#🙄🙄🙄🙄 why are POC like this

[skxrbrand]

🙄

[sukibenders]

Me: Hey, can I please have content for the poc characters on The Boys universe? Especially MM, Victoria, and Marie?

Tumblr:

[grimmjow]

white ppl thinking if they just say 'trump is worse' enough times that poc will finally change their minds and vote for biden is so funny.

like you might have had your head up your ass for the last 4 years ignoring how badly hes fucked over our communities but the white supremacist dog you want in charge is just as bad for us as the one you dont like. only real difference for us is that white ppl actually pretend to care when the one they dont like is in charge.

[yourqueenb]

I often talk about how much I’ve forgotten since I first played this series. But one thing that has always stuck with me is “the chocolate incident”. I remember being so sickened and infuriated by that scene and the limited ways in which MC could respond as Hana’s friend that I almost exited the chapter right then and there. And the responses I saw from many of the fans at that time made it worse. There were, of course, people who felt similarly to me. But seeing just as many people downplay, defend, and even praise Madeleine for what she did was upsetting (and that’s an understatement).

As you so astutely pointed out, Madeleine’s statement about wanting to break Hana was not only sick on a human level. It, and her overall treatment of the latter, were also proof of abuse as an employer and her sadistic glee in psychologically and emotionally tormenting Hana for literally no reason, going to the point of making her think she was beholden to her and could send her back home in disgrace at any moment. However (and perhaps this is predictable of me), I’d like to take it a step further and say that the optics of all that with regard to Madeleine being a white woman and Hana being a woc… do not look good to say the least. White women have abused their social power to the detriment of women of color for their own benefit and entertainment for centuries and continue to do it to this day. And whether the people harmed by that reach their breaking point or not, those same women often turn around and weaponize their tears to steal sympathy and feign innocence. And it’s very clear that PB didn’t consider or care about any of this when they were going out of their way to reflect all of it in the writing for Madeleine (giving her a sob story, painting her as the ultimate patriot, downplaying then retconning the narrative AND pinning things on Kiara, another woc, forcing everyone to coddle her, etc.) and even worse, using the woman she abused to make her appear less villainous.

I mean “Madeleine would be most likely to take a bullet for Liam”? Were they serious???

Hana and Madeleine: When You Reward Your Favourite Bully with One of Her Victims

Series - TRR's Alternative LIs: The "Romances" That Didn't Happen

Previous - Maxwell and Penelope: When You Like the Side Character So Much, You Gift Her A Shiny New LI

A/N1: Apologies, again, for the length of this. There was so much damn retconning to wade through that it felt like a rollercoaster to write. There is also not going to be a lot of Hana in this, as I needed to unravel so many inconsistencies in Madeleine's writing. I also didn't want this to become a repeat of my essay series on Hana (which you can read here).

CW: Descriptions of bullying and intimidation, as well as dismissiveness of the same both in canon and from fandom. A mention of the 'infertility' plotline written for Hana in TRH1. Mentions of parental abuse and neglect.

In every other essay in this series, it's been important for me to analyse the potential of the pairings TRR went for. No matter how badly PB handled them later on, one could find promise in the possibilities of these pairings, and if written well they could result in a sweet, happy ending for the LIs we didn't marry. With a better sense of balance from the writers and less vitriol and double standards (in some cases) from the fandom, they could have worked.

Not so for this pairing.

In the case of Hana and Madeleine,it would have been far far better if this pairing had never happened at all. The problem wasn't just in the development; the roots of such a pairing itself were rotten.

(White) Female Antagonists

Before I delve into the characters involved in this pairing, it's important we take another deep dive into a narrative practice we often see with PB. Their blatant favouring of specifically white female antagonists.

Now, it's not as if white men in antagonistic roles don't get favourable writing from their teams and adulation from sections of the fandom (one has to only look at some of the posts Gaius Augustine of BB, Caleb of Hero, and Kane of TE got - just to name a few). But we also often see fans of such white women decry the (very little compared to their black counterparts) condemnation that their faves get for their actions in comparison to both antagonistic and romanceable white men. Such readers often neglect to acknowledge exactly how much the narrative bends over backwards to accomodate them, in a way that they never have done for even mildly hostile/wary black and brown women. And often this is with ample support and encouragement within the fandom itself.

One cannot even pretend this is a recent development. The early books had their fair share of white-woman-adulation and you can see some of the patterns that would solidify in PB discourse already take shape in their early books.

One excellent example of this is TCaTF. Compare the treatment that white women like Helene Leventis, Hex and Zenobia Nevrakis are given, to what Rowan Thorn - a black woman - gets. Helene is allowed to escape never to return, or join Kenna, despite being the woman who killed her mentor and close friend Gabriel. Hex is well known in the series for her sadistic torture devices and for destroying an extremely prosperous kingdom. Yet, she is captured - alive - and there are two options that allow her a bit more mercy, and only one that recommends the harshest of punishments. Rowan in the meantime only betrays Kenna if the latter is an absolute tyrant to her, and letting her go if she betrays her is touted as a failure. Her loyalty doesn't ensure she will live like Diavolos' does - you can in fact leave her to die if you don't have enough diamonds/prestige points.

The Freshman was an improvement on this: even if Becca Davenport started out as a classic college mean girl, her redemption arc involved her needing to work to regain trust with the group and her best friend Madison, regardless of the MC's fondness of her. Her housemates immediately set her straight when she lashes out at them at the beginning of TS, and Becca has to plan for almost a-book-and-a-half to get her friendship with Madison back to normal again.

Sadly, this is something that rarely ever happened again. Discrepancies in character treatment became more and more obvious as the years passed. Books where black and brown women behaved even mildly unimpressed or catty with the MC, showed them either suffering grievous fates or written out of the narrative (eg. Scarlett not even getting a proper future in the VoS bonus scene) or being mistrusted and misunderstood constantly by the MC and their friends (Aurora). Books where white women could cause grievous harm depicted them being let off without so much as a slap on the wrist (eg. Aunt Mallory of RoE being rewarded with a happy life, a man and reconciliation with the niece she tried to kill and the daughter she emotionally abused).

(Screenshots from SavageLordBarlow's YouTube channel)

Perhaps the worst and most obvious case to date was that of Vanessa Blackwood of MoTY, who called a young child "guttersnipe" within minutes of encountering her, outed a lesbian teacher, encouraged her son's bullying, provided legal counsel to the MC's ex husband just to see the woman suffer, and engineered a plot to frame the MC for theft so she could lose her job. Once Vanessa had crossed her limits, PB ensured they laid on the sympathy narrative thick, having her show sad faces when the MC scolded her in a paywall scene, punishing only her brown lackey (both the white people involved - Vanessa and Guy - are never named when Tallulah is exposed, even though she literally stole jewellery and framed the MC for them). In the series finale, Vanessa was rewarded with a cushy diamond scene where the MC can choose (in what is the understatement of the century) to call her "classist and a little bit racist" - all she is given at the end of the book is an extremely softball form of criticism.

Compare this to Xanthe of ACOR, who had far less power, who was repeatedly slut shamed by the MC and others for doing her job, and whose end was met in a "comical" scene that implied she'd been sold into sexual slavery while two black members of her scholae gloated over her plight (in a manner so uncharacteristic of them that even players who didn't necessarily like Xanthe were shocked. I would highly recommend you read @cassiopeiacorvus' excellent essay on her, "Xanthe: Courtesan, Rival, Pawn").

In an essay I'd written years ago, I'd noted the following:

"Check out who the narrative rewards you for treating well, as opposed to who will be made to support you either way.

You're allowed to show basic decency to a black or brown woman. But you're expected to show kindness, understanding and empathy to a white woman, and richly rewarded if you do. In some cases you will also face consequences if you don't. (Fandom - take note of the difference, and be sure not to forget it)."

Madeleine Amaranath is probably one of the best examples of this - with blatant retcons, unfounded adulation and obvious pandering lasting over five books.

Rules of Engagement

When we look at the full cast of TRR, we find at least six characters who are callbacks to its sister series, Rules of Engagement. Leo, Constantine, Regina, Bastien, Madeleine and Rashad (the last one was an addition from TRR2 onwards). Part of TRR's appeal as a series was its ability to reference the earlier one through these characters, but this time from the PoV of Leo's younger brother instead.

Madeleine appeared in only 2 chapters in RoE. She was Leo's fiancée, in an arranged match that not only their parents but their citizens expected, unfazed by the "commoners" Leo brought to his bed and secure in the knowledge that no matter who he slept with she would eventually become his Queen. Leo dashes these expectations, however, by abdicating his claim to the throne - whether the RoE MC chooses him or not.

At this point - when TRR was barely even a concept - Leo was a clear fan favourite. Players liked the idea of romancing a rogue prince from a fictional European country; it meant they could revel in the luxury of touching royalty, while being away from all the hard, unsavoury parts. The Madeleine angle provided them with a rival to fight off, and at the time that was all that mattered.

Was Leo's behaviour in RoE, towards both the RoE MC and Madeleine, dishonest? Definitely, but not many seemed to care much at the time and it hardly created a dent in his fanbase (most of the criticisms against him and his cheating ways and irresponsibility would emerge later - when the Leo stans became Drake stans, and it was more convenient to badmouth Liam's family).

Jeffrey Herdman, a Junior Game Writer with Pixelberry for over 7 years, was a part of both the RoE and TRR teams, and proudly admitted in the TRR2 pre-release interview, to being the one in charge of writing Madeleine:

Q: Very funny. (Just so we're clear, Jeffrey is joking. Sort of.) Out of curiosity, who's your favorite character to write in The Royal Romance?

Jeffrey: Madeleine. It's fun to write someone who's constantly trying to spin a situation to their benefit, and making power plays along the way. I've actually been writing for Madeleine since her appearance in Rules of Engagement: Book 2, so we're practically besties.

Excerpt from The Royal Romance: Book 2 Interview

(If we were to compare this adulation of the character from Jeffrey, to the person who wrote Hana - head writer Jennifer Young, you'd find a surprising difference. In this very interview Jennifer talks about enjoying the process of writing Hana, but pointed to Drake as her favourite LI - "In my personal game, my love interest is definitely Drake, and I totally make Kara write him just so I can read his scenes and enjoy the romance. =)".

Perhaps if Jennifer had spent less time fawning over Drake, and more time doing Hana's story justice, that LI wouldn't be stuck in a situation where the team constantly erased her experiences and history to benefit their favourites)

When you look at Jeffrey's open admiration of Madeleine, and trace her fairly choppy and largely incoherent narrative journey through the books...a lot of things begin to make sense.

TRR1 - Would a TRR1 Madeleine Have Been A Better Fit for Hana?

When you look at the first book, you can tell that the possibility of any of the other alternative pairings besides Liam and Olivia wasn't really entertained. There is no buildup at all for Maxwell x Penelope, Drake x Kiara - and not even a single direct interaction between fellow competitors Hana and Madeleine. In fact, TRR2 often had to cover up for the lack of interaction in certain cases by making the alternative LI come up with justifications for why they weren't approaching the LI before.

There is maybe one implied interaction between Hana and Madeleine, that I don't think even the writers paid much attention to at the time. In the pie baking scene in Applewood, Hana is assigned to Madeleine's team if the MC doesn't take her along. Whichever group Hana is in, she is in charge of the pie design.

In the diamond scene, she takes the MC's suggestions and gives her advice on the amount of apples required for the filling. Given that she gives credit to the MC (in front of Queen Regina) in this option, and doesn't not do the same for Madeleine, it is likely that she was allowed to decorate for the other team, but not with much input from the captain.

This pie has a rose design, which is beautiful but lacks the intricacy and the challenge of the Cordonian Royal Seal, which the MC can suggest in the diamond scene. It's possible that by default, Madeleine handled the baking herself (since Penelope couldn't even boil water and in fact is so distracted she unwittingly helps sabotage the pie), and Hana was assigned strictly decoration duties. But even these possibilities rely on conjecture and guesswork, with no real dialogue or interaction shown.

There are no other scenes where the two women talk or do anything together. Hana may be present in one or two scenes where Madeleine is speaking (such as the dining scene in Ch 17 where Madeleine tells the court ladies about the upcoming Engagement Tour), but the two never directly engage with each other. It's more likely that (like Maxwell and Penelope, or Drake and Kiara), the writers may have thought of Hana and Madeleine only in the second or third book - more likely the third, but there are possible hints in TRR2 if you squint.

Hana is an interesting anomaly among the cast of TRR. She is both Cordonian and foreigner; the ways of the Cordonian court are, in equal parts, both familiar and confusing to her. This serves as an double-edged advantage to the MC - Hana is both skilled and knowledgeable enough to ease her into the culture, and isolated and vulnerable enough for the MC to step up as a hero on occasion. We also find out in Lythikos (TRR1 Ch 7) that she was so deep in the closet that she couldn't fully articulate her struggle to love the romantic English noble who wanted to marry her, in the presence of the woman she was slowly beginning to love. Within the competition itself, Hana is shown having a hard time finding people who will associate with her, often shown left out of events and her yacht party abandoned during the Regatta. The broken engagement could have a hand in making her appear to be struggling in the competition, but tbh Olivia is the only one who brings it up. Overall, she does well in the competition, but gets little credit for the same.

Madeleine is the polar opposite of this. Even though the ladies of the court initially view her with a mixture of pity and respect (due to her broken engagement with Leo, and her position as a Countess and winner of the previous season), their views on Madeleine once she enters the competition range from anger (Olivia), to speculation (Kiara and Penelope), to indifference and later suspicion (the MC).

Madeleine comes into the social season with several advantages: her pedigree and her years of experience at court. Both Bertrand and the MC note that Madeleine hails from a "powerful family" and "is immersed in the intrigues and maneuverings of courtly life", and therefore the MC is cautioned by Applewood to pay more attention to her than to Olivia. If the MC fails to win court favour, both Penelope and Kiara show allegiance to Madeleine. Where Hana is shown to be vulnerable despite her skills, charm and intelligence, Madeleine is meant to be viewed with respect even by her peers - and expected not to return that respect to others unless they're the king and queen.

I often view the Madeleine of Book 1 (and early TRR2), and the Madeleine of the latter half of Book 2, as two separate people (more on that in the next section). Early Madeleine was depicted as a clear threat. While she does nothing too out-of-pocket during the competition, her threats to the MC once she is (optionally) the favourite frontrunner, her singular focus on only the king and queen (and largely ignoring the Prince), and inability to respectfully lose, ensure that the reader registers her as a figure of danger early on. The first time she (optionally) faces an obvious loss and sees the MC crowned as Apple Queen, Madeleine tells her to "savour these moments. You may never hear the phrase again".

Her very extreme attempts to belatedly win Liam's favour after ignoring him the entire season (we later find out that she barged into his sleeping quarters the previous night and suggested the arrangement that Liam speaks about in TRR2), earns her speculative looks from the MC and wariness from Liam himself. Given that the outcome was so different in TRR2 but the buildup to said outcome was so rushed and chaotic, there is a 70/30 chance that Madeleine's buildup in Book 1 was meant to highlight her as someone with the capability to harm the MC, rather than just as a red herring. At the very most, Book 1 would highlight her as powerful, with the intention that Book 2 would follow through with showing her as a cog in a very vicious machine.

