#I wish people would stop hating kind characters they’re so good

[sukifoof]

hii i was talking about this on twitter so i think i will just copy paste it here cuz i’ll probably delete it there at some point <3 twitter frightens me but i love my mutuals here we are all insane about flowey in the same way

 i think saying “you’re the type of friend i wish i always had” is a really important thing for asriel to admit... this whole time asriel has dealt with so much grief and guilt about chara that it separated the actual person chara from the idealized version of them in his head who he has never stopped grieving. its a huge part of his character that hes unable to view them as they were because that’s just how his ptsd and guilt affects him. as someone who went through a similar thing that kind of grief can mess with your head and how you view yourself and the person who’s gone really badly. the pacifist route, for flowey’s character specifically, is a really good example of how grief and ptsd can make you feel disconnected from yourself, everyone around you, and like if only the person you lost was back everything would be perfectly fine again. the fact that he can admit they weren’t perfect and that he made the right decision is a huge character development that we don’t get to see in the no mercy route because he’s still convinced that this idealized version of them birthed from bereavement will make everything okay. similarly to how he believed toriel might have been able to fix him, he wants to believe there’s someone out there that could somehow return him to who he was before being traumatized, but the reality of it is this is just who he is.

his grief and trauma is a huge part of who he is like it is with real people, but it doesn’t have to be all of him. i think the emphasis the fandom puts on whether chara was Good Or Bad completely misses the point that it doesn’t really. matter i guess?? they were a kid people loved and now they’re gone. we're seeing people deal with the grief this brought and we know so little of who they are because there’s also a degree of separation about who they are to the people they loved as well. idk i hope this makes sense i think a lot about how chara is a kid who hated humanity and calls themself a demon. to me that just shows an EXTREMELY traumatized child with self hatred. i don’t know why there was ever this huge moral argument about chara when they’re literally just a kid with issues. they weren’t taught how to deal with how they felt and likely held themself in lower regard compared to the dreemurrs. its the same thing with asriel, he feels responsible for them being gone and his own trauma. he just wants a friend who can teach him to understand his grief or someone who can at least let him view the situation for how it really is

i just think. flowey is so well written but not understood very well by the fandom because the type of thing he’s gone through is kind of hard to grasp. it’s a weird situation that doesn’t have a completely black or white Is He Or Chara At Fault kind of answer. they were children. people are complicated and want someone to blame when something goes wrong and flowey directed that at himself. hes such a fascinating and well written character i love him dearly i hope u guys understand how insane he makes me <3

#undertale #utdr #flowey #asriel #asriel dreemurr #chara dreemurr #chara #utdr analysis

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! Sorry if this is a stupid question but I was wondering about representing disabilities/things in general that you don't have.

I always see people say that they want characters to be represented properly, and to show their disabilities and lives in an accurate way, but I also see people talk about how you shouldn't write about the struggles a POC/minority/person with a disability/etc. faces because you don't experience that and you're speaking over them or only using their story for "trauma porn" or whatever.

Maybe it's just because I'm autistic but I'm really not understanding how those two things coexist. How do I show how someone lives, especially with a disability that might be painful, without writing about the things they face?

Obviously it would be super weird if the character's entire personality was just "My life is awful because I'm so different, I can't do the things everyone else can, my life sucks."

But what about normal things that they struggle with? Like "Yeah I only have one arm, it's a pain in the ass to do dishes but it's not the end of the world." or "I have albinism so my depth perception is shit but whatever" or "It's fucking annoying when people stare at/judge me because I look different, but if they don't like it that's their problem, not mine lol."

Is the problem whether or not a characters ENTIRE story revolves around their disability? Using my own as an example:

A story, specifically, about how Funky Bungus, as an autistic person, lives in the world and what struggles he has due to his disability, VS a story where Funky Bungus is trying to stop two kingdoms from going to war and there's a short scene where he feels bad about not being able to make eye contract with people, before going back to the Kingdom War Drama.

I just want to use my stories as a way to educate people about disabilities and make people go "Hey, that character is like me!" or to make people think about their actions, like having a character complain about people staring at their scar/missing arm/etc. so maybe people will read it and go "Wow, I guess it IS rude when I don't mind my own business, from now on I won't stare at people."

Sorry if this got long and incomprehensible 😬

I guess the question is "How do I write about the struggles someone with a disability faces without coming across like I'm writing trauma porn or speaking over people" but I just have the Overexplain Everything So I'm Not Misunderstood Disorder™ lmao

I believe you have it right; the problem with many stories about disabilities written by non disabled authors often lies in when the story relies entirely on the disability.

It’s absolutely fine to write about the struggles a character faces — for an example with one of my disabilities, say a non-disabled author wrote about how a character kinda hates their chronic pain and wishes they didn’t have it. But otherwise there’s other stuff going on in the character’s life, like friends and family and hobbies, not just self-pity, and there’s other things going on in the plot, like maybe a mystery to solve or an Item to find or an adventure to go on or something.

That would be perfectly fine, and I’d love to read it actually, and really writing is kind of a balance of using what we know already and mixing it with things we haven’t experienced but have researched and/or thought about.

That’s how you show an authentic character with disabilities — they have struggles, things they can’t do or can’t do as well as others, but that’s not all there is to them. There’s things they enjoy doing, things they’re good at, people they spend time with and things they do.

Good intentions combined with research and knowledge (and good plots!) will make for good stories that feel authentic.

Hope this helps!

Mod Sparrow

Hi!

I think that there can be good stories that have disability/ableism as its primary focus, but they should be #OwnVoices (as in, made by people who experience said thing). That's largely because it often gets very specific and thus easy to misrepresent even if you have good intentions. Sometimes it can end up like "being disabled is so sad and everything is inaccessible, how tragic!" and end up pitying the character - rather than actually sympathizing with them - just because that nuance is missing. To use the same example as you did, "character complains about people staring at their scar sometimes" would be a completely normal way to include ableism as a part of life that does happen, while "character gets bullied for 300 pages for having a facial difference" would be in the torture porn category (when written by someone who doesn't have that experience).

I think that what Sparrow described is the best if you're not describing your own experiences. Including ableism as a thing that happens from time to time or as a tertiary focus is totally fine. That's how it is in real life - sometimes things do suck, but there's still a whole lot of other things that we do.

I think your desire to educate people is admirable and it should be very much doable with the solutions you presented! Good luck writing!

mod Sasza

#mod sparrow #anonymous #ableism #mod sasza

[pinkandpurple360]

New happy ending for the Full Moon episode! So Stol/tz ‘breakup’ happens, Blitzo goes back to his apartment, upset and worn out. He gets a text from Fizz asking how it went (since Fizz lent him the sex toys or whatever) and goes over to Fizz’s place to return whatever it was he borrowed and didn’t use.

Fizz notices he’s upset and they talk. Now Fizz is feeling less insecure about his own relationship with Ozzie he doesn’t project the whole ‘you just hate him for being rich’ thing onto Blitzo this time and instead he just. Listens. He realizes in like a microsecond that Stolas is nothing like Ozzie - Ozzie cares about his comfort and his consent. Stolas cared about using Blitzo to get off, then blamed him for feeling used once he decided he wanted something real. He’s horrified and gives Blitzo a much needed hug, apologizing for making Blitzo feel like he was going crazy thinking something was wrong between him and Stolas.

Blitzo chuckles and says something else that makes Fizz’s blood run cold: Stolas is the noble Buckzo sold him to that day all those years ago and ever since it's been like he can't escape him. If only he hadn't gotten caught stealing that book... But Fizz doesn’t have much time to compute that before Blitzo follows up with: ‘but you’ve always been my real childhood friend. The whole time I just wished I was playing with you. I always wished I was with you.’ They both realize Blitzo has just said ‘I love you’ without saying it and Blitzo gets up to try to leave, panicked

For a second Fizz just watches him and Blitzo thinks he’s lost him for good & is juuuust about to start tearing up when Fizz's mechanical arm winds around Blitzo’s hand, stopping him.

Fizz tells him ‘you know… I bet Ozzie and I can make room for one more’. Blitzo turns back, now openly crying. Fizz pulls him in for another hug

Cut to Blitzo snuggled up between the two of them in the big love heart bed, post 'breakup' ice cream bowl in hand as the two of them just let him eat ice cream, cry and spill his guts about how awful the whole arrangement was until he’s feeling safer and happier

/end scene

Fuck that hits heavy

Imagine the character growth of fizz not being such a pushover for royals, Blitzø being the one to really get him to that point because of what happened with Mammon. Blitzø apologises for implying Ozzie was treating fizz some kind of way. But he still knew fizz was off. Saying things defensively in a way he never used to, defending abusive people out of his own insecurity, his denial that mammon was abusing him because sometimes you just want someone to be better than they are.

Blitzø shows him bruising on his scarred side where stolas likes to yank at his face whenever he got angry or got mad at Blitzø for being “too mouthy” or doing something uncouth. Which was often. Fizz says mammon always did that too, but always mixed it with compliments and nice sounding words. Causing confusion. Exactly like stolas calling Blitzø ‘darling’ before glaring at him with those terrifying, manic, glowing red eyes, so full of disdain.

They both promise not to call each other ‘fizzy’ or ‘Blitzy’ , so happy to not have to ‘perform’ monthly or annually in bed or on stage for nasty royal demons whims. It’s finally over.

