with some decent lines (funny similes, the occasional spurt of something pretty), and one of the things i will give her is that she can definitely set an Atmosphere (although this skill seems to have gone missing for CDTH) - monmouth manufacturing and fox way both feel like places that are just a bit too interesting to be real but in a nice way. overall though i find her prose weirdly stilted and artificial and tryhard. i think at some point i called her what taylor swift would be as a novelist, back when our most recent taylor albums were red & 1989, and i more or less stand by that - "losing him was like driving a new maserati down a dead-end street" feels like something stief could write, but instead of a 3-minute country-pop song, it's 350 pages of that. also i have genuinely never encountered an author worse at plotting. there's a weird and almost baffling shapelessness to the books that is truly like nothing else i've read in a bad way. like i said this a couple days ago but i felt like it gave me a new respect for every other bad to mediocre novel i had read in my life, because apparently those authors did all have some kind of basic skillset so fundamental i hadn't appreciated it until i read one who absolutely does not. and also the thing i have said before of, every book has a million chapters about the villain who has nothing to do with anything, and every single one of those chapters is boring as absolute fuck. the whelk chapters in TRB are sort of retroactively justified by the noah reveal, which on reflection i think remains the most successful thing she's pulled off, but the others are interminable and completely without reward for the reader.

even fans of the series seem to concede that plotting is not her strong suit, and the things people tend to like her for are (1) her writing, which... sure. i don't think it is good but you do you. and if i am forcing myself to be fair i will say that at the very least she does have a distinct voice and doesn't have that horrible flat YA Novelist Affect that has taken over what i sometimes feel insane swearing used to be a much more vibrant and stylistically diverse genre at least in terms of the things that made their way to my sphere of awareness. so. fine. and then (2) her characters. and like yeah the TRC crew is cute. they're fun. i liked that gansey was kind of insufferable and the books made no attempt to pretend otherwise. i did love classic scorpio depresso bean trauma freak ronan lynch, and i loved how as the series went on he was both a snarling anger machine and an idiot teenage boy with the most embarrassing crush in the world. i liked blue's ambition and her imperfect but passionate feminism. i loved adam parrish's teeth-gritted determination.

and i did absolutely fall for the pynch of it all. ronan lynch, who could have anything he wanted, desperate for the affection of the one guy who had no patience for his bullshit! adam parrish, who saw himself as so lowly, falling for this almost ethereal creature who dreamed beautiful things! the way ronan's main hobby was wallowing in self-pity but the person he was attracted to was the guy who refused to act like it wasn't time for ronan to grow the fuck up. the way adam had such a fraught relationship with anger, his own anger and that of other people, but he saw so keenly through to who ronan really was that while ronan's anger exasperated him, it never scared him or made him feel like he had any obligation but to be his honest self. the way hard-edged ronan dreamed adam lotion for his hands and labeled it in freaking LATIN, the way tense adam started finding a new respect for ronan without ever feeling a need to become more deferential or apologetic. i mean it was good shit. it was such good shit that i really and truly believed that while she was not the greatest writer in the world, stief must have built this particular dynamic between these two people on purpose. she must have deliberately planned for their slow-burning mutual attraction and deepening care to communicate these exact things about what their value was to each other - ronan giving adam space to dream, adam tugging ronan into reality - and while i was pretty sure the last book would be dumb, because all the books were dumb and she'd thrown a lot of balls into the air that she was not gonna catch, and especially because i had the sense she was going to want a neat happy ending which meant either gansey wasn't going to die (boring) or gansey was going to die but everyone was somehow going to be okay by the end anyway (stupid), i was also like, well at least pynch are gonna get together and it's going to be this really nice culmination of both their arcs.

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

the short version of why TRK made me feel so wild with rage was that it made extremely clear that everything i had enjoyed about the books up till that point had happened 10000% by accident. pynch is a good example of this. all that stuff i talked about above, all the push-pull dynamics of them, all the stuff that made them a good ship - it turned out that none of it mattered. none of it was relevant. none of it was even worth mentioning. because none of it, actually, was on purpose. adam and ronan get together by making out, which i respect. they do not have a conversation after that happens. not like, they hook up and don't took about it right away. i mean they don't have a post-makeout conversation IN THE ENTIRE BOOK. there is no moment where either of them says or even thinks, like - why this person. which is dumb for ronan because he has been so horny about adam, but hateful for adam because he is out of ronan's league unless we're being very clear about why this is a good fit! the stuff about ronan helping adam normalize his relationship to anger, lmao. nowhere to be found. instead we get gansey telling adam, "don't hurt him." repeat: we get gansey telling adam, who tries the hardest all the time of all people ever and who is half convinced he should be in jail for having feelings, to make sure he is nice to ronan, whose ENTIRE BRAND is "huge fucking asshole all the time for no reason." because ronan is "fragile." which like, sure. he's a half-orphan [at that point] with a fucked up life whose brain tried to kill him two years ago. but adam is an 18 year old paying all his own bills who moved out of his parents' house the day his dad DEAFENED HIM IN ONE EAR, and somehow this does not grant him any kind of special dispensation for care in the ganseyverse. and this is not ever in any way contradicted or challenged or complicated or even referred to later by the text. crime!

meanwhile, ronan... [pinches nose, sighs heavily]. again i said recently that the dream thieves should have told me her hand was not steady on the steering well. because what happens in the dream thieves is ronan meets someone who is like him but bad, and learns from him, and then figures out how to be himself but good. which is a fun sexy idea for a story, but the book fucks it up because ronan is too aware at all times of what a dirtbag kavinsky is and too untempted by his wild ways. there's no real fall, so there can't be a real rise. he fucks up his best friend's car, which he knows is also his best friend's number one most prized possession on earth, and the resolution to that is: hey dude my bad i killed your car but it's okay i dreamed you a copy of it. ???????? that's like parent who runs over your cat and says it's okay because they'll take you to the pet store tomorrow logic [realized in the middle of that i stole that image from sandman sorry]. i mean, in a vacuum, i guess it's not exactly. but like: ronan doesn't address the situation by learning anything about how not to be the kind of person who destroys something of great emotional value to someone he cares about. he addresses the situation by learning how to do his superpower good. this is not emotionally satisfying fantasy writing. it's hollow and stupid. and it's extra stupid because the book's attempt at an emotional resolution later down the line is that ronan needs to... hate himself less. which he can do by... realizing he doesn't hate himself. ??????? once again: empty. unbelievable. stupid. there's no connection there to, like, "now that i hate myself less, i can and should be less of a dick to everyone all the time," much less "one way of hating myself less might be to stop doing things that make me extremely unlikable." just: he hates himself less, he's no longer alone, he can dream whatever he wants, he's cool with his big gay crush now. weak. and like it was weak for me at the time, but reading BLLB i did think: well, the hand lotion. well, the trying to dream up a soul for the dream people. well, the big hug with blue at the end. ronan is growing and changing following his experience. it's kind of a shame we don't get his POV on any of this. but we'll probably catch up with him in the next book.

and again: no. i mean, we get ronan's POV, yeah. but none of it is reflective of someone like consciously trying to break the destructive and harmful (to self and others) habits he had forged in his grief. none of it conveys any awareness on the part of character or text that, like, deciding on purpose to be a decent human being matters. that maybe it's the kind of thing you should commit to before falling into a long distance relationship with someone who probably has PTSD from their abusive parents. that it can be hard, that it's rewarding. none of that. instead - i don't even fucking remember what. at one point he feels guilty about holding adam back and then he thinks, i'm not asking him to stay, just to come back, like ok that makes it so much better. you're just asking adam parrish, a steel whirlwind of ambition, to go to the ivy league college he has just about killed himself getting to because of how desperately he wants to escape the shithole town where he had his traumatic childhood, and then move back in four years' time. which again is not discussed. it's just taken for granted that ronan wants to stay at the barns forever. he tells declan he wants to drop out of high school [a choice being made by an eighteen year old two years after the traumatic experience of finding his dad's murdered corpse] and be a farmer and drive a tractor in circles on the property, which would be kind of funny given that his family farm is populated by dream creatures, except that like the book takes him weirdly seriously and also this is not intended as a metaphor. like his endgame in that series is that this traumatized teenager is living by himself on the barns fucking around and dreaming forever with like 3 friends all of whom are leaving town and zero ties to human reality or goals or desires of any kind and this is treated as a happy ending. even though by the way his mom got brutally murdered eight months before the stupid epilogue. but he's doing fine [stief hates women so bad]. [again it's SO funny that the first dreamer book opens with "ronan realized that his life was totally pathetic and depressing so he decided to move." like there was not this level of complexity present when you wrote the dumb epilogue!]

i keep forgetting about how ronan dreams into existence a weird little feral fawn creature/person and is bizarrely chill about it. also how his mom is his dad's dream and his little brother is his own dream and it's really explicit that his mom in particular does not have a personality of her own but just responds by giving whoever she's talking to whatever kind of person they want to interact with, which is the moooooost fuuuuuucked uuuup thiiiiiing eeeeeeverrrrrrrrrrr, and the books are just like. yeah this is normal and fine. [again sooo funny that in the dreamer trilogy declan is like "unbelievably fucked up that my little brother and mom are dreams." like yeah it is! where did you get that idea maggie. was it in the tumblr tags.]

