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olive-branch-witch-library · 6 months ago

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Lightbringer Book 2: The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks

Series Warnings: SA, non-explicit smut, violence, slavery, sex slavery, classism (the main villain wants to put magic-users above non magic users), assassination attempts, body mutilation (someone loses fingers, the antagonists modify their bodies with magic), drug abuse, large age gaps (19 year old with ~60 ish year old, used as a political scheme), PTSD, identity theft, fratricide, ceremonial killings to prevent insanity, Politics, lots of creepy men, betrayal, cheating, torture, insanity

Book Warnings: SA, non-explicit smut, violence, slavery, sex slavery, classism (the main villain wants to put magic-users above non magic users), assassination attempts, body mutilation (the antagonists modify their bodies with magic), drug abuse, PTSD, identity theft, fratricide, Politics, lots of creepy men, betrayal, cheating, insanity

Notable POV Characters: Kip Guile, Gavin Guile, Dazen Guile, Aliviana 'Liv' Danavis, Adrasteia, Karris White Oak

Ahhh I'm so excited! The plot twists and cliffhangers keep getting better! And there's more characters that I hate with my whole being!

First of all, Andross Guile? Can suck my dick. I hate him and everything he stands for. He made his grandchild play him in a card game to keep his friend from becoming his slave. Same with Teia's old mistress. The bitch gave her olive oil as a reminder she could become a sex slave in a brothel?? They both need to die and they need to do it now.

Speaking of Teia though, there's a new color on the spectrum! Paryl is completely invisible to everyone except paryl drafters and maybe superchromats (people who have perfect color vision), idk I don't think it was ever really explained who can see it. It's below sub-red on the color spectrum, meaning in our normal world it would have really long wavelengths.

Most of this book surrounds Kip's Blackguard training, and oh my god I adore these kids so much. I just want them all to be happy forever but I know that's not possible.

While Kip does that, Young Gavin takes a bunch of refugees and places them on an island that already has people living there. I'm sure that won't cause any problems. Anyway, after he does that he kills Old Gavin! And gets raped because he thought it was his room slave 'attending' to him after being around Karris constantly for 4 months. And then he thought it was Karris. He like immediately feels disgusted when he learns not only was it neither of them, but it was one of his students and I'm pretty sure a minor (by our standards). He did kill her almost the moment he got back to his room after trying to explain what happened (and failing), but then it's like... never talked about again? And I really feel like it should have been. Male characters are almost never assaulted like this in fiction, much less one who has as much power as Young Gavin does. Maybe it gets talked about in a later book, since there is currently a war going on and he's desperately trying to get the Spectrum (government) to help. He could just be pushing it down at the moment to focus on stopping the thing that will literally destroy the world because there's also giant monsters and the villains are trying to resurrect old pagan gods to tear down the Chromeria.

But then he marries Karris (he does explain what happened there and that he's really Dazen)!! I'm gonna be horny on.. not main really but you get it and say that I really want to be in a sandwich between them. Like both of them are my ideal concept of a partner. Young Gavin is smart, incredibly charming, and doesn't shy away from pleasure, and Karris is such a fucking badass and I know she could 100% kill me in like 10 different ways just with her legs.

I know how I said in my last post the author does the male fantasy author thing where he sexualizes women a lot, and it genuinely didn't bother me. But in this book a lot of the women being targeted are either underage or just barely legal. And that makes me really uncomfortable. For the most part Kip is the one doing the sexualizing, which is again acceptable because he's 15. But in the case of other characters doing it it feels gross. And I know this is a fantasy world, and their definition of an adult isn't necessarily someone who's over the age of 18 especially because it's wartime, but I still don't like it.

But back to the positives, the cliffhanger!! Kip and Young Gavin are both kidnapped on ships by separate people! Young Gavin is now completely colorblind! Kip killed a god! Liv is still a bitch and I hate her!

#lightbringer #olive reads #tw slavery #tw sa #tw drugs #tw body modification #tw body mutilation #tw age gap #tw cheating

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fullscoreshenanigans · 7 months ago

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Genuinely shocked Emma and Yuugo role swap received any votes when stacked up against the other options, but I can think of at least two reasons to dislike each one so respect o7

For me, it's a toss up between Mama Emma AU and Emma Ratri AU. With the latter,

#but oghhhh the way people interpret Emma Ratri AU’s is INSANE #( noremma stans) #( some of them ) #the only two acceptable Emma Ratri AU’s are #1 . Norm married her ( and Ray har har )#( because can’t leave him out ) #or 2 . she’d be a GOOD ratri #she would NOT be evil !!! (via @sleepyhouzuki) --- #as for emma ratri most the fics of it completely change her personality and it really bugs me (via @silentstudiosyt)

So often I've seen this tied up in "enemies to lovers" NE that's more overtly horny than the other options and turned me off to the concept almost entirely because I have zero interest in that for these two characters based on their canon personalities. With Emma in particular there's a need to balance her being a product of her environment, as in, at least at the start of the AU she should have some degree of disdain or at least disregard for the cattle children. Even if she's heavily influenced by James, I need some dialogue indicating she used to believe in the clan's ideology that kept them going for a millennia before the shift, otherwise it's like, what's the point lol

With Mama Emma AUs, especially if there's a timeskip to her becoming a Mom with the focus on her being broken by the farm system, it feels like an exercise in excessive sadness and despair and the tragedy of abusive cycles for the sake of seeing just how sad one can make oneself, without any additional nuance to make it worthwhile for me.

#my Norman fic is literally him being a Ratri so can’t choose that one !! #I also hate Mama Emma au’s because lord would she rather die than do that #yes #yes she would #but Emma Ratri AU takes the cake I am raising my brows at you . (via @sleepyhouzuki) --- #mama emma au for me personally bc I can't see emma ever doing it unless she was absolutely forced to #and even then she's still gonna be difficult about it (via @silentstudiosyt)

If she keeps her rebellious spirit and some degree of her idealism then it's a bit different, but there's still my personal hangup of not wanting any of the characters we're introduced to as children experiencing the horrors of systemic medical rape, so there's not much to entice me unless the farm system is dismantled before it gets to that point. (But then there's also my grievances with how canon speedruns this after nearly a millennia of inaction and without larger collaboration with the general demon population so I'm just never completely happy dljfks)

#I think I'm that weird person in the fandom who's very firm in wanting to explore the themes and ramifications of Emma's reward so I chose #The No Reward AU #With the other AUs there will always be one fic that will try to go against the curve of whatever cliches the fandom carves for it #That's what me and my friend are trying to do with our version of the Mama!Emma AU (via @thathilomgirl)

I love how half the post-canon AUs I've seen on AO3 are No Reward AUs that boil down to "…yeah I'm ignoring that because that ending was rushed as hell" kldsj

But this might come down to whether a person considers Emma regaining her memories in any capacity as an AU or only if she regains them right away because I'm thoroughly enjoying works like SuddenWhisper's Tethered where the possibility of her regaining her memories seems to be on the table, but at the cost of undoing the promise/the separation of the demon and human world, and how the trio feel about that versus how people like Mike Ratri feel about it. (Ngl this is my ideal continuation of canon with the level of nuance the author puts into it).

There's still some significant conflict involved to make it worthwhile that's related to canon, but even without that, if there's new character drama that arises from the kids naturally aging, or if its an AU where they aren't as easily accepted by the human world and/or Lambda sickness isn't cured quite as conveniently, I'm entirely on board for that too in a No Reward AU.

#same with lambda emma au #i genuinely can't see her trying to kill off all demons like Norman no matter how much hell they put her through (via @silentstudiosyt)

I haven't delved too much into Athena Emma just because Apollo Ray is more prominent, but from what I've seen Emma isn't as militant as either of the boys in her approach, so I thought that was an interesting spin on it. Could be wrong, though.

#most of the norman ratri aus (that I've seen at least) are also a modern au #still fairly interesting tho (via @silentstudiosyt) --- #so - Norman Ratri it is#despite me liking the idea. could be fun especially if he's not directly related with Peter and James #but most time it's an excuse to make him the rich famous white boy. difficult (via @officersnickers)

Modern AUs are hit or miss for me depending on the author because everyone's threshold for when characters become OCs after being removed from the canon environment that shaped them varies.

I've mentioned before how I think Norman has too much shit going on in canon so throwing him being a Ratri into the narrative as it stands feels excessive, but oooooh am I still fully on board with him being a Ratri clan descendant in some capacity other than him being James' or Peter's son. The key component for me is that he has to not initially be aware of it and he has to absolutely loathe it once he finds out.

#lambda ray and emma and yuugo role swap are criminally underrated #i wanna see more of those #no reward au is just a guilty pleasure for me lol #let them all be happy together :( #anyways mb for the tangent (via @silentstudiosyt)

Please feel free to go on more tangents I love hearing from you 💖💝

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alovelyburn · 3 years ago

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Rambles about The Golden Age Arc - Part 1

Did you know that there’s a special edition of Berserk in Japan that rearranges the chapters to be in chronological order? So I guess the Gambino chapters -> Childhood arc -> Golden Age -> Black Swordsman -> and so forth from there.

I’m not about that, but it is pretty interesting. I’m tempted to get the first volumes just to see how it feels laid out that way but I’m UH KINDA RUSTY on Japanese so it would mostly just be pretty pictures to me.

Anyway!

Rambles about The Golden Age Arc - Part 1

1, I’m not sure when this was changed, but the deluxe edition corrects Guts’ adopted mother’s name to Cis from Shisu.

2. So, last night @zombiesgohome and I were discussing Berserk because we’ve both recently had our heads redevoured, and one thing that came up is how much Guts in his most feral mode (his teenage years, and the pre-rpg party Black Swordsman years) acts a lot like Gambino - with some Griffithy elements in the post-Golden Age era And it’s interesting because Guts isn’t really much like Gambino, right? He’s much more... sensitive and empathetic and not a, you know, abusive monster, but behaving that way is something of a survival mechanism for him - something he reverts to when he’s too hurt to let himself be himself. His armor, you could say.

Cis adds a whole new dimension to this because her character - the madness she seems to be suffering from post-miscarriage - strongly resembles the state Casca ended up in post-Eclipse, Does it mean anything? I DONT KNOW but it’s a pretty cool statement on cycles and becoming your parents vs forging your own identity, intentional or not.

As a sidenote though, early Miura really had a hard time with female characters, huh? And I don’t just mean the prevalence of rape and the weird thing that happens to Casca’s personality when she and Guts get together - there’s also things like how completely incapacitated Casca is by her period (although PMDD is a thing, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t thinking about that at the time) or like Cis going insane because of a miscarriage. It’s also weird that Cis is still considered Gambino’s “woman” despite being in an infantilized state - which is something that irks me about the trauma!Casca years, too.

3. That said, fuck Gambino he’s literally the worst. I do appreciate that there’s a bit more going on with him than just straight up evil father stuff - from the way he seems to genuinely enjoy training Guts -- right up until he gets injured and loses his temper - to the balm and ultimately the way he calls for Cis when he’s injured, there’s obviously something going on under that asshat presentation. So score one for depth in characterization but he’s still the worst.

4. LOOK AT THIS BABY IS HE NOT THE CUTEST LITTLE CUTIE OF ALL THE BABIES IN THE WORLD YES HE IS

5. Anyway the young Guts days are just packed with information about the reasons for his being... who and what he is. His relationship with his sword is fantastic especially because its so consistent over the entirety of his life, and of course this comes down to his having learned quite early that the sword is what gives him both value and safety. But if you think about his childhood and the way this group of people - his family you could say really, talked about him at night, the way his father figure literally prostituted him, and then of course tried to murder him... followed by said “family” chasing him down to kill him, too, it’s REALLY not difficult to see the basis of his self-isolation, his distrust, his emotional walls and also his lack of self-knowledge.

Anyway he really has a well-executed backstory (Donovan’s design aside) that does a great job of setting up who he is and why, plus setting some of the motifs going forward - Guts lying on the ground watching the moon on the day his first band, and his first idol, threw him away being echoed on the night he decides to dedicate himself to Griffith, for example. Not to mention the bottomless will to survive that drives him and won’t let him give up and die even if he’s an 11 year old fighting wolves, or an adult fighting endless hordes of demons.

6. I think I’m generally a lot more positive about the later Berserk years than a lot of the people who are mostly into the Golden Age stuff tend to be, but I will say I do miss the brand, and the sense that Guts brings disaster wherever he goes... and just the general tragic atmosphere. Depending on how long I manage to keep doing this I might get into it eventually but it’s things like how Guts’ relationship with Casca feels to me like it’s transitioned from a complicated and semi-ambiguous mess of guilt and affection and rebounding (yeah I said it) into a sort of standard issue “they should really be a family!’ one. I just don’t think that’s as interesting, but anyway doesn’t stop me from loving the series.

7. Also this sad smile, the look of someone accepting their sad fate? That comes up a few times, particualrly with Griffith

8. [insert boyhood arc here]

9. Four years later, that puts Guts at 15 years old. I like to keep track of this stuff.

Love the Bazuso fight - also love how consistent Guts’ fighting style is going all the way back to him wielding an adult sword at 6 years old. He’s basically a walking blitz attack, and by the time the opponent realizes what’s happening they’re already dead. Also he tends to target the opponent’s weapon when he’s not sure he isn’t outclassed (or when he’s sure he is outclassed as with Zodd).

My RPG geek self can’t imagine what kind of stats this guy has.

10. Enter the Band of the Hawk and Griffith in his pre-cape wearing days. Much has been said about why it is that Griffith has this reaction to him upfront - the clear fascination that only gets fully expressed later. It’s not going to be surprising to anyone who remembers anything about me that I take it as a given that Griffith is in love with Guts throughout... basically his whole human arc, and while I don’t think he literally fell for Guts right there, I do think that moment is the seeds being planted. He sees someone whose drive, determination and willingness to take risks echoes his own - someone that stands out in a crowd much the same way he does. This is going to be more and more evident over the courst of the series but Guts is basically Griffith’s only true peer. Even when he didn’t see it in himself, he was a baby epic turning into a fellow epic, and I do think Griffith knew that about him almost from day one.

11. The way Guts’ haphephobia is treated... is one of my favorite parts of his story really - I kind of regret it falling off, even though I do think it makes sense that it does once he starts letting people in again to at least some degree. Is it realistic? I mean probably not, but it’s a powerful symbol of where his head is at and who he connects with, e.g Griffith’s ability to touch him without triggering a panicked response foreshadows the the intensity and closeness of that relationship.