But because Madeleine's actions in TRR1 don't result in any direct harm, it's honestly hard to envision her as dangerous beyond the subtle threats (that people could brush off as basic rivalry) and rank classism.

Would Hana's pairing with the Madeleine of TRR1 have worked? It's equally hard to say. If we take only Book 1 into account, and ignore the very real possibility of a threat that Madeleine represents, there's a sliver of a chance that such a pairing could work...if Madeleine works on herself. At this point she hasn't manifested as a direct threat to Hana in a way that, say, Olivia has - and all the MC has at this point are theories and speculation. You'd have to probably change half of Madeleine's characterization, but it could be workable if the foundation for such a pairing was mutual respect from the start.

Still, when you take into consideration that Madeleine being involved in the plot against the MC was a very legitimate possibility, it's hard to see any opening for this pairing. Even Penelope - whose coddling from the narrative knew no limits - was no longer entertained as a potential alternative romance for an LI the moment her role in the plot was uncovered. If any harm was done to the MC, and Madeleine was found to be behind it, there is no way Hana would even be allowed to entertain the thought of her as an alternative LI at all.

You see - hurting Hana is no big deal. But hurting the MC and still getting an LI to show interest in you? Now that would be beyond the pale!

Madeleine: A Red Herring...Or A Villain Retconned?

As I have mentioned earlier, there is one writer - who has seniority in the company because of his many years there, who has always been in charge of Madeleine's writing, and who has always loved writing her. On close inspection one can say for certain that Jeffrey Herdman had a fair bit of sway in the team itself, especially from the fact that one of his weirdest writing suggestions - the MC's supposed obsession with hats - was retained in the books as a gag for a very, very long time (TRF finale livestream interview). When you take both Jeffrey's sway in the team, and the writing of Madeleine in TRR2 and 3 (and beyond), one can make several educated guesses about what Madeleine was built up to be, and how that changed midway.

Plenty of fan posts written in the gap between TRR1's finale and TRR2's release, took for granted that Madeleine would have some role to play in the plot against the MC. While one may assume this was due to "jealousy" from players or "hate for a bitchy character", there were enough signs in TRR1 and 2 that this was the route the narrative was initially planning to take with her.

The MC does voice suspicions of Madeleine in the first book - mostly after Madeleine herself voices threats to the MC during the Apple Queen ceremony. Madeleine also looks apprehensive at the (optional) public support Liam shows towards the MC at the Beaumont estate, and even shows him a suspiciously huge amount of attention at the Coronation. The MC even confronts Madeleine during the Coronation festivities when she gets a note threatening her to withdraw from the competition, believing it was sent by the latter. But beyond this, Madeleine's own words in TRR1 often sound ominous and laced with subtle threats. Still - going by just TRR1's evidence, Madeleine could still work as a good red herring, since she's not exactly crossed a clear line with anyone yet.

TRR2 seems to go in one direction when it comes to Madeleine's arc, then makes a sharp pivot in the opposite direction post Chs 7 and 8. The first half of the book has both the MC and Liam regard her with doubt and suspicion, especially when the MC learns that Madeleine had come to Liam's rooms the night before the Coronation, and insisted he continue the relationship with the MC on the sly while making her the queen. The book presents several contrasts between Madeleine and the MC, presenting their possible ruling styles and envisioning how each woman would fare as a future queen.

In a diamond scene in TRR2 Ch 4, Liam asks the MC how she would handle a plate of curry chicken falling on someone - an incident that has already occurred in some playthroughs to Madeleine (who got recognizably frustrated and called the whole episode "a disaster"). In contrast, the MC can claim she would either defuse the situation with humour or help clear the mess - both of which establish that unlike Madeleine the MC knows how to adapt to different situations, and prefers to find a solution rather than take her frustrations out on everyone else. Liam points out the differences between the two women as the MC "having perspective... every gaffe isn't a disaster".

Multiple scenes in the story focus on Madeleine's rigidity, her inability to adapt, her hunger for power, her belief that becoming queen gives her a free pass to be a tyrant, her hubris that allows her to outright harm some of her ladies in waiting and believe she will never face consequences, and her overall lack of real impact during her own engagement tour (only if the MC fails miserably does the Italian statesman Francesco even mention Madeleine). A lot of this buildup indicates that she won't be as effective a queen as other characters claim she will be.

Her overall behaviour in the first half of TRR2 seems to highlight overconfidence, and a willingness to overstep every possible boundary in the belief that nothing will now prevent her from getting what she wants ("the best part about being Queen is that I don't have to care about what you think"). Even though she isn't queen yet, both Madeleine and everyone around her behave as if she has already been crowned! That kind of overconfidence - especially from someone who should know better than anyone that winning the competition doesn't necessarily mean she'll be crowned - makes more sense when she is aware that there are powerful people (like the former king and her aunt, the former queen) to back her.

There is also the fact that Penelope's involvement in the plot never got any proper buildup. There is just one scene, in TRR2 Ch 6, where she speaks about feeling uncomfortable at parties and balls, and how much she hates crowds. The reveal of her being the culprit is in Ch 7; the reveal of her social anxiety is in Ch 8. Before this, you have zero indicators of her being involved in this level of deception - even though her history of "social anxiety" should have ideally made that kind of subterfuge difficult, and she should have been able to leave a few tells, signalling her guilt. It is very clear on rereads that Penelope's involvement in the plot was a last-minute narrative decision.

But perhaps the strongest evidence that TRR2 was originally meant to establish Madeleine as part of the plot against the MC, is a line from the very first scene of the book. When a confused MC asks Bertrand how it's possible for Liam to break his engagement, Bertrand mentions a constitutional provision:

"The king is able to change his selection in specific cases for the good of the nation". The MC being proven as framed and unfairly disgraced achieves very little in this context, because the focus is clearly on the king's final choice. This means that the engagement cannot be voided on the basis of the MC being innocent, but on the basis of Madeleine being unfit for the role.

What happens to this "constitutional clause" once Penelope is declared the culprit among the court ladies rather than Madeleine? It disappears completely. If she was really meant to be a red herring from the start, the team would never have added this line in the first place. Nor would they have left the "buildup" for Penelope's anxiety till Ch 6, just one chapter before her reveal. If Madeleine was really meant to be a mere red herring from the start, there would have been more than just one crumb presented for that trail.

It is highly possible that the team had plans for Madeleine to be involved in the plot, or in something shady enough to justify breaking the engagement. It is just as highly possible that Jeffrey, the writer in charge of her character, allowed his favouritism for that character to dictate his writing of her, and convinced the team to change the trajectory of the story to benefit her.

Hana and Madeleine - The First Half of TRR2

Most of the interactions between Hana and Madeleine in TRR2 are overshadowed by one incident in Ch 7 - the one most popularly known as "the chocolate incident". Madeleine was already not too popular as a character when this scene came out, but her admission that she wanted to break Hana crossed enough of a line that a number of players would bring it up as a reason for why they couldn't ever like her, no matter how often she was retconned in canon.

A common misconception made about the "chocolate incident" from Madeleine lovers and haters alike, is that it's viewed as a singular episode rather than as an escalation in an ongoing pattern of threats that Madeleine was already making to Hana.

Viewing it as an isolated incident is precisely what allowed both Madeleine stans, and the canon narrative itself, to severely downplay what Madeleine did, and what she openly declared she would continue doing to Hana. Therefore, it is essential to look into Hana and Madeleine's interactions before Ch 7, as well as the context behind Hana's return to court and the very real and grave threat that Madeleine represents to Hana specifically.

To do this, we must first look into how Hana's return to court (after her parents forced her to leave post Coronation) is depicted. There are two versions of this story - Madeleine's version...and the truth.

Madeleine's Version: "If it wasn't for me, she'd still be on the other side of the world. I've heard dogs remember those who feed them. I hope you'll keep this in mind and remember that dear Hana is here by my personal invitation". This is a half-truth at best and ironically, this is the version Hana sticks to. She is never allowed to tell us differently.

The truth, as said by Liam to Hana post Coronation: "I am the King of Cordonia. I'm sure Lady Madeleine knows that if she wants to keep our engagement, she'll have to give me something. Perhaps I can convince her to make you part of her court". Hana never gets to tell us this. That honour is given to Drake!

Even after the MC (optionally) gets to know this truth, she never talks to Hana about it, and Hana is never allowed to veer from Madeleine's narrative even in private. In the process, Madeleine gets to use her half-truth as a form of blackmail - threatening Hana at least twice to send her back to China if she paces even one toe out of Madeleine's arbitrary line.

In TRR2 Ch 4, Madeleine is shown antagonizing her entire court (ordering Penelope to get lemonade and comparing her to dogs, telling Kiara to exoticize herself by not speaking in English [which itself has colonial/Orientalist connotations]). But none is more ominous and disturbing than her subtle threat to Hana before introducing her to the two suitors:

Being sent back to her parents is a terrifying prospect for Hana...for two reasons. For one, Hana is committed to being there for the MC, to contributing to her investigation (and she does! Massively. Perhaps more than anyone else in the group). For another, she is just beginning to realize what a damaging environment her parents' house is, and she also knows they are already growing suspicious that she hasn't found another suitor yet. By the end of this conversation, Hana is visibly distraught... to the point of needing moral support (something she rarely asks for herself).

Remember - this is an arbitrary rule Madeleine comes up with, that applies only to Hana. In the same conversation, neither Kiara nor Penelope are placed under this kind of pressure. Though Penelope claims in Ch 6 that her parents won't allow her to come home if she doesn't get a suitor, Madeleine doesn't levy any other threats of this nature on her (she harms Penelope in other ways).

Madeleine is aware that Liam was the one responsible for Hana's return. It is implied that she is also aware that neither Liam nor Hana can say this in public. By this coin, she'd know that she shouldn't be the one who can take a call on sending Hana back - Liam is. Yet she issues this sort of a threat, and worse still...is allowed to get away with it through Hana and the MC's silence, both in private and in public.

Unlike the MC and Olivia, the other three ladies of the court are present in official positions to the future Queen, and are expected to publicly pledge loyalty to her. The narrative of TRR2 alone seems to give the King's fiancèe powers and influences similar to an actual Queen Consort's. And Hana, Kiara and Penelope aren't just random "court members" - they are Madeleine's ladies-in-waiting. They cannot even speak to certain people unless she approves of it (Ch 1), she orders them around with the disrespect that many in that nobility reserve for their servants (Penelope in Ch 4), she publicly humiliates and insults them if they make a single mistake (eg. Penelope not getting a metallic dress in time for the bachelorette), and she can get away with causing them grievous harm (Hana). There is no actual point to any of this behaviour - it achieves nothing and (by the narrative parameters of the third book) is actually foolish, because Madeleine's actions could cost the royal family their relationship with the Great Houses. Neither the MC nor Liam (the actual monarch), would be allowed by the narrative later to abuse their power the way Madeleine can, in a position that isn't even hers yet!

It is easy to view Madeleine's interactions with Hana and Penelope especially, as just some regular mean-girls shit, with all the excuses, justifications and crocodile tears that the fandom can shower on said white/white-passing mean girls. Canon itself encourages this reading when they use the word "hazing" to describe what Madeleine put Hana through. But when we speak of Madeleine's behaviour in her engagement tour that way, we miss a very important aspect of her dynamic with these two women. They are no longer competitors or mere allies. They are not just people she knows in court.

They are not Madeleine's equals. They are her employees. She is directly in a position of immense, unquestioned and unchecked power over them. Publicly, she has the authority to invite them into her court, and to throw them out of their jobs. It is from that lens, that we must view her behaviour, especially in Ch 7.

The "Chocolate Incident" and Its Aftermath

Another reason to believe Jeffrey's favouritism for Madeleine allowed for an actual change in the story, is the way this above scene - and the ones preceding it - were handled immediately in both the immediate and long-term aftermath.

Often dubbed "the chocolate incident", this scene takes place in Italy (the first stop of the engagement tour) during Madeleine's bachelorette. For anyone who has forgotten the incident, Madeleine's ladies-in-waiting are supposed to organize different fun activities for her bachelorette, and the MC uses each event as both a PR exercise and an opportunity to check the credit cards of the ladies.

The final activity is Hana's, an intricately-planned chocolate fondue party complete with chocolate-themed games and treats. If one reads too much between the lines, one could maybe notice the tiniest sliver of a romantic hint in Hana's conversation with the MC over her confusing an actual bachelorette party with the show The Bachelorette (It is just as possible tho - if not more - that this is a comic aside pointing to Hana's lack of exposure to modern media).

However, things take a turn for the worst at this juncture. Madeleine heavily berates Hana for not knowing that she is "allergic to chocolate", accusing her of an attempt to murder and even threatening to remove her from her position in court. This leaves Hana so distraught that she ruins her own dress in the process, and is damn near inconsolable. The MC can - if she chooses - comfort Hana along with their friends. At the end of the night, a heavily drunk Madeleine gleefully admits she lied about the allergy and gloats about wanting to keep hurting Hana till she breaks, because she "wants to have a little fun".

She claims, when asked why, that it's because "everyone wants something, but the nice ones like Hana don't even have the decency to act like it". Which sounds like the sort of sick logic that fandom often happily accepts from their favourite white antagonists, where they can project whatever sob story they want to make such a reasoning palatable. Such attempts ignore the fact that Madeleine is torturing someone for supposed "duplicity" when she is herself well-known for being insincere.

Later, when it was convenient for the fandom to hate on Hana, she would be either blamed for the torture Madeleine put her through (because she was "weak" or "too nice", or that she was "spineless and deserved this treatment". I even saw posts that claimed it "wasn't that bad" (in the case of one particularly memorable instance, a Madeleine stan went so far as to say, agreeing with a post expressing a fondness for Madeleine: "...before anyone mentions the chocolate prank: Did Hana die, tho?"). Some also tried to reason that it was fair for Madeleine to target Hana, either to showcase her "wiles" or because of her sad sad childhood.

As I pointed out earlier, every single one of these takes tend to downplay Madeleine's bullying/abuse so that it sounds more like a schoolyard squabble that happened only once, rather than a person in power consistently placing their employee's job under threat, with the stated intention of harming them mentally and emotionally on a regular basis, until they experienced a breakdown. The center of this conflict isn't about different people with different approaches. Nor is it about court maneuvering or wiles because honestly, nothing worthwhile was achieved through Madeleine's abuse, and she had no purpose for doing those things beyond deriving a sick pleasure from other people's suffering.

It isn't about nice vs tough, nor ambitious vs generous, nor "naive" vs "jaded". It is about a gross power imbalance. An imbalance that results in the exploitation of the more vulnerable party...which is later brushed aside by the one who claims to be the latter's "friend" like it means nothing.

Structure wise, one can see striking similarities between this chapter, and TRR1's Ch 7, where the MC can view Olivia in a new light in the first half of the chapter, but be disturbed by her vindictive nature by the end of it. Here too, the MC comes into the investigation of the credit cards fully expecting to see Madeleine as the culprit. Over the course of the evening she finds Madeleine treating her ladies-in-waiting badly, but also calling out the press for targeting only the MC but staying silent on Tariq's involvement (ironically, Madeleine herself didn't exactly believe the MC if she tells her she was set up). She is also shocked when she realises Madeleine isn't the culprit at the club. Still, the court is given a rude shock when Hana is accused of putting Madeleine's life in danger.

