#I’m bad at analysis I can’t write down shit for my life

[periciles]

Codependent is Clay and Bloberta while (Girl We Got a) Good Thing is Orel and Christina

[this-do-be-therapeutic]

Like Me Again

Eddie Munson x FReader

Summary: Everything is going swimmingly with Eddie. I could not be happier. But one day, everything just takes a turn for the worse. Angst, hurt/comfort

Word Count: 3,883

A/N: Heyyyyyy. I'm going through some good ol' life shit, abandonment issues for the win, am I right? So I'm sorry if this is a mess and not well done, I was literally sobbing while writing this. Also, the reader has a good relationship with her father, I'm sorry if that seems unrealistic. I just like my dad and refuse to write anything about a bad dad.

This is the longest thing I've ever written. I'm not very proud of it, but I hope you enjoy. <3

Eddie and I have been dating for just a little over 3 months now and everything is going great. We have movie nights every single week on Friday at his house. We have a going out date every other week on Wednesday. We even have some spontaneous dates every now and then. I stay out of his Hellfire stuff because I simply don’t understand D&D. And we’re obviously together every day during lunch. Which is where we’re at now, lunch on Friday. 

I land in the seat next to him with a bit of a huff, exhausted from my last period. I place my chin on his shoulder, excited to see him. “Hi Eddie Bear.”  

He gives me a small smile and pats my head before wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “Hey sweetheart. Boring class?” 

“Ugh, yes. We were working on rhetorical analysis. I don’t understand it at all.” He chuckles a little and gives me a little kiss on the lips. He then feeds me the food that I brought with me, understanding that I simply could not be bothered.  

“Are you excited for movie night tonight?” He asks me. 

“You know I am. What are we watching tonight?” 

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.” 

“Noooooo, you know how I am with horror movies!” 

Eddie gives me a big toothy grin. “That’s exactly why we watch them. It’s fun when you have to hide in me. And then you have to stay the night because you’re too scared to go home.” 

I give him the biggest pout I could muster. “You just like it when I suffer.” 

He laughs out loud, “You know I do!” 

That night I head over to his house already wearing my comfy pajamas and my fluffiest blanket- it’s Eddie’s favorite to cuddle under. Before I can even knock on the door, Eddie is opening it, having heard my car. 

I just have to stare at his glorious countenance, thinking about how lucky I got to be with such a handsome and cute man, his big brown eyes always carrying such love and kindness for me. His smiles that never seem to not light up a room. And it’s all mine. 

After staring at him for just a little longer, I realize he’s trying to get my attention and give him a smile. “Are you okay? You’ve been staring at me in silence for 30 seconds.” 

“Yeah. I’m wonderful. Just thinking about how much I love you and ow lucky I am.” 

Eddie practically melts at that, looking down with a huge smile trying to hide his blush. “You’re just trying to butter me up so we don’t have to watch the scary movie, aren’t you Princess?” 

I bite my lip with a little shake of my head. “Maybe.” 

He grabs my arm and pulls me close, holding me against his body. “It’s not going to work. I’ve learned of your temptress ways.” We both laugh a little as he wraps his arm around me, shutting the door at the same time. Eddie places a quick kiss on the top of my head before muttering, “I love you, too.” That’s always been my favorite thing to hear from him. 

We head over to the couch and set up everything we’ll need for our movie session, popcorn, skittles, m&ms, all the good stuff.  

After the movie is over, I’m clinging to Eddie with my entire being, my arms wrapped around one of his and my legs wrapped tight around his hips. He plays with the ends of my hair as he laughs at me. “Come on baby girl, it wasn’t that bad.” 

I turn my head to look at him with a small glare and pout, which just makes him laugh harder at my predicament. “Yes it was. It was awful. I can’t believe you made me watch that. 

Eddie simply shakes his head and picks me up- I refuse to place my feet on the floor when I’m scared. The monsters might be under ALL of the furniture- and takes me to his bed to sleep. He wraps his arms around me just as tight as my legs are around him, kissing the top of my head before whispering a sweet and gentle goodnight.  

In the morning, he sends me off with a full belly of eggs, toast, and apple juice, along with a kiss and a request that I call him when I get home so he knows I’m safe. Which I do, of course. It ends up being a 3 hour phone call before my mom gets mad and makes me get off so she can talk to one of her friends about a lunch they’re having. 

Monday morning, Eddie comes to pick me up for school. He comes and knocks on my door, doesn’t give me a kiss on the head for some reason, opens the van door for me and drives us to school. 

“Hey Eddie Bear. How’d you sleep?” 

“Good.” He lets out a sigh having to answer that simple question. He would usually tell me about how he would have slept much better if I were with him, or tell me about a crazy dream that he had. But he probably just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, we all have those days. 

“Did you have any fun dreams?” 

“No.”  

The rest of the car ride is spent in an uncomfortable silence. 

When we get to school, he comes and opens my door for me and offers his hand to help me out. I take it and go to hold it after I’m down, but he just pulls his hand away from me. He doesn’t talk to me for the rest of the morning, just brushing off every comment I make in attempt for conversation. 

When lunch comes around, I come and sit in my chair, trying to be more cheerful than usual for his sake, and rest my head on his shoulder, but he moves to get me off. “Hey Eddie Bear.” 

“Hey.” 

“How was class?” 

“Same as usual.”  

I nod and look at him. “Can you look at me for a second?” He does. His lips are set in a stiff line and his eyes still hold the same loving look in them, but with a feeling that I don’t quite understand. “Are you okay?” 

He nods and goes back to staring at the table, not even touching his lunch. I can tell something’s wrong, but I trust he’ll tell me when he’s ready. We agreed to never hide something that is bugging us from the other, deciding that communication is one of the biggest and most important parts of our relationship. 

After school, I get the same treatment as I did this morning. He walks me to my door and is about to walk away when I grab his hand. “Eddie, do you want to come in? Talk?” He shakes his head and continues to stare at the ground. “Okay, I love you. I hope tomorrow is better.” He simply nods before leaving me. I watch him get in his van and drive away before I head inside.  

When I get to my bed is when my brain starts working in overdrive, thinking about every piece of our interaction today and on Friday. Everything seemed normal and perfect on Friday. What did I do wrong? 

Am I too annoying? 

Am I too clingy? 

Is he tired of me?  

Is he cheating on me and that’s why he looked so off and maybe guilty during lunch? 

I can feel the tears want to start running, but I hold them back. No, I know he loves me. He would never do anything to hurt me. He tells me all the time that I am the light of his life. But what the hell is going on? 

This continues on Tuesday. But when I come to lunch today, Eddie’s interacting happily with the boys and I feel the pain in my chest lighten slightly. He’s finally in a better mood. It was just a fluke. 

However, when I sit down and try to hold his hand, he goes quiet and quickly moves his hand out of the way. I close my fist and shake it a little before pulling it back into my own lap. 

“Hey guys, hey Eddie Bear. What were you talking about?” I look to Eddie to answer my question, but it’s Gareth who speaks up. 

“We were just talking about how epic the last campaign was and how excited we are for the one tonight,” He speaks animatedly, something that Eddie does, did, a lot, too. 

That makes me smile, happy that Eddie is still doing something he’s passionate about while he’s going through such a hard time. “That’s awesome! Do you think I could maybe come and watch tonight? I’ve been kind of curious how your campaigns go.” 

Eddie is quickly shaking his head. “No, you wouldn’t understand anything that’s going on.” 

“Oh, um, okay. Sorry.” Did he just call me dumb? I mean, I might not understand what’s going on, but there’s always the possibility that I might. My heart sinks a little. Eddie has never said anything to me that could be rude. Ever. 

I space out for the rest of the lunch period, thinking about what Eddie just said, and how he’s been acting. Maybe he thinks I’m just too dumb to be his girlfriend. I have pretty average grades, but I don’t have much street smarts, I guess.  

Maybe I just need to learn about it on my own, then I can impress him and maybe try to either make my own character or even my own campaign! I can even ask my dad- who started playing a couple years ago with a few of his buddies- for help!  

I smile a little before the bell rings, blow Eddie a quick kiss and head off to my next period with a pep in my step. 

When Eddie drives me home, I go in and raid my dad’s stack of D&D books in the corner of our dining room, reading through everything and taking notes.  

The next day when Eddie cancels our Wednesday date to do who knows what, I’m not as disappointed as I imagined I would be, just excited to get back to learning about the things that my boyfriend is passionate about.  

The treatment continues all through to Friday. When I sit down for lunch, I turn my entire body to face Eddie. 

“Hey Eddie Bear, so I’ve been thinking about our movie date tonight. I kind of want to just talk to you instead of watch the movie. I’ve been working on something I think you’ll absolutely love.” 

He won’t even make eye contact with me as he says, “Um, sure. I guess we can do that.” As the days have been going on, Eddie has been looking less and less frustrated. At least with everyone else. It hurts, but I’m going to make everything better tonight, I just know it. 

So when I show up that night with my pajamas- and both a character sheet and a fun campaign that my dad helped with- in my backpack instead of wearing them, I’m literally dancing around as I wait for Eddie to open the door after I knock.  

When he does, I launch myself into his arms, hugging him as tight as I can, and he just holds his arms up in the air, as if hugging me back might hurt him. So I let him go and go sit on his couch. “Hey Eddie Bear! Are you ready to have your socks absolutely blown off?” 

He scratches at the back of his head and looks down at his feet, mumbling a little, “I’m not wearing socks,” which is the closest to a real conversation I’ve had with all week, so I giggle for a good five seconds before I get a hold of myself. 

“Okay, well I’m about to blow your mind. At least I hope so.” I pull out all the papers that I had carefully placed in a little folder to present them to him. 

“What is this?” He takes it and flips through the first few pages not really looking at them.  

“Well,” I start, drawing out the l, “I know I haven’t exactly been the best girlfriend and haven’t been showing an interest in your favorite game, so I did a bunch of research and made my own character! I even had my dad help me write a campaign!” He plops down on the recliner next to the couch as he starts actually reading through it.  

When he finishes, he clears his throat and says, “This is sweet and I appreciate the thought, but I still don’t think you would understand anything that happens in the game.”  

I deflate only a little. “But that’s the great part, my dad agreed to help me learn everything about it! He and his friends are starting a new campaign soon and they’re going to make it a little easier for me to learn, so I can finally come play with you!” 

He runs his hand over his face in exasperation with a small groan. “But I don’t want you to come play with us, alright? You happy? Is that what you wanted to hear?” 

Now that’s what deflates me completely. My face falls and I feel my tears threatening to come back, but I refuse to cry over something like this. OF course, he wouldn’t want me to come play with them. This is something he does with his friends, we spend enough time together. “Oh, um, I’m sorry for overstepping. I understand why you wouldn’t want me to play with you guys.” Eddie just looks at me in silence, not giving away anything he’s thinking about through his expression. 

“Do you,” I start, my voice cracking so I clear my throat, “do you think we could maybe watch a movie now?” 

“You said you didn’t want to watch one, so I didn’t rent one.” He is continuing to be very short with me. 

“Oh, can I still spend the night though?” 

“I think it would be best if you left, honestly.” 

I officially feel a tear slide down my cheek as I nod and stand up. “Okay, I love you. I’m sorry I upset you.” I pick up my stupid papers and shove them in my backpack before leaving. I take a glance back at him before I leave. He’s sitting with a hand over his mouth, his leg bouncing as he stares at the wall away from me.  

When I get home, I immediately run to my room, sobbing silently into my pillow, hoping nobody else in the house can hear me.  

As I lie there, I think about other ways that I could try to be a better girlfriend, what else I can do to make him like me again.  

I spend the rest of the weekend trying to hide my hurt feelings from my family and not looking forward to Monday.  

On Sunday night, Eddie calls. He tells me he can’t give me a ride to school tomorrow. Which is fine, I can’t bear to continue to be a disappointment to him. 

I don’t sit with the group during lunch. I go to the library, still trying to figure out what I can do to appeal to my boyfriend once more.  

When I first walk in, I take a look at the bulletin board, and suddenly a lightbulb goes off. Sitting in the middle of the board is a flyer to Corroded Coffin’s performance at the Hideout every Saturday night. Of course! Eddie and I don’t share much of an interest in music, but I can learn to love it! I can feel my spirit start to return. 

As soon as school lets out, I run to the music store. I go through the cassettes and do my best to remember the bands that Eddie loves, and buy every one that I can find.  

I continue to not sit with the boys at lunch, instead I sit in the library listening to as much metal music as I can. I do the same when I’m at home and even in my car. And on Friday, after Eddie finds me to tell me that he can’t watch a movie with me tonight, I go shopping for a more metal outfit that I can wear to his show tomorrow. I end up with a black tank and a black ripped skinny jeans, finding some chains that match Eddie’s, loving the fact that I’ll get to match my sexy boyfriend. 

When I show up to the Hideout, Corroded Coffin is already set up and on stage, about ready to start their performance. I look around and find some other metalheads, a few of them girls, and a few drunk dudes strewn about the joint.  

