#i am 100% positive that there are plenty of them who are Nice

[shewantsitall]

Reaaaaalllly missing The South rn tbh... people here are Different

^REALLY just here for a Tag Rant but this could 100% be a Southern Whizzer post

[heckinconfusedparade]

Part 1: Knuckles Goes Treasure Hunting

Knuckles wakes up. Today is the perfect day! Clear weather, nice temperature, yes!

He takes his treasure hunting hat off his nightstand and stands up and does a few big stretches. He’s been waiting for a weekend with 0 plans.

Knuckles joins the others upstairs for breakfast. Sonic raises an eyebrow “what’s with the hat?” “It is my treasure hunting hat.” Knuckles responds, slurping some nice warm coffee. “I think it’s cool!” Says Tails coming to sit next to him with his and Knuckles’ plate. Tom smiles at his son “snazzy hat, Indiana Jones.” “I do not know who that is, but I accept the compliment.

“Knux, are you going treasure hunting?” Maddie asks, finally sitting down, “yes. It is the perfect day to look for treasure. I have been waiting. I can sense that this will be a worthwhile journey.” Knuckles is quickly eating. Tails swallows what’s in his mouth “do ya need a metal detector? You can borrow mine!” “Thank you fox, that is very kind. But unfortunately I will have to decline your offer. I cannot hold something and dig without it slowing me down. I need maximum palm space. I can also simply sense when I get close, which is why I am always successful.” Knuckles finishes his breakfast and goes to put his shoes on.

“Be back for dinner, ok?” Maddie shouts. Knuckles shouts back “of course mother!” And he’s off.

He goes to the corner of the yard. He begins his hole and drills down. He senses something coming from the West, so he tunnels in that direction. It is there he finds his first treasure! Cleaning it off, he has found an old bottle cap. Neat! He puts it in his little pouch and carry’s on.

He digs deeper, following every signal he can. He acquires a bottle, an old coin dating back to 100 years ago. That’s a long time! He wonders if this coin is worth anything now..

At some point he picks up something strong. After a bit more digging, he falls into a cave. He picks himself up and looks around. He gathers some crystals and jewels while continuing down the cave.

Then he spots something.. less of a good sign. A skeleton. He feels himself tense a little, wondering if that person died getting trapped or something attacked them. He makes note of the location and continues forward. It gets colder. He begins hearing whispers.. whispers about turning around, and legends of old. He reaches an open room. In the middle stop a pile of sand is an open treasure chest full of jewels, jewelry, gold,… and a single golden dabloon. This is the strong signal he got. Just by looking at it he can tell it’s very very old, but in remarkable shape.

Knuckles hears a noise behind him and whips around. Then he hears something above him… a pair of glowing blue eyes stare back at him. “Hello? Who are you?” Knuckles points to the figure hanging from the ceiling. The figure drops down to the floor. She is a bat taller than he, dressed in a mixture of stealth clothes and flash. “What are you doin with those jewels, big shot~?” She speaks, stepping closer to him, triggering him to back away “I do not wish to fight you. Are you also a treasure hunter?” Knuckles stands in front of the chest. The bat chuckles darkly “something like that. Now, how about you share your findings with lil ol me, big guy?” she gets in position, expecting a fight. Knuckles blinks “well. I don’t need this jewelry. You can take some. If you made it here, you must be experienced in the art of looking for jewels, and I admire that.” Knuckles shows her the jewelry. The bat gasps and rushes over to it, gathering plenty “well aren’t you just the kindest soul~? Hello gorgeous!” She cuddles a Diamond necklace. The bat returns to Knuckles’ side and places a smooch on his cheek “thank you, stranger!” And flies off. Knuckles is frozen in place trying to process what just happened.

He checks what was left behind and finds a bracelet he thinks Maddie would like, and puts it in his bag with everything else. He decides to keep exploring the cave, and he does so until Knuckles senses something else. He gets the same feeling he did when he was near the master emerald.. but he hears some robotic movement.

Knuckles creeps around the corner of the cave, and peers to take a peak. He spots a robot that is definitely Robotniks. It appears to be searching for something. Another Badnik approaches it “Nothing over here.” “We must keep looking.”

The robots turn to face Knuckles who now stands in full sight, fists balled up “what are you looking for?” He says slowly. The robots prepare for battle. They do not respond, but they begin fire. Knuckles dodges the lasers, hiding behind boulders

He climbs up the wall of the cave onto the ceiling and drills downward into one of the robots, destroying it. The other robot tries to grab him, but he grabs the arm and swings around, landing one big punch into its eye socket. He throws the robot at the other one, causing them to explode. The explosion caused the cave to start rumbling “that’s my signal to leave.” Knuckles says to himself when he spots something glowing out of the corner of his eye. It’s a red emerald. He quickly stuffs it into his bag before tunnelling out of the cave.

He returns to the surface and shakes off the dirt. Knuckles reaches back into the bag and pulls out the emerald. This is it. This is what caused him to feel that way. Could this be one of the Chaos Emeralds? Here on Earth?

Knuckles remembers when Sonic turned back to normal from his Super Sonic form, some bright objects shot out of him and scattered across the sky. This confirms there are more of them, and that if all of them are brought together, they will nearly equal the power the master emerald holds.

He carefully places the emerald back in the bag. If his memory serves him correctly, there are more out there. Six more to be exact.. he will keep an eye out for the rest of them

He returns home just as Tom is setting the table for dinner. Tom pats his head “welcome back, buddy! Did you have fun?” “Yes, I did.” Tails comes running, and wraps his arms and tails around his brother in an embrace “hi!! I missed you!!” “I missed you too, Tails.”

Sonic emerges from where Tails came from. Knuckles smirks at him “did you miss me too, hedgehog?“ Sonic shakes his head “nope.” Tails speaks up “he did!” Knuckles laughs and gives the giggling fox a noogie. Sonic, offended by his baby brothers betrayal, decides he is going to be a good boy and join the table setting.

Maddie comes out of the kitchen and hugs her treasure hunter “looks like you found a bunch of stuff!” “I did. I will tell you all about my journey over dinner.”

Knuckles turns to his brothers “Sonic, Tails, there is something I would first like to discuss with you.” He leads them down into his room in the basement. He pulls out the emerald and places it on the floor in the middle of them.

Sonic gasps “woah.. what is that? It’s like.. a smaller master emerald?” he reaches to try and touch it, but Knuckles moves his hand away “it is a Chaos emerald. When you broke the Master Emerald, they must have materialized and been absorbed by you. When you changed back from your Super form, the emeralds shot up and scattered away in different directions. There are seven.. and we now have one.”

Tails thinks for a moment, then speaks “…so if we have all seven, we can use the power of the master emerald.. without the master emerald?” “Yes. But a single Chaos Emerald is still very powerful on its own.” “I’ll run some tests on it.. I’ll try to make a radar so the others will be easy to find. We cannot let anyone get these emeralds.”

The three brothers share an unbreakable promise fist bump.