what else. she ruined blue liking space, which didn't seem possible. blue doesn't like space and want big things because she's a smart spunky girl in nowheresville virginia feisty enough to dare to believe she can make her own life. no. it's because her dad is a tree person and trees like the sky because they grow upwards. whenever i tell people this i have to emphasize how much i'm not exaggerating or making it up. this is what it says in the text. she's like "oh that makes sense." ???????? i dwell on this one a lot because it's soooooo so so so stupid, but also because i think it really encapsulates the thing that makes TRK not just stupid but actively repellant to me, which is that you get the sense reading it that stief thinks it's better when things come from weird magic shit instead of from like real human characteristics and psychology. like for a series about friendship it winds up feeling to me weirdly and grossly misanthropic - none of these people are special or worth caring about because they are human people, it's all because of their magic Stuff. it's all because oh they actually WERE more special than everyone all along, not because of the choices they made but because they were born to it (why is ronan the only one who can take from the ley line without stealing? is it because of the kind of person he is? no. it's bc he's Special). ronan's dreaming, blue's treeness, and then gansey being actually all along a time-shifted resurrected friendship amalgamation creature who felt an instant kinship with his friends, again, not because he was a lonely teenage boy seeking out fellow weirdos to care about, but because they literally had met him before. adam, the only genuinely human character left by the end, meanwhile still is constantly asked by the text to apologize for his existence, not just in the "don't hurt him" scene but in the absolute nightmare section in the end where he goes back to his abusive parents' house for closure(????) and reflects primarily on how ugly and small his trailer was (?????????) and feels startled to discover an instinct in himself to help other adams who might be stuck like he once was, and then immediately conceptualizes this as something blue or gansey would think, which is so hateful i can't even process it. like adam at no point in this last book is acknowledged to have had a positive influence on anyone else even though he's better than the lot of them put together, but he has to kowtow to blue and gansey in his own brain for teaching him (a poor abused kid) that he might empathize with poor abused kids???? when to my sincere recollection NEITHER of them has ever like on the page demonstrated any kind of do-gooding impulse? their hobbies are myth-hunting and unskilled clothing manufacture? perfectly acceptable hobbies for a pair of teens but like? why does she hate poor people and victims of abuse so bad...

the big bad demon that is destroying the town is shaped like a wasp. gansey has a bee/wasp allergy and one time died from bees. these two things are never connected. henry cheng is upgraded to a main character because maggie heard you like diversity and now has a completely different personality than when he was an amiable preppy dbag who happened to be asian. now he has a mother in the mob and a tragic backstory about being kidnapped that taught him that you can't let fear rule your life and if you're scared you should be scared and then do it and be happy anyway, which is pretty good advice for things like an irrational fear of closed spaces that can't actually hurt you but really not applicable to someone who both does literally have a deadly allergy to bees and also has spent the past four years traipsing willy nilly all over the place not even bothering to keep his epipen with him. it turns out gansey's big moral lesson has nothing to do with for example his obsessive desire to control his friends but actually like ronan he just needs to love himself better and realize that his friends care about him after all. please notice again that ronan and gansey, rich boys acting out, need to love themselves more. this is dumb but if this was like the thesis of the whole series i would be like, that was stupid but whatever. but what of adam parrish, a poor abused kid who was abused so hard he is now a poor abused disabled kid? does he get self-love? no. he gets to realize that his rich friends have made him a better person, and be relieved that he's escaped from poverty because of how the aesthetics were bad. I MEAN IT'S SOOOOOO CRAZY AUGHHHHHHH

i forgot when i was talking about henry cheng the scene where blue and gansey go to the asian kids' house and are like "wow such diversity so culture," which is like a nightmare edward said had once. like they're just so excited to have discovered this exotic exciting new world and to learn about things like how henry cheng makes asian jokes because if he says all the bad things about himself first then other people won't say them. and i shit you not, the entire sequence is done in narration, with spoken lines appearing in italics in the middle of descriptive paragraphs, not rendered with dialogue as an actual scene, a technique she doesn't use anywhere else that i can recall and which really serves to just be like... here is this Mass of Asianness, as opposed to being normal about it and being like "here's some asian kids having a party." i haven't seen anyone comment on this technical feature but i think about it all the time because it makes me feel insane. it's one of the few things i've read in the past however many years where i read it and was like "i guess i was naive before about racism." like it's not that i didn't know but i was like, wow in 2016 you can still just transparently have your entire ability to conceptualize scene and narrative totally warped by an attempt to feature non-white people and no one will be like, hey we're all unlearning a lot of stuff but maybe let's rethink this before we go to print. there's a scene where ronan jokes about henry's mixed-raceness by saying "which half" which i do think is stief being unaware of the optics bc she's dumb but still comes across real bad and then there's also a scene where ronan does a "vaguely offensive" imitation of henry's voice which i truly have no fucking idea what the hell that is supposed to mean on a literal concrete basis other than making fun of an asian kid's accent. in both of these cases gansey and blue are disapproving and adam snickers and it's like, ok so pynch is racist now. cool. who asked for this, maggie. and also see above re: i really gaslit myself into thinking that one of the points of this series was that ronan learns to be a better person. my bad! (he sort of attempts at one point to make up with declan about how ronan has treated him so bad and also ronan was obviously his dad's favorite. but like his way of doing this is he gives him a toy he dreamed called a Orb. if i were declan i would throw his Orb back in his face. but like that's how broken the ethos of these books is. a heartwarming reunion between two brothers torn apart by the death of the father that they both equally lost hello declan is also a teenage orphan - and it's just. here's some garbage i got you. i didn't even spend money on it. it just happened.)

in addition to ronan's mom the lady bad guy also dies a horrible bloody death that feels a lot more gratuitously fucked up than any of the man deaths in the series. oh i forgot about how blue's mom is dating a hitman who killed ronan's dad and ronan just like doesn't care about this after the first five minutes at all. and neither does anyone else. and then he wanders offscreen... i forget why. we never get any intel on why blue is destined to kill her first love if they kiss or if that would have happened with anyone but gansey or if she and gansey can kiss after he's resurrected or what. like the prophecy that kicks off the series, and just: nada. gansey sells his beloved home to bribe aglionby into letting ronan graduate and the two of them never talk about this and the text never clarifies whether ronan bothered to graduate or not (and in CDTH it turns out he didn't). like another way this alleged series about friendship is weirdly misanthropic is i really was not convinced by the end of it that these people were friends. none of them are seen ever enjoying each other's company or thinking well of each other outside of the two romantic pairings and gansey going apeshit about how awesome henry cheng is. also gansey's whole big quest for meaning blah blah, like i don't super care that glendower is dead, i think you could write a good book with that moment working thematically even though it does fuck with your continuity because who the fuck were the three sleepers. what was with those birds. (there's a lot of mysterious/spooky shit that never gets addressed and like... again i think you could write a book where that works, i don't like to be prescriptive about this stuff, but again: play stupid games win stupid prizes. write a dumbass book that invests a lot of time in the importance of its magic and worldbuilding, and i will get annoyed when your magic and worldbuilding is dumb as fuck and/or totally pointless.) but it's like ok so then the idea should be that the whole point of gansey's glendower quest was actually an internal one, that the payoff of SIXTEEN HUNDRED PAGES of this is some kind of life lesson or emotional shift or whatever. and the payoff is that gansey realizes his friends love him (which again: but do they though? like do they really?), and that he and blue and henry take a gap year. that's the big exciting finale. a year off before gansey goes to college, with his true love and a guy he first hung out with eight months ago. HELLO? like who gives any kind of a shit about that. about any of this. what the fuck was all this for. this all happened so that two rich teenagers could like themselves better. are you fucking kidding me maggie? hateful!

anyway. i'm sure at the time there was more i was forgetting because this book was sooooo boring and every single thing that happened in it was stupid. i feel like this was very incoherent but in my defense these books are hard to critique coherently because they are, again, so stupid. CDTH from what i remember reading it through the first time and continue to pick up now like hangs together as a book better certainly than TRK did but my experience is such that every time she does something passably right i truly can only be like, wonder how she's gonna fuck this one up to kingdom come.

#askbox #the shmeamer shmilogy #the shmaven shmycle #i had a bunch of stuff under that tag at my old now deleted blog but not this one

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lansangprincess · 9 months

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Finished Heartbreak High S1

My thoughts

malakai mitchell is a yes. the way anon thought id like him bc he's a golden retriever sunshine bi prince has now made me feel like i have a type and i dont know how to process that information

I'd say darren and ca$h are my #1 ship on the show. they're just so sweet together and one of those ships where u dont think they'd have any chemistry bc of their public personas but have SO much chemistry T-T i love them

i never liked sasha and quinni together. i liked how their relationship was written, and by that i mean the topics that the show explored byway of the sasha/quinni relationship but sasha never gave me the feeling that she was in it as much as quinni and that disappointed me bc I LOVE QUINNIIIIII

the police brutality was warned but it still shocked me and im just aaaaa im still recovering

i like that they painted dusty as a guy w some dimension but is still an asshole. i feel like a lot of the times male characters are given dimension (aka aren't just a dumbass popular guy archetype) and suddenly it makes all their actions forgivable and justifiable. not that that's a bad thing per se im just saying that male characters on a whole are easily forgiven by general public after they're given some depth and i just think that everybody's gone through shit, even dumb assholes, and we should normalize still calling them assholes even after acknowledging their depth (lmao did i articulate myself well here?)(no)

i think amerie being the protagonist of the show is an interesting choice. obviously all of them have main character energy but there is something i like about how the person who's often been a witness/bystander to these events rather than a participant, is the one holding our gaze most of the time. tho obv she is #1 participant in the incest map shit which does tie everything together but if u think about how one of the most intense events of the season (ducky/wolf ifykyk) was something that happened to her co-map creator, putting us in amerie's shoes as she figures everything out was a really fun choice.

oh oh oH i need ant to be a main character in s2. we dont know anything abt him but he is definitely the least problematic among the three dumbasses and he is already so lovable from the little we know of him and that makes me happy

#heartbreak high #heartbreak high s1 thoughts #tv #thanks anon for the rec

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lemonhemlock · 1 year

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Which one do you think is stronger Grrm's boner for Daemon or Ryan and Miguel's boner for Aemond?