Clearly the aim of such a chapter was to make the MC soften a little towards Madeleine, while still keeping some of the antagonistic tension. However, the more direct impact of Madeleine's huge ego trip on Hana made the harm far more visible than Olivia's jibes towards a woman who was far away...plus the scenes that followed in the former sequence centered Drake, far more than the ones in the latter that involved comforting Hana.

Madeleine's bullying also clashes - quite conveniently - with the reveal of Penelope's betrayal, so that the latter overshadows what Hana went through altogether.

It is important to note at this point that the MC is the only person not directly tied in an alliance to Madeleine (besides Olivia and Maxwell, who are then missing at the fashion show backstage scene in Paris) who knows Madeleine's intentions towards Hana. She is the only person present at the event in Paris, who knows that Madeleine intended to continue harassing her until she broke. Hana herself is never made fully aware of this, and if she is left in a vulnerable, dangerous position while on her mission to support the MC's investigation - then the fault lies to a large extent with the MC for keeping silent, rather than protecting her friend from someone who fully intended to hurt her.

I say this because in France (Ch 8), the MC's exposing of Madeleine is by choice, rather than default (this essay has a full breakdown of said scene). Moreover, the option where the MC can "expose" her will result in Madeleine lying about the act being an "official hazing" she does for all her ladies-in-waiting. Not only does the MC neglect to contest Madeleine's claims (or even tell Hana the full truth in secret), she also parrots Madeleine's lie in a conversation with Adeleide in NY, as if it were the truth (Ch 14).

Remember how I mentioned Jeffrey - the writer who was in charge of Madeleine's scenes and sang her praises in TRR2's pre-release interview? His influence here is obvious in the way the narrative sharply pivots away from Madeleine's characterization so far, to engage in a full-blown pity party.

The abuses of her power (towards Hana and Penelope in particular) stop. The parallels that canon makes between Madeleine and the MC as future Queens, stop. No reference, ever, is made of her actions before Ch 8.

For over seven chapters, Madeleine largely fades into the background - sometimes there will be scenes where she is present, but without any dialogue or actions. Sometimes she may make a catty move like getting the MC to pick up her wedding ring, but from a safe distance. Because she doesn't openly antagonize anyone or show up much in Chs 9-15, the sense of distance could allow some to soften in their memories of her. Especially when the only strong reminders of Madeleine in these chapters come from Adeleide, her mother.

Adeleide is an important cog in the machinery that resulted in the retconning of Madeleine's character in TRR2. Without her, Patriotic!Madeleine wouldn't have become canon. Adeleide sets the stage for this extremely inaccurate reading of her, with complaints on two occasions about how Madeleine is "putting too much pressure on herself" and working too hard. Which contradicts her very real actions in Applewood and Italy, where she regularly antagonized her entire court and where she doesn't get much notable approval from foreign dignitaries (Signor Francesco) unless the MC is that bad.

The narrative, at this point, expects us to view her with sympathy, as someone who could have been "an excellent queen" (Adeleide's words, not mine). The stage is clearly set so that we pity her when Liam calls off the engagement and she loses this position, that we can see her loss as "unfair". It ensures that there is an overflow of sympathy for Madeleine's plight, especially since she had already lost her chance to become Queen once before with Leo. By this point, many readers had actually forgotten the "chocolate incident" altogether, and were more than willing to view Madeleine as a patriot who wasn't given her due. A description that, ironically, more accurately fits Hana.

Is Hana Really Just A Nice Girl who Never Fights Back?

As I mentioned before, Hana's "niceness" and "weakness" were sometimes presented in fandom as justifications/reasons for Madeleine's bullying of her, often in an attempt to shift blame or make it sound like Madeleine's stated "reasons" (in TRR2 Ch 7) to hurt her were legitimate. Almost as if to say that Hana was targeted because she presents herself as an easy target.

To be clear, I don't subscribe to such a train of thought myself. Different people react to bullies and abusers in different ways - and not being able to push back aggressively in tense situations doesn't make anyone a lesser person. In fact, canon itself doesn't mind providing a "weaker" person protection against someone like Madeleine...as long as that person is Penelope. So we cannot even claim that Hana's "weakness" is why Madeleine targets her, or why the MC shouldn't have to protect Hana better.

Canon also doesn't help much in this respect, especially with their preferences for the meaner white women. In fact the narrative doesn't even allow Hana the chance to speak up in private against Madeleine's half-truths about her return, and she is made to easily accept Madeleine's "hazing" excuse. Let's not even get into how she speaks about Madeleine in TRR3. Additionally, no one in Hana's own friend group provides adequate protection or support - they stay silent where it counts.

But is Hana really that incapable of fighting for herself? According to the finale of TRR1, no.

Even though the scene is hidden behind a paywall, Hana's pushback against Olivia's treatment of her during the social season is strong, decisive and done entirely on her own initiative, with no prompting or involvement from the MC. She is honest about the ways in which Olivia has hurt her, but also makes it clear that Olivia's opinions and vitriol no longer matter - effectively reclaiming her own power in the process.

Such a scene is a clear indicator that Hana is capable of pushing back, and isn't afraid to speak truth to power - as early as TRR1. While one could say that as a diamond scene, it is possible that it can't be fully shown as canon - there are ways the writers know how to incorporate such things. Often, they have managed to write in similar scenes or the same information into free scenes later on (eg. the selling of Liam's bachelor party photos, which wasn't even that important to the story of TRR2). Hana could have had a free pushback scene with Olivia if the writers really wanted to give her one.

That aside, it's safe to say that there is a precedent for Hana being able to fight back before TRR2, and canon could have found ways to ensure that she could safely do so with Madeleine too. Or at least have more protection and care from her friend group, if her position as lady-in-waiting prevented her from speaking out. Penelope got to demand protection later on, after all - and she wasn't even our friend.

We must also take into account the positions of power that Madeleine, Olivia and later even the MC hold. Madeleine is a countess in line to become queen in TRR2. Olivia is a duchess, and the MC herself is given this honour in Book 2. Hana - despite her skills, knowledge and charm - never gets lands, nor a title unless she marries the MC. Hana's experience in Cordonia isn't just about "other women" being mean to her with the MC being "not like other girls" - all three of the above women are in positions of power over her, and even the nicest of them uses her more often than she helps.

TRR2 doesn't exactly build Hana and Madeleine as a pair. In hindsight one can read romantic hints into Madeleine's mocking usage of the word "darling" around Hana, Hana's attempt to replicate The Bachelorette for Madeleine's bachelorette party, and read parallels into both their toxic family histories (particularly Hana with her mother and Madeleine with her father). But there is no actual romantic content there that one could find with the other three pairs, which leads me to believe that Hana and Madeleine was only taken seriously as a romantic prospect in TRR3.

How did Madeleine become the final romantic choice for Hana, and no one else? Because the relationship was never made Hana's benefit - it was for Madeleine's. Given all the evidence laid out about TRR1!Madeleine, TRR2!Madeleine and including hints that she may have actually been written as the villain at some point, it's more likely that Madeleine's main writer ensured some changes in the writing of his favourite character midway into the story, resulting in her staying longer in court and several retcons that painted her as a tragic heroine and completely erased any actions that contradicted such a narrative.

This specific narrative also seems to draw upon a narrative trope that is seen sometimes in certain stories featuring queer couples - the Armoured Closted Gay. It is employed often enough, mostly to show the pervasiveness and immense pressure heteronormativity can have on some queer people - that sometimes, they hate themselves for not adhering to the norm and therefore project that self-hatred onto people like them. PB had done a similar kind of story in TF and ILITW - with Zig and an aggressive teammate Manny (but with discussions on sexual harassment and about being closeted) and with Lily Oritz and her crush Britney. Unlike Zig's and Lily's cases though, this sort of narrative hardly centers on Hana.

Hana is hardly treated as a person in her own right in this narrative. She is treated as a "consolation prize" for Madeleine's "good behaviour" and "hard work". Which is still a really, really hard story to sell when one of the characters states outright that they'd abuse their power over the other till she breaks.

So how does PB get back from that kind of cruelty, and convert it into an actual romance?

Madeleine in TRR3 - The Royal Retcon

(In order: MC complimenting Madeleine to Godfrey (Ch 3), response to Madeleine's "send my regards to Hana (Ch 9), Madeleine asking for a dance (Ch 16), Optional response about memories of Madeleine's bachelorette in Hana's Vegas diamond scene (Ch 16))

By gaslighting an entire fandom, of course.

TRR3 requires us at the very start to do two things - to recruit Madeleine into replacing Justin as our press secretary, and to convince her family to join the Unity Tour so that Cordonia knows its nobility stands with the Crown. Until this point, we've only had hints of Madeleine's so-called "patriotism", mostly from Adeleide. TRR3 Ch 3 goes full force on this reading: having Madeleine claim (in the most positive option) that all her efforts to become queen was "for my people...it was always for Cordonia", having Hana claim that Madeleine "would mostly likely take a bullet for Liam... because you'd never leave Cordonia without a King". Coupled with Godfrey and Adeleide's toxic family dynamics, the story is set to push forward a narrative where we are meant to sympathize with her and preferably downplay her behaviour from the previous book.

Throughout Madeleine's tenure as press sec, we are expected to laud her "work" - even though the truth is that she makes our work harder by giving us heavy folders and 100 note cards of materials just minutes before our meetings, and leaving out important information (like Zeke) for us to scramble about and find. Where during her time as future queen, her ladies-in-waiting were expected to have every detail perfect as per her desires otherwise face her wrath - as our employee, we are expected to appreciate efforts alone, and be lenient when she doesn't follow our rules (eg. wearing gold for our bachelorette when she was supposed to wear muted colours, trying to sneak in a white dress to our wedding). Most of our responses to her "work" involve fulsome praise, or at most a very light criticism that still claims she's good at her job (she isn't). And it isn't just the MC - even Justin (who recommended her) and Hana are made to sing her praises.

Having canon claim Madeleine does a good job when she actually doesn't is... frustrating, but not as awful as the retconning they do for her past behaviour. But it is part of a pattern that whitewashes Madeleine altogether so the readers can consider her deserving of the rewards that the narrative so badly wants to give her, whether her actual conduct matches up to these fulsome praises or not.

One clear tactic that is used to achieve this, was to have the person she harmed the most, speak of her in glowing terms. In TRR3 Ch 3, you have at least two instances during the "Cordonia's Most" game where Hana uses the game to compliment Madeleine. Here, she compliments Madeleine on knowing how to "charm a crowd...her confidence and poise", and claims her to be very patriotic. If the MC refuses to coddle Madeleine during their private conversation, the onus to be kind to her rests solely on Hana's shoulders, where she is required to say, "maybe it's time to see if you can catch more flies with honey". Hana is also shown wanting to include Madeleine in group activities (TRR3 Ch 6, before going to the spa), in the same way she tried to include Olivia in TRR2. When we're shown a Hana who is not only willing but enthusiastic to speak to Madeleine, it further encourages the reader to befriend her - almost as if to say, "if Hana doesn't mind being friendly with her, why should you?".

And this wouldn't be possible at all if canon was honest about Madeleine's conduct in TRR2. So much about Madeleine's advice to us in TRR3 directly contradicts her own behaviour as future queen in TRR2 ("having an entourage isn't about vanity...it's about support"). Had canon actually been honest about her conduct, this statement would be viewed as extremely ironic, a huge portion of the blame for Penelope's reluctance to return to court would be (rightly) placed on Madeleine's shoulders and we would be able to call her out specifically on her tyrannical behaviour as future queen, as well as her inability to adjust her work to suit her client now. We would not be placing Madeleine on a pedestal ad nauseum, or paying much attention to her childish complaints that her "efforts" are going unappreciated.

Whenever the early part of the engagement tour is referenced, it is spoken of in the vaguest, most milquetoast terms. The narrative will speak vaguely of "meanness", but never actually specify what Madeleine did. The closest we get to any sort of confirmation of this is in the Costume Gala (Ch 9) if the MC warns Madeleine to stay away from Hana...and even there, the MC just says she did "mean things". Which is the mildest possible way I have seen of someone describing a person who gloated about breaking Hana. Like the word "hazing" from the previous book, all these vague references leave it to the readers' faint memories, or imagination, to figure out what Madeleine did.

But all of these are just hints at best, and most of what we could assume of the writers' intentions came largely from guesswork. There was constantly a sense of something not being right, but many of us at the time couldn't completely articulate it. That is, until Ch 16, and only if we pressed a specific option in the Vegas diamond scene, in just Hana's playthrough:

Unlike the previous scenes - which were mostly attempts to obfuscate the events of the previous book - this scene replaces what actually happened with blatant lies. Not only does it wipe out entirely what Madeleine did, replacing it with a casual comment from Hana about her "fun side", it also smears Kiara for something she didn't do at all during the bachelorette (for clarity, Kiara found out she was a great dancer, and looked quite annoyed if the MC chose a wrong dialogue option as an excuse to see her card. The MC never saw her lashing out at Penelope during this event). Even if the MC and Hana were so drunk that night that they wouldn't remember events clearly (which isn't how they're depicted at all when the "chocolate incident" took place), it wouldn't be replaced with things that never actually happened. The writers were more than ready to throw Kiara under the bus to make Madeleine look better, and have those lies come out of Hana's mouth (and mind you, Hana liked Kiara so much she chose her to be her MoH in Ch 18 of her playthrough, so it can't even have been spite towards Kiara on her part).

In contrast, Penelope is allowed to be open about Madeleine's mistreatment of her. In fact she cites it as the main reason for her reluctance to return to court, and even complains at the MC if the latter asks her if she didn't get the memo on the bachelorette dress code in TRR3 Ch 16 ("oh no, no, it's like Madeleine all over again!"). The group is required to protect her from Madeleine; in Ch 4, when Penelope is upset at the very sight of Madeleine, Drake comes to her rescue and reassures her ("She's with us, Penelope. We won't let her bite."). While Madeleine herself is protected from any consequences for what she did to Penelope (besides an optional tiny jibe in Ch 4), the MC and her group are required to reassure her that they will never allow it to happen again. In a very disgusting contrast, the narrative pushes Hana at the forefront of the diamond scene with Madeleine, without ever considering her comfort or safety around the person who wanted to break her. Not only does the group involve her without ever asking her if she wants to be part of it - Drake and Maxwell safely distance themselves when the time comes for Madeleine to speak personally about her troubles, and the MC can choose not to be sympathetic in certain dialogue options. Which means that the onus to comfort and persuade her is largely on Hana's shoulders. We must also remember that, unlike Penelope, Hana is deprived of the full truth of Madeleine's intentions in the last book too.

Where the writers were ready to at least admit that Madeleine's behaviour affected Penelope deeply, they went to the extent of completely rewriting the narrative of her TRR2 bachelorette to erase what she put Hana through.

