#‘nature loves diversity society hates it’

[contagious-addiction]

So badly wanna dare a tattoo idea I’ve got that I want done sometime but the idea of someone taking it from me without permission is horrifying so it must be kept only to those I know (tragically)

[angelofviscera]

in every lifetime

1, 5, 8 & 13b we're in love, boygenius / 2 & 11 untitled, li hui / 3 & 17 hold my hand, wild pink & julien baker / 4 untitled (cropped), lee kyutae / 6 untitled, @/_dagou / 7 untitled (cropped), li hui / 9 queer love forever (cropped), thea elder / 10 nature loves diversity; society hates it, li hui / 12 & 14 love train, tomás q. morín / 13a & 13e untitled, @/_dagou / 13c untitled, li hui / 13d & 19 last forest, torres / 15 untitled, Фотограф Казань / 16 I love you - nyc, justin lee jamison / 18 untitled, zoe cavaro

[soekmatthew]

Proposing a reform on Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics!

An essay on why we should reformulate the often misguided interpretations on each secondary gender.

In this essay I will debate the absence of personality often assigned to Beta's secondary gender, the inherent nature of violence that shouldn't exclusively be attributed to Alphas, and how deeply we can explore the aspects of Omega's biology in fiction, furthering its visions from the deep rotted misogyny implicated in these matters.

(remember this is a joke, you can create your ficverse and works however you'd like)

1.0 THE BETA ISSUE

The beta role in an a/b/o society is pushed towards the sense of "normality", betas normally aren't that phased by their nature. This is fitting, although the lack of complexity deposited onto its concepts led a creator to create variations of betas that aren't really necessary.

I propose that betas have pheromones that emit a scent genetically structured to be smelled by a specific type of group, regardless of their secondary gender, people who are able to scent betas pheromones have a variation in their olfactory-receptor genes and allow them to strongly perceive their scents. (this happens irl, with cilantro tasting like soap or some people being able to smell cockroaches)

It would solve the beta complex and wouldn't necessarily affect the whole structural alpha/omega naturally based relationship.

2.0 THE ALPHA MATTER

It is easy to antagonize alphas, and I do believe it is crucial for it to be antagonized, given how the discourse towards alpha aggression can create well built debates approximated to human reality. But it also can spice up some debates on a lot of more interesting matters other than hierarchy and dominance.

"Soft-alphas" was a term designed to fit in the alphas that are able to somehow "contain" their inner wolf, on contrary to "normal alphas" that are aggressive and excessively dominant.

Of course, as fun as it is to explore this concept, it's not necessary to give them this title, it thins the discussions that can be made upon this type of characteristics on alphas.

It is easy to explore the topics around an alpha considered "defective", and give them the capacity to have more and more deepness, an alpha who doesn't feel protective despite their love towards their omegas and needs to learn how to stimulate its natural instincts, an alpha who was forced to submit and therefore had their alpha contained to a point it needs healing and an exercise in dominance!! Fun aspects of an inverted container of the morality based alpha corrections often seen around the fic community.

I propose more and more diversity and complexity around alphas, seeing them fight their instincts is fun, but it would also be fun to see them fight for their need to have the same instincts that antagonizes them.

3.0 THE OMEGA DEBATE

There is a lot of discourse around omegas, especially when people simplify them as "the woman of a/b/o society".

Although understandably fitting for the time it was developed, it is still a conception most people have and has grown outdated.

It also created a movement to fight against this idea, that has empowered omegas, but the lack of consistency fails to impress. For example, in this case, it doesn't matter how much of a rebel omega the character is, they will still "fail" their morals and submit to an alpha.

I know you guys can do better!

What is better than an inner monologue on why your nature is failing your mundane conceptions? Better than that what's more revolutionary than being able to mend your instincts and ideas?

The nature of an omega is vast and instinctually more prone to aggression than most alphas! Omegas protect and go feral over their offsprings! Explore it more!

And make omegas also be proud of their nature, instead of simply making them disgusted by it without backgrounding their stories! (i mean, if they have traumas associated with their secondary genders it is obvious and expected for them to hate it).

Omegas can be hard creatures to deal with, omegas can reject their offsprings scent for example, give them hardships dudes! It will be fun!

A/B/O is fun, and I LOVE TRADITIONAL A/B/O SO MUCH! but we can do more justice at least to betas :3

(this is literally a joke in case someone hates me for it)

[misericordia-writing]

Lightning Bugs

"𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙜𝙤 𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚, 𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛 𝙩𝙤 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙜𝙤𝙙-𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙨𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙣 𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙚.

𝙎𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙮, 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙮, 𝘿𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙚𝙡 𝙅𝙤𝙝𝙣𝙨𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙’𝙫𝙚 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙢𝙗𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚, 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙤𝙣 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙨."

Chapter 1 of Matchbook

Pairings: Danny Johnson/Gender-Neutral Reader

Word Count: 2.3k

Angst, Fluff

Summary: A character exploration of Danny. I've noticed most fics make him super funny and sardonic, and while I love that, I imagine I'd have huge moral qualms about dating a serial killer. So I wrote this. Not particularly dark, but depressing? I don't know. I’m sorting things out. Probably super OOC. Enjoy.

TW for canon-typical violence, implications of mental illness, and unhealthy relationships/power imbalance (naturally)

Ao3: s://archiveofourown.org/works/45585013/chapters/114704077

    "I hate that you're right."

        The words come out quietly one night, while you're sitting on a muggy balcony that smells like cigarettes and acetone. The green-gray haze of Floridian night swamping you in swaths of gnats, only gently dissuaded by a mesh screen.

        A streetlamp flickers and dulls, the painted metal cart of a dollar store clinks against its siblings, and an old man sputters and coughs up into his shirt collar.

        "About what?"

        "About people. Humanity. Life. Society. That type of stuff." You say, balancing a bottle of black nail polish on your thigh while you try to paint your toes. "How it's just primal violence. You're pretty much right."

        He doesn't respond. Normally, you wouldn’t be allowed to talk about this stuff so openly, outside, where a neighbor could hear you. But everyone is busy tonight. You’re not too surprised that he’s memorized their schedules. Furtively scratching pens into notebooks almost every single second that he’s not busy playing out stories. Too enamored to eat or sleep or wash the dishes. ‘That’s one of the reasons I keep you around,’ he had said, in partial jest, as if you were his mid-century housewife.

        "Listen, I'm not just sucking up to you like some chick in a horror movie, trying to persuade the killer that she's on his side. As applicable as that may be. You're right. Genuinely."

        "I thought you were into all of that spirituality stuff. Being good. Reaching nirvana and donating to the thrift store." He mutters, methodically scraping the debris of last night out from under his nails. Jed has work tomorrow.

        Jed Olsen is who you signed up for, back when you were still a recent college graduate, finally having gotten to the 'good' part of your life. Feeling hopeful, cheery even. Watering your plants, picking up dandelions off the side of the road, smiling at strangers. Saving up to buy a nice house someday, with a garden and personal study. Somewhere you could bake in, read in, live in. Maybe even find someone to share it with.

        ‘You were just so sweet,’ He said one time, while you were in his car. He had locked the doors and told you that he just couldn’t trust you that much, yet. But soon.

        ‘Always so withdrawn, cautious. But sweet. Barely able to deal with playing nice to co-workers, but then turning your back and smiling at weeds in the cracks of a sidewalk. Surprising, considering the way you dress. All rock n’ roll, usually. Black looks good on you. That scraped-up Walkman attached to your hip. Diverse taste. I mean, the way you seamlessly went from Bauhaus to Blondie in the span of an hour was truly something.’ Sip.