They return to the dinner table, and Knuckles begins to tell his tale, from the coin, to the cave, to the whispers, to the chest, to the bat lady. Sonic and Tails look at eachother, then to Knuckles and go “ooooooo~!” When he mentions the bat. “What?” Knuckles asks, putting down his fork. Sonic laughs “you said she kissed you on the cheek, eh~?” Tails makes kissy faces to further the teasing. Knuckles blushes and rolls his eyes “it was merely an act of gratitude and nothing more. I don’t even know her, or her name.” Then he eats his feelings, while his brothers continue to tease him. Tom laughs while Maddie makes the two stop teasing their brother.

Then Knuckles explains his fight with the Badniks.

“..how? Why are Robotniks robots still active? Were they like Unit?” Tom asks. Unit has gone off to pursue poetry, they occasionally come back to visit Tails and Sonic to read poems.

Knuckles shakes his head “these robots appeared to follow strict programming. They had a task.”

Tails hums “maybe it’s possible that they were already given the task before we fought? Or..” his face drops “or someone else has access to Eggmans database.”

Sonic feels some blood leave his face “..or Eggman is still out there. And he knows about the Chaos Emeralds.”

It’s pretty silent for the rest of dinner.

Tom and Maddie discuss what to do while the boys head out to the shed.

It’s time for science stuff.

[bonesandthebees]

*shoves aside all the other fic updates i need to read* GLASS IS HERE

i am in fact incredibly busy but i digress

I AM SO EXCITED

*casually scrolls past all the warnings*

i like to be blinded though i have been informed of death from our lovely other anon friends! i am so excited!!!

SMOKE RAHHH

i like that he said “the pythias room” as in like he is no longer the pythia he is leaving that behind for that room is not his and he is not the pythia anymore i think that was a nice touch

filigree is a nice word j like it

DARK VS LIGHT IMAGERY AHHHHH just yk light is supposed to be purity, goodness, etc so when what people have perceived as that becomes shrouded in darkness it highlights either the shift in the people, narrator, or the actual place of lights from the good to the bad or evil in a sense and it just says a lot about wilbur i think bc he didnt think the castle was pure persay but it wasnt horrible in his eyes but now that hes back after gaining clarity (which i have thoughts about regarding other symbolism and junk but i wont bore you) it is now dark like it has never been

WOW WILBUR ISNF A FIGHTER???? sorry something came over me

i dont think he wants to be rescued by you hottie

A GUN

NO BABY BROTHER

i love when wilbur uses his power of the title for himself rather than for that “im not a person” stuff and like serving others and whatnot yk?

anyways hes wilbur but also for like a few lines hes the pythia like right after the guard says your grace

anywhoooo

FRICK A PRIEST GO AWAY

vessel this vessel that why dont you go pray or something like dont you have more important things to do?

frick. the fricken tattoo

hes trying to be a person you literally a**

.

okay

HES NOT THE FIRST

a syringe

with bright yellow liquid

intriguing

and not good i would assume

as she should.

she dreamt of death so the curse interesting im interested

im questioning the tenets

“the connection” my god this priest

poor tomathy

HEY IT LOOKS GREAT (i think)

niki! jack!

wow look at them talk politely to each other!!!

THE MARBLE

OH FRICK THE POOL

JACK WTF

niki. let him get his brother.

tommy.

wilbur wheres the wffing vial thing at idk what it does but now or never

THERE IT IS

hes back! my boy!!! my baby!!!

darn schlatt what a shame.

the pythia cant change the future! who would have guessed! not i!

isnt that literally crazy????

i cant believe i got that one

okay!!!! slah wilbur! way to go king!

ranboo was never a snitch hes a real one

anyways bee this was incredible i loved this chapter all three of the big scenes were awesome and yeah this was super exciting i loved it i love this fic i cant believe its almost over anyways k got hot girl things to do!!

- 🪿

very fun to go in blind especially for a chapter like this

YEAHHH pythia's room not his room. it was never really his room.

god yeah you get the dark vs light imagery I was going for. the palace is so light and bright all the time with white and gold walls and plenty of windows and all of that so for it to suddenly be turned dark by the ash and smoke in the air... it's only dark now that he's back and seeing things as they really are for the first time...

it is fun to see the rare occasions where wilbur can use the pythia title for himself as a way to grab power. he's not great at it but he does try it sometimes in these little moments of trying to take advantage of the shitty position he's been put in

yes yes lots of fun switching between wilbur and pythia this chapter

he's not the first to try and leave :)) I was so excited to finally get to share that little snippet of pythia history I know you guys have been asking

jack and niki... ruh roh

I mean to be FAIR it's not confirmed 100% that the pythia can't change the future there's just. zero evidence that they actually can.

aaaa so glad you enjoyed!!

[ltleflrt]

So here’s the thing about antisemitic tropes in the media...I wouldn’t have recognized them 10-15 years ago, before I started meeting Jewish people on the internet.  I live in a place where there are functionally no Jewish people.  Growing up, I watched plenty of stuff made by non-Jewish people who were using antisemitic tropes and I didn’t clock what was going on. Hell, even on the positive side of things, I watched Mel Brooks movies and heard the jokes the characters made about Jews and had no idea what it meant.  

“Jew” was a word that I had no context for.

So on a very simple, surface level, I can see why people are playing That Game without caring about the antisemitic stuff.  I fully believe there are people who just don’t have the context to recognize the bullshit they’re being fed because they grew up on shit sandwiches and don’t realize that peanut butter and jelly are better options. 

But what I don’t get is how they can continue eating it once they have the context.  Like, how do you unsee bad things once the veil has been pulled back?

When I was a kid, my dad would use the phrase “to kyfe” (kife? idk how it’s spelled, don’t care) when he meant “to steal”, so I did too.  Until someone told me it was antisemitic, and then explained to me what antisemitism was.  It was so long ago that I don’t even remember who told me this information.  I’m not even 100% sure it’s true, since Google is not being helpful about it, and a quick search only gives me the “to steal” definition on the first 3 pages. But I’ve never used the phrase ever again, because that’s not who I am as a person, and I’m willing to change.

Anyway, this is all a long rambly post to say thank you to the people out there who are willing to educate me.  It DOES make a difference when you speak up.  It’s gotta be exhausting as fuck tho, and I hope you all get to take a nap and have a nice treat at some point in the day after having one of these conversations, and get five fucking minutes of peace. 

[ceramicdove]

hello dove! i am intending to send a similar ask to matthew and angie so if u see them answering asks of the like thats whats up. anyways, i finished jane austens persuasion today. its a rlly lovely book, pondering on something i never rlly thought of but which has enlightened me quite a lot as someone in the position of persuader myself. theres a lot of craft put into it thats very clever and delightful... but i only realised it by reading the introduction after reading the whole book! im not very good at noticing literary techniques at all or implications in words and actions unless theyre very obvious :( reasonably this troubles me (although i hope this ask does not do the same for u)

as someone who reads a lot i assume or just has a great deal of passion for what u read , what do u do to become more sensitive to texts so u can form such nuanced and layered takes! or really how do u read in general?

hello to you too, lab! it took me a while to get around to this, though I strongly enjoyed angie’s and matthew's responses. I've yet to read persuasion, but you make me curious about it, so I may add it to my reading list. Thank you for choosing me to answer this as well! It's an honour.

angie and matthew both wrote very solid and informative responses with more practical advice, so I will ruin this streak of well-sharpened answers by offering you the most dove-like response there is: one that is very long, tangential, and convoluted. this is a theoretical and personal response, it will carry parts that are more like general rants on how people engage with reading, rather than things targeted at you specifically. but this is just how I am. you likely already knew that when you chose to ask me this.

