#I can't believe there is not more people a bit more deranged about what is going on with the Aeons and their powers in this world

[fragmentedblade]

The more I think about it the more intrigued I am about the future development of Ruan Mei

[irmawrites]

Sleeping with the enemy | One-Shot

Summary: your father, Gwayne Hightower, had always told you to beware of Davos Blackwood, son of one of your grandfather's most ardent haters. But when you meet him at a party years after graduating college, you can't help but think he's not so bad after all.

Rating: Explicit [18+], MDNI.

Pairing: modern!Davos Blackwood x Hightower!Reader (appearance isn’t specified, everyone is 18+ in this)

TW: smut with a tiny bit of plot, fingering, oral sex (m receiving), p in v sex, praising kink, unprotected sex, loss of virginity, dom/sub undertones, afab reader, not proofread.

Words count: 4393

Author’s note: Hi, everyone! This is my first time posting here, and I have to admit I'm a bit intimidated ahaha like a lot of people, I fell in love with Davos Blackwood's in episode three and ABSOLUTELY had to write this idea that's been on my mind for a while now.

I should probably mention that English is not my mother tongue, so please excuse my grammar mistakes!

Davos Blackwood had a bad reputation in your neighborhood, that much was true.

The rumors about him had started when you were still in college, something about red liquid smeared on the mirror in the boys' bathroom. A silly prank involving fake blood and strange theatrics to scare off a younger classmate that had perhaps gone too far. It was your own cousin Aemond who had found the fake crime scene just after the culprit had left, still licking his red-stained fingers. It caused quite a stir at the time, and he hadn't been seen on campus for at least two weeks. It may have been fake blood or just a tasteless joke, it was still inevitable that action would have to be taken.

It was Aeron Bracken in particular who had helped make these bizarre stories popular. He told anyone who would listen that Davos Blackwood was a deranged, violent madman. It was no secret that the two young men didn't get along. But no one expected things to get as bad as they did. There had been rumors in the hallways and whispers in the cafeteria, but that wasn't all. His car had been vandalized and marked with insults on several occasions. Even Gwayne Hightower, your father, had warned you.

A real witch hunt.

As far as you knew, however, the main target had remained unaffected by the situation, even toying with those who provoked him. In a way, he almost seemed to enjoy the wild, mysterious aura that all this fuss gave him.

You, for one, had never really believed it. After all, he didn't look like a bad guy, with his big, green eyes and permanently disheveled black hair. He seemed a little strange to you, a little off, but not enough to be considered a clear danger. But your opinion didn't matter much.

Nothing had ever destined the two of you to spend time together. His parents' company only did business with Rhaenyra's, refusing any ties and especially any agreements with the Hightowers. His father seemed to harbor a fierce hatred and boundless distrust of your family, apparently fearing that Otto's overweening ambition would lead him to overturn the order of succession established by Viserys himself and install his own grandson as sole ruler of the company.

And in your world, your parents had a bit more say in who you dated than they did for other people. You couldn't just go out with a guy because he seemed interesting, especially if he was the son of one of your grandfather's most ardent haters.

So you'd never spoken to each other in college, let alone at the lavish charity galas your family hosted.

Never, until that day.

"You like Iron Maiden?" a hoarse, unfamiliar voice said from behind you as you wrung the water out of your hair, "or is that your boyfriend's shirt?". The sun was high in the sky and you could feel the heat of its rays burning your exposed neck. The clear waters of the Targaryen family pool sparkled, and the garden echoed with the bursts of voices of those Aegon had invited to what should have been a casual gathering of the younger generation with ties to the Targaryen business.

You didn't think he'd invite Davos Blackwood, though.

"It's mine," you replied, giving the young man a mischievous smile, your fingers playing absentmindedly with the string that held the bottom of your swimsuit to your hip, "and yeah, it's one of my favorite bands actually." He seemed to take a moment to assess the situation, his eyes roaming up and down your body, an unreadable smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Never pegged you as a little rebel," he crossed his arms over his chest before continuing, "more of a model daughter." You knew he was toying with you, trying to tease you, but you were more than happy to play along.

Besides, you understood where the thought came from, you who were usually more used to short skirts and high heels than band shirts.

Mentally, you thanked Aegon for thinking of him. "Be careful, Blackwood," your voice sounded like a playful threat, "you might be surprised."

You were about to leave to return to the deck chairs, but it seemed that Davos wasn't quite finished with the conversation. "Wait," he ordered, taking your wrist between his broad fingers. Mechanically, you glanced around to make sure no one was watching. After all, the last thing you wanted was for someone to spy on your conversation with someone who still belonged to your grandfather's enemy side. "What is it?" it was your turn to cross your arms over your chest, your eyebrows furrowing as you waited for some kind of justification from him. It was clear he had something on his mind, but you just couldn't figure out what. "Do you want to come over to my place sometime?" he finally said, and you felt your breath catch somewhere between your throat and your lungs. "Why?" the question crossed your lips before you could even think about it.

You didn't know each other, had never spoken before, not to mention the fact that your families didn't approve of each other. You were tempted to agree, of course, because whether you liked it or not, you felt this kind of almost magnetic attraction pulling you together.

You'd have liked to think it was fate, but you knew it was just your love of danger and the forbidden.

His voice pulled you out of your thoughts again. "You seem like a pretty nice girl, and we obviously have the same taste in music," he replied, finally loosening his grip on your wrist, "we could watch a movie, get to know each other, something like that." The offer was tempting, the prospect of spending a little more time with him appealing, but even though you desperately wanted to say yes, you knew you couldn't. You had to be reasonable and listen to that little voice in your head that told you it all sounded like a terrible idea. But he seemed to sense your reluctance because he quickly added, "Don't worry, no one will know."

***

Davos’ room wasn't exactly what you'd call tidy. You noticed a half-full ashtray on the windowsill and a few empty cans on his desk. It was the opposite of your own bedroom, neatly decorated and perfectly organized. Your wardrobe drawers were a bit of an exception, but that didn't really matter.

Even so, you couldn't help but find it a little charming. The smell of his cologne in the air, the half-unraveled sheets, this was unmistakably him. It tasted risky and illicit, and it stirred something unfamiliar in the pit of your stomach. A reaction that no boy had ever managed to provoke in you.

"There's no denying it, vampires really are the best supernatural creatures," you muttered, sinking your teeth into the last slice of the half-cold pizza you'd ordered earlier. You were especially comfortable sitting cross-legged on his bed as the rain pounded against the windows and the end of the movie drew near on his computer screen. His parents were out of town for the week, on a business trip or something, providing you with an opportunity to finally meet away from prying eyes. He seemed quite comfortable too, with his leg pressed against yours and his hand wrapped around his soda cup, which he sipped absentmindedly. "I have to say, I never thought you'd be into movies like this," he told you after a few long seconds, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his lips, "given your looks, I thought you'd be more into romantic comedies or something." You held back an annoyed sigh.

"Like I said..." you finally replied, "you should beware of appearances."

They can be misleading sometimes, you kept to yourself.

It was true that you were usually a sweet, sensible girl, the ideal daughter who always smiled and never caused trouble. The pride and joy of your parents. But lately you had grown tired. Tired of following orders, of doing everything you were told without ever being able to listen to your heart. You were eager to get rid of this constant fear of disappointing your loved ones if you didn't live up to their expectations, and it seemed that life had given you the perfect opportunity to free yourself from all that. 

"Is there something I should know?" the young man’s hand came to rest on the top of your thigh, his thumb delicately stroking the soft skin there, "some dark secret of yours, princess?". His almost mocking tone and the annoying nickname were enough to bring back that scorching heat in the pit of your stomach. The way he looked at you, at your breasts, made you think that he was affected by this sudden closeness, too. His gaze burned, almost as much as his fingers, which were now creeping dangerously up the hem of your shorts. And when you felt them graze the lace of your underwear in the hollow where your leg and hip met, you thought that maybe, just maybe, you'd bitten off more than you could chew.

But even though you were entering unfamiliar territory, something foreign to you, you refused to lose control and let him take what he wanted without saying a word. This wasn't your style. You always had a witty comeback ready to go. And you were going to show him.

Slowly, you moved forward a few inches on the bed to sit astride his very inviting lap, never taking your eyes off his lips. Your hands found his shoulders, and you could feel the hardness of his desire beneath your thighs. Gods, the sensation was divine. This was your doing. You and no one else’s. The sudden surge of power and dominance made your head spin. "Be very careful what you do now," his fingers settled on your hips to bring your chests a little closer together, his grip tight and bruising. "Or what?" you replied in an almost insolent, even provocative tone.

"Or we could end up doing something you might regret."

This was all a very bad idea, that much was true. Davos Blackwood was a very bad idea. But you didn't want to dwell on what the future might hold, let alone the potential consequences of your actions. All you knew was that you wanted more. More of his hands on your skin, more of his lips on yours, and more of him.  

And it seemed that he, too, was eager to take it further.

His fingers made their way up from your waist to your chest, slipping under your tank top to brush his thumbs over the two little hardened buds. The ghost of a touch, really, but it was enough to make you moan. Your mouths were now just a few inches apart, your breaths mingling, but you didn't want to kiss him yet, choosing to prolong this delicious, exhilarating tension for a few minutes longer.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing to me?" he asked, his voice hoarse with desire. "Do you feel it?". He backed up his words with action, rolling his hips and planting a kiss right at the corner of your jaw. "You know what this is?" he added, rolling one of your nipples between his index finger and thumb, "what happens to a man when a woman behaves the way you do?". Of course I know, you wanted to say but the words stuck in your throat and only a moan managed to break through the barrier of your lips. You weren't stupid, you were perfectly aware of what happened in this kind of situation. But you'd never seen it, let alone touched it, and the theory was very different from the actual reality.

"Shut up," you replied at last, before planting a kiss on his lips. You didn't mean it, though. To be honest, you wished he would talk to you like that all night long, sending a wave of heat straight to your core with words alone. His tongue found yours, silencing your thoughts, and you wrapped your arms around his neck to keep from losing your footing. "Such a foul mouth," he said, smiling against your lips as he gave you time to breathe, "we'll see if you're still so talkative once I'm done with you."

The young man's hands found the bottom of your tank top and pulled it over your head, and soon it was your shorts that suffered the same fate, leaving you in nothing but your black lace panties. You suddenly felt exposed, lying there under that hungry gaze that regarded you like a precious gift, a prized possession. You waited eagerly for his next move.

Where was the bold young woman who had taken the lead just a few minutes earlier, the one so determined not to lose control? It seemed like she'd already vanished, replaced by some shy creature beneath his crude words and inappropriate touch.