Asmodeus actually is the jealous type. Very jealous. A third would have to be someone really special, who he trusts. And he really does trust. When he sees them curled up together though, he doesn’t feel mad, he sees fizz in a calmer state than he’s ever been, this Blitzø is someone Ozzie has always known was important to fizz. He never shuts up about him. Now he knows their love for each other is even older than his own and he respects that. They’re both just so darn cute. And they’re both so happy he helped them reunite. With the three of them together that big bed doesn’t feel so big anymore, and it’s twice as warm as it used to be ❤️💚💙

#helluva boss critical #Blitzfizzarozzie #stolitz critical

[patcaps]

you can read my other thoughts on the finale here so i’m not gonna just say all the same things again but

the ending was always gonna be divisive with people loving it or hating it, liking it but wishing some things were a bit different. it’s the ending of a beloved show and nobody is ever gonna agree on what the right ending would be. it sucks to have folks outright rejecting it but it also sucks to see people like “you are wrong for having any criticisms whatsoever” like, i’m all for being able to discuss aspects of media and what we liked and didn’t like. it’s not always a bad faith interpretation, or cynicism, or being poor at understanding the writing and intention. and i love meta and analysis that doesn’t completely pick apart something and refuse it any grace or leniency. i think sometimes we’re way too hard on stuff that is ultimately heartfelt and from a place of love and joy, and unraveling them dampens the magic.

anyway. that aside. i love this show so much. there are things i’d have done differently, pacing choices that made it fall flat in places, but it’s not my show and these guys know their characters and love them as much as we do. and the ghosts and mike and alison never stopped being family - which is, ultimately, the biggest thing that matters. not the house, not where they are, but how they’ve helped each other for the better. alison and mike spent their entire lives making sure the ghosts were never forgotten, always went back to catch up. they got to enjoy all the fun and love of visiting family without the stress of living under each other’s feet 24/7 - and relationships with family often improve tenfold with that breathing space.

the show ended where it started with the plans to turn it into a hotel, but this time instead of the ghosts panicking and being like “drive her out, kill her” they loved alison enough to take all of that change on, safe in the knowledge that alison would never ever just abandon them. that’s such a neat way of showing how they’ve all helped each other. like, robin’s seen that house and the houses and land before it change so much but he felt so good about this change, literally said he felt christmassy finally, because they could do this. for her. for their friend, their family member, their alison.

they existed before alison and they’ll exist after her, but in the meantime they get to enjoy being her family and also know they’ve given them a more stable, secure, less stressful living arrangement that works for them all. they aren���t fully dependent on alison anymore and alison was no longer fearful of leaving and losing them because she knew they’d still be her family no matter what. i’ve seen some people interpret this as “they’re saying having a baby meant her found family weren’t important anymore, they have to go be a traditional family alone” and that was my kneejerk response too, but then i sat with it. and actually, alison goes from being a (presumed) orphan with no family besides mike and his side, to having all of that plus the ghosts, people who love her and always welcome her back to visit whenever she wants. how lovely for her to have her very own family she can go and see, who did such a kind thing for her, however bittersweet a decision it was initially.

and yeah, it’s true that the ghosts have less of alison there to take care of things like personalised entertainment, but that’s the whole point of them leaving - alison wasn’t in a position where she could worry about entertaining them all the time whilst also being with her husband and raising a newborn. it wasn’t fair to keep asking her to run around after a houseful of ghosts when looking after yourself and a small child is hard enough. she could have stayed and ended up resenting them, getting frustrated and angry the way they did with mike’s mum, potentially souring that relationship with the ghosts. instead she moved out and gets to go back and see them and love and enjoy them fully without that responsibility 24/7. i’m sure she took them new things, gifts, let them watch tv and read books, i bet they had requests for whenever she visited which she was more than happy to supply. and i bet they always had new anecdotes and things to catch her up on.

the more time i have, the more i warm to it all. it’s easy to say “they should have stayed together at the house” but this show is about being human, about life and death, how existence is both cruel and kind and beautiful and unexpected and it changes you and you change it. they did stay together, just not under the same roof. home is more than just button house, more than just a dream because dreams change as we go, and belonging is about more than just a destination. alison found home and belonging in the ghosts, and they found it in her too. the rest is just bricks and mortar.

#bbc ghosts spoilers #bbc ghosts #quill to paper #ghosts meta

[13thdoctorposts]

Michelle Gomez Panel

Please note this IS NOT word for word, but so you can get a general gist of the panel. Both Michelle and Sacha were hilarious.

Whovians of all ages got to ask Michelle questions.

This post is just Michelle’s panel I’ll make separate posts for them together and Sacha’s panel soon!

How’s your New Zealand accent?

Bad I only have one and it’s Scottish I’ve been working on it my entire life… so 27 years. Lol

What was your favourite episode of Doctor Who to film?

I went to set and there was an army Daleks of every variety, and I stuck my 8 year old son in one and they started filming and I didn’t know were he was just that he in was in a Dalek.

Would you like to be in the new series of Doctor Who?

Hell yes, I’m just waiting for the call.

In Who and Sabrina you play a define feminine who was wronged by others what was your motivation to play these kind of villains?

With my face it’s hard not to plays witches and bitches and I long to play a character called Alison but Madam it is. I want to make sure I’m not just playing bad, I believe people are the way they are because of their experiences, so what makes them bad? That’s what interests me in the characters.

Did you like sitting on the throne of hell in Sabrina?

I loved sitting on it and wish I could have taken it home, I would have made room for it.

Did you Ad lib much in Doctor Who?

Steven Moffatt is a phenomenal writer so there’s not much you could add to it. But sometimes on the day something would fit. But Moffatt wrote to my strengths so I didn’t feel I needed to.

Why did you want to help the Doctor?

There’s a thing called a frenemy, keep your enemy’s close. They were originally friends and like all relationships they go through good times and bad times and sometimes they go their different ways. The master went to the dark side and the Doctor went to that other side. I was trying to bring in the nuance to that relationship

If you make it to the new series will you still help the Doctor?

No

If you put Missy and Lilith in a room together would they plot world domination or try to kill each other?

I think they would try each others costumes on. Once I wanted to bust of of Missy’s costume and it was hot so I took the top layer off and thought I’d just wear the petty coats in the scene, and Steven Moffatt was like… what are you doing? This is a children’s show, put your clothes back on. Lol. Lilith got lots of incredible costumes.

Being the last of the Timelords do you think the Master and the Doctor ever had a child?

Wow, I don’t know, I’m not sure the Doctor and the Master have those bits. They’re like Barbie and Ken. The first thing you do with a figurine of yourself is check.

What would you have changed about Missy’s costume?

I don’t think it could have been more Missy, it was a phenomenal image. It sent the message that Mary Poppin’s was the most evil woman in the Universe. There was a corset and after lunch I did hate the costume.

How did you get the role of Missy?

I was offered another part but I was doing psycho bitches at the time so I wrote to Steven Moffatt if you need a villainess I’m your man. Then a couple months later my agent called, said to sit down and that Steven was offering me the role of the Master, I was blown away. I might have planted the seed, I’d like to take credit for it.

If you could travel with any other Doctor and torment them who would it be?

Tom Baker

Do you like being the villain of Doctor Who?

I do. If anyone is listening I do, I would like to come back, stop fucking around, I’m available.

There’s episodes with multiple Doctors why can’t we have multiple Masters?

Because there’s only one! Although Sacha is quite good, I like Sacha.

Were you nervous the first time you were on TV?

Yeah, that was a long time ago on a show called The Bill and I played a ticket warden. The director said to do a banana around the car and slap a ticket on the window. I didn’t know what a ‘banana’ was so I acted like I was slipping on a banana, landed on the ground, the crew looked at me and I just jumped up and they told me what I actually needed to do.

What was your favourite part of being chaotic and fun with your Missy?

They let me piss about with focus, I could be physically free, I could dance and bounce a lot.

Can you share a funny moment on Doctor Who?

I was nervous, it was my first day, Peter and Jenna were there, when I get nervous I over compensate so I grabbed Peter, it’s like I go into some kind of black out, I threw him against the wall and snogged him, had my hand behind my back, because I knew that would make a nice visual, Jenna Coleman took my hand, that was my first 5 mins, it was weird.

What was it like being on set with Peter?

When I was younger I’d see Peter around and he was so cool like the David Bowie of paisley. And I looked up to him. When we started working together I felt like I already knew him, we had an instant short hand, so we crack each other up.

Shouting from the back…

Sacha: Oh so boring!

Michelle: SECURITY, SECURITY!

*Coming soon… there will be a part 2 with both of them and 3 with Sacha… I just don’t have time to post now.

#gomez!missy #gomez!master #missy #michelle gomez #sacha dhawan #dhawan!master #spymaster #13th doctor #12th doctor

[moedull]

LIKE

A/N: This is part of my AO3 series where my favourite characters represent different times (and ways) to say I love you

this was written waaay back in 2021? This is rewritten ofc, but, quite hastily in my opinion! It may not be the best, but, hey, it's cool

also.... dont be afraid to comment... help artists survive by showing ur love through comments or sharing their fics!!!!! >_o thanks!

AKA. Posted from my ao3 once again!

words: 1273

tags: NOT BETA READ, mild hurt/comfort, gender neutral reader, established relationship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Enjoy: TSUKISHIMA KEI!

“Oh you’re still going on about that?”

“Yes.” 

Tsukishima sighs, sitting behind you as you smash the letters on your keyboard. You hear the bed creak and suddenly, he’s sitting next to you. He gently grabs your hands and holds them tight. 

“Hey.” He starts casually.

You look him in the eye with a huge frown, and furrowed eyebrows. “What?”

“Come here.”

‘Here’ is the soft bed you wish to lay on with no worries in the world. Of course, with your boyfriend, Tsukishima Kei.

“Why?”

“Why not?” 

“I’m busy right now…” You try pushing him away. 

“You don’t look like you’re in the best condition.” He says matter of factly, rubbing circles onto the back of your hand.

“So what if I am? I have to finish my thesis.”

He looks at you, sighs, and rolls his eyes. “I know that but it doesn’t change the fact that I worry about you.”

“I can take care of myself.” You hushed. “But thank you.”

“Are you ever gonna let me help? Or just go along with everything because you have too much pride for your own good?”

“No.” You huff. You suppose it was a habit from when you first met– always reaching for the top, showing everyone who really deserves to be up there– and, you do. You try hard everyday, working and caring for so many different things.

You just seem to be out of luck as it always feels like your efforts are unnoticed. In such situations, perseverance is key– but that kind of mindset may quickly turn sour when they’re left to linger and turn into stubbornness. 

You should probably hate Tsukishima Kei– strong-willed, cool and collected, and of course, smart. You would never have expected to hit it off with him, but he's one of those people who could easily get under your skin and get you to crack.

“Well, I know you can handle yourself, but don’t forget to eat.”

You roll your eyes (no malice is intended, of course). “You don’t need to baby me all the time.”

His eyebrow twitches, and he rolls his eyes in exasperation (no malice is intended here as well). “Whatever. But you need to sleep. Okay?”

“Yeah yeah.” You wave his concerns away, already turning around to resume typing.

Tsukishima huffs, gets up and moves over to your desk. He places his hands on either side of the laptop, leaning forward slightly as he studies the screen. 

“It’s not good to stress yourself out like this.”

“I don’t stress out.” You argue.

“Right, cause you always make sure you’re not stressed out.”