Eddie starts playing a song I don’t recognize, and he looks completely in his element. I imagine it’s similar to how he looks when he is playing D&D, and it just makes me fall deeper in love with him.  

When he starts singing, I can’t help but cheer along with all the other metals, remembering all those nights that Eddie would sing my favorite songs to me after we would watch a horror movie to help calm me down.  

When the song ends he takes a hold of the microphone to speak, “This next one goes out to my favorite fan,” he must have seen me! I’m so glad I put in the extra effort to be here. “Bethany.” Then a slower song starts, and I immediately recognize it as a song that he always sang to me.  

I look at the other girls and can tell which one is Bethany. All the other ones are looking at her and giving her knowing looks.  

When I look up, I see Eddie looking right at her, playing and singing for her. So I leave.  

When I make it to my car, I slam my forehead into the steering wheel with a scream before I start sobbing into the silence. I rip off the ugly chain that was supposed to match him, not caring that it ripped the belt loops on my pants. Rub at the makeup I put on to match the other girls and come to a decision. 

I have to end things with Edie. 

He made it pretty obvious that things were over between us, he just didn’t have the balls to do the messy breakup thing. So I’ll do it for him. On Monday. 

On Monday, I get to school before Eddie does, and I leave a note in his locker asking to meet up at the spot in the woods after school. If he thinks it’s for a drug deal, he won’t back out. He needs all the money he can get to take Bethany out on nice dates like he did me. 

After school, I let him get to the spot first, that way he won’t have a chance to see me and run.  

When I get there, I call out to him. He turns and his eyes widen as he stiffens. My heart tightens as I look at him, still absolutely in love with him. 

“Edward.” He winces. I never use his legal name. 

“Y/N. What’s going on?” 

“Nothing. Just decided I could show some mercy on you and do this for you. We’re over. I can’t do this anymore.” 

His brows furrow. “Do this for me? Sweetheart, do you think I want to break up with you?” 

“You’ve made it pretty damn obvious. Especially on Saturday night when you dedicated a song to another girl.”  

“You came to my show?” 

“Yes, Eddie! I came to your show! Like I should have the whole time, because that’s what a good girlfriend would do! I’m sorry I’m such a shitty girlfriend and I didn’t support you as much as I should have.” My emotions are starting to pour over once again as I feel my throat tighten and hear my voice break. “I’m so sorry I drove you away. I didn’t mean to. I just wish you could have told me before you decided I wasn’t worth it anymore. I would do anything to make you happy.” At this point the tears flowing hot and free. I can’t even see Eddie from how my eyes are watering. 

I’m shocked when he pulls me into him, burying his face in my hair. “Baby girl, you are not a bad girlfriend. Shit,” I hear his voice break now too. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like that, I’m so sorry. I don’t want to break up. I just got so scared.” 

“W-Why would you get scared?” 

“After you told me that you were thinking about how lucky you are, it got me thinking. About how you could do so much better. And I thought that if you looked at me long enough you’d realize that and just leave me. So I shut down and shut you out. I’m so sorry.” He starts rocking us back and forth. 

“B-But I love you so much,” a whole new wave of tears starts pouring down my face as I think about how much I really do. “You’re the best boyfriend I could ever have. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I thought you were getting tired of me because I wasn’t interested in all the stuff you are.” 

“Is that why you learned about D&D? Because you wanted me to like you?” I nod. “And why you came to my show on Saturday?” 

“Mhm. Even bought a whole new outfit to match you and everything.” 

“Oh baby girl, I’m so sorry you felt like that.” He kisses the top of my head again. “I promise I love you. I could never get tired of you.” 

“So,” I sniffle, “who’s Bethany and why did you sing that song to her? I thought that was only for me.” 

“Bethany is our biggest supporter. She gave us large donations after our first performance so we could get new instruments. And she specifically requested that song. Some of our audience likes more boring music like you.” 

“Hey!” I pull out of his embrace to smack his arm. “Not cool man.” He laughs and cups both my cheeks to give me a gentle kiss, the first one in so long.  

When we pull away, we both have huge smiles, and when I look in his eyes, I can see the love he has for me back in his eyes. “So is she still your favorite fan?” 

“Not if you’re a fan, Princess.” He messes up my hair but I don’t care. 

“Of course I’m a fan. My boyfriend is rocking on a super cool guitar and singing sexy metal music. Which I listened a bunch to and actually really enjoyed. 

He lights up even more at that. “Really?” I nod. “That’s awesome! But now I kind of want to see the outfit you bought just for me.”  

I grab his hand and drag him back to our cars, “Right this way, Eddie Bear.” 

[wolfnanaki]

2023 Retrospective

It’s hard to describe what happened this year. So much of it doesn’t seem real, and if it weren’t for me living through it and writing it down, I’d have assumed I dreamed it. Sometimes, you don’t realize the full scope of “life comes at you fast” until you’re living through it. And I don’t want to discuss major world events because fuck, there’s no way I could say anything meaningful about them.

If I were to give the short version, I’d call this a “silver lining” year for me. Lots of bad things happened, but good things came out of some of them, or at the very least, I had reason to keep going. I lost my job, my dog died, I got doxed, just to name a few. But I’ve also been using the time off work to improve my physical and mental health. I’ve made several new friends, some surprising friendships that I didn’t see coming. I’ve been privately chugging away at some writing projects that I can’t wait to show you all soon, once it’s time.

And if you were to tell me three years ago after the PS5 reveal stream that my entire online presence in 2023 would be swallowed up by Goodbye Volcano High, I’d find that hard to believe. But that’s kinda what happened. It’s a beautiful game that stole my heart and gave me new inspiration for stories and analysis. To all of the KO_OP staff, I'm so glad you didn't buckle against all the adversity you faced and gave us this heartfelt, unique, memorable game. I wish you all nothing but further success and accolades on your future projects, I can't wait to see what you've got coming up.

I want this new year to be one of positive change and growth. I’ve been applying to so many jobs and rebuilding my resume, and I’ve had some interviews lately that I hope to lead somewhere good. Plus there are aforementioned writing projects I’m hoping to share soon! And this April will mark my third year of being on HRT, which is kinda wild to think about. Being openly trans online can be scary, but I'm proud to be who I am.

I shouldn’t drag this on for longer than it needs to be, so I think I’ll call it here.

Thank you so much to all of my amazing friends, old and new, for making this year memorable, for keeping me going when shit got rough, for everything, really. I hope all of you reading this have an amazing new year filled with love, accomplishment, and good health.

Love, Nanaki

[hismercytomyjustice]

Ayyy, I’m back on my bullshit with my BG3 fic! Just about to hit 86k words. Good god.

Still struggling to comprehend that. And still have about two chapters to go. Eh, maybe 1.5. I’m thinking it’ll end around 95k. Maybe 100k. (・ω・｀)………..

Those numbers sound wildly fake. Especially how up until this fic, I’d never written anything longer than maybe 55k.

I can’t believe I’m finally reaching the end. Just a month or two ago, I was convinced I might never finish it with how bad my analysis paralysis was.

The whole reason I even started posting it was because my therapist suggested it as a way to help me out of the OCD spiral it was sending me into. I had fully intended not to post any of it until it was completely finished because I was terrified I’d never finish it.

…def don’t have unfinished shit haunting me decades later from ff.net…

Somehow my most popular fic on there was an InuYasha one from my MAJOR InuYasha brain rot days. God, Sesshomaru lived rent free in my head for fucking YEARS.

I am so fucking distraught with how they decided to handle his character arc. There is SO MUCH Sesshomaru merch out there this day and age. I would have lost my fucking mind as a teen if it had been available then. But I just can’t enjoy it now.

Like, no shade to those who are happy with how he wound up with Rin. I’m just not one of them. I just personally feel like it was a missed opportunity for both of their character arcs and also imho…he was pretty much her dad, so it just doesn’t sit right with me. Especially with how young she was when he took her in…

Would’ve loved to see her wind up with Kohaku like it felt they were going to. I also really loved Sesshomaru and Kagura together too (minus the whole uh…her no longer being around thing).

God my life fucking revolved around that show for literal years. Pretty much all of high school. Maybe some of middle school? I don’t remember 100% when I started watching it.

Idk if it was a special interest or a hyperfocus or what. It doesn’t happen to me often (despite what it might seem like on here). POTO hit me around the same time (when I was 16) and then there was a gap until Pacific Rim with a brief Transformers interlude in between.

The fact it’s happened again recently with BG3, Hazbin, and borderline IWTV is fucking wild to me. Like oh yeah, I get obsessed with shit but there’s obsessed and then there is Obsessed™. It might not look that different from an outside perspective, but good god it is BAD on the inside.

I fucking LOVE IWTV but I’m not hunting down every single microscopic bit of lore I can find for it.

Hazbin and BG3 tho? Good fucking god. I am desperate to consume anything I can fucking find. I am watching interviews, reading veritable dissertations on them, I am thinking about them non-fucking-stop.

You can gauge my true level of derangement by:

1. Have I written fanfic about it?

2. How much fanfic have I written about it?

IWTV is an A Tier obsession for me. BG3 and Hazbin? That shit is S Tier.

Not that I write fanfic for everything S Tier, case in point Stardew Valley, but yeah…there’s a fucking reason I have fucking 7 Pacific Rim fanfics under my belt.

And right now I’ve got a multi-chapter Hazbin crack fic cooking on the side that’s already about to hit 9k words. It is wildly self-indulgent but damn if I’m not enjoying every fucking second of it.

Maybe one day I’ll get back to the modern day Phantom AU I started back at the end of January. It’s got 5k on it. My only real concern with it tho is I worry about drifting too close to Binary, my fave POTO fanfic of all time. And, tbh, a solid contender for my fave fic of all time in general. The number of times I have read that masterpiece.

Fuck. Cannot recommend it enough if you’re a POTO fan. It is a goddamn work of art.

But yeah, being so close to finishing this BG3 fic is such a weird feeling. It kind of makes me want to peel my skin off and flee into the woods? But I think it’ll also be really fucking good for me. And I can’t believe I’m about to do it. It’s fucking terrifying lol. My OCD is NOT HAPPY.

I can take “comfort” in the fact I still have 9 weeks of editing ahead of me tho I guess? (ಥ﹏ಥ) Maybe that’ll shut my goddamn fucking OCD up with its chants of “you never finish anything, you’ll never finish this, best to give up now, easier to give it up than fight through until the end, you should give it up before everyone comes to their senses and realize it’s awful” blah blah blah.

OCD is the fucking WORST.

Weirdly I also have piano to thank for my ability to write again? Because the hardcore fucking OCD spirals that shit was sending me on was what made me realize I constantly have OCD spirals running in the background. It’s making them a fuck of a lot easier to see earlier on too. And that was like…Category 2/3 OCD for me lol. Writing was probably Category 4/5 until recently. There’s other shit that’s solidly a Cat 5 but I don’t ever intend to talk about it on here. That’s what I have my therapist for! Yay, therapy!

It is truly fucking wild seeing an OCD specialist though who is just like “oh, your big scary brain is not as big and scary as it wants you to think.” Like that was one of the biggest “holy shit” moments I had when she was walking me through the stages of OCD spirals and I was just like…I never saw the pattern before. But there it was. Spelled out in black and white on a little fucking worksheet.

Fucking insane.

Tumblr has helped me so fucking much too by making it easy for me journal about it all regularly. I don’t always post what I journal, but it helps me see the forest for the trees regardless. And by forcing myself to “share” shit, I’m chipping away at the part of my OCD that fucking thrives on avoidance and self-consciousness about this shit. Because you’re not supposed to avoid OCD thoughts. That just makes ultimately them worse. So I share them on here knowing there’s like a 1% anyone will ever read any of this, but it’s enough to take away some of the fear/shame/avoidance that would otherwise add fuel to the fire so.

┐(￣ ヘ￣)┌

It’s all not as big and bad and scary and awful as my OCD makes it out to be in the confines of my noggin. It’s fucking hard sometimes, sharing some of this stuff because it’s embarrassing and awful and stupid. There’s nothing logical about OCD thoughts and knowing that makes it even fucking worse.

Like… I know the entirety of the internet isn’t going to just show up one day and tell me my writing is shit and I should quit. Logically. My OCD, however… It makes a lot of compelling arguments to my little lizard brain that are a lot harder to ignore.

Like how I almost didn’t sign up for piano classes at all because my OCD told me I’d never practice and I’d be wasting the teacher’s time and if I then quit I was frivolously playing with part of their livelihood and therefore a terrible fucking person. Would I say that to someone else? Absolutely not. That’s all absurd. Did I spend weeks agonizing over it in my noggin? Abso-fuckin’-lutely I did. And it didn’t even occur to me it was batshit until I finally brought it up to my husband and realized “wait one goddamn second, this is an OCD spiral, isn’t it?”

Lololol. The “joys” of mental illness! But hey, at least the therapy seems to be working. One step at a time baybeee!

