#i am so fully aware

[spacecoyote]

what ARE the episodes where you can hear jf laughing at his own jokes

hahahah a decade of sitting in front of him at tall tales has lead to this

offfff the top of my head the clearest you can hear him is in the opening of douz where martin says '... or to look out of the windows!' and the cold open of gdansk where douglas says '... ready to follow golf echo echo' lmao, I am sure there are others but they elude me rn

[thatneoncrisis]

i wrote a big long essay talking about tlt and how it engages with describing the skintones of brown characters its under a read more bc it is so long.

I already left a long comment about this on someone else post but I wish I could study tazmuirs odd little habit of dancing around the fact that Gideon and Harrow are women of color when she describes them, and how this kind of extends to other brown characters

We get a million descriptions for how sickly pale ianthe Silas and cytherea are, what a lovely golden tan corona has, the odd tannish yellow hue of colum, all imagined by her, in her own words, to be white. Then when it comes to Marta and Judith they're called dark like Once in the text. I don't think it's even mentioned for Jeannemary and magnus in the entirety of gtn though I will gladly stand corrected if I missed something. It's such a non factor for them, which normally I would overlook if it wasn't for the aforementioned specificity of how white characters are described on Top of one of the major themes of the book being how John, a Maori man, resurrected a largely Polynesian population and then proceed to rule them using the exact same methods that actively colonized new zealand. Like I just think it's really interesting that in many ways, the story is about two young Maori women completely stripped of cultural heritage, they can't even speak te reo maori they cannot even conceptualize the scale of that kind of loss. Theyve been to earth once and during her brief time there Gideon literally died on it's soil it feels so poignant

Back to them specifically being Not Pale, this is not me saying they would be "less" maori if they were light-skinned that's total bullshit and the entire paradigm exists as a product of European bullshit. My fascination is more with the fact that tamsyn has clearly thought of them as midtoned to dark skinned. I'm going to be really generous and disregard the Tommy Arnold covers- he is a talented artist but he's not the author and Taz stated in an interview that she didn't envision Gideon with an undercut either so he clearly has little liberties he can take and I'm fine with that get your coin dude. For these two I'm going to have to focus on Nona the Ninth, bc for the entirety of gtn, harrow is described as grey, and while I understand that's bc she's constantly under a mountain of white and black facepaint, we basically never get an objective description for either of them. Gideon stand out features are her build, hair and eyes, like a lot of characters, but it could have been pretty easy to throw in a line about how she seems less desaturated than what one might expect from a ninth cavalier, like a rich warm brown, possibly hinting to other characters that she isn't a ninth native

Htn also gives very little to work with, again harrows primary colors are the blacks whites and greys of facepaint and her hair and the reds of constantly sweating blood. The character who's darker skintone is Most remarked upon (also one of the few ever constantly headcanoned) as black, is g1deon. I've actually spoken to a few people about this and there seems to be some actual Mandela effect shit going on where people remember Taz saying he's black despite me never once finding evidence for this. However, this is not a case where I'd be overjoyed to be proven wrong, because g1deon being the one black guy in this entire cast, the one who's dark skintone is commented on the most, being the guy who barely speaks, tries killing harrow with a spear 14 times and then dies offscreen. Not good. Bad, actually

Finally onto ntn, in the beginning chapters Nona remarks her (harrows) skintone is the color of an egg carton. I assume she means the light tan, desaturated brown of the cardboard used in certain cartons, which is fitting for harrow, girls lived in an ice cave for 17 years. This is basically the only word we get on it. I believe a few times the text will say something about pyrrha's (g1deon's) brown Everything; brown skin, russet brown hair, rich brown eyes. that character gets to be viewed and constantly affirmed as a brown character in teh way gideon and harrow arent, it kind of others pyrrha. to contrast camillas hands are called tanned way at the beginning while recording nona's dream, then at the way end it says, "Her face still looked grey beneath its nice normal olive," olive being used to describe her once before in gtn as far as i can see. pyrrha's (g1deon's) skintone is one of her most notable features, its brought up to a noticeable agree the text wants you to keep it in your mind when you think of the saint of duty; "Most of Pyrrha was the colours of the building site: deep dried-out browns, dusty hunks of clay, rusted metal." "Pyrrha wouldn’t burn any colour other than her deep cool brown." "Nona took the water from Pyrrha’s brown, work-chapped hand and even sipped it" "Pyrrha had carried Camilla to bed in her big brown arms like Cam weighed nothing" "Pyrrha said, “Thanks, Nums,” and drained the whole thing. Nona,fascinated, watched the brown column of her throat move as she swallowed." its just notable to me when alternatively with nona you'll get a line like "Camilla didn’t say anything to that either, only rubbed her wrists where the tape had been. Nona’s skin was already back to its nice normal colour." like just the vagueness in nice normal color, we get one line about what shes supposed to look like in the beginning and thats it

towards the end during the broadcast, nona gets her first clear look at kiriona, described as: "warm-coloured skin that should have been a similar brown hue to Nona’s, except that there was something wrong with it." break out the champagne its official

