#I see people talking about it being a possibility and it makes me want to rip my hair out

[ir-abelas-vhenan]

Don't mind me, just revisiting the plot (again) and dying over this line (again). (These screenshots are going to be abysmal, but you'll get the point).

"To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far."

Yeah he's talking about Mythal (earned or not) and Felassan and Lavellan and Varric...but the way it applies to HIM, too, is what absolutely guts me.

Long post ahead...

Solas realizing that Lavellan doesn't care about how others see him or want to use him under the inquisiton, that HIS motivations as he has shared them are enough for her and worth defending against those who would tell him he's something he isn't. Solas, for the first time, being confronted with the realization that one these new elves he does not see himself in will still go to bat for him.

"You came here to help, Solas, I won't let them use that against you."

(Is he duplicitous? Yes. But intent on working against Corypheus? Undoubtedly).

“How would you stop them?”

“However I had to.”

“...thank you.”

Solas grappling with the fact that it wasn't just a one off, that this Dalish woman being faced with "hypotheticals" he's desperately been trying to get her people to entertain is jumping in head first, pushing back and disagreeing with him but never treating him worse for their differences and always admitting when he's helped shape a changing perspective. Solas daring to ask for help and marveling at the fact that he receives it, that the same woman who asked if it might some day be possible to live alongside spirits, who did not immediately shoot down his critique of THE CHANTRY REFUSING TO ACKNOWLEDGE SPIRITS AS LEGITIMATE BEINGS (GAH), who did not laugh at him for saying he preferred their company most days, this woman, is going to drop time and resources during war time preparations to personally help his friend.

And then, when he is too late and has once again failed someone he considers a friend, he disappears within himself, where he has always gone to exact punishment for the weight of the lives he believes he's betrayed. It almost works, too.

Psych. Lavellan doesn't want him to grieve alone, to stare at the place in the Fade where his friend used to be and think of all he should have done differently.

“The next time you have to mourn, you don’t need to be alone.”

“It’s been so long since I could trust someone.”

“I know.”

“I’ll work on it. And thank you.”

And still she unbalances him, accepts him, wants more. Solas is sharing a personality that brings him the closest he has ever been to his spirit form, and it is ENOUGH for her. Existing as he has always dreamt of is all takes to earn her loyalty, respect, and eventually love.

But does she stop there? No. She doesn't chafe at this random apostate who speaks with certainty and unapologetically delves into a past he believes worth preserving, even at the cost of questioning her culture as it currently stands.

The very woman he once thought of as a mistake that HE unleashed upon the world is asking to be a part of his, not because of what he can bring to the table, not because she needs a right hand man, and certainly not because she thinks he has some well of power and intelligence critical to winning over enemies she’s willing to join for "supervisory" purposes (cough cough hi Mythal). She bears the weight of choices that can and will lead to death, to pain, and when it wears on her she relies on him, not for solutions but so that at the end of it all she might smile with someone who knows her heart and the good she tried to do amidst a sea of terrible options. She wants to be known, no inch of her unturned, and worse, she thinks she knows him. But how could she? This is no longer who he is, it is merely the remnants of what he destroyed to make a world at Mythal's whim.

“You’re an admirable man. Not many people know who they are the way you do.”

“Thank you. Both for saying that and…for seeing that. Few in this world can see me instead of just seeing a pair of pointed ears”

She. Sees. Him. Every part he slowly is realizing he wants to be known for and even a few he thought he could hide. And then he gives it all up. Because he woke to a new world where spirits and elves and mages were so far removed from the role they played in Arlathan that it can only be yet another mistake he caused and must fix, never mind the fact that the dwarves have forgotten why they fled underground millennia ago in the first place.

The friend who tore him from the world he loved, urged him to take physical form? She is dead, too, never mind the fact that she ignored his urging for a different path, nevermind that he killed and tore and hurt in her name because otherwise what was losing the part of himself he loved for?

"A spirit becomes a demon when denied its original purpose.”

“It hurts. It always does, but I will survive.”

“You bound it to obedience, then commanded it to kill. That is when it turned.”

He may no longer recognize where the Dread Wolf ends and where Solas begins, but if he gives up now and permits himself the chance to remember, the pain he caused himself and others means nothing, because he did it all for Mythal and in his final discussion with her, regardless of what Veilguard tries to convey, she does not release him from his position as her agent.

And maybe that's part of why I'm so angry, because EVEN BEFORE TRESPASSER, the fragment of Mythal that ends up in Morrigan could have freed him, but she does not.

"I am sorry." He whispers.

"The failure was mine," he tells her, voice trembling. "I should pay the price."

Silence.

And do we get that "what we did, we did together" psuedo-fake ass-absolution, the one that, if given enough time and safety to put himself first he may have realised he doesn't truly need to pursue the things he deserves, that make him feel finally like himself again? No the fuck we don't.

"As am I, old friend." She murmurs.

Looking through the lens of Veilguard, this isn't an apology, it's a condemnation. It's Mythal tormenting him one more time, twisting the knife deeper, agreeing that it is Solas alone who has brought them to this point, who deserves to be punished. And then she reminds him what they are to each other, what he is supposed to be to her. What he must become again.

"It isn't abuse if I ask," Cole says in his personal quest.

"Not always true," Solas shoots back.

So he recommits to the friend he gave up his nature for, he refuses to let himself remember that Lavellan learned the full truth of his identity and still begged him not to mourn alone. Even so, he still cannot quite forget.

Var lath vir suledin. Our love will persevere.

I wish it could, vhenan.

And so he pushes onwards, spending almost a decade denying himself his true nature and regretting that he ever gave it a chance to come through because now he KNOWS that this world is different and a little broken, but it's a world he could be a part of because of the woman and the friends that made a place for him. It is a world that doesn't necessarily need to be restored as much as it might need renovation, but that is not the world Mythal demanded of him when she let him kill a remaining piece of her. And any solution but that means the hurt of taking a body, of hurting the titans, of time and time again being called on by one evanuris to fix a problem they all caused, was for nothing.

And a Pride of that magnitude, that sinister an origin, has a long, long way to fall.

And then that same uppity little shit has the audacity to tell him it's not too late, that he can turn back.

He kills again. He kills again. He kills again.

He kills a friend.

He fails to prevent the Evanuris from wreaking havoc a second time, wrenches another innocent into his war, and when they ask him about the woman he calls vhenan, he feels the mask stifling him begin to suffocate. But he never lets it fall, because to surrender now is to place her broken heart atop the pile of regrets he's been holding up like Atlas crumbling beneath the weight of the world itself. Because he still thinks it selfish to want the things that make him feel like himself again, so they need to be taken off the board entirely.

"To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far."

If he gives up now, his entire corporeal life has been a betrayal of many, but worst of all, he will have ruined himself for nothing.

But then she's there. A little older, a little sadder, and still looking at him like she did the night he almost broke and instead carefully removed any suggestion that she had ever belonged to anyone but herself.

"Didn't you hear me?" Her every action screams as she kneels to meet his gaze like he did the day he took her arm (another failure, another sacrifice he cannot let be for nothing).

The tombstone in the fade is his greatest fear, but it is not his fate. Why? She will not let it be. It cannot be his din'anshiral if she is not beside him.

Lavellan may not have understood the depth of exactly WHEN Solas first came somewhere foreign and uncertain to help, but she never once failed to keep her promise. She refuses to let his initial desire to do good be held against him any longer. And when she sees him accept that not-quite-absolution-definitely-more-of-a-power-play from the god that saw what he was capable of and molded him into a weapon, she finds her in to make sure he doesn't walk off alone to mourn again, never again will she lose him to the expectations others have of him. No doubt she wants to find a way to sink the fingers of her good hand into that spectral visage and tear it away like he wishes to do to the veil. But she is not here for Mythal. She is here for her heart, and for the man who has been carrying it since the moment her lips met his in the fade ten years ago.

“No orders to kill, no conflict with its nature, no demon.”

She forces him to see that the only remaining betrayal is to lock himself away one more irreversible time. All that's left to lose is the piece of himself he cherishes more than his greatest victories: all that he has to gain comes from making sure the love that was given to him at Skyhold, in the moment where Varric saw all he was capable of and still tried to bring him back home, was not given in vain.

"There is no fate but the love we share." She tells him as soon as Mythal's too-little-too-late platitudes send shudders through his body.

Banal nadas ar lath'ma vhenan.

It will not be so terrible a place, so unforgivable a betrayal if he can finally dare to put himself first. If, unlike that night in Crestwood, he finally gives in not to break, but to make himself whole.

There's a codex entry in Inquisiton about a spirit of wisdom who is summoned by researchers and only after a very pleasant conversation do they realize they made a mistake and never successfully bound the spirit in the first place, that it chose to speak with them of its own accord.

"I am not certain the spirit would have talked so freely had it been shackled at the time," writes the author of the entry.

I keep thinking about this alongside the datamined line of Morrigan saying, "And so, the Dread Wolf is stopped by, of all things love."

But that isn't quite right, is it?

Because in the end, of course the Dread Wolf could only ever freed by, over everything, love.

[kinardsevan]

What is your opinion on Tommy coming back or not? And in they case we see him again, do you think it’ll be just for closure (ex: Abby in season 3) or maybe for a BuckTommy second chance?

fun fact: i was considering doing an entire breakdown with a bunch of Oliver's interviews from the start of this arc until now to point to my opinion:

Tommy is coming back. The romcom theme is still in effect, and we're only about midway through the 3rd act.

Long story short (and without sources right now), I think that the interviews were actuallly pointing in this direction with the wording for a hot second. We have OS telling us that he thinks the best relationships have a "will they, won't they" bit where the audience and the characters are pining. We've seen this play out on the show. And we also have to remember that Oli knew during this interview that the breakup was coming. We also have the interview (I believe it was the Decider one I linked last week) where he mentions choosing to fight for the relationship or not. I feel like a lot of people have taken the context of that and twisted it into "they didn't do it right away, so they're not going to". Except, there's ANOTHER quote of relevance, which is Oliver talking about how Buck's queerness isn't tied to Tommy or Eddie, and only to himself.

Obviously, there have been things said since 806 that would point towards me being delulu, except, here's the issue: TM, OS and LFJr are NOT going to tell us that Tommy is coming back if that's the intention. It would spoil the surprise of it all, and the win of it all. What fun is there in that? What TM has said is that Tommy is Buck's romantic past but that doesn't mean he won't turn up again in the future (all relevant and true facts which do not shut down a reconciliation). Lou never out-and-out said he was done with the show. He's said time and time again that he wants to come back. TM has mentioned Tommy coming around again. OS literally said in an interview "they may run into each other on scene and have it be awkward".

