#and like can we just please stop pushing this narrative that babies and children are the be all end all

[royallyprincesslilly]

Title: Rumor Has It {Epilogue}

Chris Evans x Famous Reader Uriah “Riah” Tyler

Warning: Cursing, Plot, Fluff, 

Words: 2.2k

Summary: You and Chris have been married for four years after a whirlwind romance. You are both happy and trying to navigate marriage in the public eye while balancing your successful careers. In the entertainment industry, not everything is as it seems, the flash of a camera lens impairs vision. As scandal and flashing lights put a strain on your once fairytale marriage is it possible your Hollywood marriage can stand the test of the rumor mill?

**Inspired by a video seen of Chris and his co-star Ana De Armas on their press tour for Knives Out at TIFF where she kept touching his chest and face standing about five inches apart.

NOTE: DO NOT COME FOR ME. THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION.

**Loosely Edited/Proofread**

Thank you guys for reading!!!! If you enjoyed this please LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG. 😊❤️❤️

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If the public ripped Chris a new asshole when the odds seemed ever not in his favor, they massacred Ana once the facts were revealed. When it came out just how low Ana had gone in her efforts to get your husband, the world turned into a colder place. The tabloids ran endless pieces on what a horrible person she was. They were relentless when it came to nitpicking not just her behavior and actions, but they even went in on her acting. You could have said you felt bad for her, but you didn’t. Not one bit.

 The support that came out for you and Chris was heartwarming. Everyone seemed to want to wrap the two of you in a cocoon of support and love. You received well-wishes from fans and supporters, and even celebs sent floral arrangements, all expressing their support for you. The narrative that was spun was the diabolical plot of Ana and jilted ex Christiano who concocted a plot that was to end with Ana getting Chris and Christiano kidnapping you. Most of the details were released to the press, though you and Chris had both tried to keep as much of it under wraps as possible. Neither one of you wanted to continue dealing with it. You just wanted to move forward and focus on better things—happier things.

 Because Christiano had broken into your home and attempted to cause harm to its residents, Chris’s actions were seen as self-defense, and Chrisnao’s death ruled an accidental result of self-defense. Though the White family were distraught once they were faced with the severity of Christiano’s actions and continued plans, they didn’t have the heart to put you through any further trauma. You’d suspected it was Christina’s doing, and a floral arrangement from her a few weeks after the incident proved your suspicions.

 You’d been friends with her first, and it was a friendship that survived the end of your relationship with Christiano. This was her way of letting it be known that her brother did wrong. A month after the incident, her statement shed light on Christiano’s mental health and revealed he’d been struggling for several years since the break-up. She made no apologies for his actions and didn’t try to make him seem like a victim. She was adamant about letting the full truth be seen. She did offer an apology to you, Chris, your families, and your children.

 For her part in the plot, her actions of physically trying to kill you, not knowing you pregnant at the time, was what sealed Ana’s fate. She was sentenced to jail, and it wasn’t entirely the sentence of a privileged woman. It was one of a criminal who showed no remorse for their actions. She was given nine years behind bars, and because she was living and working in the US on a visa rather than citizenship, after the completion of her sentence, she would be deported to Spain. 

Even film studios were distancing themselves from her at record speed. All the roles she had been considered for quickly changed their views and voiced wanting you to have the roles. It was sort of poetic to you. She hated you because you were black, and you didn’t deserve all you had, including your career and husband. In the end, she was the absolute furthest from your husband, and now everything that was hers would be yours.

 You and Chris were on a flight to Massachusetts two days after the incident. Neither of you were suspects; there was no reason for you to remain in LA, so you quietly packed up what you wanted and made arrangements to pack up the house for the foreseeable future, then went where both of you felt like you belonged. You left any details about your career plans to your manager to close. Everyone seemed to understand the want you had to step back from work and Hollywood, especially when the news was out that you were going to be parents.

 That was the only thing Chris seemed to care about. He was on a mission to keep you comfortable, happy, and taken care of. From the minute he carried you over the threshold of the home he’d built for you, it felt like a fresh start, a new beginning meant just for the five of you.

 He was there beside you every morning, patting your back as you vomited because of your morning sickness until you were four and a half months along. He was there for every single appointment. He read every book you did to prepare for the remainder of your pregnancy and life with twins. He was there preparing you lunch every afternoon, there massaging your feet and back at the end of every night. He was there to lather on the cocoa and shea butter to your growing belly. He was there to compliment every stretch mark you received because of your quickly stretching skin. He was there to kiss each of them while telling you how much he loved each and every tiger stripe, as he called them. He was even there for you when none of your clothes fit you, and he offered you all his cable-knit sweaters, hoodies, sweatpants, and button-downs.

 When your belly became so big you couldn’t see your feet; he put your shoes on for you. When you couldn’t get up without looking like a beached whale, Chris was there to carry you wherever you wanted to go. There rarely went an hour that went by where he didn’t strip you to worship your body as if you were his scripture, and he worshiped you and you alone. Not a day passed where you didn’t feel loved, desired, and protected.

 Through it all, you decided that therapy was beneficial and a powerful enough tool to bring you back together that you wanted to continue. Dr. Danquah was thrilled having the two of you as clients again and, because of your progress, saw no need for you to see her more than twice a month to keep the lines of communication and the roots of love and passion ever strong. The love you felt for Chris and the connection you felt to each other only deepened throughout your pregnancy.

 Just when you thought you couldn’t love him anymore, he did something to prove you wrong. Every day you found something more to love. If it wasn’t his fun-loving nature that was on display every time he played with Dodger, it was his outdoorsy adventurism with the way he bounded from the bed once the sun rose to drag you on another of his nature walks so he could photograph the trees or the hills. If it wasn’t his romantic side with how he prepared candlelit baths every night that posed as a prequel to dinner by candlelight and the most passionate session of lovemaking, it was his undercover, not so undercover freak antics with him wanting to christen every single room in the house and a few spots outdoors with your lovemaking. At nights when he thought you were sleeping, you heard him talking to the babies as he caressed your stomach. That was what you loved most. His sheer love, devotion, and adoration for his children and the strong protector that resided in him. he was the only one for you.

 “Push Riah.”

 “Don’t fucking tell me to push. You push!”

 Chris snorted, and you wanted to kill him. His hands rubbed your belly before he kissed your jaw from his position behind you in the tub in your bathroom.

 “I can push with you, but you have the babies in you. You have to show them the way.”

 You groaned, and it echoed in the hallowed bathroom.

 “You can do this, Uriah,” Lisa encouraged, giving your shoulder a firm squeeze.

 You looked across to your mother, who nodded, hoping to steel your nerve. Chris kissed your ear.

“Come on, dragonfly. You got this. Bring our babies into the world so we can spoil them.”

 And you can change all the poop diapers?”

 Chris snorted again. “I don’t recall making any such promise.”

 You squeezed his hand with everything you had. He groaned and hissed from the pain.

 “Ah, ah, wow. Okay, I see my error. Yes, all poop diapers that you don’t want.” You released his hand, letting him relax somewhat.

 “Use that, baby. I know it’s hard. I know it hurts, and I’m sorry.”

 “This is your fault,” you pointedly accused.

 “Yes. My fault. I take full blame. I’m sorry.”

 “You owe me so big for this, Evans.”

 He nodded, agreeing with you. that was when the pain intensified at levels that made you regret choosing a natural birth at home.

 “Oh fuckity, fuck. So big, Evans!”

 “You’re crowning. Do you want to come over here and catch your baby, dad?”

 Chris moved from behind you and got into position between your legs. His eyes widened, clearly seeing the baby’s head. The excitement around you was palpable, and it gave you a burst of energy to get the baby out. You grabbed your knees, hunkered down, and pushed because whether you were supposed to or not. Your scream was loud, and the screams of those around you picked up. They shouted to you, encouraging you to keep going and not to stop. The look on Chris's face suddenly changed, and you saw the tears in his eyes.

 “Oh my god, Riah, I can—I can see—oh baby, I can see a face. come on, Dragonfly, one more push.”

 You screeched out and fought through the intense burning you felt, and in seconds the crying of a baby echoed in the bathroom.

 “Aah, oh my god, Riah, it’s a girl. She’s here,” Chris elated as tears rolled down his cheeks.

 You smiled widely as Chris held your daughter and cut her umbilical cord before he placed her on your chest.

 “Oh my god!”

 She was perfect, with a full head of hair that was the color of Chris’s and cheeks so plump you were tempted to pinch them. You only had a moment to place a kiss on her forehead before you felt another stab of pain that made you shout again. The second midwife took the baby from you so you could focus on pushing out her sister.

 “She’s right there, Uriah. You’re doing incredible, baby,” your mother informed.

 “I’m thinking three good pushes, Uriah.  When you feel the urge, push.

 You instantly felt the urge to push and returned to your previous position and pushed as hard as you could. This push was just as painful as the first one, but you felt this push accomplished more.

 “Good push, her head is out. One more, and she’ll be out,” your first midwife said.

 The look on everyone's face was one of anxiety and excitement. The sounds of your first daughter’s cries had died down, and the only thing that could be heard in the room was your panting, screeching, and grunting.

 “Fuuuuuck!”

 You managed to push your daughter out, and her cries filled the bathroom. Soon, it was not one baby crying but both of them.

 “You did it!”

 Lisa and your mother both kissed your cheeks and forehead, happily congratulating you and telling you how well you’d done while the midwives cleaned the babies to bring them to you. When Chris came up beside you, your mothers backed away, giving you a few moments together. Chris kissed your forehead.

 “You’re incredible. You did so good, dragonfly. I’m so proud of you.” He kissed you once, then twice, and nuzzled his nose against yours.

 “I love you so much.”

 “Did someone order two perfect babies?”

 The midwives placed your daughters in your arms.

 “This is baby A; she was born first and her sister.”

 Your tears flowed freely as so much emotion filled you. Love in it’s purest form washed over you.

 “Chris. They’re beautiful.”

 “Of course they are. They look just like you,” Chris said, kissing your temple.

 A comfortable silence fell between you as you admired your newborn daughters.

 “Any decision on names?”

 You smiled and ran your thumb across the baby’s brow in your arm.

 “Yeah. How do you feel about Nova and Rae?”

 Chris’s face lit up as his smile spread so wide that you wondered if his face would split in two.

 “I love them. Nova and Rae Evans,” he uttered. You nodded and couldn’t help but choke up, seeing the emotion on his face.

 “Chasing dragonflies,” he whispered the meanings of the names you’d discussed weeks ago before his lips met yours for a tender kiss.

 With his forehead pressed to yours, he whispered again. “Rumor has it you’re going to be an amazing mom.”

 You smiled and looked at him before pressing your lips to his for a quick kiss. “Rumor has it you’re a DILF.”

 Chris laughed so loud it startled your babies, making them stir and cry. You joined in laughing with him, unable to keep your sublime happiness under wraps any longer.

 “Rumor has it you two will have siblings in record time,” Lisa said slightly above a whisper.

 Everyone in the room laughed, not knowing how true those were most likely were. You and Chris gazed at each other with longing and love in your eyes. When Chris kissed you again, this time taking his time to do it properly, completely and heartily, you knew his mother’s words would be the truest spoken.  

                                             The End!!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tag List:

@chaneajoyyy @caplover22​ @caramara3 @southerngracela @cyntgefel01 @vannahvannahhh @lorainnebabyy @patzammit @yourwonderbelle @pennywisesmistress @theblulife @kelbabyblue @bugngiz @kikimiyazaki @toniilaney @areubeingserved @chaos-crusader @thinkxlovexloud @cocothewriter @periodtcevans @bellaamor88 @mack-jay @titty-teetee @pananegra @wellthirsted @sup3rn0va13 @nova3312 @hello-therree @valkyriesnymph @squeackygee @niyashell @allmonstersxarehuman @zsuzstyina @peggy-potts @amelatonin @lvlyab @sullyosully @taylorveebee​ @renesmeeharelds @capslut2014 @ilovehatembj @thelittlemoistcarrot @sarcastic-sunshines @a-dizzle777 @taylorveebee @jesseswartzwelder @90sinspiredgirl @allnamesicouldthinkofweretaken @choices97  @jd-now-jq @actorinfluence @chrisgalore @rynabarnesrogers @ab-baybay @motivation-idontknowher @lo-cheu  @builtalongthewaysi @momobaby227@drsunshine97 @cleothegoldfish

@thatrandomhetaliachick @missdeerstalker15 @queenbetter @ilovehatembj @briellableu @zaddysqueen7 @melaninhawtie @simplyyamberr  @ashanti-notthesinger @chezdricks @euh-say-what-now @afraiddreamingandloving @ajspencer1892 @wakanda-inspired @chillavesss @theunsweetenedtruth @geeksareunique @aykanna @hanasamara @profilia @ollieveracity @autumn242 @missyperle @forbeautyandlife @kreolemami @songtoyou @designerwriterchic @firedolphin04 @academic-glowup @periodtcevans @nova3312 @naturalthrone22 @squeackygeecapslut2014 @queen-audsalena

@unknownmystery22 @thatcrazymarvelfan @mizcaptainwidow @angrybirdcr @cherrystainedlipsbaby @marvelfansworld @fanfictionaffair @kemkem101 @blowmymbackout @almostpurelysmut @blackgurlkillinit @simply-heaven @impossiblegiantrebelbasketball @renfrewscorner @choices97 @phreshouttherunwaaayy @heladoom @alyxkbrl @evemej @queensevansackles @rosey1981 @laketaj24 @munteanhore @minton131 @trillistb @night-of-the-living-shred @chrisevansfanfic @scoop93535 @miss-jackson500 @purplehairgawdess @ollieveracity @maddeningmayhem @what-is-your-plan-today @tantricevans @evermcfearless @richonne4life @dumbchick @toni9 @briellableu @amennariee @rynabarnesrogers-reading @chrissbabybunny @brwnsugababe @queenshikongo3 @sadishdelray @what-is-your-plan-today @islanddgal @reignandrain @liquorlaughslove @thefuckingluxury @surmya1907 @maeleeme @queenoftheworldisdead @coolbakeryprunetoad @naturalthrone22 @wonderlandfandomkingdom @starlite-starbrite @offrostandstarlight @zeedaye @partypoison00 @thejeneralvicinity  @littlepreciousangel @doublesidedscoobysnacks

@imthatbitchsworld @soul–notforsale @toni9 @someone-really-bored @venustrap04 @chrisevansdaddycap @kittykatlow @live-laugh-love-ki @asiaaisa77 @melanicia @fistmetonystark @livinglifeformemyselfandi @crowngold @allnamesicouldthinkofweretaken @lost- ssoull @give-me-a-million-dollars-pls​ @shar74nett @cltex84 @badbitchhtown @petty-bitch-akira​ @unknownmystery22​ @raveviolet @madixii @almosttherebutnot @rainbowkisses31​​ @smediumsmeatbae @bernie-k @nina1800 @nervousninjatheorist @lo-cheu @creole-mami @acciolove724 @shipatheart @captainchrisstan @ramp-it-up @bforbbgirl @brownskinafro @jhayes6984 @badbo1-evans @msblkfire84 @jovanaprime @poshgirl2 @marvelatthis30 @littlepreciousangel @youremysuperstar @alookintohersoul @cleopatra-knowles​ @xsweetdellzx @cxmfort​ @i-just-like-fanfics @storiestoldbyjazz @jennmurawski13 @imthewarmpenguininthemiddle @ak329​

@koko-michelle @sophiasotherdaughter @maeleeme  @mauvecherie​ @jbrizzywrites​

***There are a few that are bold that I tried to tag but your @ wasn’t coming up. I’m not sure why. Please check that you are taggable. I’m sorry.***

#rumor has it fic #Chris Evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x reader #chris evans x you #chris evans x black reader #chris evans x black ofc #black fanfiction #chris evans x ofc uriah

[guiltysecretpasttime]

Homecoming - 2

This is the continuation of this prompt.

Lin/Tenzin, pre-canon AU, 2 of 2, T, completed.

----

“Hello?” Lin’s yelling was paused when the phone rang.

Tenzin’s continued words of apologies and evasion of flying folders and papers were cut short when Lin had to answer (irritably) the ringing phone. He bent over to pick up the scattered things, while listening to the one-sided conversation he could hear.

“Nothing’s wrong here. Of course not – yes, he is here.” Lin rolled her eyes. “There is no domestic disturbance at my address, I don’t know where that report even came from… Well, if they want to arrest someone, why don’t they arrest him?” She threw him an irritated look. “He is trespassing, isn’t he?”

At this, Tenzin frowned at her and dangled the house keys.

Who could she be talking to at this time of the night? Which police officer is responding to the call?

How can he be trespassing when he actually had keys? And as far as he knew, he lived here, didn’t he?

She snapped her fingers, asking him to hand over the keys.

Oh, damn he is screwed.

Lin leaned back at the headboard. “Okay, fine.” She placed a hand on her stomach. “I’m sure my blood pressure is fine… Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow… Love you too, Mom.”

Tenzin felt his stomach turn to lead.

If Lin reacted this way to him, Toph Beifong could do much worse.

And all because – at least from what he gathered from Lin’s invectives earlier– Lin’s letter informing him of her pregnancy did not reach him.

When the earthbender had suitably calmed down, Tenzin cautiously approached the bed with her paperwork. She was eying him with distrust.

At least she had stopped shouting or throwing things – so I count that as a win.

To his surprise, Lin offered the phone to him.

“Tenzin!” Toph’s gruff voice greeted him. “I don’t care what your excuse is but for tonight, make sure she relaxes. She’s on bed rest –.”

“Bed rest!”

Toph continued speaking as though he did not just interrupt her. “So, make sure she takes it easy and does not overexert herself.” She sighed. “You know what I mean, Airhead. No bedroom activities for the two of you.”

---

After a relatively painful call with Toph (where he was alternately scolded, reminded, threatened and advised), the airbender finally addressed the earthbender who was sitting in bed, protectively cradling her pregnant stomach.

“So,” Tenzin rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re having a child.” He sat the edge of the bed cautiously.

“Are we?” Lin asked back in challenge. “As far I know, you seemed to have washed your hands off of us the moment you left to fulfill your airbending duties.”

“No – I would never –,” He reached out to hold her hand, tightening when her grasp went limp. “You – the both of you – are my priority. Please don’t doubt that.” He looked straight into her eyes, trying to convey the truth behind his words.

Only their breathing can be heard for the next few moments.

“You never replied – I thought – we thought – you were gone. Then the acolytes responded and said you were there… I thought… you didn’t want it. You didn’t want…” Lin cleared her throat. “You were so pleased about being able to finally go around the temples. Having a child – well – I wouldn’t put it past you to stay behind because of responsibility, even if you didn’t want…”

At that point, her tears fell. This was the side of Lin Beifong that only few managed to see – one that was more human than her public persona allowed her to be. He was one of the few who she allowed to know about her insecurities and her fears.

Both of them had been raised in the public eye and they learned early on that their actions will be dissected by the press. They learned to be guarded – but not with each other.

Her mother had tried to protect her as much as she could but Lin learned the truth anyway. That her father had abandoned only remained with her mother as long as he could only due to a sense of duty to the unborn child. That when the opportunity came for him to jump ship, he did so without a backward glance.

Tenzin knew this was what was going through her mind with their current predicament.

He knew that words at this point would not mean anything to her as he pulled her into an embrace, letting her tears drop on his robes.

Tenzin knew he would do his best to reassure her.

---

The next few days were spent getting up to speed with Lin’s pregnancy. He wanted to know it all – how were her check-ups, what is the gestational age, are there any food or drink that she is not allowed to eat, etc. After that first night, Lin became apprehensive about what Tenzin thinks of fatherhood; she did have several weeks to get used to it but Tenzin, apparently was learning about it just now.

It seemed like she need not have worried, however, as the man reveled in it.

Katara had laughed at that, fondly saying that Aang is the same for each of their children.

To be fair, Toph had snorted, he was like that for all of the children born within their circle of friends, remembering that Aang was over the moon when Toph started showing with Lin.

---

Tenzin did not think the rest of the pregnancy would be spent in peaceful waiting if the succeeding days were a precedent as to what to expect.

It had been embarrassing enough to have his mother extract a promise from him to refrain from intercourse (“Stop cringing, Tenzin. If you’re old enough to be a father, you’re old enough to use the clinical term.”) in the next few months due to Lin’s delicate condition.

It became worse when Lin’s mother dropped by to bring in paperwork from headquarters. The older metalbender could not resist but comment about flighty airbenders doing the cut-and-run. That definitely did not do well to assuage Lin’s doubts.

His own father would likewise come by almost daily, bringing all sorts of food for Lin. Lin would graciously thank him and accept the gifts but would often ask him that he did not need to bring anything over. The Avatar would wave her concern away and say he was bringing over materials that Tenzin would need to work on anyway. Lin subtly implied that he need not stay in Republic City and he could go back to Air Temple Island to do whatever he needs to do for the Air Nation. This made Tenzin all the more adamant to work remotely from the house.

It also seemed like both of the Avatar’s sons took on the same anticipation and excitement in welcoming a child as Tenzin discovered that Bumi had taken to sending a knitted piece to Republic City every few weeks or so. Never mind that there were only so many bibs or bonnets a baby could use.

Their family, however well-meaning, tended to barge into their life – always checking in, always dropping by, always present.

Lin, being the well-mannered lady that she was, took it all in stride. While she would have previously scowled at her mother’s narratives or kept a polite face at his mother’s coddling, Tenzin saw her have a genuine smile at her face at their visits.

It was only one afternoon that Tenzin realized why.

He thought that they were simply falling into a routine when he came back. However, it became apparent to him that he was the one who has not yet assimilated into the established routine. With a pang, he realized their family had done what he should have been doing in the first place in supporting Lin in her pregnancy.

---

It was not quite the same home he had left.

Being away for months made it challenging for the airbender to reintegrate himself but he did manage bit by bit.

---

Lin really disliked being on bedrest. She had never been one for idleness, but she saw the necessity in taking it easy. She was determined to bring the child up to term and Lin Beifong is not anything but determined.

Nonetheless, this did not keep her from occasionally complaining; she did not like being dependent on others after all.

“I’m sorry Lin – but healer’s orders.” Tenzin handed her a book she requested; she was put out when he did not let her get out of bed and she had to wait for him to get it for her.

She thanked him though still with a frown on her face.  

Tenzin settled himself beside her in bed as they were wont to do before bedtime, taking out his own book to read. “Mother said you’ll likely be removed from bed rest in a few weeks’ time. Your mother did not have to go on extended bed rest and managed to work at the station back then. So mother is hopeful for you.”

Lin sighed and leaned back, lightly flipping through the pages of her book. “Well, that’s my mother. Unfortunately for me, I inherited the body type of my grandmother.”

They knew how difficult it was for Poppy Beifong to carry a child to term. As much as Lao and she wanted another child as a sibling to Toph, it had not been successful.