        ‘All while performing an elaborate routine in your bedroom- complete with costume changes and a hairbrush microphone. You really could be a rockstar, sweetheart. Too bad though, I don’t think that’ll happen. Maybe in your next life.’

        He paused to look at his milkshake, then dipped a fry in it. ‘Different- odd and unusual, but not in the predicable early-twenty-year old way I see a lot. Talking to the spiders you would find in your room, politely asking them to leave. So observant and smart. But ultimately, I guess you just weren’t observant or smart enough, were you?’ He barked out a laugh, triumphantly.

        He was so charming, the way he would stop by your job before work. Monday through Friday. Pretending to think for a minute, before ordering the exact same coffee as he always did. Coincidentally loving the same books, talking with you about the new episode of a sitcom you had been watching the night before. Handsome, and only a few years older, with a degree from a similar program to yours under his belt. Good reputation, wonderful penmanship. Enthusiastic, kind- but with a quick wit.

        He made you feel special- which, apparently, you were. Just not in the way you’d think.

        "I am, still." You sigh, painting, the brush spreading smooth inky black across keratin. A drop of paint drips onto the skin of your foot.

        You scrape it away with the back of your fingernail and quickly dab it to a folded paper towel.

        "Danny." You say, looking at him. "Do you think I'm a bad person?"

        He tsks, as if the question offends him. "You really want me to be the judge on ethics? Are you forgetting who I am? What I do?" A gravelly punch dips the last syllable of each sentence, almost like a growl.

        "No," You say, "I'm just asking. Besides, I thought you thought you were right? Do you think that your actions are ethical? By your logic, that we are all inherently violent and terrible, then you wouldn't be evil for acting on that. My beliefs lie somewhere in the middle. Just curious."

        He pauses, dark eyes looking down into the parking lot. The man is gone, and the cart is pushed neatly back into its place.

        Sweltering heat. He smells like detergent, the good middle-of-the-road kind. Sticky notes. Cologne. Sweat. Iron.

        "No."

        You frown, looking down through the mesh as well. Lightning bugs light up the brush at the edge of the apartment complex. “Fireflies!” You say, with childish glee. You almost forget the crushing guilt for a minute, beaming down at the glowing shrubs.

        You’re eight again, bare feet padding through wet grass, trying to catch them in a jar. Somebody is having a barbeque, and you’re going to go to bed tired and happy tonight, with a dozen itchy mosquito bites down your legs.

        You wonder what eight-year-old you would think about this situation. You wish you could go back in time, tell yourself to never move to this god-forsaken red state.

        Surely, that way, Daniel Johnson would’ve never stumbled into your life, staining you with the blood on his hands.

        He still doesn’t say anything, other than a hum, so you sit back down. Finishing the last coat of paint on your smallest toe.

        The plastic weaving of the chair digs into the backs of your thighs, and you set the polish back down on the accent table. The thermometer reads 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

        “I hate myself.” You say, feeling every bitter moment and truth from your past bubble up at once. Every scrape, burn, and cut. “I don’t understand why you do what you do. It makes me feel guilty for you. Like I’m the one doing those things. Am I not just as bad? I don't try to stop you. I should.”

        You often feel that Danny’s twenty steps ahead of you. Just waiting for the right moment. Chess and checkers.

        A bead of sweat rolls down your back, the tank top you wear doing little to reduce the humidity. You stand up and walk to stand in front of him. “But yet here I am. I’m still surprised you haven’t killed me yet. You said you were going to. Why not?”

        “I probably will when the time is right." He looks up at you for a moment, pausing before looking back at the sky.

        "If it makes you feel any better, you don’t really have a choice in what I do, or a choice in being involved with me… I would find my way in, in any situation. This is probably just some type of Stockholm syndrome kicking in. So you survive. Fun, right? Your brain and body are doing the best they can to cope with the reality. Of your situation. Of how you feel about me. Really, you’re lucky. You think all of the others wouldn't have taken this opportunity? Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

        He swats a mosquito nonchalantly.

        “Yeah, I guess so.” You say, sitting down at the foot of his lawn chair. “Do you care about me?”

        “A little bit.” He says, gaze off to the side. “Don’t let it get to your head.”

        You laugh, though you aren’t sure if he was trying to be funny. Not that it was very funny in the first place.

        “For the record,” He says, “You’ve made it longer than anyone else has. Normally I lose interest. I’m not done watching you yet. I don’t know if I want to end your story. It’s my favorite.”

        “Well, if I’m nothing else, at least I’m a serial killer’s favorite 'story'.” You roll your eyes, but there isn’t too much sarcasm behind it.

        “You make me feel the way I feel when I kill, sometimes. I don’t know if I love you, because I don’t really believe in that stuff. But I like you more than most things.” He says, fingers reaching out to twirl a lock of your hair. 

        The same fingers that dig knives into people and then snap pictures of it after. That rip intestines out and turn them into party streamers. The same fingers that would’ve done the same thing to you, too. That still might.

        That fantasize about it, twitching sometimes when you turn your back. Itching to grab you by the throat and finally write a conclusion. Aching to make you a headline.

        Fingers that move down to your neck now, feeling the red pulse of your blood. Padding up to the side of your face and wiping a welling tear away from the corner of your eye.

        Fingers that have held your hair back when you puked, and gripped your hand firmly in public when you can’t find the clarity to process all the different sounds of a supermarket. Let you pick out your favorite candy at the video store, made popcorn with you on the stove.

        Pressed your favorite VHS into the player for the third time that week, not because he found it particularly groundbreaking, but because you couldn’t get out of bed to wash your hair or eat, and that stupid movie was- for whatever reason- the only thing capable of distracting you from the thought of pink-red water slotting down the drain of his porcelain white bathtub.

         “I feel that way too, sometimes.” You rasp. “Minus the whole killing people part. I don’t know if it exists. Love. At least, not as the thing people say it is. Really relates back to the animalistic nature thing, right? Do animals feel ‘love’? We are animals. I’ve felt things like love, but never what I’m supposed to. I wish I knew. Snakes like warm rocks. Do they love warm rocks?”

         “You’re probably never going to know.” He says, bluntly, nails scratching at your scalp. You wonder if he's only doing it to get the last flakes of dried blood out. You imagine little beams coming from his fingers, wiggling into your brain and picking out all of your synapses. Mapping your psyche.

       He probably would if he could, but then he might get bored and gut you for his collage.

        “Yeah,” You sigh, “I know. But… I love you. The closest to love I think I can.”

        “I know.” On anybody else, it would sound almost pitying.

        You know that even if he loved you, he would never say it. The words will not leave his mouth. But you feel loved. The way that he touches you, the way he presses against your back sometimes, in the middle of dark, foggy nights. Covers kicked off the bed, and a face pressed into your neck. Him keeping a box of special pictures under the bed, just of you, that you don’t think he knows you know about-  but maybe he knows that you know. Some of them from before you even met. Almost all of them when you weren’t looking.

        And later that night, when you’ve locked the screen door, and he’s meticulously arranged his piles of papers, looked through his hastily (passionately) scrawled designs one more time, and finished the laundry, you two lay down in the bed. As the moonlight streams down onto his face, dark hair reflecting its soft glow, you sigh. A hand reaches out to stroke his neck, and you wonder again why he does the things he does. He lets you. You can feel the heartbeat in his throat.

