#i know a lot of these shows are very toxic and trauma inducing but ... the patterns

[jisungshotfirst]

Toku anon: so speaking of the Kpop survival show with Hui in it, I have some questions about Kpop survival/predebut shows in general.

1. Why does everything seem so dramatic whenever I see clips of these shows? Are they always like this? I think the least-toxic-feeling one I've seen clips of was the Stray Kids one. And even then, there were some tense moments.

2.a. I've noticed that a group doesn't always seem to debut from the shows? Like, there was a clip of predebut Ateez on a show called Mix-Nine, but I don't think that was their show? Because I was told only some of them got near the end. And the YG boss guy was there for some reason? (At least, I think it's him? It was the same dude that showed up in one of the SKZ survival show episodes.) So then which group was that show for?

2.b. and then there's that show that some of the Cravity guys were in, that led to X1, but apparently X1 disbanded. But it must have happened fast, because the Cravity guys looked almost the same in those clips as when they debuted in Cravity. So what's going on there?

3. Not exactly a survival show question, but what was happening in that predebut Seventeen show with the green basement? On the one hand, it wasn't scary the way the survival shows were (none of the evil edits and that type of drama). And I don't mind the low video quality (I've watched a couple toku shows at 144p). But there's just. Just something that doesn't sit right. As if at any moment some narrator would start saying that these videos were the start of an urban-legend creepypasta. But that never happens.

4. So how often do the "losing" trainees end up going to another company (and maybe debuting)? Because on the one hand, some of these shows have around 100 contestants. But on the other hand, it does seem to happen sometimes (again, seeing Ateez, and half of Cravity. Those are the only ones I know of though.)

5. How often do these Hui Moments happen? As in, a musician who's in an arguably-active group appears as a contestant.

Ahh<3 the world of survival shows<3 I shall answer all ur questions my friend 😎

1. They are edited and written that dramatically because it is reality tv 💔 drama needs to happen for it to be entertaining (subjective ofc! but to producers it needs to be) and again it's reality tv so it needs to at least Seem real. So the editors use what footage they have and dramatise the Heck out of it or some things will be scripted. It will fully depend on the situation and show as to how much the trainees are made aware of all of this (most of the time I feel they are not to have more 'realistic' emotional outbursts). They come in a whole range of toxicity<3 like in the skz one they do kick out felix and minho for drama despite the fact I'm sure jype had the full intention to debut them all. But yeah there can be a lot worse or just different. No mercy is the show that debuted monsta x and I have literally only seen a handful of clips from it because i hear it's one of the toughest to watch, I am not emotionally strong enough. Survival shows are often that dramatic because it's produced as a competition, but run-up-to-debut shows? A lot of them I fucking Love. Because there can be drama but it's not over elimination, the tasks are team building/training skills ! Oneus/onewe and ateez had very fun ones and my BELOVED flower snack .. which was tbz predebut show and it was just them running a restaurant. So nothing to do with performing skills but it was extremely entertaining and was just about team-building and getting to know the members personalities!

2a . There are survival/elimination shows of 2 kinds - one where trainees are from multiple different companies and winners debut in a temporary group together before going back to their companies (eg. Produce series, MixNine). And another where the trainees are from one company, or the show is run by one company, and there are eliminations and the winners debut in a fixed group (eg. treasure box, i-land). And then there are debut/predebut/run-up-to-debut shows with the lineup already fixed (eg. codename is ateez, flower snack). And then there are the few that are technically predebut shows with a fixed lineup but pretend there are eliminations for drama/ have temporary eliminations (eg. stray kids, pentagon maker). I will make a little list here of whos from what!! Official groups are ones made through winning the competition. Follow-on are ones with many losing trainees, or formed by winning contestants but After the temporary group disbands

produce (4 seasons) = [an mnet show - the most watched survival show]

official groups: I.O.I, wanna one, iz*one, x1

follow-on groups: ab6ix, cix, oneus, wei, cravity, bae173, ive, lesserafim, wekimeki +

mixnine = [a show made between yang hyunsuk (yg guy) and jtbc (tv producer)]

(No official group coz their debut was cancelled - yg SUCKS)

follow-on groups: ateez, oneus, onf, a.c.e, treasure, itzy, loona +

other shows

ateez = codename is ateez, treasure = treasure box, oneus/onewe = i will debut, pentagon = pentagon maker, enhypen = i-land, twice = sixteen

yes, some groups are listed multiple times<3 either members went through multiple shows or the group split themselves up between them all.

2.b. so... x1 jnfnd btw anything opinionated here is my personal opinion and people are welcome to disagree! but personally x1 disbanding to quickly improved my life tenfold. x1 was a group made of the 11 top trainees at the end of produce season 4. produce has had a lot of controversy to do with voting fraud (just in season 3 and 4 as far as im aware) so it's very unlikely that the iz*one and X1 lineups where the actual true winners. but iz*one were well debuted by the time it blew up but x1 were just debuted and it was decided that they'd disband and the members went back to their companies. there were 5 starship boys in produce season 4, 4 who are in cravity, and 2 of who got into x1. because x1 disbanded, the 2 x1 boys went back to starship and cravity were able to debut as 9 when they did! which ofc means the world to me because i love them so dearly as they are. and speed was of the essence to try debut and put out music as quickly as possible to make everyone forget about the controversies so it did happen super fast! (x1 disbanded jan 2020, vity debuted april 2020)

3. DFGJFGD no seventeen were just weird <3 not a survival show but not quite the official line up because there's footage from before all svt members joined and also of this kid samuel was training to be in svt but didn't end up doing that. (which kinda thank god because he was literally way too young. also he later was in produce season 2 and choreographed my favourite stage<3). those predebut svt clips are insanity... like they r being weird because they're svt and a big group of teenage boys but also pledis sucks so they were probably being driven insane too. but we got incredible memes<3

4. very often!! the world of entertainment companies is rly small it seems and trainees quite often jump around but especially through competitions and stuff! because they gain attention from other companies who offer a contract etc. a fun little case study for this is kang seokhwa <3 so seokhwa was a YG trainee and was in treasure box survival show and eliminated. he then left YG and entered produce season 4 as an individual with no company. during produce he befriends yohan of oui entertainment and yohan is like 'bro, come join my company and we can debut together!'. seokhwa agrees but yohan wins produce so is put in x1.... but THEN x1 disband. Yohan is shipped back to oui and oh? seokhwas here now! and then they debut together in wei!! but yeah. trainees can audition for different companies and companies can scout people from survival shows. this wasnt the fact with ateez tho! they went into mixnine as kq trainees and went back to kq when they lost. also with cravity, 4 of the 5 starshipz in produce went back to starship and debuted in cravity, the other guy went to rain company and debuted in ciipher!

5. so the hui thing... there have been similar occurences! i think beginning with produce season 2 when 4 of the 100 trainees were members of nu'est, so already debuted. however, they hadn't been active in a long time and had it Very tough trying to prevent disbandment so them joining produce was somewhat of a "last chance" - and it WORKED! minhyun got into wanna one and promoted with them for a year or so, and the rest of nu'est released music while waiting for him and they had an increase in fans from being on produce! this has since been replicated to varying degrees of success (victon, up10tion). there's a possibility that hui being in boysplanet was an attempt at the same thing (my initial understanding) and that it was some kind of strategical move but I be confused as to why because pentagon are not the same as nu'est victon and up10tion... its not the same situation, pentagon are comparatively much more popular. But i think now, hui might've just... decided to go himself. i can't remember exactly but it was something shinwon said about trusting hui to do what we wants to so now i'm not as mad at cube (i always am a bit tho) but im confuzzled by hui's existence. like what is that man thinking.

i hope all ur questions were answered!! if u have more or want me to elaborate on anything please just hit me. I love talking about this shit

#i could li2terally write a thesis about this #this basically IS a thesis #i hope u like reading<3 #jdfjgfd #thank you for asking tho!! #i know a lot of these shows are very toxic and trauma inducing but ... the patterns #my brain Loves patterns and being able to connect so much of the kpop scene to eachother by knowing these shows... incredible #u could throw me two random idols and i could connect them somehow #produce be my main specialty #also i think it's fine to enjoy these shows but not condone a lot of it #or just understand the negatives #like it all boils down to fuck mnet and fuck hybe and fuck yg #and pledis and cube why not! #but the trainees join these shows to be watched and get support and i do be supporting them!! #speaking of! vote for woonggi on boys planet<3 #my son<3 #asks #anons #toku anon #kpop survival shows #kit rants

[luciddownloading]

Venus in the 8th House 🕯️🖤

🕷️There may be a "familial curse" regarding the female lineage that needs to be broken. The mom's side of the family may be very female dominated but the women might be very troubled or suffer from abusive/controlling relationships

🕷️When you have this placement, please know the difference between "obsession" and genuine love. Venus in the 8th can draw very intense admiration or fixation from others. But, if you mistake that for love, you can attract some really toxic or destructive people.

Inevitably, with this placement, even the ones who truly love you will be highly fixated on you. But, it won't be only out of lust or a need to possess or control you

🕷️ The best way for you to know and build your self-worth in love is to avoid obsessing over your person. YOU also have to know the difference between obsessing over someone and actually loving them. If not, you can either attract emotionally/physically unavailable people who keep you in that state of longing or love interests who are very low-vibrational. Either way, this won't build your self-esteem.

This is to not say that you should become a self-obsessed person. Just put plenty of energy into yourself. Pour into yourself and only accept love from those who can pour into you, too, especially if you're a more feminine person. Because you have a tremendous amount of love to give and need someone to match that.

🕷️The more Venus in the 8th House people hold their incredible affection back for those who are willing to really show up for them and respect them, the more magnetic and irresistible they become.

The 8th House represents our power. With Venus in the 8th, you are very powerfully attractive, in many senses of the word. Your energy itself is super-attractive. But, when you are desperate or settling for disrespect/dissatisfaction/no-effort partners, you are not standing in your power.

🕷️Okay, so let's talk about the sex appeal of this placement because, yes, it is talked about all the time for a reason. But it's also very misunderstood. While Venus in the 8th CAN easily be that very alluring siren, there's often a deep seated fear or discomfort around playing that role that needs to be worked through.

Don't forget that the 8th House is also about trauma, triggers, intense fears. Unfortunately, a lot of people with this placement either experience some kind of sexual abuse or assault when young or were just sexualized way too early by adults or older people around them, which can be quite traumatizing in itself. They may even endure some sort of shame-inducing scandal involving sex. So, a deep fear around one's attractiveness or a subconscious worry about being objectified or taken advantage of settles in. If you have this placement, instead of sexing up your appearance, you may actually cover up or even try to desexualize yourself to avoid such a thing. But, even then, when you're doing absolutely nothing, you still get sexualized

🕷️I think a lot about Venus in the 8th can speak to the dark side of the feminine experience. Being treated solely like a sexual object. Also, you may fear just being dismissed as pretty or written off as having no substance. You may try very hard to prove that you're not just pretty or some nice person who can just be pushed around. There may also be trauma surrounding that, as some 8th House Venus people have been conditioned to either people-please or suffer abuse

🕷️ Because of the possible aforementioned traumas, it can be highly empowering for those with this placement to EMBRACE their sex appeal. Not just for the sake of being sexy but to take that power back; to own their sexiness and heal their relationship with it.

(Of course, if you have been abused or assaulted, therapy and genuine self-work is key, too. Because it shouldn't be about seeking validation through being sexy. Remember that it's not the source of your self-worth)

🕷️ Embracing a more feminine role, in general, can also be very healing and empowering; to know that femininity is a form of power, not weakness. If you're into men, this can open up your receptive power in a way that makes you even more enticing. If you're into women, this will give you much greater respect for them

🕷️You are very naturally seductive, especially toward your preferred sex. It's not always in a sexual way, in your mind. It's more about your ability to deeply connect to people and draw them in. BUT, it can come across in a very sexual way to others, whether you intend for it to or not

🕷️ Unfortunately, it is very easy to attract toxic feminine energies into your life, with Venus in the 8th, particularly women who are very envious, controlling or untrustworthy. If you're a straight girl or queer guy, you may deal with a female "bestie" or two who is actually jealous, nasty, and manipulative. Who may secretly want to be you or feels threatened by you and is subtly trying to tear you down because of it. Or, if the friendship ends, she goes on a whole smear campaign to try and "destroy" you (which will probably fail anyway because you're a bad bitch).

I'm not saying be paranoid or don't trust people. But, please be very discerning about who you let close to you. Someone may claim to love you while secretly hating you.

🕷️On the flip side, when you're vibrating high and using discernment, you could attract women into your life who are wonderfully empowering, fiercely loyal and deeply loving. You just have to choose what kind of energy you want around you.

🕷️ Speaking of which, if you catch yourself displaying jealousy toward others or a need to cut others down, work on that! An envious, hating-ass Venus in the 8th House person is a sorry sight, particularly because it's so obviously coming from a place of poor self-esteem. Mind your business, stay in your lane, and encourage the empowerment of others. Because that's a reflection of your own self-love.

🕷️Beauty is your power but this is not solely external. Some Venus in the 8th people could become hyperfixated on their appearance to try and maintain their power. Others could go the opposite extreme and claim to not care at all about their looks because they're not "shallow". The key is balancing an awareness of both your inner and outer beauty. To know you're equally attractive inside and out and that you should put effort into both kinds of beauty.

🕷️ People can react to you in very extreme ways because of your attractiveness. A lot of times, this is just dramatic idealization or feeling very intimidated or unable to act "normal" around you because of your beauty. And yes, some may just be very envious or triggered by you. Oh, well. It's their problem!

🕷️At your most powerful, you'll be able to turn any sort of hate directed your way into fuel for your self-love and self-respect. Especially if anyone is trying to make you feel like you're not good enough or attractive enough. No one can make you feel less than unless you allow them to.

#astrology #astrology notes #astrology observations #venus in the 8th house #8th house venus #8th house

[luthwhore]

smallville really did just give lex severe mental illness and then had his only canon interaction with mental healthcare be him getting gaslight, drugged, and forcibly institutionalized.

like yes the psychotic break in "shattered" was bc he was drugged, but the show also casually drops that lex had a psychotic episode as a child after his brother's death (which is the whole reason people find it believable that he is having a psychotic break in "shattered") while also lowkey having lex exhibit paranoid and/or delusional behavior especially in his last few seasons.

this in combination with some of his seemingly random mood swings and impulsive and/or self-destructive behavior makes me suspect that he has bipolar disorder, but i think you could potentially make an argument for PTSD-induced psychosis as well.

he also has severe attachment/abandonment issues, bc even ignoring desired, latching onto clark and helen as hard and fast as he did is not normal behavior and asking helen to move in with him and then marry him all within the span of maaaybe six months seems very rushed and happened in response to him being afraid she was going to leave, and a lot of his more toxic behavior with lana in s6-s7 similarity spun out of a fear of abandonment.

that, in conjunction with his particular black-and-white views of people, his anxieties about being a Bad Person (even when he was tried to do good), and his general obsession with clark and frustration at clark hiding things from him, feels... very, very in-line with borderline personality disorder. and bpd tends to be caused at least in part by childhood trauma, which god knows lex has in spades.

#lex just really needed a mental health professional who wasn't being paid for by lionel lmao #lex luthor

[ruby-whistler]

Why c!Dream should (and probably will be) redeemed

Hi! I’m bad with intros. You’ve read the title, so, let’s start with the definitions.

