#but ultimately i changed my mind because everything i wrote for that last section was coming out too harsh

[panharmonium]

Hi! I love your Naruto thoughts and meta posts with all my heart and I want to ask your thoughts on something that has been on my mind literally since I was 13: what do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura? I went from being a hardcore shipper when I was a teenager, to being against any romantic relationship in Naruto after finishing the anime when I was in my early twenties. Nowadays I'm very into platonic love and depictions of friendship and I think the anime's obsession with forcing the "romantic interest" curse upon the main female character robbed us of... so much. There are a few wonderful moments in the anime where Sasuke and Sakura acknowledge each other, but because she's always "the girl with the crush", her actions are so often interpret as irrational or selfish by the fandom.

Hi @riemmetric!  It's great to talk to you again! Sorry it's taken me so long to answer this; RL has been making demands of me lately and it took me way longer to finish writing this up than I wanted it to (then again, I knew from the minute I read your original ask that my reply was going to get long, so I suppose I should have predicted a delay XD)

It's funny, my sister once asked me to choose between Sasuke or Sakura for an “unpopular opinion” meme, and I ended up doing Sasuke solely because I think the negative fandom opinions about Sakura are so unhinged and divorced from the actual text that I wouldn’t even know where to start.  People are entitled to dislike whatever characters they want, obviously, but there are some fandom takes that are, for me, so obviously rooted in bad faith viewings/readings that there’s no urge in me to discuss them.  That said, since you asked, I’m happy to go into my own thoughts on this a bit, with the disclaimer for other potential readers that I only write about fandom things for my own personal enjoyment, not as a contribution to The Discourse. If you don’t like Sakura, great!  I have no interest in changing your mind. Please consider this a sincere invitation to scroll on by and go enjoy whatever parts of the fandom appeal to you.

In general terms: I love Sasuke and Sakura’s relationship as much as I love all of the relationships in Team 7.  If we’re talking about them specifically as a romantic couple, then I probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, because I do like them together in a post-canon (to be clear: non-Boruto) setting, after time has passed and they’ve continued to develop individually and reconnect with each other, but I also wouldn’t exactly call myself an intense “shipper,” in the sense that I have no interest in pulling things out from the text and incorrectly citing them as evidence that Sasuke has hidden romantic feelings for her during the canon period. He cares about her in the canon period, just like he cares about Naruto and Kakashi.  That’s not up for interpretation; it’s the text.  But Sasuke during the canon time period does not demonstrate specifically romantic interest in anyone.  

[A note before people who might ship Sasuke with Someone Else emerge to rail against this statement - please just scroll past and continue enjoying fandom in whatever way is most fun for you. It is cool to ship whatever fanon thing you want; I think that’s great!  But earnestly citing any loving or emotional thing Sasuke does re: various characters in this story (yes, Sakura included) as indicative of specifically romantic love isn’t supported by the text. I know there are always going to be enormous subsets of any fandom who insist that it is, and I'm certainly not going to barge into anyone else's space to complain about that (because other people having fun together is harmless and none of my business), but I'm not obligated to indulge it on my own blog, either.]

Anyway, that said - the reason why I love Sakura and Sasuke’s relationship (from here on out I’ll use “relationship” in a general, non-romantic sense) is precisely because Sakura isn’t just “the girl with the crush.” Sakura has an arc when it comes to Sasuke, and its trajectory moves in the exact opposite direction of “irrational” or “selfish.”  She specifically goes from “the girl with the crush” to “the girl who steels herself and tries to put her personal feelings for Sasuke aside for the greater good” to “the girl who knows she can’t put her feelings aside, but who also knows full well that Sasuke doesn’t reciprocate them, and who still wants to save him regardless, because he matters to her as a person and a friend.”

[I'm putting the rest of this under a cut to save everyone's dash, and also to emphasize once again that this is a personal post on my personal blog which I wrote in response to a question from a personal acquaintance, the full content of which no one is obligated to read. I am not sending this post to random strangers and forcing them to look at it. I'm not even putting it in the character tags. I'm typing it up on my own blog and putting it under a cut. If you already know that you don't like Sakura, but you still click the link/read the post and then feel an urge to comment and complain, I am going to copy-paste this disclaimer and remind you that I specifically recommended that you scroll past and go have fun with fandom in your own way. Thanks in advance for responsibly curating your own fandom experience!]

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

Sakura is, obviously, completely obsessed with Sasuke at the beginning of Part 1.  She’s also deeply clueless about him and his history (bizarre though it is, the story seems to indicate that she initially doesn’t know what happened with his family, the same way young!Obito is initially clueless about Kakashi’s father).  But what I like about Sakura and Sasuke’s Part 1 relationship is how this changes over time.

The critical scene that kicks this off happens right at the beginning of the manga, when she and Sasuke are talking by that bench - she complains about Naruto and blames his behavior on him being all alone/having no family to scold him; and even says she’s jealous that he doesn’t have parents to nag him all the time.  This obviously triggers an outburst from Sasuke, who tells her she has no idea what loneliness means and that she “makes him sick”/she’s “annoying” (importantly, the exact same thing Sakura said to Naruto in anger earlier that day), which in turn prompts Sakura to reassess herself and wonder whether she’s been making Naruto feel this terrible all the time, too:

From that point on, it’s a process of her putting little pieces together.  She still has a MAJOR crush, and she still acts like a twelve year-old, but as we approach the end of Part I, Sakura actually has a more accurate grasp on Sasuke’s current state of mind than Naruto does.  Naruto is initially excited to fight Sasuke on top of the hospital, because he feels like Sasuke’s finally acknowledging him, whereas Sakura is the one who immediately recognizes that something is wrong about this situation.  She is also the one who, after this fight, is concerned that Sasuke is really unwell and might do something drastic like run off in pursuit of the power Orochimaru promised him, but when she communicates this to Naruto, he assures her that this would NEVER happen:

(Sakura isn't convinced, though, because she goes to monitor the exit out of the village anyway.)

I’m not criticizing Naruto for his response here.  I ADORE hearing him say that Sasuke is too strong to need Orochimaru, with such perfect confidence - I love seeing how much respect and admiration he has for Sasuke underneath all their fighting, because that’s the whole reason he’s always baiting Sasuke and yelling at him and claiming “you're not so great!” He looks up to Sasuke; he wants to be like Sasuke; he thinks Sasuke is awesome! (It’s that Obito @ Kakashi behavior, you know?) But the fact remains that he is clueless about what’s actually going on with Sasuke in Part 1, and he remains clueless(ly optimistic) for a long time.  

(Eg, when he catches up to Sasuke during the retrieval arc and Sasuke climbs out of that cursed seal coffin, Naruto waves at him and calls "Come on, let's go!" as if Sasuke has been successfully rescued and is now going to come running home.  Even in Part II, when Naruto hears that Sasuke killed Orochimaru, he beams and immediately says, “So he must be on his way back to the Leaf Village!”  And everyone else in the room is like, “....,” because they know better.  Naruto doesn’t yet fully understand [or doesn't want to accept] the extent to which Sasuke has willingly chosen this path, and it’s not until after Jiraiya’s death/the Pain attack/the Five Kage Summit that Naruto really starts to understand Sasuke more clearly, which is something he himself admits.)

Sakura, in Part 1, has access to more information about Sasuke - she’s there for his first dissociative monologue during the bells test, she’s there for the curse mark’s placement, she’s there for his first violent transformation in the Forest of Death - she is, in fact, the unwitting catalyst for it (“Sakura…who did this to you?”), and her compassion is the reason Sasuke is later able to overcome the curse mark’s influence - so she has a more accurate/complete picture of “how he’s doing,” for lack of a better phrase, whereas Naruto, who doesn’t know about the curse mark in the first place, is still in the dark.  This means that Sakura is able to accurately discern that Sasuke is struggling more than Naruto realizes, and specifically to predict that he’s going to run away.  

(This dynamic is then interestingly flipped in the back half of Part II, since at any point after the Five Kage Summit, Sakura doesn’t have access to extremely relevant [if currently questionable and unproven] details that would in any other circumstance inform her behavior).

Of course, just because she has more info in Part 1 doesn’t mean she has some kind of miraculous insight into Sasuke’s every thought and feeling.  There are parts of her attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village that are as clueless as any of Naruto’s assumptions, and they showcase the kind of magical thinking common to childhood - like when she says that if he stayed with her, she could give him happiness, she’d do anything for him, even help him get his revenge - this idea that she herself can do something to make him feel better, that she can love him powerfully enough to defeat his pain - obviously none of that is rooted in realism.

Is this part of her approach irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered?  Of course it is!  But it’s no more irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered than Naruto’s stated plan to drag Sasuke back to the village even if he has to “break every bone in [his] body!” 

Hating on Sakura for her Part 1 attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village while simultaneously lauding Naruto for his feels like a bad faith misread of what is, to me, pretty clear narrative intention.  The story doesn’t at any point intend for us to see her begging him to stay as a selfish or conniving attempt to get something she wants.  She’s begging him to stay for the same underlying reason that Naruto is: she cares about him.  She thinks he’s making a mistake that will only cause him more pain in the end (she’s right) and she wants to make it so he feels less pain right now (she can’t.  But she doesn’t understand that/isn’t able to admit that, and she’s willing to try ANYTHING that might help).  

It’s critical that this farewell scene is set in front of that same bench from their first important confrontation - she references that day and how angry he got at her, and this time she tells him that she understands his reaction.  She’s learned things and she recognizes how insensitive she was being back then (“I know what happened to your clan, Sasuke”), even though she still can’t fully grasp all the complexities of the situation. She tells him that him blowing up at her back then helped her understand what loneliness actually meant (as opposed to her previous shallow understanding of it), and she challenges him about his choice right now: "So that's it, you're choosing the lonely path?" And when she tells him that she'll be very lonely if he leaves, we're immediately shown a panel of Sasuke thinking of both his friends, with the very clear implication that if he goes through with this, he will be lonely without them, too - that he's still struggling with the idea of leaving them, no matter how hard he tries to pretend:

Sakura at this point knows that Sasuke isn’t interested in her the way she is in him, but she still wants to give him happiness, however fantastical and immature her ideas sound to us (and, I’m sure, to him).  “I’ll do anything, even help you get your revenge/we'll have fun every day, and...and you'll be happy! I'll make sure of it!” - of course, it’s completely childish.  It’s irrational.  It’s ridiculous to think that any of this would ever be effective, but no more ridiculous than Naruto’s belief that he can simply break every bone in Sasuke’s body and keep him in the Leaf by force.

Both Naruto and Sakura are children who have a deeply oversimplified understanding of Sasuke’s situation.  They both still think they can fix him themselves.  They both think they can save him themselves.  They both think they can convince (or force) him to do what they want, what they think is in his best interests.  Both of them don’t yet understand that he has to want to come back, if it’s ever going to mean anything.  Their attempts to keep him in the village are immature and unrealistic, yes.  What they aren’t, however, is selfish, because neither Sakura nor Naruto are doing any of this with the intention of advancing their own interests.  They’re only thinking about Sasuke - how to keep Sasuke safe, how to make Sasuke happy - even when neither of them are taking an approach that will actually work.

Naruto and Sakura are children.  They’re afraid of losing somebody they care about.  Their attempts to prevent that from happening are desperate and messy and ultimately ineffective, but they are also genuinely felt and rooted in a true desire to rescue Sasuke from his pain, which - and this is the single most important thing that should impact our viewing of Part 1 - is something that Sasuke RECOGNIZES.  He doesn’t spend that agonizingly long moment bowed over Naruto’s defeated body so we can pretend he doesn’t understand that Naruto was just trying to help him.  He doesn’t take the time to murmur, “Sakura…thank you,” before laying her out carefully on a bench, just so we can discount it and pretend that he doesn’t recognize and appreciate her genuine intention to make things better for him, however clumsy that attempt might have been.

2. the greater good

If Stage 1 Sakura is "the girl with the crush," then Stage 2 Sakura is a progression to “the girl who decides to put her feelings for Sasuke aside in order to protect innocent people, including (but certainly not limited to) Naruto.”  She’s driven to this decision by interactions with Shikamaru, who all too recently had to grow up fast himself (“We're not kids anymore...we can't allow a war to break out between the Hidden Leaf and the Hidden Cloud because of Sasuke") and Sai, who risks his new friendship with Sakura and Team 7 in order to speak some hard truths and deliver one of my favorite lines in the whole story: “I don’t know what promise Naruto made to you, but it’s really no different than what was done to me.  It’s like a curse mark.”

(INCREDIBLE.  How can anybody be complaining about a season where Sai gets to say something that goes THIS HARD and Sakura LISTENS and takes DRAMATIC ACTION that actually propels the story forward in a meaningful way - )

[Okay, yeah, brief personal opinion interlude - it is just bonkers wild to me that there are people who complain about Sakura in the Five Kage Summit arc. That entire season is the greatest character arc she ever has.  Literally she has never been more interesting and dynamic than in Season 10; it’s the first time she ever gets to be as deep and fascinating as the boys; what is everybody so worked up about?  Oh, “she lied to Naruto that one time” - Sasuke joined infant-kidnapping baby-murdering human experimentation machine Orochimaru when he was twelve years old in order to (dare I say it????) selfishly pursue his personal goals and yet, somehow, we are still able to root for him.  He abandoned his friends/allies to imprisonment and death (Suigetsu and Jūgo) or outright stabbed them in the chest himself (Karin) in order to (SELFISHLY) get what he wanted, and yet, somehow, we are still able to love him, understand him, and be on his side.  Naruto is canonically not upset with Sakura about her lie after receiving context for the situation and I think we can probably take our cues from him without feeling the need to bring her up on war crimes; please calm down]

[Sorry, I just really love most of Season 10 and think it’s one of the best examples of how good this story can be when every single character gets to do something that matters (as opposed to things being all Naruto, all the time) so I get a little bit worked up over people complaining about some of the best writing Sakura ever gets.  I don’t understand what certain elements of fandom want from her. People complain about her being “useless” and not doing anything that contributes to the story, but then they complain just as much when she does finally get to act decisively and have just as complex/dynamic an inner world as the boys.  She’s “weak” for being unreasonably in love with Sasuke, but when she tries to be “strong” and put her love for him aside and eliminate him in order to protect Naruto and the rest of the world, she’s evil, because she should have been more understanding of his situation (despite the fact that she doesn’t KNOW anything about his situation).  But then when she can’t go through with killing him after all because she cares about him too much despite the things he’s done, she’s not "compassionate" or "kind" or "a good friend," she’s “weak” again. Nothing Sakura does in S10 is more wrongheaded or rash than any of the batshit, buckwild things Naruto and Sasuke have done in the past (and will continue to do in the future), but when Naruto and Sasuke have big feelings or take bold action, it makes them interesting characters, whereas Sakura can’t breathe in anyone’s direction without being minutely scrutinized for moral impurities.]  

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.  

Every single piece of development Sakura has with regard to Sasuke in this season satisfies me so much.  Her initial shock and disbelief at hearing that Sasuke had joined the Akatsuki?  Good, appropriate.  The fact that she starts to acknowledge the reality of what Sasuke’s done sooner than Naruto does?  Also extremely appropriate, very in-character for both of them.  Her taking Sai’s words to heart and deciding that the promise she asked Naruto to make when they were children is causing him to suffer and she has to relieve him of that burden?  Juicy!  AND thematically significant (promises!!!!  the burden that a promise places on a person, especially when it can't be kept - we've seen that before in this story and we'll see it again).  Her anguished pivot from wanting to protect Sasuke to realizing that she has a responsibility to protect the countless innocents who will die because of the war he’s trying to start?  HELLO THIS IS INCREDIBLE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.  Her knocking out the classmates who agreed to help her so they don’t have to share in her burden (and so the only person Naruto will hate when it’s over is her)?  BRUH.  Her being so committed and focused on her goal of saving innocents and protecting Naruto (not just from being harmed by Sasuke/the Akatsuki, but by the possibility that Naruto will someday have to hurt Sasuke himself) that she tries to take everything on by herself and walks into a confrontation that she absolutely cannot win??  INCREDIBLE.  (Literally the first time I watched this, I said, “Finally!!!  It’s Sakura’s turn to go off the rails!”  I laughed with my sister about how Kakashi isn’t even mad, because Naruto and Sasuke have been pulling stunts like this for years and Sakura was way overdue for her own meltdown.)  And then, after Kakashi intervenes in the fight - Sakura barreling back into the battle when she realizes he’s going to take on the burden of killing Sasuke himself in order to spare her and Naruto the horror - “I can’t let Kakashi-sensei bear this burden!”  I love her for that.  

And then, of course, in the end - her not being able to do hurt Sasuke after all.  Despite committing herself to the act, despite forcing herself to put her feelings for him aside, despite resolving to stop him from starting a war and killing innocent people, she can’t harm him.  She cares about him too much.  This, too, is thematically significant - think about Itachi’s “you don’t have enough hatred” - she doesn’t have enough hatred to kill someone she cares about, even if it seems like he deserves it, even if would be the right thing to do to protect others.  She can’t do it, and Sasuke almost kills her for her compassion.  

I love the dynamic this sets up between her and Sasuke, for a few reasons:

1) Personally, I think Sasuke respects Sakura much more for trying to kill him than he would have if she’d just tried to talk him out of his behavior or beg him to come home (a la their original confrontation in Part 1).  This is the first significant interaction he’s had with Sakura in years, and the fact that she does something SO contrary to his memory of her is an important demonstration of the fact that she’s not the same girl she used to be.  Sasuke spends a lot of time after his defection declaring to his old team “I’ve changed; I’m not that person anymore,” but this is one of the moments where he’s forced to acknowledge that his teammates have changed, too.  Time didn’t just stop for them when he left.  While he was turning into someone new, so were they.  They grew up without him, and his old memories of them can’t encompass the whole picture of who they are now.  

(This is a little tangential, but in general, I love the spectrum of reactions that Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi have in this sequence, and the way that all of them are ultimately messages Sasuke needs to hear.  Sasuke - who we know textually regrets what he did here, who apologizes to Sakura for it later - for “everything,” in fact - needs Naruto’s aggressively optimistic open-arms policy, yes, needs that potential, that unconditional possibility of return.  He also needs Sakura’s refusal to let him hurt her friends and start a war that will kill thousands of people, needs her surprisingly ruthless attempt to take him down; needs just as much her failure to do so, because it shows him that she still loves him too much to kill him even as she condemns him.  And he needs Kakashi’s grim line in the sand, needs someone who very possibly won't hesitate like Sakura (despite the horrifying personal cost), someone who will try to reach him but also won't let him escape and become the next generation’s Orochimaru, who won't let him cause untold suffering to untold numbers of people just because a teacher loved him too much to stop him when he had the chance. 

(And then even Kakashi chooses not to deliver a killing blow when he has the opportunity -)

(I know that in fandom people are more likely to be all, “oh, Naruto Good, everybody else Bad,” but I don’t think the narrative frames Sakura or Kakashi as “worse” than Naruto in any way.  The story goes out of its way to make it clear how desperately they don’t want to hurt Sasuke and how much they care about him.  And [this is just my interpretation, so obviously I won’t claim it as fact], I personally think that Sasuke - Sasuke, who, looking back, can see how lost he was then and how tortured he would have been if he’d gone through with many of his plans - would be grateful to Sakura and Kakashi for making an attempt to stop him when he couldn’t stop himself.)

2) On the other side of this, the fact that Sakura wasn’t able to deliver the killing blow means a lot. Sasuke was incapacitated under that bridge; he was completely at her mercy - but she stopped with the kunai an inch from his back.  She couldn’t kill him, even though she knew that he was completely willing to kill her (because he'd attempted to Chidori-assassinate her from behind just a few minutes ago).  That’s huge!  Sasuke is too out of his head right now to process this or understand it, but later, it's going to matter.  She stayed her hand.  She spared his life.  She loved him too much to hurt him, even when he’d given her every reason to take him down.  She hesitated, and he almost killed her for it, but her inability to strike him ultimately gave him yet another chance to come home, another chance to get better, another chance to have a life outside of his pain.  Despite everything, some part of her still hadn’t really given up on him, and that knowledge will matter later, when he’s finally able to acknowledge it.  

The point of all this is to say that I really have no complaints about Sakura and Sasuke’s dynamic in their S10 confrontation.  This season is the point where Sakura fully grows past her “girl with a crush” stage and into her “shinobi must make very harsh decisions” adulthood, but it never means that she doesn’t care about the person she’s trying to take down.  Her ultimate inability to deliver the killing blow remains a dangling lifeline for her relationship with Sasuke, an open door that Sasuke is able to walk through at the end of the story (literally, in fact, when Sakura opens that portal for him and saves him from Kaguya’s desert prison, and figuratively, too, when Sasuke apologizes to her).

3. she only wants to save you

The last stage in their relationship is what Sakura settles into during the war arc.  She started off Part 1 being just a girl with a crush, then tried to harden her heart and put her feelings for Sasuke aside in service of the greater good, but she was unable to actually follow through and kill him, and because of that, what she’s come to accept by the war arc is actually two things: that 1) Sasuke truly is willing to let her die if it furthers his goals, and 2) she wants to save him anyway.  

She has no intention of pursuing Sasuke romantically.  She knows full well that Sasuke isn’t interested in her.  She even knows that Sasuke isn’t really on their side (there’s a great scene where Sai questions Sakura about Sasuke’s return, and she reassures him that everything is fine, and Sai sadly thinks to himself “even I can tell your smile is fake”).  She’s well-aware that Sasuke didn’t try to help her when Madara stabbed her.  She’s well-aware that he left her to die in the lava pit.  She’s also well-aware that none of this is enough to make her stop loving him.  He doesn’t have to care about her - she still cares about him.  She still wants to help him.  She still wants to save him.

This is not hidden, hard-to-parse character development.  It’s explicitly articulated on the page:

Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers!  She only wants to save you.

I’m not sure if people look at this last confrontation and unquestioningly take Sasuke at his word (as if we haven’t just read 71 volumes/watched 700 episodes showing us how how painfully distorted his thinking is), or if they stop reading/watching before the end of the scene, or if they don’t understand that Sasuke saying something doesn’t make that statement an accurate representation of reality.  The entire point of this scene is to show us how deeply mistaken Sasuke is about Sakura (and, by extension, the rest of Team 7).  He’s locked into a false pattern of thinking.  His single-minded focus on revenge and destruction has blinded him to the unconditional love his friends feel for him; he’s become so accustomed to using others and being used that he can’t understand or accept that someone would care about him without needing a reason, without needing him to love them back, without needing to receive something from him in exchange.

Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers!  She only wants to save you.

Sasuke matters to Sakura as more than a love interest.  He always has.  She does love him romantically, yes, but she doesn’t only love him romantically, and her desire to help him is not and has never been contingent on him returning her feelings, romantically or otherwise.  Sasuke isn’t able to acknowledge that in this scene, but that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to just sit back and agree with his warped perspective.  Kakashi is the one who’s explicitly positioned as the voice of the narrative here.  We, as the audience, are supposed to recognize that Kakashi is the one telling us the truth.

[tangential thing 1: You don’t have to love Sakura's last plea to Sasuke here. It’s not my favorite, either - the best part, other than Kakashi’s speech at the end, is the moment after Kakashi collapses when Sakura’s expression changes from pained uncertainty to pure rage, when she grits her teeth together - when I first saw that, I almost leapt out of my seat like “Oh my god.  She’s finally going to let him have it.  It’s finally happening - ”  I wanted that so badly, and I still think it would have been a more effective writing choice for Sakura’s last words to lean more into her anger at the suffering Sasuke is causing all of them (himself included!) and less into yet another of Kishimoto’s “let me have Sakura articulate what a shame it is that she can’t do as much as Naruto despite the fact that I literally just went through a major reveal sequence in the war to show that she’s caught up to the boys; I can’t make up my mind about whether I want her to progress or not” - it’s extremely frustrating (and it's something he does at the very end of the S10 Team 7 reunion, too, which is the ONLY moment of S10 that falls flat for me).  But at the same time, even if there are ways this sequence could be more satisfying, it doesn’t change the fact that her plea to him is not remotely motivated by a desire to be with him romantically and not anything to condemn her for.]

[tangential thing 2: I do like how she remembers that moment when Sasuke says “Thank you.”  That panel precedes her saying “If there’s even a tiny corner of your heart that thinks about me…” (which I’m sure is one of the things that people like to criticize about this scene, aka “oh she’s sooooo self-centered” etc), but that particular line of dialogue is preceded by that particular flashback panel for a reason: Sakura knows that Sasuke DOES think about her.  He thinks about all of them.  Sakura remembers that “thank you,” and it reminds her that despite everything Sasuke has done and said since, despite all evidence to the contrary, she knows in her bones that his expression of gratitude back then was genuine.  He cared about her once.  He cared about all of them.  She’s trying to reach the part of him that still does, if it exists.]

