#it's 100 words and the author is dead so context is what you make it

[sushisocks]

since sean was the first to die(rip king😔), we never rly saw him deal w the death of the other members. how do you think a situation like that would go and who's death would impact him the most?

Oooh boy, what a great question!! 

So, I do think Sean would feel obligated to keep things light, but we also KNOW that he’s the one that likes to remember people and talk about the ones he cared for. I can 100% see him being the main push for letting people feel grief in a safe manner; Sean would be the one sitting at the campfire telling funny and heartwarming stories about the dead person, and encouraging other people to open up and share stories too.

At the same time, I 100% see him being weighed down HEAVY by certain deaths in private. If he survived past Arthur’s death, for example, that would absolutely rock his world. Same with Lenny’s death; if not from a shipping perspective, simply because Lenny is the youngest gun, is smart, and a friend of Sean’s. I think that would put some things in perspective for him real quick, and internally he’d be having a REAL bad time. Thing is, Sean isn’t really one to show a whole lot of negativity, so I don’t think this would be apparent to anyone who didn’t know how to look for it.

Additionally, I do genuinely think both Kieran and Molly’s deaths would hit him HARD. I’ve talked with several friends now about how Sean, Molly, and Kieran do all three have a connection with Ireland, and probably did feel a faint sense of kinship over it. Molly feeling unsafe and more alone after both Sean and Kieran dying right after one another makes a world of sense, even if she wasn’t really close to either of them, simply because of what they represent to one another. I can imagine her death hitting Sean in a similar way, and Kieran’s death would also absolutely sour certain things for him – ESPECIALLY since if you get all their possible interactions over the course of Horseshoe & Clemens Point, the two DO actually develop a repertoire between one another. 

Hosea’s death is a rough one, I think. Sean and Hosea’s relationship is of great interest to me, because there’s a LOT of conflict there, and Hosea is definitely among the– Less kind gang members, to Sean. Still though, Sean does clearly have some regard for Hosea as a wiser older man, as shown by him actually asking Hosea about their situation, clearly seeking advice and/or comfort regarding it. In large part I think Hosea’s death would be somewhat overshadowed by Lenny’s, to Sean at least, but there would very much be a sense of… Indignation, maybe? The context of this being one of the founding members of the gang, Dutch’s partner in crime, this voice of authority, now dead for what? 

Sean, at his core, is a people person. There’s no way any of the deaths wouldn’t leave an impression.

One thing I can then see happening is… A sort of disillusionment for Sean, when it comes to Dutch & the gang? Imagine all these rapid rate deaths of people you care about, and when you look to your leader he doesn’t really… Do or say anything? About it?? 

I think, similarly to my reasoning as to why I think Sean would’ve sided with Arthur in the end had he gotten that far, Sean isn’t as fully sold on every aspect of Dutch’s talk nor as fully invested as Arthur and John are (with their specific daddy issues lmfao). That WOULD allow Sean to grow more critical, and as more people die, I can imagine us actually getting to see Sean possibly become more– Well, for a lack of a better word, more Arthur-like. “He’s just a younger version of you” and all that, here’s Sean at around the same age Arthur was when he lost Eliza and Isaac, watching people that matter to him die through a failure of leadership, if you will. It makes sense to me that Sean would start harboring a similar sense of anger, that would probably start grounding him a bit more. 

This is all obviously assuming that Sean survives and everything happens the exact same way, which, as I’ve talked about before, I think is extremely unlikely! But it’s an interesting thought experiment for sure!!

Thank you so much for this question!! I enjoyed writing this a lot, and Sean’s potential journey in the story when surviving his scripted death has always been a point of deep fascination to me, so I LOVE getting to think abt stuff like this!!!

#i took a REALLY analytical approach to this question bcz otherwise i'd have started sobbing lmfao #id just be crying all over ur dash. wailing. im fine though its okay lmaoo #teki talks #sean macguire #rdr2 sean #sean rdr2 #rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #rdr thoughts #asks #rdr asks #meta asks

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 40, 41, and 42 of Harrow the Ninth

I did read Chapter 43 also, so I got the explanation of what's going on here, but I wanted one post just to talk about all these, uh, AUs, I guess? I gather Harrow's dream bubble river bubble is just going a bit haywire because she's badly wounded or something

The first one seems to be an AU where Harrow was not a necromancer, but Gideon was, and Harrow's parents adopted Gideon and disowned Harrow, if I'm understanding correctly. I wonder if they just opted not to murder 200 children in this universe, or if they did do that but the thanergy somehow caused Gideon to become a necromancer instead of Harrow because they miscalculated something? TBH, this seems like a completely different genre of enemies-to-lovers than the version where Harrow is suicidal due to being told constantly about the 200 dead children

Yeah, this is exactly what Harrow would be like as cavalier, or, I guess, aspiring cavalier, since I gather you have to actually be attached to a necromancer in order to really be a cavalier. I gather the only other options on the Ninth other than becoming a cavalier would be to just become a miscellaneous nun, or to realize Gideon's original dream of running off to join the Cohort. Although, there is also a Harrow-joins-the-Cohort AU in this set as well. Harrow says it's her right to carry the blade because she was born into the noble house, so presumably it's just that there's no other respectable career available for the nobility if they aren't necromancers

Something interesting here is that they both seem to be assuming that being Gideon's cavalier automatically makes one the cavalier primary, whereas based on Judith's notes about everyone's history that doesn't actually seem to be the case for at least most of the other Houses, since a lot of the other cavaliers became cavalier primary either before or after getting attached to their necromancer. The only one I can remember off the top of my head where it seemed like becoming the cavalier to the heir necessarily made you cavalier primary was in the case of Magnus and Abigail, but I could be misremembering. It also didn't seem to me like this kind of challenge that Harrow is issuing here would be a normative thing to happen, that someone would challenge a necromancer's cavalier for the right to take their place with that necromancer, it seemed like cavalierships were meant to be a death-do-us-part thing, and a lot of the pairs seem to have been specifically selected for compatibility at birth or a very young age (e.g. Mayonnaise Uncle and Colum), and that compatibility was more important than something like martial ability

This is not a context where I expected to see the word "flog", so I looked it up:

Since the author is a kiwi, I guess she means definition 4, rather than definition 3? That's really interesting, I had no idea "flog" was used in either of those senses

Right, so, this is the cavalier!Harrow version of opening the Tomb, isn't it? Except in this case Gideon intervenes on her behalf, instead of telling on her. Or maybe she did both?

Interesting that Samael is just Anastasia's "warrior servant" here, and not specifically called out as her cavalier, or maybe that's just another way of saying it?

Harrow does know the contents of the Noniad, so presumably this is in there in some capacity, or she's at least heard Ortus talk about this. I wonder what Lyctor Nonius supposedly stood against? There's a very finite number of them

Funny that the role reversal didn't change Crux's opinion of anyone, he has no truck with this adoption nonsense and is still 100% loyal to Harrow and hates Gideon

The next one seems to be an arranged marriage AU of some sort, I feel like these are getting progressively more and more griddlehark content, or just more and more direct Gideon involvement as they go, possibly due to Harrow gradually resurrecting her memories of Gideon

I note that in the last one, Crux had a speaking part, and in this one, Aiglamene has a speaking part. According to Magnus and Abigail in Chapter 43, the major roles in these are played by ghosts in the River, but as far as I'm aware Crux and Aiglamene are still alive on Pluto. Did something happen on Pluto since the last time we saw them? Although Corona seems to be in this one, too, albeit not as a speaking part

Ianthe's soup recipe, lmao

The third one is a Harrow-joins-the-Cohort AU, but it's also... a coffee shop AU, and I guess "BARI" is meant to recall "barista"? Ok, look, the reason people write coffee shop AUs (and high school AUs, and college roommate AUs, etc.) is that those are everyday social situations that are very familiar to the people writing the story, so that's just naturally what they fall back on when they want to write an AU, they want to bring the characters into their everyday lives, or write about them in a situation that they have a lot of first-hand knowledge of. The first AU is in fact a social situation that Harrow would at least be pretty familiar with, even if it's not her actual everyday experience, and the arranged marriage thing, that does definitely seem like something that happens in this universe, it's been mentioned several times at different points, even if Harrow has never personally been involved in something like that. But I don't think Harrow has any personal experience of anything like a coffee shop, or with interacting with food service people in general? Why is there a coffee shop AU here? I guess the reason the last Canaan House episode established Harrow's familiarity with coffee was to set up the basis for this coffee shop AU, but it seems kind of odd given that Gideon had no familiarity at all with hot drinks and Harrow also had no familiarity with tea or how to drink it without burning herself

Did Isaac have earrings in Gideon the Ninth, or is this just a reference to how he died?

Ahh, 14-year-old logic

Also, speaking of mumps, why are people getting mumps in this setting? Even if the Resurrection/etc. wiped out all knowledge of modern medicine, is 10,000 years really not enough time in which to reinvent the MMR vaccine? Also, I seem to remember now that Dulcinea claimed that her breathing tube had been invented by Palamedes, which means it somehow hadn't been invented before Palamedes. You would think that the kind of anatomical knowledge that necromancy would require would mean that medical science is more advanced, not less

Is this "absolutely not, I'm not going to be part of your coffee shop AU about you and your crush", or "absolutely not, you're not dragging my poor dead kids into this River bubble"? It seemed so perfectly to be the first one when I got to the end of the chapter, but then when I read Chapter 43, I started to think it might actually be the second

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth

[spookfished]

kades big media roundup (august)

hiii! like i said in my last post i spent a big portion of august being sick :| which involved spending like a Lot of the time sitting around playing pikmin 4, going "oh i think im thinking so hard about pikmin that its making me more tired?" and then playing more pikmin anyways. i 100%d this game guys it was so serious

books/comics/written media: paladins strength by ursula vernon: this is part of the saints of iron series, but i dont think context from the other books is really needed! romantasy/murder mystery about a nun and a paladin travelling together to the city by chance… they both have their own agendas but something draws them together 0///0 i found this really fun!! may have too much blood and guts for a pure romance fan but its very sort of pragmatic and down to earth in that ursula vernon way. nice dynamic between the leads, had a delightfully creepy (and sad!) antagonist and wrapped up threads from the previous book very nicely. would recommend 👍

in other words by jhumpa lahiri: semi autobiographical literary fiction about a (pulitzer winning) author who decides to move to italy and start writing exclusively in italian. (its translated!) hmmm as someone who also really loves languages but also doesnt really have the resources or desire to do something like. move to a different country (i mean maybe!) and only speak and write in that language from now on (probably not), it was a really interesting perspective. i was sort of put off by her attitude towards bengali but the whole "triangle of languages" theory makes sense… the writer is very straightforward and honest feeling in a way thats almost irritating sometimes but i think thats how a lot of artists are. and the concept alone is still very interesting.. lol anyways its a very short read so id still recommend 👍

the twisted ones by ursula vernon: horror. a woman is tasked with cleaning out her late hoarder grandmothers' house, located in rural north carolina. this was ursula vernons first horror book, i think! i was a little disappointed bc this wasnt very scary, exactly--but i feel like ive also been learning that even if i startle easily, my horror threshhold is actually very high……? i ended up liking what moves the dead more (it was scarier!) but this still had a fun cast of characters. still worth a read though :3 i enjoyed it

dungeon meshi by ryoko kui(catchup): manga about a group of adventurers looking for their lost friend. stuck in the dungeon for months on end, they resort to eating monsters! ohhhhh my god drags down myface dungeon meshi is literally one of the best manga out there and im glad everyone recognizes this. its about desire and need and the way unfulfilled desires is what propels our lives forward and gives them meaning and also how its SUPER IMPORTANT TO GET 3 NUTRITIOUS MEALS AND SLEEP 8 HOURS and all that. lol. phenomenal art i cant help but think that ryoko kui draws women as only a lesbian can..? highly recommend 👍

witch hat atelier by kamome shirahama(catchup): coming of age/fantasy manga--a girl discovers the secret behind the magic that powers her world. she's determined to use it to save her mother, but it may bring a heavy price--or maybe not at all…? like vita nostra (which i read last month!), this is also a book about learning magic that focuses heavily on pedagogy itself (which in this case is also a direct parallel to learning about art/drawing!). however, unlike vita nostra the characters are more like 10-11, and so it also takes a much more gentle and compassionate approach to how we should learn. but it also tackles some really interesting themes about restriction of information, and if said info should be restricted and why! and sort of digging deeper into the idea of "a secret hidden from the normal world". the art is soooo gorgeous i think its all done by hand? looks like a picture book can honestly get a bit overwhelming. highly recommend 👍

bloom into you: f/f manga about a girl who has never fallen in love, and a girl who never wants to be loved. bloom into you is one of those Yuri Classics that i enjoyed a lot as someone who has complicated feelings about romance :3 theres that really interesting quote thats like "love isnt about wanting someone to change or stay the same. when i say 'i love you,' its an expression of faith that even as you change, youll always be the person i adore"….. very interesting! also the sort of idea that you cant 'no true scotsman' love--you can just decide that you love someone, and then you do? kind of? anyways i thought it was pretty interesting :3

beastars: coming of age manga, set in a world kinda like zootopia but if someone thought about it way more. legosi, a large grey wolf struggles with distinguishing between his carnal desires and his, uh, carnivorous desires. ok EYE really liked it but also i think it handles a lot of themes really weirdly… maybe this is because legosi is just really fucking weird (this is definitely part of it) but in many ways beastars portrays the split between men and women as being even more uncrossable than the split between herbivores and carnivores.. which to me was surprising since the manga itself is written by a woman? definitely look up a TW list if youre planning on reading lol. it definitely has some of the best "what if animals lol" worldbuilding out there. i had louis/legosi/haru ot3 in my heart the whole way through LOL but i, uh, dont really think legosi and haru work as a couple just by themselves .. also the gaybait in here is crazy. i think past the midway or maybe 3/4 point it kinda starts to lose focus, but it still had a lot of compelling drama. yayyy louis beastars i think more theater kids should go through unbelievable self-inflicted pain

beast complex: anthology about the surrounding stories of the ppl of beastars. SO fun many people agree that the best part of beastars was the worldbuilding and this was basically all that. very fun :3

surviving romance: horror/adventure? chaerin wants nothing more than to live her fated fairy-tale life--so much so that people other than her love interest appear as nothing more than extras. one day ZOMBIES ATTACK!!!!11! very fun :33 maybe this is just me but is meta stuff getting more popular because of orv…? its not doing it as well ngl but still entertaining. chaerin trying to gain the trust of ppl that she originally didnt gaf about is fun

video games: pikmin 4: pikmin 4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! its a game about being 1 inch tall and controlling your hordes of small creatures (pikmin) to gather things like fruits. i think i bought this when i was sick because i saw a post that was like "pikmin cured my executive function" lol everyone who plays pikmin doesnt fucking shut up about what an indie gem it is but theyre kinda right………pikmin is really good…. its all about finding beauty and joy in the small intricacies of this wide world……i know some people were annoyed by the story parts but i thought it was cute idk :] and oatchi was there . recommend if you like games like starcraft or if you like watching ants carry around a giant caterpillar

movies: farewell my concubine: coming of age/literary/tragedy/historical/??? its a wong kar wai movie. dieyi has nothing in his life but the stage, where he plays as the faithful concubine to a doomed king. his life offstage is much more fraught. i would dearly love to read any articles or things about this movie so if you got anything come find me? ALSO if you have the forbidden cancelled broadway adaption script please let me know. im so curious. ok so its a wong kar wai movie so everyone knows its crazy good already. did watch it when i was sick so not super coherent ideas about it but its like omggggg dieyiii hes so doomed. the way it integrated with history was also interesting (i kinda cant believe someone made a rakugo-based adaptaiton of this. bro it doesnt WORK like that) its really interesting that like dieyis single point of friction between himself and consort yu is his gender.. but that constant emasculation is also what allows him to be so unique in theater and have a special bond w xiaolou.. man well it really was a movie. i want to see it again in a couple months maybe..? its about performance and gender and Performance of Gender and sexuality and cyclical violence and art during a time of strife and art as apolitical and also art as very political. and also a lot of other stuff. very awesome

we are the tigers: thriller musical about a terrible group of cheerleaders coming together for the first meeting of the year. and bad shit happens!!! omg i love girls who kill. and girls who kill each other i dont think this was particularly deep or anything but i enjoyed it :3

nope: horror movie about oj and em, two siblings struggling to keep their stunt horse business running after their father dies. ok well like above its a jordan peele movie so of course its very good. scary as well! i loved the themes… i went back to when ppl were talkingabout the movie to see what people said! ngl i kinda thought jupe was going to have a bigger part in the movie but he was cool as he was. idk it was just very enjoyable and had a lot of things to think about. the idea of spectacle and like.. tragedy-voyeurism are something thats really important to examine closely in times like these i think?