To preface my actual thoughts with a more personal & anecdotal segment: despite your assumption, I actually don't read a lot (what even is "a lot"?), despite wanting to. I'm frequently disappointed with my short-comings in reading and analysis. I have glaring issues with feeling restless and having a poor attention span and memory while reading, which makes it difficult for me to parse through long texts. Like you, I struggle with taking certain things at face value. I have to rely on re-reading a lot.

It's something I beat myself up over frequently. I'm very eager to pursue knowledge, and I always feel like the more I learn, the more I realise I ultimately know absolutely nothing. It's so easy to feel unbearably small. It's a very human thing, but it also makes it difficult to healthily relate with myself when I set such a high bar. at times, it has made me very doubtful about whether my thoughts are worthy of sharing.

Plenty of those who either are or wish to be into analysis & literature place a lot of value and pressure on the act of being someone intellectual, someone who reads a lot, someone who can read a book one time, understand it, and walk away to the next book. I get a lot of youtube videos about literature in my recommended, videos about people who read dozens upon dozens of books in a year, people who read 15 long books in just one month. It's a nice mental image, no? you must be so smart, being able to say "I read 100 books this year!"

I have never read 100 books in one year. I probably never will.

I think many of us don't engage with reading the way we should. I think there's too much pressure placed on being fast and doing more, instead of taking your time and doing better.

reading is a skill. the ideal way to improve a skill is not by mindlessly practicing a lot or as fast as you can, just so you can feel fulfilled by the concept of practicing so much. the ideal way of improving a skill is by identifying your own blind spots, your pace & personal needs, and understanding each piece of knowledge you gain as you evolve.

this is NOT to say that anyone who reads a lot must be a faux-pas intellectual who doesn't actually understand what they're reading, or that you HAVE to pour over every paragraph in a literary work in order to be a good reader. my point is that the desire to "read more" (implicitly the desire to be fulfilled, passionate, smart) is a slippery slope into feeling inferior because you can't read fast enough, can't understand a specific metaphor, can't understand a book if you only read it once, can't do [X] and [Y].

we are all different people, with vastly different minds, needs, and limits.

this is something I'm still coming to terms with. I'm 17, going on 18, and my relationship with art & analysis is constantly shifting as I age. but, fucking hell, you can read just 3 books front-to-back in a year and still have that be more impactful than reading 30 books, solely based on what you read and how you choose to extend your time and sensibility to the work.

You can dedicate a year of your life to loving one singular work, researching all of its references, absorbing its vision. You can do that with just one work, and have that singular experience expand your general culture, evolve your relationship with art and analysis as a whole, or even change your life. Conversely, you can have a massive bookshelf and still have the sensibility & analysis skills of a cardboard box. We are obsessed with doing more, and subsequently beating ourselves up for not doing more, for no reason at all.

the point I'm trying to make is that many of us are a little too hard on ourselves, or are looking at things from the wrong angle. and I really do understand your sentiment of being troubled! I finished utena last night and found myself almost overwhelmed by how much content & symbolism there was that I still needed to go back to and grasp. there were moments when I questioned my own merits as someone who enjoys critical analysis.

but there's a reason why many books have published student guides: lots of people will naturally struggle to grasp certain literary devices. there is no shame in using whatever resources you have at hand. there are entire books and blogs published on understanding specific authors and their works. there's a reason why author's notes exist.

there will be authors who will confuse you, authors that will make you second-guess yourself constantly, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. we all have different lives, minds, and artistic visions. some authors just have narrative voices you can't connect with very well, and that can be a matter of personal discrepancy. there will be times when you will have to offer yourself patience or look towards external sources. similarly, because you have your own individual mind and vision, there will be instances where other people may seek your help, or praise you for how easily you could grasp an idea that is natural to you, but complex to others.

part of my sensibility as both a reader & writer came from acknowledging all of the aforementioned things, and fighting to untangle them in my mind so I can read in a way that is natural to me and my needs. this is something I still do every day. I still doubt myself every day. I still feel guilty every day. for not being smart enough, not understanding things fast enough, not being a good learner, not being able to use my own words when I need to. but ultimately, I try to remain as open as I can.

would some people be surprised to hear that a lot of my ideas on ES, the ones you and I have spoken of, stem from information I've slowly picked up from other people? I did not re-invent the wheel! I was just open to everything until I started to alchemize everything I learned into my own ideas.

I was insanely different when I first started reading these stories back in the summer of 2021. it's now december 2022, I have re-read some of them more times than I can count. I have read other people's thoughts, at first passively, as a neutral audience member taking everything in, then critically, as someone who has a more solidified vision. the thing is, I still remain open, and still believe I essentially know nothing. but I needed external influence to get to this point.

angie is actually someone who helped me feel more driven towards pursuing and sharing my thoughts with people before we were even friends like we are now, and his analysis & writing is very meaningful and dear to me. it can be really important to have people you can talk to and share ideas with, and that can prove to be mutually beneficial as well. I'm not exactly sure where I'd be now if it weren't for his presence!

in my own case, another part of being nuanced and layered lies in my nature of being open. there is no secret mechanism to this. the truth is, I am inherently what some would call naive. the word "naive" is quite derogatory, and it's true that carrying this childishness has caused me a lot of cognitive dissonance, emotional turmoil, and consequences. but, sometimes, and especially in the field of art, it grants me a special kind of sensibility. it's part of who I am. I am very open to wonder and to child-like feelings. I am very prone to offering the benefit of the doubt and to believing in everything and everyone. I am not a push-over, but I am malleable. I absorb everything around me until I can mature my knowledge and evolve my own ideas.

this can be a downfall, it can cause me to become so conflicted with my ideas that I can't bear it, and it has isolated me at times. but it has also manifested itself as an artistic and interpretative strength, an internal world I see that others cannot.

look into yourself and how you engage with art, and come to terms with your own strengths and needs as someone who both creates and engages with creations. you are a very sensible and intelligent person, and I admire you for that. perhaps we all just need more time with ourselves in order to find a method of engaging with texts that is more personal and holistic to us.

generally speaking, in no particular order, this is what I do:

-> I re-read the material as many times as I feel called to. re-reading is my natural way of evolving information. I seek patterns and reoccurring symbols, structures that sew the story together.

-> I take note of any terms or references that are foreign to me, and I research them as deeply as I can to see if I can find anything useful to my interpretation. sometimes, I will put coloured post-it indexes on the pages of a book to mark information I plan to research at a later time, or I use my highlighter chrome extension if I'm reading digitally. wikipedia, articles, academic papers, and guidebooks are my best friends.

-> I stay open to what other people are saying and weigh in their perspectives. I try to understand people's backgrounds, as well as what they seek from the story, so I can understand why they look at it in that way. I take information that is new and intriguing to me, and I leave the rest behind.

-> I can get very restless and overwhelmed quickly if I focus too much on a text, so I give myself time to process information. I write down analysis notes, half-baked as they may be in the beginning, in order to unravel any confused and tangled thoughts in my mind and give myself space to think and evolve more calmly.