“I am not stressed out.” You insist.

“Fine.”  He relents. “But just remember I care about you. I can’t help it if you act like an idiot sometimes.”

The corners of your lips twitch up. “You’re cute.”

“Shut up.” 

“And sweet.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Don’t you think I should use more than two adjectives when talking about someone I like?” You ask with a smile, tilting your head.

He grins smugly down at you, crossing his arms over his chest. “Maybe.”

You chuckle, but it stops right away as you turn back to your work. Tsukishima still hangs around, not entirely convinced of your claims of being fine. He is especially convinced when you simply stare at your blank page, trying to find the right words to make the right sentence to make the right point of the right argument and–

“Okay, so what’s the problem?” He asks, taking a seat next to you. He scrolls up with your mouse, trying to read the rest of your document. 

You see the reflection of his face; His eyebrows knit together, lips pursed as the cursor moves underneath a few words. He lingers on a few sentences for unknown reasons that make your hands sweat and your heart beat faster. Flustered? Hardly, it’s the ache of anxiety. Your problems, right now, are far from school-related. 

“Mm.” Tsukishima hums, resting his chin on your shoulder. “You have the idea, so that’s good.”

But,

“You’re not being straight to the point about it.” He scrolls back to whatever page you made some stupid mistake on.

When did mistakes matter? I mean, seriously, at which stage of your life, did you begin to wallow over your mistakes? You were only in 3rd grade, scraping your knee on a cement pavement from running and that was one of the worst things that happened to you. 

Now, you read back on all of your essays and tests and feel your heart drop when you see that red ‘X’, the teacher encircling a specific part, or some harsh comments at the side. You want to blame the system, the adults, the economy or whatever God is up there– but, you can’t help it– You look in the mirror, thinking: Fuck. Was this all me?

Someone flicks your forehead, and you let out a wince, rubbing the spot.

“Hey.” Tsukishima says, tilting his head to look at your face. “You were zoning out.”

You glance back at him with an almost confused, somewhat dazed look. Here’s another big question: When did Tsukishima Kei matter? It’s incredible that you looked at someone for 304 days, talked, fell in love and somehow, it’s your life and his. You can’t put it into words right now; the questions that grow inside the empty pit of your stomach, because, right, you haven’t eaten yet, and you can’t tell if it really is a question, or if it’s screaming at you. 

You feel like you’re going to vomit–Fuck, that anxiety was just building up inside of you.

“I..” You pause, swallowing a non-existent lump in your throat. 

 “I didn’t think..” You pause again, taking a deep breath. “I didn’t think you’d like me back.”

He sits straight up, and stares down at you, furrowing his eyebrows with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean?”

You shake your head. “Look, I wasn’t expecting any response from you when I confessed.” 

You pause, feeling your eyes burn slightly from the tears that were building up, “I was just.. someone. You were one of the smartest guys in school—still are—but, out of everyone....” you start to trail off. 

“Out of everyone, why did you choose me?” You continue, forcing yourself to speak slowly, slightly tensing up at the evident sound of your voice breaking halfway.

He doesn’t respond. He slumps his shoulders, seemingly taken aback and bewildered.

“Why does someone like you pick me?” You laugh bitterly. Your heart aches even at the thought of it.

You watch him closely, as if looking for some sort of reaction or sign of how he feels. A flicker in his eyes, anything.

Tsukishima’s face remains blank for several moments before opening his mouth slowly to say, “Because I like you.”  

It takes you a minute to process what he said and you blink owlishly. You’d been prepared to hear something like ‘You’re a dumbass’ or something along the lines.

”But why?” You manage to blurt out, unable to hide a frown.

There’s a long silence as you hold his gaze. You stare at each other, neither willing to break eye contact, not until he leans in and presses his lips against yours.

“Was that answer not enough?” He whispers into your ear, his fingers gently caressing your cheek.

You feel lightheaded, your entire body buzzing and your heartbeat drumming against your ribcage.

You can’t speak, so instead you shake your head.

There's silence as he begins to cradle you in his arms, resting his chin on your head.

“I love you.” He tells you again.

#tsukishima kei x reader #haikyuu x reader #kei tsukishima x reader #moedull

[adhdbisexualramblings]

I’m likely going to regret posting this after an actual rewatch of season ten, but-

Chloe was a wonderful foil to Timmy. They should have shared fairies. They’re perfect for each other friendship-wise.

Timmy’s conflicts are mainly external - neglectful parents, abusive babysitter, sucky school life - and despite his rowdiness and forgetful nature, he’s genuinely a very sweet boy who just gets caught up in whatever rash wish he’s made. Sure, he only has two friends (excluding his godparents), but that’s because he’s unpopular.

Chloe…has the exact opposite problem. All of her problems are purely internal. She does good everywhere she goes and strives to help everyone, which makes her a good person by nature, but it’s because of that giving nature why she has no real friends. She’s elevated immediately upon going somewhere to a celebrity status - it happened in Dimmsdale, and though she didn’t seem particularly upset about it, she still hasn’t stopped getting praise for her actions even months after moving there. Her life is the antithesis of Timmy’s to a T - wonderful, caring (if not overprotective) parents, a lot of people around her all the time, and a genuine love for everything that would theoretically make her the ‘perfect godchild’.

But, she has no real friends. No one she can count on for a cry or to lean back on if she needs help. Because she’s Chloe Carmichael, perfect girl, she shouldn’t have problems when everything in her life is great. Unlike Timmy, who is seen again and again clearly needing assistance, mainly assumed by characters and not explicitly said aloud by him. Chloe doesn’t have that specific ‘normal child’ status he has (no I am not projecting my survivor’s guilt onto a fictional character be quiet) because her life looks so good from the outside.

Despite what many reviewers, angry YouTubers in 2017, and a look at the first episode may tell you, Chloe does have flaws. Sure, she does actually like doing all this good stuff, but she’s…well, not far from, but you get it. She’s not totally perfect. She’s very protective about things she values (her DVD box set (which I totally get because those things are pricey, especially in this economy)) and tends to blow up if there’s any chance they’re threatened (yelling at Timmy to never lay a hand on said box set). She can be selfish (that episode where she had to share Timmy’s birthday and tried to one-up him) and a bit of a control freak (ideas likely coming from her parents’ want for perfection). She’s overly ambitious and her desire to find good in everyone blinds her to their bad parts (Foop may be a baby, but he’s not exactly as innocent as Chloe thinks). She can be easily-impressionable, as shown when she took to a brief life of crime in one episode. And, as Timmy puts it, she’s a little nuts.

Back to Chloe having no friends because she can’t be vulnerable with people who see her as a celebrity. She has a lot of traits that people might not like (see above) and can put them off on being an actual friend. Timmy has never seen Chloe as this popular untouchable mini-goddess - he hated her from the moment he saw her. Him having to share his fairies and subsequently be around her more often allows her to show those ‘worse’ (read: naturally human) traits off, and he won’t mind because those aren’t new to him, or weird. Timmy becomes, because of this, her first actual friend.

So while Timmy is rambunctious, mischievous, and has trouble paying attention but is still a sweet child in the moments where we see it, Chloe is a kind, generous, potentially self-sacrificing, overflowing-with-love girl who can get obsessed at times and lets her kindness be her downfall (sometimes). In the end, they’re both kids who have flaws.

Chloe and Timmy prove that misery is in the eye of the beholder. What’s miserable to Chloe may just be a normal day for Timmy, and we don’t know what fairy council grounds are for distributing godparents.

Additionally, Nick ruined Chloe as a character by breaking the show, don’t tell rule (telling us why she needed fairies instead of showing it through body language or actions) and sweeping her other bad traits under the rug. I despise the bright colors and neat lines of the new Flash animation they used, I hate it immensely, and Timmy’s character was botched within the first two seconds he was onscreen, but those are all their own posts.

#Do I hate Chloe still along with season ten? Yes #But I think her and the season’s potential was wasted #And I’m no longer on the mindless hate-train YouTubers forced upon the people in 2016-17 #I mean I still am a little but I’m older now and know better #Fairly Oddparents #chloe carmichael #timmy turner #cosmo cosma #wanda fairywinkle cosma #character analysis

[zutaralesbian]

Tagged by the lovely @callivich to answer these Gallavich questions! Thank you, they were fun 😊

1. What’s a fic you’ve read more than once?

You Can Bite Me by Shamelessquestions. I love the vampire trope so having arguably the most iconic author for the Gallavich fandom write something for it was a dream come true. And it did not disappoint.

2. What’s a gifset you always have to reblog?

I can’t really think of a specific gifset but pretty much anything that involves paralleling Gallavich’s first ever scene with one of them getting married or engaged is my shit. It’s the journey.

3. What’s a headcanon you can’t stop thinking about?

A headcanon that is my Truth and that I always stick to is that the first time Ian told Mickey he loved him was in 4x11 after Mickey came out.

4. What’s a fanart you love looking at?

This one ❤️

5. What’s an idea you’d love to create if you had the time/inspiration?

I have a thousand different fic ideas running through my head at all times 😭 But one that’s been lingering in my head lately in particular is a canon divergence where Mickey completes his time in prison after S6 but doesn’t try to contact Ian after he’s released. Years later, they run into each other in a different city when they’re both in their early thirties and married to other people. They decide to catch up and try being friends. However, they quickly realize that the romantic feelings never fully went away and things spiral into them having an affair with each other. It’d be a super messy fic but would capitalize on the aspect of them being magnetic soulmates who ultimately can’t stay away from each other no matter the circumstances.

6. What’s something you’ve discovered since entering this fandom? A new trope you love? A different analysis of the show? Something else?

Hmmm…tbh I can’t really think of anything in particular for this question

7. What’s an underrated trope or concept you’d like to see more of?

I’ve said this before, but Gallavich is one of those ships that I feel like can fit into a large pool of AU’s. That being said, I would personally like to read more enemies to lovers and/or rivals to lovers. I kinda get why it’s a little rare since in canon, Ian/Mickey definitely are a friends with benefits to lovers type trope. But I can’t help it…I love reading fics where two characters fucking hate each other before falling in love lol

8. What’s your favourite season? And has this changed after multiple rewatches of the show?

S4. And it’s pretty much been that way since the first time I watched the show. Mickey is my fave so I’m definitely biased considering it was arguably his best season.