when harry met sally: ROMCOM YAYY about a man and a woman meeting each other across multiple periods of their life. literally one of the only romcoms i can remember my dad openly admit to liking it really deserves the hype. its so heartfelt and sweet and genuinely funny and the character development is so good. its like gay people for straight people

how to lose a man in 10 days: romcom about a guy who thinks he can make any girl fall in love vs a girl who is trying to give the worst dating experience possible. um well it was ok? i only really felt the chemistry between the main leads in a couple of scenes (like when she visits his home) it wasnt really funny or romantic enough..? especially given that most of the humor was predicated on LOL LOOK HOW SHITTY AND CONTROLLING GFS CAN BE which is like ok fine. whatever. idk it was ok

annihilation: horror about a group of scientists who go into a unsettling area to see whats wrong with it.. um well i read the book first and i had heard that this was a pretty good adaptation ? a la howls moving castle book vs movie. i thought it was pretty good? but WAY more focused on the horror stuff than the book, and also (bc its a movie) not really able to focus on the characters interiorities as much..? and also like the way the characters slowly lose it in weird ways and their dynamic frays was one of the cooler parts of annihilation (book) to me. i think at the time having queer characters and characters of color and a cast comprised almost entirely of women was a pretty big deal though i think i heard a lot about it on tumblr lol. its hard not to nitpick on lots of details but i thought it was pretty good overall! a lot of the differences that i didnt like that much made sense as a migration from book->movie--like for example if theyd made the mc as cold and unfeeling it would have been harder to have her be a sympathetic movie protagonist. i thought the infidelity plot w the professor was kind of a timewaster though . anyways still recommend 👍

blue beetle: action movie about a guy whos blue and a beetle. i liked this a surprising amount but i also saw it with friends. the first half of the movie is kinda better than the first also being a tokusatsu fan makes me go "wow this would be so much better if it was with suit actors" lol but the first half of the movie was sooo fun i think also had a really good depiction of a genttrifying city which i enjoyed

oppenheimer: historical drama about that one guy. copy pasting my thoughts from discord: even my dad who liked the movie more was like wow… this movie was kinda too long idk i think it was like technically cool in terms of like imagery and sound and actgin and stuff. but i like wasnt really moved LOL. christopher nolan is playing a little game where i have to recognize as many white men in sequence as possible and im going to be real i can manage maybe like 3? also the whole outer shell plot with strauss and misha collins (EDIT: it was not misha collins) who literally unironically said "youre the god of shadows now" (????) was like. um well this is really intricate but also i dont really care…? like am i supposed to have a stake in this…..? and sort of the intertwining of that story combined w the creation of the atomic bomb was like kinda so-so (my inability to tell faces didnt help w this) it was fine but not really my kind of movie. omg i did like the part with like all the thundering applause and stuff but it blows up there was this part where they kept on being like omg the X incident. all this stuff happened with X and i was like wow what is it….. turns out it was literally referring to a recurring character that i neither remembered nor could recognize. sad

us: horror movie about doubles. YESSS SO FUCKING SCARY i watched this on the airplane to school and the old lady sitting next to me had to watch me hyperventilating and clutching my chest and the whole nine yards. definitely the scariest jordan peele movie. man and the twist at the end was so freaking good. i think its the scariest because the danger is so there, and so immediate, but the beginning part of the movie actually succeeded (for me?) in getting you to be invested in the characters as well. i was wondering if maybe the doubles were also supposed to be connected to like ideas of caricature about black people..? it leaves just enough unanswered that youre still scared. and the questions that do get answered leave you with………THE HORRIFYING TRUTH!! god what a good movie

moonlight: coming of age about a boy who struggles with being black and gay during the crack epidemic of the 80s/90s. < sorry if this isnt a good summary i remember this was a pretty important film when it came out.. i watched part of it a couple years ago and then just remembered to finish this month. its a good movie… you kinda just sit with it yk. hm i (obviously?) dont have a lot of experience with black masculinity but i thought it was interesting how vulnerability can be like taken away from you or you can withhold it from yourself..and that can feel or even be really powerful! but its also like never too late to do that until youre dead. waves my hands around

thanks if you got to the end of this :3 stg ive had like 5 books on loan that ive had on loan for several months by now? idk if ill be able to get to them now (its the beginning of the school year..) but hopefully. i will do that soon. me n neil are sort of planning to get into "film bro movies" were watching the shining soon im very excited. see you later!

#txt

[meova101]

One day, I was making fun of myself for usually using alcohol instead of a plot to get sebchal together. Actually, that’s most days, you’d think I’d stop at some point but nah. And then I combined that with some of my favourite Waterparks lyrics and there’s a new drabble. It happens.

Anyway, based on the lyric There’s nothing in my system so I’m feeling what I feel for you from Waterparks’ excellent song Not Warriors which I highly recommend to anyone who will listen and even to anyone who won’t. Love me some Waterparks.

-

Charles’d hoped so hard it was just the alcohol that fed the butterflies in his stomach.

They hadn’t had many nights out together, admittedly, and at Ferrari celebrations he tried not to drink much, but his eyes strayed to Sebastian anyway, admired how he looked in a suit, or when sweaty in a hot club, and he could allow himself those thoughts because that wasn’t him, just the alcohol.

But he’s stone-cold sober now and it’s worse, somehow, every touch magnified, every glance a shock to his system. The butterflies kept coming.

I just need you to feel it too.

#sebchal #fanf1ction #look okay charles and awsten knight are very similar people and if charles didn't drink he would definitely be european awsten #lucky for me though he does drink so I don't have to think up actual plot #never said I wasn't a lazy writer #also feel free to read this as either a sebchal prequel or just unresolved angsting from chal's side #it's 100 words and the author is dead so context is what you make it #wrote some fic and posted it #one day I will think up a drabble tag I promise #meo shouting into the void #tw alcohol #bite sized pieces of f1c

[ciaran-archive]

Serious question. How do you write long stories? Is there a technique or advice for that? No matter what story I have in mind, I can't seem to tell it in anything longer than 1 to 2k. Writing 5k is tiring already, where do people seriously get that stamina to even do 50 or 100 or 200k? It's mind-blowingly amazing.

there is nothing less worthy or amazing about writing shorter fic - i know writers who struggle with it, and i’ve come to inhabit that position somewhat myself, though i’m determined to stay in practice. it’s a different skillset, that’s all. your fics aren’t worse for being shorter.

that said i will not deny that longer fics generate far more engagement from fandoms simply by virtue of updating more often  → being on top of the ao3 tag when people first open it  → getting more clicks and being considered less ‘frivolous’ (which is bullshit, but what can you do)

if you’re dead sure you want to write longer fic, i would first recommend reading this post about writing drabbles, which i promise is relevant to the point i’m about to make.

Because drabbles are about one moment. You don't need to know exactly what happened before this moment of dialogue, or what happens next, or what's happening around it. You don't have to do any of the planning you might do for a longer fic, but you also don't have the space to let the scene lead in and develop naturally. You've got 100 words.

a lot of writing a longer story is about establishing the scope of your story, deciding what beats you want to hit. there are a lot of ways to go about this; [some people like to outline. i don’t outline, ever, so if you want help for outlining you should look at the other sources on the internet. there are quite a few.] i’m going to talk about the way i’ve learnt to do it.

so when i’m writing a short fic, the thing i’m considering is one or two ideas, and one or two moments (short in this case being under 5k). this also depends on the style i’m going for - fics with sparser styles can fit more scenes, if i’m going for my usual style, each scene takes about 700-2000 words at least and therefore takes up more space. a lot of how i eased into writing longer fics was focusing on stylistic changes - you can push up the word count of a fic by going moment by moment. note the difference between: 

They’d been standing next to each other as they spoke; now Felix turned to him in the rain, startled by the admission of weakness. He reached out clumsily, bumping his hand against Ryan’s until he took the hint and grabbed on.

and 

The rain made it near-impossible to hear Ryan speaking, but the harshness in his voice would’ve been audible through a hurricane. “So you ran away,” he said, like he hadn’t expected this. 

“Course I did,” Felix snapped. “What was I supposed to do? Stick it out and let her kill me?” I almost did, he added under his breath.

Ryan’s sensitive werewolf ears, of course, caught that. “I’m glad you did,” he amended, as though it pained him to admit it. “I would’ve - I did the same. It’s all you can do, sometimes.”

Felix turned to him, blinking through the curtains of water. Ryan was slouching in the downpour, eyes narrowed elsewhere. Mostly he was startled by the admission of weakness - rare in a person who prided himself so thoroughly on being reliable and independent. He reached out, struck by the urge to offer whatever clumsy comfort he was capable of; his hand bumped against Ryan’s, and he held it there until Ryan caught up and wove their fingers together. 

His hands were wet and cold, and he gripped so hard Felix’s very human bones ached, but he wouldn’t have pulled away now. Not when he’d been the one to offer.

it’s not even that one is necessarily better than the other - they both work, and they’re working in different ways. they’re set in the same scene, conveying the same beat - reaching out to comfort someone in the wake of vulnerability. it’s just that one is longer, and therefore gives you more room to - set the scene (rain, being unable to hear each other) - use dialogue to show what is being told in the first example - convey extra information about the characters (actually, if this was a scene i was writing in a fic or novel, the stuff about ryan being a werewolf would already be known to the reader, so i would use that space to convey something else about ryan in that moment) - elaborate on felix’s internal state: the transition from defensive to curious/surprised to gentle - linger for a sentence or two on the moment of connection

this is about unraveling a scene and making it bigger than it was, breaking it apart into tinier beats and describing each one in the narrative. what happens when you do that and your fic doesn’t get much bigger still?

back to scope! we understand, as people who read and write and live, that the part of a story that you choose to depict in a narrative is not the entire story: events happen off-screen. some of them happened before the story started, and they will continue to happen after the story ends. the narrative is only showing you an arc, a particular series of events. 

when you’re writing fic, you have in fact tremendous amounts of flexibility when it comes to the scope of a story. you can write something that is about a single moment in canon, and trust that your audience is following along because they have the context already. so you don’t need to waste time on setting it up, which often means - if you’re given to a certain kind of fic writing (canon compliant / small divergences / missing scenes / character studies) your fics will end up not being very long because you’re not reiterating what you don’t need to reiterate. your idea is small because it inhabits a small space, is squished between canon events, and so doesn’t ever get bigger. if this is what is happening, it’s good, and you should try to preserve this going forward. 

people who are writing longer fic are, simply, working with bigger ideas*. they’re not just going “what if he said what he wanted in this scene instead of going home?” and writing the bit where they kiss immediately after - they’re also going “what if this changed everything in the future? what happens if they tackle all their problems together from now on? what new problems arise from this?”

*hopefully they are working with bigger ideas. i have seen longfics that are just incredibly fucking tedious because the author swallowed a thesaurus and had a tenuous grasp on plotting to begin with. 

that’s for a canon divergent fic, presumably. you might also be writing a post-canon fic, with its own set of pre-fic events and a new set of problems to deal with. currently, for example, i’m writing a fic where akira and goro were dating after canon, broke up, and stayed together in a deeply dysfunctional way after that - and the consequences for them now that they’re forced to deal with the mess they’ve made of their lives, together and apart. so now they have to deal with: the catalyst for dealing with their old problems, which is a problem in itself, and their old problems, which have been festering for a really long time.

which forms the core of the scope i’m talking about. i have to go through a bunch of scenes to set this fic up - i need to show their old problems and their new problems, i need to explain why the old ones haven’t been dealt with already, i need to set up the potential for dealing with them and the necessity of doing so, i need to give them places to start, and also i want to allow them to fail so they can choose to start again. i know these things because i have some idea of the kind of story i want to tell. if i didn’t know this, my story would not go anywhere by itself, and i would have to start outlining scene by scene the way people who actually outline do it, and i hate doing that because then i never write. 

if you can outline and it doesn’t make you want to chew wood, then i highly recommend picking up the habit. it’s very useful, and the methodical approach is a fantastic failsafe for the moments when you (me) get stuck on your fic (breakup au) and have to stop writing for several weeks in order to figure out a single fucking plot point that will let you move forward and

anyway. 

so yeah! to sum up;

find a larger scope for your story

get in the habit of picking apart beats into discrete moments and guiding the narrative through them

learn to outline if you can

last thing - which is perhaps the most vital and least reliable - stamina. 

you WILL lose interest in half the longer fics you write. it WILL suck. if you think you know pain because you have 700 words of a fic and can’t get through the last 400, i promise you it is like that but much worse because you have 7000 words now, or 17000 words, and you are stuck with no way forward. it will suck so BAD. 

don’t beat yourself up over it. once you’re in the habit of writing something long, you will retain that habit, and be able to apply it elsewhere. the words aren’t wasted, they’re practice, and they’re worth what they’ve taught you.

but! all the scope and internal scene-building and outlines won’t help you if you do not (and this is not as bad as everyone makes it sound) actually write. you HAVE to learn to actually write. you have to figure out what you like about writing and make a longfic outline [/ scene beats notes chart / themes mind map / tumblr tag of inspiring quotes and photography] that consists entirely of stuff you love and then you have to sit down and write your fic. it is not terribly scary. it’s okay to fail, but you also have no way around this. 

i hope this helped, and good luck!

#writelogging #ok 2 rb #anon #asks

[cto10121]

Does R&J Play With Gender Stereotypes?

So I came across this piece of meta by @hamliet that rather intrigued me:

There’s also another layer here: the imagery Romeo uses for Juliet (the sun) and that Juliet uses for Romeo (the moon) is the inverse of how imagery was typically presented in those days. The moon was feminine; the sun, masculine. Even if we look at Romeo and Juliet’s respective character traits, Romeo is the flighty, impulsive, love-struck one who cries all the time, while Juliet is the decisive, bold, and loyal one. That’s the first thing Juliet declares to Romeo in the balcony scene: that she will always be loyal, and she shows this in every choice she makes in the story.

Let’s break this down.

“the imagery Romeo uses for Juliet (the sun) and that Juliet uses for Romeo (the moon) is the inverse of how imagery was typically presented in those days. The moon was feminine; the sun, masculine.”

Romeo does indeed call Juliet the sun, but Juliet never calls Romeo the moon—or likens him with anything symbolically feminine, come to think of it. The closest she or the play gets is a small but clear association with night: Romeo has “night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes” and Juliet implores “loving, black-browed” night to give her her Romeo. Even then it is so that he can “make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun.”

Instead, Juliet consistently uses the same love language of authority as Romeo does with her, calling him her lord, husband, knight, “day-in-night,” “mansion of a love,” “god of my idolatry,” and, (my particular favorite), “tassel-gentle” or “falcon.” “Pilgrim” is the lowest social rank she uses, but of course she is following Romeo’s pilgrim-and-saints flirtation and its wink-wink bilingual allusion to his name. Romeo’s use of “sun,” then, could be viewed in the context of both lovers conferring cosmic/earthly authority, beauty, ownership, and sovereignty to each other—the Elizabethan equivalent of calling each other wife/husband. And of course they begin doing that immediately after they marry.

Even if we look at Romeo and Juliet’s respective character traits, Romeo is the flighty, impulsive, love-struck one who cries all the time, while Juliet is the decisive, bold, and loyal one.

Definitely not. Romeo is plenty decisive and bold—making the first move in wooing Juliet, climbing the orchard wall, showing himself to Juliet, immediately agreeing to marry her, nearly killing himself when he thinks Juliet might not take him back and, er, actually killing himself for her. I wouldn’t say he is impulsive, either—though he makes decisions fairly quickly, it is almost always with some deliberation beforehand (“Can I go forward when my heart is here?” “Shall I hear more or shall I speak at this?” and his monologue after Mercutio’s exit) and of course there are instances in which he restrains himself (“I am too bold” and his monologue after Mercutio’s death). The most accurate description of Romeo is that he is a risk taker—at least when he is well and truly motivated. And even then it does not rob his deliberation or even his wits.

He is also not flighty. In fact, he proves just as loyal as Juliet—as soon as he meets her, he forgets about Rosaline and leaves her clear behind. He doesn’t once waver in his conviction that Juliet is for him and makes plans to die with her (and does!). His love for Rosaline is clearly framed by the narrative as shallow, performative, and passive, and the verse bears this out. He was never in any kind of relationship with Rosaline—his love was an unrequited crush that he was at perfectly liberty to have ditched, frankly. After that, it’s Juliet, Juliet, Juliet until he dies.