"What are you going to do to me?" you tilted your head to the side to give him better access to the skin of your neck, which he was kissing with increasing fervor. "Nothing you won't like," he replied as he stood up to get rid of his t-shirt, which joined the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. Your eyes couldn't help but wander over his toned torso dotted with dark hairs, your hands itching to touch him.

Soon enough, his lips found your jaw, then your neck, then the top of your chest, and you immediately shivered. The weight of his body lying on yours was delightful, comforting. "Please..." you whimpered as your hands settled on his shoulders, urging him to give you what you were so desperate for. You felt his fingers slide slowly against the skin of your belly, then lower, much lower, to play with the lace of your underwear, and your back arched almost reflexively. You wanted more, you needed more, and you were getting tired of waiting.

"Be patient, princess," he said, nibbling on the soft skin of your breast, his mouth soon wrapping around your hardened nipple. A grunt escaped you, and you weren't quite sure if it was from your frustration or the dominant tone he had just used. His hand slipped under the fabric of your panties to tease the top of your slit before brushing over your already soaked folds. It was annoying, really, the effect he was having on you with such a light touch. But it was heavenly, and you had decided to ignore the voice of reason for the night.

His index finger found the little pearl nestled at the apex of your center, and the contact felt like a delicious electric shock. You threw your head back, eyes closing, lips parting in a silent cry as he drew little circles around your most sensitive area. "Have you ever had anyone here?" he asked after a few seconds. When you didn't answer, he added: "I asked you a question, and I want you to answer me." There it was again, his commanding, almost controlling tone.

"N... no," you stammered as you opened your eyes again to meet his, "nobody." You suddenly felt like prey under his hungry gaze that devoured your trembling body. "Perfect," you heard, just before his fingers found your entrance, which was already clenching around nothing, "and here?".

The idea of being the first to enter you seemed to obsess him.

You nodded, this time from left to right, signifying that no, you had saved your virginity for the right man, the one who would know how to make you tremble under his ministrations, the one who would know how to make you beg for more, always more.

"Perfect," he repeated again, as the first knuckle of his index finger sank agonizingly slowly into you, teasing your inner walls. It was barely there, nothing really, and yet you already felt incredibly full. "You're so tight," he growled against the skin of your throat, "so warm too, you're going to feel amazing around me." He added a second knuckle and soon his finger was completely buried inside you. It felt good, and it felt right, but it didn't feel like enough. You wiggled your hips and it seemed as if Davos had understood your silent request immediately. "I need you to take another," he straightened on his left elbow to look at you with lust-blown pupils, "do you think you can do that for me?". Once again, you nodded your head in agreement, but this time it didn't seem to be enough for him. "Use your words, princess." You fought the urge to roll your eyes. "I... I can take more," you murmured right against his lips as you looked down between your thighs.

"Good girl," he said, his voice low and rough as you felt his middle finger pressing into you. He curled them both, brushing that spongy spot against your inner wall, and you threw your head back.

You dug your nails into his pale skin to stay anchored in the present as his thumb found your clit. But you knew you wouldn't last long. You could already feel tingles of pleasure buzzing through your body, and in the pit of your belly, the fires of delight burned a little more fiercely. You wanted to warn him, to tell him you were close, but he was quicker than you: "Come for me."

He didn't need to tell you a second time.

Soon, the wave of your orgasm washed over you.

It made your whole body shake with spasms, your climax exploding like fireworks behind your eyelids. Your lips crashed against his neck to stifle your final moan as your back arched under the intense sensation. The young man was merciful enough to give you a few seconds to recover before withdrawing his fingers, leaving you empty and frustrated. "Look at the mess you made," you heard him groan, "clean it up." His index and middle fingers brushed across your lips, which parted eagerly to welcome them into your warm mouth.

You timidly wrapped your tongue around them under his predatory gaze. The mere thought that you could taste yourself on your taste buds set your body on fire once again. It was indecent, inappropriate, and you probably should have been ashamed to be used like this, but you couldn't care less.

Maybe it was his fault, or maybe you'd just found each other despite everything that kept you apart.

His fingers left your mouth to wrap around your neck. But as he lay back on the mattress and guided you towards his lips, you resisted. Once again, you straddled his hips, only this time completely naked. He looked at you for a few seconds, a little confused, until you reached under the elastic of his underwear to slide it down his legs. This seemed to make him realize the extent of your intentions. His hard member jumped free and caught your eye. Standing proud with a mass of dark curls adorning its base, the sight alone made you salivate. "Let me thank you," you said, as your fingers gently traced its length. "I want to make you feel good too." You slowly moved between his legs to kiss his inner thighs.

You reached out tentatively and wrapped your fingers around his manhood. It felt heavy in your hand, massive and your index finger couldn't quite touch your thumb because it was so wide. You brought your lips to his crotch and, watching Davos from beneath your long lashes, planted a quick kiss on the head where it was already weeping for you. Your tongue traced a vein on the underside without ever breaking eye contact. He threw his head back, his lips parted to let out a muffled curse.

The rush of power you felt when you saw him so vulnerable under your touch was sinfully delicious.

You tilted your head to the side to plant a series of kisses all along his hardened manhood, your big innocent eyes still locked with his. There was a pause, a few tense seconds, before finally, finally, you moved your head forward to take him fully into your mouth. His big hand found refuge at the back of your skull, and you let him guide you completely.

The grip on your hair tightened, almost to the point of pain. "Breathe, through your nose," the young man ordered, but his voice was more urgent than before, his breathing becoming ragged from the growing pleasure. "You can do better than that." The fingers buried in your locks soon forced you to swallow him whole, your nose pressed against his pelvis, the unruly hair tickling your face. You could feel yourself drooling around him, the action messy. "Such a filthy girl," he said as his thumb came to caress the corner of your mouth, right where his member disappeared between your lips, "sucking my cock like a real whore." You let out an audible moan around his length in response to the foulness of his words.

But instead of disgusting you, it only served to encourage you.

You hollowed out your cheeks, still following the rhythm of his hand, which had resumed its place at the back of your head. He was big, and he filled your mouth in a way you hadn't experienced before, but you wanted to prove to him that you could satisfy him, that you could make him proud. Tears formed at the corners of your eyes, which he hastily wiped away with the tip of his free thumb. "Shh... you're doing so well," he praised you in a reassuring tone. You knew he was close to reaching his climax. His breathing had become labored, his movements erratic, and it was evident that you were causing him to lose his balance. But it seemed he didn't want to end it that quickly.

"Wait, not yet," he straightened into a sitting position, placing his hand on your cheek to force you back a few inches, "I'd hate to waste it." The implication made your cheeks flush, but you couldn't help but look forward to what would come next.

His hands came to rest on your waist, encouraging you to sit on his hips again, this time making his still impossibly hard manhood brush against your soaked cunt. The contact alone was enough to elicit a moan from you. His own fingers wrapped around his member as he guided it towards your narrow entrance.

And after what felt like an eternity, he finally thrust into you.

He stretched you to perfection, the foreign sensation a mixture of delicious pain and aching pleasure. "Fuck princess, you're tight," your head found refuge in the hollow of his neck, but you could hear that annoying smirk in his voice, "I'm going to ruin you." And oh how you couldn't wait for him to make good on his threats. "Move," you pleaded against the skin of his throat as you hesitantly moved your hips up and down to get that delicious friction you craved. He seemed hell-bent on teaching you self-restraint, even though you desperately wanted to see him lose control. He grabbed your waist in a firm grip, keeping you pressed against his hips and making you whine. "Did I say you could move?" he asked, kissing the side of your jaw. Once again that night, you'd annoyed him by not answering, and he repeated, "did I say you could move?".  

It seems he was also trying to make you learn obedience, in addition to patience.

You didn't even have a chance to react before the young man used his grip on your waist to pull back almost completely, revealing his member glistening with your sticky juices before thrusting himself into you once more. His head was rubbing against that most delicious spot inside you, making your legs tremble with pure bliss. "Please, I..." You didn't even know what you were asking for as he moved back and forth continuously. You thought he'd ask you to speak again, but he was too caught up in pleasure and close to his release to be bothered by your pleas.

But even if he'd lost his rhythm, it was clear he was still determined to satisfy you. His thumb was back on your little pearl, tracing small circles around it, while inside you his length relentlessly pounded against your inner wall. You could feel yourself clenching around him, and the heat between your thighs was back with a fiercer intensity than ever. “I’m going to fill you up,” his teeth nibbled at the soft skin of your neck, marking it possessively, “I’m going to fill you up and you’re going to take everything I’m going to give you, feel me for days.” The moans that came out of your mouth were now completely incoherent, a confused jumble of yes and please.

Your climax hit hard and fast—stronger than the one Davos had offered you earlier that night. You dug your nails into his shoulders, leaving red half-moons as evidence of your forbidden actions. Your back arched off the mattress, pressing his body against yours as reality slipped through your fingers and a myriad of stars danced behind your eyelids. He followed you just a few seconds later, pouring into you with white ropes.

He stayed inside you for a few more moments, his length softening. But neither of you felt like moving, not when you were so comfortable, lying against each other, your limbs tangled. He placed a tender kiss on your forehead that made your heart clench. You still refused to think about the future and the problems that might arise from such a strong connection between the two of you. All that mattered for the moment was his skin against yours and your fingers in his hair.

"We should do that again," you murmured as you kissed his cheeks, his chin, his nose, "someday."

He smiled.

"We will," he said with confidence, "I'll make sure of that, princess."

The nickname made your stomach flutter with excitement.

[leftneb]

to absolutely no one's request: an updated and expanded revision of the a ship chart I made back in august

ramblings about my thought process and clearer definitions of the catergories below the cut :3

plus a blank for your scientific purposes!! I'd honestly love to see other people's charts this was so fun to do

main - self explanatory, these are pairings I'm actively deranged about. always (actively seek out fic etc)

bros - non-romance category, these are pretty much the most prominent "main pairing's friendgroup" lines (plus carjack because I didn't want jack to be lonely lmao)

mentour-mentee - self explanatory (although you can't see it that well on the graph mb) most of these have to do with nationality and teammateship

real - I had a bit of trouble defining where the line between this category and "silly" would be, what I settled on at the end was "would you find this in my reblogs like, more than once" which has a large but not 100% overlap with "pairings I've actually read fic about"

silly - pairings I enjoy in the bg of fic, but wouldn't neccessarilly read about (with the exception of the Banger fic, which has a chance of tipping the pairing over into the "real" category

missing: Simi (would be in the "silly" category) I cannot believe I fucking fucking forgot them but I also could not be arsed to redo the 2nd graph entirely

I split the more negative category into two subcategories:

1. in romantic contexts no but as bros yes

I get it, but no - self explanatory, I can very much see the appeal but personally not interested for whatever reason

neutral/? - either just don't have feelings on it (but see it around enough that I'm not completely blank) or mixed feelings (lots of these didn't end up on this list ex: jendo and jondo. for the sake of entertainment sure but nah)

2. not my thing

NOT for me - I wouldn't say there's any pairings I "hate" per se but some just feel a bit icky (age differences + carlando lmao. I think the latter has more to do with carlos' typical portrayal in landoscar fics)

not convinced - self explanatory, just not compelled by their dynamic as I understand it (I am however, easily swayed)

[shiurkoma]

Take: chaotic evil Yehonatan, in which he knew David is meant to replace him and his father from the very start.