[johaerys-writes]

Get to know me

I was tagged by @baejax-the-great, thank you so much pal! 

Share your wallpaper: My phone background for the past six months or so has been the same Patrochilles art that I'm actually not sure if I should post here without permission from the artist lol. But I can confirm that it's the cutest, most loveliest drawing of them, and Achilles looks so baby in it and I love staring at it every time I open up my phone :')

The last song you listened to: Unbound by Asgeir

Currently Reading:  Ten Days That Shook The World by John Reed (don't ask why or how, but my autistic Special Interest of choice for the past 2-3 weeks has been the political intrigue surrounding WWI and how it fuelled the October Revolution so I've been reading any book/watching any documentary I can get my hands on about it), and I've also been listening to The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath while doing chores and stuff

Last Movie: Everything Everywhere All at Once with @baejax-the-great

Craving: Travel :|

What are you wearing right now: My fluffiest house robe and my fluffy slippers and super comfy and soft socks, and yes I'm still in pyjamas 

How tall are you: 167 cm, no idea how that translates in feet and inches lol don't make me google it

Piercings: I have one piercing in each ear, I've often thought about getting more but needles be scary 

Tattoos: 6, and planning to finish my half sleeve by the end of the year

Glasses? Contacts?: Glasses, and I do sometimes wear contacts as well

Last drink: I am currently drinking some lukewarm coffee with oat milk :3

Last show: In the past couple years I've become so bad with starting shows and actually sticking with them lol, but I did do a rewatch of Neon Genesis Evangelion fairly recently..... OH and I watched Interview with the Vampire with @baejax-the-great a little while back which was super fun!! (because apparently I can't watch something unless I can shit talk or go feral over it with Bae LOL)

Last thing you ate: Toast with peanut butter and an apple

Favourite colour: Oooh that's such a hard question to answer!! The first colour that comes to mind is blue -- I always gravitate towards some version of blue, and currently it's deep navy blue, but I also own a lot of powder blue stuff. It's either that or baby pink or cream tbh, but I also own a good amount of gold/mustard things as well. Yellow makes me happy. I find jewel green incredibly pretty though I weirdly don't own anything of that colour (which reminds me I should perhaps make that a priority)

Current obsession: I'm guessing this is a fandom related question, so I'm going to be predictable and say that I'm, as usual, obsessed with Patrochilles and most of the other pairings I am currently writing, even though anxiety over real life stuff hasn't let me engage with them as much as I want lately. I do think about them a lot and have lots of ideas for new stories, and I'm also working my way back into catching up with fics I love, which I haven't been able to do in a while despite the joy it normally gives me. Brains can be very uncooperative at times, but what can you do about it lol. 

Unrelated Obsession: As I mentioned earlier I have been obsessed with Russian and generally European politics of the early 20th century for some weird ass reason lmao, but I've also been reading an in-depth analysis of Aeschylus' life and work I found in some corner of my library, which led me to looking up some academic papers about it, which led me to signing up for an online course about Athenian tragedy, so um?? I don't know what it is with me and going down those endless rabbit holes lately ahah. 

Any pets: I have a cat, aka a baby and a bastard and a devil spawn all wrapped in one (he is currently sleeping like an angel after attempting to tear down the curtains)

Do you have a crush on anyone: Um. Like, on a real life person? A fictional person? I do have crushes on several of my mutuals so if y'all are reading it I'm kissing you on the forehead MWAH

Favourite fictional character: I can't choose, don't make me choose!!!!!!! I can't choose between my children. But if I had to choose then maybe.... Patroclus? But also, Achilles? But also, my OC Tristan Trevelyan and Dorian Pavus from DA? But also Shiro and Keith from VLD? But also -- SEE, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO CHOOSE

The last place you traveled: It feels like it's been SO long since I've traveled anywhere. I went to Aegina island last summer but since then I haven't been outside the city for even a DAY and it's been driving me crazy. I just need to see some green and blue and listen to nothing but birds or waves or the wind (at this point I'll even take the rooster that woke me up EVERY DAMN MORNING when I was in Aegina lmao). I'm planning on going on a day trip to Mycenae soon though so I'm very excited about that 😄

Tagging forth to @in-arlathan, @mogwaei, @tessa1972, @aymayzing, @inquisitoracorn, @tevivinter, @elveny, @pikapeppa, @petrowriting @peggy-sue-reads-a-book @juliafied, @vimlos, @gloriesunsung, @figsandphiltatos, @gwensparlour, @glimmerofgold, @sabino-sea, and so many more of my mutuals that I'm actually too shy to tag here. But seriously if you're reading this and it looks fun please do it and tag me, I'm nosy and I want to know everything about you LOL  

[lesbianfreyja]

Ok I’m genuinely curious… can you like explain Gaylors? It’s like usually even if I don’t get something I can see how people got there but that is not the case here. Like I’m coming from a biased place because I do not like her music and I can’t prove it but she gives me the vibe she would have bullied me in high school and I have a very low tolerance for White Feminism but like as a queer person on the queer internet I can’t not see stuff about it. Is it like they want her to be gay so they have a chance or is it like something they actually believe? Neither? Both?

ok i will try to answer this accessibly 🙏 without delving into her personal life and focusing more on lyrical analysis because it's more interesting <3 and less invasive & takes into account that there is always an element of storytelling to songwriting that will beget themes and so on, without always aligning directly with the truth because...it's a story <3

let's get into it!!

i'd like to start with how she repeatedly comes back to this hidden, forbidden love that she can't let anyone know about. this is a recurring theme on basically every album, and while some of it is because of the media attention and investigations on her & her relationships….

i know places that we can hide and they'll be chasing their tails trying to track us down

outside, they're pushing & shoving; everyone's up to something / you're in the kitchen humming, all that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing

make sure nobody sees you leave, keep your hood up and your head down / that's the thing about illicit affairs

no deal, that 1950s shit they want from me / all they see is a one night or a wife / i just wanna stay in this lavender haze (a song she specifically said was about rumors she loathed, which as an interesting aside, the internet took to mean gaylors until the album came out)

some of it relies a little too heavily on the "this is something BAD/secret that CANNOT be discovered" with full religious imagery to boot

don't blame me, love made me crazy / lord, save me / i would fall from grace just to touch your face

they say i did something bad, then why's it feel so good?

your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand / i wish to know the fatal flaw that makes you long to be magnificently cursed

i'm drunk in the back of the car and i cried like a baby coming home from the bar said i'm fine but it wasn't true i don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you and i snuck in through the garden gate every night that summer just to seal my fate and i scream "for whatever it's worth, i love you; ain't that the worst thing you've ever heard?"

there's her repeated instances of "writing from a man's perspective" i.e. betty, the man; which is interesting when in Dear Reader she refers to herself as "a fourth drink in my hand, these desperate prayers from a cursed man" & it's worth noting that this album leaned heavily on the grief of being unknowable to ANYONE and going home alone everyday, even when she....had a boyfriend but i digress because we're getting away from literary analysis. it's worth nothing that evermore also included ivy, which is about how one of the bronte sisters stole their brother's wife

interestingly, she also capitalizes certain letters in the songbooks sent out with physical CDs. some fun ones to note include WHEN I SAW YOU IN HYIANNIS PORT (specifically spelled incorrectly to match the letters of dianna agrons name; dianna also had an alice in wonderland tattoo on her ribs that she got lasered off after Wonderland was released). there are other, similar instances of this.

then there's the things that just plain...don't sound like they're about a man because of the words she uses. not a trump card, but certainly an interesting cherry on top

you're so gorgeous, i can't say anything to your face

i used to switch out these kens, i'd just ghost / it hits different 'cos its you

the lips i used to call home so scarlet it was maroon

hair falling into place like dominos

i don't want you like a best friend

it feels like i'm losing a friend / i can't breathe without you

feels like home, stay in bed the whole weekend; its nice to have a friend

i hate accidents except when we went from friends to this

it's interesting that she "went from friends to this" when there's no evidence her and joe knew each other at all before dating. actually, friends to this is more of a gay thing.

then there's things that seem like clear flagging.

her hair dyed the bi pride colors in You Need to Calm Down mv

the miss americana documentary in which she lists things that make her her, amongst them "cowboy boots, rainbows, gay pride"

her midnights merch included a bracelet that just says PRIDE with the bi flag

i heard that the Eras tour starts out with the lesbian flag colors splashed on the stage

fun fact: if you lay out each color she lists in maroon, you get lesbian flag colors (rose, burgundy, scarlet, rust, maroon, ruby)

some throwaway things that are i think are funny gaylor "evidence":

starting out reputation with "you & me got big reputations and would be a big conversation" when no one knew who joe was at all

the chorus of this song: "they don't know about the night in the hotel, they weren't riding in the car when we both fell, didn't read the note on the polaroid picture, they don't know how much i miss..........you"

referring to red lips in maroon when she's never dated a man with lips, let alone red lips

she advocates for gay rights & taylor never speaks up about anything that doesn't affect her

[sebastianshaw]

In my darkest fantasies I am the picture of passivity Waiting for you silent stage Suppressing all my private rage But as my sister said I’d probably last six days - Girls Against God by Florence + the Machine I’ve said before Haven is generally my Mary Sue character now, with me just inserting her into everything and typically having everyone love her because it soothes my salty soul after how she was ACTUALLY treated. But there are some characters I do see being mean to her, because, well, it makes sense. Like Sinister, the Fenris twins, and. . .Emma. Now, evil and/or racist characters like the first two, but why Emma? Partly, I’m kinda fed up with her in canon so it’s the “make the character I don’t like look bad by being mean to my fave” Mary Sue thing. But partly, Emma actually is just mean. She’s mean even to people she LIKES. And I don’t think she’d like Haven AT ALL. Why though? Because I think in many ways, Haven throws Emma’s entire understanding of how the world works out of whack. Before I get going, I’d like to note, I am NOT an Emma expert so if you find yourself thinking my analysis is TOTALLY WRONG, you are probably right. But this has been in my head for AGES so I’m gonna get going.

Both Haven and Emma are very feminine in extremely stereotypical ways, but it’s very OPPOSITE ways of femininity. Emma is the “sharp” and “sexy” way, the femme fatale, whole “my eyeliner wings are sharp to cut the patriarchy” thing, the “women as conniving schemers” way. Haven is the “soft” way, the maternal way, the women as maternal and nurturing beings. This is even reflected in their dress; Emma in high-fashion super-skimpy stark whites with mostly sharp cuts, Haven in very traditional long flowy and ornate, detailed outfits in bright colors. An n being soft and yielding and nonsexual, Haven is everything Emma either can’t be, or thought she had to push down and stop herself from ever being in order to survive and succeed. She’s everything Emma thought she would be punished and taken advantage of if she allowed herself to become, and thus expects to see other women punished for. And yet, Haven is rewarded for it instead. And I think that would tick Emma off. Of course, Haven is NOT rewarded for ANY of this in canon. You KNOW how she’s treated in canon. But in MY world, where -I- am writing things, Haven’s way of being a woman and how she handles situations in general is, while SOMETIMES a hindrance or not effective, is also often rewarded and very effective. She takes a very different route with Emma, but gets great results. And to Emma, this is both bizarre and unfair. It’s bizarre because her entire life she’s felt she had to take the route of firstly being extremely callous and mean and disliked to get shit done, and also to exploit her beauty and sexuality for the same reason. She sees women who don’t as weaklings and fools, she’s pretty plain about this fact in the 80s when she talks to that one Hellfire maid who is upset about the costumes. So when she sees Haven doing NONE of this, doing the OPPOSITE, and getting just as good, it’s not just weird, it’s upsetting—Emma had to repress and carve away all the softness in herself to the point it became a struggle to reach even when she wanted to. Haven didn’t have to do that, but she’s reaping the benefits that Emma sacrificed so much for. There’s also the fact that her mother Hazel is the only “soft” woman (read: didn’t do anything about the abuse in their household, never spoke up against their father, etc) in Emma’s life and she’s a bystander to abuse. Emma has complicated feelings for her father; she hates him yet she credits him for making her a very successful woman. At times she seems to have empathy and even sympathy for him but she has none of that for Hazel that I’ve ever seen. She never expresses any feelings about Hazel at all  to my memory. She’s a non entity, she’s just there, she doesn’t count, and I think that’s how Emma sees women who aren’t like herself, as being like Hazel. Useless people who let bad things happen because they don’t have the spine to do something. So definitely hostility and projecting there. Now, speaking of women and men. . .

In canon, Haven’s allies are almost all women, and the one guy who goes to bat for her is Madrox’s gay-coded dupe who cries and wears a pink crop top that says Stop The Hate. And I definitely think Haven is a girl’s girl, I write her as catnip to other women in various ways, but I also think she’d have quite an effect on many men too. Just, not like Emma does. Emma banks on men’s desire, exploiting their need to either have her sexually because she’s hot or to conquer her because she’s NOT docile and submissive. Haven is beautiful, and I’m sure some men find her sexy, but the response I think she mainly elicits is the response to protect, to serve her, to be polite to her, to open doors, to not swear in her presence or make her cry, that kind of thing. It is still sexist in its own way, but a far more soft and benevolent sort, where she’s pedestalized as a treasure and can get to her goals that way, rather than putting up with the insipid lust and misogyny that Emma, by her own admission, relies on. Again, she gets the same results without the same sacrifice that Emma felt she had to make.