Now obviously we don't actually have the full story with how things went down and the show decided to go with splitting the boys up. I think the fact that Lou has called out the bullying but says he wants to come back suggests that it wasn't him saying it was too much. I have two theories that could honestly run concurrent with one another:

Evan and Tommy break up in 806 at the end of the episode. With 911 having 18 episode seasons, this quite literally only makes up the first third of the season. It set up the beginning of the year for us. We're now two episodes into the second part of the season with a pretty clear idea of where the next three will go and suggestions (by fans, nothing official) that the "soonest" we could see LFJr again is 812. This is reasonable, as it would be the end of the middle of the season. Knowing that TM has suggested he might do a multi-episode season finale, pushing LFJr back into the show in 812 (or even the end of 811 if we go with my theory that Eddie could possibly leave around this time and Tommy helps them pack up/his and Buck's first time spending time around each other again), there would still likely be something around this time period that would be around when they would open the doors to this. As it is, we know that 809 and 810 go together, and then we'd have 811 to really flesh out the end of Buck's fling. I think there's even more possibility of LFJr being in this episode as well because if the plan is to bring them back together (which everything has been suggested so far ON screen in terms of keeping Tommy "in" the story), three-episode arc gives us several things: a. it allows the show to make the point that Buck's queerness is not intrinsically attached to Tommy; that his interest in men is as equal as he know his interest in women is. b. it gives them the ability to also show that his feelings for Tommy are not based in Tommy being his "first", or Evan needing to "discover" more about himself. They're in love with each other, and the show has given us the pieces for that. LFJr has acknowledged it in an interview, Tommy loves Buck. We also know that Tommy's line to Evan is "you'd end up breaking my heart, and I don't think I could deal with that". When I hear that sentence, what I'm actually hearing is "I'm already in love with you, and if I let myself fall more in love with you by being with you every day all the time and this ends, I won't survive it". By relation, we have Josh ask Buck if he loves Tommy and Buck waffles, but I think this has more to do with his lack of understanding of what a healthy love is in a relationship, given his past relationships. He never got to tell Abby. Ali left. and saying I love you to Taylor wasn't about the core of actually being in love with her, which I think is another important piece for BuckTommy: they don't just love each other, they're in love with each other. Still, sometimes it's hard to quantify that feeling, and I think (as I've referenced before), for Evan it was easier to ask Tommy to share a living space with him than to share how he feels about him because historically, things haven't worked out well for him when he's been in love outwardly. Further, the questions Josh asks Evan are directly correlated with loving someone, and Evan answers yes to all of them. (I don't think I need to add this, but he also sees a future with Tommy, talks about being engaged or married. He's serious about Tommy in a way he never has been before.)

There's also the theory that the breakup happened because of scheduling conflicts. Now obviously the show could've found other ways to work around LFJr's scheduling issues by having Tommy go on a trip or what-have-you, but let's remember OTHER things that have been said by OS in prior interviews: a. back in June, he did an interview where he stated that he wanted and hoped that BuckTommy would go through issues that couples normally go through in their first year together. He wanted normal issues. This storyline IS normal. b. he didn't want to repeat Tarlos. By the very definition of what the show is doing right now, we're not. Tarlos and BuckTommy are their own things with their own reasonings.

One of the other things I also keep being pulled back to is these issues: first of all, we know how LFJr plays with the 911 demo, given that they got to see it last season. It's why he was written into more episodes after his initial four episode arc and brought back. ABC has also used BuckTommy in their own adverts, which suggests that they are very supportive of the relationship continuing because it draws in viewers. Truly giving that up for good feels like dousing yourself in gasoline and then considering striking a match. Second, people also keep calling out that TM only plans a few weeks in advance. I believe this is true with story beats. We know that the writers room has a general idea on character arcs, thanks to some of the discussion on the cheese page post-806. I really struggle to believe that TM didn't know going into going forward with the breakup whether or not he wanted to bring LFJr back. We know he waffled back and forth on the idea of the breakup, meaning he probably had other solutions on his mind for whatever LFJr's schedule needed adjusting for, and this is what he decided on. Also, even if 8b hasn't been broken down yet (we know it hasn't), they would still know at this point what they do or don't want, what their ideas might be. Solidification for why Tommy should be brought back is directly shown in the reaction by the GA and the fandom to the breakup. They may not know exactly how that reunion happens yet, but what they have suggested is that Buck's new relationship will be short-lived. That he's using it to cope. We also know he's still processing the break-up and still misses Tommy. These are all things that point to the story not being over. Plus, I feel (once again), if the story really was over and they didn't have plans to continue this in 8b, LFJr wouldn't be talking about wanting to go back. It be far more "yeah that sucked, but it's over now and what can you do? I'm off to this new show and I'll never be back." (I've commented also on the fact that the fangirlish interview comment about his "i'm going here, doing this, have some opportunities" statement is very run-of-the-mill. Obvs I could mean something. Or it could literally just be a canned answer.) (This might feel a little off-center, but I think his commentary on trusting TM and knowing what he's doing in one of his post-806 interviews directly suggests that he believes the story is going to be handled properly.)

I realize at the end of the day, all of what I'm piecing together could mean zilch and Tommy could possibly never come back. They could truly just drop the story and never circle back around, set fire to a beautiful arc and lose thousands (possibly millions) of viewers. I've certainly suggested myself being one of them. But I don't see BuckTommy only getting an Abby fix for two reasons. LFJr wants to come back and continue the story, and Connie Britton only ever intended to do one season. Also, the fling has been called out as being planned to be short-lived. Why bother mentioning that if you don't have other plans for the story.

The last thing I'll leave you with is my commentary from the interview Oli and Aisha did with the guy from Chicago. That reporter obviously liked the BuckTommy storyline and said he's choosing to believe that the relationship is paused, not over. By relation, we had Oliver say three things: (1 and 2) Buck is still looking for love, both in himself and with another person. (3)The season is only half over. Circle that back to 806-808. Buck is finding love in himself by dealing with it in a healthy way (so far) with the baking. We've also seen the "cracks" Oli mentioned with his continued urge to want to text Tommy, as well as him fighting it off by baking (referencing the "pendulum swinging"). Looking for love in others will likely be this arc where he tries to deal/move on. I feel like we collectively watched the end of 806, and then 807 and 808 yelling at the TV "you're in love with him, piece it together already!" (or maybe that was just me???). But truly, whether it's a fling, his therapist, or Bobby/Maddie/Eddie who finally spells it out of or him, I think there will be a point at which we see that come to fruition. The seeds were sewn in for it in the scene with Josh. Now it's just about watching those seeds sprout.

Final note: we've had a good run up to this point with these two. Did we truly thing that the honeymoon phase would last forever? (I didn't. Conflict and the pink bubble popping have to happen eventually.) If we really want to suggest that what BuckTommy has is real, they have to go through this and come out the other side. I think everyone is justifiably frustrated due to the 4 month wait on new episodes (I personally would not have left people hanging quite like this, but that's just me), but the narrative does lead us toward what the show is doing with the suggestion that it does have a natural (and good) conclusion. (Possibly with a helicopter/truck/jeep crash?!)

And just as my singularly LAST note, here's my other thing: Evan and Tommy both have abandonment issues. (Tommy's are clear based on the break up and we know Buck's.) By that correlation, when these two finally get back together, they're never going to fucking let the other go.

(This was so much longer than I intended it to be, but that's my answer 😂😂😂😂😂😂)

[hoonieyun]

now playing...

after midnight - chappell roan

pairing: singer/producer lee heeseung x singer reader "y/n" x singer sim jaeyun

warnings: profanity, suggestive, kissing, heeseung is thirsty, overall 18+ - also this is partially written so please make sure to read the written part so it all makes sense

wc: 954

ignore the time stamps and any possible typos lol

heeseung approaches y/n as she’s mingling with jake and his friends. her smile fading after he taps her shoulder and he comes into view. “can i steal her for a bit?” heeseung asks jake as if jake was the person in charge of you. a recurring behavior heeseung where he felt the need to always show ownership and possession of you when you were dating, rarely ever considering how you felt or how it would affect you. 

jake shakes his head and lets you go with heeseung even if you don't want to. heeseung grabs your wrist after failing to hold your hand, dragging you to a part of the venue where you weren’t necessarily seen by a lot of people. “what do you want heeseung? i’m trying to enjoy the party…” you say with a sigh and he tries to reel you in by showing you his big doe eyes and even though it slightly made your heart flutter, you chose to stand on business. 

“look, i know i fucked up but just give me one more chance to treat you right.” heeseung says but slows down as the sentence progresses when you just so happen to say the same exact things as him. this was the sentence he had pulled on you in the past and quite frankly, it worked a few times but not this time. 

“you didn’t even wanna try a new script to get me back?” you ask coldly and heeseung drops his face like he has been caught. “okay, i just don’t know what to say. i miss you and i know i was a fucking ass but i just can’t stand being without you.” heeseung says and you just watch him, waiting because you know he was eventually going to tell on himself. he had that habit, when heeseung was drunk and he began to ramble at you, if you just stared at him his silent pauses would be filled with more rambling because he wanted to avoid the awkward silence. so he’d fill it with more talking and eventually confess something he didn’t mean to.

“and i don’t know. that sond i made was mean i admit that but did you have to do a collab with jake of all people? you know how much i liked his music and it felt like a low blow.” there it is…

“ha! i knew it! you’re jealous, i can’t believe this is what this is actually about. do you even want me back or are you just threatened with the idea that someone else wants me and that i’m no longer yours?” you ask, anger in your voice and heeseung doesn’t know what to say. 

“heeseung, i mean this in the nicest way possible, leave me alone.” you say and although heeseung was expecting something a bit harsher, your tired demeanor and offset to his advances hurt more than your words. 

you walk away before heeseung could say another but you don’t rejoin jake and his friends, choosing to find a spot you could be alone for a few minutes. 

you turn around to hide yourself from jake as he approaches, half embarrassed that he has to see you like this and the other feeling guilty as you’re bringing down the vibe of his own party. 

“you okay, pretty?” jake asks as he pushes open the door to the balcony. the cold air whipping past him as he takes the spot next to you. clearing your throat, “yeah, i’m okay. sorry i don’t wanna be a downer on your birthday.” you say, trying to avoid eye contact but jake softly grabs your chin to make eye contact with you. 

“can i be honest..? i wasn’t really feeling the party either.” jake says with a chuckle and he gets a laugh out of you at the same time, smiling even bigger when he hears your laugh that he finds so pretty. 

