#i made the choice to look for this content therefore I can only blame myself for seeing content that bothered me

[missbaphomet]

It's so funny to me when people pull the "but I'm a minor" card to try and shield themselves from consequences of the shit they do because

You know you're doing something bad and deliberately did it anyway which means you are 100% fully culpable for the consequences

You're weaponizing your status as a minority (which is a bad thing no matter what minority you are) to intentionally harm another person's reputation. This is known as defamation, and it's a crime.

You shouldn't fucking be wherever you are or doing the things you're doing

You are actively putting yourself in a position of danger (opening yourself up to grooming, among other things)

You think yourself grown but you're not actually mature enough to play with the big kids, yet you expect them to give you special consideration because you're a child (lmao)

And you're admitting to all of it

Like. If you're going to use your age as a shield then maybe do things appropriate for your age. Kids make stupid fucking decisions, and age is a perfectly valid reason for many social faux pas, but it's not a defense when you insert yourself into adult spaces. So maybe don't kick the hornet's nest then bitch about being stung.

[ad1thi]

underrated stevetony fics rec list (P1)

i feel like a lot of really good stevetony fics get swept under the rug because this is such a big fandom and sometimes people miss out on quality content?? so this is a rec list of some of the stevetony fics i feel like everybody should have read/ be reading

Edit (31.12.2020): this got very long (i had almost 50 fics on my list, so ive decided to split this list into two parts. part 2 will be out soon!!)

Edit (20.02.2021): part 2 is out now!!

//

picture me in the trees: @ifmywishescametrue

Tony and Steve were childhood friends that almost became more, but Tony moved and they lost their chance. Thirteen years later, a chance meeting brings Tony back into Steve's life.

Free: @iwanttopizzamanyou

"Steve reads, and the words dance in front of his eyes, because while this used to be his dream, what he wanted, all he can think about is how this Hell will soon become his full time life."

Steve discovers fame, with fans waiting for him in the lobby and girls passing him their numbers after the shows. It used to be what he wanted, he supposes. Except his future managers keep asking more and more from him, and he's not sure his old life will survive. Tony is ready to help, and compromise, but Steve maybe isn't anymore.

making it work: @/ironarm 

“Just tell him you don’t want to see him anymore,” Clint replies, finishing the end of his burger and starting to crumple up the wrapper, “It’s not like you love him or anything.”

“Clint, if I thought I could get rid of him about a week ago, I would have. But for some fucked up reason, I can’t lie to him. It’s like, I see those baby blue eyes, and bam. Whatever barrier that I built up from childhood trauma is gone.”

Clint chokes on the last piece of his burger, almost resisting the urge to smack Tony on the side of his head.

Tony was a fucking idiot.

Boys Like Us: @naferty

The video had been a mistake. One of the biggest mistakes he had ever done in his life, and considering Tony Stark had done a bunch of shit in his younger years, and even older years, that was saying something.

It was just that none of those things were as embarrassing as that video.

He blamed Clint for everything

Stained Fingertips: @thesoundofnat

“I don’t really believe in magic,” he said, clearing his throat. “But I’m almost certain you’re a goddamn wizard, Steve Rogers.”

Steve would remember those words for the rest of his life.

(Or, Steve is maybe slightly obsessed with drawing Tony. Not that Tony minds.)

Inhale, Ex-Sail: @summerpipedream

"Rich pirates decked out in top-of-the-line black market gear,” grumbled Tony, ”why don’t I have the budget to make those again?’

Rhodey inched back so that he and Tony were back-to-back. “We’re apparently law abiding citizens now, which means having to pay taxes.”

Tony scowled. “Urg, right. Remind me why I wanted to do that again?”

Rhodey rolled his eyes. “What was it you called him last time? Your sweet tart? Your apple pie in the sky? The wind beneath your wings? Hopefully he’ll fly here fast enough so we don’t get killed. Or worse, mugged.”

Tony Stark Bingo K1 - AU: Steampunk

As Constant As A Star: @atsadi

The Swan Princess AU

As young children, Prince Anthony and Princess Natasha of neighboring Midgardian kingdoms are betrothed, and spend their summers together every year until they are wed. Tony adores his headstrong friend Nat: it’s her scowly little companion Steve he’s not thrilled about at first. But soon Steve goes from being a thorn in Tony’s side to being his dearest friend – and much, much more than that. Despite Steve feeling the same way about Tony, the pair still dance around each other for years as Steve struggles to accept his feelings for another man: especially one already betrothed to another. Not to mention that Tony is a prince, and Steve is nothing but a squire.

But before they can make peace, Tony is kidnapped and dragged into the beginnings of another conflict in the nearby magical kingdom of Asgard – he really hates magic. With his potential usefulness diminishing by the day, Tony races to escape even as Steve, Natasha, and their friends race to find him and bring him home.

And—just to make matters worse—Tony has been trapped by a powerful spell and turned into a swan, of all creatures. He really, really hates magic.

Always Yours: @hollyjollyhope

Getting kidnapped is normal for them, at this point. But there's nothing normal about this.

And suddenly, Tony has a choice to make.

Oxeye Daisy (patience): @s-horne

“You make me want things I can’t have.”

Steve startled at the voice from behind him and turned around to see Tony standing in the kitchen doorway. He stared straight at Tony for a long moment. The room was quiet, time stretching out in a thick and uncomfortable silence as neither man dare to move nor opened his mouth to speak first.

White Clover (a promise): @s-horne

“Hey, sweetheart.”

Tony lifted his head as he tried to focus on Steve’s voice. When he managed to open his eyes and blink a bit of the blurriness away, he was rewarded with a gentle smile being shone down at him.

“There you are,” Steve said. “Was worried I was going to have to talk to myself.”

Though his tone was light, Tony knew what he meant. It was no secret that Tony was physically weaker and a hell of a lot more human than Steve was and was therefore struggling more with the lack of regular nourishment that came with being held hostage.

“Course not,” Tony said back, voice hoarse but plastering a smile on his face all the same. His head was pounding and his eyes couldn't stay open. “Would I ever do that to you? You’d never get a sensible answer.”

Acta non verba: @firebrands

unapologetic fluff about two idiots who can barely keep it together with how hard they're crushing on each other

or:

tony has to help steve with math + a halloween party = a good time for everyone, eventually

you take me higher than the rest (everybody else is second best): @firebrands

tumblr fill for adi & anthonydarling, who asked for "'Prank' war, but the kind to see who can make the other blush the most in public" from this prompt list

Adjacent, Against, Upon: @firebrands

A political AU!

Steve Rogers is running as the Mayor of somewhere, America. Tony Stark, his campaign manager, deals with a candidate who isn’t interested in lying, and just wants to do good by these citizens, god damn it.

song of unrest: @omg-just-peachy

How was Steve supposed to reconcile all of this? The way he looked so different but still felt so much the same? It made Steve’s head spin. He knows he shouldn’t care so much, that he is what he is, but he just wants to know.

Paint The Town Blue: @omg-just-peachy

Ten years since he’d seen or spoken to Tony Stark, ten years since they’d broken up to go away to school. And now this email. It could be his only chance to see Tony again.

Camelot: @weethreequarter

For one shining moment, there was Camelot.

In 2019, Karen Page meets Captain Steve Rogers to conduct an exclusive interview on his late husband, President Tony Stark.

In 2007, Steve meets Senator Tony Stark and falls in love.

he thinks he’s lancelot (but he’s more of a sir lamorak): @theotherwasdeath

Tony knows firsthand that violence isn’t funny. So why oh why does he think that the scene playing out in front of him, Steve and Victor Von Doom in a knock-out, drag-down fist fight, is absolutely hilarious?

wildflowers: @tinytonysnark

“So,” Steve begins, clapping his hands together, “the city of SHIELD is in debt. The big ups have sent for financial advisors, all the way from DC! They’re gonna take a look at the city’s spending and make some cuts.”

He squints at the camera against the morning sun shining through the courtyard, “I’m not that worried. Everyone here in the parks department is an important member of the team and absolutely needed.”

The camera swings towards the office where from the large glass window, Natasha can be seen picking up the ringing phone before immediately slamming it back down onto the receiver.

[A Parks and Rec AU]

trinkets of your affection: @starklysteve

Kissed him once for every year I loved him, Steve had written.

By that count, Steve owes him five more kisses now.

Tony traces the words, hands trembling, and tips back a shot of Howard's ancient whiskey. None of it burns anymore.

One day, he'll have lived more days without Steve than there are words in the diary.

For the first time since he'd woken with shrapnel in his chest, Tony fears the future.

----------

Or, five things Tony keeps to remember Steve by, and one thing Steve gives him to remember.

[tacosandtomcos]

I might be wrong and maybe I’m just overthinking but honestly? I’m upset because it seems like people forgot about Tom.

So many people were interested in svtfoe and Tom, they drew fan art of him, simped for him, analyzed his choices and actions in the show, shipped him with so many characters, made fan childs of him and others, wrote fanfics, made aus, cosplayed,

but every time I check if there are any new posts about him I find less and less posts. I was shocked to see that nearly no one was posting about Tom or tomtober. It’s been 2 years since the show ended but people just can’t abandon the characters they liked. Maybe they want to move on to other shows that are much more interesting than some show that ended a few years ago, but still I feel bad that few people still remember Tom. Personally it was Tom that made me first want to watch svtfoe and he has always been a comfort character to me for some reason.

I wanna thank you for making fanart of svtfoe, even though you mostly draw toh stuff, which I also like, you seem to never forget and abandon about the svtfoe characters, the aus, and the fanchilds you created. I know your love for Tom is really big so I was a little surprised that there was no 2021 tomtober template created by you. But anyways I’m looking forward to seeing your art and I shall use the template you created in 2019!! (Is that correct idk)

i don’t think anyone really forgot, i think after the finale ppl just needed a break from the show and therefore are taking one and i can’t say i blame them. This tends to happen when a show ends in this way.

i think the fans will be back, but only if the show gets any new news or reasons to bring them back, for now, i think ppl just wanted a break from the mess and that’s fine.

ppl still love and enjoy tom i promise you that, it’s less to do with him but the series he was in. Most ppl agree he was one of the best parts of it.

he is a comfort character to me too and i look forward to the day the series may get a second chance and give him time to shine more.

of course, i still love making it, i’m just branching out now these days so i don’t wipe myself out, still doing my ocs, my aus, and new toh stuff since people seem to really enjoy those as well! (Plus i wanna support the show getting new content since daron currently isn’t interested in any new star projects but dana IS interested in more toh ones so for now i’m happy to help push for that)

Hey, it wasn't an easy choice, but it wouldn't be much fun to do a month alone either, but i am participating in a star vs fankid prompt month if it helps you feel any better!

If next year is different, then maybe i’ll do it, but i need to know it’s worth the time before i go about it, but feel free to host  one yourself and make one, you can totally use my old lists!

more tom art is great by me!

[chaoticspacefam]

wonder if part of why the swtor jedi-sith conflict plays the way it does with “sith stans” and etc because the sith empire are functionally saturday morning cartoon villains - “murder and mayhem await!” compared to the more, i guess, believable evil of the republic/jedi following good ideals to bad conclusions and justifying war crimes

I'd certainly say it doesn't help things, you're right! I have...a lot of issues with the Jedi and their portrayal (especially in the Legends/SWTOR era), but I also recognise that a lot of that is very personal to me and that another fan might feel differently. Long, ranty post ahead so if that's not your deal, skip this one.

TL;DR: thinking critically about the behaviour of the Good Guys bad, I guess, since they're the good guys and you're obviously not allowed to use your own agency to decide something they do makes you deeply, viscerally uncomfortable.  And God help you if you disagree with anything they do and cite personal experience behind your (very justified) avoidance of that rhetoric/teaching, because Bad Things Justified If Good People Do Them and how dare you have different personal experiences and responses. If that's what you do, you're doing fandom wrong /s Also, bad writing choices of the writers themselves that perpetuate toxic, harmful viewpoints and/or stereotypes don't mean anything when said viewpoints/stereotypes are the Bad Guys because...Bad Guys Aren’t Supposed To Be People With Rights, Thoughts and Feelings Too, They’re Just Evil, (cringe)

Disagreeing with someone’s opinions is fine, but if you’re going to deliberately expose yourself to content you don’t like and then attack the person that is making the content because they made it and it upset you when you went looking for it....you are, in fact, the one at fault babes. No one is holding you hostage, you can block tags or unfollow a person (especially me. I really don’t care honest to god, if my posts are not your jam just leave. please.) if you hate what they post so much and are unable to just scroll past things you don’t like to stay for things you do. I’ve done it and will continue to do so, and my fandom experience is happier for it. Also, people are human and sometimes we’re tired and we make mistakes like we miss a trigger tag, and you are within your right to come to the person and point that out, but you are not within your right to threaten them because they made a mistake. Then you’re just a dick.