I mean look don’t diagnose fictional characters with psychiatric disorders (or at least don’t take it that seriously if you do) but Guts does show a lot of symptoms of PTSD.

12. I’m sorry, Corkus is absurd, what in the whole world made him think he was going to run up on Guts and... what, rob him? Why. Seems ridiculous on the face of it but anyway.

13. One of the few things that surprised me when reading miura interviews was that he hadn’t planned for Guts and Casca to get together originally and just decided partway through that it would be more dramatic that way. This is surprising to me becaus eof the way Casca is introduced, you know? The hidden face, the helmet reveal with Guts being like “??? She’s a woman!?!?!?” and then later the naked recovery tent situation - all seems to be markers for a love interest. Incidentally she’s not the only one who gets those kinds of markers.

Also, Casca seems to be named after a series of novels about the Roman Legionairre who stabbed Jesus with a spear and was therefore cursed to aimlessly wander. I always thought that was kind of a pointed reference with her. But I wonder what the purpose of her character would have been if he hadn’t decided to make it more dramatic by getting them together. Because she’s clearly given more importance than the other captains... though I do think people who consider her a third protagonist are smoking a little something - Miura himself always referred to Berserk as being about Guts and Griffith. Casca main narrative purpose is to catalyze their relationship, whether you think it’s good or bad

.14. Just leaving that there.

15. The way Griffith rarely gives away what’s going on in his head is kind of a problem as far as people’s ability to read and interpret him... I don’t really know why, in the year of our lord 2022, I’m still reading people saying he’s incapable of loving anyone and only cares about himself. But

But in any case his interest in Guts as a presence, as a sword, as a person, really does start from minute one

And of course Griffith is the other one with the love interest style reveal.

One of the things I like about Miura’s work is that his shojo influences are super obvious. And that does shift the perspectives a little bit - if you’re familiar with classic shojo then you can recognize some of the storytelling techniques being used, which are sort of... responsible for lending the Guts/Griffith relationship so much of its... air of tragic love. Not being a mindreader or a personal friend of Miura’s I can’t vouch for whether he purposefully sat there and said “yes, I will draw such and such scenes in such a way that it clearly looks like a romantic turning point in a romance manga” but if I were going to GUESS I sort of think yes he did. Given the specifics of his influences and how much of it is like shonen ai or lgbtq themed love stories,

But that’s just me though!

Anyway, it’s 1am, off I go.

#berserk meta #not the berserk tag #rambles about berserk

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antiloreolympus · 3 years ago

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7 Anti LO Asks

1. Do you know what really gets my blood boiling about this comic? Persephone and Demeter's relationship.

In the myths, Demeter and Persephone loved each other more than anything. Their reunion is so important - it marked the coming of spring and growth. A whole cult was dedicated to this for crying out loud. Yes, the myths were far from perfect, but the Persephone and Demeter myth showed the strength of a loving mother-daughter relationship with Demeter searching endlessly to find her child that was ripped away and had her innocence forcibly taken.

Now, RS is not the only author to make Demeter this over-bearing mother type in order to put more positivity onto the Hades-Persephone relationship. However, RS takes this trend to a whole new level - to the point where I would even consider it misogyny.

How is it, she takes this beautiful mother-daughter relationship and makes it out to be an abusive and controlling one, and then takes the Hades-Persephone relationship from a forceful one to a loving, perfect relationship with no problems? How is it ok to ruin one relationship to elevate another?

I understand that many versions of the myth try to downplay Hades' actions, and even make it so Persephone actually falls in love with him and there is no rape. But it doesn't change that this relationship was problematic, and meant to represent the loss of innocence.

Then fans have the gall to claim this comic is feminist and then claim on top of that that Demeter and Persephone's relationship was the same in the myth? These fans clearly don't know the myths, and neither does RS.

Making Hades a good person is fine. Changing it up a bit to make Persephone's loss of innocence something else is also fine. But ruining Demeter and Persephone's relationship? Especially when Persephone has to spend half the year with her? So horrible.

2. im sorry, but rachel cant introduce KRONOS coming back and then dropping it for several episodes to focus on a stake-less trail and persephone not knowing what lingerie to seduce hades in. like thats too much of an earth shaking development and huge stake plot point to just ignore for months to focus instead on something as minor as hxp's relationship, which only points out a huge flaw: why is hxp's relationship so minor in this? isnt the whole point supposed to be about them?

3. I think LO completely dropped the ball over Hades’ characterization.

From the first ep I thought ok, this is good, we have some bones to see he’s not that lucky in love and is just tired and lonely, and while ignoring the creepy actions towards Persephone, I thought ok, Artemis hates him, Hestia hates, even Ares hates him, maybe once Persephone finally sees the underworld and probably gets to know him it’ll be a clever twist and they’ll be proven wrong. The underworld will turn out to be fair and just, the citizens will love Hades, he’ll be revealed to be a good leader and king and not like his brothers, it’ll be like everyone saying Hades of myth isn’t actually that bad, and it’ll help reinforce why this sweet and bubbly Persephone wants him, she sees the real him, not the mean rumors and assumptions, this is perfect.

And then it just didn’t happen. The exact opposite happened, actually.

We’re shown the LO underworld is cruel and unjust, where the poor dead are forced into slavery and Hades created a harsh class divide with him and him only on top, the citizens hate him, the underworld gods don’t trust him and openly seem ok if he’s taken out of power, he’s not a good leader and king and doesn’t even want the job yet keeps it for his own ego and grip of power m, and on top of it all he is just like his brothers, if not worse. He loves to get violent over any little slight against him, he hoards wealth and resources to enrich himself while his citizens starve and struggle to survive, he’s corrupt, he controls all the media and laws to bend to his will, sleeps with his brothers wife for centuries behind his back while claiming to be holier than thou, he has sex with his secretaries who are made dependent on him for any way to survive, and now he lusts after his barely legal intern who is also now dependent on him for her way to survive, and that’s only what I remember off the top of my head.

LO perfectly set up to prove Hades isn’t the devil or the false pop culture assumption that he’s evil and to show some actual facts from myth, and yet Rachel only ended up reinforcing exactly that and even making him even worse with her made up ideas, all while thinking having Persephone ignore or excuse it somehow makes it not bad or even a good thing. It’s honestly kind of impressive just how bad of writing that actually is.

4. Chapter 172 is not that interesting. It’s setup had me excited to see Hephaestus and Hera and learning more about echo, but it’s cut so short. Because again the story can’t leave HXP out for 2 seconds.

I can also see why Zeus is gonna go insane.

5. i agree w/ other anon. LO should have pulled a PJO or a BoZ and just made up OCs and have them interact with the gods than whatever Rachel thinks shes doing, which is lying she's being accurate and faithful while completely changing all of it, removing what is needed, and adding what isnt so that it lines up with no actual myth besides like, various 50 shades fanfic she read in 2015 and some popular tumblr text posts.

6 . the animation studio behind blood of zeus literally can only draw one face for the men and one face for the women and they were still able to make the gods all look distinct and hot while LO can't even bother to use more than 6 colors and can only have the women look as tiny as possible with the biggest boobs while the men are all just lego men.

7. ////FP SPOILERS////

Okay so like I stopped reading LO way back before season 1 ended, and a majority of my knowledge of the series comes from what I read here on your blog which is enough for me lol and I decided to read the latest 5 chapters just to see what's up (on zahard. I refuse to give the actual series any views)

And I just. Could not take the whole scene with Daphne running from Apollo seriously? The anatomy and art inconsistency was so distracting that i genuinely could not find it serious. Even when Thanatos discovers her hibernated body I couldn't take it seriously because of how she looked?

And when Hades had that call (??? Was it a call? Or his inner dialogue? I couldn't really tell ngl) with Zeus and said he's causing Persephone unnecessary distress, and that she didn't pose any threat. B!tch??? She killed a ton of mortals??? She has no control over her powers???? She's literally a fugitive for the aforementioned things??? She apparently woke Kronos up? (Idk if anyone knows about that, again my knowledge only spans to whatever I read here) Hello????

And I have a lot to say about the chapters starting the trial but I'll only mention one thing; Hades saying "I don't think blindly supporting my little brother would be doing him any favours (as a ruler)" had me cackling. This is coming from a guy blindly supporting a girl he's literally only known for a few weeks, who's like what, only recently turned 20? Sit tf down Hades you're not cool, you creepy ass overgrown smurf.

Overall I still hate this series lmao. Regarding art though I feel like I wouldn't be so miffed about the anatomy much if the character designs were consistent and the story was compelling. They literally change hairstyles and body types frame by frame, and it's distracting.

The timeline from what I read here is laughable. 4 years in publication with almost 200 chapters and you're telling me only like a month has passed canonically. That's wild and such poor writing.

And as someone who literally will sympathise with any lead character pretty quickly, the story makes me hate them. It makes me want to root against them. I also hate the fact this trash is somehow top ranked on webtoons when so many other stories are far better then it.

Anyway, many thanks to this blog for existing and allowing me to dump so much text here to vent out my hate for this series lmao. You the mvp fam, hope you're having a good day 🥂🥂🥂

#anti lo #anti lore olympus #lore olympus critical #lo critical

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denimbex1986 · 4 years ago

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A Note On The Mistreatment & Bullying Of Sebastian Stan

@infinitecrime: Sebastian has never, ever said that he doesn't make mistakes, that he always gets everything right, that he has 0 ignorance or areas he could improve, or that all criticism of him in the world is simply mindless hate. In fact, quite the opposite. Throughout his entire career he's been uncommonly engaged with his fans, open to criticism, and commited to learning and getting better. He's consistently reminded us that he isn't perfect, he's human, and he makes mistakes.

He's still yet to directly call out the people who are making his life a living hell, but has, in recent interviews, hinted at how the toxic behaviour of the fanbase has been getting to him - particularly the hypersensitivity of fans who willfully dissect his every word to find something to bash him with, and will twist everything he does to be negative. It's ironic that his point has been proven tenfold by people picking apart his words and trying to make even his basic acknowledgement of what you have all being doing to him for the last year problematic. If you heard him taking about bullies and harassment and thought "hey, he's aiming that at me!", then I don't know what to tell you. Why do you see yourself in that description?

He's allowed to be affected by literally years of abuse and harassment. He's allowed to be upset by intense stalking and leaking of his home address (twice!) and phone number. He's allowed to be disturbed by people sending his friends and loved ones vile racist, xenophobic and misogynistic abuse on a daily basis and pretending that's somehow social justice. He's allowed to have a reaction to death threats, rape threats and countless messages telling him to kill himself. He's allowed to want freedom to make his own choices about his personal life without consulting a bunch of random kids. He's allowed to show human emotion and not want his life dissected and controlled by a mob of total strangers. He's allowed to react to near daily attempts to end his career and/or life over often made up or exaggerated bad faith accusations. He's allowed to call the people who have openly admitted their goal is "to bully him off the internet" what they are: bullies. And he is more than allowed to fucking stand up for himself and call out bullies and stalkers. He has a right to defend himself, to call out the abuse, and to be angry or sad about it. And he's been far more polite and indirect about all this than any of you deserve.

He's not "playing the victim". He is the victim. The only person who has had tangible harm done to them is him. Not you. He hasn't done anything to you. He hasn't sent you death threats, told you to kill yourself, or abused or stalked you. You cannot police the way he reacts or criticise him for struggling mentally after you've subjected him to a 3000 on 1, year long, 24/7 beat down. Relentlessly harassing someone and then mocking or criticising them for daring to react to it is such a typical abuse tactic I genuinely can't understand how you don't see what you are and what you're doing to another human being. You're not making the world a better place or achieving anything at all. You're not the good guy. You're no one's saviour.

The post above is HUGELY Important. Not just lately, as a result of the hatred, vitriol and crap Seb has had directed at him in recent days, but more generally. Some people forget that Seb is actually human - he has thoughts and feelings just like everyone else and it utterly appalls me the way some individuals have completely disregarded this fact. He has spent more than a decade in the spotlight - closer to two as a whole - and had to tolerate people giving him shit over various things on and off for years.

Now, I’m all for people calling him out on inappropriate comments he’s made/things he’s done etc., but it must be noted he HAS apologized for most of these instances. What I don’t - and what no-one should support or condone - is people continuing to criticize him not just for such things he’s apologized for, and constantly dragging them back up, sometimes even years later, just to cast him in a bad light or in an attempt to “cancel” him, but in general; things like criticizing his projects and the way he looks etc. Nor should anyone support or partake in such appalling, disrespectful actions and behaviours such as stalking him or leaking his address and I’m sickened by the fact that some people have in fact done this.

To think Seb - particularly as someone who has spoken time and time again about suffering with anxiety - wasn’t ever going to be or isn’t affected by any of this is utterly insane. If things like this were to happen to us, there is NO WAY we wouldn’t be affected, negatively, by it, so it is unfair to think or assume that Seb is or would be any different. He has every right to call the people who make his life miserable, particularly the scores of people who seem to take so much pride in tearing him down and criticizing him online bullies because that is exactly what they are.

People have said he’s been wrong in the past few days to in some way hint at or address the actions of some people/their intrusion/obsession with him and constant barrages of hatred etc. in his recent interviews. NO. HE’S NOT. He’s used and is using the platform he has to get a message across - just as those who spout and direct shit at him do - that he is aware of what people are saying and doing, and that it does affect and is affecting him. The fact he’s done it so politely is testament to his character, and as @infinitecrime says above, such politeness is far more than the bullies and haters deserve.

The fact of the matter is Seb is and will forever be a far better person than any of those who find pleasure in causing him harm; emotional, mental or otherwise. He is a person who brings pleasure to the lives of millions of people, not only through his work, but through his kind heart and his compassion. He has had and continues to have an ultimately positive impact on this world and for that he should be very proud. The same cannot and should not be said for those who find joy in bringing and causing him pain.

#Sebastian Stan

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hawkland · 4 years ago

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Dear Fandom5k Author

My AO3 account (sidewinder)

Hello and thank you for writing for me! I’m excited to give this exchange a try for the first time and cannot wait to read what you can come up with for one of my requests. Please note I’d love any of them equally, no matter if I have more prompt ideas for one or the other. Some I seriously would love just about anything about since they are so rare, others I have more specific requests to scratch itches I haven’t seen written before (or that much.)