Also, once more, Romeo is no crybaby. He explicitly cries a total of two times—one even before the events of the play, when he pines over Rosaline under a grove of sycamore, and another when he’s 1) seen Mercutio get mortally wounded, 2) killed Tybalt, 3) learned that he is banished from the city, and 4) mistakenly believed that Juliet no longer wants him (the Nurse’s reply is vague enough to be misinterpreted); at the very least he is devastated to have been the cause of her pain. Anyone would break down in those circumstances. Juliet herself breaks down on hearing the news and arguably is more verbally vehement than Romeo—namely, that even the words “Romeo is banishèd” are worse than if herself, Romeo, her parents, and Tybalt were dead. She ends that monologue with a passive suicide threat: “And Death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!” How anyone can argue Juliet isn’t as lovestruck as Romeo is beyond me.

What Shakespeare was most likely aiming for was showing the mutuality of R&J’s love with parallel scenes and even language. Both have chances to act strong, decisive, and bold, both show vulnerability and great emotion and passion, both are lovestruck. Both demonstrate so-called “masculine” and “feminine” traits, which is almost always culturally-and time-based, anyway. There are only a few key differences between the two—almost all of the above traits, however, they both share. It’s almost as if…Shakespeare understood that no man or woman had all masculine or all feminine traits.

Moving on to the conclusion:

In other words, Shakespeare was deliberately playing with gender and its stereotypes in the play, which gains an even more interesting layer to it when you consider that Shakespeare was himself almost certainly bisexual (his sonnets are preeeetty explicit). It’s not a patriarchal narrative; it can well be seen as a queer narrative in a patriarchal society. And it shouldn’t take two kids having to kill themselves to get society to realize how effed up it is. It isn’t an out-of-touch play, but instead one extremely relevant to our society 500+ years later. 

In other words, Shakespeare was deliberately playing with gender and its stereotypes in the play, which gains an even more interesting layer to it when you consider that Shakespeare was himself almost certainly bisexual (his sonnets are preeeetty explicit).

You just opened up 200+ years of fandom wank, OP. I’ll just do a quick sum-up.

The Sonnets are a complete mess. They are contradictory as hell, there is clearly more than one persona speaking, there is evidence that Shakespeare edited and revised them, evidence they were published with his permission, quite a few sonnets are based on pre-existing sources, and, most damnably of all, none of the most likely candidates for the so-called Fair Youth and Dark Lady fit the narrative of the Sonnets perfectly or even satisfactorily—if there is even a clear narrative to these things to begin with. Sonnets were artificial works whose clichés and conventions were heavily satirized in Shakespeare’s own works—Berowne’s own rant-y sonnet swearing he would never believe in love sonnets comes most readily to mind. They were usually not meant to denote an actual real-life relationship, although there was a kind of “game” in trying to figure out which parts are true and which ones fiction. At least one sonnet sequence had a completely fictional addressee (Fulke Greville, I think).

Shakespeare’s sonnets do break a lot of these rules and conventions, and radically, and as they seem to have been compiled over many years, they lend themselves to autobiographical speculation. But, as a bit of a poet myself, I feel this: No one writes 154 sonnets—plus a whole narrative poem!—to one lover or even multiple lovers. Poetry is much less personal than laypeople think. Outside the sonnets, Shakespeare is not linked to any man romantically, and, besides his wife, only to two women (unnamed citizen’s wife and Jane Devanant).

Even if we assume Shakespeare’s bi, though, that doesn’t mean R&J is a queer narrative, which brings us to…

It’s not a patriarchal narrative; it can well be seen as a queer narrative in a patriarchal society.

A queer narrative that has its lovers express their love through the language of heterosexual marriage (husband, lord, wife, lady, pilgrim/saint), and commit suicide by a chalice-and-blade symbolism that mimics heterosexual sex (Romeo drinking a “cup” of poison and Juliet stabbing herself with Romeo’s dagger. Freud couldn’t have done it better). If Shakespeare was thinking “gay allegory!!!” he would have had to at least change or erase the symbolism (straight coding?) of the double suicide, or have Juliet attribute to Romeo explicitly feminine imagery. He would have to have done some major plot rejiggering. He would have had to, in short, change the whole story.

(Unless by “queer narrative” you mean “anything that has an emotionally constipated male lead who doesn’t growl sexily and a female lead who doesn’t cry/faint at the drop of a hat.” That’d be most every narrative, lol.)

Also, I’m hard-pressed to think of love romances that are 100% patriarchal narratives, and those that do (Casablanca, maybe?) are not really true ones, anyway. Patriarchy inherently opposes all romances of love and sex, including heterosexual. It demands that men be raised as soldiers to kill enemies, slaughtered, and discarded, and women as chattel and land to be bought and sold. Marriage was that transferral of property. Having children is necessary, not out of love and care for them, but to propagate the species and create even more future warriors and womb incubators. It grudgingly accepts only (mostly straight and like maybe 1 or 2 gay) love narratives that can be subsumed into this narrow paradigm, but the tension of interpretation is always present. Ideally, it prefers to ignore, diminish, scorn and mock, or even suppress them. I suspect most people’s problems and discomfort with R&J stem from this pathology, this deep-seated unease over anything that touches on human experience patriarchy can’t quite control or subsume.

Shakespeare was obviously no lover of patriarchy (in his personal life, though…well, it’s debatable). His plays resist it greatly to various degrees, and R&J is no exception. R&J hews much closer to the reality of heterosexual love and love in general, which are informed by, though are not inherently tied to, patriarchy (as are gay relationships, sadly). Shakespeare is just being a good writer in throwing most of that rotten apple away; it doesn’t apply to what he was trying to do, anyway. R&J’s challenge to patriarchy, though, is heterosexual in nature.

And it shouldn’t take two kids having to kill themselves to get society to realize how effed up it is. It isn’t an out-of-touch play, but instead one extremely relevant to our society 500+ years later. 

True dat.

#romeo and juliet #shakespeare #cristina metas #rj meta #r&j meta #rj are just so boyxgirl op #accept it and you will find peace #repressive traditional gender roles are back in fashion it seems #the victorians couldn’t accept romeo as a man either and had him be played by an actress #but if we’re going to take our notions of gender from the victorians of all people well…

[spaceshipkat]

i think so much of writing respectfully and inclusively is being aware of what you’re putting down on the page. what do i mean by this? what better author to focus on than sj///m, right? i’ll start with CCity on this, since it’s the one where it’s most obvious she’s trying so hard to fix her mistakes, but the problem always comes back to her fundamental misunderstanding of why and how her shit is problematic in the first place and what she must do to fix said problematic shit. 

i’m sticking this under a cut bc, surprise surprise, i rambled 😌

take, for instance, Hunt: i think it’s pretty widely-accepted he’s coded as a MOC, (potentially an Asian-coded man) since he’s given “golden-brown skin” and “angular” eyes. sj//m was trying to be more inclusive by writing him in such a way that he shouldn’t be perceived as white, but what she failed to realize is two big things: 1) the fact he’s a slave of centuries who is constantly tortured, mutilated, and manipulated by his oppressors, and 2) the fact he lusts after and is demeaned by Bruce, a white girl. furthermore, Bruce constantly makes comments about how Hunt should fight back, shouldn’t allow himself to remain a slave, and taunts him into either disobeying Micah (the man he’s enslaved to) or killing for her. it’s made clear time and time again that Hunt doesn’t like that he’s an assassin for Micah, and yet there are so many instances of him wanting to kill or hurt someone for Bruce, which not only makes his characterization inconsistent, it plays into the problematic trope of the dark-skinned aggressor (a trope that sj///m seems to be particularly fond of, what with the Illyrians). 

(on the topic of Hunt, a quick side-note: the idea of the “alphahole” that comes up again and again in CCity and that antis have critiqued up the wazoo (though not with the “alphahole” colloquialism until CCity came along, but i don’t think many antis actually use “alphahole” as anything but a joke when talking about her obvious love of the hypermasculine alpha male). sj///m is clearly trying to call out her past mistakes and work to rectify them going forward, but she completely fails bc she only succeeds at 1) mocking her readers, who are often fans of hers bc they like the alpha male douchebag sj///m is infamous for, and 2) making herself sound like an idiot when she calls out “alphahole” behavior while actively writing “alphaholes” and making them (possible) endgame love interests (i say possible bc it’s anyone’s guess if sj///m will actually subvert everyone and their mother’s expectations by making Hunt endgame). Hunt is an “alphahole,” even if he’s not quite as bad as riceman or rowboat and even if sj///m thinks she’s not actually writing an “alphahole”. with his aforementioned behavior toward anyone who’s mean to Bruce (aka wanting to kill them for her), he still falls under the “alphahole” category.

but i digress.)

another example of sj///m writing without being aware of what she’s actually putting on the page is her inclusion of queer rep. sj///m queerbaits quite a lot with Danika, thanks to lines she has involving Bruce and her relationship with Bruce, not to mention how many times others wonder if Bruce and Danika are “just” best friends and not actually lovers. we have Hunt wonder about it, after all, several times iirc. one that stands out the most is when he says that they have to be more than “just” best friends because Bruce doesn’t mourn Danika like someone mourns “just” their best friend, thus implying that Bruce is mourning Danika like a lover and/or spouse (bc obviously people can’t be torn to pieces over losing their best friend in a horrific attack, right?). 

here’s some lines that have romantic connotations bc i am nothing if not a historian who likes citations: 

page 38 of my ebook: 

Danika just said it. “If he grabs his phone to check his messages before his dick’s barely out of you again, please have the self-respect to kick his balls across the room and come home to me.” 

page 45 of my ebook: 

But it was Danika’s added “Love you” as [Bruce] slipped out into the grimy hallway that made her hesitate with her hand on the knob. 

It’d taken Danika a few years to save those words, and she still used them sparingly. Danika had initially hated it when [Bruce] said them to her—even when [Bruce] explained that she’d spent most of her life saying it, just in case it was the last time. In case she wouldn’t get to say goodbye to the people who mattered most. And it had taken one of their more fucked-up adventures[...]to get Danika to utter the words, but at least she now said them. Sometimes. 

page 258 of my ebook (aka the line of Hunt’s i referenced above): 

The silence pressed on [Hunt] enough that he asked, “Were you and Danika lovers?” 

He’d been told two years ago that they weren’t, but friends didn’t mourn each other the way [Bruce] seemed to have so thoroughly shut down every part of herself. The way he had for Shahar. 

[...]

Hunt turned in place as [Bruce] padded around the other end of the kitchen island, flinging open the enormous metal fridge to examine its meager contents. “No,” [Bruce] said, her voice flat and cold. “Danika and I weren’t like that.” 

page 696 of my ebook: 

[Bruce] swallowed, looking at the ground that was not earth, but the very base of Self, of the world. She whispered, “I’m scared.”

Danika grabbed her hand again. “That’s the point of it, [Bruce]. Of life. To live, to love, knowing that it might all vanish tomorrow. It makes everything that much more precious.” She took [Bruce’s] face in her hands and pressed their brows together. 

page 700 of my ebook (and i was torn on including this one, but it’s from Danika, so i think i should): 

Danika had whispered, “I love you,” before fading into nothing, her hand sliding from Bryce’s.

page 703 of my ebook (also torn on this, but it does sound a little queer, so): 

But it wasn’t okay. Not even close. What had happened, what [Bruce had] done and revealed, the Horn in her body, all those people dead, Lehabah dead, and seeing Danika, Danika, Danika—

Her breathless words turned into pants, and then shuddering sobs.

also, not for nothing, but the fact Danika dies without an actual male love interest to make Her Straightness Obvious kinda also implies she’s queer, but *sips tea*

furthermore, there’s the way sj///m writes Fury and Juniper: we see the two women together in one scene, in which Juniper is fetishized and goes to sleep with some random guy. for the rest of the book, they never interact on-page and thus we are never given the chance to see their dynamic, which would provide crucial context clues to what their relationship really is by the time this exchange happens between Fury and Bruce on page 494 of my ebook:

“And yet you can still talk to Juniper?” Bryce’s throat closed up. “I wasn’t worth the risk to you?”

Fury hissed, “Juniper and I have something that is none of your fucking business.” Bryce refrained from gaping. Juniper had never hinted, never suggested—“I could no sooner stop talking to her than I could rip out my own fucking heart, okay?”

“I get it, I get it,” Bryce said. She blew out a long breath. “Love trumps all.”

i’ve talked about this scene to death, but this is written in such a way that it can be read as “just” best friends or as two women in a romantic relationship, depending on the reader. the fact that Bruce “gapes” (which faerug also does to Mor, and which i talk about below) implies that being openly queer isn’t accepted in this world, that it’s not very likely you’ll see two women holding hands as they walk down the sidewalk or kiss at a romantic restaurant. it also implies that Bruce, no matter that she says about “love trumps all,” might not be as accepting as sj///m would like us to believe. maybe sj///m has never had a friend come out to her before, but if i came out to someone and they gaped at me (and i’ve come out to several people several times now, both about my sexuality and my gender, so i have some experience here), i don’t think i would be very happy with them/want to remain their friend. 

on the note of queer rep in sj///m’s work, Mor is another fantastic example of trying to be inclusive through a response to criticism without sj///m being aware of what, exactly, she’s writing. Mor comes out because faerug all but forces her to by not shutting up what a good guy Azriel is and that Mor should just give him a chance. that right there is fucked on so many levels, not just because Mor is a lesbian, but bc she’s supposedly faerug’s friend. no one should ever force their friends to date someone they don’t want to (i’ve had this happen to me! i had to literally snap at my friend to get her to back off bc i wasn’t going to go to the dance with this one guy who ignored my every rejection and bought us tickets to winter formal, just bc he’s a nice guy and i might like him if i gave him a chance), but i don’t think sj///m could figure out how else to write Mor’s coming out scene, largely bc she has no fucking clue how disgusting the scene we’re given is. the problem with Mor being a lesbian is threefold: 1) she’s a woman who was tortured by her father and left to die bc she was no longer a virgin; 2) Azriel spends centuries lusting after a woman who makes it clear time and again that she does not reciprocate his feelings and yet he cannot take the fucking hint, so much so that sj///m has to now dangle Elain in front of him like a piece of meat to get him to let go of Mor; and 3) sj///m was obviously setting up Mor and Azriel to be an endgame couple in ac0maf, as evidenced both in canon and in her pinterest board: 

even stans picked up on it, what with their vocal outrage over how Mor “led Azriel on” for centuries instead of just outing herself to a man she obviously does not feel safe around, and posts like these: 

and fanart like this: 

the tl;dr of this ramble is this: if you want to write inclusively and respectfully, you have to be 100% aware of everything you’re putting on the page. when people ask for advice on this kind of thing, my first comment is to always say they’re already on the right track bc they’re already thinking of this, rather than being unaware of problems bc a state of unawareness is where the problems begin to appear. Hafsah Faizal has talked about this before on her twitter (i wish i could find the tweet, but this is from eons ago), but if you write a character of color when you yourself are white, you have to be wholly conscious of how your white character talks to this character of color. if the character of color is constantly yelled at or ordered around or ignored by the white character, that’s a big problem. if you write a queer character when you yourself are straight, you have to be conscious of how your queer character comes out, is perceived by the reader, and is treated by the straight character. if the queer character comes out by comparing their bisexuality to forced prostitution, as is the case with Aedion and Lysandra in t0g, that’s a big problem. 

the moment you share your work for public consumption, it no longer matters what your intentions are (something sj///m has a lot of trouble understanding, hence why she over-explains everything in her interviews and on tours, not to mention why she force-feeds us her opinion of her characters in canon so we’re forced to share the exact same outlook on them) bc all that matters is what you’ve put down on the page. your words, at that point, have no choice but to speak for themselves, and if they do any of the above, your work is going to come under warranted critique, and unless you learn from that critique and do more than half-assed jobs to write more inclusively and respectfully, you’ll run into the exact same problems that sj///m has with CCity. 

#anti sjm #anti ccity #anti acotar #anti tog #long post #stans being stans #writing advice #writing tips #sorta

[caliwashere]

TGKDN Ch 19-20 Thoughts & Spoilers

author publishing two chapters at once is the best thing to wake up to 

context: TGKDN is a jjkxoc (additional add-ons: dad!gojoxoc, yutaxoc, megumixoc) fic called Tsuki Ga Kirei Desu Ne. It’s linked in my bio in case anyone wants to read it. I don’t own TGKDN or take credit for the story/OCs! I’m just a fan!

spoilers below ⬇️

-author added a lot of new content for the “It May Be Last” chapter wow

-the demon slayer references to douma, inosuke, and his mom thooo kinda ironic that douma’s the one out here calling ppl demons 

-when going on a trip with a homie turns into getting tortured by a janky cult 

-megumi’s in the closet 👀 (lmao im sorry it was right there)

- not both fushiguros (megs and toji) being traumatized by a gojo (gojo and hiyori (ik shes adopted but she’s technically legally a gojo cuz gojo is her legal guardian) in diff ways 

-just a question: can’t hiyori just use her innate curse nullification ability to get tsumiki out of her coma or is that not how it works?