In this essay, we are considering the popularized definition of “redemption” instead of the classical one, which is, as per the Oxford Dictionary, “the act of saving or state of being saved from the power of evil; the act of redeeming.” That’s not however the way the word is used in fandom and media.

/dsmp /rp

The definition of redemption I’ll be working with in this essay is not forgiveness by the people who c!Dream has hurt, nor is it removing himself entirely from his past actions, but moreso the decision to change for the better and abandon destructive mindsets for himself and others.

A “redemption” in a narrative sense would be circumstances and a character arc that would allow that kind of healing and betterment.

I’d like to start this off by the fact that being “irredeemable”, in this sense, also doesn’t exist; redemption is a thing of conditions and choice, not of being allowed by someone else. You can’t gatekeep healing from people who seek it, just to be clear, and that even goes for people who have done terrible things.

Since I understand there is a lot of concern for c!Dream’s past actions, here is a post from people who are much more fit than me to speak on the matter, about the way in which they see a possible c!Dream redemption arc.

Another disclaimer, I am not going to be considering c!Dream only from the perspective of c!Tommy in this essay. c!Dream appears in other people’s perspectives and he himself has his own, unseen perspective. As a character, he is an individual person in his own right rather than just the antagonist of c!Tommy’s story, and so I do not have much concern for their narratives intertwining too much should this writing choice occur.

I’d also like to note that redemption is, in this sense, always a positive thing for everyone involved - someone who’s been prone to doing bad things in the past deciding not to do them anymore and try to change, or just simply heal enough to consider it, isn’t going to have a long-term negative effect in any of the characters, but rather the other way around. Healing is an unlimited resource, and the victims do not have to heal first for the person who hurt them to consider being better.

Here’s a well-written thread on Twitter that elaborates a bit to finish off this point, and let’s move on to actually talking about redemption in the context of the Dream SMP, and c!Dream specifically.

Why a c!Dream redemption arc is not only a good writing choice, but in this case the only good writing choice;

c!Dream, as we all know, has been subject to mental and physical abuse to the point of straight up torture by both c!Sam and c!Quackity (to different extents). He has been in indescribable amounts of suffering for the past 74 days at the time this essay will be published. That is six and something times the duration of the entire exile arc in canon.

Whatever the interpretation of his words in prison is, what is undeniable is first of all the fact his mental stability is absolutely crushed at this point, second that no human being could possibly ever deserve to undergo this, and third, his stay in the prison is showing off his humanity and making him out to be sympathetic.

Now, consider this; how would it feel if c!Tommy died at the end of the exile arc? Empty, there would be no catharsis to such an end, especially because of all of the hurt he’d gone through. Objectively, a bad writing choice.

Let’s compare, narratively of course, this situation to the prison arc. Even though I would never say one of them is “better” or “worse” than the other, since both are terrible and undeserved, c!Dream’s current state checks off all of the boxes that would make his death unsatisfying in the storyline; even if people want him gone, there would still be the dissatisfaction at the current build-up and why they even did it in the first place (it really wasn’t necessary to anyone else’s story to make him out as a victim, and yet they did) if they were planning to kill him off anyways. And since the prison arc is naturally meant to induce sympathy, even from an angst perspective it would simply not make sense within the themes and writing of the plot.

So, c!Dream can’t die, and he also can’t stay in the prison forever - the build-up must lead to something, which is logically a breakout. Great… what now?

Well, the Dream SMP prides itself in accurate representation of trauma and mental instability, specifically cc!Tommy and cc!Dream who have pulled it off incredibly during the exile arc.

Now, undoubtedly, after the prison, c!Dream is going to be just terribly traumatized- considering the writers’ past creative decisions, would it make sense for him to play the role of a dangerous, heartless villain in other people’s stories, while completely ignoring the logical fallout of what he’s been through?

In my mind, no. The most possible result is that cc!Dream is going to rightfully portray someone who’s been hurt so much he is broken, scared and tortured into submissions over months of agony and slowly stripping away of his agency, his dignity, his humanity. And that is… not going to be pretty, nor is he going to be in any way the same as before.

After everything, I’d be surprised if he can properly look at shears without shaking. That’s not villain behaviour, that’s the behaviour of someone who needs help.

Which leads me to another point, which is relatability. Believe me or not, there are people out there who heavily relate to c!Dream because they have been through things that allow them to see themselves in the character - abandonment, mental illness, etc. - or who have had destructive mindsets they have struggled to let go of in the past.

To them, as well as to the viewer, redeeming c!Dream could actually be a very good example, showcasing that anyone who has done bad things or has been hurt in the past can learn that it is possible to be better, to move on, to not be stuck in a loop but to actively seek help and then use that support to find the path to healing.

Making c!Dream a better person, who in a way, wins over his past, over his trauma, over the hurt he’s caused, and manages to actually get better… is inspiring, in a sense. It shows that you can abandon unhealthy mindsets, you can find a support group of people who care about you, you can make your life better simply by deciding to be better and then sticking to that, no matter how difficult the process.

This is why I believe that redeeming c!Dream would not be bad writing, but quite the opposite, and that the prison arc is an obvious set-up. Alright, but how does that work with the character? How could someone so widely hated mentally improve in such a seemingly violent and terrible environment? Would it even make sense within the context of c!Dream’s character so far? Well,

Why c!Dream has the capacity for healing and the Dream SMP the ability to provide it;

First of all, let’s remind ourselves that through c!Dream’s entire spiral he wasn’t ever directly given a chance to change. He was regarded as someone to defeat in order to accomplish a happy ending, or as someone who needed to be removed in order to achieve power on the SMP. Ever since the 16th, which is when the corruption of the character is the most obvious, there have been no attempts to reach out or to help him. I do not blame the characters for this - I am simply pointing out that since it has never happened before, we do not know how he would respond, and that, after everything he’s been through, any bit of kindness or compassion towards him will be a new concept he will have to learn to deal with somehow.

This point is especially driven home by the fact that both c!Quackity and c!Sam would often tell him he is a monster who deserves nothing but to suffer, and that what he’s going through is never going to amount to all the hurt he’s caused - basically removing any possibility for ever getting better (because by this logic, he doesn’t deserve support, and he doesn’t deserve to get better) from his line of sight.

He also hasn’t had a support system since shortly after the 16th, when his friends left him over c!George’s dethronement and made no effort to mend their relationship afterwards. c!Dream isn’t used to having allies and people on his side, but to being hated; again, wouldn’t that mean positive reinforcement could very well be all he needs to make the choice?

His bad mindsets - attachments are weakness, ends always justify the means, people will consider you a bad person no matter what you do - have been continuously proven right by his environment, even in prison. Any kind of subversion, plus an explanation as to why they are wrong, could be of great help to c!Dream.

Just another disclaimer; I do not believe c!Dream would change thanks to the treatment in prison, but rather despite it. His mental stability is non-existent at that point, and in order to get better he needs genuine emotional support from the people around him as well as to heal before he can redeem himself.

Alright, but… c!Dream has hurt a lot of people. Who would be fit to help him?

Let’s start off with the worst option and why it’s impossible the writers would even attempt this; c!Tommy.

c!Tommy has no responsibility to help or ever forgive c!Dream - not to say he could. The two, as it is, would drag each other down instead of helping in any capacity, and only make matters worse. The two of them shouldn’t even interact in the best case scenario - the best thing for both of them would be if they got enough healing and support individually that they could live around each other and not get their trauma or toxic habits triggered when interacting for whatever purpose of the plot.

So, if not c!Tommy (and c!Tubbo neither by extension), who could redeem c!Dream?

Well, he can’t do it on his own for sure. Being in nature with animals is nice, but further isolation from other people would merely help with the prison trauma, not with the state of his tendencies when interacting with others. He, once again, needs positive reinforcement from other people for him to heal properly.

There are two main options for this in my mind, and then there’s a few individuals he could also find comfort in, including people from both groups or those unaligned.

1) Kinoko Kingdom

From the people of this new country, c!Dream has never negatively interacted with c!Karl before, he has never hurt c!George and he hasn’t directly harmed c!Sapnap. Although the relationship with his old friend group could be difficult to rekindle, none of them have grudges against him that are too personal, and they have been canonically close friends since the beginning of the SMP, so it would be very much possible to rebuild burnt bridges. They’d be familiar, and with the addition of c!Karl they could be a good source of comfort for c!Dream after he either breaks out or is released from prison - just gotta convince c!Sapnap not to kill him first.

2) The Syndicate

From the Syndicate, c!Dream has never directly interacted with c!Nikki, and from what I know of her character she never seemed to be very affected by his actions - even doing his work for him when he was planning to burn down the L’Mantree. c!Techno is an ally who doesn’t have anything against him, and as for c!Ranboo, here is why I believe c!Dream being in the Syndicate could be positively influential on his character arc as well;

c!Ranboo and c!Philza have had a conversation about change, during which c!Ranboo made it clear he thinks everyone can change except for c!Dream; who, in his mind, is “too deep down the rabbit hole”. c!Philza replied that he thinks anyone can change if given enough time.

… you see what I’m getting at?

c!Dream has been implied to be an ally to c!Ranboo’s enderwalk state (or the state when he has access to his full memory), and hence would most likely not behave negatively towards him at all. While it might make it more difficult for c!Ranboo to deal with his own issues, it might also give him more motivation to get to the bottom of it as well, especially since he now has access to the person who, presumably, started this all. While this is going on, c!Dream would show himself in a much different light than c!Ranboo sees himin, which could lead to confusion, realization of the flaws in his own logic, and hence, positive character development.

Here’s a great post about why c!Techno as a character could be a great asset in c!Dream’s healing process & redemption, and why there is not much need to worry about him not knowing or finding out about c!Dream’s actions.

Of Kinoko Kingdom and the Syndicate, as far as I know, neither c!Tommy nor c!Tubbo have ever been directly involved with these groups, nor are they planning to.

Another important point to make is that, while c!Tommy needs to be kept away from c!Dream in order to heal properly, the same goes for c!Quackity and c!Sam in c!Dream’s case. While c!Quackity has high chances to interact with either Kinoko Kingdom or the Syndicate in the future, there’s an even higher chance, in that situation, that c!Dream would be offered protection, which is also important; there is no healing from trauma without the knowledge of safety, to some degree.

So, this was an essay as to why I think c!Dream’s recovery and redemption (one needs to come before the other, naturally) is not only extremely possible but also could be pulled off well and have a positive impact on both the characters, and the audience.

#dreblr #dream smp #c!dream #c!dream sympathetic #c!quackity neg #c!sam neg #dsmp analysis #tw torture #tw abuse #long post #i really should start writing longer essays #i need more material #anyways #hope y'all liked this #just joining the debate #:]

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

just because you’re afraid it doesn’t mean you’re broken.

Titans 3.05

once more into the cold dark void of the internet with my stream-of-consciousness take on a superhero tv show...

spoilers ahead.

1. i cannot believe that among the first things i get to hear in this episode with my own two ears is the line 'eluded our overdudes'. why must you give me such pain along with so much joy, show?

1.5. scarecrow stringing jason along on this path to red-hood-dom is not something i would’ve ever expected, but does kind of make sense. 

1.55. i don’t know all the details of the original resurrection arc in the comics but i like that jason, weirdly, has a greater role to play in his own demise and rebirth? i think it makes it easier to draw a line between his past trauma, the demonstrably shitty and terrifying responsibility of being robin, the ways bruce and the titans wronged him, his responses to that, the reasons he turns to scarecrow, and his final evolution to red hood. it makes for a smoother character arc rather than a one that was interrupted for two decades before somebody went oh hey let’s resurrect that kid that the audience once voted to kill and make him an anti-hero!

1.75. what’s crane giving him? anti fear toxin? anyway, crane is a fucking creep and i’m not sure i want to see a whole lot of him on my screen.

2. oh, um, heads up: there’s a long sequence of unsteady cam + flickering lights right after the title card upto the 3:16 mark. it’s a bit headache-inducing so if you want to skip, you can go ahead and do that. 

2.45. that’s... weird... why would he dream about... donna...

ok, who am i kidding. i’m going to jump right into my theory about Why Titans Makes Sense Actually because the show itself is apparently not interested in explaining itself:

a) it makes no sense for jason to be conjuring up donna--who famously did not care much for him!--in his dreams. (he wasn’t even there when she died.) or for her to be telling him don’t go or there’s still time.

b) this leads me to think that that’s actually donna, in some sort of limbo between life and death, the kind of place where jericho used to be

c) rachel has demonstrated that she has the power to link the minds of the titans across great distances--she called jason and hank/dawn for help in 2.01, she linked up everybody later in the season, projected dick’s hallucination of his father into their brains without even realising she was doing it, and in the finale, she managed to get dick into conner’s brain. she’s in themyscira now. is this how she gets donna back to life? but reaching out to her in that non-space between life and death?

d) the next obvious question is: why isn’t donna appearing in the dreams of the other titans? she probably is, but they have better reason to be dreaming about her since they were actually close to her, unlike jason.

e) but why would she warn jason in particular? does she foresee jason entering the afterlife--however briefly? does she have an idea of what jason plans to do and what he will become?

f) anyway, more trippy mindscapes and weird psychic powers, yay!

2.5. my heart clenched when bruce comforted jason post-nightmare: clearly i’ve been reading way too much batfam fic. this is a side of bruce we haven’t really been told to expect by all the characters on the show calling him a ‘psychopath’ (*cough*unreliablenarrators*cough*) and him getting jason to speak to a professional speaks volumes about the kind of self-reflection he’s done post dick’s departure, and maybe some of the regrets he has with regards to how he dealt with dick’s traumas.

i mean, just look at him when jason dismisses his concerns! BRUCE IS TRYING JASON

anyway, i have a whole lot more i want to say about this, but i’ll save it for later. 

also: LESLIE THOMPKINS!!!!

3. i really like molly--and i love that she’s a friend from before jason got taken in by bruce, the implication that they meet up regularly and that she’s a grounding influence on him (tho clearly not grounding enough to not go along with his dumbass idea about confronting a child trafficker alone). 

3.5. aw, jason. robin was his armour against everything in the world that would throw him down and chew him to bits, but san francisco proved that even robin wasn’t enough to protect him. it’s really interesting how ‘disillusionment with the idea of robin’ is so integral to the traumas of both dick and jason but in such different ways. 

4. LESLIE!!!!!!! i even forgive her office being so goddamn blue because leslie! 

4.5. it makes so much sense for titans!verse leslie to be a therapist, because this show is so inward looking anyway, and therapist sessions are a useful tool to showcase this character work in a story. besides, at least in fanfic, leslie often seems to double up as a counsellor anyway. 

4.6. oh man. i’m not terribly convinced by walters’ red hood (tho i think that may be the point--argh. i’ll come back to this thought later. have to stop getting distracted!) but he plays the asshole kid that’s trying not to let any real emotion seep through really well.

“you’d like me to punch you, wouldn’t you”

5. not sure what to think of batman’s little trophy case other than the show winking unsubtly at us and going look look - catwoman! the riddler! two face! you excited yet?! it’s like the scene from the end of amazing spiderman 2 when they were trying to drum up excitement for a sinister six spinoff by having harry osborne walk by a bunch of display cases with stuff from iconic villains in them.