-> I listen to ambiental music or meditate in order to cool off and allow ideas to come to me more easily. entering this flow state can be crucial to me as someone who easily gets too energetic or tense when trying to process information and ideas.

-> I try to take a step back when I am frustrated with my understanding of a text, and I either seek external resources, come back to it a bit later, or I put it on the backburner for when I feel that my reading skills are more developed and I can tackle it more confidently.

I could say a million other things, but I already think it's a miracle if you even read this far in the first place. if you did, thank you. I emphatise with your feelings a lot, since I have shared similar experiences with understanding prose, poetry, and plays alike. this is something I am still actively learning for myself. I hope we can both continue finding ways to grow as readers!

[crow-caller]

ive been writing book reveiws for a while, just for me. like, i have a whole file full of docs about books ive liked, hated, or a bit of both. And I want to post them because i find them interesting, but im very nervous that I'll say something wrong or just ramble and sound stupid. You seem very put together though, did you have the same anxieties? if so, how did you overcome them?

(sorry if this is poorly written english is not my first language)

It's nice to know I seem put together, because I'm actually a huge mess and very sloppy!

Book reviews are very fun to write. I love the feeling of finishing a book and thinking about how I'll write up my thoughts. I've gotten better and developed more of a style over time too.

The first thing is to get a blog for it. I'd really recommend wordpress- I cross post here, but tumblr itself isn't a great format for a review blog. I'd also say crosspost to Goodreads/Storygraph. What helps with the anxiety of posting reviews is the fact you'll probably get only a few views. This sounds discouraging but can be a big plus. After having my blog casually for like 4 years and having over 100 (huh??) reviews, my total viewcount was still only a few thousand, like 2k a year. This was enough that friends were reading it and random internet people were, which was nice, but not so high I could panic I was going to get cyberbullied.

Posting a review and getting up to 50 views? That's 50 people who maybe read my review, baby! That's actually nice. That gives space to post reviews and feel confident doing so- getting a bit of positive feedback and feeling rewarded for writing the review, but also plenty of space to get better and improve at review writing. It's a small confidence boost that can encourage you to just keep writing.

I have quite bad anxiety- used to be worse- so I think about my reviews a lot. I also used to be worse at reviews, so I think about my old reviews a lot. The thing is, the best way to improve your writing is to keep writing. Find your own voice and system for it. And reread it! I reread my own reviews every so often to refresh my memory or for fun, and that really helps. Hindsight means I can see where I WISH I'd expanded on something more, phrased it better, or rambled. It's okay to ramble or be informal- I am- but if you're worried you do it too much, ask someone else for their thoughts or try using a structure. My reviews were all over the place until I started using sections like "Plot", "Characters", "Moon Squid Hell"!

Book reviewing is not something that is generally a high octane high fame thing. it's one of my precious hobbies I genuinely love, and if you've been writing reviews only for yourself, you obviously like it too! It'll only get a lot of attention if you're lucky, if you cover the right books, if you're even more lucky... but the reward of just getting to talk about something you read and put your thoughts down is fantastic. I wrote reviews for myself, but I found out by sharing them my friends liked them too, and so the biggest high of finishing a book and review was getting to post it in the group chat and seeing reactions. I really think the feeling of accomplishment for your work will best your anxiety, and rather than be discouraged if you don't get thousands of views immediately, having few views can actually beat your anxiety.

Hope that helps!

[theantiinfluencer]

A Strong Case For Value Village in 2024

12 Years ago, Value Village was a godsent for me. For first office my job my budget was $100 for a full wardrobe, with Value Village it was accomplished easily. I could get shirts for a few bucks, pants for a few more and even get a couple nice blazers for around $10-$15. Fast forward to 2024, there are these new stores popping up everywhere called Value Village Boutique, I honestly didn't know what to expect. A curated Value Village? Sounds good to me.

However, if you do a quick good search you will dozens of examples of them marking up their products to outrageous prices and if you look in the google reviews you will see plenty of other customers complain about the same thing. My personal experience is similar. There are many items that are priced $30-$70 dollars if they have any sort of brand name attached to them. You would also be hard pressed to find a good shirt for under $10, although that is probably just inflation. When I see a clothing item at Value Village for $70 a part of me cries inside. If I were in the same position as I was 12 years ago and Value Village may still be an option but the "value" just wouldn't be as strong.

As Secondhand shopping has increased in popularity, so has the prices just as rapidly. Which makes me sad because the people who actually need these places for cheap clothing end up suffering, while hipsters post on social media about their finds. But, through closer inspection there is still strong case to shop there for the budget luxury consumer.

I am going to go out on a limb and say the people who are pricing these products are not nearly as knowledgeable about luxury products as the average Vintage or Consignment store employee. Therefore, I have found some pretty high end stuff for next to nothing. For example, I pick up a YMC camp collar shirt for $14, a pair of Paul Smith dress pants for $9, Made in USA Cole Haan Oxford shoes for $20, and a Coppley Blazer for $20. What does this tell me? When I see a Banana Republic Jacket for $50 and a Z Zegna one for $10, these people do not likely only know fashion based on what they see at the popular stores at the Mall OR they understand that most of their customers will not know what these brands are so they price it like any other item in the store. Either way, consumers like me, win. For the items that I purchased, I could find similar items at Vintage or Consignment stores for around 5-10 times the price.

I went on exactly 4 mass excursions of these stores and have purchased the above items plus a Champion Hoodie for $10. The total I spent was $63 CAD before tax. I did have to spend several hours searching, but for someone like me, that's the fun part. Additionally, if you become a member, they will send you coupons and you will also save 20% if you donate something (Don't abuse it!).

Are the things people say online true about this new boutique? In my experience, yes. Does it have carefully curated stuff that is much different than regular Value Villages? No. Is it still the best place to find a diamond in the rough for the best price? Absolutely!

[kierancampire]

So just as a reminder. I have never liked New Years, however, i started to have so many horrible years in a row, and then one horrifically shit year, that i decided i needed to write down everything good to remind myself that even in a year full of multiple deep traumas, good things happen. But this is where I've struggled this year. Has this been my worst year? Far and away, no, i have had worse. But the thing is, in previous year lots of good things happened, big things too, however this year i struggled to pull out more than 2 things without feeling like i was REALLY scraping the barrel. As yes, i have had worse, but because of my HA and my flat, this has just been a constant, steady, unrelenting stream of shit that has lasted more than this year. But the thing is, considering why i started this and the purpose of this, that kinda made it worse for me, the whole point of this is to find purpose in my years and to give myself a reason to smile and keep fighting, and i was just struggling to do that this year. But, even if they aren't as big or as plentiful as last year, good things did happen, and this isn't why i do this, i complain enough through out the year, so i reminded myself no matter how big or small, good things are good, so here are my joys of 2022.

Starting off with the biggest and most obvious, i got the girls this year. Things have been stressful at times, they were last night even, but they have added so much to my life, purpose, company, something to care about. In fact, all morning i have spent snuggling them and i had a bath for the first time, which they were so intrigued by the entire thing and couldn't leave me alone! I've laughed so much since getting them and i can only hope they provide joy for many more years.

Although i only saw 1 friend once this year, partly my fault as other opportunities came up but i turned them down. Yes, at the start of the year i did meet a friend for his birthday, had a great time, and to show how far my anxiety has come, i even met someone who i didn't know and met him by myself and hung out with him for a bit, which that was really nice also.

