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jupitermelichios · 4 years ago

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On a more possitive note, I’ve started watching Sword Art Online. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen (and the last film I saw in cinemas was Cats to give you context for the scale i’m working on here) and I kind of adore it in much the same way I love garbage like Smallville or Twilight. It’s so stupid on so many levels. You could challenge someone to write the worst anime, and it would almost certainly be better than SAO. It’s almost hypnotic how terrible it is.

No one should watch this terrible terrible show so I therefore don’t feel at all bad that I’m about the spoil absolutely everything, but honestly if you do also hate-watch this please come talk to me about how terrible it is. I don’t know anyone else who watches it.

Highlights of Season 1 include:

everyone is trapped in an MMO, and if you die in the MMO you die IRL. but if you were a beta-tester you’re probably fine because they just let them keep all their levels and items from the testing, so they’re all massively OP and everyone just accepts this as a normal and non-game-breaking thing

it’s a fantasy MMO but there’s no races, no magic system, no weapons except swords and maces, and not even an option to dual wield - literally all you can do in this fucking game is stand in front of an enemy and mash the attack button. I’m pretty sure they’re trapped there because the devs realised no one would play this post launch-day otherwise because it’s boring as shit

when the villain traps everyone he also just changs all their avatars to look like they do IRL for absolutely no reason, like actually none, he doesn’t even say he thinks it would be funny, he just does it and no one questions it and it is literally never mentioned again because this is the worst TV show ever animated.

in the second episode the main character deliberately witholds information about how to defeat a boss, indirectly causing multiple deaths. there is absolutely no reason for him to withhold it, he was just being a jerk because he doesn’t like people

in the third episode they reset his entire personality and he’s now a selfless hero pretending to be a lower level than he really is so people will find him more relateable and be his friend because all he wants is to help people. this is not a consequence of episode 2, they just decided they didnt like the character as he’d previously been written.

he makes some new friends who are all objectively terrible people who have decided for no season that the twelve year old who doesn’t really know how to play and keeps having anxiety attacks about the very real possibility of death has to be the guild tank. the MC is high enough level to be functionally immortal in like half the levels, but doesn’t tell anyone this he just lets them go on bullying this child

none of his friends survive that episode, in the game or IRL. which is also a christmas epsiode. a child dies in battle because she’s a terrible tank and then a man commits suicide out of guilt, so then the main character murders santa to try and bring them back from the actual dead but it doesn’t work because again, this is a video game and they are dead IRL, so then he walks off into the snow alone. Christmas!

we meet the best character in the entire show in episode 4, Rosalia, who has gone evil and started just straight murdering people because she’s sick of being an attractive adult woman who can’t get a date because she’s surrounded by lolicons who are only interested in the preteen characters (not a joke, that comes up, the show is firmly on the side of the lolicons)

in the same episode we get an extended bra and panty sequence staring an actual fucking child, like canonically this character is maybe 13 at best. this is one of only 2 occaisions when they feel the need to undress a character and it’s the fucking 12 year old, it’s so gross it reads like a parody of itself

literally every single named female character aged over 8 who talks to the MC falls in love with him after like 5 minutes (and in season 2 this includes his actual sister). he shows absolutely no interest in any of them (including his sister, thank god) until...

the main character gets engaged to a girl he only knows from an MMO after a virtual single date (he doesn’t actually win her in a PVP match but only because he looses the match, he 100% canonically tries to win her in a match, which she is apparently fine with). he then doesn’t bother to ask for her real name until the final episode, he just calls her by her screen name

(that’s okay though becuase it turns out that this moron of a love interest used her real name, on a local server, in a game where your character looks like you do IRL, because apparently getting doxxed is her hobby)

they then get in-game married off screen. there’s not even like a still of a wedding photo. nothing. the main character proposes and then the show immediately jumps to the honeymoon, it’s fucking bizarre.

they find a creepy child dressed all in white with no memory alone in the woods a week into their honeymoon who starts calling them mommy and daddy literally seconds after they first meet her, and they don’t suspect anything suss is going on and adopt her

for hilarity bear in mind the main character may only be 15 at this point (he says he’s only just turned 16 in the last epsiode, but his actual birthday is never mentioned), and his virtual wifu is 16, but no one ever questions the marriage or the adoption, even though ‘hey marriage in a video game is as important and meaningful as marriage in real life’ is an actual conversation people have multiple times. also they think the child they adopt is an actual IRL 8 year old who thinks these randos she met in an MMO are her mum and dad and everyone just goes with that like it’s a totally normal thing

a character called ‘Thinker’ agrees to meet an enemy faction leader for peace talks. the “peace talks” take place in a high level dungeon and he is told to come alone with no weapons and no fast travel. he does this. no one ever comments that his name is ironic, and in fact they seem to think that being betrayed and trapped in a dungeon with a boss is a totally unexpected turn of events Thinker could never have planned for

they take their new baby into the dungeon to rescue thinker, because they went to the jean grey school of baby rearing, and she imediately reveals that she’s actually a magical maggufin with infinite power, murders the grim reaper, and then dies. In literally the second episode she’s in

after she dies the MC hacks the admin account of the game, converts her corpse into an in game item, and saves to the local storage on his console, with the intention of bringing her back to life as a robot once they’re saved from the game. I’m not joking, that’s an actual thing that happens.

the fact that the main character can just access the main admin account and make massive game-breaking changes isn’t used again in that game and he never thinks to try and use it to force log people out or give himself infinite life so he can just rush the game and free everyone. nope, convert a corpse into an item and then never think about it again.

there’s an entire episode where all they do is go fishing. its the only filler episode in the season, and it immediately follows the death of a small child. it’s the most tone-deaf beach episode in writing history

it turns out this game, this game where they didn’t bother coding in any difference races, weapons, or any kind of magic system, was intended to have fully sentient AI therapists, because why the fuck not at this point honestly

oh also the game has PVP and you can trick the game into thinking a sleeping player is in PVP with you in order to actually murder a real person without it flagging in-game as a murder making the crime impossible for the real life legal system to investigate even though you just murdered a person. and they expect us to believe this game had actual beta testers. at least cyberpunk wasn’t played on microwaves you connected straight to your brain (also not a joke, the VR consoles canonically work by sending microwave radiation into your brain, no wonder VR never caught on)

the set up for the show is that they have to reach level 100 of a dungeon in order to win. At level 75, the writers got bored and the show just ends.

it turns out the power of love allows you to just break the fucking game and the main villain literally has a line about how ‘love allows you to remove debuffs, huh, we didn’t think to plan for that’ because again, there’s no metaphors in this show, everything is 100% literal including the fact that falling in love with another player means you’re immune to the paralysis status effect

power of love also allows you to very briefly become a poltergeist after being killed, but only for like 2 seconds. again not a joke or a metaphor, main character is killed but then gets to hang around as a ghost for a little bit to enable him to defeat the boss. he also doesn’t die in real life despite that being the entire fucking premise of the show, again because power of love.

the bad guy literally has no plan, he’s just doing shit for the sake of having something to do. His actions directly cause the deaths of more than 4,000 people, and it’s not even in aid of anything. they ask him why he trapped 10,000 people in an MMO and allowed them to slowly die, and he’s just like ‘huh, i forgot i did that, random’ and then just fucking peaces out

the fact that he committed one of the largest mass killings outside of war never really comes up again, as far as we know he doesn’t even go to jail. i think the show actually kind of thinks he’s a good guy, which is a fucking WILD moral stance to take on the deaths of 4000 completely innocent people for absolutely no reason

If this sounds hilari-bad but you don’t want to invest the time to watch a show which is objectively garbage, it has an abridged series which is famously better than the show it’s parodying (i’m dead serious, people have character arcs, the getting married after one date thing is properly addressed, the mc has to deal with PTSD because of all his friends dying in epsidode 3, they don’t immediately follow the death of a child with an extended fishing montage, the villain has an actual plan). It’s mostly actually pretty good, but this is the internet and it’s an abridged series, so while there are a lot fewer yikes moments than most it still has enough that I’m not comfortable recommending it without the caveat. that said I still enjoyed it a lot, although possibly not at much as pointing and laughing at the garbage that is the actual show.

#sao bashing #kirito bashing #sao abridged #good bad shows #i love this garbage show so much #it's one of the funniest things i've watched all year #and none of that is intentional #sword art online bashing #if you also love hate this show please come talk to me about how terrible it is

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kitkatopinions · 4 years ago

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Okay, so I’ve talked before about the many problems I have with James Ironwood’s semblance ‘Mettle’ here, but I wanted to make a post about what changes I personally would make to James’s semblance and how I would put it into practice in the show.

This is pro James Ironwood content. Ironwood haters, don’t @ me, don’t interact.

1. Change the phraseology and the way the semblance is presented. I would present it as a literal form of mind control, where his semblance makes him do whatever it takes to accomplish a set goal. Phrasing it as increasing his stubbornness and focus to the point where other things fall by the wayside makes it seem like his semblance just makes character traits much stronger, villainizes those traits, and is insensitive to people that hyper-fixate and can’t help that. Phrasing his semblance instead as centered around making him do whatever it takes to accomplish a goal, even if that changes who he is, is better in my opinion.

2. Change his semblance from passive to active This is good for a couple of reasons. People can’t control their passive semblances, which A. leaves James looking almost completely sympathetic (since, you know, he can’t fully control his actions) and it also leaves the casual viewer wondering what’s James and what’s his semblance. Did he bring his ships to Vale of his own volition or was it his semblance? Did he close the borders to Atlas himself or is it his semblance? Did he shoot Oscar himself, or was it his semblance? Etc. Etc. Making his semblance something that he himself chooses to use despite recognizing that it’s dangerous both gives James some level of culpability and it makes it much clearer to the audience what’s James’ personality and what is done under the influence of his semblance. I would make it so that James can turn on his semblance, but rarely ever does, because when he turns it on, he can’t make himself turn it off, and he can’t control himself or his responses in that state. I would make it so the only ways for James’s semblance to turn off again is if his goal is completed, his aura breaks, or he dies.

3. Make his semblance use clear through visual cues Honestly, this one isn’t as needed as the other two, but it just makes it much easier to understand and A. gives the audience another way to be clued in to when James is or isn’t under the affects of his semblance, and B. gives the characters a way to be clued in to when James is or isn’t under the affects of his semblance. In the first Avengers, when someone got possessed, their eyes would turn black and then turn a certain color of blue. A similar thing could happen with James, his eyes lightening, even if it was really subtle.

Also a change in body language would make for a subtle, but nice shift. James tends to put his arms behind his back, he tends to look people in the eye when he’s talking to them, he sighs, he acts tired out, he acts a little awkward, he gives little physical signs of affection like a shoulder to the hand, or a hug, or smiling softly. Having him do none of these things - keeping his arms at his sides, not looking at people when he talks to them or they talk to him, acting perfectly alert, not ever showing his more affectionate, warm, or awkward sides - all would make it clear that there’s something off. James isn’t acting like himself. To be totally fair to the show, there’s for sure some of that ‘James isn’t acting like himself’ stuff in the show, buuuut to be totally honest about the show, it’s clear we’re meant to see James as just an evil villain and his semblance isn’t even mentioned in the show, so... Yeah.

So in my ideal version, James’s semblance is an active semblance he can’t turn off, that forces him to accomplish a set goal no matter what and will even change his morality and base personality in order to achieve it, and it has visual cues like a change in body language and eye color shifting. Another thing to note is that James’s semblance is a secret, even to many of his confidants. The people that James has told about his semblance are Qrow and Ozpin.

Now to apply it to the show.

Adding an extra scene into the early episodes of V7.

Qrow enters James’s office and the two start talking about James’ plans. Qrow notes that it all still seems like ‘a bit much’ and James dismisses this concern, talking about how drastic times call for drastic measures, and they have to do whatever they can to stop Salem. Qrow has a moment’s pause and a guilty look (since he’s keeping the secret of Salem being immortal,) but then narrows his eyes and asks James “Is that you or your semblance talking?” James sighs, he says “You know I don’t use my semblance.” Qrow looks unconvinced, and James turns to face him a little more fully. They lock eyes and Qrow seems satisfied, nodding a little and turning away again. James asks Qrow to trust him, and Qrow agrees, with the qualification that James has to let him - and the others - help him instead of taking it all on himself, which James also agrees to, if not a little reluctantly.

Later in the episode ‘Gravity’ when Ironwood makes the choice to leave Mantle, he does so clearly under his own power. As Team RWBY start opposing him and after realizing they’ve gone behind his back, we see James hesitate. He takes a deep breath with his back to the girls and the Ace Ops and then triggers his semblance, his aura lighting up for a minor moment and his eyes shifting color to a lighter blue. The Ace Ops and Team RWBY all have a split second moment of confusion - seeing his aura flash - but then James turns and that’s when he declares he’s going to enact martial law. The scene continues on as is, with Ruby contacting the others and the Ace Ops going to arrest Team RWBY, etc.

Meanwhile, Qrow, Robyn, and Clover are all left confused and uncertain, and then receive the order for everyone’s arrest, including Qrow. Cue more confusion, and Qrow says there must be some sort of mistake. Robyn starts up the fight, Clover and Qrow try to de-escalate things, and in this version of things, Qrow doesn’t really join in the fight (Oh, I should note, I’m also erasing the Oz-punch in this version because I can do whatever I want.) When the plane goes down, he’s still trying to defend and make sense of things, but Tyrian’s coming on strong, taking advantage of Clover trying to make sure Qrow can’t get away - since he literally doesn’t know that Qrow isn’t a criminal - and Qrow being unwilling to fight Clover, and Tyrian kills Clover himself. Qrow’s distraught and affected, but doesn’t blame James, and Tyrian gets away.

He and Robyn are both arrested, and meanwhile, James and Oscar’s confrontation happens, and right before Ironwood shoots him, Oscar realizes that his eyes are different, but is then shot. In season eight and in jail with Robyn, Jacques, and Watts, we see Qrow frustrated and upset as the three argue back and forth, and all three of them are blaming Ironwood, when Qrow gets up and again starts trying to say there’s been some kind of mistake. Robyn says he’s putting too much faith in Atlas’s higher ups, and Qrow says that she just doesn’t know James like he does - which is true. When the guards come to take Watts away, Qrow says “That isn’t like him,” And Robyn rolls her eyes, but we see Qrow’s eyes widen in realization and he tells Robyn that James must’ve triggered his semblance.

