#but as people the women are still written really really well

[mylformiles]

Bro the alnst community actually disappoints me with the amount of misogyny in this fandom. Mizi is a GRAND example of this. Cause why is everyone switching up on her now that her character is more than just a naive, cutesy, and innocent girl?

And the amount of people calling Mizi evil after seeing the comic are concrete proof of lack of media literacy. Comprehension and reasoning has sadly died out and it shows. People call for complex and interesting girl characters and then suddenly call them “evil” once they have one? And the saddest part is that they still love other characters like Luka or Till or Ivan (don’t get me wrong I love them too but I’m proving a point here).

Luka literally manipulates his opponents to feel a sense of control in his life, causing people’s deaths, and has intense, almost unhealthy, longing for Hyuna. Ivan has an unhealthy love for Till, cannot properly express his feelings, and gives up practically everything for his love. And Till is rebellious and aggressive because he has been taught he has to be and he doesn’t understand his own emotions.

THEY’RE ALL COMPLICATED, WELL-WRITTEN CHARACTERS WITH FLAWS AND WEAKNESSESS!!!!

That’s what makes Alien Stage so great! Every single one of our characters have been negatively impacted and influenced by the aliens around them, fellow children, and the reality that they are mere pets to their alien overlords! Sua is so much more than some quiet, shy, lesbian who only likes Mizi. Mizi is so much more than just a bubbly, sweet girl in the way of your favorite ship! Hyuna is so much more than her angst with Lula and Hyun-Woo! This fandom loves to shove these female characters into a box and say that they are this and that.

Mizi is not evil, even in light of this new comic revealing that Mizi did indeed know what happens in Alien Stage. In her situation, Mizi is in no power to do anything about this. She can’t stop her friends from having to compete and she can’t stop Alient Stage by herself. All she really can do is hope and try to keep her friends safe. I really do believe that Mizi desperately wanted to make a tie between her and Sua. And she’s is clearly majorly affected by Sua’s death, otherwise she wouldn’t have cared about Luka’s manipulation.

Mizi has been objectified since childhood, by both aliens and fellow humans! I think it’s perfectly understandable that a human child with no positive role models and no healthy coping mechanisms will lash out at Sua or put up a mask of what people want to see. Isn’t that almost exactly what Till does? Lashing out? Isn’t that what Ivan does? Putting on a mask to hide your true emotions.

Mizi isn’t a manipulator, yet she see’s herself as one. She’s an unreliable narrator in her own story because she’s never on her own side. Mizi’s survivor’s guilt is real and strenuous on her mental state. She and Luka are literally the only ones alive now. She’s lost her lover and her best friends. Of course she’d feel like everything’s her fault!

(This part is an addition! The previous section was all my thoughts purely from everything I saw from others touching on this subject. This next part is a bit more detailed after I’ve now read “The True Face” all the way through!)

The blonde boy (forgive me I don’t know his name and honestly I couldn’t care less about him) is the stem of Mizi’s mask. He’s the reason she feels the need to be so perfect for everyone. He comments on how men and women can’t ever just be friends and that eventually they will have the urge to mate (gross, right?). Mizi, of course, does not like this at all. He clearly has a crush on Mizi and when she expresses her discomfort he SLAPS HER! HE SLAPS HER! The boy talks to her, planting the seed of her being a manipulator into her head. I quote: “I know you’re aware of everything. So easy for you with that pretty face, huh? Just a little smile and everyone loves you. Must be nice, right?”

Mizi, of course, cries but she smiles as well. She’s masking her pain with happiness like she’s learned to do. She APOLOGIZES to HIM! She asks him what she did wrong. It’s so very clear that everyone in Mizi’s life, even if they didn’t mean to, contributed to this need to be perfect and happy. Her collar is red too. She runs off and presumably tells Sua about it all, smiling again.

She defends the boy, saying it she did something wrong and that the boy isn’t a bad person (spoiler he’s definitely in the wrong). Sua tells Mizi about her “mom” (her alien owner I guess). But she says this: “At least you don’t get dragged around like me. Must be nice, right?”

So if you’re not a media illiterate zombie, it’s clear then that this is a major trigger for Mizi. And it’s then no surprise that Mizi slaps Sua after Sua says this. She has learned through her encounter with that boy that violence is an acceptable response to being hurt by someone. Mizi’s collar is orange as she cries again and smiles. It quickly turns red and she seems remorseful, no longer smiling. She apologizes to Sua and Sua hugs her saying it’s fine.