And again, Haven is beautiful. This is remarked upon in-universe, with Strong Guy saying she looks like a “babe of the month” despite that fact that she’s 40, six feet tall, with very dark skin and, to put it bluntly, a big ass (which was NOT desirable in the “heroin chic” 90s America). None of which is unattractive, btw, but is often treated like it is. Emma is the epitome of white Western beauty standards, and she canonically did that very deliberately via hair dye and plastic surgery and she sleeps in her diamond form to stave off aging. So yet again, from Emma’s perspective, she put in all this work, but then Haven shows up and is getting the same admiration while not putting in any of the effort. It’s enraging. Doubly so since my Haven has love handles and smile lines. Given how Emma has body-shamed totally svelte women before, I have no doubt she’s got no shortage of catty comments for Haven on this matter. And the thing is, Emma does see other women as competition by default as it is even without all this extra reasoning. Her father was the abuser in her household, but that abuse made her sisters into her enemies and her mother into an enabler. We can see this attitude in how she’s interacted with other women for DECADES, always ready to tear them down in one sense or another. Ironically it’s even how she seems to ultimately bond with other women, by starting off with animosity—her and Jean, her and Storm, her and Kitty in Astonishing. Any woman that Emma is friends with has always started out firstly as a foe, and always an extremely personal one at that—these three are the ones she hurt most after Firestar. I don’t think Emma knows HOW to build a positive relationship with another woman that doesn’t begin from animosity. If Emma can build a bond with another woman that doesn’t involve seriously clawing chunks out of each other emotionally and sometimes physically along the way, I have yet to see it (no, I do not count the Lourdes retcon) And integral to this is that the other woman in the equation does strike back, does have that inside her too, often in a way as nasty and cruel as Emma herself could be. Jean, Kate, and Ororo have all shown themselves more than once to be capable of absolute brutality towards others under the right circumstances, and Jean in particular really hurt Emma in a very cruel way in retaliation once. And I think it’s only then that Emma can see these women as worthy of her respect, and as kindred spirits under the skin, someone who is like her in some way, and thus not someone she feels “bad” by comparison next to. That’s why she WANTS Haven to “hit back” to show she actually ISN’T this perfect soft enduring angel, but Haven WON’T and I think it would drive her batty. Because the thing is, I think Emma knows Haven COULD hurt her if she chose, just as badly as Jean and without even needing telepathy. Emma has an empathy and understanding of other people that she usually uses for cruelty, as she did when she was brainwashing Firestar. Haven demonstrated in canon that she COULD do the same but chose not to, when she pinpoints the psychological problems and pains of everyone in X-Factor, but approaches them with sympathy rather than manipulation. She does CLAIM she’ll use these issues against them if they keep getting in her way, but never does. So she COULD probably rip Emma an emotional new one but WONT, and her refusing to rise to any bait Emma gives—as I see Emma trying to provoke her—makes Emma both see as morally superior (which she hates) and ALSO as unworthy as respect for not taking the shot. In Emma’s head, she’s both better AND worse than she is, and she hates both options. It’s complicated, basically, as anything with Emma is. And bringing it to “feeling bad in comparison next to”--while Emma is in general proud of who and what she is and sees it as an advantage to getting things done for others that need to be done and that other characters are too “pure” to do (which is an unusual thing for a female character and I do like that about her) there are absolutely moments she’s conflicted about it and hates herself for it. I think she’s proud of who she is and looks down on others….and I also think she thinks she’s a bad person. And here Haven is, just effortlessly embodying these traits Emma is so pained by lacking (or believing that she lacks) and actually getting things done like that and people love her for it. It’s upsetting. It makes Emma feel like maybe she never had to work to strip away all softness for herself, resent Haven for not having to make the sacrifices of her own soul that she did to get the same results, it makes her feel unappreciated because don’t these people who fawn over Haven realize what SHE went through for THEM? None of which is Haven’s fault nor even necessarily reality, but it’s a very HUMAN response in my opinion. And speaking of feelings, Haven’s someone pretty clearly okay with them, whereas Emma has very much shown herself as afraid of them. And I think there’d be a definite envy that Haven can let herself be so vulnerable in so many ways and be at ease with that. I also think she sees Haven as able to escape her past and responsibility for it in a way Emma can’t, because as much as writers try and drive it into readers heads that Emma was Actually Innocent and Heroic The Whole Time, other characters did still bring up Emma’s history in-universe against her all the time well after her heel-face-turn. Whereas Haven actually does have a really goddamn good excuse. As for how Haven feels in all this. . .she handles every jab with absolute grace, not retaliating or displaying any upset. Emma’s doubtless not the first person to attempt to get under her skin for some reason. And because Haven is so uncannily perceptive and empathetic, I think she can discern at least SOME of Emma’s reasons, even if she can’t know why she has those reasons, and she has a quiet sympathy for her. Which, of course, would just piss Emma off more. Because this woman isn’t buckling or shrinking under her, which the bully in Emma wants, the need to punish other women for not being like she is, the contempt she has for that (again, see the maid), but she’s also not doing the OTHER option Emma wants either, which is rising to it, breaking her Miss Perfect mask, showing she’s NOT this angel everyone else thinks. She does NOT bow to Emma, and yet neither does she push back. She is unyielding yet softly so, like a padded wall. And I think that just drives Emma nuts. But hey, I could be wrong.

[dearqueerdeers]

no wait actually as an avid reader English classes pissed me off so bad in high school. before high school I just found them vaguely annoying because it was super easy stuff— the author says in paragraph 3 that daisy is mad. Which of these word is a synonym for “mad”?— but in high school they really started to lean into analysis that was deeper than “surface level”. Here’s the thing. I’ve been writing fanfiction since I was 11. I know how to read between the lines. I know how to analyze shit. Been doing it forever. So I get to English classes where they’re asking me to do that and I go “great! this will be fun!”— only to be told that I am, in fact, wrong, in my interpretation of whatever current book we were reading.

This happened a lot for a lot of books (I am autistic lmao), but the one that infuriates me to this day is when we read Things Fall Apart in my senior year English class. Note that we did not read Heart of Darkness, which supposedly this book was a response to, so I could very well be missing a chunk of analysis here. It essentially followed a man living in Nigeria pre-colonialism and followed his life as European “missionaries” slowly started invading the surrounding area & eventually his home. According to my English teacher, Heart of Darkness portrayed the indigenous people in African in a very negative light and erased a lot of their culture, and Things Fall Apart was written as a rebuttal to showcase the rich culture and interior lives of the people portrayed as “savages” in Heart of Darkness.

And yes, the book did a wonderful job of showcasing the presence of a thriving culture and the personhood of those living in Nigeria! However. This teacher absolutely refused to hear any analysis that painted the main character in a bad light. If you pointed out that any of his actions were bad and suggested that he had personal growth to do, she’d shut you down immediately. I specifically was told “it’s a different culture and you can’t judge them based on our cultural standards.” My class was told the protagonist was a good guy trying his best, & that’s what the book was trying to showcase. If you listened to my English teacher without ever touching this book, you’d probably think it was about a guy doing his best and who therefore didn’t deserve the violence he experienced at the hands of the colonizers. (Disclaimer here that shouldn’t need to be said but I’m saying it anyways: You can’t “deserve” to be colonized. No culture or individual person should ever be forced to endure colonization. Full stop, period, end of story.)

Here’s the thing. This dude sucked balls, guys. He murders his adopted son. He hits his kids. He abuses his wives. & the whole time shows no learning from any of these actions. And those actions formed my analysis of the book! My analysis was that this guy sucked hard and the point of the book was that even when people suck, colonization is bad. My TEACHER’S analysis (and the only analysis she allowed us to discuss) was that this guy was a good guy and the point of the book was to make us feel bad that a good guy was the victim of colonization. I don’t even think I need to unpack why that’s totally bullshit, y’all have reading comprehension skills lmao.

To this day I still bitch about this book and this unit to my friends who were in that class. Not that any media analysis should ever be considered “right” or “wrong,” but to be told I was wrong in my analysis when I so very clearly was not was infuriating.

[tarobytez]

disability in the Six Of Crows Duology; an analysis of Kaz Brekker, Wylan Van Eck, and the fandom’s treatment of them.

****Note: I originally wrote this for a tiktok series, which im still going to do, but i wanted to post here as well bc tumblr is major contributor to what im going to talk about

CW: ableism, filicide, abuse

In the Six of Crows duology, Leigh Bardugo delicately subverts and melds harmful disability tropes into her narrative, unpacking them in a way that I, as a disabled person, found immensely refreshing and…. just brilliant. 

But what did you all do with that? Well, you fucked it up. Instead of critically looking at the characters, y’all just chose to be ableist. 

For the next few videos paragraphs im going to unpack disability theory (largely the stuff surrounding media, for obvious reasons) and how it relates to Six Of Crows and the characterization of Kaz Brekker and Wylan Van Eck, then how, despite their brilliant writing, y’all completely overlooked the actual text and continuously revert them to ableist cariactures.

Disclaimer: 1. Shocker - i am disabled. I have also extensively researched disability theory and am very active in the disabled community. Basically, I know my shit. 2. im going to be mad in these videos this analysis. Because the way y’all have been acting has been going on for a long ass time and im fuckin sick of it. I don’t give a shit about non-disabled feelings, die mad

Firstly, I’m going to discuss Kaz, his play on the stereotypical “mean cripple” trope and how Bardugo subverts it, his cane, and disabled rage. Then, I am going to discuss Wylan, the “inspiration porn” stereotype, caregivers / parents, and the social model of disability. Finally, I will then explain the problems in the fandom from my perspective as a disabled person, largely when it comes to wylan, bc yall cant leave that boy tf alone.

Kaz Brekker

Think of a character who uses a cane (obviously not Kaz). Now, are they evil, dubiously moral, or just an asshole in general? Because nearly example I can think of is: whether it be Lots’O from Toy Story, Lucius Malfoy, or even Scrooge and Mr.Gold from Once Upon A Time all have canes (the last two even having their canes appear less and less as they become better people)

The mean/evil cripple trope is far more common than you would think. Villains with different bodies are confined to the role of “evil”. To quote TV Tropes, who I think did a brilliant job on explaining it “The first is rooted in eugenics-based ideas linking disability or other physical deformities with a "natural" predisposition towards madness, criminality, vice, etc. The Rule of Symbolism is often at work here, since a "crippled" body can be used to represent a "crippled" soul — and indeed, a disabled villain is usually put in contrast to a morally upright and physically "perfect" hero. Whether consciously on the part of the writer or not, this can reinforce cultural ideas of disability making a person inherently inferior or negative, much in the same way the Sissy Villain or Depraved Homosexual trope associate sexual and gender nonconformity with evil. ”

Our introduction to Kaz affirms this notion of him being bad or morally bankrupt, with “Kaz Brekker didn’t need a reason”, etc. This mythologized version of himself, the “bastard of the barrel” actively fed into this misconception. But, as we the audience are privy to his inner thoughts, know that he is just a teenager like every other Crow. He is complex, his disability isn’t this tragic backstory, he just fell off a roof. It’s not his main motivation, nor does he curse revenge for making him a cripple - it is just another part of who he is. 

His cane (though the shows version fills me with rage but-) is an extension of Kaz - he fights with it, but it has a purpose. Another common thing in media is for canes to be simply accessories, but while Kaz’ cane is fashionable, it has purpose.

The quote “There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.” is so fucking powerful. Kaz does not want nor need a cure - its said in Crooked Kingdom that his leg could most likely be healed, but he chooses not to. Abled-bodied people tend to dismiss this thought as Kaz being stubborn but it shows a reality of acceptance of his disability that is just, so refreshing.

In chapter 22 of SOC, we see disabled rage done right - when he is called a cripple by the Fjerdan inmate, Kaz is pissed - the important detail being that he is pissed at the Fjerdan, at society for ableism, not blaming it on being disabled or wishing he could be normal. He takes action, dislocating the asshole’s shoulder and proving to him, and to a lesser extent, himself, that he is just as capable as anyone else, not in spite of, but because he is disabled. And that is the point of Kaz, harking back to the line that “there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken”. 

I cried on numerous occasions while reading the SOC duology, but the parts I highlighted in this section especially so. I, as many other disabled people do, have had a long and tumultuous relationship with our disability/es, and for many still struggle. But Kaz Brekker gave me an empowered disabled character who accepts themselves, and that means the world to me. 

Keeping that in mind, I hope you can understand why it hurts so much to disabled people when you either erase Kaz’s disability (whether through cosplay or fanfiction), or portray him as a “broken boy uwu”, especially implying that he would want a cure. That flies in the face of canon and is inherently fucking ableist. (if u think im mad wait until the next section)

Next, we have Wylan.  