“wanna get out of here?” he asks and as much as you wanted to, you felt bad. “jake, this is your party, you should be here.” you say to him and jake just rolls his eyes with a pout. “nah, everyone in there is probably too drunk to even notice.” he reassures you and for a moment you’re just looking at each other. jake’s eyes are fishing for the small glint in your eyes that tells him you want this as much as he does, and indeed you do. 

you take his hand in yours and drag him back inside, past the party, and into the elevator. “where you taking me, huh?” jake says, teasingly and you roll your eyes at him playfully as you drag jake to your car. 

the drive back to your place is filled with laughter and singing random songs with jake. he couldn’t believe this was finally, his crush on you was finally progressing to something more. his eyes widened at the sight of your apartment, a high rise but humble home that screamed your style. cute figures and stuffed animals scattered throughout the home and empty cans of energy drinks on your kitchen counter. 

jake is taken out of his thoughts when you slam the door behind him and you grab him by the collar. “do you think i’m pretty?” you ask even though you already know that answer to it. jake nods, desperation in his eyes as he looks down at your lips. 

“do you wanna kiss me, jakey?” you ask and he nods eagerly, answering faster than the first time. you don’t even get a chance to lean closer to jake before he crashes his lips onto yours. a moment he had been waiting for. 

masterlist - back - next

hoonieyun notes: trouble in paradise for heeseung means smooth sailing for jake! what do we think jake and yn are going to do once they get to yn's place? do a puzzle? coloring book? bake cookies?

also please answer the little poll, the result doesn't affect the story but i'd love to see yalls input

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all writing here is fiction & not in any association with characters mentioned.

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[starrbar]

I've been furiously wondering about this, like I would LOVE to see all the events that took "Vi died during the job in this version" to basically a perfect Zaun where everyone else is happy.

The only idea I've had so far is that like, Vander has been struggling to keep his people satisfied with the painful status quo he's got the Lanes in because of his refusal to ever fight again. Vander was overcorrecting here because he didn't want anyone else to get killed.

Well, he didn't fight Piltover and one of his daughters still got killed.

Maybe that kind of made him realize that this status quo isn't what will keep his people safe in the end, it can't be maintained forever, and it didn't even protect his family. I dunno if he would have gone back out to search for Silco after this or if Silco would have heard about it and maybe finally approached him instead?

I love the idea of Silco being like, "Well, look at that. You sure are doing a good job keeping everyone safe." Kinda twist the knife because he still never received that letter and he's still hurt over the betrayal, so fuck Vander's feelings, right?

But Vander is like... idk, probably awfully conflicted. Angry and upset ofc, but he doesn't get physical cause he can't possibly regret what he did before only to do something like that again (as in that's what he thinks, so no punching or choking allowed, even if deserved in that moment). Maybe he's even kinda defeated about it or wrapped up in the shock of seeing Silco again since he apparently just never came back?

And they have one of those REALLY juicy, harsh fights that does eventually lead to them making up because at least now they're talking about it. Blurting out years of pent up hurt and pain and dead hopes, in an environment where they're on equal terms instead of Vander needing to focus on begging Silco not to destroy everything.

I love this timeline and I wanna see every speck of it??

also if anyone writes this scene out before I maybe possibly start to consider writing it myself, if anyone posts this, DM it to me, I'll read it in a heartbeat and cry about it. x3

🚨Crack theory🚨 but at first I was confused how Vi's death led to an alternate universe where everything is a utopia. Even if Hextech was never invented it doesnt explain how all the class disparity was solved. And then I realized it was probably this:

Vander and Silco are the only ones who really had a plan for a unified and independent Zaun. My theory: after the accident, Vander went into grief over the death of his daughter and stumbled pathetically into the arms of his ex-twink, finally apologized for trying to kill him that one time, they get back together and solve all poverty with the power of old man yaoi. (Also Silco stops making drugs at some point)

[perseidlion]

So I am a certified Catwin shipper. I have written a series that currently sits at 90k words that is casefic but also them getting together. But I am also a multishipper and have written some Payneland stories as well.

So I was understandably quite happy to hear we would've gotten Catwin in S2 because I love the dynamic and I love Lukas Gage and his performance.

But it has made me very sad to see how some people are genuinely upset by this news. I don't think it's justified, frankly. People are doing a lot of filling in the blanks, guessing, and supposition. Just because Catwin would have happened doesn't mean Payneland wouldn't have. Also, we have no idea the context in which all of this would have gone down.

It's important to remember that The Cat King also went on a journey and changed as a person throughout season 1 (as did all the characters.) He is not the same person who slapped the bracelet on Edwin when they first met and not just because he died and was resurrected.

He's matured, settled and grown. It's very possible this arc would have continued. Even if you hated TCK in S1, you may have come to love him in S2, or at least hate him less. Redemption arcs are great fodder for stories and I have no doubt the writers and Lukas would have done that kind of arc justice.

Or maybe Edwin would have had his hot girl summer and TCK was the same old lothario. In which case, he'd definitely be no threat to Payneland endgame. This scenario would make me sad for TCK because he does seem to have genuine feelings for Edwin beyond the sexual, but that was certainly a way they could have gone with it.

My point is, we're missing a lot of context. If you were to take plot points of S1 out of context as well, it would be very hard to envision the final product.

I mean:

Niko gets infested with dandelion sprites that nearly kill her. These sprites manifest with cartoon sparkles around her head and they feed on attention. When they get out of her brain, they're tiny snarky humans she keeps in a terrarium.

Jenny gets set up by Niko with a quiet librarian who turns out to be psycho killer stalker.

People jump off a lighthouse and get swallowed up by a giant angler fish who is siren-ing them to their death. Their ghosts linger, and this annoys the ghost who mans the lighthouse so he hires the boys. Charles yeets the Night Nurse into the fish, and inside she has a talk with an oddly calm and optimistic man. Oh, also the fish is called Angie and she didn't do any of this maliciously.

My point is, this show is camp. That's part of the charm of it. Camp plotlines sound absolutely wild when you distill them to one-liners. When you add in inciting incidents, context and character interactions, these turn from wacky scenarios into full, entertaining stories.

Please don't catastrophize based on crumbs! Whether we get a S2 or not, it's really not worth getting that worked up over. We can't draw conclusions based on what we've been given. It's all guesses, and it could have changed a million times before the episodes were finished.

Also please don't get upset at Catwin shippers for being happy about this. We just wanted to see more of Lukas and George interacting. Most of us are Payneland fans, too and understand that would be the most likely endgame.

[conretewings]

A Good Name 🌟

-Set some months after the trio's conversation that night at the bar, the guys get a visit from their friend..and new companion. My heart is broken and I need some fluffy healing okay I really wanted to write a thing with Vander meeting baby Vi sue me.

A light rapping at the door makes Vander look up and Silco glance over his shoulder. They weren't open, and unexpected knocks usually came with some sort of headache or trouble.

They catch each other's gaze in a silent question of if they should answer, and whom if so. Silco's pen hovers above the ledger in front of him, brow raised a measure, his glass-green eyes sharp and steady. They dart towards the sound before meeting Vander's again, his head tilting slightly. Vander nods and reflexively rolls his shoulders, stepping around the table he was cleaning and takes a couple steps forward when there's a second knock-only this time it comes in a very distinctive, two-three-two pattern and both men are instantly fully alert.

Vander makes it to the door in a few hurried strides, undoing the locks and throwing it open to have two people dart inside. Closing it again he whirls and steps toward them, Silco also approaching now.

"Felicia, Connol!" he huffs, irate and concerned all at once, "We haven't heard from you in over a week! We were starting to think-"

She whips a hand forward and presses a finger to his lips, "Shhhhh...she's dozing-oh, not anymore."

It's then a small, thin cry is heard, the sound suddenly the only one in the room, and certainly not normally heard.

Vander and Silco freeze for a moment before the larger man barely finds his voice, "Is...did you..?"

Felicia rolls her eyes with a smirk, "Sorry guys. Been a little preoccupied."

Pulling aside the loose cloak she wore, she turns to reveal a wide piece of fabric wound around herself, and securely bound in the middle, cradled against her chest, was a tiny, wiggly bundle. Connol smiles broadly, weaving an arm around her shoulders, "Mates, meet our daughter."

As if knowing she was being talked about, the infant's wriggling increases and she turns her head, topped with a fluff of pinkish-red hair and gapes at the adults with brilliant, sky-blue eyes.

There's a beat of silence, save for the newborn's whimpers and soft cries, as if the reverence and significance for this moment was an unspoken agreement. Felicia tenderly brushes her fingers across her cheek and the puff of hair, a soft, peaceful smile on her face.

It's Silco who breaks the quiet with a simple, understated, "Ah...I see." still at a loss how to properly react to the situation.

"Lookit her...so small..." Vander breathes, moving closer, a lopsided grin slowly growing, "Hello there little one...lemme be the first to welcome you here though eh, it'll be a bit before you're a customer yeah?"

Connol rolls his eyes with a snort, yet Silco's face hardens just the slightest degree, "Not that I'm questioning your judgement, however is it not incredibly risky to whisk a newborn all the way here?"

"We know the best routes, and besides, this is about the safest place she could possibly be." answers Felicia.

Connol nods, "Ain't no better spot than the one that means so much to us all. It's practically our home, and we felt there'd be no better for ya to meet her."

Silco clears his throat with an understanding nod in return, a smile playing at his lips as he turns and steps back toward the bar, "Well then. I do believe congratulations are in order. How old is she?"

"Five days now," Felicia answers as she and Connol go to sit at a nearby table, readjusting the sling so she can hold her on her shoulder, "And already giving me sass!"

Vander laughs, a bright, warm laugh that bounces off the walls before he sits with them, "I don't know what you expected, bein' the result of you two!"

"Oy man what's that supposed to mean?" says Connol with feigned indignation and a smirk.

Silco joins the group then, carrying a tray with several glasses-and one deep blue tumbler. He passes a glass to each of the men, then with a little flourish and gallant bow, sets the cup in front of Felicia, who laughs and does a slight bow in return.

"A toast then. Congratulations to the new parents, to your new addition, and many hopes for the future..." says Silco proudly, raising his glass, and the others follow suit.

"Oh! Right!" Vander snaps his fingers, "So, what's her name then?"

Felicia catches his eye, a glimmer both sly and yet softened with pride in her own, "Violet, of course."

Vander freezes, mouth half open in disbelief, feeling his heart leap, having to set his glass down before he dropped it, "...What?"

"You heard me." she grins, Connol adding, "We talked about it, considered others, but we kept coming back around and decided...Violet is a good name."

Swallowing thickly, Vander takes a moment before responding, "I...don't know what to say..."

Silco shakes his head with a smile, patting the larger man's shoulder, "I think he means he's honored."