-yuta not being good at making jokes is canon both in tgkdn and jjk (that joke about gojo having a gf lmaoooo) 

-MAN NEEDS TO TELL HER HE LIKES HER SOON BECAUSE I CAN’T STAND THIS ANYMORE 

- i want couple yuta and hiyori content plzzzz one of them needs to just confess 😭

- ok ok this is just my theory but the flashback words that stopped hiyori from fighting were definitely said by KAZUHA cuz i can’t think of anyone else who could’ve (maybe Hiyori’s sister but like if u do then math then Asami disappeared when Hiyori was like 5(?) so I don’t think Hiyori would remember something like that)

-it also said “dying wish” AND WHO DO WE KNOW THAT’S DEAD?!  EXACTLY! 

-so maybe kazuha was like hiyori’s moral compass or he still is and that’s why she hasn’t killed anyone like she only beat the cursed user in Ch. 6 (”best friends”) into a coma 

-i think it’s interesting that instead of hiyori just being against killing, it’s actually something preventing her from doing so 

- i can’t wait to see how this “promise” to not kill turns out as the story progresses especially in later jjk manga arcs

-she’s probably gonna snap eventually and end up breaking that promise or something cuz we’ve already seen her lose her cool (aka in Ch. 6 with the ribbon + cursed user guy) and when the higher-ups/Kyoto students targeted Yuta 

- i think someone she cares about a lot will get super hurt/die and that might push her off the deep end and make her relinquish the whole no killing thing (there’s a lot of ppl to choose from considering what goes down during the shibuya arc)

-at least that creepy cult guy (douma-knockoff) died

- angry/protective dad gojo makes me feel things but like his adoptive daughter is hotter (sorry not sorry) feral hiyori is just *chef’s kiss*

-asofnaisof feral gojo and hiyori together?? that would be amazing ( i wanna see them work together in a fight aifnasofa)

- i also wanna see her work with maki in a fight like they fight together AND her with yuta (maybe a mission together??)

- geto killing the non-sorcs because they hurt hiyori even tho they were brainwashed is peak writing by author because that’s 100% something jjk canon geto would do after he went off the deep end

- the “we know who you pretend we are” by the two girls geto took in hit me in the feels man 

- i need more young gojo and geto with hiyori content (one chapter wasnt enough author plzzzz)

- geto’s perspective rlly highlights just how hard it was for him to end up choosing the path he did and it also makes me cry

- the realization that hiyori will probably never get the closure she needs with geto like they wont ever get to talk it out (even gojo gotto during that kfc break up) hurts me

-its almost time for the death parade arc yall 😭

#okkotsu yuuta #yuta okkotsu #yuuta okkotsu #okkotsu yuta #yuuta #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk 0 #gojo #gojo satoru #satoru gojo #geto #geto suguru #suguru geto #okkotsu #maki #zenin maki #maki zenin #tsukuyo hiyori #jjk fanfic #jjk x oc #jjk x reader #tsuki ga kirei desu ne #tsuki ga kirei #jjk spoilers #megumi fushiguro #fushiguro megumi #fushiguro

[betweengenesisfrogs]

The Triumph of the Marginalia

Marginalia, n.:

1 : notes or embellishments in the margins (as in a book)

2 : nonessential items

-Troll OED

Is it just me, or is Nepeta and Equius’s arc the most slept-upon piece of brilliance in all of Homestuck?

A brilliance, might I add, that culminates in possibly the most triumphant, fulfilling emotional moment in the entire work:

https://www.homestuck.com/story/7928

*stands back and beholds its majesty while from the background comes the sound of James Roach brutally murdering ska*

No, but actually, I mean this 100% unironically, and by the end of this post, I think you’ll agree with me.

By now, I think we all understand the Act 6 double metaphor: the series of temporal loops and universes that Lord English commands is paralleled with, and in fact totally identical to, the narrative of Homestuck. Our characters’ lives exist within this context. They struggle to escape it, and are defined both by it and by the rejection of it.

Enter Nepeta.

The metaphorical meaning of Nepeta in Homestuck is irrelevance, and that’s why she’s the most relevant character in any discussion.

Nepeta was one of the characters killed off during the Murderstuck arc. Hussie argued that she was perfect for this role. In fact, I believe he said something like “Nepeta is sweet, but if you look up the dictionary definition of ‘expendable character,’ you’ll see a picture of Nepeta playing with a ball of yarn and looking very cute.” She’s an endearing combination of shipper girl and apex predator, but not one of your Vriskas or Terezis in being a driver of the plot. Hussie, it seems, created her just to round out the troll cast. He described one of his purposes in Murderstuck as being to axe some of the less necessary trolls to reduce the scope of his character list.

Except that didn’t really happen, did it?

Like a cat with nine lives, Nepeta just keeps coming back.

Equius is another addition to the troll cast who gets pushed away from the main action. He was a character-writing challenge: how do you make someone who’s gross, uncomfortable, and racist kind of likable anyway? I’d argue Hussie succeeded, in large part because of Equius’s relationship with Nepeta. By the time you finish with Hivebent, you’ll probably have a little fondness for their moraillegiance. And if that doesn’t do it, the conversation that serves as their swansong in Equius: Seek the Highblood will tear your heartstrings to shreds.

Because Equius dies, tragically clownmurdered. There was, at the time, some stink over this from Equius fans. Would he have really let himself be killed so easily? Hussie countered: yes, and it was the most in-character thing he could have done. He died doing what he loved: being asphyxiated erotically and horrifically by a superior. Truly, there could be no more fitting end to his character than that.

And yet.

No sooner did Hussie complete his self-appointed story cleanup challenge than he immediately began to undo his own work. It’s almost as if, in declaring his intention to own those who preferred more characters to narrative economy, he immediately had to own himself??

By the time we get even a little way into Act 6, we’re deep in the dreambubble landscape, meeting dead characters left and right. And who should show up there but Equius and Nepeta? Equius attempting to get it on with a bunch of Aradias, who dump him. And Nepeta, living out her romantic dreams as a representative of a timeline where she got together with Karkat. They both appear as symbols of this deadness, this irrelevance. Except that that brings them back into the story, into the spotlight – the opposite of where they’re supposed to be!

Like many bits of commentary, Hussie continues to incorporate the metaphor Nepeta=Irrelevance into Homestuck. Karkat’s remark on their journey that he would love to meet “FIFTY FUCKING NEPETAS” and embark on “NEPETAQUEST” alludes to formspring remarks to the effect that, no, Homestuck was not going to have much time for the minor characters. Except it clearly did.

Why couldn’t the narrative let the meowrails go? Was it that despite the economy of Murderstuck, something was still incomplete? After all, one of Equius’s charms was that he appeared to be growing into a less repressed, kinder person. In Seek the Highblood, we see him letting his guard down enough to roleplay with Nepeta for a change. Their love for each other: wasn’t that ultimately what could redeem Equius in our eyes? So his dying and thus failing to protect her–isn’t that something that should be addressed?

You could imagine many a Nepeta and Equius fan saying this to Hussie back in 2011.

But Hussie was already saying it to himself.

The duo come roaring back into the story in the Trickster mode arc, mid Act 6, thanks to Gamzee’s ridiculous resurrections. True, Nepeta is still reduced as part of Fefeta, the character formed from killed-off girls who never speaks onscreen. But doesn’t using that fact as a running gag kind of draw our attention to it? Doesn’t the fact that Fefeta talks to Roxy constantly offscreen inform us that once we get outside the frame of the narrative, Nepeta has a rich inner life and countless stories to tell?

And it’s here that Equius gets something he never got in his original “arc:” the chance to apologize to Nepeta. You’d be forgiven for missing it since there’s so much else going on at the time, but he does, while fused with AR. Here’s what you’d miss, though: he’s grown as a person in the afterlife. He’s come to regret that moment of weakness, where his fetish kept him from protecting his moirail. Impossible as it seems, he’s continuing his character arc.

The scene ends with Fefeta exploding (she’s also, after all, dealing with Eridan), but it leaves us with a tantalizing question:

Will Nepeta forgive Equius? Is there even a plausible time and space in that story when she could respond to his words?

Do you see what’s happening here? Instead of being erased, Nepeta and Equius are starting to slip the bounds of the story that killed them. They leap in and out of the frame, half-mythical figures. Marginalized, they write their own stories in the margins. They exist in complete defiance of the original logic of Homestuck.

Lord English is an alt-Author figure, a dark, brutal reflection of narrative control and narrative necessity. His world, in which horrible choices are necessary, in which the alpha timeline is a ticking clock leading inexorably to his manifestation, is one that beats down people not deemed important enough by his narrative. Which makes it identical to the one we’re reading. Throw all the unnecessary characters in the trash. Kill them off, if it suits my purposes. The world doesn’t need Nepeta.

Which is precisely why it does. Because isn’t defying Lord English the entire point? Isn’t it what Homestuck reveals as truly heroic?

What might Nepeta be capable of?

Let’s talk about two other victims of English’s forces of marginalization. Davesprite might be the most quintessential example. He teaches us what the alpha timeline is and how it works, by going back to fix a doomed timeline and submitting to being doomed himself. Except he merges with a bird and avoids that fate. Okay, but he clearly gets killed off fighting Jack in Jade: Enter. Except he comes back and hangs out with Jadesprite. Okay, but he dies in the planetsplode in the Retcon. Nope, he comes back from that, too. Huh. He keeps slipping the fate decreed for him by – who else? Lord English.

But it’s a struggle, clearly. He’s caught up in various cycles of guilt and shame. Over being “not the real Dave.” Over his feeling that he has to be a hero in the sense Bro demanded he be. Hussie describes Davesprite as fitting the “way of the unbroken sword:” his experiences have led him to believe in being strong and capable at the expense of all else, in contrast with the other Dave, whose belief in Bros’ toxic ideas is beginning to slip – the “way of the broken sword.” And where did Bro get his toxic ideas from? At least in part, the whispering voice of the soul of Lord English.

Now we turn to Dirk. Like Dave, Dirk has a marginalized, “less important” splinter self but it’s more of a pressing concern. AR shows Dirk’s darker side: exhibiting manipulative tendencies that human Dirk is trying to move away from. He’s also a copy removed from humanity, who feels an understandable amount of disillusionment about being removed from physical existence and his own identity. But as much as Dirk may splinter, like his dumb anime sword, he never breaks. What this means in the symbolic language of Homestuck is that Dirk lives fully, instinctually, in the way of the sword. He believe in a world of hard choices, masculine heroism, and necessity. Ultimately, this, too, is part of what makes Bro so harmful to Dave. In AR and Davesprite, we have a strange parallel: two splinter selves, both of whom are enmeshed in the logic of LE.

Except AR, unlike Davesprite…kind of is LE.

What is Lord English composed of? Well, there’s Caliborn, the most unrepentant shithead of all time. There’s Gamzee, embodiment of horrifying clownery. And then there’s AR, a version of Dirk even more removed from the person he wants to be.

And…Equius?

Allow me a moment to get really indulgent and take a big puff on my Homestuck scholar’s pipe.

The metaphorical meaning of Equius in Homestuck is: sort of growing out of being a creepy racist.

Or maybe let’s say: the opportunity to do that. We said that Equius was on the verge of being redeemed (even had been, in the eyes of many readers). What does it mean to stick him in with Lord English’s souls? It means two things:

1) Equius is a product of his society, which was shaped by Doc Scratch, aka by Lord English, both of whom are kind of him, but Scratch picks up on his traits especially. This is a recognition of that fact: the part of him that sucks is, itself, Lord English in a dizzying loop.

2) Equius’s story is a tragedy. It is the story of a kid who started to escape his society’s tendencies, but was sucked back in by the evil force behind them.

Although…maybe that’s not the whole story.

Because both Equius and AR aren’t really that bad. AR’s pretty understandable, and by no means beyond the possibility of goodness. And the combination of the two? Honestly, pretty harmless. They counter each other’s worst tendencies by devolving into a weird goofball. In fact, AR even says he wants to do something heroic: to sacrifice himself for something really important. He does, kind of, mustering a last-ditch robohorse assault on Caliborn. But at the same time, this is the substance of his tragedy. A hero whose defeat of a great evil forces him to become the substance of that evil. Which could not be a more fitting summary of how these characters function in their story.

But maybe that’s still not the whole story.

Enter Davepeta.

At first glance, the creation of Davepeta seems like Hussie’s most batshit troll move yet. I feel pretty confident in saying that even those who predicted either of these characters returning didn’t see that one coming. However, a few pages of Davepeta’s presence reveals a fundamental truth:

Davepeta is fucking amazing.

In them, Davesprite’s depressive moods are buoyed up by Nepeta’s upbeat optimism. Nepeta’s reclusive shyness is balanced by Dave’s tendency toward brash banter. Both of them gain confidence from being the new person they are. They quickly let go of ideas inherited from the world that kept them from self-knowledge and happiness. Dave, his toxic masculinity; Nepeta, her fear.

A great point I’ve seen made is how much Jasprose and Davepeta resemble fantasy selves for Rose and Dave: indulgent, technicolor manifestations of people they could be if they let go of inhibitions and limitations. But I think Davepeta is the most unambiguously positive of the two.

The metaphorical meaning of Davepeta in Homestuck?

Growth.

Not giving a fuck about what the world thinks. The world, aka Lord English. Because Lord English could never have predicted that his machinations would also spawn a confident, powerful fusion of two beings he had discarded as totally irrelevant.

They’re also a multicolored non-binary furry, so that’s even more points in the pissing off shitheads column.

They are someone Lord English never conceived of, never could have conceived of, but which lay as potential within his domain all along.

And if Lord English is a reflection of the author, of what Hussie feels one has to destroy or sacrifice, than Davepeta is an indulgence existing in defiance of all that.

And this makes Davepeta the most powerful person of all.

They are the light at the end of the tunnel. They are the person you could be, if you could get past your mental shackles and just grow. It may not be possible to ever get there as a mortal human, may only be for a godlike sprite, but striving to be like them matters, is purpose and fulfilment enough.

And they love ARquius.

Nepeta believed in Equius, believed he could grow, and was growing. So as much as ARquius traps himself in a Lord English loop of his own making – grown, perhaps, out of Dirk’s belief that there should be a loop, that importance is admirable—Davepeta pulls from him, in his last scene, his finest qualities. His love.

Equius asks forgiveness again, and this time, Nepeta’s able to give it. Davepeta easily accepts ARquius’s apology, an apology which never could have existed within the confines of a normal narrative. A reconciliation that both of them fought for by defying their narrative, by existing outside it. By being not the trolls who lived and died, but their broader, conceptual selves, who exist beyond lifetimes. Beyond the comic page. And they consummate that reconciliation with that most cherished and loving of gestures:

A hug.

And even as this is Equius and Nepeta’s reconciliation, it’s also Dirk and Dave’s. Which, I should mention, is also taking place, simultaneously and circumstantially simultaneously, just below. It’s a more difficult one, certainly, especially as filtered through the splinters of Davesprite and AR. Here forgiveness is not quite the right word. But – knowledge, and recognition, and a kind of peace. It’s Davesprite’s chance to reunite with the part of his brother he loved, while also being a person who’s grown beyond him. And it’s AR’s chance to be loved.

Oh, sure, the art is ridiculous, the pose absurd. But that’s what makes it sublime.

I mean, what did you think that Sbahj comic was really about?

A boy distancing himself from his feelings through irony, never acknowledging that the story he’s telling is about two bros who desperately want to hug each other, but don’t know how.

Here’s the hug.

I want to dip into Epilogues territory for a moment, but it’s territory which is fairly well implied by Davepeta’s statements and role in Collide. The Meat Epilogue, I think, only illuminates what was already there.

Lord English is uniquely vulnerable to Davepeta.

And why shouldn’t he be? They, like so much else in Homestuck, are a consequence of his actions spiraling far beyond his control. But it’s more than that. Davepeta is finally able to lay the unbroken sword to rest by following the “prophecy” about Dave defeating Lord English. On the one hand, that’s kind of what happened. But it’s also completely different from what English intended, antithetical to his desires and goals. Which makes the victory all the sweeter. But at the end of the day, Davepeta doesn’t fight for the reasons Davesprite did. They’re free of that, now. Instead, they fight from a place of genuine compassion. Because Davesprite, like Dave, knows the true meaning of being a hero: caring about one’s friends.

But the most important thing about Davepeta is that they know Lord English, on a level that perhaps neither he nor they recognize. Both AR and Equius are in there, and both are capable of redemption. It’s only Gamzee and Caliborn who are truly beyond it.

How does Davepeta defeat Lord English?