TLDR: Yehonatan is as, if not more likely to be the abuser in their relationship because it is plain unfair to overlook how humongous their power gap is, and he is abused enough to be at least a little unhinged in his noggins.

Warning: dead dove do not eat. Im going to entertain an idea where Yehonatan is definitely not a good person. If you have a problem with that, or have issue reading fictional underage abuse and emotional manipulation, please stop reading. Finally, nothing about this is meant to be serious interpretation of the original text, it's all plain headcanoning for fanfiction.

(For the record, i seriously do not consider David (even close to being) a morally good individual in any possible sense of the word. It doesn't make any of this ok tho)

Some fanfics i've seen paint the davinatan ship as a manipulative one, with david being the seducter that manipulates Yehonatan into simping for him, only to discard him after David achieved his goals. Even outside of fanfictions, i know of people who view Yehonatan as a tragic victim. While i appreciate David's more malicious side being acknowledged, and agree with it more than depicting them simply and benignly loving eachother(tho i appreciate that too), I can't help but think how both protrayal down plays just how utterly creepy yehonatan's part in the relationship is.

Like, Yehonatan, a middle aged man with wives and kids, went ahead and basically stripped in front of a teen the first night they met then gave him some really personal and valuable gifts. If thats not a red flag i don't know what is.

Yehonatan is someone you do not want to cross, maybe even more so than Saul.

It is easy to forget that, holding the title of eldest son and legal heir to the throne comes with immense pressure, responsibility and danger, and dealing with all that takes more than just a thick backbone. With a deranged father as king, people around him are constantly plotting to take the throne for themselves. All bets are off in the war for the throne, even if Yehonatan doesn't actually want to be king, his competitors (which includes but not limited to his entire family) wouldn't rest until he is dead. He isn't in a position where he can just back off: it isn't unheard of that princes and kings renounce their positions, retire, and end up getting assassinated or executed anyway. Because king or not, they are still legitimate heirs to the throne and therefore a potential threat.

Basically, Yehonatan lives in a situation where he simply cannot afford to show weakness or hesitation, not to his subordinates, not to his brothers, not to his father, not to anyone. What doesn't kill you makes you dangerous, and Yehonatan is deadly in that sense.

(But its not to say all that didn't take a toll on his mental wellbeing. Yehonatan has no business being mentally ok. He watched his father ascend to the throne, watched as Saul sunk further towards insanity, and had to endure his often psychotic abuse for years. I don't believe one bit that he isn't depressed and at least a little messed up, especially in a time where mental illnesses aren't even acknowledged yet.)

To sum it up, as a weathered crown prince, Yehonatan would logically be a person who is reasonably paranoid, moderately ruthless, extremely strong willed and more than competently intuitive about the motives and intentions of people around him.

David on the other hand (at the start of their relationship anyway) had no prior experience mingling with politics, no ties in the palace, was never regarded with importance by his father or brothers (meaning he had zero exposure and no one ever invested in him), young and inexperienced (meaning vulnerable to manipulation), stands no chance against Yehonatan if he were to play mind games on him.

David could pull an Esther on Yehonatan. But keep in mind Esther and a lot of other femme fatal spies in history had ties that helped pull strings from the outside, they are often not the master mind either. David had himself, and practically nothing else.

This is why Yehonatan helping him matters so much. Useing weak willed and easily manipulated individuals only works for you if you are already a powerful dictator. If you have absolutely nothing you need powerful allys.

The most straightforward option for dark Yehonatan is just to kick the creep element up ten notchs. David tries to seduce Yehonatan, then immediately realises he bit off more than he could chew: he is just too possessive to be controlled. Yehonatan in this scenario probably somewhat resembles that purple creep from Tokyo ghoul, entertaining while the shock value lasts, but after that it gets pretty shallow. I hate this approach tbh.

Or, him seeing David that day was Yehonatan's last straw(what i doodled basically). He stops giving a sh*t about everything, and thought since he is so "in love" he might as well groom and sodomize David. Its a petty way of getting back at God for making him fall for the boy, and for making his life miserable in general.

He uses his charms and presents himself as a saintly figure to appeal to David's more religious side, then proceeds to not only make sure that David is emotionally dependent on him(i won't elaborate how but its easier than you think), but also plans to make it so that if he dies it will f*ck David in the head. He enjoys this, because for once in his life he feels a "real" sense of control, albeit a twisted and perverted one.

(Maybe he will feel shame and regret eventually, but thats another talk for another day.)

I'll borrow my friend's comment to sum up the take: "a broken abused individual perpetuating a cycle of abuse to an ambitions sociopathic twink, each making the other worse just through being together." Another reason i prefer this version of dark Yehonatan is cuz it restores some agency Yehonatan desperate lacks.

Strayed quite far from his canon image with my shameless slandering but yeah that's about it. For now. Might explore David's pov in this later.

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

Something that I couldn't put into words but now I can about the Chaggie conflict in "Rosie" and one other reason it hurt: Charlie questioning Vaggie's loyalty. Yes, I know it wasn't because of Vaggie's origin but because of the lie itself but still hurts and clearly hurt Vaggie - she has been nothing but loyal and honest in Charlie's dream and has only ever done 1 lie in all of that. And when it's revealed, Charlie is now questioning everything - Again, I understand but it still hurts. And I know this might be redundant, I WANT this moment to come back again in S2. I don't know how but I want Vaggie to admit how angry/hurt it made her that Charlie questioned the loyalty she has given without asking for anything. What do you think?

i don't think Vaggie was even slightly angry with Charlie until her girlfriend made a magically binding pact with an unrepentant serial killer the second Vaggie wasn't looking XD

......we're asking a bit much by expecting the woman who hates and judges herself over her own mass murderer past... to then be upset that her girlfriend was also hurt and angry about that and reacted badly to randomly having all that dropped out of the clear blue sky in the middle of an already terrible day...

so in that ep got the vibe Vaggie spent the entire time feeling sick and guilty over the whole thing tbh. As usual

(and her feeling very very not good about seeing Alastor getting all creepy mentor with a Charlie who just got a wedge driven between her and her main emotional support- im 100% sure Vaggie's "Charlie can we talk-?" following Alastor's "good girl" thing was her wanting to know EXACTLY what deal her gf just made with Alastor and what the hell she was thinking and charlie are you sure Vaggie can't just stab him a little as a warning-)

But Vaggie, she's also not really uh. Not got a good track record of wanting or letting Charlie know about her feeling bad about stuff, emotions wise. Even when Charlie is right next to her reaching out. That's not her thing???

ah what the hell tangent time

like one big reason Vaggie DIDN'T fess up her past to Charlie was her being scared Charlie would be hurt by it and actually hate her for having done that, because Vaggie is being hurt by her past and hates herself for having it (re: every time she's called angels like herself deranged), so even though the blackmail against her made NO real sense and Adam's threat was just him not understanding that someone (charlie) could ACTUALLY believe in redemption for LITERALLY anyone (she does), it still pinged Vaggie's fear right in the heart, making the stuff like how Charlie is letting a known serial killer live in the hotel and help out with her and Vaggie's dream go RIGHT out the window-

(to be fair from Vaggie's pov there's probably a BIG difference between ending someone's mortal life on Earth (a la normal sinner seral killers) and presumably destroying their entire soul forever (re: exorcists) so like, that's kinda fair, but it still doesn't include how Charlie is WILLING TO WORK WITH AND THINK THE BEST OF HEAVEN AND THE EXORCISTS ANYWAY which is WHY she thought going to heaven to talk with them could work in the first place)

(to be extra fair it doesn't MATTER how much Vaggie trusts Charlie bc Vaggie had body parts ripped off and her eye permanently gouged out and was abandoned in hell by someone ELSE she use to trust once and THAT means really trusting people not to hate or abandon her is gonna take her putting some more blame on Adam and Lute and co and less on herself, because as long as she focuses on what SHE did (murderer) to make all this happen TO herself (filth like you doesn't deserve-) she's never gonna fully get that what happened to her was a choice shit people made (let's exterminate ppl for fun! let's rip off our comrade's wings and eye without hesitation!!!), one they didn't have to make, one she didn't make for them- meaning non-shit people like Charlie probably won't do that to her, actually, bc people like Charlie will care about Vaggie as a person outside of her being useful or being exactly what is wanted. Like how Charlie was more worried about Vaggie at the end of ep 3 than anything else and wouldn't let Vaggie blame herself and was fine with things being hard as long as she and Vaggie could face them together. Like how Charlie was calmed in the More Than Anything reprise not by Vaggie promising to fix everything but by Vaggie saying Charlie is important and wonderful to HER)

if anything Vaggie might be upset if she found out Charlie had less of a problem with the Exorcist thing than with the lying thing

If you (Vaggie) think you still need to EARN redemption, then having someone say your sins don't bother them so much can ironically make you panic and either think they're lying to you OR it can make you worry you've downplayed what you've done and are somehow tricking the person you love into believing you're a better person than you actually are and therefor might be taking advantage of them, which of course you don't want to do because you love them, which is a pretty big contradiction you probably won't notice is there

Sooooo i could see Vaggie spiraling into something like THAT but,

her be angry at Charlie for being upset over the thing Vaggie hates about herself? the mental health levels aren't good enough for that one yet XD

basically both Vaggie and Charlie got to live through the very fun experience of being trapped in your own head and trauma

anyway, the fact that Charlie didn't ask or want or LET Vaggie do an apology for any of that at the hotel gates says more than enough for me, for both of them. Just like with Vaggie putting her own fear and self-loathing onto Charlie, most of Charlie's pain in that ep didn't come from Vaggie's past or Vaggie's lie.

I've said Charlie's bad at figuring out what she's feeling and ep 7 is where it really bit her in the ass- she got hit with an identity crisis (turns out the one person who always believes in her didn't trust her enough to tell her this) (this on top of the epic fail of their shared dream to save sinners from extermination and the looming destruction of the hotel that represents that dream) and trauma trigger (what if Vaggie lied about all of that too, what if she never really loved or had faith in Charlie, what if Charlie is going to be alone again) without understanding that's what was going on or that it was something coming from herself as much as from Vaggie.