... but then again, bruce does like to display a lot of shit in his batcave, including his dead robin’s bloodstained costume, so.

5.5. bruce is so soft with jason it’s killing me. beyond just trying to learn from his mistakes with dick, it speaks to his own genuine desire to balance his dedication to gotham with doing the best by his sons, although he’s often not successful with that. 

i love that titans is really playing the long game with bruce wayne, with each season and character-perspective sliding in fresh pieces of a bigger puzzle. titans’ bruce has always been a phantom of other peoples’ making, but now we’re getting the idea that he’s a whole lot more complicated than other people make it seem.

5.75. it really recontextualises some of his actions from previous seasons: the fact that he locked dick out of his security systems in 1.06 is likely his way of respecting dick’s independence and his desire not to be associated with batman/gotham anymore. jason knowing about bruce’s tracker while dick doesn’t is probably bruce trying to be more honest and upfront with his charges. bruce sending jason packing off to sanfran to spend time with the titans is probably not him passing on a big responsibility to dick (as i first uncharitably thought) but him trying to get jason out of the toxic influence of gotham for a while and a sign of his trust in dick as a leader and a mentor,

5.8. i mean, bruce is a prick, but he’s also human.

6. i think leslie is doing some good work with jason here, though she may have overstepped the line with her line about robin as a construct being projected by a man with BPD. her speculations about bruce’s diagnosis have no place in her session with jason, and if bruce confides in her, an egregious violation of patient-therapist confidentiality. 

(about the diagnosis itself... i don’t know. i can’t really confirm or refute this without a whole lot more information, and i’m not sure if the writer of this episode means BPD in the same way an actual professional might.)

6.5. i think a huge thing that gets missed out in a lot of recent comics as well as movies/shows is that bruce didn’t create the robin persona out of whole cloth. dick did. he’s the starting point of that legacy and to call it entirely bruce’s creation is blatant erasure of that. in fact, i’m surprised that dick doesn’t feature more in the conversations they’re having about the pressures of being robin. after all, the guy had been robin--bruce’s partner--for such a long time before jason. 

6.8. (and here’s the primal part of me that resonates the deepest with dick grayson--the Eldest Daughter part--that’s sort of resentful: that jason gets the therapy and softness and the learning from mistakes when it took years and years for bruce to reach out in any meaningful way to dick.)

7. oooh that was a great scene!

it’s fun to do these stream-of-consciousness live reactions, because the moment you step down from your soapbox, the episode goes right into tackling what you were just complaining about. bruce means well, he’s learning, but he goes about exactly the wrong way to help jason: taking away robin now can’t be read by jason as anything but a devastating judgment call from bruce. and iain glen really sells the moment that bruce realises this--too late--and his helplessness in trying to get jason to see that it isn’t jason’s fault that he’s trying to do this. he loves jason enough that jason is enough. 

7.5. aaaah so jason brings up the elephant in the room at last. dick got everything makes sense from his perspective, where getting to put on a costume and fight crime means approval, means being something stronger and better than you are. dick got to be robin, then nightwing, and a leader of a whole team of other costume-clad heroes. 

8. ... how did jason just walk into arkham????? this is ridiculous.

8.3. i mean, clearly jason’s not thinking straight, but betraying batman like this puts his possibilities of being robin again even further away. 

8.5. watching that chemistry experiment montage was strangely funny. this guy is looking for an antidote to fear? well, constantly mixing up and inhaling gases concocted by a mad-scientist supervillain is something only the very fearless--reckless to the point of foolishness!--would do. what’s to say crane’s not given you a formula for a drug that will keep you tethered to his every will and whim? hmmmm?

8.7. so he sought out the joker to... test the formula??? 

9. wow the “loud and clear... boss” hits different after a whole episode of them referring to each other as father and son.

9.3. waitwaitwait HOLD UP. wait a DANG MINUTE. you’re telling me that scarecrow had enough resources that he could not only have folks on the outside steal jason away and dunk him in a lazarus pit (i TOLD you that this show would bring up and dismiss ra’s al ghul in a ten second aside! I TOLD YOU) but also have his own little chemistry lab in the basement, AND have enough resources for jason to build his red hood persona???????? all of this in barely twenty four hours?

well there goes my ‘jason orchestrated his death’ theory. it was nice while it lasted. *cups hands to the sky* fly away, my baby.

9.6. a part of me is gleeful at the rushed nature of such an iconic transformation though, especially when compared to all the character work that went before it. we’re so used to getting the opposite that it’s fucking delightful to have a show that’s more interested in exploring its characters’ minds rather than battle scenes or recreating transformations from the comics. that’s taken such bold and exciting steps to fully convey all the nuances of its most recognisable character, bruce wayne, from casting an older actor to play him to unflinchingly showing just how damaging the vigilante lifestyle has been to him and the people he loves. BRILLIANT

*sporfle*

10. again, heads up: a whole lot of flashing lights between 40:28 and 42:00. 

10.3. i guess it’s the super-compressed timeline that’s really throwing me off. where did he have the time to get/develop the mind control thing from? or is it something that he got from the cabal of villains that he intimidated at the beginning of 3.02? very messy.

10.5. i love molly, i hope she shows up again this season.

11. aaaand that’s it! that was a solid episode as flashback episodes go, but now i can’t wait to return to the present.

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #jason todd #bruce wayne #leslie thompkins #a tragic jalebi #robin #red hood

[pynkhues]

I got so excited seeing you post about Succession, I am absolutely obsessed with everything about that show from the writing, to the performances, to Kendall fucking Roy. Would love to hear any of your takes or analysis on the Roy siblings.

Oh my gosh, me too, anon. I'd been watching the eps a few at a time and when I got halfway through s2, I started watching them one at a time just because I didn't want it to end! It's been a crazy long time since I've done that, and it was such an invigorating feeling to enjoy a show that much to want to draw it out again. I finished s2 a few days ago and am halfway through a rewatch already, haha, and I am SO. HYPED. for s3.

It's so well written and like you said, the performances are top-notch (Jeremy Strong ridiculously deserved his Emmy last year, oh my god), and just the pay off with plotlines and character arcs is unreal, even if that pay off often hurts. I think it does such a great job of showing how filthy rich they are too, but making no part of their life aspirational? Which is a hard line to walk. They're all so miserable and traumatised and disconnected and lonely and they're destined to stay that way because they have no emotional tools to do or be otherwise. It hurts, but it's so frequently what they deserve too, and that gets so tangled up and twisted. I love it.

And man, the Roy kids!! Putting some broadstrokes analysis / opinions under the cut, because omg, I feel like I'll be talking for 1,200 years otherwise, haha.

Connor Roy

Legit obsessed tbh. When I was growing up, my mum was a huge Spin City fan, so she used to park me and my sister on the floor in front of it with toys while she watched, and as a result I think I have this really warm response to Alan Ruck, haha. He's fantastic in this, and lends the right amount of vulnerability to Connor.

I love that there's this push-pull with him as kind of an outsider, but also not? Like he's there at the table, to borrow the phrase from Tom, but there's very much this feeling that it's a courtesy or formality to Logan's previous family (and god, I'm dying to know more about his mum / Logan's first wife), but that doesn't stop this deep rooted need that Connor shares with his siblings for their father's validation.

I think a lot about what Connor says to Kendall in the s1 finale about how anyone can have a million dollars, but right now, with Logan's empire, they're somebody. It's this sort of tangled disconnect from reality (anyone can have a million dollars??) but also his desire to be seen broadly, but more specifically seen as Logan's son, that I feel really grounds Connor's arc, and I feel like he's just going to get louder and louder about it, especially with his presidential run getting closer.

Kendall Roy

Okay, okay, okay, I know that he's an absolute nightmare and a terrible human, but oh my goooooddddd, I love him as a character. I saw it in somebody's tags on a gifset, but I love this set-up where Logan keeps Kendall on the shortest leash, but it's a leash all of his siblings, despite themselves, want to be on. That's awful, but so indicative of the toxic way that Logan's raised his children.

There's also a great quote from Jeremy Strong somewhere, and I can't find it now, but to paraphrase, he said that the whole family is raised on this idea of strength and power, and Kendall's sort of a case study in strength not being his native language. It's so true, and I think Kendall's smart and resourceful and quick on his feet, but he's also so often desperately trying to wear a costume of who he thinks he should be.

I don't think he's weak (in fact, I think he's really resiliant), but he's definitely a fragile character and an addict, who nakedly needs nurturing that no one is willing to give him, least of all his mother (which, god, that scene when he tries to talk to her in the UK destroyed me) so instead he pretends to mould himself into the perceived image of his father and fails every time.

It's brutal to watch, especially when you see other characters know that and use it to manipulate him. Hell, his own father pretends to nurture and protect him (and I think kind of genuinely does too? But it's so warped?) the whole of s2, and it brings Kendall closer than ever before. It's painful, and affecting, and it's just this manifestation of trauma in a hopeless, cringe-inducing package, haha.

Roman Roy

Another nightmare baby I tragically love, hahaha. I actually think Roman's had one of the most interesting arcs on the show and one of the few that seems to be positive? Like his tendency to not take anything seriously so that he never truly fails was pretty fun in the first season, but to see that evolve into someone who's green but has great gut instincts, and is good when he lets himself be and when he lets himself try, is really invigorating narratively, especially as the other characters all slip further down morally and/or stagnate.

I'm loving the way that it's sort of cannibalising itself though too with him and Geri's relationship suddenly, um, pivoting, hahaha, and especially the way she's honed in on him getting off on being demeaned. There's something really fun about the one character clawing his way up masturbating to being told exactly how low he is.

Plus Kieran Culkin is a gem.

Shiv Roy

Sarah!! Snook!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've had a huge crush on her since Not Suitable for Children so was already totally delighted to see her in this, but oh my god, she's so good, and Shiv is so awful in so many wonderful ways. I love that she's kind of like Kendall in the way she pendulums between extreme competence and the most mortifying self-sabotage, and the way she's a very specific sort of insecure. Logan never asked her, y'know? Not really, and the way she knows she's his favourite, but knows that being his favourite without the validation of succession doesn't mean anything.

In a lot of ways, she encapsulates the show's themes and Logan's abuse in the best way, because she has what her brothers want. Her father loves her more openly than he does any of them, but that love isn't enough, because Logan's made sure it never will be. It's not a true love after all, because Logan loves them, but he loves none of them more than himself and his legacy, and being given the latter is what they've all been convinced will make them happy when it never will.

Nothing will.

It's just so good and so painful, and I'm in love with it all.

#i hope this makes an ounce of sense anon #i am still extremely in my feelings haha #hbo succession #connor roy #kendall roy #roman roy #shiv roy #welcome to my ama

[eldritchamy]

I watched “Happiest Season” and no it fucking wasn’t.

Here’s a review so you don’t have to suffer like I did: if I wasn’t watching it as the host of a movie night, I would not have made it past 20-30 minutes in.

It was very uncomfortable to watch.  I feel like I just spent two hours on a plane with a crying baby.  Except the baby was a homophobic rich white Republican that I was forced to campaign for.  All of the people I watched it with, including myself, found it stressful, anxiety inducing, and deeply unpleasant.  The first thing I did when it was over was warn my best friend not to watch it.

90% of the movie is rich white straight people drama forcing lesbians into the closet.  It’s not fun.  It’s not happy.  It wasn’t enjoyable.  At all.  Watching this was an uncompromisingly depressing and miserable experience.

It was marketed as a romantic comedy and it was neither of those things.   I feel repressed for having seen it.  

Every relationship in this movie is toxic and hard to watch, with the sole exception of two other characters who aren’t part of the family both having much better chemistry with Kristen Stewart’s character than her girlfriend.

Aubrey Plaza playing Gay Aubrey Plaza one of two redeeming things in the movie and she’s in it for about ten minutes, and even one of her scenes was hard for me to sit through (the awkward and dubiously written drag bar scene)  The other 90 minutes are agonizingly drawn out and unbearable.

If you are determined to support this movie because god knows we need more (and MUCH better) representation and we live in a hellscape where money is the only way to ask for such things, press play on it and then take out your headphones and go read a book instead until it’s over.

For your own sake please do not watch this.  

I genuinely can’t tell who it’s even FOR.  If anything about this movie resonates with you, I am SORRY to hear that, because you are probably the lesbian daughter of a very rich white man running for office as a Republican, and watching any of the rich housewife reality shows probably gives you PTSD because those are the kind of people you grew up with.  

And even IF that is the case, spare yourself the trauma of watching your own life and watch something else instead.  This movie will only hurt you.

Nothing about the experience of seeing this was worth it.

Plot spoilers ahead.

The plot is as follows:

Abby (Kristen Stewart) loves her girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis).  But she does not love Christmas.  After a night out together, Harper asks her to join her when she visits her family for the holidays.  Abby says yes, and gets her gay male friend John (that guy from Schitt’s Creek) to cover pet sitting for her. While running a few errands with him, she goes to pick up an engagement ring which looks completely unattainable for a woman who makes a living as a pet sitter.

When they are almost to Harper’s family’s home, she awkwardly brings up that she lied about coming out to them earlier in the year.  They still don’t know she’s gay and they have to make sure the family is perfect and scandal free because her dad is running for mayor or something and one of his donors? campaign manager? is going to be there.  So they have to pretend Abby is her straight roommmate.  They fight about it before Abby very reluctantly agrees.  This is a pattern that repeats until Abby can’t take any more.

The family is like upper-class-Republican terrible.  They are AWFUL people.  The parents treat their children like trophies in a display case, and the children all feel forced into brutal competition with each other to see who the parents will actually be proud of.  One of Harper’s sisters (Jane) is actually an okay person who does nothing wrong, but she’s an aspiring writer who has spent 10 years not finishing her book and she’s played like she belongs in a different movie, and it feels like she’s meant to be seen as the useless layabout sibling, in a cruelly funny way.  

The other sister is a nightmare of a woman (Sloane? I think?) played by a completely unrecognizable Allison Brie.  She’s a lawful evil cutthroat monster who is straight up VICIOUS to the other two, and is especially terrible to Harper, because neither of them even see Jane as competition.  Her own family is the thing she uses to try to be worthy of her parents’ pride and affection.  

The dad is focused entirely on his campaign and is more or less indifferent to all of them unless they aren’t “presentable” and “scandal free” enough to keep his potential donor/campaign manager satisfied, in which case he “expects better of them” until they behave.  The children are like 30.  

The mom is maybe the worst of all of them.  She’s invasive, ignorant in that forceful way where she doesn’t give a shit about anything except her own bubble of reality that she thinks she’s living in and blows past any contradiction to it like it’s not even there, nitpicky about what everyone’s doing, is willfully out of touch with everything she’s told (Abby’s parents died when she was 19, and she spends the movie acting like she thinks Abby grew up in an orphanage made of dirt and never had a Christmas before).  And she will not leave the two of them alone.  She insists it’s ridiculous for two grown women to share a bedroom and gives Abby a room without a lock in a basement that’s bigger than my whole house, while Harper’s room is upstairs.  Everyone is constantly barging into Abby’s room with less than two seconds of notice, which leads to the kind of tension and awkwardness you’d expect.  The first morning, Abby wakes up to Sloane’s children staring at her.

Abby is clearly MISERABLE.  And so are you, because you’re watching this movie.  Abby and Harper are constantly pushed apart by the family, and Harper pushes Abby away while pretending to be perfect and straight for her family.

