#But like some crimes are dumb and related to injustice

[salvadorbonaparte]

I think that, in theory, you should be able to run for office even if you have been convicted of a crime. Otherwise, you'd risk show trials where political opponents get convicted of fake crimes to get rid of them. However, Donald "first president to be impeached twice" "first president to be convicted of a crime" Trump with his 34 felony counts, other open cases and all of that directly relating to his campaign and time as president. Is no such case. He never should have been able to become president in the first place. Every day I hope there is some loophole that disqualifies him and also that he dies in prison.

[moku-youbi]

On the one hand, my side won and I'm glad because I'm very familiar with both media, ships, and fandoms and Wangxian wins hands down imo.

I tried to get into ofmd fandom and it was so gross and toxic I noped out within a couple weeks. I know not everyone in there is like that, obvs, and I'm sorry you have to deal with that toxicity within your own fandom. And I'm definitely pissed by all the ofmd comments full of barely veiled racism (but unsurprised given the racism against native folks and black folks that is a big reason I left ofmd fandom, seriously, grow the fuck up, y'all), and the hilarious suggestion that wangxian fans are the toxic ones (to be clear, while ao3 China ban is tangentially related to wangxian, it was actually because of the antis mad about rps involving the actors playing them, and perceived slights against their Stan and lots of blatant homophobia -- not wangxian fans themselves!), and all the ignorant dismissal as 'some asian guys' 'a dumb cartoon' 'queerbaiting' etc, when the source material is a fucking masterwork of a fantasy book that is socially commentary on classism and war crimes and injustice against minorities too weak to defend themselves and what happens when you attempt to challenge the status quo for morally righteous reasons...with explicit on page sex

On the other hand, what's bumming me out is how gross the stucky fans are being. Like I'd rather not have your gross hate vote for my ship, thanks. You're just as bad. It's a fucking poll, y'all and you have to bring your racist, bigoted, toxic shit into other fandoms.

There's a difference between being passionate for your ship, even unhinged in your love /protection/promotion of it, and being an aggressive douchebag who ruins fandom for everyone else. And a lot of you are showing your asses.

Fwiw, I enjoy all three of these ships, and weirdly, when I say Wangxian is my favourite, I don't feel the need to tear down or belittle the others to do so. Wangxian speaks for itself, if you're familiar with the canon, and it's impact on fandom speaks for itself if you are in fandom. So to those specific stucky and blackbonnet fans who are being asshats, for real. Consume the media in good faith. Read some of our absolutely glorious fics (unrivaled --I've read extensively in al three of these ships, I know from experience!) Learn about our ship instead of bashing it in ignorance or using it as a cudgel to bash the others, and maybe find a way to enjoy fandom without being fucks?

AO3 Top Relationships Bracket- Round 4

This poll is a celebration of fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[ninjastormhawkkat]

Another Wordgirl Au: Morally Gray Wordgirl

Morally Gray Wordgirl au

I don’t know if anyone else in the Wordgirl fandom thought about this at one point. A what-if I thought one day was what would have happened if Steven became Dr. Two Brains before Becky became Wordgirl? Such as what if Steven became Two Brains when Becky just came to earth as a baby? This is where the au begins

In this au, Becky is adopted by Dr. Two Brains. After Becky and Bob crash land on earth, Bob carries Becky around for a bit and enters the city. This is around the time Steven first becomes Two Brains. Bob, while carrying Becky, runs into Two Brains. At this point, Bob has no idea that Two Brains is a villain. Two Brains has cheese with him and Bob is hungry. Two Brains awkwardly hands some of his cheese to Bob. Two Brains may be a villain now but he is not heartless to not offer someone that is hungry food. Bob eats the cheese while Two Brains holds Becky. Two Brains is nervous at first because some random monkey just gave him a baby to hold😟. When Becky looks at Two Brains, she curiously calls him daddy. She is just a little kid who think that this new man holding her is her parent now. Two Brains heart just melts😍after hearing her call him daddy and looking into her innocent, alien, eyes. He immediately begins to dote on her as a dad would, ex. baby talk and cooing. Bob watches the interaction between Two Brains and Becky and decides that Two Brains would be a great person to stay with and raise Becky. He later regrets his decision.😓😆Here is an outline for how this au would go:

1. Becky still becomes Wordgirl. Bob tries to implement heroic morals into Becky during the time she is being raised by a villain. Becky wants to become a hero because she does not want to see the lives of innocent civilians hurt. However, since Dr. Two Brains also implemented villainous ideals into Becky growing up, her moral values are kind of mixed in her actions as a hero.

2. Becky is more sympathetic towards villains. Ex. When Chuck and Butcher claim to be innocent after being framed by Amazing Rope Guy, she immediately believes them and tries to figure out another angle of who really committed those crimes.

3. She isn’t as upset as when the spotlight is turned off her such as when Tiny Big came onto the scene or when Granny May became bingo champion. She is still upset, but Becky is not as focused on the limelight as canon. She, from Huggy’s teachings, believes that a superhero’s true reward comes from protecting the citizens and just helping when needed to prevent or avenge the cruelest of injustices. Wordgirl will accept gifts or keys to the city out of politeness. She uses the limelight to give the people of Fair City comfort and assurance that she is still there to protect them. Becky views heroism as a job more than a pleasure. It is basically, “You get good results based on how hard and well you do the work, not just what others say.” mentality.

4. That being said, Becky will not take a passive stance and try hard to prove her innocence if the citizens suddenly began to take advantage of her heroism or if they turn on her such as with the evil duplicate or when Granny May framed her for crimes. As I said earlier, Becky in this au views heroism as a job she enjoys and doesn't take impolite backlash, constructive criticism yes. Basically she just becomes done when residents of Fair City act like morons who think they know better. (I have always had a problem when a majority of the residents in Fair City act like gullible idiots. It always irks me how they will turn on Wordgirl easily and not often give a proper apology when they realize they were wrong. Sometimes, to me, it seems the villains have better appreciation for Wordgirl than the citizens. I am not including all citizens, just seems like a majority do this.) (Okay rant over.) Becky will be like, “if you guys don’t want me anymore then good luck.” She will intervene again just to keep the city from going into complete chaos. She still cares about the safety of the citizens, she just does not like it when they abandon their trust in her for no good reason. She is not even mad at the villains who cause this. They didn’t force the citizens to dislike Wordgirl, that was their choice.

5. Becky will not often take her dad to jail. She loves her dad and does not like the idea of him not being home (the warehouse; Becky’s living conditions their are like my version of the Becky Boxleitner au, just somewhat better due to her living their all her life.) She also does not like the idea of having to fight him, but has to in order to keep up appearances and not let anyone get suspicious and start suspecting her identity. That being said, she will let Two Brains escape after stoping the crimes depending on the severity. If Two Brains just steals cheese from the grocery store, she may often ignore it (its just cheese and it can easily be replenished). For crimes such as stealing money or turning artwork into cheese, Becky will stop her dad, but later act like he got away (if police are not around. “Two Brains Quartet” still happens because police are there.). Becky may do this sometimes for other villains depending on her or their mood. Citizens and Villains believe that Dr. Two Brains is an extremely tough villain to catch which raises his credibility as Fair City’s #1 villain when Wordgirl does this. Captain Huggy Face is not happy when Wordgirl let’s her dad go, but he deals with it because she cares about her dad. Becky does stand her ground if her dad, and the other villains, do something dangerous that affects the lives of the citizens. Incidents such as the plot to mind control all the city with bunny buttons and the cheesteroid do get Two Brains arrested. (Becky is like, “Sorry dad, but I can’t let you threaten the lives of innocent civilians.”) Since this happens rarely, Becky usually stays at her friends houses until her dad leaves prison. She has a visitor clearance and does visits with her dad when she can. (Still brings him cheese.) Not much interaction with the Botsford family unless they were a focus in episodes.

6. Becky is more aware of when villains act deceitful. (She was raised by one herself.) She pretends to be tricked to let their guard down before turning the tables on them. (She can be tricky and deceitful herself when she wants to be.)

The police force are more competent in this au than in canon. They were able to capture most villains, with exception to Two Brains and other major villains, before Wordgirl came onto the scene. The city was similar to Gotham before Batman showed up. It was fine, but crime rates were still high. The episode “The Wrong Side of the Law” happens differently than canon. Wordgirl is civil and polite to the police, but does really like law enforcement or fully trusts them due to her upbringing by a super villain. (Two Brains taught her she can respect law enforcement because they are capable of doing a good job, it does not mean she has to like them or follow the rules all the time. I sorta think that the villains have some respect for D.A. Sally Botsford because of how she is good at her job.)

Now on to “Normal” girl Becky. Becky is still referred to as Becky Boxleitner. (Dr. Two Brains did not want kids ignoring or making fun of Becky with a last name like Brains, or something mouse related. He wanted people to know and treat his daughter as herself, not just who she is related to. Two Brains also wanted to give Becky some protection so random people wouldn’t bother her because of his actions. So he just gave her his old human name.) Becky is similar to her canon character with a few changes.

1. Becky will empathize with someone if they are feeling upset and hurt. But if they are doing something dumb and stupid, or anything that is concerning to her, she will be upfront and honest with that person (not complete brutal honesty but something like “Please don’t do something stupid, I care about you and your health.”). She isn’t mean, but she is forward and won’t bother to hide feelings if hiding your emotions will only make the situation worse. 

2. Both Becky and Wordgirl are sassy like her dad.

3. She is still passionate about words and respects her teachers and main authority figures.

4. Becky is more clever about excuses.

5. She enjoys science more as well as literature. Becky has top grades in her class. (Next to Tobey). She enjoys science fairs and is a bit better at creating workable, and visually acceptable, inventions.

6. Becky likes puns (Two Brains) and knows every fact about cheese as well as every fact about words (again Two Brains’ fault). 

7. Becky is still a fan of Pretty Princess, but has ponies, books, and science stuff in her room. She is a bit more tomboyish than canon.  

Becky is still friends with Violet in this au. I always viewed Violet’s mom as an open-minded nature women, based on Violet’s character and where they live. She is easily accepting of Becky and Dr. Two Brains despite Two Brains life as a villain. Becky is also forward early on how some of Violet’s traditions make her uncomfortable so there is no issue in the series. 

Becky is more a fan of words and science in this au. She and Violet have fun mixing art and science. Becky does not take art classes, but rather is part of after-school science and reading clubs. (She takes science club with Tobey and reading club with Violet.)

Becky is also friends with Tobey in this au. I have nothing against Scoops’ character. I was just more fond of his character development in the episodes during and after he learns Becky’s identity, plus a few before the reveal. (In the early seasons, it seemed that Scoops would do anything for a big story, even as exposing Wordgirl’s identity as Becky. I was upset in that Vocab Bee episode because Scoops did not seem to consider Becky’s input or feeling when he found strong evidence that Becky was Wordgirl. To me it seemed unfair that Becky had to throw her chances at a competition she was having fun in just to protect her identity because of Scoops’ actions and attitude.) Tobey met Becky when they were between 5 and 6. Tobey just lost his dad (up to interpretation on how) and was just lonely. Kids would make fun of Tobey’s nerd-side and some other mean reasons, or they would ignore him. Becky sympathized with Tobey because most kids, not Violet, would avoid her because of her dad. (They would not dare bully her for fear of how Dr. Two Brains would react.) Tobey and Becky easily began to get along and overtime became friends. Claire McCallister was worried about her son hanging out with the child of a villain. But quickly after seeing how Becky was a good kid plus Two Brains being a good dad despite his status, and that her son was happy with friends, she let her worries slide. Claire, Dr. Two Brains, and Violet’s mom, have made an unofficial single parents support group between the three of them. In this au, Tobey does not become a villain, but still builds robots. (I already have a new villain that takes canon Tobey’s role.) Becky and Tobey are silently crushing on each other. Tobey does suspect Becky is Wordgirl, but respects her secret identity and will wait for her to tell him (or a reveal). (Still cares for her anyway.)

Scoops parents are friendly but are strong law-abiding citizens so they avoid Two Brains and Becky. Scoops in this au is nice, but is more concerned on news stories. He originally talks to Becky in hopes of getting an interview with her dad. Scoops is trying not to be inconsiderate, but he is sorta using Becky as a way to get to her dad. Becky deals with this stuff from other reporters and fans of her dad. Neither Dr. Two Brains and Becky like this attention. (Two Brains likes being in the news and in magazines, but he doesn’t like people using his daughter to get to him. Becky is the most important person in his life with cheese being second.) Becky shuts Scoops down after his first few initial attempts. Scoops is disappointed, but he apologizes and doesn’t bother her anymore. Becky is civil and polite to Scoops in this series, but that is about it. There is no crush. (I don’t know if I will keep the Violet x Scoops ship in this au or change it.)  

I really like this au along with a few other aus I made up which include an Alliance Swap au. I am going to expand more on this au and the characters later.  

[bigskydreaming]

Hey i'd just like to say i'm the anon who sent that ask to hood-ex about the humor in the new nightwing run and you pretty much expressed in a much clearer way my problems with it so far. It's only been two issues so I'm willing to give it a chance ofc but idk. The character voice so far is a bit goofy to me. Like i like that we're going for a socially conscious dive into how to fight crime but dick's reactions last issue came off as like idk like it's the first time he ever gave deep thought about how to fight social injustices himself. Like he did have a trust fund at some point, right? It's not like it's the first time he had money. And it's not like he was especially privileged before bruce to not give this a thought esp since he ended up in the system himself. So?????? Like i know this is probably bc it's written by a white man who only realized this later in life himself but idk... maybe i'm just raising my eyebrow bc i grew up in a country w/ corrupt politicians and rampant poverty so i'm projecting a bit haha.

Hey project away if it incites the thinking of thinkie thoughts, I say. Or something more cohesive. You get it.

But anyway yeah, like, I’m with you and Emily in that I’m just trying to keep some perspective and remind myself that its only two issues in and it might just be taking Taylor some time to find his footing. And to be fair, I’d much rather be complaining about this sorta thing than complaining about characters constantly guest-starring in Dick’s book for the sole purpose of telling him how terrible he is at having amnesia. That was getting old. 

And idk, I think its also an issue of.....maybe I’m giving Taylor’s work here more scrutiny and less of a chance because I’m borrowing cynicism from previous runs and from fanon trends in general? Like I just mean, if all other things were equal, this sorta thing wouldn’t bug me SO much but BECAUSE it comes in the wake of massively shitty plots at Dick’s expense like the Ric Grayson arc after following the Spyral arc after following Forever Evil, etc, etc......like it probably wouldn’t stand out as much IF we were getting some actual Good Dick Grayson Content from elsewhere, y’know? But its been 84 years and our crops need watering, our pores need cleansing and so we’re just like....uh, this ain’t it so far. Might not be the worst, but its still not what we were hoping for, and personally, I think that’s all right to say and express. 

But y’know like......don’t get me wrong. There’s room in comics and fanfic for goofy Dick Grayson, or a Dick Grayson who even while being extremely smart and competent has his dumb moments, stuff like that. That’s true of EVERY character though, and its just the scales have been tipped so far for so long in just the one direction JUST in terms of Dick’s character and not any of the Batfam or Titan related characters around him that like....we kinda just have no patience for that sorta thing at the moment. Balance things out with a lot more content on the flip side of things where he’s actually afforded some respect and dignity by other characters and his narratives, and like.....I’m not even gonna blink at Dick having a Dude Where’s My Car moment, y’know? Because in and of itself, its not that big a deal. Its that its ALL we ever seem to get that makes it a big deal and me like hmmmm what if you guys wrote this consummate professional and extremely skilled, knowledgeable and well-loved character as though he were actually extremely skilled, knowledgeable and well-loved. What would that look like? Can we try that look on for a minute, maybe give it a shot? 

[aawesomepenguin]

RATING EVERY SONIC FROM THE SONIC MULTIVERSE

How much of a good boy they are? All of this in this thread.

Disclaimer: Of course, this is my opinion. You might feel different. You’re welcome to disagree!

(MAIN UNIVERSE - Universe 1991)

The Sonic from the games, a true good boy. He does things on his way, his own way, he aims to do what he believes is right, hates injustice. He cherishes his freedom above everything.

He loves to explore the world, always running around. Doesn’t have a house.

Doesn’t like to see tears. He also likes to crack some jokes to have fun with his friends. Is a hedgehog of action, usually doesn’t think twice before taking action.

Also has not shown much interest in doing romance.

10/10, this is my favorite Sonic

(UNIVERSE 1991A - 1991 Promotional Manga)

This Sonic is the vocalist of his world’s most famous band, and also has cool sharp fangs. A lot of human girls have a crush on him.There are certain rumors circulating around that he might be dating a human girl named Madonna... could it be true?

He is also a good boy, takes action when he sees others in danger, and is also determined to fight against injustice.

9/10

(UNIVERSE 1991B - American Sonic)

Originally brown, Sonic was a great friend of Dr. Ovi Kintobor, a good human scientist. Kintobor studied the Chaos Emeralds with the intention to get Mobius rid of all evil.

Kintobor gives Sonic cool new red sneakers as a gift, and after getting involved in an accident on one of Doctor’s inventions, Sonic turns blue. Eventually Sonic and Kintobor become enemies after the Doctor trips and breaks the machine that stored the Chaos Emeralds, becoming Robotnik.

A good boy, a dude with atitude, also way past cool, and full of 90s charm.

9/10

(UNIVERSE 1992 - Sonic the Hedgehog Manga)

Nicky is a shy boy, he has a younger sister, his father is a pilot, and his mom is a housewife. Nicky is a nerd dedicated to math and all kind of things related to it. He’s very coward and shy, and has a huge crush on Amy Rose.

But, when there’s danger on the horizon, Nicky’s second personality shows up! It’s Sonic, a way more brave dude, and with no reason to be shy! Sonic always fights against the tirany of the evil Dr. Eggman! After his duty of saving people is done, he turns back into Nicky.

Nicky does not have memories of what he did as Sonic, but Sonic retains the memories of what he does as Nicky. Nicky is a VERY good boy, a nerd, awkward and shy, I love him a lot 10/10

(UNIVERSE 1993 - ARCHIE’S SONIC/PRE-SGW) This Sonic is also a good boy. But, differently from the Sonic from the 1991 Universe, this Sonic is more “domestic”.

He has a place where he lives regularly, being it New Mobotropolis. He also has a father, mother, uncle and even a pet dog. This Sonic also does have some interest in dating/romance, having relationships with some girls in the past. But his main love is Sally, someone who he knows since he was a child. Currently dating Sally Acorn. But even with all of those differences, he still has a big sense of justice, always fighting agains Dr. Robotnik’s tirany and also Dr. Eggman’s. Just like some other Sonics, he sometimes allows his emotions to take over, which sometimes makes him do some unfortunate choices, but he eventually sees how he messed up and tries to do his best to fix things. This Sonic also has a certain ego, but he grows and learns as a person more and more as time passes. 9/10, a good boy

(UNIVERSE 1993B - SONIC THE COMIC)

This Sonic at first can see to be a little hard to approach. He has an even bigger ego than the other Sonics, and can say some things that can hurt his friend’s feelings.

But inside he is extremly unsure about himself, and tries to play “tough” in front of others to hide it. He also has shown some difficulty in reading other people’s emotions, which has put him in some complicated situations in the past.

He’s been trying to improve and be more friendly and approachable with others after being yelled at by Tails and Amy.

He has the same origins as American Sonic, being born brown and a friend of Kintobor. This Sonic was wrongly acused of crimes through an out of context video that was shown for all of Mobius to see. He’s been trying to regain people’s trust and show how much he has improved since.

His Super Sonic is an evil entity that has intentions of hurting all of those that Sonic cares about.

He is trying his best, 8/10

(UNIVERSE 1993C - AOSTH)

This Sonic is also a good boy. He’s an excelent older brother for Tails, that in this universe is only 4 and a half years old. Sonic always tries to be an exemplary figure for Tails.

He has atitude, likes to play and mess around, and lives running around Mobius. Just like Main Sonic, he also doesn’t have a house. He lives fighting all injustice wherever he goes through.

But, he can be a little bit of a womanizer, always getting himself a little carried away with the girls he crosses path with in his adventures. A cool dude, 9/10

(UNIVERSE 1993D - Sonic SatAM)

Blue streak. Speeds by, Sonic the Hedgehog. 

He’s a cool dude to talk and hang out with, he’s very chill. He can be a little bit of an airhead and is not very bright-- but in compensation he has a heart of gold, caring a lot about his friends and family. 

He also fights to have his Uncle Chuck back. Just like Archie Sonic, he also has a home. In this case being Knothole. But, now with Robotnik defeated, it’s maybe time to bring Mobotropolis back to its’ glory days.

He also has a big ego, and can be a little bit full of himself. But Sally keeps this side of him in check.

He dates Sally, that acts as Sonic’s conscience a lot of times.

A good boy, look out, when he storms through. He’s the fastest thing alive. 9/10.

(UNIVERSE 1994 - SONIC ADVENTURES)

This Sonic, just like Game Sonic, is full of attitude, brave, and fights against all kinds of evil he finds in his way.

He also becomes friend with an Echidna Lady. He has a thing going on with Amy Rose. He also has a cool mohawk.

8/10

(UNIVERSE 1996 - SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: THE MOVIE OVA)

This Sonic at first can seem a little bit arrogant, but inside he hides a huge heart full of compassion. He lives on a plane that crashed on South Island a long time ago, possibly the coolest house any Sonic has ever had.

Tails is his best friend, and lives together with him. Both usually either relax on the beach or go on adventures to fight against Dr. Eggman.

A very carefree Sonic, that takes action, and very rebellious.

10/10, an absolute good boy

(UNIVERSE 1997 - SONIC: MAN OF THE YEAR)

A Sonic that clearly fights against Eggman’s evil schemes for a long time. Was chosen as the Man of the year, even though he’s clearly a hedgehog.

Eggman ruins his image when disguises as him. I hope he got it back together, since we never got a continuation to this.

Just looking at him, you can tell he’s full of charm and has that Animaniacs flair in his animation, just from this alone I give him a 9/10

(UNIVERSE 1996B - SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: WONDERS OF THE WORLD)

This Sonic, unlike others, is a fictional character even in his own universe. He ends up going to the real world through an invention done by Josh’s dad. Josh is a real world kid that becomes Sonic’s friend.

This Sonic is a good boy, he believes that the powers of the Chaos Emeralds shouldn’t be used so carelessy, and helps Josh fights against his insecurities, while at the same time he saves his world from the evil Dr. Robotnik, that also ran away from the videogame world.