Meanwhile, Oz (now back and getting the lowdown on everything from Oscar) speculates on whether or not James’s semblance is affecting his choices, but the both of them agree that they’re not 100% sure if they can give James the benefit of that doubt after Lionheart and everyone else that’s ever betrayed Oz (Note this also leaves a place where at least Oscar can say he’s sorry for how the Jinn/backstory thing went down.) Oscar doesn’t ask how James’s semblance works and Oz only really mentions that it alters his behavior. Oscar doesn’t tell the others Oz is back and Oscar doesn’t mention the semblance to the others, since neither of them are sure if it’s really at play.

Next time we see them, Robyn is pressing Qrow for details on James’s semblance and he tells her what it does and how it works. Robyn isn’t sure, but Qrow insists. He does wonder why James even turned it on and takes a moment to be angry that he did when he knows how dangerous it is - and maybe makes some comment about ‘if I could keep mine off, I’d never use it.’ Robyn hesitates, and then says “Well, I trust you, Qrow. If you say it’s his semblance, and that’s what’s really putting Mantle at risk... Then how do we stop it?” The two start making a plan to break out of the jail to get to Ironwood so they can help him.

Meanwhile, everything with Ironwood keeps escalating, the Ace Ops are still following his orders, they try to arrest Penny, delivering the bomb to the whale, find Team JRY, Winter makes her compromise, Cinder breaks in to free Watts, yada yada. When the Ace Ops bring the bomb back to Ironwood and it’s revealed Qrow and Robyn have escaped, James starts talking about how he should’ve used Qrow to get to Penny, could’ve used Penny’s friends against her, and then decides to drop the bomb on Mantle. And Winter clearly figures out something is wrong and starts getting suspicious and freaked. She tries to talk him out of it and tells him “this isn’t you, why are you doing this?” but James will barely look at her and keeps insisting, and finally she ‘agrees,’ but clearly seems perturbed and very unhappy with it.

Meanwhile, seeing the bomb threat puts Oz over the edge of thinking this is James affected by his semblance. Both he and Oscar still aren’t totally sure, but bring it up to Ruby and the others, and there’s a moment of “What the heck, another secret” before Oscar defends Oz “We didn’t know for sure, there was so much going on, I’m the one who didn’t think to mention it, it wasn’t our secret to tell,” and Jaune or something quickly says they don’t have time to argue anyway, and everyone moves on. No one is sure that it’s just James’s semblance, but Ruby declares that they have to try and break his aura and trust that there’s a fix - keeping the themes consistent, what with Emerald easily accepted right there. However, there’s still Salem reforming and the virus infecting Penny to think of, so they start making their whole plan as it is in the real show.

When Winter helps Marrow escape, she tells him that there’s something very wrong with James (even noticing about his eyes,) and he - like Robyn - thinks she’s just putting too much faith in him, and Winter sadly says that maybe he’s right, but that she just would never have believed he’d do something like that, insisting that his other choices made sense, that every war takes sacrifice, but this was just too far, cruel, evil, even. Marrow gets more serious and agrees. Qrow and Robyn, having escaped, start realizing everything that’s happening, they start to become even more frantic to find James and break his aura, which kicks into overdrive when they hear the message saying they only have an hour to go before James drops a bomb on Mantle. Qrow says “James is never going to forgive himself if that happens,” and Robyn declares “I’ll never forgive him if that happens.” Qrow gets angry and Robyn gets angry in response, reminding Qrow - and the audience - that James is the one who chose to turn his semblance on.

When the two run into Winter and Marrow, Winter starts telling them that James is planning to bomb Mantle, and Qrow gives her a quick low-down of James’s semblance. Winter then gets a quick “I knew it,” moment. Winter convinces Qrow she’ll break James’s aura or die trying and for him and Robyn to focus on getting the other Ace Ops out of commission since James will let her get close enough to land a strong enough hit. Qrow is really reluctant to leave it in her hands, but she assures him “I’m not going to let the General destroy himself,” and Qrow - despite his clear early problems with Winter, says “I know you won’t.” The fight goes down pretty much the same, with the kids still all going hard and Winter getting in the final hit that puts James out of commission. Nora, Jaune, and Oscar are all like “Did that do it, is he back to how he should be?” And Winter says she’ll bring him to a medical room. Nora and Jaune exchange an unsure look, Nora ventures “Just a medical room?” And Winter sighs, looks a little unsure herself, but then nods. Ozpin then speaks up, saying “She’s right. I... I trust him. I have to trust him.” Jaune, Nora, and Ren then agree, nodding, and then things start continuing like normal, only Winter is keeping Ironwood in a medical room instead of a jail cell.

When James wakes back up, he’s himself again. He has to deal with the fact that because of his choice to turn his semblance on, he almost caused destruction and death to innocent people at his own hand and when there was absolutely no real reason to. He has to grapple with the hurt he caused as well as knowing he literally had no control and couldn’t even feel horror or guilt over what he was doing in the moment. He could go on to Vacuo, but he knows the general population of Atlas and Mantle won’t just accept that it was his semblance at work. He’s going to be hated, maybe even arrested as a villain, his position and his ability to lead that he’s strived for in an effort to help whoever he can is gone, many of the people who were his allies will never look at him the same way again, he hurt Penny so much, and he can’t just get rid of that because he never meant to and hadn’t been able to control it - and it was still because he made the choice to turn on his semblance in the first place. But. No, in this version, he doesn’t die, and Qrow would talk to him and connect with him again somewhere down the line, and when James started berating himself, Qrow would softly and sympathetically say

“You idiot. I know you didn’t do this.”

This is by no means perfect. This is by no means without flaw. And I know my Ironqrow shipping impacted it, but you know what? I don’t care. I wrote this for me. This is the headcanoned version that’s going to live in my head rent free, canon or otherwise.

#rwby criticism #anti rwby #james ironwood #pro james ironwood #ironwood defense #pro ironwood #james ironwood defense #Again any Ironwood haters don't interact

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sokkastyles · 4 years ago

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So a while back I saw this pretty inaccurate and by inaccurate I mean mind-numbingly stupid take that’s been grinding at my gears ever since I saw it so I’m just going to rant about it and then ask you what you think.

So, you know when Toph first joins Team Avatar, she’s having a hard time fitting in with the group, and Katara tells her that they usually all set up camp together, and so Toph tells her that she “carries her own weight” and would prefer it if she could just do the work she needed to do for herself and everyone else also do all the work they needed to do for themselves instead of everyone doing all of it together? This is pretty understandable considering that she not only grew up an only child (and as an only child let me tell you that a lot of us do prefer to work by ourselves a lot of the time and can get stressed out doing group work) but was essentially locked away in her own home and never allowed to socialize with anyone, period, let alone make friends her own age and learn how to collaborate with others. The only thing experience she had talking to other people besides her parents would be from the Earth Rumble, and needless to say what’s essentially the Avatar equivalent of WWE isn’t the best place for a 12 year old to build her social skills. Then there’s her fierce independent streak and aversion to accepting help from and feeling dependent on others, something instilled in her due to how her parents treated her because she was blind.

So this person claimed that the reason why Toph did not want to help Katara and the others set up camp was not, in fact, due to these reasons but rather due to her “classist belief that she did not have to do any work and those of a lower socioeconomic background than her should be expected to serve her.” (And just you wait, this isn’t even the worst part of the post, there’s way more.) First of all, Toph was HAPPY to do work, she just wanted to do her OWN work and have everyone else do THEIR own work too. It’s not like she made everyone else set up camp for her. She set up her own camp and let the others set up theirs. She didn’t expect anybody to serve her, that’s just blatantly untrue. This person made it sound like she was bossing everyone around and calling them “peasants” or something. They claimed that there’s apparently “a lot of inherent classism in the way Toph interacts with the rest of Team Avatar.” No? There really isn’t? AND ALSO SHE LEARNT HER LESSON BY THE END OF THE EPISODE AND STARTED WORKING AS A TEAM WITH THEM!!

They also claimed that the reason why Toph was initially annoyed by Katara was also due to her supposed “classism” as well as her “internalized misogyny.” First of all, the reason why Toph was initially annoyed by Katara was because she projected her strained relationship with her overbearing mother onto her due to the fact that Katara is the de facto caregiver of Team Avatar. That’s it. That’s the 100% canonical, undisputable, undebatable reason. They literally spell it out for you in the episode “The Runaway.” I’m not saying it’s okay for her to do that, but that is the reason why she was sometimes annoyed by Katara, not because she was “classist” or “misogynistic.” I also believe that her distaste for conventional femininity probably stems more from the way she associates it with the life she ran away from as well as the fact that it’s largely inaccessible to her due to her blindness. This person literally said, and I quote, “Toph is being classist, misogynistic, and homophobic here.” My god. I guess I can see where you get classist and misogynistic from even if I don’t quite agree with it, but homophobic? Come on. Homophobia is the hatred of gay people. Show me ONE instance where Toph expressed a hatred for gay people. Oh wait, you can’t, because that never happened. Stop throwing around buzzwords just because you can, it lessens their significance and seriousness. Also, KATARA AND TOPH ARE FRIENDS THEY’RE VERY CLOSE FRIENDS AND EVERY TIME THEY FOUGHT THEY MADE UP AND APOLOGIZED AND CHANGED THEIR BEHAVIOUR BECAUSE THEY’RE BOTH GOOD PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT EACHOTHER MY GOD DID YOU EVEN WATCH THE SHOW BECAUSE YOU ENJOY IT OR DID YOU JUST GO INTO IT PURPOSELY LOOKING FOR THINGS TO BE MAD ABOUT?

So yeah. I love Toph, I love Katara, and I love their friendship. They’re both huge comfort characters for me. That post was 100% grasping for straws and really rubbed me the wrong way because it almost felt like the OP was willfully misinterpreting Toph and Katara’s dynamic because they were looking for woke points and liked the rush they get out of going “popular thing bad, actually” and it felt very disrespectful to both of their characters and their friendship.

I absolutely agree with you about people being contradictory for woke points and I have seen these takes before. Tumblr social justice circles are also in general really bad at acknowledging ableism in general and misogyny against girls and women who don't perform traditional femininity and Toph lives at the intersection of both and is a wildly popular character. And as a disabled woman I find these takes to be really off base. As you said, Katara and Toph are friends and they worked it out in the end, and these issues canonically stem from both Toph's experiences of abuse because of being a disabled girl and Katara's need to mother other people because of her own trauma, and both of these perspectives are sympathetic and they both had to adjust their worldview a little bit. I identify a lot with Toph's desire to be taken seriously both as a person and as a woman, the latter you do see in "Tales of Ba Sing Se." Toph very clearly does not hate femininity, she wants to be seen as pretty and looks to Katara for validation because Katara is a feminine girl, but she also struggles with being able to perform femininity. She also is just not that comfortable with it, and that's okay. Like Toph, I can sometimes enjoy getting made up but it's not something I can do every day without help.

I love her and Katara's Ba Sing Se segment because it shows so well the kind of misogyny Toph experiences. The reason the other girls make fun of Toph is because she very obviously did not do her makeup herself, and this reflects on her performance of femininity. Women are supposed to perform femininity in a way that it is both perfect and appears effortless. When I go and get my eye makeup done because I can't see well enough and don't have a steady enough hand to do it myself, you can tell that I didn't do it myself. I look like Toph. I love that that episode affirms both that Toph is pretty AND that she doesn't have to be.

And Katara, the "Runaway" pretty clearly validates Katara and shows that Toph appreciates Katara's "mothering" and that she looks up to her. As younger girls are wont to do with older girls. And Katara is right about Toph missing her mom but she also realizes that Toph needs that older female figure in her life.

It also really bothers me when people pull the classism card to talk about disabled characters. I have seen it elsewhere and I have seen it in atla fandom with Toph and Zuko. Both also are fiercely independent because they struggle to be taken seriously by abusive families. To see that struggle reduced to "Oh, they just don't want to work/are ignorant because of classism" feels very ableist. People will belittle the accomplishments of these characters because they're privileged. Which, yes, they are, in some ways, but privilege is not a dirty word and you also have to recognize what privileges they lack. And in both cases, their class privilege was actually tied to the way they were abused. If Toph wasn't born into a wealthy family, she might have been subject to other forms of abuse. And Zuko...it's a miracle that Zuko survived to see his teen years considering the household he grew up in.

As for the issue between Katara and Toph, Katara has also made comments towards Toph that could be interpreted as ableism and misogyny, but like you said, at the end of the day, they are friends who deeply care about each other, so pitting them against each other like this over issues that are complex and also resolved within the series seems like just grasping for something to start discourse about.

#toph #katara #atla meta

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itsmeizumine · 4 years ago

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COMMS ARE OPEN!

[ID: a 6 panels presentation explaining how OP’s commissions are going to pan out. First panel has scripts divided in two columns. The first column says “Hello, fellows! It’s me, Izumine, and right now I’m taking digital art commissions! I really need to buy new PC and I would be extremely glad if you spread word of this commissions for me. Thank you so much!”. The second column says that payment is to happen via Nubank Pix system and OP’s other social medias’ handle; “itsmeizumine” on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube. From the second panel onward, OP’s gonna showcase the types of commission they are willing to take.]

[ID: Second panel is titled “Silly Doodles”. There are three drawings on the panel, all of them very simple and cartoonish. The first drawing is of a kid reenacting “Will Smith Showing Off His Wife” meme, with a speech bubble that says “Bitch, I love and appreciate you” stylized to add comedic effect. The second is of someone grimacing, with “OUCH...” written behind them. The third drawing is of a surprised person, with a speech bubble that says “*GASP* what- NO WAY!!”. There’s a script at the bottom right that says “Silly doodles are fun to draw and use, specially as stickers! They are the quickest to make, and cost 5 USD*.”. The asteristiks are going to be addressed on the 6th panel.]

[ID: Third panel is titled “My Style” and has a column of script right under it that says “I don’t face much trouble with either headshots or full body, but I don’t dig rendering a lot, so my price table is this: a) SKETCH: 10 USD. b) FLAT COLORS: 15 USD**. c) RENDERED: 20 USD**.”. By the side of this column, there are three versions of the portrait of a boy, showing the different finalizations the price table announced going from the simplest (option a) to the most difficult (option c), left-right. At the bottom left of the panel, there’s a script in parentheses that says “This is good to make portraits of loved ones!”.]