Obviously, dying takes some color from you. If anything, gideons desaturation should make them More comparable given the egg carton comment and harrows general state of constant anemia. Has Nona gotten darker during her time on new rho? Was Gideon lighter than the cover led us to believe? We don't know. We well never know, which is odd, bc these books fucking love purple prose about people's appearances. We have like seven different synonyms for the shade of ianthes hair. New words for black have to be invented in order to convey harrows eyes which are Black, not the dark muddy brown of someone like ortus. It's less that I'm bothered by the text not hyperfocusing on their skin and more it picking and choosing when it will laser focus on a detail like that, and how often it's skipped over to the point that I like, constantly see people draw harrow as incredibly pale, which is very different from being light-skinned

Finally, I know people can dismiss this as like an audience interpretation thing. I know I actively draw harrow darker than Gideon which I know isn't canon. But this is less about Fandom response to the text and more the text itself and how it's like. Afraid to say brown. near the end of ntn i found One instance of it referring to gideons "slim brown hand" on nonas cheek and that is direct as it gets. even her other like, strongly non european traits are sort of danced around. her nose is "a nose that was the complete opposite of Nona’s nose, one that put her in mind of those big poison desert cats Born in the Morning was crazy about." a very fanciful description, you have to infer that nona means that its probably flat and wide, also giving us the information that harrows is most likely narrow and straight, possibly downturned. im not opposed to this, especially given the character talking about her is nona, but then you get the following paragraph:

"Her skin was very much dead-person skin, ashen and tinted the wrong colour around the nostrils and the mouth. But even if she hadn’t been dead, Nona was critical. Her eyelashes were very dark, but short and curly, whereas Nona thought all eyelashes should be long and straight (her own eyelashes were long and straight). The corpse had too much mouth and a dimple (nobody in her home had a dimple). You could not, at least, see the veins in her eyelids, which were heavy and cold and deep-set. But Nona thought it was going to be a shame to go from being so lovely as she was to being so—redheaded."

its a very frank description. dimple, curly lashes, red head, dead skin, probably a wide mouth. her nose is contrasted against nonas nose, which is also never directly described, and then compared to a fantasy animal we have never heard of until right now

kicks rocks. there isnt a point to this. the series is almost over, there is zero reason to like, knock on taz's door and ask why she did this or that. it doesnt stop me from loving the series, and the insinuation that noticing this means i must dislike the series is frankly insane (real thing that happened). if someone got the impression that harrow was white given how shes described i wouldnt blame them honestly, its most apparent she isnt in the third book (with the cover art being incredibly ambiguous) and a single blog post from taz mentioning shes maori, immediately followed by an "oh i dont care how you see the characters" addendum, which i think is like. an odd thing to tack on bc them descended from kiwis is like, very integral to the story, and gideon being the daughter of the maori man who took everything from her she didnt even know she could have and the (presumably, given her name and a very brief description) maori woman fighting to get that world back its like. damn. it feels a little important. that the audience knows theyre maori. like a little. it feels intertwined with the whole thing about john using european standards of imperialism and general aesthetics to hurt his own kid. actually.

[skuntank]

Samantha Béart: yeah so Karlach isn't like. A totally good person. She's certainly not evil, but she's definitely flawed. There is a dark side to her that she doesn't want you to know about, and not only has she done heinous things in the past, she's still fully capable of doing heinous things now. Her happy-go-lucky attitude is 1000% a trauma response and this woman absolutely NEEDS to go to therapy because her mental health? It's in shambles

People online: puppy :)

[emblazons]

the way my jaw is simply on the floor (x)

[ricky-mortis]

Some pose practice with my favorite spy

[ballwizard]

can i be real with you guys i fucking hate the "HOW HIGH WERE U WRITING THIS XD CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTOR!!! LOL WHAT!! UR A CRAZY PSYCHO FOR WRITING YHIS" schtick that I've been seeing around recently . it's like. Not funny at best and really rude and annoying at worst

[theminecraftbee]

man so i have recently started to go VERY SLOWLY through my first time watching any star trek (i am watching tng first as opposed to tos because data is in tng and literally anyone who knows me including myself could guess data would be one of my favorite characters) and. the concept of 'what if a star trek au' is VASTLY underutilized i think. this is a show all about "what if we put that damn space ship in a Situation". the number of Situations the average starfleet member ends up in is apparently just constant. Situations are so common that it only took until episode two for magic space water to make everyone drunk and horny. episode one a god put humanity on trial and there was a sentient space jellyfish. like if you just want to stick your blorbo in a Fucking Situation, star trek has you covered for basically any trope. and then the next chapter you could do an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TROPE. and it would still fit. because my god, starfleet is apparently made entirely of Situations.

