#not saying it's perfect I recognise there's flaws in it

[byoldervine]

Writing Tips - Beating Perfectionism

1. Recognising writing perfectionism. It’s not usually as literal as “This isn’t 100% perfect and so it is the worst thing ever”, in my experience it usually sneaks up more subtly. Things like where you should probably be continuing on but if you don’t figure out how to word this paragraph better it’s just going to bug you the whole time, or where you’re growing demotivated because you don’t know how to describe the scene 100% exactly as you can imagine it in your head, or things along those lines where your desire to be exact can get in the way of progression. In isolated scenarios this is natural, but if it’s regularly and notably impacting your progress then there’s a more pressing issue

2. Write now, edit later. Easier said than done, which always infuriated me until I worked out how it translates into practice; you need to recognise what the purpose of this stage of the writing process is and when editing will hinder you more than help you. Anything up to and including your first draft is purely done for structural and creative purposes, and trying to impose perfection on a creative process will naturally stifle said creativity. Creativity demands the freedom of imperfection

3. Perfection is stagnant. We all know that we have to give our characters flaws and challenges to overcome since, otherwise, there’s no room for growth or conflict or plot, and it ends up being boring and predictable at best - and it’s just the same as your writing. Say you wrote the absolute perfect book; the perfect plot, the perfect characters, the perfect arcs, the perfect ending, etc etc. It’s an overnight bestseller and you’re discussed as a literary great for all time. Everyone, even those outside of your target demographic, call it the perfect book. Not only would that first require you to turn the perfect book into something objective, which is impossible, but it would also mean that you would either never write again, because you can never do better than your perfect book, or you’ll always write the exact same thing in the exact same way to ensure constant perfection. It’s repetitive, it’s boring, and all in all it’s just fearful behaviour meant to protect you from criticism that you aren’t used to, rather than allowing yourself to get acclimated to less than purely positive feedback

4. Faulty comparisons. Comparing your writing to that of a published author’s is great from an analytical perspective, but it can easily just become a case of “Their work is so much better, mine sucks, I’ll never be as good as them or as good as any ‘real’ writer”. You need to remember that you’re comparing a completely finished draft, which likely underwent at least three major edits and could have even had upwards of ten, to wherever it is you’re at. A surprising number of people compare their *first* draft to a finished product, which is insanity when you think of it that way; it seems so obvious from this perspective why your first attempt isn’t as good as their tenth. You also end up comparing your ability to describe the images in your head to their ability to craft a new image in your head; I guarantee you that the image the author came up with isn’t the one their readers have, and they’re kicking themselves for not being able to get it exactly as they themselves imagine it. Only the author knows what image they’re working off of; the readers don’t, and they can imagine their own variation which is just as amazing

5. Up close and too personal. Expanding on the last point, just in general it’s harder to describe something in coherent words than it is to process it when someone else prompts you to do so. You end up frustrated and going over it a gazillion times, even to the point where words don’t even look like words anymore. You’ve got this perfect vision of how the whole story is supposed to go, and when you very understandably can’t flawlessly translate every single minute detail to your satisfaction, it’s demotivating. You’re emotionally attached to this perfect version that can’t ever be fully articulated through any other medium. But on the other hand, when consuming other media that you didn’t have a hand in creating, you’re viewing it with perfectly fresh eyes; you have no ‘perfect ideal’ of how everything is supposed to look and feel and be, so the images the final product conjures up become that idealised version - its no wonder why it always feels like every writer except you can pull off their visions when your writing is the only one you have such rigorous preconceived notions of

6. That’s entertainment. Of course writing can be stressful and draining and frustrating and all other sorts of nasty things, but if overall you can’t say that you ultimately enjoy it, you’re not writing for the right reasons. You’ll never take true pride in your work if it only brings you misery. Take a step back, figure out what you can do to make things more fun for you - or at least less like a chore - and work from there

7. Write for yourself. One of the things that most gets to me when writing is “If this was found and read by someone I know, how would that feel?”, which has lead me on multiple occasions to backtrack and try to be less cringe or less weird or less preachy or whatever else. It’s harder to share your work with people you know whose opinions you care about and whose impressions of you have the potential of shifting based on this - sharing it to strangers whose opinions ultimately don’t matter and who you’ll never have to interact with again is somehow a lot less scary because their judgements won’t stick. But allowing the imaginary opinions of others to dictate not even your finished project, but your unmoderated creative process in general? Nobody is going to see this without your say so; this is not the time to be fussing over how others may perceive your writing. The only opinion that matters at this stage is your own

8. Redirection. Instead of focusing on quality, focusing on quantity has helped me to improve my perfectionism issues; it doesn’t matter if I write twenty paragraphs of complete BS so long as I’ve written twenty paragraphs or something that may or may not be useful later. I can still let myself feel accomplished regardless of quality, and if I later have to throw out whole chapters, so be it

9. That’s a problem for future me. A lot of people have no idea how to edit, or what to look for when they do so, so having a clear idea of what you want to edit by the time the editing session comes around is gonna be a game-changer once you’re supposed to be editing. Save the clear work for when you’re allocating time for it and you’ll have a much easier and more focused start to the editing process. It’ll be more motivating than staring blankly at the intimidating word count, at least

10. The application of applications. If all else fails and you’re still going back to edit what you’ve just wrote in some struggle for the perfect writing, there are apps and websites that you can use that physically prevent you from editing your work until you’re done with it. If nothing else, maybe it can help train you away from major edits as you go

#perfectionism #perfection #writing #writers #writeblr #bookblr #book #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writers of tumblr #writer #my writing #how to write #on writing #creative writing #write #writing tips #writblr #female writers #queer writers #writer things #writer stuff #writing is hard #writing advice #writing life #writer problems #writerscreed #writersnetwork #writerblr #writersociety

[yellowloid]

It's so embarrassing when Twitter fans call them "mom and dad" or "parents" or worse those who write "adopt me please" they are cringe as hell. I may be old and I believe that it's trendy for teenagers to use this term but it's really nonsense and it just makes me nervous

i think they can say whatever they want tbh, call them 'parents' and whatnot - as long as they're reasonable when it comes to discussing louise/her relationship with alex. what i mean is, i don't care that they call them 'mom and dad' per se, what's annoying is them defending her at all costs. idealising their relationship when we really haven't seen that much of it, constantly bringing her up and just putting her on a pedestal (like amanda did) for... what, exactly? just so they can tell themselves they're oh-so-mature because they accept her? when in reality we all know all they want is to be in her place lmao

#they literally wouldn't hesitate to throw her under the bus if given the opportunity to replace her #you can say you like her while still recognising she's a person who has flaws like everyone else and not a perfect angel #and i say this as someone who feels neutral about her #just. don't idealise people you don't know just to feel better about yourself bc of how mature and 'not like other fans' you think you are #louise verneuil #answered

[humandisastersquad]

oh boy here come all the RTD stans telling everyone to back off and stop criticising this decision bc god forbid we point out how bringing back an overhyped previous incarnation is a clear cash grab and has now directed all the attention onto their white man fave, completely overshadowing the first female doctor and upstaging the first MOC to play the doctor, the latter of which many have been worried about irt how he will be written given RTD’s (and dr who writers in general) terrible treatment of POC on this show

#please take off your rose coloured (pun intended) glasses and realise that RTD has flaws like any other dr who show runner #and that the RTD era was not ‘perfect’ or ‘objectively the best’ #and that people have legitimate criticisms of him and this decision #I say this as someone who grew up with and loves rewatching said era #every era of dr who has its flaws #a good deal of the show is straight up garbage #and while I love it to bits it’s important to recognise that #dw spoilers #dw critical

[yjhariani]

Warnings: Profanity, angst.

“Again, does anybody have a lighter?” Price asked a little louder this time.

Soap gently elbowed Ghost on the side. Ghost only turned to look at him, tilting his head a little to show his annoyance.

They were almost in the middle of nowhere. At least they had electricity and water. What they did not have was a lighter, thus Price’s moaning. He was going to light up a cigar.

Ghost knew why Soap was elbowing him. Soap was referring to that lighter in Ghost’s pocket. The one he held personally for himself and himself only.

So, Ghost ignored the sergeant. Price had arrived in front of them by then.

“Simon, you smoke,” Price brought up.

“I don’t have a lighter,” Ghost said.

“You pray with it every night,” Soap muttered.

Price and Ghost looked at him. Ghost was practically glaring at Soap. Soap looked like he wished he had not said a word.

“Am I missing something?” Price asked.

Ghost said nothing and now Price was also looking at Soap rather intimidatingly.

“I… Ghost has a lighter,” Soap said.

“I don’t,” Ghost insisted.

Price now turned his expecting glare at Ghost. That got Soap a little confident to proceed.

“As I said, he basically prayed with it every night before he sleeps,” Soap continued.

“Just this once, Simon, I will lose my shit if I can’t get this cigar lit up,” Price said.

Ghost did not react at first, but seeing that the two of them were not going to let this go, he shot a final murderous glare at Soap before putting his hand into his pocket. He held the lighter in his palm and pulled it out of his pocket. 

Looking at the captain, Ghost almost did not want to hand out the lighter. However, he ended up opening his palm and revealed the lighter that sat on his palm.

It was as if the whole area turned frozen. Gaz had just walked in and saw the reveal. Even he stopped at his track.

The lighter was yours. It used to be yours. It did belong to you. It did not belong to you anymore. It belonged to Ghost now. You gave it to him before your last mission. The mission that got you killed.

Every thing was fine before that—no, every thing was perfect.

Ghost and you were basically a nightmare couple. A nightmare as in badass motherfuckers who got shit done effectively. Sure, there were flaws such as the constant passive-agressive flirting, recklessness, and tense eye contacts, but, damn… the two of you were great at your job together.

That last mission was indeed going to be your last mission because you decided to not renew your military contract and you both were about to get married. Without telling anyone. However, the others just knew. They always knew that the two of you would end up together one way or another.

Then, shit happened. The worst happened. The irony.

You ended up buried under the ground and became a memory. Ghost ended up here, with these three, more bitter than he ever was.

You always had his heart and it was buried with you. Whatever sentimental left in him, it was out of respect of the memory of you. Of the memory you both were about to make and never did.

Price, Gaz, and Soap never brought you up. Not since the funeral. Price tried and Ghost ended up walking out of the room without saying anything, slamming the door on his way out.

This would be the first time anything about you ever came up ever since that incident. Soap had no idea it was the lighter. Ever. So, his heart did not only stop when he saw it, it would blow up if it could. Gaz used to borrow the lighter to do tricks, so he would recognise it from afar. Price had his cigars lit up by the lighter a few times before.

The four of them were frozen there for quite some time.

“So, we don’t have a lighter,” Price concluded before anyone of them started bursting into either anger or tears.

“Yeah, we don’t,” Soap nodded. “Steamin’ Jesus.”

“You know, there’s a stove in the kitchen. You can light your cigar up with it,” Gaz brought up. “I’m about to cook something, too.”

“Right, right,” Price nodded before walking away.

“I’ll help make sure no one’s burning anything down and get us compromised,” Soap stated before leaving the area.

Ghost stayed where he stood a while after they left. He stared at the lighter for some time, thinking about what you might say if you were still here. None of them would be this messy. The four of them would likely be laughing right now of some stupid joke you made.

Maybe you were still here. He might be the Ghost, but you were the ghost now. Maybe you were laughing at them right now.

“Would’ve been nice if you’re here,” Ghost said under his breath before pocketing the lighter back.

#simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley #simon ghost riley #ghost #ghost x reader #price x reader #captain price x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle garrick x reader #gaz x reader #soap x reader #john mactavish x reader

[saintsenara]

Thoughts on Ron and Hermione as a ship?

thank you very much for the ask, @thesilverstarling!

i’ll state my position straight away: book ron and hermione are the best of the canon couples.

they will have a long and extremely happy marriage made rich by great and stalwart love, lust, fun, and faithfulness, rather than held together by duty and couples’ therapy like so many readers and authors (including jkr, who seems to have decided to spend the years since the conclusion of the series failing to understand anything about her own characters) tend to think.

i will state another position straight away: lest i seem like i’m just a fan with blinkers on, i think this even though hermione is, by far, my least favourite member of the trio. if she were real i would detest her, and i dislike how she is treated by the narrative as always justified in her negative characteristics. i like fanon hermione - perfect and preternaturally good - even less.

as a result, i think that it’s ridiculous that jkr has said that she thought ron needed to ‘become worthy’ of hermione. they belong together as equals - which is what they’re set up in the narrative as being from the off - and i hate seeing that undermined.

because ronald weasley? he’s an icon. and he doesn’t get anywhere near the respect he deserves in fandom.

there are multiple reasons for this - ron’s narrative purpose is to be the everyman sidekick, and so he is able to be less special than harry or hermione (the helper-figure); the amount of aristocracy wank in this fandom means that the weasleys’ ordinariness is less appealing to writers than making harry have twenty different lordships and call himself hadrian; the narrative interrogates ron’s flaws - especially his capacity for jealousy - much more intensively than it interrogates either hermione’s (cruel, inflexible, meddling) or harry’s (reckless, self-absorbed, judgemental) - but one i feel is particularly significant is that ron is such a british character that many of his traits are not understood as intended by non-british readers.

in particular - as is outlined in this excellent meta by @whinlatter - ron’s sense of humour isn’t indicative of immaturity or a lack of seriousness, but is, in fact, evidence that he’s the most emotionally aware of the trio.

ron is shown throughout the series to understand how both harry and hermione need to have their emotions approached - and i think there is no piece of writing which says this better than crocodile heart by @floreatcastellumposts:

That was what she liked most about Ron, she thought vaguely. He was very good at being suitably outraged on your behalf. For Harry, for her, for Neville. That sort of thing mattered, when you were hurt or embarrassed or wronged in some way. You needed to have someone else on your side, to be as emotional as you felt, maybe even more so, so that you might feel a bit more normal. It was very decent of him, and she was not sure he realised he did it.

ron’s inherent emotional awareness is an enormous source of comfort to other people. he does the work which isn’t flashy or special - he makes tea and tells jokes and is just there - but which is needed in healthy human relationships far more frequently than a willingness to fight to the death for the other person.

[as an aside, this normality - even though i think it is assumed rather than justified by the text - is also what ginny provides for harry. if you believe that hinny are a good couple but romione aren’t… i can’t help you.]

but let’s look at some specific reasons why ron and hermione belong together:

their communication styles mesh perfectly. ron is the only person hermione knows who feeds her love of being challenged and debated, and who is able to engage in this way of communicating without becoming irate when she refuses to back down. ron is good at picking his battles, but he’s also good at recognising that hermione’s tendency to argue isn’t intended to be confrontational a lot of the time - it’s just the way she works through feelings and problems. he’s far more easy-going about her tendency to nag, interrupt, try to provoke arguments, or speak condescendingly than he’s given credit for - and hermione evidently respects this, since when he does tell her not to push a situation (above all, when she’s trying to needle harry into talking about sirius), she listens to him.

that ron and hermione’s tendency to bicker is taken by fans to be a bad thing is because it’s something harry - from whose perspective the narrative is written - doesn’t understand. harry is extremely conflict-avoidant - he tends to take being pushed on views and opinions he has to be insulting; and he has a tendency to assume that he is right which is just as profound as hermione’s. he and ginny communicate not by debating, but by ginny having no time for his rigidity and refusing to indulge it - but ron and hermione bickering about everything is not a negative thing within their specific emotional dynamic.

[as another aside, this glaring chasm in communication styles is why harry and hermione would be a disaster as a couple.]

they each provide validation the other needs. it’s clear - reading between the lines - that hermione is a tremendously lonely person. the friendlessness of her initial few weeks at hogwarts seems to be a continuation of her experience as a child, and - outside of ron and harry - that friendlessness endures through her schooldays. i’m always struck, for example, by the fact that, when she falls out with ron in prisoner of azkaban, she has no-one else to spend time with, and that this is only avoided in half-blood prince because harry decides not to freeze her out. i don’t think her friendship with ginny is anywhere near as close as fanon seems to imply (ginny has no interest in being nagged either), nor do i think that she’s anywhere near as close to neville (not least because she is so condescending to him) as she’s often written to be.

and this loneliness seems to stretch beyond hogwarts. the absence of hermione’s parents’ from the narrative is - in a doylist sense - clearly just a device to maximise time with the trio all together, but the watsonian reading is that she doesn’t have a particularly good relationship with them. hermione’s obviously upper-middle-class background - the name! the skiing! the holidays in the south of france! - can be presumed, i think, to come with a series of expectations from her parents which she feels constantly that she’s not entirely meeting, particularly expectations attached to academic success.

[for example, the grangers - were she a muggle child - would undoubtedly have ambitions for her to attend an elite university and then go into a prestigious career. tertiary education of the type that they’re familiar with doesn’t seem to exist in the wizarding world - most careers seem to be taught by apprenticeship - and this, alongside all the other divides between the magical and muggle worlds which contribute to the distance between them, would be one very obvious area in which she felt the need to prove herself to them.]

ron, too, has quite a difficult relationship with his position in the family - voldemort’s locket is not wrong to point out that he seems to receive considerably less of his mother’s emotional attention than ginny or the rest of his brothers - and he too is constrained by expectations which he doesn’t know how to explain he has no interest in - above all, molly’s desire for her sons to achieve top grades and go into the ministry.

he also suffers while at hogwarts from being ‘harry potter’s best friend’, something which harry never appreciates. but hermione does. she recognises ron’s jealousy and never allows harry to minimise it (and she and ron are very much aligned on having no respect for harry’s saviour and martyr complexes). she appreciates ron’s strengths - above all his kindness and his sense of humour - and makes him feel as though he’s achieved things with them. and ron does the same for her; he is hugely observant when it comes to her, and he challenges and defends her.

the two of them clearly spend a lot of time together one-on-one while harry’s involved in his various shenanigans (including outside of school - hermione has often arrived at the burrow days or even weeks before harry, and they seem to write to each other frequently when apart). they do this within a relationship which is fundamentally equal. one issue with hinny is that, post-war, harry is going to have to get used to seeing ginny as a peer, rather than as someone he has to protect. but ron and hermione never have that issue - equality is baked into their relationship from the off.

because, to be quite frank, fandom overstates the role that jealousy plays in their relationship. it’s true that ron certainly doesn’t acquit himself brilliantly when it comes to hermione’s relationship with viktor krum (it’s because he’s bi and doesn’t know it yet), and a tendency to externalise his insecurity into trying to make others also feel insecure is one of his primary negative traits (hermione does this too, via her patented lofty voice when she’s trying to condescend to people). but this is often taken as the initial red flag for how the relationship would crash and burn, and ron’s toxic jealousy is often used in fan-fiction as the trigger for emotional and physical violence towards hermione which, frequently, seems to drive her into the arms of either draco malfoy or severus snape… who are, of course, the first people we think of when we hear the words ‘not prone to jealousy’...

but i think it’s important to point out several things in defence of ron’s jealousy over krum. firstly, hermione evidently regards his jealousy as ridiculous - she’s upset by it, yes, but her upset must be understood as being caused by the fact that she wanted him to ask her out. she doesn’t think he’s being possessive, she thinks he’s being stupid. secondly, hermione is equally as jealous over ron’s crush on fleur delacour and relationship with lavender brown. she behaves just as cruelly when it comes to lavender as ron does when it comes to krum - and the narrative only treats her actions as more sympathetic or justified both because harry dislikes lavender too, and because, by that point in the series, jkr has dispensed with any inclination to ever criticise her.

but, outside of this teenage pettiness, ron is never jealous of hermione over things which matter. he is never jealous of her intelligence or competence or ambition or success (indeed, he defends her constantly from attacks designed to undermine her in these areas). for someone who struggles with being overshadowed by harry, he is never upset at being overshadowed by her. he is clearly going to be happy to support her in any of the career ambitions she can be written as having post-war.

and, on this point, i think it’s worth interrogating why so many readers still seem to feel uncomfortable with the idea of ron and hermione having a dynamic where she is the more ‘powerful’ one. [it’s always a bit trite to say ‘but what if the genders were reversed?’, but actually that’s not irrelevant here]. if hermione ends up taking the ministry by storm and ron becomes a stay-at-home father or has a job which is just to pay the bills, what, precisely, is wrong with that? why, precisely, should hermione regard ron making that choice for himself as a negative thing? hermione so often seems to leave ron in fan-fiction because of a lack of ambition - something which seems to be particularly common in dramione - but, in canon, she is shown to not particularly care if ron and harry do the bare minimum when it comes to studying etc. she nags them to do their work so they don’t get in trouble. she doesn’t nag them to do it to the same standard that she would.

and, actually, i think that ron being less ambitious than hermione is something which is key to how well they work. because ron provides not only emotional support, but emotional clarity.

hermione is shown throughout canon to - just as harry does - have a tendency to become obsessive to the detriment of her own health. she is also often - as harry is - emotionally or intellectually inflexible, and finds it hard to move on when what she feels or believes is proven to be wrong. both she and harry are micro-thinkers, who lean towards knee-jerk assumptions and stubborn convictions (and, indeed, hermione has a remarkably hagrid-ish tendency towards blind loyalty).

ron is none of these things. ron is a big-picture thinker (it’s why he’s so good at chess). he’s a pragmatist. he’s the least righteous of the three. he understands that faith and loyalty are choices, and that sometimes these choices will lead to outcomes which are bad or hard. he is the one of the three most willing to own up to having made mistakes. he is the one least likely to act on gut instinct (and, therefore, the hardest to fool - i think it’s worth emphasising that he clocks that tom riddle is tricking harry immediately, the only one of the trio to do so). he understands that things are a marathon, not a sprint. he is the least obsessive.

and these traits contribute to aspects of his character which are underappreciated. ron worries about hermione making herself ill during exams, or when she is using the time-turner, and makes an effort to get her to set healthy boundaries and redirect her anxiety. ron stands on a broken leg in front of sirius or goes into the forest to fight aragog not out of righteousness, but out of choice. ron takes over the burden of preparing buckbeak’s defence when it is clear that hermione is approaching burnout. ron is completely right that harry hasn’t done any long-term planning for the horcrux hunt, and his anger does force harry to tighten up after he leaves the trio. ron has a clear head in the middle of battle. ron makes harry and hermione laugh. ron is unafraid of human emotion. ron arrests harry’s tendency to brood over the little things by looking at the bigger picture. ron will always come back.

ron is bringing his politician wife regular cups of tea and making sure she doesn’t work all night. he is helping his lawyer wife to feel less upset over losing one case by reminding her that she’s won ten others. he is noticing stress creeping in and whirling her off for a dirty weekend, or even just a takeaway on the sofa. he is teaching his daughter to be proud of her ambition and his son to treat women as equals and both of his children that all you can do when you fuck up is apologise and try to do better. he is making hermione smile on the worst days of her life. he is helping her strategise her long-term goals when she gets stuck on the short-term ones. he is telling her straight when she needs to get it together. he is seeing a misogynistic head of department call hermione a ‘silly little girl’ and choosing to tell him exactly what he thinks of that.

ron is the ultimate wife guy. hermione is a very, very lucky lady.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #romione #ron weasley #hermione granger #ron is a wife guy #also may i be clear #ron is evidently unbelievably hot #the text says he looks like bill #who is so fit that harry can barely see when in his company #hermione you lucky thing

[xstarsdiary]

Thinking about how much Neteyam loves your body 😫

warnings - minors dni!! aged up!neteyam, smut under the cut, praise, cussing, begging, mentions of creampie/cumshot.

vocabulary - lor: beautiful, tìyawn: love, srane: yes. 𝑎𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑎𝑟 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡.

tagging - @neteyamsoare @neteyamtesuli （ 𝗍𝖺𝗀𝗅𝗂𝗌𝗍 𝖿𝗈𝗋𝗆 𝗂𝗌 𝗈𝗇 𝗉𝗂𝗇𝗇𝖾𝖽 𝗉𝗈𝗌𝗍! ）

There’s no denying that Neteyam loves passionate and slow sex. I mean, of course every now and then he enjoys a rough quickie but then he just feels like he’s really missing out on admiring your gorgeous body.

