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asiryn · 5 years

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Healing Vision Headcanons: Olette/Xion/Namine/Sora/Riku Edition

will be putting this behind a cut for the length. will contain a bit of kh3 spoilers behind the cut. refer to this post for background knowledge about this verse.

as indicated by the title, this post will all be about that ship, and the subset ships of olette/namine, xion/namine, xion/olette, sora/riku, and sora/namine.

- namette, namishi, xiolette, soriku, and sonami will all be romantic ships

- olette/sora, olette/riku, xion/sora, rikushi, and namiku will all be more on the queerplatonic end of the spectrum

- sora is pan; riku is gay; olette is a lesbian; xion is a lesbian demisexual; namine is a demiromantic ace

- xion is intersex, but i’m still deciding between her either being a trans girl or nonbinary; i’m similarly undecided about namine, tho for her i’m deciding between bigender or nonbinary

- originally in the HV, soriku and namixiolette were going remain separate. but then i played kh3, and my sonami feels were really reawakened with a vengeance; when i went to look up fanfic for the ship, i was distressed to see that the majority of them were all alternative CoM angst endings---there was pretty much no fluff, none where sora and namine just got to be happy together. so---i’m being the change that i want to see in the world :3

- many years ago now (o.o ...god saying that makes me feel old), i wrote an olette/namine fanfic, which essentially details how i think they could have met in the canon verse, and even now it’s still essentially my headcanon. this is a bit of a spoiler for the end of that fic, but namine ends up having to wipe herself from olette’s memory. in the HV, when olette sees namine again for the first time after kh3, all her memories come back, and she remembers her again

- xion and namine bond over their similar experiences of being forgotten by the ppl they cared about

- part of the reason that xion and namine are drawn to olette is bc, compared to most of the ppl they’ve known, she’s so simple and uncomplicated; she’s warm, genuine, honest, easygoing, affectionate, and compassionate, and so she’s like a breath of fresh air to them

- sora’s feelings for riku have been present for a long time, though before the events of the series, he was a bit oblivious to the true, romantic nature of those feelings, mostly bc he just didn’t really dwell on it that much. all he knew was that riku was his favorite person to be around, and he was content w/ that

- but as they grew older, and especially as riku hit puberty, riku’s relationships with both sora and kairi started to take a downward swing. riku started getting very jealous of sora and kairi’s relationship, bc he was realizing that he was in love with sora, and wanted all of sora’s attention to himself, especially romantically. but riku was also experiencing an incredible amount of internalized homophobia, and he started lashing out at sora, which drove sora into spending more time with kairi

- riku’s parents were extremely homophobic, and so riku grew up knowing from a pretty young age that he was in love w/ sora, and also that those feelings were Wrong, but no matter how much he tried to ignore them, they never went away. and as he grew up, riku knew perfectly well that his parents would kick him out, at best, if they found out he was gay, and so he grew up with a crippling fear of abandonment, and he especially became terrified of losing sora too (riku attempting to share a paopu fruit w/ sora was partially motivated as a way to ensure that sora would never abandon him)

- ftr, when sora and riku are finally together and are going to go home after kh3, they discuss how they want to handle their relationship, and when riku finally reveals his parents’ emotional abuse, sora refuses to let riku go back to living w/ them. so first they come out to sora’s mom, who’s supportive and agrees to let riku live w/ them from now on, and then after they pack up riku’s belongings, they come out to riku’s parents and the community on their own terms (bc after everything they’ve been through, they refuse to be ashamed about this, and they know that word would travel fast anyway); riku’s parents react as expected, but at this point, riku’s done giving a shit about them, and so he moves in w/ sora

- (this is the beginning of hikari becoming the pioneer of what i call the gaywakening of destiny islands; she’s on a one-woman crusade to bring about queer education, rights, and pride, and it is 50% her being determined to be the most supportive parent in all the known universe, and 50% her being passive-aggressive as fuck towards riku’s parents. but the details of her crusade will be for another post XP)

- by the beginning of kh1, sora was starting to feel more flashes of attraction to riku. when riku first attempted to share a paopu fruit w/ him, sora kind of panicked, and thought that riku was just teasing him, and so sora tossed it away (riku of course took this as a total rejection)

