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#especially without addressing the implications in any capacity
eldritch-spouse · 2 years
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Ok, so the s/o calling your boys “daddy” ask has been stuck in my head foreverrrr and I need to know…
Who would call their s/o “mommy”???
(My money is on grimbly)
[A follow up to this ask.]
(Minors dni)
Calls their s/o "mommy":
Grimbly. To absolutely no one's surprise. Mommy this, mommy that- The moment he's given the greenlight to do it, your name will be replaced. He absolutely brings kinkplay outside of the bedroom and it's embarrassing for everyone.
Breg. Well, you are going to be a mommy in the future, might as well get used to it. I feel like he would call you mommy after you called him daddy, without really realizing the implications of his words. It's not a huge turn-on for him unless he links it to breederism in his mind.
Patches. Likes the power play soooo much. Especially if he's forced to adopt a submissive, frivolous demeanor where you talk down to him like he's brainless. Prefers mistress, but mommy does the job.
Santi. Also should come as no surprise. Mommy doms all the way, the incubus loves the thrill of bending for his mommies and letting them do whatever they want. He picks up on the type of language you like and returns it tenfold to drive you wild. It may also replace your name, but in a much more playful manner.
Ludwig. Is mostly ambivalent towards the term, but if it gets you hot under the collar, he's using it against you at every turn. He just wants to see how much it takes before you go wild and teach him to behave. Your secret is safe with this one.
Rarely does it:
Morell. He's just not big on subbing at any capacity. Morell did everything he could as a little shroom to grow big and strong so that he could always be on top of everything. However... If it really seems to turn you on, Morell will occasionally humor this and ask for mommy. He's kind of into it, but won't admit it.
Fasma. He feels a little weird about it, primarily because he's basically toddler-sized. This better not be a weird fetish of yours, he's skeptical of it. Truth of the matter though, is that he's lonely and will do it if it guarantees sex and affection. Who knows, it may even grow on him after a while.
Gallon. Utterly indifferent towards it. Does it as a favor, for the most part. Quite like Ludwig, but a little more subtle. Gallon will pick the best, most innocuous moments and make you flinch by casually calling you mommy. You'll never quite know how into it he is, and that's how the slime likes it.
Won't ever do it:
Vinnel. Nah, not his style. Only ever mockingly calls you that. Vinnel gets you in the most submissive of positions where you have zero control and then call you mommy, as a joke. It's really cute that you think he'd call you that- You might have to rip it out of him.
Krulu. Naturally. You should know better than to expect him to play along with that by now. Perhaps, every once in a blue moon, Krulu will tease the idea of using you as an incubator to his spawn, and only then lightly address you as mommy. The term is still heavily submissive in this scenario.
Nebul. You'd think, given how mellow he is, that they'd be open to the concept. And Nebul would be, if he didn't like having you wrapped around his pinkie so much. You're just too cute to be called "mommy", and the fact that you want to be dominant is even more adorable.
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shadowshrike · 1 year
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3 Hopes: Some Dimiclaude Parallels between Games
While doing a "One of Claude's goals is to save Dimitri" reading of Golden Wildfire, I ended up stumbling across some lines that make for fun dimiclaude implications mirroring the first game. Surprisingly, this time, most of it is from Claude's side.
First, there are the 'world problems' that Claude talks about in their support. He's trying to appear as though he's addressing a broad audience, but the pointedness of his language suggests a more personal focus on Dimitri, especially when he begins getting worked up as they continue.
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"Who steals your freedom and gives you an endless list of duties and obligations simply because you have a Crest?"
This could be generally addressed towards the noble experience, using 'you' to mean anyone with a crest. It's a generic complaint about the crest system that falls in line with what he'd know from the Alliance nobility he's spent most of his time with.
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"Who forces you and your friends into a bunch of unwanted marriages and positions of power?"
By adding 'and your friends,' this line must be partially directed at Dimitri, specifically regarding the burdens of his station. The unwanted marriage line is odd because Claude theoretically doesn't know the Blue Lions well due to the civil war, and he's implying Dimitri is part of the group that is slated for one. Claude's expression shifting towards frustration here is an interesting choice.
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"In the world I'm trying to create, you wouldn't be burdened by them either. You could even..."
This is unambiguously directed at Dimitri. It's clearly personal to Claude as well. It's a shame we never get to hear what he wants to see Dimitri do in Claude's ideal future, especially since Dimitri himself holds little ambition beyond serving his people in any capacity he can. Of course, the dimiclaude reading is that Claude hopes they could have a relationship, which is why when he realizes he's almost said too much, he instead backtracks to a more neutral longing for friendship.
Particularly striking about this line is how when Claude cuts himself off about what Dimitri could do in this new world, you can hear him getting emotional in the audio. The notorious schemer's heart is so rarely on display. Although both deliveries are good, I find the JP version feels extra heartwrenching (and can be listened to at the youtube recordings of the scene).
To bring this back to the original game, we see a parallel in how Claude responds to Dimitri's burdens. In Hopes, Dimitri's duties and obligations as king are the things that weigh most heavily on him, whether or not he is a willing steward. Claude responds by trying to shake him from that and acknowledge how it gets in Dimitri's way.
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In Azure Moon, we see a similarly direct approach to Dimitri's demons. There, he's plagued by the dead and how they, along with Dimitri's people, place too much weight on his shoulders. Claude responds, just like in Hopes, without having spent much time with the king, yet immediately trying to break him from that burden.
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However, in a reversal from Houses, we see the lion's share of direct, admiring lines about the other coming from Claude rather than Dimitri. There's still some of both, but Claude is exceptionally vocal in Hopes. He mentions how much he appreciates Dimitri's integrity and knightly values to his face...
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...and indirectly to his friends through his distraught speech after Margrave Gautier's death when the rest of his army is celebrating.
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This is unlike Azure Moon, where the alignment of his personal values with Dimitri's was primarily implied by his actions. He mostly mentions Dimitri's kindness in a lighthearted, disparaging manner there.
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notachaconne · 2 years
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Encrypted Omens
It seems that Aziraphale and Crowley can speak to humans in the local language of wherever they live on earth; so much so that they can pass for a native speaker at any time and in any place they wish. There is exactly one exception, which is that Aziraphale, for some reason, has problems with 1790s French. The reason is an official "wait and see", so apparently there is a reason.
One possibility is that they just say things in a language they speak, and some magic between them and the brain of the human addressed sorts it out, like the Babelfish in H2G2. But Aziraphale having problems with one specific language implies that that's not what's happening: instead, they learn all the languages and actually speak them. Usually, it seems, without effort or imperfection, but nevertheless there is some learning process that can, under some condition or other, go wrong. If there were no learning process, there would be nothing to go wrong, so Aziraphale couldn't have trouble.
This has some interesting implications. For example, if the learning process requires substantial exposure to the language in actual use, then that implies that Aziraphale and Crowley both know at least some languages that are not known to the other angels or demons, unless both Heaven and Hell have done some planning that seems well beyond their capacity as represented in canon. And since A and C have been on Earth for six thousand years, these should include at least one language that no living humans understand.
A good candidate would be the language of Linear A, for example. We know it had a writing system. We know that elements of that writing system were later re-used, in the system called Linear B, to write Mycenaen Greek. But no one has any idea at all how the language worked, and the texts written in it are a complete mystery. There are dead languages that can be decoded fairly well by reference to other, related languages. The Minoan language of Linear A is not one of them.
If Aziraphale and Crowley both remembered the Minoan language, they would have an excellent way of encrypting their communications - a system used by some of those clever humans in the Second World War. The Navajo language worked rather well for this purpose.
Even then, writing is convenient, but a phone call in a language that has never been written down would be even more secure. We don't know any dead language that did not have a writing system, although we can make a lot of very educated guesses, but A&C probably do.
The downside is there are limitations on what you can say about anything that involves new technology without borrowing words from related or unrelated languages. Linear A definitely did not have a word for "helicopter". That process does make it easier to decrypt, especially if the language is inflected. However, the Navajo Code Talkers managed to overcome that problem, so it's not insuperable. They did not have a common word for "Observation Plane", so they agreed to call it an owl, which was easy to remember and perfectly clear in the context of a military radio transmission.
If we grant that even other angels and demons would require some hours or days of exposure to the language in speech in order to learn it, then it's a very solid system even against Heaven and Hell.
The only way to decrypt it would be to ask some of the dead humans, but that would require (a) that humans in the afterlife remember their languages and (b) that angels and demons can meaningfully tell the difference between dead humans and (c) that they can meaningfully communicate with them. In canon, it's really not clear that any of those things are the case. The only hint we have is Crowley's claim about "eternity with Elgar", and I don't think it's very conclusive. So, for fanfic purposes, it's up to you.
So why don't they use this? Well, maybe because it would be incriminating. If you use a language only understood by one other person in the relevant universe, you are intentionally having a private communication with that person. After their head offices have tried to murder or execute them, however, perhaps that becomes a moot point.
[Source for information about Linear A, Linear B, Minoan, and the Navajo Code Talkers: Simon Singh's excellent The Code Book.]
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marjansmarwani · 3 years
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trust that there will be light always waiting behind
8.4k || ao3
TK has gone out of his way to prove to Carlos that being a paramedic is every bit as dangerous as being a firefighter, it seems.
But Carlos will do whatever it takes to find him and bring him home safe, and he always will. Even if it means he needs to face some personal demons on the way. But it's worth it - he refuses to lose TK for anything. ------ A 2x08 speculative fic
All the kudos and thanks to @officereyes for not only convincing me to actually write this but for also brainstorming with me, a lot. 
Will it happen like this? Probably not. But we can dream. All I can ask for is some quality Carlos and his dad content, and maybe Owen not being as shitty as he has been lately. But because I don't trust Fox to give us that, I wrote it.
Title from "Six" by Sleeping at Last
--------------
TK wasn’t sure how things had gone from normal to total nightmare in a matter of seconds, but here they were. 
In this case “here” meant that the pregnant woman they were meant to be helping was not in fact, pregnant and that he and his team were now being held at gunpoint in an empty parking garage. 
So yeah, total nightmare. And the day had started off so well. 
He stood quietly, body tense with his hands up wishing he had been paying more attention; that he had noticed them coming from behind before they had gotten the drop on them. That he had noticed before he and his team were in danger. But he hadn’t and here they were: at gunpoint looking at a critically injured patient they were expected to save with only the gear in their medpacks. Which was especially bad, considering it seemed pretty clear that their survival depended on his. 
He exchanged a glance with Nancy as he pulled open the bag to start grabbing gear, doing his best to shoot her a reassuring smile. All the while he couldn’t help but think about something Carlos had said when he had discussed becoming a paramedic with him. One of the pros, he had noted wryly as he planted a kiss on the top of TK’s head, was that at least his boyfriend being a paramedic instead of a firefighter would mean he would have to worry less. TK had rolled his eyes at the time but now he could say quite firmly that Carlos was wrong. 
After all, he had never been held at gunpoint as a firefighter. 
----------
A surprise party worked best when the person who is supposed to be surprised shows up, Carlos figured. 
If it were anyone else, he might have been amused. But it was TK, who was supposed to be at his parent’s house for his surprise party 40 minutes ago. Tommy and Nancy were going to bring him by after shift but instead, none of them had shown up and Carlos couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. 
He could see the unease growing in the eyes of some of the others too as they made the transition from amused to concerned as the time ticked by. Carlos had tried calling TK almost a dozen times now, only to get his voicemail each time. He knew that Tommy and Nancy had gotten calls too, from Judd and Marjan respectively, with the same result. Now, 40 minutes later it had moved from a feeling to a fact: something was wrong. He could see Owen off to the side of the yard now, speaking lowly into his phone as he tried to get an update from dispatch. His expression was grim and when he ended the call Carlos crossed the yard towards him. 
“Well?” he asked when he drew close enough, “what did they say?” 
Owen shook his head, “They can’t reach the unit, and it hasn’t been in contact for over an hour.” 
Carlos could feel the fear solidifying within him even as he asked the next question, “Were they able to tell you where?” 
“I’m waiting on that info now.” 
Even as he said it his phone dinged with an incoming text and Carlos craned his neck to read the address over Owen’s shoulder. 
“That’s not too far,” he said, “if we leave now we should be there within the hour.” At Owen’s surprised look he raised an eyebrow, “What? You thought I was just going to stay here while you go look for them? Not likely.” 
Owen nodded and managed a small smile, “Let’s go then. We have a paramedic team to find.” 
--------
It took some negotiating but Tommy had managed to ultimately convince the people with guns that their friend would be better off receiving treatment in the ambulance rather than in the back of a van. As they packed up their supplies and got the patient ready to move to the ambulance TK’s mind was racing through all the implications. This move meant that they were planning on relocating, which meant that they would be leaving their last known location. Once they left this parking garage unless they were somehow able to check-in, dispatch would have no way of knowing where they were and they would be officially labeled as MIA. 
Which was less than ideal, but did at least mean that someone would be looking for them. TK pushed the used gauze into a pile, taking care to make sure that his back was turned to their kidnappers as he reached for his neck and pulled at his necklace until the chain came undone. He slid it under the edge of the pile, where it would hopefully be spotted by anyone looking for clues. He looked up to see Nancy and Tommy both giving him curious looks. He met their eyes and mouthed, “Carlos.” 
Once they were reported missing there was a zero percent chance that his boyfriend would not be involved in the search, he knew that without a doubt. It was subtle enough that it would hopefully pass their captors’ notice, but Carlos would recognize it instantly. It was something that would tell him that they had been here, and that they were in danger. Carlos would know that TK wouldn’t have parted with the pendant otherwise. 
Nancy raised an eyebrow and Tommy shot him a quick smile as they finished their prep and got ready to move the patient. When they entered the ambulance and got the patient settled TK crossed to the cab and pulled himself into the driver’s seat, only to look down and get a sinking feeling. While traveling by ambulance would be ultimately better for the patient (and by extension, them) TK had also been banking on the fact that once in the ambulance there would be more opportunities to call for help. 
Which was a hope quickly dashed when he saw that their radio had been ripped out, effectively eliminating the possibility of getting help that way. TK bit his lip and turned his eyes to the road in front of him as the armed man climbed into the cab beside him. “Drive,” he instructed plainly and TK complied, switching on the engine and shifting the vehicle into gear, acutely aware of the gun leveled at his chest the entire time. Getting shot was not an experience he had been looking forward to relieving ever again if he could help it. 
“Where to?” he asked.
“Just drive and I direct you.” 
TK nodded and slowly pulled forward, keeping his eyes trained on the road. 
Maybe, just maybe these people were more reasonable than they seemed and maybe this wouldn’t end in disaster, TK thought to himself as he pulled out of the parking garage and headed to the right as instructed. They just need to keep everything calm until help arrived. Because it would, TK was sure of it. 
--------
The ride there was filled with tense silence, their combined anxiety filling the car to capacity and leaving no room for words. Carlos kept an eye on the phone in his hand, the small blue dot tracing their location and showing their progress as they grew closer and closer to the destination flag. They were almost there. They would have answers soon, one way or another. 
He spared a glance at Owen. The fire captain’s eyes were glued to the road and his hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles shining white against the black upholstery. His jaw was set and his expression was full of a panic Carlos was sure was reflected in his own face. He wondered if Owen was thinking the same thing: things had been going so well. Possibly too well, and now the universe was looking to even the score. Carlos hated the thought — TK deserved all the good things the world had to offer, in his opinion — but it was one he couldn’t help but wonder. He just hoped that no matter what, TK would be okay. No matter what the universe was trying to throw at them as long as he was safe at the end, Carlos could take it. 
Reaching the parking garage had been the easy part, it turned out. He and Owen drove the levels in tense silence, each scanning for any clues, any signs of the missing paramedics. It wasn’t until he saw a black panel van parked haphazardly that Carlos broke the tense silence: “Stop the car!” 
Owen did and Carlos was out his door before the car had even lurched to a complete stop. He ran to the van, heart sinking as he noticed the back doors hanging open. He approached with increased trepidation, not sure what he was hoping to find. When he reached the back and got his first look inside the van, he was pretty sure this wasn’t it. 
Bloody gauze and other medical scraps littered the ground, along with three broken cell phones, all of which seemed to have been smashed. Carlos could feel dread building in his gut as he surveyed the destruction. He sensed Owen come up behind him, heard the low curse he let out at the scene. 
