#i have multiple friends who have been in relationships who aren’t currently and they’re complaining abt being single on valentine’s day

[jujutsu-headcanons]

Gojo Satoru general headcanons

Let's get one thing clear: this man is absolutely chaotic. He is always full of energy. His energy levels never reach below 50%. He is loud and proud, always running, and never takes a minute to relax.

Do not give him Monster. Shoko did that once and it took her forever to get him off the ceiling. Also, avoid caffeine. Shoko replaces his normal coffee with decaf and he still hasn't noticed the difference. Keep it that way.

He was the class clown when he was younger. He wasn't exactly a trouble maker, but he may as well be. I cannot word that sentence and I am sorry. Next.

All of his teachers assumed he never listened in class, so they always called in him when they thought he wasn't paying attention. It still shocked them every time he rattled off the correct answer.

Not only did he answer the question correctly, but he could also explain his reasoning behind the answer, and if it was multiple choice, explain why the other answers were wrong. 

This tall man child would march up to the board and absolutely fill it to the brim with work, turn around, drop the chalk-like a mic drop and walk back to his desk with the smuggest look on his face.

That doesn't mean he did the work tho

Idk how schools in japan work but we all know schools in America only care about the amount of work you do and not what you actually know so we'll use that for the sake of the headcanon: he had straight D's bc he never turned in his work

Despite not doing the work snd goofing off, teachers actually really liked him

A lot of people liked him and he was super popular, but he still felt alone

Fake friends, you know how that works, he didn't meet any real friends until he became a shaman

Clean freak. This dude actually makes his bed. He scrubs his bathroom twice a week. His desk can get cluttered but he straightens up once a week. He's not exactly a germaphobe because

He cannot respect your personal space and that's actually canon but let me take it a step further 

He's a slapper. Especially when he laughs. It doesn't hurt, it's playful dw. He hugs you from behind especially when he's cold. He picks you up and carries you around. He will grab your wrist, arm, or hand and lead you around even if you're following him. He lays his legs across you or lays across your lap. Puts his head on your shoulder. Platonic cuddling between friends is mandatory. He's just so hands-on it's ridiculous.

Unless you explicitly tell him you're uncomfortable he won't stop

Don't worry, if you aren't in that type of relationship, your no-no square is safe. Except, if you seem chill, he will slap your ass regardless of friendship status. His ass is also slappable. You can't tell me Geto and Gojo didn't run around slapping each other asses, okay

He was weird and scrawny as a child. He didn't start beefing out until he started training to be a shaman and he's still kinda smaller than most beefy boys

He can pick you up and throw you around easily. He carried around a 170 pound Yuji like a sack of potatoes and can easily carry around three times that weight

It's amazing he's so tiny because you remember 2014 Shane Dawson making all of those wack ass desserts that was just s pile of chaos wrapped in chocolate?

He can eat every last bite of one of those monstrosities without getting a stomach ache, gaining weight, or dying basically

He knows bc Yuji dared him to do it

He has really cold hands and feet

He sounds old. Let me elaborate. He's constantly cracking his joints. They also creak when he moves. He complains about body pains like he's 80 y/o

He also shares wisdom with the kids as if he's actually 80 y/o

It's irrelevant advice that doesn't make sense but is also useful. Megumi can't count the number of times he's asked Gojo for feedback on his technique but had been told to remember to chew 40 times or never go to bed angry

Starts off sentences with "now son" and "when I was your age"

He uses his blindfold as a headband when he wants his hair out of his face. He also uses headbands as... Headbands... When he wants to wear sunglasses but get his hair out of his face

He owns so many pairs of sunglasses but he always wears the same pair

He's only bought a handful of them himself, most of them are gifts

No one knows what to get him for Christmas or his birthday bc he has everything, so they resort to sunglasses

His favorite pair is a pair that Shoko and Geto bought him as a gag. He thought they were dead serious, though, so he wore them around for a month

They were heart-shaped, rose-tinted glasses

Can you believe this man doesn't use any gel or anything to keep his hair spiky with the blindfold on? It just naturally defies gravity when the blindfold is on

Tell this man he's pretty because he already knows. He's narcissistic but not the cringy kind

Photogenic as hell. Takes great pictures from any angle. 

He gives everyone a different story as to why he covers his eyes. Sometimes he says it's because his eyes are too pretty and are a distraction. Sometimes he says it's because the sunglasses/bandages/blindfold look cooler than his eyes. Sometimes he says it's to protect the six eyes from seeing things he doesn't want to see. The world may never know

He's tried covering his whole face before, but he thinks he's too pretty for that. He at least wants one of his many amazing features to be shown at all times.

So about his driver's license;

He knows how to drive. He can be a good driver. When he wants to be. He just doesn't have a driver's license.

Now he TELLS people he just never got around to getting one, however, there's a rumor he lost it due to too many parking tickets

It's amazing the only tickets he's ever gotten have been from that and once he got caught without a seatbelt; he would have gotten out of that one if he hadn't been flirting with the police officer so bad

This doesn't stop Gojo from driving places though

He steals Ijichi's car a LOT and Ijichi DOESN'T KNOW HOW like??? The windows are never broken and it doesn't look hotwired-

Gojo has a key

You're not even supposed to be able to duplicate car keys but Gojo did 

Also; none of the first-year trio knows he doesn't have a driver's license, though that much should be painfully obvious

He whips around corners, speeds up at yellow lights, goes "watch this" and does a donut, it's just a mess

The poor students have to sit in the backseat too. Just imagine Megumi with all three seatbelts around him like that one meme.

He thrives off of Nobara and Yuji screaming from the backseat, and he can see Megumi being smooshed because he thought the middle seat was the safest through the rearview mirror

Which he doesn't even need because of the six eyes

Despite being such a reckless driver, he knows when danger will happen, so he's never once gotten in a wreck

He blasts the radio, which makes up for the driving.

Has a habit of getting in a car and ending up in the McDonalds drive-thru

Steals other people's fries and keeps the fullest one for himself.

He was rebellious as a kid and teenager, but hey, at least his juvie record is sealed 

He's been detained and in the back of a cop car many times, but the reason was never really bad enough for him to be arrested. Mostly he's just being mouthy. And the time he got caught spray painting on the side of a building. And that one time he and Getou hopped the fence to get into the local pool. And that other time-

It got worse after Getou wasn't around to get him out of trouble. Suddenly, breaking the rules wasn't fun anymore and he mellowed out. 

Tried alcohol and cigarettes before he was legal. Decided neither was his thing, however, he did start drinking occasionally when he was legal.

He's a fucking chaotic drunk. Oh my god he's absolutely feral

Most bars in the vicinity know him by name and they sigh whenever he walks in

Shoko is his emergency contact. She hates it

Shoko has to drag drunk Gojo home at least twice a month and is not happy about it

Once she left him in an alley. He made it home okay so she guesses it's fine

Once he got so drunk he spilled beer on his sock. The thought the fastest way to dry them was by sticking them in the microwave. Forgot about it until someone asked, "Who the fuck is cooking socks???"

I feel it important he was in the break room of the local grocery store and no one knows how he got there

As he was escorted out he stole a grocery cart and rode away in it while singing Don't Threaten Me (With A Good Time) by Panic! At The Disco

He has no alcohol tolerance at all what so ever

He will literally just stare at you and giggle

It's funny he's really flirty but also doesn't seal the deal. Literally, every woman in that bar is willing to get in his bed but he declines every offer. No one knows why

Its because he respects women

He helps his students break the rules as long as they're within reason. Once night Yuji was really hungry and after having a temper tantrum he couldn't order Uber eats bc the school is supposed to be secret Gojo helped sneak him out to get food. Who needs curfew anyway.

The shirts in his closet range from like twenty bucks to the iconic rich bitch shirt the kids ruined in that one chapter we all know the one 

He still wears that by the way, he calls it "art" 

When he was younger, Megumi drew a picture of Gojo being eaten by his shadow dogs. Gojo found it and now it's framed in his room.

He keeps up with current trends and memes like no one's business. This is how he bonds with his kids.

Don't call him old, but also, he'll tell you to respect your elders it's a mess

He has a lot of games on his phone. You can usually find him holding his phone sideways playing some RPG game he probably spent too much money on 

He did hop on the Pokemon Go hype train but after becoming overpowered he got bored

This happens to a lot of games. He pays way too much money, gets to be the strongest in the server, and gets bored

He likes games where you can kill other people's troops and likes to watch as they lose all their power

I canon him as being borderline sadistic

This is why he's Sakata Gintoki reincarnated

White hair, sweet tooth, black leather clothes, dad vibes, never takes anything seriously bc when he does he's scary as fuck, the works.

He is Sakata Gintoki

He liked Gintama growing up. He watched a lot of iconic shows as they aired. He considers himself an og

He's hella bilingual

Because he's the strongest he goes overseas for missions a lot. Because of this he speaks a lot of languages and knows a lot about international cuisine 

He takes pictures of himself eating disgusting foods like snails. He never likes them but he loves the idea of Nobara gagging back in japan

Has paperwork sitting untouched on his desk from three months ago that he will not touch for at least another three months

Does the crossword puzzles in the newspaper every week

Uses humor as a coping mechanism and it honestly just became a personality

Constantly popping his joints. I'm sorry if you find this gross I too find it gross.

Probably brought home every stray animal he ever met ever until he was at least like 22 y/o

Tags: @wasabito @kittaliapenn

[therealvinelle]

in the “everyone is in love with Bella” scenario, what about the wolves? Wouldn’t it be really fucked up for Sam to fall in love with her? Would it make the wolves try to redefine imprinting? how would Leah react to the whole situation?

Anon is referring to this post. For the record, I didn't get into them in the post because the plot would veer so far off-course in Twilight that Edward never leaves and Victoria never becomes a threat to Bella, meaning Bella and Jake don't get close and she doesn't need their protection.

But, let's do this.

First encounter

Bella arrives in Forks, and Billy and Jacob are there to hand over the pickup.

Boom.

They fall in love.

Jacob, having never had a real crush before nevermind something so powerful as falling in love, is overwhelmed by these new feelings. He blushes and flushes and stutters, and fails to say anything reasonable or even intelligble to Bella. Too mortified to function, he decides to hide in La Push until the embarrassment fades. Which very well could be never.

Billy, meanwhile, is unable to cope. He just fell in love with Charlie's daughter. Charlie's 17-year-old daughter who used to make mud cakes with Billy's daughters.

This is bad.

This, to a good man like Billy, is unforgivably bad.

He goes from being Charlie's best friend to suddenly being very distant, not wanting to ever cross paths with Bella again.

But, you asked about the wolves, not just Jake and Billy, so let's take this scenario further.

Bella's friends, all of whom are hopelessly in love with her, drag her to La Push

Jessica, Lauren, Mike, Angela, Tyler, Eric, Ben, the whole gang, they're all going to La Push for the weekend.

And it just won't be the same without Bella. She's just so great, you know?

Everyone looks at each other and nods. Yeah, it's just not fun without Bella. Bella's great, someone should invite her.

They all invite her, one by one, all of them with wide, adoring eyes. "It would be so amazing if you came, Bella," Jessica says dreamily, twirling a lock of Bella's hair around her fingers. "Your hair is really pretty," she giggles.

Angela and Ben are each blushing too hard to really say anything to Bella, so they end up running away from her. Bella is left feeling like some kind of freak. She later receives two notes in class, one from each, begging her in cramped writing to come to La Push. Yeah, not helping her feel like less of a freak.

Mike, Eric, Tyler, and Lauren all corner her, each worse than the last.

By the end of the schoolday Bella doesn't know what's going to happen at La Push but she does know that she doesn't want to go.

She complains about this to the Cullens (remember, her and Edward became an item much earlier in this timeline), and they all fawn and coo over her and act like she just went through a warzone. If she wants to go to the beach, she could try Isle Esme Bella. Would she like that, an island vacation? Or an island?

Bella is pulled out of school for a romantic two-week totally-not-a-honeymoon.

La Push never happens.

But surely Bella and the wolves must meet at some point

Billy catches wind that Bella Swan is dating Edward Cullen. As in, the girl he has fallen so deeply in love with is now being preyed upon by a blood-sucking demon.

Billy's own sense of propriety or honor be damned, he has to save this girl's life.

He tries to speak to her, just as in canon, but just as in canon this goes poorly. Bella is a savvy 17-year-old who doesn't need no warning, and besides, the Cullens are all so sweet. They're like hobbits, really, obviously she's not in any danger. She tells Billy as much. Vampires are lovely, does he know they gave her an island?

(Billy did not know this, and yes, that's weird. Doesn't mean they're not evil, though.)

Billy gets nowhere with his would-be intervention.

Time to bring in the big guns.

Sam phases around this time, and imprints on Emily. Break-ups with Leah, maulings, and tragic lovestories all around are had.

It is around this time that Billy brings Sam up to speed on the Bella situation, although leaving out the part where he's hopelessly in love with the girl because that would not be received well. Could Sam go speak with her about this, see if maybe she will take his warning seriously? The situation is dire.

Sure, Sam can do that. No one wants a human girl to get eaten or turned, after all.

Sam goes to see Bella.

And promptly falls in love just as he did Emily.

Emily, who is currently in the hospital from Sam mauling her, which happened specifically because Sam had imprinted.

It's official, Sam thinks, he's the greatest scumbag there ever was.

The Emily and Leah situation was awful enough as it was, breaking all three of their hearts and causing irreparable damage both physically and mentally. Sam wronged them both colossaly, and he can never amend that.

But he imprinted. He wasn't just being a douchebag, actual magic made him do it.

Now, though...

Either Sam imprinted on multiple people, in which case his happy ending is now polygamy. And how would that be a happy ending for Emily and Bella?

Or, possibly even more terrifying yet, he didn't imprint on either woman.

Breaking up with Leah, mauling Emily, making Emily fall in love with him after that and ruining her relationship with her cousin, in short putting these women through hell, all of it- it was for nothing. Sam's just a horndog who sees supernatural intervention where there's really just hormones.

Why couldn't he just have imprinted on Leah?

Sam can't go on a sabbatical to figure this out, his tribe needs him. So he takes to living in the woods alone, where he is alone, to try and figure this out.

But it gets more painful yet, because he can't just disappear on Emily.

So, he tells her. He owes her that much. And it's not goodbye forever, either, just- goodbye until he can figure out how to be the man she deserves. A man anybody deserves, really, because right now Sam's not it.

Emily has no idea what to make of any of this, but she knows her heart is broken.

She has to see this woman all of this is about.

Naturally, she falls in love as well.

The plot thickens

The next time Sam drops by, Emily gives him the news. They're both in love with Bella now.

Sam no longer knows what to make of anything.

Is the universe trying to tell them to form a polycule?

Nothing like that has ever happened before, but not much is known about imprinting. There's a first time for everything..?

At this point they're both giving themselves headaches trying to figure this out. It's a mess.

More, Bella hasn't even met either of them. Sam and Emily can't just walk up to her and say "Hi, be our wife".

Or can they?

If Emily fell in love at first sight, maybe it'll work in reverse. Maybe Bella just has to look upon them, and she'll fall in love.

Sam is dubious, but at this point let's just do this. Let's just do this, see what happens.

They walk up to Charlie's to deliver some of Harry's fish fry. Bella opens the door.

"HIIIII" Emily says, trying to act normal.

Sam's not saying anything.

"Hi," Bella says back, nonplussed, and looks at the bag Emily is clutching with white-knuckled fists.

All three of them are silent.

Bella is starting to wonder if there's something with the town water supply. She is also wondering if these people are planning to say anything, or if they just really enjoy knocking on doors and saying hi to people. Is there something Bella should be doing?

Eventually she clears er throat and asks if there's anything she can do for them.

Sam and Emily glance at each other. Bella's not looking starstruck with love, but she's not acting normal either. Who stands in a doorway and stares at people for almost a minute before talking?

It's inconclusive.

Emily hands over the fish fry. "From Harry," she says, and introduces herself.

Bella nods, remembering Charlie's friend who all but ran out of the door when he saw her and hasn't been fishing with Charlie since. None of Charlie's friends have. Charlie is going nuts. Maybe she should try hooking him up with Carlisle, vampires are lovely, they'd get along so well.

Bella, noting Emily and Sam aren't saying anything else, says bye and moves to close the door.

"Wait!" Sam yells, at the same time as Emily rips a piece of paper from her pocket, and sticks it into Bella's hand.

Bella looks down on it. It's two phone numbers.

She looks back up at Sam and Emily, who by now feel quite certain that this girl hasn't fallen in love with them and that this is the most humiliating moment of both their lives.

Just in case, though...

"Call us," Emily says flirtatiously, winks, and runs away.

Sam follows.

Bella never calls them back, and they never speak of this again.

A few months later, Leah who’d been shopping in Forks happily tells Sam and Emily that she's fallen in love with a girl, she lives in Forks, she's amazing, her name is Bella Swan.

"I took one look at her, and I knew," Leah says dreamily.

[the-palmetto-king]

In Neil's Sophomore year, Katelyn (5'3, blue eyed, slender build, auburn haired Katelyn) has a friend with cancer and decides to cut her hair very, very short (ahem like Neil's). CUE THE DRAMATICS

listen this took very long i've been insanely busy. so um sorry. but also this ended up really long. so. enjoy.

---------------------

"I'm thinking about cutting my hair," Katelyn said in the car, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Okay. I mean you don't need my permission, and I think you should do it if you want to, but why?" Aaron asked.

"I mean with Emma and everything, I mean I feel like it's the least I could do," she replied. A few weeks ago, one of the vixens had been diagnosed with cancer and it had been hard on all of them. A few of them had decided to band together and cut their hair in a show of support.

Aaron loved how caring she was, caring about everyone from her found family with the vixens to fucking Josten sometimes. He could never, and probably will never, understand how those two came to be friends.

When he picked Katelyn up from her hair stylist's place Aaron's first thought was that she looked amazing.

His second thought was that she looked like Josten. God. His girlfriend, of all people looking like the Palmetto striker who happened to be fucking his brother.

Auburn hair atop a thin face with bright blue eyes flashing in the sunshine.

"Do you like it?" she asked warily.

"Do you?"

"Yeah, I really like the feel and the look," Katelyn responded.

"Then yes, I do," Aaron smiled. He pushed all thoughts about his twin brother and his boyfriend out of his head.

His girlfriend was amazing and lovely, and nothing like Josten. He kissed her and pulled out of his parking spot.

When he pulled up to practice later, he saw Josten standing next to Andrew and it nearly gave him a heart attack. When he couldn't see Josten's obnoxious face, his first thought was that it was Katelyn. God. He loved Katelyn more than he loved himself, but he had to figure something out if he thought of Neil fucking Josten every time he looked at her and vice versa.

The more he thought about it, the more he didn't like it. Katelyn was kind, forgiving, and the woman he loved. Neil was ruthless, hotheaded, and the boy who was going after his brother.

Maybe they did look a little similar though. He could admit that. Maybe admit it, but not deal with it. If he ignored it long enough, maybe it would go away.

Sitting in front of Bee a week later, it did not. Clearly. When he was sleep-deprived, for example, he nearly called Neil Katelyn, and he couldn't stop thinking about she looked like Neil when he was kissing Katelyn yesterday. It was seriously fucking him up.

Andrew was running late for their joint session, and he would never talk about it with Andrew. They have enough problems as is. Bee could just tell something was wrong. He could see why Andrew liked her. Maybe "liked" wasn't the word; more like "she appealed to him." He would never understand their relationship and he's given up on trying to.

So when she asked him what was bothering him, he said fuck it and told her. Legally, she couldn't tell anyone.

"So does it bother you that Katelyn and Neil look similar, or that it's Neil she looks similar to?"

Turns out Neil, speaking of the devil, was sick and Andrew decided to skip and take care of him. Aaron had no idea how that made him feel, or whatever it was that Betsy asked because he didn't care. Andrew could skip their session with a fake excuse that he was taking care of his multiple-night stand. He was okay to skip his weekly torture, but Betsy asked him to stay.

Which is how he wound up talking about his current issue.

"I mean- they're so different, and Katelyn and I care about each other, and she could never be like him."

"So it's the fact that she looks like Neil that's bothering you," Bee replied.

"I didn't say that," Aaron protested, "I just hate that they are nothing alike but look so similar."

"And how exactly are they different?"

"Well Katelyn's amazing and I love her, and Neil's well- just Andrew's boyfriend and they don't actually care about each other; Neil's ruthless and rude, and everything Katelyn isn't."

"So is this about you and Andrew then?"

"I did not say that."

"But you meant it," Bee quirked an eyebrow. "And I think you might be upset that you and Andrew aren't as different as you may believe."

"Are you going to give me a solution to stop thinking of my brother's- whatever Neil is to him- or are you just going to sit there and psychoanalyze me?"

"You are welcome to leave if you don't want to get to the root of the problem," Bee replied, completely straight-faced.

"I don't want to get to the root of the problem, I just want it fixed."

When Katelyn picked him up, he tried to push everything relating to Andrew and Neil out of his head.

It was small talk before a genuine question about how therapy went before making out in her car and thinking that this was everything compared to his brother and Neil.

But it wasn't that he didn't care about Andrew, because he did and he was learning to; it was that he could never see how Andrew could look at Neil like he saw Katelyn.

Ignoring it worked for a little while, and he watched the sunlight streaming through her hair as she carefully drove her car back to the dorms. Completely unlike Neil's reckless driving, swerving between lanes like he was still on the run.

They said goodbye in the hallway with a kiss as Aaron opened his door. He trudged through his mountain of homework before waiting outside the Maserati for practice.

Neil and Andrew approached the car and hopped in the front seats of the car. Fuckers.

He rolled his eyes and hopped in the back. He looked at Neil leaning back in his seat and watched as his hair caught fire. Just like Katelyn's did. Fuck. God.

When they finally pulled up to the stadium Aaron jumped out of the car as quickly as he could and slammed the door. Neil looked at him weirdly, but Aaron didn't need anything from the source of his problem at the moment.

They had the same hair and the same eyes. They weren't anything like each other, right? Other than red hair and blue eyes. A fairly rare genetic combination doubling up in Palmetto to torture him. Figures, knowing his luck around anything concerning his brother.

The longer he zoned out staring at Neil, Aaron sort of started to see exactly what was bothering him.

It wasn't just that they were different, and that Neil annoyed him whilst Katelyn did anything but. Maybe it was the fact that Andrew had someone that wasn't him.

He remembered the nights on the bus where Neil comforted Andrew and the time Katelyn punched a guy who catcalled her. As much as he hated to admit it, both he and his brother had found people. Similar people, to say the least.

And whether or not they looked similar, well. It was funny that short auburn hair was what caused Aaron's entire predicament in the first place.

Andrew had Neil. Whether it was an actual relationship or just whatever they did, they were happy and Aaron was okay with that. And Aaron had Katelyn with that, and Andrew was coming to be okay with that.

God, admitting to himself that he and his brother were even somewhat similar was uncomfortable. Not in a bad way, more like it was something he was going to have to get used to.

A week later, he was sitting in front of Bee and he made eye contact and muttered a quick

"You were right."

She smiled and offered him hot cocoa. Andrew didn't say anything or even ask, and he silently thanked his brother for his apathetic attitude.

When Andrew left, Aaron stayed behind.

"I think it was more that it was Andrew's person or whatever," he said.

"Was this about Neil or Andrew?" Bee asked.

"Both, I think," he hesitated, "Maybe that Andrew and I had found people, and maybe even that they were similar." What had Josten even done to him. He wasn't exactly complaining about his mending relationship with Andrew, but now he was talking about his problems.

"Well, Aaron, I think that is a good explanation and that you have made good progress, especially with your brother." He nodded at her and got up from his chair.

In the car, Andrew raised an eyebrow, one of his only tells of emotions, and said, "If you're waiting for me to ask about whatever the fuck is going on with you I'm not going to."

"I wasn't waiting for you to do anything, asshole. And nothing's going on with me," Aaron replied through gritted teeth.

Just because he accepted whatever Josten was to Andrew does not mean he had to play nice with his asshole brother or his boyfriend. But for now, he was okay with his asshole brother and his even worse boyfriend.

[randomnameless]

I don't know if this has been asked before, but I was wondering what your thoughts on Rhea are.

Oh, I don't think someone asked it, but I remember a character meme.

Rhea's in the Julia tier : you're expecting things and the game doesn't give you any.

you asked for thoughts so this is long and rather unorganised even if i tried a bit and i feel like i repeated myself a lot so meh

If Edel and Rhea have one thing in common, it's being shafted by the need to make Billy the most special being every with the monstrous "I was lonely before you player-chan uwu".

Seteth'n'Flayn ? In the same trashcan Hubert went in.

Catherine, Shamir, the randoms living in the monastery? Dgaf but still she's willing to die for them so does she really gaf or not? Rhea's willing to give her blood and crest stone shards (to this day I still don't understand what those are) to trusted randoms who would become cardinals? "uwu player-chan". I know I've written a bit about it with the seirelm anon, but with the Canon-ish info? Post Zanado Rhea told a random dude she could turn in a dragon, gave her blood to the same dude and remained in his empire/fighting by his side for at least 30 years. Still “lonely without U Billy <3″

I've written this in the meme entry, but Rhea has her own net of relationships. They're not as important as Dimitri and his childhood friends, but erasing them for the sake of "player-chan" feels wrong.

Role and goals

Rhea's in an interesting place, being a former "legendary hero" like Athos, Sephiran etc.

