#I have to believe someone knew how this scene would read from a bisexual perspective

[deadwerewolfgirlfriend]

Meta: 1x07 Hook Man, repressed emotions, and haunting the narrative.

gifset // meta

I want to take a closer look at a scene about halfway through 1x07 Hook Man, an episode in which Sam and Dean catch a case involving an invisible spirit that kills people and seems connected to the daughter of the local reverend. They find out that the same spirit has been murdering people on and off for many years, always as retribution for what it considers to be immoral acts. At a college party, Sam and Dean have the following conversation.

Sam: A man of religion, who openly preaches against immorality. (Dean looks away) ...Except, maybe this time instead of saving the whole town, he's just trying to save his only daughter. Dean: Reverend Sorenson. You think he's summoning the spirit? Sam: Maybe. Or, you know how a poltergeist can haunt a person instead of a place? Dean: Yeah, the spirit latches on to the reverend's repressed emotions, feeds off them, yeah, okay. Sam: Without the reverend ever even knowing it. (Dean looks away again) Dean: Either way, you should keep an eye on Lori tonight. Sam: What about you? (Dean sighs, looking around) Dean: I'm gonna go see if I can find that unmarked grave.

It's worth noting further context of the episode. The brothers are still looking for John and haven't heard anything from him. Dean is interested in finding John and killing any monsters he finds on the way to hunting down the yellow-eyed demon that killed Mary, while Sam sees their time as a temporary vacation from his normal life.

I see a few reads of this scene, and what repressed emotions Sam is specifically referring to, because the MOTW is never just another monster.

1. The bisexual read.

Assuming that Dean is bisexual (source: Supernatural, seasons 1-15), this scene can be interpreted as Dean realizing that "repressed emotions" hits a little close to home. Sam either says this intentionally, that [Dean] is repressing his emotions and [Dean] doesn't even realize that people get hurt because of it, or accidentally, and Dean changes the subject because he doesn't want Sam to get any closer to the truth.

The righteous men the spirit has possessed preach against immorality. The reverend preaches against immorality. And "immorality" is the first thing that makes Dean look away -- whether because he knows that that could apply to him, or because he doesn't want to have to think about it.

2. Something (or someone) is haunting the narrative.

"Haunt the narrative" pun partially intended, because there's not a better word to describe how longing for a normal life, feeling out of place in a normal life, and whether hunting is an all-consuming lifestyle or a heroic and sacred duty are all present in every episode, even when they aren't mentioned. As of 1x07, Dean thinks hunting is a holy calling, and Sam thinks hunting is a necessary evil. Dean always believes that Sam can "escape" hunting, escape "the life," but he doesn't believe the same of himself. Dean believes that Sam is the smart one, that once they catch the yellow-eyed demon Sam will go back to Stanford and Dean will keep hunting until something kills him -- something he literally voices in 10x07.

Given how many times Dean will try to leave the hunting life and "be normal" in later seasons, I have to believe he yearns for something different. A life free of hunting, perhaps not, but I don't believe in 1x07 he thinks that leaving the life is an option. I think he believes that repressing his emotions and hunting are the same thing (and who taught him that?). The brothers don't know if they can ever return to a so-called "normal life," how they can stomach not getting involved when they know that monsters kill people, or what it takes for someone who kills monsters to become one themselves. These are not ideas that are named in every episode, but they exist in every episode, under every argument between the brothers, every difficult choice they have to make, every monster they do and don't choose to kill. Truly, these ideas haunt the narrative.

Maybe Sam believes that hunting is what's haunting Dean, that Dean would actually benefit from trying to be "normal" and taking a break from always being on the job, and that whether or not Dean is aware of it, refusing to feel and refusing to be human isn't good for him or the people around him. Unintentionally or not, and no matter how many people he saves and how many monsters he kills, Dean leaves collateral damage in his wake, damage often counted in human lives.

3. The crueler read.

What if Sam is implying that Dean is the one haunting him? Dean keeps dragging him away from his happy, ordinary life, free of monsters and hunting and demons killing people. And what happens as soon as Dean shows up again? Jess is killed by a demon. As much as Sam believes that he's the common thread, it's no coincidence that where Dean goes, there are monsters. Jess comes up again, almost always as ammunition in another of the brothers' arguments.

Wherever Sam goes, whatever he does, no matter how many times he tries to leave hunting, to leave the life, Dean follows him. Dean brings him back from the dead, again and again and again, making deals and getting himself a one-way ticket to Hell to save his brother's life, even when Sam wishes he'd just let him die. Dean tries to bring him back from the Cage. Dean makes deals with anyone who'll bargain to save Sam from remembering Hell. Whenever Sam escapes, Dean catches up, whether it's in season 6 or season 8.

And Sam is not like Dean. Hunting isn't the one true calling for him. While Dean enjoys Purgatory, even says to Sam that he enjoys killing monsters in 9x19, Sam doesn't. Sam doesn't want to kill Madison in Heart, doesn't want to kill Jack Montgomery in Metamorphosis, doesn't want to kill monsters, not the way Dean does. He doesn't take pleasure in it, and finds Dean's pleasure distasteful -- and when Sam gets just a day in Purgatory, he doesn't understand Dean's yearning for simple hunting, rather he understands Dean's pain.

Sam loves his brother, but their codependency is skewed one way, and Sam is the one who can go on without him, who can hunt without him, who can even escape the life without him. Sam is always trying to claw his way out, and Dean, without realizing, always manages to drag him back in. Dean, haunted by hunting, is haunting Sam, and he doesn't even realize who he's hurting.

[ethernetchord]

lets talk: popular iwwv criticism

(disclaimer: i know criticism is subjective and thats why im doing this, i wanna look at some common points made against iwwv and dissect them just a little bit in the opposite direction. also none of this is directed at any individual- it’s all based on the general talking points i’ve seen surrounding the book.)

SPOILER WARNING !!

lack of exploration into james and oliver (+ gay characters feel performative)

i’ve seen loads of people say that oliver and james’ relationship felt very performative, a way of including the queer romnce which clearly is very important to the plot but not actually giving it any space in the novel, nor developing it to the same extent which meredith/oliver was.

oliver and meredith had a very strictly physical relationship and while he did love her, he wasn’t in love with her the way he was with james. the juxtaposition in the way that oliver/james is delivered and the way meredith/oliver is delivered is, i believe, far too repetitive to not be intentional. i actually realised upon re-reading how much focus there really is on meredith’s sexuality, even in subtleties in the book. meredith and oliver get more blatant sex scenes, get more physical parts because oliver was (to an extent) using his attraction to meredith to distract himself from his infatuation with james.

we also have to remember that oliver and james didn’t get their real moment of honesty about their relationship till extremely late into the book. i’d honestly see it as more ‘performative’ to then after or in the middle of kind lear throwing in some wild sex scene between the two. it wouldn't have fit.

“why didn’t james and oliver get together earlier then >:(((“ because the slow burn between them, the subtext, the subtle-ness, the yearning, they were all crucial to the decision which oliver made at the end. the fact that they burned so bright for each other but (oliver particularly) were so desperately repressed, that was what made this such a tragic romance. yes its tiring to read stories about queer people being repressed, yes its tiring to see the bury your gays trope. but like oliver says, it goes beyond gender.

if oliver’s second love interest was a girl, and treated this way, we’d be a lot more on board with these tropes- but the fact that james is a man, and this therefor becomes a queer relationship, makes it feel performative. i can’t convince you of anything- but i like to believe that their relationship being treated like this not only makes it so much more “heart wrenching because why! why couldn’t it work out, why couldn’t it be better!” - not because its a queer relationship but because they were soulmates.

alexander wasn’t performative. not in the slightest, rio just didn’t make being gay his entire identity. same goes for colin. just because they’re queer doesn’t mean it needs to be the only thing about them. this isn’t a lgbt novel- characters dont have to be gay just for plot. they can just be gay.

i’ve also seen people complain about not just making oliver bisexual. guys. did you read the book? he was bisexual. he was emotionally and physically attracted to both meredith and james. guys that’s literally what bisexual means.

i'm totally on board with the coming out scenes! and realisation of feelings and all that stuff- but again, not an lgbt centric novel and also- these were things oliver probably did and realised far before this book. remember that its set in 4th year, at an art school. he knew he was fruity ok. not every queer character in every queer book have to have these grandious coming out scenes or realisations. the lack there of doesn’t equal performance.

the ending was rushed and bad

believe what you will, but i don’t think james is dead. there’s a little too much ambiguity in that ending, in the extract he leaves oliver, in the “his body was never found.” so if your main quarrel with the ending is that “bury your gays” situation- please know there’s a chance- and that giving it that chance opens up so much more discussion and reader response.

yes, the ending is sad. but it’s not rushed. “but that is how a tragedy like ours or king lears breaks your heart- by making you believe the ending might still be happy until the very last second.” doing king lear, doing macbeth, doing romeo and juliet, the plays are chosen not only for reader convenience (they’re plays readers will most likely be familiar with) but also because they all, so very deeply, foreshadow a “bad” ending. killing james, makes sense. as much as people don’t want to hear it, from an authorial perspective- from the reader’s perspective and as a human being it makes sense. why do keep arguing that he “should’ve stayed alive for oliver” or that “if he really loved oliver he wouldn’t have done it” - why are we limiting a character’s entire existence down to their love interest. yes, they were best friends, yes they were set up as lovers but that doesn’t mean that that would be enough to keep james around. james was a fragile character- he was always checking with oliver if he had upset him, he was always worried, overthinking, james wasn’t strong minded- and he was suffering. the only person he had left to depend on was in prison, he was plagued with the guilt of causing the death of a classmate and letting oliver take the blame, if he did kill himself, it sure as hell doesn’t have any reason to sound forced.

“its not nearly as good as the secret history!!!!”

to be honest here buds, why the fuck do we keep comparing them so insistently. they are not the same book. iwwv wasn’t trying to be tsh 2.0, yes there are similarities because hey! guess what! books in similar genres tend to do that! always comparing it tsh when they have different motives, different plots and vastly different execution makes no sense. the only reason that they are compared is because tumblrtm dark academics like to group the two together. and yea- makes sense, but stop trying to belittle iwwv because it isn't as grandiose as tsh, because it’s a little more literal, because it’s not as intertextual as tsh. half the people saying iwwv isn’t as good as tsh are practically just subtly going “shakespeare isn’t as complicated as ancient greek huehue” stop forcing the two together and let them be separately appreciated.

the characters were flat/archetypes/etc

sigh. okay.

these characters are actors. this book shows us their transition from themselves entirely into a conjunction of the roles they’ve played and the stereotypes they’ve portrayed.

“we were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.”

“for us, everything was a performance”

“imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. it can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.”

“far too many times i had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around”

“it’s easier now to be romeo, or macbeth, or brutus, or edmund. someone else.”

are you seeing it now? this focus on their archetypes, this focus on the character they are; the way they see themselves not merely as human but as a walking concoction of every character they have turned into and out of. they depend on their archetypes to give them meaning. rio uses these archetypes to remind us of the submersion of her characters. they weren’t flat, their intentional lack of dimension due to their pasts is what makes them so intricate. furthermore, there's an evident subversion- the tyrant becomes a victim, the hero becomes a villain (they all become villains really), the ingenue becomes corrupted. like mentioned before, i think we forget ourselves easily reading this book but there is a great deal of emphasis on this being their last year- which is so important. the damage has been done and a lot of the issues people have with the content (or lack thereof) in this book has to do with the fact that it’s all things that would have occurred in books focusing on previous years at delletcher.

“it didn't live up to expectation” (also leading on from read tsh to this and being ‘disappointed’)

i cant argue this because its entirely subjective. whatever expectation was created for you, i cannot know that and appropriately respond however- if you liked the secret history and understood the secret history then there's a good chance you also liked and understood this book- even if not to the same extent but you must be able to recognize the authorial approach and its significance. i think a lot of ppl read iwwv (and a lot of “dark academia” texts and films) and hope to be able to romanticize the aesthetic or the concepts and then are disappointed when they are presented with mildly unlikeable and overwhelmingly human characters who aren’t easy to romanticize.

a great majority of these books are criticisms of the very culture you’re trying to romanticize, and the only time you’re willing to admit that is when boasting about the ‘self-awareness’ of the people indulging in them, and then a moment later complain about those same qualities because they don’t serve this idealized expectation.

bad rep for arts/liberal arts/ humanities students as being pretentious/cultish

as a humanities student with a great love for eng lit- all of these things are indeed pretentious and cultish. not all the time and not always and not every person- but it is a common theme. academia is overwhelmingly obsessive and extremely white-washed. people become so fast to believe that they are indulging in finer arts and are therefore a higher standard of person. academia is problematic. and the recent influx of people interested in it is good, very good because hopefully, we’ll be more diverse, more open-minded, more accepting. that's what i hope at least. if you know, as an individual, that you’re not a pretentious academic who places themselves above non-academics then that's wonderful- but there are dangers and negative sides to academia that need to be understood so that we can see to not perpetuating them.

i cant refute all points, mostly because there's a lot of good and well-explained criticism because no book is perfect. and my intentions are not to belittle anyone's opinion. these are merely opposing arguments, food for thought and to be fair- a critical look into why not everything is always going to be what we expect of it and why every ‘problem’ can be assessed.

[coolseniorhighschoolfightsong]

YES PLEASE SHARE IT!!!!

okay buckle up friends

In Dead Poets Society, poetry was a very central part of the movie. Poetry represented not conforming to society's ideals, and thinking for yourself. This was the central idea of the Dead Poets Society - the boys went out into the woods to free themselves from society’s views on what was right or wrong, and they used poetry as a device to truly express themselves, without caring about what people, such as teachers, their peers, or their parents would think. Our society, and especially society at that time, is extremely heteronormative, and by removing themselves from a world that pushes heterosexuality and cisgenderism, they created a safe space for them to experiment and explore, and find out who they really are. I also found it very interesting how poetry had a very different effect on each of the main characters in the movie, and how poetry could be used as a metaphor for being gay.

Firstly, I’d like to discuss Neil Perry. Through reading poetry, Neil decides that he needs to seize the day, and he auditions for play. Here, he finds his passion for acting, and realizes that he doesn’t want to be a doctor. He tells this to Keating, his English teacher, and what Keating then replies really struck me - “Then you’re acting for him too. You’re playing the part of the dutiful son.” Most queer people grow up playing a version of themselves that is accepted in society and they hide the part of themselves that is queer to please parents or friends. 

Throughout this response I mention that many of the characters use femininity as a rejection of heterosexuality. I do not mean to imply that all queer men are feminine, and all feminine men are gay. Because acts such as the Hays code made it impossible for queer people to be represented on screen, many movies used femininity in men to represent being gay. I believe that much like many other pieces of cinema, Dead Poets Society uses this technique to add queer subtext. By looking at Neil through this lens, it makes sense that Neil plays Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck is an androgynous, feminine leasing fairy, and through playing Puck, Neil is able to embrace the side of himself that isn’t what was considered ‘manly’ at the time. In addition, after the play, Neil’s father tells him that Neil will be sent to military school, a place where all of Neil’s femininity and homosexual tendencies will be squashed. In response to this, Neil shouts “I have to tell you what I feel!” Neil’s father already knows that Neil loves acting, so what more is there to say? This line shows that there is something deeper than Neil’s acting at play, and when Neil’s father shuts him down, it ends the scene with a feeling of something left unsaid. Finally, Neil’s suicide also ties in shows that there is something else going on. Simply not being allowed to act leaves a lack of reasoning for his death, but when you add in the fact he will have to pretend to be someone he’s not, and he won’t have the chance to love someone, truly, his suicide makes more sense.

Secondly, I thought that the effect of poetry on Todd Anderson was particularly fascinating. Todd starts this movie as a shy, anxious kid, constantly in his brother’s shadow. However, by the end of the movie, Todd gains confidence in himself with the help of poetry. Much like Neil, Todd also plays the role of the dutiful son, and he gets a lawyer desk every year for his birthday. This scene shows a deep disconnect between Todd and his parents, and it shows that his parents really don’t know him at all, a feeling that many queer people can relate to. But when Todd throws the desk set off the bridge, he is rejecting the heterosexuality that his parents are forcing upon him. Also, in the scene where all of the boys are changing in the locker room, Todd is the only one fully dressed, and he is staring down at the floor, visibly uncomfortable. This is a position that many queer people have been in before. Also, when Todd improvises a poem in front of the class, he uses the phrase “being chased by Walt Whitman” repeatedly. Although people debate the sexuality of Whitman, he is generally presumed to be gay or bi. This phrase that Todd uses shows that he is trying to run away from his gay feelings, or push them down. In addition, after the play, he is the last one to be told about Neil’s death. This is because Dalton knows that Todd will be the one affected by his death the most, suggesting that Todd and Neil’s relationship is on a different level than Neil’s relationship with the other members of the Dead Poets Society. Even though Todd only knew Neil for about three months, he is the one that is most torn up about it, which suggests that they have a deeper relationship than the one that is explicitly shown on screen.

Lastly, I’d like to talk about Charlie Dalton’s relationship with poetry. Much like Todd and Neil, he performs for an audience. In contrast to, though, Dalton’s audience is not his parents. It’s his peers. Dalton uses comedy and flamboyant gestures to hide his true feelings, but through poetry he is able to express who he really is, underneath the fake smiles. Much like Neil, he uses femininity to rebel and reject the heterosexual, banker life his parents have planed for him. He names himself  Nuwanda, and paints a lightning on his chest in lipstick, an image reminiscent of David Bowie, an openly bisexual singer. By reading poetry, Dalton was able to embrace the feminine side of himself, and become more honest with the people he loves.

Overall, poetry is used to represent being your true self, and it is a central aspect of the movie. Whether or not anyone working on the movie intended or wanted any of the characters to be something other than straight, it’s worth looking into the queer subtext of this movie and viewing it with a new perspective.

There’s probably essays that explain this more eloquently, but I’m kinda proud of this one.