Her family invited Harper’s ex boyfriend, who thinks they should rekindle things.  Super fun thing that I always love to see in my lesbian media.

While out at dinner, Abby and Harper have another mini fight in the bathroom.  Harper promises she had no idea Connor(?) was going to be there and that there won’t be any more surprises.  They walk out of the bathroom, right into Harper’s OTHER ex, her first girlfriend Riley (Aubrey Plaza, who literally just plays herself and is the only good thing about the movie).

This is the first 20 minutes.

There’s a party that leaves Abby feeling isolated and pushed away.  She goes outside to make a phone call.  She makes regular texts and phone calls to John for support and advice throughout the movie.  He’s terrible at taking care of fish, but he’s genuinely a good friend to her and it’s clear he cares about her a lot.  It’s probably unfair not to say his friendship is the second redeeming thing in the movie.  After Abby gets off the phone with him the first time, Riley comes out from around the corner and tries to be nice, saying she could relate to what she’s going through.  Abby kind of closes off from her and she takes the hint without any fuss and leaves her alone.

The movie slogs on with compounding stress and anxiety and a moment when Abby is LITERALLY forced to hide in a closet and pretend she was sleepwalking on her way to Harper’s bedroom at night.  It MIGHT have been an attempt at a joke?  I’m genuinely not sure because I did not come close to laughing once in the entire 100 minutes of this nightmare.  Harper instead sneaks into Abby’s room while she’s awkwardly trying to get away from Harper’s mom.  That’s where the gifs of the sneak-snuggle from behind the door come from.  Enjoy the gifs because everything that wasn’t giffed is not worth seeing.  Harper spends the night there.

Bright and early, Harper’s mom comes knocking on the door, trying to open it and barge in again but Abby blocked the door with something heavy claiming it was to “keep her from sleepwalking again” (her excuse for being in the closet) while Harper frantically gets almost-dressed and hides behind the door as BOTH parents come to bother them, and the evil sister’s children see her partially dressed through the crack in the door.

Later that day Abby has to go shopping for a present for the “White Elephant” Harper didn’t warn her about.  She bumps into Sloane at the mall, who dumps her kids off on her before quickly leaving.  The kids very intentionally frame Abby for shoplifting by putting a necklace in her bag, and there’s a really awkward and uncomfortable scene with her being interrogated by overly forceful mall cops who are yelling at her.  When she finally gets back to the house, Harper’s entire family now thinks she’s a criminal.

Abby spends the night alone during another (campaign?) party that Harper told her she’d probably be happier getting left out of, and she bumps into Riley on the street and gets to talking with her, still more frustrated by Harper and her family.  She says she needs some alcohol, Riley takes her to a drag bar which gave me really bad vibes and bonds with her there, telling her a bit about her relationship with Harper.  They dated secretly (obviously) in their first year of high school (which implies she knew she was gay before she dated Connor, and used him as a cover).  They would sneak each other romantic notes.  When someone found one in Harper’s locker, she threw Riley under the bus completely, outed her, and said she was obsessed with her so she could go on pretending to be straight.  They bond a bit and seem like they could be friends, at a minimum.  They have a few more scenes together over the next hour (yeah there’s still that much movie left, and if you’re wondering how it could be that bad, you’re welcome for the warning, because I was wondering that too) and they have better chemistry than Abby and Harper by miles.

Eventually Abby becomes so miserable she checks the movie-specific version of Uber to try to go home by herself, but it’s running at holiday rates so it would cost over $1000 for her to leave.  She’s still tempted to do it, and calls John again for advice and says she feels awful, completely alone, and with no way out of this horrible situation.  He gives her some more friendly support.

Abby still needs a White Elephant gift, but has no way to go by herself because Harper drove them there.  So she calls Riley to go with her.  They spend a day hanging out together while Harper is doing some other thing with her dad’s campaign, and Abby makes text excuses to Harper, who then immediately sees Riley and Abby walking by on the street together.  Before she gets a chance to run out and say something, she gets interrupted by something I thankfully don’t remember (I long for the moment this is true of the rest of it).

Riley and Abby bond some more but nothing romantic happens.  The plot only wants them to be good friends, even though their chemistry is really good.

At the end of the day Abby comes in and Harper immediately almost starts a fight with her but they get interrupted again somehow.

I have willed most of the next 20 minutes out of my mind, apparently.

There’s yet another party at this gigantic house because I hate the rich, Abby and Riley talk more.  This is the one with the really gay outfit.  Abby admits to Riley that she was planning on proposing to Harper, but at this point it’s like she’s a completely different person and she can’t tell who the real Harper is.  Riley says it’s probably both of them.

SURPRISE JOHN IS HERE.  He comes in the front door and calls for Abby.  After Abby’s last phone call he arranged for his therapist to do the pet sitting and he drove all the way here just so he could take her home.  Seriously, John has incredible Good Friend Energy.  Yet more awkwardness ensues, while John mixes some awkward flirting with Connor into his poor attempt to come off as straight.  Abby then walks right up to Harper, says “we’re done” and goes to grab some things to leave.  Harper follows her into the room and tries to get her to stay, Abby says she can’t take the hiding and the general misery, the whole experience has been terrible and she’s not sure if Harper is the person she thought she was.  Harper argues for her to stay and says she’s caught between being afraid of losing her family if she comes out and knowing she’ll lose Abby if she doesn’t.  She promises to come out to them as soon as the holidays are over because Abby is more important to her.  They kiss briefly and realize Sloane is in the doorway.

Sloane tries to run to tell the rest of the family because burning Harper’s reputation forever means she’ll be the one their parents love most.  They fight in the many hallways of this stupidly enormous rich people house (this is when “Stay out of it, Sappho” happens) and on the way to ruin her sister’s life Sloane finds her husband making out with another ....campaign person? in the pantry and or closet which is big enough to fit two people inside.   Now Harper has something to use against Sloane.  This family is fucking horrible.  Sloane gets to where everyone else is first, and outs Harper.

Harper tries to swear she’s not gay, and sees Abby watching her.  She silently turns and walks out the door with John.  Harper then grabs a giant painting that Jane spent 100 hours on for the white elephant and smashes it over Sloane’s head and yells at her before falling apart.

Abby and John have another heartfelt conversation where John asks how she came out to her parents, and she said they loved and supported her.  Then he said his dad kicked him out on the street and didn’t talk to him for thirteen years.  He says everyone’s story is different, and Harper was still going through hers, and it was a hard one.  I THINK he acknowledges that if Abby doesn’t feel like she belongs in that story, she shouldn’t force herself to?  But that might have been wishful hindsight.  Abby comes back into the house to grab her things and leave, Harper comes out to her family right in front of her, Abby says it was too late and leaves anyway.  Harper is crushed and the rest of the family starts to see how fucked up they all are.

And then in the span of 7 fucking minutes the parents realize they were shitty to Sloane and Harper and the only reason Jane turned out okay is because they gave up on her, they give a minimal apology to their children, who also realize they were shitty to each other, and then it’s the next day and Abby is there with them, Harper has the ring on her finger, and everyone is magically happy now because the dad turned down his campaign advisor who said she could still work with him if he kept Harper’s “problem” a secret.

Jane’s book becomes a best seller and she’s friends with John now, because he was the only person who seemed genuinely interested in her passion.  He sits next to her at her book signing.  The end.

No, I’m not kidding.

As soon as it was over, I thought, wow that felt like a rushed happy ending that got slapped onto the end with nothing building up to or deserving it.

After further consideration, that gives it too much credit.

Because honestly? after the first hour and thirty five minutes of this hell, Abby and Harper being together at the end is not even something I would consider a happy ending.  I wasn’t satisfied at all.  It DEFINITELY felt like Abby ending up with Riley would have been a better movie.

If I had been told beforehand that a lesbian romcom starring Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis, and featuring Aubrey Plaza as Gay Aubrey Plaza would have been an absolutely miserable experience that was hard to sit through and nothing but unpleasant to watch, I would probably have been shocked and disappointed.  

But at least I would have not seen this movie.  That is my gift to you.  Please do NOT watch this.

It was marketed as a romantic comedy and it lived up to neither of those claims.  Absolutely terrible movie.  The happiest season of all is one where you don’t watch this stressful, uncomfortable disaster.

#eldritchreviews

[apprenticevida]

I know you lovelies like playlists, so here: have a sometimes updated, mostly chronological WIP playlist for Vida!

It’s about 12 hours long, because I’m a pack rat.

Track explanations under the cut. Because it’s a lot.

Benediction And Dream: I like this as an intro song. Set in Galbrada. (I hc Galbrada as Fantasy!Spain, but for all intents and purposes, consider a re-skinned Ohio)

La Bruja: Vida’s theme song

South of the Border through Smalltown Boy: Vida’s youth and adolescence. They’re queer and nonbinary in a place that doesn’t know what to do with that. Vida’s parents love them, but they aren’t exactly accepting of them. Nica and Alpin are both religious and mean well, they really do, but to have their firstborn daughter go against so much of what they believe is hard. Vida’s relationship with their siblings is strained as they grow up, but Dáibhidh (Dai for short) and Alma become their closest friends and biggest supporters. Sachairi is still very young and doesn’t really care about any of this. He loves his big sister and doesn’t understand what the deal is. (Vida is misgendered a lot by everyone except Alma and Dai.)

Spanish Ladies: Vida leaves Galbrada for Vesuvia. Nica and Alma see them off.

The Island through Rye Whiskey: WE’RE ON A BOAT. Sea shanties and drinks aplenty! This is Mazelinka’s ship because I’m a trite author she and Duende are friends. Maz is one of the first adults that tries to understand Vida, uses their pronouns, etc. Julian is also there.

Hey Mami: Vida arrives in Vesuvia! They’re an adult in a new country! Why are all these people looking at them like that???!!!

Under My Skin: Homesickness is weird. They miss their family but there was so much stress they had to bury deep down.

God is Alive Magic is Afoot through The Mystic’s Dream: Duende Time.

Sea of Love through Gooey: Asra Time. Vida and Asra fall for each other hard and fast. A couple of dumb virgins.

Shadow of the Hunted: Muriel Time.

Mama’s Room through Genderqueer Love Song: Vida and Asra ARE ADULTS DOING ADULT THINGS (mostly each other)

Third Eye Sixth Sense: Oh yeah they’re supposed to be learning magic from Tía Duende. Hey, this magic stuff is really fun! Vida’s really good at it!! Duende sees their potential and devises plans.

The Court of the Crimson King: Duende brings Vida to the palace to formally introduce them to the Count and Countess of Vesuvia. This is basically a ploy by Duende to curry favor with the court. Vida is smart and pretty, and despite not wanting to leave the shop they do well at court.

The Soundmaker: Vida’s all goo-goo eyes at the Countess. Nadia is the most beautiful and elegant woman they’ve ever met.

God Help You Dumb Boy through Doctrine: Lucio Time.

My Type through Livin’ La Vida Loca: Vida’s life in Vesuvia. Lots of beautiful people. Exploring submission with Nadia. Oh hey, Julian’s here to stay? Vida catches feelings for everyone. Hanging out with Asra and Muriel, generally having a great time.

Safe, Now: Everything is good and nothing hurts. They’re with Asra, talking magical theory with him and Duende; learning to contact The Arcana; learning how to play the violin with Julian; dancing with Nadia; quiet forest nights with Muriel. Things should stay like this forever!

The Plague: ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

Severed Soul: Asra Time OVER. Vida believes there’s something, ANYTHING that can be done to help, but Asra is antsy to leave Vesuvia. The Red Plague is only getting worse and more prevalent in the city, if they don’t leave now, they will lose everything. Vida tells him to go, they won’t follow. This is the beginning of the end.

Season of the Witch through Mystic Woman: Tía Duende is infected with the plague. Vida water skypes home and Nica is on the first boat to Vesuvia. Through various deals Duende’s made, she’s able to last a lot longer than expected. Nica makes it in time to help…

Spanish Ladies through La Llorona: …but she also catches the plague. Duende has nothing else she can barter, and Nica dies quickly. Heartbroken that she couldn’t do anything to save the closest thing she had to a daughter, Duende follows quickly. Vida is left alone to mourn. The ports are shut down. They clean out the home of anything that could be contaminated. Soon all that’s left are memories. Vida closes the shop for good, alone in an empty building. Quarantined until it’s obvious they haven’t caught the plague. They’re lucky, it’s a miracle they weren’t infected after all that time.

Pretty Little Head: The trauma of all this loss breaks Vida. A grief-induced breakdown. The beginning of short-lived hook-ups, including grief-sex with Muriel.

Coffee through Kinky: Vida leaves for the palace after Nadia finds out what happened. She invites Vida to stay as long as they want, all their needs will be taken care of. Without Duende to play interference, Vida gets to know the Courtiers (At Midnight). Vida’s grip on reality becomes tenuous the more they visit the Arcane Realm. In the physical realm they just go full-tilt on the hedonism of the palace. Lots of drinking, lots of smoking, lots of bad decisions they can’t remember. Valerius becomes a drinking friend of sorts. They shut out people emotionally who try to help, but become desperate to be wanted by anyone.

Ay Mi Pendejo through Marat/Sade: Lucio Time. Vida can indulge in self-harm, self-hate, violent aggression, and just absolute toxic behavior with Lucio. Things stop being a game though when they “wake up” to how self-centered Lucio is with all his power and riches. Vesuvia is dying around them, but nothing changes. The love-hate they feel becomes just regular hate. Maybe they should take Julian up on his offer to actually help the city in his clinic.

Dr. Flynn through Le Moribund: Vida tries to help, but still struggle to take care of themself. Whatever luck kept them safe from the plague is running out. A gift of red lipstick from someone was made with the plague beetles. When they notice the red in their eyes isn’t going away, they cut and run. Muriel is the only one they tell in person. A letter to Julian and Nadia is sent from the docks and takes too long to arrive. The Plague drains their magic as quickly as their life when they’re at the Lazaret.

Your Protector: Asra arrives to a shop that’s been empty for years. He’s too late, Muriel tells him. Vida left for the Lazaret months ago and never returned.

Bones through Cliquot: Asra finds Vida’s remains at the Lazaret and knows this isn’t fair. They had so much life they could have lived. They wanted to help, Asra ran. A plan is made. A call is made for all magicians, physicians, alchemists, anyone to find a cure for the plague as Lucio shows signs of the plague.

Gymnopédie No. 1 through New Men With Old Man Named: Necromancy pays, but comes with a cost. A deal is made, Vida’s alive, but with no memories, skills, or abilities from their life before. Asra is their caretaker, teacher, and friend interchangeably. They are the one who teaches Vida everything they will come to know, and over time their personality returns, but their old insecurities are back in full force.

Fluid through The Floating Bed: Vida’s feelings for Asra grow and blossom. This was going to be the beginning of Asra’s route before I got caught up in Julian’s route in the game. I’ll probably rearrange the playlist to fit the prologue here and move these songs elsewhere.

Miri’s Magic Dance through Not Human Anymore: Julian’s route, no other LIs. Vida is utterly devoted to Julian, but ends up enabling and echoing his self-sacrificing behavior. Co-dependent. Reversed Ending.

Big God through Love Like You: An assorted jumble of unorganized songs. Most of these are for Nadia and Portia. When I say WIP, this is the In Progress portion.