He’d just much prefer to watch as your cunt slowly takes all of him in, juices coating and glistening on his cock as he leisurely slides in and out of you.

And the feeling of his cold hands trailing and groping all over your warm body sends you spiralling. He definitely makes sure to touch and caress every single inch of your skin.

Sometimes the pace is agonising for him, his cock twitching and throbbing as it begs to pound into you. But watching your lips part in pretty moans and pleads is definitely worth it.

“Please- please Teyam! I need more!” The corner of his lip pulls upwards into a smirk, his hands squeezing your plush hips just right. “I know. I know lor- fuck.” His teeth grit together as your soaked pussy squeezes him, his eyes still never once leaving your face. “S’ fuckin’ pretty. Aren’t you, tìyawn ?” And when nothing but a lewd whine leaves your lips he squeezes your hips harder, fingernails now digging into your skin but still not hard enough to cause you any real pain, “I asked you a question.” Only then with a loud moan do you reply, “Mmmhm! Srane.. I’m your pretty girl Nete!”

You’d recognised early on in your guys’ relationship that he’s a talker, he never says anything inherently dirty, no. Neteyam is the type of guy to speak with sweet whispers, always groaning out gentle praises, coaxing pleasure from you until you’re a puddle of mess beneath him.

Overall he just loves admiring your beauty, taking all of you in and ravishing you wish his lust filled eyes. He especially loves how you look after coming, all fucked out, skin sticky with sweat and eyes closed in tired bliss. You’re just so fucking perfect.

Of course he thinks is you look even better when you’re sticky and coated with his own come. Whether it’s on your face, tongue, lips, stomach, back, ass, your pretty puffy pussy or even inside of you.. he absolutely loves it. Knowing that other males will be able to smell him on you fills him with a sense of pride and possession.

He definitely knows your body better than yourself. He knows every stripe and scar, every perfection and ‘flaw’, he knows which places to touch to make you feel good and which places you’re most self conscious about. (Of course he’s making sure to show extra love and affection to those spots.)

Neteyam just loves his perfect pretty girl more than anything. And he’d do anything and everything to make sure she feels loved.

| 𝗋𝖾𝖻𝗅𝗈𝗀𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝖺𝗉𝗉𝗋𝖾𝖼𝗂𝖺𝗍𝖾𝖽 ! |

#🦢 ． 𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓇 𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉ℯ𝓈 － 📝 #avatar smut #avatar twow #neteyam x reader smut #neteyam te suli tsyeyk'itan #neteyam smut #neteyam imagine #neteyam x reader #avatar neteyam #neteyam sully #neteyam avatar #neteyam #avatar the way of water #atwow neteyam

[gay-dorito-dust]

Hi, I wanna know if you take requests? If you do, I would like I comfort Blade please, where he comforts reader who constantly regrets and blames themselves for everything, even the pettiest things

Blade knew something was wrong, he wasn’t stupid, especially not when it came to you and your tendencies to blame yourself for things that you had little to no control over.

You even blamed yourself for the smallest things and he hates it because someone, somewhere must’ve messed with you so badly to the point where you couldn’t go a single day without blaming yourself for something minute.

If Blade were to ever come across that person, he’d make them pay for what they did to you tenfold. But until then he would go out of his way to comfort you and reassure you that you’re not as much of a fuck up as you’ve lead yourself to believe.

Which leads us to the moment where Blade found you in your room, sat upon your bed, silently sobbing into your hands and just generally looking distraught.

He sighs and walks into your room, his heavy footsteps causing you to freeze and become hyperaware of the fact that your moment of vulnerability has been had witnessed by another person, and just as he then makes himself comfortable on the bed next to you he asks. ‘What’s wrong? Why the waterworks?’ The way the words left his mouth some would consider uncharacteristic of him, but then again what did they know about him that wasn’t something that was rehashed on the news.

You shrug, sniffling as you wiped the tears from your eyes aggressively with the sleeve of your shirt. ‘Just reminding myself of how much of a fuck up I am compared to everyone else.’ You admitted with a weak laugh as though what you just said was something to laugh at, but Blade wasn’t laughing, just looking at you with his deadpan face.

You chuckled humourlessly as you fisted your jeans to disguise your internal torment. ‘I don’t expect you to understand because unlike me, you don’t make mistakes.’ You added apathetically and Blade knew this train of thought shouldn’t be allowed to continue, for it was ruining you right before his eyes and he hated it. ‘And what makes you think that you’re a so called fuck up?’ Blade said. ‘Because to me you’re anything other then a fuck up, yes we all make mistakes, but that shouldn’t warrant you torturing yourself over it day in day out when everyone else has all but forgotten.’ He concludes.

‘I can’t do anything right. Not a single thing.’ You began. ‘I can’t socialise with other people like I’m suppose to-‘

‘I’ve seen you socialise and I think you do it just fine.’ Blade interrupts. ‘You held an hour long conversation with both a Halovian and a Foxian without stopping. So that’s obviously false.’

‘I can’t talk without them commenting on the fact that I speak as though I’m in the middle of a sentence.’ You rebutted.

Blade shrugs. ‘Everyone’s a judgemental hypocrite, it’s best to remember that all sentient beings are born with equal parts flaws as they are perfections.’ He then tips your chin up to look at him in the eyes. ‘There’s no such thing as an entirely perfect person because if there was, they’d be the most flawed out of all of us, for they lack the ability to recognise their own imperfections in the same way they recognise everyone else’s.’

‘I can’t tie my shoes perfectly without them coming undone five minutes later.’ You then said.

‘There’s a majority of people who just can’t tie their shoes no matter what, whether it be from trauma or otherwise but you don’t see them shaming themselves for it.’ Blade responded, trying to make you see that for every mistake you made wasn’t something you should take as personally as you have, however it feels as though the more he tries to make you see reason it only heightens your need to prove to him that you were indeed a fuck up.

So just be for you were about to say something else that you were an apparent fuck up about, Blade pulled you against him and held you there as he soothingly rubs his hand up and down your back, rendering you speechless. ‘I don’t know why you’re so hellbent on trying to prove that you’re a fuck up.’ Blade began as he felt you begin to relax under his touch. ‘You’re not and I will keep telling you this for as long as you need me to because you don’t deserve to beat yourself up over everything like you’re meant to be perfect at it. I don’t know who told you that you had to be perfect at everything first try, but it’s a load of fucking bullshit and I need you to realise that.’

‘But-‘ you tried to pull yourself away from his grasp, thinking that you weren’t deserving of being comforted, especially when that comfort came from Balde of all people. For you honestly didn’t believe that he would put up with you and your mistakes at all, it wasn’t fair on him; However Blade thinks it was unfair on you to think that even putting on a mismatched pair of socks was entirely your fault and should constantly be reminded of it for the rest of the week.

‘No.’ Blade stopped you before you could start. ‘You’re not meant to get everything right. Practice makes perfect is a saying for a reason because it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, you always get better with each attempt.’ He pulled back enough to look you in the eyes for what he says next. ‘You make mistakes, you fail, you fall but do you know what I want you to do when you feel the desire to blame yourself and avoid trying again?’

‘What?’ You asked meekly as you gripped onto him tightly.

‘Get back up.’ He said, pressing his forehead against yours. ‘Get back up and try again, try as many times as you need until you’ve mastered it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, nobody’s asking that of you, it just has to be what you’re happiest with. Don’t reduce your self worth to what others think of you and don’t let the voices in here,’ Blade then gently taps a finger to your temple, ‘dictate your self worth either. Okay?’

‘I’ll try.’ You whispered, smiling softly at him as you allowed for Blade’s words of wisdom sink in rather than fight them off.

Blade smiles back as he presses a kiss to your forehead. ‘That’s all I can ask for.’ He says against your skin, happy that you were ready to take a chance on yourself.

#hsr fanfic #hsr imagines #hsr fic #hsr imagine #hsr #hsr x reader #hsr blade x reader #hsr blade x you #blade imagines #blade imagine #blade x reader #hsr fluff #honkai star rail #honkai star rail x reader #honkai star rail x you #honkai star rail imagines #Honkai star rail imagine #honkai star rail fanfic #honkai star rail fluff #blade fluff

[captainmera]

ok but Caleb saying " I do not want to rob my son of his life" is heartbreaking.

It so bittersweet that he sees him like a son especially since he never got to meet his own child. I really love the scene where he gives hunter his cloak when he puts him to sleep, I think he would've been a good dad...

The way I've written Caleb's fatherhood-ness is this:

He was a parental-figure brother to Philip, but he was a child himself when he started doing that. I am sure Caleb grew painfully aware that he wasn't equipped to take care of Philip; 'nor in maturity or ability, but what's the alternative? There isn't one. You do what you gotta do with the knowledge and power you have.

Which means he probably didn't raise Philip exemplarily. You can blame the adult-Caleb for not adjusting to it; but then you're asking him to control his brother with a whole new set of rules and reshape their set and working dynamic, which is easier said than done with a teenage little brother. And you cant really blame child-Caleb for not knowing better.

Caleb acts quickly on his fears or intuitions out of terror that things can escalate for the worse. He thinks he knows best because that's who he had to be, regardless of if he actually does knows best. He never had anyone to turn to, he just had to figure it out on the fly.

I think his worst bully is hindsight, and although he acts out of love (embraced by fear) he, too, can see retroactively that his actions are at best clumsy and at worst consequential.

Nobody's perfect, I don't think he would've been a perfect dad (just as there are no ideal person or people, people are just.. people! trying their best) But I do think he'd be a very loving one. And for someone like Hunter, I think that's pretty much all Hunter wished for.

But yes, I think Caleb, with the person he discovered himself to be in the BI, is someone who would do a good job as a dad. He does care, he does love. Even if it kind of comes out like a hiccup and a slap on the back that's a little too rough.

centuries of watching his doppelganger (sons) live their lives I'm sure he also picked up on a few things to advise them on. He's better on giving advise as an observer than being the one to interfere. (clearly)

But all in all, I think he is very proud of Hunter and already considers himself a father to him. Hunter is, technically, his flesh and blood.

My version of Caleb is a very flawed person. His fatherhood and continues attempt to be a martyr or take on all the load is.. also.. Reflective on the Noceda family trauma of losing Manny.

Luz and Camila both try to shoulder the burdens in the family. Wanting to be the one who makes life easier for the other.

Caleb sees and recognises this, especially in Camila. That's why he seemingly hold no qualms in laying out the hard cold cards for Luz the way he did in chapter Modern Times.

Anyway, I like Caleb. At least the way I write him. He's a little scatter-brained and wheezing, but dangit he's pulling the plot onwards. :'D

#toh #caleb wittebane #tgb #tgb talk #the owl house #toh hunter #hunter wittebane #hunter noceda #ttocw #toh caleb

[viennacherries]

I encroach upon ye with a request

Zevlor breeding kink with like, his long term partner who can’t get pregnant for one reason or another (whether you write them as amab or an afab person who is sterile/lacking a functional uterus is up to you)

Zevlor deserves to be really a little bit feral about his partner yk?? Let the man loose himself, it’d be good for the self-loathing imo (/hj)

hi bestie!! my first time trying to write zevlor so i hope u like it! mwah

CONCEPTION

Zevlor/Tav | NSFW | 2,898 words

Summary:

“Tav…” He can hear the grumble in his own voice, watches as it washes over her and she shivers. “Come here.” She shakes her head slowly, a teasing smirk flitting across her face. When she speaks, it's a breath. “Come and get me.” ~~~ Tav and Zevlor want a baby, but things are rarely that simple.

Read it on AO3!

How long has it been now? Several months, at least. And yet he can't give her the one thing she yearns for more than anything. The gift of motherhood. 