7/10

(UNIVERSE 1999 - SONIC UNDERGROUND)

He swore his mother will be found. He was raised by Uncle Chuck. He also wants to save Mobotropolis. He’s also a prince, being the son of Mobotropolis’ original Queen, Aleena.

He has two siblings, Manic and Sonia, and while they ocasionally fight between themselves, they care a lot about each other.

He also plays musical instruments, he can invoke a guitar through his necklace. Playing music somehow solves his problems.

7.5/10, a good boy

(UNIVERSE 2003 - SONIC X)

One of my favorite Sonics. This Sonic is more calm and reserved. Loves to take naps. He is usually more reserved about his emotions, and hates to show emotional weaknesses in front of others.

He likes to read, hates injustice, and likes to pass most of his time alone. But he is shown sometimes to have a romantic interest in Amy Rose.

Extremely helpful, always tries to do his best to make his friends happy. Ditches a meeting with the president to make his friend happy.

An EXTREMELY good boy, 10/10 for him 

(UNIVERSE 2003B - SONIC: DASH & SPIN)

This Sonic is probably one of the zaniest Sonics there is, he’s pretty up there with AoStH Sonic. He fights against Eggman’s evil plots, that in this universe can go from stealing a bank to using Sonic’s flu to cover the world with his snot (I’m serious).

He also can count with his friends for help, is full of attitude, nothing will stop him. He likes snowboarding.

7/10. 

(UNIVERSE 2013 - ARCHIE SONIC POST-SGW)

This Sonic resembles Game Sonic in a lot of ways, but he is also part of the Freedom Fighters. But he also likes to have his own adventures across his world.

This Sonic, diferent from his other Archie version, isn’t much interested in dating.

He cares a lot about his friends, but he don’t want them to worry a lot about him, usually hiding any signs of weakness.

In general, a good boy, and an excelent friend you can trust.

10/10

(UNIVERSE 2014 - SONIC BOOM)

This Sonic, like Archie’s Pre-SGW Sonic, is also very domestic. He has a house, lives in a calm island, and just likes to have fun with his friends, specially Knuckles and Tails.

He has a huge crush on Amy Rose, and there are a lot of signs pointing that they are boyfriend and girlfriend.

He likes to constantly foil Eggman’s schemes, saving the Bygone Island a LOT of times.

He can lose his patience sometimes due to dumb stuff said or done by his friends or townsfolk; or also with the surreal situations he gets involved.

9/10

(UNIVERSE 2011 - CLASSIC SONIC’S DIMENSION)

After the events of Sonic Generations, the timeline has split in two, thanks to alterations done to the past. Because of this, we’re having brand new adventures with Classic Sonic.

He’s also a good boy, fights against all kind of evil he faces against, and cares a lot about his friends. Doesn’t talk much, prefering to keep quiet during most of his adventures. 10/10, a cute mute wholesome boy

(UNIVERSE 2018 - IDW'S SONIC THE HEDGEHOG)

Passing in an universe after the events of Sonic Forces, IDW’s Sonic is, in a lot of ways, the Sonic from the games.

He has no fixed place to live in, always running around, making this his own way. Is constantly fighting against Dr. Eggman.

He usually believes that everyone can get redeemed or improve. This sometimes can come back to bite him in the ass, though.

A good boy, 9/10. Give him some rest, let him sleep

(UNIVERSE 2020 - THE SONIC MOVIE)

This Sonic found himself on Earth after running away from his home planet. He becomes best friends with the Sheriff of the city of Green Hills. He ends up being adopted by him. Tom is now his dad.

He is super hyperactive, full of energy and can get easily distracted. He is a Sonic that doesn’t have much of a notion on how big the world can be. Some times can feel very lonely. Unlike some other Sonics, he seeks affection and interaction with others, doesn’t like being alone.

An absolute good boy, I LOVE HIM A LOT, 10/10

(UNIVERSE ZERO - ZONIC THE ZONE COP)

Zonic is responsible for patroling the Sonic Multiverse, checking if everything is in order. He takes his profession very seriously.

Works for Zobotnik, as much as he believes that Zobotnik shouldn’t be the one protecting the Multiverse prison.

This Sonic is a lot more serious and mature than the others, but he has shown to have a sense of humor to the Sonic from the 1993 Universe.

8/10. This Sonic isn’t a good boy though, he is a good man.

(ALTERNATE 1993 UNIVERSE - SCOURGE THE HEDGEHOG)

Coming from a mirror dimension from the 1993 Universe, Scourge was born in an extremly peaceful Moebius. His father was a politician loved by all. Scourge felt neglected by him, deciding to become a rebellious punk to tease and provoke his father.

He forms the Supression Squad with Anti-Sally,  Anti-Tails, Anti-Rotor and Anti-Antoine. They decide to commit acts of vandalism and robbery all across Moebius.

Scourge also antagonizes Dr. Kintobor, a benevolent scientist that tries to bring the best for the Planet’s citizens.

Eventually he becomes the King of Moebius, but Sonic managed do defeat him. He plans to have his revenge on Sonic. This one is a bad boy, he’s an asshole Sonic. I kinda like him. 8/10.

(UNIVERSE 1993E - CYBORG SONIC)

In this universe, Robotnik manages to capture the Freedom Fighters, but something goes awry during the roboticization process, and as a result, Sonic and the others ended up as cyborgs.

A lot more stronger than they originally were, the Freedom Fighters decide to end with Robotnik once for all. But, Robotnik roboticizes himself as a last ditch resort, becoming the mighty Robo-Robotnik.

6.5/10, he mostly exists to make The Terminator References

(UNIVERSE 1993F - SONIC BATMAN)

He is the night. He is also the speed. 

8/10.

(UNIVERSE 616 - SONIC WOLVERINE)

An angry Canadian Sonic with claws.

8/10.

(UNIVERSE 697 - FREEDOM FIGHTERS OF THE GALAXY) This Sonic spent a while in space after some circunstances. Thanks to Einsten’s Law of Relativity, when he returns to Mobius, 2000 years have gone by. This Sonic allies himself with the descendants of the Freedom Dighters, and tries to stop Silver Snively and Robotniklactus’ evil schemes.

He’s kinda lame. A 5/10.

(UNIVERSE 1993FT - Light Mobius)

This Sonic accomplished defeating Robotnik, and with Mobius finally in peace, he married Princess Sally. He grew up, became an adult and had kids.

But he didn’t count with the fact that Robotnik had a Plan B-- the scientist sent his inteligence to a space ship, and from space he sent nukes to Mobius-- killing this version of Sonic in the process. This Robotnik would eventually go to universe 1993 and adopt the name of Eggman.

F to pay respects for this Sonic. F/10.

(UNIVERSE 1993FT2 - MOBIUS X YEARS LATER)

This Sonic went through a lot. After having to rewrite his own timeline to save the universe, he had to win back his friends’ friendship and the love of his life, Sally.He eventually marries Sally, has two kids, and lives happily. Can you believe this Sonic is almost 50 years old? He’s 47 years old!8/10, a good dad

[introvertguide]

On the Waterfront (1954); AFI #19

The next film on the AFI top 100 under review is the award winning crime drama, On the Waterfront (1954). This film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and picked up 8 including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. The film is based on a series of articles in the New York Sun from 1949 that depicted the condition of the eastern seaboard and all the corruption that was involved at the time. I did a lot of historical digging for this film and realize how important the accuracy was and it seemed pretty spot on. Before I get into story, let me give the standard announcement...

SUPER SPOILER WARNING!!! I TOOK A LOT OF NOTES DURING THE FILM AND THIS WILL SPOIL THE ENTIRE THING!!! WATCH THE MOVIE FIRST AND THEN COME BACK AND CHECK OUT THE ARTICLE!!!

The film starts out with the murder of a man named Joey Doyle. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) calls to Joey’s window at night to have him meet up on the roof concerning a pigeon. We see that Terry is with a bunch of gangsters who are waiting up on the roof for Joey. The audience doesn’t see the actual meeting, but a person falls off the building a couple seconds later and it is assumed that Joey is dead. It seems that Terry was not aware that Joey would be killed, he thought they were going to rough him up or intimidate him.

Terry is not put out too much because he goes to a local pub right after and we meet the local crime boss. Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) is a stereotype mob boss who runs a tight ship and could snap at any moment. It is an awkward scene where one person in the room is having fun and everyone else is nervously waiting for something to go wrong. Friendly’s right hand man is Terry’s brother Charley (Rod Steiger) and Friendly has a fondness for Terry because of the relation and also that Terry used to be a boxer. Before the night is over, Terry is given a stack of cash for his help with Joey and the promise of a cushy job on the dock the next day.

The next morning, a group of people look over Joey’s body on the street and his sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) is understandably angry about the event. She shames her father and the other workers for not saying anything and she yells at the local priest (Karl Malden) for not being more involved. She wants to get involved and help her father get work so she goes down to the docks with the priest to see what the situation is really like. People attached to the mob are given preferred treatment (including Terry) and all the other workers have to scramble in hopes of getting work. The priest sees the corruption and decides to hold a union meeting in the church to encourage the workers to speak out against Friendly to improve the working conditions.

A group of dockworkers not part of the corruption meet at the church, but all remain quiet. The stay “D & D” (deaf and dumb) to what is going on so that they don’t get hurt. Joey is sent by Friendly to the meeting to see if anybody talks and he sits in the back. It seems apparent that he is there to intimidate the others into remaining silent. Before the meeting is officially over, a brick comes through the window and a bunch of gangsters pound sticks on the ground, waiting for the workers in the meeting to leave. Most everyone is attacked and beaten on the way out except for the priest, Edie, and Terry. The priest convinces one of the workers named Dugan (Pat Henning) to talk to the Waterfront Crime Commission to prevent another attack like this.

Dugan agrees to testify and we move forward to the day before he is supposed to go in front of the court. He is working on unloading a ship of Irish whiskey and an “accident” occurs in which a pallet of booze falls on Dugan, killing him. The priest comes to give last rights and gives an impassioned speech to the surrounding workers about how keeping quiet is a crucifixion and good men would not let this happen if they could stop it. Some of the gangsters through garbage at the priest while he is talking, but he continues on and Terry starts to feel guilty about his part in the deaths and injustice. He punches one of the enforcers who is going to throw something and this does not go unnoticed. In a very symbolic image, the priest rides a crane up out of the ship and ascends out of the hold like an angel ascending towards heaven. Very cinematic and full credit to cinematographer Boris Kaufman for this fantastic shot that no doubt contributed to his Oscar win for his work on this film.  

Terry starts to fall for Edie and considers testifying against friendly. He knows, however, that she will learn of his connection to her brother’s death and fears show will hate him. Friendly gets wind of Terry’s connection with Edie and sends Charley over to convince him to not testify. In a very poignant scene, Charley and Terry talk in a taxi and Charley tells him that he needs to promise not to squeal or Charley will take him to the docks to be executed. Terry says that he can’t live being a bum. He used to be a prizefighter and Friendly had convinced him to take a dive during a fight and all his potential was wasted. It is the famous “I could have been a contender. I could have been a somebody” scene. Charley let’s Terry go and goes in to stall so the Terry can escape and instead Charley is killed and left hanging from an ice hook in an alleyway as a message to Terry.

This goes too far and Terry goes to the local bar to shoot Friendly. Instead of the crime boss, Terry runs into the priest and is convinced to testify in court as a better form of revenge. He agrees and Terry identifies friendly in court as being corrupt and ordering the murder of both Joey Doyle and Dugan. After testifying, Friendly threatens Terry and says that he will never find work on the docks. Terry is shunned by all the other workers for squealing and only finds kindness from Edie.

Terry shows up the next day for work recruitment and every person there (including a random hobo) is given work except for him. Terry goes to confront Friendly and is summarily beaten by a group of gangsters. The dock workers see this and say that they will not work unless Terry is allowed to work as well. Friendly has lost his power over the docks and can’t kill Terry since he has already talked and is now being protected by the police. The priest shows up and tells Terry to stand up and lead the workers onto the ship, cementing the shift in power. A severely beaten Terry is helped up and he stumbles onto the boat followed by the rest of the works. The movie ends as the plank doors to the ship’s hull close.

Although the characters are sensationalized, the situation was very representative of what life what life was like on the East Coast docks during the late 40s and early 50s. This film is a time capsule for American life right after WW2 and a lesson concerning what can happen with complete corruption. Very fascinating from a historical perspective as well as an artistic one.

I have a little bit of an issue with Brando and his acting in this film. I do not think he is that good. He mumbles his lines like he does in every movie and it is apparent that he is a good actor but not that great at line delivery. Also, when I say he is a good actor, I don’t mean this film. He comes across almost whiny and conceited and I never really get behind the character. I freely admit that I don’t really like Brando in general as a person (at least from the stories I hear, I have never met him) and that might taint my judgment of his performances. I never bought him as a boxer and I never bought him as being tough. He is acting like a soft hearted bully, but it just doesn’t impress me. He got top billing and his name is bigger than the movie credit on the opening title cards, but I thought Karl Malden did a much better acting job. I am thankful for Brando’s contribution to creating method acting, but that doesn’t make this a great performance and I don’t think he deserved the Oscar. 

Also, just like with The Godfather, Brando played a part that was memorable with great lines and won the award for Best Actor while the rest of the male cast who gave outstanding performances were relegated to Best Supporting Actor (three actors nominated in both cases) and came home empty handed. Brando kept getting quirky character roles in well written films and surrounded by incredible talent...and then he was given all the credit for the incredible result. I just don’t like that guy and I realize it is a personal bias. I just don’t like how he is given all the credit (and takes all the credit) for projects he was a part of. But moving on...

I again want to point out the cinematography for this movie because I am not generally impressed by this aspect of films, especially when they are in black and white. I think On the Waterfront, Citizen Cane, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf are all examples of how prop placement, camera angles, pans, and lighting can be used to tell a story beyond just the acting and dialogue. A well deserved Best Cinematography award for Boris Kaufman. 

So does this film deserve to be on the AFI top 100? Yes. For the  famous  “contender” speech, the reflection of history, the visual storytelling, and the wonderful acting, it absolutely deserves a spot. Would I recommend it? Well...I would say yes but not for Brando. I was so bored by the part of Terry Malloy that I found many other things that I liked to get through the film. The first time I watched I was expecting this great performance and I was thoroughly disappointed. Watch the film for everything else besides Marlon Brando and you will be impressed.

[sixmorningsafter]

An Apology Letter, SMA Love Letter, & Gabi Appreciation Letter

Let me begin this review by apologizing. Not just for waiting almost a year to review this insanely awesome chapter (don’t even tell me I don’t have to; I’ll drive up state just to take you by the shoulders and shake you and that silly thought out of your head; it is an honor and privilege to tell you how awesome you are!), but also for the tone of this review feeling so haggard. 2018 was, as Damon told Kai, “not a good look”, and I feel like it’s digested all the gall and sass and shit-starting energy I usually dole out for these reviews, so here I am, a regurgitation, still holding to the fact that you’re a fabulous writer who deserves all the praise I can possibly muster for your efforts. Despite having a life (or not, considering, ya know, med school), you still post on this page; you’re clearly still carrying the headcanons and the plot and the characters with you. I know the feeling of having the desire to write but feeling too tired, physically and emotionally, or disinterested or unmotivated, or whatever so I can’t even sit in your inbox like “hey love sma! You write soooo good. You’re awesome! and uh when are you gonna update?” Of course, I’d love an update, but I also know you. You want to put out your best work, what you’re at least 95% proud of, and it’s so obvious in Chapter 17.

Side note: I reread Chapter 16 and my review to give myself context and bolster some pizazz just for you.

REPLY: Let me begin my response to this review by apologizing for MY TEARS. Cass, you’re just an absolute light in this bitchy eclipse of a world and your ridiculous kindness radiates off every sassy, stubborn, talented, vulnerable, open-hearted part of you and I’m so, so happy I get to call you a friend. The fact that you took the time to write all of this despite your ridiculously busy, full, grad student, WEDDING-PLANNING (at the time) life, largely because you knew it’d put an idiotic smile on my face? You’re just a gem of a human being. I don’t know what else to say. I’m trying to keep my responses as succinct as possible because I’m so eager to post this and share your insights and writing with everyone else, partly because they always make me and my dumb writing look smarter than it actually is, but mostly because it’s a crime to keep it from the world. Anyway, onward and upward:

Bamon + Kai + the Pig Cadaver

To remind the audience, Bamon had a pretty petty and deep-cutting fight last chapter; Damon got over himself, with the help of Kai (kinda), and now Bamon are on better terms. That being said, these two dumbies are so… nerve-wrackingly good at detaching themselves from conflict. Like, I feel like Steroline would have put up walls and ruminated hard on something as harsh as Damon’s mention of Bonnie’s shitty life, but Bamon are King and Queen of sweeping the bad shit under the rug.

REPLY: I think it’s so cool that you point that out because it made me realize that’s one of my favorite things about writing Bonnie and Damon: they’re ability to both deliver and take hits. They’ve both gone through some really dark, messed up stuff - the kind of stuff people with more traditional upbringings tend to tiptoe around because they don’t know how to talk about it - so it’s almost like to be accepted in their entirety, they need to be around people who are unafraid of that stuff. Unafraid to go there. Unafraid to bring it up, unafraid to cross lines sometimes, unafraid to make jokes about messed up experiences and accept them about each other without flinching. I think they can recover quickly from those kind of blows from each other because in a weird way, at least they’re being acknowledged. At least someone’s talking about it without getting that wincing, deer-in-the-headlights look and acting like it’s a forbidden topic. Obviously in the last chapter, Damon took it too far and was trying to actively alienate her with his comments, but in general I really enjoy writing their budding sense of familiarity with each other. Anyway, good thing I’m being succinct right the review hasn’t even really started GOOD LORD.

Damon jolting Bonnie like she’s being electrocuted is so unbearably cute to me. So domestic. So friendly but also playful but also coupley… I’m dead.

“Wow, you’re really going full nerd.”/”Oh… you sweet summer child, you haven’t even begun to see full nerd.” In my previous review, I (demanded) mentioned wanting more nerd!Bonnie, and you delivered. What an honor, truly.

“It was like he’d [Kai] never left, except now he was surrounded by a bunch of wires and a mini Tesla coil.” I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, but I think it’s so funny and silly that you embedded some serious sci-fi shit in this romcom fic. Like, we’re really out here, considering is Kai an alien? Can Kai really teleport or “dissolve in and out of the time-space continuum as he pleases”? He’s not just creepy or socially inept. He’s also fucking extraterrestrial.

lmfao in chapter 16 or 15 or whichever it was where they explored Kai’s apartment while he went swan-hunting, I had to make a choice about whether to keep things semi-realistic or just go balls-to-the-wall cray re: Kai and I think we all know which route I decided to take 😂

“Still, it was a surprisingly appealing thought, the idea of having some kind of effect on him.”/ “Snagging the unsnaggable.”/ “Ruffling the unruffable.” We out here, making up words and shit; my Word doc spell-check is having a field day. But her observation about having dealt with guarded people kind of relates to what I was tryna say earlier on: both Damon and herself are very guarded, and her ability to see that nothing truly sticks to him is reflective of that same for her.

“It was like he was coated in oil, like his entire personality was adapted to glide through life without ever catching on anything around him.” / “Even the good things.” Talk about knife to the gut (why yes, this is a reference to the future Steroline conversation, which I am using to demonstrate how fucking enamored I am by this understanding of Damon’s character). I feel like Damon started as the kid thinking “if things are good, then something bad is gonna happen” to “good? bad? what are those and, more importantly, who fucking cares?”

Just another day of Cass making me feel like a far better writer than I am because she always gets exactly what I’m going for and then explains it better than I do. That’s precisely his trajectory, man. He went from a kid with no control of his own life, constantly bracing for impact, to a kid who realized nothing can control if you don’t give a fuck. If good things don’t make you happy and bad things don’t make you sad, you’re always at equilibrium. You’re always at a steady-state. And most importantly, you’re at a steady-state that no outside factor controls.

“Maybe the oil coat went more than skin-deep.” Foreshadowing! I like this conversation a lot though. Insight about Bonnie’s past (another gracious gift promised last review, thank you SMA goddess for such a blessing) and her PTSD and embarrassment about the shit show that is her parents.

Bonnie’s “I wish I could turn it off like that.” Speaking of shit shows, nice nod to canon.

😂😂😂

“Was that—vulnerability?” Yes baby, revel in it! Idk if you did this on purpose, but it’s like Damon is leaning into his previous realization of her cracking his “varnish” (just realizing his description of a glossy seal is an almost visual parallel to Bonnie’s description of him being slick with oil (I’m thinking like petroleum)… anyways). Like, “she’s already seen me lose my fucking mind in the cellar, being a little vulnerable about it won’t hurt, right?” I mean, yes, but also, Bonnie is a shit-starter too, babe.

“Were those—emotions?” / “I hate knowing you.” / “Are you okay? Do you need some water?” and later paired with “How does it feel to be a human being?” / “Stupid.” / “That means you’re doing it right.”

You know how I feel about Kai’s “Friends!” He is so weird, and I love it, but I’m also afraid that I love it. Thanks!

Yeeeesssss, I wanted to show him slowly starting to adjust to the fact that she’s seen things. Him.  And you know what, here they are anyway. The world’s still spinning. She’s still being her weirdo competitive self. So maybe it’s not the worst thing to have (albeit accidentally) let someone in a little. A big motivation for me re: Bamon in this chapter was getting them to the point where they eased into being comfortable sharing things with each other. Not everything, obviously, but way more than they share with the average person. Kind of like a ‘well we’re stuck in this ridiculous situation and we’re unexpectedly more alike than we think so maybe we just lean in a little’. So I’m really glad that’s what you got out of this, WOOT.

Kai’s everyone’s friendly neighborhood son/serial killer and I think it’s best to just let yourself adore him and hope for a minimal body count. 

The Matt Talk

I think I already told you I was so emotionally distraught this chapter. If you’re new to SMA, hi I’m Cassandra and I’m always an emotional mess when it comes to Gabi’s writing. But, this was some next level shit. You’ve said so many times you’re worried about how these emotional scenes go, but like fuck dude. You went hard, and it was so difficult for me not to be actually crying. Idk, I’ve never been in Caroline’s situation or known anyone to go through this, but the whole injustice of it, you know? The possibility that any woman could be going through this or has gone through this. I’m not belittling the men who have been abused in their relationships, of course. What I am saying is if I am taking this personally, having never experienced it, but as a female, knowing this could very well happen, that means your writing is fucking spot on.