Still her fight isn't over, she only defeated Nemesis and couldn't end the mastermind behind (a bit like Seliph if you only kill Arvis or Roy when you forget to pick up every legendary weapon). Also, if Seiros killed Nemesis, she hasn't won. In the current Fodlan, she still has to pretend to be a human, the Nabateans as a culture/population are dead. They're still 5 (ish? I think the apostles are lizards), she's still afraid humans will dice them if they learn the truth. Has she won? Idk. Could she win and make a Fodlan were lizards and humans could live together? I don't think so.

Her role as the Archbishop? Well, the game really liked Rhea as a red herring during white clouds and the way FE16 is built, around the monastery, reinforces it. Rhea's the head of the monastery, so she's the head of your world. Everything wrong with the world is automatically linked to Rhea.

So, when Marianne complains about people wanting to kill/ostracise her because of her crest, thinking it's a curse, we of course wonder "why Rhea can't tell to the randoms that no Marianne shouldn't be killed/shunned because of her crest?". Completely forgetting that, hey, Marianne's from the Alliance and heiress of Edmund, so if some people should intervene, it should be her dad "why the fuck are you trying to kill my daughter" or the Alliance council "Duke Riegan, could you please make a public statement about my daughter and how she isn't some sort of demonic beast so stop throwing rocks at her?".

Same thing with the Empire, why should you blame the church and the crests instead of the people doing shit? Hanneman's brother in law? Like is marriage so absolute that a husband can force multiple pregnancies on his wife to the point of literally killing her? The von Essar aren't as important as the Bergliez, but Hanneman's sister dying like that should have rang some bells? Hanneman's dad didn't care? No one wanted to appeal to the Emperor or something? If Jane the random or Karen the peasant died this way, it’d be usual class nonsense. But a noble woman??

Rhea should have done more to prevent crest abuse. She wrote tenets in her Bible and apparently doesn't discriminate in her monastery. But in the other countries? Idk. Her tenets are interpreted like your shopping list by Gloucester Sr "and add a part where interacting with foreigners goes against Seiros's teachings what yes I know better than those dunces from the eastern/central church".

It's not because Riegan Sr and Ionius aren't doing shit that she should do nothing too, but ultimately it falls on the usual landmine about Rhea's influence and power over Fodlan and if we consider Fodlan isn't just the Monastery we see but a continent made up of 4 autonomous states...

The so-called status quo isn't upheld by the church alone (if it is upheld in the first place!), but also by the empire and the Alliance... Lambert was toasted before making any changes, the Alliance is that weird thing where money is anything and crests/old nobility doesn't matter anymore, and the Empire is... Well. The Empire.

Regarding this, I find it really strange that Rhea went to Goneril and rescued one of their slaves, with how much she cares about protecting her monastery and not antagonising anyone, picking Cyril up, risking the ire of house Goneril, feels really risky from her perspective.

Imo WC doesn't sell me the "church rules over the continent" take.

Ultimately it doesn't matter because Rhea thinks she should have done more, and abused her position as the archbishop to rez her mom - I understand the "abused her position" as regretting her various omissions, like helping more people around etc etc.

I also feel like Rhea’s got a big survivor complex, and tries to fulfill impossible tasks. "leading/guiding the world?" she won't take an active role in it, but still resents the state of current Fodlan and wishes Sothis could restore some order (crest abuse? Or relics popping up right and left meaning more sibs dying). She wants to :

1/ guide the world and make it a better place (why complaining about the wayward Fodlan otherwise?)

2/ protect randoms who live under her protection

3/ make sure no one learns the truth about her appearance and relics at the same time.

I don't think it's possible given her current role and especially not possible on her own.

About 3/, call back to FE9 or not, but Rhea's paranoia is... Actually, not proven to be exaggerated in the game.

Ranulf was lynched in Crimea when he was discovered to be a laguz? In a certain route, Rhea's called a cruel beast due to her appearance, accused of not having "human" feelings and is depicted as a creature masquerading as a human. Hate and attack the woman all you want for things she did or might have done, but getting rid of her because she's not human? Rhea's right about not revealing her true nature, because, relics notwithstanding, humans will try to kill her for being a nabatean. Relic wise, in the DLC, we learn Aubin was recently turned in a relic, so that's even more reason to hide.

On 1/, wanting to promote peace in the land? National bias at play with rewriting history “to promote peace” issue. Rhea also built the officer's academy (if nobles from different states can live and study together surely they won't try to kill each other when they return home because they might have become friends?) and with help from the everyone in Fodlan (even the empire iirc?) built the locket to fend off Almyrian invasions. Not saying this is the best way to protect your borders but at least she tried to help instead of staying holed in her monastery.

Imo if Rhea didn't care about Fodlan, she'd have followed her bros and fortified herself in her monastery without accepting random humans to live with her, wouldn't have written a book about how everyone had to get along "unless it goes against the goddess" and wouldn't basically run what seems to be the biggest orphanage/place for the needy/and whatever is the abyss in the continent.

Not saying she doesn't have a priority, but Rhea tries to care, on her scale, about Fodlan's randoms.

About said randoms (and 2/)...

Well there's this bout with Lonato's rebellion and another herring where Rhea's all "I will destroy anyone who takes arms against the church and its believers" and it's extreme, I can’t deny. But if Lonato took arms and mounted a militia to attack Ositia's castle and its randoms? Hector'd have Armads'd Lonato without a second thought. Elincia had qualms about taking her weapons against her own countrymen who were used by Ludveck, but in the end, she took up her weapons to defend her castle, even if it meant she had to kill militiamen. Rhea's line seemed random and cold in the context, but it's the same general idea, attack her people and she will kill you. Still, if you don't take weapons against her, she won't react violently. Duke Gerth is apparently dick waving with Aubin's relic, but Shamir wasn't sent to recover the thing or to get rid of Gerth.

Ultimately Rhea blows her cover and abandons her dream to reunite with her mother to protect the monastery and its inhabitants in 3 routes (arguably in CF too). Someone once made a post about the differences between Seiros's and Edel's crowns and the symbolism of wings - the IO's wings are meant to protect. The IO is the guardian/protector. Rhea tanks missiles and buys time for the students to escape at the cost of her life.

Relationships

Rhea and Sothis? someone made a post summarizing my thoughts about their relationship, or lack of, and if we can argue Sothis was shafted by the devs like Rhea and Edel, ultimately the only important person to Sothis is Billy.

Billy doesn't warp Sothis's preexisting net of relationships, Sothis doesn't have relationships with anyone save for Billy. Rhea wants to meet her mom more than anything else (save for protecting randoms) but Sothis will never address that plot point. She only does in SS and off screen, and it ends up with Rhea wondering if she should live... so take it as you want, but to me it mustn't have been the "hug and pat on the head" kind of reunion.

Ultimately we see Rhea is able to let go of her dream (rez mom) in several routes, she understands and acknowledges Sothis will never return and Billy has her powers now, so either she dies more or less at peace knowing she can trust Billy with Fodlan's future, or she can return to Zanado and live peacefully with Catherine.

Which leads me to the Billy relationship,

As much as I hate player pandering, it makes some sense that Rhea would support Billy and not, let's say, Caspar. I still hate it though because Billy exclusive support means we were robbed of Rhea's other supports with, idk, her fam, Cyril, Catherine, Shamir, Alois, Hanneman, Manu etc etc.

In the beginning of WC, Rhea's pretty sure Billy's Sothis but without memories. Then in the non-cf chapter 12, she tells Billy they know what they are and thus must guide Fodlan, also telling Seteth Billy's a vector for sothis's powers, but not Sothis herself. In SS's finale she calls them "mother" but in her S-support finally acknowledges Billy's their own thing.

In CF Rhea's vicious in her trash talk but immediately jumps to the conclusion that Billy cannot be or hear Sothis, because, to her, logically, Sothis wouldn't side with Edel and her Agarthian allies (stealing the crest stones, Flayn, etc etc). Billy is something that stole Sothis's crest stone and sword and wants to finish what Nemesis started. I don't think CF Rhea snaps because Billy isn't Sothis, CF Rhea snaps because, again, someone is using her mother to kill her.

Rhea's also supposed to have been fond of Citrus to the point of talking to her remains (something she does with her mom) which could explain her sympathy for Billy regardless of the Sothis project.

Jeralt's a different issue, apparently they worked together for more than 100 years but Rhea never told him the truth about her nature, only about how he was saved. Still, Jeralt betrays when his baby is "weird" and unlike regular human babies so... Would he have ran away if he learnt what rhea was? Dumped Citrus if he knew she was an artificial being? Idk.

Catherine Shamir cyril and pals (Alois)? We don't know bcs the game dgaf about anyone not named Billy. As I said above, It’d have been nice to get more interactions with randoms she is working with, or at least showed some care, but nope. “Player-chan uwu” strikes again.

Seteth'n'Flayn? Rhea's close to them, she gets out of her room to look for Flayn and Cyril and Catherine note how she seems close to Seteth (who's totally her bro), but again, the game hates us. FFS don't think she has a line with Flayn!

Secrets and explosions

Tied to 3/ and 1/ from earlier, Rhea keeps a lot of secrets which could justify her lack of relationships/supports with the others... but this argument falls flat, because she’s not the only one with a secret and if Flayn doesn’t seem to care that much about hers, Seteth does and is still able to support students and staff members. Which leads to tragedies.

The Christophe incident is not well documented, and while we learn Rhea was the target of Christophe’s attempt because Western peeps told him so, it is not very well explained why she didn’t execute him on those grounds instead of falsifying charges about involvement with the Regicide. We are told it was to stabilise the Kingdom, but I still don’t know how the Kingdom would have suffered backlash if Rhea told the truth (maybe it would have led to open conflict between the western church and the central church in the kingdom, when the kingdom needed stability at that point? idk).

Still, Lonato wants revenge for Christophe, not because he was executed on false charges, but because he died ; imo, if Lonato learnt the truth, he’d still be out for Catherine and Rhea’s head.

Aelfie’s gambit is more of a direct result of Rhea’s secrecy, because she had “no words” for him about why Citrus was still in pristine condition, he gave up and tried to rez her. Would it had been different if she told him what Citrus was (and by extent, what she was)? Idk. Maybe, maybe not.

Still, Rhea doesn’t keep secrets from everyone every time - she once trusted Willy and told him about her alternate form and it exploded 1k years later, when Willy’s descendants are out for her head because she’s a creature masquerading as a human (I know mole people also played a part, but I guess it sticked more with Edel and the gang who already knew Rhea was a dragon ; trying to convince a random that “hey, this woman is a dragon !” would be more difficult). CF-wise again, Rhea trusts Billy with the SoC and, again, it explodes. In CF Rhea feels betrayed, she trusted some people and now the very same people (or their descendant in Edel’s case) are trying to kill her.

So it’s not a case of someone never trusting anyone, it’s someone trusting some people and regretting it afterwards (in both routes + CF at least, even if I firmly believe the “evil lizards ruling over the world” spiel doesn’t come from Willy, but from later emperors influenced by mole people).

There can also be a point made for Aelfie, who might have been able to merge with Citrus to create an umbral beast because he had Rhea’s blood and a crest stone shard - Citrus being a fake Nabatean and Aelfie having a crest stone + blood might have produced CS’s final boss? Rhea trusted Aelfie with a crest stone shard and her blood, and he became an umbral beast.

Interestingly, Rhea is hell bent on keeping her secrets regarding her identity, in SS Seteth has to beg her to reveal everything to Billy when Billy is the most important person in the world “uwu” or at least, the only person Rhea supposedly opened to. Even the “uwu” factor isn’t enough, on its own, to make her reveal the truth about her identity.

She gives Claude half-truths, and has to be on death’s door to tell him everything - still occulting Seteth’n’Flayn, to the point where Claude later wonders if there are other children of the goddess around.

Vengeful Rhea?

Rhea isn't a stale piece of bread like Julia. She says mean words to Nemesis but also brutally kills him. Rhea cannot forgive the Elites. I know it's very different, but Julia "dad is the kindest man I ever knew" making a 180° “i must atone for what dad did eff him” will always make me throw up - she doesn’t have to be vengeful or try to stab Seliph with a butter knife, but no acknowledgement of “dad’s the bestest” after his death, or even, of his death is meh.

To Rhea, Nemesis and the Elites are a trigger point, and everything related to Zanado. CF!Billy using her mom’s powers is like Nemesis, CF!Billy + Edel pillaging what remains of her siblings in Nemesis’n’Dudes. Flamey doing his shit with Flayn also parallels that. There’s the usual “vengeance sucks” speech to be given, but also the Tellius verse where Laguz aren’t depicted in a bad light when they want to destroy Izuka or when Tibarn learns Lekain was responsible for Serenes’s massacre.

Still, unlike Tibarn’n’pals, Rhea, unlike Macuil, doesn't seem to hold a grudge against descendants of the Elites. Maybe she had faith in them when she told them not to abuse the power of their crests, but then their descendants forgot or didn’t care and we’re in the so-called crest system.

In SS, Seteth asks the BE students if they want to return home to the Empire and how he won’t hold it against them. Seteth’s being Rhea’s right hand bro in this situation, I doubt he’d have proposed this solution without her approval.

She is vengeful and ready to pursue for more 90 years someone to kill them, but she won’t target that someone’s descendants or potential allies. I’ve read some takes about the Western Church being razed to the ground after Catherine’s paralogue, but iirc, Rhea’s only going to execute the Bishop there ; they appoint a new bishop in hopes to ease the relationships between the central and western church. There’d be no point to appoint someone to rule over a body that doesn’t exist...

Grey waves

Wave 1 : Another parallel with Edel is the will to sink in troubled waters to reach their goals.

However, Rhea stays on the surface.

Aelfie thinks Seiros failed to rez Sothis with the chalice because she didn't take more blood from the apostles. Blood rituals are creepy and gave an umbral beast. Seiros didn't pursue and sought another mean to rez Sothis without killing her bros. Rhea makes homunculi to host Sothis's soul? It fails but the homunculi isn't destroyed asap to make another one, hell, Rhea cares about them (which is all kinds of fucked up on its own).

AM wise, iirc, Seteth and Catherine say Rhea'd never forgive them if they run to save her instead of saving randoms first.

Still, making homunculus to create a vessel for her mom - making artificial lives - is problematic, she’s ashamed of it “i did questionable things” and Seteth berates her on her “questionable” experiments.

CF!Rhea eats babies during the final map. She burns the city to make her last stronghold and refuses to run away. CF!Rhea, at the end of this route, completely abandoned goal 1 2 and 3. She wants to survive, yes, but to recover Sothis, no matter how. She still seems to care about humanity, but takes everything too literally and is persuaded humanity and humans are after her to hurt her and her mother (i’m pretty sure uncle Arry was waiting with his Agarthan tech suitcase for Edel to deal with the beast in the background). Contrary to CF’s chapter 12, Endgame!Rhea doesn’t have lines when Catherine and Cyril fall. She’s still siding with humans, but she’s in this for herself now.

Of course, CF!Rhea is special, because CF!Rhea lives again through her trauma, CF!Rhea lost her home, her bro and niece a few chapters ago, she lost her human allies, apparently some peons from her church are deserting and Uncle is waiting with his portable electric saw to turn her in a shiny sword, because she trusted a corpse with Sothis’s heart and spine and trusted a human 1000 years ago with her secret. And now said corpse follows someone who rings at her door with an army, wishes to obliterate her unless she surrenders (?) and works with Uncle and his dubstep pals.

In the other routes, Billy doesn’t want to killer her with her mother’s spine and tries to defend her home, Seteth’n’Flayn aren’t forced into exile or dead and depending on the route she gets to see Uncle and his dubstep friends being buried under rubble.

Troubled waters to reach her goals also include slowing Fodlan’s technological advancements (but was it really slowing down Fodlan’s R&D’s department or cliking “no” when Mole People offer a free (for now) new technology that makes you advance from bronze age to the industrial era in one go?)

Wave 2 : Rhea’s anchored in the past, she wants to return to happier days with her mom and her family, but also wants to help randoms in Fodlan

She doesn’t seem to mind the present where humans do whatever they want, and yet will protect her people and tries (or tried since it’s history) to keep Fodlan safe.

I think the game wanted to tell us Rhea’s stuck in the past, but she also manages to form bonds (albeit fickle) in the present with Catherine, Shamir and, arguably, Cyril. Seteth’n’Flayn accept the past and try to move forward, Rhea cannot and yet is making baby steps forward, or at least to live in the present. “uwu factor” is supposed to mean Rhea’s stuck in the past and can only see Billy for what they are once she accepts to live in the present, but Rhea’s already fond of Catherine, calls Aelfie her child, was fond of Citrus and Jeralt, makes time for Cyril, etc etc. It’s not as clear cut as drinking tea with them but it’s still something that quashes the “lonely B4 U player-chan uwu”.

Rhea thinks her biggest grey wave is how she didn’t do enough for Fodlan and feels inadequate to walk in Sothis’s shoes as the guardian/protector of Fodlan - she could have done more, but she’s busy juggling with three goals, rez mom, protect fodlan, protect the fam.

I think one of her main issue (but the game was also made this way so) is to try to reach those goals alone, save for the “rez mom” goal, everyone in Fodlan, especially the heads of the three states should be concerned with keeping peace in the continent!

Lambert was BBQ’s, Riegan’s busy shitting on Gloucester and Ionius is... well, Ionius. Add to that Mole People starting up shit all around the continent and you have the recipe for a disaster. I’m not saying Lambert and Ionius should have participated to the “protect her family” goal, but at least not trying to eradicate them to turn them in relics would have been nice, sadly Ionius’s bro in law was an Agarthan.

Even if she is nearly immortal compared to a human, Rhea can’t do everything on her own. That’s why I ultimately think a SS ending is doomed to fail, Billy will try to be Rhea 2.0. and in 1000 years it will fall apart again.

AM ending? Billy will become like Rhea was post War of Heroes, but when Dimitri’s descendants start to do shit, his Kingdom disappears and humans start to return to their usual shitty selves, what will Billy do?

VW ending is kind of the same, Claude wants to open the borders and make everyone able to live regardless of their differences, but what if 940 years later an Almyrian president decides to build a wall between Fodlan and Almyra and make Fodlaneses pay for it? What is immortal Billy, who knew Claude and his ideals, going to do?

Wave 3 (lol i nearly forgot but remembered when i was rambling in the tags) : Rhea and technology !

The DLC book and Word of God said she slowed advance of technology in Fodlan to protect peace etc etc. But there’s a book where a cardinal said “eff to autopsies else people won’t rely on us with faith magic” which is... kind of weird. There’s a reason why Rhea might have approved that ban (Why does Freikugel look like a hip bone?) but it still deprived Fodlan’s randoms from the scientifical advance of autopsies... and made people reliant on faith magic.

Actually, the book goes

“Though it is widely believed that this is medically relevant, such actions upon a corpse are considered desecration of the dead. Since white magic can be used to a similar end, autopsies were deemed taboo. A notable cardinal asserted that if medical science were to excel over faith-based white magic, it would destabilize the foundation of the church “

I already pointed out the WTF between faith and white magic (Seteth doesn’t believe his mom is real so he has no faith boon) but interesting to note “desecrating the dead” is still something of an argument nowadays, not regarding autopsies but other practices like anatomical theaters etc etc. Maybe White Magic isn’t intrusive and yields the same results? idk.

Interesting to note, it’s a cardinal who edicted/justified that ban (Rhea as the head of the Church would have given her approval oc). As pointed out with the Freikugel example, Rhea’d have a personal interest in preventing humans to know more about anatomy (goal 3/). Would people stop looking to the church to be healed if “medical science” progresses too much? Maybe. From what we see in the curren Fodlan, it doesn’t.

Also, French version translated the “foundation of the church” as “stability” of the church - would the church become unstable or challenged if people could heal without using white magic? Again, we ultimately know that it doesn’t, magical science and medical science coexist, Manuela gives a short summary of the two - they have different effects.

As for things Rhea herself banned : Telescopes, Oil exploitation and Printed Press.

Telescopes were banned because Rhea thought it would increase violence during wartimes and would make it too easy to snipe from afar (TFW mages with bolting can do the same without telescopes, but they’re limited by their range and if they have a gloucester’s crest by Rhea’s sister’s femur’s range or whatever is Thyrsus). We know the mole people use (and most likely used before during the Sothis war) this technology. The “lessening the mystery of the goddess” thing is noted by Edel herself who wonders if the Goddess could really have come from space since it’s super far away. Edel doesn’t know the Goddess is an alien dragon-thing though.

Oil exploitation : “Misuse could result in accidental death” tfw random Faerghus countryman thought it was water and died :’(

Used tactically by those lacking magical abilities - like gambits? Was Rhea thinking that a random human cannot set fire to an entire city (lol) on his own with his limited spell pool/uses, but if he uses oil then he would only be limited by the quatity of oil? So it’d be easier to cause mass fires? Or whatever Robin did in FE13 with the ships and the Valmese army? Also, if Rhea thought oil could replace humans with magic, does it mean humans with magic were supposed to do everything oil can do? Like making a lamp or they still used something else as fuel? “Competition for it could cause strife” Rhea acknowledged that if humans discovered this ressource they’d deem it as essential and try to get their hands on it, even if they had to wage war?

Metal molding Printing Machine : “after careful consideration” Rhea banned it because it’d be useless for illiterate randoms - well yes, but why should this be an argument? You don’t ban something because it’s useless, look, no one banned airpods - risk of mass circulation of false information or rumors : rhea wanted to prevent redshit from existing This is a way to control information, but funnily enough in the game, we see the results or someone deliberately using manifestos spreading misinformation - risk of “increasing disparity between church branches” (fr version has “rivalry” instead of disparity) what does it mean? The central church would have more means to print books than the eastern church so the eastern church would be jealous? Or the Western Church could mass print its doctrine and have more zealots than the central or the easter church?

Ultimately, all those bans were lifted with time, Manuela performs Jeralt’s autopsy, Edel’s imperial science division managed to guess the distance between the Blue sea star and Fodlan, Oil is apparently used in several gambits, Edel’s able to send manifestos around the continent and Seteth can write children books and sell them without difficulties. Hilda can also lose books which would be a big no-no even if you are a noble if books weren’t, kind of, mass printed.

So why those bans? To protect Fodlan and the fam, but since they were lifted with time, I don’t think Rhea abandonned her goals, most likely, she thought humans were making small steps to discover those technologies, slowly learning about them so they won’t have them when they’re not “ready enough” to use them.

The “ready enough” thing sounds paternalistic or what can be expected from a more technologically advanced alien, but technically Rhea’s part alien and she lived through (or not?) an episode where humans received technology and did shit with it (mole people) so maybe she won’t hand them the car with the keys this time, and instead let them figure out how to build the car.

Still, this is HC because, as usual, the game doesn’t let us talk or question Rhea about those things, so we can only infer, read between the lines or between pixels.

****

TBH, I didn’t care a lot about her when I played, but when she had to eat babies in CF I grew more interested. Other bloggers already pointed it out, but Rhea’s a Tiki, but also a “traditional FE lord” in the sense she avenged her mom who was killed by the king of another kingdom, lived in exile and raised an army to fight against the King.

Still, Rhea didn’t end up as the leader of the world, or as the first Empress of United Fodlan, or something like that. She let Willy do his thing. Why? How? Why didn’t she became an integral part of the Empire, if she had been politically important, or a kind of seer/oracle, it would have been difficult for the Empire to go against her!

But nope, Rhea figged away in her mountains to rez her mom, sprout some “doctrine” (she could have done the same as an Emperor/Seer/Oracle) and watched over randoms who made up her “church”. She sometimes tries to intervene in Fodlan’s best interests, but it failed. Because Rhea doesn’t want to rule. She feels like she has to be a guide, but when humans don’t follow her? Well, what can she do? FE16 doesn’t show us Rhea sending her knights against the Empire when the Empire kicked out her Church and basically said “fig” to her face. FE16 doesn’t show us Rhea being angry and punching Gloucester in the face because he doesn’t show “real piety” and sprouts doctrine out of his rear.

Still, when she has to take a more hands-on approach and cannot be a distant figure/guide, she complains about maintaining a certain image as the Archbishop and how she cannot socialise with students or even walk around without Seteth randoms guarding her. She feels her mother would do a better job and tries to act as a proxy. Imo, Rhea’s bound by duty to her mom, to her sibs dead and living, and to Fodlan. She doesn’t reject her role, she accepts it, she doesn’t like it yes, but if going Gandalf in non-CF chapter 12 shows, she will fulfill it.

What’s most saddening though, is how her duty is a self-imposed one. Rez her mom? She personally took the challenge, because she misses Sothis the most and feels ashamed of this feeling to the point of not telling Seteth about it (interesting enough, Indech seems to be aware Billy’s Sothis incarnation and didn’t jump to the “Billy must be one of Nemesis’s kids with the crest of flames” conclusion, as if he knew Sothis could “incarnate” one day, but was he thinking Sothis would incarnate on her own or Rhea would trigger it? Flayn also suspects a thing about Billy being related to them because of Rhea). Rhea personally thinks she has to lead/guide Fodlan and make it a better place, ignoring the heads of the 3 states who should also be concerned with this goal. Rhea will create a false history to protect her living siblings when Macuil and Indech won’t give a fuck and live in their bestial forms somewhere, and when Seteth hides, but made it clear his only wish is to protect Flayn and the apostles, if they were really lizards, disappeared in random villages.