Definitely GRRM's Daemon boner. FB!Daemon is a lesson in bad behaviour,* yet he gets so rewarded by the narrative to infuriating levels.** Whereas HOTD!Aemond is given a believable backstory. Even though he's meowified, it's not done to a degree that it excuses and legitimizes his mistakes, nor is he rewarded for them. For example, even though his hatred for Luke is shown to be understandable and his death is an accident, it's framed as a horror story, not as Aemond avenging himself righteously. This doesn't make B&C "justified" or "rightful payment", it's very much a monstrous act, but Aemond's actions have consequences, he's not just gallivanting around Westeros doing whatever with no negative karma biting him in the arse. It's a similar story to him claiming Vhagar - he did not steal anything, he was the wronged party, yet his action garnered a reaction, it did not exist in a void.

*Honestly, I am raking my brains trying to think of one instance in which Daemon was just nice to someone without some ulterior motive. He loves Viserys and Rhaenyra, but he's an arsehole to them, and is generally-speaking transactional in his dealings with them. Maybe when he gave Viserys his Stepstones crown? But that wasn't ever his in the first place, it was a stupid claim to a territory he could never hold, nor was he interested in holding or "ruling" - at most, a symbolic gesture devoid of any actual meaning. So what was he actually giving up here? Maybe his relationship with Laena? He is said to have loved her, the text gives no indication they didn't get along, but also doesn't really delve into the intricacies of their dynamic, and she was also super young when they got together, so you know. In the show at least, in the books she's 23.

**Here I am compelled to admit that, at the very least, GRRM DOES kill Daemon, thank god, he doesn't get off the hook completely. This is something that I generally appreciate within ASOIAF, that the narrative ultimately does punish transgressors. But the bias shines through the fact that Daemon gets a badass death scene where he's the star of the show, even though the shit he pulls off at 50 years old doesn't make sense, but even so, the laws of physics are bent so that Daemon can go out on his own terms. He is rumoured to be involved in the deaths of a bunch of people (Harwin, Laenor, Rhea is suspicious in the books, he kills the son of the Sealord of Braavos) with zero consequences AND his unhinged behaviour somehow doesn't affect Rhaenyra's military alliances, all his children live, both his sons get to be kings - I mean, come on.

#ask #anon #anti daemon targaryen #aemond targaryen

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minhosimthings · 16 days

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girl, i'm ngl i've always gotten this vibe yk... that the girl behind deluluriddhi was a minor. like i hadn't read her fics back then, it was just from one of her other posts. you see, i'm a south indian. and her way of speaking english (or writing, should i say) was exactly how you find sixth grade kids speak here. like it was kinda hard to believe that she was 21 but i just accepted it because i thought "why would someone lie about their age?"

...

like damn, when i was 11-12, i had just found out that "sex" (under quotes because i didn't know how it worked, just that it was wrong to know about it at that age) was how kids were born, and god does not magically bless a woman with a child after he sees her getting married. to be 12 and doing all that she did is crazy tbh. lying about her age and interacting with nsfw posts of author, yet claiming that said authors were sending her hate by blocking her, like of course they're gonna block you miss mam!!

and the way she didn't understand the seriousness of the situation... like i read smuts when i was a minor too, when i was 17 (because, yohoo! i was "almost an adult")... and i regret it so much because it fucked my brain up a bit, because back then i read it in wattpad (yikes, i know) and i didn't know what was ok and what was not, and in most of cases i saw, it was like porn, demeaning and dehumanising the female and glorifying the male... you don't get to know what is right and wrong until you're educated like i was by my parents when i finally turned 18.

i hope minors realise the importance of following the mdni, because it is not just respecting their boundaries but for their own good too. also this is not hate towards riddhi (not that she's gonna see it, i just saw she deactivated) but more like an older sister being mad because she cares.

To be honest, before Riddhi told me about her actual age, I, too got that slight feeling that she maybe a minor. Look I'm not saying that her writing is bad or anything, but the way she used her punctuation and everything just gave me an off feeling. But yeah as you said I accepted it, because I though what kind of a child would actively interact with NSFW content right?

You're so real for the God magically blessing women with children after marriage, indian sex ed does NOT exist at all, and definitely not in South India (I'm from Hyderabad). But yeah, even I didn't know about it other than biology classes as a child. And I get it, nowadays, children have more access to technology and more resources and they may end up seeing something accidentally too because the internet holds a lot of shit. But, to choose to actually interact more with said shit? Nah that's just plain wrong.

I feel like 17 is an alright age to just get started with NSFW. You may not be legal age, but you're nearing that area so it's fine. Of course if a blog says mdni even if you're 17 you should respect the wishes of the blog owner. But for a 12 year old? 6 years younger than legal age? That's too much of an age gap to justify.

I hope Riddhi understands that I did this for her own good and not because I'm against her or anything. I mean, no harm to her, I want her to live her childhood out. Because there's a lot of time to be an adult and it's much worse than being a child.

#mona's sessions #anon alert!#I've had a lot of feelings about this for the past few days #some of my moots I've ranted to know about that lol #and yet i still believe Riddhi has hope to be better and maybe forgive me for doing this

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ashtrayfloors · 8 months

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—I was getting kinda down on myself because I felt like I’d been really on top of my shit recently but then somehow ran out of money again. So I had to remind myself that being broke doesn’t mean I’m not on top of my shit—it just means we are living in late capitalism, and times are hard. But then I’m not going to let myself stop trying to improve my own/my family’s lives because of it, either. Times are hard but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep looking for more/better work, or that it’s not worth going back to school.

—Saturday evening, P. and I got to go out for a drink. We went to a different bar than the one we usually go to, and had the place to ourselves, so we ended up talking with the bartender. The three of us hit it off immediately. The bartender was a flamingly gay punk dude, and the first thing he said to us was: “You two have the best couple energy I’ve ever witnessed.” He said he could just tell we love each other a lot, and then he commented on the fact that we were even sorta dressed alike. Which I hadn’t realized, but when he said that…we were both wearing Chucks, and jeans, and flannel shirts over old tees. (Love each other so, closer than you know, and all that.) Then we were all talking about our favorite cocktails for a bit, and then Green Day’s “When I Come Around” came on the stereo and me and the bartender were both singing along at the top of our lungs. “I can’t not sing along to this song, you know?” he said, and I said: “Oh my god, same.” And then later somehow the discussion turned to ghosts and he told us the haunted history of the building we were in and some other nearby places, and it was all stuff which I’d never even heard! And I’ve researched that shit! We told him how years ago we went on the downtown ghost tour and it was so boring, we barely even heard any haunted stories, and it turns out that he’s one of the people that now does the ghost tours since the old group folded—and he’s a member of the local paranormal investigation group! He gave us the dates that he’ll specifically be leading the tour this year, so we’re definitely going on one of those dates. Anyway, befriending a gay punk who’s into ghosts and Green Day? 10/10, highly recommended.

—The bar we were in is also a high-end liquor store, and I perused their whiskey selection while we were there, and discovered there’s an Irish whiskey called The Legendary Silkie. As soon as I have enough money where I can justify dropping some on it, I’m going to. Because Irish whiskies are my favorite, and also because I’ve been obsessed with silkie/selkie lore since I was a wee’un.

—Sunday, I basically did jack shit. I was having a sinus issue flare-up, plus it was the first day of my period (which always comes with cramps and exhaustion and a general feeling of yuck), so I stayed in bed half the day. And yes, while I am still hustling my ass off to improve my situation, I have to remind myself it’s okay to have days like that. Especially when I physically need it. When I was younger, I would push myself past my limits, and then I’d wind up super ill for weeks or months, unable to do much of anything. I’m not willing to risk that these days, so when I need a day of rest, I take one, if it’s at all possible.

—Yesterday, I felt a lot better. I did school stuff with the kids, dayjob work + side hustle, and writing/submitting stuff. I also took the kiddos to the library for Maker Monday, and they got to mess around with robots and VR and 3D printers. While at the library, I saw the most beautiful trans woman, and I tried hard not to stare at her like a creep. I managed it—I just smiled at her, she smiled back, and I went on my way. And then in the kids’ play area, I encountered an adorable toddler. He was clearly new to both walking and speaking, and one of the few words he knows is ‘bowl.’ He found a plastic bowl in the play kitchen, and was toddling around the room, presenting it to everyone, saying “bowl!” Which he pronounced like ‘buh!’ So obviously I was super enthusiastic when he showed it to me. “That’s right buddy! That’s a great bowl you’ve got there!” And he grinned his little toothless grin and toddled away to present his ‘buh’ to someone else. Aw. I definitely don’t want any more kids, and in many ways I’m glad my kids are past the toddler stage, but it’s nice to interact with teeny kiddos from time to time.

