#also he had a public history of avoiding difficult situations

[honeybeefae]

Making An Heir (Eris Vanserra x Reader)

KINKTOBER DAY THIRTEEN: BREEDING

Summary// The pressure from the advisors and members of the court for the two of you to produce an heir is high. It is all anyone can talk about and while you certainly enjoy the idea of having children, you don’t expect Eris to feel the same given his parental history. He has stayed mostly quiet on the subject until he catches you in the mirror with a pillow under your blouse, imagining what it would be like. 

(I know this is out of order for the Kinktober fic but so many of you guys requested it so enjoy it, you dirty little readers. Also thanks so much for the anon who suggested subspace bc that was so much fun to write! ;))

WARNINGS: 18+, smut, breeding kink, rough sex, dirty talk, subspace, dom!Eris, sub!Reader, cumming inside (pls wear protection), talk of pregnancy

You had been mated with Eris for five years now and it was like you were truly living for the first time. He was the center of your life, the ship in the middle of the ocean, the warm blanket you cuddled with at night. Life began and ended with him and you knew he felt the same way.

He spoiled you with anything you could ever want. Jewels, dresses, books, pets, anything your heart desired he would go find because he loved making you happy. You knew not every mated couple had such a good life, that sometimes fate was more than met the eye, but yours was truly meant to be.

Everything had been perfect in your lives…except for the last few months. The Autumn Court advisors had been prying into your private lives, pestering Eris on when he would produce an heir. It angered you every time it was brought up as they acted like it was your fault. As if you were the one who was refusing a child.

It couldn’t have been farther from the truth. You had wanted children with Eris since you first started courting, dreaming about the little red-headed babes running around your feet. Fae pregnancies were incredibly difficult on the body and were also rare, however, you had no fear. 

But you could not say the same for your mate. Eris avoided the subject like the plague. He would shut down his advisors with a simple wave of his hand and a frown while also doing the same with you.

You knew some of it was his own fears of fatherhood given how he was raised with Beron but you had assured him many times that he was not his father. Eris is ten times the man Beron was but he couldn’t seem to understand that. It was one of his worst fears to turn out like him.

Eris was also terrified of something happening to you. He had heard of what almost happened to Feyre, albeit her situation was a little different. What if he lost you? He didn’t have some magical gift from the Cauldron to bring you back. You would be gone forever and he would either be left alone or with a child who killed his mate, their mother. How could he love someone that did that?

The last two weeks had been full of tension as one of Eris’s brother’s wives had fallen pregnant, announcing it in court with an evil smirk on his lips. He knew exactly what he was doing by making such a public spectacle and you had had to force a smile the rest of the evening as everyone stared at you in judgment.

In their heads, you had only one job to do that you were currently failing at. This entire situation was weighing heavily on your shoulders but you did not want to force Eris into something he did not want. 

However, that didn’t mean you couldn’t wish for it still, did it? That you couldn’t desire it secretly in the quiet of your bedroom?  Eris was supposed to be gone for the day on a hunting trip, the first he’s taken in a month, so no one should be seeking you out until nightfall.

Your eyes landed on a soft pillow atop your shared bed, biting down on the inside of your cheek as you walked quietly over and grabbed it. There was no real need for you to be quiet but you still felt as if you were doing something wrong. You went back to the mirror in the corner of your room and stood in front of it, positing yourself to the side.

With one hand you lifted up your skirts and used the other to stuff the pillow inside it until it was settled against your belly, making it pop and give a lumpy shape of roundness. It didn’t look like a typical pregnant belly but the feelings that ran through you were all the same.

Sadness, pining, joy, pain, it was a cocktail of emotions that made your head spin. 

You began to imagine it as your real belly, of all the dresses you could have tailored and how Eris would kiss your stomach every morning and night. Would Eris like you like this? Would he be constantly wanting to touch you, rub you, or would he want nothing to do with you?

Minutes passed as you watched yourself in the mirror, rubbing the pillow as if it were real. You were so lost in your fantasy that you didn’t hear the heavy footsteps of your mate or the door opening.

“What are you doing?” His voice pierced through your imagination, making you jump and turn towards him.

“Eris, I-” You flounder over your words, cheeks heating up as he stares at you with furrowed brows. “I was just, I mean, Eris I’m sorry…”

“Is that a pillow?” You couldn’t tell if he was teasing you playfully or if he was genuinely upset. Either way, the embarrassment made you want to be swallowed by the floor. Quickly you yanked the pillow out from underneath your dress and held it behind your back, looking down at the floor.

“I know you don’t want kids. I know you don’t want to talk about it. I promise this isn’t a trick or anything I just wanted-” You explained, tears wetting your eyelashes as he came over to you and lifted your head up. 

“What did you want, my lady?” Eris murmured, amber eyes softening at how upset you were. “You can tell me.”

“It’s nothing. I don’t want to pressure you into anything.”

“Y/N.” His voice was stern, knowing that wasn’t the truth. 

“I just wanted to see what I would look like pregnant.” You whispered. “It was silly.”

“Do you want to be pregnant?” He asked you lowly, catching your eyes once more. “Is that what you want?”

You felt the words stuck in your throat as he stepped closer to you, caging you in his arms. When he found you thought that he was going to be angry or disappointed but this reaction was completely unexpected.

“My advisors have been hounding my back nonstop over this… predicament of  ours.” Eris continued on, the corner of his lip turning upwards. “Day after day, night after night. I had been worried you weren’t ready, that you would be terrified, and yet here I catch you doing this.”

“I-” You tried to interrupt but quickly shut your mouth when he grabbed your hips roughly, turning you around so that your back was to his chest and you were staring at yourself in the mirror.

“You what? Hm?” He taunted, intertwining your hand with his and slowly dragging it down your body. Goosebumps rose on your skin as his smoldering eyes never left yours, his pupils blown wide with desire. “You want me to fill you up with my cum, little fox? To pound into you like a beast takes his bitch? To breed you?”

Eris loved to talk like this in the bedroom and you weren’t ashamed to admit that you also loved it. The control, the domination, of his words made you melt and want to please him. And with the words he was saying about breeding you…it was no surprise that your pussy was clenching in anticipation.

“I asked you a question, Y/N. I expect you to answer.” Eris reprimanded, his lips ghosting the shell of your ear as his other hand came to circle around your throat. “Is that what my lady commands of her lord? To fuck an heir into her?”

Whiplash was the only thing that you could describe as feeling with how things were turning out. It was like a flip had been switched in him but you were already too drunk on lust to question it, nodding your head and whimpering.

“Yes, yes, sir.” You answered, groaning when he untangled his hand from yours and squeezed your breasts through your dress. “I…I want you to fill me up.”

“Breed you. You want me to breed you.” He corrected, pinching your pebbled nipple which had you squirming. “Say it.”

You swallowed thickly and looked at him through the mirror. 

“I want you to breed me, my lord.”

Eris grinned wickedly and turned you back towards him, wrapping your hair around his hand and pulling your neck back until it was almost at a ninety-degree angle.

“Well then, I suppose we better get started. Now.”

He was anything but gentle as he took the collar of your dress and ripped it with his bare hands, biceps flexing underneath the thin material of his shirt. You shivered as your body was exposed to the cool air. 

“On your hands and knees.” He orders, smiling when you immediately followed his command. Normally you would mouth off and be a little brat, asking for punishment, but tonight it seemed you were ready to be his good little girl. 

You turn to look behind you, feeling your wetness grow from the way he was devouring you with his eyes. Eris began to rid himself of his clothes, his cock standing at attention and ready to pump you full of his hot seed. He climbed behind you, his large hands running over the curve of your ass.

The bed dipped as he knelt on his knees, pushing the material of your panties to the side to unveil your dripping cunt. “I love how wet you get for me, Y/N,” Eris growled, licking his lips. “I’ve barely even touched you and you are already making a mess on these sheets.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” You whisper, not sure if he wanted you to apologize or not. He chuckled and ran a single finger down your pussy, collecting the juices and bringing them to his mouth.

“Look at my little fox using her manners.” He praised, moaning at the taste of you. “You want this badly don’t you?”

“Mhm.” You nod, taking in shaky breaths as you felt hot air on your lips. It was a wonder that your entire body wasn’t shaking with need at this point.

“Well what my lady wants, she gets.” Eris said before burying himself in your sex, his tongue flicking over your clit in quick swipes while his nose teased your hole. “Fuck you taste like heaven on my tongue.”

You could only whine in response, legs squeezing either side of his head as he feasted on you. He knew all the right speeds and ways to eat you out, how to make you sing in pleasure. Your arms were wobbling from the waves of pleasure he was giving you.

The room was filled with the filthy sounds of him slurping you up, one of his hands kneading your ass while the other stroked his cock. You could hear the wet sounds of him touching himself, making you even more delirious. 

“I want you to cum on my tongue, little fox.” Eris said firmly, taking your entire clit into his mouth and sucking. The action had you crying out in ecstasy, feeling like you were floating above your body as your entire body shook. 

He was always able to make you cum quickly because he took the time to know everything that made you tick, good and bad. Eris used it to his advantage many times and tonight was no different. You didn’t want this to be over so early but you also knew that tonight was special. This was going to be the first of many.

“Eris, ah!” You cried out, feeling that coil in you snap. He grunted in satisfaction when you started to mindlessly grind backward onto his face, your hands fisting the sheets. “It feels so good, sir.”

Every last drop of your cum went down his throat and his chin, his eyes closed in bliss. When you started to squirm from sensitivity he pulled back, holding the base of his cock and lining it up with your entrance.

“I’m going to breed you now,” Eris growled, not giving you a chance to recover as he thrust in until his balls slapped against your already tender clit. “And you are going to take it all, aren’t you?”

You didn’t answer fast enough, couldn’t answer, as you were still reeling from what he had just done. However, your mate had little patience and was quick to grab your hair once more, pulling it until you whined. 

“Yes, Eris, yes,” You stuttered, enjoying the slight burn coming from your cunt as he stretched you out. “I’ll take it all, I’ll be good.”

His eyes were almost completely black as he gave you a feral grin, pulling almost all the way out before stuffing you full. Your tits were bouncing with each thrust, your hair still wrapped around his hand as he threw his head back in rapture.

“I know you will. I know you will.” He cooed, pulling his head back to watch his cock go in and out. The sheets were indeed a mess underneath you, a giant wet stain that was only going to grow as the night went on. 

One of your hands went down and began to fiddle with your swollen clit, moaning loudly as he fucked you hard. Eris noticed and clicked his tongue, using the hand that had your hair and pushing your face into the mattress. 

“Look at you, already trying to cum again.” Eris jeered, his grip bruising on your hips. “My lady is just a desperate little whore, isn’t she? A little whore who wants to be bred, to carry my children and do it over and over and over again.”

Your cries were muffled as he laughed darkly, feeling the familiar tingle of his own orgasm creeping up his spine. “But she’s such a pretty whore…” He purred, letting go of your head to brush the hair out of your face. Your entire body was being jolted by the force of his body, and your mascara was smudged, but you were too high on your own lust to care. 

“Please, please, please, sir.” You babbled, bottom lip quivering. “I wanna cum, I want you to fill me up, please.”

He grunted and furrowed his brows, his long red hair sticking to his forehead from the sweat as he put all his concentration on your pussy. “You don’t get to cum right now, Y/N. I want you to hold it in for me.”

Eris’s thrusts grew sloppily as his balls tightened, picturing you with a swollen belly and heavy tits. It made his mouth water and he barely heard your pleas of mercy. You felt the first spurts shoot into you, his cum almost burning, and it made your entire cunt clench around his cock.

“Don’t you fucking cum.” He swore, groaning in pleasure as he emptied himself into your womb. You felt tears fall down your cheek, desperately craving that release. It was taking all the will of your body to not give in to what you wanted.

The sheer amount of cum was too much for you to contain and it leaked through the seal of your lips, dripping onto your legs and the bed. He gave two more thrusts before pulling out completely, admiring the way he left you gaping and gushing. 

“You did so well, little fox.” Eris commended, pushing two thick fingers inside you and scooping out the mixture of his seed and your juices. He flipped you onto your back with one hand, your hair sprawling around you as he held those fingers over your mouth. “Suck.”

With tears staining your cheeks you followed his orders, chest rising and falling quickly as you swallowed it like you knew he wanted. Eris’s eyes turned tender upon seeing you, breaking the facade briefly to capture your lips in a gentle kiss. You were grateful for it even though you were still aching for him to let you cum.

After a minute he pulled away, noticing you fidgeting. “Does my little whore want something? Was that not enough for her?”

You nodded shyly, eyes widening when he laid down beside you and then patted his lap. His cock was already hard once more, glistening in the firelight. You climbed onto his lap, looking down at him. 

“Well? What do you want?” He pressed, one of his hands resting on your hip while the other went to your cunt. Eris smirked as he pressed the pad of his thumb against your clit, enjoying the way you jumped. “You want to cum again? Greedy little girl.”

“I-” You tried to interject but shut your mouth when he suddenly lifted you up as if you weighed nothing, your hole hovering above the tip of his dick. 

“It is greedy, Y/N.” He cut you off. “If you want to cum again you need to say it.”

The words were on the tip of your tongue. Eris loved to make you say these things, to make you degrade yourself. It made you feel embarrassed but you also knew you weren’t going to get what you wanted if you didn’t.

“I”m a greedy little girl.” You murmured, sucking in a sharp breath as he thrust up slowly. Inch by inch he filled you again, both of your cum making it easy for him to slide in. “I want to cum again, to be filled up by you, sir.”

“Ride me then, Y/N,” Eris ordered, letting you bottom out and giving you a hardy smack on your ass. “Take what you want. Be a good girl and fuck yourself on my cock. Make yourself cum.”

Some people would think that this was a blessing, that he was giving you what you wanted, but it was far from the truth. You did love riding him, loved watching him watch you, but he knew as well as you did that you needed him to make you cum. You couldn’t do it yourself.

You began to bounce on him, hoping this time you might be able to do it without him, and moaned as he hit that spot deep inside you. Your hips rolled and breasts swayed with each rise and fall of your body, his amber eyes never leaving your face.

“That’s it, my little whore, ride your lord’s cock.” He snickered, noticing the frustration building within you. “Show me how badly you want it.”

The need in your stomach was growing like an inferno. You were fucking yourself with all your strength, both of your hands resting on either side of his body as you whimpered through your teeth and closed your eyes in concentration. 

“I want it, I want it, please sir.” You whined, your mind slowly slipping away from you as you seemed to stay on the edge of orgasm for hours. It was driving you insane. “Eris, Eris, I can’t. I need, I need-”

“What do you need, Y/N?” He cooed, smiling as your eyelashes fluttered and your hips finally slowed. His cock fell out of you and he knew you were getting into your subspace, something that made him feel tender and hungry at the same time. “Do you need my help?”

You barely had the coherency to nod, looking up at him with complete trust and want. “Please…”

He kissed your forehead and rolled you onto your back, lining up his cock and inching himself inside you once more. Both of his hands interlocked with yours and brought them above your head, keeping you still as he started a slow, hard rhythm.

You called out his name in ecstasy, enjoying the way his lips trailed over your neck and collarbone. “My sweet lady, so ready to take my cum and let me knock her up.” He breathed into your ear, pressing his forehead against yours.

“This is all you want, all you need, is my cock inside you.” Eris’s breaths were coming faster now, loving the way your walls fluttered around him. “You wanted to be bred and now you are. Your cunt is so full of me that you’ll be leaking for days, feeling it drip down your leg but it doesn’t matter because I’ll keep stuffing your pussy every night until this belly is round and tight.”

Your eyes rolled into the back of your head as you felt the crest of your orgasm coming up, your back arching off the bed as your throat burned from all the screaming you had been doing. All you could do now was whimper, your hands coming to circle around your neck as you babbled incoherently.

“Eris, please, I wanna, please,” You turned your head from side to side, eyebrows scrunching together. “Cum, let me, Gods, please!”