- the next day, when riku brought up the idea of sharing a paopu fruit w/ kairi, was when sora’s confusion over his feelings really started. bc of general compulsory heterosexuality, and bc destiny islands was a more conservative community and thus had a lot of casual homophobia, sora never much questioned the assumption that boys and girls could only date each other (not that he had really given dating much thought before then, either). and w/ the assumption that strong relationships between boys and girls always ended up as romances, sora started wondering if his feelings towards kairi were romantic, and whether he did want to share a paopu fruit w/ her. complicating this was the fact that he really didn’t like the idea of riku sharing a paopu fruit w/ her, though he didn’t quite understand why, combined w/ the fact that he hated feeling like he was only ever second best to riku

- all of riku’s anguish came to a boiling and breaking point in kh1, as riku perceived all of sora’s actions as him choosing to abandon riku, just like he’d always feared. at this point, riku felt that he needed to be needed and necessary, and his whole identity was built on the idea that his friends needed him to be their strong protector, and he couldn’t really cope w/ the idea of sora not needing him after all; he latched onto saving kairi bc she really did need help

- as the series went on, sora became more fixated on the idea of kairi; she came to sort of represent the home that he missed so much. and w/ everyone else just assuming that it was So Obvious that sora was in love w/ kairi, he went along w/ that assumption too. upon his reunions w/ kairi and riku in twtnw at the end of kh2, and the wildly different emotions they each had inspired in him, sora began to realize the truth of his feelings, but he was still mostly in denial. when they were all home for a brief bit before the mark of mastery exams, sora was being confronted w/ the fact that his ideal of both kairi and Being Home weren’t matching up w/ the reality and things were awkward between them, but sora tried to tell himself that it was just bc they still needed more time

- all of this was even further compounded by the fact that sora fell in love w/ namine during re:com, and tho he couldn’t recall the memories of her, his feelings for her were still there, along with the aching sense that he had forgotten something important. seeing namine again at the end of kh2 really sparked and stirred up his feelings again, but sora had no context to understand them (how could he be in love w/ someone that he didn’t even know?). he kind of tried to convince himself that these feelings were for kairi, but he knew that they weren’t really

- obvs, after kh3, sora remembers (and thanks) namine; the circumstances of this aren’t fully fleshed out. partially it’s bc it’s tied in with my indecision about in what way i should alter the canon scenes of kairi being fridged. on one hand, bc i feel that the whole affair of kairi dying was entirely superfluous, i could tweak it so that she never dies. on the other hand, i could go with kairi ‘dying’ in the battle, but in a more heroic self-sacrificial way (maybe she took a hit meant for sora or someone else), and then there being an actual story arc where sora and riku go and save her. it would essentially involve them collecting the pieces of her and putting her back together (like sora did for himself in the final world), but with more...effort involved. and in said story arc, there could be an event that triggers sora into remembering namine, or something to that effect.

- again, undecided if i want to change the canon paopu fruit scene into being a sorikai friendship moment instead, or if i’ll keep the canon version, but with the reading that it happened bc sora and kairi were both still suffering from compulsory heterosexuality, and still trying to force themselves into believing that they liked each other romantically; if i go with the saving kairi story arc, it would be the latter option

- continuing on with ‘saving kairi’ story arc, in this version, when sora and riku go off to save her together (on a meta-textual level, it’d be a way for their story to come full circle: they’re back where they started, but they’re going to do it right this time; instead of having petty fights with each other over who gets to save kairi, they’ll save her together), sora still would have been in denial about the true nature of his feelings for riku. but travelling together with him, and actually spending time with riku after being apart for so long, sora will start to understand his feelings better

- riku of course already knows that he’s deeply in love with sora and is pining, but he’s trying to keep his distance, bc sora and kairi are ‘together’ now (and mostly riku is just resolved that he won’t let his jealousy get the better of him this time, and he’s determined to be the best and most supportive friend that he can be)

- romantic moments and almost kisses keep happening anyway, but riku tries to tell himself that he’s imagining things and reading too much into it, while sora struggles with acceptance of his true feelings

- even still, sora and riku won’t actually get together until after sora and kairi have some sort of conversation where they finally talk through everything and can admit that they only love each other as friends, and they finally put to rest their attempts to force romantic feelings for each other