[tangential thing 3: The fact that Kakashi says “she suffers from loving you,” and it triggers Sasuke to remember his own family - thinking about how much he suffered (and still suffers) from loving them - “Perhaps…those are the ties to a failed past” - the idea that it’s not worth it to have bonds if it means you suffer this much…that it’s too difficult, it’s too painful, and if Sakura and the rest of Team 7 were smarter they would just give it up (all Sasuke knows how to do now is sever potential bonds before they can hurt him; so why aren’t Sakura and the rest of his teammates doing that, why can’t they let it go, why are they making this so hard - ) << yeah, he clearly doesn't care about her/them at all.]

4. the shadow of my family

This has all been a really long way to answer the original question, but the short response to “What do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura?” is “I really care about it,” just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Naruto, just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Kakashi. And I don’t think the story ever asks me to choose between them.

I’m not sure whether it’s the impact of Boruto-era “canon” that gets in the way of other people approaching things this way (I don’t consider sequel material when I evaluate the original story), or if it’s Kishimoto’s frequent disinterest in/disrespect towards female characters, which yes, does sometimes make it harder, or if it's a shipping thing (bane of my existence), or some combination of factors, but for me, taking one member of Team 7 out of the equation hobbles the rest of the story.  I can’t read/watch Naruto while hating one of the protagonists and loving the other three.  It doesn’t work like that for me.  The story wasn’t written that way, and there’s nothing in the text that would cause me to receive it that way.

That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with disliking one of the main foursome (or any character, for that matter) - obviously we're all going to have different preferences, and everyone is free to enjoy or reject whatever parts of a story they want, or to like or dislike whatever characters they want. I know that some people have more fun disregarding canon and doing their own thing, which is fine.  My own personal zone of enjoyment comes from receiving the story as closely to how I think it was intended to be read as I can, and personally, when I look at this particular story, what I see is that all the members of Team 7 clearly demonstrate their love for Sasuke in ways that he himself later recognizes and acknowledges. All of them are driven by their desire to save him and their unwillingness to hurt him. All of them make repeated choices to chase after him when he runs away, to trust him when he hasn't exactly earned it, to give him another chance when he doesn't appear to deserve it. ALL of them, not just Naruto, do these things multiple times throughout the story, and Sasuke owes his life (and thus his eventual recovery) to ALL of them, many times over. Kakashi disobeys Hokage-elect Danzō and breaks the law to negotiate for Sasuke's life with a foreign head of state. Sakura and Kakashi both have opportunities to kill Sasuke in the Land of Iron, and they choose to spare him instead. Kakashi stops Sasuke from killing his only friends at two different points in the story, which would have been a mistake Sasuke couldn't have recovered from. Sasuke would have died in Kaguya's desert dimension if Sakura hadn't saved him (Sakura, who knew that Sasuke wasn't even truly on her side yet, who knew he'd abandoned her for dead multiple times already that day). Kaguya's bone bullet would have killed Sasuke too, if Kakashi, with his intention to die in Sasuke's place, hadn't leapt in front of it (Kakashi, who also knew that Sasuke wasn't fully on their side yet, who also knew that Sasuke had abandoned him for dead earlier that day). Sasuke and Naruto would have BOTH died in the Final Valley if Sakura and a severely injured Kakashi hadn't chased after them to heal their injuries.

Remove any one member of Team 7, and Sasuke never makes it home. Without the combined efforts of all three of his teammates, he doesn't survive.  That’s the way it should be, thematically, for a story whose first and most foundational premise was the importance of teamwork, and since Sakura was just as essential to that framework as everyone else, I’m just as invested in her relationship with Sasuke as I am in his relationship with everyone else.  You can’t remove one leg from a four-legged stool without damaging the integrity of the entire structure, and for me, discounting any single member of Team 7 irreparably damages the integrity of the entire story. 

TL;DR: I love all of the Team 7 relationships, including Sakura and Sasuke's, because despite what some segments of fandom seem to believe, the text of the story never gives me any reason not to.

[hotchshands]

Chapter 1 | First Day of Class

Masterlist | Taglist | Other Chapters

Summary: The first day of class is upon you and first up is Professor Hotchner's lecture, Intro to Profiling. You've been anxiously waiting for this day to arrive, having picked out your outfit and prepared yourself for his lecture weeks in advance.

Word Count: 2.3k

Contains: professor!hotch x student!reader

A/N: Welcome to the first chapter of Teacher’s Pet, a Professor!Hotch AU (Yes, I changed the title for the second time). Oh, and imagine readers wearing the outfit above. Last thing to keep in mind, the university is totally made up, but the mechanics are modeled after my uni.

The start of the new semester rolled around quickly, signaling the end of summer and the start of yet another academic year. You weren’t looking forward to the start of the semester until you reviewed your course schedule and saw his name, Aaron Hotchner. The name alone brought back memories of why you registered for the class in the first place.

Fall registration rolled around sometime in March. You had put it off for a while, but you needed to sign up for a university lecture, as your school required every student to take two before graduation. Luckily you were able to take one relevant to your major, so all you needed was one more.

As you scrolled through the course catalog, you were doomed to be unlucky. Everything was completely out of your field of study, and none were remotely interesting, though there was one that sounded like it could be. Intro to Profiling? Hmm.

You click on the course to read more. As you read the course description, the class seemed to be more and more like something you should register for. The lecture meets on Mondays and has discussion sections on Wednesdays at 10 am. The course would be taught by Aaron Hotchner and some TAs would lead the discussion sections.

Aaron Hotchner? Because you weren’t a criminology major, you’d never heard the name before, so you decided to do some research. You did this every semester: Look up the professors and see if there were any major red flags before signing up for their courses. As you Googled Aaron Hotchner, all you saw were articles upon articles about his achievements at the Behavioral Analysis Unit or BAU. Most are about the cases he has worked on, and others about his leadership as the Unit Chief of the BAU.

Clearly, the man was well-educated in the field of profiling, not that it really mattered to you. Now for the ultimate final test: RateMyProfessor. You go on the site and type in his name. Thankfully, several results popped up. Most were from Georgetown University in DC, but a few were from your small private school.

The reviews varied, but they all had one commonality: the man was strict. “Insanely strict,” one reviewer put it. That same reviewer went on to complain that he "failed them." You started to become hesitate. As you continued scrolling through the reviews, more and more said things like “Don't take his class” and “He refuses to give A’s.”

As a person who craved academic validation in the form of a 4.0 GPA, straight As, and high praise from your professors, your brain was screaming RUN. However, a small voice in the back of your head told you to continue your research, so you did.

You read through some of the more nicer reviews. “He's strict as hell, but put in the effort, and you'll get a B.” another reviewer said. Another wrote, “Forced to take this horrible class, but my God, does the professor put the hot in Hotchner!” Your eyes widen at that. Secretly, you always wanted to witness the hot professor trope in action; maybe this was your chance.

You go back to Google and look for images of the man. Since he had been in the press quite a bit, it wasn't hard to find several photos of him in action. Some of the photos were from press conferences, others were taken from the scene. You study each picture you come across like it was a painting. You take in the lines on his face, the browns of his eyes and hair, and the mole on the right of his nose. Right then, your mind was made up; you were taking his class.

As you were preparing for the start of the fall semester, you huffed at all the clothes in your closet—or, according to you, the lack thereof. Hours later, you decide on a more preppy look. You choose a pale blue button-up, a plaid skirt, and a navy blue blazer for your outfit on Monday. The look felt like a cliche, the teacher's pet kind of cliche, but you wanted to impress Professor Hotchner, so you pushed the doubts aside.

The weekend could not have gone by any slower. By the time Monday came, you were antsy. You woke up later than you would have liked, at 8:30, giving you less than an hour to get ready if you wanted to be early for class. One thing you did not want to do was show up late on the first day, especially to Professor Hotchner's lecture. Another commonality those RateMyProfessor reviews had was that Professor Hotchner hated lateness.

You rushed out of bed, brewed yourself a cup of coffee, and got dressed. By the time you were dressed and ready to go, it was nine o'clock. Crap! You didn't have time to make breakfast, so you left the house, stopped in your favorite local cafe, and grabbed a quick bite and another cup of coffee. You were by no means a morning person, so caffeine was a must for a 10 am class, especially one you feared would kick your ass. He had better be worth it, you thought, as you made your way to the classroom listed on your schedule.

The campus was quiet in the mornings, so thankfully, you didn't have to deal with crowds of students. You searched the halls of classrooms before coming across room 213. The door was closed, making you think you were late, but when you glanced at your watch, it was 9:46. You sighed and slowly opened the door into the classroom. Your heart was pounding as you entered the room, which was empty except for one man. You gulp as you look around.

“You're early,” a deep voice spoke.

You look at the man standing in front of the class. He was facing the chalkboard, so you couldn't see his face, but you knew who he was. After he finished writing on the board, he turned around and faced you. “Well, I didn't want to be late on the first day, so...” your voice trailed off as you took in the man now facing you. He looks down at a sheet of paper on the desk in front of him. “What's your name?” he asks while looking at the sheet of paper.

“Y/N,” you answer.

“Y/N, Y/N... Ah, found you,” he mutters, assumely marking you present for class. The sound of your name falling from his tongue mesmerized you. His voice was deep and commanding, and you didn't know if it turned you on or terrified you. He looks up at you again, taking in your frozen state. “Well, uh, find a seat. We'll start at exactly ten o'clock,” he said, returning to work.

You walk toward the middle of the classroom, not wanting to sit in the front or back. Once you sit down, you take out your note-taking materials and wait as students begin to fill the empty seats.

As soon as the clock struck 10, Professor Hotchner began class.

“As many of you already know, the next fifteen weeks will be your introduction to the study of profiling. I will be your instructor on Mondays for the lecture portion of the class. On Wednesdays, my TAs will lead you in discussion. We'll get to introductions in a moment,” Professor Hotchner pauses, picking up a thick stack of papers before handing them off to one of the TAs, who begins distributing the papers to the students.

“The syllabus for the semester is going around. I expect you all to keep up with this, and should any of this change, I will let you know via email. Now, does everyone have a syllabus?” the professor scans the room before continuing. “Good. Let’s get started. My name is Aaron Hotchner. I’ve been a profiler for almost twenty years now and am the Unit Chief of the Behavioral Analysis Unit over at Quanco. My TAs are my colleagues who help me profile all sorts of cases from kidnapping to serial crime.”

Professor Hotchner goes on to talk about his work at the FBI. You dazed off into space shortly after. Rather than pay attention to what was being said, you paid attention to who was speaking. That one review was right. He was hot and completely your type—no one would ever know this because you knew admitting to liking older men would elicit judgemental looks of disgust. Although you were well aware of your preference, you couldn't help but feel like it was a fucked-up fantasy that would never come true. Regardless, it couldn't hurt to dream a little.

“I will expect a level of professionalism from you all and will require your undivided attention during class. If I catch you glancing at your phone, that will be the last time you will have it out during class. You may get away with stuff like that in your other classes, but not in this one. Do I make myself clear?” He pauses, remaining authoritative. The class nods as if this was the moment in the horror movie when the victims knew they were going to die.

“I also expect you to arrive to class on time as we start promptly at ten and end at eleven thirty. If you are late, you will receive dedications in your final grade. Attendance accounts for twenty percent. Remember that,” Professor Hotchner scanned the room, ensuring everyone understood his expectations. His eyes stopped toward the middle of the classroom where you were sitting before turning his gaze to the desk before him.

Man, he sure has high expectations. Do people really fail for being late? I was never one for lateness, but sometimes it's inevitable. I looked around the classroom. Everyone looked terrified, as if they were going to pee their pants. One or two students looked up to the challenge, eager to learn from him—makes sense considering he's the best profiler out there.

Professor Hotchner's firm voice continues, “For your midterm, you will present a profile. For your final, you will write a ten-page essay, which we will discuss in further detail later in the semester. Just note that if you pay attention in class, study hard, and take notes, you'll pass. You may not pass with an A, but I'll admit this class isn't an easy one, so simply passing is quite that accomplishment.” His eyes once again seem to gravitate toward you, and this time, they linger.

“I can already tell whose going to pass and who isn't, but I hope I'm wrong, and you'll all pass. So, prove me wrong,” Professor Hotchner chuckles as he prepares to go over the syllabus.

“How?” you ask before you even realize it. Once you realized you spoke, your eyes widened, and there you were, a deer in the fluorescent lights of the lecture hall.

A hint of a smirk appears on Professor Hotchner's face. You were eager to learn, and he liked that. “Body language reveals so much. I can learn a lot about someone just by observing them,” he spoke professionally.

You ponder his words before speaking, “So you can profile us based on our body language?”

Professor Hotchner's smirk fades and his expression becomes more serious. “No, not exactly,” he answers, his tone firm and serious. “Profiling is about using observations and knowledge to get a sense of a person's behavior. Body language is part of it, but a lot more work goes into it.”

You nod and go back to remaining silent.

Professor Hotchner finishes the class by going over the syllabus in great detail and answering questions, “Alright, that's it for today. I will see you all next week.” Students quickly begin leaving the lecture hall, and the TAs follow, leaving you and the professor alone in the big, empty classroom.

“I appreciate your questions in class today. I hope you'll continue asking questions throughout the semester. Don't be too intimidated by the content. I know it's a lot, but I can tell you're one of the brighter students in the class,” Professor Hotchner said as you exited the row you were sitting in.

You smiled at that. It was nice to hear a professor praise you for once. “Thanks, I didn't mean to interrupt you or anything—” you began before he cut you off.

“Nonsense. You didn't interrupt me.”

You pause at that. For someone so strict, you seemed nice, almost welcoming. “Well, uh, thanks away. I'll see you next week,” you said, turning to exit the room.

“Wait! I uh couldn't help but notice you don't seem like a criminology major, so why take this class?” the professor ejects, looking you over.

You face him, surprised that he knew without actually knowing you. “How did you figure that out?” you said.

He chuckles, looking down at his shoes. “Well, you're dressed like a schoolgirl. Your demeanor is curious yet kind, and you looked at me the entire class rather than at the syllabus or your classmates. Criminology students tend to be professional and overly confident and see their peers as competition. They show up to class right on time, not early, dressed like they already work at the FBI, and pay most attention to those around them.”

You were stunned. How did he observe all this in only 90 minutes? Was he really paying attention to you?

“So what's your major?” Professor Hotchner repeats his earlier question.

“Literature,” you answer.

He smirks, “That makes sense. It suits you. Hopefully, you'll find my class just as suitable.”

You smile, “I hope so, too. Goodbye, Professor.” You exit the class, taking one look back at him before closing the door behind you. He is going to be the death of me, you thought as you walked down the hall, anxious for it to be Monday again.

Taglist: @zaddyhotch @none-of-your-bullshit @snapessecretdiary @uselessnewt @presidentdangdang @lalaehlaa @de-duchess @targaryenswhxre @chicagotrio101 @barbeddreams @adrienneleclerc

[pterodactylterrace]

Guys Like You Chapter 11

Title: Guys Like You

Chapter:  Chapter 11

Chapter Summary:  I’ll be sure to mark this date down.

Rating: 18+

Warnings: Who would have guessed, I wrote another porn. So that, and tooth rotting fluff because I’m a soft slut.

{Prologue} {Chapter 1} {Chapter 2} {Chapter 3} {Chapter 4} {Chapter 5} {Chapter 6} {Chapter 7} {Chapter 8} {Chapter 9} {Chapter 10}

Henry really had thought of everything when he decided to 'redecorate' his home. Briar was in love with her Paw Patrol bedding and wasted no time in naming all the stuffed animals that now lined the shelf. She fawned over all of the new bedtime story books he had bought and stored in the night stand, quickly picking out her favorites, despite never having been read most of them. She squealed in delight when he turned on the fancy nightlight that projected different images onto the ceiling. He even got a couple spare changes of clothes for the girl.

While Faye loved the idea of him fumbling through the baby girl section, trying to figure out what size Briar wore, Henry confessed to ordering most everything online. He cited COVID as his reason for not going in person, but Faye had a feeling it was because he had no idea what he was doing in the girl's section. He only had two nieces, after all. He was just used to buying for boys instead. His nieces tended to have very specific wants. His brothers or his sisters-in-law told him what they wanted, and he supplied it.

That being said, he did a very good job preparing for a little girl. Faye found herself spending most of her time at his house after the first week. Henry only had a bag of dog food, a couple bowls for Kal and a dog bed at her house. He claimed it was all he needed to be comfortable, but Faye knew otherwise.

On the days they had stayed at his house, Briar almost never let him out of her sight. She loomed across the kitchen when he would try to cook. She stared at him while he read. She lurked while he played video games. Finally Henry invited her to watch him, the little girl all too happy to perch herself on his knee, happily cheering him on despite not knowing what was going on in the game. The few nights they spent back at their own home, Briar demanded to call Henry every night so he knew she was behaving for Mommy.

Henry was even thoughtful enough to clear out a drawer in his bathroom for Faye. She'd lived with a man before, and she always had to fight for her own drawer in the bathroom. She wasn't even asking much. She had a relatively small make up back considering her profession. She only wanted a place to store that, and her feminine necessities. Henry already had those in the drawer for when she needed them. All she had left to do was chuck her spare make up bag, a few hair ties and a brush into her drawer, and she was good to go.

Not to mention, the man had a trash can already in his bathroom. One that he knew existed. Even her father would regularly forget about the trash can in the bathroom growing up. Every Tuesday, he would go through the house and empty each of the smaller bins so he could take all the trash out to the side of the road for trash pick up day. Every Wednesday, her mother would ask him if he got all the trash cans. Every time he would assure that he emptied all of them. Then she would ask about the bathroom and he would stare at her blankly before finally mumbling a small 'oh'.

Finally, Faye reached a point where she couldn't hold it in anymore; her heart was about to explode if she didn't let it out. Henry had just put Briar and Kal off to bed when he found her, a crying mess on the couch. Naturally, his first instinct was to panic. Was she hurt? Did he forget something important? Was it their anniversary? Did they even have one? They've only been involved for a few months, right? Was he ignoring her? Did she feel like he was pushing her aside again? Ultimately, he took his brother's sage like advice that had been freely given at each of his other's brother's weddings.

"Faye, while I don't know exactly what I did wrong, I can see that you are upset, and I am sorry."

"For what?" She sniffled, popping her head up from her knees all to quickly.

"I don't know." Henry admitted, cautiously sitting next to her.

"Henry, I'm not upset. I'm the happiest I've been in a long time." Faye explained, only furthering Henry's confusion.

"Then why are you crying?" He asked slowly, growing more and more uncomfortable by the second. He knew females could be complicated, but how could you be happy and crying at the same time? Those were two opposite emotions, weren't they?

"I'm just really happy." Faye wiped at her eyes, scooting closer to Henry to lean against him.

"That doesn't explain why you are crying..."

"Haven't you ever been so happy you cried?"

"I've been so happy it's brought a tear to my eye, yes. Never full out sobbing like something horrible just happened. I thought I forgot an anniversary or something!"

"We don't have one." Faye pointed out, as Henry wrapped his arm around her shoulder to pull her closer.

"I'm sure we do."

"We never officially agreed to be exclusive or anything."

"Have you been doing things I should be aware of?" Henry asked, raising a brow as he looked down at her.

"No. Have you?"

"Of course not. I was under the impression we've been a thing for a while now. Unlike some people."

"You never said anything! You can't just decide we're a thing without telling me!"

"Well do you want this to be a thing?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind it..."

"Then let's just retro date it. What was a significant even between us? Me meeting Briar?"

"No, we just flirted a lot back then."

"True."

"When you asked me to spend more time here?"

"That's way too recent. We've definitely been involved longer than that. What about that night on the couch? When you started dry humping me during the movie?"

"That was a fun night." Faye sighed wistfully.

"Certainly sticks out to me." Henry agreed.

"Deal. We'll figure out what day that was and that can be our anniversary."

"I need to put it in my phone. If I forget I get the feeling I won't ever hear the end of it."

"Do you even know when my birthday is?" Faye asked suddenly, twisting in his embrace to look up at him."

"That would be another good date to put in my calendar."

"What about Briar's birthday?"

"Ok, that one I know! You invited me over to help make her a cake. And then Briar led me into your room right after you'd finished showering. God, that ass..."

"Focus, Romeo!" Faye giggled, playfully swatting at his shoulder.

"Ugh, not Romeo. Choose a different story, I don't want us to end up dead over a misunderstanding."

"Uhh... I'm drawing a blank. You go first."

"You started it, you go first."

"You know, it's getting kinda late, I should go shower before I get too tired." Faye excused herself, slipping from his grip and scurrying out of his reach before he could snatch her up again.

"You, Miss Warren, are a tease." Henry pouted, flopping himself against the back of the couch.

"I am no such thing." Faye gasped, slowly peeling her shirt up over her head. She let it fall silently to the floor, annoyed when her actions went unnoticed. She was in no mood to be ignored.

This time, she reached behind herself, unhooking her bra and slinging it at him, the supportive garment landing directly on his face. It took Henry a second to realize what was going on, picking it up and straightening it out, his mind quickly connecting the dots once he realized what it was. He was on his feet in an instant, growling as he chased his laughing prey down the hall.

He snatched her up around her waist just before she could reach the door, playfully biting at the junction of her neck. "Got you, you little minx." He growled, pressing a kiss to the mark he had left.

"Well that means you get to lay claim to me." Faye giggled, reaching back to cup the back of his neck, pulling his head down for an awkwardly angled kiss.

"Bedroom." Henry muttered against her lips, blindly reaching for the knob and pushing the door open. He set Faye down, swatting at her ass as she slipped by, eagerly following and locking the door behind themselves. By the time he had yanked his shirt off, Faye had already pushed her sweats and panties down, crawling up the bed and giving him a view he never wanted to forget, her glistening peach peeking out from between her thighs, her ass swaying delightfully as she moved.

"Condom?" Faye asked, settling herself down in the middle of the bed, propped up on her elbows.

"Side table." Henry responded, nodding to the table on his side of the bed as he got to work shedding the rest of his clothing. "They better fucking be in date." He added after a second of thought.

"How long have you had them?" Faye snorted, digging through the drawer until she came up with the foil packet.

"Not a clue. They haven't been seeing much use in the last year or so."

"COVID?"

"Fucking COVID." Henry grumbled, crawling onto the edge of the bed, his eyes slowly drinking her in.  He grabbed her by the ankle, reverently uncrossing her legs, his strong hands kneading into the arch of her foot as he laid gentle kisses along the ink decorating the top of it. "What's this called?" He asked, his fingers brushing across the design.

"Mandala." Faye explained, Henry nodding and pressing a gentle kiss to it and slowly sliding his hands up, crossing over to her other leg to trace his fingers over the owl.

"This is an owl." He stated definitively, pressing another kiss to her artwork. He then slid up more, nudging her arm out of his way to look more closely at the mermaid he had found before, letting his fingers trace over it, causing Faye to giggle and squirm. "And here is a ticklish little mermaid." He teased, kissing across her torso, just beneath her bare breasts, craning his neck and smiling proudly "Ah ha! I thought I saw something over there." He mumbled proudly, pressing a kiss to the small butterfly on that side of her ribcage, eliciting another giggle from the woman trapped below him. "A ticklish little butterfly! Any others around here?" He asked, pressing kisses back across her torso, wrapping his lips around a nipple when she shook her head.

His tongue flicked against the rapidly hardening bud, grabbing onto her arms and pinning them down when she began to squirm more beneath him.

"Now then, I know about this one." He continued, lifting her right hand to kiss at the leaves and vines wrapping around her wrist and thumb. "And you showed me this one." He pressed an almost reverent kiss to the inside of her forearm, gently moving her arms up over her head. "Now, I can think of one more..." He mumbled, sliding a hand beneath Faye's hip and flipping her over onto her stomach all too easily, managing to keep her trapped beneath him the entire time. "And that's back here." His fingers traced along the black and white depiction of a tree, winding along her spine, its branches reaching up to her shoulders.

"Any others I should know about?" He asked, sliding his hand beneath Faye's hips, trailing lower to slide his fingers through the slick heat gathering between her thighs.

"That's all." Faye moaned, grinding down into his probing fingers.

"You do have quite a few, Miss Warren." Henry finally conceded, his hand sliding back just far enough to roll her back onto her back. "But I would consider this a work of art as well." He purred, diving in to kiss and suck at her slick folds shamelessly.

"Oh shit." Faye panted, her back arching at the sudden stimulation. "Fuck, Henry. I want you now."

"Patience, Miss Warren. I'm going to need you nice and relaxed before you try and take me."

"Damnit, Henry!" Faye growled, using her legs to pull his face even closer to her core, effectively silencing him with her pussy for the time being. "I can sink the Titanic with how fucking wet I am. Now."