Zevlor is certain it’s something wrong with him, because of course it must be. Perhaps it’s a punishment from the Gods for his failures against his kin. Perhaps they’ve deemed him unworthy and made him barren as penance for his sins. Him, an oath-broken paladin who couldn't resist the call of a false deity and sacrificed his people in his hubris, and her, the Hero of Baldur’s Gate who had been ready to sacrifice everything for a whole city of people she owed nothing to. He is broken and flawed in every way she is perfect and faultless. 

And, Hells , does it hurt. Because there's nothing he wants more than to make her happy. There’s nothing he wants more than to start a family with her, to see her hold their child in her arms and to place a kiss to both of their foreheads. There’s nothing more that he wants than to be a father and navigate the turmoils of parenthood with her by his side. 

And yet he keeps failing her. 

The worst part is, he’s fucking enjoying it. Laying with her every night, pumping his seed into her while she begs him to fill her. His infernal hindbrain lavishes in hearing her plead for his spend, in holding her down and filling her repeatedly, in watching his cum spill out of her and fingering it back inside her cunt to make sure not a drop is wasted. Some nights she’ll beg him to fuck her again and again, over and over until they’re both sore and exhausted, and he fucking loves it. 

But other nights, he’ll wake while the sky is still dark to a cold bed, and hear her sobbing in the other room. He’ll reach out his hand and be met with a small damp circle in the centre of the sheets, and he’ll know her cycle has come again. He’ll rise and find her, holding her while she sobs, and wonder how much longer he can stand to see her like this. 

And then they do it all again. 

He’s training in the low sun of the afternoon when she finds him, he feels her eyes on him and catches her leaning against a post from the corner of his vision. She looks radiant as always, wearing her favourite blouse and a skirt he doesn't recognise. 

He usually trains while she runs errands. It’s nothing as intensive as when he was a Hellrider; his joints complain far more these days. A young man he is not, but he still tries to keep himself in shape. Tav can more than hold her own, but he prides himself in feeling able to protect her, needs to know he’s strong enough to keep their family safe. So, when she travels into town for groceries, or visits the children at school to teach them about the Battle for Baldur’s Gate, he takes himself to the drill field on the outskirts and sharpens his sword. 

They’ve made their home in the burgeoning community Halsin has built in the Reclaimed Lands, and she’s absolutely thriving. Retirement from the adventuring life suits her. That's not to say she’s idle, but seeing her able to relax and travel for pleasure rather than a need to outmarch death fills him with joy. 

It’s been a few days since he’s seen her, her trip to the Grove taking longer than usual on this occasion. He’s a soldier, though, so of course he finishes his set before he turns to her (plus it sends a thrill through him, knowing she’s watching him, though he won't ever mention that to her). He wipes his brow along the back of his arm, spears his sword into the earth, and opens his arms wide to her. She giggles as she throws herself into his embrace and he swings her around in circles. That’s the other benefit to keeping up his training, being able to lift and carry her and hear the elated squeals she lets out. It makes him feel a far more youthful man than he is. 

Before he can ask how her trip went, she's kissing him deeply and smiling against his lips. Yet another way being with her makes him feel young; the way her every touch sends heat through his body as though he’s a virginal adolescent. Hells, he loves her so much. 

When she pulls away she’s grinning, and he can't help but return it. “Good journey, I take it?”

She laughs, and the sound is so weightless and musical it makes his head spin. 

“ Great trip! I have something for you - for us!”

He raises an eyebrow in question. She often brings him back little trinkets and treats from the Grove but it’s rare she’s this excited to give him them. 

Scratch bounds up to her before he can ask any questions and practically clings to her, and her beautiful laugh is back again. Whatever queries he may have had are forgotten as she kneels, cackling as Scratch smothers her face in sloppy kisses.

Usually she’ll bring back a brace of rabbits or pheasants that she’s hunted on the trek back, but she tells him excitedly as she brings out the meat for dinner that she managed to snag a deer. She stopped at a small trading post, where they butchered it for her and she traded them everything that wouldn't keep. She holds the venison steaks up proudly and he applauds her as she takes a deep bow, laughing her way through it. She also foraged some fresh herbs and wild garlic, and the traders gave her some asparagus and carrots in return for the doe. 

As usual, he offers to cook, and as usual he’s swatted out of the kitchen, so instead he vows to do the dishes and takes the time to set the table. He feels so lucky to be privy to the mundanity of domestic life with her, so he takes pride in setting their cutlery and placing the table mats down. He lights a few candles, too, because he’s nothing if not a romantic. Tav deserves candlelit dinners. 

He’s still not used to the way she looks after him. A lifetime of bachelorhood and swordsmanship doesn’t prepare a man for gentle touches and lovingly cooked meals. Zevlor considers himself a reasonably talented chef, and he’s not some invalid that never learnt how to do his own laundry, and yet Tav always insists on doing these things for him. He’s quite sure he’s never known a love like it. He’s so used to being relied on, and it took a long time to wrap his head around the idea of letting Tav carry some of his burdens. They lean on each other, they give each other balance and stability. 

Still, it’s always a competition to see who notices the washing on the line is dry first, and they’re often racing one another to take it down. 

Dinner is delicious, as always. The vegetables are roasted in honey and garlic, and she’s cooked the venison in butter which has it tender and flavourful. She even pours them both a glass of wine, and it pairs beautifully. 

When they’ve both eaten, the dishes washed and the candles extinguished, she’s practically vibrating with excitement. 

“My dear,” he says at last, as he watches her shuffling from one foot to the other, “are you going to tell me what has you so agitated?”

She grins and grabs his hand, standing in front of him, and the words burst from her almost immediately.

“It’s me, Zev. I’m the problem.”

He feels his face twist in confusion and sorrow. It’s not hard to deduce what she’s talking about, but he’s not quite sure why that fills her with such glee. 

“Tav… I’m sorry, I-”

She interrupts him with a finger over his lips. “No, no you don't understand. I spoke to Nettie. She says I can have children, I just don't ovulate at regular intervals. She said the reason we've not been able to conceive is because I have a hormone imbalance, not because either of us are sterile.” 

He lets her announcement wash over him. The thought that all of their issues have been poor timing and unfortunate happenstance is… Almost unbelievable. He’d resigned himself so fully to the idea that he was the issue, finding out that isn't the case makes his heart stop in his chest. 

“How do you-”

She interrupts again, “Nettie gave me a brew when I arrived, to balance my hormones. It’s why I stayed in the Grove a few extra days, so she could test them for me. She says everything is as it should be now. She says…” A blush rises over her cheeks, though the ecstatic smile over her features doesn't falter. “She says if we try now she suspects we’ll have no problems.”

He feels his own blush rising to his face, mostly due to the fact that Nettie now knows far more about his sex-life than he’d hoped to share with anyone ever . He opens his mouth to speak but she’s talking again before he can. 

“And, just to be safe, she brewed me a concoction with Mandrake. She said it tastes foul, but that it boosts fertility.” A smirk rises on her face, and she rises on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. Her breath is warm on his ear and he shivers. “I mixed it into my wine.”

The groan he lets out is involuntary, and it resonates low in his chest like a purr. The sudden switch from confused and sad to elated and turned on has his head spinning, and as she walks him backwards towards their bed he feels his cock rush to attention. 

A single hand in the centre of his chest pushes him back and down, and he sits staring at her from the mattress. She takes two steps backwards and slowly begins unbuttoning her blouse. 

“Zev…” His name on her tongue is like honey. He’s certain she does it on purpose and it drives him wild. “I want you to breed me, darling. Want you to fill me with your babies.”

He clenches his jaw and digs his nails into his thighs. He knows exactly what game she’s playing. She loves to unravel his sensibilities until he’s squirming - until he can't help but rut into her like a wild creature. She knows just how to toy with him to bring his infernal heritage to heel til she gets exactly what she wants. 

She chuckles at his reaction, because obviously she does. “You want that, love? Want to mount me and fill me up?”

The noise he makes at that is closer to a growl than anything else, and he nods tensely. She giggles and lets her blouse drop from her shoulders, and hells, of course she isn't wearing a brassiere. The realisation that she’s been planning this, waiting for this, drives him insane. Suddenly the new skirt makes far more sense. It takes all of his restraint to stay seated where he is.  

Tav brushes a thumb over each of her nipples and lets out an exaggerated keen, which has his cock twitching and straining against his trousers. 

“Tav…” He can hear the grumble in his own voice, watches as it washes over her and she shivers. “Come here.”

She shakes her head slowly, a teasing smirk flitting across her face. When she speaks, it's a breath. 

“ Come and get me .”

Every shred of control he has snaps and he’s on her in an instant, pulling her against his body in one long stride. He hikes her legs up around his waist and holds her there, drawing her as close to himself as he possibly can and bringing their lips together in a bruising kiss. She tightens her legs around him and moans into his mouth and, fuck, he wants her so badly. He spins and drops her down onto the bed, and she gasps as she lands on it. 

She looks a picture like this; skirt sitting high on her thighs with her tits hanging heavy on her chest. An image of her sitting like this, round and full with his child, fills his mind. He imagines her breasts full, imagines her body swelling with pregnancy, and Gods if it doesn't make his cock ache. 

“You…” His voice comes out strained, gravelled and thick. “Are such a tease . I try to be polite and you push…” He moves to stand closer, her head level with his stomach. “... and push…” He puts one hand on her shoulder, easing her backwards and hovering above her. Her legs fall open and he stands between them. “... and push …” He rolls his hips against her core and she throws her head backwards with a moan. “... until I can't help but fold you over, hm? Is that what you want, my love? You want me to use your body til you’re good and bred?”

Hells, she’s making so many needy noises and he’s barely touched her yet. She nods hurriedly, wrapping her arms around his neck and leaning up to suck a bruise onto his neck, and fuck he loves when she marks him. He moans and tips his head to give her better access, and he feels Tav smile against his skin as she nibbles at him. 

He slips a hand under her skirt and moans at the realisation that she’s not wearing underclothes either. 

“Hells, Tav, you’re so needy for it. You sat there like this the whole time we ate, desperate for me, hm?”

“ Yes , Zev, Gods . Need you.” Her voice is breathy.

He wants to be teasing, wants to wind her up the way she does to him, but he’s not strong enough. Hearing her beg for him has his face full of heat and has his head swimming. “Can I taste you, love?”

She starts to give her assent, but he’s dropping to his knees before she even finishes getting the words out, lifting her skirt and burying his face in her core. The scent of her drives him wild, and the taste of her musk on his tongue as he drags it through her slick has him moaning into her. Her hands lace into his hair as he sucks her clit between his lips, teasing and tasting her until she’s writhing and keening and cumming into his mouth. 

She drags him back up, kisses him deeply, and the feeling of her tongue massaging against his is so erotic that he can't help grinding against her again. He can feel the wet heat of her cunt leaving a damp patch on the front of his trousers and he knows he can't wait any longer to have her. 

He manages to pry himself away and strips unceremoniously, letting himself languish for a moment in the heated way she stares at his body. The scars and infernal ridges littering his body have always, to him, been unattractive, but she looks at him every time like she can't bear to look away. No one has ever looked at him the way Tav does, and it lights his whole being on fire. 

There's no more conversation needed. He lays himself over her, folds her legs up towards her chest and sinks deep into her heat, and she throws her head back and whines as he fills her. With her legs pushed up like this he can fill her entirely, and the way she clenches around him has him gritting his teeth and grinding deeper into her body. 

“I’ll keep you here all night, if that's what you want, love. Fill you til you’re certain you’ll burst. Can't wait to see you full with my child.”

She tries to reply, but he chooses that moment to fill her with a deep thrust from tip to root, and her eyes roll back into her head as she frees a leg from his grip, digging a heel into his rear and pulling him deeper. With every thrust of his hips she keens, louder and louder until her cries reach a crescendo, and then she’s sobbing her way through her second orgasm and clenching her walls around his cock. 

The wet, tight squeeze of her cunt means it doesn't take long for him to reach his own end, spilling himself inside her just like she asked, kissing her lovingly through it. Every twitch of his cock makes her sigh and clench him harder, milking him of every drop of his cum until he’s laying boneless over her. 