[daisychvins]

｡･ﾟﾟ･ — introduction.

introducing ... violet’s demise ! aka grayson aka her big brother she’s been wiring money to stay away in europe <33333

name: grayson swag money jeon  age: 22 turning 23 (don’t ask me about his sign that’s for liza to figure out someday <3) gender: cis male; he/him hometown: baltimore, maryland sexuality: bisexual & biromantic

listen i was feeling rlly committed to completing his stats but i’m already over it so don’t ask dont tell xx anYWAYS let’s get on to the juicy stuff hehe

i tend to ramble a lot so this intro is gonna be probably a mixture of paragraphs and bullet points and everything in between but let’s start simple. also i rlly wanna emphasize a massive DRUGS TW bc his character largely revolves around his interest in and addiction to drugs

blackmails

grayson is claiming that he's been in a rehab program for the last year and is now completely sober and reformed when he really was just using the money to party and travel throughout europe.

without his parents paying to support him now, he's had to start dealing to make ends meet and keep up appearances. it’s mostly coke, but he dabbles in harder substances depending on what his connections can get him. 

grayson dabbles with calligraphy and was notorious for forging excuse notes and parent signatures all throughout high school and even now sells forgeries for a quick buck. the most notable of these was xavi’s letter of recommendation that helped him get into yale. 

background

grayson is violet’s older brother!!1 yes, that’s right, THE big brother who’s been out of the country getting LIT (and by lit i mean he’s been traveling europe on a series of solo trips w his parents’ money and doin lots of recreational drugs)

i haven’t fully fleshed out the dynamic he has w his parents but just know it’s ,, bad ASDHFJNK basically the jeons treated their children like accessories and expected them to be their little trophies and grayson just was not having that as a kid!!! so he acted out a lot and obviously got himself into a pretty bad scene (thank u goosie) and is basically the bane of his parents existence at this point <3 yet they still try to appease him to keep him under control but that’s for the family task to work out hehehehe

despite hating his parents, he adores both of his siblings. before the drug use started, he was always a big nurturer and would have done anything for either of them......now he wouldn’t be caught dead praising violet but he loves her in secret from afar HSJDFKG

yeah basically he met goose when he was around 15 i think????? and got introduced to drugs around 16 or 17 i wanna say and by the time he graduated high school he was just....a much different person than the soft big brother he used to be. his parents sent him off to europe pretty much as soon as he turned 18 under the guise of going to school internationally, but grayson obviously knew the truth and understood that he was being sent away so he wouldn’t be his parents problem anymore. 

he basically spent the last four years galavanting europe and just....trying to enjoy it???? but it’s hard to enjoy an extended vacation when u have no family or friends on ur side anymore </3 he basically used the money to stay in hostels and worked odd jobs here and there to stay afloat and keep supplied w the...special goods....but yeah lots of drugs, alcohol, sex, and recklessness but he DID learn a couple languages??? or at least enough to get through some pretty basic conversations in most european countries so <3 guess it’s all okay then!!!! 

anyways idk what else to put here that u won’t just find out in the family task so uhhhhhh idk lmk if u need anything else i guess

present/personality

so now grayson is just vibing at yale obviously ummm he actually got super into writing after high school, especially poetry. he used to carry journals full of just random prose about his addiction and his deepest thoughts, as well as probably some lighter stuff about his love escapades or maybe goose idk...basically he used poetry as an outlet and it allowed him to really ground himself and find his place in the world even if it didnt include who he thought it would SO with that being said, grayson got into yale due to a poetry competition he was a part of. he saw some big fancy competition being advertised and on a whim decided to submit some poem about his struggles with addiction and losing his family (a v raw piece that he didn’t expect to ever see the light of day) and he actually ended up winning! it caught yale’s attention and they invited him to apply and, knowing how much it would probably disturb his little sister, grayson very smugly applied and was pretty stoked to see he got in 

because that poem gained such publicity, it was assumed that he was a survivor of addiction and was writing from a sober perspective. he didn’t want to correct anyone, so he just went with it and has basically crafted this story about his massive success and has become an advocate for addiction treatment and rehabilitation. of course, none of the companies that sponsor him or the events that host him as a motivational speaker know that he’s snorting lines in the bathroom beforehand or dealing to half the elites, but that’s between grayson, god, and the blackmailer !

basically grayson showed back up because of violet’s blackmail being exposed. he was off in europe, unable to defend himself, and with a massive vendetta against his family so he decided what better way to reenter society than by publicly outing himself as a martyr <3333 his plan is basically to bash the family name to fulfill whatever angsty coming of age arc he has in store for him to make up for the pain of being sent away .... really angsty yeah </3 rip grayson 

anyways yeah he’s a total fake. he’s been using his status as a martyr to his advantage a lot, the best example being his recruitment into the elites. he guilted them into accepting him by discussing the PR benefits of recruiting a member that struggles with addiction and how supporting addiction treatment and second chances would be such a good look for them. like he basically threatened to publicly expose them for denying him due to his troubled past and accuse them of being exclusionary so they said boop ! ur in. now the elites are proud advocates for second chances <3333

i would describe grayson as fearless, overconfident, infamous due to his condition being exposed recently, a little gloomy, he’s kind of just got this chip on his shoulder and feels like he has something to prove....he’s gotta be better than his parents, gotta stick it to them and to violet and to everyone who doubts him. he’s a grumpy guy with a massive vendetta and a need for some kind of justice. he just doesn’t know what that is yet. despite all of the bad, however, he’s genuinely a pretty good guy. he’s really goofy and a genuine person, pretty friendly with literally everyone until they give him a reason not to be. basically, unless you are a member of the jeon family he probably likes you or is at least cordial to you (unless we plot differently ofc but u know). he’s just a big lovable dummy with some sweet drug connects and a knack for poetry. he also knows calligraphy but that’s beside the point . 

idk if this is enough to describe him but yeah if u have any questions just let me know hehe

this is probably gonna make things hard but considering violet was just exposed i think that he’s pretty new to yale ???? like probably just transferred in/started this spring semester rather than being here for the entire year/a prolonged amount of time so most of our plots will likely have to be newer/center on him first showing up OR we can establish their connections from pre-europe which is also fine w me....idk i didnt rlly think this timeline through so let’s just plot and see what happens aghbfjnd anyways i included some connection ideas to help us all just in case

wanted connections

i’d say he’s the honorary dealer of the elites aghbdfjn so literally anyone who needs a plug could be a potential connection. we can obviously tweak this and customize it to each character <3

maybe someone who met grayson in europe. they could have travelled together for an extended period of time or even just a brief encounter. he was over there for four years, so the possibilities are endless. 

building off the last one, this same connection could work with a romantic interest. maybe they were romantically involved for a time in europe and fell out of touch or maybe grayson/your muse just left in the middle of the night and they never saw each other again until now and maybe there’s some unresolved feelings/one-sided longing or need for closure. it could also be that they just hooked up whenever this person was in the area and that was that, no strings attached. 

maybe someone who genuinely believes that grayson is actually sober and really admires his strength and idk maybe they’re struggling w their own issues and seek advice from him or maybe they just make it harder for him to actually do his thing bc they’re constantly around and it’s not like they can catch him strung out and acting up 

someone in the literature department or with a background in english or writing. someone he could read poetry to, or share his favorite lines with. someone who’s taken the same professors and can tell him who to watch out for or what to expect. idk i just want him to have someone to share his passions with. maybe a little crush is forming? maybe they’re just friends who share a love of fiction? idk i’m open to literally anything 

he’s sort of a motivational speaker now bc he advocates for rehabilitation resources and stuff so like maybe ur muse saw him give a presentation or participate in some kind of seminar and they called bullshit on him after the show bc they were like,,, bro i literally saw u partying w max and avery last weekend what the fuck are u on about and now they could potentially hold that blackmail over his head hehe......

exes plots are always fun we love angst in this house 

fuck it let’s bring another family member BHJFNGKM no but grayson rlly is a nurturing guy and like....definitely develops unhealthy attachments to cope w his loss of family so he’d love all the sibling-like bonds he can get to kinda numb the pain of “””””losing””””” violet 

if none of these interest you i’m literally so down for anything pls just let me know and i’m happy to brainstorm always <333333 

thank u for reading this....smooch . 

[eponinemylove]

AFTG First Impressions

If you haven’t read aftg just glaze right over this post because I’m bouta spoil some shit and this is something you need to experience for yourself if you ever read the series

OK so let’s talk about first impressions, because there are a couple of things I immediately assumed when I listened to the books (and yes I never read the series, I listened to them on audiobooks, this is important) that were just so far off from what ended up happening that I thought it would be funny to share them

I THOUGHT KEVIN AND ANDREW WERE AN ESTABLISHED COUPLE. Like it’s not even that I thought that Kevin and Andrew might be having sex, which I know a couple of y’all picked up on too and are in the same boat, I actually believed that Andrew was Kevin’s boyfriend and everyone knew this. I thought that it was common knowledge in the exy world that they were openly and publicly dating. The reason I assumed this was because, in the first fucking chapter, they’re described as 1) Kevin having switched to PSU for the short goalkeeper and 2) Kevin never went anywhere without Andrew. This is c a n o n okay, sounds like a relationship to me. moving on.

So again, I listened to this on audiobooks. The audiobooks were voiced by a man. For the first couple of chapters I thought that Aaron was Erin, and I didn’t exactly piece together that he was a guy? Or even that he was the same person? This is just me being a little slow, but for a solid part of the first half of The Foxhole Court, I kind of thought of Aaron as two separate people: Aaron and Erin. I knew that Aaron was Andrew’s twin in the back of my mind, but then I forgot to make the connection that Erin was anything more than a sort of secondary character (like how y’all be doing my boy Seth) so I was just rolling with everything pretty much until around the time that Neil went to Columbia (yes this is how long it took, shut up) and I sat straight up, paused the book, and realized that I was a huge dumbass and that Erin wasn’t a fucking character at all, that I was thinking of AARON, who was the second short blonde maniac and not the maybe-female player that just chills with Andrew’s crowd

Also just me misunderstanding, but when they talked about going to Columbia pretty often I was like oh?? Oh shit. Y’all just be flying down to Columbia every other week, no problem? And then it’s mentioned that they’re from Columbia and i’m there like on god??? I though y’all were white? Ok I see you. It wasn’t until they were actually in the car driving I realized that they meant Columbia, South Carolina and not the country

Also a really minor thing but I thought Nicky was spelled Nicki. This wouldn’t have really changed anything, I just think that Nicki is a more feminine spelling and I was kinda excited about that being his name until I realized that realistically it wasn’t very likely. 

I definitely though that Kevin was going to be Neil’s love interest. He was the one who flew down to Millport to get Neil!! He was the one who decided they have to have him!! In the book’s summary or blurb or whatever it’s called, Kevin is the one Nora is vagueing about, his mysterious friend from the past who might jeopardize Neil’s whole secret but who he’s inexplicably drawn to!! And then I meet Andrew, again who I thought was Kevin’s established boyfriend, and I’m like ???? Is Neil going to have to break them up? Andrew isn’t going to like Neil very much. What’s happening

Ok no tea no shade, BUT. I mean honestly no offense, but how did y’all not pick up on Andreil? Look I KNOW I just said I thought Neil/Kevin was endgame. After like chapter 6 I realized my folly. Kevin was over here getting NO screen time, while Andrew was getting a lot of focus? Which isn’t exactly what pushed me over, but it got me reevaluating. And then Columbia happened and a bunch of other shit but—ok, do y’all remember the scene towards the end (I think) of The Foxhole Court? Chapter 14? I’ll quote it for you: 

“A group of people shouldered their way up to the bar counter at Neil’s back, pushing him into Andrew. Andrew didn’t budge beneath his weight. He was something solid to lean against, something violent and fierce and unmoving. Neil couldn’t remember what it felt like to have someone hold him up. It was terrifying and liberating all at once. His life was out of his control now; he was giving it up to Andrew and hoping Andrew would keep it safe.”

THAT SHOULD’VE BEEN YOUR FIRST MF CLUE. This is the exact moment I realized that Neil was going to end up catching feelings for Andrew, and, let’s be real, I’d already began to assume that Andrew would return them, because obviously. Look at everything that’s happened so far. He’s bought this boy clothes, kept his secrets, adopted him into his family, offered to fight off the mafia for him and??? otherwise completely obsessed over him thus far. The chemistry was there.

I think this pretty much goes without saying but I thought that first night at Columbia would’ve had a much bigger role than it did? Nicky literally kissed Neil against his will while Neil was roofied, and then the next thing Neil knows he’s waking up in bed with Nicky the next day? And sure he freaks out in the moment and for the next couple of days, but there isn’t a whole lot of follow through after that. It’s talked about a few times and then just... never again. I really thought that that would’ve torn a much bigger hole in Neil and Nicky’s relationship than it did

Do you know how much bullshit Andrew’s coming out scene was from my perspective??? Please refer back to the top of this post where I mention that from the first chapter of the first book and one of the first descriptions of Andrew Minyard that we get, I thought this boy was out and proud and dating Kevin Day. And then for Renee to have to break it to Neil in the SECOND BOOK that not only is Andrew not straight, but that no one else knows this about him, I about lost my shit. And then the scene sometime earlier where Kevin is advising Neil that if he is gay to stay in the closet bc it’s easier for pepople to think Neil’s straight??? As if deep down we all don’t know that Kevin himself is a raging bisexual?? Nora, I hate to tell you this, but no one was assuming that your characters are straight. I appreciate you calling out heteronormativity, but I can assure you that was absolutely not the case in your books.

I didn’t like Jean at first. I can admit it. I thought that he was one of Kevin’s asshole ex-teammates who wanted him to come back to the nest, and if not than he’d make him miserable. I have done a complete 180 and I love and respect Jean Moreau so much more now that I understand his character, but that was my initial assumption and I’m not proud of it

Alright I think that’s about it for this post. Feel free to add on with some of your first impressions from aftg, or if you make a separate post tag me in it!

[pug-bitch]

That’s not why I’m going (24)

I can’t believe we’re alone

Book: The Royal Romance

Pairing: Drake Walker x Amara Suarez

Rating: some foul language, some extremely suggestive, and a VERY steamy scene. This is absolutely NOT appropriate for people under 18. 

Word count: 4,875 (let me know if the ‘keep reading’ cutoff isn’t working well!)

Notes: This picks up right after Drake and Amara take off for the cabin in Portavira, starting with Maxwell’s POV.

*****

‘Alright Amara, that sounds good. Yep, you two get some air, ok? We’ll be fine. No, no, don’t worry about us, I promise, Bertrand and I are gonna take good care of Hana. Love you, see you tomorrow!’

Maxwell hangs up, and turns to Bertrand and Hana, seated on his left in the towncar.

‘Are they ok?’ Hana asks.

‘They’re fine! They’re going to Jackson’s cabin in Portavira until the event on Monday. Amara needs a breather, and I think Drake too.’

Bertrand nods. Maxwell had expected his brother to protest, but ever since they’d talked about their father together, something in him had changed. ‘Then they need to do what’s best for them,’ Bertrand chimes in, surprisingly.

Max is taken aback, but he smiles at his brother. ‘Yeah. That being said, Drake wants to grill tomorrow night and he invites us over, that way we’ll be that much closer to Penelope’s estate.’

‘Oh my God that sounds great!’ Hana says excitedly. ‘I can’t wait to see the cabin!’

Max glances at his brother, who is suddenly looking out the window, his lips pursed. ‘Bertrand, Amara said you’re invited. Come with us!’

His face lights up, and Max’s heart sinks. How many times had he excluded his brother, simply because they didn’t have the same notion of fun? Bertrand clears his throat and says ‘I unfortunately cannot. I’m, um… I have to meet with Prince Liam tomorrow in the late afternoon. About Father and how to go about it.’

Max nods. He and Bertrand had discussed the matter, and both agreed that it was time to stop the blackmail. But first, they needed to talk to Liam and make sure they did it right. After that, they would find a time and a way to openly discuss their father’s secret with the court, and the country, which would allow them to both stop paying off Albert --and, most logically, to let him go--, and to advocate for LGBTQ rights. Max had suggested that they give the money that served to buy Albert’s silence to an association. Bertrand had loved the idea. Of course they wouldn’t be able to do it every month, but once in a while was important.

Max was not surprised that his brother was supportive. Ever since he’d told him about their father’s secret, Maxwell couldn’t stop thinking about the year he came out as bisexual, to both his dad and brother, when he was 18. He was terrified of their reaction, but Bertrand had been nothing but supportive, and although talking about it made him blush, he even encouraged Max to bring his girlfriends or boyfriends home as he pleased. Their father simply gave him a pat in the back, and told him this only sentence: ‘You are who you are, son, in the privacy of your own life.’ Max had always thought it was because his father did not want a stain on their reputation. But now he knew he was hurting from his own lie and simply didn’t know how else to deal with it.

As a result, Max never really came out publicly, just to his friends, and whenever he dated men, he did so in a discreet manner, avoiding the spotlight. With his party boy reputation, he was sure that, if he was ever caught by a photographer kissing a man, it would just be shrugged off as ‘Maxwell Beaumont is so silly! He kisses boys when he’s drunk, what a scamp!’

Max didn’t care, though. His friends knew him, he knew himself, and that’s all that matters.

But maybe this was the moment? Maybe not. If he came out publicly now, some old school, ignorant bigots would probably claim that queerness is hereditary, and that would hurt the cause more than help it. Maybe he’d be public about it one day, but not now. He didn’t feel the need to, anyway.

Max was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t even notice that they had arrived at Ramsford. It would be weird to be here without Dramara. In such a short time, Amara had become so important to him, like a sister, the sister he never had. Funnily enough, if he had had one, he would have never been able to sponsor Amara for the competition, and the rest is history.

‘Are you alright, Maxwell?’ Hana asks sweetly.

He squeezes her hand and responds, ‘Yes hun. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s go have fun!’

*****

Olivia looks at her phone. Her fucking phone, the origin of all this bullshit. A text from Amara, after dodging about 4 calls from her. She wasn’t the worst person to talk to, far from it, but Olivia just didn’t feel like talking right now. Still, she opens the text.

Wanna come to Drake’s cabin tomorrow night for a barbecue? You can stay over, the whole gang is coming. Please, Liv?

She rolls her eyes, but quickly responds.

Yes. Stop harassing me, I’ll come.

The dots appear, and soon another text.

Ok, I’ll leave you be. Just please tell me if you’re ok, and please promise you’ll call if you need anything.

She rolls her eyes again, but deep down, she’s grateful that someone’s in her corner.

Yes and yes.

Without giving Amara any more time to respond, Liv throws her phone at the bottom of a drawer. She doesn’t want to see it right now. She hates to admit it, but the perspective of slumming it in a dirty cabin tomorrow is refreshing. She needs out of this mess, even if it means staring at Walker’s antler collection.

As she’s about to get into more comfortable clothes, she hears a knock. ‘Liv? It’s me.’

Liam. Just who she doesn’t want to see.

But she’s gonna have to face him at some point. ‘Come in.’

As he carefully enters her room, she corrects her posture, and makes a point of maintaining eye contact with him. Fake it til you make it, right?

‘How you holding up?’ he asks, while closing the door behind him.

‘I’m fine.’

Was she, though? She’s not ashamed of having casual sex with a hot man who happens to work for her, not at all. She’s not one to be bashful about those things.

No, that’s not what’s bothering her. She saw Liam’s face fall when he opened his envelope. She saw the disappointment. So sure, she could be mad at him for taking her for granted all their lives, and for holding up to a double standard. As Amara pointed it out, he’s upset at her banging someone else when he has a literal litter of women pursuing him? That’s not fair.

But she knows he knows. She knows he realizes why she’s banging Ilya.

To forget him, to pretend that everything is ok, even if he doesn’t choose her, even when he doesn’t choose her.

That’s not how a Queen would deal with things.

‘Liv, tell me the truth. We both know you didn’t do anything wrong, but it can’t be easy, having your private life broadcasted like that--’

‘I’m fine, Liam,’ she repeats, her tone as cutting as possible.

Liam throws his hands in the air and responds, ‘Alright. Whatever you say.’ He gestures to the ottoman next to her bed, and raises his eyebrows at her. She nods, and he sits down. ‘I, um… I’m sorry that happened, for what it’s worth. I’ll do whatever it takes to find who did this.’

‘Liam, we both know who did this. Madeleine.’

Liam nods. ‘She’s part of it for sure. But I discussed it with Drake and Amara, and they both agree that she couldn’t have done any of this alone. Logistically, it’s not possible.’

‘No shit,’ Liv says. ‘Ask yourself the right questions, Li.’

‘What do you mean?’

She sighs. ‘Just be careful who you trust.’

He nods, visibly not comprehending everything. ‘You’re right.’

She can tell he’s watching his mouth around her, he’s tiptoeing around the problem, and it kills her. Fuck it, she thinks. She’ll just ram right into it.

‘Not much of a royal attitude I have, huh?’ she asks bitterly.

Liam chuckles, and looks at his feet. ‘I don’t know why you’re saying this. You can do whatever you want, and in fact, you know as well as I do that many nobles are not monogamous, so…’

‘But they don’t really fuck the help, do they?’

She didn’t mean to sound so condescending. That’s not her. She doesn’t look down at commoners the way that Neville does, for instance. But it just came out of her mouth before she could stop herself. She’s not going to correct herself, that’s not her either.

‘Liv, I don’t judge you. I promise. You and I never established--’

‘Yeah yeah, I get it, we never had anything worth keeping. Now please get out, I’m tired. I won’t join for dinner, but tomorrow I’ll be at breakfast. Bye, Liam.’

He opens his mouth to respond, but quickly gives up, sighs, and heads towards the door. ‘See you tomorrow, Livvy.’

As he closes the door, tears flow to her eyes. He hadn’t called her that since childhood, since their sleepovers. ‘Night, Livvy,’ he would say, while they were counting the stars on his bedroom ceiling.

No, she won’t cry. Not today. She can still breathe.

*****

Drake can already feel himself relax as they’re getting closer to the cabin. He can tell that Amara is relaxing too, judging from the way she started to chat excitedly once they were about half an hour away from the capital.

‘Look at these birds, Drake! So pretty!’

He turns his head towards her, and smiles upon seeing that she is peacefully smiling at the fauna they are passing on the country road. Part of him was scared that she wouldn’t enjoy the countryside, what with her being a New Yorker, but he can see that he was wrong.

‘I hope you like the cabin,’ he says. ‘It’s very remote but it has everything we need.’

She nods. ‘Of course I’ll like it! I’m not in a state of mind to complain about the lack of wifi, believe me. I’m excited to get away!’

Drake chuckles. ‘Heh, there’s actually wifi in there, you know. I’m there quite often and I like being able to watch movies and TV shows. So you see, it’s more modern than you thought already!’

She smiles and takes his hand, placing it on her thigh where she grips it tightly. ‘Thank you for taking me, Walker. It’s exactly what we need right now.’

‘You’re welcome, it’s literally my pleasure. I’m looking forward to just us.’

‘Me too. Just us, no talking about anything upsetting, ok?’

He nods enthusiastically. ‘Absolutely. No investigations, right?’

‘I’m putting all of this on hold, I promise,’ she responds. ‘Can I just ask you something, one last thing, before we get there?’

His heart tightens. ‘Tell me.’

She sighs deeply. ‘Do you think our friends are ok? I think Hana is, but Liv? Max and Bertrand after all the talk about their father?’

‘I think so. Max is stronger than you think. It may look like Bertrand is the rock of the family, and in a lot of ways he is, but Max is emotionally very strong. Healthy emotions, no repression.’

Amara nods. ‘I see that. I just…’ she shakes her head and stays silent.

‘What babe? Tell me.’ He squeezes her hand.

‘I know Max had a complicated relationship with his father, and he told me that when he came out to him, Barthélémy’s reaction was...underwhelming. Now that we know what we know, there’s definitely a lot to unpack there. I wonder if Max needs to talk about it. I just want to be there for him the way he was for me. For us.’