        Danny hates when he falls asleep before you, but you like it. So rarely do you get to see him off-guard- innocent and peaceful, brows finally unknitted. The little scar on his forehead that he keeps covered. The slow rise and fall of his stomach against you, occasionally an upper arm tensing over your shoulder. The way he rests his face in your hair, or the crook of your neck.

        Surprisingly cuddly, for a ruthless, taunting killer, who you know for a fact has slaughtered more than enough people to fill the  floor-plan of your shared apartment, probably, if you laid them down flat.

       ‘Thirty-two,’ he’d grinned, proud of himself. ‘Not many others can say the same, can they?’

        You grimaced. ‘No, I suppose not.'

        Your stomach churns again, before you drift off. You dream about fireflies and going to prison. People screaming and swimming in a pink-red bathtub. Sometimes you think it would be easier if he had just killed you the way he planned. Maybe you wouldn’t feel so guilty for being alive, then.

        If you could go back in time, you would fix him. You like to tell yourself that, sometimes. That you could change his outcome, and the fates of dozens of others as well. You would treat him right, never let the sickness twist his mind. Stop his father from planting a seed of despair and overwhelming hatred in his heart. Let him be ignorant and happy, watch the news. Not make the news.

        Maybe you would have a nice house together, if it were Jed, and you could make lemonade and watch fireworks together. Kiss him on the cheek and watch him smile. Have deep conversations that take all night, but never reach past the abstract and theoretical, into the realm of reality. Be normal. You were foolish to ever wish for anything other than normal. You would kill to have normal, now. To live without the churning in your stomach.

        You really should be more careful what you wish for.

[bestworstcase]

a ribbon of something that popped into my head: when the Tree/Smith is telling the story of the Brothers & says that "balance is not two forces eternally fighting, it's an ecosystem" could that be taken as the narrative actively judging the Brothers for the role they ended up taking on in Remnant? by that I mean, being judged for viewing themselves as above all the other things on Remnant, for isolating themselves from the societies they created and not being A Part of Things. they weren't a part of remnant's ecosystem. never seeing themselves as owing these people anything. this adds a whole new layer to Dark being happy that someone was worshipping him. It wasn't Dark's choice to be that way. It was Light's. this was a fight they'd been having for eons. perhaps Dark obliterated humanity because he was tiring of that battle. imagine how exhausting it would be to have empathy for thousands, millions, and have someone in your ear telling you that they're worthless? if I had to listen to that for an innumerable amount of years I'd probably want them gone eventually too. just so I didn't have to suffer the pain. but he didn't destroy the Grimm. his creations. only the thing he and Light made together.

whatever new world the brothers went to next, I hope Dark's okay. this feels more and more like familial abuse on a cosmic scale by the day.

hey you know what’s really great and also hysterical. about ‘balance is an ecosystem.’

‘the two brothers’ describes the god of darkness as the creator of:

1. the moon.

2. mountains.

3. deserts.

4. storms.

5. volcanoes.

6. earthquakes.

7. the continents as they exist today (he breaks his brother’s supercontinent apart.)

light is vexed by all of this because he considers these things to be ruinous—he accuses dark of spoiling their creation.

but

it means

that the god of darkness created the tides. plate tectonics. weather. eco-diversity. ALL ESSENTIAL NATURAL PROCESSES WITHOUT WHICH LIFE AS WE KNOW IT LIKELY COULD NOT EXIST.

dark is the reason remnant is habitable, not by divine fiat but genuinely a habitable planet. if the mythical division of responsibility is accurate (and i’m inclined to think it is, because it’s written so strongly in light’s favor and if light saw any value in these things he would absolutely have claimed credit for them regardless of whether that was true), then that implies the god of darkness Deliberately redesigned remnant into a world that could survive and thrive without divine intervention.

the god of light made a world by fiat—a world like the ever after, which needed divine agents to tend it—and the god of darkness “spoiled” it. by remaking it into a world that DIDN’T NEED THEM. a world that could only exist in its natural equilibrium, not balanced by force or calculation.

dark understood the assignment. the tree guided the brothers to an empty canvas to learn the true meaning of balance. an ecosystem. a living breathing thing that cannot be planned, only found. light doesn’t get it—light still conceives of himself as the designer, the ruler, the arbiter of balance, and he hates his brother because his brother proved the lie.

what happens to afterans when they lose sight of their purpose? they go home. they ascend. they are renewed and become themselves anew. the tree left the door open for the brothers to return when they were ready.

dark made a world that did not need gods. he made humans and yearned for their attention; in ‘the two brothers’ humans are said to be dark’s favorite creation. he delights in them. and in the lost fable we see that desire playing out through his empathy for salem, his desire to reciprocate, and his cruel retaliation when light convinces him that she lied. and then that cruelty escalates far beyond what either brother could have imagined. dark slaughters humanity—the same tyrannical violence he refused to countenance for eons, destroying the creation he loved best.

does it not naturally follow that he would go home? return to the tree, reflect on his mistakes, and come back as something new? something closer to what he wanted to be when he was still himself, before he let his brother’s warped perspective twist his own?

something, perhaps, less powerful but a little closer to human?

in ‘the two brothers’ a lonely dragon divides himself into two warring halves. we now have hard confirmation that this is only myth, not the true origin of the brothers, and its relevancy to the narrative is purely symbolic.

there are also four very humanlike spirits chained up in those relics, and of the two we’ve met both of them palpably LOATHE ozma but delight in the ingenuity of other humans. and the grimm are drawn to the relics (“something to do with their origins”).

and the spirit of knowledge strains so hard against ozpin’s framing of the narrative that salem’s rightness shines through it like a goddamned lighthouse.

(also ‘gather these magical artifacts and combine them together to bring my dead loved one back to life’ is a pretty fucking standard fantasy grief-gone-wrong trope; if dark ascended and left light behind… like eternal conflict or no, they’re brothers. twins. they have always been together and—because destruction came first—light has never known existence without dark. what would it DO to him if dark ascended and he could not?)

[masp161]

Astro Observations #V

Asteroid Clymene, derived from the goddess of Fame and Fortune, might likely show where you are seen as potentially popular/famous, where and how you can achieve fame

Gemini/3rd House is associated with Society/People

Popular opinion : Sidereal birth charts describe you more

Sag Mercury will always have something to talk about, even if nothing happens in their lives. They just always have something interesting

The energy or attachment style you have with the sign in your 12th House can reflect your type of trauma and insecurity

I can easily see the dark minds of the zodiac being XXTPs or XXTJs (See Briggs Myers test) since XXTPs/XXTJs are not only mentally focused people, but that need to focus on the mind more than the heart usually tends to come from early trauma OR emotional absence of any kind. Their capacity to live on their own terms and spontaneity can be an aftermath of being left alone to deal with their trauma, forging their personality, leading to XXTPs.

Cancer/Capricorn 1st/3rd/4th/9th/10th or Mars/Saturn/Moon can often be perceived as parental, their energy. They radiate the parental energy that they lacked as a child, especially if the planets are retrograde

Pisces Mars people have a power to get revenge through karma because most of them tend to have an Aquarius Mars in their Sidereal Chart, Aquarius being the sign of Karma along with Capricorn, and Mars being the planet of intense emotions

What pisses people off about Pisces Mars is their emotional unavailability or diversity : their natural state of needing or having lots of people physically attracted to them but them not wanting anything. They also, Pisces Mars, have tendencies to just not settle for inclusivity.