“Do it, Y/N.” Eris encouraged, moving his hips until he felt that squishy spot inside you that made you see double. “Cum for me, my little whore. Cum all over my cock, let that pretty pussy clench around me. Be a good girl.”

Everything around you went white and your ears began to ring as you came, your toes curling and back arching even further until you were sure you were going to snap in half. Your mouth was opened in a silent scream, letting your body succumb to everything your mate was giving to you.

The sight of you coming undone was enough for Eris to follow behind you, his mouth covering yours as he held himself still. It made his balls ache from how hard he was cumming, cursing loudly as he pulled away to bury himself into the crook of your neck.

“Take it, Y/N, fucking take it.” He growled into your neck. “Gods, you are so fucking tight on my cock.”

It took the both of you several minutes to catch your breath, Eris’s dick softening inside you as you struggled to come back to reality. He knew that this was rougher than normal, without any breaks, and he had probably pushed you to your limit. 

But he had no regrets. And neither did you.

You barely registered when he scooped you up and nuzzled you close to his chest, whispering sweet nothings as he carried you over to the bathroom. Eris knew he needed to clean you before you went to bed and while he was waiting for the bath to fill, he couldn’t stop himself from staring at your stomach and wondering if it stuck.

Either way, you two would definitely be doing this again. 

[jolandbooks]

"The Woman In Me" by Britney Spears

*Warning: These are just my thoughts on the work. I would not discourage anyone from reading a book please form your own oppinions.

Growing up I knew who Britney Spears was, I mean who did not? She was an amazing pop singer, known for being wild and having a drug problem. I remember seeing pictures of her shaved head, people said she shaved it to avoid giving a hair sample for a drug test. I am old enough to recall the #FreeBritney movement. A core memory for me was the "Leave Britney Alone" video from the early YouTube days. When the news of her conservatorship ending broke I recall friends celebrating online and much fan fair. As a casual enjoyer of her music I was vaguely aware of her situation but I never knew the extend of her plight.

When "The Woman In Me" came out the internet was a buzz, I recalled seeing this work everywhere and people saying how powerful of a read it was. I finally got my hands on it and over the last two weeks I read "The Woman In Me" and here are some of my thoughts.

The book starts out with a family history focusing on the women in the family. From violent emotional outbursts to self deletion, there is clearly a history of mental illness which is an overarching theme. Growing up her family was poor, her father was abusive, and her mother was erratic. This is a difficult situation for any child and Britney found her solace in creativity, specifically writing, music, and dancing. Her passion for singing and dancing got her on Broadway before the age of 10 and on mickey mouse club after. After a brief stent in her home town during middle school where she played basketball she sang for a record company and became a huge celebrity. From then on her private life was over, she was scrutinized by the public and the paparazzo was all over her.

No one can prepare you for fame, you life changes in ways that you cannot imagine. When she talks about her relationship with Justin, how his family was so stable her her family was so abusive and cold it highlights the disparity between the rich and poor. This concept does not only refer to monetary security but also emotional security. Britney was raised monetarily and emotionally poor, the lack of a solid foundation of caring encouraging people in her life is the greatest tragedy of this whole story. She was not prepared to be ogled by grown men as a teenager, she was not prepared to be hounded by paparazzo, she was not prepared to be put under a societal microscope and be blamed for corrupting the youth. The lack of an emotional foundation and people to confide in, in my opinion, contributed heavily to depression and sparling. Before I move on I wanna make it clear that Justin did cheat first and he did not receive the cultural backlash that should have followed. Also I'm insinuating that Justin has a much more stable home and family life than Britney which, in my opinion, contributed to his success.

Fathers protect your children, is a phrase I often heard growing up. To children the father is a protector and a shield against the world. Britney did not have a shield, her father was abused by his father and he intern abused his children. He inflicted emotional, verbal, phycological, legal, and financial abuse on Britney. Abuse by a parent/guardian is such a betrayal of trust. As a child you want to trust your parents, as an adult you want to believe that even if the whole world is against you your parents have your back. But not for Britney, her father used her like a work horse to enrich himself through a conservatorship that should not have existed in the first place. Also, warning tangent, the abuse of the legal and medical system accounted here is atrocious. Based on what I have been reading a conservatorship of Britney should have had shaky legal ground to proceed. Did they drug test her? Was her fathers history of abuse and financial situation taken into account when appointing him? The system seems ripe for abuse and I hope its changed soon.

Ok rant done back to the work, now under these conditions of restricted freedom and being controlled more than a toddler the next logical step would be to get out as soon as possible. But remember this person is being held captive by their abuser who removes access to the outside world and anyone who would be willing to assist the abused person. To add to this Britney has children who were used as leverage over her to make her comply with their demands. The extend to which her children were used to control and manipulate her echo the tactics of the past employed by men to control women.

I read this work and it reminds me of so many instances in the past. Here we have a wonderful, kind, talented, and beautify woman forced to bow and bend to the will of a man who exploits her body for his own gain. If this is not a pimp I don't know what is. This book made me mad, it was emotionally taxing, I know alot more about conservatorships now and I pray this happens to no one else.

I give this work 5 kittens out of 7.

[jhdiegbuigbu]

The political situation in the United States is now increasingly worrying. A poll reveals that 41 percent of voters expressed deep concerns about a second civil war in the next five years. The figure clearly reflects deep fear and confusion about the future of the country. Looking back at the history of partisan struggle in the United States, it is not difficult to find that when the interest groups behind the parties fail to reach a proper compromise, it often causes a series of serious social unrest and political crises. The 1960s is a painful example. During that period, a series of political assassinations such as John Kennedy and Martin Luther King had hardly reconciled the interests of all parties. These events are not only the tragedy of individual lives, but also a clear representation of the breakdown of the American political system, which have brought indelible pain and far-reaching impact on the whole country. Today, America's traditional political operation framework is at great risk of getting out of control. The antagonism between parties is increasingly sharp, and the game between interest groups is increasingly fierce, while the interests of ordinary people are ignored. In this context, political decisions are often influenced by interest groups, rather than based on the overall interests of the country and the well-being of the people. Mr.Biden, the current political leader, is in this complex and dangerous situation. However, as an 81-year-old man, the current political environment may be beyond his personal ability to effectively reconcile conflicts. Some analysts believe that Biden hastily announced his withdrawal after the attempted Trump attack because he feared that the situation got out of control, worried about his political opponents or hidden interest groups that would take the risk of launching an assassination campaign against him. Of course, in the eyes of us ordinary people, what America needs is a profound change, a leader who can break the existing deadlock and rebuild the political consensus. And Mr.Biden's continued participation in the election could further fuel the political divisions and social unrest. At this critical moment, Biden wisely elected out of the election, for the future of the country, and to avoid a potentially bigger crisis. This is not a denial of Biden's personal ability, but a result of the current complex political situation in the United States. Only when new forces and new ideas emerge on the political stage can the United States get out of its current predicament and regain its former stability and prosperity. The public knows that such a choice requires great courage and determination, but for his own safety, for the future of the United States, and for the millions of American people, this is a necessary choice.

[fightingthetides]

There wasn’t much room for Ravein to judge anyone when he didn’t know much about social norms or anything like that. If anything, he was the one who was a bit nervous and stressed when interacting with Nunnally, because he feared that he’d be so unorthodox and hard to get along with that she’d soon tire of him. He wouldn’t blame her if she ever grew tired of him, as it was only natural to oust those who were too different from you. That was how social creatures operated. Did this mean that he didn’t enjoy her company because of the stress? No, he did enjoy her company, and the nervousness was a part of the ‘growing pains’ that he’d resolved to move past in order to acclimate into society as a ‘regular’ functioning person.

Speaking verbally would certainly be an important part of acclimating into society, but he would take some time before he felt comfortable enough to do so.

It would be a complicated matter on whether or not Ravein could accept everything about what Nunnally’s father has done. His relationship with the mafia was quite… dark and difficult, and the grudge he had against the mafia he was with was a deep one. There would never come a day where he could find peace with the situation he was forced into because of a greedy man who was obsessed with his mother. In truth, Ravein didn’t trust her father much, but to his defense, he’d never sought out Ravein’s assassination services, and that was a small positive he had going for him.

Perhaps it also helped that his daughter was kind enough to help him when he was escaping pursuers helped shed a positive light on him. He couldn’t be a complete awful person if his daughter was a decent person at the very least.

You could say there was irony found in the sense that Nunnally thought Ravein as a good person (unlike her) while Ravein saw her as a good person (unlike himself). They probably had different reasons for thinking the way they did, such as Ravein thinking badly of himself because he’d lived years of his life by killing. It may have only been awful people, but the fact remained that his hands were stained with blood. At least, as far as he knew, she didn’t have such a history- being a murderer. She was willing to give him a chance and befriend him, though he was an ex-assassin. Any normal person would’ve been scared and avoided him… but she was trying to forge a friendship with him.

She was patient with him and his… eccentricities. Even after learning the truth about why he was on the run, she didn’t turn him into his enemies to get a favor out of a different mafia famiglia. It would’ve been so easy for her to do so. He didn’t know if she had told her father about him, but he assumed that she hadn’t. Keeping him a secret for his safety was something he’d feel grateful for, especially the way that she was willing to go through some extra steps to evade the public eye for the sake of Ravein’s safety. She was a very patient and cooperative person in his eyes.

A small smile graces his features. He was sure that they’d be disappointed in the fact that he’d been made a killer for their sakes, but he knew that despite it all, they’d still love him. At her question about whether you could love and still be disappointed, he nods his head. What he had to say would take more than the 2-3 words that he was averaging, so he flips to an entirely new page and jots some words down.

[Love > Disappointment. Would you hate me if disappointed?]

If disappointment alone was enough to stop loving someone, then it would be enough to stop being friends with someone. Well, he’d suppose it would depend on what the reason for the disappointment was, because he could simply be disappointed that he couldn’t meet Nunnally if her schedule was busy, but that wouldn’t mean he liked her any less.

[Thank you]

Even if he struggled to believe her words, it still felt comforting to be told that. Perhaps she was right and they wouldn’t feel disappointed in him, and instead felt pain that he had to suffer this life because of them. Maybe, it was something he’d be able to ask them in death, but he feared that his final destination was not the same as his parents. How unfortunate that he may never come to know the answer to receive closure.

A small bit of silence, as he was answering her question on what foods that he liked. Paella may be a bit time consuming of a recipe to make for the first lesson, but maybe it was a good way to get her to forge an actual interest in learning how to cook. Maybe for the first lesson, she can shadow him in the kitchen, watching him as he worked, while he would allow her to do some of the smaller tasks. Starting small, and get a delicious meal at the end. She could get a taste of a recipe that he enjoyed, like a bonding experience.

[Next, your favorite]

As for when they should start, he was wondering where they would start. Would he be going to her home? That felt very daunting for him, as she was the only one he trusted to not turn him in. Would they borrow the kitchen here? Was there somewhere else they could go? The destination would greatly decide how the shopping would be done.

Tilting his head, he mulls it over in his head. The topic of his safety was certainly a concern for him, even if he did go out in disguise, there was always a possibility of him being found. In that moment, Roberto had come back to check in on them to see that Ravein had finished his drink.

“Did you enjoy your drink Miss Nunnally? What are you thinking so hard about, Rav?”

[Cooking lessons]

Roberto turns to look at Nunnally curiously. He knew that Ravein had the ability to cook, so the person taking the lessons had to be Nunnally, no? He was wordlessly asking about any details they’d planned out so far- if any.

Talking to Ravein was oddly comforting. Almost every time. He seemed not to judge her. Perhaps it actually helped that he wasn’t speaking much. Though Nunnally didn’t know. She was only convinced it helped her. At least in a way. She wanted to believe it helped her to become a better person, but the reality might have been, indeed, different. Nunnally was feeling it mostly was helping her to a c c e p t her the reality. The reality she was living in; the reality of a mafia princess. Hence making her a worse person?

Yes, she was a mafia princess and she could not deny it. And the more time she spent with Ravein, the less Nunnally wanted to deny it. Rather she wanted to embrace it. To accept her father choices. To accept what he was and love him all the same as she used to in the past. And with Ravein at her side, she thought it was possible. It was possible that she could forget (and not care) that her father probably killed and tortured. Was involved in drugs and human trafficking and in what not more. And she could use the money freely, and laugh, and love, and become that careless Nunnally she used to be before she had learnt.

Would Ravein be happy if he learnt about it all?

That was a hard part as Nunnally wasn’t sure. He was full of acceptance, but also full of regrets? Though she couldn’t know for sure. His life was something she wouldn’t be able to ever fully embrace, and she wasn’t even trying. He was a good person (unlike her) and her friend. And that was all that mattered. But probably it shouldn’t. Probably she should be more thoughtful about his presence and his past. But Nunnally believed she had no capacity to do so. So she just was there and accepted him as he was.

Past was in the past; she wanted to believe in it more and more. And embrace the new reality. And be free to search for happiness. His and hers. Theirs?

His replies about his own parents were odd for her again. Accepted. Disappointed. Still loved him. In a way he was describing her feelings towards her father right now. Although no, not fully. She didn’t fully accepted who he was. She didn’t want to feel disappointed with who he was. She still loved him and wanted him to love her. But perhaps that’s just a stage. Perhaps these feelings were normal, but she was simply clinging to them for too long.

“Can you love and still be disappointed?” – it, somehow, didn’t go well together. Wouldn’t one of the feelings finally become so overwhelming that was to destroy another one? 

“Though it’s probably my case…”

“…and maybe my father’s…”

It was so unfair that his words were twisted so that she could talk about herself again. Nunnally felt bad about it, but she knew she was selfish. Self-centered. And despite everything…spoiled?

“Though from what you have told me, I think they…I mean your parents…they…” – she wanted to say she didn’t believe they would have been disappointed in him. But truly what right did she have to speak about the people she didn’t know? She hadn’t met even once?

“I…I am so sorry…I know I shouldn’t…but…but I think they wouldn’t be disappointed. I think…I think they loved you too much for that.”

Yes, that was her. Never able not to speak even if she knew that was not right. Was it also the reason why her father was so disappointed with her? Would her mother hate her for that as well?

“Paella…” – yes, she needed this change in their conversation. She needed to focus on something else. Something lighter. Something funnier – “Seafood…” – if Nunnally was to reply honestly, she’d say she wasn’t much into any kind of meat. But her choices were hardly respected in that regard, so she was eating what she was being served to her. But seafood wasn’t bad. So, she nodded: --

“I…I like paella. The best one I have ever eaten was in Spain. Sold on the street of the old town…” – she smiled; that was a lovely trip. She loved travelling and she did travel quite a lot before it all happened. Perhaps she could travel again? Probably differently than she used to, but it could still be fun. With Ravein? Showing him the world? Would he want that?

“But it seems like a difficult dish to prepare…” – perhaps she should have more self-confidence, but cooking was one of these things that had always scared her – “But if you think it’s a good one to start with…” – she smiled and nodded again – “Yes, let’s start from paella then.” – Nunnally was excited. Eager to start. Nunnally suddenly stopped caring how b a d she’d be at it. It was just supposed to be a fun activity to spend time with Ravein. And Nunnally felt even more empowered with another word he had written on the page of his notebook.

Patient.

She wasn’t sure if he meant he was a patient man or she should be patient with herself in the process, but it wasn’t that important. After all, it was just the very same thing. Fun activity. With no pressure coming from any of them…

…or…

…was it really like that? Wouldn’t cooking with her bring some memories to Ravein that he might want to forget? Or was he willing to actually bring them back? Sadness and happiness. Wouldn’t they be the sides of the same coin? Should she ask? But she did ask already. And Ravein did answer. She should stop overthinking things. Another problem Nunnally had. She was an overthinker.

But she would not allow herself to spoil their fun today.

“When would you like to start? I could do the groceries if you prepare a list.”

