#henry: this has got to be the exact same emotional mental and physical feeling as getting eaten alive limb by limb

[keymeaning]

i think the biggest thing about firstprince is that pre-confession of love they both know fucking each other complicates a lot in their respective lives, for different reasons, but alex chooses to put this out of mind until it becomes relevant to Future Alex because he's nothing if not evasive of his own problems and really he doesn't want to give any of it up and henry can't stop thinking about all the ways it could and is probably going to end badly but still continues with it because he can't give it up (nevermind the fact that he's briefly able to convince himself otherwise). alex is living the adhd "consequences schmonsequences" procrastinator's life to the max and henry is experiencing levels of dread and anxiety equivalent to someone on the cusp of being brutally murdered

[discocandles]

Charlotte, Henry, and Jasper hcs:

-Jasper gives the best cuddles in swellview, it's unreal. Piper has agreed, and she can barely stand physical contact with other people outside of a firm handshake or the contact needed to maim someone; a fist bump if you're lucky. it's also most common that Jasper is the first to ask about cuddles, especially if he notices Henry or Charlotte might want that.

It's not uncommon to see Charlotte doing homework in junk n' stuff laying against Jasper while he scrolls on his phone. Honestly, it's bad for her productivity(not as bad as the man cave but still). She wants to get her shit done, but that requires grabbing her backpack, and it's comfy where she's at right there. After like a minute of mentally being at war with herself she'll be like "Is it ok if I go to the man cave to grab my backpack? I'll be right back." and Jasper's like "yeah, no problem." and Charlotte's like "ok thanks".

-They have a 1 spotify account between the 3 of them. How they manage to share a singular account is beyond me, and the laws of reason, but they do it. It's technically Henry's account, given he pays for the premium subscription, but it wasn't just his for more than like a week. Their spotify wrapped playlist is disjointed to a comedic degree. Don't even try to get through their liked songs.

They have separate personal playlists for their personal favorites. but the playlist names are indecipherable if you are not them. and they will judge each other's music tastes in the playlist description.

-This might be canon, but Charlote can read Henry like a book. Henry's eyebrows move a centimeter, and Charlotte is getting a burrito bc she sees that he's craving one. She knows the degree of "Is Ray shitting me?" that Henry is feeling the second he comes out the tube, the mask affects nothing. Everyone kinda writes it off like "It's a bit creepy, but it's also Charlotte" & "that's a normal smart person thing to do." which no, it isn't.

Charlotte is most accurate with Henry, but Henry can read Jasper better than Charlotte can, and Jasper can read Charlotte better than Henry. It moves in a triangle of sorts. They also read each other's emotions in different ways. Charlotte goes off of facial expressions, Henry by the tone of their voice, and Jasper by general body language.

-Henry is probably the best cook out of the 3 of them. None of them are particularly bad at cooking per say, but Henry is the best at it. He tries to play it off at times and suggest that they get take-out on his nights to make dinner, but that's almost always a no from Charlotte and Jasper unless he's exhausted. Also the take-out in dystopia is terrible, even by shitty take-out standards. Like you do not get take-out in dystopia unless you *have* to.

Henry's weak link? Grilling/Barbeque. The guy won't turn hamburgers into hockey pucks, but he hates working a grill, and the grill hates him back. But that's fine, as Charlotte was taught by the Lord of Barbeque, her uncle Rosco. And in terms of baking, Henry and Charlotte love Jasper's baking too much to try and replicate it. It works out well for them in the kitchen.

-Henry and Charlotte were in competition for best driver sophomore year. It started as a joke of who would chauffer and who would pay for gas. But then they were in the same car for driver's ed and shit got intense. They would point out if the other was one mile over the speed limit, roasting the other's parking, grilling each other on the exact meaning of signs.

They got their driver's test scores and it turns out Jasper is the best/safest driver. Henry and Charlotte tied at the decent score of 79, but Jasper got a 96. He jokes its his way of recovering after experiencing Piper drive in the graveyard, which she scoffed at. So Jasper is the chauffer while Henry and Charlotte pay for his gas.

-honestly it's a good rule of thumb that if two of them are competing, the other person will win. Jasper and Henry racing to the swellview pool in the summer? Charlotte's already there. Jasper and Charlotte at each other's throats over who gets the last slice of pie? They turn around and Henry's watching them while eating the piece in question. Henry and Charlotte are spending all day trying to beat a high score in a video game? Jasper takes a turn and his score is undefeated for a week.