Cap Pluto are a generation of pretending doms who want to rule but are submissive in bed.

Most Mutable Venuses are least likely to confess their feelings not entirely because they're not interested in love, but because they don't wanna admit or acknowledge their emotions until they're certain it's mutual. They don't like to look like fools.

What if all Libra Risings soulmate were themselves. Their 7th house, after all, is ruled by a sign representing the self.

I don't think, after all, that Saturn in your birth chart only shows how karma works for you. But rather what trace you leave on people.

The ugly part of astrology that people don't want to face is having North Node or personal planets in water houses (4th, 8th, 12th). They are indicators of the psyche. Indicators that the lifetime will be a lot of focus on the ugly parts of the self, of humanity, on healing and understanding those around us in order to understand ourselves.

My opinion :

Tropical Charts are the physicality of things, physical you, physical events

Sidereal Charts are the emotionality of things, emotional you, emotional reactions, you being you

Draconic Charts are the Ideal, the perfect you, the you with no concept of good or bad, with no concept at all, just yourself

(To be reviewed)

People with Cancer placements, Neptune in the 4th, or Neptune in Cancer can pretty much remember anything, even drunk or high.

People, in my opinion, with their north nodes in the 7th/8th/12th house have this kind of inevitable lesson, that they mastered in youth but lost over many years of trauma, to learn on how to let go of ego and work on their inner selves. And learn to let go of themselves and harmonize with the world/the universe.

Before any hate, let me explain why I didn't add the 9th/10th/11th House. To me the 9th house is about the philosophies and world views, not directly how we get to be extremely dependent of the world whether we want to or not. The 10th house is more close on how we can rely on people, but North Node in the 10th isn't necessarily involved in a spiritual AND emotional (both together) level (and in case you mention the 7th house, the 7th house is about the shadow part of ourselves and in some occasions the soul level of attachment we can have to somebody). And 11th house is more on the society/friends level. I see it also as a sort of independence house, where you can learn to not need people.

If the 2nd house is about knowing who you are and standing firm on knowing who you are, then the 8th house is the opposite : realizing you don't know who you are because you are constantly changing/evolving. Thus, people with the North Node in the 8th House, know that it's normal to feel like you don't know who you truly are because you're always changing. It's part of your journey.

Convince me otherwise, but Cardinal Moons are impulsive smartasses, especially when undeveloped or overdeveloped

Air signs, Scorpio, Pisces, Saggy and Capri LOVE doing personality tests more than the other signs (check out sun, moon, rising and dominant) generally because they tend to lack a fixed identity despite them saying they HAVE an identity. Sometimes they even redo the same tests just to be sure they won't change their score or answer. Part of them also loves discovering themselves through others (hence the internet tests).

[snowviolettwhite]

Fan-Fiction Idea Blurts

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Maybe let me know what you think or questions you have?

Fan-Fiction Idea Blurts

Suits: Harvey Specter is an omega. He has been pretending to be an alpha to be taken seriously since working in the mailroom by taking illegal suppressants and scent blockers and not being sexually intimate with his colleagues and peers. But suppressing his true natural and side effects of the drugs start catching up with him. He is having parental protective feelings towards his new associate Mike and is catching feels for his tough as stones alpha assistant Donna.

911: In summer 2011 barely eighteen and barely out of high school Buck and Eddie run away from home to California and joining the fire academy and eventually joining the 118. Eddie brings baby Christopher with him. Eddie's parent did not think he was mature and adult enough to take care of Chris as a 20-something year old, so it would be even worse for teenagers, people who are transiting from childhood/teenage-hood to young adulthood and still being treated like kids.

Stranger Things: It is a post Vecna world in the omegaverse with disabled Mike and Max. The Byers and Hopper have moved back to Hawkins, Indiana. Mike is an omega and Will is an alpha. They have been re-building their friendship and it even stronger than before, they kiss sometimes. It gets intense one day when they are alone, Will bits and accidentally bonds Mike. Mike makes it even by biting him back. You cannot remove a claim without a doctor, they hidden the development from their families and friends.

Stranger Things: Need To Update With Chapter Nine: manic pixie dream prince -Michael Wheeler presented on the second worst days of his life but, it is okay because Will Byers his best friend since kindergarten was safe. William Jacob Byers was dreading the day he presents because he was told constantly that he was an omega. He really hopes they are wrong.

911: Lone Star - little boy don't you cry, cause the child in you is still alive: Need To Update With Chapter 7: The fourteen-year-old and ninth grader Tyler Kennedy Strand who goes by Tk was riding high until he was not. His life turned upside down during one short week. It was the 2010 Manhattan school districts homecoming week; everything was good great then it suddenly turned into a nightmare. Now to get away from all the pain his dad is moving him to Austin, Texas. Owen is rebuilding 126 fire-station which recently suffered a great loss, most of the firefighters lost their lives.

Stranger Things: Post Vecna, Mike and Will friendship has been repaired since the Byers and Hopper. Mike has been hiding the fact he is an omega since the seventh grade. Will is the only one who finds out.

Stranger Things: The monsters of the upside-down prefer hunting omega presenting humans but these two alphas presenting humans El and Will have the power to resist the monsters/kill them. They upside-down monsters and Venca specifically hates omega Mike Wheeler because he is always foiling their plans and protecting the alphas. There is a love triangle between Will – Mike- El.

911: Lone – Tk finds out Owen, his dad is bisexual and had a boyfriend when he was a teenager. Or Owen thinks people are attractive regards of their gender and says something very bisexual and proceeds to have an identity crisis in his middle age and get a boyfriend eventually.

911 – A series of one-shots of Eddie Diaz as a baby, toddler, little kid, preteen and teenager in the 1990s and 2000s and early 2010s. Eddie was born in 1992.

911: Lone Star - The higher ups hire Owen to build the 126 firehouse in Austin, Texas because he is a white straight man and thinking he is a dom or switch to add diversity. He is a sub pretending he is a dom or switch to keep his job and taken seriously in the intense kind of work, along with dealing with cancer and taking care of his son after relapsing. (It is a bdsm alternative universe where dom/switch/sub is biological and in society. I enjoy this au because of the world building, it is one of the reasons I love the omegaverse. I don’t know how it is going to go all my knowledge of bdsm comes from fanfiction and erotic fiction. So, I might change it to the omegaverse with omega Owen but then Gwyn would have to be an alpha because when I write omega males and alpha female as intersex, male omega can only be impregnated and female can only impregnate.)

911 – Eddie has started taking anti-depressants after his breakdown and seeing his therapist, one of the side of effects is decreased sex drive and effect his heat cycle and his scent and omega instincts.

911 – Eddie moves to California and joins the 118 firehouse and hides his secondary gender to avoid the stigma and discrimination of being an omega, who is a single omega parent who was abandoned by his alpha which he dealt with in Texas. Buck is an omega who is opened about being an omega and hates Eddie because he thinks he is an arrogant alpha and has a little bit of a crush on him.

911 - Both Eddie and Buck pretend they are not omegas to avoid discrimination plus the trauma they experienced back home but they become best friends and work through that pain together.

911: Lone Star – Tk who is an omega after his relapses and moving leaving New York with father Owen, Tk also has to death with detoxing from the heat suppressants in the omegeverse alpha Alex forced him to take during their two year relationship.