General Likes:

Soumates with a twist. I love soulmate/soulbond AUs, as long as it’s just not a shortcut to happily-ever, no-conflict fluff. I want there to be some difficulties or angst involved. For instance, I’d love seeing any fusion/inspired-by fics based off the concept of the AMC Soumates series - where there’s a newly-developed scientific test a person can choose to take to find their soulmate (if the other person out there has also taken the test). That way it’s a choice to find out or not. Would an already established couple want to take the test to find out if they’re really “meant” to be together or not? What if they find out other people are their “soulmates”? What about the possibility of platonic soulmates vs romantic? Discussions for the future if/when one partner dies before the other? I’d love to see these questions played out with one of my fave ships in either a happy or somewhat angsty/dark way.

Vacation/travel stories. Being unable to travel this past year+ thanks to covid-19 has me desperate to explore and live vicariously through my favorite characters! So I’d love a story involving travel to somewhere new (to them). It could be a romantic getaway/honeymoon trip to somewhere special - and I love it when an author “takes me” to a favorite city/place of their own. Or two friends just going on an escapade together, maybe one sensing the other needs some time away from a stressful situation or workplace.

Smutty likes: I love extended kissing scenes, frottage, light restraint play, sharing-one-bed-for-~reasons~-ooops-how-did-we-wake-up-cuddling, bathing/caretaking an injured partner-turns-erotic, desperate/reunion sex.

Canon-divergent AUs - I’m always good with fix-its, shifts in canon that only change one thing and see what happens next or instead.

Do Not Wants:

A/B/O dynamics, mating heats. (I do like Supernatural fics that explore Castiel and the angels having bird-like behaviors and instincts, however.)

animal abuse/death

anything related to pregnancy/childbirth/kidfic (except for Jack in SPN)

formalized BDSM relationships

scat/watersports

unrequested alternative-universe scenarios such as high school/mundane/genderswap/coffee shop/fantasy/etc. There are a few ships/groups where I would enjoy specific AUs, and those are outlined below.

Completely sad endings/permanent character death or injury that isn’t part of canon

Rape/non-con between requested characters. Dubious consent is fine in situations like magic spells/possession/fuck-or-die, however.

Supernatural

AU - Canon Divergence, Character Development, Established Relationship, Getting Together, Fix-it fic, Interpersonal Drama, Smut, Angst, Canon-Style Plot - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery/Procedural, Slice of Life, Worldbuilding, Horror

In general for SPN, I love canon-divergence AUs at pretty much any point in time (especially as they kept having so many dumb reasons in canon to keep Dean & Cas apart just when one or the other seriously needed support or TLC!) I’m okay with post-series Heaven fics as well as canon fix-its/completely ignoring the finale, and I like exploring both human!Cas as endgame or Cas keeping/getting his full angelic grace back (which is a slight preference to me, as he repeatedly seemed to genuinely value/want to be an angel? But exploring all possibilities in fic is cool for me.)

I’m a sucker for Castiel Whump/hurt!Cas in general, so long as the author remembers Cas is a bad ass and not just a baby in a trenchcoat. If he’s going to suffer, I want him to suffer stoically until he just cannot keep up the facade any longer.

SPN-specific DNWs: mentions/implications of Wincest, past or present; extreme bashing/characterization of John and Mary Winchester, or Jimmy Nowak, as homophobic.

Group: Castiel/Dean Winchester Group: Castiel/Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester

Give me all the finale fix-it fics - no I’m still not over it, I’m still happy to read any new twist on how Cas got out of the Empty and got back together with Dean (and Sam). If Dean still dies early/ends up in Heaven, I’d like a story that explores what happens when one gets bored of peace-and-happiness-ever-after. (Yes, I’m a big fan of The Good Place and as such it makes me wonder if eternity with no conflict and everything you could ever want would just melt your brain and identity after a few millennia.) So what then?

I’m also stealing a Tumblr rant as a prompt I’d love to read, if you want to get into some good dirty smut:

ive had it up to here with fictional gays being like “i love you and if all i can ever have is that knowledge it’s enough for me” we need more “i have been struck down by horny insanity and i beg you to fuck me once. i’ve had three smirnoff ices and i’m gonna be crazy now. we can pretend it didn’t happen i don’t give a shit just gimme daddy’s blunt instrument” it’s more realistic [x]

Um so yeah. I’d love an au where, anywhere along the line when it’s been their/someone’s/the universe’s life on the life, Cas takes the initiative decides they’re gonna have crazy sex even if it’s just once before the end of the world/we die. But then, oops, we’ve survived, now we have to deal with it. ...Please?

For something different, maybe more romantic/fluffy, I’d really love a vacation/getaway story here, since they never really got anything like that of substance on the show. I want to see Cas take Dean somewhere beautiful and amazing in the world he’s never gotten to see before. Show him there’s more than just greasy diners and the landscape of America to enjoy and experience. If you want, they could stumble on a case/haunting/monster from another part of the world while they’re at it...but I just really want to see Dean having some mind-opening and expanding experiences beyond what’s he’s known and seen so far in life.

In specific with Cas/Dean + Sam, I love another tumblr idea I saw recently where Sam totally keeps bringing up the idea of “Sastiel” as a fun joke between him and Cas, and Cas plays along, and it drives Dean up the wall. Cas has to just keep re-assuring Dean that no, he doesn’t see Sam that way...but why does it bother Dean so much? A.k.a. Dean has to finally own up to the fact that it bothers him because he wants Cas to feel that way about him.

Castiel (Supernatural)

I just love Cas, period, end of story, he’s my One True Character of SPN. I love any stories that try to explore him more fully—be it his relationships in the past with other angels and being a BAMF commander/warrior of Heaven, or what specifically it is that keeps him so tied to the Winchesters. I love stories that feature his true-form in some fashion or try to dig into the alien/different nature of angels vs. humans.

Also, another Tumblr-musing-turned-prompt (I lost who posted it, sorry!) I'd love to see explored in a canon divergence fic focused on Cas. Specifically:

"I would have loved an arc for Cas (after he got his grace back) where he wanted to help people, like he was helped. Spending time in soup kitchens or healing people, and through that developing a sense of self purpose, leading to his grace replenishing unexpectedly. Sort of fulfilling the traditional angel role (as we know it nowadays) by replacing his faith in heaven/dean with faith in himself, to redefine himself as a protector of humanity instead of heaven's soldier."

Group: Castiel/Dean Winchester & Jimmy Novak Group: Castiel & Jimmy Novak

We know Cas carried a lot of guilt for what happened to Jimmy and his whole family. So I'm interested in a post-finale, canon-compliant (I guess?) fic where Cas tries to reconcile things with Jimmy in Heaven. Maybe Jimmy & Amelia were one of his first "projects" or test cases in trying to build a new and better Heaven with Jack? (And it's what he was so busy with while Dean was still alive.) Or, is it weird in Heaven with Cas and Jimmy looking so similar? Does Cas still fight doubts as to whether Dean really loves him, or just desires this body/form that isn’t his own?

Otherwise, I've been thinking about Endverse!Cas, who had lost his grace/powers as the angels have all left and abandoned humankind. What happened to/where is Jimmy in all of that? (If we go by the canon that Jimmy was not killed, nor went to Heaven, until the end of Season 5, when Lucifer blew up that vessel and Cas was resurrected by Chuck.) Are they now two "mortal men"/souls trapped sharing one body? Is that why Cas is so messed up/always seeking an escape through drugs and sex? (Besides of course Dean having changed so much.) This is one prompt where I don’t mind a very dark/not-so-happily-ever-after ending.

The Police

Angst, Character Development, Established Relationship, Getting Together, Humor, Interpersonal Drama, Smut

Group: Sting/Stewart Copeland

Yeah I’ll always request these two together even though I know it’s a long shot to find anyone else as obsessed about them as I am. Really anything at all whatsoever would make me happy for this ship: Reunion Tour-era fic, early punk days before they grew successful, soulmate AUs...

I’d also love a spooky story where they’re on tour/on the road somewhere and end up in a haunted hotel. Or their tour bus/van breaks down in the middle of nowhere and they have to seek shelter in an abandoned house or farm or something...and supernatural weirdness ends up affecting them or bringing them together.

If you want to go the crack route: it wasn’t enough for Miles to take them all around the world to tour in “exotic” locations back in the day. He’s arranged for them now to go on the ultimate tour...of outer space and alien worlds.

Crossover Fandom

Action/Adventure, Character Development, Interpersonal Drama, Angst, Canon-Style Plot - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery/Procedural

Group: Abe Morgan (Forever TV) & John Munch (L&O: SVU)

I’ve had a long running headcanon that these two could have been friends back in their respective 60s/early 70s hippie days. I’d love either a story set back then, “pre-canon”, or them running into each other in NYC later in life. Munch ending up in Abe’s antique shop, for instance, while on an investigation?

Group: Dean Winchester (Supernatural) & Ezekiel Stone (Brimstone) Group: Castiel (Supernatural) & Ezekiel Stone (Brimstone)

I’m fascinated by the idea of crossing over these two canons. Even if there’s some conflict in their approach to Hell/Lucifer/demons, there’s still a lot in common. Dean & Ezekiel having both put in their time in Hell and being demon hunters, for instance, and their complicated relationships with (fallen) angels. I’d love to see them bonding over their experiences (Maybe they even meet in Hell? Time DOES work differently there…) Maybe somehow after Ezekiel completed his mission for the Devil, he did get his second chance at “life on Earth”…but the devil’s trick is that it’s not HIS Earth, it’s in a different dimension (Supernatural’s). I’m also curious how Ezekiel might respond to Castiel as an angel–perhaps he mistakes Cas for a demon at first, with his powers, but then they realize they are in fact hunting the same demon? Cas is stuck in an alternative dimension and recognizes Ezekiel as a similar soul to Dean’s, and seeks out his help?

Basically I’d love some kind of casefic/demon hunt here, with the characters bonding over their shared/similar past traumas, taking care of each other when/if injured on a hunt, and/or perhaps helping them sort out their complicated feelings for another (ie, background Cas/Dean and/or Zeke/the Devil are TOTALLY welcome here, as I ship both of those ships.)

Law & Order: SVU

Group: John Munch/Odafin "Fin" Tutuola

Character Development, Established Relationship, Humor, Getting Together, Interpersonal Drama, Canon-Style Plot - Freeform, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery/Procedural, Slice of Life, AU-Genre shift

Munch/Fin is one of my eternal OTPs so I’m always happy to see something new featuring them! I’m always good for procedural/case-fics. And this is one request where I’d love to read some AU-Genre or setting shift, reimagining the two in some other situations besides police work. I’ve always loved the idea of John hosting a conspiracy/weird news radio show or podcast, and Fin as someone completely skeptical but who gets wrapped up in one of John’s mysteries. Or John as the owner of a bar somewhere that Fin is one of his regulars, and over time their friendship develops/deepens into something more.

Supernatural RPF

Misha Collins/Jensen Ackles Established Relationship, Getting Together, Smut, Fluff, Slice of Life, Humor

It’s odd for me to be into an actor RPF fandom (I usually only fall for music/band-related ones), but what can I say...these two just make it almost impossible not to see the possibilities!

I was thinking I’d love something set post-Supernatural...their first time seeing each other again after a long time apart? (What with the show ending, covid, Misha’s surgery, etc etc.) Could be at a convention or maybe they get to go off on a getaway together somewhere private/romantic and it’s...kind of tense and maybe nervous/angsty at first? Like with doubts about whether they can/should go back to the way things were before.

Or: putting tin-hatty speculation about the “secret/real identity” of Alma Perpetua aside, I love their poetry and I’d love any “Cockles” fic using one of their poems as inspiration.

#fandom5k #dear author #exchange letter

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lihikainanea · 6 years ago

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Guys. Guys. I uh....I got carried away. I’m almost sorry except....I’m not. This took on a life of its own and I just cannot deal.

I mentioned it in my previous post but originally, this portion was planned to be all smut because I was in A MOOD. But when I started writing it, I realized that I just...I really love these two and their dynamic, so more of that ended up coming out in this round. I’m a sucker for these hooligans and how sweet they are, I can’t wait to see what happens next wait shit I’m the author what the fuck.

Anyway, I have maybe one part left in this; I want to do a morning after. That being said, if you want more BFF!Bill then by all means, send me prompts. I can’t get enough of him either. I created him and that bish still fucks me up.

You know the drill, Parts 1 + 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Originally inspired by the nani ask to @ill-skillsgard thats over there in the first parts.

But listen, hey, I want you all to be safe here, so trigger warnings: there’s a brief mention of the date rape drug being slipped into her drink. Nothing happens from it, but it’s mentioned and I want this to be a safe space for you all.

If you think I missed a trigger, please, let me know. I don’t ever want anyone to be triggered by what I write because it lacked a proper warning.

Name’s Leilani, by the way. No it ain’t my real name. Pronoun is she. I’m angry smol human but on here I’m quite friendly.

Tags: oh god people asked me to tag them and I feel way too self-indulgent doing so??

*******

You almost wished he’d hurry up, be just a little more rushed in his movements. Not because you wanted the whole thing over with, not because you wanted something a little rougher, but because something fast and unbalanced on the pleasure scale was a lot more familiar to you. Too many men had poked and prodded at you a little too roughly and a little too soon, and while it had always been consensual, there was nothing that was pleasurable about the jackhammer, hurried pace that dominated the majority of your experiences. Men who skipped foreplay altogether, had little to no knowledge of female anatomy, men who were so scared you’d change your mind that they went fast, came first, and left right after.

The way Bill was savouring you, though, was driving you insane. You had never quite been with a man who made your pleasure his sole focus, who seemed to be enjoying giving you pleasure as much as you were enjoying receiving it. He took his time, and nothing in his movements was tentative. Every touch, every kiss, was something you could feel. It was confident, it was sure. It was gentle and kind but definitive in letting you know that he was exactly where he wanted to be right then. Everything he did lacked hesitation of any kind. His sole focus was on you, on making sure you were enjoying what he was doing. On making sure that you were finally getting the pleasure that, in his mind, you deserved every time.