With a hug.

They wrap their claws around him, and carry him into the sun like a piece of garbage. It’s an aggressive hold, but it’s also effectively an embrace.

And I have to wonder: in those final moments, did they sense a connection there? Did Equius and Dirk stir somewhere within Lord English? Did they give him a moment’s pause? Resist him? Make it just the tiniest bit easier for Davepeta to do their work?

If so, then that, too, is heroism.

At the very least, it’s circumstantially simultaneous with the hug we see in Act 6, and so it carries the same message:

Redemption.

Not for the shitheads, but for those who wanted to be better.

And if this isn’t enough, there’s a third reconciliation here, too: between author and reader, or to put it in other terms, author and character.

If Lord English is a shadow of the author, what part of the author can be redeemed? Maybe not the destructive, antagonistic urges. But the part that plans and designs and philosophizes as Dirk does. That part of Hussie wanted Davepeta to be there, to strike that final blow, and made it happen.

Because, when you get right down to it, as much as Hussie pretends to be antagonistic toward his readers and the characters they enjoy, it’s the fans, the shippers, the furries, those whose hearts go out to a cute, shy cat girl that he most celebrates.

Hussie fucking loves Nepeta.

Nepeta and Equius are, sneakily, the best characters in Homestuck, because they understand its fundamental message: that to succeed in Homestuck is to defy Homestuck. They defy everything it throws at them, and somehow, improbably, come out on top.

All of this is there on that page, a whole edifice of storytelling culminating in that singular, grand, supremely indulgent expression, a feast of looping leitmotif and color and imagery and meme and sound. It’s all there, if you know where to look.

Nepeta and Equius love each other, and that’s pretty fucking great.

See? I told you.

<> Ari

#nepeta #equius #davepeta #homestuck analysis #arquius #meowrails #davesprite #hal #trying to get out ahead of hussie's commentary for a change #happy 4/13 :33 #<3 #stay tuned #feast of homestuck 2020

[achraf4you]

The believer and death

The believer knows that he was created for the purpose of slavery, for he is in this world a servant of Allah (God), and the reward for his servitude is paradise.

As for the worldly life, it is all a way to the afterlife, so he does the work of the slave who has nothing but his need, and does not turn around or be deceived by anything. He thinks about death and loves to meet Allah (God), may He be glorified and exalted.

It is a good end for the believer to succeed before his death to abandon what anger the Lord, glory be to Him, and repent from sins and sins, and turn to obedience and good deeds, then his death after that will be in this good condition, and what indicates this meaning is what was authenticated on the authority of Anas Ibn Malik, may Allah (God) be pleased with him, said: The Messenger of Allah (God), may Allah's (God’s) prayers and peace be upon him, said: (If Allah (God) wants good for his servant, he use it.) They said: How can he use it? He said: (He enables him to do good work before his death) Narrated by Imam Ahmad and Tirmidhi, and Al-Hakim authenticated it in Al-Mustadrak.

Before the moment of death will descend upon the angels preaches and reassure, Allah (God) Almighty says{ Surely, those who say: "Our Lord is Allah," and then go straight, the angels will descend upon them: "Do not fear, and do not grieve, but rejoice in the news of the Garden which you were promised } [Quran 41:30], The angels calmed him from his horror and deaded and promise him with paradise behind, so some of them smiled and cheered their faces in the event of death.

The angels descend upon the believer to preach and reassure him - before the seizure of his soul - of Allah's (God) forgiveness and pleasure, then Allah (God) facilitates the seizure of his soul, so the angels hasten, they receive it embalm it and perfume it, then they ascend with her while she is happy to her Lord, Glory be to Him, so Allah (God) Almighty says: In Elian, and bring it back to the land)).

The unbeliever and death

As for the unbeliever, whoever is deceived by the situation of the infidels and imitating them, he is walking the road without knowing where to go, so if he tried the road and took a distance and cut a time in it, he felt that it was not suitable for him and that this road was not good, so he went back to the beginning and took another path.

And if he wanted to walk and cut a distance in the road, he discovered that it was not a good road, and he returned lost and floundered, and he took a third way ... until death suddenly came to him.

And it is a bad end for the dying Muslim, who is disobedient or disbeliever, to show signs or conditions indicating a bad end, such as giving up on pronouncing the testimony - testifying that there is no god but Allah - and rejecting that, and such as speaking in the context of death about evil deeds and prohibitions and showing attachment to it And similar sayings and actions that indicate turning away from the religion of Allah (God) Almighty and reprehensible due to the revelation of his judgment.

{ Until, when death comes to one of them, he says, "My Lord, send me back.That I may do right in what I have neglected." By no means! It is just a word that he utters. And behind them is a barrier, until the Day they are resurrected } [Quran 23:99-100], Even if one of these polytheists came to death, and saw what was happening, he said remorse for what had passed in his life, and he did not neglect Allah (God): Lord, bring me back to this life. Perhaps I will do a righteous deed if I return to it, no, the matter is not as requested, it is just a word that he said. They do not return from him to this world to make up for what they missed, and fix what they have corrupted.This is the case of the disbelievers and the disobedient if death descended on them, they wish that if they returned to this world, if he was an infidel, perhaps he would become Muslim.

And the most terrible thing that he encounters the evildoer or the unbeliever upon the departure of his soul:

1- His vision of the angels of torment and the angel of death, and what a vision they are!

2- The angels rebuked him, cursed him, and preached Allh's (God) wrath, anger, and torment.

3- He knows his place in the fire before his death.

4- The angels hit him with oppressors, for his face and his paw, and what do you think of hitting the angels ?! And Allah (God) is not imagined by the minds, nor surrounded by minds, and there is no power for human beings.

5- The severity of removing his soul from his body until the veins and nerves are severed.

6- Putting his soul in sackcloths of fire.

7- The curse of every angel between heaven and earth, and every angel in heaven is.

8- It comes out of it as the stench of a cadaver wind on the face of the earth.

9- The gates of heaven are closed without him, and the angels of every heaven claim that his soul will not limp by them

10- They call him his ugliest names, which he was called by in the abode of this world.

11- Allah (God) says: ((Write the book of my servant in Sjjeen)); That is, in the lower ground, and what a prison and confinement and distress it is.

12- His soul is cast from heaven until it falls into his body.

13- He called woe to himself when carrying his funeral, oh woe, where do you go?

14- And finally, a herald from heaven calls out: ((My servant lied), and if he had no punishment except this, that would suffice.

15- He cannot answer the two angel's questions.

16- His grave is narrowed so that his ribs differ.

17- His evil deed is represented to him in the image of a black-faced, ugly-dressed man who stinks of the wind.

18- A deaf blind person is sentenced to death, and he struck him with a mooring, if a mountain was hit with it.

19- A fire door is opened for it, and fire brushes are made for it.

حال المؤمن عند الموت

المؤمن يعلم أنه خُلق لغاية العبودية، فهو في الدنيا عبد لله و جزاء عبوديته هو الجنة، أما الحياة الدنيا فكلها طريق للآخرة، فيعمل عمل العبد الذي لا يملك شيئًا إلا حاجته، و لا يلتفت و لا ينخدع بشيء. و هو يفكر في الموت و يحب لقاء الله جل جلاله.

و من حسن خاتمة المؤمن أن يوفق قبل موته لهجر عما يغضب الرب سبحانه، و التوبة من الذنوب و المعاصي، و الإقبال على الطاعات و أعمال الخير، ثم يكون موته بعد ذلك على هذه الحال الحسنة، و مما يدل على هذا المعنى ما صح عن أنس بن مالك رضي الله عنه قال: قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه و سلم: (إذا أراد الله بعبده خيراً استعمله) قالوا: كيف يستعمله؟ قال: (يوفقه لعمل صالح قبل موته) رواه الإمام أحمد و الترمذي و صححه الحاكم في المستدرك.

فقبل لحظة الموت تتنزل عليه الملائكة تبشره و تطمئنه، يقول الله تعالى: ﴿ إِنَّ الَّذِينَ قَالُوا رَبُّنَا اللَّهُ ثُمَّ اسْتَقَامُوا تَتَنَزَّلُ عَلَيْهِمُ الْمَلَائِكَةُ أَلَّا تَخَافُوا وَ لَا تَحْزَنُوا وَأَبْشِرُوا بِالْجَنَّةِ الَّتِي كُنْتُمْ تُوعَدُونَ ﴾ [فصلت-30]، تهدئ الملائكة من رَوعه و فزعه و تبشره بالجنة، فكان بعضهم يبتسم و يتهلل وجهه حال الموت.

فالملائكة تتنزل على المؤمن تبشره و تطمئنه - قبل قبض روحه - بمغفرة الله و رضوانه، ثم يسهِّل الله قبض روحه فتسارع الملائكة، يتلقونها يحنطونها و يطيبونها، ثم يصعدون بها وهي سعيدة إلى ربها سبحانه، فيقول الله عز و جل: ((اكْتُبُوا كِتَابَ عَبْدِي فِي عِلِّيينَ وَ أَعِيدُوهُ إِلَى الأَرْضِ)).

حال الفاجر و الكافر عند الموت

أما الكافر ومن انخدع بحال الكفار و تشبَّه بهم، فإنه يمشي بالطريق بلا معرفة إلى أين يسير، فإذا جرب الطريق و أخذ مسافة وقطع وقتًا فيه، شعر بأنه ��ير مناسب له وأن الطريق هذا غير جيد، فرجع إلى البداية و سلك طريقًا آخر، و إذا أراد السير وقطع في الطريق مسافة اكتشف أنه طريق غير جيد، و عاد تائهًا يتخبط فيسلك طريقًا ثالثًا...إلى أن يأتيه الموت فجأة.

و من سوء الخاتمة أن يظهر على المحتضر المسلم العاصي أو الكافر علامات أو أحوال تدل على سوء الخاتمة، مثل النكوب عن نطق الشهادة - شهادة أن لا إله إلا الله - و رفض ذلك، و مثل التحدث في سياق الموت بالسيئات و المحرمات و إظهار التعلق بها، و نحو ذلك من الأقوال و الأفعال التي تدل على الإعراض عن دين الله تعالى و التبرم لنزول قضائه.

قال تعالى: ﴿ حَتَّى إِذَا جَاءَ أَحَدَهُمُ الْمَوْتُ قَالَ رَبِّ ارْجِعُونِ، لَعَلِّي أَعْمَلُ صَالِحًا فِيمَا تَرَكْتُ كَلَّا إِنَّهَا كَلِمَةٌ هُوَ قَائِلُهَا وَمِنْ وَرَائِهِمْ بَرْزَخٌ إِلَى يَوْمِ يُبْعَثُون ﴾ [المؤمنون: 99- 100]، حتى إذا جاء أحدَ هؤلاء المشركين الموتُ، وعاين ما ينزل به قال ندمًا على ما فات من عمره، وما فرّط في جنب الله: رب ارجعني إلى الحياة الدنيا. لعلّي أعمل عملًا صالحًا إذا رجعت إليها، كلا، ليس الأمر كما طلب، إنها مجرد كلمة هو قائلها، فلو رُدَّ إلى الحياة الدنيا لما وفى بما وعد به، وسيبقى هؤلاء المتوفّون في حاجز بين الدنيا والآخرة إلى يوم البعث والنشور، فلا يرجعون منه إلى الدنيا ليستدركوا ما فاتهم، ويصلحوا ما أفسدوه.

فهذا حال الكفار و العُصاة إذا نزل بهم الموت، يتمنَّون أن لو رجعوا إلى الدنيا، فإن كان كافرًا لعله يُسلِم، و إن كان مسلما عاصيًا فلعله يتوب، و لكن الإيمان لا يُقبَل إذا حضر الموت، و التوبة لا تنفع إذا غرغر العبد.

و أفظع ما يلاقيه يُلاقيه الفاجر أو الكافر عند خروج رُوحه:

1- رؤيته لملائكة العذاب و مَلَك الموت ويا لها من رؤية!

2- توبيخ الملائكة إياه، و لعنه، و تبشيره بسخط الله و غضبه و عذابه.

3- يعلم مكانه من النار قبل موته.

4- ضرْب الملائكة له بالمقامع، لوجهه و دُبره، و ما ظنُّك بضرب الملائكة؟! و الله لا تتصوَّره العقول، و ولا تُحيط به الأذهان، و لا طاقة للبشر به.

5- شدة نزْع رُوحه من جسده حتى تتقطَّع العروق ووالأعصاب.

6- وضْع رُوحه في مُسوح من النار.

7- لعنة كل مَلَك بين السماء و الأرض، و كل ملك في السماء له.

8- يخرج منها كأنتن ريح جيفة على وجه الأرض.

9- تُغلَق أبواب السماء دونه، ليس من أهل باب، إلا وهم يدعونه ألا تَعرُج رُوحه من قِبلهم.

10- يُنادونه بأقبح أسمائه التي كان يُسمَّى بها في دار الدنيا.

11- قول الله: ((اكتبوا كتابَ عبدي في سجين))؛ أي: في الأرض السفلى، و يا له من سجن و حبس و ضيق.

12- تُطرح رُوحه من السماء طرحًا حتى تقع في جسده.

13- دعاؤه بالويل على نفسه عند حملِ جنازته، يا ويلها أين تذهبون بها؟

14- و أخيرًا، يُنادي منادٍ من قِبل السماء: ((أن كذَب عبدي))، و لو لم يكن له من العقاب إلا هذا لكفى.

15- لا يستطيع الإجابة على أسئلة المَلَكين.

16- يُضَيَّق عليه قبره حتى تختلف أضلاعه.

17- يُمثَّل له عمله الخبيث على صورة رجلٍ أسود الوجه، قبيح الثياب، مُنتن الريح، فيقول له: أبشِر بالذي يسوؤك.

18- يُقيَّض له أعمى أصم، فيضربه بمرزبة، لو ضُرِب بها جبل كان ترابًا.

19- يُفتَح له باب من النار، و يُمهَّد له فُرش النار.

#SoundCloud #death #paradise #fire

[giurochedadomani]

Fic-in-progress type of update that has gotten a tiny, little bit out of hand but I regret nothing and I really want to share it

I’m doing the third and final part of this. 

When I do get to finish this I feel like it’ll work just fine as a one shot, but. Just to give you some context: this scene of the story takes place after a botched plan ends up with the son of a rival capo dead at the hands of? Leonardo? I never bothered to write out what exactly happened on That Fateful Night and now I’m taking 100% advantage of that.  

The thing is, the other mafioso certainly blames him. When Primo manages to keep Leo out of jail by putting the blame of the murder on the son of the town’s mayor, their rival decides to take justice into his own hands, failing to consider how little Primo is likely to stop until he owns the city and ends with every kind of threat vaguely pointed in his direction, Leo’s or this family he has adopted himself into. Enter: 

[Gioia Tauro, Saturday night] 

Uhhhhh there are things I can tag for: mentions of abuse re: Primo’s childhood, discussions of murder and other Mob related stuff, but there are other things that I can’t really tag without spoiling away what happens,  so I’m gonna highlight that this story is basically about a mob war and that violent stuff happens and use the handy ao3 sign of ‘Author decided not to display any warnings’

“Do you want me to tell you, or not?”

“I don’t know, you seem to be doing quite well on your own”. 

It comes off way drier than Leonardo means to, and the without me goes over them, unspoken. He bites the tip of his tongue and stands his ground and tries not to picture the hint of hurt that passes over Primo’s face as Leonardo goes through his business, picking up his suit’s jacket and the briefcase from the sofa as the other looks at him like some kind of gargoyle while he fusses through the office. 

“A bomb. In his office”, Primo explains, slow, after a moment, blatantly ignoring him. “Next week, we’re aiming for Friday, although Fiore needs to tie up some loose ends”. A beat of silence. “I insisted on it being Friday. Less people in the building that day, like you said”. Leonardo won’t give in to Primo’s unsubtle attempts to win him over. “I was going to tell you”. 

He gives the other a sharp look. What he means to be a sharp look, really. It’s kind of endearing that Primo cannot withstand a grand total of half a minute of silence treatment. No, Leonardo’s still pissed that he didn’t call him into the meeting. 

“What loose ends?”, he asks, tone clipped.  

“ID passes. He wants to get a couple of original ones”, rob some innocent cleaning lady of her own pass, more likely, Leonardo thinks, as if he were in some shape or form morally superior to that, “and just modify the photos, keeping it simple. He can’t do that a week earlier, it’d be...”, Primo trails off, looking at him with a tinge of— 

It’d be less likely to call on any unwanted attention, that’s for sure. And truth be told, they’ve never been lucky with forgeries. It’s not as if they’re trying to enter the fucking Quirinale, and one would think that a sleepy guard on a Friday morning wouldn’t pay much attention to some cleaning staff’s passes, but it doesn’t hurt to be a little bit extra cautious: Romano has proven himself to be able to become quite the headache. And he can’t help feeling a little satisfied at how Primo is not diving head first into danger for once in his fucking life— no. He’s annoyed.