"Of course I am, just also...wow. I didn't think..." Vander laughs, much more softly, running a hand through his hair, "Violet. Yeah."

Felicia turns so the newborn is facing them, "Say hello to your uncles Vander and Silco, Violet! They look like dorks, and they can be, but I'll tell you something...there's no one who cares about us down here as much, who'll fight harder for us, who will love you more, besides me and your pa, then these two."

The baby stares at them, and Vander is surprised to feel tears pricking the corners of his eyes, "Hello, Violet...what your mum said is true. No matter what happens, we've got ya."

Noticing, Silco breaks into a mocking grin, "Oh dear dear what's this? Is the great Hound of the Underground actually crying?"

"Shut it. It's dusty in here." grumbles Vander, yet unable to hide his own grin. All laugh, then the conversation carries on...

[turtle-paced]

How are we supposed to see both Ramsay’s… well everything (since it’s such an open secret) and the “maiden could walk in her nameday suit and not be touched” quote? Am I the only one who finds it inconsistent? How is it possible that Ned didn’t know?

Here's the quote for context:

The Liddle took out a knife and whittled at a stick. "When there was a Stark in Winterfell, a maiden girl could walk the kingsroad in her name-day gown and still go unmolested, and travelers could find fire, bread, and salt at many an inn and holdfast. But the nights are colder now, and doors are closed. There's squids in the wolfswood, and flayed men ride the kingsroad asking after strangers." Bran II, ASoS

I think that this man's perspective of Ned's rule is coloured by the misrule that he's currently seeing. Ned was good, Bolton occupation is bad. That can be true without his words to Bran being 100%, literally, absolute fact. We sure get enough to see that injustices occurred under Ned's watch. Like in the very first chapter, meant to tell us a few key things about the setting.

As for people not knowing about Ramsay...

"No tales were ever told of me. Do you think I would be sitting here if it were otherwise? Your amusements are your own, I will not chide you on that count, but you must be more discreet. A peaceful land, a quiet people. That has always been my rule. Make it yours." Roose to Ramsay, Reek III, ADWD

In that same chapter, Roose talks about cutting tongues out so nobody goes telling the Starks anything. On those occasions where Roose lacks discretion, he actively hushes things up afterwards. He's a bit more organised than, say, Jorah and his selling people into slavery. The Jorah incident is worth noting, actually - it demonstrates that when Ned did see his bannerpeople breaking the rules, he went and enforced them despite the perpetrator's social class and family name. Ned wanted a situation where a maiden girl could walk the Kingsroad naked and go unmolested, and did his best to get there. That's all the more reason for Roose, who isn't stupid and isn't rash, to conceal the shit he does and the shit his son does.

[littlebitofeverythingsblog]

So in short: bioware really gave us a shit product (the writing team SPECIFICALLY) with dragon age veilguard and gaslit us that it was come to form game. I genuinely hate what we got and I hate it even more knowing what could've been. I can't believe how a company had such guts to absolutely destroy their game this hard with little to no regard of fans. Like these same people gotta make ME4 IM GONNA KILL MYSELF

But to be so honest I'm kind of happy they fumbled because of this. They lied about everything. Game being dark,the illusion of "choice" in the game,romances,having the most dialog in the game even tho we can't even go up to companions and talk to them...and thank God they weren't awarded for this shit. I hope they sink because of their hubris and arrogance.

All they wanted was to get rid of this game so they can move on to ME4 so they did little what they could do. Push their political agenda (sorry gotta pull a Bharv now🤭) and reuse what seemed more like a ME version of DA. It never felt like a DA game. ME is an amazing game but very different to DA. They took completely different approach in every way possible when handing the Veilguard and its BAD it's just hot pile of crap.

(the potential this game had after seeing the art book is crazy) I'm so disappointed,angry and sad. After 10 years...yes they had ups and downs but c'mon...THEY HAD THE ARTWORK RIGHT THERE!!! how could it be possible that they removed ALL THE ACTUAL INTERSTING THINGS?! They're incompetent but hey at least we got "educated" and "preaced to" on what really matters in the world (and the world of Thedas) ! Thanks Bioware. What a shit show.

[loveandlegacy]

i think this is a little unfair as a critique because i generally do not see much value in being like "well i wish this story had just been a completely different thing instead of the story it was" like there are better ways to talk about how a narrative could be improved on its own merits rather than just saying "well do something different". BUT this is my blog where i get to say what i want and so: read the rest at your own risk wherein i talk about what i might have preferred to see with viktor's storyline

i think that if they were going to dispense with the variations of viktor's prior lore - which is totally fine to do tbh! - but they wanted to still stick to him feeling more alienated and indifferent to human needs/suffering but also superior to them and kind of outside of time without fully leaning into the timeloop cyborgism of it all, it would have been wise to make him somewhat more nihilistic on the order of doctor manhattan?

a: if he were outside of time in the way that doctor manhattan is, it would avoid the issue of a time loop (which generally tends to damage to a story in my opinion) and would still permit for some kind of epiphany about love a la what happens with doctor manhattan and laurie juspeczyk. it also would maintain viktor's ability to see into other people's pasts and memories or to walk among them in those past places. this might have even allowed us to get a fuller and more sensitive picture of sky as a person independent of viktor once he was unstuck from time or in quantum time or etc!

b: jon osterman is a physicist and, like viktor, goes through a transformation that basically makes him feel completely distant from humans and as if their fates are fixed in a hopeless cycle, he's obsessive about his research, and he generally behaves as if humanity is somewhat beneath him because of how he experiences time and space

obviously there are some differences. doctor manhattan never aims to build a perfect world of flawless nonsuffering. he decides to abandon humanity altogether, and the person with the questionable morals driven by a raging ego is adrian veidt, but honestly you could just blend the archetypes of the two and get a clearer sense of direction for viktor's story.

like obviously this is just my vibe. i think i like this better because doctor manhattan and adrian veidt, both of whom are deeply selfish and in veidt's case egomaniacal about how to 'fix' the world, are still realized in ways where both characters feels more complicated than how viktor's story played out in arcane. like even leaving off the league lore about him, i think the show either didn't have enough time to fully actualize the struggle in him between wanting to help and being sure he knew better than everyone else about how to help, or it was always just going to be too cartoon-villain simplistic with his army of evil robots. i think the latter is unlikely given that they worked pretty hard to paint silco, jinx, and more or less everyone else in the undercity in many shades of grey but who knows!

like most of what frustrated me by the end about viktor's story wasn't that he was doing cruel things, it was just that those cruel things felt goofy and flat compared to even the cruel things ambessa was doing for most of the season. i cite mandus from a machine for pigs a lot as a different possible comparison to viktor. mandus is another industrialist/inventor who ends up splitting his consciousness and decides the world is full of nothing but cruelty and that he knows better than everyone else and starts mutilating people and feeding them to each other to build a new world order. but even mandus, who traps people into forced-cannibalism, feels that he has more depth to him than viktor did for me by the end of the show. it may be how mandus's story is constructed and that his logic feels sadder than viktor's, or it may just be that again the writers had less time to deal with more storylines but! idk!

all in all i maintain that the machine herald arc was pretty disappointing and honestly kind of goofy/immature along with being like cringily ableist and relying on politically unsound tropes that mostly amount to 'hey watch out for communist zombies', so i'll be out here thinking about what might have made it land better for me

[fromville-divorce-lawyer]

Here's my From season 4 theory:

So we know Tabitha has dreamed about being in Fromville as a girl who was dressed in a cape at the red stones, and Jade saw the guy dressed in old rags and missing an eye at the same stones. I don't know what time period this is, but I saw a person somewhere mention they look dressed from the same period.

Both are also seeing civil war soldiers. (Tabitha not directly. She was Miranda when she saw them.)

So they both seem to have memories from lives in Fromville far into the past.

I think the monsters from the 1950s being the OG ones who sacrificed their children is a misdirect. Jade & Tabitha's visions/memories go back further than that, so the place has been around a lot longer. I think Jade and Tabitha have reincarnating since the beginning of this place, and the people who first sacrificed their kids are older than the monsters. They're actually the things in the forest that are worse than the town.

Now why are Tabitha & Jade reincarnating rather than becoming whatever the other people became?

Well, it's because Tabitha made a promise to the Boy in White to defeat the Man in Yellow by fulfilling a quest.

What quest you ask? Why, the quest to obtain the hottest husband possible.

Wait, wait. Hear me out.

Henry looks like he was a good-looking dude at 35, and Jim is a blue-eyed hottie himself, so Miranda & Tabitha were obviously well on the way. It just was not quite enough.

Then Tabitha gets to Fromville and meets Jade who (based on empirical data collected via Tumblr poll) is becoming exponentially more fuckable each season. By season 4, Jade's fuckability will be reaching critical levels. Fifth season, it'll be unchartable. Tabitha will have achieved her goal of most fuckable husband to ever live.

Then, everyone gets go home. Remember when we get to season 5 that I called it!

Okay. Sorry, I'm kidding about the Jade fuckability part. But for real, I don't think that the 1950s monsters are the original people who made the deal for immortality.

My theory is that it started hundreds of years ago. With help from the Boy in White, (original)Jade and (original)Tabitha were able to reincarnate so that they can try to save their daughter. (The image on the talisman is either Jade & Tabitha with the sun & moon representing rebirth or MIY & BIW with the sun and moon representing opposing forces. I'm leaning toward the second.)

Now, each cycle restarts when both Jade & Tabitha arrive. (Miranda and Christopher were the two cars that arrived in the past, and although Victor talks about it like he remembers it happening but doesn't seem like he was in one of the cars, I think that's a misdirect, because it would have been too obvious if we knew Mirand and Christopher were the last people to arrive in the same day.)

Each cycle gets to make a choice. If they choose to sacrifice their children, they become a new monster in the forest. In the 1950s cycle, they chose to make the sacrifice, forming the town and turning the people into monsters.

During Victor's cycle in the 1970s, neither Miranda nor Christopher remembered their past lives like Tabitha and Jade just did. However, the town was given the same choice. Miranda hid Victor and Eloise from Christopher (she told Victor to hide somewhere Christopher didn't know about), because he was going to choose to sacrifice the children while Miranda wanted to try to set the ones that were already trapped free. Since Victor was hidden, there was no sacrifice, and everyone died instead of becoming a new type of immortal monster.

[fmluder24]

Might Be One Yourself: A Brief and Normal Look at Jewish Fox Mulder

As the only Jewish fan of The X Files that I know, I feel compelled to make some comments about this show’s writing around Judaism. This is all in the spirit of being a fan and criticizing something I enjoy, not an attempt to “cancel” anyone or anything.