Full-disclosure, your entire breakdown of this scene is just the most beyond fantastic thing that I don’t even want to break it up with shitty responses. I’m pretty sure reading your insights about it affected me more than the entire multi-week process of actually writing it, so idk how you did that but here we are. For the millionth time, your responses are the only reason I think maybe all my fumbling and exasperated editing is somehow producing something half-okay. I’m dying whale noises. Bye.

Setting the scene up with Steroline in the tub, for being their poetic selves tryna be symmetrical in their emotional moments and emphasizing how thick the silence around them is… oof dude. I know you have that “movie” mentality when you write, and idk how you fucking do it, but it definitely translates. Idk if you’ve ever been in a moment like this, where you need to say something of Importance to someone of Importance, but your voice has just gone on vacation for a minute, and you’re sitting there with an empty tongue, and, in my experience, the person tries to prompt you about what you’re trying to say, but I’ve been in moments like this. So, this set up was so poignant for me. Luckily, she’s talking to Stefan, the boy who listens to even Rebekah earnestly and wholeheartedly.

Caroline’s Gazania daisies metaphor: shit breaks my heart. How long did she think about this? The metaphor is like… a detachment. Like, how light bends in water. Her story is the light, the flower metaphor is the water, allowing the story to refract, to be that much more removed from the reality.

“A flicker of intimacy based not on things they’d experienced together, but rather things they’d experienced apart.” I think it loops back to Bamon too, whether neither are eloquent enough to make that seamless connection. I think that should be the tag line of each ship; these very different people are tied to one another by feeling what they’ve felt and relating it back to what the other(s) has (have) felt.

I think you’ve very skillfully woven canon and SMA for Matt’s story. TVD made him the human golden boy, and SMA has him resentful and dark… and it just goes to show how environment can really shape a character’s outcome. tvd!Matt saw the supernatural as the reason his life was so shitty and suddenly had a purpose; sma!Matt didn’t have that scapegoat, so without rhyme or reason for his shitty circumstance, he fabricated that it was somehow Caroline.

Fucker.

“Senior year was kind of a train wreck” to “We were still okay, though. Still us.” Rereading this part made me seriously think of like… a slingshot. Like, all of this is just leading up to the snap and the release of Matt’s true colors. And how devastatingly it was that Caroline didn’t know, honestly couldn’t know, that it was going to happen.

Shit like Matt being mad at Caroline for proudly blurting out she got accepted into NYU when Vicky had just OD’ed is so fucked up to me. To be actually mad about it. Bro, stay mad about it. But that’s the point, isn’t it? That this was the final straw for him, the last thing to tip him into batshit abusive fuck mode.

As a therapist, I could easily say, he is clearly shaped by his circumstances, he didn’t have enough support or self-esteem to fully develop the core values and strengths that he needed to not become this abusive piece of shit, that there might be some self-awareness by the way he tries to remedy a bad fight with a great breakfast (or a learned behavior to get approval again). Even if I do consider those things, irl and even with Matt, it’s in no way condonable, and I don’t think I could ever be able move from this point of view.

“She’d lived like that for months, a blur of turtlenecks and concealer, of overbright smiles and obsessive thoughts, of guilt and blame and normalizing the abnormal, of questioning if what she thought was happening was actually happening.” / “Could actually be happening.” Just reading this summarizes all the females who are in relationships like this, who question whether their partners’ could actually be raping them… ugh. It breaks my heart even now, writing this review.

(Honestly, I had to step away and resume the next day)

Caroline’s comeback: “He was staring at the old Caroline. The one he hadn’t broken in. The one that ran on gall and instincts, that didn’t dim herself for anyone, that’d jump in front of a bus for the people she loved… She’d grown back into her skin. Unshrunken till she was towering over him, a bright, brilliant light staring down at a meager lick of flames.” This whole bit was so good, so relieving, so satisfying. I know what Matt did still haunts her, but Caroline coming back and reclaiming who she is, even to present time, is so, so satisfying.

“Let’s be real, though, Bonnie could probably beat us both up.” / “Definitely.” – these were my thoughts when Caroline was defending her lol.

The Universe Speech: ilysm but also fuck you for being so good at this lol. I am so mad at how good you are at this, and you’re kinda like shruggy shoulders, I’m-just-trying-my-best. Get your humble ass out of here. “I think you’re a universe. I think you’re full of suns—and comets and black holes and everything in between. And when one sun burns out, you’ll just flare into a million more, unapologetic and infinite, because nothing… not pain, not heartbreak, not even the entire exec board of Emory apparently, can stop a universe from expanding.”

And Caroline immediately clicking with the metaphor? (rewriting her Gazania metaphor story I hope) And she runs with it like, “It couldn’t help but make her feel like maybe she hadn’t lost anything. /  Maybe she’d just outgrown it.” and “An infinite, chaotic expanse of dazzling light and annihilating dark… capable of anything but responsible for nothing outside of stretching out toward an invisible horizon fiercely, constantly, even in the face of billions of years of gravity pulling her back”. THIS IS MY SHIT DUDE. First off, this visual representation of a person is so beautiful and inspiring and so full of grace and forgiving, you know what I mean? It just shouts volumes to how okay it is to fail sometimes or to feel Feelings, and how it shouldn’t and couldn’t be used against her. It’s literally the expanded and improved version of “reach for the stars” – more like be the universe, among the stars, and reach for the unknown. BIG OOF.

“I can’t possibly follow that up with my dumb Elena drama” / “Hey, not a competition.” – someone recently quoted someone else to me, saying It’s not the suffering Olympics, and it’s resonated with me so hard, dude.

Steroline throwing back things the others have said, Stefan’s “Whatever nice thing you feel like you have to say, it’s okay” and Caroline’s “You can’t escape me! / I’m unapologetic and infinite!”

I don’t remember if its this chapter or last, but Stefan indulging in Caroline’s playful side, and Caroline recognizing Stefan’s sassypants is by far my favorite Steroline Thing ™ in this story. Parallelly, Bonnie’s Damon-ain’t-shit attitude, and Damon’s she’s-more-than-I-anticipated revelation is my favorite Bamon Thing ™.

I am overwhelm-sion. 

I am aegoifhjaeoeagidhy.

That scene took me weeks of editing to get in a remotely publishable place and even then I was like WELP SURE HOPE THIS ISN’T OFFENSIVE FLAMING GARBAGE LOL ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT *POST* so. Needless to say. This response means el mundo. I am in full turtle.

But real quick, exiting emotional turtle stance to say that I feel like you and I have always been super in sync about liking writing that celebrates messiness and imperfections and humanity in all it’s mistake-ridden earnestness so I’m not surprised you liked the universe metaphor as much as I did. Fuck suns and their one-dimensional asses. We stan universes in this bitch. Asteroids. Supernovas. Blow some things up. Crash into some planets. Sink into some really deep darknesses. It’s okay. There will always be bright, brilliant stars all around you, too. 

Bamon, Kai, Bonnie’s Feral Sweet Tooth, and The Food Fight

Speak of the devil: “She shook her head, lips curling into a droll ‘get over yourself’ of a smile, and for some reason, something about the look stuck out to him a bit.” AND, MY FAV: “For some reason, he liked it.” YES YES YES YES.

He’s hopeless.

The “Love It” arc (why yes I did use that word very specifically to refer to the sassy snap). On a tangent, Kai on Twitter, Kai on Pinterest… for an alien, he’s very adaptive.

He’s got his entire home planet hooked on snapchat. 

Oh, here it is again: “Now that he knew what a genuine fucking weirdo she was, he was a little curious about what she’d actually been thinking.” I know fluffy moments such as Never Have I Ever (before shit hit the fan) are most likely over, but if they were to return, I suggest Truth or Dare, and Damon asks Bonnie what she thought of him when he’d met Caroline (and her) at that club. Listen, both Damon and I want to know. I’m not saying make it happen, but I am.

There’s another dinner coming for their last snowed in night because I’m nothing if not repetitive and I think Truth or Dare is a trope I can definitely work in. I mean, I wouldn’t want it to feel left out given that I’ve used every other fanfic trope known to mankind.

“Wow!” Bonnie exclaimed, leaning forward to peer at the uncanny cake topper with a bewildered look. He even got her one earring right. – I’m cryinggg

He’s special.

“Can we just… go through what all of these heavenly things are, because I may look calm, but I’m actually losing my mind.”

“Absofruitely!” This is a mine of just so many fucking gems.

Kai Knowing: I feel like he’s just a mind-reader, because he already stated he can’t read people very well. But I absolutely love how both Bonnie and Damon are like, oh yeah totally super in love you betcha bud, and Kai’s like, I see it for realsies this time. Bamon 4 Eva bb. Love at first bicker, honestly.

lolololol I just loved the idea that their growing connection was so goddamn obvious that even the self-declared Worst Person Reader Ever was like ‘wowza so this is love huh?’

The Food Fight. I love the “She was glaring at him, eyelashes coated in frosting” line so much. It’s both cute and endearing, and the fact that Damon is paying that close attention.

“Cupcake Quidditch seems kind of fun.”

“It’s stupid dangerous, not to mention a giant waste of food.” Lol Bonnie.

Bonnie being on the shooting team—and Damon also being good at shooting. AU of an AU where SMA Bamon are spies or assassins (Mr. & Mrs. Smith). But only sma bamon. Fuck canon.

We don’t know her.

But also yes to this AU. @coraxes��� once wrote this awesome drabble where Bonnie and Damon met as teenagers and because of it I’ve always wanted to do some alternate timeline where they grew up in the same city, weaving in and out of the same seedy social circle as teens, flickering in and out of the periphery of each other’s lives, but always having this strange tension whenever their paths happened to cross, you know? Just these rare, vaguely loaded interactions where they both saw glimpses of the fact that the other was smarter than this, better than this, you know? That they both were. The point of this all being that I could imagine them both showing off whatever it is they know about guns, lololol. 

“It’s not very captain-y to bathe in the blood of my enemies either but hell if that’s going to stop me.”

She’s also special.

“Temporary timeout” leading to the “Truce” leading to “she suddenly hit him with the look, like Bambi and Tiny Tim and sixteen puppies and every Pixar character ever created had been thrown into one of those face-combining apps” which ultimately leads to Damon’s “fine” and his absolute bewilderment “He just blinked in confusion, unsure of what the hell had just happened.”

From “he held out his [launcher] and she stared at it for a beat before grudgingly taking it” to “in the split-second before she spoke, he suddenly knew exactly what was about to happen” STRAIGHT UP, UNFILTERED GOLD. Like, there’s no other explanation, really. You’re the Midas of Belvafore. I’m calling it, it has been declared, no take backsies or arguments from you, young lady.

I AM NO SUCH THING BUT I WILL TAKE IT ANYWAY.

The Elena Talk

Stefan’s safe space being Bonnie’s room – my heart. There are a lot of things I don’t like about canon, you know, but it would have made so much sense to have a stefonnie friendship (more than bamon, honestly). I didn’t know I needed it until SMA lol.

Listen, I was never into it until I wrote this. I don’t even know where it came from - I legit think the clips for the first trailer I made just worked out that way so I rolled with it, but once I started writing it it felt so natural? They just bounce off each other so easily, it’s one of my fave dynamics to write in a fic full of dynamics I love to write.

The glow-in-the-dark stars: I can totally imagine Stefan helping Bonnie move into every new place, and once all the boxes are in, he’s like, all right now for the real reason I helped you move in, and he rearranges the constellations by memory.

LMAO YES.

The fire escape call backs lol. I feel like every single person in this universe is a shit-starter—it just comes easier to Daroline lol.

The segue from the glow-in-the-dark stickers to “Bright things fade” in reference to the bright, warm, gooey-ness that was Stelena. You already know, I am impressed times a thousand, as always. I also think using this space theme between them is interesting and something to be explored. (I feel like an English teacher, and like maybe it was intentional, maybe it wasn’t. Either way, there is something there, and honestly, as the writer, it was your gut feeling to go with this theme, so maybe it was a subconscious effort, if not fully intentional). (Fight me).

We can go with me having complicated, writery instincts with layers and intricacies that are all very intentional or we can go with me not being creative enough to come up with another metaphor. 

The Meet-Cute has a quality that makes it perfect for Stelena. Yes, you are the author, and yes, you created what is ‘perfect’ for them, and yet? It could have easily been a different meet-cute, not Stefan’s speechlessness or her instant smitten-ness. God, he is such a Ted Mosby. But, at least, he’s learning from his Elena experience, that love may not exactly work like that. Maybe love-at-first-sight is a thing (hard maybe), but like Caroline soon alludes to, it’s more devastatingly impactful if love is grown as between two friends or even two people who don’t even like each other (both ships, honestly).

THE TED MOSBIEST. I honestly had trouble writing some of that scene because I was trying to walk the fine line between ‘this guy is sappy and unrealistic but ultimately earnest’ and ‘this guy has imposed wildly unrealistic ideals onto the world around him and it comes from a place of entitlement and privilege and neither the narrative nor the characters condone it’. I’m a big hater of the Ted Mosby’s of the world because I feel like they go through the motions of ‘growing’ but actually just keep doing the exact same thing and falling head over heels for girls that ‘disappoint them’ without ever seriously looking at themselves, so what I tried to do in the scene was show the side of Stefan that’s kind of messed up AND the side of him that realizes he’s kind of messed up. I wanted Caroline’s original dislike of him to make a little more sense, but also wanted to show you why he’s different from the prototypical Nice Guy. He knows that he was unrealistic. He knows that he purposefully turned a blind eye to red flags. He knows that he was putting too much weight on something that had a flimsy foundation at best. But he’s still human and admits that he’s never felt something that electric before, despite all that knowledge, and that’s why he hasn’t been able to shake this for two years. SO yeah, he’s an interesting one to pin down.

Sidenote about the Salvatores: I think it’s interesting that the first person Rebekah calls is Stefan, Stefan calls Lexi. Does that mean Lexi calls Freya? Freya probably doesn’t call a damn one of them lol. It’d be interesting if Lexi or Freya called Rebekah, for non-logical thinking, you know what I mean? I feel like Freya (even though it should be impossible to feel anything about her, considering she’s just a thought at this point) is very well-grounded, and she has a harder time thinking with her heart—and that’s why she might call someone like Rebekah. Omg, could you imagine that they all want to call Stefan, but if he’s busy, they call one another like, “Okay what would Stefan say? What would Stefan do?” Lol, headcanon.

Honestly this is perfect. And you’ve got Freya down to a T so idk how that happened. One of my fave things is getting headcanons about the Salvatores because they’ve basically had like one scene (two for Rebekah) on the phone and yet everyone just gets them. Every headcanon I get is spot-on. It’s delightful.

“Sounds like you and me”… “You said scowls and blizzards and vomit-inducing disdain, right?” lol oh Caroline. Allergic to a sincere moment, either reacting very, very violently or with a joke to help alleviate his discomfort.

She’s a syrupy little thing.

“Nothing could diminish the drug-rush feeling that’d flooded his veins”. I think it’s interesting that his reaction is “Nothing could ever make him forget that he was capable of feeling that much” and not that he wanted to feel that feeling again. It seems like him staying with Elena was him resupplying that feeling, but irl, it seems like people are more likely to relationship-hop, thinking that the relationship/the significant other was at fault, that love in its full drug-like capacity is worth it and they need, need, need it. It’s interesting that he turned inward and actively avoids feeling that way. He later says “It’s so hard not to want to feel it again” but what keeps him from feeling that way again? Is it Caroline’s fear of a person’s potential to ruin? Or maybe it’s just that he hadn’t found someone who is like that? Does Stefan even date around? I’m curious about your insight.

This actually took me a while to pin down in the story because canon was so all over the place with Stefan’s love life - I feel like he had a new love-of-his-life-from-the-past every season and if it wasn’t this random guest star, it was the other one, you know? He was kind of a serial monogamist in canon and yet still managed to have this distinct air of believing in a singular soulmate/’Elena’ lowkey being the be all, end all, you know? So I basically ignored that confusing shit and conceptualized him as a very picky person when it came to love. He doesn’t fall easily - or before Elena, ever. He mentions dating Valerie in high school and I’m sure he went on a few dates here and there in early college, but Elena was a punch in the face for him. He didn’t know what it was about her. He’d never felt that way about anyone before, not even close. Love wasn’t even really the drug-rush, it was her, specifically. That’s why he hasn’t felt it again, that’s why he’s scared he never will - it was entirely tied to Elena. If we wanted to analyze the ‘why’ of it all - why her, why would someone so picky just see someone and feel something they’d never felt before - I would probably say that Stefan grew up with a very specific picture of what he wanted in life, and for whatever reason, she looked exactly like what he’d imagined. The dark hair. The soft features. The romantic eyes. I think it also ties into canon a little, too, since in TVD he was immediately drawn to Elena because she looked exactly like Katherine. Immediate, visual enrapture. So yeah, long story short, I don’t see him as a guy who dates around a lot. I see him as a guy who, pre-Elena, thought he knew exactly what he wanted and never really compromised until he (thought) he found it. And now I see him as a guy who realizes that was an incredibly stupid way to think about love but worries it’s the only approach he’s capable of/that’ll make him feel that incredible feeling.

“But I’m scared I will anyways… And you’re scared you won’t.” Oof. Biggest oof.

I like how Stefan says he doesn’t want to sound like a cliché, but he’s a Disney prince. It only makes sense that he would feel that way, you know? It only makes sense that his life would play out that way. Who are this boys’ parents? How did they indoctrinate him? Or, rather, what thing made him this way?

He’s a mess. This is what happens when you’re the lone golden boy in a family of six and everyone indulges your unrealistic bullshit as cute/funny.

Your writing, for this movie montage of their love, is so perfect. Rude. The imagery! The word-choice! The whole thing reminds me of a caramel-candy commercial, where everything is warm and gooey and slow-motion. Clearly I’m not as cultured to compare to a Sundance film lol, but nonetheless, you did an excellent job describing that warm-toned, rose-colored-glasses kind of love.

Wow, I just realized how much Stefan sounds like the stereotypical ‘male author’. Except he has some decency not to describe the weight of her breasts or her aura during sex (eyeroll). Even his “and he was happy to be her anchor to that for the rest of their lives if she needed him to be”. Idr when, but Stefan shakes off some fairytale notion, saying ‘life doesn’t work that way’ or something – that is character development that we didn’t know we needed!

CAN YOU IMAGINE STEFAN DESCRIBING THE WEIGHT OF ELENA’S BREASTS now I need it

Yeah, honestly, I already said it but I’ll say it again - half the battle of writing that scene was giving Stefan just enough Ted Mosby/Male Author vibes to make him realistically flawed but not going too far as to making him someone you’re actively not rooting for anymore. I think you make a great point, though - he’s growing out of it and recognizing the role he played in his relationship failures and I think that’ll hopefully be what sets him apart.

Also, kudos for the Colorado trip call back. I think it’s very telling how invested and how thought out your process is for these characters by how you using some passing details like, Steroline skirting around their Matt and Elena stories, and then actually using them in their ‘origin’ stories… like, again, you didn’t have to, but you! went! there! and you did a phenomenal job, dude. Again, just a testament to how invested you are. Sure, you could say you wrote it out of order or something brush-off-y, but  to even consider, oh hey continuity is a thing, is great. We stan an Awesome Writer!

lmao I’m so happy you get as much enjoyment as I do from little details like that - I’m usually pretty terrible at it because updating within a normal time frame? Don’t know her. But anytime I see a chance to make a random detail I threw in years ago feel remotely deliberate, I’m all over that shit.

“He felt the barest flicker of defensiveness shoot through him… instead he thought back to the trip”. Hopefully, before I submit this, I would have submitted a list of headcanons I have. One of them is that Stefan’s so well-adjusted via his introspection, that I think one of this parents are a therapist of sorts. I’m just calling it.

oooo, I LIKE that. Largely because Therapist Parents would annoy the everloving hell out of Lexi, lmao - I feel like she’s the prototypical daughter of therapists who goes out of her way to be unpredictable just so her parents can’t psychoanalyze her/figure her out.

I wonder if Stefan still thinks he and Elena could have OTP. Like, he says “or, at least, as much sense as the idea of her and a guy like Liam will ever make to me”. Because if Liam is like canon Liam… she and Liam made total sense (aside from her still being a vampire). Oh but wait… Elena is an artist, not pre-med. Because Elena x Liam made sense in TVD, being pre-med kids, flirty and competitive and ambitious. If she’d never known about the supernatural world, it would make sense for her to be with a Liam, and not a Damon, because Liam is the human version of intense/consuming… Sorry about that canon tangent. Canon, I don’t know her?

Who is she? I think I went to high school with her but we weren’t friends. 

What’s SMA Liam like? Or is Stefan’s bitterness getting in the way of seeing, maybe, that Liam did make sense for Elena?

Re: Liam - it’s basically what you said above. Very different from canon Liam. Definitely played more of the canon Damon role re: this cocky, morally ambiguous bad boy that appealed to the darker/superficial/more selfish parts of Elena (that she felt she had to hide from Stefan). I think at the start of the story, there’s still a part of Stefan that thinks Stelena was OTP but the further it goes and the deeper he falls into this thing with Caroline, the more that part disappears. I think it’s really easy to idolize something when you have nothing to compare it to, and even more so when you have no closure so you stay stuck on it and time keeps passing it and making it more and more immortalized.  With Caroline in the picture now, though, I think it’s shifting his relationship with Elena into a different, more exposing light and revealing some of the insubstantiality of it all. 

Elena’s “it’s was like all those awful parts of me were allowed to exist again” speech is so heartbreaking. I know we’re here to cheer for Stefan, be on his ‘side’, and in no way am I saying cheating is condonable, but it’s another great example of how a writer can make you root for both sides of a broken-up couple. A mentor of mine once told me the sign of a good therapist is for each person in a couple to think you’re on their side. And I’m applying this to writing now. Not, in anyway, can I apply this to Matt (fuck that guy), but I get it for Elena. And it totally makes sense that Stefan was like that, or has a potential to be that way.

This was exactly what I was going for so I’m so happy that’s what your fancy talented therapist brain got out of it. 

I love how Caroline’s conversation of ‘you can be this way and the situation was not your fault’. Basically, to say to Stefan ‘you don’t know if you could have loved the real Elena’ and ‘you didn’t deserve what Elena did’ is such a good conversation to have. Because knowing this Soft Boy and knowing how most people feel when their partners cheat, it would make sense for him to blame himself. It seems he does that by the way he holds himself back from doing that to Caroline.

Wow, he even comes to this realization, “he hadn’t been able to reconcile the idea of both of them being a little right”. Don’t I look dumb lol… time to retreat….

NO because as I was writing that dialogue I kept getting it wrong and either making it sound like Caroline was blaming him completely or too much on his side and I was struggle-bussing to strike the exact balance you’re describing so NOT DUMB AT ALL. Exactly what I was flailingly going for.