- after coming to an understanding with kairi, sora will then seek out to riku finally talk things out with him and to confess his true feelings (and there’ll be a lot of happy tears, probably)

- even tho sora might be a bit hesitant to potentially rock the boat this early in his new relationship w/ riku, in the interests of honesty and full disclosure, and having by this point remembered namine and had all those feelings come rushing back to the forefront, sora will quietly confess to riku that he thinks he might be in love with namine too

- to sora’s surprise, riku’s quiet for a moment, but then tells him that he’s honestly not really surprised, as he’s always thought that a lot more went down between sora and namine in castle oblivion than namine tried to let on; at this point, riku reminds sora that he spent the majority of a year w/ namine while she was trying to fix his memories, and he remembered her heartbreak and anguish as she essentially worked to erase herself from sora’s memories, tho she tried to conceal her pain

- riku remembers this as being one of the big turning points for him as a person, bc instead of being jealous about namine being in love w/ sora too, he just empathized w/ her instead, and thought that they were/would be suffering the same pain of being in unrequited love w/ sora, as he thought they’d both have to watch sora be in love w/ kairi

- while sora and riku are off saving kairi, and incidentally saving namine as well, during that time, xion and olette are meeting and getting to know each other as friends

- xion and olette may have already started going on a few dates by the time sora and riku get back w/ kairi, and namine is given her own body again; sora and riku get together not long after they get back

- at first, namine is more focused on forming friendships; during this time, the person she becomes closest to is xion, bc again, they can both empathize w/ each other a lot

- during this time, sora and namine are trying to keep their promise of being friends for real this time, but it’s not quite working out bc they’re both kinda pining for each other

- all the while, namine is coming to terms w/ her asexuality, and she’s also starting to fall for xion especially, but also olette; namine tends to experience a lot of insecurity and anxiety, and she becomes terrified of possibly ruining her friendship w/ xion, and so ends up confiding in her all of her angst. xion assures her that she’s not ruining anything, and that she’s interested in namine as well, but admits that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing either, and suggests that they consult w/ olette, who’s pretty much the relationship expert

- olette is the one who helps namine understand her asexuality, and suggests the polyamory option; xion and olette have an allosexual relationship, while their relationship w/ namine is purely ace

- meanwhile, riku can’t stand seeing sora be unhappy, and so he goes to consult w/ olette, and together they arrange for all five of them to sit down and hash everything out, w/ the end result being that sora and namine will also be dating; their relationship is also purely ace, and sora’s w/ riku is allosexual

- after kh3, axel and saix effectively adopt roxas and xion, and they’re all living in twilight town now

- sora and riku are of course living w/ sora’s mom on destiny islands, and namine was adopted by kairi’s dad, and so now she’s living w/ kairi (at first namine was afraid of kairi being mad at her for dating sora, but kairi’s perfectly fine w/ it)

- if the ‘saving kairi’ story arc didn’t happen, then during the amount of time that it would have taken for sora and riku to save her, that time was instead sora and kairi attempting to date each other; when they realized that the relationship wasn’t working for them and neither of them were happy, they finally gave up on being in denial and called it quits. during that time, riku and namine were pining for sora, while in this version, namixiolette fell for each other at around the same time and pace (instead of it being xiolette first, and then namine coming into the relationship later)

- after sokai stopped dating, the ot5 getting together went down pretty much in the same way as in the ‘saving kairi’ story arc

- is it perhaps excessive that namine has two girlfriends, a boyfriend, and a queerplatonic partner? imo, she’s been alone and isolated for far too long, so i’m giving her all the love that she deserves (and she’ll also have ALL the friends; a few of the ones she’s closest to being kairi and terra)

- every one of the ot5 ships will just be full of softness and gentleness

- sora and olette.....are just gonna be such BROS to each other (in general, olette is just cultivating her butch lesbian #aesthetic these days). she’ll be like this w/ roxas too, but they’ll just constantly be playing video games and skateboarding; xion’ll be getting in on this too

- okay, so xion and riku’s relationship. during Days, when xion was absorbing sora and his memories, she did experience and kinda channel sora’s feelings for riku (and for his part, riku felt something of an echo of sora from her). so while she doesn’t experience those feelings for herself anymore, she still remembers the echo of it, and so things are a bit awkward between them at first (also riku still feels guilty about essentially coercing xion and roxas into dying). eventually they do find common ground and settle into a comfortable friendship (also, xion experienced the same thing in regards to kairi)