There it is. Amara is such a good friend, she tends to put herself second, Drake knows that about her already. ‘You are there for him, Suarez. You’re just taking an evening off. We’ll see them tomorrow. He’s not alone.’

He’s squeezing her hand still, eyes on the road. He doesn’t want to look at her, because if he does right now, he may never look away again. His hand feels warm, entangled with hers, and he has trouble defining what he feels. Warmth, happiness maybe. A furious need to be there for the woman he loves and admires so much.

A ravaging fear of letting her down.

*****

‘This is amazing, Drake,’ Amara whispers as they both walk into the cabin.

She takes it all in; the wood panels, the rustic, simple furniture, the smell of fresh air and lavender. She noticed tons of lavender everywhere in the front yard as they got out of the car.

‘Really?’ he asks, visibly nervous.

She knows he has always compared himself to Liam, and that he has an inferiority complex. She just has no idea why. No one could look at this amazing man and think he’s inferior to anyone.

She has just walked in, and yet she feels a thousand times more at home here than she has ever felt in the palace. Or even in her own apartment in Brooklyn, which had always felt like the wrong place. The only place she had ever felt this way about was her parents’ house in the Philadelphia suburbs. A small, modest house, but in a nice neighborhood, and with a huge backyard where she and Sergio would run around when they were kids, and later on, lay in the sun with books and drinks. Their dad still lived there with Nancy, he never had the heart to sell it, and probably never would. When you lose so many people, you want to hold on to the feeling of truly belonging somewhere. That house was like a family member.

That’s how she feels now. Like home.

‘Yeah, really,’ she replies, a little twinge in her voice. ‘I love it.’

Drake rubs his neck awkwardly and smiles at her. ‘Do you want a tour? I’ll give you some toiletries and maybe some clothes until Max brings your stuff. Sav still has a room here, and lots of things in her closet.’

Amara nods. She closes the distance between them and grabs Drake’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers in his ear, before kissing his neck. ‘I’m not sure we’re gonna need clothes, but ok.’

Drake’s face breaks into a wide grin, as he captures her lips into a deep kiss. They both lose themselves in the moment and Amara feels her head spin. She throws her arms around him, and he pulls her closer.

‘Fuck, I can’t believe we’re alone,’ he whispers, his voice raspy.

Amara has to stop herself so as to not rip off his shirt. After all, this is the finest denim, it should be treated carefully. With shaky hands, she impatiently unbuttons it and throws it on the ground, before pulling off his T-shirt. She’d missed feeling him close to her. Ever since the wave of paranoia, they had barely had the opportunity to be alone, and even when they were, they had to be careful.

No more being careful here, though. Drake responds by unzipping her floral dress and letting it drop to the floor, without ever interrupting their kiss. She can feel his hardness against her, and she can’t wait any longer to set it free. Her hands explore his stomach, then venture south where they undo his belt and unzip his jeans. Amara can’t help but let out a moan upon touching his big, hard cock. She wants it, she wants him really badly. She pulls down his boxers, and lets her hands roam all over his naked body.

He guides her to the kitchen island, a square, wooden cabinet on which Drake hoists her up swiftly, still kissing her. Once she is seated, he spreads her legs open with a movement of his knee, and Amara feels her core burning. She grabs his cock in her hand, drawing a low groan from Drake, and proceeds to pull her own panties to the side. He stops her in a swift hand motion, and pulls down her underwear so quickly that a yelp escapes her mouth.

With one hand on her pussy, he unhooks her bra with the other, and then caresses her breasts softly and lovingly. Amara can’t take it anymore, she’s so wet that she’s worried she will flood the island. ‘Fuck me,’ she whispers. ‘Please.’

He slides two fingers inside her at once, and explores her core in circular motion. She moans tirelessly, hungry for more.

‘You’re so wet,’ he whispers into their kiss.

‘I want you,’ she groans, impatient. ‘Now, Drake, please.’

But he continues to tease her clit with his thumb, his index and middle fingers still inside her. She bucks her hips and grinds his hand, moaning louder and louder. His impossibly hard cock is resting on her thigh, and she feels him getting impatient too, as he pushes himself closer and closer to her. Finally, he puts his tip on her entrance, and Amara can’t help herself but moan loudly in relief. She needs him now, why is he making her wait?

When he pushes himself into her, he lets out a long and deep groan, as if he had been waiting to enter her for hours. She would like it to last, she really would, but she is so close to orgasming from the anticipation, and she knows he’s close too. Too bad, she thinks, they’re gonna have to do it again later and savor the moment more. For now, she wants him to fuck her senseless.

*****

They had come together and it had been mind blowing. Still giddy and shaky from the orgasm and the closeness he had shared with Amara, Drake poured two whiskeys and smiled as he watched her put her dress back on.

‘You look beautiful,’ he says.

‘You look beautiful too, Walker,’ she responds playfully.

He walks towards her and kisses her on the lips as he gives her a glass of whiskey. He felt totally relaxed. Not to mention it felt good to be as loud as they want. No more muffled sounds, no more stress about who might hear. Over here, no one could.

Even the location of the cabin was pretty secret, as it was not on an official road. You’d need to know where to go. Max knew, of course, and so did Liam, but that was about it. Drake wasn’t even sure if Liv had ever been here.

‘Do you want to go sit in the backyard?’ he asks.

She nods, excited. ‘Yes! Let’s enjoy the sun.’

They had to wipe down two chairs; Drake hadn’t been at the cabin in a while and everything was covered in pollen outside. He couldn’t stop smiling, he was simply loving life too much right now. What more could he want? He was away from everything, with the woman he loves.

‘What’s up with the goofy grin, Walker?’ Amara asks cheekily.

Drake chuckles. ‘You know exactly what’s up.’

‘Oh, you’re feeling smug because you drove me crazy and made me wait forever?’ she responds with a grin.

‘Heh, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Suarez.’ He takes her hand and kisses it. ‘It’s just that… you know.’ She raises an eyebrow, prompting him to continue. He obliges. ‘I love you.’

Her face lights up. ‘I love you too.’

They sit outside, side by side, their whiskey in hand, for a while. Then, Drake breaks the comfortable silence. ‘I didn’t even give you a tour.’

‘I saw the kitchen island, that’s all that counts, right?’

He laughs. ‘Do you want to see upstairs? It’s not much but…’

‘I’d love to see upstairs. Let’s go.’

He guides her to Sav’s room first, and shows her to the clothes she’s welcome to borrow. She looks at the framed pictures of the two Walker kids, tracing the frames with her fingertips, not saying a word. She stops at a group photo, including a younger gang: Max, Drake, Liam, Kiara, and Savannah. ‘Wow,’ she says, ‘you know this pic is old when Maxwell doesn’t have his hippo tat yet!’

Drake laughs heartily. ‘Exactly. We were kids.’

‘You were cute. Very broody. Just like now…’

He shows her his bedroom next, the same one he lived in on weekends when he was young. He changed it all though, he didn’t keep it intact the way Sav did. He wanted this place to make him feel like an adult, unlike his room at the palace, which made him feel like a teenage mooch. He’d thought of taking the master bedroom in the cabin, now that his dad had passed and his mom was back in the States. But he couldn’t bring himself to move in. Couldn’t get past his dad’s lingering presence, which made him ache still. So, he had turned his teenage bedroom into something more adult, with fewer posters and more artwork, a bigger bed, better sheets, and even a loveseat for when he wanted to read in the evenings.

‘Drake, this is beautiful,’ Amara whispers. ‘Very nicely decorated, and so tidy. I’m impressed.’

‘Did you expect a bachelor pad?’ he asks, a smile on his face.

She laughs. ‘Not really. I know you’re tidy. I just expected something different. More of a time capsule, less of adult you.’

He nods. ‘I do what I can.’ He smiles at her and wraps his arms around her. ‘The bathroom is next door, feel free to take what you need. Mi casa es su casa, ok? I’m gonna go to the store to get some food for tonight and tomorrow. Any requests?’

‘Just one,’ Amara responds, her face lighting up. ‘Can I come with you?’

*****

Olivia had ventured out of her room right before dinner to get some food. She’d thought of asking Ilya to bring her some, but she didn’t feel like talking to him today at all. He’d called her several times, but she didn’t pick up, so he’d sent her many apology messages. She’d reply another time. She didn’t want him to feel guilty about something that had never been wrong to begin with.

She wasn’t even hungry, so she’d pecked at her food while she was watching Killing Eve on her iPad. Something about assassins helped her relax.

When she heard a knock on her door, she debated playing dead. She was sure it was Liam again, to try and convince her to come down for dinner. She was in no mood to talk to him again.

‘Liv, it’s Rashad.’

She sat up, startled. She and Rashad were far from being close, but they respected each other, and enjoyed each other’s company at official functions, as two cool, cynical people. Maybe he wouldn’t be annoying, who knew. So, for some reason, she went and opened the door.

‘Hey Liv,’ he says nonchalantly, ‘can I come in? I come bearing gifts.’ He holds up a plate of pastries and a bottle of vodka.

‘Fine,’ she responds coldly, even though the sight of the vodka made her heart skip a beat. She was almost out of scotch, so this was good timing.

He closes the door behind him. ‘I won’t pry, I won’t ask questions. Let’s just gorge on éclairs and drink the entire bottle of vodka. Ok?’

She takes one too many seconds to respond. ‘It’s 7. You should be at dinner.’

He shrugs playfully. ‘Eh, I’m not in the mood. All of the interesting people are gone someplace or other tonight. I was starting to regret staying at the palace, but then I remembered that at least, one interesting person remains. Hidden, here, in your lair. So, here I am.’

Liv represses a smile. ‘Fine. But we’re watching my show.’

‘What is it?’ he glances at the screen. ‘Oh, Killing Eve. Love it. Do you have any glasses?’

Olivia nods. ‘Yes. Glasses are over there. Make mine a triple.’

*****

‘We have to buy these. Oh, and these!’ Amara gestures at all kinds of cheeses.

Drake laughs, ‘Hey, hold on, we’re gonna need a bigger basket if you continue.’

She pouts, ‘But the cheese… we can’t get anything that good in the US!’

‘Ha, I know. Alright, let’s take it all. If you and I don’t eat it, Max will tomorrow.’

Amara was delighted. Sure, it was a simple grocery store, about twenty minutes from the cabin, still in the middle of nowhere in Portavira. But that’s exactly what she loved about it. No frills, no court, no bodyguards, no one watching them, just Drake. She was dying to do more normal people stuff with him, was aching to get away from it all. She was still feeling guilty about leaving Max, Liv, and Hana when they needed her, but the guilt was starting to fade away as she felt more and more comfortable in this new, amazingly simple routine with Drake.

He’d chosen fish fillets for tonight, that he would bake in the oven, accompanied by rice and vegetables. She was enjoying looking at him, at how happy he was, conceiving a menu and describing to her how he would cook the ingredients. He also picked up hamburger patties and sausages for tomorrow’s barbecue, as well as some crudités and snacks. Eggs for breakfast, bacon, fruit. He was thinking about everything.

‘Do you want me to make a dessert for tomorrow?’ Amara asks.

‘If you want to, that would be great,’ he smiles as he’s putting peaches in his basket.

‘I could make a pineapple cake,’ she says excitedly.

‘Sounds awesome.’

She kisses his cheek, excited to be a part of the hosting process, even though she is fully aware that Drake is enjoying himself doing all the prep. She can’t help but imagine what life could be like if they just escaped court, and had a regular job, without any blackmailers or sneaky bodyguards. She lets herself dream for now, because she knows in a couple of days, they’ll have to report back to Penelope’s, and by next weekend, Liam will have chosen a Queen. Amara tries to chase all stressful thoughts from her head. Maybe everything will fall into place, that’s what she needs to hold on to.

*****

‘The sexual tension is phenomenal,’ Rashad murmurs, absentmindedly biting into a small puff pastry.

‘Shh,’ Liv says, ‘you’re misreading the show, so shut up.’

Rashad scoffs, and pauses the video, to Olivia’s dismay. ‘Hold on,’ he slurs, already drunk after three very generous shots of vodka, ‘are you telling me you’re not watching this for the character interactions?’

Liv rolls her eyes. ‘No. That’s unimportant. What matters is the murders, Rashad.’

He giggles. ‘Oh, Nevrakis. You are definitely something.’

She tries to stop the smile from reaching her lips, but she can’t this time. The vodka, the sweet, sweet murderous TV show, the pastries, and Rashad’s comforting presence are making her feel warm inside. She almost presses play, but hesitates. Finally, she says, ‘Thanks for coming tonight. I, um. I thought I needed to be alone, but I appreciate the support.’

He nods, finishing his shot in one gulp. ‘Of course. It’s appalling what they’re doing.’ He puts a hand on his mouth. ‘Sorry kid. I said I wouldn’t talk about it.’ He makes a zipper gesture on his lips.

Liv sits up. ‘No, it’s fine. I started talking about it. You can. I’m an idiot who fucked her bodyguard and sexted with him, please chime in.’

Rashad grabs the vodka and pours a shot for Liv, and one for himself. ‘No, you’re not an idiot. In fact, I think you’re as far away from being an idiot as humanly possible, you know. The blackmailer, that’s an idiot. Or several idiots. Like, outing a person? That’s fucking horrible. That can ruin a life. And then what, broadcasting nude pics of someone else?’

Liv laughs. It’s funny how she never stopped to consider how Ilya felt about his penis being printed and distributed to everyone. She’d have to check in with him later. ‘You’re right. Thankfully for him, he’s well endowed. Otherwise it could have been embarrassing.’

Rashad laughs earnestly. ‘Right? I mean come on, the people responsible for this shit are really backwards. They think being gay is a scandal. They think casual sex with the bodyguard is a scandal. You’re above that, Liv. And if that whole thing prevents you from moving forward in the competition, well you deserve better than this country. Than--’

‘Than Liam?’ she interrupts.

Rashad falls silent for a few seconds. She caught him off guard. ‘That’s not what--you know I meant no disrespect. I know you two have history.’

She nods. ‘You know Amara, right?’

‘Yeah. The American woman, very nice. Spoke to her before brunch.’

‘She agrees with you. She thinks I deserve better. I never stopped to think about it in those terms before she mentioned it. And now you mentioned it.’

‘Again, Liv, I meant no disrespect.’ His words aren’t slurred anymore. Olivia can tell he feels bad, and it sobered him up.

‘No worries. I’m starting to get it.’ She chugs her shot, and gestures for Rashad to pour her another, which he does.

‘Cheers, Nevrakis,’ he says, raising his glass.

‘Cheers.’ She turns off her iPad. She needs something else right now, something to keep her mind off of all the shit that’s happening. She thinks of Little Beaumont and his answer to everything. She shrugs. Maybe he had a point. No harm in trying, right? ‘Hey Rashad, wanna play Never Have I Ever?’

*****

Taglist:

@andy-loves-corgis @drakeandcamilleofvaltoria @jovialyouthmusic @alesana45 @mariahschoices @drakesensworld @thequeenofcronuts @notoriouscs @drakewalkerisreal @nikkis1983 @simsvetements @iplaydrake @emceesynonymroll @lily1999love @drakewalkerwhipped @drakewalkerrosenberg @drakeswalkers @drakelover78 @silviasutton1989 @dcbbw @carabeth @furiousherringoperatortoad @hollygirl1269 @sirbeepsalot

Thank you for your encouragements, everyone! Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist :)

[carrotwine4captainhops]

Major Character Death as a creative writing tool

I’ve always been interested in the craft of writing. I’ve been mulling over the way Major Character Death is used as a tool in fiction for awhile, and after watching the extremely problematic death of Quentin Coldwater, (and the self-congratulatory responses of the show’s producers who apparently believe they invented the concept) I thought I’d give you the the high school level compare and contrast MCD essay you didn’t really need or want.

Before I start, I want to be clear that MCD as a tool is not a bad thing by itself. Many, many fiction authors use it in a very calculated way, and as long as it serves the story well, they’re doing their job. Many essays and books about the craft of writing discuss its use because it is just another tool in the creative writer’s tool box. When done well, it makes you cry in a good way; when done badly, the death feels like a cheap gimmick to force an emotion without doing much work as a story teller. The latter is definitely what happened with the season finale of The Magicians.

If season 4 of the magicians had been a novel, it would have been sent back for major revisions before publication.

The first MCD that came to mind while watching the season 4 finale of The Magicians, wasn’t technically an MCD, but may as well be: the ending of the Golden Compass trilogy. The two protagonists have recently fallen in love, and make the difficult decision to return to never see each other again as a way to save the multiverse from the damage caused by traveling between worlds. They won’t even be able to contact each other, and will have to live out their lives as if the other had died.

It was incredibly painful to read (it’s the first book I cried over), but it was beautifully written and a very logical conclusion that the author set up from book one. The books are about (among many other things) the failures of adults and authority when they make selfish decisions, and by choosing to put the health of the universe above their own happiness, they made the bravest, most adult decision they could. It’s a message about the hope that younger generations can fix the things that their predecessors broke if they’re brave enough. The Magicians almost had a similar message.

The second MCD I thought of was that of “Wash” from Firefly. Like a lot of other fans of the show, I got angry at this death in the movie Serenity (essentially the series finale of the TV show). Wash was the comedic relief and voice of optimism in a dark and dystopic show. While Quentin was clinically depressed, and, in the words of Margo Hanson, ”moderately socially maladjusted”, he also acted as the voice of hope to his peers. Both characters were the emotional core of their shows, which was a big reason why they were chosen by their perspective creators as the deaths that would be most felt by the audience. They both got a funeral scene, to really drive home how much the other characters (and by extension, the audience) would be impacted by their death.

In Wash’s case, having his death be accidental impalement during a crash didn’t feel entirely satisfying or necessary. It felt like a lazy way to make the audience sad and motivate the rest of the characters to Really Get That Baddie… BUT, this cheapness is balanced by the symbolism of an outlaw pilot literally dying at the helm of the ship he loved while trying to save the world. It also didn’t send any problematic messages to the audience. Wash was not the protagonist or a “self-insert” the way Quentin was; he wasn’t suicidal or part of an underserved minority group (and make no mistake, by making Quentin sexually fluid/bisexual, the producers signed themselves up for a more thoughtful treatment of his death, if it had to happen.)

The message from Wash’s death is one that is very familiar to readers of genre fiction MCDs: simply: “not everyone lives” and “people who put themselves in high-risk situations sometimes die”. Both of which are painful but fair messages to absorb.

This same tactic was used again by Whedon with Agent Coulson in The Avengers. As an optimistic “plot-armor-free” side character who had become a fan favorite, he was given an entire arc in the movie that the audience wasn’t expecting, made to be even more loveable, and then killed off in a long emotional death scene which was then used in the third act turning point of the movie. Whedon made it clear in interviews that the whole death was coldly calculated to squeeze emotion from the audience, and up the stakes in a way that a large body count couldn’t. It upset a lot of fans, it wasn’t perfect, but it was well done and fitting for the narrative and made the movie stronger, and, again, he wasn’t a member of a minority group. (And as a side note, a different creative team knew how popular Coulson was and managed to resurrect him for his own TV show and managed to do it in a way that wasn’t flip-his resurrection had consequences that lasted at least until season 5, the current season).

There is no mitigating balance to Quentin’s death. He was suicidal  from day one of the series, and he left via (a purposefully plausible) suicide. His first question, once he realizes he’s dead, is not, “Did the plan work?” or “is Eliot OK?” (the friend he’d been working so hard all season to save) or even “is Julia/Alice/Josh/all my other friends ok?” These are questions that would be plausible and fitting in a character who’s journey has about helping friends and the world out of tough situations. But no, the first thing he asks is “did I finally kill myself?” 

With one sentence, his character returned to the self-centered, timid, low-confidence, suicidal mess he’d been established as within five minutes of the show’s pilot. He had no self-realization until after watching his own funeral, at which point he happily and peacefully goes to heaven. At best, that’s heavy-handed symbolism. At worst, it’s erasing all of his character growth and making his entire story pointless, while sending the very dangerous message to the audience. 

The writers stated in interviews that they made his death all about suicide on purpose, and now (as of this writing) they continue to refuse to grapple with how problematic that is.

Another MCD that seemed to do the same thing was Tris from the Divergent series. Like Quentin, she was the protagonist. Also similar to Quentin, her arc was almost too on the nose: she was born into a clan literally named “Abnegation” and indoctrinated from birth to sacrifice herself for her community. She wasn’t even allowed to look into mirrors in case she caught even a smidgen of self-regard. And how does her story end? By her sacrificing her life to get the “big baddie” and save her friends and family. 