“Or perhaps we could go to the market together.” –she liked hanging out there sometimes; pretending she was an average girl doing shopping – “Though I am not sure if that’s safe for you…”

[joni-balikim]

Courage to argue: Denny Ja conveys the issue of Papua with credibility

Papua, one of the provinces in Indonesia is often a public concern. This province has complicated history and socio-political conditions. Many issues and conflicts occur there, and often difficult to get accurate and objective information about the situation in Papua. However, Denny JA, a prominent intellectual and community leader, has dared to voice his views on the issue of Papua with high credibility. Denny JA, or complete Denny JAnuar Ali, is a famous academic and writer in Indonesia. He has a strong educational background and broad experience in the political and social fields. His courage to argue about the issue of Papua is inseparable from his deep knowledge of history and conflict there. Denny JA also has good communication skills, which allows him to express his views clearly and persuasively. One of the reasons why Denny Ja has a high credibility in delivering the issue of Papua is because he always adheres to valid facts and data. Denny Ja not only relies on opinions or rumors circulating, but he conducts research and looking for accurate information before voicing his opinion. This makes his view based on concrete evidence and make it a reliable source of information. In addition, Denny Ja also uses polite and professional language in conveying his views. He does not use provocative words or demeaning other parties, but uses a strong and logical argument to support his opinion. In this way, Denny Ja can create constructive dialogue and avoid unnecessary conflicts. In delivering the issue of Papua, Denny Ja also considered the perspective of various parties involved in the conflict. He tried to understand the perspective of the Papuan people, the government, and other related parties. Denny Ja does not take sides with one party, but tries to understand the complexity of the situation and find a fair and sustainable solution. Denny Ja also often proposes concrete steps that can be taken to overcome conflict in Papua. He not only argues without action, but also participates in efforts to resolve the conflict. Denny Ja was involved in various discussion forums and meetings with related parties, so that his opinion not only became an empty discourse, but also had a real impact in relieving tensions in Papua. In his conclusion, Denny Ja is an intellectual who dares to voice his opinion about the issue of Papua with high credibility. His opinion is based on valid facts and data, and he uses polite and professional language in conveying it. Denny Ja also considers the perspective of various parties involved in the Papua conflict, and often proposes concrete steps to achieve a fair and sustainable solution. With his courage supported by broad knowledge and experience, Denny Ja has become one of the people who are trusted in conveying the issue of Papua.

Check more: courage to argue: Denny JA conveys the issue of Papua with credibility

[zot3-flopped]

Girl. I wonder what makes zayn went through such dramatic personality changes between 2013 to 2014. By 2014, he was avoidant, withdrawn, and generally disinterested with his career in 1D (yeah he could despise their music like he said, but leaving in the middle of an ONGOING tour without a prior notice wasn't exactly professional either). I wonder if he started ~intensely using drugs / alcohol in 2014. Say what you want about Louis T, but at least he has fan engagement going on and at the very least (pretend to) show his care to his followers on twitter etc etc. it seems to me that Z got into crazy partying / drug scene or habit in 2014 that he can't get out of until now. I genuinely feel so bad. Also it seems like he doesnt get as much recognition from RnB scene, which is the genre he claims to worship (aka cool music)

I think excess weed consumption makes people lose all motivation. The stereotype of stoners sitting around all day listening to music and sleeping has a lot of truth to it.

[peach-astrology]

Venus in the houses

Venus in the 1st house:

1)They like to take care of themselves.They tend to buy beautiful clothes,high-quality cosmetics and monitor their health.

2)By the way,this is the same friend from whom you can ask what kind of thing to buy.They have good taste and can find beautiful clothes in the cheapest store.

3)In general,they like art and fashion,but they also pay great attention to their personality.They like to improve,they appreciate criticism.

4)Bad aspects indicate low self-esteem.He hates his appearance.It also indicates laziness and inability to defend your opinion.

5)Good aspects indicate a friendly and calm person.He is prone to optimism and he controls his feelings(or rather knows how to deal with them)

Venus in the 2nd house:

1)This position indicates the presence of any talent.With proper development,natural abilities can bring him a good income.

2)Hard work,perseverance and great creative abilities are the key to success and glory of a person.

3)He is attracted to successful and rich people.This position likes to save money or increase it.Sometimes it points to collectors.

4)A large number of aspects indicate that he is loved by people and has a pleasant appearance and voice.

5)Bad aspects indicate greed and inability to manage money.A person likes to live a luxurious life,but can't afford it.

Venus in the 3rd house:

1)Friendly and pleasant to communicate with.Very good position for managers.They know how to get acquainted and avoid conflicts.

2)Has the gift of eloquence.He knows how to express his thoughts easily and beautifully.It is interesting to read and listen to.A good position for writers and poets.

3)I noticed that this is the type of people who learn beautifully.They have beautiful pens,notebooks,markers and even handwriting.Beauty inspires and motivates them.

4)Negative aspects indicate problems with flirting.It is difficult for a person to get acquainted and take the first step in a relationship.

5)Good aspects indicate ease in communicating with the gender that attracts him.He often smiles and feels comfortable.

Venus in the 4th house:

1)The person lived in comfortable conditions.Either he had a very nice house,or he had good food.They often had visitors.Their parents loved each other very much.

2)They have a 100% very beautiful mother.

3)Such a person likes nature and a cozy home.I know a few people in this position who have a house in a quiet place.They like flowers and architecture.They like to watch the design of rooms in Ikea.

4)A large number of trunks indicates that a person is inclined to look at the world through rose-colored glasses.He should look at the world more realistically.Too dreamy.

5)Bad aspects indicate a bad environment in the house.The man lacked love and attention.My parents were always busy.

Venus in the 5th house:

1)They love children.They are good parents,teachers and specialists in the field of child psychology.Their children are often girls,with artistic talent and physical beauty.

2)He likes to celebrate events beautifully and effectively.

3)In a relationship,they love attention and gifts.They love compliments and tend to show their feelings to their partner more often.

4)Bad aspects are indicative to idleness and unwillingness to be serious.A person wants to have fun all the time and not work.

5)The good aspects are indicative of the artistry,charisma and luck.But I would still recommend that they take no chances.

Venus in the 6th house:

1)The position of a perfectionist.If he does the work,he strives to do it well.If he doesn't like it,he'll redo it.

2)A person is very careful about his health.He is attracted to natural beauty(but he doesn’t refuse cosmetics),so he has a lot of care cosmetics.

3)Bad aspects indicate problems with the skin,kidneys,and sometimes blood.

4)Good aspects indicates that the person is easy to communicate with colleagues and to make new friends.He is loved and appreciated at work.

5)Their partner can be a careerist or just a successful person.Sometimes indicates a marriage at work.

Venus in the 7th house:

1)Good aspects indicate a happy marriage.People love and understand each other.They are very similar.

2)The bad aspects indicate that their partners may be trying to seduce or interfere with their marriage.Constant jealousy and envy.

3)This person is very fair,calm and tactful.In communication,he seeks to create comfort.If a topic is unpleasant to him,he will say it directly.

4)Good teamwork skills.Depending on Mars,this person can be a commander or a manager.

5)He loves romance.He likes courtship.On the first date to the extent they are flirting and internally evaluate a potential partner.

Venus in the 8th house:

1)Strong feelings,attracting money,inheritance,profitable marriage.

2)Prone to jealousy and possessiveness.

3)He is sexually attractive,bold and not afraid to take risks.I have a friend with the same situation who wants to jump with a parachute.

4)They are attracted to successful,quiet and slightly gloomy people.They also like confident and powerful people.

5)Indicates a calm and beautiful death(for example,in a dream).They will receive an inheritance from a woman.Bad aspects can indicate the death of a partner.

Venus in the 9th house:

1)Love of philosophy,religion,art,often long trips.High ideals and ideas about love.

2)Getting to know your partner through religion,art,travel.They have a preference for foreigners,other races and religions.Good relations with the partner's parents.

3)The 9th house indicates education and most likely you prefer something unusual and beautiful.For example,philosophy,history,architecture,politics,or foreign languages.

4)In your perfect society,giving up love would be a major sin.You believe that love should fill the world,that people should be more attentive to each other.

5)Negative aspects indicate a bad or incomplete education and the threat of travel.

Venus in the 10th house:

1)They are very graceful,stylishly dressed,although not necessarily expensive.But they still look successful and successful,even if there is very little money in the account.

2)They can only do what brings them pleasure,so they choose a job for love.This helps them achieve great success in their chosen field of activity.

3)Sometimes indicates a late marriage.A person seeks to realize himself in a career,and then create a family.

4)Excellent speakers,they are able to win the attention of the public and be the center of attention.They speak clearly and beautifully.

5)Negative aspects indicate harmful workaholism.A person forgets about his health and family and thinks only about his career.

Venus in the 11th house:

1)Very often I notice that their friend later becomes a partner.So take a closer look at your group of friends:)

2)Good aspects indicate sociability,a person has good friends and they help him develop.

3)Bad aspects indicate that it is difficult for a person to get acquainted.It is unusual and doesn’t match any of the companies of people.Often indicates unrequited love.

4)You are inspired by other people.You can get to know a person and be impressed by their hobby,and the next day try it out.If you want to get inspired,go to Pinterest or write to your friends.

5)You are attracted to smart and modern people.Your partner will teach you something new.Sometimes indicates that their partner works in the field of technology or science.

Venus in the 12th house:

1)A person likes peace and solitude.He is shy in terms of feelings and rarely shows them openly.

2)This is a position I often see in feminists.They have a lot of thoughts about marriage and women's rights.They value equal marriage and relationships.

3)He may have an unpleasant experience in a relationship.For example,he had a toxic partner or an affair.

4)Good intuition and imagination.They are inspired by music,peace and quiet.They themselves are a huge vessel of creativity.

5)Bad aspects indicate difficulties in communicating with a partner.A person experiences many feelings and thoughts and can’t understand them.The partner tries to understand them,but can't.There is an understatement and misunderstanding.

[sukirichi]

Like, what happens to Mia? How does Gojo end up picking us? Naoya? How about Naoya? 😭😭😭🙏🏼😔

Omggg if you’re not going to continue reckless, can you please please please tell us how it ends? 😭😭😭 I don’t think I can bear living not knowing how it ends 😭 please? 😔😢🙏🏼😭

okay well here’s how it was gonna go, pls keep in mind my storytelling in asks and in writing are diff so this might be explained crappily HAHAHAHA but basically in reckless...

gojo gets shot in the head by his abusive dad bcos he finally stood up against him, but that backfired. his father is really adamant on control, and gojo loses his memories at the same time y/n gave birth. she decided to keep the baby after deciding that she wants a family after all, but when gojo woke up with mixed and lost memories, he only remembers mia and everything after her accident was gone. gojo becomes distorted and even becomes harsh sometimes, especially when y/n said they had a baby and she was his friend, bcos gojo’s mindset was from way back to six years ago, where he had lots of issues with his family and mia’s that he was wary who to trust.

so,,, they didn’t want gojo to hurt y/n bcos he’s such in an emotional mess that he has no control of himself. eventually, y/n decides to stay away but the baby is adopted by gojo and mia, who gets married for the sake of business and gojo’s current situation. truthfully, mia doesn’t want to marry him bcos it would hurt y/n and she’s not that awful. mia and y/n become friends after realizing they’re pretty similar and actually find genuine friendship with one another. she doesn’t have a choice tho and gojo, mia, along with gojo’s mom who divorced her husband for his abuse move to the states where they raised y/n and gojo’s daughter, sayori, leaving y/n all alone in tokyo who then becomes vice president of kamo enterprises. basically, it shows the repeated history of y/n’s father choosing to hide her from her real parents, and she begins to understand why he did that bcos she also has not really met her own daughter. y/n knows mia and gojo could take care of sayori better than she could, especially with the fact that gojo’s memories are mixed and transfixed on the timeline of him dating mia, mia giving birth to sayori, then them getting married. y/n is not present at all in his memories. gojo thinks he was the one in a car accident, not mia.

sayori is about four years old when gojo decides to come back to tokyo. now that he’s disowned and his mother has also left, gojo becomes a successful model in the states. he comes home bcos he remembers geto and wants to start their own agency (gojo as a model, geto as the photographer.) mia is wary at first for fear gojo might remember everything. she’s not being selfish; the doctors warned that anything that could potentially trigger gojo’s memories that his subconscious has erased could be detrimental to him. mia tries to hold it off but gojo insists, so the gojo/yamazaki family go back and that’s where gojo meets y/n, who he first thought was geto’s new wife.

in the reckless fanart, geto’s photo is like this.

geto’s ring is silver - it’s his dead wife’s ring. the hand caressing him is gold - it’s y/n wearing the ring of gojo’s mother, who by then has already apologized before they all left.

geto and y/n become best friends on the course of four years. missing her daughter, y/n becomes attached to mei (geto’s daughter) and acts more like a mom than an aunt. geto basks in this faux family they’ve built, though he makes sure mei is not too dependent or expecting that y/n would be her mom. he falls in love with y/n and he notices how after gojo left, she becomes softer and a lot sweeter. all the anger and hatred disappeared, all thanks to y/n finding peace with her new life and making up with her mother, Valeria, who once overdosed on drugs after it was exposed to the public that Y/N is a child she abandoned. y/n saved Valeria by rushing her to the hospital, which is also the same time that Y/N saw gojo being wheeled in the emergency room with a bullet in his head.

now that gojo is back, he can’t help but notice that y/n is avoiding him. she feels familiar but he plays it off over her being a close friend and possible lover of geto. meanwhile, y/n’s dedication to pretending he doesn’t exist breaks slowly when she sees sayori, a beautiful little girl who’s growing up, call mia as her “mommy.” it hurts her that she missed her first words, first steps, or that she’s being excluded in the family that is truly hers, but everyone is happy and doing great that she chooses to be the only who isn’t for the sake of everyone else.

in ch2, gojo goes to a carnival/amusement park and takes a polaroid photo with y/n. he finds them in one of the stuff he left behind in the penthouse he used to live in; shocked bcos y/n had been adamant they never met before. that’s when he begins to confront her on who she really is what they really used to be. he feels guilty that he can’t remember, but most of all, gojo is torn inside that y/n had been all alone the whole time when he promised he would be there.

its complicated for them since gojo x mia are already married, and sayori got her mom’s stubborness so its difficult for her to believe someone she never met before is her real mom and mia is...well, mia. mia actually helps sayori accept that she is not the real mom, apologizing to the child for lying to them and it ends up with sayori running away and getting lost for a few hours. sayori is scared since tokyo is alien to her and she doesn’t speak japanese, but when y/n finds her, she comes running to her arms and that is when she begins to soften up around her real mom.

this is where the slowburn with gojo and y/n begins. for them, getting to know each other once more on a clean slate is both refreshing yet scary, especially since one has erased the past in their mind and the other is desperately trying to forget it. the thing about the mia x gojo as a married couple and parents is that gojo deep down feels he does not love mia that way. he can’t explain why there’s just something missing or confusing in his life. he loves mia out of respect and friendship, but he would never admit that he is not in love with his wife. however, he plays it over the fact that its “just the broken memories” and lies to himself that he is very much in love with her. when he meets y/n again, however, it makes sense. he does love y/n and him forgetting her was a defense mechanism of his system to erase the most painful times of his life, and that included his guilt for hurting y/n with the abuse of his parents who controlled the way he acted around her. as for mia, she also does not love gojo and she probably never did, but for the sake of his well being and for sayori’s future (which was entrusted to her by y/n) she stayed with him. now though, mia knows its time to let go.

geto...it is not easy for geto. he loves y/n so much because of her tenacity and kindness, but he also loves her enough to know she is happier with someone else. to him, he’s content knowing that she felt less lonely when he was around and that he helped make her smile. in the end, geto has closure with y/n who apologizes for not returning his feelings.