[ID: Forth panel is titled “Mimicking”. Under the title, a column of script says “I can imitate your favorite show’ style on a drawing of your OC! I’m particularly good at: BNHA, SvtFoE, The Loud House and Adventure Time. But I can give a shot to any other ones!”. There are four drawings of original characters to the left of the column, each into the styles of the shows OP mentioned. A serious girl using Yuuei’s uniform and sneakers; a boy dressed as a prince from other dimension dancing with a girl in a poncho blouse and pleated skirt, both seemingly in love with each other; a kid wearing a vest, a long-sleeved blouse, pants and boots, expectantly looking to the forth wall; and a fire monk in their casual garb, content; respectfully. In the midst of the drawings there’s a box that says the price is 15 USD**.]

[ID: Fifth panel is titled “Landscapes”. There are two big drawings. The one at the left shows a empty main avenue prepared to start a community fair. The day is sunny and there are little flags and lace tinsels hanging from building to building as there are flower garlands and wreaths decorating the shopfronts. The floor is made up from packed dirt and cobblestone and there has a kiss booth and a roasted chicken stand at the edge of the street. The drawing on the right is the WIP of a staffroom from a mechanic workshop. There are two different levels at the same room. In the lowest there’s a small kitchenette with lights hanging from a support beam made out of steel and a sofa with a remote control atop of it. In the highest, the ground has the same metal texture of a bus’ floor; there’s a ladder, four tires piled together with plants around them and a shelving unit attached to the entryway. There’s a box that says the price for the art pieces is 25 USD**.]

[ID: Sixth panel is titled "Yes, can do/ No, can't do". The text that follows right after is divided in two columns, each column under one segment of the title. The column under the first segment lists Lettering, NSFW art (though, OP says it's debatable) and Mecha/Armor as things they can also do. The column under the last segment lists Gore (OP clarifying that they can work with blood, but nothing more explicit than that), Hate Material and Animals (and by extension, Furries) as things they can't do. Under these columns there's a box that explains the asterisks. It says "Single asterisk: In case USD is not your currency, we'll follow the procedure of converting the values using it as reference. Double asterisks: This is a minimum price. Might be upped depending on the complexity of your commission, but don't worry! We'll discuss it before settling on anything. And! We'll only start negotiations if you read and agree with my Terms of Service, so that's that as well.". This is all there is to the last panel, and with that the presentation ends.]

(TERMS OF SERVICE BELOW, READ IT ATTENTIVELY)

if DM me about any commission you're interested to do i'll assume you've read everything and are 100% okay with it, so don't even try if you're aren't. this is not up to debate.

there's stuff worthy of taking notice before asking a commission from me:

i need my commissioner to be somewhat available for communication. i'm gonna share my process with you and i need your feedback during it to go on. any sort of adjustment gotta happen there, as i'm not returning to the finished piece to retouch it on any way or form nor do i allow anyone to make any changes to my artwork.

i'm not delivering the finished piece until you fully pay me. no debate on that. and i reserve the right to cancel and refund any commissions at any time for any reason.

unless you oppose to it during the process, there's a chance that i might use the commissioned artwork on my social medias as a way to promote me and my services. if that bothers you or makes you uncomfortable, you gotta tell me.

you retain all rights over the intellectual property of the commissioned piece and i assure you i won't make any claims over it, but the artwork is mine nonetheless. it's for personal use ONLY until stated otherwise, and you CANNOT profit from it or use it commercially unless we discuss it beforehand.

i won't make you NSFW art if you're under age, for obvious reasons. any minors asking for commissions of any other kind need have permission from their legal guardian, unless they have their own bank account.

if you want to eventually print the artwork, please state this before we get started on the commission. my default set-up is made for small files that are going to pixelate once you size them up to make, say, a poster. it's going to reflect badly on the end result of my work and i can make it right from the start if only you warn me first.

and i won't lower the price of any commissions below where they are now. the prices are as accessible as they can be. i'll work hard on each and every piece ever commissioned and and i need money like any other person too, respect me and my work.

i’d like thank anyone commissioning, reblogging or sharing the link of this post with possible future commissioners right now. hopefully i’ll be able to buy a new computer and make even better art to share with you guys soon!!

#izumine #digital art #art comissions #digitalcommissions #digitalart #art commission info #art commission prices #art community #terms of service #commisions open #i feel like i'm flooding the tags uselessly but oh well #izumine talks #image description #it's the first time i've ever done one #is it helpful guys?#feedback is greatly appreciated #signal boost #artists on tumblr #small artist

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cardentist · 4 years ago

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this isn’t a proper discourse post, I Agree with a lot of what the op said but there’s specific things about it that get under my skin in a way that makes me want to talk about it, but I don’t want to engage with that post both because I don’t want to speak over the point that’s being made and frankly because I don’t want to be misinterpreted because of the point that’s being made in it.

so for context, I’ll just say that it was a long post about how a lack of engagement with women characters in fandom spaces is tied to misogyny. just be aware that I’m responding to something specific and not criticisms of this in general. (feel free to dm me if you want to see the post for yourself)

the rest of this is going to be rambly and a bit unfocused, so I want to get this out the door right at the top: it is not actually someone’s moral obligation to engage with or create fan content. all other points aside, what this amounts to is labeling people as bigoted for either not creating or engaging with content that you want to see, and while the individual may or may not be a bigot it’s not actually anyone’s job to tailor their fandom experience to cater to you.

fandom is not activism. it’s not Wrong to point out that a lack of content about women in fandom is likely indicative of the influence of our misogynistic society. and suggesting that people examine their internalized biases isn’t just fine, it’s something that everyone should be doing all the time. but saying that it is literally someone’s “responsibility” to “make an effort” by consuming content about women or they’re bigoted is presenting the consumption of fan content as a moral litmus test that you pass and fail not by how you engage with content but by not engaging with all of the Correct content.

judging people’s morality based on what characters they read meta for or look at fanart for is, a mistake. it Can Be Indicative of internalized biases but it is not, in and of itself, a moral failing that has to be corrected.

if you want more content to be created about women in fandom then you do it by spreading content about women in fandom, not by guilting people into engaging with it by saying that they’re bigots if they don’t. you encourage creation Through creation.

okay, now to address what Mainly set me off to inspire this post.

this post specifically went out of it’s way to present misogyny as the only answer for why this problem exists in fandom spaces. and while I absolutely agree that it’s a Factor, they left absolutely no room for nuance which included debunking “common excuses.” which, as you can probably guess, contained the things that ticked me off.

first off, you can’t judge that someone is disconnected from women in general based on their fandom consumption because the sum total of their being is not available on tumblr.

people don’t always bear their souls in fandom spaces. just because they don’t actively post about a character or Characters doesn’t mean that they see them as lesser or that they don’t think about them. the idea that you can tell what a person’s moral beliefs are not based on what they’ve said or done but based on whether they engage with specific characters in a specific way in a specific space can Only work on the assumption that they engage with that space in a way that expresses the entirety of who they are or even their engagement with that specific media.

what I engage with on ao3 is different from what I engage with on tumblr, youtube, twitter, my friend’s dms, and my own head. people are going to engage with social media and fandom spaces specifically differently for different reasons. you can’t assume what the other parts of their lives look like based on this alone.

second off, there can be other factors at play that influence people’s specific engagement with a fandom.

they specifically brought up the magnus archives as an example of a show with well written women. which while absolutely true, does Not mean that misogyny is the only option for why people wouldn’t engage with content about them as often. for me personally? a lot of fan content is soured because of how it presents jon. I relate to him very heavily as a neurodivergent and traumatized person, and he faces a Lot of victim blaming and dehumanization in the writing. sasha and martin are more or less the only main characters that Aren’t guilty of this, and sasha was out of the picture after season 1.

while this affects my enjoyment of fan content for these characters To Some Extent on it’s own (I love georgie, I love her a lot, but I can’t forget that she looked at someone and told them that they were better off dead because they couldn’t “choose” to not be abused), the bigger issue is fan content that Specifically doesn’t address the victim blaming and ableism as what it is, even presenting it as just Correct.

this isn’t exclusive to the women in the show by any means, this is exactly why I avoid a lot of content about tim, but it affects a lot of the women who are main characters. that isn’t the Only reason, there’s more casual ableism and things that tear him down for other reasons (the prevalent theory that elias passed up on sasha because he’s afraid of how she’s More Competent In Jon In Every Single way. which comes with the unfortunate implications of jon being responsible for his own trauma because he just wasn’t competent enough to avoid it) but that’s the main one that squicks me out.

of course not all fan content does this, and I Do engage with content about these characters, but sometimes it’s easier to just stick with content that centers on my comfort character because it’s more likely to look at his character with the nuance required to see that it is victim blaming and ableism.

it’s not enough to say that the characters are well rounded or well written and conclude that if someone isn’t consuming or creating content about them then it has to be due to misogyny and nothing else.

there’s also just like, the Obvious answer. two most prominent characters are two men that are in a canonical gay relationship, which draws in queer men/masc people on it’s own but the centering of their othering and trauma Particularly draws in traumatized queer people that are starved for content. georgie and melanie are both fleshed out characters in and of themselves, but their relationship with each other doesn’t have nearly as much direct screen time. and daisy and basira have a lot more screen time together and about each other, but their relationship is very intentionally non-canon because of its role as a commentary on cop pack mentality.

people are More Likely to create content for the more prominent relationship in the show and be drawn into the fandom through that relationship in the first place. I have no doubt that there Are misogynistic fans of the show, but focusing on the relationship and the characters that make you happy isn’t and indication that you’re one of them.

which brings us to the big one, the one that sparked me into writing this in the first place (and the last that I have time for if I’m being honest). the “common excuses” section in general is, extremely dismissive obviously but there’s only one section that genuinely upsets me.

without copying and pasting what they said directly, it essentially boils down to this: while they recognize that gay and trans men are “allowed” to relate to men, they’re still Men which makes them misogynistic. Rather than acknowledge Why gay and trans men would engage with fan-content specifically that caters to them they present it as a given that it’s 100% due to misogyny anyways. they present queer men engaging with content about themselves as them treating women like they’re “unworthy of attention,” calling it a “patriarchal tendency” that they have to unlearn.

being gay and trans does not mean that you’re immune to misogyny, being a woman doesn’t even mean that you’re immune to misogyny, but that’s engaging in bad faith in a way that really puts a bad taste in my mouth.

queer men aren’t just like, Special Men that have Extra Bonus Reasons to be relate to boys, they’re people who are more likely to Need fandom spaces to explore facets of themselves. and while you can Relate to any character, it feels good to be able to explore those aspect with characters that resemble you or how you see yourself.

when I first started actively seeking out fandom spaces in middle school I engaged with content about queer men more or less exclusively. at this point I had no concept of what trans people were, and wouldn’t begin openly considering that I might be a trans person until high school. I knew that I’d be happier as a gay man before I knew I could be a gay man, and that’s affected my relationship with fandom forever.

I engage with most things pretty casually, reblogging meta and joke posts when I see them, but what I go out of my way to engage with is largely an expression of my gender identity and sexuality. I project myself onto a comfort character and then I Consume content for them because that was how I was able to express myself before I knew that I needed to. it’s not that girl characters aren’t “worthy” of me relating to them, it’s that I specifically go to certain fandom spaces to express and work through my gender and sexuality. that’s what I use those fandom spaces For.

I imagine that I’ll need this crutch less when I’m allowed to transition and if I ever find a relationship situation that works out for me. but also like, why should I? it’s not actually hurting anyone for me to explore my gender and sexuality through fanfic until the end of time. nor does it hurt anyone for me to focus on my comfort characters.

fandom is personal comfort and entertainment, not a moral obligation. people absolutely should engage with women in media and real life with more nuance and energy than they do, but fandom spaces are not the place to police or judge that.

#discourse #I've been writing and rewriting this for 4 and a half hours instead of going to bed before 9 am #I already know that absolutely no one is going to read this so I don't know why I did this to myself #also I couldn't find a place to fit this in so I'm just gonna say it here #sometimes people just engage with fandom based on characters that they find attractive #and if that means boys then that means boys #it doesn't have to be more complicated than that

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janicho88 · 5 years ago

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In This Together

Pic originally posted by jrackles

Pairing- Dean x Wife!Reader

Word count-9825

Summary-The reader hasn’t been feeling well and is afraid to go to a doctor, because of her medical history. One thing seems to lead to another, but she has her husband Dean to lean on. This is AU

Warnings- Sick reader, Little bit of language, A little angst, and maybe a little fluff, slight implied smut. Possible triggers talks of multiple surgeries some are a little descriptive, talk of possible loss of fertility, female problems.

A/N This is my first fic I have finished. I have had some things going on, I needed someone like Dean, this was the closest I could get to having him. It is unbeta’d all mistakes are mine. @winchest09 and @katehuntington you two are absolutely amazing!! Without you two, your virtual lockdowns and the people I met because of them, I never would have had the confidence to finish this let alone post it. Thank you!

You sighed as you rolled over in bed, time to get up and start another day. Although you were hoping today was different. You were hoping the pain you had been having which couldn’t decide whether or not it wanted to be in your side or abdomen would actually be gone. Something that had just been in your head. You had felt a kind of off for the last 2 weeks but had kept that to yourself.

“Morning Sweetheart,” came from your husband of four years, as Dean walked back in your room fresh from the shower. A quick kiss good morning before he finished getting dressed and you headed to get yourself ready in the bathroom. Soon you were both out the door and off to work. Dean was a partner in his father’s mechanic business. It was doing well for him; he’d even added on auto parts store next door. You were running your family’s restaurants, your parents slowly cutting back on their day to day involvement, but not leaving entirely yet because you were going to need their help in the new year.

You enjoyed your mornings at work, for the first few hours it was just you preparing things for the day, your radio playing softly your only companion. It wasn’t long before your daytime employees came in and the lunch rush began you all working as a team everything going smoothly today. It was while working on clean up and the dinner prep, one of your workers, and your friend, Donna found you in a back corner with your hands on your right side. When she asked what was going on, you told her you were fine and went to finish the task you were working on. Before she left Donna passed by your office where she saw you inside with a look of pain on your face again, your ringing phone interrupted her from saying anything to you then.

Dean beat you home from work and was preparing hamburgers to grill when you walked in. You set your things down and met him in the kitchen for a kiss, “Hey Babe, how was your day?”

“Good. The new guy, Gabe, I was telling you about should work out well, might be a little bit of a smart ass. Benny seems to have taken him under his wing to show him the ropes. Those two will be interesting together. How were things at the restaurant today?”

“That’s great! I know with your Dad, and Bobby cutting back their time there you wanted at least one more person in. Work was fine, late lunch and steady afternoon which is why I’m later getting home.”

