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cloveroctobers · 3 years

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• ROHAN WASTI•

IG info/bio: @/niceguyroasti | 175k followers | Just here for a bit of fun 🤹🏽‍♂️! They don’t call me the brown handstand king for nuthin, mate 🎪🤸🏽‍♂️

(23) 25 (26) years old

From Wolverhampton, England

Before you ask...no he’s never met Liam Payne but Rohan’s sure he’s a great lad. (He was asked this question in one of his lives, he secretly thinks it was talia from one of her secret burner stan accounts lol) He’s got a nice tune with a boogie w da hoodie that he likes??

Anyways...he’s of Pakistani heritage

His mother used to work for a printing press company until she along with 15 other employees were laid off back in Sargodha

She was out of work for months becoming a stay at home mom (which his father initially wanted)

While his father continued in ironwork

They uprooted their family to the uk two years later after Rohan’s father also got laid off

Rohan was about 7 years old when they moved to Wolverhampton

he picked up on the English language faster than his parents

Always a quick learner

He has two younger brothers

Who are really his cousins/friends of the family that his parents brought home from Pakistan after their parents passed in a tragic accident

he was eleven years old when he met them at the airport and was super excited to have sibs! & even encouraged his mom to let him buy them something they would like sort of like a ice breaker which they seemed to appreciate 😭

His parents wanted him to major in software engineering or any form of engineering really but that quickly became a “hell no” vs “hell yeah” after those courses started to rot his brain?

So what does he do? He decides he’s gonna major in psychology instead!

That seems more of his speed? Kinda? As long as he’s not dealing with that hardware shit then that’s cool with him tbh

Psych held more of his interest since he doesn’t have a issue with the whole science aspect tied into it but it’s deff lengthy and can be draining sometimes too

He doesn’t psychoanalyze everything like our girl marisol does

marisol will be like “hmm...you’re distributing narcissistic behavior based on your superego more than your ego ya know?”

but Rohan will either think it or think nothing of it and just continue to go with the flow lol. He’s that kinda guy

Why was he majoring in this in the first place? Just to say he had the degree in something maybe?

He’s 50/50 thinking he’ll just get the degree he’s halfway there but he really wants to be part of the circus

And now has circus themed tatts that he’s proud of thank u

Always had the obsession with all that comes with the circus, he had his paternal grandfather to thank for that

His grandfather used to juggle along with other forms of entertainment but mostly juggling on the street back in Pakistan to earn $ since there were a lack of jobs

The atmosphere there also was what got him into doing handstands cause why tf not

You can absolutely guess that the acrobats, trapeze acts, and tightrope entertainers are his favorites to watch

His parents just assumed it was a hobby of his and never took him serious even tho he openly said growing up that’s something he would like to do in life

He now understands the purpose of “freak shows” even tho he can honestly say those parts of the circus used to terrify him until he learned that not everyone is the same and there should be no shame in that

He will train on the side until he finishes his degree to make his parents happy but he knows he truly belongs in the circus and that’s where he will be someday whether his parents approve or not— after all this is his life

Lives on campus and is currently looking for a flat off campus to share with a roommate or two (he thought about asking jake & Tim but decided against it FOR NOW)

Mostly had temporary and odd jobs to get by each semester, has not had a steady job due to fully being a full-time student

He’s tried to be a full time student and full time employee (working as a package delivery man) just to burn himself out and never attempted to be a part time employee. It was not something he could handle sorry

His mother spoils him...he’s a bit of a mama’s boy

When it comes to relationships, it never seems to be what he thinks it is? One moment things are going great then the next he’s in the friend zone so he’s never quite sure where he stands with his significant others?

Which is why he thinks it’s safe to always start off in the friend zone or unintentionally puts those who have interest in him in the friend zone because that’s what’s comfortable to him

however if he’s really into you & you’re showing that you’re into him but it’s causal dating or whatever u want to call it? & you up and decide to pick the other over him catching him off guard he’s gonna be in his feelings about it 100% ex.) how he picked erikah over mc the 2nd time around and felt some type of way when erikah hopped on reeses dck

he wants communication even if it’s hard

and he wants someone to love unconditionally and for them to love him back

Definitely likes to sweep his loves off their feet

Especially when he’s kissing! The whole dipping you while you kiss, hand on the small of your back, or hands gripping your waist while he’s pressed up against you. Probably likes to bend you over things or have you pressed up against objects as well—Sign me tf up

I feel like he’s always warm and his hands are surprisingly soft with how many handstands he does in a damn day

He purchases hand moisturizing gloves

can always hold his own weight

enjoys core exercises

Will carry you on his back or his shoulders if you need to see better at festivals/concerts

He’s sexually fluid

It’s canon/hinted that something went on between him & jake when mc walked in that we missed by a few seconds or even a minute but I do think he’s attracted/was to jake and it’s canon that jake is bi bby

Plus he got excited when mc suggested that he’d date jake if jake doesn’t find someone in the villa so BOOM 🤗

Always active as a kid trying to do flips and shit likes he’s doing parkour much like Bobby ending up with bruises, scrapes, and surprisingly no broken bones? Well maybe scratch that last bit out...He did crack his head open a little bit once giving his mother a heart attack but his mother doesn’t dare speak of it — haram!

Loves his sleeveless shirts and silver thick chains

Keeps a five o’clock shadow + might grow a little stubble here and there, feels like it’s part of his signature look

Won’t grow a full beard due to the racism/prejudice he witnessed his father, grandfather, uncles, and cousins go thru!

Will spend coin on some aftershave, none of that cheap shit when it comes to that! Sorry he takes pride in his facial area

probably went thru a mild case of cystic acne when puberty hit & had some insecure moments when it comes to his appearance & still has moments where it’ll hit even tho he beat it thanks to some remedies but tries his best not to let it get to him

He knows how to manage his $ but can splurge every now and then but will never showcase what he has — that’s v corny to him to be overly flashy. He’s looking at y’all @/leggy @/jasper/@/miles

Doesn’t take high quality photos of himself, it’s always zoomed in or extra zoomed in photos—yup he’s got that type of feed

Regrets putting mc in the friend zone & wishes he put more effort in making things work with erikah

But slowly learned to be happy that she’s with Reese even if he wasn’t at first. He really thought there could have been something for him & erikah

he secretly thinks their “relationship” is superficial & based off of shallowness and lust. What else do they have? Nothing that he could have given her but what’s the point in being bitter over this?

Reese is a shit stirrer that thinks he can get anything he wants because of the way he looks & if he knows outside info that he can use again you, he WILL

& erikah? He doesn’t know where her head is at majority of the time. She likes to throw rocks then acts like she didn’t mean to do it but why do it in the first place if you didn’t mean to? + she seems to lose interest fast if they don’t fit her standards besides their physical appearance...yeah Rohan caught all of that

So did she even genuinely like him or want to besides what he brought to the table physically? Who knows

He just thinks people deserve their chance at happiness and he possibly could have had it if he wasn’t standing in his own way...and he absolutely won’t stand in anyone else’s way if they don’t see potential happiness with him

He’s cool with cherry but deep down he knew there wouldn’t be anything long term between him & her after some time. She’s a beautiful/hot girl but she wasn’t his type + he didn’t like how she portrayed herself in the villa even tho she claims there was more than what meets the eye when it comes to her

she proved that to him which she didn’t HAVE to!!! outside of the house and they actually remained friends unlike the now growing distance he has with erikah

I cannoned that him and Hannah give it a go. I think they’d be cute together? She told him from the moment they met at a festival that they were now dating after they ended up holding hands but he didn’t take her seriously since she was a little drunk?