"So bossy." Henry tutted, using the leverage he had against her to push her knees almost to her chest, eagerly diving back in, licking, sucking and kissing like a starving man at a feast.

"Fuuuuck." Faye groaned, gripping the sheets with one hand, the other trying to grip the hair on the back of his head, only to be met with fuzz. "Damnit all!" She hissed, cupping the back of his head instead to pull him closer. Henry was all to happy to comply with her demands, even slipping two fingers inside her dripping entrance, curling them in search of the sensitive spot he knew was there, grinning triumphantly when she started squirming harder. One part of her wanted to go up into his teasing mouth. The other wanted to go down onto his wandering fingers.

Henry finally took mercy on her, latching onto her bundle of nerves and sucking hard, his tongue flicking over it as his fingers tapped out a rhythm inside of her, easily sending her toppling over the edge, leaving her a panting mess below him.

"I think you're relaxed enough now." He taunted playfully, gently moving to let her lay flat on the bed.

"I want dick." Faye panted, glaring up at him as he attempted to innocently open the condom, shooting what she assumed was meant to be a wink her way.

"What a coincidence, I just so happen to have one right here, wrapped and ready to go."

"Shut up and fuck me." Faye groaned, rolling her eyes at his antics. Of course, he would manage to still be a dork in the middle of having sex.

"Would you like to stay on your back, or do you want to try something else?"

"I don't have the energy to bounce around on your cock right now."

"Alrighty then." He half laughed, nudging her knees apart to make room for himself, caging her in below his body once again. "This might sting a bit." He advised, gripping himself by the base, sliding the head of his cock between her swollen petals. He slowly pressed inside, rocking his way in until the tip of his cock was pressed firmly against her cervix.

"Are you alright?" Henry asked, wincing when her nails dug even harder into his shoulders.

"Yeah." Faye forced out, trying to slow her breathing. "I'm actively being split in half, but yeah."

"I'm sorry." Henry murmured softly, peppering her face with kisses as he began to roll his hips. Not full on thrusting, no. He saved that for when she started to squirm beneath him, trying to get him to press against all the right spots inside her. Then and only then did he rise up onto his knees, holding her up by her hips to pound into her, her nails now scratching at the sheets.

"Fuck, right there!" Faye gasped, her back arching when he brushed against a particularly sensitive area. "Fuck, don't stop, don't stop!" Henry's head fell back at her pleading, loving how she kept begging for more, her pleas devolving until only his name, 'please' and 'more' fell from her lips.

"Come on, cum all over my cock. Let me watch you come undone." Henry encouraged, slamming into her harder until he felt her walls clenching around him, her head thrown back as she begged him to keep going. Henry didn't last long past her orgasm, finishing himself only a few thrusts later.

"We did it." Faye panted as Henry slowly withdrew, careful to tie the condom off and toss it into the bathroom trashcan.

"Did what?" Henry inquired as he crawled back into bed, letting Faye curl into his side and pulling the blanket over both of them.

"We finally had sex."

"I shall be sure to also mark this date on my calendar."

"Dork."

"Yes, but I'm your dork."

Taglist: @Xxxkatxo @Weallhaveadestiny @lunedelorient

[mira--mira]

Question from an aspiring writer:

How do you stay motivated on one project for such a long time?

I personally have the attention span of a goldfish, and whenever I have an idea I either have to write down everything my brain can spew immediately or have it be lost in the void for eternity.

Never mind going back and turning my outline into a fic or gasp editing.

Do you have any tips and/or tricks you use?

Ok, I got completely carried away with this just fyi, but hopefully I ended up answering your actual question 😂 tl;dr at the bottom.

To be honest, staying motivated is a tricky thing, one that I feel I'm still learning how to do even now and varies a bit between shortfics/oneshots and multi-chaptered fics/longfics. For a bit of background, I've been writing fanfic for about a year and a half, but I've been writing original fiction since I was seven, over a decade and a half, and I still wrestle with it. It's definitely a learning process.

One thing I wish someone would have told me when I was starting out was the power of ~scenes~ in either multi-chapters or one-shots. All writing is ultimately made up of scenes, but if you're struggling to put things together, focusing on an individual scene, or multiple short scenes, might help you focus on getting something completed, and it's something that eventually can be applied to longer works as well. Writing has been a snowball process for me and once I started getting anything completed, I felt more secure in knowing what I could write comfortably and what was out of my comfort zone, eventually getting to the point where I felt comfortable tackling bigger and longer projects and knowing I could stay with them.

OoT's interlude chapters and the snippet series are both good examples of scenes because I wrote them with that intention...even if most of them are actually two or three scenes combined. "Gai meets Hashirama and Madara", "Hashirama gets revenge on Kakashi", "Tatsuki and Hashirama pick flowers for Madara, then give them to him" etc. were all my starting points.

If you're first starting out and feel comfortable with outlines of some sort before you start writing I would encourage you to try and write down a bullet point list of your scene(s) and what you know you want to happen in it.

"Gai meets Hashirama and Madara"

* Hashirama meets Gai first, mistakes him for Lee.

* Madara is shopping for a gift for Hashirama

* Madara finds Gai and Hashirama, they spar, Gai kicks his ass, both of them love him.

This is how my initial outline looked for the first interlude chapter, technically each one of these "points" are their own scenes stuck together. Outlining is different for everyone, some people like super specific points, others even less detail than this. For me this is a nice middle that gives me a roadmap for the chapter, but allows plenty of room to naturally diverge and add detail. Play around with outlines and see what you're comfortable with/what gives you the best results.

I'm not sure of your individual situation, but if you're struggling to put together fics in general something like this might help. Doing this process again and again personally helps me stay on track and gives me a sense of progress.

This sense of progress is ultimately key and why I think motivation differs slightly between one-shots/short fics and longfics. If you confine the individual scene to a one-shot, that might give you the motivation to complete it. Even if you start writing and you get interrupted/can't finish having in one setting, bullet points sometimes help inspire me to finish because I'm not starting from scratch when I return to writing. The whole "eat an elephant one piece at a time" thing was difficult for me to learn, but ultimately proved true. Learning to chip away at something bit by bit is going to be the only (healthy) way to write longer projects you can't complete in one sitting.

For longer projects, it's a similar beast just on bigger levels and with an added dimension. I would actually suggest something similar to OoT for a starting project because it is ultimately broken up into arcs that you know and can reference, instead of making a lot of og content for a fan setting. Maybe not go into it thinking, 'I'll do a complete rewrite' but once you feel like you're ready for a longer project 30K+ or so, the rough outline method and the ability to follow arcs was what got me started when I eventually decided to make the fic multi-chaptered. Try writing one arc and keep yourself contained in that. Now the added dimension aspect in general for longfics is that you eventually want to plot individual chapters in a multi-chaptered longfic and individual arcs (character, plot, etc). This comes with practice. I honestly don't think there's a way to get around that. It's something that I'm still trying to work on and I can look back at my early work and see how I've improved, how I can recognize where things didn't go well in certain places, and how I would change them if I was writing today. That's a good thing to be able to do, it means you've grown! The other thing I find that helps with staying motivated week after week for longer projects is to roughly know where you're going and to try to be excited about a plot point/scene/chapter/etc that you're going to write. Really try to hype yourself up. For me, it's a moment that comes at the very end of the chunin arc and I start grinning even thinking about it because I know it's going to be awesome. It's always what gets me through the rough days, imagining the moment I'll get to actually write that scene in its entirety (it's definitely already outlined and I mentally play it out at least twice a week lol) and is a big motivating drive.

So far I think this is pretty standard stuff if you're an outliner and you've been writing for a few years, but the other thing motivational-wise for me is having a schedule. From reading this message alone, I would not suggest it for you right away. Get comfortable finishing small things and feeling confident that if you let an idea sit for a week or two, you can pick it back up and continue. But if you eventually dip your toes into longfics (and don't plan to pre-write everything before you publish) that routine and rhythm really helps keep me going. I've made a commitment, I've posted it online, I'm going to stick to it. No one is going to jump down my throat if I fail to keep it (this is still a hobby and having fun is the most important thing) but in my mind I should commit to it unless something irl prevents me from doing so. Don't put a tight deadline on yourself, I'd start with once a month or if you write shorter chapters every three weeks. This also would help you build up and get a readership, interaction being another big motivational key.

Also, it's important to accept that sometimes you bite off more than you can chew, and when you feel completely demotivated from a fanfic project...it's okay to drop it. It's okay to take a step back and work on something else. Maybe you'll come back to it, maybe you won't. If you can, try to pinpoint what it was about that project that made you demotivated, were you pushing yourself too much and you got burnt out, was it an ongoing series and your interest for canon lagged and so did the fic, was it just too stressful to keep juggling plotpoints, etc. and keep that in mind moving forward. Every experience can be a learning one and eventually make you a better writer that can eventually tackle those bigger projects. Don't be afraid to take on big aspirational projects, but don't walk into them blind either. Above all, and this is repeated a lot because it's true, enjoy what you write. Some days you might not. That's true with anything, but any project you take on the good should outweigh the bad.

This is my wrap up of the motivational section but I also wanted to throw my two-cents in about editing because "oh no editing" is a perspective I've seen from a lot of writers, and used to have myself, but I think is going to stifle your progress in the long run.

Here's the thing: you need to look forward to editing.

You don't have to be jumping for joy, but editing, imo, should be a positive thing. You have all these great ideas, you made it into a fic, something you wrote, and now you get to go back and make it even better! This is a tough attitude to adopt. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It took me a long time to unlearn the negative attitude and even then sometimes I still wish the editing was already done once I type in the last period. But I've learned to at least appreciate what editing does and I try to think to myself as I'm going through and making changes things like "wow, this suddenly became so much better. X plot point that I thought of ten pages from now is suddenly being hinted at and doesn't come out of left field. The transition points are a lot cleaner, it's not so jarring anymore. I bet the readers are going to love this little detail. Here's some foreshadowing that I hope someone picks up bc it's going to come back in like 5 chapters from now" it's hard, especially when you start, but this is something you made, and now are actively making better and that's something to celebrate.

I hope this helps anon! I know it's a lot and I'm by no means an expert but I've been doing this for more than a decade because I love it and I want to help others get into writing to! I have no problem answering any writing questions you may have if you find this helpful!

tl;dr

-motivation is slightly different between short/long fics.

-starting out, learn to outline by scenes and focus on finishing small projects and getting to a point where you feel like you can put something down and come back and pick it up again in a week. Completion is key and will help you feel satisfied/know your limits.

-long projects also can work on the scene-to-scene outline but now with individual chapters and individual arcs. It's tough to balance both but comes with practice. Bit-by-bit is key, as is having 'one moment you can't wait to write', possibly a schedule if it works for you, and reader feedback are all huge long-term motivational points.

-editing is tough but learn to look forward to it instead of dreading it.

edited: added a bit more/few typos fixed

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Dangerous Minds

Those of my readers who haven’t known me long may not know that I was once a corps member of Teach for America. I taught 10th and 11th grade English for about 5 weeks, then I was told on a Friday about my “involuntary transfer” to another school in the district, where I’d be teaching 7th and 8th grade English instead. I went from having about 110 students to about 190. My classroom had no books (textbook or otherwise), no pencils, no paper, no markers or chalk, but it DID have one of those folding lamps that come out of the ceiling at the dentist’s office. The kids had been in there for 5 weeks with a rotating roster of subs; they’d done no schoolwork of any kind. I was teaching in a very poor area of the city, and my students were predominantly Black and Hispanic. One of my 10th graders wrote his first personal essay about getting shot the previous year. I say all this to tell you that when Chad asked that I review Dangerous Minds, the 1995 adaptation starring Michelle Pfeiffer of the true story of Louanne Johnson’s experience teaching in inner city schools in California, I was prepared to laugh it off as a cringey, Lifetime-movie representation of my experience. Is that what I got? Well...

For the most part, what I got was a ball of anxiety in my chest. It’s well-worn territory, obviously. A teacher bonds with their students from the wrong side of the tracks, and ends up learning just as much from them as they learn from him/her. Usually poetry or music features heavily as a tool that can set the students free from the depressing circumstances of their lives. Depending on the rating, usually a student dies, and the teacher learns just how Important their job is, so they commit to it even harder even though it pays no money and garners no respect from the administration who just doesn’t “get it.” But these cliches and stereotypes and broad strokes exist because at their core, they’re true, and they make me anxious and uncomfortable and I can’t laugh at them or Michelle Pfeiffer being a Nice White Lady because I’m too busy being angry about the systems we put in place that straight up abandon so many kids, all in the name of white supremacy.

Some thoughts:

Oh we’re starting right off the BAT with “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Fantastic news. Two things I associate so strongly with this song is skating around the skating rink in 2nd grade and buying the Weird Al cassingle of “Amish Paradise” and wearing it out. 

Ooh, the score was composed and performed by Wendy & Lisa! Love that, you don’t see nearly as many film scores as you should composed by women.

God, the salary is $24,700 a year and Louanne acts as though that is appealing - I can’t tell if that’s because it was 1995 or because teacher salaries are so dismally low that this feels like a good salary?

This scene in which Louanne goes into her classroom for the first time and the kids are all shouting at her and getting in her face and sexually harassing her and throwing paper balls at her is giving me stress hives. 

Also her friend Griffith (George Dzundza) saying, “You wanna teach, so teach! All you gotta do is get their attention” is rather disingenuous. Trust me, you can have their attention, and still not be able to teach. 

I’m excited to see Sally-Can’t-Dance from Con Air as Raul (Renoly Santiago). He’s honestly fantastic in this, with a tough exterior but a sensitive and gooey inner sweet boy. All of the teens give pretty solid performances, but he’s a real standout.

I recognize this is based on a true story and Louanne Johnson’s lived experience, but I am not sure it’s wise for any teacher, regardless of grade or subject, to be teaching her students how to fight each other. Or taking them to dinner on what looks to outsiders like a date. I know some people have a problem with the bribery (giving her students candy for speaking up in class) but I have no problem with it - you get paid to do all the dumb stuff you don’t want to do at work, why shouldn’t kids be compensated for going to school if they don’t want to be there? External motivation goes a long way to building up internal motivation.

Mm I do love me some Courtney B. Vance, but he’s such a quiet, condescending ass in this. It’s a different vibe than I’m used to seeing in a principal in a movie like this. 

Ooh, Griffith grading papers and saying “What a fuckin’ idiot” is a real mood. 

“Since when has the Board of Education done anything for us? We barely get fuckin lunch” is legit. The lunches my students were served in summer school were some of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen. One day it was spoiled milk, white bread, and pickles. And one of my students put his in a microwave that was hidden in the back of my classroom behind some dividers and left it for a week. And just so you know, as stomach-churningly awful as that sounds, the day I found “pickle man” as my student called him, isn’t even in my top 5 worst days teaching list. 

I like Griffith, and I’m glad Louanne has a friend, but frankly I’m not that interested in these interludes between them - they really feel like they slow down the momentum from the scenes of her in the classroom slowly earning the kids’ trust. The pacing is kind of a mess, because the most dynamic sections all revolve around the kids in the classroom, and I feel like that only makes up about a third of the movie. 

One thing I know for sure is you do not get in the middle of a fight between students. I have a friend who worked in the same district I did who interrupted a fight and got punched in the face because of it. And her principal blamed her. 

Oh wow the way the soundtrack picks up when Emilio finally engages in the class is some kinda cheesy. And it continues through the rest of the scene to a distracting degree. Oh Wendy and Lisa, I hoped for better. 

Can I just emphasize that to reach these kids, Louanne uses her experience as a LITERAL MARINE by demonstrating she can kick all their asses, and then she bribes them by paying for 25 kids to go to an amusement park for the entire day with her?

Also, even if they like and respect her now, I call bullshit at any scene in which ALL of  the kids are A) sitting in their seats or B) silent, and especially C) both. 

Um suddenly feeling some weird vibes with Louanne and Raul having a dinner date at this fancy restaurant by themselves. Also, the double standard here is pretty telling - there’s no way this scene makes the movie if Louanne had been a male teacher and Raul was a female student.

Wait wait wait, she’s also loaning Raul $200? Like, is this why I didn’t make it as a teacher? Because I wasn’t a former Marine taking students to amusement parks and fancy dinners and lending them money? I was 25 and could barely afford rent. Maybe teachers who have enough money to take care of themselves are better equipped to take care of others. Idk, I’m just spitballin here.

Oh “Gangsta’s Paradise” is happening again! We already heard the whole song over the opening credits but now it’s happening again about 3/4 way through. I mean this song is definitely the best thing about the film, so I get it, but it feels weird that they think we wouldn’t notice it playing to completion twice.

Michelle Pfeiffer is doing everything she can to make this movie feel less cheesy and more real. Like, you can tell she’s really trying with her performance. Of course, it’s not like the character is a huge challenge acting-wise, but she is definitely committed to the part and can walk the line of both accessible and tough. 

This scene where Louanne tells her class she is not going to be there next year, that what happened to Durell and Lionel and Callie and Emilio made her too sad to stay has not aged well at all. And it’s certainly true to life, and I say that as someone who did the same thing. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s a reality - the fact that I’m a nice white lady is exactly the reason that I can choose to leave when things get too hard. Just because the kids convince her to stay at the end in this very rushed “all’s well that ends well” way doesn’t sweep this scene under the rug, and it shouldn’t. 

Ope, “Gangsta’s Paradise” shows up one last time in the credits for good measure. 

Side note: after the film, I researched Louanne, and she’s still teaching, which honestly made me emotional (in a good way). And I’d like to point out the racist ass bullshit the studio and screenwriter Ronald Bass pulled by changing the poems the students read to Bob Dylan lyrics when Louanne originally used rap lyrics from popular artists in ‘89-’90 to teach the kids about poetry. 

Did I Cry? No, but I did get heartburn from anxiety flashbacks.

This genre of film is easy to mock and parody because it tells the same story and hits the same beats to the point that they’ve become cliche. Ultimately, the truth at the heart of the movie (which is the un-nuanced and candy-coated depiction of Johnson’s real memoir, My Posse Don’t Do Homework) is that high schoolers crave someone who will see them and validate them, someone who is willing to put in the effort. The quality of the package that truth is wrapped in varies, and this one certainly leans in hard on stereotypes that feel like cheat codes rather than any real illuminating depictions of living teenagers. But as cringey as it is to watch, maybe it’s not a bad thing to remember that all people - including those who are trapped in poverty and all the cruel injustices that entails - want to be seen and valued for who they really are. 

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

[wedreamedlove]

Li Zeyan In Love - Character Study

I sat on this because I wanted to get more dates done but, after seeing people bring up this one poem that is the epitome of Li Zeyan in the aftermath of 34, I decided to finish this. This essay has been brought to you from my occasional bursts of frustration at Elex LOL.

First, I need to acknowledge that I'll be pulling comments from others who have made their own amazing discussions about Li Zeyan's charcter. PS. Thanks for inspiring me and giving me points to think about!

SPOILERS to Chapter 21. Plus CN card lines up to Chapter 34.

THE ENDLESS SEARCH

(Sorry, Luoluo, I still have no good essay thoughts on you yet.)

It's amusing that if Bai Qi's love is in the form of "all roads lead to you". He can see where MC is standing and he is moving towards that point, struggling through all the obstacles in the way.

And Xu Mo's love is in the form of the red string of fate. No matter how much they hurt each other, walk in opposite directions, or try to tangle it up, they are forever connected to each other.

Then Li Zeyan's love is in the form of searching for a needle in the haystack. The needle being MC and the haystack being all possible worlds and universes in space-time.

Li Zeyan has tons of quotes about time, staying beside each other, and searching:

[Winter Infatuation SSR] "No matter the distance or time, nothing can prevent me from keeping you by my side."

[Time's End SSR] "I'll find and bring back the past you."

[Tour to Deep Space SSR] "No matter where you are, I will always find you."

[CN Silent Twilight SSR] "You are the only predestined ending I believe in." and "I will cross countless spaces of time to look for an ending which has you."

[Main Story 18-16] "I will definitely find and bring back the past you."

[Main Story 18-23] "Don't make it hard for me to find you, understand?"

This is reflected so painfully in [Dim Light SR] where MC takes Li Zeyan to light lanterns and he writes a poem on it. Elex didn't translate the poem and, at the time, I was somewhat lenient. But after seeing references made to it... ELEX, COME OVER HERE. I JUST WANNA TALK.

So, Li Zeyan wrote:

The last line about his wish having come true already is the same in both CN and ENG.

He wrote the last line of this poem by Xin Qiji, one of many great poets in Chinese history. Here I have provided Irving Y. Lo's translation of the poem from "Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry".

The Night of the Lantern Festival, to the Tune of ‘Green Jade Table’ - Xin Qiji [1140–1207]

One night’s wind made a thousand trees burst into flower,     And breath down still more     Showers of fallen stars. Splendid horses, carved carriages, fragrance filled the road. Music resounded from paired flutes,     Light swirled on water-clock towers.     All night long, the fabled fish-dragons danced. Gold-threaded jacket, moth- or willow-shaped hair ornaments     Melted into the throng, giggling, a trail of scents. In the crowd I looked for her a thousand and one times,     And all at once, as I turned my head,     I was startled to find her     Among the lanterns where the candles were growing dim.

The bold is Li Zeyan's lines in Chinese.

@love-p typed up an amazing post about the context of this poem:

Regarding Xin Qiji, and the political context of this poem—he was a military general during the Southern Song dynasty, sidelined due to the policy of appeasement against the Jurchen.

The poem reflects his unfortunate political circumstances by contrasting the brilliance and liveliness of the Lantern Festival and the single-minded search of the narrator for just one, special, woman, ultimately finding her in the darkness with the dimming lights.

To the writer, the brilliance and beauty of the festival pale in comparison to his goal. He is not swayed by all this finery, and in fact is willing to reject the light, for what he has held in his heart all along.

Xin Qiji was a deeply passionate patriot, which ultimately led to his discharge and suppression in the changing political tides of the era. He spent decades in seclusion pretending to be indifferent to the world, but he never lost his love for his country, and held fast to his beliefs, even when they could (and did) cost him heavily.

There's other romantic interpretations of this poem, such as the woman deciding to stop and wait when she realized this man was looking for her. She is willing to be with him.

Another interpretation is that, these two are already lovers, and when he turns his head and sees her it reflects how your happiness was right beside you all along and you just needed to turn your head, instead of searching ahead desperately.

So, back to Li Zeyan and MC. He is quoting a poem from someone who suffered for holding fast to their beliefs and who can still ignore everything around him, even the light, to find what he's held in his heart all this time. HM.

@unluckysatellite also pointed out something great, which I bolded for emphasis:

I realized this just now, but MC and Victor have this narrative theme where they keep losing and finding each other, both in the main story and in their dates. The main story plays this out pretty seriously: Victor and MC meet as kids, and then Victor loses MC because of Black Swan, which causes him to search for her the next 17 years. Victor and MC meet in chapter 1 and then Victor loses MC in chapter 18 and he vows to find her again. Victor finding MC in that HBS trap during chapter 10 and nearly losing her at the end of the chapter (with the added irony of him realizing that she was the girl he was looking for all this time). YMMV if you consider MC losing Victor in chapter 14 since a black hole sent Victor traveling into the future, but both managed to keep contact with each other in the time he was away.

BTW the reference is that his [Dim Light SR] was released in 2018 for the real lantern festival holiday. Then in 2019 all the men send gems as gifts during the holiday. Li Zeyan sends mail with the title of "Turning My Head" and the body of the message is him promising to go to the lantern festival with MC this year too, but he reminds her to stay beside him and don't make it so that when he turns his head he can't find her.

THE CONSTANT

Now another common theme that appears over and over again in Li Zeyan's character arc is him being a constant amongst all the change.

[Main Story 11-19] MC confronts Li Zeyan about his overprotectiveness: "It doesn't matter if it's the previous me, or the me in the present, all of them are [a single] me. Do you understand?"

[Winter Infatuation SSR Sinful Late-Night Snack Call] "Of course I'm me. No matter when, the person at your side is always the same me."

@sharinluna wrote a great section about Li Zeyan in Chapters 19-21 and IMO these chapters just hammer in this theme more. Even in a world where none of the men remember MC, Li Zeyan still cruises along (mostly) the same as usual. He really is a steady constant when everything's gone topsy-turvy for the poor MC.

I commented about this in my post on Chapter 19's use of horror but hilariously Li Zeyan is the most normal out of the rest of the men. If the MC weren't around, it's likely he wouldn't be involved in so much craziness. This is reflected in how the MC thinks about how he'd be better off without her in [Main Story 20-4] and her dream version of him in [Main Story 19-6].

However, I always end up thinking about Alfred Lord Tennyson's quote on this topic: "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

I honestly think this is one of the themes of the game too, shown at the end of Chapter 19 where MC doesn't regret holding onto her memories and experiences with everyone, even if that means going back to the cruel real world.