“How’s the foot doing? You’ve been on it more with working longer hours lately.”

“Okay, as good as it’s going to be for now.”

You two enjoyed a quiet dinner, then curled up on the couch to watch a movie before heading to bed. Dean noticed you didn’t eat much of your dinner, but he figured you were either tired or grabbed a snack at the restaurant.

Your next morning started off about the same both of you on your separate ways to work. It was afternoon when Donna saw you again with a grimace on your face and a hand on your side. A little while later she saw your running to the restroom where you threw up.

“Alright, spill Y/N. What is going on, you’ve been a little off lately?”

“Donna, I’m fine.”

“Bull, lady. Do I need to call Dean and ask him?”

“NO!” Your head went back, and your eyes closed as you thought about what you were going to say. You went with the truth, maybe she would tell you what you were hoping, it was nothing. “I’ve been having a sharp pain in my right side, sometimes it moves to the front and is in my abdomen. Every once in while it might go lower. It’s probably just a sore muscle or maybe the ulcer is coming back”

“And the upset stomach?”

“That’s new-ish. This is nothing, I’m fine. It can’t be anything.” You almost whispered.

“You should probably talk to your Dr. Maybe your OB first, given your history. That’s what your worried about right?”

With tears in your eyes you gave a soft yes.

“Call them, and then talk to Dean. Knowing you, you haven’t said anything to him, and were going to keep pretending nothing was happening.”

You walked away to call for an appointment. Donna was right, you were scared, and you hadn’t told Dean. You didn’t want to go through this again. Around year and half ago you were at a girls day out when you just didn’t feel right. You attributed it to worry you had about something at work. It didn’t go away and over the next two weeks things got worse. You weren’t hungry, you had a sharp pain in your side, had started burping and not been able to stop it. That one bothered you the most. Then you started getting sick. Overall, you just didn’t feel well. You figured it was early February now, you just had a good old-fashioned winter cold. When you suddenly had trouble drawing a deep breath and it hurt to breathe, you had gone to a walk-in-clinic. They thought it was your appendix or gallbladder and sent you to your primary Doctor the next day. They agreed and sent you to a CT Scan the next day. Dean went with that morning and waited while you went back for the test. You were told your doctor would have to results in a few days while they were getting the test started. When they finished the scan, they told you to stay on the table they had a radiologist coming to read the scan right then. That hadn’t done much for your nerves. They told you something about a mass on your ovary and kids still being possible, but you needed to see your OB asap. You had walked back out to Dean in the waiting room in shock, not 100% sure what had happened in the last few minutes. You had ended up having a cyst on an ovary, which had destroyed that ovary and continued to grow into what your doctor called a giant mass. It had gotten so big it was pushing on your other organs. They had to go in and take it out. You were getting to the point you were okay with that part, but the doctor kept talking, and you kept squeezing Dean’s hand harder. They couldn’t see the uterus around the mass and didn’t know if it had damage or the other ovary, and there was a possibility it was cancerous. Suddenly the kids you and Dean had been talking about and picturing, might only ever be that, talk. You had been a wreck the morning of surgery, but Dean was in pre-op with you as long as he could be holding your hand telling you everything was going to be fine. It didn’t matter what happened with the surgery. If it was just the two of you, or if you ended up adopting. You were in this together. He loved you and the two of you would be just fine. The surgery had gone well. They only had to take the mass out and the tests came back cancer free.

Things between you and Dean were good. The last year and half had been crazy, no kids yet, although that wasn’t due to lack of trying in the beginning. The December after your surgery you had ended up with a stomach ulcer and they found a fibroid on your uterus. You really couldn’t catch a break. Your doctor had wanted to put you on birth control to slow down the growth for now. Here you were, once again worried that you wouldn’t be able to give Dean the baby you knew he wanted. His brother Sam, and his wife Jess had had their first child a few months prior and Dean was the loving uncle. Holding little Jake, he could calm him down faster than anyone but Jess. He spent a bit of time telling him all about Baby, and the things he would teach him when he was older. You were fairly certain he might get that boy in trouble with a few things, but that could be dealt with in a few years. You knew Dean was hoping for the day he would be holding his own baby, and teaching them, you were afraid you were never going to be able to give him that.

You were sitting on the couch when Dean came home from work.

“Hey Sweetheart, how was your day?”

“Fine, how were things at the shop?”

“Good, busy. Dinner smells great.”

“Thanks, it’s got about a half hour till it’s done. I know you want to shower, but can I talk to you first?”

“Always.”

Dean joined you on the couch as you started explaining. “So I’ve been feeling kind of off lately, not quite right. Pain in my side and abdomen. The last few days throwing up if I ate and drank much. It’s a bit like before.”

Dean moved closer and held you as he asked, “Are you thinking you have another mass, the fibroid, or something else?”

“I don’t know, and that scares me. I want it to be nothing, but we both know my luck isn’t that good. I have an appointment next Wednesday with my OB/GYN. I figured it would cut some of the middle wait time out.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“Thanks, but I think I will be ok alone with this first visit.”

“Wait, don’t you have your foot appointment that day?”

“Yes, but it’s in the morning.”

Wednesday your appointments finally arrived. You had been having trouble with your foot for a few years now, it had gotten so bad you couldn’t even wear a tennis shoe anymore. You actually were supposed to have surgery on it a few years ago, the same year you had found the mass and had to have that removed instead. It was a pretty simple appointment; they did updated x-rays since you hadn’t had any in over a year and talked again with the surgeon about what surgery would entail. He was a foot and ankle specialist at the University hospital. This was going to be your third foot/ankle related surgery but the first on your right foot. You had had different doctors each time, and you like this one the best. He was extremely knowledgeable and easy to talk to. You may have been nervous for this surgery, but that was because of everything it was going to involve. You were born with as the doctors called them extremely high arches. It had caused you a number of problems over the years, sprained ankles, multiply breaks, and your two other surgeries. They were going to go in and break your fifth metatarsal and put a plate in there and realign it, cut the Achilles tendon and lengthen it, you had tears in the Peroneal tendon which had to be fixed and then attached to the Brevis tendon to strengthen it, ligaments on the inside and outside of the foot needed to be tightened or loosened depending on the side. You had had all of that done nine years ago on your other foot, but because of problems you had with that first surgery they were taking it a step further. They were going to cut the bones in your heel and realign them. That part was making you the most nervous. You would be spending the 3 months following surgery on crutches, possibly longer. You had spent enough time on them over the years, you were pretty good on them at least. You had been planning on the surgery happening in January, you couldn’t put it off any longer.

The worst part of all this has been the not knowing because your mind is great at making up worst case scenarios, you were a bit worked up for your afternoon OB appointment. You and your doctor talked and going over your symptoms he was sending you for a CT scan the following week because he thought you might have a kidney stone based on some of your symptoms. He also ordered an ultrasound to check on the fibroid. They don’t do anything with fibroids until they are over 4 cm and causing problems. When yours was found it was at 3.3 cm, so they had just put you on birth control. The doctor talked about what could happen if it was the fibroid. You might need surgery to remove it, if it was to big, they might have to take the uterus out or there were shots out that put you in menopause for a while. You were due back in his office in two and half weeks to go over the tests. More waiting, just great.

Dean had dinner waiting for you when you got home. You explained the tests the doctor wanted and what he told you he was thinking. You never thought you would be in a spot where kidney stones were an option you were hoping for. You two spent the evening on the couch watching movies compromising on your choices. Since Halloween was coming soon Dean wanted a horror movie, you agreed if you watched that one first and ended your night with The Proposal. That way your mind wasn’t on a horror movie just before bed.

The next week went fairly quickly and your tests were done you were just waiting on follow up. You and Dean both busy at work during the days. You had lost a manager, you mom had been taking on a lot of caterings which kept her out of the store, and Donna couldn’t pick up more hours because she was taking care of her sister, Jody’s daughters at night. All this meant you were working open to close three to four days a week and at least 8 hours the other days. You would get home at night and not want to move from your couch. Friday morning you were doing your prep work when you received a call from your doctor’s office. They had both of your results in. They didn’t find kidney stones; the fibroid had doubled in size and there was a mass on your remaining ovary. Your follow-up appointment with them was 10 days away, but they wanted to see you as soon as you could come in the next day they were open, which was Tuesday. The last surgery you needed was like that, everything done asap. You had found out about the mass and a week later you were in surgery.

You hung up with them and called Dean in tears. Your mind automatically going through worse case scenarios. He did his best to calm you down and tell you everything would be okay. You two were going to be alright. You called your mom when you hung up from Dean and filled her in on your results. Making yourself get back to work.

Being a Friday, you had a busy lunch rush and had a bit of clean up and more prep work to get ready for the dinner rush. You were working in the back when the door buzzer went off notifying you of someone coming in. Donna called you to the front saying a customer needed your help. The first genuine smile you had all day coming to your face as you took in Dean standing there with a bunch of colorful flowers.

“Oh Dean, they’re beautiful! Thank you!”

“Not half as beautiful as you Y/N, how are you holding up sweetheart?”

“I’ve been better. It’s going to be a long weekend waiting to see what he has to say. My mom talked to my cousin who does some work at the hospital, a friend of hers works for an OB/GYN who has been around awhile and is the only one in town who does this surgery robotically. I have an appointment with him next week also for his opinion.”

“It’s all going to work out, no matter what it’s you and me together. I have to get back to work and I know you do to, I just wanted to stop in and see how you were doing.”

“Thank you, Baby, I appreciate it so much. I love you.”

“Love you too Sweetheart. I will see you at home tonight”

When you weren’t at work, you and Dean hung out at home over the weekend. He did his best to take his mind off of your upcoming appointment. You greatly appreciated his effort. Before you knew it, Tuesday afternoon rolled around. This time dean accompanied you to the appointment. The doctor explained that the fibroid was now at 6.7cm and was what was causing your problems. He was really pushing these shots you take once a month that put you in menopause for six months. He told you that it would shrink the fibroid, and that would be best to start with. The other options he was giving you were waiting and getting another ultrasound end of December/early January and coming back then or go in and do surgery sometime. You weren’t sure how you felt about either of those options but were glad he wasn’t going in right away to take out the uterus. What did frustrate you the most, was how the call on Friday made it sound like things were worse and you needed to come in asap for something to be done, and the doctor wasn’t doing anything right now.

You and Dean both felt a little calmer when you left the office. “What are you thinking about your options, Darling?”

“Honestly, I’m not so sure about those shots, I would need a lot more information on them first. The whole being put into menopause has me nervous. That’s not something I ever thought I would be thinking about at 31. When I talked to the nurse on the phone Friday she made this seem so much worse, and he’s not doing anything other than the shots now. I guess we’ll see what the other doctor says tomorrow.”

The next morning you and Dean were at the other doctor’s office. New patient paperwork all filled out and you were waiting to go back. Your cousin’s friend called your name and took you back. She had been talking to your mom, so she knew what was going on and had shared it with the doctor. You asked her opinion on the shots, and she just shook her head. She told you there wasn’t any guarantee it would even work, and there was a lot of risk with what going into menopause could do to you and your chance of having a child. You would have to sign a number of documents that said you didn’t hold that company responsible for any of the large number of side effects.

“I wasn’t sold on them before, I’m really not know” you told her and Dean.

The doctor came in shortly after and did quick exam. You had asked his opinion on what to do, he said taking it out would be the best thing to try and preserve the uterus and a chance for you to have children in the future. Yes, you could have a child with a fibroid on the uterus, but as big as it was it could cause problems. It didn’t end up being a long appointment because he was called away for a birth. He did order 2 tests and you set those up before leaving. One was another ultrasound to check where the fibroid was and if that would cause any problems itself. The other was to check the uterus for any cancer spots, they did warn you that one could be painful, and you weren’t going to want to do much after the test was done. You had those both scheduled for the following Tuesday and Wednesday.

As you walked out to your cars you asked Dean “What did you think of him, and everything said?”

“They are both pretty against the shots, and I know you didn’t really like the idea of them either. You cousin said he has more experience, right?”

“Yes, he does. I’ve talked to a few others that know him, and they all like him. Donna’s aunt was an OB and she referred patients to him if it was something she couldn’t do.”

“Ultimately Y/N, it comes down to what you think, and what you want to do. We can talk more at home on your thoughts and see what these tests say. I will support your decision no matter what.”

“Thank you, Babe. I love you. Have a great day at work.”

“I love you too. I hope you have a great one as well.”

You were talking to Donna at work about everything that you had found out. She had spent a little time working in her aunt’s office and at one point had been premed in school, you valued her opinion.

“You need to get it taken out girly, it’s already grown a lot on you. I know how much you and Dean want kids. If you wait too long you run the risk of losing that chance.”

“Part of me knows that, but the other part of me is worried about what is going to happen during surgery.”

“That’s understandable, any surgery there is a risk. This doctor has done thousands of these, you’ll be fine, most importantly you’ll be better. Don’t ignore this, Dean and you can adopt if you can’t have kids, Dean won’t be fine if he loses you. Don’t do those shots, there is a lot of risk with those, and you could run into even more problems.”

“Those shots are pretty much off the table, I really don’t like the idea of them. I know your right, a part of me just really doesn’t want more surgery. The last week the pain has gotten worse so I don’t know that I can put this off.”

“I know Sweetie, surgery makes anyone nervous. This will all work out.”

“Thanks, Donna, you are an amazing friend.”

After dinner that night you and Dean were sitting in the living room and you decided you weren’t going to think about any medical issues. While he had the game on you grabbed your computer and recipe binder. Settling next to Dean on the couch you pulled up Pinterest and Christmas recipe ideas. You had been scrolling for a few minutes when Dean looked over at your screen.

“What are you looking up Christmas for?”

“Mom and Dad’s Christmas party is a month from tomorrow, and I need to get my baking list around.”

“What do you mean a month away, that’s before Thanksgiving?”

“With Thanksgiving being so late this year, they are doing it the Saturday before. That way it has less chance running into other Holiday parties. You don’t want to do it Thanksgiving weekend, and then there are only three other weekends before Christmas and there will be a bit going on. So I need to figure out what’s on my baking list this year, what’s staying, what I’m adding.”

“It’s too early to talk Christmas.”

“Hallmark starts Christmas movies this weekend, Saturday has some of my favorites we can watch after work!”

“It’s not even Halloween Y/N, I’m not watching Christmas movies!” Dean threw his head back against the couch turning slightly to glare at you.