She saw Tenzin pause, recognizing the moment he understood what was not being said.

In true (and expected) airbender fashion, he did not address it head on and simply turned to focus on fluffing her pillows.

“Well, if you’re going to stay in bed much longer, we’ll have to make sure it’s a comfortable stay, right?”

She merely tilted her head in agreement, thankful that he did not push the issue.

---

Lin did not know what to expect from Tenzin when he said they will make the extended bed rest comfortable.

He arrived home one day with a lot of paper bags.

She had thought Bumi was ridiculous in sending a lot of baby clothes, but this did not even compare. Lin found Tenzin guilty of a shopping spree – his were of a complement to Bumi’s bibs and bonnets in the form of onesies, mittens and booties.

No matter, she thought, as she lightly fingered the texture of one of the green onesies, it pleased her to see Tenzin excited about the child.

---

As the weeks passed, Lin was able to finally convince Tenzin that she would be fine at home during the day with the staff and that he need not curtail his own activities.

During the day, after all, the household staff that Toph hired for them to clean and cook was around and could easily assist Lin with her needs.

The airbender still spent most of his time at home, working and keeping her company. But at least, his company was no longer limited to her and their family. Hopefully, Lin thought, it would keep him from being bored and restless.

She was pleasantly surprised when he arrived home on that first day.

He had been listening to her when they talked about food she missed and likely craved for. She was thankful for the food that Aang brings over and the food the chef cooks, however, there is only so much she could take of healthy and bordering on bland food.

Tenzin had gone out of his way to the other side of the city to bring home her favorite steamed buns. Steamed meat buns, that is. None of the vegetarian mush he enjoyed himself.

---

It became their ritual – whenever Tenzin goes out, they were sure to have a dinner that consists of Lin’s favorite foods.

---

“You keep eating more of that and we’re calling our baby Bao.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Doesn’t Bao Beifong sound nice?”

A pillow hit Tenzin in the face.

---

“Thanks, kid. Excellent paperwork as per usual, loved your penmanship.”

Lin rolled her eyes at her mother’s odd humor. She took the folder her mother brought in exchange for the reports she had completed. Before her mother leaves, Lin usually makes sure she had scanned through quickly the paperwork so she could ask questions if she has clarifications.

“There was a meeting earlier at City Hall.” Toph often shared with her about her workday. “I suppose you were the catalyst for this.”

“What? I don’t even get to leave the house, never mind the bedroom,” Lin felt defensive, thinking that Toph was about to blame her for something. “How can I have caused it?” She continued to go through the paperwork.

Toph clicked her tongue. “They’ve selected an air acolyte as the representative to the Air Temples.”

That got her full attention. “But Tenzin’s the current representative.” She put down the folder on her lap and turned to her mother. “He did not mention he was quitting.”

“He was not quitting per se, he would be still part of the Air Nation’s council staff – just not the one who would need to frequently travel around the temples.”

---

She was floored.

She never asked that of him.

The airbender had been talking about air temples and all things air nomad from they were kids.

Giving up this particular role – this is huge.

And if it was because of her – them – she corrected, rubbing her stomach, it was significant.

---

He did not bring it up that night.

She thought he would have done so the first thing he got home.

But he did not.

---

She brought it up two nights later, unable to keep the curiosity out of her voice.

The why hung between them.

He simply smiled back at her, his hand joining hers as their baby kicked.

“I know my priorities.”

---

The next day, she hands him back his keys.

Then maybe, he feels hopeful as he tightens his fist around it, maybe this is what it really feels like the beginning of a true homecoming.

-----

Note: And that’s that. Thoughts around it? Thanks for reading :)

#linzin #linzin fanfic #writing prompts maybe #toccatina's fanfics #toccatina completed #toccatina homecoming #lin beifong #tenzin

[mggpleasedontlookhere]

reid’s anatomy pt. 2

summary: after seeing spencer in the OR, you have no other choice but to wait and see if he makes it or not

word count: 1,827                                                                                               reading time: 7 mins

masterlist

Pt. 1

My spine had succumbed to the soreness that had spread throughout my lower body as me and Morgan sat almost lifelessly together on cold hospital floors.

If Spencer was present at the moment, he would ramble about the billion strains of bacteria and viruses incomprehensible by the naked eye, at which our skin would be exposed to. But he wasn’t here, he’s laying placid under OR lights that were just as bright as Time Square’s streets at night and a scalpel just as sharp as the sushi chef in the japanese cuisine he took me out for our 2 year anniversary.

Morgan still continued to stroke my head, our tear ducts running dry as the minutes passed us. I sat up from his shoulder, facing him for the first time since he came to check up on me.

“What happened out there?” I asked disdainfully. It was evident in my tone that I held some sort of animosity, possibly blame towards the team for not protecting Spencer. But deep down I knew that no matter how many cautionary provisions they’ve taken, you can never dodge the inevitable.

He flinched at the presence on my voice, not anticipating that I would be so prominent in speaking. He shifted to face the ceiling, sighing as he dragged his hand over the bridge of his nose.

“I-i can’t even to begin to explain Y/N. I-i’m so sorry” He repented, his eyes beginning to water again. I prolonged my examination of him, egging him to continue his narrative.

He now bowed his head, laying them on his hands that were supported by his knees. “We were with the unsub right” He painted out the scenario, I nodded while following along with his recollection of the events. “We were in the middle of a standoff. We had about 3 additional agents with us and the police force, but me and Reid were hanging back behind the unsub, in case he had tried to escape...” He paused in the midst of his sentence, taking in a breath as he began to choke on a few words.

“It was supposed to be me” He confessed, earning a look of perplexity from me. “The unsub had a kid in hostage, and the kid got in the middle of me and the unsub. So naturally I went to take the kid away, but I made the stupid mistake of dropping my gun. Obviously, the unsub heard and turned around to shoot me and the kid since we were both defenseless. But...Reid, he-. He shoved both me and the kid, taking the shot himself”.

The words that came from Morgan’s lips were incoherent by the time he finished. He looked over to me, his eyes exhibiting a great deal of grief before searching my own for a response or clemency.

In contrast to the circumstances that were placed before us, a forced chuckle lunged out from my throat, acquiring Morgan’s attention. A morbid smile planted on my lips as I thought about Spencer.

“He would’ve been such a good father. Don’t you think?” I asked using the same tone from earlier. Morgan agreed apprehensively, sorrow still evident by the way his body responded to mine.

“He deserves children. Doesn’t he, Derek?”

“Y/N- I don’t understa-”

“Then he should be able to have them” I snapped, slamming my fist against the wall behind me. Morgan reached a comforting hand out, but I swatted his hand away. I gave him a crazed look, running my hand through my hair. “H-he should have a family, he deserves a future...Morgan, he should be...alive. That’s how it’s supposed to be” I choked out, word vomit spilling from my mouth as my thoughts swirled around my head at a thousand miles an hour, any sense of rationality I had depleting. 

“Y/N- I-” 

Soft sobs racked my entire body and defeated whimpers had crawled up my esophagus. I rocked myself back and forth, burying my head into my arms until all I saw was the artificial darkness I placed myself in. It was almost a cocoon that composed of me and my thoughts, regardless if Morgan was next to me. 

My own heartbeat was ringing in my ears, drowning out any other noise around me, including Morgan. That wasn’t until I heard scurried footsteps, metal hitting metal, and the attending inside the OR yelling brutal commands at the staff. 

It suddenly came clear to me when Morgans hand gripped mine and all that could be heard from the OR was, “his BP is down, he’s going into V-fib, we’re losing him”. At that moment, my heart stopped and my vision dwindled, I was too tired to react. Pain resurfaced as my mind grew dizzy, next followed the sensation in my arms, legs, and back. Finally, my consciousness inevitably followed in its footsteps as it withered away to the sound of the doctors frantically shifting around to save Spencer’s life.

-

Light began to be apparent again, my vision gradually retaining it’s efficiency as I noticed I was placed on a hospital chair. I rubbed my eyes, sitting up in the seat that I was slumped down on, scratching my head while my eyes examined the environment. 

The first thing that had caught my attention was that I wasn’t in the hallway anymore, but in a post-op room. My eyes felt heavy from all the crying I’ve done previously and my forehead grew hot from the stress I’ve undergone. 

The sound of voices pricked my ears, and in curiosity, I stood up to investigate. Getting closer to the noise, I noticed my legs were tender and that I had a great difficulty at maneuvering around. 

How long was I out?

I finally got to my destination and was met with a privacy curtain that ran from the ceiling to the floor. I heard a multitude of voices that rang from the other side of the curtain. 

Uneasiness set in my bones, not wanting to get my hopes up. I slowly pushed the fabric aside, letting my presence be known, and let me tell you, it was the best decision I’ve made. 

To my fortune, there stood the attending that was operating on Spencer with the rest of the crew that surrounded a single bed. On that hospital bed laid the love of my live. 

Spencer was the first one I locked eyes with, he was in the middle of speaking with his colleagues when we did, which halted his speech. In recognition of Spencer’s pause, all eyes were then relocated to me. Although I didn’t reciprocate anyone else’s glances, except Spencer. 

“C-can we have a moment of privacy please?” Spencer requested, looking at his doctor for approval. 

The attending nodded in agreement, shifting his focus to me and gave me a hopeful smile. The same smile I would give to my patients after a successful surgery. Everyone filed out after the doctor one by one, leaving Morgan to be the last one out. 

As he exited the room, I stopped him by the shoulder and silently thanked him. He returned the gesture with a large smile, nudging me towards Spence. When the room was finally empty, I inched towards spencer with the brightest smile I can wear. His eyes shone nothing but love as he continued to gawk at me venturing towards him. 

When I finally got to his side, he greeted me with an amiable ‘hello’ like it was the first time we met. He reached out for my hand, placing it on his chest for comfort and giving it an affectionate kiss. 

I, then, proceeded to lovingly whack him upside the head in return, earning a playful wince from him. 

“I swear to god Spencer Reid, if you ever, and I mean EVER, put me through anything like that again, I will personally go into the OR and cut your LVAD wire and kill you myself, bec-” 

“Y/N, honey, I’m here no-” 

“DON’T. Don’t you dare tell me to calm down Spence because I will have to be restrained and placed in a mental hospital when I lose my license for kicking the IQ out of you” I finished, heaving as I gathered my composure. 

Spencer looked at me amused, gripping my hand in his and hauling me closer to the side of his bed. “Y/N Y/L/N, I’m sorry for putting you through everything you went through” He looked up at me with sincere eyes, melting all the disdain that swelled in my heart. 

I sighed, leaning down to lay my head on his chest, in which he gave me permission to hop into his bed. I pulled him in closer, terrified that he might vanish from my grasp into thin air. “Spencer, I love you so much” I sniffled, muffling my words into his chest. “You have no idea Spence, I-i felt so lost and hopeless. I-i couldn’t do anything to save you, they-they wouldn’t let me” I sobbed, my throat tightening up as the words spilled actively from my lips. 

Spencer quieted me down, stroking my hair as I spoke. “I don’t know where I’d be without you Spence”. I looked up at the man who held me, my heart beating in delight, in contrast to the emotion my face was probably expressing. 

He leaned in pressing a long lasting kiss on my lips, then he proceeded to reciprocate the same gesture on my forehead. “You’re my absolute everything Y/N’ He sighed. “Before I- before everything became a blur, all I could think of was you. All I could think of was that I took out one less person that can harm you. I love you so much Y/N”. 

A comforting silence followed after, creating an environment of serendipity. I toyed with the hospital gown that covered his body, thinking of all the events that had occured before, thanking the heavens for the outcome that was given to me and praying for the future. 

“I want a baby” I professed without warning, feeling Spencer tense up in surprise. 

“W-what did you say Y/N?” 

“I want a baby, I want to start a family with you” I continued, adjusting my position to get a good look at his reaction. “I want to have a baby now” I declared, determination dripping from my confession. 

Spencer chuckled, gesturing to the IV and the tubes that were wired into him. “I would be glad to Y/N, but I’m kind of a human experiment as this moment” He joked. 

We both chuckled in glee, holding each other tight as we basked in the pleasant scene. “But I would love to have little Y/N’s and Spencers running around, especially with the one I’d want nothing more than to spend my lifetime with” He pulled me into another kiss, peering deeply into my eyes before shutting his own to get some rest. 

“I love you so much, Y/N Y/L/N” He whispered through his breath.

“I love you more than you know, Spencer Reid” 

-

A/N:

That’s a wrap, you know I was going to end this short story with Spencer dying, but I thought about how evil that was. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it and don’t be afraid to put in any requests :)

taglist: @l0ve-0f-my-life  @spideyreid​ @evelyn-4034

#spencer reid imagines #spencerreid #spencer reid #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid icons #spencer x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x oc #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #matthew gray gubler #matthew gray gubler imagines

[mexicancat-girl]

Ok guys, I can't take it, I’m seriously at my limit here.

Uraraka vs Bakuboi was a sham of a fight and none of it makes any goddamn sense.

Uraraka deserved her win, for multiple reasons.

Shout out to @bnhasalt, who’s post reminded me how indignantly furious this arc makes me.

More under the cut over both how salty I am, and how Uraraka losing against Explodo Kills makes absolutely no sense, even narratively.

(Warning ahead for a discussion on sexism, misogyny, forced fanservice, the blatant favoritism towards That One Specific Character even if unearned in the narrative, and the general incompetence on how to write female characters.

I call B/kugo “Bakuboi” in this analysis bc I don’t want to write his Actual Name out and have it pop up in his character tags. Also, heads up, I’m sorry for how messy and long this rant is )

First, can I just say that Horikoshi is uhhhh Bad at writing female characters?

Which I’m sure many female fans already have an inkling about, but goddamn is it never more obvious than in the Sports Festival Arc. Because hey, at least the female characters are THERE and PARTICIPATING and have their own time to shine! This ISN’T one of those arcs that just stars THE BOYS, so that MUST mean this arc is equal opportunity! Right...?

God, I wish. I wish...

See, the girls are the minority of the Sports Fest in general. It shouldn’t be this way. And quite frankly, the fact that the classes (and UA in general) isn’t closer to being a 50/50 gender split also makes no sense, considering all children are raised in a society that values heroism EQUALLY and almost half the population is male and half female.

But, okay, let’s say I actually believe in the most illogical character ratio imagineable of there being a 2 boy to 1 girl, like this is another round of Naruto But It’s Superheroes So It’s Different I Swear.

We all know that there is going to be an emphasis on Izuku, since he’s the protagonist and he wants to make All Might proud during the Sports Festival.

Pre-Festival, there’s the reveal that Uraraka wants to do her best, with her main motivation of becoming a hero to give her parents a good life. Iida also wants to make his own family proud, specifically his brother, because of his family legacy. 

Since these three are a trio, you’d think they’d all get some time to shine, right? Since they’re Izuku’s friends? And Izuku considers them his equals?

Yeah, no. Wrong.

This arc is dominated by Izuku, Shoto, and Bakuboi. That becomes clear very quickly. 

I knew I shouldn’t expect much, since these three are powerhouses and also the most popular characters of the entire franchise (just look at the popularity polls) but still. I’d thought at least Uraraka would get a chance to shine! Since we get some character development and motivation revealed from her!

But the female characters in general get done so dirty this arc, despite it being first set up as a perfect arc to let the girls have just as much opportunity to participate as their male peers.

The most significant part of the female characters all getting an ‘equal time to shine’ is when He Who Must Not Be Mentioned and Kaminari trick the girls into dressing as scantily-clad cheerleaders. Which is both Tiring and Unncessary.

(This scheme also shouldn’t have worked because Momo is Vice Rep and she is an intelligent girl, top of her class. She would be smart enough to go to a teacher and actually double-check to see if Class 1-A girls really needed to cheer in the activities portion of the Sports Festival. 

But noooo, Horikoshi can’t pass up a chance for FANSERVICE and forcing his underaged female characters to be uncomfortable for The Funnies! Thanks! I hate it!)

The female characters that move onto the final round of the Sports Festival, and thusly have the most attention, are: Uraraka, Mei Hatsume from Support, Momo, Mina, and Shiozaki from 1-B.

Wow, I sure wish these girls could like...show their worth. And maybe NOT get steamrolled and easily tossed aside in their matches because they’re facing Boys and Boys Have Strong Offense-based Quirks, That’s The Rules Folks.

(Before you come at me, I know that isn’t a rule that applies to every single male character in the series, but the strongest and offense-based Quirks tend to go to the male characters, while the female characters tend to get more support-based Quirks. It’s both sexist, but also an inherent trend in media in general. Please Just Let Women Punch Shit To Smithereens And Control The Elements.)

Yes, Mina and Shiozaki won their first rounds easily! And that’s great to see! But then we turn right around, and they're eliminated just as quickly in their second matches! Without even a fighting chance!

Good God, Shiozaki is literally PUSHED OUT OF THE RING. That’s it, that’s how she lost. Same thing with Momo in her match! And Mei straight-up forfeits because her character is based more on advertising her inventions/babies, so she doesn’t even fight.

So essentially, the female characters are shucked away if they’re not used to make the male characters look good, or there for fanservice, or there to show a shallow form of ~feminism~ so Horikoshi can pat himself on the back and say “See! Girls strong! I can write girls!”

And now we get to the meat of things: Uraraka.

Oh, poor Uraraka. Out of all the female characters, your potential was the greatest, and also the most squandered...

As a reminder, at the start of the arc, Uraraka speaks with both Izuku and Iida about how she wants to do well in the Sports Fest. They all promise to do their best. Izuku’s friends admit that they want to face him in later matches, because they want to be his equals.

Uraraka wanted to stand on the same level as Izuku and Iida, but she's the only one that doesn't move on past her first match!

And man, what an absolute bogus match it is.

Is it emotional? Yeah. Did I tear up when I watched it? Sure, every single time! But that's more because Uraraka is one of my favorite characters and I feel empathy for her and thought she deserved better.

The match gets to me because I also hate how Bakuboi is so fucking entitled and gets everything handed to him on a silver platter.

Bakuboi himself is written as, essentially, a Gary Stu. He always wins. ALWAYS. And even when he ‘loses’, he still manages to beat his opponents to the point that they need to be hospitalized (see Izuku vs Kacchan pt 1) or he makes his losses ALL ABOUT HIMSELF by twisting logic to fit his own narrative.

Remember how Bakuboi won against Todoroki in the final match? And was so pissed at him he was ready to Physically Assault Todoroki for him not being able to Get Over His Trauma to go 100% during their match? And even though Bakuboi LITERALLY won the entire Sports Festival, he’s so entitled that he demands a rematch because he feels like he “didn’t actually win”?

Not wanting a rematch for Todoroki’s sake, because Todoroki has been through a rough time and Bakuboi overheard Todo’s Tragic Abusive Backstory. Oh no, that would make too much sense and show too much character growth, we can’t have that! Bakuboi, even when winning the Sports Festival, demanded a rematch because he wanted to beat the shit out of Todoroki AGAIN to assert his dominance.

You see, Bakuboi is always rewarded in the narrative. Even when he loses it’s not seen as his fault. He’s never really punished for it, and he never learns any lessons from his losses.

Ah, and let’s not forget, Katsuki Bakuboi has the Best And Strongest Quirk Ever. Strong enough to even do the impossible and work to his advantage when it shouldn’t!

Like how he SOMEHOW manages to ‘beat the odds’ by breaking the laws of physics to win in Round 2. He manages to PUNCH THROUGH A QUIRK THAT CREATES A SOLID WALL from 1-B’s Tsuburaba in order to get back his team’s headband and move on to Round 3.

Or hey, his finishing move, Howlitzer Impact? Doesn’t make any sense either. It shouldn’t work as a...cyclone? Tornado? Drill thing? 

Look, the logistics of it shouldn’t work. Yes, this is anime, but do you HONESTLY think that a teenager YEETING himself in a fast spiral will somehow accomplish anything more than spreading out some explosions in a circle around him? You honestly think any other character would be able to pull that bullshit off WITHOUT upchucking their entire lunch?

But because it’s Bakuboi, it works somehow. Because Bakuboi’s Quirk is The Shining Beacon Of Quirks. 

Drawbacks? Sure, he SUPPOSEDLY has them. They’re noted in his character profile and everything. But very rarely do those supposed “drawbacks” ever actually come into play and actually, like, stop him. Or slow him down. Or, yknow, ACTUALLY WORK LIKE DRAWBACKS ARE SUPPOSED TO WORK.

Because apparently, human limits don’t exist for Katsuki fucking Bakuboi, nope, not at all!

One of Bakuboi’s "drawbacks" is supposed to be that he can't overexert himself or he can fuck up his wrists/his forearms will start to ache. 

Cool cool cool, except...This rarely slows him down or effects him at all. 

It’s actually astounding he hasn’t given himself Carpel Tunnel, because that would be a natural consequence to over-using his Quirk. Hell, he should be fucking up his arms almost as much as Izuku does to his own arms with a destructive Quirk like OFA! Explosions are dangerous and cause massive destruction, and that should be fucking up his arms SOMEHOW!

But, nope. Bakuboi is as fresh as a goddamn daisy. He can Never Have A Weakness.

(Another drawback is cold weather/Winter season is supposed to weaken his Quirk. Makes sense, since heat would help him produce more nitroglycerin sweat, and the cold would make it hard to sweat. But that sure as hell didn’t stop him during the Joint Training Arc in the future, and he didn’t struggle whatsoever to almost singlehandedly win that for his team.)

Not ONCE does Bakuboi’s Quirk ever effect him negatively and forces him to weaken! He keeps using his Quirk like it's nothing!!

And that’s the crux of the entire problem with Uraraka vs Bakuboi’s match.

Bakuboi apparently has “drawbacks” and “limits”, but he keeps somehow managing to break them without a sweat (ha) and without consequence, essentially PULLING WINS OUT OF HIS ASS.

Bakuboi was using his Quirk LITERALLY NONSTOP during Round 1, and kept using it to throw himself around in Round 2. Logically, he should’ve fucked his arms up and been at the very least SLOWED DOWN by the third round of the Sports Fest because he went past what were SUPPOSED to be his Quirk’s canonical limitations and logic!

It would've taught Bakuboi that he can't fucking steamroll through all his problems! He has limits! There are consequences to over using his Quirk! He’s a human being and he doesn’t have endless stamina like some sort of God!

Hell, every other character has these limits very clearly shown and outlined with their Quirks! Uraraka throws up when she over-uses Zero Gravity. Shoto, before using his fire side, would get frostbite. Iida’s Engines will stall after using Recipro Burst.

The other characters have limitations to their Quirks that slows them down, shows consequences for their actions, but Bakuboi NEVER HAS ANY.

THIS is why he’s a Gary Stu. THIS is why he won his match against Uraraka.

Not because of any logic. Because HIS QUIRK HAS NO FLAWS. And on top of that, THE NARRATIVE KEEPS REWARDING HIM, EVEN WHEN HE HASN’T EARNED IT.