She messaged him two days later asking him when they were going on their date and that was enough for him to give it a go

They only lasted for a couple of months since they outgrew each other slowly but surely. ‘Not all things are temporary,’ he had to remind himself

It was no bad blood thankfully and they continued to be friends with him wishing her well on her new relationship with Carl. He was genuinely happy for her as he always was for his friends

Cannot cook for shit but makes the best coffee with cinnamon & cardamom

once tried to make Aloo Chaat but with a twist! With the use of Potato Skins instead! for a family dinner party and his mum almost sent him home due to the insults his father spewed at rohan trying to fool them all that it was his wife who prepared such a thing

It is evident that his father only enjoys his wife’s cooking

he still makes it for himself when he’s starving despite what his father thinks

Is fluent in Urdu, English came second

Never ashamed of his culture although his father thinks he is...

His fav shows are misfits + the IT crowd and he is currently watching & enjoying truth seekers + mr. selfridge since Tim recommended it to him ofc

his fav American show is the challenge

when asked what his fav American movie is, he got dragged since ppl assumed it would be the greatest showman but he can’t take all the singing...musicals aren’t his thing sorry

But he’ll bust out a rap only if Tim & jake are around, he rarely does it alone

Even looked into producing music for fun but never took THAT seriously

closest with jake & Tim, doesn’t have much of a relationship with the other lads 🤷🏽‍♀️ but there’s no real beef with anyone he knows how to let shit go

But you’ll never catch him having a chat with Reese or following him back on ig. What they had to say to each other was already said and done so?

If erikah agrees to get engaged to Reese, he’s happy for her but cordial to him

if she doesn’t end up with Reese, he’ll be her shoulder to lean on if she needs it

his love language is physical touch with a splash of acts of service

Commonly sleeps curled up, his mum says he was like that in the womb as well—(same dude)

He’s probably a good 5’9 - 5’7 on bad days

Is he a Pisces? Idk

His signature cologne is probably Antaeus by Chanel which is described to have notes of: lemon, lime, coriander and sage w. A blend of thyme, basil and rose

Loves black pepper, specifically garlic, onion, black pepper, and sea salt all mixed together

has a vitiligo spot on the right side of his lower spine that is commonly covered with the waistband of whatever bottoms he has on

has a pogo stick

Wants to go skydiving next, has gone bungee jumping—which was such a adrenaline rush!!!

probably knows a few tips on how to survive in the wild or if the apocalypse hits...you can never be too sure

If he ever gets a pet he might get something like: Satanic Leaf tailed Gecko, Kinkajou, or a Pac-Man frog. He likes being different okay

he actually enjoyed season 3 despite the negative remarks made about it. It was “different” basically drama free which was a shocker knowing how production likes to take things take a shot every time ro explains his decisions/opinions as such lol

BUT he won’t go as far to say he liked it better than his season yet he did enjoy keeping up with it. He def has a crush on iona, aj, vieve, Camilo & tai

Yasmin actually joined one of his lives, which he doesn’t do too often but he couldn’t sleep one night and thought he’d give it a go. She’s quite nice & quiet but he ultimately felt calm around her + they bonded over bohemian lifestyle & his love for the circus + a little about their cultures

Long term goals? He doesn’t have a set timeline of when he wants everything to happen because pressure is not fun

but he wants to be in love and loved back, wants to be married, wants to have kids, wants to try out the circus for awhile and if that doesn’t work out he can always fall back on his psych degree—he just wants to be happy and share that with someone, that’s one of the biggest adventures he can possibly have

His anthem = Blxst, “No Love Lost”

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imaginative-spirit · 4 years

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hii! i found your twitter acc when i was searching for sefikura meta/analysis, and i found your tweet! i wanted to ask if you know some blog posts (or any posts) of their relationship analysis, as i am quite new to the whole ffvii series and i am intrigued by their relationship. i wanted to ask through cc but i noticed you dont have curiouscat so i’m asking through tumblr, sorry ;;

I didn’t mean to put all of this under a readmore but tumblr is being an ass so that’s what we’re doing now, I guess...

Hello!! Unfortunately I can’t really come up with anything on the spot, because despite seeing posts like that around before, I’m very unorganized and bad at keeping track of posts... so I decided to write you one on the spot instead, lmao!! I’ve been planning to write a more coherent, longer analysis for a while but still haven’t gotten around to it, but I’ll share some of my condensed thoughts here. The sefikura relationship is what intrigues me most about FFVII after all, and I usually yell quite a lot about them on twitter!

You say you’re new to FFVII, which means that I should definitely give a spoiler warning here. I’m going to address spoilery stuff from the OG, Remake and also some of the compilation material, because it’s hard to talk about their relationship without doing so. (I’ll also assume you’re familiar enough with the world of FFVII to know what I mean when I talk about stuff like SOLDIER, Shinra, Jenova, the Lifestream and such... this would get too long if I explained all of that here, lol)

Okay, so. Cloud and Sephiroth are narrative foils, which means their stories and arcs parallel each other in many ways. The most central themes surrounding them are their loneliness, sadness and how they cope with trauma.

Sephiroth was most likely raised by Hojo in a Shinra lab, and if you know Hojo, you know that there’s no way Sephiroth was treated as anything but an experiment. He never knew his mother, and the only person he had any respect for - Professor Gast - vanished when he was young and this seems to have given him abandonment issues. Cloud, on the other hand, had a mother but not much else. He felt alienated by the other children growing up in Nibelheim and seems to have been generally disliked by the adults as well, due to them blaming him for the time Tifa got hurt. In other words, they were both very lonely as children.

Shinra sent Sephiroth to war when he was very young (people disagree quite a lot on how old Sephiroth actually is but it’s assumed that he was around 12), and as the years went by, Sephiroth became the poster child of SOLDIER. We know that Cloud grew to idolize Sephiroth for how strong and brave the media made him out to be (A.K.A. had a celebrity crush on him), and that was what inspired Cloud to leave town and try to join SOLDIER.

As we see in the prequel game Crisis Core, Sephiroth at this point is well-respected by his peers after his efforts in conquering Wutai. His two only friends are Genesis and Angeal, who are also SOLDIER 1st Class, but they end up leaving SOLDIER, which means Sephiroth gets left behind. Considering that he already had abandonment issues to begin with, being abandoned by his only friends must’ve hit hard. I’d say this sets the foundation for Sephiroth’s downward spiral. However, at this point, I would argue that Sephiroth is still a good person at heart, despite all the trauma he has endured. He persists, refusing to hunt down his deserter friends, and even begins a hesitant friendship with Zack, who was Angeal’s apprentice.