[thecurioustale]

I Have a Fanatical Stance on Conventions of Body Appearance in Visual Media

In the timelines where I end up making movie, TV, or video game productions of my work, I have always had a list of several defiant guidelines that I will never compromise on, no matter what—even to the point of not making the movies if it comes to it. (Nor am I kidding about that.) Here's the list:

Body size norms for male and female actors = gone. In particular, I want to dispel the ghoulish reality we live in where female actors' upper arms look skeletal and their shoulders look almost juvenilely narrow; and, on the male side, those equally emaciated male actors who look like they're being tortured just as much as the female ones to eliminate virtually all their body fat, while also being forced to have comically broad shoulders and horrifying, steroidal musculature on their arms and torsos (and sometimes thighs). I really hate to use the word ugly, because that's not fair to the people who naturally look that way or deliberately want to look that way and work to achieve it. But I will say that the norm of imposing this shit as a societal default in our media absolutely is ugly.

Body diversity = the new hotness. I don't just mean I would make all the characters fat. I really do mean "diversity": I would ensure that my casting operation selected for a variety of body sizes and types, both within and on top of any my preexisting descriptions in written form.

Female beauty stereotypes like cosmetic makeup, big boobs, and high heels = begone! Just like it says on the tin. It blows my fucking mind that still to this day our media show female characters in war zones / apocalypse conditions / etc. in full lipstick, eyeliner, lash extensions...it's just ludicrous. Makeup for the camera, which all actors receive to "correct" for the biases of being filmed, I would keep, but the cosmetic makeup as a female default is gone. Only if characters (of any sex!) would actually want to wear cosmetic makeup, and only in situations where it would make sense for them to do so, would they be filmed in it. Same goes for the high heels. As for big chests, there would be some of that on the grounds of body diversity, but it would no longer be the norm, and bra padding for size or shape would not happen (again, unless the characters themselves had in-world personal motives for doing it because they wanted it as a part of their own look; that is night-and-day different from the production forcing it onto the characters as a meta-narrative).

Height diversity = lovely skylines. There's been a long trend favoring tall actors over short ones, and male actors are always cast as or else portrayed to be taller than their female counterparts. This artificial uniformity would be gone in favor of a natural variety of body heights.

Body hair = natural by default. Characters who would actually want to wear their hear differently (for aesthetic reasons more so than to conform to social norms for the sake of avoiding scrutiny) would of course continue to do as they liked, but no longer would this be the default. Waxed chests, sculpted beards, shaved pits...it's all an artifice of social convention. Nothing wrong with it, but neither is it the natural state of our bodies, nor is it inherently superior. We need to normalize body hair in our social conscience again.

Splotches, blotches, freckles, warts, and moles = back in business! This stuff is erased for no good reason. Societies hold onto these stupid norms of erasure out of a misapplied phobia toward the appearance of "sickness," and out of a powerful bias toward conformity.

I feel very strongly about all of this, and especially about the body size stuff. I'm really not kidding or exaggerating when I say that I would not sign any movie, TV, or game contract that did not guarantee all of the above. I do not want to participate in the cultural bigotry of homogenizing human appearance. I do not want to participate in the erasure of marginalized bodies, or the lie that what is popular is also better. For me, the items on this list would be as central to the purpose of my works as the actual contents of the story.

[ettaberrytea]

@theimaginatrix27 (I'm starting a new post because the other one was starting to get long).

I think that new trek is trying a bit too hard to live up to a legacy that is crushing it. It's trying too hard to be Star Trek instead of using Star Trek as a medium to tell a story and explore a philosophical idea. I think the best thing about Old trek is that nearly every episode poses a philosophical question about morality or the nature of reality or something and then explores that idea. Even if you absolutely hate what they did with the episode, you keep thinking about the philosophical question long after you've turned off the tv. Even though new trek tries to be edgy and dark with the gorn or whatever, it feels like it's playing it safe because the audience doesn't get challenged as much.

Personally I like a darker interpretation of starfleet, but I still don't like how new trek has gone about it. I agree that deep space nine did it better and with nuance. I think that you don't have to invent secret corruption to explore that aspect of starfleet. Starfleet is already deeply flawed in cannon, even in the original series. Star Trek started as a space western, a wagon train to the stars as Rodenberry called it. Which means that starfleet, from it's beginning, is colonial. The federation is constantly expanding and settling new planets that it deems to be unclaimed by sentient life as by it's own definitions of sentient life. It's a utopia, but it's a white american idea of utopia that just can't exist in real life without distopian consequences. North America was not empty land after all. I'd like to see that explored more. I'd like to see new star trek get radical and challenge colonialism. I want to see it challenge the beliefs it held about it's self in earlier trek. I think that it's still possible to have an inspiring message about everyone working together to create a better society without having the federation be the ultimate example of what a better society looks like. I think that having secret corruption story lines takes zero risks. At best it's over done. At worst, it's just rehashing the idea of a mysterious organization controlling the government that must be routed out by the good, innocent starfleet officers and there's absolutely nothing radical about that.

Anyways, I bet we both could write at least a ten page essay on why new trek doesn't work. There was a few episodes I liked. I really liked the episode in Picard where captain Rios gets detained by ICE. That one felt like a deep space nine episode and was powerful. They need more of that. I'm glad that they've been able to introduce more diversity but they've got to do something with it! They need more diversity in their writing rooms. Imagine what it would be like if they hired a bunch of black women to write stories for Michael Burnham. Discovery could have been so cool. I know that they had one black man who left the team after the white staff reported him to hr for using the n word. Hey, imagine if they hired a blind writer to give Hemmer some love! He deserved so much more. Star Trek has been conserned with living up to it's past, but really it needs to get with the program of today. It used to push the boundaries of what was on tv. Now there's hundreds of shows boldly going where Star Trek is seemingly scared to go.

[ben-man]

Please tell me more about fat Light. I’m so curious

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW EXCITED I AM TO TALK ABOUT THIS I am quite literally physically vibrating. I grew up fat and remain fat so please for the love of fuck nobody be rude about me being just unfiltered about this.

Light Yagami is so obsessed with his exterior shell. His like beautiful ornate carapace. His mask. He's obsessed with his image, and a huge reason for this is his fathers position in society and being the perfect son to make his family proud and the fact that he is empty. There is a certain type of childhood where you grow up with a pit in your gut and anger in your heart and no reasonable place to put it or explanation for why you feel that way.

He is a young boy given the power to kill people, and an unnatural boredom borne of his privilege, nature, and power. He's unchallenged by school, he finds no connection in those around him, the distance between him and his family may as well be a chasm. There is no 'real' Light Yagami you will find under that flesh he cloaks himself in (because he doesn't even know who he is himself, he never got the opportunity to.)

I write this fairly often but I hate the characterization where Light is written as if Light and Kira are two different people. Kira is a young boys realization that if he acts sweet and remorseful enough he can get away with breaking other kids toys. It's the fucking feeling in the air when someone's position gives them the power to do whatever bloody cruel thing they want. Kira is a round-faced boy with a terrible weapon to kill. Many people forget that when Light first killed someone (in the manga) he basically cowered under his bedsheets for an entire night. He is bored, and he is empty, and to him excitement and feeling comes when he is so nervous he feels bile in his mouth.

In my mind he grows up fat, he's a pudgy fucking kid. And you know when you're young and fat and you are meant to be fingerpainting you crawl up that step stool and look in the mirror wondering why your soft, fat, unmanageable body doesn't look good enough.