........anyway i am enjoying it,

[skateboardtotheheart]

no because it's the way Tommy sits through that frankly disASTER of an explanation by Evan "ally" Buckley and STILL FLIRTS WITH HIM AFTER

they're literally so cute idk who you are, I am ROOTING FOR THIS RELATIONSHIP

[clarionglass]

so i have been bitten by the sam reich!master bug courtesy of some phenomenal art by @northernfireart and uh. as is too often the case i had to write something otherwise if i didn't get it out of my brain i would go absolutely insane

(there may be more vignettes coming if i have ideas..... there are definitely other episodes i'd like to give the Treatment to, plus with the new dw series coming out on the weekend i may have ideas for how to incorporate the dw gang! however, i promise neither more writing or no more writing. that said, this was a lot of fun so there'll probably be more at some stage :D )

this has full spoilers for the game changer ep "escape the greenroom", but hey that's been out for a while now so,,,, if you haven't seen it i'd highly recommend it as an episode!

so, without further ado:

--

Samuel Dalton was a complete fiction, of course, but that didn't mean that when Sam Reich snuck back upstairs to get tied up in the “out of order” bathroom, the Sam that remained on the monitor, laughing at the contestants, was a pre-recording. And if Brennan, Siobhan and Lou had snorted at the idea of a time-travelling evil magician great-grandfather (for good reason), going in with the actual truth of the matter would have sounded like jumping the shark.

It sounded bizarre, but the time travel bit was the only part about his new partner in crime that was confirmably real. Admittedly, the jury was still out on “evil”—he gave off a weird vibe at times, but so far, no lines had been crossed, and it had all been funny as hell—so for now, Sam was willing to roll with it. But perhaps most surprisingly, there wasn’t even the possibility of blood relation between Samuel Dalton Reich and the guy who had shown up out of the blue one day with his exact face and a plan to really fuck around with things on Game Changer.

Yeah, the whole alien thing had really ruled out that particular prospect.

There had been various bits and pieces of confirmation that this guy wasn’t human through the time Sam had known him, but the final nail in the coffin for that one was when his doppelganger had looked him dead in the eye and tried on one of the heart rate monitors—sorry, “range extenders”—for As a Cucumber. The damn thing had literally sparked up, then died completely. Trying to process input from two separate heartbeats at once would do that, apparently. 

His doppelganger was a Time Lord, or so he had nonchalantly said one afternoon in casual conversation, though Sam still wasn’t sure if that one was a joke or not. It was hard to tell, sometimes, because he said the wildest things with the straightest face, and so far, most of them had turned out to be one hundred percent certifiably true. The time travel, the space travel, even the changing faces thing—it sounded objectively insane, but the proof was undeniable. 

There were some notable exceptions, though. Saying he’d been trapped for aeons inside Neil Patrick Harris’s gold tooth went just that bit too far to be believable, though Sam did appreciate his double’s slightly warped sense of humour.

It was that offbeat line of thinking that lent itself well to game design, as it turned out. He had a knack for coming up with ideas for Game Changer episodes, albeit with the occasional suggestion that went way beyond the bounds of good taste, and, as in the case of Escape the Greenroom, had devised some blinding twists on concepts Sam had already half-formed. The letter puzzle unlocking the secret door? It was perfect.

Understandably, Sam’s doppelganger had wanted to observe the fruits of their labours in real time, rather than watching the recording later. It happened, sometimes, particularly when it was one of his ideas that had made it through to the episode list—they’d swap places for a session, with nobody being any the wiser. Watching those edits back always felt a bit weird—it was uncanny how flawless the mimicry was—but hey, the guy was right. It was always fun.

Escape the Greenroom, specifically, with its “Samuel Dalton” conceit, provided them with a unique opportunity. Instead of swapping out the camera feed for a recording when the cast piled into the tiny secret room behind the wall, as per the original plan to get Sam in position to be discovered in the bathroom, they could just swap out the people. Sam would go upstairs, and his double would take his place at the podium, ducking out of sight when everyone came back to the main stage to “defuse the bomb”.