“There’s no saying any of the blood is theirs,” he reminded Carlos as if he could read the frantic thoughts racing through his mind, each possibility worse than the last. 
Carlos bit back a retort — there was no good in reminding Owen that there was no saying it wasn’t either — and was about to ask another question when he noticed something silver poking out from under one of the gauze scraps. He leaned forward to grab it, heart sinking when he pulled it out to reveal a very familiar necklace. 
“Maybe,” he told Owen as he turned, holding up the necklace while the FDNY pendant glinting in the low light of the parking garage, “but they were definitely here.”
Carlos hadn’t been sure it was possible but he was certain he saw the fear in Owen’s eyes grow as he took the necklace from Carlos, running his thumb over the numbers engraved in the pendant. “He left this as a clue,” he said quietly, and Carlos nodded. 
“Which probably means they were taken somewhere else and TK wanted us to know they were here.” 
Owen nodded, pulling his gaze up from the necklace to meet Carlos’s eyes, “We need to find them.”
His voice was tinged in desperation, a feeling Carlos knew well. He nodded and reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone as he took another look at the mess in the back of the van. “We will,” he told Owen, “and I think I know someone that can help.” 
------
Their destination had turned out to be an abandoned restaurant, shuttered by the pandemic. As workspaces went it wasn’t a bad one, if a little dusty, and they got their patient set up on a prep table in no time, falling into their usual rhythm as they returned to this relative familiarity. TK was currently retrieving supplies from one of their cases and running through the situation in his head, separating it into pros and cons. 
Pro: they had come here in an ambulance with their house number clearly painted on it in broad daylight. Once people started looking it shouldn’t be too hard to spot. 
Con: they were deep into a neighborhood known for being an entertainment district. While traffic had decreased significantly overall since the start of the pandemic it was nearly non-existent this early in the day. The odds of a casual observer being in the neighborhood were slim to none, which was not a thought that brought much comfort. 
The man shouted at him to hurry up and TK quickly added another con to his list as he grabbed the last thing and crossed back to the table: their kidnappers were not reasonable people and every moment that passed seemed to push them just that much closer to the edge. Even as he thought it the woman edged closer to Nancy, causing her to tense as the cold metal of the gun was pressed against her side. 
“Hey,” he said firmly, “if you want us to save your friend, you need to let us work. That means you and your guns should be at least 6 feet away. It’s a little hard to focus otherwise.” 
The woman glanced at the man, who was studying TK. TK met his gaze steadily, not looking away until the man nodded and turned to his companion, “Go wait by the door, just in case. They’re not going anywhere.” 
She nodded and TK could breathe easier as she stepped away from Nancy, who visibly relaxed and shot TK a grateful look. Tommy eyed him quickly before returning her focus to the patient. “I appreciate what you’re doing, Strand, but in the future maybe let’s try to not antagonize the criminals with guns, yeah?” 
TK nodded as he worked, “Sorry Cap, I just really don’t like guns. Chalk it up to bad personal experience.” 
Nancy grimaced at the reminder and Tommy nodded, “Then let's keep this calm, no one needs to get shot today. I’m not losing another member of my crew, you both got that?” 
“Yes Cap,” TK and Nancy chorused, lapsing into silence as they worked. Unfortunately, with their supplies, there was only so much they could do. They had had a busy morning before this call had come in and no time to restock in between. They were running low on pretty much everything, and everything they had would have hardly been enough to repair the damage before them on a good day. But, despite everything, he was still a patient and he was still in need of treatment so they did what they always did: everything they could. 
Even as they worked TK made sure to keep one eye on their kidnappers. With each passing minute, they seemed to get more and more restless, and increasingly desperate. The woman even seemed twitchy and TK vaguely wondered if she was going through withdrawal. All the signs were there and if she was that made their situation even worse. TK knew how that felt first hand and knew what it could do to a person’s mental state. The idea that she might be coming down from a high and was currently pointing a gun at them was less than ideal and he mentally added it to his con list. 
Surprisingly, she wasn’t the one to crack first. TK was helping Captain Vega to do what they could to clean and secure the entry wound when the man stepped closer, waving the gun around as he shouted, “What is taking so long? We’ve been here too long, we need to get moving!”  
“Do you want it done right or do you want it done fast?” Tommy asked evenly, her voice calm and level. 
The man scowled at that, but stepped away, “Just, go as fast as you can.”
TK watched him walk away, glancing at the clock above the door and cursing before running his free hand across his face, the hand holding the gun tapping against his leg. 
“He’s spiraling Cap,” TK noted softly, “we might need a plan if you want to avoid that whole one of us getting shot thing.” 
“And we’ll find one,” Tommy agreed, “but for now we stick with the original one: do our jobs and keep calm.” 
TK nodded tersely and continued with the task at hand. It was only a few more moments before his Captain gave a soft curse and he looked over to see her scowling at the bag next to her. “We’re out of saline,” she said in answer to his questioning look, “can you go see if there is any more in that bag by the door?” 
TK nodded and crossed the bag laying on the ground next to the door they had entered. As he grew closer he noticed that the bag wasn’t the only thing by the door: a fire alarm, bright red against the white of the walls and shining like a beacon of hope as he drew closer, was situated on the wall just past the bag. If he could reach it and pull it, dispatch would be notified. A fire company and at least one APD unit would be called and the alarm might be enough of a distraction for them to get out of here and get somewhere safe until help arrived. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder to see that the two armed assailants were not watching him and made up his mind. He was going to pull it, and hope for the best. If it doesn’t work it’ll have been his idea and his idea alone — the rest of his team doesn't need to be involved in this. This was a stupid choice he could make for himself and by himself. 
He stepped forward, hardly daring to breathe as he drew closer. He was just about to reach out his hand when he heard footsteps behind him, loud and fast. He turned in time to see a hand reaching for him, aiming to strike him with the side of the gun. He ducked, the hand missing his target as he dodged the blow. The man came for him again and TK managed to dodge the next blow as well, and the one after that. 
They moved away from the wall and TK had the frantic thought that maybe he could get the gun away from him, maybe he could actually get the upper hand. He reached for it, throwing himself into the man’s space and reaching around for his arm. He leaned closer, so intent on his goal that he didn’t notice the man rummaging on the nearby shelf with his free hand. He didn’t notice his other hand at all until a sharp pain ripped through his side, causing him to release his grip on the other man involuntarily. He stumbled back, hands reaching blindly to the source of the pain coursing through his body. He felt a warm and sticky wetness and was about to lift his hand to examine it when he felt another sharp pain which caused his vision to go white before everything went black and he knew no more. 
-----
Carlos hadn’t had to say too much before his dad had agreed to help out. One of the perks of being a Ranger, Gabriel reminded his son, was getting to choose the cases he focused on from time to time. He wasn’t sure if it was the words he had said or the tone of his voice that had done the convincing but within two minutes his dad had taken down the address and was on his way. He had said he was likely 10 minutes out but each one of those minutes seemed to stretch on endlessly. 
He and Owen waited in tense silence, neither saying a word since Carlos had hung up the phone with the news that a Texas Ranger was on the case. Owen had raised an eyebrow but after Carlos clarified that it was his dad his expression had shifted to something unreadable and Carlos wondered how much Owen knew about his parental situation in regards to TK. 
He didn’t have to wait long to find out, as it happened. About 4 minutes into their wait, after Owen had made a phone call to Gwyn and Carlos had sent out some updates to the team, Owen cleared his throat, turning to Carlos before he spoke. 
“I don’t want to pry, Carlos, but TK mentioned something about you and your parents a few months ago and I just want to know where that stands. I don’t want to make things weird for you, but I also don’t want to accidentally reveal any information you’re not okay with.”
Carlos nodded, feeling a rush of appreciation for the older man’s tact as he responded, “They know I’m gay,” he told Owen plainly, “but they don’t know I’m in a relationship. They’ve never known about any of my relationships, we just don’t talk about it. When TK and I ran into them at the farmer’s market I introduced him as a friend and as far as they know that’s the truth.” Carlos turned to see Owen’s reaction, not sure what to expect. Anger maybe? Frustration or upset? 
When he did turn he didn’t see any of those. Instead, the older man’s face was neutral as he nodded. “They won’t find out otherwise from me,” Owen promised him, and Carlos nodded his thanks, letting out a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding. He was surprised, however, when Owen continued talking. 
“I know it’s not my place to tell you how to interact with your parents,” he began, “but for what it’s worth, I would never want TK to keep something that was important to him from me because he was worried it might make me upset or uncomfortable. From everything you and TK have said about your parents, I wouldn’t be surprised if they felt the same way.” 
Carlos could feel Owen’s gaze on him, steady and reassuring despite everything, and he nodded. He could feel Owen’s words rattling inside his head, but there was no way to process them right now, not when the fear of possibly losing TK and the worry that his danger-prone boyfriend was missing was so soundly occupying the forefront of his thoughts. 
He was still trying to parse through it all when he heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. He stood as he recognized his dad’s truck, crossing to meet him as he pulled to a stop. “Thank you,” he told his dad as he stepped out, “I really appreciate this.” 
“Anything for you, mijo,” his dad assured him with a smile, “all you have to do is ask. Which you rarely do, which tells me this is pretty important.”
There’s something else there, in his dad’s words and his expression, that tells Carlos that his dad knows there is something Carlos isn’t telling him, but he ignores it. It didn’t matter right now — nothing mattered except for finding TK. “Still,” he says instead before turning to Owen who has been hovering at the back of the van. “This is TK’s dad, Captain Owen Strand of the 126.” 
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Captain,” Gabriel says with a nod, “I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“Likewise,” Owen replies quickly before diving right in. “Were you able to find out anything yet?”
“Actually yes,” Gabriel admitted and Carlos tensed at the expression on his dad’s face. It was the one he used when he tried to break bad news gently. “We think we may have identified the suspects. There was a bank robbery this morning and the suspects fled in a van matching the description Carlos gave me. There were three suspects — two who entered the bank and one getaway driver — and bank security thinks that they hit one of them while exchanging fire as they fled.” 
There was so much information trying to squeeze into Carlos’s head now. None of it was good but one fact jumped out amongst the others. The suspects had exchanged fire with the security guards which meant…
“They’re armed,” he said tersely, the dread he had already been feeling threatening to overtake him now, “the suspects are armed.” 
“And they needed the paramedics to treat their partner,” his dad agreed grimly.
“Do we know anything about what kind of shape the injured suspect was in?” Owen asked and Carlos could tell that his mind had gone to the same place his own had: if the paramedics were not able to save the injured bank robber, things didn’t look great for them. Their best hope was for a minor injury but judging by the amount of bloody gauze in the back of the van and the fact that it was a gunshot wound the chances for that were slim to non-existent. 
Gabriel shook his head, “No, and the security cams in this parking garage are just for show, I already had someone check.” 
So TK and his team were being held at gunpoint, being asked to provide medical care that should be done in a trauma room, and there was no way of saying where they had been taken or if they were okay. Carlos could feel his chest tighten in panic as the hopelessness of the situation set in. 
“Are there any leads?” he asked, not even bothering to hide the desperation in his voice. 
“Well, they did leave in an ambulance, and that’s not exactly subtle,” his dad reminded him bracingly. “We’ve put out a bulletin — every cop, sheriff, and ranger will be looking for it. We’ll find them, mjio.” 
Carlos nodded because he didn’t trust himself to speak and because he desperately needed it to be true. They needed to find them, and TK needed to be okay. Nothing short of that would be enough. 
----------
TK knew he was somewhere he shouldn’t be, but he couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
There were voices nearby, but TK couldn’t process any of them. Some of them sounded familiar but others were foreign; unknown with a hostile edge. He tried to open his eyes, to try and take stock of his surroundings but all he could see were vague and blurry shapes. He thought that someone called his name but he couldn’t bring himself to answer. The only thing he knew for sure was that he was in pain, and he was in danger. 
The pull of the darkness was stronger than any fear or curiosity, however, and it washed back over him without hesitation, pulling him back under.
---------
Riding in his dad’s truck with his dad and Owen Strand would have been awkward on a good day but today, with his mind full of fear for TK and the tension of the secret between them all, it was unbearable. Carlos couldn’t stop his leg from bouncing anxiously against the floor — the exact same nervous tick he teased TK about on an almost daily basis. The irony wasn’t lost on him, or Owen it seemed as the man leaned forward from the back seat to put a steadying hand on his shoulder, empathetic eyes meeting his own in the rearview. Gabriel kept up a steady stream of one-sided chatter, undaunted by the lack of response from his traveling companions. Every once in a while his radio would crackle to life and Carlos could swear that he could feel his heart seize each and every time. 
But every time it was the same: no news, no one had spotted the ambulance yet. Crime scene techs had scoured the van and surrounding area, pulling fingerprints and looking for anything else that could give them a lead on who these people were and where they may have gone. Carlos knew all too well that criminals, especially ones involved in crimes that took as much planning as a bank robbery did, were creatures of habit. If they had somewhere they felt was safe and secluded enough, they would go there. It was up to them to find it.  
Carlos knew that his anxiety had not gone unnoticed by his father. He sent him surreptitious glances from time to time, in between radio updates and idle chatter. Finally, he asked a question: “You really care about this TK, don’t you?” 
The opening was there, Carlos could see it. A part of his mind told him his dad must too, to open the door so plainly. But the fear of what could happen, of what he has convinced himself he stands to lose is too much. There was already so much fear in his heart from this nightmare he was trapped in, he can’t stand any more. So he nodded and simply answered, “Yeah, I do.” 
He tried not to notice the disappointment and pity he could feel from all sides as Owen met his eyes again in the mirror. But his boyfriend’s father stayed silent as promised and Carlos looked away, turning his attention to the window instead. He knew he needed to tell them, he had been coming closer to making that decision on his own with each passing day. Now he just had to hope that they both survived this one and that there would still be something to tell at the end of it all. 
His pessimistic spiral was interrupted by the familiar crackle of the radio. He listened absently as his dad grabbed it and at the words that came in response. At least he was only listening absently until some of the words processed in his mind: “Ambulance 126 has been spotted in an alley off W. Fourth St.” 
His heart was working on beating its way out of his chest now. He sat upright, looking around frantically to get their bearings. They were only a few blocks east of West Fourth, they could be there in minutes. He relayed this to his dad who nodded before flipping on his lightbar and heading in the direction of the address provided. As they drove Carlos sent his desperate hopes out to the universe. Let them all be okay, let them actually be in or at least nearby the ambulance. Above all, let TK be safe. 
As they sped through the city that was the thought that Carlos played on a loop in his head. Let TK be safe, and everything else would be fine 
----------
TK came to awareness slowly and at first, the only thing he was truly aware of was the feeling of someone repeatedly tapping his cheek. 
“Cut it out,” he whined and heard a relieved sigh in response. 
“He’s awake,” a voice — Nancy? — declared and TK tried to open his eyes. It took several tries but he managed, painstakingly blinking them open to reveal the worried faces of his Captain and his partner staring down at him. 
“Hey guys,” he said as he tried to pull himself into a sitting position, “why the long faces?” 
Captain Vega looked unimpressed with his efforts and pushed him back down onto the ground. “Don’t try to play nice with me Strand after you did that. Of all the reckless, foolhardy things. I really thought you had more sense than that.” 
TK frowned at her, trying to piece together all the uncategorized shapes and sensations floating through his hazy mind, “What do you…” he began, but broke off when a sharp pain ripped through his side and Nancy pressed gauze down onto his side, “oh.” 
It was coming back now. 
“Yeah, ‘oh,’” his Captain scoffed, “what were you thinking TK?” 
“I was thinking that they were getting more and more unhinged the longer we were here and that if I had been able to pull the fire alarm dispatch would be notified and it would have given us enough of a distraction we could have maybe saved ourselves,” he said defensively, trying hard to sound assertive when even just the dim lights of the kitchen were causing explosions of pain in his head. 
“And how did that go for you?” 
“Not great,” he admitted. “How long was I out?” 
“Not too long,” Nancy told him as she lifted up the gauze to check on his stab wound, “and I’ve got the bleeding slowed but this wound is pretty deep. Not to mention the knife did not look particularly sterile so this needs treatment, soon.” She nodded towards the abandoned blood-covered chef’s knife on the ground that the man must have grabbed during their scuffle, and TK groaned. 
“So probable infection,” he muttered, “great.” 
“Not to mention with the width of that knife likely some significant damage,” Tomy reminded him, her unimpressed look holding firm.