When schwoz first pointed it out, it was kind of a point of contention. the 2 competing would glare at the 3rd person before snapping back to glaring at the other. But after the driver's license competition, it just became funny. Charlotte and Henry saw Jasper asking Piper and Ray their scores, laughing his ass off as grumbled about just barely passing his drivers test. And joined in laughing as Piper growled at him, but not quite ruing the fact the dmv fucked up about her license.

[queen-mabs-revenge]

OK so here’s my @watchingfairytales Ep 1-8 “””write up”””:

Man, shit’s hard, but this is so enjoyable.

So the thing I’m really trying to do with this rewatch is stop and question every time I get a conditioned emotional response. By that I mean, there are certain truths that each section of the fandom has come up with in order to justify/condemn certain things/characters according to the desired outcome in relation to that section’s faves. As someone entrenched in the Hooker/CS side of things, of course that resulted in a lot of animosity towards Regina and Rumple, some justified, some not. But I think a lot of times, every single thing was pitched to make the two of them The Worst Of All Time, and I know this has happened in other corners of the fandom with regards respective antagonists.

So rewatching, I’ve had to take my head out of that space by asking certain questions over and over again:

“Am I feeling this because of fanon or canon?” being a huge one. 

“Am I applying real-world rules to the narrative instead of viewing actions with the in-show framework?” which I think has some overlapping qualities with the first question. And again, kind of a reworking of both of these:

“Am I choosing to see this action/person negatively in order to overly-exonerate my fave?”

“Am I holding this character to different standards than I do my favourite?”

So for example, I just finished 1x08, and while I don’t remember having a particularly negative reaction to Rumpelstiltskin in this episode on first watch (before Milah and Killian were introduced, that is), I know that if I were to have come at this post S6, I would have made efforts to find every possible way to drag him, or use every one of his choices to show how morally bankrupt he is at a base level. He burnt down the duke’s castle, people lived there and COULD HAVE DIED -- which, fair, that’s true in a sense, but I think that I have to ask myself the second question in relation to that opinion.

Am I applying real-world rules to the narrative instead of viewing actions with the in-show framework? A bit, yeah. I’ve created a score of imaginary victims that probably would have been there if the castle were a real one to take the focus away from the moral dilemma that the show is actually asking about Rumplestiltskin in relation to the episode’s themes: What does one place one’s trust in at the point of desperation?

And so I’m missing the forest for the trees by creating a conflict that isn’t really there, and that’s something that takes away from my enjoyment of the character and the show because I’m so intent on villifing every action that the antagonist-to-my-fave is doing. (Which, super different reaction to him in this episode than to 1.04, but that’s for a different meta because oh yikes that’s even worse now after 5.14) Which in turn robs me of the real guttural conflict that’s going on because I’m too busy being hung up on invented nitpickery?

And I know that would have been the case because the fourth question then comes into play. Am I holding this character to different standards than I do my fave? ...Yep. I’m not even going to go into the S4 Evil Hand thing with Killian and Rumple, nope. I’m gonna put my own problematic fave on the line rn: Liam Jones.

A person in a position of complete lack of power left to care for their only remaining family in a situation of economic poverty, social poverty, and the poverty of choice. That person is faced with a crisis situation in which the child they love and care for is in a situation of mortal peril. They might be able to solve the problem themselves, but the chances are slim to none. Instead they’re approached by a person who offers them a magically guaranteed solution -- the power to 100% assure that their child will be safe. It might require a bit of light murder, but only of people who had been the ones to take away the person’s choice and safety in the first place. The person takes the power to guarantee their child’s safety at the peril of others and attempts then to live a life with the child that the safety of that choice afforded.

Yep, if I can see all of that for Liam, I sure as hell better be able to see that for Rumple, and if I can’t? Then I have to ask myself why. And there might be a valid reason for those feelings (writing reasons, character trajectory within the show, etc.), but if I don’t acknowledge the disparity and ask myself the question, then it’s just running off of what I think is probably that ol’ fandom anxiety chestnut: I have to defend everything that remotely relates to my fave in a way that puts them on top in the morality olympics.