One popular headcanon in the X Files fandom is that Fox Mulder is Jewish. I think headcanons are all well and good but many people seem to be under the impression that Fox Mulder is canonically a Jewish character. I think this assumption is telling and I don’t entirely fault people for interpreting the character in that direction given how the writers play with tropes and stereotypes around Jews and Judaism. That being said, I do not think that this interpretation of the character would exist if not for David Duchovny’s personal background as being Jewish on his father’s side. I think the writers want to entertain the possibility of Mulder being Jewish as a way to heighten tensions in certain episodes and along the way they intentionally or not brought in a lot of antisemitic tropes into the narrative. This will be my attempt to aggregate these odd moments of tension and their implications into an analysis of how Fox Mulder being read as a Jewish character shapes how we can think of the X Files as a whole

First of all I think that the X files inherently plays with some antisemitic tropes with the focus on conspiracy theories. On top of that, there’s ways that the X Files references the history of World War Two that trivializes that history. I think on some level the writers were aware of some of that and wanted to use Mulders ambiguous Jewishness to deflect from criticism. Let me summarize the tropes that are used in the show with regards to Mulder and Jewishness.

1. The elephant in the room

Mulder was literally born into the elite globalist cabal headquartered in New York City. It doesn’t get much more stereotypical than that.

2. Rich and a cheapskate

His family is quite wealthy and is shown as having several homes due to all of Bill Mulder’s shady business with the government. Despite this Mulder is implied to be a cheapskate with numerous scenes where he refuses to tip or tips next to nothing to a disgruntled service worker. Both of these tropes play into historical stereotypes around Jews and money.

3. Operation paper clip

Bill mulder is implied to have helped nazis escape justice after World War Two by involving them in US government projects related to the alien conspiracy. This is similar to the current right wing conspiracy theory that certain Jewish families were complicit in Nazi crimes to get ahead for themselves. If you look at how the far right talks about George Soros, you will see what I mean about antisemitic accusations of collusion.

4. Died in the holocaust

Mulder literally recovers his repressed memories from dying in the holocaust in his last life during the events of “The Field Where I Died.” There are not many experiences more pivotally Jewish in the eyes of non Jews than that. I get that Scully also canonically died in the holocaust in her prior life as well but I personally think the weight behind it is quite different when delivered by an actor who wouldn’t be here if his grandparents had missed a boat out of Eastern Europe in the 1920s.

5. In with shady figures

He strikes up a very fast friendship with Mr Saperstein in “Fight Club.” Saperstein greats Scully by saying “Ma Nishtana,” the opening phrases of a Passover song. Jewish people do not use this to greet each other but Chris Carter apparently thinks we do. Mulder is delighted by this and then says goodbye to him in Yiddish with the phrase sholom aleichem (peace be upon you) to which Saperstein replies “yo momma.” I think this is Chris Carter taking a swing at Jewish people, Black people, and Black Jewish people all at once. But for our purposes this is a scene where Mulder is supposedly sharing in some culture knowledge with a person who is implied to be Jewish. Saperstein is stereotypically for both communities out to hustle people rather than deal honestly

6. Dislikes his appearance

The season 4 episode “Sanguinarium” has multiple scenes where Mulder entertains getting a nose job. I would like to think the writers were trying to be aware around gender by making Mulder the vain one instead of Scully, but the decision to portray a nose job specifically must have been an intentional dig. Beauty is political. Being conventionally attractive or not is political. A character played by a Jewish actor, who is written with many stereotypes around Jewish men as we will continue to see, wanting to have a different nose is not in my opinion an innocent writing decision but rather an intentional message about beauty standards and adhering to a white Gentile idea. This is underscored because the final message of the episode is that one should rise above one’s tendencies to be vain, not that Mulder should like the way he looks.

7. Faces antisemitism

The episodes you are almost certainly thinking of when reading the word antisemitism are Kaddish and Drive. In both of these the villains see Mulder and going off appearance alone assume he is Jewish. If this happened in more benign circumstances in addition to or instead of these malevolent ones, it would not have the oddly accusatory weight it has in the world of the show. People only clock him in situations where violence is a factor.

There are two other episodes that are not brought up as examples of antisemitic violence towards Mulder but that I think cannot be separated from the overall context of the show. One of these is Triangle, where Mulder is trapped in the 1940s on a boat with Nazis. The majority of the fans seem to just see this as a fun homage to the Alfred Hitchcock film Rope, but coming off the heels of Drive, one cannot escape the parallels of him being trapped in moving vehicles with violent antisemites two weeks in a row. The escapist time travel fantasy is hampered by the fact that most families like Duchovnys were wiped out by men like the villains in the episode. It takes an ahistorical white American eye to decontextualize Nazis and Jewish people so thoroughly as to make Triangle what it is —- all style, no substance.

The other episode with subtext that people seem to have missed is The Pine Bluff Variant. In it Mulder has to gain the trust of a right wing militia. The one character that seems to see through his act is the shaved head thug who gleefully tortures Mulder in the course of the episode. The fact that the character with the shaved head distrusts him and takes such delight in harming him is intentional, because this character is a skinhead. The political affiliation of the character is made obvious by Mulder referring to him as a Nazi in the torture sequence. While it is never directly stated, the fact that antisemitic characters regularly assume Mulder’s Jewishness on sight , combined with what a shaved head means in the world of the militant far right, gives the strong implication that this is further antisemitism.

Final thoughts

Taken together what are we as fans to do with this? I believe that the writers knew that they were playing with a lot of antisemitic elements with the general conspiracy theories format. They tried to cover for this by having some antisemitic villains come at one of the main characters. In doing so they enforced the trope that Jewish people have a certain look. Furthermore, combined with the stereotypes present in how Mulder is written there is the awkward dynamic of writing a stereotypical character, trying to make it clear they were not endorsing the stereotypes, and then reinforcing the equation of the stereotypes with Jewish people. So we are left with Mulder as a character with many Jewish stereotypes, who is fetishized as a perpetual victim of antisemitism, with no positive aspects of Jewish identity and community portrayed.

However, Duchovny himself headcanons Mulder as Jewish and if it makes any of my fellow fans happy to do the same, they should go right ahead and enjoy. There are many good fics on AO3 that explore the possibility of Mulder’s Jewishness in ways that exceed what the show portrayed.

[buddiebeginz]

Bummy stans truly believe that their ship that has maybe an hour of screen time collectively between 2 seasons has the bigger fandom. Yet if you go on tiktok Buddie edits are getting 20k+ likes. (You can see a post I made about that here. Where a bunch of Buddie TT's made right after 808 were up to 10/20k in a day.)

Journalists are also always eager to talk to Ryan, Oliver, and Tim about Buddie. They ask about it in basically every single interview now. B/T never got that kind of attention ever.

Bummys continue to play the victims making it seem like they've been the ones repeatedly attacked by us. Yet I've been around the 911 fandom for years and never seen the kind of toxicity, harassment, and drama that I have this year. If Buddie fans were always the problem this would be something well known in 911 fandom and likely in fandom spaces in general but it's not. It would also make sense that the show would want to distance themselves from our fandom if all we did was cause issues like harass the show and the actors (like Bummy's allege) but they don't. Most people involved with 911 have shown support for Buddie and us especially in the past two seasons when it's clear they've been working towards Buddie canon happening with ABC.

I'm not saying Buddie fans are totally innocent and never caused any issues because I know some have. But pretty much since 704 aired we've been having to deal with Bummy stans telling us that we were homophobic for not liking their ship. We've watched as the 911 News account was harassed and journalists were threatened with doxxing just for posting positive Buddie content. During Pride month there was repeated harassment towards Buddie fans for wanting to celebrate Eddie for being gay/demi. And lately Bummy's have been hurling a lot of hate towards Oliver because they blame him for their ship ending.

Bummy's talk all this trash about our ship and our fandom but the fact is they wish they had what we have. They wish Oliver talked about their ship like he does Buddie. They wish he posted pics of Lou constantly like he does Ryan. They wish b/t had the amount of screentime Buddie have had. They wish that b/t had the kind of scenes together that Buddie get to have. Almost all of Buck's most meaningful moments in s7 happened with Eddie not Tommy.

They also wish Tommy was Eddie in that they wish he looked like Lou but acted like Eddie. Look at some of the posts they make or their fics, where they talk about how much Tommy gets Buck or is there for him that was never how it was in canon. But you know who is there for Buck and who gets him better than anyone? Eddie.

Bummy's also talk about how important and beloved their ship is but it's not and never will be. Both Oliver and Tim have tried to make it as clear as possible in their interviews that b/t was supposed to be a stepping stone relationship for Buck. Tommy was never ever intended to be Buck's endgame love. That is Eddie. Buddie is the ground breaking ship and it will be something everyone will be talking about when it goes canon. People are literally starting to watch 911 for the first time during the hiatus now that they know Buddie canon is coming.

There is a part of me that feels the tiniest bit of empathy for these people because I know what it feels to lose a character and ship you love. But at the same time it's also hard to feel bad for a fandom that has been repeatedly abusive and continues to be and continues to insist Tommy is coming back even though every single thing is screaming how much that's not happening.

I just really hope that in these few months of break from the show we all have that they'll gain some perspective or at the least go follow Lou in some other project. It's been genuinely exhausting having to deal with this for over half a year now and I miss when we could just enjoy shipping Buddie in peace.