Being away from Vaggie didn't reduce Charlie's stress during that ep, it made it worse, until Rosie had to yoink her in for an emergency counseling session. Before that Charlie vents about how she told Vaggie everything and shared everything with her (the exorcist thing gets a TINY throwaway mention it is NOT the focus here) and when you add the lie revelation to how Vaggie asked to be alone on the roof in ep 3 instead of letting Charlie be there for her, it stops being about ONE lie TO Charlie, and turns into YEARS of lies ABOUT Charlie's place in Vaggie's life.

Which was terrifying and painful and... went away the MOMENT Charlie realized Vaggie did actual love her and believe in her, and was not actually going to leave her.

If actions mean more than words then their reunion at the hotel gates is them both saying the only thing either of them want to hear- I missed you, i love you, i want to be with you. Here's this horrible souvenir i picked up for your while we were on opposite sides of town and thanks babe im gonna fling myself into your open arms about it.

Vaggie hates herself too much to feel like Charlie owes her an apology for being hurt and angry at the Exorcist lie. It was a pretty big thing to keep hidden

i mean murder aside, Charlie had no idea Vaggie's opinions and advice about heaven was from personal experience, she probably assumed it was just normal sinner bias against the people who kill sinners and not, you know, Vaggie secretly dissing on how terrible her former boss and co-workers used to be. Maybe Charlie would've approached the talking to heaven differently if she'd known. Maybe she would've tried strangling Lute's hologram in ep 1. we will sadly never know

we DO know that Vaggie ran to hug Charlie right after the secret was revealed, which means Vaggie was mainly worried about Charlie being hurt by it, which doesn't really leave a lot of room for Vaggie to be upset at Charlie when Charlie does turn out to be hurt by it

so Vaggie wanting an apology from Charlie? I see her more wanting a very, very, VERY long hug

but if Charlie ever tries giving an apology anyway (a la the balcony scene in ep 3), that might just freak Vaggie out and fuck her up with "oh no my gf doesn't understand how bad the things i've done are am i tricking her am i using her would she be better off without me" issues for the foreseeable future ^w^;

[emlan]

Finished DLC!

Here's some Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree ramblings, spoilers under cut.

.

.

.

.

. DLC catered to me a lot since I'm a Zanzibart cutscene enjoyer who loves map exploration and Vista money shots but I'm kinda HUH-cat.clip when it comes to some new lore bits and in general the world feels divorced from main game even though main game characters and topics are around?

I don't remember how much souls DLC tied into the other story, but I'm using The Old Hunters from BB as base and it really added extra value to its world and characters and there's just nothing new of real interest in SotE from what I can see…

In a vacuum I can only appreciate even more (literal) brother on brother action but Miquella seemingly being deeply obsessed with Radahan is so out of left field??? Granted I'm not an lorester but what I remember as Miq's key things from flavor text when it comes to ties to other people is him being sad about being unable to cure Malenia of her rot and also sad about not being able to grant Godwyn his true death. The only ties to Radahan is by proxy of his sister fighting him? (Was she even fighting him just to bring bro his crush to him? This makes Caelid getting nuked by her even more of a waste.)

It's so out of nowhere that the Epic Prime Version of him comes off as a cheap soyjak pointing bit pandering to Radahan fanboys (pretty sure he's like no1 fav guy for players right), but fanboys will obviously not be happy about him just being a hollow shell again (?) that might not have wanted anything to do with Miquella (?) so I just can't see this as satisfying for ANY kind of player even on a full Gamer Dude to Deranged Fujoshi spectrum? I imagine deep lore enthusiasts also feels a bit… Ambushed.

I'm not against Miquella doing dark unpleasant or just stupid desperate acts since it was already a popular theory that he was a brainwasher type, but the issue for me is that I'm not sure if this Miq/Rad union is "intended" to be read in such a twisted way even when it's the only way I can read it.

Though I guess the fact general consensus going from "wow Mohg is so messed up claiming Miq no matter Miq's consent" to "wow Miq is so messed up claiming Radahan no matter Radahan's* consent" is poetic….?

*I'm writing Radahan here but really it's also a synonym for 'Mohg' considering he's the one getting desecrated the most.

I'm sure I'll end up watching some vid or writeup making pieces fall into place later but I can't believe Miyazaki is handing me visual age gap brother incest and all I can do is force a strained smile in response!!!

Anyway general whining time:

As much as I love filling out up the map I feel there was too much big "empty" areas. Climbing the dragon mountain was the worst presentation of anything I've seen in a FS title, extremely cheap unfinished filler feeling with the spirit jumps instead of at least adding some kinda atmosphere like the open flower/gravestone fields. The Abyss gimmick overstayed it's welcome since it's too miserable checking if you missed a shiny somewhere without your horse, but at least the stealth parts was such a non-issue it might as well not be there.

While I like that you can see several inaccessible areas from where you stand, and I do think it leads to some fun moments when you're taking a random path halfway across the map and ends up on the other side as an a-ha moment, it was a bit frustrating not being able to tell more clearly how to reach sections. Plus I would've died 10000 times from drops if it wasn't the fact Rainbow Stones protected me from making bad choices.

What mindbroke me most was trying to get into the flower field area north east, having an "oh boy, beating this guy will let me reach it for sure!" moment for both Gaius and Sunflower was such [record scratch SFX]. I did figure posing in front of the statue was most likely the entry afterwards but somehow I had missed the gesture needed (most embarrassing DLC moment considering I tend to fine comb pretty well and the gesture pickup is just sitting there out in the open………. why am I even admitting this shameful thing). Watching trees get knocked over from something moving under the water in the church district was really cool and unnerving and then you realize it's just branch dragon number 800……………..

The wicker men has a great design but fighting them was either a boring slog or a frustrating jankfest trying to toss the bombs right. Peeved that you HAVE to use a furnace pot for the sleeping one blocking the ruin puzzle, hefty should've been fine too.

Bosses are too hectic/aggressive for my taste but that's just business as usual for ER so whatever, last boss really is way too punishing compared to other Hard bosses tho, in fact I just watched ending on YT since I'm stuck still on them :V Camera also makes a glorious return as the toughest challenge of them all.

Think my biggest highlights was seeing the bizarre finger/tongue path under the church and the finger mom boss visual itself and the black humor of the miserable living jars stumbling around with the pot on their head. Ansbach is a hot new waifu and it's very precious how such an upstanding man stays all-in loyal to a Deranged Satan (said lovingly) soooo cute you actually get a "Um, so about how Mohg died…👉👈" prompt with him. There was more NPC voice lines than I expected which was fun. St Trina's design was very neat and shoujo manga. Having to sip syrup 4-5 times instead of the classic Third Time's The Charm is a crime however and I missed making the Trina fanboy jealous until it was too late :/

The open world for all of Elden Ring is such an incredible experience that I'm happy I got to play and I had such a good time and I can't imagine any other studios will be able to reach these map heights but I also hope they never make an OW game again because it's too much when you "need" to replay it.

[toastypockets]

"Obake, You look like a mess..."

...

lots of words below concerning these sobbing sods

they allow themselves to be vulnerable around each other, or at least that's what i believe

when it comes to this pairing i usually can't figure out who's taking on what role in the relationship because i enjoy going off the rails with their canon identities a bit too much

my (very shaky) foundation is that they've realized they appreciate each other's company a lot more than they initially thought because they connect with each other in so many ways that "regular people" could never get

(generally speaking that is a positive thing since Momakase is, respectfully, a crazy knife lady constantly loading her pockets with unrighteous dollar bills, and Obake is, respectfully, a deranged mad scientist who almost wiped out a population and thought he was in the right for doing so)

the most obvious reason they even show interest in each other is the fact that they are both certified powerful supervillains, but i need there to be more going on because i'm a wreck for this particular ship and i don't know what to do about it

Momakase loses her temper and has become aggressive (← that's putting it lightly) when she can't keep herself in check, but she is still able to feel the emotions she hides from others so well, like compassion, for example. she doesn't feel that stuff often but that doesn't mean she can't feel it. Obake came into her life with a flimsy little replica of her signature graphene material and that smug expression of his only for her to fall for it later on because he didn't just break out a prisoner that night, he broke out these emotions that were in need of light after being kept in the dark for so long (and hey would you look at that- here is a light that occasionally glows a colorful purple/pink hue)

Obake, on the other hand, believed he was content with the solitude he built for himself because he never thought he would be trying to look out for anyone but himself and his aspirations for the future. he never thought he would even consider such a thing because who can really understand the ingenuity of a dark mastermind like him? could anyone even appreciate it? Momakase unexpectedly reveals that she is more than a henchwoman and throws him off his mark by being this unexplainable outlier in his comprehension of the world. after that, she provides an answer to his question, but it's not what he anticipated. furthermore, he realizes that the person he released from captivity is dangerous, conniving, and sharp, like himself, but displayed in a way he's never seen before. it's what he would define as beautiful. things are no longer as straightforward as he knew it so now he's brainstorming a plethora of questions, most of them concerning the ninja and the rest concerning his state of being when he's around her

[peachymilkandcream]

Fraud|Part 4|Yandere All Might x Hero!Reader

(A/N: I love doing yanderes who have a lot of political power. Both All Might and Levi can basically get away with anything because they have a reputation that proceeds them. Hope you enjoy and comment to be added to the taglist!)

WARNINGS: implied noncon, dubcon, manipulation, domestic abuse, yandere themes, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, stockholm syndrome, graphic depictions of violence, mind breaking, misogyny, power imbalance, age difference, cheating, etc.

===============================================

When you're the Number One hero it's never hard to find someone willing to do whatever it takes to get in the good favor of the Symbol of Peace. Anyone would kill to be so recognized by Japan's hero.

With this came some rather deranged fans who would do even more than most because of their deep devotion and infatuation with the hero. Some women would call to him on the streets while others were willing to lie, steal, and manipulate if it meant the Toshinori noticed them.

Which is where he found the perfect woman to execute his plan.

===============================================

Just killing the man would do nothing in the long run. Some women swore off love forever if the person they considered their soulmate happened to die, or they would always long for the one who's life was cut short too soon. And what Toshinori needed was for her to fall for him, that way she would be easier to manipulate.

Breaking her entire image of this man was what needed to happen. To make her believe that all men except for him were truly horrible and deplorable people.

Then she would find safety in the only one who was truly kind and good to her.

The most gorgeous women followed All Might like he was a god, so when he approached a young woman and have her seduce Shade's significant other in exchange for promised intimacy later, she jumped at the opportunity. Both women were out of this scum's league, but there was no doubt he would choose what he perceived as the prettier of the two.

Deep down All Might felt a twinge of guilt, forcing this woman to go through such pain to get what he wanted was truly deplorable. But if the man willingly cheated on her then All Might was simply saving her time.