The "Romance" in TRR3

(First four screenshots from my playthroughs, next four from the Adventure...Romance...Thrills YouTube Channel, and the final row's screenshots from the Annabelle Lee YouTube channel and the Skylia YouTube channel)

The Hana and Madeleine "romance" is hinted at in 5 scenes (4 in other playthroughs, and just one in Hana's own). As with most of the other romances, Madeleine's feelings are the most prominent. To the more romance-coded overtures, Hana's reaction is usually shock and disbelief, with a small suspicion over whether Madeleine is doing this to trick her into humiliation later. But the narrative gives her very little opportunity to even talk about anything related to Madeleine, especially anything negative. You do have a scene at the finale that is meant to provide closure, but not in a romantic way. This scene is very different from the others, and in some ways puts an end to the possibility of this relationship happening anytime soon.

How did we get from those scenes to this final one in Ch 22? It would be useful to look at the scenes, within the timeline of TRR3's release and with the context of fandom reactions.

1. The "Cordonia's Most" Scene (Ch 3)

This diamond scene is written to give the MC/reader a bit of background on Madeleine's past and family, which will prove useful later when she has to convince the Amaranths to fix their relationship with each other. It is set against the background of a drinking game where an asker can quiz everyone else about who would be the most likely to do a particular action. Hana references Madeleine twice in the game (in a very complimentary manner), and Madeleine references Hana once. It was her comment about Hana being "stupidly sweet and perfect" that caught the attention of some readers and made them wonder if that was the route PB was planning to take with Hana. This dialogue shows up in Hana's route as well.

In later chapters, we see instances of Hana trying to include Madeleine in group activities...such as in Ch 6 where she invites the latter to come with them to the spa after the football match with Jiro and Camellia.

2 and 3. Cross-Referencing Each Other at Costume Gala (Ch 9)

This is a very interesting development, at an equally interesting time. Around the time Ch 9 released (end-April 2018), PB announced that TRR's team would be taking a hiatus, mostly to work on "some exciting stuff" during that break. It also gave them the time to work on certain things the fandom was demanding, and do away with others due to stan vitriol (Kiara's attraction towards Drake being one of them). The next chapter would only appear a month and a half later (mid-June).

Ch 9 sneaked in a scene that hinted at Hana and Madeleine as a romance option, but in a way that made it very hard for players to notice on a casual read. The scene is split in two parts: the MC can choose to speak to either Hana and Olivia, or Maxwell, Justin and Madeleine. Hana and Olivia's scene shows the two commenting on Gala outfits, which kickstarts a conversation about diplomacy vs bluntness. The latter option explores a variety of topics, mostly revolving around an appreciation for Madeleine's "great work".

Both Hana and Madeleine reference each other in their scenes. Hana's dialogue depends on whether the MC is her fiancèe or not; in other playthroughs, she admires Madeleine's costume, the compliment on her good looks very personal. In her own playthrough, she compliments Kiara's outfit but in a more distant fashion ("subtle and clever, just like her...very well-chosen"). In Madeleine's scene (which is the same across playthroughs), the ending involves her telling the MC to "send my regards to Hana", in response to which she can choose a line of questioning (which ranges from "protective towards Hana" to largely indifferent. In all three options, thankfully, the MC can close with "don't let me catch you antagonizing her", but that really is one small mercy in a pile of blatant retconning.

What marks Hana's dialogue about Madeleine as an LI-specific option, is that she says something entirely different if the MC is getting married to her. This is an indication that the dialogue was intended to be read as romantic, and that it couldn't be said by an LI who was already in love and ready to marry the MC. Pretty much in the same way that Olivia in Liam's playthrough cannot hold his hand in Applewood or dance with him in Vegas.

I wrote an essay on this at the time - both on the possibility of the pairing and why it was a bad idea - and the overall response I received at the time was mixed. Those who remembered exactly what went down at Madeleine's bachelorette and weren't her fans hated the prospect, but some weren't as convinced and some refused to believe it would happen. So there was some pushback for it, citing Madeleine's "chocolate incident" (thankfully, since there were players who had forgotten about it), but it was very low-key and didn't gain much traction.

4. An Offer to Dance in Vegas (Ch 16)

The most obvious indication of Hana and Madeleine being a romantic possibility was in the Vegas chapter. It was impossible to miss for people who didn't romance Hana. This scene, again, featured only in playthroughs where Hana wasn't getting married - which meant that many Hana-romancers didn't get to know of this pairing unless they were told by a friend or saw any such posts on their dash (some even found out years later, to their shock and dismay).

The mild pushback from Ch 9 resulted in a scene where the writers could be emboldened to continue writing this pairing, but confirm (in the vaguest possible way) that Madeleine treated Hana badly. Madeleine's non-apology "apology" really reads more like an attempt to get into Hana's pants than actual regret, and is followed by a reaction from Hana that is confusing in its mildness. Hana is surprised at the offer to dance, asking Madeleine whether she's trying to trick her. While the mild suspicion is a slight improvement from Hana's fulsome praise and enthusiastic attempts to involve Madeleine in group stuff in previous chapters, it still downplays what Hana suffered at Madeleine's hands by making her present the weakest, most milquetoast examples of "fooling someone", examples that pale miserably in comparison to what Madeleine actually put Hana through.

With both the "stupidly sweet and perfect" dialogue and this scene, you'll notice that Madeleine is not only the one who initiates the conversation, but is also the only one with an actual voice in these exchanges. Forget having an opinion on whether she wants to have anything to do with Madeleine or not - the narrative doesn't even give poor Hana the opportunity to properly react beyond mere shock.

There was a stronger reaction to this scene than to the Ch 9 one, because it was way more visible (though you could avoid it just by letting Madeleine stay in her hotel) with Madeleine's romantic intentions on full display. Her asking Hana for a dance immediately after the no apology made it pretty obvious. Players who didn't see the Ch 9 scenes or who didn't believe the divergences meant anything, now couldn't deny that this was positioned as an alternative romance. Additionally by this time, those who forgot about the "chocolate incident" did get reminded of the exact scene, so the vagueness with which Madeleine "addressed" her actions in TRR2 felt criminally inadequate for a number of readers.

Most of us, however, didn't know about the retcon in Hana's Vegas scene, until years later. Those who didn't do Hana's playthrough would have had no idea, and those who did more likely chose the more romantic options.

5. "Jealous?" (Ch 20)

This scene is unique in that the option shows up across all playthroughs, but the specific reaction only shows up in two of them. It's understandable that Hana stans would have missed this - the dialogue is an option, the response is very fleeting and you would have to look through the same option in other playthroughs to recognise the variations.

In the cases of both Drake and Maxwell, Madeleine's response to this jibe from the MC is "ugh, please". Dismissive, almost mocking the idea that she would have any interest in them. In Liam's and Hana's cases, she appears shocked for a minute, then composes herself and gives a more neutral response ("I...I refuse to dignify such a ridiculous question with a response"). In Liam's case, one can safely assume that even though she had no romantic interest in him, she was still on the verge of marrying Liam and that alone would make the situation awkward. In Hana's case there is really no other reason for her to feel that awkward besides having lingering feelings that she cannot suppress.

While this version of the scene doesn't feature in playthroughs where she is single at all, it's still a very strong indicator of authorial intent. Even in the face of backlash against the pairing, the writers clearly wanted to continue hinting at the possibility, if they were slipping in hints of Madeleine's feelings for Hana as late as Ch 20 (just two chapters before the finale). The most plausible theory for this inclusion would be that the backlash was a lot more than it was after Ch 9, but not entirely enough to do away without the pairing completely...yet.

6. "I Wanted To Break You" (Ch 22)

No one knows what happened between Chs 20 and 22, and there's little I can think of that would account for such a quick change in such a short span of time. The finale has a scene featuring Hana and Madeleine, that begins by drawing more obvious parallels between the two women and their families (until now, the parallels were not as pronounced. It's not exactly a great parallel to begin with, since Madeleine has at least one supportive parent and doesn't get punished to the extent that Hana has been, if she openly protests against her parents' methods. But in TRR3 the narrative sometimes does use Hana's toxic parental situation as a parallel to garner sympathy for Madeleine's).

However, once the parents are out of the picture, the attention then turns to Hana and Madeleine, setting the stage for either a romantic confession or a full apology. This time, canon opts to go for the latter.

Unlike all the others, this scene is bluntly specific not just about what Madeleine did but what exactly her intentions were. It has her use the word "break"; it has her actually say the word "sorry". It allowed Hana, for the first time, to fully hear the truth about the harm Madeleine planned to wreck on her. And most importantly, it also allowed Hana her own voice in response to Madeleine's revelations, making it very clear to her that her forgiveness needed to be earned, over a period of time.

The dialogues used to talk about Madeleine's bachelorette in the finale are poles apart from the language they'd used earlier ("hazing", "put my ladies through their paces", "mean things", "refuse to coddle", "wronged"). The finale scene was a more accurate return to the original language and purpose of that bachelorette scene. In fact it sounds less like what canon had been attempting to gaslight their readers into believing thus far, and even seemed to borrow verbatim from the language of the readers who closely followed this issue.

One could call it a good closure scene on the surface level...but there are many, many problems with it.

One was the reaction of the MC. Her angry "excuse me?" in response to Madeleine's confession is still a very obvious retcon. It may have been done to preserve the myth that the MC is a good friend/wife to Hana, but reads as extremely dishonest when you remember that canonically, the MC knew the truth about Madeleine's intentions the whole time and just chose to leave Hana in the dark. It's an attempt to make the MC seem protective that ultimately rings false.

Another is the excuse Madeleine gives for why she targeted Hana. "I wanted to push Hana too far, and for her to drop the nice-girl act once and for all! Only, it isn't an act, is it?" My response when I first read this was "if Hana was faking it...so what. So fucking what. Who was she harming". Coming from the reigning queen of duplicity herself, Madeleine is really not in a position to be judging anyone for putting up a front. This also ties into the hollowness of the motives PB tried to belatedly cook up for TRR2 Madeleine's bullying - no matter what canon says to whitewash her actions, her attempts achieved nothing, did no good for Cordonia, and would likely have led to a very fractured court if the Unity Tour was held while she was queen.

Ultimately, the possibility of this pairing becoming canon was laid to rest in the final chapter. One could interpret Madeleine's promise of a starting gesture ("know that if anyone at court gives you trouble, I can make them regret it") as a possible opening to something more, but considering the earlier backlash, that was unlikely.

TRH - Madeleine Gets The Penelope Treatment, Hana Gets Her Entire Childhood History Retconned.

An interesting development that came up when TRH dropped was the departure of Jeffrey Herdman from the team, most likely because he was heavily involved in the writing of its Renaissance-era spin-off The Royal Masquerade. He would return, by TRF (he is part of their finale livestream), but by then his pet favourite character was likely gone.

TRH has a different set of circumstances, and different power dynamics. The MC is settled into marriage and trying for a child, the LIs are working in the council, Olivia is upgraded to cosplaying spymaster and the side characters go on with their lives. The first book of TRH seemed to do a surface-level recognition of some of the complaints certain readers had in previous books, but their favourites and the people who wouldn't get much attention or appreciation, remained the same.

TRH1 was a time when the writers praised Hana and claimed in a livestream that she was the kind of LI they would love to marry, but also where they gave her a condition that (inaccurately) made her unable to safely carry children (just for the MC to be the mother of the heir) and forced her to be immediately okay with that fate. As the sequel series progressed over the course of 4 books, the erasure of all that Hana was in the past was subtle and insidious - the narrative often compared her to Olivia and found her lesser, she was never allowed to even mention her home place China and worst of all - the writing completely retconned the emotional abuse she suffered at home by claiming it emerged from loving protection, from wanting to keep their daughter away from a cult. And even though Hana's discovery of her sexuality was described by Kara as a "journey that she's still on", no attempts were ever made to show her exploring what she likes romantically, or to show her dating. We don't know if she's involved with anyone, we don't know where she lives, we learn very little of her interests beyond what benefits the MC at any given moment, and the narrative never fails to remind us that they like Olivia more than they like her. Hell, they still encourage Olivia to keep insulting and degrading Hana! Hardly the behaviour of writers who love a character so much they would marry them irl, honestly.

On the other hand, Madeleine wasn't very prominent in TRH1, but gained notoriety in the next two books. The first book has her occasionally engage in inappropriate, invasive badgering of the MC to get pregnant quickly, and she continues to pretend that her doing whatever she likes without ever consulting the person in charge is professional behaviour (eg. Setting up the presscon about the MC's pregnancy announcement. She never even considers whether the MC would be comfortable announcing this pregnancy or not at this time). She gets to deliver a small bit of foreshadowing in the second half of the book (an early hint about Queen Eleanor's pregnancy, though Madeleine's awareness of it hardly makes sense when you look at the entire TRH series, and it never comes up as a point again). Her father being exposed as the traitor who poisoned the former queen builds up to a storyline that benefits her the most in the long run.

Hana is given one chapter where she can call Madeleine out on her entitlement (Savannah's bachelorette). She doesn't insult or berate Madeleine in TRH1 Ch 7, but is refreshingly no-nonsense and will not put up with Madeleine's constant whining about an event she had invited herself to. It's a small, cold comfort, since Hana's actions here are tied to making Savannah's bachelorette a success rather than for herself - but it's still gratifying to see Hana in a position where she can call people out without having to worry about the repercussions. Especially when the narrative disrespects Hana in so, so many other ways for the rest of the series.

In the same chapter, the ladies of the court are given an opportunity to talk about their love lives. Of the four, two women can speak about the people they like (Penelope about Ezekiel by default, and Olivia about Liam if you choose), and one only mentions him by name if the MC is married to someone else (Kiara, about Drake, if you choose to ask her over Madeleine). Madeleine doesn't mention anyone at all, insisting that marriage is something she will only consider for the benefit of her country or estate. This was a relief to players who feared that PB might attempt to push the possibility of romance between Madeleine and Hana again.

Though Madeleine doesn't get the romance that PB so desperately wanted to gift her in the last series, and she isn't given any further romances...the narrative clearly wasn't done pandering to her, even though Jeffrey was not officially a part of the team.

Remember how in the previous essay, we explored the levels to which PB encouraged players to coddle Penelope? Entire chapters would be spent just making her feel comfortable and safe, in encouraging her to help us. No actual initiative or enthusiasm from her end, even if her actions caused the problem or there were lives and reputations at stake. No, Penelope's comfort and happiness should be front and center.

Now think of that treatment, but on steroids and lasting for two whole books. That's what Madeleine's story - starting from TRH2 - looks like.

TRH1 ends with the reveal that Madeleine's father, Godfrey, was involved in the assassination of Liam's mother Eleanor. So a certain amount of narrative focus on Madeleine was expected, perhaps. But the second book doesn't stop at just that.

We are not merely asked to be kind to Madeleine. No, kindness towards Madeleine is expected of us. The warning issued in TRH2 Ch 4 promises "consequences", which means we know straight off the bat that we will be punished if we're not nice enough. It insists we take note of her "fragile state", and give her the mercy and compassion she had never given to anyone in her court.