Caroline’s “Okay, now, you’re just indulging.” Another headcanon, Steroline have made a rule to say, “do you need a moment” for any self-indulgent emotion in a conversation. But they only allow a moment. That’s it. ~feel and let go~

Wow, Caroline a combination of all the Salvatore Sisters? Works like a Freya, thinks like a Bekah, talks like a Lexi.

😂this just got vaguely Freudian but also, yes.

“I don’t want to be the guy who makes people feel like they have to pretend around him. That guy sucks.”/ “That guy does kind of suck” BUT ALSO “You may have a certain gooey idealism about you that makes people want to, I don’t know, believe in good things.” My fairly-new/just-for-SMA Steroline heart!

There’s hope for them yet.

The Knife Speech: yes. Wouldn’t it have been kinda funny if, instead of pretending to stab herself in the stomach, she pretended to stab him, a perfect foreshadowing. Also her “I’d imagine that’s when you’re really fucked, so… best is yet to come for you, Salvatore.” BUT WAIT. Perhaps the knife stabbing of oneself is the imagery of allowing one’s self to be stabbed, to be gutted, to be vulnerable enough to be in love. (Here goes English-teacher Cassandra again, please forgive her, she’s eager and truly a huge fan).

This is a perfect example of you making me sound like a hundred times better of a writer than I actually am because I legitimately do not remember who she pretended to stab in the gut and I also thought you were going to say ‘wouldn’t it have been kinda funny if she actually stabbed him and he died gurgling in shock’ and was ready to enthusiastically agree.

On a different note: “Wouldn’t you like to know.” / He’d very much like to know. How does one create such sexual tension in one small exchange? Big oof again.

Honestly this makes my life because I always feel like I’m SO BAD at getting these mood whiplash lines to pack enough punch. Like they always do in my head when I can see the delivery and the camera shot and whatnot, but when I write it I’m always like ‘eh. I mean. I guess’. TRUST YOURSELVES FRIENDS.

Bamon in the Bathroom

First off: “In my defense, you goaded me into playing” / “Yeah, well in my defense, I didn’t know I was releasing the fucking Kraken”. L O L

Bonnie’s winning – “But hey, a win was a win, right?” – I love it. Never underestimate Bonnie Cutthroat-Competition Bennett!

“You’re kind of a maniac, you know that?” paired so deliciously with “Didn’t say I wasn’t a maniac, too.” AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I think I forgot how much I loved bamon and all their goodness? Especially your version. Ahhhh!

“You know, for a doctor, you’re really bad for my health.” Bad for your heart! ‘Cause she’s got it racing! Oooo, burn!

That’s such a Kai line I’m dying.

Bonnie getting all defensive and going off about how she doesn’t mind “being the person that someone needs at the end of the day” (serious Stefan vibes, doesn’t he say this at one point also?), and Damon being all, like, heart-eyes and shit, calling her ‘surprising’ and stuff. Good content, yes, yes, please continue.

Ooo, didn’t even make that parallel between Stefan and Bonnie (because I am, in fact, a garbage author) but it’s so cool that you bring that up because on Stefan, that line can easily sound a little self-aggrandizing - it’s coming from (again) a place of privilege, of playing the hero because he’s had this charmed life and it’s the right thing to do, but from Bonnie, it’s almost the exact opposite. She didn’t have that growing up. She was the person without anyone in her corner. So with her, it’s not a hero complex, it’s a victim-turned-survivor motivation. I feel like I’m being really mean to Stefan in these responses lmao I gotta back off, I adore that kid. Just keepin’ it real. 

“Maybe I’ve handled enough” in a playfully dramatic way, and yet, Bonnie’s full realization that (the man of her dreams) Damon probably has been through enough, and she knew what that was like. Sad boy hours.

Sad boy days.

Bonnie avoiding tension by returning to tending to his wound, Damon avoiding tension by returning to his sexy-mysterious-guy vibes. I almost titled this “SMA and the Many, Many Ship Parallels”.

The whole scene that I shall call “I go by daddy, actually” which is just vague enough to make me laugh wildly in this library full of undergrads studying for finals—and because the scene is so ridiculous and hilarious and so, so Bamon, I will die cackling.

I’m brainstorming ways to bring more ‘daddy’ energy into chapter 18.

Belavafore

“Why are you like this?” / “We’re embracing the great outdoors!” Use what he loves against him, honey, you’re doing great.

“Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry.” / “No, you’re not.” / “No, I’m not.” / “Would it help if I said I’m proud of you? … I really am.”

I love how much lighter Steroline has become. Like Caroline just casually throwing the responsibility of “Go for it” / “Forgive yourself for something” to Stefan is so… unlike her. I feel like she’s the type that shows people up whenever they’re afraid to do something, like tell their waitress this is not what they ordered. Because that’s exactly it. This whole forgiving themselves thing was not what Caroline ordered- just a side of cheesy jokes on Stefan.

GIRL YOU AND ME BOTH, I was so tired of writing their tension oh my Gooooooodsicles. I basically spent sixteen chapters trying to earn the ability to write them this light and this comfortable and this open with each other so I SAW MY CHANCE AND TOOK IT.  

“I can’t believe we’re listening to happy4eva dot com.” / “We’re not, we’re listening to me” / “Is that any better?” I agree with Caroline and am fully happy to admit I am in love with Stefan’s sass.

“Some of us are capable of taking this seriously” / “What makes you think I wasn’t serious about the printer ink?”

Leash him.

Caroline’s “Here was all she needed to be” realization and acceptance is giving me so much life, I’m teeming with so much love and pride and straight up inspiration, dude, bless.

Caroline’s cathartic sobbing, and Stefan’s, “I think you might be forgiving yourself.” My whole heart is just FULL and maybe I TOO started crying, YOU CANNOT PROVE ANYTHING.

Filed under: scenes I wrote horribly the first few times and still was not convinced I got right by the time I finally posted it so thank God it made someone feel something because ya girl was skressed.

Bonnie going onto the fire escape without coat or shoes, despite hating the cold, just to be there for Caroline, to hug her and be happy for her forgiveness journey is the most Bonnie thing, and I am living for it.

Tag-line for Damon: “She could always count on Damon to be a shithead”.

Bonne saying her date was horrible, Damon mentioned Kai still being present – so mom and dad of them! Did I mention this in a previous review? Maybe. Ugh, I love them so much, I don’t mind if I ramble the same few things about it and your incredible writing of them.

Baroline deciding for the boys ‘this is something we are doing’. *arc snap* love it!

<3

“You jump, I jump, Jack.” I’ll be honest with ya, when I first read this, I was like, dude I love you madly but it feels a little too late to bring this friendship quirk up in here, but then I was like, who the fuck says? You did a great job explaining the context of it, and I love it! Please bring it back! You know, when you write more…

LMFAO no girl I thought the exact same thing, so much so that I went back and edited it into the chapter where Bonnie apologizes to Caroline after her bender. It was totally too late to introduce but I was like ‘I don’t really know what else to put here so we’re gonna pretend this has always been a thing, join me friends in this who cares revisionist approach to writing’.

Steroline being protective of Bonnie’s feelings paralleling with Damon’s protectiveness of Bonnie’s physical wellbeing. It’s just much like, ‘I’m not good at the emotions thing, may I offer you a blanket and some boots instead?” Very in-character of him, this is good, good stuff.

YES, exactly what I was going for! I feel like my entire reaction to your review is either going to be YES EXACTLY YOU WORDSMITH or ACTUALLY I AM FAR TOO DUMB TO HAVE DONE THAT ON PURPOSE BUT I LOVE IT LET’S GO WITH IT.

Bonnie using the ‘you were mean to me’ to get Damon to participate!!!

Caroline’s only known Damon for a month?????? This would make sense, a little, but also it feels like so much longer. (this isn’t me side-eyeing the author, she’s busy and doing important things, but also…)

😂😂😂😂

Bonnie’s prompting of Damon, “And?” felt very much like when you’re at the doctor’s office, and they’re listening to your heart, and they’re prompting you to take a deep breath “again” and quiet and waiting. Was this on purpose? Even his “how many do I have to do?” and her “Just one more.” Feels very much like when they’re in the bathroom, and he’s being a literal child under her medical care.

This definitely falls under the ‘not smart enough to have done that on purpose but I love it so let’s go with it’ category.

“Fuck you world, I’m perfect!” inspired by our resident sociopath (who has no regrets, naturally lol). LOVE. It really aligns with Caroline’s “here” realization, and later, Damon’s “okay, noted” response. It’s kinda messy of them, considering they’re clearly not, but the acceptance and willingness to say, fuck you world, I don’t need to conform to whatever, is so nice. So, so good. So much growth. And the title name-drop! And all of them cheering one another on (especially Stefan)!

“…Damon sasses, making Bonnie’s bright laugh even louder, and in that exact moment, with Damon’s hand caught in some kind of Z-snap and Bonnie gasping for air and Stefan’s eyes crinkled from the size of his grin, she felt something shift for her… And looking at the laughing faces surrounding her, their movements arrested in some kind of vibrant slow-motion, the glint of the flurrying snow around them like magic, she couldn’t help but think that it had to be something good.” (okay maybe now I will admit to more crying).

Kai vs the Neighbor and Caroline’s realization of ‘this guy is crazy I like him’. She doesn’t like a cat, but Kai, she’s here for. “That was amazing!” / “Thanks! I still don’t understand you.” love it!

I think I’ve edited this scene (what don’t I edit) since you read it but I think all the parts that stood out to you were ones I mostly kept the same, so that makes me really happy. I had a blast writing it, particularly Kai vs. The Neighbor and everyone just giving in to hedonistic self-acceptance for that one, sparkling minute. It felt needed and I’m so glad it seemed to trigger all the right emotions. 

Scrabble, Backstories, THE Kiss

I know this is not what I was supposed to take away from this, but I like Bonnie’s dark moments, lol. Like her joke about her mom not being around. Like, it makes her more real. Like Stefan’s sass makes him more real. No one is just the One Trait that ‘defines’ them, whatever the fuck that means.

I love writing those moments. I talked about this a few paragraphs up, but a big part of why I love writing Bonnie and Damon is exactly those moments - the ones where she can make a joke about her absentee mom and Damon can laugh at the idea of Kai assassinating them. They need that. They need to be able to do that. It doesn’t feel real to me otherwise. It doesn’t feel special, you know? Why are they so drawn to each other if not for precisely that? Their ability to be every part of themselves around each other - the hopeful parts, the selfish parts, the angry parts, the vulnerable parts - is what makes them tick the most, so I’m excited I’ve gotten to the point in their development where they can do that. There’s a scene pretty early in chapter 18 where they have another one of those moments, where Bonnie lets Damon get this sort of ugly/twisted glimpse at her that she’s hiding from everyone else, and she does it with this casualness that I really enjoyed writing. She’s not afraid of judgement. She’s not afraid of what he’s going to think. She knows he gets it, and he does, and it’s simple but I think it means so much more than grand gestures or big sex scenes do for them (but those are fun too lol).

Aw Damon wanting to know more about Bonnie. We see a lot of Bonnie’s curiosity about Mr. Enigma, but he’s embarking on this conversation without really knowing where it’d go or what he wants from it.

That’s a big shift that’s carrying into 18 - Damon’s officially starting to get hooked. It’s been so fun writing him in this shifting context of developing confusing feelings because he’s kind of a disaster about it - especially because Bonnie’s distracted by all the Steroline drama so she’s not even full cognizant of it. 

Wow, why am I just noticing this: “He thought about the fire escape, about the things she’d claimed to forgive herself for, and dwelled in the awareness that they’d all been just as performative as his” !!!! excuse me! NOT OKAY. I guess they haven’t had the chance to talk it out like Steroline did, and maybe that’s part of the reason it was more difficult to jump onto the forgiveness train right away.

Yeah, they still have a long way to go. Honestly, I don’t even know if forgiveness really fits what they need. Bamon strikes me more as just needing to accept themselves, and I think being able to accept each other so casually and completely will play a big role in that. 

“He wasn’t sure when she’d started taking up actual real estate in his thoughts, but it was kind of a disorienting realization.” !!!

“He used to let himself feel every last lick of it [his anger], blistering and white-hot… it’d bite and fester at the inside of his skin till it wore itself out slowly bled out of his pores” that’s good stuff there, dude, great description.

“That was all before he’d met Katherine, though. Before she’d shown him how to turn it all of instead.” Nice nod to that dumpster fire of canon. Datherine was such an interesting thing that could have been cool. The debauchery, honestly, instead of Damon desiring to be ‘good’ or some shit.

I honestly don’t even remember their canon dynamic and I think it’s probably better that way.

“She’d moved on from the question. He’d had an out. But for some reason, he had this weird, anxious feeling, like an opportunity was flashing past him and he didn’t want to just let it. So he kept going.” We stan character development and growth. You go, baby!

I wonder what it was like for Damon, to re-testify. Was he all shelled-up, the Damon who jokes his way through, who doesn’t give a single fuck about anything, or was he Lily’s scared son, traumatized and hurt, unable to make eye-contact or even lift his head during his testimony?

I think he was forcibly numb to the whole thing until he saw her. Probably being sarcastic under oath, acting like this was a waste of his time, but distinctly edgier than usual. I don’t think he was planning on seeing her and I don’t think he was even supposed to, given the whole witness protection thing, but knowing Lily, she probably dreamed up a way to make sure she was being transported at the exact moment she knew he’d be there, and seeing her and how entirely unchanged, unrepentant, undulled she was after seventeen years, daring to look at him like a project she was coolly proud of, just flipped him out a little. 

“She looked protective./ He wasn’t sure anyone had ever looked protective of him before.” AHHHHHHH.

Once you have a Gryffinpuff in your corner there’s no shaking them.

Damon’s “Here” paralleling to Caroline’s “Here”. Two sides of the same coin, though. Caroline’s “here” was liberating and existing meant so much for her, but Damon’s “here” is just existing, not feeling or holding on to anything.

Okay, I will admit this one I did on purpose.

“Kai could probably kill them both if we asked.” Dark!Bonnie, yas queen, slay!

“They didn’t just ‘happen’ / “I did them. I actively ruined those people’s lives.” I know it seems like I’m grasping here, but this just really seems to echo Caroline’s speech to Stefan, that Elena made choices. Bonnie made choices too. Does this mean Elena is just as redeemable as Bonnie is? Stay tuned to probably never find out.

Elena Redemption Arc 2029

Damon: “In fact, it’s [accepting the ‘bad’ parts of her] not going to change you at all—they’re already part of you, they’ve always been part of you. I’m not saying they’re shiny or pretty but honestly, fuck shiny and pretty.” Stefan’s rejection of Elena’s ‘darkness’, Damon’s acceptance of Bonnie’s ‘non-shiny, non-pretty’ elements. I’m just saying dude, conscious or subconscious—your Inner Writer is doing amazing, sweetie, please keep it up forever, thanks.

“Goodness wasn’t default coded into you but having some perfect life that never tempted you to be anything else.” / “To me, that’s a hell of a lot prettier and shinier than someone who never had ugly as an option.” *sings quietly* Tell me how I’m supposed to breathe with no air? 

lmfaoooo why do your expressions always murder me

‘I’m too tired to be funny’ fuck you this entire review is either poignant af or hilarious I was ill-prepared I was MISLED

“Your desperation to paint me out as some kind of reluctant hero is your real flaw—in fact, that should be the part of yourself you’re ashamed of.” OKAY THEN STOP BEING ONE

He’s so dumb. And we haven’t even gone into the Tyler arc. 

Baroline quoting Defan to throw their own words back at them like ninja stars, pinning them to their words’ truths.

We love a good Pin The Truth Bomb on the Idiot game.

 “I’m just saying there’s a chance you aren’t a complete supervillain.” / “I’d be a great supervillain.”

(I just had an overwhelming sense of maybe, someone in this very library, could be a SMA fan also. How wild would that be???)

I wrote this HP fanfic a long time ago that got weirdly popular and someone once left a review saying they saw someone else reading the new update at the airport and they ended up talking about it together for a little while and it was the greatest moment of my entire life

“He wasn’t sure what made him do it. Wasn’t sure if it was a pride thing, a contrarian thing, or a product of whatever weird mindfuck of a thing had been brewing between them over the course of the night, but before he even knew what was happening, he slid his hands up her face and caught her mouth in a swift, deliberate counterargument.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damon’s analysis of Bonnie: more exclamation marks

“And that even without the varnish, even with all bitterness and fear and anxiety bursting through his cracks like light, he was worth seeing.” Actual tears in my actual eyes. I am not a crier, Gabi, what have you done

He’s a love-starved stray, LOVE HIM. PET HIM. 

Bonnie being all weirded out by the intimacy of the kiss, Damon apologizing about it, “He felt a flicker of resentment over the charm of her awkwardness.”

“If he didn’t know any better, he’d think it was the beginnings of another panic attack.” It’s the knife! (you know the Vine where the kid is running alongside a pool, and the woman behind the camera says, “what’cha got there?” and the kid is like “a knife!” and she’s like “no!” that’s this.)

I’M DEAD.

INEVITABLE. BOOM.

LOOK AT ALL THOSE CHICKENS

Steroline and the Case of the Heart-Eyes

“Laughing on that fire escape was the happiest he thought he’d ever seen her.”

Stefan being unable to deal with Caroline’s weirdo silence. Being nervous and worried about it, being super boyfriendy without actually noticing it. Him finally, full out, asking her what’s her deal.

“I’m out of reasons.” It’s so simple, yet so awwwww inducing.

Stefan going into straight up panic mode is so hilarious to me, even though it’s supposed to be more on the serious side lol. Like, I can just imagine Paul Wesley’s scrunched face, pushing away, avoiding any sort of physical interaction—and I’m cackling.

oh my God now I’m cackling

why is he like that

lmao I just see eyebrows I can’t

“I’m not that guy.” / “I’m the guy who can barely breathe right now because of the smell of your shampoo / who literally can’t open his eyes because if I look at you right now, I’m going to kiss you / who’s a few involuntary stares away from having the exact pattern of your freckles memorized—in fact, I honestly might already. Six on the right, six of the left, rebel freckle.” My heart. Gabi, stoppppp! I didn’t even ship this ship before SMA!

He writes his Boy Scout-ass self blame him.

“I’m pretty sure what makes me happy is you.” I cry so many tears. “I think I might finally be at the point where I’m more scared of missing out on that than I am of what letting it in might do.”

“His heart began humming in his throat at the way she was looking at him.”

“The hope in her eyes grabbed his stupid heart but its stupid heart throat and why the hell did he even pretend he had any actual choice in any of this?” There you go, buddy, finally getting with the program. A parallel to Bamon, and Damon’s wtf is happening to me caring about this cupcake of a person?

“No banning of the full spectrum of human emotion.” / “Do your worst, Disney prince.” / “Don’t know if you can handle that.”

Another artful sex scene. I know they’re not your Fav to write, but you do a real good job. Especially for these two and this moment of it being Real.

Bless, I just never know how they’re going to come across. So easy for them to feel cheesy. Glad this one didn’t tip too far into that territory. 

Caroline’s “No” and Stefan’s “a soundless projection of determination so palpable it bent the air into a word.”

“Her eyes were mosaics, art made out of jagged pieces – chipped trust and cracked pride glued together into something flawed and lovely.” Stefan has ruined every romantic thing for me. Thanks, bud.

He sucks.

Caroline’s ‘shift’ (which I am now just realizing she refers to as ‘a lock snapping undone’; giiiiiiiirl) and Stefan’s “and he felt the knife go straight through his gut.”

I can’t read that metaphor now without thinking about her legit stabbing him like a black widow and just completely 180ing this into a slasher fic.

Bonnie and the Contract

Short scene, yes. Bonnie’s absentmindedness, not just because of Damon, but because she doesn’t have eyes for this lol. It’s so casual how you described it too, “just some clothes, abandoned mugs, scatter of papers”, the usual, ya know, nothing to see here lol. Damon’s attempt to keep her from looking at the contract. Like, he was all mischief and trickery a few days ago, waiting for this very moment, and now, he’s all ‘oh uh you may wanna….’ tongue-tied. Short scene, yes. Great cliff-hanger, absolutely. Awesome way to close off what felt like whole movie worth of content? A million percent yes, sign me up for more!

Writing it def felt like a whole movie’s worth of content lmao so getting to that short, final, zippy cliffhanger scene was glorious. Felt like delivering a placenta. Like I’d already birthed the thankless succubus of a baby and all I needed now was the placenta I barely had to push to get out, you know? This metaphor got lowkey gross but fun fact one of the women whose placenta I delivered in OB wanted to keep it so her and her husband could eat it and I was like coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool.

Okay, so this is a monster of a review for a masterpiece of a chapter (100+ pages, right?). Coupling happy and silly scenes with these intense confessions was amazing, and your fear of the emotional scenes not clicking is unwarranted! You’re truly a phenomenal writer, and I know I tell you all the time, but you need to hear it always and forever! I was recently telling my sister writing is my actual passion, and by the way in which you write, it seems like it’s, at least, one of your passions too. Like yeah, medicine is gonna be great, you’re gonna be awesome, and maybe I too will be successful as a therapist, but your passion and talent shines through your writing. YOU! ARE! GREAT! TRULY!

I will not apologize for such a long review, like I always do (13 pages babyyy), but I will apologize for basically rewriting the chapter in this review. I tried my best to simplify and summarize, but bro, so! many! good morsels of gorgeous similes and metaphors and descriptions and dialogue, and did I mention I am in love with your characters? your writing? your goddamn brain? Lol.

(Okay, I think I’m done. This took me almost three weeks to write.)

I truly hope you’re doing well, and if you’re writing, YAS, but if you’re not, you know what? You do you, girl, slay in whatever you’re doing. I am your support! I am your cheerleader! I’m here to bolster any sort of feeling you need! Love ya, toodles ;)

(If you’re new here and you got to the end of this review, hey I’m Cassandra, and you’ve made the best decision to read this fic. Gabi, look away, you’re not supposed to see my gushing about your story yet again. You, Reader, good on ya!)

Girl, I don’t even know what to say at this point. Your reviews are always just so lovely, so funny, so thoughtful, so insightful, so goddamn smart - I’m honored to have you as a reader, dude. Truly. Knowing you’re going to be reading challenges me to write better (and that’s actually true of a lot of you, if you’re reading this!). I adore having your therapist brain reading this, too, because it’s such a character-driven story and I’m writing about a lot of things I’ve never actually been through but have done my best to inhabit, and having your perspective is so wonderful. You find the motivations and you see the dimensionality and half the time your reviews actually give me ideas because you see things I don’t. So basically, all of this to say thank you. I adore you. You’re wonderful. And the one good thing about having taken so friggin’ long to post this response that I AM ACTUALLY WRITING lmao, and despite your busy life of saving people’s sanity and BEING FRIGGIN’ MARRIED, I hope you are, too! Love ya, babe. This was so kind. You’re a universe. 