Like Quentin’s death, a lot of her character growth appeared to be erased in the last few chapters of the book. Prior to Book 3, Tris had been learning to question her upbringing, to think for herself, that it’s ok to look for happiness for oneself, and that selfishness takes many forms, not all of them bad. When she makes the decision to kill herself in the end, it left a bad taste in my mouth. The plot didn’t require her death, (for example, there were other characters who could have gone in her place, and as a leader at that point, the more difficult decision probably would have been to send someone else on that mission and learn to live with the guilt). Her death and the manner of it, seemed to say, “just kidding, actually the only way to realize your self-worth is to is sacrifice your happiness and entire self for your community.”

Sound familiar?

Quentin Coldwater was just starting to learn (and because he had an audience, to teach) many of these same things. For three and a half seasons, we see him form strong friendships (when he thought he couldn’t); help people (when he thought he was useless), pursue romantic relationships (when he thought no one could love him); he lives an entire lifetime with Eliot during a quest on alternate timeline, where he’s shown having to make the difficult decision every day, to stay alive, to keep working on the tedious and almost hopeless task of completing the puzzle to finish a quest, and then it turns out that the answer to the puzzle all along WAS that daily struggle. Later, in season 4, he tells us that he hopes to be a dad (again) someday; he shows more and more confidence in his magical abilities every season. All of that was erased by the way his death was written.

Even with the uneven messaging of Tris’ death, there is at least lots of room for interpretation. I believe the author was trying to show her final sacrifice as a way of reclaiming part of her upbringing that wasn’t toxic. The character went through a rebellious phase during book one, during which she seems to reject all parts of her former life, even the good ones, right after leaving the Abnegation community for the hedonistic clan of Dauntless. It would definitely be good growth for her, as part of self-actualization, to accept the good parts of her upbringing. I don’t necessarily believe that’s the message we get at the end, but we at least have the possibility. Not everyone has reacted negatively to the way Quentin’s death was handled, so maybe there is more possibility of interpretation than what I see. I’m willing to be proven wrong, but nothing I’ve seen from critics or the showrunners statements has yet convinced me.

Another (highly speculative), parallel I couldn’t help but make over the last few days, is between the Magicians showrunners’s treatment of this MCD and Joss Whedon of a decade ago. His recent fall from grace has finally allowed more critical examination of his past works, but I remember how, at his peak, he could do no wrong. He was the voice of hollywood feminism. He was lauded by critics, peers, and fans. Any voice that questioned him was mocked, dismissed, and even harassed. Anyone else remember when critics call “Dollhouse” a feminist show? None of that has not aged well, has it?

The Magicians producers, riding high off of critical acclaim of Quentin’s homosexual romance in Season 3x05, had ample chance to make the braver choice: to allow a queer suicidal boy make the choice to keep fighting every day despite how hard it was; To break rank with 99% of other TV shows and allow his homosexual romance to be explored and given the same consideration as the hetersexual romances. Instead, they made him kill himself and be happy about it, literally saying in interviews that he had nothing left to live for. Without even addressing his feelings for Eliot. They buried yet another gay, all in the name of a shock-value gimmick, and they think they’re being “revolutionary” and that anyone critical of their choices is “just sad”.

There are about a thousand different ways season 4 could have gone that would have made the writers’ intended message less problematic, more impactful, and more satisfying, and none of them involve a MCD OR a trite “happily ever after”. Consider, for example, that Zelda could have completed her redemption arc in some kind of sacrifice similar to quentin’s. Everett was much more her “big baddie” than he was Quentin’s, it’s just strange that she never got to really confront her mentor-turned-enemy. Consider that, since Quentin’s main focus and motivation all season was to get Eliot back, that he actually succeeds, but, their reunion and relationship is strained. If we must push this idea that “magic comes from pain”, think how much more painful it would be to be to have Eliot finally confess his love to Quentin, but now Quentin is unable to pursue that relationship because of all the trauma he’s suffered at the hands of Eliot’s possessed body all season. Consider that he finally breaks under the strain and excuses himself from further questing, which would easily allow Julia, Kady, or Alice to get more screentime. (I mean, this is just stuff off the top of my head. For a hundred other ideas, check out Archive of Our Own).

They did just about everything wrong with this particular major character death, and I don’t think their choice is going to age well in the years to come.

[soiread-blog1]

So, I read... Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston [Book Review]

I got to admit that at first, I thought I wasn’t going to like it. And I guess I still don’t like some things from the beginning? However, I was gladly surprised by the novel. At first I thought this was another story written by a straight white woman essentializing, fetishizing and fantasizing about gays; which kind of made me realize that I’m an asshole, as the author is not straight and I didn’t even took my time to research about the author. There’s room for growth in this blog, so I learnt my lesson. That being said, I don’t mean that straight people cannot write stories with LGBTQ+ characters or stories which main plot is about LGBTQ+ people; it’s just that sometimes it feels like a ‘token’ character for inclusion or that (mainly) gay men are cool just because they’re gay. I think that Becky Albertalli did a wonderful job when writing Simon vs The Homo-Sapiens Agenda, which makes sense as she worked as a child psychologist. Anyways. Did I like it? I has some issues with it, but I ended up loving it.

 Red, White and Royal Blue is about the son of the first female president of the US, Alex Claremont-Diaz. For a reason that is not really that important, Alex hates Henry, the Prince of England. And guess what? Henry hates Alex too. After being a drunk mess, Alex and Henry got into a really small fight, but they end up screwing the royal wedding cake. Of course, such a scandal ends up in the news, and in order to keep everything great, they have to spend time together to make people think they’re actually like best friends. It’s not really a spoiler, as it is on the back of the book, but they go from being a drunk mess (well, actually Alex was the only one drunk) to be a cute mess.

 I’ll start saying what I didn’t like because I want to end this review in a positive note, as I truly recommend the book. Also, most of what I didn’t enjoy have to with tropes that I personally don’t enjoy more than the quality of the book, so if you actually love what I don’t like it’s completely okay.

I know that it’s the trigger for the story to happen, and that’s why I thought I wasn’t going to enjoy the book, but I couldn’t like the fact that it was a foes-to-lovers story. It might be because I hate this trope, but I found the rivalry between to be kind of forced and very unnecessary. Their ‘hatred’ towards each other was only important on the first pages, so it didn’t work for me. I would’ve preferred if it was more like they met each other for the first time, or after years of a small talk they had, and start to know each other and ended up liking each other. However, that’s just a personal preference, so if you liked their rivalry, great for you.

Another thing that I didn’t enjoy that much was the ‘you have no friends’ stuff that was happening, especially because [SPOILER ALERT I GUESS] they told Alex that his sister and Nora could not be his only friends, but at the end of the book the only additions to this group are Henry and his sister. Don’t misunderstand me, this group of friends is amazing, I truly loved them. But I didn’t think it was necessary to say that over and over when it wasn’t going to be a great deal.

This is just a stupid complain that I have, but the first pages are super weird when it comes to the terms they use. First of all, for a while I felt that Alex and Henry were treated just as sexual body parts? Does that make sense? It was when the rivalry was still relevant. The first 50 pages (I think) were all about Alex’s ass and Henry’s penis. If you’re reading it for the first time, pay attention to that, because it’s so weird that it’s almost funny? Almost, though. And the other thing that called my attention was that, when they were not even friends yet, the terms used by the characters in order to refer to Alex and Henry’s ‘forced’ friendship (when it was still a plan) were related to couples. And I guess the author did this to ´foreshadow’ their relationship, but we already knew that that was going to happen, so I don’t really see the point on doing that.

And the last thing that I couldn’t stand of the book, for at least the first half of the book, was Alex himself. He was too much of an asshole, in my opinion. I know he’s the protagonist, but he made everything about himself. That’s even stated in the book, so I guess that was the point of it. Now, I hate the ´bad boy changed by the good girl’ trope, but this is completely different. At the end of the book I genuinely liked Alex, but because I could see him grow because of Henry’s influence. He was never a bad boy, just annoying. So, I truly appreciated that.

 Now to why I liked this book. Yay!

I was pleasantly surprised by the portrayal of bisexuality in this book. I thought that it was going to be the usual ‘and I suddenly discovered that I actually never liked women’. I know that it’s something that could happen in real life, but in media it tends to happen that bisexuality does not exist at all. You can just go from straight to gay. Because apparently the only letter in LGBTQ+ is the B. Speaking about that, I must admit that I said out loud ‘Yass. Bitch. Work.’ when I read ‘the B is not silent’. Not because of the impact in terms of narrative, but because it’s inherently political and related to our own reality. Also, Nora kind of acknowledges that realizing about your own sexual orientation just happens, and it’s not that you wake up at 3 AM with lights in your eyes while a storm is outside your window and a spirit comes to tell you ‘hunty, you gay’. Sorry if this seems confusing, but I had this picture in my head and I needed to write it.

Although some sex scenes were a bit confusing (which might be because English is not my first language), I was really pleased with the portrayal of safe sex as something important, even if it was just a glimpse of it. And I’m not only talking about condoms, but also the inclusion of lube as something important. I know that in 2019 is way easier to take care of yourself and your sexual partner when it comes to STI’s, it’s still important to keep acknowledging the significance of safe sex. Also, I loved that the author portrayed their sexuality as very versatile. I think that media tends to create a binary relationship, in which one has to be a top and the other one a bottom, when in reality that’s not necessarily how it works.

Even though I loved the film ‘Love, Simon’, one of my issues with the movie was that, in my opinion, it gave a little bit the message that being an asshole is okay if you’re suffering. So I was really moved by Alex when he stated that it was unfair for his sister and Nora to be treated as objects in order to cover the main couple. That’s what I mean by the ‘growth of Alex’, he realizes that it’s knot okay, and not only because he feels uncomfortable not being himself publicly.

I know it’s a touchy subject, so I appreciate the inclusion of the problematization and treatment of sexual harassment. I like that the author states that it’s not something about sexuality, but rather about having power over another human. I would like to know more about this situation, maybe in a spin-off or something like that.

 I truly recommend you this book, in case you haven’t read it. Consider that it has various sex scenes, in case you want to recommend it to a child or someone who’s sensitive about this, or more conservative or whatever. However, please consider that this is not only a cute story. Is very political about issues regarding the LGBTQ+ community. It’s a great book to read this pride month, as I think it ends making you feel hopeful about the world.  The world can change, but we need to fight for it. No one is going to give us our rights if we don’t fight for them. As the author says in the acknowledgements ‘Keep fighting, keep making history, keep looking after one another’.

 Story: (3.5/5)

As stated before, I wasn’t a fan of the premise. I do think is way better than I thought it was going to be, but the rivalry was unnecessary for me. And not only that, it didn’t work for me. However, it is a really cute and uplifting story, and I really enjoyed reading the book, so I only have problems with the beginning of the story.

Style: (3.5/5)

At the beginning I felt like the characters were not fully developed. By that I mean the narrator had to state ‘[character] is [adjective]’, instead of showing it. This is a bit dumb, but I also didn’t like the use of couple terms at the beginning. However, I do think the narrator is very good at being at Alex’s perspective. You know what he’s thinking, what he resents, even when he’s not talking. That also makes me think that it might be an unreliable narrator, which is great.

Narrative: (4.5/5)

It’s really easy to keep up with the reading. The emails make it more likable, in the sense that the way it tells you the story is not only through narrative, which feels kind of like a break. I love that, which might or might not be related to the references. What I didn’t like was a specific paragraph that I found unnecessary, and that at some points I found myself skipping some parts that I didn’t find engaging.

Characters: (4/5)

I love the wide variety of character. I felt that each of them was unique in many ways, so it was great. It might be because of the narrative, but I felt that the only character that was detached from his own reality was Alex. There’s a moment in which it is stated that he ‘genuinely care[d] about people’, but I didn’t start to feel that it was true until the end, so I don’t necessarily think it was well developed. I think the author had the idea of the Alex at the end but didn’t realize he wasn’t like that at the beginning. Again, I give it the benefit of the doubt because I want to believe that it was an unreliable narrator, but I don’t really know.

Overall: (3.8/5) Yes. I’ll give it 4 stars in Goodreads.

 Fun facts:

-          History, Huh?

-          I think it’s the longest review I’ve ever written.

-          kensingtonemail.com is the worst email I’ve ever seen.

-          I shared one of my favorite quotes a few days ago, in case you want to share it too.

-          When June was talking about Drag Race I couldn’t help myself and I wrote ‘I’m so into voguing right now’.

-          I didn’t took a picture of the book because… I read it on my kindle.

 You can also find me in Instagram, Goodreads and Pinterest: @soiread

[jemariel]

Sherlock, Supernatural, and How I Am Trying to Take Shipping Less Seriously

I want to tell my story. 

(tl;dr: I have a lot more fun with shipping when I don’t worry about whether or not it will ever be canon. OR: Never put that much faith in the hands of showrunners. It always ends BAD.gif)

I wrote most of this post months ago and it’s been rotting away in my drafts since maybe March? It seemed like a good time to actually post it. This is my own personal perspective, where I’m coming from on this. Obviously everyone’s feelings and opinions are 100% their own and I respect that. We’re all coming from somewhere.

Soooo. I’ve been lurking in various fandoms for a long time. I started in 2001, when I was 14. I’ve seen a lot of changes in fandom and the internet and how we interact with our favorite media. Now seemed like a good time for me to sort through this.

My first OTP was in Highlander. It was, for all intents and purposes, a dead fandom when I arrived. The show had been cancelled 5 years before I even discovered that other people wrote and posted their fanfiction, and one half of my pairing was dead for the final series. The pair I read about maybe shared half an hour of screen time through the whole three seasons they were both in the show? They had very little plot interaction at least.

I didn’t care. It didn’t stop me from reading about them. Didn’t stop me from wanting to put them in the same room and see what happened – usually them getting on like a house on fire.

The point is that we were under absolutely no impression that they would ever become canon. There was literally no possibility for it. But that didn’t matter. We could do what we wanted. We were just having fun.

After Highlander came Harry Potter. Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. I don’t remember if I started shipping them before or after the 4th book but it was definitely long before the 5th book. This was the first time I had the inkling that maybe, possibly, JK Rowling might have actually intended them to be read that way. This is where I read my first meta, before it was called that – someone who went through the books and pulled out excerpts that made a person think. Wow that eye contact really did linger, I thought. Maybe that embrace wasn’t strictly brotherly, I said to myself.

At the time, queerbaiting was not even a word in the vernacular. So when the 6th book came out and Tonks and Remus became the most eyebrow-raising pairing I’ve ever encountered, I just shrugged and went on with my life. Sirius was dead anyway so this really changed nothing. I liked Remus the gay uncle werewolf, but bisexual was fine too. I mostly wrote and read about them during their school days anyway. So this was fine.

Eventually I moved on, and where I landed after that was in the grand daddy of all slash pairings, the first fandom in our current fanfiction zeitgeist: Star Trek, the Original Series. Kirk and Spock. This was still a couple of years before the 2009 reboot movies, so all I had was a cheesy 60s TV show with a venerable back catalogue of fanfic. What’s better, this ship could never be sunk! Of course they couldn’t ever be canon, it was the 60s. Times were different. I could ship them with fervor and never be disappointed because of course it was just our interpretation. … Wasn’t it?

Oh, Gene Roddenberry. You idealistic sonuvabitch. You created the Vulcan word “t’hy’la” specifically for Spock to use for Kirk, and you made it mean friend, brother, and lover? Was that really necessary or were you trying to tell us something?

Here I found more fledgling meta, and I went through the novelizations of the movies with a highlighter devouring every piece of evidence I could find. But while this ship was unsinkable, it would also never fly. Even if Roddenberry had intended this, or supported it after the fact, prejudice surely had kept his intentions in the background. Subtext was our friend. We could work with subtext. The subtext wove a gay love story the likes of which we haven’t seen since the ancient Greeks. I was happy with that.

But then.

2010. Sherlock.

I knew going into it that Holmes and Watson were the greatest love story never told. I figured it would be a fun pairing for a while. But oh. I was not prepared. And oh, be still my beating heart, the Angelo’s scene! If I recall correctly I actually sat up straighter in my chair at “so you’ve got a boyfriend then”/”No.” Could they… could he? Did they actually…? Was this written for… me? For us? Could we, the weird little corner of the fandom be right for once?? The slash shippers, the queer kids, the ones who had been peering between the lines for decades to try and catch glimpses of ourselves in our favorite stories?

I buried the thought for a few years, devouring Johnlock fanfic like it was my job, my civic duty, my vocation. I waited patiently for each new series. But I never actually expected anything to come of my hopes until after season 3.

Bet you guessed it. TJLC had caught me like a spark in dry grass. The few analyses I’d read before were NOTHING compared to this. Suddenly it all seemed so possible. So real. After The Abominable Bride it seemed like there was nowhere else to go, nowhere to go but up. We were right. WE WERE RIGHT! For a whole year, we got to relish the thought that it might actually happen.

…………….. Season 4 was… tough. It felt like a slap in the face, all of our hopes thrown back at us with ignorance at best, cruelty and direct malice at worst. If it had been a good season on its own without canon Johnlock I might have been okay, but as it is….. It was not the first time I’ve had my heart broken by a TV show, and probably only seems like the worst by virtue of being recent. But I would very much like it to be the last.

A few months before diving head-first into the pre season-4 gear-up, I watched a few seasons of Supernatural. Just enough to meet Castiel and lay the groundwork for a Destiel obsession as a contingency plan for if season 4 of Sherlock went all pear shaped. I’m glad I did or I don’t know where I would have found my refuge.

But I started to notice something. From my earliest wading in the Destiel end of the tumblr pond, I shied away quickly from any discussion of evidence, subtextual clues used to make predictions, or whether or not Destiel could or should or will be canon. I still take all meta and spec I read with a healthy pinch of salt. I am trying very hard not to care about whether or not it becomes canon, because honestly? I miss the days when whether or not a ship was canon or had a snowball’s chance of ever becoming so had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I shipped it.

Fandom is just one of many echo chambers that the internet has molded around every one of us. It is so easy to become convinced that our way is right and everyone else’s way is wrong, because we only hear our own voices and those of people we agree with reflected back at us.

We are not the arbiters of what happens in canon. The showrunners are NOT obligated to listen to us. Not everyone can be right, and the showrunners cannot listen to everyone. Nor should they. They are, for better or for worse, creating their own story. Not ours.

We can always write the story the way we want to, over and over in countless different ways. These days I see a show almost more as a set of toys to play with than as its own impermeable whole. I can believe that Dean and Castiel have been slowly falling in love over the course of the last decade. I can decide when and where I want them to have first admitted it, to themselves or each other. What’s more – I can change my mind. Some days I like believing that they’ve been together since Cas’s hand print was still fresh on Dean’s shoulder. Some days I’d rather believe that they’re still pining and in various states of denial. Or anything in between – it’s all equally valid. Once it’s said and stated in canon, that’s it. That’s the show. That’s how it happened. I like the freedom I have when my ship is not explicitly canon. The best is when they are clearly aware of it and give us moments like the mixtape or the Fanfiction Gap of 9x06 – new toys to play with – but let us shape what’s actually going on. As I say in my tags sometimes: They clearly love us and want us to have nice things.

All of this is NOT to say that up-and-coming queer kids do not richly need and deserve representation. God, not at all. I beat myself up about this a lot, for what feels like a terribly selfish desire to just enjoy it and not worry about whether or not the up and coming queer youth could have it better than I did. They can and they should and I still believe that season 4 of Sherlock was the biggest missed opportunity in queer cinema history.

I just can’t take it so personally anymore. For the sake of my favorite hobby, I cannot stake my enjoyment of a pairing and a show on whether or not the showrunners want to take the risk. I cannot let them dangle me on that particular string. I cannot give them that power over me. 

So this is my manifesto, for me personally. If Destiel becomes canon? I will be over the moon. But I will not go hunting for it. I won’t expect it. I will cherish every gift that the showrunners give to us because they’re not obligated to give us a damn thing, so I can’t take what they do give us for granted. I will live my headcanons, write my fics, and I will love the show for what it is, warts and all. I will ship my ship, enthusiastically and with my whole heart, because it brings me joy to do so. Canon or no canon. @starsinursa @daughter-of-the-rain-and-snow

[books--andt]

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J Maas Review and Spoiler Discussion!!!

Hey everyone!! Raise your hand if you read and devoured ACOWAR and loved every stinking minute of it! *raises hand 1231434241 times*

Ahh the long awaited ACOWAR, the third and final book in this trilogy. But have no fear! SJM has announced that she will be writing more books set in this world, just not from Feyre's perspective. I CANNOT WAIT YOU GUYS.

To give some thoughts for my non spoiler readers... Sarah J Maas is a queen. Her writing is liquid gold. The way she describes courts, weather, clothing--everything was just beautiful. The character development, for not only Feyre and Rhys, but for other characters as well was through the roof and truly, honestly, makes you wish these characters were real because they FEEl real. They feel like they are your own friends and family and I ended up caring deeply for every one of them. And don't even get me started on Velaris. I WISH I LIVED THERE!

Read this book. This series. Read EVERYTHING by the queen- SARAH J MAAS!