Because the game (hopefully) isn't going to invalidate our experiences with everyone that means that Li Zeyan is not better off for not meeting the MC.

IMO love doesn't have to do something monumental like change your world but I think it adds something to our experience as humans (no matter its form: platonic, romantic, compassionate, selfless, etc). This is why I love this game so much because it's all about love in its entirety.

So, even if Li Zeyan's character isn't changed in any earth-shattering way from meeting or not meeting the MC the fact that he chooses MC again and again over everything else means something. He is willing to sacrifice everything to find her, no matter how long it takes him or how many worlds and times he has to traverse. His constant state is choosing MC.

I'm so scared about the Banquet of the Fallen Moon. Why did he turn into a demon lord SOBS when he promised his father he wouldn't go down that path? If it's connected to MC... OOF.

THE LOVE AND SUPPORT

Here we reach the relationship the two do have! Uh, I swear I wasn't intentionally picking the sad quotes...

[Main Story 6-16] "In your eyes? Am I that unapproachable?" He says this but then grabs her hand and holds it through his company, not caring who sees them.

[Main Story 10-25] "I'm sorry, I came late. I won't lose you a second time. Nothing will be able to hurt you again. In the future, let me fight your battles for you, just like how you protected me that year, alright?"

[Main Story 11-14] "I won't hesitate to pay any price in order to let you avoid all dangers and affairs... The things you wish to do, I will release you and let you do them. However, now isn't the time. That's why, you need to be a bit more obedient."

[Chapter 11] in general shows his protectiveness over MC and consideration for her. From caring for her in the hospital, to sending her between work and home, and even the SP detail (even though it became overwhelming).

[Main Story 18-3] "... Every time I call you dumb isn't to insult you. [...] It's acknowledgement."

IMO these are all more examples of how Li Zeyan is like a steady mountain or a tree that provides a canopy and safe harbor for the MC to take her time growing up under. He wants her to better herself because he cares for her (like a quintessential Capricorn) but at the same time he knows when to back off and let her go at her own speed.

Li Zeyan will be there every step of the way with MC, just a little bit ahead of her so she has a direction but always ready to catch her should she fall. Unlike a certain BS liar COUGHS.

@sharinluna also wrote this great post on Reddit about how the dates reflect Li Zeyan's patience and awareness of the imbalance in his and MC's relationship. Chapter 11 shows this too where he realizes he was overwhelming her and brings back the "old" Li Zeyan to wait for her to make a decision on her own feelings.

Finishing off this essay with some quotes:

[Instant Moment SSR] "There is no such thing as eternity, only every single moment together with you."

This is so cute since it's said by the man who can traverse time. It's the little snapshot moments he can get with MC that mean the most to him.

There's actually another related quote which comes from [Winter Infatuation SSR Sinful Late-Night Snack Call]. This happens when they're talking about the meaning of the Ephemere shop and Li Zeyan quotes a poem about mayflies.

The Chinese line is from the poem "Former Ode on the Red Cliffs" by Su Shi:

"We are like mayflies enjoying a flicker of life in this world, and as infinitesimal as a grain in the sea."

Ironically, Li Zeyan is not asking much at all of the world. He is someone who has everything but all he wants is just a peaceful life with the love of his life and he has shown again and again that he's willing to give up everything for her...

But the universe spits in his face (because tragic Chinese archetype of Crown Prince/Emperor LOL) and makes him suffer so much just for wanting some fleeting moments of joy in this flickering human life they both have.

[linklethehistorian]

Randou and the Sins of Season 3's Fifteen Adaption (Interlude)

Episode  27 — The God of Fire: A Post-Section Addendum

Forgive me for backtracking for a brief moment, but in hindsight, there were two small things — particularly relating to the subsection of this section, which is titled “The Confrontation with Sheep at the Arcade” — that it seems I failed to properly address in my initial posts on this subject.

After realizing this mistake during the long struggle to get back on track with rolling out the rest of my article, it became apparent to me that I had three choices: I could go back and try to edit this information into the main article, hoping that it would fit well into what already existed without clashing with the carefully written transitions between sections, I could wait until the very end of my article and then make a post addressing the matter in hindsight, risking my audience becoming and remaining conflicted over certain bits of information until then, and being totally unaware of the one thing I accidentally skipped over, or I could simply make a separate addendum such as this to address it here and now, as soon as possible, and not have to worry about fitting it directly into the previous section for the time being — without having to give up either the chance to talk about it now or even to potentially go back at the end and try to fit it back into the main article at my leisure, as well.

Naturally, as I’m more than sure you can already see for yourself, given that you’re reading this, I decided to go with the last of these options, as I felt that this was the one that would offer the greatest amount of opportunities, with the least amount of potential problems that could come out of it. As for whether or not I will eventually, upon the completion of this very long analysis and review, attempt to backtrack and merge this added data into its rightful place in the main piece, that is something which I will have to decide when the time comes, even if I have a very optimistic outlook on this prospect right now, but in the meantime, I will just be sharing it with you here, and placing the link to this post somewhere in the Masterlist between the discussions on Episode 27 and Episode 28.

On one final note before we jump into this, if this post seems a bit sloppier than usual or just flows less smoothly than the rest of the article in any way, I truly apologize, but if that is indeed the case, it is likely due to the fact that I have had much less time to plan for my discussion of these things than I have had for everything else I’ve talked about up until this point. I promise that if in hindsight I should sense any need for it, I will attempt to re-write it in a better, more comprehensible format at a later date, but at the moment, I’m afraid that this is the absolute best that I can do if I am to get this information out in a timely manner.

Now, with that said, let’s go ahead and get into the actual things I’d like to talk about.

Dazai’s Previous Invitation to Join Sheep, and the Gang’s Initial Misunderstanding About His Affiliation

Okay, so this one is honestly a little embarrassing for me to admit to forgetting in hindsight, purely because of how often the subject is referenced in the novel despite being completely removed from the television series’ adaption, but in earnest, part of the reason I didn’t even think about it at the time was due to just how inconsequential this information was in the grand scheme of things; nevertheless, for those of you who truly want to know everything that was changed or omitted from Fifteen in the anime — or even just want to know more about the events and details of Dazai’s life — these facts probably still will be of some interest, so I will mention them anyway.

Contrary to how the show presents it, in the original version of the tale, Sheep actually do not immediately look upon Dazai as a threat when they first meet him in the arcade, nor does it even cross their minds that he might be a member of the Port Mafia; rather, their first thought upon seeing and conversing with him was simply that he had to be someone whom Chuuya had been looking to recruit into their own ranks.

Interestingly, it was also very briefly mentioned much earlier in the novel by Dazai himself — back during his and Chuuya’s initial meeting in Suribachi City — that the bandaged brunet actually was once handed a formal invitation by Sheep to join their organization but ultimately refused their offer, although this does not appear to be the reason why the gang now mistakes him as a potential new member of their group, given that, at the very least, the members there in the arcade seem not to recognize him whatsoever; in fact, they even question Chuuya’s behavior in seemingly having chosen to induct him without first receiving the council’s pre-approval — an accusation which Chuuya curiously, actively chooses not to correct, likely purely because he does not want to look like a traitor in their eyes, should they realize Dazai was actually with the Mafia. Indeed, it isn’t until Dazai purposefully outs himself as a mafioso in order to stop them from taking the redhead away with them that Sheep realizes the truth of things — at which point Dazai ends up having their captive members released in order to appease them, as we see in the anime, and things then go on to unfold as I have described previously in my article.

However, while of this might be very intriguing and, at the least, a bit insightful into how Dazai knows as much about the organization as he does, to be totally earnest about the matter, I must reiterate all the same that the removal of this information from the show was on the whole a very wise one that I can wholeheartedly support, for its existence truly doesn’t affect the overall storyline in any majorly impactful way, whatsoever — so much so that even I, a very dedicated Fifteen enthusiast, was able to easily forget about its existence during every one of the multiple times I wrote, read, and re-wrote the section dealing with the episode in which it mostly would have been present.

Looking back on it from that angle, I suppose, then, that my failure to bring it up prior to this probably did not change all that much, but still, in the interest of transparency and thoroughness, I wanted to make a small addendum post about it, anyway — and besides, there was already another matter regarding the arcade scene that I needed to speak on to begin with, so why pass up the opportunity to do this at the same time? There was genuinely no reason why I should have resisted.

Sheep Truly Being the First to Leave the Arcade in the Novel & DarkestJay8686’s English Translations

Now, in regards to that other matter I needed to address, for anyone who might have already read and/or started reading only DarkestJay8686′s English translation of the Fifteen light novel upon discovering my article, I am sure that there is probably a lot of confusion resulting from the conflict between my assurance that Sheep were the first to leave the Arcade before Dazai and Chuuya, and DarkestJay’s translation, which depicts the exact opposite of this, and for that I deeply apologize — not because I am wrong about it (as I am not), but rather, because I failed to discuss this apparent contradiction back when I first brought it up, even though, rightfully, I should have.

Be that as it may, I need you to understand that I did actually have a specific reason for why I had previously chosen refrain from talking about it, as although I did sincerely think about and even strongly consider adding mention of this whole ordeal to my disclaimers and notes at the beginning of this article back when I had first prepared to post it, in the end, I was simply too concerned that it would be considered somehow rude or unfair for me to do so.

My train of thought back then was — mistakenly — that to express anything other than complete praise and pure, unconditional endorsement of DarkestJay’s work would be to instantly and irrevocably make myself come off as a disrespectful, ungrateful monster who has no appreciation for the people who dedicate their free time to making these stories available to non-Japanese speaking members of the fandom, no matter how kindly I may have tried to word what I had to say. I was utterly terrified that, even if I spoke highly of the translation as a whole and encouraged people to read it, if I also had explicitly addressed the reason why I personally did not recommend using it as the sole source of knowledge of the book at the same time and mentioned any of the mistakes I found to be made within their interpretation of events, then I would be seen as criticizing the author for things that truthfully were likely to largely not be in any way their fault. Obviously, in hindsight, this line of thinking was not the best to listen to in light of the misunderstandings it could cause, and I realize that, but these were nevertheless my thought processes at the time; having had time to think deeper on the circumstances now, though, I of course have also come to the conclusion that none of these other concerns of mine need be had, so long as I try to approach the matter as delicately and respectfully as I can, however big these fears may have been at the time, and so, I intend to finally speak about it at long last.

Furthermore, while I in no way want to seem like an opportunistic profiting off of someone else’s misfortune — as I assure you that I, too, was quite saddened to hear of their struggles and wish it hadn’t happened — seeing as that their work was nonetheless sadly removed from WattPad, and they had to relocate to another platform where they wouldn’t have to fear censorship again, thus requiring me to have to provide y’all with a new link that actually works and leads you to where you need to go to read it, I think that is really the perfect time for me to preface my sharing of that new link with this little PSA of a sort.

So, if you’re keen on getting that new link I mentioned and want to learn about the reason why my information about Sheep’s departure from the arcade doesn’t line up with their translations, as well as why it’s inadvisable to use their otherwise mostly excellent translations as your sole source of info on Fifteen rather than reading it alongside the other trusted translation I have provided at the beginning of my article, feel free to hop on over to this post to find out.

[View the masterlist]

[iohourtime]

Kiokuya (The Memory Eraser) Review - With Spoilers

Since I read the book, sort of followed the filming progress, and read a bunch of interviews (that all sounded the same after a while), I should finish off by writing a review for the movie itself! 

Thanks to the pandemic, I was stuck at home watching Netflix for 7 months, so I’ve watched all sorts of movies & TV; sadly most are in the average to crappy category. To me, Kiokuya was probably in the average to slightly above average category. In other words, there are elements I like and there are things I feel the movie can improve on.

The review is a bit long since apparently I have a lot of thoughts about the script.😅 I pretty much summed up my thoughts in the “theme” section. If you are interested in the book / movie differences & things from the DVD visual commentary, I included those in the script & characters section. (Movie Walker included highlights from the visual commentary here.) . If you want to discuss the movie but don’t want to put spoilers on Twitter, leave me a message.

Theme:

The movie’s main theme is obviously about memory. If a memory is making your life miserable, or even stopping you from living, is it better to erase it? Or do all memories, even bad ones, shape you as a human? If someone’s memory of you is gone, are you killed in their minds? If you think someone is better off forgetting you, do you have the right to ask Kiokuya to erase their memories of you? Are the memories gone forever? If you have the power to erase someone’s memory, what are your responsibilities? And to some extent, what are the criteria to evaluate each request and what due diligence should you do before you accept this task? These were the questions the movie wanted you to ask. You know because the movie kept hitting you on the head through the dialogue! That’s probably my main complaint about the movie.

I didn’t study film so I don’t know the theories, but I think being heavy handed at telling you what you should be thinking is like listening to a textbook; it robs the audience of the chance to experience and internalize what they saw, and as a result, they are less able to connect emotionally to the film. That’s not to say people are not moved by the movie and empathize with the characters. I feel that it had more to do with the actors than the script though.

I think the cinematography was generally nice. I liked how they used the drone shots to film the beautiful Hiroshima scenery. The sunset scene was beautiful. The music did not seem intrusive. Other than that, I’m not sure I have more to say. (Fine. Yamada looked good in the plaid shirts and his hair was on point.)

Script vs Book: (Spoiler alert from here on!)

Kiokuya, the movie, was an adaptation of a “horror” novel of the same name. Although there were horror elements, mostly because Kiokuya was kind of a shadowy figure, even the novel itself was focused more on humanity. The original story was divided into 4 parts; the first 3 parts were really 3 separate short stories that explored different reasons people have for wanting their memories erased. The final part was about Kiokuya herself. The Ryoichi character simply served as a bridge between the stories. Here’s a brief description:

Kyoko - A while ago, she was attacked in a dark alley but was saved at the last minute. Even though she was unharmed, she developed a crippling phobia of the dark, so she locked herself inside her home at night and was not able to live a normal life. She and Ryoichi were kinda but not really dating, and Ryoichi, being a typical guy, figured he could fix her. Kyoko tried everything but as a last resort, she asked Kiokuya to erase her memory of the attack. Since her relation with Ryoichi was based almost entirely on overcoming the phobia, she forgot him too. Through this incident, Ryoichi remembered how Maki had her memory erased when she was 5 or 6 - she saw her mom confessing to her dad that she had an affair with her uncle. Kiokuya might have erased Maki’s memory a second time when she was 10-12. Finally, he realized he “forgot” about his year-long investigation of Kiokuya with Takahara & others. It seemed like he was doggedly pursuing Kiokuya because he felt violated more than his undying love for Kyoko. In his own words, he didn’t try to rebuild his relationship with Kyoko again after she forgot about him. There was nothing stopping him, so his feelings towards Kyoko were not that deep.

Takahara - He was a 30 year old ikemen lawyer, though like the movie, he was dying. The chapter focused on his touching friendship with his assistant. Takahara was also close with Nanami, a suicidal, 17-year-old daughter of a client who became very attached to him. When Takahara found out Nanami planned to kill herself after he died, he asked Kiokuya to erase her memory of him so that she would live on.

Misao & Kaname - They were childhood friends and Misao started crushing on Kaname. She confessed and was rejected, but after that, they were not able to be friends like before. She figured if she erased everything about Kaname, they may be able to start over and become friends again without the awkward feelings.

Maki - Ryoichi thought Maki was looking for Kiokuya to erase some unpleasant memories. Then he found out she was Kiokuya, who inherited her ability from her grandfather. In the end, Maki confessed to the burden of being Kiokuya and Ryoichi told her he would support her and that she didn’t have to do it alone. Maki decided to erase anything Kiokuya related in his memory, but their friendship remained intact. Oh, Maki was 17 in the book and also had a crush on Ryoichi. She erased his memories many times before. Like in the movie, she also would like Ryoichi to love her just once, although he never ever saw her as anyone other than his annoying little sister. 😅

The director of the movie, Hirakawa Yuichi, also wrote or co-wrote the script. While the movie stuck to the themes of the novel, the motivations were completely different. Kyoko and Misao were both rape victims, Takahara now wanted to protect his young daughter from the sadness of his death, and Maki was herself kidnapped by a psychopath when she was a kid. I guess Hirakawa needed to pump up the drama and felt the stakes were not high enough for a 2 hour movie? There is always some uneasiness with using rape and trauma to move the story along. I guess there is a difference between this and the usual example of “fridging a female character”, i.e. kill a love interest of the hero to motivate him on some journey. Ryoichi was motivated by being erased and he actually gradually realized he should not push for restoring Kyoko’s memories if it was her wish. He only found out what happened to her at the end of the movie. Considering their relationship in the movie was a lot more serious, they couldn’t really use the phobia of darkness reason. However, it would also take something really big for Kyoko to want her memory erased while not talking to Ryoichi beforehand. Anyway, I really don’t see a way out of this.

For Misao though, I didn’t think they needed to make her a victim of the same serial rapist, especially when they use the same reason as the book for erasing Kaname. I suppose they need to explain why Nanami (and later Ryoichi) was looking into them? But they could just have the doctor referred the case (who appeared to be breaking doctor-patient confidentiality?! Just me?) In fact, the whole Misao / Kaname storyline didn’t really do much other than allowing Ryoichi to find out from Kaname that Kiokuya was a young girl.

Maki’s childhood trauma was also a bit excessive. I can’t see it as anything other than to get Ryoichi out to Hiroshima to talk to Grandpa. While finding out mom was “dealing with” uncle would be traumatic for a young child, it might not be dramatic enough for a movie.

Ryoichi & Maki’s origins were also changed. They were now raised in Hiroshima and moved to Tokyo to attend university. The only reason was to place Grandpa-Kiokuya in Hiroshima after the bombing. While I liked the grandpa scene, was it necessary? They already covered the “Kiokuya after WWII” with the interview with the elderly woman. I think they could still keep Grandpa, since he was Kiokuya (and ironically suffering from Alzheimer’s) but maybe just skip the elderly woman part and use those minutes to build Ryoichi & Kyoko’s relationship! 

Upgrading Ryoichi & Kyoko’s relationship to being engaged gave him more incentive to look for Kiokuya, but all we got to see was 1 proposal scene and some snapshots, which made it harder for us to understand the loss Ryoichi experienced when Kyoko forgot him. Ultimately, I feel that more time should be given to the “before” times. They don’t even need that much. If done effectively like the movie Searching with John Cho, 5 minutes or so of clips would be enough to get us to care more. I’m not saying people won’t care, but it’s true that there are people who didn’t quite feel it. Yamada basically had to sell it with longing looks at Renbutsu, so how deeply you feel for them depends on whether you buy it or not.

Takahara’s story might have been changed because of who they cast. Also, Takahara & Nanami’s relationship in the book was kinda weird, considering Nanami actually loved him and she was 17 while he was 30. I definitely cannot agree with how Movie Takahara wanted to erase his daughter’s memory to spare her the pain of losing him. It reminded me of that Black Mirror episode where the mom put in a blocker to shield her daughter from bad things. It ended up messing up the girl & broke their relationship. Young children are resilient and the sadness would eventually change into something else, which would shape their characters. Also, just because she forgot her birth father didn’t mean she would suddenly get along with her stepfather. I won’t even get into the whole consent thing. It was a good thing Maki did not follow through.

Less good was what Movie Maki did to Ryoichi & Kyoko though. When I found out Movie Ryoichi & Kyoko were engaged instead of “pre-dating” like in the book, I was quite worried they would have Movie Maki erase Ryoichi from Kyoko’s mind for selfish reasons. I was hoping that maybe he got erased by mistake, but unfortunately, the script did go with the jealousy angle, which made Maki extremely unsympathetic.

In the visual commentary, they said they rewrote the ending because it didn’t fit. Maki erased her entire existence from Ryoichi's mind as penance for what she did. (I think initially, they were going with the book ending where Maki just erased Kiokuya from his head.) In the end, the actual cut used in the movie was more ambiguous - they “left it to the audience” to decide how much Maki erased and whether Ryoichi & Kyoko got a second chance at happiness. (The director said it ended on a hopeful note. Take it how you want.)

It’s unclear if Movie Maki erased Ryoichi’s memories more than once, but Book Maki had done it many times. Even though Book Maki seemed more responsible with her powers and didn’t slip up like Movie Maki, she did wipe part of Ryoichi’s memories without his consent. Ryoichi said that she didn’t have to do this alone and she could lean on him, so why didn’t she? Also, losing all that memory got to have some long term effect on him, right? In the movie, it was worse because Maki took the “easy” way out by erasing herself. Yes, she was punishing herself, but shouldn’t the more courageous thing to do was to own up to what she had done and work for Ryoichi’s (& Kyoko’s) forgiveness?

Speaking of Ryoichi’s forgiveness, I actually saw some viewers calling Ryoichi a cad for telling Maki that he would always protect her and be by her side to protect her. Apparently they seemed to think he was in love with Maki and forgot all about Kyoko. Well, I think in that moment, there were 3 things going on: 1) Takahara told him that it was better to forgive and that there will be justice in other ways, 2) he understood why it was devastating to Kyoko to remember what happened and 3) Maki was like his little sister. His immediate desire to comfort his friend overrode the anger and betrayal he might have felt. Had Maki not erased his memory around 2 minutes after, who knew if they would have a more substantial talk? He didn’t even have a chance to talk to Kyoko. (I suspect Maki would have tried to “spare him” by erasing his relationship with Kyoko as well. He still ended up at the cafe because he could remember physically going there a lot.)

Overall, I think the movie was a bit unfocused due to some extraneous storylines and having too much exposition, which was a disservice to some of the characters. It failed to show how their relationships build, like Ryoichi & Takahara became buddies over what seemed like a week! I wish they trimmed a couple of the minor stories and used that time to go deeper on the main lines.

Characters / Actors:

Yoshimura Ryoichi (Yamada Ryosuke)

I was watching the movie and halfway through when it hit me… Yamada’s Ryoichi was… normal? I mean obviously quite good looking in the boy-next-door kind of way, but Ryoichi was a regular, run-of-the-mill university student, who was normally an optimistic and forgiving but happened to be dealing with heartbreak at the moment. Seriously, if you’ve watched Yamada’s other works, his characters are usually kind of comedic, sort of pathetic, occasionally brilliant, psychotic, or… non-human. (Very odd roles for a Johnny’s actor.) He probably has not been this normal since the 24Hr drama. He still cried a lot, so that’s familiar.

OK, let’s get back on topic. Since Book Ryoichi functioned more as a character that connects the short stories rather than a real character, I didn’t have hopes for the movie version. Surprisingly, Movie Ryoichi came across as a real person and I did care what happened to him. While we didn’t get to see how Ryoichi & Kyoko were in happier times, he was able to convey the longing and slight awkwardness in their interaction when he tried to talk to her after. Similarly, in the scene where he learned of Takahara’s death, you could tell what was going through his mind even though he said nothing. Same with the final “confrontation” with Maki. Even though he didn’t say much, his eyes conveyed the emotions subtly: the longing, shock, confusion, etc. Overall, he was quite subtle and natural. As the articles say, he managed to “suppress his aura” and played an average guy. I hope he can play more of these subtle types of roles in future. (It is unfortunate that a lot of people have preconceived notions about Johnny’s actors, to put it politely. It’s like the reverse of the “fan blinder” that we sometimes get accused of having.)

Now there are some discussions as to whether he overacted in the crying scenes. The main “crying” scenes were probably 1) confession to grandpa in Hiroshima, 2) in the rain, and 3) reading the letter. I’ve seen people say he overacted in either 1) or 2).

When I first watched the Hiroshima scene, I did feel that his crying may have been a bit much because I was watching the movie with just Japanese subtitles, so I missed an important detail: Ryoichi told his mom he was going to Hiroshima to confront his past. When you consider that Ryoichi had been carrying the guilt for “causing” Maki’s kidnapping for 15 years, it was totally reasonable for him to prostrate himself in front of Grandpa. He would also be relieved when Grandpa told him the statute of limitation was over and he should forgive himself. As an aside, according to the director in the visual commentary, Yamada cried in the first take of the scene. Hirakawa said “Aren’t you crying too much?” Yamada said “OK, I’ll do another take without crying.” However, when the Director was cutting the movie together, he suddenly saw Ryoichi’s mental journey and ended up using the first take because it was the logical conclusion to the closure he got.

In the rain scene, he just learned about Kyoko’s attack. Knowing how much hurt she endured and how he did nothing to support and comfort her, he was still in a state of shock when he got knocked down. Then the dam burst and he cried hysterically. That seemed quite reasonable to me. I was more shocked that nobody checked on the guy who fell on the pavement and was crying. Pedestrians were cold! So I don’t really understand the objection to that scene. Maybe they thought this was something that happened a while ago and/or he didn’t love Kyoko that much, so he wouldn’t be that emotional?