#vida vibes #apprentice vida #I hope you like text #this is basically the outline for Viva Mi Vida #planning viva mi vida #oc playlist #the arcana oc

[i-just-love-spop]

I’m here

Some nights were alright.

Some nights were bad.

And some nights were terrible.

Bow was there to remind Glimmer that she wasn’t alone during all of them.

Glimbow-centric. Catradora is hinted at, but is completely off-screen for this one.

Glimmer is very heavily implied to also be traumatized in “Save the Cat”, and while it’s definitely different from Catra’s trauma, I imagine it’s pretty bad as well, so instead of writing the seven other concepts that are flying around in my notes, I decided to write this one because it jumped at me randomly way too early in the morning.

I know that there are technically no “nights” in space, but they still have some sort of day-night-rhythm, and night in this case just refers to the time they are all sleeping – or should be, at least.

Takes place in between “Taking Control” and “Perils of Peekablue”. This assumes that traveling from Etheria to Prime’s flagship and back took them at least three weeks each, because of their old ship, their limited knowledge of the technology and the lack of any ability to teleport or create portals. I have no idea if that’s accurate, but then again, nobody really knows how much time passes during the show.

TW: PTSD-induced panic attacks.

Glimmer‘s body tensed up in Bow‘s arms while she slept, just like it had happened the nights before, ever since Catra had teleported her off of Prime‘s ship.

He was still awake, hugging her gently to remind her he was there, and always on the lookout for signs of another panic attack like the one he had witnessed about two weeks earlier.

He rubbed her back.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here. I will never let him hurt you again, I promise.”

-

For the first few nights after she’d been freed from Prime’s ship, she’d suffered through her terrors alone – not wanting to reach out to Bow too early, because he was allowed to stay mad at her for a while. Because she didn’t want to overstrain his good will after everything they’d went through, or to burden him or Adora with her silly nightmares considering everything else that was going on. What kind of terrible friend would she be if she’d do that?

Well, that facade had been smashed and crumbled completely about two days before they’d arrived at Prime’s ship.

She’d promised Adora she would help her rescue Catra – stars, there was a part of her that had started to like Catra when they had both been prisoners, and she had saved her, after all –, but the closer they got to Prime’s flagship, the worse her nightmares got.

This had eventually culminated in a full-blown panic attack, and after half a night of sobbing and thrashing around in her own bed, she’d gotten up, and had told Bow, still crying and entire body trembling, that she understood that he was still mad at her, and that it was okay, and if he needed more time, but-

By then he’d already gotten out of bed, put his arms around her and told her that of course she could stay.

No matter how mad he was at her... seeing her so upset and scared shattered his heart to pieces.

He’d never seen her like this before – not even after her mother died. And it terrified him.

He couldn’t take it.

Glimmer had slept in his bed every night after that.

_

Some nights were alright.

She’d flaked out and had been fast asleep until morning after long days of planning the rescue mission – planning itself hadn’t been easy for her, either. He had seen the way her body tensed whenever Horde Prime or the flagship were mentioned – he still saw it, now that they were on their way back home, whenever they talked about what had happened –, and he had eventually decided that comforting her by holding her hand, despite still being mad at her, was alright for him.

Not that staying mad at her was easy. She’d made mistakes, there was no denying that... but he knew her well enough to know that her apology was sincere, and that even if he were to never forgiven her, this would still be the first and last time she’d made a mistake like this.

Also, staying mad at anyone – especially at Glimmer –, had never been his strong suit. She was his best friend after all... and, at the same time, so much more than that. They’d been inseparable ever since they were little, and he couldn’t imagine his life without her – and even if he could have, he didn’t want to.

He hated fighting with her. He hated being mad at her.

He... he could have lost her. She could have been gone by now. The thought terrified him in a way that nothing had ever terrified him before. It made him sick to the stomach.

He hugged her tighter.

...Adora was to Catra what Glimmer was to him, wasn’t she? Just that she had needed her even more desperately, because they’d grown up in such a toxic environment. He hadn’t always been able to be honest with his dads, and Glimmer’s mother had driven her insane sometimes... but neither of their parents would have ever thought of hurting them, especially not on purpose.

That didn’t make everything Catra had done alright, of course. It was far from that.

But he was starting to understand her better – he could definitely see how everything that had happened could drive someone in her situation over the edge.

Catra actually seemed to be a decent person when she wasn’t trying to kill them, so he was willing to give her another chance as long as she kept on working on herself and didn’t hurt his friends again.

He was suddenly pulled out of his thoughts as Glimmer stirred in his arms again.

Most nights weren’t good. More were since they’d started traveling back home, away from Horde Prime... but there were still a lot of nights that Glimmer thrashed around in her sleep, that she woke up screaming and crying and unable to catch her breath.

-

Some nights were bad.

-

And some nights were terrible.

-

Glimmer woke up in cold sweat. She felt dizzy, her heart was beating out of her chest, and she felt almost nauseous. For a moment, all she could see was green eyes in the pitch black room. She screamed and backed away until her back hit the wall.

“Glimmer... Glimmer, it’s okay. It’s just me. You’re safe.”

The voice was soothing and weirdly familiar. And then, all of a sudden, the green eyes disappeared, and she jolted up, back into reality.

She was... she was on the ship. She’d been on the First One’s ship for weeks. She was... she was... scared and confused, and threw her arms around her best friend like there was no tomorrow.

She needed this. More than she would like to admit.

She was completely freaked out and was positive she’d forgotten how to breathe, and it was getting worse and worse and worse and-

“Glimmer, it’s okay.” He stroked her head. “You’re here. With me. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Bow...” She sobbed into his chest. “I-I’m so cold...”

Seeing his best friend this hurt and afraid and broken caused physical pain. She’d been through so much lately. She didn’t deserve this.

For a while, they just sat there and he hugged her shivering body tight because that seemed to be the only thing that calmed her down, if only slightly.

"It will be okay. I promise. You can get through this. I know you can.”

“B-but-“

Her entire body was shaking.

She was so stuck in her terror that it made her completely unable to form words properly, even less sentences.

“No. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He let go of her and offered her his hands to hold. She took them with shaking hands.

“I-“

The words still didn’t come.

"Concentrate on your breathing. Stay in the present. Count to ten with me, alright? Like we practiced."

She nodded slowly, closing her eyes and squeezing his hands as they counted, her breaths slowly growing steadier. She was still panicking, still scared, but his voice was calm and soft and his hands in hers felt nice and warm and kept her in reality.

He was so patient with her. He was always so patient with her. She was pretty certain Bow was the most amazing person in the entire universe.

How she deserved someone like him in her life, especially after how badly she had messed up, was beyond her.

“I- I’m s-sorry I-I‘m so m-messed u-up,“ she sobbed.

She was still shaking, but she wasn’t quite as trapped in her head anymore.

He just held her and rubbed her back.

“You did good, okay? I’m so proud of you.” She buried her head in his chest. He went back to stroking her head gently. “And you’re not messed up. You’ve just been through a lot lately. I don’t think any of us will get out of this battle without scars. But that doesn’t make us broken.” He smiled at her. “You’re one of the strongest people I know. You’ve gotten through so much already. We’ll work through this, too.”

“W-we?”

She looked up at him, her arms still wrapped around him tightly.

Touching him calmed her down. It always had.

Bow nodded.

“Of course. You’re my best friend, Glimmer. And you don’t have to do this alone, okay? I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Her breathing was steadier now, her hands not shivering as much when she lifted them to her face to wipe her tears away.

“Bow, I-“ She cut herself off mid-sentence. “Thank you. For being so patient with me, and calming me down and- still wanting to be my best friend, even after everything that happened. You’re amazing. You’re the best friend anyone could ever wish for.”

“Anytime.” He squeezed her hand. “Do you need anything else?” She shook her head. “Do... do you want to go back to sleep?”

“I... yeah. That... that might be good. Can... can I be the big spoon?“

Bow smiled.

“Always.” He hugged her one more time. “So... do I want to sleep with the lights on today?”

She smiled softly. He asked her this every time she woke up from a nightmare, ever since the first night she had slept on his bed here.

She’d freaked out when he’d turned the lights back off that night, and then told him through sobs that saying she wanted to leave them would make her feel like a little girl and that she hated that.

He’d retorted “Well, maybe I want to leave the lights on.”

And now he always asked if he wanted to leave them on because that made her feel less weird about it.

Stars, how was he this perfect...

“No... I... I think I’m okay now. Better at least. But... thank you.”

They laid back down and Bow pulled the blanked back over them as she took him into her arms.

Glimmer liked being the big spoon sometimes. She liked holding him, and she loved the way it made her feel strong and big when she was feeling so small and vulnerable.

Being the little spoon made her feel loved and protected, and she liked that just as much... but some nights it was easier if she had something to hold onto.

“And Bow?” She said after a while.

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favor and actually sleep this time, okay? You can’t exactly reprimand Adora for not sleeping enough if you stay up all night watching over me.”

Adora didn’t even need to be reprimanded as much anymore. Both of them were certain that they’d never seen her as happy and relaxed as she was since she had Catra back, and especially since Catra had made up with Entrapta.

Sure, she was still her usual ‘I need to save the galaxy all on my own’-level of stressed, but something had changed since Catra was on the ship.

This fact was extremely hard to miss – after all, even Entrapta had picked up on it, and she wasn’t exactly an expert on picking up social cues.

How had she put it again?

‘Adora’s smile rate goes up by at least twenty percent whenever Catra is in the room’, or something.

“I... can’t sleep when I’m not sure you’ll sleep through the night,” Bow admitted, interrupting her thoughts. “I hate seeing you like this.”

“That’s...” Her voice cracked. “That’s so sweet of you. I appreciate it, I really do... but you need to sleep.”

“Promise me you’ll wake me up if you need help again?”

She nodded.

“I promise.”

Bow was the first one to doze off this time. Glimmer didn’t mind. She was comfortable and warm and felt save now. He’d gotten really good at battling her fears with her these past few weeks.

She loved him for that, and for so many other things. She was so incredibly thankful to have him in her life.

His body felt so nice against hers. His hair smelled pretty good, too. And then she caught herself thinking about kissing him again, like she had so many times during these past few years.

I think I love you. I think I love you, love you.

She could at least admit that to herself now, and although the thought still terrified her – the same way it always had when it had crossed her mind over the years to abruptly be banished into the darkest depths of denial again –, it also made her smile, if only a little.

For the rest of the night, the two of them slept peacefully.

___

A/N: So, uuuhm... did anyone ask for angst? No?

...Well, have some anyway.

The idea just kind of popped into my head, and, well, we need more Glimbow content anyway.

This also adds some more meaning to Bow reaching for Glimmer’s hand while they are asleep in “Failsafe“, and it’s an additional reason why they could be cuddling in “Don’t go”. Just saying.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it!

Feedback is always appreciated, comments especially. I’m also happy about reblogs!

I will upload this on my Ao3 tomorrow.

...and I’m already writing a spin-off ficlet about Catradora and Glimbow goofing around the next morning because I have no self-control. Whoops.

Thank you for reading!

#glimbow #glimmer x bow #spop glow #Glimmer #Bow #Glimbow-centric #*casually drops angst into the tag* #we need more comtent for this ship #so I‘m writing more fics #hurt/comfort #my works #my writing #Entrapta and Catra and Adora are mentioned #But they‘re not actually on screen

[yetanotherlesbianonthiswebsite]

If you are wondering how my writing process for Arc 2 of TRoT is going, I’d be halfway through it by now if it weren’t for one small scene that at max should cap out around 3k words.

There are reasons I am placing it at the particular point in the story, why it has the dynamic it has, why it involves specifically those characters, and what it is saying in-universe direct, in-universe metaphorically and with its metacommentary. It has a more defined outline than the entire chapter it belongs to because I want it to fulfill specific purposes.

I loathed the way TME treated Briala’s sex life as something outrageous to be used against Celene; an indigenous-coded black lesbian finds herself in an incredibly toxic relationship with a white woman who is responsible for the violence her people face and it’s considered as something the white woman should be ashamed of. I can’t really think of a narrative that would rob Briala more of sexual agency and I want to write a modicum of counterbalance to that where Briala can enjoy sexual agency and sex in a loving and caring relationship.

Honestly, the way that both DA:O and DA II treat genderqueer sex workers is horrifying down to my soul; dehumanized, treated as experimental and weird and even treated as nigh violent in some situations, robbed of all ability to define themselves and ultimately the punchline of a joke. Dragon Age absolutely does not care about the humanity of genderqueer people and treats us as a fetish at best that the protagonists are kinkshamed for. Having a sex scene with Imerati as a trans lesbian main character is a fuck you towards the writing of DA in general that I need in my story.

Having this scene exactly in this chapter means that I can talk about dysphoria and sex. Afterwards, the main triad gets seperated and in the meantime before they reunite, Merrill introduces Imerati to the mirror of transformation. Writing this scene right here means three things: I can explore trans femme sex before GRS (with the added bonus of writing a beautiful sex scene that doesn’t or rather can’t end with all parties having an orgasm), I can explore the very personal pain that comes from not having the access to some of the means of medical transition (though for Imerati, it’s the taint messing with blood magic and for me, it’s the Federal Republic messing with my health insurance provider, but same degree of pain) and I can have a sex scene between a trans lesbian and a cis lesbian that shows that yes, some cis lesbians decide in favor of sex with trans women before GRS and it can be quite beautiful, which is the metacommentary of this scene.

The problem is that it is so incredibly personal. I have written Imerati to be an almost perfect mirror of me, I write my pain and trauma and happiness and hopes into her, she acts like me in any situation, she decides and thinks and feels like me. And that means that I have already canonically written into her the trauma surrounding sex that comes from growing up in a sex-negative cult and in the catholic church. It means I have already given her the clumsyness I have, the result of weak bones and failing muscles. It means that I have written her with all the general anxiety I have and the specific anxiety that comes from the intersection of being a lesbian and trans and having limited motoric skills. It means that writing this scene would mean acknowledging my own sexuality, in full, and exposing myself in a deeply anxiety-inducing way to the readers.

I know that a lot of smut is just the authors expressing their own sexual fantasies and preferences. I know that a lot of readers go there because that particular smut is connected to a lot of their own sexuality. I know a lot of comments and fics are just very openly horny. And yet that openness is exactly what makes it so difficult for me; to so openly make clear that despite not being allo, I am not ace either. Among the global anti-queer hatred movements, violence against specifically trans femme sexuality is a central motive; that’s what the metacommentary counterattacks, and yet that makes it so much more difficult for the entire thing to be so personal. Trans women being openly trans and sexual can be an act of resistance and revolution, and that’s exactly why this scene belongs in TRoT. This fic is built around the question “what is revolutionary?” and one of the most prominent answers next to “stating the truth” is sapphic intimacy and sapphic love; so it almost seems thematically imperative to have at least one sex scene like this.

And yet, it is so damned personal. Given how strong and organized transmisogynistic violence is globally, some of the strongest wounds of self-hatred within me stem from internalized transmisogyny. It means that I have an easier time believing that people hate me than love me; it means that by the shit I hear on the daily, it feels like my partners are making a big sacrifice by being together with a trans woman, that they somehow suffer under me being trans. Every transmisic sentence I have ever witnessed is another dagger in my soul, and believe me when I say that it makes sex incredibly difficult when the fact of your sexuality is the battleground upon which organized global movements rally for the destruction of all queerness.