Cloud befriends Zack as well, but doesn’t make it into SOLDIER and instead remains in the ordinary Shinra infantry, which is a crushing loss for him because he can’t achieve his dream. It’s at this point I like to imagine that if Zack had introduced Sephiroth and Cloud to one another, things could’ve gone better. Sephiroth is older than Cloud and outranks him, but with how isolated Sephiroth has been for his entire life I think there’s potential for a meaningful friendship here. They’re both very lonely and neither of them is really a people-person, so I think they’d get along well once Cloud gets over his hero-worship and Sephiroth manages to open up a bit. I would say that sefikura, if Nibelheim didn’t happen, has the potential to be a healthy relationship.

But of course, that’s not how canon goes. The Nibelheim mission happens, Sephiroth finds out that he’s not human and finally snaps after years of mistreatment, burning the town to the ground. Cloud manages to kill Sephiroth, ends up spending several years as an experiment, gets injected with Jenova cells, goes into a coma, wakes up just in time to watch Zack die, and ends up so traumatized that he creates a false identity for himself as a former SOLDIER 1st Class.

We’ve now reached OG FFVII. At this point, Sephiroth, while technically dead and chilling in the Lifestream, uses Jenova as a vessel to move around and takes advantage of Cloud, using him as a puppet for his own gains. He constantly dehumanizes Cloud and generally doesn’t give a damn about him as a person, while Cloud resents Sephiroth but can’t resist his manipulations. In a lot of ways, I think Sephiroth projects his own trauma onto Cloud here, because if Sephiroth had to suffer as Shinra’s puppet for his entire life, then Cloud should suffer as Sephiroth’s puppet as well. As a victim of horrific abuse, Sephiroth has a lot of justified anger, but he takes it out on the wrong person entirely. It’s definitely a very unhealthy situation.

But of course, unlike Sephiroth, Cloud doesn’t let his trauma define him. He reaches his breaking point and falls apart completely, but he gets back up, because unlike Sephiroth, he has a support system of friends who stand by his side and work together with him to defeat Sephiroth at the end of the game. For most of his life, Cloud has been chasing Sephiroth. This is where he finally catches up and surpasses him.

And here, the tables turn. Cloud kills Sephiroth but that’s never stopped Sephiroth before. This is where Sephiroth first develops his Cloud-obsession. He fixates on Cloud so hard that his hatred keeps him from completely fading away into the Lifestream. Cloud is literally his lifeline. (Isn’t it romantic? lol) He returns in the sequel movie Advent Children, where he fights Cloud one-on-one and basically just taunts him for 10 minutes before Cloud kills him again. It’s implied that Sephiroth can keep coming back as long as Cloud exists as well.

Canon beyond this has, for a long time, been unknown territory. There’s a sequel game called Dirge of Cerberus that the fandom at large pretends doesn’t exist because it’s... kinda weird to say the least, lol. And it doesn’t really have anything to do with sefikura anyway. People have written post-canon sefikura as something that continues to be toxic, but there’s also fic that offers redemption and forgiveness for Sephiroth, acknowledging that he was a victim too. It’s left very open-ended.

All of this basically explains how I see sefikura. They’re two people who were alike in many ways, who could have been friends before everything fell apart around them, if things had been different. But they never did meet, before it was too late. Instead, they keep chasing each other, full of hate even though they’re probably the only people in the world who could truly understand each other’s trauma. The only real difference is that Cloud had friends to back him up while Sephiroth was abandoned, and I really, truly wish they could get an opportunity to reach some sort of understanding. And that would basically be it...

...but then the Remake happened. Diving into speculation territory here. I firmly believe that the Sephiroth we see in the Remake is a time traveller, or is at least aware of the future to some degree, and that the remake is actually a sequel where Sephiroth is quite literally remaking OG ffvii. He’s completely obsessed with Cloud to a degree that he never was in the OG, and considering how loyal the developers stayed to the characterization of basically every other OG character this immediately stuck out to me like a sore thumb even though it took me until the end of the game to piece it together.

I’m not kidding here. Sephiroth is desperate for Cloud’s attention in the Remake. He's constantly trying to touch Cloud, everything he says to Cloud makes him sound like a pining ex-husband, and he generally doesn’t do anything to harm Cloud except scaring him shitless simply by showing up. He actually has quite a few moments when he’s very gentle with Cloud. At the end of the game he basically even proposes to Cloud by asking Cloud to join him and genuinely seems upset when Cloud rejects him. And even then, he claims he doesn’t want Cloud (nor himself) to die.

For the life of me, I can’t wrap my head around what Sephiroth’s goal is in the Remake and I have no idea what they’re planning to do with his character in future parts, but I’m very excited to find out. The sefikura content in the Remake was very delicious and at this point the only thing they could do to surpass it in the future would be to have them actually make out on screen, lmao.

I hope this is coherent enough to read, I basically just tried to condense everything I could into a neat little essay and there’s definitely things I didn’t mention here, lol. I’ll write a proper, more well-thought out analysis another time!

Also, if you want to ask me anything else or talk to me about sefikura in general, my DMs are always open, both here and on twitter ;D

#hhhhhh I didn't mean for the entire thing to end up under a readmore but tumblr is a bitch and I can't fix it >:(#adventures in answering asks #sefikura #ffvii #Anonymous

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gaymirajane · 7 years

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Droplets (Juvia Lockser character study)

Juvia reflects on her time in Fairy Tail, and all the regrets she now has a result of it.

ANTI-GR//UVIA AND ANTI-CANON!JUVIA. THIS IS MEANT FOR THE PURPOSE OF A CHARACTER STUDY AND TO HELP ME WRITE JUVIA BETTER. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE READ IN A WAY THAT ATTACKS PEOPLE WHO SHIP JUVIA WITH GRAY.

Words- 1.5k

Pairings- N/A. Juvia central

Warnings- depression, anxiety, abusive relationships, reference to eating disorders

Juvia despised the rain. Although the practical reasons for this, the ones many other people gave for making the exact same statement, were completely lost on her.

It's cold! Juvia's body was made of water; it could be frozen, but it did not freeze. It makes the ground wet! The feeling of water sliding over her black boots was so familiar to Juvia, she hardly even registered it anymore. Although, when she did, it felt less like water and more like bile, sliding down her throat with an ease that could only come to be through years of practice.

No, Juvia didn't hate the rain for a frivolous or self-indulgent reason; she hated the rain simply because it made her sad. Juvia knew that there were definitely better names for it (melancholy, anguish, sorrow), but still she only recognised it as Sadness. But this Sadness was surreal. Unlike anything she had ever experienced before, the Sadness Juvia felt when she saw the clear droplets slither their way down her windowpane was as vast and encompassing as the ocean itself, and just as relentless.

It was a constant reminder how weak she was, and how alone. It drove everyone away, her family, her friends, her guild. Everyone was swept away by the rain. Everyone except Juvia. Because she was the rain, and so could not be hurt by it. Because she didn’t deserve them in her life to begin with. Juvia was nothing and she was a fool to think that she could be anything more.

What did she even try to be, anyway?

A daughter to a mother who was dead and a father who never wanted her. He still didn’t, and Juvia didn’t blame him. She didn’t want Juvia, either.

A wizard to a guild that did nothing but use her, and then to a guild who showed her kindness that she would never deserve. Juvia was rotten, and everything she touched turned to dust. Worse, it turned to water; an all encompassing nothingness that made up so much of herself that she hated it even more.