But the pace, and his undivided attention, also made you feel vulnerable in a way you hadn’t anticipated. You had been vulnerable with each other before on so many occasions, sure. You weren’t afraid to be emotional, to be raw with one another. You were the one who put Bill back on his feet after his girlfriend--the first girl he fell so, so hard for--broke his heart and left very suddenly. He had been a mess for weeks, not eating, not sleeping, spending days in bed in a catatonic state. You had set up camp at his place, coaxing him to shower, to eat a little something, to talk through it or just cry his heart out. Bill had been the one your friends called when a girl’s night out went south, after a jerk at the bar slipped something into your drink. Your friends had noticed your strange behaviour and followed you into the bathroom, where the last thing you remembered was throwing up neon orange and passing out. Your friends, they later told you, had called him in the wee hours of the morning. He left the set he was on immediately, ran through the bar and had busted the door down of the women’s bathroom to find you on the floor, bleeding from a gash in your forehead where you smacked the toilet on the way down. He wrapped you in his jacket, tucking you into his chest as he carried you out. Bill never mentioned anything, but that night he ordered Uber rides for all of your friends, tracked their routes and requested that they text him when they arrived home safely. He was the one to drive you to the hospital, propping you against him as he held his scarf to your bleeding head. You had thrown up, both in his expensive car and directly on him, but he held your hand while the doctors connected you to an IV and stroked your cheek while they stitched you up. He slept with you at the hospital that night, contorting his large frame into an uncomfortable chair and keeping a solid hold of your hand. Afterward, he had donated half of his earnings from his latest movie into the patent that was pending for a nailpolish that could detect the drug in someone’s drink.

Everything about Bill, about your friendship with him, had been about comfort. About safety. And now, it was that same comfort you felt in every kiss, every move he made against you and to you. It was reassurance that you were safe, that he wanted you to feel good.

And you did feel good, so good. As he ground his hips into yours, kissing you until you were lightheaded while you were still trembling slightly from your earlier release, the only thing you could think of was chasing that high again but making sure he was right there with you this time.

You threaded your fingers in his hair, scratching at his scalp lightly and he moaned into the kiss as he placed his forearms by your head, giving him better leverage to grind against you. You reached your other hand down between your bodies and palmed firmly at the large bulge prominent in his jeans, and his hips surged forth. He broke the kiss with a grunt, drawing his bottom lip between his teeth as he tried to control his urge to drive you into the mattress. You removed the hand you had buried in his hair to lightly trace his cheek instead, down his jaw, and finally tugging his lip free from his teeth. His mouth was on yours again in an instant, the intensity matching the way his pelvis was grinding into your palm with much more urgency. Popping open the button on his jeans, you danced your fingertips along his happy trail, scratching ever so lightly with your nails. He moaned loudly against your lips, hips jutting forward again of their own volition.

“Fuck,” he grunted, “You could kill a man, you know that? Kill him de-” his sentence was cut off abruptly in favour of a drawn out moan when you reached your hand into his boxers and took a firm hold of him. He ran a hand through your hair and clenched it lightly in his fist, pulling your head back and smothering you with his lips again. He licked into your mouth, caressing your tongue with his, moving his warm lips against your own until you both were out of breath.

You whimpered when you felt him twitch under your hand, and you weren’t sure how much more you could wait.

“Bill,” you moaned against his lips, “Please, fuck, please don’t make me beg for it.”

The look in his eyes when he pulled back slightly to look at your face was enough to almost put you over the edge again.

“What did I tell you about begging, tiger?” he placed a sweet kiss to the tip of your nose, giving you a genuine smile that flashed his dimple, and you suddenly couldn't wait a second longer. Your fervour took him a little by surprise, he jumped ever so slightly as you started to yank at his pants. He helped you take them off of him, shimmying out and kicking them away as he moved to crawl back over you. He settled between your legs again, both of you moaning when he felt your wetness slide along the length of him. He ran his finger lightly down the bridge of your nose and your eyes fluttered closed.

“You feeling good, tiger?” he asked.

“Yes,” you replied, pleasure drunk and stupid on it. He kissed your cheek, then your earlobe, before placing his lips at your ear.

“Eyes, sweetheart.”

You turned your head, opening your eyes and bumping your nose against his. You grabbed one of his hands and laced your fingers through it.

“Yes,” you whimpered.

“Good,” another slow kiss, “I’m glad. Do you want to keep going?”

“Bill please, make me come again,” you begged, and your own response would have embarrassed you if your mind hadn’t gone completely blank except for the need to feel that again.

His eyes closed, and he rested his forehead on yours, squeezing your hand tighter.

“Say that again.”

You only whimpered, tilting your pelvis up to rub your wetness against him. A firm hand stopped you.

“I won’t make you beg, sweetheart, but fuck say that again. Please,” he pleaded.

You indulged him, moving a hand to claw desperately at his back, drag down his spine and dig your nails into his hip bone, pulling him towards you.

“Please Bill,” you whined, “Please make me come again. God you made me feel so good.”

He groaned, low and deep in his throat before you felt him line up against your entrance. He gently took your chin in his thumb and forefinger, kissing you softly, before checking in one last time.

“You want this?” he whispered, close enough that his lips still touched yours when he spoke.

“Yes,” the desperation was getting worse, you could feel your insides throbbing just at the thought of being stretched so deliciously around him. You felt yourself clench around nothing, so empty that it ached.

“You’ll tell me to stop if you change your mind?”

“Yes. Bill...” it was almost a sob. You felt the tip of what you so desperately wanted bump against your entrance and then he was pushing in, agonizingly slow, so that you could feel every vein, every pulse, every single inch of him. It was a stretch, he was bigger than most of the men you had been with, but he had spent so much time making sure you were ready that the only thing you felt was pleasure. With a drawn out groan and one last push of his hips he was seated fully inside you, his face buried in your neck and his arms wound tightly around you. You had never felt so full, with his hips flush against yours and you felt your walls clench involuntarily around him.

His arm shot out, gripping the headboard until it almost splintered.

“Fuck,” he swore. You felt him twitch deep inside you, and then you suddenly started to feel that delicious pressure low in your belly again. It was already starting to build, his tip resting heavily against that spot inside you that had you squirming. You just needed...friction. You needed friction.

You ran your hands down his tensed back, pressing down firmly, and you wrapped your legs around his waist. You used your heel to gently tap at his backside, rubbing your clit against his pubic bone in a silent plea to get him to move.

“I just....” his face was still buried in your neck, his chest heaving against yours, his hand still gripping the headboard in a vice, “I just need a minute.” He rested his full weight on you in an effort to render you rather unable to tilt up and grind against him, but all it did was put more pressure on your clit and caused you to clench around him again.

A string of Swedish curse words, some new to your ears, left his mouth.

Removing his hand from the headboard, he wove it with yours and dragged his hips back, thrusting into you slowly. Your head fell back against the pillow and you moaned loudly, spurring him to bring his face back to yours and lay a kiss on you that had the pressure in your belly building even faster. Your walls fluttered around him as he rolled his hips forward with every thrust, rubbing his pubic bone against your clit as his tip repeatedly pressed down against that spot inside you that had your toes curling.

“You’re so tight,” he ground out, “So wet for me.”

You were a mess, legs shaking, and the only thing you could do was moan as you started to feel your insides clenching more frequently around him now. His hips faltered in their pace.

“God I can feel how close you are again, sweetheart” he moaned, “You’re so sensitive.”

You whimpered, almost embarrassed at how easily he was working you over.

“Don’t hold back, kid. Just let go,” he coaxed. You gasped, feeling that coil winding so tightly it was ready to burst again. His lips at your neck, his delicious words at your ear, were getting you there that much faster.

“Bill...” you tried to warn. He licked at your mouth, taking your lips in a ferocious kiss and tangling his tongue with yours before pulling away

“That’s it, tiger,” he groaned, “Just let go. All over me.” He thrusted a few more times, angled deeper.

You were powerless to stop it. Your second orgasm of the night tore through you and your back bowed roughly off the bed. He caught you as you surged forward into him, wrapping his arm around your back to support your body and keep your chests together. You clenched repeatedly around him and he let go a grunt so rough that it was nearly a yell, fisting the sheet in his hands as he tried to stave off his own release. When you finally went limp against him, he kept you close and guided you back to the bed. Wiping the hair from your face, he used every ounce of willpower he had left to still his hips.

“You’re okay, sweetheart. You’re so good for me,” he soothed. You could barely breathe.

“Hey, tiger,” he said, and when the haze wasn’t clearing from your head, his voice got a bit more firm, “Look at me, kid.”

You dragged your eyelids open, almost wincing, and looked at him.

“You’re okay. We’re okay,” he said, continuing to trail a delicate finger around your features. You came back to your senses slowly, and he waited patiently until he saw the spark return to your eyes. The spark, and then a glint of ferocity that he knew well. Grabbing a fistful of his hair, you crushed your lips to his forcefully.

“More,” you demanded, once you had separated from his mouth. He was still buried deep in you, but hadn’t moved an inch while you came down from your high. You could feel him throbbing, twitching inside you, and you noticed now the tight clenching of his jaw, the way his fists held sheets so tightly balled up that his knuckles were turning white. He needed his own release so badly it hurt.

“More?” he looked for confirmation. Your eyes already bore into his and you didn’t look away, didn’t even blink, as you raked your nails down his back.

“More,” you confirmed emphatically and it was all the encouragement he needed before he started moving against you again, slowly at first, as he felt you involuntarily jerk your hips towards his.

You were already so sensitive, so buzzing, that it didn’t take much to get you right back to that edge again. He had a knack for making sure his pelvic bone ground against your clit with every thrust, and with every push forward you felt him slamming into that spot nestled deep inside you that felt like it might explode. You felt like you might explode, not only had you never had this pleasurable of an encounter with any man, but Bill had catapulted you off the edge twice already in releases that were nothing short of earth-shattering. Maybe it was his weight on you, maybe it was his breath on your neck, his voice in your ear, maybe it was the reverberations in his chest that you felt against yours when he moaned his own pleasure so loudly--but nothing, no toy, no man, not even yourself, had ever made you so pleasure drunk.

You knew he was close the way his hips took on a more frantic pace. His large hands grabbed at you, still careful to avoid your love handles that you had told him you hated being grabbed, but he palmed at your thighs around him, grabbed at your hair, your chest. You had a vice grip around his back, needing the closeness, as he drove into you with more fervour. His moans were sinful and loud, unrestrained passion in your ear. The sound of his pleasure only drove you further until you were soaring higher. He fisted your hair, pulled your head back none too gently and crushed his lips to yours before tearing them away, biting anywhere he could reach as he felt your tell-tale fluttering around him again.

“Come for me,” he commanded. You moaned, digging your nails into his shoulders. His hips surged, faltered, and drove deeper.

“Now, tiger,” he said with urgency. And then, you were crashing again. Like a freight train. You gripped him, helplessly holding on as you spasmed and cried out, your body feeling like it was moving independently of your mind.

He couldn’t hold back anymore, the sight of you coming undone for the third time that night, and all the little noises you made, pushed him over the edge. He gave a few more thrusts before groaning loudly, nearly ripping the bedsheets bundled in his fists as he came. His back popped, his leg cramped up and he was pretty sure he may have cracked a tooth with how hard his jaw clenched. He jolted for several moments, the aftershocks tearing through him, as you soothingly ran your fingernails up and down his spine. They found their way to his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp as he panted in your ear and collapsed against you.

“Thank you,” you said, your voice taking on a frail tone, “thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you,” you kissed any part of him that you could reach. His hairline, his cheeks, his chin, his nose, his jaw, his neck.

“That was....” you started to say.

“Oh my god.”

“That was incredible,” you kept your tone low, not wanting to spoil the intensity of it all.

“Oh my god,” he repeated.

You laid like that for awhile, waiting until each of you caught your breath. When your breathing had slowed, he moved his face to yours and gently caressed your features. You reached up and moved his hair away from his forehead.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Mmmm, yes,” you closed your eyes and hummed happily, wriggling further into the mattress. You felt him gently bump his nose against yours, and you opened your eyes, staring into his, knowing that he needed that eye contact to confirm.

“I’m good. You?” You kissed him lightly, and were rewarded with that boyish smile and the dimple that accompanied it again. He nodded.

“Did that feel good?” he asked.

“Good?” you replied incredulously, “Bill, I think I’m going to need a chiropractor to reset my spine, I came so hard.” It earned a chuckle, and you drew him back in to keep him close as exhaustion suddenly overtook you. He held you like that for awhile, his weight pressing into you, and it was a comfort. After several minutes, and only once he was sure you would be okay with the loss of contact, you winced as you felt him slip out of you and leave the bed. Floating in that in between state of consciousness and deep sleep, you barely registered a warm wash cloth between your legs, a cool one being pressed to your forehead. He disappeared for a few moments when you had passed out cold, you heard the shower running and the clang of a few pots and pans in the kitchen, before the bed dipped down under his weight and a hand was gently running through your hair.

“Come on tiger, sit up for a sec,” he coaxed. You turned your head into his hand, urging the head scratches, but ignored his plea.

“Can’t sit up. Too fucked out.”

He chuckled, easing an arm under you and slowly bringing you upright. You caught whiff of something--food something, and shit you were starving now--and opened your eyes. He was waving a plate under your nose; two grilled cheese sandwiches, one with the crusts cut off. Your hand immediately snatched it.

“Yeah, thought so,” he said, smugly. You munched on your sandwiches in comfortable silence, still maintaining contact in some way--he brushed the hair from your eyes, or you swiped at a crumb stuck on his lip. When you were done eating, he placed the plate on the floor and put a glass of water in your hand, urging you to drink it. You listened, handing the empty glass back to him. Sitting on his haunches, he reached a large hand up and cupped your jaw, gently forcing you to look at him.

“You feel good?” he asked, his thumb stroking your cheek. You placed your hand over his.

“Yeah. Yeah, I feel really good,” you said. You placed a gentle kiss on his palm. “Thank you, Bill.”

He smiled at you, dragging his thumb across your lips. You kissed that too, before grabbing his chin and bringing his face to yours, placing a gentle kiss on his mouth.

“Happy to help. Now come on, let’s get some sleep.”

He nudged you into lying down, scooting in close behind you. He wrapped an arm around your rib cage, opening his hand over your heart and tucked his legs up under you.

“This okay?” he asked, burying his face into your neck.

