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reiedits1 · 4 years ago

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The Last Of Us Part II

I played and finished The Last Of Us Part II last week and it has been on my mind ever since. I obviously understand that a lot of people have problems with this game, and that’s okay. I’m not here to change anyone’s views on the game or anything, I just want to kind of write down my opinions and takeaways as, again, it’s been on my mind since finishing it lol. Nobody may see this and this will mean nothing, that’s fine.

Anyway, this post will contain SPOILERS

My Overall Thoughts

I’m not entirely sure how to structure this so I guess I’ll just start with a broad statement lol; I loved The Last Of Us Part II. In my opinion, it’s a beautiful and well-crafted story about loss, grief and consequences, with how each of these things affect different people.

Discussion

From what I’ve seen, I see a lot of people hating on this game for its handling of Joel and the decision to have the player play as Joel’s murderer, Abby. I’ve also seen a lot of people say that the message is as simple and plain as “viOleNcE iS bAd”, but I personally think it’s so much more than that.

The Last Of Us Part II doesn’t just tell you that violence is bad, but it shows you the ramifications of it by dealing with the emotional toll as well as the consequences on not just the main person involved, but their loved ones too.

As we all know, at the start of the game, Joel is brutally killed by Abby and we go with Ellie on a mission to avenge him by killing everybody involved. We see it all from Ellie’s point of view, hardheartedly seeing Abby as the villain as she just killed the character that we know and love as we have an emotional connection to him after the first game. His death is supposed to make you feel angered. It’s not like you’re supposed to be joyed by it. His death scene left me feeling empty and sick, wanting revenge alongside Ellie.

However, as the game goes on, we start to see the story from Abby’s point of view. We learn that the doctor that you, the player, had to murder at the end of The Last of Us is actually the father of Abby. This is brilliant. Now we see one of the main themes of the story, consequences, and I was immediately on board. Joel is not a good person, at all. He murdered hundreds of Fireflies and took away the possible cure for humanity for his own personal reasons. This is incredibly selfish, even going to the lengths of lying to Ellie about the events as he knows that it isn’t what she would want. Technically, Joel is the villain.

Joel had been through so much, so you may think it’s justified. But the point is, Joel isn’t the only person in the world of The Last of Us. Everybody he murders aren’t just mindless NPCs, they are people. People with their own problems who have gone through their own share of pain and loss, people with their own loved ones. Such as the doctor, who had Abby, whom he loved very much and Abby the same. So, understandably, she would feel incredibly angry and feel the need for revenge, just the same as Ellie and the player after Joel’s death.

There is now a cycle of revenge. Ellie goes on to kill Abby’s friends, and so Abby tries to kill Ellie and her friends. It’s not until Lev talks Abby out of it that the cycle seems to have been “broken”. Abby and Lev put it behind them, however, Ellie cannot and nor can Tommy, which means that the cycle is not broken. Ellie continues her hunt for revenge, thinking it’s still what she needs. Just as she’s about to murder Abby, she sees it’s completely useless.

Here I’m going to talk about another core theme of the story: loss. As Ellie is about to kill Abby, she realises that Joel is gone. Completely gone, and killing Abby is not going to change that. She now has Lev, and if Ellie was to kill Abby, Lev would only lose Abby, leaving him in the same situation Ellie was in at the start of the game, which in turn means Ellie is becoming what she set out to kill. It’s no use. Revenge only causes more pain and loss. This cycle is so vicious and nobody wins, and Abby realised this once she found Lev, and found that revenge is a futile thing that does not achieve anything, especially not bringing back her dead friends. She managed to break the cycle herself, and in turn, she found a life worth living, a live with Lev. However, Ellie could not manage this, choosing to still seek revenge.

Because of this, she faces the consequences. She loses all of her loved ones. She loses Dina, she loses Jesse and she loses her baby son, JJ. Tommy is the same too. Tommy couldn’t break the cycle, and he loses his wife, Maria. And guess what, Joel is still gone. All of that loss, yet Joel is still dead. It’s all been for nothing. Ellie is now completely alone, which is what she said she was scared of in the first game, all because of revenge. The way forward is not anger, rage or revenge, but acceptance and love. That’s my takeaway.

You may think this treatment of Joel and Ellie is “disrespectful”, but I disagree. In the first game, you do a lot of bad things as these characters. Yeah, you go through a lot of pain, but so has everybody else, yet they still face the unfavorable consequences. It only makes sense that Joel and Ellie would too. In my opinion, this only helps to build the world of The Last of Us and show that just because Joel and Ellie are the main characters, they aren’t invincible, and the world doesn’t revolve around them. They just happen to be two people who live in the world amongst so many others, which for me, makes it so much more realistic. This is emphasised in the incredible detail in the gameplay of each enemy having names, with other enemies interacting with eachother as you stalk them. It makes them feel so much more real and only increased my enjoyability.

From a story like this, which is so dark and gritty, I don’t expect a happy ending. You’re not supposed to like Ellie by the end of this story, as she serves as the example of why the cycle of revenge is horrible. You’re not supposed to feel satisfied by it, you’re supposed to feel empty, hurt and sad. That is literally the point.

You have to realise that The Last Of Us is a piece of artistic storytelling told and made by artists. It would have been so easy for Neil Druckmann to write a boring and two-dimensional story to appease players and make bank. But he didn’t. He chose to craft an intricate, heavy and creative direction for his material, and I hugely respect that. At the end of the day, he doesn’t owe you anything. This is his story, and these are his characters, he can do what he wants with them. If you don’t like his creative vision, then great! You don’t have to. If you don’t like something, just don’t play/watch/read it. If you loved the first game but hated the second, then just pretend it doesn’t exist and come up with your own fanfiction for these characters, it probably wouldn’t have been as good as this.

A lot of people blame “bad writing” when they don’t like something. There’s a difference between feeling bad about something than it being bad writing, you know. Just because it wasn’t what you wanted, doesn’t mean the writing is bad. By you feeling angry about Joel dying, Neil Druckmann’s writing has accomplished its objective. And I’m not trying to say that everybody who doesn’t like this game didn’t like it because their fanfiction didn’t come true. You cannot like this game solely because you don’t like the direction it took, and that’s fine. Because again, this story is a piece of artistic storytelling, and art is subjective.

This entire post is just my opinion. I personally loved this story and these characters, and it was exactly what I wanted to get out of this game. Everything about the game I just adored. I loved the plot, the writing, the characters, the gameplay, the music, the visuals, the performances - everything. And if you didn’t, then great. That’s your opinion. It just hurts me to see so many people dismissing the incredible things achieved in this game solely because of one plot point. I don’t know. As I said, I’m not trying to change your opinion or anything, I just thought I’d share mine.

I only scratched the surface of my thoughts and opinions on this game. I could talk about it for hours, which only goes to show the extent of its achievements and how incredible it really is. I doubt anybody is reading this and that’s fine, apologies if none of what I said made any sense at all lol, I’m awful at articulating my opinions aha.

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amor-immortalem · 3 years ago

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An Alternate Path

Genre: Angst

A/N: Originally this was supposed to be a two-part mini fic but people asked about a part three. I wasn’t sure where else to exactly go from there since the end of the second part felt so final for me. But then, inspired by a comment on the 2nd part, I began to think about how it would have gone if Arella hadn’t been revived with Mammon’s blood. Think of this as the bad end to the AU. This is the final part.

obviously spoilers for the lesson 16 incident and for lesson 50 (i think… correct me if Im wrong)

Replaced part 1

The Good/True End

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He sits in his room starting at the dried blood on his hands, heart aching from the loss of his mate. It had only been mere hours since Barbatos had taken her body to prepare for funeral rites but to the Avatar of Greed, it had felt like centuries. Why? He’s asked himself this question over and over. Why didn’t you check on her sooner? Why didn’t you call or text? Why didn’t you notice? Why didn’t you feel something was wrong through your pact?

As much as he wants to, Mammon has no more tears left to cry. His human is gone, never to return and it was the fault of him and his brother. He should have been there sooner. Should have reminded her how much he cared. Should have done a lot of things. He had every opportunity to, but he squandered all of it.

He rakes his hands through his hair as they whys replay in his head. The demon doesn’t have an answer for them- none that would satisfy them, at least. He lets out a yell as grief turns to rage and nothing of value is spared from his violence. Items and trinkets knock from their shelves, furniture overturned, by time the second-born was done, his room looked like a war zone.

It’s only then that Mammon collapses to his knees and lets out a broken wail as he can hear the restless cawing of his crows outside.

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Levi is alone in his room, having shut himself away hours ago. Laying in his bathtub bed, the Avatar of Envy loses himself to his thoughts and the view of the water above him. He can’t help but think about what would have happened if he had put his foot down when Asmo approached him to recruit him in helping his little matchmaking plan for Melissa and Satan.

And then his thoughts focus in on the other human. If she had never come, if they had never welcomed her into their lives through the exchange programme... Arella would still be alive. She’d still be sitting here, playing video games and helping him decide which anime he should choose to watch when there was a conflict of time slots. They’d still be talking about their Husbandos and Waifus just as they always had. But she’s not here. She never will be anymore. All because he didn’t have the spine to act like the older brother and tell Asmo no. Because he allowed his younger brother to monopolize his time.

His best friend is gone and he was part of the problem that led up to that. Levi has never felt so much self-hatred before and, just like with Lilith, he doesn’t know how to come to terms with the loss of another person so dear to him. For now, he’ll just lay here and waste away like the filthy, yucky otaku he is, wishing there was a way he could go back and undo it all or hoping that this was all just some horrible nightmare that his brain has conjured up.

“She’ll be back in the morning... right? She’s just sleeping over at the castle, right?!”

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Beel just eats. He eats and eats and eats to make the pain go away but just like his endless hunger, the pain never stops. He feels so empty inside that the only other option is to gorge himself until he physically can’t hold it anymore and vomits before he goes back for more until the cycle repeats and he runs out of food. The loss of their favorite human is killing him now- the grief of it squeezing his heart like an anaconda.

If he would have just gone to invite her to that new café she had wanted to visit with him only an hour sooner, this could have been stopped. But he didn’t. He didn’t and that’s what cuts deepest. He should have noticed when she stopped coming to dinner, or skipping breakfast, or not joining the student council for lunch day after day. He should have realized something was wrong then. But he chose to ignore it, thinking it was just one of those ‘moods’ Arella had told him about human women experiencing at certain times of the month. He thought he was helping by giving her space these last few weeks but Beel knows now that he was dead wrong.

Who would be his food buddy now? Who would let him drag them all over town in order to try out restaurant after restaurant, café and café? Sure, he had Belphie to take with him but his younger twin never really showed the same excitement when it came to trying out all the different food and drink options on the menu. The demon doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tear drops hit his hands. She only needed one of them to take a moment to see her and none of them could be bothered do just that.

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Belphegor only wants to sleep. He wants to sleep and never wake up again. In his dreams is where Arella is, happy, smiling, laughing. That laugh will haunt his waking moments forever as he realizes that for the second time, the Avatar of Sloth has caused her death. Belphie was only one of two brothers who rejected Asmo when they asked him to help with that damn plan of his. It had been too long since he and Arella had napped together after school or plotted something with Satan as part of the Anti-Lucifer league. How he missed those days.

He can feel the tears pool in his eyes as he curls up into a ball on the bed in the attic. He wonders if he had just stayed up here forever instead of trying to trick Arella into setting him free, would this hole in his chest disappear? As he buries his face into the body pillow Arella had gifted him for his birthday this year, he cries himself to sleep- indulges himself in all the good memories they had made together after she had forgiven him for everything he had done to her.

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Asmodeus is lost. They stare and stare at their skincare products trying to will themself to start their nightly skincare routine. How could they have been so foolish? The passage of time is so different to humans than it is to demons. They had only meant to take a month to match Satan and Melissa up so how had it turned to eleven already?! The Avatar of Lust wants to scream. Both at themself and no one at all. Hot tears still sting their eyes as they shapeshift. They change and they change and they change forms- any number of features forming and then shifting away as they try to find a look that they won’t recognize themself in but it doesn’t work. Asmo’s not able to look themself in the mirror for the rest of the night as they just crash down on their bed. They want to mark up their beautiful body into some hideous to match the feelings crushing their heart. Asmo wants to do something- anything- to themself to experience even a fraction of the pain Arella must have felt but all the demon feels now is just hollowness.

Their phone is vibrating on the bed next to them- a call from Solomon. No doubt he could feel Asmo’s distress through the pact they share but the Avatar of Lust is too tired from hours of ugly crying and most certainly not in the mood to speak to anyone- pact master or otherwise. The phone goes unanswered.

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Satan has his head buried in the books. He’s been at this for hours- there must be a way to bring her back to them! Melissa is with him, bringing whatever books he asks for in his search as she too is eager to bring the lost human back to this plane of existence. There was so much they wanted to do with her. From watching cheesy mystery dramas together to forming a small book club consisting of just the three of them, none of that would come to pass now.

As book after book turns up dead ends, the demon just buries his head in his hands. It feels pointless now. Who was he to play God with life and death? The thought of never seeing his friend alive once more is enough to break the Avatar of Wrath as his shoulders shake with violent sobs. He wants to go on a rampage- destroy the whole city but what would that fix? It certainly wouldn’t bring her back.

As the demon continues to cry, Melissa only wraps her arms around him and he returns the gesture. She runs her fingers through his blonde hair in an effort to calm him and it seems to work, if only for a little while. She pulls a chair up to sit next to him as she holds his hand in hers.

“Tell me about your favorite memories with her,” They girl begins, “We can’t undo what was done, but we can keep her memory alive by sharing the good times.”

And so, they talk late into the night, Satan smiling at all the memories of Arella that he holds close to his heart.

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“Hi this is Arella! I’m sorry I can’t get to the phone right now but leave a message after the beep.... Beeeeeeeeeep”

The sound of his brother’s laughter followed by Mammon calling Arella a dork in the background can be heard at the end of the greeting on her D.D.D.’s voicemail. The Avatar of Pride can only smile with tear-stained cheeks. He was beyond intoxicated, having just finished his fourth bottle of demonus for the night. He can feel the anguish his brothers have been going through all night and it only makes his sorrow deeper.

When Arella first arrived, all Lucifer cared about was keeping her alive long enough to make it through the year. She was unimportant to him outside of the viability of the exchange programme. Back then, he would have laughed at himself for the state he was in currently. She was just a human. Why did it matter if she lived or died if it didn’t affect the exchange programme?

But she wasn’t just a human. She was their human. She was special to him. And now she was gone. There was no second chance. There would be no merging of timelines to keep her alive. Fate was cruel, but sometimes Diavolo could be crueler.

Lucifer knew his longtime friend had a reason for this. He was teaching the brothers a lesson with her death. As much as it hurt now to lose another part of this family, things would get easier as the years went on regardless of how horribly they all would miss her. This was a lesson he and his brothers would not soon forget.

Cracking open his fifth bottle of demonus, the first-born scrolls through devilgram, saving pictures on her profile to be used in the memorial service. One of Arella with each of his brothers and himself and multiple pictures she’d taken with all eight of them from their adventures throughout the years that they’d all been together.

He lets his mind wander back over the last eleven months. All the red flags he had missed with his rose-colored glasses. They all made sense to him now. All the time she spent isolating herself from them, skipping meals, leaving either incredibly early for school or incredibly late for school. She was trying to get them to notice her over Melissa. He regrets their last interaction from a few months back. The way there had clearly been something wrong, yet he chose to lecture her about attending RAD on time as to not disgrace Diavolo. How he wishes he could take it back.

As the only brother save for Belphegor not conscripted to help Asmo in his ridiculous plan, Lucifer should have been the first to reach out to her. He may have been buried under paperwork, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t just sit and talk while he worked. He regrets not calling or checking up on her.

A video plays on her devilgram. It was from one of the nights they had spent up in the human world last summer.

“Awww, come one, Lucifer. It won’t be that bad. We’ll have those flowers from the fairy rings and make it back in one piece. I promise to keep Mammon under control so we won’t cause any trouble.”

The Avatar of Pride clicks out of the app as he feels more tears gather in his eyes. He can’t do this right now. Not tonight.

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Her service was beautiful- Or at least that’s what Lucifer tells Mammon as he and the rest of their brothers return home. Mammon wanted to go, he really did, but with it only being a few days removed from her death, the second-born couldn’t bring himself to go. It wasn’t because he didn’t love her or didn’t want to celebrate his mate’s life but it was still far too painful for him.

Part of him was still in denial over it too. Somehow, he’d managed to convince himself that she wasn’t gone. She was just stuck up in the human world and had forgotten her D.D.D here so he couldn’t call her. The logical side of him knew it wasn’t the case and every time he was reminded of it, it threw the Avatar of Greed into a deeper pit of despair. He’d spent some nights since she’d passed alone, crying himself to sleep begging for his human to come back to him others he would just lie awake, tracing over where her mark from their pact had been etched into his chest, set right over his heart.