FE16 isn’t interested by Rhea’s story though.

That’s why I’m desperately waiting for a War of Heroes DLC or prequel of BSFE or whatever because I don’t really care about Fodlan in 1180 and who can have a perfect tea time with Billy or not.

I’d like to know why Birdie and Indech figged away, why Rhea thought letting Willy control the entire continent when he knows she’s a dragon was a good idea, why the Apostles didn’t take part in the Nemesis fight, why Fodlan’s humans decided to side with Willy in his brand new Empire instead of staying with King Nemesis, did Sothis have a previous faithful and what happened when she disappeared, were the Nabateans tyrannical rulers over humans which made some with Nemesis’n’pals, what were they supposed to do when they left Zanado, etc, etc.

So just like Julia and the baijilions AU ideas I came up with, Rhea’s a fuel for AUs because her base game dgaf about her.

[mystech-master]

A while ago, I made a post discussing my thoughts on Nu and Lambda, in it I also described why I personally can’t ship them, even if I also said you could do mental gymnastics to ignore the Saya clone stuff (read it to understand what I mean).

But, they aren’t the only ones to have this issue; What about Noel and Celica, two more MAIN characters who have a similar issue in their storytelling.

I will go into that now, starting with Noel (beware possibly long-ass post)

Noel is one of the main characters, and one of the most important characters in the setting (to many fan’s displeasure), so of course she is highly tied to the MC Ragna, even getting a lot of shippy moments with him. This is in spite of her being a Murakumo.

Now in my Nu and Lambda thing I said that b/c Ars Magus is weird and not an exact science and seem to be made from Saya’s soul not her DNA you could do mental gymnastics to ignore that and make the shipping okay. Could you do that with Noel? I say NO.

Not only is Noel MUCH closer to Saya (seriously put a picture of her next to young Saya from flashbacks and she looks exactly like what she’d grow up to be), but she is also apparently made from the largest chunk of her soul.

The games seem to go along this thought process with her:

Noel is a Murakumo -> Noel is not human -> Noel is a weapon -> cue angst

but the fans have the thought process of

Noel is a Murakumo -> Murakumo Units are clones of Saya -> Saya is Ragna’s sister -> Murakumo Units are clones of Ragna’s sister -> they are Ragna’s sisters.

This gets even more stupid once Izanami comes in and we learn SHE is Saya, not Noel (her being an amnesiac Saya would’ve made things much easier), because then it is like “See, Noel isn’t Saya, THAT’S Saya!”. Also Blazblue has a while thing about roles, like Ragna has ONE little brother and ONE little sister: Jin and Saya, respectively. But fans say he can have multiple little sisters but the story doesn’t because “roles” or whatever (using the weird stage terms that Rachel and Amane use).

Like, here is an idea I had for CS’ plot with more emphasis on Noel actually being Saya rather than just a clone/copy, or at least more focus on her connection with Ragna to HAVE that sibling instead of just taking the “I am not human” thing from the Murakumo:

They escape from the Cauldron at the end of CT, and Ragna now gets a god look at her, maybe he does think that this IS Saya, and you can have a bit of an emotional scene here, but Noel runs off b/c A. she is still shy girl and a MAN is so close to her, and B. this is still the SS-Class Criminal Ragna the Bloodedge. A bit of angst there because Ragna supposedly thought something horrible happened to Saya (based on a flashback in CF with Jubei).

Much, MUCH later, he can meet up with Noel again, before she is kidnapped by Terumi for the final act of being the Godslayer, maybe with Makoto there. This is where they can actually talk and bond for a bit so Ragna has an actual reason to go running off an saving her. This is where Ragna can explain his little sister to the two, maybe thinking that he got Noel confused for Saya since she looks just like her.

But, then they start piecing together everything. Noel has weird memories of Ragna, and she has amnesia from before the destruction of Ibukido after the Ikaruga Civil War. SO, what if Noel IS just an Amnesiac Saya who has trauma induced amnesia from the Ibukido stuff? This is great for Noel because all this time she might also be worried about her humanity after the shit with Nu in CT’s true ending, and maybe a cryptic line from Terumi/Hazama, but now with this information, she reaffirms that she is HUMAN, she has a family (imagine the reaction when she learns that major dickbag Kisaragi is her big brother). We could then maybe cut back to someone watching them cryptically commentating, and when we cut back Noel is in the middle of telling Ragna, her newly re-discovered big brother, about what she’s been up to, her adoptive family and her time at the Military Academy. Maybe here we could also have a gag reel where, like a later one where they try and help Celica improve her sense of direction, Ragna and Noel cook something. We get some fun-sibling time and get to see Ragna’s cooking hobby in semi-canon action. He’d call her Saya, but everyone else calls her Noel since that’s what they know her as (think of it similar to how Vegeta calls Goku by his Sayan name “Kakarot” while everyone else just calls him his Earth name).

THEN we have Terumi come in and kidnap her.

Rachel stops Ragna from running after them for cryptic warning BS, then the fight with Jin, then the fight with Terumi, etc. everything happens the same from there. Only it isn’t some random stranger who Ragna all of a sudden is risking his life for, this is the little sister he lost so long ago.

Then comes the shit with Izanami. One idea that  had was that Noel IS still a Murakumo AND Saya, but she is Saya’s good half fragmented off when Izanami was made. Izanami is one part the Origin’s Drive and one part Saya’s Darkness. So Noel breaking off from Saya is kind of like M.Bison from Street Fighter removing all the good from his soul to use Psycho Power, resulting in Rose.

Then in CP, we can have an extra layer of conflict because Noel is trying to save Tsubaki, who points out that she is affiliated with a wanted criminal, Ragna the Bloodedge. Remember, Noel just wants to be a normal girl with a normal life. She already has the issue of her humanity with being a Murakumo, but then you have the more societal BS of being related to a super criminal. She cannot be “normal girl“ Noel Vermilion, AND friends with Ragna the Bloodedge, SS-Class Criminal at the same time.

Tell me that wouldn’t all be a really good alternative.

Also being able to refer to the three MCs as “The Siblings” is just so much easier.

and then we got Celica A. Mercury.

she flops back and forth between, Ragna’s mom, and Ragna’s love interest.

Celica A. Mercury in Blazblue Chronophantasma, is well, a Chronophantasma. A copy of someone who isn’t supposed to be alive in the current timeline. Specifically, Celica is the younger sister of the Great Sage Nine, one of the Six Heroes who defeated the Black Beast 100 years before the setting of the games. the ORIGINAL Celica, after the Six Heroes were almost wiped out by Terumi, proceeded to become a nun/sister in a church built over the remains of the Black Beast’s corpse, as she has a unique Order power to nullify seithr. With her healing magic keeping her young and healthy she lived there alone until Jubei brought the three siblings, Ragna Jin and Saya, to be under her care for an undisclosed amount of time. This is where people get her being Ragna’s mom, even thought nuns/sisters are more just general caretakers instead of parents, but she is still a female maternal figure who looked after Ragna so you can see where people get that.

But then you get “teen” Celica, the one the games show in the story. She is from the Dark War, where she actually met Ragna first. Ragna was sent back in time, with Amnesia, to fill the role of the unsung 7th Hero “Bloodedge” and stop the Black Beast for a year allowing Nine to arm humanity with Ars Magus. Celica apparently fell in love with him because she is very affectionate and familiar with Ragna once she is brought to the future as a Chronophantasma.

The story really does ping pong between her being very motherly, specifically her scolding Ragna and Jin for fighting in CP, and just being a naive child, see her complaining when people get on her case about her awful sense of direction. But it is really hard because the image of the sister seems to flash over her, which the other characters seem to notice, but much like Noel and Saya, no one in the story EVER seems to connect the dots and have that change the relationship between them.

Now I personally don’t like the ship because she is a naive child in a woman’s body, with the stupid no sense of direction gag, to her scolding Ragna and Jin as if they were Natsu and Gray from Fairy Tail who are just fighting for some dick measuring contest when we all KNOW the actual reason is more complicated but the story just seems to abandon that and GGRRRR!!!

But, looking at Celica, really you can;t do the whole “Schrodinger’s Relationship” thing like they’re doing with Saya and Noel and the Murakumos. They need to COMMIT, to a role.

If Celica is Ragna’s MOM, no ifs and or buts, then 1. They need to make her less of a cutesy child. and 2. Maybe age up her design, Litchi has the design vibe of someone who is “older” than the cast, maybe something similar to that. Just imagine another angsty scene of Ragna meeting this woman who has the same face as the Sister who raised him who he KNOWS 100% is dead, so no mistaken identity shit like I already suggested with Saya/Noel, and her looking at him with her face is just MOCKING him, especially since his first two meetings with her in CP are after he gets his ass kicked (once after he is sent back in time after Nu kicking his butt, and once after Kagura knocks him out and arrests him). Also you’d have to undo ALL ship teasing in Phase Shift, or just use one of my friend’s ideas and just have Ragna be a reincarnation of Bloodedge instead of going back in time.

If you want Celica to be the cute girl love interest, and this is the option I feel most people would want either b/c shipping or the cute girl waifu factor that Japan likes (I base some of m reasoning based on “could this be made”, then you’d have to undo all connections between Celica and the Sister. My simple idea was instead of Celica living all those years she dies there, but Nine also had a bunch of other caretakers go with her to help take care of the church. I mean Nine is one of the Great Sages AND a member of the Six Heroes you’re telling em she wouldn’t use some of tat fame and authority to make sure his little sister is safe when she is all alone out there. Seems almost out of character with how fiercely protective Nine was of Celica. Of course this all means that the Sister that raises Ragna and the siblings is less important as she is just a nameless backstory character in a similar vein to Noel’s adoptive Parents, but is is a much easier thing to do than the previous option.

Either of those two options are good IMO, but I still think Celica needs to grow up a bit and release how much everyone around her is an asshole before I can fully ship her and Ragna.

So, what do you guys think? Noel being fully Ragna’s sister leading to much more interesting plot stuff, and Celica committing to either the cute girl love interest or mom role. I feel lkike my ideas are good, but what d you guys think?

[bakagamieru]

I don't think people are mad because of harry still being sad about zayn or whatever it is between them. Public image or offical narrative you name it but for some reason it's ALWAYS zayn who gets talked shit about and people at their "enough!" point me inclueded. 90% of theblogs I follow here are always critical about what's going on but after 5 years you want somethings to left behind. And at this point I can't help but ask would this mess still going on after all this time if it was not zayn?

General

There is every reason to believe that Zayn leaving is a stunt and that none of the boys ever had a problem with each other.  I’ve explained that in many previous posts, and the explanation takes up a lot of space, so I’m not doing it again here.  You can check out those posts in my Zayn Stunt Summary here: https://bakagamieru.tumblr.com/post/120840259353/zayn-stunt-summary

I think it helps to visualize this situation as a siege.  The human psyche is rather suggestible.  Even for strong, confident, self-assured personalities, it can be difficult to hold up against constantly being told the same lie from every quarter.  Sooner or later, people who are repeatedly told lies start to believe them, unless they’re very lucky, very aware, and very careful.  That’s the whole concept of gaslighting.  This has also been shown in psychological experiments where people have eventually been convinced they’ve broken bones that they never have just because they keep being told they have over and over.  

That’s why it’s important with this situation to keep reminding ourselves of the hard facts and work through every new development logically.  That’s how we survive the siege and stop ourselves from getting hypnotized into believing negative things about the boys just because we’re told negative things over and over again.

Direct Answer

I think the current badmouthing is about a sick and twisted promo strategy that all of their teams seem to share.

I suspect there would be a lot more negativity from Zayn’s side if he had proper promo.  No promo, no appearances, no performances, no interviews = no opportunity for badmouthing.  

Also, keep in mind that there are 4 people that can potentially badmouth Zayn, while Zayn is only 1 person to badmouth the other boys.  That’s obviously going to lead to more vitriol directed at Zayn than at the other boys.

Those two things (lack of promo, 4 v. 1 scenario) are probably part of the reason everything seems so unbalanced.

There’s also the fact that Zayn was cast as the villain from the beginning.  In the post I linked, you can find a post I made about why there were multiple reasons for that and why Zayn was actually the only person among the boys that could have been put in that role during this stunt.  Is there probably some racism involved in that?  Yes.  Is part of the reason that people are so willing to believe the worst about Zayn linked to unconscious racism?  Quite possibly, yes.

I know it sucks to see other people buying the negativity and feel like there’s nothing you can do about it.  The only thing I can say is that if you’re surrounded by negativity, it’s very difficult to see anything but the negative side of a situation.  

I prefer to think that most of the fans have been taken in by a targeted psychological strategy that relies more on repetitive misdirection than that most of the fans are blatantly racist.  And I really do believe that’s true.  I believe a lot of this type of racism is unconscious bias and that one day, hopefully a lot of people with these unconscious biases will at least become aware they have them and work towards trying to fix them.  

But no, in general I don’t think this negativity is still going on only because it’s Zayn.  I think it’s still going on because old 1DHQ still want it to be going on and keeps stirring the pot to make sure it does.  I think this is still going on because old 1DHQ still has some sort of hold on 1D’s public images, because the “feud” drama is being used for promo, and because the situation can’t really be fully resolved until the hiatus ends (and I predicted that before the hiatus began).  I had hoped that we might at least get friendly Zayn and 1D even before a reunion, but apparently that’s too much to ask for from the evil 1D overlords.

I, too, feel like shit every time this unnecessary negativity rears its ugly head. However, you have to either find a way to accept and move past it (which I do through reminding myself of the truth via logic) or you might need to remove yourself from the negativity.  If it’s dragging you down constantly, consider unfollowing blogs that post the news that upsets you or blocking the most common tags on the posts that upset you.  I know being told to ignore a bad situation isn’t the best, but for your mental health, it’s either that or finding a way to fight back that makes you feel better.

Showy = Putting on a Show

To me, the drama of this “feud” is just another reason to believe that nothing IS actually going on between Harry and Zayn.  Nothing bad anyway.  

When something is constantly being pushed in your face, it’s generally because someone wants you to see it.  More often than not, the things that are really scandalous are hidden in the entertainment industry and it’s the huge dramatic “feuds” that are constantly in the news that end up being all an act.

Character

Maybe I wear rose-colored glasses, but I’d like to think I’m a decent judge of character.  None of the boys are rude or spiteful enough to keep taking potshots, especially to gang up on one particular person, for years and years after a fight.

It takes a certain maturity to survive with as much grace as the boys have managed in the entertainment industry, and that sort of maturity should also lend itself towards mending a relationship after an argument / learning how to move on from an argument that can’t be fixed.

Former Friend vs. Foe 

Yes, there have been a few public scuffles with other celebs in the past, such as the Wanted, but that situation is different simply because no 1D boys were ever close to any of the Wanted.  A fight with a near-stranger is very different from a fight with someone you’ve called your brother on multiple occasions. 

The closer the people who are fighting are, the more emotional it is and the more hurt people get.  Being more emotional means being more likely to be very angry, but being more hurt means that you aren’t as likely to want to broadcast that very vulnerable, private feeling.  You’re more likely to want to shun the topic with strangers than vent about it, if you’re any sort of a private person.

If we know nothing else, we at least know for sure that Zayn and the other boys were very, very good friends.  You can’t fake the way they were together for the amount of time they were together.

It Was a Single Fight Supposedly

The story is that none of the boys are really in contact with Zayn, so according to that narrative, it’s not like there are ongoing clashes that keep any of the boys feeling like they need to keep commenting negatively about Zayn.  If you’re continually butting heads, it might make sense to keep complaining about the situation, but that’s not what we’re being told is happening.  We’ve essentially been told that there was 1 fight years ago and that’s been it aside from a small amount of supposed back and forth, almost entirely in print interviews initially.

Time and Common Decency

It’s been almost 5 YEARS.  What person with any sense of decency keeps bringing up a fight at every public appearance that happened 5 YEARS ago?  

That would be like getting in a fight with your good friend and then badmouthing them publicly at every gathering of your mutual friends for years.  No matter who was in the right originally, you’re just a jackass at that point.

Talking about something in private and complaining is one thing, but doing it in public?  That’s entirely different.  And the more time that passes, the more ridiculous it is.

Relevancy

Zayn isn’t even really relevant to any of the boys’ solo careers, so it doesn’t particularly make sense for him to be brought up over and over.  

This might be because the interviewers can’t seem to move on from 5 years ago, asking constantly about when the band is getting back together, if they’re getting back together, how is it different having a solo career, etc.  It’s been 5 YEARS.  Those questions have been asked and answered ad nauseam and it’s not like those answers have changed over time.  

Sorry, got a bit off track complaining about interviewers… Anyway, it might just be the interviewers being unoriginal, but their team clearly hasn’t blacklisted the topic which would be a more sensible and classy way to handle things given the situation and the amount of time that’s passed.  There’s no need to talk about Zayn at all really, and yet it keeps coming up.  It just makes all of them look bad, which shouldn’t be the image their teams want for them, and yet…apparently something is more important.

The Promo Connection

More than that, it specifically always seems to come up during promo, for better or worse.  Sometimes the mentions are more positive, but most of the time the narrative takes a sharp turn to the aggressively negative overnight. 

After ranging from positive to neutral when talking about Zayn for years, suddenly during Liam’s first round of promo, things turned quite negative (e.g., wouldn’t save Zayn if he were drowning) and again during this current round of promo (e.g., guess I can talk about this honestly now, etc.).  

After supposedly reconciling about 3 different times (while apparently having no contact positive or negative at all during these years?), Louis’ feelings on Zayn are apparently very negative (e.g. we’re too immature to ever make up) during this current round of promo.  

After not talking about Zayn at all, Harry was suddenly negative during his first round of promo (I think it was the Rolling Stone print interview, but I’m not sure) and brought it up negatively again, unprompted, during this round of promo on SNL.  

It’s not like Zayn ever HAS promo anymore, but when he does have interviews, there’s generally some sort of dig at One Direction somehow (pretty much all print interviews, of course).  

The only one to escape the pattern is Niall, but Teflon Niall is a real thing, enough said. 

It’s ALWAYS during promo for a single or album that things get nasty again.   My best guess is that their teams think that the “feud” = drama = attention = sales.  To me, it seems dumb, repetitive, unrealistic, etc., but I guess a casual fan or the general public wouldn’t follow everything they do, so it’s not as repetitive to that type of consumer.

Conclusion

I am 100% aware of how exhausting, frustrating, and infuriating this whole situation is.  There’s no need for the negativity, it makes no sense, it paints all of the boys in a bad light, it basically requires someone to assume the worst of Zayn in order to believe any of it, and yet there are tons of people who still do believe all of it without any critical thought.

This is why I still write posts like these over and over again.  I have to get those negative emotions out somehow, and the best way for me to feel better is by countering the official narrative by using logic.  It reassures me that even though I’m made to feel like crap about the situation, my initial and continuing judgments about the situation haven’t been wrong.  If you remind yourself of the actual proven characters of the people involved and work things out logically, it’s not dire like all the negativity makes it feel.

When things are loud, they tend to be for show.  That’s what this all is.  This negativity is for show, which means it’s not real.

TLDR;

The fact that there’s still so much public negativity between the boys and Zayn is unrealistic, and therefore suspicious, because:

the boys are too good to be acting like this

this supposed fight would be too intimate and painful to bandy about publicly like this

supposedly the boys haven’t been in contact and so all of this is over a single fight that happened 5 years ago

the boys are too smart to not know that acting like this makes them look bad

their teams have to be in favor of the badmouthing because otherwise they could easily have just not talked about it at all

there’s generally a sharp increase in negativity when one of the boys has single or album promo

there’s more badmouthing of Zayn because it’s framed as 4 v. 1 and also Zayn never has any promo

My conclusion from these points (and also from previous facts and experience) is that the badmouthing isn’t because 1D and Zayn want to be badmouthing each other.  Rather, the drama of the “feud” is being used for promo and possibly other purposes.  I firmly believe that if there were a real falling out, the 1D boys would have handled it far more gracefully than this, given the chance.  

I suppose it’s possible that there was a real fight and that the boys were forced to handle it ungracefully by their team, but I would point to Occam’s Razor.  The simplest explanation that fits ALL the facts related to this situation (from the time of Zayn leaving through now) is that Zayn was forced out of 1D as a stunt and that there was never an actual feud between Zayn and the rest of the boys.

So yes, this situation sucks, but no, I don’t blame either side for it because there are NO sides when there is no actual fight.  I blame old 1DHQ and I blame society in general and I blame the ignorance of the general public.  But I’m not here for them, I’m here for 1D, so I keep my head down and keep waiting for things to get good again.

[miraculouscontent]

Hi! If you could improve both Marinette/Ladybug and Sabrina''s treatment in "Miraculer", how would you do so? And how do you think the episode could be improved in general? Thank you! I appreciate your insights and conscientiousness for making the writing quality much better!

dkjfgnjdkfngj t-thank you!

The thing about “Miraculer” honestly is that its plot in terms of build-up is not technically bad.

In fact, it’s actually really solid for Miraculous standards.

It references “Style Queen.”

It brings back the Gabriel-Lila team-up from “Onichan.”

It shows what happens when Cataclysm is used on a person.

It addresses an issue concerning Chloe’s current standing as Queen Bee.

And, it continues the plot of Gabriel and Nathalie working together (I know that we’re clearly missing some episodes here but I’m not going to hold that over the episode itself. maybe they’re getting around Nathalie’s sickness in some way. I don’t know so I won’t judge until we’ve seen what’s up on that front).

In that way, it’s “Onichan,” Part 2, but… well… that doesn’t make it good or enjoyable (and it feels weird right after “Onichan” to see Nathalie being Gabriel’s partner rather than his employee).

Not only that, but it does exactly what “Onichan” does: giving too much focus to other characters than the one given the akuma.

This episode has a lot going on, and I don’t think it’s able to balance everything.

So, we’re gonna have to go point by point here… again.

[Safreena]

Will someone release this girl into the freaking wild already?

Because, okay, let’s get the akuma’s victim out of the way first, since we’ve been through this song and dance before.

This show cannot keep telling me that these two are “like, the best of friends” when Chloe keeps treating Sabrina like garbage. Chloe didn’t apologize to Sabrina for yelling at her, nor did Chloe make up for it aside from just letting Sabrina play pretend with her again (which is not an apology, even if Chloe lets Sabrina keep the Ladybug costume).

I can only imagine that the difference between Miraculer and Vanisher is Hawk Moth’s choice of words and the fact that Sabrina has someone else to target (i.e: Ladybug) this time, because otherwise, I cannot fathom why Sabrina wouldn’t be mad at Chloe again after Chloe has snapped at her for next to nothing.

It’s not healthy nor logical for Sabrina to stay in this relationship, and no, the show giving us three measly moments (that we did not even see in previous episodes) where they got along doesn’t make anything better.

Yet again, Chloe has taken over an episode where Sabrina gets akumatized. Once is understandable if it is a plot point (it isn’t; it’s a setup for Chloe’s plot point and Marinette to learn a “lesson”), but two with, again, no plot point that’s for her, is going overboard.

Having Chloe in a Sabrina episode, honestly, is inevitable. I understand that. Chloe is a huge part of Sabrina’s life.

But when Sabrina shows up in an episode that’s centered around her akumatization, it ends up being about Chloe. Typically, in episodes, when a person who’s akumatized, we get to know more about them, or they get to develop in someway, even if it’s a small amount.

Heck, even in episodes with characters who showed up for that one episode only, we got to learn about them. Just about the only exception was the kid in “Sandboy” who had zero time to get any development because the episode was packed with other stuff.

But it is Season 3 and we still know next to nothing about Sabrina. The episode may be packed, but we are shown the lead-up of Sabrina’s akumatization with no actual pay-off.

Sabrina, in this episode, is nothing but a tool that the writers are using to test Chloe. She’s not a person; she’s a prop.

That’s why she can’t separate from Chloe. The writers needed her to make Chloe look good by having her reject an akuma after it touched her object (something that no one has ever done). They needed someone to get akumatized, but they knew–they must’ve known–that it would look back if Chloe got akumatized over Ladybug again.

And we’ve established all the way back in “Evillustrator” that Sabrina shouldn’t be around Chloe, right? Yet here we are again, playing this charade and being shown moments that simply do not matter because they don’t take away the terrible things Chloe has done.

Speaking of whom…

[Showy Bourgeois]

Uggggggh.

Alright, yes, Chloe rejecting the akuma was a “good for her” moment and–maybe–a sign of her loyalty for Ladybug.

But that’s not the problem here.

The problem is Chloe’s behavior everywhere else. We’re just back to the bully Chloe who’s loud and complains and isn’t fun because she’s not given any good lines to work with.

And this has been the Chloe we’ve had for a while; for the whole show, honestly. She arrives, she’s mean, she yells a bit, does one maybe-nice thing, and then she goes off into the abyss until someone needs a good akumatizing.

I like Chloe best when she’s mean but fun. The “that’s three questions” line was a good example and I want more of that, because otherwise it’s just Chloe screaming at people until the plot kicks in.

I want Chloe to channel that cruelty and focus it solely on the villains instead of on Sabrina.

And really, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. No one’s around to keep Chloe in check. Chloe doesn’t have a reason to change.

Ladybug helped her take the first few steps, but Andre is still her father, Sabrina is still her friend, and because miraculouses aren’t permanent (and Pollen is submissive anyway), there is no one to tell Chloe what she should and shouldn’t be doing. The best Chloe has is Jean (her butler) and he can’t actively speak out because he can be fired the moment he oversteps his bounds.