“You say that now, we’ll see what happens when I get that remote,” you smirked. “I could happily watch them year-round.”

“Ehh, your getting better with that. You used to be into Christmas songs and movies 361, the couple days leading up to Christmas Eve and sometimes that morning you were a little bah humbug saying you were done with all of it. Then the day after Christmas you start singing Frosty again.”

You just glared at him for a minute, “It was the stress, and trying to get everything just right and make everyone happy. My shopping will be done, before 2 days before Christmas this year. I’m going to enjoy it, no stress.”

“Sure thing, Sweetheart, whatever you say. We’ll see how you are on December 23rd.”

“Going back to the Holiday of the month we are actually in, Sam wanted to know if we wanted to come over Thursday night. See Jake in his first Halloween costume, hand out candy to the Trick-or-Treaters. Mom and dad are going to be there too.”

“Sure I’m in. It’s usually a busy night for us so I will be over after I can leave work.”

“Okay so we have my usual baking items: Sugar cookies I think I’m going to keep it simple and just do drop cookies instead of cut outs, buckeyes, peanut butter blossoms, no bakes, petit-fours, truffles, cranberry bars and the varieties of chocolates those I’ll make with mom. Now I need to figure out some new ones. Hey what do you think about, hey, where are you going?”

“I need a beer if we are going to talk about your crazy Christmas baking list.”

You waited for Dean to settle back next to you to show him your finds.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/174584923042596801/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/174584923042596805/

“You’re on a Grinch kick this year aren’t you? You mentioned a few weeks ago you wanted a Grinch sweatshirt this year.”

“Maybe, part of me is. Anyways thoughts? What about these?” https://www.pinterest.com/pin/174584923042556919/

“Ooohhhh, Do you think I could make these?” https://www.pinterest.com/pin/174584923040748115/

“We aren’t going to be using our kitchen to make actual food anytime soon are we? I love you and you are very talented when it comes to your baking but I don’t know if you have the patience for those cupcakes.”

“You’re probably right, it does tend to run thinner when I’m trying to get all this stuff done. Look on the bright side, the party is early this year so I will have the kitchen back to normal sooner.”

“Sureee you will.”

You weren’t going to admit it to Dean right now, but you were trying to force yourself into the Holiday spirit. With everything going on you weren’t sure you were going to be in the celebrating mood this year. You knew how much he loved the Holiday, and the time with family together. You would put on a happy face for him.

Dean took you to your appointment Tuesday afternoon, because they didn’t recommend driving after since you were going to be in a bit of pain. It wasn’t even a five minute test to go take a swab of the uterus lining to send in to check for abnormal or cancer cells. They were right though, you definitely hurt after. You and Dean picked up food on the way home so neither of you would have to cook or clean up. He got you situated on the couch with a heating pad after you got home. You two spent another quiet night in. The next afternoon you took yourself to your ultrasound. The results for both tests would be back in time for your appointment the following Tuesday.

Thursday was Halloween, and you were short handed at work again, but not as busy as you were expecting to be. You left around 7 and headed over to Sam and Jess’ house. 5-month-old Jake was dressed up in a cute duck onesie. After saying hi to the couple, your husband, and his parents you grabbed some food and settled down with Jake. You were told you just missed Cas, his wife Kelly, and their son Jack. The one year old getting cranky and ready for bed. Jess and Mary joined you shortly. The guys were watching one of the All Saint’s Day movies. Apparently having a little one to get excited about put Sam in a better Halloween mood then he usually was in. Mary asked how you were doing; Dean had apparently told her a few days before and Jess had just found out tonight.

“I’m alright, it’s been going on over a month and I think at this point I want a plan. I want to know what’s going to happen. But I want to make sure that we decide on the right course of action too.”

Both ladies assured you they thought you would be fine, and that everything would work out for you. Your attention turning to the little boy on the floor in front of you.

You spent your weekend working and had started some grocery shopping for you baking supplies. Those supplies then found a home on your kitchen counter. So Dean was right, he was slowing losing the kitchen for a little while.

Tuesday afternoon saw you and Dean back in your new doctor’s office waiting to be called back. It wasn’t a long wait and you headed back. Thankful your tests had come back normal and the new ultrasound didn’t show any new problems. Because of the last surgery you had there was to much scar tissue in your abdomen for the surgery to be done robotically, and the fibroid was too big. You did have the option for another procedure, he described it as resetting your uterus. He did tell you it wouldn’t do anything for the fibroid, but it could get your periods back under control and might lesson some pain, you would need a few days off work. The best chance you had if you wanted to get pregnant sometime was to have the fibroid removed. Now you just needed to make a decision on what you were going to do. You were leaning toward surgery and when you didn’t make a definitive decision the doctor told you to come back in 2 weeks. When you were checking out and scheduling the next appointment you asked how far out the wait for surgery was. His calendar was filling up and he only had December 9th and 23rd open.

On your way home you and Dean talked about what you both were thinking. You told him you were leaning toward surgery, and he also thought that would be your best choice. Now you just weren’t sure you really wanted to wait. If you called your first doctor, he could do the surgery in two weeks, he just had to wait for insurance purposes. Honestly, he was never busy. That put you the day before your parents Christmas party or waiting till the next weekend which was the day after Thanksgiving. Another problem you had was making sure you had help at work. Right now, you didn’t have the help to do it. If you pushed it too far into December it was going to be a problem with your foot surgery. They had said with your stomach because they were cutting it open you would need to be careful not to tear your stitches for a few weeks and be limited for 6 weeks with what you could do. Crutches weren’t going to be a good thing to mix in.

Your parents, you and Dean all talked. You didn’t have the help to do the surgery in November, December wasn’t a good idea because of your next surgery. You decided if the doctor thought you could wait you would do the foot surgery in January and then six weeks later when you should be able to start putting some pressure on your foot you would have the other. That way the six weeks you needed to be careful with the second surgery would be ending in time for therapy in May. Work was going to be getting better help wise because you were selling on of your locations. The gas station next door to one of them wanted to expand and the only way they could was if they bought your property. That deal was supposed to close first of January. Your foot surgery was scheduled for the 16th. Things seemed to fall in to place for that all to work out.

You still weren’t feeling the best, but you were glad to have noticed you didn’t have the pain in your side and stomach every day anymore. It had turned into just having really bad periods every few weeks.

When you went to your appointment two weeks later you went alone and talked to the doctor about your thoughts and timeline. He didn’t think that would be a problem, telling you before he left that removing it was your best option. They weren’t’ scheduling yet for February or March so they would call you when those books opened.

If you were honest, you were feeling better with what you had decided on. Also, the fact that no one was worried enough to say you had to get in right now for surgery. You were still going to worry between now and surgery it was just who you were.

It was the third week of November, your new focus on the upcoming Holidays. You had already started your baking, freezing everything once it was made cooled and put in an airtight container. The list was still shorter this year it only had about 15 things on it. You didn’t get the Grinch recipes made, or the snow globe cupcakes, but you did make the thumb print snowmen. Next year. Two days before the party you moved on from baking to getting the food you were doing around. In between all this also trying to help your mom decorate their house and putting decorations up at yours. You didn’t end up doing as much to your house as you usually would, but just less to take down after and you knew things would be crazy then.

The day of the party both you and your mom ended up being stuck at work longer than you were supposed to be. This meant you had to work quicker when you got home. Dean went to your parents with you to help with the last minute set up. It was nice living on the same street as them, so you didn’t have far to go. With the final cleaning finished you were in the kitchen with Dean starting to get food around while your mom ran upstairs to shower. Your brother and his girlfriend coming shortly after. They had been dating for almost a year, but she didn’t come around much, so you didn’t know her well. Trying to ask her questions about herself didn’t get you very far because she only gave one-word answers. You looked to Dean and he just shrugged his shoulders, not knowing how to get much out of her either. When your mom came back down, and the food was in good shape you and dean went home to get ready and get the desserts.

You always enjoyed this party it was family from both of your parent’s sides, Dean’s family started coming when you two were dating. A variety of your parent’s friends along with your brother’s and yours. You were surprised to see more cars in the driveway when you returned. Cas, Benny and Kelly were in the kitchen talking to your dad and brother, along with one of his old friends from school. It didn’t take long for the house to fill up with people and the sounds of laughter. It was close to one by the time you and Dean went home after helping to clean up. You were beat and ready to fall into bed, Dean not far behind.

The restaurant you were selling, was the store you spent every day at, it had been your baby over the last 8 years. Since you were going to be closing it soon you had cut back on the Sunday hours which meant you and Dean could enjoy a lazy morning after the party. It was nice not to get up and go, you had missed the relaxing mornings you two used to enjoy. When you finally dragged yourselves from bed it was to the kitchen to make a late breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast. You would have to head in to work after lunch, but that didn’t mean you had to be in a hurry to get ready. After cleaning up the kitchen Dean dragged you back to the bedroom where you spent a little more time catching up.

That week was Thanksgiving which meant a shorter work week for you both. Thursday morning started off much like Sunday’s had, although you both had to be out the door by noon and have your food and deserts ready. A late lunch with your family at your grandmother’s house was first. The Y/L/N could be a rowdy group, so it was usually a good time as long as you could avoid any family arguments. After cleaning up there you would head to Dean’s parents where they had an early dinner. You tried not to eat too much at either place for two reasons, one you wanted to be able to move later and two you were trying to avoid being sick. It didn’t hit you as much as before, but you never knew when it would. After the guys collapsed in front of the football game on tv, Mary and Jess hit the adds. You left to go pick up your mom. The last two years you to had done some Thursday evening shopping because you both worked on Friday, and it gave you time just he two of you. You hit the mall and a few stores trying to start on your shopping list. You meant it when you told Dean that everything was going to be done early this year. You were going to enjoy the Holiday season. When you finished you dropped her back at home before going back to your in-laws. A short time later you and Dean headed home.

Much like it does every year December flies by. You hadn’t finished your shopping as early as you wanted, but you weren’t as stressed about it this year. You enjoyed nights with Dean curled up on the couch. You had seen the Grinch more times than you could count this year, I guess you were having a Grinchy year. Before you knew it, Christmas Eve was here. Both you and Dean worked that morning before meeting your families at church for the 4 o’clock service. You had to go early if you wanted a park, and a seat. It was always so beautifully decorated for Christmas, you enjoyed taking it all in waiting for Mass to start. One of your favorite parts of this service was when Father would call any little kids up that wanted to and ask them questions about the religious aspects of the holiday. Where was Jesus born? Your favorite answer this year was Baltimore. What gifts did the baby receive? Cake and ice cream. The answers they came up with were always a laugh. You hoped you would be sending your own child up there someday.

Everyone headed to your parents’ house after, some other family and friends would be joining you. You had dinner and then played games. As you and your cousins had grown so had the games. Jake was the only child present and he wasn’t old enough to understand what was going on. With all the adults playing it could get a little rowdy especially between Sam and Dean. One of your aunts had done that gifts wrapped in a saran wrap ball and it seemed like only those two could make much progress. So of course, when one of them was trying to unwrap the other would give a little trash talk. You had been feeling a little off and would disappear from the room. When the ball was unwrapped, and Dean saw you left again he came to find you. He found you sitting on the steps just outside your parents’ upstairs bathroom.

“Everything all right, Sweetheart?”

“Not really, my stomach is hurting me a bit and if I try to eat or drink I’m running to the restroom because it’s going to make a reappearance.”

“Anything I can do to make it better?”

“Thank you, but no I just need to tough it out.”

“Soon Y/N this is all going to be behind you honey.”

“I cannot wait.”

He held you close as you both sat on the steps for a few minutes softly kissing the top of your head. When you rejoined your family, they were on to a different game. The two of you hanging back to watch. When the time came to leave you were more than ready to head home just so Dean could hold you in bed. You fell into a fitful sleep that night, not feeling all that much better when you awoke.

The two of you were spending the morning at your mom and dad’s and then going to John and Mary’s in the afternoon. Your dad’s mom and siblings joined you for breakfast and afterwards you exchanged gifts. Luckily, you only had to leave the room once. Dean knew you weren’t feeling well so the two of you left shortly after to go home before heading to his parent’s house. When you arrived, you headed to the kitchen to help Mary. The two of you got along really well, you often considered yourself luck in that way. A few of your friends didn’t have the best relationship with their in-laws. By the time Sam and Jess arrived dinner was ready, and you all gathered round the table to enjoy. It was a great night spent with them.

The end of December was quickly approaching, and you hadn’t heard anything from the company buying your story, communication had just stopped. After you talked to your dad, he started making phone calls to the company again to see what was going on. Their plans for the property and been pushed back a few months so they were no longer in a hurry to close. You ended up pushing your foot surgery back there weeks till the 6th of February. Your dad finally got a date out of them you were closing on Monday the 3rd of February, that would also be the last day open. You would spend the next two days moving everything out. The New Year wasn’t even here yet and you knew it was going to be going fast.

Things were going to get busy for you in January, so you and Dean decided you just wanted a quiet night in for New Year’s. At the store you picked up a bottle of Sparkling Cider to toast with, neither one of you big Champagne drinkers, along with a few different appetizers to make. The evening was spent curled up on the couch watching movies, until you switched over to watch the ball drop. Sharing a sweet kiss with Dean when midnight arrived. This was going to be your year. The surgeries would be done soon, you and Dean could move on with the rest of your lives, it was all going to work out and be fine.

You had been right when you told Dean January would be crazy. You spent the month working on cleaning out things at work. The office took a bit of time, dividing up what was going home and what you were sending to your new office. Cleaning out things you didn’t use any more, what you were selling and what was moving to the other location. On top of all that you were trying to keep a relatively clean house and not let everything there fall on Dean’s shoulders. Everyday it seemed like a little bit more left the store and the shelves were slowly becoming bare.

Sunday through Wednesday of closing week was going to be extremely chaotic for you all, so you wanted things at home that needed to be done before surgery finished by Saturday. You cleaned the house top to bottom, rearranged the living room furniture so it would be easier to navigate on crutches, got the crutches ready, finished laundry and tried to stock up on non-perishable groceries so Dean wouldn’t have to go out as much.

The last two days you were open were particularly emotional for you. This location had been your baby and second home for the last 8 years, you had helped with the cleaning, gutting, and remodeling of the building when you bought it. Everything was set up just how you wanted it. When you went back to work in a few months at the other location it was going to be vastly different. Sitting at the closing you were trying to hold back the tears as you signed the papers, part of you wished Dean was there to give you some of his strength but he had to be at the shop that day since he was taking the next 3 days off. Leaving the closing you went to work to open for the last time. That day was extremely busy for your and Donna so many of your loyal customers coming in one last time. Dean came in for a late lunch giving you a much-needed hug, he left after promising to be back before closing. Dean along with your parents came back before closing helping you to clean up and finish making orders. When you turned the open sign off one last time Dean pulled you into his arms and held you while you cried.