Their heavy breaths mingle together as they share deep, meaningful kisses. When he tries to remove himself from her, she wraps her legs around him and shakes her head. 

“You said you’d keep me here all night. I hope you intend to keep that promise. I want… I want you to stay inside. I want to feel you get hard, and then I want you to fuck me full again.”

And hells, her words have his spent cock twitching valiantly, aching to take her again despite it being too soon, so he tells her yes as he leans in to kiss her again. 

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fic #bg3 fanfic #bg3 smut #bg3 requests #bg3 fanfic prompt #bg3 fluff #zevlor bg3 #bg3 zevlor #zevlor #zevlor x tav

[wrens-wramblings]

A massive problem with how fandom - particularly queer rep - is going right now on this website is how quick people are to jump ship onto the next thing and then immediately start trashing the everliving shit out of the old thing.

Steven Universe (not a perfect show by any means) while it was coming out was celebrated constantly. The Garnet reveal? Pearl being in love with Rose? The Rupphire wedding? SU was revolutionary and has been quoted by cartoon creators now for being a big reason people are allowed to bring their stories to life. Say what you want about the show, but it broke boundaries and set precedents for a lot of the shows that you now love. And the show's plot lines regarding the diamonds has been taken in completely bad faith - do yall really think the half Jewish queer person meant for you to get "Let's all forgive Nazis" from the Diamonds redemption arcs??

After Steven Universe ended a large majority of people jumped to She Ra and the Princesses of Power and when they mentioned SU at all it was to put it down as a show with terrible representation and all round bad writing.

During SPOP's run it was massively popular, with a lot of buzz around the main ship, Catradora. I know this is gonna be taken in bad faith so a quick note - while I do like Catradora, I do feel that there should have been another season for Catra to properly acknowledge the harm she did to Adora and actually grow as a person before entering into a relationship. Catra was forgiven too easily, but that was in part due to Netflix not wanting to give the show another season to properly flesh out the redemption arc. The final season was rushed as all hell, and so many story points would have been better with another season to flesh them out further.

But I digress - during the show's run it was constantly talked about for it's representation, having multiple queer characters, including a nonbinary character.

The show ends and again, the fanbase jumps. This time, it's to the Owl House. People start talking about how SPOP was actually horrible representation and, my personal favourite, they "added gay people as a cash grab."

Yeah okay guys, I'm sure a queer nonbinary creator is writing about queer people because they actually dislike the gays and want to wring money out of us. That is definitely the situation here.

And now I'm worried that in a year or two we'll have the next big queer cartoon and the posts will start popping up -

"Amity Blight is the mean lesbian stereotype."

"Raine and Eda's relationship is problematic because-"

"Amity and Luz started out as rivals, which is toxic because-"

"The romance didn't start until later in the show, it was added at the end for a cash grab."

Again, I'm certain there's gonna be bad faith takes on this -- I'm not saying these shows are perfect. They all have flaws somewhere. No media is completely without it's faults and its good to recognise those faults, that what critical reading is. But calling someone an abuser for enjoying SPOP, or a Nazi sympathiser for liking SU (actual accusations I have seen on tumblr.com) is frankly a little ridiculous.

As for the bad rep argument - every show on this list has one thing in common: a queer creator. No one experiences queerness the exact same way - the only thing that harassing queer creators for not showing your experience does is make other queer creators... not want to write queer characters. No one wants to receive death threats because, for example, they based a character with their sexuality off of how that actually affected them and someone on the Internet decided they were feeding into a harmful stereotype.

#wrenposting #toh #the owl house #eda clawthorne #amity blight #raine whispers #luz noceda #lumity #spop #Catradora #Catradora spop #catra spop #double trouble #she ra and the princess of power fanart #she ra #adora spop #netossa #spinnerella #steven universe #garnet #ruby su #sapphire su #rupphire #pearl su #rose quartz su #queer media #queer cartoons

[annoyinglandmagazine]

The Sons of Feanor aren’t monsters. That would imply that they’re somehow different, that they were either born a certain way or were transformed past the point where they could be recognised as people. That it wasn’t entirely their fault that they were incapable of making the right choices because they were fundamentally evil through no choice of their own.

And I don’t think that that’s true at any point for a single one of them. Because they’ve all seen each other drenched in blood that wasn’t their own, hacking their way through orcs and elves alike and maybe it would be easier even if they could say that they didn’t recognise their brothers, that they had changed and become mindless killing machines, slaves to The Oath. And it wouldn’t fully be a lie. But it wouldn’t be the truth either.

Because they’re still the same people. They talk the same way, they make the same facial expressions, they have the same (though sometimes darker) sense of humour, Celegorm still tackles everyone when he sees them, Maglor still hums under his breath constantly, Maedhros still worries about them, Curufin still fiddles with bits of metal during meetings, Caranthir still likes his hair to be stroked just so and Amrod and Amras still pull faces at each other during meetings to see who’ll crack first. And when they’re killing they’re not different people then either. Because they still mourn, they still weep, they wake up in the middle of the night screaming, they shake and tremble in each other’s arms, and they know they’re monsters but they’re still people.

Sometimes one of them will think back to their childhood. Maedhros always took control of a situation, any argument. The expression of grim determination the lord of Himring later wore was not new, he’d worn it all his life as Prince Nelyafinwe when he’d been keeping all his emotions under wraps to maintain appearances as he witnessed all the most vicious manoeuvrings in court with no qualms.

Maglor’s voice had always been powerful, sometimes it had made things break with the sheer strength of it. Curufin had always been good at getting himself out of trouble and others into it, annoying all his cousins and brothers thoroughly in their youth. When Celegorm hunted he never blanched at the bloody entrails of the creatures he killed. Caranthir had gone into moods where he could be angry enough to try and fight anyone who so much as looked at him. They’d always agreed with all their father said with no hesitation, adored him fully.

All of this comes to mind sometimes when they think of all they’ve done, the familiar expressions, the same techniques and skills used for evil but none of them had been red flags. A red flag would imply that how things had gone was somehow inevitable, that it should have been spotted and predicted. But the thing about that is that it couldn’t have been predicted that they’d do this because they might not have. They could have been good people. None of their attributes had made a single one of them predisposed for the path they’d later taken. They’d always been flawed but they hadn’t ever had any desire to hurt other people, they’d had the potential to be not perfect but still good.

And they don’t lose that potential altogether. Maglor and Maedhros still find traces of it even after everything, damaged from disuse though it may be. They don’t lose who they were entirely, they haven’t fully changed per say, the difference is that now they know what the are capable of doing. They know that they will kill if it is necessary, that they will do anything for their father, for their Oath and they know that they always would have. No matter what good they do they always were and always will be capable of this. But they might have never known that. And that’s the tragic thing about them, they had the potential to be the heroes but were born into precisely the circumstances that would turn them into villains.

#silmarillion #tolkien #maedhros #caranthir #celegorm #curufin #maglor #sons of feanor #feanorians #meta #angst #Amrod #amras

[thecrustiestpurp]

Genius writing of Pavitr Prabhakar

They made an ass of a spiderman in theory yet he's my favourite out of all of them and naturally I'm thinking why.

Ignoring the aesthetic aspects like his sick design and his distinctive web slinging style. I think it's most interesting how they do this through the writing, the way they tackle his fatal flaw, his fat ego and blind optimism by creating a really sharp interval logic and communicating this within the space of 15 minutes.

We understand that his big ego is all earnest and out of naivite rather than him putting down others. He just so happens to be the best and perfect, and therefore everything is great for him. He was given a blessing at a very young age to be a spider and he happens to be good at it of course he's going to be prideful how can it not be. And why would he not gloat, he's a perfect guy perfect grades perfect hair and he knows that makes him special. Especially considering the rest of the Spider-Verse, having a perfect one like Pavitr is unexpected so we're at least intrigued by him.

But why do we like him despite characters with perfect lives and a big ego typically being frustrated. Using his humour the writers made his introduction it as playful as possible so we laugh at how him you know. One of the first things he says is "being Spiderman is so easy" and knowing he's been at it for 6 months it's super funny. He's also relatable, the successes he points out, skipping working out because he has a perfect body, having a girlfriend her parents don't know about, doing well in school are all things that are relatable to us especially if you're Indian, it feels like a real student who's living their best like. Also playfulness is maintained when they go to unglitch spots thing the collider scene, he treating it with even less seriousness "just another easy day of being spiderman" he says and is subsequently blown up - it's funny. We also can't get annoyed during that scene really being invasive to Miles' attempts and channelling the electricity so he's not being frustrating to us or to Miles, just a little naive. We can get humour from it but we also understand this as a flaw too because of the dramatic irony, we're hinting that he's not supposed to think this way.

They also give him the nice internal logic making his mindset sympathetic by testing it within the movie. In the saving India scene, what's most notable is the line "I can do both" turning his idealism into tragedy when he's faced between saving his girlfriend and saving his girlfriends dad. The surrounding microelements and whatnot making the atmosphere feel dire which contributes to the tragedy. But it's that were seeing the life that he easily lives turning on its head. His mentality given definition as a this it will work out so long as I do it, a noble origin for his confidence. Though he knows he's special but he doesn't think he's any more valuable. "do both" showing no real bias towards to what directly affects him - he can empathise with his girlfriend and recognise loosing her and her dad would be devastating. He's not egotistical like thinking he's better than others, he's empathetic and values the people he saves as well as the people they value. The words "do both" colours his saving as this as being an overexertion, he's unaware of what he can't do solidifying his perspective of viewing this as easy coming from a place of naivite. Additionally he has to be the one to save people - "I can do both" - and this is why being Spider-Man is easy for him, it has to be. This all makes him more understandable and the fact this is clearly failing him and tragically makes him sympathetic. Moreover, we care about the love for his girlfriend and for his people because it was fun hearing him explain it earlier so its even more sympathetic that he's loosing what he loves. I think this also stops being a careful what you wish for where we could reproach him because of the scenery we understand him to have.

It seems more he does everything because he's so loving, and he just so happens to be blessed and stuff. Which is super enjoyable to watch! and this burst of characterisation happens in like 20 minutes so like wowowowoowwwowoowowowowow

Anyway, this isn't the greatest most insightful analysis but I just had to ramble about my favourite boy!!

#acrossthespiderverse #spiderverse #spiderman #pravitr prabhakar #found a new character to be fixated on #pavitr i love you sm

[hellenicrisis]

How do you reconcile the mainstream Christian ideals of not worshipping any other god than YHWH/trinity with Hellenic paganism?

Hi sunshine! ☀️

I see this topic debated a lot and answers vary. I think one factor that makes this reconciliation easier for me is that I was raised in an athiest/agnostic household. I was then purely Hellenic pagan for a few years so I have a slightly different – some would say heretical – view of Christian/Catholic practices. For context, I am now Christopagan. I worship Hellenic (Greek) pagan deities and Jesus, and I work with some of the saints.

To my knowledge, the verses that touch on this subject are Exodus 20:3, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me", and Exodus 22:20, "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed".

Now personally, I don't believe that the Bible is the word of God. I believe that the Bible is the word of man inspired by God. It is similar to how we understand the Greek myths as being written by human beings, portraying how they and society of the time interpreted the gods.

However, while man may be divinely inspired, we are also flawed. It is no secret that the church constantly seeks power, and the Bible was written during a time when paganism was the church's biggest competitor. While it was compiled roughly 200-400 years before the official outlawing of paganism, this was still a time when the church would have sought to diminish the number of pagan followers. Lines like those from Exodus were, I think, written with the agenda of turning people away from pagan faiths.

A way for the church to dominate pagan religions was to demonise the practices and to instill fear in the people, which we continue to see today. I have no problem with the Bible and I would never disrespect it, but I believe we must consider its historical context and recognise that it is, in part, religious propaganda. That's the stance I take, at least.

There are parts of the Bible I take more to heart than others. Lines that sound more like propaganda than something to bring you closer to God and to Jesus, I acknowledge as a part of history and something to be left in the past. The Greek myths are also not perfect and depict many values that are outdated and strange to us today, but again, those are aspects to be understood historically and interpreted accordingly.