Juvia glanced to the sky, pulling the umbrella back and letting mother nature cradle her blotchy features. It was freezing. It was soothing. It made her feel real again.

The rain wasn't always so bad, she decided. It showed her that she was still connected to the Earth that she occupied, and that nature was not only around her, but also a part of her. On occasion that was a comfort, and on days when Juvia felt Sadness as daunting as how she felt now, the heavens opened and the sky cried with her.

She missed Gray.

It was raining when we first met, Juvia thinks, even if it is an obvious statement to make. It was always raining back then, after all. Juvia kicks an empty bottle of Sake into the gutter, watching as it rolls helplessly in the small flood and then, floundering, disappears into the black abyss of the drain. Juvia smiles wryly. Alcohol is a good stain remover, but no amount of it could erase the memories of her sins from her mind. She had already tried that, after all, and it only heightened her self-awareness, or rather the awareness of herself, and who she had become.

She wasn’t in love with Gray.

It was a shock to everyone besides her, ironically enough. Even Gray had stumbled over his words, his shirt becoming lost along with his train of thoughts as he struggled to comprehend her words.

I’m breaking up with you.

A funny choice of phrase, really, considering she would never truly be free from Gray, or rather who she believed him to be. Not unless she left Fairy Tail, a prospect as daunting as the sun at dawn, or the moon rippling across a summer lake. Juvia was a lot of things, but she didn’t think strong was one of them. Physically, she was in great shape, but mentally... Juvia watches the wind tear leaves from their branches, and a small, undiscriminating sob pries itself from her pursed lips.

Love was like a set of scales, where reality and dreams are balanced. As soon as she has set eyes on Gray- who Juvia had perceived to be her dream man- the scales had tipped in his favour, and suddenly he could do no wrong. And in some ways that was still true; Juvia is the one who had wronged him for more years then she could ever repent for, and yet, in some ways, she knew that he had wronged her as well.

For example, whenever he said that he loved her. A lie, of course, in the same way it was a lie when she said it back. In her lust-fogged mind, nothing but sweet-nothings were registered, and Juvia could not hear the deliciously sweet lies dripping from her tongue. Gray was a great wizard and an even better man, and he had issues which were as deeply embedded into his core as Juvia’s own. She hadn’t helped him, hadn’t considered how her actions would affect him in the long run.

That was her greatest sin; not considering his feelings about any of this.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t told her, on more than one occasion, that her ministrations were unwelcome. Unwarranted. That she could choose anyone from the guild and it would still somehow make more sense than the feckless way she acted around Gray. And yet she pushed and pushed, hoping to push herself into his heart and instead pushing him further away than ever. Her desperation to be loved by him blinded her to his lack of feelings for her. It was sad, and pathetic, and exactly what Juvia expected from herself.

She wasn’t in love with him, of course, but rather the idea of him. This idealised version of Gray Fullbuster that she had plastered over her walls and ingrained into her heart. But he did not exist; Gray- the real Gray- was flawed, the same as every member of Fairy Tail was, and these flaws are what brought to the conclusion that should have been obvious from the start; Gray was dating her out of pity, not any real affection, or the distorted, charred emotion that Juvia called ‘love’. Once again she had neglected to realise that Gray was unhappy, or at the very least uncomfortable. If she could not see that, what else had she failed to realise?

Gajeel- stars!- when was the last time she had spoken to him, let alone asked to take a job together? During her Phantom days, Gajeel had been the consistently inconsistent person in Juvia’s life whom she adored, an anchor that offered her support in the likelihood that she floated away, lost in her own waters. She had cared enough about him to buy his music, invite him into a guild, help him to make friends... and for what? To abandon him years later, for a fruitless love that was as much an obsession as it was an affection?

Juvia felt sick.

Cana, Mirajane, Erza, Wendy... so many people in the guild had shown her kindness, and all she had given them was inconvenience and grief. It was deplorable, really, how poorly she had treated them, Lucy especially.

Lucy Heartfilia, a woman who gave nothing but warmth and accepted all of the cool hardness that Juvia reciprocated with with nothing but an airy laugh and a bright smile. She was the first woman to be nice to Juvia without expecting anything in return, and that had meant everything to Juvia at one point. Who had she become, to forget something as significant as that in such a whimsical and nonchalant fashion?

With a slight stumble, Juvia fell behind the park bench and dropped the umbrella, throwing up yesterday’s lunch with an indignant retch. She had not eaten since then, but now realised how hungry she had become. Still, she knew she would not eat today. She had failed her mind and her morals, it was only a small a small step to fail her body as well.

Wiping her mouth with back of her hand, Juvia turns her head back to the sky. Her eyes were swollen, but still they watered again, transforming the grey expanse into broken and cloudy remnants. She thought about her time in Fairy Tail, about how she had gone from a villain, to part of a family, before reverting back to an unfavourable attitude towards other. In that moment, with her physical and mental form low to the ground, but eyes cast up to the heavens, Juvia made an oath to herself.

Never again would she force a man or woman to be with her out of her own selfishness alone. Never again would she hope for the injury of a comrade to aid her own tedious quest for ‘love’. Never again would she become the low-down, disgusting person who she had seen reflected in the mirror on two separate occasions in her life. Never again would she feel ashamed to be Juvia Lockser.

Never again.

#anti gruvia #Juvia lockser #my writing #my fanfiction #anti canon juvia #anti canon #tbh #tw: depressing thoughts #tw: eating problems #tw: anxiety

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macdnald-old-blog · 7 years

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Under the cut you will find Mary’s app, minus the para sample + the ooc info!

* DEVELOPMENT :

Character Name, age, pronouns and house:

M A R Y / M A R I A ;; her name is biblical and means sea of bitterness, rebellion and wished for child. These fit Mary quite well: while she tries hard not to be a cynic, a bitterness sits inside her and makes her look at the world with a dark look; she’s filled with determination to do what is right and to stand up against those who are in her eyes wrong, and she is thus rebellious (she also grew up pranking her sister and brothers quite a lot), and Mary waswished for, as her parents are nothing but loving.

The Mary/Maria thing is, I think, a confusing one and I will clear that up right away: Mary’s mother is Puerto Rican and her father is Scottish, and when she was born they could not quitedecide if they wanted to name their first daughter the English or Spanish name of Mary/Maria. Her birth certificate says Mary, and it’s the name she goes by at Hogwarts, but to her mother and extended maternal family, she has always been Maria. As she’s proud of her Puerto Rican roots, Mary doesn’t keep quiet with this, and loves the fact that she kind of has twonames.

A G A T H A ;; this name was picked because of the famous writer Agatha Christie, whose books Mary’s parents loved deeply. It means good woman, which I do truly think Mary is, despite her faults and flaws.

M A C D O N A L D ;; a Scottish surname of a proud family that lives in the Scottish highlands. A long line of farmers, they’re hardworking and no-nonsense, but have great love and respect in their heart. Mary loves her name, except for the fact that a lot of people tended to sing Old MacDonald whenever they saw her or her siblings in town: it simply grew annoying.