Leonardo hums, pensive. He locks the door of his office after they step outside, and speaks again once he finds another direction in which to funnel his irritation. 

“What’s their story, if they’ve got to flee the scene”.

Primo frowns. His patent confusion vindicates Leonardo, for some fucking reason. He focuses on that instead on how much it pisses him off that he already knows that Primo will avoid simply saying that he’s sorry, as if the words were fucking poisonous. 

“They don’t manage to do it, what do they do”, he insists.  

The eerie stillness of the building, empty at that hour, just makes Primo’s silence louder as they walk to the elevator. 

“Why, if someone had thought to ask just that”, Leonardo concludes, sarcastic, stabbing the push button. 

Primo huffs. He can behave like a child all he wants, Leonardo is not going to give in. He’s fully capable of becoming as difficult as Primo can be, when he puts his mind to it. Let’s see if the other can take his own medicine—  

“Her name’s Lucrezia”. 

…

Leonardo is so thrown off by the non sequitur that he almost manages to momentary forget about his exasperation. He stares at Primo for a long moment, the doors of the elevator opening and staying open for them. “...She’s one of his classmates”, Primo adds, as if that clarified anything. 

Leonardo’s bewilderment must be patent on his face because Primo makes a whole show of rolling his eyes, looking up as if asking God for patience. He grabs him and pushes him inside the elevator, pushing the button to the ground floor. 

“Francesco”, he starts again, slowly, once the doors close off again. He’s probably aiming to be more comprehensible, but doesn’t manage to make it look as if he’s not in some way explaining things to a baby. “He’s not out there doing…”, he has to think for a moment to land in something Leonardo could possibly be pissed off about, and he’s not entirely convinced when he says: “...Drugs, or whatever the hell you’re worried about. He’s just got himself a...”, he trails off again, does a florid gesture with his hand as if he could grab the right word, ends up saying a very dubitative: “... friend”. He shrugs, as if deeming it a suitable enough explanation. “So yeah. You can stop being insufferable now”. 

Each button keeps getting illuminated as they descend, a little peep sounding each time they pass a floor. So that’s what was up with them both. Leonardo feels tranquility washing over his surprise, before his gut settles on uneasiness as he continues looking at Primo and the stiffness of his shoulders. 

He passes a hand over his face. 

“Francesco’s got a girlfriend”. 

“You’re not this dense on the usual”. 

“And he told you about it”. 

He’s well aware that Franceso regards Primo with an undercurrent of hero worship. He’s also intimately familiar with how despite the fact that Primo is a man of many hidden talents, romance is, to put it mildly, not the subject he feels most comfortable with. The other is fucking with him in some way, he can’t help feeling sure of that, and it makes him kind of tense not being able to point out exactly where. 

Uncharacteristically of him, Primo feels the need to fill the silence. 

“Don’t be jealous”, he starts once the doors open, and he sounds a tad arrogant, as he always does when— “I told him to do a formal presentation at some point, bring her home to have dinner and all that stuff, let Regina gush and… yeah”. He turns to face Leonardo once he realizes that he has stopped on his tracks, adds, defensively: “You have been weird all fucking day. That’s why I didn’t tell you to come into the meeting”. 

“Lucrezia”, Leonardo repeats. The name sounds familiar. It’s Primo’s closed off expression what makes realization fall onto his mind like a circuit breaker blowing up the fuse: a scratching sound and then fade to black. He stares at Primo in disbelief, mouth hanging open until he can work around the knot at his throat. 

“Brambilla. Lucrezia Brambilla. Brambilla, as in. The daughter of the—”. 

“Yes”. 

A well-mannered girl, soft spoken and sweet. He has seen her in passing, disappearing behind the tinted windows of his father’s fancy car at the entrance of Francesco’s high school. He knows her father better. Sergio Brambilla.

Prosecutor. 

“And you told him it was a good idea?”, Leonardo asks, in which he’d defend as a very reasonable tone of voice, given the circumstances, but doesn’t perhaps quite manage to hit the whole discreet thing, because Primo makes a sharp movement in the general direction of the night guard booth.

“What’s exactly bad about knowing what the fuck happens in that house?”

Of course. Of fucking course Primo would think it’s a good idea. He doesn’t even know why he’s surprised except that for the very little, trivial fact that he cannot believe what he’s hearing!

“You had a hand on it!?”

Primo has the sheer audacity to look offended. 

“Me? In what? How the fuck could I possibly— As if it were my fucking fault now that your kid likes blondes!” 

“I swear on everything that’s holy, Primo!”

Primo throws a look to the booth over his shoulder, then at him, then promptly grabs his arm and pushes him forward, making him advance towards the garage entrance, past the night guard, who takes a look at them and searches to fade with the wallpaper behind. He loves Primo, God damn them both, he does, but sometimes he’d hit him with a fucking chair, but also no, because someone’s got to keep a levelled head and he refuses to go down the level of a machiavelian, manipulative jerk who deems feasible to intervene in his son’s life like— 

“Shut up for a fucking minute, will you”, Primo says, which is fucking rich. Leonardo shoves him off the moment they’re passing the first row of cars, the itch of a fight bubbling right under his skin. Primo doesn’t continue after seemingly making sure that he’s going to listen. He takes a deep breath before doing so, evidently to rile himself in, which would be the most annoyingly petulant thing in the world if he were any other person. “He took a liking to the girl on his own. They’re classmates, as I said. They’ve been friends since the start of the year, and now, well”, he shrugs, ostensibly. “She’s also going to study in Rome, it seems”. 

It hurts. The fact that not only did Primo know before him about it, but that he has done so for such a very long time. 

“And you planned to tell me when, exactly?”, Leonardo can’t help but to interrupt.

Primo copies his sarcastic tone when he answers: “When you’ve decided to make a problem out of it, perhaps?” 

He knows in his heart that Primo trusts him, and that he does so seemingly to a further extent than anyone else. That he loves him, in his own peculiar way, and that he’d move heaven and Earth to protect him, and his family. That’s why it’s so hard to wrap his mind around the fact that he wouldn’t even bother to mention something like this. Besides, the careless way he’s speaking about it doesn’t really sit well with Leonardo. As if he had landed himself had single handedly on court when he came to know the girl’s father: “You remember that Brambilla accused me of murder, don’t you?” 

“You were acquitted”, the other replies, instantly, tone tense. “You’re a model citizen, for all the guy knows”.  

“He defended that I’m a mafioso”, he insists. He remembers the charges line by fateful line. Refusing to talk about it won’t make him forget what happened, notwithstanding Primo’s look on the subject. “He said that I planned to set up a cocaine distribution ring with the money I supposedly stole from—”. 

“Nothing about them getting together forces you to have a good relationship with Brambilla”, Primo points out, exasperated, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s Francesco the one who’s dating his daughter”. 

Leonardo limits himself to stare at the other from the other side of his Berlinetta when they reach it.  

He should have confronted Francesco directly about it, but no, because the kid’s got an angelic face of never having done harm to a fly and he’s soft. Regina has a sixth sense for these things, she would have been a better option, except that he feared that Francesco would have gotten himself in bigger problems than a girl. It’s not a girl, though, not just like that, and really, there’s probably an option that he has somehow missed that would have prevented him from ending up in a parking lot, being looked at as if he’s hawk’s prey. 

He sighs, opens the car and gets in, going through the usual motions as Primo follows him suit, putting the briefcase on the backseat, his jacket covering it after he fishes out his keys from one of the pockets. 

Francesco could easily say the wrong thing, in the wrong moment, to the wrong person, and neither of them would be none the wiser. He could rat them out in a bid to brag, or because he thinks that he can relax his guard. What if he breaks the poor girl’s heart and she wants to take revenge? He remembers how stupid young love can make you, how blind. 

“Telling Francesco that he can’t do it won’t work”, Primo says, serious, but not quite as biting. “You’ll just be handing him over the perfect excuse for him not to tell you shit in the future”. 

Leonardo wonders if it’s the girl sticking it to her father what appeals to Primo so much about the whole thing, he supposes the other could appreciate a kindred spirit. It’s obvious that he’s talking from experience, and Leonardo doesn’t know if he feels more insulted by the possibility that Primo might be comparing him to Salvatore, of all people, or to Primo’s own dad, of all fucking people, as if he had ever given the slightest indication that he’d beat— That he’d— Just considering the idea that he might have to explain to the other that not every son has quite the same relationship with their father as Primo did with Angelo Nizzuto makes him kind of nauseous. 

Primo must sense where his mind’s heading because he ends up adding: “Doesn’t matter if you’re nice about it, but you can be my damn fucking guest if you want to try”. He shrugs, then looks out of the window, as if he were washing his hands out of the situation instead of biding his time, as Leonardo is completely convinced he’s doing. 

This is a lost battle, if Primo has already taken such a defensive stance on the subject. He’s got months on him, despite all (“They’ve been friends since the start of the year, and now, well”), more than enough time for him to look at Francesco and Lucrezia from every possible angle and to collect every single argument in favor of their relationship before quick starting a confrontation with him. And really, he’s just so blind sided by the whole thing. He must be a really bad father not to suspect a thing for months.  

Leonardo puts the ignition key on, but Primo speaks again before he turns it. 

“I’ve just told him to be smart, to pay attention, and not to run himself into problems” he insists, softer. “Your kid can do that. You know he can. Besides, I’m keeping an eye on him”, he turns to face him, “You can at least trust that, don’t you?” 

That’s very unfair of Primo. It’s not a question of trust. Francesco’s a very inexperienced hot head. He’d be up to his knees in problems before he recognizes the first signs of danger, let alone ask for help. 

“He’ll tell me himself if he does fuck up, you can be sure of that. Holy hell, he just won’t stop talking about the girl, you know? Lulu this, Lulu that”, Primo continues, as if he knew full well that he’s picking at his reticences little by little. Leonardo’s running out of excuses not to associate the pang in his chest with the notion that he’s been kept outside this little secret. “He calls her Lulu”, Primo explains, seemingly flabbergasted at the notion, which is very boldly rich coming from him, and kind of makes Leonardo want to ask him what exactly makes Lulu any more ridiculous of a nickname than Leo. 

He snorts, despite himself.  

Primo smiles a little when he sees him doing so, as if he’s just proved his point. It’d be so annoying, if it wasn’t so genuine.  

“Better to wait the whole thing out. Let him go to Rome. There are more options in Rome. He’ll just grow bored, with time”. Leonardo raises an eyebrow. Primo’s smile takes the barest turn to playful. He deadpans: “Worse case scenario, they do end up getting married and we need to find you a proper suit to wear. You look hot with a suit. I don’t see a downside of the situation for anyone involved”. 

Just like that. As if it were so easy. 

He’d like to have a smidge of Primo’s unwavering faith in their future, of his unstoppable conviction that they’ll always come up on top, though he’s reduced to trust that the other knows what he’s doing and join for the ride. 

Leonardo’s done so many bad things in his life, this is surely his God given punishment. 

“When I told you to solve this I didn’t mean, like, personally”, Primo interrupts his train of thought making a vague gesture towards the backseat. “We’ve got people for that. You keep insisting on that: a good boss knows when to delegate”, he adds, in which Leonardo’s forced to interpret as his attempt to mock him. It’s very unfair, given how different is delivering the suitcase from when he told Primo that, that is, when he had to keep him in bed after getting shot, but he knows where Primo’s going with this. He knows this kind of dance. 

He looks at him and keeps silent, so Primo’s forced to elaborate. If he wants to have dinner with him, he can just ask. Primo purses his lips, frowns a little, but finally says, slowly: 

“I have an idea. That I want your opinion on”, then he stops for a moment, seemingly to revise what he’s going to say, and adds: “That we could discuss, with wine”. 

“You want to have dinner at the Olimpo, then?”, he insists, just to hear Primo say it, and not be the slightest bit surprised when he ignores him. 

“It’s got to do with your cousin. Does he still want to work for us?”

“Antonio? Yes”. 

“How fluent would you say that he’s in Spanish?” 

Leonardo takes the ignition key out. 

___

An hour later, Dante would finish his cigarette under the street light by the back entrance of the office. He would take a quick look at his watch, and he would get into the car after checking the backseat, adjusting the jacket slightly over the suitcase. If he came back soon enough, he could have dinner with his girlfriend, he’d think, fishing for Leonardo’s car keys in his pocket. Maybe he could take her out next weekend, treat her to somewhere posh by the port. He’d turn the ignition key on. 

…

KA-BOOM!!!!!

#trust fx #primo x leonardo #Lau writes #this is awfully domestic truth be told #if you made it to the end: I’m sorry but also I’m not sorry at all #Working title: My daddy’s got a gun (you better run)

[booksandwords]

Autoboyography by Christina Lauren

Read time: 2 Days Rating: 4/5

The quote: This is how we reveal ourselves: these tiny flashes of discomfort, the reactions we can’t hide. — Tanner Scott

Autoboyography is a wonderful book that enjoys a lot of praise. I really enjoyed it. This review ended up being quite lengthy. I have chosen to focus largely on the characters of Autoboyography which I really appreciated. This is a well thought out and designed story, intended to provoke thought in readers. Not just about religion and relationships but maybe about themselves a bit. It deals with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints referred to as LDS with at least some dignity, more than is normal.

The opening is great, a walk through the relevant parts of Tanner's life and clarification on the LDS. Some stereotypes are displayed, these are still high school students. The LDS we all think of are those on their Mission. The pacing of the plot is at least reasonable, it fits the relationship. Especially after the line "You've always led with your heart first and your heart second, but I need you to think about this one." (Jenna to Tanner, p 100). There are a couple of moments that are questionable. A convenient change in the enrolment numbers for the Seminar (14 to 15), one frequently mentioned moments comes to nothing. The plot is described as Tanner falling in love with Sebastian, which just feels right it really is that simple and that complicated. The ending feels right. An HFN was almost certain but it was the journey that I was unsure of and really enjoyed.

Characters are multidimensional and of their circumstances. With Emily and Jenna wholly distrustful to the point of nearly hating LDS due to their previous experiences with it. Paul knows what could have been and knows the situation his son his in, as well as his familial history having a role to play. Due to the differences between the families, Tanner and Sebastian don't face the same concerns or restrictions within their relationship, though both have the same source to a degree. Tanner's family objects to Sebastian's religion. Sebastian's family stringently objects to same-sex relationships. Autoboyography is one of those books that shows love in multiple forms. Familial, in different forms. Romantic between the protagonists, it's complicated and messy. Platonic between friends and unrequited love as well. Autoboyography has some wonderful quotes about love, faith, family and friendship.

Tanner 'Tann' Scott is a bi, senior and transplant to Provo, Utah from Palo Alto, California, a move that put him firmly back in the closet. Even his best friend, the brilliant Autumn doesn't know his true sexuality. His parents are extremely supportive of his sexuality but don't want him to get hurt in the very Mormon town he now lives in. His subject strengths are in the math/science stream. he's an honors student essentially with his pick of universities. After accepting a challenge to join the Seminar, a semester-long book writing course he is introduced to local celebrity Sebastian Brother. Tann's attraction to Sebastian is instantaneous  "His smile ruins me." (Tanner, p 22) which is a great line, I remember being bowled over like that. His fast movement from infatuation to love is interesting to read. Tanner is helpless to resist even though he knows he should (Sebastian is in the same position there). His coping mechanisms are sometimes healthy, sometimes destructive, reading both in the same character added a great depth. I quite like Tanner, because of how this book his written I could feel his anger and pain.

Sebastian 'Seb' Brother is a published author tutoring the Seminar Tan is in. After the semester is over he goes on book tour than on his two year Mission. While he is attracted to men, he doesn't identify as gay. His father is the local Bishop as such his family are expected to lead by example in both word and deed. Seb's family are very welcoming and accepting of Tann when they meet him. Sebastian's experimentation and reluctance to label (and hair-splitting) were extremely off-putting. I've been known to DNF a book for less, despite what I said earlier, that was more about Tann's reaction rather than Seb's choices. "I'm not gay, I'm not straight, I'm me" (Sebastian, p 224). The very thing that makes him off-putting makes him a great character, it's the circumstances and expectation (familial and communal) that make the person. He also has a hidden passion that is shown only at the right times but it was definitely needed, and it, not a small streak either.