Your only answer was to scoot further back into him, pressing your back to his chest, and enclose your hand around his. The last thing you remember is him pressing a gentle kiss to your ear before coaxing you to sleep.

#BFF Bill #bill skarsgard drabble #bill skarsgard fic #nani asks #BFF!Bill

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arecomicsevengood · 5 years ago

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Watching Movies In Self-Isolation, Part Two

L’Assassin Habite Au Rue 21 (1942), dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Clouzot is better known for directing The Wages Of Fear (the movie William Friedkin remade as Sorcerer) and Diabolique, but this is the first movie he directed. It’s a pretty effective comedy, as well as an Agatha Christie style murder-mystery thriller. It’s really cool to watch these things that feel like they are just “movies,” before a bunch of genre conventions got built up and put in place. This one’s also eighty minutes long, super-short. The premise of the movie is there’s a serial killer on the loose, leaving a business card on every dead body. A dude passes along to the police that he found a stash of the business cards in the attic of a boarding house, so the killer must live there. A police officer goes undercover as a priest moving into the boarding house to investigate the residents. His wife, an aspiring singer, has made a bet with him she can solve the crime first, and in doing so become a celebrity that will be hired to perform places, so she also moves into the boarding house, partly to annoy him. The stuff at the boarding house is basically the film’s second act, while the first and third act are more typical murder-mystery stuff, although the tone of comedy is maintained throughout, despite all the cold-blooded murders.

All These Women (1964), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Kind of dumb sex comedy directed by Ingmar Bergman, but with gorgeous Sven Nykvist cinematography, bright jewel-toned pastels, and sort of theatrical staging in spots seeming to foreshadow Parajanov’s The Color Of Pomegranates or eighties Greenaway stuff. About a critic who visits the palatial estate of a famous cellist to write a biography of him only to find a harem of women; the whole thing unfolding from the cellist’s funeral a few days later. The winking humor is both music-hall bawdy but in a way that feels self-aware or “meta” in the context of a sixties film.

The Touch (1971), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Bergman’s one of my favorites, many of his canonized classics resonate deeply with me, but he was also astonishingly prolific, with a bunch of movies of his blurring together in my mind, and even more that I didn’t know existed, like this English-language one, starring Elliott Gould. Gould’s another favorite of mine, being in a bunch of great movies in the sixties and seventies, but damn, he’s unlikable here. Unlikable characters “hit different” in older material because I’m not sure if you’re supposed to sympathize with them according to the sexist cultural attitudes of the day. Here he’s “the other man” Liv Ullman is cheating on Max Von Sydow (RIP) with, but he’s pretty emotionally abusive, just a shit to her, extremely demanding of her in a relationship he did nothing to earn, though it does feel like the movie is kind of treating him as a romantic lead.

The Anderson Tapes (1971), dir. Sidney Lumet. This is heist movie, starring Sean Connery as a dude fresh out of prison, planning to rob his girlfriend’s apartment building, costarring Christopher Walken in his first film role. It contains all the plot beats of a typical heist thing, all the satisfying “getting the gang together, planning things out in advance, chaotic elements interfere” stuff but also a totally superfluous bit of framing about like constant surveillance, video monitoring and audio tape. All this dystopian police-state stuff seems, implicitly, like it would make a crime impossible to execute, the criminals are monitored every step of the way, by assorted agencies. But then the punchline, after everyone’s arrested for reasons having nothing to do with that, is that all this recording is illegal and all the tapes should be erased as the high-profile nature of the case makes it likely the monitoring agencies will get caught. Sidney Lumet directs a good thriller, even though I don’t find Connery (or Dyan Cannon, who plays the girlfriend) particularly compelling.

The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (1933), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this years ago, after reading Matt Fraction praise it, particularly how skillful the transitions between scenes were, and I really enjoyed it, but didn’t remember much about it and was excited to rewatch it. It’s got a lot going for it: An exceedingly elaborate criminal plot whose only goal is to wreak chaos, low-level criminals caught up in something they’re morally unprepared to reckon with, a charismatic police detective interviewing a bunch of weirdos, Fritz Lang following up M by continuing to be a master of film and sound editing very early stitching it all together. The Mabuse character was previously the star of a silent film I haven’t watched, and here he’s mute, which is a clever choice I didn’t register until writing it out just now. He’s gone completely insane, but is nonetheless writing a journal filled with elaborate crime plots, and his psychologist is completely insane and following these directions, in a commentary on the rise of Nazism in Germany at the time.

House By The River (1950), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this in the pre-Quarantine days, but it totally rules. Again, it feels sordid in part because of how old it is and my assumption you’re meant to identify on some level with the completely loathsome protagonist’s sexual desire and anger at getting turned down. It’s so creepy, he’s listening to the sound of his maid showering at one point. All the characters seem very fun to play, they’re all pretty cartoonish. This guy murder his maid, and then gets the idea that he should write a book about the murder when someone explains the idea of “writing what you know” to him, and he is then surprised when his wife reads the book and puts together that it’s a murder confession, saying something like “Really? I thought I disguised it pretty well.” The film functions as a dark comedy because every character is completely mortifying. Lang’s work becoming less ambitious and more reduced in budget during his time working in America is pretty sad but this movie feels legit deranged.

Midsommar (2019), Ari Aster. Heard good things about Hereditary, but haven’t watched it yet, having been put off by the plot summary of Aster’s preceding short film, about a kid who rapes his dad. This is like a longer version of The Wicker Man, basically, starring Florence Pugh, who I had heard was like the new actress everyone’s enamored with, but didn’t think was that compelling in this. A bunch of Americans go to a Swedish village, one of them (played by Chidi from The Good Place) has studied their anthropology extensively, but all are unprepared for the fact that their whole culture seems to revolve around human sacrifice and having sex with outsiders so they don’t become totally inbred. There’s a monstrously deformed, cognitively impaired child who’s been bred specifically so his abstract splashings of paint can be interpreted as culture-defining profound lore, which I took away as being comparable to the role Joe Biden plays within the death cult of the DNC.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2019), dir. Bi Gan. This got a lot of acclaim, but I am almost certain the main reason I watched it is because the director made a list of his favorite movies and included Masaaki Yuasa’s anime series Kemonozume on it. Does a sort of bisected narrative thing, where half of the movie is this sort of fragmented crime thing, a little hard to follow, and then you get the title card, and then the second half is this pretty dreamlike atmospheric piece done in a single shot, with a moving camera. I’m not the sort to jerk off over long shots, although I appreciate the large amount of technical pre-planning that goes into pulling them off. The second part is pretty compelling though, enveloping, I guess it was in 3-D at certain theatrical screenings? I’m a little unclear on how my fucked-up eyes can deal with 3-D these days and I was never that into it. The first half is easy to turn off and walk away from, the second half isn’t but I’m unsure on how much it amounts to beyond its atmosphere.

Black Sun (1964), dir. Koreyoshi Kurahara. This one’s about a Japanese Jazz fan and dirtbag squatter who meets a black American soldier who’s gone crazy and AWOL. He loves him because he loves Jazz and all Black people, but the soldier is pretty crazy and can’t understand him anyway. Jazz is, or was, huge in Japan and this is a cooler depiction of that fandom than you get in Murakami novels but it’s a fairly uncomfortable watch, I guess because the black dude seems so crazy it feels a little racist to an American audience? Maybe he wasn’t being directed that well because there would be a language barrier but it’s weird.

Honestly the thing to watch from sixties Japan on The Criterion Channel is Black Lizard (1962), dir. Umetsugu Inoue, which I watched shortly after Trump’s election in 2016, when all the Criterion stuff was still on Hulu, and it cheered me up considerably in those dark days. It feels a little like The Abominable Dr. Phibes, but with a couple musical numbers, and is about a master detective who thinks crime is super-cool and wishes there was a criminal who would challenge his intellect. Then the Black Lizard kidnaps someone. It’s a lot of fun, with a tone that feels close to camp but is so knowing and smart it feels more genuinely strange and precise. One of those things you get fairly often where the Japanese outsider’s take on American genre stuff gets what it’s about more deeply and so feels like it’s operating on a higher level. I really love this movie.

I had this larger point I wanted to make about just feeling repulsed by genre stuff that self-consciously attempts to mimic its canonical influences and that might not be all the way present in this post. Still, something that really should be implicit when talking about movies from the past is that they are not superhero movies, and how repulsed I am by that particular genre’s domination of cinema right now, and how much of cinema has a history of something far looser and more freewheeling in its ideas of how to make work that appealed to a broad audience, and how much weird formal playfulness can be understood intuitively by an audience without being offputting, and the sort of spirit of formal interrogation connects the films I like to the comics I like (as well as the books I like, and the visual art I like), this sense of doing something that can only be done within that medium even as certain other aspects translate.

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bthump · 6 years ago

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If you could change one thing about the whole Bersek series, what would it be?

Hands down, Guts and Casca hooking up.

That is the grit around which nearly every writing choice I hate grows like a terrible pearl. So maybe this is an unfair answer lol, because by erasing Guts and Casca’s sexual relationship we erase just about everything I hate about Berserk, so it’s kind of more than one thing, but I’m still going with it.

Like, Guts and Casca’s hookup shows up to the story 5 minutes late with starbucks and derails a shitload of what I actually love about it, and I’m not even talking about the gay subtext because it doesn’t derail that at all lmao.

Before Miura came up with the bright idea partway through of adding Guts and Casca’s relationship for the sake of more Eclipse drama (ie a long offensively gratuitous/eroticized/manpainy/etc rape scene), Berserk was a story about a dude and his own personal trauma. Black Swordsman Guts’ parallel backstories of childhood abuse and the sacrifice were all about things that happened personally to him, which is surprisingly refreshing.

Even the fetus wasn’t a fetus but just a random creepy demon meant to symbolize Guts’ own burgeoning monstrosity, with a much more sad and pathetic vibe than the beast of darkness, which tbqh I preferred.

After they get together Berserk is manpain central. During the Eclipse Guts doesn’t even care that Griffith sacrificed him, he only gets angry when he realizes all his friends are dead followed by the rape scene. And yeah okay in fairness I do kind of love that Guts doesn’t blame human Griffith at all or seem to hold any hard feelings towards him lol, but Guts feeling personally betrayed by the sacrifice as an echo of his childhood trauma is still way better writing and I’d take it over the Eclipse rape any day.

And everything just snowballs from there. No regressed baby Casca (who still gets fanservice-y panels, eugh). We’d have some entirely different plot to replace the Elfhelm sidequest, and chances are I’d enjoy it more. No moonlight boy, Guts would still be dark and fucked up but he wouldn’t sexually assault his infantalized ex girlfriend, the fetus would still be a symbol of Guts’ pathetic monstrousness maybe as a telling contrast to the “cool” beast of darkness, Guts wouldn’t be motivated by a fridged damsel in distress. I wouldn’t be living in dread that Miura is going to keep teasing the possibility of Guts and Casca living happily ever after together even after he assaulted her.

God just the prospect of Berserk not expecting its readers to ship Guts with a helpless baby woman who’s afraid of him, and find their dynamic heartwarming and sweet instead of disturbing as all fuck would be an enormous relief. Like I’m sorry, the narrative wants me to read scenes like the one where Moonlight Boy first appears and everyone awws about how Guts and Casca look like its parents and feel happy and hopeful??? Even if it’s set up for eventual tragedy, which I’m 90% certain it is, it’s still fucked up to expect the audience to want them to live happily ever after.

Also without the Eclipse rape NeoGriffith’s storyline would be so much less awkward lmao, and would actually work tonally. Like, all Miura had to do to prove that Femto is evil is have him like, casually murder a few surviving Hawks or something. Easy peasy.

Oh even back during the Golden Age, Casca wouldn’t need to be depowered so Guts could rescue her multiple times as a prelude to romance. I mean maybe we’d still have the one time, when they fall off the cliff, because that whole scene is more significant to Guts’ Griffith-related storyline than future het romance, but at least she could take Silat out herself, and she wouldn’t be casually sexually assaulted by Wyald just so Guts could quippily wake up in the nick of time and save her.

She wouldn’t have a breakdown by a waterfall and weepingly declare that she lied about caring about Griffith’s dream and wanting to support it, really she was just in love with him all along, because that ~revelation~ was just a set up for sex with Guts. Like she could’ve just been motivated the whole time by sharing Griffith’s vision for the future! She wouldn’t suddenly decide apropros of nothing to ditch the Hawks she considers family to leave with Guts, without getting any internal conflict about it or the same sense that she’s choosing to abandon loved ones that we got with Guts (that still completely floors me lol, what the fuck Miura. Guts leaving was a huge tragic production but Casca deciding to leave is neither here nor there? Fuck off.)

And we also wouldn’t have that painful “am I feminine enough for you Guts???” shit lol, complete with Guts’ wonderful “yeah you’re a hysterical woman ofc you’re womanly” response to one of those moments. Also in general the vast majority of Guts’ most unlikeable moments, at least in my opinion, are when he’s interacting with Casca after she becomes his love interest. We could cut most of his misogynist tirades, more sexual assault when he grabs her tit while she’s angry with him, yelling at her after Wyald nearly rapes her, and all the times he treats her like shit post-Eclipse even before the assault scene.

We could’ve had a great rivals to reluctant friends who bond over their mutual feelings towards Griffith type of relationship between them throughout the Golden Age! Just thinking about how much better that would be is depressing lol. And then when Guts destroys Griffith and his dream by leaving Casca could actually be genuinely incredibly angry with him because he actively ruined her life and hopes and dreams as well. God like, Casca’s storyline would be so much richer with the romance removed.

The only negative would be that she would’ve died during the Eclipse with everyone else. Like while I can imagine amazing scenarios where she’d survive and get a tertiary narrative of her own without being Guts’ love interest, I gotta admit that’s not what Miura would’ve gone with lol. But she’s been functionally written out for 250 chapters anyway now, at least a sad death scene would’ve been more respectful. And it’s not like I’m turning to Berserk for good female characters and representation anyway let’s be real here.

lol sorry this just turned into a long ranty list of everything i hate about berserk lol. Also to be fair if I had to pick just one thing to change, while keeping the rest of Berserk as close to the same as possible, I’d pick the Eclipse rape. Change it to Femto driving Casca insane with magic mental torture or something. It could even be significant to Casca’s narrative, like, hell, we could get a revealing hallucinatory and nightmarish trip through Casca’s mind and memories or something like that.