The comic then switches to Mizi asking Till if he knows that the most important person in her life is Sua, which he’s fully aware of. She then asks him why he likes her so much. Till is clearly flustered and responds that it’s because she’s pretty (I personally don’t believe Till means this in a shallow way but that’s a rant for another day. There are some out there I’ve read that really explain it well!). Mizi doesn’t lash out this time though she is visibly upset as her collar is orange. All she does this time is laugh though.

This is a development from her interaction with Sua for sure. Unlike with Sua, it seems that Mizi has already been far used to keeping up her mask like this. She is still upset but she doesn’t show it. She doesn’t lash out, she just maintains the persona like usual.

The comic ends with Mizi “confronting” herself about using what she could and playing dumb to survive. Basically calling herself a manipulator for using people’s affection and good impression of her to her advantage. Except we’ve seen that that’s not exactly the case (unless you’re a dumb bitch). Mizi is NOT the one pulling the strings here. She is as much of a victim as everyone else. Mizi is no more free or okay as everyone else. The only difference is that people assume she has it good, or at least better. And since she’s seen firsthand (blonde boy I’m coming for you) that when people see that she’s anything other than that, they don’t like it. She feels all this pressure to be the image other people put onto her that she feels like she’s leading them into a bear trap. Mizi now sees herself as a selfish person, using people who loved her for her own benefit, her own survival, even when in reality she is suffering just like everyone else.

Mizi is not in control of how people feel about her, other people’s opinions of her are not her responsibility, and she is not orchestrating a DAMN THING. So Mizi haters can absolutely SUCK MY—

Anyway!!

Conclusion: I hate the misogyny in Alien Stage; I love Mizi and I will die on this hill.

[taylenpenrose]

I've recently figured out a problem--there seems to be this trope in media where two guys and a girl are all hanging out, and one of the guys and the girl have a canon romantic relationship, but almost the entire fandom ships the two guys instead. And I don't have a problem with that! I love gay people! I am gay people! The problem happens when people start hating on the girl. Like, here's a deeply amazing cool badass beautiful woman, and . . . you hate her? Because she gets in the way of your ship? What?? But she's perfect!! I've seen this happen in at least three shows! (Arcane, Dead Boy Detectives, and Loki, if you're curious.) It really bugs me, because like, not only are you hating someone who objectively did nothing wrong, but I've also noticed that in two of these examples, the girl is Black and the guys are white, and there's a misogyny angle as well, like, putting down a woman in favor of men, and the men are gay (although often not confirmed), but they're still men. I think I'm just too bisexual for shipping wars ngl. Basically all this to say, if you want to fight Mel or Crystal or Sylvie for the sole reason of "But my ship!", then you're gonna have to go through me. It's my ship too, actually! But I love these women and it's not fair to hate them for the way their relationships were written.

[seratlantisite]

for all its faults, One Piece never has women inexplicably hate each other for?? no reason?

oda's strong women don't stand around saying how they aren't like other girls then tear each other down - they are always so supportive of each other! its why we can joke that nami is a huge lesbian with the most game of the crew. she always bonds with other women so deeply so quickly without a hint of two faced-ness. its always so genuine and so so sweet.

kaya, vivi, robin, camie, wanda, kiku, even lola-the-homicidal-zombie-warthog who thought nami was stealing her love interest. lola ended up helping nami above all. nami fought a guy she was terrified of for lola! no hesitation!!

[milfbrainrot]

i know other people are tired of female characters having stories revolving motherhood but god it is so nice to get stories about it that are actually... written with care? i imagine some of the fatigue around these stories is bc of how it's done with the assumption that all women must be or want to be mothers or it's done without any actual examination of the woman's characterization--and i also get tired of those! but there are so many female characters who specifically do not have or want kids as well these days, so i am glad that we can have a balance of ones who are fine without kids but also ones who are well-written as mothers??? idk. it makes me happy that we can have both, because parenthood will always be a thing, even if some people... equate their own preference of avoiding those stories altogether with automatic misogyny when a story does include it at all.

[trans-soapberry]

Catching up to CSM is terrible because all it does is make me wish JJK was more like it

[yanderespamton78]

when a regretevator headcanon pisses you off so much that you become a feminist

[hauntingblue]

Stampede aka another episode of luffy turning haters into dick riders just with his kind and big heart

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

what some of the undertale fandom did with grillby fucking fascinates me like my god

[daydreamerdrew]

Black Widow: Deadly Origin (2010) #2 and #4

[amplexadversary]

Wow.