9. What’s a plot hole you wish had been answered or resolved?

I would have liked to have gotten to know more about Mickey and Mandy’s mother. I guess in a way it is kind of fun that the fandom can have their own headcanons about her. I kind of have a headcanon that Mickey and Mandy have a different biological mother than the rest of the Milkovich siblings because they look alike but both look different from Terry.

10. What scene or moment do you feel isn’t discussed enough?

This is another hard one because I personally feel that the fandom does a pretty good job of discussing and analyzing all of Ian and Mickey’s important scenes. I guess maybe the “you’re just a warm mouth to me” scene in S2. It gets overshadowed as far as angsty scenes go considering everything Ian/Mickey go through in their relationship later. But I feel like it was their first big heartbreak with each other.

11. What line/dialogue/description from something else (a poem, a book, a tv show, a movie, or something else) do you feel describes Ian and Mickey’s relationship?

"When you meet the right person, you know it. You can't stop thinking about them. They are your best friend and your soulmate. You can't wait to spend the rest of your life with them. No one and nothing else can compare." (From How I Met Your Mother)

12. What do you think is next for Ian and Mickey post-finale?

I think they stay in their westside apartment for a little while but ultimately do decide to move out when their lease is up. They end up getting a decent place back in the south side, after both of them admit they miss it. Ian brings up the idea of them having kids from time to time but the idea still makes Mickey nervous. They compromise by deciding to try out being pet owners first and get a cat and a dog. (The cat being a stray they find on the streets and the dog adopted from a shelter). They run their security business for a while but eventually Mickey does encourage Ian to try something new, knowing his husband has a hero complex and might not be fully satisfied with a career that doesn’t involve him helping people. What that is, I’m not entirely sure. I’d like to see him go back into the medical field but I don’t know how feasible that is with him being a felon. But hey, it’s also the Shameless universe so anything is possible.

Tagging: @whaticameherefor @milkymickeyway @such-a-barbarian @auds-and-evens

I feel like most of my Shameless moots were tagged in the og post but if I happened to miss anyone feel free take this as a tag!

#gallavich #shameless #*

[goldeneyedgirl]

TwiFicmas23 Day 7: ATBT (all the truth that's in me)

Good evening! Tonight I've got All These Broken Things, with a brand new portion from the second draft. I'm really excited about how this fits into the fic because it really sets up the 'healing' character arc and the part it replaces wasn't nearly as interesting or character-driven.

I hope everyone is well and having a nice holiday period, whatever that looks like.

all the truth that's in me.

five years post-breaking dawn.

The notes start showing up late spring, in dirty and crumpled envelopes with the address written in unsteady letters. There is no pattern to their arrival - three might arrive one week, and then it might be months until another appears. All of them are addressed to him, and they have no return address with postmarks from all over the country. Several of them arrive postage-due, and it’s all very strange, but no one says anything.

They know who they’re from, and so does he. 

And it’s always a postcard-sized page torn from a sketchbook with a simple pencil drawing. No letters or signature. Just the drawing. 

(He’s not sure what they are supposed to mean, at first - a cloudy night sky framed in treetops; hand prints sunk into the mud. His face sketched smiling warmly at something off the page. They are oddly unsettling, and he’s not sure what to make of them, or why she’s sending them. But he keeps them in his desk drawer, away from prying eyes.)

They keep coming. A dead body with the neck snapped. Blood on thin hands. Jumping into the river and being dragged by the current. A dress that doesn’t quite fit. All sketched out, devoid of colour, but so vivid and detailed that it doesn’t matter. He can see it all as if it’s a still photograph; she’s talented even beyond the skills of a vampire. 

But he doesn’t know what Alice is trying to tell him. Is she showing him where she’s going? What she’s doing? It’s all disjointed and strange and he wishes he could ask her. 

(He doesn't care if she's stopped hunting animals. It's not going to shock or disgust him if she has. He hopes she knows that.)

The pile of pages keeps on growing and it takes more than a dozen for him to realise Alice never draws herself. He sees her hands and feet, but there are no drawings of her face. No real reassurance in the images that she’s okay.

It still doesn’t feel like the reason she’s sending them. 

(The rest of the family want to know exactly what she’s sending him, but they know better than to ask. Perhaps they are imagining short letters full of pleasantries that at least makes him feel confident in her path forward. Or marks on a map so that he knows where to find her. Both things that he would prefer so at least he knows that she’s not out there miserable and suffering - which is what he assumes is the truth. She never asked them for help before.)

He doesn’t understand.

The next four arrive in a row, one after the other from Tuesday to Friday. 

The first one is of a diner. People hunched over soup bowls and coffee, the checkerboard floors, the waitresses doling out coffee. 

He doesn’t recognize the place until the second card and it’s like being thrown back in time, into his most shameful memory. He knows that diner, he remembers that night and what he did there. It weighs as heavily on him as a lot of the things he did in the South. 

He feels sick looking at the drawing, at the rendering of his rain-soaked self walking through the door. He doesn’t need another card, he wants to tear this one up. He hates it, hates the fact that Alice saw this, hates the fact that she found a red pencil just for his eyes. And he hates that the next card that he gets will show him exactly what he’s capable of, damning evidence of one of the most terrible things he’s ever done. A page scrawled over in red, letting him know that she knows his past, knows what kind of man he chose to be. 

The shame is stifling, and it takes hours for him to calm down enough to venture out of his study. He’s confused and oddly hurt that she felt the need to send him this, even as the calmer, more rational voice in his head reminds him that she is most likely still upset and hurt by him and his actions in Forks. That if lashing out with the truth, with his truth, hurts so badly then that is his fault for being such a monster in the first place. 

Esme notices how unsettled he is, but she doesn’t ask. Of the whole family, she and Jasper are the two who took Alice’s departure the hardest. The rest of the family were confused and hurt - but Carlisle was very much the kind of person who believed that the door was always open to Alice as a daughter, a sister, or as a friend, and that sometimes paths divert. Rosalie and Edward saw it as a betrayal, that Alice had rejected their offering of family, and weren’t interested or invested in her return. Emmett just shrugged and said that he hoped she was doing better. And Bella just admitted that Alice had scared her when she was a human because of everything that happened with James. 

He doesn’t want to talk to Esme about the drawings. Alice addressed them to him and to him alone. And he’s still not sure what the message is, beyond the diner. He doesn’t want Esme speculating, inspecting them for clues. They’re his, and his alone, to riddle out for a reason. 

It’s less than a day before the next one arrives, and he practically snatches it from Esme’s hand, tension in every movement - obvious enough that Rosalie gives him a funny look but he doesn’t want to explain. 

He sits in his study with the door locked, and it still takes time to convince himself to open it, to see her beautiful rendering of the diner awash in the blood of twelve innocent people. A place he set fire to as soon as he could stand. It had been in all the papers, the gas-line explosion in Philadelphia that killed everyone inside. 

Jasper never returned to that city, and has refused to live there ever since. 

He finally opens the envelope and flips over the paper. 

It’s not… 

It’s wrong. It’s not what happened.

The page she has sent has him sitting in the window of the diner, across from her; the angle is such that her hands are reaching out to him, wearing gloves with tiny buttons. The closest thing he has to a drawing of her face is her fuzzy reflection in the rain-flecked glass. 

The look on his face in the drawing is unfamiliar. It’s suspicious and incredulous but so very tired. He’s forgotten how gaunt he looked in those days, the strain of everything written across his face. 

(He understands even less than he did before, but if she means it as some kind of comfort to him, he appreciates the clumsy attempt. He murdered twelve people that night, a hysterical panic attack that was over in less than twenty seconds, and left him shaking in the corner of the diner. Ten minutes after he walked in, the building was on fire, and he was half a city away.)

It still feels like he’s missing something about all of the cards. He could ask the others, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want his siblings to look at him like he’s crazy or a fool, and explain them so simply and obviously. He couldn’t stand it if they understood immediately and he hadn’t, when she entrusted them to him. 

And then the next one arrives, and he’s absolutely bewildered. No faces, just bodies, his hand hiking up her skirt with her legs wrapped around him, pressed against dark brickwork of an alley. Even with only a fragment of the scene, it’s abundantly obvious that this is what happened after the diner and he’s oddly ashamed that this version of him that she’s made up didn’t have the grace to get a room for the night. But he’s also the one that was fucking her in the woods, so maybe he’s a hypocrite. 

He’s also oddly relieved to see the return of the red pencil in the trim of her shift, and nothing else. 

And that’s it for months. No more grubby envelopes with his name written neater every single time. No more postmarks darting all over the country. No more picture-riddles that he doesn’t understand. And somehow, that makes it worse. He spreads them out on the floor of his study once, in order, and tries to figure them out. There are exactly forty-eight of them, and he wonders if that’s a coincidence. 

Emmett brings him the next one, nearly six months later. Marked from Washington State, and Jasper wonders with horror if she tried to go home again and they weren’t there. But it’s been years, surely… no, surely she was just passing through. She knows they aren’t there, because she sends mail to him. Just a coincidence. 

There’s more than one in the envelope this time. And they’ve all been destroyed; scrunched up and torn and scribbled through. It takes him over an hour to piece together what she’s sent, to try and erase the angry lines bisecting the drawing without erasing something important. 

And they’re beautiful. Vaguer and looser than the drawings before, scattered scenes across four pages of them. Her face is always obscured but the way she stands next to him, the way she’s portrayed beside him - always close, always touching - is so different to what he expected. It’s a kind of gentleness he never thought himself capable of. 

Before all of this, when he considered marriage, he figured he’d be exactly as he would have been as a human husband - polite, respectful, and protective. That he was incapable of that easy back-and-forth that Esme and Carlisle shared; or that relaxed affection and camaraderie of Rosalie and Emmett. Or even the absolute devotion that Bella and Edward held together. That invisible way anyone who walked into a room could tell that they were together and in love. No, he wouldn’t have that. If there was any hope for a partner for him, they would have to accept separate rooms and that polite but firm distance between them. He would take care of them to his full ability, but that kind of intimacy would never be part of any of his relationships. He accepted that a long time ago.  

And now he’s seeing that Alice, at least, believes he is capable of more. He sees that in the lines of his illustrated self, the way his body leans towards her and her to him. Touching her cheek, clasping her hand tightly, hands lacing or buttoning up a dress along a bony spine. The kind of affection and gentleness that feels alien to him, and he is bewildered and oddly frustrated and angry that Alice has imposed this possibility onto him. She’s delusional if this is what she hopes for, what she expects from him. She’s destined to be disappointed if that’s the kind of thing she wants specifically from him. 