“It’s okay Sweetheart. It’s the start of a new chapter, you have a lot of memories to take with you.”

“Thanks, Dean. I know, I just hate goodbyes, and change.”

“I know you do, but it’s a good one. Keep telling yourself that. Closing this story is going to help greatly relieve some stress.”

“You’re right, Babe.”

“Hey! I’m always right. We should probably head home; we have an early busy day tomorrow.”

It was six am when you and Dean pulled back into the parking lot the next day. You had wanted a few minutes without the others around to take care of some of your stuff. By 6:30 someone was there to disconnect the water lines so the pop dispenser and ice machine could be moved. Your parents arrived at 7 and you started loading both of their trucks and the trailer with items going to the other store. Sam arrived and went with Dean in one of the trucks following your mom to go unload. Electricians, and others arrived to get the oven and its components unhooked. You had gone around the day before and put a note on everything stating where it was going, whether the other store, your or your parents’ house for storage, staying in the building or going somewhere and you just didn’t know where yet. The movers were the last to arrive taking some of the bigger equipment for you, this way you guys didn’t have to figure out how to get it on and off a trailer. Dean and Sam arrived back to help load the truck and your SUV. At one-point Dean took one of the “going somewhere” notes and tapped it to your back. It was awhile and two stops later before anyone told you. It was 6 o’clock that night when you put the last load in your car to leave for the day, heading home to unload one more time. By the time it was unloaded your foot hurt so bad you could barely walk, both you and Dean collapsing on the couch not moving till you went to bed.

The next day you had a few more things to get out of the store and had to meet the pop company to pick up their equipment since they couldn’t come the previous day. You left the store that afternoon for the final time. Your OB and scheduled one last ultrasound you had to run and get that done, thankfully the fibroid had not changed from your last one in December. One more grocery store run to stock up for a bit, then home to vacuum and make sure you were all packed for the hospital.

Both your mom and Dean were going with you for surgery, but Dean had an early morning meeting the next day he couldn’t reschedule so your mom was staying the night in the hospital and bringing you home the next day. It was an hour drive and you had to be there at 6:30 for an 8:30 surgery. You went through all your pre-op things and your mom and Dean joined you back there waiting for you to go. Several people were in and out of your little curtain room, the surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurses, and med students. It was finally time to wheel you back after getting one last hug and kiss from Dean and him telling you everything would be fine. A few hours later you woke up in recovery which is where you saw Dean and your mom again. It is also where you found out they didn’t have a room for you, and you were staying in a short-term patient ward. It was almost like a pre-op room, one giant room with 15 curtained off rooms. Actually, the pre-op room was bigger. There was a bed a chair and one of the old hospital TVs that moved. The back of your foot where they did the heal work was bleeding through your after surgery splint and they said it would take a few hours to stop so they propped it up and told you, you couldn’t get out of bed. It only took a few hours for you to be tired of sitting in one spot, as someone who spent all day on her feet this was a struggle. Sleeping in a hospital had never come easy for you with your previous surgeries and adding all the extra noise with so many people around that wasn’t happening either. It was later in the afternoon when you told Dean he should go.

“Babe, you might as well head home, you have an hour drive and there isn’t anything you can do here. Plus, there really isn’t any room in here.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to leave if you need me.”

“We will be fine, I’m not moving, and mom will be here if I need something. Go home get some rest it’s been a long week. I love you I’ll see you at home tomorrow.”

“Love you too, I’ll call you later. Take care Sweetheart. Y/M/N, call me if you need something or anything.” He gave you a kiss and hugged your mom before leaving.

The rest of the evening and night dragged on, when you finally fell asleep that night you woke up almost every half and hour. The nurses were in every hour, and around 2am one of the other patients started screaming because he pulled something out he shouldn’t have. By 5 am you gave up on sleep. One of the doctors came in later in the morning to wrap another layer of gauze around your splint to cover up the blood, and by noon they let you go home.

The next two weeks went fairly quickly, Dean made a good nurse when he was home at night getting you whatever you needed so you didn’t have to get up or try and carry anything while using the crutches. You had practiced on the crutches before surgery, but it is still a little different when you have to be using them. As your family knew well, you were also accident prone and managed to slip and slam your foot down a handful of times. Both your parents, and his would stop over during the day to see if you needed anything or to bring you lunch. The stitches and staples came out at the two-week mark, that wasn’t a fun experience you had never had it hurt as much as it did this time. The doctor wasn’t putting you in a cast, he was going to let you leave in a boot which you would be able to take off if you were sitting with it up or to shower. Thank you for small miracles! The next appointment was four weeks away, the Friday before your Monday surgery.

The next month went fine for you, just very long. You were still stuck at home so things did get a bit boring, a number of new games could be found on your phone and you found a website with fanfiction from your favorite show you started reading. While fine for you, things were going nuts in the outside world, something called Covid-19 was making a lot of people extremely sick, overseas countries shut down and in the U.S., many states were doing the same thing. Your follow up appointment was cancelled and moved to a video chat, then days before it was scheduled your next surgery was cancelled. Stay at home orders were put in place and masks were required for those who had to leave the house.

It was definitely a crazy time and it went on for a few months. 6 weeks after you last video appointment, during the first full week of May, you had another and this one sent you to therapy if you could find someone open. You could also lose the boot and work on losing the crutches. The place you had gone for past surgeries was open and you started back there. This surgery was the hardest time you had to start walking again. There was a bit of pain if your heel hit the ground, so you couldn’t completely get rid of the crutches like you wanted to. The therapist you were working with said with the type of surgery done to your heel, the pain you had with it would determine what you could do and how fast you would get there.

You got a call from your OB’s office, they were given the clear to start surgeries again and yours was scheduled for June 1st, which was two weeks away. You had had a few problems over the last couple of months and just hoped nothing had changed and they would be able to just go in and take the fibroid out no problem. The closer the date got the more worried you became. Dean tried to tell you everything was going to be fine, and not to worry, but you aren’t the best listener. Because of things going on with Covid, you needed to be home the week before surgery as much as possible only going to therapy twice and the grocery store once early in the week to get a few things you wanted. For the last three months Dean had done the shopping, and you were thankful, but there were a few things you wanted to get yourself. Saturday you were going to have to get a Covid test and then had to self-isolate until you left for the hospital on Monday morning. The hardest part of that was going to be sleeping in a different room from Dean, you were even supposed to wear a mask when he was in the same room as you. You had spent the week before rearranging the living room again, then cleaning the house best you could as you hobbled around. Friday night you spent the evening with Dean curled up in your spots on the couch. The closer you got to surgery the more nervous you became.

“Sweetheart, everything is going to go just fine. There is nothing for you to worry about, and no matter how much you worry it isn’t going to change anything.”

“I know, I’m just, I can’t help it. You know how my mind works I’m great at going to the worse case possible. I’ve always wanted kids, and I know you did too, I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to give that to you.”

“Hey, it’s you and me no matter what happens. If we can have kids one day awesome, if not we will look into adopting. What’s not changing is you and me, we are in this together, always.”

“I love you. Thanks for being so amazing, especially during these last crazy months when I couldn’t do much on my own.”

“I love you, too. That’s what I’m here for, you would do the same thing for me. You always take care of me when I’m sick. I will always be here for you.”

“I will always be here for you too.”

Saturday morning you did a few more things around the house before giving Dean a kiss and leaving for your test. It went fairly quick your doctor’s office scheduled you an appointment and you preregistered. You headed home to work on laundry and make sure you bag was packed. That evening you and Dean were watching movies in the living room, although unlike usual you weren’t sitting together on the couch. Sunday was a warm sunny day, so you enjoyed it outside. Monday morning Dean took you to the hospital, you went through check in and then through the routine in pre-op. Just before they took you back you snuck in a quick hug and kiss from Dean.

“I love you, Baby, everything is going to be just fine. I will talk to you after surgery.”

“I love you too, thank you for everything.”

“You don’t have to thank me for anything. We are in this together. Love you Sweetheart.”

Dean was able to stay at the hospital during surgery, but he had to leave after. They weren’t allowing visitors into the hospital, so you were going to be on your own in the hospital for the next three days. Dean headed to the waiting room and they came to wheel you back to surgery. Well, here goes nothing.

Part 2

#dean x reader #sick reader #Supernatural #dean winchester

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hopeshoodie · 4 years ago

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What storyline do you prefer Cherrygate or Operation Nope

Concept-wise, I prefer Operation Nope. But in execution… Cherrygate. Specifically how Matchmaker does Cherrygate, but I was really invested in the canonical version too.

Like when I played S1 for the first time, Cherrygate and the lie detector challenge were my favorite plot beats. The Cherrygate drama is so wholly centered on MC, almost everyone in the villa gets involved, it’s the first time you can really meaningfully interact with Jake, and you get to actually talk to Cherry and Erikah.

The only reason I prefer Matchmaker is that it gives you the option to be open that you’re romancing Talia and not bothered, versus the canon game forces you to be angry about it.

But conceptually, god I love Operation Nope. It could’ve been so good. Hope and Noah’s relationship is one of my favorite parts of S2, and seeing the cracks start to show would’ve been really interesting, especially if MC had a part in it. But the execution was so butchered. I kind of want to do a whole post about how I would re-write Operation Nope, because it was such a missed opportunity imo.

It was too late in the season

I think it was @bobbyboops who pointed out that Rocco’s whole thing and Operation Nope should have been switched. I 100% agree. OP hits at a weird spot in Nope’s relationship, they’ve been together for about a third of the game, Hope’s confessing that she’s getting anxious about how invested she is, Noah feels like they’re fighting too often, and THEN Priya/MC get involved. I’d much rather have Priya challenge their relationship earlier and then stick through it, THEN devolve into conflicts.

It would’ve been juicier to try and see Hope blame her relationship issues on Priya intervening earlier when that’s clearly not the issue. It would make more sense that Bobby wanted to out Nope as being a shaky relationship earlier on because they got serious so fast. The weird dynamic of ‘Lottie makes fun of Nope but everyone else is fully on board until suddenly some people have suspicious’ is just kind of inconsistent. Either we need to have Bobby express doubts about Nope earlier, or OP has to happen around day 7.

We focused on all the wrong parts

What I wanted was to get the perspectives of different islanders and really hear Hope and Noah go at it, instead we got Hope and Noah arguing off-screen and Hope and Priya arguing. We've already seen Priya beefing with Lottie, so seeing her do it with Hope isn't interesting.

MC didn’t have a clear role

Obviously, this is because you either kiss Noah or you don’t, but it gets really muddled in both cases. If you don’t kiss Noah, Hope will still blame you if you don’t tell her. If you do kiss Noah, Hope’s still predominately mad at Priya despite MC clearly being more in the wrong.

Plus the option to ‘solve’ everything feels really unsatisfying because Hope just smiles and forgives everyone if you say the right thing. That doesn’t make sense to me. I think the issue is that there’s too many choices, and they conflict with each other. You shouldn’t be able to tell Hope about it if you take part in it, because the result is that Hope is only mad at Priya.

There’s no real consequences

If MC takes part in ON, the worst thing that will happen to her is that Hope can put too many stickers on her face. That makes no sense to me.

At the very least, you shouldn’t be able to romance Noah in late game if you betray his trust and take part in ON. Maybe you can still sleep with him on day 29, but he confesses afterward that he wanted to see if he was still invested and realized he wasn’t. Noah wouldn’t want to long-term date someone who broke his trust and undermined a happy relationship he was in- to some extent he’ll always blame MC to an extent for him and Hope struggling.

Also, if MC is coupled with Rahim? She should lose a ton of hearts with him. Hope and Noah are Rahim’s best friends in the house, if his girl tried to cheat on him with his best friend he should be angry at her.

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itsclydebitches · 5 years ago

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This is me sort of rising from the briny depths of an extremely salty ocean but re: the Penny framing I actually wonder if the whole purpose was to justify that little line Ironwood has at the dinner where he maintains that the robot is under his control. Because imho they had already sort of derailed Penny in her v7 reintroduction from a curious and rebellious girl [1/4]

I feel like my brain is rebooting after reading these asks because that is a damn good point. I’d honestly forgotten how much of a rebel---or at least a ‘child chafing against strict parental control/expectations’---Penny was characterized as in the early volumes... but you’re right. She’s someone who:

Tackles a girl for calling her “friend” even though she’s supposed to be keeping a low profile/not interacting with people much

Continues to prioritize Ruby’s safety over hiding that she’s a robot (attacking Roman, stopping that car)

Straight up told Ruby about her not human being even though that absolutely went against her orders

Running off to have fun with Ruby instead of doing whatever it was she was tasked with

Continuing to hang around when Blake went missing despite being told to get lost

Trying to ditch Ciel and not wanting to keep to whatever schedule she has planned

Getting a magnet stuck to her head and just casually hiding it with a hat. Who needs to deal with something that would blow your secret when there’s fun festival stuff to do?

Clear discomfort with the expectations put on her to save the world

In contrast Volume Seven gives us a Penny who

Apparently never tried to contact Ruby after her resurrection. If she disagreed with the (presumed) order to keep he identity quiet outside of Atlas/Mantle she never expressed that

Immediately goes off to do her job despite being reunited with Ruby. Sorry, responsibility takes precedence over friendship now

Showcases great pride in those responsibilities---the Protector of Mantle, being in Ironwood’s inner circle---as opposed to the previous discomfort

Accepts the fact that she shouldn’t be making new friends, even if she doesn’t like it. Whatever she learned in Volumes Two-Three didn’t stick in the face of what she’s learned while back in Atlas

All of which isn’t a bad thing (minus the idea that she shouldn’t make friends). In fact, I’d argue that our whole main cast needs to start balancing responsibility with personal desires more and doing things they don’t always want to because it’s their job/the right thing to do/The Power of Friendship doesn’t always hold in a logical, complicated world. Penny had that balance down decently well. Penny grew. The problem is we didn’t see that growth happening on screen and it was never acknowledged later. We could have easily framed this all through the lens of ‘rebuilding a robot = changing her personality somewhat,’ but we didn’t even get that. Penny is suddenly much more loyal to different people, much more responsible, much more confident in what she wants out of life, much more meek about accepting the things she doesn’t agree with... and we’re shown neither how nor why these changes took place.