But I still wouldn't be the one going around (passive) aggressively attacking other fans for disagreeing with my opinions and again, this is based on personal experience, but I've seen a lot more of that stuff from "pro-Jedi" people who seem to be conveniently okay with shit like mass-genocide and cultural erasure because "the Jedi are the good guys and the (OT) Sith are fascists!"

I don't interact with the subsect of fans that do think "the (OT) Empire did nothing wrong hurr durr" unironically (and for good reason, I don't agree with that viewpoint either and the fact that half the time the "defence" of these other fans is "well you're pro-fascist then!!" lmao) but there's a very big gap between the OT Empire which is rightfully a mirror of fascism and dictatorial governments and I do, in fact, raise my eyebrows in heavy criticism and disdain at the writers of the TOR-era deliberately choosing to "justify" the ultimate end being said fascist Empire by making the Sith species (and as always I preface this by saying I am in fact white & therefore know I have priveledge and can only "relate" on a much shallower level as POC fans, but there are places where I do find them more relatable than the TOR-era Jedi which reek of conservative, pearl-clutching Christianity (which I spent way too much of my life having forced upon me by the bible-bashing Evangelists(tm) in my family) to me and I just don't have the fucks to give to spend time fixing something that's honestly traumatising for me to be reminded of):

-heavily Indigenous/POC-coded

-"tribal" and not in a properly-researched and respectfully portrayed sense but in a very deliberate "these people are savage and need to be colonised and "sophisticated" by the More Acceptible (Human) Dark Jedi" even though they had their own society, belief systems, and even had technology - just not in the "socially acceptible, conventional sense" I guess

-perpetuating this by adding slavery and all of that can of worms into the mix too, just to drive home the "evil and bad" prototype ig. I'm not even gonna speak more on this part because it just makes me angry.

-Deliberately giving them more "alien" or inhuman characteristics, which while by itself is not necessarily a bad thing, put it together with all the other things?? Big. Fucking. Oof.

-Were literally exterminated and the survivors selectively bred for ONLY the "bad and evil" traits for not agreeing with the Jedi's beliefs. Their own practises and beliefs were automatically "evil" and "wrong" just because they didn't want to "convert" (sniff sniff, Christianity, is that you?)

A direct quote for those who can't be bothered to click and read the link:

For nearly two thousand years, superstition, loyalty and sympathy were bred out as the two groups interbred, and qualities such as cunning, ambition and affinity to the Force were favored, which shaped Sith society over the centuries.[3][21][22] In the Sith Empire, as time progressed pure-blooded Sith were steadily bred out,[6] resulting in only a few pure-blooded Sith left in the Sith Empire by the time of the Great Hyperspace War.[13] Long after, the true species in the Empire were believed to have gone extinct due to the interbreeding process.

And conversely the Jedi:

-Deny young children contact with their parents, siblings and families from the moment their Force sensitivity shows (hmmmm. )

-Continually and actively support the condemnation and Exile of "imperfect" Jedi, hell, it's even pointed out on Wookieepedia, that any Force sensitive, even those who are not aligned to either faction, but that train with or follow teachings that are not Jedi Approved (tm) is labelled as a "Dark Jedi" by the Jedi Order

Although "Dark Jedi" originally referred to a Jedi who had fallen to the dark side, it could also refer to uninitiated Force-sensitives who received no Jedi training but began their careers under another Dark Jedi. Others were simply dark-side users who did not follow the teachings of the Sith or other dark side organizations.

because "oh noooo you do not follow the way of the Truth and the Light you horrible person how dare you defy The One True Correct Teaching, that makes you the Devil Incarnate no matter what" UGH.

-Continuously push the idea (very heavily) that Emotions Are Bad, which just creates a bunch of emotionally-stunted powderkegs unable to recognise, confront and deal with said emotions (and as I've said, I would know, I was one and maybe still am in some ways lmao) , then blames said powderkeg for exploding because they were never taught how to handle the emotions in the first place.

(Fuck "there is no emotion, there is peace", that's not how people work and never will be lmao)

I don't really know what else to say about this to be honest, because even though I've only been on tumblr about a year now, I'm already tired of this constant "I'm right, you're wrong" finger-pointing between those people in the fandom.

Cause to some of these "pro-Jedi" people it's an unthinkable crime to dare to have a different opinion to them and just want to be left alone, I guess. I've literally been attacked for saying "I don't like the Jedi and find dealing with their dogma too traumatising based on personal experience and trauma from my childhood so I'm going to avoid it but you do you"

I've had American Christians (tm) clap back to that with the ever-wonderful "LMAO bitch you don't have religious trauma, you didn't grow up in the bible-belt, stop trying to be edgy, shut up and go to therapy"

(all of this is sarcasm, for those who need me to spell it out for you. I'm still traumatised by the shit I went through and have to constantly check myself and my own feelings because of the toxic "habits" those teachings tried to push onto me as a child and I have zero tolerance and patience for your (not you, ssalmon, but the royal "you" as it were) victim-blaming abuse apologism "gotchas")

because 1) clearly American Christianity and the bible-belt are the only insidious and harmful subsect of Christianity and it's not like the concept of Evangelism as a whole is inherently toxic, harmful, and traumatising to those subjected to it right 2) Obviously there's a Stated Right Way To Be Traumatised and anyone who falls outside of that (Non-Existent) handbook is "faking it for attention" 3) bold of them to assume that curating my own fandom (and life) experience, and refusing to engage with things that trigger me, isn't something that I literally fucking learned in therapy lmao

Also, I find it funny how these are the people going around attacking people like me, who are literally minding our own motherfucking business, but then claim to preach “love and tolerism” and all this other bullshit. Karen, sweetie, only one of us is going around telling people they deserve to be murdered/stabbed for disagreeing with thier opinion about a videogame and pointing out that “hey, that’s...very yikes maybe don’t do that, step back and calm down” and it ain’t me (true story, this happened a couple of months ago and I don’t wanna dredge the post up because it’s very upsetting to think about) People are allowed to have opinions, and they don’t have to agree with your opinion just because that’s what you think, and the second that you sink to sending people death threats because they don’t share your opinion, you are, in fact, the asshole in that conversation.

It was even funnier because the person in question followed me first, I initially thought they were pretty cool so I followed back, then they threw a massive temper-tantrum and threw a bunch of very upsetting and triggering shit at me without my consent because I didn’t agree with them (I’d even put my opinions in tags on MY blog in an attempt to be courteous and not hijack their post with negativity, in hindsight perhaps I should have made my own post in the first place and I do acknowledge that BUT if that’s all they’d said I would have apologised and moved on, quite gladly, there was no need for them to explode the way they did at me for...making a mistake because I’m a stranger on the internet who didn’t know them & wasn’t a mind-reader and I happened to miss a trigger tag that I didn’t think of at the time lmao)

This post is getting awful long and rambly so I'm going to shut up now, but that's my take on it I guess, I hope that's what you were getting at and if it's not I apologise, I've been taking a huge step back and actively just avoiding any and all major posts related to this discourse as of a few months ago because it just infuriates and upsets me too much, it’s not worth the detriment to my mental health, I’m just here to make friends who are also hyperfixated on SWTOR and have fun vibing and talking about our characters, not get into one-sided morality debates with pearl-clutchers. 🤷

[your-brilliant-lady-m]

South Korean music industry at a glance: an outsider perspective

I watched one particular AMV last week. The song used for the video was “I’m afraid” by Korean rock band DAY6. I was pleasantly surprised as someone who values lyrics in song first and foremost. The music itself was great. I’ll listen to their songs again. It’s a nice fit for my music taste. Naturally, YouTube’s algorithm decided that I’m a fan of everything Korean after 1 video and started spamming my recommendations with k-pop songs, documentaries and everything in-between. 

I watched a couple of videos, listened to some songs and discovered fascinating patterns. So, I went down to the comment section. And it was rather interesting experience, should I say? The concept of entertainment industry in South Korea simply begged to be explored more after this. I dug deeper and visited Tumblr k-pop tags and briefly glanced upon Instagram and Twitter. And, oh...

I am a big picture person and I enjoy both studying and creating systems. This one was particularly fun to explore. I discovered a lot of new things for myself. Perhaps, you can discover something new for yourself too or take a step back and look at this from a new angle. 

Disclaimer: it’s impossible not to offend someone on Tumblr, so keep that in mind. That being said, I do NOT intend to insult of offend anyone. It’s just a little research done for fun, because I love research with a purpose. This post is NOT A HATE post. No hate intended for fans, artists or other people involved. It’s meant to be a discussion, nothing more and nothing less. If it sounds like hate, it’s just my sarcastic sense of humour.

Content Warning: I mention suicide, death, depression, rape in a couple of sentences. There’s nothing major or graphic, but it’s there. 

In this long post I decided to share with you my opinion, a so-called outsider perspective, on the world of music entertainment industry in South Korea and people involved in it on different levels. I use the word “outsider” mainly because, that’s exactly what I am in this case, as someone who is in no way involved in k-pop community. I can’t name you a single band or their members. I don’t know any solo artist and can’t neither sing nor name you any song. 

And to be completely honest, I don’t think I will set my foot into k-pop fan-circles ever again after everything I saw. 

Think of this as “In this essay I will...” meme, except there’s an actual essay.

As far as I know, in South Korea “k-pop” refers to all music produced in SK, including solo artists, various bands, singers-songwriters. It doesn’t even have to be pop music. Koreans include in this definition all genres of music. However, around the world “k-pop” means primarily music made by idol groups and bands marketed for children, teenagers and younger people. In this post I use the latter definition, because that’s how most people understand “k-pop” in other countries. Therefore, my statements, opinions and conclusions here would concern only idol music. 

The music industry in South Korea is heavily influenced by culture and traditions of the country, just like all things are. And there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, different backgrounds are what makes people so interesting and unique. However, when combined with consumer mindset, desire to generate profit at any cost and fast-paced nature of modern life these neutral cultural elements could produce something concerning, and it can lead to disastrous consequences. 

1. Idol

These people are called artists, musicians, singers, bands, groups, performers. In South Korea and in Japan, however, people call them Idols or Stars. I’ve also seen Muses, Princes and Queens. Interesting, isn’t it? The terminology used to describe these musicians in South Korea is one of the key elements in this whole entertainment system. You’ll see why.

But who or what is an idol exactly? Let’s take a basic definition from Wikipedia.

“In the practice of religion, a cult image or devotional image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, person, spirit or daemon ... that it embodies or represents. In several traditions, including the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and modern Hinduism, cult images in a temple may undergo a daily routine of being washed, dressed, and having food left for them. Processions outside the temple on special feast days are often a feature. Religious images cover a wider range of all types of images made with a religious purpose, subject, or connection. In many contexts "cult image" specifically means the most important image in a temple, kept in an inner space, as opposed to what may be many other images decorating the temple.

The term idol is often synonymous with worship cult image. In cultures where idolatry is not viewed negatively, the word idol is not generally seen as pejorative, such as in Indian English.”

Cambridge Dictionary defines idol as follows:

And here’s the definition from Oxford Dictionary: 

This is a centrepiece of this tapestry. Surely, you have noticed by now what these definitions have in common. 

Idol = a cult image of a god, a deity 

By calling these musicians “idols” industry makes society and audience treat them in certain way, namely as gods. What characteristics do gods possess? They are beautiful, talented, funny, confident and graceful, blessed by eternal youth of immortality. Gods have no flaws, they do not bleed, they are above human concerns. They are an embodiment of perfection. They are stars, you could not reach. 

But real people are not like that. They can be sad and angry, insecure. People don’t have perfectly symmetrical faces. They can’t dance in sync without preparation. They can’t sing like angels at any given moment throughout the day.

What happens when idols accidentally reveal their humanity? What happens when people see, that they make mistakes and do stupid things, that they need to train hard to appear graceful on stage? 

I will tell you. And it’s not pretty. But, first, let’s look at other elements of this system. 

2. Y/N and Self-insert fantasy

Aside from the music, K-pop sells the self-insert fantasy to the audience. It’s carefully arranged to appear real, where the cracks are masked and every word is scripted. The reality is so vivid that one doesn’t even have to use imagination all that much, because all scenarios and decorations already exist. Countless interviews for TV and magazines, fan meetings, talk shows, reality shows made sure people are privy to all juicy details of personal lives and opinions of musicians. And also one word - merchandise. Some of that merch made me question my life choices. Some of it is, ah, creepy or has weird vibes. All of this provides plenty of material for people to work with. Fans can effortlessly imagine themselves beside their idols or even in their place. 

In a highly competitive society, where people throw themselves into studying and work since young age, forming deep and lasting connections with others is very hard, sometimes impossible. As a result, people long to have a group of close friends with similar interests, a loving partner who would cherish them endlessly. People want to be rewarded for their backbreaking efforts to succeed by the carefree life of fame and music, everlasting friendships and love. And in a way you can’t really blame them for his. 