A G E ;; sixteen years old. Mary was born October 25th 1959, which makes her a Scorpio:

Positive traits include magnetic charisma, ambition, drive, a penetrating mind, curiosity, intensity of focus, emotional depth, consistency, persistence, willpower, and the potential for inner transformation and regeneration Negative traits include selfishness, obsessiveness, vindictiveness, hypersensitivity,ruthlessness, cynicism, an inability to understand the word “moderation,” and jealousy

P R O N O U N S ;; she/her.

H O U S E ;; Gryffindor.

Choose five of the follow questions to answer.

What is their patronus? Why does this fit your character?

The P H O E N I X is a creature that’s constantly reborn, that constantly rises from its ashes. One of my most important themes for Mary is that she always gets up. Always. Whatever might knock her down, whatever might make her feel more lost than anything, she gets back up. I feel like this fits in with the Phoenix beautifully ( and while I feel a little guilty using a ‘rare’ patronus, I cannot help but love this one so much for her ).

Phoenixes are also creatures that are associated to fire a lot and while Mary had quite the fear of fire as a child, she is firehearted. She’s warm and compassionate and inflammatory and spirited. She’s someone who can burn entire empire and walk over its ashes as well as give warmth to those who need it ( she will usually pick the latter, but in the future she has no trouble fighting back with gritted teeth ).

This bird also doesn’t die, and Mary is ( in canon ) the only one of our beautiful trinity who comes out of the war physically & mentally healthy, unlike Lily, who dies and Alice, who loses her mind. Many others she loves die too, and to her it will more than often feel like a burden than a gift; for what is life without your loved ones there by your side?

The Chinese Phoenix is also thought of as a gentle creature, and while Mary has her rough edges and dark sides, I do believe she is gentle in her core. With her friends, she’s warm and loving and barely ever brash, and with strangers she will hardly be rude unless they give her reason to be.

In Chinese culture, when a house was decorated with a Phoenix, this meant the people living there were loyal and honest. Mary is loyal to her very core and could never be moved to betray those she love; she would die, if she could keep them safe. As she’s not a good liar, Mary’s also honest; she’s not always happy about this fact, as it doesn’t always benefit her, but it does make her an outspoken individual.

What is their wand and their wand core? Why does this fit your character?

Sycamore, Dragon Heart String, 12 ½ inches, reasonably supple.

The sycamore makes a questing wand, eager for new experience and losing brilliance if engaged in mundane activities. It is a quirk of these handsome wands that they may combust if allowed to become ‘bored,’ and many witches and wizards, settling down into middle age, are disconcerted to find their trusty wand bursting into flame in their hand as they ask it, one more time, to fetch their slippers. As may be deduced, the sycamore’s ideal owner is curious, vital and adventurous, and when paired with such an owner, it demonstrates a capacity to learn and adapt that earns it a rightful place among the world’s most highly-prized wand woods.

I think this fits Mary quite well; she gets restless when there is nothing to do and doesn’t feel inspired when she’s doing something that doesn’t interest her. Mary, even though her spirit is somewhat damaged at the moment, is a vivacious being, someone who does not do anything half-heartedly.

I chose the Dragon Heartstring, mostly because I really didn’t think a Unicorn Hair core would fit; Mary would, even though she hates it, dabble in some darker spells if it could save lives. I also didn’t think the Phoenix feather core fit as well as the Dragon one did. Dragon Heartstring cores fit fast learners, and Mary definitely is that. The wand is also temperamental, and so is Mary.

What is a song lyric that represents your character?

i’d rather be spitting blood // than have this silence fuck me up (…) i’d rather have broken bones // than feel myself turn to stone ( troye sivan, the quiet. )

How would your character react if they saw an older student bullying a first year Muggleborn?

First, Mary would understand; she has been in that situation more than often, has seen her best friend Lily end up in that situation ( even having been bullied by someone who called her a friend ) and knows what it is like. She knows how it makes your skin crawl with a feeling of powerlessness; how useless the anger you feel usually is, as these pureblood elitists will not change their mind because of you; she knows how somewhere, even though you may not like it, there is also fear sneaking in the back of your mind, because this is what a great part of the wizarding community thinks.

Secondly, there would be anger. Because of her understanding of the situation – better than most, considering last year – she will feel an outrage, because this shouldn’t be happening. Bullying in the first place is something that makes her feel nauseous, but when it’s based on something like this, it also causes a rage. She will use this to speak up, to show the older student that this not okay: because Mary will never sit idly by and watch injustice happen under her nose. She’ll snap and her words will be cutting and her eyes will be narrowed. Fear will not be present, not when there is something to be done.

Lastly, there would be comfort. Once the older student vanishes ( which, hopefully, is sooner rather than later ) she will look after the younger student her brothers do for her with soothing words and a few promises she cannot keep. Mary is compassionate and warm, and while it could become a weakness, it is a strength at present time: it makes her stand up to injustice and look after those who need it.

Is you character a virgin? How do they view sex? What’s their sexuality? Does their gender align to their canon gender?

Mary is not a virgin. She lost her virginity just before Christmas break last school year at the age of sixteen to someone who did not mean too much to her in that way: they were both a bit more than tipsy, both attracted to each other and both filled with the energy that had been pulsing through the party. It was no bad experience; Mary doesn’t feel regret about not losing her virginity to someone who meant a little more to her, as in her eyes it’s not a big deal.

Even though Mary was raised Christian and is still religious, her thoughts on sex do not really fit her upbringing: she feels no need to wait for marriage and doesn’t think sex should just be between two people. No, Mary thinks sex is something that people should simply do if they want to, and not do if they don’t want to. She, herself, has not yet has sex with someone sheloved, and this is something that doesn’t bother her at all: she is, after all, young, and she’s having fun.

( internalised ) biphobia tw for the coming paragraph

Her sexuality is something she did struggle a little more with than sex in general. Mary is bisexual, and this is something that wasn’t much of a surprise to her, but it did take a while for her to figure it out. Mary was confused about liking girls for a few years, was not sure how shecould, as she liked boys as well. She knew some girls liked girls and she was okay with that, but she felt like that wasn’t just the case for her. Eventually she came across the termbisexual, and a weight seemed to roll off her shoulders when she did. Mary took the label and applied it upon herself, coming out to her friends with a slight nonchalance but a relieved grin still on her lips. She hasn’t told her family yet and knows she won’t until she really has to. With all the things going on around her, she doesn’t wish to deal with the potential reaction her parents might have.

Still, there is no shame surrounding her sexuality. Mary might not have come out to her parents, but she is not necessarily quiet about her sexuality to her friends and other schoolmates. She takes pride in it, actually —– Mary might be an insecure person, but she does take pride in the ways she can identify. She’s proudly half-latina, she’s proudly muggleborn and she’s proudly bisexual.

Mary identifies as a woman and has never questioned her gender much. She’s got sides that are very traditionally feminine and sides that are more traditionally masculine, and she won’t let people judge her for either of those. She can wear lipstick and play football, can wear dresses and still kick ass and she takes pride in her being a woman.

What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to them? What’s the worst?

T H E B E S T ( discovering she’s a witch )

Mary turns eleven and this is what she knows: she’s a farm girl, she prefers speaking Spanish because then she gets to roll her R’s, she has two brothers and one sister, she is good at history and bad at maths, and strange things happen to her. Strange things that no one can quite explain, strange things that excite and frighten her at the same time. Strange things that happen when she’s happy or angry or scared.