Suddenly years have gone by now. His brothers have made peace with her passing but Mammon cannot. Visiting her grave never helps to ease the pain either, but still he goes. If Arella’s spirit still lingers, no doubt she would be upset if he didn’t go. It would only serve to prove her dying thoughts true when they couldn’t have been further from the truth.

“Hey, Treasure... Miss me?” There’s no one here but Mammon and a tombstone. “I miss you... everyday... So much changes every year... Both Asmo, Levi, ‘n Satan got kids now... little girls for them and Levi has a boy...” He pauses to take a shuddering breath as the cold wind blows. “Can ya believe it? The first kids born ta this family and their both girls and then we got a boy... sweet little things too- alla ‘em. I wish ya coulda been there ta meet them... Actually, looking at my brothers with their kids, it makes me wonder what ours woulda been like, ya know? And I wish none of this woulda happened... you deserved so much better than me ‘n I knew that. We all knew that. But ya chose me anyway and look where it got ya... Six feet under... If I could go back and do it all over again I would. I woulda told ya what was goin’ on. I woulda spent more time with ya. I woulda... woulda proposed... made sure you knew how much I loved ya everyday... I know ya probably can’t hear me, but I’m so sorry... for everything! I love you so much that I can’t move on and I won’t. If I die single then that’s fine by me.”

As he cries, thinking he’s alone, Arella watches from her seat on her tombstone. None of the brothers knew it but she’d been watching all this time. It wasn’t until she passed that she realized how deep their feelings ran and part of her wishes she would have waited just a bit longer before leaving for the human world that night.

She tries her best to let them know she’s there- that she loves them and is watching over them with Lilith, but she’s not strong enough to do more than move small objects around. She hopes that they’d notice but they never do.

As she hops off of her tombstone, Arella crouches down next to her mate. The best she can do for him is conjure a warm breeze as her spirit leans over to press a kiss that he’ll never feel to his cheek. Upon the breeze, he can hear a soft whisper of a reply.

“I love you too.”

And it's that reply that reassures him she’s there and she always will be. He hopes maybe in another life they’ll meet again and get to have the happy ending they never got to have in this one.

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shreddedleopard · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on chapter 137, and why it makes complete sense and cements the themes and lessons of Attack on Titan.

I have so many thoughts, I just want to word vomit them out at a million miles an hour, but I’ll try to do this in some sort of order and not my usual chaotic mess.

Attack on Titan is about family and belonging, and THIS is the dream that Ymir was drunk on. This is ‘that scenery.’

Ymir, the founder, just wants to belong somewhere. With someone. She wants to be loved and valued as a person, not as a slave; not as someone who merely fulfils a role. In the latest chapter, Zeke explains how he failed to understand her, but Eren did.

Look at Eren’s words to Ymir in this moment, several chapters earlier:

All Ymir has ever wanted is to be held. To be loved like a person. To feel that connection because of who she is, not the role she fulfils.

Eren understands this, in contrast to Zeke, who once again tries to impose her role upon her:

Ymir has been hanging around in paths all this time, unable to fully die and let her consciousness pass on to the next world, because she needs to find this thing that she’s been searching for since the start of the story.

It’s not just about romantic love. It’s about connection. That sense of being understood and belonging with someone else, whether that be romantically, platonically, as family ... we keep seeing the same theme brought up throughout the entire manga.

Who else is a character that constantly searches for the same thing? Mikasa.

She has so many parallels and yet also opposites with Ymir. Ymir is told she is a slave, she obeys the king, that is her role. And she accepts it. Because she believes that it’s the only way to find happiness; to find this belonging she’s been craving. However, unlike Ymir, who does not truly love the king, I believe that Mikasa does truly love Eren - what form that takes doesn’t necessarily matter to me at this point. It’s just about connection.

Whether Eren feels the same, tragically for him, doesn’t matter. Because Eren knows he is destined to be the one to end the cycle of hatred and free Ymir. And that will ultimately cost him his life. That is why, when Zeke asks him what he will do about Mikas’s affections - which have nothing to do with her bloodline and everything to do with him - Eren cannot answer. That choice has sadly been taken from him.

When Eren asks Mikasa what she is to him, I think he genuinely wants to know at that point. I think he cares about her so deeply and wants to know she feels the same way, and it’s not just about him being ‘her saviour’. But as we’ve seen before, Eren cannot afford to stop for too long and dwell in the moment, because he must push on towards freedom - the freedom of Ymir and the Eldian people from the curse of the Titans.

This brings his conversation around the table with Armin, Mikasa and Gabi into a whole new light. Eren insults his friends in an attempt to push them away from him - because he knows he won’t be around to live that ‘long, happy life’ with them. So instead, he wants to push them to confront their feelings in the arms of others. He pushes Armin to really consider what Annie means to him, and for Mikasa, I believe that Eren intends her to perhaps look towards Jean, who is truly willing to give her the love she has always sought from Eren. Because again, so tragically, Eren will not be around to provide that for her - regardless of whether it’s something he wants or not. His own wishes no longer matter on the path he has been set upon.

Back to Ymir. Eren tells her, he will put an end to this world:

He doesn’t mean the human world; the living world. He means the world of paths, where Ymir is trapped, unable to let go of the souls of dead Eldians, because she’s still searching for that connection she craves so much. Her paths world is an attempt to quell that feeling of loneliness she’s been plagued with, but ironically, she’s more lonely than ever, stuck there, serving the bloodline she’s created from a place of misery and duty, rather than love.

The rumbling and the destruction of Marley is a very tragic consequence of what Eren has to do to put an end to the curse of the Titans. He’s searched for another way to no avail; we’ve seen his remorse when he apologises to Halil or Ramsey in chapter 131:

I think the anger and devastation that’s unleashed in the rumbling, is a result of the hurt and mistreatment both Eren and Ymir have felt at points in their lives.

Eren understands that to destroy the paths realm, first this devastation is necessary, because he’s seen it in his future memories, despite the conflicting feelings it’s evoked from him - he doesn’t really want to destroy humanity outside of the walls, but his own future is telling him that he must and he will. But it’s not Eren’s emotions that drive this initial destruction - it is Ymir’s. These emotions are no different in nature than the ones that Eren felt in response to Armin’s childhood bullies - that sense of unfairness and need to lash out at oppressors - but tragically, unlike Eren who in that moment of intense, irrational emotion had only his fists to vent and release, Ymir is in possession of one of the most terrible and destructive weapons there is - hordes of colossal Titans. And in that moment where Eren finally gives her that validation she has been searching for, and allows her that feeling of release from the duty she’s felt she needed to fulfil for thousands of years, Ymir releases that frustration and anger too and sends them walking.

This theme of the oppressor and oppressed switching places in an endless cycle of revenge and stealing from others what has been stolen from you is a theme that we see repeated throughout not only the AOT manga, but also soundtrack and additional content too.

Eren was right that it would be Armin that saves humanity - because Armin is the one that makes the connection in paths - he understands what is being shown to him with the leaf - and tragically, it actually highlights how, even up until the very end, Eren and Armin knew each other very well. Eren trusted Armin to make sense of what he’s had to do - even if it’s only Ymir that he understands, because while Eren is the one to give Ymir her freedom and unleash this terrible devastation, Armin is the one who must stop it.

But how does this idea of family and connection tie in to the rest of the events in the chapter, and wider manga, and what’s up with Historia’s pregnancy? And how is paths going to be destroyed, if the rumbling has been stopped and Ymir is free, but the Titans are still around?

This is where the rest of our cast fit in - namely Zeke, Levi, Historia and Reiner. If my theory is correct.

Eren gave Ymir the validation she needed and that sense of connection, freeing her from her role, and this bought that final bit of time needed for Historia to give birth to her child. Why is Historia’s child important? Because it is the ‘new dawn’ we’ve seen foreshadowed repeatedly throughout the series. The birth of a new history. And this comes in the form of a new bloodline, no longer infected with ‘parasite’ of the founding Titan.

Unlike Ymir’s bloodline, which stemmed from a place of duty and slavery - as she was ordered by the king to take ‘his seed’, and carried the parasite of the creature that bound to her within the depths of the tree, creating the paths realm and an almost purgatory type space free of death or heaven or earth or anything, Historia’s bloodline will be ‘cleaned’ because of the genes of the child’s father. And not only this, it will be born out of a moment of love and connection, rather than duty. This new combination will make it impossible for a child of the royal bloodline to become a Titan. There will be no coordinate - no link for Ymir from her paths realm to the living world, because the last link to her bloodline - a Titan with royal blood - will no longer exist.

This really brings home the gravity of the moment where Levi cuts Zeke down - he’s the last of the royal Titans, but the reader knows Historia’s baby is about to be born - will they inherit the Titan, and the cycle will re-start?

They will not. The cycle will be broken with them, because - and here’s where it gets wild - Historia’s child is not a Fritz, or a Reiss - they are an Ackerman. They physically cannot turn.

Why does all this fit in symbolically? Let me draw your attention to the genre of Seikaikei.

Attack on Titan uses this idea with our two Ackermans.

We have both endings. Eren and Mikasa, our bittersweet ending, where Eren ultimately chooses the fate of humanity over his relationships with Mikasa and Armin, and Levi, who, in a moment of selfishness, allows himself to put aside his role for a night - probably at the railroad banquet, where he was supposed to be making sure the likes of Eren and Yelena were kept apart - and indulges in this connection that he’s formed with Historia. You can read my 10 reasons post if you want to for why the heck I would think these two would form a deep bond - it’s all there in the Uprising Arc. They have been the same as Ymir - yearning for a sense of love and connection, but bound by roles neither of them asked for or particularly wanted - reluctant heroes comes to mind. Remember how freckled Ymir’s parting wish was for Historia to live for herself?

The result is an accidental pregnancy which, ironically enough, is what is going to annihilate the curse of the Titans and save the world. How poetic that the Titans will not be ‘driven out’ by hate, violence, and destruction, but instead by love, connection and new life.

Remember Kenny and Uri’s miracle?

Kenny and Uri’s chapter, ‘Friends’, was exactly halfway back into the manga. History moves in repeating cycles in AOT, and we see things change slightly each time, on this journey to freedom. At this point, the Ackermans and royals were one step away from where they needed to get to in order to build this paradise - and Levi and Historia complete the cycle by becoming ‘lovers,’ tragically, the thing that Eren and Mikasa could not become, because Eren had to undertake the rumbling and be the one to free Ymir from her sorrow and loneliness. She can make the choice now - will she fight to be reborn as Historia’s child - fight for dominance with the Ackerman bloodline - or will she concede, finally laid to rest because the cycle has been broken by two people that love one another, just like the couple Ymir saw long ago and wished for.

Remember how Eren asked Zeke whether the ackermans act the way they do from a place of duty or genuine feelings? He needed to check it was the real deal that would break the curse, and finally lay Ymir to rest peacefully, after 2,000 years of hatred and searching. She will see that her descendant, Historia, finally has what she always dreamed of. That idea of dreams pushing us onwards - Ymir’s dream is realised through Historia and Levi.

As for the parasite itself? I believe Reiner will be the one to lock it in a Crystal prison with himself, deep underground.

A new dawn will come, and a new world will be built from the ashes of the old.

#snk #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #eren jaeger #levi ackerman #armin alert #ymir the founder #historia reiss #mikasa ackerman

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holyhellpod · 4 years ago

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4. Fambily

In this episode, we skim the surface of the fambily dynamics in Supernatural, which are--ah. Dicey at best.

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Transcript under the cut!

Content warnings: domestic violence and family abuse

[Growl]

Ah, the Winchesters. Where do we even start. Unhinged, deranged, and continually traumatised in every way, Sam and Dean complete each other. At least, that’s what the show wants us to think. Despite the ways they betray each other, lie to each other, and piss each other off, they are fambily. And fambily is the most important thing. The concept of Fambily in the show Supernatural (2005-2020) takes many twists and turns throughout its run. In the first five minutes of episode one, the heteronormative, nuclear family of John, Mary, Sam and Dean is ripped apart by an unknown, antagonistic force that represents all the evil in the world. It creeps into a nursery and eviscerates a white, blonde mother while preying upon a 👶, I mean, how much more evil can you get? It’s fantastic that, in the later seasons especially, Supernatural embraces this idea that fambily doesn’t end in blood, but blood doesn’t always mean fambily. By the end of the series, the fambily concept has expanded to include two dads, an aunt and uncle, and a thirty-year old infant. I’m going to talk about the finale in its own episode, so that my ire will have its proper outlet.

When the show starts, Sam, Dean and John have each other, and only each other. By the time season 2 really kicks off, Sam and Dean don’t have John anymore, but they do have Bobby Singer. The concept of the triumvirate follows them throughout the series as though they’re in a less sexy Italo Calvino novel—first Sam, Dean and John, then Sam, Dean and Bobby, then Sam, Dean and Ruby, then Sam, Dean and Cas, then Sam, Dean and Mary, then Sam, Dean and Jack. It’s broken in seasons 13-15 when Cas comes back and they have a family of four, and then five when Mary can stand to see her boys.

But the Winchesters are not the only fambily in Supernatural who matter. In season two, we’re introduced to the Harvelles, mother Ellen and daughter Jo, who are a hunting fambily who run a hunter pub in the middle of whoop whoop. A pub that Eric Kripke famously hated, and rejoiced when he burnt it down at the end of season 2, because the Winchesters and by extension everyone they know aren’t allowed to have anything good ever. It’s revealed in season two episode “No Exit” that John got Jo’s father killed on a hunt, which obviously affects Jo more than it does Sam and Dean.

[Editing note:] Okay I’m editing this episode, and I’m not happy with it. I’m not going to scrap it completely because I think I do have good points to say, but the general analysis of this episode is so surface level. It is basically contributing nothing to the conversation. And I started this podcast in order to actually contribute something to the culture. I could make a bunch of text posts on tumblr or I could spend hours and hours and hours and hours of my life to something that — I don’t know. Is it bringing me joy? Not at the moment. But, yeah. So I’m not going to scrap this episode completely but this is my way of saying from now on the episodes are going to take as much as they will take and I will commit myself to having deeper and more thoughtful analysis. And if I have to spend an entire episode on one aspect of one thing, I will. I could be at university right now studying a masters or a PhD in fucking literary analysis but instead I’m sitting on my bed making a Supernatural podcast because it brings me joy. It does. It really makes me happy and I don’t want to abandon this project, because people are listening to it. I don’t know why, I don’t know what you like it about it, but you’re listening. And I just think I owe it to myself to make things that I support 100%. So I’ll continue this episode and hopefully this rambling hasn’t put you off it completely. But from now on, I’m going to really, really talk about things that matter in regards to Supernatural… Kind of an oxymoron. Kind of a contradiction. But things that contribute to the cultural consciousness instead of just rehashing the road so far. That’s all I want to do. I want to contribute. I want to say good…ful things. Okay this is making me happy. It’s already working, it’s already making me happy. I’m just going to keep rambling and laughing. Okay so, more thoughtful analysis, deeper analysis. Things that make you think. Things that make me think. Instead of just a bunch of words that mean nothing. Okay, continuing on.

Okay to figure out which episode this was I had to watch a little bit of season two, and I’m still on my season 13 rewatch. The difference between the two seasons. I don’t know if I can even put into words the growth this show has gone through, and the characters have gone through, over the last 15 years. It would be like summarising my own growth by combing through my extensive diary collection and the years of societally- and governmentally-enforced heterosexuality that has plagued my entire life. Those boys are babies in season two. The bootcut jeans alone. Sam is literally 23 years old. I don’t even talk to 23 year olds. I block them on social media.

The Harvelles are a blip in the Winchester map. While the actors Samantha Ferris and Chad Lindberg did attempt to resuscitate their cultural currency months after the show ended by participating in an event — okay I can’t. I can’t even go into it. Like, clearly Samantha Ferris heard back from her representation as soon as she started posting those tweets and realised she wouldn’t continue to get money if she endorsed, well, the gays. And Chad Lindberg was just using the clout to push his Etsy wares like a 14th century merchant, so I gotta respect the hustle. But Jo and Ellen die in season 5 episode “Abandon All Hope” and are barely mentioned again except the episode Ash appears in, season 5 “Dark side of the moon,” Jo in season 7, “Defending Your Life,” and Ellen in the season 6 episode “My heart will go on.” They didn’t exactly leave what you would call a lasting impact for the next, you know, ten seasons.