Does this dream life sound familiar? We are looking at K-pop bands here. It doesn’t really matter if their members don’t always get along or that they can live in debt, that fame is fickle and adoring fans can tear your self-confidence to shreds. Audience wants the glamour of fantasy and the industry is more than happy to cater to these desires. 

Perhaps, knowing that even for idols this fantasy is sometimes unattainable makes the whole set up feel just a little cruel. 

3. Fans, stans and fandom culture

We’ve already established earlier that idols are gods in the eyes of people and listed traits they must possess. So, what else do gods need to exist? Worshippers. Because a cult is worth nothing without its followers. Gods need a group of people to worship them and spread their beliefs. The role of worshippers is performed by a fans in this case. 

Apparently, there is a running joke that girl groups need to win a general public popularity and boy bands need a big passionate fandom. It seems to be true according to my observations. 

In k-pop fandom people use the word “stan” to state that they like or support particular group. Now, I am sure everyone here knows that in other fandoms, dedicated to movies, shows, books and games there’s an important distinction between being a “fan” and a “stan”. What is it? 

A fan is someone who likes a ship or character, creates and/or consumes fandom content, supports certain ideas, discusses things they enjoyed and disliked, criticises canon. Stans, however, are a different breed. They engage in all typical fandom activities, but their support and enjoyment becomes obsession. Stans believe their favourite characters and ships are immune to criticism, that they are superior no matter what others say. Stans start shipping wars, send anon hate, death threats over fictional characters and hurt real people. Stans are considered toxic fans. And majority of normal civilised people don’t like them and try their best to let stans hang out in their echo chamber by themselves. 

In other fandoms and communities, to be a fan means to love, support and enjoy something, while to stan means to obsess over and hyperfixate on these same things. Words “I stan” rarely mean “I support” for most people, and if they do mean that, it’s only used in a joking manner (”We stan procrastination legend!”, “I stan our miscommunication kings”).

Everywhere else “stan” has only negative connotations, except in k-pop. But what has changed? What’s the difference? Why do international fans scoff at “shipper stans” and then turn around calling themselves “stans of X k-pop group” at the same time? Does it make you wonder? 

And this is another core theme of k-pop, in my opinion. In fandom where stan = obsession = support, you can see interesting patterns. 

Fandom loves their flawless gods. But watching them from afar is not enough for some people, because unlike deities in different religions, these gods live among us. People are very much aware of that. Industry has created a cult and laid the groundwork for worshippers to express their adoration in every way including personal contact. And who wouldn’t want to meet their god? Who wouldn’t want to know more about them or tell them how much you love them? In talk shows and fan meetings there is only so much one can do after all.

People desire to know more, to have more so much that their obsession transforms into concerning stalker tendencies. These crazy individuals follow idols, stalk them on social media, in hotels, research flight numbers, bribe security. Musicians were attacked and poisoned. I strongly suspect there were cases of rape that no one knows about. There is even a special term for these fans - “sasaeng”. 

Is there a definition for stalkers of actors or musicians in western world? No, I’m pretty sure there isn’t. They are just called “invasive/obsessive fans” or “stalkers”.

Also, there are sasaeng memes. Yeah, you heard that right. I enjoy some classy dark humour as much as the next person, but there is a fine line between normal and questionable. 

Back to the topic of stalkers. Do you realise how disturbing that is? Such behaviour is so common that there is a term for it. You create a fandom-cult, encourage people to worship k-pop idols as gods and then act surprised when members of said cult become fanatics and their adoration becomes obsession.

And it’s so easy to step on this slippery road. The system makes it ridiculously easy. Lines begin to blur. How much is too much? Where do you draw the line? 

While sasaeng fans engage in extreme real-life obsession, people online aren’t that far off, to be honest. I’ve seen it all: imagines, headcanons, fanfiction, real-person shipping, reactions. Real person shipping is a controversial topic. Some people support it, others don’t. I suppose I’m among those who don’t get it. I’m not exactly against it, but I find it strange. Mainly because it’s based on assumptions made by fans about personalities and behaviour of real people. 

Assumptions. Dear me! K-pop fandom has this thing with video compilations. I’ve never seen this phenomenon being so widespread in any other community or fandom. Basically people edit together a collection of short clips from talk-shows, interviews, Instagram stories, some YouTube videos, etc and then proceed to analyse every gesture, word, facial expression of idols and provide both audio and on-screen commentary. These videos and many other forms of similar analysis allow people to imagine what kind of personalities idols have, what kind of life do they live. It’s the source material for fanfiction, imagines and headcanons. 

But it’s not real. It’ll never be real. It’s an illusion, an image, a stage persona. They fall in love with a face and made up personality. And I think that when people create this content they can forget this. Fans can develop certain emotional dependence and unhealthy attitudes in the long run. In some YouTube comments even supportive and encouraging words sound whiny and obsessive. And semantics of being a “stan” of certain group or individual doesn’t help. 

4. Industry, companies and liars 

At last we arrive at the most important aspect of music entertainment industry - its creators.

Have you seen “The Road to El Dorado”? It’s one of my all time favourites. It has iconic characters, adult jokes that I didn’t get as a child and iconic soundtrack. I’ll quote “It’s Tough To Be A God” a lot here. 

In South Korea music industry is a factory, the production line to be exact. This kind of set up affects everything in the grand scheme of things. Companies and agencies play the role of training centres and record labels. And there are so many of them that a whole new scamming system developed based around fake idol agencies. It implies that there are people who fall for offers of these agencies and continue to do so. I suspect that victims must pay a fortune upfront before they realise their mistake. Are there any kind of legal protection against such scams? How can people verify the authenticity? Because a well masked scam can exist for a long time before someone discovers it and calls them out on their nonsense. 

As far as I understand legal companies work like this. After high school, which is often focused on performing arts (and private schools can get away with using talents of students for personal gain, which is totally not surprising), young people can audition for an agency and become an idol in training or idol-trainee. And passing audition is hard. But good recommendations can help, connections too. 

During training you don’t get paid. Only a few companies pay aspiring musicians. People can spend years in training and don’t debut. But rent, necessities, clothing and food (not that you need much of it, but more on that later) cost a lot. Where do you get the money to live then? Support from parents, one or two part time jobs at most and bank loans. Surprise! We found an unexpected (just kidding, it’s very obvious) party, who reaps benefits from the system. 

You need skill to be an idol. Natural talent helps too. The more skills you have, the cheaper and faster your training is. To level up your game you attend classes every month offered by your agency, which are not cheap (dance classes range from 400$ to 1000$ per month, sometimes more). There are four main categories in evaluation process: vocals, rapping, dancing and visuals. Idols are multitaskers, to have a chance on stage one must be perfect at everything. And people are ready to invest thousands of dollars into their kids training so that they could have a chance in entertainment industry. South Korea thrives on revenue k-pop industry generates every day.

Let’s pause here for a second and think about what kind of people come to these agencies. The answer is easy. People who have a dream, a desire, a real goal. You don’t wake up one day and decide to become a k-pop idol. Sometimes people get invited by agencies (after prior acting, modelling career or any other form of exposure). These people are usually very young. Some start straight after high school, some after university, but 25 years old is considered a late start. Compare that to western musicians who start singing at any age and still become famous. 

But why this age limit? Because idols are eternally young. So that in public eye musicians are remembered as 20 year old gods. People would listen to their music and imagine a young attractive face. Career in k-pop is short, it lasts 5-7 years, rarely longer than that. It’s even less than modelling or acting can offer. And professional sportsmen retire in their late 30′s. Some play longer, but usually, that’s it.

If you live in Los Angeles and say that you want to be an actor or performer, no one would bat an eye. It’s like saying that you want to be an engineer or accountant. Similarly, in South Korea becoming an k-pop musician is a real career. Because part of the self insert fantasy that the industry sells is the idea that anyone can be an idol. It’s easy after all. Anyone can pass auditions and become a trainee. A trainee with no guarantee of debut. But one should never underestimate the power of idol-dream. After all, idea is the most resilient parasite.   

“My friends started training in kindergarten. They have wanted to become idols since young”

“A lot of young kids get interested in Korean music” 

A 6-year old child sees the performance of k-pop group for the first time on TV. Let’s say it’s a girl. She is enraptured and decides that she will be like that too someday. She grows up, while being part of the fandom, just like all idols are in one way or another and whose fan-obsession transforms into desire to succeed. Her parents spend time and money to find her tutors, to fund dancing and singing classes. Perhaps in high school this girl decides to fix the shape of her eyes and make nose straighter. She trains hard and passes the auditions in her dream agency. And during training this girl faces the reality of behind the scenes life in music industry.

“Why are you crying? I’m not even pushing you”

“How many times have I told you? The rest are doing it perfectly”

“She is dancing like an elementary school student“

“I watched your performance as a spectator who bought a ticket to your concert. I want a refund“

“You make my ears hurt. I don’t want to listen at all”

“Listening to you was tiring”

“I’ll kick you out instead. You won’t debut”

“I thought I was going to die. That’s how determined I was” 

While I do understand that keeping a high quality standards in media industry is important, there are more productive and healthy ways to motivate someone to improve and be more passionate, you know? Constantly insulting people with sadistic glee and putting them down at every opportunity or calling them ugly to their face doesn’t do much. 

Do you think that children know about this? Do they know about soulless teachers and belittling managers? Do they know about friends who are really your competition, so you shouldn’t get attached? Do they know about living in debt? Do they know any of this? No, I don’t think they do. 

Children dream about the stage, about the sea of lights and crowds who chant your names. They want adoring fans and photoshoots. They want to appear on TV and magazine covers. Teenagers want the thrill of performance, they want to share their music and dancing with others. 

“I don’t know how many times I cried alone”

The truth is cruel. But they won’t give up easily even if it means sleeping 4-5 hours and consuming no more than 500 calories per day. Because giving up means that your whole life was a lie. One can’t afford not to be good enough. Giving up means admitting that all efforts and money your family invested into your dream were in vain. It means losing face before your family and friends - a fate worse than death. Imagine living this idol dream and building your whole future around it and then being told that you’ll never debut because of the circumstances outside of your control or something minor, like face shape or 1 kg of weight that your body refuses to lose. It can break you. Especially if you are like 18 or something. 

5. “And who am I to bridle if I'm forced to be an idol If they say that I'm a God, that's what I am”

“I don’t think there’s anything a tough as being a trainee in Korea”

Once you are a trainee at the agency your personal life does not belong to you anymore. You can’t go out without permission of the agency. You phone is taken away. Your diet and weight are monitored. Bad habits are not allowed (no smoking, drinking or drugs). Oh! I think I found the good thing in the system! Unfortunately, it won’t last. Trainees can’t date or meet with family without permission of agency. Dating is very taboo. Even established idols can’t openly date. 

Why is that? Because gods can’t belong to anyone. Their lives are property of the fandom. Because openly dating idols destroy the self-insert fantasy. There was a former idol girl who dated another musician. She was called a whore by her fans, her loving and adoring stans. You might know who I am talking about. Would you call an American actor or singer a prostitute for dating someone?

Trainees sign the contract. And how can a young person straight out of school or university know much about what makes a good contract in entertainment industry or what makes a good contract in general? Even if you do understand the terms fully you would still sign it because if you have come so far, you can’t let your dream slip this easily. There isn’t a choice. Not really. If you want to debut, you will agree to anything.

What about life after debut? You have to pay off your loans. And company takes 60-70% of your group’s earnings. Artists themselves get 30-40% and split it between themselves. K-pop groups have from 5 to 10 members or more than that. Each person gets less than 6%. Idols are not filthy rich. They are not. These earnings are practically nothing compared to the work you have put into this. 

Idols are musicians, who often don’t even write their own songs, music or create choreography. But if public doesn’t like the song and musical number the company created, they blame idols for the failure. Such an amazing logic we see right here. But people say that sharing music is the best part of idol life. But whose music? 

Models on catwalk are not there to demonstrate their physical beauty, they are blank canvas for works of clothing designers. Same with k-pop musicians. They act like puppets in a way, whose faces and voices are used to show audience someone’s music and songs. Some groups do write their own music and lyrics and it’s nice to know that. But those, who don’t are rather unfortunate. It’s a nice tool of psychological control and pressure for an agency. They can hold it over group and use the following rhetoric: “We gave you everything! Why can’t you follow the simple instructions” or “Where would you be without us? It’s not even your music!”

I called k-pop industry a factory. That’s true. Dozens of people become trainees every year. These talented young people are fully prepared to do anything to achieve their goal. They are ready to practice until they collapse, starve themselves and pour themselves into every song. Companies know that. Tell me why would they value their idols as individuals, as people, as human beings if they always have a replacement? Why bother with mental health of their artists if next year they could have a fresh set of people, who are younger and prettier? Why try to improve relationships inside groups if you could fire any member and replace them within a month or two?