To give Madeleine the smallest of credits, she acknowledges this just two chapters prior to the oath ("in the past, our positions were once reversed and I was...unkind to you. I had no reason to expect any kindness from you..."). However, this admission does sound disingenuous in the face of the narrative's implicit demand that we treat her nicely. Because if she did recognise her own past behaviour in TRR2 esp as hurtful, and herself as not exactly deserving of kindness, then it makes no sense for her to judge people for behaving exactly as she expected. A genuine redemption arc would have been one where she understood no one owed her kindness after what she'd done, and still determinedly forged ahead to do good for her country. After all, the narrative wanted us so badly to believe this woman was patriotic, right? If her "patriotic spirit" was so tied to her ego that you needed to pamper and praise her every five minutes, just for her to not support such an obviously-foolish tyrant as Bartie Sr, then it can't have been as strong as canon so vehemently claimed.

TRH tracks our "treatment" of Madeleine over 2 books and 10 distinct scenes. Of these, 6 scenes allow us to choose between kind responses and unkind ones, 2 others require the player to choose one among multiple options of people, and 2 scenes are check-in dialogues rather than actual choices (which means that the player doesn't choose an option, they just find out through such scenes whether they are winning Madeleine's favour or not). I imagine that the first category is the most important, with the second being options that you don't necessarily need to choose Madeleine for if you want to go for one of the others, as long as you pressed enough "kind" options.

To elaborate, here's the breakdown:

Kind/Unkind Responses

- House Amaranth's pledge (TRH2 Ch 4). Notably, the "most hurtful" one doesn't even accuse her of anything - it just tells her that the family needs to earn back the Crown's trust. Compare that to Madeleine's accusations to Hana that she was trying to kill her and deserved to lose her position in court. You know, the cruel treatment that some Madeleine stans claimed "wasn't that bad".

- Carrying the Heir's train at Anointing Ball or not (Ch 5)

- Deciphering Madeleine's conversation with Godfrey on his boat (ie whether she is betraying or helping the MC) (Ch 6)

- Acknowledging Madeleine's help in capturing Godfrey, at the Gratitude Ball (Ch 7)

- Gently encouraging Madeleine into being Penelope's bridal attendant, rather than mocking her (TRH3 Ch 2). There is no longer any need to acknowledge Penelope's earlier fear of Madeleine - we are expected to forget entirely that she was the main reason why Penelope didn't want to return to court in TRR3.

- Trusting Madeleine to help with investigations at Fydelia (Ch 6)

Choosing Among Multiple People:

- Speaking about loyalty before making a pledge to the Heir. Other ladies of the house are also presented as choices (TRH 2 Ch 14)

- Babysitting the Heir during Fox Hunt. Other choices are Regina and Savannah (TRH3 Ch 10)

Relationship Check-in:

- The way Madeleine greets you at Fydelia (Warm Welcome/Cold Front) (TRH3 Ch 6)

- Whether Madeleine helps you escape with the Heir in Ch 13, or allows the child to get kidnapped by Godfrey in Ch 15 (Desparate Times/What Goes Around)

The ending of TRH3 has Madeleine either thriving and inheriting her mother's estate, or being merely fired from her job in Royal Communications (a better punishment would have been to strip the entire Amaranth family of their lands, but I digress). She is notably absent in TRF, possibly because she wasn't entirely very popular to start with and two whole books of coddling her didn't exactly help matters either. As one of the junior writers in the TRF team said, "some people exiled her so..."

The first few opportunities to win her over, notably emerge from attempts Madeleine makes to assure the Crown/MC of House Amaranth's loyalty, and you will find that even at an early stage she expects to be included in sensitive discussions that call for discretion, and to be constantly praised for her efforts. Let me give a reminder, again, that she hardly ever gave any praise to the women working for her, and in fact punished them just to keep them constantly in fear of her.

I know it sounds like I'm labouring too much on this point, but it's important to understand just how much effort the narrative had put into coddling this one woman. Chapters and chapters of branch coding, writing two routes, title cards, dialogues, rewards and consequences.

This is similar to the way the narrative encouraged kindness and sympathy towards Penelope, but it's now over a lengthier period of time and with more drastic consequences. We were required to coddle Penelope over a chapter each in three specific books, or be deprived of her support/help. We are required to constantly shower Madeleine with praise and sweet words over the course of 31 chapters, or she will help an unscrupulous Regent-Elect kidnap our child. She will even openly accept that the only reason she put a mere child through that, was because we weren't nice to her ("Wouldn't you have done the same to me? You've made it abundantly clear you see me as the enemy").

But if the MC deserved a punishment this cruel for just mocking Madeleine at every turn, then what punishments should Madeleine get for what she put her own ladies-in-waiting through? What should she get for planning to "break" one of her courtiers? A second broken engagement doesn't seem entirely enough by such parameters.

Then again - as I said before, the narrative deliberately shifted the goal posts for what a potential royal could and couldn't get away with, in the time between Madeleine's engagement tour and the MC's marriage, for this very reason. So that Madeleine would never have to face the kind of constant censure the MC and Liam would face regularly. Among characters in canon, or among largely biased stans in the fandom. Speaking of which...

Fandom

Madeleine's popularity has always been a mixed bag, ever since TRR2. By TRR2, there were people who loved her for what they thought were her craftiness and wiles, some who suspected her to be involved in the plot against the MC, and a number of Liam stans had reactions that ranged from stanning, to indifferent (after all, both Liam and Madeleine showed a mutual disinterest towards each other), to slightly jealous (after all, she was still his fiancée).

But it was Madeleine's treatment of Hana in Ch 7 that definitely crossed a line for quite a few. It was so unwarranted, and her justification for this act so inarguably cruel, that it turned several people off her immediately. The way canon dealt with this was to make her feature less in the story until the memory of the "chocolate incident" was faded and almost forgotten, and then encourage fans to sympathize with her.

The gamble definitely worked, with plenty of help from hardcore Madeleine stans who often downplayed what happened to Hana ("a prank", "making Hana cry just once" were some of the terms used to describe it). By TRR3, I recall having to remind some of my mutuals what actually happened in this scene - their own recollections of it were that vague. The Hana and Madeleine ship would have died a far quicker death if more people remembered this incident as it was shown, and not as narrative wanted us to remember it (and also, if more people cared that it was Hana being hurt, rather than their fave white girl/boy).

Madeleine gained some popularity among the wlw crowd - a couple of them did have a soft spot for stoic, aggressive or women often labelled as "bitchy" (I know a few who also showed a similar amount of love for ACOR's Xanthe or BB's Priya, to be fair...but the adulation for the white female antagonists was a lot more), and Madeleine clearly fit that bill.

A point that often came up from Madeleine stans who were wlw (and reiterated with other mean-girl characters) was that grey-shaded and villanous male characters weren't subject to as much censure as their favourites were. While there is truth to such an argument, it fails to take into account the role race often plays in the way some "mean" women are loved and certain others are scorned. Madeleine clearly did not have the scale of hate that a Xanthe or even a Kiara (who isn't even on the same level) got. In fact when it suited them, many in the fandom were more than ready to view Madeleine as a victim when Liam broke his engagement with her.

Madeleine's "patriotism" - as I've now clearly established - was a retcon made to erase the worst aspects of her characterization. Sometimes it was used to make people feel sorry for her losses, other times it was made to cover up her actual behaviour in TRR2. But there were very few readers who didn't consider it an undeniable fact. Even among those who were indifferent towards her. For instance, in an anon ask that compared Madeleine and QB's Poppy, a poster responded that "the difference between the two was that Madeleine had a sense of duty, and Poppy was just petty". In TRH3, players who claimed that "we can all agree Madeleine is fully redeemed" when she worked with the MC to protect the child from Bartie Sr, stayed mysteriously silent when the other consequence (her helping in the child's kidnapping because she didn't like the MC's pettiness) showed up.

And while these responses could be attributed to the way canon gassed Madeleine up in TRR2 and 3, some of these players had no problem nitpicking the political savvy or work of certain other (CoC) characters, esp Liam (often bashing them for "throwing parties every day", even though the general populace was depicted as being happy with their rule and influence. Mind you, no prompting from PB was necessary to bash these characters). So why were these parameters never applied to Madeleine? Why was practically no one asking what the political relevance of her bullying (as future Queen) was, or why we were expected to sing her praises for poor time management or terrible work ethics towards her boss, or ask what work she actually did in canon as Royal Comms Director? (There is a reference or two to the position, but you aren't shown that many instances of her doing much work). For quite a few, the fact that she walked around with a job title in TRH was more than enough (somehow Kiara never got this kind of fandom treatment despite being part of the Diplomatic Liaisons department).

How does this adulation for such a heavily retconned character, affect the way the Hana and Madeleine ship was viewed? For one, it meant that readers bought into the retcons easily enough that Hana's pairing with her was seen as an extension of her "redemption arc" by some.

Take the example of the various posts that argue in favour of this pairing, or fic that features them as a couple - a lot of them center Madeleine: her pain, her history, her reasons, the correctness of giving her a reward. Hana is barely mentioned or given much attention in these arguments - and often when she has any sort of voice, it is only there to humanize Madeleine. Supporters of this pair often took stances that were either ready to throw Hana under the bus, act like she hardly mattered, or treat her like some sort of blank slate to scribble their adulation for Madeleine over.

Hana is often viewed as less worthy of a focus - she is often the benevolent saint who forgives Madeleine because she "worked so hard to be better". Often it never matters to get into detail why Hana thought Madeleine earned her forgiveness, what Hana's perspective was, what journey she went through to get such a point. Because if Hana's journey really mattered in such a ship, the most pressing questions would revolve around why Hana should ever trust a person who wanted to break her in the first place. Why she should feel safe around such a person. Why her own friend group wouldn't want to protect her from such a person.

Some readers would bring up their parallels as daughters brought up in families that didn't value them, but neglect to take into account the nuances of those dynamics (Madeleine's mother at least wanted to be supportive, and no matter how bad things got, Madeleine was never in danger of being disowned. Hana was, repeatedly). Nor is it fully honest about how Madeleine was comfortable being a perpetrator of abuse, in contrast to Hana's own deep discomfort with the idea of controlling her partner.

In certain cases, I can maybe see this attitude in fandom emerging from an acceptance of the narrative's retcons as truth. But I also think there were as many readers who were just inclined to liking the mean white girl, and finding justifications and excuses for her behaviour.

Fandom's attitudes towards Hana herself often played a small role in how Hana's end of this story was ignored too. When TRR3 fucked up her arc phenomenally (by rushing her parents' turnaround from disowning her to supporting her in Ch 15), it became popular to view Hana as a lesser character, and the "meaner" white women as better. People who wanted other options for female LI often took their frustrations out on her, calling her "weak", servile and submissive, dismissing her honest accounts of the treatment she faced even from her own parents as "whining". If that was the way people preferred to view her emotionally abusive childhood...then what can one expect from such a fandom when she was being outright bullied?

Fandom was already comfortable with the idea of erasing Hana in their content, or replacing her with either their fave white girl (or an equally white OC esp in their fanfic - but more on that in a future Hana essay). So neglecting to center her in what would have been her only canonical alternative romance wouldn't be too difficult for some people.

Which merits the question...is there a way to write about (or write fic for) such a pairing, in a way that centers Hana, respects her story, makes it clear that she has the right to never forgive Madeleine no matter what she does to "earn" it - if that was what she wanted? I highly doubt it. You'd have to completely change Madeleine for that to happen, and that would more likely result in a situation where you were too busy working on her as a character, to give Hana the attention and focus she deserved.

And that's a real pity, because there's plenty to explore about Hana if you actually take the effort to look.

Conclusion

In a lot of ways, once the team had decided upon making Madeleine into a more positive character, they tried to draw a little from Olivia's arc to replicate its success. You can see some of these parallels in the way TRR2 structured the bachelorette as a semi-callback to the childhood- reveal-mocking-Savannah sequences in TRR1 Ch 7. Both chapters gave you reasons to start seeing these women in a different light, while still feeling free to dislike them. In both chapters they also targeted LIs - the only difference was that Drake's diamond scene post that confrontation centered him, and Hana's parallel diamond scene a book later...centered everyone else.

That attempt in TRR2 didn't work for several reasons - the timing wasn't right, Madeleine's cruelty had gone too far for some, the retconning hoodwinked quite a few people but not enough.

So when they tried to pair her up with the victim of her bullying, and twisted canon to make it happen - enough readers emerged to call it out, enough people pushed back by Ch 16, and the possibility of this alternative pairing garnered enough dislike that not only did the writers have to backtrack, but they also had to wipe away their past retcons and write in a scene where Madeleine gave Hana the full, unvarnished truth about the "chocolate incident". Hana was, thankfully, given a chance to give Madeleine her most polite "no".

And although that ship would never be brought up again, the team (even without Madeleine's top writer Jeffrey) still attempted to make pampering and uncritically praising her a narrative priority. She gained a bit more popularity during this time period - quite a few were inclined to feel sorry for her (especially considering the way her father's crimes affected her social standing) and saw only what happened if you were consistently nice to her.

But there was also a significant section of people who were tired of the constant coddling, and who didn't like that it was demanded of the player (when there were far more deserving WOC in the same book, who didn't get this level of kindness). It was significant enough that Madeleine wasn't given any scenes in the final book, and the writers cited her lack of popularity as a reason why.

As a Hana fan myself, it was a relief to see Hana not be paired up with her bully. But it was also immensely disheartening for me to see that "ship" get as far as it did, and to see the narrative do so much more work for Madeleine, than they did for Hana even in the follow up series. It was even more disheartening to see so many in fandom follow suit.

--

By now, we have explored 3 out of the 4 alternative pairings that TRR put forward for the LIs. They all vary in terms of buildup, attention, and payoff. But there are several things that are common about them. They all have either significant histories with the LI, or the narrative thinks they share something in common. The moment an "alternative" option ends up harming the MC, they are no longer suitable as an option because of the LI's loyalty towards her.

But perhaps the most common factor among the three women we have explored so far is how the LI is expected to treat the alternate, no matter how jealous the MC is allowed to get, no matter what the alternate themselves may have done in the past. The alternate is supposed to be treated well. With respect, with kindness, with compassion.

Betrayal doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Bad behaviour doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Disregarding consent doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Classism doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Not loving them back doesn't allow it either. Not even extreme levels of bullying...allows an LI to disrespect them.

In the next essay, we will see if any of these rules apply to our last alternative LI - Kiara.

Next: Drake and Kiara.

[mugiwara-lucy]

....

When Roe v Wade was overturned, I did say what would be next on the chopping block was interracial relationships. And look what a Republican said.....

Like I've said over the last couple of months; if that Convicted Felon Trump gets back into office; we can pretty much kiss goodbye to Gay Rights, Interracial Relationships and basically Civil Rights in general.

Or like the asshole in the picture says it'll be "left up to the states" 🙄 Yeah because that's worked out SO WELL with abortion.

Hey why don't we leave the Second Amendment to the states?? Let's see how well that'll go with these MAGA clowns??

Just like with abortion, relationships should NEVER EVER be left up to the states! And this will be our HELL (as someone who's in an interracial relationship) IF we let Trump get back in office.

Here’s the link to register to vote and if you already haven’t in some states voting registration ends TODAY so get on it if you haven’t!! Also here are the deadlines by state! But your own vote isn’t enough! Get as many people as you can to vote for Kamala be it your friends, cousins, parents, grandparents, old friends from high school and college, coworkers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, stepchildren (if they’re 18 and over) and the list goes on and on but every vote counts! Here’s the link and deadlines by state! AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION DAILY!!!!