***SPOILER TALK AHEAD***

Hey spoiler peeps! SO! Where do I even begin?? Feyre begins her story trapped yet again in the Spring court. I have to say, I really, really despised Tamlin all throughout this book. The fact that he didn't understand that he wasn't making Feyre happy, that he was trapping her, and that she left on her own FREE WILL made me so angry. It wasn't until the end of the book when I actually was like, ok, he's learned, he sort of redeemed himself. We'll get more into this later.

Once Feyre and Rhys were back together my heart grew three sizes. They are just perfect together. They spoke a lot more with their minds, being Daemati, and I thought this showed just how close the two of them are.

I freaking love Nesta. I feel like if you were to tell someone this who has only read ACOTAR they'd be pretty confused, but her character development, and Elain's too was just stunning. I love how Nesta has this tough attitude about her. She's the kind of person who would say, "you can say mean things about me. But insult my family and friends? You're dead."

And don't even get me started on her and Cassian!!!!!!!!!!! I SHIP!!!!! SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!! I was dying at the end of ACOMAF when she was being forced into that cauldron and Cassian was crawling for her, and calling her name. And then I was bawling YET AGAIN when the same thing was happening at the end of ACOWAR, when Nesta is about to kill the king of Hybern, having summoned the cauldrons powers, but is stopped short when the king breaks her fathers neck, killing him, and her powers are snuffed out. Meanwhile, Cassian is laying at her side, crawling towards her, his wings snapped and broken, telling her to leave him, to run, and she tells him that she CAN'T leave him. Oh my heart. When Nesta positioned herself in front of Cassian and he held her back, I was CERTAIN that Hybern was going to kill them and I was NOT ready. I was nearly bawling at this point. But thank the Mother!!! Elain!!!! She is exactly as SJM describes her as; a flower child, with flora in her mind and a hobby for gardening. But then she comes up behind Hybern and BOOM! Stabs him in the throat-- with the blade Azriel gave her nonetheless! This just proves how she isn't just a bystander, how she has faced trivialities, and hardships, and losses, and it has shaped her into who she is. I'm not trying to say that you need to kill someone to prove your strength, god no, but it was just SO SATISFYING when she stabbed the king and then hisses into his ear, "Don't you dare touch my sister." I DIED. And of course, Nesta gives the final twist of the blade that severs the kings head from his body. Just fulfilling that death promise that she made with her vulgar gesture before being fully submerged in the cauldron in ACMOAF. Loved it.

When Amren betrayed Feyre I was pissed, but only because I didn't understand what Amren intended to do. For a second I thought Amren was going to completely turn on her, and say she was fighting with Hybern, and had been this whole time. But then we realize that she just figured out the only way to stop him and his army is if she is transformed into her original body, the one that would make her forget who Feyre, Rhys, and the others are. It was a sad reality, but one they couldn't risk not having.

AND RHYS. OH. MY. GOD. When he died.... I think all of us readers died a little inside too. But it didn't actually hit me as hard as when I thought Cassian and Nesta were going to die. And that is simply because I didn't believe that SJM would kill Rhys off like that. She's a dreamer, and a lover, and I just couldn't accept that she would leave Feyre to live her immortal life without her mate! Where as for Cassian and Nesta... It just seemed like that could actually happen. Thank the Mother it did not!

The part that really killed me was when Feyre realizes Rhys is dead and is shouting, begging, for the other High Lords to do something to, "BRING HIM BACK." I was a blubbery mess. Until Tarquin, the youngest of the High Lords, steps forward and says to him, "For what he gave. Today and for many years before." And he is the first to give him an ounce of his power. This was so touching to me because Tarquin had sent them blood rubies, had thought them to be liars and thieves. But he then sees that it is not who they are, that they want peace just as he does. When all the other High Lords gave their powers I was really holding my hopes high, that Rhys would indeed survive. But then Tamlin... I was afraid he wouldn't give up his powers to Rhys, and poor Feyre Darling was begging him saying she would give him anything. And then my heart just broke further when he said to her, "Just be happy, Feyre." This is where he redeemed himself for me. That he FINALLY sees that Feyre is indeed happy with Rhys, as High Lady of the Night Court. And while he is still bitter about it probably, and is a real man-bitch to Lucien, I'm happy he at least accepts what Feyre desires now, and helped her to continue her happiness. I also thought it was neat to see the High lords give their powers to Rhys, gently pouring a bit of their magical light onto his bare throat. We didn't see this in ACMOAF since Feyre was dead so it was neat. But one thing that I'm questioning is just the whole process...If the seven High Lords can bring back the dead, why don't they do it all the time? I understand for a mortal they would be giving away their powers as they did to Feyre and they don't want that, but for a High Lord... Well, Rhys didn't steal any of their powers. So basically, if they can do this, the High Lords can never die and will always be able to come back to life, so long as they all agree upon it...Interesting. Unless there are some rules about this that we do not know of yet.

When Rhys awoke and Amren too was returned to them- that shocked me! I was-and still am- surprised that not a single one of the inner circle died or was sent back to where they came from. I'm not saying I wanted any of them too, but it all just seemed so... perfect to have them all end up back together. While Amren no longer has her abilities she had before, she is now High Fae and can maybe learn to train and fight as they would- if she even needs it. I also have to admit, that while I adore the little romances, I kind of prefer Amren on her own. She is just so independent and bad ass, so while I liked her with Varian, I'm not sure I want them to be mates.

AND MOR!!! Tell me that scene where she comes out to Feyre didn't kill you on the inside, splitting your heart into 1000 tiny pieces???? It all makes sense. Why she did what she did with Cassian to avoid being married to Eris, why she could never let herself be with Azriel because while it would mean close to nothing for her, as it had with previous men she'd been with, it would mean a lot to him. It just made my heart grow. And what made it grow even more was Feyre's reaction. She let Mor speak, and gave her the absolute most respect, understanding, and acceptance. I especially loved that she told Mor she wouldn't tell anyone, not even Rhys, which is SO important, because a gay or lesbian person should have the full right to declare the time and manner of when and to who they come out. I love that SJM incorporates this kind of diversity in her books. We also have Thesan, High Lord of the Dawn court who is gay and mated to his captain. Then there's Helion, High Lord of the Day court, who is bisexual. I adored these characters and loooooved learning about the courts more and meeting their High Lords. I really loved the descriptions of the Winter Court; the white foxes wearing little vests, the white bears, the long blue overcoats with white rabbit fur at the trims. And of course, Kallias and his wife Vivianne. I really adored them too.

And then we have those three beautiful monsters. The Bone Carver, the Weaver, and Bryaxis. I was SHOOK when Feyre realized that the Bone Carver was being seen to her as her and Rhys' possible future son. SHOOK I TELL YOU! And when Rhys quietly asked what he looked like and Feyre showed him with her mind... *heart breaks 1213344123 more times*

I was sad when he died, surprisingly. I was never attached to the Bone Carver but... Just when Feyre said that she wishes that he goes to wherever it is he imagined, since he was so fascinated by death, and she sent a prayer to him... That part got me.

When Stryga, the Weaver died... Well I was sad but only because she was fighting for the good side. I think that character is so fascinating and creepy and just... That scene in the Weavers cottage in ACOMAF is one I'll never forget for sure. And when Feyre goes back there in ACOWAR, luring Ianthe and that other guy with her, omg SHOOK AGAIN!! Feyre knew not to close the door, knowing well it would lock, and pinned Ianthe inside while telling the Weaver she brought her dinner. What a vicious, deserving death for Ianthe. Good riddance.

And that poor Suriel... I wonder what it's name was. Feyre is honestly like a disney princess, having all the woodland animals like her and get along with her. She was so respectful to ask for Helion's cape and lay it overtop the Suriel. I feel like it is a debt that no other Suriel will ever not know of or forget. And their father!!! When he came with those ships, three of which were named after his daughters my heart was aching. It just bound their bond a bit tighter, since well, there wasn't really a bond between the four of them at all before. It showed that he is sorry for not being the father he wished he could be, but that he loved them dearly, and was now trying to make things right. He was not away on merchant business as they had thought, but had heard of the betrayal of the mortal queens and sought to find Vassa and Drakon and Myriam who Lucien then brought to the battle. When he died... I mean, I wasn't super connected to him, nor were his three daughters I have to say, but it was indeed sad, just because he was there, fighting for them, loving them even as they were Fae.

And Jurian?? Thank goodness he was on the good side. I'd like to learn more about him as well as Drakon and Myriam. Their stories weren't the most interesting to me, but still I'd like to know more!

While this book surely closed some ties- more so with Rhys and Feyre. I am SO happy they live happily together, laying over Velaris. Although I'm sure they will be facing a little more turmoil in the books to come. What with the mortal queens never showing up to war and all.

Gawd I wonder what's in store for us next??? I'm hoping we see more from the inner circle. I want to see Mor happy with a girlfriend, to have her father either accept it or just be completely thrown out of the picture (good riddance again) and to have Azriel know so that he doesn't think anything is wrong with him. MAN I loved him in this book. He's so shy and mysterious and just... *heart eyes* I also hope he finds a lover-not that you need a lover to be happy but... you know. I kind of like him and Elain together... Anyone else?? I mean, he gave her his SWORD!!!! TRUTH TELLER!!! I know that Elain and Lucien are mates and all, but I said in my review of ACOMAF that it seemed to come out of now where, and it certainly didn't seem to click into place in this book. Elain did not accept the mating bond, nor did she make him food, and she hardly ever spoke to him. If anything, I think they could be friends. Perhaps this will be an example of how the mating bond is not always right, since it's somewhat connected to bearing the strongest offspring, but there's waaaaaay more to a relationship than that of course. Maybe Lucien will find some other lover/mate? I've heard others thoughts of him possibly being with Vassa?? I wonder if Feyre will free her of her firebird curse; Firebird by day, normal female by night.

I also want to see what happens with Nesta and Cassian. Because I SHIP IT SO HARD, MAN. I also want to see if Amren and Varian do end up together or not. It did indeed break my heart when Varian was pleading with Feyre and Amren saying no to her going into the cauldron. But still... Amren is so strong and sassy she can be a bad ass High Fae all on her own without any man.

AND UMMM Lucien is related to Helion!!!!!!!!!!! It all makes sense... He doesn't look like any of his brothers or his father, and this would explain why his fathers and brothers hate him so much. His mother had an affair with Helion, who doesn't even know that Lucien is his son!! How will this play out??? Will Lucien find out somehow? Will he be told? Will Helion discover it?? ORRRR!!!!! Will Helion die, and then boom the new High lord of the Day Court is Lucien and he didn't even know.... THAT would be a shock for him to say the very least.

Also can we talk about the glorious fan art???? It's basically exactly as I picture the Inner Circle to look. Charlie Bowater is seriously talented. Her recent work has Cassian in a man bun-- Like Guys COME ON!!! *heart eyes x 1000* I seriously need the colouring books now, both ACOTAR and ToG. I neeeeeed themmmmmm.

And speculation on an ACOTAR movie??? I mean HELL TO THE YES but the casting would need to be spot on AND it would have to be really, really true to the books. Not holding anything back just to make it suitable for all audiences. War is bloody. War is brutal. It can't be toned down. And for the sexy time scenes well... Maybe it would be sort of like an HBO show ;)

WELL. That was a long one. I love Sarah J MAAS' books. I always thought I loved Throne Of Glass so much more... but now they are pretty even. I can't wait for the next instalments, although it is going to be VERY difficult to wait all the way until 2018 for them. In the meantime... Guess I'll just be rereading them and reading up on some theories for the latter books! What are yours??? I've read some theories for connections between the ToG and ACOTAR universe and it's mind blowing guys, mind blowing.

1000/5 Stars on glorious Star Fall in Velaris. *sighs* Now on to bingeing all the ACOWAR reviews, and perhaps buying an ACOTAR universe themed candle, while I remain in what may just be my largest book hangover yet.... although EoS did give me a huge one too.

What are your thoughts on ACOWAR? I'd LOOOOOVEEE to know and talk all about it! Send me a message or reply to this chat!

As always, thanks for reading.

- T

[wistfuldragon]

Coming Out, Sort Of

I came out as bisexual this year, sort of. And it’s both a big deal and not a big deal at all. I say I “sort of” came out because a few people knew - my husband, surely all of my sisters (sibling gossip travels fast), and a few friends. But I never talked about it with anybody except my spouse and, occasionally, friends. I wasn’t sure what to say, or how to say it, or even if it mattered at all. I still feel like I’m sitting on an iceberg floating aimlessly around the ocean asking the water, “Is this okay? How about this? Am I allowed to feel these things or say these things? Does it matter?”

Almost twenty years ago I got my first big, obvious crush on a girl in college. It hit me like a sack of bricks. I didn’t understand. And - please forgive me for sounding so unbelievably naive - I wondered if was I a lesbian now? Except I still was attracted to guys. Was I straight but confused? Or a lesbian but confused? Did I need to “pick a side”? Was it a phase? What was this “bisexual” thing and why were a lot of people saying it didn’t exist or it was offensive? I stayed up late in the computer room reading scathing internet blog posts talking about college girls “experimenting” or articles about how bisexual people gave real gay people a bad name and conversion therapy proponents more fodder. (It’s important to note that I was a social idiot and never talked to anyone online or in person to get other perspectives. Give me a choice between believing the worst thing and the best and guess which one I’m likely to choose. It’s like a bad romantic comedy where you’re screaming at the screen, just TALK about it goddamnit.)

The girl I liked was straight, dating a long term boyfriend, and - oh yeah - she was my college roommate and friend of several years. That didn’t make life incredibly awkward or frustrating at all. I’m pretty sure I was an asshole for a while.

I also thought about my conservative family - and whether I would even be allowed to bring a girl home for holidays. Maybe, I decided. Probably? Still, the history wasn’t great. When I was about 8 or 9 I remember one of my sisters telling me that queer was a bad word - not precisely because it was a slur but because it meant gay and being gay was bad. She was trying to protect me, I think. She didn’t want me to get bullied over it. I lived in a lot of homophobic places growing up, though maybe that was everywhere at the time. Even though I eventually realized that being gay was normal and natural, I clearly didn’t internalize it enough. In the end, mired in cowardice and doubt, I squashed it all down and locked it in a room. All of it. I had school to focus on, good friends, zero romantic game anyway. I’d never actually dated anybody at all. Maybe it was just a phase. Maybe I was just confused. I’d ignore it and think about it later. That’s how I was raised to deal with problems, after all, and it felt like a problem I wasn’t ready to tackle.

I met my husband at a party on my first night in the dorms, had an unrequited (but secretly requited - it’s a long story) crush, and then we became friends, but we didn’t start dating until a few years later. We had a solid friendship underpinning our relationship. It was a good thing. But my sexuality continued to sit in a locked room in the back of my mind. One night about a year after we started dating we went to an LGBTQ (as it was labeled at the time) awareness event. It was a maze of exhibits highlighting love and hate. And though I considered myself an ally and not unschooled in the level of horror in the world, there was something about that evening that broke me apart. I didn’t fully realize it until the small tour group gathered in a room at the end of the exhibit to talk about the displays and why it was important to be a good ally. The facilitator went around the room asking people what they learned. I tried not to cry as people went around the room blithely talking about things they’d taken away from the exhibits. I tried deep breathing. I dug my nails into my palms. And when they got to me, I realized I should have just gotten up and left because I burst into tears. Actually, I started sobbing. And I couldn’t stop. I sobbed through the rest of the (much more rushed) follow-up interviews. I sobbed as we gathered coats in the lobby. I sobbed as we walked out to my boyfriend’s car. We sat there for a while as I struggled to get my emotions under control. And then we started to talk about it.

We talked about a lot of stuff and he asked without a hint of judgment whether maybe I could be bisexual. And something within me cracked open. I apologize for the analogy I’m about to use, but you know that scene in Goonies where they have to play notes on an organ to open the bridge? This was a correct organ note and the closed door I’d built opened a little bit. I felt freer to just have one person I cared about act like A) it was real and B) it was fine. So I started thinking about it again.

The door still wasn’t open all the way, though. Soon after that I mentioned to one of my sisters that I thought I was bisexual. She said absolutely nothing about it, neither in condemnation nor support. (And, okay, I’m fucking terrible at talking about feelings. I had slipped this into a text message conversation about something else entirely because I am an utter coward.) So, in typical fashion for me, I read the worst into our lack of communication. I decided that she probably said nothing because the internet articles were right, and it either wasn’t a big deal or it was offensive of me - a woman dating a man - to put myself forward as bisexual. Did I ask her about it again? No, because I’m an idiot.

And besides, a voice in the back of my head whispered, what if it really was just a phase?

So I waited. I fell in love and got married. I opened the door sometimes to peek inside. “Still attracted to women, too? Okay, just checking.” (Door click.) I did this for a while before I felt confident in saying, like a grand pronouncement, “I am bisexual.” Only I didn’t pronounce a damn thing, not to anyone else.

There were a couple of reasons, at this point. For one, it had been SO GODDAMN long since I first realized it and accepted it fully. Like, would I have to explain to people, “Heh, yeah good friend, sorry I should have said this years ago but, you know, I’m an emotionally repressed human being.” I actually sat around trying to imagine the conversations but always managed to come up with an excuse not to talk about it. I remember sitting on a friend’s couch one day with this new/old news balanced on the tip of my tongue. But I decided, at the time, that coming out was something people did when they needed support for a relationship. In the end, I was married to a man. I didn’t need anybody’s acceptance of my relationship. I was in the safest possible position - married for years to the opposite sex. In the eyes of the world, I might as well be straight - anything else be damned. What did it matter?

Plus, I was ashamed at how fucking long it took me to accept that I was bisexual. I tried for years to be a good ally, but it turned out I was a shitty ally when it came to myself. The shame I feel that my first response was fear will stay with me the rest of my life. I felt that I didn’t deserve to talk about my feelings. I didn’t deserve anybody’s messages of support.

And then 2016 rolled around and Trump/Pence got elected. I was commuting to work with my small daughter a few days later, still burning with rage and shock. I looked at my daughter and several great, thunderous organ notes sounded and the door opened so much wider. What kind of world will we leave for her? What kind of world is it now where someone with such a transparently hateful platform could be elected to such a high office? And I realized that I think every voice is important. I felt culpable, in my silence. Growing up, if I had known just one person who had openly said, “Hey, I’m bisexual,” I truly think I would have realized this about myself sooner. It could have spared me years of wondering. It might have spared me all this shame I feel now that I ever felt ashamed about my sexuality. Basically, I looked at my daughter as we waited for the traffic light to change and desperately wanted a better world for her. And I realized I had to start with myself.

Fandom gets a lot of flack for being a toxic place. But in the fandoms I was participating in I saw people posting about coming out on social media and I thought…yeah, I should do that. Like, it’s literally the least I could do. But it’s something. I worked my way up to it, still more than half convinced that my voice didn’t matter. Instead, I started by telling a total stranger online that I was bisexual - in a conversation related to a fictional character possibly being bisexual. I couched it in apologies about being married to a man for so many years and was told quite clearly and politely, that I had every right to talk about being bisexual - it didn’t matter who I was married to. BONG. Another organ note. The door opened further. (And, me being me, of course I cried at even the merest scrap of validation.)

So I posted something small on Facebook and Twitter, terrifically nervous about the reactions of family and friends. What kind of backlash would I get? Was it just way too weird to post this now after so many years? It turned out that all my fears of being called fake or confused or not important or a fucking coward were unfounded. Several family members and friends were supportive. At the time of that post I tried to brush it off as not really coming out. After all, “coming out” sounds so dramatic. I talked briefly about the experience it in an online chat and then felt deeply embarrassed that it had taken me so very many years to do even this one tiny thing. But, yeah. I was pretty much coming out.

Being more open is still a work in progress, I guess. My parents and I are strictly on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell plan. I don’t ask them how they feel and they don’t tell me. They didn’t “like” any of my Facebook pride posts, anyway. Yeah. Communication is…not our strong suit. I fully realize this, but I’m scared to ask them and hear something I don’t like. God, even in my upper thirties and mostly really happy with my life I’m scared of that. I find that I care and don’t care at the same time. It’s always disheartening to realize that you’re still kind of chickenshit. I’ll give them some time to process it and maybe next year I’ll work up the ovaries to talk to them about it.

Shame at my past doubts, ever-present weaknesses, and my own intrinsically awkward nature mean that I’m still bumbling around on my little iceberg asking the ocean if I’m being offensive, or overstepping, or if my voice even matters. But I will strive to be better. For my daughter, and maybe even for other people, I want to be a better advocate. And I really, really needed to start with myself this time. Our experiences constantly shape and reshape our lives and I’ll do my best to be a better, more open and self-accepting person. Maybe someday I’ll even forgive myself and shed past regrets.

So it is and it isn’t a big deal. It’s changed my life and it hasn’t changed it at all. But I’m going to keep trying to be a better person for myself and also for my daughter who might someday try to sort out her own sexuality. I’ll be able to be there saying, “I’m bisexual and proud of it and I love and accept you no matter how you identify or who you love.” That’s far more than I ever had, and I think it’s a good start. This is the first year I’ve done any kind of personal acknowledgment or celebration of pride month, and it feels really good.