No Keyleth. No Laudna. No Ashton or Percy (the most understandable tbh because Kingsley doesn't actually have much airtime). No Vex. No Vax or Orym.

Veth is like the only decent pick that audience went with. Fuck I love CR but you people have the worst fucking taste.

(Grog and Fearne are great picks actually but I'm not crediting the fandom for the latter two because it's hard to go wrong with Tr-s and Al-hy characters. Also they picked only two non-TM9 characters which, holy fucking dull, Batman.)

[therealbeachfox]

Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.

It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.

To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.

This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.

Join me below, if you would.

2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.

Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.

It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.

But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.

The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.

“Everyone else?” Goes I, “I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”

“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. They’re doing them all weekend long!”

We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.

"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, it’s a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?

The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.

We had slightly miscalculated.

Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.

“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?” I asked. “It’s a holiday”

“Oh sure,” they reply, “but people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.”

“Oh cool,” we go, “Backup.”

“Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say, “because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.”

And all this shit is super not-legal, so they’ll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.

00000

We don’t get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.

It’s… incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.

At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, “That’s Newsom.” He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.

Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.

So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February, so it’s only six or so, but it’s getting dark.

“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?” we ask.

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us. “We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. We’d need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.

Monday is the last day to do this, after all.

00000

So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.

The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people who’re up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.

“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”

So.

Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?

Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.

It’s 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least weren’t likely to loose job protections any time soon.).

Then it starts to rain.

We had not dressed for rain.

00000

Here is how the next six hours go.

We’re in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat! So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.

Everyone is so happy.

Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.

People online start making delivery orders.

Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.

A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.

The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which… Yes they do.

A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.

Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.

00000

We have Line Neighbors.

Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. They’ve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. They’d started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.

The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. She’s their local friend who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.

Behind us are a lesbian couple who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. “We met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”

“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says, “and we can’t leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.”

“I told them why,” her partner says, “I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.”

My husband-to-be and I look at each other. We’ve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple that’d been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.

“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.

“You kids are too cute together,” says the gay couple’s friend. “you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.”

We stay in line.

It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. “Can we say we’re with you? His uncles are already inside and they’re not letting anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.” “Of course!” we say.

The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.

We pass by a statue of Lincoln with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.

It’s about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.

They’ve promised that anyone who’s inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. We’re safe.

We still have a -long- way to go.

00000

They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.

It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”

We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.

We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.

I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.

The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.

Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.

The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“

The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”

We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.

If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.

That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.

There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.

We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)

I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.

There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.

Then we're married.

Then we get in line to get our license.

It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.

Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.

We make it to the marriage records office.

I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.

It's almost 3PM.

00000

There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.

We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.

I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”

He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.

Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.

We get back to our car and climb in.

It’s 4:30 and we are starving.

There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.

We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.

We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.

The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.

My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”

00000

It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was “marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming what you already have.”

But maybe it’s just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is, “It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each other’s support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.

It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.

I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. It’s been twenty years and we’re still together and still married.

We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. We’d done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.

Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.

It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldn’t negate it that time.

Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"

And that was that.

00000

When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.

I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before I’d barely started by 30s. I never thought I’d be in my 40s and it’d be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers would’ve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.

I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.

I never thought I’d live in this world.

And it’s twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.

I don’t have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you can’t predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.

The future we’re resigned to doesn’t have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.

And always remember that the people who want to get married will show up by the thousands in rain that none of those who’re against it will brave.

[earanie]

i guess this is the year i learn stuff about myself if nothing else.

[drdemonprince]

to the anon asking why trans women don't have male privilege.

well. a lot of you are gonna be shocked to hear this one, but it's incredibly clear why not if you listen to trans women's experiences.

trans women have written at length about being sexually victimized, othered, subjected to violence for gender non-conformity, internalizing transmisogynistic cultural norms, being socially excluded and penalized for their failure to be adequate "cis men" and much more. if you are a person who has experienced misogyny but are not a trans woman you really have got to spend a lot of time reading transfeminist writing about this stuff, because your understanding of gender based oppression will always be woefully incomplete if you don't know what a lot of trans women go through and trust them as a reputable source.

here are some texts that i recommend just off the dome

Here's a thread from Grace Lavery about how even before she came out as a trans woman, men perceived her as an acceptable target for sexual assault in much the same way they do women of all kinds.

Here's a book from Laura Kate Dale about how her Autism was never recognized when she was a child because she met all the hallmarks of "female Autism" as a young closet trans girl.