Those postcards get tossed in the drawer out of order from the others, and his mood is foul for days. He’d rather she’d sent him a portrait of his kills than this fantasy.

He ignores the next two envelopes on his desk for two weeks before he opens them. The first one he wants to burn, because it’s just him again, facing her with a totally foreign expression on his face. His own face looks like a stranger to him in that picture. 

But the second one… 

It’s identical to the very first one she ever sent. The night sky framed in trees. Perhaps they’ve reached the end of her fairy tale, and he can be left in peace. 

The next ones take weeks to arrive, one every three days, and he’s not really sure why she’s still sending them until he opens the first one up and recoils. 

James’ face fills the frame, his smile too wide, and his eyes cold. The red pencil has returned in his irises, in the corners of his mouth, and a swipe at his hairline. In all the careful renderings of his own face, Jasper had wondered if Alice was even capable of drawing the violent, monstrous truth in people. But now… the pencil has dug into the paper, and some of the lines are unsteady. There is terror and hate in every stroke, and James in that picture is the most terrible thing that can be conceived. 

The rest of them are abstract, with no faces or details, but it doesn’t take much to decipher the violence and fear and misery in each one.

In the spirals within the internals of her severed wrist, the petrified flesh and muscle rippled like the rings in the stump of a tree.

In the portrait of rats, of squirrels, of scavenged meals so beneath her nature that he can see the shame in each line. In a collection of lines that he doesn’t do more than glimpse at, but the meaning and intent and occurrence are already burnt into his mind. 

This is how he tortured me, degraded me, raped me. He can hear her say it, in her soft, flat voice. 

And he wonders, again, why he is being shown this. Why she has gone to so much trouble, to draw and send him each page like this. 

The final one arrives in spring, more than three years after they started. They’ve stopped being a curiosity in the house; Esme very occasionally asks him how Alice is, and he’s noncommittal because he truly has no idea. He knows nothing more than when they started, honestly. 

There are over one hundred of them now, bound together in his desk, and he’s given up trying to understand Alice’s motive in sending them and is just compiling them for her. They are some kind of diary, and he is merely the archivist. He can do that. It makes them easier to handle, in many ways. 

He doesn’t even realise the last one is the end, honestly. He’s become numb to the horror of the most recent ones, looking at them briefly before adding them to the stack - in order, of course. The previous one had them running in the forest - the red of their eyes and of Victoria’s hair bright and eye-catching amongst the black of the pencil. The drawings have gotten looser, lazier, and he wonders if she’s losing interest in the project. 

The last one slides out of the envelope, and… it’s him. It’s him, in beautiful detail, the baseball bat mid-spin in his hand. He’s grinning at someone off-page, and she’s found a golden pencil for his eyes. There’s the gesture of Bella and Esme behind him, but he is the focus - soft and realistic and rendered so very carefully, right down to the scar next to his right eye. 

And in the bottom left corner, in tiny letters, there is a heart with ‘Alice’ carefully signed. That’s how he knows she’s done. And that’s how he knows that it’s taken him too long to understand and that he needs… he needs someone else to look at what she’s given him and explain to him how he’s supposed to put this all together.

#alice cullen #jasper hale #jalice #the twilight saga #twilight fic #ficmas #ficmas23 #my fic: all these broken things #when jasper realises they're going to have to hold him back from finding her #alice spending hours drawing jasper just the way she sees him in her head #and ending up in tears drawing all the good times they were supposed to have after the diner #as soon as stl is complete atbt gets posted i'm very excited

[jemgirl86]

All this The Bear Syd/Carmy shipping discourse unfolding on Twitter, Tiktok, here, and everywhere else has only reinforced what I’ve long since believed: the only people whose intentions I trust, in any fandom, are the handful of people I fuck with regularly. Watching this unfold the past few days has been downright comical.

Ship them, don’t ship them - that’s not the issue. The issue is that the reaction to the people that do ship them, from all kinds of fans, has been so aggressively over the top that I can’t help but shake my head. Let’s be for fucking real for five seconds. I’ve seen more pushback to Syd/Carmy than I’ve seen to Shuri/Namor, and Namor MURDERED SHURI’S MOTHER. And if you think there’s no overlap between those who hate one but support the other, you’re wrong lol.

See, stuff like that is why I can’t take y’all seriously when it comes to shipping. People swear up and down they like and respect these characters, then ship them with people who killed their moms. Or they swear it’s all about chemistry between two characters, but suddenly ignore chemistry if it comes in a package they don’t like. Hell, I don’t even think it’s about who folks think look cute together. No. At this point, I’m pretty sure most people are shipping purely based on who they feel most comfortable self-inserting with.

That’s why people don’t like Carmy/Syd. That’s why the idea of other people liking Carmy/Syd makes people so sick, even sicker than they usually get when a Black woman is involved in a ship. Not only is Syd Black, but she’s a little off beat and doesn’t take shit, and people hate when a BW character is written that way. A good deal of viewers didn’t even really like her during s1 (I remember the hateful tiktok comments vividly), so they cannot successfully self-insert with her, so they can’t deal with the ship. It has absolutely nothing to do with “let men and women be friends” or “let her be with Marcus” (don’t make me laugh, y’all don’t give af about them as a couple. When was the last time y’all cared about a Black couple of a show that was a “Black” show??? Besides, Syd doesn’t even like him like that, not now anyway), and everything to do with people not being able to see themselves as her.

I just… I wish people would stop fronting. Not just with Carmy/Syd, but with everything. I mean, I once said shipping Shuri/Namor was wild, and someone said I was antiBlack. I got so much shit, you would’ve thought I was talking about someone who didn’t kill her mom. Now, what seems more likely - that my Black ass is antiBlack for not liking a ship where one person killed another person’s parent, or that most fans of the ship only ship it because they want to fuck the dude that plays Namor and they’re using Shuri as a self-insert???? Lmaoooo. One day, just scroll through some of Shuri’s other ships, and I think you’ll be able to figure that one out. But it’s not just those two couples… it’s so so many.

Idk… it’s just so funny watching this Carmy/Syd ship be met with so much disgust, derision, and dismay, given all the shitty pairings nobody has a problem with. That’s why fandom culture needs to be honest about the fact that there are two kinds of shippers: those who ship because they really like a particular character, and those who ship because they really want to sleep with a particular actor, and the people mad about Carmy/Syd definitely fall into the latter category.

#the bear #frankly i’m happy with sugar’s relationship being the only romantic one see in present day 🤷🏾‍♀️ #but it’s the principle of the matter lol

[ocpdzim]

so ok in deep space nine they HEAVILY code the genetically enhanced people as neurodivergent (imo they all read quite clearly as autistic coded like, specifically, but most of them also seem to have other neurodivergency going on on top of that) and on one hand it kind of really sucks and is one of the biggest fuckups in the show in terms of like. representation. bc it’s sometimes played for some sort of shitty comedy and also plays into the autistic savant stereotype which nobody likes.

however also with that big “THIS KINDA SUCKS” disclaimer out of the way , there’s also some other things about how it’s handled that i want to also discuss bc they’re either interesting or actually good or just fucking weird and the combination of “this is good” and “this sucks” and “what the absolute hell were they even trying to do here” has resulted in me not being able to stop thinking about it.

first of all the number one thing that i think is actually really good about it is the very blatant and obvious “we need neurodivergent doctors for neurodivergent people” subtext that i’m not even sure it’s accurate to call subtext, it may just be text. NEVER have i seen that as a message in any show, the closest i have seen are shows where there’s a neurodivergent doctor but the reason the show considers that great is that the doctor in question can come up with novel ideas for helping neurotypical patients with unrelated issues. but it is really important - we do need neurodivergent doctors!!!! it makes a MASSIVE difference in pretty much the exact way depicted in the episode - neurodivergent doctors treat neurodivergent patients like people and engage with them on their own level and can relate to them and understand what they’re going through. star trek really said “maybe some of these patients who are ~difficult cases~ aren’t actually difficult cases and don’t need some kind of novel special procedure or whatever, they just need someone to fucking respect them for once.” and it extended that compassionate and humanizing perspective to neurodivergent people who had extremely visible and debilitating symptoms. brilliant incredible ahead of its time i just wish that it wasn’t weighed down by other Problems In The Episode. and since i figure i ought to throw in my two cents, i think this is a valuable enough message that it makes up for the flaws of the episode overall even though they are so glaring.

second of all the other thing i think is Actually Really Good about it is bashir being neurodivergent already before augmentation (they pretty much explicitly state he had some sort of learning disability) and how his parents’ attempt to “fix” him was NOT a good parenting move but instead, even though it DID make him fit in more with society and “fix” his symptoms, was a massive violation of his personhood that severely damaged his sense of self and pretty much destroyed his relationship with his parents. they weren’t evil or hateful parents - they really did want what was best for their son - but because of their ableism they couldn’t understand that what he really needed was to be accepted and respected for who he was, and to have his needs accommodated, not to be changed. neurodivergent kids get put through traumatizing and harmful “therapies” by parents who really do love them and would never intentionally harm them just like this all the time in real life. i really liked that his parents were dealt with sympathetically and it was made clear that they really did mean well, but despite that, he didn’t have to accept any justifications for what they’d done and his father ended up facing real consequences for it and accepting that it had been wrong.

this is a continuation of the bit about bashir being neurodivergent already, but i felt it needed a paragraph break - the other thing about the way being augmented by his parents in an attempt to stop him from being neurodivergent impacted bashir as a character that worked really well is that it DIDN’T stop him from being neurodivergent, it stopped him from outwardly appearing neurodivergent super obviously. it’s made very clear that even though he doesn’t have the same symptoms he had as a child, he’s still neurodivergent and instead of freeing him from any kind of burden, the treatments he was subjected to have condemned him to a life of masking forever. once again this is something that is the actual goal of many “therapies” for developmentally disabled people (fuck you aba), AND it’s something that a lot of neurodivergent people end up self-enforcing even if they’ve never been through these abusive therapies. bashir has to hide his neurodivergency to avoid making others uncomfortable and to protect his career, and it takes a clear and painful toll on his wellbeing even though it allows him to become a successful doctor. he makes it very clear he’d have rather lived his life without being forced into this box in the first place, even though now that he’s in the box he doesn’t want to get back out of it since being his authentic self now, after all the years of hiding, would put everything he has at risk. a lot of us do grapple with that and i don’t often see it portrayed at all.