I don’t think people have issues with the letter scene? Narratively, it made the most sense since he was close with Takahara, who was literally speaking to him from the grave via the letter. Oh, they talked about filming the letter scene in the visual commentary. Yamada was just reading the letter in silence and they added in Takahara’s narration in post production. Since he wanted to save the emotional outburst for the real take, he did not dare to look at the letter during the rehearsal.

One last thing, Yamada and Yoshine spoke in Hiroshima-ben when they were talking amongst each other. I have horrible listening skills and while I think he used some slang or phrasing, his accent still seemed mostly Kanto. It’s like if I call a bunch of people “wankers” with a Canadian accent; it doesn’t make me sound English. Maybe someone can tell me just how well (or not) he did.

Kawai Maki (Yoshine Kyoko)

I have only watched Yoshine in the drama Stay Tuned and I liked her there. She played this airhead character who could be super annoying if the balance was off, yet she came across as likeable. I think she portrayed Maki very well in this movie. Of course, I knew she was Kiokuya going in, so even at the beginning, you could see some of her subtle reactions to the Kiokuya discussions. I really liked her chemistry with Yamada - they felt like they could have been lifelong friends. While she played the annoying little sister part quite well, you could also see the pain she felt when she had to make difficult choices like erasing Nanami’s memory. Throughout the movie, you could sense her regret for what she did to Ryoichi. Her emotions in the final scene were also very raw. While Maki’s characterization was problematic, Yoshine was really good at playing that character and you might even be sympathetic towards her. Also, I feel that her Hiroshima-ben might be more on point? Some people didn’t buy that she was in love with Ryoichi the whole time. I thought the flashbacks made it pretty clear but I’ve also read the book, so there’s that.

In the visual commentary, they were talking about their various acting styles. Yoshine said she carried her emotions with her even after the director shouted cut. So when she was shooting the last scene, she was still crying furiously afterwards. Yamada said she was like an acting monster - she could get right into the emotions even during the table read. It was funny how different she is from Yamada and Renbutsu. They are the flip-the-switch type - when the director yells cut, it was like they woke up from a dream into a different world. She also apologized to Yamada when they were watching the scene where she confessed to selfishly erasing Kyoko’s memory of Ryoichi.😅

Takahara Tomoaki (Sasaki Kuranosuke)

I have not seen Sasaki’s other projects, so I had no idea what to expect. His Takahara came  across as pretty charming, easy going, and playful, though you could feel his love for his daughter and the hard decision he had to make. He also had a natural chemistry with the other cast and was very believable. While I disagree with what Takahara wanted, Sasaki’s acting as Takahara made sense. I don’t know what more to say. It is probably expected since he is a veteran and is generally well regarded as an actor.

Sawada Kyoko (Renbutsu Misako)

I have only seen Renbutsu in Hagaren. I liked her character there. I also liked how Yamada decided to break the ice with her back then by asking if she has any friends. (She had more friends than him. 😅) To be honest, there wasn’t much for her to do in this movie, although I think she was believable as the very confused Kyoko. She was apprehensive about Ryoichi in the “after” scenes, who was honestly coming across too strong. I don’t think Ryoichi & Kyoko really had crackling sexual chemistry based on the proposal scene, but they seemed like a cute couple. They were pretty cute together in the behind-the-scenes featurette when they took the “dating photos”. I wish those dates were included in the movie.

Conclusion:

As you can see above, I have some general issues about the script but I think the actors elevated the story. The movie could have been better if it streamlined some of the storylines. Right now, it was trying to go for a deeper message but the stories themselves were a bit too superficial to accomplish that. I suppose the problem was that the original novel was more like an anthology of short stories dealing with memory, so it was hard to create a through line for a movie.

[minaminokyoko]

Farewell, Dresden Files

“Everyone I know goes away in the end

And you could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

If I could start again a million miles away

I would keep myself

I would find a way.”

I never wanted to be here, and yet I am anyway. 

I am walking away from The Dresden Files.

“No more.”

One major spoiler for Battle Ground below. You’ve been warned. 

Some of you will already have heard the news if you follow my Harry/Murphy collection on AO3, Landfill Heaven, but I thought I should get my feelings out here as well since I know the fandom still has a presence left on Tumblr. I wanted to talk a bit more about why I’m exiting the series after Battle Ground. 

Disclaimer: I did not read Battle Ground. I was going to, but I was moving out of my house into an apartment and was too busy to read it the day it released. However, my friend was reading it and so I told her to flag me down for certain things because if they happened, then there would be no point for me to spend $16 on something I would refuse to read.

And he fucking did it.

Jim fucking Butcher killed Karrin Murphy.

Any of you who know me know that I’ve said a thousand times that killing either Murphy or Thomas before the last book in the series would be my breaking point.

And I broke.

I screamed. I cried. I punched my punching bag while screaming and crying. Karrin Murphy and Harry Dresden are my OTP. They are my favorite goddamn couple aside from Castle and Beckett, for God’s sake. Maybe that’s it. It’s fate. Castle and Beckett were written incompetently towards the end of the show, so maybe this was just fucking inevitable. 

And you know what? I’d have hated reading Karrin Murphy dying in the last books in the series, but if Butcher hadn’t utterly abandoned her fucking character arc and treated her like dirt after the hiatus and had written her romance with Harry with all the shit we BEGGED him for after Skin Game, I’d have accepted it. I’d have accepted it if Karrin and Harry went out hand in hand defeating the ultimate evil or she went first and he met her in heaven and that was their happy ending even with the darkness of him having to die. 

But this shit?

I do not accept this shit.

Fuck you, Jim.

Fuck you for the years and years of slow building trust and friendship and true love only for you to throw the entire goddamn fucking thing in the fucking bin like it doesn’t matter.

Fuck you for the disrespect of making us invest completely in her and Harry and then not showing a goddamn fucking thing about the romantic relationship that we wanted to see.

Fuck you for shortchanging the faithful fans for whatever the fuck are your personal goddamn reasons for forcing her to exit the series when you have that many books left before the end.

Fuck you for killing the love of Harry’s life only five books after you did it the first fucking time because you can’t think of anything better to do and you truly think that’s the way to “keep it interesting” or because you just wanted to make everyone angry and sad or because you just decided now you hate Murphy.

Fuck you for listening to any of the toxic anti Murphy crowd. 

I don’t care if you had reasons. I don’t care about context. I don’t care about anything you thought was justification for doing this to such a powerfully written character. I don’t care about your endgame. I don’t care about your plan.

Do you know what I did care about?

Karrin fucking Murphy and Harry fucking Dresden.

And do you know why I quit after years of loyal service to this series? The real reason is not just because I ship it and it’s my OTP. The real reason is that Harry Dresden became this beloved character to me directly because of Karrin Murphy. Her constant love, friendship, emotional support, and literal fucking ass-kicking is exactly why Harry developed into such an incredible man who is thoughtful and kind and strong and layered and funny and charming. Murphy saved Harry. He would not be that man without her at his side along his journey, and Murphy would not be the fucking badass yet loving woman that she is without Harry’s support as well. They are each other’s yin and yang. They are each other’s safe place. I don’t know what made you ignore that fact or forget it or change your mind, but that’s the way you fucking wrote it. I understand that people change and I don’t have to like what you write, but this is one of the only times in my life where I will look an author dead in the fucking eye and say it:

You were fucking wrong.

This is not only a bad call; this is the worst call you’ve ever made, and that’s saying something. I’ve defended this series a dozen times, but I will not defend this decision. It was not made with the intention of enhancing anything in the story and not for developing the remaining characters. Maybe you’ve already said why you did it or maybe you will in some future interview or podcast, but whatever the reason, fuck you, Jim. Fuck your soul to hell for doing this to such an incredible couple of characters. 

And if this is all part of your trollface, “haha, I did this just to upset the fans” bullshit that you’re always on, then double fuck you for being so immature that you caused this entire section of the fandom to feel utterly fucking betrayed. 

I loved Karrin. I loved Harry. And it is through sheer perseverance and spite that I will someday journey back to writing fics about them that take place prior to Battle Ground. If one thing is certain, I refuse to let Jim Butcher take them away from me. It’s the reverse. I am taking them away from Jim. I am going to separate the characters and give them the fucking writing they deserve and I don’t even care that I’m not technically allowed to do it. I don’t care because they deserve better. This fandom deserves better. This series deserves better.

I know writing this post doesn’t matter. I know no one cares about me having an emotional breakdown that my anchor characters have been taken away from me. I know that there are some toxic fans who will mock me for getting this angry and emotional over it. But I just want it said aloud that what Jim Butcher did to Karrin Murphy was unacceptable for the sake of my own soul. I am letting this series go for good and I am going to try my best to move past it without letting its ruination remove the last bit of good fiction I’ve experienced in the last ten years. I could go straight into denial and forget it ever happened and forget how much I loved the series, but I refuse. I refuse to let Jim’s selfish bullshit sudden personal vendetta against Murphy take away years of enjoyment and of meeting awesome, thoughtful, creative fans. I refuse because he doesn’t deserve that victory over me. I’m sure he knew part of the Harry/Murphy fandom would leave and he was satisfied with that, either because he thinks we’re worthless or because he knows it shouldn’t affect his bottom line enough to be significant. Well, joke’s on you. Harry and Murphy aren’t the only stubborn ones. I’m plenty goddamn stubborn. So everything after this point that I write for the two of them will be in spite of all that Butcher’s done to screw me and the other HarriKarri fans over and I hope someday that karma gets him back for it all.

To all the angry and hurt HarriKarri fans out there, you’re not alone. I once crowned myself as Queen of the HarriKarri trashpile, so trust me when I say that it truly hurts me to write these things, but they need to be said for my own sake and to share with you that I’m still here for all of you if you need it. And if you drop the series like I did, then know I’m happy that I met you and I wish you well. 

This is the end.

Farewell.

Karrin Murphy fucking deserved better.

And so did we.

-Kyoko, a former Dresden Files fan 

[nouveauweird]

bullshit-free guide to actually fucking writing your wip

disclaimer: this isn’t a fool proof method. when it comes to writing advice and techniques for productivity I say keep an open mind, but take what works for you and leave the rest. 

disclaimer 02: this is more or less for people who want to eventually publish, but there may be elements in here that benefit hobby-writers.

Where & When You Write

Some people will tell you that your writing routine needs to be sacred. I don’t quite believe that. You can absolutely curate a space for yourself that you aim to write in, but at the same time, focusing very strongly on the ritual of writing makes it hard to create an adaptable habit. 

The Writing Zone: 

Your desk or table should face away from your bed, my mother always swore by that and it stuck with me. If space doesn’t allow for that, consider putting furniture or some partition up so you can’t see your bed. For some reason, this makes focusing easier. 

For those of you who may be bedridden or have limited space, a good bed-desk is absolutely just as acceptable (I am actually planning to get one). 

If you have a space separate from your bedroom, the follow applies as well: 

Eliminate as much distraction as possible from your desk. Your experience of distraction is unique so do what you gotta do to eliminate it. 

Make sure your space is well lit. Background light is essential to avoid eyestrain when staring at a screen.

Your chair should be comfortable, and support your back. Scoot your ass all the way to the back of the chair and try sitting on your thighs as much as possible to take strain off your lower spine (my chiropractor told me this).

The Writing Time: 

You need to make time for your writing. Summer means the sunshine is waking me up at 5:45 AM and it’s too hot to doze comfortably so my ass is up and writing or reading until 7 AM when I gotta start getting reading for the day. If I have to catch the 10:15 AM bus, I’ve for about 4 hours to work with between waking up and leaving. 

I finished July 2019 Camp Nano by writing in the morning. And I’m not even a morning person, I swear.

Make time for you writing. If you can make a routine you can stick to, excellent, if you have a handful of 5-10 minute time-pockets— also okay! The 30 minutes your dinner is in the oven is just as good a time to write as any other.

How do you learn how to write in tiny time pockets, you ask, well here it is: Micro Writing Sprints and Macro Writing Sprints. The former applies to pockets of time under 15 mins, while the latter applies to pockets of time over 20 mins. All you have to do is set a timer and challenge yourself to write as much as you possibly can. 

Another thing to keep in mind is knowing your personal limits. If your attention suffers and you start to wander after 15 mins, keep your sprints to 5-10 minute blocks, and give yourself 5-15 min breaks where you get up, drink some water, move your body and then come back to your writing. 

How to Write More, Faster

You have to kill your inner editor. Or at least subdue them. You can fix a typo or whatever but that’s really it. The idea is that you need to allow yourself to get into a mindset where you’re only focusing on the writing, your prose is allowed to be a mess. Insecurity and doubt have no place here, only writing.

Your first draft doesn’t need to be clean. You get to clean it up when it’s done. Stephen King says you write your first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open, and I like that saying a lot. The revision process is actually way more fun than I thought it would be. I get to make fun of myself for my weird writing quirks— every single one of my “most common errors” in my Grammarly report is about misusing commas!— and restructure and improve upon the foundation I laid with the first draft.

If you come up with something that changes something significant to your story, write a note about it, and then continue on with your draft like it’s been that way the whole ass time. Do not go back and change things. Just keep writing.

Learning how to do Writing Sprints allows you to quickly get into the habit of putting everything down as fast as you can without overthinking it. Because the real thinking is for later, when you’re revising. Essentially these Sprints enable you to get into the writing zone much faster, so feasibly you could write in small time-pockets at the bus stop, in a waiting room, on the bus—anywhere.

Outlining will make you write faster.

Yes I am pro-outlining, please don’t click away because of that, because I also still think that you need to use what works for you, and if you’re reading this something isn’t working, so please keep your mind open.

The very least you should try is preparing or pre-planning what you need to write for your writing session (no matter how short). You will write more and faster this way. Most of all, you will be less likely to “wander” around. 

I wrote out a small fragment-filled paragraph of what needed to happen in the first few scenes of my July 2019 Camp Nano project and got them out more easily and faster compared to when I didn’t. I wrote sustainedly in 30 minute time-pockets with a great deal of focus when I prepared my writing before actually writing.

Your WIP Outline

What if your outline was also actually super connected to your character sheets? Libbie Hawker makes this sound so easy in her book “Take Off Your Pants” in which she broke down some very interesting ideas on how to build your characters and your story that I hadn’t previously considered. 

What I ended up with was something like this: 

CHARACTER NAME Character: write down the basics; age, career, small relevant facts Flaw: what problem do they have that hinders them External goal: the thing they want that they can’t get unless they overcome their ‘flaw’ Ally:  who pushes the character toward their goal when they stray Antagonist: who has same or aligned goal, but with different motives and execution Events:

Opening scene

Inciting event

Character realizes external goal

Display of flaw

Drive for goal

Antagonist reveal

Thwart 01

Revisiting flaw

New drive for goal

Antagonist attacks

Thwart 02

Changed goal

Ally intervention

Renewed Focus

Battle

Death

Outcome

End: success or failure or neutral result with regards to overcoming ‘flaw’

The stuff under the “Events” category is stuff everyone has seen before in narrative charts, and it won’t be the last time you see it either. You can use or discard or repeat them however many times you need to. I still think this plot chart that I made it great for figuring out pacing, so check that out if you need some help there.

You can also apply these to series, where the character’s “Flaw” and “External goal” change as the narrative progresses. 

All of these parts are explained in Libbie Hawker’s book, but I’m happy to explain if you DM me! 

I applied a central idea for my WIP “Hyacinth Stalks” and all the central characters share a common idea with regards to their flaws. Hawker recommends filling in this information for all central characters, and working in which events which characters will interact in. 

The common idea is that my characters are “holding onto the past to feel more in control in the present”. Juliet Shain maintains habits of maintaining a “perfect athletic body” in the same way she did as a dancer five years earlier. She can’t exercise that same control over her mental health, which she struggles with, because of questions she has pertaining to the accident that lost her her leg remaining unanswered. 

Juliet’s ultimate goal is closure about the accident, which she won’t be able to access unless she stops holding onto the past and in turn the idea that the accident “ruined” her. 

I can apply the same things to Alana Murdock, another central character in “Hyacinth Stalks”, who, because she could only rely on herself after her sister’s murder while her parents grieved and her brother cut all contact, rejects her brother’s attempt to reconnect in order to protect herself in the present despite the stress of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Hyacinth Killer’s disappearance. Her goal, would be to make it to the Olympic Volleyball team, which she won’t be able to do unless she stops isolating herself.

I can now approach the Events sections with more clarity because I know what the characters’ goals are and what their hindrances are as well. I can apply the same ideas to the other central characters, as well as the Serial Killer and weave their stories into the narrative as well. When you have a strong character arc, you can build a strong story.

When you can answer the questions about your character(s) you can fill in those Event sections with far more ease, and begin to break those sections down into chapters, scenes, or beats, with as much or as little detail as you want. Libbie Hawker’s method involves writing out paragraphs worth of scene details before actually getting to the writing. She says this isn’t necessary, but that for her it eliminates “wandering” and any doubts about what needs to be put on the page. 

Personally speaking, I lie somewhere in the middle, wherein my scene outlines involve small paragraph or bullet points for what needs to happen. 

Hawker has written books in 21 days, so there is definitely some magic in her method. In her book, Hawker details that creating her outline took 4 hours. When I outlined “But a Monster” it took a week (5 days), and despite not having had her method then, the existence of the outline made writing the novel much clearer and focused, which my writing had not been prior to admitting I needed to give outlining a chance. 

All writing advice is a tree of wisdom

Take what benefits you most and leave the rest. 

I have fully taken the advice that I have attempted to explain here. I read in “5000 Words Per Hour” by Chris Fox and “Take Off Your Pants” by Libbie Hawker and felt incredibly inspired and motivated, but some of what they say or eschue doesn’t resonate with me or my craft. I have to do what works for my writing, and if I’m happy with the pace the work is going at then alright! 

What I’ve written here is meant to give you new ideas on how to be more productive. I read the books that helped me come up with this because I felt like something was lacking in my writing routine and I had my eyes opened. I hope I have opened yours too and that your work benefits from this.

[lizzybeth1986]

Quick Thoughts on The White People Waambulance, Chapters 18 and 19

• Sorry this QT is coming out so late, guys. I regret to say my heart wasn't really in this one...and it hasn't been with regards to my QTs for a while. This one might be my last, unless we count me finishing them off for the (not rewritten) Book 1. It's been two years since I began, and the last two books made the process honestly really exhausting.

• I clubbed the two finale chapters together because I really couldn't be bothered to do separate ones for both.

• In fact...I won't be doing any of what I have been doing for my QTs so far. I'll be honest to you: I usually do multiple replays, the last few in tandem with the other routes on YouTube. I go through the scenes one by one. I keep note of differences and variations and carefully choose screenshots that will reflect the gist of the scenes.

But I couldn't be bothered to do any of that this time. I pressed the "continue" and then the "end book" buttons as soon as I finished my first run of those chapters. I'm drained, guys. And I don't think I'll be coming back to the TRH series at least, not even for Liam or Hana or Kiara. Maybe my mind will change by the time the second book comes out (update from present-day Lizzy: no it didn't) but I'm not counting on it. And you'll probably know why by the time this QT ends.

• TW: Discussions on racism, both fandom racism and from within the narrative. The last section of this QT is going to be...pretty heavy, guys.

There's also going to be a lot of anti-Drake, anti-Olivia, anti-Madeleine and anti-Penelope content here, so if you like any of those characters...well, you've been warned.

The ensuing post is going to be LONG, and I know a lot of you have good reasons not to deal with long posts, so here's a tldr:

1. The TRR writing team stick to their weird obsession for jobless whiny white men.

2. Read this book once and you'll feel like you're drowning in an ocean of white tears.

3. WOC continue to get scraps from the writing team, even as they boast of being diverse and inclusive. In fact, they're regularly treated as mere tokens, exotic eye-candy or non-entities, while their behaviour is measured on standards that are very different from their white counterparts (this happens in other books as well).

...okay I wasn't expecting for the tldr to be long too 😅

• Me @ my QTs then:

Me @ my QTs now:

• I'll probably be finishing off my TRR Book 1 QT series when I'm a little less burnt out, but for now this is where it ends, I guess.

• So...here is to summarize the last two chapters: Accident happens. LIs mad. Paparazzi sad (but largely get away scot-free). MC and baby safe. At the Council meeting Kiara slam dunks the murderer of Liam's mother with the style and elegance this fandom still refuses to acknowledge her for. The MC is nice to her for like half a second. Last Apple Ball. New clothes for everyone as if they had a Diwali bumper sale the week before or something. Godfrey is somehow responsible for the security (who thought this was a good idea) and seeing the Auvernese Royal Guard outside our doors is SO not-creepy.

We get to see if we impressed our Auvernese and Monterriso allies enough. Bradshaw compliments Kiara for like half a second. Olivia sees the dude from the Q&A session (Jin) at the Ball and (if you pay) you get to see her catch, interrogate and lowkey flirt with him.

Leona and Bianca make it to the ball (where is Bartie Sr. Where are Xinghai and Lorelei. Where is Regina) and this time the narrative makes sure to shoehorn a plot element into their presence here: Leona is there so we can do something about the reveal that she constantly ratted us out to the press for money. ("oh look! Walker Ranch was plot related after all! We have a reason (albeit a flimsy, paper-thin one) to set 9 whole chapters in Texas. Even though we had to literally come up with this bit in the last minute, because really - all we wanted to do as a writing team was nut collectively over Drake Walker")

(I also can't believe that between the time I wrote this line and the time this QT finally came out - they literally found a way to re-fucking-write Book 1 so they could nut collectively over Drake Walker earlier)

• Why were we required to dress down in Texas for these assholes when they couldn't even bother to dig up their Sunday best for this ball??? Oh right, they're Walkers. Hypocrisy runs in the family.

• Good thing is you can choose to banish Leona if you want. She's angry about it for a second then accepts it and leaves. But like what is the point of banishing her when she hardly even bothers to come there in the first place? She's not going to be bawling her eyeballs out saying "boohoo, they threw me out of this country that I spent like five minutes in and never even wanted to visit in the first place".

• Bianca is present at the end of Chapter 18 mainly to deliver to us a plot point at the very last minute: a clue about where we could find proof about Queen Eleanor's murder. Bianca mentions conversations Jackson had with her, and a secret room somewhere. Her leaving the palace and abandoning her children is addressed, and the MC gets to berate her. It's...short.

• Why this important piece of information was given to Bianca when idk LEO could have pitched in and spoken about it, no one knows. Oh wait. I keep forgetting. Bianca is Drake's mother. That's why.

• Okay so Amalas valiantly found out about Leona's involvement in this and gave us tangible proof via photographs. But we're kiiiinda forgetting that the scrutiny and privacy invasions were happening even before we hauled ass to Walker Ranch? Who was responsible for those? Who was the "source" that the Chapter 17 paparazzo was referring to, the one that mentioned they would triple the price for more photos of the Queen/Mother of the Heir (Coz like why would she do that. She's already broke)? How did Amalas come by this information so easily and why was she really that invested? Why is no one asking these questions? Why isn't the group asking these questions? Why are they stupid. Jesus, they're all so stupid. HOW ARE YOU SO STUPID, SQUAD.

• Shortly after they get rid of Leona and Bianca, the rest of the group give the happy couple a choice of toys for the nursery - and that's our final nursery purchase. You can either go for the corgi - which is on brand for the series by now I think - or the lion, which is seen as very Cordonian.

• More party shenanigans. We're nice to Kiara for another half-second. Kiara arranges a photoshoot for us. The team can't pretend to give a fuck anymore about its fans so they will ask us to pay for an edit that I've seen millions of edit-creators in the fandom do wayyyy better. Like let's be honest - compare the engagement shoot pics (messy as they were) to the shoots we eventually got this book. You can see the difference. You can tell which one required more work.

• Anyway, if you choose this scene you wind up going back to the ballroom, dance with your spouse, aaaaand it's time for another diamond option. This time your spouse gives you something you've been craving (mousse parfait for the Liam MC, chocolate chip cookies for the Hana MC, handmade chocolates for the Maxwell MC and a choice between bacon and a veg version of it for the Drake MC. Damn, team TRR. Your favouritism is showing). The couple also writes a letter to the baby that the child can read growing up, in a bit of a parallel to Eleanor's letter to Liam that we see at the end of the chapter.

• After this, Liam reveals he has been pondering over what Bianca said, and wants to find out where they could find that secret room. Cue Liam's own flashback scene for free. Godfrey bringing to Queen the same goblet that the RoE MC found in a flea market in Book 2 for Regina (or perhaps just a similarish one). Liam and Eleanor reciting a rhyme that turns out to have clues for the secret room.

• To give the team credit, they seem to have (finally) put some thought into this. Like this actually feels like Liam's scene. Not one that delivers information about his family but is really about another character. They seem to incorporate all the things Eleanor seemed to be known for - things that were hardly addressed in the books when it came to talk of her. She is shown with a love for books given that books and poetry form an important part of the clues she leaves for Liam. One of the books is about foraging, which is unsurprising considering her love for gardens that was established in Book 1 of TRR.