Here's Jules Gill-Peterson on what transmisogyny is, how it functions, and how it affects the entire course of trans women's lives.

Here's Julia Serano's foundational text that introduced the concept of transmisogyny which explains at length how transmisogyny is so baked into our culture that it influences everyone and harms trans women long before they come out.

There's also just, you know, the base logic that queer people still suffer from homophobia and transphobia as kids before they even *know* they are queer. That's not exactly controversial. In fact the very fact that presumed straightness and cisness is forced upon everyone to the extent that a person must "come out" as anything else is a clear demonstration that trans women suffer from transmisogyny at every point in their lives. Being told you are not permitted to be yourself, that people like you do not even exist, is a pretty core experience of oppression and mimics what a lot of other groups of oppressed women (for example, lesbians) go through.

I will also clarify that trans men often experience privileges related to transmasculinity before they even come out! People never quite treated me the way they treated cis women, I've written about that before, and while structurally trans men do experience misogyny, their positionality is different in all kinds of subtle ways.

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

Hey so like many of you, I saw that article about how people are going into college having read no classic books. And believe it or not, I've been pissed about this for years. Like the article revealed, a good chunk of American Schools don't require students to actually read books, rather they just give them an excerpt and tell them how to feel about it. Which is bullshit.

So like. As a positivity post, let's use this time to recommend actually good classic books that you've actually enjoyed reading! I know that Dracula Daily and Epic the Musical have wonderfully tricked y'all into reading Dracula and The Odyssey, and I've seen a resurgence of Picture of Dorian Gray readership out of spite for N-tflix, so let's keep the ball rolling!

My absolute favorite books of all time are The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Classic psychological horror books about unhinged women.

I adore The Bad Seed by William March. It's widely considered to be the first "creepy child" book in American literature, so reading it now you're like "wow that's kinda cliche- oh my god this is what started it. This was ground zero."

I remember the feelings of validation I got when people realized Dracula wasn't actually a love story. For further feelings of validation, please read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. There's a lot the more popular adaptations missed out on.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is an absolute gem of a book. It's a slow-build psychological study so it may not be for everyone, but damn do the plot twists hit. It's a really good book to go into blind, but I will say that its handling of abuse victims is actually insanely good for the time period it was written in.

Moving on from horror, you know people who say "I loved this book so much I couldn't put it down"? That was me as a kid reading A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Picked it up while bored at the library and was glued to it until I finished it.

Peter Pan and Wendy by JM Barrie was also a childhood favorite of mine. Next time someone bitches about Woke Casting, tell them that the original 1911 Peter Pan novel had canon nonbinary fairies.

Watership Down by Richard Adams is my sister Cori's favorite book period. If you were a Warrior Cats, Guardians of Ga'Hoole or Wings of Fire kid, you owe a metric fuckton to Watership Down and its "little animals on a big adventure" setup.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry was a play and not a book first, but damn if it isn't a good fucking read. It was also named after a Langston Hughes poem, who's also an absolutely incredible author.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a book I absolutely adore and will defend until the day I die. It's so friggin good, y'all, I love it more than anything. You like people breaking out of fascist brainwashing? You like reading and value knowledge? You wanna see a guy basically predict the future of television back in 1953? Read Fahrenheit.

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are considered required reading for a reason: they're both really good books about young white children unlearning the racial biases of their time. Huck Finn specifically has the main character being told that he will go to hell if he frees a slave, and deciding eternal damnation would be worth it.

As a sidenote, another Mark Twain book I was obsessed with as a kid was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Exactly what it says on the tin, incredibly insane read.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin is a heartbreaking but powerful book and a look at the racism of the time while still centering the love the two black protagonists feel for each other. Giovanni's Room by the same author is one that focuses on a MLM man struggling with his sexuality, and it's really important to see from the perspective of a queer man living in the 50s– as well as Baldwin's autobiographical novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain.

Agatha Christie mysteries are all still absolutely iconic, but Murder on the Orient Express is such a good read whether or not you know the end twist.

Maybe-controversial-maybe-not take: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is a good book if you have reading comprehension. No, you're not supposed to like the main character. He pretty much spells that out for you at the end ffs.

Animal Farm by George Orwell was another favorite of mine; it was written as an obvious metaphor for the rise of fascism in Russia at the time and boy does it hit even now.