Oh fucking boy. 

I love Wylan so fucking much, and y’all just do not seem to understand his character? Like at all? Since this is disability-centric, I’m not going to discuss how the intersection of his queerness also contributes to these issues, but trust me when I say it’s a contributing factor to what i'm going to say.

Wylan, motherfucking Van Eck. If you ableist pricks don’t take ur fucking hands off him right now im going to fight you. I see Wylan as a subversion another, and in my opinion more insidious stereotype pf disabled people - inspiration porn.

Cara Liebowitz in a 2015 article on the blog The Body Is Not An Apology explains in greater detail how inspiration porn is impactful in real life, but media is a major contributing factor to this reality. The technical definition is “the portrayal of people with disabilities as inspirational solely or in part on the basis of their disability” - but that does not cover it fully. 

Inspiration porn does lasting damage on the disabled community as it implies that disability is a negative that you need to “overcome” or “triumph” instead of something one can feel proud of. It exploits disabled people for the development of non-disabled people, and in media often the white male protagonist. Framing disability as inherently negative perpetuates ideals of eugenics and cures - see Autism $peaks’ “I Am Autism” ad. Inspiration porn is also incredibly patronizing as it implies that we cannot take care of ourselves, or do things like non-disabled people do. Because i stg some of you tend to think that we just sit around all day wishing we weren’t disabled. 

Another important theory ideal that is necessary when thinking about Wylan is the experience of feeling like a burden simply for needing help or accommodations. This is especially true when it comes to familial relationships, and internalized ableism.

The rhetoric that Wylan’s father drilled into his head, that he is “defective”, “a mistake”, and “needs to be corrected”, that he (Jan) was “cursed with a moron for a child” is a long held belief that disabled people hear relentlessly. And while many see Van Eck’s attempted murder of Wylan as “preposturous” and overall something that you would never think happens today - filicide (a parent murdering their child) is more common than you would like to believe. Without even mentioning the countless and often unreported deaths of disabled people due to lack of / insufficient / neglectful medical care, in a study on children who died from the result of household abuse, 40 of 42 of them (95%) were diagnosed with disabilities. Van Eck is not some caricature of ableist ideals - he is a real reflection on how many people and family members view disability. 

Circling back to how Wylan unpacks the inspiration porn trope - he is 3 dimensional, he is not only used to develop the other characters, he is just *chefs kiss* Leigh, imo, put so much love and care into the creation of Wylan and his story and character growth that is representative of a larger feeling in the disabled community. 

That being said, what you non-disabled motherfuckers have done to him.

The “haha Wylan can’t read” jokes aren’t and were not funny. Y’all literally boiled down everything Wylan is to him being dyslexic. And it’s like,,,, the only thing you can say about him. You ignore every other part of him other than his disability, and then mock him for it. There’s so much you can say about Wylan - simping for Jesper, being band kid and playing the fuckin flute, literally anything else. But no, you just chose to mock his disability, excellent fucking job!

Next up on “ableds stfu” - infantilization! y’all are so fucking condescending to Wylan, and treat him like a fucking toddler. And while partly it is due to his sexuality i think a larger portion is him being disabled. Its in the same vein of people who think that Wylan and Jesper are romantically one sided, and that Jesper only kind of liked Wylan, despite the canon evidence of him loving Wylan just as much. You all view him as a “smol bean”, who needs protecting, and care, when Wylan is the opposite of that. He is a fucking demolitions expert who suggested waking up sleeping men to kill them - what about that says “uwu”. You are treating Wylan as a burden to Jesper and the other Crows when he is an immensely valuable, fully autonomous disabled person - you all just view him as damaged. 

And before I get a comment saying that “uhhh Wylan isn’t real why do you care” while Wylan may not be real, how you all view him and treat him has real fucking impacts and informs how you treat people like me. If someone called me an “uwu baby boy” they’d get a fist square in the fucking jaw. Fiction informs how we perceive the world and y’all are making it super fucking clear how you see disabled people. 

Finally, I wanted to talk about how the social model of disability is portrayed through Wylan. For those who are unaware, the social model of disability contrasts the medical model, that views the disability itself as the problem, that needs to be cured, whereas the social model essentially boils down to creating an accommodating society, where disability acceptance and pride is the goal. And we see this with Wylan - he is able to manage his father’s estate, with Jesper’s assistance to help him read documents. And this is not out of pity or charity, but an act of love. It is not portrayed as this almighty act for Jesper to play saviour, just a given, which is incredibly important to show, especially for someone who has been abused by family for his disability like Wylan, that he is accepted. 

Yet, I still see people hold up Jesper on a pedestal for “putting up with” Wylan, as if loving a disabled person deserves a fucking pat on the back. It’s genuinely exhausting trying to engage with a work I love so much with a fandom that thinks so little of me and my community. It fucking shows. 

Overall, Leigh Bardugo as a disabled person wrote two incredibly meticulous and empowered disabled characters, and due to either lack of reading comprehension, ableism, or a quirky mix of both, the fandom has ignored canon and the experiences of disabled people for…. shits and giggles i guess. And yes, there are issues with the Grishaverse and disability representation - while I haven’t finished them yet so I do not have an opinion on it, people have been discussing issues in the KOS duology with ableist ideals. This mini series was no way indicative of the entire disabled experience, nor does it represent my entire view on the representation as a whole. These things need to be met critically in our community, and talked about with disabled voices at the forefront. For example, the limited perspective we get of Wylan and Kaz being both white men, does not account for a large portion of the disabled community and the intersection of multiple identities.

All-in-all, Critique media, but do not forget to also critique fandom spaces. Alternatively, just shut the fuck up :)

happy fucking disability pride month, ig

[sortasirius]

“Despair” and Dean and Cas

Well well well, winning is my favorite thing.

As usual, this is going to be as long as hell. And fair warning, it’s extremely emotional.

So here it is, the thing that we have been barrelling towards for years, literally years.

Just want to point out this.  Also, I will NEVER allow someone to speak negatively about this writing group, EVER.

Team Free Dads starting off the episode is so sweet, so scary.  Cas’ calming, Dean’s fear, Sam’s desperation, really just hammering home how much they love Jack, how his pain is pain for them, how losing him is unbearable.

“I can’t stop this.  I’m coming apart.  I don’t want to hurt you.  Don’t let me hurt you.”

Oof.  If you’ve ever question whether Jack is a Winchester, this line should shut that shit down for you.

When I tell you I was PISSED when Billie sent Jack to the Empty to EXPLODE?????  PAIN.

“Yeah the Empty can’t come to earth, not without being summoned.”

Hello Bobo, clue number 1.

The fact that they only had Jack in limbo for like five seconds was great for my heart health, thank u very much Bobo.

Also Dean wielding Death’s scythe?????? KING?????

Man, Sam and Dean’s growth.  The way that they’re able to, idk, actually speak on how they feel without death looming or fear or pain.  It’s just a conversation, just an honest conversation of Dean admitting his mistakes, admitting how he felt.  Admitting that he fucked up, and Sam forgiving him for it.

CHARLIE AND HER GF CHARLIE AND HER GF CHARLIE AND HER GF

Also...hunters and their “dates.”  Two hunters who are happily together, who are happily fighting monsters.  Hm.  Sounds like a Saileen/Destiel parallel to me boys.

You ever wish Cas would look and the mirror and take the great advice he gives others?  Because I do.  He’s always tried to be “useful” for Sam and Dean, for Jack, always tried to make sure that he’s useful enough that they keep him around.  But what he doesn’t understand, what he’s never understood, is that they need him because of who he is, not because of what he contributes.

Remind y’all of anything?

And here we have Clue Number 2

And then, Sam’s realization.  Eileen.

Did I begin full tilt screaming no in my apartment when he said her name?  Who’s to say?

How can a lock screen cause me this much pain????

Okay but: Charlie loses Stevie, Sam loses Eileen.  Clue Number 3.

I feel like I don’t talk enough about how much Sam loves Eileen.  About how obvious it is that they are endgame, about how happy he is when he talks about her.  This just feels like a blow to the stomach, but we’ve barely even started.

Sam immediately shifting into protective leader mode?  He is the love of my life.

Dean’s simple nod, like it’s a given?  Enough to do me in right there.

This is another episode where it’s just so clear that Sam is the leader of the North American hunters.  Everyone knows him, everyone is willing to follow him.  He’s knowledgeable and kind and fair and just and an incredibly capable fighter.  Once again, I don’t believe his work on earth is done.

Can we also please talk about how FRIGHTENING IT WAS for Jack to kill that plant???  I don’t really have much of a comment on it because I was literally just like ?????

With Billie saying that it’s Chuck, the way that people were dusted, very similar to Becky and Amara, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised, especially with Donna getting taken off the board.  It’s like I said last week, I don’t buy that he’s taken himself off the board, he’s too invested in the unraveling of this story to take a step back.  He’s gotta break them before he can defeat them, that’s the only way.

And here we go, into one of the most painful and surreal things I will ever write about.

Dean’s speech.  His guilt, his regret.  The shame of not only trapping himself, but the pain, the horror of trapping Cas.

“I just lead us into another trap.  All because I, I couldn’t hurt Chuck.  Because I was angry and because I just needed something to kill, and because that’s all I know how to do.”

“Dean-”

“It was Chuck all along.  We never should have left Sam and Jack, we should be there with them now.  Everybody’s gonna die, Cas.  Everybody.  I can’t stop it.”

His narrative arc.  Tied up in a bow.

“She’s gonna get through that door.”

“I know.”

“And she’s gonna kill you and then she’s gonna kill me.  I’m sorry.”

Cas smiles.

Cas knows.  He knows what’ll get them out of this, and he knows that he would do anything in this Universe for Dean Winchester. The human man he fell for.

“When Jack was dying, I made a deal to save him.”

“You what?”

“The price was my life.  When I experienced a moment of true happiness, the Empty would be summoned and it would take me forever.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“I always wondered, ever since I took that burden, that curse, I’ve wondered what it could be, what my true happiness could even look like.  I never found an answer, because the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have. 

“But I think I know, I think I know now...happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being.  It’s in just saying it.”

“What are you talking about, man?”

The most selfless thing Cas does in this, and he does a lot of selfless things, is to tell Dean Winchester how impossibly good he is.  To tell him that he is worthy, to tell him that he is adored.

“I know, I know how you see yourself, Dean.  You see yourself the same way our enemies see you.  You’re destructive and you’re angry and you’re broken and you’re daddy’s blunt instrument.  And you think that hate and anger, that’s what drives you, that’s who you are.  It’s not.  And everyone who knows you sees it, and everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love.  You raise your little brother for love, you fought for this whole world for love.  That is who you are.

“You’re the most caring man on earth.  You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know.  You know, ever since we met, ever since I pulled you outta Hell...knowing you has changed me.

“Because you cared, I cared.  I cared about you, I cared about Sam, I cared about Jack, I cared about the whole world because of you. 

“You changed me, Dean.”

“Why does this sound like a goodbye?”

Dean’s greatest fear. His fear of those loving him leaving him. The terror of being alone.

“Because it is.

The head shake.  Don’t love me.  Don’t love me if it means you’ll leave me, don’t love me, everyone I love leaves me.  Don’t leave me.  Don’t love me.  Don’t leave me.

“Don’t do this, Cas.”

Just like I always thought.  One last look at Dean before the Empty takes him.

“Cas-”

“Goodbye Dean.”

And Dean is left, broken on the floor, unable to answer Sam’s calls, unable to do anything.  It doesn’t matter to him that Chuck has wiped everyone out, it doesn’t matter to him that Sam and Jack might need him.  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter, because the thing that mattered still hangs on his lips, still waiting to be said, and now he won’t get another chance to say it.

The fact that I am writing this, even with all my spec, with all my analysis of the writers’ room, of their text, of the way Dabb and co had approached this story, nothing could have ever prepared me for this.  Nothing could have prepared me for a three and a half minute, uninterrupted scene where Cas confesses not only that he loves Dean, but that he has always loved him.

I talk a lot about how these writers don’t get the credit they deserve.  Unfortunately, from most of this fandom, they never will.  We will likely never know the fights with the network they had, the steps backward they had to take, the way they had to beg and fight and claw to get this on the screen.  But they did it.  They did it for these characters, they did it for this dinosaur of a show, and yeah, they did it for us.

It was not easy, I can promise you, to get this greenlit.  They had to fight for this, they likely had to call in favors and make threats and quite literally put their careers on the line (you may scoff at that, but WB is a BIG company, especially in the TV/movie world) for this story.  This story of Dean and Cas, the man dragged out of Hell and the angel who fell for him.

I have tons more to say, and will likely have several more posts about this, but I want to leave all my babes who are worried that that was the end for Dean and Cas with some takeaways.