• So...like...nice job but why was practically everything about Eleanor (including the way she'd stand up to Constantine, her displeasure at the sound of Godfrey and Bartie's names, her nature that Liam not only inherited but also learned) left only for your finale? Why no buildup? Why was I seeing you lot constantly pandering to Drake's family the entire time? Why do I know way, way more about Jackson than I do about Eleanor whose story this WAS? Why is she and her son suddenly getting this burst of attention at the tail end??

• They still manage to push young!Drake into a scene focusing on Liam and Eleanor, so we can see how Eleanor's teaching of how to be a responsible royal began to make inroads into Liam's way of thinking. It's the ultimate irony, that Liam took his mother's advice so much to heart that he lets Drake stay in his home, eat his food, and complain about those dastardly nobles to his heart's content for free.

Poor Eleanor in her grave is like

• Very fitting, how Constantine's proposal to Eleanor happens in the hedge maze, very much like Liam's first declaration of love in Book 1.

• If you're married to Liam, you get an extra letter that's addressed to Liam's future wife. She clearly knew her days were to be numbered by the time she gave birth to that second child at least.

• Lmao @ how the team somehow managed to remember that Eleanor would have been Leo's stepmother too. He's mentioned a couple of times. They didn't have enough time to develop a sprite for young!Leo but somehow had all the time and resources to make one for young!Savannah who had literally no purpose in Drake's flashback scene? Hmm. Hmm.

• They somehow manage to find the twin to the RoE MC's gifted goblet that Godfrey gave Eleanor the night she died, and Liam reveals that he's been obsessed with poisons enough to know that it wasn't the drink that was poisoned, it was the cup itself. Everyone is shook.

• Love that extra little detail about Liam's obsession with learning about poisons and how it's a sign of how deeply Eleanor's death affected him. But tell me honestly if you remember this plot point coming up even once before in any significant way. Even during the one time a person is poisoned in the previous book (by the laws of karma, the victim in this instance is Godfrey's only daughter) Liam shows very few signs of this "obsession". At a time when he has also lost a father. Convenient how something that could have added more depth to Liam is kept aside until there's a scene where his knowledge is required. Convenient indeed.

• I kind of understand why Liam acts on impulse, okay. The man just discovered who murdered his mum, at least some amount of irrationality is allowed (esp considering he hardly got to express ANYTHING when his goddamn father died). But you'd think Liam's friends would hold him back and help him think this through? Convince him that there are more effective ways to confront and get a confession out of Godfrey who after is in charge of security at the moment? You seriously think charging into the ballroom and suddenly stripping this man of his titles is going to actually work??? You couldn't figure out how to make him vulnerable instead so that he wouldn't be able to escape???

• I mean like, sure, one could always rationalize it all as "well see Lizzy, they needed a dramatic end to this story and they needed to wrap this mystery up quick". But there were other ways they could have spread it out than make it all sound so...so random. And you bet we all know why the narrative had to scramble around last minute to solve this. It's because we spend half the damn book in a dilapidated ranch with a shit family!

• Anyway, Godfrey escapes...and the MC tells her spouse that she's going into labour after...two contractions? Um. Okay.

• So. That ends Book 1 of this new series. And with it my QTs, for this series at least. My QTs for Book 1 (the OG, not the rewrite) might continue, but I'd need to repeat my failplay again because I lost most of those screenshots 😭

General Thoughts on the Book:

• So far, this is what I can see as happening in the next book:

- The birth, obviously

- Any extra perks from our purchases (ie. the nursery and the garden)

- Subplots involving the LIs' conflicts regarding parenthood and their own childhoods

- The mystery behind Eleanor's death isn't quite over yet, nor is the truth behind the constant paparazzi presence in TRH. Leona was the scapegoat this time around, but how did Amalas get all this information so quickly?

- Where is Eleanor's other child? Olivia's investigations may or may not lead to that answer. I'm pretty sure Jin might be involved as well.

- Another possibility is that Madeleine may give us important information since she was potentially aware that Eleanor was pregnant at the time.

- The mystery behind Jackson's death and what he knew regarding Eleanor's condition.

- What part did Bartie Sr have to play in all this? How involved was Constantine in the murder (if in fact he was)? What more dark secrets will we learn about Constantine, Godfrey and Bartie Sr during this time? What ultimately caused the breakdown in Constantine and Jackson's relationship, since Drake mentions Jackson being around when Regina was Queen as well?

- Speaking of Regina, how involved was she in any of this? We know she was Godfrey's cousin-in-law and Bartie Sr made a comment on her during the announcement about the heir, and that she married Constantine a couple years after Eleanor's death, but was she aware of any of this or was she largely out of the major plot and brought in later to cement Godfrey's position and power?

- I'd mention the possibility that Lorelai could know something, but they didn't really give anyone connected to Hana any time at all, so I have my doubts.

- Operation Swan, and possibly a visit to Monterisso. Liam's younger sibling must be in one of these places but my guess is on Monterisso.

- I'm guessing the team will write a nice wedding for Penelope and Ezekiel next book, while Kiara continues to get scraps from the same team.

- Drake and Olivia will continue to eat into the plot. Madeleine will join this unholy trinity as well because they've set the stage for her to have plenty of angst.

With that over, these were my thoughts once this book was finished:

WHERE ARE THE DUCHESSES?

Remember how, back in Book 3, we all marvelled at the number of women in this country who were in positions of power? Adeleide and Emmeline were powerful duchesses while their husbands were secondary figures, and Joelle though married into a noble family is an influential artist and - according to Liam - the embodiment of King Fabian's values. It seemed like, despite the underlying sexism and racism in the story, women were at least at the forefront of Cordonian politics.

This is virtually gone in TRH1. Godfrey (who wasn't even interested in Krona in the first place, much less Cordonia) and Landon (whose only concern seemed to be Penelope, leaving Emmeline to manage the duchy) have a seat in the Council. In fact we never even see either of these woman in the book. I can maybe understand the logic behind not appointing Adeleide, but the fact that Emmeline is passed over for her far-less -qualified husband is a mystery to me!

Also, has anyone noticed how white-male-centered the whole Eleanor story is? Notice how we never see Eleanor's friends, besides Jackson? We never see any of the courtly ladies of that era? She's the Queen. She'd have her own court. I find it impossible that Eleanor would have no interactions of importance among her own goddamned court, that Joelle, Emmeline or Adeleide wouldn't even be mentioned in her story thus far. It's fascinating that forget being part of her story - these women are largely forgotten in the book itself.

(Note: It's also important to add that none of Kiara's family - besides Zeke - makes an appearance this book. At all. One member of Penelope's family and one member of Madeleine's family is in the council, but we never really see or hear anything from Kiara's, even though Hakim was Constantine's old friend and Joelle could have easily been connected to Eleanor, given that Eleanor was exactly the kind of ruler Joelle would have loved and respected.

While we're on that subject, Lorelai could have been connected to Eleanor as well - considering that we know next to nothing about her years in Shanghai. There were ways Hana's story could have been tied into the overall plot as well that were largely ignored. The fact that both the main and secondary WOCs presented opportunities for better plot and story, and despite that they were largely ignored in the books...I think that says a lot. But I will get into more of that in detail in a different section).

LI SPACE AND STORY

• Now...as we all know, The TRR/TRH series is primarily a romance-focused book first, with an underlying plot about royalty and politics. So it makes sense to evaluate the book based on what it gives its love interests. That includes the number of scenes they get, and the kind of focus their story is given. So...here's the rundown of how that goes in TRH Book 1:

Liam: Overall, not too bad. He gets one individual scene, a free and paywalled childhood scene (though the free one is essential for the group's realization of who killed Eleanor). The letter his mother writes to Liam includes an extra section towards the end, meant for the MC who marries him. However, we must note that a lot of this "attention" was thrust into the very final chapter of this book, and 99% of the same book didn't exactly make an attempt to explore his inner thoughts on anything - his mother's death, the dealings with the foreign countries, his political activities. Eleanor being pregnant came from a scene that made Olivia the center of attention, the MC had the opportunity to ask him how he was feeling only once or twice, and most of the time the narrative relegated it all to "the matter is still being investigated". It's a slight improvement from the absolute lack of concern the MC and the narrative showed about Liam's emotional state post his father's death in Book 3, but not much.

Variations wise, the team did step up on the basic ones for most of the LIs, so clearly we've moved past the days of seeing cut-paste scenes and the likes of Liam and Hana saying "I'm so dumb in love with you". However, in playthroughs where the MC is Liam's wife and Queen of Cordonia, her lack of genuine concern for her country and lack of curiosity about the place she's ruling, sticks out like a sore thumb. The fandom loves to highlight how the plot is "written for Liam" or is "easier in Liam's playthrough", but besides his own child being the heir, nothing else from Book 3 onwards seems like it was particularly written with him in mind.

Drake: Hoo boy. So 2019 was clearly the year that many people didn't believe me about Drake eating up space, and the year they had to eat their words because in TRH it was too obvious to be ignored. On an overall scale you cannot avoid the extra perks even his LI scenes got - his Valtoria scene in Chapter 4 was longer, set in a different place and he was allowed to expand on his decision to say yes to Liam's request in a way Hana and Maxwell never were. We learned way more about his familial relationships and dynamics than all the LIs combined. His childhood scene was the first to be given variants depending on whether the MC was his wife or not. His sister's wedding takes up almost half the book, leaving little to no space for either the intrigue, or even the pregnancy that was supposed to be THE most important part of the book.

An insane amount of retconning was done to emphasize strongly on the "marshmallow" part of his personality, having him state time and again that for the MC he can even "sport a tutu if you said you had a thing for the Sugar Fairy". Part of these changes could be attributed to the backlash the team got for having him call a pink cake "girly".

There is a strong possibility that Jackson might be explored further in the second book, and it's no surprise considering that he's the one parent that is most talked about in the series. The book looks like it was truly written with Drake in mind, with a heavy dose of Olivia, and everyone else was added as a bit of an afterthought.

Maxwell: Pretty awful treatment for a character that the head writer of the team claims to like. He has no individual character scenes, and one childhood scene where his older brother Bertrand is given more focus. Ironically, Maxwell was more wary of Bartie Sr in TRR Book 2 than Bertrand was, but somehow they changed this little detail so that Maxwell could be written out of his own story.

His LI scenes were also not given much effort - some were badly written, and some scenes (like the free ones) showed little to no variations between the friendly and romantic playthroughs. One that comes to mind is the baby announcement photoshoot, which was so poorly done it added nothing of value to the character or the relationship.

Like the last book, Maxwell isn't allowed much development in TRH1, and he's still forced into a largely "court jester" role in the story. This reflects very poorly on him in certain situations, such as the chapter where we finally get glimpses of his book. The aim was to be humourous and light about the events of the series, but he comes out of it sounding thoroughly insensitive towards his friends, none of whose consent he took to write this self-centered pile of garbage.

However, there is hope that they might do things a bit better for him next book, if the rewrite of him in TRR 2.0 was anything to go by. However, it would be awful if they tried to do a better job of him and then left out Hana. Speaking of which...

Hana: I'm going to begin this section with a comparison to another character, someone who should have been treated as a secondary character - Olivia.

Olivia in this book has 2 character scenes (they're very plot driven, but they also explore her outside of her friendship with the MC and dynamic with the group). The spy scene with Auvernese royalty, and the scene with Jin, the Auvernese spy. An entire chapter is spent in her duchy (by now we've seen Lythikos four times and I'm now sick of the place), and she winds up taking over Maxwell's Q&A scene as well.

So that's technically 2.5 scenes AND a childhood scene that revolves around her even though it's about Liam's mother. In addition to this, Olivia also gets her own mini-book, The Royal Holiday, that revolves (again) around her duchy and has the group clamouring to give her attention when no one else wants to.

Here are the stats for Hana, who by virtue of being an LI, is also a potential co-protagonist in the series:

Nothing.

Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nada. Nothing.

She has one childhood scene that is part of the group's scenes - a beautiful, heartbreaking one that serves as a slap in the face to anyone who'd dared to be dismissive of what she went through earlier - but none after that, and no individual scenes either. The team - in one of their most offensive choices this book - force a storyline where she has fertility issues just so the MC can be the one carrying the child, and the same MC can opt(!!) to ask about her well-being after two days. The same MC has the chance to whine about not getting pregnant soon enough in front of Hana.

There have been a few efforts made to make the MC appear more caring towards Hana: she can angrily defend Hana against Isabella's jibes, and she can make Hana relax for once during the baby shower (unlike the wedding reception where the same MC treated her like a bridesmaid). The MC even gets to tell her wife that she should never consider herself secondary or unimportant.

All of these are nice, but at the end of the day they're all scraps. I'd equate it to how we're allowed to give Kiara compliments on the final two chapters, but the white women around her still get a far bigger chunk of space, story and attention dedicated to them. The team have a pattern of adding these tiny tidbits that will temporarily satisfy stans while still maintaining the status quo, and that's precisely what's happening here. Its important for us to understand this. Underneath all this surface concern and all these scraps, Hana is still getting dust in place of actual story and characterization. And given that they made ZERO major changes to Hana's scenes in TRR 2.0, I'm not expecting that to change.

As for the book in general...I don't have to go into why this book is a mess, do I? We all know. We've all witnessed how disproportionate the writing has been and while I'm glad more and more people recognize what I've been seeing since Book 3, it's sad that it took 9 whole chapters in Walker Ranch for so many to understand exactly how much space Drake has been eating up for no good reason.

BLACK HOLES AND WHITE TEARS

I'll begin this section by talking about Drake Walker. He's the most prominent sign of the larger problem.

Drake Walker is what I call a Black Hole LI. And yes I mean black hole as in the one that exists in space (Beckett from TE also fits into this category). He is the kind of LI that sucks up everything. Love. Light. Joy. Common sense. Other characters' spaces.

He is the kind of love interest that will have Liam's traumatic experience centered around him. The kind of love interest for whose problems - largely created by his mammoth ego - we have to resolve in Shanghai, the home of the lone female LI. While that same female LI gets nothing, and then disappears in a subsequent chapter. The kind of love interest whose love confession can take precedence even over the MC's own issues (remember the Beaumont House chapter in Book 1? The one that took place the day after Tariq nonconsensually kissed the MC? 98% of the dialogue revolved around Drake's feelings. Not about the faulty lock, not the possibility that the MC's security had been tampered with - Drake's feelings). The kind of love interest that was given an entire extra wedding and artwork for his mother in Book 3 itself - none of which were given to any other LI.

A Black Hole LI is totally the kind of LI that would get 9 whole chapters in their home while we have never even visited the homes of the others since the early books of the previous series.

This wasn't something that began just this book. It's been a constant since Book 2, and you can even see signs of his story gaining way more importance in Book 1. It's also not something we can - in all honesty - blame simply on finances and fan popularity: the writers confirmed Drake to be one of their favourites, and attempts to give his scenes additional perks (eg plot elements pushed into both the Whiskey scene and the Beaumont Office scene) happened long before they could make any conclusions about his popularity. I bought the Beaumont Office scene to find out more about that family. I bought the Marshmallow scene so I could find out more about Liam and Hana's conversation post Coronation (remember - Hana was never even allowed to speak about her return to Cordonia because that scene was given to Drake). I bought the Italian Restaurant scene to learn more about Liam's assassination. The funny thing about all these three is that these were their stories to tell, yet Drake is the focus. Quite a few of Drake's initial scenes sold because the team consistently made the effort, consistently ensured that the information from his scenes would benefit us in the long run. The narrative allowed for Drake to have his own story, and additionally let aspects of his story overshadow that of the other LIs' (see the examples I've given above). Even though he has very little of value to contribute to the larger story (no job, his friendships are shallower than a wash-basin, and no genuine communication with any commoner in the story - only endless whining).

The treatment Drake gets that no other LI does, is a problem in itself, but it also is a small part of an even bigger issue. He isn't the only white character who gets this sort of attention and detail to his story.

Take Olivia, for example. Started out as a rival to the MC, before her sad sad childhood and her genuine love for Liam was revealed in the Book 1 finale. Over the course of the story, her role changed from petty rival to Warrior Duchess to reluctant bff. Over the course of the original series, Olivia became one of the most prominent characters in the story, on par with the male LIs. I'm not sure how many people realize that Lythikos is the ONLY duchy in the kingdom we've seen thrice (four times if you count Holiday). To give you an idea of how big a deal that is, here's how many times we've visited other duchies besides the capital and Applewood:

Fydelia - 2

Portavira - 1

Castelserraillian - 1

Ramsford (the home of our sponsors!) - 1

Hana's mother's home - Never.

Lythikos has a detailed familial and cultural history, and I wouldn't be lying if I said we know more about this one region than we know about the entire country of Cordonia. And honestly for me, the obsession with this one duchy has reached saturation point. Lythikos is not Cordonia. Lythikos is not all there is to Cordonia or even the only place that should matter. Yet it seems the team is more than eager to flog that horse until there's nothing of interest left.

Olivia is the only character who gets an entire mini book that revolves around comforting her and making her feel better about her background and origins. I don't think we've ever given Hana this much attention when she left her home for us. Or when she was being bullied by Madeleine. Or when she was the other bride in that grand wedding. Or when we received the news that carrying a child to term would be dangerous for her body. Or --

We were given an entire mini-book to comfort Olivia - the woman who continued to call Hana "damaged goods" and " a failure" for not marrying a man, while Hana's friend/wife stood by and watched. The woman who didn't have to think twice before making snide remarks about an equally skilled courtier who never did her any harm, only because she could get away with it. Istg when I heard that most of the court snubbed her during that first event in Holiday, this was my reaction:

Like girl I feel bad for you but at least now you know how it feels to be held responsible for shit beyond your control!

Hana, in the meantime, is forced time and again into situations that would break most people - but with very little payoff. Her arc with her parents was given a resolution that confirmed that Hana could only be considered worthy if she was useful. She was made to interact time and again with the woman who harmed her with such glee in Book 2. The MC - as a friend or as a wife - is at best neglectful of her issues and at worst someone who uses and discards Hana as she sees fit. And now...in her romantic playthrough she's given a storyline that doesn't allow her to bear children easily, and the MC spends less than two minutes to actually check on her. Hana is one of the co-protagonists, yet a side character given the treatment she should be getting. One could technically blame finances for the way she's being treated too, but keep in mind that the bad treatment goes as far back as the Applewood chapters in Book 1. Technically a time when she was bringing in money.

I get it. Olivia is a fan favourite. Many in the fandom wanted her to be an LI, the writers didn't, so they carved out this middle path where she'd have a major portion of the story anyway. But keep in mind that a lot of this attention came - and is still coming - at the cost of Hana. The team pretty much gave Olivia what they'd been refusing to give Hana all along.

On a smaller scale, you see similar patterns with the secondary characters - especially the women of the court. Madeleine and Penelope had elaborate backstories designed to make people forgive and sympathize with them, and Kiara - even though her backstory in Book 1 was inherently tragic and deserved to be handled sensitively - was given validation with great reluctance from the team, and with no consequences if we treated her cruelly. Even now, the team has only tossed Kiara a couple of scraps in the final chapter, while already setting the stage for Madeleine to get her own tragic "patriotism" arc for TRH Book 2, and a possible wedding for Penelope in the near future.

The difference here doesn't just lie in who gets attention and who doesn't. It lies in how the MC is supposed to view these women as well. A lot more sympathy and understanding is automatically extended to the white women, and the MC faces consequences if she fails to acknowledge their pain. Far less sympathy is offered by default to the black and the Asian woman - the MC may be friends with Hana but a huge chunk of their relationship is mostly about the MC benefiting from Hana's skills without giving much in return.

Even though their misdeeds are acknowledged and spoken about, both Madeleine and Penelope are written in such a way that the problems they're currently facing matter more than anything they've ever done in the past. Hana is made to sweet-talk Madeleine despite being bullied by her in a previous book. The MC herself never gets ANY opportunity to directly address what Penelope put her through in Portavira, because what the MC went through matters less than Penelope's condition.

Compare this to the relatively small scale of Kiara's "misdeed" (being honest about not continuing with an alliance - I'm surprised people think this is an actual thing to be offended about!), and the way the MC is allowed to mistreat her sans consequences afterwards. We're even allowed to call Kiara a snob in the books - which isn't at all true if you look at any of her scenes in canon - and constantly make fun of her desire to learn (in fact, if anyone in the series could be called a snob, it would be Olivia). If I were to sum up how a woman of colour is spoken about in the books, vs a white woman - this screenshot would do the trick:

(Notice how none of the options to speak about Penelope allow us to speak rudely of her, yet in Kiara's case we're allowed to make judgements on her as a person. In Hana's case, while we don't exactly drag her the way we can drag Kiara - we get precious few opportunities to actually defend or support her when others talk rubbish about her).

When you explore the series overall, it's impossible to ignore the casual racism that makes disrespecting people of a certain race/colour easier than on another. It's impossible not to see where the narrative chooses to give consequences to an MC who treats a white woman badly, and where it allows the very same MC to suspect, and then (optionally) gaslight, a woman of colour a couple chapters later. It's impossible not to see which people are meant to be respected despite their bad behaviour, and which people can still be treated badly despite their better behaviour. It's impossible not to see a pattern emerging.

This is not even a problem that plagues only the TRR series. From TCaTF to ACOR to Platinum to even MoTY, there is an ongoing pattern of discrepancies between the way white people and people of colour - particularly women - are treated. Many POC characters are placed in situations where it's easier for them to suffer/die/be shown disrespect, than it is to show them kindness or mercy. MOC are regularly either exoticized (Prince Hamid is the most glaring example of this) or placed in very traumatic situations for which the payoff isn't always going to be that great (I know this happens to Dallas, but I don't know about the payoff for Syphax).

WOC particularly suffer quite a bit in a lot of PB novels, in comparison to their white counterparts. Rowan Thorne of TCaTF, as a character, didn't deserve for her death to be made easier than her survival (in contrast to Diavolos, who was given far more opportunities AND will live simply by virtue of allying with Kenna), any more than Kiara deserved to be interrogated by the people who should have been concerned for her safety or Xanthe deserved to be shipped to slavery. All this, while a Vanessa (who is in a position of power and who plays an active role in rendering the MOTY MC financially helpless) gets a diamond scene where she "explains" her situation and a Madeleine doesn't even have to hear about her bullying from her victims.

The fandom, too, has contributed to this on a number of occasions. Speaking specifically of TRR, how many times have we seen Hana being dragged on Olivia posts? (also, if we were really measuring Olivia by the impossible standards that we held for Hana's characterization, Olivia would appear pretty damn one-note too: after all, 80% of her characterization consists of knife jokes). How many times was Hana being looked at with disdain for either her niceness or the poor writing for her, while the same fandom would regularly coo over a nice-presenting Penelope (whose characterization is one of the most inconsistent in the series)? How many times have we seen Kiara being called a creep/obsessed for merely looking at a man, while almost no one judges Olivia for kissing a man without his consent? How many times have people forgiven a traitorous Penelope and hated on a far more innocent Kiara in the same breath? How often did the fandom hate on Liam for accepting the MC's advances after she rejected him, yet not say a word when Drake did the same thing? How many times has Maxwell been loved for his humour and childlike nature while people of colour with a similar personality (Lily from Bloodbound, for example) were hated on instantly? Clearly, there have been more instances of people in the fandom sympathizing automatically with the white character, than with characters of colour. Time and again, brown and black characters - particularly women - have been required to match up to impossible standards (if they're nice they're boring. If they don't like the MC they're <insert every gendered sexist insult you can think of here>). The standards are far more relaxed for white characters, and they're often given more breathing room and to most of what they want without the constant judgement that black and brown women get. The standards set up for both are grossly different.

Racism is a beast that assumes many forms - and not all forms of racism will appear obvious to some, especially when such stereotypes are so normalized in media and popular fiction that we almost accept it at first. Almost. To get to the root of why there's such an imbalance in this series - among others - we need to first acknowledge the sexism and racism that are such a vital part of its narrative, and that its fandom regularly buys into and (sometimes unwittingly) promotes.

At this point, it's important to understand that having queer characters or characters of colour simply exist in the books isn't enough. Token rep can be found in PB's books by the dozens, but at the end of the day it means nothing if there is a constant reluctance, over and over and over, to treat those characters with the same care and sensitivity that they treat their white ones (or their "exoticized brown" ones).

• Like I mentioned earlier, I won't be playing TRH from this point forward, but I do hope to finish my TRR QTs soon. I have a LOT of thoughts! If you'd like to be tagged on those, do tell me!

[dognoselover]

Bloodstained Hands, Ch 2:

Kakashi shot awake in a panic, gasping for breath and covered in a cold sweat. His hands were trembling, and, for a long moment, he was disoriented. This wasn’t his room, or his apartment. Where were his pictures of his team? Or Mr. Ukki? Even his body felt wrong. But then, suddenly, Kakashi remembered where he was. When he was.