—Today I felt pretty sucky again, physically. My period yuck has passed, but it was a bad allergy/sinus day. I wasn’t able to take the day off, but I rested as much as possible. I did school stuff with the kids, and then made a cup of tea and took it up to bed, and I worked from bed for a couple hours. After that, I felt well enough to do some other stuff. I packed up some zine orders. And then C. and I did some baking—I had a bunch of peaches left over from a meal we made the other night, so we baked a peach and blackberry galette.

—I’m deep in nostalgia these days, as per usual, but right now it’s mainly for September 2003 and September 2008—The Perpetual Motion Roadshow, and Thee Hobo Love Tour. And how the fuck were those tours 20 and 15 years ago, respectively?!

—Today, I found out that Nick Cave is playing in Milwaukee later this month. There is literally no way I can afford to go, but unlike the Blue Meanies show in July, I didn’t freak out about it. I was bummed for about thirty minutes, and then went: “Eh, so I can’t see Nick Cave in concert right now. Instead, I will sit alone in my room, dressed all in black, drinking tea or wine, and listening to Nick Cave while thinking about a girl I once knew, as god intended.”

—Overall, I’ve been better able to appreciate the small moments of contentment in my life than I was earlier in the summer. Like the fact that the weather is turning autumnal. Like lying in bed drinking tea, or sitting in my backyard drinking coffee. Like watching the birds in my backyard. Like listening to jazz while writing or doing chores. (I’ve been on a big jazz kick lately. This is fairly common for me, this cycle—listen to a ton of punk to the point where I’m almost sick of it, then listen to a ton of jazz.) Like cooking with my kids and reading with my kids.

—Plans for the next week or two include: getting the new CoViD vaccine/booster, home visit with the director for the community program we’re getting D. into, more printing/collating/packing up zine orders, submitting work to more contests and magazines, a field trip with the kiddos to our favorite nearby park/stretch of woods, and performing at 100 Thousand Poets for Change.

#ashtrayfloors #dear livejournal #personal #capitalism ruins everything around me #alcohol #encounters #mirror image see no damage see no evil at all #when i come around #haunted history #rest #illness #i love my local library #baking #i wanna tell you about a girl #small good things #plans

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drawnecromancy · 11 months

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Writer Questions game !

Tagged by @isabellebissonrouthier

As always if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged by me !

Under a cut because it's slightly long imo :)

1. What is your absolute all-time favorite idea you've ever had?

Hmm. Considering I keep going back to it, even after long stretches of time, I guess the building blocks of Break of Dawn would be that ? I'm bad at choosing favorites unless they really jump out, honestly. (like the Emperor but does he count as an idea if he's a character ?)

2. Is there a question you've been asked in the past that really stands out to you and you still think about sometimes?

Uh. nah ?

3. What is your favorite part of being a writer? What parts could you take or leave?

Genuinely, re-reading my own writing. It's great. I giggle at ALL of my jokes, even the stupidest, because I am the primary audience and i LOVE my own humor.

What i could take or leave... idk. looking up vocabulary. please brain have a french-english dictionary that doesn't stop working every other sentence please and thanks.

4. What is your greatest motivation to write/create?

I Get To Get Shit Done. It's Here. It Exists

5. What is the best piece of advice you've ever read or been given as a writer?

Done is better than perfect done is better than perfect done is better than perfect.

6. What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out writing?

..............done is better than perfect

But, seriously, I would've liked knowing that drafting on paper then doing the second draft on computer was the way to go earlier. Like, i always assumed i "wrote good" at school because it was to take off my mind of the boredom, but i realize it's also just because. it was on paper. it wasn't directly on computer. for some reason directly on computer just Does Not Work for me.

7. What is your favorite story you've written TO COMPLETION? Link it if you'd like and can

It's either Sweet Revenge or The Festival of Fire, both of which i will not link due to being smut. And also Sweet Revenge should get an itch.io publish whenever i can actually finish the goddamn illustrations !

8. What is your favorite out-of-the-box quote?

I had to google what this means and I'm still not sure what it means so I'm guessing it's an out of context quote.

"– I know who you are.

This barely gave Velannen pause.

– A man whose inkpot you just spilled everywhere ?"

Guess 3 sentences is slightly longer than One Quote but eh!

9. Which of your characters would you say has the most controversial mindset? Why do you say so and how do you personally feel about their ideals?

Hmm... I don't. Elysia, maybe? How no matter what her goal is, good or bad, she's willing to do Absolutely Anything, the end justify the means, as well as being a general Chaos Agent, that shape her into this. Peculiar lady. Her ideal is to Fucking Murder Dawn [i still am not certain why] because Fuck Dawn in Particular, which is something I agree with, but you know, manipulating everyone around her and forcing them into deeply fucked relationships with her is definitely A Way to go about it.

But I have, like, an array of fucked up characters. The Emperor and his obsession with perfection/perfecting himself vs his unwillingness to change himself and become a better person, instead arguing that everyone has it wrong and he IS perfect already, while deeply hating himself. Dawn and her being convinced that to be perfect, this planet has to abide by HER rules that SHE thought up in SPITE of her job being 'make sure the universe doesn't fold over itself" and not "take over a planet because they have a different system to write down magic'. I realize everyone I mentioned here is from Break of Dawn.

10. If you when you first started writing met you now, what would younger you think?

"YOU WRITE IN ENGLISH FLUENTLY NOW ????"

#tag games #fun!

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letamthoughts · 1 year

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Set It Off (1991)

(movie had me so fucked up had to cry about it to my partner and forgot to give it a rating; and here we go 1.5 months later) i love it? (probably... painfully) (x tier? idfk) 10/10

nice-ass camera work during the first robbery nice-ass vibe during the graduation party

interesting choice making the dudes so frightening; like, they had some solid “hard” vibes going on, monstrous even... very interesting 🤔

really well done #NotAllCops shit; still ACAB tho "What's the procedure?"

The Intimate List (the rooftop and the car) The Black List The Nostalgic List i fucking hate it

Part of our February series "Black History Sounds Like... 90's Film Edition"

Minor Spoilers

fucked up what it came down to for her regarding the advance both slaps were justified, but he'll never understand why

Latifah's lover was either written that way or just couldn't act well; either way, she played the roll very well wait, was she (the actor) mute? 🤔 Latifah's character is trans, isn't she? definitely a short-sighted hot head had an interesting perspective, though; on belonging in the hood and all methinks the problem was that she failed to consider other options (e.g.: leave the damn country)

Moderate Spoilers

Latifah turning around during gave strong lashing vibes like, no way that wasn't intentional... these directors and/or writers be Black missa gon' check later; 'cause fuck they really did that shit the director is, and the two writers probably are considering their filmography killed by the system was he lying about the money or no? most likely, but he lied too well then again, does he always keep a revolver under the pillow when at a motel? 🤔 shooting him might've been the right call tbh; no tellin' what he intended or what would've gone down yeah~, surely he would've told 'em they were jobless "Don't be greedy." 😭

yeah, she teared up after romance night because it was just another trade off like with the check; significantly better, sure, but it ain't balanced and it sure as hell ain't hers this movie's violently feminist

Major Spoilers

BRUH~ I honestly needed to baby cry with my head in somebody's lap after that. 😢 Spent most of the movie tense af knowing what was coming. And hard cried thrice. Fuck, this movie was better than I remember. Why dafuq don't I ever hear about it? 🤔

the sad ending would be the other fucker never jumping in and they all go to prison this was the fucked ending three people died, somebody lost their lover, a child lost their mother, and somebody lost three friends i'm hurting myself again, time to change the topic

#Thoughts #Set It Off #1991 #i love it #10/10 #Sie FilmCenter #Watched: February 2023 #The Black List #The Intimate List #The Nostalgic List #i fucking hate it #Black History Sounds Like... 90's Film Edition #Black History Sounds Like #still ACAB tho

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theteasetwrites · 2 years

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Man I think there’s only one scene in the whole show that made me a little repulsed by Daryl, and that’s in season 9 when he’s interrogating Lydia and he’s threatening her and stuff. Like if Lydia were a grown woman I don’t think I’d care as much, but since she was only a teen it made me feel so bad when he was pulling her out and she was begging for her life. (Though overall he was justified, that moment gave me a little ick)

Oh wow, you know I never even think about that scene that much, but you're actually right in a way. Daryl was definitely a little too rough with her. To give Daryl some credit, I think he was really pissed about Jesus' death and he was taking it out on Lydia. That's not an excuse, of course, but we have to remember that Daryl sometimes does not handle his emotions very well. Plus, he wasn't hitting her or anything, just kind of yelling and scaring her?? Idk I do agree with you tho, I don't think Daryl handled it well but he's definitely a flawed character and that's ultimately what makes the show interesting. Perfect characters are boring, so it's always interesting to see how certain characters fuck up or do shit that's not right. We can still not like it though. I definitely don't like it now that I think about it, but it's also not completely OOC for Daryl. He's a harsh, mean person sometimes. Most of the time, he's not, esp not around his friends and loved ones, but someone who is from a hostile group? He's got much less patience for that. Plus, I think Daryl was really trying to get information out of her, so he was definitely going hard on her because that's how he interrogates people (see season 2). Daryl is a hardass.

#not me and my daryl simpery #but i totally agree with you lol

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felesrubrum · 2 years

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CW// Transphobia, youtube comment section, stream of thought at 6am

i genuinely don't know how this happened but I have entered into my like.. 2nd month being active on a youtube comment i left on a video called "JK Rowling's patronus is a TERF" (by the iiiluminaughtiii, great vid) saying that its baffling that the person who wrote a fantastic queer allegory is such a bigot.