- for sora, he had a similar problem w/ xion, in that he experienced a lot of roxas’s feelings towards her (tho that was mostly the pain of losing her), so he still remembers the echoes of those emotions. but again, he ends up really becoming bros w/ her and olette

- olette and riku probably took the longest to really bond, tho they eventually did bc they discovered they liked doing little crafts together

- being both introverts, riku and namine find a lot of solace in each other when they just need some quiet time; olette and sora are both extroverts, w/ xion being somewhere in the middle

- olette does have some playful flirting going on w/ kairi, but it’s never anything serious. xion and kairi like sparring w/ their keyblades together

- if the five of them ever moved in together, it’d probably be in either twilight town or destiny islands. there’d be at least 3 bedrooms (one for if someone needed some alone time, one for cuddles, and one for activities that would not involve namine)

- the more likely option is that soriku and xiolette would each have their own houses/apartments (in destiny islands and twilight town, respectively), and namine would bounce back and forth between them. both places would have at least 2 bedrooms each

- soriku’s place is probably more of a cottage that’s closer to the seaside than the center of the mainland, while xiolette’s place is an apartment. namine has rooms set aside for her in both places, and her belongings are scattered between them. big things like her easels for paintings and canvases and things like that are at soriku’s cottage, which has more space than xiolette’s apartment, etc.

- sora, riku, and xion are all officially keyblade wielders/masters, so that’s pretty much their occupations. olette is probably going to be attending university soon, and namine will probably go to art school (probably just for the experience more than anything else)

- tbh, idk what olette would be studying at university. maybe business management and/or marketing, bc she found she really liked working at scrooge’s bistro and wants to take over it someday? maybe she wants to open her own small business. maybe it’s a sports scholarship. fashion or graphic design? idkkk

okay, i think that’ll be enough for this post. if i have more headcanons about this ship, i’ll be making another post for them, bc this one is already probably far too long XDD

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sobdasha · 4 years

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i got caught up with this not because i did better but because i’ve had no time/watched some tv

War for the Oaks, Emma Bull I began reading this book at the same time as The Innkeeper's Song, listed below. I started out dragging my feet on this one and racing through TIS. But one book got progressively more amazing while the other book got progressively less impressive and my better book is this one. This was the roomie's first brush with urban fantasy, and one of her friends got her a second-hand first edition paperback, and so she talked about it a lot until I finally picked it up and she said "Uh but also I haven't read it in forever so I uh. Don't know how it holds up." (She rightly fears me because as you will have noticed I am a Very Particular Reader.) Reasons I disliked this book at first: - fashion choices that scream "1980s" and fashion choices that scream "lesbian" are incredibly similar and guess which of the two I am not getting, seeing as this was published in 1987. - Eddie is breaking up with her garbage boyfriend which is good but she has an incredible amount of chemistry with Carla which is disheartening given that I know I won't get sapphics and Eddie will end up dating some other boy with whom there is no chemistry. - This is a book about rock-n-roll bands I don't know any of these songs (okay I might know these songs but I don't know artists or titles so I may as well not know any of these songs) it's kinda wasted on me. - oh boy I'm so excited to watch her and the phouka fight like Kagome and Inuyasha or any other pair with this dynamic yaaaaay /sarcasm Reasons this came to be a Good Read: - Everyone dresses so goddamn queer in this book that you know what, everyone except that jerkass Stuart is queer. He's garbage so he can be straight or whatever. It's my reading experience I do what I want. There's no way these people aren't bi. Also it's canon because everyone takes one look at the phouka and assumes he's gay. …………………………with slurs but still. - Good supporting cast. - I both failed to give the phouka a deep voice and also to sustain a Stereotypical Gay voice (which, the dialogue will totally 100% support), but I did accidentally voice him with Tatum's dub of Tomoe from Kamisama Kiss which was completely appropriate in the "vaguely gay vaguely British unambiguously prissy" department, and also entertaining because it reminded me of the dynamics in that anime but, y'know, better. - I almost gave up when the romance hit hardcore but it turned out later that was actually a fake-out that was meant to be garbage and set us up for the endgame much later, by which point Eddie and the phouka actually had the same level of chemistry as Eddie and Carla, so I could actively enjoy the ship. A win! Anyway it was fun. It may not have aged the best in the sense that it strove to be accurate to time and place (see: homophobic slurs), but the character dynamics held up pretty dang well. I would definitely read this again and enjoy myself; in fact I plan to.