This is just what I believe though and how I personally view things. Debate is welcomed, as long as it is respectful. Thank you so much for asking, sunshine!

Khaire! ☀️

#asks #answered asks #christopagan #christopaganism #pagan #paganism #polytheist #polytheism #folk catholic #folk catholicism

[doodles-dearest]

TW: SELF LOATHING AS A RESULT OF EMOTIONAL ABUSE FROM PARENTS

welp, ask and ye shall recieve, enjoy the happy ending to this

"Steve?"

"Shut up." Steve snaps, making Eddie flinch.

"Stevie-"

"I said shut up."

Steve tensens, hearing the fierceness in his own voice. The fierceness ever present when he was popular. He loathes it.

They sit in silence for what at most is 10 minutes, but it feels like days.

Eddie breaks the silence. "I didn't mean it in the annoyingly perfect way I-"

"Exactly." Steve grumbles.

The quiet resumes.

They sit for another ten minutes before Steve silently gets up to leave, cigarette in hand. He was so sure Eddie would see him properly, but no. He's like everyone else.

Eddie watched him exit the van and walk down the street. Steve's fine with that. He didn't want to be followed anyway.

What hurts the most is the fact Steve likes Eddie so much. He's kind, caring, beautiful- if anything, Steve thinks, he's the perfect one, not me.

Eddie's meant to be the one who can see through him. See his flaws, his insecurities, Eddie's meant to see through that confident act. For the short time Steve's known Eddie, he's done that. Every time those beautiful brown eyes gaze upon him it feels like hes being x-rayed with how well Eddie can read him, but that's gone now.

As soon as he's rounded a corner and he's far enough away from Eddie's van, he throws the cigarette onto the floor and stamps on it. He doesn't want to be perfect. He doesn't want people to like him. He wants people to see his flaws, and if his flaws are so bad that everyone hates him, so be it. He yells curses to himself before collapsing against a wall.

He's been keeping track of his flaws since he was young. He decided a long time ago that was the only way to keep him humble- or was it his parents who'd decided that? Steve can't remember. It doesn't matter anyway.

"Guess I can add tantrums to the list." Steve laughs to himself bitterly.

He rests his head on his knees, recounting all his flaws. His father's repeated them all to him many a time. His posture is terrible, he cries too much, he's too sensitive, he can't speak properly to authority, he acts like a girl, his manners are horrible, he's untidy, his grades were too low, he's an idiot, he can't even get into college- the list goes on and on.

"Disappointment." His parents' words echo through his brain. "You are a disappointment. Look at you. You've got such a fortunate life and you've thrown it all away. You bring shame to the Harrington name."

The voices get louder.

"Disappointment."

"Disappointment."

"Disappointment."

Steve can't take it.

"I know!" He yells, standing up. "I fucking know!"

He feels the tears in his eyes and slams back down onto the floor.

"I know." He repeats to himself. "I know."

He hides his face in his knees and hugs his legs, tears running faster than he can wipe them away. Who cares if anyone sees him? Then they can see him as the disappointment he is.

He hears footsteps nearby, but he doesn't move. People in Hawkins are assholes anyway, they won't care. At most they'll berate him, and his head is hidden so well in his knees that if anyone he knows were to see him, they won't recognise him, not unless they'd seen him walk this way.

"Steve? Steve, honey, what's wrong?" a panicked voice says.

Shit.

Eddie.

"Steve, it's okay, tell me whats wrong." He feels Eddie's arm around him and he flinches away from the movement.

"C'mon, look at me, babe, look." He usually loves Eddie's petnames for him, but this time it just makes his heart ache.

Eddie gently tips Steve's head upwards to look at him after a few seconds of unresponsiveness from Steve. Those stupid doe eyes just make him want to cry more. Why does Eddie care so much? He preferred it when Eddie didn't. Back when Eddie could see his flaws.

He feels anger burn in the back of his mind.

"'M not.. fuckin' perfect.." he mumbles.

"Sorry, love?"

"'M.. I'm not fucking perfect, alright?! I'm not perfect, I'm a damn disappointment, and you used to be able to see it, you could see my flaws, and now you can't okay? I'm. Not. Perfect." Steve yells, making Eddie flinch a little.

"Steve- is that what this is about?" Eddie questions, confusion clouding his eyes.

"Yeah, it is. You're the only person who's ever been able to be fucking real with me, you could always see I'm shitty. But now you can't."

"I- I'm not sure I understand?"

"Back in highschool everyone treated me like some sort of celebrity because I had money and popularity and they wanted a piece of that. I was perfect to them. If everyone thinks I'm perfect now, how can I be any different to back then?" Steve hears his voice break as more tears came flooding.

"Oh- oh Stevie-" Eddie says, pulling Steve closer into a tight hug. "It's okay, Steve, you're nothing that, I promise, you just-"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up. I don't want some stupid lecture about how I am actually perfect because I'm not, and for some reason no one can see my glaring flaws but me."

Eddie opens his mouth to protest but finds no words. He just complies and hugs Steve tightly, comforting him, letting Steve get it all out.

After around ten minutes, Steve's finally starting to calm down. His breathing slows back to a normal rate, and although his head is spinning, the tears have stopped.

Eddie cups his cheek. "I feel like I owe you and explanation for why I've treated you so different lately."

Steve narrows his eyes in confusion. "What do you mean?"

Eddie sighs and looks at the sky, leaning next to Steve. "Y'know how when you and Nancy were together you acted like she hung the moon?"

Steve hesitates, unsure of where this is going. "...Yeah?"

"Well, Stevie, it's like that."

Steve gives him a puzzled look.

Eddie gives him an awkward smile, the type of smile people give when they really don't want to have to say what they're saying.

"Love is a crazy thing, Steve. Makes you go mad. And it can make you see past all someone's flaws."

Steve's mouth goes dry. Surely Eddie can't be saying what he thinks Eddie's saying.

Eddie looks at Steve. "Steve Harrington, when I first met you I knew there was something up. I knew you were a conceited idiot, yes, but I also knew there was something else going on. But when we met again years later things were different, Stevie. You're a new man. You've gone from perfect in the way of a dumbass who gets everything he wants to perfect in a soft mothergoose way. But you're right, you do have flaws. The pressure you put on yourself, your lack of a healthy sleep schedule, your inability to take time for yourself-"

"I don't- what?- That's all wrong-"

"Speaking of which, stubborness." Eddie finishes with a smile, and Steve feels inclined to smile back. "I promise you, I know you have flaws. But I know that those flaws are much less intense than you've been told."

Steve's smile fades.

"And that's okay, I'll help you through that. Because, for all your flaws, Steve, you're pretty damn easy to get a crush on. And like I said, love can make you blind to flaws, which is why I treated you so differently. Why I said you're perfect."

"Eddie, you can't be serious right now." Steve's voice wobbled.

"Well I'm serious enough that if you don't say not to then I'll kiss you."

Steve immediately plants a gentle kiss on Eddie's lips, causing both of them to flush bright red.

Steve smiles.

Eddie loves him, flaws and all.

people who wanted to be tagged:

@youmakemyhearthowl @thesuninyaface @funnymagicman-named-dandy @samcoxramblings @pluto-21

#stranger things #st #steve harrington #steddie #eddie munson #ficlet #tw self loathing #tw emotional abuse #tw abuse #steveddie #eddiesteve

[xanvasofxords]

Thoughts On SaiTeru & Why It Makes Sense To Me

Honestly speaking, I wasn’t too big on this ship but over the time, it has definitely grown a lot on me and I’d actually like if they took that route. Mainly because Saiki ending up with someone other than Kokomi wouldn’t make sense, after all the progression they went through, ending up with each other is natural. Besides, whatever Kokomi wills eventually happens so if I had to guess I’d go with the prior lol. That aside, imo they fit each other the best.

I haven’t done ship analysis posts before so the sequence is pretty messy but I’ll try to keep it as organised as possible so it’s easier to read. Let’s start anyways :

Starting off with the very thing that places Kokomi at the top of the food-chain : her charms. Due to Saiki’s x-ray vision, that ability is rendered completely useless against him. As a result, Saiki recognises her for her true self and knows her inside out. While he’s aware of her flaws, he also witnesses her growth as a person. She makes true friends and starts to enjoy their company and care about them. For Saiki, she stops dreaming about marrying a rich guy and rejects Saiko.

Kokomi even gives up on playing the perfect pretty girl which she has been doing for years, just for his sake.

Likewise, Saiki’s psychic powers have little to no effect on Kokomi because she’s loved by the God himself and she gets whatever she wants. Regardless of how hard Saiki tries to win against her, he always ends up losing instead, all the while her likability with him increases.

Her efforts in her role, her wits and abilities surprise him enough to make him wonder if she’s actually perfect. He even goes as far as to say that they’re invincible together. Saiki goes from being half-scared of her powers to fully acknowledging and admiring her by the end.

Before Kokomi, Saiki has dealt with people who had crush on him- Imu and Chiyo. He made them give up on him with ease which resulted into him believing that it’s easy to move people’s hearts. Kokomi however, breaks that misconception by moving his own and shows him that she loves him just as he is and that won’t change.

And it’s because he’s aware that her feelings are genuine, unlike the other two, he stops resisting her completely and starts avoiding possible misunderstandings. When Kokomi changes herself to suit his tastes, Saiki doesn’t actively try to make her give up on him instead tries to revert her back to her usual self. He isn’t bothered by her feelings for him anymore, rather prefers her the way she is.

There are only a few times in the show when Saiki gets nervous. Even Nendou and Kusuke who he can’t use his telepathy on, don’t have that effect on him. Yet being alone with Kokomi makes him nervous. Prior to the mixer event, Saiki has been alone with her on more than one occasion. After that day however, Saiki’s perception of Kokomi changes. He’s aware that she truely loves him and won’t give up on him no matter how indifferent he acts towards her. It’s fairly new to him, accepting the fact that someone loves him despite all the odds and she actually manages to make him happy because of it.

Just like how Kokomi gives up on the most important thing for Saiki, being perfect that is, he does the same for her. Saiki hates drawing attention to himself and he puts a lot of efforts in that. However, he gives up on that without a moment’s thought and catches Kokomi in his arms in front of the entire school and takes her to the infirmary. There couldn’t be any better way to draw attention.

My point remains the same even if I don’t include this because Kokomi’s beauty has always been irrelevant in their relationship and this is the first and only time we see Saiki being attracted to someone. Ironically, Saiki reacts to seeing Kokomi just as any other guy would and he’s too transparent about it. Not to Kokomi but to the readers.

From time to time, Kokomi’s likability with Saiki increases to such point where he subconsciously sees her differently than others. I’m sure there are people who would disagree because Saiki makes exceptions for all his friends and Kokomi shouldn’t be different. There are multiple counter to that arguement.

One of the two is when Saiki turns invisible and shares a drink with Kokomi. Honestly, whatever happened in that chapter doesn’t make sense in the least.

Saiki has gone out of his way to get Kokomi’s valentines chocolates. I can say that’s because he loves sweets. He buys her a birthday gift : the cat mug, I can reason that he even got Chiyo a soft toy back when she was dating Takeru to make their relationship last. Several times he has gone out of his way to check up on his friends such as when Aren received a fake love letter or when Kaido and Chiyo had a misunderstanding and stayed with them the entire time to make sure everything was alright.

However, this time the only thing he has to do is avoid her and go home. Kokomi isn’t in any trouble nor does she need his help for anything. So he succeeds the moment he manages to lose her by getting up in the air. All he needs to do his teleport home.

But he doesn’t. We don’t know why.

He just turns invisible which saves him from the men searching for him, again he can teleport home or even walk home. But he just decides to sit there with her and share her drink for some reason and leaves only when she thinks of doing the same. Which is outright ridiculous because he could just leave the moment Kokomi lost him but he does the opposite and does exactly what Kokomi wanted on his own free will except, differently.

Last but not the least, the most significant moment is when Saiki hears Kokomi’s voice in the end. Having read the manga, it’s clear that Kokomi’s part is supposed to stand out from others but the added scene in the anime makes it more obvious.