And people keep bending over backwards trying to justify her bigotry using the most assbackwards logic like.

"Women are adult human females of child bearing age!!" Most people with a uterus can bear children starting at age 8-12! Are they women?? Are they ADULTS??? What are they BEFORE they can bear children???? And they followed that up with "And women who are infertile due to biological reasons are still women 🙄🙄🙄"...........ough my guy. By your own fucking definition this would include women who were amab.

Another person insisted on trying to learn why "people could possibly want to be trans" or some shit. After a genuinely fruitful discussion they closed with "Well amab folks could never understand the true opression of women because they're still persecuted for their gender [insert abuse toward children in other countries]". Is that really your Gotcha. Ffs. I also could never truly understand the oppression PoC go through. That doesn't make their suffering not exist. And really? You think trans folks DON'T experience oppression?? As queer folks we're all suffering in different ways in this world! That doesn'tmake anyone's suffering "more/less" valid or bad!!! Is it bad that women and children are oppressed?? YES OBVIOUSLY! But that's not a fucking reason to turn on another oppressed group fjkskfjjdJKCKKEKS

Yet another tried to use science! Sorry bud, I have trained for this moment. Many many people who are afab are discluded if you use generalist terms :) They gave up after a while.

My favorite by far though was someone who just accused me for like 3w of "virtue signaling and doing irreparable damage to the world", and refused to tell me what exactly i was doing. Thanks for the confidence boost tho, didn't know i could tear down society from the comfort of my livingroom 😂😂

I don't know why I'm still responding to these comments tbh at this point I should just link people my previous comments from the thread. I also don't knoww why i wrote up this post i just want to talk about it somewhere. Why are people like this. What does it matter to you??? Leave people alone jfc

#Feles rambles #Transphobia #CW #Cw transphobia

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casliveblog · 1 year

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Custom Toonami Block Week 127 Rundown

Inuyasha: So right where we left off last time and someone fucking left a boiling pot of water overflowing in the school kitchen and that’s a terrible idea even when there’s not dangerous dehydrated fungus demons threatening to pop out from every corner. Still the fungus demons are so laughably not a threat, they don’t even get close to attacking anyone and can basically be punched into dust so most of the episode is this funny little farce of Kagome balancing between the biggest social threat she’s ever faced and the smallest physical threat she’s ever faced. Admittedly she does have some cool moments of storming the convenience store to replace the food and ad-libbing the whole play scene, no wonder Yashahime stole this plot point to do in like a quarter of the time frame. Watching Hojo try and rush a giant mushroom that was nowhere in the script with a toy sword and having Inuyasha Wind Scar the entire gym is pretty entertaining, really gotta wonder how the school justifies all the collateral damage as ‘just part of the play’ like when I was in High School the staff flipped their shit when someone put soap in the water fountain so I can’t imagine how destroying half the auditorium is just like ‘yeah okay, things happen’. Also Kagome’s family is pretty funny with Sota carrying on the running gag from the episode with his crush and thinking he can really use Inuyasha’s attacks and Grandpa trying to use his absolutely worthless sutras on dudes in costumes while Kagome’s Mom tries to rein them both in (I didn’t realize they never gave them names until Yashahime and it’s really weird, like at least the anime made up names for Kagome’s friends when Rumiko didn’t do it for them so idk why they couldn’t pick something for her mom and grandpa). Also the classic ‘oh everyone’s in cosplay so they don’t notice the fantasy main character’ deal is pretty funny since I actually recognize a lot more anime than I did when I first watched this, I guess Japan’s a lot more lax about cameos like that than the West is.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Yusuke’s fight with Doctor continues and the guy tells him he works on One Piece rules and the only way to stop his virus is to forcefully knock him out but thanks to his powers he’s on the spirit equivalent of Trucker Anti-Sleep Pills so the only way to stop him is to kill him and they do this whole Dark Knight Joker thing and it’s hard to tell if Doctor wants Yusuke to kill him and stain his hands or if he’s counting on Yusuke just letting everyone die and not killing him in a fit of rage after which judgding by what happened in the Dark Tournament would definitely happen. Like he seems to be betting on Yusuke not doing it and genuinely fearful for his life when Yusuke looks like he’ll kill him but at the same time he keeps egging him on There’s a lot of cutting around in this episode while Yusuke agonizes over killing a human which like I mentioned last time seems kinda racist given all the virtually indistinguishable demons he’s killed but okay. To be fair at least he makes up his mind to do it relatively quickly and goes to just fucking disintegrate him with a Spirit Gun but Clone Ally Stand User guy takes the form of a sick nurse and gets captured to be a hostage before throwing acid in his face which is pretty dope but like Yusuke had the guy dead to rights so idk why he had to get involved at all unless he was just not wanting Yusuke to blow the guy’s head off but even after the acid thing they’re still basically in the same situation so idk what that accomplished really. Doctor tries to bargain with a cure for his life but Mind Reader Stand User Guy comes in to tell them the cure is fake which it’s kinda nice that all the Stand Users get something to do given they can’t really fight on their own. Yusuke decks Doctor through a window which is apparently enough to kill him after all his ‘I’m a doctor so I told my spine to not break’ shenanigans and everyone (including Keiko who is there to be a damsel but Yusuke is legit the only one who doesn’t know she’s there so what’s the point I guess it’s just for our benefit? That’s kinda silly) is cured. Genkai does Spirit CPR on Doctor to bring him back to life and is like ‘this guy doesn’t deserve it but you’d be a mopey little bitch if you killed someone and we got shit to do so don’t worry about it this one’s on me’ and the more I think about it the more I realize Bleach just kinda stole half its plot from Yu Yu Hakusho.

Fate/Apocrypha: It’s the start of the final fight and everyone has their big ‘goodbye and stay alive’ speeches before they set off with a fleet of airplanes to Semiramis’s Hanging Gardens. Everyone on the enemy side wants to punch Shakespeare in the face which is understandable given he presumably become a Heroic Spirit solely based on having the world’s most punchable face and they navelgaze for a while about if it’ll be cooler to see Shirou succeed or fail and it really doesn’t amount to anything. Shirou goes into the Bigger Cup to do Bigger Cup things and meets Iri who is apparently still the projection of the Grail’s form even in this world even though Zero didn’t happen in this AU idk how that works but he wants to summon Sakura’s Route of the original and idk what that means exactly but feel all the heavens you want kid, go nuts I guess. Anyway there’s a lot of airplanes and Atalante has her eyes solely set on Jeanne d’babykiller and won’t listen to orders to take like five seconds and blow up the planes that Achilles misses so if there’s something important there it’s all her fault. Also Chiron shoots down Achilles’s chariot with the arrow equivalent of Hellzone Grenade and has them fighting on one of the planes, though given Atalante demonstrated that Semiramis can just open portals for them and Chiron can’t fly idk what’s stopping him from just destroying the plane and dipping out to let horse boy fall to his death. Anyway yeah just kind of a fight setup episode which is fine, Sieg and Astolfo are off being gay somewhere and Mordred’s presumably got her biplane ready to swoop in at some point so we’ll see how this goes.

Speed Grapher: So this episode has Saiga being chased through the subway tunnels by Mr. Speaker Politician guy and apparently it’s really hard to kill a Euphoric with vibrations because this guy absolutely blasts Saiga to hell and despite killing normal dudes in under a minute Saiga has like three brain hemorrhages and stays standing. He uses his mini-camera to blow holes in the walls to keep running away while the guy monologues on about how Saiga just documents pain and suffering for glory and doesn’t help anyone and how only politicians and powerful people can enforce order for the good of everyone. I mean to be fair a couple of the pictures they show in this episode of like bleeding children reaching out to him do show Saiga as more focused on photography than helping the suffering but that doesn’t mean his photographs did nothing either. Meanwhile, Kagura, Friend Doctor, and Shady Doctor have been abducted by Politician guy’s friends and Shady Doctor was apparently promised Kagura for his research and when he finds out he’s not going to get her he straight up abducts her and drinks the carrier virus for Euphorics. Now all he has to do here is kiss her and get superpowers and since the bodyguards are breaking down the door while he’s doing this he has to be quick right? Except he decides instead of just going for a kiss to see if he gets extra superpowers from full on sexual assault and it’s really pretty hard to watch. It’s kind of funny how confident he is that he can fuck Kagura quickly like he’s that sure he’s a three pump chump but luckily we don’t have to find out because the guards bust down the door before he can even really undress Kagura. Still Kagura’s understandably shaken by the whole affair and it’s kind of really hard to see her go into full PTSD mode and briefly turning against Friend Doctor in a rage given it was hard enough for her to take just being forced to kiss random guys at the beginning of the series, though if it’s any consolation Shady Doctor just gets dragged out of the room with his pants down. Ginza and Saiga’s boss finds the White Eagles all dead and she looks at Joe’s membership list for the Roppongi club and sees the head of the police department is on it and since she can’t find Saiga atm she’s just like ‘well better go kill my boss’ which is kind of an odd swerve given how focused on Saiga she’s been this whole series but maybe she’s become self aware of how she’s always a step behind him. Turns out her boss is the opposite of the guy from the beginning of the series with a hand fetish and he’s the foot fetish guy that cuts off legs and mounts them in his study because we’re not done with the weird fetish shit yet. He captures Ginza and straps her into a full on sex chair so this is not a good episode for our heroines not getting sexual assaulted like geez we really hit the gas on that real quick, luckily Ginza’s probably smart/strong enough to get out of this so hopefully next episode she’ll shoot her boss in the head. Meanwhile meanwhile, Saiga’s pinned to a railroad track by Politician dude’s vibrations while a train’s coming. His eye’s on the fritz which feels weird given he DEFINITELY has not been using his Euphoria Factor as much as much as the rich weirdoes he’s been fighting but maybe it either dies quicker because it’s all focused on his eye or Suitengu has treatments for Club Member Euphorics to extend the longevity of their superpowers like he does for himself but needless to say unless Saiga gets the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan soon he’s gonna go blind. Politician dude knocks his main camera out of his hand but luckily Saiga’s able to make his way over to him and just put his little camera right up to his chest and blow a hole right into him with the line ‘If your picture’s no good, you’re not close enough’ which is fucking badass. So now going into what looks to be the final arc Saiga’s half dead crawling through a subway, Ginza’s in a sex swing and Kagura’s going through sexual assault trauma, so… yeah not looking great.