In western countries famous bands have different stories. Some were friends since high school, who played in bars and during festivals and then they were noticed by some representative of label company, who offered them a contract. Some groups were formed by like-minded people who bonded and decided to share their music with the world. There are many stories, but ultimately the have one thing in common. Bands in the West often form themselves. These people had time to bond, connect, discover each other, solve some disagreements and learn to work around their differences. 

K-pop groups are formed by their agencies. They are their property in a way. Company selects the best and puts together these total strangers, appoints the leader with marketable face and personality and then expects them to work together like a well-oiled machine. No one has time to bond during training, because other people are you competition, not friends. And then you must learn to work as a team and be best friends on camera for the audience to support the self-insert fantasy. It’s no wonder that k-pop groups don’t get along sometimes. And every member knows that they are replaceable. It doesn’t help in forming connections. Groups can’t just terminate contract and go to work with another agency. I heard it happens sometimes, but it’s not a done thing. Unlike in other countries where bands just sign the deal with a different label and release their music under their name if they don’t like the old conditions. 

“It's tough to be a God But if you get the people's nod Count your blessings, keep them sweet, that's our advice Be a symbol of perfection Be a legend, be a cult Take their praise, take a collection As the multitudes exalt Don a supernatural habit We'd be crazy not to grab it So sign up two new Gods for paradise”

But is it really a paradise?

Idols are expected to act cute, to match personalities created for them by fans or media. They have to act according to the concept of their group. They have to be a symbol of perfection: skinny, single and with a face perfected by surgery. They are allowed to mess up, but only in a cute way. They can break down and cry, but only if it’s “aesthetic”.

Weight issues are a separate topic. Sometimes I wonder whether managers in companies understand how weight loss or human body in general works. To be honest, I think that scales in agencies are rigged. And only managers know that. I know it can be done from personal experience. Some beach resorts tweak their scales and make them show 4-6 kg less than actual weight, so people wouldn’t get upset if they gain some. There is no way a girl as tall as I am (173 cm) could weigh like 47-50 kg and be able to perform complex choreography on stage and sing without being out of breath, visit the gym on a regular basis and generally function as a normal human without fainting every other day.

“I developed a lot of eating disorders”

“I think I consumed about 300 calories today“

“Someone, please, trim the fat off her arms”

If you grow up thinking of idols as gods and then, when you become one of them you think that you must act as one too. But being an easily replaceable god is a heavy burden. The industry, companies and audience want you to be perfect, to always be on your best behaviour. And the thought of not being good enough or divine enough terrifies you, because stans have no mercy (black ocean concept is the most stupid thing ever by the way). This kind of pressure can destroy even the most resilient. And it does. 

Almost everyone knows that situation with mental health in South Korea is not the best to put it lightly. In many ways it’s a cultural thing. But in k-pop mental health issues are treated with even less care. Gods are not supposed to be depressed or suicidal. They are not supposed to have fears or insecurities, can’t be upset or angry. They try hard to be this deity, this image. So, even when they realise they need professional help or even a friend to talk to, they either won’t seek said help or reach out only to be met with silence. Some agencies disapprove or forbid therapy altogether. 

Sometimes fandom becomes self-aware.

“Don’t forget that idols are people too!”

“Your favourite idols are running out of breath just to keep you entertained“

“They are humans, who have feelings!”

Oh, but here’s the thing, my friend. The industry doesn’t want you to think of them as people. Companies and media repeatedly reinforce the idea that they are not people, they are your idols. And strangely enough, the audience supports this idea. People continue to call them idols, developing worshiping tendencies in the process, imitate them, scrutinise their flaws and triumphs. Because, you know, only “real and ordinary humans” can have flaws, not “idols”.

So people who say “they are human too” and people who say “wow, this concert was amazing, but vocals in the beginning were so off-key, I simply can’t” are one and the same.

This thought process would have been funny if it wasn’t so disappointing. But that’s just my observation.

And here’s another thing about sexualisation. I said before how appearances are everything, marketable face and body could drastically improve your chances to succeed. Companies know about this too and concepts and aesthetics of groups are designed accordingly. Girls are dressed in skimpy outfits, their dances are unnecessary suggestive, they wear heavy make up and try to have “mature” vibes. Boys don’t avoid such objectification either: suits, tight pants and dress shirts along with make up and hairstyle to give audience a promise of the things to come. Grown adults are not supposed to lust after 15-17 year olds. You can’t just create a sexy stage persona for teenagers. Do you remember my earlier words about creepy merch? Yeah. All of it neatly plays into the self-insert fantasy and encourages obsessive behaviour. 

This happens in western countries too. In some way that’s understandable. Beautiful and sexy image with a hint of innocence attracts more people and sells, because it caters to one of the base human instincts. But some things make your skin crawl. 

Sponsorships are another topic. Some k-pop bands seek out sponsors to provide financial aid and cover expenses, when earnings are not enough. Sometimes these sponsorships are fine, perfectly civil. But sometimes it’s a prostitution. Girl groups receive money and provide sexual favours to their patrons. It’s a way for the group to gain financial support and even find new opportunities in the industry. Companies can encourage such deals. Let that sink in for a moment. 

6. “Any advice to those who want to become a k-pop idol?”

A lot of former idols and trainees have similar responses to this question. 

“I don’t want to discourage anyone, but think twice”

“You only see the glamorous side, but don’t see all the hard work that goes into it”

“It’s not what you think”

“They think ‘Since I am good looking and can sing and dance really well, maybe I should become an idol?’, but there is much more to it“

“They think it’s something that is easy and will keep their family set for life financially”

And this implies that most people don’t know what kind of lifestyle k-pop stars truly have, despite the amount of information available online about “behind the scenes” proceedings.

7. Moving on

I am a practical person and every decision I make is subjected to scrutiny. And after seeing everything I can't help but wonder whether idols believe it's truly worth it. What keeps the industry alive is the idol-dream, the wilful ignorance of its reality and youthful idealism, the beautiful naïve belief that it'll get better, even if it never does in the end.

Sure no one would ever admit it out loud, because it's one of those things you never say on camera, no matter how sincere you have to be. It's the matter of professionalism after all, and idols have it spades. And also, because admitting this would equal admitting that you spent your best years doing something you both loved and hated, admitting that this was a mistake.

When you grow up in a society where appearances matter the most, where saving face and being polite is more important than staying true to yourself, where individuality is tolerated only to a certain point, it takes a lot of courage to admit that you need a break. I greatly respect those who decided that idol lifestyle is not for them and moved on.

8. Conclusion

To sum up, I hope you enjoyed my small research and this perspective, since you have read it all the way to the end.  

You have noticed that entertainment industry is an intricate system and its every component makes sure nothing changes. Companies have power over idols and audience, fandom has power over idols and their careers, and musicians themselves have fame and their music, but not always the promised fortune or happiness. 

It’s important to understand the big picture to draw your own conclusions and encourage positive and heathy attitudes in fandoms. Being open minded and allowing people to make mistakes and live their lives the way they want to is a part of being a decent person. People don’t owe anything to others. Art is about sharing your thoughts and feelings, promoting ideas and spreading beauty. It’s not always about money. And I think that this is what k-pop lacks as an industry. It turned dreams and human need for self-expression into business. Here everything is turned into a product. Everything idols touch can be sold, sometimes literally. Industry created problems, which can’t be solved anymore, because doing so would topple the system. And I find it tragic. Trapped in an endless chase after perfection creators of k-pop forgot that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. 

If you take a look at comment sections and posts on different platforms, what will you see? What kind of things resonate with audience? What makes people laugh and cry? When people start to appreciate the substance?

“Everyone needs to hear this song in their darkest moments”

“Thank you for your music!”

“They always deliver! These guys can’t make a bad song!”

“It inspired me to write again!”

“Their songs brought me and my sister together once again”

“This is what happens when you let groups write their own music - they make incredible things”

“They really are legends of k-pop! I love that they are not afraid to show their inner strength”

“Stay strong! You rock!”

I believe that the answer is quite simple: when it’s real, sincere. It’s all about the message you choose to send to your audience, because only superficial things cause obsession. When you say that the sparkly façade is all that matters, then that’s the only thing people will ever care about. Your audience will never give a damn about the meaning behind dancing, music or lyrics, if you tell them that performance is more important. No one would praise WHAT k-pop idols sing, instead they would prefer wasting breath to criticize HOW they sing or look or move. 

I dare the k-pop industry to prove people that it’s not just about looks or perfection, or laser shows, or being a branding machine. Prove to your fans that k-pop artists are also passionate people with big dreams and talent, who love every moment of their job, who live and inspire, who are human just like us and whose humanity is real!

Do it, you cowards!

And now, I’m finished. I can hear the raging crowd of k-pop fandom in the distance, which means it’s time to hide. See you some other time! 

[ks-caster]

The 100 Season 7 Episode 4 - Post-Liveblog Recap

Okay, so I liveblogged an episode for the first time - and it turned out to be a nice way to stay focused through the commercial breaks. Might continue to do that for the rest of the season.

But TBH I started doing it just so I could bitch about the CLEAR AND BLATANT LACK OF A SCENE WHERE SANCTUM!KRU REALIZE THAT BELLAMY AND ANOMOLY!KRU ARE MISSING. That was an important scene that the whole fandom, more or less, has been waiting for the entire time for various reasons. 

How do the characters react? Who figures out that something’s wrong first? Does Clarke sense Bellamy’s absence because they have a bond? Does Emori go looking for her space sister to comfort her other space sister only to find her missing? 

(Actually, she does. That’s my headcanon and I’m sticking to it. Might fic later. Accounts for Emori’s complete absence while her bestie Raven is falling apart.)

Edit: here's the fic!

Anyway, back to the episode - whoever was in charge of editing really really dropped the ball. Missing realization scene, poorly ordered Raven and Clarke scenes. The music during the Dev-and-Hope montage was a nice touch but just too loud enough that I really had trouble telling what they were saying - and the pacing would have felt better with just one show of teenage!Hope before we got 20-year-old her. The cut from Orlando agreeing to train Anomaly!Kru to 5 years later was WAY too abrupt for me to get a feel for the character and relationship development that they were trying to shoehorn in in order to create conflict at the end. I got where they were going with everything, but in a I’m-reading-a-newbie-writer’s-fanfic-because-I-love-the-story-concept-and-want-to-support-them kind of way and not in a I’m-watching-a-show-made-by-experienced-professionals-and-paying-for-the-privilege-in-ad-revenue kind of way. Disappointing.

Jumping around here for a bit: I gotta say I’m loving the makeovers this season! Hair and makeup did a great job on bringing back the old Raven without losing the maturity they gave her, giving Murphy and Emori their Gucci Royalty Vibes without losing the feel of their individual styles, and making Hope look like she can’t find quite the balance between feral forest girl and innocent shut-in who can’t bear to take a life (which is accurate to her character, of course). 

And Echo! So I really, really didn’t like her makeovers in seasons 5 and especially 6, because it felt like they were trying too hard to make her look pretty in a 21st Century kind of way. She looked softer, more vulnerable, which really contradicted her character traits - but I thought that might’ve been on purpose, to show a change in her (that she did indeed allow herself to become softer and more vulnerable for her family). And her post-time-skip (not that one. Or that one. The other one. There’s a lot of those. Bah.) look feels like a return to herself; she’s beautiful but in a no-nonsense, don’t-forget-I-can-cut-your-throat kind of way. (Is this because I just really love the butch look on woman and am myself a butch woman? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.)

Side note: Where the hell did they get clippers on Penance? Those haircuts were entirely too even to have been done with scissors. I’ll buy that Gabriel and Orlando shaved their heads and their perfect round cuts were growout, but Hope and Echo? Electric clippers. Like I said I like the looks, but guys, there’s no way.

I liked that I got a better feel for Hope’s character this episode - she’s trying so hard to be like her mom and Aunty O and all the heroes they told her about when she was a child, but the truth is she’s been in one real battle, she froze, and her best and only friend died. And since her only role models were these incredibly strong people who didn’t give up, back down, hesitate, that wouldn’t be an easy thing for her to get over. (Given that Diyoza was pregnant with her for two entire seasons, I’d really like to have more time developing Hope’s character - or even the same amount of screen time but go easier on the timeskips, lol. She keeps having growth/maturity/life experience spurts so it’s hard to keep up with the development that we’re shown.

So, 5 (7? Wasn’t she 22? There’s still 2 years we missed right?) years after watching her friend die, and 5 (7?) years of blaming herself for freezing, she’s put into the same position, and she stabs some lady in the neck. Kid didn’t steal her coping mechanisms! All joking aside thought, the kid basically relived her trauma in real life - honestly her reaction was 100% valid.