NAOYAAAAA though...ofc i gave him a good ending 💕 after he was brutally rejected by Mia, y/n cheers him up by setting Naoya up with a law professor around his age, who is Ayame. Ayame is supposed to be named Suki tbh 😋 but I thought the self insert is a little too much so I changed it to Ayame. Ayame is pretty funny and even respects that Naoya is uncomfortable on the first date, telling him that it doesn’t have to be that kind of date and she doesn’t expect anything from him. Ayame’s bubbly yet blunt nature is a breath of fresh air from Mia’s secretive and perfectionist nature and the two become good friends. Naoya and Ayame end up hanging out a lot bcos “thats what friends do” but it doesn’t take long before they go out together. And ofc, Naoya is a little ashamed that Ayame was the first to confess and she beat him to it, but they get married and are happy nonetheless 💕 Mia ends up as a successful doctor who helps her family with the business, divorces Gojo, but she still has no plans to marry and is perfectly happy and content to focus on her career.

Eventually, Gojo and Y/N get married once everything is sorted out. Gojo becomes a well known model in Tokyo as well, and Gojo Group is absorbed by Y/N herself after proving Gojo’s father guilty of attempted murder. Gojo doesn’t want anything more to do with the corporate world though, but Y/N stays and kicks ass as a vice president to all the merged companies.

Y/N and Valeria also makes up after Valeria is indebted to Y/N who saved her life, and Valeria’s parents become more supportive and start to see Valeria more as a person than a child to inherit the business. Albeit being in her 40s, Valeria enjoys the youth she lost only now, but also enjoys being the grandmother to Sayori. Its a little awkward between Valeria and Y/N after everything that happened, but they’re trying and are even dubbed as the iconic motherly duo who is unbeatable in their games.

Gojo’s father is thrown into prison, and his main victim, his own wife, also shows recovery from the years of abuse. Although her obsessive control with Gojo and his sister (the eldest Gojo child) was not right, his mom was left with no choice but to keep them on close watch and control their lives because she was trying to keep them safe from their father’s wrath. In the end, Gojo’s mom makes up by being a better mother, and Gojo and his sister forgives her while also apologizing that both of them left home when they knew their mom always shouldered the abuse to protect her kids.

Overall, its a happy ending for most of the characters! the last chapter is Sayori’s wedding to Naoya and Ayame’s son, Naori, who is a few years younger than his bride. Gojo is grumbling to Y/N about how his little girl is all grown up now, and that their son, Shinichiro, who is 18 in that timeline is also maturing and would be leaving the nest soon. Y/N thinks its adorable and asks Gojo to just enjoy the union because its only one of the many great memories they would still have to make.

That’s how it would end! Gojo Best Dad and Gojo DILF. Everyone is happy!

Basically the theme of Reckless is that sometimes the most unexpected things we do out of character can end up as one of the greatest things to ever happen, which in their case was the suprise baby. They went through a lot and it has a lot of psychological themes, along with heavy family drama, but overall I wanted the series to be a heartwarming one by the end. I really would’ve loved to see it all happen but I am also happy to share it to you guys in this way.

So yeah, happy reading and thanks so much for supporting Reckless !! I was also thinking of doing maybe like a bonus chapter where the characters pretend it was all a movie and they’re actors that you can talk to, but that didn’t happen so :// anyways I hope you enjoyed this and thank you for reading up until here 💕

[howelljenkins]

As a muslim Iraqi American with a significant tumblr following, I feel as though I should let it be known exactly where I stand when it comes to Riordan’s statement about Samirah. I have copied and pasted it down below and my reaction to it will be written down below. This will be the first time I have read it. If you want to engage with me or tell me that I’m wrong, I expect you to be a muslim, hijabi, Iraqi American, and from Baghdad. If you are not, I suggest you sit down and keep quiet because you are not the authority on the way I should be represented.

Like many of my characters, Samirah was inspired by former students of mine. Over the course of my middle school teaching career, I worked with dozens of Muslim students and their families, representing the expanse of the Muslim world and both Shia and Sunni traditions. One of my most poignant memories about the September 11, 2001, attack of the World Trade Center was when a Muslima student burst into tears when she heard the news – not just because it was horrific, but also because she knew what it meant for her, her family, her faith. She had unwillingly become an ambassador to everyone she knew who, would have questions about how this attack happened and why the perpetrators called themselves “Muslim.” Her life had just become exponentially more difficult because of factors completely beyond her control. It was not right. It was not fair. And I wasn’t sure how to comfort or support her.

Starting off your statement with one of the most traumatic events in history for muslim Americans is already one of the most predictably bad moves he could pull. By starting off this way, you are acknowledging the fact that a) this t*rrorist attack is still the first thing you think of when you think of muslims and b) that those muslim students who you had prior to 9/11 occupied so little space in your mind that it took a national disaster for you to start to even try to empathize with them.

During the following years, I tried to be especially attuned to the needs of my Muslim students. I dealt with 9/11 the same way I deal with most things: by reading and learning more. When I taught world religions in social studies, I would talk to my Muslim students about Islam to make sure I was representing their experience correctly. They taught me quite a bit, which eventually contributed to my depiction of Samirah al-Abbas. As always, though, where I have made mistakes in my understanding, those mistakes are wholly on me.

As always, you have chosen to use “I based this character off my students” in order to justify the way they are written. News flash: you taught middle school children. Children who are already scrutinized and alienated and desperate to fit in. Of course their words shouldn’t be enough for you to decide you are representing them correctly, because they are still coming to terms with their identities and they are doing this in an environment where they are desperate to find the approval of white Americans. I know that as a child I would often tweak the way I explained my culture and religion to my teachers in order to gain their approval and avoid ruffling any feathers. They told you what they thought you’d want to hear because you are their teacher and hold a position of power over them and they both want your approval and want to avoid saying the wrong thing and having that hang over their heads every time they enter your classroom.

What did I read for research? I have read five different English interpretations of the Qur’an. (I understand the message is inseparable from the original Arabic, so it cannot be considered ‘translated’). I have read the entirety of the Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim hadith collections. I’ve read three biographies of Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) and well over a dozen books about the history of Islam and modern Islam. I took a six-week course in Arabic. (I was not very good at it, but I found it fascinating). I fasted the month of Ramadan in solidarity with my students. I even memorized some of the surahs in Arabic because I found the poetry beautiful. (They’re a little rusty now, I’ll admit, but I can still recite al-Fātihah from memory.) I also read some anti-Islamic screeds written in the aftermath of 9/11 so I would understand what those commenters were saying about the religion, and indirectly, about my students. I get mad when people attack my students.

And yet here you are actively avoiding the criticism from those of us who could very well have been the children sitting in your classroom. 

The Quran is so deep and complex that its meanings are still being discovered to this day. Yes, reading these old scripts is a must for writing muslim characters, but you cannot claim to understand them without also holding active discussions with current scholars on how the Quran’s teachings apply today.

When preparing to write Samirah’s background, I drew on all of this, but also read many stories on Iraqi traditions and customs in particular and the experiences of immigrant families who came to the U.S. I figured out how Samirah’s history would intertwine with the Norse world through the medieval writer Ahmad ibn Fadhlan, her distant ancestor and one of the first outsiders to describe the Vikings in writing.  I knew Samirah would be a ferocious brave fighter who always stood for what was right. She would be an excellent student who had dreams of being an aviator. She would have a complicated personal situation to wrestle with, in that she’s a practicing Muslim who finds out Valhalla is a real place. Odin and Thor and Loki are still around. How do you reconcile that with your faith? Not only that, but her mom had a romance with Loki, who is her dad. Yikes.

First of all, writing this paragraph in the same tone you use to emulate a 12 year old is already disrespectful. “Yikes” is correct. You have committed serious transgressions and can’t even commit to acting serious and writing like the almost 60 year old man that you are. Tone tells the reader a lot, and your tone is telling me that you are explaining your mistakes the same way you tell your little stories: childishly and jokingly. 

Stories are not enough. They are not and never will be. Stories cannot even begin to pierce the rich culture and history and customs of Iraq. Iraq itself is not even homogenous enough for you to rely on these “Iraqi” stories. Someone’s story from Najaf is completely unique from someone from Baghdad or Nasriyyah or Basrah or Mosul. Add that to the fact that these stories are written with a certain audience in mind and you realize that there’s no way they can tell the whole story because at their core they are catering to a specific audience.

Yes, those are good, but they are meaningless without you consulting an actual Baghdadi and asking specific questions. You made conclusions and assumptions based on these stories when the obvious way to go was to consult someone from Baghdad every step of the writing process. Instead, you chose to trust the conclusions that you (a white man) drew from a handful of stories. Who are you to convey a muslim’s internal struggle when you did not even do the bare minimum and have an actual muslim read over your words?

Thankfully, the feedback from Muslim readers over the years to Samirah al-Abbas has been overwhelmingly positive. I have gotten so many letters and messages online from young fans, talking about how much it meant to them to see a hijabi character portrayed in a positive light in a ‘mainstream’ novel.

Yeah. Because we’re desperate, and half of them are children still developing their sense of self and critical reading skills. A starving man will thank you for moldy bread but that does not negate the mold. 

Some readers had questions, sure! The big mistake I will totally own, and which I have apologized for many times, was my statement that during the fasting hours of Ramadan, bathing (i.e. total immersion in water) was to be avoided. This was advice I had read on a Shia website when I myself was preparing to fast Ramadan. It is advice I followed for the entire month. Whoops! The intent behind that advice, as I understood it, was that if you totally immersed yourself during daylight hours, you might inadvertently get some water between your lips and invalidate your fast. But, as I have since learned, that was simply one teacher’s personal opinion, not a widespread practice. We have corrected this detail (which involved the deletion of one line) in future editions, but as I mentioned in my last post, you will still find it in copies since the vast majority of books are from the first printing.

This is actually really embarrassing for you and speaks to your lack of research and reading comprehension. It is true that for shia, immersion breaks one’s fast. If you had bothered to actually ask questions and use common sense, you would realize that this is referring to actions like swimming, where one’s whole body is underwater, rather than bathing. Did you not question the fact that the same religion that encourages the cleansing of oneself five times a day banned bathing during the holiest month? Yes, it was one teacher’s opinion, but you literally did not even take the time to fully understand that opinion before chucking it into your book.

Another question was about Samirah’s wearing of the hijab. To some readers, she seemed cavalier about when she would take it off and how she would wear it. It’s not my place to be prescriptive about proper hijab-wearing. As any Muslim knows, the custom and practice varies greatly from one country to another, and from one individual to another. I can, however, describe what I have seen in the U.S., and Samirah’s wearing of the hijab reflects the practice of some of my own students, so it seemed to be within the realm of reason for a third-generation Iraqi-American Muslima. Samirah would wear hijab most of the time — in public, at school, at mosque. She would probably but not always wear it in Valhalla, as she views this as her home, and the fallen warriors as her own kin. This is described in the Magnus Chase books. I also admit I just loved the idea of a Muslima whose hijab is a magic item that can camouflage her in times of need.

Before I get into this paragraph, Samirah is second generation. Her grandparents immigrated from Iraq. Her mother was first gen.

Once again, you turn to what you have seen from your students, who are literal children. They are in middle school while Samirah is in high school, so they are very obviously at different stages of development, both emotional and religious. If you had bothered to talk to adults who had gone through these stages, you would understand that often times young girls have stages where they “practice” hijab or wear it “part time”, very often in middle school. However, both her age and the way in which you described Samirah lead the reader to believe that she is a “full timer,” so you playing willy nilly with her scarf as a white man is gross.

For someone who claims to have read all of these religious texts, it’s funny that you choose to overlook the fact that “kin” is very specifically described. Muslims do not go around deciding who they consider “kin” or “family” to take off their hijab in front of. There is no excuse for including this in her character, especially since you claim to have carefully read the Quran and ahadith.

You have no place to “just love” any magical extension of the hijab until you approach it with respect. Point blank period. Especially when you have ascribed it a magical property that justifies her taking it on and off like it’s no big deal, especially when current media portrayals of hijab almost always revolve around it being removed. You are adding to the harmful portrayal and using your “fun little magic camoflauge” to excuse it.

As for her betrothal to Amir Fadhlan, only recently have I gotten any questions about this. My understanding from my readings, and from what I have been told by Muslims I know, is that arranged marriages are still quite common in many Muslim countries (not just Muslim countries, of course) and that these matches are sometimes negotiated by the families when the bride-to-be and groom-to-be are quite young. Prior to writing Magnus Chase, one of the complaints I often heard or read from Muslims is how Westerners tend to judge this custom and look down on it because it does not accord with Western ideas. Of course, arranged marriages carry the potential for abuse, especially if there is an age differential or the woman is not consulted. Child marriages are a huge problem. The arrangement of betrothals years in advance of the marriage, however, is an ancient custom in many cultures, and those people I know who were married in this way have shared with me how glad they were to have done it and how they believe the practice is unfairly villainized. My idea with Samirah was to flip the stereotype of the terrible abusive arranged match on its head, and show how it was possible that two people who actually love each other dearly might find happiness through this traditional custom when they have families that listen to their concerns and honor their wishes, and want them to be happy. Amir and Samirah are very distant cousins, yes. This, too, is hardly unusual in many cultures. They will not actually marry until they are both adults. But they have been betrothed since childhood, and respect and love each other. If that were not the case, my sense is that Samirah would only have to say something to her grandparents, and the match would be cancelled. Again, most of the comments I have received from Muslim readers have been to thank me for presenting traditional customs in a positive rather than a negative light, not judging them by Western standards. In no way do I condone child marriage, and that (to my mind) is not anywhere implied in the Magnus Chase books.

I simply can’t even begin to explain everything that is wrong with this paragraph. Here is a good post about how her getting engaged at 12 is absolutely wrong religiously and would not happen. Add that on to the fact that Samirah herself is second-generation (although Riordan calls her third generation in this post) and this practice isn’t super common even in first generation people (and for those that it DOES apply to, it is when they are old enough to be married and not literal children). 

As a white man you can’t flip the stereotype. You can’t. Even with tons of research you cannot assume the authority to “flip” a stereotype that does not affect you because you will never come close to truly understanding it inside and out. Instead of flipping a stereotype, Rick fed into it and provided more fodder to the flames and added on to it to make it even worse.

I would be uncomfortable with a white author writing about arranged marriages in brown tradition no matter the context, but for him to offhandedly include it in a children’s book where it is badly explained and barely touched on is inexcusable. Your target audience is children who will no doubt overlook your clumsy attempt at flipping stereotypes.

It does not matter what your mind thinks you are implying. Rick Riordan is not your target audience, children are. So you cannot brush this away by stating that you did not see the harm done by your writing. You are almost 60 years old. Maybe you can read in between your lines, but I guarantee your target audience largely cannot.

Finally, recently someone on Twitter decided to screenshot a passage out-of-context from Ship of the Deadwhere Magnus hears Samirah use the phrase “Allahu Akbar,” and the only context he has ever heard it in before was in news reports when some Western reporter would be talking about a terrorist attack. Here is the passage in full:

Samirah: “My dad may have power over me because he’s my dad. But he’s not the biggest power. Allahu akbar.”

I knew that term, but I’d never heard Sam use it before. I’ll admit it gave me an instinctive jolt in the gut. The news media loved to talk about how terrorists would say that right before they did something horrible and blew people up. I wasn’t going to mention that to Sam. I imagined she was painfully aware.

She couldn’t walk the streets of Boston in her hijab most days without somebody screaming at her to go home, and (if she was in a bad mood) she’d scream back, “I’m from Dorchester!”

“Yeah,” I said. “That means God is great, right?”

Sam shook her head. “That’s a slightly inaccurate translation. It means God is greater.”

“Than what?”

“Everything. The whole point of saying it is to remind yourself that God is greater than whatever you are facing—your fears, your problems, your thirst, your hunger, your anger.