[le-koko-butter-blog]

John's Erotic Self. TFP meta reading.

Introduction

I recently re-watched The Final Problem and jotted down some notes regarding things I have yet to read in other meta here on tumblr. Perhaps, they are addressed on someone's blog but I have yet to come across it. Now, I can be completely and utterly wrong. As I was writing it, it felt super duper meta but it made a lot of sense to me. Feel free to add or correct what I have written. I'm putting this out here for a discussion about the text.

In order to even read this, you have to subscribe to or entertain the idea that TFP is from John's mind bungalow perspective. If you aren't of this opinion, you'll likely think everything I am saying is nothing but embellished bullshit. I assure you, I'm being entirely sincere.

The notes follow the events as they are laid out in the episode since I wrote down bullet points as I was watching. I was going to include pictures but alas, I am lazy.

Analysis

The Final Problem displays every genre but romance and yet, in its entirety it is a romance. There was a post going around that compared the cinematic shots to other films. The dialogue and the music are also genre-specific. I was tipped off initially because of the outrageous clown sequence at the beginning. I thought that they would go through all the movie genres and end up in romance but they did the opposite. This baffled me and made me lose confidence that I knew what the hell was going on (that was just the tip of the iceberg). There was no romance, partly because all the genre switches serve a function to highlight the fact that indeed BBC Sherlock is a romance as we have always known ever since S1E1. Of course, there is a lot of meta out there already talking about how the show is perceived versus how it really is. (I suspect that that Bond article Gattiss replied to was planted just to put the idea of Bond and shitty movies into our head).

If we also extend this to John's mind, the fact that he deliberately avoids romance is pretty telling. He's afraid to even consider it in fear of its implication. I think this is the theme to the whole episode. Romance is just another word for erotic love. We tend to think of it as something naughty or bad and certainly John has this assumption but Eros as a type of love is named explicitly to separate it from the other types. We are tipped off that Eurus is a Greek name. Well so is Eros. Eros is the erotic love (hence the root word), philia is friendship, agape is like a broader kind of love, a love for humanity, that Jesus kind of love. You can easily google this if you're interested.

Eurus=John erotic self. This is not a stretch. In T6T they made the phonetic leap from ammo to amo. This seems a bit of a reach honestly since these are two common words. To me it's like bowl and bowel. Perhaps I have this impression since I live in a city that has a high population of Spanish speakers. I would also think it is somewhat common knowledge for English speakers. This is just an assumption of course. The phonetic link between Eurus and Eros is less of a stretch since the pronunciation of Eurus sounds almost the same as Eros to many of us. The actors routinely pronounced it differently since that round gutteral Euuurr sound is a bit difficult. I can't say it without mimicking her voice. 

Going forward with the idea that Eurus is John's erotic self, it's interesting to note that Eurus looks a lot like Sherlock compared to her other disguises. She has a wonderful mass of black curly hair that starkly contrasts her vibrant blue eyes. This is interesting since John has only seen her with reddish hair as the girl on the bus, light brown hair as the therapist, and coming from Sherlock's report, blonde hair when she was pretending to be Faith. 

In the initial scene at 221B, I noticed the painting of a man that is directly behind John in the living room is dark. Now, I'm sorta new to tjlc so I'm not sure if you guys decoded this already. I always thought it looked like John or a young William Shatner (The Kirk/Spock thing again?). We don't get a good look at it but it's a white man with blondish short hair. From my recollection, it's always lit. Curiously, it's dark in TFP. Perhaps, this represents John in some way. It's dark suggesting that's he's unconscious. I could be reading into it though. You all tend to be better with the sets. 

Under the assumption that Sherrinford=sherlock, one may assume that Sherrinford is a code word for Sherlock that Mycroft uses and not an actual place. And is it just me or the goddamn place looks like a penis? Anyhow, Eurus is kept secure deep in Sherrinford. Deep, deep down there is that erotic love (Eurus) at the center of John's image of Sherlock. At least, that's how I read it. Perhaps I am off.

 The next scene is in the plane. There is an empty baby seat in the aisle. The little girl looks at it briefly. I of course, think this is baby Rosie in some way. It's interesting that it's empty. I'm not sure what this symbolizes yet. Perhaps it's saying the babe ain't real or perhaps it represents the betrayal of Mary or the emptiness of John's life as a father married to Mary.

 Another interesting thing that I noticed is that throughout the episode all the deductions are freaking absurd. They sound more like the jokes that people throw at Sherlock, like did you know what college I went to by the coffee stain on my shirt? That kind of stupidity. I think that's another clue that we are in John's mind because John's isn't really able to follow Sherlock's deductions. They seem to make sense but not really. They are terribly far fetched.

 Now, you can totally disagree with me on this next point. But I believe the violin playing=sex. As soon as Sherlock plays his own song, Eurus interprets it instantly as sex even though the song sounds absolutely nothing like sex. It's rather somber. But we should recognize it as Irene's theme. John in TLD mocked Sherlock asking him if they had random sexual rendezvous. He's suspicious and massively jealous that Sherlock has had sex with Irene.

Eurus says something so interesting in this scene. She says something along the line that "The man who sees through everything, doesn't see it." In the dream world it's the glass. This of course, is laughable to us as the audience but just for second, think what it means symbolically. She keeps directing him to it, but he can't see it. Sherlock's super observant but for some reason he can't tell that John wants him, can't tell that the glass isn't really there. Oddly enough, the company is elephant glass. John is aware that he desires Sherlock and can't believe that Sherlock who can read other people so easily can't see this.

This little exchange between them is fascinating to me because there is an element of philosophy here that isn't totally ridiculous like the stuff we've heard from her before. My personal favorite is the whole shitey lot is "happiness is a pop song, sadness is poem." Like ok, what next level emo shit is that? The dialogue that I find interesting is when Sherlock mentions that her playing is beautiful. She says she doesn't know if it's beautiful, only that it's right. Sherlock then replies that they are often the same thing. Eurus immediately answers then what's the point of beauty? So to Sherlock, all things beautiful are right. However, Eurus doesn't believe that they are the same thing. Some things are beautiful and wrong. Now, John recognizes the beauty in Sherlock (this sounds corny but it is after all, a necessity to romance) but at this point John thinks his desire for Sherlock is wrong. It isn't right. He's beautiful but it isn't morally right.

Much has been said about the awful rape lines and I agree with what has been posited by other bloggers that John is further demonizing his sexuality since John is likely bisexual. 

Simultaneously, John, Mycroft, and the governor are sitting in the dude's office talking about Eurus' mind control. I think besides the obvious genre level stupidity that we see in many Hollywood films, I think for the meta, it is saying that giving Eurus your attention will compromise you, meaning giving attention to your dark sexual thoughts compromises oneself, and subsequently makes one dangerous and out of control. It's not uncommon for people to link sexual desire with the inability to control oneself. I think this further demonizes John's desire. The only practical solution is to ignore it altogether. They really don't have the option though since Eurus won't be ignored any longer.

Going back to the convo between Sherlock and his sister, John further demonizes his sexuality, turning something beautiful into something horrible. Eurus mentions Sherlock's laugh. She says it's her favorite thing. John must love the sound of Sherlock's laughter. She talks about making him laugh all night and it makes you wonder if Sherlock and John stayed up all night laughing and John all the while was extremely sexually aroused by him. This seems almost like it would be a tender moment between Eurus and Sherlock but Eurus (/John) immediately switches this to screaming. John thinks his desire would harm Sherlock in some way.

But it doesn't really matter because again, Eurus is taking over the prison and John is losing his ability to control his desire although he fights it. When Eurus finally attacks Sherlock she screams for everyone to come in and stop her from killing Sherlock. John is evidently fighting with himself.

Finally Moriarty (the manifestation of all evil gayness) shows up. What's interesting is the Queen song. People have already talked about the song's themes and what it says about coming out and embracing your sexuality. But Moriarty, the evil gay takes out the earbuds right before the word 'love.' John is still unable to see that these desires can be connected to love. His homosexual desire can in no way be connected to love. This is why all the villains in the episode are queer coded because John villain codes all queerness. One thing that strikes me is how Sherlock is interestingly less flamboyant in this episode. Like this is the same guy who used the phase "alarming shade of pink" and z-snapped as he screamed to some rando at the bar that he knew ash.  

But anyway! Back to TFP. In the flashback, the glass is clearly there when Moriarty meets Eurus. Her reflection can easily be seen. I wonder what the glass is supposed to symbolize. I wonder if it's some form of truth. The glass is not there when Eurus, John's erotic self is visited by Sherlock because there really is nothing separating them but it's present when Moriarty shows up. Moriarty and Eurus although supposedly want each other, they actually, in truth don't touch. This is perhaps a stretch. I'm just theorizing here. This just may have to do with the fact that Eurus doesn't think to take over the prison until Moriarty shows up. Not that that makes sense or anything. The surface plot of TFP makes little sense.

A random aside: Eurus mentions a so called brother of Moriarty and says he's as stationmaster. I wonder if in John's mind he is thinking of Culverton Smith.

The killing of the Governor's wife instance is really interesting because I honestly believe that it's about Mary. She is the wife after all. John curiously, is unable to kill the guy. I thought he would be able to honestly, since he is soldier and has killed people and really only a fool would think not executing the guy would not end up in the wife's death as well. But what's significant for John is he can't go against his moral code (this is brought up a couple times in the ep). He can't go against it even if it results in causalities such as the wife's death. You can certainly guess what option he'd make in those stupid hypothetical train games. 

Mary is brought up and the Gov asks what he would do to bring her back. John doesn't answer. What are we supposed to deduce about what really happened to Mary? I don't know if I'm looking at this too deeply but Mary's death and John's involvement is freaking fishy (that wasn't an aquarium pun btw). Also later on the 3 Garidebbs room, John shouts that his "priorities got a woman killed." Hmmm....

 Now to the Garrideb scene: There is red paint on the walls. I hope its paint and not blood. Mycroft mentions that it is still fresh. This reminds me of the text in T6T, "fresh paint to hide a smell."  There's a huge window with an ocean in the background. I think it's already been established that water is feeling. This isn't unique to the show. That's actually a rather old belief. That's why the water zodiac signs, Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio are thought to be ruled by their emotions. The deductions Sherlock and Mycroft here again make no sense. At least to me they don't. They deduce that the guy had laser eye surgery because of his nice clothing. This is absurd. Again, John doesn't quite understand the route of Sherlock's thinking.  

 The Garrideb story is literally and figuratively dangling in front of the viewer under the clear assumption they would know the significance of this story to Doyle's canon and yet, they gloss over it. I think they were trying to rip the heart out of everything and make it just a cold, boring case with forced stakes.

Afterwards, John is furious and Sherlock turns to him and says "Don't let Eurus distract you. Soldiers today." The soldiers thing comes off super bro, no homo and I think in a way it's meant to. John was an actual soldier. Largely being a soldier is about "duty," selflessness, and suppression for the greater good-well, supposedly. If John thinks of his desire for Sherlock as selfish and bad, he would naturally repress it under the guise of being a soldier. If you remember at Sherlock's grave in TRF, one of the most heartbreaking and powerful things John does is straighten up and stand like a soldier. You could see him crumbling underneath this futile attempt at control.

They then enter the next room and discuss the little girl on the plane. They agree that they have to get the girl to crash or land in the sea. Again, the sea and water are symbols for emotion. Later we find out that the little girl is Eurus. Eurus is John. So, it is really John that has to land in the water. He has no other choice. The only thing is whether or not Sherlock will save him or doom him.  

Next to the infamous "I love you" scene. I sincerely believe the coffin is clearly John's. The headroom shouldn't be unnecessary so why does Sherlock cut off a couple of inches? Maybe I don't understand coffins. He deduces that it's Molly because she's unmarried, practical about death, and alone...Why can't this be Irene Adler? There is no real logic in the deduction to be Molly. Most of what he says from the coffin before Mycroft looks at the lid is downright dumb speculation honestly. He assumes that it's cheap and therefore the person is unloved. One can easily say their family was poor. But anyways, it's a dream and John believes that Sherlock pulls shit out of thin air. All that really matters is that Molly is a mirror for John. She's loved Sherlock forever or at least John thinks so. The first time he meets Sherlock, Molly comes in with coffee and Sherlock remarks cruelly that her lips are too small. John could tell that Molly liked Sherlock. Molly to me comes off super ooc. She's usually rather mousey but she's somewhat forward and aggressive in TFP. She has more traits of John than she normally has. I think what's important is that she's always loved him and John has always loved Sherlock. All the ASIP reminders as well as Sherlock running up the stairs at Lauristan Gardens in HLV's mind palace to get back to John the first time he left him suggests that the two were in love at first sight. (I would love to discuss this further but I feel that someone already wrote meta on this).

 However, like John, Molly needs Sherlock to say it first. People have already discussed this, John in addition, is super emotional in this scene. Of course, he cares for Molly but he just looks downright dejected especially after the confession.

 "Saved Molly Hooper?" This line rings awful and trite. But they are utilizing the themes of genre and all it's cliches. I think what this line is actually saying about John is that he is afraid of love, he thinks it will destroy him no matter how it happens, through his own death or through the heartbreak that Sherlock doesn't really love him, that even if Sherlock says it to him, it'd be forced and empty. He thinks he's meaningless to Sherlock the way Molly thought she was meaningless to Sherlock in TRF. Again, the discussion of John's lack of self-worth has been largely discussed.

 A random aside. Molly's message machine: Dead Center of Town? Is that a morgue joke? The timer is also really incorrect and suggestive of a dream. I may be wrong about this but that last 30 seconds felt super long.

 The next scene is where Sherlock has to shoot one of them. Mycroft's words are of course how John sees himself especially in relation to Sherlock who he practically worships. He thinks he's a "stupid little man, little scrap of ordinariness," and that Sherlock can easily "find another". Again people talked about this before in other posts.

 What's interesting and also infuriating about this scene is that John doesn't actually do anything. Throughout the episode he merely gets dragged along.  His inaction is glaring when Sherlock puts a gun to himself and John doesn't intervene. This is his dream and he can't control his subconscious. Again, he thinks Eurus (his desire) is an unstoppable threat to Sherlock.

 Also, I kinda like this scene despite John's silence because it shows how underneath all his annoyance with Mycroft, John thinks he is a good guy.

The music as well, sounds straight up like a Bond movie during this scene. I'm not familiar with Bond but it sounds like the stuff they have playing during the trailers.

After they all hilariously get darted, Sherlock wakes up in that room with the cut up pictures on the wall of Sherlock and Mycroft's child selves. Escaping from his confines, Sherlock literally breaks down the four walls. Others have stated that not only is this a call back to the queen music video but this is metaphorical to what the episode and the creators are doing, breaking  down the so called 4th wall and interacting with the audience.

Meanwhile, John is in a deep well, chained to the bottom submerged in water. Again water is feeling, water is love. John is chained to the bottom drowning in his love but Sherlock can't reach him. It's hidden in some place no one knows where, no one but Eurus. So the key to saving John from the well is Eurus, the key to saving John from drowning in his love for Sherlock is reconciling with John's erotic self. In less fancy terms, if John doesn't have sex with Sherlock he will figuratively drown in his overwhelming love for him. This show is so over the top dramatic in its romance that I am inclined to believe it is actually a 15 year old gay boy's modern angst filled Sherlock AU. But I'm all for it, it's so damned romantic I can hardly think about it before my mind explodes. This is also why the rope which is actually a chain btw saves him even though he was chained to the bottom of the well. Because the thing that John thought was oppressing him, the thing he thought was evil, his erotic desire is actually the thing that saves him. How fucking sexy is that?

Meanwhile, Sherlock confronts his crazy Charlie Manson sister. She threatens him to solve the final problem (Find redbeard through the song). Meanwhile the plane is shaking around the same time that the well is filing in with water. The scenes are shot back to back, connecting them, solidifying that the little girl is John. They are both crying for help.

Sherlock then realizes that Redbeard is actually Victor. We can tell by looking at the little kid that that kid is John. So, Redbeard=Victor=John. But Sherlock can't get to him until he reconciles with Eurus. Interestingly, Eurus compares herself to no one. She felt like she was no one. She was neglected, ignored. But in order to save John, Sherlock needs to connect to Eurus. It's the like most anti-no homo thing ever. There's no platonic blah blah. Connecting John's desire and John's love are essential for his survival. In fact, all of them are the same thing. They are all John. It is worth noting that everything is John but everything is about Sherlock.

Again, when we have the flashbacks of Victor, Eurus is talking about the deep water, how Sherlock always finds himself here. The deep water though, in my opinion is almost always John expressing his love for Sherlock.  We get a flashback of the pool and the Reichenbach falls. At the pool in the Great Game, John with a chest full of explosives attempts to sacrifice himself for Sherlock. Sherlock is startled by this and it's probably the first time that Sherlock knew that John cared for him. During The Abominable Bride, John shows up at the Reichenbach falls and saves Sherlock. Interestingly, the dark blue water from the aquarium bounces off Sherlock's face in the close up with the black back drop sequence suggesting perhaps that John protected Sherlock again at the aquarium. Maybe this has something to do with Mary again?

The song was addressed in an earlier post where someone impressively decoded it, realizing that the "I'm lost without your love" was added by Sherlock because just before you thought it couldn't get insanely more romantic, it had to go another mile. I still don't understand what the "seek my room." part is supposed to mean. Maybe it refers to something literal in the real world or perhaps it's sexually suggestive.  What's super important though is that Sherlock knows at this moment that the little girl in the plane is Eurus. This is essential to solving the final problem and saving John Watson. The little girl is the link between the different sides of John, the "friend" part of him, the Redbeard/Victor John and the "erotic" Eurus John. The girl is the both of them. The plane metaphor is where the literal falling in love thing comes in to play. John is falling in love and has been but he's so afraid of landing. He's so afraid of what it would do to him. He thinks it ends in death. He needs Sherlock to coax him through the landing. Cause yes, again it just gets even more fucking romantic.

 When Sherlock delivers the line "Open your eyes," it brought shivers down my spine. I bet money that is super prominent in the 4th episode.

He keeps saying, "this time get it right." It's referring to her killing Victor but it harkens again back to what is probably a bitch load of regrets John has, especially in marrying Mary and never acting on his feelings for Sherlock.

Then there is the Greg scene and the corny great guy, good guy thing that references ASIP. It just shows again what John thinks of Sherlock. This echoes again the "who you think I am is who I want to be" speech in TLD. Sherlock had always wanted to be the hero John thinks he is. In this scene, we see that John sincerely thinks that he already is this guy.

The whole "Emotional Context" thing is also important. Eurus kept bringing this up throughout the episode. John says to Sherlock in this scene that Sherlock gave her what she needed, emotional context and then says, "It is what it is." (The fkn johnlock line).  What John needed to realize what that the emotional context is central in accepting his erotic self. He needed to realize that his love for Sherlock is not impure just because he desires him. That in fact, a central part of that love is the desire. Consider as well that Sherrinford is surrounded by a huge ocean, a symbol of John's deep love for Sherlock.

The ending is weird as hell. There's a long violin duet between Sherlock and Eurus. I wonder what song they are playing. It sounds gothic as all hell. He plays a part, she repeats it, and then they play in concert together. Often people link love making to music. It sounds weird and gross since it's his sister but it's not really his sister.

Then there is the dreaded Mary speech. She is completely wrong about Sherlock and John. Someone said that Mary is heteronormativity and I agree. John thinks that he should be this straight guy who gets married and has babies, who occasionally gets to go on adventures with his bro. I'm not sure why they decided to end it this way. Maybe it's because the show is showing everything that it isn't, starting with the obvious genre switch, the ooc-ness, and the massive amount of plotholes. It appears like a shitty horror/action flick when in fact, it's actually a romance. All the characters are ooc but they really are presenting certain aspects of the characters (mostly different elements of john), and the plotholes are actually carefully laid out either to aid the genre switch or to add a physical image in the episode of feelings and thoughts (the chain for example).  Once you think it's symbolic and from John's Mind Bungalow, everything actually has it's place.

 Oh and the fucking dummy...what the hell, I feel like that's a symbol for me. After watching the episode over I can't believe I took it's seriously. It's actually so ridiculous that I'm shocked I took it at face value. I actually laughed a lot the second time around. That whole "Which one is pain" statement was so downright dumb and reminiscent of shitty teen horror flicks that I feel I should immediately have been alerted. But I was too invested in Johnlock that I just wanted them to kiss. I didn't want to think. I didn't care about the plot honestly.

On a final note, the Mary monologue also represents what history has done to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, kept them imprisoned in this little box, forcing them from realizing who they ACTUALLY are which of course, is gay lovers. ^_-

 If you come across this, please share with other interested meta writers who might have something to add or correct me on. Most of what I've written are musings. I still think I need to watch all 3 episodes in order again to flesh out my ideas but I thought some of y'all might be interested. 