I’ve been finding it harder with Regina, but I think that’s because of two factors: one, the narrative in this season is definitely placing her as the main antagonist -- Rumple is manipulative and quietly terrifying, but the whole Regina/Henry/Emma is the main source of conflict in the show so far, and so the harm that Regina is causing is more up front and palpable. And also, she genuinely does mental harm, intentional and unintentional, to Henry in favour of preserving the world she’s created.

However, the thing that’s helping me, again, is that fourth question. And while in this case it’s not the exact same, because if you ask me I will tell you time and time again: the worst thing that Killian ever did as Hook was what he did to Bae -- he put his own hurt above the wellbeing of his child. But yeah, that’s the point isn’t it? I can look at Killian and say, he did something atrocious there -- he harmed and betrayed Bae because he was angry, hurt, insecure, and immature.

So yeah, this is emphasised to the nth degree here with Regal Believer because it’s a whole season instead of an episode and a half, but I feel like if I’m going to be fair to Regina, I’ve got to think in the same way. Yeah, she is trying to obscure Henry from the truth, and that in turn is causing him harm, but I think I can see a lot more this time around that it’s coming from this place of love, for also from a place of desperation.

Knowing what I know about Regina from all seven seasons, I do know that she has a great capacity for love, but that from the moment she was born, she was always put into a position of being valued not for herself, but for her value to a person’s needs and agenda, namely Cora’s. So you see it put into her head that she herself is not enough. She’s valuable as a bargaining chip to Cora’s security in power; she’s valuable as a mother figure to someone’s child, not as a person to love and be loved on her own; she’s valuable as a tool to be shaped to trigger a curse. And you see the foil for that in Henry Sr. and Snow, two people who I think genuinely did want her safety and happiness but who were weaker than the devaluing forces in her life, and therefore who were easier as targets of her frustration, anger and powerlessness.

So then you have Henry, who she sought to fill that hole in her heart left by killing one, and alienating another of those two people, and she’s left trying to love him, but always governed by this fear and desperation that her love isn’t enough -- she’s been given this idea that people in power don’t think she’s valuable in and over herself, that her love isn’t enough because she doesn’t have that kind of value.

She has to be useful to Henry’s needs to be worthy of him, and the thing he needs right now is honesty and that’s something she can’t give him. So she’s lashing out at anything that can jeopardise the delicate and jagged “perfect” she’s created in harmful ways. And that’s the fixation on Emma, even in situations where she’s not involved -- the whole Graham situation really drove that home for me. During the ‘break-up’ scene in front of the vault, Graham continuously says that it has nothing to do with Emma, that he’s not leaving Regina to be with Emma, but Regina keeps bringing it back to Emma. Emma is the physical representation of her not being enough for Henry. Henry needs honesty and trustworthiness, and because Regina cannot be useful to him in that way, she needs to strip Emma’s honesty and trustworthiness so that she’s no longer a useful tool for that need. And it comes from that place of anger, hurt, insecurity and immaturity.

And that’s narratively OK. It’s OK to both understand the reasons why someone might be doing something and to know what they’re doing is wrong. It’s OK to understand that she is wronging Henry right now - she’s betraying him and prioritising her own hurt above his well-being and just as it’s OK to acknowledge that for other character and not bar them from future happiness, it’s OK to do that for Regina, too.

It’s OK for her to be approaching the concept of love without utility in an immature state right now because that’s interesting and means that there’s a place to go from here. The questions that arise later on in the series, is whether the writing satisfies the journey that’s set up -- and that’s true for any and all of the characters.

Umm…. so that’s where I’m at right now? How I’m approaching this rewatch I guess? Basically I want to love all the characters like I love my favourite ones -- “you idiot child please think for .2 seconds and have a cup of tea before doing the thing?” It’s so much more fun that way, you know?

Probably a little less focused on the individual events and more on the overall themes this time around. Look, the writing’s not perfect, but there are some damned good arcs and I want to enjoy them all.