Bakuboi SHOULD have been weakened from using his Quirk non-stop. Bakuboi SHOULD NOT have managed to pull out that “one final big explosion” that ruined Uraraka’s final attack.

Bakuboi was literally hissing about his arms hurting earlier, before their match started. And Uraraka forced him to use his Quirk so much that she managed to amass a ton of debris to knock him out and win the match. HIS EXPLOSIONS SHOULD HAVE SPUTTERED OUT, AND NOT SAVED HIM WITH THAT LAST-SECOND ASSPULL.

Like, I’m preeeeetty sure the entire reason Horikoshi wrote Uraraka vs Bakuboi in the first place was because he was attempting at writing Feminism.

See, Bakuboi Hates Everyone Equally, he’s not a violent misogynist for beating up Uraraka! It’s a Match, he Respects Women And Sees Them As Equals! The Crowd of Pro Heroes are the ones being Misogynistic and Judging The Match Early!

And look at Uraraka, she’s a Strong Woman! She keeps getting back up! That’s the Shonen Spirit! And she’s smart, too! Look at her amazing plan to win--

Oh, wait. Wait, nope. She didn’t win at all! :) Because our shining beacon of perfection Katsuki Bakuboi never loses!! :)) Look at all her hopes and dreams being blown to literal smithereens, because of Bakuboi’s ass pull, even though he shouldn’t have had enough time, sweat, and strength to muster up that last explosion!!! :)))

Can ya’ll feel my incandescent fury right now?

Because Horikoshi can NEVER write Bakuboi losing, Uraraka COULDN’T HAVE WON, even if her winning makes THE MOST LOGICAL SENSE.

This scene was supposed to show Uraraka’s strength. But it feels like Uraraka is being literally spit in her face, for even DARING to TRY to win against Katsuki fucking Bakuboi.

How much more impactful would Uraraka’s breakdown have been, if she had moved onto the Second Round with Izuku and Iida? How she would feel ashamed that she couldn’t keep up with them, with how Powerful their Quirks are? Especially after seeing Izuku and Todoroki’s amazing match, and seen how destructive and close a match it had been?

How DEVASTATED she would have felt, beating BAKUBOI--one of the strongest of their class!--and then STILL managing to lose the Sports Festival?

That would have been SO much more interesting! And even SADDER!! C’mon!

Uraraka SHOULD have won her match! It would’ve provided both character development for herself, and for Bakuboi! Bakuboi would realize he has limits to his body and Quirk, and realize not to underestimate his opponents! Uraraka would realize that she’s strong in spite of her Quirk not being necessarily combat-oriented, but still has a long way to go in being a Pro Hero!

But, nooooo. We can’t have CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, can we? We ESPECIALLY can’t have THE FEMALE CHARACTERS IMPACTING THE PLOT IN SOME WAY, either! Or--what’s this? FEMALE CHARACTERS ACTUALLY HAVING THE SPOTLIGHT FOR ONCE? Perish the thought!

The only good parts about this godforsaken arc are 1) Mei Hatsume 2) Hitoshi Shinso and 3) Izuku vs Todoroki fight and Todoroki’s Tragic Backstory Reveal. Everything else is hit-or-miss, if not completely hot garbage.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk, and for reading this entire thing! Four for you, reader. You go, reader.

#Ochaco Uraraka #Ochako Uraraka #bnha meta #bnha analysis #Sports Festival Arc #Izuku Midoriya #bnha quirks #Quirk Logic #Misogyny #Sexism #Tenya Iida #Shoto Todoroki #bnha salt #salt #bnha rant #im not tagging bakuboi bc i dont want his Stans/apologists flooding my ask box to yell at me #Momo Yaoyorozu #Mina Ashido #Ibara Shiozaki #Mei Hatsume #antibaku #me being dumb #please read this ive nearly spent 2 hours writing it out #mexicat writes #fuck it this took me forever to write I'm putting it in my writing tag

[popsiclemania]

My 2020 in K dramas (+1 J drama)

I began watching k-dramas in 2018 but I’ve never watched as many shows, Korean or otherwise, as I have in this one. 2020 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I think what helps me really enjoy this over Bollywood+Malayalam+ American pop culture I grew up with is that a smirk on the wrong character’s face doesn’t make me seethe with rage and want to burn everything down. It’s not like growing up with SRK on screen and then having SRK wannabes leave you with lifelong trauma in reality. I can just move on. It’s removed enough from my everyday life but still familiar in a generic Asian family way. Does that make sense? It’s not perfect and it’s not free of its own harmful stereotypes and narratives, but there’s enough of the good stuff to make you stick around. This year I fell in love with Nana, Kim Hye Soo, Han Yeri, Park Eun bin, Ahn Eun jin, Kim Bum, Kim Yong ji, Flower Boy’s Go Dok Mi and Search:WWW’s Bae Tami. Cancelled Ji Chang wook (bye). Desperately missed Kim Jae Wook. Had thoughts on Hwang In Yeop, which were mostly heart eyes. Discovered J dramas and fell in love with Cherry Magic’s Adachi.

My year-in-review below:

LOVED

Into The Ring - I am so glad I saved this for a rainy day because it’s exactly the kind of upright citizen shenanigans my unemployed ass needed at the end of the year.

Goo Se Ra thinks the govt should work for the people but that doesn’t mean her own moral compass always points north. Her purpose is to make steady money, and I love seeing her go hard to survive and cobble together what she needs. The thing that really works for me is that she wants to be good, but she isn’t always. And you get to see her be disappointed, upset, embarrassed and hurt from being publicly kicked in the gut as she navigates a job where she appears, on the surface, to be a supremely confident, self-serving, accidental politician. What you see as her naiveté is mostly just her being a regular person in an environment dictated by backhand deals and rich people politics. She gets hit again and again, and you see what it does to her sense of worth to get back up again, how she grapples with her self. And through all this the show is funny?! Se Ra is what writers of manic pixie characters think they are doing and not doing at all. Love her friends, and Jang Hye-jin is *chef’s kiss*!

Hyena - Kim Hye Soo’s Jung Geum Ja is perhaps Se Ra’s older and darker contemporary.  Geum Ja is a survivor and will get what she wants and where she wants to, however many hells she has to cross. She’s single-minded about her success, ruthless and has no qualms about bending morals to get the outcome she needs. She’ll never compromise on who she is or justify how she lives, can build people up and also tear them down, but she also knows care and kindness.

I turned to Signal for more Kim Hye Soo but was disappointed in how the first few episodes seemed to shortchange her. May try again in 2021.

(Highly recommend @saltr0se​’s  fic series which just GETS Geum Ja so well. Fic writers are the best)

Search: WWW (Finished in 2020) - It took me half a year to finish this. I started watching Search in Oct 2019 and raced through the first 6 episodes because I couldn’t take my eyes off the rollercoaster of Bae Tami’s life. And then I had to take a break because it was a little too close to the frenetic pace of my own industry. As @drivingsideways wrote, a lot of Search is premised around ‘patriarchy? who dat?’, which is why watching its politics play out is so fascinating.  It’s also deliciously turmoil-y to watch a very clear-sighted, weathered Tami put on rose-tinted glasses for her romance and then frequently peer over them to evaluate whether it could actually meld into her life.

Catch The Ghost - Kim Seonho oozes charm and perhaps Startup was a showcase of how effectively he can be a typical male lead. But Catch is exactly not that. Go Jiseok and Yoo Ryeong have moulded their lives around to meet their most desperate wishes in life and in the process also left parts of themselves untended. There is guilt, pain and need. Now guess who will tend to whose wounds? Their dynamic is electric even when the central mystery flags towards the last few episodes of the show. I really hope Moon Geun Young is doing well and gets more amazing roles soon. She is so good here.

(Highly recommend @melonatures​‘s fic for putting that sizzling on-screen chemistry into words. HOW?!) Cherry Magic - Stories about painfully awkward people are my jam and Eiji Akaso gets Adachi’s shy, nervy energy so right. Cherry Magic is straight up just 12 hours of 🥺🥺🥺. 

Stranger/Secret Forest - I’ve been devouring the entirety of Agatha Christie’s work this year after Stranger reminded me how comforting murder mysteries can be. I love Bae Doona. I also love characters who don’t get social norms, not always because they are out to flout them but because that’s just not how their mind/brain works. (have to watch S2)

Flower Boy Next Door -  Honestly, the opening scene introducing Park Shin Hye’s character Go Deok Mi sold me on this immediately. An introverted, penny pinching copy editor living alone and working from home thanks to extreme social anxiety? Love. All the side characters are a lot of fun and I’ve never loved Kim Seulgi and Go Kyung Pyo more. It’s a warm show, slowly rounding off the sharp edges of every character.

JUST FUN

The Spies Who Loved Me -  It’s been a year of disappointing rom-coms and Spies kind of quietly turned it around for me. I want to be the fly on Yoo In Na’s wall as she figures how to play her characters. I’ve only seen her in 3 roles but somehow she always manages to be in character arcs that don’t short change her. Spies could’ve been and sometimes is the regular heterosexual fare, but In Na ups the ante over and over again, coming out on top as the smartest person in the room.

ENJOYED WITH *RESERVATIONS*

I have to watch A Piece Of Your Mind again because I don’t understand how Jung Hae In and Chae Soo bin built SO MUCH warmth and crackling chemistry with barely a kiss. I was iffy about how the whole AI thing started off and the tortured musician plotline (angsty male artists will forever be an eyeroll for me).

Park Min Young is a queen who never disappoints and When The Weather Is Nice is everything you want in a winter romance. My reservation was in how they explore so much of domestic abuse and the complex ways its traumatised the women in this family. I’m ok with the characters having imperfect ways of processing and understanding the violence, I welcome it. I’m not ok with the show dancing around whether the pivotal crime was justified/ self defence (it was).

A lot of dramas did this. I loved Han Yeri and Choo Ja Hyun in My Unfamiliar Family, I didn’t like the free pass the show gave their dad’s abusive character. 

Hwang Jung Eum’s comedy style is generally not my thing but she was pretty great in Mystic Pop-UP Bar. But I’m side-eyeing the sanctity surrounding motherhood. Maybe I should read more about babies and Korean folklore.

Hospital Playlist was my comfort watch through June and July. I think its wholesomeness and non-plot writing came at a good time for me. But I noticed then that the throughline for all main characters was moral superiority and hence what I then saw as *wholesomeness*. It’s kind of what makes it a grating rewatch in parts. Plus the real life of misogyny of Yoo Yeon Seok makes me want to push his angelic catholic character off a cliff. (For context, i was raised catholic). I want to continue loving Chae Song Hwa, and for that the showrunners need to stop cornering her with overbearing romantic interests (let that woman breathe! she literally ran away to another city!) 

Hospital is good at creating moments of comfort, so much so that I went to watch Reply 1988 after it, but had to drop it coz I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll come back to it next year.

Once Again is what I call joint family propaganda. What it does well is lay bare the mechanics of living in a society that prizes the heterosexual family structure, the loops you have to jump through to hide when you break its rules and what happens when you are found out. I love the characters, their fights, their frustrations. I just don’t love the validation of joint families. (context: i grew up in an oppressive joint family lol). In my au, Nahee and Gyujin don’t get married again or immediately have children, but take the long route to figuring out how to love the person the other is. Gahee is openly dating Hyo shin and her parents have to figure out how to process her success and her romance. Young dal and Ok boon have to learn to stop dictating their children’s lives.  Joon sun runs his company from home, so his wife Hyun kyung can work on what she wants. Choyeon, Joori and Ga-yeon go back to being flamboyant AF and the market learns to not judge. Gyujin and Jaesok have to actually work on the relationship with their mother and what sent her into depression. Just a lot of learning involved.

Just Between Lovers was a nice watch, i just don’t get how Kang doo and Ha Moon So’s relationship will survive his constantly simmering anger. 

Crash Landing on You was so much fun until the main romance turned angsty, but it gave us North Korean soldier shenanigans and the epic romance of Seo Dan and Alberto Gu that we needed more of.

Tale of The Nine Tailed is probably what Goblin wished it was. I, however, will never be over Lee Rang. (Also, when can gods stop meeting their love interests as babies? Asking for my sanity)

I literally ignored everything in Oh My Ghost except Park Bo Young and Kim Seulgi and it was amazing. 

NOPE

Goblin, Dinner Mate, Oh My Baby and My Secret Romance were a whole lot of NO, NAHI, ILLAAA. 

I loved hate-watching The King:Eternal Monarch with the rest of k drama tumblr but someone please take away Kim Eun-sook’s access to gigantic budgets and all-star casts.

It was painful to watch Do You Like Brahms squander away its potential but I’m glad to be introduced to Park Eun bin. Age of Youth is next on watchlist.

More than Friends to me is only Ahn Eun jin. Someone give her amazing lead roles asap.

Why did Record of Youth do that to Park So Dam and her clothes? Just why

WANTED TO WATCH, BUT COULDN’T BECAUSE *INTENSE* 

World Of The Married, It’s Okay Not To Be Okay, Sweet Home, Extracurricular, Penthouse, Flower of Evil, Lie After Lie

WILL WATCH NEXT YEAR

SF8, Stove League, Birth Care Centre but I’ll start the new year with School Nurse Files coz it looks very good.

#long post #kdramas #review #2020 #A DECADE #Goo Sera’s and Yoo Ryeong’s are the kinds of stories I wish I’d watched through my late teens/early 20s #Jung Geum Ja and Bae Tami are who I’m taking into my thirties.

[quazartranslates]

Welcome to the Nightmare Game - CH94

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

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Chapter 94: Castle Cry (XXI)

{cw: discussion of miscarriage and infanticide}

Just when Qi Leren was caught in a personal tangle, Dr. Lu and Su He had already discussed Miao Bo's body, and concluded that he probably hadn’t died in an accident but was instead killed by Luo Xueyi, but they couldn’t be 100% sure because there were no witnesses.

"It's time to meet Miss Nina here," Su He said, looking at the hidden door.

Qi Leren stepped up and stood outside the door again, knocking on the door and asking, "Nina, are you in there?"

There was a silence behind the door, and a trembling voice sounded: "I am... I feel that my mistress’s strength has begun to weaken, but there is a more terrible force still hovering here. Have you killed her?"

"Yes, I have been to the basement, and she is dead now," Qi Leren said.

"No! She's not dead! She’s still here! " Nina's voice suddenly became sharp and full of fear. "I can feel it... Her crazy resentment is still here... Even more terrible than ever!"

"What do you know? For example, about her transaction with the devil," Qi Leren asked again.

Behind the door, Nina replied weakly: "I don't know... I don't know anything..."

Qi Leren looked back at Su He, unsure what to do. Su He mouthed "open the door".

"Nina, I want to open the door. Let's talk face to face," Qi Leren said, clutching the dagger with one hand and reaching for the lock.

"No, no, no! Don't open the door! I beg you, don't... Don't open the door!" Nina cried and cried out, but this time Qi Leren hardened his heart, undid the lock and pushed the broken door open.

Moonlight covered the room in this world, and Nina stood under the mounted goat head, tightly burying her face in hands and sobbing.

Qi Leren walked into the room step by step: "We already know what happened in those days, and we also know that you died at the hands of the crazy lady. Even so, you still hope that we can save her. You’re a very kind girl."

Nina's crying stopped, and her hands, covering her face, slowly came down, revealing a bloody death mask. She shook her head and said hoarsely, "No, I am sorry for my mistress... I owe her... If I had obeyed, my mistress wouldn't have become pregnant or gone crazy. It's my fault. Everything is my fault."

"Then tell us everything, and then we can let her rest in peace properly," Qi Leren said to her.

"Alright... You must also promise me that you must save her soul from the Devil's hand and let her rest in peace," Nina sobbed.

"I will try my best." Qi Leren solemnly nodded his head.

Nina smiled. Her dead soul looked so terrifying, but it was very gentle.

"Things began many years ago... The Mrs.'s family has a hereditary mental illness, and almost always have gone crazy after giving birth. The Master didn't want children, so he asked the doctor for advice, and the doctor gave him a medicine. The Master asked me to put a certain amount of it into his wife's food every day, and I had always done so. Until one day... I discovered it was mercury powder.

"I heard that it was a poisonous thing, and I was afraid. I thought the Master didn't know what it was, so I told him, but he insisted that as long as the dosage was small, it wouldn't harm his wife's health. I doubt it, because my mistress often complained to me that she had a headache, and whenever she combed her hair some would always fall out. I didn't dare to disobey my Master’s order, and I was afraid of endangering my mistress's health, so I took the initiative and reduced the dose... Soon after, my mistress became pregnant.

"I confessed this matter to my Master, who beat me, locked me in this room, and ordered someone to install a lock. He no longer trusted me, and instead let another maid continue to put mercury powder into his wife's diet. Soon after, Dr. Flajser came, and I overheard him talking with the Master. He said that the Mrs. was pregnant, and taking the mercury powder would not cause miscarriage, but that the fetus would be deformed. The Master said it didn't matter. The newborn baby would be so fragile that it would be easy to kill. At that time, I realized that he was not worried that his wife would go crazy. He just didn't want an heir who would go crazy.

"Later, I learned that the Master has always had an illegitimate child, but his wife never knew it. It wasn’t that he didn't want children, he just didn't want a defective child," Nina said sadly.

With Nina's narrative, the originally scattered clues were gradually connected in series. Qi Leren heard Dr. Lu say to himself: "It turns out that the contraceptive agent is a heavy metal... No wonder..."

"At that time, I was at a loss. I don't know if I should tell my mistress all this. She loved her husband so much and looked forward to the birth of her child. If she gave birth to a deformed baby and the baby died, she would go crazy. I feel like I must have been persuaded by the Devil. I even thought that this child must not be born. He would not become the hope of my mistress, but he would instead drive her crazy. So... I did something unforgivable."

Qi Leren remembered the last time he came here, Dr. Lu asked Nina how Mrs. Sarah miscarried. Nina was silent for a long time and told them that she had fallen down the stairs. Now he knew how she fell down…

"I moved a little on the stairs. When my mistress was going up the stairs, she fell. She fell down the stairs and shed a lot of blood... When she woke up, her child was gone. I cleaned up the traces, so no one knew that this was not an accident, and even my mistress did not doubt me... After that, she gradually became wrong, and she was suspicious of everything. She felt that she was being haunted by a ghost. She began to go crazy and became unreasonable."

Nina looked at them sadly and murmured, "I am a murderer. I have committed a crime. If I didn't reduce the dose, my mistress wouldn't have become pregnant. If I didn't do that, my mistress wouldn't have gone crazy. Everything is my fault. It's my fault..."

"That's why you volunteered to be her sacrifice," Qi Leren said.

Nina showed a tearful smile: "I owed her, and I wanted to make it up to her. I secretly released her from the cellar that day. She was as happy as a child even without an eye and blood in her eyes. I hadn't seen her smile so happily for a long time, just like before she was crazy. She happily went to find her husband, and I wanted to stop her, because once she found him, she would be sent back to the cellar, and I would be beaten by him. I advised her to leave here and go back to Germany, but she wouldn't listen. She sneaked over to the Master’s study to give him a surprise… Then she saw that the Master was looking sorrowfully at Adeline’s picture. I thought she would rush in and scream bloody murder at her husband, just like before, but she didn't. 

"She turned to me and took me to this room. Her expression was so cold and indifferent, and there was blood in her eye socket, but she didn’t seem to feel it. Clearly she was so angry, but she was so calm, I suddenly felt that she really was crazy at this time..."

"Who was Adeline? Did you know her?" Qi Leren asked again.

Nina nodded her head and whispered, "She was the lady's personal maid. She grew up with my mistress since childhood, but she died many years ago... because she ate the bread that the kitchen had made for my mistress, which contained peanut butter. She was allergic to this. When she was found, she had been dead in her room for more than half a day. I don't sympathize with her at all. I found something wrong with the Master a long time ago. At that time, my mistress probably didn't know it. When she died, my mistress was very sad and went to sweep her grave every year... Before she went crazy, she was really a very gentle and kind person, but her maid betrayed her."

Had she? Qi Leren didn't refute her words, but according to the information revealed by the crazy lady’s phantom, Adeline died from the crazy lady’s deadly trap.

"The questions are almost clear. Do you have anything else to ask?" Qi Leren asked Dr. Lu and Su He.

When Dr. Lu turned his eyes, he remembered something and asked, "How much do you know about Dr. Flajser?"

"Dr. Flajser? He was a family doctor of my mistress's family... Later, he came to China and saved lives everywhere. He was a very knowledgeable doctor." Nina spoke highly of Dr. Flajser. Although the tragedy of Mad Lady was related to the medicine prescribed by Dr. Flajser, she took all her mistakes on herself and didn't think there was anything wrong with the doctor's behavior.

"I’ve finished asking, too," Dr. Lu said.

After thinking about it, Su He asked, "How many times did Dr. Flajser come to the castle after Mrs. Sarah’s miscarriage?"

"There should have been several times, but I can't remember exactly..." Nina recalled.

"Did Mrs. Sarah take any medicine after that?" Su He asked again.

"I don't know. Since I confessed to my Master, he gave it to another maid..."

"Lastly, how did the castle burn down?" Su He asked.

Nina shook her head and looked ahead with empty eyes: "I don't know. At that time, I was dead... My soul stayed here, watching my mistress draw the Devil’s totems in the room, watching her walk out of this door... After that, there was a big fire here, and then it went out, and the traces of burning disappeared. Everything seemed to go back to the past, but no one ever opened this door until you arrived…"

Two lines of bloody tears flowed down from Nina's eyes, and she cried, "I have committed an unforgivable crime. I would like to atone in purgatory, but what about my poor lady? Please let her unfortunate and lost soul rest in the arms of the Lord."

-----

The author has something to say:

PS: A little spit: Discussed with our medical consultant how to abort in the early 20th century. Abortion in the Middle Ages basically relied on stabbing, and abortion was purely physical. Was not sure when Mifepristone, a magical medicine for abortion, was invented. I was thinking about heavy metal abortion, but it was ruthlessly rejected. I learned that heavy metal poisoning mainly caused menstrual disorder and embryo displacement was difficult (ancient contraceptive method). If heavy metals are used to stop conceptions, it will basically only lead to deformity. In addition, as has been said before, abortion methods such as safflower musk are basically wive’s tales and metaphysics and are not credible. After the final discussion, we came to the conclusion that we had to abort by falling down the stairs. After thousands of years of development of human civilization, we still had to use physics to abort. It is a tragedy…

It's late due to visiting relatives in the Spring Festival. Sorry

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#Welcome to the Nightmare Game #欢迎来到噩梦游戏 #danmei

[snowdropsandtigers]

Post-Season One Rewatch Miscellany

Okay I think details are already fading even though I finished in three days, so let’s try to get some thoughts down.