[vagrantblvrd]

Oh my gosh I love the pairings for the concubine post. What about jeremwood or jerevin or jerevinwood, or jeremavinwood or jeremichael? To be honest I can see most of those working really well as well. I know you mentioned jeremwood so I’m really curious on your take? Sorry for any misspellings

Well, if you insist on twisting my arm like this, Anon! ;P (jk, I was thinking about these on the way home and your ask came at the perfect time, so yes??? Also I kind of stray from the original premise a few times, so sorry about that???)

Jeremwood:

So, okay. Let’s have baby Ryan whose parents died when he was a kid, so there’s been a regent (Geoff and Jack or someone along those lines in charge until Ryan comes of age, which is kind of ironic to Geoff because he’s not that much older than Ryan himself, always a bit of an older brother figure to him and such, but Plot Reasons.)

Conveniently for Plot Reasons, Ryan’s going to be of age in this particular AU.

Ryan’s parents may have been a bit on tyrannical side of things and due to civil unrest and the whatnot while Geoff and Jack set to putting things to right after their deaths they decide it would be wise to keep him out of the public view.

They make sure he has the best of everything they can give him – education, care, and they do love him – but there are major security reasons to limit the access others have to him and so on.

He grows up sheltered in that way. Not spoiled, or at least to a ridiculous degree, because Geoff and Jack both feel guilty about how they help raise him and overcompensate at times.

Ryan grows up knowing about the things his parents did – great and terrible and all that – and how it affected their people. The impact they have even now, a decade and change after their deaths. (Still those out there who think their madness was passed on to their son and have tried and tried to get to him to end the bloodline while they can because Drama.)

And Ryan, okay. He grows up knowing all about this, seeing Geoff and Jack injured in assassination attempts and all that – and after one that comes too close for anyone’s peace of mind, Geoff and Jack decide he should pursue additional schooling/education out of the kingdom.

Frame it as totally not being related to the time someone almost killed Ryan in his own home (again), but widening his life experiences before he takes the throne and everything.

They all know it’s a flimsy excuse, but Ryan feels too guilty to protest as strongly as he might have if their explanation was the truth.

Geoff and Jack send him off with the Twins and Michael at the head of his little entourage (just the four of them to avoid drawing too much attention because surely someone of Ryan’s import would have a grand entourage and such).

Neither Geoff and or Jack like it, but Michael’s proven himself trustworthy time and again, lifted from the ranks of city guard to castle guard to one of Ryan’s personal guards. Trevor and Alfredo are two of their most promising spies/assassins and equally loyal and most importantly, Ryan likes them. (Closest thing to friends he has, even if he thinks they see him more as a Duty than a friend, but you know. He’s kind of dumb like that.)

Anyway, anyway, all this going on and Ryan’s finished his schooling and is headed home where the coronation and all is supposed to take place before summer’s end. (Because reasons?)

They have a mostly uneventful journey home, Ryan getting a little anxious the closer they get because he, too, is concerned he may have inherited his parents’ madness.

Michael insists he’d knock any nonsense like theirs out of his head if he shows signs of madness, and while it’s worth a good laugh, he also knows Michael is serious. (As serious as the Twins and the promise he insisted on they do their duty to the kingdom if he became the same sort of monsters his parents were.)

He still worries. (Remembers overhearing Geoff and Jack when they got a little too into their drink late on winter nights and the way their own parents were executed by Ryan’s for committing treason and just. Wow, a lot to unpack there especially because the two of them never held his parents’ acts against him and just yes. He’s worried he’ll go mad and since they’re among the closest, most dangerous threats to anything he might do of course they’d have to be dealt with first.)

So, you know.

Ryan’s all fucked up about going mad and everything and also just learning to be a good ruler even though Geoff and Jack will serve as close advisors and so on.

And then!

There’s a storm or bandit attack that scatters their little group, has Ryan ending up in this tiny podunk village where they don’t ask questions. (Too many, at any rate.)

He has to wait the storm out there, worried for the others but they’re skilled fighters and he’s not with them so they should be safer?

And anyway, he notices this village is barely hanging on. Not like the other villages he’d seen on his journey to and from the neighboring country he went to school. The brief tours Geoff and Jack would allow him when he was younger.

Finds out they’re not receiving the aid they should, that the bandits are rampant and overall it’s gone unnoticed too long. (Greedy nobles squeezing what they can from them because they’re sitting on valuable land or there are mines rich with ore the people won’t relinquish and so on and so forth.)

And!

There’s a guard from a nearby city on leave, visiting the family who took him in when his parents were killed in a bandit raid years and years ago.

Bright smile and infectious laughter and – totally against some outdated order of the kingdom – teaching the men and kids of the village how to fight. (Something, something, incite rebellion against the crown if the people were properly taught to fight and all that.)

The guard knows if he’s caught out he’ll face jail, or execution, but what else can he do when his village is suffering and they’ve been denied help? So he made himself someone who could protect them by learning to fight and passing his knowledge on.

And Ryan, okay.

At first he’s all :O at the guard’s brazenness – he teaches them in broad daylight where just anyone can see!

But then Jeremy notices the stranded stranger watching and calls him over – doesn’t know what he thinks he’s doing because this is bound to land him in hot water, but hey, you know.

Poor guy was separated from his traveling party by bandits and he was injured in the fray and maybe he should learn how to defend himself?

So Ryan ends up as his training partner and Ryan is totally handling it just fine, you know? Especially when Jeremy corrects his technique (wouldn’t do to give away the fact Ryan’s a decent fighter in his own right because his cover story!!1!) by stepping in close and repositioning his grip on his weapon and so on and so forth.

The bright smile and genuine delight when he praises Ryan when he gets a move right. (Ryan being thrown and pinned and all that Good Shit when Jeremy disarms him and shows him – and their audience – how to stay alive until they can get a weapon in their hands.

Jeremy breaking off every so often to help the others, encourage the kids to keep at it because practice is how you improve! Mistakes are part of learning! And other uplifting things.

And then it rains again, everyone running to shelter and Ryan ends up eating in the humble little home of Jeremy’s adopted family and just.

A lot of Things I Love all tossed together.

And then!

A few days later Michael and the others find Ryan again and they have to finish their trek back to the castle.

Michael and the others giving Ryan and Jeremy Privacy while they make their goodbyes and totally not giving Ryan grief about it on the way back to the castle. (They would never!!11)

Ryan gets home and there’s a Touching Reunion between him and Geoff and Jack and once he’s settled back in they get on with the coronation business.

Shortly after Ryan’s coronation Trevor sidles over to let him know there’s Serious Business to see to at court, a matter of Treason ans such?

Ryan is like, well shit, because it’s like the billionth time since he took the throne. (Assassination attempts and Plotting To Overthrow the Mad King and so on.)

When the offender if brought before him it’s Jeremy.

Bound in chains and looking ragged like he’s been ill-treated before being brought to court for his crimes.

Which, as it turns out, is the whole teaching the people in his village how to fight? (Ryan’s enemies digging deep, or a sycophant chancing upon Jeremy hoping to curry favor with Ryan for exposing this nobody who is clearly out to incite rebellion.)

Trevor and Alfredo have obviously been keeping close watch on Jeremy – Ryan clearly liked him *wink wink* and also Jeremy’s own Potential and such – so they intervened when he was arrested and insisted he be brought before Ryan.

And then!

Someone rips the hood off Jeremy’s head and he’s like. He figures he’s going to be executed so he comes out firing, lays out this list of injustices against his village and others like it out there and just goes on and on and on until he runs out of breath.

The whole court is silent because such insolence?

Trevor clears his throat, which is Ryan’s cue to speak – he flubs badly - but recovers and addresses Jeremy’s grievances with the due respect they deserve, promises change will happen and Jeremy is like what the shit, because that’s Ryan???

Idiot who didn’t know how to hold s sword and always ended up on his back in the mud no matter how blatantly Jeremy telegraphed his moves and oh shit oh shit oh shit, he’s the king???

And then!!1!

Because Ryan can’t just let the whole Treason business slide, he does Research. Makes the mistake of asking Geoff what he should do – Jeremy’s not wrong for anything he did- and Geoff okay.

Super fucking Tired of everything makes what’s meant to be a throwaway joke about this insanely old tradition of the king and concubines and whatever. Something from the days their people were conquerors and Ryan is like !!!

And so he goes down to the dungeon cell Jeremy’s in. Michael goes along too, because people are constantly trying to kill Ryan and the king is a goddamned moron, but he gives them the semblance of privacy as Ryan fumbles his way to explaining his offer to Jeremy?

Jeremy who just stares at Ryan because what the actual hell is happening? (But you know, given the choice between public execution or pretending to be Ryan’s concubine? It’s an easy enough choice.)

Jeremy has the chance to ~earn his freedom for services rendered (he almost, almost laughs at the way Ryan’s face turns bright red during this part because lol, what a fearsome tyrant he is. Lost to his own madness and so on) and all that.

And then it’s just.

Romcom shenanigans with Jeremy swanning around taking advantage of his new job title or whatever you want to call it. Enjoys fucking with Ryan once he realizes he really is an idiot. He and Michael get along too well for Ryan’s peace of mind – they’re terrible enough on their own, but absolutely horrible when they team up.

Ryan can’t tell if the Twins are teaching Jeremy or if it’s the other way around, and is too scared to ask.

Geoff and Jack are freaking dying over Ryan being the one to Suffer for once.

And then there’s some Grand Conspiracy against Ryan Jeremy helps thwart? Pretends to go along with the conspirators because he’s been turned into a concubine and surely will want his revenge and Ryan is all :((((((((((((((((((((((( thinking Jeremy’s been playing him for a fool this entire time, that it was all an act – but then Jeremy reveals it was all a plot to capture the conspirators and Ryan you dunce, of course Jeremy’s madly in love with you.

And then, like.

Romance???

Ryan finally able to push new laws through that the conspirators who have been blocking them for so long are either dead or disgraced and everyone else are in favor of these changes.

Happily ever after for everyone, although Ryan laments the days Jeremy would go around shirtless all the time. (Not proper for the king’s husband, although Jeremy indulges him when they can because Ryan’s just that ridiculous.)

Jerevin:

Newly crowned king, Gavin plays the part of a fool because his is a small kingdom, right? In no real position to go to war over the smallest slight. Seems to bow and scrape to other kings and queens and only those paying close attention realize his kingdom gets the better part of any deal they make.

Perhaps not immediately noticeable, some take years to show the benefits they’ll reap, but his kingdom is happy and prosperous.

(The kingdom straddles a mountain range with treacherous paths and only a few routes viable for those on either side, so they see a lot of trade and the whatnot. Have managed to avoid war for generation by knowing how to negotiate deals with all parties coming away from the table satisfied and such.)

Jeremy’s a young guard who was born in a neighboring country and found himself enlisting in Gavin’s army...because reasons and circumstances. (Former street rat and no loyalty to any royal, but he’s heard good things about this new king and anyway, he’ll get a roof over his head and meals and coin for his pouch. Better deal than anything else he could find and he’s only expected to serve for three, four years  at most.)

He’s there in Gavin’s entourage on the way back from a negotiation when there’s an ambush – regular bandits or something more, no one knows – and he saves Gavin’s life.

Takes an arrow to the knee and tries to laugh it off when Gavin goes to the healer’s tent to check on him. All those stories he’d heard from city guards and veteran soldiers. Worried about future prospects but at least he’s alive?

And then there’s a misunderstanding or some such. Gavin just wanted to repay him for saving his life, intended to find him a suitable position in the castle proper once everything settled down some, but you know.

Suddenly everyone thinks Gavin took a liking to this young guard and made him his concubine?

Perhaps there was a Thing before the ambush in which the two of them stayed up all night playing card games or whatever in Gavin’s chambers. People thinking it was a bit more intimate than Gavin falling asleep partway through the night because exhaustion from his duties and Jeremy putting him to bed with this goofy little smile because FEELS and keeping watch.

Gavin being utterly mortified while Jeremy is initially confused because deciding to make the most of it. (Makes Gavin’s skeptics super uncomfortable and teases the hell out of Gavin and general romcom shenanigans before they get their shit together and realize they have FEELINGS for one another and happily ever after.)

Jerevinwood:

This whole plot where Gavin’s entourage is ambushed and while no one is killed, Gavin’s the only one fit to travel.

Michael and the others refuse to let Gavin go on without protection of some sort even though he insists he can look after himself -

And exasperate with their stubbornness, turns to this pair of mercenaries that were instrumental in turning the tide of the ambush in their favor.

Not even from his kingdom, but their own loyalty it to one another and other cliches, and he offers them a ridiculous amount of money to safeguard him until he’s back at the castle and among other loyal to him.

Ryan and Jeremy are kind of uneasy about it, but easy enough money and they were headed that direction anyway.

Not their fault if they develop feelings for this foolish little king along the way and vice versa.

Get back to the castle where Gavin spins a lie about his entourage taking ill – food poisoning or whatever – and traveling behind him as they’re able. (Something, something conspiracy?)

And oh, look. Treat Ryan and Jeremy nice, he’s rather sweet on them.

Ryan and Jeremy hamming it up as his concubines and daring the advisors who are part of the conspiracy to Do Something when they correct the two of them whenever they challenge the baddies on some bit of strategy or whatever.

General sort of romcom shenanigans mixed with Intrigue and so on.

Michael and the others get back to the castle just as things  reach the boiling point and then like. Battles and fighting and Ryan and Jeremy saving Gavin’s life and exposing the traitors in the process, because Drama.

And then Gavin being all :((((((((((((((((( because he thinks Ryan and Jeremy are that skilled as actors and Michael kind of wanting to throttle his idiot king. Kicks him out of the castle and tells him to bring those other idiots back before someone else hires them as his concubines and it turns into utter ridiculousness. (Also Touching and Heartfelt reunions in a forest glen beside a babbling brook and Confessions of Undying Love and also smooches.)

(I really, really, love these three in this scenario? But in my head it’s a mix of Drama and Romcom and just them being the biggest idiots ever. XD)

Jeremavinwood:

Okay.

So.

Young King Jeremy with personal guard Michael who’s injured protecting his king and general misunderstandings and awkwardness of everyone thinking Jeremy’s claimed Michael as his concubine? (Kind of a twisted childhood sweethearts deal.)

Featuring Gavin and Ryan who are members of the thieves/assassin’s guild in the city but due to Reasons no one knows which of them belongs to what guild?

The love fucking with people about it and so do their guild members, and anyway, the guilds are so closely allied it doesn’t matter?

So you’ve got Gavin and Ryan occasionally breaking into the castle – testing security and toying with spymaster Trevor and his Alfredo (No one knows what Alfredo does aside from Trevor and Alfredo and honestly, it’s too much trouble to ask, so.)

Those moments when Gavin just pops up out of nowhere, dagger at Jeremy’s throat and a cheerful grin asking him where his guards are now before things devolve to hand-to-hand and one/both of them pinning the other and mischievous grins and almost kissing before they’re reminded of propriety and their positions and suchlike? Or Ryan stalking Michael down int eh city or castle halls and an impromptu sparring match with Ryan being a smug prick riling Michael up – Michael letting Ryan think he’s riled him before he turns the tables on him and knocks his feet out from under him and also the pinning of one another.

Gavin dropping in on Michael and asking him the most infuriating questions while Michael’s working on his swordsmanship against a dummy until he decides Gavin’s footwork needs polishing. Ryan sprawled on Jeremy’s throne on a night when Jeremy’s head is full of turmoil and he doubts his decisions as king. Ryan taunting and needling him until Jeremy has a breakthrough moment of realizing he’s not a perfect ruler but he tries to be, and that’s a hell of a start and so on.

And just.

The four of them with this odd relationship that is the talk of the kingdom – everyone knows but there’s never any evidence. (With the thieves and assassin’s guilds involved, of course there isn’t.)

And then comes a day when Gavin and Ryan are accused of Jeremy and Michael's murders and have to break out of the dungeons after they've been captured.

At first it’s to bring the real killers to justice/get their revenge? But then they learn it’s a Conspiracy and Jeremy and Michael are still alive so they have to rescue them and then do the bring the baddies to justice/revenge bit.

If they’re forced to confront their FEELINGS for those two idiots and vice versa in the process – then that’s the price they have to pay.

(Because of course Jeremy and Michael have been told Gavin and Ryan are going to be executed for their “murders”, will be forced to watch it before they’re killed to cover everything up and God knows they’re going to do their damnedest to escape/make the baddies pay for their crimes.)

Super dramatic reunion scene/climactic battle and then like. ALL the FEELINGS as they finally admit they’re totally in love with one another and have been for ages and EVERYONE KNEW THIS WHOLE TIME BUT THEM.

Jeremichael:

So this is one that sticks closest to the original premise in my head?

Michael and Jeremy who train together as kids.

Jeremy from a poor village who intends to send what money he can home to his family and the village and young prince Michael whose parents think it’s best he not think himself too above the people whose welfare he’s responsible for.

They become good friends early on – maybe a bit of youth and ego at first, but that fades as they get to know one another over time. Goes from being something on it’s way to ugly and bitter to friendly teasing as they work together to improve their skills.

And then there’s an accident, some stupid little thing, and Jeremy’s going to be sent back to his village once he’s healed enough. Won’t ever become a guard with that limp or whatever else injury, but he’s young enough he can learn a trade. (Bitter seed planted in his heart because he doesn’t have the money to gain an apprenticeship, but pride and whatnot.)

Michael doesn’t know until later, Jeremy about to be sent home and he rushes to find him. Thought he’d done something to make Jeremy mad with him, not knowing Jeremy thought the same about Michael and that was why Michael never came to see him after the accident.

Michael catches him as he’s packing to leave and panicking he latches onto the last thing his tutors drilled into his head, old, outdated (barbaric) traditions having to do with concubines and blurts out an idea to keep Jeremy with him?

Tells him he’ll have a roof over his head and food and money to send home and all that and misses the way Jeremy’s face twists. (Budding feeling for Michael soured by this Deal Michael wants to make with him and of course, of course Michael wouldn’t see him in that way. He's going to be king, and Jeremy’s some poor kid who lost his chance at being someone.)

Still.

The prospect of being able to help his family and his village are too good to pass up and he accepts.

Michael insists on Jeremy being his training partner so he still learns how to fight properly even if he tires easier and the like. (Thinks Michael’s being kind when he tells Jeremy he’s improving and all that even thought Michael’s telling him the truth. Because okay, sure. Jeremy’s not as strong as he used to be, but he’s still fast and clever and compensates for his injury in brilliant ways.)

Jeremy acts as both ~concubine/advisor/additional bodyguard and falls even more in love with Michael who doesn’t seem to notice?

Meanwhile, Michael is head over heels for Jeremy but is super aware of abusing his power/position in life and thinks Jeremy couldn’t possibly like him in That Way.

Cue abominable amounts of Pining until there’s an Incident.

Some terrible storm while they’re on a ship to meet with a potential suitor for Michael and end up stranded on an island (because reasons) and have to rely on one another to survive until rescue comes.

And then FEELINGS and Realizations and just when they’re about to get to the whole Confessions bit, a fisherman happens upon their island and brings them home.

Michael’s swept away to deal with his Duties and the like and Jeremy is mostly ignored and they don’t see one another until there’s a fancy ball.

Michael’s birthday or a solstice or something, and Michael’s all dressed up and so is Jeremy and they have that oh no, not only is he hot but he cleans up real nice moment when they see one another for the first time that night.

Michael’s supposed to pay attention to the various royals who traveled to meet with hi as possible suitors, but he has eyes only for Jeremy and vice versa.

They sneak off to a quiet corner and awkwardly compliment one another and make small talk. Stop to watch the fireworks display overhead and there’s this series of horribly awkward events that ends in their hands brushing together. Eyes drawn towards their hands, slowly lifting so their gazes meet and they decide independently of one another fuck it because this may be their only chance to steal a smooch, right?

Michael's meant to marry and have heirs and Jeremy...he’s a sham, a fraud. Never made it as a soldier/guard and  a poor choice of concubine, so please, please, please let him have this one thing.

And then they kiss, and kiss again, and just kind of don’t stop until one/both of them confesses their love and then it’s just this slippery slope of requited love and all that until there’s really no choice but for them to get married, you know?

Horrible, really. (However will they manage???)

[theliterateape]

Why "Three Billboards…" is a Far Better Film Than You Thought it Was

By Don Hall

Any article that starts with the phrase “In this day and age…” is automatically suspect.

However.

“In this day and age…” we have been so bombarded with information and opinions (both real and fake, scientific and spun) that society craves nothing more than a simplistic narrative.

We want good guys and bad guys. We want a definitive sense of a moral high ground. We want to be told that we're correct in assuming that anyone who voted for Trump is a racist mouth breather. That anyone who voted for Hillary betrayed Bernie. That it is impossible for a senator to both fight aggressively for women's rights to equality and make a tasteless boob-grabbing joke.

Our popular culture reflects that desire.

Fans of the simplistic Good vs. Evil narrative balked at the complexity of the latest Star Wars. The Pit of Forced Stupidity and Dumbed Down Asshattery known as social media practically requires the propaganda of WWII (when the Japanese were routinely portrayed as rats) effectively boiling every issue down to the reductive language of the Puritans. #BlackLivesMatters is taken so literally that people feel the need to create another hashtag #AllLivesMatter because they can't handle the nuance and complexity of the argument. #MeToo suddenly devolves into an argument that men are predators and women are victims without pausing for a moment to reflect on  shades of gray.

When Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri came out, it was immediately lambasted on certain segments of Twitter as being about a racist cop who suffers no consequences for his actions and is redeemed in the end. I read this and wondered and, to be frank, was put off on seeing the film for a while.

Instead, in the pantheon of films available that were contenders for the Oscar (keeping in mind that the nominees and the winners, like so much in our religiously monied village, is bought and paid for in campaigns and perks), I caught Get Out and The Shape of Water.

I loved both films. Prior to seeing Three Billboards… I had decided that Get Out was perhaps the most culturally significant film of 2017 in that it was not only tremendously entertaining but also provided an excellent allegory for what it feels like to be a black millennial in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter.

Then I saw Three Billboards...