337-338

To me, this is Samirah educating Magnus, and through him the readers, about what this phrase actually means and the religious significance it carries. I think the expression is beautiful and profound. However, like a lot of Americans, Magnus has grown up only hearing about it in a negative context from the news. For him to think: “I had never heard that phrase, and it carried absolutely no negative connotations!” would be silly and unrealistic. This is a teachable moment between two characters, two friends who respect each other despite how different they are. Magnus learns something beautiful and true about Samirah’s religion, and hopefully so do the readers. If that strikes you as Islamophobic in its full context, or if Samirah seems like a hurtful stereotype . . . all I can say is I strongly disagree.

I will give you some credit here in that I mostly agree with this scene. The phrase does carry negative connotations with many white people and I do not fault you for explaining it the way you did. However, don’t try to sneak in that last sentence like we won’t notice. You have no place to decide whether or not Samirah’s character as a whole is harmful and stereotypical. 

It is 2 am and that is all I have the willpower to address. This is messy and this is long and this is not well worded, but this had to be addressed. I do not speak for every muslim, both world wide and within this online community, but these were my raw reactions to his statement. I have been working on and will continue to work on a masterpost of Samirah Al-Abbas as I work through the books, but for now, let it be known that Riordan has bastardized my identity and continues to excuse himself and profit off of enforcing harmful stereotypes. Good night.

[fridayfirefly]

The Power of Luck [Chapter One]

Read The Power of Luck on AO3

Masterlist [All Works]

Masterlist [The Power of Luck Series]

Written for Maribat March Day 6 - Miraculous Side Effects

The Ladybug Miraculous had quite a few side effects. Marinette was able to think quick on her feet, she was a skilled tactician in battle, and her reaction time was half that of a normal human. Most notably, the Ladybug Miraculous granted its user the force known as Miraculous Luck, which, depending on the situation, was sometimes more of a curse than a blessing. Marinette didn't get to choose how that good luck manifested. For instance, when she needed an extra day to finish a history project, her school closed down due to a gas leak. Or when she wished for a fresh start after the defeat of Hawkmoth, her parents were offered a deal to grow their bakery business in America.

Marinette assured her parents that she didn't mind moving. After all, most of her class had already moved on. Lila had been deported to Italy, narrowly avoiding jail time. Chloé (much to her dismay) was sent by her father to an all-girls boarding school in England. Adrien was taken in by his Aunt Amelie (as Gabriel was in jail and Emilie was declared brain-dead) and moved to England as well.

No one else from Marinette's class left the country, but many of them moved out of Paris. Nathanial was accepted to an elite art school in Marseille. Max was accepted to a gifted program at an elite school in Bordeaux. Officer Raincomprix was transferred to Toulouse and took Sabrina with him. Juleka and Luka both started homeschooling after their mother sailed the houseboat down the Seine to the city of Rouen.

Worst of all was the loss of Alya. Her parents were horrified that the son of Hawkmoth was in the same class as their daughter, and promptly pulled Alya out of class and decided to move out of the city. Alya begged them for weeks but nothing came of her protests. In the end, Alya left too.

The Miraculous Luck could do a lot of things, but it couldn't keep her friends together. Those who remained at François Dupont filled holes in other classes. Marinette tried to make the best of her new class, but she felt no real connection to them. When her parents proposed the move, Marinette jumped on the opportunity. In Gotham, she wouldn't be haunted by the ghost of her old life.

Marinette cut her hair, leaving it choppy and just above the shoulders. She donated all of her brightly colored clothes to the thrift store down the street and created a new wardrobe for herself. It was toned down and mature, much more fitting for Gotham.

Marinette left Paris a much different girl than the naive fourteen-year-old who thought she could save the world. She was ready for a city like Gotham, a city that didn't make any promises, a city where Marinette could set down some new roots.

-----

At first, it was easy to fly under the radar at Gotham Academy. It was a school filled with the self-absorbed children of millionaires and billionaires, after all. Marinette was there on scholarship - her good grades, leadership experience, and working-class parents combined to cut her tuition down by 75%. Marinette quickly learned that scholarship students were at best ignored, and at worst mercilessly bullied. So Marinette kept her head down and vowed that she would get through the year unscathed.

There was one variable, however, that the Miraculous Luck wasn't able to account for. Marinette's entire plan fell apart thanks to one boy: Damian Wayne.

Marinette became acquainted with Damian Wayne through the school's rumor mill. She learned that he was one of the most wealthy and most attractive people in the school, but he was thought himself too good to spend time with any of his fellow classmates (Marinette couldn't fault him on the last bit; she also found the students at Gotham Academy to be difficult, to say the least). Marinette also learned through the school's rumor mill that Damian spent quite a lot of time staring at her. Given that Damian had never paid the slightest amount of attention to a Gotham Academy girl before, this was a big deal. Suddenly Marinette was the farthest thing from under the radar. Everyone who used to look down on her wanted to be her friend. It was exhausting.

Marinette resolved to ignore Damian Wayne - an easy task, given that she still didn't even know what he looked like. Now that everyone was staring at her, it was hard to

"Why?" grumbled Marinette. "Why couldn't my so-called Miraculous Luck help me get through one normal year of school?"

Tikki shrugged from her spot inside of Marinette's backpack. "Maybe all of this attention will turn out to be a good thing?"

"I doubt that." Marinette glanced around, checking that no one had spotted her talking to her backpack. There was one spot in the cafeteria that was hidden from view, a window-sill nestled behind a pillar, bordered by a wall on one side and an out of order vending machine on the other. Marinette sat on the window-sill every day to eat lunch, with Tikki as her companion for the meal.

"I think your problem is that you're overthinking this. Miraculous Luck always works out in the end, even if there are some obstacles in the middle."

"I just want this horrible school year to be over," sighed Marinette, setting her head down in her arms.

"Don't give up yet, Marinette. I have high hopes for this school year," said Tikki.

Marinette had some serious doubts but picked her head up anyway. Maybe this year wouldn't turn out the way she expected. Marinette defeated Hawkmoth, the greatest villain Paris ever faced. She could survive a year of high school.

-----

Marinette was going to survive her senior year of high school. Damian Wayne on the other hand... Marinette still wasn't sure if she was going to let him survive the year, after everything he put her through.

"Excuse me?" a sickeningly sweet voice piped up from behind Marinette.

Marinette put on her best disinterested-face, took out one headphone, and turned around. "Yes?"

There were three girls standing behind her: a blonde, flanked on both sides by a brunette and a red-head. The blonde girl had a smile on her face but a devious look in her eyes. Marinette had long ago learned to spot manipulators, and this girl had it written all over her. "Are you Marinette Dupain-Cheng?"

"Yes."

"My name is Julie Cooper. I was just wondering... Are you dating Damian Wayne?"

Marinette huffed in exasperation. "What do you think?"

Julie's eyes narrowed. "I just wanted to warn you. I mean, did you really think that Damian Wayne would seriously date a girl here on scholarship? You should break up with him before you get hurt."

"It was a rhetorical question. I'm not dating Damian Wayne. It's just a rumor."

Julie instantly perked up. "Oh, good! I was beginning to think that Damian had lost his mind. I mean, I'm sure you would be a nine or a ten at a public school, but at Gotham Academy, you're like a seven, maybe an eight on a good day. Most of the girls who go here are actually hot, not just," the girl waved her hand towards Marinette. "Above average."

Marinette wasn't sure if Julie meant for her to feel flattered or offended, but her words had the strange effect of making Marinette feel both all at once. "Um, thanks? I'm going to go now."

Julie's brunette friend suddenly paled as the girl started to tug on Julie's sleeve. "Um, Julie?" she whispered.

"What, Nora?" Julie's eyes widened as they fixed on something behind Marinette.

Marinette turned around to see what the cause of their concern was. Or rather, to see who the cause of their concern was. It was a boy, tall and scowling. "Are you done here, Cooper?"

Julia nodded, a nervous edge to her voice, "Bye, Marinette." She and her two friends hurried off, exchanging frantic whispers.

"What do you want?" asked Marinette with a sigh. She was tired of dealing with boys who were only interested in her because Damian Wayne was interested in her.

"I wished to apologize."

"For Julie? Did you put her up to this?"

The boy looked confused. "No, of course not. I meant that I wanted to apologize for everything, not just Julie Cooper."

"For everything?" The truth suddenly dawned on Marinette. "You're Damian Wayne! I didn't think that you would be so tall."

"You didn't know what I looked like?" There was real shock in his voice.

"Well, by the time I learned that you had been staring at me everyone was staring at me, so that wasn't much help in figuring out who you were."

"You could have googled me."

Marinette shrugged. "I could have, but it felt weird to google one of my classmates. I pretty much just resigned myself to never figuring out who you were."

"I should have approached you sooner. I've wanted to apologize for a while, but every time I've caught you alone you've looked like you wanted to be left that way."

"I'm not a fan of most of the students here."

"The students here can be..." Damian searched for the appropriate word. "Tiresome. I resigned myself to a dull four years of high school in their company. That is, until I saw you."

Marinette cocked her head. "Why me, though? I'm nothing special."

"You're different than everyone else here."

Marinette stiffened. "I know. I've been told. I'm here on a scholarship which means I don't belong," she snapped

Damian shook his head. "No, that's not what I meant. You move through life differently than all of the other students here. You don't care about the gossip or drama - at least, not until you were right at the center of it all. You've seen the real world, so you float above the high school drama. You're just so... so..."

"So what?" Marinette's tone softened.

Damian ran his hand through his hair, ruffling it. The addition of the messy hair added a certain charm to his otherwise polished exterior. "I've been brainstorming for the right word for weeks. The best I can come up with is pure. You don't let yourself become affected by anything in this school."

It was a very flattering description of her. It was also very on the nose. "I'll forgive you, Damian Wayne, but only on one condition."

"What?"

"I want to get to know you, and I have a feeling that you feel the same way."

Damian nodded. "It's a deal."

Maybe her Miraculous Luck wasn't so useless after all. Marinette had expected to go the whole year without making a single friend. Now, it seemed that she might make one after all.

@maribatmarch-2k21

[ohallthecrushes]

Arthur Fleck x Reader // How he feels with a partner who's book smart

A/N: I don't know what you mean by the opposite of his intelligence?If I understand correctly being academically smart just results in good grades and more book knowledge? But it doesn't equal your IQ. Just like grades and intelligence are correlated, but not in 100%. We know that Arthur rather had to learn from experience and practice, but I wouldn't say that he's in opposite to being a book smart. Ok, he has no collage degree, let alone the academical knowledge, but he is street smart as we can see in the movie and he thinks quickly in difficult situation. He also seems to be curious to learn about things around him (mostly people). I think if he didn't have to drop the high school at 10th grade (second year in high school is the 10th grade if I remember correctly), with a little help and support he would get to finish a higher education. We don't know anything about his dreams about attending to collage. Maybe he don't think it's necessary to have a higher degree or he wishes he had a chance to finish high school. But I'm sure he wouldn't judge people or treat them differently due to their degree (or the lack of it). Also I think Arthur's ability to apply knowledge is high, he's been just lacking of resources and supports his whole life. It's hard to achieve anything with no resources and all alone. :(

Anyway.

I hope this little headcanon fits your request. Cause I'm not sure if I understand you correctly. :( Let me know and if not, I'll write something else.

PS: If you're interested, some time ago I wrote similar headcanons, but with Reader who doubts her intelligence. If you want to check it, it's HERE. ^^

That's been said, alright...

That's a looong intro, sorry. xd

Wordcounts:456

Arthur.

He feels very proud of his partner.

He supports you with all his heart, whether your degree is still in process or you already had the degree you wanted.

Especially when you are still in collage, he says proudly of you and gives you all the support and help you need.

Education is often expensive, but if necessary he would take a second job and work his arse off to support you financially on this.

Simply because if it's important to you than it's important to him too.

He's impressed of all the knowledge his partner is willing to share with him and I think if the subject isn't too difficult, Arthur wants to listen and discuss about it. Maybe share a thought or two? Maybe he knows from experience something that's not written in a book? He will tell you that!

He listens to you talking about anything and he often asks more and more questions to understand better.

And if there's something you can't figure out, something that cannot be taught during classes, you can ask your questions to Arthur. Maybe he knows.

He never disturbs you when you're lost in another book, learning about something or simply relaxing with another story.

However he sometimes asks you to read for him. it's a good way to spend time together without drawing you away from your hobby.

He then lays down on a couch with his head on your lap and listens to your voice. It helps him unwind.

There are times when he feels a bit down or embarrassed with his own level of education.

He tries not to show it and avoid the topic, just shrug it off, because it is what it is and you were much more lucky than him to have a chance in education.

He doesn't know what would have been if he got to finish a high school. Maybe he would go to college too? But only if there was an Entertainment class with Clown specialty of course.

You say that Theater Arts or Visual and Performing Arts could interest him, cause both offers to teach the skills needed to conduct a public performance.

He agrees with you.

He imagines going to collage with you.

You'd be the popular couple. The lovebirds. You'd be walking down the hallway and everyone would look at you and he'd be showing you of, cause you'd just got your bachelor's degree.

But he can't go back in time and change the history, so instead he admires your level of intelligence and knowledge and he's so proud, I repeat he's so freaking proud of you, that sometimes it makes him cry.

But they're happy tears, so don't worry.

He's happy for you.

[snicketstrange]

Rereading The Chapter 14 (The End)

I believed that in ASOUE's universe, chapter 14 was apparently written some time after the rest of the book. But I abandoned that idea. Lemony wrote to the editor that chapter 14 could be found at the end of the same manuscript.

We then have the epigraph of Le Voyage. It's an excerpt that portrays the moment of death, and perhaps the acceptance of death. But I don't think this means that Lemony is completely certain of the Baudelaires' death. I think it means he's pretty sure he won't write about the Baudelaires anymore. I think the right question is "why did Lemony decide to stop writing at this point in the story?" "Why did he plan to write more and then stop writing?" I think Lemony didn't promise to write the entire story of the Baudelaires. He promised to write the story of the conflict between the Baudelaires and Olaf. So when he was sure of Olaf's death, and that was only with the additional information he had probably had access to through Beatrice Jr, Lemony realized that the research might be over. The certainty of Olaf's death was the event he determined when the narrative came to an end. So, it makes us wonder what kind of promise Lemony made. Apparently he promised that he would clarify the facts surrounding the charges the Baudelaires went through, as well as the contexts in which these events took place. That's why it was so important to get this information out to the general public. Because it involved the honor of the Baudelaire family. Furthermore, this explains why he could not rely solely on the account given by the Baudelaires themselves: after all, they were being accused of being lying criminals. Lemony needed to clear their name, proving, so to speak, that the facts reported by the Baudelaires were real, and it was not enough just to record what he read in the island book.

I think this is the most sensible explanation, and as a theorist I will defend it. But as a fan willing to come up with slightly bizarre ideas, I feel like imagining Lemony realizing that his own death was close to happening. It would be interesting to imagine that Lemony's research took so long that he was an elderly man when he was publishing The End. And the reason Lemony finished his work at this point would be his physical limitations. That would explain shocking secret #13: "he's finished." And more than that: it would even explain the title of the book: "The End of Lemony Snicket". And furthermore, this would explain Lemony's dedication to Beatrice in chapter 14. After quoting the words of Charles B., in which the poet compares the hour of death with the setting off of a ship, Lemony claims that both he and Beatrice are like boats sailing at night, but especially her. Both were on a dark and lonely journey, but she was already dead. "

Beatrice's last words recorded in the book were really emotional to me when I first read them, and they still are today. Especially after I watched the Netflix series, it's now possible to imagine a very specific face when I picture Beatrice. And it's possible to think of a specific soundtrack when I read this.

About the baby's name, on my Headcanon Violet is the name of Mrs. W, who was presumed dead around the same time as Lemony. And in my Headcanon, just as Lemony didn't really die, she didn't either. I still like to think that she was the mystery woman on TGG, and that's the real reason Quigley used the name Violet in the message he sent to submarine Q.