[thecrossingroleplay]

AVAILABLE

Name: Darius Strickland. Age: 233 [Real Age: 233]. Species: Vampire. Sexuality: Heterosexual. Faceclaim: Ben Barnes. Personality: Darius is kind at heart, but often comes off as stoic, and brooding. He has a compassionate nature that he hides, because a part of him feels like he’s not worthy of receiving love or acknowledgement for his compassion. This lays in deep rooted insecurities and traumas that resulted from his death, the attack on his family and his years on the streets. Darius is excellent at keeping secrets, and tends to bury things deeply, most are lucky if they ever truly know who he is underneath the layers he projects to keep himself safe. Since the death of his family, he’s always searched to be a part of something, but has never felt truly at one with anybody he’s grown close to. Darius holds a deep, protective nature, because of the way he grew up, and wants to protect others from feeling the way he felt. Darius is ashamed of his nightmares and panic attacks, something he was told in his younger years were signs of weakness. Biography: Darius and his twin sister Emery were the youngest born Strickland’s, the one that none of the family truly remembers. They were born only a few years before the feud had been ignited. They were much loved, and cared for by most of the family, all but Jeremy, who never even met his younger siblings. Then the feud struck. Their father had killed a vampire who’d stumbled upon the village. Of course, the other vampires who’d run with this vampire decided to get revenge, slowly. They started by hunting the village. Whenever the villagers would track out into the surrounding woods, the vampires would pick and choose, killing some. All but the Strickland mother and father – Mary and Henry – were under the assumption animal attacks were the culprit. This went on slowly, torturing Mary and Henry mentally until finally they struck. The vampires teamed up with some demons, and used them to exact their revenge. By this time, Darius was eleven. The Strickland’s were attacked in their home. The eldest, Caleb, Annabelle, Jeremy and Mark were turned into vampires. Mary and Henry were fed the blood and killed, but never awoke. Darius and Emery were too young to survive the transition from human to vampire, so they were killed painfully, and slowly, tortured in front of their parents before their parents were killed. After the demons gathered to make the Strickland siblings forget each other, and their lives before turning, even fabricating new lives, they came upon a new idea. Instead of putting a regular block within the memories of their youngest siblings, they put in a greater one, so strong there would barely be anything to break it. It left Darius and Emery long forgotten. In an unexpected twist, Darius ended up being rescued by angels. The angels recognized his youth, and knew that there were greater things in store, so they returned him to life. Being brought back was not without its costs. He still bore the scars from the torture inflicted by the demons and vampires, both mentally and physically. He still didn’t understand the death of his twin sister, and what had happened to his parents. Nightmares plagued him, but he did his best to go on. He buried his twin sister and parents near the edge of their village, in graves marked by small, carved rocks. After that he got as far away as possible. He lived in poverty at a young age, wandering the streets helplessly, plagued by the memories and night terrors of his past. The only food and money he got was from begging. He rarely ever slept under a sheltered roof, at least until he was thirteen. When he was thirteen, a wealthy woman took notice of him. She was known for her rich husband who lived overseas for business. She was surrounded by servants in her grand estate, but had no children of her own. At first she would simply give him coins on the street so he could pay for food. Those would quickly get stolen from him, and other’s living on the streets would do terrible, awful things to get the money from him. Finally realizing this, the woman took him home, cleaned him up and gave him fresh clothes and a bed to sleep in. At first, he did not take kindly to this, and had no clue how to react. He’d often sleep outside. It took several months for him to adjust to living a life where he was safer. He never properly opened up about what had happened to his birth family, only telling her that they’d been attacked viciously, and he was the only one left. The woman raised him as his own, even going as far as formally adopting him even though he kept the family name. While the woman’s husband wasn’t entirely accepting, he didn’t force Darius to leave, though he wasn’t kind, he always thought Darius was weak for his emotional side. Darius lived with the woman for ten years, until he turned twenty three. When Darius ventured out to one of the tavern’s to meet an investor for his adoptive mother and father’s business, a man who’d lived on the streets while he did found him. He was bitter, and angry that Darius had risen in ranks so much. But there was more than that. Darius had gone on to live a normal life, while the man had been attacked outside the very same tavern and turned into a beast, a vampire. Darius was attacked viciously, forced to relive his worst nightmares and memories of his early lives while he was drained. He didn’t go down easily. He kicked, punched, clawed and bit, putting up an impressive fight for a human. Eventually he’d ingested enough blood so that when he was killed, he fell into transition. Once again, he awoke from death, this time as a vampire. Darius decided not to return home. Surely anyone would see him as a monster, and he didn’t want to risk being rejected by the woman who’d raised him for the last ten years. He allowed everyone to think he’d died in the tavern attack, and left town. Darius was a relatively controlled vampire, only prone to uncontrollable outbreaks and vicious attacks when he fell into one of his panic attacks, something he still gets, along with his nightmares. Darius kept a relatively normal lifestyle, and didn’t use many riches he’d gained over the years, instead living a simpler life. One day, he was on an outing when he could have sworn he saw his older brother Mark. He wasn’t entirely sure, and the man was gone before he could even come to check, but it was enough to trigger his memories, making them all more active and far worse than before. His panic attacks became more frequent, and led to him lashing out more. His most recent lashing out resulted in the death of fifteen people, and that was what led the asylum to him. He was captured and brought in, completely unaware that all of his siblings were present with him.