“Kakashi!”

His eyes widened at the sound of the sweet, sing-song way his name was called. No… It couldn’t be. Throwing himself from the bed, he rushed to the front door, ignoring the way his skull flared painfully and how he stumbled. Panting, he slowed as the front door came into sight.

“Kakashi, I know you’re in there. You didn’t show up for training today. Minato-sensei said you weren’t feeling well, so I thought I should bring over something for you to eat…”

“Why do you even bother?” Came a loud, familiarly obnoxious voice. Dread rose in Kakashi’s chest, threatening to consume him. “You know he’s not even going to answer the door.”

Unbeknownst to his teammates, the Hatake was only a few feet from the door. He could sense their chakra, weaker than he last remembered it, but still there, strong and steady. The wound in his heart begged him to open the door, to wrap them both in his too-small arms and beg for their forgiveness. Yet, he couldn’t find the strength in him to move, paralyzed by fear. The darkness within him too easily reminded him that he was the reason for both of their deaths. If anything, he should push them away. He should push them far, far away, and then maybe then they would be safe from the destruction that he caused everywhere he went.

Obito and Rin were freshly fallen snow, and Kakashi was soaked in their blood, trying to keep it from dripping from his fingers with every breath.

“See?” Obito broke through his thoughts. “I told you he wasn’t going to answer.”

“Hush!” Rin scolded. Kakashi silently approached the door, using every ounce of restraint that he had finely honed during his decades as a shinobi. “Kakashi, please, talk to us.”

His voice came through low and hoarse, like a hiss. “Go away.”

Unfortunately, his acknowledgement of their presence only encouraged Rin. “Kakashi!” She exclaimed. The happiness in her voice tore at his soul like savage claws, and everytime she said his name his resolve crumbled a little more. “I brought some miso soup, since I know it’s your favorite… It has eggplant, too! I-”

“Go away. I don’t want to see you.”

“Oh. Alright…” Rin trailed off, and Kakashi could hear the dejection in her voice. Of course, if Rin was upset, Obito felt the need to jump to her defense.

“Why do you have to say that, Bakakashi?” Obito shouted. “You’re always so mean, and Rin was just trying to do something nice for you-!”

ooooh this is a cool section !! i’ll do my best to give a Good DVD Comment on it but i wrote it... at least a year ago so LMAO

the chapter begins with a nightmare and that nightmare ends with rin saying kakashi’s name when she was killed - and i liked the transition of her, in real life, saying it to him to wake him up. and kakashi’s freshly time traveled, so he’s disorientated and confused af. 

meanwhile, obito and rin are... concerned out of their minds. kakashi? sick? missing training? he must be dying. so of course they’re going to go check on him. but kakashi hasn’t actually seen them yet. it’s his first interaction with his formerly dead teammates (save for minato).

and he’s just confused, especially awoken from a nightmare like that, and his most significant memories of them are of their deaths, and he’s just not ready. not ready to accept this is his reality now, not ready to lock eyes with two people he failed so spectacularly and pretend like everything was normal, like he was his bratty 12 year old self who didn’t care when actually he cares so so much.

this is also the first time we see a theme prevalent throughout the first half of the story-- what does kakashi do different? does he hold them closer or push them father away? savor their presence or protect himself from another possible failure-- their possible deaths, again?

he just doesn’t know right then, so he pushes them away. he doesn’t have a solid plan of action and that scares him. he doesn’t know what he’s going to do and he can’t show them all this emotion that he has-- emotion that he’s not even used to dealing with himself --because if they see that emotion then they’re going to know something’s wrong and then they’re going to press him. press him for information he doesn’t have and isn’t ready to give. he just... doesn’t have any answers. and with kakashi the way he is, a strategic genius since he was a toddler, i imagine not knowing what to do is frightening. he’s always been quick on his feet, with a witty retort or a plan of action and here he’s got nothing. nada. the obvious tactical solution is to retreat until he does have a plan.

so he pushes them away. or tries to. rin is wholeheartedly concerned for him and wants to express that in a way kakashi would appreciate -- something practical, like a meal -- and she’s undeterred by his expected backlash. her concern for her teammate far extends the severity of his words, which she’s used to by now, and his barbs aren’t so much as barbs to her. she recognizes it for what it is: a defense mechanism. she also knows that he just can’t keep closing himself up but that’s pitted against her politeness and fear of upsetting him, which is why she gives up relatively quickly after kakashi insists that they leave.

obito, on the other hand, is vulnerable. he’s concerned for kakashi for once, not seeing him right now as a rival but a teammate in need-- because when, ever, has the prodigy kakashi seemed so human? --and when kakashi uses that vulnerability to push him away, obito gets understandably angry. he’s defensive of himself for being vulnerable, which was obviously a mistake since kakashi didn’t take the olive branch, and it presents as defensiveness of rin, even though she can well enough handle herself. why rin, though? well, we could just put gender roles into place and say something outdated like “he was protecting her” from someone she.. didn’t need protecting from. but in reality, he gets defensive over rin because he can’t get defensive over himself. saying that he didn’t like kakashi’s response is the same as admitting weakness, and 12 year old kakashi caught scent of weaknesses and exploited them like a bloodhound on a trail. and obito wants nothing more than kakashi’s respect, to see him as an equal. so if he shows that he’s concerned, that he’s hurt, kakashi would just see him as a crybaby plus some. since he wants to avoid that, shifting his protectiveness onto rin is the next best option.

ultimately it just presents a team dynamic that i thought was... fitting. obito and kakashi still clashing, right off the bat, as if nothing had changed although everything had changed. putting a bigger strain on their first true meeting. it’s all kakashi trying to juggle time traveling and his not-dead dead teammates and all this unusual physical pain he has in his left eye, while at the same time obito trying to handle kakashi and rin trying to handle the both of them.

i could honestly ramble about this a whole lot more -- i’ve already written a fuckn more in depth analysis of my own damn writing than i was expecting (why cant i do this on my college essays) -- but i think that about sums it up. can you tell i like introspection a whole lot? :)

[pwpoetry]

Q&A with Alex Dimitrov

M: This is largely a book of praise and joy, even within despair. I wonder what it felt like to write it. Did it feel qualitatively different from your previous collections?

A: It did feel different, but mostly because it's such an aesthetic departure from my second book, which was itself an aesthetic departure from my first. The voice in Love and Other Poems is more accessible and democratic. I wrote it with people who normally wouldn't read poetry, or don't read poetry, in mind. I also found the constant doom and gloom of the media and Twitter completely unsustainable in the last four years. I wanted to give people hope. I didn't want to add to the screaming and negativity. Art can provoke but it can also bring pleasure. It can also be a companion and I think people are looking for light. I know I am. 

M: What was it like organizing the collection? How did you decide on the arc for the book?

A: I don't really decide on those things consciously. I feel them out. It's intuitive. I'm not sure how to describe it but I just know, once I have everything, where it should go. When I wrote the first month poem, which was "September" (and every month of the year has a poem in the book), I knew that the book would be structured around the concept of time. In terms of order, I happened to begin in June and end in May. Those two months are my favorite months of the year. In my mind, they hold possibility the longest. I also knew that the poem "Love," which could really go on forever (and does on Twitter at @apoemcalledlove, where I add one line a day), would use the months of the year as an organizing principle. There's a line for each month in that poem. The arc of the book is really inside it. There are also many poems that are pairs. "Yes" and "No." "Full Moon" and "New Moon." I also did that in my second book with "Champagne" and "Cocaine." "Alone Together" and "Together Alone." I'm not sure why. My brain just works that way. I like an off-center symmetry.

M: Can you tell us a bit about the generative/revision process for "Poem Written in a Cab," which is the last section of the book? 

A: I had just quit my nine to five job because it was preventing me from writing and because I felt like they didn't care about me being a poet, which really depressed me, especially since it was a poetry nonprofit. I was taking more cabs than I should have and I felt really guilty. I couldn't afford them. They were all going on my credit cards. So I made a deal with myself that whenever I was in a cab, I would be working. I would be writing poetry. And so I opened the notes app on my phone one day, stuck in traffic, and I just started writing "Poem Written In a Cab." And then the next cab ride I picked it back up. That's why the lines in that poem are so short. That's the length of line I felt comfortable with while moving. And that's why the poem is so long. Because I had to keep working through all these cab rides. So really, it came out of worry and guilt. I was constantly worried about healthcare, which I didn't have. And so another trick was, well if you are inside a poem, if you are writing, you can't worry about healthcare because writing poetry is just too hard to let you worry about anything else. M: Are there any works of art or texts with which you feel the book is in conversation?

A: Parts of the book are in conversation with Frank O'Hara, in the same way that parts of my second book were in conversation with John Ashbery and Baudelaire and Rimbaud. And my first book with Barthes and Fitzgerald and Godard. 

But really, this book is an homage to endurance and to love and to New York City. New York City is the ultimate symbol of optimism to me. It never stays down for long. It always changes. It always makes it through. That's why I dedicated the book to it. 

[fortunatelylori]

Sandtion: The Sense and sensibility connection - a meta collab with @and-holly-goes-lightly

As some of you may have gathered, @and-holly-goes-lightly​ and I are salt mates (this is a tumblr term I have learned only recently and am planning to run into the ground. You have been forwarned. I don’t want any complaints down the line!)

It all started about a year ago, with this:

And progressed steadily until we ended up here:

Occasionally, between ogling pictures of naked men, we discuss serious issues as well. Those end up as metas for your consumption, most of the time.

It’s a colaboration that works well. I write long metas, she writes really good ones. We enjoy. We have fun.

Given that we both obssesively analyze tv content and that we tend to reach about the same conclusions, we have been planning on doing some project together for a while now.

I think if 2 months ago someone had told us that Sanditon would be the tv show that would see us join writing forces, we would have been more than a little shocked.

But here we are … hoplessly obssessed with Austen’s unfinished novel and ITV’s unfinished tv show (get the hint, ITV?!?! I hope you do. Chop, chop! You can’t live on Downton Abbey reruns for the rest of time, you know)

So on this most special of days, @and-holly-goes-lightly​ and I bring you the motherload of Sandtion metas. Two crazy writers, one tv show, one simple title:

Sandtion: The Sense and Sensibility connection

It’s no surprise to anyone, at this point, that Andrew Davies wears his Austen influences on his sleeve in Sanditon. You can find easter eggs for most of Austen’s work, from the famous Pride and Prejudice to the obscure Lady Susan.

However, Sense and Sensibility seems to be one work that hasn’t insipired much comparison from the fandom. And it’s perhaps for that reason that Sandion’s last two episodes were so hard to digest and why so many question marks were raised in regards to Charlotte’s characterization.

In this project we aim to dispel some of that confusion and attempt to put into prespective the character arcs of both Sidney and Charlotte in:

Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility by @fortunatelylori​

As well as delve deeper into Charlotte’s POV through out the season finale in:

Charlotte Heywood - From Sensibility to Sense by @and-holly-goes-lightly​

We hope you enjoy our take. Please don’t forget to leave us your comments in the reply section. This is a new format for us and we’d love to hear from you on how you like this kind of collaborative work.

        Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility

As I was reading the now infamous Theo James interview, I was reminded of the “unusual” visual representation of Sanditon. It really does look quite different to most Austen adaptations which are defined by the sunny, sanitized domesticity of the English garden.

Sanditon doesn’t look like that. It’s rough and a little wild. It presents a world in the throes of change, with gales, nudity and darkness lurking around the corners. I think it’s those visual cues that made Theo link it to Wuthering Heights with its Yorkshire gloomy moors and harsh winds.

But that just goes to show you Mr. James has not done his proper Andrew Davies research (Tsk, tsk, me thinks he will need to do a few more nude scenes to atone for it) because the wind swept beaches, the wilderness of the English countryside, the cowboy motif? They all go back to this:

I imagine the visual style of Sense and Sensibility 2008 was in part generated by an attempt to separate it from the very famous 1995 version (the quintessential sunny English countryside film) and in part as a response to the earthier approach Joe Wright took for his now very influential version of Pride and Prejudice (2005).

But I do think Sanditon owes more to S&S 2008 than just its visuals. I’ve talked about this in the past but Sanditon, to me, is really Davies’ homage to Austen’s entire body of work so the more you dig and analyze, the more similarities and parallels you are going to find between Sanditon, its characters and the rest of the Austenverse (I really hope this is just a thing I say in a sarcastic way on tumblr. Not everything needs to be a –verse, people!).

Episode 8 really brought this theory into focus for me. In my review I said that the finale marked the tonal shift of the story from the naïve, hopeful and mostly comedic territory of Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice towards the darker, more reflective tone of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility.

Of course, comedy and witticisms are a core trait of all of Austen’s work. Her voice is so powerful that she is always an extra character in her own stories. However, Persuasion and S&S are also permeated with a sense of loss and angst that her other works don’t really have.

They’re more mature I suppose one could say. And it’s that maturity that plays a role in the shift that occurred in the season finale of Sanditon. Because Sanditon is really all about Charlotte Heywood. We enter this world with her and we follow her coming of age story throughout the season. And that story is marked by a pretty steep transition from the romantic, hopeful heroine represented by Marianne Dashwood to her restrained, sensible sister, Eleanor.

One of the things I liked the most about S&S 2008 was how much more balanced its view on Marianne and Eleanor was. In the 1995 film, it always felt as if Marianne was presented as a cautionary tale while Eleanor was the heroic nurturing woman who endures everything stoically and is rewarded for her restraint in the end.

But that’s not really, to my mind, the message Jane Austen would like us to get out of S&S. Just like with Pride and Prejudice, Austen is shining a light on the folly of both extreme sense and as well as extreme sensibility. It is not wise to jump head first into situations having only Lord Byron’s poems as your guide but it’s also equally unwise to constrain yourself to the point where you are unable to confide in anyone, to the point where you deny your feelings and end up a passive participant to your own life.

With Charlotte Heywood, we get to explore both those behavioral patterns.

The change from Marianne to Eleanor doesn’t occur in episode 8, by the way. It occurs at the end of episode 6 and carries through to the finale. That’s why people, including myself, were taken aback by Charlotte’s apparent change in demeanor in episode 7, from the girl who always spoke her mind (even when she shouldn’t) and wore her heart on her sleeve to the outwardly detached, apprehensive young woman who was waiting for the other shoe to drop even as the man she loved was about to propose to her.  

It would be easy to blame this transition on poor execution and I do believe the shift was too sudden and it was a mistake to have it start off screen (in between episode 6 and episode 7). However, the arc itself is not a mistake and it’s actually very clever.

For one because it allows us to explore this story both from the naïve, romantic perspective as well as the angst filled one.

Secondly, and most importantly, because it works in tandem with Sidney’s arc, who is going through the exact opposite journey from the emotionally repressed outlier to the open hearted tormented hero, representative of the Byronic romantic ideal.

What was supposed to happen is that by the end of episode 8, Sidney and Charlotte would meet in the middle, she as a more controlled romantic, he as a warmhearted stoic. What Davies gave us instead is two ships that passed each other in the night and have, by their last scene in episode 8, completely exchanged places.

So I think it’s important to go back to the beginning and analyze how the meeting between the naïve romantic Charlotte and the world weary Sidney ended up altering them forever and how, while deeply painful for both of them at the moment, their separation and behavior shift will end up benefiting them when their eventual reunion occurs (whether or not ITV decides to renew this series, Charlotte and Sidney WILL get married and have 2 to 3 adorable children because this is an Austen story and I will accept nothing less, damn it!)

One of the most important scenes in the whole season for me was the carriage scene in episode 6. I wrote a whole meta on it that you can find here and I have to go back to it in order to reference this extremely important exchange that sits as the lynchpin of this meta:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

We’ve spent a great deal of time analyzing this scene and how pivotal it is in the story of Sidney as the motivator behind his lowering of his emotional guard. But I don’t think we’ve spent nearly enough time asking ourselves what this exchange tells us about Charlotte.

Because this doesn’t just announce a change in Sidney, it also foreshadows one for her. Sidney is correct in implying she doesn’t really understand love because she’s never experienced it. She is, however, about to realize that she’s in love with him and thus her assertion that she’d rather be naïve than insensible of feeling is just about to be tested.

And the surprising result is … Charlotte fails at her own paradigm. For the rest of the season, she will never be as emotionally open as she is in episode 6.

Charlotte is unable to remain the open book, expansive girl in the face of first supposed unrequited love and then as she experiences loss. She, instead, withdraws inward and begins building up her walls just as Sidney did after Eliza left him.

I think Davies understands Austen’s ultimate message that you fall into the extreme of sense or sensibility at your own peril, which is why he chooses to have his main two characters traverse opposite journeys so they can be brought closer by the end of the story (in season 2 of course).

That’s because at the core of all of the fights and misunderstandings between Charlotte and Sidney sit two problems:

Sidney Parker does not believe in the good intentions of other people. He is operating from a place of hurt and feeling under attack. He is essentially under the impression that the people he comes into contact with have ulterior motives, and none of them are good. And you can’t really blame him for that distorted image of reality when you consider what the two most meaningful relationships in his life have been up until this point.

On the one hand you have Tom who weaponizes even the most benign of compliments:

Tom: At least I have your prowess on the cricket field to be thankful for.

Sidney: Well in truth you have Lord Babington to thank for that. I am here at his behest to give him support in his time of romantic need. God knows he shall need it.

Tom: You’re a good friend, Sidney …  I don’t suppose you could try just one last time… [to go ask for money]

On the other hand, you have Eliza Campion who says stuff like this with a straight face:

Sidney: You didn’t have to wait for me, you know.

Eliza: I’ve waited for 10 years. What’s another quarter of an hour?

While researching this meta and also trying to figure out my Christmas fic, I’ve come to realize that both Tom and Eliza are using a victim narrative to get what they want from the people around them. What Sidney has learned from these relationships is that nothing in life comes for free. Any compliment, any sign of affection comes with a price tag or an eventual let down.

For her part, Charlotte Heywood is suspicious of Sidney because he doesn’t make himself easy to understand.

Charlotte thrives on communication and she tends to empathize and like people who share, or overshare, information with her. Her opinion on Tom shifts the moment he starts including her in his Sanditon projects. She is apprehensive of Otis for quite a bit of episode 4 but ends up completely on his side the moment he talks about his past as a slave and making innuendos about Sidney, despite neither one of those things really resolving her initial reasons for being apprehensive.

This behavior is really down to Charlotte’s upbringing in a very large but very happy family. Or as Eleanor Tilney in Northanger Abbey would put it:

Eleanor: I think you have had a quite dangerous upbringing. You’ve been brought up to believe that everyone is as pure in heart as you are.

Incidentally another Andrew Davies adaptation …

In Charlotte’s mind, people who are open emotionally and speak their mind must be good people. After all, she is this way and she certainly always has the best of intentions. When someone doesn’t do that, or worse they evade and try to manipulate, she distances herself from them, as is the case with Edward and Clara.

And since Charlotte views meaningful communication as the ultimate sign of trust, it’s this withholding of information, this emotional barrier she can sense in Sidney, that makes her mistrustful of him. She can’t understand his emotional withdrawal for what it is – a response to trauma - because she’s never experienced it. And as such she will always fundamentally misunderstand him.

We see these two character hang ups rearing their ugly heads again and again in their conflicts:

Episode 1

Sidney: And what have you observed about me upon our small acquaintance?

Charlotte: I think you must be the sensible brother of the three. I may be mistaken but it seems to me that your younger brother, Arthur, is a very … contrary nature. Alternately over lethargic and over energetic. While your elder brother, Tom, could be called over enthusiastic. I’m afraid that despite his good nature, he neglects his own happiness and his family’s in his passionate devotion to Sanditon. Don’t you agree?

Sidney: Upon my word, Miss Heywood, you are very free with your opinions. And upon what experience of the world do you form your judgments? Where have you been? Nowhere. What have you learnt? Nothing it would seem. And yet you take it upon yourself to criticize. Let me put it to you, Miss Heywood: which is the better way to live? To sit in your father’s home, with your piano and your embroidery, waiting for someone to come and take you off your parents’ hands? Or to expend your energy in trying to make a difference? To leave your mark. To leave the world in a better place than you found it. That is what my brother, Tom, is trying to do. At the expense of a great deal of effort and anxiety, in a good cause in which I do my best to help and support him. And you see fit to … to criticize him … to amuse yourself at his expense.

Fortunatelylori: … I have a theory that the reason why Sidney’s been forced into prostitution by the end of season 1 is because he used the argument of the fucking patriarchy to defend Tom The Worst Parker. Gee, Sidney, us women would love to go out there and change the world but your male friends are forcing us to stay home with our pianos and embroideries to make sure they take full advantage of our ovaries. Please take several seats!

Fortunatelylori: Also … fyi … Tom isn’t protecting England from the French or helping Warren de La Rue develop the freaking light bulb. He is trying to run a dime a dozen seaside resort and failing miserably at it so spare us the change the world one naked ass at a time speeches.

Charlotte is baited by Sidney, the emotional recluse, into oversharing which she can’t help herself from doing because even at this early stage she has a crush on him and wants to impress him with her insight. He takes that rather kind take on his brother Tom and spins it into a narrative of inexperienced superficiality and mockery because that’s what he’s conditioned himself to think about people.

Episode 2  

Charlotte: Our conversation at the party … I expressed myself badly and I fear you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean to disparage your brother or to offend you. Indeed I have the greatest admiration for what you and he are doing here in Sanditon. You were right to rebuke me and indeed I am sorry. I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood. I have no interest in your approval or disapproval. Quite simply, I don’t care what you think or how you feel. I’m sorry if that disappoints you but there it is. Have I made myself clear?

Fortunatelylori: Badly done, Sidney! Badly done indeed!

Not much to say about Charlotte in this one as this argument is ALL on Sidney and his trust issues. In his world, this kind of earnest apology and brave taking of responsibility is always a precursor to a guilt trip or a victimization episode. So he has become very adept at shooting down any such attempt forcefully.

It’s only in episode 3, when he sees Charlotte helping Mr. Stringer without any expectations of reward and her accepting his apology without any hint of emotional blackmail that Sidney is able to lower his guard and begin to see Charlotte for the honest, kind and generous human being that she is:

Fortunatelylori: Awwww! This is Sidney essentially seeing his unborn children in Charlotte’s eyes. (that is the most romantic lyric in the English language and no one will convince me otherwise)

However, what ends up happening? Sidney lowers his guard just in time for Charlotte to reactivate her suspicions which leads to their most explosive fight to date:

Episode 4

Sidney: Did we not agree that you would look out for Georgiana? Keep her out of trouble? I should have known you weren’t to be trusted.

Charlotte: And I should have known, despite your professed concern, you care nothing for her happiness.

Sidney: I would ask you to refrain from making judgments about a situation you don’t understand.

Charlotte: I understand perfectly well!

Sidney: Of course you do! Even though you’ve known Georgiana but a handful of weeks and him but a matter of hours.

Charlotte: That was time enough to learn that Mr. Molyneux is as respectable a gentleman as I have ever had cause to meet.

Sidney: You seem to find it impossible to distinguish between the truth and your own opinion!

Charlotte: The truth? You wish to speak of the truth, Mr. Parker? The truth is you are so blinded by prejudice that you would judge a man by the color of his skin alone.

Sidney: You speak out of turn.

Charlotte: Why should I expect any better from a man whose fortune is so tainted with the stain of slavery!

Sidney: That is enough! … I do not need to justify myself to you.

They essentially spiral out of control in this scene. Sidney’s trust issues come back and his lack of feed-back to Charlotte’s accusations make her provide increasingly horrible explanations to fill in the blanks.

Because their fights tend to be very intense (they are both people with very strong personalities), it’s easy to think of the two of them as simply not being compatible.

But their issues aren’t a matter of compatibility but rather an inability to find the right channels on which to communicate with each other, despite both wanting to.

Which brings us to episode 5

I love these little acting choices Theo James makes. This sigh is so evocative because it’s pretty clear it’s not frustration or boredom, but rather Sidney still reeling from her accusations in episode 4.

On the other side, Charlotte looks at him and thinks he is distant and non-affected and because, despite being angry, she still wants to connect with him, she tries so hard to use Sidney’s acerbic wit against him and keeps attempting to poke the big grizzly bear:

Charlotte: I assume you are here for the cricket.

Sidney: Never short of assumptions, Miss Heywood.

Unable to find a chink in his cold shoulder, Charlotte tries again at the cricket match:

Charlotte: Good luck to you too, Mr. Parker. Although I imagine you don’t think you’ll need it.

Sidney: Yes more assumptions, Miss Heywood?

Sidney is so pissed at her in this episode, not even her low key flirting with James Stringer galvanizes him.