Sam is missing Eileen.  Dean is missing Cas.  That is no longer a fun subtextual parallel, that is it for them.  Their respective endgames are missing, and they will not know their peace until they get them back.  Chuck will not win.  That’s not the story being told, and right now?  He’s winning.  He’s broken them, left them with nothing, left them with an empty world and a hole in each of their hearts where their person (or angel) used to be.

Our show is going to end with “contentment.”  “Contentment” isn’t from Sam and Dean being filled with grief and hitting the open road.  It isn’t Sam getting Eileen back and leaving Dean with no one.  “Contentment” is Sam and Eileen, Dean and Cas.  Together.

[army-of-mai-lovers]

in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough. 

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.” 

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!” 

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role. 

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all. 

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.” 

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.” 

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka  repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--   

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~” 

y’all WHAT. 

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back. 

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai. 

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too. 

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!” 

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse. 

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.) 

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal  adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out. 

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)  

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”  

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show. 

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.” 

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process. 

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring. 

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what? 

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her. 

Conclusion    

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked. 

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here. 

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice. 

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us. 

[ayamturd]

enough│dream team

summary: y/n is overwhelmed and hits a breaking point. luckily, her boys are always there for her.

warnings: angst to fluff, light cursing

pairing: real-life platonic!dream team

a/n: was trying to write comfort drabble but got carried away, oops— pls feel free to comment or give feedback!

wc: (1.4k) - m.list

Falling face-first onto the safe haven of your couch, you felt as if you could cry from exhaustion. 

Today was long, longer than usual. From pulling an all nighter to barely finish the analysis essay you put off to the very last minute, struggling to understand the notes in most (if not all) of your online classes, to the torturous hours at work dealing with difficult coworkers and harsh customers, to say you were emotionally, physically, and mentally drained was an understatement. 

Despite the numerous assignments you knew were waiting to be completed, you couldn’t find it in yourself to care. The stress of simply worrying about them was already enough to drown your thoughts as you smothered your face into the pillow cushions. Before the raging thoughts could continue to ring though, the discord notification quietly broke the empty space, the phone being previously thrown somewhere on the floor. 

The bright screen blinded you as you brought the phone towards your face and answered the call with blurred eyes. “Hello?”

“Aye, nice to know you’re not dead!” What?

“Sap, what the hell do you want?” The lack of sleep was present in your quip tone. You probably would have apologized upon realizing if you could think straight. 

“Geeez, no need to get all upset. Was just wondering if you were still planning on joining the stream.” 

“Stream? What stream?” As if answering your own question, you pulled the phone away to check the date and sat up in slight panic. Fuck. “Shit! I didn’t realize that was today, I thought it was still Thursday!” 

Sapnap laughed, but it didn’t help calm your nerves at all. “Honestly, you’re fine. We were just wondering what happened since you weren’t answering any of our messages.” You scrolled through the boys’ messages from the past hour asking where you were. 

“Ahh, but still, I’m so sorry. I just got home but let me set up and I’ll be there in the next five minutes or so.” 

“You sure? It’s fine if you don’t wanna, s’just a chill stream while we speed run and shit.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I promised and haven’t hung out with you guys in a while anyway.” Rising slowly from the couch, you stretched with a groan and headed to your bedroom to quickly change into something comfortable. 

“Alright, nice. I’ll tell the guys, see you then.” You hummed a bye and closed your phone. Slipping out of your dirty uniform and putting on something loose, you collapsed into your office chair and turned on your monitors. You weren’t in the greatest mood if you were being honest with yourself, but you would feel bad if you fell through with plans and didn’t want to disappoint anyone. You tried to force down any negative thoughts before entering the call.

“—eorge! What?!” Clay’s signature yell practically made your ears bleed when adjusting the headphones on your head. You were quick to turn down the volume. 

“What are you idiots up to now?” you asked, letting the boys know of your presence.

“Y/n! glad you finally decided to join us!” George remarked. You could hear the stupid grin on his face while loading up the game, and scowled at your screen as if he could see it. “Shut it, Gogy. I was busy and it slipped my mind.”

“Mhmmm, suuure. You totally weren’t ignoring us for the past hour or so.” The cheeky little bitch.

“Hey, just cause the girls you hit up don’t respond doesn’t mean every girl in the world is ignoring you!” 

You could hear Clay wheeze as George and you began your usual bickering. Wanting to entertain their streams, you tried to interact and talk with each of the boys as much as possible, but you felt the high of speaking with friends significantly drop as the night continued on. 

The events of the day and the sensitive thought of meeting expectations and your inability to do so were starting to creep onto you. Even your game play was off as you died the fifth time in a row within the first 3 minutes again; the growing frustration made you tear up and get more angry at yourself. Who sucks at a block game and starts crying about it?

You didn’t realize you had gone silent until Clay called your name. “Yeah, Dream?”

“I ended the stream a few minutes after George and Sap, no need.” Oh. You must’ve spaced out and not noticed. When did George and Sapnap end stream? 

Letting out a sigh, you responded, “my bad Clay, I wasn’t paying attention.” 

George began speaking. “You okay tonight, y/n? It’s been awhile since we last actually talked and you got pretty quiet at the end there. I thought you were afk at first but could hear your keyboard.”

“I’m good, just tired.” You struggled to make a smile, barely convincing yourself as is.

“I don’t know, even when you’re tired, you’re not dead silent and completely zone out.”

“Yeah, what’s up with you today? I know you said you were at work but it’s not like you to forget things completely.”

“Plus you weren’t really fighting back that last argument. I know I’m amazing at Minecraft but I didn’t expect you to—“ You let out a stuttered breath and choked back a sob at their words, the heavy weight of the day finally crashing on you. 

You could hear George try to apologize for something he could have done to upset you and swallowed your silent hiccups to respond. “Don’t, George. Please. Trust me when I say you didn’t do anything wrong.”

The call went silent before Clay spoke up. “Then what is wrong, y/n? You can’t tell us something isn’t bothering you, we just want to help.” Now that opened the floodgates. Your breathing became irregular as more tears came into view. If the boys were talking, you couldn’t hear anything they were saying. You felt awful for forcing them to listen to you cry your emotions out, but Sapnap was quick to softly console you when you pathetically began to repeat broken sorry’s.

Eventually your sobs became sniffs as you calmed yourself while listening to George tell you to breathe in and out. The call became relatively silent once more.

“I’m so sorr—”

“Y/n,” Clay firmly stated, “never say sorry for something that isn’t your fault. You’re okay, okay?” You sniffed and nodded to his words, replying with a soft okay.  

“What’s wrong, y/n?” George was more gentle then before, him trying his best to comfort you in comparison to his joking manner. 

“I— I’m just so tired. Tired of school, t—tired of work, tired of trying to keep up with everything. I feel like I can’t breathe and it hurts. A—and I can’t help but hate myself for not being able to keep up with my own responsibilities and shit. I just, why am I not good enough?” The pause of silence was deafening and you looked desperately at the boys’ icons for an answer before screwing your eyes shut. 

Clay was first to respond. “Y/n, I know that right now everything feels hard and stacked up against you, but please trust me when I say it gets better. I know you said it’s been hard to breathe but you have to let yourself. You shouldn’t hate yourself for not being able to keep up, it’s just a sign you need to step away and give yourself a break. You’re not alone, okay? I’m here, George is here, S—“

“I’m here,” Sapnap interrupted. Clay let out a murmured groan while George scolded him for talking. “Oh, uh, sorry…” You giggled slightly.

“What I’m sure Clay was trying to say before is, you have us to back you up, alright? Struggling to take on your own responsibilities isn’t something to feel alone in, everyone needs support and we’ll always be yours. You are good enough. You’re too good for your own good that you won’t let yourself see it.” They collectively chuckled at George’s words. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

You slowly nodded while still grasping everything they said, a warmth replacing the shuddered breaths as you exhaled. “I do, yeah.” You couldn’t help but feel touched by their attentiveness and genuinely smiled. “Thank you guys, for listening and calming me down. It means a lot.”

“Course, y/n.” Sapnap reassured. “We love you and all that shit.”

“I love you guys and all that shit too.”

[juniperhillpatient]

Care to share one or more of your takes you would consider controversial for atla.

Ooh this is tough cause I feel like I’m constantly sharing my ATLA opinions so they’re mostly known 😅

A rundown of bullet point takes that I won’t budge on & think are straightforward but see people debating constantly anyway 👁👁

The Boiling Rock Betrayal was well written & did make sense people just over complicate it. Mai & Ty Lee deserved more detailed examinations of their views in other instances but it’s extremely plain what happened in this instance: adrenaline fueled actions were taken in an emergency / life threatening situation. Mai & Ty Lee weren’t wrong to save lives (it also wasn’t planned? why & how do people think it was?) & Azula was sympathetic for being hurt after the betrayal (but she was still unequivocally the villain here)

We don’t know enough about Ursa from the show to truly know what her relationship with Azula was like, making multiple interpretations of the dynamic equally valid

This is less about the show itself (though the comics & the writers being insecure about their canon ship don’t help) & more the fandom but K.at.Aang vs. Z.utara arguments are some of the most obnoxious pointless arguments I’ve ever seen & the slander toward both Aang & Zuko from opposing sides is REALLY sad considering their friendship & character arcs are at the heart of the show. It’s a kid’s show y’all calm down you can want whichever cartoon characters you want to kiss it’s not that serious. These arguments also tend to frame Katara as a prize to be won rather than one of the most badass characters in her own right & it’s uncomfortable

Anti Zuko takes from Azula fans & anti Azula takes from Zuko fans are both equally embarrassingly hypocritical & ugly

Hm okay a lot of these have had to do with the Fire Nation characters, let’s mix it up. Sokka isn’t a super genius OR a dumbass. He’s someone who would get bad grades for not doing his homework cause it’s boring but he aces every test. He’d explain some complicated physics subject to you then eat pizza out of the garbage in front of you. This one might not be *that* controversial but I do feel like I see debates over his intelligence lol

Southern Raiders is a great episode & it’s not about shipping (I mean it *can* be but that’s not the main point) it’s about opposing ideologies. Katara not necessarily forgiving Yon Rha but also not killing him is an AMAZING Katara moment where she makes the best choice for HER. If you hate this episode cause of shipping discourse or bad takes or whatever you’re missing out on an excellent episode that finally explores the anger & grief Katara has over her mother’s death. I see so much discourse over this episode but I try to ignore it cause it’s one of my favorite episodes & I don’t want fandom bs to ruin that for me

I loved Jet & felt like there was a lot to explore in this kid who’s charming & manipulative because he had to become that way because of trauma & wanted to care for other kids. I loved his dynamic with Katara & later Zuko & seeing how he’d changed. I initially thought his death, while it made me sad, was narratively fair to drill home the brutality of war. But the vagueness & later jokey callback changed my mind. Can’t drill home brutality if you’re gonna write it like *that.*

Final take & this is about the fandom at large: we forget this is an early 2000s kid’s show. It was fantastic storytelling visually beautiful & we wouldn’t still be talking about it if the characters didn’t grip us. The endless discourse & debates over things that don’t matter are tiring & ultimately a waste of time & energy - so that’s my final unpopular atla take for the day 😄 (also I’m NOT claiming to be guiltless when it comes to partaking in these debates lol) (also this isn’t about *analysis* which is always fun I’m talking more about discourse over dumb shit like why iroh gave azula a doll)

Thanks for the ask!

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

I’m sorry, but can I just go on a little rant about the Louis, clouis, and the Clem comic...? 

I didn’t really talk about Louis in my overall review of the comic because I wanted that to be more contained to the content shown on the pages, Clementine’s relationship with AJ, and her as a character.... but the more I think about these comics and Louis, the more frustrated I become thinking about what Clementine abandoning everyone would do to him. 

[... okay it’s not little anymore since I guess I can never just do anything simple when it comes to Louis, sorry my bad]

So, no surprise, we all know the comic’s bullshit by now. Clementine leaving everything and everyone behind because she’s not happy is dumb, AJ just letting her go is dumb, and Clem going to the mountains on crutches and a peg leg to find this so-called happiness is dumb. 

Now that we’ve established it’s dumb, I wanna talk about Louis because I got a lot of built up feelings about how bullshit this storyline is with how Clementine would not only abandon AJ, but also abandon Louis. 

Because let me tell you..... his heart would be broken beyond repair and I need to talk about why.

Sigh.... so.... muh boy. 

Before he met Clementine, Louis was this laidback, irresponsible, but caring and musical person who kept his head down to avoid conflict and never looked at the future. He was the kind of person who took things one day at a time, saw survival as a day-to-day task, and said that the future doesn’t exist, there’s only today. You get the point, he was never too concerned with things because they always seemed to work out, and if they didn’t, then that sucks and that’s why we should appreciate every day while we have it. 

Louis is shown to be charismatic and friendly, he spends his free time playing piano and card games, but no one really takes him seriously. Not even Marlon, his best friend for 8+ years. While he doesn’t seem to be on bad terms with anyone [including Aasim, they just act like people who disagree with the other’s point of view and have had the same argument many times, but that doesn’t mean they hate each other, y’know?] he also doesn’t appear super close with anyone outside of Marlon and possibly Violet, but even then. 