One time, Carlos cut all the hair off her favourite doll’s head and Mary got so angry that his favourite car exploded in little pieces of plastic.

Mary turns eleven and a day and she knows all the same things and this: she is a witch. Suddenly there is an explanation for all these sparks and explosions, and Mary for a moment looks at her parents in fear, because doesn’t the bible say magic is evil? But the MacDonalds are accepting and open-minded and shake their head, because if magic flows through her daughter, there is no way it could be evil.

And so Mary accepts the truth and makes it her own. She’s a witch, and she’s proud and intrigued, as there are a thousand things she does not know yet. She gets her books and her wand and her robes, and her parents tell her she can take one of the family cats with her so she doesn’t have to miss him, and Mary dreams of a beautifully big castle with endless opportunities.

This moment in her life, of course, leads to many more beautiful ones. It leads to her meeting Alice and Lily, who soon become two new siblings of hers. It leads to her discovering that she has great power and that she can use it in incredible ways. It leads to her finding out about Quidditch and actually making it on the team — Mary played football back at home, you see and the team very much reminds her of her siblings and the sport of football, too. It leads to tasting Fizzing Whizbees and Chocolate Frogs. It leads to learning about new creatures and parts of history she did not now yet. It leads to meeting people who inspire her constantly. It leads to her growing as a person and a witch.

It also leads to things that are less pretty. It leads to her discovering that discrimination is a big part of the wizarding culture as well. It leads to her hearing slurs thrown at her and her red-haired sister. It leads to moments where she fails at spells. It leads to tumbling down stairs and losing her way and feeling overwhelmed with all these things that are new to her. It leads to being the victim of an Unforgivable curse. It leads to her being told that there is nothing they can do. It leads to her feeling lost and unsafe at a place that had become her second home. It leads to Hogwarts being attacked and Mary finding herself in a battle at sixteen years old. It leads to her seeing the dead bodies of people who taught her, of people she saw in the hallways. It leads to her learning of a war where people like herself and her friends are constantly killed for the things they are labelled to be.

Still, it’s the best thing that ever happened to her, and even though there are many bad things that happened because she entered the wizarding world at age eleven, she would never go back to just being a muggle.

T H E W O R S T ( mulciber )

She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was pure coincidence that it was her who had been there. It had not been personal, but it was, of course it still was.

You cannot take someone’s will away and say it wasn’t personal. You cannot cause mental harm to someone and say that it wasn’t even that bad. You should not even be able to get away with a thing like that, but Arjun Mulciber did.

He did, and left Mary fractured and confused, even if she didn’t like to admit it.

Perhaps the fact that it was random, that it could all be blamed on coincidence, was what made it even worse: Mary felt guilty wishing this hadn’t happened to her, as that would mean it would have happened to someone else. Another muggleborn, who was condemned for something they had no power over. And while she hated what had happened, while it made a cold feeling run over her spine whenever she thought of it, she could never wish it upon someone else.

– / –

Here’s the thing about someone taking away your will and forcing you to do things: it makes you distrustful of your own body, makes you feel unsafe wherever you go. While no physical harm had come to Mary when she was cursed, there was plenty of harm caused mentally. She had suddenly grown paranoid and scared, was damaged in a way she didn’t like to think about.

Mary, in all honesty, felt weak the moment the curse broke and even weaker now that months have passed. Because she is still not over it, is still worried about seeing his face again, is still haunted by that one afternoon and all the things that followed.

Maybe, if he’d been expelled, things would have been better. Maybe then, Mary would be able to move on and feel a little safer in the castle that was supposed to be her home. But he was still at Hogwarts, he was still laughing with friends and taking the same classes she would take next year. He was still there, very much okay, and she was, too, but she was not okay at all.

Her confrontation with Mulciber is something that has changed Mary. It has given her a new kind of bravery, but also more fears. It has given her paranoia, but also determination. It has given her a reason to cower in a corner, but that is not her, and so it has also given her a reason to move on with her head high and her entire being filled with a determination to prove people like him wrong.

Because if there’s one thing she’s sure of ( and there are not many of those ), it’s that she won’t allow this to happen to anyone else as long as she has a say in it.

Is there anyone they would kill for? Would they die for anyone? Where does that list differ?

Mary is, in the end, a selfless being. She looks at the war and wishes to fight to contribute to the greater good, to stand up for what is right and work towards a future of freedom and safety. Because of this, she would have no trouble dying in the war if it was meaningful. If she could save a life, she would, if she could buy a group of people time by facing death with a raised chin, she would. Mary isn’t necessarily scared to die, but she is scared of dying for no reason, with no purpose at all.

When I say that Mary would die to save a life, I don’t mean any life, of course. Mary might be noble and selfless, but she’s not reckless. She’s seen Death Eaters, she’s been attacked by a purist and she knows that she wouldn’t die for them. She wouldn’t die for people who’d kill her if they got the chance, wouldn’t die for people who are even less aggressive about their discrimination.

Still, the list for people she would die for is long: on top, of course, are her family and friends. Then follow classmates and students that are not blood purists, civilians, other victims of the war, etcetera, etcetera. Honestly, Mary hasn’t spent to much time thinking about it, but in this sense she’s very much Gryffindor: she is ready to die in battle, ready to die a death that is glorious and heroic. Mary is loyal and committed and is set on taking a big part in this war, as she feels like she has no choice either way.

Killing, however, is a different story. It’s not only a sin, but also just something that is very much wrong in Mary’s eyes. Still, she is not naive and not at all pacifistic, and knows the Death Eaters do things much worse than kill. While she would never kill out of choice, she knows that – if she were to become part of the war – she might have to choose between killing or being killed, and as it’s a war, she thinks she would be able to. Not that she likes the idea of it much.

If her killing somebody would save somebody she loved, she would without a thought. Mary is very much human and would not think about the moral side of it all ( which she would, was it her own life that was at stake ), as she will go to the end of the world to keep those she loves safe. The people she would kill for are Alice and Lily, naturally, all of her other friends and her family members.

As for other people, I’m not sure. There’s a lot of different scenarios to consider and the options are endless and I won’t bore you too much with them. If Mary could save a life by taking a other, she would feel very conflicted ( if this life didn’t belong to a loved one ) and I think it all depends on the situation, on who these people are and what the stakes exactly are. I can’t give a proper answer, but I do know that Mary would kill to save some lives, even though she doesn’t know this yet. Of course, she will always try to stun first.

How do they feel about the war? Do they plan on getting (more) involved?

Mary feels a wide range of emotions when it comes to the war:

- She is A N G R Y. Angry, because the school that was supposed to be a safe place was attacked, because there is a movement in the world that is against a certain group of people, a group that is willing to use violence to reach their goal, which is based on a crooked ideology. She is angry that there is discrimination, angry because it makes no sense and is only making the world a place that is scary and filled with terror. Mary knows the effects discrimination can have — her mother is a Puerto Rican living in a small Scottish town, after all — and has always been very strongly against it. The fact that blood purism has such a large following makes her feel hot with rage, in all honesty, because it’s simply wrong. A lot of her anger is also caused by a feeling of powerlessness. There is not much she can do, at this point, as she is still in school and has not even finished her education. And even if she was a fully qualified witch who no longer had to attend classes, there is only so little she can do. It’s frustrating to know that this war comes from a long, long history of purist thoughts and anti-muggle sentiments, and that it because of that won’t disappear as quickly as she would like. It’s frustrating to know that even though she might work her hardest and try her best to influence the world around her, it won’t be enough. This, of course, does not mean that Mary won’t try.