- Vic’s initial coping mechanism is art. After that scares her father, and with her meeting with Manx looming ahead, that’s when she chooses to cope via drinking to forget. Later on, it’s similar; she’s helpless to do anything when she thinks her only way to fight is gone, so she turns to drinking and stops trying to make her family relationships okay. She doesn’t cope well with being helpless, and the drastically worse situation she’s in when Manx becomes aware of her existence pushes her into the things she was trying to avoid. It’s also something she can do with Craig, who she always valued, but earlier thought of as too busy with weed for her. He’s her only real, unconditional support at the time, as she’s become more isolated due to her family crumbling and her boyfriend inadvertently pushing her away.

- On that note; normally I get at least a little unhappy when you have a story in which the main girl doesn’t want someone who’s pining for her and then realizes he’s great, and on my initial watch it did surprise me a little. This time around I still feel a little pang over Drew, mostly over how it foreshadows what she’ll lose later, but I really do like how there’s no judgment in any of it. There’s nothing to say she needed to choose differently at the start, or that she should be judged based on her ability to select a man. She just wanted to be with someone who was there for her at the right time, who she valued, and who wouldn’t abandon her the way everyone else had one way or another. Also, he was a genuinely nice guy who never gave her a hard time over his feelings. I felt for him all right during my first watch, but now I really like him in much the same way as I really like Lou.

- It’s just so awful to watch Vic’s hopes and dreams crumble throughout the season. She tried so hard for everyone that in the end she couldn’t see herself following up on that for her own sake. Of course she didn’t feel like she could go to art school, given the responsibility she felt she had already failed in to protect people, and the baby that was all she had left of her best friend. She didn’t feel like the same person who wanted to go, and she’d feel like the person she was trying to escape becoming—a disappointment to her loved ones (Craig in not saving him), and pregnant before she could find a life of her own. All of that would build up over the years until by next season, unable to find and save kids from Christmasland for years, she feels she’s just as ruined and hopeless as Charlie says she is.

- Relatedly, as on my first watch, I continue to appreciate the irony in how much Charlie ruins and damages what he claims to love and want to protect. He destroyed families and stole children’s futures, and we watch him traumatize Vic long before he decides he’s going to hurt her. We watch him watch her suffering over Maggie and it doesn’t get through to him whatsoever, anymore than Jolene could get through when she actually tried. We watch an episode where Bing, who he hires to hurt people, abducts and sexually assaults her while Charlie discusses her purity with a guy who, even with his own misogyny, seems more clearheaded in his lack of a madonna/whore complex. (Sure, he didn’t ask for that to happen, but that’s the kind of thing he did encourage Bing to do, and he even validates it later. It’s a natural consequence of his words and actions.) Given everything in the season, it looks like Vic would have been well on her way to escaping Haverhill like she wanted, without having ever tasted alcohol or weed first, if not for his effect on her life. It may not be a certainty, and of course none of that made her a bad person like he said, but he did definitely push her in that direction at an important turning point in her life. I haven’t gotten that far into the book, but I keep remembering the line “what Charlie Manx couldn’t do, she did to herself.” (Or something almost exactly that.) This holds true for the show, and it’s also so true of the man himself. We see that with him and Jolene too, with her desperately wanting to believe in him, him being unable to give her a reason to, and the way he doubled down on it by trying to kill her right after. We’ll see more of that in season two. There are immensely sympathetic reasons for him to be messed up and do the wrong thing , just as with Vic,* but we can also see how his opportunities to have the things he wanted become lost, as with her. I love how he and Vic are narrative foils in this story about both how suffering can inform you and limit your choices—taking into account that limits which “only” exist in your head are still very real—and how your choices are your own. It’s very satisfying to me. A good pair of foils is just…neat.

- Speaking of! Vic has so many foils. Her father, her mother, as a parent. Her own son as the victim Charlie does successfully (if temporarily) take away, where he failed with her. Maggie, as the girl who was hunting Charlie before Vic wanted to, and the girl who wants to try for a normal life just when Vic is newly determined and desperate to hunt him with her. Jolene, who got to meet him before he showed himself as who he chose to be and had to do the hunting on her own. Bing, who we meet as someone who shares her desire to escape his current life circumstances. And Millie. The other daddy’s girl. All throughout the season we watch Vic lose faith in her father, and I couldn’t help thinking, when the calls from Christmasland started, of how Millie would go through the same thing next season. They barely interact and they don’t have a relationship, but I am absolutely fascinated by the fact that Millie goes down a similar path, that her own connection to her mother got her calling on Vic for help and gave Vic help in return, and that she must be feeling some things about how her father let her walk into the world alone, but also what she did led to his death. Not wholly unlike how at the same time, Vic is still disillusioned with her own father and watches him be murdered before she can offer him forgiveness or the hope of reconciliation. That is a wonderful mess of feeling and potential narrative fodder.

- When I heard this wasn’t getting renewed, I tried to look on the bright side. At least it wouldn’t get awful, which it still had the potential to do, and it could remain a story I loved. But damn, I rarely vibe with a show the way I do with this one; not even with shows I love do I tend to feel as on the same wavelength as I felt with NOS4A2. So many other things have gotten renewed that are less good, that don’t try to do as much with their characters, or that I just plain don’t care about as much. Whether or not things would’ve gone badly in the end, this show deserved the chance to keep trying. It’s hard to explain, but as a whole it felt unique, unlike much of the television I’ve seen over the years. The show it reminds me the most of is Buffy; mainly in their protagonists, which is the thing I love best about both shows, but also the blend of the personal and the supernatural, the grounding of the supernatural in real life. (After making this observation on my own when watching the first time, I discovered that Vic’s original creator, Joe Hill, said he thought of her as a Buffy in a different time of her life. I love finding connections between my favorite stories, but finding that it was also a connection the writer was making, and the influence is there, was very pleasing.) But it’s very much its own thing. I would’ve loved to see more of it. In the unlikely event that someone has gotten this far and not seen it because it was cancelled, or left it unfinished for the same reason—I’ve seen a couple say that over the last six months or so—I’d encourage you to not let that be a factor! It’s very complete as it is, and rewarding in how it unites characters with themes. I could’ve done with so much more of it.

*I truly appreciate how sympathetic this show is with everyone. Everyone. Every major character is framed as someone to feel empathy for at one point or another, and this is true for most, if not all, of the minor characters too, if I remember this right. We’re asked to carry that empathy when we look at them, when we look at the story as a whole. This show is so stressful and yet so kind, so empathetic. In my opinion, it is so stressful in part because it’s kind and empathetic, because you feel so much for the people who are suffering. I could feel that, and that’s part of my love for it.

#nos4a2 #text post #text #I just love it so much #😭 #meta #my meta #I guess #this isn’t supposed to be some formal thing. It’s just my personal blog about my feelings and thoughts that you can read because I want to #BTVS #buffy summers #buffy the vampire slayer #buffy #not very present but she does show up and that connection does matter to me #I really hope this shows up well because as if this week I have no laptop and had to post it on my phone

[rideboldlyride]

Perfect: Chapter 8

Like the Waves (Back and Forth)

Ao3 Link Here!

Zuko,

So I guess I should start now, huh? I mean, it’s only been a few days, but I have to start somewhere. We just skimmed Kyoshi Island, landing in Chin Village. Did I ever tell you about this place? They had planned to boil Aang in hot oil at one point. Now they have this day where they eat raw dough in celebration of … not…. boiling him? I’ll have to tell you the whole story in person one day. 

Anyway.

Chin Village is the first stop on our little crusade, it seems, since Toph already found the Triad here. (That girl has got a nose for sniffing them out). We followed them, but so far it’s been a pretty uneventful trip. I’ll have to wait to write when there’s actually something interesting to write about…

***

Dark. Black. Flash of inky nothingness flies through the air.

A heavy splash, followed by a guttural grunt. The sound of cloth whipping through the air. Followed by footsteps.

Men’s voices echoed down the hall, angry, confused. Moonlight streams through the windows, being caught up in an unnatural fog.

Silence eats up the heavy tread. 

Loud crash. Like a spirit of the damned, a beast straight from the Spirit World descends upon the throng. 

The screams are swallowed up by the night. Red, brown, blue, and water. So much water. The men could drown on the dry ground.

They fall like dead bugs around the phantom. 

One is still conscious, cowering.

“The Painted Lady…” his voice is reverant, trembling. 

“Where are you taking the children?”

***

… I seriously wish there was more to tell. The little bit of information I was able to snoop out of what Toph found seems to point us to Gaoling. She’s… not exactly pleased about it. I don’t think she’s talked with her folks in a while. I guess we’ll see if she’ll talk to them now. 

Doubt it.

How are the new settlement talks going? I heard you are playing a big role in that. I know I’m not really in any position to help, but if you want a fresh set of eyes, I’ll be happy to help.

Hope this letter finds you safe and as sane as being the Fire Lord is going to keep you.

Katara

***

Katara,

I’m surprised that you haven’t been up to mischief. That doesn’t quite sound like you. I guess I’ll have to take your word.

Sounds like Chin Village was going to be a quick stop. It’s a pretty small village, isn’t it? My Earth Kingdom geography is a little rusty. 

Aang boiled in oil- I don’t think I’ve heard that story before. 

I’m surprised to hear that Toph hasn’t seen her parents in a while. Well, maybe not surprised. But definitely sad to hear it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to smooth any interactions. The Bei Fong’s and I have crossed paths multiple times, and they seem to listen to me. Do you know what direction you’re heading in, once you get to Gaoling? That is a bit of a step up from Chin Village. 

The settlement talks are going about as well as you might expect. Kuei thinks that the islands belong to his kingdom (or at least, his advisors do), and yet my advisors tell me there’s evidence of an old Fire Nation village there. I’m not exactly sure how far to push the issue - it’s a bit of a touchy subject, when my people are involved.

I’ve been trying to do some pushing on my end, about the Triad. I’m sad to report that I’m not getting very far…

***

A ring of steel on steel echoed through the alleyway. The grimace on the strained man’s face was hardly a match for the grotesque twist of a face on the spectre’s mask. At that moment, the opponent was doubtful of the nature of the man before him. 

Earlier, inside the building they had vacated, one of his gang mates had laid a blade’s edge upon the black skin of the spirit before him and drawn red blood. He had sworn that a man’s voice had bit out a muffled curse at the action. But as the blue and white mask leaned in, there was no sign of a man’s presence behind it. No hint of skin, no rush of breath. Just heat, unbearable, aggressive heat. With a twist, the man felt his blade slip through his fingers and clatter down the street. 

A pair of dao blades intersected before his throat. 

When he swallowed heavily, his Adam's apple scraped the blade’s edge painfully. One blade was removed, and with a switch of a grip, it came tumbling back down, it’s butt meeting the side of his skull. He plummeted into the darkness.

Over his body, the Blue Spirit stood tall. Returning his blades to his sheath, he bent down, patting down the pockets of the man unconscious before him. A sound caught his attention, and with a deft hand he withdrew a small piece of parchment from a pocket. Unravelling it, he scanned it before slipping it into a private pocket of his own. 

With one more look down at the man unconscious before him, he hefted him over his shoulder and disappeared into the night.

The next morning, he would be found bound, with a fresh piece of parchment pinned to his front, showing evidence of the small cell of the Triad in the region near the Fire Nation capital, discarded before the Head of the Guard of the city.

***

… But this does not mean I have given up trying. Anything you need help with, Katara, please, just let me know. 

By the time this reaches you, I’m sure you’ll be in Gaoling. Please be safe. I don’t think I want to explain to Sokka why his baby sister is being held by a group of gangsters. 

Speaking of Sokka, I hear that they’re planning to visit in the next few months. I won’t lie, I’m excited to see them. There’s something empty to this palace without you all here.

Be safe. 

Zuko.

***

Oh Great and Fiery One, 

Hi.

Sorry, couldn’t help myself. 

Those settlements, Zuko, how old are the remnants? I can understand why you’re nervous to push anything with Kuei, but if they belong to your people… If they’re old remnants, it might just make sense to strike a deal for some archaeological dig but if not- if they’re just from before the war, then why would Kuei want the islands anyway?

I’m sorry to hear about your work on the Triad. I could’ve used the help. As it is, we’re chasing a bit of an enigma. So far the SB (that’s all I’m going to call her, since I don’t want this falling into the wrong hands) has remained elusive. There’s a whisper, but it’s a quiet one. Supposedly, this is the first place she emerged on the scene. According to what I’m finding, she hadn’t intended to be used by them. They just found her…

***

“I do not suffer fools or liars!” A voice like a dark demon split the air, and the man before her cowered in the fog at her feet. 

“I would never lie to a spirit - especially as powerful of a one as you, my Lady!” Lord Bei Fong was shivering.

“Then tell me who she is!”

“I don’t know!” He crooned, his voice wavering, as if on the edge of slipping into unconsciousness. “She was found here, yes! We brought her in, but when they came for her, we knew nothing about them or her!”

“You took her in? You, Bei Fong, are not known for your hospitality to the weak and needy.”

“She was no beggar.”

Anger spurred the spirit closer. Red lips curled in disgust as she growled out her words. “Then who was she?!”

“Someone of rank -- that’s all I know!” He threw himself to his knees, prostrate, arms covering his head. There was no more to be known as to the Spirit Bridge’s identity, but maybe she could identify where she was taken to.

“Where did they take her?”

“North - North and east. I don’t know where exactly.”

The Painted Lady straightened, blue eyes glinting in the light. “These thugs prevail on my patience, pry on my good will. Tell me all there is to know about the Triad.”

***

… and they used her. Sounds like she’s a prisoner more than an accomplice. But she’s going to have to go on hold for a few days. (hopefully only for that long. Gaoling is taking too long to comb through, and I’ve got a feeling my road leads to Omashu, at least, and I don’t want to be sidetracked for too long.) There’s a village, Linpan, that is currently being plagued, like Yomi was. It’s out in the middle of the plains, where there isn’t much of a lawful presence at all. I wonder over it’s condition, but it’s better not to concern myself too much till I get out there. 

I won’t lie, I already miss Sokka and Suki. And Yuka. I worry that I’m going to miss so much of her life. Maybe when it’s all said and done, I’ll go ahead and let Pakku set me up. Just so I can settle down. 

Who am I kidding?

Please send my love to my family. I’ll see you eventually. Be safe too, Zuko. 

Katara

***

Very funny.

You call me that again, and I won’t send you Sokka’s leftover seal jerky. 

You asked about the settlement: It’s from just prior to the war. The only real reason we’re trying to settle it is to search for the little bit that remains of the Fire Nation culture prior to the war. Most of the settlers planned for are historians. The rest are just to keep the historians afloat. I’ve tried explaining this to Kuei, but I’m beginning to wonder if his advisors are only bringing him their own narratives. 

Can I go chase bad guys with you?

This SB… she’s interesting. Her being a prisoner - that changes the dynamics in a lot of ways. And we know it’s a woman? I wish we could figure out her identity. It might help us in the long run. 

***

Pitter patter, pitter patter. 

It was an easy beat to fall into. Feet on ground, as light as the fall of the rain. Wet shale tiles were like ice in the rain. The spirit would have scaled it effortlessly. The man, instead, slipped and cursed, but managed to find his footing again. 

A chorus of yelps and hollers came from the rooftop just vacated. He ignored them and the pain shooting through his arm and shoulder. The Blue Spirit rounded the edge, jumped into an alley, slid down an old open-aired drain, and was gone. 

He had retrieved what he came for. The man behind the mask smiled victoriously.

***

So you’re headed to Linpan? If you come across anybody named Gansu, Sela or Lee,... I don’t know. Thank them from me? You might want to wait till the end of the visit to say that, though. What’s taking you out there, anyway? Last time I was there, some of the authorities were not the … friendliest. Please be careful, and don’t pick any fights.

Rather, don’t let Toph pick any fights.

When Sokka and Suki arrive, I’ll make sure to pass along your love. Have you been writing them?

Please, Katara, stay safe. This isn’t an easy quest you’ve taken on. I worry that you’re not telling me everything. 

Zuko.

***

Zuko.

Yes, I made that a sentence. 

If you’re going to self-project here, I want to be abundantly clear that I know you aren’t telling me everything. I’ll start spilling when you do.

It was a bit of insanity when I got here. Seems the Triad had just struck. Mostly snagged kids, from what I could tell, but a few women too. Went looking for that family you spoke of, but the town told me that Gansu didn’t make it back from the war. His oldest kid did, though - Sen Su. Unfortunately, Lee and Sela were a part of the ones taken.

Don’t worry, though. I think you know what happened next…

***

The wheat faded under to black and desiccated under her foot. 

Gold withered to black. Nutmeg and blood. Blue and brown. White billowed around the spectre’s feet, face. 

If there were footsteps, it was only the promise of death behind her. 

The men cowered, some of the more devout falling to their knees, lips trembling out unheard prayers. Close association with the spirits led powerful men to paranoia, a constant gaze over their shoulders.

Funny that, the spirit considered. If one kept his eyes over his shoulder, they were less likely to see the pit before them. 

Red lips curled. 

Villagers stood tall. Avenging spirits did not come for the innocent, they whispered to the children. The Painted Lady was the most righteous of them all.

But what of the Blue Spirit, the children responded. The mothers hushed them. It was improper to speak reverentially of a different spirit in the midst of an avenging one. 

With the slightest whisper of cloth, arms were raised, fingers curled like talons. The fog seemed to still, hovering. 

She rose -

She waited -

She descended.

***

Lee and Sela are back home, along with their friends. Before we left, I mentioned you. I don’t think you realize how much has changed since you left. They insisted that Toph and I stay with them another night. Lee asked if you still had your dao swords -- Zuko, you should come see them. 

This cell of the Triad isn’t going to be coming back anytime soon. I think Toph and I scared them enough that they’ll be having nightmares for at least a few months. Hopefully. I didn’t come here expecting to find anything out about the SB, but I actually did! She was in Omashu for a long time, even though she’s been moved since. I’m not quite sure where to, but I’ve got a sneaking sensation that I’ll be seeing the walls of Ba Sing Se before this is all over with. 

I’m surprised about the settlement. I can’t help but wonder if Kuei isn’t getting the full story. What can you do about it? Is there anything you can do about it?

As for being safe: I’m doing my best, Zuko. But I wouldn’t go around being high and mighty - I heard that you fended off another attempt, this time without Mai. I think you might be in more danger than me. 

Don’t let that happen again, unless I’m there, okay?

I miss you, Hotman. And … thank you. Thank you for insisting we write. It’s keeping me sane between the bouts of Toph’s snoring at night. 

I’ll see you soon, Zuko. 

Katara

***

Katara, 

How did you hear about that? I guess I forget that you write to other people too. As for your request, I’ll do my best. 

I’m glad to hear about Sela, Lee and Sen Su, but I won’t lie that it hurt to hear about Gansu. He was a very wise man, and it’s a loss to everyone who knew him. I’ll… try my best to come see them. That was an awkward time in my life, so I doubt it’ll be easy. 

It’s surprising to hear about the SB in Linpan. I’m guessing that this side quest of yours was to rout the trade routes they have. It’s just odd to find out crucial information from a little town in the middle of nowhere. Please be careful...

***

The dock rolled slowly in the surf. Bamboo mats swayed under foot. Inky darkness filled the gloom. In the black night, a devilish white grin flashed. Curled fangs snarled silently. The boat moored bumped slightly against the rafts, echoing an unearthly scrape across the soft waves. 

The phantasm stole up a plank. 

Silence long reigned in the dark. A sudden smack of skin on metal rang through the empty dock. A crash. A scuffle. A stuttering cry. 

The hatch opened without care, and a woman in practical nightwear stumbled out. In the silver of the moon’s light, the bronze at the apparition’s arms glinted, the white that lined it’s face glowed, the swords in its hands reflected like two slivers of the moon. A line of red ran down the very edge of one sword. 

It loomed over the woman, staring down coolly at her. Her mouth worked without a sound. A single blade point was shoved under her chin. She whimpered. 

“I’ll leave!” she shrieked. 

A blue face shot forward, their stance readying for action. The woman cowered even more. 

“The children, I’ll leave them here. I promise! Just don’t -- don’t hurt me!”

The black pits of emotionless eyes stared a moment longer at the woman. They nodded, pulling back and away. With the grace of many years of practice, the twin swords swirled about him, sliding into the sheath at his back. 

He stepped away, just in time to hear it. 

A loud cry echoed from the hatch. Holding a vase like a club, he brought it down on the Blue Spirit’s head. 

The dark clad figure stumbled, but only for a moment, bringing a small dagger from his boot across the man’s chest. A line of red blossomed there, only a slight wound, but the man staggered away, clutching at it. Something inhuman escaped the wraith and it rounded, something feral in their posture. 

For the first time, the Blue Spirit spoke, it’s voice like wood tumbling over stone. 

“Leave.”

The woman bolted to the side of the injured man, but turned wide gray eyes back at the Spirit. 

“Yes! We will! Forgive him his impudence!” She fell to her face, sobbing. “We’ll leave! We’ll go, and you’ll never see us again!” 

She continued to sob into the night, but the offended spirit she placated had long since disappeared.

***

Don’t make me have to come find you.

As for Kuei, I wouldn’t be surprised. We all know he has a tendency towards poor decisions in regards to advisors.

I’m trying to secure a time with him in the upcoming months. I need to make a run to Omashu myself. Bumi has got something he needs to show me, he says, but for all I know, it’ll be more gemmanite crystal in a new color. 

Maybe he’s perfected red?

Either way, he’s now going through White Lotus channels. It’s starting to frustrate Piandao, and that’s never a good thing. Who knows? Maybe we’ll cross paths there. 

(I hope we do. I’ve been missing you too.)

Zuko

***

They readied themselves on their Ostrich horses, a small pack strapped to the hind quarters of the beasts. Before them, the sun was beginning to peak over the horizon, sending the flat lands aglow. Katara shuffled before the ostrich horse, trying to steady herself for the rocking ride that always left her backside screaming the next morning. Toph, beside her, was a surprisingly comfortable rider, even if Katara had to lead them both, Toph’s ostrich tied to the back of her saddle. 

“Please be safe on your journeys, Miss Katara.” 

The young woman turned to the older, a smile pulling at her face. Sela handed over two packs - she could tell they were laden with food.

“Sela, please don’t. You three need the food more than Toph and I do.”

A hard look crossed her face, and the older woman’s hand did not falter. “Do not deny my hospitality, Katara.”

The look melted as the waterbender wrapped her up into a hug. “Thank you.” 

From the homestead, two young men walked out into the morning. Sen Su shook his head vigorously. “I’m pretty certain that we should be thanking you. I would have tried, but I doubt I could have gotten them back without your help.”

There hadn’t been much more to say, Katara felt, so with one more press of a hug to the family, she mounted the ostrich horse. 

“Make sure to write, okay?”

All three nodded. As she started to spur her mount, Lee shot forward, a look of concern on his face. 

“Oh! Miss Katara?” She turned a friendly smile to him, and he continued. “When - when you see the Fire Lord again, can you tell him that I’m sorry?”