now onto stuff i cannot slot neatly into “this is great” or “this sucks.”

on an actual serious level it is not good but i personally find it extremely hilarious, like as a concept, that in the sci-fi future of star trek, they invented a procedure to give your kid autism and then banned it because it makes your kid smarter and stronger than all the other kids and maybe he’ll take over the world. i’m drafting my world domination plan right now as we speak so watch out, i will destroy the government with my autism beam attack.

i have a lot of mixed feelings about lauren. on one hand, the way she’s written is often very flat and sometimes kind of creepy, and i wish she was dealt with with more nuance and depth. on the other hand, having a character who is not only disabled but institutionalized and nevertheless presenting her as beautiful, sexy, and capable of wanting and having romantic and sexual interactions is kind of nice in the face of the rampant desexualization experienced by disabled people.

the federation’s broad anti-augment stance is interesting in a show that generally presents the federation as being over most other types of discrimination. i think it’s intended to be up for audience interpretation whether the federation policies about augments are good or bad. personally, i think that it’s FLAGRANTLY bad - it isn’t the choice of a child whether to be augmented! it certainly makes sense for the procedure to be illegal considering both the risk of it being used for eugenics and the nature of it as a horribly violating procedure, but the consequences should not fall on the genetically enhanced person, but rather on whoever did that to them. i wish we’d seen more pushback against the federation’s policies and more examination of what they meant for augmented people.

the treason plotline being connected to all this was baffling to me. i am not necessarily against it on a principle level - “neurodivergent people will engage in high stakes treason and espionage in order to solve the world’s most fucked trolley problem” is so silly that it isn’t really a message i’m worried about - but i felt like it wasted the potential of the episode to go in plenty of other, more impactful directions. i would’ve much rather seen it end with the augments and the federation coming up with a better arrangement for their treatment and living situation - either to integrate into mainstream society or to find a way to improve the way they’re treated at the institution so that they are respected, listened to, and have their needs met better. ideally i would’ve really liked if we saw them all end up with different solutions, like maybe some of them would want to leave the institution and make a life for themselves outside it but others would want to stay, but with more autonomy and respect within the institution.

#NOTE i havent finished watching the show. i am aware they come back in at least 1 more episode. i didnt see that one yet #so like. no idea what happens in it or how it impacts this analysis #deep space nine #deep space 9 #ds9 #star trek #julian bashir #AUGH THIS IS SO LONG. sorry guys <3 #i have lots to say lol #ableism mention - #you can reblog this if you want to. like it isnt a personal do not reblog post you know? #also yeah i have been watching star trek from the 90s #they took it off netflix and so i pirated it to watch the rest and i guess paramount has a whole team dedicated to tracking down star trek #pirates bc they IMMEDIATELY threatened to cut off my internet. joke's on them though. eat shit paramount i already downloaded it #so i do not need to continue downloading it anyway

[nitecourtfairytail]

I just need to rant for a sec.

I genuinely don’t understand how or why SJM (and the fandom) puts women against other women so often. Especially Elain. Poor thing is constantly compared to her sisters, to her friends, to her sisters’ friends. Like why? Why can’t we all agree that no two people are exactly alike and that’s okay?

I have no issues with Gwyn. I don’t see her and Azriel as a couple.. or not a lasting one at least (their personalities clash too much for a long-term relationship) but I don’t hate her. Do i think she’s a little childish? Abso -fucking-lutely. But I honestly kind of like that. I like that she’s unabashedly herself.

I’m a fully grown adult and there are still things from my childhood that make me giddy: I never miss an opportunity to watch Disney’s Hercules, Mulan, Aladdin, or Robin Hood. I’ll still watch them wide-eyed, and sing along. I LOVE dinosaurs and if you ask me my favorite it will change with my mood. The scene in ACOSF where the Valkyries have a sleep over? I WISH I could do that (my friends are spread out too much now). It must have been so cathartic for the three of them to experience something they missed as kids.

All that being said, the problem I have with the gw*nriel ship/ G stans is that there is a constant need to put Elain down in order to lift Gwyn up. They’re different characters with different backgrounds and different strengths/weaknesses

Gwyn is loud and outspoken. She’s excitable and determined. Her strength is defined physically. None of this is bad!

Elain is not a confrontational character. Whether it’s from her upbringing or her own volition, she prefers the background instead of the spotlight. She’s shy and quiet. She evaluates before running headlong into something. She has a “different kind of strength”. While both characters are kind, Elain’s transcends what is considered kindness for high society-going as far as treating their staff as people rather than ‘the help’, and respecting them as people. (And I will DIE on the hill that Nuala and Cerridwen are not just staff for the IC, but valued and beloved friends of Elain).

She sees the good-seeks it out-and regardless of how deep it’s hidden she always finds it, and holds on for dear life. To be so kind, so loving, so willing to search for something beautiful regardless of her station in life is truly a strength. As well as her ability to see past the outward appearances of those around her. The fact that she has more feminine hobbies and ideals isn’t a bad thing either. That’s just what she likes! Femininity is not a crime, and I for one look forward to the day that we have a heroine who’s not a fighter. It would be a nice change of pace.

I know these are characters in a fictional series. I know that they have a lot more rounding out to do to make them multi dimensional (can’t wait for Elain’s book for her growth), but we real live actual people not in a book….as far as we know.. can’t let ourselves think like this because it bleeds over into everyday life. I don’t want to be compared to anyone but the me I was. Compare me to me. Compare past Elain with present Elain. Compare past Gwyn to present Gwyn. Stop comparing them to each other. It’s just not cool

#pro elain #elriel #elain archeron #elain and azriel #gwyn* #stop comparing

[adamwatchesmovies]

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Doctor Sleep is a sequel to The Shining 40+ years in the making. Taking its cues from the follow-up novel by Stephen King and the Stanley Kubrick classic, it’s a different but robust sequel nonetheless. Rather than try and recreate what worked about the first film (an impossible task, the 1977 horror classic is a one-in-a-million kind of movie), it tells its own story while paying homage to its predecessor and giving the fans what they want to see. Yes, it’s long at 152 but there’s an even longer director’s cut I’d love to visit sometime.

31 years after escaping the Overlook Hotel, Dan "Danny" Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is haunted by childhood trauma and struggles with alcoholism. When a young telepathic girl named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) reaches out to warn him of a group who “Shine” and feed upon people with psychic abilities, he chooses to work with her to stop them.

Unlike The Shining, Doctor Sleep isn’t a horror movie. It’s more of a drama/thriller, with action-y bits coming in the later half and some horror sprinkled on top. For a good chunk of the story, we’re following a traumatized, ruined Danny Torrance trying his best to hold at bay the lingering ghosts of the Overlook Hotel while getting over his addiction, finding his place in the world and befriending Abra. There’s a lot of great material as Danny talks to his AA group about the way he relates to his father more than ever now that he is also a prisoner of the “demon in a bottle”. The way he and Abra’s childhoods differ make for great character-based moments.

And then come Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and the members of the True Knot cult. If there’s one area where the film bites off more than it can chew, it’s with the villains. There are too many of them and several wind up being nothing more than generic baddies but otherwise, they’re the kind of villains you love to hate. As Rose the Hat puts it, the “steam” they steal from other shiners tastes best when the victim is young, terrified and in pain. If seeing kids die is something you can’t handle, know that writer/director Mike Flanagan has no mercy regardless of his characters' age.

The members of the True Knot gang who are fleshed out make for great, complex characters. One of the best examples is Snakebite Andi (Emily Alyn Lind). Under normal circumstances, she would be heroic but when she joins a group of psychic vampires who prey on children just so they can expand their lifespans… the support your initially support for her evaporates. These vampires act high and mighty but when it comes down to it, they’re just as prone to petty emotions as the rest of us, which makes every victory Dan and Abra score feel extra good.

So far, none of this sounds anything like The Shining. Psychic vampires? That’s far removed from a haunted hotel. You’re right, but Doctor Sleep makes it fit. It isn’t merely people that can shine; it’s the dead - such as the ghost from Room 237 - and places - like the Overlook - too. What we thought was a haunted building is actually much more and if that makes you wish we could get just one more look at that iconic location, the film obliges. This is where it feels most fanboy-ish, as we get pretty much every single prop and shot recreated: the blood flowing from the elevator, the twins, the tricycle down those corridors with the weird carpet, etc. Before we start docking points, however. I’d like to see anyone who didn’t want - even a little bit - to see the Overlook again. That's what I thought.

What makes these references and recreations work is how well they’re done. We see Dan confront Lloyd (Henry Thomas), who says he’s merely the Overlook's bartender but looks strikingly like Jack Nicholson. It isn’t an exact match (obviously) but even this inconsistency works. It’s a twisted memory, a ghost held captive by the Overlook looking to use a familiar image against the now grown boy who narrowly escaped its clutches years ago. The resemblance is so uncanny and the flashback and callback scenes so well done (Alex Essoe does a spot-on impersonation of Shelley Duvall) they don’t feel self-indulgent.

While we didn’t need Doctor Sleep, Stephen King felt the characters were worth returning to. Based on this effort, it’s hard to disagree. This sequel is telling its own story AND giving us more of what we enjoyed before. The performances are strong, the characters compelling and the callbacks are so well done that it makes the overlong running time feel… merely long. (December 17, 2021)

#Doctor Sleep #movies #films #movie reviews #film reviews #Mike Flanagan #Stephen King #Ewan McGregor #Rebecca Ferguson #Kyleigh Curran #CLiff Curtis #2019 movies #2019 films

[ciaossu-imagines]

to be honest rhe "choose violence" asks are all compelling! I can not pick one soooo

just pick which you would like to answer! I would love to hear your thoughts on all of it but I want you to decide how much you can and want go answer

Okay, but thank you so much for wanting to hear my thoughts on these and for giving me the freedom to decide which I felt comfortable chatting about. Since no particular fandom was requested, I did just kind of general fandom answers and hope that my answers amuse, cause some thinking, or at least don’t piss off people too much!