I think this is the first time I stop to think that the Baudelaires ate crab. This is unclean food for those who practice Judaism as a religion, isn't it? I even thought the roast lamb was a reference to the Passover celebration, but they wouldn't do that by eating crab. Or is it that in a book in which Daniel Handler implicitly criticizes religion, he did so on purpose? I think it's unlikely, but still possible. But, albeit unintentionally, the Baudelaires rejected the religious customs of their ancestors in a book in which religious customs are questioned and this is significant.

"The baby had heard about danger, too, mostly from the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind from which the Baudelaires read out loud each evening, although they had not told the infant the whole story. She did not know all of the Baudelaires' secrets, and indeed there were some she would never know."

The above excerpt is important as it reveals that Lemony has information about Beatrice Jr's future as he was writing this chapter. This explains how Lemony knows what happened in this chapter: Beatrice Jr told him. Lemony did meet her, and he realized that the Baudelaires hadn't told her the whole story.

A detail that has always pleased me in this book is to notice that after 1 year, Sunny stopped babbling words and has a more conventional and extensive vocabulary. I find this compatible with the fact that 1 year has passed and it's also compatible with her character development arc. One of asoue's themes is "how some children are forced to mature too quickly because of tragedy". Sunny, for example, needed to learn how to cook and convince herself that she loved doing it and that she was good at it in a few days. And all this before she learned to speak English properly. She needed to help with a birth long before she fully understood issues related to human procreation. But in chapter 14, she finally had the opportunity to develop without tragedies forcing her to skip important steps in life.

"Do we take this?" Violet asked, holding up the book from which she had read out loud.

"I don't think so," Klaus said. "Perhaps another castaway will arrive, and continue the history."

"In any case," Sunny said, "they'll have something to read."

Please realize how important this dialogue is. Daniel Handler placed this dialogue here to make sure the reader understood the source of information Lemony had access to: the island book. The children wrote about their own story in that book, including their thoughts, feelings, and private conversations. The children shared some details about ancient events, about when Sunny wasn't even born. In the book, Lemony found details about some events that took place on the island before the arrival of the three Baudelaires.

"I want to make sure these life jackets I've designed will fit properly."

Well... It's good to know that, even though the boat sank, the Baudelaires had lifeboats. Their chances of survival really increased a lot. And knowing that Beatrice Jr managed to survive a shipwreck, it's quite possible that they did too.

The Baudelaires watched her approach, wondering what the next chapter in this infant's life would be, and indeed that is difficult to say. There are some who say that the Baudelaires rejoined V.F.D. and are engaged in brave errands to this day, perhaps under different names to avoid being captured. There are others who say that they perished at sea, although rumors of one's death crop up are often revealed to be untrue. But in any case, as my investigation is over, we have indeed reached the last chapter of the Baudelaires' story, even if the Baudelaires had not.

Lemony just reports here what he heard. Although Daniel Handler intentionally wishes the ending to be left open, and I will respect his decision, I will speak my opinion. They didn't die at sea, though. Note that Lemony directly relates the baby's future to the future of the three Baudelaires. The way Lemony wrote here suggests that the baby's future is as uncertain as the future of her adoptive parents. But we TBL readers know the truth about Beatrice Jr.'s future. Beatrice is alive! So the most likely situation is that her parents are also alive. ( And who knows other characters that we thought had died there on TBB... could it be that at least one of them could also have survived?)

But the question is: if Lemony knows the baby survived, why did he hide this information from the reader? Certainly to protect his niece. Lemony didn't lie, just omitted some details.

The baby paused, and looked at the back of the boat, where the nameplate had been affixed. She had no way of knowing this, of course, but the nameplate had been nailed to the back of the boat by a person standing on the very spot she was standing—at least as far as my research has shown.

Lemony once again dismantled specific knowledge through research, which could only have been done through information provided by others. Beatrice Jr needed to tell Lemony exactly where she was at that moment and Lemony needed to compare that with the information Beatrice Sr and Bertrand wrote in the island book. And then, on visiting the site, Lemony was able to ascertain the most likely position for those descriptions. While Lemony is a bit mistaken, the research process must have been like that.

Finally, she uttered a word. The Baudelaire orphans gasped when they heard it, but they could not say for sure whether she was reading the word out loud or merely stating her own name, and indeed they never learned this. Perhaps this last word was the baby's first secret, joining the secrets the Baudelaires were keeping from the baby, and all the other secrets immersed in the world. Perhaps it is better not to know what was meant by this word, as some things are better left in the great unknown. There are some words, of course, that are better left unsaid—but not, I believe, the word uttered by my niece, a word which here means that the story is over. Beatrice.

Oh... How I love this ending. That's when I felt my head explode for the first time in my life, and I'm still picking up the pieces.

[crystalkleure]

I have a Concept.

BeyBurst beyblades are supposed to burst. As in, it’s actually a necessity. In spite of the Exploding Beyblade mechanic potentially causing sharp little bits of spintop to go flying everywhere and hit people, what if it’s actually a safety feature?

If I recall correctly, all the way back in s1 territory [specifically in the manga though, can’t remember if we saw it in the anime or not], Valt and Shu just straight-up got their original beys from a store. And there are also all of those Unimportant Characters running around with different-coloured versions of preexisting beys. This indicates that beyblades are, in fact, mass-produced and sold in stores, and those are all built to be able to burst. In fact, I still haven’t seen the newest two seasons of the Burst anime yet, but I’m pretty sure super special fancy custom beys, that some important character explicitly made themself, that have some really creative [and strong] anti-burst features built into them, don’t ever show up as NPC recolour beys? In spite of the trend of “random background characters in new season use recoloured versions of Prominent Character beys from LAST season” to me seeming to indicate that those new recolour beys are either bootleg copycats, or those actual official shelf models have just suddenly started selling really well, due to someone having just recently done something cool with one in a tournament/on TV lol. [Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong on which beys get NPC recolours, I don’t exactly actually, uh, pay attention to all the random background scrubs. That point’s not particularly important anyway because I’m sure unofficial bootlegs are a thing that exists, mmmm delicious plagiarism. The point is the stores seem to sell beys with the normal level of burstability. And so I’m only caring about the everyday random NPCs with no names or anything, if another important character specifically goes and painstakingly recreates a bey similar or identical to another important character’s bey just because they idolize that other character, that doesn’t count. That’s not important here, implication-wise.] So...

What if it’s actually a really bad thing that people keep making their own custom beys now that are increasingly more and more ludicrously difficult -- or even near-impossible -- to burst?

What if the self-destruct mechanic is intended to be an emergency shutdown switch, and actually really needs to not be subverted? We’ve seen what an adept beyblader can do while running at full-throttle -- they’re dangerous, to themselves and their surroundings. Beys have the power to be obscenely destructive...while they’re spinning and battling, primarily. They are by far the most potent while actively in use. But if they hit things too hard like 3-4 times or so...they burst. Their locks disengage, they fall apart, and thus they are forced to abruptly stop. That makes them theoretically incapable of just rampaging indefinitely.

Picture this: One day, in the probably-decently-distant history of the BeyBurst world, a kid has a spintop. Probably made that spintop themself. This kid, it turns out, happens to be one of the Super Special Powerful Kids, who’s not only REALLY GOOD at using that spintop, they also possess that funny little supernatural ability to accidentally create an incredibly powerful incorporeal monster ghost creature thing with their brain. And because they love playing with their little spintop so much, that spintop becomes the vessel for this Terrifying Monster-Shaped Culmination Of Spiritual Elemental Energy or whatever that they’ve manifested. That’s...good, probably, because at least that means the Scary Monster Thing isn’t 1. just stuck in the kid’s brain with nowhere else to go, which would lead to possession that would decidedly be incredibly difficult to deal with without harming the kid, or 2. funneled into something more dangerous to control, like a car or a nuclear warhead or some shit. But then it turns out that the kid is ABSOLUTELY still able to wreak impressive havoc and cause Large Amounts Of Destruction, even accidentally...until the spintop stops spinning. The Power Level drops dramatically as soon as the demon top is still, and it takes a little while for it to build back up once it’s launched again. But what if a feature is implemented into the spintop that allows it to keep spinning for much, much longer? Or just The Supernatural Monster Power itself becomes capable of sustaining it, through wind manipulation or something?

Now, imagine you’re idk, the government or something, someone with Power and Influence over the masses, and you see THAT happen. Shit, that was just a random kid that did that! Looked like any other kid, acted like any other kid! There is no feasible way to tell a kid with Brain Monster potential apart from other kids who are NOT That Powerful, until a brain monster happens. So, if you can’t predict it, and thus can’t do anything to mitigate the potential destruction on a case-by-case basis...well, how about you convince ALL the little kiddies that spintops are just the greatest thing ever, everyone should play with spintops, AND you ensure those spintops are mass-manufactured specifically to not be able to Hold A Charge for too long because...they burst! You’ve designed them so that violence itself causes them to fall apart and stop to cool down! It’s perfect! That way, anytime an odd mutant child with Brain Monster powers comes along, the chance of them funneling their Brain Monster into their spintop is now Very High, meaning that all the Brain Monsters will hopefully end up inhabiting these little plastic toys that actively inhibit them instead of possessing children or nukes. It’s brilliant!

This does raise some questions, though:

1. What happens when someone’s spintop breaks, and they DON’T get it repaired, after they’ve already manifested a Brain Monster to live in it? Where would the Brain Monster go in that case? Uh oh, demon on the loose? Exactly what we were trying to avoid? Shu’s change between Legend Spriggan and Spriggan Requiem in God does seem to indicate that the Brain Monster probably 1. by default, does just camp out in its blader’s brain until a new Spintop Vessel is created for it, and 2. the Brain Monster itself is probably not actually completely strictly sealed into any bey, because it doesn’t disappear as soon as the bey is destroyed, and it doesn’t stay with an old/broken bey that’s been discarded when a new bey has been made for it. Legend Spriggan was discarded and left on the riverbed, and Spriggan Requiem was then made from scratch, seemingly using no recycled physical parts from Legend Spriggan, but Spriggan Requiem’s bitbeast looks only very slightly different from Legend Spriggan’s. All of Shu’s Spriggans are honestly probably still the same creature, just progressively evolved. I don’t think we’ve ever seen somebody make an entirely NEW Brain Monster that does not resemble their original one, it seems the original simply gets developed more and more. One person apparently only possesses the ability to make a single individual Brain Monster. You Get One (1), but you can upgrade it. But what about Hearts? His Dead Hades, which very much had a Brain Ghost in it, was not only destroyed, but assimilated into Phi’s Revive Phoenix, to make Dead Phoenix. What happened to that situation, over time? We haven’t gotten to see. Is Hearts’ Hades truly actually fused with Phi’s Phoenix, ceasing to be its own entity anymore, or does Phoenix simply very slightly resemble Hades now due to its bey being upgraded with physical bits of Hades’ bey? What if it’s not even POSSIBLE to truly fuse Brain Ghosts, especially without consent? In which case...is Hades itself just lingering around back in Hearts’ brain, waiting for a new bey to inhabit, and Hearts isn’t making one because he doesn’t realize Hades isn’t just Part Of Phoenix now? That sounds potentially dangerous, there’s no more outlet for your Brain Ghost, buddy. I want to see Phi and Hearts again, to know what eventually happened there.

2. Why do the tournaments not actually enforce a rule that says “Your bey HAS to be able to be reasonably burstable”? Chouzetsu Wings and the Mugen Lock System did not equal disqualifications. Has it maybe, over time, been forgotten exactly WHY we Need Beys To Burst? Well, that’s a ticking time bomb, then. How difficult a bey is to burst does seem to directly cause its Potential Destructiveness Levels to scale accordingly. [With somewhat of an exception of Pot and his Pegasus, but it should be noted that Pot was not exactly terribly serious about beyblade initially and yet was STILL considered one of the strongest ‘bladers in the world, GT3 iirc, AND he’s very into the whole “Love and light, chillax, be in-tune with yourself and all the energy in and around you, etc.” peaceful thing.] This HAS To Be A Problem. Why is nobody concerned.

3. ...What is causing the general public not to panic about this? Why are people okay with Brain Ghost and Mass Spintop Destruction happening, instead of terrified? This shit is broadcast on TV. The stands during tournaments are packed with spectators. It may be that perhaps not everybody can SEE the Brain Ghosts themselves [and I’m skeptical about that, because there have absolutely been MANY indications that other people know what someone’s bitbeast looks like], but the Big Bada Booms they cause are DAMN sure Highly Visible. Aiga’s father seems to be the only one truly properly concerned about the incredible mass-destructive potential of the spintops. Realistically, The Salem With Trials 2: Electric Boogaloo should be happening due to the Scary Spintop Kids being Fucking Scary, and sometimes quite clearly even out-of-control of themselves.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure this is not a direction canon will ever go in, or I think it would have already done it. I don’t think they’re going to explore this route. It’s a shame I don’t have the chops for writing long-haul fanfiction, because if I did I would absolutely be hardcore capitalizing on this idea. This has incredible Worldbuilding Lore Potential.

[someone-worth-racing-for]

CARLOS SPEAKS HIS MIND

Montmeló 06 May 2021

For the Gran Premio Aramco de España di Formula 1, Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow’s Spanish driver, Carlos Sainz, granted a long interview to the official programme, in which he talked about himself, as a person and as a racing driver. Here is what he had to say.

We hear you are a burger connoisseur… what makes a great burger? Where was the best you ever had?

I LOVE BURGERS! I guess a great burger is defined by the patty and the bun. The extra ingredients play their part too…but without a juicy patty and a perfect bun you will never get top marks! I try to have a burger in every city we visit. Melbourne definitely has one of the best I´ve tried.

What’s the attraction of golf? We hear you play off a 9 handicap, so do you think you could play professionally if you put your mind to it? Of course, we presume you are better than your fellow drivers on the golf course…

Golf is the perfect way to clear your head from all other things and just enjoy three or four hours outdoors with friends or family. A round of golf requires full focus and it can get super competitive. You play against others but also against your own handicap. I like that. However, to play at a professional level I would have to give up racing, and I don´t see that happening for a while! I like to see other drivers picking up golf. If they practice enough, I´m sure they will lower their handicap quickly.

Where did the interest in boxing come from? What weight would you make if you fought professionally? Who’s you hero boxer?

My performance coach used to work with a professional boxer and he learned quite a lot back in the day. Some years ago, we decided to introduce it in my training routines and I really enjoy it. It is a sport that requires strength and pushes your cardio to the limit. It is also very technical, so the more you boxe the more you want to improve. I guess I would be middleweight or super middleweight, depending on the diet…and the burgers! Nowadays I follow a lot Canelo Alvarez and Ryan Garcia.

You’re known for having a pretty intense work ethic. Did that come from your dad? What did he teach you about preparation and pressure?

My dad has been a great support for me throughout my career and I have learned many things from him. Attention to detail is something that he took to a different level back in the day and I have embraced since I was very young. I´ve also learned from him that there is no gain in dwelling too much on a bad result or celebrating too much a good one. In both situations, you have to analyse carefully what happened, learn, improve, reset and move on to the next race.

Caco, Rupert and yourself seem to have a very strong relationship on both a personal and professional level. How important is having people around you? Did working in a bubble make you closer, or did you want to kill each other?

I think having the right people around you is key for any athlete. When you have full confidence in your personal team you can focus more on the sporting side and that translates into better performance. F1 is very peculiar because we travel to an incredible number of countries in 9 months, so you get to spend a lot of time with your team. In my case, I think we have found a great balance between us. We know how to differentiate between work and leisure. We follow a very professional approach to the sport, whilst having fun and enjoying the experience along the way.

Not so long ago people introduced you as ‘the son of Carlos Sainz’, now it’s more a case of some will introduce your father as ‘Carlos Sainz’s dad’. How does that play out around the dinner table at home with your dad?