===============================================

Shade had noticed something was off with her boyfriend for a while. Her and Hunter had moved to Japan from America when they were determined to make their relationship work after they both believed that they had better chances at becoming pros in Japan. Both of them were pros, with him having a bit more popularity than she, something he often reminded her of. But they had been happy, which is why his coldness to her now was immediately raising alarm bells.

Hunter usually demanded sex, getting frustrated with her whenever she was too tired on just generally not in the mood. However as of late he hadn't been asking or demanding it at all. Only when she initiated did he even touch her.

And then there was his phone, always on it, always smiling and texting someone she didn't know. Shade had to give Hunter her passcode so he could ensure she didn't cheat, however when she asked he told her to shut her mouth.

Suspicion and jealous rose up in her. "Who're you talking to babe?" She asked casually.

"Just a buddy of mine." His smile vanished.

"About what?"

"Nothing, damn, can't you leave me alone?" He rolls his eyes and goes back to the screen.

She was probably getting worked up over nothing, Hunter said he loved her so why would she need to be worried about what he was doing?

==============================================

Days turned into weeks of staying out late and mysterious messages and phone calls, and all the while Shade continued to force herself to believe all was well. Everything would be fine in the end. It would all work out okay.

Until she came home early.

Heroes never followed a very scheduled day, different jobs and situations called for unpredictable hours. Especially for a hero trying to make it.

But with the recent strangeness of Hunter, Shade wanted to make an effort to ensure it wasn't her not giving her all into the relationship. So she made a point of coming home early to surprise him. Nails and hair done in a new dress, something sexy in her shopping bag. All to show him she cared.

She shouldn't known what she would find when the door creaked open and she heard the noises. But the morbid curiosity forced her to walk the hall to their bedroom, where the creaking and moans filled her ears.

Shade pushed the door open, feeling numb as she saw another woman riding the dick of her boyfriend.

[sofoulandfairaday]

1 for the ask game

from: choose violence ask game

1. the character everyone gets wrong

Err... all of them? I'm not even kidding. More on this here.

Bellatrix: fortunately there's been progress in the fandom, but for years everyone loved to describe her as an overly sexualized, crazy, shrieking mindless slave, when she's actually quite the opposite. She is sadistic, but not insane, she's passionate but not irrational (she is the only one who knew Snape was a traitor; to me, it's because of a peculiar mix of rationality and intuition that shows her to be actually quite intelligent). Nothing suggests her being promiscuous in the text and I would actually argue the opposite of her (why would she ever lower herself to sleep with someone who she deems her inferior - so basically everyone -, even just to satisfy mere physical desires? This post, to me, is Bella at her core).

Narcissa: this is canon Narcissa, all of you are perfectly entitled to your soft babygirl headcanons, of course, but then again you are perfectly entitled to be wrong <3 [also, shameless self-promo: x]

The blorboification continues for every single member of the Black family and I hate it so much you have no idea:

Andromeda: somehow described as a soft little girl who loved her mean, mean sisters so much and had to run away? Bitch stood up to seven centuries of tradition, and abandoned her sisters and parents, to marry a boy she had fallen in love with maybe two years prior (we know this based on Tonks' age). Good for her, but as I have said previously, both Narcissa and Andromeda (and Sirius, really) strike me as a bit selfish. The one with the romantic attachment to the idea of her family, the child most like Walburga, is Bellatrix.

But this is nothing, NOTHING, compared to what this fandom does to Regulus and Sirius.

Regulus: canonically a Voldemort fanboy, with newspaper clippings of him everywhere, and a blood supremacist. Sirius says it better than anyone: Reggie is soft. But not in the way the fandom believes, nope. He's just a coward who, much like Draco years later, was super excited to be like Bellatrix (Lucius) until he realized what killing really meant, what fighting a war really was, and most importantly because Voldemort touched him personally (Kreacher, whom he loved). Voldemort was probably a little more deranged than he had been at the beginning of the First War, and someone that had inherited the Black pride/haughtiness probably didn't like being branded like cattle and treated like a slave, on top of everything else.

Sirius: fanon Sirius is basically another character. Canon!Sirius is: tall, canonically incredibly handsome, quite masculine (in an explicit and toxic way, especially as a teenager in the fucking 1970s - the skirt-wearing, feminist one-liners spouting version of Sirius is something I just cannot get behind), a dick, a bit classist ((don't come @ me with your "oh, but what about Moony?!" because a) we don't know Remus' wealth when Lyall and Hope were still alive, we only know he can't get a job as an adult because of his condition and b) Remus is Sirius' exception, in the same way Lily is Snape's when he calls her a Mudblood - everyone else is in his eyes)), brave to the point of recklessness, quite cruel, funny, witty, magically talented, loyal to a fault, extremely charismatic and everything else outlined here. For the same reasons, I'll say Remus too.

Don't even get me started on Severus Snape. Other people have spoken on this better than I could ever. At least here on Tumblr, though, it seems to me that things are getting a little better after years of absolutely bizarre takes. Or maybe I've blocked all of the idiots idk.

Dumbledore. More on this here and maybe I'll outline my ideas better in a future post.

Also: I do not accept any characterization of Evan Rosier, Barty Crouch jr, Reggie, and Rabastan Lestrange as anything less than violent blood supremacists. Yes, they can be nuanced and gay (and only for each other might I add), but these people are the KKK (metaphorically, of course, because I hate comparing real-world tragedies to completely fictional ones, but still).

Lucius: a complete dick, but definitely not abusive. The man couldn't raise a hand to Draco if the Dark Lord threatened to kill him over it.

Speaking of which: my darling Lord Voldemort. Not much to say about him really because I know that some people do write him in a very interesting way (and I am open to interpretations of his character even if they are different from how I see him - and I have a very fucking specific vision of him). The problem is that perhaps three (3) of these people write him with Bellatrix and that saddens me.

Now, I mostly read First Wizarding War stuff or Death Eater stuff so I can't really speak to many other characters, especially in Harry's generation, but anything other than cowardly Draco is not a good Draco characterization to me. Ron is hands-down the best one in the Golden Trio and Ron Weasley bashing is pathetic. Hermione has faults but is ultimately a strong, take-no-bullshit girl and I'll take that over basically any and all female YA protagonists. And Harry is sassiness personified, but with a heart of gold, and oh-so-caring. Which is also why I can't read dark!Harry for the life of me. It just makes me giggle.

[wirewitchviolet]

People really need to shout "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT!?" at bigots more often.

So I just kinda absently clicked a link to a super post of those comics with the stick figure and the "pills that make you turn green," which was neat since I only knew about the original. And I'm scrolling down through them all while also doing something else on my second monitor, sort of on autopilot, and ending up not only down in the comments but deep enough into them where the weird bigots start showing up and I see this quote from a weird bigot (skip the bold quotey bits if you don't want this garbage in your life):

BIGOT: "I feel like this is a major over simplification of what it's supposed to be an analog to. By all means, if you're happy transitioning, i won't stop you. But it's a procedure that is irreversable, and i believe it should only be taught to kids at the same age that they're being taught about the birds and the bees at the parents' disgression Any earlier and its edging on, if not, is teaching the birds and the bees to Minors"

RANDOM NORMAL PERSON: "teaching children about trans people isn't enforcing anything on them except hopefully empathy and knowledge, and acceptance if they are indeed trans"

BIGOT AGAIN: "while you're not wrong, you shouldn't teach them about it till they start experiencing puberty. Which is around middle school, which happens to be when they teach sex ed at the Parents Discression

My qualms come with teaching it to kids younger than that. If you want to teach your kids about it from a younger age, do it at home. But you shouldn't do it for the parents before then and even after you do it at the parents' discretion."

Another person whose brain works comes along and is baffled at this person talking about having sex when the subject is... children being aware that trans people exist. But you know, passively.

BIGOT REALLY GOING MASK OFF NOW: "it is a sex thing. You are going through the act of irreversably changing things about your body that are inherently sex related. Therefore, they should be taught alongside other sex related topics in the appropriate manner and time"

Now, the real thing to do here is as soon as this person starts foaming at the mouth and screaming gibberish, you ideally have them removed from the conversation/venue for being a weird violent hatemonger shouting nonsense, but since you can't do that in every possibly context, sometimes you have to engage the person. Here's how that should look if someone pops off like this face to face:

BIGOT: "I feel like this is a major over simplification of what it's supposed to be an analog to. By all means, if you're happy transitioning, i won't stop you. But it's a procedure that is irreversable-"

YOU: "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"

Because see here we have the first instance of this weird bigot shouting baffling nonsense scare words that make no damn sense. What "procedure" is this crackpot here even talking about? You stop them dead, and refuse to let them move on until they explain what they mean. Having seen enough of these in the wild, I will tell you right now that this is almost certainly operating on the deranged bigot logic of "if someone says they are trans they are a crazy man pretending to be a woman and if they say they are transitioning that means they convinced a doctor to cut their genitalia off with a giant pair of scissors and there's no way to ever sew that back on!"

This of course has absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever. This is like... "if you listen to rock and roll music you'll be possessed by the devil and do drugs and get pregnant!" levels of crazy nonsense you can't just say out loud in public without revealing you're some kind of crackpot who doesn't live in reality. You just hold them to this and get them to admit that they are spewing absolute nonsense that makes zero sense in context and hey, nobody else in earshot is going to take this creep seriously and they might even be cowed out of moving on to their next propaganda point.

In this particular case you can also point out that in this specific context (and most other times this comes up, honestly) people are quite specifically talking about a comic metaphorically talking about how silly it is that when people start HRT we have to sign a big huge scary looking consent form that goes "hey, you do realize that if you take this combination of medications that makes your body produce less of these chemicals and more of these other chemicals your body is going to gradually change to be like everyone else's with that ratio right?" And that uh... totally is reversible. If you don't have enough estrogens and have too many androgens, you take one of these things to block production of the latter and these other things to supplement the former. Other way around? Just supplement the androgens, they conveniently suppress estrogen production at the right dosage. If for some reason you decide you don't like that new ratio (or you're freaking out over how people react), just... stop doing that. If it turns out your body fell out of the habit of producing the right ratio somehow, supplement accordingly. It's not really a big deal?

OUR BIGOT IN A HYPOTHETICAL WORLD WHERE BEING SHOUTED DOWN DIDN'T MAKE THEM STOP: "i believe it should only be taught to kids at the same age that they're being taught about the birds and the bees-"

YOU: "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"

Again, just cut this weirdo off. Don't let them keep rushing feverishly through the propaganda bullet points. Demand to know what, exactly, they're worried about being "taught to kids." Like... are we in fact just talking about the concept that trans people exist out there in the world? Because that's a completely absurd and indefensible position to hold. You don't even need to argue back against that one. Being trans is roughly as common as people having red hair. Fairly rare sure, but common enough that if you want to treat that as some sort of forbidden knowledge you're gonna have to keep that kid on like some sort of cult compound with no media access and like... why would you even want to do this?