To be honest, I’m not sure when it’s revealed that Bobby’s wife died after being possessed by a demon. It’s made clear in season 5 “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” and I did not have to look that up, because season four and five are burned into my retinas like a particularly nasty sun flare. Bobby outlines the horrific way he killed his wife, because why not throw some spousal violence into the mix, and later in season 7 “Death’s Door,” it elaborates on their life together. I saw this sentiment expressed on TikTok, which we all know as the foundation of cultural knowledge, which was that fambilies don’t need to be two parents and children. Fambilies can be spouses or partners. You don’t need to have children in order to be a fambily. I think that’s a very nice sentiment and I’ve chosen to adopt it for these purposes. Bobby and his wife Karen are a fambily. While Karen wants kids, Bobby chooses not to have them for fear of becoming like his father and repeating the trauma he inflicted on Bobby. Bobby and Karen’s fambily dynamic is ruptured in the same way that John and Mary’s is—by an intrusive, demonic force that brings Bobby into the hunting world and ends Karen’s life. But by the time we see him at the end of season 1, Bobby is already ingratiated into Sam and Dean’s lives as their surrogate father, and this bond only deepens as the show progresses. Bobby expresses the sentiment to Dean to not be like John, that Dean is already a better man that his father ever was. Isn’t that what we all want to hear? That we have superseded our parents and outgrown them in ways they could never comprehend? Don’t we just want to be better than the generations that came before us, in order to mould a better world for the generations that come after us? Don’t we want to make things easier for our children, and our friends’ children, and our siblings’ children? Dean is a better man than John, and Bobby is better man than his father ever was. It’s about breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma. I have to believe that Sam, Dean and Bobby did this, because then it’s possible for me to do the same thing. Include here that speech about representation in media that I didn’t bother writing for the last episode. Bobby is the surrogate father to Sam and Dean, a better father than John was, a better hunter even. He crafts an entire network of hunters who report to him, as seen in the season 6 episode “Weekend at Bobby’s,” and he continues to act as Sam and Dean’s mentor until his death in season 7 “How to win friends and influence monsters”. An alternate universe version of Bobby is introduced in season 13, which I have my reservations about, and he and Mary get together, which again, why. Season 13 is so hard to sit through.

A fambily that is introduced late into the series and is simply NOT given enough screen time is the Banes fambily. In season 12, “Celebrating the life of Asa Fox,” we are introduced to the Banes twins, Max and Alicia, who are by far the most gorgeous hunters we’ve seen in the series. They are hunters raised by a witch, Tasha Banes, who doesn’t appear yet, and they manage to survive the trial by fire that is overcoming the demon Jael. Later in this season, in the episode “Twigs and Twane and Tasha Banes,” both of which are written by the late great Steve Yockey, we are introduced to Tasha in a way that seems awfully familiar: Alicia calls Sam to say their mother has gone missing on a hunt, and hasn’t checked in in a few days. By the end of the episode, Alicia and Tasha are dead, and Max has ostensibly sold his soul for the power to bring Alicia back. The Banes twins’ storyline directly parallels Sam and Dean’s from the pilot, but it’s a tragedy from the outset. We already know Tasha is dead and they can’t save her, however, like Dean does for Sam at the end of season 2, Max chooses to save Alicia at the expense of his own soul. Spin off when. Banes twins series when. I’m waiting. They were in two episodes and I’m still thinking about them. The Harvelles are dust.

In season 7, “Reading is Fundamental,” a waifish 17 year old honour’s student Kevin Tran breaks into a rehabilitation facility to steal a tablet. This starts a chain of events that ingratiates Kevin Tran in the apocalyptic, death-succumbing world of the Winchesters, starting with Dick Roman, head leviathan, and continuing, but not culminating, with his death at the hands of Gadreel, who was possessing Sam, it’s a whole thing. Any time you attempt to summarise anything on Supernatural, you sound like a lunatic. And I say that as someone who has a supernatural podcast, with an audience of only supernatural fans. We are lunatics, but we’re lunatics together. Kevin’s arc was cut way too short, but we at least got to see him with his momma Linda in the beginnings of season 8 with the unfortunately named episode “What’s up, Tiger Mommy?” It introduces Linda Tran as a capable and worldly woman, hell bent on protecting her son. She offers up her soul among other things in exchange for Kevin and the tablet with him. During the episode, she is possessed by Crowley, and Dean attempts to kill him, which would mean killing Linda as well. Kevin considers this the ultimate betrayal and leaves with his mum. Later in season 9 episode “Captives,” Linda is reintroduced as a captive of Crowley, who escapes with Sam’s help. Back at the bunker, she reunites with Kevin, who is now, thanks to the Winchesters’ incompetence, a ghost 👻. My macbook keeps suggesting little emojis in the smart bar so I just gotta put ‘em in. That’s the last we see of Linda, so I’m drawing my own conclusions about whether she gets to live a long and happy life. Kevin is a fan favourite and despite my reservations about Osric Chau which I will not get into like ever I really like Kevin too. He outsmarts Crowley many times and shows remarkable tenacity to get an impossible job done. His desire to see his mum again, the driving force behind his actions, mirrors Dean’s desperation to have his fambily together again like they used to be. I would call this a parallel but I don’t believe they purposefully did this, I just think they accidentally rehashed the same tired storyline they’ve been peddling since 2005. But yeah, if I was Kevin and all I had was my mum, seeing her again would be the driving force for my actions as well. Kevin’s father is never mentioned, and it honestly isn’t a big deal, which is great. Sometimes fathers are just absent, and you don’t need throw a hissy fit about it or make it your entire personality, Dean.

Missouri Moseley, played by the inimitable Loretta Devine, is introduced in the first season, episode “Home,” in which she helps out on a case involving Sam and Dean’s childhood house. We find out that Missouri is a long-time friend of John’s and helped him to understand that supernatural forces were behind Mary’s death. She is Sam and Dean’s first point of entry into the world of the Supernatural, and they didn’t know it until they meet her in “Home”. In season 13 episode “Patience,” another layer to Missouri’s character is added with the advent of her family: estranged son James and granddaughter Patience Turner, who is also a psychic. We get a lot of backstory for Missouri in this episode, even if it is sloppily written and contradictory to the way they initially set her up. If Missouri and James had been travelling when he was a child, why was she stationed in Lawrence in both 1983 and 2005? What did he mean that Missouri was hunting? I can’t be bothered unpacking the confusing bits of information presented in this episode. It’s not a good episode and I really don’t see why everyone goes apeshit for Bobo Berens. He kills Missouri in this episode, in a really horrible way. Like the history of Supernatural’s racism and misogyny should not be dumped on one man, but nor should it be perpetuated and it is continually throughout the entire show. Confusing, contradictory and badly written backstory aside, she is an interesting character, and her willingness to sacrifice herself to save her family echoes that of Mary in “Home”. I’m actually really mad that Patience never gets to have a relationship with Missouri, and later in season 13 episode “The Bad Place,” Patience’s father tells her that if she leaves to help The Winchesters and uses her psychic abilities, she’s not welcome back in his house. To me that’s just unnecessary. We have a family that has already been ruptured by the death of Patience’s mother, further ruptured by Patience’s father cutting off contact with Missouri, and then to go a step further he disintegrates their family unit by kicking Patience out. Like how much loss do the Moseley-Turners have to endure? It’s really just cruel at this point. But Patience does find family with Jodie, Donna, Claire, Alex and eventually Kaia, and while I love the concept of found family and this found family in particular, it comes at the expense of biological family, which is something that the show has pushed from the very first episode. So that’s evolution in itself. Going from “fambily is the most important thing to these characters” to “found fambily is where we find love” is great, but ripping apart a biological fambily like the Moseley-Turners, and indeed starting the episode by saying Missouri has been shunted out of her son and granddaughter’s lives for trying to bring her son comfort, is just fucked. Like, I couldn’t name a single Bobo episode that I actually like without having to comb through them. I’m trying really hard not to shit all over him because as a writer I know how much that sucks and I know how hard is it for any marginalised writers to get a start, but I’m allowed to have my vendettas.

If you’ve watched the “Runs In The Family” angels MV from 2010, and only if you’ve watched the “Runs In The Family” angels MV from 2010, you will understand just how jacked up the angel family really is. The angelic counterpoint to Sam and Dean are the archangels Lucifer and Michael. We are introduced to two different versions of Michael—one in season 5, who possesses their dad in 1979 and their brother Adam in 2010—my god that was literally over a decade ago—and Apocalypse World Michael, played by four different actors: Felisha Terrell, Christian Keyes, Jensen Ackles, and Ruth Connell, who plays Rowena. I don’t know what in the hell Jensen Ackles was doing performance-wise when playing Michael, but I consider it a federal crime akin to drug trafficking or money laundering. As for Christian Keyes playing Michael, Andrew Dabb, you know what you did and you’re going to have to live with that.

In season 5, during the apocalypse, Michael and Lucifer only interact in the last episode, “Swan Song,” but the entire season is built around their conflict. Lucifer disobeyed their father, and Michael as God’s most powerful weapon must defeat him. It’s meant to mirror Sam’s descent into, uhhhh, badness or something, disobeying John to run away to Stanford, or, like, drinking demon blood? It’s unclear. Lucifer and Apocalypse World Michael interact in season 13, and Michael kills Lucifer only to take over Dean’s body and start a season-long arc of, like, bad acting and barely thought-out plots. I would say to Jensen Ackles “don’t quit your day job,” but this is literally his day job.

The angels as they’re introduced in season 4 are warriors of god, and all they know is obedience and killing. Even Cas can’t break out of the cycle of killing his angel siblings, and often justifies it by saying that it’s for the greater good, that he needs to do it to take down a stronger force like Raphael or Metatron. Anna manages to break free of her family by falling and becoming human, but when Cas betrays her and the angels capture her, she is lobotomised, tortured and sent back out to kill Sam. Then she’s burned to a crisp by Michael possessing John, not the last time a woman would burn to death on this show. The angels are dysfunctional at best, and actively hostile to each other, especially Castiel, the infamous spanner in the works. I could write an entire academic paper about how the angels think of Castiel as this rebel slut who murdered his way to the top and is going to be the downfall of angel kind, but Dean thinks of him as this little nerdy guy with a harp he carries around in his back pocket. Which honestly Cas would love because he’s obsessed with Dean and wants to touch his butt. I don’t know what else I can say about the angels without turning this into a dissertation, so I’ll continue on.

While all seasons of the show are about family, season six is especially about matrilineal family. It introduces the concept of the mother of monsters—Eve—and focuses on Mary as a solution to the loneliness the characters feel after her death. Samuel Campbell, Mary’s father, is brought back to life and manipulated by the promise of seeing his daughter again. He asks Sam and Dean what they wouldn’t do to see Mary again, which is kind of the general thesis of the show. What wouldn’t John, Dean and Sam do for each other? Dean sells his soul. John makes a deal with the demon who killed Mary. Sam teams up with Ruby to kill Lilith in revenge, which begins as a suicide mission because he doesn’t know how to handle his grief for Dean. The difference is that Samuel betrays Sam and Dean, his own grandchildren, for the promise of seeing Mary again. This cardinal sin alienates him from being a good guy, because good guys never betray Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean are our protagonists! Our heroes! The bringers of the light! The knights in shining armour! The white on rice. The cherry in cherry pie. They are the ones we’re meant to align ourselves with, because it’s their story the narrative is telling. And anyone who doesn’t align themselves with the Winchesters is an enemy who needs to be defeated.

We’re introduced to the character of Gwen in the first episode of season 6, “Exile on Main Street”, and she says in the episode “Family Matters” that Samuel, the patriarch, doesn’t like her very much because she reminds him of Mary. While Samuel, Christian, Gwen and co are technically family, Dean has no connection to them past bloodlines. And as I said before, while family doesn’t end in blood, we learn throughout this season that blood doesn’t always mean family. Gwen dies in the episode “And Then There Were None,” because of course she does, and Mary doesn’t come back, at least not in this season.

In “Family Matters,” the alpha vampire, played by the irreplaceable Rick Worthy, mentions that “we all have our mothers,” referring to Eve, the mother of monsters, the one who spawned every other monster and who has been trapped in purgatory ever since. Eve is pulled from Purgatory to wage war against the hunters and Crowley because they have been preying on her first borns, the alphas. I love Eve. I love her. She’s my favourite villain after Metatron. Mainly because I think she is like… sexy as hell. Like wow I am just so attracted to Julia Maxwell and this, like, bored smokey affect thing she does where she barely moves her mouth when she speaks and her strong brow makes her seem so intimidating. I don’t know anything about her personally, but I feel like she would’ve bullied me in high school, and I’m into it. It’s really hard to judge just from this one role whether she’s a good actor because Eve has such limited range and few things to do, but I really wish she’d gotten more screen time. Yeah, she’s doing the bare minimum and I’m completely obsessed. But Eve isn’t just a monster, she’s literally THEE milf. The original milf. And I really think she should’ve stayed around, but since they kept Lisa alive they had to kill at least one high profile woman.

Continuing with the family storylines in season 6, Dean tries to establish a family with Lisa and Ben, and for the most part succeeds. He gets a job, plays the role of the doting boyfriend and stepfather, and protects them as best he can. I’m going to spare you the rant perched at the tip of my tongue about how this is at best a lavender marriage or staying together for the kid, and that Lisa only exists to be an ideal for Dean, not an actual partner he can grow with throughout the rest of the show. It’s his first attempt at a fambily outside of Sam, Bobby and John, and it fails miserably because Lisa isn’t a good match. The fact is, she will never be able to fit into the hunting world because of the way the writers wrote her—as mother and girlfriend archetype, and we’ve seen how well they do with those—in fact they actively paralleled it in “Exile on Main Street” where they had Dean hallucinate Azazel coming back and pinning Lisa to the ceiling. It couldn’t be more obvious that they don’t respect her. At least they didn’t fridge her for Dean’s man pain. It’s honestly horrible because Dean put so much effort into believing this was his one chance at happiness, and when it crumbles like a tim tam in hot tea he beats himself up for it and uses it as an excuse to never be happy.

He does seem to be happy for the most part with Lisa, but because Sera Gamble doesn’t know how to write interesting or complex female characters, when Sam reenters the picture it once again becomes about the original premise: two brothers on the road, fighting the forces of evil. There’s no room for any women in that sphere. Up until this point I think—correct me if I’m wrong—there has been one female hunter who survived, and she was in one episode. The hunter Tamara in season 3 “The Magnificent Seven,” whose husband died in maybe the most sadistic way anyone has died on this show. Don’t rewatch it, just google it. All women die, including Mary, their mother, who is brought back in season 12 and killed in season 14. AND FOR WHAT? For WHAT Andrew Dabb.

Often, the loss of a parent, child or significant other is used to excuse bad behaviour and terrible choices. The hunting life causes Mary’s whole family to die before she can escape it, and because she makes a deal with Azazel for John’s life, the same demon John makes a deal with, Azazel kills her anyway. John abused his kids and brought them into the hunting life, because he was obsessed with getting revenge for Mary’s death. Sam does the same thing when Jess dies in the first season, and it starts a 15-season long arc of pain and misery. He sets Lucifer free in the season four because he is obsessed with getting revenge for Dean’s death and obsessed with the power drinking demon blood gives him. Then again, Sam is actually right for saving people by exorcising demons, which is literally the first part of the family business motto, instead of just gutting them with the demon knife, but because Dean doesn’t agree with it, it’s bad. Sam always wants to do the right thing, he just gets a little caught up in the details. But you know what? Bloodfreak rights.

When Cas dies in season 13, Dean is so overcome with grief, a grief that echoes John and Sam’s, that he mistreats Jack and threatens to kill him. In season 14, Nick, Lucifer’s vessel, boo snore hiss, kills everyone involved with the murder of his wife and child before he finds out that it’s actually Lucifer’s doing, and then he tries to raise Lucifer from the empty because he’s addicted to killing? Whatever, stop employing Mark Pellegrino. Stop writing men as obsessed with getting revenge

The biological fambilies in Supernatural suck shit. Honestly every time I watch an episode about fambily I’m even more glad I don’t talk to mine. Dean and Sam need to spend some time away from each other, while they’re both still alive. Their fambily dynamic gets better as the show progresses, and I was pleased to see in season 12 that they do away with the codependency, constantly sacrificing themselves for each other, isolating themselves, betraying everyone they know for each other—they started to act like, you know, normal people. And that’s good. Sure, the show would not be anywhere without John sacrificing himself for Dean, and Dean sacrificing himself for Sam, and honestly that’s what made those first few seasons amazing. But after a while it becomes lazy writing, not parallels. A parallel that Supernatural pulled off is Sam comforting Magda in season 12 episode “The Survivor” in the way he needed to be comforted in season 1 and 2 as a psychic child. A parallel is Dean preparing Cas’s body for cremation in season 13 in counterpoint to the way Cas remade Dean’s body in season 4. This show can absolutely do parallels, some of the most beautiful parallels ever put on screen, but the last season was such lazy writing that I cannot forgive it.