“It’s not like I had any way of knowing he was going to find a knife, to be fair.” 
“To be fair, I would think the guns should have been enough of a deterrent,” Tommy countered. “Wasn’t getting shot once enough for you?” 
TK shifted uncomfortably under his Captain’s gaze and was about to fire back a retort when Nancy interrupted, “Can you both knock it off? Yes, that was incredibly stupid TK and if you weren’t already hurt I probably would have hit you myself. But it was also pretty brave, Cap, and he meant well. Either way, arguing about it is not going to change the fact that we’re still being held hostage and TK is still hurt so maybe it would be best if you both stopped, for my sanity if nothing else.” 
She gave them both a hard look and TK did his best approximation of a nod with his throbbing head, not eager to be on his partner’s bad side. Tommy nodded as well, though the look she gave TK promised that they would be revisiting this later, assuming there was a later. He cleared his throat and glanced towards the table where their patient was still laid out, “How is he?” 
“Stable, for now,” Tommy answered, following his gaze. “He’s going to need more blood than we can give him though: his friends don’t know his blood type and we only have so much O neg on hand.” 
TK nodded, reading in between the lines of what his Captain wasn’t saying: he didn’t have much longer and if he didn’t, neither did they. “What are the others up to?” 
“Arguing,” Nancy said softly, “about what to do with us.” 
TK turned his gaze to them and though he couldn’t hear their words, he had a feeling he knew what they were saying and it wasn’t good. His suspicions were confirmed a few moments later when they approached. 
“That’s enough of that,” the man informed them, gesturing roughly to where Nancy was tending to TK’s stab wound, “get away from him.” 
“He needs—” Nancy tried to argue, but TK put a hand on her arm and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile before holding out a hand for the supplies.
“It’s okay,” he told her, “I can handle it from here.” 
She didn’t look impressed or convinced, but a wave of the gun prompted her to hand them over and pull herself up from the floor, stepping in the direction indicated by the woman. The man looked down at TK with disdain, “You’re done causing trouble,” he announced, “Because if you do it again, I will start shooting, but I won’t be aiming at you. Got it?” 
TK swallowed and nodded. What else could he really say to that? He wasn’t about to risk his team’s safety for anything. 
“Good,” the man declared with a nod, “glad we’re on the same page.” He turned to Nancy and Tommy now, “Is he stable enough to be moved right now?” 
“He’s as stable as we can make him with what we have on hand,” Tommy told him calmly. 
“Then we’re moving,” he declared, “we have another van stashed nearby. We’re going to move out,” he gestured towards himself and his companion, “and we’re taking our friend and this one with us.” 
When all eyes turned to him TK realized “this one” meant him with a start. Which was...less than ideal, but at least he would know that the other two were out of danger and could probably get help. 
“Absolutely not,” Tommy said in her firmest tone, “he’s injured, he needs treatment.” 
“Which is why I know he’ll be no trouble,” the man countered, “plus he’s a paramedic, isn’t he? He can treat himself. I’ll let you give him some supplies, I’m not unreasonable.” 
TK could practically see Tommy’s anger rising from his position on the floor and he spoke up before his Captain could say anymore, “It’s okay Cap,” he said, hoping his voice sounded more sure out loud than it did to his own ears, “I’ll be fine.” 
Tommy turned her gaze to him and was more likely than not going to tell him how many ways that was not happening, but any arguments she may have made were abruptly cut off by the sound of the door banging open and a barrage of police officers entering the scene, guns raised. 
TK let himself sag against the wall in relief as he saw their two assailants surrounded and even more when he spotted a familiar gaze in the crowd, filled with fear and worry as it grew closer to him. 
“Carlos,” he said quietly, managing to pull a small smile to his face. 
“Hey Ty,” Carlos said roughly, reaching out to run a hand through his hair even as he surveyed him for damage. His eyes widened and his jaw clenched as he spotted the bloody gauze poking out from underneath his hand just above his hip. 
He reached for it, but TK called his name softly before shaking his head ever so slightly, “leave it be, I’ll be fine. I’m just so happy to see you.”  
Carlos looked like he wanted to argue but he bit his lip, turning instead to the crowd behind them. TK followed his gaze and froze when he spotted Gabriel Reyes amongst the officers. He pulled away from Carlos ever so slightly, “Your dad…” he began, but Carlos shook his head, gripping TK hands tighter, not letting him pull away. 
“That doesn’t matter right now,” he told him, “all that matters is that you’re safe.” 
TK had so many questions, but his head was swimming. He wasn’t sure if it was the blood loss or the head injury, but it was getting harder and harder to follow a fluid thought. He opened his mouth to try and ask any of them but was saved from the trouble of doing that by his dad appearing at his side, expression anxious as he kneeled down. He looked him over before calling over his shoulder for a medic and TK tried really hard to follow what was happening but it was becoming so much harder with each passing moment. 
He was so disoriented he almost missed the commotion that erupted around them. All he knew was that Carlos’s hand was suddenly gone from his and he blinked several times, forcing himself to focus on what was happening around them. The woman had somehow managed to free herself of the officer cuffing her and had managed to grab her gun again. She was waving it frantically and shouting, but her words were a blur to TK. All he could focus on now was the fact that Carlos was closest to her, and that he was stepping closer to her. 
That he was standing firmly between her and TK. 
The rest of the world might be a blur of noise and light but this was clear as day. Carlos was stepping towards the woman, hands raised as he tried to speak calmly to her. But TK knew in his heart that he had been right about her state and knew that there would be no reasoning with her. But he also knew that Carlos would try, because that’s what Carlos did. He helped people, no matter what. 
The next moment happened in a blink of an eye but TK saw it as if in slow motion. Carlos took a step forward, his soothing voice still speaking to her, still vibrating its way through the air as another sound erupted between them, eclipsing Carlos’s voice. 
It was the sound of a gun firing and TK could do nothing but watch in horror as Carlos’s stride faltered before he stumbled. He could do nothing but try to call out his name with whatever breath he still had in his lungs as Carlos went down, and he could do nothing but feel his heart shatter when he didn’t get up. 
TK tried to go to him, tried to push himself off the ground. He needed to help, he needed to save Carlos. But his body wouldn’t listen. The pain in his side sliced through him again with a vengeance and the last thing TK saw was Carlos’s unmoving body before his vision faded to black and he knew no more; left with the worst sight he had ever seen in his life as company as he fell into the darkness.  
-------
Carlos woke slowly, bits and pieces of his surroundings making themselves known to him and helping to fill in the blanks in his mind: he was in the hospital, he had been hurt, he had been searching for TK…
And that was the thought that brought him back to consciousness. He opened his eyes with a gasp, feeling hands on him instantly. “TK,” he tried to ask, “is he…”
“Relax, mijo,” his dad told him soothingly, “TK is safe. He just woke up from his own surgery a short while ago. His dad assures me that he’s fine, and asking about you.” 
Carlos took a deep breath and willed his heartbeat to slow. TK was alive, they had found him. He was hurt, but he was doing okay and Owen was with him. That did answer a lot of his questions, but there were still so many left. Starting with, “What happened?” he asked his dad. 
Gabriel settled into the chair at the side of the bed, leaving a hand on Carlos’s arm as he studied him, “What do you remember, Carlos?”
“I remember TK and his team going missing, calling you, and finding them. After that, not much.” 
Gabriel nodded and his hand on Carlos’s arm tightened, “One of the kidnappers, the woman, went a little crazy when your colleagues tried to bring her in. She freed herself from the officer’s trying to cuff her and you were closest. Well,” he amended, “you and TK. But you put yourself between them and tried to talk her down. It…” his dad broke off, clearing his throat and continuing with a thick voice, “it didn’t go well. You were shot, Carlos, right in front of me. I was so scared I was going to lose you, mijo. You cannot scare me like that, I am an old man.” 
Despite it all, Carlos chuckled, “Please, you are not old dad. There are 20-year-olds older than you.” 
His teasing didn’t put a dent into his father’s upset, and Carlos sobered, “I’m sorry,” he said instead, “that can’t have been easy. I know what it’s like to see someone you care about hurt like that. I’m sorry you had to see that, dad.”
Gabriel shook his head, leaning forward again, “You have nothing to apologize for Carlos,” he said firmly, “you only did what you thought was best, what you needed to do to protect the man you love.” 
Carlos’s breath caught in his throat and his eyes widened, but his dad held his gaze, a small smile playing on his lips, “You are not subtle, mijo. I had a feeling since this all started, but the moment I saw you with him, I knew.” 
“I’m sorry I kept this from you and mom,” Carlos apologized softly, “that I lied to you when we met at the Farmer’s Market.” 
“Stop apologizing Carlos,” Gabriel instructed, his tone matching his son’s, “you have nothing to apologize for. If anyone should be apologizing I think it should be me. Clearly, I did something or said something that made you feel like you couldn’t share this and for that I am so, so sorry. I never wanted you to feel like you had to hide anything from us, especially not this. I’m...” he trailed off and Carlos was surprised to see tears in his dad’s eyes, “I’m just sorry,” Gabriel finished, “I need you to know that. That and the fact that both your mother and I love you so much, no matter what.”  
“I do know that,” Carlos assured him, “I never doubted that for a second.” 
His father smiled at him and Carlos could feel a weight that had been subtly resting on him for nearly 10 years lifted. He met his father’s eyes and returned the smile. 
“Dad,” he said clearly, with a confidence that had been so many years coming, “I have a boyfriend. His name is TK Strand, and I love him. He means everything to me.” 
“I’m happy for you Carlos,” his father told him, a soft smile covering his face, “you deserve nothing but the most wonderful love the world has to offer, and I hope this boy can give you that.” 
“He can,” Carlos assured him, “he does.” 
----------
TK was staring moodily at the dark ceiling of his hospital room. Yes, he was beyond grateful to have been rescued and that his teammates were safe. They had just been by actually — both women very clear that they would stab him themselves next time if he ever tried to do something so reckless again — and he had been happy to see them. Just as he had his parents and his friends, all who had stopped by before the doctor informed them all that he needed rest. 
That was all wonderful and he was grateful, but the one person he wanted to see more than anyone else — that he needed to see — was in a room of his own on the other side of the hospital. He had been assured by multiple reliable sources that he was fine: awake and alert and recovering nicely from his gsw (fuck, Carlos had been shot. That was a thought and a memory that was going to haunt him for a while, he knew it). But he had been denied any and all requests of seeing him with his own eyes due to his concussion — hence the dark room as light still wreaked havoc on his head — and the antibiotics slowly dripping their way into his system in an effort to cut off any possible infection from the dirty knife blade before it had a chance to take root. Which, as a paramedic, he recognized was reasonable. If it were anyone else he would have recommended the same. But it wasn’t anyone else. It was him and it was Carlos, and TK needed to see him with his own eyes before he could believe that he was really alright. 
Since that was beyond his control, that left him with pouting about it in the dark, which is what he intended to do about it for the foreseeable future.  
A soft knock at his door interrupted his plans and when he turned his head in the direction of the door, his breath caught in his throat. 
“Carlos,” he breathed, his name emerging from his lips like a prayer as the other man gave him a small, tired smile from his wheelchair in the door. Behind him stood his father, looking at TK with a smile that told him everything he needed to know. 
He waited as Gabriel pushed the wheelchair into the room, reaching out for Carlos, taking his hand in his own as soon as they were close enough to touch. He moved to the side of the bed, leaning over and meeting Carlos in a soft, tender kiss that he hoped did something to relay even a portion of the emotions he was feeling. They pulled apart and he met Carlos’s eyes, studying them and him for any signs that he wasn’t okay, but his study was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat. He looked up, startled, to see Carlos’s father watching them with a bemused expression. 
“I will leave you both alone,” he promised, “but first I just wanted to take a moment to meet you properly, TK. I am very glad you are okay.” 
“Thank you, sir,” TK said warmly, still clutching Carlos’s hand. 
Gabriel shook his head, “None of that ‘sir’ business now,” he told him, “as far as I’m concerned we’re family now. Call me Gabriel, please.” 
“Well Gabriel, TK said lightly, “I am happy to meet you, officially.” 
He grinned at Carlos, he matched his expression without a second thought. Gabriel watched the pair of them, smile growing. 
“I would love to talk more with you TK, take some time to get to know you, but I know when I’m not wanted so we’ll take care of that later. Just remember Carlos,” he told his son, voice suddenly firm, “you’re injured too. Don’t overdo it.” 
“Yes dad, thanks.” 
Gabriel gave them both a smile and with an affectionate squeeze of Carlos’s shoulder, he was gone. 
“So,” TK said as he watched the older man walk away, “you told him.” 
Carlos scoffed, “I didn’t have to. He spent all day with me, looking for you. He figured it out pretty quickly.” He paused here, swallowing thickly as he looked back at TK, “God Ty, I was so scared. I don’t know what I would have done…” 
TK cut him off, pressing a hand against his face, “Hey, none of that. We’re both okay, and that’s what matters.” 
But even as he said it, he could feel his voice waver. The last memory he had before blacking out of Carlos collapsing after being shot would be forever ingrained in his memories, a vision he was sure would come back to haunt him for many nights to come. Carlos leaned forward now, placing a hand on top of TK’s and pulling it away from his face so he could twist their fingers together. 
“Same goes for you,” he said firmly, as if he knew where TK’s mind had gone. Because of course he did. It was Carlos, and TK knew there was no part of him that was a mystery to the other man.   
“Hey, remember when you said being a Paramedic would be less dangerous than being a firefighter?” TK quipped in an attempt to lighten the mood and Carlos rolled his eyes. 
“Only you could manage to prove that wrong,” Carlos fired back, his voice a blend of fondness and exasperation. “Maybe you can try not to keep proving that wrong though, for my sake?”
“I guess I could try,” TK said softly, “if only for you. I love you an awful lot, you know.” 
Carlos leaned forward and pulled him into a kiss with more heat than before. It was warm and bright and so full of everything TK had been so afraid of losing for good. When they pulled apart, both breathing heavier and both leaning in, resting their foreheads on each other, Carlos responded, “I love you so much, Tyler Kennedy. Don’t you ever get kidnapped on me again.” 
“I’ll do my best,” TK promised, “but I know that if I do, you’d come find me.” 
“And I always will,” Carlos assured him, squeezing their linked hands, “no matter what.” 
144 notes · View notes
bookwyrminspiration · 2 years
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TW// Drugs n such
you asked for it smh, but I've been thinking a lot about that one scene in Neverseen in Exilliums healing tent (or whatever its called)
I had a whole rant here about what the implication of this 'serum' might mean in the lost cities but it kinda spiraled into nothing so I'm cutting it out. (main point was just the mood towards drugs, Shannon has had previous mentions of both alcohol and drunk people, so (though im not saying she should incorporate this into a middle grade book series a t a l l), Id be curious to see her take on drugs, (if they exist and how they effect people and the elven population // how is it treated? Is it looked down upon or even forbidden (why we might only see it in Exillium territories) or is it so normal and inconsequential that its just part of the norm in the lost cities?
but anyway, back to the thing I was originally thinking of - i feel like this is something rarely talked about but pls tell me I'm not the only one who has picked up on how weird Keefe's relationship with sedatives is. It's such a contrast to Sophie, where she's openly opposed to taking any type of sedative he seems to be really open to them, in fact in Unlocked every time he's knocked out by a sedative his language is pretty much always positive, like he really enjoys it. This probably just ties into something you mentioned a while back about Keefe and dealing with stuff by running away but I find it really interesting.