And early voting has started! And if you don’t wanna vote on November 5th, Early Voting is another option! Like I said get as many people as you know and and try early voting! Here’s the link down below listing the dates by state:

And Mail in Ballots are ANOTHER option I highly recommend!! And like I said get as many people as you can to take advantage of this option!

Here’s the link below:

Donald Trump and his cronies wants to take us back to some 1980s Ronald Reagan Conservative bullshit. Is THAT what you want??

And for any POC that sees this and wants to vote Trump/Vance, just know Trump has said he wants to RIP UP THE CONSTITUTION. And the 14th Amendment ended SLAVERY and given one of his buddies was talking about wishing they could own Haitian slaves.....I'll let you fill in the blanks with that.

[whyse7vn]

Us -

[ot7 x reader]

AGUST DUI 🛴🔥

7 participants - 7 online

———————————

tae: ok raise your hand if you think yoongi should of died in the crash

namjoon: why would you say that?

tae: jungkook raise your hand

jk: ok

tae: not in real life the emoji please

jk: ok sorry

wait how did you know i raised my hand in real life??

tae: just do it

jk: like nike LOL

tae: i’m going to skin you alive

jk: sorry

🙋🏻‍♀️

tae: why are you a woman

jk: gender is a construction

hobi: construct

jk: control

hobi: we are not playing a game

i am correcting you

jk: oh

tae: connecticut

hobi: stop

tae: i wanted to play :(

hobi: it wasn’t a game can you read

jk: omg i know someone from connecticut

i think

jin: you have no friends don’t lie jungkook

jk: no i swear i do

tae: he does

hobi: don’t act like you know

tae: i know

hobi: who is jungkooks friend then?

tae: jungkook tell this idiot ☠️

hobi: i’m asking YOU to tell me

jk: i don’t know who it is

but i know

i’m going to go insane who is it ohmygod

y/n: jaehyun lmao

hobi: oh

jin: yikes

jk: i’m sorry

tae: how dare she lmao like she didn’t just cook my first born alive by saying that name

jk: she typed it btw

tae: that’s not the point jungkook

i’m throwing up

jk: ur right me too

i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry

y/n: ???

don’t be sorry

jk: >.<

yoongi: lol

jin: tf he laughing at?

yoongi: we’re always talking about jaehyun for some reason

hobi: be fr

yoongi: …

y/n: shouldn’t you be dead from the crash or something

tae: IM SAYING LIKE

jk: maybe he’s still drunk

hobi: LMAOOOO

yoongi: i did not crash

namjoon: he just fell over guys

yoongi: right

jin: ofc the bitch with no license is defending the other bitch with no licence

y/n: typical 🙄

yoongi: why do you know he’s from connecticut

y/n: what????

namjoon: uh??

jin: wasn’t he JUST complaining about how much we talk about you know who…

hobi: kook was right this man is still off the juiceeeee

ha juice by shinee

i’m so funny wow

tae: if we think about it wtf is connecticut

what the fuck is that srsly

i hate that

what does that mean

america is so strange

another white thing i don’t get

i hate white people

jin: ur borderline white

tae: wtf is wrong with you never say shit like that again

ur borderline old

ur borderline dying

AND ur paler than me

like wtf

this poc erasure

someone get him

jk: connecticut more like connectiYUCK 🤮🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢

EWWUUUUUU 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

hell on earth

yoongi: what

namjoon: ?

yoongi: are we talking about again

i just lost my train of thought

hobi: choo choo

y/n: chuu chuu

namjoon: jaehyun…

jk: 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤢🤢

tae: AND we are talking about poc erasure if you even care

you probably don’t

because you’re a racist

just like your father namjoon

jk: yoongi is older than namjoon

btw

tae: ok???

maybe i wasn’t even talking to yoongi

jk: ok i’m sorry

tae: it’s ok son

hobi: who the fuck were you talking to then?

tae: well yoongi but like maybe i wasn’t at the same time yk?

y/n: shut up

jk: yes

y/n: ?

tae: ok raise ur hand if you think hoseok is being unnecessarily mean to kim taehyung the 3rd today

namjoon: anyways

yoongi are you ok??

yoongi: yeah sorry my head is just all over the place rn

forget everything i said

hobi: is this due to your alcohol consumption

or is it your age getting to you LOL

since your old

older than namjoon

jk: older than namjoon

jin: jungkook is 27 btw

y/n: 23 forever

jin: that’s almost 30 yk?

hobi: at least it’s not 31

yk…

like you

jin: ok

jk: ok !!!!

namjoon: yeah i don’t know what you wanted to get out of that one…

jin: kys

ALL of you

hobi: ❤️

jk: love is love

y/n: awoman

jk: awoman

tae: if you all loved me you would send me a stack

hobi: notice how no money is being sent to your account

take that into consideration

tae: how about you consider my fist in you face

ok i take that back

hobi: don’t

y/n: bryson tiller

tae: why not :(

you didn’t even know what i was gonna say hobi >.<

hobi: namjoon tell him to shut up

namjoon: tae please

tae: yeah ok 😔

cuz you know i do NOT want the smoke

he might do me like he did jaehyun 😭🙏🏼

hobi: will you STOP bringing that up

tae: will you send me a STACK?

hobi: no

tae: then NO

namjoon: both of you stop

also where is jimin??

physically i mean

like do any of you know?

yoongi: y/n’s house i think

y/n: no he’s not??

tae: woah

jk: btw that is also my house yoongi

so y/n AND jungkook’s house

yoongi: y/n and jungkook’s house then

y/n: he’s not here

yoongi: but he was

y/n: how do you even know that??

yoongi: i just do

y/n: ok ????

yoongi: ok

jk: ok \ ^0^ /

tae: wait

jk: JIMIN WAS IN OUR HOUSE ?????

jin: keep up ohmugod

jk: LIKE PHYSICALLY IN OUR HOUSE

WHERE I SLEEP AT NIGHT???

y/n: he wasn’t in my room no

if that’s what ur asking

jk: BUT HE WAS HERE???

AFTER HE WAS SO MEAN SO EVIL?!

y/n: it’s been weeks i was gonna talk to him at some point ig

hobi: communication is key!

not key from shinee btw

jk: WHEN DID HE COME????

WHY DID HE COME????

y/n: he came a few weeks ago

august 6th ? i think

to talk about everything and apologise

jk: you let him in?

tae: LIKE…

y/n: yes

jk: and where was i?

y/n: it was a wednesday so ur boxing class?

jk: i’ve been staying back for those classes

so he came late right?

y/n: yeah

jk: did you invite him?

y/n: no he kinda just showed up

jk: and you still let him in??

y/n: yes jungkook

jk: why didn’t you tell me??

y/n: i wasn’t trying to keep it a secret or anything it just a lot

like a lot seriously

i wanted to give both me and jimin some time to process it all before we brought it all back to you guys

but i was going to tell you

all of you

jk: yeah but like it’s been weeks…

namjoon: to be fair i also did talk to

jimin and didn’t tell anyone

jk: namjoon

jin: also did that

hobi: u all know i talked to him so…

jk: guys???

i’m confused like what he said was wrong but you’re all still talking to him

like everything’s ok???

namjoon: he apologised to her kook

jk: FUCK HIS APOLOGY?????

tae you get it right?? you didn’t speak to him right??

tae: no i get it

i get you

i understand fully

but i won’t lie to you

i DID speak to him

on the phone

only for 5 minutes tho

i counted

i just wanted to make sure he didn’t yk like kill himself or something…

you know jimin is weak like that

not calling people who commit suicide weak but like calling jimin weak cuz that’s what he is

jk: TAE?????????????

tae: SORRY SUICIDE IS REAL YK?

AND LIKE IT DOESNT TAKE AWAY FROM THE FACT THAT I STILL WANT TO PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE

i was just

uh

checking?

namjoon: you can say you were worried about him you know that

jk: SHUT UP???£/8/8/8,&&:&,

NO HE CAN’T

YOU ALL HAVE NO BACK BONE /£2&/&&:&:

NO LOYALTY

HE BASICALLY CALLED Y/N A WHORE AND YOUR ALL FRIENDS WITH HIM AGAIN??????

LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED?????

tae: NO I’M MAD IM STILL SO FUCKING MAD THE FUCK????

FUCK JIMIN I MEAN IT

jk: you are a liar

LIKE

guys what£/£/&/&:&:

i thought you guys were better than this ???

i thought you all cared

jin: don’t be stupid

of course we care

jk: then act like it????

y/n tell them

y/n: jungkook

jk: tell them

in fact

jk added jimin to “AGUST DUI🛴🔥”

jk: tell ALL of them

y/n: jungkook please

jk: y/n seriously

jimin: hey

jk: shut the fuck up

tae: dude

i know ur upset and angry but doing this rn isn’t gonna solve anything

namjoon: he’s right jungkook

ur acting on emotion and not thinking properly right now

jk: IM not thinking properly???

was jimin thinking properly when he called her a slut and then ran away like a bitch?? was he????

namjoon: obviously not jungkook

hobi: but they’ve talked it out and he’s said sorry

jk: HIS SORRY DOESN’T MEAN SHIT

WHAT DO YOU GUYS NOT UNDERSTAND?

his fucking sorry means nothing

him saying sorry doesn’t take back the words he said

or any of the hurt he caused

namjoon: jungkook like she told us they’ve talked about it and he’s apologised

i not sure what more you want

jk: I WANT YOU GUYS NOT TO MOVE ON SO FUCKING FAST??

I WANT YOU GUYS TO AT LEAST TELL HIM HOW FUCKED UP THAT ALL WAS

BOTH PUBLICLY AND PRIVATELY

he should be walking around eggshells around us rn

you guys should be giving him a hard time

not wondering where he is or whether he’s depressed or not

and you wanna know something?

after it all happened she cried for hours

hours

i have genuinely never seen her so upset

she told me not to tell anyone but i have to so guys can fucking understand

and the fact that we didn’t even know that her and jimin spoke???

does that not bother you all?????

the fact that she was “so fine” and “okay” about the whole situation but didn’t tell us that they had supposedly ‘made up’

tae: she said that she was planning on telling us

jk: yeah but she didn’t did she? it’s been weeks

she said they spoke august 6th right?

we are quite literally in a whole new month

and you ALL should know that when she doesn’t tell us things it’s because she’s upset

you should KNOW her

and how she deals with things

you all claim to care but i’m yet to see how

you know i was really excited about this

we were all you know realising

and coming to terms with this

us

i thought that we felt the same

but this has shown me that you guys don’t even feel a quarter of what i do for her

and you probably never will

the way that you all just took her word for her being fine and okay about the whole situation without actually genuinely checking in with her is insane and the way you all rushed to make sure jimin was ok was even crazier

i just

whatever

bye

—

as you can probably tell this was supposed to be released last month but i tried to adjust it as much as i could

tags: @piw6n @92jinnies @birdie-vhs @earthela @hob3loveofmylife @jujubiism @bloopkook @ratchetpizza1 @myntalks @arloo00 @watamotee33 @y2kcy3brz @taiwan0618 @freyadanvers @gguksbeloved @raetf @bbsantc @winuvs @medicinemybish @bxnnyhime @seokmyballs @baetukki @zyaaaszn @thelilbutifulthings @jazminethecreator @meowgiz @jmnscutie @threeopossumsinacoat @cynicalyoongs @lightningpussy54 @eunthv @gigiiislife @lowkeykin @iammeandmeisiam @socksfirstalways @knilvr06 @lailaisarmy @thvkives @xstfudaisyx @xxxanimangxxx @solstice34 @ml8dy @hoeforseoks @futuristicenemychaos @featjunranghae @jksgirlfrl @yeetedandoboi @stellamalonesolaria @joonsprettygf

#happytimessoon >.<

[zepskies]

I saw somewhere that Dean wouldn’t date a black girl. Which is crazy because his ex was black and they had sex in season 1. Dean for sure definitely likes him a black woman. Hell he likes any type of woman

Hey anon!

Ugh, the way you know racism is still alive and well, even in fandom. 🙄 The idea that he "wouldn't date a black girl" is just plain ridiculous, and it upsets me for many reasons, being a Latina POC myself.

To start, they introduced Cassie Robinson as the one person Dean tried to entrust the "family secret" to --

AKA: the first girl he genuinely loved. A smart, fearless, badass woman not afraid to call out indiscretions and fight for the truth about her father's murder.

As a matter of fact, that entire episode (1x13) was about interracial couples, systematic racism, and breaking the cycle of social segregation, as symbolized through the Cassie x Dean relationship.

As for Dean and Cassie themselves, they had incredible chemistry. ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 To the point where I still think about the song playing during their steamy scene together ("Paradise" by Sharif), and I still use some of the Dean x Cassie gifs for my reader stories:

(And more about your "Dean likes any type of woman" comment below, because I definitely agree.)

They had a beautiful and tragic "weren't meant to be" story, but it doesn't take away from the love they had for each other and being one of the few meaningful, genuine romantic connections Dean had on the show.

"Dean likes any type of woman":

Very much agree! Dean doesn't discriminate, not with race, ethnicity, or body type. We've seen him hit on just about any lovely lady loll, from his love of Busty Asian Beauties, or when he tried to hit on Kali in season 5. 😂

When Donna tells Sam and Dean her husband said she loved chocolate chip cookie dough milkshakes more than him, I believe Dean immediately called him a douchebag, no hesitation. He supported her like this more than once.

And let's not forget this exchange in 9.13, when talking to a victim's loved one who had an affair with a heftier man:

Mala: “What can I say? Sometimes it’s nice to feel a little give.”

Dean *has an epiphany*: “Oh. Yeah, I get that. A little extra cushion for the, uh…” *fist pounding motion* (lmfao)

Hell, I've written an entire series about why Dean would be attracted to, and fall for, a POC plus-sized Latina. It's called the Midnight Espresso series.

All that being said, anyone who says Dean doesn't like or wouldn't date black women, other women of color, or certain body types is projecting their own narrow-minded, prejudiced, and/or potentially bigoted ideals. 🙅🏽‍♀️

[ushouldwatchhaikyuu]

Could you make headcanons abt a confident!chubby!poc!reader. Like when i search up haikyui x chubby reader all i get are hurt comfort stories about being insecure, and like everyone gets insecure but it gets to the point where people think everyone who isnt built like a coke bottle hates themselves 🙄. AND DONT GET ME STARTED ON THE ONES MADE FOR POC!!! Cause why are they all so stereotypical?! Like just because im black doesn’t mean im sexy redds clone😭🙏🏽.

Anyways back to the main plot🤭. I was thinking like reader with a style that has y2k/mcbling aspects (lowrise jeans, crop tops, chunky jewlery, etc) and is super bubbly. And back to he chubby thing, like ok. When i read x chubby readers, its always like fat ass and a lil bit of tummy, which is fine cause some people are built like that but not a lot🧍🏽‍♀️🧍🏽‍♀️. Like i have thighs, big boobs(pray for my spine🫡🙏🏽😭) and tummy, but I also have hipdips that dig into my butt bro. So like yea🧍🏽‍♀️. Haikyuu headcanons (you can pick the characters you think will fit🫶🏽) x confident!chubby!poc! reader

(i apologize for the yap session i have lots of opinions on this topic)

Chubby!POC!Reader x Haikyuu Headcanons

ft: literally like half the team members of all the main teams

warnings: cussing

oh pal dw about it lmfao i get what u mean!! i hope these hcs satiate ur cravings 👍

since u didn't ask for any specific characters i just came up with a few hcs that i think could apply to multiple characters lol

credits: divider .