Marlon’s shown to have little faith in him with the way he talks about if Louis will even show up to hunt. He has a controlling grip on Louis that’s prominent during the confrontation scene when he uses intimidation to try to convince Louis to not interfere. Oh, and there’s the fact that Marlon’s been lying to Louis for the past year about the twins and then continued to lie to his face about what really happened to Brody... which isn’t great when you consider how Louis was the only one who had blind faith in him as a leader and, according to Marlon, was the only one who couldn’t see how pathetic he always was. 

Violet, while having a few more nicer moments with him than Marlon, still invalidates him and his feelings several times throughout the first half of the game which makes me wonder how close they ever were, or at least if Violet ever considered him a close friend to begin with. And no, a small monologue in the dorms doesn’t make everything better or confirm they were brotp the whole time... especially when once they’re on the boat, Louis might as well not exist because Violet can’t be bothered to acknowledge what happened to him or inquire about how he’s doing. I guess she just didn’t have time react while standing in her cell for several unbothered minutes-- no wait, it’s she already reacted off screen. Right. Good writing is good.

What I’m getting at here is that even though Louis is surrounded by people who he genuinely cares about, there is an argument to be made that he’s a lonely person. Hell, he’s aware of his loneliness when he says that no one hears past his music and jokes. I mean, how many nights do you think he spent by himself playing the piano because no one wanted to hear it? Are they like Violet and crack jokes about how he doesn’t have actual talent? Probably, given that someone literally carved “you suck at playing” onto the side of the damn piano. 

Oh, and let’s touch on that backstory of his. Louis grew up wealthy with two parents who loved him and each other, and they gave him anything he wanted except singing lessons. Louis says he wanted to be a real musician. But I guess his father didn’t like that idea and told him no, with the [as Louis puts it] dumb dad lesson of, “You get to be happy, or you get to be rich, can’t be both.” ...which is interesting given that Louis and his family were stupid rich but also.... were they not happy? well, that doesn’t make sense because little Louis knew that if he broke up their marriage, they would be hurt. 

So yeah, Louis was so upset that his father continually refused to let him take singing lessons that he broke into the man’s credit cards and faked an affair, which led to his parents divorcing... and then he spit his father’s words back in his face. 

Then they dumped him at Ericson. And the walkers came. 

There’s so much to unpack from the story he tells that it could be it’s own analysis, but basically.... Louis is aware of why what he did was fucked up, and he carries it with him every day. 

He regrets what he did, chews himself out for being such a “vindictive fuckhead” [and the amount of force used in that line tells you a lot, like how it’s not the first time he’s chastised himself like this] and he admits that he doesn’t even know the person he’s talking about. Yet, he still sees himself as bad, saying that they [I assume the staff] told him and the other kids they’re bad people. I don’t doubt that Louis internalized that which played a huge role in the confidence and self-esteem issues he has during tfs. 

Anyway, I’ll come back to this later, but when you take that amount of guilt and regret, and mix it with the fact that they dropped him off at this school that was supposed to make him better.... then the walkers came and those teachers, staff, and headmaster? Gone. Left a bunch of kids to fend for themselves, with the exception of Ms. Martin [but given how she looks when we find her I doubt she lasted that long] and I cannot imagine how horrifying that was for all of them. The dead are up eating people, and if you die you become one of them... and the people you thought you could rely on just fucking left you to die at this school. 

Every kid in that school has trauma and abandonment issues from before and after the world went to shit, every last one, and Louis isn’t the exception here. Over the years, a lot of kids died and they’ve all seen horrible shit. They all knew they were never going to see their families again, and as far as we know, no one came to get their kids at the beginning. They had to find ways of coping while trying to survive, and all they had left was each other. 

Louis copes with music and games and jokes. He’s built up this persona where it seems like he’s unaffected by the comments the others make, that the death and suffering he’s gone through is in the past, that he is confident and open to those around him.

But then Clementine and AJ show up, and Louis grows close with both of them. They had immediate chemistry upon first meeting, he was the one who looked after AJ since it seems like everyone else saw him as a little terror, and he went out of his way to be kind and make them comfortable. 

When they go hunting with him, Louis and Clementine have a moment after taking care of the walker where they lower their guards a bit-- Louis gives her more in-depth reasons for his views of survival, and going off her expression, it gets to her and makes her think.... but they’ve know each other a day and he’s not quick to infodump his life story or let her in, so he cuts the conversation short.

Then we have the Marlon confrontation scene that I have gone over so many times in the past. I won’t dillydally with it too long but..... Clementine appeals to Louis, who curls in on himself because of the control Marlon has on him. He wants to help, and hell, he knows this is wrong but he’s so used to not getting involved that he gets defensive.... plus, he’s known Clementine for two days, and he’s known Marlon for 8+ years.... he wants to believe Marlon but you can tell he doesn’t want this, either. It takes Clementine talking to him to give him courage to stand between her and Marlon’s gun and it’s a lot.

AJ shoots Marlon and everything goes to shit, and Louis is a goddamn mess. His best friend was murderer right in front of him, so add that to the trauma list, and he’s overwhelmed with all these feelings that again.... they keep getting invalidated by Violet because “Marlon was a liar and murderer, therefore you shouldn’t feel bad about his death. Get over yourself, Louis, you can be such a shithead sometimes.” 

Oh yeah Vi, I guess he should care more about two people he’s known for a total of two days rather than for the safety of the people [including you] he’s grown up with and cared about for 8+ years.... makes sense. 

So yeah, little to no support during this time. Alone again. 

And just because I have to make this clear so no one gets a hair up their ass-- both Louis and Violet are wrong here. Kicking them out isn’t the solution, but neither is acting like AJ was right to commit murder just because it was Marlon.

 But plots gotta plot, so they get voted out and you can see that Louis is conflicted about the whole thing. He wants them gone, but at the same time, he knows what kicking them out means. You can see it on his face that he’s not okay with kicking them out. He’s hurting when he’s there in the dorms telling them how the vote went... he literally doesn’t know what else to do. He just knows that everything hurts, Clem and AJ caused it, and he wants the pain to stop. He even tries to justify it to himself by figuring that they’ve done this before so they’ll be fine. Not a great thing to say, Lou. 

Anyway, we know the story, Clem and AJ come back and Louis once again sees the consequences of acting out of pain.... AJ is shot because Louis was hurt and he made a bad decision that he’s gotta live with.... something that he’s done before, and this affirms to him that he’s bad. He wishes he could take it back, and goes as far as to admit that to Clementine during the archery scene. 

By the way, credit to him for his apology to her. It’s rare in these games that Clem gets a genuine apology from someone who hurt her and doesn’t turn around to repeat the hurtful behavior, y’know? Plus, I can think of plenty of characters who owed Clem an apology in the past or if they did apologize, it was half-assed. 

You can feel how conflicted he is with this whole thing-- learning who Marlon really was and what he did, feeling something for Clementine before everything went down and not knowing how to handle those feelings afterward, caring about AJ and understanding why he thought shooting was the best choice but still hurting that his friend is dead.... 

And the thing is.... Louis forgives her for so much, as she does him, and through all of that bullshit, they manage to develop that strong connection that turns romantic. Louis lets himself be fully vulnerable with her and is honest about his feelings, how she listened when no one else did and seeing him for more than just the persona he put on. 

This works on Clementine’s side, too. Clementine has been through her own fair share of bullshit-- trauma, abandonment, loss, injury, you name it. She’s made mistakes, done terrible things, and has been in enough groups to know that romance usually ends in heartbreak.... and yet, she’s willing to open herself up to Louis and admit she feels a lot for him. 

Is it a little rushed? Yep. Could it have been handled better? Of course, most things this season could’ve, but what we got was pretty good. 

So Clementine and Louis are romantically involved now, the raiders attack, and she saves him... and boy does Louis feel guilty about that one, too. He feels bad enough that he questions why she would pick him because he can’t fathom his life being worth saving over another’s. He doesn’t see himself as useful, and even though Clementine is literally his girlfriend at this point, his self-esteem is so all over the place that he can’t understand why she would have him at her side. 

And when Clementine tells him that he’s too important to her, he’s too baffled to even give a response. He looks at her in disbelief like he wasn’t expecting her to say that.  But this shows that at the beginning of their relationship, he still doubts himself, and through her working with him, he begins to build up that strength in himself. 

He becomes brave enough to share what got him sent to the school with her, and he plays Don’t Be Afraid for everyone at the party and like.... for once, everyone is listening to him. Really listening to him. They’re not talking shit about his musical skills, they’re not ignoring him or the feelings he’s putting into the song, they’re sitting there with him and I just..... if you watch him, you can see that his eyes get pretty glossy throughout the song. The moment meant something to everyone. 

There’s also the fact that Clementine asked him to come with her and AJ onto the boat, and to be the one in charge of the bomb... that’s a huge responsibly and he feels the pressure of that. He starts to panic a bit about if he can do it, because what if he fucks up? What if he gets them caught and makes everything worse? What if something happens to Clementine and he can’t do anything about it? 

She’s there to reassure him that she believes in him, and that he can do this. They’re going to get everyone back, and he needs to focus... then he asks her to slap him which why would you? that’s dumb, so Clementine smooches him instead and like.... he physically relaxes into her because he’s comfortable and trusts her in this situation. 

Also, he loves her and cares about this mission enough to cover himself and his fancy jacket in walker guts.... sure, he complains while doing so but how else is he gonna cope with rubbing rotten guts on himself to blend in with a herd of walkers? 

Skipping ahead so that we’re not here all day, I wanna talk about the walk back to the school because it’s one of the most important clouis moments in the game and a huge reason that solidifies why the comic is bullshit.

Louis went off on his own to go out and find them. He didn’t know where they would be, he just knew that he had to go out and find them after making sure everyone was okay back at the school because he couldn’t bare the thought that he had lost them. And the way the AJ gets so excited to see him? and the group hug??

At this point, Louis has grown so much as a character. With Clementine by his side to support him, he’s grown stronger and more reliable. Remember how he never thought about the future? Well, now he is because his relationship with Clementine has given him a reason to long for a future. He talks about building this imaginary house with her, one he knows they can’t physically build... but it’s his way of saying we can build a home together, that he wants a future with her and AJ and everyone else. It’s such a personal conversation that flows so easy between them. Louis is more comfortable talking to her about things from his past, which is something he didn’t want to do back in ep1. 

He confides in her how he’s feeling after he shot and killed Dorian, he tells her that having a home means protecting it and I just.... it’s so good, okay? And from Clementine’s side, you can feel how at ease she is with him, too. Just the way she smiles at him as they’re walking? like he’s the cutest thing and she’s so happy to have him with her? 

But then we gotta deal with Minerva’s crazy ass on the bridge and well, AJ shoots Tenn and Louis is having flashbacks to Marlon and it’s not great. That’s a whole thing, and he ends up separated from them while escaping.

We don’t get to see Louis’ reaction to Clementine getting bit and losing her leg since I guess that puts a damper on the overly happy ending. But, going off of what we know about him and what I’ve explained [which isn’t even all of it, this isn’t a full Louis character analysis. if it was, it would be much longer and in multiple parts... believe it or not, I’m trying to not make this too long and only sorta failing...] we can get an idea of how he would react. 

Um, to say he was upset is an understatement.

Because remember, he had no time to think and climbed over the fence, thinking he could get them to climb over and they could get away, but it didn’t work. He ended up leaving them in order to save himself since walkers were closing in on him.

But you know that he’d blame himself for the bite. A lot of, “if I had just stayed” and “I should’ve climbed back over, I should’ve stayed with you.” I’m sure there were points where it looked like Clem wouldn’t make it and I can’t imagine how much hurt he went through watching her suffer and heal from losing a leg like that. 

Not only that, but knowing that AJ was the one to do it? And him thinking about what Clem’s death would do to AJ after all this? There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Louis would take care of AJ if she died. He cares about AJ, and he loves Clementine, so he be there for both of them, even if he’s still hurting from Tenn’s death. 

However, Clementine didn’t die. She survived the bite and amputation, and when we flashforward, she and Louis are still happily together. Louis is right there next to her at dinner, and he’s the one to help her with her crutches. He’s there to go over future plans to meet the traveling caravan, and Clementine wants him to be the one to go. 

Oh, and Louis once again forgives AJ for shooting Tenn, claiming that he understands that AJ saw something that he couldn’t. Like with Marlon, he’s not happy Tenn’s dead but he can see why AJ did it to save his life. 

I just..... happy ending. Clementine and Louis are together and she’s truly happy to have found a home for her and AJ with him at Ericson. 

....But then the comic thought it would be fun to say “nah.” 

The comic isn’t canon, I’m still insulted that it would ever consider itself as such, but even so I can’t help but feel so frustrated about how this would destroy Louis. 