And finally, please read Shakespeare plays. As soon as you get used to their way of talking, they're not as hard to understand as people will lead you to believe. My absolute favorite is Twelfth Night- crossdressing, bisexual love triangles, yellow stockings... it's all a joy.

and those are just the ones i thought of off the top of my head! What're your guys' favorite classic books? Let's make everyone a reading list!

[liedownquisition]

Oh boy. You know, I really love how you've cut some of those panels out. Here's a little more context on Oliver very clearly laying a solid chunk of what's wrong with Jason at Bruce's feet:

And you know what, you're right! No one's ever obligated to forgive everyone or anyone ever! But also guess what! You're also ignoring like... a lot of stuff actually. You think the batarang is the only thing people have an issue with.... as if it exists in a vacuum as the only thing Bruce has ever done wrong to Jason ever? Because most people aren't so much mad over a single incident as we are over it happening again and again and again.

RHATO Rebirth v2 #25

Batman and Robin uhhh Issue 6 I think? Going off the omnibus, sorry

Batman #138* *yes I'm aware that Bruce is being influenced by "Zur-En-Arr" in this, but honestly? I've always felt that this & the Batman & Robin one were some of the more in-character examples of Bruce's flaws manifesting in abusive ways

Or maybe some of these are too recent. Let's talk my personal favorite little beef that I like to contrast with Ollie:

Batman #424-425 The Diplomat's Son & Consequences

Ollie, on the other hand, when his charge commits a murder that Ollie thought could be prevented:

Now there's something to be said for how the writers for these stories had very different opinions of the sidekicks that were responsible, Starlin, for example, fucking hated Jason (Well, Robin in general) and wanted him dead, and it's deliberately set up to be a question of whether or not Jason actually did. Regardless, Bruce pretty cleanly absolves himself of any wrongdoing in his upbringing of Jason, whereas Ollie takes responsibility for Mia being in the position that she even could/would make that kind of call. And at this point, Oliver had Mia with him for a lot less time than Bruce had had Jason.

If it was Just the batarang, then, frankly, I think it's be a lot less controversial. This isn't even everything OR the worst panels from those incidents!!! I'm just cherrypicking, just like you were. And you know what, let me add this:

According to Bruce, Ollie's a pretty forgiving guy, it looks like. And if we're taking more Rebirth into account, Oliver was pretty chill about Cheshire hanging out with his family, and she's definitely caused her fair share of problems for the family and world at large on scales Jason has yet to even touch*, regardless of if she's Lian's mom. *some of Jade's crimes are dubiously canon, but with the reality mashing from Convergence in a way all of it is.

Ollie is a lot of hot air. I love the man, and he'll rip anyone and everyone a new one at the drop of a hat for any godsdamned reason. Pretty sure he's called Bruce and Barry and Hal all fascists before, so he has no hesitation in saying the absolute worst about people while... still having a relatively decent relationship with them in the long run, actually. Hal even used to be a villain for a while and Oliver was forced to kill him and now they're buds again. An alternate version of Hal that is STILL that villain continues to torment Oliver and his family.

Would Jason need to actually work to earn forgiveness from the Arrows? Probably. But he's still friends with Roy now (yes, CURRENTLY. AS HE HAS BEEN FOR OVER A DECADE he hasn't even been features in much w/ Roy lately but it has been REFERENCED), and even if it was small that olive branch of helping Roy and Lian reunite (and their general friendship, actually) isn't something that Ollie would just brush off, just as he wouldn't just brush off the events of Seeing Red.

But, in the grand scheme of things, kidnapping her, sending him on a wild goose chase across town, "having a talk" (mia's words) then letting her leave unharmed, and blowing up a building behind her is honestly small potatoes in comparison to the Repeated incidents of textbook abusive relationships that goes on between Bruce and Jason. (And I cannot overemphasize how little Mia was injured by this incident.)

Of course Olie was talking shit about Jason in the interim, Red Hood is incredibly dangerous, and he's scared for her safety. You can SEE how stumped he is by her coming out of this completely unharmed. Plus! This is hot on the heels of her return after the Dr Light Incident, and Ollie has every right to be scared out of his fucking mind.

But when it comes down to it, Mia Was Not Harmed. I will not stop saying that. Because in the world of villains and superheroes and red Hood doing significantly worse shit to other characters, this is NOTHING. Even actually within Arrow comics???? This WAS NOTHING.