(Sorry if this is an uncomfortable ask to get, I know not everyone is comfortable with drug talk and I hope this Isn't overstepping a line.)
you're fine, don't worry! no lines overstepped. I appreciate you including the warning at the top, even though I'm alright talking with the subject. if there's something I'm uncomfortable with, that's not on you to know or worry about because I haven't shared any of my specific triggers, and the more anxiety-inducing ones are so specific to my personal experiences that I highly doubt they'll ever have any effect on any conversation ever. but I do genuinely appreciate your concern <33
I don't remember specifically what I asked for, but this is a topic I hadn't even realized was so fascinating, so thank you for bringing it up! That scene is kinda funny (as in weird) looking back on it, but Keefe was completely out of it and being a lot more vulnerable than he probably wanted to be due to his state of mind. I think it was intended to mirror something like anesthesia or laughing gas (note: in my brief research trying to find info about the boobrie dude I made a mental comparison between tam and sandor, so I'm just making note of it here so I don't forget), at least as far as Keefe's reaction goes. I think part of this was strategic so that we could get some information and vulnerability (although unwillingly) from Keefe and get that first glimpse of "the boy beneath all that swagger" (paraphrased from Sophie). But that's not what your ask is about so I'll move on before I get even more distracted.
wine, at the very least, exists in the lost cities. we've got fizzleberry wine, which is blamed by some for Caprise Redek's accident. Aside from that we've seen no mention of it, as this is a middle grade series about a young teen girl in a fantasy world, and in a "perfect" world there isn't a lot of talk about recreational substances. And I agree with you! this isn't to say that I think drugs and alcohol should be this huge thing in keeper or that it even needs to be address, just commenting that the attitude the general public has towards substances and intoxication is likely even more severe in the elven world, as has been the pattern with other things. We can tell from Caprise's incident that their wine functions similar if not identical to ours, as it was said to have impaired her motor control and thinking, hence how she fell off that balcony. So I think we could assume that drugs in the Lost Cities would be similar to those in the Forbidden Cities in function. Not in name though, likely named after some strange elven thing. Though if we go with the wine example, Fizzleberry is likely an exact description of what it is--the wine probably fizzes and is made from berries.
the elves highly value the mind, so I anticipate that anything that messes with it past beneficial medicinal uses prescribed by a physician are frowned upon. they think of your mental capacity and capabilities as integral to who you are, and composure as essential. drugs take that away and can impair your reasoning, hence my conclusion they're not well liked. however, I propose that this mindset is mostly those who are very proper, for example Lord Cassius. Dex was more than ready to take concentration serums of his own making--and convinced Sophie to take one (note: dex has almost killed both Sophie and Fitz. that can't be fun to know)--which directly messed with his limbic center. However, as he was raised in an apothecary and is already a little less in line with all other elvin values, I don't think him being an outlier is enough to completely through out my assumption. overall: looked down upon because it messes with the mind and the mind is crucial to elven society, and the way it impairs your thinking would make you a lesser person
and you're right! keefe's relationship with sedative is weird. we have this teenager who grew up without stable supports or a loving family having very little regard for how substances will effect his body, prioritizing the possible--not guaranteed, possible--benefits over all the risks. this is not to say drug use is inherently bad, just that the situation he's in makes me very cautious because he feels more at risk of falling into bad habits. also, your observation about tying that into him running away is very astute! i've talked a lot about him running away from his problems in more ways that physical, and I think this is an excellent example of that
he doesn't like his reality, the world he lives in when he's awake and aware and lucid. it's full of all these problems and people and he doesn't know what to do. but when he's asleep? he doesn't have to deal with any of that. he doesn't have to do anything, but he's also troubled enough and anxious enough that sleep doesn't always come easy, and he can be plagued by nightmares. but those sedatives mess with his mind and not only make him sleep faster and longer, but they can mess with your dreams and alter the reality you experience while asleep. i guess it could be a way of trying to take control of a situation he had very little control over, especially in unlocked when everyone else was trying to fix things without consulting him. with his waking world that bad, of course he's gonna like anything that takes him away from it.
it stands out especially when we switch to him as a narrator and he's praising these things and wanting to be sedated, as we've spent so long in Sophie's head and she's so against them from the trauma she experienced in the first book. that could mean his attitude them is more jarring just because we're used to Sophie and it wouldn't seem as dramatic if we'd switched from say, Fitz's head. but that doesn't mean there's nothing here.
i think i've said it before, but Keefe doesn't have any healthy coping strategies right now that he consistently relies on. his deference towards avoidance and making the problem go away, even if it's just in feeling induced by drugs, is a more extreme example of how he doesn't know how to just exist without hurting.
I jumped around a bit between topics so if I missed something you wanted to talk about more in depth please feel free to send another ask! Keefe's relationship to experiencing reality is fascinating and covers things from denial and refusal to change all the way to drugs and literally altering the way his brain perceives reality. This boy is on a collision course with destruction in both body and mind.
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warrioreowynofrohan · 3 years
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Conservatism in Brandon Sanderson’s Writings; or, Reflections on Revolution in the Cosmere
I’ve only read The Stormlight Archive and Warbreaker, so this is based on an incomplete picture, but the combination of those two have given me an impression of Sanderson’s ideas on social structures, appropriate and inappropriate responses to institutional injustice, and revolution. These ideas strike me as being essentially conservative; I’m tempted to say Burkean (hence my alternate title), but I don’t know Burke’s writings well enough to be sure if that’s correct.
To be clear: this is not a ‘call-out’ post. I personally disagree with some of Sanderson’s themes, but I’m trying to understand, engage with, and debate them, not flatly condemn them.
My interpretations here are primarily based on two storylines: Warbreaker, and Kaladin and Moash’s arcs in Words of Radiance. Both of these two storylines, and their resolutions, seem grounded in the following political ideas:
1) Injustice and cruelty are the result of bad, or flawed, people; not of bad systems. And people can change. The solution to a system that seems unjust is to improve the people within it, not to tear it down.
2) Those who seek revolution are basically self-serving and vengeful, not interested in the good of others or that of society.
3) Radicals and those who seek revolution have a blinkered political perspective, flattening societies and people into stereotypes rather than acknowledging their complexity.
1. People, not systems
For the first point: both Alethkar and the world of Warbreaker have systems that are fundamentally founded on entrenched and institutionalized inequality. In Alethkar it is the division between lighteyes and darkeyes (and the different ranks thereof). In Warbreaker it is the position of Returned, who can only exist by daily taking life-force/spirit from others - typically from the poor. Nonetheless, the narrative justifies the maintenance of both systems, primarily on the basis that the ruling classes contain good people (e.g. Dalinar, Adolin; Siri, Susebron, Lightsong); one of the major themes in TWOK and WOR revolves around forcing Kaladin to recognize that some lighteyes are good, and others, like Elhokar, have the desire and capacity to improve.
The basic political conflict is, to me, expressed by two lines following Kaladin’s (second) defeat of a Shardbearer. The first is Dalinar’s, when he states what Kaladin should do about institutionalized discrimination against darkeyes: “You want to change that?...Be the kind of man that others admire, whether they be lighteyed or dark...That will change the world.” This fundamentally rubs me the wrong way - it’s the Booker T. Washington theory of how to address racial inequality, and history has proven time and time and time again that it doesn’t work. If Kaladin did that, people would say, “Wow, that Kaladin, what an unusually exceptional darkeyes!” and continue to treat the rest of darkeyes just the same.
The second line is Kaladin’s when he refuses the shardblade that would make him lighteyed: “I don’t want my life to change because I’ve become a lighteyes. I want the lives of people like me...like I am now...to change.” This, I completely agree with - but later events would suggest the narrative may not. (And the fact that Kaladin doesn’t used his increased status in later books to push for change on this front frustrates me.)
To give another example: when Sadeas treats bridgemen as cannon fodder and their lives as utterly disposable, the problem is treated as being that Sadeas is a bad person (and facing certai. tactical constraints) - not the fact that Sadeas and the other brightlords has the power to treat darkeyes’ lives as disposable in the first place. When Kaladin is imprisoned for challenging Amaram to a duel - in effect, imprisoned for being darkeyed, since a high-nahn lighteyes would not have been punished for issuing such a challenge - this is treated as Kaladin’s fault, not the fault of a system that treats him as having fundamentally less worth than Amaram.
There’s no focus in the books on getting rid of the unjust system - by any means, violent or non-violent, bottom-up or top-down - just on having the ruling class become better people, which is expected to alleviate some problems without fundamentally altering the social structure.
2. Revolutionaries are selfish
The most open expression of this idea is in TWOK, where Moash says outright that he’d like to keep the same system but flipped, with darkeyes on the top and lighteyes on the bottom. Vivenna’s endeavours towards revolution are also portrayed as driven by bigotry against Hallandran culture. And Kalladin’s desire to remove Elhokar is shown as driven by a desire for revenge, with any larger goals or motives being mere rationalization. Likewise, the main antagonist of Warbreaker is shown as having destructive, not constructive goals.
While this is ceratinly true of some revolutionary movements, in Sanderson’s works it is shown as invariably true, with no revolutionary characters being driven by genuine justice or the desire to improve people’s lives. This provides a stark contrast with the number of virtuous characters who are shown depicting or upholding the existing social systems.
3. Radicals see society in shallow and stereotypical terms
This is a big part of the characterization of both Vivenna and Kaladin. For Vivenna, the main example is that she initially sees her people - from a largely rural nation - as fundamentally virtuous, and is horrified by the ‘criminals’ they have to live among in the slum. When she’s made to see that those ‘criminals’ are in fact members of her people, she sees them as victims tragically corrupted by the terrible (urban) culture they’ve immigrated to. She generalizes; she doesn’t want to recognize the fact that some of her people prefer life in the city - despite marginalization and poverty - to life in their country of birth, and wouldn’t want to return. She spends most of the book being gradually forced to break down her stereotypes of her culture as good and Hallandran society as corrupt.
Kaladin, for his part, continually stereotypes lighteyes. In his youth, it’s a kind of internalized caste-ism - he’s constantly disappointed and mistreated by the lighteyes around him, and he keeps on thinking that the people doing it aren’t ‘real’ lighteyes, ‘real’ lighteyes are noble and honorable and he’ll get to fight for one someday. After being betrayed one too many times, he switches to thinking that all lighteyes, invariably, are corrupt, exploitative and evil; it takes a lot to get him to trust Dalinar, and for well after that he continues stereotyping every lighteyes he meets (Adolin, Renarin, Shallan) as spoiled and uncaring even after evidence to the contrary. Even in Oathbringer stereotypes are his default reaction to lighteyes he doesn’t know. He also tends to ignore the fact of major differences in variations in status and life with the two main castes, by nahn and dahn. It’s treated as one of his more persistent character flaws, and contrasted with the more open and merit-based attitudes of the main lighteyed characters.
I’m not really comfortable with this portrayal. Kaladin’s entire life, and everything he’s suffered, have been defined and determined by being lighteyes. He doesn’t have the luxury of being ‘eye-colour-blind’ . Does he make invalid assumptions? Yes, especially about Shallan. But Kaladin thinking of Adolin as a spoiled brat and Adolin calling Kaladin ‘bridgeboy’ are not the same kind of thing; calling someone from a discriminated-against group (who is an adult of about your age) ‘boy’ has implications that both the author and reader are aware of; it is, intentionally or not, an expression of power and superiority, and it is quite justified that it would guve Kaladin a negative impression of Adolin! More broadly, mistrusting lighteyes is basically a trauma-induced defense mechanism for Kaladin, and understandable given what he’s been through. Adolin’s thinking, early in Words of Radiance, that “he was all for treating men with respect and honor regardless of eye shade, but the Almighty had put some men in command and others beneath them; it was simply the natural order of things” is to my mind far more offensive than Kaladin’s personality hostility to lighteyes, but the only main character who the narrative treats/criticizes as being bigoted on the basis of eye color is Kaladin. Adolin’s treated by the narrative as a great person who Kaladin needs to be nicer to, and the aforementioned attitude is never addressed again; it’s not part of his character arc like Kaladin’s view of lighteyes is.
In short, Sanderson’s works are strongly grounded in the idea that the quality of a society is grounded in the personal goodness of its people (including the goodness of its ruling class) more than in the creation of just and equal social structures; and that attributting a society’s problems to structures that create and perpetuate injustice rather than to the choices of individuals is basically wrongheaded. I agree with him on the importance of individual goodness and choices; I disagree with his minimization of the need to dismantle unjust social structures.
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Honestly, I don't understand what some GA supporters, Gillovny haters and David haters, which I believe are mixed groups, against David and a friendship, albeit at a distance and occasionally with Gillian. At SM, the haters draw him as if he were the same arrogant actor who was portrayed in the 90s, who didn't have a friendly off-screen relationship with Gillian (hello, they are both very introverted and worked 17 hours together. How much could they handle this work overload? (to be continued..)
 Are these followers afraid that GA is getting involved with a "rapist/misogynist", just because his have a relationship with a 27-years-old girl? Why did David write about incest is his last book? Why did he say that he wouldn't like to with Gillian on anything but The X Files? Why was he openly a sex addict? And this arguments being based entirely on facts and gossip from 15/20 /25 years ago?
People draw David as if he were a maniac who can attack Gillian at any time, and that she doesn't know his true nature, so he has a relationship. It's amazing how people make assumptions based on the past things and don't even bother to keep up with what they're doing today. And even worse: they think they can govern your personal lives. I saw it from Gillovnys in the past, and now i see it in these groups.
I read these anons earlier and spent some time thinking about your remarks and the larger implications of certain accusations and DD/GA’s relationship. This response way longer than I intended, but like I said, I spend some time thinking about your comments. And when I say it’s long, I mean it’s long.
Anti’s alleged issues with DD is a combination of things: misogyny, sexism, homophobia, pedophilia, and being friends with an alleged sex trafficker.
David has said some homophobic, misogynistic, and sexist remarks. It’s one of those things that, although a handful of people knew better, his views were “normal” back then. This isn’t to excuse David, but rather, provide context. Because there’s problematic shit and beliefs from 10 and even 5 years ago. The question I ask myself is: has David unpacked these beliefs? Is he learning and growing?
The fact that they have to dig into shit from the 90s to find shit on him says A LOT. Maybe he’s learned to keep those views to himself OR maybe he realized that some of his beliefs were fucked up and left them in the past. I’m not saying that no one can’t be upset about what he said or even dislike him now because of it. However, I don’t think people who genuinely dislike him are sending hate anons to people because they like him.
I really don’t like talking about the pedophilia and him “knowing” he’s friends with a sex trafficker accusations because, even when accusations are proven to be false, someone will believe there's truth to them. It taints a person and that's generally speaking. The reason I’m addressing them now and with you is because I want to be transparent about what’s going on with Antis and my issues with them. I don’t want to be accused of bias or protecting DD because I’m “hiding” the truth.
This man in Hollywood accused David of being sexually inappropriate with a minor who later became his wife. Apparently, this happened in David’s trailer during the original run of the X-Files and was well known on set. This revelation occurred during the Me Too era, like when accusations were hot and took just about everyone accused of impropriety down. For reference, Harvey Weinstein, a powerful producer with more money and influence, was taken down. Louis CK, well respected before his victims came out. Pre Me Too: Bill Cosby. Aziz Ansari. Hell, even some of the faces of the movement were taken down.
So, this Hollywood dude claimed on twitter that David was touching on a minor while at work and EVERYONE on set knew, but somehow this story never caught on. Virtually no media outlets picked this up. And this accusation is worse than the Aziz accusation and he was torn to shreds as his career took a hit. But David can be accused of this horrendous thing and no one reacts to it??? Apparently, he must have better lawyers than Harvey, Louis, etc because the rumors never even took flight. AND, I believe the thread is still up too. Not even crazed right wingers or pizza gate fanatics were interested in this story. However, since David is involved with a significantly younger woman this means that that rumor is true. 
The thing is: there’s implications to this accusation that the antis didn’t think of and they got mad at me and others about it.
They said that Gillian hated David, didn't talk to him, and ignored him as much as she could because she knew about all of this. So, I asked, “If she knew David was a predator, why did she keep working with him? If you argue it was due to contract reasons, why did she work with him on IWTB and Seasons 10 and 11? Why didn’t she report him?”
Me and others were accused of holding women accountable for mens’ actions. But that still doesn’t answer the question, right? If Gillian hated David because he’s a predator, why did she still work with him? Her “hate” was supposed to be “proof” that he was morally corrupt. Since Gillian “hated” David, we’re supposed to hate David.
Another layer: David’s friends with a guy who allegedly is a sex trafficker, which to Antis mean that David knows and is okay with this. They’re friends, how could he not know???
This is important to note because they switch between Gillian knowing David is a “predator” and not knowing depending on the argument. So, when they swore up and down that she hated him, Gillian “knew.” Now that Gillian and David confirmed they are friends in some capacity, “just because she’s friends with him doesn’t mean she knows everything about him.”
Interesting, right?
They used examples of Harvey Weinstein and Ted Bundy to prove how someone can hide despicable acts after swearing up and down Gillian KNEW, which is why they weren’t friends. And, if you’re thinking...well what about David’s friend who allegedly is a sex trafficker, wouldn’t the same logic apply to him?
BINGO.