He finally found someone he would consider his best friend, not just his girlfriend. She saw past that funny man persona and he trusted her enough to let her past this wall he built around himself. He let himself become vulnerable around her, he named his song after her. Their initials are carved into his piano with a heart surrounding them. He loved her. 

Clementine left him feeling loved, something he probably hasn’t truly felt since he was a little boy with his parents before their divorce. She loved him even after hearing his past because she knew that wasn’t him anymore, and she helped him build the confidence he needed to step up. Because of Clementine, Louis wants to enjoy every day while also looking at the future. He isn’t lonely anymore, he has her and AJ. He’s truly happy.

So to tell me that Louis would wake up one morning only to have AJ tell him that Clementine’s gone, she’ been planning an escape without telling anyone because she wasn’t happy...? I’m sorry, but if you think that wouldn’t leave Louis absolutely devastated, then you know nothing about him as a character. 

This idea is just.... look, Louis is perceptive. That’s a big part of his character, he’s perceptive of those around him. If Clementine was showing signs of being unhappy or depression, he would see it. He would notice a change. He would be able to tell if something was off, and he would ask her about it. Louis is the type of person to ask you what you need. What can he do to help? What do you need to feel better? And if you don’t know, it’s okay, he’ll help you figure it out in any way possible. 

Plus, the comic suggests that there are times where she went off on her own but came back [probably doing her escape prep ugh] and you expect me to believe that Louis wouldn’t notice that or wonder what she’s doing? Wouldn’t sense that something’s going on? 

After she’s gone, he’s going to blame himself for not being enough. He couldn’t make her happy and he was a fool to think he ever could. AJ lost the only family he’s known since he was born because Louis couldn’t help her, couldn’t do anything to stop her from leaving. 

And for him to realize that she didn’t love him? Clementine, the girl he thought the world of because of how strong and confident and in-charge she was, because she saw him for who he was..... she left him, abandoned him... and she couldn’t even be bothered with a goodbye.... that says that she didn’t care all that much about him in the end.

You KNOW that he would think he had this coming, too. How could the universe allow him to fall in love and be happy with someone who loved him back after what he did to his parents? He would feel so heartbroken that he would see this as some sort of karma for breaking up his parents happy marriage as a kid years before he ever met Clementine and before the apocalypse.

I fucking can’t.... I don’t have the words to fully explain how much I hate this. Louis wouldn’t be okay afterward, and I doubt he’d ever fully recover. I wasn’t joking when I mentioned before that Louis would stop playing piano. How could he sit there and play when I he can see is their initials and remember the night she confessed to him? When he named his song after her? Clementine left and took the music with her because Louis wouldn’t have it in him... something that he used to cope would be ruined and that’s just.... it’s fucking awful. 

Not only that, but now he has AJ who I assume is hurting just as much [though the comics inaccurately assume he would just let Clem go sooo... yeah] and he would be the only one Louis would really talk to about it, but then again.... what if AJ doesn’t wanna talk about it? What if AJ starts to act out and things just become terrible and Louis is just too overwhelmed? 

I just.... UGH. That’s how I feel. UGH. 

Clementine from the comic? Not her. She would never fucking do this to Louis, AJ, or anyone else at Ericson, and you would know that if you played the tfs. 

Sigh.... sorry, I just needed to get this all out. I haven’t seen anyone talk about how Clem leaving would affect Louis and I’ve gotten some asks/come across some posts about Louis that have left me incredibly annoyed.... well, I was annoyed before because of the comics, so my annoyances with those things were only heightened. So yeah... I wanted to talk about Louis’ character in hopes of explaining why he would be so hurt if this comic was canon. 

Which it’s not. So it’s fine. 

How are we all feelin’ at this point, by the way? I know I’m not the only one still annoyed with the comic, so I hope y’all are doin’ okay. Hope you’re stayin’ chill and thinking about your faves to help cope with this mess hahaha

[unmeiokaemasu]

The morphs are humans, full stop: cliffnotes edition

ok I said I wanted to write a full mini-essay on this but I need to get this out of my system NOW and I don’t have time for even a half-assed analysis, so here’s a...quarter...assed....here’s some bullet points:

BASIC PREMISE: Nergal is an abusive parent/guardian who controls the morphs by making them feel powerless and/or gaslighting them.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN?: In this case, have full autonomy and regular human emotions. I think all the named morphs shown apply but I’ll get into it.

WAIT DOES THAT MEAN NERGAL’S GOD??: No, Nergal’s a Bad Parent. I know there’re a bunch of nameless morphs that get mowed down as fodder but this is obvs not a 1:1 allegory. Case and point, you mow down endless nameless morphs the same way you reap human bandits and frankly enemy soldiers in other FE games, or, like, other maps in this game. We’re all clear that we’re smart enough to play the game and go ahead and defeat the nameless enemies knowing that we’re not equivocating them with hypothetical real world human adversaries, yes? good. So yeah Nergal’s basically the bad dad to all the named morphs. Moving on.

Ephidel: So I have the least to say about this dipstick, but yeah, he’s just a sadist from all evidence. Takes pleasure in other’s suffering. He’s the simplest one, which is why we meet him first. Nergal keeps him around because he follows orders easily and doesn’t cause trouble. Also easy to dismiss in this thoughtdump. NEXT.

Boss morphs: I had a whole section on this and it actually got so dark that I decided to cut it. Basically any implications of beings who smile when they die is Not Good, and “they are zombies” is the best case scenario.

Denning: I’m ranking this on level of pathos, and imo while Ephidel ranks up there with any bandit boss that spits at you and tells you you’ll never win even as he dies, Denning is more sympathetic than that. Yes. Denning. And I think that’s on purpose. I think this was a deliberate move to show us a morph who was unable to express personality. And yet, when they die, the way the message fades out...I mean think about it. Nergal sent a living being to serve the purpose of like, a bot in your dms. They can’t say anything other than their predetermined message, and they can’t emote that we can see. I definitely think this is a commentary on Nergal’s attitude towards life, and not meant as a statement of “morphs feel nothing by default.”

Kishuna: Explicitly described as being very sad. And then, we see how Nergal treats them: all put-downs, all the time. There is a sense both that they feel like they are inadequate as a person, and that they feel earning Nergal’s favor will give them purpose, which is why they still work for him. Kishuna is explicitly here to make you realize that morphs feel things.

Sonia: Do I. Do I even need to tell you that Sonia feels emotions? Do I even need to describe her constant existential dread? The reason she shit-talks Limstella is that she knows she’s a morph, but, like Limstella, she’s been convinced (by Nergal, duh) that human lives are worth more than morph lives, so she keeps calling herself a human, and at the very least has convinced herself that as long as she has Nergal’s approval, she’s worth as much as a human. And I can get into all the icky implications of Nergal forcing her both into a relationship with a human man and to be a mother to a human child, but. I’ll save that for later. Yes, she’s an unequivocal villain. I think that is part of her personality. But she has a personality, part of it involves ruthlessness and a willingness to utilize other’s suffering for her own gain, and part of it is the constant terror that if she doesn’t prove herself worthy, she will be killed, or used as a tool until she is killed. It is both.

Limstella: ...so. well. I said I didn’t wanna write too much but I’ve already written a bit. Short story: taking all that into account...Limstella the most powerful and most loyal of Nergal’s minions. So they get constant assurance that they are fulfilling their purpose. That’s...pretty damn human, I think. That they would never challenge their position because they constantly get overwhelming validation for their actions. *sigh* I want to go into this more later, but...yeah that’s why their death quote fucks me up so much. They’re sad to die, but so is anyone else who’s told to die for a “great cause.” And uh. Their story is the most moving tragic tale in all of FE for me? Not that it’s an objective competition, it’s just...idk. Their story moved me. I wish it could have ended differently.

OK WELL that’s out of my system now. That’s...777 words, yeesh. I could probably write a 2500 word scree on this no problem, and that’s even before starting to do research and site real-world psychology.

Anyway, I’d love to hear other’s thoughts! To me all of this seemed like obvious authorial intent, but it was never explicitly spelled out, so I’m sure lots of people have different reads!

[raptorific]

i was raised by authoritarian fascists who mentally and emotionally abused me, isolated me, and controlled what i was allowed to consume. it took years of continuing to be traumatized by interacting with fiction that affirmed their behavior and told me that i deserved my abuse before i learned it wasn't normal.

so maybe saying people should bring their own judgements "from home" when interacting with media "beyond disney's ducktales" isn't the morally superior take you think it is. you are essentially blaming people for not being you, or having the same advantages you do. there is no allowance for people with learning disabilities in your stance either.

your experience is not universal. your knowledge and the circumstances by which you came into your knowledge is not universal. your ability to form your own opinions and think critically about media is not universal. some of us were denied those privileges in our formative years. try jumping down from your high horse and exercise some empathy once in a while.

Okay so like... a few things, right off the bat:

First, I’m sorry that happened to you! You didn’t deserve that, nor should people, nor should those stories, have told you that you deserved it. It sounds like those works of fiction made a point to spell out where they stood on the actions they depicted, if they affirmed your parents’ behavior and told you that you deserved your abuse. 

Otherwise, and I’m sure you’ll agree on this, the problem with the development of your moral compass was what was your parents told you and did to you, not the fact that there is such a thing as works of fiction that depict bad things like Fascism and Abuse without having characters look into a camera and say “this is wrong, do not try this at home.” Sometimes, in fact, works of fiction have things to say that can’t be covered by a story where bad behavior is always punished, especially since many stories seek to make the point that bad people often do bad things and get away with it, even though they shouldn’t. 

Should a story about a pedophile being caught and arrested, only to be let free on a legal technicality be discounted just because it doesn’t end with the pedophile being adequately punished for his crimes? Even though having the story end that way would defeat the purpose of the story itself, which is to illustrate how unfair it is that a sexual predator can walk free just because protocol wasn’t followed to the letter, which happens all the time in real life? Is “this doesn’t happen because good always triumphs over evil” which is an outright lie, a better lesson than “this does happen and it’s bad?”

I completely stand by my belief that adults engaging with fiction intended for adults should be able to form their own opinions and use their own moral compass to navigate those works without said works holding their hands and walking them through it. If they can’t do that, it doesn’t mean the work shouldn’t exist, only that it’s a bit too advanced for them, and if they want to navigate it, they should work on developing that skill rather than blaming the writer for making a story that’s too hard for them to comprehend. 

If, using Breaking Bad as an example, you watch a show about a man who abuses his wife, deals drugs, murders people, and you think it’s about what a hero he is for doing those things? Whether you got that opinion just because you don’t see the problem with meth and murder OR you got that opinion because you had terrible parents who left you unequipped to tell right from wrong, you should absolutely be expected to improve your ability to parse media before complaining that the writers didn’t go out of their way to avoid every possible reason why someone with a warped moral compass might misinterpret it. The problem isn’t that Breaking Bad shouldn’t exist, or that Breaking Bad should have to clearly and explicitly condemn each immoral act Walter does, rather than expecting adults watching a prestige television drama to have covered “Murder Is Wrong” at some point in their lives. The problem is with your moral compass, and that’s yours to solve, it’s not the job of every writer whose work you might decide to pick up to compensate for your inability (whatever its cause might be) to tell the difference between right and wrong. 

When I say “from home,” I don’t mean from your parents. I mean from yourself. I have to assume, having been through what you’ve been through, that if you (as an adult) saw someone in a movie acting the way your parents acted and did not say “child abuse is okay,” you would know what they were doing was wrong, even if the movie didn’t say “child abuse is wrong.” I understand that wasn’t always the case! But now, as an adult, you understand that child abuse is wrong, right? If you see child abuse happening in a work of fiction that does not say “it’s good that they’re doing this,” you understand that what the abuser is doing is bad? If so, congratulations, you are already following my advice. 

What really bothers me about this message, though, is that you’re asking me to disrespect a lot of people, including you. Those people who didn’t learn critical thinking, reading comprehension, and media literacy? I believe in their ability to gain those skills, and if they’re going to engage in media analysis, I expect them to try! I don’t think, as you seem to, that “the difference between right and wrong, and the ability to identify them in fiction” is too advanced for people with learning disabilities. Incidentally, you don’t actually know jack shit about what my academic experience was like, or what disorders I might or might not have, so like... I’d thank you to not try to use people with learning disabilities as a cudgel to shut people up when they say “if you’re going to tell writers how to do their job, you should probably make an effort to know how to read at the level on which they write.”

But why do you ask me to believe you’re unable to do this? I’m not going to disrespect you like that. I know you don’t think people with learning disabilities and people who grew up in abusive backgrounds are capable of developing their media literacy skills, personal moral compass, and reading comprehension, but I don’t have any such contempt for them. Believe it or not, I actually don’t think I’m superior to those people, morally or in any other way. I believe they’re fully capable of everything I’m capable of. 

You should be able to form your own opinions and think critically about media. If you aren’t able to do that, you should learn, and I know you can. You might believe that people are simply too stupid to ride the bike without the training wheels, but I don’t, so don’t put your hang-ups on me. Unlearn that shit.