It would be disingenuous to the way I’ve written TRoT so far to now step back from the plan of writing this scene, and it would be equally disingenuous to not acknowledge this real-life pain in this scene. One of the most fascinating contrasts I see in my writing of TRoT and Nerdling’s writing of Run Home is that I write very openly romantic characters that have a lot of problems with sexuality because of their trauma and that the inverse is true of the protagonists of Run Home, they are openly horny and yet find emotional commitment extremely difficult because of their respective trauma. The problem is that my story does not have ten chapters space for a healing arc where the characters slowly address and partially overcome their trauma; the main source of conflict is the historically grown structure of the status quo, not the trauma of the characters per se. I need to fully address and work through Imerati’s (and in turn, my own) pain in one short scene. I need to balance pain and beauty, anxiety and peace, because the thematic reasons for this scene demand such a balance.

I’ve written the coronation chapter in arc 1 in one writing session, I’ve written the Gaspard POV chapter in three, and yet I sit five writing sessions on this one short scene and I don’t know what to do. I’ve written myself into a corner, not narratively, I have solutions to every single narrative conflict until 9:43, but thematically and metanarratively. I’ve seen excellent and beautiful and sweet sapphic porn in my search for examples and guiding lights in the DA fanfic community, in name that is Prequels and Pirates, and yet, I don’t know if the path I will have to take in my writing must be different. I’ve always written TRoT without the explicit need for beta readers (though I always feel like I need sensitivity readers) but this time, I feel like I need beta readers for one small sex scene. It should be simple and yet it is so fucking complicated.

#cn smut #cn sex #cn transmisia #cn racism #venting #technically this also counts as some sort of meta I guess #only mutuals should interact #it's a bit ranty anyhow #The Ridge of Thedas

[tarantinolovesmyfeet]

Off The Table part 2

Javier Pena X OFC

About: New DEA Agent from Texas is transfer over; dealing with her own trauma from her old cases. She’s not ready to trust a new partner or to start over new. (Time set for now before Steven comes in) There will be more chapters to this; not sure how often I’ll update but it’s here.

Warning: Drugs mentioned but if you watch Narcos you know lol 

Chapter 1

They were at the brothel for two more hours, La Quica as Veronica  found out was there to scout girls. The idea was weird but it made sense if Pablo was going to do something big like a party, and a party is where all the drug dealers come together and share trade deals or their own little secrets.  Pena informant told him everything he wanted to hear, and also leaving nothing to the imagination when she was out there talking to Pena and Veronica . Veronica could see her pussy hair all the way from were she sitting in the car. “So, you like them skinny.” Veronica said to him as he chuckled. “Whats with you men and fucking your informants.”  She rolled her eyes before you guys drove off and Pena laughed again.

Since kicking that random john’s ass, Carrillo and Pena gave you way more respect than that did before. They usually added you in last second or telling you about paper work but now you’re apart of the crew. You weren’t afraid to get dirty if you needed to and they liked that. You went on more trips in a car than you did 5 months ago when you got there, one day you were waiting for Pena to take another trip and you felt a pain in your hip. “Ah, fuck.” You whined as Carrillo looked over at you. “It’s gonna fucking rain, this trip is gonna be a bitch.” “How do you know?” He asked with a perked eyebrow looking over at you confused. You just pointed at your hip with a cigarette in your mouth and inhaled deeply. “I got shot two years ago, and the bitch hurts every time it rains. I fucking feel old.” “Ah, in line of duty or?” “Yeah, some informant snitched on me and my partner and let's just say I got fucked up but at least I lived.” You flicked the stick looking over at Pena with a head nod, leaning Carrillo in shock. “Ready to go?” “More than ready baby, are you?” You just walked down the stairs stiffly with no answer to him, and you could feel your head not in the game. You sighed deeply wanting for Pena to catch up, and you laughed watching him and Carrillo bullshit. “You sure you can get down the stairs old man?”

“If you can, I can.” He pointed to your hip and you flipped him off.  “My aubela walks better than you down the stairs; you sure you don’t need a cane.” “I’m more than sure Pena, dont worry about my hips old man, you better keep up when we have to get to running with your bad knees Ese.” You pointed at him with a smirk as he flipped you off. “My knees are good ask any lady around the streets and they will tell you what you need to hear.” Carrillo rolled his eyes at both of you before walking away, and you scrunched your face in disgust as you look at Pena. He sure was certain that he was being flirtatious but you were just wanting him to stop embarrassing himself. “I don’t recall asking about any of that information you just gave me and yet here I am having a dreadful mental image of you on your knees.”

“Just tell me when you dream about it, honey.” He laughed getting in the car as you rolled your eyes getting in beside him. “Sorry, primo but my dreams are always nightmares.” You joked but you were being honest and he looked at you seeing the truth within that sentence and he nodded his head as you nodded yours back.

You sat in the car letting your thoughts escape you; you missed Xavier often and a lot. You tend to wonder if maybe you weren’t so determined to make a name for yourself would you have fallen for Xavier. You guys were extremely close; and there is times that you guys had to cover your ass; so at times you had to act like you were together. Making out to get out of things or for people to assume you weren’t a cop. You never let yourself self indulge in these thoughts but now you’re sitting in a car with your new partner and you fucking missed Xavier. You could feel the ache deep in your chest, a constant reminder that someone important in your life is completely gone and you”ll never have him back.

“Veronica.” You heard dragging you out of your thoughts; you looked over at Javier as he looked almost annoyed. “Where the hell did you go.” He snapped as you snarled your lip at him. “I need you focused here.” “I’m fucking focused.” Veronica snapped back at him as her hair was down today, cascading down her shoulder. “Don’t fucking worry about me. What do you need?” “Be on the god damn look out, have my goddamn six. If you’re busy day dreaming then you can be off of this.” “I’m fucking here.” She growled now as you got out of the car, slamming the door with extra affect.

Veronica knew she shouldn’t be so emotional today but this ache sitting in her chest. She knew she would have to get over it; Javier and her are still new to one another and she didn’t want to ruin what ever their work relationship is. She sighed deeply looking up at the sky with a pleading look in her eye before shaking her head. She looked over to Javier with a nod. “I got you….trust me I do.” She looked at him and he stared back at her just a beat too long, he nodded his head before walking towards the building. The building looked abandoned but Javier and Carrillo apparently got great info about Pablo and their men being here for a little bit. She wasn’t sure how true that was; but she hasn’t gotten enough field work yet to get her own informants to tell her stuff. She followed behind Javier with her gun out just incase; she wasn’t going to lose another partner for not being quick enough. The building smelt dreadful; like toxics and chemicals causing her to wrinkle her nose. “Smells like a drug house.” Veronica said slowly she wasn’t even sure Javier heard her. “You sure Pablo was here?” “I’m not.” He said back to her pointing his gun out into the room next them and they saw nothing but the smell was so strong it was enough to make Veronica sick.

Veronica was used to the smell of weed; and the skunk smell; she wasn’t used to a mixture of chemicals being in the air sticking to the walls in every nook and crack. It seemed like the smell was stuck in the house even if the door stood opened; like a ghost lingering leaving a clue for them. “Clear” She said checking the room as Javier check his room and said the same thing. She stood in the middle of a room the light bright and whitening out the whole room. If there was anything here; it was long gone now. She thought as the smell clung to her; invading her nose and throat. She coughed a few times as her eyes watered; and Javier signaled for them to leave the house. Veronica can see the Javier was pissed off that his tip was a dollar short too late. “Fuck, I thought this was valid.” He snapped as she looked at him before looking up at the clouds as they darken. “It was valid.” She said back to him as he looked at her again as she pursed her lips “Just….a little too late.” “That’s fucking worse!” He yelled kicking at the grass by the house as she sighed looking back at the house with disgust. “At least the police have something to make a case against them.” She said to Javier in english with a twang of her texans accent dripping in her words. She looked over towards the house and the police looking around almost clueless. “What those corrupted fucks?” He responded almost in a snarl; and Veronica looked at him in slight confusion.

She wasn’t sure why Javier was angry the had proof that someone was here at least making drugs so this was a good tip; just a little too late. Someone probably leaked to them they were coming and that’s her main issue; is the leaking. She wasn’t sure why he was upset with them being gone; DEA work has always been cat and mouse; he should know that.

“Pena, did you expect Pablo to be here with his hand on his dick swinging it around just for you to catch him. And if these guys are so corrupted why work with them?” “I have too.” “Ah, so now you have too. But did you; it could just be me and you in there. We knew they weren’t going to be in there you had a pipe dream and even if someone was in there it would be those poor workers being slaved away in a chemical induced hay fever just to get pennies to scrape by to make a living in this god damn world. SO please enlighten me what’s the issue?”

They are far enough apart to see each other chest going up and down with anger; Veronica can see the anger in his eyes as he looked at her. She could feel her cheeks warmed up in the fight as well; she knew it was a fight they were having. Javier too stupid to get his emotions out of a case; and Veronica didn’t have time to baby sit his feelings. The air shifted and the tension was too much for either of them as they stared at each other. “You don’t get it.” He snapped as she rolled her eyes at him. “Sure I don’t, not like i’ve been doing this job for a god damn while. Javier get your head out of your ass for once and realize this is good. We are on a good lead; and we have a pattern, the chemicals we have a list. Jesus, calling me a cow boy when you’re the biggest one. Too stupid to be a detective and too damn hot headed to be a police officer weren’t you.”

“What did you say to me?” He snarled getting close as she glared at him feeling the heat radiate off his body. “I said what the fuck I said.” She snarled back getting into his face. “Fall back Pena, or I’ll show you how dumb you really are.” “I’ll fucking-“ “YO!” Carrillo shouted cutting Pena off as the pair glared at each other. “When you guys are done arguing come back here.”

Veronica was getting under his skin and Javier was getting under her skin. Veronica knows her anger is very apparent today; she wasn’t dealing with no man children. Javier is upset; and she knows he’s right to be upset but he was also being melodramatic. They had so many clues, and he was upset no one was there. They didn’t even have a plan if someone was there and he’s being a damn child. They begrudged walk back towards the house and instantly Veronica feels sick; as she held her breathe. “Cellphones.” He said pointing at it. “They left one.” “We can tap them no?” Veronica said barely holding it together. “I mean if they are trading secrets via phone then we can tap them.” “Are they commies? If they aren’t we aren’t getting a tap.” Javier said sucking his teeth as Veronica looked at him. He was right but she didn’t want to admit it.

In the ride back it was raining and her hip was in serve pain, she bite the inside of her cheek to ignored the pain. She could see Javier glancing at her every once and awhile as she sighed heavily rubbing her hand down her face. She was thankful she didn’t wear eyeliner that day.

“You know…..I think I can get those taps.” She grunted out in pain, and Javier looked over at her. “How?” “Someone there likes me…as a friend. I’m sure I can smooth talk them but it’s gonna take awhile. It’s all about building trust.”

“He doesn’t trust you.” He asked as she lets out a chuckle as she looked at him with a small smile.

“Uh… no he does but you can’t be too wary.” She said back at him as he looked over at her. “I think its more than friendly but I’ve been kinda blowing off hid advances….I would need to be careful on it.” “Advances?” “He asked me to go out for coffee but I don’t want to think Im hot shit. He could just be friendly.”

Javier gave her a once over; staring at her curves then looking back at her face. She was god damn beautiful; and a dumb modest person doesn’t even realize all the people in the office staring at her. He himself as gazed at her; especially when she wear pencil skirts; it annunciates her every single curve; it was enough to chase after her down the hallway but it was just his eyes that did.

“Trust your gut Vargas.”  was all he said before looking back on the road, and her cheeks were warm and her stomach tighten under his gaze.  “Trust your gut.”

#Javier Pena #Javier Pena fic #orginal character #horacio carrillo #narcos

[wichols]

My Feelings On Father’s Day

Father’s Day has always felt weird for me and let me tell you why. This is an extremely open conversation about my personal feelings on Father’s Day. I can imagine that there are others on this platform that feel similar. I want you to know that you are loved and no matter your relationship/or lack of a relationship with a parental figure does not change the validity of your feelings. Life is messy and complicated and something that I have learned is to embrace the mess and understand why I do the things I do. Hopefully by the end of this post we can understand a little bit better about the struggles some of us have on days like Mother’s/Father’s Day. I will be mentioning some things that might be triggering to some so if you are triggered by mentions of childhood trauma or discussions of dysfunctional families please go ahead and keep scrolling for your own mental health. My parents divorced when I was young, like really young. I was about 3. Now I know what you are thinking “Wichols? You were so young you wouldn’t remember anything from that time.” Let me tell you, because it happened so young it shaped and push my dominant personality qualities that I have to this day.  I am an empath (ENFP). I am swayed by the feelings of those around me. I was told that most of my childhood during that time was spent crying. Why? Because the household I was living in was unsettled. I still have coping mechanisms that I still use today. I surround myself with blankets when I feel emotionally compromised among other my personal things that I do to self soothe. I cry, a lot. Like if I am not settled somewhere between a 4-6 with my emotions then I am crying. If I am happy I cry. If I am sad I cry. I just cry, it helps. Sometimes I induce crying just so I can feel better. After many situations between myself and my bio dad our relationship is forever fractured. It has been about 5 years since I have actually spoken to him. Our love languages are different and because of the toxic history between us, I think we have mutually decided that not pursuing a relationship with each other is for the best. Let’s add another layer of complexities. My mom dated someone for a while and they one thing that came from that relationship was the fact that, that person abused my mom and took advantage of the situation. Another male figure that was supposed to be positive turned out to be toxic. Another layer shall we? (Trigger Warning: Molestation) Shortly after the breakup we moved into a smaller place and as I recall what few memories I have at that time it was not long before we moved again. My mother remarried again and we moved to a new city. The new guy seemed like a nice person and he even had two children that would stay with us. This marriage lasted about 3-4 years. Living in that time his leaving seemed abrupt but looking back the reasons were clear. He was running away because he was trying to hide from the fact that he had used me for his own pleasures. I remember one distinct time that something happened but everything else around that time his disappeared from my memories. Because I was still so young (they were married between the end of 2nd grade year to about 4th grade) I didn’t understand what was actually happening. We became homeless for a while and eventually we moved into an old house. It wasn’t till about 5th grade that I had told my mom what happened but by that time it was too late to press charges. Now I live everyday remembering almost nothing from my childhood because of this event. I have giant dark areas in my memories because my brain has blocked out everything surrounding each time of trauma. My Wedding Day Let me give you a little peak into the different dynamics between my bio dad and my step dad. And the perfect way to describe this is through the Father/Daughter Dance. Because of the complicated relationships with mine and my husband’s families we decided to combine the Father/Daughter and Mother/Son. One song for all. Now, my mother walked me down the isle and I felt like it was only right to keep this piece of wedding tradition in. My relationship with my bio dad had been okay at this point so I decided that I would honor him with this dance. But I also felt like my step father deserved some time with me during this time. So I split up the dance between them. I would dance with my bio dad the first half and then surprise my step dad and ask him to dance. The dance with my bio dad made me kind of mad if I am honest. He made it about himself. I know the things he was doing were from a good place but it was actually really hurtful. I have pictures of my dance with him where I am crying. From an outsider’s perspective it would seem that our relationship is close but when I look back at that dance I am bitter. I’m bitter because he claimed that he was losing his baby girl. But not two years prior he ended a phone call with me where he said, “If you want to communicate with me further you will have to be the one to call because I will not be.” He had made it clear in that call that he no longer wanted to put forth effort and that in defending himself he pounded in the idea that I was going to have to be the adult in that situation. So for me to hear the words he said on my wedding day compared to the words that I held in my heart were conflicting. Now to my step dad. Once I got into college our relationship balanced out and we really started getting close to each other. A couple months ago I had a Facebook memory pop up with I shouted him out for sitting and watching a chick flick with me while I was home. We have a pretty playful relationship and I have really come to care for him. Now I don’t always know what to call him I know that I am attached to him (sometimes I call him step dad, his actual name, or dad). He was surprised when I sent my bio dad and walked over to ask him to dance with me. And I loved that dance with him! We laughed, and dipped, and smiled the whole time. And I have pictures of his dumb face smiling from ear to ear while we danced. I look back at them and laugh. Two very different people with two different reactions. I have had other people throughout my life that I have placed upon the pedestal of fatherly figures and I am forever grateful to those who stepped up. Older male relationships are hard for me to navigate. I am a midwest gal at heart so we don’t want to offend or exclude anyone ever and coupled with my own personality quirks it makes it 100% more complicated navigating how to express the appropriate feelings on days such as today. Add social media pressures and current events into the mix and it leaves me crippled.  So today I will be filled with anxiety and swirling thoughts of the past. I will wrap myself up with blankets and practice any form of escapism to ease the weighty burden of expectations. Today is not a fun day. Today is a reminder of all the broken things that have happened. Today’s expectations will cripple me emotionally.  But today I will also try my best to be gentle with myself. I will try to understand my feelings better. I will allow myself to feel something. Whatever the status of your relationship with your father figures in your life just know that you are not alone with navigating difficult relationships. Appreciate the positive moments and do what you can.  You are seen and you are valued. You cannot make everyone happy. But what you can do is show love to those who have shown you love. TL:DR- Father’s day is complicated when you have emotional baggage. Just know that you are not alone with your struggles. You are not less of a person because of the status of your parent’s relationship with each other. But Happy Father’s Day to those who have stepped up. It takes a special person to love another child like their own.  