In the support cast, there is a standout. Auddy. Autumn Summer Green. Tann's best friend, she is ride or die but with a complication. Those unhealthy coping mechanisms I was mentioning, they relate to her. My one question about her is how can she be so beautiful and accepting of everything that happens? It's not passivity she's just a really well written best friend. But Tann's family are great. There is a lot going on there. Full acceptance of Tann's sexuality, but wanting to protect him from the pain they experienced. "How would this be any different from his parents saying guys are off-limits?" "It's completely different. Among a hundred other reasons, going to church is a choice.. Being bisexual is simply who you are I'm protecting you from the toxic messages of the church." (Tanner and Jenna, p 99).

One of the minor problematic elements in Autoboyography is a sense of abuse between Tanner and Sebastian. It's psychological, not physical and it called out but not in words. Some people won't have an issue with it due to the context but I did. Your identity is your own if Sebastian (or a real-life person) wants to live their life according to a religious doctrine rather that is their prerogative. There is of course the larger issues of homophobia. The LDS elements may be an issue for some readers. It is core to the plot and cannot be ignored. Those with a particular issue or history with such religions/ doctrines/ cults should read with care. I make no judgements on organised religion here.

Reading the acknowledgements I read something interesting. "We started talking about this book years ago; Cristina worked in a junior high counselling office in Utah, and Saw teen after teen coming through who honestly believed, devastatingly, that their parents would probably rather have a dead child than a gay one. As a woman who grew up bi in the queer-friendly world of the Bay-Area, Lauren felt a social obligation to reach out to teens whose experiences weren't as easy". I like that this is where Autoboyography came from. Built on their experiences with at-risk teens. Given this was the source of the idea I love the inclusion a resource section. The Song of Achilles is entirely unsurprisingly, it is hugely popular and stunning. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe has been on my tbr for far too long. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is an absolute classic and is also a brilliant stage musical. LGBTQ Reads I'd never heard of but it's really good. If I may add my own recommendations; The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee (it's my purple pride book) and Cemetry Boys by Aiden Thomas (own voice Trans POC).

#autoboyography #christina lauren #book review #lgbtq #ktreviews #young adult

[trikruheart]

Bellamy Is The Abusive One, Not Octavia: A Rant/Meta

There’s two main “reasons” that people give when they claim that Octavia is abusive. That she beats up Bellamy after Lincoln’s murder, and that she has him put in The Fighting Pits.

Let’s start with the old discourse; Bellamy did get Lincoln killed, not Octavia. Bellamy is the person who got Pike into power, the person who stood by him even after seeing + being told multiple times by people he supposedly cares about that Pike was instituting facism and going to get everyone killed. Bellamy knowingly decided to be a Nazi even though he had other options and was aware of them. And, no, Nazi is not an exaggeration, Bellamy was 100% willing to wipe out an entire race just for being that race including putting them in concentration camp-like conditions to die.

Octavia is not at fault just because she didn’t accept Bellamy’s last minute “help”, he had given her absolutely no reason to trust him so it’s not her fault she didn’t. If my brother was fhe right-hand man of a fascist leader then I wouldn’t have trusted him that after he belittled my concerns several times and stopped me from escaping, he’ll get my boyfriend out of the camp he put him in to begin with. Octavia had no obligation to trust Bellamy after he did everything in his power to destroy her trust.

So, yes, Octavia beats up Bellamy. If I had just saw and heard the love of my life be murdered at the hands of the man that my own brother knowingly put in power then I probably would beat him up to. Especially if my brother had already been abusing me my whole life.

Side note: Let me also just point out that Bellamy was never adequately redeemed for that whole being a Nazi thing, everyone just pretended it never happened. Octavia herself even calls him out “You didn’t turn on Pike because you thought what he was doing to the grounders was wrong.” and he AGREES. Bellamy 👏 never 👏 earned 👏 redemption, because men in this show don’t need to be held accountable for their actions while women (mainly Octavia and Clarke) have to supplicate themselves to men and be dragged through the dirt mercilessly for every wrong breath they take.

The Fighting Pit issue is an even weaker example because Octavia didn’t put Bellamy in there because she was angry or wanted to (although she had every right to be) she did it because Bellamy publicly broke several laws and she would have completely undermined her own authority (and given special treatment, making her a poor leader) if she let him get away with treason, child endangerment, murder, and attempted assassination. Bellamy getting put in the fighting pit was a consequence of his own actions, one that he was well aware of. Octavia wasn’t being abusive, she was being a fair leader.

Now that that BS is out of the way, here’s a list of why Bellamy is abusive to Octavia:

1.) Bellamy has had all of the power in their relationship from day one. Octavia was literally trapped in a room and only able to interact with two people for sixteen years, Bellamy came and went as he pleased. Octavia was essentially a captive, she couldn’t have possibly been more powerless during the entire time their relationship was developing. Then when they get on the ground, Bellamy is almost instantly put in a position of power which he uses to isolate and control Octavia. There’s also the age difference, I think a lot of people forget that Bellamy is way older than all the other Skaikru. Bellamy is 23 at the start of the show and everyone else is under 18 (except Raven is 18). So, we’re talking about a barely 17-year-old girl, one who grew up extremely isolated so is even more immature than most kids her age, and a 23-year-old man who lived most of his life relatively normally.

The power difference entirely favors Bellamy. Octavia has no power over him at all pre-Blodreina (which we’ll get to that) so the idea that she could possibly abuse Bellamy is pretty absurd. Abuse is a habitual pattern of controlling and belittling behavior by someone with more (actual or perceived) power over another, Octavia had no power over Bellamy at all; Bellamy had an insane amount of power over her that he constantly abuses to isolate and control her.

2.) Bellamy supposedly goes to the ground to “protect” Octavia but his means of doing so are abusive and controlling. In season 1 alone; Bellamy uses physical intimidation and manhandling against Octavia several times, he terrorizes a harmless teenager (remember how he’s a grown ass adult? Yikes...) to keep him away from Octavia who was enjoying his company, then he tortures a man in front of her while she begs him to stop because he doesn’t care about her opinions (more in 4) and he’s the leader of The 100 so he can.

3.) The whole “my sister, my responsibility” thing that everyone thinks is so cute? Yeah, that’s emotional abuse. A figure of authority repeating to a child that they are a burden for existing is disgusting and so, so harmful. That phrase is a reinforcement of the more vicious things Bellamy has said “Mom was floated for having you, she’s dead because you’re alive!” and “My life ended the day you were born!”

4.) Bellamy is constantly belittling, dismissing, and patronizing all of Octavia’s opinions and identity.

“You turned this place into a story from your childhood. I mean, the red queen? It’s a joke.”

I’m not saying that Blodreina was a positive identity for Octavia, but it was something she was forced (remember, she didn’t seek power like Bellamy and Clarke did) to become to survive. Octavia was a mentally ill teenage girl with very limited exposure to the world who has never had any power in her entire life, and suddenly she was responsible for saving the human race. How fucking dare Bellamy mock her for basing her leadership off of stories WHAT THE HELL ELSE WOULD SHE BASE IT OF OFF???

Bellamy had a job and a life on The Arc, Octavia never left her room and had no way of seeing the outside world except through stories. She has literally no reference for ruling, or anything else, except those stories and her brief time with the Grounders. Fuck you and your privilege, Bellamy.

On top of that, Octavia actually did save the human race. That “joke” kept humanity alive.

“It is time to stop playing Grounder before you get yourself hurt.”

Yes, how dare she identify with the only people who have ever accepted her and treated her like a human being. How about you stop “playing” Nazi before you get us everyone killed. Seriously, Octavia is not allowed to disagree with Bellamy without him grabbing her arm and talking down to her like she’s a toddler throwing a tantrum.

5.) As soon as Octavia is in a position of power, one she didn’t even ask for, Bellamy’s abuse gets progressively crueler because he’s trying to regain control. He starts actively using Octavia’s mental illness against her and literally suicide baits her several times.

There is NO excuse. None at all. To tell someone who is severely mentally ill, traumatized, and an active suicide risk that “I wish you were dead” and “you’re already dead”. Trying to push someone to suicide and using someone’s mental illness to hurt them, let alone your own sister, is one of the most evil things you can do. The fact that so much of the fandom ignores this genuinely makes me sick.

Bellamy chooses those words because he knows that is what will hurt Octavia the most and he wants to hurt her. Bellamy has heard Octavia say that she’s already dead when she’s at her lowest points, he knows that those are the words that haunt her and drive her to want to kill herself, and that’s why he uses them as a weapon. Notice that he says them multiple times and at very purposeful times, this is not something he yelled once when he was angry; we see him calmly make the choice to say these things to her several times when he is losing control and wants to break her back down to the helpless little girl who was always happy to see him because of her Stockholm Syndrome.

6.) I think trying to MURDER Octavia THREE FUCKING TIMES deserves its own point. Bellamy poisons Octavia, he suicide baits her and let’s her go through with it (someone else stops her, Bellamy makes no move to), and then he leaves her to die with a lovely extra “My sister is dead” for the road.

7.) Octavia spends most of season 6 groveling and trying to “earn” back Bellamy’s love and we see clearly that “earning” Bellamy’s love means being utterly powerless and subservient. Bellamy loved Octavia when she was a captive little girl but suddenly he can’t produce an ounce of human decency towards her? And don’t give me some “but she’s Blodreina” like Mr. Nazi has any room to judge Octavia for becoming a dictator out of desperation when she didn’t know what else to do and she was forced in a very, very difficult leadership position that she never wanted and all of humanity relied on.

My point is basically that Bellamy’s love is conditional, he holds it over Octavia’s head like a fucking dog treat. He wants “his sister” back but what does that mean? He wants back the scared little girl who couldn’t leave one room and was entirely dependent on him. It’s Octavia having autonomy that Bellamy hates, not her being “evil” because Bellamy is 500x as evil as Octavia and I will die on that hill. You’re telling me that Bellamy of all people is soooo upset that his sister was forced to kill some people in the context of war and keeping humanity alive? As if Bellamy isn’t a mass murderer who has killed way more people for way less. Give me a fucking break. “Octavia is dead” because Bellamy’s victim is dead and he can’t handle that.

But, please, do tell me again how two isolated incidents over six years apart from each other that are both the direct consequences of Bellamy’s autonomous choices make Octavia “eMoTiOnAllY AbUsIvE tO pOoR WitTlE BeLl”.

#anti bellamy blake #octavia blake #pro octavia blake #pro blodreina #octavia defense squad

[drwcn]

'The onus has never been on him,' that slapped so hard. It falls true in canon events too and that just hurts. 'You don't have a gege and I no longer have a didi,' you ripped out my heart from my already collapsing chest. Your words are so beautiful, author. You know where to strike and your aim is nothing but perfect. Also, I desperately want lxc to dismantle the tyrannical way the Lan Sect Elders operate. His husband's death & lwj's suffering would be the last straw, is that wishful thinking?

Hey friends! You’re too sweet! I lumped these two asks together because they kind of both address the same thing, which is the actions of the elders. On tumblr and on AO3, I’ve had a lot of friends really upset with the way the elders acted. Rightfully so, since they made our poor boy commit honour su*cide. 

However, I thought now is probably a good time to shed some light on the cultural and historical implications of their actions, and to perhaps play devil’s advocate a little bit. 

The truth is, what the elders did within context is not at all outrageous. In fact, given how I’ve set up the story, to ask Wei Wuxian to die was the only thing they could’ve done since Yunmeng Jiang was unwilling to accept a divorce. 

I will explain. 

Because historical Chinese society was very gendered, I invite y’all to imagine for one second that there is no magic in this AU. Imagine this is a historical au and imagine Wei Wuxian as a woman. (I hate the heteronormativity of it, but in the setting of the story, by marrying into Gusu Lan Sect, he essentially has cast himself in that gendered role. There are no same sex marriages historically that I can draw parallels with... as far as I know.)

I believe Jiang Yanli in part 3 explains some of this in her internal monologue. She also said that the Gusu Lan family is within their right to do whatever they want. Her last in chapter three was “.. then by the week’s end, A-Cheng could very well be the only brother she has left.” She knew right away that death was a possibility. 

You see, there is no forgiveness for any woman caught having an affair. No forgiveness of any kind. You will not find forgiveness from strangers, from public opinion, from your neighbour’s cousin twice removed. No one. In historical texts, 七出 (seven leaves) outlines the 7 reasons a man can reasonably divorce his wife. 

Reason #1 is if the wife is unkind/unfilial to her husband’s parents (Right here, you can see just how different the priorities were in ancient Chinese society, how seriously ancient society took “respect your elders”, and why the Elders of Gusu Lan have so much power. This sets the stage for some of my later points.) 

Reason #2 is no offspring. If she is unable to have children, her husband may also divorce her, although since Chinese society was polygamous until mid 1940s, this is usually not an issue because the wife can always just allow her husband to find a concubine. 

Reason number #3 is affair.   

I should also point out that “divorce” as we understand in modern society is not the same “divorce” that I speak of historically. Historically, there are two types of ending for marriages. 1) an amicable separation or so called “he-li” 和离, and 2)xiu 休. An amicable separation is almost always a huge negotiation, requiring the input of elders from both families. A man and a woman cannot just wake up one day and have an amicable separation. Also, amicable separations are typically to “save face” and is practiced by large gentry and noble families, like the Gusu Lans and Yunmeng Jiangs. As well, an amicable separation is usually done when the woman hasn’t done anything “wrong”, as in the 7 reasons indicated above. Anytime she has “committed” any one of the 7 “sins”, her husband is within full rights to “xiu” her without consulting anyone. A woman’s station in society doesn’t necessarily even save her from being “xiu”-ed, they just... take on different forms. An Empress for example can literally never be “xiu-ed”, BUT, if she does something wrong like...say for example she is a jealous lady who can’t do a good job managing the inner palace, the Emperor can “废后“ - as in abolish her of her empress status. She is probably confined to “the Cold Palace” 冷宫 (a desolated area of the palace that’s essentially a prison) for the rest of her life. If she did something VERY wrong, like say was caught having an affair, she may live (and be sent to the Cold Palace) if her maiden family is powerful/influential enough in court, but if her maiden family is just so-so, she is definitely 100% dead. She will usually be given 3 options: dagger, a white silk cloth, and a cup of wine. Basically, stab herself, hang herself or poison herself. 

Now, that’s an empress. From empress downwards, all women, noblewoman and princesses included, can be xiu-ed. 

I consulted my mother on this just to make sure I’m right, and she said, yeah, a woman divorced by her husband historically is a very serious outcome. Like.... “she could literally never face society again” kind of serious, so seriously in fact she “might as well be dead.” Her maiden family would not just...welcome her back with open arms. No. They’d send her off somewhere hidden away from sight. 

As a matter of fact, once a woman is found guilty of committing a serious infraction, affair being the most scandalous, her maiden family may not even stand up for her because....well... she did something “wrong”. It is seen as more righteous if they allow her to die because then it’s like... her death restored her honour or she at least was good enough to face the consequences of her actions (All bullshit I know, but it is what it is). In fact, some large families with good reputations they can’t afford to besmirch will actively disown her. 

Now let’s bring this back to Wei Wuxian. As Jiang Yanli mentioned in chapter 3, if Gusu Lan wanted to be a dick, they’d just divorced Wei Wuxian out right. That would’ve been the dick move. But they didn’t do that. They wanted to give the Jiangs an olive branch. As a matter of fact, had the affair just been just a thing within Cloud Recesses, the Lans would’ve allowed for an amicable separation, even though they were within their rights (technically) to divorce Wei Wuxian. But...for whatever reason (I mean... I know the reason, you don’t haha), the news of the affair became rapidly disseminated such that literally everyone knows. Now both families are in a sticky spot.  

One, Zewu-jun is a prominent cultivator. To be cheated on in historical terms is a thing to be laughed at (fragile egos of manhood I suppose). To Lan Xichen’s behaviour, you really can’t voice any criticism. He’s gone above and beyond what is culturally expected as kind. 

Two, the marriage is finished. Now that the affair is exposed, to continue would be a farce and cause more reasons for ridicule. 

I knew pretty much since I started writing this AU that if I exposed the affair, one way or the other Wei Wuxian was gonna have to “die” if I wanted any semblance of reality. 

The only other scenario where he wouldn’t have died is if Lan Xichen is allowed to marry concubines. Then, Gusu Lans could’ve just secluded (imprison) Wei Wuxian for the rest of his life. Any woman or man Lan Xichen marries thereafter still wouldn’t be his “wife” or “husband” because he technically never had a divorce. They would all be concubines, and I don’t think Lan Xichen is the kind of man to do that to someone he loves. Also, Lan Wangji would have lost any and all chances to be with Wei Wuxian since they will never let him out. In that case, wangxian is done. 

I know it doesn’t make sense from a modern stance point, but what the Elders did was not only “right” but “reasonable”. Was it kind? I would even make an argument for kind. They intend to bury and honour Wei Wuxian after death (and that’s very important because funeral and afterlife in this culture are taken very seriously), and they will allow Lan Wangji to send him off at the funeral. No family in historical China would do that. 