[genderqueerdykes]

genuine question about some identities

why do you think theres so much hate for people who are afab/amab and are also trans women/men, those who are cistrans and multigender people?

ive noticed that when you tell certain queer people you'd think wouldn't be exclusionist that your gender is funky and you're trans bc of it, they begin to use your assigned sex and your biology against you because "you can't be a trans woman if you have a uterus, ur just feminine".

its the same argument as conservatives make it. why is there so much hate?

ppl don't acknowledge my individual genders but instead see how they work alongside each other. ppl don't see me as a trans woman when my gender is woman but will acknowledge me as a trans man because of my sex traits.

these are some very important questions to ask, i appreciate you for sending this ask

i honestly think more people are becoming indoctrinated into transmedicalist and gender critical thinking without realizing it, and it's becoming dangerous. people want to inherently label an afab transfem and/or an amab transmasc as liars, people who are spitting in the faces of others, and shouldn't be a part of our community. other people make assumptions about others' experiences based on their own and don't understand that there is an entire world outside of their perspective, and that world is full of experiences they have no hope of understanding, but can simply accept.

i've gotten a lot of questions about whether afab trans women and amab trans men can exist, it's definitely a hot button issue right now, and i agree with you. if you ask me, afab trans women and amab trans men deserve to have a platform to speak from. if someone genuinely believes their identity is trans no matter what their AGAB is- who the hell am i to stop them? it's important for afab trans women and amab trans men to not speak over their other siblings and try to speak for what it's like to be intersex or an amab trans woman/afab trans man. but that doesn't mean that these people can't exist- they deserve the right to talk about their experience, because it exists alongside the experiences of amab trans women and afab trans men. they're not fighting with each other, they're unique experiences that belong under the same umbrella.

at the end of the day, someone standing there being an afab trans woman, an amab trans man, or a cistrans person is not hurting anyone. the identity itself will hurt no one. ignorance about what other trans people experience is dangerous, and so is speaking over others, but these identities in and of themselves are not harming anyone. it is very possible to go "i don't understand how that works, but if that is how they identify, then i will respect that."

between people becoming indoctrinated into radical feminism and people who are proudly adopting gender critical politics, there is a schism in our communities that don't need to be there. people think they need to "weed out the fakes" in order for us to be accepted by cishet society, which is just not how any of this works. we can't cast aside the queers who are "too weird" or "not really queer" in order to try to make the rest of the community look legitimate

this community has always been here for people whose identities don't line up with the cisheteronormative binary. it doesn't matter what someone's AGAB is- i mean, isn't that the point of the trans community? are we not the "i don't give a shit about your AGAB, i want to know who you really are" community? it's become honestly scary to see how focused the queer community has become on AGAB. people are utterly obsessed with trying to figure out the AGABs of strangers in order to deny them access to queer spaces or kick them out of spaces they rightfully belong in

and it bothers me deeply that people police the identities of multigender people beyond belief. it's like having 1 trans identity is okay but if you dare to have more than one, you're not really queer or whatever. cistrans people, multigender people who are cis, trans wo/men who consider both their manhood and womanhood trans no matter what their AGAB is, transfemmasc/transmascfem people... these identities belong and yet people proudly and gladly wake up every day to do conservatives' jobs for them.

whenever you police another queer person's identity, no matter what your intention is, good, bad or something else- you are doing conservatives' jobs for them. you are not preserving our community. you are not keeping identities sacred or safe or whatever the hell. you're gladly sucking up to our oppressors and spreading their propaganda. it's disturbing how people don't realize this

thank you for taking the time to send this ask, i agree with you 100%. this behavior has gotten out of control and it's time for people to wake the fuck up and realize they've been indoctrinated into transmedicalism, radical feminism, and being gender critical. this isn't the "right" way to behave. it's antithetical to the very foundations of the queer community.

[lovegoodlane]

Pursuing the Prefect - 4

4k words

18+ only

Warnings: none? No sexual content, only angst/arguing

Summary: Fred struggles to patch things up with his prefect after a disagreement (stubborn Fred)

A/N: The next part as requested. No smut this time, didn't quite fit the storyline. Let me know what you think!

Link to part 1, part 2, part 3

----

It was Saturday morning, and you tore through your drawers trying to decide what sweater to wear to Hogsmeade. It was early November, and the cold air was starting to become brutal. 

You settled on a burgundy one, pulling it on over your head and inspecting your reflection in the mirror. You hadn't picked out a pair of pants yet, so you were stood in just your sweater and knickers.

Your eyes wandered down to your thighs where you could still make out the outline of where Fred had left love bites. It made your stomach turn. You hadn't spoken since Thursday night when you disagreed about going on a date during the Hogsmeade trip.

You tried to force it out of your mind, grabbing a pair of jeans and pulling them up your legs. You checked your reflection again, deciding to pull your hair up into a pony tail. 

You heard a knock at your door, answering with "come in!"

Beatrice peeked her head into your room. "Almost ready?" she asked, clearly excited for the day ahead.

You exhaled, studying your reflection once more. "Almost ready," you replied. 

——

It was colder than you had expected. You bundled up with a puffer jacket and put on a pair of earmuffs, knowing that you were going to be frigid walking from shop to shop. 

Beatrice linked her arm with yours. "Where should we go first?" she asked. "I think we should get some chocolate frogs, they're my favorite."

Cho had decided to skip out on the Hosgmeade trip, so it was just you and Beatrice today. You were still struggling to handle Cho's snappiness, so you didn't mind having some one on one time with Beatrice. 

You wandered into a sweets shop, looking at all of the candies they had to offer. Sweets weren't really your thing, but Beatrice's weakness was chocolate. Every time you went to Hogsmeade, she always bought chocolate.

Beatrice had picked out a couple of chocolate frogs and some truffles, making her way towards the register to pay for her treats. You waited for her, peering out the window to see the other students who were exploring the shops. You caught a glimpse of red hair through the window, making your stomach flutter.

You really wanted to talk to Fred, but you had no idea how to approach him. A public relationship made you feel uneasy, but the more you thought about it, the less miserable it sounded. You wanted to be with Fred, and people were going to find out at some point. 

The silence between you two was palpable, and Beatrice picked up on your change in mood yesterday at breakfast. You explained the situation to her, and she sympathized with you, but she brought up some important points.

"But don't you like him?" she had asked you once you were in your dormitory for the evening. "You've been spending more time with him and he clearly makes you happy."

"I just don't want other people to be so nosy about us being together," you explained to her. "Fred is incredibly popular, meaning that everyone will suddenly be looking at me. I don't need that kind of pressure."

"You thrive under pressure," Beatrice argued. "Fred isn't asking you to declare your love from the rooftops. He just wants to be able to hold your hand in public and not have to feel like he's hiding something. He probably feels like you're ashamed of him."

Beatrice's last comment made something click, and it had been floating around in your head ever since she said it. Even now standing in the sweets shop, you felt guilty about the possibility that Fred thought you were ashamed of him. That couldn't be further from the truth.

Yes, you and Fred were admittedly pretty opposite, but that didn't matter to you. You were a prefect with perfect marks and he was a troublemaker that focused on anything but his academics. It seemed like you two couldn't be more different, but somehow the pairing just seemed to work. Opposites really do attract.

Beatrice approached you, her bag of sweets in hand. "Where to next?"

"I want to get a couple of new quills, I need to replace my old ones," you answered, heading for the door. 

A wave of cold smacked you as you exited the shop, causing you to cross your arms in an attempt to preserve your warmth. You and Beatrice walked together down the cobblestone path, heading toward the quill shop.

You entered the shop, a familiar scent and warmth overwhelming you. You visited this shop every time you came to Hogsmeade, as you loved their quills and were willing to spend your allowance on them.

You browsed their selection of quills, deciding on one hawk feather quill and one eagle feather quill. Beatrice hung back by the door, relatively uninterested in quill shopping. She was more interested in sweets and trinkets.

You paid for your quills, giving your quid to the shop owner. He packaged them up for you, giving you a small package to tuck into the tote bag that you had slung over your shoulder. 

"Why don't we grab some butter beers? I could use a break from the cold," Beatrice commented as you headed toward the exit.

You linked arms with her as you two set out for the Three Broomsticks. On your way there, you noticed Fred with his group of friends. He was goofing around with George, Angelina, Lee Jordan, and Alicia Spinnet. 

You locked eyes with Fred for a moment, a blush forming on your cheeks. He looked away first, pretending like you weren't even there. This caused your stomach to sink, as you could tell that he was still upset from your conversation on Thursday evening.

Fred was disappointed. He was hoping that you were less concerned about your reputation, but after shooting down his proposal of a Hogsmeade date, he wasn't so sure. You were willing to sneak around with him, but public acknowledgment of your involvement was somehow a step too far. This didn't sit well with Fred.

He knew that he was being immature by ignoring you, but he didn't know how else to deal with his feelings. It was a complicated situation, and he felt that you wouldn't understand his perspective. You two ran in two completely different circles, meaning that your lives at Hogwarts were nothing alike. This created a certain tension that Fred didn't know how to bridge. 

You and Beatrice walked past the group, entering the Three Broomsticks and finding a booth. You settled in, unzipping your puffer jacket and removing your earmuffs.

"Are you and Fred still not speaking?" Beatrice asked, unzipping her own jacket.

"No," you replied, clearly dismayed. "I think we're both too stubborn to admit our feelings. I know that I let him down, but he needs to acknowledge that my fears about dating are relevant."

"Why do you think he's so upset about you not wanting to be on a date together in public?" she asked, taking off her jacket and setting it in the booth next to her.

"What you said about it seeming like I'm ashamed of him made a lot of sense," you answered. "Fred seems confident on the outside, but that's not always the truth. Him and I have opposite priorities and different reputations. I think he might feel like I'm nervous about tarnishing my reputation by being with him, but that's not true."

Beatrice reached across the table for your hand. "Then what is true, love? I think you need to work that out with him."

"I like him a lot," you admitted, your cheeks flushing. "He brings out a different side of me. I get so focused on my marks sometimes that I forget to let myself have fun. He loves surprising me and being spontaneous, I think he's exactly what I've been missing in my life."

"Wow, that's....a lot," Beatrice replied, letting out a breathy laugh. "You need to tell him that. He probably has no idea that you even feel that way."

You shrugged. "I know. But things feel impossible right now. He clearly doesn't want to talk to me."

"Since when have you been afraid to approach someone?" Beatrice questioned. "You always stand your ground, sometimes I wonder how you didn't get sorted into Gryffindor."

Beatrice gave your hand a reassuring squeeze. You were grateful for moments like these. Beatrice never judged you for anything.

"I'll try to talk to him today, then," you decided. "How about I get us some butter beers?"

——

You and Beatrice had finished your butter beers and decided to simply stroll around Hogsmeade until a shop caught your eye. You walked past a number of couples, trying not to sneer at the way they seemed infatuated with each other.

As you approached a trinket shop, you noticed Fred and his group lingering nearby. The shop was known to sell a number of joke toys and all around bizarre things, so of course the Weasley twins were interested. You watched as Fred demonstrated to his friends the magic of the exploding pen he had just purchased.

You took a breath and looked over to Beatrice. "I'm going to see if he'll talk to me."

She gave you a reassuring pat on the back as you stepped toward the group of Gryffindors. Fred noticed you approaching, and he averted his gaze.

"Oi, hey there prefect!" George greeted, causing Fred to punch him in the shoulder.

The other students in the group snickered, enjoying Fred's embarrassment. Your nails dug into the palm of your hand as you clenched your fists, trying to maintain the courage to speak to Fred.

"Fred, do you have time to chat?" you asked.

"Uhm, not really," he brushed you off. 

It felt like a stab to the heart. He was suddenly so cold toward you. That wasn't the Fred you knew.

"You need to make time," you replied, willing yourself to sound assertive.

The Gryffindors stood there in shock, not believing that you would stand up to Fred like that. Fred huffed at you.