Written by Martin McDonagh (a playwright and screenwriter known for dark satires like The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Pillowman, and films like In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths) Three Billboards… eschews the easy answers of a Good vs. Evil narrative and presents a comic tale of complicated humans doing complicated things for complicated reasons. Of course, it's "problematic."

Notably, the emphasis on morality plays as the most popular form of narrative is relatively recent. The fables of Aesop do not pit good against evil — the tortoise is not innately representative of a moral center and the hare is not an avatar for depravity, they both simply represent different approaches to the same problem. The moral is not so much moral but instructive. The American legends of Paul Bunyan and John Henry are not biblical tales of decency and piety but rather tales of less strident and Puritanical visions of ethical behavior.

Stories from an oral tradition never have a modern good guy or bad guy, despite their reputation for being moralizing. In Jack and the Beanstalk or Sleeping Beauty, who is the good guy? Jack is the protagonist yet he has no ethical justification for stealing the giant’s treasures. Does Sleeping Beauty care about goodness? Does anyone fight injustice?

Even tales that can be made to seem like they are about good versus evil do not hinge on so simple a moral dichotomy. In traditional versions, Cinderella merely needs to be hot to make the story work. In the Three Little Pigs, neither pigs nor wolf deploy strategies that the other wouldn’t stoop to. It’s just a question of who gets to eat, not good versus evil.

Arguably, the propaganda of war combined with the lectures of religion set the table for our infantile attraction to the morality tale. Complexity in a world with over seven billion people is discouraged because that shit don't sell Tide. Once the idea of national values entered our storytelling, the peculiar moral physics underlying the phenomenon of good guys versus bad guys has been remarkably consistent.

The Shape of Water is a beautiful tale and a grandly lush film with extremely simplistic characters who never deviate from who they are morally from frame one. Del Torro tells us at each step how we are supposed to feel and which side everyone is on. It's comforting to not have to think about it.

Get Out is likewise a propaganda. In Peele's movie, all blacks are good and all whites are evil. It's a great ride, a fantastic horror film and a brilliant allegory for the current perspective on race relations in America today.

Three Billboards… is complicated. The characters are flawed. Mildred Hayes is filled with rage at what she sees as negligence on the police chief's part and uses McDonagh's metaphor for the callout culture of the internet to openly shame him into action. Chief Willoughby, however, isn't the cartoon bad guy he's supposed to be and that's confusing. The deeply racist Officer Dixon is not merely defined by his racism but by his anger, low intelligence and issues with his even more deeply racist mother.

Mildred does not get what she wants in the end. She wants to catch her daughter's rapist and, like Willoughby, fails. Dixon does not get his comeuppance for his brutality nor is he redeemed — he loses everything (his job, his status, his face) and is poised for redemption but, in the end, both he and Hayes set out to wreak vengeance on someone they believe is guilty of crime but not the crime that has touched their lives.

McDonagh's characters are frustratingly human.

In this day and age, with the embrace of these simple-minded techniques of creating a fantasy of Good (victims of police brutality, victims of sexual harassment, undocumented immigrants) and Evil (police, men, Donald Trump), it is advisable that we all pull away from these narratives some. These fantasies are perfect for hobbits, wizards and superheroes but not so much for modern people set in modern stories. While entertaining on a fundamental level, these narratives do not address the very complicated truths of humanity. That we all are good and we all are evil and that we all are capable of complex reasons for doing both.

[knightofbalance-13]

Boss Battle: Vs. Sokumotaka 2

https://sokumotanaka.tumblr.com/post/161038682374/it-becomes-clear-just-how-far-the-white-fang-have

Oh god look it’s clear to me you people who keep sending these either can’t read or lack the ability to understand the situation going on in this show and how fucked up it is from a writing and social perspective.

Actually as we go on, we’ll see this is more of a case of you being incapable of understanding that one’s crimes does not justify another’s actions.

The whole “We’re not working with the evil side of the white fang would have been good cause RT is trying to emulate freedom fighting organizations and spitting on them. Literally did the underground railroad (Yeah remember how many innocent black people died to even get to that place to free themselves?) But ignore that miles and kerry can spit all over harriet tubman’s legacy. okay maybe I’m a bit annoyed about that but making the entire minority organization that originally wanted equality evil? Is a bad idea! http://glyndathegoodwitchofbeacon.tumblr.com/post/138657005354/the-white-fang

Mind showing us the connection between using a system of connections to lead freed slaves to freedom to a group that goes around killing innocent people and breaking up peaceful protests to attack humans for being humans? Because all I see is you trying to drag the writer’s through the mud and instead doing that to yourself.

And let’s take a look at that link shall we? The justification given for the White Fang’s actions is that they are treated like dirt by every human in Remnant. Not only is that not  a reason to kill people in the first lace (I should know, having gone through a  personal version of that before), not every human treats them that way. In fact, judging by how disdainfully Cardin is regarded, racism in current day Remnant is much like how racism is treated today: Prevalent but looked down upon. So that doesn’t excuse the White Fang’s actions against humans, let alone their actions of breaking up peaceful Fanaus protests like they did in Episode 1 of Volume 1 which cannot be excused by that. SO they have plenty of crimes that cannot be excused by what you give them.

So let’s talk about renegades: Adam torchwich a man who falsified a faunus white fang rally one where looking at it the faunus there weren’t bloodthirsty at all, in fact during his speech he talked about equality and overthrowing the government (remember the government that’s oppressing them.) and possibly replacing them with people who would actually give a damn about faunus rights and he tricked them into thinking a train/bomb was going to do it , not that it was below an inhabited city. So you wanna talk about lies then let’s bring him up too humans did their fair share. (Let’s not forget how he talked trash on the faunus race not the white fang but the *FAUNUS* during him and ruby’s last encounter. But I’m sure you’ll brush that off too.

... Who? IS it Adam or Roman? Because if it’s Roman than I can saw about how does this connect seeing as Adam was willing to blow up a train full of innocent humans in the first lace and agreed to work with Cinder when it benefited him. And if it’s Roman, the white Fang had to know what they were gonna do seeing as they had a train of explosives, a bunch of Grimm and tracks leading to Vale. And even then, I can point out that Roman never demanded the genocide of Fanaus, unlike Adam AKA a leader of the White Fang. And then there’s the fact that Roman is a villain and is supposed to represent the worst of humanity, not the majority so it’s not even justified that way.

Okay so we’re gonna base the entire white fang past present and future on a dumb “twirl my mustache oooh so evil.” scene? That’s asinine! Let us not forget again the white fang held peaceful protest (again which I support but you heathens only hear “Blah blah Racist.” again which I also stated the first time I brought up the white fang and even linked to post like this but ha who’s counting?) for “Despite being promised keyword PROMISED equality, the faunus were subjected to discrimination and hate.” -Blake belladonna

No one here is saying that. In fact, the very quote you have at the top talks about how the White Fang has fallen, showing that they were good once before. You’re the only person saying that they were bad past, present and future. We just acknowledged they have soured. And the White Fang ONCE held peaceful protest, they now actively BREAK up peaceful protest, meaning they now longer do that so the point is moot.

And yes, they were promised equality and they didn't get it. So the fuck what? You think that justifies the deaths of innocent people, numbering possibly in the hundreds if not thousands? A single innocent death is inexcusable and the White Fang has caused so much more than that with the attempted Train bombing and the fall of Beacon. Blake (that person you’re quoting) outright left them BECAUSE they were so murder happy. One of the most devoute members jumped ship because they got too radical. Says a lot.

And despite this (usually violating the terms of a treaty was to the writers justified to start all out wars and there has been wars on this that were *ahem* justified.) The faunus met this injustice with peaceful protesting for many many years so they reacted to this injustice for several years (double digits from what the show tells us) before retaliation.

Doesn’t matter how long they’ve suffered. The jewish people were enslaved by the egyphtans for centuries, the Christians were hunted and killed for centuries as well, the African Americans were enslaved for decades and discriminated against for decades more. It doesn’t matter how long your people has suffered: The killing of innocent life is never justified. And if I hear they deserved to die because they were human: That’s racist you asshole.

Way less than real life peaceful protesting last.

I can feel Martin Luther King Jr. rolling in his grave.

Think about this the white fang had justification for reigniting a full scale war for 20+ years but held back in favor of peaceful protesting, not to mention the literal murder of them because as the WOR stated “they looked different or threatening” so humans would hunt them down with NO again retaliation from the faunus until they stated “No we had enough.” and in the end what? got a small cramped island that’s mostly desert and lacking in resources? Yes what a gift for the murder of our loved one’s in which none of these people pay any consequences.

War is never justified because inevitably, innocent blood is spilled. Terrorism is never justified. Especially against a race of people which is what you are demanding. You are demanding that the human race pay for what they did to the Fanaus, even if said humans never did such a thing and even disagree with such a disgusting action. Those people who are all but on your side must pay because of their race correct? Sounds pretty racist to me.

So I mean if you want to say the white fang’s actions aren’t justified because they’re sadistic murderers, causing genocide well so we’re humans in that regard and no one reined them in when they shed so much blood so I think you sound like a hypocrite.  The humans aren’t justified for their actions either.

No one ever said that they were. Ever heard of the concept of “Black and Black morality?” Where neither side is right and it ends u as two assholes punching each other? That’s what this is you idiot. The world isn’t some squeaky clean Black and white place.

In the end I just think making a splinter group that wasn’t 100% twirl my mustache evil would have been realistic, smart and a good call especially since so many people can relate to the white fang’s want of peace and equality, it makes them more sympathetic than the humans who lied to them about equality, oh did you gloss over that too?

But there IS members of the Fanaus race fighting for peace and equality instead of genocide and oppression. Blake, Sun, Ghira and Kali: They want TRUE equality and REAL peace but you ignore that and think that the White Fang should have been this handsome group of freedom fighters right? Well, time for a life lesson: Fight an enemy long enough and you BECOME that enemy. You adapt their style, their attitude and their ways. It happens in real life: Deal with it.

Lastly let’s squash the idea right now that you can’t like villains (Let’s just call them that in case your thick skull doesn’t register that.) I’m sorry but after several of this same message from the same person? I think you’re kinda pigheaded. Anyway let’s squash the idea that you can’t like villainous characters, people like frieza from dbz who’s racist, people like S.U villains who view humans as trash and you jerks like cinder who attacked and is now using the white fanus for murder and stuff because before she took over there wasn’t a single murder only dust stealing but hey let’s not give cinder any blame she’s too sexy.

Ah yes but the White Fang were hurting people long before Cinder came around: She just gave them better guns. Before Cinder, Adam tried blowing a train full of innocent humans. Who forced his hand there? It had to be forced since Blake outright asked about the humans. It’s not like Adam wanted to kill every human he could find because he’s a genocidal bastrad who deserves to be put down like a rapid dog. It was never said that the WHite Fang didn’t kill people before Cinder and Adam tried to before Cinder so no excuses there.

But hey, let’s not blame Adam. He’s oppressed uwu

Christ! Do yourself a favor and just do what I do: Just say everyone on remnant is a little bit of an asshole. And again for the last time leave me out of it, I already debunked this same argument like 3 times come up with some new material.

Really? Because from where I am sitting, sick and in the middle of the night, I just tore your debunk apart in a matter of minutes. Kind of shows how shit your argument is at it’s very basis.

Considering the fact that people like Ruby and Jaune exist on Renment, people who have done nothing but try to help others, I refuse to say that. I will not hold them accountable for the actions of people they don’t know or agree with just because they share the same race. That’s stupid and wrong. Just like you.

[obaewankenope]

The Gospel of the Anakin Apologist + The General Rudeness of Unrelated Comments on a Post

So @stonefreeak had an anon show up and whine about Padme. I and @sanerontheinside added our two cents in then *waves hands* SOME ASSHOLE shows up and wants to play ‘Anakin is a victim and Padme is a stupid ho and Obi-Wan is to blame for EVERYTHING EVER’ on the post even though, amusingly enough, it has no bearing on the discussion in the slightest.

Ergo I got vexed.

Actually all of us did bc wow stupid much.

The rest is under a read more because wow this got long and salty.

Also I’m tagging people so they can share the salt: @meabhair, @kyberpunk, @maawi, @markwatnae, @lilyrose225writes, @knight-kennedy, @punsbulletsandpointythings, @deadcatwithaflamethrower, @myurbandream, @jhaernyl :)

You see, we were discussing Padme as a female character and the double-standard around female characters being expected to be perfect and male characters essentially being able to do whatever the fuck they want so long as they’re pretty (pick a fandom, any fandom, you’re guaranteed to see the same dichotomy in treatment of male - female characters).

Apparently we can’t do that shit tho bc ‘oh no you’re blaming my bae!!!’ like wow, really fucking stupid much.

Anyway, to explain why I’m raging (why all of us are raging actually: it’s glorious to behold and I feel so blessed to experience the righteous fury of my spouses and friends) I personally feel like this particular person has literally pulled the embodiment of that “she doesn’t even go here” meme because whoa boy, their reblog does not belong here.

Now, in general I’m usually quite happy to let the morons roll on by like the sad little tumbleweeds of ignorance they are. But not when it’s on a post informing others of the behaviour and perception of gender/sex relations and treatment of characters in fandom. When you show up here and want to blame a single character who is flawed, especially just to venerate and excuse the behaviour of another flawed character... well, then I feel obligated to respond.

It’s not personal it is it’s just in my nature.

Okay so, first paragraph of their reblog (and subsequent stupid dialogue included) sums up the situation on Mustafar as ‘Padme should have been a good wife and sided with her genocidal husband who just helped wipe out thousands of lives (including children) bc she’s his wife’ and that ‘Obi-Wan is responsible bc he tried to do his duty as a Jedi’ and apparently that’s wrong as according to the Gospel of the Anakin Apologist.

Of course, they make a general, sweeping statement about Obi-Wan, describing him as a ‘fantastic space cop but an asshole friend and a person in general’ which, as I’m sure you’re all aware, shows a typical lack of understanding of what the Jedi are in universe, and also the background of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s interaction.

This isn’t unusual and I’m not gonna berate people for not knowing about the EU (Extended Universe) materials, or those damned benighted Junior Apprentice (JA) novels about Obi-Wan’s padawanship (and Anakin’s later on). The thing is though, there is plenty of information available about Obi-Wan, his background and so on on various websites -- Wookieepedia, to name but one -- so I don’t think it’s fair to be so quick to judge a character, any character, without understanding their background.

Even if this blogger is uninitiated into the ranks of SW lore and such, even if they only have the movies to go on, I still consider them to have a shockingly particular mindset and perspective of the relationship between the three protagonist characters.

So, here’s the thing, the below is a direct quote from their post. As you can see it’s... a particular perspective.

Padme should have sided with Anakin or Obi-Wan clearly when Anakin confronted her about Obi-Wan being on the ship, Obi-Wan killed Padme by appearing while they were talking, Padme might’ve been able to talk some sense into Anakin or join him, i guess Obi-Wan was afraid Padme would flip sides and decided to burst out with his “hello there” bullshit, if i was Padme i would have immediately said            “that fucker snuck on my ship i had nothing to do with this, take care of him my love!” or “oh shit, well i didn’t plan this Obi-Wan tag in!”            i know she was shocked and all that jazz but lady think on your feet, you went to meet your fugitive husband who just killed a academy full of space coplings on isolated planet and a space cop popped out of your trunk, use your words and use them quick! Anakin choking his wife in anger is understandable when you think of it from his perspective,           “ok im on the hide from the law(Jedi), ill contact my wife and get her to safety” “hi love i came alone as you asked”            “oh thank god for a moment i thought you might sympathize with the corrupt jedi” *Obi-Wan dumb ass pops out of the shadows* “hello there bitches!~~”            “wtf Padme?! you brought a cop to our meet out?! you do know i am wanted dead right!? You little bitch! i did this all so i could keep you alive and this is how you repay me? i killed younglings to get this power Padme fucking younglings! you ungrateful little bitch ill kill you!” “hey bro let her go you said you wanted to save her right? kind of doing the opposite right now”            “… god damn it i hate it when he is right, lets fight!”

First of all, they’re working on the assumption that Anakin was hiding from the Jedi. Second of all, that he was hiding from the Law(Jedi). Perhaps their memory has failed them, but I’ll provide a little breakdown of how the third movie actually went so they can understand that their initial narrative is... well, to put it plainly, ‘wrong and really wrong’.

1. Separatists vs Republic battle with Obi-Wan and Anakin going after Dooku. Dooku dies by Anakin’s hands after being disarmed (this is murder btw, rules of war mean that if your opponent loses or surrenders, then you don’t kill them -- this is generally considered a war crime). 

2. Obi-Wan and Anakin talk about stuff and then Obi-Wan heads off to chase Grievous alone. This is after Anakin has been put on the Council by Palpatine even though he’s only been a Knight for a while. The Jedi do not approve, Obi-Wan is cautious and advises Anakin to be careful (Anakin ignores him by the way and continues to be friendly with Palpatine).

4. While Obi-Wan is off after Grievous, Anakin has Palpatine’s identity revealed to him. Gets played into saving him from Mace and co in order to keep Padme alive (even though she isn’t dead by the way). Anakin then goes to the Temple with a collection of Clones and helps murder every Jedi there. He purposefully murders the children in the Council chambers. 

5. Obi-Wan is nearly killed after defeating Grievous because of Order 66. He escapes and hides. Meets up with Yoda and Bail. Goes to the Temple. Finds out that Anakin killed Jedi and is heartbroken by this fact. Then he goes to Padme after being tasked by his superior to go and defeat Anakin. He tells her the truth and she refuses to believe him.

6. Padme goes to meet with Anakin who is on Mustafar, drowning in his angst-ridden guilt of now having become an accomplice to genocide. Obi-Wan tags along, knowing that Anakin and Padme love each other so much that both would forsake their duties. He hides and Padme doesn’t know. Anakin doesn’t notice.

7. Padme rejects Anakin BEFORE Obi-Wan shows himself, because she realises he’s literally gone crazy. Then Anakin turns on Padme and chokes her into unconsciousness, even though she’s heavily pregnant and he ‘loves’ her. Obi-Wan gets Anakin to focus on him and they fight.

8. They fight to the point where Obi-Wan has the high-ground and Anakin does a stupid and gets his limbs cut off. Obi-Wan leaves him to burn to death (brutal) and goes to Padme. He takes her for treatment and instead watches one of his oldest friends die while her children are made into orphans.

9. Movie ends with Anakin becoming the giant suit version of Vader and Obi-Wan on Tattooine delivering Luke to his aunt and uncle.

Anakin isn’t evading the law, aka the Jedi, he’s killed them. Obi-Wan is the one evading the law because it wants him dead. Anakin is on Mustafar because Sidious told him to take out the Sep leadership. Padme meets him there after hearing the truth from Obi-Wan and only believes it when Anakin admits it himself. Then she rejects him. Obi-Wan does his duty as a Jedi -- sworn to destroy the Sith -- and the end is that Padme dies because Anakin loses his temper and lashes out at her.

I may be Anakin apologist but considering his situation he didn’t act out of character, id be pissed off too if i contacted my wife when i am in hiding and she brings a cop there (it seemed like that to Anakin since he didn’t know Obi-wan snuck on board) before i can explain myself to my wife

Firstly, you are an Anakin apologist and he did act out of character. His behaviour after discovering Sidious’ identity and stopping Mace from killing a Sith Lord is out of character. Anakin is a bright, kind and friendly child with a temper issue. Anakin is someone who hates injustice and despises the way some people are treated by others for no other reason than because of where they were born or who they were born to. He was a slave and then he became a Jedi; he went from victim to protector. His final character jump sent him from protector to oppressor. That’s not in character, that’s specifically cultivated and justified behaviour because he puts his own needs above absolutely everything else.

He also had the chance to explain to Padme. He didn’t deny what he did and Padme actively rejected him when she realised he wasn’t sorry for what he’d done ‘in the name of love’. You’re justifying abuse and don’t even realise it.

Think of it like this, in a galaxy where there are force powers etc shit you keep seeing horrible nightmares of your wife dying, your mother gets kidnapped by space isis and killed,             you butcher the village in retaliation and tell your wife about it, after which the greatest political figure of your “country” tells you that there is a way to save your wifes life from the faith that seems foretold (like someone offering you a cure for cancer when you think your wife has cancer),            the old dude tells you you have to do something to get the cure (equivalent would probably be extracting stem cells from kids spines or something lethal), well you love your wife and can’t let her die because love,            well you go and do the dirty deed like a loving husband would can’t let your honey bun die, now you’re kind of in hiding waiting for your old dude friend to wipe out the cops (rought shit but it will all be worth it when i save my wife from certain death),            you contact your wife and tell her to meet you in some backwater planet where you two can talk it out, you can tell her why you did it and you can finally save her from her faith, your wife finally arrives the joy we are finally together, listen wife the reason i killed the younglings is “Everybody down on the ground, the Jedi man has arrived!”,            all your efforts to get the cure, all you did in the name of saving your wife and she brings a cop to execute you (that’s what he thought and can’t blame him, how the fuck did she not know Obi-Wan snuck on board?)

Firstly, Shmi Skywalker was kidnapped and tortured by Tusken Raiders on Tattooine, not ‘Space ISIS’. The settlers on Tattooine are the proverbial invaders of a planet where the Tuskens are the natural species. So your metaphor is inaccurate and shows but a lack of understanding and also a clear desire to produce extreme sympathy for Anakin. We don’t know why the Tusken’s took Shmi but it’s generally considered unusual behaviour. We do know that they have attacked farms on Tattooine before and that they have been united by an ex-Jedi at one point when Obi-Wan was in exile. This is all we know. So you’re making an assumption that they’re evil terrorists when you don’t even have the material to back you up. 

Anakin killed an entire village of Tuskens, including women and children. There is no excuse for that. Unless you think it would be acceptable for a US soldier to execute the children in an Iraqi village because some of the inhabitants were part of Al Queda? 

Obi-Wan had already informed Anakin in Attack of the Clones that ‘dreams pass in time’ referring to Anakin’s recurring problems with his dreams about his mother. Anakin didn’t inform Obi-Wan of anything after that and so Obi-Wan has no knowledge. He tried to help, in his own way. Anakin’s behaviour and fear of what he dreamt about Padme drove him to extremes of behaviour -- the love he held for her is what destroyed him because he was so selfish as to refuse to let her go.

The dangers of attachment isn’t of falling in love, it’s in that love turning into obsession which is what happened with Anakin. Palpatine used Anakin’s fears of losing Padme to sway him into his service and with Mace’s death, sealed his fate and that of Padme. 

Do you honestly think Padme would have died had she not been choked into unconsciousness by her ‘loving’ husband on a boiling planet of death, after the revelation that her husband had willingly committed genocide because of his love for her? 