Chloe is still too volatile. She’s still prone to presuming the worst in people. Even when Marinette tries to comfort her, Chloe is still acting like what Marinette did in “Malediktator” didn’t happen.

And I’d honestly be fine with that if I saw Chloe’s conflict with it. If the show wants to convince me that Chloe’s improving, the solution is not to have Chloe act the same 90% of the time and then have the other 10% be her acting differently than she usually would.

We, as an audience, should see what the difference between Chloe then and Chloe now.

When Chloe acts out of line, we should see a sense of regret. When Sabrina runs out in tears, we should see Chloe go from seething to shocked to horrified as she realizes that she took her anger out on someone who didn’t deserve it.

When Chloe yells at Marinette, we should see a flash of the party Marinette threw for her in “Malediktator,” followed by Chloe clamming up from her shouting and simply storming off.

The show doesn’t have to stop Chloe from doing any bad things right after “Malediktator,” but it needs to show that she’s been affected and impacted by everything that’s been happening to her. She doesn’t have to have regrets all the time, but she should start caring about people who cared for her. She can still be mean, but she needs to be mean at the right people.

Which, honestly, brings us to the big question that this episode doesn’t even try to address.

[Miraculoss]

Does Chloe really deserve a miraculous?

This isn’t about her identity as Queen Bee. This has nothing to do with the fact that she revealed herself to everyone.

This is about entitlement. This is about feeling that something is owed.

Should miraculouses be given out to those who feel like they earned or deserve it?

Does it even matter if they’re good at using their powers?

Is someone who uses their powers effectively worth keeping around regardless of the trouble they cause during their civilian life?

Can that even be a question when a miraculous can just be given to a person who hasn’t nearly killed dozens of people in a potential train accident?

But instead of talking about these things, the show takes another opportunity to push everything onto Ladybug.

Ladybug has to talk to Chloe. Ladybug has to tell her that she can’t be Queen Bee anymore. Ladybug is the one to apologize despite the fact that she is kept very busy (something that Chat seems to constantly forget about, even thinking that it’s okay to keep talking to her while her miraculous is going off like a fire alarm). Even just Marinette has to be lectured by Tikki to go see Chloe as Ladybug anyway even though Marinette already talked to Chloe as Marinette (which was an obvious thing that honestly has no purpose and could’ve been used to have Marinette talk to Tikki about if her feelings towards Chloe’s behavior has changed).

Would Chloe have believed Chat? No one knows because Chat didn’t try. Just like “Glaciator,” Chat doesn’t imagine Ladybug having personal problems or a life outside of superheroing. She’s the “leader” (despite them being called partner’s multiple times and talking like they’re equal), so Ladybug has to do it.

And it’s not like they explain why Chat doesn’t do it. I mean, is it Chloe; the fact that Chloe only would’ve listened to Ladybug?

…Because that’s all the more reason to not use Chloe at all.

We all remember “Antibug,” yes? We all remember the lesson that Marinette didn’t need to learn?

It was about teamwork. It was about listening to others. And that’s something Chloe needs to learn about.

If Chloe can’t respect Chat Noir, Carapace, and Rena Rouge, then she shouldn’t be on the team, period. If Ladybug is the only one she’ll listen too, then that’s not teamwork. Just because Ladybug is the planner doesn’t mean that Chloe would never have to listen to someone else.

Now, if Chloe was fighting with a specific member of the team–like Rena Rouge–and Rena was also fighting back, that’d be different. That would be a conflict that the two team members would either need to sort out or they would have to get out.

And that’s not something that’s discussed either. They don’t talk about the possibility of getting a new holder for the bee and instead still give it to Chloe even when something shady was obviously going on with the sentimonster and akumatized person not being a team (I know we know basically nothing about this yet but Ladybug says it’s weird so I’m rolling with it).

These are all questions I was asking mid-watch and they were never discussed, because it’s easier not to discuss them.

Discussing any of those topics brings Chloe’s worth as a person into question. If Chloe’s worth as a holder is questioned, then the audience will inevitably wonder why Chloe is let loose on the world in civilian form with no one reigning her in.

And, with the possibility that she’ll be given the bee again, that trend continues. Chloe gets a free ride where no one around her has to wonder, “Hey, is this worth it?”

Chloe is an effective bee, and that’s great. It’s good that she was able to take her akumatized father down in “Malediktator.”

And Marinette is a good person. She wanted Chloe to have the bee in hopes that it would make Chloe a better person. I see what Marinette was trying to do, but…

how much good would Queen Bee do for Chloe, really? Chloe has been given a miraculous, what, three times after “Malediktator?” She’s been Queen Bee for maybe a few hours?

When that transformation drops, Chloe still goes home to someone who spoils her rotten. She still goes to school with a girl who does whatever she wants. She still gets waited on by a butler who can’t do anything of value at risk of losing his job.

I’ve said it before, but what Chloe needs is not endless praise and kindness and people being “good examples.” What Chloe needs are boundaries.

When Chloe gets things taken away from her–when there are consequences to her actions–she reacts, but only as long as those things are still held against her.

Once she’s given full trust, she reverts right back to how she was before, with the exception that she receives praise for doing the slightest thing correctly because the tonal whiplash makes it look more impressive. That’s just how it is.

Is Chloe worth trying to “save” as a person? Maybe, but do I think that it should involve a gamble with a miraculous? Absolutely not.

[Bore Game]

Even disregarding Chloe and her constant shouting, this episode isn’t very fun. While the episode tries to squeeze in references and plot elements from other episodes, the final result isn’t something I enjoy watching.

Seeing what Cataclysm does to a person is… something, I suppose, but after Volpina’s illusion in “Catalyst,” it’s not anything special. It hurts, it drains energy, and that’s it. Now, of course, Cataclysm could do worse if used on a normal human, but because Chat’s catsuit is invincible, we don’t get to see any physical damage. We see the impact, we see Chat struggling, and we see Adrien and Plagg hurt and tired.

But then, Chat has to get right back up again to fight Miraculer, getting hit around like a ragdoll in the process. That first Cataclysm hurt, but it doesn’t mean much since Chat has other things he has to do during the episode, so he’s “hurt, but just strong enough to still do everything.”

I don’t need to see Chat bleeding or anything, but just something to show us visually (on his person, not through animation) that he’s roughed up. Belt slightly undone, wrist cuffs twisted, a cat ear bent down at an awkward angle, something!

If Miraculer’s powers were just a downgrade of the actual powers, that’d be different, but they’re not. Miraculer can take them and use them infinitely, which is like… show, I’m not the type to complain about the villains acting OP, but I don’t know what else I can say when it’s so obvious? I mean, they could’ve at least injected some comedy there, like maybe Lucky Charm is bad for Miraculer because she never knows what to do with the charms, yet Ladybug takes them and uses them to her advantage instead.

Anyway, not only that, but Miraculer doesn’t feel like a threat. She’s practically a child, still dedicated to Chloe and being annoying to all the wrong people.

Honestly, she’s in my Top 5 Most Annoying Akuma Victims, easily.

I see what the setup is doing, having Hawk Moth using Miraculer to lure Chloe to their side (even though I’m not sure exactly what they plan to do once they have her since everyone knows that Chloe is Queen Bee; do they only plan to akumatize her? Use her for sentimonsters? The bee is a close combat miraculous, so Chloe can’t hide in the shadows like they can and her miraculous is an easy grab), but with Miraculer being someone who annoys and mockingly imitates people, that’d be the perfect time to give Chloe a taste of her own medicine.

Instead, we just get the same old Sabrina, the same old Chloe with the same old “I might be a good person somewhere” piece of dialog, and the same old formula of having plots that could have potental but are left to the wayside because dealing with complex issues is hard.

[Raincomfix]

Adjusting this episode is… complicated, especially considering that Hawk Moth obviously has something planned for Chloe later (and the possibility that she could still get the bee back; honestly questioning how much the show doesn’t want to make new transformation models for other characters). Either way, I would take Chloe’s miraculous away, but the outcomes here change everything.

Firstly, let’s aim for redemption.

For that adjustment, we first have to change Chloe’s reactions. For example, Chloe’s attitude while waiting to be given the bee may start off angry, and Chloe may toss a few insults at how “useless” the team is without her, but here, she’s going to become very quickly anxious.

Maybe Ladybug didn’t see the signal.

Maybe Ladybug forgot where she lived.

Maybe Ladybug was too far away to get to Chloe in time.

Chloe’s reasoning with herself. She’s rationalizing. This brings back “Malediktator” where Chloe lamented how few friends she had.

And while stressing out over Ladybug, Chloe is neglecting Sabrina.

Meanwhile, Chat and Ladybug only very briefly discuss Queen Bee. Chat is hesitant to say that Chloe doesn’t deserve a miraculous and thus tries to focus on the identity issue, whereas Ladybug is concerned that Chloe isn’t improving enough in her civilian life.

Also, instead of mocking Carapace and Rena Rouge in front of Adrien and the others, Chloe is sulking while pretending she’s not sulking. Marinette approaches and, while Chloe’s initial response is hostile, Chloe softens upon remembering “Malediktator” and realizing that Marinette is trying to comfort her.

Then, Chloe immediately puts up a front and walks away, though isn’t aggressive with Marinette. Chloe just doesn’t like leaving her defenses down since it makes her feel vulnerable.

Marinette considers that reaction and talks to Tikki about a variety of things. Chloe seems to be improving, but is it a big enough improvement? How much should they expect out of her, considering her environment? What about the identity risk? Is the risk worth it if Chloe has been showing signs of good?

Cut to the scene where Chloe is frustrated and takes it out on Sabrina. As Sabrina runs off, Chloe realizes what she did and is instantly regretful. Instead of Sabrina remembering all those “good times” they had together, it’s Chloe, showing that those moments meant something to her. It’s made clear to the audience that Chloe is a mess due to the conflicting influences around her.

Hawk Moth senses that Chloe’s anger has faded and that Chloe cares about Sabrina, so Hawk Moth decides to let the akuma chase Sabrina instead, hoping to use Sabrina to lure Chloe to his side (much like in the original).

The episode plays out mostly as normal, only Chloe is left to consider the fact that she caused Sabrina to get akumatized again, except this time, she feels bad about it. She called herself a hero, but heroes aren’t supposed to cause akumatizations. That’s not right.

By the end of the episode, Chloe has already taken everything into consideration. Thus, before Ladybug can even start talking about Chloe no longer being Queen Bee, Chloe starts talking about how she “doesn’t even want the bee anymore, so Ladybug can just keep it.”

The wind just messes up her hair. She can’t wait around just in case Ladybug might give her the miraculous; she has important Chloe things to do!

In reality, Chloe has recognized that she doesn’t deserve the bee and that Mayura was stalking her. She’s just making the moment easier for both Ladybug and herself.

After Ladybug and the others leave, Sabrina runs up to Chloe, all concerned and friendly like nothing happened and Chloe didn’t snap at her. This affects Chloe emotionally and helps her manage to get out an apology, even if it’s a bit mumbled (apologies are still difficult for her).

The end of the episode is them walking back into the hotel, talking about their next game of pretend. A bit awkwardly, Chloe asks if Sabrina wants to pick who’s who this time.

The episode cuts off there, but that moment shows the audience that Chloe is really trying hard. It shows that Chloe cares about people and that she’s willing to do better.

Now, the unredeemed Chloe version of this episode honestly isn’t that different from the original in terms of how Chloe acts. The only notable difference is that her fighting back against Hawk Moth’s influence is more of a joke than some sort of “character growth” moment.

The big change to the episode, however, is Sabrina. Sabrina’s given a lot more focus.

Why is Sabrina with Chloe? Did Sabrina try to make other friends, and if so, why didn’t she succeed? Does Sabrina care for Chloe, or is it a fear of Chloe that makes Sabrina react?

This would all be addressed, especially as Jean shows up in the episode and would be the perfect person for Sabrina to talk to about Chloe. Instead of the episode stalling and keeping its attention on Chloe’s loud complaints about Ladybug not bringing the bee to her, the focus shifts to Jean and Sabrina, who had moved out of Chloe’s range of hearing while Chloe is “having a moment.”

Jean doesn’t technically discourage Sabrina from staying friends with Chloe, but he hints that Sabrina should question whether or not she’s happy where she is in her friendships.

Sabrina, of course, passes this off as silly. Her and Chloe are best friends! They fight sometimes–okay, Chloe fights–but that’s totally normal, right?

Jean gives her an unsure expression that makes Sabrina falter.

During the scene where Chloe is complaining to Adrien, Chloe’s yelling at Marinette just makes Marinette even more hesitant about letting Chloe be Queen Bee again, much less giving Chloe another miraculous. Tikki tries to suggest the good moments that Chloe’s had, only for Marinette to argue that… is it even worth it? Why bring along someone who needs time and effort to improve when she could find someone else who’d do the job without all this hassle?

Tikki doesn’t have a response to that. Experience means nothing when a different holder can just be trained all over again.

Back with Chloe and Sabrina (Chloe waiting for Ladybug again), Sabrina finally starts considering what Jean had told her after Chloe has yelled at her.

Hawk Moth, nonetheless, tries to get his plan in place, and manages to convince Sabrina (remember, Chloe’s defiance is a joke in this version) to become Miraculer to get Chloe’s attention one last time.

After everything’s said and done, Ladybug admits to Chloe that Chloe can’t have the bee anymore. Chloe is angry and argues that she does well as the bee.

Chat steps in to claim it’s about her identity, but Ladybug turns it on him, pointing out that Chat had refused to tell Chloe himself… why?

Chat stiffens.

Ladybug continues, saying it’s because Chloe sees Chat as a sidekick. Chloe isn’t a team player. Chloe listens to Ladybug and no one else. Ladybug knows what Chloe says about Rena and Carapace “behind her back” and she does not appreciate it.

This isn’t just about identity. This is because Chloe causes akumatizations, is still rude and inconsiderate to people who are only trying to help her, and feels entitled to a miraculous when that is something for Ladybug to decide.

Ladybug commends Chloe for the few times she’s tried, but also adds that it’s not enough. Chloe once told her that she wants to change, but isn’t putting steps in place to do anything about it.

Chloe is stunned by this lecture, then begins fuming, claiming that she “doesn’t need Ladybug anyway” and she “didn’t even want to be a part of their team” (obvious lies).

Chloe then storms off, demanding that Sabrina follow.

“…No.”

Chloe stops, spinning on her heel to face Sabrina. “What?”

“I…” Sabrina stands, not meeting Chloe’s gaze and practically shaking. “I said… no.”

“You can’t just say ‘no’ to me!” Chloe shouts.

Meekly, Sabrina looks at Chloe, voice soft. “I… just did.”

Chloe gapes.

Sabrina continues, nearing tears. “Ladybug’s right. You try, but that’s not enough. I just wanted to make you feel better and you snapped at me. You hurt me and… you’re not even sorry, are you?”

“Ugh.” Chloe flips her hair. “It’s not a big deal. We do this all the time.”

“And that’s the problem!” Sabrina says, raising her voice. “I’m sick of that! I’m stressed out and I can’t take it anymore!”

She turns, hugging herself, then walks over to Ladybug. “C-can you take me home, please?”

Ladybug is surprised, but nods. She reaches for Sabrina, pauses, then glances at Chloe.

“…Actually…”

She turns to Chat, who’s stood conflicted this whole time. “Chat, will you do it?”

Ladybug leans in, whispering, “I want to make sure Hawk Moth won’t come after Chloe.”

Chat nods, then gives Chloe a sympathetic gaze before picking Sabrina up and leaping away. Chloe shouts after Sabrina to come back, but her words are worthless now.

And with that, Chloe would glare at Ladybug, clearly blaming her for all these problems (classic projection), which would be a setup for a future akumatization from Hawk Moth.

The latter points out the faults in Chloe’s environment–that Chloe can’t improve without boundaries–and makes steps to change that by removing Sabrina.

The former probably won’t function for Hawk Moth’s future plans, but could if he was able to escalate a situation and make Chloe believe some sort of falsehood about Ladybug.

I wouldn’t call “Miraculer” a bad episode exactly. I like some of these setups and I like some of the references.

It just doesn’t work as a product that’s trying to make me feel something for Chloe. The only reason that any reaction to Chloe’s changes are so strong is because the writers intentionally write her as rude and nasty as Season 1 Chloe so that the flashbacks and false akumatization hit harder, which is not a natural state of character progression.

Instead of feeling bad for Chloe, I’m left wondering why Ladybug doesn’t just find a new bee during a time where there aren’t any akumatizations or sentimonsters so they can be trained to Queen Bee’s level. This amount of work to improve someone who doesn’t even feel remorse for yelling at her best friend is not worth it. It has never been worth it.

Like, here’s a question: how many episodes did it take for Rena Rouge and Carapace to get their stuff together? One each.

Alya’s moment of weakness was refusing to return the miraculous. Nino’s weakness was wanting to protect Alya but not having the strength to do so. Both of these were resolved in the episode that introduced them.

Chloe has had over four episodes that have her showing clear struggles of being Queen Bee.

“Queen Wasp” - nearly killed dozens of people to “prove herself,” then got akumatized because Ladybug obviously didn’t like that

“Malediktator” - tries to show improvement but then has a “Despair Bear” moment where she’s clearly still Chloe

“Heroes’ Day” - identity came back to bite her

“Miraculer” - is still being a terrible person and showing little desire to actually change her ways

So why does Queen Bee stand on the same ground as Rena and Carapace? Is gambling on her improving using a miraculous really the way to go?

No. No, it’s not. It’s not exactly hard to find someone with higher moral standards than Chloe who can just be taught the ways of the bee.

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

@trek-tracks

I'd read your rant! Also, you should see Beyond. I haven't seen ID, but I'm confident Beyond is WAY better than ST:2009 and, from what I've heard about ID (that it is a garbage fire), Beyond is not the one of the three to not see.

Yeah, I have heard that about Beyond, and I keep meaning to watch it. I’m not like actively avoiding it, it just sort of...hasn’t happened. I have a To Watch list about five miles long at this point that I just keep foregoing in favor of watching gaming videos on YouTube. It’s a sad life.

But here’s the rant (feel free to skip if you didn’t follow this blog to hear me complain about AOS):

My strong impression from the first two movies was that the writers misunderstood--or just, for whatever reason, chose to discard-- the dynamic that Kirk, Spock and Bones actually had in TOS.

In TOS there’s a very deliberate balance wherein Spock and Bones are on opposite ends of a spectrum of logic vs emotion/ lawful vs chaotic, and Kirk sits in the middle of that spectrum, getting the input from both ends and then turning that into balanced decision-making. (I know it’s deliberate because of that whole “I took one man and wrote him as three people” quote from Roddenberry.) It’s a great setup when it’s being used correctly because it gives you a built-in method of examining any situation that comes up in the show from multiple angles without sacrificing the drive of any of the characters.

Trying to write one single character covering the same total perspective as Spock, McCoy and Kirk can create combined would necessarily result in either a character who appears to be wildly indecisive at best and lacking in any consistent characterization at worst, or in paring down the range of that perspective to avoid the first thing happening. This is all especially important in a show with the set-up of Star Trek, where not only do you not have much time to deliberate because everything has to be solved in under 60 minutes and no we will NOT be revisiting any of it later, but your lead character is in a position of formal command, meaning you have very little room to allow him to be hesitant or indecisive in his decisions before he starts to look like he shouldn’t be in that job. Indeed, it’s made explicitly clear multiple times that any sign of hesitation on Kirk’s part will be taken by not just him but most of the crew and Starfleet as a sign that he’s losing ability to command. Because Spock and McCoy have different roles not just as characters but as crewmembers, they can give full attention to their respective angles in a way that Kirk alone could not without it looking like he was dithering, with the bonus that you can write it all as a natural (and entertaining) conversation rather than it coming off as forced exposition. You don’t need to have those kinds of discussions all the time--there are plenty of times when one or more of the trio is absent and things tick along just fine--but there are also times, IMO, when someone being missing or just poorly written makes things falter quite obviously, Where No Man Has Gone Before being the biggest example that comes to mind.

But instead of having Kirk be in the middle of this spectrum I may have just sort of made up, the AOS movies seem to take the tack of having Spock be at one end and Kirk at the other end. They’re portrayed as being complete opposites to such an extent that they’re at odds practically the minute they meet, and spend the entire first movie at each other’s throats because AOS!Kirk’s brash, reckless, emotion-driven, rules-ignoring personality clashes incompatibly with Spock being deliberate, logical, and law-abiding to the letter. There’s absolutely no indication in TOS that Kirk and Spock ever had that kind of relationship or that they had to get over any sense of rivalry before they became friends. Granted, TOS had such a lackadaisical approach to backstory that we don’t really know anything about how they did become friends, but we are told on more than one occasion (which, for TOS, is practically hammering the point in) that Kirk was himself was so serious and focused as a student (”positively grim”) that he attracted bullying for it. In other words, for as little solid backstory as we get, one thing TOS is clear on is that Kirk did not have an arc of being reckless and wild and having to learn some patience and sense--if anything he seems to have had an arc in the complete opposite direction, although not so much that he isn’t still a total workaholic.

So that of course very much impacts Kirk and Spock’s characterizations and dynamic, but it also impacts McCoy, because by sticking Kirk in McCoy’s usual role, McCoy himself is now left with very little to do but make snarky comments and stick hyposprays in people from time to time (which he does very well, but, still). Which is sort of both cause and effect, because the fact that the writers put Kirk in that position to begin with indicates to me that they didn’t understand and/or didn’t value the importance of McCoy, specifically, being in that spot in the first place. But it is important that McCoy is in that spot because I love him and he deserves it because McCoy as a character is in a much more natural position to serve that role than Kirk is.

This may seem like a tangent, but stick with me here: McCoy inherently has a different perspective towards Starfleet than Kirk. Than everyone in the main cast, really, but especially Kirk. Kirk’s character, his perspective, his role in life, his arc, his backstory, all are closely tied to his being in Starfleet. Kirk’s position in relation to Starfleet is so important that it’s part of if not the entirety of practically every bit of story or backstory he has. When we hear about Kirk’s history, we mostly hear about it in terms of where he was in Starfleet at the time: at the Academy, serving his first assignment as an ensign, being a lieutenant on the Farragut, etc. Kirk’s career is very much on his mind all the time and threats to it are the subject of conflict multiple times, not because he cares about climbing in rank for rank’s sake but because he needs that career, and that good relationship with Starfleet, to do the thing he is most meant to do in life: be a starship captain. It’s not a position he could have outside of Starfleet--maybe he could go command an independent ship of some kind, but it wouldn’t be the same thing, not really. Kirk’s not meant to be doing supply runs or carrying passengers or what have you; he wants to explore, he wants to be out there checking out the weirdest shit the universe has to offer, he wants to be doing something important. This is why it’s such a big deal that Kirk is willing to sacrifice his career to save Spock in the movies, because that career is his life.

Yes, Kirk doesn’t always agree with Starfleet, and he’s willing to break their rules if he really has to. But Kirk could never exist in the position he is in TOS, and he certainly couldn’t maintain that position, if he couldn’t agree with Starfleet on most things, and conduct himself in a way that they in turn found agreeable. You don’t get to be the captain of one of the most important ships in the fleet by fucking around. And he didn’t. He worked his ass off to get there! TOS Kirk might be a bit young to be a captain but not so much so that he didn’t have to climb up the ranks the old-fashioned way to get there. Meanwhile AOS had to have Kirk sneak onto a ship he wasn’t supposed to be on and then get rid of practically everyone else on said ship, right up to provoking the acting captain into a fistfight, to get Kirk into a position where it would be remotely plausible for him to be in command of the Enterprise. In AOS Kirk is characterized as being so at odds with Starfleet and the Starfleet way of doing things that it takes some very extreme circumstances to get him in a position to command the ship because there’s no way Starfleet would have actually chosen for him to do that.

The reason I’m putting all this emphasis on Starfleet is that in TOS, when it comes to questions of Following The Rules vs Doing What’s Right, Starfleet is the rules. If it’s a matter of Lawful vs Chaotic, Starfleet is going to be the law. Any time the characters are in a situation where they have to ask “Is it the right thing to do what the rules say we should be doing here? Could the rules be wrong?” the rules they’re debating are almost always going to be Starfleet rules. (When it comes to following non-Starfleet rules it’s usually not so much a moral matter as “okay following the rules might be the only way we’ll get this done but we’re not going to act like we like or agree with those rules.”)

So when it comes to putting a character in the position of being the one who’s emotional rather than logical, who’s the voice of Hang The Rules, I’m Doing The Right Thing, who’s there to say things that need to be said but aren’t really appropriate to just say in the societal rules we’re working under here--Kirk can do that to some degree, but it really doesn’t make sense for him to be the one on the far end of that spectrum. To have been in the Starfleet environment as long as he has, and to have been as successful in that environment as he has, he has to be someone who can thrive in that environment, who finds it more acceptable to work with than not, or at least can do a good job faking it.

But McCoy? McCoy’s coming at it from a completely different angle. McCoy didn’t join Starfleet out of any kind of lifelong pursuit, he basically did it on impulse because fuck it, he had nothing better to do with his life at the time. Being in Starfleet informs McCoy’s characterization far less than everyone else’s in the show; mostly it just informs his current physical location. His identity isn’t really wrapped up in being Starfleet personnel. His identity is wrapped up in being a doctor. He was a doctor long before he was Starfleet, and when being in Starfleet stops being a viable option he goes to be a doctor somewhere else (and to make regrettable fashion choices but that’s another topic entirely).