I think there’s more to this moment than most talk about. Other than the fact that Saiki reacts to Kokomi’s name, what makes him smile is that even when Kokomi knows that her life is in danger, she still thinks about him. He realises that the girl he finds so troublesome truely does love him. And he knows that in the end, what she wants, will happen. Through him this time. Personally I think this scene acts as the trigger to Saiki realising that he needs his powers and he doesn’t actually hate being a psychic.

All in all, Kokomi is the only one who balances out Saiki perfectly and Saiki is the one who made her develop as a person. They’re compatible with each other and even Saiki believes that. Both have lasting impact on each other even without being able to use their respective powers which solidifies the fact that the progression is genuine. Both have polar opposite nature, Kokomi loves receiving attention while Saiki hates that. However when push comes to shove, Kokomi’s willing to sacrifice her perfect pretty girl role while Saiki’s ready to draw attention to himself despite all the efforts they both put into their respective places.

Kokomi influences Saiki’s thought process despite him being able to read her like an open book. She makes him guess his choices and decisions. She brings surprises and challenges in his life. Saiki does the same since he isn’t affected by her charms, he makes her focus on other things beside looks. And he’s literally the only one who recognises her for herself and not her beauty unlike her own brother. I could go on forever about how they complement each other but that’s for another day.

I may not be the biggest SaiTeru shipper out there but I most definitely think Saiki should either remain single or end up with Kokomi. I prefer the later.

#the disastrous life of saiki k. #saiki x teruhashi #teruhashi x saiki #terusai #saiteru #saiki kusuo #teruhashi kokomi

[tsarinatorment]

Michael Yew's Fatal Flaw

This meta is the fault of @apollosgiftofprophecy who made the questionable decision of asking about Michael's fatal flaw in my vicinity the other day.

People who have been following me for a while may recall I once answered an ask about Apollo kid fatal flaws, and mentioned Michael there. Please ignore what I said back then because I'd barely even started picking him apart to see what made him tick, and my conclusions there have since been deemed rather surface-level!

The first question, of course, is what is a fatal flaw? What makes it different from a regular character flaw? The clue's in the name, I think - fatal flaw is one that's most likely to one day result in the hero's death, as Annabeth also suggests in Sea of Monsters:

“I don’t know, Percy, but every hero has one. If you don’t find it and learn to control it … well, they don’t call it ‘fatal’ for nothing.”

Athena gives us a little more to go on in The Titan's Curse:

"In each case, your loved ones have been used to lure you into Kronos's traps. Your fatal flaw is personal loyalty, Percy. You do not know when it is time to cut your losses. To save a friend, you would sacrifice the world. In a hero of the prophecy, that is very, very dangerous." I balled my fists. "That's not a flaw. Just because I want to help my friends—" "The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation," she said. "Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom… that is very hard indeed."

Of course, she's talking specifically to Percy about his flaw here, but there are certainly broader points to be inferred from this. When you break down all her warnings, it boils down near enough to "your fatal flaw is one you either cannot fight, or do not want to fight, because you think it is right/justified", which is interesting. It's a flaw that you don't, necessarily, recognise as a flaw, which makes it difficult to do anything about because how can something that's right be wrong?

As Athena says, the most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation - flaws that, in most situations, actually help, or are perceived to do so. These are the flaws most likely to kill the hero - and maybe others, as well.

With that out of the way, let's start picking apart Michael properly.

Generally, I see anger, pride or stubbornness put forwards as suggestions for his fatal flaw, so I'll look at each of those and see how well they actually fit. On top of that, I'm also going to explore two other contenders that I've come to notice from the hundreds of times I've re-read his scenes - protectiveness, and love.

First up, let's talk about Anger.

Anger is the one that seems to spring to mind most readily for some people (myself included), and it's hardly surprising given his introductory scene:

She was in the midst of yelling at Michael Yew, the new head counselor for Apollo, which looked kind of funny since Clarisse was a foot taller. Michael had taken over the Apollo cabin after Lee Fletcher died in battle last summer. Michael stood four feet six, with another two feet of attitude. He reminded me of a ferret, with a pointy nose and scrunched-up features—either because he scowled so much or because he spent too much time looking down the shaft of an arrow. "It's our loot!" he yelled, standing on his tiptoes so he could get in Clarisse's face. "If you don't like it, you can kiss my quiver!" [...] I couldn't believe Clarisse and Michael standing over her, arguing about something as stupid as loot, when she'd just lost Beckendorf. "STOP IT!" I yelled. "What are you guys doing?" Clarisse glowered at me. "Tell Michael not to be a selfish jerk." "Oh, that's perfect, coming from you," Michael said.

(As an aside, I love Michael's "kiss my quiver" line because hip quivers are very much a thing and if you think of his quiver as on his hip instead of his back... he's basically saying "kiss my ass" but in a kid-book-friendly way)

Michael's introduction is full of aggression - he's standing on tiptoes, getting "in Clarisse's face", and yelling at her. To make matters worse, it's in front of a grieving Silena which makes him (and Clarisse, but we've already had four books on how much Clarisse can be a bitch in Percy's opinion) look incredibly callous and uncaring. Percy's rather unflattering description about "two feet of attitude" and "because he scowled so much" adds to the overall impression that Michael's a right piece of work as well. Thanks, Percy.

It's a good introduction, though. This is memorable, as far as character introductions go (far more memorable than the first time we're introduced to Beckendorf, or Silena, etc.), and it's full of personality - personality that says Michael is not afraid to throw hands and will do it anywhere, anytime. It directly opposes him with Clarisse, but in such a way that makes them seem like similar characters, and we know anger/rage is one of Clarisse's traits as well.

This scene isn't a one-off, either. We get the full feud against the Ares cabin, which Michael spearheads:

We ducked as Michael Yew's chariot dive-bombed an Ares camper. The Ares camper tried to stab him and cuss him out in rhyming couplets. He was pretty creative about rhyming those cuss words. "We're fighting for our lives," I said, "and they're bickering about some stupid chariot." "They'll get over it," Annabeth said. "Clarisse will come to her senses."

The fact that it's Clarisse, not Michael, that Annabeth thinks is going to stand down also says a lot about how she sees the pair of them, and she must know Michael reasonably well, so this adds another note to the impression that Michael can be even more unreasonable than Clarisse (although it should also be noted that in this feud Michael is the one in the right, and Chiron has said as much to the campers, or at least the head counsellors - and of course from a narrative point of view, Clarisse is a far more familiar character for readers).

Michael himself also admits later on that he lost his temper with Clarisse again off-screen:

Michael shrugged. "Yeah, well, I called her some names when she said she still wouldn't fight. I doubt that helped. Here come the uglies!"

Those names certainly weren't ones for polite company - or a children's book. I think we can confidently say that Michael certainly has a temper, much like his father is legendary for.

But is it a fatal flaw? Well, sadly we have a scene that's implied to be Michael's death scene (I say implied because we never saw a body and a lot of things don't quite add up, so I prefer to think of him as not-dead, but for the purposes of this meta we'll consider it his death scene), so let's go look at that.

He struck the bridge with the butt of his scythe, and a wave of pure force blasted me backward. Cars went careening. Demigods—even Luke's own men—were blown off the edge of the bridge. Suspension cords whipped around, and I skidded halfway back to Manhattan. I got unsteadily to my feet. The remaining Apollo campers had almost made it to the end of the bridge, except for Michael Yew, who was perched on one of the suspension cables a few yards away from me, His last arrow was notched in his bow.

Michael's final stand happens immediately after several demigods - including his own siblings - are just blown clean off the bridge by Kronos. Is it a decision spurred by anger after things going wrong after they were finally going right? It would make sense.

However, there is one big issue with anger as his fatal flaw. Obviously, Michael does have this temper, and it does get out of hand, but we only ever see it get out of hand in the (relative) safety of camp. The Michael we see in Manhattan actually seems very calm and in control the entire time. He's observant and quick-witted, and is the only head counsellor to spot (or at least verbalise) a potential flaws in Percy and Annabeth's plan.

"He's right," Annabeth said. "The gods of the wind should keep Kronos's forces away from Olympus by air, so he'll try a ground assault. We have to cut off the entrances to the island." "They have boats," Michael Yew pointed out. An electric tingle went down my back. Suddenly I understood Athena's advice: Remember the rivers. "I'll take care of the boats," I said. Michael frowned. "How?" "Just leave it to me," I said.

Of course, Percy being the son of Poseidon can plug that massive gap, but it took Michael asking the question for him to make the important connection that he needed to.

This calmness continues into the battle itself, as well.

Michael Yew ran up to us. He was definitely the shortest commando I'd ever seen. He had a bandaged cut on his arm. His ferrety face was smeared with soot and his quiver was almost empty, but he was smiling like he was having a great time. "Glad you could join us," he said. "Where are the other reinforcements?" "For now, we're it," I said. "Then we're dead," he said. [...] "We have to fall back," Michael said. "I've got Kayla and Austin setting traps farther down the bridge." "No," I said. "Bring your campers forward to this position and wait for my signal. We're going to drive the enemy back to Brooklyn." Michael laughed. "How do you plan to do that?" I drew my sword. "Percy," Annabeth said, "let me come with you." "Too dangerous," I said. "Besides, I need you to help Michael coordinate the defensive line. I'll distract the monsters. You group up here. Move the sleeping mortals out of the way. Then you can start picking off monsters while I keep them focused on me. If anybody can do all that, you can." Michael snorted. "Thanks a lot."

No temper tantrums, no yelling like he did with Clarisse earlier - he's matter of fact when he realises they don't really have reinforcements (not knowing, of course, about Percy's little Styx bath), he doesn't argue with Percy when Percy starts taking command. He continues to say his piece and get his point across, but at no point do we ever get the sense that Michael is anything other than perfectly in control at any point during the battle - which is not what you would expect from a rage-based fatal flaw.

For example, contrast Michael's scenes with Clarisse later in the battle:

The real Clarisse looked up at the drakon, her face filled with absolute hate. I'd seen a look that intense only once before. Her father, Ares, had worn the same expression when I'd fought him in single combat. "YOU WANT DEATH?" Clarisse screamed at the drakon. "WELL, COME ON!" She grabbed her spear from the fallen girl. With no armor or shield, she charged the drakon.

and

"I AM CLARISSE, DRAKON-SLAYER!" she yelled. "I will kill you ALL! Where is Kronos? Bring him out! Is he a coward?" "Clarisse!" I yelled. "Stop it. Withdraw!" "What's the matter, Titan lord?" she yelled. "BRING IT ON!" There was no answer from the enemy. Slowly, they began to fall back behind a dracaenae shield wall, while Clarisse drove in circles around Fifth Avenue, daring anyone to cross her path. The two- hundred-foot-long drakon carcass made a hollow scraping noise against the pavement, like a thousand knives. Meanwhile, we tended our wounded, bringing them inside the lobby. Long after the enemy had retreated from sight, Clarisse kept riding up and down the avenue with her horrible trophy, demanding that Kronos meet her battle.

Calm and collected whomst? Not to say that Clarisse's temper isn't understandable here, but this fits much more in line with Athena's description of a fatal flaw - one that seems justified, right, even (and later on, Clarisse gets frozen by a Hyperborean Giant, so this does come back to bite her!), as opposed to the way Michael seems to stay in control of his temper even when his siblings are being killed around him.

With all that in mind, while I willa gree that anger is a flaw of Michael's, it certainly doesn't seem to check the boxes to be a fatal flaw, so let's move onto the next one: Pride.

Pride has its roots in the same parts of the narration as anger, so this section is going to be rather shorter because I don't need to rehash all the quotes again. The main thing that stands out on the pride side of the feud, specifically, is that it's completely needless for Michael to keep agitating Clarisse and the Ares cabin.

Clarisse turned to Chiron. "You're in charge, right? Does my cabin get what we want or not?" Chiron shuffled his hooves. "My dear, as I've already explained, Michael is correct. Apollo's cabin has the best claim. Besides, we have more important matters—" [...] "I see," Clarisse said. "And the senior counselors? Are any of you going to side with me?" Nobody was smiling now. None of them met Clarisse's eyes.