The Innkeeper's Song, Peter S. Beagle I was very excited to read this because I was so blown away by The Last Unicorn but the more I read the more disappointed I got. Half the time I feel like that weeb who is like "hello I only like your fanfic you wrote when you were 13 and high on pixie stixs, all your stuff now sucks", and half the time I tell myself, "Maybe there is a reason I've only ever heard of The Last Unicorn and had no idea he'd actually written other books." As you have probably picked up by now, I have a knee-jerk dislike of first person PoV where it must prove itself worthy to me first, despite the fact that I like plenty of things written in first person. I also have a knee-jerk dislike of "I will change the narrator every chapter and announce loudly who it is instead of doing it subtly but unmistakably in the content of the text itself." This book had both. Despite all my harsh judgment, it would be incorrect of me to say that this writing choice is not valid. That this writing choice cannot be used to amazing effect. I do not believe that is what happened here. I did not feel it was adding much to the story to begin with (other than being the shortest and straightest path to advancing a narrative with many fronts), and I was definitely unimpressed when we got to the string of chapters, all of them less than a page and some no more than a paragraph, during the orgy scene where the 3 women have sex with 1 teen boy who's been thirsting after them, and they pay him a lot of worshipful attention in the orgy even though none of them actually like him, and also this is when we reveal one of the women is a man in disguise in the most confusing way possible so my cringe got even deeper as I waited for Beagle to fuck up a trans storyline. (It was literally just "I'm on the run so I'm magically dressing as a girl" but it took a really long time to clarify that after.) In addition to not liking the narrative structure, I just wasn't interested or invested in the actual plot. It didn't feel very urgent or important and at the end I was like "what even happened and also why did it happen." I was underwhelmed. I was definitely the wrong audience for this book. Oh also because I was not enjoying myself I started to get really irrationally annoyed by the way fantasy fauna and flora would have fantasy names and they would be italicized. In a first person PoV. Where the narrator is literally speaking the language that this word is native to. It half felt pretentious, and half highlighted what felt like a loose thread: everyone is literally narrating to someone (presumably collecting the story, after everyone has gone their separate ways) and this has all been woven together into a proper narrative, but our story collector is absent despite addresses to such a person. What purpose does this serve? Does it make it more ~authentic~ fantasy? Because I don't buy it. Now my suspension of disbelief is snapped; I'd have preferred it was either left out entirely, or made into a brilliant framing device like in The Name of the Wind.

Giant Bones, Peter S. Beagle This one was short stories "set in the same universe as The Innkeeper's Song", which basically meant some city names were reused, as well as all those italicized fantasy names and the "I am narrating my story to an audience in-story" frame. You know, all the things I didn't particularly care for. I pressed on to see if there was anything I might like, but since I can't remember, I assume there wasn't. Because this left me wanting, and the title was Giant Bones, I went to reread Conservation of Shadows by Lee instead, starting with "The Bones of Giants," which was greatly preferable, so much more my speed. That's when I did the write-up for the last round of books lol.

Nimona, Noelle Stevenson This has been on my list for Forever but I'm bad at reading new books. Anyway! Nimona was very good!! It felt, hm, very self-indulgent in the way that is amazing, where the creator gives themself whatever they want and the work turns out brilliantly because of it. I didn't think I was into friends to enemies to lovers but apparently I love it wen Stevenson handles it (see: She Ra reboot). Speaking of She Ra, I probably would have figured out where the end game was going if I'd read Nimona before looool. I know people referenced it when they talked ships but I just….didn't...pay enough attention. There was found family stuff I enjoyed, dad stuff, I'm finding that I am liking a lot of takes on monster girls, etc. Anyway it gave me a lot of feelings, it was funny, it was good, I need to get a copy.

The Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee The first time I talked about this book I mentioned something about the pacing and suspending disbelief or whatever, but I want to note that this time the pacing felt perfect and the plot didn't seem weird at all, it flowed very smoothly. I don't know if that's because it was a reread and I knew where it was going, or because I just read it awkwardly the first time. Anyway. Something that stood out to me this time is that, near the end, I realized this story is a bit animated Disney Mulan. There's even the "you broke this you broke that you impersonated a soldier but also you saved China so thanks" bit. Where The Dragon Pearl is wildly different from other Mulan-type stories that I like (see: Monstrous Regiment) is that it is entirely ungendered. (There are some mentions of gender in the book. These amount mostly to, "most foxes choose to be female because Tradition but one of my cousins decided to be male like my brother and no one mocks him for it" and "official name tags also include handy signifiers of which personal pronouns a person prefers.") What I'm trying to say is, a lot of other stuff when dealing with/trying to deconstruct gender stereotyping, ends up reinforcing it in a way. In order to illustrate why the stereotypes are wrong, they end up repeating the stereotypes a lot in order to argue against them. The Dragon Pearl, on the other hand, is genderless in a way that doesn't reinforce the gender binary. There are no gendered clothes. There are no gendered bathrooms. There are no gendered hairstyles or accessories. There are no gendered actions or emotions or stereotypes. There are no gendered bodies (the differences highlighted between Min and Jang-who-she's-shapeshifting-into are of build ie, height, center of gravity, not of private bits). No plot points revolve around the maleness of the person Min is impersonating; no plot points revolve around the femaleness of Min. And they/them? It's never explained why any person uses that pronoun. They just do so that's just how it is. I just think this is amazingly neat and I wanna applaud Lee for this finesse.

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, Mackenzi Lee I put this on my list because Queer and people were recommending it, but it was not well-advertized to me. I was expecting shallow teen romance, but dressed in historical clothes and unsubtly, unabashedly, unashamedly GAY. So I was expecting some gay. I was not expecting gay pining I actually enjoyed, I was not expecting call-outs for privilege of wealth and class and sex and color, I was not expecting the drama of the romance to not be stupidly fabricated misunderstandings but instead be driven by the need for character development and personal growth, I had forgotten I was expecting people of color, people with disabilities, badass women, I was not expecting a nuanced call-out of ableism ("I don't believe I need to be well to be happy", etc). I was not expecting a reversal of gender stereotypes that avoided saying "X gender is bad." Like, Monty is the team weakest link. Monty faints at the sight of blood. Monty is romantic and emotional and swoons at the slightest provocation. Monty uses his wiles to seduce people, that's the main skill he actually brings to the party. Monty cries. Aside from probably Monty's asshole dad who hates him for being gay, no one else nor the narrative calls these traits out as being Feminine (And Therefore Bad). Like, haha, We All Know These Are All Stereotypes Of Women At The Time, but no one says it. I find there's something really nice about no one saying it. Meanwhile, Percy and Felicity are competent and cool and I heart them. (What the hell, I heart Monty too. He really grows on you. He's so soft and in love and pathetic.) Anyway going back to the privilege thing, I love that Percy and Felicity and others constantly call Monty out on his privilege and refuse to coddle him over it. But they also care about him and they are very tender to him, not because of his privilege, but because he is a person who deserves basic person things, when he has his own issues. Your issues don't excuse your behavior, but yikes we deeply underestimated the sheer depth of your PTSD and we're gentler with you because of it. So try to stop being an ass. This book is just super wholesome and I can already tell this will be one of my new go-to's when I need a comfort book. Like Ancillary Justice etc.

The Gentleman's Guide to Getting Lucky, Mackenzi Lee This is not a fanfiction in the sense that is it written by the author and not a fan, but you need to understand, as part of me selling this to you as earnestly as I can, this is a fanfiction set after The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue which involves hijinks as Monty and Percy try and fail hilariously to have their first time having sex together, Felicity tries to wingman, there are miscommunications and nervous breakdowns and tender resolutions and it is absolutely a perfect indulgence. Because it was written by the actual author everyone is 100% in character and the narrative voice is spot-on. Kudos!