There are a million excuses and justifications when you apply their logic to Gillian, but they never give David the benefit of the doubt. They never critically examine any information they’re given if it paints David in a bad light. Then they put their heads in the sand if this info implicates Gillian. And the sad part is that I can go on a longer rant tearing their accusations apart.
There isn’t any consistency from Antis. I’d respect them if they’d dropped Gillian because she’s friends with the “predator” they hate. But no, their stance and justification changes so she's always in a good light.
You see how low they're willing to stoop to justify their hate. They aren’t content with disliking David, they need others to hate him too. They're too invested to admit they were wrong because then they’d have to face how foolish they looked hating David on the behalf of Gillian who doesn’t hate him at all. All that energy and hate for nothing.
Lastly, I genuinely do believe Antis are afraid that David and Gillian may be fucking or, at least, that casual fans will come to that conclusion. Think about it: who reacts like this to two people, who many thought hated each other, essentially announcing they are friends?
Who?
These are two adults with (an) adult kid(s). And they could literally become grandparents at any time. lol. These are two people who have known each other for damn near 30 years and Antis think they know David and Gillian better than they know each other.
But a simple photo got them rattled because they HAVE TO admit Gillian’s friends with David. She inadvertently put them in a corner and the only way out of it is to admit something they mocked others for believing. Their other options would fall into Gillovny thinking: they're fucking or dating.
And that’s what they’re really upset about.
They were left with options that fell into Gillovny thinking and had to choose the lesser of the evils. And they can’t say David and Gillian aren’t friends without looking delusional. Especially when they don’t have their handy dandy convenient excuses of “promo” for the x files or a charity. lol. Especially when they took a personal photo together and posted it online.
And I guess that’s the beauty of the picture: you’re only left with three options. Because, if you take friendship off the table, there is no other way to explain why David was there that doesn’t suggest them being intimately acquainted with each other.
I’ll say this: Antis don’t care about facts if the facts can’t be used as ammunition to shit on someone even if they have to distort it.
Now I know this is long and I’ve discussed things you didn’t intend, but I guess I needed this rant. LOL. Some Gillovnies and David fans may be upset that I discussed those topics, but most of the people on my blog either already heard about this OR have read me discuss it before.
Either way, Antis are hypocrites and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
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bridenore · 4 years
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Author rec : Femmequixotic
One of my favorite authors by far. Here are a few recs, listed in alphabetical order. I’ve read most of those stories multiple times, without any regrets.
***
All I Want For Christmas (Is For You To Stop Talking) by @femmequixogtic and @noeeon [162k]
The Niffler's Garden is the most prestigious wizarding nursery school in England and has been for the last century or more. Harry Potter's boys are both enrolled as pupils at the Garden. When he volunteers to assist with the Yule pageant, he has no idea that he'll be working closely with another parent, Draco Malfoy. Although they haven't seen each other much since their own school days, Harry faults Malfoy for not being a hands-on dad to little Scorpius. Will the intense weeks of preparation fan the fires of enmity or something else entirely?
Warnings: Background discussion of divorce, coming out, parenting, very brief mention of difficult pregnancy.
As Magic As It Gets by @femmequixotic [9k]
The last person Draco expects to see in the office of his relocation charity is Harry bloody Potter.
As soul from bodies steal by @femmequixotic [40k]
Hope may be found in the oddest of places, even in the bleakness of winter.
Black Holes and Revelations by @femmequixotic [38k]
What was meant to be an unexpected one-off in the loo of a Camden bar turns into something rather different, much to Harry and Draco's surprise.
Boom Clap (The Sound of My Heart) by @femmequixotic and @noeeon [39k]
Post-war Hogwarts has been energized by its new teaching fellows program. Where once bitter enmity divided the wizarding community, Malfoy and Potter chummily patrol hallways together whilst Granger and Zabini seek lost parts of the castle at McGonagall’s behest and Chang supervises Quidditch when not lecturing in Charms. It’s a veritable wizarding utopia and life is predictable for the first time in years. Which is, of course, when everything blows apart as the result of a drunken dare and Malfoy’s life is ruined beyond his capacity to repair it. Ever. In a million years.
Can't Get You Out of My Head by @femmequixotic [14k]
After he sees Harry Potter naked in the Auror showers once, Draco can't stop thinking about him. 
Lost In Your Arms by @femmequixotic [257k]
Three months after their brief encounter, Draco has almost forgotten about Potter--or so he tells himself. Then a Dark wizard shows up on the Auror radar and all hell breaks loose. Draco will have to choose between everything he holds dear--everything he's worked so hard for--and a few stolen moments of passion with a certain green-eyed Inspector, once his sworn enemy and now something rather different entirely. He'll make the right choice, won't he?
Who is he kidding? He'll ruin everything, as per usual. Bad choices and the name Malfoy go hand in hand.
These Secrets In Me by @femmequixotic [357k]
Auror Special Branch team seven-four-alpha--Sergeant Draco Malfoy, Constable Pansy Parkinson, and Constable Blaise Zabini led by their SIO, Inspector Harry Potter--must handle personal and political fallout from the implication of Ministry employees and Aurors in the scandal around escaped Death Eaters and a Dementor uprising at Azkaban. On top of that, their original target, Antonin Dolohov, is in the wind.
With all the ruckus, it's a good thing they have help from Unspeakable Hermione Granger, American Unspeakable, Legilimens, and Harry's recent ex, Jake Durant, Blaise's legendary necromancer grandfather, Barachiel Dee, and his potions expert mother, Olivia Zabini. What could possibly go wrong with an army of best friends, ex-lovers, and family? Especially when you add the strong-willed Parkinson clan to the mix.
Meanwhile, troubling new leads arise, taking Our Team in a surprising direction.
And Draco, still hiding his relationship with his SIO from the upper echelons of the Auror force, is definitely not falling in love with Harry Potter along the way. Not at all. Don't be ridiculous.
Dare To Think by @femmequixotic [388k]
After recent events in New York, Seven-Four-Alpha are set to return back to London. They've captured their primary target, but by no means settled their case. They've still got rogue Dementors at Azkaban, prying investigators from Luxembourg, and a far larger Death Eater threat to manage, not to mention pressure from their own higher ups. Draco is reeling from his loss, and Harry is trying to be the best boyfriend he can, which may mean not being Draco's guv any longer. Harry's uncertain what his team'll find as they press deeper in the investigation, but he knows they will all be tested, perhaps more than they can bear.
But they haven't a choice, have they? It's the bloody Death Eaters, after all, and the political integrity of Wizarding Britain and their magical allies hangs in the balance.
Set Me Free by @femmequixotic [196k] *Incomplete
Seven-Four-Alpha are back in London with available resources of the Ministry tracking their every move. Draco Malfoy remains lost, last seen in Thibodaux, Louisiana, as MACUSA was closing in. Harry is raging, barely in control of his magic, and the rest of the team are battered and unsure. Their recent failure haunts them, as does the spectre of a MACUSA-Ministry alliance under the control of the Quahog administration and its shadow puppetmaster, Aldric Yaxley. The Dementor crisis with Luxembourg is brewing in the background, as is a conflict with Rodolphus Lestrange. And that's not even mentioning the bargain Blaise struck with Death to return his cup. The team have very little energy or resources for one fight, much less several of this magnitude simultaneously.
Should they fail, though, political tyranny will grip both sides of the Atlantic and evils recently banished may return. Each of them is fighting for something they hold dear, but no victory comes without a price. Still, desperate situations call for desperate measures, and desperation appears to be all they have.
Cigarettes will kill you by @femmequixotic [3k]
He lights a cigarette across the pub, his hand cupped to his mouth as the tip sparks to life in a faint orange flare, and my breath catches.
Kiss A Boy In London Town (And Other Intimate Misadventures of A Society Whore) by @femmequixotic [36k]
There's only one cardinal sin for a whore.
Let's Dance To Joy Division by @femmequixotic [12k]
Let the love tear us apart, I've found a cure for a broken heart...
Little Talks by @femmequixotic and @noeeon [11k]
Draco's been shagging the Head Auror for months now, and he's sure it's just a fling. Until Harry asks him to a Quidditch match, that is, and things go horribly wrong.
Once upon a time, yesterday by @femmequixotic [22k]
"You've always been obsessed with Malfoy, Harry. That should probably tell you something."
Pocket Full Of Starlight (Never Let It Fade Away) by @femmequixotic and @noeeon [46k]
When Scorpius Malfoy and Jamie Potter meet at Quidditch camp, they take an instant dislike to each other. Then they discover their lives are more connected than they could possibly imagine.
Reading Malfoy by @femmequixotic [15k]
After thirteen years of hiding himself away in Muggle London, Draco Malfoy shows up again in the wizarding world--with a wickedly amusing memoir in hand. Harry doesn't want to read it. Really. He doesn't.
Sæglópur by @femmequixotic [34k]
After a difficult breakup, Draco finds himself dragged to the land of magic, law, and natural wonders where, of course, nothing goes as planned.
Says the magpie to the morning  by @femmequixotic [33k]
It's terribly bad form, sleeping with your ex when you're still half in love with the bastard.
The Silent World Within You by @femmequixotic and @noeeon [95k]
Harry only wanted Malfoy for one night, one birthday. It wasn’t meant to be anything more.
Take A Sad Song (And Make It Better) by @femmequixotic [46k]
The last thing Harry wants is to lose his kids.
Things Worth Knowing by @femmequixotic and @noeeon [164k]
After the Battle, Harry thinks he's left Hogwarts for good, but Minerva insists that all students return for an Eighth Year if they wish to sit for NEWTs in the spring, and Harry needs those NEWTs to go into the Aurors. Draco's just grateful not to be in Azkaban. Or the Manor. He's hoping he can steer clear of Potter this year and grapple with his own problems. Unfortunately for him, Potter appears to be one of those problems. And that's not even addressing the fact that Potter's got serious issues of his own, which Draco realises as he's forced to share an Eighth Year dormitory room and several classes with the Gryffindor Git. If only they can make it through the year without killing each other, it should be all right, shouldn't it?
Unkissed Kisses and Songs Never Sung by @femmequixotic [12k]
I sit silently in the shadows, staring at the tiny, pulsing ball of light that tells me my Harry's still alive.
Waiting By An Open Door by @femmequixotic and @noeeon [29k]
Draco starts following Potterwatch secretly during the War. He wishes Potter would come save him too. But that sort of thing only happens in fairy tales, and Malfoys don't get fairy tale endings, do they?
We Are Young (I'll Carry You Home Tonight) by @femmequixotic [68k]
Harry and Draco have been falling into bed on and off again since the last election five years ago, much to the amusement--and financial gain--of their circle of friends. But when Harry agrees to work with Draco to put Kingsley Shacklebolt into the Minister's office, they can't work side-by-side again every day and sleep together; that would be courting disaster. Wouldn't it?
The Weight of a Wanting Heart by @femmequixotic [11k]
After nearly two decades hidden away in the Wiltshire countryside, Draco Malfoy’s surprised to see a familiar face come into his local.
When You Kiss Me (What A Lovely Way To Burn) by @femmequixotic [22k]
A drag fairytale of New York in which Draco wears red lipstick and Potter can’t get enough.
The Years That Walk Between by @femmequixotic [15k]
Draco finds his way after the war.
***
I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did!
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talistheintrovert · 4 years
Text
Deleting my fic
Hi everyone! I just posted an explanation in my Salem Fic about why I will be taking it down in the next few days. If you like, you can go look at it HERE or you can read it under the cut, but I felt the need to explain. 
I'm posting this to let everybody know that I am taking this fic down. I will leave it up for another day or two, and then it is permanently coming down as I have no desire to associate myself with this fic or its origins anymore.
I initially received a single anon comment on this fic when I posted it way back over a year ago:
ANON: Hi if you are going to borrow ideas for fics from other people, even if it’s out there on tumblr, you should at least credit them for the original idea.
and I responded the way I thought I should at the time:
hi, i'm gonna be honest - I forgot where this idea had even come from until you brought it up.
At the time i was planning to do this idea, i considered myself friends, or at least close acquaintances with the person who threw it out there, and offered to write it. Then I became very busy and decided to abandon the idea.
Then, after a bunch of things happened, I stopped talking to that person, and I'm fairly certain they wouldn't even want to see the fic or the credit, despite the idea no longer having anything to do with them.
When I found the idea again, all I had was a word document with a bunch of plot points and ideas written down, and was suddenly struck with the inspiration to write it again.
Because I had honestly forgotten to credit the person involved I will be sure to do that when I update it.
However, i do not appreciate you coming on anon to accuse me like this. I would never intentionally fuck someone else over, not EVER, and I resent the implication that I would. I will, however, be sure to credit Alex, because despite me no longer being friends with her, and the fact that we don't really talk anymore, I respect her enough as a human being not to let her think I'm treating her with disrespect.
Thanks for the anon.
I then reached out to Alex to clarify with her that I had not - nor would I EVER - intentionally steal the idea, and that I was going to clarify that on the fic itself, and she agreed, and we discussed the dissolution of our friendship and then didn't speak again. I went ahead and linked the post with her initial idea in it, which also has our interaction where I offered to write it.  
The circumstances surrounding the whole situation were unfortunate - I perceived her support of a certain fic as potentially harmful, and sent her One Single Anonymous Ask about it. I was relatively polite (although I do understand that anything on Anon can be perceived as impolite) and I asked her specifically because there was a rift growing among halves of the fandom and Alex had always been the person I knew to be the most level-headed and I figured if she could explain why she was right and I was wrong then I would apologise and leave it alone. Unfortunately, as with everything in fandom, it blew up.
I was not the only person who had taken issue with this fic, or the attitude that accompanied it, and MANY people - some that I knew, but most that I didn't - started to also send in asks, and a lot of them were a lot more accusatory, and I'm sure some of them were trolls deliberately designed to rile up the drama even further. Alex has since expressed to me that this all blew up around the time she was having a hard time, and I apologised to her as it was NEVER my intention to launch some kind of attack on her, or anyone. I explained that the reason I went on anon was because at the time, the issue of the fic was so personal to me and I wasn't ready to talk about it with anyone I was friends with online at a limited capacity, because it was part of my life. Just as Alex's own troubles at the time were unbeknownst to me.
I have since opened up about my personal experiences with some internet friends, and in the last two years have grown and learned how to move on with my life, but at that point, the pain was very raw and I didn't want to expose myself to that kind of drama where I would be forced to relive the trauma over and over again.
As it turned out, it didn't matter.
People decided that because I was posting about these issues (without necessarily explicitly bringing up my personal experiences), that not only did I send that one ask to Alex, but that I was responsible for MULTIPLE asks, that I had organised some kind of coordinated attack, that the entire rift was my fault and that I'd done it maliciously. And I spent MONTHS getting vicious, nasty, hateful anons that didn't even all address the issues they supposedly had with me, just told me I was a waste of space, that I didn’t belong, that I shouldn’t exist. I am sure Alex received her own number of those too, and I am truly sorry for that because no-one deserves to go through anything like that.
After Alex and I talked for the last time, I thought we had moved on. I unfollowed her and a number of other creators not because I had anything against them personally but because I realised this was an issue we were never going to agree on, and rather than stoke the flames I chose to step back from them entirely, so that I no longer had to see the content I was uncomfortable with. I respect her as a person, and as a content creator, and regardless of whether I am an avid follower of her anymore, I still support her ability to create and speak freely. I have never blocked her, nor have I ever sent any kind of anon/non-anon hate to her, and I have never, NEVER plagiarised, from her or anyone else.
And yet.
Close friends of mine within the fandom, friends that I don't even consider just fandom friends anymore - friends that I would live, breathe and die for, friends who I love more than anything in the world - have been periodically, over the last six or so months, receiving various anons claiming to be someone who has "had too much to drink" and telling them that I am a bad person, that it's "well known within the fandom" that I'm a plagiarist, and that it is "tiring to see such hypocrisy" when they preach about original content and then remain friends with me.
TO BE CLEAR: I don't think that Alex would do this.
So before anyone gets it twisted, this isn't some kind of EXPOSE where I drag someone's dirty laundry into the open, because I am absolutely not that kind of person, and the one time I waded into fandom drama, it caused this mess, and it ended my friendship with someone who had basically been the cause of me getting into this fandom in the first place. So no, I am not accusing Alex, or any of her friends, of sending these anons.