Sam was keen—hell, if their situations had been reversed, he’d want to be there to watch, too—but caution raised a flag. “You don’t think it’s too risky?” he’d asked when the subject was first raised. “Both of us being in the same place?”

His doppelganger had shrugged one shoulder with supreme unconcern. “The crew won't notice.”

At the time, Sam had shot him a sceptical look, but right now, Sam-Reich-in-a-purple-tie and Sam-Reich-in-an-orange-tie were standing backstage post-record, clearly visible and and calmly chatting, and not a single member of the crew had given them so much as a second glance. 

…Hardly even a first glance, come to think about it. If anyone looked over their way, their eyes seemed to… not exactly go through them, but slide over the two of them like water. He was tempted to wave to Nico or Ash or someone, just out of pure curiosity, but something in the back of his mind told him that wouldn’t be the world’s greatest idea. He had a funny feeling he wouldn’t like to see what would happen next.

(He’d given the prop bomb back to the crew once the cameras stopped rolling, and though it looked the same as the one he remembered from before he’d headed upstairs, it felt different in his hands. Heavier, more… serious, somehow. He was sure nothing would have happened—but at the same time, he was suddenly very glad that the cast had cut the correct wire with no less than a minute fifteen to go.)

(The jury was still out on evil, after all.)

“Worth coming in for?” he asked instead.

“Absolutely,” his double replied with relish. “Locking those three in a small room for an hour? Brilliant, fantastic. Inspired. It was absolute chaos.”

“Have you seen up there?” Sam asked, a smile starting to spread across his face. “They messed up the set real bad.”

His doppelganger smirked at him. “You know it took literally two seconds from you telling them to escape the greenroom for Lou to smash that guitar?”

Sam shook his head. “Oh my god. Yeah, they were stressed.” 

“Mmm. Some real panic in that room,” his doppelganger agreed, and Sam chose to ignore the faint note of satisfaction in his voice.

He shifted his weight, settling back to lean against the table behind the set, in the exact instant his double decided to do the same thing. It really was freaky how similar they were, down to the smallest mannerism—like looking in a mirror, only weirder, because the face that looked back at him was truly his own face, not mirror-reversed. Even now, it still caught Sam off guard from time to time, but at least it had faded into a more comfortable kind of strange. He had an exact lookalike who was an actual time-travelling alien. Cool. Doesn’t everyone?

The pair shared a companionable silence for a few moments, before a thought Sam had been turning over for a while rose to the top of his mind. He shifted again, this time on his own, and he felt his double’s regard swing up to fix on him like a magnet. 

“Okay, real talk,” he started, and his doppelganger frowned back in an approximation of confused innocence. “What’s all this for?”

“Who says it has to be for anything? Aren't we just having fun?”

Sam hummed, considering. “Yeah. No, I'd believe that, if I didn't sometimes walk into production meetings and find out I'd apparently been very specific about the people I wanted for certain episodes.”

“Point for Sam,” his doppelganger acknowledged with a grin. “You got me. Wasn’t hard to make a few phone calls on our joint behalf.”

“Yeah, but why?” Sam pressed. “I mean, Siobhan, Brennan and Lou are always great comedy value when you put them together, and it was awesome to have them for this, but I get the feeling you’re thinking of something other than making good content.”

“Who, me?”

With that, his double gave him a look of such overdone pantomime innocence that Sam suddenly and thoroughly understood why, not half an hour earlier, Brennan had very seriously threatened to push him down the stairs. 

He rolled his eyes, which earned him a smirk for his troubles.

Dropping the act, his doppelganger continued. “I’m expecting an… old friend, I guess, to show up at some point, and—well, I’d like to put on a really special show for them. I thought it would be a good opportunity to try a few things out, you know?”

Ominous pause aside, that was actually kind of sweet. Sweeter than he’d been expecting, that’s for sure—he was half anticipating the revelation that he and his cast were subjects in some weird experiment. Hey, that still couldn’t fully be ruled out, but still.

“Okay,” he acquiesced. “Well… just let me know, next time? Before you start ordering in my cast like takeout?”

“Who says they’re your cast?” his double shot back with a twinkle in his eye, and Sam snorted.

“Fine. Our cast, then. But seriously, let me know?”

His doppelganger nodded, which, if not quite fully convincing, was good enough. 

“Oh, and do you know when your friend might be arriving?” Sam asked. “Because if you wanted to plan something, we can—”

“I don’t know,” his doppelganger interrupted. “So yeah, we’ll have to move fast when they do get here. But I’ve got it under control.”