He lowkey likes it when people look at his partner and assume he can't carry them, but then he just goes "oh yeah? lemme just-" *picks u up and puts u on his shoulder without a single hint of struggling* 👍

Ushijima, Bokuto, Kuroo, Atsumu, Sakusa, Iwaizumi (but he wouldn't say it outloud lmao).

Can't pick you up? No problem, they wanna be the ones getting picked up anyways.

Yachi, Yamaguchi, Kenma, Tendou (u cant convince me he doesnt like getting picked up)

Can't pick you up? unacceptable. They're begging your forgiveness and spending hours at the gym until they can do it. Just give them a few months.

Nishinoya, Hinata, Hoshiumi, Kageyama, Terushima, Levi.

Became an absolute pro at finding your exact foundation shade. Like, has your exact match pinned down. Could just look at a foundation color and go "yeah that's their shade". Some may think it's a bit weird, but honestly it's so helpful sometimes.

Ushijima's autistic ass, Tsukishima, Sugawara, Asahi, Yachi, Sakusa and Osamu maybe?

Gets so excited over fashion, makeup, jewelry and all that stuff. Goes shopping/thrifting with you, pays for your nails and is very enthusiastic whenever you ask for their opinion on your outfits. Also lets you give them makeovers sometimes. They will absolutely serve cunt if you ask them to.

Hinata, Nishinoya, Atsumu, Yamaguchi, Tendou, Kuroo, Bokuto, Oikawa, Yachi, maybe Levi lmao. Hot take but Ushijima would absolutely do it too.

Does encourage your passions and interest and stuff but their sense of fashion is that of a rock. If rocks wore crocs with socks. Still go shopping with u tho and they make up for their lack of advice by paying for all ur stuff. They spoil u so fricking much.

Tsukishima, Kageyama, Akaashi, Iwaizumi, Suna, Daichi, Sakusa, Ennoshita, Kenma.

Paints/writes/does photography and will make the most beautiful jaw dropping mouth watering gorgeous absolutely stunning works of art portraying you in such a beautifully realistic way. They get your colors and shapes and curves so perfectly well, it's incredible– it shows just how much attention they pay to every little detail about you, and how much they love all of it.

Daichi, Asahi, Ushijima, Osamu, Ennoshita, Sakusa, Yamaguchi, Yachi, maybe Kageyama.

[badgyalshii]

WANNA TRY IT WITH ME?

word count: 3.1k?

warnings! smut, maybe some typos, oral (f) and missionary, overstimulation, some dirty talk.

pairing! only fans!timothee chalamet x (f) friend!reader (ALWAYS SAFE FOR POC + PLUS SIZE)

a/n: hereee goes my long awaited apology for the finale of its never over🙄 i hope you guys enjoy! two hands on the phone please😏 the “xxx” is a divider btw i just got lazy lmao TELL ME IF IT SERVES CUNTTTT (requests are open)

have you read the series? check it out!

like shii’s writing!? check out her masterlist for her future imagines/series! (that needs to be updated, come on shii wtf r u doing😒)

It was no secret that timothee owned a onlyfans, he didnt really talk about it though. He didnt want it to be the main conversation between him and his friends, he kept the subjects separated but he was very close with his fans. You said you would always support what he does and even registered for an account to follow him, he tried to fight it and block you from his page, but you said it wasnt really that big of a deal considering you would never open the app and just to let you love him, to which he sighed and let it go, but convsersations were awkward because in the back of his mind he didnt know and was wondering you ever watched his videos. It was only a side gig, but he wanted to focus on college and small acting.

One day, you decided to initiate the conversation with timmy while you both ate chinese. ¨i just felt like if i talked to you about it then it would be hard for you to separate me from being a normal sensitive person from being ya know….that¨ he explained, you shrugged. ¨i mean, i wouldnt look at you differently- not that ive watched but i know you, and how could i judge such a sweet person like you? The only thing that i would have questions about is, like, is it awkward? On camera? Im not even comfortable with myself so put myself on camera and do that-¨ ¨if you dont like yourself, trust their is someone to appreciates you like ten times more than you do on a good day. Theres no reason for you to feel like that¨ he said looking over before eating the rice with a fork. You let out a hum and things fell silent as you both watched a movie, but it was clear you both were thinking. ¨would- would you like…¨ he looked over at you, your eyebrows lifted as you looked at him, he seemed nervous as his cheeks were slowly turning rosy, he cleared his throat before finishing his question. ¨like try it?¨ he asked, ¨erm¨ you said before thinking to yourself, ¨maybe with someone i trust, could be fun¨ you smiled before asking for the rice, taking a forkfull bite off of the same utensil that timmy used. He shrugged, becoming more comfortable, seeing as you were rather chill about the situation, it was a joke to him, what he was about to say, but the tone that came out otherwise said different.

¨wanna try it with me?¨ your eyes widened in surprise, to which he laughed, ¨joking, im joking¨ he let out with a nervous chuckle leaving his lips, his face was visibly warm now, a big grin on his face trying to fight off the fact that he said that. You chewed and swallowed your rice carefully, not saying a word and looking at him while he looked at you, itching and waiting for your response. You shrugged, ¨fuck it¨ your stomach was doing flips, what were you saying? Are you fucking serious? You thought after you said that, your eyebrows high and a side smile on your lips. His mouth parted, ¨when-when would you wanna do it?¨ he asked, ¨its your page, shouldnt you make the rules?¨ you muttered, setting down the rice. ¨tommorow maybe?¨ he let out, watching you get up, you said yeah and said you had to use the bathroom.

When you made it to the bathroom you looked at yourself in the mirror before letting out a sigh and putting a hand on your face is disbelief, what had you singed yourself up for? Why were you just talking? Were you just talking? It was clear that you both were very attractive, so imagine what people think. Your shared friends already think you guys have something casual going on, so would they really be surprised if you both busted out with a cake saying ¨we did it! We fucked! (and recorded)¨? You bit your lip before running the water and washing your hands, before exiting out of the bathroom and sitting next to timothee again.

XXX

You both shyd away about the idea even if it was just the next day, but here we are. You sat ontop of timothees bed, fully clothed and your hair out of the way. You bit your lip, you were anxious, you didnt know how to feel about this, how would others take it? What if they didnt like you? What if you didnt like it. Timothee sat infront of you the entire time, telling you that it was okay if you didnt want to do it and reassuring you the entire time and double checking in with you. As nervous as you were, there was a small burst of excitement that jumped in your stomach.

He bit his lip, ¨you ready?¨ he asked, holding up the camera, about to record you. On the nightstand sat a white viberator, body oil, and lube just incase. He raised three fingers behind the camera, initiating a count down, he very soon pressed the record button, you saw the red small light from the camera flicker. A smile played on your lips from awkwardness but you tried your best to cover it up. ¨this is y/n. One of my closest friends who wanted to join us today¨ he chuckled, ëyes on the screen as he looked through the camera to see you. ¨but ill let her introduce herself¨ he finished, your eyes widened, you didnt know what to do. ¨im nervous¨ you let out with a pity smile and you both let out a laugh, ¨just get undressed while you introduce yourself¨ he let out a small grunt as he watched you immediately catch on and start pulling up your top.he bit his lip, he couldnt deny you looked fucking great, the way your breasts were laid pretty in that bra and how your hips sat with the hidden treasures just waiting to be touched. You watched as he slowly palmed himself and continued to record. You decided this was the right time to speak up.

¨my name is y/n, but timothee told you that¨ you laughed as you stripped your shirt off, muffled music played in the back but you both werent too focused on that, you wore a matching set for the circumstance, and when your bra was revealed he let out a muttered fuck and applied more pressure to his clothed cock. T̈his is my first time¨ you continued, looking over at the oil before reaching over, your ass in the air as you reached for it he let out a sigh, and watched as your back arched and when you came back at sat correctly, he lended his hand out, ¨i wanna do that¨ he said, and you complied, handing him the oil, he let out a small groan, he was as hard as a rock and youve barely even started, he had no shirt on but he had his grey sweatpants, he took the camera and set it up on its stand on the end of the bed.

When he looked back at you, you sat there innocently, you sat on the back of your calves, legs closed and looking up at him so lost, it turned him on that he could take control and lead you. He softly grabbed your neck and pulled you in for a slowly soft to passionate open mouth kiss, pulling your head towards himself before letting you go and moving behind you, his warm touch on your arms, following all the way up to your neck and you tilted your head back on his shoulder as he now kissed your neck and uncuffed your bra. ¨shittttt¨ he muttered, looking at your tits and taking them into his hands, to which they fit perfectly, your nipple between his first and middle finger, rolling them around as soft sighs of pleasure left your lips, he looked at you the entire time before applying a kiss to your cheek, then your lips. You closed your eyes and let him lead you, you felt like you were falling in his arms and allowed him to take you anywhere, you swore this is what you needed, you almost forgot the camera was even there. He put his hand on your waist before he reached for the oil and while he did that, you stripped yourself from your shorts, revealing your matching thong before getting back into pisition and you looked at the camera, thinking you should be more seductive, you looked at it and let out a moan as the warm oil hit your body, he rubbed it over your chest, your stomach, his touch was gentle the entire time, ¨can you bend over infront of the camera for me?¨ he asked gently, you looked at him and nodded, your ass was pointed to the camera and he moved behind you and to the side, his eyebrows raised as you arched as your already glistening cunt was soaking the thin material of the thong, he applied oil over your ass and rubbed it in before his hands crawled up to the sides of your thong, ¨is it okay if i pull this down?¨ he asked, you nodded and he looked at you before dropping your panties, he let out a sigh of satifacation and rubbed over your entrance, you let out a hum and arched your back further before he plunged a finger into your soaking wet cunt, your mouth dropped as he slowly fingered you, he watched as your walls tighten around his fingers, his mouth dropped and he couldnt wait to put his dick inside.

He lifted up your ass as he started to apply pressure and finger harder, your eyebrows furrowed as you looked back at him. ¨like that?¨ he asked as he continued to finger, you bit your lip and nodded your head, your hips moved back into his hand as a small smirk played on his face before he stripped his fingers away, you let out a whine, wanting him to keep going before he surprised you and applied his tongue to your clit, your mouth dropped, his tongue was circling and you let out a moan.

¨timmy” left your lips, fuck. Is this what you were missing out on? Your stomach has butterflies as you leaned back wanting more, he let out a chuckle against your lips in cockiness seeing as you were enjoying this. He shook his head against your pussy and you moaned his name again. ¨dont stop, make me cum timmy¨ he let out another hum against your pearl before pulling away with a pop. ¨make you cum? Want me to make you cum baby?¨ he asked, pumping his fingers.

You looked back at him and seen your juices covering his lips, you could finish just now, looking at his low eyes, looking at him made it seem like he was clouded with ecstasy. He licked his lips and you nodded, letting out a soft please. He kissed your ass before getting on his knees and pulsing into your pussy harder, your eyebrows furrow as you close your eyes, opened mouth gasps and a deep moan just rips away from your lips, fuck, you couldnt take it. And the way timothee looked at you didnt help, ¨shit¨ he muttered, taking his thumb and rubbing your pearl in complete circles. Your mouth hung low as your belly started to heat up, you could feel yourself about to explode. You let out a whine and he bit his lower lip, ¨look at me, look at me while i make you cum¨ he circled faster, you looked at him desperate, desperate to finish.

And suddenly you did, ¨timmy!¨ you let out, your eyes rolling and the way he tried to ride your high out was overstimulating for you so you jerked your body from his fingers, to which he laughed at. ¨shut up¨ you laughed, putting your heand in your hands as your stomach continued to burn from the release. ¨you okay?¨ he asked again, you nodded yes and it was okay and that you were ready for the next round, he smiled at you, and you smiled back, before something else caught your attention. He was clearly breathing heavier and as you shamelessly panned his body, and something else was clearly looking at you.

He didnt try to hide it, instead, he grabbed it while he looked at you, ¨missionary? Or?¨ he asked. You shrugged in return, you liked that he mentioned missionary first, “is that a good angle?” you asked, “any shot with you in it is a good angle, y/n” he said, stripping from his sweats and boxers before coming over to press a kiss on your lips. Once again, the kiss became heated, he leaded you to lay on your back while your lips were still together. He came down and laid firm on you, pressing up against your bare pussy. You held onto his curls as his soft lips were on yours, his tongue entered your mouth, shamelessly clashing against yours, your teeth. It was so hot, he pumped himself before pressing up against your entrance. He rubbed his dick messily against your clit, looking at you jutter under his touch, he kissed your head before he entered slowly, a soft sigh left your lips as you made eye contact with him, watching his eyebrows press together from the easy slip in, to the tight satisfying feeling of your pussy wrapped around his hard throbbing dick. He looked at you for approval, and you nodded.

“y/n, fuck you feel good” he muttered, his mouth opening as you opened your legs further, wanting more. A throaty moan left your mouth as you leaned up on your elbows to watch him fuck you, his dick hit your spot everytime and he only moved faster. “Timmy, keep going” you moaned, your head tilting back from the euphoria. He reached up and grabbed your tit, massaging it as he continued to let out moans, “fuck, like that? You like that?” he muttered, now focusing and putting his hands on both sides of your head. He rocked his hips thorough, his mouth agape and low groans ripping away as the headboard of the bed clashed against the wall time and time again.

“yes! mmph-“ you were cut off by how deep his dick was inside you and how your sensitive nipples tickled in his touch, the way he looked so focused and lost in the moment only made you more wet, you tilted your head back and let out a cry, he was hitting the same spot over again and fucking you harder, you felt your walls clench desperately and that only motivated him more. “timmy!” you whine, putting your hand on his stomach and closing your legs around him, the sound of skin on skin became more relevant as he didnt stop, “i got you” he let out in a breathy, low and seductive tone.

he slapped your hand out of the way before taking it and your other and placing them ontop of the pillow, holding your hands by the wrist as he came down and kissed your sweet spot, “oh my- mmm!” a high pitched hum broke and tried to hide your neck, this was all so overpowering and it felt so good, “where do you want me to cum, y/n” he whispered in your ear, “fuck!” he closed his eyes and his hips rutted slowly, still having powerful strokes, “inside” you let out, he looks up at you before letting out a laugh, “are you crazy? you’re gonna get pregnant- shit” the pleasure took over, canceling his sentence.