This has been an overall negative episode of Holy Hell, and that sucks. I don’t want to be so negative. I want to talk about the good things that Supernatural did, and share in joy with you all, so now I’m going to talk about the only positive I see with fambily in the entire show.

For Dean, everyone older than him is a parent to disappoint, and everyone younger than him is a little sibling to protect. Cas is the exception, as there’s no way to define Dean and Cas’s relationship without acknowledging the reciprocal romantic ways they care about each other. Dean says on multiple occasions that Cas is like a brother to him, and that he’s Sam and Dean’s best friend. He actually drops the line, “After Sam and Bobby, you are the closest thing I have to family,” on Cas in season 6, and he acts like it’s nothing, but you can see in the expression on Cas’s face that Dean just recontextualised the entirety of Cas’s being in one sentence. Cas falls for Dean, gives up his family for Dean, and decides to follow him in the first act of free will we see on screen. And Dean, who has never known love without pain, says to Cas, you are fambily to me, I actively choose you, you belong in my life. But to belong in Dean’s life is to follow his plan, and when Cas doesn’t, he is punished for his hubris. Dean loves him, and he never even admits it.

Charlie becomes like a little sister to Dean, as does Jo. Jack is unequivocally Cas’s son, but becomes something of Dean’s son as well and some would argue Sam’s son. Claire becomes Cas’s daughter, but imprints so much on Dean that many, myself included, have come to consider Dean her father as well. If you subscribe to the idea that Dean and Cas are old marrieds, Dean would be Claire and Jack’s stepfather, and they would be a nuclear fambily all on their own. In season 14 “Lebanon,” when John says to Dean that he thought Dean would have settled down with a fambily, Dean says, “I have a fambily.” Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.

Cas chooses to be a part of Claire’s life in season 10 “The Things We Left Behind” because he feels guilty about what happened to her after he possessed Jimmy, but after getting to know Claire he cares for her. The crime that is Claire and Cas not interacting after season 10, my god. That’s his daughter, you ghouls. But Claire and Dean do get more moments together. Dean, Sam and some British guy save Claire from turning into a werewolf, and Claire and the rest of the Wayward Sisters save Sam and Dean from the Bad Place. The Wayward Sisters are a found fambily all on their own, and since I could devote an entire episode to Jody’s little brood, I have chosen not to talk about them much, because this episode is at least half an hour, 34 minutes, and it would take up too much of my time. Claire is one of my favourite characters and I’ll be talking about her in the next ep, so stay tuned for that.

Even before Jack is born, Cas becomes his protector. He goes from trying to convince Kelly to end her and Jack’s life, to being her pseudo-husband and the surrogate father to her child. To me personally, it’s the best thing this show has ever done. Cas, Kelly and Jack love each other in a way that is so wholly uncomplicated, that is so pure and so good. Once Cas becomes Jack’s protector, there’s never any question of whether they would hurt or betray each other. He is Cas’s son, his baby boy, and he loves Cas so much that he resurrects Cas from the empty. When they meet for the first time in season 13 “Tombstone” after Cas comes back, they fit into each other’s lives so easily. This is the part in writing this where I was absolutely sobbing my dick off. There are so many moments between them that show the kind of love that each of these characters deserved. Sam and Dean deserve to have that love from their father, and so does Cas. And together they build a family unit around caring for Jack that does indeed end the intergenerational trauma that plagues the Winchester fambily.

And that’s why season 16 is so important to me. I can make things better. Dean sorts his shit out, all of his shit: his alcoholism, depression, ADHD, borderline personality disorder, suicidal ideation, sexuality, gender, the fact that Cas is literally the love of his life and he gets to save him from the Empty the way Cas saved him from Hell. They plant flowers in the field where Dean spread Cas’s ashes in season 13, and they get married at Jody’s cabin with all their loved ones left alive. Claire walks Cas down the aisle and Jack is the flower girl, because he’s literally a three year old baby. Sam and Eileen raise a bunch of rugrats and the Wayward fambily continue the hunting legacy and have a Sunday afternoon roast every week. Dean and Cas raise Jack right, they cut up oranges for soccer practice and watch all his school plays. He and his cousins grow up knowing what it’s like not only to be loved, but to be looked after, to have all their needs met. They grow up normal, and the trauma that plagued their family is a thing of the past. It’s good, you know? It’s just fucking good.

#transcripts #episodes #supernatural #spn

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ronans-sepiaphotograph · 3 years ago

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AO3 FIC MASTERLIST:

Been meaning to do this for a while so here we go. An incomplete list of my fics on AO3:

1. You stole a piece of my heart and took it with you.

Fandom: All For The Game-Nora Sakavic, Carry On Series-Rainbow Rowell

Word count: 15k+

Summary:

Neil Josten has been kidnapped and Andrew's life turns upside down, months after Baltimore happened. Somewhere in London, a particular Simon Snow gets hurt out of nowhere, leaving more questions than before. Will Andrew Minyard find Neil? Will Baz and Penny find out what is happening to Simon? What happens when all of them cross paths? Will they survive or will they lose what they fought so hard to gain?

Archive warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, major character death

Completion status: Complete

2. Can I call you tonight?

Fandom: Raven Cycle-Maggie Stiefvater, All For The Game-Nora Sakavic

Word count: 90k+

Summary:

And then they were roommates.

Adam and Andrew are best friends turned roommates turned co-workers. Andrew is searching for a new roommate since Adam lives at the Harvard campus with Neil Josten. And Andrew's roommate turns out to be a certain blue-eyed boy who Adam knows. Will Adam face Ronan Lynch again? After breaking his heart or will he choose to not face him at all? And will Neil find out that Andrew has a thing for him? Or will Andrew have to make a grand confession of love?

This is a story about friendships, caring and most importantly, finding love in the cracks that time leaves.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

3. My Daddy loves you, Mr. Lynch.

Fandom: Raven Cycle-Maggie Stiefvater

Word count: 55K+

Summary:

Adam Parrish is a successful lawyer, single dad living in New York with one of his best friends. Ronan Lynch is a kindergarten teacher, part-time farmer living in New York with his pet Raven.

It's been six years since they saw each other, after Ronan broke up with him and now Adam is turning 25 and Gansey and Blue kidnap Ronan for Adam's birthday.

What happens when his particularly attractive, magical ex-boyfriend enters his life again? And Adam is hearing things again. Is it just him or is his magic coming back to him? Will Adam allow himself to have it again, with his and his baby boy's heart on the line or will he let Ronan go? But what if some bonds are never meant to be broken? What if one particular baby is magical too? Maybe love and magic are the answers.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

4. Pinch of salt.

Fandom: All For The Game-Nora Sakavic

Word count: 50k+

Summary:

At 25, Neil has everything, well kind of. An adorable two year old baby boy, two best friends who live on another continent where's he moving to and a chance at a new life, away from his past.

But what happens when a particular blond baker enters his life, or rather Neil enters his? And when Henry and Neil both find themselves slowly falling for the grumpy baker, namely Andrew Minyard?

Guess sometimes all you need is a little boy, old crushes and salted caramel cupcakes to find what you've been looking for.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

5. Falling Into You.

Fandom: Raven Cycle-Maggie Stiefvater, All For The Game-Nora Sakavic

Word count: 30k+

Summary:

Adam Parrish stood on the front porch, fully wet from head to toe. His dusty hair soaked and sticking to his forehead, a few strands of it poking his eyes. Ronan tucked the loose strands away from Adam's eyes and Adam stared at him, before Ronan realized what he was doing and pulled away.

Neil had just come face to face with Andrew Minyard himself, three years after he'd broken up with Neil because they wouldn't make it anyway. Because what they had was nothing, too little to mean something to Andrew and too much to mean to Neil.

A story about learning to love, again.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

6. Darling, don't let my love slip.

Fandom: Raven Cycle-Maggie Stiefvater

Word count: 10k+

Summary:

Ronan had decided to leave Henrietta after Aglionby had ended to join his mother in Ireland as Aurora had decided to move there a few years back after Niall's death. The Lynch family owned a large property and from what Adam had heard, Aurora now owned a large farming business. Ronan had never been one for colleges and degrees and jobs, so Adam really wasn't surprised when Ronan had told him. And anyways, the farmer lifestyle suited Ronan more, with cows and crops. Adam had seen him tend to his secret garden patch as if the plants were little children. It was not the fact that Ronan was leaving, Adam would never stop him; loving him or him from leaving.

It was just the fact that he was heartbroken.

Because he had been falling for Ronan Lynch, and now his love was slipping away.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

7. When the snow falls.

Fandom: Raven Cycle-Maggie Stiefvater

Word count: 4.5k

Summary:

"Ronan." What he meant was, Ronan.

"Adam." What he meant was, Adam.

"Kiss me."

"Fuck Parrish, we don't have mistletoe to kiss under", Ronan replied and grinned.

Sometimes all you need is the Christmas spirit and one bad date for you to finally kiss one Ronan Lynch. And no Ronan, you don't need mistletoe above your head for you to kiss somebody.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

8. Can't remember to forget you.

Fandom: Raven Cycle-Maggie Stiefvater

Word count: 57k+

Summary:

Eight years, it has been eight long years since that one trip to Manali and that break-up that left both Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch in search of something they didn't know they already had. For Ronan, choosing between breaking his own heart and Adam's dreams, it wasn't much of a choice. For Adam, choosing between his dreams and dreamer, it wasn't much of a choice either.

It has been eight years and now Blue and Gansey are getting married at Ronan's farms in Ireland and the gang is getting together for one intimate wedding of their best friends and Adam is here, to everybody's surprise. feelings and wounds resurface as Adam and Ronan revolve in each other's orbits again.

Do you chase your dreams or do you chase love? What happens when both of them clash and collide? Sometimes, for your heart, you let them.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

9. What are these fates that we share?

Fandom: Raven Cycle-Maggie Stiefvater

Word count: 35k+

Summary:

Fifteen years later, the Parrish-Lynch and Minyard-Josten household is thriving and happy as Adam-Ronan and Noah & Neil-Andrew and Henry live through everyday life. Little do they know, it's a small world and about to get smaller as their lives run into each other. Don't worry, it's all good.

In all honesty, Noah Parrish-Lynch and Henry Minyard-Josten shouldn't be friends, Noah is loud, bright and a big nerd while Henry is quiet, not as bright and not as much as a nerd (ew). Noah is scared of losing people so he pulls them closer, Henry is scared of losing people so he pushes them away. Their friendship has a rocky start and Henry hates Noah, right? So then why does pushing Noah away feel different? Noah thinks Henry doesn't care about him, but is that really the case? What happens when feelings get involved?

We'll just find out. (So will everybody).

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

10. All this time you were mine.

Fandom: Raven Cycle-Maggie Stiefvater

Word count: 33k+

Summary:

What happens when a very frustrated and not to mention, recently broken up Ronan Lynch steals his car and drives off in an unfamiliar city and ends up at Hollywood Boulevard? He meets Adam Parrish, of course. Ronan Lynch is not somebody who engages in a night of casual sex but there is something different about Adam Parrish that he cannot resist. Little does he know that there is more to Adam Parrish than what meets the eye.

Adam Parrish is what he describes himself as- A runway hooker with big dreams of learning everything about art. What happens when a runaway hooker meets wealthy but an asshole Ronan Lynch? He gets into his car, of course. Little does he know that his life is about to get just a bit interesting. A lot interesting actually.

A night of casual something turns into a week of a whirlwind of emotions, a lot of fashion and art, of course. What happens when they go their separate ways after their week, their deal, Ronan's business trip ends? Sometimes we don't know what we want is already ours.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

11. Why does it have to end with you?

Fandom: Raven Cycle-Maggie Stiefvater

Word count: 26k+

Summary:

Everything is a story. So is this. This is a story about magic, ancient energies and folklore and about the people who are tangled with the same. This is a story about ley lines and the people tied to them. About cyclus corvorum. The cycle of the ravens. When the magic slumbers to rejuvenate and replenish itself so it can run anew.

It had been twelve years. Since Ronan and Adam parted ways, not circling around each other's orbit anymore. Ronan is content with his life at the Barns with an honorary roommate named Henry Cheng. He isn't necessarily the happiest, but life has been good. From what he knows, Adam Parrish is an architect living his charmed life in Ireland. Ronan seemingly doesn't care, or so he thinks.

But what happens when he finds out about the phenomenon of the Cycle of the Ravens? What happens when he finds out that Adam has strayed too far away? What happens when Adam goes a little too far away from what was once home? Ronan races against time to save what was once his before it gets taken away for good.

Sometimes you know the answers, but you don't ask the right questions. This is a story about asking the right questions.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Complete

12. Boy Memorized.

Fandom: All For The Game-Nora Sakavic

Word count: 38k+ (currently)

Summary:

Eight years after the world found out about Nathaniel Wesninski, he disappeared from it, leaving no traces behind. Some said he couldn't be found, some said he died. But what remained in the ashes was Neil Josten. Or as the world knew him, Nicholas John.

Eight years ago, Andrew Minyard felt the pang of loneliness for the first time in his left when the only boy that made him feel left him. He moved on, or at least tried to. If only he could know how to forget him. So he moved on, and Alan James Martin was born.

Nicholas John is an artist, known for his colorful illustrations and artistic sketches. Alan James Martin is a famed crime thriller author. He is also a father to his seven year old. When a meeting is scheduled for professional work, neither know that they're about to uncover the ghosts of their past. When Neil discovers what Andrew's life has become, he can't help but think about the life he's missed out on. When Andrew discovers that Neil is back, alive and well, he realises that some feelings were not quite gone. Griffin just wants Andrew to be happy.

Some things rarely fall into place easily, especially when it's the cracked pieces of your heart.

Archive warnings: -

Completion status: Incomplete

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mikaylaology · 3 years ago

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Packed with so much space

Field Work: Chapter 3

This very detailed and very large image above is a map of my new neighbor hood. Located in Owings Mills (the most info I’ll give about its whereabouts) even though the area was new the space felt familiar having lived in suburbs my whole life. I was a little reluctant to talk about this specific places but this new house is something that will remain constant for a longer time in my life. Having moved place to place my whole life its hard to come to terms with something so stagnate. I new that if I was physically stuck in one spot I would go stir crazy and have to leave soon. But with my ever growing mountain of debt and my ever shrinking amount of spending money this project has helped lead me to a compromise. I would discover every single square inch of my community and neighbor hood not matter how boring it might get.

Every morning at varying different times I walk my dog around the street. A great time for him to go to a bathroom and a great way for me to wake up/ get some exercise. I can find my other neighbors starting the day jogging, getting ready for their commute or even walking their dog themselves. You can see which cars have come home and which have left. How many groggily drag their trash to the curb. And whose cooking a hopefully yummy breakfast.

Something I’ve never noticed in all my years of living is how routine some peoples lives are. I understand getting up to get to work at a specific time or making sure the bus picks you up but the same routine being played out seems eerie. Physically many suburban residents don’t face immediate danger thanks to the privilege of living in a gated community with no gate. Mentally however, the toll that a “rinse and repeat” cycle has on a person can’t be healthy. While you can’t visually experience it, I can’t help but connect problems like infidelity, spontaneous abandonment, suicide and instances of domestic violence to living in an area like this. People resent the comfort that suburbs give them because their loss of control festers into acts of violence. By leaving physically they free themselves mentally even at the cost of others around them.

With Covid-19′s impact on the world many people have had to stay indoors. Some where delighted knowing that their outlet for human interaction wouldn’t be completely shut off. Give it a couple of months though and you see the rise in broken friends ships, fights and couples divorcing. And when after we leave of have already lived alone the isolation doesn’t make time pass any better. Stated in the Article The Double Pandemic of Social Isolation and Covid -19: Cross Sector Policy Must Address Both

“ When we lack proximity to trusted others our brain and body may respond with a state of heightened alert. This can result in increases in blood pressure, stress hormones, and inflammatory responses—which if experienced on an ongoing basis can put us at increased risk for a variety of chronic illnesses. Among those with pre-existing health conditions, these changes in physiology could potentially exacerbate the condition, precipitate the onset of an acute event, or hasten disease progression” .

Covid’s impact on the U.S. for most doesn’t compare to the women we studied in Brazil facing the pandemic of infanticide but I think Covid allows us to understand on some part why they make such a hard decision. The only real comparison to the chapter we read I could make is that although we don’t want to live like this we choose to because the alternative could be worse not only for us but for others. Having to stay stuck in on place is something I don’t want to do and I know how mentally taxing this routine can become. But I choose to stay in one place because on some level it helps others. People around me get the security of growing rapidly with a place to come back to and others settle down taking a well needed break.

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diariesof-kg · 3 years ago

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Love & Order.