He broke off, then shot Sam a mischievous grin. “In the meantime, though, I’ve had this fun thought about time loops…”

[beanghostprincess]

Actually thinking more about Reiju's only sin being a woman and... Going into more depth, I know that logically/canonically she's smart and empathetic enough to not want to be in her brothers' place. She doesn't want to be an heir/ successor or follow the family's footsteps at all. She knows they're bad. She sees herself as such, too, unable to change/be different like Sanji was. She doesn't think she can bring her mother's kindness to this world the way Sanji does, so she sticks to what she knows, whether it is to protect Sanji too or to accept her fate.

BUT (and bear with me for a second here, I know I have been watching too much Succession lately) we also do know that during her childhood she didn't do anything to help Sanji from the abuse. She watched it happen because that was the way things went there and because she knew what would happen to her if she did. Of course, she ends up helping him escape and taking care of him but-- I'm just thinking, for a tiny little moment, about how she's actually the oldest.

She should be the heir. She should be the person everybody views Ichiji as. She should be considered the most responsible. The smartest. The strongest one. The one who should take the throne. And she doesn't even want it now, but what about back then? What about when she did have some little, tiny faith/hopes for her family and what they did? She sought approval and naively thought "my father is going to offer me the place I rightfully deserve, right?" blindly seeking acceptance like all of them did.

But no, because she might be the oldest but Ichiji is a man. She might be the strongest, the smartest, the most reliable... But she is not a man. And I believe there must have been a time when she expected her destiny to be something more, and once she realized she was just a woman in their eyes... Well, we know what happened.

I just keep finding similarities between The Vinsmokes (OP) and The Roys (Succession) and perhaps my headcanon of Reiju being similar to Shiv has gone a bit too far. But the scene where Shiv is like "This is real?" when Logan promises she'll be the CEO and he goes "This is real. Remember this. The slant of light" for it to be a lie later is something I fear could have happened with Reiju and Judge if Oda had given us more content,,,,

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

See Ya When I See Ya (Acoustic), Miles Kane @ The Caves Edinburgh 13/11/24

literal moments before this: a group of people in the crowd suddenly started chanting for miles to play standing next to me. he acknowledged it for a moment with the hint of a nostalgic/wistful smile, and then proceeded to level us all with reactionary, wry, raised-eyebrows look and launched immediately into see ya when i see ya instead. and this isn’t even my milex brain talking (the girl next to me literally went “oh wow”), the way he did it was genuinely SO loud. like it was an unmistakeable expression that so clearly showed he feels something about those two songs is inherently connected. it was such a from-the-gut, instinctive response and it spoke VOLUMES. i wish wish WISH i'd managed to catch it on video because i know my description is not doing it justice at all, but trust me. it really packed a punch. like there was this reminder of the most popular puppets song from the crowd (and one that’s particularly associated with all their milex antics at that) , and then this visceral expression from miles of "yeah, none of that anymore" or "look at where we are now" as he introduced see ya when i see ya. there were just. SO many emotional layers. and like yes, i know it's sort of an open secret that see ya when i see ya might be about alex and their creative/personal relationship, but god. this really felt so close to an open admission that that’s the case.

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Still very wild to me when people try to gotcha Jason with the whole "if you can kill other people for being evil why can't they kill you" when jason is like. One of the most passively suicidal characters I've ever seen. What if man

[sad-scarred-sassy]

Please please please continue the one shot of Feyre and Tamlin meeting after she has the baby. It’s so beautiful and well written

Oh 🥹 thank you!! I wasn’t gonna continue it but since you asked so nicely… proceed at your own discretion.

// It’s a headcanon of mine that Feyre questions all her life choices after the whole pregnancy fiasco happens.