“i wont” you shook your head, fuck thats all you wanted, for him to fill you up, give himself to you fully. he looks at you and presses a kiss to your lips before letting out an okay, he takes one of his hands off of your wrists to come down and rub your clit, but it was difficult considering how wet you were. your body was overstimulated and tried to fight his hand off by moving your hips, but when you moved them it just made him go deeper, past your spot, you froze in that position, your body shocked as he hit a point you didnt know anyone could. “fuck! dont stop!” you scream in a whiney tone, keeping your hips where they were. “cum for me” he said, his jaw clenching as he looked at you with all seriousness, “take it, take it from me make me cum!” you cry, his hand moved faster against your clit and more rough groans left his lips, your mouth suddenly became agape and he looked at you, your eyes pouring into his as you came. “timmy, im, im cumming” your eyebrows furrowed, it felt like the world stopped, your body jerked and released all the knots in your stomach. he came down and you both shared and open mouthed sloppy kiss, he bit his lip and and looked down at you, fucked you harder and the bed creaking and the camera was so close to flipping over.

“mmm” his lips pursed together, fucking you faster now, “timmy!” you cried again, before his mouth dropped, a whiney moan left him lips “y/n, y/n, aw, fuckkk y/n” he said over and over again, feeling his seed shoot up in your stomach as he looked at you, both eyes were desperate for each other, so hazed in the stars. he let you go and your arms went under his, holding him as he let out “uhs” as he finished cumming inside you, and making sure you got all of it as he messily rutted his hips until failure. your back came off the matress as you accepted the cum shooting up your pussy as your chest uncontrollably heaves.

his head falls into the deep of your neck, still breathing heavy but applied kisses there. Once he catches his breath, he sits back up and pulls out, a curse leaving your lips as he grabbed the camera and pointed it at you, you looked at him behind the camera, he was still breathing heavy and he reached his hand to your lips, his thumb brushing over them before you took it into your mouth and sucked, a smirk and a small chuckle left his lips before he took out his thumb and traced it along your body, you were covered in sweat, your body glistening heavenly, or at least he thought so. the camera following, all the way down until he zoomed in on your fucked out area, seeinng the cum slowly leaking from your hole and your clit visibly swollen. he separates your folds from each other, “man i could really eat you out again” he joked.

[lover-of-mine]

Idk why they're even discussing this still. Ryan already spoke about this, making it obvious he's seen their bullshit, and spoke against this idea.

Why are they acting like Eddie is a raging pick me wanting Gerrard, of all people, to pick him?

I know a lot of them haven't seen the rest of the show, but let's get things clear. Eddie was shot pre-show in the army, he was shot AGAIN in s4, and not long after, he found himself with Buck being threatened at gunpoint by escaped prisioners. Eddie chose to make a deal with a deranged prisoner to remain in the ambulance, held at gunpoint, as long as said prisoner let Buck out. Eddie chose to remain in the line of fire to make sure Buck was not.

If he's not afraid of getting shot again and rather it happen to him than it happening to Buck... we really going to sit here and speculate on how Eddie would hurt Buck... for GERRARD? Ya'll goofy.

Let's be honest. Only Tommy actively kept quiet AND participated in this rampant bigotry. It's easy for him to say he's grown and matured when we don't see how he'd act different in the same environment. What we did see, though, is Tommy once again remaining silent in the face of Gerrard's bigotry at the medal ceremony while Chimney stood up for himself and Buck looked seconds away from making him into an actual corpse.

Don't admit that Tommy's behavior is problematic but only if it's hypothetically done by Eddie, a POC. They're so performative🙄

I'm giving you a standing ovation, babe! No notes.

[genderkoolaid]

Some people on my dash are posting a screencap of u apparently defending race play and problematic kink and calling u names, the screen cap includes zero content about that it cuts off after a sentence but whats going on. I'm on mobile i really dont feel like scrolling back 4 weeks on your blog to see whole context plus i have a fckin headache but why are they saying this and what is the context. im anon so weird people dont harrass me for not going along with ooc screenshots 🙄

The post in reference is here.

Me "defending raceplay" is saying that some people of color are going to be into raceplay, and we have to be comfortable with that and not stigmatize marginalized people for having a "problematic" sexuality. Because that's how you get marginalized people getting harassment campaigns for not having Morally Pure Kinks, and that does nothing to actually help them but it does create a new way to control how they are allowed to engage with their sexuality instead of respecting their autonomy.

If you can't respect a person of color who gets off on raceplay, if you view them as less an [ethnicity] or less capable of being an activist or shame them etc etc That Isn't Helping POC! And it also gives actual racists (and transphobes, homophobes, misogynists, fatphobes etc.) more fuel, because if someone is exposed as having one of these Bad Kinks and all their leftist friends shame them, then they are left perfectly vulnerable to be torn to shreds by bigots who will blow it up and make it a huge "Cringe Leftist Actually Gets Off On Bad Thing!". But if their leftist friends say "yeah, and?" to that exposé, it can have less of an impact AND you don't have a marginalized person left vulnerable to harassment.

Basically. If the left doesn't get over its fucking kink-phobia then bigots will forever be able to use that shit to target marginalized people and leftist will help them because they genuinely think that having Bad Sex Thoughts is a sin akin to murder. So we have to not care. You have to be able to look at a kinkster and not judge them for the kink.

[destinyc1020]

I find it weird how people are trying to come into my inbox and claim that Zendaya being shy is "all an act"🙄, when she HERSELF has said this, and also her teachers have said it as well!

Zendaya was even held back one grade in grade school because she was so shy and wouldn't ask questions when she didn't understand something.

She's been talking about this for YEARS y'all..... 😒 It's time to believe her.

.

.

.

.

.

I swear.....

People online on the internet trying to claim that they know someone's personality BETTER than the person themselves, or the people around them who actually KNOW them smh....

And I'm sorry, but racism is (yet again) at the forefront of why SOME people can't imagine that a black woman (or any woman of color) can actually be SHY! We are not a monolith! We as POC can have various different types of personalities. Some of us are actually kind of shy! (myself included)

I've had to learn how to grow out of it myself (now it's to the point where people can't even tell that I was an incredibly shy kid growing up), but it's something I STILL work at. I suffer from anxiety. I'm painfully shy whenever I have to do public speaking or whenever a lot of attention is on me. But I work through it IN spite of my anxiety and shyness. Some people think that just because you seem "fine" and "outgoing" that you can't possibly be shy. But ummm....YES you can. You don't know what that person is going through on the INSIDE. So, when people tell you that they are shy, simply just believe them!

And lastly....

[lo-toh-takes]

Lily: "Hunter is a boring white boy who takes the spotlight from the other poc characters!"

"Okay, that's...that's not really a sound argument, but whatever, if you dont like Hunter, why don't talk about the other poc characters in the show? Why don't you talk about Luz?"

Lily: "Luz has become an angsty teen, I mean, I get that she found out she accidentally helped a man who's literally planning to commit a g3nocide of witches and take over the human world, but seriously, why is she sooooo annoyingly depressed ? 🙄 The only appropriate response is to be angry and hungry for revenge, or work on the portal tirelessly and neglect her friends and family, only THEN it's appropriate for her to be upset and sad."

"That's....that's not- whatever, then why don't talk about Gus or Willow? You said they've been sidelined in the show a lot-"

Lily: "Gus has been sidelined a looot, he's such an interesting character, I love him he's such a cute kid, but I'm NOT making a video on him, or really talk about him much unless it's to mention how sidelined he is. And Willow should've been Luz's girlfriend instead of Amity. Willow and Luz had more groundwork for a relationship! *shows one pic of Luz and Willow holding hands*

"Wha- No, they didn't! And what's wrong with Amity being Luz's girlfriend?!"

Lily: "Oh, nothing, they're both so cute and lovely! This is the gay rep in cartoons that I've been waiting to see for years!....buuuuut, the only reason why Amity's popular and liked within the fandom is because she's white. She doesn't have a real personality. Her only trait as a character is just abusive parents and being Luz's girlfriend, that's it. And whenever people show art of Lumity, it's ONLY focusing on Amity, never Luz, and theyll think shes the main character instead of Luz, and when I found out about the show cause I saw a clip of Eda, and i thought she was the main character, only for it to turn out to be Luz. That was my experience finding out about the show, therefore EVERYONE will think Amity is the main character instead of Luz and will be surprised that Luz is the actual protagonist."

"....You do realize people like Amity and Hunter because of their personalities and struggles, right? Heck, some people find Amity's struggle with abusive parents relatable. Same thing with Hunter, a lot of fans, and me personally, love Hunter because of his arc of growing up indoctrinated and escaping the cult he was raised in -"

Lily: "No, no you don't."

"Do...do you not have no counter argument to what I'm saying? You do realize you can't just say "no you don't" to arguments with people?!"

Lily: "Yeah well, the only reason you like Hunter is because he's an angsty white-"

"I'm literally black."

Lily: "You're brainwashed"

"????"

Ya this pretty much sums up Lily's TOH takes in a nutshell.

[myartcloudsstuff]

You know, it be preferable if certain Jily artists would bother to tag their art with poc/desi james potter tag. Cause not all of us consider that headcanon to be ‘canon’. The author is problematic and all, but that doesn’t mean race swapping existing white characters is any better/makes y’all superior. It works for Hermione because she’s a muggleborn and the added subtext of her being picked on by a racist, pureblood white prick like Draco and the garbage Malfoys. And this doesn’t fucking mean Jily=Dramione! Fuck no. If anything, James being the reverse of Draco, but similar in he too was a white, pure blood privileged boy raised and pampered but was actual taught to not be a complete dick to those who’s blood status isn’t pure. Changing his race to fit a certain headcanon is bs and makes Dursleys hypocritical and worse(but skin color logic, they should hate Kingsley too). And it’s always James & Harry. Never Sirius, Remus, or Lily(who has the most reason to be race swapped). So overall, this fandom is a joke

I thought about not responding to this comment because I don't like wasting my time on people who make assumptions about me and my decisions, but I will because people like this piss me off. First of all, get a life. Second of all, it can’t be that in this day and age, you are crying and complaining about a fictional character’s race, again, I repeat: FICTIONAL CHARACTER!! What does it matter to you if I decide to draw James as a POC character? I don’t care about what you or anybody think is ‘canon’ this is how I like to draw James and how I will continue to do, always. I don’t think changing a character’s race makes me “superior” that’s ridiculous, please, and what does race have to do with blood purity? they’re both two separate things. Third of all, “It is always James and Harry” and what if it is? Why is it such a big problem, just say you are racist and it bothers you to see them as anything other than white. And finally, what do you mean by “who has the most reason to be race swapped”, huh? Just curious… 🙄

[slushiesandshowtunesat3am]

you have a good point about the increasement of non con/dub con fanfiction. i just want to add that it's not surprise that Joel Miller's fanfiction are the one that always sexualize the word "kiddo" or are mostly about age gap because the fandom (and i'm talking here about Pedro Pascal fandom generally) has been more toxic in the recent years. big problem here is they tend to fetishize Pedro Pascal a lot so, when you scroll in his character tags, the stories you always found are about daddy kinks, age gap kinks, dbf/bfd, etc. it's look that a reader that is over 30 is a crime.

funny thing, this doesn't happen when i'm looking in other characters tags that aren't latinos, like Bucky Barnes or Steve Harrington, i wonder why🙄

This is an interesting perspective for a lot of reasons <3

The ask above and the text below is a response to concern about the growing number of infantilization and dub con/non con content that is taking over certain fanfiction spaces.

I will be using tags from those spaces to spread the message and further encourage conversation, so if you do not want to see my posts, block me now

Honestly, until reading this ask, I didn't realize just how severe the overt sexualization of Pedro Pascal has gotten.

I remember seeing videos of him reading certain fan tweets filled with the term daddy and I would cringe, but I just figured it was because I was a bit put off by one of my favorite actors being put in that situation.

But I do remember, before Pedro really started picking up traction as Joel Miller, his most sought after character was the Mandalorian, and I don't recall ever seeing as much non-con and infantilization content as I do now.

All of the dynamics explored, at least in the fics I read, where all based upon mutual protection because of the environment that Mando was in. Mutual respect, mutual responsibility, because it was life or death. And even if age was a concern, the term daddy was hardly ever uttered.

With Joel, it's almost the complete opposite. Despite the landscape for the show literally being the end of the world, it seems as though the most popular works for the fiction focus on age gaps. And a good number of them, aren't even focused on the actual plot line. It's all: Dad's best friend, hot older man next door, perv! Joel, etc.

And I get it, I do! It's fanFICTION for a reason, you're supposed to create your own stories, but there seeks to be an underlying theme here that I don't believe I'm comfortable with.

What was the shift?

And I can't help but view your other point as one of interest as well.

A post I made a while ago highlighted a lack of representation, or rather an exclusion of POC in fanfiction due to descriptive terms often catering to a white demographic.

In a follow-up post I made, a response to an ask, I said that I couldn't help but wonder if the seemingly deliberate exclusion of inclusive vocabulary was because there has been a growing number of content feeding into this very lolita-esque style of reader. One of pink, princess purity, and sexuality found in corruption. And, because POC do not fit this image of purity in your mind, we are subconsciously removed from these spaces.

But now I'm wondering about other repercussions.

It's no secret that Latin women have been sexualized since Christopher Colonizer sailed the ocean blue, but I truly haven't looked at how Latin men may be as well.

As a black women, I know black men, (black women as well, but not as frequently) are often sexualized by other races for various reasons, but I wasn't aware that this may be happening in the Latin community as well.

Is it possible that Pedro, or rather his characters, present an easy target for blatant sexualization, even of graphic and exploitative content, because of this ideology?

Again, open to discussion.

[rogue205]

Oh my god. What is with Disney these days? No one wants a “woke” Princess and it’s like they don’t even understand the word anyway.

Pixar does because look at Merida. She still got help from “a man” even if they were her little brothers. It was still “female empowerment” because her mother is actually the one who killed the bad guy anyway and it was because he was about to kill Merida. It wasn’t just “women strong!”. Hell, Merida refuses to get married and actually ends the movie that way but she never comes across as “ew, men” but that she simply doesn’t want to. I can relate.

But back to Disney. They changed Little Mermaid so Ariel literally did EVERYTHING including killing Ursula despite the fact that she shouldn’t even know how to drive a damn ship. 🙄 There was nothing wrong with Eric doing it!

And now we’re getting “woke” Snow White who is named as such because her skin is WHITE AS SNOW! But noooooo… she has to be a person of color too so Disney can have lazy writing and call everyone racist when we call them out on this BS. POC are just shields for them now although Rachel Zegler tried to accuse everyone of hate already. Lady, that’s not going to get people to see your point. And frankly, it’s not even about her. It’s about Disney and what they’re doing.

Also they’re apparently planning to change the Prince coming in to wake her up at the end. Like, what? And most of the seven dwarves are gone too. I think there’s only one now while the others are “normal”. They thought(and Zegler said) that the Prince was “acting stalker-ish” so that’s why they wanted to change him. Hah. They clearly didn’t watch “Once Upon a Time”. Now THAT is a live-action Snow White.

Plus there is a “deleted scene” comic which explains how the Prince even knew to come looking for Snow White. He was captured and locked up by the Evil Queen and witnessed her transform into the hag and poison the apple. He immediately went to find Snow when he managed to escape. All the live-action had to do was include something like this and then he isn’t “stalkerish”. 🙄

Frankly, their movie is not even Snow White anymore and I can tell already that it’s going to flop with all these unneeded and unnecessary changes. All it shares in common now is the name. Nothing else.

This is just my opinion. You don’t have to agree.