08_01_2021

I am bothered that I keep having dreams about this person. I am confused why my mind is going in reverse. Why my mind creates these visuals of us happy and being together when that could never be. Perhaps it’s the illusion of the mind. Perhaps my dream is the reality of false hopes. It’s strange and I need it to stop. There are moments that I do miss, I can be honest about but I feel as those the rush of disappointments erased all of that.

I do embrace the dreams because they are true feelings that I had. I really loved and cared about her deeply. It is extremely hard to make me fall in love. I don’t rush into using the word love either. I have to feel it on a spiritual level before it leaves my mouth. I am at most disappointed with myself though. I reflect a lot and think, girl, you were blinded because you left a lot of people behind for things they did to you and you couldn’t see any of this coming. But relationships are complicated as usual. The last time we had a disagreement, was when she was doing my hair. And I remember I just got over it quick and asked for a kiss. And that was the end of it. There are positive reasons why I stayed although it felt toxic as hell. I had experienced things I didn’t experience in my past relationships. I legit slept on the couch, floor after an argument from my past. I legit couldn’t get a hug or kiss. It was bad and so part of me was getting something different and I stayed. There were positive moments.

After the court proceedings, I reflected on what was said. She said she bit me to get me to leave. But I was bit outside of your residence and it wasn’t a nibble, it was cuts in my arms and a nasty bruise that looked gross overtime. That statement made me sick to my stomach. It just reminded me of victims in domestic violence situations get blamed for them being harmed. She admitted to it, but still didn’t apologize. It was disgusting. This is why I will speak on what happened to me to the masses. Because there are so many victims who live in silence, because of how conditioned they have become from their partners. Like when she told me her friend slit her wrist and wrote I love you all over the girlfriend walls because they were breaking up. What excuse is that? What if your friend killed her girlfriend, you are going to blame the dead? She shouldn’t have broken up with someone crazy, then she’d be alive. This is truthfully sick. It makes sense why your friends are your friends and why as a flock of pigeons, neither one of you really held each other accountable. Her and her friends find excuses to one’s actions and blames the victims. That’s honestly scary. I am lowkey scared for my life now. I mean wow. And then the person who paid you to mail drugs or what have you told you the police was coming and to not come home. I should report his ass. LOL. He part of the problem too. You have a whole ring device to avoid the police from your recreational activities. Oh boy.

I am at peace though. I feel refreshed after everything that has happened. I wish I could date someone else, but I am stuck, well my soul is stuck on the person who betrayed me. I am patiently waiting for everything to resolve itself, so that I can move on and be with someone else. I feel like the timing and the universe will work itself out. I honestly love the Buffins. The way they built their foundation and their relationship is goals. They both have great work ethics and indulge in each other. I know where they are with each other took a lot of time, but when you know that person is your forever I am going to have to assume something silently dings. I thought she was my person too, but somehow I was wrong. Still upset with myself about that. I even thought, what if all this blows over and we reunite but then I think to myself, she told a federal employee that I stole her identity. I just can’t forgive that. That’s really dangerous to lie like that. You walking around Los Angeles telling lies like that. I work for the government how gross can you get. You could make up any lie on me but that is too far. Even the lawyer was shocked and was like, you work with so many people, why would you choose her. Especially when they ask if she has a job or monies. They trying to understand the motive here. Like that is disgusting. That’s part of my story too. Like I said, someone else is for me. A soulmate. A lifetime partner. I just have to be patient enough. I want to move in with my partner and travel together. I want to propose the whole nine.

So before everything hit the fan, I had this plan to ask her to be my gf. The only person that knew of this was my bff Nay. I had told her to ask her what kind of ring she likes and all these questions. I started taking her out on random dates just to see how things could go. I had bought a ring, lordt nobody knows, because they’d all kill me. Lol. But I did. You can even check my bookmarks. Even when I was planning Big Sur, it was all part of the plot. I remember trying to figure out how to get her out of the resort room to set this all up. I even reached out to a planner. I am very romantic when it comes to showing my partner love. I don’t believe in showing it upfront all the time, because its cliche. I even had the idea of at my house. It was a thing. And this was being planned since December. I think my bff did ask silver or gold and my bff said silver. It was bound to happen regardless of us being on bad terms, because I never give up on what I truly feel. But parts of me is glad I saw those tweets. Because I would have been a dumbass bish looking real stupid. I mean I still looked stupid because I was loyal and not being flirtatious to others. I am still upset at my damn self to be honest.

I wake up everyday feeling great, because I can replan it for someone else. I can fall in love with someone else. I can spoil someone else who will truly love and care about me. Who is secure within themselves and open. That is what keeps me going. Even though I felt broken after April 30th, I told my therapist no one will ever want me. And I cried for a week. I look back and think damn I survived that. Someone will accept me as damage goods and understand my past. I do believe it will happen soon. It’s difficult being that covid has made its rounds again. But I took time from work to refocus on a few things. My room is almost done. Its going to be like a spiritual room when you walk in. You can meditate, write on the board of things you want to let go of and then it’s just that. I my friends to feel at peace when they come in. I know it seems strange but that’s how I want my condo to be as well. Like a zen vibe. I am just waiting for more stuff to be delivered. I am excited about that. I have not have the urge to hop back on any dating sites. I do feel different about myself. I have never had trust issues at all. And now I do. I am definitely scared to get to know someone or allow them to know me. It’s not a good feelings at all. But I do want to be with someone by 2022. I want to share a life with someone. There is no rush but I for one don’t want to be past 35, still can’t be in a relationship.

Parts of me is sad though too. Because we would look at million dollar homes and in my head, I knew how simple it would to get it. But like spiritual z said, you can’t protect her anymore and I have to move on and get out of this cycle. But I do want to settle down by 2022. I want to get this townhouse or condo and then a Tesla. And then whomever is interested can have the choice as we get serious to move in with me or we get a place together. All about communication and commitment and I am ready for that. But also, I have to close this chapter. Which means after telling my story to the blogs, the groups etc. and I am fully healed, I know the universe will be ready to send me someone by the end of the year. I am honestly excited, because I am definitely going to take my future bae on a vacation by the 5th date. I am not playing this time. I have the means to do it, so why not. I saved up enough for anything I desire at this point. Plus thank you MTV and VH1. Thank you for all the bookings honestly.

To end this blog, I will post the responses I received after the domestic violence occurred. I posted this anonymously to avoid being flooded in my inbox. But it made me feel better about the situation, especially when you are torn.

Until next time...

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a-flickering-soul · 5 years ago

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realized a lot of the media i’ve gotten into recently all have hopepunk-ish elements. this is a nichepost made for me alone. sources, brief ID, and me rambling below cut.

Image 1: Mad Max: Fury Road. A picture of words, painted in white on the floor: “Our babies will not be warlords.” With the new generation of leaders in the Citadel, they break the culture, the cycle, of violence. They will not perpetuate unnecessary killings. Their children will green the world.

Image 2: Lyrics from “Nina Cried Power” by Hozier and Mavis Staples. “It’s not the song, it is the singing/ It is the heaven of a human spirit singing/ It’s the bringing of the line/ It’s the bearing of the rhyme/ It’s not the waking, it’s the rising.” Chains can be broken. Human beings cannot. There is strength in song, and it can inspire change.

Image 3: A screencap from Star Wars: The Force Awakens of Poe Dameron in an X-Wing cockpit, saying “--but as long as there’s light, we’ve got a chance.” A screencap from Star Wars: Rogue 1 of Cassian Andor as Jyn Erso says “Rebellions are built on hope.” Against insurmountable odds, incredible loss, rebellion against fascism and hatred cannot be stopped. As long as there’s hope, there’s change.

Image 4: A screencap of Janelle Monae’s emotion picture “Dirty Computer”, where she is looking directly into the camera. Lyrics from Janelle Monae’s “Americans”--”Hold on, don’t fight your war alone/ Hate all around you, don’t have to face it on your own/ We will win this fight, let all souls be brave/ We’ll find a way to heaven, we’ll find a way.”

Image 5: A screencap from BTS’s music video “ON”, where RM holds his fist up to the sky, his band members and other people gathered beside and behind him. Lyrics from “ON”--”Even if I fall, I come right back up. Even if my knees drop to the ground, as long as they’re not buried it don’t matter.” When you can’t run, walk. When you can’t walk, crawl. When you can’t crawl, use your voice and cry to your community for help.

Image 6: A screencap from “Stan Frederick” by Evan Santiago, where just out of focus, Stan Frederick faces off with a tall, menacing man in a black suit. A screencap from the Stan Frederick YouTube channel description--”Spent the second half of my life making up for the first half. Currently in the third half. Don’t think about it too much.” A quote from Stan Frederick--”(Stan, tired) I guess the whole point is that if they...want help, then I should probably just be there to help them...I want to start just worrying about stuff for the sake of helping people, not for the sake of guessing whether or not what they're asking of me is legitimate...I think that the last thing I can afford to do is pick and choose what's important. Everything is.” No one is beyond redemption with actionable repentance. Even in a fight against an enemy as old as humanity--if you can help one person even a little bit, do you not have a moral obligation to help?

Image 7: A screencap from Pacific Rim, where Stacker Pentecost stands in armor, addressing his people before they fight. A quote from his speech--”We have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today there is not a man nor woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today.” Again against insurmountable enemies, our strength lies within each others as well as ourself.

Image 8: A screencap of a transcript from The Adventure Zone: Balance by the McElroy Family, between John and Merle. The transcript can be found here--highlighted is Merle saying “And no matter how bad things are, no matter how crummy, no matter how many times some guy named John kills your ass, you find joy.” It takes strength to find joy. To choose joy. Against all odds.

Image 9: A screencap from “everymanHYBRID” by Jeffrey Koval, Vincent Caffarello, and Evan Jennings, where Evan, Vinnie, Jeff, and James Corenthal are walking off-screen into a sunlit field. The subtitles on the screencap read “You did what you thought was right.” A quote from everymanHYBRID--”(Patrick, muffled) One is going to break the machine, I guess...but, y’know, after every cycle it shifts a little bit at the end--you win a bit more every time. So that’s gonna take...endless cycles, man. But maybe eventually you and I will be done with this.” Humans are not infallible. They do what they think is right and usually, that’s good enough. And again, always, against a fight as old as time--if your actions make even the slightest difference, you have a moral obligation to make them. If not for yourself, then for the greater fight.

Image 10: A picture of the set of Hadestown, where Hermes sings in between Orpheus and Eurydice. The subtitles on the picture read “It’s a sad song. But we sing it anways. Because here’s the thing--to know how it ends, and still begin to sing it again, as if it might turn out this time...” Sorrow and sadness are not evil things. They help us remember why we are here, why we still fight. To tell the stories of our fallen friends is to keep their legacy alive.

#image caps have limited quotes but no image desc unfortunately #i'm not tagging all the fandoms bc i want to have some modicum of chill #flickerthoughts #nice things #quarantine b like: sophia consumes content and cries abt it #pity o lord the phonebloggers #flicker's meta

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jenn-coffin · 4 years ago

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Dear her

I remember my moment of clarity like it was yesterday. Which is interesting because I don’t remember much detail from that period of my life. The constant violence, anger and unpredictability put me into a state of fight or flight 24/7, and I have learned that when you live in trauma your mind forgets details in order to protect itself. My mind was protecting me long before I saw the danger I was in. But I remember my moment of clarity. I lived in this adorable little cottage in the old part of town. It was the place to be. We were surrounded by historic remodeled homes, and our little 1920’s cottage was tiny, mended and fixed up just enough to be liveable. I loved that home. It was what I always dreamed of living in when newly married and starting a family. I remember I was standing in the bathroom and I had just thrown up, which is how I started most mornings. At that point I was waking up with uncontrollable anxiety and fear. I couldn’t get out of bed without feeling nauseous. It had become my new routine, start the coffee pot, throw up, get ready for work. But this day was different, I was standing in the bathroom, not wanting to walk into the kitchen, not ready to put on a fake smile and my “everything is ok” look for my husband, I was staring at the scars all over the bathroom walls, partly from the age of the house and some from my husband's fists. I looked in the mirror and I finally saw the darkness I was feeling in my heart through my eyes. I felt as close to dead as one can while still being alive. I didn’t know what to do then, but I did know I was not living, I was barely surviving, and my body was disintegrating from the torture of abuse. I am not religious, It's kind of cheesy, maybe cliche, but in that moment I was reminded of the serenity prayer:“God, please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”I finally saw that I could not control my husband's abuse, but I could control how I reacted, and it was getting time to leave.Shortly after that morning, my husband’s violence escalated to hitting me in public. It was still another two months before I filed for divorce. I share all of this because when I was asked to write this letter I realized I am writing to her. That woman staring at me in the mirror of that broken bathroom, in my dream home. I pray I never forget that darkness. It keeps me connected to where I came from, what I have overcome, and what others suffering in the silence of domestic violence need to hear.Dear Her,There is no other way to say this except, this situation you are in, being in love with a sick person, sucks. No matter how you look at it, living in this abuse is scary and it's sad. You have zero control of his continued choice to hurt you. I know he tells you differently, that he can’t control himself. He says it's because he has anger issues, and his anger is because of his childhood, or because he can’t keep a job, or because of alcohol, or because he is stressed about money, or because of his parents divorce, or because of his strained relationship with his sister, or because you don’t understand how to make him happy, or because of the way you said something. The list goes on and evolves depending on which excuse is closest to grab after the beating. The fact is, his abuse is a choice. His anger is a choice. He is able to control it when he is around other people. Just not you. This shows that he does have a choice and he chooses to hurt you. He hurts you because in his twisted sick mind, your tears and your fear and your pleading for him to stop because you love him makes him feel loved. It's weird, I know, with time you will start to understand this about abusive people. For now, you just need to know that his abuse is a choice that he makes every time he does it, and every time he doesn’t get help.Domestic violence, is hard to escape for many reasons, but the hardest to overcome is the genuine love you have for them. You have evaluated your love for him time and time again to make sure you are willing to stick around through hell until the love of your life can return and treat you like they did at the beginning. It's true, you do love him, and honestly, you won't ever stop loving him. You sincerely meant and believed your vows. When you said in sickness and health, you meant it, but unfortunately his sickness is actually hurting and killing you. He broke both of your vows when he started hurting you with the verbal, emotional, psychological and physical abuse. You cannot break something that is already broken, and he broke your vows for the both of you.Please know that you did not cause the abuse. There is nothing you could have done to keep him from doing the things he did. There is very little you could have done to have kept from falling in love with an abusive person. Domestic violence does not happen to an individual because of their characteristics, family background, mental health, race, sexual orientation, financial status, or an unconscious search for a certain type of partner. It can happen to anyone who has the misfortune of becoming involved with a person who wants power and control. You did not “let” abuse happen to you, you did not “allow it,” you did not get swept up into the cycle of abuse because of something wrong or lacking in you. You got swept up because that is how powerful the cycle of abuse is. Repeat this to yourself daily, write it on a sticky note, dedicate time, energy and emotion for this truth to sink in. It will help you forgive yourself, and you have to forgive yourself in order to live again.When you first get out, your life is instantly going to expand. Don’t get me wrong, you will grieve, but you will begin to feel the freedom of not living in fear. Enjoy this time, play with family and friends, let yourself dream about what your life in freedom will look like. This moment is called the pink cloud, and unfortunately it is temporary. Fear will creep back in through nightmares and potential stalking and harassing behaviors of your abuser. Enjoy the joy and dream the dreams you make during this time because it will be your fuel to continue healing and further separate from your abuser through the dark times in recovery.Connect with other survivors. You are part of an unfortunate club of badass, strong as hell, resilient, strategic, empowered, survivors. Survivors of abuse have some of the most powerful skill sets. We can manage high stress situations, juggle emotional turmoil, while managing our day to day responsibilities, care for others, and put on a smile while we do it. Through recovery and working with other survivors I have found that the soft skills I learned to survive abuse now are my greatest assets. But we need one another to recover and we need recovery to ensure these skills of ours are used for our health and benefit, and not for our detriment. As another survivor and author, Leslie Morgan Steiner says, “abuse thrives in silence.” When you feel the pangs of abuse creep in, and have thoughts of loneliness, despair, regret, self hate, disappointment, or worthlessness, talk to another survivor. Sitting in those feelings, mulling over them, trying to sort them out on your own, trying to understand what happened to you, what you did wrong, alone, is sitting in silence and continuing the isolation your abuser put you in. The shame of abuse is not yours to carry. Refuse to hold shame for something, someone else chose to do to you. To recover we have to step out of that silence and shame, we have to step out of our shell and talk about our experience. Only other survivors of abuse understand where we are, what we are feeling, and can offer solutions to get out of the holes our abusive partners put us in. This is why it is vital to find and connect to other survivors. We have all been there, we get it, and in fact, talking to new survivors helps us in our continued recovery as well. You can connect with other survivors by getting involved with a shelter or non-profit in your area. If by chance you are unable to connect to a local organization, which can be quite hard, you can find communities of survivors on Facebook and Instagram.No matter how hard you tried to not let their words of abuse sink in to how you see or believe yourself to be, more likely than not, they did. That's ok, with time the voices in your head will be yours again. It is not an easy or fast process, but it is possible. You need to practice everyday, identifying their voice and then replacing it with yours. It takes time but it is doable. Working with a therapist and other survivors will help you see when this is happening and help you change it.Recovery is hard. Sometimes it feels harder than it was to live in the abuse. In these moments you may think about going back. Don’t forget, you survived the abuse, you can survive recovery. You are going to miss them and hate that you miss someone that hurt you like they did. You will have nightmares, flashbacks, and sometimes feel paralyzed in fear. You will have a hard time focusing at work because you are hyper vigilant, a side effect of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Your other relationships may be difficult because of behaviors you learned in the abuse. Even if you don’t understand it, or think you need it, find a therapist that understands domestic violence and talk to other survivors. Talking to someone with a shared experience gets us out of the dark parts of recovery and empowers us to keep moving forward. Recovery is one day at a time, sometimes one moment at a time, and relearning how to meet our individual needs one need at a time. Reach out and ask for help when you don’t think you will make it through a day. We have all been there. Again, you survived the abuse, you can survive the recovery.Give yourself grace...As survivors of domestic abuse, giving ourselves grace is 100% necessary and unbelievably hard to do. I believe learning self grace is difficult for most people, but the difference for survivors of abuse is that doing it, giving ourselves grace, can literally feel unsafe in our minds and bodies. We have been conditioned to believe that giving ourselves a pass, or grace, is putting our guard down. We have learned that if we take responsibility, assume blame and make our self disappointment known, we can sometimes reduce or curb moments of violence with our abuser. Once we are free from abuse, victim blaming culture tells us we should be disappointed in ourselves for getting into and allowing abuse in our relationship. Looking back on my journey I see that there are two roads of recovery that run parallel to one another. One road is bereavement and it is lined with never ending regret, self hatred, and living in our trauma. The other road is self grace and lined with self forgiveness, love, appreciation and understanding our trauma. Unlike most parts of recovery, we have complete control over which road we take. Here is the deal, to step from bereavement to grace, we have to understand and accept that while living in abuse, we were doing the best we could with the information we had at the time of assault. The information we lacked or lack is that we were in the cycle of abuse, and that there is no fixing or stopping abusive behavior, there is only leaving and separating from it. Again, domestic violence does not happen to an individual because of their characteristics, family background, mental health, race, sexual orientation, financial status, or an unconscious search for a certain type of partner. It can happen to anyone who has the misfortune of becoming involved with a person who wants power and control.It takes work, but things do get better, that I promise you.Check out more blog posts at jenncoffin.com