If you wanna read the first part here it is.

~~~~~~~

She had sworn she would not go back.

Somehow nobody had noticed her brief absence, not Azriel, not the wraiths, not even Rhys. Feyre had carried that secret for months with a small hint of shame, and a very weird sense of triumph.

What Rhys had noticed since then though, was the new barrier she had put up between them. For the first time, she no longer let him slip in and out of her mind at will. She no longer shared with him her deepest darkest secrets. She realized with a cold, sickening feeling, that he knew every miserable aspect of her life and psyche and she did not know him, not entirely.

It was a strange realization, Feyre truly felt alone for the first time in years. The whole deal of her pregnancy had acted as an eye opener for her and it didn’t help that she had just too much time to think. Feyre spent her days taking care of her toddler, a beautiful child that smiled at her and she could not, for the life of her, understand why she did not love him as she had been promised she would.

Feyre sighed, sitting next to Nyx’s crib. Rhysand was gone to the Hewn City for a meeting, leaving her alone with the baby. She tucked Nyx’s small wings correctly behind him as he slept. Logically, she knew she loved him, she could simply not reach the feeling, not yet.

“I will try” She said, a tear streaming down her face. “I swear”

When she had found out about the secret, she had been so hurt and mad, betrayed by her mate, her family, the ones who said they loved her. She had yelled at him, had demanded him to tell her why. Then, she had succumbed to Rhys’ explanation again. He had said he hadn’t wanted to worry her. At the time she had concluded that she was fine with the decision, she wanted Nyx, she would have done anything to keep him alive. But after he was born, when she had too much time to herself, her mind had started to unravel on her.

How many times had he decided something and made her believe she was the one on charge? Why hadn’t they ever talked about the awful things he had done to her when nobody was witnessing it? How much of anything he had told her was actually true? How much of her hatred towards her past friends had been fed to her? How much of her rivalry with her own sisters stemmed from what he wanted?

It was too much. It was suffocating.

She knew she had to talk to Rhys, he was her husband, her mate… her High Lord, but she was tired of hearing his excuses, she was tired of him pretending to adhere to her demands only to flip it to something he wanted. She was tired.

After tucking Nyx in his bed she grabbed a sketchbook and let her fingers do the talking.

She had seen him again after their brief encounter in the Spring Court. Helion had called for a High Lord meeting wanting to discuss the next steps at peace, and she had taken her ass to Dawn pretending she had any say on whatever was to be discussed. As much as she tried to believe it herself, the sheer reality of being nothing else but a puppet in her husband’s hands was so glaring she could not hide from it.

Even if she knew he loved her, she could see it in him. She could see the way he also valued what she could do for him, how she was useful, how keeping her in this illusion of power actually benefitted him. She knew he would do anything for her, unless doing it contradicted what he truly wanted. Whatever that was, she did not know. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Her chalk began tracing lines she had burned in her memory a long time ago. Strong jaw, deep set eyes with a hint of sadness in them, high cheekbones and plump lips. Long, silky hair that cascaded down his strong trapezius muscles.

She had studied him in the meeting, his green worn tunic, his old polished boots. He had informed everyone that the Spring Court was slowly healing. Beron had snorted and mocked the state of his manor, still in ruins. Tamlin simply watched him and said “I’m not living there anymore” and that was that.

Their eyes had locked for a fraction of a moment, he looked lonely and broken still, she averted her eyes before anyone noticed.

She did not know what she felt about him after all this time, after all was said and done. The things she had said to him were true, he had hurt her and she had destroyed all he was in return. It still didn’t feel right.

Did he see it in her? Just how lost and desolated she felt? How trapped she felt in her own chosen life, trapped to serve a purpose, serve like she had always done. He had trapped her once too, why did this feel different? Why did it matter? Why?

Why? Why? Why?

The question plagued her while she yanked the page from the sketchbook, and giving it one last glance, put it in the fire slowly, for it to be consumed and destroyed. She wished she could do that with all these thoughts, set them on fire and let them burn into nothing.

She would never go back to him, she could never go back to him anyway. She had a son now, she had a mate for life. He was the one who hurt her.

You hurt him too.

Yes, they had both destroyed each other. So why did she feel that unshakable need to see him again? Why couldn’t she just be content with her life? Why did she want to talk to him again? Why did she care about what he had to say? Did she need confirmation that he was the monster she believed him to be? Or did she want to think that at some point she did have something genuine, even if she thought she lost it forever? Did that make her feel better or worse? She didn’t know. She couldn’t, wouldn’t go back-

“I’ll take care of him tonight” Feyre almost jumped at the sound of her sister Elain’s words from behind her. She turned abruptly to see her knowing eyes studying her. “Go, do what you have to do” She said and Feyre felt her heart beating unnaturally fast in her chest.

“Elain” She said. “I don’t know what I have to do” She said.