- She is F R I G H T E N E D. Fear is a funny thing, Mary learned last year. It’s like a different person altogether, living in a corner of your mind, and even when you think they’re gone, they’re still there. Whispering, softly making your muscles tense because the world around you is slowly falling apart and so are you, and while it’s enough to make someone angry, it’s also really scary. Mary knows what some people are capable of, has seen it, has felt it, and it’s simply unnerving to know what they are willing to do for their cause. Mary is frightened for the future and what is to come. She is terrified that the war will only get worse, that it will cost the lives of people she holds so very dear, that she will lose herself. She doesn’t like to admit it, but her fear is a thing that greatly influences her. It’s part of her, and Mary prefers to deny it rather than accept it, as she feels weak for being scared. Of course, it’s only logical that she is: this war is a terrifying one, after all.

- She is D E T E R M I N E D. The two emotions mentioned before both lead to Mary feeling determined. She’s someone who gets up every time, someone who will never be fully beaten down no matter what. Mary is determined to stand up for what is right, to fight in this war and show people that she will not stand for this injustice, that there is no way to silence her besides ending her life. Last years happenings had great impact on her, and while they have left her spirit somewhat fractured and her heart filled with invisible scars, she is trying to use her negative experiences to learn. Mary wishes to become an Auror, to practice the law the way she deems right. She wants to become part of the Ministry, an institution she does not back fully. That, however, is just another reason for her to work there: to be part of something that feels corrupt to her. The only way to make sure things are one the right way is to do it yourself, after all.

I don’t think I need to clarify it, but the answer is yes, Mary does plan on getting involved. She’s filled with determination, fear and anger and with those three emotions swirling through her being she will not sit by idly as a war rages on. Mary doesn’t know in what way she wishes to get more involved, as she doesn’t know what ways there are for her to do so. All she knows is that, eventually, she will. And rather sooner than later.

What’s their best class? How will that skill benefit them as they begin looking for a job?

Mary is, usually, best at Defense. It’s a class that comes natural to her, something that she also just enjoys very much. It’s a very physical and practical subject, and while Mary is good at theoretical stuff, these kind of things simply come more natural to her. She’s able to channel her emotions into her magic quite well, which is why spells as the Patronus are ones that she likes most.

It is not, however, her favourite class: the teacher changes every year, of course, which is something that very much bothers her. It’s tiring to her that she has to adjust to a new professor each year. No, Mary’s favourite subject is Transfiguration: she holds an immense amount of respect for Minerva McGonagall and as the class is a challenge it’s something that constantly keeps her interested and alert. She’s not as good in it as she’d like, but she’s never been bad at it.

In all honesty, Mary’s quite a good student. She’s skilled in many departments of magic and very much enjoys learning. It does depend on the teacher how motivated she is. With History, for example, she’s not very motivated because Binns is not the most inspirational teacher, to put it lightly. She dropped the subject because of this, but does enjoy reading history books very much ( it was one of her favourite subjects in elementary school ). Potions is a class she struggles with a lot, but as Lily is one of her best friends, she’s able to get help if she needs it.

Mary’s skills in DADA will definitely help her with the goals she has set for herself. Of course, becoming an Auror is more than dueling and fighting against the dark arts, but it is a very big part of it. She’s got her mind set on doing some extra assignments for the class this year as well, just to become better at the subject and so she can feel more prepared should another battle come.

How did they react when they learned of Dumbledore’s death?

Mary didn’t hold the same amount of respect for Albus Dumbledore that most of the people at Hogwarts and in the wizarding community did: he did not back her up when she needed him to, and it very much shattered her blind admiration for the man. Still, she knew that he was an important person to Hogwarts and was doing very much to keep the place safe from the war.

When she learned he had died, Mary was shocked. Dumbledore seemed like someone who could not be defeated, an immensely strong force in this war who was on the good side. On her side. She felt grief, too, of course. While he had disappointed her before, he had still been a good man – flawed, yes, but still good – and it was terrible that good people were killed. Fear followed once her shock and grief had become less loud, as this meant only terrible things for the future of Hogwarts. Mary hadn’t felt safe at Hogwarts for a couple of months before the battle, but this feeling only grew when Dumbledore was murdered. Even worse, she knew that other people would also start to feel unsafe and she didn’t wish that uponanyone.

* WRITING SAMPLES :

Respond to the following prompt as though it was a short chat. Be sure to include a gif.

“Yeah mate, I saw them snogging in the astronomy tower. I know it’s a bit unconventional, but we’re in the middle of a war. Love is all that matters at a time like this.”

“Whoa, slow down there, buddy,” said Mary, taking a sip of her coffee. “Love is all that matters? That’s … I mean, it’s a beautiful sentiment, but that’s not true. Not to be a smarty-pants, or anything, but morals and security and respect and all those things matter too.” A pause. “Still, though, really? Them, snogging? I had not seen that one coming at all.”

#( musings : all i learned was how to be strong. )#( application. )

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the-chaotic-neutral · 6 years

Text

Is it possible to go home again? Are your favorite books of childhood actually as good as you remember? Or should they simply remain just that, memories, never to be revisited? I went back to my childhood touchstones to see. The results were varied and interesting.

Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis

One of the earliest of my childhood loves to be taken off a pedestal. I was near obsessed with these novels as a child. I found the amount of world-building to be enthralling. It felt grounded and fantastic, and there always seemed to be more out there to be discovered. However, my memory failed me a bit regarding the specifics of the later books (or earlier depending on your preferred reading order).

Revisiting this was crushing. I suddenly remembered being put off by the nonsensical rules that seemed to govern Narnia… sometimes. And Aslan never. There were holes in the storytelling that eclipsed the actual story. And the Christianity. It’s not fair to call it symbolism or imagery. The reason I kept petering out toward the end of the series is that it goes from Christian allegory to a blatant Christian bible retelling. Which, both as a child and adult, is incredibly unfulfilling. But to my younger self, the Rapture ending was unforgivable. There was enough magic in Narnia and the other realms to save everything. Either the people could have rallied, or the citizens of Narnia, or Aslan. In order to stick with the canonical bible ending, Lewis was forced to write an ending where everyone essentially either forgets their power or forgoes their power, giving up and running away. It’s dull, derivative, and didn’t really hold up when I was a kid.

Still, there are aspects of the world-building that appealed to me as an adult. The parts that aren’t Christian, that is. There’s a mundanity to the magic that seems both sincere and slightly ironic. That sensibility is what I’ve kept with me. The fact that after magic is discovered then it simply is. The act of discovery can’t go on forever, and at some point the magic will either be gone or become part of every-day life. And the latter is what Narnia showed me.

Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville

I was the most nervous about picking this one back up. I’ve written at length about this book meant and means to me. My adult self is delighted to tell you that this book still works. Not necessarily on a prose level. The story is very simple, many details that I recall likely came from my imagination. It moved along as was over before I expected. It was, dare I say, breezy. The book was a perfect cocktail for my younger self because it was made of two ingredients.

The first was Jeremy Thatcher and his dragon. He was simplistic enough that my imagination could put me in his shoes, and his emotional bond with the dragon Tiamat. Style aside, the fact that I had a book with an emotional core to latch on to, rather than the story-driven books I was used to (a la Louis Sachar and the like). That just clicked with me. It stood out from the rest of my books at the time. This variation was showing me a difference between drama and emotional resonance. Did I understand that at the time? Hell no. But I had a book I could get emotional over that featured a dragon.

The other is the framing device of S.H. Elives’ Magic Shop. The shop shows up across a number of titles by Bruce Coville, creating a loose series. The fact that it was a place that revealed itself to each protagonist gave me just a bit of day-dream fuel that the next time I was walking home from school on a foggy day or just biking around town I had a small chance of finding an old shopfront I had never noticed before. And whereas with the wardrobe you get Narnia, or with an owl letter you get Hogwarts, the shop was so mysteriously stocked that I would often wonder what item should call to me from the shelves.

So yeah, this book still has some magic in it. It didn’t blow me away now, but I can clearly see all the parts that cemented it into my imagination as a child.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

This one is probably the most disappointing revisit. I absolutely adored these books as a child. And unlike the Narnia books, I whole-heatedly loved the entire quintet. But upon revisiting these they were the biggest fall from grace, so to speak. Unlike the Narnia books they aren’t blatantly Christian, but they are blatantly pro-religion. There’s a pervasive, albeit holistic, focus on selfless devotion, grace, and faith. To some that may not sound terrible, but I remembered these as being about children who found personal strength. The focus on faith takes away some of their agency and replaces it with a weak version of destiny.

Faith in and of itself is not a good thing. It is made through the pairing of belief and an absence of evidence, which is a terrible combination. Faith, both in definition and in practice within these books, requires a certain degree of ignorance. Faith without ignorance becomes confidence and loyalty. These books made me appreciate mysteries as a part of life, but I hadn’t realized how much they also eschewed the act of solving said mysteries.The takeaway I had with this series as that as a child I believed they were about strength and perseverance, but as an adult they have a strange reliance on faith and fatalism.

Tom Swift Jr. (Tom Swift IV)

Jesus, what was I thinking? The takeaway from these? Shame. Actually, that was what they taught me back then, as well. I stopped reading them after I had chosen it for a “what did you read over the summer” book report in elementary school and then was too embarrassed to talk about it for my presentation. I got a zero.

Okay, in all honesty I could see an anthology TV show being made of these today. They would be over-the-top faux 90s nostalgia and based solely on the covers, rather than any of the actual novels. They’d be produced by (and first episode directed by) Chris Miller & Phil Lord or John Carpenter, depending on how much they wanted to lean into the humor. And lord help me, I’d probably watch it.

The House with a Clock in its Walls by John Bellairs

This was an odd one. If you’ve ever revisited grade school as an adult you know how everything seems so much smaller. Well, the prose felt smaller. I remembered these books as dripping with a wry darkness. Not sinister, but macabre and mysterious. They don’t read that way to me now. Granted, they’re not bundles of sunshine. There’s death, children in peril, and well-meaning adults keeping kids in danger because they don’t believe they need all the facts. This isn’t the dark favorite I remember.

But it’s the foundation of it. There are elements that, when properly fermented and aged, will grow into my love of dark literature and sinister storytelling. There’s danger without cruelty. There’s darkness and the threat of violence, but it’s the mystery that fuels it all, not the threat of death. Death is just the seasoning, and that’s still pretty satisfying.

And then there are the illustrations. These books, or at least the editions I read and re-read, are illustrated by the illustrious Edward Gorey. Whether or not you know the name, there is little doubt you know his art. His creepy Victorian/Edwardian-esque art probably has at least as much to do with what I took away from these books as the text. I don’t really feel the need to contextualize that aspect of these books. It’s Edward Gorey. I loved his art then and I love it now.

Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones

This one is probably the strangest and most complicated as far as lasting influence and how well it holds up over time. This book may be the only one that could be considered more solid now than when I read it as a child.

The plot is bizarre and convoluted and purposefully opaque. The book is dense. I had a bit of a touch go with it this time around, though don’t remember it being a particularly hard read as a child. Now it comes across as a mix between Jeff Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and the Canadian horror film Cube. But for kids.

Looking outside just the plot, the author, Diana Wynne Jones, dedicated this novel to Neil Gaiman, who had previously dedicated his mini-series The Books of Magic to four witches, one of which was her. There’s also the fact that the Studio Ghibli film Howl’s Moving Castle is based on one of her novels, something I did not know when I first saw it. Coming back to this book, with all these pop-culture threads that have woven back into my life, was like finding out that someone you befriended recently was in the background of some of your childhood vacation photos. It’s strange and unsettling but also a little comforting in a cosmic way. Like a little validation from the universe about who I am and what I like today.

There are countless books I did not go back to, including The Tripods trilogy by John Christopher, The Time Warp Trio by Jon Scieszka and Catwings by Ursula K. Le Guin. These weren’t out of fear so much as I realized that once I finished the titles that came immediately to mind there really wasn’t a point on delving deeper. These books all made my childhood to one extent or another. Some were emotionally fulfilling, others helped build my literary taste and personal aesthetics. The point isn’t whether they’re still fulfilling to me now, but that they served their purpose at the time. A Wrinkle in Time’s awkward religion felt like a huge blow to discover, but it’s not that bad. I tore through those books as a kid, often identifying with Meg and sometimes oddly put off by Charles Wallace. But that series left a desire for mystery in my genre stories. I liked that there was always more somewhere else in their world. The Narnia chronicles gave me a taste for concrete world-building, for an underlying mechanic and logic in the substructure of a book. This eventually led me to delight in the construction of Eric Nylund’s fantasy and is probably why the Feed and Wayward Children books by Seanan McGuire are utterly compelling and fulfilling to me as an adult. The John Bellairs books gave me a taste of the macabre with prose, and a second helping of darkness from the Edward Gorey illustrations.

That might seem like an obvious lesson, but it’s still worth learning on your own. There’s a security in knowing that while a loved story from youth may lose its appeal, that doesn’t make it any less meaningful. None of my subsequent loves and discoveries came tumbling down. I think there’s a strength in knowing that first-hand. It lets me be less precious with what I loved in the past. And when some of those old stories turn out to hold up, it makes them all the more magnificent.

Nostalgia calls! But do these classics from my childhood hold up? Can You Go Home Again? Revisiting Favorite Childhood Books Is it possible to go home again? Are your favorite books of childhood actually as good as you remember?

#A Wrinkle in Time #Bruce Coville #Catwings #Chronicles of Narnia #CS Lewis #Diana Wynne Jones #Hexwood #Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher #John Bellairs #John Christopher #Jon Scieszka #Madeleine L&039;Engle #The House with a Clock in its Walls #The Time Warp Trio #The Tripods #Tom Swift Junior #Ursula K. Le Guin

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