This year i once again tried a lot of new foods, new recipes, and am still constantly expanding the foods i eat. Some of my favourite days this year have been when Kayden has come over to visit me, just sitting here and playing games with him, screaming at each other and laughing, those are great! This year, although not many still, i went on more walks this year than i did the last 2/3 combined, so it's a start on pushing myself to go out more and get more active again.

This year obviously the ADHD process got weirdly started, which is leading to an autism process, so i might finally be getting an autism diagnosis soon or just finding out exactly what's going on in my head after years of asking. We had some great snow this year, first time in a while. And Christmas was very great this year, great gifts, great times, it was nice!

One final thing i am hesitant to include, but i feel it is good too. Obviously my HA has been the huge problem this year, why i feel so miserable, why i am struggling so much, why the only thing i wanted was my home to be decorated ASAP, as that was most important to me, yet it still isn't because of them. They have made me cry so much, get angry so much, feel so exhausted, to the point i can't even talk to people any more. But i wanna take a positive from this too. Even though it feels like my HA has given up on me, and i just keep hitting dead end after dead end, i have had hundreds of people let me down, and I've had virtually no support or help for nearly all of this. Here i am. I'm still fighting them, I'm still arguing them, I'm still telling them how shit they are, and i am still fighting for my right to be happy. Am i miserable and exhausted? 100%. But have i given in? Not in the damn slightest. They may be this big corporation, but I'm a homosexual who has gone through enough shit and wants his happy ending, and this will be my David and Goliath story, cause I'm gonna win in the end.

This year isn't as bad as others, this year isn't as good as others, and i won't hope for next year to be better, i won't even hope my issues are resolved by the end of next year. But no matter what next year throws at me, I'll take each day as it comes, and I'll get through it like i have this year and ever year before it. I may stumble, i may make bad choices, i may have lows, and i will definitely be tired, but I'll do it, especially cause i got the girls now.

[internetaddict104]

I’m sorry you think I’m a miserable person for getting upset I’m getting death threats. I’m sorry you think I’m taking this too far by venting on a platform they don’t use so will likely never see (especially since it’s both negative and negative towards Amanda). Am I not allowed to vent? I’m sorry this might upset her, but you’re lowkey just proving my point. You’re upset that I posted a negative opinion of Amanda. What I gain from posting this is to be able to let it out somewhere (and yes a little bit of this is to try seek some validation and find someone else who sees my perspective but I know that’s selfish and wishful thinking). Also Amanda is an influencer, she had to expect some people to not like her. She puts herself on the internet for all to see, why can’t I put my opinion out there too? If she can’t handle one negative comment/one person she’s never met not liking her, maybe being an internet celebrity/influencer/YouTuber isn’t the right career for her.

My issue at the moment isn’t that I don’t like her, it’s that I’m not allowed to dislike her. Any other cast member, fine. But Amanda, no. I can say I don’t like Kimmy (and I did years ago bc I actually didn’t, but now I like her), and I got people agreeing and disagreeing. I’ve seen people say they don’t like Courtney, or Noah, or that Keith isn’t funny, and while there’s still a ton of fans disagreeing with them, there’s some who agree. I’ve only gotten hate over Amanda. I’m not allowed, by fandom history and rules, to dislike her. I’m not allowed to not find her funny. I can say Olivia’s jokes are bad and unfunny, and people will agree. But if I say I didn’t like Amanda’s jokes, I deserve to die and my parents hate me and I’m a horrible disgusting trash person. I literally cannot have a negative opinion of this woman or else the fandom attacks me.

I don’t give a shit if everyone else likes her, that’s fine. She’s just not for me. In any other fandom/space, that’s fine, but with Smosh, it’s unacceptable. I just don’t understand why I can’t have or express my feelings too. There’s plenty of negative posts on the Reddit (there’s a majority positive ones but there are still some negatives in there), and no one has any issue. But if someone asks for an unpopular opinion or our thoughts on each cast member, and I give my opinion and thoughts on Amanda, I’m wrong.

I just wanna know why I can’t dislike her. And because I’m not allowed to express my feelings on Reddit (where it’s asked and usually encouraged), or really any platform, it’s just getting bottled up and getting worse. I can’t express my feelings anywhere and I don’t think that’s fair.

I just don’t understand why the fandom is so gatekeepery over her. Like why is she the one person we can’t have a negative thought about? It’s sort of like how when you’re a kid, and your parents tell you not to do something, that makes you really want to do it more, if that makes sense? Like since I’m not allowed to dislike Amanda, it’s just making her dislike her more. She’s like the golden child of Smosh and I’m not sure why or how that happened.

She seems really condescending and patronizing to me, and while I’m sure she’s a lovely person, I just can’t vibe with her. I thought the feeling would pass because I had similar negative feelings towards Kimmy when she was introduced, but after Summer Games that subsided and I really liked her (I think I didn’t at first bc everything about her was “I’m new here/I’m the new girl” and “I’m super sweet and nice”, like her entire personality and schtick was that she was nice and she was new).

Also People Magazine did cover Harambe a few times 😂. And Amanda is only 36, she’s the same age as Ian and Anthony, so while she is one of the oldest cast members, it’s not like she’s a grandma 😂.

As for your last paragraph, I’m honestly not 100% on what parasocial means (tbh my understanding mainly comes from the John Mulaney and Ned Fulmer scandals) but from my understanding I don’t think I personally am. I’m not saying we all need to dislike Amanda, or saying she deserves pain and suffering because I don’t like her. I’m not upset at Smosh for hiring her. I don’t care that she’s there. I just don’t like her and don’t understand why I can’t share it, in that I get attacked and harassed because of it, and only when it comes to Amanda. I once said I didn’t think Olivia was funny (this was during her “bored” phase where she always looked like she’d rather be anywhere else and put no effort into videos, and this isn’t my opinion, that’s what most fans describe it as) and every single comment agreed with me, though some took it too far. I say I don’t think Amanda is funny, I deserve to die horribly. I just don’t understand the double standard here.

Also this post of mine has gotten more engagement than any other post of mine in terms of conversations (it’s usually just reblogs with maybe some tags, I never get asks or reblogs that add/discuss my posts), and I think that’s just proving my point because every single one has been negative or disagreeing with me 😂.

I need to vent for a sec

So idk if yall know this bc idk if I posted about it before but I truly cannot stand Amanda. I have no idea why she’s just never clicked for me and I can’t watch any videos she’s in.

I can’t say it on the Smosh Reddit because I get attacked (I’m currently being bombarded for disliking her “I don’t know the internet/pop culture” bit. It doesn’t even work bc she’s admitted she reads pop culture magazines so she has to know some things. I don’t find fake ignorance funny, I’m sorry.

I also just don’t think she’s funny at all. She’s patronizing, condescending, and only has 1 character voice she uses for everyone. Talking in a low voice doesn’t make it funny.

It’s also not helping that I’m not allowed to dislike her. Someone else just posted on the sub about not liking Trevor and his humor, and that was okay, but me commenting that I don’t like an Amanda bit has the pitchforks and torches out??? It’s just making her hate her more bc I have to bottle it up.