And when you become an adult, for some the doorway to changing your body opens. It can fucking eat you whole man! And I write Light Yagami with these issues and interpret him as having a fuck ton of internalized fatphobia and body image issues, and now he's thin, unhealthily so. I usually write him struggling with eating.

When I do write him having the happy ending he doesn't deserve, I write him gaining weight as a good thing, and that means a lot to me! Internalized fatphobia makes you bitter and cruel not just to yourself but to others. He gets a very prominent double chin and gets larger gradually as he ages I think.

Also my friend @kattidiot wrote a BEAUTIFUL (unpublished) Light Yagami drabble about him being a child and crushing ants and his mother teaching him to bake so he directs that energy not toward covering his fingers in bug guts and he's looking back on that childhood and describes his fat little boy hands and how he doesn't want to add too much butter or sugar and so it always comes out wrong and his cruel perspective on his own baby-faced self is like so well written its like electric.

Anyway yeah diversity win the deranged mass murderer is fat.

[timetraveltiddy]

Thinking Muchly about how it sucks that all these popular websites keep trying to purge shit with regards to sexuality lately…we’ve all heard the arguments about how censoring shit you don’t like will just lead to censoring things like LGBTQ+ content and the like and yeah, it sucks. It makes me think about some of the things I studied years ago about pushing sexuality out of the public eye and the way people just don’t take it seriously.

In real life, stuff like porn shops wouldn’t be allowed to be open in more “public”, touristy spots and instead pushed into “seedy” areas which just stigmatizes it further. Airing shows with more overt sexual tones late at night, of course. Sexuality studies in general is treated a bit like a joke, I remember bringing up that I was studying it to someone once and the first thing they said was “oh, I could tell you all about that :)” which, from who said it, wasn’t really what I wanted to hear. And according to the articles I’ve read, joking and brushing off is an EXTREMELY common reaction. It feels like people throw sexuality under fire way too often and just don’t want to actually discuss why they feel that way. Which is understandable when sexuality holds so much significance for people, be it because it’s “shameful” or a trauma site or anything in between. While I couldn’t fault someone for not wanting to discuss trauma, that Western society loves to lump shame on people for talking about sexuality at all is another form of censorship when you get down to it.

Extending attempts at censorship to the internet is of course the natural progression and it really is unsettling how many people, especially “antis” are for it. We see these bills and shit the US government is trying to pass and people are vehemently against them and yet so many of the same people are more than happy to enforce their own censorship by bullying people who make content they don’t like. Which is what it boils down to in most cases, it just sounds more “legitimate” to shroud it in something already shameful and package it as something harmful. And then of course people just follow the leader because, assuming good faith, if you hear that doing something is going to hurt people why wouldn’t you protest it? It’s tricky to separate for those who haven’t developed strong critical thinking skills. And even in having developed it, being reactionary is kind of the natural thing when you simply don’t have the knowledge behind it. This not even getting into the fact that some people simply love the power trip this gives them. Shit like this is how people GAIN this type of power…which is why discussing this kind of thing is critically important. Which is why even if I hate certain kinds of content online, I’m not gonna lobby for its complete removal.

I have so, so much more I can ramble about but I’ll call it here for now. Human sexuality is just such a diverse and expansive topic and as much as people wanna pretend any of this is unimportant or can be reduced to the “bad” parts it really ain’t that simple!!

[junebugwriter]

The Cult of Normalcy

I'm going to talk a bit about my research and something that's really been stuck in my brain, and one of the biggest issues I've found in my work in theology and how the church in the US operates.

In the book Vulnerable Communion by Thomas Reynolds, the author talks about something he calls "the cult of normalcy."

(Thomas Reynolds, "Vulnerable Communion," pg 62.)

I've highlighted the relevant bits, but in essence, the cult of normalcy is our veneration for a baseline standard "normal" body. Any deviation from this is pathologized as not only abnormal, but deficient, and in need of correction, aka punishment through stigma. Mass media and community standards enforce normativity and conformity to extreme degrees, an impossible standard that arguably nobody can actually either attain or maintain. In the long term, nobody stays "normal" all their lives. Bodies change as the world changes them. We age. We grow. We decay. Such is the natural way of human life, but we have as a society decided that such "natural" change is in fact undesirable, and deviation from the norm will be punished.

Churches, I have found, are most susceptible to this. Whereas we ought to embrace the diversity of our communities, the variation each person can embody and celebrate, the cult of normalcy instead polices us into conformity. I have in many ways seen this done through misapplication of scripture, too, specifically Paul's letter to the Romans. Perhaps you've heard these verses tossed out by pastors seeking to tell you exactly how you ought to live your life:

"We know this because God knew them in advance, and he decided in advance that they would be conformed to the image of his Son. That way his Son would be the first of many brothers and sisters. Those who God decided in advance would be conformed to his Son, he also called. Those whom he called, he also made righteous. Those whom he made righteous, he also glorified." --Romans 8: 29-30 (CEB)

Or most ironically, this one:

"Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature." --Romans 12:2 (CEB)

The first actively calls us to conformity, and pastors will often use this as a cudgel, completely ignoring the context of the passage. The second is the most ironic, because I've seen it paired with the message of "Don't succumb to THEIR peer pressure, succumb to OUR peer pressure, OUR definition of what being transformed looks/acts like! :) "

Christians love their conformity. They love their communities to look/exist a certain way, and when that preexisting image is countered by the real, lived experience of a community in real life, the reaction is most often to double down on rigid conformity.

I saw this a lot as I was going into ministry. I heard a lot of talk from the people in charge, excited to have such a RICHLY DIVERSE incoming class of pastors coming into ministry, and positively beaming with expectation for our ability to fill the pews with their most desired demographic: young white adults ages 18-35, ideally from middle to upper-class backgrounds! Of course, when that failed to happen, because that demographic is largely LEAVING churches, the punishment came. Out of all the people that remained in ministry in the church largely looked and lived like one specific kind of person, and wouldn't you know it, that person was a white young adult, usually male.

The cult of normalcy is insidious, and the church loves to adhere to it, especially when it doesn't know it is doing it. It makes us think "surely, this is what God wants" when that is not at all what God is doing. There is a serious disconnect between expectation and reality, and once we see that it is in place, we have to insist that no, there is no such thing as "normal."

Normal is a lie. Normal is a tidy little box that fits nothing, and God hates being in a box. We ought to resist normal with every fiber of our beings. Normalcy is a prison. Normalcy corrodes and sands down everything wild and wonderful about creation.

Reject normalcy. Embrace your weird self. It's what God made you to be. Anything less would be to deny the image of God within you.

[all-hallows-street]

Lingzi's Odaibako/Twitter Answers Collection Volume 1

In case you weren't aware, the author of 1031 All Saints Street Lingzi has a twitter account they update rarely, mostly rt'ing announcements of the Japanese release, 1031 fanart, Jpns comedians, and sometimes posting doodles and answering fan questions through Odaibako. You can still send questions/comments/requests through Odaibako but please be respectful and mindful! As the author stated they will not respond to any questions or suggestions about future content! Also do not spam, Lingzi answers in rare bursts so they might not get to answer your comment any time soon. Here is a compilation of what has been answered so far. Chinese questions and answers are being machine translated and I'm verifying with a friend the Japanese questions translations.

A few clarifications. I will skip some doodle requests/drawn answers and will compile them later in a post with all of Lingzi's twitter drawings. Everything with [] marks an edit so the English sounds more natural.