#person post #father's day

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

Lucy looked up at him, concern making the lines of her face stand out. “Wyatt… are you saying you think you’re…” “I don’t know.” Wyatt knew he spoke too quickly, panicky, his voice strangled. “I don’t—it’s not—we don’t talk about it. Where I grew up. Then the army—it just, you don’t talk about it. And I like women. I didn’t…” DVD commentary on a fic. (Anything,Something) Extra: what made you chose for it to be Lucy to be the one he told first, since Flynn caused his crisis?

Oh man. All the way back to my very first Timeless fanfic. Damn. Two years have just flown by, feels like a decade has passed since then.

Lord, this scene. This scene was a lot. I had read @extasiswings amazing fic “Revelations,” which focuses on Wyatt coming to terms with his sexuality and redeeming himself as a person, and that informed a lot of my thoughts and headcanons about Wyatt. So I was really building off of that with his characterization in this fic.

But this passage right here was also intensely personal because growing up, I didn’t know you could be bi. I didn’t know there was anything other than straight or gay. And I like men. So I just focused on liking men and ignored/stuffed down the... other stuff. I can’t tell you how many years I would say, “I don’t think it’s fair for me to say that I’m bi...” Like, I spent years telling myself I wasn’t bi enough and setting myself all these benchmarks, judging myself, denying that part of who I was. So writing this scene for Wyatt was very personal. I haven’t given Wyatt my exact coming-out story. I sort of evenly split my own personal experiences between Lucy, Wyatt, and Flynn. But this part here was very me.

However, unlike me, a woman who grew up in Los Angeles in a liberal community, Wyatt is a man grew up in a small town in a conservative state and had absolutely zero support. The only person he could have possibly confided in was Jess, and as we’ve seen from his interactions with her, he refused to be vulnerable around her. So he had no one to tell this to, and he was doused, socially, with the idea that liking men was shameful. So I had to take my own lack of understanding and my own confusion and times it by ten, because Wyatt was in a less forgiving environment than I was and he had to deal with the pressure of “being a real man.” The journey for bisexual men is no less or more harrowing than the journey for bisexual women, but it is a different journey, so I had to take into consideration the toxic masculinity Wyatt’s steeped in.

It was just so much easier for Wyatt to ignore and pretend it didn’t exist than to confront it, even in his own head. The best way to keep a secret is to not realize you have a secret at all. So he was in huge denial, and in this scene, he’s finally admitting that there is something there, and that’s a big step for him. I liked how these scene turned out, I thought I managed to make it raw and real.

As to your question - Lucy is the person around whom Wyatt feels the safest. Lucy saw Wyatt have a trauma-induced breakdown at the Alamo and she didn’t judge him. Lucy listened to Wyatt’s trauma about Jess and she comforted him. This fic was written right after Hollywoodland, before Salem, so in canon, all we’ve seen is Wyatt be forced into vulnerability in front of Lucy, and Lucy accepting and supporting that vulnerability.

Take into consideration the pressure men are under. As much as Wyatt loves Rufus, he’s conditioned to believe that men are less sympathetic and that other men will judge him for showing vulnerability, so he has to (in his mind) go to a woman. Denise is gay, but she’s also very stern, and I think Wyatt craves her authority and approval as an authority figure too much to drop his guard like that around her (yet). And he’s not about to go to Flynn, who is not only also a man but the very object of his feelings. He’s not close with Jiya or Mason. That leaves Lucy.

Lucy has done nothing but be a warm, comforting, listening ear to everyone since day one. Wyatt knows that no matter what he says or does, Lucy’s going to be understanding. Even though things at this point in the fic are rocky between them, at least in regards to their romantic/sexual relationship status, when it comes to opening up, Wyatt knows that Lucy will be there for him. So that’s why I really couldn’t have him confess to anyone else.

#mads answers things #wow this was a trip back in time to talk about this fic #in a good way though #even-in-winter #mads writes stuff

[bi-lullaby]

Meredith vs People

Alternative titles: “My other post in a similar format got slightly popular and I crave attention” and “I’m still hung up on the one time Owen called Mer “the only universally liked individual in the hospital” because she is my fave”

Meredith x Cristina

Once called “the true lovestory of the show” I think it’s one of the kost refreshing relationships between characters I’ve ever seen in my, admittedly not that long, experience with fandom. The love and support each other wildly and publicly, straight up say to others how their person is important and a thing to prioritize. It’s so... Amazing to watch their deep, soulmate-like bond develop. I also love them from a narrative standpoint: How they started out as ambitious, driven people with complicated relationships with intimacy who saw surgery as the end all be all goal, and how they’re allowed to grow apart from that slightly, acquire other goals and relationships and projects (Meredith) or continue on that path, prioritizing their career and success solely/mostly (Cristina) and how both are treated as valid, rewarding choices (Mer with her happiness at family life and her Harper Avery, and Cristina with her bomb-ass hospital and the resolution of her personal relationships). They’re two characters that took on distinct journeys, but whose paths to personal fulfillment are deeply intertwined to each other.

Meredith x Alex

Okay, this is my favorite friendship ever. If Izzie showed Alex that his “evil spawn” ways weren’t exactly preferable nor they made him better than anyone or immune to pain, Meredith stuck out her hand for him and said “you’re dark and twisty? Cool. Doesn’t mean you can’t find, and fight for, happiness. Lets be dark and twisty together while we figure this out.” They relate to each other in a fascinating way, both children of neglect (to varying degrees) who worked their way to the top with a lot of bumps in the way. Also, seeing as I’m Mer’s number one stan, I also love their relationship because Alex is so amazing to her. Even Cristina had her moments of “mommy tracking” her, or even putting her aside in favor of a relationship, while Alex sticks by her side like glue and puts her above almost everything (which, I’m not saying a friendship is less valid if it’s not the most important thing in the world to you, of course not. I’m saying that everyone has a favorite person in the world, and the fact Mer is someone’s, makes that someone (Alex) even better in my eyes). Meredith sticks by the people she cares about’s sides through whatever they’re going through, in whatever way she can, and I find that that is surprisingly not-reciprocal in some instances, so it’s good she has her own ride-or-die. It’s also comic to me that two of the most sexually active, sex-driven characters in the show have never had an indication of sexual tension between them. (Almost like men and women can be friends, shocking!). The show’s not complete without Merlex, that’s for sure!

Meredith x Lexie

BRB, will be crying about the softest sisters ever, who deserved a much more fleshed-out relationship! To this day, all my (unpublished) Grey’s fanfiction involve “Lexie is actually alive” because it was such a traumatic loss to Meredith (that was under explored, imo, even if the little mentions of it through the show are heartwarming AND breaking). I loved that they made Mer push her way at first, because it showed her deep resentment of her own life, of not getting the doting father and the protective mother and the “growing up with siblings” and then having someone who had all that come and throw at her face the word “sisters” like they shared anything but DNA at that point... I think my two favorite examples of “family is about choice, not blood” examples of this show are their relationship and how it got deep through knowing each other (Meredith donates a piece of her liver to their father because of Lexie, but doesn’t remember Molly’s name in the same ep because Molly has not actively been her sister) and another one I’ll talk about later. And the contrast between Lexie’s own sadness from suddenly being left with basically no family (alcoholic father, dead mother,stranded older dister and far-away younger sister, all things I feel like people don’t consider enough to understand Lexie has also suffered) and her fight to get that family back was just so amazing. In a way, Lexie was Meredith’s Izzie, not only by being cuddly and fuzzy and nurturing but by having a “I deserve better than you being an asshole so I’ll make you less of an asshole or so help me god” attitude. Mer got softer for lexie and I think that’s beautiful.

Meredith x Amelia

Yeah, that’s my other “favorite family is not by blood, it’s by choice” ark. That clear-contrast scene of Amelia coming from her “sisters” meetup, emotionally drained after having to endure their toxic, demeaning, vicious attacks, and into her sisters, who are earning to hear what she has to say, who empathize with her and support her... I ate that shit UP, let me tell you. Because Mer was such a huge bitch to Amy at first, but came to love her after allowing herself to truly get to know her (which is the opposite story with Nancy and Lizzie and Kate, who all refuse to get to know her past the version that they despise). I also love that Derek was kind of a barrier between them, because he had his own views of Amy that influenced Mer and when he was gone, she had to face a... quite different reality. I see a lot of people shitting on Mer for the “You’re not my sister, Cristina is my sister. You’re Derek’s sister and Derek is dead” line, and I can see why, it was rude, but... That’s Meredith’s whole instance on family? Yeah, Amy was sweet and I’d bet she was mer’s favorite “Shepherdress” out of the four woman (she had stood up to her before, against Derek, nonetheless), and it breaks my heart that Amy saw her as “the only sister she could relate to” (seriously I was sobbing) but... Sister? That’s a personal, intimate title she reserved very, very few people in her life, and Amy has earned that right with a lot more patience and care than most people put into relationships. Of course she was more loyal to Cristina than to Amy at that point (who herself was more loyal to Addison than to her own siblings, hence she didn’t tell Derek about the affair, for example). But then? She literally tells Megan she can’t possibly choose which one of Owen’s wives she likes more, and need I remind you the other one is Cristina herself? (who she called “her soulmate” over Derek?. They’re two example of women who’ve gone through tremendous trauma and pain and came out changed from it, and the fact they have each other for support now makes me very, very happy. I do wish they had more scenes together, but the ones they do share are enough for me to say their relationship is a gift for this show.

Meredith x Maggie

So pure! I like that they meet up when they’re both older and more experienced and have kind of “set” personalities, that clash sometimes, but also can add up into beautiful things when combined. It was... slightly frustrating to see Mer push away yet another person at first, but watching them get closer was also sweet. I hate the comparisons between their relationship and Merlexie’s (and the comparisons between Maggie and Lexie/Cristina/April like she’s just a stand-in for them). They were different moments of all their lives. Mer and Lexie? Inexperienced 20-something women going though shit trying to find their place in the world, when Mer was still in her dark and twisties and needed to be cajoled into giving Lexie even an inch. Mer and Maggie? Well-established women in their late thirties whose relationship wasn’t built on a need for each other, but in working together for the sisterhood they wanted. I love that it was Maggie that had to get to know Meredith and be persuaded into liking her, actually. And look where they are now! They have such a comfortable, intimate relationship that’s based on love and mutual respect! I love Maggie’s small fangirl moment when Mer pulls that amazing straw-in-the-skull stunt in the airplane and Maggie’s filming the interview (although I hated what came afterwards. C’mon Maggie, fighting over a boy? Really?). It’s also good to see how Meredith helps Maggie navigate her first real trauma (loosing her mother) and how her pain has build her up and actually helps others! It’s an excellent stance of character development that remains true to the character. Their little interaction when Mer’s creating her little dream-induced invention and Maggie looks at the board once and understands it, helping her figure it all out, is so cute and nice! They’re sweet and good for each other, and I’ll protect this relationship forever!

Meredith and Jo

“You’re Jo Wilson, I know exactly who you are!” makes me weak. Because it’s such a powerful, important phrase, but also such... A Mer thing to say. At the end of the day, Mer loves people and takes them under her wing and empathizes with them. She becomes Jo’s support system and doesn’t let go. I love how she’s the one to stand by her side and protect her from Paul, and I love how she’s the one in the more recent episode to manage to get Jo to open up, to get up and get help. They’re almost mirrors, Jo with Mer’s headstrongness and emotional baggage, barging in and taking the world by storm, with Mer being Jo’s Bailey in a way, with a lot of crankiness and a slight superiority complex but lots of wisdom and care, looking at her go with a smirk like “that girl will go far but she’ll need a couple wrist slaps on the way”. Mer was extremely important in Alex’s life, she became extremely important in Jo’s life, and that’s beautiful and sweet. Also, their “shared custody” of Alex is hilarious.

Meredith x Callie

How could we have guessed that two people that initially were at each others throats constantly would be so close one day? They are absurdly different, and yet so close! The way they support each other’s journeys as mothers, wives and surgeons is a great thing to see. And they have such iconic moments, like the panties in the bulletin board, the trial, and the little kiss!

Meredith x Mark

I’m not gonna lie, I shipped those two very briefly but very intensely when they first met! Then they evolved into a rather sweet friendship. I love to think Mer tells Sofia all sorts of stories she heard through Derek in those first years. When she told Callie that Mark used to call her (not Derek, not Addison, not Derek’s mom, not Bailey, her!) whenever he needed advice or had a crisis in the middle of the night, I teared up a little, because that’s such a huge step from who they began as! From loner and relationship-phobic insecure to parents with loving relationships who could count on each other! My favorite dirty mistresses ever!

And there’s so much more! Meredith and Bailey and how they both grew so much, Meredith and Arizona and how their relationship is underrate, Meredith and Jackson’s sibling-esque relationship, Meredith and April... “I used to think you could only have one person, but now I know. Turns out I have a whole damn village!”.

#meredith grey #mertina #cristina yang #merlex #alex karev #lexie grey #merlexie #callie torres #merllie #meramy #amelia shepherd #merggie #maggie pierce #merk #mark sloan #greys anatomy #grey’s anatomy #mine

[inanawesomewave]

AND HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL?