I just really need to vent about it since I’m apparently not allowed to and I’ve gotten death threats over it before. Please tell me someone else in the Smosh fandom isn’t kissing her ass worse than a Swiftie or Ariana Grande fan 🙏

[blooming-cecilia]

special | venti/reader

what makes you, a mere mortal, special in the eyes of barbatos, the god of freedom and wind?

drabble, 100% pure fluff, gn reader (if i let a gendered pronoun slip, pls lmk)

if you know of lunasmr, this was written with her venti and that format in mind. (highly recommend you check out luna's audios if you haven't yet, especially if you're a venti liker! she characterizes all characters she does content for really well!)

likes and reblogs appreciated, enjoy! <3

you and venti lie in bed together one slow afternoon, just enjoying each other's presence. snuggling into each other's embrace, pressing kisses here and there, bathing in the serenity of your room when he starts telling you how much he appreciates you and the love you give him.

"......no one has ever loved me like this, as much as you do, and it feels... so nice. to be loved by you."

you lie next to him, smiling over his sweet words when the thought occurs to you, "wait... am i to take it that i'm your first lover too?"

"hm? yes, you are...?" he sees your eyebrows furrowing and a pout forming on your lips, "what's wrong, windblume?"

you turn to face him fully.

"as happy as i am to hear that i'm your first and only... it makes me a little sad, somehow. to think that no one has shown you the love that you rightfully deserve in all those years..."

"..."

"i like the idea of being special to you in this way but i think... i would have loved it more if there were people before me who appreciated you as much as i do. i think you deserve so much more than i am able to give and if it comes from others too, so be it. i just want you to be the happiest you could ever be."

he lies there silently, taking in your earnest gaze and your sincere words. he is once again stunned by how good you truly are. who else would wish for him to have had past lovers, just so he could have also been as happy as he is now in the many long years before he's met you?

"oh windblume... you're too good to me sometimes, you know that? seems i haven't made the mistake to wait for you to come after all."

he laughs softly at the confusion written all over your face.

"i may have fancied others before and have had others fancy me in return, but none have ever been fortunate enough to be in your position right now. my lover, the one who truly sees, accepts and loves all of me, the way i do for you.

and sure, i've met and befriended plenty outstanding individuals in my life, and i'm glad to have had the opportunity to see them bloom into such wonderful people.

but none of them were you."

ha takes your hand and places it on his chest, right over his heart. he rests his own hand on top of yours. the steady ba-bump of his heart quickly speeding up the longer you press your hand onto it.

"you're the only one that makes me feel this way, my dear. the only one i want to see lying next to me when i wake up in the mornings... the only one i want to hold in my arms as i fall asleep at night. the only one i want to spend the rest of my days with."

his free hand cups your cheek and strokes it, delighting in the way it heats up under his touch.

"such a beautiful heart and soul..." he giggles as he taps on your nose with his finger, "and a pretty face too!"

"i know that i can trust you completely. i'm yours. i love you, and only you. that is what makes you special, and the reason i'll choose no one else but you to be my lover."

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

This one will be pretty personal and contain some negative self-talk but I think it’s an important conversation to have: 

When I first came out as trans, some people told me that i will never be in a relationship ever again: Straight men and lesbian women won’t date me because I’m a man, gay men and straight women won’t date me because I am a trans man. They warned me that, by choosing to live as myself, I am also choosing to stay alone forever, to end up as the sad little leftover nobody ever picks out of the fridge - and I hate to admit it but I feel like they were right. 

I haven’t been in a relationship ever since I came out in 2019. Even just typing this out loud makes me feel like a failure. 

Am I not supposed to be proof of all those positive statements? Trans people are loveable! Trans people are attractive! Trans people can do anything they want to do! …and instead here I am, proving the people right who said I’ll never find love ever again. Turning into the leftover, into the kooky lonely uncle who will always just be the uncle, never a husband. 

Yes, this all sounds depressing and no, I don’t 100% believe my own thoughts here either. The logical part of my brain knows all the good counterattacks: “Plenty of people of all genders and many different orientations are happy to date trans men. Being single for multiple years or even forever isn’t a moral failure and being in a relationship isn’t a guarantee for happiness. Society is moving past the whole leftovers thing, the “you either get married in your twenties or never at all” binary. Plenty of people get married later. You don’t even need to get married at all for a happy and fulfilled life. And maybe most importantly, as a trans person you’re not supposed to be proof of anything. You’re not a fictional character who needs to be good representation of the trans community. You are a human being.”

And yet, with all these nice sentences in my brain: I sometimes do feel like a leftover. Like I am undateable. Unable to ever be someone’s husband because of, well, the trans thing (and the “I want no sex at all whatsoever” thing but there’s not enough room in this letter for all that), and that sucks because I’d really like to be someone’s husband. 

If I knew that before I came out, I still would’ve decided to come out. The happiness and freedom and self-love I found in openly living as my true self is worth it. Even if I really do never get married and even if it was a  direct “result” of coming out, it’s the happier alternative for me. If I never came out and got married, I’d have to be someone’s wife and I couldn’t do that without heavily lying to both myself and them, and that would definitely be unhappy and unhealthy for everyone involved. 

So, what’s the big message for you here? Well, it’s 3 am and I couldn’t sleep without getting these thoughts out of my system, so this is somewhat of a diary entry for myself. But I am a firm believer in open and honest conversations about feelings - and feelings don’t always fit into the neat “lgbt+ positivity” category. I wanted to share this with you, just to show you that it’s fine to have worries and negative thoughts like these. It doesn’t make you less trans or bad at being trans to worry about stuff like this, it just makes you a human being. 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[hanjisungs-bigtittyg0thgf]

Hi pretty👋🏻💓

I LOVE your writing and wanted to request something !

I’m a sub alllllll the way and my ult is Lino . I need every thought you have about how dom Lino would be with his gf . Sexual and non sexual please . Also maybe how he would be in bed (how he sounds or acts) . Tysm !!

Sorry if it’s too much to ask 😭

- 🧚‍♀️ Anon

lord okay so i have let this one sit in my inbox a couple days because i have so many thoughts and i just- wow hhhh minho has been on my damn nerves (in a good way) lately

okay so let’s dive right in

in bed:

minho, despite what everyone says, is a soft dom with you. he’s a surprisingly gentle lover and he will do everything in his power to get you off as many times as possible before he maxes out himself. he’s selfless in bed even if he appears cold at first glance. he also just loves dirty talk and could probably make you cum just from talking about all the nasty things he wants to do to you (things would only ever do if you explicitly asked for it). but he’s more careful with you because you’re his girlfriend. he absolutely loves rough sex but he’s terrified of hurting the one person who means the world to him, so getting him to absolutely rail you is a task. one i am willing to take on

bonus: his high notes on the new album? that’s what he sounds like when you’re riding 👀

in daily life:

he’s 100% the type to act all tough and unfeeling around others, only really showing positive emotions. but with you, he lets his walls down and he’s actually the softest baby ever. he’s not afraid to cry around you, not afraid to show how he truly feels. he’s so pure and sweet when it’s just the two of you. sometimes he teases that he’ll stick you in the air fryer instead of hyunjin. he’s just playful and cuddly and sweet and i’m 🥺 plus he’s the perfect cat dad and i love seeing him interact with soonie doongie and dori and i feel like the care he takes with them is the same care he would take with a partner (not in a pet play way, just in a nurturing “let me baby you” way)

i have plenty more thoughts but this is all i can convey right now because FUCKING OUCH

anyways it’s nice to meet you 🧚‍♀️

[ultra-kiss]

So. I decided to, in the last scene, add V1 talking with English Braille - in addition to the fingerspelling it's been using - just because I think it'd be nice for them to be able to talk without watching each other, and for them to incorporate a new means of communication on the fly.