"Fine. I'll be at the Hufflepuff party tonight," he said, finally meeting your eye for a moment.

You tried to keep his gaze, but he looked away. You felt so defeated. 

"Alright, I'll see you then," you answered, offering the group a tense smile and nod before turning back toward Beatrice.

You felt like you couldn't reach her fast enough, your breathing becoming more rapid with each step you took. You were panicking. Everything you thought was true about Fred was unraveling before your very eyes. 

"What happened?" Beatrice asked, noticing the frantic look in your eyes and pulling you to sit on a nearby bench. She wrapped an arm around your shoulder, attempting to comfort you.

"Fred just...he's acting so...I don't understand," was all you managed to get out before frustrated tears began rolling down your cheeks.

"Love, take your time," Beatrice soothed, leaning her head against you.

The Fred you knew was assertive. He wasn't afraid of conflict and he always spoke his mind. Fred was kind and thoughtful, and he had done everything he could to make you feel special. But all of that had changed over the matter of a couple of days. 

"He barely even looked at me," you sputtered out, wiping the tears as fast as they fell. You hated crying. It made you feel weak. Your stubborn streak hated giving in to your feelings.

"I'm trying to make things better, and he's acting like he doesn't have time to work things out," you explained, trying to slow your breathing. 

"I'm sorry. He's being a git, there's no excuse for that behavior," Beatrice said.

"I thought he cared about me. A few days ago he wanted all of Hogwarts to know we were together, and now he doesn't even want to speak to me," you said, exhaling to try to gather yourself.

It was confusing. Fred had never sent you mixed signals like this before. He was always very clear about his intention to woo you and make you his girlfriend, but that didn't feel so clear anymore.

Fred's group of friends walked past the trinket shop heading toward the Three Broomsticks. They didn't seem to noticed you and Beatrice, as the bench you were sat on was tucked around the side of the shop. 

Fred and George were at the back of the pack. You were crossing your fingers that they would keep going toward the Three Broomsticks and not see that you were crying on a bench. But of course, George happened to look over his shoulder and saw you.

He stopped for a moment, crinkling his eyebrows and cocking his head to the side as he tried to evaluate the situation. He noticed your splotchy face, and it was clear that you had been crying. He turned to Fred, pulling him by the back of his coat.

"What?" Fred said, sounding frustrated. George motioned toward where you and Beatrice sat on the bench. You tried to shrink yourself, not wanting to speak to Fred in this moment.

"I think that's your fault," George said, referring to you in your upset state.

Fred nodded, muttering something else to his brother before he began walking toward you and Beatrice.

"What do you want, Weasley?" Beatrice challenged, her voice sounding fierce. She was trying to protect you.

"I just...we need to talk," Fred replied, sounding guilty.

Beatrice looked at you, and you nodded at her to tell her that it was okay. She stood up, giving Fred one last glare before walking off into the trinket shop to give you some space.

Fred sat on the bench, a wide space between the two of you. It felt like you were worlds apart. Just two nights ago, you were in his bed crying out his name. Now you felt like strangers.

Neither of you wanted to start the conversation, but you just wanted to get it over with at this point.

"I'm so confused," you said, sounding small. "You told me that you would never stop pursuing me and now you can't even look at me."

"Birdie...." Fred started, but nothing else came out. He didn't have anything to say.

"I know that I hurt you when I said I wasn't ready for a date at Hogsmeade. I'm sorry for that, but I didn't say no because I'm ashamed of you. I said no because the last time I was dating someone, everyone had an opinion on it. When we broke up, I could hear people whispering about me in the hallways. I don't like that," you explained.

You still weren't looking at each other, choosing to look at the ground instead.

"I don't know how to feel, Fred," you confessed. "You have spent the past couple weeks convincing me that we should be together, and we have one small disagreement and you don't even want to speak to me. That's terrifying, and that's not the kind of person that I thought you were."

Fred laced his fingers together in front of him, considering what to say to you. You were right. The way he was reacting was out of the usual.

"I'm sorry, birdie," he finally said. "I just...when you said no, it felt like proof that you thought you were too good for me."

"But Fred, I have never once said that to you," you said, turning to look at him. "You know that I don't think that. We're different people, but neither of us is better than the other."

Fred sighed. Once again, he knew that you were right.

"I know. I get in my own head sometimes. I guess it's just the way that I feel about myself. I feel like you're better than me, and I've been trying to find ways to prove that you think that too," he said, sounding defeated.

You dared to reach across the bench to hold his hand. He let you.

"Freddie, it's not possible for me to think something like that. I'm sure that people will say that you're too good for me. Every girl at school would be chuffed for the chance to date you. You're cracking at quidditch. You know how to make anyone laugh," you listed out. "There are things that you will always be better than me at. And I am better than you at other things. But that doesn't mean that I want to compare us to each other. It only reminds me of why I admire you and the ways that you inspire me to want to improve myself."

Fred finally looked at you. It seemed like he finally understood. The soft look that you were familiar with had finally returned to his eyes. 

"I'm so sorry that I made you upset," Fred said. "I was being a git. I didn't know how to handle my feelings, so I just tried to ignore you. Clearly that didn't help either of us."

You nodded your head in understanding. It felt nice to be able to talk like this again after over a day of silence and turmoil. 

"Will you let me make it up to you?" he asked, squeezing your hand that was still holding onto his. A hopeful smile played at the corners of his mouth, causing your own smile to spread across your lips.

"Alright," you agreed, leaning your head onto his shoulder. You still probably needed to work a few more things out before all could return to normal, but Fred was making steps in the right direction. You knew that you tended to hold grudges, but you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Free scooted closer to you on the bench, wrapping his arm around you. "Is it too late for that Hogsmeade date?" he asked, a light chuckle punctuating the end of his question. "You and Beatrice can join us at the Three Broomsticks. We're going to get lunch and have butter beers."

"Bea and I already had butter beers," you confessed, leaning into his warmth. "But she always loves chatting up Gryffindors. I'll see if she wants to go."

You stayed like that for another moment, cuddling on the bench before going to find Beatrice inside the trinket shop. 

——

You and Beatrice were going to the Hufflepuff party tonight, and you felt nervous for some reason. Not nearly as nervous as you were when you were getting ready for the Gryffindor party, but being with Fred in a semi-public space was brand new.

Beatrice had once again lent you a t shirt of hers, cropped just enough to hit along the waistband of your low rise jeans. She was perfecting her makeup, stationed at her desk while you stood in front of the full length mirror.

"Are you really doing this again?" she teased, referring to your struggle with getting ready earlier today. "It's just Fred. I'm sure he thinks you look great in anything. Or rather, maybe he'd prefer it if you wore nothing at all."

Beatrice chuckled deviously at you, and you picked up a pillow from her bed and threw it at her. This just made her laugh even harder. You cracked a smile, knowing that there was probably a bit of truth to her statement.

"This is the first thing we're doing together where other people can see," you said, sounding stressed. "I don't want to be the topic of gossip for the next week."

Beatrice turned in her chair to look at you. "I know love, but that's just what it's like to be with someone like Fred. He's always up to something. If you want to be with him, you'll have to get used to it."

You huffed. "You're right. It's just...being with Adrian was so peaceful. No one batted an eye until we broke up."

"You've never been someone who likes when things are easy," Beatrice commented, raising her eyebrows knowingly at you.

You shook your head at her, smirking because she was absolutely correct. You loved a good challenge. This usually meant in your academic life rather than social life, but you would try to embrace the uphill battle nonetheless.

"Let me at least put some lip gloss on you if you're going to be despised by every girl at Hogwarts for the next week," Beatrice joked, getting up to join you at the mirror.

You let her put the gloss on your lips, something sparkly but not over the top. You pressed your lips together, checking your reflection with satisfaction. "I think it's time to party," you declared.

----

You and Beatrice wandered into the Hufflepuff common room, already packed with upper year students. The music was loud, and most people were dancing in the middle of the room. Fred spotted you immediately, joining you and Beatrice near the entrance.

"You look....I have no words," Fred commented, chuckling and shaking his head. It made him flustered when he saw you out of your uniform. Especially when you wore shirts that showed off a little bit of your stomach. 

"Thanks, Freddie," you replied, taking his hand and giving him a grin. 

"Oh yuck," Beatrice joked, sticking her tongue out. "Why don't you make yourself useful and get us some drinks? We're going to hit the dance floor."

Beatrice eyed Fred up and down, waiting for him to depart to get drinks. He looked at her for a second, seemingly unsure if she was serious. She gestured toward the makeshift bar, prodding at him to fetch the drinks. He obliged, turning on his heel toward the bar.

Beatrice looped her arm through yours, dragging you to the dance floor. "I know you've got some moves, little miss prefect," she joked. "Let's see those hips move."

You scoffed at her words, scandalized by the idea of dancing in such a way. You always just did a simple sway from side to side, dancing wasn't your personal specialty. 

You tried to stay on the beat, hesitantly moving your hips from side to side. "Alright! Get it, girl!" Beatrice encouraged, giggling with you as both of you danced.

You felt a hand on your waist, and you instinctually leaned back to meet the person behind you. "I missed you, Freddie," you joked as you danced up against him.

"Freddie?" the voice asked. It was not Fred's voice.

You turned around to find Adrian behind you instead of Fred. You felt your face heat up instantly, embarrassed at your actions. You had assumed that it was Fred coming back with your drink.

"Adrian--" you started, unsure of what to say.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," he said, his voice raising in volume. The other students at the party began to stare at you, only making the situation feel worse.

"You've been shagging Fred Weasley?" he asked, almost yelling at you. Everyone definitely heard it, with conversations coming to a halt to watch the confrontation.

It felt like your voice was stuck in your throat. This was a scene from your nightmares. All eyes were on you, and your private life was being exposed for all to see.

You saw Fred over Adrian's shoulder, still hovering near the bar where he had a drink in each hand for you and Beatrice. He met your eyes for a moment then looked away, assuming that you were going to deny Adrian's allegations.

You cleared your throat, trying to gain some semblance of composure. "So what if I am?" you replied, squaring your shoulders.

"You've lost your bloody mind," Adrian said, shaking his head and laughing.

"Might I remind you that I have something called free will?" you shot back. "You don't own me. Now fuck off and mind your bloody business."

You crossed your arms, a fire burning in your eyes as you stared Adrian down. He huffed, seemingly unable to find a snappy reply. He pushed past you, exiting the circle that had formed around the two of you.

Everyone was still staring, and instead of staying in the middle of the crowd, you headed toward Fred.

"Fred, I'm so sor--" you started before he cut you off by slamming his lips into yours.