Within context, the Elders aren’t wrong. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian made their bed, now they have to lie in it. 

#discordance #discordance explanation #wangxian #denira #corie replies

[whoson1st]

Are you in the official King Falls server at all? Just trying to get an idea of what's going on and who knows what's going on

Hoooooo BOISE.

So, long story short, yes. Yes I’m in the discord, yes I know what’s going on, and it’s all really, really stupid. I think that there were mistakes made on a lot of fronts, but I also think that the end result is, in a lot of ways, a long time coming.

I haven’t been responding to things I’ve seen on social media for the most part, and wasn’t REALLY keen to respond to this, but there’s also a lot of misinformation happening due to hurt feelings. There’s plenty of abridged accounts of what’s going on, and I’m pretty sure you know that. I’m taking this question on good faith that it’s genuinely asking and not setting me up to get torn down but...honestly, either way, I don’t care. I’m not on tumblr much these days anyway so it doesn’t really matter, and internet drama is just….it’s always dumb. But there’s a lot of “evidence” being put forth that is out of context or in bad faith, and the people who are being the loudest are a whole lot of the problem, so I’ll put in my account and opinions.

Anyway, I’m putting everything under a cut because it’s...a lot.

So first off, full disclosure, I used to be a mod on the discord. I left the team at the beginning of the year of my own volition because I’m an adult with a job and a life and things to take care of that aren’t that and needed a break. I’m still friends with all the current mods, and talk to them regularly, as well as being on good terms with the cast and creators. Just in case you’re dead set on hating any of them, you should know that. I try to keep a pretty good perspective, and I’m a little more removed than I was a few months ago, but I won’t say I’m totally free of bias either. If that’s what you’re into, just go ahead and skip this.

This all started with a piece of fan art, which honestly should be a clue as to how petty this all is. The fanart included The Dirt in a BDSM outfit as part of a larger work, and it was posted in the fanart section of the discord. It was bordering on NSFW, and the artist maybe should have asked the mods and/or put it behind a spoiler tag--which is probably as far as the mods would have gone had they been consulted, because it was 1) part of a larger thing and 2) canon compliant (it’s Jacob Williams, what do you want?). Neither of those things happened, people complained, the art was taken down. Then Kyle Brown, one of the writers, retweeted the copy that had been uploaded to twitter on his personal account--his account, not KFAM official--and someone complained that it made them uncomfortable and was not safe for work. Another cast member, Trent Shumway, replied that twitter isn’t a safe for work site, which it’s not. Which then led to both Kyle and Trent being socially crucified for not taking more care in what their followers see on their personal accounts on an open social media platform that is not dedicated to any single person or work.

It was already stupid. Really, really stupid. Especially since this is not a SFW podcast. It never has been. Everyone remember the third episode with Archie’s pomchies? And I know that certain aspects of that make people uncomfortable but if you are choosing to listen to the show regardless of that, it’s on you. An artist isn’t going to repaint something because you’re not a fan of green. And the SFW rule on the server has always been “within the guidelines of the show”.

So then, someone made this post that has since been deleted but I’m including mostly because if other people want to go ahead and pull receipts, I’m also going to.

Before I go ANY further with this, I want to say this: this person has been a problem for a LONG TIME. Months, at least, since before I left the mod team, and is honestly part of the reason being a mod became so difficult for me. They have displayed a pattern of abuse of the mods, the creators, and other members of the community on both twitter and tumblr, and have made people on the discord server uncomfortable enough that they either don’t participate or have left completely. This one person. And they have a bully squad behind them. And it sucks. But in the end, it was always decided that we couldn’t police what people did on their individual accounts or single someone out who hadn’t technically broken guidelines in the server, despite numerous complaints, because the mods and creators want to make everyone feel that they’re included. This decision was made...numerous times. After multiple incidents. For months.

I had my own issues with this decision, but that’s neither here nor there, and doesn’t really matter anymore. Because that post was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Kyle, misunderstanding the term, took it as a threat. Not hard to do, given the already heightened emotions, the tags, and this person’s history. So the person was immediately banned. The fact is, even without misunderstanding, that’s a really shitty post. That’s hating one a writer and a cast member and still wanting to pretend they have nothing to do with the THING THEY CREATE because this person doesn’t like what they said on twitter.

Following that, one of their friends--who had also been a longstanding problem--attempted to start a knockdown dragout in the general chat with one of the mods over this, and was upset when the mod in question first said they’d be happy to talk on DM but not on the server, and then ignored them when they repeatedly tried to carry on the argument.

Then they lit a candle in the channel the banned person had pitched a fit in order to form, as if the person was dead and not just a jerk. And then they made this post:

They also got banned, because OBVIOUSLY. Again, misunderstanding or not, that’s a horrible way to deal with it. You can’t possibly expect to call someone an illiterate fuckwad and still want to be included in spaces they created, much less EXPECT to be. 

And then several other people who were attempting the same nonsense publicly. And then invites were taken away when the mods got word that there was a possible plan in the works to spam the server. And there’s a weird campaign to EXPOSE THE CREATORS FOR THE ASSHOLES THEY ARE.

And that’s...about where things are at now. A lot of people are upset and hurt across the board. And it sucks.

Here’s the thing. Mistakes were made. Kyle misunderstood Death of the Author, and has a tendency toward knee-jerk, unedited reactions. The mods should have been more on top of the problem and not let it fester. There were ways that this could have been mitigated and done better. There always are.

But this was always going to happen in some fashion.

Podcasts and podcast communities are not new anymore, folks. But it still seems like people have a hard time grasping their actual level of involvement in the creation because of how active some creators are. You’re free to say whatever you want, but you are not free from consequence. And you’re not exempt from being wrong. This isn’t just a matter of the creators of KFAM--or any work, to be honest--not being able to take criticism, this is a matter of people thinking that their criticism is 100% correct 100% of the time, and the entitled attitude that comes with that. KFAM isn’t perfect, I have my own criticisms of it, because I have criticisms about basically everything under the sun, so it’s not just blind following. But it is trust in the creators and the people around them to find the best way to tell their story, to the see their problems and strive for better. And we’ve literally seen that happen in KFAM, in changes made to Walt, in Emily’s storyline, in Lily’s...everything. In the addition of “guys, gals, and non-binary pals”. They’re trying. They’re not perfect, but they’re not deaf. They’re also not obligated or beholden to everything their audience says regarding their story.

The whole argument that they can’t take criticism is undercut when it’s being made by people who think that everything they say should be taken as gospel, and treat every instance where someone disagrees with them as a personal attack. The scope of hypocrisy here is just...breathtaking.

Also, when not withstanding some nonsense attacks, they’re all genuinely kind and friendly. I already admitted some bias here, but seriously, they go out of their way to check on people and respond to people and lift people up. It’s total horse dookie to act like they don’t care about their fans.

And as for the discord--god, just get a life. The mods there work SO HARD to make everyone feel included, to encourage participation, the create a positive environment for people to talk about the things they love and make friends. They have meetings and spreadsheets and calendars and work together as a team and with Kyle to keep the place working smoothly even though there’s FIVE of them running a HUGE server. The person who was initially banned was forever complaining about the discord and how the mods ran it, even while some suggestions they had were implemented. But that discord has like 1500 people in it, gang, it’s not about what one person wants all the time. And that person has their own server anyway so just go be unhappy there and leave everyone else alone. It’s what you were doing anyway.

TL;DR: There was a lot of manufactured outrage over something incredibly dumb, and some misunderstandings, and resulted in actions that had been looming for a long time and just finally popped off. Kyle and the mods aren’t perfect, but they aren’t the villains. The people who were banned have a history of negativity and bullying that led to the decision to remove them.

If anyone takes anything from this, please let it be that it’s a GODDAMN PODCAST. If it makes you angry, if you don’t like it, go watch a movie. Eat a snack. Knit a sweater. Take a nap. Listen to a new music album. Literally anything. There’s so many things to do in this life that aren’t LOOKING for things to be upset about.

Remember the golden rule, and don’t be a dick.

#kfam #King Falls AM #drama llama #I blocked out names because if you want to know you can find them #but I'm not here to call out names #because I just don't give enough of a fuck about them to deal with them later #and this is all really dumb and overblown #Anonymous

[henrikvanderswoon]

MURDER AT TURQUOISE INN: A Nancy Drew Story Written by 10-year-old Yours Truly Readthrough

Alright, guys, you asked for it! It’s pouring down rain outside, I’ve grabbed some tea, I have my entire Nancy Drew game music track playlist going, and I’m ready to crack this s nutcase wide open.

Absolute ridiculousness below: 

The fact that this story is titled “Murder at Turquoise Inn” is already sending me, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I spelled it terquoice on the cover page.

I also started this story out with a letter to Ned. God bless. 

Dear Ned, Beth Robertson was murdered! 

As if Ned (or anyone else) even knows who the fuck Beth Robertson is, Nancy. 

I named the owner of the inn Tina Mulberry, and I think that was very sexy of me. 

“I turned to do something, and when I came back, she was dead on the floor! I could tell because her heart wasn’t beating and she wasn’t breathing!”

I mean… that’ll do it, Tina. That’ll do it. 

Oh, but she can’t prove anything now because she ran to get help and when she returned the body was fucking MISSING.

Bess throws a conniption fit every time someone says “Beth.”

“Oh, hello, Nancy,” she greeted.

“Hello,” Nancy greeted back. 

That is some…some god-tier writing right there. 

I really had no concept of space and time in fifth grade.

It was a huge room. Bigger than the cafeteria in Ned’s college.

Oh, was it? 

A message from the author: Hey kiddos, if you’re snooping around in someone’s closet and you come across a completely conspicuous button just chilling on the wall, don’t press it.

The three girls came out of the closet.

Well, there you have it, folks. Nancy, Bess, and George are gay. Everyone’s gay. Even your cat is gay.

Tina has a niece named Lily who calls her Mrs. Mulberry. Also, Tina consistently neglects her work duties in favor of writing a screenplay at the front desk computer and I have no idea why. 

The murderer is walking around leaving stupid messages with the drawing of a knife on them trying to curse everyone and I’m so confused. Where the hell was I going with this? 

“I KNOW YOU SAW BETH DEAD, BUT IF YOU TELL ANYONE, A DEADLY CURSE WILL FALL UPON YOU.”

WHAT DOES THIS EVEN FUCKING MEAN?

The lines in this thing are really just peak writing:

George took off after him at a safe distance to avoid being seen. But BAD LUCK FOR HER, the man jumped into a car and drove off.

 Someone sabotaged the girls’ rental car while they were away from the hotel, and this couple they literally just met are like: “I just remembered, we have an extra car that we don’t use. You could use that.” Who the fuck–?

Uh, oh. They got back to the hotel and found their own curse lying in Bess’ suitcase:

LAY OFF THE CASE, NANCY DREW. YOU MADE MRS. MULBERRY TELL YOU THE MURDER STORY. NOW THE CURSE IS UPON YOU TOO.” 

This sounds like a ten-year-old wrote it… wAiT A MiNutE–

Literally nothing in this story explains what the curse would even do to them. I love myself.

The culprit: *leaves threatening messages warning people not to speak about the murder or they’ll be cursed*

Nancy:

“Oh, hello,” Jackson greeted.

“Hi,” Nancy said. “Say! Have you heard about the murder?”

I ALMOST SPAT OUT MY TEA.

Also:

“I’m going to the store to, um, get some stuff. Like food.”

“But there’s foot here.”

“I just want to BUY things, okay? You’re so NOSEY!”

Jackson stormed off, leaving Nancy astonished. That put him on her suspect list FOR SURE.

This is a literary gem.

The way the dialogue sounds in this thing…I mean you can just tell the only written media I had been consuming at that time was the 1930′s books. 

“I think,” Nancy replied. “That tomorrow we should go to the place where I followed Jackson.”

Giving me Scooby-Doo vibes too. 

The number of times Bess says something like, “Why, Nancy!” or “This is horrid!” really makes me want to turn this into a drinking game. Take a shot every time Bess speaks like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. 

“Oh, fiddlesticks,” Bess exclaimed. 

…

No comment. 

Also, Nancy’s unadulterated sass my fifth-grade self gave her is both the worst and the best thing I’ve ever seen: 

“But what if the house isn’t empty?” Bess asked. 

“Bess, please. Ever heard of the word: S-N-E-A-K?”

I want to harpoon myself. 

There’s an elaborate maze of tunnels running underground that connects the hotel to this sketchy house miles away. The characters consistently find themselves back there several times throughout the story and literally nothing about it makes any sense at all, nor is it ever explained.  

“Man, that passageway confuses me,” said George.

Thank you, George, it confuses all of us. 

I’m actually embarrassed about how many times I refer to the group of characters as a “threesome” or a “foursome” in this thing. It’s really just the worst.

The culprit purposefully leaves behind their real initials multiple times in this story and has the audacity to be surprised when they get caught at the end? Iconique™. 

“I’m just a weird ol’ guy, Sweety-Cakes.” 

Ned, are you okay? Was I okay when I wrote this? 

Ned’s coming to visit, and he brings Burt and Dave with him and boy howdy did I forget about those two. 

“This mystery sounds dangerous,” Burt remarked. “Shouldn’t you leave this case to the men?” 

“I’d like to see you try,” Nancy fired back.

Yaaaassss, Queen. Get his ass. 

Also the murderer has now resorted to hitting people with a driverless vehicle and I’m honestly convinced ten-year-old me was on drugs. 

“Good! We were starting to get worried about you.” 

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I…wait…wait, actually, worry about me!” 

The line goes dead here because Lily’s car was uhhhh T-boned. 

My only regret in this story is that the Hardy Boy’s are not here. Although, in hindsight, they’re probably lucky they didn’t get subjected to this shitshow. 

Meanwhile, George thought maybe Bess had made a mistake and walk’s into the men’s bathroom. She walked in but found no one–well, except a bunch of screaming men. 

I don’t even know what to say. 

They went to see Lily in the hospital and Bess got hit by a driverless car in the fucking parking lot. WHAT KIND OF MADWOMAN WOULD WRITE THIS I CAN’T BREATHE.

That night, back at the hotel, Nancy gets lured out of the hotel and into the back forest behind it because someone’ s playing weird music and I’m just now realizing my child self had no idea what kind of theme to run with here (murder, hauntings, curses, GTA) so I just went with all of them at once.

“I could just destroy it,” Ned said as he studied the lock. “Stand back.” Backing up a few yards, he bolted for the cabin door and broke it down with a strong kick. “For Nancy!” he shouted. 

HeR Interactive’s Ned could never.

 So they find Nancy tied up in a cabin in the woods and, lo and behold there’s a trap door that LeADs InTo tHE UnDeRGroUnD TuNnEls. Who’da thunk?

And of course they find a journal written in code, and the code key just happens to have been left in the cabin. 

“I’ve written this journal in code so if anyone finds it, they will not discover my secret. Okay, now that I’ve said that, here is my secret.” 

This is the first line Nancy decodes. I’m…

Naturally, we find out that Beth Robertson was not dead, but just kidnapped (don’t even ask me how the fuck they got her body to appear dead…drugs?) and being held in the underground tunnels. 

Because this makes perfect sense. 

“You seem different. Your voice doesn’t sound the same and you’re a little shorter than you usually…” Tiffany trailed off. “You are Jackson, aren’t you?”

“No,” Ned said. “Thanks for asking.” 

This is 100 times funnier without context so I’m not giving you any. 

I don’t know about you guys, but if I was arranging a meeting with a colleague and they showed up in a ski mask and a hooded cloak, I’d be a little suspicious.

“But you’ re supposed to be delivering Nancy Drew poisonous flowers from her ‘boyfriend.’”

Oh my god this bitch pulls a gun on Ned and together the rest of the group (you know, the ones who haven’t been hit by a car) fucking go APESHIT on this woman’s ass. I CAN’T BREATHE. 

And of course they find Beth tied up somewhere in the tunnels and get her to safety, and they learn that Bess and Lily are recovering well in the hospital and go to visit them and everything’s all bright and happy. 

THE LAST LINE OF THE STORY HAS ME SCREAMING, THOUGH. To the point where I’m just gonna sign off here and leave you all with it. 

“Man.” Lily looked sad. “I wish I hadn’t missed almost the whole thing.” 

Bess spoke up. “I, on the other hand, am glad.” 

#I just spend over two hours doing this and i have never felt more accomplished (how tf am i supposed to tag this??) #nancy drew #nd humor #the clue crew #i'm not even putting this in a 'my writing' tag fbsfnadnsdk #have fun guys #txt post #long post #like theres so much more i could have written but this is ridiculous enough haha