There’s a lot of little ways that McCoy shows that he doesn’t care a whole lot about the Starfleet way of doing things. He’s casually insubordinate to people who seriously outrank him. He inserts himself into situations and discussions that aren’t what his actual job calls for--there’s no real reason why the CMO would need to hang out on the bridge all the time but there he is. He complains about the dress uniforms. He usually forgoes referring to other crewmembers by their ranks if he can get away with using their first name instead. He doesn’t even sit right.

[ID: 1. McCoy sitting on the edge of Spock’s console on the bridge, 2. McCoy sitting on the edge of the briefing table with a cup of coffee, 3. McCoy sitting sideways in a shuttle chair while talking to Spock.]

And he has very little interest in his own rank, or in commanding anyone, or in generally behaving as if he’s a member of a military organization, something reflected in the fact that he in turn hardly ever gets referred to by his actual rank. McCoy is okay with ordering people around as a doctor--he’ll pull rank to get someone in for a physical, or make them sit down and rest when they’re injured, Jim, and since he has to he’ll run the rest of the medical department, whatever there is of it. But I think he sees that first and foremost as being a doctor, who just happens to have a few extra tools at his disposal to make his patients behave so hey, might as well use ‘em. But on the one occasion* when he’s called upon to actually act as a ranking officer in a completely non-doctoring-related matter, he gets so flustered about the whole thing that he has to ask the person he’s supposed to be ordering if he did it right. He’s not really interested in being in charge of anyone in any formal sense.

*The one occasion in the main show, at least, which doesn’t take into account Diane Duane’s extremely excellent novel Doctor’s Orders, in which McCoy winds up in charge of the Enterprise because Shenanigans, and spends the rest of the book having a massive extended anxiety attack about it. It’s so great.

So McCoy doesn’t look at things tactically in the same way that Kirk does. He doesn’t have to. It’s not his job. Not to say that McCoy never has to make any hard decisions, but as a character he functions much better than Kirk as the one who’s looking at the emotional aspect of things because most of the time, McCoy’s not the one who has to turn The Right Thing To Do into standing orders for 430 people that can actually be practically acted upon. He tends to have a more immediate, short-range focus, contrasting the way Spock tends to look at the biggest picture and Kirk, again, lands somewhere in the middle. McCoy thinks about individual people first and foremost. If the Enterprise is about to get into a skirmish with a Klingon ship, Kirk has to be thinking about what the outcome of that battle will mean for Federation-Klingon relations, about what he can do now that might save more lives down the road even if it puts some in danger right now, but McCoy will be thinking about the people who are about to be hurt, maybe killed, right now. Which is a great perspective for a doctor to have, and an important perspective for a captain to keep in mind, but it could never be the only perspective for a captain.

McCoy’s viewpoint is a very important one in the Watsonian sense that it’s useful for Kirk and in the Doylist sense that it contributes to the specific tone that TOS wanted to achieve. But it’s a viewpoint that has to be balanced for it to be effective both practically speaking and in story-telling terms. AOS missed that balance; by putting all their emphasis on Kirk and Spock being opposites they made McCoy more or less redundant. Which is a crying shame, because it’s an unforgivable waste of Karl Urban’s goddamn amazing performance. The thought of what he could have done if he’d had something more to work with is heartbreaking to me.

But McCoy goes unappreciated far too often in general. You know I once went looking for a TOS McCoy Funko Pop and they didn’t have one? They had a generic Andorian but they didn’t have McCoy. It’s an outrage! I had to make my own out of a Munny.

[daesungindistress]

Hi, Not a Seungri defender as such, but I've also not "cancelled" him yet. I've personally been following the investigation and evidence closely (like to the point of checking Korean sources). I don't know if it what I say matters to you, but I wanted to reassure you that a lot of the VIPs who are OT5 rn, aren't supporting blindly (although there's a few). In my research, I've found most accusations are unbacked media claims. However, if solid evidence should show. I'd change my opinion on it.

*to clarify what I mean by evidence. A lot of the accusations media claim Ri has done or is being investigated for are false. The assumption he was in the MOLKA has so far been disproven. The prostitution claims don’t meet up with other evidence (women out right deny it) And the two burning sun videos, both the woman dragged out and the woman supposedly drugged, have both stated these are but true. I’m not one to believe things blindly but all he women involved have denied all accusation (rn).

I understand that you want to wait for stronger evidence that might convince you to “cancel” him altogether, and that’s fine, but this far into the investigation much of the fandom has seen enough to decide that Seungri’s role in Big Bang has come to an end. The way I look at it, that is the spirit behind OT4 vs OT5. It doesn’t have to be about hating Seungri specifically, it’s more about Big Bang’s longevity… and at this time it’s tough to envision a Big Bang that can live on with Seungri in it. On that subject, I have to stop there because I’m currently in the process of writing another post about this, and I don’t want to use up all my thoughts on it here… or have to resort to repeating myself there.

As for the rest, I agree that Seungri probably isn’t guilty of everything he’s been accused of. But it’s likely he’s guilty of some things. Some of which may never be proven in court because, remember, he told his friends to change phones before turning them in to the police – which they did. It’s recently been reported that Seungri himself submitted a new phone too. He’s currently being investigated for that, this destruction of evidence, so we’ll see if it goes anywhere. By the way, this info was gathered by police during questioning of Seungri’s friends (CJH, JJY, etc).

This is an extremely important point to me. Because if he did tell his friends to ditch their old phones, and took the same measures himself, then that’s practically an admission of guilt, albeit an indirect one. Guilt for what, you ask? We may never know. He made sure we wouldn’t. He pledged to cooperate sincerely with the investigation, but… that doesn’t sound like cooperating sincerely to me. It’s exceedingly weird to me that people aren’t talking about this more.

As for the prostitution claims, yes, some women interviewed have denied. I mean… of course they’re going to deny it, prostitution is illegal in South Korea and confessing would land them in trouble. And yet, it is also possible that they’re being truthful and they are not, in fact, prostitutes. I’m willing to believe that. Keep in mind, however, that there have been multiple chats released that appear to be alluding to prostitution mediation / acting as a liaison in various locations, and the investigation is still ongoing. Police have said recently that they believe they’ve obtained some credible testimony and feel they’re making progress on those allegations, so again, yes or no, we’ll just have to wait and see. Seungri claims that many of those chats are being taken out of context. For some of them, I can accept that. For others… that rosy tint is fading fast.

The Burning Sun video of the woman being dragged is irrelevant, I think. Just a misunderstanding. Last I heard, that video showed her being forcibly removed from the club for causing a disturbance; the woman herself wrote the club a letter of apology and paid for damages. It is true, however, that women have been assaulted and secretly filmed inside the club Burning Sun; not sure about CCTV footage, but police caught two employees who were doing it, using a VIP bathroom and filming it on their phones. IIRC at least one of them is in custody. And many more women are speaking out now – specifically, about how they tried to report problems related to the club but were ignored or silenced by the local police (Gangnam district). It’s quite clear at this point that Burning Sun itself was a hotbed of illegal activity. Many arrests have been made on charges of drug use, and a few for drug distribution.

I’m not actually very interested in discussing Seungri’s role in Burning Sun, as I’m not convinced yet that he had much to do with the seedy goings-on there. Even the prostitution stuff I’m still pretty ‘meh’ about for reasons I don’t feel like going into right now. Gambling = whatever, his drug tests were clean, embezzlement… yeah that’s not great, he’ll probably just pay a fine. Tax evasion, again, sucks, probably another fine. Police collusion… jury’s still out on that one, but it definitely doesn’t reflect well on him, that he’s being questioned about it at all. Remember his comment: “Korean law is shit, that’s why I love it.” Dude. Dumb thing to say when you’re a highly-regarded celebrity who people look up and admire. And now it’s out there for the whole world to see.

Whew. And we haven’t even touched on the main source of fans’ outrage: m o l k a

It’s true that Seungri wasn’t in the majority of JJY’s molka chats and was instead in a chat reserved mostly for business. However, he was sent at least one molka video, and he did see it, because he responded to it. I’m not too fussed by his reply (”Who’s that? Oh, Oo-hyung lol”)… it comes off as more dismissive to me than anything – uninterested, mostly. Unfortunately for him, many are interpreting it as amusement. At the very least, he was aware of JJY’s molka/spycam fetish, because in his Chosun Ilbo interview he said, “Of course I tried to stop him. When I met him in person I tried to stop him and said, ‘Don’t do stuff like that, you’ll get in really big trouble.’” There’s no question anymore whether he did or did not know about his friend’s dirty habits / crimes against women. The most concerning thing, to me, is that he didn’t seem to care enough to cut ties with him because of it. If he had made a visible effort to distance himself, I think people might be more forgiving.

Also strange is his total failure to mention the women affected in any of his apologies. He’s taken the time to apologize to his former agency YG, his bandmates (seen translated as “teammates”), his fans, the Korean public, and even Mr. Kim following his assault by police at Burning Sun… but never once the women. Why? What does that say about him? I’m not sure, but I don’t think I like it.

In the end, here’s what it all boils down to, for me: whatever the extent of his involvement, it’s pretty obvious at this point that he’s not some innocent lamb being led to slaughter. Seungri let this relationship drag on for years and stuck with it, this shady bunch. This wasn���t just a one-time thing, a simple mistake anyone might make. Worse, he was warned by his hyungs many times – on camera, even, in front of fans, in front of TV audiences. They begged him not to mess up while they were away and Big Bang was dependent on him. They trusted him with the name BIGBANG. Will they, or anyone else for that matter, be willing to trust him with it again?

I hate to say it, but it looks like Seungri chose these people over Big Bang. He chose Jung Joonyoung, Choi Jonghoon, Yoo Insuk, and others over Kwon Jiyong, Choi Seunghyun, Dong Youngbae, and Kang Daesung. Forget the warnings, OT4 teased, complained, and scolded him often enough about not spending time with them outside of band-related activities. Well, I guess now we know why. He had other friends, other loyalties, other priorities. Even as recently as late February of this year, when the first KKT chats were dropped (the Arena prostitution chat), Seungri’s first concern was contacting his friends to make sure they’d be safe in the event of a “mandatory police investigation”. I don’t think he’s this horrible person that so many are making him out to be, no, but this is not behavior befitting a member of a world-renowned boyband with a tremendous following of adoring female fans. It’s a coveted position of great power and great responsibility – to his fans, to his bandmates, to himself. But with his burgeoning interest in business, I guess Seungri felt he had better, more important things and people to attend to.

And then on March 11, 2019, he saw the writing on the wall and left Big Bang.

I’m sad to lose him. But I think, in a way, we lost him a long time ago. We just didn’t know it yet.

[whistlevevo]

characters — jade kristine qi

GIVE ME THE STRENGTH AND HEIGHT OF GLORY

full name:

— jade kristine qi

nicknames:

— none. jade likes her name and prefers to be called by it.

date of birth:

— july 16, 1998

age:

— as of july 17, 2016, jade is 18

nationality:

— american

ethnicity:

— mexican, cuban, filipino, and chinese

place of residence:

— new smyrna beach, florida

languages spoken:

— english

— spanish

— enough tagalog to get by

— jade also knows how to count to ten in chinese and thinks it counts as knowing chinese even though it really doesn’t

sexuality:

— bisexual

GIVE ME GLORIOUS LIFE, THE STRAINING AND THE STRIFE

general:

— jade is honestly, pretty hot. she’s got that trendy instagram look that makes even the straightest of girls question. she has an oval-shaped face with a sharp jawline and defined cheekbones. her nose is thin, but rounded and points up into a button nose. her eyes are light and almond-shaped, with thick eyelashes and eyebrows to frame them. her lips are thick and surly, and her skin is dark and clear, only peppered with freckles. 

hair color:

— naturally, brown, but jade likes to dye it all sorts of colors. she did most of her experimenting as a pre-teen and for now, is sticking with a bubblegum pink hair color, but she’s been known to dye her hair green, silver, blue, purple...the list goes on.

hairstyle:

— jade’s hairstyle varies from day to day. jade’s hair is naturally slightly wavy, so she normally either leaves it like that or puts it back in a messy low ponytail. jade’s not the one for extravagant hairstyles.

eye color:

— jade’s eyes were bright green when she was born, but as she’s gotten older, they darkened down to green and eventually, to her current hazel.

body:

— i hate to be crude, but jade has a rockin’ bod. she’s one of those people that works out for fun. like, she’ll go to the gym and have fun. wild, i know. not only that, but she excelled at sports. i’m talking field hockey, cross country, track, basketball, soccer—jade did all of it, and it gave her a pretty high metabolism, hence her smokin’ hot body. she has a pretty small waist with toned abs, muscular arms, and thick legs.

height:

— jade stands at 5′6″ or 168 centimeters

weight:

— jade weighs 130 pounds or 59 kilograms.

LOVE, PASSION, HOPE IN THEIR DIVINEST SCOPE

casual style:

— jade’s everyday wear is simple. she dresses like your typical “instagram baddie,” just with more comfort. i’m talking sweatpants, crop tops, and sneakers. most of her clothes aren’t that expensive, mainly because jade is super broke, all the time, but it looks fine on jade. it’s nothing special, really.

formal:

— jade rarely goes anywhere where she needs to dress up, but when the occasion arises, she also usually goes for a simple look. jade would normally dress in an unadorned, long dress, maybe with spaghetti straps or a leg slit, but jade prefers to keep the attention on her face and not on her clothes. she’d probably wear some nice heels, too, or at least ones that look nice, and some jewelry from claire’s, probably.

sleepwear:

— jade’s sleepwear isn’t anything fancy. she usually just wears a big sweatshirt, even if she has people sleeping over. no one important’s really gonna see her anyway, so...

swimwear:

— jade’s swimwear is pretty much just the basic bathing suits you’d find at target, your simple bikinis with a few fun patterns or interesting cutouts. living in florida, she goes to the beach often, so she’ll pretty much wear any bathing suit that’s cheap, functional, and looks somewhat decent. she’s not really too picky.

athletic wear:

— jade’s workout clothes are pretty much based on comfort and they don’t really deviate from the usual “leggings-and-sports-bra” thing that most people have going on. no one’s going to see her, so what does it even matter?

dreamworld style:

— jade’s subconscious favors clothes that are a little more rugged than your typical dream keeper. she can be seen in short, dark green skirts and capes. they’re not exactly armor, but they’re easy to move around in, and they allow her to blend in with the other dream keepers. they’re adorned with gold pins.

— however, when the time comes, jade wears as much protective gear as she can. that is, while looking cute. her armor covers her up much more than her casual clothes. there are few rules of physics and science in the dreamworld, so often, armored clothes look exactly the same as normal clothes, similar to the uses of vibranium in black panther. normally, one would wear whatever armor is available, as there aren’t very many battles in the dreamworld and therefore, not a lot of armor, but jade likes earth-toned ( usually green ) armor that hugs her body and doesn’t weigh her down too much. she will often wear a cloak, a cape, or a poncho, just because most of the battles take place near the nightmare realm, where it’s much colder. she also wears a black gas mask, to try to protect her from hallucinations and any attacks that may affect her face.

HIGH WINDS ON MIGHTY SEAS, NOT SHELTERED BAY

personality overview:

— jade is kind of a confusing person. on the outside, she seems extroverted and crazy. she’s reckless, insane, and honestly, kind of mean. she’s egotistical and refuses to think about anyone but herself. anything she does is for her immediate comfort and benefit, even if it hurts someone else. she seems stupid on the outside too, and she kind of is. she focuses on the present, which makes her terrible at making plans and getting out of situations, but either way, jade picks up on social cues very well. she just doesn’t care. jade doesn’t look for anyone else’s opinion on her, which is both a blessing and a curse. she’s rough around the edges, and seems like an open book, when really, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

— once more, jade isn’t stupid. she knows that people wouldn’t fear her, listen to her, or really even like her if they knew who she was at her core. so, she bottles everything up. she doesn’t disclose her past, her emotions, or her pain to anyone. she’ll whine about papercuts like nobody’s business so people think she’s open, but she’ll suffer in silence if she suffers from anything bad. at her core, jade is a cunning girl that prefers being alone, but she turns on her facade of a happy, extroverted, life of the party when she has to. maybe she feels like she has something to prove. maybe she doesn’t want people to see her weak. who knows?

personality type:

— istp-a

strengths:

— energetic // jade is a seemingly, endless ball of energy that doesn’t seem to get stressed out over much, only if she believes that something will seriously have consequences.

— creative and practical // jade isn’t super smart, but what she does know with a combination of her anxiety, makes her combine creative solutions with practical information to figure things out. 

— spontaneous and rational // jade doesn’t think much before making decisions. she doesn’t overthink things and sees a crossroads sort of like a multiple choice answer. she thinks through all the scenarios and chooses the most logical one.

— knows how to prioritize // jade tries to focus on the task at hand and moves everything else to the back of her mind until she can come back to it later, which usually works pretty well.

— tough // jade’s really good at repressing all her emotions and only complaining about stupid, petty things. she can remain pretty relaxed during a crisis, giving her the impression of toughness.

weaknesses:

— stubborn // jade does this fun thing where she disagrees with anything you say, even if she doesn’t really believe it. that’s how stubborn she is.

— insensitive // jade cares little for the feelings of others and uses logic and her own personal agenda to get what she wants, even if it hurts others.

— private // as i said before, jade seems like an open book, but most people who think they know her really don’t know anything important about her.

— dislike commitment // jade has a really hard time forming meaningful relationships with the people around her, especially romantic ones, because in jade’s mind, a relationship would only weigh her down, so she just....doesn’t commit.

— reckless // jade is bored easily, which leads to terrible decisions and unnecessary trials that could’ve been avoided had she just sat still for a few minutes. with jade, situations often escalate quickly and she can quickly lose control of a situation.

STILL LET ME SNATCH THE CROWN

stats:

— strength : 10 // jade was a boxer for a few years. not only that, but the endless sports she did as a child and many, many fights she got into left her with a lot of brute strength.

— agility : 3 // while jade did many sports, gymnastics and/or dance was not one of them. she’s not very graceful and the little agility she has came from jumping hurdles.

— stealth : 2 // jade is a classically loud person, and very clumsy. stealth is definitely not her forte.

— intellect : 5 // jade is also fantastically bad at thinking ahead. she’s not good at planning ahead. she is good at deducing things, though.

— hand to hand combat : 7 // while jade is strong physically and her boxing and karate skills do come in handy, jade isn’t particularly good with weapons, so her hand to hand combat skills are merely average.

— weaponry : 0 // jade doesn’t even know how to shoot a gun, and jade’s far too clumsy to be good with swords and knives.

physical disabilities:

— a bad punch in her left ear left jade slightly hard of hearing. she should probably use a hearing aid, but didn’t really ever have the money to fix it.

mental disorders:

— jade has severe anxiety. it can always be seen in one way or another, usually by bouncing her leg and going through every worst possible scenario in her head.

— jade also has adhd, hence her not-so-great report cards. jade initially wanted to learn in school, but her adhd made it so difficult and she got so little help that  she simply lost her motivation. 

OF ALL LIFE HAS TO GIVE

friends:

— jade doesn’t need friends. they disappoint her. also, her commitment thing...

family:

— ana paulina rosales : mother // jade’s mother was always busy, which wasn’t her fault, but they never formed a meaningful relationship. jade learned from a young age to stay away from her mother, as to not bother or inconvenience her, so while jade would certainly like to protect her mom, she rarely talks to her about anything important.

— christopher andrew qi : father // jade never met her father. she detests him for leaving her and her mom. plain and simple.

past relationships:

— god, where do i start? jade’s had countless relationships, but none that really lasted more than a week. again, fear of commitment, so...

pets:

— jade’s family never had the time or money for any pets, so none.

AND TO CRY BUT ONCE

pre-conception:

— jade’s mother, ana paulina rosales was the daughter of a filipino immigrant and a poor mexican farmer. neither of them had anything, which meant that neither did jade’s mother. determined to break the cycle of poverty, jade’s mother tried her hardest to finish high school and actually did. like many immigrants, jade’s mother knew that she had to the united states if she wanted to do anything more than be a beggar on the street. so, she hitchhiked and walked all the way to monterrey, saving as much money as she could to finally get a visa and buy a plane ticket to dallas, texas, where she met christopher andrew qi, a cuban-chinese lawyer who promised ana paulina the world. she got pregnant, and when he found out, he bailed, leaving her broke, homeless, and pregnant.

— jade was born nine months later, and lived in dallas for the first few years of her life, until her mom managed to get back on her feet and save enough money to move to new smyrna beach, florida, a quiet and quaint town filled with retired white people, so if you’re a maid, basically prime real estate. jade used to help out, too, until she had to go to school. she was diagnosed with adhd at around seven years old, but no one really did anything to help jade learn, even though she really did want to. eventually, she simply lost interest which just led to jade listening to hours worth of green day during school, which didn’t help anyone at all.

— jade realized she was bisexual when she was in seventh grade and kissed a girl in her class, which was a lot less fun than it sounded. jade spent the next few years denying her sexuality, and her town wasn’t the most accepting of gay people, especially not lgbt+ women of color, which is when jade started to get into her first few scrapes, which began escalating. jade was keeping to herself, frying ants with a magnifying glass in eighth grade-ish, and before she knew it, people were punching her. she punched them back, but she didn’t have enough time to react, and the kid hit her left ear, hard. it sent her to the emergency room, and to this day, jade’s still hard of hearing. but life went on nonetheless.

— that fight was the first time jade went to juvie. she was accused of assault and battery, and come on, this is florida. who are they gonna believe, a straight white male kid or a bisexual woman of color? yeah, jade went to juvie. after that, it mostly went downhill. no one trusted her, so she was convicted of various things that never happened, for example, drug possession and distribution, resisting arrest, trespassing, and burglary. jade pretty much stopped caring at that point, and was arrested a total of 27 times, mostly for things she hadn’t done. after that, she figured that if people thought she was guilty, then she might as well live up to their standards and started regularly breaking the law. she only got caught sometimes.

— jade had originally made her instagram account in 2013, when she was 14 years old. obviously, most 14-year-olds are ugly and disgusting, so jade didn’t have a lot of followers from the start, but as she got older and prettier, her pictures started gaining recognition. she even did a few modeling gigs, which is where she found her passion. sadly, she had to drop out of high school her senior year to work and help her mom. she did help a lot by getting sponsorships on instagram, though, which brings us to present day. i can’t say much more because it’d give away the plot, so i’ll just leave it at that.

BUT ONCE I LIVE

likes:

— shopping // jade doesn’t go shopping often because she’s super broke, but when she does, she enjoys it.

— modeling // jade finds it relaxing and it helps her focus. plus, she’s good at it.

— boxing // out of all the sports jade has done, boxing is her favorite. it lets her harness her anger and frustration into something productive.

— the beach // who doesn’t like swimming, getting tan, and getting sand up your buttcrack for weeks?

— meat // jade tried going vegetarian, but she lost so much muscle mass that she had to keep eating meat. she got a taste for it eventually.

dislikes:

— creative writing // jade is only good at things that make sense, things that have a formula to them. creative writing does not.

— insects // they’re weird and disgusting and jade does not enjoy them.

— children // jade has a little bit of a potty mouth, so kids around jade is a sure recipe for disaster.

— fish // jade eats meat, yes, but she can’t stand the smell of fish, so even cooked fish is something that jade definitely stays away from.

— police officers // they’re annoying and kind of a nuisance and definitely a wrench in jade’s illegal shenanigans.

extra:

— jade can play the drums. not well, but she can carry a beat.

— jade auditioned for america’s next top model, but didn’t make it.

— jade met chris hemsworth once. or, rather, she broke into chris hemsworth’s house and tried to get an autograph. he kicked her out and she did not get her autograph and is now not allowed within 100 feet of chris hemsworth.

[genderonthescreen-blog]

The Problematic Love Interest: No Means Yes?

What do TV and film teach us about love? Well, they teach us that romantic love is very important, that the grand gestures are everything, that true love’s kiss will always break the spell, and, oh yeah, when someone says “no” they really mean “yes.” The lack of consent in movies and TV shows, in scenes that are supposed to be romantic, is shocking. Time and time again I will come across a show or film that looks promising, it usually is, and I am enjoying the film or show. That is before I am shown a scene that is so obviously sexual assault, yet, it is shown as seductive, or romantic, or even funny.

Last summer I watched the movie Blade Runner (1982) for the first time. As an avid fan of Star Wars, I spent most of my pre-teen years drooling over Han Solo (Harrison Ford)—as well as the swashbuckling archaeologist, Dr. Indiana Jones (also Ford). So after re-watching the Star Wars films I was suffering from a Harrison Ford withdrawal, so I decided it was time to check out, supposedly, the next best “Ford Sci-fi Flick”: Blade Runner. Now, in my own personal and unimportant opinion, I don’t think Blade Runner is a very good movie. However, I think it would’ve been much better in my eyes if it weren’t for the rape scene that happens about halfway through the film. In the scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjO8wsjPqbg), the lead character, Rick Deckard, just told his “love interest”, Rachael (Sean Young), that she is an android (the beings the Deckard is supposed to be hunting and killing) and that her human memories are fake. In her moment of distress Deckard makes a move on her. However, she doesn’t respond. She moves away when he tries to kiss her again and quickly gets up to leave his apartment. Deckard becomes angry. He storms in front of her, blocking the path between her and the door, before he grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her up against the window on the opposite end of the room. He proceeds to force a kiss on her and then tells her to to say to him “Kiss me” and then, after she complies, he tells her to say “I want you” to him. In doing this, Deckard forces her to give him “consent”, thus making the whole assault her fault. Its a disgusting scene that made me wonder: “Why I am supposed to be rooting for this main character?” But honestly the worst part about it is that it’s filmed as a seduction. The music swells as Deckard kisses Rachael, telling the audience that this is a romantic and sensual moment. What it really does, however, is perpetuate the falsehood that when a woman says “no” (either with her words or her body language) she really means “yes.”