1. Hello~ Lingzi! What made you want to become a manga artist?

To put it simply, it was because of a domestic comic called "Super Alloy Society". At that time (around 14 years old), I became completely obsessed with it after reading a few chapters, and I was very eager to draw such a work myself 😌

Source

2. Does Nick [have] feeling[s] towards Lynn?

ummm······I would say it's more like “he is curious about/interested in Lynn”

Source

3. Who out of all the character would have the [ugliest] laugh?

Ah-never thought about this before, maybe broken [Cupid]？

Source

4. Will we get stories about Nick's university friends? Their designs are so cool and I would love to know more about them!

maybe? 🤔🤔 let me ask my editor next time.

Source

5. anyone you relate to in the series?

Does this count? Look that is my name on the background 🤣🤣

Source

6. Which character do you enjoy drawing [the most]?

Definitely Nick[.] He's the easiest to draw, also [the] sexiest. 😌

Source

6. Lingzi, do angles live longer than demons?

Yes! Angels basically cannot pass away unless they are killed. Teacher Lynn's age is also in the three digits~

Source

7. I really, really, REALLY love All Saints Street. Thank you so much for creating this series! There are so many diverse characters, and I love the charming and relaxed atmosphere. I find it really difficult to choose a favorite character because I just love them all so much (Nick is objectively the best though). It encouraged me to try learning to read Chinese again in order to read the manhua. Again, thank you so much for creating this!

Wow I'm flattered, thank you for [liking] my manhua 😳😳 I will do my best to keep [it] going!

Source

8. A work of my pleasure! I love you! I love “All Saints Street”! I love you big hair! Thank you for creating such wonderful works!

[Thank you]! 😊😊 Hope you will like the Japanese [dubbed] version too~

Source

9. This is not an ask but I wanted to say thank you for your hard work! Your series makes me very happy and I love it so much! It's inspired me more to continue making my own characters and helped me create art more. thank you so much! <3

Thank you too 😊😊 Glad I [..] helped.

Source

Not a question but a fact related to a previous question that is very much lore relevant:

Fun fact: Although angels live much longer than demons, because demons can reproduce independently but angels cannot, the number of angels is currently less than one-tenth of the number of demons. ( ← A small private device

Source

10. Can Lynn turn into a girl like Nick and Neil?

No~ Transfiguration is a demon thing.

Source

11. Can Ira taste demon blood? or does he hate it?

He can [...] but demon blood is always too strong for vampires, one bite is like [drinking] ten cups of coffee at once[.] They can get really hyperactive by drinking demon blood. Some vampires may like it, but not Ira. (And it's really bad for vampire kid[s])

Source

12. Hi! This is not a question but i wanted to tell you that I REALLY LOVE ALL SAINTS STREET, since 2020 i been in love with this manhua/donghua, thank you for create all saints street, the manhua/donghua really help me in hard times and inspire me to create my own comics. I really love the characters specially Abu and Luis ❤️

Thank you too, glad you enjoy my work 😊😊

Source

13. Who gives the best hugs?

Maybe?

Source

14. Why are Lily's wings so small compared to other angels?

No special reason, I just think it's cuter this way.

Source

REALLY IMPORTANT NOTE: IN CHINESE FANDOMS C P MEANS CHARACTER PAIRING, IS HOW THEY REFER TO SHIPS/SHIPPING

I will replace it with ship because I don't want the use the acronym due to tumblr search.

15. Will it be very Lynn/Nick? Because people keep telling me that Nini/Lily is the official ship, I am troubled. If the original painting is very bad, it feels like I have violated someone else's OC. I'm very sorry for disturbing you, and I really like your illustrations and works!

To answer this question, mainstream ship ≠ is correct. I think any ship has a reason to exist as long as some people like it. I don’t think it is a minefield at all... and even "official" ship does not mean anything. What kind of ship you want to consume is completely up to you, and you don’t need to ask for my opinion, just be happy

Source

Continued in Part 2!

[wondereads]

Review of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

Summary

Princess Gwen has been betrothed to Arthur, the son of a duke, since childhood. They hate each other, but their engagement is made only more complicated by Gwen's crush on lady knight Bridget Leclair and Arthur's penchant for kissing boys. In an attempt to cover up their respective romantic pursuits, they pretend to fall in love, but the ruse can only last for so long.

Plot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

I really liked how this story took some fun, more contemporary romance tropes and put them into a historical setting. Historical romances can often be quite dramatic and perhaps not the best fit for the YA style, but Lex Croucher did a great job of creating a more lighthearted story that still didn't make me forget the setting. There was an unexpected bit of plot at the end; I certainly didn't anticipate it, and it felt a little out of left field, but I think it ultimately gave some good character development and provided a nice conclusion to the story.

There were some points where the actual situations the four main characters got into felt a little unrealistic. Like it was stretching my suspension of disbelief. However, that's pretty par for the course for romance. The worldbuilding was a lot more in-depth than I thought it would be. It was wildly historically inaccurate, but it brought a lot more diversity than is normally present in historical romances.

Characters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

I really liked the characters of this book, especially Gwen. The romance was great too, and I'll talk about that, but I appreciate that they all had their own arcs to follow and develop through outside their romantic attachments. Gwen has issues with her confidence, Arthur is the king of all daddy issues, Bridget struggles with her place in society as a female knight, and Gabriel has to come to terms with his sexuality. Them all having their own arcs really helps establish them as characters.

The romance itself was very sweet. Even if some of the situations were a bit unrealistic, the characters dealt with them very naturally and the build of both relationships felt well-paced. There was good conflict in both of them as well, ones where neither side was wrong or right and they had to come together to understand each other. By around halfway through the book if not sooner, I was wholeheartedly rooting for both Gwen and Arthur's happy endings with their love interests.

Writing Style 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Although this is a historical setting, the writing is quite modern (bonus points if you catch the Riverdale meme reference in the first few chapters). However, considering this is pitched as a romcom and makes no pretense of being historically accurate, I don't mind it. The tone and language is consistent throughout the book, and I really only think it's an issue if it changes between 'modern' and 'historical'. The writing itself isn't amazing, but it is still good and Croucher does a good job portraying emotion.

Overall 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This was a great historical romance. It was super sweet with a lot of great representation, even if it wasn't what most would consider historically accurate. Both relationships developed naturally with some pretty realistic bumps along the way. Some scenes felt a little forced, but more in the uncanny probability of the world, not the characters. Gwen was my favorite character, and I loved her arc of self-improvement. There was an unexpected bit of plot at the end, but I think it worked well in the context of how the characters were developing and what needed to occur for a happy ending.

The Author

Lex Croucher: British, also wrote Reputation and Infamous, has a cat

The Reviewer

Hi, I'm Wonderose, and I write reviews! Check out my pinned post for more about me :)

[authoralexharvey]

INTERVIEW WITH A WRITEBLR — @mjjune

Who You Are:

MJ June || She/they, any

Healthcare worker by day, writer by night, who writes all kinds of fantasy with a focus on diversity and exploring dark themes and trauma.

What You Write:

What genres do you write in? What age ranges do you write for?

Adventure, fantasy, paranormal. Adult.

What genre would you write in for the rest of your life, if you could? What about that genre appeals to you?

Fantasy, because I love exploring how real life themes interact with other worlds and times.

What genre/s will you not write unless you HAVE to? What about that genre turns you off?