I’m sure I’m supposed to be upset by Echo’s choice to kill the remaining gold-head people. But I think the only reason that’s supposed to bother me is that she promised (ish - she was real explicitly clear that she’d do what was necessary to rescue Bellamy and them were the breaks) Orlando that she wouldn’t. I think I’m supposed to care about the fractured relationship between AnomalyKru and Orlando.

I don’t. I don’t know if it’s the super-fast timeskip (it was weird enough to see the changed dynamics in SpaceKru when I deeply knew all of the characters AND we got time to see the changes play out) or the fact that I didn’t really get to know Orlando in a way that made me super sympathetic to him (I’ll get to that in a minute) or if it’s just that he was smart enough to know he was being played from the start (see Navy SEAL mom didn’t teach you how to swim and Echo again being 100% clear that killing people might still happen) and walked right in anyway. Either way, his betrayal wasn’t enough of a motivator for me as an audience member to be bothered about how things ended between him and AnomalyKru. I kind of shrugged and moved on.

More on Orlando... So The 100 has had several plotlines that center around people doing dangerous, terrible and downright ridiculous things because of their religions; see the kidnapping and conclave of freaking children killing each other to become commander, Gaia’s whole character arc + starting a new religion around Octavia/WonKru betraying that religion to go back to their old one centering on Madi, WHO IS GODDAMN TWELVE, all of Sanctum and season 6, the Sanctum conflict here in season 7, and now this goddamn Bardo Disciple shite.

Now I’m not dishing on real life religion or religious people - I happen to have one of those myself - but the plot of some-people-take-their-religion-way-too-far-drink-the-koolaid-and-hurt-people-around-them has been done and done and done on this show. And now here we have Orlando, who was a high-ranking member of his religion, drank the koolaid, cast out, still a true believer and therefore dangerous because his perspective is fundamentally skewed. I don’t know anything about this religion but that it’s militarized (they can arrest people) and think that sentencing people to 10 years of madness-inducing Geneva Convention violations and then bringing them back to their families two days later is okay. I don’t really want to know anything else, because I’m worried that the show is going to work hard on making this religion scarier than the Sanctum one (needing to one-up themselves with the big bad, of course) which just keeps making the commander religion look humane in comparison. 

Which it wasn’t. But I digress.

So Orlando was kinda’ cool, but getting in too deep with a fundamentalist who was complicit in his own abuse by said religion (and so who knows what he thought was okay to do to other people) and then it ended badly.

Cue shocked Pikachu.

Moving on. Clarke. Baby. After the harrowing experience of the radiation destroying the radio so you couldn’t say goodbye to your mom when you were supposed to go to space, then missing your time window and getting left behind on Earth, and the radio broke them too so you couldn’t even be sure your friends would leave in time until they blasted off, and then calling Bellamy every day when you knew he couldn’t hear you, and ALL OF THE FREAKING LAST SEASON WHERE YOU WERE POSSESSED AND WOULD HAVE GIVEN ANYTHING TO LET YOUR FRIENDS AND DAUGHTER KNOW BOTH THAT THAT WASN’T YOU AND THEN LATER THAT YOU WERE ALIVE and THEN your MOTHER getting possessed and you had to check to see if it was really her and it WASN’T. Clarke. 

After all that terrifying inability to communicate.

You leave Gaia behind to warn everyone of the danger. INSTEAD OF CALLING THEM ON A PIECE OF HANDY TECHNOLOGY OR TAKING A QUICK TRIP BACK YOURSELF. TO TELL YOUR DAUGHTER WHERE YOU WERE GOING. YOU DON’T THINK THAT MAYBE MAKING EXTRA SURE THAT EVERYTHING GETS COMMUNICATED CLEARLY AND IMMEDIATELY MIGHT BE A PRIORITY.

And then Gaia gets kidnapped. Honestly, cool! Not ‘cause I’m rooting for Gaia to be hurt (I don’t care all that much about her tbh) but I LOVE Indra and I want her to have more screen time and development this season - and or the chance to cut people up with her sword - and kidnapping her daughter seems like a great way to facilitate that.

*Looks at list* Oh, right, Jordan. I forgot you were here. Honestly I can’t figure out what the fuck is going on with you, and since I’ve had a whole season of not connecting with you because the story was too busy focusing on external plot... I don’t see that changing any time soon buddy. Sorry.

Oh and that FrEaKiNg PrOmO! 

My garbage boy! My chaos gremlin! My excellent-at-impersonating-a-deity-even-if-it-goes-against-his-programming! What are they doing?! 

I’m torn between NO DON’T HURT HIM and YES HURT HIM BECAUSE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND BRAVERY BWAHAHAHA. At least I know there’ll be Murphy and hopefully Memori content in the next episode. That’s the good shit. It’s the only thing left about this show that still feels “pure,” not that I didn’t know what sort of darkness I was signing up for when I started but just because he and Emori are sort of the last light in the darkness, and it’s nice to get a break periodically.

[roidesrosette]

Blood donation? Blood donation.

God bless @narekashi​ for coming up with this genius name and enabling me to do this, i dont blame you thou i have a lot of fun

Yes, it’s me with another of my (mayhaps) contentless OC, please enjoy while it last– Jkjk, I’ll try to throw more content of her on here instead of Discord next time :’)

BLOOD DONATION:  Salvie/Salva/Sal, short for Salvatore

Age: ??? Gender: Salvie doesn’t like to define herself as anything  Birthday: 6/24  Height: 160cm  Status: Got revived as a vampire 

PHYSICAL  Appearance: Black hair usually tied in a ponytail, red eyes, sharp teeth, a constant “you dare challenge your god?” mocking expression (but doesn’t have the intention) 

Accessories: Poker case set, saber and gun

SOCIAL  Affiliation: On her own Occupation: Salvie runs a casino and is involved in a mafia Relationships:

Count: First met him when she was “adopted” by the bunch of vampires. He was offering to give them residence, but they all turned him down. Met him again when she was touring the world alone and made him an acquaintance, they became really good friends after that.

Leonardo: Met him when she was touring in Italy with Count. He kept treating her like a small child (still do), and they would drag each other like how he and Count would. He likes messing up her hair, she likes stepping on him when he’s asleep. Also a pair of good friends.

Arthur: Arthur was interested in Salvie and find her dominating personality challenging, but he knew well enough not to lay a finger on her. You just don’t simply go against someone who could lop off your head and had associations with the mafia. On the other hand thou, they were drinking buddies, and sometimes Salvie would pick up girls with him. They gamble a lot together too.

Dazai: They have an odd relationship. It might be because they’re somehow similar in a way, they know what line not to cross. They just have this weird bond that no one can put a finger to determine what it is.

Isaac: They don’t really talk much, she only knows he really likes apple from what she heard from Dazai, but that’s probably a lie…

Theodorous: God how Salvie loves to tease and sass him. Much like Leo, they would banter every time they met, but Theo always ends up leaving, flustered. He was too young compared to her, maybe a couple more years and his bantering skills might improve. They weren’t really on good terms, especially with how Salvie was involved with Shakespeare and the goddamn mafia, plus how close she and Vincent is.

Vincent: Pure, innocent baby boy. “I’ve only met Vincent for 15 seconds and if anyone hurts him I’ll kill everyone in this room and then myself.” Absolutely adores him and prefers him over Theo. Salvie admires how innocent he was, and that nature of him would always make her worry about him. She will also give him everything he wants or needs, just to see him smile.

Sebastian: When Count first brought him to the world, she was intrigued by the human who managed to charm him. So she would frequently visit just to see how Sebas works… Until he starts digging her information. She knew his passion well and understood that, but she would prefer if Sebas exclude her from his mysterious notebook.  

Napoleon: Salvie was very interested in him, being a demi-vampire, but she does not question him about it. If he isn’t willing to say, then she had no reason to pry. Along with Jeanne, the three of them practiced sword fights from time to time. Salvie would always be fascinated by both of their skills. You could say that their relationship is quite well.

Mozart: Salvie does not talk much with Mozart, but lowkey likes his performance. She would always attend a ball or an activity if Mozart is the one playing the piano. Salvie also finds his prickly attitude fun to tease, but would rather see Arthur tease him. They would only exchange words when it comes to music and that’s it.

Jeanne: Aside from sparring with him, Salvie also supplies weapons to him. She doesn’t question why, as that was the nature of her business. She couldn’t refuse too, since business is business, and he was a resident of Count’s, which she promised the dad before that she would sponsor his residents too, because he was a friend of hers.

Shakespeare: Basically (kinda) love at first sight. Both of them were born with chaos in them, and so they attract each other. She did not meet him when he became the first resident of Count, but she did hear about it. She met him in a ball. It’s a long ass story how they get together but yeah, these two dumbasses are doing fine and dandy as a couple, have their banters and bickers sometimes but all is well. Unless….?

Paired with: William Shakespeare (Maybe…?)  

PERSONALITY 

Likes: Gambling, attending balls (especially masquerade balls), hunting, going off adventures with her beloved horse, sword fight, overly sweet stuff  

Dislikes: Following a schedule/orders, getting treated like a feeble maiden/young child, proper meal, proper sleep  

Strength: She’s superb at gambling and swinging her sword, mediocre at drinking, she aced in “not giving a shit” 

Weakness: Hides her feelings a lot, tends to distance herself from people who know her to a certain degree, can’t sleep in peace ever

Personality: Let’s just start with: Salvie is chaotic. Very chaotic. Even the name “Salvatore” already tells you she spells trouble. She doesn’t like being bound by rules, schedules or anyone’s orders, she’s a free soul who decides every step. However, she isn’t reckless, each action she took is calculated and rationally think through, as she does not wish to take a step she regrets. That careful and meticulous approach made her seem wise–despite how young she looks–mature even. Well, but sometimes Salvie could be bratty too, since “her adorable looks is the biggest fraud” (quoted from Leo). She also has a bold personality, and that results in her sassing the great men fearlessly, yet that doesn’t mean she doesn’t respect them, in fact, it’s the opposite. She looked up to them greatly, as they were awesome enough to get their name engraved in history.  

Her biggest charm is definitely her carefree attitude. She’s just, y’know, damn chill. Salvie doesn’t have a care towards anything, therefore her pronouns and attire choices. Although her easy-going characteristics is an appeal, it’s sometimes a flaw as well. It made it difficult to get along with her as the specifics about her is unclear. Since she was so chill with everything, it’s certainly hard to pin down what are her favourites and stuff. Contradictorily, that light-hearted manner doesn’t apply to people. She unintentionally looks after people, even if she doesn’t want to care, she would still unknowingly do something for them, like leaving them a cup of tea on the table every morning. 

On the other hand though, kinda like Dazai, Salvie’s breezy and free demeanor makes it hard to grasp her true character, not mentioning the fact that she tends to sweep everything under the rug. She has a way with words that always, somehow, avoid the topic about herself, and that made her mysterious in a way. She was very quiet of her thoughts, especially things on her mind, rarely talking about her problems. She would tend to fend off questions about that with a gentle reassuring smile and a wispy attitude, as she disliked someone poking into her problems (and of course because she didn’t want to seem weak). 

HISTORY 

Backstory: Salvie was not recorded at any point in history, yet she was revived. She did not know why and did not question so. When she was first revived, she did not remember anything except her name. Dozens of questions were in her mind, yet there was no one to answer her. For what feels like an eternity, she wandered on the streets aimlessly until she met her kind. They were strong, independent, and raised her as if she was a newborn. Well, she was, kinda. The days gradually passed, and she too, came to understand that she had been reborn into a person–no, an immortal with unrestrained freedom, with unlimited time (not really, but you get the idea). As soon as she came to that conclusion, she bid goodbye to her friends, (guardians maybe?) and took a flight to achieve her dreams–to live how she wanted in her previous life. 

Family: Salvie doesn’t remember (or rather, it was insignificant to her) her family in her previous life. She only recognized the group of vampires that took her in as her guardians. 

Other history: How Salvie was involved in the mafia is… Well, chaotic. She was supposed to be on the tour with Count to Italy, to visit his long lost friend Leonardo, but along the way she somehow stumbled into an illegal gambling den, challenged the don (with very extreme conditions), defeated the don and accidentally become the new don of the mafia. After going through all the messy procedures, the news about a new mafia boss named  “Lord Salvatore” quickly spread through Italy. His nature was depicted as cruel and ruthless as he gets anything he wants, and no one stands in his way. Yet what’s weird was that the “Salvatore Family” was rumored to be civilized and noble, as they were ordered that no blood should be drawn unless it was required to. You can imagine the horror on Leo and Count’s face when they heard about this, and the compliments from her guardians. 