It’s been a very long time since I posted and for that I can only apologise, I’m extremely, abnormally, infinitely pregnant (okay, I’m 39 weeks) and I’ve spent this past few months hibernating, and recovering from a bipolar depression that, thankyou alexithymia, I didn’t notice I was having until it went away and I no longer had any thoughts of ending my life. But, I’m back now, happily alive and happy to be alive, and as I’m in these final days of pregnancy, I’m thinking about oxytocin. When you’re ridiculously pregnant you think of all the ways you can induce labour (hint: none of them work). I’ve tried it all, castor oil, clary sage, red raspberry leaf tea, evening primrose, sex, long walks, whatever. And I started thinking today about how the only thing that is proven to work, is oxytocin, and how when it is released, it can make your body think you are breastfeeding and you begin to have contractions now that the baby knows it’s okay to come out and get fed. That’s because oxytocin is a hormone that promotes love, bonding, sociability, friendship. They call it the hormone of love, lust and labour. And I realised, as I was looking up all the ways I could release oxytocin myself at home, that I don’t have a good relationship to it. At all. 

I first realised maybe there was something a little off with my oxytocin during my last pregnancy, and in the first few months of breastfeeding my son. I would pump milk or my son would latch on, and within seconds I felt horrendously depressed and anxious, as if the release of oxytocin triggered a panic response in me. They playfully call this “Sad Nipple Syndrome”, many people confuse it for a repressed memory of sexual abuse, but really, it’s related to a phenomenon known as Depressive Milk Ejection Reflex and is believed to be because of a rapid, brief reduction of dopamine immediately before milk let-down, but I wonder if for me it has more to do with oxytocin.

Now I’m not trying to martyr myself when I say this, because largely, I find breastfeeding very rewarding, not to mention practical, and money-saving, and it’s my favourite time of the evening -- when my son is cuddling me, watching his bedtime shows, and nursing. And I’m not battling through some horrendous feeling in order to do that, and really, I’d mostly got used to it. But just recently, near the end of the pregnancy I’m having now, I’m experiencing that familiar sense of dread, anxiety, depression and need to escape when he latches on, and I felt it the other night when I was expressing, and I felt it recently after (hehe) an orgasm. I mean, when it comes to dopamine, I’m fucked. I’m bipolar and I take, to be exact about the dosage, a metric ton of quetiapine (Seroquel) every day just to keep on an even keel, which is an antipsychotic which means its sole purpose is to tell my dopamine to shut the fuck up for five seconds. I’m used to having my dopamine function in swells and droughts. But oxytocin, fucking hell. I have antisocial personality disorder. It makes sense that something about the bonding hormone makes me feel uneasy, or even unwell, like I need to escape the situation. I’ve always said, something about myself and my disorder that I kind of despise, is how I have this bizarre drive to fight my way out of any and all groups I find myself in. Groups of friends, colleagues, schoolmates, peers of any kind, I will try with all my might to be part of the group, then when I realise how cynical I am about that, I will try to at least appear to be part of the group for Machiavellian reasons, and then when I begin hating myself because the pretence is too exhausting, I will find myself subconsciously picking the group apart. My lack of empathy becomes hostile, and if anything, the most toxic trait I exhibit in these situations is to break the group up entirely. If I can’t have it, nobody can. It was worse when I was younger: at school, I’d lie about things one friend said about the other and watch arguments happen, delighting in the collapse of that friendship circle. I’d tell one the other stole from them, I’d tell the other that everyone is saying she spread a harmful rumour. I’ve even gone so far as to frame a person for theft just to watch the fallout. I did that when I was about 8, I did it again when I was 10. I did it a third time in my teens. It was kind of my MO. I’m not proud of that spiteful need to isolate people from loving interaction just because I was so afraid of it. Okay, I’m a little proud of pulling it off. The ease with which you could snap apart even close bonds confirmed everything I loved and hated about how I saw the world: sociability is a lie and empathy is a cool trick to use against people. Even as an adult, whilst not maliciously and actively trying to hurt people any more, I have found reasons to leave groups under a black cloud. I was a poet once, and I hated all my contemporaries except for a few. I used the people I hated the most, got where I wanted to be, and fucked off forever because the game got boring. I did the same when I was a musician. When I was a student. When I was doing both my undergraduate degrees. My God, my need to be antisocial is so strong, it’s ruining my careers.

Now, we all know that research on ASPD is quite scant. They don’t really want to know much about us except for the fact we prefer bitter tasting things, or that people want to fuck us, or that we dig easily accessible rap music. What is out there about us is mostly inconclusive, or the conclusions drawn are highly subjective -- I featured one on this blog a long time ago for example that said we are more likely to use expressive, emotive and loaded language when talking about our life experiences, and the researchers used their personal judgements to conclude that this was further evidence of our heartlessness, which was fucking hilarious. Heaven forfend we might be seen as humans for five seconds. Anyway, today when searching around to see if there’s any chemical link to ASPD and oxytocin, I found this. If you don’t have access to it, that’s fine, it was a study from last year that looked into this very relationship, to see if oxytocin treatment could improve outcomes for antisocial people both with and without diagnosis. The research itself was more an inquiry into an aggregate of 36 previously done studies (because to actually do new research would cost money that needs to be spent on finding out if we ever yawn or if our eyes look weird or if we give a shit if someone jumps up behind us dead scary like and says “boo” or some shit). Results again were inconclusive, but something interested was noted: oxytocin was largely associated with a reduction in criminal/amoral/antisocial behaviour, but in some, had an opposite effect - that is to say, antisocials sometimes respond to oxytocin with hostility toward their loved ones. 

So why is that? Well, there aren’t any answers right now and “further high quality, large sample-size studies are required” (so, let’s not all hold our breath at once), but do I have a theory? You bet I do! 

We know that personality disorders, especially cluster-b, come from neglect and trauma. We can theorise that antisocials have a lack of empathy because we weren’t taught it, or maybe we had emotionally manipulative parents that would prey upon our empathy and later use it to harm us so we learned to be cynical of it, maybe we had to learn how to fake empathy toward our abusive parents so they’d stop beating the shit out of us for five seconds, maybe we learned the language of violence and aggression because it was the language we were taught at home, and maybe we fought our way out of social groups because we were taught not to have friends, or our parents only really loved us when we reflected their own hateful, selfish and volatile traits back to them, so we learned not only that love was pointless, but actively rejecting it was favourable. There are lots of reasons why a person might develop antisocial personality disorder. So surely it makes sense, that if we learn these antisocial behaviours, we also learn to be antisocial to a chemical process in our bodies that is imploring us to be the exact opposite? Doesn’t it make sense that if we feel love, bonding, connection, our instinct is to panic and fight it? To feel sad, to want to cry? And if we don’t know how to cry or connect to that part of ourselves because we never learned emotional intelligence, doesn’t it make sense we’d then convert that feeling into something else, something immediate and easy? Like anger? Like rage? Antisocial people experience everything in primaries: blue, red, yellow. Generic bad, rage, and generic good. When we need to access a secondary or tertiary emotion (something orange like homesickness? Or something even magenta like... fucking... humiliation?), we have to channel it back into one of those primary colours, something we can understand. So, generic good, generic bad, and red red rage are all we have. Oxytocin? Bonding? Who knows where that belongs. Could be any of the three. And let’s be honest, this isn’t restricted purely to antisocial personality disorder. Narcissists respond to love and bonding with a push-back, so do borderlines and histrionics. It all comes out different, but it all comes from the same place: don’t you fucking dare love me. The only person in my life I feel that immediate, unwavering bond with, is my son. Maybe that’s why I’ve been able to breastfeed him despite the sadness and panic of it all, because the initial reaction to the oxytocin is the hurdle and not the reward, and after that I can get to it properly, to look at him and feel intense love, empathy and joy. Maybe it’s evolutionary, the truth of it is when it comes to my children, I don’t care what the mechanism is that makes me love them the way I do or how it ties into my disorder. But how I feel about friends, lovers, and other family members is up for scrutiny, my own scrutiny at that. 

So as I sit here wondering why it’s hard for me to experience oxytocin, I wonder how the rest of you feel. Do you have a good relationship to it? What does it do for your empathy? When you perform a good deed, do you feel warm and fuzzy, or is it a logical step for you? How do you access love? Is it a decision, or a gut instinct? And for christ’s sake, when you have sex, are you doing it to grab hold of the oxytocin, or fight it off? 

#antisocial personality disorder #antisocial #actually aspd #actually npd #actually bpd #antisocial feels #antisocial tag #cluster b #cluster b feels #trauma #abuse #neglect #sociopath #sociopathy #psychopath #psychopathy #oxytocin #love

[tshepiso-reads-books]

Prepare For a Rant | Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

Started: February 10th, 2020

Finished: February 14th, 2020

I have a lot of thoughts about Lair of Dreams [Goodreads] and most of them are negative. It took me what felt like several lightyears to finish this book and the reading experience sapped the joy of reading out of me for a while. This is going to be a long one folks, so buckle in. Before we jump into things I’d like to warn that this is going to be a spoilerific review so heed my warning before you jump in.

Lair of Dreams takes place shortly after the events of the first book in this series The Diviners. The city is on the cusp of an all-out outbreak as more and more cases of Sleeping Sickness, a mysterious illness that causes the afflicted to fall asleep and never wake up again, are cropping up in Chinatown. While the gang goes on wildly different adventures in this book they all ultimately come together to solve the mystery of the sleeping sickness.

On Character

My biggest problem with this book is the characters. They’re selfish, self-centered, naïve and don’t understand that actions hurt others. This is most evident in Evie, but every character in the book has moments of this scattered throughout the novel. However,  I feel uncomfortable throwing this fact as a criticism of the book because all of these characteristics are fundamental character traits of teenagers and I find it obtuse to criticize a young adult novel for accurately writing teenaged protagonists. But I can’t divorce this understanding from how absolutely infuriating I found so many moments in this book.

I will say just because our protagonists, and especially Evie, were annoying doesn’t mean they didn’t have depth. Libba Bray is a good writer and fully fleshed out every character in this book mellowing some of my frustrations with them. The perfect example of this is Sam Lloyd. The bad boy character archetype has been done to death in YA, but Sam stands apart from the crowd of tousled haired edge-lords by having a tragic backstory with legitimate weight to it. His search for his mother never felt like an afterthought or quirk. I genuinely felt his deep desire to find the truth and it made him well rounded. The same could be said about all the other characters in the story.

Evie was the only character I truly hated while reading this book. I understand the reason why Evie is the way she is and how her past influenced her bad behavior. But understanding that her PTSD and trauma are the cause of her actions was never enough to get me to sympathize with her. Every single character in this book has been through just as much if not more than she has and they never went as far as to abandon and betray their friends as consistently as Evie did. I could never get behind Evie, her selfishness went above and beyond teenaged immaturity and her inability to own up to her mistakes and change angered me.

Now on to Jericho Jones, my second least favorite character in this book. I genuinely liked Jericho in The Diviners, but his behavior in this book was appalling. I will admit he had the misfortune of falling into one of my least favorite tropes out there: “The Monster Inside Me“ [TV Tropes]. However, his particular brand of self-loathing went further than that. At the end of The Diviners Jericho was rejected by Evie causing a cycle of self-pity that verged on incel behavior. His constant monologuing about how “girls just don’t like guys him” was eye-roll inducing and his hurry to lash out at others because a girl he liked rejected him was gross. His actions depict a man who sees Evie as a prize rather than a human being.

Another problem I had with this book is how central protagonists from The Diviners were sidelined in the novel. It’s almost impossible in a reasonably sized book to follow eight different characters and give them all their due. The characters I feel most negatively effected by Bray’s shift in focus to new POVs were Memphis, Theta and Mabel. It would take over 500 more words to deep dive into my specific thoughts on each of their character arcs so in summation: these three were barely given anything to do and their character arcs didn’t move forward in any significant way. Mabel was given the harshest treatment of all because she had literally nothing to do in this book but pine after a guy who didn’t like her. No other character conflict she had from the previous book in this series was even mentioned or explored.

On Romance

Possibly my least favorite element in this book was its romantic subplot. So much page time was dedicated to it that it could reasonably be dubbed the main plot So here’s the rundown:

Mabel likes Jericho, but Jericho likes Evie.

Evie thinks she likes Jericho but doesn’t want to date him because of girl code.

Evie fake dates Sam and they both start catching feelings.

Jericho goes out with Mabel even though he knows that Mabel likes him and he still has feelings for Evie.

This is the kind of conflict I hate in books. This love triangle was so convoluted and contrived. It did nothing but make me hate Evie and Jericho, and I found none of the romantic tension exciting because the dynamics explored were built on a foundation of miscommunication and lies of omission.

On Representation

While I was pleasantly surprised by the anti-racism in The Diviners I was uncomfortable by the way some of the themes of diversity were explored in this book. In Lair of Dreams, we are introduced to Ling Chang a half Chinese girl with a recent case of infantile paralysis causing her to wear leg braces. She has a lot of self-hatred in regard to her disability. This trope while cliche wasn’t my problem, my problem was how this internal conflict is resolved. Another one of our protagonists, Henry, finds out about her disability and all her self loathing is resolved by him telling her she should love herself. This interaction is that it places Ling’s self-worth in the hands of an able-bodied person rather than focusing this her arc on self-acceptance. As an able-bodied person, I don’t want to cry ableism without shouting out actual disabled people’s voices on the matter so I would highly encourage you to seek out these voices. I’ve yet to encounter an ownvoices reviewer’s thought on Ling’s arc (believe me I looked) and this observation should in no way take away anything from disabled people who appreciated Bray’s writing.

There is so much that Bray does right when it comes to diversity and representation. I find her honest depictions of America’s ugly history timely and relevant and I admire her willingness to starkly show anti-semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, police brutality of the time. She clearly parallels America’s history with America’s present reminding you not so subtly that these toxic ideas still exist. I will warn readers that Bray graphically depicts racist imagery and I found the descriptive scenes of lynch mobs and the like very upsetting so be prepared for that.

One aspect of Bray’s depiction of American society I really liked was her pointed observation of the link between Evangelical Christianity and racism and xenophobia. I also liked how she depicted the ways people use American Exceptionalism (the idea that Americans are inherently superior to all others and that their position as a dominant world power is a God-given right rather than luck and historic subjugation) as a justification for bigotry and all detractors of this ideology is consistently labeled as anti-American by the people who benefit from bigotry.

On Everything Else

I will say Lair of Dreams was fairly well-plotted. Though the mystery element of this book very much felt like a subplot with the character conflicts taking center stage. While I didn’t find the sleeping sickness as outright terrifying as Naughty John in the first book Bray is good at building tension and suspense and the final climactic scene did get my heart racing. Bray’s ability to capture a creepy gothic atmosphere shines in this book and I loved her interlude chapters that showed brief snippets of our characters and the city itself.

Stars 🌟🌟🌟

I don’t know where I stand with this series. I found so much of the reading experience frustrating, but I am still invested in so many of the characters in the series and I would like to see how the final mystery unfolds. We’ll see if I continue on with the series because right now I don’t know.

#So... I had feelings #Libba Bray #The Diviners #Lair of Dreams #long post #remember when I reviewed the DIviners and I said Jericho was my favourite #things change