“You want answers, right?” Elain cocked her head at her, seeing too much, too damn much. “Go seek them”

Seek the other side of the story. Seek the answers to her questions. Seek the clarity she so desperately needed, for better or worse.

So there she was standing again in the middle of the Spring forest, feeling like thief in the night, a witch to be caught and burned, waiting for him to sense her somehow. He didn’t disappoint, standing before her just minutes after, face open, arms slack at his sides.

“I-“ She said. “I wish to talk”

He gave her one nod and signaled her to follow him, which she did, slowly, keeping a distance.

To her utter surprise he led them into a small Spring town she hadn’t ever visited before. The night was quiet and she could see the smoke coming out of the chimneys of the small wisteria-covered cottages. He kept walking, turning to step towards a small stone cottage lit with fae lights and covered by vines and moss.

He pushed open the wooden door and let her inside, her eyes jumping to look at everything within, the small dinner table and two chairs with a bowl of uneaten stew on top of it. The small kitchen and cozy fireplace, the feeble stairs that led to a second floor where she could spy his bed. The arrangement of knives lying on the small worktable along with piles of documents and notes in the far back. The muddy boots in the corner. Feyre was stunned by what she concluded. He lived here.

“You-“ She couldn’t articulate her words. “Why?”

He understood the question. “If I was going to fix this court, I had to do it from the inside” He said moving to sit on the chair next to the dinner table.

“But you’re a High Lord” She said.

“I am” He said, eyes stern. “Do you want some stew?” He asked and she shook her head vigorously, he shook his hand and the stew disappeared. Her shock didn’t subside, even when she remembered just how close Tamlin had been with his subjects before, she would’ve never thought she would find him in a place like this. Then again, this wasn’t too far fetched for a male who had wanted to leave it all to write poetry while traveling around the world.

He watched her, studied her, then wet his lips and furrowed his brows.

“Why are you here, Feyre?” He asked genuinely.

“I wanted to ask you something” She said. “If you would give me your word and answer honestly” She heard herself say.

“I give you my word” He said solemnly. “Please-” He gestured to the other chair in front of him.

Feyre cautiously dragged her feet and sat down, utilizing the moment to arrange the question in her mind, picking at her nails in anxiety. He noticed.

“Why did you lock me up in the manor?” She asked in a blurt.

Tamlin’s fingers, which had been thrumming a pattern on the table stopped abruptly.

His throat bobbed as he took a fortifying breath.

“I was terrified of not being able to protect you, and seeing you die… again” He said so quietly she had to stop breathing to hear him correctly. “I acted on impulse, everything I did in that time was on impulse, I knew you were going to hate me and I still did it, I can’t justify it, I’m sorry” He said, eyes lifting to find hers.

“I had never felt so alone then” She said.

“I never wanted you to feel alone. I understand now that I could not give you the partnership you needed at that time” He began drumming his fingers again.

“You were broken, as I was too” She concluded, studying as his eyes lifted towards her for a second, only to drop as he gave her a small nod.

“What did she do to you there?” She whispered, Tamlin’s eyes shot to her in a panic.

“I-“ He said, sitting straight on his small chair. “That doesn’t matter”

“It does.” She said, placing both hands on the table facing him. “You never told me”

“It wasn’t worth discussing”

“It was, if we had maybe-“

“Maybe we would still be together?” Tamlin smiled a sad smile of disbelief. “He would have never allowed it, you know that” He said. Feyre closed her eyes. The control she had thought she possessed in her life had been an illusion and she knew it. She hated that he could tell, he could always tell and she was just too stubborn to admit it.

“I still want to know” She said again. “If you’re comfortable telling me”

He sighed, running a hand through his long hair. “She said she would kill you if I didn’t-” He said suddenly, then didn’t continue, choosing to look away from her.

“You never showed-“ She remembered all the times they had been intimate after it all happened. Why didn’t it ever cross her mind? “When we were together, I-“

“Being with you was like a salve for the horrible things that had been done” He said in a closed tone. “I thought it was the same for you”

The silence stretched for long moments before she spoke.

“I’m sorry”

He laughed humorlessly. “Please Feyre, don’t apologize to me. Especially not about that” He clenched his fist. “Especially when I did nothing when he-“ His eyes fell to the tattoo on her hand. “I wish I could have done more to save you… from all of us”

“I chose this life”

“You were thrust upon it”

“You still think of me as a helpless little thing” She clenched her fists.

“No, but you are young, and you have been through too much” He said.

She pressed her lips together, looking down at her manicured nails, the intricate tattoo that branded her… like a mare. She shook her head at that thought.

“Did you know I would fall for his… for his tricks?” She croaked. She couldn’t believe she was talking about Rhys in that way, but she couldn’t stop, the words were burning in her throat.

“I thought you were happy falling for them” He mumbled and she looked up at his empty eyes. “He was there when I couldn’t, after all” He took a breath. “I can’t blame him for setting to win over his mate”

“I’m not his property” She said.

“Aren’t you?” He glanced at her tattoo. She flinched.

“He loves me” She proclaimed with a sniff.