#ooc #Toonami #Custom Toonami Block #Inuyasha #Yu Yu Hakusho #Fate Apocrypha #Speed Grapher

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soulmate-game · 3 years

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Hawkmoth was a bitch, and Marinette meant that with every fiber of her soul. Fu was also a bitch, and Marinette actually had good memories of the guy. Not many, but she had some. The fact that the guy got two ten-year-olds to become super heroes and fight a supervillain for him kinda soured those memories, though. But with Chat Noir not allowed to leave his house? Yeah, even as young as they were it only took about a year to find out who HawkMoth was and another year to take him down.

Except, that left Marinette alone. The final battle took her mom away, and Chat had to move out of Paris after his dad was arrested. Luckily Jagged allowed her and her papa to move into his house in Gotham, and everything was…

Well, it was okay. For about a month.

Then her dad was gone too, and she had no way to talk to Jagged, and the police were scaring her—

Yeah, that was the basic order of events that led to where she was now. Pushing fourteen years old, ex-superhero, protector of a magical box of gods, stealing the tires off of a very nice motorcycle.

Marinette was tempted to just take the whole thing, she loved bikes and knew she could drive it. But the thing had more security than she knew what to do with, and the fact that it belonged to Red Hood… she didn’t want to deal with trackers today, thanks. So the tires it was.

Should she maybe care more about the fact that she was stealing from a vigilante with a violent streak? Maybe. Did she? Hell no. For all she knew, maybe Red Hood was a bitch too. (Yes, she was still learning English slang. She was fluent by educational standards, but learning how to curse in a foreign language was fun and she still had a little bit to go. Her few street friends were very happy to help).

A shadow dropped down in front of her, and Marinette’s hero instincts kicked in. The tire iron she was using cut through the air, slamming right into the side of Red Hood’s knee.

—*—*—*—*—*

“Hood,” Batman’s voice grumbled over the comms, instantly grabbing the attention of everyone else who was on the comms. It wasn’t as gruff as he usually sounded, in fact it almost sounded like… he was trying not to laugh?

“Did you get gassed by Joker?” Dick asked before Jason got a chance to respond. “Need backup?”

“No,” Batman responded, sounding a little more composed. “Not a rogue. But Hood, I need you to join me at my location as soon as possible.”

Finally getting the chance to talk, Jason responded a little warily; “Sure, B. Wait,” he blinked at the location that was sent to him. “Isn’t that where my bike is parked?”

Batman didn’t respond at first, only the sound of labored breathing— again, as if he was trying not to laugh. “Just get here, Hood.”

Sighing, but not too mad since the night had been fairly quiet so far, Jason decided to humor the old man and head over. When he could see the cape-clad back of Batman, he easily leapt over the last roof and sauntered over.

“Okay, B,” he had his thumbs tucked in his pockets as he drawled. “What’s the issue?”

Batman was grinning. As in, actually showing amusement. And he just pointed down, straight at Hood’s bike.

Jason rolled his eyes under his helmet, turning to look. At first he didn’t see anything amiss, until he saw movement and looked harder. Oh. Oh, holy shit.

“Is that a kid?”

“Yep,” Batman’s grin grew.

“Is she… stealing my tires?” Hood was so, so glad he wore a helmet that hid his expression. Because… wow.

“Yep,” Batman finally lost his composure, chuckling. “This seems like Karma, don’t you think?”

“And you just watched her so you could rub it in,” Jason groaned, throwing his head back in exasperation. Of course he would. Nobody knew it (except the other heroes who knew him) but Batman was a petty little jerk when he wanted to be. He bought the whole Daily Planet just to spite Clark, for crying out loud.

“Don’t adopt her,” Batman said as he stood up, patting Red Hood’s shoulder. “It looks like she’s almost done.”

“Shit,” Jason hissed, looking down to see that she was, actually, very close to being done. She had already had one tire completely free by the time he had arrived, and now she was only seconds away from getting the other one completely free.

He took a quick assessment— she was tiny, and really thin. Definitely a street kid, he thought, though he didn’t recognize her. He knew most of the street kids that stole to get by, nowadays, which meant she must have been fairly new. But even though she seemed to know what she was doing, her small frame made her take longer unscrewing the tires than it normally would have taken. Sure that she wasn’t a threat by any stretch of the imagination, he jumped down. His plan had been to startle her a little by showing up out of nowhere, but he didn’t want to scare her too badly. Just make her jump a little.

But he had underestimated her, it seemed. Without wasting a second, she jumped up and swung her tire iron at his knee. He cursed, she was a lot faster than her had been expecting. He was able to move so that the weapon only clipped the side of his knee, his knee pad thankfully taking the worst of it. She still hit hard enough to make him stumble and hiss in pain though, which was an accomplishment.

That’s when she abandoned her weapon and her tires, darting to try and escape only for Batman to drop down and block her escape. Though really, it was the grin Batman had that scared the girl most of all, apparently, making her slowly back away from him.

“Please stop smiling,” she begged with a faint French accent to her words. “It is not natural.”

That made Red Hood laugh, already recovered and right behind her. He plopped a gloved hand on her head.

“I know, it’s creepy right?” He joked. “What’cha doin’ stealing my tires, kid? I kinda need them to drive anywhere,” he was careful to keep his voice light and devoid of any anger. He wasn’t really upset, all told. It would be hypocritical of him if he was.

She looked between the two vigilantes for a moment, clear intelligence behind those bright blue eyes as she seemed to consider something. Suddenly she pulled away from Red Hood and stepped away from his reach, straightening up and trying to look tall.

“My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” she said as firmly as she could. “My father was Tom Dupain, he was killed in a mugging three months ago. We were living in a house that our family friend leant to us after my mother’s death six months ago, and we moved here from Paris. I haven’t been able to contact him, and the police… I don’t trust them,” she admitted, clearly seeing this as the chance she had been waiting for. “I have been living on the streets since my father died. I am sorry for trying to steal your tires, Monsieur Red Hood. But it was a risk I had to take.”

“Did you expect us to catch you?” He asked, crossing his arms as he re-evaluated the girl. She was a lot stronger than he had assumed earlier, both physically and mentally. She seesawed her hand to indicate ‘kinda’.

“Even if you didn’t, I could make good money off your tires,” she justified with a shrug. “To me, I would win either way.”

“Who is your family friend? Can he help you now, take you in?” Batman asked, moving forward and kneeling down to be closer to Marinette’s height. Neither he nor Jason had missed the part where she was an orphan, but they had expected that considering what they had caught her doing. And they both knew that she wasn’t likely to take any apologies they tried to offer very well. It was best not to show pity, or she might get angry.

Marinette frowned. “... Our family friend is Jagged Stone. He lets me call him Uncle Jagged,” she told them, clearly expecting the disbelieving grunts they gave. “I mean it! You can call him, he might even be looking for me! I—“

“We know,” Hood assured her, now kneeling down as well. Man, she was short. “Calm down, we know you’re telling the truth. Jagged has made several public announcements about his missing honorary niece, we just didn’t recognize your name right away. And Jagged doesn’t have access to very many pictures of you, those he does have the Mayor isn’t allowing him to show because that spineless jackass—“

“Language, Hood.”

“—Cares more about keeping bad press off the air than finding a kid, even if it’s a world famous rockstar who’s asking. That’s probably why you haven’t heard anything, the mayor’s keeping it off the radio and not many reporters are brave enough to take the story and get on his bad side.”

“Oh…” Marinette took a deep breath, fighting the tears that were threatening to rise up. “He has been looking…” she sniffled, curling in on herself a little. “Can you take me to him?”

“I think we can do that,” Batman agreed, standing up. “I’ll contact him. Red Hood, can you handle everything here until I give you a place to meet up with Jagged Stone?”

Jason nodded. “No problem, B. Come on, little rabid pixie. Step one of gettin’ you back to your uncle is to help me fix my bike back up.”

Marinette sighed, shoulders dropping. “All my hard work, undone…” she playfully complained. But in the end she didn’t argue or fight against it, she just sat down and helped him reattach his tires.

All the while, Jason’s family kept teasing him over the comms. Clearly they were also thoroughly amused by the cosmic display of karma.

“...Monsieur Hood,” Marinette asked once they were done repairing the motorcycle and he had given her his too-big extra helmet. He tilted his head a bit to show he was listening. She squirmed. “Can… can we stop by my hideout? I have something really important I have to get.”

Jason smiles gently under his mask. She might not have been a street kid for very long, but she really did bring back some memories for him. He got on his bike and held a hand out to her.

“Sure thing kid. Wanna grab something to eat after? Can’t have a reunion on an empty stomach.”