#domesticviolence #domesticabuse #domesticviolencesurvivor #domesticviolenceawareness #ptsd #recovery

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ghostmartyr · 5 years ago

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SnK 128 Thoughts

Pacing, I think, is the single most difficult thing to do correctly when telling a story. Out loud or in text, you have to juggle every cue you’re giving off, keep it all relevant, and make it so when things fall into place, they’re falling to the gravity that the story’s been given.

That’s why we’ve got something of a problem in this arc.

I complain a lot, because it’s easy, and this is hardly a flawless work. Organization has also been one of the regular things this series just has trouble with.

Still, while I really feel that the last few chapters aren’t the best way to tell this story, the story chosen is a monster to keep in line.

[insert amusing pre-cut joke of your choice here]

Conflict is the root of every story. Character vs self. Character vs character. Character vs nature. Pick one, then plant the seed and watch the clash reform the setting. Knowing your protagonist often involves knowing your villain.

Eren has always been the best protagonist for this series. He embodies the fury of humanity in an environment that embraces complacency. He is the voice that shouts for people to do something.

Back in Trost, everyone on his starting squad plans on picking the Survey Corps. Because of his constant, unfettering influence. He’s the one who is always reminding them that there’s a world outside that they’re abandoning. He never lets Jean forget it. He interrupts parties with the vocal equivalent of hammering 99 problems to every door.

Eren is one of the top ten soldiers in the 104th, and he makes sure everyone knows what he’s using his skills for. And before they themselves are confronted with what’s being asked of them to join him, everyone in his social circle is ready to make the same choice.

Moving forward is what Eren does in a world that’s been trapped in stagnation. He is a force of change. He is a force of impotent rage in the face of disaster.

He is every reaction the humans inside the walls don’t have, because as a people, they can’t imagine what there is to be done about their problems. Staying within the safety of the walls and limiting their potential in return for not dying a bloody death seems fair, to them.

They are imprisoned, so Eren, our protagonist, seeks freedom.

Being born free is the linchpin of his first successful transformation.

His first rather disturbing act of violence comes from him murdering slavers.

The wings of freedom are the iconic brand of his chosen military branch.

Subtlety.

That’s all very straightforward and simple to work with.

Then we open up the setting, and things are still rather simple, just in a turn that kicks off one hell of a problem.

The world itself is a cage. Physically, in the form of internment camps, or culturally, in the form of how people think about each other and act. There is no freedom for the citizens of Paradis now that they have broken out of their shell. There is just another prison, and a ticking time bomb.

Naturally, in its most basic form, this would make the world Eren’s enemy, because Eren is the champion of freedom.

Only then, if you stick to the most basic form of the concept, the simple answer is that when everyone else dies, then you will have your freedom.

Eren might be the story’s protagonist, but that’s because he stands at the fulcrum of all the story’s core ideas. He makes the rest of the plot move. He is the focus point. He is why there’s a story, and not a jumble of confused, dying people throwing themselves at the problem of titans.

He’s not everything that’s going on.

The world’s cruelty is not what this story is about.

Eren starts thinking about the outside world because a boy shares his dreams of the ocean.

Mikasa takes the time to salute a little girl on a battlefield.

Sasha fights a titan off with a bow and arrow to save one child’s life. She dies because she won’t kill a little girl.

Levi chooses not to revive Erwin so that Erwin can die without being brutally abused as the rest of mankind’s sacrifice.

Niccolo’s entire concept of what he’s fighting for is disrupted because people like his cooking.

Gabi is protected and treated like a child by the 104th even after they know she pulled the trigger on their friend.

Colt dies because of his insistence on giving his little brother comfort.

Reiner’s still breathing because there’s a few little kids he can do some good for.

Annie just wants to see her dad again.

Humanity, as a general concept, begins in an easily condemnable place in the manga. One of the first things Paradis does is send out a large percentage of its citizens to die so that the rest can live. Meanwhile, the only people who do try to go outside and learn more about the world are smeared even as they’re bringing back corpses.

By the end of Uprising, there’s a crowd of cheering people waiting for the Scouts to succeed.

People are awful.

They can do better.

A lot of Eren’s objection to Jean is highlighted through that. He never gives Connie a hard time for wanting to join the MPs. It’s Jean, who’s vocally joining up just so he can take it easy, that Eren objects to. Jean doesn’t have to be a jackass. It’s a decision he’s making.

Jean decides to do better.

In the beginning, people are willing to settle for ‘good enough.' Slowly, as the arcs go by, we approach a near universal take of people seeing problems and taking preventative action.

Here, with the Yeagerists, we come back to the original sin of Paradis.

As long as this one little island is okay, and no one on it has to worry about death, what does the outside world matter? Especially when that outside world has repeatedly promised to kill them? Killing them all first isn’t a problem, it’s a solution.

Samuel’s there at the start of Trost.

Sasha saves his life.

Connie kills him.

They don’t hate each other. Neither one wants to pull the trigger. But Samuel is willing to see the rest of the world die if it means keeping Paradis safe. Connie isn’t.

Over and over, the cycle plays out the exact same way. People kill each other to free themselves. As long as there’s always an Us vs Them dynamic, the bloodshed continues indefinitely. The Eldian Empire enslaved the world through titans. Marley won its freedom and decided it was okay to do the same thing as long as they only enslaved Eldians.

The methodology is what’s going to fuck everyone over in the end.

During Uprising, it is routinely discussed that it’s possible the royal family and the upper brass do know something that makes a coup a bad idea. It’s possible that overthrowing them will bring Paradis into an even darker landscape.

What it comes down to is that whatever they know, they’re willing to let everyone else die if it saves their own skin.

Since that particular Everyone Else is united, the coup continues, and the island’s given its chance at actual peace.

Now, the Yeagerists are making that same argument.

Meanwhile, before we were dealing with this, we had Zeke. His argument was that seeing as the world would never change, Ymir’s people were all cursed and damned, it is for the best of all of us if we all die.

He’s the ultimate counter to Eren. Eren is fighting for life, while Zeke is only searching for the best death.

Only by all appearances, Eren’s fight has landed him in the exact same place. It’s only the question of which people are dying.

Getting back to Connie and Samuel, if you squint, Connie is betraying his allegiance to his comrades. ...If you squint. I know he feels that way, and I know what the chapter title is, but the Yeagerists are a genocidal cult who bully their way into power and try to kill off their actual Commander, who Connie is still following.

Samuel might not be aware of that, but that’s what we’ve got.

The closest Connie came to betrayal was throwing a Warrior Candidate into his mom’s mouth, and we wrapped up that subplot.

Without squinting, Samuel is betraying the ideals that Connie chose the Survey Corps for. Connie wants to save people. He doesn’t want all this death, regardless of how it benefits him.

So this whole conflict, throughout this entire chapter, is really all about who wants which people dead.

The Warriors are still fighting for Marley. Despite everything, that’s their home, and their base of operations if they ever want a chance at fixing things. Paradis has more friends on it than they like thinking about, but Paradis is not their problem.

Kiyomi and the Hizuru flock are pretty much... she is just so done, and it’s very easy to see why. This is not their war. They were looking for a beneficial partnership. For power and resources, sure, but they were willing to play ball. Now they get to watch as the nation they helped kills off the world and their only allies are rushing them to a basement. Hopefully to do something significant before their country burns.

What’s left of the Scouts who are actually following the legitimate chain of command is, surprisingly, focused on stopping Eren’s genocide.

Then I guess the rest of the world probably has opinions, but they don’t get any pages. But it’s pretty safe to assume Eren’s high on their ‘want dead’ list. If not all of Paradis.

We’ve got one group of people who are actually, actively, doing the anti-genocide thing.

The rest is just fighting over the biggest piece of the pie.

The conflict is that some people think genocide is bad, and some people think genocide is okay, actually.

And, you know, fine.

Only then we have Eren.

Protagonist boy.

We don’t know his conflict, and he has more power than anyone else in the entire cast. Unless we count the primordial ooze as a cast member. He is a giant stegosaurus monster who has threatened the entire world, and as far as anyone with eyes can see, he’s actually going through with it.

Nothing presented anywhere suggests that there is a way to stop him.

At best, if people succeed in killing him, they will have unleashed a bunch of mindless Colossals into the world. If we revisit our volume 1 knowledge, we know this to be a problem.

Making all of this really, really pointless.

Obviously, this is what all these characters would do in this situation.

Obviously, we have some feelings about them being forced to kill their allies while the world falls apart.

Obviously, the author probably being willing to fast-forward through all of this is not necessarily an indication that that is what creates the optimal story.

Obviously, these are important details.

The plot still might as well be a glacier.

There is one person moving pieces around. Everyone else is just scrambling on the board he’s created and rehashing whether or not genocide is a good thing every time they’re considering shooting someone they kind of don’t want to.

All of the tension is literally an ocean away.

As great as the character moments are, there’s nothing to ground them in. There’s just a baseless hope that somehow, there’s a way out of this, and the story doesn’t end with yet another genocide kicking off a rebellion.

Magath flips on his worst hot take immediately. He does that because his country is dying and it’s reorganizing his priorities and beliefs to line up with what he’s actually feeling instead of parroting the world that created him.

Yelena goes from being catatonic to being a nuisance because -- reasons?

Connie almost kills Falco then doesn’t, because he really, honestly, was never going to kill the kid and we all knew that.

The driving force of all these potential conflicts is just too distant. As much work as everyone’s doing, they’re only making progress towards getting to Eren.

When you have a character who can end the world choosing to end the world, it creates problems. When that character is your protagonist, it’s even worse.

In the past, Eren’s absence has spurred characters to action and revealed more of the world’s secrets. Presently, unlike in his various kidnappings, Eren is the one with the secrets. His absence is making people do stuff, but not stuff that has any tangible meaning outside of putting actions to the belief that genocide is bad.

Secrets, and people seeking answers, has been a major player in moving the plot from the beginning.

Here though, we have the issue of no one having the luxury of investigating why this is happening. Mikasa and Armin might be desperate to know, but they have no tools available to them except the airship. Which, again, just puts them in the same place as Eren. It does not give them much more than they had the last time they were in a room with him.

Whatever secrets are in place, they are insignificant next to the fact that the world is ending as they watch.

Only, you know, slowly.

Because the decision has been made that Eren’s perspective is going to be a Reveal. It has to stay private until the moment it’s relevant to the other members of the cast, or otherwise, what was the point of holding off so long?

The result is this. Too much going on in too little time, and all of it technically mattering, but not enough that spending 40 pages on it really changes how the story is progressing.

I’m not sure this is a problem that would be easy to see coming. In the design phase, I mean. I’ve kind of been cautiously whining about these concerns for several months.

But the stage is set like this: Eren pulls the doomsday trigger. Enough time must pass for Paradis to cultivate a new normal and for Eren to reach land with his squad of titans. The goal is gathering our cast and stopping Eren.

There’s a disconnect between what needs to be done and how much time it takes to portray those things.

Connie’s breakdown over feeding Falco to his mom is a character moment that helps to inform his emotions this chapter. That’s probably why it survived. It still drags four named characters off to a village in the middle of nowhere while Floch’s reign is establishing itself.

Magath’s turnabout this chapter is the culmination of a lot of the emotional connections he’s made with Eldians, and the attachment he has to his home, but it comes after driving in the point of why Marley is so fucking awful. He’s spouting rhetoric last chapter, then he’s immediately confronted with the birthplace of that rhetoric being destroyed thanks to events he’s had a part in forging.

Yelena goes from being willing to let Floch shoot her to having an interest in watching things play out. Courtesy of one background dump.

The emotional beats these characters are all due do not match up with what they have to do, and it’s making things come across as really disjointed. It’s a frustrating combination of this needing more pages, but the idea of yet more pages being spent off where the main plot actually is going on is exhausting.

The world is ending, but the world has been ending for months.

We’ve clearly got a checklist of things to get done before we meet up with Eren, but he’s hoarding the plot. Sticking around to watch the list be physically checked is...

To paraphrase some tumblr post from the past few months, it feels like laundry, mostly.

The story wouldn’t survive just jumping to Eren. The more time we’re away from him, the greater the impact when we finally know what’s up. The more time we have with our squad of unlikely, plucky heroes, the more we’re going to want to punch Eren in the face for not listening to them. Again.

It’s not that there’s no value in devoting chapters to all of this planning and reeling. It’s that no matter what happens here, it is not fixing the larger problem of Eren’s genocide campaign.

The plot is across the ocean, and we are months into watching our cast try to reconnect with it.

For me, that makes it a bit dull to read, but it is hard to hold it against the story. Writing the end of the world when you intend to make the audience care about the world -- even though the protagonist is ending it -- that is a lot of plot. Knitting it all together is not a simple task. You can see the seams popping.

Oh well.

One of the things I will stand by is that this manga is a great story told gracelessly. If you read it all linearly, problems are going to be noticed. Stuff be weird. Plus timed terribly.

But there’s a lot of emotion packed into it all. It’s a story that, when you look back in retrospect, free of any time line and observing only through the lens of your knowledge, it holds up and has power.

So I’m glad all of this stuff is being drawn, because one day, when the story’s over, having a fragmented, disjointed thread of progression isn’t going to matter so much.

Some stories survive on how they’re told.

Arguably, that includes this one, because the anime got people through the first few volumes.

This story, primarily, survives on the quality of what it is attempting to lump together.

...Not that I don’t wish it wouldn’t try a little harder to pace itself, but I suppose all that energy is being spent on Eren. You know. Since he’s the only one who has any of the parts of the plot that matter.

Uh.

As far as what actually happened this chapter, yay for Mikasa showing attachment to Kiyomi and crew. Intrigue for the question of where Eren is being such a topic (he’s a fucking giant stegosaurus last I saw figure it out). Sadness for Samuel being on the wrong side after surviving so long (Connie probably remembers Sasha saving his life). Sadness for Reiner trying to spare his friends the pain of what he went through for his cause. Pat on the head for Annie still being impossibly Annie. Pat on the head for Onyankopon just because (sorry about your life yikes).