[sherlockgayaturgy]

The Gay is On

“ Hey all. I saw a lot of people despairing last night and questioning this episode and I also saw a lot of people generally confused but optimistic. I have confessed myself skeptical of TJLC but hopeful in the past and… I gotta say… this episode might just be MY episode. The episode that convinced me more than any others. This is gonna be a long post, in which I’ll throw out some theories that are pretty loose, but overall I hope the message you take away is not to worry, to trust our dads, and to remember that this SHOULD be the lowest that we see these characters for their story to unfold the way it needs to.

Okay. Jumping right in. It’s long, so read under the cut.

We start with the cover-up, or how they got Sherlock off the murder charge. Mycroft provides us with codenames. We know that each person in the room has one of the names.

I’m inferring that Avalanche is Mycroft (Ice Man)

Lady Smallwood is later revealed to be “Love.” (That’s the codename she’s assigned by the rest of that group but we find out that she not the “Love” this show is trying to uncover.)

That leaves Langdale and Porlock for Sherlock and Sir Edwin. I believe Porlock is Sherlock ( “shifty and evasive personality”) and Sir Edwin, who we don’t know much about yet, is Langdale. Based on Langdale in the stories, Sir Edwin might be responsible for all of these government secret leaks to the papers that have been troubling our heroes so.

Very noteworthy that Vivienne Norbury, the actual person of import in this episode, does not have a codename. She’s written off as the secretary, as unimportant. But she goes onto have her own code at the end of the episode when Sherlock asks Mrs. Hudson to say Norbury to him if she ever feels he’s too full of himself.

They doctor the video footage of Sherlock shooting Magnussen. They’re setting us up to know, once again, that records can be changed even when you have VISUAL PROOF of what happened. Especially when we’re looking at a video recording. This will be VERY important later.

After the credits, we get the story of the Merchant of Bagdhad, a story of a man who tries to outrun fate and instead runs towards it. All of this is undercut with Sherlock traveling through the London Aquarium, presumably on his way to meet Vivienne Norbury. I believe this entire (or the majority) of the episode is Sherlock recounting the events to Ella while he’s in therapy, which I’ll show later too. The important thing to takeaway from that part of my theory is that Sherlock is an unreliable narrator. He has a very distinct perspective, and that perspective is going to influence everything we see for the rest of the episode.

Then we get the cases. The first of which is called “Dusty Death.” It involves a man who drowns (water=emotions) yet he was filled with sand. Sherlock calls it “superficial.” (Mary “dies” in the aquarium, beneath a lot of water, yet is her death really as emotional as it’s made out to be?).

There’s also “The Duplicate Man” -- the story of someone who was in two places at once and ended up dead at one of them.

That’s not a theme in this show. At all. There aren’t multiple people who’ve done that. And it’s certainly never twins. COUGH. (I’m not entirely made up yet who they’re referring to specifically, but it HAS to be either Mary or Moriarty, meaning that one of them, possibly both, are still alive).

Finally, there’s “The Cardiac Arrest.”

Whoops. Sorry. Wrong “Cardiac Arrest”

A man is found strangled in the bedsit he shares with his brother. They’d always gotten along well, and there wasn’t anything that suggested otherwise. It turns out that the man was strangled by a jellyfish. While I think the other circumstances of this case will come to fruition, I’d like to point this out from the end of the episode.

“What was directly behind you when you were murdered?”

So Mary seemed to be getting along well with the gang, there was something sinister about the JELLYFISH in the room full of sharks. We weren’t looking in the obvious place. Sometimes its the more ordinary thing that is the most dangerous, and what was it that Mary so desperately wanted? An ordinary life.

This piece is immediately followed by the 59 missed calls bit. So Sherlock and John are chatting about an assassin lurking close by, John checks his phone, and Mary’s been trying to get his attention. Cool.

Then there’s the birth scene, then Hudders taking pictures, and she has a line that I ADORE ( “They never come out when I take them”) some baby schmoop that I thought was pretty funny, Sherlock hiding his heart phone from the congregation who were all throwing their lot in behind the Watson family, Sherlock preferring a male Siri... so on.

In between, we get John’s first interaction with “E.” I’ve already written a bit about “E” here. I’ll highlight a couple of things.

This is the first shot we see of her. I was reminded distinctly of Irene Adler with the red lipstick. Other people have said she seems like a literal red herring with the red jacket, red hair, red lips. We get this beauty as well:

Wherein John, who has not fully accepted his own bisexuality, is reflected in a window, staring at the woman, with the TPLOSH flower in his hair. Now, the scene in TPLOSH that I’m referencing is the one where Watson ends up dancing with a bunch of men with a flower in his hair and the dance troupe leader later asks him if he’s bisexual. So we see John, who has just gotten a text from Sherlock, whom he desperately loves but hasn’t allowed himself to, turn around and contemplate flirting with a woman while he’s got the flower in his hair -- the reminder of Sherlock and what he’s repressing still on his mind.

“E” already has a paper in her hand. A lot of people have pointed out that it’s weird that she has this ready for John. I agree, though the first time I wrote my theory I didn’t see that she hadn’t yet actually written her number. Regardless, the theory still stands.

John gets off the bus, sees the flower in his hair, and thinks the woman was laughing at him for it. We think that that’s the end of that.

Then we get to the case.

(”Give the people what they want”) cough

We’re introduced to it with some food=sex coding that as far as I’ve seen got swept under the radar, especially if you look at Charlie (the son) as being gay (which I’ll show).

Charlie is on a gap year with a bunch of male friends in Tibet.

“Your mom wants to know if you’re eating properly.”

Your mom wants to know if you’re sleeping with women.

We get further hints that Charlie is gay with this:

Which some folks have pointed out, being the blue power ranger (I believe the actor who played him was kicked off for being gay? someone correct me...) indicates Charlie prefers men. He asks his dad to take a picture to “show his friends” (prove his homosexuality).

I think we all in the TJLC community know what Thatcher symbolized to the LGTB community of the UK. From there, we can certainly imagine what Charlie’s life must have been like growing up with a father who worshiped Margaret Thatcher. And of course Sherlock, as a gay man, would have picked up on that as well.

This is the first time Sherlock sees the shrine with the missing bust. It’s a bit obvious that he first looks at a shrine of Thatcher and thinks, “Something sinister is going on here.” But more than that, the entire thing is shot as if it’s underwater. We already know that water symbolizes deep emotions. A basic symbolism search for me turned up this as well:

“Water generally cleanses... it inevitably becomes a symbol of characters in stories handling difficult life scenarios. In any case, water is a symbol of power in stories. It has the ability to free characters as well as claim them.

Oceans... often represent obstacles or abysses from which things emerge or that characters must journey across to reach a destination. Oceans are often symbolically mysterious places that can symbolize overcoming a great obstacle or being dragged down into deep depths by it.” [x]

Now, we know later that Mary dies in an aquarium, filled with oceanic animals, so I think it’s safe to assume the ocean metaphor can apply here. It also fits with the theme of the story -- going on a journey, overcoming obstacles, having the opportunity to be freed by water but also dragged under. So this story, the part one of three, is these characters entering the “abyss.” They’re being pulled down to the depths, and the next two installments will be about them making their way out.

In certain instances, too, water can represent introspection. We know Sherlock goes to therapy later in the episode (though I think that MAY be MP... either way, this applies) and introspection is a big theme in therapeutic work. If you believe, as I do, that this is told through Sherlock’s perspective as he’s recounting it to Ella, then the narration at the top of the episode is likely him telling that story to Ella. And as it’s told with the water symbolism stamped over the top of it, we have to be wary of any other time they use blatant underwater imagery in this show.

So have a look at this picture again. It’s underwater. We know that Sherlock was recounting events to Ella the last time we saw an underwater image. I believe that’s what’s happening again, here. Sherlock sees this shrine. He is remembering (much later) that this is the moment when he was pulled into the case that was going to bring about Mary’s downfall. He feels he should have recognized it sooner. But he presses on anyway.

Now, many people feel it’s weird that Sherlock pretends not to know who Thatcher is -- he clearly knew Thatcher in THoB. John points out that he’s playing for time so that he can piece together the case, and I believe that. I also think Sherlock thoroughly enjoyed messing with a Thatcher enthusiast by pretending not to know who she was. That didn’t really bother me.

We learn that Charlie died having never shown his true self to his parents (:-() and then we’re on to the real case of the episode, the six Thatchers. Sherlock also calls his death “superficial,” the same as he called the victim in “Dusty Death” earlier. I’ve shown how this is going to be connected to Mary’s “superficial” death later, so what’s connected here? A boy, pretending to be something he wasn’t, dies randomly and tragically before he could reveal his true self. He’d also pre-recorded a video message in the hopes of “surprising” or “getting the attention of” his parents.

“Thought that might get your attention.”

But that story was never allowed to unfold. The footage was doctored. We even see that visually on the screen:

Plus, you know, the literal rainbow over Charlie’s face as he yells “Surprise!”

Any time we see something that’s been “pre-recorded,” it’s not what it seems. Remember that.

Why is Sherlock interested in the bust case? A lot of people have wondered that, too, or thought it felt off. Mycroft tells us, in the scene immediately after, that the Black Pearl is still missing -- one of the last known pieces of Moriarty’s web that’s still active. Of COURSE this would be haunting Sherlock, while he pretends otherwise. He is waiting on his toes for Moriarty’s next move -- Moriarty is representative of his greatest fear, his greatest failure in his relationship with John. The time he had to leave John alone. So if someone’s smashing busts of Margaret Thatcher for non-political reasons, Sherlock thinks, “They’ve hidden something inside it.” He thinks someone has led him to this case, and that it could be the start of Moriarty’s post-humus game. He’s correct, of course, but not in the way he anticipates.

We also get Sherlock and Mycroft’s conversation about “premonition” here. 

This shot comes with Sherlock’s line, “There’s something important about this.” Introspection, remember? This is future Sherlock bleeding through. This is a moment where he felt something -- a pulling of the strings -- and he didn’t realize what it meant. Hindsight is 20-20.

Mycroft brings up the Baghdad merchant story -- how Sherlock hated it and how he’s been changing the ending because he didn’t like its. Sherlock wants to change the story that’s been told for hundreds of years. He wants to get it right.

I feel like there’s another story that’s really old that people “haven’t been getting right...” Hmmmm....

Does anyone else see Mary here, not Thatcher? Just me? Ok...

Alright, we’re about to get my favorite little, “Sherlock is gay,” in a moment. I’m going to set it up now.

Lestrade and Hopkins, both waiting to talk to Sherlock about a case. Hopkins is there to talk about the Black Pearl -- the case Sherlock is actually working on -- but he turns her down.

The way this scene is written, it’s almost like Hopkins and Lestrade are competing for Sherlock’s love. They say things like, “You see a lot of each other?” “It’s nothing. Nothing serious.” “How long have you been seeing him/known him?” Things like that. And there’s a lot of general posturing going on between them. Sherlock buts in and asks them to shut up. He’s not ready to deal with choosing between them at the moment. Also the door to the kitchen, where John is, is wide open, so he can hear everything.

John is starting to think he’s not valuable to Sherlock. Sherlock is shocked and embarrassed that he’s made John feel this way. I just... can you imagine John drawing the face on that balloon? While Sherlock was deducting?

Then there’s the guy talking about the tattoo/the girlfriend he was indifferent to. I believe this is foreshadowing for how we’re going to see John feel about Mary, especially from the parallels that Sherlock makes up about the man in the “fake deduction.”

Sherlock blatantly pushes the woman -- the one who’s coming him with the case he’s actually working on -- out of his flat. He rejects the lady. He does not like the ladies.

But who does he let in?

The dude... who’s dressed quite a bit like a certain army doctor.

There’s this, which I can’t tell if it’s Thatcher’s face superimposed over Ben’s, or Ben’s face...

Then we get this -- and we know that they put this scene in because the dog was being uncooperative and Mark/Steven had to improvise something.

You’re not picking up that I like you, but I know you’ll get there one day

You don’t need the me

I love you.

He still doesn’t get it.

Yeah... subtext isn’t as covered-up as it usually is but hey, they wrote it in 10 mins.

Then there’s some lovely mirror shots of the Watsons, which I’ve already written about.

And John starts getting texts from “E” but we don’t learn that until later.

Then a really great fight scene in which Sherlock is literally being drowned in his emotions/hindsight/introspection... held down by Mary’s past.

Sherlock smashes the bust, thinking he’ll find the Black Pearl -- the next part of Moriarty’s game. Instead he finds

And once again -- consciously or unconsciously -- the audience is MEANT to associate Mary with Moriarty. Once you plant an idea, it can never be killed.

We see a slice of Mary’s past -- are introduced to the code “Ammo” -- and learn that Mary was one of four assassins, only two of whom have been accounted for.

Sorry. Finger slipped.

Now, later we learn that the “English woman” is Vivienne Norbury. Except Ajay didn’t know who she was. A.G.R.A. didn’t know who had hired them. They didn’t know who “betrayed them.” They didn’t even know who “Ammo” referred to. So why do the terrorists think he will be betrayed by learning about what the “English woman” did? Because it was someone who Ajay knew.

This looks VERY similar to the transition we saw in the Czech trailer with Sherlock. Hold me I’m scared.

I wanna read that text.

Sherlock’s read the drive. But he wants to hear Mary say it. Because he knows records can be altered.

We still NEVER get confirmation that what Mary tells Sherlock is the truth. All of the truth. We never know if he believes her.

The agents names are Alex, Gabriel, Rosamund, and Ajay.

Alex - “Defender of mankind.”

Gabriel - “God is my strength” -- also possible reference to the archangel Gabriel. ( “On the side of the angels”)

Rosamund - “Rose of the world” also “protection” ( “This is my protection... I make my way in the world. I misbehave.”) The “Rose of the world” is not actually a literal translation -- it’s a reference to Rosamund Clifford -- mistress to King Henry II, who bore him illegitimate children and whose maternity was disputed.

Ajay - “Unconquerable”

Mary says her memory stick was absolutely secure. Ajay’s was secure as well, yet CAM had her info, which means someone else from A.G.R.A was responsible for the leak. A leak to someone obsessed with scandals and news organizations.

“Langdale.”

PBS subtitles are kind enough to give us this to go along with the pirate kids from Sherlock’s dream.

I believe this is the recurring dream he talks to Ella about.

You will find me deep down in the ocean... down in the abyss. Waiting to cross through to freedom.

“Not you... not you...”

“Is that sentiment talking?” “No. It’s me.”

“A.G.R.A.” “T.J.L.C.”

Now the whole Mary sequence is odd to me, because everything up to this point has mostly been Sherlock’s perspective. But we know Sherlock and John are tailing her, so it makes sense that Sherlock would have pretty good knowledge of what she’s doing.

We also find out that it was John’s idea to put the tracker on the memory stick. He knew that Mary would run as soon as Sherlock confronted her. He does not trust  her in the least.

“I’ve always liked Mary.” “Yeah. Me too. I used to.”

We know at this point that John has been involved with “E” for a while.

If we believe that “E” was a set-up, and that Mary is in on it, I believe this is part of Mary’s plan to build John up so that he feels immensely guilty when she dies at the end of the episode.

That’s um. That’s nice, Sherlock... but nobody was asking... you? Also the way they framed this whole conversation -- John and Mary having an intimate discussion and then we realize Sherlock is there the whole time?

There’s a mirror there at the back, too, with John and Mary appearing to sit on Sherlock’s shoulder. He has the weight of trying to keep their relationship together and it’s (visually) keeping him down.

Also let me point out that John, who killed a man for making Sherlock eat a pill, has a perfectly clean shot to Ajay -- the man who has a gun to his wife’s head -- and he doesn’t take it. Not even after he goes on and on and on about how badly he wants to kill her.

And when does Sherlock clue in that “Ammo” is actually “Amo?” (Love)

“What did I hear? Every day as they tore into me? Ammo.”

Sherlock is remembering Serbia. Remembering the awful torture, and remembering that the only thing that got him through was love. Thinking of John, how much he loved him was the only way to get through that pain. Amo = Love.

Which of course prompts him to think of Lady Smallwood’s codename.

There’s this wonderful shot. “Love” being denied by a foil in the background. The receptionist, who nobody expects.

Then John on the plane. We get a lovely callback to earlier:

With this:

And then we learn that John actually did go through with his affair (I know some people think he didn’t. I believe he did -- it makes more sense with John’s romantic arc and Moriarty trying to burn Sherlock’s heart out)

She says, “I like your daisy.” She’s also wearing a rose necklace (Rose of the world). We associate roses with Mary already. Yet she’s trying to trick John with something else -- a daisy -- symbol of quick wit, creativity, purity, cleansing. John was the one with it in his hair -- these are all things relating to John. It’s also, from TPLOSH, a symbol of his bisexuality. He tells her, “It’s not really me.” And she doesn’t believe him.

She gives him her number, signed “E”, and he texts her. The last three digits of her number are “552″ or “JLC.” Johnlock Conspiracy. (”1058″ -- random number wasn’t the correct code -- they never choose random numbers on this show) -- Thanks dads!

I think he was texting her in bed, I know some people think he wasn’t. I think he’s about to break it off here:

“I’m not free.” Good choice of words John.

And then he steps off the bus and there she is (WAY TOO CONVENIENTLY)

By a poster of Smith, who we know is going to try to tear Sherlock apart in the next episode. If Smith orchestrated E and John’s affair, he may try to use it against Sherlock in the next episode.

This -- this is the moment John decides to go through with it. And this is the moment I believe proves that he DID have a serious affair with E. I also love the arrow behind John’s head encouraging him to run the other way. Subtle.

“NO! DON’T! SAY NO TO THIS!”

Then the interrogation scene.

Lady Smallwood’s codename is “Love.” She insists she is not the one who betrayed them, though. She is not the “Love” that is the answer. But... maybe... this one is. Not. One. Not the One.

Lady Smallwood’s love is not the answer. Sherlock’s is.

John’s drinking in this scene. Which is symbolic of fear. He is afraid and he has something he needs to tell Mary. I believe he’s telling her that he wants out. He could just be telling her about the affair, coming clean, but we know divorce is already on his mind. We know he feels trapped in the marriage, which is why he had the affair in the first place. And that’s going to eat at him later when Mary dies.

Sherlock on a bridge thinking about water -- rainbow in the corner -- while the Moriarty’s coming music from s1 and 2 plays. It’s almost like what’s about to happen is... connected to Moriarty...

Also the receptionists, the ones who “write everything down” “THEY KNOW EVERYTHING.

More building John up.

Sherlock never tells Mary where to go. He’s testing her -- testing to see if she’s in on the plan and knows where to go. John he tells, because he’s not in on it.

And Mary goes. She gives in without a fight.

“You will find me deep under the ocean.”

Sherlock’s lines strongly echo lines from TAB when Moriarty broke through his dream. “Never could resist a touch of the dramatic.” 

John is telling someone to meet him there -- I assume Lestrade and Mycroft. But how did they get there before him if he’s already on his way? They could have been closer, but what if they were in on it, or someone deliberately kept John from the room so he couldn’t see all of what happened?

If John were to divorce Mary, he’d look for a new partner, and Sherlock would be a likely choice.

But a widowed John would fill the void. He would find a rebound. Convenient he’s already got one.

Then this:

“Pets do that, or so I’m told.”

Pets fill the void of a lost love. Redbeard could have possibly filled a void in Sherlock’s life. But John is also told repeatedly that he’s like a pet to Sherlock. Even in this very episode he’s compared to the dog. He fills a void in Sherlock’s life. And Sherlock would very much like to fill that void in John’s life after Mary dies, once John is ready. But “E” is going to take that hope away from him.

Then this.

“You’ve got a way out, well good luck with that.”

And.

This is a man very clearly preparing for a bullet impact. Again. He knows what it feels like, and he’s steeling himself for the sensation. He’s not expecting what happens.

Mary jumps in front of it. She doesn’t push Sherlock aside. She doesn’t pull him to the ground like we saw her do with John. She jumps.

Who else jumped and faked their own death? I can’t think of anyone...

That. Is. The. Face. Of. Someone. Whose. Plan. Just. Worked.

And it hearkens back to this:

Surprise! The doctored footage from earlier in the episode. A hint that what we’ve just seen is not real. There’s something else going on.

John conveniently comes in just after Mary is shot. He didn’t see anything that happened before, so when Mary says this:

And even though John will have the full story explained to him. For a moment. Just for a moment. What the hell is he supposed to make of that?

“You were my whole world.” She is just laying it on. And it’s tearing John up because of what he’d done and what he was about to do. He can’t reciprocate, even on his wife’s death bed, he can’t tell her he feels the same. And that’s being lain out for everyone in the room to see.