I understand if they dislike me because of what transpired over a year ago, and I have my own regrets about the entire situation, and I have no desire to bring it all back up again. I'm not doing this to get anyone to go after them or anyone else, because I don't think it's anyone's fault except the anon people in my friends' askboxes. My friends have never publicly addressed the asks, except for a single post this afternoon where Abby told the person to stop, and didn't even answer the ask or explicitly talk about what was said in it.
I don't mind if you hate me. Whether you dislike me on your own time or you do it in my askbox; I've gotten pretty used to anon hate, and I genuinely don't mind people throwing some my way - this is the internet. But when you're going out of your way to harass my friends, I cannot just ignore it.
That's my family you're talking to.
Whoever this anon person/anon people are, you are deliberately taking your personal opinion of me, and you are walking up to my family and telling them that I am not worth their time. You are telling them that I am a plagiarist, despite the SINGLE instance of "plagiarism" (this fic) being an honest mistake, and one that I immediately reconciled once I realised. This fic that I haven't updated since, because I wasn't sure when it would be acceptable for me to do so without upsetting Alex further, and have now decided to delete. I considered deleting it quietly, without explanation, as I did another one of my fics earlier this year (simply because it was a WIP that I was never planning on finishing) but I realised that deleting this fic without an explanation could potentially give this anon person/people more fuel to come after me with, and I really just want this whole drama to be over. It's been a year, and I have no desire to start the debate again, nor do I wish any ill will towards anyone, especially Alex, and I do not want to cause undue drama later down the line when this anon person/people returns to my friends askboxes to accuse them of helping me "hide the truth" or some other bullshit that has nothing to do with them or anyone else.
I'm putting this out in the open to make myself very clear: I am not a plagiarist. And if you have any assumptions that you feel the need to jump on anon to yell, it should be coming to me, not to my family.
This fandom was the first real fandom experience I had on tumblr. I have been involved in fandom culture for years, but always from afar, and it was because of Alex's fics that I found my way into this place, that I met the people I now call my family, and that I rediscovered my own confidence in my writing, confidence that had been lacking for some time due to my personal life. I will always be grateful to her for that.
My writing is my writing. It is deeply personal to me, as it is to every writer, and as someone who plans to have a career in writing, it is incredibly important to me that my work is my own. I would never intentionally steal (or as that anon commenter put "borrow") anything from anybody, and the implication that I would is truly hurtful, especially when it seems to come from a place of exclusively hate, with no actual understanding of the situation. A troll.
I would like to repeat myself: I DO NOT THINK THIS IS ALEX'S PROBLEM and anyone who jumps in her asks to talk about it is not really doing it for the "truth" or for anything other than their own desire to stir up drama. I will be sending the link to this chapter to her myself, because I do not wish for this to be something she stumbles across and assumes I am trying to pin the blame on her for something I categorically do not think she would ever do.
I just want to move on, and I want my friends to be left out of whatever vendetta this anon person/people have.
I am certain I will make more mistakes as I go forward, because that is the nature of growth, but I would like to believe that I have never done anything, especially any of this, as a desire to be malicious or to hurt anyone, even those people who I fundamentally disagree with and do not interact with anymore. I'm not remotely begging for sympathy in this situation - I don't need it, I am confident enough in myself to know that I would not intentionally hurt anyone - I am simply asking for my friends, my family, to be left out of whatever this bullshit is.
I'm sorry if you were expecting a chapter, and I'm sorry this was so long, but I wanted to be clear about where I stand right now.
The 100 is coming to an end soon, and soon all we will have of this show and this fandom is memories, tumblr content, and friendships, and I do not want to spend any more of the limited time we have while this show is still on the air, spreading negativity or letting it be spread. This isn't to start drama, this is to end it.
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vaguely-concerned · 4 years
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Some Alec Ryder Meta
So since I couldn’t find the screenshots of Alec Ryder’s dying ‘thoughts’, I went and got them myself!* And I am uh way closer to crying than I thought I would be, Alec sort of surprised me here. Let’s go! 
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I was NOT prepared for his literal first thought to be of his children. And notice -- this is not his children being impressive or special or idk ordered/obedient. It’s them being happy and safe and playing and chaotic. I uh did not expect this, frankly.
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I’m guessing this is where they used to live when the kids were small! (Would this be before or during their time on the Citadel? The timeline there is so hazy to me haha, I can never quite remember how that works)
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Baby Scott on the swing ;______; I wonder if Alec is ‘there’ off screen in this scene, pushing him, since we start off with a shot looking over Scott’s shoulder like that 
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Can I just say how quietly charmed I am by the fact that in Alec’s memories Ellen isn’t captured when she was ~*young and beautiful*~ or whatever nonsense -- she’s a mature woman, the same age as himself. It feels like there is something sweet and telling in that, like they were partners/equals in his mind. (This also makes me very uncomfortable to think he didn’t ask her/didn’t get her consent at the last moment on her death bed to put her in stasis, after the twins left the room at least; he seems to have respected her so much, if he went against her wishes that’s... such a breach of everything she seems to have meant to him and really should have been addressed more because it would essentially be his big sin as a character. So I choose to believe for now that when the kids left he did one last ‘give it this one last shot and I promise that if I find nothing within a certain time I’ll let you go and grieve like a normal fucking person’ sales pitch, possibly with prepared Science to back him up because they were both kind of weird like that and I think that if anything could have worked that would. ‘But think of the scientific implications tho babe wouldn’t you want to be able to find out how worked?’ ‘...You’ve got me there’)
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More confirmation that Ellen had probably come to terms with her death and Alec Really Hadn’t lol. (Ellen might have just been grateful she lost neither of her children to the eezo exposure, actually -- she would have understood intimately how phenomenally lucky they were that both the twins survived and were healthy to boot) If I were to hazard a guess I’d say that Alec probably was in pretty bad need of space therapy even before his wife got ill, she was just his emotional support and he was intelligent and driven enough to hide most of it until that stability came under threat
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:( this is upsetting. It doesn’t come across as well without the movement but he’s bowing his head and putting his face in his hands. Either Ellen when she’s really sick or when she uh ‘died’ 
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I’m fairly sure that’s Ellen’s eyes -- and crucially they’re opening again. 
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Mom and the twins :’) I think it’s pretty clear Alec did that thing some people (especially men) do where they sort of organize all their feelings through their partner -- “Your mother would have been proud of you, of both of you” JESUS CHRIST ALEC JUST TELL YOUR CHILDREN YOU’RE PROUD OF THEM LIKE YOU ACTUALLY MEANT TO SAY, THEY ALREADY KNOW THEIR MOM LOVED THEM FOR GOD’S SAKE YOU ARE THE UNCERTAIN ELEMENT HERE
ETA: actually this might also have something to do with how convinced he seems to be that the kids don’t need him -- that his love and attention and regard doesn’t matter or count, or would even be seen as an imposition (he consistently refers to himself pretty self-deprecatingly in connection to them, their ‘old man’ coming in and messing up their lives, like he considers his absence to probably be the best he can do for them? He certainly devalues his own impact massively, positive or negative). Meanwhile Ellen’s place in all their lives is a clear and uncontested positive so maybe that’s why he goes for her pride and her love like that. Again: who the fuck raised this weird dysfunctional man to be like this and how did he get away with it for so long haha
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Alec and adult/at least teenaged twins! a) I suspect going to another galaxy with them to explore might honestly have been his idea of how bonding works, which... well and b) Sara is right behind him, leaning in like she’s listening and interested in what he’s saying and maybe even speaking too, and Scott looks to me like he’s sort of stranded on the side, looking in but not quite able to connect the same way. (This might be coloured by what I know about their respective relationships from the rest of the game, granted)
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The same memory as before BUT interestingly --
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the camera is turning around, like Alec is trying to get a look at his children’s faces and can’t :) this is fine and not at all illustrative of his entire deal *everything in my heart is on fire*
sOME observations: 
- These flashes give you more emotional insight in him than all the unlockable memories put together, and you’ll literally never see most of them unless you’re a freak like me, painstakingly frame by framing your way through it. That... seems like a waste?? 
- Despite his numerous flaws and shortcomings as a parent and as a person, literally every single thought he has at the end is about his family -- and not only his wife, all of them. There’s no place for his work here at all. That doesn’t absolve him of anything, of course, but it makes me sad that he never found a better way to show it, or to emotionally connect with his children, which he seems to have a real wish to. (”Maybe six hundred years can change a man”) Bioware... Bioware sequel pls don’t leave it like this ;_________;
- He himself does not figure prominently in his memories, and when he does he is faceless and vague -- except for when he is completely alone with his grief and Ellen is gone. I think there is something to be said about the fact that he makes all these huge inspiring speeches about the unknown and exploration... and yet his actual motivation is so firmly rooted in this immense fear of the unknown and of himself, of not knowing who to be without his wife, of not knowing how to go on living, of being alone. I wonder to what degree he knows this himself. (From what I’ve read so far of Mass Effect Initiation he certainly isn’t as idealistic about the whole thing as even the game portrays him, where he’s show to be pretty clear-eyed about the Initiative already -- or maybe he sort of is an idealist, under the fear and the jaded exhaustion. Either he genuinely believes Andromeda will hold answers and that science can achieve the impossible or he’s just too scared to consider any other outcome. Oh Boy tm)
- Ellen’s illness is such a cataclysmic event for him that I really have to assume he was never that stable to begin with. And as we’ve seen: When a Ryder goes off the rails they do so in STYLE and drag thousands of people with them to an uncertain fate haha
- My personal headcanon is that Alec used to be a better dad before Ellen got ill and when the kids were still very young; when all they really needed was to be held and loved and made to feel safe, and then became more and more distant as his work with SAM progressed and the children’s emotional needs grew more complex and demanding. Sara remembers this part of their father better (or clings to it more desperately, depending on your point of view) and is also more like him in general, being driven, competitive and intensely intellectually engaged (no matter how you play her in-game, Sara is always presented as vastly more A Nerd than Scott is -- its own can of worms of course but it’s there in the text). Meanwhile Scott has reached a resigned sort of ‘It’s perfectly plausible my dad would not be able to pick me out from a crowd’ place about it and given up on expecting anything more a long time ago in self defense. I think they’ve both hit on different parts of the truth there lol
(Also Sara and Alec seem to have bonded over making fun of Scott a little bit and considering him the underachiever of the two and like Not Cool guys!!! :( ) 
- Anyway Alec Ryder is a very interesting and immensely flawed character and killing him off and never meaningfully engaging with him again seems like throwing away a golden opportunity. Sequel where ‘Ghost Riders’ takes on a new meaning when??? I just want the twins to be able to either yell at him or connect to him better, as appropriate to the feelings of the individual player (I totally get why people would want to give their Ryders a chance to straight up hate him)
I think where it really hurts for me is that he clearly has these feelings, the capacity for it. There’s a wealth of affection and... tenderness? reverence, nearly? in these memories. None of his outward hardass needs-everything-to-be-under-control persona. And yet he could find no way to express this or even really meaningfully stay with his own feelings and his children suffered for it. It’s just all so fucking sad
*Courtesy of DanaDuchy’s youtube channel, which is truly one of the marvels of the internet; please check it out if you have any interest at all in Bioware games or indeed RPGs/games in general, there’s SO much content and it’s all neatly organized! If like me you want to listen to all the banter of every game... this channel’s got you covered
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fireflysummers · 5 years
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Just Fiction (and When It’s Not)
I’ve been tying myself in mental knots for the last while about the “It’s Just Fiction” argument. At this point I’ve heard a lot from both sides that’s actually pretty valid, leading to a lot of general confusion. 
The conclusion that I’ve come to, though, is that “It’s Just Fiction” is not a universal defense, and its meaning shifts drastically when it’s shifted out of the originally intended lens.
I propose that there are three lenses through which the “It’s Just Fiction” argument can be viewed: in-universe, authorial intent, and public interpretation.
Before jumping into the analysis, I should note that there are a few assumptions here:
The fiction in question is actually fiction, and does not resemble any real life persons, living or dead in an identifiable capacity. Therefore, things like the Ted Bundy Case Files are immediately disqualified.
We are assuming innocence until proven guilty.
The In-Universe Lens
The “It’s Just Fiction” defense is most often applied to in-universe logic, and is related to the suspension of disbelief--the mechanism by which we can ignore our comparisons to the real world and immerse ourselves in a fantasy.
When you say "It's Just Fiction" about in-universe logic, it understands very clearly that fiction is fake, and that the characters and events do not exist in the real world. It may echo real life, and real people might to replicate it, but no matter how dark or gross or fluffy or fantastical the content, no matter how gritty and “realistic” it is, it is not real. 
Arguing that "It’s Just Fiction" is basically stating that you understand how to separate reality from fantasy, and treat characters and in-canon logic as the mechanisms by which an interesting story is told. While they may feel real, especially if you have a special connection with them, they fundamentally are not. 
As a result, content creators are generally allowed to use it as space to explore taboo topics and search for relationships and meaning in places that no sane person would enact in real life. 
However, this is not free reign to create whatever you want, and expect no consequences, as we will get to in our next point.
Authorial Intent
As stated earlier, the general assumption here is that the content creator did not intentionally have ill will towards anybody. Unfortunately, there have been too many case where this has proven to be bad faith. As a result, how to approach this aspect of the “It’s Just Fiction” argument is very difficult and controversial, because sometimes it is very difficult to “prove,” especially since the creative process is often multi-faceted as content creators draw from multiple inspirational and motivational sources. 
Oftentimes, content creators are young, ignorant, and lacking self-awareness. This leads to them not knowing how to take critique, especially if they are approached in a harsh, critical manner, and generally only alienates them in a way that stifles their desire to learn and grow naturally. It is generally not your job to educate strangers on the internet, either, since there are often trolls who disguise actual ill intent as ignorance.
The most surefire way to address this is to curate your own internet experience by blocking liberally those whose content you do not wish to see.
There is another case, though, that needs to be discussed: that of predatory content creators. These people usually straddle the line between “a distasteful lack of mindfulness” and “preying on vulnerable populations.” 
Accusations of ped/o/phil/ia against any individual are serious, and in process you have to consider a personal history of predatory behavior, rather than applying a blanket "if it's dark and taboo topics, then it automatically implicates the author as a pervert.”
You can usually identify these individuals based on the content’s tone and approach--that they aren't approaching a taboo topic for the sake of literary exploration, but because they are self-inserting themselves. There are heavy implications about people who  self-insert into that sort of fiction, such as people who write or draw cartoon character CP, and you can usually tell on a case-by-case basis whether or not somebody is hiding a gross perversion behind "It’s Just Fiction.”
Public Interpretation
Public interpretation is usually where the “It’s Just Fiction” argument breaks down entirely, because we are no longer working directly with the work (in-universe) or the people immediately responsible for its creation (authorial intent). Public reactions are very, very real and need to be treated as such--but first, you have to consider the likelihood that a work of fiction will actually contribute to swaying that public.
The argument here is “even if the person didn’t mean any harm, that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be held responsible.” And this is another tough one, because on one hand, yes, content creators ideally should exercise mindfulness about how their work will be received and interpreted. On the other hand, the public is beyond the control of any single individual, and things can easily be taken out of context or snowball out of their control, regardless of their intent. 
So, for the sake of this particular case, we have determined that the author did not mean to cause harm, the next question is how much harm is being done. 
In other words, who exactly is the public, and how many of them are there?
For instance, a bunch of kids filming a shitty monster movie featuring sharks may have the exact same messages as Jaws (sharks are evil and need to be killed). Neither one of them intend to do real sharks any harm; however, the one that needs to be held responsible is Jaws, not the shitty indie film. 
Why? Because Jaws was a box-office success that became a cultural phenomenon. It impacted the opinions of the millions of people, leading to a sharp increase of shark hunting. 
Yeah, the indie film was equally bad in the messages it was conveying, but it just fades into obscurity without actually doing any harm. 
It’s the same spiel with fandom works. Because fandoms are insular spaces, they feel a lot bigger than they actually are. That’s why fan-content creators are not held to the same standards as mainstream content creators, because the public they actually affect is actually quite small. 
When people say “It’s Just Fiction” in relation to content that is not intended to do harm, but is controversial in content, what they’re really saying is “fandom is a small, in-bred pocket of the internet, and and because it is not written by somebody intending to cause harm and will never likely see the public eye, the damage that it does is negligible, and any energy that you put into causing an outcry over it is merely a petty waste of time.”
At which point, again, the best course of action is to just block what you don’t want to see.
Applications
This is a long read, and the basic point is to exercise your own critical thinking skills. My general rubric for what I keep versus what I block is:
Is the content actually fictional.