And oh my god "He did the same thing Joker did" okay so where do I start with this

a) that was the point, obviously.

b) he didn't, actually.

c) that was the worst description of both incidents I've ever read in my entire life. Joker didn't "take a kid from his father and torture him and make him doubt his place in his family" unless you're talking about the fucking Arkham 'verse!

c2) actually let's break down that description: "took a kid from their father figure" Joker didn't take Jason, he was sold out by his mom. "Beat them up" understatement, but go off. "Tortured them mentally about their place in their family" not really. Joker just beat him nearly to death laughing for the most part, Jason's doubts about it came after he came back to life and saw news that Joker was still alive.

d) hmmm I wonder who said it was just Jason messing with Bruce...

Hm. Yeah. Bruce is definitely the most reliable source for Jason's intentions. I mean, was it generally to spite Bruce? Probably, yeah. But Jason's very good at multitasking and layering his intentions.

e) once again, Mia was not harmed. Jason spent most of their sparring match on the defensive, And only hit Her, physically, like, four times? and all of them in retaliation to her getting in close and hitting him first*? (And, trust me, if Jason can pull the hypercompetent bullshit that is "Seemingly shooting wildly but managing to hit nothing but THE STRING OF MIA'S BOW while also accounting for how she'd dodge" he could do sooooo much worse.) Notably, he briefly had her pinned to the floor with his hands around her throat... and then let up just after he held it long enough to make his point *Note: this is not a justification, she had every reason to fight back with everything she had and what Jason does is very fucked up on like...a normalscale. But it's worth noting he was Very Visibly and outright explicitly "teaching" her throughout it and it's soooo much less than any other villain has done to her.

This doesn't read to me "Making her doubt her place in her family" so much as "Emphasizing their similarities" this is the kind of speech the villain gives when he's trying to recruit the hero. (something which, hilariously, he mocked the idea of in UTH) But you know, all interpretations of canon are valid, although...

Funny enough, this also is very much not what Joker Did, actually. I mean, I don't recall Joker letting Jason have ANY agency at all, really. Just started breaking bones.

Now, I didn't post all of them because if I kept going it'd just be the whole comic, but yeah he does very much air out his daddy issues and compare them to her relationship with Ollie. It's clear that while he does know a lot about Mia... he also doesn't know much about Ollie. At least, not personality wise. Not how much genuinely better he is at this whole parenting gig.

This is so, so much easier to forgive, conceptually, than everything that goes on in the Batfam both from and to Jason and from and to OTHER MEMBERS OF THE BATFAM without involving Jason at all!!! (Birthdays, amirite?)

And, honestly, I'm probably seeing a lot of the posts that you are, and the ones making the Jason & Ollie bonding posts? Aren't really the same ones going on about the Batarang Incident. We've moved on to the rest of the, gestures above, Patterns of Abuse. If we discuss anything past post-crisis at all. (Speaking of post crisis, I actually remember Jason doing a pretty big solid for one of Oliver's close friends... hmmmmmm. Oh, yeah, he helped out when Black Lightning was framed for murder by Slade so good that even HE thought he did it! Granted, that was pre-Mia. So he's not going to stop being wary, but it's not like Jason hasn't done good things that affected people close to Ollie either.)

And if Jason's emotions aren't an excuse, than, well, Bruce's aren't really an excuse either, are they?

Jason's not even the only one who gets abusive treatment from Bruce. And regardless of your personal interpretations of whether or not it's a valid Batman characterization, after multiple writers have written this kind of thing across multiple continuities, there comes a point when you have to accept that this is a genuine flaw that Bruce carries and find a way to reconcile it with everything else.

And if we're going off of canon-gospel, Jason's own behavior has steadily trended towards more and more fangless, more palatable, in a way that given exposure Oliver would probably tolerate, considering all the others that he tends to tolerate. He still seems to regard the Batclan in general as a dumpster fire, "None of my kids would take a shot at me" he says, completely correct, while Batman's kids wouldn't even hesitate. He rolled up with unsolicited advice about Batman's relationships multiple times, all correct, and gotten shot down or ignored as if his significantly fewer incidents of being a shitty parent that he's very self-aware about somehow make him unqualified to speak at all!

Sometimes the reason that people are writing this, is because they like Ollie more than Bruce, because he knows how to actually apologize and actually do better. And trying to ignore canon in favor of making "good dad" Bruce stories, can wear you down when you just keep seeing Bruce depicted worse and worse and worse, and so maybe you want to start seeing the people trapped in Bruce's vortex move away from that.