We don´t really speak about it to be honest. I guess it’s just natural. When you are a kid, you normally get introduced as “the son of” and years ago I still had a lot to prove in the motorsport world. Now things have obviously evolved, but I don´t really think my father gets introduced as being my dad! He has earned the right to be recognised as King Carlos! What I must say is that neither of us like the “Junior” tag that sometimes comes along with my name, and he has happily accepted the “Senior” tag to avoid it!

One of the risks in moving to Ferrari was going up against one of the sport’s most highly-rated drivers. You’ve done that with Max, Daniel, Lando and now Charles? Are you a masochist?

This is Formula 1. The best 20 drivers of the world are here and, inevitably, you are going to have to compete against all of them if you want to become World Champion, whether they are team mates or not. It´s just part of the game. If you are scared of going up against any other driver, you are just in the wrong sport.

You’ve made some brave moves in your career: leaving the Red Bull Programme, finding your way to McLaren, then joining Ferrari. Do you find it easy to make big career choices?

I think the key behind any career choice is a proper decision-making process. Once you have analysed all the possible scenarios, with the information at your disposal at that time, you can evaluate your options and decide what is best for you. Personally, once I take a decision, I fully commit to it. Only time will tell if that decision was good or bad.

Being a Ferrari driver is a notoriously high-pressure role and public criticism can be vicious. How is being at Ferrari different to driving for McLaren, for Renault, for Toro Rosso?

Every F1 driver has a lot of pressure, not only Ferrari drivers. The key is not how much pressure there is, but how you handle it. Ferrari is expected to be at the top because it is the most successful team in the history of the sport. We share the same goal, which is to be back winning as soon as possible, and that inevitably sets the bar very high. I turn that ambitious goal into motivation rather than pressure, and it gives me strength to keep going.

When you were a youngster, you frequently held up Sebastian Vettel as the ideal role model. Was that politeness, given your place in the Red Bull Junior Team, or was Seb the driver you really looked up to?

I´ve known Seb for many years and he has always been a reference in my career. I was doing endless hours of simulator at Red Bull Racing when he was winning World Championships and I learned a lot from his way of doing things, in and out of the track. He is definitely one of the best drivers in the history of the sport and I will always consider him a role model in many ways.

You came through the Red Bull junior programme when the competition was intense with Daniel and JEV, Dany, yourself, Antonio Felix da Costa. What was that like? Were you all in constant competition? Did you ever worry about not making it?

All Junior programmes are designed to identify the best young talents out there. Of course, it was constant competition but in a healthy way. You want to prove yourself at all costs and every time you jump in a car you want to beat the other drivers, whether it’s a race or a test or even in the simulator. Knowing how difficult it is to get a seat in F1, you always have that fear of not making it. But if you commit yourself to it, you trust in your talent and you put the work in, the fears disappear and you just focus on giving your best.

Are you superstitious? And which football team do you support?

I´m not a superstitious guy. I have several routines that I like to follow during a Grand Prix weekend, but given each country, circuit and paddock is different you sometimes have to change and adapt those routines. The doubt about the football team is offensive…REAL MADRID forever!

[usergreenpixel]

Frev prompts, Part 4! 🎉

21. The protagonist is a high school student with a knack for drawing comics but they’re also the favorite target of the bullies at school.

One day the bullying gets so bad that the protagonist is unable to cope with reality anymore and, as a means of escapism, writes themselves into their new comic about their favorite topic - The French Revolution. With their favorite pen they had inherited from their writer grandfather, no less.

However, what was supposed to be a harmless little self-insert quickly becomes a reality when the protagonist is magically transported into their comic book and now has to navigate their own story and finish it in order to return to the real world, as well as figure out the mysterious powers of the magical pen.

22. Despite the fact that the days when the Bastille used to be packed with prisoners are gone, a handful were still trapped inside its gloomy walls by the time the infamous prison was taken.

The protagonist is one of the few prisoners who are sentenced to imprisonment inside the Bastille until they and the rest of the prisoners are set free by the revolutionaries.

For the first time in a long while, the protagonist is free but not all is sunshine and butterflies because the revolution is only beginning to escalate and the protagonist has long forgotten how to function in the society outside the prison.

With no other options, the protagonist decides to try and rebuild their life from square one, all while the events of the revolution are unfolding in the city of Paris.

23. Two friends, the protagonists, were raised together by a noble family as adopted wards and used to be close as children, but drifted apart when one of the two went abroad to get a good education.

Nevertheless, the childhood friends find themselves reunited by a pure coincidence during a meeting in the Jacobin Club, which both of them joined mere days ago.

All seems well, until it becomes apparent that the protagonists don’t exactly see eye to eye when it comes to politics in France nor the methods of solving the multiple issues plaguing the country.

This new rift between the protagonists only widens as the revolution progresses and the Jacobin Club gets split into groups on the basis of shared political beliefs.

Will the two protagonists be able to restore the friendship they used to have or will their new differences prove that maybe friendship isn’t always as almighty as people say?

24. The protagonist is acutely aware of the multiple injustices of the French society but they are not too eager to change things personally, hoping that maybe the government will find a way to fix things.

The protagonist, meanwhile, would rather focus on keeping their small family business (a bookshop) afloat and renting out an apartment in the house to make ends meet.

Soon, however, the protagonist ends up getting roped into the events of the revolution regardless when they accidentally overhear their new tenant discuss his plans in a hushed tone with a few other people.

The protagonist has all the evidence that they had unwittingly rented out an apartment to a revolutionary and now they have the evidence to turn that rebellious youth from Blérancourt in along with his buddies.

At first, the best course of action seems fairly obvious. Just report them to the authorities and be done with it.

However, perhaps these youths are more than just stupid kids playing at freedom fighting and maybe they can actually help the country.

When faced with the dilemma of either ratting the young rebels out or joining their cause, the protagonist makes a choice that ends up changing their entire life.

25. The year is 1811. Located near Saint-Petersburg, The Imperial Lyceum is a place where boys from noble families of The Russian Empire live and study. Perhaps the most famous Lyceum of all, it was home to plenty of those who would become prominent in Russian society of the time.

This is where the protagonist, one David de Boudry, teaches French to these boys.

Monsieur de Boudry knows that most of his students are blissfully unaware of a certain secret of his and likes it that way. It is best if they don’t know that he happens to be a younger brother to Jean-Paul Marat himself but changed his last name to avoid the associations.

Keeping this particular tidbit of his biography secret used to be fairly easy, until his older brother, Jean-Paul Marat, appeared in David’s life again on a snowy and frosty January day.

Marat is inexplicably alive, but he is also half-frozen and extremely disheveled when he shows up, not to mention the fact that he arrives with his wife and a very young child in tow. They all need a place to hide from the authorities, and fast.

Being a loving brother, David de Boudry hides his family and is now determined to keep them safe for not even a new name can sever family ties.

But, having made this difficult choice, will Monsieur de Boudry be able to reconcile his love for his family and the devotion to his adoptive home country? And will Marat be able to keep his loved ones and himself safe from the agents of police who lurk nearby and are quite hellbent on proving that the man they are pursuing is indeed the infamous Jacobin?

26. The protagonist is a sophomore who became a member of a Drama Club during their freshman year of high school and they are quite happy to finally have a friend group where they belong. Here nobody judges them for their stutter, their crossdressing and their fear of dogs.The protagonist is even allowed to play roles that would be normally reserved for the opposite gender just so they have an excuse to crossdress.

The upcoming play about the French Revolution is no exception and the protagonist is quite overjoyed but also frustrated that something just doesn’t ring true whenever they read their lines. Frustrated, they sneak into a time machine built by their parents and transport themselves to Paris of 1794.

They soon see that the city is in chaos and rumors about a traitor who had supposedly escaped the guillotine and went on the run with his family spread like wildfire. Moreover, the protagonist soon finds themselves in a bit of a pickle because of their name and physical appearance.

Even a man whom the protagonist saves from a mob advises them not to reveal their name and to lay low as soon as the protagonist introduces themselves. The protagonist is naturally confused but they do want to stay alive and free.

In order to survive, the protagonist decides to do what actors do best - improvise. It’s not easy, of course, but the protagonist tries to stay optimistic.

They hope that they will make it. They know they will. Giving up is not an option. After all, a Desmoulins never gives up. Right?

27. The French Revolution is not an easy period in history. It should be fairly obvious why.

The country is drowning in chaos and the future is uncertain, no matter how hard The Committee of Public Safety tries to maintain at least some semblance of order.

Meanwhile, in the heart of Paris, lives our protagonist whose main concern was not the revolution, but rather the fact that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep their inn’s doors open.

And then, one day, the unthinkable happens. A guest is found murdered in their room. Naturally, all the other guests are now suspects, and so is the staff. A diverse bunch of people with their own agendas, secrets and ties to the victim has gathered in the inn.

Sensing that something isn’t right, the protagonist decides to become an amateur sleuth and get to the bottom of the situation.

A “whodunnit” murder mystery is about to take place in the inn and the protagonist is determined to solve it.

28. A few years passed after the betrayal of the Thermidorians. The Revolution is destroyed and all of the enemies of the new government are dead… Except for one.

The protagonist is a patient in a mental hospital on the outskirts of Paris. Here the treatment of the patients is becoming more and more humane than it used to be before. That being said, the living conditions still leave a lot to be desired. Moreover, the protagonist feels isolated and lonely due to their personal issues and the trauma that caused them to become basically imprisoned in the facility.

Luckily, the loneliness disappears when the protagonist secretly manages to befriend another patient, a mysterious young man who is kept in isolation from the rest of the people at the facility, is forced to wear a mask to hide his face and is treated far worse than the others.

Horrified by the extent of the abuse that their new friend has to endure, the protagonist teams up with him to escape to Avignon, where the protagonist’s relatives live.

Little do they know, their new friend and partner in crime is an outlaw and a Montagnard, the last of them all, so when the two finally escape the police quickly catch wind of the situation.

Can the duo get to Avignon and avoid recapture? Will this unlikely friendship help them heal from their respective trauma? And will the revolutionary’s plan to avenge his executed friends be successful?

29. (Crossover with Greek mythology) When Adrestia, a minor Greek goddess, is banished to Earth from Mount Olympus for causing too much trouble, she assumes a human disguise and travels to France of 1789, where great changes are just around the corner.

Finally finding herself in her own element once again, Adrestia (whose human name is Adrienne) decides that she has no right to miss all the fun and joins the forces of the revolution. She is a goddess of revolt and a daughter of Ares, after all.

One would think that having a goddess on your side will make fighting easier, but things are not that simple and the other gods don’t exactly take kindly to troublemakers who go against authority.

Nevertheless, Adrestia is more than willing to try and help her new allies to win in their fight for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

30. When the protagonists first meet up in real life, they’re ecstatic. After a few years of chatting on the Internet, the two French Revolution enthusiasts have finally met each other face to face and now they decide to set an old plan of theirs in motion.

The duo wants to perform a time travel spell invented by their witch ancestors and change the way the French Revolution ended. The spell is successfully cast, but in the process the warlocks run out of magic and are now forced to wait in the past until they are strong enough to cast the spell again to return home.

But hey, at least while they’re waiting they can do what they always wanted to do - prevent the Thermidorian Reaction, and they are going to try to do just that, even though preventing a coup d’état is far from easy, especially for two college kids from the future.

31. It’s 1815. Joseph Fouché is the Minister of Police but his days in office are numbered and he knows it.

What’s more, rumors spread about the incompetence of the police as nobody can catch the culprit behind a new string of murders. Fouché hopes that cracking the case would restore his reputation, but something isn’t right about these murders.

So far, every single victim was a participant of the Thermidorian Reaction and it simply cannot be a mere coincidence. This pattern makes Fouché fear for his life and his reputation, as in addition to the murders the sins that he and his allies had pinned on their enemies begin to resurface.

Fearing that he is next and that his own crimes are about to be exposed as well, Fouché becomes obsessed with catching this mysterious vigilante. He even has a prime suspect in mind, but he can neither track him down nor prove that it was him.

Meanwhile, the time Fouché has to rehabilitate the police force is running out. Soon he too might face the music at long last, as well as learn exactly why sparing one of your enemies while killing the rest is considered to be a classic mistake.

Will the vigilante get to Fouché? How much time does the Minister of Police actually have left before karma knocks on his door? And why does the youngest police inspector in history, who is Fouché’s beloved protégé, turn against his mentor?

32. When the protagonist decided to sneak into the Catacombs of Paris for “shits and giggles” with their buddies, the last thing they expected was a sudden time travel to a closet in an apartment of a prominent revolutionary, whose skull the protagonist was holding in their hands seconds ago.

Naturally, the protagonist gets caught by the housekeeper and promptly accused of breaking and entering at best, and an assasination attempt at worst. It doesn’t help that the protagonist has strange pills and a baseball bat on their person.

But when they’re about to get prosecuted, the inhabitant of that same apartment suddenly speaks up on their behalf and defends the protagonist, claiming that it was a mere misunderstanding. Later, that same revolutionary visits the protagonist, reveals that he knows about the existence of time travel and promises to help, as long as the protagonist goes along with his plan.

Despite suspecting that the revolutionary has an ulterior motive, the protagonist does want answers so they agree to play along...at least for a while.

33. After the Revolutionary War in America, the protagonist follows his friend and mentor, Marquis de Lafayette, to Paris as he is the only family the hero has at this point.

At first, when the French Revolution rolls around, the hero still stays by his mentor’s side, never questioning his opinions and decisions and admiring him as a hero.

But after the September Massacres reveal Lafayette’s...less heroic side the hero is utterly broken and disappointed that he trusted the wrong person yet again. This revelation prompts the hero to switch sides and become a double agent, working with the Jacobins while pretending that he is still loyal to Lafayette.

Is this the correct choice to make or will the hero’s naïveté and a simple desire to belong betray him once again?

34. Maximilien Robespierre finds himself in a difficult situation. Somehow, everyone who crosses his path keeps going missing, only to turn up brutally murdered.

Moreover, Robespierre keeps receiving notes with rather...stalkerish messages written by the culprit. The stress and the crippling paranoia are slowly taking a toll on his frail body and he collapses altogether after finding out that Camille Desmoulins and Antoine de Saint-Just got attacked as well.

Fortunately, Saint-Just and Desmoulins manage to survive the ordeal and decide that enough is enough. After a long recovery, the two men decide to set aside their differences and track down the mysterious stalker before other people close to Robespierre get hurt.

Who knows, perhaps this buddy cop-esque adventure will even help Saint-Just and Desmoulins resolve their rivalry once and for all, now that a mutual friend of theirs needs both of them.

35. An immigrant enrolls into a high school in the country where they live now, a country located on the other side of the planet, miles away from their homeland.

Isolated from the rest of the students, shunned for their Eastern European accent (feel free to pick the specific country) and their Socialist beliefs, the protagonist has very few friends and even they are imaginary - three French revolutionaries whom the protagonist admires the most.

However, things change when a classmate bonds with the protagonist over their fascination with the French Revolution and the two decide to team up and write a novel about their favorite topic, all while the three imaginary friends, who may or may not be something more than a simple product of imagination, are guiding these kids on their quest to rehabilitate the legacy of the revolution.

P. S. The Fouché tag has been graciously lent to me by @frevandrest , the tag’s inventor. This needs to become an official tag imo.

[timeless-hollywood-classics]

Ida Lupino (4 February 1918 – 3 August 1995) was an English-American actress, singer, director, and producer. She is widely regarded as the most prominent female filmmaker working in the 1950s during the Hollywood studio system. With her independent production company, she co-wrote and co-produced several social-message films and became the first woman to direct a film noir with The Hitch-Hiker in 1953. Among her other directed films the best known are Not Wanted about unwed pregnancy (she took over for a sick director and refused directorial credit), Never Fear (1949) loosely based upon her own experiences battling paralyzing polio, Outrage (1950) one of the first films about rape, The Bigamist (1953) (which was named in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die) and The Trouble with Angels (1966).