Is the content creator acting out of a desire to hurt others?
If the harm is unintentional, how many people are affected, and how wide-spread is the damage? 
Let’s Practice
Case 1
Person A is obsessed with a villainous character from an anime.
They know that the character is completely made up.
They have no desire to hurt other people, since this affection for a fictional character is literally just them. Their actions do not pose a threat to vulnerable groups. 
The number of people even directly aware of Person A’s special interest is pretty small, and if you’re squicked out by it they’re an easy block.
Therefore, by this rubric, “It’s Just Fiction” works just fine as an explanation for their actions.
Case 2
Person B’s fanfic reduces your favorite character to LGBT+ stereotypes. The tone of the fic, though, is fluffy and light-hearted.
Again, this is entirely fictional and all parties know it.
It’s difficult to gauge whether this was done intentionally or not; sometimes a quick chat with the author will clear things up; otherwise, the tone of the fic and the lack of mean spirit in any of their other works, so it’s probably unintentional. It’s probably safe to give the benefit of the doubt.
The general readership on the fic and the number of kudos is pretty low, which means that it’s not getting much attention anyways. It was distasteful, it made you feel gross when you read it, but overall the damage is pretty contained.
Therefore, by this rubric, “It’s Just Fiction” still generally works, because of the limited number of people even aware of the fic’s existence.
Case 3
Person C made an AU with characters aged-up from the canon, and there are some N/S/F/W scenes or jokes!
AU = fictional
This is a tricky one sometimes, because there are absolutely people who age up characters just to “legally” draw them in N/S/F/W situations. 
However, there is a difference between people who do that, and others who say, project out an entire timeline full of unique character interactions and are looking to explore the various aspects of adult life, which sometimes involves consensual sex. The authorial intent here is usually pretty easy to pick up on, because a well thought-out aged-up AU often takes a lot of mindfulness on the part of the creator.
Again, things limited to fandom spaces are by default pretty small in the public that they reach. 
“It’s Just Fiction” absolutely applies here because of the amount of work that has been put into it to create an adult version of the world and characters, and it’s clear that the intent was not to expose minors for the entertainment of perverts.
tl;dr: If you’re going to treat fandom with academic scrutiny, please apply critical thinking to situations as they come. “It’s Just Fiction” does not work as a general statement because it wasn’t originally meant to be a general statement.
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exeggcute · 5 years
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I'm unabashedly pro-abortion to pretty much the fullest possible extent (a term I prefer to "pro-choice," because I am also pro-choice in that sense, but I think "pro-abortion" is more representative of the philosophical approach grounded on the four pillars of ethics whereas "pro-choice" is inextricably tangled up in the verbage of the uber-politicized american abortion debate and is often founded upon well-meaning but unsound lines of reasoning), and I think it's immensely disingenuous when people raise concerns about aborting a pregnancy for the "wrong" reasons as a gotcha-type justification for restricting abortion (because ultimately "I do not wish to be pregnant" should be enough reason to not be pregnant any longer, full stop), but I do think in order to strengthen the pro-abortion argument we need to address some of these objections, both to prevent them from detracting from our argument and to peel back some of the layers to examine a small kernel of truth lying beneath.
there's an idea called "the doctrine of double effect," which I don't fully ascribe to, but I believe can be useful here: that idea is that if something morally good (or even neutral) has bad side effects, it's okay as long as the side effects weren't your goal, even if you knew these bad side effects ahead of time. you can imagine that this principle can be used to a variety of ends: perhaps it is good to give a child medicine, even with the unintended side effects that the child hates the taste (but you are not trying to torment their taste buds, only to promote the child's health; if it were possible to give them medicine without the side effect of bad taste, you would). on the other hand, perhaps it's less permissible to, say, carry out a military operation that will bring great success, but has the unintended side effect of a civilian death toll, even if you did not "intend" for this to happen, simply because the trade-off is too great and morally impermissible.
however, this principle provides a useful rhetorical tool when approaching abortion, in a variety of ways. for one, we could argue that the main goal of abortion is simply to terminate a pregnancy, not to bring about any "harm" to a fetus (harm, of course, being a much thornier issue than I'd like to get into here, especially when considering the tenuous nature of fetal personhood or lack thereof; here, I mean harm more or less colloquially), and that if it were possible to end a pregnancy (goal) without causing the death (intended side effect; and again, "death" in a colloquial sense, since whether a fetus is truly living is not cut and dry) of a fetus. perhaps in the future it will be possible to terminate some or all pregnancies in such a way that the fetus can continue living outside the womb of the pregnant person unimpeded, and that such a choice is equally desirable to abortion as it currently stands; perhaps this will never happen, or would never be practical or desirable or even ethical, since this hypothetical scenario raises its own set of concerns. but as it currently stands, abortion necessarily dictates that a fetus will cease to be (though there is one specific way to terminate a pregnancy without harming a fetus, but we usually call that "birth"), and that's perfectly okay--not even because of the doctrine of double effect, but for other reasons: under the four pillars model, the right to autonomy is generally invoked as the strongest driving force for pro-abortion arguments.
anyway, to circle back to my earlier point about abortion for the "wrong" reasons: people generally bring up these arguments in bad faith, with the goal of weakening the pro-abortion stance. so I understand the reflex to shut these arguments down wholesale, but I think that does us all a disservice. some of these arguments contain reasonable concerns at their core, even if it's cloaked in a fair amount of baggage, and I believe that being able to address these concerns only strengthens the pro-abortion stance overall.
many concerns often touch upon the morality of aborting a pregnancy for "malicious" reasons: generally, getting into territory of eugenics and whether it's permissible to abort a fetus simply because it carries some "undesirable" trait. yes, many of these concerns are often invoked only as a way to shut down pro-abortion arguments and not out of a desire to combat eugenicist thinking, but we can't ignore the issue. the idea that people would use abortion as a means of eugenics should be, for obvious reasons, very bad. the idea of aborting a fetus specifically because it will have a disability, or be gay, or be a certain gender--this has catastrophic implications, both for people who already exist as these things, and for the hypothetical future brought upon by such a eugenicist methodology. we should not strive for a future that readily allows for this kind of methodology; however, the site of the problem is not in abortion itself.
to invert the doctrine of double effect here: perhaps an act can be morally negative, but the mechanism by which the act is carried out is not, provided that the mechanism is not only used to such ends. abortion for the "wrong" reasons (that is to say, abortion that is specifically eugenicist in nature) is wrong for the reasons driving it, not because of abortion itself. if, in another scenario, someone was pregnant with a fetus that happened to have certain characteristics, but chose to abort simply because they did not wish to be pregnant for whatever reason, that is permissible. the issue is when someone wishes to abort specifically because they believe said fetus is inherently lesser as a result of those certain characteristics, and acts accordingly.
the way to fix this is not to restrict abortion outright, or even to require justification to receive abortion, but rather to address the driving forces and oppressive structures that create these attitudes. if someone wishes to abort a fetus on the grounds that said fetus will be born with a disability, because they believe that said disability lessens the value of said fetus's life, we must dismantle the eugenicist structures that lead them to believe that only a certain "kind" of person should live. assuming that, all other things considered, the only reason for this abortion is due to eugenicist reasoning: then, if the person is no longer operating under such a framework, they will no longer be compelled to abort, and they will no longer be acting to further oppressive systems. however, if it just so happens that someone wishes to abort a fetus with a disability, but their desire to abort has nothing to do with this fact (i.e., if they would abort any other interchangeable fetus, not simply this particular one), then the abortion remains permissible, for it is not being used as a vehicle of eugenics. abortion itself is not the issue; addressing the underlying concerns of certain circumstances surrounding abortion allows us to combat such issues, but acknowledging such problems does not detract from the permissibility of abortion as an act. the problem is structural, and needs to be tackled by rooting out societal attitudes, not in restricting an act that could maybe possibly be used to carry out such attitudes. arguments that forbid abortion on the grounds that it could be used for evil are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
ultimately, it's not always this simple. as it stands now, I don't believe anyone should be compelled to carry a pregnancy for any reason, simply because claiming otherwise will lead to extremely morally fraught areas with catastrophic implications. arguments on paper like this often don't reflect the reality of the situation, which is much messier. I often defer to judith jarvis thompson's idea of the "minimally decent samaritan" and that nobody should be compelled to extend their capacity beyond a reasonable level, but certain standards of decency do exist. perhaps there are varying levels of "good" and "decent" and "bad" reasons for terminating a pregnancy, and that some reasons may theoretically be used to bad ends. but as thompson argues, the act of carrying a pregnancy to term is far beyond the reach of a minimally decent samaritan, and is often too much to ask of someone who would otherwise not choose to be in this position. the very desire to no longer be pregnant is enough of a reason to seek an abortion, full stop. but if we wish to be minimally decent, we may need to examine the mechanism for these desires, and perhaps even alter them at the source, without taking down abortion rights as collateral damage.
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v-thinks-on · 5 years
Text
The Problem With Paradise (Part 2)
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The shuttle traveled on autopilot for Spock knew not how long. He did not know if time properly existed in this realm, nor how it was measured. He meditated, and waited, and found that the computer still answered questions when asked, but refused to provide him with any more information.
An eternity may have passed before the viewscreen darkened and showed the shuttle emerging from a stormy sky that hung above a dark, industrial cityscape. It descended to the foot of the tallest skyscraper and the door opened to allow Spock out in front of the main entrance.
To his surprise, he found himself looking into the lobby of Starfleet headquarters, just as it had appeared in the late 23rd century. But where the blue flags of the United Federation of Planets should have been, there were red banners displaying a caricature of the planet Earth in front of a sword. There was no doubt that this was where Spock would find his former captain. The doors opened with a rush of frigid air, and he strode through them as though he belonged there.
No one as much as looked up at his arrival. Immediately inside was the end of a long, curving line that, through many twists and turns, made its way to a large desk in the center of the room, in front of the largest bright red banner. At the desk was a lone humanoid woman, frantically attempting to answer a barrage of incoming calls, beeping urgently above the din. The rest of the large lobby bustled with humanoids running to and fro, often colliding in their hurry to be some place or another. Spock noted that many of them limped or sported broken limbs that further hindered their progress. But James Kirk was not among them.
There was no obvious indication of where to begin, and so Spock took his place at the end of the line. However, it showed little indication of moving, and he could not help but wonder what fate his former bondmate had been condemned to. The woman at the desk could hardly answer one call when she was interrupted by another that beeped even more urgently. The man at the front of the line tried many times to make his case to no avail. Meanwhile, the temperature of the room began to rise until it became uncomfortable even for an old Vulcan.
Finally, Spock decided that enough was enough and left his place in the line to wade through the crowd and make his way directly to the desk.
“One moment, sir,” the woman snapped as Spock approached, not even looking up from her work to see the latest visitor.
“Get back in line!” a man near the front shouted, “You have to wait like the rest of us!”
Spock ignored him and addressed the harried receptionist. “I am on urgent business. I merely wish to know the whereabouts of Admiral James Tiberius Kirk.”
“Just one minute!” the woman exclaimed into the terminal in front of her. She pressed another button and demanded, “Yes, what is it? I can’t hear you!” Finally, she risked a glance up at Spock. “What was that? A cup of tin?” she asked. Her eyes looked a little wild.
Spock would not contribute to her torment, as this certainly was, so he merely nodded and took his leave with a word of thanks.
Carefully maneuvering to avoid colliding with anyone, he scanned the room for some other source of information. “Computer, locate James Tiberius Kirk,” he attempted, but received no answer.
Finally, on the far wall, he located a directory. Beneath the sign was a screen that displayed a very, very long list of names in no apparent order, accompanied by incomprehensible locations. There was no means to automatically search through them that Spock could locate, so he scrolled down the list, registering each name as he skimmed past it. It was inefficient and tedious, but he read as quickly and precisely as any Vulcan, and time seemed to have little meaning in this place. Eventually, he found “Kirk, James Tiberius,” and a long string of apparently random numbers and letters.
As he turned to the map beside the directory, the directory reset, so it only displayed the beginning of the list. Thankfully, Spock had what he presumed was the room number memorized. Of course, the map appeared to be organized as logically as the list of names had been. If it was accurate, the building was a labyrinth of rooms and hallways arranged in configurations that may not even have been physically possible. And if the locations were indexed according to a system, Spock could not begin to understand it.  But eventually he found the correct location - a room on the thirteenth floor, no doubt in reference to an old human superstition.
His destination in mind, Spock again maneuvered through the fray, to the lift on the other side of the lobby. Just as he arrived, the doors slid shut on a carriage full well past capacity. So, he waited and called for another. According to the indicator above the door, it started on the second floor. For a long time, it did not move, then it rocketed up to the thirteenth floor, barely paused long enough for the doors to open, and dropped down to the basement. It stayed there for a little while, before passing Spock again, on its way to the third, and then it returned to the second. Spock could hear it moving, perhaps even getting closer, but it gave no indication of arriving.
Finally, Spock gave up the wait as a waste of time and went for the stairs. As he walked away, he heard the lift arrive. In the time it took him to glance back over his shoulder, a whole crowd of people rushed in, and it was almost immediately filled past capacity again.
Spock continued on his way. The stairwell was empty, dank and musty, poorly illuminated by flickering lights. The stairs down to the basement descended into darkness, but Spock did not need to concern himself with what lurked down there. Instead, he made his way up the flights of stairs, each much longer than it ought to have been, especially on old, tired legs.
Eventually, he passed a door to the second floor, then the third, the fourth, the fifth... He had to stop and rest somewhere between the ninth and tenth. At long last, he arrived at the thirteenth. The paint on the door was peeled, and as he approached, it started to slide open and stuck.
Undeterred, he slid his fingers into the narrow crack between the door and the wall, braced himself and pulled at it with all the strength he had forgotten he had. The edge of the door cut into his fingers and his arms ached with the effort, but it only barely budged. He tried once more and was nearly knocked off his feet as the door suddenly slid open to allow a woman to pass from the other side.
He got his bearings before the door closed once more and stepped into a bustling hallway, just as hazardous as the main lobby had been. He maneuvered through the crowd of humanoids, all pushing and shouting to get by. The map he had memorized was clear in his mind and he knew the route.
Finally, after many twists and turns, and what felt like going in circles, he found his destination in an abandoned corridor. Somehow all the noise from just around the corner was muted. At the end of the hallway, exactly where it had been indicated on the map, was a door marked with a shiny new plate that read “Admiral James T. Kirk.”
Spock entered without knocking, unarmed and much too old for physical combat, but prepared to fight if it came to that. The door slid open easily. The only occupant of the large office was busy pouring over an endless pile of PADDs bearing thousands of lifetimes’ worth of paperwork. He looked tired and worn, more haggard than Spock had ever seen him in life - defeated.
“Jim,” Spock said, almost without thinking.
The admiral glanced up without really looking and froze. A tired dismissal died on his lips. His eyes widened in surprise. The PADD he was holding fell to the table with a thud.
“Spock, what are you doing here?” he whispered. His look of wonder turned to horror as he realized, “What are they going to do to you?”
“I am here of my own volition,” Spock answered sharply, though a trace of a gentle smile softened it. “I am here to rescue you.”
Kirk stumbled to his feet and moved toward Spock as though in a trance. His hands landed on Spock’s shoulders and he squeezed as though to assure himself that Spock was really there. “How did you get away?”
“I merely asked,” Spock replied. “I was sent somewhere rather different.”
Kirk grinned at the implication. “I knew you’d make it if either of us did.” But then his face fell. “But what are you doing here?”
“I am here to rescue you,” Spock repeated and offered Kirk his arm. “We should not delay.”
Kirk hesitated.
“You would do the same for me - and have,” Spock said.
Kirk pursed his lips, and looked like he wanted to argue, but finally he accepted Spock’s arm and said, “Alright. Let’s go.”
They stepped out through the door and walked down the hallway hand in hand. As they came upon a more major thoroughfare, they exchanged a glance - Spock raised one eyebrow, and Kirk’s lips quirked upward in a small smile - before plunging into the fray.
They ran as fast as two old men could, dodging past humanoids hurrying around them in all directions. The crowd threatened to pull them apart, but they never let go. Together, they forced open the door to the stairwell and nearly tumbled down the stairs. They burst out into the lobby, through the front doors, back to the waiting shuttle.
They both stopped dead in their tracks. The shuttle was surrounded by a dozen humanoids of no species either Kirk or Spock recognized, who were clearly none too happy with the apparent intrusion on their domain.