It turns out that English Braille may be a little more complicated than fingerspelling. I know that I probably don't have to get it 100% right, especially given the fucking context (Ultrakill smutfic) but. I have Questions!

Is it weird to use hyphens to indicate separate "letters" on introduction (and we'll get to "letters" in a second!) when English Braille - at least, the version that I'm currently looking at- includes hyphen characters? How weird would it be to do that? Was it also weird with the fingerspelling? Oh, and English Braille isn't just characters, it also includes common sounds and words, and it has rules for when to use those sounds, when to include those "words" inside other words, and when to just spell things out. Also, there are multiple versions of English Braille, and Wikipedia isn't super clear on which one(s) are currently in use and when? And different "Grades"! And it's a written language, so how *on earth* could my clumsy representation of it ever be translated into English Braille itself???

To be clear, I'm not mad at English Braille - it's a language, it's gonna have rules, and I don't know them so I'm going to find them complicated (and I do find them interesting anyways!) - I'm frustrated with myself for leaving this idea to the last day, after giving myself plenty of time and opportunities for additions, and publicly announcing that I was almost done writing. It's not that dire, I'm just. Kind of ridiculous. Also for the record, even though probably no one is going to read this: Sorry for being an abled person, complaining about how a means of communication for disabled people is ~complicated~. Again, I know that I fully put myself in this position and it's not a huge deal. Plus, I am planning on learning and I think I can probably figure it out, at least Enough, by the end of the day. So it's not really even a problem.

I would like to write V1 as a character that can't speak, and perhaps, despite at some point having the means to, a character that prefers not to speak and chooses other forms of communication instead. I want to write a character that enjoys figuring out different means of communication than speaking, and doesn't feel limited by that- and that has a partner who not only accepts this, but enjoys and admires it, too. Again, this may not ever matter to anyone, and I could be mistaken, but I want to clarify my intentions, if only to myself

Re: being almost done with the fanfic, that being said... I have also done some research into suturing tools/techniques and some serious thinking about how Blood as Technology would work, either alongside or instead of electronics. The latter is probably? impossible to conclusively determine at present, though a more sure sign that I should Just Stop Here is that I'd have to rewrite soooo many references to electricity if I decided that bloodtech has replaced electronics somehow.

I am kinda proud of myself for not sinking too much time into the suturing thing, since I've done way more research for way flimsier reasons. I realized that I would not have room to specify what specific tools/techniques that V1 was using, and why- so I stopped at "probably interrupted? stitching w/ a curved needle and forceps." Maybe ignore that I've likely written this whole post in order to get those details down somewhere

[danielxricciardo]

Hi girl!! I love everything you’ve wrote! Couldn’t say how much I enjoyed reading one shots of F1 drivers! I have to ask if you could do one for Carlos? He and reader are expecting but keeping it secret, Carlos won the race! And he ask if he could hear her through radio, though with some glitch, all other drivers and teams hear Carlos’ radio, he tells her how he’s so happy with the win but more than anything about their little one on the way and now everyone knows the secret of pregnancy because he suddenly slipped it while talking to her on radio👶🏻 I can’t imagine how will other drivers will congratulate him (like Daniel, Max, Landooooo! Seb! And even Kimi!🤣) I think Lando will be overjoyed and will be presenting to be Godfather already Hahahaha!

Summary: Having a baby and everybody finding out

Warnings: fluff

Word count: 1.5k

You realized that you were pregnant after a series of fortunate events that, individually, you did not take as alarm signals.

One evening, Carlos decided to spare you from cooking dinner and ordered your favorite food from your favorite restaurant. You were very excited to eat it, but when the food arrived you were on the verge of throwing up because of the smell. You told Carlos you couldn't eat, so you just ate an apple and went to bed. The next day, after Carlos left for the gym, you couldn't get away from the toilet because if you took a few steps you would feel like throwing up. However, when your boyfriend came home, you didn't feel so sick anymore, but you didn't tell him what happened to you because you didn't want to worry him.

You had a vague idea that you could be pregnant but you wanted to wait until Carlos leaves for France for the Grand Prix.

The day he left you went to the pharmacy and bought two pregnancy tests.

Positive.

You just sat down and cried. You stared at the positive test for several minutes. Honestly, you were so hormonal and conflicted about the timing that you bawled your eyes out. You were both happy and worried. Carlos was busy with his Formula 1 career, you didn't know if it was appropriate to add a child to the dynamics of your life.

But you recovered immediately. You are talking about Carlos, of course, he will be happy to have a child with you. You've been together for four years, you knew you would be together for the rest of your life.

The next day you did another pregnancy test, just in case. Positive, obviously. You went to the pharmacy again, and you took four more tests, to do one every day until Carlos came home.

"Hey, honey. I missed you," says Carlos entering the house.

You didn't even let him take off his shoes. You handed him a gift box in which you put the six pregnancy tests you took.

"Amor, did I forget an anniversary?"

You nod.

"Open it."

You see him take the lid off the box and take out a pregnancy test. Then another one, and another one, until he took them all out. You could see it on his face, he was scared and overwhelmed.

"Seriously?" he asks.

You nod and bite your lip, a few tears run down your face.

"Amor, that's wonderful! Ay Dios Mio! Are we going to be parents?"

You laugh and kiss him long.

"Yes, we will be parents."

You have scheduled an appointment for the next day to confirm the pregnancy and determine how many weeks you are pregnant. It looks like you're 10 weeks pregnant, so that means month 3 of your pregnancy. You couldn't believe that for almost 3 months you didn't realize you were pregnant, but you always had an irregular cycle, so it's not really incomprehensible.

You and Carlos have decided not to announce publicly that you will have a child just yet. For now, you were happy to share the news with your families, wanting to plan a nice way to tell your friends as well.

You know that feeling you get at certain times of the month when you want to cry at every cheesy commercial or could explode with anger at the drop of a hat? Pregnancy is like that sometimes, except 10 times more intense. With your new hormones raging, and more stress in your life than ever before, what with getting a nursery together and preparing to welcome the precious baby into the world and all, emotions are high. Tempers are bound to flare.

That is how you felt sitting in the paddock with Carlos who was preparing for the race. He was starting from P3 so he was pretty excited and nervous for the race. He saw your state, he knew you too well.

"Ay, mi Amor, come here," he said and hugged you to calm your nerves. "Don't worry, ok? It's an easy race, I'm gonna win it for you and the little bean, ok?"

You giggle at the sound of Carlos's nickname for the baby. You kiss him and smile.

"You know I don't really care about winning. Just come back to us. Safe." you say, your voice barely a whisper, not wanting anyone around you to hear your discussion.

"Si, pequeña. Always."

Sure, you were always concerned when he was racing. But especially now when your hormones were driving you insane and you were growing another person in your body. But you trusted him. With all of your heart. If he said he will come back to you, he will.