And among those in that vortex, Jason has it the worst. Like, this isn't a competition. Some of the shitty stuff that Bruce does to him could be argued to be just responses to what he does himself (victim-blamey, but you know what let's pretend it makes things okay) like uth, or RHATOv2#25 But... Batman & Robin? "Oh Bruce was upset about Damian."

What was it you said? Oh, that's right: "Your feelings being valid don't excuse the harm you do, guys."

Gotham War? I'm sure you'll make excuses for Bruce there. I mean, maybe implementing it was Zur, but, frankly, that "Failsafe"? That has "Bruce genuinely thought this" written all over it. Hypocrite. Considering what his response was to the last time someone messed with his mind.

Oliver... kind of is the canon version of fanon's "good dad Bruce" tbh. And sometimes people make that connection, see those parallels, and want to play with that. It's just a what if.

You know that thing about tragedies about how if anything happened any differently it could have been prevented, that someone could have been saved? Ollie fucks up, but, fundamentally, if Ollie had been in Bruce's position, he would have saved Jason, not by doing the impossible of making it there in time, but by putting Jason first and having healthy communication lmao. Because Bruce very explicitly didn't! He didn't want to talk about it because he was scared of the truth! Or, he was scared of what he believed to be the truth, which would be that Jason had killed. And that it wasn't Bruce's fault. Because it's never Bruce's fault if he failed to raise Jason in that way that took that instinct out. It's not his responsibility to have realized, as the adult in the situation, that Jason maybe shouldn't have been exposed to so much rape and murder at an impressionable age. It's not his responsibility to keep better track of his barely teenaged son who's going through severe trauma right in front of him because they failed to enact justice on someone.

And Bruce had a lot to say about what he thought about Jason that varied and, honestly, rang more as projecting his own issues onto Jason than matching up what was actually happening on the page. Better meta-writers than I have discussed how rarely we get Jason's POV in these situations, that we're TOLD a lot about Jason by everyone else who has an agenda to frame Jason in a certain way.

If you hate Jason Todd, or hate jayroy, then block the damn tags & add it to a content filter bcs generally the latter is always marked. if it's someone on your dash reblogging them and it's not tagged/hiding it then ask them to tag it so you can filter it or stop following them idc. Don't pretend your cherry picking of canon and willful out-of-context misinterpretations is any better than anyone else's.

I have seen many posts and fanfics who are going "Oliver works with Jason to annoy Bruce!", "Oliver protecting Jason from Bruce!", "Oliver deciding to annoy Bruce by being like a father figure to Jason!", "Oliver being so happy for Roy and Jason being together!", and etc, but in canon, Oliver HATES his guts.

Here is a compilation of Oliver thinking or talking about Jason from Seeing Red, which is the first Red Hood's story after Under The Red Hood, and the one time Oliver and Jason interracted in canon (if I'm not mistaken, they never did since):

For the last one, he is talking to Bruce and Jason is one of the "every damned manner of sociopathic fruit fly".

And like, Oliver and the Arrowfam are 100% justified in their dislike or hate. He literally pulled the same shit Joker did on them: took a teenager away from her father figure, beat her up, torture her mentally about her place in her new family and her usefulness, make her and her guardian think he was going to kill her, explode the building she was in in front of her father figure to make him believe he was too late... And all of that to get to Batman. He doesn't give a shit about Oliver or Mia, it's about Batman, it's about Bruce. Just like when the Joker killed him, it wasn't about him, it was about Batman.

And it doesn't matter that Jason changed, because others aren't obligated to forgive someone because they redeemed themselves. I do not believe that Oliver is fine with Jason, he is probably not very happy he hangs around Roy, and does NOT want him near Mia ever again, and certainly not his granddaughter, Liam. That's the man that kidnapped his daughter because he was mad at his own father, nope. He knows how it is to be annoyed with the Bat, and it doesn't justify this.

I can hear y'all seeing disregarding canon is fine, and yes, sure. But also, folks, you are such hypocrites if you want to keep in that Bruce threw a batarang at Jason's neck, and erase how it was an accident ("Batman doesn't make mistakes!" Firstly, he does, canonically, make huge mistakes sometimes. Secondly, the man was an emotional wreck, his son had come back to life and had been killing people and his other son, Dick, was maybe dead because his city just exploded. He is human, not a machine! Thirdly, it is simply fucking stupid for a character who is against killing to willingly inflict such a mortal wound.), but Jason being a huge asshole to others is either erased or excusable (your feelings being valid don't excuse the harm you do, guys). Talk about favoritism.

[jarofstyles]

flower + jealous and relief. I love all of your writing, thank you for all you do!!