If you do then there’s no hope for you.

The dialogue of the Mustafar scene is below, read it and perhaps recognise that Anakin admits to having become obsessed with power and paranoid. Perhaps also recognise how Padme only rejects him after he says he’s going to overthrow the Chancellor and together they can rule the galaxy.

Padme: Obi-Wan told me terrible things Anakin: What things? Padme: He said, you’d turned to the Dark Side. That you... killed younglings? Anakin: Obi-Wan is trying to turn you against me Padme: He cares about us Anakin: Us? Padme: He knows. He wants to help you... Anakin, all I want is your love Anakin: Love won’t save you Padme, only my new powers can do that Padme: At what cost? You’re a good person, don’t do this! Anakin: I won’t lose you the way I lost my mother. I am becoming more powerful than any Jedi has ever dreamed of. And I’m doing it for you. To protect you Padme: Come away with me. Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can! Anakin: Don’t you see? We don’t have to run away anymore. I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor. I- I can overthrow him. And together you and I can rule the galaxy. Make things the way we want them to be Padme: [backs away, shaking head] I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Obi-Wan was right, you’ve changed Anakin: I don’t want to hear any more about Obi-Wan. The Jedi turned against me, don’t you turn against me Padme: I don’t know you any more. Anakin... you’re breaking my heart. You’re going down a path I can’t follow Anakin: Because of Obi-Wan?  Padme: Because of what you’ve done! What you plan to do! Stop! Stop now! Come back! I love you! Anakin: LIAR! Padme: No! Anakin: You’re with him! You brought him here to kill me! [Starts choking HIS WIFE] Obi-Wan: Let her go Anakin!

The end of this interaction is that Padme rejects Anakin for going power-mad, Anakin admits he’s become a stranger to her and then attacks her over a perceived betrayal -- out of character for someone who at the beginning of the movie thought Padme might have been cheating on him and then APOLOGISED for thinking such things in the first place. 

In conclusion to your post that I’m not going to ever reblog, but will link here so others can read it in full, I have to say that your ending paragraph is... well, a fantastic example of selective thinking and something I daresay several of my friends from my psych classes would have had a field day with the dispositional and situational bias you exhibit.

who nearly killed Anakin and Padme? Obi-wan freaking Kenobi, well done douchebag, be sure to lie to his son that Vader killed Anakin to pit a son against his own father, Obi-wan was a fantastic space cop but an asshole friend and a person in general, dude is the reason Luke’s father is a space cyborg and Padme is a corpse, but that’s not all let’s turn their son into a space cop and tell him to kill daddy cyborg, he’ll never know it was his father, if he did this could really backfire but who gives a shit ill probs be dead by then

[reanimatedmagpie]

WHO ELSE IS IN THE STORY

Besides Dragon there are:

August - The protag number 1 and a sweet half demon cinnamon roll magical boy. Has anime hair, pointy ears, and a really dumb jacket. Also, a prince of a really tiny country in a rather magical world and has to deal with politics. He hates doing it with passion as it requires talking to a lot of grumpy people who all slightly hate him. Likes to help others, but his social awkwardness makes it difficult in a lot of situations. Isn’t particularly crazy to inherit the throne, but as a single child kind of has to, so, hopes to be a somewhat decent leader. Has a magical power that has to do with giving hints and predicting future, as far as he knows at least but his understanding of it is like, at 3% now. He is extremely frustrated because of it.

Nicole - The protag number 2 and a grumpy edgy moody nerd teen. She was bored with life on Earth and now when she is in a magical world she… is still bored because transporting into another world doesn’t just magically change your views on life. Deeply flawed but #relatable. Earns actual redeeming qualities as the story progresses as she realizes some important stuff.

Emma - August’s best friend and since the first day of their life and also pretty much a de-facto adopted sibling. Is a jester/bodyguard of August. Loves her job. Is unapologetically gay. Uses dual blades in combat. Owns a deck of tarot cards. She and August were born on the same day and together they act pretty much as actual twins. If they lived on Earth they would totally wear Jessie and James outfits for Halloween and on all the conventions they go to. Did I mention how gay she is? She is really gay. 

Mary T. - A nice girl who just wants to be a cartographer but has to aid Nicole on a supposed magical quest. Does pathfinding magic. To August’s envy is actually pretty good with controlling and understanding it. Has a crush on Emma but they are not exactly on the same side for the majority of the story, so, she has conflicted feelings about it. She is also really shy.

Cassandra - The beautiful lady in armor. Also the captain of the royal guards who is on the watch for crime and injustice. If only she looked in the right direction to find it… She is seen as a hero by the people but she herself has some doubts. Something doesn’t seem quite right to her at the moment, but she can’t find out what. Recently has found old records of people disappearing without a trace and can’t put that out of her mind.

Goritsvet - Hot Russian spy witch lady. Also a skilled healer. Is actually able to get a person who got cut in half back together alive. Her and Juliana have a secret romance. She is also the same kind of being as Dragon is, but telling any further would be a massive spoiler. She is a highly qualified spy and can find any information as long as she knows what exactly to look for.

Juliana of Freewind - August’s mother and a queen of Freewind. Quite an effective leader who is generally positively seen by her people which is an impressive feat. Extremely aware of everything that is happening on the political front and her network of spies has newer been outshined. Uses communication magic. Has majestic horns.

[pamphletstoinspire]

Psalm 81 - Interpreted

Daily Plenary Indulgence

Per Vatican II, one of the ways to gain a daily plenary indulgence is to read Scripture for ½ hour per day. For Pamphlets to Inspire (PTI), the Scripture readings that inspire us the most are the Psalms. Reading the Psalms and understanding their meaning can sometimes be challenging. In an attempt to draw more individuals to not only read the Psalms, but to understand their meaning, PTI has found an analysis of their meaning by St. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. The method that will be employed is to list the chapter and verse, and then provide an explanation of that verse. Your interest in this subject will determine how often we will chat about this topic. The Bible that will be used is the official Bible of the Catholic Church and used by the Vatican, that is, the Douay-Rheims or Latin Vulgate version.

An exhortation to judges and men in power.

1. God hath stood in the congregation of gods: and being in the midst of them he judgeth gods.

1. “God hath stood in the congregation of gods: and being in the midst of them, he judgeth gods.” The holy Prophet pronounces that God is always present with judges when they are delivering their judgment, and that he sits in judgment on theirs. A consideration that would prove highly useful to judges, if they would seriously consider that all causes will be judged in the sight of the supreme Judge. “God hath stood;” is always present in his majesty, though invisible; “in the congregation of gods;” in the assembly of the judges when they meet to sit in judgment; and, while they are judging the people, he, “in the midst” of them standing by, judges the judges themselves.

2. How long will you judge unjustly; and accept the persons of the wicked?

2. “How long will you judge unjustly; and accept the persons of the wicked?” Whether this is the language of the Prophet reproving the judges for not reflecting on the fact of God’s presence at their judgments, and thus judge wrongfully; or whether it is the language of God, who, on assisting at the trials, and examining the decisions, reproves the corrupt judges for their principal and most frequent crime, their regard of persons, which causes them to decide unjustly, is uncertain, but, because it is the Holy Ghost who speaks through the mouth of the Prophet, and because it seldom happens that a poor man, however just, meets with favor or partiality; and it is quite the other way with the rich man, no matter how much in the wrong; he, therefore, censures them most severely for such regard of persons. “How long will you judge unjustly?” How long will you persevere in this sin of unjust judgment? And he assigns the principal cause of their doing so when he says, “and accept the persons of the wicked;” for, hence all the unjust judgments, the judges not looking to the merits of the case, but that the favor of the rich and powerful, who themselves sin by the fact of wishing the judges to lean to them instead of to justice. To “accept the persons of the wicked,” then, means to pronounce sentence, not according to the justice of the case, but according to the wishes of one party, be he friend, benefactor, or relation.

3. Judge for the needy and fatherless: do justice to the humble and the poor.

3. “Judge for the needy and fatherless: do justice to the humble and the poor.” Having censured vice of regard of person, he now adverts to the oppression of the poor, which judges are guilty of when a deferred justice to the poor, or when they decide unjustly against them, for fear of displeasing their more powerful adversaries. “Judge for the needy and the fatherless.” Freely entertain, diligently discuss, and, for fear they may suffer by protracted litigation, decide as quickly as possible on the case of the poor; and especially of the orphans. This, however, supposes that they have justice at their side; for, in Leviticus 19, we read, “respect not the person of the poor nor honor the countenance of the mighty, but judge thy neighbor according to justice.” The meaning, then, is not to judge at all times in favor of the poor, but, when he shall have justice at his side, that the judge shall take care to make it appear, and not to allow him to be oppressed by the influence of his adversaries.

4. Rescued the poor; and deliver the needy out of the hand of the Sinner.

4. “Rescue the poor; and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner.” The judge does not discharge his duty by giving a just decision if he does not compel the rich and the powerful to make restitution to the poor and the needy, either by restoring what they took from them, or by compensating them for their losses through defamation or litigation; and he therefore says, “rescue the poor” from the powerful, “and the needy” from the same sinner. A repetition for the sake of impression. In this point especially, should judges and princes show their power in protecting the poor. By so doing, they conciliate God and the people; but as they generally do not, the Prophet adds:

5. They have not known nor understood; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth shall be moved.

5. “They have not known nor understood: they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth shall be moved.” He now deplores the willful blindness of those judges, whose injustice is the cause of all the confusion all over the world. For, as the Lord himself says, “if the salt lose its flavor, with what shall it be salted?” And again, “if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great will the darkness itself be?” So we can say of those who administer justice, if justice be not found in them, where will it be found? Injustice will reign supreme. “They have not known nor understood.” They took no trouble to inquire into the facts nor the law of the case. Such ignorance caused them “to walk on in darkness;” to give erroneous decisions, like one going astray in the dark; and from erroneous decisions, from such ignorance, arose confusion, tumult, sedition and rebellion, on the part of the people; as is signified in the next sentence, “all the foundations of the earth shall be moved;” that means, the whole world will be confused, and knocked about. When the whole kingdom of Israel revolted from Dave, no other reason could be assigned for such revolt but Absalom’s having persuaded the people that David took no trouble in hearing their complaints, and doing them justice, 2 Kings 13. The holy Scripture assigns bribery as the cause of so much corruption among judges. Thus, Isaias 1, “they all love bribes they run after rewards; they judge not for the fatherless, and the widows cause, cometh not in to them;” and in Exodus 23, “neither shalt thou take bribes, which blind the wise;” and in Deuteronomy 16, “thou shall not accept gifts: for gifts blind the eyes of the wise, and changed the words of the just;” and finally, Ecclus. 20, “presents and gifts blind the eyes of judges, and make them dumb in the mouth, so that they cannot correct.”

6. I has said: you are gods, and all of you the sons of the most high.

6 “I have said: you are gods, and all of you the sons of the Most High.” Having hitherto censured those judges for the respect of persons, their injustice, and their ignorance, he now shows how derogatory such vices are to the high position in which God had placed them. “I have said;” I have asserted, that you judges and princes “are gods, and all of you the sons of the Most High.” He calls them the sons of the Most High; either, because they were nearly equal to the angels who, in Job, all called “sons of God;” or to show that these judges are not gods, strictly speaking, as is the true supreme God, who had neither beginning nor end; but that they may be called gods, it as much as they are sons of God, of the one true God; and made, to a certain extent, gods by him when he gave them a share in his authority, and power of sitting in judgment. In the Gospel of St. John, our Lord, in quoting this passage, says, that they are called gods, because “the word of God was spoken to them.” Then said he, “if he called them gods, to whom the word of God was spoken; do you say of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world: thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” The meaning of the expression, “to whom the word of God was spoken,” is the being appointed to, or entrusted with, some particular duty by God. Thus, “the word of God came to the prophets whom he sent to preach;” and in Luke 3, “the word of the Lord came to John.” Hence, we see the force of Christ’s argument. If those whom God entrusted with any particular duty or mission were called gods, how much a better title thereto have I not, who am the Son of God, sent with all power into the world by my heavenly Father? We are not, however, to infer from this passage that all princes and judges have their power immediately to God. Some have, such as Moses and the Old, and Peter in the New Testament. Others have it through the consent of the people, who give up the power of the natural law conferred on them, which power had its origin in God, “for there is no power but from God,” Romans 13.

7. But you like men shall die; and shall fall like one of the princes.

7. “But you like men shall die; and shall fall like one of the princes.” I have told you what you were through God’s mercy. I will now tell you what you are through your own perversity. Through God’s mercy you were gods, and like angels; but, from the sin you inherit from your first family, “like men you shall die;” and, from your own wickedness in abusing the power committed to you, “you shall fall” from the highest pinnacle of glory to the lowest pit of hell, “like one of the princes,” the fallen angels.

8. Arise, O God, Judge thou the earth: but thou shalt inherit among all the nations.

8. “Arise, O God, judge thou the earth: for thou shall inherit among all the nations.” The Prophet concludes by asking God’s assistance against the injustice of the princes and judges of this world, and prays that he who is the real master and owner of this world may correct the judgment of man, may punish unjust judges, and relieve the oppressed poor according to his own power and wisdom; the prayer being a prophetic one, in which he predicts, the Messias, who, as he will come in for the inheritance of the world, will also see that justice be fairly administered therein, through his princes and judges, and afterwards by himself on the day of judgment. “Arise, O God, judge the earth;” since the judges so abused their authority, you, that are the supreme Judge, arise and “judge the earth,” including the judges themselves, and deliver the suffering poor from their unjust oppressors; “for thou shalt inherit among all the nations;” because all nations, as they ever did, so they ever will belong to you; because you never placed anyone in power here below without reserving the supreme authority to yourself above.

[escaping-worries]

I don’t know what to say really. 

I started doing a Grant and replying to racists on Facebook when they complain about news articles. It’s painfully obvious that these people aren’t reading the articles. I have had to sit and correct grown-ass people saying “why you bringing this up and we need to learn from history not live in the past” like are you fucking dumb? This is the kind of stupidity where it’s like what can you say to that except for wow guess some people just don’t have a brain!! And we all know why but I’m saying it anyway, I wonder WHY on articles I’ve seen about viking burials being discovered and articles about fossils that they aren’t “stirring anything up” or aren’t people “living in the past”. It’s almost like we’re selective with what history we want to hear as white people because some of it made us uncomfortable. I’m tired of hearing all lives matter, I’m tired of hearing about black on black slavery, I’m tired of hearing about persecution of Jews because this issue isn’t going to go away just because you point out other injustices!! BLACK LIVES MATTER does NOT say that YOUR life as a non-black person DOESN’T MATTER. It just says that black lives DO. It’s not that hard to understand if these people had even one fucking brain cell!!!! 

On top of the fact that as a woman arguing with grown men online, I get things MANSPLAINED TO ME. Apparently me saying yeah they re-named streets and took down statues of Hitler is cancelled out by Chris very helpfully telling me that other Nazi places of importance still exist - THE ONE HE LISTED IS A FUCKING MUSEUM NOW GUYS, GALS AND NON-BINARY PALS!!! So I told him that. He didn’t reply. I told him how Germany had lots of museums and used these places to educate against fascism, Nazism, racism and antisemitism and some other bloke called Brian told me that they didn’t do that straight away and that Nazis weren’t all jailed or anything. Well, fuck me Brian. You really showed me didn’t you. My point about the museums that exist and the way Germany talks about its history as being awful but something to learn from has been completely THWARTED by your dumb-ass inclusion of something that still doesn’t fucking disprove my point. We get it. You watch World War Two documentaries.

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of fucking arguing with idiots. People who can’t spell or write or pull a sentence together and I UNDERSTAND that some people might take this as offensive like what if they’re dyslexic what if they have issues with literacy and I am SORRY for that but mostly my annoyance stems from these people wanting to have arguments with me and not making any fucking sense. Proof read your two sentence comment, Barry. I don’t know what you’re fucking saying pal. 

I’m tired of explaining to grown men how news articles work. That this article is about one topic but other articles are about other topics. That’s how news works. You can’t fit every instance of racism into one article it would take literally forever. An article focusing on systemic racism against black people in the UK does not need to include information about Jewish persecution. Yes, that’s awful. But it’s not what the article is about you fucking moron. I don’t sit in Brooklyn Nine Nine and go “wow like what about all the work that doctors and social workers do in New York. Why is this show only about crime and the police Wow. This must be racist. All lives matter” because that would make me an actual fucking IDIOT. I’m fucking tired of it. I’m tired of the way people with stupid, bigoted opinions talk so loudly in Facebook comments. I’m tired of people wanking themselves off cos they all have the same racist opinions, the same opinions that BBC news should cover local news as if it’s not a GLOBAL FUCKING NETWORK, I’m tired of people not understanding the easiest fucking things to understand!!! Like how news articles work!!!! And I know that it’s not that they’re really mad about, they’re mad that everything isn’t about white people, they’re mad that people are asking them to confront their own privileges and own biases and own racism and it’s hard and I get that but I also think GROW THE FUCK UP. An article asking for information about a local slave trader, in a north east newspaper, should not cause uproar. I shouldn’t have to explain to people that nothing is being torn down, nothing is being criticised, but information IS being requested. I shouldn’t have to explain to people that 3 people being killed in Reading has nothing to do with Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But here I am. Doing it. 

I know this is a bit of a rant. I feel like writing is all but I can’t actually write my blog because I’m too angry to be educational and informative. It would just be me saying SYSTEMIC RACISM EXISTS YOU FUCKING MORON. And that’s not very good because I am writing a history blog. So I want to be clear and good. Not angry. But I am angry. I can’t calm down about it all. 

What I don’t want to come across as is a white person who is angry now and it’s like where have you been. I have cared about these issues beforehand, but I can acknowledge that I haven’t done enough to educate myself and others. I have the luxury and privilege of not being affected by these issues everyday. And I know I can do more. And I am trying to. I’ve got some of the recommended texts, I read news articles and articles talking about the issues, I am watching lots of documentaries and series related to the issue. I am trying and I don’t expect praise for that. It’s just what you do. Everyday I try to find a petition I haven’t signed yet and sign it. I know where systemic racism comes from. I know how micro aggressions are harmful. I want to be better. So I probably will keep arguing with racists on Facebook. I will continue to post anti-racist videos and articles. I will try to write more inclusively about people of all races and backgrounds. History is more than just white people and history is more than just what Brian, Karen and Steve find interesting on Facebook. 

Anyway. If you read this, thanks very much. I update this resource post as regularly as I can and would appreciate it if you thought about following an organisation’s social media page, or signing a petition, or donating, or reading a newspaper article. Just because it’s important.   Link: https://wholecharlottahistory.wordpress.com/2020/06/08/anti-racism-what-you-can-do/

[epistolizer]

Southern Baptist Convention Undermined By Russell Moore's Propensity Towards Compromise

(photo wikimedia commons)

Granted, in response to what was seen as encroaching apostasy and unbelief eroding both strong moral and sound doctrine, Fundamentalism at times presented a militant brand of conservative Protestantism that could could occasionally be construed as a bit gruff around the edges.  In such circles, a soft answer was not necessarily perceived as turning away wrath as admonished by Proverbs 15:1 but rather as a sign of spiritual weakness and, even worse, possible compromise.  

In what is categorized as the nation's largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention serves as an interesting sociological barometer in terms of what direction ideological winds tend to be blowing.  For example early in the twentieth century, the ecclesiastical association nearly succumbed to the temptations of liberalism and modernism only to be pulled back from this brink by a conservative resurgence that coincided with the ascent of Reaganism on through the Republican Party taking both houses of Congress in the 1990's.  

Now it seems the tide might once again be receding.  Those that have in a sense grown up in an environment characterized as overwhelmingly religious are tempted to surrender the ground gained as a form of repentance in their minds for certain admitted excesses and as a way to promote the peace and toleration always being yelled about in one's ear.  

In his early 40's as of this writing in late 2017, Dr. Russell Moore of Southern Theological Seminary and now the Ethics and Public Policy Commission is often fawned over as a prominent young leader who could very likely shape the Southern Baptist Convention throughout the course of much of the twenty-first century.  If that is the case, conservative Baptists mind end up finding themselves betrayed on what could very well be a sinking ship.  

Without a doubt, Russell Moore professes those fundamentals of the faith necessary to assure the individual of salvation in Christ and eternity in Heaven.  But it is in those areas where it is easy to compromise for broad approval and applause that Dr. Moore presents the greater spiritual danger.  

I Corinthians 9:22 counsels to be all things to all men.  By this, it is believed that the Gospel message can be adapted within certain parameters or presented in such a way that addresses individuals in the particular circumstances in which they find themselves.    

The problem with Russell Moore and an  increasing number within Evangelical Christianity in general and the Southern Baptist Convention in particular is the growing conviction that, in order to appeal to what is perceived as untapped demographics, professional religionists must go out of there way to publicly denigrate those expected to financially sponsor these outreach efforts.  And in so doing, one is expected to turn one's back on much of the foundation that was laid as the foundation that got us to where we are today.

This is particularly evident in Russell Moore's response to the Trayvon Martin incident.  As someone that presents himself not only as a clergyman but as someone that also makes his comfortable living as such, one might think Russell Moore would have endeavored to remain above the fray in regards to such an issue by calling for cooler heads to prevail or to point out how quickly individual lives can be lost.

Instead, Moore came out quite publicly in favor of Trayvon Martin and against George Zimmerman.  The mouthpiece of Southern Baptist public policy is quoted in the 7/16/13 edition of the Washington Post as saying, “Regardless of what Trayvon Martin was doing or not doing, you have someone who was taking upon himself some sort of vigilante justice, even by getting out of the car.  Regardless of what the legal verdict was, this was wrong.  

Perhaps we really should consider what transpired and especially what it was that Trayvon Martin was doing the moment his life ended.  

From what the judicial process has been able to establish, Trayvon Martin was beating George Zimmerman and delivering blows to the head that could have resulted in permanent injury and even death.  Why does the criteria Moore invokes to defend Martin not apply to protect Zimmerman in this incident as well?  

For example, according to Moore, the chain of events began when Zimmerman disembarked from the vehicle.  That may or may not have been the wisest course of action.  However, that was probably more legal and less suspicious than Martin zig-zagging late at night in and out of people's yards like a drunk or  reefer addict up to no good.  

So if Zimmerman committed a great wrong by laying his hands on Martin, why should Martin be exonerated for attacking Zimmerman who was doing nothing worse than perambulating over a public thoroughfare?  However, it is apparently not enough for Moore to simply side perhaps with the party that did not have access to a fire arm in this altercation.  