But yeah my first choice would be cutting the romance.

#Anonymous #ask #a #b #ship: gtsca #theme: critique #(i should've made that tag 'criticism' instead tbh critique sounds too pretentious for a rant like this lol. oh well.)#theme: misogyny #ty for the ask lol this was fun to complain about #theme: opinion

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mustlovemustypages · 6 years ago

Text

2018 Letter

Dear potential writer,

*Sigh* 2018 has been a long year, has it not? Yuletide is proving to be a great distraction and I'm very excited to be participating again. Thank you for reading my letter and also thank you in advance for anything you decide to write for me!

Below are my desired fandoms and pairings along with story ideas that I would love to see written. Please don't feel stifled by my prompts; I've also listed my general likes/dislikes at the very bottom of this letter if you decide to go a different route.

The Defenders (TV):

Characters: Luke Cage and Jessica Jones

I will admit that my main motivation for watching The Defenders was to see more interactions between these two characters. While I loved all of the scenes between them, I wish they'd had a lot more shared screen time.

Overall I just want these two kids to end up together. I've been a fan of their relationship before the Netflix shows came out and will continue to be a fan after they have ended.

Story ideas:

Luke and Jessica learning to trust each other again amongst the events of The Defenders, and Jessica sharing a bit more of her past with Kilgrave to help Luke understand what exactly she went through.

Seeing Luke and Jessica's on screen (or imagined off screen) interactions through the eyes of the other characters.

Jessica Jones is a walking poster child for PTSD and I would really like to see this explored more. Recovery isn’t necessary, but having Luke at least realize her suffering and talking/hugging it out would be lovely.

We may or may not be getting a season 2. Feel free to imagine your own post-season 1 with the team, especially focusing on the Jessica/Luke dynamic.

Speed (1994):

Characters: Annie Porter and Jack Traven

I'm a sucker for characters who fall in love during immensely stressful situations. Especially characters played by Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. I'm also a sucker for action movies that have not-quite-believable but really-thrilling-anyway plotlines. Like buses with bombs that go off if driving under 50 mph.

Story ideas:

Regardless of what Jack said at the end of the movie about most relationships formed during stressful circumstances not surviving, I have chosen to believe Annie and Jack would have beaten the odds once again. I'm sure their friends, co-workers, and family would have had their doubts but would have eventually seen that the two were perfect for each other.

I'd adore post-movie slice of life stories where they buy their first place together, meet each others' families for the first time, or even do something as mundane as going to get groceries. It would be so endearingly (and hilariously) normal in contrast to their first meeting.

Annie definitely thought Jack was insane when he flagged down the bus and jumped on. It would be interesting to read that scene from her point of view as well as other scenes throughout the movie as her opinion of him changes.

It would be impossible to go through what these two characters did without it having some sort of impact on their psyche. Whether it be Annie refusing to ride the bus again and Jack offering to drive her to work until/if she recovers, or Jack having flashbacks of the helplessness he felt on that train when he couldn't get Annie unchained.

The Darkest Minds (Book Series):

Character: Ruby Daly

X-Men was my jam when I was younger, and The Darkest Minds is basically X-Men set in a dystopian world with really loveable characters.

Ruby is a precious gem* that needs to be protected at all costs, even if it’s from herself. Liam is such a sweetheart. Book 2 when he gets his memories back had me literally crying. Chubs and Zhu are amazing, and I love the little family the four of them made together. Vida was also really great, and so was Cole… and you get the point. I loved them all.

*Pun not intended but acknowledged nevertheless.

My favorite pairing from the series is Ruby/Liam but sadly Liam is not in the tagset. It would be amazing if you wrote a Ruby/Liam story but if that's not your thing, I'd be equally happy with a gen story focusing on Ruby and Cole, Ruby and Chubs, Ruby and Vida, etc. Chubs/Vida in the background would be even more wonderful!

Story ideas:

Ruby definitely struggled with her abilities and had healthy/unhealthy coping mechanisms. Expanding on this would be great and including any of the other characters' responses to her coping mechanisms would be a definite plus.

Reunions are the best. Write how you would have liked the Liam and Ruby reunion in book 2 to have played out or expand on canon to bring on even more feels. Again, I fully realize that Liam is not in the tagset so don't feel pressured to include him. Instead write about a reunion between Ruby and one of the other main characters (like Chubs)!

I wish there were more scenes exploring the dynamics of Cole and Ruby's friendship and how that impacts their respective relationships with Liam, especially because Cole and Ruby relate on a level that I don't think Liam ever quite understood. One of my favorite parts from the whole series is the scene in the shower where Cole is basically interrogating Ruby for information about Liam. It's a totally non-romantic scene but very emotionally charged and it would be really interesting to read about it from Cole's point of view.

Impluse (TV):

Characters: Henrietta "Henry" Coles, Lucas Boone, Jenna Hope, Townes Linderman

This show became a surprise favorite of mine in 2018, mostly because it's on YouTube Red and I haven't given most of their original shows much thought. Also because it tackles rape and recovery in such a raw and interesting, especially in the context of a sci-fi show.

I just need more Henry Coles. If you want to do a romantic relationship I'd prefer seeing something explored with Lucas Boone or her canon love interest Josh (who was only in 2 episodes but really seemed to "get" Henry). Otherwise, gen stories between Henry and any/all of the tagset characters would be great.

Story Ideas:

Henry will never be fully "recovered" in the sense that one can never truly recover from rape. It will always have an impact on her life. The other characters get that and try to help her in any way they can.

While Lucas is aware of what his brother did to Henry, he has no idea of the real impact. I'd love a story where he learns more about her seizures and the way her anxiety/fears manifest themselves as teleportation.

Hurt/comfort in all forms because Henry has been hurt enough for a lifetime, but she could do with a whole lot more comfort. Either within the confines of season 1 or imagined opportunities for comfort in season 2.

We get the story from mostly Henry's perspective, but I'm sure there is a lot going on in the minds of Lucas, Jenna and/or Townes as the events of season 1 play out.

The Folk of the Air

Pairing: Cardan Greenbriar/Jude Duarte

Holly Black is an evil genius and I bow down to her greatness. Starting off the first book in this series, I never would have imagined that by the end I'd be rooting for Jude and Cardan to be together but here we are.

They are the ultimate enemies-to-lovers and I can't wait to see what happens to them in the second book coming in 2019.

Story ideas:

Maybe I'm being unrealistically optimistic, but despite Jude's betrayal at the end of the first book, I think these two can work it out. Perhaps Jude helps Cardan cope with the stresses of being king and he is able to move past what she did. Or maybe he sees how impossible Jude thought the situation was and comes to the realization that he was the only one she trusted to do it.

Madoc is a horrible father. Jude basically knows this from the beginning. Still, she was genuinely upset in discovering what he had done. I'd love to see her finally release all of that pent up anger - either her using Cardan as a sounding board for her rants or even having her completely breakdown under all of the stress and him comforting her.

We get the perspective of Jude throughout the entire book, but I would really enjoy seeing some of the scenes from Cardan's point of view as his feelings for Jude change.

There is no way that Jude's sister, Vivienne, wouldn't be alarmed when finding out that Jude and Cardan kissed. Jude having to explain her changed feelings for Cardan and Vivienne realizing that Jude is in like/love would be hilarious and heartwarming.

Things I don’t like:

Alternate Universes – For the specific fandoms that I picked, I really like the universes as they are. I’m definitely okay with deviations from canon, but please don’t make Speed into a supernatural werewolf story or the fantasy/sci-fi canons take place in a mundane coffee shop setting. (I don’t mind Soulmate AUs or something similar because those can be incorporated into canon with little change to worldbuilding).

Non-Con/Rape/BDSM/Sexual Violence/Graphic Sex – I like my characters to be happy and everything within ships to be 100% consensual, no question about it (mentions of non-con if it occurred in canon is fine). I also prefer plot over porn, especially with one-shots.

OT3s – Two people per romantic relationship please. Any more than that makes me uncomfortable.

Character Bashing - Unless a character is a bad guy in canon, I don’t want to read hundreds of words about how awful they are, especially if they are one of the characters that I requested. Don’t take it out on the characters if you hate my pairings, just write gen.

Things I love:

Hurt/Comfort – There is nothing I love more than one character comforting another. The hurt can be physical, psychological, or both.

Happy Endings – I’m all for the realistic endings… but if they could be plausible AND happy-ish, that would be amazing.

Expanded Scenes/Contorting Canon – Feel free to expand scenes and change up canon to your heart’s content as long as it makes logical sense.

Humor/Banter/Snark – I thrive on this stuff.

Bonding/Building Relationships – Whether it be a friendship or a romantic relationship, I adore reading about two people growing closer together. When characters know each other so well that they can have conversations with just their eyes or anticipate the person’s next move (especially if it’s to the surprise/confusion of everyone around them), my shipper heart is thrilled.

Dark to Light – Seeing a character come out of a bad mindset/situation and get better is so satisfying.

Thanks again and happy writing!

- Maddy @mustlovemustypages (on Tumblr, Ao3 and FF.net)

#yuletide #defenders #the folk of the air #the darkest minds #impulse #speed #jessica x luke #jude x cardan #henry coles #annie x jack #ruby x liam

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cabiba · 6 years ago

Link

Having recently created the hashtag #contrapot, I thought I’d better explain what I mean by it. In overreaction to the evils of Nazism and the Holocaust (as well as to the injustice and inhumanity of Jim Crow and Apartheid) the West’s ruling elites embraced an ideology of white racial self-denial and self-contempt, which is the exact but equally extreme and insane opposite of Nazi racial ideology (see BLOG in which I elaborate). The Nazis made a big, nasty and totally misconceived issue of race, seeing profound racial differences where they did not exist, between the closely related peoples of Europe, including European Jews. In the aftermath of these horrors there was an understandable overreaction, especially by academics (and, for obvious reasons, even more especially by Jewish academics), who went to the opposite extreme of denying the importance, even the very existence, of race altogether. Despite being inherent to human nature, prejudice and xenophobia were blamed for the Holocaust and demonised, which is like blaming and demonising male sexuality for rape.

This extreme overreaction should have been recognised for the madness it was and corrected long ago, but wasn’t, because quickly incorporated into the state's age-old state strategy of “divide and rule”, whereby society is divided into a “morally superior”, now supposedly unprejudiced, ”colour-blind” and xenophilic, elite, on the one hand, and the morally inferior, naturally (evolved human nature being what it is) prejudiced, not colour-blind, but xenophobically-inclined masses, on the other, who must submit to the authority of and domination by their supposed "moral superiors”. This new, secular, ideology of divide and rule was of little use as a replacement for church ideology in the essentially mono-racially white societies which comprised the West prior to WW2, where there was little opportunity to accuse transgressors of prejudice, xenophobia or racism (Jim Crow America and Apartheid South Africa being notable exceptions, of course), so multi-racial and multi-cultural societies were created in their place, via mass immigration from relatively poor, non-European countries, which comprised people of different race (conveniently advertised by their darker skin colour) and culture, which also served state and capital as a welcome source of cheap and complaint foreign labour.

Anyone objecting to immigration or the changing ethnic composition of their neighbourhood or society was dismissed as a bigot, nativist, xenophobe or racist. Only relatively recently, with mass migration to the UK of white Europeans has it become possible to criticise immigration at all, without it automatically resulting in accusations of racism. Post-racial multiculturalism now serves the state as an instrument of socio-political intimidation, rewards, punishments, manipulation and control, just as medieval church ideology once did. It doesn’t seem credible that classically democratic states like Britain, France and the USA would inflict such madness on their own people, but they have, and are, with other western states following suit. Because it is so incredible, it is very difficult to recognise. Added to which, it is also a very painful and frightening thing to recognise: that the state we trust and identify with as our nation should betray us in such a fashion. How can it be possible? The whole purpose of the “nation state” is to serve its people’s collective self-interests - surely?

I’m afraid not. The primary purpose of the state is very different from what we have been led to believe by academics (formerly churchmen), who are looked upon as authorities, but are privileged clients and employees of the state themselves, with a massive personal self-interest (sub-conscious more than conscious) in rationalising and defending its role, self-image (as a “nation”), and ideologies (social, political, economic and racial, formerly religious) on which the state bases its claim to moral and knowledgeable authority.

The state conflates and confounds very different aspects of the original tribal environment in which human nature evolved, long before the first states and civilisations emerged from it, with the modern "nation state" now deceitfully posing as our tribe or nation (intra- and inter-tribal environment) itself, while at the same time facilitating society’s SELF-exploitation (as an extra-tribal environment, on a par with the natural environment) to the personal advantage of its ruling elites and favoured (especially wealthy and academic/formerly priestly) clients, at the expense of society at large and its long-term survival. This binds all civilisations to a cycle of boom and bust, eventually resulting in their complete demise, as in the case ancient Greece and Rome. Western civilisation, thanks to its development of science and technology, has boomed like none other before it, but its bust phase is fast approaching, if not already upon us. The way things look at the moment, it is very unlikely that it will survive this present century, especially since the situation is compounded by our finite, vulnerable and overpopulated planet's compromised ability to support us.

It is a prospect that very few - especially those with children and grandchildren - are prepared to countenance, preferring instead to allow themselves to be deceived by professional optimists (mainly academics and politicians) who deceive themselves first hand. The state does serve us, of course, and we are all completely dependent on it, but as a shepherd serves his flock; which is not for the flock's sake (notwithstanding any genuine concern he may feel for a lost of injured lamb), but for his own and/or his employer's sake, for the meat and wool the flock provides and can be exchanged at market for money. The state is like an abusive step-parent which did away with our natural, loving parents (our original tribes and nations) before we were born, and brought us up to believe that it was our natural, caring parent, i.e. nation, with all its children’s, i.e. citizens’, best interests at heart, when in fact, its real purpose is to facilitate our self-abuse and exploitation, which is now rapidly leading to our civilisation’s self-destruction.

This explains the otherwise inexplicable self-betrayal we are currently experiencing, but which very few are aware of. Most of what is happening is being driven by subconscious forces, in fact, by our own Darwinian nature, which has been perverted by the artificial environment to civilisation itself. It is, admittedly, difficult to get one’s head around, but once you do, everything starts to make a lot more sense. And once we understand the madness, we can start to think rationally about how to put and end to it, hopefully before it puts an end to us. It is important to recognise it as “self-betrayal”, because blaming “others” only makes our situation worse, preventing us from uniting and putting an end to the madness. Instead, we just fight amongst ourselves as we head towards the abyss. It is what happened to ancient Greece and Rome, and is currently also happening to us.