Maybe they're willing to play the cards on the table that what they really have a problem with is letting trans kids know that being trans is a thing, and that they have options on the table that will allow them to actually lead a good happy life. Again, a pretty damn weird thing to object to, that kind of outs someone as a crank. You could maybe drill deeper on that. Does this person have a kid they suspect is trans? Are they in denial about that and abusing their child to try and "fix them?"

For taht matter, are we still in a world where this person is really conspicuously emphasizing this weird desire to live in a world where sex education isn't taught to children until after they hit puberty? And then only at their parents' discretion, like they kept repeated over and over when given free reign? Because that is a whole other can of worms that someone should really be opening up and interrogating the hell out of.

Like hey... the whole point of sex education is to make sure kids have some basic idea of what sex is prior to any situation where they might be taken advantage of sexually, contract an STI, and/or have some sort of pregnancy scare. You kinda want to get on that as early as you can reasonably expect the kid in question to comprehend what you're even warning them about, and it's kind of a huge red flag when you see people going "only if their parents are OK with it though!" Because like... why the hell wouldn't you be OK with it? The only reasons I can think of are A- you are sexually abusing your child and don't want someone to explain how these things you are doing to them are Bad Actually and they should tell someone, or B- you are confident enough that you have such complete control over where your child is and what your child is doing at every moment of every day that there is no way in hell said child will ever be involved in anything sexual without your direct approval. That one is also abusive, to be clear, and also stupid because we've already established your child is in public school, so, NOT, in fact, under your watchful eye at all times.

And of course, there is again no reason to let a bigot ramble unchecked long enough to get to this point, beyond this being tumblr and moderation being hard to come by of course, but it should go without saying there is absolutely no connection at all between being trans and having sex. It's just a weird association bigots have because A- they are constantly trying to paint trans people as sexual deviants, and B- there is a... really alarming overlap between people who hate trans people and... people who I... don't want to discuss when I'm trying to keep this fairly light... but uh... see option A in the previous paragraph.

Anyway this is all getting way off topic but hey, I'm all for small children being aware that trans people exist and people making it known to young children that being trans is a thing they maybe are, in the interest of... you know, NOT forcing little girls whose parents really badly want them to be little boys to fake it, fail, and get beaten to a pulp by their peers for being weird, and vice versa, and little enbies from also dealing with some variation of this, etc. Let'em all be themselves, and let their weird parents get over it.

But yeah, bigots. Cut them off when they start talking. Interrogate every point as they bring them up. Don't let anything fly. Force them to either admit the horrible agenda they're trying to push today, or the fact that their beliefs are too awful to state in polite society and flee. And be rude and angry about it.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading update: January 2024

as long as I'm talking about The Gargoyle's Captive, let's discuss what else I've been reading this month.

Maeve Fly (CJ Leede, 2023) - I really liked this slender debut novel, which follows the titular Maeve Fly as she prowls LA like a homicidal alien, playing an unnamed ice princess in a certain theme park by day and indulging her murderous tendencies by night. Maeve is in a downward spiral; she's 27 years old and is preparing to lose her grandmother to illness and her only friend to a blossoming acting career. she sees no future for herself beyond losing the only two people she cares about and has no further goals, contenting herself with alcohol and porn while she rereads the same books, rewatches the same videos, and listens over and over to her playlist of Halloween music. Maeve is, it must be said, an abysmal loser, and I like her terrible melodrama a lot. I do think some of the hype is perhaps overstating the feminist credentials of this book; it sort of reminds me of when a college friend told me their favorite feminist movie was Suicide Squad (2016) because Harley Quinn was in it. Maeve talks a lot of big game about how women are always expected to have some tragedy to be deranged serial killers, while men are allowed to just do it, but it hit me as a little tryhard. there are a lot of books trying to be "the female American Psycho" right now - Eliza Clark's 2020 novel Boy Parts is frequently described as such - but it feels a bit too on the nose when Maeve's ultimate climactic rampage is directly inspired by a glimpse of the American Psycho novel. it's not that deep, but it is a gross, captivating read told from a fascinatingly cracked POV. check out Maeve Fly.

Laziness Does Not Exist (Devon Price, 2021) - yeah Devon Price is still following me (though my days are numbered, I'm sure) so it's a massive relief to say that I did like this book. Price has sort of become my self-help ride or die, mainly because a.) he's so much more self-aware than the average self-help writer that it feels kind of insulting to call him one and b.) he's actually dealing with topics that are relevant or interesting and providing actionable advice. while LDNE didn't engross me quite as hard as Unmasking Autism (while I am, famously, not autistic, I do believe in their beliefs, by which I mean I'm the token allistic among my close friends and I vastly prefer autistic company) it hit me hard in several unexpected pressure points. I'll happily admit that I can't relate to Price's interviewees who willingly work 50+ hours a week for jobs that hate them and are destroying their minds and bodies, but I still struggle to escape the perpetual sensation that a moment at rest is a moment wasted. It probably didn't help that I was reading this book while on vacation at my mother's, where I visited the beach almost daily and was so work-averse that we didn't even bother going grocery shopping because I didn't want to cook. and yet, despite getting dummy chill in some aspects of my life, I am still constantly possessed by a malevolent ghost insisting that I'm wasting my time and have never actually done Enough. maybe Price's next book, Unlearning Shame, will finally fix me; it's out in four days and god knows I'll be getting my hands on it as soon as humanly possible.

Patternmaster (Octavia E. Butler, 1976) - y'all know I love a messy political fantasy, and this is just... god, the absolute messiest. I thought Mind of My Mind was bad, but it turns out Mary's descendants are going to full-on reinvent feudalism with psychic powers, treating non-psychics as chattel and causing technological advancement to regress since they refuse to handle their problems with anything but psychic powers. and it's even got two brothers duking it out for the throne that will give them power over every bitchy psychic on earth! you love to see it. if I can be 100% honest I do think it's straight up bananagrams that this was the first book released in the series even though it's chronologically last; I genuinely cannot imagine caring enough to figure out what the fuck these people were talking about if I didn't have the previous four books for context. and even "context" may be generous; Octavia still has absolutely 0 interest in explaining what's up with the fucking outer space werewolves who are the psychics' #1 enemy. if I could have brunch with any person living or dead I would summon Butler up in a heartbeat to explain what the fuck her thought process was in plotting out this series over some mimosas, and I would take extensive notes on every word she said. an absolute genius and the uncontested queen of freak shit forever.

Thirsty Mermaids (Kat Leyh, 2021) - I purchased this graphic novel in November 2023 at a conference where I bumped into Queer Comics Peddler, my very favorite queer midwestern pop-up. running into them is always a delight, and this time I came with a question: could they give me a recommendation? the very nice people working offered up Thirsty Mermaids, which was the PERFECT companion for a long airplane ride. it's cute without being overly sappy, and avoids the trap of sacrificing a plot for the sake of checking off as many representation boxes as possible. the story is simple: three mermaids use a spell to turn into humans and go ashore in search of booze, only to realize in the morning that they don't know how to turn back. taken in by a generous bartender, they're faced with the reality of having to make money for the first time in their lives. hijinks ensue, but also a very sweet and warmhearted story about the friends looking out for one another as they try to figure out exactly where they belong and what home even means. also the artwork is GORGEOUS, with the mermaids' extremely memorable character designs being a real standout. if you're a graphic novel enthusiast, definitely check this out 🧜‍♀️

Sugar, Baby (Celine Saintclare, 2023) - Sugar, Baby came to me in a very similar way as Thirsty Mermaids: while visiting a witchy little bookstore that I was immediately charmed by, I asked the cashier what they would recommend. they offered up Maeve Fly (fab) and this novel, a stack of which was on the counter advertising an upcoming event with the author. neither have disappointed, so shout out to that one employee with the great taste! Sugar, Baby sees a young cleaner named Agnes, one of the only biracial women in her unnamed English town, befriending the daughter of a wealthy client and getting whisked away to her new friend's London lifestyle: crashing in an apartment with fellow models, staying out all night to party, and making money by going on dates with extravagantly wealthy older men. Agnes starts out having a swell time, but the cracks pretty swiftly start to form as she realizes how much more dependent she is on these men than her wealthy new friends and she begins to wonder exactly how much she's willing to diminish herself to get the bag. it's not a perfect first novel but it is a compelling one, a perfect airplane page-turner that crashes from glitzy to ghoulish and back with breakneck speed.

The Gargoyle's Captive (Katee Robert, 2023) - my full review is over on patreon for my darling supporters who want me dead (and picked this book in the first place, damn them to hell), but suffice to say this is a fun book to read if you like the sensation of your brain melting out of your nose, if you're really turned on by baby's first bdsm, you are not particularly concerned with trifling matters like "plot coherence" or "character motivation" or "writing that is complex and artful," and/or you've ever wanted to have sex with a dude whose penis is so big that you feel genuinely fear. also, hey, I forgot to include this in my patreon write-up so fuck it: Robert REFUSES to tell us what kind of food the protagonists are eating, ever. whenever they have a meal it's just "the food was placed on the table" "I took a bite" etc. drop me a HINT, man, come on! is it a protein? grain? starches? the only thing I know for sure that they're consuming is wine and a single marshmallow, and god does it show. it's just a very weird and distracting omission and it's absolutely not the worst thing about this book but it is a hill I'm willing to die complaining on.

[fkevin073]

so i finally watched TBOSAS, and as someone who didn't read the TBOSAS book, i'm going all movie based here to ask you about that cabin scene-- do you think snow would have killed lucy gray there? i mean, he did started shooting later, but that was because she put the doubt of "nooo, oF cOuRsE i WoN't TeLL" and i feel like that's when his trust ON HER was broken?

idk where i'm going with this, i guess i just wanted to hear your opinion on it. i honestly think if movie!lucy had just kept quiet in the cabin, movie!snow wouldn't have done anything? (anything to harm her, that is. i definitely think he would go back to go to district 2)

ahh welcome to the TBOSAS brain rot! it's a fun place to be lol

but u see, what you just described is exactly my biggest issue with the movie. like don't get me wrong, everyone in the cast killed it, and I love the movie overall, but the book 100% helped you realize just how selfish, deranged and paranoid Coriolanus really is. like he's not totally evil, but you see his flaws very, very prominently, and know that even if he does love Lucy gray, he doesn't love her well or right. the movie doesn't give you that insight, which makes sense considering we don't have that endless access to his thoughts like we do in the book, but in the movie they do this weird thing of almost making him better? or making him seem more like a tragic villain? like the book makes it 100% clear he did not truly care about Sejanus. When he cries post the hanging in the book, he cries because he thinks he's next, not because he feels genuine remorse for what did to sejanus. The movie makes it seem like he was genuinely convinced sejanus would be fine and his dad would buy him out of trouble; the book makes it clear that isn't truly a priority for him.

this speaks mainly to your question: do you think snow would have killed Lucy gray? in the book, the answer is 100% yes. I've already spoken about this with the amazing @indistinctmumblings, but in the book we already know how suspicious and paranoid snow is. he was already ready to ditch her the instant he saw the guns. book Coriolanus is ready to turn on people the moment he realizes he can't control them, even if he loves them. the movie changes coriolanus in that way, and while I think it's effective in its own way - makes his fall seem a bit more tragic because we like Coriolanus more, it infuriates me because in the woods scene it almost makes Lucy gray seem more like the aggressor?