“Sorry? Lee…,” Katara sighed, dismounting. She placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Lee, Zuko is one of my closest friends --” Pointedly, Katara ignored Toph’s shot of laughter. “ -- so we write each other a lot. If I know Zuko at all, he would never feel that he deserved an apology for your behaviour. If anything, he’d be the one apologizing to you.”

“Still,” the young man pressed, “can you tell him for me?”

A wry smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Yeah, Lee, I can do that.”

***

#zutara #perfect #zutara is my new hell #atla #atla is my new hell #zutara fanfiction #fanfiction update

[nazariolahela]

Something Domestic: Chapter 9

A/N: Hey y’all! This story is told in first-person narrative, from Riley’s (MC) POV. There will likely be smidges of canon in this, but not too much. Thanks for reading, and please leave feedback, and/or if you would like to be tagged.

This chapter ended up being longer than anticipated, so it will essentially be split into two. Whoops!

Catch up here

Series Tags: @burnsoslow​ @aworldoffandoms​ @dcbbw​ @ladyangel70​ @texaskitten30​ @sunandlemons​ @jlynn12273​ @indiacater​ @jared2612​ @rainbowsinthestorm​ @drakesensworld​ @badchoicesposts​ @msjr0119​ @katurrade​ @blackcoffee85​ @cynicalworlds-blog​ @hopefulmoonobject​ @beardedoafdonutwagon​ @cmestrella​ @sugarandspice-milkandhoney​ @superharrietsuper​​

Synopsis: When Riley Brooks takes a new job as a nanny for the affluent Rhys family in New York’s Upper East Side, she assumes she’s just going to care for the children of the couple who hired her. But instead of just school pick-ups and afternoon snacks, she also finds herself spending time with Liam, the handsome divorced dad. Can Riley control her feelings for Liam while still performing the job she was hired for?

All characters are the property of Pixelberry Studios. Thanks for allowing me to borrow them.

Chapter Summary: Manhattan puts on its best-dressed for an annual fundraiser, and all eyes are on Riley.

The next week had come and with little drama. Charlotte started her first day of school on Monday, which she was surprisingly unhappy about. I wonder if she had overheard Liam and Madeleine’s fight Friday evening. I showed up early that day to make sure she had everything she needed. Liam stayed mostly out of sight as I got her ready for school. No doubt he was having second thoughts about our steamy makeout session. Or maybe he was embarrassed. Nevertheless, he was gone before the kids and I left. After I dropped Charlotte off at school, Philip and I spent the day doing fun stuff. Museums, painting classes, even a stop for some dairy-free ice cream. Madeleine actually showed up on time from work to relieve me of my duties, and I was gone before Liam got home. Tuesday through Thursday were much of the same. Arrive early, get Charlotte off to school, spend time with Philip, pick up Charlotte from school, spend time with them until their mother arrived, then head for home.

Now, it’s Thursday evening, and Hana and I are sitting in our apartment eating takeout. She’s sitting in the recliner, cell phone in hand, texting Meghan. I hold the remote and flip through Netflix, trying to find a movie for us to watch. I find one that might be interesting to me and turn to her. “Wanna watch this one?”

She looks up from her phone to the TV and frowns. “Watched it with Meghan last night. What else is there?”

I flip through to find another one then turn back to her, “How about this one?” She shakes her head no. I sigh and toss the remote on the couch next to me. “I got nothing then.”

“How about we go shopping for the banquet on Saturday?’ she pipes up. I give her a grin, and we both slip on our shoes, grab our purses and head outside to hail a cab. Hana and I scored invitations to the Enrique M. Vasquez Memorial Scholarship Banquet. It’s the largest fundraiser for New York Private Schools in the state. Every year, the richest and most powerful in New York society show up, rub elbows with each other, and donate a shit ton of money for scholarships to some of the most prestigious private elementary, middle, and high schools. Last year, more than $500,000 in scholarships were handed out.

Hana and I arrive at Carmina — an upscale dress shop in Manhattan — 30 minutes later. We browse through the racks, picking out a selection of gowns to try on. Most of these dresses cost at least a month’s salary, but they’re so pretty, I have to force myself to overlook the price tag. Gowns in hand, we retreat to the dressing rooms. After a few minutes, Hana steps out in a stunning shimmery gold number, with a sweetheart neckline. My jaw drops as she does a little twirl. Damn, my best friend is hot.

“I don’t know what other dresses you have in there, but don’t bother trying them on. That’s the one.”

Hana laughs. “Take a picture of me. I wanna send it to Meghan and get her opinion on it.” I snap the picture with her phone and hand it back to her. A few moments later, her phone buzzes, and I peek over her shoulder to see Meghan’s reply.

That dress is beautiful. I can’t wait to see what it looks like on my bedroom floor.

“Ooooh!” I say, reading the message. Hana tucks the phone into her chest, her cheeks turning crimson.

“Get out of here, nosy and go try on your own dresses.”

I snicker and return to my dressing room. “So how are things going with you and Meghan?” I ask her.

“Pretty good. I know it’s only been a week, but I really like her.”

“That’s wonderful, Hana. You two seem to be getting along well. She’s certainly smitten. Have you two… ya know…”

“RILEY!” she shrieks. She pauses for a few beats, then replies. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. Yes, we have.”

Half dressed, I rip the door open to my dressing room and find her sitting on one of the elaborate couches. “What?! Really?! That’s great!” I rush over to her and grab her hands. “You have to tell me all about it. Well, not all about it, but you know.”

Hana giggles, pushing me away from her. “Go get dressed, you perv. We don’t have all night.” I stick my tongue out at her and move back into the dressing room. I try on the three dresses I chose. The first one is a purple halter dress with a slit up the leg that damn near shows everything. The second one is a black cap sleeve number that would look better for a funeral than a benefit dinner. The third dress is a beautiful glittery blue gown with a plunging neckline. I emerge from the dressing room and hear Hana audibly gasp.

“Oh, my gods. That’s it. That’s the one.”

I smile. “You think so?”

“I know so! You look breathtaking!”

I clap my hands together. “Awesome! Let’s pay for these and get out of here. I have to find a pair of shoes to go with this baby!” We pay for our gowns and my credit card weeps. As we are leaving the dress shop, Hana’s phone chimes with a text.

“It’s from Meghan. She wants to go get a drink.” She frowns. “But I don’t want to ditch you.”

I turn to her, shaking my head. “Don’t worry about it. Go see your woman. One of us deserves to get laid.”

She laughs and pulls me into a hug. “I’ll see you at the apartment later, ‘kay?” I nod as she gets into a cab and takes off. I hail my own cab and make my way back to the apartment, clutching the dress in my arms. I think about how I’m going to style my hair, and what accessories I’m going to pair with it. I’m going to look so hot, no man there will be able to take his eyes off me. My mind wanders to the only man who’s eyes I want on me. I know he’s going to be there on Saturday. His company is an annual sponsor and of course, he donates a lot of money to the scholarship fund. I remember that he’s also been avoiding me all week. Maybe if I can get a few minutes alone with him, we can at least talk about what happened.

***

Saturday rolls around and Hana and I are at our apartment getting ready for the evening. The two of us are crowded in our tiny bathroom, doing each other’s hair and makeup. When we’ve finished primping and priming, we head to our bedrooms to get dressed. After I’m dressed, I assess myself in the full-length mirror behind my door. Looking good, Riley. I shout at Hana from the other side of the wall. “What time is the car picking us up?”

“6:30. There’s a cocktail hour at 7, and dinner starts at 8.”

I check my phone. It’s already 6:25. “You about ready?”

She giggles. “Yep. You?”

I open my door at the same time she opens hers. We step out into the hall and dramatically present ourselves. “Ta-da!” she sing-songs. 

“Gahddamn, we look good! Ready to go break some hearts and raise some money?”

“You know it!” she replies. We grab our things and head downstairs to meet the car. On the ride there, Hana and I chat about who we might run into tonight. She mentions that her college advisor is expected to make an appearance, and she hopes they can get together and visit. I think about running into Liam and what I’m going to say to him. The car stops in front of The Celestial Hotel & Resort, and a valet rushes to open our door for us. We climb out and make our way inside, walking the “red carpet.” I roll my eyes as the paparazzi snap pictures of Manhattan’s biggest names. All this for a scholarship benefit?!

We enter the Grand Ballroom and are taken aback by how elaborate the setup is. Roughly 50 tables are set up with white tablecloths and ornate centerpieces. Each table has eight chairs, and place cards on bright white cardstock with gold accents. There’s a bar set up to the left of the room, and a stage at the back. The right side of the room features several floor-to-ceiling windows, showcasing the New York skyline. 

My eyes scan the room, looking for someone I might know. I see Dr. Ethan Ramsey chatting with famous author Marianne D'Arneaux. Near the bar, fashion designer Lancelin St. Claire and actor Ryan Summers laugh at something comedian Josh Morello said. Across the room, singers Raleigh Carrera and Cady Dorian are locked in a heated embrace. Talk about little fish in a big pond. I read about all these people in my favorite tabloid magazines, and now I’m in the same room as they are. It’s not all celebrities though. I see several New York educators, school administrators, and faculty members. I even spot one of my professors from Steinhardt. I remind myself to say hello to him later.

“I found our table,” Hana says, grabbing my arm and guiding me to where we’ll be sitting for the evening. I look at the placeholders and notice a few big names seated with us. Matt Rodriguez and his wife Jessica Clark; and Avery Wilshire. The Manhattan School District superintendent; the dean of Barnard College; and the principal of Hana’s school, Vera Thompson are also seated at our table. We take our seats and wait for the other occupants to arrive.

“I feel so out of place here. Maybe we should go,” I say, fidgeting with my napkin.

“What? No! This event is the biggest fundraiser of the year. Think of the connections we could make. Plus, Dr. Ramsey is the guest speaker tonight. Don’t you want to stick around for that?” I can tell this event is important to her, so I decide to just suck it up and stay. We make our way to the bar and order a couple of whiskey sours. Thank gods this event has an open bar. I take a sip of my drink and frown. These don’t taste nearly as good as the ones Drake makes. Speak of the devil. I spot Drake and Maxwell making their way toward the bar. Maxwell is wearing the most amazing suit I’ve ever seen. It’s light blue with tentacles stretching the length of the jacket. His bowtie is an orange squid. Drake is a tad more casual in black slacks and a blue button-up with a tie.

“Ladies! What are you doing here this fine evening? This doesn’t seem like the type of party you like to crash,” Maxwell says, winking at us.

Drake rolls his eyes. “Hey girls. Fancy party, huh? This is not what I was expecting when I signed up to be a sponsor.”

“You’re a sponsor?” Hana questions. Drake cocks an eyebrow at her as if to ask, “What does that mean?”

“We both are,” Maxwell replies. “Been giving money to this program for years.”

Drake nods. “This state has a lot of really good private schools, and it’s only fair that every kid has the opportunity to attend them. I like that kids of all economic status can get scholarships for them. I wouldn’t give money to the program otherwise.”

Hana smiles, satisfied, and sips her drink. Maxwell orders two glasses of champagne and hands one to Drake. Drake takes the glass, frowning. “What am I supposed to do with this?

“Drink it. What else would you do?” Drake brings the glass to his lips and takes a small sip. He makes a face before knocking it back and setting the glass back on the bar.

“So where’s the third member of your Motley Crew?” I ask. Just then, the crowd parts and Olivia herself appears. She saunters toward us — her trademark smirk plastered across her face — in a red sequined gown. A man with dark hair and an all-black suit trails behind her, holding two glasses of champagne.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the hot nanny. You clean up nicely. I’ll give you that. That’s quite the gown. Liam’s going to shit himself.” She turns to the man behind her and plucks one of the champagne glasses from his hand, downing it in two gulps, then sets it on the bar. “What is a nanny doing at a scholarship benefit? Shouldn’t you be watching the kids?”

“I don’t have them on weekends. I actually don't know where they are. I haven’t spoken to Liam or Madeleine tonight,” I state matter-of-factly.

She chuckles. “I’m glad the she-witch lets you have some free time. It’s not like she watches her own kids. Why else would she have hired you?”

“Olivia,” Drake snaps.

She turns to him and smirks. “Hello, Drake. I see you couldn’t be bothered to find a suit for this little soirée? I doubt it would have killed you to put on a damn jacket. At least the babysitter wore a nice dress.” She laughs and turns to the man behind her, snapping her fingers. “Come, Ray.” The two of them disappear into the crowd and all four of us breathe a sigh of relief.

Hana scowls. “Oh my gods, she’s so brash? How do you put up with her?”

“Lots and lots of alcohol,” Drake answers.

Maxwell snorts and takes a drink of his champagne. “Don’t mind her. It’s a defense mechanism. Once you get to know her, she’s actually a ray of sunshine. Except to Drake. Pretty sure she still hates you for junior year, man.”

Hana and I exchange a look. I turn to Maxwell. “So, who are most of these people? I recognize the celebrities and some of the educators, but I have no idea who everyone else is.” He slings an arm around my shoulder and turns my body toward the crowd. He points toward the podium near the stage where two older men and a woman about my age are holding a conversation. and I recognize one of the men as Maxwell’s brother.

“You remember Bertrand. Well, the woman on his arm is his wife, Savannah. The blonde guy next to him is Liam’s older brother Leo.” I squint and immediately see the resemblance. Maxwell moves his hand over to two women giggling. “The woman in the purple dress with the narwhal necklace is Penelope, and the one next to her in the black dress with feathers on the shoulders is Kiara. They’re Madeleine’s best friends from college. And if they’re here, that means she’s not too far away. Those three are attached at the hip.”

“So I’ve heard.”

He chuckles. Sure enough, a woman with a blonde bob and a stunning cold-shoulder emerald green dress struts up to the two women. Yep, that’s her alright. If she’s here, then that means… I scan the ballroom for any sign of him. From the corner of my eye, I see Hana ducking behind Maxwell.

“Oh my gods, he’s here. Hide me!”

“Who?” I ask her, confused. She points toward the center of the room where a man with slicked-back hair and a permanent scowl stands. He’s wearing a brown blazer over a blue pullover, and brown slacks.

“It’s Neville,” she whispers as if he can hear us from across the room. After scanning my face for signs of recognition, she continues. “The trust-fund douche my parents have been trying to set me up with. He’s been texting me for a few weeks now, even after I told him I’m dating someone. I didn’t know he’d be here, but I guess it’s not surprising. His father owns Cormery Isle vacation rentals, so I’m sure he donates a lot of money to this program.” She groans, taking my hand. “Will you please be my buffer this evening? I don’t want to be anywhere near him.”

“I got you, boo!” I reply, patting her arm. I turn back to Maxwell. “Dinner is starting soon, so we’re going to go take our seats. We’ll catch up to you later.” He smiles and gives us a wave before taking off towards his table. Hana and I link arms and make our way to ours, where most of our tablemates have already been seated. As Hana strikes up a conversation with them, I look around the ballroom for any sighting of Liam.

I give up after a few minutes, and excuse myself to hit the ladies room. After getting directions from a member of the waitstaff, I leave the ballroom and walk down a long hallway to the restrooms at the end. Thankfully, I’m alone. I do my business and check my reflection in the mirror. At least I still look good. Too bad there’s no one here to appreciate it. As I exit the bathroom and make my way back toward the banquet, a pair of strong arms wraps around my waist and pulls me into a dark conference room. He pins me against the closed door. The weight of his masculine body feels like heaven.

“I was hoping to run into you tonight,” Liam’s voice whispers in my ear, setting my skin on fire. His hot breath on the back of my neck makes my knees go weak.  

“Where have you been all night?” I ask, turning to face him. He rubs his nose along the base of my throat.

“Waiting for my opportunity to get you alone. And can I say? That dress…” he says, tugging the collar down so he can kiss my shoulder. “If it weren’t for all these people, I would have taken you right there in the middle of that ballroom.” My breath hitches and I run my hands down his broad chest, feeling every muscle beneath his dress shirt. My fingers slip beneath the waistband of his pants and I tug the hem loose, grazing his bare stomach. His body quivers beneath my touch.

“Riley…”

I glide my hand back up to his neck to his hair, where I weave my fingers through the short strands. I pull his head down to mine and brush my lips against his. “You’ve been avoiding me all week. What’s up with that, Mr. Rhys?”

He groans and presses his lips to mine. His tongue slips in and caresses mine as he grips my ass in his hands and lifts me up. I wrap my legs around his waist. His erection presses hard against my core as he nibbles on my collarbone. “It’s all I could do to keep myself from ravishing you. My lawyers called me last week. We finally have a date for the hearing. If we ensure that there are no unresolved matters and the judge approves our agreement, the divorce becomes final on Wednesday. After that, you’re mine.” His lips travel down my neck and his teeth graze my pulse and I feel sparks shoot throughout my body. He moves one of his hands up to my breast, making me arch into his touch. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.” He pauses, then looks around the room. “Think we can be quiet?” he whispers.

“I can’t make any promises,” I reply. He smirks and moves from the door to the conference table and places me on top of it. I lay back and watch him in the dark as he slowly undoes his belt. I hitch up the skirt of my dress around my waist. I rest on my elbows as he unzips his pants painfully slow as if to tease me. I sit up to reach for him when the sound of a cell phone ringing from his pocket interrupts us. “Ignore it,” I say.

He nods and rubs his hands up the inside of my thighs. His thumbs graze the outside of my underwear, and I inhale sharply. He rubs his thumb over my clit in slow, agonizing circles. I gasp and drop my head back, feeling my body hum. The phone rings again and he sighs. “...One second.” He pulls it out and answers it. After spitting out a series of short answers, he hangs up and slips the phone back in his jacket pocket, frowning. “I’m sorry. I have to go. We’ll continue this later?”

I nod and swallow, sliding down off the table and fixing my dress. “I’ll go first. Come find me later.” I lean in and kiss him before opening the door and peeking out to make sure no one is around. I slip out of the conference room and hustle back into the ballroom to my seat. Hana eyes me suspiciously. “Sorry about that. The line for the bathroom was long. What did I miss?”

She opens her mouth to reply when the squealing of a microphone cuts through the room. The emcee announces that dinner will be served in a few short minutes. I notice out of the corner of my eye, Liam slipping back into the ballroom and taking his place next to Madeleine at their table. She smiles at him, the fakest smile I’ve ever seen. He leans in to whisper something in her ear, then rests his arm on the back of her chair and plants a kiss her on the cheek. I’m suddenly seeing red. Not five minutes ago, his tongue was down my throat and his hands were all over my body. Now, he’s cozying up to his ex-wife.

#something domestic #trr au #trr fanfic #playchoices fanfic #riley brooks #liam rhys #nanny au #nazariolahela fanfic

[gffa]

I HAVE SOME FEELINGS ABOUT PADME AMIDALA and why, despite that I get a lot of people hated her ending and I can’t entirely disagree that it was because her character wasn’t written for her own sake, but for Anakin’s sake, that I still have a lot of feelings about this and why it’s intensely important to me personally. I’ve been giving Padme’s character a lot of thought lately, as I’ve been digesting Queen’s Shadow and how it’s made me really have to untangle a lot of the feelings I have about her character.  One of the things you need to know about me is that I love complicated, messy female characters, that they are so very much my jam.  My main blog is dedicated to female characters and one of the things I often look for when wanting to reblog stuff is, “Is this woman kind of a jerk sometimes?  But still unequestionably a hero of the story?  OMG, MY LOVE, MARRY ME.”  Or “Is this woman kind of failing at something, but I never question that she’s a worthwhile person to tell her story?  OMG, I LOVE HER, TELL ME MORE.” So much of this comes from my frustration with how women are portrayed in media, that in order to be “good” characters, they had to be all things to all women, which meant they had to be perfect.  Which, itself, was also a limitation on the characters, it was a reaction to the limitations of them, rather than just letting the characters be.  In order for them not to be torn to shreds, they had to have absolutely no flaws, they had to be able to do everything just as well and still were only considered half as good as the male characters by a lot of people.  Male characters get to run the gamut and we never have to justify that character type, whether they’re the best person ever or the worst person ever or somewhere in between.  They can just be. Women, on the other hand, if they have a flaw, it gets magnified a thousandfold and then they’re just a worthless bitch.  I want to reject that idea so hard.  No!  Give me snotty, not always nice, but whole-heartedly good women!  Give me smug, arrogant, asshole but whole-heartedly good women!  Give me messy, complicated, depressed, mean but whole-heartedly good women!  I wanttttt themmmmm allllll and I AM GOING TO MARRY THEM ALL. This is why I do really love Star Wars, I can get an absolute array of those characters, from the softest, kindest, “weakest” character, to the nastiest, meanest, but sympathetic character, to the full on villain who isn’t redeemable at all but can still be cool.  Yeah, SW still has a long ways to go (especially in terms of diversity–we’re inching forward, please give me more, LF! I’m so ready!!) but there are so many women I love. So, for me, I really, really like the complicated, messy Padme of Revenge of the Sith.  I get that a lot of people see her differently and feel like she was written only for the sake of Anakin’s manpain, that a lot of people hate that she died of a broken heart, and I can’t say I disagree that she probably got really shafted in terms of it being her story.  But I really want to find meaning in her story and look at it from her point of view, and, for me, Padme has always been someone who is a GIANT BALL OF FEELINGS, so much so that she cares intensely about people she just barely met and remembers them for years afterwards, but also that she can be blinded to the suffering of others because the other person she cares about is right in front of her.  Padme’s willingness to ignore the murder of the indigenous children on Tatooine, her willingness to ignore the murder of the Jedi children and go raise their baby together with Anakin, for me those things are about a Padme who is utterly relatable to me in that her feelings are so intense they burned the candle at both ends, and eventually that consumed her. The fall of the Republic, the fall of democracy, the fall of Anakin, the increasing isolation we see of her during AOTC and ROTS, where her fire is steadily snuffing itself out because it’s using up all her oxygen, is part of what draws me to her character.  Not because Padme is lesser or more of an asshole for this, but because she’s relatable to me, because I love her and feel for her and cry for her, what she goes through and how it tears at her. Padme being so strong that she can sway entire governments to her plans and being so weak that she dies of a broken heart when she loses the Republic and Anakin?  THAT’S MY GIRL, THAT’S IT, THAT’S HER, THAT’S THE ONE I LOVE AND WANT TO INTERNET MARRY. In the struggle to come to this understanding of how I feel about this character, I realized something that I’d never quite connected to before--I strongly identify with Padme’s giving up on life.  I’ve had suicidal thoughts for almost my entire life, that if there had been a way for me to just give up on life, to just lay down and not exist anymore, I don’t think I would still be here today.  The only thing that stopped me was that I wasn’t actively aggressive enough about it.  I didn’t precisely want to die, I just didn’t want to live, either.  It took me a very long time to get to a better place, but I can still look back on that time of my life and intensely remember how I felt--I know my family and friends love me, but I’m such a burden on them, I’m failing them, yes, they’d be sad when I was gone, but they’d heal, they wouldn’t have this weight dragging them down, they would be better off without me, because this world is so painful for me to live in, that I wish I wasn’t in it anymore. When I look at Padme Amidala, I see someone who burned so brightly, but that she crumbled bit by bit.  I see someone who had no one to turn to when she was crying alone in her apartment as the Republic was falling, as the Jedi Temple burned, and Anakin was falling off the cliff.  I see someone who, instead of continuing to push for something she felt strongly about, dropped it when Anakin was was upset about it and said, “Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo.”  I see someone who knew how badly Anakin’s dreams upset him and what he was capable of when the worst happened, like on Tatooine, and said, “They’re just dreams.” because she was trying to hold all of this together.  I see someone who had no time to address the underlying problems in the Republic because of the 20 tire fires going on, who had no time to address the underlying problems in her marriage because there were 20 more tire fires going on, and I see someone who lost them both. I see someone who pleaded on Mustafar, ignoring more murder of children, to come away with her and raise their child together.  I see someone who passionately believed that love would save them all and it didn’t, Anakin still became Darth Vader, the Republic still fell, the Jedi still died, and she felt like everything she’d done was nothing, she’d failed them all. I can all too easily imagine myself in Padme’s place, feeling like I’d failed at everything, like I wasn’t enough, no matter how brightly I burned, no matter how much I poured myself into my efforts to help people and change the world around me, that I cannot live in it anymore, that even if they’ll be sad without me for awhile, I would only fail them again.  That there were some things about myself that it took me a very, very long time to be able to face and deal with. So many of the arguments against Padme’s death often come around to, “She wouldn’t just give up!” like Padme’s too good to be depressed and suicidal, like she’s better than that.  Which then implies that the people who struggle with this are somehow lesser or worthless, that because I have felt this way before, because I would be dead now if I could die in a fairy tale way of just giving up on life, that I’m lesser and worthless, too.  That my struggle with this makes me bad.  Which is not my favorite feeling in the world, no. I don’t demand that anyone agree with me, nor do I necessarily think this was the narrative intent.  But I see a woman who cried alone in her apartment, I see a woman who couldn’t face some things that she couldn’t deal with, I see a woman who tried and tried and tried and failed (in her eyes), I see a woman who was capable of great things but was crushed under the weight of loss and quite possibly her own thoughts. And I see a lot of myself there.  So, Padme Amidala dying of a broken heart, losing the will to live, being unable to live even for the people she has left, that struck a hard resonating note with me.  In the same way that Anakin’s anxieties and fears consumed him has meaning for me (as someone who suffers through a shitload of anxiety), so too does Padme’s depression and willingness to give up.