She gave him a lopsided smile— not quite overjoyed, but definitely hopeful and thankful. Maybe this was the end of her streak of bad luck, she could only hope.

“Only if you don’t mind, Monsieur Hood,” she agreed before taking his hand and letting him help her onto the bike.

“No skin off my back, pixie,” he assured her. Then they were off. He followed her directions until they got to an abandoned building about three miles away, not in a good part of town at all but at least not in crime alley. Marinette easily led him through the building, skirting around other piles of ratty blankets and up broken stairs until they got to the badly-maintained top floor. She led him over to an almost invisible door in the concrete wall that pulled out to reveal what was probably a broom closet once upon a time. It was crowded with what looked like junk and empty boxes, along with a few blankets and two or three changes of clothes that were clearly her’s. A few belongings scattered around— a book, a small pink purse, and… Marinette came out of the pile of mess holding what had clearly been a very carefully hidden box. She also grabbed the purse and slung it over her shoulder, but didn’t seem worried about anything else.

Jason frowned at the box. It wasn’t that big, but it was clearly made of old wood. There were intricate carvings that were painted pink, in a symbol that was itching at the back of his mind. He recognized that symbol, but from where?

“Ready to go, kid?” He asked as he thought about it, getting a nod from Marinette. Twenty minutes later they were at a Batburger, sitting in a shaded booth that couldn’t be seen from the street.

She never let the box out of her sight. She kept it on the seat next to her, and Jason noticed that she tried to keep one hand on it at all times. But when she spoke, now her French accent stood out to him even more than before. But why—?

And then it clicked. Paris. Hawkmoth. Ladybug, Chat Noir, magic artifacts called Miraculous. Wonder Woman had raised a fuss when the heroes disappeared, declaring that something was wrong but she couldn’t put her finger on what. Then the magic users they trusted were called in, and returned from Paris with the grim news that the former Guardian of those artifacts had activated a failsafe and passed the guardianship on to someone else while erasing his own memories at the same time. But nobody knew who he could have passed it on to, so Batman had been given the green light to do all the research he and his team could into the Miraculous box to try and help track it down.

And here it was. The carvings were in pink now, which might have been the “cosmetic change” that Constantine had mentioned might happen when the box changed guardians. He had found the box full of super powerful magical artifacts… in the hands of a newly orphaned street kid who couldn’t have been older than fourteen at best.

What the hell?

“...” Red hood reached into his pocket and pulled out an old receipt and a sharpie. He scrawled on the back of the receipt and handed to Marinette. The girl was halfway into a bite of her burger when he did, and blinked at him owlishly before swallowing and cautiously reaching out to grab it. She frowned at the numbers scrawled there.

“What’s this?” She asked.

“My contact info,” he explained. “I won’t ask questions about why you have that box,” he watched her instantly stiffen but continued as casually as he could; “but it doesn’t matter. You can call me if you ever need help with anything, kid. Help with that box, help if you get in trouble in Gotham again, or even if you’re having a bad day. You can call me for whatever, got it? I don’t care if you think it’s stupid, if you can’t talk to anyone else in your life you can always call or text me and I’ll do whatever I can. Got it?”

“...” Marinette sniffled for a second and looked down at the table in silence for a second. “... what if I want your motorcycle?” she joked, but the watery tone of her voice gave her away.

Jason laughed, patting her head. “I need my bike, but we can talk about getting you your own once you are old enough to get a license. You almost done? Bats says that Jagged is ready to meet you, I can take you to him right now.”

“Yeah, lets go!” she was newly energized and shoved the last bite of burger into her mouth greedily. “And Red Hood?” She asked as they headed out to where he had parked.

“Yeah, kid?”

“Thanks.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Permanent tag list (I remembered it this time!)

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mochegato · 3 years

Text

Even the Losers

Chapter 16

Chapter 1 Chapter 15

Marinette blinked as the room around her slowly came into focus. She tried to bring her hand up to rub her head to help alleviate her pulsing headache but her hands weren’t responding. It felt like there was a weight on them. Or like they were being held down, bound. Marinette’s eyes flew open and her heart started pounding as she searched the room for the akuma. She looked at her hands and silently cursed to herself. Not only were her arms bound to the arms of a wooden chair, she saw her own naked hands instead of her distinct red suit.

She groaned and looked around for any clues to where she was being held and what the akuma might be. If she could figure out their powers, she might be able to figure out how to get out of this. She stopped when she saw a man in a green suit making his way toward her. She blinked a few more times taking in his suit and hat. “Is that… are those question marks? Are you a question akuma?” she muttered out in French.

The man tilted his head at her. “You’ll find English is necessary if you want to get out of this one alive, young Wayne.”

Marinette stared at the man a few more seconds, letting his words settle in her head as things started to click in her mind. She wasn’t in Paris. This wasn’t an akuma, because there weren’t akumas anymore. She and Adrien had defeated his father. She was in Gotham. She had been on her way home after a disastrous dinner at the Wayne’s. This was a Gotham villain, not a Parisian one. This was the Riddler.

Marinette breathed out a sigh of relief before her face scrunched in frustration. “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me right now? You had to do this right now?”

“Oh, I never kid about riddles. Now, is not the time to panic, Little Lady,” he taunted.

“Oh, you have no fucking clue. Now is most definitely NOT the time, but you made it the time,” she hissed at him. “Do you have ANY idea how bad my week is going? My night? Do you? Do you have any idea of the trauma and nightmares I’m going to have to deal with already? And that was before you forced me to witness your suit in person. And can you comprehend the mental and emotional cataclysm I’m already going to have to endure? And you’re pulling this shit? Now?”

“I’m just going to ask a few questions and then it’ll all be over and then you can have your little mental breakdown,” he jeered condescendingly.

She narrowed her eyes at him and tried to lunge at him, but her chest was tied to the chair, holding her back, and she’d never hated rope more than she did in that moment. She growled and glared at him. “Oh thank you for the permission. And for the record, it won’t be little. It’s going to be a monufuckingmental breakdown. Thank you very much. Granted it isn’t everything on Earth is destroyed but me and one other person, who caused it in the first place, level of bad. But I think I’m justified in needing to take a fucking second to think and process. A second I’m not going to fucking get now am I? Because of you.” She turned her head to the side in frustration but her eyes got caught on a small red light. Her mouth dropped open. “Are you recording this?” she yelled at him. That complicated things considerably. Now she needed to watch her words. Now she needed to make sure she didn’t expose anything. Well that just sucked even more.

“Well, it wouldn’t be much of a game show without an audience, now would it,” he purred.

She scowled at him. “By all means, record this to watch later. Most people aren’t looking to get bitch slapped as hard as you’re going to get so publicly, but to each their own, I guess. But, consent is a thing and next time, keep me out of it.”

She strained against the ropes holding her hands to the chair arms. She glowered at him when they proved too tight for her to move her wrists. “Also, it’s already not much of a game show. If you have to knock out people and tie them down just to get them to play, either your show sucks or your host does. Or in this case, both.”

“Now, now,” he snarled, his smile considerably more strained than it had been before. “We’re just testing the newest Wayne to see how you’re going to fit in.”

“I could have told you that without all this,” she glowered. “But you wanted to be a big man and ask a question. So ask your little question. Be a big man putting a bound, petite, non-native English speaking woman, in her place. Although if that’s what it takes to make you feel like a man, that’s one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever heard.”

Riddler seethed at her, attempting to keep his face neutral, but failing spectacularly. One of the Waynes should be afraid of him. He had been hoping the new one would finally give him a Wayne that cowered in fear. Instead, he got yet another feral child. He gripped his question mark staff tightly, fighting the urge to hit her with it. It was too early to start. She’d get her punishment soon enough. He looked up with a grin. Very soon.

He looked back at her with a sadistic smirk. “Fine. I’d hate to keep a lady waiting. Perhaps first I should start with the stakes.” He moved closer to smile in her face. “Think well on your answer young Wayne, because for every question you get wrong,” he pointed up with his staff, “a knife falls.”

Marinette let out a deep, annoyed sigh and looked up to see a series of knives tied to the ceiling right above her seat. She sighed and gave him a flat look. “Really? That’s the best you could do? You realize what I’ve been faced with before, right? Or did you not do your research?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You look like a man who never does his research.”

Riddler sidled up to her in a step, his face a few centimeters from her own. “We can start by testing out the knives if you’d prefer.”

Marinette leaned her head back. Even if she couldn’t talk him out of making one drop, it wasn’t going to get her. They would miraculously get diverted just enough to miss her. Luck could be a bitch when it was against you and he’d left too much up to chance. “Already changing the rules of the game? What were you saying about a good game show? Guess you really don’t care.”

“Fine!” Riddler screamed. He walked away a few steps and turned back to her with a malicious glint in his eyes. “Let’s start slow, shall we? Starting in 1881, this hall brightened Paris’ nights while darkening its satire. What is the name of this baby of Salis?”

Marinette stared at him blankly for a few seconds. Her face went slack.

Riddler leered down at her, his face breaking into a creepy grin at her apparent inability to answer his question. “Oh, how sad.” He gave her a mock pout. “Looks like the new Wayne isn’t so smart after all. What do they see in you anyway? Can’t even answer a simple, easy question.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Marinette finally burst out.

Riddler frowned at her. Instead of the fear he expected, her voice was incredulous and angry. “That’s the question, if you can’t answer…”

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? That’s not a… You’re the Riddler. That’s not a riddle! That’s a… are you okay? Like, seriously. Are you okay? Because I think… You know what?” She took a deep steadying breath. She opened her eyes to give him a serious look, completely devoid of fear, leaning more towards concerned.