The character everyone gets wrong

Honestly, I live and die by the thought that everyone has the right to interpret a canon character however they wish. They’re not hurting anyone, viewing the character differently or even completely opposite to how they’re written in canon. No matter how OOC I think their portrayal of the character is, I don’t think it’s any of my business, as long as they’re having fun. I say this but…there’s one minor exception and it comes back to my days in the Harry Potter fandom. I have seen so many excuses made for Severus Snape, so many rewrites of him as this tragic heroic character, the paragon of knowing what it is to love truly and deeply. Nah, my dudes. Snape was a racist sad sack incel who felt entitled to Lily’s love and called her slurs when she didn’t return it. Having a bad past, being bullied? That’s no excuse for him literally not caring if this chick’s husband and child died, as long as he could have his shot with her. That’s no excuse for him literally joining what was basically magical KKK. That’s no excuse for him growing up to become such a huge bully towards literal children that one of his students literally had him as their greatest fear. Tragic hero my ass. The man wasn’t fully evil and he did do good, in the end. But he wasn’t such things of myths and legends and he can exist as both a horrible person and as someone who did good things.

Screenshot or description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr

I really do hate just the recent trend in fandom of not interacting. I don’t just mean that people have stopped interacting with posts and with artists and writers, though that is most definitely true and it’s incredibly frustrating to see. I mean it in a larger sense than that. Going from what fandom was back then to what fandom is now, I really do feel like overall, there’s less interaction between fans. I don’t even know how to explain it but I remember how easy it used to be make fandom friends. There were super active Discord servers, yeah, but even before that, you’d make friends commenting on people’s fics or through writing fics on ff.net. There were active writer’s groups for fan writers where you’d get to talk to people, both about writing fics and fandom in general. There were lots of rp boards. You’d get interaction just making fandom-centric music mixes. You’d get lots of interaction hosting a blog like mine. No matter how introverted you were, you could always find a safe place and friends in fandom. But it feels more and more like it’s hard to find any of those things now. It feels like somewhere along the way, fandom became almost commercialized and now it’s consume this thing, move on. Put out this thing that takes hours of your time for a handful of likes and be grateful for that because you’re only supposed to create for the simple joy of creation (which yes, creating fandom stuff should be fun, but if it was only ever done for the reason of enjoyment, there’s really no reason to share it – people generally share fandom stuff because they’re excited to share it with fellow fans, they’re looking for that interaction and that feedback and for other people to be excited with them) and then move on. It feels like it takes a shit-ton more time and energy now to find those fandom spaces to meet people and make friends in and it’s just not a trend that I’m really the biggest fan of, though this is, of course, just my view and perception of things and maybe I’m wrong.

What was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

People can be rude and mean to me all they want, but being mean or rude towards any of my friends or readers? Instant block from this particular blog. Stealing work also earns you an instant block. On my personal blog, just being ignorant towards people will make me pre-emptively block you, even if we’ve never interacted. I figure if people are that comfortable using this platform to hate, then they’re probably not people I’m ever going to want interacting with me or my art.

Common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

Characters do not have to be rewritten so that they’ve never done anything bad, excuses don’t need to be made wildly to excuse every bad thing they’ve done, they don’t need to be rewritten to be perfect – always doing the right thing, communicating so healthily and with proper therapeutic terms to the point you have to wonder when this character went through extensive therapy, super strong mentally and emotionally but still able to be vulnerable, no flaws besides a few superficial ones that everyone easily forgives except for those bad guys to be interesting and ‘good’. Characters can and should be flawed, characters can and should make mistakes and do the wrong thing every now and then. Writing a character who isn’t universally loved and right and good, writing a character who does horrible things or has views that aren’t kosher – none of those things make the character OR ESPECIALLY THE WRITER a bad person. Writing a character with not-so-great views doesn’t mean the writer holds those views. Basically, be able to separate the writer and the character and know that it’s okay for characters to be well…human. To mess up or be massively unhealthy and to still like them despite that. I hate washing down of a character to sanitize them, I really, really do, both in canon characters and OC’s because it just makes them feel flat to me, and I’m really sorry to anyone whom that offends.

Worst part of canon

I completely understand, as a writer, that it’s almost impossible to fully explore every character in your work, to delve into all their backstories and to give them all their days in the spotlight. That’s the worst part of any canon work to me – there’s never enough space and time in a properly done story for us to really get to know all the characters and because of that, there’s always going to be at least one or two characters who remain forever flat and unloved, despite how interesting they look and seem. Thankfully, that’s what fanfiction is for and I’ve often found fics for these characters that really endear me to them and shape how I view them.

Worst part of fanon

You guys all know how I’m going to answer this. You guys all have heard me rant and rave about this a million times – it’s the tendency of fandom to prioritize and make only romantic relationships important. Two characters can’t have a meaningful relationship and bond without secretly wanting to fuck, or so some parts of fandom would have you believe. Two characters can’t be just close friends without secretly wanting to date each other. It completely disregards how important platonic bonds are, how much familial relationships shape us, how strong a bond hatred towards another person can forge, how much we rely on co-worker relationships, on student/teacher relationships, how literally important relationships of all kinds and shapes are. It also kind of erases the existence of aromantic people and characters. Some people are just generally not interested in romance in any sort of way, and they deserve to find plenty in fandom to latch onto just as much as people who love romance do. I am not saying romantic relationships are bad and should be stopped when it comes to fandom stuff. Go ahead, ship, fill your boots, as long as you’re respectful about it of course. Tell me all the fluff and cute things about these relationships. Fine. But I firmly believe that other types of relationships should be more loudly explored in fandom as well, without people automatically taking that discussion and turning it into an automatic ‘well, yeah, that’s because they’re in love with each other, duh?’

Worst blorboficiation

Okay, I’m not answering this one so much as I’m admitting to be an old fuddy-duddy. Leaning on a cane, shooing people off my yard, and grumbling about the new-fangled fancy speech. In other words, I don’t know what this word means, please someone explain it??

That one thing you see in fanart all the time

I will say this plain and clear and take any harsh feedback on this. If you’re only using AI to create ‘fan art’, you’re not an artist and you’re using a tool created through theft of artist’s actual hard work. I see AI art more and more frequently and it vaguely pisses me off every time.

You can’t understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc.)

I really don’t see the appeal of romanticized yandere or of the A/B/O trope, but that’s just me. I ask that people don’t share things along those lines with me and as long as those boundaries are respected, other people can fill their boots with those tropes and enjoy because people are allowed to like things I don’t really get!

You’re mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like…

NOTHING. Repeat with me – cringe culture is dead. I am allowed to like any and everything I like without having to worry about whether it’s ‘cool’. Cool is a social construct that is perpetually changing and feeling guilt or shame because you enjoy something that other people are telling you is wrong to enjoy is a waste of your time and mental energy. Don’t buy into that – enjoy what you enjoy! Talk about it, create for it, let it live in your head and let it make you happy.

Topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

Sorry, not sorry, but it’s shipping. I’d say about 80-90% of fanwank and fandom arguments and drama and fights in fandom boil down to ‘I don’t like what they ship/they ship something different from me/they ship the character I love with themselves and that pisses me off/they’re shipping the wrong way wah wah wah’. Honestly guys, it’s a large part of why I don’t really ship. I mean, growing up in early aughts fandom that 80-90% was 95-99% of fandom wank, since I grew up in the days of Ichigo/Rukia or Ichigo/Orihime and Sakura in the Naruto scene and whether she belonged with Naruto or Sasuke or whether she belonged dead because she was standing in the way of the boys being together and what do you mean, you ship with an OC? And that OC? They’re trash and mary-sue and you’re dumb for making them, especially shipping them with my fave character and after living through all that wank and drama, I just can’t really find it in me to want to ship outside of just shipping all my friend’s OC/self-inserts with their respective fictional others. There’s much less wank when you’re just supporting friend’s ships and getting into them and when there is, I can easily be like ‘I ship it because you see that character there? My friend made that gorgeous beast. Do you not have eyes, Susan? Can you not see how wonderful that character and ship is? No? Go see the fucking optometrist then.”

Common fandom complaint that you’re sick of hearing

Okay, I know the KHR fandom will tear me apart on this one and I sort of apologize in advance. But honestly guys…I want it as much as the next person, since the anime was nowhere near what the manga deserved, but we’re never going to get a reboot. I mean, it’s been 14 years since the anime ended. God, do I feel old typing that out. I do think the best we can hope for at the moment is really just a good English dub, hopefully a full one, that will revitalize the fandom a bit and maybe a couple small one-shot manga’s or spin-offs for other media.

#admin chatter #unpopular opinions #being salty #oops I answered a wrong ask #this is the right one though haha

[merrycrisis-if]

allie hi omg i’m so late but i finally played the update and I LOVED IT SO MUCH like idek where to start because i played all the routes and they’re all so good. plus the 18+ scenes got me slutting out for real 😭😭

okok listen the added details in qiu’s first flashback literally drove me crazy like “you’re a hard person to catch alone” QIU PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP IM IN LOVE WITH YOU 😭😭😭 and the new flashback!!!!!! like not to make it about me but it reminded me sm of the bday drabble you wrote me last year and let me tell you. a bitch (me) was giggling <3333 the bit where qiu wiped a bit of cheesecake off mc’s lips and mc teased them about making a move to kiss them was so fucking cute :((( and even taking them fishing and the dinner ugh just ALL OF IT!!! they really pulled all the romantic shit and even cut classes for mc and still couldn’t commit to a relationship smh

also nat…… when i say that steamy scene blindsided me and the way they did what they did underwater… i lost my damn mind over that flashback 😮‍💨😮‍💨 but omg that phone call idk what i was expecting but it wasn’t a breakup conversation. when nat said “i need someone who’s here” and “i don’t want scraps when i’ve had all of you” ……. yeah i’m fine 🥲 when mc was like “i wish nat would say smth hurtful so i could hate them” i was like yeah same because nat is so nice and supportive and so spouse material it’s literally impossible not to fall in love with them

but also shay…. god their scenes were fucking insane i was BLUSHING 😭😭😭 there was just no way for me to play different variations of their scenes and stay normal like the little motorcycle bit if you skip the show and they pick you up at dinner was so cute but also the way they make eye contact with you the whole time at their gig…. “tell me why you’re leaving and why it is that we’re kissing on borrowed time” yeah i’m mentally ill. and when they kiss your forehead and your closed eyelids and was like “stop being cute all the time” and the scene in their apartment…. yeah shay’s fucking insane but also very hot but also the biggest sweetheart. i will never be normal after all that

this is so rambly now but i really genuinely enjoyed the demo. i keep saying it but the characters are all lovable even mc’s chaotic and prying relatives which make merry crisis all the more relatable and realistic. i hold this if so close to my heart thank you for writing it 🩷

AHHH!!!! Nikka you have no idea how excited I was to see this in my inbox, and the smile on my face just kept growing and growing as I read this message. It's been a while! I hope 2023 has been kind to you!