The absolute funniest part of all of this, to me, is that Daz is now dead.

Beats freezing to death in a blizzard while two teenagers shout about philosophy over your unconscious body?

Anyway, another month goes by.

Much the way waves do in Wind Waker.

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 128 #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #tl;dr #chapter post #it might be worth noting that I spent all of the time writing this post wondering what the hell I was talking about #the nature of how these posts are written means that is now your problem

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threeletterslife · 4 years ago

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[Finale] 08 | Over the Moon

→ previous | next (second book of love chaser series masterpost)

→ summary: You feel isolated in the vast American country with no one but your older brother and your six rowdy friends to keep you company. But when they disappear without a trace, you're left with nothing. Nothing until you become dragged into the world of the mob. The mafia world promises glory, fame and big bucks. But that comes with backstabbing, pain, regret and vengeance behind the veils. You're not ready for that alone. Are you?

→ genre: 85% angst, 15% fluff | mafia!au

→ warnings: profanity, mentions of death

→ wordcount: 4.1k

"WHO'S DOWN THERE?" the voice repeats again, and when you squint, you can make out Jungkook's figure coming closer and closer into the light. He's holding his gun straight out, ready to shoot any second.

"Oh great," Yoongi mutters. "Company. Put the gun down, will you?"

Jungkook skids to a stop in front of a shirtless Yoongi hiding you behind his back. The younger man frowns but he slowly puts his gun down. "What are you two doing here?" His eyes glance back and forth your red face and messily tied hair and Yoongi's bare chest. "Oh," he mumbles. "Was I interrupting something?"

"No! No," you quickly say, stepping forward. "No, sorry. You didn't interrupt anything."

Jungkook narrows his eyes. "Okay..." But he finally notices the new mark on Yoongi's chest and the used metal wielding sticks abandoned on the floor. He sees the duffel bags on the floor and he sees the way you grip at Yoongi's wrist with anxiousness. "What's going on?"

There's a certain harshness to his soft voice that makes you flinch back. "We, um... We're—"

"You'll find out tomorrow," Yoongi says with blinking. "Come on, Y/N," he mutters as he finds his shirt strewn on the floor and dons it once more.

"You're leaving, aren't you?" Jungkook spits out accusingly. He points at the bags, then at Yoongi. "You were never loyal."

Yoongi sighs. "I'm sorry," he apologizes and you know he means it. "No hard feelings," he tells Jungkook who's shaking his head in denial. "I know we weren't the closest, Jungkook... But I'm sorry for not being the friend I should've been."

Jungkook is silent as his gaze downcasts to the ground.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be the brother that I swore to be," Yoongi says.

"Fuck," Jungkook whimpers. He doesn't raise his head but you and Yoongi both know that he's crying. The tears glisten on his face, illuminated by the warm lights of the room.

"Hey..." you say, walking toward Jungkook. "JK..."

"No," he says, gritting his teeth and grasping his gun tightly. "Don't fucking come closer... please."

"It's okay to cry..." you tell him.

He ignores you, shaking his head again. "Does anyone else know?"

"Seokjin..." you say.

Jungkook finally looks up at you, wiping his eyes with a rough stroke of his arm. You can see the look of betrayal in his eyes, a look of sadness and regret. "I... I won't say anything if you don't," he says. "Just so you know, Jeon Jungkook never cries."

"Of course," you whisper.

"I'm so sorry, Y/N," Jungkook sighs, looking down at his feet again. "I'm sorry about Jimin... I loved him as much as you loved him. We all did. Fuck," he mutters, trying to wipe his tears away again. Yoongi hands you a tissue box, which you hand to Jungkook. "Thanks," he says, finally meeting your eyes. "I never apologized for slamming that door in your face when you were just trying to help me... I'm sorry for that too."

"You're fine, JK," you say. "No hard feelings."

"I'm sorry this is our goodbye," Yoongi says, rummaging around in the duffel bag to pull out a stack of letters. "Can you... give these to them?" he asks. "I was going to mail it to you guys, but now I guess I don't really have to. They're just my parting words..." He tugs one envelope out of the pile and hands it to Jungkook. "And this one's for you, actually."

Jungkook fumbles awkwardly with his gun, setting it down on the ground before taking the letters with shaking hands. He stares at them for a good few minutes before nodding to himself. "You guys should get going."

You and Yoongi nod in agreement. There are no more words exchanged as Yoongi picks up the bags and leads you away from the younger man. Just as you're about to leave, you take a deep breath and yell out: "Wait!"

Yoongi stops walking and Jungkook whirls around, meeting your eyes.

"Y/N?" Jungkook says.

"If you can... and if the others will listen... I want you to tell them that I don't want you to take vengeance on Jimin's death," you say. "Stop your search for his murderer and just move on."

"Y/N..."

"It's my final wish, JK," you say. "Finding his murderer will not bring him back to life. It'll only lead to another murder... which will lead to another murder... then another and another... Let's be the better people and stop the cycle before it starts."

Yoongi puts a comforting hand on your shoulder, silently praising you.

No one speaks for a few long seconds. Then: "Do you think Jimin will be fine with that?"

You smile, nodding. "Jimin never wanted any unnecessary violence."

When Jungkook doesn't answer after that, Yoongi leads you away once more. Just as you are out the door, Jungkook answers, "I'll see what I can do."

You and Yoongi leave with smiles on your faces.

Beyond the gates of the mansion, outside the walls of the mafia, the air is fresh. The moon is bright. You and Yoongi run, chasing after nothing in particular but running away from the Crescents.

It's exhilarating to run late at night with your partner without knowing what you're going to face in the future. You run where the wind takes you, sometimes you follow Yoongi, sometimes he follows you.

And when you've stopped running, you find that quite conveniently, you're in front of a train station.

"This is it," you breathe. "Our one-way ticket out."

Yoongi chuckles. "I don't think I've ever been on a train before."

"Me neither," you say. You pause before turning to Yoongi. "Can I ask what you wrote in their letters?"

Yoongi laughs quietly, pulling you close to his arms. "That was sudden."

"Are you going to answer me?"

"Yeah..." he trails off. "I wrote a lot of things, actually. Things I was never able to tell them in person... I just thought that maybe, one day, years from now, I'll be able to tell them that stuff in person."

You nod thoughtfully. "Do you think we're going to meet them later?"

"Maybe..." Yoongi says. "Maybe not." He encompasses his hand in yours, squinting at the train schedule board. "Let's take the next train out of here," he declares. "Before we change our minds."

You smile, squeezing his hand. "Something tells me we'll stick to our plans."

The late-night train is passenger-less except for you and Yoongi. The two of you choose a window seat, looking up at the full moon looming in the sky. It's silent except the small squeaks and creaks of the train wheels on the railroad tracks. You close your eyes but you can feel the moonlight hitting your eyelids.

"Hey, Y/N?" Yoongi asks. He leans in to kiss your cheek.

"Hmm?" you hum.

"Where are we going again?" he whispers.

You giggle, taking a deep breath before sighing out. "Nowhere." You turn to face Yoongi, smiling softly. "But maybe somewhere too." He grasps your hands, tugging you close to meet his waiting lips. "Or... anywhere," you breath against his lips.

And it's true. Anything's possible now. You've broken free from the restraints of the Crescents, and you're chasing after your freedom; you and Yoongi, hand in hand, are chasing after the full moon.

Traveling the world with the love of your life is definitely something else. You couldn't have really asked for a better ending... or beginning. It depends on the way you look at it.

You're beginning a new life with your boyfriend, working odd jobs around the world and renting beach houses every once in a while when you scored a financial surplus. And you've moved, cut off all ties and totally ended your short-lived mafia life. Yet it doesn't hurt to ruminate about the past.

Coincidentally, the moon in the sky is crescent-shaped. You and Yoongi lay with each other on a hammock that swings slowly to and fro from the light, beach breeze. You can smell the ocean when you close your eyes, and Yoongi's sharp hearing would allow him to hear the delicate sounds of the waves lapping at the soft sand.

It's been silent for a while now as both of you basked in your thoughts, but you break the silence to ask a question that's been on your mind for a while.

"I wonder how they're doing..." you whisper. "The Crescents, I mean." You look up at the crescent moon and sigh thoughtfully.

"Me too," Yoongi agrees. "I wonder if Jungkook ever got my letters across... I hope they read them."

"Same," you say. "They deserve closure... I wonder if the others feel as if we betrayed them."

"Maybe," Yoongi replies. "We did betray them by disproving our loyalty, after all. I just hope they're okay."

"Mhm," you nod.

"I don't regret anything, though," Yoongi says. His fingers tangle into your messy beach hair as he tugs you closer to his chest. "Wouldn't regret anything I did. Because everything I did landed me right here. And I like it here. Traveling, being with you... learning about cultures... away from pretentious wealth and extravagance. I love it here."

"Good. Me too," you say. You pause, looking up to meet Yoongi's eyes. "Hey, you think Jimin would be proud of me? You know, for leaving and standing my ground and stuff?"

"You're his little sister," Yoongi says. "He'd be proud of anything you do. And especially this. He would be so proud that you left. He'd call you courageous... then he'd probably make you your favorite drink concoction to celebrate."

You smile as you paint that picture in your head. "It's insane how things would've turned out so differently if he hadn't continued writing in that diary."

Yoongi hums. "You know, I've thought about that too... All I can say is, thank god he did."

"Mhm..."

"So," Yoongi breathes softly. "Where to, next? Are we going to travel the world again? Settle down? The choice is yours, really."

"Well, that's a lot of pressure on me," you joke. "But I was thinking... Don't you miss your hometown?"

"The one in Korea?" Yoongi asks as he shifts in his spot to look at you from a better angle. "You want to settle down in Korea?"

"I don't know about settling down, yet," you admit, "but I think it's time to move back there... maybe just for a visit. I don't know. I'm just feeling very... Korea."

"You're feeling Korea?" Yoongi laughs. "Then Korea it is. God, I haven't been in there for so long. I wonder how things have changed. Do you want me to book the flight tickets right now?"

"No," you giggle. "Stay with me. I wanna fall asleep here one last time before we have to go."

"Okay," Yoongi smiles as he wraps his arm around you. The familiar feeling of warmth and security overcomes your senses as you snuggle deeper into his chest, reciprocating his smile on your lips. The night breeze caresses your cheeks, the salty smell of the waters clinging to the air and slipping past your nose with grace and poetic serenity. This, this is heaven.

"Goodnight, Y/N," Yoongi whispers, planting a chaste kiss again your cheek.

Your bodies rock side to side in the roped hammock. Peacefully. Your love for him is as calm and composed as the shy waves washing fleetingly against the sandy shore. There is nothing better that can happen in your life. You've found your friend—best friend—and your lover. Things cannot be better.

"Goodnight, Yoongi," you murmur. It's so much easier to drift off into a tranquil, unbothered sleep these days. It's the Yoongi Effect, and it works miracles.

It's hard to see the foggy night sky in Korea. There are too many street lights, too many glowing vendor signs and even more too many blinding red car beams in the city. But you and Yoongi somehow manage.

In your small apartment, the bed is conveniently placed right by the biggest window so you and your boyfriends can continue the tradition of moon-watching. By 11:00 p.m., all the lights in your apartment are off and you're cradled in Yoongi's arms—full moon marks touching. This routine has lasted for three months now, ever since the two of you had made your permanent move to Korea. It's a nice, quiet routine that you enjoy every night.

Today, though, something's different in the air. You can't quite pinpoint what, but as you nestle against Yoongi's chest and he begins to play with your hair, you decide to let the foreign feeling go. In silence, the two of you watch the moon tonight as it peeks out from behind the dark clouds.

"It's a crescent moon," you say. "I can barely see it through the fog."

Yoongi nods, rubbing your arm with his hand. "Well, we're not the Crescents anymore. We're the Full Moons," he answers.

You frown, looking up to catch his eyes. "That name sounds so stupid," you giggle.

"Oh, c'mon," Yoongi says. "I was just trying to be inspirational for once."

"I know," you say, reaching out to hold his warm hand. "I appreciate it."

"Thanks," Yoongi mutters. There's a short pause before he speaks again. "You know, it's nights like this when I just... I don't know... I miss them."

"Oh, Yoongi..." you say. "I'm sorry. They were like—no, they were your brothers."

"Yeah," Yoongi agrees, looking forlornly out the window at staring straight at the dim moon. "It's okay though. I'm sure they're doing well without us. And I don't regret leaving at all. We're past the Crescents, anyway. We've... Well, it's like we've jumped over the moon and landed amongst the twinkling stars."

You raise your eyebrows, sitting up and turning around to face Yoongi. "Okay. Woah. That is way too much poetry coming from your mouth to be normal. What's up?"

Yoongi shakes his head. "Nothing's up. I'm just saying that... well, the day that we left the Crescents, I felt like I was reborn. And I'm just glad that I met you so I can share this journey with you."

You look at him, completely bewildered, letting go of his hand to cross your arms over your chest. "Did you hit your head somewhere?"

Yoongi laughs. "No, I swear I'm fine," he says. "I... um..." He sits up with you grasping your hands and tugging you so close to him that your noses are touching. He looks nowhere but into your eyes—he's dead serious. "To tell you the truth..." he hesitates.

"The truth?" you whisper.

"The truth is that I feel over the moon with you," he tells you as his lips turn upwards into a beautiful smile.

You laugh, pulling away from his grasp. "God, Yoongi!" you snort. "That was so—"

"Will you marry me?"

"What??" you gasp.

"Will you marry me?" Yoongi repeats as he slowly takes out a little box from his sweatpants pocket. Your eyes widen when he opens it and reveals a sparkling diamond ring.

"Oh my god," you whisper. "When did you buy that? Yoongi, what the fuck?"

Your boyfriend smiles. "I bought it when we were visiting Antwerp."

"That's a Belgium ring???" you gasp. "Yoongi! Oh my god. Is that why you disappeared for an hour while we were at the mall?"

"You thought I was having explosive diarrhea after all those Liers Vlaaike I ate," he smiles. "I was really choosing a ring."

"O-Oh my god," you stutter, hands flying to your head in disbelief. "Yoongi..." you breathe. He looks expectantly at you. "Of course I'd say yes!"

"I know," Yoongi laughs. "I wasn't that nervous about it..."

"Yeah right," you giggle as he slips the engagement ring on your finger. "You should've heard yourself uttering the cheesiest things just a moment ago. I thought you had a concussion or something for a second."

Yoongi huffs. "I was trying to be romantic."

"I know," you say, admiring your hand and the sparkling diamond ring resting on your finger. "Romantic Yoongi is adorable. But it's really not your thing."

"It could be my thing," Yoongi argues. Then he snorts, shaking his head. "You're right. I was dying inside saying all that shit. I meant it though. But I wouldn't have said it in that way if I hadn't planned on proposing to you."

You laugh, tugging Yoongi into your arms. "So... wow. I guess I'm gonna be your wife," you whisper.

"Couldn't have asked for a better lifelong partner," he whispers back. The two of you break apart, simultaneously looking out the window to watch the moon watching you. The clouds have miraculously cleared away, letting the moonlight shine into the dark apartment and illuminate your faces. "I'm sorry I put you through so much trouble," Yoongi mutters. "I promise that I'll always stay truthful to you. We won't have to hide anything from each other. And I promise I'll be a diligent husband."

"Oh, Yoongi," you sigh, slipping your wedding ring donned hand in his as you stare at the glowing moon. "You don't have to be sorry. We're over all of that. Literally. It's like you said. We're the Full Moons, not the Crescents."

With that, you tear your eyes away from the enchanting crescent moon up in the midnight sky, meeting Yoongi's eyes. Your hands trail up his soft t-shirt until your palm rests again his chest—right where his mark lies. Yoongi lets out a deep breath, cupping your cheek with one of his strong hands and placing his other against your neck. His thumb brushes over your mark as he gazes into your eyes like you're the brightest star in the darkest sky.

He doesn't have to say it. You know he loves you. And you don't have to say it either because the two of you—you don't need words to keep your relationship afloat. You already know what Yoongi's feeling just by the way he acts; how daintily he touches your skin, how softly he pecks the corners of your lips after he deeply he kisses you, how delicately he makes love to you.

Maybe you've been through rough times with him. Maybe you've had your fleeting days of crime. Maybe you've had to face your brother's brutal murder and be pressured into taking vengeance. But the trying journey helped you find a man who you can depend on, look up to, trust. You ultimately learned to forgive. Because violence against violence is for people who chase a troubled life of anger, frustration and tension. You don't regret leaving. You don't regret a single thing, actually.

You hear that, Jimin? you think. No unnecessary violence. It's just what you always wanted.