Post-racial multicultural ideology and the government policies it has inspired have led to many western cities, such as London, becoming a melting pot for all humanity. People of different race and culture are officially encouraged to mix, integrate and assimilate, which is pretty Orwellian, when you think about it, because it destroys the very diversity its adherents claim to love and want us all to celebrate. Human racial and cultural diversity is a consequence of populations having been more or less isolated from each other in the past. Bring them together in a city like London and what you create is a melting pot in which this diversity will gradually dissolve and disappear. In overreaction to the Nazi’s insane notion of a "pure" Germanic master race, we have gone to the opposite extreme of trying to create a “mixed-race master race”. Those seeking to maintain their racial identity by opposing the melting pot (especially if they belong to the non-Jewish white majority) are demonised as racists or white supremacists (a blind eye is turned to ethnic minorities, which, naturally enough, are often just as keen to retain their racial/ethnic identity as white people). Post-racial multiculturalism might also be called “one-human-racism”, or the “ideology of the Pot”, and those who support it, “people of the Pot” (“miscegenate man”, as opposed to “ethnic man”). Britain has a “Pot Parliament”, committed to white racial self-denial and self-contempt, which promotes racial mixing in the melting pot of the post-racial multicultural society it has engineered and imposed on British society by demonising anyone who opposes it as “racist”.

It is not just the British state, of course. The French and American states have done the same, as, to varying degrees, have all western “democracies”. The power-political method to this madness I have already explained. My opposition to state ideology of the Pot I call “Contrapot”. Thus the hashtag. Evolution wired our very tribal brains to see things in terms of “them and us”, and it is better to go with the grain of human nature rather than against it. We each need to decide which side we are on: Pot or Contrapot? It has to be one or the other.

Which ever side you choose, or while you remain undecided, it is important not to demonise the other side. The revolution I am hoping for cannot be achieved by force, violence or intimidation, but only peacefully and with respect, for others and for the rule of law. The truism, "united we stand, divided we fall", is indeed true. The very survival of our civilisation depends on us uniting, which we cannot do if we are hating and fighting each other, or trying to impose our own views on others, even when encouraged to do so by the state.

Multi-ethnic society has been imposed on us by the state using lies, deceit, force, intimidation and rewards (as you would expect from an abusive step-parent), but we cannot free ourselves from it using the same methods by which it was imposed. In fact, we can’t free ourselves from it, unless we use force and inflict grave injustice on others, which I certainly do not want to do. We must learn to live with it now, but in such a way that it is genuinely enriching for all concerned. At the moment it is Orwellian in nature, imposed as it is by the state, deceitfully posing as our nation, via a system of rewards & intimidation. Contrapot is defined by its non-violent and respectful opposition to the Pot, i.e. the oxymoronic absurdity of multi-ethnic nationhood, which is what the British and other western governments seek to impose on their countries. But opposition is not enough. It must offer an alternative, or at least point in a direction that will lead to an alternative. So much has to change in the radical reformation of society and the state that it will take some time, years, if not decades.

Challenging the authority of the state is a tricky thing to do, given its immense power and our dependency on it (both material and emotional, so long as we identify with it as our nation), but it has to be done, so that we can carry out the radical reforms to it that are necessary, if it is to serve our long-term survival and well-being, rather our self-exploitation and self-destruction, as it has done up until now. There is a lot more to be said, some of which I say in the blogs I link to below, but this will have to do for now.

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nadbooks · 8 years ago

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My Favorite Books of 2016

So I know this is really late but I only just decided to start a book blog and what better way to start than with this kind of post. So here we go! Here are the top ten books I read in 2016, rank-ordered, all of which I gave 5 stars to.

10. Beside Myself by Ann Morgan

This book is about a pair of twins who like to pretend to be each other until one day, one of the twins refuses to switch back. It’s basically a look at how people’s perceptions of you can really influence your entire life trajectory. It’s the most insane case of a self-fulfilling prophecy I ever read about and as a psychology student, I’m a complete sucker for it. The story does get a bit dramatic and it seems that anything bad that can happen to our main character will happen. Still, it is a really interesting look at how the way we judge people can really influence who they become and also highlights some of the worst parenting I’ve ever read about. Kind of an eye-opening book which is why it made it onto my list!

9. Genesis by Bernard Beckett

This book... man, I don’t even know how to describe this book. It’s some sort of dystopian I guess but it’s a relatively short book that takes place over the course of a few hours. The story follows our main character as she takes a history exam about her society so we get to learn about the history of this society and how it came to be from her answers on the exam. It’s a really interesting way of introducing the world that was informative and felt genuine and didn’t feel like info-dumping. Other than the way the story is told, this book also discusses really interesting philosophical questions like how different is artificial intelligence really from humans and what gives humans our humanity? Overall, a really mind-blowing read which I did not expect at all, and one that will make you think.

8. Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell

You will soon realise that I am a huge fan of dystopian books and I will likely feature many of them on my blog. This is one of the most classic dystopians out there so I thought I should give it a read if I wanted to proclaim myself a dystopian fan. It’s easy to see how this book became such a staple for the dystopian genre. It is creepy and unsettling in a quiet way, as all dystopians should be. I thought the idea of language as the thing that allows us to have independent thoughts was fascinating and the idea to severely limit the vocabulary of the society so that people cannot even think rebellious thoughts was the creepiest thing I had ever read about. That is essentially mind control in the subtlest yet most powerful way. There were so many quotable passages in this book and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy so that I can highlight them all! I also liked how the ending was different from many other dystopians in that it is a pretty bleak one and essentially nothing has changed. Much more realistic in my opinion, albeit a tad depressing. That’s just the way I like my books though!

7. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This book is extremely well-loved in the book community and perhaps it is surprising that it is only number 7. Unfortunately, this is entirely my own fault as I saw the movie before I read the book (I know, burn me at the stake) so I knew what was going to happen in the end. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I still felt all the emotions that I was supposed to throughout the entire story (though maybe a little less strongly). I thought having Death as the narrator was genius and made the writing so interesting. It was dark but also funny. The plot of the story itself was a little lacking perhaps so what I really enjoyed about this book was the writing. I really do wish I had read this before I saw the movie because I think it would have packed a much bigger punch but oh well... Still a wonderful story and an instant favorite.

6. Faking Normal by Courtney C. Stevens

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved this book. This is a story about a girl who was raped and is trying to deal with that. I thought this book showcased a way of dealing with rape that is different from what I usually see in other stories. Our main character in this story is actually quite high-functioning and is able to go about her life like usual. It is only when she is alone at night that the nightmares come. I thought this was an interesting portrayal of that. I also loved the romance and friendship in this story. It is not a ‘love fixes mental issues’ kind of story but more like ‘love gives you the strength to face your issues’, which I thought was beautiful. The love interest was so kind and respectful and I just want every love interest to be like him. I am so done with the bad boy trope, give me more nice guys! Contrary to popular belief, they don’t finish last, at least not in my books. The mystery element and sibling relationship in this book were also really great.

5. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This has got to be my absolute favorite historical fiction so far. The story follows a blind Parisian girl and a German boy sent to Hitler Youth and it is a slow build-up to when their paths eventually cross. I don’t usually care about beautiful or poetic writing but Anthony Doerr, man, you sucked me right in. The writing was truly, truly beautiful and was absolutely perfect for a story like this. I fell in love with all the characters and although this book was a chunker, I never wanted it to end. I wanted to keep following these characters forever. Unlike other historical fictions, I thought this one also had a pretty solid plot that had an element of mystery in it, which I loved. This book is just so beautiful (inside and out) and I can’t recommend it enough.

4. The House of Hades by Rick Riordan

This is the fourth book in The Heroes of Olympus series. Last year, I read the whole Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and The Heroes of Olympus series and it was incredible. The world of Percy Jackson is so cool! I was always fascinated by Greek mythology as a kid and I only wish I had discovered Percy Jackson sooner! It is just as enjoyable to read these books even now when I’m 23 though! The Heroes of Olympus is definitely my favorite of the two series because I just love all of the characters and their character development was just incredible. You know Rick Riordan is an incredible author when he is able to fully flesh out 10 characters in the space of 5 books. The House of Hades is my favorite one because this was like the peak of all the character development (especially precious Nico!!) and it was also incredibly exciting because we were building up to the finale. Also, Percy and Annabeth are #relationshipgoals. I can’t wait to dive back into the Percy Jackson world with the Magnus Chase and Trials of Apollo series!

3. Champion by Marie Lu

Ahhh here we go again with the dystopians. Champion is the third book in the Legend trilogy. I was pleasantly surprised by this trilogy. I thought it would be just another dystopian, following the same kind of formula all dystopians seem to follow these days. And yes, it kind of did, but it did it well. I thought the Legend trilogy was a bit more political than most other dystopians which I actually enjoyed. I like seeing how people actually carry out decisions in these societies and the kinds of biases that pervade the people. I also think this series is different in that the characters actually work together with the government (or at least a member of the government) to bring about a better society, rather than to just rebel and cause social upheaval and violence. June and Day are also OTP and while many people hated the ending of Champion, I actually really loved it, especially the epilogue. It really struck me and left me thinking about them long after I closed the book, which I can’t say for many other couples in books.

2. Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Whoo boy, how do I even begin to explain my love for this book and this series in general. The Unwind dystology consists of four books and is a dystopian series (surprise, surprise) set in a world where parents are allowed to harvest their children’s organs if they want to. Sound creepy yet? This world is so incredibly fleshed out (no pun intended) and I think that is largely due to the multiple POVs. We get so many interesting POVs throughout the series that really let us see this world and society from every possible angle. It is also the dystopian that seems closest to our real world which is incredibly scary. The process of unwinding really got me shook. Aside from the world and the multiple POV writing, our main characters are also so interesting and brave and just human. I love love love Connor, Risa and Lev and I think they are some of the most interesting but relatable heroes ever. Gaaaaahhhh I can’t say enough good things about this book and it pains me that it is not more well-known or well-loved. It has quickly become my favorite dystopian series, even surpassing The Hunger Games! If that doesn’t tell you to go read this series, I don’t know what will.

1. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

I really struggled between Unwind and A Monster Calls for the number one spot but I decided to give it to A Monster Calls. This book packs such an emotional punch for one that I read in two hours. It is a story about a boy dealing with grief and I think it is such an important read for everyone. Another beautiful story with simplistic but beautiful writing. The story is just so incredible and I am amazed at how it is able to capture so many themes and ideas about grief in such a short and simple story. A must read for anyone who is dealing with grief and highly recommended for everyone in general. The movie was also incredible and really brought out all the raw emotions I felt while reading this book. Please, do yourself a favor and read this if you haven’t. You’ll get a whole new understanding of grief and life and eventually being okay again.

So those are my top ten books of 2016! I’m excited to start book blogging although I’m not sure how often I can do it. I planned to start in 2018 but I thought I would give it a go first with some posts. I will soon post my Least Favorite Reads of 2016 and also Booktube’s Favorite Reads of 2016 where I list out the definitive top ten list of books based on 30 booktubers’ Favorites of 2016 videos.

Cheers and happy reading!

#best books of 2016 #beside myself #genesis by bernard beckett #nineteen eighty-four #the book thief #faking normal #all the light we cannot see #the house of hades #champion #unwind #a monster calls #george orwell #rick riordan #marie lu #neal shusterman #anthony doerr #patrick ness #markus zusak

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russellthornton · 8 years ago

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Controlling Relationship: 18 Signs You’re Being Coerced Into One

You know the old saying, love is blind. Until you wake up and realize you’re in a controlling relationship and alienated from those you love.

You’re not living in the movie Twilight. Somehow the idea of a controlling relationship suddenly became acceptable. Though they managed to portray that relationship as healthy. In reality, it’s highly toxic.

When love turns into obsession, that’s when you have a problem. Sure, Edward was a rich vampire, but is it really worth your freedom?

18 signs of a controlling relationship

It’s important to recognize the signs of being in a controlling relationship well in advance. So, here are the 18 signs you need to look out for.

#1 Makes you feel guilty when spending time with friends. You’re going to see your friends? But what about me? Ugh, there’s plenty of time for them. Listen, if they’re upset that you spend time with your friends, that’s a problem.

In a healthy relationship, your partner should encourage you to spend time apart from them so you see your friends. They have friends as well that they want to spend time with. If your partner doesn’t have any friends, it’s a very clear sign something’s wrong with them. [Read: 15 questions to reveal a controlling personality instantly]

#2 Wants you to change. You’re too fat, too skinny, your hair is drab. It’s always something. In controlling relationships, they’ll never be happy with how you look. You’ll need to constantly be changing yourself to please them. And guess what? It’ll never be enough.

If someone genuinely likes you, they won’t try to change who you are. I mean, that’s what attracted them to you in the first place. My ex-boyfriend didn’t like me wearing green. Yeah, I know, ridiculous. He wanted me to get rid of all my clothes that color *I didn’t, by the way*. [Read: 15 subtle signs of a controlling boyfriend]

#3 It’s all about the small things. You may not recognize it right away because this can be portrayed as being supportive. However, it’s not. Are you really going to wear that today? That’s how you wash your clothes? That’s what you do in your free time? These are small minor comments.

But they make you second guess what you’re doing and if you’re making the right decisions. Your partner will try to convince that they’re helping you understand the right way of living. [Read: Emotionally abusive relationship: 15 signs you just can’t miss]

#4 They don’t trust you. Do they insist on having your social media passwords? Do they comment on everything you post and who commented on it? Call you when you’re with your friends to see how you’re doing?

Yeah, they’re not doing that because they’re concerned about you. They’re concerned about themselves. They don’t trust you. If they did, they wouldn’t be keeping such close tabs on you. And if you think it can’t get any worse, this untrustworthy behavior is just the beginning of a controlling relationship.

#5 They want to protect you. Listen, Twilight was a hit movie for a reason. The girl came to a small town, was lonely and this attractive man came and picked her up to give her a bright future.