[sehnsuchti-blog]

ii \ 2014

A certain encounter today inspired me to pen down my thoughts when I first got diagnosed with depression. Without further ado, let’s go back to 2014 - freshman year.

When I entered university, this guy started texting me right after the first week of school began. Let’s call him…Bob. Bob was a really extroverted, friendly senior whom I found to be quite charismatic when I joined my first hall camp. To cut to the chase, I thought I had really good feelings towards Bob. I knew I liked him, but there was no way I could pursue anything further than a friendship with him.

The back story is, I had just broken up with my ex-boyfriend of 2.5 years in August 2014. I always felt that it was utterly shameful and wrong for anyone to hop onto another relationship after ending one. It is disrespecting the time that both parties would need to recover from the breakup, and I feel that you would be shortchanging your love for the other person because you are still emotionally invested in recuperating from the breakup. Hence, even though I had strong feelings for Bob, I could never bring myself to do anything more than being a good friend to him, at least not in the short run.

I know that this was supposed to be about my depression, but I will get to that soon.

Although I knew from the start that I could not pursue our friendship any further than it already was, I wanted to at least know if he had feelings for me too. Throughout my freshman year, we texted every day and every night, and he did many sweet things for me. But like I said earlier, he was very extroverted and friendly to everyone, so he might be doing the same things to his close female friends too.

Until one day, right before he flew off to America for an exchange program, he texted me and said he wanted to meet up with me. We met up and talked about it, and he said that he saw me as nothing more but a little sister whom he deeply cared about. This was when I was conflicted - a part of me knows that I should be happy because I never wanted to be in a relationship with him, but the other part of me is like, “What?!” because I thought for sure that he was sending me signals that he liked me. Of course, the former side of me showed up during the talk, and that was it.

A few months later, I found out that he had confessed to my best friend in hall, a couple of weeks after the last time I met up with him. She was still in a relationship at that time. I was shocked, and heartbroken to my very core when she broke the news to me. The remaining months when he was on exchange became a blur to me. Despite all that has happened, I texted Bob lesser and lesser in those months, but our conversations were not as deep and detailed as it used to be.

When summer break started, my preparation for a dance concert began. My best friend and I auditioned for this concert together and we both got into the same item. However, to my horror, my greatest horror, Bob actually did a video audition for this concert and got into the same item as the both of us. I was texting him every single day when he was on exchange, and I even told him that I passed the audition for this particular concert. But at no point in time, had he ever mentioned that he was joining the exact same concert. You would imagine how uncomfortable it was for me to attend every practice session, and eventually, I started coming up with the most ridiculousnreasons to skip practice. It was too late for me to back out of this item because we were done with half of the choreography, so I chose to avoid practice sessions like the plague.

Throughout the entire duration of the concert preparation, I was choked with so much anger and pain, that my mental state of being worsened with each passing day. I was suicidal before I came into university, but the suicidal thoughts stopped for many months, and it came back again. Many people were talking behind my back for coming up with excuses to miss practice, but I had to protect myself from feeling anymore hurt. I kept a penknife close to me at all times. I hammered my head against the wall everyday to try and forget the emotional pain. No form of physical pain could have ever come close to the emotional hurt I felt. I did not want to see Bob in my life ever again.

All of the physical hurt that I did to myself triggered Henry to call for help. He sent me to the health centre right away and that was when I got diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder - one of the most severe cases of depression (and yes, there are different severity levels for depression). There were several other events in my life that had caused me to have this disorder, but the whole experience with Bob had definitely triggered another side of me.

Right now, I’m so glad that I’m in a better place in life. But that part of my freshman year will always be a dark, dark time for me.