It took you a few moments to understand what was happening. Carlos Oñoro was hugging you, yelling 'He won!' and you looked at the screens in front of you. He did. Carlos Sainz was the winner in Monza! He kept his word, he won for you and your child.

"Hey, Y/N!" you hear your name being called by Riccardo Adami, the race engineer of Carlos. "The winner wants to talk to you."

You giggle and go to him. 'The winner'... Has a nice ring to it.

"Hey, baby! Congratulations!" you say excitedly over the radio.

"Si, mi amor! I told you I'm gonna win for our baby! I love you both so much!"

What you didn't know was that there was a glitch over the radio and every driver heard Carlos talking about 'your baby'.

"Aaa, guys? Why am I hearing Carlos over the radio talking about a baby?" Charles asked his race engineer.

"There's a glitch. Come to the garage."

"A baby?!" Lando yells into the radio, making his race engineer flinch. "Was that Carlos saying he is going to have a baby? Oh my God!"

You were waiting for Carlos to come out of his car, being absolutely clueless about the hysteria you two just caused. Carlos was just about to get his helmet out when all the drivers came to you two, yelling congratulations to you both. You looked at Carlos. Did he tell someone about your pregnancy? Did you give it away?

"Uh, thank you but how did you find out?" Carlos asked, clueless as you.

"We heard it over the radio," Kimi responds giving you a genuine smile.

"This is not how I wanted you guys to find out," Carlos said and put an arm over your shoulders, kissing your head. "But, yeah, it is true, we are having a baby."

"Mate, you're having a baby! That is so crazy! You are basically a baby!" Daniel says and hugged you both.

"And who is the godfather?" Lando asked and everyone laughed.

"We just found out two weeks ago, there are still five months to think about it," you say and bit your lip and Lando pouts. "You'll be considered, Lando."

After three months you decided to have a gender reveal for your family and friends. You could have had it a lot sooner but you wanted to be at an appropriate time for everyone. All the drivers came, as well as your family and Carlos's too. You made everyone wear a piece of clothing according to the gender they think your baby is. You were surprised to see the majority of the people being team boy, but as Lewis said 'They just want to make sure the third generations of Sainz is coming in Formula 1' and you know he was right.

"Look, listen to me, I have three kids, ok? I know, for a fact, by the way you are carrying that it is a girl!" Sebastian said and you laughed. He was wearing his pink T-shirt with pride, being 100% sure he is right.

He was.

You were having a girl and you could swear that Carlos cried a little when he saw the pink confetti. He hugged you for a few minutes, being still in shock.

"Una niña pequeña..." he whispered in your ear. "I am not ready."

You laughed and kissed him.

"You are gonna be the best dad ever, don't worry."

"No, I know that. I am not ready for her to date! And she'll go to university, no..."

"Carlos, she is not even been born yet! You have plenty of time to spend with her."

"Hi, guys, sorry to interrupt!" Lando appears near the two of you, making you break apart from your hug. "Did you think about the godfather or... or this is not a good time to ask?"

Everyone heard him and started laughing.

"Mate, remember the bag I gave you when you arrived?" Carlos asked him and Lando nodded. "You can look inside the bag now."

Lando got the bag and inside was a white romper saying 'Will you be my godfather?'

Lando looked at the romper with tears in his eyes.

"Well, if you insist..."

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

[moonstonediaz]

buddie: a natural progression

i’ll start this out by saying i am not worried about future of buddie. i’m not 100% certain the story will take us to full canon buddie, but i am about 80% sure—which is plenty for me! okay, onward.

the show has already raised the question “why is eddie with ana?” they’ve put this to the forefront of our minds by having carla bring it up with eddie in 4x13, and the fact that eddie hasn’t directly addressed it yet in the show tells us that something is coming. likely a breakup. but will eddie initiate this? i think it’s important that he does, that he makes that choice for himself and not have it made for him by ana leaving.

tim has said that he “doesn’t know” what the fate of the eddieana relationship is and, well, that tells me all i need to know right there. given that they’ve done all but remove her completely, i think it’s pretty safe to say a breakup is coming. but when? in between seasons? early season 5? we’ll have to wait and see for that, but i’m pretty positive that’s coming soon.

back to what tim said, he “doesn’t know” the fate of their relationship and he “doesn’t want to define” buck and eddie’s relationship yet…what else is that supposed to mean? how else are we supposed to read that? what—do they expect us to think that eddie just hasn’t found the right one yet? that he doesn’t already have everything right under his nose—a best friend, a partner, someone he can count on to have both his and christopher’s best interests at heart, a family? are we supposed to think that they’re going to introduce another rando next season for him to pursue yet another relationship that’ll feel forced? that he’ll put another person in chris’ life that could leave again? i’m gonna say it’s highly UNLIKELY.

eddieana has been cringe from the start. their whole relationship feels forced and awkward to me. (re: awkward breakfast date, creepy math date and the no-kiss, weird cheek kiss at the homecoming party, etc.) (not to mention, ana’s been little more than blurrywife at this point, amirite?) and i know it’s probably structured this way so buck and eddie could have that talk in the hospital, but if my boyfriend had been shot and was being discharged from the hospital, you can bet your ass i’m there to take him home 👀 … not to mention eddie doesn’t trust ana. his immediate reaction was to bristle and get defensive when he thought she was snooping around on that kid and his mom in 4x13. one of their very first interactions was a negative one with the skateboard incident. and we all know who came through to make it all better for christopher. eddie might find it easy and nice being with her, but he doesn’t trust her. that’s not a good foundation for a long-term relationship.

speaking of foundations…bucktaylor had a good foundation for friendship, and maybe even a potential relationship in the future, but the second that kiss happened and she ran—from a man who has a history of abandonment issues—foundation crumbled. she then came back and made the comment about buck not chasing after her when his literal best friend partner was posted up in the hospital unconscious after getting shot right in front of him. that made ME bristle.….girl. and i know i don’t need to mention it, but the second she left after kissing him and eddie wakes up? i see you, eds 👀. bucktaylor could have been natural if taylor hadn’t used buck’s vulnerability to her advantage in 4x14. imo, the show really screwed up an awesome blossoming friendship. instead of being what buck needed in that moment—a friend to lean on while dealing with yet another trauma—they forced a romantic arc between the two instead of letting it happen naturally.

you know what makes the most sense, narratively? buck and eddie gradually shifting from best friends to romantic partners. because, honestly, when i call them ‘best friends’, it doesn’t feel like enough. those words are less than the magnitude of their relationship. when i think of 9-1-1 and best friends, the pairs that come to mind are chimney and hen, bobby and michael, hen and athena. i don’t think of buck and eddie because they’re not just best friends. they’re more than that. they always have been.

the way i see it, eddie making buck legal guardian over christopher was the most natural next step for their relationship. it wasn’t shocking at all, it made sense. their foundation is solid. the only thing that surprised me was the fact that eddie’s been sitting on this information for a year. SIR.

there’s no one eddie trusts more to have his and christopher’s backs than buck. there’s no one buck trusts more to fight for him and his self-worth than eddie. and he’s just now beginning to realize this. they’re partners. they’re a unit. they’re a family.

it’s natural.