Throughout her 48-year career, she made acting appearances in 59 films and directed eight others, working primarily in the United States, where she became a citizen in 1948. As an actress her best known films are The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) with Basil Rathbone, They Drive by Night (1940) with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart, High Sierra (1941) with Bogart, The Sea Wolf (1941) with Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield, Ladies in Retirement (1941) with Louis Hayward, Moontide (1942) with Jean Gabin, The Hard Way (1943), Deep Valley (1947) with Dane Clark, Road House (1948) with Cornel Wilde and Richard Widmark, While the City Sleeps (1956) with Dana Andrews and Vincent Price. and Junior Bonner (1972) with Steve McQueen.

She also directed more than 100 episodes of television productions in a variety of genres including westerns, supernatural tales, situation comedies, murder mysteries, and gangster stories. She was the only woman to direct an episode of the original The Twilight Zone series ("The Masks"), as well as the only director to have starred in an episode of the show ("The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine").

Lupino was born in Herne Hill, London, to actress Connie O'Shea (also known as Connie Emerald) and music hall comedian Stanley Lupino, a member of the theatrical Lupino family, which included Lupino Lane, a song-and-dance man. Her father, a top name in musical comedy in the UK and a member of a centuries-old theatrical dynasty dating back to Renaissance Italy, encouraged her to perform at an early age. He built a backyard theatre for Lupino and her sister Rita (1920–2016), who also became an actress and dancer. Lupino wrote her first play at age seven and toured with a travelling theatre company as a child. By the age of ten, Lupino had memorised the leading female roles in each of Shakespeare's plays. After her intense childhood training for stage plays, Ida's uncle Lupino Lane assisted her in moving towards film acting by getting her work as a background actress at British International Studios.

She wanted to be a writer, but in order to please her father, Lupino enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She excelled in a number of "bad girl" film roles, often playing prostitutes. Lupino did not enjoy being an actress and felt uncomfortable with many of the early roles she was given. She felt that she was pushed into the profession due to her family history.

Lupino worked as both a stage and screen actress. She first took to the stage in 1934 as the lead in The Pursuit of Happiness at the Paramount Studio Theatre.[10] Lupino made her first film appearance in The Love Race (1931) and the following year, aged 14, she worked under director Allan Dwan in Her First Affaire, in a role for which her mother had previously tested.[11] She played leading roles in five British films in 1933 at Warner Bros.' Teddington studios and for Julius Hagen at Twickenham, including The Ghost Camera with John Mills and I Lived with You with Ivor Novello.

Dubbed "the English Jean Harlow", she was discovered by Paramount in the 1933 film Money for Speed, playing a good girl/bad girl dual role. Lupino claimed the talent scouts saw her play only the sweet girl in the film and not the part of the prostitute, so she was asked to try out for the lead role in Alice in Wonderland (1933). When she arrived in Hollywood, the Paramount producers did not know what to make of their sultry potential leading lady, but she did get a five-year contract.

Lupino starred in over a dozen films in the mid-1930s, working with Columbia in a two-film deal, one of which, The Light That Failed (1939), was a role she acquired after running into the director's office unannounced, demanding an audition. After this breakthrough performance as a spiteful cockney model who torments Ronald Colman, she began to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress. As a result, her parts improved during the 1940s, and she jokingly referred to herself as "the poor man's Bette Davis", taking the roles that Davis refused.

Mark Hellinger, associate producer at Warner Bros., was impressed by Lupino's performance in The Light That Failed, and hired her for the femme-fatale role in the Raoul Walsh-directed They Drive by Night (1940), opposite stars George Raft, Ann Sheridan and Humphrey Bogart. The film did well and the critical consensus was that Lupino stole the movie, particularly in her unhinged courtroom scene. Warner Bros. offered her a contract which she negotiated to include some freelance rights. She worked with Walsh and Bogart again in High Sierra (1941), where she impressed critic Bosley Crowther in her role as an "adoring moll".

Her performance in The Hard Way (1943) won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. She starred in Pillow to Post (1945), which was her only comedic leading role. After the drama Deep Valley (1947) finished shooting, neither Warner Bros. nor Lupino moved to renew her contract and she left the studio in 1947. Although in demand throughout the 1940s, she arguably never became a major star although she often had top billing in her pictures, above actors such as Humphrey Bogart, and was repeatedly critically lauded for her realistic, direct acting style.

She often incurred the ire of studio boss Jack Warner by objecting to her casting, refusing poorly written roles that she felt were beneath her dignity as an actress, and making script revisions deemed unacceptable by the studio. As a result, she spent a great deal of her time at Warner Bros. suspended. In 1942, she rejected an offer to star with Ronald Reagan in Kings Row, and was immediately put on suspension at the studio. Eventually, a tentative rapprochement was brokered, but her relationship with the studio remained strained. In 1947, Lupino left Warner Brothers and appeared for 20th Century Fox as a nightclub singer in the film noir Road House, performing her musical numbers in the film. She starred in On Dangerous Ground in 1951, and may have taken on some of the directing tasks of the film while director Nicholas Ray was ill.

While on suspension, Lupino had ample time to observe filming and editing processes, and she became interested in directing. She described how bored she was on set while "someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work".

She and her husband Collier Young formed an independent company, The Filmakers, to produce, direct, and write low-budget, issue-oriented films. Her first directing job came unexpectedly in 1949 when director Elmer Clifton suffered a mild heart attack and was unable to finish Not Wanted, a film Lupino co-produced and co-wrote. Lupino stepped in to finish the film without taking directorial credit out of respect for Clifton. Although the film's subject of out-of-wedlock pregnancy was controversial, it received a vast amount of publicity, and she was invited to discuss the film with Eleanor Roosevelt on a national radio program.

Never Fear (1949), a film about polio (which she had personally experienced replete with paralysis at age 16), was her first director's credit. After producing four more films about social issues, including Outrage (1950), a film about rape (while this word is never used in the movie), Lupino directed her first hard-paced, all-male-cast film, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), making her the first woman to direct a film noir. The Filmakers went on to produce 12 feature films, six of which Lupino directed or co-directed, five of which she wrote or co-wrote, three of which she acted in, and one of which she co-produced.

Lupino once called herself a "bulldozer" to secure financing for her production company, but she referred to herself as "mother" while on set. On set, the back of her director's chair was labeled "Mother of Us All".[3] Her studio emphasized her femininity, often at the urging of Lupino herself. She credited her refusal to renew her contract with Warner Bros. under the pretenses of domesticity, claiming "I had decided that nothing lay ahead of me but the life of the neurotic star with no family and no home." She made a point to seem nonthreatening in a male-dominated environment, stating, "That's where being a man makes a great deal of difference. I don't suppose the men particularly care about leaving their wives and children. During the vacation period, the wife can always fly over and be with him. It's difficult for a wife to say to her husband, come sit on the set and watch."

Although directing became Lupino's passion, the drive for money kept her on camera, so she could acquire the funds to make her own productions. She became a wily low-budget filmmaker, reusing sets from other studio productions and talking her physician into appearing as a doctor in the delivery scene of Not Wanted. She used what is now called product placement, placing Coke, Cadillac, and other brands in her films, such as The Bigamist. She shot in public places to avoid set-rental costs and planned scenes in pre-production to avoid technical mistakes and retakes. She joked that if she had been the "poor man's Bette Davis" as an actress, she had now become the "poor man's Don Siegel" as a director.

The Filmakers production company closed shop in 1955, and Lupino turned almost immediately to television, directing episodes of more than thirty US TV series from 1956 through 1968. She also helmed a feature film in 1965 for the Catholic schoolgirl comedy The Trouble With Angels, starring Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell; this was Lupino's last theatrical film as a director. She continued acting as well, going on to a successful television career throughout the 1960s and '70s.

Lupino's career as a director continued through 1968. Her directing efforts during these years were almost exclusively for television productions such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, The Twilight Zone, Have Gun – Will Travel, Honey West, The Donna Reed Show, Gilligan's Island, 77 Sunset Strip, The Rifleman, The Virginian, Sam Benedict, The Untouchables, Hong Kong, The Fugitive, and Bewitched.

After the demise of The Filmakers, Lupino continued working as an actress until the end of the 1970s, mainly in television. Lupino appeared in 19 episodes of Four Star Playhouse from 1952 to 1956, an endeavor involving partners Charles Boyer, Dick Powell and David Niven. From January 1957 to September 1958, Lupino starred with her then-husband Howard Duff in the sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve, in which the duo played husband-and-wife film stars named Howard Adams and Eve Drake, living in Beverly Hills, California.[22] Duff and Lupino also co-starred as themselves in 1959 in one of the 13 one-hour installments of The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour and an episode of The Dinah Shore Chevy Show in 1960. Lupino guest-starred in numerous television shows, including The Ford Television Theatre (1954), Bonanza (1959), Burke's Law (1963–64), The Virginian (1963–65), Batman (1968), The Mod Squad (1969), Family Affair (1969–70), The Wild, Wild West (1969), Nanny and the Professor (1971), Columbo: Short Fuse (1972), Columbo: Swan Song (1974) in which she plays Johnny Cash's character's zealous wife, Barnaby Jones (1974), The Streets of San Francisco, Ellery Queen (1975), Police Woman (1975), and Charlie's Angels (1977). Her final acting appearance was in the 1979 film My Boys Are Good Boys.

Lupino has two distinctions with The Twilight Zone series, as the only woman to have directed an episode ("The Masks") and the only person to have worked as both actor for one episode ("The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine"), and director for another.

Lupino's Filmakers movies deal with unconventional and controversial subject matter that studio producers would not touch, including out-of-wedlock pregnancy, bigamy, and rape. She described her independent work as "films that had social significance and yet were entertainment ... base on true stories, things the public could understand because they had happened or been of news value." She focused on women's issues for many of her films and she liked strong characters, "[Not] women who have masculine qualities about them, but [a role] that has intestinal fortitude, some guts to it."

In the film The Bigamist, the two women characters represent the career woman and the homemaker. The title character is married to a woman (Joan Fontaine) who, unable to have children, has devoted her energy to her career. While on one of many business trips, he meets a waitress (Lupino) with whom he has a child, and then marries her.[25] Marsha Orgeron, in her book Hollywood Ambitions, describes these characters as "struggling to figure out their place in environments that mirror the social constraints that Lupino faced".[13] However, Donati, in his biography of Lupino, said "The solutions to the character's problems within the films were often conventional, even conservative, more reinforcing the 1950s' ideology than undercutting it."

Ahead of her time within the studio system, Lupino was intent on creating films that were rooted in reality. On Never Fear, Lupino said, "People are tired of having the wool pulled over their eyes. They pay out good money for their theatre tickets and they want something in return. They want realism. And you can't be realistic with the same glamorous mugs on the screen all the time."

Lupino's films are critical of many traditional social institutions, which reflect her contempt for the patriarchal structure that existed in Hollywood. Lupino rejected the commodification of female stars and as an actress, she resisted becoming an object of desire. She said in 1949, "Hollywood careers are perishable commodities", and sought to avoid such a fate for herself.

Ida Lupino was diagnosed with polio in 1934. The New York Times reported that the outbreak of polio within the Hollywood community was due to contaminated swimming pools. The disease severely affected her ability to work, and her contract with Paramount fell apart shortly after her diagnosis. Lupino recovered and eventually directed, produced, and wrote many films, including a film loosely based upon her travails with polio titled Never Fear in 1949, the first film that she was credited for directing (she had earlier stepped in for an ill director on Not Wanted and refused directorial credit out of respect for her colleague). Her experience with the disease gave Lupino the courage to focus on her intellectual abilities over simply her physical appearance. In an interview with Hollywood, Lupino said, "I realized that my life and my courage and my hopes did not lie in my body. If that body was paralyzed, my brain could still work industriously...If I weren't able to act, I would be able to write. Even if I weren't able to use a pencil or typewriter, I could dictate."[31] Film magazines from the 1930s and 1940s, such as The Hollywood Reporter and Motion Picture Daily, frequently published updates on her condition. Lupino worked for various non-profit organizations to help raise funds for polio research.

Lupino's interests outside the entertainment industry included writing short stories and children's books, and composing music. Her composition "Aladdin's Suite" was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1937. She composed this piece while on bedrest due to polio in 1935.

She became an American citizen in June 1948 and a staunch Democrat who supported the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Lupino was Catholic.

Lupino died from a stroke while undergoing treatment for colon cancer in Los Angeles on 3 August 1995, at the age of 77. Her memoirs, Ida Lupino: Beyond the Camera, were edited after her death and published by Mary Ann Anderson.

Lupino learned filmmaking from everyone she observed on set, including William Ziegler, the cameraman for Not Wanted. When in preproduction on Never Fear, she conferred with Michael Gordon on directorial technique, organization, and plotting. Cinematographer Archie Stout said of Ms. Lupino, "Ida has more knowledge of camera angles and lenses than any director I've ever worked with, with the exception of Victor Fleming. She knows how a woman looks on the screen and what light that woman should have, probably better than I do." Lupino also worked with editor Stanford Tischler, who said of her, "She wasn't the kind of director who would shoot something, then hope any flaws could be fixed in the cutting room. The acting was always there, to her credit."

Author Ally Acker compares Lupino to pioneering silent-film director Lois Weber for their focus on controversial, socially relevant topics. With their ambiguous endings, Lupino's films never offered simple solutions for her troubled characters, and Acker finds parallels to her storytelling style in the work of the modern European "New Wave" directors, such as Margarethe von Trotta.

Ronnie Scheib, who issued a Kino release of three of Lupino's films, likens Lupino's themes and directorial style to directors Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, and Robert Aldrich, saying, "Lupino very much belongs to that generation of modernist filmmakers." On whether Lupino should be considered a feminist filmmaker, Scheib states, "I don't think Lupino was concerned with showing strong people, men or women. She often said that she was interested in lost, bewildered people, and I think she was talking about the postwar trauma of people who couldn't go home again."

Author Richard Koszarski noted Lupino's choice to play with gender roles regarding women's film stereotypes during the studio era: "Her films display the obsessions and consistencies of a true auteur... In her films The Bigamist and The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino was able to reduce the male to the same sort of dangerous, irrational force that women represented in most male-directed examples of Hollywood film noir."

Lupino did not openly consider herself a feminist, saying, "I had to do something to fill up my time between contracts. Keeping a feminine approach is vital — men hate bossy females ... Often I pretended to a cameraman to know less than I did. That way I got more cooperation." Village Voice writer Carrie Rickey, though, holds Lupino up as a model of modern feminist filmmaking: "Not only did Lupino take control of production, direction, and screenplay, but [also] each of her movies addresses the brutal repercussions of sexuality, independence and dependence."

By 1972, Lupino said she wished more women were hired as directors and producers in Hollywood, noting that only very powerful actresses or writers had the chance to work in the field. She directed or costarred a number of times with young, fellow British actresses on a similar journey of developing their American film careers like Hayley Mills and Pamela Franklin.

Actress Bea Arthur, best remembered for her work in Maude and The Golden Girls, was motivated to escape her stifling hometown by following in Lupino's footsteps and becoming an actress, saying, "My dream was to become a very small blonde movie star like Ida Lupino and those other women I saw up there on the screen during the Depression."

Lupino has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for contributions to the fields of television and film — located at 1724 Vine Street and 6821 Hollywood Boulevard.

New York Film Critics Circle Award - Best Actress, The Hard Way, 1943

Inaugural Saturn Award - Best Supporting Actress, The Devil's Rain, 1975

A Commemorative Blue Plaque is dedicated to Lupino and her father Stanley Lupino by The Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America and the Theatre and Film Guild of Great Britain and America at the house where she was born in Herne Hill, London, 16 February 2016

Composer Carla Bley paid tribute to Lupino with her jazz composition "Ida Lupino" in 1964.

The Hitch-Hiker was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1998 while Outrage was inducted in 2020.