One can barely find a piece of direct mail promotional newsletter propaganda these days that does not go out of its way to denigrate White people for simply being white.  A considerable number of these ecclesiastical functionaries have adopted a rhetoric of White guilt more typically emanating from the likes of Phil Donahue and Woody Allen that from behind a Dixie pulpit.  One of the foremost practitioners of this victimization narrative is none other than Russell Moore.  

To the analysis of the Trayvon Martin issue, Russell Moore added, “And when you add this to the larger context of racial profiling and a legal system that does seem to have systemic injustices as it related to African Americans with arrests and sentencing, I think makes for a huge crisis.”   Moore further observes, “Most white evangelicals...are seeing [the Martin case] microscopically and most African Americans are seeing it macroscopically.   Most white Americans say we don't know what happened that night and they are missing the point.”  

As dumb as Whites are depicted now by the hierarchs of the Southern Baptist Convention, it's a wonder they are able to drop their tithe into the collection plate.  But perhaps it is because of such stupidity that Whites so flagrantly mocked don't take their religious dollars elsewhere.  

Notice that nowhere in those comments did Moore ponder that Trayvon Martin might have been as high as a kite or that George Zimmerman might have taken the only course of action that would have preserved his own life.  If Moore is going to be this discombobulated over matters of race and ethnicty to the point where in matters of law enforcement and civil adjudication that the primary concern is not so much that of an individual's guilt or innocence in terms of committing a certain act but rather on the basis of the individual's membership in certain demographic categories, Russell Moore should be asked just what is he himself willing to sacrifice in terms of comprehensive social equity.  

For example, if Russell Moore on a proverbial dark and stormy night found himself confronted by a Black assailant that proceeds to perpetrate violence against this seminarian naive to how the world actually exists, is he going to do what he expected of George Zimmerman and allow himself to be pummeled either to death or into a state of permanent mental imbecility as a result of brain damage received for the good of the cause?  More importantly, is Dr. Moore willing for his wife or daughters to be raped in order to balance out what Southern Baptist functionaries such as himself now consider the scales of ethnic justice?  

Just as important, should these kinds of tragedies befall Rev. Moore or his ecclesiastical allies and the scumbag is apprehended by law enforcement, are these theologians then going to parrot the fashionable liberal drivel about disparities in sentencing should the perpetrator of the crimes against them be one of the minorities the denomination has come to coddle and fawn over these past few years?  For in his praise of Trayvon Martin and condemnation of George Zimmerman, Moore went out of his way to emphasize this issue.  

In 2013, the Convention went out of its way to enact a resolution condemning incarceration with little mention as to whether or not those tossed in the slammer might actually deserve to be there.  Perhaps the denomination would instead prefer to come out in favor of more explicitly Old Testament punishments such as floggings and public executions.  

The Convention also condemned former chairman of the Ethics and Policy Commission and eventually forced into retirement Richard Land for merely verbalizing what it was that the vast majority of Americans were already thinking that President Obama was “trying to gin up the black vote” and that allied racemongers “need the Trayvon Martins to continue perpetuating their central myth --- America is a racist and evil nation.”  

It is not only in the area of race relations where Russell Moore falls pitifully short of the kind of leadership Baptists need if the denomination and that particular theological perspective is to not only ride out the waves of the looming cultural collapse but possibly even rescue the nation from drowning in these overwhelming historical tides.

In coverage of the 2013 convention in which Russell Moore was installed as the chairman of the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission, an observer gushed in one press account that his election brought a more moderate tone.  As it was explained, “The new generation is less ideologically motivated.”  However, is it that the new generation is “less ideologically motivated” or simply that it decided to collaborate in implementing a more leftist ideology?

It seems Brother Moore is quite adept at implementing a don't do as I do, do as I say mentality.  For on an episode of the Albert Mohler Program broadcast sometimes around 2006 probably around the first time I had ever even heard of Russell Moore, he confessed that, while thoroughly enjoying Halloween himself as a youth, it is now wrong for contemporary Christian children to participate in Halloween. And the point of raising this issue, some are probably asking with perplexity?  After all, such a viewpoint is no doubt common among a variety of theologies found among Independent Baptist, conservative Southern Baptist, and even Pentecostal or Charismatic churches.

Indeed it is.  However, the example is brought up to point out that Russell Moore and the young Turks advocating his style of social engagement are not quite of the live and let live mindset those unaccustomed to fully parsing phrases such as “less ideologically motivated” might be led to believe.  If anything, it would seem Russell Moore has something of a tendency to crackdown in those areas where individual preference should be allowed to flourish while allowing things to get a bit out of line where, if one slacks an inch, assorted subversives will take a proverbial mile.  

How does this represent a more moderate wind being blown into Baptist sails?  I can assure you, I know first hand the sort of message has been pounded into the minds of Christian youth for nearly thirty years.  

I remember back in my day that, along with whether or not you watched “The Simpsons”, you would speak in hushed tones about celebrating Halloween for fear of bringing the wrath of the more religiously fanatical teachers in Christian day school down upon you.  It often seemed that some would even go out of their way to assign extra homework or schedule a test for the next day as a way to punish those that might succumb to the temptation of masquerading for prepackaged nocturnal confections.  

This hypocrisy aside, it is not the only issue regarding which this new breed of seemingly less ideological Southern Baptist leader may actually be more ideological than ever before.  Baptists might be mocked with the mantra of “Don't drink, don't chew, and don't go with girls who do” in terms of the rigorous behavioral codes many adhere to in the attempt to differentiate themselves from those considered worldly and in an effort to adhere to a lifestyle that they believe would be pleasing to God.  However, if there is one area in which Baptists are noted for a spirit of liberation it is in the area of food.  

However, Russell Moore and his allies would likely impose an additional set of regulations upon those in their congregations and within their respective spheres of homiletical influence in regards to this aspect of existence in no way derived from Biblical principles such as those regarding booze.  

On 1/2/2006, Russell Moore posted an entry on the blog of the Henry Institute at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary titled “Crunchy Cons and Veggie Tales”.  The brief essay is a review and elaboration of an emerging ideology known as crunchy conservatism coined by Moore's “Touchstone Magazine” colleague Rod Dreher.  

In the post, Moore describes crunchy cons as, “...conservatives who are religious traditionalists and political conservatives but who are deeply suspicious of the materialism and consumerist assumptions of the reigning culture.”  However, the materialism denounced here goes beyond that requiring the latest iteration of the I-Phone when the one acquired last year still works perfectly fine or having to acquire an entirely new wardrobe every year irrespective of whether or not the duds from the previous season have worn out  

Rather, it is of the variety of how we mere working slobs are expected to willingly embrace with deliberation and aforethought a harsher and less convenient lifestyle because doing so makes detached intellectuals like Russell Moore that have not gotten their hands dirty in years or even decades feel so much more satisfied with themselves because they know more about how you ought to spend your miserable existence better than you do.  

In the TimesOnline article referenced by Moore titled “Mr. And Mrs. Crunchy”, his “Touchstone Magazine” colleague Rod Dreher begins, “We had come to believe that the family, not the individual, is the basic building block of our society.”  It depends upon what the writer means by that.  

Bravo if by that he is expressing a realization that, upon having children, his wellbeing and that of his wife takes a backseat and their needs play second fiddle to those of the children.  However, to those such as Rod Dreher and Russell Moore, the notion likely goes considerably beyond that.  

For example, often those of this mentality having procreated believe that they are entitled to an ever-increasing percentage of the income and accumulated resources of those that do not have children, especially if such people are single.  This confiscatory compensation can take on a number of forms.

The first is in the form of traditional taxation.  Those of a communalist mindset believe that each additional child that they parent into the world should grant them a larger piece of the economic pie to be siphoned off as form of punishment from those not having produced children or not having produced by what in their standard is an acceptable number.  One radical homeschooler has even insinuated that those not having at least four (the particular number he just happens to have) of harboring an insufficient love of children.  It is about time to end manipulation of the tax code as a kind of mind game to trick supposedly free people into engaging in predetermined behavior of any kind.

In expanding that the family and not the individual is the building block of society, Rod Dreher expounded,  “I heretically came to realize that Hillary Clinton was right: it really does take a village to raise a child.  We conservatives, with our exaltation of consumer choice and the sovereign individual, were dismantling the village as effectively as the statist libertines we opposed.”

This notion of the village goes beyond simply perhaps curtailing the amount of smut broadcast on television.  Rather, it allows for the COMMUNITY often in the guise of government authorities to have final say over decisions regarding your existence that might not really be based upon any principle clearly delineated in the pages of Scripture.

Dreher further elaborates regarding free market principles, “But they were based on fundamentally materialist assumptions about human nature which conservatives ought to have known were inaccurate and which would lead to a loss of purpose, of community, or idealism.”

But is it really the place of government (because that is ultimately what is meant by COMMUNITY to these neo-beatnik types) to police these matters in the lives of individuals and families?  For what if these are at variance with what communal elites decide constitutes prevailing values and acceptable citizenship (for lack of a better term for those advocating for the elimination of traditional borders).

For example, what ought to happen when the COMMUNITY decides you as a professional baker you will provide your particular goods and services for gay weddings?  Better yet, in such circumstances, what happens when the COMMUNITY decides that its vision of marriage not being limited between a single pair of heterosexual partners but rather open to any combination of consenting adult partners is the view to be taught to your children?

Granted, it is doubtful that a good Baptist like Russell Moore would applaud such social decay.  In fact, overall the Southern Baptist Convention has stood for the God-ordained traditional heterosexual family even if a number of the association's spokesfolk have been hoodwinked into public forums and dialogs where the attendees mired in that specific inclination are not so much looking to be delivered spiritually from that particular sin but are instead attempting to lure the well-intentioned but somewhat naïve Baptist into a state of ever-increasing compromise.

Russell Moore could be one of the most prominent Baptist leaders of the twenty-first century with the possibility as many as five additional decades of theological productivity before him if he is blessed with mental vitality and a long life.  As such, American Evangelicals need to be cognizant where his accumulating compromises undermine what little remains of the nation's conservative values and influence upon America's cultural institutions.  

Most would agree that a progressive licentiousness pervades much of the Western world's media landscape.  However, one of the few remaining areas in which conservatives of varying stripes have been able to hold their own has been talk radio.  

Yet, if Russell Moore had his way, conservatives ---- particularly of the Evangelical variety --- would relinquish the ground that they hold in the media or at least moderate their tone to the extent that such voices would be indistinguishable from any other variety of broadcaster.  

At the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention's 2014 Leadership Summit, as that body's president, Moore said that if all he knew about Christianity was what he heard on Christian radio in the Nashville area while driving to that particular conference, he would hate Christianity too.  Such an allegation, in and of itself, might have merit.  The thing of it is that, since then, Moore has been disturbingly vague and elusive regarding the nature of these criticisms.  

In this particular tirade, Moore said, “There are some people who believe that fidelity to the gospel simply means speaking 'you kids get off my lawn'.  That is not the message of the gospel.  If the call to repentance does not end with an invitation that is grounded ...in the cross and the empty tomb of Jesus we are speaking a different word than the Word that has been given.”

Such a statement is accurate if the venue and/or media under consideration is the pulpit on Sunday morning.  However, talk radio (even Christian talk radio) can have a slightly different methodology dependent upon the particular program under consideration.

For example, in his tirade Russell Moore said, “If all you and I are doing is standing and speaking a word, including a truthful word, about sexual immorality...the world does not need us for that.  The devil is able to do that on his own.  We have not been called simply to condemn.  We have been called to reconcile.”

It seems that increasingly in Dr. Moore's homiletical repertoire that “reconcile” has become a euphemism for capitulation and pandering.  There is indeed more to repentance than condemnation.  But in order for someone to admit that they are wrong and want to do something about that situation, doesn't the individual need to informed that they have done something wrong?  

Apparently in his attempt to garner the approval of religious leftists, Russell Moore insists that the world does not need us to stand and speak against sexual immorality.  But if not Christians and conservatives of various persuasions, who will be left to do so.  In light of the Duggar and Bill Gothard scandals most prominently and to a lesser extent R.C. Sproul Jr's confession to his own carnal temptation, it seems this variety of compromise is even coming to grip those uplifted among us as supposedly the best that Evangelicalism has to offer.  

For how long did Russell Moore listen to talk radio during the day in question?  Shouldn't he be required to listen to a station's entire weekly program rotation before rendering a somewhat objective verdict that the complete Gospel message is not being presented?

Russell Moore dismisses Christian talk radio as little more than the rhetorical equivalent of “you kids get off my lawn”.  But if certain people are deliberately somewhere they ought not to be doing something they definitely shouldn't be, why shouldn't they be told about it?  Professional religionists and clergy such as Moore certainly don't mind letting this be known when the tithes and offering slack off.  

In the effort to protect their stations and privileges placing them on a rung on the social ladder higher than that of the average pewfiller, a number of ministers like to emphasize the passage found in Ephesians 4:11 stipulating that some are called to be teachers, some pastors, and other evangelists.  

So why cant this also apply to the various ministries and programs features on an average Christian radio station?  Some shows might emphasize family life and personal relationships.  Others such as Moore seem to prefer, according to his remarks, to focus upon explicitly evangelistic outreach.  Others might be a bit more hard hitting (in a way that seems to turn off Dr. Moore) by exposing the doctrinal deficiencies in systems in competition with Christianity or the moral controversies eating away at the heart of American society or Western civilization.  

Russell Moore is partially correct in that if all we know of Christianity came from the assorted radio programs broadcast in the faith's name one might very well not want anything to do with this particular religion.  Does the theologian articulating such scathing remarks intend to repent of the role he has played in such a development surprisingly not always so much the result of an excess of conservatism but often times as a result of his desire to curry favor with religious leftists?  

For example, as previously stated, where in the pages of Scripture is the pastor or evangelist instructed to berate the Christian for acquiring provisions from large chain retailers such as Target or Walmart?  Likewise, what self-respecting White person is going to want anything to do with your religion when you rhetorically flog them for things that happened nearly half a century ago when it is often the minorities that these self-loathing Caucasians go out of their way to pander towards destroying property and threatening the innocent in the blighted urban areas?

It might be one thing to strive for the Biblical admonition to be all things to all men.  However, in the way in which they attempt to do so, Southern Baptist functionaries such as Russell Moore would do well to remember that those having been loyal members all along are just as much worthy of respect and admiration as those attempting to be brought into the fold.

By Frederick Meekins

[infinitewatchlistt-blog]

Some Mother’s Failson: AJ Soprano and the Millennial Condition

In upper- and upper-middle class American culture, receiving a new car on your sixteenth birthday is a cherished rite of passage. Countless episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen, a seminal work of the early 2000s (known in some online circles as the "McBling" era), feature an eager, bouncing teen rejoicing as her parents hand off the keys to a new convertible or SUV. Mom and Dad grin as they point out all the great safety features of the new car, while daughter or son caress the leather interiors and fantasize about how great the car will look in the parking lot of their school or the background of their MySpace pics. For thousands of teens growing up before the recession, their first car was a material signifier of both adult responsibility and enviable status. Fictional teenager AJ Soprano, from David Chase's masterpiece HBO series, is no exception.

For some participants of "weird Twitter", meme groups, and other obsessive online media-consumption communities, AJ Soprano has become a symbol for the beloved "failson" - a millennial who is pitiable and ironically hilarious for his constant inability to make anything of himself. Though many AJ fans were likely too young to watch The Sopranos when it initially aired, the show's continued popularity and presence on streaming services has led many young people (self included) to revisit the show. Those in the millennial age group - commonly recognized as those born between 1981 and 1997 - are likely to recognize many of the material goods that occupy AJ's adolescence: Mario Kart, metal posters, skate apparel, a personal computer kept in the bedroom (perfect for shirtless message board posting). These are items cherished by those who, unable to fit in with the more socially-adept "cool kids" (ie. those featured on shows like My Super Sweet Sixteen), retreated into a more insular world of teenage angst and video games. But AJ was not just any awkward mid-2000s teenager: he was the son of a wealthy mobster, and thanks to that, he will receive a car.

In the season five episode "All Happy Families", Tony interrupts one of AJ's belabored tutoring sessions to present him with a brand new Nissan Xterra SUV. AJ's face lights up when he sees the car, while his father tells him about "sensors in the seatbelts" and Nissan's "triple-safety philosophy". Though he notes that SUVs are less environmentally friendly, AJ is as pleased as any disaffected teen can be; but his expression changes when Tony tells him that the car will stay in the garage until he can bring his grades up to a "C". It's an attempt on Tony's part to motivate his son, but AJ immediately expresses annoyance at his parents, irritated that the gift has a catch. As in other episodes of the Sopranos, Tony and Carmela attempt to set standards for AJ, but in their materially-obsessed lives, their hopes for his success can only be expressed through expensive goods. By giving AJ a car dependent only on his continued studying and eventual attainment of good grades, Tony provides a physical representation of the gap between AJ's current self and what his parents expect him to be.

It's no wonder, then, that after the car catches fire in the series finale "Made in America", AJ tells his therapist that he feels "cleansed" by watching it explode. On a subconscious level, AJ is able to recognize the chasm of expectation that the car represents. Just moments before the car was destroyed, he was making out with a beautiful young model and listening to Bob Dylan's "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), claiming to finally "get" Dylan's music. AJ was experiencing a sense of pleasure and accomplishment at having matured in a way that had nothing to do with his parents' vision of his future. Though it was accidental, setting the car on fire was a both a dumb mistake and a youthful "fuck you!", allowing the real AJ to stick it to the imagined one that hangs over each of his failures.

This imagined AJ heavily influenced his family's view of him, but it also had an overpowering effect on how AJ saw himself. Like many teenagers, AJ strived for adulthood, sneaking into clubs, doing drugs, and trying to shrug off his parents at every turn. But AJ didn't completely reject the nuclear family he was born into: the ideal of the strong, mature head of household - someone like AJ's father - led him to pursue Blanca, a young single mother he met at one of Tony's construction sites. Blanca and her three-year-old son Hector were a ready-made family unit, practically an adult male starter pack. When AJ and Blanca start dating, he immediately jumps into the idea of caring and providing for them. Early in the relationship, he attempts to scare off men making noise outside Blanca's apartment because that's what Hector's father used to do. He takes Hector to the Puerto Rican day parade, keeps a baby seat in the back of his Nissan, and invites them to all Sopranos family functions, much to his mother's barely suppressed chagrin. AJ is so enamored with the idea of settling down with Blanca that he proposes to her, presenting a diamond ring of McBling-appropriate bigness. Blanca is unsure, and though AJ tries to convince her by saying that he'll soon be night manager at the pizzeria where he works, she ultimately declines the engagement and breaks off the relationship. This sends AJ into a deep depression, one that culminates in a suicide attempt and hospitalization. Though his father and sister try to give him perspective and insist that he'll recover from the heartbreak, AJ's failure to build a family and achieve this benchmark of male adulthood devastates him. The viewer (and AJ's more mature loved ones) is able to recognize that AJ did not put in the time and effort a nuclear family typically requires. As with the relationship between the SUV and AJ's academic performance, AJ has put the cart before the horse, and thus failed again to meet the standard provided for him.

Cognitive dissonance is the fuel that keeps the Soprano crime family running. Throughout the series, characters are constantly embroiled in petty arguments or obsessed with minor slights while downplaying the violence, death, and destruction that keeps their pockets lined. Though AJ does not participate in his father's "business", he is aware of it, often seeing news reports and internet articles about the mob's crimes. Instead of turning his burgeoning moral consciousness on the Sopranos family's actions, he fixates on other political concerns: the environment, the Israel-Palestine conflict, factory farming. Millennials recognize AJ becoming "woke" and may guiltily relate to the scenes of AJ sitting at the dinner table, claiming the steak his mother cooked with sprayed with pesticides and insisting that his father read the newspaper. AJ is so divorced from the real tragedy in his life that, just weeks after losing his cousin, he snottily tells Tony to "just bury his head in the sand" regarding the injustices of the world. As the privileged son of a well-to-do family, AJ's political concerns are linked more to his youth and his depression than to any real relationship to these struggles - it seems unlikely that he would care so much about the plight of displaced Palestinians if he had a good job and stable relationship.

Thinking that you're the only person who really understands the world is a classic symptom of youth, and AJ is a perfect symbol of perpetual adolescence. Though he's able to spend thousands of dollars on Cristal at the club, his life is largely a monotony of 9:00 AM cartoons, afternoons working at Blockbuster, and “lincoln log sandwiches” prepared by his mother. Robert Iler's round, wide-eyed face always looks thirteen-years-old, even after AJ grows a hideous chinstrap beard. His continued presence in his childhood home and constant in-and-out of academic institutions prevents him - and the viewer - from establishing a clear timeline for his life; in later seasons, I have little sense of how old AJ is from episode to episode. It's difficult to imagine him ever fully extricating himself from the comfortable life that his parents provided for him. Though the viewer sees the ways in which AJ is forced to grow and change, the series suggests that he - like every other character, and like all of us - will always be stuck in the same framework he was raised with. The last scene of AJ's story (diner scene not included) shows him leaving his job at Little Carmine's film company - a gig that his father got for him - in a new BMW M3, driving to pick up his hot model girlfriend. He tells a friend over the phone that, compared to the old SUV, the new car's environmental impact is "not that bad". The girlfriend gets in the car, and they drive off to one of David Chase's pitch-perfect music cues, as the Noisettes sing to "scratch your name into the fabric of this world."

AJ would be 31-years-old in 2017. When his father was that age, he already had a wife and two children. He had a clear career path and a strong foundation for the rest of his life - a foundation built on bodies buried in backyard, but a foundation nonetheless. We cannot know for certain what AJ Soprano’s life is like ten years after the events of the series finale - David Chase, in the handful of post-finale interviews where he isn’t frustratingly coy, hasn’t given indication about where AJ’s life may have lead. The viewer may speculate that, having seen his father die right in front of him, AJ decided to avenge him. It’s possible that he managed to continue his father's legacy as Don, running the Bada Bing stripclub and ruling New Jersey with an iron fist. For this viewer, it's difficult to really imagine sweet, sensitive AJ, the “happy little boy” Carmela remembered him as, the prodigal son whose father tried desperately to steer him away from a life of crime, following in the family tradition. The perpetual adolescent can never truly progress into the realm of adulthood he so long imaged. Here's a more likely scenario: AJ Soprano, 31-years-old, living with roommates, or a live-in girlfriend, piecing together a life working for Little Carmine’s production company, blowing thousands of dollars on today’s fashionable equivalent of Cristal (high-end mezcal? Humboldt County kush?), and still, always, sensing that great chasm, knowing that he can never progress to being the man his father was, or return to the child he used to be.