But then something quite unexpected happens … Without actually realizing it, Charlotte manages to find the right channel to communicate on:

Stringer: You haven’t got another player to replace him. We win.

Charlotte: I’ll play.

With the wide eyed enthusiasm of a true romantic, Charlotte taps into the core of what Sidney desperately needs in his life. She doesn’t just help and support him when he needs her to but crucially she doesn’t put a price tag on it.

Charlotte: Is that a smile I detected?

Sidney: Oh, I doubt it …

Charlotte doesn’t enter the cricket match because she wants to use that gesture to ask Sidney for money for her pyramid scheme or gaslight him into thinking her betrayal was actually her “waiting” for him. Charlotte does it because she wants to see him smile. And just look at him …

Unfortunately that momentary progress is derailed again when Georgiana is kidnapped which will eventually lead to the carriage scene in episode 6 where Charlotte’s need for feed-back clashes with Sidney’s trust issues in their most revealing conversation.

It’s tempting to look at this argument and think Sidney is the only one who is in the wrong and who needs to change. But that would be missing a few important aspects of the story.

Charlotte: Otis never meant to place Georgiana in harm’s way. Any more than I did.  

Sidney: And yet you both did.

I think a lot of people, Charlotte included, fall into the trap of believing that if someone didn’t intend to harm someone else that means they haven’t actually done something wrong. Which is why there are still people in the Sanditon tag that are resisting the idea that Tom Parker is a villain. Surely he never meant to hurt his brother and he didn’t force him to propose to Eliza, so why is everyone so hard on him?

But like Charlotte had to learn with Otis, just because Tom didn’t intend to cause Sidney harm doesn’t change the fact that he very much did.

In this case, Charlotte’s major mistake was not that she helped Georgiana stay in touch with Otis. Charlotte’s mistake was in assuming she had the whole 1000 piece puzzle completed when she only had about 200 pieces in place.

Charlotte: All I ever cared about was Georgiana’s happiness.

Sidney: What did you think I cared about?

Charlotte: That is anyone’s guess!

Sidney: I’ve done the best I can by Georgiana.

Charlotte: No! At every turn you have abdicated responsibility. If you truly cared for her welfare, you would have watched over her yourself.

Sidney: It is a role I neither sought or asked for.

Charlotte: Of course not! Because you are determined to remain an outlier. God forbid you give something of yourself!

Sidney: Please do not presume to know my mind, Miss Heywood.

Charlotte: How could anyone know your mind? You take pains to be unknowable. All I know is that you cannot bear the idea of two people being in love.

Despite admitting she doesn’t know his mind, Charlotte can’t help herself from filling in the blanks with what she assumes is a conscious desire to be uncaring. Because she doesn’t have the life experience to come up with another answer.

For his part, Sidney is hurt by her lack of trust in him but unwilling to trust her enough in return to tell her the whole story. Still her words do affect him enough to make him begin to lower his barrier and give Theo James one of his best acting moments:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

Sidney: Is that really what you think of me? I’m sorry that you think that. How much easier my life would have been if I were …

Fortunatelylori: I just … he’s very good … that is all

It would be very tempting to assume that since Charlotte admits to being naïve once the whole Otis and Georgiana’s situation is revealed:

Charlotte: It’s all so overwhelming! I hardly know what to think anymore. (beat) About anything! I’ve always felt so certain of my judgment. But now I see that I have been blinded by sentiment and naivety. How could I have gotten it all so wrong? No wonder your brother has such a poor opinion of me …

and Sidney begins to show more outward concern for the people around him and validate Charlotte in ever increasingly romantic ways:

Charlotte: I know … I’m too headstrong. I’m too opinionated. I’m too …

Sidney: No. You are not too anything. Don’t doubt yourself. You’re more than equal to any woman here.

That their clashing world views are now aligned. But the truth is, Sidney isn’t the one to explain to Charlotte how it was that he became “insensible of feeling”. It’s Tom that tells her that story (and then promptly bungles whatever help he might have provided his brother). Sidney’s trust issues remain which is evident even as late as episode 8:

Babbington: I believe she’s tamed me.

Sidney: Yes … I just imagine how that might feel.

And

Sidney: I have never wanted to put myself in someone else’s power before.

Don’t get me wrong, I melt every time I hear that second line but it is indicative of the fact that love still feels like an inherently risky and dangerous thing for Sidney where he is obliged to hand over his power to someone else and pray that person doesn’t abuse it the way Eliza did.

For Charlotte’s part, Sidney beginning to reveal more of himself and show her the true man underneath the armor, makes her fall more and more in love with him. And the more she loves him, the more afraid she is of outwardly showing it. His confusion over his feelings for her and Eliza’s reappearance in his life, cause her to attempt to fill in the blanks again in episode 7. First by proxy, while talking to James Stringer:

Charlotte: You are far too sensible to form such a misguided and futile attachment.

Stringer: Why should it be futile, Miss Heywood? For all you know your feelings are repaid 5 times over.

Charlotte: I allowed myself to believe so for the briefest of moments. But I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes.

And then directly:

Sidney: I hope you weren’t too offended by Mrs. Campion. It was only meant in jest.

Charlotte: Is that all I am to you? A source of amusement?

Sidney: No. Of course not! You’re … Forgive me.

Charlotte: On the contrary, you’ve done me a great service. I am no longer in any doubt as to how you regard me.

So what happens in episode 8? Well, they essentially trade places, going from this:

Charlotte: I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood.

To this:

Sidney: Tell me you don’t think too badly of me.

Charlotte: I don’t think badly of you.

In one of my metas I made the point that Sidney Parker IS Charlotte Heywood’s coming of age story: he is her first love, the first man she is sexually attracted to, her first kiss and well … unfortunately also her first (and hopefully only) heartbreak.

By being forced to deal with her own sense of loss and the pain of being separated from the person she loves, Charlotte will finally be able to understand the true nature of Sidney’s insensitivity of feeling. Instead of causing her suspicion or apprehension, she will be able to connect with it because she’s lived through it herself.

As for Sidney … I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the end he is forced to do to Charlotte what Eliza did to him all those years ago. He chooses to marry a wealthy woman he does not love and disappoint a poor woman whom he does love.

I think given that his motives are obviously altruistic while Eliza’s were not (both per Tom’s story as well as her general character as revealed in the show so far), the point of the similarity is not to bring him closer to Eliza. Certainly not when he’s looking at Charlotte like this:

Which means that him being forced to contend with what happened 10 years ago by reliving the incident, this time in the role of the aggressor, is there to increase his level of vulnerability and put him in the place of the earnest person trying to reach out for emotional connection and having to fight to pull down the walls he himself helped put up in Charlotte.

You know what they say … If you really want to know someone, walk a mile in their shoes. No one ever said those shoes would be comfortable.

[doomedandstoned]

Nicolas Perrault from Rage of Samedi Taps Deep Emotion in New Solo Effort

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By MelLie

NICOLAS "SCRIOS" PERRAULT -- some of you may have heard this name in the course of the German monster sludgers RAGE OF SAMEDI. German multi-instrumentalist, producer, live audio engineer, creative head in general, and bad-ass bassist of the aforementioned band. Often these artists are mostly referred to us in connection with the bands in which they play and we often know too little about their individual personalities and the solo projects they have to offer. Ashes on our heads!

After six years of walking the path of self-discovery and working on his authenticity as a solo artist, Nicolas has now announced the release of his first full-length album 'Shadows Cast At Dawn' (2020) on May 20th. That's why we should jump at this perfect opportunity to get a foretaste of the new album and take a closer look at Nick Perrault as "singer/songwriter" (a term that somehow doesn't entirely fit him).

With the song "Fires Within," Nick not only offers us a gloomy soul plough, but also a glance into his own soul. It is a gritty absolution punch, with abysmal soundscapes that deal with depression and anxiety. Emotional, melancholic, but in no way melodramatic -- a puristic and minimalistic-looking audio-active encounter with the emotionally frozen world and the breakout of those soul-damaging shackles. Like the Last Judgement runs Nick‘s throaty, heavy, powerful voice through the song and manifests itself like a memorial at the edge of the abyss into which the listener seems to look. This musical work is further underpinned by the impressive video-artwork, which was also created by Nick's own artistic hand.

I hope I have made you a little curious about the excursion into a border area of this heavy genre, which generally receives less attention here, and about the artistic work of Nicolas Perrault. Enjoy the ride through the abyss.

'Fires Within' music video

An Interview with Nicolas Perrault

By MelLie (Doomed & Stoned & Sunday's Heavy Tunes)

First of all, a warm "welcome", on behalf of Doomed & Stoned and our audience, Nick. It's only been a few months since you answered my questions as part of the gang of Rage Of Samedi! But this time, you are in the spotlight with your solo project! It‘s nice to have you here again!

It's an absolute honor to get to do this twice in a single year, so thanks for having me!

Nick, of course I have created my own impression of you in the process of preparing for this interview - at the latest now you still have the chance to escape! (laughs) How would you describe yourself? Who is this guy Nicolas Perrault?

I'm a multi-instrumentalist, tattooer, live audio engineer and producer and slightly sociophobic. So pretty much your average vegan straightedge dude who refuses to get a real job.

What made you decide to sell your soul to the "Devil Of Music"? In other words, how and when did you realize that you were burning with heart and soul to dedicate your life to music?

I've always played instruments, starting with the recorder, then organ and piano, bass, drums, guitar, bagpipes, and everything else. Way back when I joined my first band (a grunge/punk three-piece) and first picked up a bass, I realized I had a lot to say and music quickly became my outlet of choice. So about 18 years ago, but I didn't think of it in terms of a career yet, that only happened roughly six years ago, so I dropped out of university and started to work on my solo project.

You have left some very manifold and genre crossing footsteps on the pilgrimage through your personal music history: PTAH (doom), MOONSAIL (depressive pop-blues), and THRENODIA (black-metal) in former times are on my mind, current side projects are WILLE ZUR MACHT (avangarde) and you are the bass-riffer of Germany's blackened sludge doom monster RAGE OF SAMEDI! To what extent were these different musical influences and band experiences important for your progress as solo-artist?

I've spent a decade and a half working in bands, which would usually split up after a while, when the band became more serious and the others decided they'd rather pursue "real" jobs. So after a couple of those, I grew tired of waiting on the right people and just started working on my own. But every now and then I'd want to experiment with different genres, so I'd start a new project. The reason I'm now releasing under my actual name is that I didn't want to be stuck in one genre. I don't regret any of it, as they shaped who I am and the music I play now.

At the mention of your solo project, I could see the glint in your eyes. May 20th is the day! Let's light a sparkler for a minute! After three released EPs and six years of working as a solo artist, 'Shadows Cast At Dawn' will sail into the world as your first full-length album, which you even produced under the name of your own label Yew & Holly, right? What thoughts shoot spontaneously through your head right now?

Yup. I'm just incredibly excited to finally release this thing! It's been nearly six years and about eight different entire recordings, several changes to the track listing, heck- there are two tracks on the album that I only wrote this year! It's been a long, tedious journey and I'm glad for everything that happened along the way, because it made the final version of the album so much better!

Nick, let's turn the spotlight on the background information for your new album now. How would you describe your it to someone who has never heard your music before and which instruments play a major role?

A genre defying journey through post-modern life in a capitalist reality, focussing on depression and anxiety. Almost all of the songs are two sets of drums, a minute string section of violin and cello plus baritone guitar and vocals, that together create soundscapes so vast you might mistake them for an assassin's creed map.

Listening a little deeper into your work, one does not miss your natural fondness for philosophical thinking -- correct me if I am wrong with my assumption. Where do you get your inspirations from? And is there a message you want to convey to the listeners?

Well, I did study philosophy way back when. I tend to use naval imagery to paint a lyrical picture of depression and bipolar disorder, as a means of sharing the way I experience the world. It's likely not the most accessible thing you will ever hear, but it's a sincere expression of myself and that's really all I can offer.

"Fires Within," btw. Also one of my personal favorites of your album - is the amuse-gueule for our listeners What is the meaning behind this song and what moved you, writing the lyrics for this song?

"Fires" is all about setting boundaries and tearing down unhealthy relationships. If you have people in your life that hold you back instead of supporting you, ditch their ass! They're not worth the time and will poison any creative endeavor. Everyone knows at least a handful of these negative feckers and so did I. I spent years trying to help them get through their shit, but whenever I needed them they'd be more interested in getting drunk.

It's an unburdening from dead weight we carry, a cleansing, if you will. The chorus says "look not towards time, it brings only decay and destruction " and I think this is key to ridding yourself from negativity. Focus on your ultimate goal, that transcends trends and mood swings, that lives beyond time, and let it guide you. Don't stray too much from the path, or these negative influences will be right there waiting to cut you down.

"Fires Within"

Call upon the wind To wipe the surface clean He brings the rain and with it Absolution To carry with it the dust And bittersweet memories lost

Look not towards time To save your soul from fires It brings only decay and with it Destruction The fires burn from within Feast on the sand and it's running thin

Turn away from everything you hold dear To keep yourself safe from despair Cause all they bring is but loss All that remains is darkness when they are all gone Darkness that stretches like shadows cast from a new dawn

I would like to make a short swerve to the album cover. It is the wonderful artwork of Maryland based illustrator Luke Martin (Suburban Avenger Studios) who counts some famous musicians among his clients (Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys, Red Hot Chili Pepper and others). How does the artwork relate to "Shadows Cast To Dawn"?

I've been a huge fan of Luke's work for years and a while ago he posted this picture to his Instagram. I was looking for something very specific to use as an album cover at the time. I needed it to evoke claustrophobia and a feeling of being safe inside whilst at the same time showing an outside, detached from the rest, just out of reach.

So imagine my jaw dropping as I saw this picture for the first time. It just struck me. So I wrote Luke, if he'd sell it. He had never sold a photograph before (plenty of awesome illustrations, though) so needless to say, I was very happy he did. He basically captured exactly what I had conceptualized -- that it's an actual photograph just makes it even better, as the concept is very much abstract but now has an actual physical representation.

The title "Shadows Cast At Dawn" was something that I had floating around in my head for ever. So when I began to work on the album that became the working title. Since I've worked on it for so long, that title has- in a way- effected everything I wrote, so it seemed to fit perfectly by the end.

Is there a special favourite place where you prefer to let your ideas mature? - a kind of soul-flyer place? I know you live in a small, rather idyllic place and not in a vibrant artists' metropolis! Whereby this way of living has advantages as well as disadvantages for an artist, right?

I love forests, oceans and mountains, so I'm pretty much alright with any surroundings, as long as I can escape civilization from time to time. Living out in the countryside allows me to focus, as you pretty much know where to find people, if you're looking for company but at the same time, you know where you are less likely to be found.

Sure, I need to travel a lot more to get anywhere and there aren't as many connections to be made face to face, but digitalization has granted us loners access to that aspect of life from the comfort of our homes, so I'd say it really depends on what you need to stay sane.

With the release of this album, you could now realize one of your dreams. Do we have another sparkler to light? What else do you have in the works? Are there any future plans that float in space? Or do you still carry around another big dream in your head?

I've already started recording for the next album, so fingers crossed that this time it won't take as long. Apart from that, I really want to tour the world, but circumstances aren't exactly ideal for that, at the moment. Apart from the music, I also tattoo and paint and hope to be doing more of that alongside music in the future. So if y'all wanna get some ink, hit me up!

Thanks a lot Nick, for giving us a deeper insight into your solo project and the things that move you! It's been very entertaining having this conversation with you here. We all will keep our eyes upon Nicolas "Scrios" Perrault in anticipation of your success!

Thank you very much, Mel, it's been my pleasure!

Leave Me To The Waves by Nicolas Perrault

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[spnfanficpond]

September 2019 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with @manawhaat today! Thank you so much for joining us, even though you were busy!!

Today, a bunch of us got together and talked about inspiration and writer’s block! We all had good ideas that were discussed! A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut!

To start us off, Mana shared a link to this ask that was recently presented to the Pond. The question was that a professor said that there was no such thing as a muse or writer’s block. The answers given by some of our Big Fish are terrific! All seem to agree that the ideas of a muse and writer’s block are valid, no matter what you call them. Digging beneath the surface to ask what is causing the writer’s block or the inspiration can help to get you past what’s stopping you and get you writing, again.

@mrswhozeewhatsis (Michelle)shared a link to a tweet by Robbie Thompson. She had asked him for tips on getting inspired or getting past blocks when the words just don’t want to flow. He responded by saying, “write from emotion: what scares you, angers you, etc. and make writing a habit. sit down once a day, same time if you can & just get to work. got nothing? write until it comes. inspiration is great but not always reliable.”

When looking for ideas from other famously prolific writers, this post from Neil Gaiman came up. In it, Mr. Gaiman says that blaming writer’s block gives you something to blame, but it’s usually a combination of laziness, perfectionism and getting stuck. He goes on to encourage writers to not accept writer’s block as a insurmountable thing and figure out the cause so you can get past it.

@mostly-shawn (Maayan): My professor's take on writer's block is that writer's block doesn't exist because there's no such thing as "not knowing". What we call "writer's block" is simply being distracted by other things like shopping lists and to-do lists and everything else, so in order to overcome "writer's block" you just need to sit and write everything that's in your head and clear out your brain space to allow yourself access to the idea. And in terms of muse, she doesn't believe in muse because no work is perfect on the first draft and because it's not perfect, you can't have had a muse.

If anyone wants to read her book it's called "To Tell The Truth" and it's about how to write creative nonfiction. Obviously, that's not what we're all in the business of, but it's a good read for all genres.

Everyone seemed to agree that this professor has a strange view on muse, but she’s got a point about writer’s block. A muse can be anything that inspires you to write, and nothing anyone ever writes is perfect right out of the gate, so her perfection theory makes no sense to us. Mana disagreed with part of her thoughts on writer’s block, though.

Mana: I think she has a point of clearing your head in order to get into your 'writing groove' but insisting that there isn't such a thing as 'not knowing' sounds ridiculous to me, specifically, a person who has not known what she wanted to do with a certain rpf fic for over 4 years.

@katehuntington mentioned that sometimes she feels like she knows exactly what she wants to write, but when she sits down, the words just won’t come. She can’t get them down. Michelle said her Fibromyalgia sometimes causes similar cognitive difficulties. The words just aren’t there. (If anyone has read Rob Benedict’s chapter in Family Don’t End With Blood, the feeling is described there beautifully.) 

Michelle: Physical and mental issues can definitely affect creativity. When you're struggling to do the basic activities of daily living, creativity is not your body's priority.

Q: So, what do you guys do when you hit a block?

Kate: Accept it. LOL. I take a lot of inspiration out of what I've written already, if that makes sense. I revisit stories, go over what made those work. And I read back on the feedback I had from readers too. Those can be super inspiring.

Maayan: Yeah, I basically just say "alrighty then" and continue on with my life and push the work as far out of my head as possible.

Mana: Write some flaming garbage. (Michelle added, “Crap makes good compost.”) I get through as much as I can, plot wise. if I'm stuck between point b and c, but know where I'm going from point d to e then I just put down anything I might want to happen between point b and c and then move on. There is no rule that says writing needs to happen in a linear form so if I get stuck, I move on.

Michelle: I once heard Robbie Thompson talk about writing at a seminar, and he said that if he's really stuck, he'll take a walk, get outside, get some fresh air, clear his head. Just change his scenery, really. Did you know that when you move from one room to another, your brain kind of ties off the thought you had in the first room and opens up another thread in the second room? It's why so many people arrive in a room and then forget why they're there. (This is why carrying something from one room to the next can help you remember why you're in that second room.) Sometimes, that's what you need. Make your brain jump out of the rut it was in. Write in a different room, on a different medium (paper instead of tablet, tablet instead of computer, etc)

Mana: I haven't tried writing on a different medium, unless you count someone else's computer instead of your own, but the change of scenery does help. listening to different music instead of your usual tunes helps. 

Maayan: I think better when I pace so when if I'm trying to figure out a storyline I pace, but when I have the storyline but I can't make my fingers do the word thing on the magical typing box I'm just stuck for good usually. (A suggestion was made that she could try speech-to-text software to help her get past that!) Mana records voice notes to her phone to be transcribed later.

Kate and Michelle both said that having ideas isn’t the problem for them, most of the time. The problem is usually having the focus to sit down and translate them to paper.

Mana: Watching a movie you know well enough to tune in and out of is a big one for me. Literally any time I NEED to do something in my life, I put on Pride and Prejudice bc I know the film so well and love the score, but it's my ultimate focus movie. I can tune out and write or file taxes or whatever the fuck and tune back in for him to hold her hand helping her in the carriage and then tune back out and repeat this process while the movie plays 6 times in a row.

Michelle: I can't have anything else playing. No music, no TV, no nothing. However, I've discovered that a lava lamp does wonders! When we lived in our apartment in Chicago, I had a great view of the planes coming into O'Hare, and it was an east-facing view, so I saw the sunrise after a long night of writing so many times. My creativity dropped way down when we moved and I no longer had a view to stare at. So, I bought a glitter lava lamp. I love staring into that thing. And then I put up twinkling fairy lights over my desk. Something about that got me going, again. 

Maayan: I use my fish and snail as a lava lamp with the same effect.

Q: What do you do when you’re in the flow, and everything is going great, but you suddenly just stop? You know where you want to go, but you’re suddenly just stuck for no clear reason?

Michelle: I've discovered, and this may not be true for anyone else, but I've discovered that it usually means I've screwed up a little ways back. If I go back to where I last felt like everything was going well, and rethink everything I wrote since then, I've usually made a mistake in that section, and it needs to be rewritten. Whether I've made a character do something that's not in their character, or I've added something (or taken something away) that isn't right, whatever it is, it's in that section. If I just delete it and start writing from the previous good spot, I get going again.

Kate: Yeah. I've read somewhere that when you're stuck, you should go back at least 5 lines and start over. Put those lines away, pick it up again.

Mana: I think that's a big difference between us, Michelle. You can pinpoint a spot where things go awry and back up, cut off what isn't working and restart. I am a stubborn bitch so even if I see that something isn't really working, if I like it even the slightest bit, I refuse to get rid of it or change it. And those are the instances where I 'pick fights' with you and resist your input when you're beta reading for me. Am I the only one that does that? And if so, how are you all able to justify letting go of something that doesn't quite work but you've grown attached to?

Michelle: It’s perfectly okay to set bits aside and use them in other fics! Timestamps. Put it in another fic. Make it a one shot! I cut SO MUCH from Non-Trad, but I loved those parts SO MUCH, and that's how the Timestamps were born. They really didn't fit into the story well. They made it bloated. So I published them separately. Now, finding that I've gone off the rails entirely makes it easier for me to go back and get rid of something.

Q: Tips that we haven’t mentioned, yet?

Kate: Ask for help. Have a beta look it over, or whoever is interested and might be able to add to it.

Michelle: When looking for inspiration, always go back to the source material. It's not lazily, obsessively binge-watching the same show over and over, it's RESEARCH.

Mana: Someone asked what I do to get over it and I said: when I experience writer’s block or when the character I’m trying to write isn’t cooperating with me and I can’t get my brain to function I try to distract myself with something else or another character. Try watching an episode with your character in it, get a refreshed feel of how they move, talk, interact with other characters, draw from the episode or scenarios that you can fill in where the ep didn’t. Or, take ques from other characters, write about someone else for a bit so your mind has a break and time to sort itself out, then go back to what you were working on. 

Another way to get past it is to read other’s work. It may inspire you, make you realize that the story you wanted to tell this way can be told a different way, or give you the kick you need. 

My best answer to this: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

When the block hits and you have zero inspiration or motivation, write about anything and everything. Start reading and watching new things to see if it’ll spark something, check out Tumblr and users you don’t follow to get your eyes on some fresh content, write a dramatic scene of you sitting on the couch to hear the doorbell ring and let the suspense grow until you open it to find a pizza man there when you specifically did not order a pizza. Writing through it may spark something, and if not, my best suggestion would be to read. Read your old stuff and that of others, read a new book, read an article on how to beat writer’s block, read through the writer resources tag at the @spnfanficpond…

Mana also gifted us with these lovely links:

Writer’s block app that won’t let you do anything else until you’ve reached your goal.

A lovely gif beautifully encapsulating exactly how writer’s block feels.

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: Not much, at the moment, since everyone is busy, so we’re just trying to keep up with the day-to-day at the moment! Our to do list is still long, though, and will not be neglected forever!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work!  IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

SPNFanFicPond Season 14 Weekly Episode Challenge - Even though season 15 is just around the corner, these prompts will still always be open for you to use! Remember, there’s no deadline for submissions! Just tag the Pond and @mrswhozeewhatsis in your post!

Say hi to August’s New Members!

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the Skype chat room/discord general channel and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details!  The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We don’t have a topic or speaker set up for October’s event, yet, so if there’s something you want to talk about, or someone you want to talk to, LET US KNOW!