This is going to be me taking a moment to just please... please ask that people stop making fun of the noises Martin makes. They’re real. They’re genuine. They make us laugh because they’re uncomfortable -- I hope no one has ever had reason to make or heard someone make these kinds of sounds in their life because I have, and it’s awful. That concludes my request.

John is experiencing grief here -- but it’s different from the grief he experienced with Sherlock, and that comes out in the noises. This is grief laced with fury and guilt. Guilt which he’s going to project on

(God, I just... Sherlock is trying to help, trying to connect, and this happens I just...)

It’s there -- it’s small but it’s there -- tears. John’s emotions are real in this scene.

He snaps. He blames Sherlock because he can’t bear to blame himself, or acknowledge what he did. It’s awful. It’s not fair. It’s horrible to Sherlock. It’s going to put Sherlock through agony. But John is not perfect, that’s the whole point of this episode. And the more human Sherlock has become throughout this story, the more John has fallen apart because it means he’s going to have to get closer and closer to recognizing his true feelings for Sherlock.

Mary is cremated -- but the transition and the flames make it look like water. She wasn’t able to escape the depths.

There’s also the looming threat that this -- Mary’s death -- is going to be the catalyst for really burning the heart (John’s love) out of Sherlock.

But cremation also allows for an opportunity for a body switch and the destruction of evidence.

We see John in a graveyard again. But notably we don’t see him making a speech begging for her to return. We don’t see him wishing her back like he did with Sherlock.

I noticed here that both his limp and his hand tremor seemed to be back.

Which it’s interesting that we didn’t see it after Sherlock died if it really is there. That’s because this -- this event -- has truly made John doubt Sherlock. He didn’t doubt Sherlock when he jumped and he could go on with the happy memories that he and Sherlock had shared. But all of that is tainted now with Mary removed in such a violent way.

I also think John decides to delete his blog and that’s why we have the “John Watson will not be updating this” message on it now. It doesn’t say it won’t be updated -- it says “John” will not be doing it. He really wants to cut Sherlock out for good.

Which was Moriarty’s plan the whole time.

And... well... Sherlock keeps trying. (The contact name is too long to be “E”)

Look at that. John ignoring his heart.

Sherlock visits Ella

She tells him, “Do you want to talk about it? This is a two-way relationship, you know.” Basically, he needs to talk to John.

This whole set-up looks weird to me. It looks like Sherlock’s chair that they’re sitting in. They seem to be in a church -- but there are weird wall cut-offs or mirrors on the outside. A lot of people think this is MP -- I think it might be as well... or at least Sherlock’s visualization of his therapy sessions. I think he’s actually talking to Ella but visualizing it in a different way. Things that are in Sherlock’s MP are always places he’s visited. He also wouldn’t know what Ella looks/sounds like if he hadn’t seen her. And he goes to her for help -- that’s what she symbolizes to him.

We also have John sitting in a chair that looks like HIS 221b chair when he goes to sessions with Ella. We now have Sherlock sitting in what looks like HIS 221b chair. This all implies that when they sit down, across from one another, in those chairs and open up about what they really feel, the show will come to a completion. A shattering climax, you might say. If only we had any indication that we might get that this season...

Oh...

Then we see Mycroft’s flat. Which makes me a little sad.

But there’s an elephant on the fridge. So that makes me happy.

The sticky note says 13th on it -- TFP will be the 13th episode of the show -- and Mycroft puts a call through to Sherrinford. The clue they gave us for TFP was “Sherrinford.” We’ll be seeing that play out in the 13th episode.

Sherlock asks Mrs. H. to keep him in line by reminding him of Norbury if he ever messes up. He views it as a mistake -- he wasn’t in on whatever the larger plan was.

We are, once again, asked to associate Mary with Moriarty. That. Is. Intentional.

Who. Even. Are. You?

Also -- remember -- pre-recorded videos are not ever what they seem on this show.

Then there’s John’s mirror looking more like a John mirror than she ever has in her life handing Sherlock the letter that’s probably gonna burn his heart out completely and telling him that John would rather have ANYONE but him. So.

And after the whole Irene Adler thing, I don’t know how to take the phrase “Have anyone” in any other way but romantic/sexual.

“Save souls now! John or James Watson!”

“You’re lettin’ him down, Sherlock. John Watson is definitely in danger.”

The ending text:

“When does the path we walk on lock around our feet?” (When is it too late to change the ending?

“When does the road become a river with only one destination?” (When do we get swept up and inevitably carried out to the abyss?)

“Death waits for us all in Samarra, but can Samarra be avoided?” (The love story will die if we take it down the road it’s always gone. But can we change the ending?)

But before Sherlock gets to that happy ending, he has to go through the abyss.

This is VERY much the 1st part in a bigger series 4 arc.

Then we get this in post-credits.

Many think it could be referring to Hell, Norway. Which would make sense. Some people despair because they think this actually does redeem Mary in the end. But even so, the way they’ve framed this makes sure we still doubt Mary. We aren’t meant to trust her. They keep telling us that over and over and we have to trust them.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed reading my thoughts. It’s taken me all day to write this, so I don’t know if people have already gotten to these theories on their own. I’m going to tag a couple of people because I’m curious to hear your thoughts: @roostruk, @deducingbbcsherlock, @loudest-subtext-in-tv, @skulls-and-tea, @inevitably-johnlocked, @fuckwitjulite, @warmth-and-constancy, @finalproblem @johnlockhell221b @incurablylazydevil @victorianlovers @221bmeta @going-to-my-mind--palace @skeilig @bakerstreetstorytime @the-7-percent-solution @whatsortofcase and of course, anyone else who would like to contribute!

I think in the next episode, we’re going to get confirmation that “E” was planted by Smith, and we’ll see the fallout from that. We’ll see Sherlock’s devastation at John apparently having moved on. We’ll see Sherlock suspect that Mary faked her death, only to have it revealed that she really is dead (like the bride in TAB) -- I think that’s the morgue scene, and I think that’s where the lines “So what is this, a trick?” (Mary’s death) and “Of course it’s not a trick, it’s a plan.” Except Sherlock will be wrong again, and that’s when John loses it and hits him in the morgue -- conveniently with “E” standing right behind him.

[scriptscribbles]

why do you think John is straight? I mean I agree, but I'm interested in your reasoning

It’s a number of reasons.

Crucially, of course, there’s him saying “I’m not gay” whenever someone suggests he’s interested in Sherlock. Yes, bisexuality is a thing, I’m living proof of that. But to be honest, I don’t think the notion even occurs to him. I know it doesn’t to most straight men in that sort of situation. It also wouldn’t be left without clarification if he was openly bi.

He also says it with a pretty defensive tone. That could be read as repression, but that’s not in my experience how repression manifests. At least in my experience, repressing bisexuality is an act of actively policing your own behavior and that of others, desperate to erase the part of yourself and even of others that defies your standard. I think I was once the most homophobic person I knew because of that. And the defensive tone would make sense with that, except we also see him try (though awkwardly, because straight man, that’s all I’m saying) to be accepting of Sherlock when he thinks Sherlock, a total stranger, is gay. Repressed homophobic me would have cancelled flat share plans right there. John instead just tries to be accepting but is also defensive against being considered gay himself which strikes me as far more likely behavior for a slightly problematic but well-meaning straight man.

There’s also other evidence, like the mention of his laptop being full of naked women or his long long string of girlfriends. Perhaps even the “normal” porn preference listed by Magnussen, as I recall, though to be fair Sherlock has that as well I believe.

(The one bit of solid evidence for him being bi, I think, is one the fandom screws over anyway. They erase any bisexuality Irene could have, saying it’s even homophobic to pair her with Sherlock (which the whole episode is about), while saying her “Well I am, and look at us both” means John is bi. Personally, I take that scene as just describing a mutual intense fascination with him, a not necessarily romantic thing.)

Frankly, if any lead in BBC Sherlock is bi (and it’s a big if), I’d suggest it’s Sherlock. There’s not one but two classic Moffat flirty duels of wits he gets, one with Moriarty and one with Irene Adler. In probing his ambiguous sexuality, it raises the possibility of it being more all-encompassing (I like to read him as aro/ace personally but it’s far from the only valid perspective). Plus, there’s the lovely Moffat quote, “He’s not gay. He’s not straight.”

[bloodroyalsrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, ALEX!

You have been accepted for the role of AMELIA SLUGHORN. Mysterious and changable, from the outset we intended for Amelia to be one of our most flexible skeletons. The fact that she was existentially constructed on a talent for adaptability left a lot of room for interpretation as to her true nature; the challenge, then, was how someone translate that into a solid and believable character who would fit within the frame of the game. Your interpretation knocked it out of the park. We adore your Amelia with all her selfish and effervescent edges and can definitely see why she’s probably left a trail of broken hearts along her travels. Bravo! Please look at the CHECKLIST for next steps. Welcome to Blood Royals!

♕ I: OUT OF CHARACTER ♕

NAME / ALIAS: alex

♕ II: CHARACTER INFORMATION ♕

FULL NAME: Amelia Slughorn

FACECLAIM: Ana de Armas

DATE OF BIRTH: December 15th, 1952;

Sagittarius Ravenclaw: Ravenclaw Sagittarians are the philosophers of the magical world. They love pure theory, pure mathematics, and anything that appeals to their yearning for far horizons, whether those horizons be physical (in which case they will do a lot of traveling) or mental. They excel at astrology and research, and have the rare gift of both being able to investigate a subject deeply and then being able to explain it to other people in plain language. This makes for excellent teaching potential. They are cheerful, athletic, brisk, and humourous, and also decidedly eccentric. Sometimes they get on people’s nerves, because they don’t have as many interpersonal skills as they seem to think they have, but it’s hard to stay mad at a Ravenclaw Sagittarian for very long. They’re just too goofy. HOGWARTS HOUSE & YEAR: Ravenclaw, Class of 1969 GENDER & PRONOUNS: Female, she/her/hers SEXUALITY / SHIPS / ANTI-SHIPS: Bisexual, I ship Amelia/Chemistry and my anti ships would be Amelia/No Chemistry. OCCUPATION: Technically unemployed, Amelia is something of a renaissance witch (read below); but her constant role is as public relations representative for the Ministry abroad.

ALLIANCE: Neutral POLITICAL VIEWS:

Amelia remains neutral in many deeply political issues within the wizarding world. She has publicly expressed support for magical beings regardless of blood purity, and concerns for the protection of muggleborns who may be bullied or persecuted in the muggle world. Amelia advocates for their safety, but she does not necessarily show strong support to mend ties with muggles anytime soon. She also does not believe they should hold political power, except perhaps those that demonstrate incredible abilities and a willingness to place the interests of the wizarding community over muggles. While she is not fervently supportive of blood purity, she wants to retain their higher status - it only makes sense for families with centuries old magic in their veins to be in powerful positions, but she does not believe it should come at the expense of destroying muggles, muggle borns or shaming those who wish to mix with them.

Privately, Amelia disapproves of muggle/wizard relationships - both because of her mother’s history with muggles, and her sister’s romantic misadventures with a muggleborn. She believes muggles will never truly understand, or accept, a magical creature and vice versa. History and precedence does not make for healthy, supportive or even pragmatic relationships and can only lead to more chaos in her perspective.

Depending on the company, however, point of view can change; but she is leaning more towards supporting the Death Eater cause, as long as it is without Lord Voldemort and his cruel practices.

KNOWN FACTS:

The Slughorn family is known and wealthy due to both their effortless ability to create and nurture relationships, along with their ancient family “business” as patrons of wizards with spectacular talents in the artist, potion master, duelists, quidditch players and those dabbing in the arts of divination and alchemy. You could say they have eyes and ears where they feel they need to be; but they do also adore supporting those of value to their interests. Their money is ancient and the return on investment often worth whatever risks they may face.  

The Slughorns have a history of remaining neutral in polarizing topics; specially when it comes to muggles and muggleborns. Infamously, they once or twice they have sponsored muggleborns of extreme talent, provoking some tension amongst the pureblood society. But this is often dismissed by them, as they are talented at twisting their reasons (talent, potential, for the greater good) and the occasions are so few and between, they are often forgotten by their next investment.

Amelia’s talent for socializing was not natural. During her first years at Hogwarts, she was something of an eccentric child who felt left out due to being sorted into Ravenclaw house. Yet with the tutelage of her older sister, she slowly came into herself - by the time she graduated Hogwarts, she was already known for her charisma and spontaneous adventures. Not all of them true, but who she makes no effort in silencing (some) stories.

This same, older and beloved sister was recently betrothed and left at the altar; she was engaged to a non-name American wizard who proposed to her after a long term relationship. Rumors have it her sister went into exile due to the public shame, and many often whisper of how her cries could be heard for days. Rumors also say the man was not a pureblood, but a muggleborn who was paid off by their father to disappear. Worst rumors say he was killed before the wedding to prevent tainting their blood line. Regardless, there was heartbreak, yet Amelia was nowhere to be found at the wedding reception. Some say this means she either knew or did something; but she also hasn’t bothered to clarify this.

Amelia tends to dab in different affairs depending on her mood; she submits photographs, editorials and open-eds to The Daily Prophet, on others she edits a recently published potion or antidotes, and she has a recently published books on culinary delicacies across the wizarding world with a focus on South America and the Caribbean. Lately, she picked up the drawing of portraits, and she amuses herself and guests by drawing caricatures of them.

BOGGART: Herself without a face; Amelia fears looking in the mirror and not recognizing her own reflection. She’s slowly yet surely losing grasps of her values, her principles and her true goals in life - she fears the moment she has to sit down and truly take a hard look at pure, raw reality. AMORTENTIA: tropical summer storm ; ocean breeze at dawn ; old worn out leather ; elderflower wine

PERSONALITY TRAITS: At least four detailed personality traits Adventurous & Eccentric - A bohemian heart beats within her chest. Amelia craves the thrill of change and the adrenaline of hopping from one place to another without the need to commit anywhere. She goes where she wants and does as she pleases. An aesthete by nature, she seeks the beauty of the land, their people, their food and their culture. Amelia is mesmerized by beauty itself and she is capable of finding it in humans and art alike. This adds to her eccentricity; she cares little for the mundane and shows no care for whatever she finds dull or boring, sometimes to extremes.

Observant & Adaptable - Fascinated as she is by humans, she is quite observant of quirks and little changes others might overlook. At times, she finds delight by just staying in the back and observing the interactions of the crowd; noticing the glances, glares, and gestures of every person. She uses this knowledge when she chooses to interact, too; she knows what name to drop, what topic to touch on, or what question to ask. Her ability to read the environment and the people in it provoke many to seek her company and counsel. She can switch from a charming socialite to an eloquent aristocrat to a dedicated academic based on the scene and the mood.

Deceitful & Detached - Clearly, her knack for changing to fit the winds means she lacks candor and sincerity. Very rarely will she say what she actually means; and even rarer are the times she will speak her mind without twisting or switching words around. Sometimes this is harmless; a friend who needs a shoulder to cry on, a white lie meant to prevent more pain, etc. Sometimes it is said with a purpose - to influence, to manipulate, or simply to lie about the many personal and borrowed secrets she holds dear. The life she leads prevents her from truly growing roots, be it with a place or with a person; and she prefers it that way. While she has loved ones she certainly cares for, Amelia prefers not to feel anything too intensely; it leads to chaos, and however crazy her life is, it is never, in her eyes, chaotic.

Vivacious & Self-Indulgent - Amelia has a certain unique love affair with life. She aims to live on her terms and she looks always for the splendid, the delicate, the amazing aspects that this world has to offer.  Why should she not thrive in beauty and wonders when they are ripped for the taking? She looks for the good life and feels no shame in it; yet her hunger for these experiences, short-lived as they may be, have led to extremes. Conniving and manipulative actions done in the name of loyalty, of self preservation, of doing anything to continue to live the life she wants - she is not proud of them, guilt plagues her mind at times; but like her uncle taught her, she prefers to ignore them rather than to dwell in what cannot be changed anymore.

SPECIAL SKILLS: Amelia is fluent in English, French and Spanish but she can defend herself in German and Portuguese. She is practicing legilimency, she wants to become an expert eventually. She also tends to pick up hobbies depending on where she goes.

BIOGRAPHY:

Amelia is the youngest daughter  to Antonina de la Rosa and Eldwin Slughorn, born in Spain to her cuban mother who was visiting her family at the time. Her mother is the heir of an ancient and long line of infamous and iAmelia is the youngest daughter to Antonina de la Rosa and Eldwin Slughorn, born in Spain to her Cuban mother who was visiting her family at the time. Her mother is the heir of an ancient and long line of infamous and influential brujas in Cuba who sought refuge in Northern America and Europe when rumors of their magical abilities (things of the devil to the devout catholic population) began to bring deadly threats to their family. Antonina attended Hogwarts then, and through interactions with her favorite teacher, the famous and well-connected, Horace Slughorn, she met his nephew - a talented quidditch player a few years older than her. They married both out of love (infatuation, at least) and convenience; Antonina sought to build a name for her family in Europe, and Eldwin always did like a pretty face and sharp mind.

Spoiled and adored during her childhood, she was expected to attend and learn many lessons to become a proper pureblood lady along with her elder siblings. They were allowed to be loud and rambunctious sure enough; they were free to indulge in their likings as they pleased, as long as they excelled at it. Amelia those grew without many barriers in her life; supported by her parents, protected by her siblings and instructed by her relatives, in their family no one fell behind and loyalty runs deep.

Her parents settled in Spain’s countryside to raise their children, and while her siblings attended Beauxbatons, Amelia begged to go to Hogwarts where her favorite uncle taught. She dreamed of his stories and travels, and soon she became Horace’s protégé despite being sorted, to his disappointment and her fear, in a different house. The first few years saw a curious and wild child who didn’t quite fit in, as she was only friends with fellow pureblood children, she was sometimes bullied for her eccentricities. Eventually, due in great part to the aid of her older sister, Amelia learned to navigate the halls of Hogwarts as a proud Ravenclaw and use some finesse in her behavior; she was capable of being equally approachable and sly, humorous and cruel, depending on the occasion and the witch or wizard she faced.

After endless lessons, Amelia has become quite the expert in socializing and networking with very specific witches and warlocks; those that spark her curiosity, or that tick a box she needed. Her adult life is filled of tales from foreign places, and none can track her down unless she wishes to be found. While she tried to settle for a moment in Argentina, where she worked as the apprentice to a potion master, this only lasted for a few months before she felt the itch to move some place else. She is always on the look for the next steps, the next place to go, the next person to meet. The opportunities are endless, and the young witch is simply dying to explore and exploit them all.

CONNECTIONS:

Isle Ollivander; Amelia always had a certain appreciation for Isle’s tendency towards silence and solitude; her presence was a welcome breath from her usual scene. The fact that Isle is willing to step past her bashfulness is very exciting to Amelia; while the same age, she’s protective of the witch and she looks forward to guide her into these new endeavors.

Hero Borgin; The young witch’s thirst for adventure is amusing, and Amelia has never been one to prevent others from reaching for the stars. In a way it bothers her, to see someone’s wishes shut down by their own family; but she can somewhat understand the reasoning behind keeping such a bright mind hidden in the safety of their home. The world out there is becoming uglier with the day and her interests in archeology could lead to dangerous routes. Besides, once one has tasted freedom, it is hard to go back to a cage.

Roman Shafig; Not one for commitment, their mutual understanding is much cherished by the young witch. She admires his character and ambitions and is always disposed to help whenever, wherever, or with whoever is needed. Roman is one of the few wizards she still keeps in contact with after their romantic liaisons; he is a friend to her, and often writes him owls filled with tales of her affairs and sometimes less than noble yet equally entertaining deeds. He is just what she needs whenever he happens to be around, and that is just fine with them.

♕ III: FREESTYLE ♕

My friend, I would do graphics if I could, but I can share her mock blog right here.

Wand; 10 ½’, Maple, Phoenix Feather with Chimera Scale Fragment,

Core: Phoenix Feather - Very versatile. Learns most varied magic, hard to be chosen. Its main strength lies in Defense Against the Dark Arts, although its adaptability can wrench it to hexes and jinxes if need be. As with the dragon heartstring core, the phoenix core is common amongst Light Wizards, but its users are not necessarily Light Wizards.

Today, [Chimera Scale Fragments] are only found as parts of heirloom cores, and even then, all such cores are a more common core (often dragon heartstring) with a tiny fragment of scale embedded. Chimera wands are most common in Greece and the Balkans, although as they were circulated through the Mediterranean and former Roman Empire they are found throughout Europe. These wands are prized for their raw power, although they are difficult to control.

Maple Wood: “I have often found that those chosen by maple wands are by nature travellers and explorers; they are not stay-at-home wands, and prefer ambition in their witch or wizard, otherwise their magic grows heavy and lacklustre. Fresh challenges and regular changes of scene cause this wand to literally shine, burnishing itself as it grows, with its partner, in ability and status. This is a beautiful and desirable wood, and wand quality maple has been among the most costly for centuries. Possession of a maple wand has long been a mark of status, because of its reputation as the wand of high achievers.”