We all have crap going on in our lives, and though relationships do include some sort of protection, your partner is probably taking it to a whole other level. Is your partner’s protective nature supportive or are they controlling everything you’re doing in the name of protecting you? Because if it’s the latter, it’s called trying to make you dependent on them. [Read: 10 scary signs of codependency in your relationship]

#6 Refuses to hear your point of view. Do you have an opinion? Do they stop you from voicing it? Of course, they do. They don’t care about what you have to say. If someone is preventing you from speaking your mind, well, that’s a control mechanism.

#7 Make you indebted to them. Do they buy you anything you want? Take you out for expensive dinners? Sure, they may seem as if they’re very romantic and caring, but nothing comes for free with them. Beware, they’ll make you feel like you owe them something in return, that you’re indebted to them. It won’t be so easy to get out of the relationship because you’ll feel burdened with guilt. [Read: 18 clear signs he’s overprotective and dominating]

#8 You feel like you’re going insane. Do you feel like you’re losing your mind? You partner is probably trying all the tricks in the book, including trying to alter your reality. Sounds intense, right? It’s a method called gaslighting.

This method involves your partner altering your reality and making you second guess your perception. For example, you may have had a fight with your partner last week. They’ll tell you that that didn’t happen because you didn’t see each other last week. [Read: Gaslighting: 16 signs your lover is messing with your mind]

#9 Demeaning your goals. You’re going to that school? It’s not even that good, or don’t try out for that play, you’re not that good of an actor. A healthy relationship consists of two people supporting each other in whatever their goals may be. However, in a controlling relationship, your partner tries to drive you away from completing your goals to control you.

#10 They want you all to themselves. Everyone needs some personal space and time to themselves. Maybe you want to go to yoga class or read a book at the park. Well, your partner’s not going to let that happen.

They try to make you feel guilty that you need time to yourself and that you don’t love them. Recharging your batteries and having time to yourself allows you time to think, and they don’t want that. [Read: 17 relationship red flags that most people completely ignore]

#11 They slowly remove you from your family. If you haven’t talked to your family and friends in a couple of weeks, that’s not a good sign. This starts very subtly and gradually increases over time.

They initially make small comments about your friends and family, or they’ll forget to tell you they called or they’re not a good support system.

Their goal is to make them your only support system. Why? Well, then they have your full control. [Read: How to stop being manipulated in a relationship]

#12 Questions, questions, questions. Who, what, when, where, why?? Expect a list of questions the minute you tell them what you’re doing. Everything must be questioned and you better have an answer. If not, they’ll use every trick in the book to get you to not do what you want. Control freak.

#13 They’re the boss. They pick what you two will do today, they decide where you’re going to eat—they’re the boss. You’ll see this further down in the relationship because usually, in the beginning, there’s a balance of power.

However, as time passes, their true colors show. Typically, this is usually seen when the woman has her first child. But, if you look at the other signs, you don’t have to wait until that point.

#14 It’s always your fault. Listen, it’s always going to be your fault. If your partner cheated on you, it’s because you’re not putting out. If they spilled something on the floor, it’s because you distracted them.

It’ll always be your fault. And when you want to leave the relationship, then they accept some blame until you agree to stay with them. It sounds exhausting, right? If your partner is a control freak, they never want to accept responsibility for their actions. [Read: Don’t stay stuck: 16 strategies to get your shit together]

#15 Substance abuse. If you’re not a big drinker, you don’t smoke, you work out—this is seen as a problem. You’re too strong of a person for them. So, they try to get you drinking a couple glasses of wine a night, get you to save money by quitting the gym. All these little things to make you weak. In a controlling relationship, the only way they control you is if you’re weaker than them.

#16 Uncomfortable sexual interactions. This type of controlling behavior makes its way into the bedroom at some point. It’s only a matter of time.

Perhaps you don’t want to have sex that night, and they force you into it. You’ll be left feeling highly uncomfortable, which is a normal feeling because that is rape. If you’re having uncomfortable and unsettling feelings during sex, something is very wrong. [Read: Date rape – Facts and signs of date rape]

#17 They tease you. Everybody gets teased, that’s normal. However, there’s a fine line between humor and emotional abuse. If they tease you constantly, they’ll say, Oh, I was just teasing you, don’t take it so seriously.

If you say anything back, you’ll be told that your reaction is incorrect and that you have a negative reaction. In a controlling relationship, your feelings are wrong. That works out perfectly for them, why? Because next time, you’ll just sit and take their demeaning jokes. [Read: The 14 telling signs it’s time to give up on a relationship]

#18 You’re guilty before proven innocent. Oh, that’s right, they saw you walking down the street with someone of the opposite sex. So you must have cheated—yup, you definitely cheated.

Your partner probably convinces you that you actually did do something wrong even if you didn’t do anything wrong. They show you your guilty behavior. In turn, you’ll never repeat those actions again. That’s how they control you.

[Read: How to handle controlling behavior in a relationship]

If you’re reading this because you’re suspicious, follow your gut instinct. Make sure you look at these 18 signs to avoid being in a controlling relationship.

The post Controlling Relationship: 18 Signs You’re Being Coerced Into One is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.

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bthump · 6 years ago

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what are the things you like and dislike about the '97 anime and the films?

ty for asking, i’m just gonna write a few long lists lol

97 anime likes:

the animation, including the like, yk the more detailed stills they pan over in place of action or to punctuate important moments, i love it

the gorgeous backgrounds

most of the colour choices. red eclipse, femto’s blue eyes, casca’s skintone, griffith’s mauve clothes, etc.

how close it is to the manga. like, it’s a solid adaption just by virtue of making very few changes.

so like, most of it really, because i like the manga

special mention to the entire lead up to the eclipse from griffith’s reality break to the sacrifice tho, because i think that was all pretty damn perfect. it’s the most important scene and they did it right.

actually also shout out to casca’s flashback to griffith and the dead kid, gennon, the river scene, all that. another difficult v emotional sequence that they nailed imo.

griffith thinking about how he “loves” guts during the monologue

skipped most of the griffith/charlotte sex scene iirc which i approve of

the glimpse of black swordsman guts in ep 1. it’s not perfect but it’s way better than the ovas starting w/ 15 yr old guts

the opening and closing themes. fucking love both songs ngl

also the opening monologue. never get tired of hearing it

the score

the portrayal of griffith was honestly pretty solid imo. i have very few issues there. and lbr that’s important lol

97 anime dislikes:

not a big fan of griffith or guts’ character designs.

just about everything that isn’t identical to the manga is a change for the worse

turned griffith’s scratch marks into that giant unexplained scar

adding extra scenes where casca is secretly impressed with guts’ skills in battle in an attempt to build up their relationship better, which instead just made casca look unfair for still being a dick to him for 3 years and made guts stupidly gary stu-ish

obviously the straightforwardly romantic portrayal of guts and casca’s relationship

through several seemingly minor changes (eg, skipping guts’ night of self-doubt after he leaves, giving guts’ stay with godo its own half-episode, making guts inviting casca along super romantic rather than the incredibly casual and assholish way he does it in the manga, etc) it makes Guts’ dream seem legitimately noble and worthwhile, with none of the like… implicit critique the manga has. like honestly it completely fucks up what i consider one of the central themes of the story lol

the pre eclipse stuff also fails to sell guts’ sense of regret - through things like playing guts’ theme while judeau is telling guts to leave, not repeating guts’ statement of regret after casca tells him to leave again, the tone remains consistently in favour of guts’ dream. wrong and bad.

like it really reads like the suggested tragedy is that guts doesn’t get the chance to ditch griffith with judeau and take off with casca and the raiders lol

also fucks it up by never directly mentioning guts’ csa trauma

also fucks it up by losing guts’ self-destructive single-minded urge to fight monsters that we saw thru the wyald stuff. i’m not gonna say that losing wyald was a bad decision, but they should’ve at least moved erika suggesting that guts just wants to fight zodd again to the fucking waterfall scene in question, which they portrayed completely sans zodd discussion, completely sans implication of the self-destructiveness of guts’ dream

like in the manga he nearly gets killed by the falling logs and just laughs it off like a dumbass while erika is concerned and suggests that guts is driven by something irrational and not actually a ~noble~ dream, ie, wanting to fight zodd again (ie, going deeper, his csa trauma), while in the anime we get a 2nd scene where he successfully slices through the logs as a super basic symbol of growth and a narrative pat on guts’ back that shouldn’t be there!

honestly just fucking everything about the portrayal of guts’ dream lol it just takes it at face value in a way the manga consistently never did and always undermined and critiqued, and it bugs the hell out of me.

guts is just drawn in a way that makes him look angry way too often and he often feels ooc to me bc of it. like he lacks a lot of the warmth he has in the manga imo

showing that griffith is awake when guts says “i’ll stay too” even tho in the manga those words are placed over a panel of him asleep for a reason like, ffs

lots of other random nitpicky details that only i give a fuck about because my opinions and feelings about the story are too strong lol. like not showing griffith’s face when he asks if guts thinks he’s cruel

oh huge one: moving the scene where the torturer rips off griffith’s behelit from about a day after he was imprisoned to right before his rescue. completely trivializes griffith’s torture because it still looks like he’s been in there for a day at most

why on earth did it end where it ended????????????? who’s bright idea was that? the perfect ending is skull knight riding tf out with guts and casca and femto not killing them, but then they also cut out skull knight’s first appearance so idfk man.

oh some downplaying of griffguts, like i can’t complain too much about this because it was still p homoerotic, but things like omitting guts assuming griffith wants to fuck him right before their first duel. boo.

ultimately at the end of the day as much as i do genuinely like the anime, it’s not telling quite the same story the manga was - the story it’s telling is more boring and basic. but because it sticks so close to the manga the good story still shines through? it just means there’s inconsistent tone choices and stuff, like the aforementioned grievances.

it’s like, they kept casca’s diatribe at guts line for line while she’s screaming that griffith needed him and a man can’t live on dreams alone, but they don’t extend that train of thought to guts going off to pursue his dream, while the manga does.

anyway despite that giant list of dislikes i still think the anime is pretty fantastic overall. i just also like, blame it for a lot of wrong fandom takes lol.

movie likes:

character designs! honestly imo everyone looked pretty great.

they played up the homoeroticism and i appreciate that

illustrating griffith being torn between guts and his dream through that lovely moment when he catches guts when he nearly falls off the stairs right before he catches charlotte, and in a more romantically suggestive way

the whole scene where griffith shows up at charlotte’s window thoroughly improved on the manga, so hats off there. loved how completely out of it he was to the point where he barely realized where he was and immediately turned to leave when charlotte was like ‘woah dude wtf,’ love that charlotte was the one to ask him to stay and then physically move his hand back to her tit, love how emphatically griffith was thinking about guts during that sex scene, etc. like it’s still not perfect, but it is a vast improvement.

griffith showing up in person after the hundred man fight was a nice touch

it was cool that they got a lot of the same english vas from the anime dub back, and they all did a gr8 job. like it’s a pretty good dub imo.

i liked that they moved ‘the crystalization of your last tear shed’ to after guts’ post-eclipse breakdown

compared to the anime at least gtsca was more low-key and chill rather than dramatically romantic. still don’t want it there, and still not as… unromantic as the manga, but i’ll take what i can get

the animation during griffith’s transformation into femto, yk that whole sequence, was cool

slan’s english voice was super sexy

ummmmm i feel like they conveyed the whole dreams are stupid theme, and guts’ decision to leave being a mistake, better than the anime? like i got the sense that the ova ppl recognized that was a theme, at least. i’d have to watch them again to really be sure of that tho

movie dislikes:

GRIFFITH’S. NARRATIVE.

like holy fuck they completely destroyed his character lmao

i cannot believe

no backstory! no tombstone of flame! no ‘do you think i’m cruel?’ THAT WAS THE REASON HE MADE THE SACRIFICE FFS HOW DO YOU SKIP IT????

no dead kid angst, gennon only in vague implication, no self harm - oh no wait we saw self inflicted scratches, they were just completely contextless and meaningless to the point where we could assume charlotte’s nails made them

no torture chamber monologue

no guts monologue in the tavern either for that matter

no rooftop scene

again barely the implication of guts’ childhood trauma, both the sexual abuse and the general parental abuse. one vague flashbacky nightmare doesn’t cut it, it’s the cornerstone of the story

like i get it, it’s a movie trilogy, you have to cut some things, but goddamn, cut out gtsca. trim the hundred man fight. add 20 minutes to the first ova and take the insanely long rape scene out of the third. trim down the whole eclipse sequence. don’t cut out like… the story. like they cut out SO MANY emotionally relevant scenes and kept so many much less relevant scenes, idek.

and like let’s be real here, they turned griffith from an immensely interesting and complex character into a 1 dimensional dude who is torn between a vaguely evil ambition and being in vaguely evil love with guts, just for the sake of streamlining the least interesting aspects of the story

they don’t even try to pretend otherwise lol, look at his fucking hilarious evil smile here

also while i’m looking at it, in general i think they failed at the whole eclipse sequence. looks, lighting, colour, build up of tension… there are a few minor improvements here and there (eg casca’s point of view shot of femto, femto telekinesising guts back a la the black swordsman arc which emphasizes his failure to act when he escapes), but overall it doesn’t work for me at all. like imo the anime has the exact same highs and lows as the manga, but while the ova avoids some lows it never reaches those highs.

they also had griffith overhear guts saying he wants to stay. i really don’t get why this happened twice lol, like… ok his face is kind of shadowed here but he’s still very clearly asleep? this is an important detail, guts’ interrupted words are even on that very panel, so why would you go out of your way to show that he’s awake and listening at that point.

the pacing sucked. 3rd movie was too long, 1st was too short, and they skipped waaaaaay too many significant scenes that should’ve been there as emotional beats

honestly the movies are pretty, they’re nicely fanservicey in ways, they capture some good subtleties and nuances at times, but they’re a husk of the story

oh did i mention the music during the eclipse rape? incredible.

also i am actually generally positive about the movies too despite what it seems like here lmao. i’ve watched them all like, 3 or more times and i find them v enjoyable.

i just have a way easier time listing nitpicky flaws than positives honestly. the flaws stand out to me, the virtues pass me by because i’m just enjoying them and not dwelling on them

and lbr here at the end of the day no adaption will ever really satisfy me unless i somehow find several million dollars lying around and make my own lol. and that would probably be a flop anyway.

#Anonymous #ask #a #b #theme: adaption #theme: dreams #arc: ga

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