These kinds of scenes are very prevalent in older films. The John Hughes classic Sixteen Candles (1984) is chalk full of dubious consent. In one scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmf_sT_IcMc&t=125s), the love interest, Jake (Michael Schoeffling), of the main character, Samantha (Molly Ringwald)—who’s supposed to be a sensitive jock; he just wants a nice girl to love him—hands his current girlfriend, a very drunk Caroline (Haviland Morris), off to Farmer Ted (Anthony Michael Hall) in exchange for a pair of Sam’s underwear. In the kitchen when the two boys are talking about this plan, Jake delivers the infamous line: “I can get a piece of ass anytime I want. Shit, I’ve got Caroline in my bedroom now passed out cold. I could violate her ten different ways if I wanted to.” This line is the precursor to Jake saying how he wants a nice girl who doesn’t party. Honestly, how is he the romantic male lead in this movie and not the predatory creep! Later in the film it is implied that Caroline and Farmer Ted have sex, to which Caroline is very okay with, despite the fact she was totally drunk throughout the whole ordeal (thus, unable to consent), and was also tricked by her boyfriend into thinking that Farmer Ted was her boyfriend, Jake. This perpetuates that same stereotype seen in Blade Runner: “no” means “yes.”

An argument can be made that “These movies are from the eighties! They’re just a product of the times!” And, while Sixteen Candles especially is a product of it’s time, that doesn’t mean this kind of portrayal of “romance” is gone from TV and cinema today. In fact, it’s unfortunately alive and well.

Take the relationship between Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) from the HBO show Game of Thrones. Daenerys is basically sold into marriage to Drogo by her brother, and proceeds to get raped by her husband multiple times during the beginning of their relationship. However, by the time Khal Drogo makes his exit from the show (SPOILER ALERT! He dies) the two are in love. All is forgiven, and Daenerys is heartbroken by the loss of her husband. This kind of forgiveness of sexual predators in a TV show is quite common. The character Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick), from the classic 2000s show Gossip Girl, forces himself on two different characters during the first season, but all is forgotten barely a few episodes later, and he just becomes an annoying antagonist—and by the end of the series, he’s a dashing love interest!

I hate to say it, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer (one of my favorite TV shows of all time) is another example of this kind of forgetfulness when it comes to sexual assault in TV shows. In the episode “Seeing Red” from season six, there is a scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGWhEgjdLeM ) where the vampire, Spike (James Marsters), attempts to rape Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar). These are two characters have been in an “on again, off again” sexual relationship for most of the season. However, Spike has fallen in love with Buffy, and she has not fallen for him. In an attempt to get her to love him back, Spike decides to force himself on her. After a bit of a struggle—where Spike tries to pull off her robe and tackles her to the ground—Buffy kicks him off of her before anything happens, but the damage is done. The problem is Spike still stays a fan favorite on the show and he is very easily redeemed (he gets a soul so all is well!). He is also not only redeemed in the eyes of the viewer, but also in the eyes of Buffy, the victim of his abuse—who, in the next season, actually falls in love with him. These are all classic examples of the actions of a male character, who is a sexual abuser/assaulter, getting forgotten or easily forgiven as the show progresses.

Modern movies still have problems with consent, too. A recent Netflix release titled Sierra Burgess is a Loser (2018) is an example of dubious consent passed off as a sweet romance. The basic plot of this teen romance movie is: a teenage girl, named Sierra (Shannon Purser), cat-fishes this teenage boy, Jamey (Noah Centineo), because she is too insecure to tell him who she really is. Sierra does this with the help of the popular girl from her high school, Veronica (Kristine Froseth), who is the person Jamey thinks he is texting/talking on the phone with. This movie has a LOT of problems, but what I thought the most disturbing part was a scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMdjN-sIxw4) where Veronica goes on a date with Jamey as Sierra. Sierra follows the two around on their “date” and texts Veronica instructions on how to act so Jamey doesn’t think something’s up. Towards the end of the evening, Jamey and Veronica are leaning on the hood of his car—Sierra is hiding underneath the car, spying on the two of them—and Jamey leans in for a kiss. Veronica stops him and tells him to close his eyes first before she gestures for Sierra to come out and kiss Jamey herself, and she does. It’s super weird and uncomfortable to watch because this teenage boy is being kissed by someone he’s never met, and without his consent. But, all the while, the music swells, telling the audience that this is a romantic moment. A lot of people were complaining about this movie—like I said, it had many issues (making fun of deaf people, and some off comments about the LGBT community)—but I wish more people were talking about this scene. If the roles were reversed and Jamey was a girl being kissed by this boy who was cat-fishing her, people would be up in arms (because that literally sounds like it was taken out of Sixteen Candles!). But, because Jamey is a boy, people aren’t as upset about this scene.

The movie Wedding Crashers (2005) is a comedy about two guys who have a hobby of (you guessed it) crashing weddings. It’s a very funny movie that I have thoroughly enjoyed. However, this movie makes many jokes about men who have been sexually assaulted—thus, perpetuating the stereotype that men can’t be sexually assaulted because they always want to have sex. There are several scenes that depict sexual coercion and even a scene that could be considered rape! In this scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_r1zDwdmSg&has_verified=1), Jeremy (Vince Vaughn) wakes up tied to his bed with a naked Gloria (Isla Fisher), the woman that he’s been sleeping with, sitting on top of him. He begins to ask her what is going on, and she tells him she thinks what’s wrong with their relationship is that they aren’t being adventurous enough. Jeremy tries to protest, but Gloria quickly “shushes” him before shoving a sock into his mouth and covering it with duct tape before the camera cuts away. This scene is depicted as funny, as are all of the other sexual assault scenes in this movie. In the next scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6fLskrvsRA also depicted as funny), Jeremy tells his friend, John (Owen Wilson), about what happened to him. Unfortunately, Jeremy is semi-ignored by his friend, who brushes off his complaints and proceeds to go on about the woman he has feelings for. When Jeremy says he wants to leave the house they are staying at and go home, John guilt-trips him into staying (no bro left behind). Later in the film Gloria and Jeremy actually end up getting married! Throughout the film, these scenes are played off as funny, because it’s a man getting sexually assaulted and not a woman. Once again I ask you to switch the roles and pretend that Jeremy is a woman and Gloria is a man. Would people still be laughing if that was the case?

Sexual assault and consent is a serious issue. With the “Time’s Up” and #Metoo movement taking the internet by storm, and so many actresses and actors (and people in general!) coming forward about the sexual assault and mistreatment they experienced in their industry, there is a lot to consider. But the fact that films and TV are still allowing sexual coercion, assault, harassment, and rape to be shot as funny, romantic, sensual, or easily forgiven is sending people the message that sexual assault isn’t a big deal—thus, adding to the problem. This notion is not only wrong, but also dangerous. It is teaching people (especially young people) that consent isn’t important. Future writers, directors, producers, and anyone else involved in making films and TV need to step up to the plate and use their platform to enforce the importance of consent, instead of disregarding it.

.

.

.

Check out these cool sources!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWoP8VpbpYI

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/when-pop-culture-sells-dangerous-myths-about-romance/549749/

http://shrcc.org/get-the-facts/what-is-consent/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4062022/

How about this cooler bibliography!

https://vimeo.com/194215274

https://books.google.com/books?id=Kq4-DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=consent+in+films&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNvOrYl5nfAhVws1kKHaiCDBUQuwUIOzAD#v=onepage&q=consent%20in%20films&f=false

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/12/05/why-the-last-tango-in-paris-rape-scene-is-generating-such-an-outcry-now/?utm_term=.5b8a35fad57e

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-469646/I-felt-raped-Brando.html

[nappainanotherdimension]

SHIPPING INFO.       Answer the following for your muse(s) so people       know how shipping works on your blog. REPOST.       Don’t reblog. 

{Mun Note: Did this all the way back in July of 2017 and in January of this year. A lot of things have happened both within the fandom, new characters have been added to the series with new content, and I’ve had some experiences RP wise that impact my stance on shipping with Nappa, so I figured it’d be nice to update this meme!}

WHAT’S YOUR OTP FOR YOUR MUSE?:

Since late February of this year, I finally defined Nappa as a Single-Ship blog. Which means whoever his shipping partner ends up being would be his true OTP on the blog.

At the time of writing this, Nappa is still a single muse, and I still have no OTP for the Nappa I play here on this blog. I do have a crack!ship OTP but that’s for my fanfiction.

For a short time in the Summer of 2017, he had a fun time flirting with and developing a brief crush on someone’s OC named Poharu. Her mun and I had agreed that although they had fun flirtatious chemistry in the threads we had at the time, we both were not interested in doing a ship. Both Poharu and her mun are no longer with us due to their need to focus on real life matters. But she and I still talk once in awhile off Tumblr. I will mention Poharu from time to time when portraying Nappa in his Xenoverse mentor verse because I liked her character and she is fine with it being brought up. Her character was one of the first muses to interact with him in that verse, so naturally she played a part in his character development within that verse’s continuity.

Since Poharu, Nappa has not had strong chemistry with anyone. I have mentioned to someone else that I, the mun, can see potential chemistry with someone else’s muse, but our writing has not taken a romantic turn there. It might never go there either, which is okay with me. :3 Overall, I’m not in a hurry to hook up Nappa.

WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO RP WHEN IT COMES TO SHIPPING?:

I’m not entirely sure what all will happen if I end up shipping Nappa on this blog. I can only guess at what Nappa will want to do while in a ship or when he feels attraction to another muse. With my headcanons he’s not been in a relationship for at least 20+ years or longer depending on the verse being used in a thread.

I headcanon that Nappa is into tasteful PDA and is affectionate – both verbally, and physically – with women he’s involved with in a romantic way. He’ll have a bit of a Saiyan twist to his affections, but he’s a genuine person with how he feels so that part of his personality can easily lead to romantic fluff once he’s comfortable in a defined relationship. He just might be silly or awkward with it because Saiyans aren’t exactly romantic in conventional ways, especially in the beginning of their relationship. But I swear I will usually play this up for cute and endearing comedy. If things are uncomfortably awkward for either muse, that’s not a good sign and the ship probably isn’t gonna happen unless we figure out how to fix it, if it can be fixed.

Romance will be very experimental, because I headcanon that Nappa’s never been in love romantically (by our definitions) before. Nappa is proven to be capable of unconditional love in canon thanks to a cutscene in Extreme Butoden. It just has to happen with the right person for him, y’know? I’m also not opposed to one-sided feelings on either of our muses’ sides.

Because I’ve spent a lot of my roleplay experience writing Nappa in a situation where he’s left with unresolved anger and bitterness for what happened to him in canon, I’m not up for doing a toxic or unhealthy ship. He wouldn’t be happy, and that wouldn’t be fun for me to write responses for. That isn’t to say that a ship with Nappa wouldn’t have some problems come up, but I’m not gonna go out of my way to ship him with a muse who don’t seem like a good fit. (If it’s not that apparent I’m pretty protective of this muse in many ways.)

 HOW LARGE DOES THE AGE GAP HAVE TO BE TO MAKE IT UNCOMFORTABLE?:

A huge NO on anyone under 18, and even at age 18, that’s really too young for my muse. 20-30 year-olds may even be too young, unless they are mentally mature. Nappa can be childish sometimes, but he’s still a full-grown man who’s about 60 years old (or older depending on the verse) with lots of life-experience. If your muse is young enough to be his kid, that’ll be on his mind. He’s not going to be comfortable with anyone as a love interest if they act overly childish and bratty, especially for little to no reason. He’ll complain about that sort of person if they’re in his presence, even if there’s no shipping potential going on. If your muse acts like a child, he’ll treat her like one.

Age gaps are going to be a thing I have to deal with since few people play muses as old as mine, and if they are older, they don’t look it or act too differently from 15-30 year olds. I’m not fully against age gaps, in fact I think they’re interesting, so long as the characters can respect one another and are even with mental maturity.

Respect and maturity are two key things that have to be there for a ship with Nappa to work. It’s okay if the two bicker at first, or don’t always see eye-to-eye, but they need to get along. There has to be a strong friendship or at the very least some fair amount of kindness from the other person before Nappa can feel any sort of romantic and sexual interest he’ll think about or want to act on.

 ARE YOU SELECTIVE WHEN SHIPPING?:  

Yes, because my muse is selective about who he wants to be with, and I don’t want to force him into a ship for the sake of shipping. 

Nappa has an elitist attitude, and because he’s never experienced romantic love, he observes male-female relationships with the perspective of if he and the woman in question will make desirable children, and if she’ll make a good mother. That is just how his mentality works. It would take a lot of chemistry and a woman with a lot of desirable personality traits to make him overlook some of his hang-ups. The woman has to get to know and accept who Nappa is IC – the good and the bad – in consistent roleplay threads.

If things are rushed, there’s a high chance Nappa won’t feel the same interest as your muse and he’ll friend zone her. (But that’s not always bad because remember there has to be friendship before anything more can happen.) But it will make both of us feel uncomfortable TBH unless we’ve planned OOC for there to be one-sided feelings for a time.

In general, I’m still not actively looking for a ship to happen with Nappa on this blog. But if a ship happens it’d be a pleasant surprise.

 HOW FAR DO STEAMY MOMENTS HAVE TO GO BEFORE THEY’RE CONSIDERED NSFW?:

When it comes to talking, anything that starts to get dirty with graphic sexual activity details is what I’d consider NSFW.  Detailed descriptions of sexualized body parts, groping/stroking of genitals or breasts are things I consider NSFW. Also detailed sexual fantasy thoughts and emotions felt during physical activity can be too. Basically if you could get into trouble for getting caught reading it at work, or I don’t think the content is suitable for minors to be reading, I’d consider it NSFW, tag it accordingly, and may even use the Keep Reading cut.

Blatantly stating things like: sex, penis, vagina, kinky, “let’s fuck” or other such things, I wouldn’t think are worth labeling and tagging. Grabbing, smacking, or rubbing a butt isn’t NSFW to me unless said butt is bare and/or the muses are starting to do something sexual in nature.

 WHO ARE OTHER MUSES YOU SHIP YOUR MUSE WITH?: At the moment there is no ship for my muse with another muse. (He would only have one because his blog is single-ship.) @cruciatusxcervus has mentioned having an interest in shipping with Nappa, and she is currently involved with my other muse, Raditz. I’ve already mentioned that I’d need to see chemistry build up between the muses in our threads before confirming if a ship can happen or not. (And I’ve been on a hiatus for this blog this past Summer so the two still are only acquaintances as of writing this.) I mentioned to @ayekanaru months ago that I could see potential for a ship with our muses, but our writing has not gone in that direction, and she’s been on hiatus too. The chemistry they have as friends is very nice so if they stay that way it would be fine with me.  

DOES ONE HAVE TO ASK TO SHIP WITH YOU?:  

YES! OOC communication is important if you would like a ship to happen. Decent communication about our muses and the direction of our threads can help out a lot. It won’t guarantee that a ship will happen but it does more good than harm. (Unless I’ve already expressed that I don’t want to ship with you and your muse.)

I’m fine with playing things by ear, but this can also lead to our characters saying or doing things that might piss each other off and make it harder for a ship to happen.

I can’t be the only one putting in the work either. If you’re not going to put in any effort – be it IC and/or OOC – then you probably don’t care that much about it, and I’m not going to either.

HOW OFTEN DO YOU LIKE TO SHIP?:

Whenever I see potential chemistry. With Nappa, I’ve only seen natural chemistry happen like…once in all my years of roleplaying him.

Not kidding when I say he’s hard to ship with.

 ARE YOU MULTISHIP?:

Not on this blog. For Nappa, I decided months ago that single-ship is what’s best for him.

I’m not against multiship blogs. However as I am multiship with Raditz, I have seen and dealt with the kinds of complications having multiple ships with others can create. There are more demanding expectations for thread responses, comparisons between shipping partners, and it can also bring out the worst in people who can’t control their jealousy/envy. Honestly, shipping drama between multiship blogs is a big reason why Nappa is single-ship along with how picky he and I are for a shipping partner for him.

 ARE YOU SHIP OBSESSED OR SHIP MORE-OR-LESS?:

I love shipping and crack!shipping with fandom stuff. When it comes to roleplay though, I like when ships happen naturally. It’s a fun surprise! If ships happen, they happen! Though I will admit, when I feel a lot of investment in ship I will be enthusiastic about working on it. 

I used to have a healthy interest in shipping, but I’m noticing that I’m becoming more protective and guarded, especially with my Nappa muse. I worry that I come off as too negative about it, even though I’m just sticking up for both his interests, and my own for him.

I’ve been through a lot of negative experiences regarding shipping in the last two years. I do my best to be very considerate of others’ feelings to avoid force-shipping from my end too. A ship between fictional characters is never more important to me than an IRL friendship or rp partnership.

 WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SHIP IN YOUR CURRENT FANDOM?:  

I do vicariously enjoy Raditz x Nappa (when they’re both adults) because of one of my friend’s older content. But outside of their stuff, the ship isn’t something that tickles my fancy much. In general though, I don’t *personally* see him having a lot of chemistry with other dudes.

For the heterosexual side of things, I didn’t used to see any canon women from DBZ who would be good with Nappa either. And I’ve seen some things. (It’s all pretty awful too, even if there could have been some good potential.) I will admit that Nappa x Android 21 is the closest thing to a canon character pairing I see happening, but I’m more in favor of a partnerSHIP rather than a romantic relationSHIP. (I wouldn’t want to ship it for RP either honestly. It’d be too unhealthy for my liking. I’d rather write my own one-shot or a brief fic if I get an itch for it. There’s nothing for it out there on the internet either, so it all pretty much happens in my head. Something I’m all too used to for a lot of my ships.)

TBH I’m more open to crossover ships or OC ships with Nappa. (Just please no Nappa x Ami…just no. That’s a NOTP for both Muse and Mun.)

 FINALLY, HOW DOES ONE SHIP WITH YOU?:

Talk to me about it and also roleplay for awhile with me and my muse before deciding if you really want to ship with us. As I’ve mentioned before, because of my headcanons and who Nappa is, he’s not really an easy person to ship with.

Thanks to anyone who sat through reading the second revision of this meme. There’s some old and new content here that’s worth reading if you’re interested in this dumb topic.

TAGGED BY. Nobody recently. Just felt like updating this since I’ve become single-ship and a lot of stuff has changed since January 2018. TAGGING.  Whoever wants to do this meme!

[piccolina-mina]

I love you @witchwolfmouse. I love you with my whole heart

Honestly, and respectfully OP, it's literally EVERYTHING said above with a big cosign. Since I mentioned the pair the spares bit myself, I can speak for myself in that regard when I say it's literally everything said above and that's it.

The irony of this is no one, absolutely NO ONE has said Maria and Kyle are an awful ship. Even those criticizing those in fandom desperate to pair the two spares together to protect the ships they care about aren't saying Kyle and Maria is a bad ship. I'm literally one of those people who is side-eying some people's motivation behind shipping two characters that haven't even interacted, but I have also admitted (as have others like myself) that I'm totally game for the show exploring it for a lot of the reasons you mentioned, and I cannot wait to actually see the two of them interact because they probably will have fun chemistry and could be a cute ship.

There are like a handful of genuine Kyle and Maria shippers, and not content (can't wait for it though so bring it on), and they're more than entitled to have fun with their ship. I say the same thing for the Kyle and Alex shippers out there. Nothing delighted me more than seeing Kylex shippers too, so wholesome and sweet and I lowkey started shipping it myself thanks to them. 😘

But the people who are treating Maria and her love life or Kyle and his love life like an afterthought by shoving them together as an afterthought for the sole reason of them not interfering with their Malex and Echo ... those people are the only people who some fans are side eyeing. That's it. You can usually find them literally stating how cute the pairing would be in part because it wouldn't affect Malex. They're usually the same ones passive aggressively saying "this friendship is cute" under anything that remotely has to do with Michael and Maria. So, yeah, in that sense it's transparent, and those people and only those people are who some fans are annoyed by.

Those same fans who think it's fucked up to entertain the idea of Maria sleeping with her best friend's soulmate if it's Michael are pairing the spares with Maria and Kyle even though Kyle is Liz's ex. If we really hated the ship itself, we'd bring that up a thousand times more because Maria knows about Kyle and Liz's history. She doesn't know about Michael and Alex's, right? But it isn't about that at all.

This fandom at least on here isn't the most open to those who aren't talking about the majority's issues, so any Maria and Michael fans on here mostly stay out of fandom or go elsewhere. They don't even have the space to discuss anything here. So what is this imaginary war if you will between two subsections of fandom with more similarities than differences who you need a telescope to find anyway?!

Especially when the issue brought up is explained. It's not the ship that anyone has an issue with, it's the motivation of some people for shipping it that people are annoyed by.

It's true. I don't even think anyone realizes that literally anyone who says anything that can remotely be perceived as anti Malex has to insist multiple times that they are in fact a Malex shipper or express how much they like the ship before they can state their opinion. Even then, one still runs the risk of being called homophobic or other things. Seriously, pay attention to how often people do that, like they're trying to prove something, or apologizing, or trying to make sure they don't get attacked, and then think about how messed up that is. Because that is mesed up.

All anyone wants is to be able to discuss all parts of this series. They want to discuss all the characters. They want to be free to discuss any and all ships, hell even crack ships without putting disclaimers up to make sure they aren't attacked or having what brings them joy shat on by the majority telling them they are wrong or not respecting them. Or reminding people that it's a reboot all the time, like no one knows that.

And Maria fans just want to talk about Maria. Maria's life. Maria's storylines. Maria's friendships. And yes, even Maria's love life whether it's Michael or Isobel or Kyle or someone else. They don't want an entire tag dedicated to a fantastic character to ONLY be filled with people speaking of her as a contrivance. That's it. That's the only complaint here, and it is annoying that it keeps getting turned into other things that it isn't about.

It's true that there has yet to be a single person who said a hateful word about Maria and she's well liked. But that doesn't mean that the way in which she is discussed isn't hurtful, and inconsiderate, and annoying, and problematic.

Simply put, people want to be free to discuss more than just one particular ship or topic or a couple of characters without those discussions or tags or photo sets or meta getting derailed or taken over etc. And the only reason the Kyle and Maria thing is brought up is because of how it ties in with everything else going on with fandom and Maria and even fandom and Kyle. The ship itself isn't the problem. It's actually cute af in theory and could be in practice when they give them screentime together to see if the chemistry is there. They're my favorites and I lowkey ship them with everyone myself, but whatever.

OK, I’m not trying to be wanky, but I find it kind of hilarious how offended I’ve seen some people get over the fact that there are those who ship Maria with Kyle. They are mad because the two of them have not yet shared scenes so apparently it’s a bad and offensive thing to ship them.

So, while I’m not a Maria and Kyle shipper per se (though I’ve considered the possibility of a future relationship between them), I’m gonna lay a few things out.

1) First off, let us acknowledge that both the books and OG has everyone conveniently paired off. In this version, we have the two major pairings of Max/Liz and Michael/Alex. Isobel/Noah are married but still presented as a lesser couple compared to the epic drama of echo and malex. Yet even they are shown to be deeply in love with one another, and Noah is not giving up on Isobel during her current crisis.

2) Kyle and Maria are both single as a pringle. Even with Kyle’s fooling around with Liz, they’re not in love or even in like. They are friends who have fooled around.

3) While the only scene they’ve shared is the brief pilot flashback scene with Max looking through the window, it can be established that Kyle and Maria know one another and have since high school. (And if it wasn’t for Heather having prior filming obligations, she would have been in HS scenes with Liz and Kyle, it’s very likely.)

4) Kyle and Maria have some similarities. They’re both trustworthy. They’re both smart. They’re both loyal friends. They’re both funny and kind of sassy. Neither are afraid to tell it like it is.

5) Yet their differences make for some fun potential and an interesting balance. Kyle- man of science. Maria- woman of faith. He’s a doctor. She’s a bar owner and psychic. He was a quarterback douche in HS, she was a hippie protester. There could be a fun dynamic.

6) People can ship whatever. And nothing against crackships, but it’s not even as though Kyle and Maria are one though some like to act that way. The two have some sort of established relationship even if we haven’t seen it on screen yet. And even if it’s in the past. You can’t use the argument of them not having scenes (even if they really haven’t run into each other in town in the last 10 years which is highly unlikely). Because Max and Liz didn’t see each other for 10 years either. And no one doubts that they have an established relationship of some sort.

7) Those those same people that I’ve seen complaining about shipping Maria with Kyle seem to think that shipping Maria with Michael is much better. Since they’ve shared two whole scenes together. And Michael is in love with Maria’s best friend (and him with Michael) and this has been the case for the past ten years. Like you can’t make this up. 🤣 But hey. That’s also perfectly fine. I mean why not? Just don’t act like you’re somehow above Maria and Kyle shippers or that your reasons for shipping M&M are more valid.