Worse, Penny is another victim of the “Ironwood is now illogically evil” volume ending because this new characterization means that she SHOULD be loyal to him with the same intensity that Winter is. Because she has been loyal! Because she’s been demonstrating a nuanced understanding of why you do hard things for good reasons all volume! She doesn’t, for example, throw a fit about sitting out on her Mantle duties post-framing because she gets that being among the people right now isn’t what they need, no matter how unfair that is to her. Penny post-resurrection is someone characterized as putting her job first and thus she should have been agreeing with Winter during that hallway conversation, not pushing back when she knows there’s currently no better option. She’s been Team Ironwood for the last year (at least) so why the sudden, “Hmm... I don’t know if he’s right”? An unexpected view Penny maintains even after Winter re-explains the logic of the situation, if we choose to read Penny taking the Maiden powers as a deliberate betrayal against them both. You shouldn’t have this power, I (Team RWBY) should. Her new characterization---unexpected as it is---sets her up as someone who would be thoroughly AGAINST Team RWBY’s flimsy “plan” of standing their ground and not following orders, so why in the world does she end up on the airship with them? Hell, we could argue that given the time jumps and depending on how long it took for her to be rebuilt, Penny has known/spent far more time with Ironwood than Ruby, so we can’t even fall back on a generic, “She’s closer to Ruby and therefore instinctively loyal to her.”

Literally the only thing we get, as you point out, is Ironwood’s comment at the dinner and Penny’s comment in the truck. Two very broad hints about how friendship is (supposedly, I don’t actually think Ironwood is arguing this here) bad so yeah, poor Penny. Of course she would go side with the Good Guys who realize the simple lesson that Friendship is Good. A reading that’s bolstered by the whole Ace Ops situation. That’s another moment where a character, Harriet, insists they’re not friends---implying that Ironwood doesn’t encourage them to be friends---but showing us the exact opposite. They are friends. That’s clear to see in literally any scene where two or more of them interact. Now here’s Penny, insisting Ironwood doesn’t allow her to have friends, even as he lets her hang out with/work with Team RWBY every moment possible. At no point do we actually see Ironwood pushing against friendship and the need to work together. We see the opposite, with him planning license parties for them to chill out and running after Qrow to hug him. Volume 7′s really just out here insisting that Ironwood and his allies think friendship is unnecessary, despite us not being shown that, and then using it as justification for why a bunch of teens beat the most elite huntsmen group we’ve ever seen and why a previously hyper-loyal ally took Maiden powers and jumped on the airship with them. Because Team RWBY are the intrinsic heroes who believe in friendship and Ironwood is suddenly the bad guy who believes in nothing but power... even though that is 100% not the characters they wrote.

It’s... yeah. That’s all pretty bad lol

#rwby #rwby volume 7 #rwby volume 7 spoilers #mymetas #rwde #long post #gorgeousgalatea

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turning-dreams-into-chaos · 5 years ago

Text

Banished (Part 24)

*Not My Gif*

Summary: When the 100 was sent to the ground, Y/N Y/L/N was one of them. Having been locked up for almost 8 years, how will she react to surviving on Earth? Especially when she gets banished…

Post Date: 11-16-19

Paring: Bellamy Blake x Reader

Word Count: 3.1K

A/N: I am so sorry this is so late! Last night we had this last minute Bachelorette party for my friend who was having this surprise wedding and I didn’t get him until like 3 this morning and then I was out and now I have a hangover, so my bad guys.

~Master List~

~Banished Master~

*Based off episode 2x11 of the 100, Coup de Grace*

Kane paced back and forth in front of the door, every now and then taking a glace at it but not once choosing to open it. He ran a hand through his typically kept hair as a group of footsteps rounded about the corner and he looked up, catching sight of Indra and a few grounders as they approached the door.

“Indra.” Kane spoke first, hiding the worry behind his eyes as Indra turned towards the door, the metal still in place as Kane clenched his jaw.

“How’s Y/N?” she asked him as he finally willed himself to open the door and walk into the room. You laid on a hospital bed unconscious, a few new bruises on your eye and upper cheek but ultimately, you’ve looked worse, and Indra’s seen you like that before. Kane however hadn’t.

“How do you think she is?” He spat, crossing his arms and letting his anger seep through a little. “He could’ve killed her.”

“Then she would’ve died an honorable death.” Kane scoffed as he chose to focus on you instead of the woman as she and her men left. He couldn’t believe he was here with you covered in bruises and knocked out. He carefully brushed a few pieces of your hair out of your face, revealing a few more scars on the side of your face as he sighed.

“Would she have really wanted you in here?” Kane jumped as he turned around at the voice, seeing the owner standing in the doorway and leaning against the frame. Octavia’s face hardened as she watched the older man shake his head.

“She would’ve hated it.” He whispered, letting his fingers trace under your eye on the purpling skin, being sure not to press on it at all. Octavia walked up next to him, taking one of your hands in hers as Kane sighed. “She’s so different.” He found himself confessing as Octavia turned to him.

“She’s been through a lot.” She agreed before remembering why she came in. She grabbed the rag next to you, dipping it in water and cleaning up the last of the blood and dirt scattered throughout your body. Kane’s eyes remained on you, seeing the more and more cuts and scare being revealed before he turned around, marching right out the door and leaving the girl to watch over you. Octavia let out a shaky breath as she sat down next to you, her hand still holding yours in hopes that you’ll wake up soon. “You don’t get to die on me Y/N.” She mumbled, resting her forehead on the bed before you started to move.

“Hey. You’re alright. You’re alright.” Octavia assures you as you sit up, holding your head in your hands.

“Ugh, O? How long have I been out?” You asked her in a raspy voice, longing for water as she handed you a canteen.

“A few hours. Jackson told us to bring you here.” She said as you guzzled down the water. “He also fixed a few of your deeper cuts.” She indicated to your stomach as you pulled up your shirt, the stitching on your wound now cleaned up. “I should go get him.” She made her way to the door before you stuck your hand out.

“No. I’m fine. You don’t have to worry anyone about me.”

“Y/N. I’m not worrying him. He needs to look at you, make sure you’re alright.” You just shook your head, pushing your legs over the side of the bed. You didn’t need anyone looking after you, you were fine. A little tired, but fine. Octavia was at your side, helping you to your feet as you smiled, softly pushing her hands away to show you were fine to stand on your own. “You were just unconscious, Y/N. Maybe you should take it easy.” She suggested as you still shook your head.

“O, I said I was fine.” Your next question shouldn’t have shocked her, but she didn’t know how to answer it. “Where’s Bellamy?” She stayed silent, a hand on a guiding position on your back but making no move to push you anywhere. “Octavia?” you pressed as your stomach dropped, automatically assuming the worst. You knew your breathing stared to get hard as you felt more light-headed, your knees giving out from under you slightly as Octavia helped you to the bed.

“Y/N! Hey, It’s okay! It’s okay, he’s okay. He’s alive.” She assured you as she tried anything to make you calm down, trying to your head level to clear your head. He’s okay. He’s alive. That’s what you had to keep repeating in your head as your eyes closed, listening to Octavia speak.

“Where is he?” You knew you didn’t need to see Bellamy. But you wanted to. And having gone a few days you begun to realize you hadn’t seen Bellamy since the other night and you were worried.

“He went into Mount Weather.” Octavia said it so simply that you could’ve sworn you misheard her.

“What?”

“He’s the inside man.” She shrugged, a frown on her face before she met your eyes and furrowed her brows. “He didn’t tell you? I could’ve sworn you’d be the first he’d talk to.”

Bellamy left? Was that what he was going to tell you? You couldn’t help but hate Octavia’s words. There’s no reason why you’d be the first person that Bellamy would tell. You and Bellamy couldn’t be anything more than what you were right now. Octavia caught onto your silence as she tried to change the subject.

“How are you feeling?” She asked.

“Like shit. Only better.” You both chuckled before you noticed Octavia’s sword on her hip and how her eyes had her battle paint on them. “You going somewhere?” She glanced down to the sword, before looking at you again.

“Clarke is coming back from Tondc with Lexa, Indra and I was going to meet her.” She barely got the words out of her mouth before you were standing up again, only this time you didn’t need to sit back down.

“I’m going with you.” You told her and shrugged on your jacket, not waiting for a response that was sure to come.

“Y/N.”

“I’m going with you.” You repeated with more force as Octavia just smiled.

“I know. I was going to say I have something for you.” She went outside the room, leaving only briefly before coming back, a new bow in her hand. “This is for you. From Indra.” The girls words died on her tongue as your eye brows went wide.

“Indra.. got me a bow?” You hid the shock on your face with more shock as you tested it out, pulling back the string and checking the resistance.

“So hows it feel?”

“It feels... great.” Octavia felt a smile across her face when you inspected the bow even more. “Why did Indra do this?” You thought she hated you but giving you a bow like this meant the woman might just be warming up to you a little.

“That is a question for her. Now c’mon she’s waiting.” You nodded, following Octavia down the halls off the ark.

“I guess I don’t really need the eye makeup.” You joked as you held back a smile, pointing to the bruises surrounding your eye. Octavia gave you an amused look as she chuckled lightly.

“Leave it to you to make a joke at yourself.” She ran off with a laugh as you followed her.

“Oh come on! That was funny!”

You met up with Indra soon and thanked her for the bow, but she didn’t say anything, only nodding at you and then moving on. After walking maybe a half hour you came across Clarke and the rest of her people.

Octavia was about to head towards them before the color movement entered your sight line and you stopped her.

“Look,” You said as you pointed to where 2 Mountain Men lay on the ground with a gun pointed at Clarke’s head. “They’re going to kill her.” You said as Octavia and Indra both crouched to the ground with you, peering over the bushes.

“What do we do?” Octavia asked as you shook your head, trying to figure out a plan.

“Ok, Octavia you go this way,” you pointed to your left, “Indra and I will go this way. When I give the signal we attack.” They both agreed, Indra surprised you by not having anything to say about your plan before you were on your separate ways. When you got into your position, you pulled out an arrow and placed it in your bow, pulling back and taking a deep breath. Your aim was on the man with a gun who pulled the trigger quickly before you let your arrow fly right into his head.

“Ahhh!” Octavia yelled as she ran up to fight the last man and you and Indra took a step out of your spot. You were about to help her before Indra put her hand out to stop you.

“No, her kill.” You didn’t want to just leave Octavia to fight but you knew she had it handled so you watched as she fought the man, almost killing him before Clarke came barreling in on horse back.

“Stop!” she orders as Octavia looked at her. “He’s from Mount Weather. We need to keep him alive.” Octavia didn’t say anything but you understood, taking the time to dig through the belongings and pockets of the dead man.

You ripped their backpack open and barely needed to look inside before you found what you were looking for.

“What is that?” Clarke asked as you pulled out the photos. One of them was Clarke and Lexa both with their faces circled in red and your eyes widened, heading over to show Clarke.

“You and Lexa were the targets.” Clarke looked down at you in shock as Indra yelled to warn the commander. “We have to take him back to camp.” You told her as she nodded, getting off her horse to help restrain him as you all made your way back to camp.

Bellamy trembled as he sat up in the cage, looking around the room at the numerous grounders locked in cages around him. He couldn’t even count them all. Grabbing the lock on the door he tried to yank it off, break it or something to escape but it wasn’t working. All it did was draw attention.

“Shof op.” A grounder told him when he made to much noise.

“I don’t understand you.” He told her as she spit in his face and called him a sky person. “I take it no one told you we aren’t enemies anymore?” He wiped the spit from his face as the woman watched him carefully. “I need out of this cage.”

“And then what?” She asked, shaking her head.

Bellamy glared straight ahead. “And then I’m going to kill everyone in this mountain.” He looked at the woman once more before pounding on the door, trying to push it away. He hated being locked in here but he also hated that he didn’t say goodbye to you. He thought it was dumb, he said goodbye to his sister before Lincoln and him left but he didn’t say goodbye to you. He didn’t even know if you knew he was here. And that was just eating at him. He was worried about what you might’ve said when he told you. Would you have fought for him to stay? Would you have let him go and be worried for him. Or worse, would you not even care?

You stayed back when you get to Camp Jaha, knowing there was nothing you could do for medical. You began to follow Octavia to relieve Raven before a hand was on your arm, pulling you back.

“What the hell you were doing?!” Kane asked, lowering his voice so only the two of you could hear as you rolled your eyes.

“None of your business Kane.” You pushed off his arm, turning to leave before he jumped in front of you.

“I find out you woke up and then left right afterwards? Do you know how worried I had been?!” You didn’t have anything to say to him. What would you say? Besides everything you been telling him since he landed on this cursed planet. He doesn’t deserve to worry about you. You pushed past him and this time he didn’t follow, letting you reach Octavia with a huff.

“Any word from Bell?” You asked her, not catching her smile at the use of his nickname.

“Nothing yet.” You sighed and looked at her smile making you confused.

“Why are you happy? I thought your brother not answering is a bad thing.” You reminded her, tapping the radio gently as she nodded.

“Oh it is.”

“Then why are you smiling?” She just shrugged and you couldn’t help yourself. “Octavia tell me, I need to know now!”

She bit her lip, looking away only briefly as her smile got bigger.

“What’s going on with you and my brother?” She was playing matchmaker and you couldn’t help but blush.

“Nothing O. Absolutely nothing.” You lied through your teeth. You knew that wasn’t completely 100 percent true. While there was nothing happening, that didn’t mean neither of you wanted it to happen.

“Come on Y/N. Just tell him! I know you’re one of the most stubborn people I’ve met but you two need each other.” She put her hands on your shoulders and shook your gently, making you laugh out a breath.

“Okay! How about this?” You took a second to form the words as your heart beat out of your chest. “We all make it out of this alive, I’ll consider it.” Octavia have you a hug before you both focused on the radio, praying that Bellamy would just answer it already.

Kane approached Abby who stood outside the airlock watching Emerson.

“Raven did a good job with the airlock. When is he going to wake up?” He asked her as she crossed her arms.

“I don’t know. Our blood heals them. It’s incredible.” She told them as his face fell.

“That’s Why the kids are in trouble in Mount Weather.”

“My kid’s in trouble Marcus. They tried to kill her.”

“They missed. Clarke is strong.”

Abby faced Kane, irritation written across her face. “She’s not that strong. Everyone looks at her like she’s a leader, even Mount Weather.” Kane didn’t know what to say to her, it wasn’t like she was wrong. “How’s Y/N doing with all this?” She asked the man who groaned, letting his eyes close.