Fred pulled you into the kiss, one hand cradling your head and the other wrapping around your waist. You hesitated for a moment before returning his kiss, trying to ignore the attention that was on you. 

For some unknown reason, the other students began to cheer. You pulled out of the kiss, absolutely confused by the commotion. Then you realized that they were cheering for you and Fred.

You had just stood up to Adrian, which is something that almost no one would fathom doing. And you were snogging Fred Weasley, everyone's favorite prankster. It was a combination that inspired awe in your fellow students.

"Want to get out of here?" Fred asked, leaning close to your ear so you could hear him.

"Please," you said, holding his hand. He led you through the crowd and out the door, heading straight for his dormitory.

[webanglikethat]

things ram and devi have done and said without even saying they’re in love / being in a relationship because they drive me insane:

Ram defied orders from the LITERAL goddess because he didn’t want Devi to die, thus ignoring his duties

-> like …. he willingly let another woman DIE in Devi’s place and !!!! this act had been committed five years ago, when the affection between the two had BARELY begun blossoming

-> “Why bother when the goddess herself allows you to decide people’s fate?” had been Devi’s question to him, but little did she know, he already defied every rule for her, going against literal fate

he saved Devi during the arson, putting her before his own BROTHER

he went after Devi when she took off on an horse during the attack, and carried her in his arms back to safety (which he realllyy didn’t have to do 🤭)

it’s revealed he would purposefully change his route to catch a glimpse of Devi

-> Ram’s wishful desire was to see her at every service; just hoping to catch her smile along the hallowed halls where once they met

he “noticed an unfamiliar feeling rising inside him” when he met her again

Ram always found an excuse to touch Deviya — holding her hand to lead her somewhere, brushing his fingers over her cheek to calm her, cupping her face, putting a hand on her waist, trapping her against the wall, his finger on her lips, holding her hands tighter as if it could heal her holding her waist as she straddled him

he said he “missed her smiling at him”

he kissed her neck (quite literally marking her) while thinking of how De Clare would react, not realizing the jealousy that was growing in his heart at the thought of losing her to him

-> which he then said (in season 2) he’d do it on her wedding day too !!

-> in the same episode he tried to pretend he doesn’t care about their engagement 💀, mission failed my dude 🤭

“That. The way he felt when she was near him. The reason he always looked for her in the crowd and couldn’t stop teasing her”

ram always thought of marriage as a transaction, a duty to be fulfilled, something he simply had to do. and love? love wasn’t a necessary equation. that’s what his family line looked like — alliances, partnership, all devoid of tenderness. but Deviya awakened something in Ram — and for the first time, he was confused and lost

“It’s ironic that even with all the knowledge and wisdom of the world at my disposal, I still can’t figure this out on my own. I’m almost thirty, and for all of my life I have denied myself what I wanted because the greater good was more important. And in all this time… no one has ever been able to enchant me as much as…”

Ram talked Devi through her anger at the reception so she wouldn’t make a mistake in front of her guests and lose the position she had so long worked for (he helps her see the bigger picture)

Ram told her their connection wasn’t for nothing. they were fated for a reason

the less often he saw her, the more he wanted to see her

-> and if she didn’t came, he would wait for her

he noticed everything she did — be it the way she shifted from foot to foot when she was nervous or how she looked at him in fear (from the subtlest of things to the most obvious, he noticed it always)

he teased her about how much she liked him but then said:

“such a rakhasi cannot possibly die. I need her”

admitting, even if it was meant as a tease, that he could no longer exist in a world in which her presence didn’t fill his heart’s pages

he comforted her on the day of her death, quickly realizing that:

“/ wish this had happened to me instead... hasn't she been dealt enough pain already, in her life?”

“when Ram realized how sincere his desire to take all Deviya's troubles for himself was, it quickly became clear that their secret relationship had taken on a new meaning … growing into something profound”.

what started as a perhaps meaningless, fleeting, teasing affair quickly turned into something more — something he couldn’t put a name to, but he could feel encompassing his body every single second

he could no longer pretend it was just for fun or a distraction

so he finally mustered up the courage to ask Devi to be with him (but not officially 😔) even if it was in secret — for he would rather have her in secret, than lose her be it to death or another man. 

noticing how distressed she was, he closed his eyes and then slowly began kissing her fingers. Devi noticed that his eyelashes were trembling. “he’s nervous as well, but once again he tries to reassure me first, even though he could use some support himself."

he always put her before himself, over and over again. this isn’t something he was taught, like I mentioned before. for him, marriage or love was based on children, mutual respect and the husband’s views. yet he interminably put himself in the background, just to help Devi shine

“they kissed each other gently and yet desperately at the same time, as only doomed lovers can kiss.”

“he was with her right at that moment. sharing her pain and fear... would that have been possible if what they had was fleeting? he always chose her, no matter what.”

Ram: “I'll be with you. no matter what.” Devi: “I know”

he fought for her, allowing her to escape

and her thoughts led to him, even as she bled out

“the very thought of losing him was unbearable. and just as things were beginning to blossom between them.” “dying would be a little easier if you were holding my hand right now”

"I'm with him in my thoughts, heart, and soul." // "even if it doesn't make any real sense, it does for me. l feel calmer this way."

being away from her, when she was in a coma, made Ram feel like he was dying too // the thought of losing him (as she actively died) felt even worse than death

-> his biggest dream was being able to touch her again, to gaze into her eyes, to see his affection being mirrored in hers. to hear her laughter again was all he could hope for

they risked MULTIPLE times to be caught just to bask in each other’s presence — even if it was only for a few moments because the risk was worth it — they are worth it to each other

his face “instantly lost colour” when she mentioned her wedding

he tried pretending it didn’t hurt him — that he could accept it, that he could have a part of her and let it be enough, but they both knew the truth

so she laid out her future: her married to De Clare, visiting India from time to time, meeting Ram’s wife — but not him because he would still remain a coward who couldn’t voice what he wanted

so he finally let his feelings free and kissed her, marking her neck (in the middle of the hall where everyone could’ve caught them)

he touched her under the table — at dinner, where again, anyone could’ve seen them !!!

the moment Devi’s smile faded, Ram noticed immediately and shifted his tone, asking softly, “is something wrong?” -> he is SO attuned to her emotions, so skilled at noticing even the slightest change — which is especially important since Ram isn’t portrayed as someone who does this for just anyone

they know each other well enough to play off each other’s words without malice — their banter is so much fun (especially on passion route)

he fingers her in the library 🤭 he’s SO careful with her even though it’s obvious they’re both overwhelmed by the connection — he’s letting her set the pace and the fact that Ram doesn't push, but instead allows her to slowly move at her own pace, amplifies her vulnerability and makes her every move feel more significant. she’s still confused on what she wants and he lets her explore it on her own, and she knows he will wait for her

he wanted to dance with her despite not knowing how to — and in front of everyone too !! he was ready to embarrass himself for her

-> he is so caught up in her that he’s willing to push past his own comfort zone, even if it means embarrassing himself a little; as long as he can witness her smile

now she is the one who takes the power and kisses him, marking HIS neck — and so they imagine each other naked, finally taking the next step and ….

he finally admits it to himself.

He wanted to finally understand what it meant to connect with the woman he loved with all his heart.

Ram Doobay is in love with Deviya Sharma.

[deiastormborn]

Arcane Season 2 Finale theory. (Jinx, Cait and Vi)

Heya. Since I was somehow on a roll with my theories about the show previously, and I somehow hit the nail on 90% of the things I predicted, here is a new theory of mine.

Jinx is not dead. Yes, of course, that makes sense considering League of Legends exists, and everything that happened in Arcane happened before the game. Arcane was made canon, and a lot of current lore is being rewritten to match the show, so to people that play the game it's no surprise that Jinx is most likely alive. But how?

Here is what I think:

After Jinx said 'I didn't know your mom was in there', Cait realized that Jinx did in fact change. Or, at the very least, could relate to her pain and mistakes. If you think about it, Jinx's actions were mostly fueled with grief, and the rocket that was shot at the council building happened right after Silco died, who was like a father to Jinx. Caitlyn lost her mother, and became angrier, irrational, fueled with revenge. I think Jinx saying that to Caitlyn made her relate, and maybe understand what is hidden below all the madness that Jinx has in her.

I think Caitlyn and Jinx had a dialogue behind the scenes, that was not shown to us. Knowing Caitlyn's character and somewhat a soft heart, I think Caitlyn sat down and told Jinx that she can't be truely free due to the volume of the crimes that she has done. My idea is that Caitlyn tossed the idea to Jinx about escaping, fleeing, and faking her death. Didn't Caitlyn tell Vi that she became too predictable? Doesn't it mean that Caitlyn knew that Vi will try to free Jinx? Didn't Caitlyn say something about this place being thoroughly guarded too? Yet Jinx managed to escape anyhow?

I genuinely don't think it was done without Caitlyn's interference.

Maybe, after the talk that Caitlyn had with Jinx behind the scenes, Jinx asked Caitlyn to keep Vi oblivious to everything that is happening. Hence why Jinx said that Vi deserves to be with Caitlyn - that could not have gone out of nowhere. Caitlyn and Jinx didn't interact enough in the show for Jinx to say that. And Vi never really spoke to Jinx about Caitlyn for her to make this conclusion.

Now, possibly, Jinx took the whole 'fake the death' quite literal, since we see her go quite suicidal after that. It is possible that she thought that it is pointless, and genuinely didn't want to try and run anymore, hence why she attempted to blow herself up. Luckily, Ekko came in, and the rest we know.

However, it doesn't sit right with me. Not just because Jinx is very much alive in game, but also the fact that we were shown Caitlyn looking at the tower where Jinx fell, while holding the Jinx's monkey bomb in her hand. She also let go of a slight smile when she zoomed in on all the exits and rooms in the tower. Something tells me Jinx knew how to escape, and something tells me Caitlyn was the one who told her. Something also tells me that the balloon we saw at the very last scene of the whole show might have had Jinx in it.

The show is notorious for showing scenes that always mean and imply something. I previously had a theory where I drew a parallel between Vander, Silco and Felicia, with Caitlyn, Vi and Jinx, where Felicia was bringing Vander and Silco closer to each other, and her death ended up splitting them both. I truly think Caitlyn was meant to be the same mediator for Jinx and Vi as Felicia was for Vander and Silco. And maybe that was it. Maybe that's what happened.

Knowing Caitlyn, she is more than capable of forgiveness, and seeing good in people. I think it would be in her character to help Jinx escape, even if it is at a cost of lying to someone she loves.

And, since we see Jinx tell Vi to let go, I think it would be in her character to ask Caitlyn to keep Vi in the shadows.