[tsaritsa]

Isabella Petersen and the job that did not pay nearly enough but turned out alright in the end

this fic can also be found on ff.net and ao3

Isabella would love to say to General Hakuro that this was not what she had signed up for – but she had, and that was why she was hiding out in some bushes outside Colonel Mustang’s apartment at 2:38 on a frigid September morning.

originally written for the fma 2k16 secret santa for @rosyoreo​

It had been a rough week for Isabella Petersen. Her landlord had decided to hike up her rent by another three-thousand cenz a week; her cat had learned a new trick where she would run and vomit underneath the couch after gorging down her food; and her boyfriend had given her a call at two in the morning to say that ‘we should take a break.’ Isabella tried to ignore the obviously feminine voice cajoling him to ‘hang up on the hussy.’

Maybe that was why she had been so quick to accept a meeting with Major General Hakuro in a seedy little bar in downtown East City. While her job at the Eastern Gazette wasn’t that awful, Isabella was sick of being shunted down to advertising management and a terrible column titled What I Heard in the Wind, where she literally had to go and eavesdrop on people and essentially shit out three hundred words every Monday morning that would keep their over-75’s as loyal readers and subscribers. Apparently real issues didn’t matter so long as Doris got her weekly fix of barista gossip and mother-in-laws complaining about daughter-in-laws. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy hearing gossip, or even better – writing about said gossip, but Isabella was tired of being overlooked in favour of more senior members who had less to contribute than her vomiting cat. She had been with the Eastern Gazette for nearly three years now and was yet to be featured as a journalist – and it wasn’t like the East was particularly strapped for news. Just last week a train had been hijacked from New Optain to East City and if rumours were to be believed, it was the East’s very own ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’ who managed to subdue the terrorists and save everybody on board from a grisly fate.

Naturally, the military kept this all very hush-hush – after all, dissent from the people about the military wasn’t a great way of inspiring faith in the military, and the East had always been a bit of a rogue district when compared to the likes of the West or Central itself.  However, Isabella had a friend who worked at the train station, and if he was to be believed (and he generally was, she went through school with the man), the Fullmetal Alchemist wasn’t the only high-profile person on that train ride: Major General Hakuro and his family was reported to have as well (and he was the entire reason why the train was hijacked in the first place, Jeremy said dramatically over coffee with her earlier in the week).

So it was a couple of reasons really, Isabella thought as she walked into the bar, taking off her coat and bee lining to the first empty booth she saw. It was a monumentally awful week as far as weeks have gone, and there was the potential to put two and two together regarding the events at the East City train station. This could be my big break, she thought, stuffing her gloves into her coat pocket and signalling the bartender. Finally get noticed, and crack a story that nobody else in the papers has managed to do in a long while.

So here she sat, nursing what the bartender had described as ‘ the finest cure to a shit week’ – she was fairly certain it was just two cheap whiskeys blended together with a mint sprig added to make it look like it was a legitimate drink – but no matter. The tip-off from Hakuro had been a blessing in disguise – often the Eastern Gazette and the military didn’t get on – but hey, if the man said he’d pay for any of the drinks she ordered if she agreed to meet him in what Isabella was certain was not only a bar, but also worked as a brothel on the side, then she wasn’t going to complain.

It was almost 10 o’clock before he walked into the bar, looking agitated and a little unkempt as he entered, shrugging off his heavy coat and talking to the bartender in low tones. The man motioned towards her and for the first time that night Isabella felt that it might be possible that she was making a mistake in agreeing so hastily to Hakuro’s (almost barked) demand that someone from the Eastern Gazette meet him at the Lady 8ight at nine the next night. But there was free alcohol, and after the week she’d had, Isabella just wanted to drown her sorrows until she couldn’t remember that she had any to begin with.

Hakuro sat down opposite her in the booth she had sequestered, holding a drink that looked an awful lot like hers. “You’re the one I spoke to yesterday?” he asked gruffly, a hard look on his face.

Isabella nodded, curling her fingers around her glass. “Yes, sir. You said you wanted a story written?”

Hakuro nodded shortly, before draining his glass in one mouthful and grimacing slightly. “Yeah – kind of. Not so much a story, as gathering information for me. If you find enough to make a story of it, then maybe you can do that too. You’ll need to do your own research though – I don’t particularly care how you do that, illegal or not.”

Isabella pulled out a small notepad and pen from her bag and started taking notes. “What’s it about?” she asked, noticing a bandage on his ear that was bleeding through slightly. Hakuro ran a hand through his hair, carefully avoiding hitting his ear. Interesting.

“How long have you been out here at East?” he asked, motioning for the barman’s attention.

“I was born and raised here,” she replied. “Does that matter?”                      

“It certainly helps matters,” he muttered, as he handed the bartender a few folded bills and took the entire whiskey bottle from the man, who only responded by glancing to Isabella and sauntering back to behind the bar. “You know of Colonel Roy Mustang?”

“The…Flame Alchemist, right? Hero of Ishval?”

A sour look passed over Hakuro’s face. “Yeah, that guy. I’ve gotten word that he’s been abusing his position in the military. I need you to find out exactly what he’s been doing and how he’s been doing it.”

Isabella looked up at the man, pen poised on her notepad. “What kind of abuses are we talking about here?” she asked, sitting up and leaning back into the booth. “They must be serious if it’s come to your attention – you’re not even stationed out here.”

Hakuro crossed his arms, frowning at her. Too insightful. Dial back a bit. “Why does it matter? Details aren’t important. You just need to find evidence that they’re happening.”

Isabella put her pen down and stared at the Major General. “The man is a legend around here, General. Which means you have got to have some pretty concrete suspicions, right?”

The man nodded, pouring himself another drink.

“So tell me what you know. I can’t go in blind, General,” she said easily, taking a sip of the frankly awful cure to a shit week. “Just nudge me in the right direction. Where or who should I be looking for?”

Hakuro sighed and shrugged. “My…informants tell me it could be multiple things – he’s in charge of the finances for the State Alchemist’s out here at East so that could be one place to look – but to be honest with you, I don’t think that’s it.”

Isabella took a few more notes. “Why don’t you think so?”

Hakuro snorted. “The man is an alchemist – he could just transmute himself some gold and be done with it-”

“That’s illegal though, isn’t it?”

“They’ll revoke your licence if they find you doing it,” Hakuro replied, finishing his second glass of whiskey. “But it’s the people around him I’m more worried about. He’s in close with the Commander of East Headquaters and that certainly doesn’t help matters – there are lots of things that don’t go detected out here. I can probably grant you access to some personnel files without arousing too much suspicion but…”

“Who would I be looking for?” Isabella asked, flipping onto another page.

“His aide would be the best place to start – First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye. Served alongside him in the civil war so they’re closer than most, but if the rumours are to be believed they knew each other before that, as well.”

“I see,” she replied. “Are they involved?”

Hakuro laughed a little bitterly. “That’s the million cenz question, isn’t it? If you can even prove just that – it’ll be more than enough to bring any other relationships into question.”

Isabella nodded slowly. “What would be enough to accuse him?”

The General poured himself a third drink, which he finished in quick succession before answering. The man had apparently had a worse week than she had.

“She’s his aide, so it wouldn’t be seen as uncommon or suspicious for them to be at each other’s places,” he began, rubbing behind his bandaged ear carefully. “Basically anything that goes against fraternisation rules – like certain information being shared between ranks, or him abusing his rank over her. But they are good. Nothing but consummate professionals.” He stopped here, looking down at her with a hard gaze. “I can get you their addresses, but if I request what their current schedules are it will raise all sorts of alarm bells. You’ll be on your own from there.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. On my own, can’t let me be traced back to you,” she responded, looking up from her note taking. “Find enough proof that’s undeniable, don’t get caught and get it back to you discreetly. I have done this sort of thing before, General. It’s why you guys don’t like us at the Gazette, remember?”

A strange look settled on the man’s face. “You seem very sure of yourself,” Hakuro replied finally, pouring another drink.

“No point in not being. This is my job,” she said briskly, putting the cap back on her pen. “Before I go and start planning how to do this – what’re you going to pay me?”

“Two hundred thousand cenz.”

Isabella was glad she had finished her drink. “Two hundred thousand?” she managed; her mind running at full tilt with the amount of rent that two hundred thousand motherfucking cenz would cover.

“You seem to think this will be an easy job, Ms…?”

“Petersen,” she supplied automatically, trying to keep the shock from registering on her face.

“Ms Petersen. I can assure you it will not be. You will not be paid until the end, when I am physically holding the proof that proves this man is not all he’s cracked up to be.”

He was angry, Isabella noticed. It wasn’t directed at her – but she could feel it simmering away underneath his words – a wrong word or even gesture here could easily take away two hundred thousand motherfucking cenz, but Isabella was a reporter (and a damn good one, in her opinion). So the question came out of her mouth before she had properly considered her phrasing.

“Is any of this to do with the hostage situation a week ago?” she began, cocking her head at Hakuro. “I don’t know all the details, obviously, but my mate works at the station as a ticket operator. He said you and your family were on that train that the terrorists attacked. Is that why your ear is bandaged up?”

Hakuro’s face turned an ugly shade of puce, and Isabella saw his hands clench on the table top, knuckles white.

Well, that answers that question nicely.

Averting her eyes from the oncoming explosion, Isabella quickly got out of the booth, collecting her coat and bag swiftly. The man looked like he would combust at any second.

“If you could send me copies of the personnel files that would be wonderful,” she began, shrugging on her coat, “and I’ll send you an update by the end of this week how I’m going.” She rummaged around in her bag for a moment, before presenting the General with her business card. There was an uneasy pause where she thought that this casual action would prove too much for the obviously furious General, but it passed and he accepted it with little more than a grunt in response. “If you need to call me, use that number. Any extra tips would be appreciated – or a warning, if you think someone is onto me.”

The General grunted again, a clear dismissal.

“Pleasure doing business with you, General Hakuro,” Isabella said warmly, walking away and pulling her gloves back on. “He’s paying for my drinks,” she mentioned to the bartender as she passed him.

“Two hundred thousand motherfucking cenz – what has Mustang done to be worth this much?” Isabella murmured to herself as she stepped out into the cold September air, shivering slightly. “Poor guy.”

The next couple of weeks passed uneventfully – Hakuro, true to his word, had forwarded a box full of personnel files about the Colonel and the subordinates that Hakuro felt were closest to the man. The Fullmetal Alchemist was amongst them, Isabella noted with interest one night as she sifted through record upon record. The kid sure knew how to go through money. All State Alchemist’s actually, if Fullmetal’s and the Colonel’s expenses were the norm for all – Isabella was certain that she had earned less at the Gazette in three years than what Edward Elric had managed to spend in a single weekend.

However, in terms of actual evidence, Isabella had yet to find anything suspect about any of the people Hakuro had supplied. Numbers matched up where they were meant to, and she could find very little on complaints made (especially regarding Colonel Mustang, the Fullmetal Alchemist on the other hand, had many angry complaints from the public about ‘damaged property’ and ‘he repaired what he broke but now it looks really ugly’).

Though Hakuro hadn’t been too annoyed last week when she gave him an update of the situation, a week had passed and she was nowhere closer to framing this guy for anything remotely scandalous or even gossip-worthy and there was two hundred thousand motherfucking cenz on the line. Drastic measures had to be taken if she wanted to keep this job.

She slumped onto her couch next to her cat, grumpy and exhausted. Work hadn’t been much fun either – Nicole from the entertainment section had been loudly talking about the recent soirée that she had managed to get an invite to in the break room for the last 6 days straight and Isabella was going positively batty with the constant shrill laughter and the never-ending stream of comments about how wonderful it was of Mrs Blackwood to extend her an invitation. Nicole had even managed to slip her a snide comment – “I could see if I could get you an invite as well, Izzy; you could come with Will- oh, I forgot, you two aren’t together anymore, are you? Oh well, I couldn’t have you hanging on my arm all night.”

Isabella hated the nickname. She hated William as well. Apparently his new relationship was going very well.

Nothing was going very well for her at the moment, unless-

She sat up suddenly, fumbling through the mountains of paper that Hakuro had delivered to her desk at the Gazette. He had written down their addresses somewhere – why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? Pictures spoke a thousand words, after all. Just a few photographs of the two and she could doctor the rest herself – a skill that she had picked up over the years. It might not be enough to indict the man, but it would be enough to have others – meaning people not based at Eastern City Command – to have suspicions and begin to investigate themselves. Hakuro had said, after all, that his informants felt there were multiple breaches of confidence happening – a catalyst at this stage was all she would need to meet his request.

Hakuro, she reasoned, wouldn’t need to know that the images were doctored – nor would he care, she considered. He seemed like the sort of man where the ends justified the means when it came to his enemies.

It was settled. She would skip work and call in sick tomorrow – if she had to listen to Nicole bragging about the haute couture dress she had acquired one more time she was going to stab something (or somebody). She’d pose as a young and naïve university student and see if she could manage an interview with the man himself, and follow him back to his house, hopefully with his aide in tow. She’d only need a few photographs of the two – if she managed one inside the house she could do wonderful things with it – and then it would simply be a matter of going to the Gazette on the weekend and producing the photos and begin the doctoring process.

Isabella stood and stretched languidly. Hopefully by Saturday she’d have all the evidence that Hakuro required and then she would have two hundred thousand motherfucking cenz. This week was turning out to be alright.

As it turned out, posing as a young and naïve university student with a paper on alchemy didn’t get you anywhere when it came to the military receptionists – but it was worth a shot anyway. She managed to find out where the car park was, so it was just a matter of waiting for the right head to be spotted in a car and she could be on her way. At least this gave Isabella a chance to people-watch – a favourite pastime of hers that had fallen to the wayside. You couldn’t really eavesdrop on people and watch them at the same time – most people were quick to catch on.

It was nearing eight in the evening now, and Isabella was onto her fourth coffee, binoculars trained on the entrance of the car park. Almost everybody had gone home – by her counting, only five or six cars were left by this stage, but she had yet to see the Colonel leave. Did he normally work such long hours?

Isabella sighed, shifting in her seat, picking at the skin around her nails. It had been a gamble to come here today – but the receptionist had confirmed he was here – and she had wasted this much time on him already. “Might as well go the whole hog,” she muttered under her breath, cricking her neck from side to side, sighing in pleasure as she felt and heard the joints crack loudly. It was an ugly habit of hers but it certainly helped her look intimidating during high school. All the cool gangsters in the magazine serials all cracked their necks and knuckles before going in for the kill.

Hours passed, and Isabella dozed a little, eyes focused blearily on the part of the street lit up by the entrance to the car park. At this rate it looked like he was going to sleeping over at headquarters – could he even do that? It was a worrying thought but then-

A car suddenly pulled out from the entrance to the car park and Isabella struggled for a moment with her binoculars before focusing on the car, which was giving way to a pedestrian. It was definitely the Colonel, with the Lieutenant driving. Bingo.

She started her car, waiting for them to get ahead to the lights before pulling out into the minimal traffic. It was nearly one in the morning, she realised as turned the radio off – what on earth were they doing to be going home at this hour?

Or maybe they fuck there after everybody else has gone home, she thought, trying to contain a snigger. General Hakuro would certainly never be expecting that.

They seemed to be following the most direct route to his house, Isabella noted. She could probably afford to lose them for a minute and come up a side street and wait for them to pass – a parked car would look far less suspicious than a moving one.

She was correct in her assumptions – her shortcut allowed her to start walking to the park that was next to his apartment building, and she had a nice view of this building’s car park too – she would just need to wait for the next window to be lit up and she could settle in for some good old-fashioned investigating. She had brought a thermos of coffee as well – though she was beginning to feel the need to pee. She could pee in a bush here. It wouldn’t be the worst thing she was doing that night.

Isabella flattened herself against one of the trees in the park as car lights shone across the ground. With luck, this would be the Colonel. Voices floated out across the park – from what she could gather – it was them. The car wasn’t leaving, and Lieutenant Hawkeye didn’t live within walking distance of Colonel Mustang’s apartment which meant-

Oh, she had definitely hit the jackpot tonight.

Isabella would love to say to General Hakuro that this was not what she had signed up for – but she had, and that was why she was hiding out in some bushes outside Colonel Mustang’s apartment at 2:38 on a frigid September morning.

She had managed to get a couple of photos of the two walking from the car park to the front of his building – it wasn’t her best work, but in her defence it wasn’t like she got the opportunity much these days: eavesdropping was definitely becoming her specialty now. But apart from those photos, nothing else had happened. Multiple apartments had lit up but nobody had gone near the windows, and by now Isabella was beginning to lose the feeling in her fingers. She was cold, and tired, and hungry and-

“Can I help you?” a male asked from behind her. She twisted suddenly, and found herself face-to-face with none other than Colonel Roy Mustang himself. She gaped for a second, before coughing and standing up. Say something say something saysomethingsaysomething-

“Shit, man! I thought you were my perp!”

Mustang looked confused. “Perp?”

Isabella stuck out her hand as a way of greeting. He accepted it, albeit warily. “I’ve been employed to investigate a man who lives in this apartment block – his fiancée thinks that he’s cheating on her – she’s right.” Isabella said briskly. “I’m a private detective.”

“That explains the camera then.”

She nodded. “Yeah, though I haven’t had much luck tonight. Do you live in this building? I- I didn’t mean to scare you. Obviously I’m not doing a great job of hiding if you saw me,” she admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck. Mustang laughed, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“You might want to work on that,” he replied kindly, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “But, uh, I’m not here to critique your investigating skills. I was just wondering if you wanted to come up for a cup of tea or coffee? You must be freezing out here.”

You must be kidding me. “I- I wouldn’t say no to a coffee right now,” Isabella answered, biting the inside of her cheek. This is not happening right now. “I don’t want to be a bother though,” she added quickly.

Mustang shook his head. “Nonsense – I’m up anyway. Some company would be nice – and this park isn’t the safest place after dark. C’mon,” he gestured towards to the apartment block and she nodded, picking up her bag and followed him.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Mustang said as he held open the door to the apartment building.

“Isabella Petersen,” she replied easily. If she had learnt anything about snooping about, the less lying you did made the job a million times easier. Lies were hard to make convincing – but the truth was much easier to manipulate – and a fake name was the first mistake many rookies made. A mistake she had made a long time ago.

“Lovely to meet you, Isabella Peterson,” Mustang said warmly, climbing the stairs two at a time. “I’m Roy Mustang, perpetual insomniac.”

Isabella copied his gait with a little difficulty. “Your name’s familiar,” she commented. “Should I know you from somewhere?”

Mustang laughed a little awkwardly. “I’m a…state alchemist,” he explained, turning onto the second flight of stairs. “I work at Eastern Headquarters.”

“Is insomnia a side effect of being a state alchemist?” she quipped. They had slowed to a stop on the second floor in front of an unassuming brown door. He rummaged around in his jacket pocket for a key, before looking back at her.

“I never thought about it that way,” he replied thoughtfully, fighting with the lock for a moment before it gave way. “It’ll definitely be a contributing factor.”

“What’s a contributing factor?” a feminine voice asked from inside the apartment. Mustang gestured inside and Isabella hesitated for a second, before passing over the threshold. His apartment was rather sparse for the amount of money he had available at his disposal, she though critically, noticing First Lieutenant Hawkeye curled up on the couch surrounded by several boxes worth of paper. She had changed out of her uniform, Isabella realised.

“Me being a ‘dog of the military’ might be related to my insomnia, Riza,” Mustang answered behind her, shrugging of his coat and hanging it up next to the closed door. “This is Isabella Petersen,” he said over his shoulder as he walked towards the kitchenette. “She’s joining us for a cup of tea.”

Hawkeye winked at her. “I was the one who spotted you,” she admitted, shifting on the couch slightly. “Your lens was reflecting against the light.”

“Oh,” Isabella replied, a little awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to scare you or anything.” Hawkeye laughed, her smile reaching from ear to ear.

“Believe me when I say I have faced far worse than a camera,” she confided. “But that park can be really dangerous at night – we really don’t want to have to investigate a murder in our own backyard.” She gestured to the single-seater opposite her. “Take a seat. Roy makes good tea.”

“Do you have milk or sugar?” Mustang called from the kitchenette.

“Both please,” Isabella replied, placing her backpack at her feet. Mustang came out of the kitchenette holding two steaming mugs. Giving one to her, he turned to where Hawkeye was on the couch.

“Can I not sit down?” he asked. Hawkeye rolled her eyes before shifting a box onto the ground, muttering under her breath. Mustang ignored this, sitting down next to her and passing her the other mug before clasping his hands together and looked directly at Isabella.

“So, Ms Petersen,” he began, his gaze steady, “why don’t you tell me why you’ve been following and photographing us?”

There was a beat before Isabella registered the question.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfu-

“I…haven’t,” she answered warily, eyes darting between the two of them. Hawkeye seemed completely disinterested in the conversation, sipping on her tea and reading papers.

Mustang snorted harshly. “Nice try. I do read the Eastern Gazette though – What I Heard in the Wind is one of the highlights, really, compared to the rest of the drivel coming out of that rag. But that’s not why I brought you up here. Why have you been following us?”

Her heart was beating at a mile a minute and it was difficult to concentrate – had Hakuro set her up? Mustang read her column? Mustang read her column?

I’m fucked.

“I’m writing a story,” she said finally, her shoulders slumping. “About State Alchemist’s. Whether they’re necessary in today’s political climate. It wasn’t anything personal – just business.”

Mustang leaned back into the couch, regarding her cautiously. Hawkeye hadn’t reacted to the confession: she was still reading files with no indication whatsoever that something momentous had just occurred.

“Forgive me if I don’t take what you say at face value,” Mustang replied, folding his arms over his chest. “But you wouldn’t need photos for a story, would you, Ms Petersen? You’re a writer, not a photographer.”

Isabella chewed on her lip, meeting his stony gaze. He wasn’t angry – and an angry Mustang was something she dearly wished she would never have to see. She had heard the rumours of what his alchemy could do. He was annoyed, more than anything – and tired. The bags under his eyes had a faint purple tinge to them, and all his movements seemed to suggest weariness.

Silence hung between them. Hawkeye opened up another file and kept reading.

“Tell you what,” said Mustang carefully, leaning forward and trying his best to supress a yawn. “I will tell you what I’m going to do if you don’t tell me the truth, and then you can decide what to do from there.”

She stared at him, biting on her tongue.

“Well, first of all, you’re going to be arrested right here and now because I can do that, and then I’ll get a warrant to search both your home and the offices of the Eastern Gazette – and would you believe that I can also sign for those warrants too? Then it’s simply a matter of finding enough evidence against the military to get you charged with treason-”

“Don’t forget that all her co-workers might as well.” Hawkeye mentioned, finally looking up from her file and glancing at Mustang. “They will also be investigated. The Eastern Gazette would be done and dusted before the month is out.” She looked at Isabella. “All because of you.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“Major General Hakuro paid me to try and discredit you,” she finally said, squeezing her eyes shut. Goodbye cenz. Goodbye credibility. Goodbye job offers.

“How much?”

Isabella looked up. Mustang had gotten up and walked down the hallway next to the kitchenette, his hands on his face. Hawkeye looked at her pointedly.

“Two hundred thousand cenz.”

If she was shocked, Hawkeye did a very good job of hiding it. “Do you know what he was going to do with the information?”

“Take it to someone who could use it, I imagine. He wasn’t of Eastern Command.”

“He wouldn’t be,” Hawkeye muttered under her breath, shifting files off her lap. There was an uneasy silence as the older woman regarded her coolly. “Why did you say yes?”

“What?”

Hawkeye shrugged. “Two hundred thousand cenz in the scheme of things isn’t a lot when you’re talking about military brass. What was in it for you?”

“Money,” replied Isabella angrily. “It might come as a surprise to you, but not everybody gets a cushy salary. Even a hundred thousand would be more than enough to help people like me survive a little easier.”

“No ulterior motives?”

“Sometimes reasons are simple.”

Something flitted over Hawkeye’s face, before she stood up and poked her head down the hallway. “I’ve got an idea Roy,” she called out, before placing her mug on the kitchen bench and walked back to the lounge suite, shifting the remaining paperwork back into an open box. It was a few minutes before Mustang returned, looking even wearier than had had before. He all but flung himself onto the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes.

“What is it?”

“Hakuro is going to be out for blood once he finds out. She won’t be safe.” Hawkeye answered quietly, placing the lid on the last of the boxes.

“That matters?” he asked. Isabella winced at the unconcerned tone.

“It could,” Hawkeye pointed out, kneeling beside the man. “Madame Christmas mentioned she was looking for new girls. Hakuro won’t be able to touch her there.”

“Why should I care about some bitch who tried to sell me out?”

“Because she’s got enough brains to lie well enough under pressure. Because she’s in way out of her depth. Because if you don’t help her the General will keep trying to discredit you.”

Mustang huffed, shifting on the couch so he could look at his aide. “What would you have me do?”

Hawkeye glanced back at where Isabella was sitting, fingers curling around the mug of now-cold tea. “I would protect her,” she began slowly, brushing his hair out of his eyes very carefully. “The General has more influence than you think. He could make things difficult for all of us-”

“And once girl will stop that?” he asked harshly. Hawkeye nodded.

“The General won’t protect her – it’s why he chose her. She’s disposable, easy to silence. Make sure he cannot do that.” She rose from kneeling beside him, her hand brushing his for barely a second before she walked down the dim hallway, undoing her hairclip and vanishing behind a door.