Like by the time Coriolanus finds the snake in the book, he's already turned on her. the movie makes it seem like her 'betrayal', which seems a bit more unjustified considering how remorseful he was about sejanus (saying I'm sorry, crying over pictures, etc), and which could (somewhat??) reasonably be interpreted as a murder attempt on her part (in the book it's specified post his return to district 12 by a doctor that the snake wasn't venomous at all) is what makes Coriolanus snap. and it grates at me, esp after the first time I watched it.

because in the movie I was also genuinely convinced that until she said "besides me?" Coriolanus hadn't really thought of her as a threat? like it's only when she says it that it occurs to him, but even then he doesn't seem to mistrust her. it's only post snakebite that he's like okay, that's it, we're done, you're done. And I think it kind of undermines the danger Lucy Gray was in, in a way. Like I firmly believe in both the book and the movie she was waiting in the bushes to see how he would react as a final kind of test, and he very obviously fails it on both accounts, but in the movie it's a bit more reasonable why he was upset?? to some degree, anyway. he's still an asshole, and Lucy gray is stilll the one in the right here.

I think the main difference between book Coriolanus and movie Coriolanus to me is this: if he DID shoot Lucy gray, and he found her lying on the forest floor and bleeding, I believe book Coriolanus would have gone for the kill shot, even if it was in a fit of rage. I don't believe movie Coriolanus had it in him. I think he would have helped her, or let her go. but that's just me!

I definitely agree with you though! I think the more I rewatch it the more okay I become with it, but when I first watched the movie I was hit by the changes in the cabin like a truck. thanks sm for the ask, and have a happy new year!

[soaringwide]

Hello, Soaringwide, how are you?

I just saw your Get to know your tarot reader - ask game. The questions are really interesting so I want to ask a few questions (I actually want to know your answers to all the questions 😆)

✒️ What’s a quote that sums up your philosophy?

🐦‍🔥 What’s a belief you once held that you no longer do?

🦅 What does personal growth mean to you, and how do you pursue it?

Have a nice day, and thank you for all the insightful PACs and tarot posts 💐

Hello :D

Doing okay today, it's 6 am and I'm about to go to work, and you? :)

Haha feel free to post as well (haven't checked if you did but I will) so I can ask a few too! thank you for your questions :D

✒️ What’s a quote that sums up your philosophy?

I'm a massive fan of everything from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, but I've also been obsessed with Rimbaud's work every since I was a teenager. So, hard to pick but I'd say I keep coming back to this one:

“The poet makes himself a seer through a long, immense reasoned deranging of all his senses. All the forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he tries to find himself, he exhausts in himself all the poisons, to keep only their quintessences.” - Rimbaud

Idk there is something about embracing the chaos with all your senses and diving within you that I find extremely inspiring in Rimbaud's writings, and validating in a way, because it explains what animates me in life and explains why it seems I always look for intensity in everything...

🐦‍🔥 What’s a belief you once held that you no longer do?

There was a dark time in my life, the year leading up to the plague, where I was a bit too obsessed with a niche new age youtuber, some type of small scale online guru that i started listening because i thought she gave me spiritual insight on my life; which ended up confusing me and leading me astray more than anything.

Ever since I have a big dislike for anything starseed and magical alien related, because the whole thing left me a sour taste and comes with rotten ideas of like ''everything is meant to happen and will always be fine, you're destined for success if you just manifest it well enough, there is nothing but light, YOU are just so sPeCiAL, all your symptoms are proofs that you are ascending and everyone who doesn't believe that is in the matrix or whatever, ...", there is no critical thinking allowed and so many things that didn't fit with my world view that I was silencing because what she was saying was making me feel good in the moment.

Idk I just LOATH how that movement targets vulnerable people at the worst time for them to give them false hope and derail their real potential for recovery by masking everything with a collective lie that serves no good except making whoever is spewing them richer and more powerful.

What made me snap out of it is when covid started early 2020 and she (of course) started spewing conspiracy theories about what was happening, of the like of ''the earth is purging itself to ascend, you have nothing to worry about you will not get sick... and also it was made by the chinese...'', and I was like, this is getting weird I'm out. So I just unfollowed and never went back to that...

🦅 What does personal growth mean to you, and how do you pursue it?

As a 31 yo, I truly believe that while you can't do much about your body aging (yes cosmetically you can, but it won't stop you from dying at some point), you absolutely can do something about your Heart.

There is something I noticed in people who let bitterness take a hold of their Heart (which can happen at any time but gets worse as you get older), and it's that it changes you, and I think you lose something here. You're no longer longing for the future, looking ahead and hoping to make a change in the world and in your own life. You're just defeated and looking at everything pessimistically, judging the youth for being too this or too that. You lose the spark, the passion and the ability to dream the future. Life becomes that heavy routine that has lost all magic.

So at this point, personal growth means never to lose sight of that, and how I pursue it is to always have something going on within me that pushes me forward, a dream to hold on, a passion to cherish, for that keeps my Heart young while I accumulate wisdom in the right places and age without losing myself.

But yeah, it's difficult and some days I can't do it so well, but I'm determined and it's like, the goal of my life I'd say.

ask me a question from here

[goosemixtapes]

max's top books of 2023 :3c

as usual, these rankings are based on some arcane mix of objective quality + my personal enjoyment (previous year's lists)

it was another weird reading year! i did a lot of reading for school, more so than in the past; some of it was really good and some of it was, uh. well, some of it was william wordsworth. nothing i absolutely loathed, though (most of the reads i disliked were books i could at least appreciate on an art/history level), which is cool. so i'm bringing back the runner-up category. did not make it onto my top ten list but were really good anyway: beartown by fredrik backman (books that no joke made me understand why people are insane about sports) and the GORGEOUS re-release of my dear @yvesdot 's debut, something's not right, which i have read before but will always gladly revisit again.

my top anticipated release for 2024 is alecto the ninth again.

(but shoutout also to just happy to be here, king cheer, and henry henry. trans people! shakespeare, even!)

and the list! in increasing order of enjoyment, with pictures this year!

10. The Common Liar by Janet Adelman

no, i can't believe i'm doing this either. i can't believe i did all that preamble and the first book on my list is an academic thesis analyzing shakespeare's antony and cleopatra. but also? it's the only book anyone ever needs to write about shakespeare's antony and cleopatra. janet adelman said it all. which is cool, because i have a fixation on that play, but also sucks, because i was also trying to write an essay on it and mine wasn't nearly as good. btw if anyone wants to buy this for me, somehow, for the $120 it costs on amazon because academia is awful, i will send you my address,

9. Robert Icke's Oresteia

i don't need to say anything about this play, because it's the source of "this was always going to happen. she's been dead since the beginning." that should be enough. but after becoming deranged about the oresteia last year, i finally read this, and holy shit, this adaptation of the story is so fucking genius and icke's writing is so fucking good. it's antiwar! it's about mental illness! there's gender! the fucking ENDING! (i have a pdf if anyone would like it. anything to plug this play bark bark bark rufrufruf grrrrrr)

8. Down Girl: the Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

this is a little bit cheating, because i haven't finished this book yet, so maybe in the final chapters manne will say something like "what if we blew up every orphan" and i'll have to retract this. but right now it's fucking excellent! i've been making an effort to read more nonfiction lately, and this one shines; manne sets out to analyze misogyny not as a personal hatred of women that some men harbor, but as an intricate and structural system forcing women into the role of Giving (attention, affection, power, etc; sometimes their lives). and it's sooooo smart. some of it is stuff i already know (and some of it is Academic Philosophy TM that goes right over my head), but manne articulates her point excellently and i can feel it rearranging my brain, so it's going on the list for longevity and skill!

7. Dictator by Robert Harris

does this book objectively deserve to be on this list? you know what, yeah. i'll say it with my whole chest. i don't like how harris writes women and there are plenty of things to pick at in his cicero trilogy, but i had so much goddamn fun reading it that i can't not put it on the list. this was my year of being really really into cicero, and this was fun to read alongside e-pistulae. harris is sooooo good at making ancient roman politics gripping. the last scenes of this book. augh. ack. ough!

6. Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters

there are a lot of valid critiques of this one (a lot of bad critiqus, too, but such is writing literally anything about transness), but i fucking adored it. i LOVE dual timelines, i LOVE unlikable characters, and i FUCKING LOVE TRANSSEXUALITY! moreover, i love that peters isn't afraid to Go There, to poke at the messy ugly sides of transness (and queerness in general) that i think a lot of us don't like acknowledging, especially to cishet people whose view of the community is already skewed. i don’t think this is the One Great Trans Novel; i think there are a lot of great trans novels, and we need more. but this one did hit me RIGHT in the chest, and i couldn't put it down.

5. Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane

the iliad but achilles is a trans woman and she's fighting the war on both mortal and divine levels and she and helen have an insane homoerotic half-god rivalry and everybody is fucking crazy. pitched as "for fans of TSOA" but as i said in my review if TSOA is a pleasant but watery iced tea then this book is gasoline laced with crack. there is a bisexual transgender threesome. i fucking love women. book of the fucking summer

4. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

i probably enjoyed wrath goddess sing more, but i can't not rank this book highly on this list. this book is such a fucking masterpiece. it's tolstoy for the modern age. it's a sprawling multi-familial multi-cultural multi-generational epic about race and gender and religion and science and humanity and britishness. smith's prose is fucking amazing; her character work is even better; this book has no plot but it uses its length sooooooo well. the first zadie smith i've read, but by god there will be more. she wrote this at TWENTY-FIVE. that's fucking CRAZY. do you know how much control over your craft you have to have to write this at twenty-five. bonkers. it is also the only enjoyable book i read in my modern literature class, so shoutout to white teeth for keeping me sane,

3. The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

this book is ostensibly about bechdel's relationship with exercise. it is actually about bechdel's relationship with her own body, her own soul, her desire for individualism in the style of the transcendentalists, transcendentalism in general, mortality, and aging. i can't really tell you more than that because i didn't actually "read" this so much as i absorbed it through my skin like a frog while trying not to tremble like a little purse dog. i am not gonna lie man i did not have a very good. um. august. or september. or october november december. so this book really could not have come at a better time. alison bechdel i am obsessed with you

2. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

ALISON BECHDEL I AM OBSESSED WITH YOU!!!! this one narrowly edges out secret to superhuman strength because... well, i'm sort of rating the entire comic strip's run, and dude. holy shit. i love lesbians so much. this strip is such an important piece of lesbian history; it reminded me that a lot of the things lesbians (and LGBT people in general) argue about and deal with today are... the same things we've always argued about and dealt with, from intracommunity label discourse to global politics to hitting on women badly. but history aside--it's also just really fucking good! it's really funny! if you are a neurotic leftist, as so many of us are, it's hysterical! it's smart! it's hot! it's heartwarming! i read it over the first half of the year, in little bits and pieces, and by the end i felt like i really had gone decades with these characters. really just. so good. the power she has the range she has

1. the suzanne collins reread

okay. this one is definitely cheating. because i usually like to keep this list to books i'm reading for the first time, and i HAVE read the hunger games and the underland chronicles. but i read them, like, almost ten years ago, and i was not prepared to be so thoroughly fucking bodied by them this time around, now that i have critical thinking and analysis skills. we all know the hunger games is a fucking banger, so let me pitch the gregor the overlander series: something of a modern alice in wonderland setup, where the eleven-year-old main character falls into an underground world full of strangeness, except this world isn't whimsical, it's dangerous and stuffed with giant talking animals like bats and rats and cockroaches. there's a war on. there are plagues. there are war crimes. there is a plotline that is extremely explicitly about ethnic cleansing. there is some of the most heartbreaking fucking shit you've ever read in your goddamn life. there is also a rat who quotes macbeth and the underlanders revere a guy named bartholomew of sandwich. this series is for middle schoolers. i cried. not when i was a middle schooler reading it the first time; i mean now. so i'm breaking my no-rereads rule, because it really would be a lie to say that my best reading experience wasn't revisiting all of collins' work with my friends (yes, i read TBSOS; i think it's fine but not great). sorry to give publicity to an author who definitely doesn't need my help, but a few years ago my #1 spot went to shakespeare, so.

if you've read this far: thank you! please tell me your thoughts! tell me your favorite books of 2023! tell me which books you're excited for in 2024! and have a very lovely new year :)

[connectionterminated13]

Any other details you’ve been thinking about for the Millie and Elizabeth au?

There's a couple of things that have been floating around in my brain space... This is going to be very long...

- Relationship progression stuff with Elizabeth and Millie!

I think I've mentioned this before but they start off as like not really friends more like acquaintances. Like Elizabeth thinks Millie is really cool and wants to be her friend and Millie thinks Elizabeth is just a prep! (My immortal voice). I think they kind of start being friends after The whole Millies Crush/boyfriend dating another girl (Sorry if I'm not remembering that right it's been a billion years since I've read count the ways). Liz finds her being a pissed off mess in the Bathroom at their school and they chat about it. Millie realizes that Elizabeth isn't really that bad, But still things that she can't possibly understand Being such a perfect girl with a perfect life.

They get like a lot closer and the plot really starts Post count the ways, Elizabeth visits Millie in the hospital as she's recovering from having like most of the arteries in her neck slashed and nearly bleeding out. Elizabeth believes her about the evil murder bear, Explain the lore, And apologizes because in her eyes there's nothing they can do to stop it. Millie tells her that's stupid and that they could stop William! Elizabeth tentatively agrees and they start trying to track down William's monsters and killing/like dispatching them before they do murder.

From here on out I imagine there's a lot of smaller stories of Liz And Millie catching the evil machines, Stopping the frights before they happen and all that, Having lesbian tension. Elizabeth knows she likes Millie but She doesn't want to pursue that because the only other queer person she knows is her father the deranged murderer and also Her own fear that she's inherently just as bad as William and could hurt her the people close to her. Millie is a lot more accepting of the crush since she's goth, But she's still having a bit of a hard time like grappling with that internally.

Then some big event happens, IDK maybe a Fight with Some extra spooky monster from frights (I was thinking ralpho or My re-imagined Eleanor). And they're trapped together alone and both of them are very sure they're going to die. Liz apologizes to Millie blaming herself for their situation, She pulled Millie into this After all it's her fault, The 2 of them are going to be torn apart or stitched into something new and horrible and it's all her fault. She probably whispers something like "I'm just like him aren't I?" Millie holds her and Tells her it's both of their faults and that's okay. Even if it was a small one they made a difference. Millie also tells Elizabeth that she's nothing like her dad, She's a wonderful lady and it's sad they didn't get to be together longer. Then they kiss. Then the monster is stopped by probably Mikey and Charlie coming to the rescue. And the 2 surviving and realizing that both of them like each other decide to start dating yea!!!

- I have a weird idea of how to use Casey/the new kid from frights?

So before this you should know that I'm thinking about using my frights re imagining/ Agony creature lore for this! In my frights re imagining Casey from the new kid is an agony creature who kind of dislike runs around scamming into people's friend groups just to kill them till I get agony.

I think here he does the same thing on the side but mostly he's Kind of trying to suck up to William by like "protecting" Liz (William knows he exists and let him do his thing but also does not care at all about him in any way) . He's like one of her only friends before Millie. Elizabeth sort of knows what he is but things he's just like William's way of keeping eyes on her. After Millie comes along and Elizabeth spends most of her time with Millie, Casey gets worried that They're going to get on to him and like set him on fire or something. I think he's probably a minor antagonist, in like the first or second part...

- Abigail And her relationship with Elizabeth and also her feelings on Millie

Abigail loves Elizabeth More because she's William's daughter than because Abigail is her stepmother. William loves her so like a good wife Abigail loves her. She wants what's best for Elizabeth and what's best for her is what William wants and what William wants is Elizabeth to be like Him/a good daughter who doesn't ask questions or step out of line.

And that was going well until Millie came. Millie maid Elizabeth adventures which made William madd which made Abigail mad. These 2 girls were now ruining so many of their plans and if William didn't tell her not to Elizabeth would have been shoved in a robot by now. Also the fact that (as everyone can tell) they're clearly together. Like Abigail knows that William is not straight and how William has a weird fascination with Henry. She's done her best to steer him away from that but Elizabeth being gay too opens up that wound again. Because no matter how hard Abigail tries she'll never be the Henry that William imagines Henry is in his head.

- Zombie???

I think it would be funny if there was a running joke that Michael didn't like zombies. He finds them gross. Anything that his father makes that has to do with like weird flesh organic junk freaks him out.

Also there are like no zombies in frights so this is probably going to be the one connection terminated AU without a zombie :(..... Maybe I throw in the kids from the breaking wheel I don't know.

[thewhizzyhead]

before I sleep, here is my definitive ranking on all the NPMD songs and some rambles on why I placed them there - also the ranking is based on how much I vibe with them (music production and lyricism have different rankings)

1. Hatchet Town (aka the hatchetfield trilogy theme song like this tune perfectly encapsulates the chaos Hatchetfield has to go through with every Starkid project pos-2018 and I love it - kinda wish it was a number that is more integrated with the plot with the kids tho BUT I REALLY DID LIKE that this melody was quite prominent in the other songs too)

2. High School is Killing Me (I've watched many teen centered musicals and believe me when I say that this song is one of, if not, the best introduction numbers out there for this genre - also it's a really great opening hook for a show)

3. Nerdy Prudes Must Die (FUCKING AMAZING HONESTLY - amazing way to REALLY re-establish a villain back from the dead and to establish the main theme for the nerds here: "I'm Not A Loser" (tho i fucking wish that motif was used a bit more))

4. Just For Once (everyone cheer for Lauren Lopez flexing not just her high tier soprano skills, but also how amazing of a fucking actor she can be like the concept of this song is quite layered and to pull it off both comedically and emphatically takes great lyrical and acting prowess)

5. The Summoning (a well-anticipated onstage introduction to all 5 of the LiB that balances out befuddling neon-entertainment with genuine fucking menace)

7. Cool As I Think I Am Reprise (A FUCKING GENIUS REPRISE I CAN'T STRESS ENOUGH HOW COOL I FIND THEM RECONTEXTUALIZING THE OG SONG AND IF I LOVED YOU TO FIT THE SITUATION AND BOTH OF THE CHARACTERS GROWTH. LIKE IN TERMS OF THEMATIC IMPLICATIONS WITH CHARQCTER DEVELOPMENT, THIS SONG AND ITS SCENE WOULD BE THE TOP)

6. If I Loved You (I think this song could be a bit more honestly like I know how much Starkid has explored Steph and Pete's relationship in their other projects and I was really hoping that they would have it more portrayed here - however the song is a bop nonetheless and it matches neatly with their themes and the harmonies are top tier. I placed this higher than the next just due to my personal bias like I really do like the song)

8. Dirty Dudes Must Die (A GREAT TWIST THAT MAKES ME WANT ANOTHER MUSICAL ABOUT GRACE CHASITY'S DERANGED SELF - also the new context of the song Grace is reprising here makes her a villain even scarier than MAX of all people but that's just me)

9. Literal Monster (A very catchy beat and well structured song that provides a good introduction to a jock-bully with the god complex. also kinda foreshadowing to nerdy prudes must die)

10. Cool As I Think I Am (the instrumentation reminded me of Dear Evan Hansen ngl fjsjd but it really does sound like an I-Want song from a teen-musical which is of course what they are going for - it sounds very nice and earnest though and I loved how it was utilised in the reprise. However I still fucking wish that the I'm Not A Loser motif was used more)

11. Dirty Girl (look I'm sorry for ranking this quite low on the list but like there is no fucking way I'm using this as bait to lure other people in like they'd be scared away I'm sorry fjdjs BUT I love how Will and Angela perform this though like top tier starkid performances ever - its not just what I would listen to on repeat personally jgjdjs)

12. Go Go Nighthawks! (This one gets plus points because of FUCK YOU CLIVESDALE GO GET FUCKED. otherwise its nice and cheery and perfectly shows how happy everyone is without Max but um I kinda wish it could be a bit more especially in terms of showing how happy the other nerds are now that Max is gone but that's just me)

13. Bully The Bully + Bury The Bully (Look I couldn't decide which was better like they both are the same melodies so like gjxjs these two are cute though and I liked seeing the 5 kids bonding in Bully The Bully since we don't get that many scenes with them)

14. The Best Of You (the pop-punk happy number is a staple of teen-centered musicals and it does really sound nice - just isn't that much of a standout compared to the others.)