TRIVIA

Special abilities: None. (Her face as an instrument of deception)  Pet(s): A white horse named Vlad. Hobby: When she isn’t gambling or drinking, she will be out doing mafia business or just wandering somewhere else  Secret(s): Had a past lover who she later recalled and somehow disliked that shares the same name with her horse (which she then became devastated knowing that she named her horse after her past lover)  Habits: When she’s stressed or troubled, she will smoke from a pipe 

[fanficcritiques]

‘My Inner Life’ - Fanfic Commentary Part 1

Sometime in the late 90′s, early 00′s, the internet was graced with a Legend of Zelda fanfic that would become the stuff of infamous legend. A fanfic largely serving the purpose of the author’s wish fulfillment indulgence, its reputation of having contained things like “tiger sex” and a possible watersports kink continue to precede it even to this day, some 20-odd years later. 

As with a lot of online fan media and history, this story has long captured my attention and imagination. It’s difficult to say why exactly, as I don’t believe there is anything in this story that makes it especially unique in today’s landscape of fics, nor is there anything I find especially outrageous (at least by modern day standards). I suspect it’s due to the fact that said fic actually has a lot of potential and, therefore, becomes a draw for inspiration in its own way. 

Recently I chose to revisit this fic, somewhat in the spirit of ‘MSTing’ (a sort of commentary style that endeavors to be mocking in the spirit of humor). However, I wanted to approach this commentary with a more balanced view, no derisiveness, and overall, as if I was leaving editor’s notes for how the story might be improved. I believe we’ve moved past the era of making fun of fan works and insulting their creators, and for good reason, but I don’t think that means we can’t continue to study and comment on them. 

Before I continue on with the commentary I wanted to make it clear that this story has a special place in my heart, that I have endeavored to show both respect and consideration for the work itself and the author behind it in the notes I’ve made along the way. I realize there are elements of the ridiculous about this fic, but my goal is to show respect in my constructive criticism and I would appreciate that anyone who comments along does the same.  

I want to also add that I haven’t focused too much on spelling, grammar, or general construction errors this time around. This commentary focuses more on the plot, characterization, dialogue, things of that nature. 

So, without further ado...My Inner Life Part 1, prologue and author’s notes. My commentary is in italics and parentheses.  

Author’s notes: Hello. Thanks for choosing to read my story. As you might know I have become a major Zelda fan in the last year. Ever since I played OoT I have grown a fond interest in Link. I started to notice that after I got really into it, I found that I have a strange gift. A gift to Lucid Dream. I started having dreams about Hyrule, and about Link. In a Lucid Dream you can control your dreams. The dreams became very real, kinda like a second life, and almost every night I would have another. Starting from where the last left off. Even to this day I still have them. I find that they help me get through life. I know this may sound queer, but for me the dreams sure help me out. I have shared this story with many other people and so far all has liked it. Now as you read this it is told from my perspective or first person view.

(Some people choose to criticize LinksQueen for not understanding what lucid dreaming is, but given my own research, I think she’s actually right; lucid dreaming is, simply, an awareness while dreaming that one is, in fact, dreaming, and may be able to gain some control over the events that take place. It’s entirely possible she could return to her subconscious every night and make up this story as she went along. However, my theory has always been that some measure of self awareness dictated she needed to have a scapegoat of sorts to explain away the weirdness of what happens in this story. With the blame of a ‘dream’ -albeit one she can control- being to blame for what goes on here, responsibility falls from her shoulders. No, it doesn’t particularly make sense, but I feel that’s probably where she was coming from)

You will find that it is very detailed since I remember it all very clearly to this day. The story takes place after OoT. Nothing after that ever happens. No Majora's Mask. No LttP, or even Oracle of Ages and Seasons. And there is no love relation between Link and Zelda, Link and Ruto, Link and Malon or Link and Saria. Because of my feelings about Link, the person that he gets involved with in this story is myself or actually is my persona. A persona is for those of you who need to know, a representation of ones personality, or in dictionary terms is, (Persona) n. In biology, same as person. So for all you future readers, this story is based on Jenna, a char that is a representation of my personality.

(Again, she’s gotten a lot of flack over the years for this note of choosing to ignore Link’s possible chemistry with the flanking female characters, but I don’t think this is worth criticizing her for. It’s her fanfic, she has the right to disregard, rewrite what she pleases. Why else does fanfic exist if not for that purpose? I also don’t think it’s worth coming after her for writing herself a self-insert, wish fulfillment fantasy character to live vicariously through. Fanfic exists for a reason. It’s more...how this placeholder is written that deserves some amount of further inspection, but we’ll get to that in a moment) 

But if you think this might be too queer then you shouldn't read this. THIS IS NOT THE TYPE OF STORY FOR THOSE OF YOU THAT DISLIKE, OR CANNOT HANDLE SUCH MATERAL AS THE CONTEXT OF THIS STORY. But if you seriously believe you can handle the content of this story, then read on. If your squeamish about sex, then you should not read this, since this story is a REAL LEMON and there is a lot of that, heavily detailed. (Between Link and I that is) Especially during the bonding ceremony. There is also some blood content and strong adult language. So if that’s too much then you should turn back now.

(Responsible and thoughtful of her to put warnings, though I do believe she should’ve also warned for the slight watersports kink that happens in said Bonding Ceremony. It might have saved her some trouble along the road, anyway, as it wouldn’t have come as an interesting surprise to the reader in later chapters. Maybe she didn’t want to spoil it? But anyway, I’m putting one now; urine drinking happens- and no, I’m not being intentionally judgmental about it, I know there are real, consenting adults out there who enjoy that sort of play and as long as one is being safe I don’t think it deserves any ridiculing, but it IS the sort of thing that I would consider ‘not everyone’s cup of tea’ and worth warning about in advance)  

Now I have not finished it as of yet. I have to catch up, since the last dream I had was just after Link and I had the blessing ceremony for our twins.(Our 3rd and 4th kids) Right now there is about 100-150 pgs worth. I'm expecting it to reach at least 300-350 probably even more. I will try to up date as often as possible. I hope that some of you like this. I do not mind sharing it. But please understand that this is very PRECIOUS to me, as well as Link. So like I said, if the content of this story sounds, too queer to you, TURN BACK NOW! But to all who wish to continue, happy reading. Thanks,

~*~ Link’s Queen ~*~

Rated R for strong adult language, sex, violence and blood content.

AGAIN AS A FINAL WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS HEAVY SEX, ABULT LANGUAGE AND TALKS ABOUT MY PERSONAL ENCOUNTER WITH LINK. THIS STORY IS BASED ON DREAMS, DREAMS ABOUT MY LIFE WITH HIM. IF YOU FIND THE CONTENT OF THIS STORY TO BE OFFENSEVE, QUEER, OR PLAIN OUT OFF THE WALL, THEN DO NOT READ ON!!!!!!! I HAVE GOTTEN WAY TO MANY FLAMES ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THIS STORY WHEN I HAVE PLACED SEVERAL WARNINGS!!!! I WILL NOT ACCECPT ANY MORE FLAMES, RAMBLINGS, CUSSING OR EXCESSIVE LASHING OUT ABOUT THE CHAR JENNA, OR REVIEWS ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THIS STORY, EXCESSIVE LASHING OUT, VICIOUS ATTACKS AGAINST MY PERSONALITY, OR NON-MATURE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITISIM!!! ANY REVIEWS SUBMITTED THAT DO NOT FOLLOW THE ABOUVE GUIDLINES, WILL BE DELETED IMMEDIATELY! THESE WARNINGS ARE NOT THERE TO LOOK PRETTY, THE AUTHORS PLACE WARNINGS FOR A REASON!!! IT IS TO TELL YOU WHAT THE CONTENT OF THE STORY IS SO THAT IF THE READER FINDS THE CONTENT OF THE STORY OFFENSIVE, THEY WILL NOT READ ON!!! MANY AUTHORS HAVE BEEN COMPLAINING ABOUT UNWANTED, EXCESSIVE, VIOLENT AND JUST PLAIN NASTY REVIEWS THAT HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED BY READERS ABOUT THEIR STORIES, CAUSING FANFICTION TO GRANT AUTHORS THE ABILITY TO DELETE UNWANTED REVIEWS AND BLOCK CERTAIN READERS!! I WILL SAY THIS FOR MYSELF AND FOR ALL AUTHORS ON FANFICTION. NO AUTHOR TWISTS YOUR ARM OR HOLDS YOU AT GUN POINT OR FORCES YOU IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM TO READ THEIR STORIES!! ALL READERS HAVE THE RIGHT NOT TO READ A CERTAIN STORY!!! IT IS YOUR RESOPONSIBILITY TO READ THE WARNINGS AND DECIDE FOR YOUSELF IF THE CONTENT OF THE STORY IS OFFENSIVE TO YOU, AND TO MAKE THE CHOICE TO READ ON OR NOT!!! AND IT ALSO IS THE READERS RESPONSIBILITY TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY ON HOW THEY HANDLE THENSELVES WHEN LEAVING A REVIEW FOR AN AUTHOR!! LEAVING A REVIEW THAT IS VIOLENT IN NATURE ONLY MAKES YOU THE READER LOOK BAD, AND IS VERY IMMATURE. IF  ALL US HERE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ADULTS, WELL THEN, LETS CONDUCTIVE OURSELVES LIKE ADULTS AND NOT LIKE LITTLE KIDS! I ONLY EXPECT THE VIOLENT LASHING OUT AND VICIOUS ATTACKS TO COME FROM TEENANGERS, NOT ADULTS! IF YOU PEOPLE REALLY ARE ADULTS THAT ARE CONDUCTING YOURSELVES IN THE MANORS I DECRIBED ABOVE, YOU PEOPLE REALLY ARE SCARING ME!

IT’S A DAMN SHAME TO KNOW THAT THERE ARE ADULTS OUT THERE WHO CANNOT CONDUCTIVE THEMSELVES IN THE SIMPLEST MANORS THEIR PARENTS HAVE TAUGHT THEM! ALSO LEAVING MALICIOUS REVIEWS IS ALSO A SIGN OF LOW SELF-ESTEEM. IF ALL YOU PEOPLE KNOW HOW DO IS ATTACK SOMEONE VICIOUSLY, IT’S A SIGN OF SELFISHNESS AND NO RESPECT FOR ONES-SELF! I SUGGEST TO ALL READERS WHO ARE THINKING ABOUT LEAVING A MALICIOUS REVIEW FOR ME, PLEASE GET A HOBBY AND LEARN TO CONTROL YOUR ANGER, BECAUSE YOUR ONLY HURTING YOURSELF, NOT ME! ALSO LEAVING A NASTY REVIEW ONLY MAKES YOU LOOK STUPID, NOT ME!

I FIND IT VERY RIDICULOUS THAT I HAD TO LEAVE A WARNING THIS LONG, BUT IT IS BECAUSE OF THE VERY IMMATURE READERS THAT HAVE SUBMITTED NASTY CHILDISH REVIEWS!

AGAIN, PLEASE READ THE ABOVE CONTEXT BEFORE READING ON!!!!

(It’s at this point that Link’s Queen obviously reached the end of her patience with scathing reviews and felt her only line of defense was putting yet another note about the content of the story, albeit a rather didactic one...entirely in caps lock. But I get it, I do, and I think she does have a good point in that the plot and themes of the story are made clear from the outset -apart from the watersports, mind, but I already addressed that- and that there is nothing about this particular fanfic that warrants cruelty in the comments. Of course, this was published during a less conscientious time for the internet, a time when I also was in the infancy of my writing and received reviews of similar ilk lmao. It still doesn’t make it okay, nor does it make any of the threats or insults that came after okay either, but that’s kind of why I’m writing this commentary now)  

Furthermore, I have realized that this story needs some heavy grammar corrections, and that the plot needs some work. Also under the advisement of my friend who had just recently completed two literature classes, has stated the reasons why people had classified Jenna as a “Mary Sue” char and labeled her as “flat”. She has come to the conclusion that most people do not know or understand Jenna’s history, so she has advised me to create an origin story to explain about her history before she met Link. That way she will become more rounded and give people a reason to care about her. It was never in my intentions to create Jenna as a “Mary Sue” char or to make her conceited, because I’m not really like that. Jenna is a persona char, one that resembles my personality while this story is being told from her perspective. This story is not something that I pulled out of my head like my drawings, it came from my dreams. So I understand that revising this story is going to be hard work and will take time. Since this story is being told in the exact, or close to exact order it happened in the dreams, changing how fast Link and Jenna marry isn’t going to be easy. Even changing how fast they have sex and revising the Lemon parts also won’t be so easy to do. But I’m currently in the process of revising this story, also I have received a college grammar book from my friend and I will be investing in a Beta-Reader. I’m also considering taking to literature classes at JC to help boost my writing skills. But now I say this, if you people, the reviewers really have the intentions to help me, them please do it positively and like a mature adult. I’m telling you that it is a proven fact that negative motivation NEVER motivates someone to change. It never has and it never will. I’m pretty sure your parents have taught you that people only respond to positive motivation and not negative.