Chiron's put his hooves down on the matter - the Apollo cabin has the best claim to the chariot, Clarisse is the aggressor here. The other head counsellors all agree with that, too. Michael could, and given the upcoming war, should, ignore her and put his and his siblings' focus towards the war and not an argument he's already won.

But he doesn't. His chariot is attacking the campers - the Apollo kids aren't just defending themselves from the upset Ares kids, they're on the offensive themselves, arguably more so than the Ares campers.

As we crossed the commons area, a fight broke out between the Ares and Apollo cabins. Some Apollo campers armed with firebombs flew over the Ares cabin in a chariot pulled by two pegasi. I'd never seen the chariot before, but it looked like a pretty sweet ride. Soon, the roof of the Ares cabin was burning, and naiads from the canoe lake rushed over to blow water on it. Then the Ares campers called down a curse, and all the Apollo kids' arrows turned to rubber. The Apollo kids kept shooting at the Ares kids, but the arrows bounced off. Two archers ran by, chased by an angry Ares kid who was yelling in poetry: "Curse me, eh? I'll make you pay! / I don't want to rhyme all day!"

This feels a lot like he's trying to validate that yes, the chariot really is his cabin's, and the fact that Clarisse keeps insisting otherwise despite every non-Ares member of the camp being on Michael's side is insulting/undermining the Apollo cabin's claim.

It also sounds like he made sure to have the final word against Clarisse when she still refused to come and fight, which is a very prideful action.

"Nah," Michael said. "Left it at camp. I told Clarisse she could have it. Whatever, you know? Not worth fighting about anymore. But she said it was too late. We'd insulted her honor for the last time or some stupid thing." "Least you tried," I said. Michael shrugged. "Yeah, well, I called her some names when she said she still wouldn't fight. I doubt that helped. Here come the uglies!"

The thing is, though, that we hit a snag with the pride theory at this point for a similar reason to the anger one - as soon as there's something bigger and more immediate to focus on, Michael sets it aside.

He gives up the chariot they were fighting over - the chariot that, rightfully, is the Apollo cabin's - for no reason other than because he knew that they needed the Ares cabin to come and fight and it was the only thing he could think of that he could do to try and change Clarisse's mind - made even more stark when compared with Michael's original, in-camp, reaction to Clarisse's declaration.

Clarisse threw her knife on the Ping-Pong table. "All of you can fight this war without Ares. Until I get satisfaction, no one in my cabin is lifting a finger to help. Have fun dying." The counselors were all too stunned to say anything as Clarisse stormed out of the room. Finally Michael Yew said, "Good riddance."

It's true that Michael does get upset when Clarisse ignores his sacrifice of the chariot and still refuses to fight, but I think that's understandable given the situation (and he is, still, a teenage boy with a temper). It doesn't change the fact that he does it, however, nor the fact that Michael doesn't rescind the sacrifice and bring the chariot with him regardless, despite its potential stragetic uses in the war. Pride certainly doesn't seem to have much if any weight in his final stand, either, so I'd say that like anger, this doesn't actually fit as his fatal flaw, even if it might be somewhat of a personal trait/flaw.

At this point, it seems a little bit like a moot point to poke at Stubbornness because most of the counter-arguments for anger and pride also address this, but I'll quickly go over it anyway because this is the first one that properly shows itself all the way through Michael's appearances.

I've already mentioned the way he doesn't back down in the chariot feud, which is pride, yes, but also stubbornness - he won't leave it alone, won't let Clarisse stake her own claim on it, keeps fighting past the point of necessity over it.

But then we have his final scene, where he stands his ground. There's no indication that Michael even tried to run when the bridge crumbled.

I got unsteadily to my feet. The remaining Apollo campers had almost made it to the end of the bridge, except for Michael Yew, who was perched on one of the suspension cables a few yards away from me, His last arrow was notched in his bow. "Michael, go!" I screamed. "Percy, the bridge!" he called. "It's already weak!" At first I didn't understand. Then I looked down and saw fissures in the pavement. Patches of the road were half melted from Greek fire. The bridge had taken a beating from Kronos's blast and the exploding arrows. "Break it!" Michael yelled. "Use your powers!" [...] I turned to thank Michael Yew, but the words died in my throat. Twenty feet away, a bow lay in the street. Its owner was nowhere to be seen. "No!" I searched the wreckage on my side of the bridge. I stared down at the river. Nothing.

Michael completely ignores Percy telling him to run, tells him to break the bridge that he's currently on and clearly has no intentions of leaving, not with that notched arrow that he then seems to have fired, given that there's no arrow later on. This seems the closest we've got so far to a flaw that goes beyond a simple character flaw and into the fatal category.

Except.

He's a stubborn character, but just like with anger, like with pride, Michael keeps putting it aside when it might otherwise cause issues during the battle - he questions Percy's plans more than once, but despite that, he cedes command to Percy on Williamsburg Bridge, follows his orders instead of continuing with his own strategies, and generally shows that he's exactly the sort of person you want by your side/at your back when you're fighting. Michael's flexible and prepared to change and adapt as the situation does - which is pretty much the opposite of stubbornness, so while at first glance it seemed like a strong candidate it's once again contradicted by the scenes on Williamsburg Bridge.

So, that's the three usual suspects that arise from the chariot feud all falling apart once we rearch the battlefield. Michael is certainly passionate about the fight - more than once, Percy implies that he seems to actually be having a good time on the battlefield and there's no other explanation other than eagerness for this moment:

I sliced through armor like it was made of paper. Snake women exploded. Hellhounds melted to shadow. I slashed and stabbed and whirled, and I might have even laughed once or twice—a crazy laugh that scared me as much as it did my enemies. I was aware of the Apollo campers behind me shooting arrows, disrupting every attempt by the enemy to rally. Finally, the monsters turned and fled—about twenty left alive out of two hundred. I followed with the Apollo campers at my heels. "Yes!" yelled Michael Yew. "That's what I'm talking about!"

But despite all of this, that passion doesn't seem to be based in anger, pride, or stubbornness, despite those being the first things people seem to think of when they think about Michael - and that's why I have two more options added to the list to explore.

Moving on, then, I'll start with Protectiveness.

So, just now I said that stubbornness is what caused Michael's final moments, but is it really? It was certainly part of it, but also - as I mentioned earlier, when talking about anger, Michael's final stand is immediately after some of his siblings have been thrown off the bridge - having already seen at least one other sibling killed earlier:

Hellhounds leaped ahead of the line from time to time. Most were destroyed with arrows, but one got hold of an Apollo camper and dragged him away. I didn't see what happened to him next. I didn't want to know.

Siblings, of course, that as their head counsellor he is the one in charge of and responsible for - it's likely that he's the oldest in the cabin as well (although not guaranteed), and that these are all his younger siblings that are getting killed/seriously injured/status unknown. We're told that the "remaining" Apollo campers are running for the end of the bridge and retreating as far as possible - all of them except for Michael, who was with them to start with but stopped and turned to face the enemy.

Michael and his archers tried to retreat, but Annabeth stayed right beside me, fighting with her knife and mirrored shield as we slowly backed up the bridge.

Followed by

The remaining Apollo campers had almost made it to the end of the bridge, except for Michael Yew, who was perched on one of the suspension cables a few yards away from me. His last arrow was notched in his bow.

This is the point when Michael makes the decision that the bridge has to be destroyed, figures out how to destroy it, and basically orders Percy to do it. I've got a whole other argument about how Michael is the reason Olympus didn't fall that first night of the siege, but at this point I think it's blatantly obvious that the only thing Michael is thinking about is protecting his siblings. Why else would he put himself (tiny archer who should never, ever, be on the front lines - which is hinted at by the fact he still seeks out as high a ground as he can get aka the cables) as the rear guard, the barrier between an entire army and his fleeing siblings?

He's protecting his siblings - he's guarding their backs as they flee to safety and he's finding a way to stop them from being pursued, even if it kills him in the process. It's clearly the right decision to him, the only decision he thinks he can take - and it's textbook fatal flaw.

But before I settle on that, there's one more I want to talk about, which is really an extension of protectiveness, and that's Love.

I'll admit that love always feels like a bit of a cheat to me as a fatal flaw - it's a bit of a catch-all, in that if you argue hard enough you can pull back almost any character to love in some way (which is why Aphrodite is such an underrated yet powerful goddess), and it's nowhere near as obvious for Michael as it is for Apollo and Nico (yes I know what Bianca said, but consider: she didn't know what she was talking about. Nico's fatal flaw is a whole other meta, though), but I think it fills in a few gaps that protectiveness leaves a little open.

There's something that gets overlooked a lot when Michael gets discussed, especially the chariot feud, despite the fact that Percy outright states it.

Michael had taken over the Apollo cabin after Lee Fletcher died in battle last summer.

No sugar-coating, no forgetting about a background character that got all of two pre-death appearances - Lee was killed in battle, and Michael was the one that took over the cabin from him.

We never get any canon information on Michael and Lee's relationship, but obviously they knew each other well, given that Michael's the next most senior kid - and isn't that the kicker. Because this line tells us one very important thing: Michael had to step into his big brother's suddenly-vacated shoes in the immediate aftermath of a battle, with no time to grieve.

We even have a comparison to make right in that same scene:

Even Jake Mason, the hastily appointed new counselor from Hephaestus, managed a faint smile.

Jake's also been shoved into the same role, a role we later find out he never wanted and never recovered from - big brother's dead, your turn to step up and lead the cabin in war. Most of the counsellors are laughing but all Jake can do is a faint smile. He's not okay, and you wouldn't expect him to be - and in The Lost Hero he's even more blatant about the fact that he's not okay (same as Will, in fact) - so, clearly, Michael is not okay, either.

The chariot feud is a whole mess of emotions - anger, pride and stubbornness are ones I've already covered - but I never see anyone talk about grief, and how Michael's been forced to lead a cabin in the wake of the death of his older sibling (the first wartime promotion, really - the Stolls situation isn't quite the same), and how he has to be at least somewhat off-balance, because grief is a tricky little thing and there's no way it hasn't got its nasty little claws in Michael, and that only a few scant months - a year at most - after Lee's death, it's still very, very raw.

And there's a strong correlation between love and grief. "What is grief but love perservering?" "Grief is the price we pay for love" - there's a neverending list of sayings about grief and love.

Then there's the bridge. There's Michael putting Austin and Kayla right at the back, setting traps but a long way back from the front line. There's the way he knew that without the Ares cabin they weren't going to win so he surrendered the chariot in the hopes of getting the front line fighters to join in - the ones that will stand between the archers and the enemy, between his siblings and the enemy. There's, again, the way he stood his ground as a barrier between Kronos and his army and his siblings, even though if Percy hadn't destroyed the bridge he would've been overrun and killed (and he was in such a precarious position that breaking the bridge... well, we know what happened or do we).

But also there's the fact that Michael was fighting at all. The fact that Michael wanted to fight - when Percy gives him the opportunity to take the fight to Kronos, to fight back rather than just numbly defending the bridge/Manhattan/Olympus, Michael seizes it.

His ferrety face was smeared with soot and his quiver was almost empty, but he was smiling like he was having a great time.

"That was my last sonic arrow," Michael said. "A gift from your dad?" I asked. "God of music?" Michael grinned wickedly.

I followed with the Apollo campers at my heels. "Yes!" yelled Michael Yew. "That's what I'm talking about!"

He's right there on the front line, it's so obvious that he's there because he wants to be, because he believes in their cause. Because he loves Apollo.

It's never said in so many words (although we know Apollo has interacted with Michael because he's given him those sonic arrows), but it's there in Michael's actions, in how he never falters in the pro-god side of the war despite losing sibling after sibling after sibling to it - Michael has to love Apollo for anything else to make sense.

It's his siblings he sacrifices himself for, but it's his father he chose to fight for. And it's both that he died for.

If that's not a fatal flaw in action, what is?

#michael yew #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #pjo meta #tsari analyses things #i have so many feelings about Michael okay #he didn't deserve to die #and i sincerely hope he didn't