#padme amidala #meta #suicide ideation #long post #this was definitely a rather personal post #but it's okay to reblog if you want

[saltfics]

"*name*? Come on, say something to me." for Alex and Henry? 💜

Tumblr did that thing again where it put the ‘keep reading’ on top. Love this hellish website. So! I didn’t actually do this for Alex and Henry and I apologize for that. But I did it for Henry and the Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor siblings and I hope you enjoy anyway! This chapter is very soap-y and dramatic but there are baby Fox siblings in there so I hope it makes up for it.

Also this is 6k long (I have no self-restrain) so I’m only including a short preview here, for the rest please click on the link. those markings on your skin  chapter four

"We grew up on those stairs. The only people who could hurt us in there were each other."

aka the "I spent 45 minutes researching staircases just so I can push a character down one" fic.

For the longest time, Kensington Palace used to be less than a home for him. It’s gotten better since his nephew was first born, since he and Philip started to get closer. He changed the narrative himself so he could learn to not dread his visits. He unearthed his childhood memories to drape over the rooms he walked and covered the ghosts that lingered from centuries’ worth of grief. He tucked a memory between the cushions of the couch, of movie nights watching dad’s films, and the way he pretended to be bashful but smiled at the enthralled look on his children’s faces. He poured the sound of Bea’s voice over the reading nook, soft-spoken words hiding between the books on the shelves. He heard Philip’s footsteps rushing up the stairs, when their grandmother wasn’t around to reprimand them for running in the house, and the only person he had to please was his little brother. Henry would race him knowing he would lose because he saw how much Pip loved to win. And his mother, he saw reflected in the little trinkets around the sitting room, those remnants of the rebellious young princess, bright curiosities with stories she would share freely with them no matter how many times they asked.

And it worked for a while, pushing the good things in front to stifle the bad, allowing himself to remember his childhood despite the pain, because feeling the ghosts in the room pulling him away from the family he had left hurt him more in the long run. Perhaps it was nothing more than plastering wallpaper over broken walls, but Philip and Bea must have unwittingly caught up to it, because they tried their hardest to keep the illusion up, adding pieces of patchwork of their own to fill up the hole gnawing behind it. It held a piece of them and Henry held on to it too.

“Alternative suggestion,” Henry whispers, quiet so only his brother can hear, as they make their way up the stairs for a meeting that for some reason it was deemed of the utmost importance that Henry joins in too since he’s in England anyway. “You attend this meeting, and I go babysit your son.”

Philip smirks, not unkindly. “I’m afraid I can’t spare you from this one. I will, however, do my best to wrap it up as quickly as possible, so you don’t have to feign another emergency.”

Henry chokes on a laugh. “If you’re referring to your dinner party, may I remind you that I was, in fact, poisoned during that time, hence under a very real emergency?”

“And yet, that was not the excuse you chose,” Philip points out. He just shrugs in response, unapologetic. Not even poison or injury can stop his brother from being just enough of a dick, apparently. “Come now. You’ve survived worse.”

Henry decides not to tell him that apart from their grandmother, the worst meetings he has survived were the ones with Philip himself.

They seat themselves around the room, their guests already pulling out folders from leather briefcases so new he can still catch a whiff of the telltale scent of them. Shaan and two of Philip’s security team are off to the side, silent but watching over them. Despite himself, Henry gives him a small smile as he settles down.

Shaan has been in a bad mood since the ‘incident’. It’s almost impossible to notice that Shaan even has a bad mood, but for Henry, who has spent years under his watch, it’s clear in the way his silence weighs around them, in the subtle acts of protectiveness that stretch further than they would. The only other person who noticed was Zahra… who in turn asked Henry about it, and then spent two hours yelling at Alex for not telling any of them they went to the hospital.

Alex too has been different. He almost threw a fit at the idea of Henry traveling to England alone. ‘Someone tried to kill you there, H, and they still haven’t found who it was!’ he protested, and Henry’s ‘If someone truly wanted to kill me, I imagine they wouldn’t have waited until I was back in the country to do so,’ did very little to convince him. Even so, neither of them could avoid their responsibilities. Alex does check-in every two hours or so as compensation, and if Henry is being honest, he knows he would have been a lot worse about it had Alex been the one in danger.

But Henry doesn’t like to think about the incident. Not unless he has to, usually late at night or in the wee hours of the morning after one or both of them have woken up in various states of disarray. Alex tends to wake up with his name on his lips. Henry wakes up gasping, but it’s not him who ends up in tears when that happens. More than wishing himself safe, he can only hope with everything in him that he never puts Alex through that again.

#im-definitely-hermione-granger #rwrb #rwrb fic #red white and royal blue #henry fox mountchristen windsor #i am TIRED #this is unbetaed #AND IM SORRY #(btw a reblog goes a long way ;) ) #and if you feel like going extra hard on the appreciation friendly reminder that i have a kofi link on my bio ;)

[girlobsessed21]

The 100 - 6x04: The face behind the glass review and predictions.

Before we get into the specifics, I’m a little scared of the rehashing of old narratives that comes to surface in this episode especially. Not sure how I feel about all the parallels. In my trailer analysis, I did point out the fact that it does not seem that much different than previous seasons: There are no good guys, we kill them so that we can live and blah, blah, blah. Even so, I’m interested and invested to see what types of unique twists and turns this story will throw at us. Jason Rothenberg, you better not disappoint.

The face behind the glass written by Charmaine DeGrate and directed by Tim Scanlan, who is known for directing the sex scenes on the show. Dead giveaway. Not my favorite so far, but a lot of things happened that has me excited for the rest of the season.

Is there a better way to open an episode than Diyoza joking with her unborn child? It’s no secret she’s in my top 5 favorite characters and keeps climbing the charts. So, the Sanctumites offer her a deal: Save Rose and we’ll take care of your baby, which she takes, to offer her child a life and it’s something to do other than trying to survive. But in known Diyoza fashion on condition of a gun and a bike. 

Then, Simone begs Russel to cancel naming day on account of spies inside the compund. They’ve already been deprived of three primes (Kaylee’s family) and Rose. Pushing them towards extinction at an alarming rate and it once again becomes obvious that Clarke will become Josephine, yet I’m now intrigued by Madi. The cultish way in which these people worship the primes are uncanny and wayward. But then again all cults are weird. I don’t believe in the divinity of the primes either.

Russel disagrees by saying: “If we cancel, Gabriel wins.” Last week I thought that Gabriel will be brought back to life in one of the hosts, but I think there’s something else going on there. It’s clear now that Gabriel and his children are against the revival of the primes, bringing about the question: How has he survived all these years?

Priya and Jordan share some sweet intimate moments where he tells her he feels guilty for becoming another taunting face behind the glass. Which was necessary to show he’s still grieving his parents even while having fun. Her referral to this line later before she becomes a prime is crucial though, meaning there might be a possibility for her to come back.

The four pillars of Sanctum: Repent, Renew, Rejoice, Rebirth. Accentuating rebirth very literally. We know from episode two that Russel Lightbourne does not believe in God, but by killing a person for no reason other than so that someone you love can live is playing god in the cruelest way imaginable.

Embracing their traditions, Clarke decides to repent for her sins. She tries to apologize to Raven who won’t have any of it and compares her to Octavia. For me, the biggest difference between Clarke and Octavia is the remorse she feels. She knows what she did was wrong and she’s trying to make up for it. Therefore she deserves forgiveness. I wonder how Raven will react to Clarke’s death? 

Gabriel? Who the f#@k are Gabriel and his children?

As I said earlier, the old man is definitely Gabriel. We don’t know if he’s dead or alive. It can’t be that he lives within a computer because then his existence would be known. 

My guess is the split within Sanctum came recently (using the term loosely). Gabriel had to be one of the 12 primes since he came with them and his blood was also altered. Meaning his conscience was also transferred into a host. He was against the hostile takeover of innocent bodies and decided to rebel by saving the hosts. 

If this happened sixty odd years ago, Gabriel could still be alive somewhere (perhaps in hiding due to a failed conviction) and old. Very, very old. I’m not sure whether his followers are literally his children or just those that have sided with him, but either way, they want to continue his cause. Which they’ve clearly lost sight of. Save the hosts, don’t kill them.

Or this anomaly they mentioned somehow extends life, only it’s dangerous. Who knows, I’m a bit boggled here.

Xavier purposefully left his bag out to save Octavia and Rose. I’m sure I’ve seen this before. Right, Lincoln kidnapped her and saved her simultaneously. I know this is such a retelling of their story, but I loved Linctavia and thus cannot help boarding this ship.

Another season one throwback to Bellamy and Charlotte. But I think I’ve voiced my concerns about these. Poor, poor Rose. That scene was heartbreaking. 

Boy oh boy Bellarke and their romances

Clarke apologizes to Bellamy and states her reasons even though Bellamy has already forgiven her because he would be a hypocrite not to. And they share what has now become known as a Bellarke hug since it’s all these idiots can ever do.

Clarke hooks up with Cillian (who turns out to be the spy) within two seconds, now I’m not sure about you, but I rolled my eyes. Oh, cute, Clarke has yet another lover added to her long list of previous ones. Finn, Niyalah, Lexa, and Bellamy always on the side. I’m glad it’s a guy though to showcase that she is indeed bisexual and not gay. Bisexuality really needs some appreciation.

No one can tell if Bellamy was only upset with the party as he stated or Clarke having fun with some random dude. Most will say it’s the former and it probably is, yet it’s filmed in a different way. Why did they put him in this scene in the first place? 

When he sees her having fun, he smiles, he’s happy for her. Then the doctor’s all over her and all of a sudden his attitude changes. I don’t want to read too much into it since I had to watch it like six times to draw this conclusion.

He’s hurt and grieving over a lot of things, especially his sister and then he witnesses his “platonic soulmate” in the arms of another man. She’s always known exactly how to get him to open up, what to say to make him feel better and even though he knows he’s not allowed to feel that way, he’s jealous, he realizes he still needs her. 

And that spurs the single tear and his fight with Echo. He even spares another glance over his shoulder when she asks what’s wrong. Or was that just random? Because once he’s calmed down he apologizes to his girlfriend and comforts her when she tells him her backstory after six years of being lied to.

I felt for Echo, her life wasn’t easy, but none of their lives were. Honestly, I just can’t find Becho’s connection. Even though I try, because at some point we have to accept the fact that this is possibly a long term pairing. I’ve made my peace, I’ll ignore them. Give Echo an individual storyline and I might just start liking her more. 

A Red Queen and a terrorist walk into a bar

First of all, I have to show my gratitude for the glimpses of Octavia’s humanity. She’s in there and she’s slowly swimming to the top. That thorned rose is blossoming once again, thank you, Bellamy, for your part in this.

This is a weapon of mass destruction if I’ve ever seen one. A pregnant terrorist and a former evil queen. Yes, this is what I’m talking about. I might just write fanfiction about it.

“The devils of earth become the heroes of Sanctum.” They’re set out to kill Gabriel, but I doubt that will occur. From all I’ve heard, he’s good. Enhanced by Cillian’s words: “There are two sides to every story.” So, they will most likely join forces against Sanctum in some way. Hopefully not blowing up another planet. Please do something interesting here.

Josephine!Clarke

Okay, my first take on Josephine Ada Lightbourne was very wrong. To me, she seemed smart, funny and confident. Now she looks like the devil in disguise (No pun intended.) 

Reverting back to my earlier assumption about Delilah/Priya. It’s evident that Delilah no longer exists within her body which sets Jordan on edge. But that small statement along with knowing the mind of the host is erased but the brain is unharmed propels me to believe they can come back. Somehow. Hopefully.

Simone says, “I’ll prep for insertion, you clear the host.” Did that mean Clarke’s mind might be stored in some device too? They must have a way of extracting consciousness to transfer it to a host. Thus Clarke Griffin’s mind will be backed up somewhere as well. Not for too long before it’s disposed of, I’m sure.

Come on Madi (Lexa and Becca), Bellamy, Abby, Jordan, Raven, Murphy. You have to figure this out and bring her back before its too late. I refuse to believe Princess Clarke is dead. If she is, my mind is blown in a bullet to the brain kind of way. 

One scenario is that Josephine will have to give forth a ruse of being Clarke and willingly accept the “honor” of becoming a prime. She’s been indulging in all their other conventions, why not this one, right? But Jordan now knows what happened to Delilah, so they will try to stop her. Most likely Madi or Bellamy will notice a difference within her.

The dangerous alternative will be for Josephine to simply embrace her new host by saying they brought her to life after Cillian murdered her. Sanctumites, you have no idea how much Clarke’s people care about her. This might even sway those currently mad at her for an investigation.

A few last things

Russel does feel bad about what he’s doing, but so did Dante Wallace.

Raven and Wick (Sorry the other mechanic) what is that? Five minutes after Shaw’s death. Or was it only the motorcycle. Why does this show give us seedlings of relationships that will have no chance of growing?

Is Shadeheda Cadogen and what will he bring to the table?

Madi tasting her first cookie was awesome!

I missed Murphy this episode. His presence is required at all times.

What will happen to Niylah on the ship? And when will Indra make her appearance?

Will Russel and Simone find out that Abby knows how to create nightblood? 

Let me know what you think.

#The 100 #the100 #the 100 season 6 #The 100 s6 #the1006x04 #the 100 season six #the 100 6x04 #the100 6x04 #the100 6x04 review

[madamslayyy]

Untitled Series XI

PART ONE - PART TWO - PART THREE - INFORMATIONAL DIRECTORY  - PART FOUR - PART FIVE - PART SIX - PART SEVEN - PART EIGHT - PART NINE - PART TEN

Pairing: Erik Killmonger x Reader

A/N: Yeah I know it’s been a min but I’m back on my bullshit so here we go!

~*~

The new semester started and things were back to normal. Well as normal as things could be.

You and Ty were as strong as before and nobody talked about what went down at his parents’ house.

Erik, of course, was back with the start of the new semester, this time single and back to his old Hoe™️ ways. You tried to pretend it didn’t phase you but it did. How could he claim to love you then get over you so quickly. Because you certainly weren’t over him.

You thought about him constantly, obsessing over his social media, watching the numerous videos and snaps of him being twerked on in the club, drinking bottle after bottle, having random girl after random girl perched on his lap. That was almost ninety percent of his social media presence, the other ten percent would show him in class, doing homework, or getting As on whatever assignment he posted.

‘At least he’s still going to class....’ you thought watching his snapstory. You were currently in Ty’s room, on his bed, while Ty was taking a shower. Even though your boyfriend was in the room right next to you, stark naked that is, he couldn’t be farther from your mind. The truth is, whenever Ty did enter your thoughts, you were overwhelmed with such guilt, you had no choice but to push him out of your mind.

No matter how you chose to twist the narrative, the fact remained the same: you’d cheated on him. You might not have slept with Erik but allowing him to get close enough to you to eat you out was still cheating. And you’d been keeping it from Ty for over a month now as it picked away at you. You had tried multiple times to tell him to no avail. At the end of the day, you were a coward.

“Y/N!” Ty said loudly, snapping you from your thoughts.

“Why are you yelling babe?” You asked, as he stood in front of you dripping wet in nothing but a towel.

“I called your name like five times, what’s going on in that head of yours?” He said leaning down to kiss you. You instinctively moved away without even thinking about it.

“Did I.... do something wrong?” Ty asked, his eyes searching yours.

“N-no, I’m just... not feeling it tonight, bae” you spluttered.

“Hmm.... you’ve been ‘not feeling it’ a lot lately. We okay?” Ty asked, sitting up.

“Peachy,” you smiled and with that he got up to get dressed. Even though the subject was dropped, the air was tense and awkward so you left shortly after, your heart sitting heavy in your chest.

~*~

It’d been about two weeks and you hadn’t seen neither Ty nor Erik. You knew you couldn’t avoid them forever but you were most certainly gonna try until you sorted out everything that was going on in your head.

Ty, of course, had no intention of letting that happen.

He called and texted you everyday just to make sure you were alright and when he could see you. You dodged him as much as you could but at the turn of the second week, he’d had enough.

It was almost 5 a.m. in the morning, about two hours before your first class when you heard someone pounding madly at your door. You had just woken up and was in the middle of brushing your teeth when you answered the door.

“Tyrell Beaudreux have you lost your mind!?” You said swinging the door open. He charged into the room, not waiting for an invitation.

“Tell me what I did wrong. What did I do to upset you so much that you’ve been avoiding me for the last couple of weeks? If you tell me, I can fix it Y/N but please baby stop leaving me in the dark,” Ty said, his big brown eyes pleading with you. You felt like you might have thrown up right then right there if your stomach wasn’t already empty since you’d just woke up.

“Hold on,” you said, walking back to your bathroom to finish brushing your teeth, a weak stalling tactic but at least it bought you a few extra seconds.

“Ty.... sit down...” you said entering the bedroom once more. He sat down but his face was contorted into a look of pure anguish. He knew whatever you were about to tell him, it wasn’t going to be good.

“Look Ty... I.... love you so muc-

“And I you, I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you. That’s why we’re in a relationship,” he said standing, cupping your face between his hands. He leaned down to kiss you but you turned your head, causing him to peck your cheek.

“Ty please just let me finish, this is already hard enough as it is. “ He let your face go but remained standing.

“Look, when we were in Montreal... me and Erik... after the kiss... we talked.... the next night that is... and one thing led to another and there was.... another kiss,” you saw Ty flinch but you had no choice but to keep going “and we messed around a bit and it was all just a huge mistake that I regret more than anything and I’m so sorry but it’s not fair to you or me to keep this a secret.” You finished in one single breath, your words rushed. Ty’s eyes were swimming with emotion: anger, hurt, betrayal, everything yet he said nothing.

“What do you mean by fooled around? Did you sleep with him?” Ty asked in a harsh tone you weren’t used to hearing him use ever, least of all with you.

“No! God no! We just made a mistake-

“A mistake, eh? No a mistake was him kissing you when he ‘thought you were Lisa’ which we all know is a right crock of bullshit. No, Y/N, you made a choice, ye. You chose to give yourself to another man when you were supposedly committed to me! So how far did he go, huh? Under your shirt? Between your legs? Is there a part of you he hasn’t seen?” Ty yelled, his face flushing red with anger. You were at a loss for words, your silence a clear admission of guilt.

“Wow,” Ty said, charging for the door.

“And to think I really saw myself with you, eh. Like in the long run, you know. Marriage, picket fence, kids, the whole yard, ye. A right imbecile I was,” Ty said, his Canadian accent coming out strong with his anger.

“I’m sorry Ty! But I still love y-“ you never got to finish that sentence because he slammed the door behind him, his footsteps receding down the hall.

You’d expected some form of Deja Vu to take over from the time Erik had stormed out on you, for you to crumple to the floor and cry yourself into a stupor. But all you felt was an odd numbness take over as you grabbed your clothes and headed to your bathroom to take a shower.

~*~

“Shit Erik! Yes Daddy just like that! Punish this pussy! Fuck me like the dirty slut I am! Kill my shit Papi! Tell me I’m your favorite little whore! Spa-

“Will you shut up?” Erik said, clamping his hand over the girl beneath him’s mouth. He couldn’t remember her name, all he remembered was they headed back to her place after the club, fucked, he fell asleep (like a goddamn idiot), and she woke up horny, begging for round three.

Truthfully, she wasn’t nearly as attractive to him sober as she was last night but he always seemed to focus better in class if he’d busted a nut before so he had no problem complying to her sexual demands.

But he knew this was the last time he’d ever see her. She was much too thin, missing the excessive padding Erik was absolutely obsessed with, and she was also too loud. She was moaning before he even put the tip in and he hated that shit, it felt so inauthentic.

So now he was simply trying to get off as soon as he could so he could get the hell out of there. He had a special memory bank of you stored for moments exactly like these. Thoughts of you that night you offered yourself to him after the club, asking to taste him, eat him, flooded his mind. The sound of your moans were also his favorite, even if it was Ty eliciting those noises from you. And of course the gold that always pushed him over the edge to climax every single time was the memory of that night in Montreal. He’d imagine whatever warm body under him was you, whithering to his touch.

He could still feel your soft skin etched into his brain. Your smell, your breathy groans, your taste.... it took permanent residence in his thoughts and got him over the edge every time. He was so enamoured in his fantasy of you, he hadn’t noticed he’d finished inside the mystery woman until she spoke up.