Anything that's contemporary/real life based, or a plot that's purely romantic in nature.

Who is your target audience? Do you think anyone outside of that would get anything out of your works?

My books are Adult, but most of them I consider to be PG-13. My goal is to write stories that, if a teen/young adult were to pick it up, they could also read it, understand it, and get something out of it, even if they're not the audience I have in mind.

What kind of themes do you tend to focus on? What kinds of tropes? What about them appeals to you?

Gender and sexuality exploration, and how society defines and views gender and sexuality will probably be in all of my works. The concept of time, change, trauma, humanity, acceptance of the past and moving on. The exploration of dark things, and characters accepting and living on is a big draw for me, I guess because I write what I need, or what I wish I had when I was younger. In terms of tropes I love enemies to [anything], found family, female friendship, reluctant heroes, and anything diverse.

What themes or tropes can you not stand? What about them turn you off?

Most romance-only tropes are meh for me. I don't hate them, I just don't prefer romance in general. The most annoying trope to me is forced miscommunication for the sake of a plot device.

What are you currently working on? How long have you been working on it?

I just started outlining a new story this week!! So like.. 4 days? lol

Why do you write? What keeps you writing?

I have to. I have too many worlds and themes to explore and writing is how I explore my own feelings and perceptions of the world. Not sure how I could function without writing.

How long have you been writing? What do you think first drew you to it?

Since before I could write, actually. I would say them aloud and my mom would write them, and then I started writing them myself in kindergarten. I don't have memory of it myself, so I don't know what drew me in originally. I think it's just the way I communicate my ideas best.

Where do you get your inspiration from? Is that how you got your inspiration for your current project? If not, where did the inspiration come from?

Books, movies, music, and all forms of art. Lately, I've been doing fairytale retellings so fairytales have been my go-to inspiration.

What work of yours are you most proud of? Why?

I really only have 2 right now, and I'm very proud of both of them. My urban (paranormal) fantasy duology is how I explored my own identity, through various characters and arcs, and my red riding hood retelling is very much about exploring other elements of my identity that I haven't gotten to yet, as well as exploring the theme of hatred and revenge, which is something I've never tackled before, so it was fun and exciting and I'm proud of how it turned out.

Have you published anything? Do you want to?

No, but I want to. I have queried some and hope to start querying my red riding hood retelling after a few beta rounds.

What part of the publishing process most appeals to you? What part least appeals to you?

Um.. getting paid? lol And getting my work out to large masses of people. My least favorite part is querying and how long it takes to get anything done, and also royalties tend to be low in trad publishing.

What part of the writing process most appeals to you? What part is least appealing?

All of it! I don't think there's a part I dislike. Worldbuilding, outlining, drafting, editing, getting feedback… I really enjoy the whole process.

Do you have a writing process? Do you have an ideal setup? Do you write in pure chaos? Talk about your process a bit.

I outline, which is generally chaotic and what I call "word vomit" and then from there I elaborate, edit, remove, rearrange, etc. Then I draft it and get it out to alphas and then betas.

Your Thoughts on Writeblr:

How long have you been a writeblr? What inspired you to join the community?

Only a few months. I had tried a few other online communities but they all had elements that ended up pushing me away. I've been on tumblr for years under other aliases so I thought I would start fresh with a new blog for writing.

Shout out some of your favorite writeblrs. How did you find them and what made you want to follow them?

@jamieanovels, @isabellebissonrouthier, @flowerprose, @pinespittinink, @vacantgodling just to name a few!! I mostly find people through the writeblr tags and my dash.

What is your favorite part about writeblr?

How positive and accepting and supportive everyone is.

What do you think writeblr could improve on? How do you think we can go about doing so?

Hmm honestly it's the best community I've tried online. I do think it could be helpful to have some way to clearly identity who wants to publish (whether trad or indie or self) and who doesn't, and from there also setting up support for betas/feedback?? But really that would just be icing on the cake, and not sure how exactly that would work lol

How do you contribute to the writeblr community? Do you think you could be doing more?

I try my best to reblog, share and comment in the tags of the writers I follow, and actually just made a separate sideblog for it because I was doing it so much my main blog started feel too chaotic for me. I probably could do more, but it's hard to find the time with everything irl I have going on.

What kinds of posts do you most like to interact with?

Short snippets, tag and ask games.

What kind of posts do you most like to make?

Excerpts, moodboards, and playlists

Finally, anywhere else online we may be able to find you?

Themjjune on twitter but I'm mostly just lurking there lol

Questions For Fun:

What is the worst thing you have put a character through? Why?

Hmm well I have tortured quite a few characters in my day. like chained and human experimentation, starved to near death - the works. so, probably that?

If your writing was a smell, what would it be and why?

lmao my sense of smell sucks but I want to lean towards a mix of something natural, like plants or a forest, plus something artificial - to mirror how in all of my works i take nature and twist it, or how i use old tropes to reveal things about human nature that usually tropes (especially toxic cisheteronormative tropes) don't usually allow to be shown

Have you ever taken anything from your career and put it in your writing? If so, what was it and how did it turn out? If not, have you wanted to do so? What's stopping you?

as a healthcare worker, absolutely! a lot of my supernatural/vampire lore and use of blood loss, how often they have to drink, inclusion of blood plasma, etc. all come from my medical knowledge. i also have a background in linguistics and while it hasn't directly impacted my books, i do think my characters use and understand language similarly to me and will play with it.

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

Listen I’m enjoying East of Eden for all the Biblical allusion and its meditation on trauma, grief, and the impact trauma has on communities

But I think Steinbeck’s misogyny and racism is so overwhelming that it’s almost impossible to take his other comments on society seriously

Because if he’s so blind to his own internal prejudice- how much can I possibly trust his judgment on biblical interpretation and the truth of American community consciousness during the 19th-20th century?

Anyway, for commentary on the life in the American West, and the impact war, famine, and diversity had on creating the collective identity of the American people, during the 19th and 20th centuries, seek authors like:

Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, Edith Warton, Zora Neel Hurston, Rebecca Harding Davis, Alice Walker, Susan Glaspell, Marianne Moore, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Joy Harjo, N. Scott Momaday, Lanston Hughes,

(and SO MANY MORE)

All of these authors deal with the subjects (to various degrees) of class vs individualism, American emergent Identity issues, industrialism, tradition vs modernism, and multiculturalism in the West in ways that are much more nuanced than anything Steinbeck ever wrote.

Some of them wrote with clear Christian overtones- some with indigenous religiosity and recrimination of internalize colonialist attitude existing within pop-christian thought, and some of them are pure modernist empiricists. And I love the diversity of thought extant within these works- much more interesting than painting with broad generalization and assuming all of American history to revolve around the same conceptual points modern evangelist's decree.

We are a nation built on diversity- of people, of thought, and of place. I'll accept no other definition of what it means to be USamerican.

At this point, I'm pretty sure Steinbeck was just projecting his own hatred of women, and processing his divorce, throughout the entirety of East of Eden- like the book gets so close to interesting biblical allusion overlay onto familial interdependent dynamic and mediation on the nature of evil - but then his work devolves into racism and misogyny diminishing the impact of these really interesting themes.

BOOO!

Why do I have to read this. I hate the so-called Literary Canon.

So sick of the fact that I have to read the work of every white American man ever- for the purpose of my degree program's culminative exam- yet many of the women authors, indigenous authors, or multiethnic authors will not be on my exam.

IDK bro- I'm feeling a type of way about it today.