“He does” He moved his hand in a swipe and two cups of wine appeared on the table, along with a decanter. He began pouring the wine for himself, then for her. She placed the cup on her lips and took a sip. She would never say it out loud but she had missed the Spring rich and sweet wine, so different from the Night Court’s bitter undertones.

They sat there, drinking the wine, listening to the crack and sizzling of the fire. His green eyes fixed on it, the flame reflecting on them, hiding the emptiness within. She always thought they were very similar in some ways, maybe much of it was still true.

“The woman you loved died in that mountain” She said stiffly. “I think that was the toughest part, saying goodbye to her while seeing how you still searched for her when you looked at me” She took another sip. His gaze rose to meet hers.

“Is that what you think?” He cocked his head.

“It’s the truth”

“It’s bullshit”

“The woman I was before would have never done what she did to you, to your court, to your people” She placed the cup on the table forcefully.

“Perhaps, but she would be here now, asking me of all people to forgive her” He breathed a laugh, turning his whole body towards her. “You’re not ruined, Feyre” He said and she felt her eyes sting.

“I am. I said you were a monster, but I am one too”

“No, you are not”

“I am! Do you think I cared when I came here and destroyed this court? Do you think I cared when I sent your life to hell, sent the lives of innocents to hell? I didn’t care, I relished on it” She leaned forward as she spoke with bitterness.

He simply watched her, took his cup and downed the wine.

“I always knew what you were capable of” He said, staring at the fire on his side. “I never saw you as an innocent fawn, if that’s what you’re thinking” He mumbled, she noticed her fingers were trembling.

“You still trapped me so that I didn’t fight”

“Capable is not all-mighty” He said. Her stomach clenched so she took the cup in both her hands and drank its contents in one gulp.

“You didn’t see it coming, what I did when I came back”

“I didn’t see it coming because I didn’t think you wanted to do it, not because I didn’t think you could” He said pensively. “But I was clouded in my own delusion” He smiled sadly.

They stared at each other then for a long moment, before he leaned and poured them more wine.

“What will it take for you to be happy?” He asked suddenly, taking her by surprise.

“I was happy” She said, dragging the wine down her throat.

“Not anymore?” His eyes were pinned on her.

“I don’t know”

“You should be talking about this with him, not me”

“I know” They both took a sip of their wine at the same time, the silence stretching, the seat in her back digging into her, his eyes burning a hole through her. She could see now how time had also affected him, his eyes were empty but clear, for the first time since everything had happened, she could tell.

“Do you love him?” He asked with a strain in his voice, as if he did not want to know, but he had to ask anyway.

“I do” She said, the sad truth of the matter. “It’s not so simple, though”

“It is. You love him, he loves you, he’s your mate, it is simple” His gaze was vacant again, the words seeming to burn through him as he spoke them.

“Do you love me?” She heard herself ask. Why did she ask?

His eyes snapped to her like a whiplash. He didn’t say anything for a long moment as he studied her, then smiled bitterly.

“I guess I deserve it” He placed the cup on his lips, mumbling to himself.

“Deserve what?” She breathed.

“You, toying with me when you’re bored of him” He cocked his head at her. “I should have guessed that’s what my life would be like. Letting you toy with me and fucking relishing on it, relishing on the sight of you in that chair, tormenting me” He let his eyes travel down her body down, down, then up towards her face again.

“I’m not trying to torment you” She rasped.

“Hm” He took another sip. “Don’t worry about me. Your torment is the best thing that has happened to me in years” His eyes found hers and locked, vibrant green that exuded the power she had known, the power she had held in her hands once.

Her breath caught and she stared down at her wine.

“I should go” She said, she didn’t know what would happen if she didn’t leave now. She was not in the right mindset to be having this conversation, for him to be saying these things to her, to having him look at her the way he was. Her head was already pounding.

“I do” He said quietly, answering her last question just as she stood up to leave. “I always will. You know that” He said, his eyes were still fixed on her, that lupine gaze that hunted her features as a predator would its prey.

She nodded. “I should go” She repeated.

He nodded weakly. Her heart started beating faster and faster. She wasn’t sure why. “If you’re lonely” He stood up and towered above her. “I will never turn you down” His eyes fell to her mouth and she sucked a breath.

“He will kill you”

“Hopefully”

“Tamlin-“ She warned and he only closed his eyes momentarily, a small rumble in the back of his throat at the sound of his name on her lips.

“Go” He said, eyes still closed, fists still tightly clenched at his sides.

With a heaving chest she gathered herself, and with one last glance at the male before her, disappeared from his small, cozy home into the grand empty hall of her own.

She would never go back she said to herself. She would never go back.

[saltpepperbeard]

remember how i was like “oh haha wouldn’t it be something if taika and rhys turned up their whole ‘we wanted our little shoulder touches and pats to come across’ to a really romantic level and would have ed and stede affectionately touch each other whenever possible”

…yeah

yeah

[epicfirestormer]

[yourdeepestfathoms]

as hyped as i am for P3, i’m so scared that the fandom will sideline and ignore Clara even more than she already has been