“Damn papi, that was amazing. Careful with that shit, it’s addictive,” she winked at him. He rolled his eyes and pulled out, tying up the used condom and tucking it in his back pocket of his jeans while he slid them on. Believe it or not, he’d had his fair share of girls try to trap him, for what reason he’d never know. They must realize that he’d never give a shit about them, whether they carried his spawn or not. It was pathetic and always made Erik uneasy. Actually, most things concerning children made him uneasy. He wasn’t father material and he knew it. Hell he wasn’t husband material either, nor boyfriend material, and given how you and him hadn’t spoken to each other in months, he was pretty bad friend material too.

Even with things being dodgy before the whole Winter break fiasco, he knew there was no coming back from this one. It was really over between you two. No communication whatsoever and that was probably for the best. Erik couldn’t control himself around you, couldn’t control his judgement, and couldn’t control his emotions. You made him reckless and raw. And he couldn’t handle it. So he was content with living with the memory of what you two were. He knew the whole “Time Heals All Wounds” notion was bullshit but he did know that it would dim over time. That’s what he kept telling himself at least. To just give it time.

Erik was on his way across campus on his way to class when he saw him. Ty. He looked bad surprisingly. The boy was always light on the facial hair, but he now sported a thick, overgrown beard. If it were the old days when their friendship was strong, he’d recommend him to his barber, get his shit looking crispy like Erik’s, but those days were long gone. He looked like he’d lost weight, which was hard considering he probably couldn’t be more that 120 lbs soaking wet anyway. He also had dark bags under his eyes like he hadn’t got a decent night’s sleep in a while. Overall, he just had a haunted vibe about him, one that only intensified when he laid his dead eyes on Erik.

“Got something you wanna say man?” Erik said, stopping in front of him. Erik was always ready for a fight but he really hoped Ty didn’t take the bait. Even if they weren’t friends anymore, Erik didn’t wanna hit him when he was in this state. It wasn’t right nor fair.

“I hope you’re happy, mate. Finally got what you wanted, eh?” He said in a deadpan voice.

“Wanna run that by me again?” Erik asked as he cocked an eyebrow. Maybe Ty was as crazy as he looked.

“You’ll hurt her. Throw her away the same way you do every fucking body else. Can’t really say I blame you though,” Ty let out a humorless laugh.

“And why is that?” Erik said through gritted teeth.

“Because you’re empty inside. You don’t give a shit about anyone, including yourself. And she’ll realize that. Realize I’ll love her more than you ever could. And she’ll be back,” Ty said, and before Erik could ask one of the numerous questions he had, he walked off.

Erik stood there for another ten solid minutes trying to figure out what the hell Ty was talking about but one thing out of all of this was crystal clear. Y/N and him were over. She was single. And he hadn’t heard a peep from her, which sent the loudest message of all.

She wanted nothing to do with him period. Boyfriend or not. It stung Erik but he knew deep down she never felt the same. So with that, he trailed his way to his class, limbs heavy trying his hardest to not feel the ocean of hurt that ate at his heart.

~*~

A/N: So what yall think? I rewrote this chapter like four times with different scenarios but in the end i decided on this one because I feel it flows easier that their still in college (even though they lowkey about to graduate). But anyway I just wanna say thanks to everyone who interacted with my last chapter and i will be going back and responding those after I post this. Going back and reading all those replies, I just KNEW i couldn’t leave it like that for yall.  Let me know yall’s theories or if you want to be added to/ deleted from the taglist.

Taglist:  @sassyxsagittarius @hold-me-like-a-heart-beat@imasmille@iamrheaspeaks@myaw731@whoawhoababywhoa@inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove@chaneajoyyy@myboyfriendgiriboy@theunsweetenedtruth@cancerianprincess@wawakanda-btch@laketaj24 @give-me-a-million-dollars-pls@sugardaddytonystark@getinmelanin011@pananegra@violet-ines@stars8melanin@tchallas-klaws@savagefromspruce@l7nikkifn@areubeingserved @itsmarshalltime98@adahjones@macfizzle@avengershavethetardis@adahjones @peter-pans-panda  @sleep-and-i-dont-get-along@weyheycraicey @little-toxic-angel@queennanayaaswimminginfandoms1020@ultracrii@bossyboyd03@lovelyangelofasgard @zuzuspanda@raveennn@msirii @m-mokkori @muse-of-mbaku@blackpanthersmut @chefjessypooh

@regular-biitch@ruruly20@k0linahr@storibambino@sweetbearcolorgarden@inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove @theunsweetenedtruth@elaindeereads@truequeenofnightmares@muse-of-mbaku @wawakanda-btch @hellenmuma @lauureeen @kimpossible1977@vikkidc@lauureeen@laketaj24@lavitabella87@youreadthatright@vanitykocaine @wakanda-inspired@wakandas-vibranium@autumn242@marvelpotterlove@jaaystaar95@queennanayaa @halonahoney @loosewindmill @blackpinup22@halonahoney@thedelightfulone@supersizemeplz@ilovebubblesz @cinki-kmusic@post-woke @yofavcocoa@vanitykocaine @shesakillerkween @shadowkissedprincessofheart @dessianna1 @ickidub718 @yoursoulstea @randomwordprompts @sweetsexysavagery @cancerianprincess @myaw731 @blackchunkyqueen 

#Erik Killmonger #erik killmonger x you #Erik Killmonger headcanon #erik killmonger imagine #Erik Stevens #black panther #marvel #mcu

[knowing-truth4031-blog]

Santa Claus (Opinion)

Since Christmas is right around the corner I figured this particular opinion post would focus on the holly jolly man in the red suite...Santa Claus.

So who is this Santa Claus. In our culture here in the United States of America, Santa Claus is a man who lives at the North Pole. He has a workshop where the toys are made for all of the good children of the world. How are the toys made? Well, a bunch of little creatures called elves work all year (with no pay) to make these toys in time for them to be delivered by Christmas morning. 

How does Santa deliver these toys? Why, in a magical sled pulled along by eight (nine if you count the red nosed one) reindeer who can...fly. On the night of Christmas Eve, Santa flies around the entire world, breaks in to every house and leaves toys for the good kids.  

If you haven't figured it out from my maybe obvious sarcasm, I am not a fan of Santa Claus. In fact, I find him to be very harmful and not just from a Christian perspective. We will touch on the Christian perspective of course, because this blog is taken from such perspective, but I will also throw in why even those who stay far away from the church should also caution themselves when it comes to ol’ St. Nick.

Reason #1: Santa Is A Lie

If you are reading this and you still believe in Santa...well, spoiler alert, he’s not real. This shouldn’t be a controversial idea. Santa Claus is not real. He doesn’t live in the North Pole, he does not have a magic sled (because that’s not real either). He does not have several flying reindeer (because those don’t exist either...reindeer do, just not the flying kind). There is no toy factory at the North Pole where a bunch of little enslaved creatures work day after day all year to make toys for no pay. It’s all fantasy. 

Is there anything wrong with fantasy? No. God gave us an imagination. Fantasy has been used by many people to promote the gospel. A good example is the famous and wonderful Chronicles of Narnia saga by C. S. Lewis. When you have an active imagination, you can use that for the glory of God! So now why is Santa different? When you read stories to your children such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings you make it clear (or at least you should) that what is going on is not real. Hogwarts does not exist. Middle Earth is not a real place. You read these stories because they are entertaining and there are wonderful lessons that can be learned from them. The whole Santa Claus narrative is most commonly told to children as real and true. 

How many of you grew up believing in Santa Claus? I’m sure many of you did! I did. The Bible says this...

- So stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors , for we are all part of the same body. (Ephesians 4:25)

I know what some of you are thinking...this is a little intense. That’s the point. I think many of us as Christians see that there are two levels of lying. The lying that is really bad and the lying that is not that bad because it’s not hurting anything. Right? Wrong. All lying is wrong. All lying is sin. The Bible is very clear on this. We as Christians are supposed to be witnesses to truth! That’s all truth. 

We tell our kids they shouldn’t lie to us. We tell our kids that lying is a sin. Then we need to be an example of this and not lie to them! No matter how big or small we think the lie may be, it is still a lie. And in case you’re wondering, I believe this applies to all fictional things such as the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Great Pumpkin, Bigfoot and that creepy baby angel Cupid.

Reason #2: Santa Teaches a Gospel of Works

If we want to raise our kids in a Christ centered home with a Bible based way of seeing things then we need to apply it to our whole lives and not pick and choose. The Bible teaches that it is by grace through faith alone that we are saved and not by works so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). So if this is the case, then why do we tach that Santa will only reward you if you are good?

He knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake. I think most know this song. And I think we can all agree that being kind to others and acting with other people’s best interest instead of our own. That’s sacrificial. But it does not count towards our salvation. At all. Our works are as filthy rags to God. If we try to earn or even contribute to our salvation through good works then we are fighting a losing fight. God loved us so he made a way for us to have access to him through the death of Christ. This is a gift freely given to us. We did not earn it. It’s not based on if we’ve been bad or good.

Parents will use this idea of Santa to get their kids to behave. I remember my mom or dad would say things like, “You better be good because Santa is watching!” And this would sometimes cause me to get my act together because I wanted to make sure I got that one special gift for Christmas. I am not faulting my parents. Like most parents, I do not believe there is any intent to lead their children astray. They see it as a fun little way of getting in the Christmas spirit. My parents were very good about making sure me and my brother knew that Jesus was the reason for the season. However, there were times when it crossed over in to “do this or Santa will know and you won’t get anything for Christmas!” 

To repeat. God gives us the free gift of salvation for all who repent and turn from sin and surrender to Christ. It has nothing to with us. What we do. It has everything to do with what Jesus has done. 

Reason #3: Santa Discriminates

What do I mean by this? This is probably the simplest point I can make. When we do the Santa thing with our kids we are not taking other people in to consideration. Let me paint a picture for you...

Family A is an upper-middle class family. They have a  lovely young son who really wants an Xbox for Christmas. He has not been very good all year but he is sure Santa is going to bring one for him.

Family B is a lower income family with an equally lovely young son who also really wants and Xbox for Christmas. He has been good all year. Respects his parents, gets good grades, says please and thank you. Great kid.

Well, Christmas comes and Family A has put a brand new Xbox under the tree for their child while Family B does not because they can’ afford one. They give their son what they can. Both kids happen to go to the same school and are in the same class. Kid from Family A is talking about his new Xbox that Santa gave him and kid from Family B overhears him.

Why didn’t Santa bring him one if he brought the kid from Family A one? Did he do something wrong? Was he not good enough? Or does Santa not like lower class people?

You see the issue here? 

We put so much value on our possessions. And we like people to know what we have. We like people to see the car we drive or the clothes we wear or we want them to know that we have the latest and greatest gadget. I have an iPhone, and I think the most common question I get asked is, “what iPhone do you have.” When I answer they usually respond with, “Oh, I have the newest one. It’s great.” Why do I care? Why should I care?

You shouldn’t care. Because the worth of someone is not found in what someone has. It is found in their character. I am reminded of a story from the Bible where Jesus and his disciples are at the temple. Jesus points out the rich people like to make a show of their giving. They do it for the attention and not because they want to be generous but because they have the extra money and what they’re giving isn’t a sacrifice to them. And then comes this woman who puts in two little coins. Jesus points her out and says that she gave more because she gave everything shad had. Her heart was in the right place. 

The idea of Santa falls in this category of the rich. We give these gifts because we want to be recognized. Be good and get gifts and tell everyone that Santa brought it to you. Santa is all for show and it’s all about me. If we teach our kids to give instead of receive, to abandon this idea of a Santa who discriminates against the less fortunate then we are able to teach them about a God who gave everything to us. To make a sacrifice on our behalf, not because we’ve been good or bad but because he loves us. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re from. Jesus extends this invitation to all who repent and turn to him. This is something Santa cannot offer.

I am not saying receiving gifts is bad. I’m not saying to have a desire for something is bad. What is bad is when we tell our children that there is this man who seems to know everything (sees us when we’re sleeping. Knows when we’re awake. Knows if we’ve been bad or good) and yet seems to forget about or doesn’t care about the kids in the families who can’t afford the luxuries other people can.

Reason #4: Santa Takes the Place of Jesus

I do think we need to be cautious though. There are much bigger issues in the Bible that need to be addressed when it comes to what we teach our children, but, the Bible does paint a pretty harsh picture of what should happen to someone who leads children away from Jesus (Matthew 18:6). Again, do I think that if you are a parent who does the Santa thing is guilty of this? Not necessarily, but could that be the case? Yes. When the child chooses Santa over Jesus. When Jesus is put aside and Santa takes that spot, then I believe you are walking on dangerous ground. 

Jesus needs to be the focus and the center of our entire lives. Everything we do should be Jesus centered. The moment something takes the place of Jesus in our lives we have crossed over in to sin. Don’t get me wrong, we all do this from time to time. We are human beings. We are not perfect. Yes we will stumble, but we repent. However, when we knowingly and willingly put Santa in our children’ t head as this all knowing judge of good and bad, we cross a line. We lie to them. We push Jesus to the side. And that is not good. Not good at all.

Bonus Reason: Santa Is Just Kind Of Creepy

Let’s just take a moment and remember a quote from a lovely little fellow named Olaf; “Breaking and entering: Okay on Christmas.” And I might add that it’s okay as long as it’s someone who is bringing you a gift that you really, really, really, really wanted. Can I just remind everyone that this person called Santa apparently breaks in to your house by means of chimney. And according to a semi-entertaining movie from years back, if you don’t have a fireplace one would just appear. I like how they fill that plot hole but not the one about kids in 3rd world countries. The point I’m making is Santa is just plain creepy.

Conclusion: I know many of you who read this probably think I am being way too picky about this and that it’s not as big of a deal as I am making it out to be. And that’s okay. That’s why this is marked as an opinion blog. Unlike most of my other blogs, this is all based on my own opinion of what I see in scripture. If you do the Santa thing with your kids, I do not see you as a bad person nor would I avoid you if I saw you in a Walmart picking out one of those giant inflatable yard Santas. I love you and you have your own convictions. I just argue that maybe some re-evaluation takes place with the whole Santa Claus thing.

God bless.

-Ty

#Blog #Christmas #Christian #Santa #Claus #Holiday #Holly #Jolly #Opinion #Jesus #Christ #God #Love #Bible #Snow #Winter

[thehiddenlawyer]

Mother’s Milk

Before you read-- please keep in mind that I’m REALLY not mentally...stable enough to write coherently so y’know. Enjoy <3

Apparently, the only way to untangle what my brain’s going through is to realize that my experience of Mother’s Milk isn’t just from the perspective of Patrick a survivor of sexual abuse, but also the addict, the potential alcoholic, a potential mother, a lover of difficult men and situations (these last two are Mary), and the helpless outsider looking in (Robert), and someone who is completely horrified of messing up so badly that their preventive measures completely backfire and bring full-circle (Patrick again).

During my first reading of Mother’s Milk I found I didn’t connect to it as much as I had with the other books in the story and I’m not sure why. I think my brain focused so completely on Some Hope and the aspects of Patrick as the survivor trying to find his way into the world that Mother’s Milk was too abstract for me to understand.

I kept thinking, even after I reread the novels, that the reason I wasn’t able to connect to the fourth novel was because I’m not a mother, and I have a pretty healthy relationship with my parents. I think the world of my parents, they’ve given me more than I could ever hope for, they’ve sacrificed and have continued to sacrifice, for my sisters and I on a profound level. Like all parents, they’re human and they made mistakes, they’ve given me my fair share of baggage again, like all parents, no matter how careful they are.

So I have continued to read the book as a fan of literature and found myself enthralled with Edward St. Aubyn’s representation of motherhood and childhood, and the understanding of the child of his mother and father, and eventually his sibling. It’s such breathtaking, pure prose, an imaginative take on Patrick’s children. If you’ve read the novels you know that the perspective shifts a lot, that we see the point of view of different characters, not just Patrick. So when the baby narrator talked about his father who couldn’t stop talking in the hospital room, I remember my heart in my throat wondering if the baby’s father was Patrick!

Imagine my surprise last night when I watched Mother’s Milk and found that I connected so much more to this bit of the story than I’d imagined earlier. I still don’t think I fully understand what happened, and I don’t understand my reactions to a few bits of it—I just know that I reacted, and maybe as I verbally vomit all over this post I can figure out a few things through my exhaustive question for narrative exhaustion.

This was also the biggest deviation between the book and the show by the way, the book is so complex because it’s mostly cerebral, a lot of it is Robert’s understanding of his father and his father’s situation and the relationship his father has with Eleanor. The book shows Robert’s sympathy more, Patrick doesn’t fail as viciously as he does in the show. But the show does capture Patrick’s desperation to be a better father and to protect is children from the poison of his past and his own life, but he tries so hard that it backfires and he comes back full circle. There’s this gorgeous scene in the book when they’re in a shitty hotel room in New York (after having gotten kicked out of a few others because Patrick is David’s son and he has to get them thrown out of a few places first) where Thomas and Mary are sleeping in one room but Robert can’t sleep so he goes to the living room where Patrick’s supposed to be sleeping on the sofa bed but he’s in  this manic state, caught between insomnia and drunkness and he simply absorbs his father’s verbal vomit. Robert tells Patrick to stop because he’s frightened and Patrick does, and he apologizes and winds up reading to his son instead.

While the books are filled with loving, touching moments like that, I think the episode really lacked that bit of humanity that Patrick has.

I’m starting to realize that I’m disappointed with this episode.

It conveys what it needs to convey, it highlights everything it should highlight, especially Robert’s understanding of Patrick but it does it contained in an hour long tv episode. I think they could make a full length feature film with Mother’s Milk with all the correct details and I’d watch it a million times.

The Addict

Through therapy and research and counselling, I’ve discovered that children who suffered trauma or specifically sexual abuse at a very young age tend to have addictive personalities. It’s a coping mechanism, it’s something comfortable and familiar, something easy to turn to when everything else is up in the air. If you take the alcohol and drugs out of the connotation of addiction, you’ll see that it’s simply repetitive, comforting behavior, something to blur the edges of reality not through chemical haze or a high but the simple psychology of doing something to distract you from your own thoughts.

I have a very addictive personality and it shows itself in a lot of ways. I call it stubbornness, my family and friends prefer to think of it as a healthy sense of curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. But once I get a…noun in my head, I have to pursue it and I have no control over it. And I say noun because it can be a person (BC, Nick Cave, AB, even people that I latch on to like @sobeautifullyobsessed) place (Fort Point in San Francisco, Baker Beach, Half Moon Bay, London, Molly’s flat) or a thing (alcohol, cigarettes, writing….writing is the biggest one) or an idea (Sherlolly, any idea I’ve ever had to write any story or a character that inspires my thoughts like Patrick or Christopher Tiejens).

It’s HARD.

I’ve tried my best to let go of these distractors because I can SEE I’m out of control when I’m in one of my “manic states”. When I’ve latched onto this noun so hard that’s permeating everything I do, everything I think, everything I say. These nouns distract me from work, from school. You’ve SEEN my posts where I should be studying but I can’t stop watching something or reading something or writing something. Through therapy and meditation, I noticed that I latch on like that when the past bubbles too close to the surface, where the violence and shame that whispers across my skin is a little too close to the surface and I need something else to occupy my brain for those moments.

That’s addiction explained in general, now I want to talk to you about alcoholism before I connect it back to Patrick.

I struggle with alcohol. A combination of my addictive personality and the chemical affects of alcohol have been a lure since I was a teenager, and I’ve been very painfully aware that it’s a rabbit hole waiting to swallow me up. I made a conscious decision when I was 16 that I wouldn’t touch alcohol until I turned 21, and once I turned 21, I tried to never buy alcohol for myself but in my family and my culture it’s always present so I’ve always been around it. When I moved it, I’ve been living with foot on solid ground and one in the rabbit’s hole. With my health crises, I swore it off completely and succeeded for a while to stay sober but I’ve been predictably failing miserably these past few weekends.

I’ve tried to never drink alone but I’ve done it several times and secret, which is a warning bell. The problem is always that it’s a secret, and I drink to pass out.

I drank A LOT last night during the wedding, I felt myself slipping away and had exercise some control and stop. I am aware that I was giggly and talkative like I always am when I’m sloshed—I don’t know if it’s a gift or a curse. No one ever knows I’m drunk, and I’m never a sad or angry when I’m around people. When I’m, alone that’s a different story.

And drinking helps you disconnect from you skin, lets you float away from things you don’t want to confront, things that you’d rather go unthought.

For someone who has lived through trauma (and let me enumerate for you what I have been through: sexual abuse by multiple parties as a child, becoming a refugee when I was 8 and being forced out of my home to come to a country where I knew nothing and no one and my parents knew nothing and no one, I’ve lived through life-threatening illness and recently, having survived law school, my body tried to kill me again and I’m still dealing with that bit of reality) you can see why drinking and disassociation and addiction is such a lovely thought for us.

I would much rather look at my life objectively. I sometimes like to imagine what it’s like hearing my story as someone who doesn’t know me, who hasn’t been around me. How can one single person experience being raped as a child, becoming a refugee, cancer, suicidal thoughts and addiction, and still function?

Well…you can, it just comes with a lot of extra little side effects that you probably aren’t aware of.

Like Patrick can be a husband, a father, a survivor of being raped repeatedly by his father with an indifferent mother, he can be a drug addict, an alcoholic, and a barrister.

He can be all those things.

The side effects are when you’re not careful, the smallest notion, the smallest idea or thought can push you over the edge.

I can sit here and have conversations about being raped and function perfectly but one day someone will something small and (I loathe this word) trigger me and I go down to a spiral. I drink, I seek my other addictions, because I need to not be me for a little bit, I’d rather just watch someone else deal with being me.

You can fight it and fight it and fight it. You can lay awake nights dreaming of that escape that you KNOW ruins your life and you someone make it through one more second without it until you just can’t. until one tiny thing pushes you over the edge and it’s a house of course that falls. You drink too much, you smoke too much, you neglect your responsibilities, you push away everything that is good about yourself because you need to wallow in the bad, to convince yourself that you are a shitty person because shitty things happened to you.

I do that all the fucking time, I’m doing it right now. I should be studying for the Bar, I shouldn’t be drinking, I shouldn’t be smoking, I shouldn’t be writing, I shouldn’t be reading anything that’s not related to the Bar. But I’m not, because it’s comforting self-destructive behavior, it’s something I know how to do, it’s easier than all the rest of it.

For Patrick, it’s the same. I’m not asking you to excuse any of his behavior, because I can’t forgive him for giving up on himself because I feel like he’s propelled me to giving up on myself too (I really have these past few days just thinking about Mother’s Milk and At Last) but this is urging you to understand why he fails so miserably, why he flushes years of sobriety down the toilet, why he can’t stop making his parents mistakes and adopting them as your own.

The harder you run, the easier it is to fall and that’s what happens to him.