The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, Mackenzi Lee Ace/aro Felicity???? ACE/ARO FELICITY!!! TBH I only vaguely remembered the descriptions for this one, ie "this time it's lesbians," and I was reading this going "there is a suspicious lack of lesbians but so much platonic vibes and also…..maybe…..maybe…????" and like I got both lesbians AND ace/aro Felicity????? Lee wrote this book? As a gift? For me???? I cannot believe I was blessed with "not like other girls"!Felicity as a vehicle for calling out the internalized misogyny inherent in the Not Like Other Girls mindset, and it is glorious. You can like pretty dresses and running around doing science, or you can hate dresses and only love science, or you can only like pretty dresses, or you can like whatever the heck you want in whatever combo, doesn't matter you're still a girl you're still valid and this shit isn't mutually exclusive. Much as I don't wear makeup (I've slowly learned to wear dresses again) in real life, gosh I love Johanna for being like "I love dresses and I love science and what if I was a badass adventurer but also got to be rescued a lot" because that was bitty me. Gimme a princess dress and a sword and a bow and arrows but also a tower to be rescued from and then various adventures. I want it both ways! And that's okay!! Also this is a critique I have apparently wanted since at least 3rd grade, see this proof from my daily journal prompts, I apologize for my lack of attention to spelling and forming letters: "Girls are what ever girls are. Girls like different things so I con't judge them all. Some girls like barbies. Just becaus you my not like barbies dosn't mean those girls aren't girls, it means they like more things that hove barbies. I like nintendo and I'm a girl." Apparently I was a Not Like Other Girls who thought Other Girls were still extremely valid. (that's kind of hilarious though because like, child, you had Barbies and didn't hate Barbies, you are just bad at playing with dolls and props. You're also bad at playing Nintendo.) Other stuff specifically, hm, it was refreshing to not have "I am skinny and perfect and clearly ugly" or even "I am legitimately ugly." Instead we have, "You do realize my torso is a solid rectangle, it laughs at this corset which I guess we are going to put on anyway, also my football player shoulders are going to literally pop the sleeves off that dress" and "I am built like a corgi dog, this is simply a fact of my proportions." Like, Felicity definitely has Issues with her traditional femininity and lack thereof, but I feel like it was never specifically tied to "my body shape is ugly." Also to go back to this book being written for me personally. You know they always say to write things that only you could write, that are self-indulgent, write what you want to see? It's really hard to do without a template to follow. Right before I picked up this book I realized that maybe The Thing Only I Would Write would be saying "a Skadi-and-Njord marriage is in fact a valid happy ending," but I've never seen that before and I don't know what it would look like even if I kind of understand the concept. All the media I consume, if not ending in romantic soulmates, is at least found family. If you are a loner, if you like being alone, your happy ending is to get a manic-pixie-dream-anything (girl, grandson, grandma, dog, whathaveyou) and integrate back into being social. There are no happy endings where a loner stays alone, where you get married but live separately and see each other very rarely because you love them but can't stand to live with them and you need to be alone to exist as you. And Mackenzi Lee just up and wrote it. It's valid to want to live in a house by yourself filled with bookshelves and have friends. It's valid for a girl to marry another girl who is a pirate and sails around most of the time and only comes to visit on occasion so you don't get sick of her and you keep loving her. This is an okay thing for an ace/aro to want, and it's valid to be happy with this. I can't even, y'all. I'm still marveling. I finally have seen a picture of the life I know would make me happy, and it's finally been acknowledged that I can be happy. (The amount of time I've spent, knowing I hate being social, and wondering--how many years down the line, when I'm living alone and content, will the switch suddenly flip? How many bridges will I have left behind when it turns out that I actually feel loneliness, and I'm miserable and unable to make friends and it turns out there are no manic pixie dream whatevers in real life and I fucked myself over forever because I was wrong and I should have been maintaining these social ties now and turning into someone I'm sure I'm not? What if people like me, who don't really get lonely without people, don't actually exist??) Anyway representation matters. Also Felicity being blindsided with Callum's proposal was, wow, okay I should have caught on to ace!Felicity then because that was so very accurate to my life experience minus people cutting fingers off. Look I was quoting stuff at the end to a friend and she was like "maybe that's why there's aces on the cover" and I am a very stupid ace okay. Felicity and Johanna's intense queerplatonic friendship that they keep trying to take up again in among the same sort of "you need character growth" drama that Monty needed re: Percy is also just, chef kiss, god I love this book. I need to buy this book. I haven't yet so what I did is I renewed all the books so I could immediately reread them after I finished them the first time.

#sobdasha booking

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