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aparticularbandit · 5 years
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Hey, have you seen the latest JtV episode yet? Wondered what you thought of certain developments.
so.  i apologize ahead of time because this will probably get long.  i plan to start with the non-rose and/or luisa scenes and then give a general idea of what i want to do with that discussion before throwing most of that one beneath the cut.  i especially apologize to those of you on mobile because i know that it doesn’t always do the read more stuff correctly and i’m so sorry.also know that i. really don’t want to write this right now, but i want to get my thoughts out because maybe then i’ll stop ruminating over it (hah!).so, first of all, i’ve seen the scenes relevant to this discussion.  which means i haven’t paid attention to the entire episode but i have seen rose’s scenes and luisa’s scenes (sort of) and then the scene in regards to mateo being diagnosed with adhd.  i very rarely see the shows live, although i saw some of last week’s live, and typically scroll through spoilers to see if anything that interests me (rose or lusia) is in the episode.  if not, i typically just don’t see it because, to be honest, i don’t care.  spoilers give me enough information and while there may be scenes or moments that i’d probably like that i missed, i didn’t want to deal with love triangle fun with michael or most stuff with raf at this point because spoilers tell me the writing is very, very poor.which means that yes i knew about the adhd diagnosis and what i suspect is the real point of the question here - rose let luisa drink?! what?! - before seeing the episode.  and definitely spent a good chunk of time ranting about the latter in the jtv discord spoilers tag before seeing the episode.  and even knowing it was coming, it still depressed me.  but that’s reactions, not thoughts, which. i have a lot.  from different angles.i do want to address mateo being diagnosed with adhd.  i’m not okay with this happening.  while i do think it’s important for characters to be diagnosed with mental illness in media and i do think that it’s important to delve into those diagnoses, i don’t think jtv will do a good job with this because they haven’t done a good job with this previously.  raf’s depression (again, didn’t see that scene, so going off of spoilers here) was mentioned once and then apparently hasn’t been brought up again (with the exception of potentially being implied with how much of a help luisa has been while he dealt with his break-up with jane and let’s be real here luisa knows more about mental illness at this point than most of the other characters except maybe petra and even then).  petra’s postpartum depression was mentioned i think once and then wasn’t brougt up again.  petra’s anxiety? i think it was? was mentioned in season one in relation to her taking pills and this was diagnosed while raf had cancer and…hasn’t been brought up again.  in fact, the biggest proponent we have outside of this with how jtv deals with mental illness is luisa alver, and her mental illness is consistently used as a joke or a way to make her unreliable.now, yes, adhd is a learning disability and you can debate whether or not that constitutes a mental illness or not.  i apologize if my lumping it in under the mental illness umbrella is a problem.  this is not an illness that i myself have (as far as i know), so please understand that i mean no offense.  my concern is that jtv does not deal with these sorts of things well.  it uses them to drum up drama and then sweeps them under the rug as if they’re a passing thing that is suddenly better or not important until, like in luisa’s case, they want to use it as a plot point or a joke again.  and the thing is that they already in the episode used mateo’s adhd to make a visual joke on what it was like to have adhd.  this is not okay.further, their focus isn’t on the character who has the disability.  they’re using the disability to drum up drama for the character’s parents.  again, this is not okay.  it is good to let the characters have that reaction to what the child is going through, but it may - or i’m concerned that it’ll turn into one of those moments where it focuses only on the pain of the parents and how they live with a child with this issue and not on the character who. actually has the issue.  as someone with mental illnesses, this does not sit well with me.and they did this with nine episodes left.  even if they were going to deal with this well, it’s hard to do so within nine episodes, especially considering the other threads they have going.  at this point, i don’t trust the writers and i’m not okay with this happening.  i dislike this development.now with regards to the rose and luisa scenes, in particular the scene they shared together and the developments from this–really there are two ways to take this as far as rose’s character interpretation (rose as a sociopath who truly loves luisa and for whom this development has an aspect that feels really out of character from what we have seen of her OR rose as a sociopath psychopath who did some has been setting up a lot of pins for a payoff that we…can guess would end with luisa finally officially choosing her? this one is a little more shaky) and two ways to take this as far as how this will work out in the show with regards to luisa (is she actually siding with rose or is she using this to fake her out and finally prove herself to raf once and for all).so.  this is a long discussion.  UNDER THE CUT.
so let’s start with the important thing: luisa signing papers while she was apparently black out drunk on rose’s submarine.the first thing i want to comment on in relation to this is that rose giving all of her bank accounts to luisa can have a lot of different implications.  the first one, and the nicest in my opinion, is that consolidating bank accounts is something married people do.  or they open a joint account.  something like that.  so, symbolically, you can have the implication of rose and luisa being married.  woo-hoo!  the second one is, again, the potential risk that rose is taking here.  just like with her kill sheet, rose is basically giving luisa the keys to the kingdom where she is concerned, and for someone who (in my interpretation) has been under elena’s thumb and control for the majority of her life to just give herself over to luisa’s control says a lot about what luisa means to rose.  the third implication will be addressed later.the second thing i want to comment on is, of course, the idea that luisa was black out drunk on rose’s submarine.  now, when i initially was going through the spoiler tag, someone suggested that this might have happened when luisa was drugged on the submarine, which would imply that this happened during the period of time when rose took her to the sub.  (i tend to not think that rose drugged luisa at that time; i actually think that luisa fainted shortly after rose revealed that she was susanna.  but that might just be me.)  however, based on the specific lines of the scene, this cannot be the case.  in fact, it has to have happened after luisa initially left the sub.  we know from s3 that during the time luisa was initially on the sub they were circling the great barrier reef (coral reef?  they were circling a reef), not taking random vacations to other locations like madagascar.  not only that, but rose says it happened while luisa was insecure about their relationship, and they were not in a relationship during the scenes we saw on the submarine.  so this had to have happened sometime after that - maybe before we met eileen or maybe during the three year time-skip sometime at the beginning of all that.  i’d guess before we met eileen, but that’s just me.  further, i did look at screencaps from the scene where they ate breakfast on the sub because the back of my brain keeps trying to tell me that one of the men was carrying champagne, but while there were tea and orange juice cups (they did each have two cups, a white tea cup and saucer and a glass with a tropical leaf pattern - rose’s had orange juice so i assume that’s what it was for), in the caps i saw, there was no champagne bottle.  but they weren’t all comprehensive screencaps so might’ve missed a thing.now, here’s where things are up to interpretation and it all depends on rose’s character.if we take rose as we have seen her throughout the series - not what people have said but what we have seen with regards to luisa - the idea that rose let luisa drink at all on the sub or while they were together feels completely out of character.rose consistently when no one else but luisa would likely know has made sure that luisa is not drinking.  even from their first meeting, when luisa reveals that she’s been sober for thirty-four days, rose accepts that and doesn’t press and continues on as if it doesn’t matter (because it doesn’t).  rose is the one who checks in on luisa after allison cheats on her to make sure that she isn’t drinking; rose is the one who brings up with raf that hey, maybe you should be concerned about your sister disappearing and when raf suggest (without any real concern at all) that luisa is probably on a bender calls luisa and tells her that she’s worried she’s drinking; rose is the one who, when luisa calls her (as susanna), chooses to stay with her and not judge her for taking rose’s death hard and actually accepts that this is hard for her; rose is the one who (as susanna) tells luisa to go back to rehab because she shouldn’t be drinking.  this isn’t even getting into the time where rose just happened to call when luisa was going to try and drink in the hotel after emilio died.  rose has a sixth sense when it comes to luisa.  it is hard for me to see rose letting luisa drink on her sub in any capacity to the point that it is easier for me to think that rose forbade any alcohol on the sub at all.  i could maybe hazard that one of the workers on the sub brought a drink back with them, and since the lettering in the sub appeared to be russian, hey, probably vodka, and we know from s2 that vodka is luisa’s drink of choice, but that’s a stretch for me.even more to the point - and this is a little off-topic in terms of talking about rose’s character - but the times we have seen luisa drawn to drinking were when her life was at rock bottom.  the first time we see this is when 1) she’s losing her job; 2) her brother has cut her off; 3) her wife cheated on her (and they got divorced off-screen??); and 4) she almost got caught sleeping with her stepmother by her father.  the second time we see this is when 1) her father died; 2) her stepmother/lover turned out to be a crime lord; 3) her father died because said stepmother killed him; 4) her brother thought her shares were more important than letting her mourn and only pretended to care about her because he needed to talk business with her and then disappeared after that yolo (and she only didn’t drink because 1) there wasn’t any alcohol in her fridge and 2) rose called her).  the third time we see this is when 1) she accidentally got the love of her life murdered by trying to turn her over to the police by using herself as bait (among her listed reasons of 1) her brother doesn’t want anything to do with her and 2) her mother and father are dead).  the fourth time we see this is when 1) luisa thinks that she is disappointing raf and failing him because 2) rose killed his mom and 3) she still wants to be with rose, albeit this last one is not something the show covers.  please note the common threads here, and also note that this last one would put her in a place to potentially be drinking on rose’s sub if she was picked up by rose instead of going to preventative rehab like she decided to do with rogelio and also assuming that she brought alcohol on the sub with her while rose was preoccupied with something off of the ship.  so, conceivably, luisa could have been in a place to drink on the sub.  maybe.  if that’s the timeline we want to go with.  but if not, luisa probably wouldn’t be at rock bottom and probably wouldn’t feel so desperate to drink.  luisa drinks when she needs to take the edge off.  when she’s with rose, rose takes the edge off.  so really i feel like this is kind of a little out of character for luisa, too.back to topic.the third thing i want to comment on is that rose has never made luisa choose between her and rafael.  she’s never needed luisa to prove that she loved her.  it’s consistently been rose proving her love to luisa because as the crime lord murderer sociopath it makes sense that rose would need to prove that she actually loved luisa (and i think i may have discussed this elsewhere - the entire point of chapter fourteen was proving that rose did love luisa, not just to her but also to the viewers - that rose’s love of luisa was not just part of the rose solano part she had been playing up to that point)  there’s been no doubt that luisa does love rose, but there’s also no doubt that luisa has consistently chosen raf over rose.but this goes back to the submarine scenes in chapter forty-seven.  the biggest conflict in luisa staying with rose is that she still loves raf.  she asks to go up to wi-fi depths to see if raf emailed her, and when there is no email, rose uses this to say look, i’m the one who is here, i’m the one who loves you.  she gives luisa the option to leave (just like she gave her the option to run away with her and respected luisa’s boundary when luisa said no; rose only took luisa with her once luisa fell in love with her again as susanna (who very clearly did not want to be around luisa or in that sort of situation with her. constantly.  luisa pursued susanna, even when susanna visibly did not want to be pursued)).  and when rose realizes that raf might have emailed luisa but they were a day off because time zones, she checks and gives luisa raf’s email.  she gives luisa an option where she can still spend time with raf and rose will just wear a mask and pretend to be someone else.  and when luisa was afraid that rafael’s cancer had returned and decided to leave and gave rose the option to stay behind, despite her certainty that rafael was working with the police, rose went with her.  rose has not, up to this point, forced luisa to choose between them.  rafael has.  so for her to do so here and now might not be completely out of character and for her to ask luisa to prove that she loves her might not be completely out of character either (because relationships require both sides together and rose might be feeling like she’s pulling a lot of weight and not getting very much in return at this point.  i mean.  she is in jail because of how much trust she has given luisa, even knowing - from her time as susanna - that luisa can’t keep her mouth shut - and i want to address this in the latter portion of this exercise) but it still feels out of character because, again, rose has never forced that choice.  rafael has.however.
if we interpret rose differently, based not on what we have seen with luisa but how maybe they want her character interpreted, then luisa drinking on the sub, as well as some other moments we really want to chalk up to rose being a useless lovesick lesbian, make more sense because as a sociopath they might be something rose would allow if she got something out of it.primarily luisa.and for this i kind of want to go in chronological order of what rose would have been doing when, which means we’ll kind of be addressing these a little bit out of order.  ish.first, rose giving luisa her kill sheet.  this is a big indication of trust.  one that does eventually come to bite rose in the ass.  and rose, because she was susanna, knows that luisa cannot keep her mouth shut when it comes to the police, so if they end up in that sort of situation, rose is screwed.  rose knows she is screwed.  rose knows she can get out of jail, so this is potentially not as big of an issue or indicator of trust as we think it is.  but for luisa, it’s an indicator of trust and an indicator that rose will do what she wants.second, rose giving luisa rafael’s letter.  we can assume from this that rose has access to luisa’s email account.  it’s possible that luisa just stayed logged in.  who knows.  for this interpretation, we’re going with the darker version of rose, so let’s assume that rose just reads luisa’s emails to make sure she’s not getting anything that would distract her away from rose.  in this case, yeah, rose gives luisa rafael’s letter because 1) there’s nothing inherently dangerous or coded in what he said, so far as she can see, and 2) it gets luisa to trust her as someone who, seeing this, would want to allow luisa to still have her relationship with raf.third, rose coming up with an idea that allows luisa to have the best of both worlds, basically.  again, an indicator that rose wants to be family and will do what she has to in regards to being with luisa.  1) rose’ll wear a mask, and 2) rose won’t kill anyone anymore.  surprisingly for this interpretation, she does stick to the second one.  but this plays into her plot anyway.fourth, rose getting luisa drunk and signing her accounts over to her.  assume that rose notices that there’s alcohol on the ship where luisa can get it or that luisa brings alcohol on the ship and rose pretends not to see it so that luisa can get drunk.  signing her bank accounts over to luisa does two things: 1) it reinforces that she trusts luisa and gets luisa to trust her and 2) it ensures that if rose gets caught luisa is part of her getting out.  no matter whether luisa wants to be part of the plot or not, she is an accomplice based on her name being on the accounts.  this makes luisa look shady to rafael and drives a better wedge between them.fifth, rose getting caught.  now, again, there’s a risk, but rose thinks she can get out of jail.  either rafael finally catching her despite luisa’s insistence that he is good will cause a final break between them or her continuing indication of doing what luisa wants and proving to her that she loves her will get luisa on her side.  even with michael - that might be about them, but it’s more about i played ball for you.  i have done everything you asked.  i have shown you nothing but love and support.  i have never asked you to choose.  now choose me.it’s a multi-year timeline set-up to make luisa trust her and her love while also simultaneously driving a wedge between luisa and raf.  and right now, it looks like it’s working.now - the problem i have with this is that it seems much more indicative of a cold-blooded psychopath than the hot-tempered sociopath that the show consistently tells us rose is, so it’s….  for me, it checks out, and it’s not too much of a stretch and i think it may be what the show wants us to pick up on but is not doing a very good job of showing.  (this would have been strengthened if one of the guys on the sub had been carrying a champagne bottle, which is why i wanted to check that - and it’s possible that’s still the case because the screencaps i checked weren’t that specific.)  but, again, it’s up to character interpretation and i do think that this is the direction that the show wants us to go in.even in this direction, we can say that rose’s continued care in regards to luisa not drinking 1) reinforces to luisa that rose cares about her (and this is compounded with rose’s sixth sense and calling just when luisa needs her - once on the bridge right before luisa jumped and once when luisa wanted to drink after emilio’s funeral) and 2) is a bit of a self-preservation habit because luisa likely talks a lot when she’s drunk and, ah, given the sensitive nature of their relationship, luisa needs to not talk about them.  in susanna’s case, the second isn’t a thing but it makes her look like a good girlfriend to anyone watching and so more solidifies susanna as a good person and not the mole.do i like this interpretation?  no.  do i think it’s what the show wants us to go for at this point?  yes.now, as far as ways this could go - there are two:1) luisa is actually working with rose.  this is the good end in the first scenario, but the bad end in the second one.  since i think the show wants us to go with the second interpretation, i think it’s more likely that2) luisa is working against rose.  this is the bad end in the first scenario, but the good end in the second one and the one that, again, i think is more likely given what we know of the show at this point.  and by what we know, i mean the instagram photos of the last day of shooting wherein yara - luisa - was at what appears to be a jafael wedding but bridget - rose - is nowhere to be seen.  and, yes, we could make assumptions that rose could be there under another mask, but i don’t think that’s the way the show is going to go.especially since jennie has already told us that a death is coming near the end of the season.  i expect luisa is working against rose, and i expect that rose will die.  that might not be what’s going on, but i think it’s the most likely scenario given what we have.
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