“I don’t know. Clarke and Y/N are holding this alliance together and we’d lose the alliance without them.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, as Abby rubbed a hand on his back.

“I didn’t know I’d lose my daughter over it.” She stormed out and left him alone as Kane just pictured you laying on the bed covered in the thousand scars and bruises.

“I think I already lost mine.” He whispered to himself as he now stared at Emerson laying much like you had and Fire was lit within him.

Raven took over Radio duty from you and Octavia and you didn’t mind, honestly you were pretty beat but you couldn’t sleep now. Not when you were scared of what you’d see if you did and if Bellamy contacted you wanted to be there. Abby told you that you should be taking it easy and refused to allow you to spar, but you told her she didn’t have any day in what you did. Your head hurt to much to spar anyways. Too much movement. The only thing you could do was walk around.

A P.A. Announcement came on calling Clarke and Kane to the airlock where they kept Emerson and suddenly you found yourself heading that way, your feet taking you before your brain even made the decision.

“Jackson found genetic marker anomalies that can only come from someone who was born on the Ark." Abby said as you approached the room, standing a few paces behind Clarke who was in the doorway.

“It didn’t come from our blood transfusion?” Kane looked back at Emerson as Abby denied, saying they took the test before.

“They’re bleeding our friends.” You pulled everyone’s attention to you, past Clarke as she looked as equally scared as you. Sure they banished you but they were still your friends. Jasper was in there, Monty, Harper. And now Bellamy.

You left the room, ignoring how Clarke headed to Emerson to kill him as you ignored everyone’s glances through the halls, both curious and some still disgusted you’d be here.

You found a spot alone, pressing up against the side of the ark as Clarke walked past you and straight to where Raven was with the Radio. Something in you told you to follow but you didn’t care. You didn’t need to get your hopes up that Bellamy would answer only to struck down. Again.

You started to push the dirt around with your fingers, trying to make your head stop fighting their battles and before you knew it Bellamy’s name was scribbled across the ground in sloppy writing. You stared at it for what seemed like forever before Clarke’s boots Cosme into your view and huge smile on her face.

“Bellamy’s alive.” She said as she kept walking, making you sit up straight in shock.

“Wait, what do you mean he’s alive?” You knew you should have followed her into that damn tent! Clarke turned to you briefly, beckoning you to follow as you got to your feet, shooting his name on the ground one last look before leaving it, following after the girl.

You stood by Clarke’s side as she got Emerson out of the airlock, walking him straight through camp as you stood between Octavia and Indra. Clarke was doing something right for once and you were all for it. You turned behind you, seeing Emerson being forced to walk with you all and satisfied smirk happened across your face. Until Kane and Abby stopped you all. Clarke told off her mother and Kane, saying that she was in charge. It made you almost proud. Kane watched you stand with them, knowing that you wouldn’t have previously stood with Clarke if something hadn’t changed.

“The grounders trust Clarke. Maybe we should too.” Even though Kane was talking to Abby, he kept glancing at you, but you looked anywhere but.

“Do you want to explain how this helps Bellamy?” Octavia asked you as you shared a look with Clarke.

“Because O, the more they’re looking at us.”

“The less they’re looking for Bellamy.” Clarke continued and your smirk dropped a little.

“Bellamy’s the key to everything. He dies, we die.” You finished and took a deep breath and hoped, prayed, you did anything that Bellamy wasn’t going to die. For more than just one reason.

Feedback makes me happy, and happy makes me write!

All Tags Open!

***Reblogging with Banished Tags***

Permanent: @literal-fand0m-trash @just4muggles @saturn-aka-six @nathaliabakes @whyamihere-bro @colored-confetti @wiseeggspickleslime @sadn0va @btsiguess-kpop @galacticstxrdust @independentgirl @wellhellotherelovey @hollymac79

Bellamy: @jodiereedus22 @nyxxxwtp @danielabetancourth

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discyours · 4 years ago

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also with the housewife thing.. i get what you are saying. i think. but can we still acknowledge it feels like a slap in the face. even if it isnt. i think people need a chance to say how something makes them feel even if it is an accidental tragedy, a like one of the commons, one where everyone is understandable but still i can say, "that lady makes me feel like SHIT when she tells me i will certainly want to be a homemaker some day" with a smile w/o blaming her 100%. But some. I have to, some.

i guess i mean, i think the feeling "housewives are disgusting" for a girl comes from a fear, not a hate. i am afraid of what i see happening and see coming for me and it makes me attack any way i can to keep it off my back. so they say "sweetie you change your mind" and i want to say FUCK YOU it is DISGUSTING and is NEVER HAPPENING TO ME. it makes it feel realer that i can not be controlled to say.

but i guess i get the hurt some housewife or someone who sees herself in them at all would feel hearing me say that, not getting why i "need" to say it, is worth not saying it like that. but that takes self awareness and time and just like you say not every woman is a feminist, not everyone can be expected to participate in major activism around not being housewife and demanding the man do fair work instead... not every one can reflect all the time to be perfect. The cost is we hurt each other.

You’re doing the same thing as the OP of that post. Blaming housewives in particular for the thing you really take issue with, which is being pressured or forced into femininity. I can agree that telling women they’ll inevitably change their minds about not wanting to conform is disgusting, but that’s not something all housewives do, and it certainly isn’t something only housewives do.

I realise that choices aren’t made in a vacuum and that a lot of women who do choose to become housewives do so out of harmful beliefs they hold not just about themselves but about women as a whole. Those beliefs and the way they’re expressed can certainly be criticised, but attributing malice to any woman who ends up being involved in a misogynistic or patriarchal institution just ends up being a way to victim blame. Especially if you don’t bother to find out why or don’t care to distinguish between the different motivations behind it.

#anon

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xhxhxhx · 5 years ago

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“The Only Real Exception”

After writing about the education-polarization thesis and the future of Europe and Asia, I was curious: Has Japan polarized? One of Thomas Piketty’s students studied the question. They came to a surprising answer.

As Western Europe and North America have become increasingly polarized around education and income, Japan has actually depolarized.

Western Europe and Japan started in different places. In Western Europe, the educated classes traditionally supported parties of the right. In postwar Japan, they supported parties of the left. They moved in different directions. In Western Europe, the educated moved left. In Japan, they moved right.

From Amory Gethin, “Cleavage structures and distributive politics”:

7.6 The end of ‘cultural politics’

One of the other specificities of Japanese electoral behaviour is the fact that higher educated individuals have continuously supported left-wing parties, especially during the twenty years following the end of World War II. The historical strength of education levels in predicting party choice in Japan is well-known: it reflects the freezing of the party system which had emerged in the context of the ‘cultural politics’ of the 1950s (Watanuki, 1991).

Even when controlling for the significant improvements in citizens’ education levels since the 1960s, this pattern has persisted for most of the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1960s, 65% of the 20% least educated voters supported the Liberal Democratic Party, against 41% of voters belonging to the top education decile (figure 7.3c). During recent years, however, these differences have decreased considerably, and popular vote for the LDP has oscillated between 40% and 45% for all education groups in 2009-2014. Looking more closely at intellectual elites confirms this evolution (figure 7.3d). In 1963-1967, top 10% educated voters were indeed less likely to support the LDP by about 15 percentage points (8 percentage points after controls). This figure remained broadly stable, staying between 5 and 10 percentage points during the 1963-1996 period. Starting in 2009, however, education lost significance, even when including controls. The decline of the Social Democratic Party during the 1990s and its replacement by the Democratic Party of Japan – which culminated by its victory in 2009 – therefore seems to coincide with the disappearance of what was one of the most fundamental political divisions of Japanese society. The fact that this dealignment was sudden and occurred at the same time as shifts in the structure of party politics suggests that this process is driven by top-down mechanisms rather than long-run evolutions in collective beliefs.

7.7 From a multiple elites party system to political indifferentiation?

Bringing these two dynamics together points to a trend which is the exact opposite of the one observed in most Western countries (figure 7.4). In the 1960s, intellectual and economic elites were clearly separated into two different groups. On the left of the political spectrum, university graduates were highly supportive of the Japanese Communist Party and the Japanese Socialist Party, who based their appeal more on liberal values than on class antagonisms. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democratic Party attracted both low income earners and business elites. Through its defense of organized capitalism, it created strong ties with top executives and industrial leaders who participated in developing Japan’s growth model. This structure of political competition suddenly ended in 2009, when the LDP was defeated for the first time.

While these figures suggest that Japan was originally a perfect example of a multiple elites party system, this characterisation should not be over-emphasised. Persistently strong levels of support for the party among low income earners demonstrates that the LDP has never favoured exclusively economic elites. As was highlighted above, part of its remarkable hegemony came from its ability to distribute equally the fruits of the country’s long periods of growth. The non-linearity of the relationship between income and electoral behaviour is, to some extent, an interesting representation of the Japanese social compromise, which came with its dominant-party system.

Piketty describes Japan as the exception to the education-polarization rule. From Capital and Ideology:

The only real exception to this general evolution of the structure of political cleavages within the electoral democracies of developed countries seems to concern Japan, which has never really experienced a party system of classist type comparable to those observed in European countries and Westerners during the post-war period. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been in power almost permanently in Japan since 1945. Historically, this almost hegemonic conservative party has achieved its best scores in the rural and agricultural world and among the urban bourgeoisie. The LDP thus succeeded in synthesizing between the economic and industrial elites and traditional Japan, around a project of reconstruction of the country, in a complex context marked by the American occupation and an anticommunism exacerbated by the Russian-Chinese proximity. Conversely, the Democratic Party (main opposition party) has generally achieved its best scores among modest and average urban employees and among the most highly qualified, who are willing to protest against the presence of the United States and the new moral and social order embodied by the LDP, but without succeeding in sustainably gathering an alternative majority8. More generally, the specific structure of the political conflict in Japan must be linked to the particular form taken by Japanese cleavages around nationalism and traditional values9.

8. See A. GETHIN, Cleavages Structures and Distributive Politics, op. cit., p. 89-100. See also K. MORI MCELWAIN, « Party System Institutionalization in Japan », in A. HICKEN, E. MARTINEZ KUHONTA, Party System Institutionalization in Asia, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 74-107.

9. In The Game of the Century [The Silent Cry] (1967), Kenzaburô Ôé magnificently evokes the complexity and the violence of the relations between the intellectual elites and the popular classes in Japan, in particular around the urban-rural divide, traditional values and the question of the modernization of the country since the beginning of the Meiji era (1868), without forgetting the role played by the geopolitical positioning of the archipelago, the relationship with the United States and the antagonisms aroused by the presence of Korean workers.

Perhaps Japan was a precociously modern society in the 1960s, with an educated left and a uneducated right. Or perhaps it was a “post-colonial” society, with a self-consciously anti-imperialist left.

The Japanese experience of the 1960s can certainly sound precociously modern. In Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (1987), one working class student was put off by the 1960s educated left:

"You know, when I went to university I joined a folk-music club. I just wanted to sing songs. But the members were a load of frauds. I get goose-bumps just thinking about them. The first thing they tell you when you enter the club is you have to read Marx. ‘Read page so-and-so to such-and-such for next time.’ Somebody gave a lecture on how folk songs have to be deeply involved with society and the radical movement. So, what the hell, I went home and tried as hard as I could to read it, but I didn't understand a thing. It was worse than the subjunctive. I gave up after three pages. So I went to the next week's meeting like a good little scout and said I had read it, but I couldn't understand it. From that point on they treated me like an idiot.

“I had no critical awareness of the class struggle, they said, I was a social cripple. I mean, this was serious. And all because I said I couldn't understand a piece of writing. Don't you think they were terrible?"

"Uh-huh," I said.

"And their so-called discussions were terrible, too. Everybody would use big words and pretend they knew what was going on. But I would ask questions whenever I didn't understand something. "What is this imperialist exploitation stuff you're talking about? Is it connected somehow to the East India Company?' "Does smashing the educational-industrial complex mean we're not supposed to work for a company after we graduate?' And stuff like that. But nobody was willing to explain anything to me. Far from it -- they got really angry.

“Can you believe it?"

"Yeah, I can," I said.

"One guy yelled at me, "You stupid bitch, how do you live like that with nothing in your brain?' Well, that did it. I wasn't going to put up with that. OK, so I'm not so smart. I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running, and it's the working classes that get exploited. What kind of revolution is it that just throws out big words that working-class people can't understand? What kind of crap social revolution is that? I mean, I'd like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody's really being exploited, we've got to put a stop to it. That's what I believe, and that's why I ask questions.

“Am I right, or what?"

"You're right."

"So that's when it hit me. These guys are fakes. All they've got on their minds is impressing the new girls with the big words they're so proud of, while sticking their hands up their skirts. And when they graduate, they cut their hair short and march off to work for Mitsubishi or IBM or Fuji Bank. They marry pretty wives who've never read Marx and have kids they give fancy new names to that are enough to make you puke. Smash what educational-industrial complex? Don't make me laugh! And the new members were just as bad. They didn't understand a thing either, but they pretended to and they were laughing at me. After the meeting, they told me, "Don't be silly! So what if you don't understand? Just agree with everything they say.'"

[...]

"So then what happened with your club?"

"I left in June, I was so furious," Midori said. "Most of these student types are total frauds. They're scared to death somebody's gonna find out they don't know something. They all read the same books and they all spout the same slogans, and they love listening to John Coltrane and seeing Pasolini movies. You call that "revolution?"'

"Hey, don't ask me, I've never actually seen a revolution."

"Well, if that's revolution, you can stick it. They'd probably shoot me for putting umeboshi in my rice balls. They'd shoot you, too, for understanding the subjunctive."

"It could happen."

"Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. I'm working class.”

But those dynamics changed. Today, Japan is about as polarized by education as France and the United States were in the 1970s and the United Kingdom was in the 1990s: the more educated and the less educated vote the same way.

I am still interested in whether Japan has depolarized at the level of opinion and policy. Under Shinzo Abe, the country has liberalized. It has more immigration and more women in the workforce. Perhaps that reflects the preferences of an increasingly educated population.

But it might be something else. The Liberal Democrats have a freedom of action that parties in competitive systems do not enjoy. In the United States, Democrats and Republicans must respond to changing preferences. In Japan, the Liberal Democrats can, more often than not, ignore them.

Perhaps Abe simply decided that cultural conservatism is not a winning program. But perhaps the country is changing beneath his feet.

#effortpost

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