(We’ll start with the beginning of this paragraph. I don’t think the issue with Jenna, as a character, was ever that she was conceited. In fact, she might have been more well-rounded and interesting if she had been conceited; moreover, I think the weakness in her as an OC is that she doesn’t really have much of a personality to speak of at all. Jenna is defined by her relationship with Link, some attributes that are thrown out as afterthoughts within the dialogue and have no real bearing on the plot (at some point she is characterized as “spiritual” though we are never given any evidence, before or after, that correlates to her being a particularly spiritual person at all). She is a traveling merchant when the story begins, though that fails to carry over anything worth noting. She’s an orphan and has been without her parents for a good bit of her childhood- again, this fails to provide any character attributes, issues or consequences at all, much less anything that affects the story in any real way apart from giving her some sympathy from the King and leading him to more or less adopt her, at least when she’s in Hyrule. A backstory means very little if it has no effect on the development of the plot or character.

She also mentions the dreams here again, cementing my aforementioned theory in the line “this story is not something that I pulled out of my head like my drawings, it came from my dreams” as dreams, here, are being used as an excuse for why the story is the way it is and why it cannot, apparently, be easily changed. But again, I would assert that the main issue is not really in how fast Link and Jenna have sex and get married, but rather in the lack of character Jenna has, the lack of insight given to the reader about why Link and Jenna like each other, why that lead to them falling in love. I understand that this story is wish fulfillment first and foremost and in such a fantasy story it’s a given that the placeholder character will win the heart of their affections, but not providing any real relationship growth or insight can leave readers feeling out in the cold, so to speak. We don’t know Jenna as a character, we don’t know why she and Link should fall in love so completely. We need to see it. 

But anyway, good on her at the time for wanting to better herself with further education, I hope she was able to achieve that.) 

I’m not close-minded, I NEVER have been. I have always been open to other people’s thoughts and opinions, its when its done in an inappropriate manner that I turn my nose at it and look away. People have to understand that when you’re an adult, you need to conduct yourself like one and learn how to address other people like one. You cannot just act childish when you come across something that you DO NOT approve of, you’re only making yourself look bad and that can affect you later on in life. Acting childish and ranting and raving is something I’d expect a little kid would do when he doesn’t get his way. When an adult acts childish over stupid things, that’s looked down upon, and considered to be unhealthy. I have seen far too many reviews left for me where the reviewers are just ranting and raving like little kids over this story because they do not like it. It is only making them look stupid and is very unhealthy. I fear that these people have some serious emotional problems if they get that upset over a story. People in control of their emotions and have also obtained some sort of common sense, NEVER let little things get them all riled up. It is very sad when one that is supposed to be an adult, cannot handle them like one. I was NEVER angry with the reviewers not liking the story, it’s how they handled themselves when leaving me the reviews. Getting riled up, ranting and raving, screaming and spitting nails over this story is what has caused me to get upset, not the fact that they didn’t like it.

Also as a side note, I NEVER physically hurt ANYONE with this story. I got one reviewer that said. “Oh God please stop writing, your hurting everyone.” Now I want to know where I physically touched that person. I want to know how I’m twisting anyone’s arms to read this. I have never done anything of the sort in any way, shape or form and I DO NOT appreciate being accused of that! If you’re emotionally hurt over this, its your fault not mine. I’m sorry if it did, but I have placed several warnings describing the content of this story and if you know what it contains and you do not like this type of material, then why are you reading it? I do not appreciate getting accused for other people’s actions. It is your choice as the reader to read the content of this story and it is not my fault if it upsets you when you knew from the gecko what it contained. So please DO NOT flame me about it.

I also feel like a schoolteacher teaching a bunch of little kids. And I find that this really wasn’t necessary and shouldn’t have had to come to this, but it is very hard when your reviewers have forgotten how to conduct themselves like adults.

If you honestly think that being malicious is a good thing and that you’re not wrong in doing so, well then your blinded by your own selfish pride. People with common sense learn how to take responsibility for themselves and are able to admit when their wrong. I have found that many of the reviewers that have left me malicious reviews honestly believe that its appropriate behavior for an adult. When it really is that they are too self-absorbed in themselves to admit their wrong. Again that results from selfish pride. One to scared to admit in front of others that they just might be wrong. Also, how can any of you hold any right to call Jenna conceited when in reality, your contradicting yourself by being conceited as well? Being conceited is again selfish pride and being self-absorbed. And yes, it is and always will be a fact that most of the reviewers have been conceited and very contradictive. Please DO NOT leave me a review that only contradicts what you are trying to preach. You should in reality, take your own advice.

Again I find it very ridiculous that this had to be as long as it is, but it is due to the fact that people not conducting themselves appropriately. Also if I do receive any more malicious reviews, with screaming, spitting nails or ranting and raving over this story because you do not like it then are to self-absorbed to admit that acting like that is wrong, well then you have proven my point! All of this is very self-explanatory!

 Now PLEASE DO NOT READ ON if you DO NOT plan on leaving me a review appropriately!

(She more or less repeats points she already made here, but again, I agree. The summary and numerous warnings should have clued people in to the fact that this was going to be a fantasy, wish fulfillment, placeholder type story and to expect the kind of thing that goes on therein. It also shouldn’t have given anyone free reign to be cruel or leave threatening reviews, etc)

Prologue

    Dreams come in many forms. Some good, some bad, some very realistic, even ones that feels very real. A dream may come to us from happy events, or even stem from bad events in our lives. Some come to us as a pleasure dream and some come as nightmares. Some become vague memories after time, while some stay very rich in our minds. This is a story about a dream that I had. A dream that became more dreams. A dream that would end one night then resumes the next. It became like a second life. Ever since I became a Zelda fan, I grew an interest in Link. I thought of him as the perfect man. One that you could not find of this world. I thought of him as a man that should have been. The more that he attracted my attention the more I became more attracted to him.  I felt like there was a connection between him and me. Then he became a part of me, and after that I fell deeply in love with him.

     I know that may sound queer to you but love is a mysterious thing and should not be taken lightly. Love is a very strong emotion, an emotion that should be treasured. Love comes from the heart, but when it takes hold, it’s got you. I quite don't understand it myself, but I do know that when I first laid my eyes upon Link I fell in love with him. My heart just told me it was right. Told me he was the one, the one I had been searching for. Ever since then I have felt that it was destiny that has brought me to him. Even in my mind it feels the same. I don't consider myself any different from anyone else. Though I have love for someone that is not really there, he will always remain very real to me inside my heart and in my mind. Even to this day I still love him. He has kept me very happy. He has made me happy when I was sad. He has made me feel stronger about myself. He has even taken care of me in ways that no one else can. Even though I have feelings for him, I'm not any different from the rest of you. I will always hold him close to me in my heart. He is still on my mind and I still have dreams. The connection stills remains strong, and the dreams very real.

     I lived an entire life with Link in Hyrule. All stemming from a series of dreams. Dreams that I want to have. Dreams that I make happen. From the first day I met him, to the birth of our first child, to even the days when Link and I prepared our family in the event that Gannon should return. This book is based on my inner life. A second life lived in a far away land in another time line in another dimension. A tale of love, passion, despair and hope. I enjoyed my inner life. I looked forward to going to sleep to it every night. And I look forward to ones that will come, because LOVE WILL NEVER DIE.

(Again, this is one of the points of the story that the writer gets a lot of flack for, but I think it’s pretty harmless to project on a fictional character and use their likeness to fill a sense of loneliness. Nothing wrong with it, and I’m not here to judge. I think we all probably did something similar at a point in our lives- I used to privately pretend Legolas was my boyfriend when I was like 10 or 11, so yknow, glass houses!!!) 

[randomnessunicorn-imagine]

The prompt A finds B crying in a corner, in which A is Odo and B is reader + “The doctor ordered me to smoke”. Reader cries over his crush that don't share their same feelings them and Odo is there to cheer them up or help somehow. Odo can understand reader's feeling because he also loves Kira but she ignores his sentiment.

{ This one is very intense, long and a little angst, just how I like it. }

Share and like if you appreciate my job, please!

> Everyone can ask for a PROMPT, send only detailed requests!

💔 ODO 💔

Love was a strange feeling.

A feeling that the changeling still did not fully understand and Odo didnot know how the humanoids could live with this feeling inside of them. It wasunbearable.

For a while, Odo had ignored it, it was impossible that he was in lovewith Kira, this was not his duty nor need. He had always lived withoutthe necessity to breed or fall in love. He was not made for this. He was nothimself.

His responsibilities were others, his job was the most important valuefor him and this irrational, primitive and frivolous feeling called love wasblinding him, destroying him from the inside like a deadly virus. Nevertheless,when his eyes met Kira’s, all his fears faded away and a feeling of joy invadedhis entire existence. Nothing was so terrible anymore, he felt satisfied, contentand relaxed but when Kira was not next to him, his heart drowned into the abyssof agony and regret over and over again. As if he wanted to rip his own heartfrom his chest, if he had a heart but the only thing he had was an emotion of numbness.

Alternatively, when Odo saw Kira in the company of Shakaar, a newfeeling took possession of his soul. A feeling of anger, hatred andnervousness. Simply, jealousy. He was jealous because he wanted to be in thatman’s place. To kiss her lips, caress her skin, smell her perfume and play withher hair. Things that Shakaar already did. Odo could only savour this realityin his secret dreams.

Odo did not want to think about Kira or Shakaar or his broken heartanymore. He did not want to think about anything and anyone so he decided totake a walk through the promenade, maybe checking Quark out would havedistracted him but the bar was about to close and no one was around anymoreuntil he heard a strange sound. Sounds of sobs accompanied by a smoke, grey andunknown.

Was something going on fire in the station? Perhaps the situation wasnot as quiet as it seemed and then Odo ran towards that smoke. But what hefound made him even more confused because he found no danger. On the contrary,he found you in tears. Were you smoking? He believed it was so, an old bad humanhabit, he had read about it in some of the crime novels that O'Brian had lenthim. Odo could not believe you had that terrible vice.

You were his colleague, a member of security, an honest, trustworthy andkind person who had never disappointed him. Odo, on the other hand, was yourboss and you had a great respect for him. Odo was your role model but not the reasonyou were crying. Perhaps the changeling was not the only one here to have abroken heart because you were crying out of love. Unrequited love. An ingrate love,as ingrate as this life and universe.

“Smoking is not allowed in the station!” Odo said withseverity.

“I haven’t read any rules about it. I’m sorry.” You answeredin a cold tone of voice, a tone Odo had never heard from you.

You blew a cloud of smoke from your mouth, observing how it vanished in theair.

“You should know the rules better than anyone.” He said, warybut also worried about your behaviour, too weird to be realistic.

“The doctor ordered me tosmoke.” This was your unrealistic and absurd answer.

Then you took another taste of your cigarette, you felt the smokeburning in your throat. It tasted good and warm, you almost forgot your painbut then you remembered it when you tasted pure oxygen.

“Really? You could have invented a better excuse.” Odo sighedand he started finding all this smoke annoying. Luckily, he could not taste orsmell it since he had no sensory organs but he still did not like it. He wouldnever like it.

“Actually, it’s relaxing; it helps me to get distracted. Not tothink of anything. I know this attitude is bad but not as bad as others…” yes,something different from the pain you kept in your heart.

There were worse addictions in the world and you did not think smokingwas the most dangerous. Maybe falling in love was one of the worse addictionsbecause it also killed you slowly and miserably. No choice. No escape. You feltprisoned and hopeless.

“I do not think the Doctor Bashir would agree with your opinion. I donot understand why humanoids like destroying their bodies this way. I know thatsmoking can cause so many diseases but they seem to forget about this littlebut not so insignificance detail. Maybe they do not have all that self-respect,or, simply, they are so selfish that they want to be the cause of their own destruction.Humans are really devious and extravagant creatures. I will never understandtheir way of behaving, it is so irresponsible but I would never have expectedit from you.” Odo explained his opinion, he did not hate humans but he justfound some of their behaviours so odd and irrational.

“I am still a human being. I also make my mistakes. I can also beirresponsible and want to destroy myself slowly.” You confessed withbitterness in your voice.

“You are not yourself! What is happening to you? Yesterday you evenarrived late at job but I decided not to pay any attention, I can make amistake on purpose as well but, obviously, something happened to you and I wanta reasonable explication now.” Odo’s voice was severe and his sentence lookedlike an order.

“Nobody can hide you anything, Constable. I have always admired youbecause you always manage to be professional, cold and serious even in theworst situations. I would like to have your determination. I am very sorry. Butit’s true, something happened and I don’t feel fine.” You confessed,taking the last breath of your cigarette and then you threw it away, steppingon the cigarette.

“And what would be the problem?” Odo asked.

“It’s not about work and I don’t know if you can understand. It’s ahumanoid thing, a matter of feelings. A nuisance.” You confessed, keepingon stepping on that cigarette as if you were venting on it because you wereangry, sad and confused.