Isabella glanced at Mustang. He was staring at her, a calculating look on his face.

“C’mon,” he said suddenly, all but leaping from the couch and heading for the front door, grabbing his coat. “We’re going to the bank.”

Today’s Politics with Lizzy Peters, Central Times, 14th of November, 1914.

Since arriving in Central, dear readers, I have discovered two things – you all have an obsession with tea, and everyone makes fun of me for being from East City. You should all visit there sometime: the sun would do some good for your dour personalities!

But I am not here to convince you to have a holiday out East (though you should really consider it!) My job is to tell you all about the issues being discussed by our senate, by the different council’s here in the Central district. However, today is a little different. I was reminded recently of why I chose to become a journalist, instead of an author or tutor, or a zoo keeper (my childhood dream). I chose to become a journalist because I wanted to help people – where I grew up, there were a few military officials who would be bribed and offer bribes, without considering the very people who they were entrusted to protect. My village suffered because of their greed, because of their callousness. It was the local paper who brought the evidence of their deception and dishonesty to light and ensured that these people paid for their crimes. These journalists, who were putting their very lives on the line to protect us, did not care that they could get arrested for treason. They did it because it was the right thing to do.

It was these few brave souls who have inspired me ever since.

And so, today, dear readers, it is now my turn to inspire, it is my turn to be brave and suffer the consequences as they come. There is an issue I must bring to your attention. It is an issue that is near and dear to my heart – an issue I’m sure you can all understand. That issue is the rampant corruption in our military. Many of you have written in to tell me of the injustices you have faced at the hands of those who swear to serve us. ‘What can I, a single person do?’ so many of you ask. Week after week I read the incidents that have occurred and it pulls at my heart. One person can only do so much, after all.

I have found in my time here at the Central Times that many of you accept your rights as you are told them. From now on, this column will be dedicated to ensuring that every person who reads this paper will understand exactly how the military works in our great country – as well as what your rights are when you feel that they have not done their best to serve you. The military as an idea is not corrupt – but there are those inside who are. Together, we need to expose their lies. Together, we as a people can protect those who cannot protect themselves.

I look forward to serving you as best I can.

With all my love,

Lizzy Peters

‘Well-known’ soldier denies embezzling state funds, by Lizzy Peters, Central Times, 11th of January, 1915.

A soldier stationed at New Optain has pleaded not guilty to embezzling more than 800,000 cenz in civilian funding, the Eastern District court heard today.

Name suppression has been granted for the interim for the soldier who was ‘well-known’ in the district, when they appeared at the district court this Thursday.

Not guilty pleas were entered to the charge of stealing money and they were remanded on bail to reappear for a case review in March. 

Court documents alleged the offending took place between the winter of 1912 and summer of 1915. 

A spokesperson for the New Optain branch said the soldier had worked for the military for over four decades. 

The alleged theft was "devastating for the morale of his subordinates", she said.

“Did you know anything about this?” Riza asked, as she shrugged on a spare shirt that she found on the ground. She motioned to the newspaper on the bed. Roy groaned and rolled over in the bed, scrubbing at his eyes and blearily looking at the headline.

“Well-known…” he mumbled, tracing his fingers over the ink. “There must’ve been enough evidence if it’s gone to court.”

Riza sat down next to him in the light that was filtering through his curtains, kissing his cheek lightly. “The real question was whether it existed before or after his little meltdown at the Gazette,” she said quietly, leaning her head in the crook of his shoulder.

Roy made a noise of agreement, before throwing the newspaper off the bed and curling his arms tightly around her waist.

“Doesn’t matter,” he murmured between languid kisses. “It’ll keep him busy.”

[lelou-quotes]

If You Hate Going To Work, Read This

https://medium.com/@bykateward/if-you-hate-going-to-work-read-this-c34c7f91dbb1

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. I’m a Millennial. At the core, I buy into Sigmund Freud’s belief that:

“Love and work are the cornerstones of humanness.”

That these are the only things that matter. Call it entitled. Call it narcissistic. Call it whatever you please. If you don’t at least partially buy into this view of the world, I urge you to stop reading now. The thesis of this entire post stems from this belief.

It’s an ode to any 20-something in the midst of an existential crisis that believes this, too, but can’t seem to put it into practice.

This is for my countless friends that hate what they’re doing. Hate their jobs. Hate the people. Hate the company politics.

That have been experiencing anxiety. Panic attacks. Existential crises. Depression.

It’s for those stuck in the loop of the Sunday Scarries, Mad Mondays, Terrible Tuesdays, WTF Wednesdays, Thoughtless Thursdays, Finally Fridays, and Super Saturdays.

For those feeling lost, unfulfilled, unmotivated, and exhausted. Daydreaming about starting their “own thing.” Wondering why they haven’t dropped out yet. Going through the motions. Sitting on the sidelines of life.

Whoever you are, in whatever version of this predicament, this is for you.

Step #1: Recognize And Combat The Forces At Play.

There is something that’s made you believe you shouldn’t try to change. That you shouldn’t do something new. That’s kept you from switching paths already. What is it?

Inertia.

Being who you are, doing what you’re doing already, is easy. Very easy. You have learned habits and ingrained patterns of thinking and behaving that drive almost everything you do. Whether you like your job or not, it’s easy to wake up and keep going.

And while it’s easy to imagine what it would be like once you’ve changed, it’s cognitively exhausting to think about putting in the work to change. Pushing yourself to new limits. Applying to new jobs. Sidelining your ego. Breaking habits. Building a new network. Choosing a non-traditional path. Doing the inner work. Jumping in.

Henry Cloud wrote,

“We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.”

We stay in jobs when they’re comfortable. But just because something’s comfortable, doesn’t mean it’s serving you.

A good test for deciding whether to change is to ask yourself the following:

Is this engagement something I enjoy and/or am proud to be a part of?

Is this engagement getting me closer to doing something I’m proud of or will enjoy? (i.e. helping you build up the you the money, skills, and relationships you’ll need.)

If the answer to both questions is “no,” then you should seriously consider quitting, turning in a new direction, or coming up with a new plan.

Inertia is a life killer. It is the result of prioritizing comfort over growth. And to stop growing is to die.

Justification.

I genuinely convinced myself on multiple occasions at my last engagement:

“The long-term payout could be huge.”

“If I can’t commit myself to this, I won’t be able to commit myself to anything.”

“Everyone thinks I’m good at this.”

“My resume can’t have a gap on it.”

All partially true thoughts. All ego-centric. All hard to let go of.

Author, Tim Ferriss, in his bestselling book, The Four Hour Work Week, calls this out for what it is: “fear disguised as optimism.” He goes on to write:

“Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.”

The mind is a tricky machine. There are thousands of potential rationalizations and justifications for why you should stay — in the unfulfilling job or unhealthy relationship — and the mind is prepared to use them all against you.

Because the mind favors inertia. It doesn’t want to change. And therefore, you can convince yourself of absolutely anything.

And when you listen, you become confined to this state of non-commitment disguised as poise, dedication, and honorable sacrifice.

Pay attention to what you are justifying — to yourself and others — about your current situation. If you feel compelled to justify anything, it means you don’t believe it. It means you’re afraid of the alternative or the truth. Work through that and you will find what you truly believe.

Push vs. Pull.

There is a lot of talk lately about “hustle” and “hard work” thanks be to Gary Vaynerchuk and the rest of the “thought leader” crew. Working hard is a key element in success, certainly. As the saying goes:

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”

But it’s not the only element.

In fact, it’s preceded by something much more important.

What’s made Gary Vaynerchuk successful is that he’s doing what he loves. He’s aligned. He’s operating within his natural set of talents and abilities. He’s the adult-version of his baseball card-selling self. He loves the game.

He’s working hard, but he isn’t forcing it. He isn’t pushing himself to work hard so much as he’s being pulled to.

If you have to drag yourself out of bed in the morning, complain all the way to the office, and spend 18 hours feeling exhausted, miserable, and uninspired, then you are doing it wrong.

That’s slaving for a paycheck. It’s honorable and obligatory to some extent, sure. But if you want complete fulfillment and massive success, you need to switch strategies. Stop pushing, and search for what pulls you.

The hard work, the ethic, and the drive will come naturally when you stop resisting what’s pulling you.

Step #2: Pay Attention — Get To Know Yourself Better.

No one else can tell when you’re actually “all in.” No one else can tell you what you should be, do, or have. No one else can tell you when it’s the right time to start, stop, or change. That’s your job.

Only you can know when you’re putting in 80% effort.

When you’re in something — a job, a game, relationship, or conversation — you are either fully present and committed or you aren’t. This is binary.

You are the only one who knows what lingering doubts, regrets, and suspicions you have. You are the only one who knows what you’re holding back or what you’re reserving for a better opportunity.

This has nothing to do with the results you’re seeing or how people perceive you. You can kill yourself for something and still blow it. You can half-ass something and stroll right through.

You might be really good at conversational masturbation. You may have a really good performance on the field after a night of partying. You might be really good at crunching numbers. You might be really good at making your partner believe you love them.

But only you know the truth. Did you put every ounce of effort and energy into that presentation? Did you bring your A game? Did you leave it all on the field? Do you have wandering eyes? Do you have doubts?

Are you really in this or are you out?

It feels crappy to be less than who you are capable of being and to do less than what you are capable of doing.

Life is too short to only go in 80%.

Aren’t you the least bit curious what would happen if you put 100% of yourself into something?

It’s up to you to find what’s worth the extra 20%.

You have a unique purpose.

I have a lot of qualms with the education system, but perhaps the greatest is that we push students to choose majors and career paths based on expected future value calculations.

Business is more valuable than psychology. Engineering is more valuable than business. Medicine is more valuable than engineering.

Pick something that will “set you up.” Blah. Blah. Blah.

There are lucrative opportunities down any path. If you can fill a big need, you can make big money. Simple as that.

You’ve probably seen this diagram before. Purpose is found at the intersection of what you love doing, what the world needs, what you are good at, and what pays.

I believe when you are not obligated to a marital partner or a child, you are obligated to this Venn Diagram.

The world is better off when you are self-aware and deploying against that self-awareness. When you are doing what makes you feel alive. When you are feeling fulfilled. And you are better off when you’re getting paid for it.

The highest service you can do for humanity is to find and do what makes you feel alive. You will work harder, and therefore add more value that way. You will be happier, and therefore raise others up.

Be patient. Try as many things as possible. Travel. Take cheap internships. Figure out what you must do, not what your mentors, parents, teachers, and peers have told you you should do.

Don’t go into insurance sales for the money and misery. Don’t walk the path of the starving artist.

Find the intersection. Be a thriving artist.

You have natural talents, inclinations, and filters. Find them.

Meg Jay, Ph.D, calls these our:

“UNTHOUGHT KNOWNS.”

The things that are already inside of you that you once actively understood but forgot about yourself. The things that the world stripped from you. The things you enjoy doing. That you are good at. That add value to the world. That others praise you for.

The spark to initiate the commitment. Something worth building upon. A runner’s high or a young lover’s buzz. The catalyst.

It’s like what Steve Jobs said in his famous Stanford Commencement speech:

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

To find your “unthought knowns,” you have to create a clear channel. Your heart and intuition cannot “speak up” if you don’t create a space for them to.

You have to provide a blank canvas.

The problem is, by this point in our lives, most of us are working with a canvas that’s already full. It has all of our preconceived notions of what we should be. All the years of people telling you what’s practical and profitable.

Scrape it down and you will discover your essence.

Start by asking:

What do I do that no one pays me for?

What did I like to do as a child?

What do I do just for the sake of enjoyment?

How do I process the world around me?

When I asked those questions, my thing, for example, became abundantly clear. It had been staring me in the face since I was probably a freshman in high school, maybe even before that.

I have memories from middle school in being applauded for it.

I even received honors in college for doing it well.

I even created a daily habit of doing it in 2016.

I was paid for it a few times in (and right after) college.

I’ve had people over the years tell me — you should do that thing as a job.

It’s the thing I do when I have a little extra time on my hands.

And it wasn’t until the beginning of 2018, at the age of 25, that I even realized I could monetize in a massive way. That I could really make an impact with it. That it was my gift. It just hit me. And just like that, everything shifted.

You have something in you like that, too.

Step #3: Take Some Action.

What’s often missed with “The Law of Attraction” is that you have to line your thoughts, words, and actions. I don’t deny that thought is a powerful tool, but it is the weakest tool between the triad. It is only the start; it is not the end.

Action, on the other hand, is the most powerful.

Sometimes you have to “drop out” to drop in.

There is all of this talk about starting a “side hustle” before leaving your corporate job. Getting your toes wet. Identifying the next platform to jump to. Testing the efficacy of your business plan.

I like it. I think it’s practical, smart, and effective. I wish I could have done that.

But I couldn't.

If you have the type of personality or identity structure that requires you go “all in” on every venture, you will likely find yourself at a crossroads eventually. “The crossroads of should and must,” as author Elle Luna calls it.

A place where you have to make a decision because the two paths you’re headed down are mutually exclusive. You are trying to find time for long-term creative thinking, but you’re on the high-powered executive track. You are trying to pursue screenwriting, but you’re acting in commercials full time.

If you have the energy and the ability to force separation between your paying gig and your purpose, power to you. If you are highly risk-averse or financially conservative, own that. Start a side hustle.

But don’t wait on attacking your dreams just because you believe it has to start as a side hustle. Sometimes in life, we have to burn the bridges backwards to secure any chance of moving forwards.

To go against all of the advice you’ve heard from career counselors and mentors. To intentionally create space. To do what you should have done at 18. To hope that you aren’t delusional. To soul search and figure out what may be worthy of commitment. A craft. A mission. A business.

And in that space you carve out, you may just find it. The thing that you are meant to commit yourself to. That you are willing to assume risk for. That you are meant to do with your days, weeks, months, and years. That makes you want to publicly fail, so you can get better.

Find something to go a mile deep in.

As Matthew McConaughey’s character in True Detective said,

“Life’s barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you get good at.”

You’re becoming what you’re spending your time on and who you’re spending it with. The podcasts you listen to. The books you read. The TV shows you watch. What’s on your Instagram feed. Your friends. Your coworkers. How you spend your evenings.

Seeing results and experiencing fulfillment are a matter of making a deep commitment to something bigger than the minutia.

You could become a fundamental Christian. You could become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. An engineer. A Buddhist. A daycare worker. An entrepreneur. A monk. A public defender. A law enforcement officer. An archaeologist. An activist. A multi-planetary human being. A tattoo artist.

But you can’t be all of those things.

If you go an inch deep in ten areas, you are likely to be pretty mediocre in all ten. If you go a foot deep in one area, you will not only have built a valuable skill and knowledge base, you will be a magnet for those other nine things anyways.

Becoming a world-class anything will attract teaching, speaking, and writing opportunities. It will open doors for collaborations you can’t even dream of.

The key is this: start with one thing. Wake up each day and be the best you can be. Stay committed no matter how many escape routes you see.

The dividends paid on that kind of commitment are huge.

Take action on the grand strategy.

Grand strategy, according to military strategist, Liddell Hart, is the way in which resources should be banded together to reach some political objective in war.

Often we are hyper-focused on winning this battle, forgetting about why we are fighting this war in the first place.

You have to keep the overarching objective in mind. A goal. An endgame. An ideal day in mind. Something to work for. Something you want. Someone you want to be.

When you have a clear vision of what you want to become, what you want to do, and what you want to have, you can take steps towards that goal without worrying too much about the small losses. The additional anxieties and pressures fall off. The macro becomes more important than the micro.

You are less invested and more detached from the short-term outcomes. You can put up with a little grunt work. Long hours. Crappy shifts. And the work no one else wants to do.

And that’s how you win. That’s how you acquire success and become fulfilled.

Take action. Be persistent. Play the long game.

Now… the end is not yet written.

I could be wrong. I could be just another Millennial preaching about finding purpose in the world. About doing good. About making stuff that matters.

I could experience financial destruction in a recession. I could fail to become as great as I want to at this craft. I could suffer many failures on the path.

But the science is unequivocal. Economists and philosophers agree. There is no better time to act than right now. No better time to quit. No better time to start. No better time to take the first step on the path to becoming who you want to become.

As Meg Jay, Ph.D, writes:

“The post-twenty something brain is still plastic, of course, but the opportunity is that never again in our lifetime will the brain offer up countless new connections and see what we make of them. Never again will we be so quick to learn new things. Never again will it be so easy to become the people we hope to be. The risk is that we may not act now.”

[journal911]

why this must end, part 2

Relationships are supposed to be hard. They’re supposed to be a push and pull. Two people can’t go through life, living side by side, without struggling to communicate, relate, compromise, or be happy, at least a little bit. It’s supposed to be hard, because life is hard. 

But--life is hard. So relationships shouldn’t be so hard that they make life harder. A relationship should alleviate the burden of life despite moments of pain. Those moments of pain should reveal growth and appreciation and a deeper connection. A relationship should not make someone suffer without purpose.

Our relationship does not alleviate the burden of life, at least for me. Work alone for me has been so painful and all-consuming that all I have needed for the past year is a companion, someone to lean on, someone I can rely on to be there when I need it most. But every night I come home to an empty bed. Every night I come home to an empty inbox. I go weeks without seeing you, and sometimes when I do see you you are completely wrapped up in your own world that it’s like I’m not even seeing you at all. I beg you to be with me and to be present and you fight me, tooth and nail, every step of the way. Call me petty. Say that it’s not you to be “that way”. It’s not just about listening to me talk about work; you will listen to me talk, if I start the conversation. It’s about being with me. Being a companion. Knowing that I can see you whenever and you’ll be happy, satisfied, excited. Knowing that I can call you and not feel like I should apologize for interrupting your life or whatever you were doing, even if it was nothing at all. Knowing that I can make plans with you without the worry that later on down the line you’ll find something better to do, or change your mind because it’s no longer what you want to do. Knowing that you’re there, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. I have to beg for that now. I shouldn’t. I have to scream and cry to no avail until finally you get tired and say, in essence, “whatever”, and spill an empty promise you know you’re not going to keep. I cry myself to sleep several times a week. Not necessarily because of you, but because of stress and anxiety and loneliness. All I want is you to be there for me, the way I have been there for you, picking up the phone at 2, 3, 4 in the morning when you’re panicking, cooing you back to sleep. Listening to you breathe on the other side for an hour just in case you wake up again. Sometimes, if I call you too late, you won’t answer and then you won’t call me back at all. Or you’ll text me sometime the next day saying, “missed your call, what’s up”. As if I just had some “petty” shit to talk about and it didn’t really matter. It matters. I matter. 

Our relationship has made me suffer. I have spent so many moments crying in a corner of a wedding, or splayed across my floor, or chain-smoking on my front stoop, or head buried in a pillow, or in my office, or on a subway, or in an airport, or...I have spent so many more moments crying over the fact that you don’t care that I’m crying. Calling me petty. Saying that what I am upset about is bullshit, and that you’re not going to change, and that “this” isn’t going to work. It’s frustrating, because you play that as your trump card, like you know it’s going to shut me up because you said something bigger than the problem at hand: you’re mad I didn’t dance? This isn’t going to work, because I am who I am and I’m not going to change. When you say things like that, of course, me wanting to dance seems petty in the scheme of our entire relationship. But isn’t it also petty that you won’t dance with me just to make me happy for an evening? It’s not like we have so many evenings of dancing, or so many evenings together at all, that you can sit one or two out and I won’t notice. This is just one example, a recent example, of you framing the conversation, where whatever I get upset over is insignificant in comparison to the person you are as a whole. It has manipulated me into thinking that none of the things that I want or care about really matter that much. And that’s really fucked up, because who I am, and what I want, is just as important as who you are, and what you want. And usually at this point in the conversation, I give up. Sometimes I even say sorry. Rarely, we compromise. Always, I’m disappointed, upset, and alone. My friends are worried about me. They say that I’ve changed, that I’m darker, sadder, less social. They don’t understand how I cry so much, because I never really cry at anything else--I’m usually so stoic, so calm and level-headed. Something about you gets me, and its a combination of the intense love I have for you and the extreme frustration I feel when trying to reason with you. The things I ask from you are the very basics of what a relationship is, and still somehow you find a way to say that I’m being unreasonable, and that I’m asking too much. All I want is:

1) Consistent communication

2) Frequent quality time spent together

3) Empathy and sympathy for one another’s needs and desires

4) Efforts made toward meeting one another’s needs and desires

5) Compromise pursuant to disagreements or differences in opinion

This is not unreasonable to request in a romantic relationship, nor a regular friend or family relationship. It’s the basis of how to be in any relationship, period. Note that I didn’t add anything about “romantic gestures” or “living together” or “follow me on social media” or “become friends with my friends” or “go on dates” or “plan for the future”, all of which would also be considered reasonable expectations for a romantic relationship, and also, all of which I’ve either done for you, requested of you, or both, but that you have shot down on multiple occasions. (Literally denying my Instagram follow request! Ha.) And honestly, the fact that those things aren’t present in our relationship have worn on me, but I’ve stopped asking because I know they’re never going to happen and I love you too much to let them get in the way of a relationship with you. But those few things I listed as the “basics” are necessary to call what we have a relationship. And they’re not present. They’re not even close to present. 

1) You call me sporadically, if at all. If I call you or text you, you usually don’t respond for a while, or you’re so quiet it’s awkward. You express little interest in the things I have to talk about other than basic mmhmms and “cool”, unless it has to do with stocks or something else you’re personally interested in. If I disagree with what you have to say, you say that I’m being too sensitive, not good at debating, short-sighted, or something similarly patronizing. You do talk to me about work sometimes, which is nice.

2) We spend maybe 3-4 days a month together, and you argue regularly with me when I say I want to spend more time with you. You tell me I’m being needy when I get upset about going many days without seeing you. When we do see each other, you are on your phone playing Yu-Gi-Oh for a long enough chunk of time for me to be annoyed, and then you get pissed when I tell you that. I’ve tried to come to your house, but it’s currently a mess and you’ve discouraged me from doing so for the last month and a half. When I ask you to come into the city, you say no, or if you say yes, you complain about parking, the drive, the cost, the time, etc. so much that I feel guilty for even asking you to come in in the first place.

3) You tell me the things I desire and need are “petty” and “bullshit”. You get immediately angry when I express my feelings or opinions, and speak to me curtly and forcefully. Your tone is consistently condescending and impatient. If I express emotion, such as raising my voice or crying, your tone becomes even more hurtful. You curse, sometimes at me, and sometimes calling me names. I can’t remember the last time I expressed the way I felt to you and you asked me questions, tried to figure out what’s wrong, or apologized for hurting my feelings. I often feel like you’d prefer me to not say anything at all than express the way I feel.

4) There have been times that you’ve tried to accommodate my needs and desires--I really loved when you brought me flowers and made me dinner on our anniversary. I appreciated that you came to those weddings with me. I loved that you sent me flowers on Valentine’s Day and took me on an awesome date. But generally speaking, these efforts are not the norm. My needs and desires are usually ignored when considering numbers 1-3, but also with stuff like: wanting to do things together; using the word “we” or planning things together; acting in any way like we’re a couple. That’s a need of mine: to feel like you’re my partner. I’ve expressed this to you, and you’ve made efforts toward the opposite, to actually back farther away from me than before. To tell me you don’t know if you ever want to move in, if you’ll ever feel ready, that you’ll resent me if it happens too fast, that we aren’t family yet, that you want to have two separate lives, that you want to feel like you have a place to get away from me. Like damn.  

5) You end nearly every disagreement with “I’m not going to change”, “this isn’t going to work”, or “I’m not talking about this anymore, this is bullshit, I told you from the start who I am and I’ve never changed that.” Compromise isn’t something you’re familiar with in any of your relationships, because no one has ever demanded it. You don’t go deep with virtually anyone, so it hasn’t been necessary. But like, compromise isn’t screaming at and berating someone, wearing down their will to argue. Compromise isn’t empty promises. Compromise is actually acting in a way that satisfies both people, even if both people also have to give up a little of what they want. I’ve given up a lot for you. I’m moving to Newark instead of saving up for a house in New York because you refuse to move to New York. And I was happy to do that, but it was a sacrifice for me to move from my family and friends in New York to live with you in Jersey. It is a consistent sacrifice to refrain from talking to you and seeing you so that you can feel free and unbound; I have so many things that I need to talk about with my partner, but I feel like I can’t because you don’t want to, so I either have to swallow it or talk to someone else or just distract myself until it passes. It’s a sacrifice to spend money on things to help you be presentable--your clothes, your car, your house, our vacations, our dates. These are all compromises I was and am willing to make because I love you, and I want you to be happy, and I want you to be with me. But the other side of compromise is you returning those favors with favors of your own. Is this selfish? Yes. But isn’t it really fucking selfish to be sitting on your side of the table, receiving and receiving without giving what is asked in return? I recognize that you feel that you’ve done and sacrificed a lot for me as well, and I appreciate the things you have done and do to try and make me feel loved. But at a certain point, talking about my financial health and doing the dishes or cooking me a dinner every once in a while does not cut it. I need more. 

I fucking hate this, and I hate that I have to do this, but I really do. I have to take care of myself, because you’ve proven time and time again that you will not, and that you refuse to modify your behavior in any way to meet basic relationship standards and/or my needs and desires on a consistent basis. I feel like I have tried everything I possibly can to make this work, including going to therapy, talking with you for countless hours, and giving up my personal happiness to accommodate your desires. This is not an equal relationship, and I can’t do this anymore.

I love you.