Flower!!! Our babies. Oh god, I love them soooooooooooooooo much. Thank you for requesting!

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Y/N shouldn’t be jealous. Ever, really, and she knew that.

Harry had never given her any indication that he would ever have a straying eye. He was borderline obsessed with her, the admission coming from his mouth multiple times a week, treated her like the sun and moon both revolved around her, but that didn’t stop the uneasy feeling she felt when he watched Bonnie laugh a little too hard at something he said.

She was an old friend of his. A family friend, at this family cookout that they’d been invited to. Y/N had been quickly introduced to her and she had felt it since then. There was a way women knew. It’s an intuition, really, knowing someone was into your man. And Bonnie had it written all over her.

Harry was slightly oblivious and Y/N knew that. He was quietly friendly with the people here- they were his family, for fucks sake! But that didn’t mean he liked this not-actually-family-but-longtime-friend placing her hand on his bicep as she giggled and batted her lashes at him.

Y/N was helping his mum in the kitchen, trying her best to do what a hopeful future daughter in law would do, but it was hard to concentrate when she had a direct view outside of the both of them. Harry had been dragged into a conversation with her and as much as Y/N didn’t love the idea of leaving him alone with her, she was secure enough to know that Harry wouldn’t do anything, let alone flirt back. She could tell just by the look on his face that he wasn’t.

When Harry was flirting, she knew it. And she’d only ever seen that face be directed towards her.

“Thank you for helping me.” His mum grinned, wiping her hands on her apron. “I won’t keep you. Come back in a little bit if you’d like to help slicing these up but I want you to go out and get a drink, please. Make yourself at home.”

It wasn’t the first time she had met Harry’s family and his mum seemed to like her but she wanted to keep that going. “Of course.” She chirped. “I never mind helping. Yell for me if you need me and I’ll come running, okay?”

His mum laughed loudly before playfully pushing her out towards the patio. Secretly she had wondered if she had seen her distraction and wanted her to go out and self soothe, but she wouldn’t know.

Jealousy wasn’t an emotion she felt a lot but she felt it now. It wasn’t one she liked either. Usually she could get over women simply looking at him or grinning at him, even if they hit on him before she would arrive because there was always the chance they didn’t know he was taken- but Bonnie did. She knew good and well that Harry was taken and she didn’t like that she was touching him so much.

Selfishly, unrealistically, she wanted to be the only one that got to touch him. She had asked her therapist if that was toxic and she’d said slightly but she reassured her that it was human nature. It wasn’t like she stopped it from happening, but the desire was still there.

She made her way towards the pair with her head high and schooled features- because in no way was she going to give the girl satisfaction in knowing that even for a moment she’d been insecure- but it seemed her boyfriend knew what she needed.

“There she is.” He grinned, stepping away from Bonnie to gather her into his arms and smack a kiss to her forehead. “Did mum hold you hostage or somethin’?”

“No.” She relaxed into his body as he made no move to let go of her. “She was lovely as always. I was helping her with the last of the pies. It wasn’t any trouble.”

“Mmmm… She wants to steal you away because she said she wants you t’come over more. ‘Wants to know her future daughter’, all of that.” Harry let that go casually and a tiny (humongous) piece of her felt satisfaction seeing the lingering woman’s face fall at that.

Yes, it was sad for her that a man she liked wasn’t available. Harry was strong, stable, handsome, doting, absolutely fucking perfect. But… he was Y/N’s.

“Well I told her we’d come for dinner next week.” Resting her hand on his chest she played with the collar of his shirt. “So I’m giving into her antics. But when she cooks like that, I can’t really complain.” Harry’s mum was an incredible chef and she knew her own would never compare to it so… she was more than happy to eat yummy food and get to know his family better. “Besides. I do want to get to know my new family. Is that so wrong?” Was she pulling out all the stops, giving her the best doe eyes she could muster and laying it on a bit thick? Yes. And she was only a tiny bit ashamed.

“Fuckin’ love you, Y’know that?” It seemed as if as soon as Y/N had made it into his vicinity he forgot about anyone else. Bonnie still stood awkwardly close but his full focus was on her. Rude? Maybe to someone else, and she would have to be in charge of making sure she redirected… but for now? She was going with the flow.

“I love you more.” Pecking his cheek, she saw him pull back and look offended.

“Proper kiss. Please and thank you.” He muttered. “S’quite rude. Don’t deny me of what I need, thank you.”

Y/N really never had anything to worry about.