“I think you need a break. I think you need to take a bit of time to reassess, refocus, and recenter yourself. Then you can come back and be the Riddler I know you can be. Because this,” she tried to motion toward him, “this is not it. That is... that isn't a riddle! That's trivia! You inaccurately named, evil Alex Trebek! This would be a perfect opportunity to say I’m in Jeopardy, clueless asshole. So disappointed right now.” She shook her head in disappointment, refusing to even look at him.

Riddler seethed at her, his face turning red with anger. “Look either answer the question or…”

“THAT’S EXACTLY THE PROBLEM!” she screamed at him. “It’s a question, not a riddle. And you missed a golden opportunity to ask a follow up question and saying it’s Double Jeopardy. You missed the obvious pun! This is why I say you need to take a break. This isn’t you. You’re better than this, I know you are. I’m just… I’m worried about your mental health.” She gave him a concerned look.

“If you can’t answer…” he snapped at her. He gripped and regripped his question staff menacingly, leaning toward her with a snarl.

Marinette rolled her eyes at the attempt at intimidation. “Of course I can answer. I’m from Paris and you’re asking about Le Chat Noir? Of course I know the answer. Let me guess, your next question is about a ladybug,” she chirped, widening her eyes with false excitement.

Her face dropped the false sweetness and turned back into an aggravated frown. “That’s not the fucking point. My point is you interrupted my fucking abomination of a night for this bullshit and you’re not even on top of your game. So I not only get shoved into the spotlight, against my will, by people violating my and my parents’ privacy, forcing Mon… my father to ramp up plans for my introduction. Making sure my family and I knew we weren’t safe and exposing me to this bullshit along with the other attempts on me since it happened.”

Her frown turned into a disgusted sneer. “And I was actually afraid for a moment because I thought you were an akuma, but you’re really just an underprepared asshole. It’s insulting frankly.”

Riddler swung his question mark staff at her catching her across her cheek. He grinned at the blood trickling down her cheek. Marinette glared up at him but refused to let a grunt of pain pass her lips. “Next question, hopefully this one is more to your liking.” His eyes took on a malevolent glint.

Marinette’s eyes flicked behind him. He smirked at her inability to make eye contact any longer. “No,” she interrupted, a smirk forming on her own lips. “It’s my turn. I have one for you. It’s actually in the form of a riddle, if you think you can handle that.” The Riddler growled at her and moved closer to tower over her threateningly. “What lights up the day with black against yellow yet lights up the night with yellow against black. It brings hope to those who see it yet marks your demise. What is it?”

Riddler narrowed his eyes at her and backed away to get some space while he thought. He looked down for a second, searching the ground as though it might hold the answer for him. He suddenly looked up, his eyes bright with realization. “A signal!” he exclaimed, jumping with excitement. His face suddenly fell realizing the words that passed his lips.

He spun around just in time for Signal to punch him in the jaw. Riddler stumbled back falling backward on his ass. Signal stalked toward him, eskrima sticks out and ready. He kept his eyes on Riddler but raised his voice so Marinette could hear him. “You alright, Ma’am?”

“I’m fine. Just pissed,” she grunted. She focused on her bindings, trying to figure out a way to loosen them enough to get out.

Signal smirked and gave a short nod. “Preying on young women again? Not a good look for you.”

“Penguin and Scarecrow both tried and couldn’t get to her. I did,” he said defiantly, his chest puffing out even as he was slumped on the floor. “Penguin got to the museum too early. Scarecrow got to the hotel too late. But me? I plan better.”

“And got a verbal bitch slap the likes of which Gotham has never seen for your trouble.” Signal shook his head in mock sympathy and regripped his sticks. “Publicly.”

Riddler sneered at Signal. “It won’t happen again.”

“You’re damn right it won’t,” Marinette called from her seat. She pointed at him threateningly with her now miraculously freed right hand. “Next time I’ll do it physically too.”

Signal grinned proudly and snorted at her comment. Riddler growled before looking back up at Signal with an angry scowl. “Looks like this show has come to an end. But we’ll be back after a short break.” He hit his staff hard on the ground and a gas started emitting from it, obscuring Signal’s view. Signal backed away and rushed over to Marinette, uncertain if the gas was dangerous.

He pulled out a knife and quickly sliced through the remaining ropes and helped her get free. “Can you walk?”

Marinette started sprinting toward the exit. “I can do better than that,” she called over her shoulder. “You just going to stand there and let the gas get you?” Signal smirked and followed her out.

She grunted as her shoulder rammed into the doorframe when she miscalculated the distance. She silently cursed how long it was taking her brain to recover from having been knocked out. Now out of the room she stopped running and rubbed her head as if willing it to kick back into gear.

“You sure you’re okay?” Signal asked catching up to her.

Marinette couldn’t see his eyes under his mask but the bottom half of his face seemed to be contorted in concern. She grumbled noncommittally in response and rubbed her shoulder. She looked around them quickly. “You sure this is a safe way out? He has to have had help. I don’t see him doing his own dirty work.”

Signal nodded. “He did have help. But, so do I.” He nodded behind him.

Marinette craned her neck around him to look behind him. She cringed as she saw Red Hood kneeing someone in the face. The goon fell limply to the ground, unconscious before he hit. Red Hood looked up and ran over to them as soon as he spotted her. “Pi… uh… pretty impressive mouth,” he stuttered. He looked over her closely as he could without touching her. His eyes zeroed in on her cheek.

Marinette stared at him for a few seconds missing the incredulous look Signal tried to give him. “Um… thanks… I think.” She blinked a few more times before frowning. “Yeah, can we not talk about my mouth, please?”

Red Hood choked on nothing and shook his head, leaning away, as if trying to get away from the idea. “I meant your att…” he shook his head again and looked back at her. “Not a problem. Let’s never talk about it again. Are you okay? Did he hurt you anywhere else?” His eyes scanned her again and stopped at her wrists.

Marinette rubbed her wrists self-consciously. “No…” she started. “I mean! No he didn’t hurt me anywhere else. But I am okay,” she rushed out when she saw him tense up at her words.

“Where is he?” Red Hood growled, still staring at her wrists.

“Got away,” Signal answered.

Red hood rounded on him, his entire body tensed for a fight. “What do you mean he got away?”

Marinette stepped between them and pushed Red Hood back gently. “He released some kind of gas. He got me out of there before we found out what it did. Seems like a good move considering how he got me in the first place.”

Red Hood looked down at her for a second before looking up to Signal with a nod. He remembered seeing the gas dissipating when they finally caught up to where she was taken. It had looked like there was enough to knock out an entire city block. Definitely overkill, but spoke to Riddler’s desperation to be the first to kidnap her. “Idea which direction he went?”

Signal sighed a heavy sigh. “I didn’t see which way he went but it had to be out the west side of the room, but that’s all I got.”

Red Hood nodded and touched his com. “You got that?” He paused for a moment listening to whatever was being said over his com. “Yes, she’s fine. A few rope burns and a cut on her cheek, but seems okay other than that.”

Signal nodded and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Do you have family we can call?”

Marinette shook her head absentmindedly, the strain of the night starting to hit. “No, I can call my brother. He’s probably terrified about me.”

Red Hood seemed to freeze. “Just… the one brother? You… aren’t you one of the Waynes?”

Marinette’s eyes widened and her face paled. She plastered a smile on her face. “Right. Yes. Of course. I… I meant my one brother was with me at the time. Yes. Yeah. The Waynes are my family. I’m a… I’m… Yeah, I’m a… Wayne,” she barely managed to get the word out of her mouth. It felt wrong and foreign on her tongue. She smiled wider at them. “But you don’t… you don’t have to bother them. They’re all busy.”

“Yeah, looking for you,” Red Hood answered back sharply. “They’re the ones that called us. They’re terrified right now.”

“I think they’d want to know,” Signal urged gently, his voice heartfelt and slightly pained.

She let out a bitter scoff before she could stop herself. She squeezed her eyes shut and mentally berated her still drugged mind for letting that slip out. “I meant,” she started loudly, “I’ll inform someone. They’d want to… hear it from me,” she finished quietly.

Red Hood took a breath and moved closer to her, gently resting his hands on her shoulders. “I promise you, they’re worried about you and they would want to know. They’d want to make sure you’re okay. They’d want to make sure you feel safe. They would want to protect you. In fact, I’d expect to see a lot more of them over the next few days.”

Marinette opened her mouth to answer but got interrupted by the police breaking into the room. Marinette pursed her lips and seemed to let a calm come over her. Red Hood looked harder at her change as the police led her off to take her statement. No, it wasn’t calm. It was a numbness, an absence of any feelings. His face contorted into a scowl. Exactly what Adrien had described. “You get that,” Red Hood snapped into his com. He waited a few seconds before shaking his head.

“That’s a fool’s bet,” Signal scoffed. “Of course she’s not going to. She might send a text. And even then I bet it won’t be much.”

Red Hood listened for a few more seconds before he shook his head again. “I’m not taking that bet either.” He watched as Adrien just stopped himself from tackling Marinette in his excitement to see her again. After what looked like a worried conversation, he saw Adrien pull her into a tight hug and Marinette melt into it. “We need to fix this and quick before B does anything else to completely destroy any chance we have,” Red Hood snarled. He turned and started grappling away. “I’m going rogue hunting.”

Chapter 17

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