I loved writing that update, and I hold Merry Crisis very dear to my heart as well—so it always just hits me in the feels when people like it too/relate to it, ya know!

The Qiu flashback was 1000% inspired by the drabble I wrote for you last year, and I'm so glad I got to use it and expand on it in the game!! I am soooo happy that you liked the scenes, especially because I consider you a Qiu-authority at this point! And on Qiu doing literally everything except commit to a relationship.... yes. Exactly. I think this is what MC also cannot. believe.

Ahh omg. Heh. The Nat spicy scene at the beach was definitely... quite something to write. I wanted the call to really hit hard, but also offer some opportunity for redemption/hope (I wonder if you managed to get the scenes where MC does get a 'maybe' from Nat!)

Yeah, this last update was definitely one for the Shay fans—I packed in as much as I could in there, and writing the music/performance scene was fun, but so were the... bedroom / pillow talk scenes... especially for same-sex Shay!

Anyway, this message made me so so happy, so thank you so much for sending it. (It also makes me happy to know that the side characters / MC's family are also welcome and not simply an annoyance.)

Sending you a million hugs and all of my love!!

#merry crisis #asks #IF #interactive fiction #best ask ever #:') #you're the best #shay #qiu #nat

[sxs-kav]

In defense of Hophie, and how I would improve it

First of all, spoilers ahead, obviously. Secondly, this is a pro-Hophie post. Not to try and convince anyone to change their minds, but because while I love them together, I also recognize that they're relationship buildup was a disaster. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have worked at all with some tweaking. Also I just have a lot of thoughts about this series right now so I need to let them out or they'll just keep rattling around in my brain. Sorry this is like another dissertation.

I'll be honest: I may be totally biased towards Hort because I am a sucker for unrequitted love stories. Take my favorite example, Seiya/Usagi. I couldn't help comparing a lot of Hophie's interactions and story beats to them (though I think Seiya/Usagi is a stronger ship). I know a lot of people will say Hort is creepy, and yeah, I remember moments where I was like, okay calm your hormones dude. But just because he was open about his feelings I don't think he was pushy. I see people saying he pushed himself on Sophie, but I didn't see that. He was just there, trying to prove himself over and over, being supportive, protective, and even accepting that things weren't going to happen between them. It's why he was able to try dating Nicola. But just because you try to move on or accept someone's rejection doesn't mean you stop caring. I do wish he was a stronger character on his own. He has potential (I feel like I say that a lot about these books). He can be clever, he’s strong (maybe a bit OP), savage and yet kind-hearted. I would have liked to see him warm up to Tedros more, become unlikely bros. They almost did at the end of the last book. Also would have liked to see more of his motives beyond protecting Sophie, since he already reached his goal of burying his father. Maybe he learns to like teaching history more than he thought or finds some other thing he enjoys while they’re out questing.

Sophie on the other hand...I wish I'd seen more development of her feelings. Not so much in the first trilogy; I think the way it was open-ended with her being single and happy was nice, it left us to our imaginations. But if the end game was Hophie from the start of Camelot Years, then it needed to be better. There were so many missed opportunities to show her growing close to him, seeing him in a different light, questioning her feelings. They happened sparsely, and almost like an afterthought, until the last third of the last book where suddenly she was in love. And as a person who is perfectly comfortable being single, I don't think it ruins her character growth to be in a relationship. But rather than wanting it because she's lonely and misses Agatha, I wish it was because she just happened to fall in love along the way. In fact, that would have been even more compelling: being so happy alone that she wonders if she wants to be in a relationship at all, but unable to help falling for Hort, and realizing it doesn't mean she has to stop being independent and comfortable with herself.

What drives me nuts too is the Handbook. I really enjoyed it as a companion piece for expanding the world and letting us be inside the characters’ heads without narration. But it also heavily implied that there was already something developing between Hophie before the Camelot trilogy (especially the last bit about Sophie whispering something in Hort’s ear). So why did it seem like they were no closer to getting together by the time Camelot started?

I also have to point out Nicola. I hope I don't get hate for this, but she was kind of pointless, and a Mary Sue. She comes in like a self-insert character who read the first trilogy and wants to self-ship with Hort. She's got too much special knowledge that gets them out of trouble when no one else can. She's smarter than a lot of the other first years and there's not a good explanation why she was in Evil and switched to Good. The Storian picked her to go with them, but there was no resolution for why she was so important to be mentioned by name when no one really knew her beforehand. Then suddenly she became a background character because Soman was focused in on Hophie. Not to mention how quickly she went from being infatuated with Hort to being annoyed every time he spoke. Their breakup was so forced, and it only made it clear that Nicola was introduced mostly to create a love triangle, but it wasn't even utilized well to advance Hophie's relationship. It all goes back to Soman's writing in general, which I went on about at length in a different post, so check that out if you want.

For now, may I present to you how I would have written Hophie's love story:

Starting in book 4, since Sophie and Hort have been working closely for the last 6 months, they have gotten to be very close friends. Eating together, doing lesson plans together, etc., and yes, Sophie still has him do things for her because that’s just how she is, but he doesn’t mind because that’s how he is. Sophie hasn't felt this comfortable around another person since Agatha, that she can just be herself and not worry about judgement. Obviously she can tell Hort's feelings haven't changed a bit, and they do have some flirty moments, but she's so at peace with herself in her independence, she doesn't want to disturb that balance and possibly become the old Sophie who felt like all she wanted in life was a boyfriend. So she skirts around any advances or moments where they're on the brink of something, doing her best not to hurt Hort's feelings even more.

In comes Nicola. Things generally play out the same in the books, with Hort feeling like Sophie will just never feel the same, that maybe she only sees him as a friend now that they've gotten to know each other so intimately. So he gives Nicola a chance, and Sophie is jealous. More so than the hinted jealousy we got in the books that lasted like five minutes. This girl just came along and snatched up her bestie (not that she’s replacing Agatha, but how can she not consider Hort a best friend in this scenario?) and she does not want to go through that again. But she's also annoyed with herself for being jealous because she chose this life of being single and she likes it. She's not unhappy, she's not lost and lonely anymore. She shouldn't care that someone else is dating Hort because she already chose not to. She has no claim to him, and he looks happy. So she doesn’t try to break them up (after the first few days) but she keeps her distance.

As for Rhian, Sophie has her doubts still about dating, but now she's wondering if she hasn’t changed as much as she thought. Clearly she still wants love in some capacity if she can get so jealous, and since she missed her chance with Hort she doesn't want to lose another. She also uses Rhian a bit to get back at Hort even though he didn't really do anything wrong (but it's Sophie, she needs to let her anger out somehow). But even as Rhian dotes on her and acts like the prince she'd always dreamed of, she's still not entirely satisfied. She's still jealous. She realizes that it's not that she just wants any old boyfriend so she won’t miss out on love. She only wants Hort, and now it's too late. She plans to dump Rhian but he holds her hostage before she has a chance.

Meanwhile, Nicola is getting to know the real Hort, rather than the storybook one, and she's starting to wonder if maybe she was more attracted to the idea of him than the actual person. There would be a moment when he would do something that she was either disgusted by or showed a side of him she didn't know was there and didn't like. Maybe something Never-ish that bothered her more than she'd thought it would. She starts to rethink her feelings, while also seeing more and more that Hort is not over Sophie.

Hort is basically the same as the books with his protectiveness, but since it would be established that he and Sophie are even closer friends, he would try to talk to her like normal and she would be very distant. He's confused and hurt, but he keeps trying until Rhian comes along. When Sophie rubs him in Hort’s face, he gets angry and puts all his attention on Nicola, rubbing it back in her face, creating a vicious cycle. But Nicola’s fantasy of him is already breaking. I think they would break up sooner in this version of the story, since it’s not really necessary for them still to be together after they are captured by Rhian.

Sophie and Hort’s anger at each other is put aside after Rhian pulls the sword. There would still be the scene where she chooses to take him from the dungeon, and the rescue gone wrong. This whole section of book 5, from Hort trying to kill Rhian through the stymph rescue is one of my favorite parts because you really felt the chemistry between Sophie and Hort, how easy it was for them to plot together without even speaking. I think it would be even more heartbreaking when he leaves without her, because they almost made it out together, but now they’re separated again without having had a chance to apologize to each other, not knowing if they’ll ever see each other again.

The first thing they do when they’re reunited in Gnomeland is apologize, and though it’s a little awkward at first, now that Nicola dumped Hort, they fall right back to where they were before. From here, I think the story would progress pretty similarly to how it does in the books, with the some minor changes. Obviously Sophie and Agatha’s conversation on the camel would be different, with Sophie confessing to her about her feelings and the fact that she held back because she didn’t want to lose her independence. Agatha would urge her to act on her feelings using herself as an example. She still did what she wanted, even when Tedros wanted her to act like a regular princess, and she’s sure Hort would never hold her back from being her own person and doing what made her happy. That’s when Sophie decides that she’s going to make her move the next chance she gets.

The scene in the Mirage would be a little different too. Rather than accidentally insulting Hort, their conversation would just be interrupted by the arrival of the army. And they’d still be interrupted in the Celestium. The scene where Hort ‘dies’ would also be pretty much the same, but I think it would hit harder after all this build up. And their reunion scene would be even more satisfying, but I’d have Sophie run at him and kiss him before they say anything. He would be shocked, but he wouldn’t dare to let her go. They’d both be all teary-eyed as Hort explained how he lived and that the wolf was gone, and she might not like him anymore. She would definitely confess that she’d been in love with him for a while, not for the wolf but for the man. That she wanted to tell him in Shazabah, and how sorry she was for being too stubborn to let herself be happy, independent and in love. He would agree that she was stubborn, but also say he loved her for it.

And that, my friends, is how Hophie should have been written. If it was, I think a lot more people would appreciate it, and I would like it even more than I do. I see so much potential for what could have been, and again I’m left frustrated by how it was actually done. But at least I can finally say one of my ships is actually canon, problematic as it is.

#sge #school for good and evil #hophie #sophie #hort #spoilers #sge spoilers