—ONE YEAR LATER—

The moon is faint, barely visible in the cerulean sky as the sun beats down on the city. You stare at the clouds from your window, wondering how long it'll take for the moon to disappear fully.

Sighing, you turn away from the window, rubbing your eyes and collapsing on the bed. You were home alone because Yoongi had work early in the morning. Normally, you'd just curl up on the couch and read or catch up on your own work, but today, you just feel like laying around doing nothing.

Even blinking seems strenuous today, so you close your eyes, sighing out as you stretch your legs across the expanse of your sheets. Yoongi must've washed them with ocean-scented laundry detergent recently because the sheets smell like the beach. You smile. Your husband's thoughtful in small ways like that.

You'll have to cook him his favorite meal today to surprise him. If only you could get out of this bed... You're usually not this lazy, but ever since you've had closure—ever since you forgave and forgot—you've been living much better. You have no ties with the mafia now, and you know your brother's in a better place. It's so much easier to breathe.

You groan, flipping on your stomach and stretching out your arms as the sun warms your back. God, you really don't want to get up. Maybe you'll watch some TV? Maybe you'll make yourself a healthy salad? Or, or, you can text Yoongi a summary of the news today—he loves it when you send him little bits of the news on days he's too busy to read full articles. Hm, or you can surprise him with that medical documentary he's always wanted to watch but never wanted to splurge on. Yeah. That' seems like a good idea.

The motivation to get up is suddenly back—the thought of making Yoongi happy gets you up on your feet on days like this.

You're already holding the TV remote, about to turn it on when the doorbell of the apartment rings. You cock your head curiously.

That couldn't be Yoongi. It was almost around noon—he'd be working his busiest shift right now... And besides, if it were Yoongi, he wouldn't have bothered to ring the doorbell; he would've walked right in. So maybe he ordered something and it was just delivered? You straighten your clothes and quickly run your fingers through your hair, hastily trying to making yourself look a little more presentable.

But when you open the door and see the person outside, you gasp, goosebumps dotting your skin as you stumble backwards. "JUNGKOOK?!"

"Y/N."

He looks horrible. Tired. Unhappy. Impatient.

"Hey..." you say, immediately tugging him into the apartment to give him a hug. "What are you doing here?" you ask as you pull away. "This... wow, this is so sudden, JK. How are you doing? Where's Tae? Why isn't he with you? Is everyone else here?" You quickly close the door before you ask the next question. "Did you finally quit the Crescents?" you ask, excitedly. "I mean, I thought you guys would continue with all that stupid gang business but—holy shit, Jungkook! You're crying!"

"I-I," Jungkook sniffles, attempting to wipe his tears away as he shakes his head when you try to hug him again. "T-They.... They're..." he stutters, burying his face in his hands. "I didn't quit the Crescents," he finally whispers.

"Oh..." you say, awkwardly. "I'm sorry. I didn't really mean what I said, I just—"

"The Crescents are dead."

"What?" you say. "Come again?"

"They're dead."

"What?"

"T-They found out we were lying about our numbers... I... I was lucky enough to escape... And I just... ran. I'm sorry. I didn't know where else to go. I didn't know what to do. I'm so sorry. Boss... the underboss, Hoseok and... Taehyung they're all... dead," Jungkook whimpers.

"D-Dead??" you whisper, your heart dropping in your chest. "JK... That isn't your fault. Oh my god." Your hands shake as you put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Jungkook jerks up to look into your eyes. His tears are welled up and his breathing is ragged but he shakes his head. "No," he blurts out. "I don't ever want to talk about it."

"Okay, okay," you say, patting his back. "Let's get you a warm cup of Yuja tea, okay? We'll wait until Yoongi arrives. Oh god, Jungkook. You can stay here as long as you want, okay? You'll be okay..."

The poor, trembling man doesn't say anything as you lead him away in your apartment. Jungkook doesn't think he'll ever trust anyone enough to tell them what had truly happened that murderous night—sequence by sequence.

Jungkook screams, gasping away as he clutches his chest and kicks the blankets away from his feet. His frantic movements wake the sleeping girl beside him on their shared bed.

"I-I'm sorry," Jungkook pants, attempting to steady his breaths but with little success. "It was just a dream. I'm sorry."

The girl rubs her eyes, stifling a yawn before hugging the trembling man. "Don't apologize," she says in a sleepy voice. "It was about the Crescents again, huh? It's okay, baby, you can tell me what happened. Maybe it'll make you feel better if someone else knows."

Jungkook hesitates. "I dunno..." he says, hugging her back as she begins to rock softly back and forth as if to cradle him into serenity.

"You can trust me. You know that, right? Kook?"

He takes a deep breath. "It's gonna take a while."

She looks at the alarm clock, which reads 3:04 a.m. "We've got all night," she says, brushing his sweaty hair away from his forehead. "And I'm patient."

Jungkook sighs. "Okay... I guess I'll have to start from the beginning then..."

—previous | next (second book of love chaser series masterpost)

—masterpost

—masterlist

#bts #bts fanfiction #ot7 #seokjin #yoongi #hoseok #namjoon #jimin #taehyung #jungkook #mafia au #over the moon #otm

36 notes · View notes

lesbianaglaya · 5 years ago

Note

Please elaborate on that The Idiot essay

Okay anon, ask and ye shall receive. Here is my manifesto on why I love The Idiot (1868-1869). Homoeroticism and me crying over Bakhtin under the cut.

Okay from here on out let me just warn you that there will be discussion of epilepsy, sexual abuse, violence against women, murder, and suicide. I never claimed it wasn’t a messed up story.

Let me start off by saying, this is not a good novel. It was written as a desperate cash grab by Dostoevsky after he and his wife Anna had had to move to Switzerland for financial reasons (they were rather continually in debt due to Dostoevsky’s gambling problem. In fact, they’d met when Fyodor hired Anna as a stenographer to help him write down The Gambler, the completion of which he’d bet all his rights to his published works on). The four separate parts are only loosely linked by narrative threads, things don’t follow the course you would expect from a work of literature, and the protagonist of the novel’s literal schtick is that he was supposed to be “a perfectly beautiful man”. Which, yeah, great in theory but in reality people don’t want perfect protagonists. The morals of the novel tend towards Dostoevsky’s own often troubling views of religion and morality, and it is a distinctly 19th century work.

And yet, it’s still one of my favourite things I’ve ever read. Not only are there some truly insane homoerotic moments in here, but there are some brilliant moments of play with narrative voice, society novel-esque shenanigans, questions about the nature of goodness and what that really means, and, of course, one really hot moment where a woman slaps a guy who’s being a dick in the face with a riding crop.

The loose plot of the novel is that Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, the eponymous idiot (and a holy fool, or as Dostoevsky once described him, “Prince Christ”), is returning to Russia from a period of many years in Switzerland being treated for epilepsy. On the train into Petersburg he meets Rogozhin, a young man who has just inherited an enormous fortune after the death of his father. They begin talking, and Rogozhin confides in Myshkin about his love for (read: obsession with) a girl known as Nastasya Filipovna. (This seems weird doesn’t it? Just confessing your major life problems to this weird guy sitting next to you on the train? Yea that’s just what people do around Myshkin). Upon arriving in Petersburg, Myshkin goes to meet with his distant relations, the Epanchins, to get to know them and form a family connection. The rest of the novel is these characters cycling through various love (?) plots, more random inheritances, people dying of consumption, going to stay in the country for a while Just Because, and other stereotypical 19th century novel things.

What makes it unique is that each character is their own person with their own thoughts, experiences and world views and the novel is these views interacting and clashing, or as Bakhtin puts it “a plurality of consciousness, with equal rights and each with its own world”. The characters are not there to help prove any thesis or idea; instead the thesis of the novel is how these characters differing views interact with each other. Myshkin is the lens of this, making it a picture of how each different character (or world view) reacts to his inherent goodness.

Of course, that’s all very... meta. Fun to discuss, but it doesn’t necessarily make the book fun to read. That’s where Nastasya Filipovna comes in.

Nastasya Filipovna, the girl that Rogoshin is “in love with” is a young woman who was born to nobility but orphaned and then sexually abused and turned into a concubine by her guardian Totsky. At the beginning of the novel she has escaped the control of Totsky and is in the incredibly tenuous situation of being provided an income from him for not completely destroying his reputation. A marriage has been arranged by Totsky (so that he won't have to worry about her any more) between her and this one asshole Ganya, but she has not agreed to it yet and has said she will announce her decision at her name day party.

At said name day party is where things get Crazy. She goes ham, mocking Ganya (who she knows hates her) for selling himself for the money promised in marrying her, verbally torturing Totsky, and generally saying fuck you to everyone while also tossing in a good amount of self hatred. Myshkin (whom she invited after meeting him once earlier that day for like five seconds seriously just role with it) declares quite earnestly that he thinks she is a good person and if she likes he’ll marry her amd also that he just inherited a fuck ton of money. Nastya is taken aback, and agrees to marry Myshkin. Then Rogozhin shows up (drunk, with the lads) and we find out Nastya has been planning all this. She tells Myshkin that she can’t actually marry him because he’s too innocent and she believes herself to be awful, and then asks Rogozhin for the money he promised her. Rogozhin hands over 100,000 rubles and Nastasya proceeds to toss them in the fire, tell Ganya that they’re his if he’ll reach in to get them out, and then leaves her own party with Rogozhin!!! I said this novel was batshit!!!!

Nastya through out the novel continues to be The Best Character, writing homoerotic letters to Aglaya Epanchina, who I FIRMLY choose to see as a lesbian, smoking cigars, and of course, upon hearing a man say of her “Here you simply need a whip, there’s no other way with this creature”, in return “she rushed to a young man completely unknown to her who was standing two steps away and holding a thin, braided riding crop, tore it out of his hand, and struck the offender accross the face as hard as she could”. Iconique. Of course, her story ends tragically but we’ll get into that later.

To quickly touch on Aglaya Epanchina, because I love her, she is one of the daughters of the Epanchin family, she and Myshkin almost get married, and she ends the novel by running off with a foreigner and becoming (horrified whisper) Catholic. Anyway she and Nastya have a brief but horribly gay dicourse where Nastya confesses her love (platonic of course. That is definitely how I, a lesbian, read this) for Aglaya and Aglaya refuses to believe her. Aglaya says she wants to marry Myshkin specifically because then she wouldn’t have to be a wife and a mother and could pursue what she wants and continue to learn. Also at one point Aglaya adopts a hedgehog. That’s Lesbianism Baybee. Her ending is supposed to be tragic but I choose to believe that her marriage is a lavender marriage and she and her gay husband are having wild fun around Europe. Let me have this.

Now for what you’ve all been waiting for — more homoeroticism.

Myshkin and Rogoshin’s dynamic is, like, fully insane. After their first meeting on the train, Rogozhin says to Myshkin “Prince, I don’t know why I’ve come to love you. . . . Come and see me, Prince. We’ll take those wretched gaiters off you; I’ll dress you in a top-notch marten coat; I’ll have the best of tailcoats made for you, a white waistcoat, or whatever you like; I’ll stuff your pockets with money”. Slow down lover boy you met this man five minutes ago and you’re already trying to sugar daddy him?? It only gets worse from here.

Part II of the novel picks up six months after the name day party. Rogozhin and Myshkin have in the intervening time “often happened to spend long hours together, and there had even been several moments during their meetings that had left an all too memorable imprint upon their hearts”. Yeah. It’s also said that Rogozhin is jealous of Myshkin maybe holding some of Nastya’s affection but like. It just reads a lot like Rogozhin is torn between Nastya and Myshkin, which he is in a way because being in love with friends with Myshkin and Nastya (lavender) marrying Myshkin (that’s not an exaggeration it’s basically out right stated that if Myshkin and Nastya married they would not have sex), would mean giving up the weird destructive obsession he and Nastya have with each other. This is supposed to imply coming to Jesus. I take it as accepting your homosexuality because Dostoevsky is dead and I can do what I want.

So Myshkin shows up at Rogozhin’s house and things are a bit awkward (Rogozhin has maybe been stalking Myshkin??) His “affectionate” smile is described “as if something had been broken, and try as he might, he was unable to glue it back together.” Anyway.

They begin actually talking and oh boy. I’ll just present these without comment.

“I’ve come to bring you peace, because you, too, are dear to me. I love you very much Parfyon. And now I’ll go and never come again. Farewell.” “‘Stay with me a little’ Parfyon said quietly, without getting up from his place and leaning his head on his right hand, ‘I haven’t seen you in a very long time.’”

“When you’re not in front of me, I feel spite for you Lev Nikolaevich. . . . Now you haven’t sat with me a quarter of an hour and all my spite is gone, and I love you like before. Stay with me a little . . .’”

“Nobody’s asking our opinion. It got decided without us. And we love differently too.”

“I didn’t want to come here! I wanted to forget everything here, tear it out of my heart!”

Not to mention the jealousy Rogozhin has for the perceived relationship between Myshkin and Nastya. Hmmmm. Anyway after all That, Rogozhin insists that he and Myshkin trade crosses, his golden one for Myshkin’s tin one.

And THEN Rogozhin proceeds to stop Myshkin from leaving again, and takes him to get his mother’s blessing, which is the same thing he did with Nastasya!!!!!! I feel insane.

After this Myshkin returns to his hotel but then Rogozhin follows him and um. Tries to stab him. With the knife that’s been built up as a phallic symbol through the whole novel. But then Myshkin falls into an epileptic fit and Rogozhin flees. Like this is deeply fucked up but What The Hell am I supposed to be thinking rn??

Anyway the next time they meet it’s in the countryside and Myshkin has fully forgiven him for the murder attempt. Indeed “struck by Rogozhin’s sudden appearance, the prince was unable to collect his thoughts for sometime, and a painful sensation rose again in his heart.”

Rogoshin has apparently not forgiven himself for trying to kill Myshkin, to which Myshkin responds “all that you went through that day I now know as well as I know my own self. What you were imagining did not and could not exist.” *jenny slate scream*

Myshkin proceeds to invite Rogozhin home with him, saying “I have some wine, we’ll drink wine, you must wish me something I myself don’t know how to wish for now, and it’s precisely you who must wish it, and I’ll wish you your fullest happiness. Or else give me back my cross! You didn’t even send it back to me the next day! You’re wearing it? Wearing it even now?” and THEN he says “I don’t want to meet my new life without you because my new life has begun! Don’t you know that my new life begins today?” and then they head home together.

Okay skipping over a bunch of stuff because 1) I havent read the novel in a year and while i know there’s more stuff in there I don’t know exactly where and I don’t want to be flipping pages for another hour and 2) this is already insanely long so. For context in the intervening time Rogozhin and Nastya do end up getting married (which everyone including the two of them kind of agree that it’s just a way for them both to kill each other/basically comit suicide. Fun!). So that’s exactly what happens, and Myshkin runs to their house, arriving too late and finding that Rogozhin has stabbed Nastya and she is dead. Thus ensues a scene that makes me so insane I cant... look here just take this:

“‘So let her lie here now, next to us, next to me and you...’

‘Yes, yes!’ the prince agreed warmly.”

And

“‘I’ll make up the bed and you can lie down... and I’ll lie down with you... and we’ll listen... because I don’t know yet man... I don’t know everything yet, man, so I’m telling you about it ahead of time, so you’ll know all about it ahead of time...’”

And

“But two people could not lie on the sofa, and he absolutely wanted to make up beds now side by side, and that way why, with great effort, he now dragged pillows of various sizesfrom both sofas all the way across the room, right up to the opening in the curtain. The bed got made up anyhow; he went over to the prince, took him tenderly and rapturously by the arm, got him to his feet, and led him to the bed”

And

“[Rogozhin was] laying the prince down on the left, better, pillows, himself on the right”

And

“‘What did you use? A knife? That same one?’

‘That same one’”

And

“The prince would reach out his trembling hand to him and quietly touch his head, his hair, stroke it and stroke his cheeks... there was nothing more he could do! . . . and pressed his face to the pale and motionless face of Rogozhin; tears flowed from his eyes onto Rogozhin’s cheeks”

And

“He quietly hastened to pass his trembling hand over his hair and cheeks, as if caressing and soothing him”

And then the cops show up and there’s a brief epilogue talking about how everything is terrible now and Myshkin goes back to Switzerland because he’s incoherent with grief. Insane.

So there’s also a lot in this novel about what is actually good, and how people react when confronted with goodness, etc. etc. but this is five pages in google docs and I need to. Stop. Anyway if you made it to the end cheers this novel is awful and insane and I love it. Dostoevsky do not interact I hate your crusty ass even if your prose makes me feel things.

#gabby.txt #mail #anon #the idiot #anyway sorry this took so long but ah. yeah.#i have a lot of Thoughts #literature #Anonymous

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