Potential Mother

My ideas about motherhood are laden with trauma and feminism, they’re this psychotic, bipolar, schizophrenic blend of narcissism, selfishness, abject fear of failure as a mother, fear of lack of control over what happens to my child, hating the idea of becoming nothing but a stay-at-home mom after working so hard to become more…so reading and watching Mother’s Milk the potential mother in me is watching it in terror.

Because all I can imagine is finding the man I love, the man I adore, the love of my heart and soul, predictably attracted to his darkness and intensity, trusting him enough to let him father my child only to come to the realization that he’s not as strong as I need him to be, that I’m going to have to step up to bat and be everything to our child because he’s failing.

The thought of leaving that potential love in favor of my child’s wellbeing sickens me to my stomach. I can’t bare the thought and that potential mother shrivels at this unlikely hypothetical.

God I don’t even want to think about what that’s like.

I can’t bare to think what Mary goes through! (And yet I do, as @sobeautifullyobsessed has been reading via my extremely random ass prose)

So we circle back to Julia and what happens with Patrick and I again preface this with a few things- these are my thoughts based on my own background and prejudices, my own life experiences and my understanding of the characters in the novels and the show. This is my opinion based on addiction and personalities and trauma, my understanding love.

Julia is a very, very, very messed up individual. She every bit as pompous and unbearable git as Patrick is. The difference is that Julia enjoys the cruelty of their world while Patrick takes comfort in the routine of it- it’s a world he knows, disappointment and anger are emotions that he understands better than happiness or forgiveness. It’s easier to default to negative emotions rather than positive or productive ones (as I’ve been learning these past few days).

Julia should not have encouraged Patrick. And Patrick should have walked away.

But they didn’t because they’re both damaged individuals.

There’s no excuse.

There’s no excuse in claiming that Mary was being cold to Patrick, there’s no excuse in saying that Patrick was feeling lonely and bored and needing sex and Julia was available.

If he really wanted to, he could have found Mary, could have told her, could have confided in her.

GOD the way he clings to her in the beginning after he tells her he’s been disinherited, the smile on his face when he’s in bed and she tells him they’re going to pick up Kettle, the way they lay on the couch together and talk about needing a holiday from their holiday….he actively, consciously, with malice aforethought pushes her away. He’s confused between wanting her so much he can’t stand it and wanting to push her away just in case he makes the same mistakes his father did, same mistakes his mother made. And while attempting to run away from all that, he makes his own, fresh mistakes with Mary. He knows it too, he says exactly that while he’s on the poolside with Julia.

He could have turned to Mary but she’s new, the joy she could bring him, the promise of peace and forgiveness with her standing beside him is too much light for someone who knows darkness like an old friend.

He should have turned to Mary.

As for Julia—let’s go back to their relationship shall we. In the books, when they first meet, she’s underage and talks him into having sex with her. In the show, the only positive thing she does is show up at the end of Never Mind and put her hand over his forehead. In Some Hope she tries to break his heart and his best friends heart by forcing him to fuck her when he’s in no condition to make a rational decision Here, she does the same thing. She should’ve pushed him away.

A good person in her shoes would have pushed him away.

I cannot and will not deny that Benedict Cumberbatch the actor and Jessica Raine the actress have wonderful chemistry together and they’re so sexy together, they’re interactions are stunning, crackling with energy.

But but BUT the toxic relationship between Patrick and Julia should NOT be sexualized or idealized. Cheating on your devoted and loving spouse is NOT sexy. Taking advantage of someone with clear emotional issues, struggling with sobriety, hanging on to it by a thread, is NOT sexy. It can never be sexy, and it should never be sexy.

Christ my heart hurt for Mary. I’ve been seeing discussions on here and on twitter about when Mary knows that her husband is being unfaithful—she knows the second it happens. Watch her the morning after, when he stands next to her and says “now we can have fun!” The poor thing knows and she tries to excuse it away because she loves him, and she understands the pain he’s in, the confusion he’s experiencing.

In this love triangle, only Mary Melrose comes out in tact. Julia and Patrick…they mess up big time, and Patrick knows it.

And instead of stopping, instead of trying to find someway back to being a husband and father, he pushes Mary further and further away because it’s so much easier than confronting their life together.

God he wants to be with her so much but he doesn’t know how.

There’s a feeling of decapitation, like missing a limb, losing the words that you want to say but they’re not there, they’ve flown the coop.

I want to confess, I want to live in your heart, I want the warmth of your soul, the warmth of your smile but darling it’s easier to push you away now because what if I disappoint you again, what if I break your heart again? I need to cut you my love, before you cut me.

I’ve had that conversation so many fucking times man….

Love me but I need you to hate me to function.

Love me, be my escape, but I need to make you hate me because I don’t want to see disappointment in your eyes.

 -----------------------------

Guys, I’m completely certain I’m not making any sense because I’m really in a bit of a free fall right now and there’s no landing in sight.

I might add more to this, make it more coherent but this is all I got. And I’m not making sense.

#mother's milk #patrick melrose #benedict cumberbatch #edward st. aubyn #my thoughts #my opinions only nothing else

[throwingideasatthewall]

The Clone Wars    Senate Murders

          (Season 2 Episode 15)

Ack      ....  So     are     we    going     to    address     the     guy      that    got     killed?      . .      Oh      This   is a new one       . . .         Oh       No       . . .        The        Bab        ies        -      Will       Only    Pro     Long

  Oh good

 [I was worried      I was going to have to pull out  The old   “Amidala kills children,”      Thing,]

   Any way,      That’s            Good        I like        babies not getting         hurt,         [Cute things in      general]    

      Oof           That’s           Not-

     [pretty sure       that’s the            point]

       Whelp

Well I have teased       Amidala pretty       unmercifully,      Regarding       That        Episode,        I do    still give her       a bit of slack          (Age    appropriate)       Because she still    has a chance to        un-feck the situation      [In the       story]

 Least we know    it      isn’t her getting   poison      ed this time,

 Oh,   never     mind,

That actually    did   apparently   help     (slightly)     (in the   unaccountable)        (Slightly           less       toxicity          in         air)

     Smooth

      Hold             Up           Wait,          Wasn’t              Ready           (Sus             Pect-           Ing-       Animation           That       smooth,

      I          think that was      Sa-        tine          -            Good         ref      (erence)          Picking       up        right       where       he      left        off  

   C-3PO

   Nice

  Whelp

-Windows        -

   Okay,        Minor        Issue?

  ?

  Oh it’s a whole bunch of them

   That’s nice-

      Senator            Stonk

“what will the public think   if I don’t want to make child soldiers,?”

     -Boomer

    (Probably)

   “But he wants to know    how very sorry he is,”

    Haha

      That   is the correct tone

  “Sorry-”

   Sorry doesn’t get you anything

   It’s an attempt to control the     narr-     ative

And    nothing else

 (If you screw up just      fix the problem     don’t keep dragging the tox,”

   Votes

  That’s nice

This is a very non-toxic         healthy tea

  (I know he’s kind of assuming authority          here

    But they   seem to be pretty close friends-

   Who are covered under the friend-      ship rules

“ A.k.a. not doing it to a random stranger who doesn’t like it,”

 Good rule

Oh God      It’s        

THAT

fucker..  

   ?

With the line about   convincing     other people of good?

I-

 Nope-

Note; this isn’t an official X

 It’s just a show my venomous   hatred of this guy..

And the episode he   Spawned    from

 Which was the first one to     earn a strike from me...

For normalizing    abuse...

With that in mind I give this episode the benefit of the     doubt...

  Even with that     concerning opening line

  So I will acknowledge I am slightly doubtful

 [not quite   putting on the   SWAT gear,    maybe just     a bat]

With that-     in mind- let’s continue...

... .

Mistakes       ...     

Em-     That at least counts as   one tox

Bring up the previous   things you did wrong     does not fix it

It’s guilt tripping

And an attempt to get the other party to validate   your toxicity

Dude’s      Towing..

Just after a joke   about how sorry doesn’t do anything

I hope the writers can see the irony in that

(Utilize          It)

  Peace         -         Dick

  Ah

   Hey-

[Repeat generations/friends can be friends with older     members,      just      Weird,]         -        Any       ,Way-

  Aight

  Ni’     gh    t’

 Ah- did they skip over to it or they   going?

“exciting isn’t quite the word   I would use,”

Toxic,     authority assuming,     enabling,

Authority assume     is not ok  regardless of what generation you   are

[Dude’s going to be a Traitor,        Isn’t he?

  They focused on him

  Might be actually a good bit of tension    if he didn’t      (Former   Separatist)

Terri-fying

Yeah surrounded by a bunch of toxic boomers   who will   feel free.    To be as doubting       distrustful.    negative     and overall unhelpful

As you allow

And they feel like pushing the   boundary...

Mind

Or-     gana

Dick move

It’s her     personal opinion       -      and it ain’t   tox?

People can have   dislikes

Not like she called you an   Overinvolved boomer       —        or held you to any   accountability       (Yet)          ...    

 Who order-

[This is getting really     tox

and I don’t trust the   writers           ✖️ Just   putting      it     over        there         in       case      I need it           .....

 Hm

 You

 ..  [Grooming        isn’t cool

 Self deprecation       isn’t either]

  Aight

  Hm

 Also there’s a process you need to go to to speak?

Money doesn’t   matter -

Killing    -      and     hatred      but       the   pacifistic        bitch        vilified

*Spoken   in  complement

She kicked     ASS   last episode

*sorry   for the vulgarity       I’m excited      . .       Also,    so is this     Padme’s episode.

 Cause        Neat.

 Good

 But are votes   casted by     clapping?

(I’m not sure)

 Okay

  Whelp

That’s     either a bad guy       or damn good red   herring

I’m intrigued

Also, whatever happened to     Clovis?

Like,      he still a        senator?

He get   kicked?

Uhm

Dude,

 False   appreciation

Also yeah     what was with that dude       earlier?

[Uncle what’s his name apologize to him for Padme’s comment despite Uncle what’s his name being the one who made it, implying dude took a serious issue with it,]

Also,   Oo, is this working of the previous quote about the line between friends and foes being blurred.

              [I like                  consistency]

So it has to be one of those guys,

The ones in the   room with her,

I’m putting a guess on   Senator-

 The one uncle       what’s- his-name         apologized to

      That guy

[Or it could be that guy that]

No actually he’s probably   abstain        ed for that reason

Sorry      I’m getting ahead          -     But it does say     “Murder,”

   And        I      am    curious        .     Really   going   over       -         Also    why   is that guy   bowing?

[Tran-slation?]

Right        .        obvious     villain       .

 Also   light bullshit..

There’s no-   way guy could’ve made it over there

The thing is still in session

We saw him less than a    minute ago

 And she just came in directly

[He’d be         halfway down the hallway]

For likely scope

Yeah, this dude is totally a     Red     Herring       -        He’s    way    too    over     the     top       ...    I’m putting my bets      On that human Senator          Guy           .       CHILD SOLDIERS      ARE BAD!       [sorry I just   felt the need to say that,]

  Okay,    Uncle-what’s his name-

Other person

 That guy-

  Drink      -ing!

  Nice

  Vi-ctory

   Oh, this looks like a problem

    Child groomers          In-       corporate-

    Off

Second Red herring!

(It’s that guy   and I’m sticking with        it)

  Private

  Yeah,  like how did he even get into the room without a key card?

  I know Amidala’s a senator and      by that,               A public      servant,         But you figure if they’re bringing out the    alcohol, they’d shut the door

   -Declare      off hours

  -For the celeb     ration-

 Separatist      Con        Spiracy-

   She has a     point-

   You did a     hundred percent enable his behavior

    (No argument            there)

      Pro- separatist

Ah, uncle back stabber there would contradict you

   Not sure if you’re the same species

But,       you do know about his bullshit,

Don’t assume accountability       free snarking             Territory           (They’re all enablers so I’m not even going to bother with the math,      About who screwed up more,          All the   elders   here are held to the same standard,       About,

 Uncle Backstabber a little more

   *Since I know what he did,

Account

From the most bastard,       of the group,

Who’s the next Red herring?

It’s that dude     I swear      Soon

Yeah child soldiering is a bitch

As is enabling

But she has no idea what’s going to happen     being the past.

Dick,    whelp,

Poor       Frita       (I think)

He’s going       he’s going to get roped into this too     isn’t he?

      “ We you must be doing something right,”

Nah,  enabling abusers  never a good idea

   But then again there’s no rules for dealing with trauma individuals because they aren’t supposed to be any

   How long that takes and what it entails

   Is down to who ever is        asserting accountability     (Excluding      the actual accountability, cutting      Them off)

That’s unnegotiable

(And it can’t involve   death)

Too.     harsh-

No you haven’t-

Well, yeah

But that’s     accessory at best     ... Ono you’ve done a wonderful job

No he hasn’t

Don’t coddle   the abuser

 He’s screwed up pretty consistently

 Pretty sure       it’s more than five

And was leading to let the future get     hecked         ...

 Very       Likely

He wasn’t hurt

The other lady   spent a lot more time defending

She should get the ‘don’t listen to them’

If anything just    ‘reflect the bitch’          (Neutral)          Aight    

     Too          Late!

      Can someone stop      playing the sad music?

      This isn’t sad

     And you can’t make me       sympathize for the abuser

   (I- don’t trust this     writer)

    That Dude sus

    Aight

  Faker-

He’s dying you        dumb ass

(Having a      heart attack       probably

  All the stress            of denial)

   Whelp

Call!

 Please

 Whelp

 -Oh wait      bitch is dead?

Uhm.

DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD  the WICKED WITCH IS DEAD!    

 (I know that seems really harsh-            But dude- deserved it

And I never have to deal with that character        anymore!

So,

 Al-      right       the      funeral;

 Um,

DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD  the WICKED WITCH IS DEAD!

 (I’m sorry I really hated that      character-)

* In reality      the loss of life is a very serious thing and      I don’t mean to make light of it

 But no one is required      to feel sad about their abusers-         Nor toxic individuals        Nor anyone else        Yes the loss of life is a     serious thing           But it should not             And could not         control a person’s life

I’ve always played accountability    over death          Or death   penalty           ...

“...was is a flawed man,”

  He tried to sell someone into   slavery...

  The fact that Amidala was an adult           and could get out of the situation           Doesn’t forgive        how terrible that situation was.

    Un-healthy           And        Wrong

   “Own    mistakes”

 And he tried to guilt trip everyone       into giving him validation

    Specifically           Amidala

      Every        occasion

    [Also      flawed          Some          one        breaking            the           code           once             or           twice,           (Under            five)            Is        flawed,

       This         dude          tox,  

       He should’ve been sentenced     to      accountability along time ago

    For trying to make the world      a generally terrible place for someone

    Multiple times-

  That’s not okay

   [and he clearly         didn’t learn his lesson]

    [Note; whether a person “learned their lesson” or not,            Is irrelevant

   [They already    knew the rules before]

But he never compromised his principles-

    HaHAha,

    What?

That’s because   dude didn’t have any principles

He broke them long before,

Also why the frick does Master Yoda care?

Dude    was          a      politic,

 The     Fuck,

He engaging this propaganda?

Why?

Why does he care about any of this.

Why does   ANY     one

[Satine, alright, hermen got murdered and she might be looking for evidence on who-done-it   That’s fair

?

Oh says it’s an everyone event

That makes sense

Guessing the Jedi are required   to come or else the branded as that asshole

Fair

 Eyes

Aight

What-      ever-

   ?

Why the guard?

Like cultural customs

Aren’t honor guards          for veterans      (And possibly extremely         high positions,      Like         Chancellor?

As technical commander of the army?

Like,      Explain?

That guy-

 Sus

 Very       Sus-

   Pas-         sed

    I’d say      to find his killer

     But yeah I can’t really   blame anyone for not    caring that much     about that dude

   Specifically      Amidala

(Though     accountability law..

   D

   Frita is honestly my favorite        character

   I don’t know       why.

     Possibly his relation to the           chancellor and how      he still a good natured guy,

     Aight

     Yeah     he was a dick,

Hope those aren’t memories     [also        totally the        Kamooin               B-            Right?

                    [Like                         I’m totally still after                          Dude, ]

But she’s   the only one that     touched the bottle]

That we saw?

Dude did suggest it

      Still        heavily          sussing              him                .          No           Face               .              Also       is that his wife?

     (Don’t think it was         ever established)

     I-

    Mentor

     ?

   How old is this person?

I’m gonna assume     adult

 So.

He toxically asserted   authority over me.

Or wrong choice of words and they meant like     “best friend”

 Cause that’s kind of     tox,

Me?

  - -

  This is     getting       Hella          tox

    You’re       a      person

    Yeah you might miss him   and that’s totally fine

     But-

You’re still a person completely able to   self determine.

   ‘ take his place,’

   Oh no

   Oh no

   Shit

   Just what she needs         overinvolvement 

   Right

   Not        threatening at all    

    Oh         Red           .         We        never       see      them      enter            .         Right            .            Well this turned from a private party     to a    Conference

   I thought he was just calling    to offer condolences.

   Questions.

Oh,    Did you not tell the loud ones what happened to their loved one?

  (Like normally I’m all for no one should      witness anyone else’s death          Or that news be public

   But this is assumed authority.         And that stuff is pretty normal

     Regardless       of how terrible.       Senator Fa

This guy seems like a drip

[Guessing that’s the reason why       Amidala is going to end up taking charge,]

Because      the Chancellor     hired a sham detector    Whelp

   Dick way to put it

  True, the protocol for murder          isn’t cutting and clear

   Dragging random people into it, isn’t

   You see it          you’re        immediately accountable,

      (Only by view of the body,          Not by word of mouth)

Because this kind of approach is super          in-effective,

  Whelp        Great

  Also there were thousands of       senators in that building that could screw up the thing

Only five

(I’ll give the        murder        mystery            It’s             Dues,           And           let it          continue,             But       (im-probabilit-           ies is not a good thing)

        Might              Want                    To                  Avoid

(Also     if that’s the     qualification;       I’m sussing         Amidala,          Dude      was                 a           dick           to          her)

    THOUGH              I’M STILL-         SUSS      -ING           DUDE       IN           Blue?     dude with the    beard

   That      one.

   Build-ing    <—-    He          Sus

   Him

—-

 Ha!

Here

Hey   that was almost emotion,      Nice

(also, dang how frequent are   murders?

Him

<—-

  He          Sus

   He didn’t take a seat         like everyone else

   [Also, it was purple    Dude wearing purple     that’s who I’m talking about]

Also are you going to introduce him as the     detective ?

‘cause you’re kind of   screwing with these people

Not   telling them what’s going on

Answering in vague Snark

Him.    ...

For no reason

Considering he was an uncountable toxic frick who allowed it lots of people to get hurt-

  I’m       mad,

 A ight

Right..

 And

Okay, He’s got a point

Immediate accountability     is the case murder     for good reason

Surprised they didn’t start       this right after the     murder

When it happened

Dude- [i’m not going to criticize       the spatial awareness]

Him

<—-

 Right         there

  Murder

A good point since     they really haven’t explained anything?

   Okay,         Right

Or anyone     stealthy

  Though yeah I guess    politicians

  [just don’t like the        generalization]

   Someone good        With he rbs..

  Okay.

  Neat.

  Insult.

Poor.   Frita

  He didn’t deserve     this,

(Well yeah he’s an enabler,)

But       He’s the least toxic..

[Also poor Frita,       Always       getting sucked into these mysteries

   He’s the shaggy        of this damn group

   [Likes food          and hanging out with people,          Gets dragged into      bullshit,

 Rip

Insulting     the whole damn room             .....            This character is                 obnoxious

            But in a fun way

             The narr              -atives-            clearly having fun

Ono        yeah       he   was    an   open   dick

  [Seriously they’re treating him    like-]

  ?

 No it couldn’t possibly be because he was an       ex separatist,

Open book         Case,

Con-troversial

 Politicians      arguing over basic human decency

   And common sense

    ‘Do we really.. Ok        that’s enough politic jokes

   The movie started it         so I had to finish it.

  Now on with.

      Dude drunk

     Dick

  “ I’m        totally-”

 Um, this is     delicious corruption

How long until     Amidala figures what’s going on?

  Whelp

He just     left?

   He really is a       quack

    Did you find him         on       fakedetectives.com?

     Palpatine?

    Crud

    Okay,

    That guy,

    Target

   Good

  Aight

Also it’s that guy     Authority ass-     umer sus,

  No       No,

Good plan

Ono

  Good      plan

  Evil.

  Aight

    .

  Good

In-vestigation

   Yes-       Good

    Let’s           Do           It           ...

    It’s that guy

    Him

He     -a dick

Also not to claim authority over   him

Not, not to be     cu-     rious-    -

No-pe

Authority   figures     don’t 

 He was an ass

Also yeah just     put   all the possible suspects in the room      -         That       Guy

Uhm

Ty-pho

Agana!

  That       fricker

   Onu          looked         at him         before         his death                 -             He came back last       to the party-

       He was the first             to suggest opening the drinks             -              Also the thing with the detective       and him just trying to get over as quickly as possible

        He sus,  

Aight,   

Right,       -       Don’t - get stabbed

Um-

Aight

Wha-

 Ha, such a red         herring-

 Okay-

Oh, Red herring        Co-nference

  Didn’t notice the     snake lady          (Kamoin)     Empty     Chair       -        Also     they know each other?

  Good,        evil for them,

  Fair

 Aight

Also yeah the         boomers here didn’t do it       -         More     likely someone from the Present     Gen.. . 

Theory

That      Guy..

Guy’s like damn

Like just give her your time and your place and       your alibi.

Whelp,       Aight

So I’m pretty sure if I had paid attention to the     bottles,        That wouldn’t have   matched up       ...

Yeah he was a separatist

              DAMN

    Like I saw the hand on the dock            But I thought it was an assassin        or team up

                But  

                 DAMN

                               I feel                                   verified

              Until it played music                       victory music                         Over the arrest                       of a distressed                        and less toxic                            person

*While   painting      the      toxic     person           as a        saint

                  Which I cannot                          condone

         As such;

                  it earns my most                             regretful                              strike;

Official;

   For attempting to     excuse a toxic       person’s          actions

* I want to emphasize that this is not ok, a person does not get off for un- accountable actions, simply by apologizing, never mind the fact          - that it is an attempt    to guilt-trip       Invalidate          And      Gas-    light               The       Recipient,       But also should not apply to someone that has repeatedly attempt to Gaslight, guilt trip and sell a person into slavery;         (Crossing more than five accounts)

[never mind the selectivi       ty of what it is applied        “Ano” getting away         With slavery, be        -cause he        Was “So-      rry,” gun        held to      (-near)        his       Back      While      Lolo       doesn’t     just   mummer      sorry)

         That once you commit harm              against another person.. it can                not be taken back, the victim       owes you no sympathy, no    right to their emotions, and        certainly, no un      accountability-       Forgive      Ness-      From what you have done.

   You must live with what you have        commit

   Regard        Less