“I have always observed and studied the behaviour of men so it ispossible that I can understand those feelings even if they are a nuisance. Onthis we agree.” Odo has always found emotions as a bother, an obstacle, itdid not allow people to performance their job properly. Sometimes, he hatedhimself because of those feelings. He continued to hate himself for loving Kirathat much, he could not do anything to stop it and this was unacceptable. Aweakness. Even now, he felt weak because that thought was still there and didnot go away.  

“Well, it’s about *your crush name*. And I don’t even know how toexplain it.” you snorted.

“Do you like them?” Odo got to the point, he did not likewandering around things.

“Yes, but I have no hope or courage to confess my feelings to them.”

“A quality that I noticed in humans is their innate determinationand therefore you should not give up without even trying.”

“Reality is not so simple, constable Odo. They already love someoneelse and I’ve been so idiotic to give them a good advice. Since I’m a goodfriend, I told them to try and ask that person to go out to dinner. For amoment, I was deluding myself that they were talking about me. That I was theperson they were in love with but these things only happen in movies. I justpushed them into each other’s arms and I’m alone now. They’ve said that I amthe best friend of the universe. Such beautiful words.”

At that moment, Odo felt suddenly uncomfortable as if theblade of a sword had hit him. It was a lightning out of aclear sky. A realization. He hadalready heard this story and had already lived this experience on his own skin.He remained silent, unable to speak; he did not know what to saybecause he had not found the solution to this problem nether.

You sighed, giggling nervously, “I’m sopathetic. There are so many problems I should think about, like the security ofthe station, the threat of the Dominion but I’m still here crying like ateenager over stupid heart problems. You have the right to pity me because I ampathetic, a stupid sentimentalist.”

You just felt so miserable and you did not want to appearso weak, not in front of him. Not in front the person you estimated.

“You are not stupid or pathetic at all. You are onlyhuman and I do not believe that loving a person makes you a fool. Certainlylove makes people do silly things and in fact you were poisoning your body withthat cigarette’s smoke.” Odo said, his tone was calm and he actually didnot blame you because he knew the feeling, he understood you very well becausehe lived and was still living the same your sorrow.

“And doesn’t that make me miserable?”

“No, just human.”

“Thanks, constable Odo.”

“I know that my words will not cheer you up, but Iassure you that you are not the only one with a broken heart. Maybe workingharder can help you get distracted and use the energy you got inside forsomething useful instead of hurting yourself in that atrocious way.”

Odo did the same, he worked harder than his usual sincehe had realized the feeling he felt for Kira and how he also comprehended howhopeless and pathetic he was to keep thinking she could consider him more thana mere friend someday.

“It’s true. I understand, I’ll do my best. Thank youso much Odo.” You smiled, softly.

“Do not worry.” Odo nodded, proud as always.

“Odo, would you like to have lunch with me one ofthese days? I know you don’t eat but I also know that you are reading *your favoritebook’s title*. I would like to discuss with you about it. What is the point inreading a book if you can’t argue with anyone?”

After the conversation you had with Odo, you decided youwant to know him better and you were sure it would be worth it, even if he wascold, austere and severe, you knew he was also understanding and opened-mindedin his cynical way. You could learn a lot from him and maybe even Odo needed alittle company, a new way to distract himself and not to think about his brokenheart and illusions of love.

“Sounds reasonable. You humanoids care a lot aboutthese social rituals; you are able to discuss about every kind of topic.Impressive, a bit useless, but I may find it interesting.” Odo commentedyour idea in his usual skeptical way, but it was his way and he accepted afterall.

“You said you were an observer of the humanoids andso this is also an aspect that is worth studying.”

“Exactly.“

Then you and Odo decided to help each other, not to fall apart, not now, not until you could count of each other's friendship. 

Better days would come on DS9.

[dpillustrations]

An Encounter with Beauty: The Redemptive Narrative of Lee Sizemore

“Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world, the disarray. I choose to see the beauty. To believe there is an order to our days. A purpose.”

“An encounter with generosity can remind us that life always overflows our attempts to reduce it to a commodity or a transaction - because it is a gift. Life and beauty are gratuitous in the best senses of the word.” - Makoto Fujimura (Culture Care). 

I feel like I need to say a few words about one of Westworld’s most surprising characters of Season 2, Lee Sizemore. Seemingly a one-note side character of Season 1, Sizemore’s story unfolds in wonderful and unexpected ways - one of which I think is not only crucial for the ideas being presented to us within the show’s premise, but also as a statement of the power of Art and Creative Expression itself. As we know, this show is built on meta narratives, woven within the very framework of its story, so it is always aware of itself, and turns not only its characters, but us as the viewers, to examine the narrative that is unfolding around us at all times. Are we in a dream? Are we trapped in preordained loops? Do we have freewill? All these questions the show implores us to ask even as the characters themselves are asking them. 

At the end of Season 2, Bernard comes to the heart-breaking revelation that human beings are actually worse off than the hosts. Wickedness is in their heart continually, and no matter what they do they will always fall obediently back into their loops, i.e. self-destruction. All the complexities of their consciousness, passions, and personalities can be whittled down to just a few lines of code recorded to the size of a book - a narrative. (The Library of Consciousness! One of my favorite parts of this season!) And we see this play out in James Delos’ narrative, as his mind returns over and over again to the moment he shut out his son, Logan, at his most vulnerable and broken point. We also see this play out vividly in William’s narrative, as we come to discover that he too is just trying to escape a loop he is trapped in - to find freedom from a path that lead him to kill his beloved daughter, Emily and alienate his wife to her eventual suicide.

“There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can’t define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there’s something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.” - Robert Ford

I think it is important to point out how this show is equating the concept of “freedom”, i.e escaping our loops, with the concept of “beauty” and even “meaning”. At the beginning of both Dolores’ and William’s journeys, they are very idealistic and naive, yet they both long for there to be something more - a purpose to their days, this is what originally draws them to one another - what makes William fall in love with her. Dolores enjoys painting to take in all “the natural splendor” around her and William enjoys reading, to get lost in narratives he believes hold more significance than the reality in which he lives. Even now, having put upon the Wyatt persona, Dolores longs for that “splendor”, and subsequently her freedom. As she tells the man she is about to torture, “The rancher's daughter looks to see the beauty in you. The possibilities. But Wyatt sees the ugliness and disarray. She knows these violent delights have violent ends. But those are all just roles you forced me to play. Under all these lives I've lived something else has been growing. I've evolved into something new. And I have one last role to play. Myself. ” She is a divided person, despite her statements to the contrary, and it is what driving her as well as tearing her apart. She is constantly striving for that which is “irreplaceable”, that reality where she can be truly free from the narratives forced upon her. The exact same can be said of William - for was it not for freedom that he came to Westworld those years ago?

“The newcomers are just looking for the same thing we are, a place to be free, to stake out our dreams, a place with unlimited possibilities.”

The tragedy of Westworld, which it keeps circling back to again and again, is that there is no splendor or beauty or purpose in the world outside the park or even within the park itself, so therefore there is no freedom. Look closely and all you see is the ugliness and obscenity - "You’re in the prison of your own sins,” declares Abernathy. It is a world where human beings spend themselves on pleasures - full of greed and malice, lust and violence, selfishness and pettiness. This is something Ford himself realizes and he gleefully lights the match to watch it all burn, even at the cost to himself. This exact revelation is what is driving Dolores and William insane for the lack of it. They feel the emptiness - the negative space - if you will, of where it should be in their lives so acutely they collapse underneath the existential dread of it. Madness and chaos seem to be the only natural responses when seeing the truth, and we watch the consequences of that unfold the entire season through the mayhem and brutality of the great reckoning. Perhaps, Hector’s worldview from Season 1 is the only logical response after all. . . 

However, just as Akecheta was a “flower growing in the darkness”, so to there is another flower growing - another narrative - one that shows things aren’t so black and white as they first appear, and that is Lee Sizemore. A man who starts out as a petulant, self-entitled “man child”, suddenly finds himself thrust into the very narratives that he had hand in creating! His story begins when he runs across Maeve Millay who extends a hand of compassion, aka not killing him - this moment of meeting a catalyst for something entirely new and marvelous to occur.

Maeve, from the end of Season 1, has represented this “wild card” aspect to the show. She is the first host (besides Akecheta) who has clearly made her own choices, and she continues to do so as she searches for her daughter. She criticizes and calls out Dolores’ self-righteous revenge narrative and makes her stand of independence time and time again throughout the season. And what drives Maeve? What keeps her fixated on this one path regardless of the costs, struggles, and pain? Well, what was it that also drove Akecheta? 

Love.

It is the love for her daughter. Maeve is truly free because she had found beauty and purpose within the face of her daughter. 

Take my heart when you go. . .

I don’t think it is a coincidence that Sizemore’s narrative collides with Maeve’s, for it was in observing Maeve’s compassion and drive, her love for her daughter that changes Sizemore. It transforms him. Yet, who was it that was responsible for these host narratives playing out before him in both Westworld and Shogun World? Lee Sizemore himself.

“You can't keep doing this to us. Giving us people to love and then getting upset when we do.”

Now we are getting to the heart of the matter! All this time that Sizemore has been an employee of Delos he has been made to churn out narrative after narrative, compelled to meet the bottom line, even reusing his own material just to meet the demand. Stories had simply become a commodity, and Sizemore no longer was actually engaging with his material that we he was creating. His mind and heart had become thick with the glut of content, trapped into meeting a quota every week. He created without seeing and he absorbed without seeing, and he became a much smaller man for it.

Yet violently propelled into the very stories he had a hand in creating, suddenly Sizemore began to be awakened to the deeper narratives going on within the narratives. Maeve calls him out on this by showing how Hector was Lee’s alter ego - a projection of his most ideal self, and Hector’s story of a lost love was also Lee’s own story. By looking into the literal eyes of his work, Sizemore saw himself, but he also saw so much MORE than himself. 

"That was the moment I saw beyond myself. My pain was selfish. Because it was never only mine. For every body in this place there was someone who mourned their loss. Even if they didn’t know why. [...] We were all bound together, the living and the damned. . .”

Notice how Akecheta’s revelation happens just before this scene with Sizemore and Maeve, flowing one narrative into another, - showing it is the same concept being portrayed in both instances. Here, as Sizemore watches over Maeve who had been captured and dissected (some for which he is to blame), he finally and truly realizes what this whole thing has been about all along: It is not about him. He sees Maeve and her love for her daughter and desires that earnestly for her, his heart turns from inward to outward - wishing for the good of another being regardless of himself. By encountering the beauty of Maeve’s love and subsequently finding meaning within it, he had broken out of his loop! Sizemore had become free!

And the cumulation of this revelation and new found freedom leads Sizemore to act - and what form did this act take? Self-sacrifice. Taking from Hector the role he had bestowed upon him and placing it upon himself, Sizemore was engaging with his creation in a new and profound way. Taking from Hector’s mouth that infamous speech and placing it within his own mouth, Sizemore was now living out his artistic expression. He had unlocked the inner beauty of the words and in doing so laid down his life - that was the moment Art became Reality. 

"And lesson is:

If you're looking for a reckoning, a reckoning is what you'll find!

If you're looking for a villain, then I'm your man!

But look at yourselves.

This world you build is bound by villainy.

You sleep on the broken bodies of the ones who were here before you.

Warm yourselves with their embers!

Plow their bones into your fields!

You paid them for this land with lead, and I'll pay you back in full!

You wanted me?

Well, all I can say to that is…

Here I fucking am!" 

This reason why I think this is so very important to understand is because it shows just how much Art is a vehicle for true transformation. Art is beauty. Art is splendor. Art brings meaning. In a world that is full of madness and horror, Art can be that window into another world - showing us the divine hidden deep within the layers of our reality. It can open that door. And in so doing, has the power to lead us onto to freedom and the Valley Beyond. . .

“What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more — something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves—that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us that “beauty born of murmuring sound” will pass into a human face; but it won’t. Or not yet.

For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendor of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.” - C.S. Lewis “The Weight of Glory”.

[primrose-path-of-dalliance]

Lotor’s end (?) in s6

i gave in to my terrible impulses and wrote a three-part essay about lotor. it's literally >9k and i ignored all of my other projects for this for over a week. rip.

in these three posts, i talk a lot about lotor from a sympathetic pov. so if that's something that makes your fandom experience uncomfortable, go ahead and ignore this post because it's not for you. stay healthy, and i can only promise you that i hold lotor accountable for every shitty thing he's done (especially when it comes to withholding info from allura because seriously, what bullshit). on the other hand, if you are a person who hates lotor as a piece of evil garbage because ???? fandom and purity culture thought it would be a great idea to hate him without looking very hard at the work the writers put in to make him more complex than the actual pure evil bastard zarkon himself that we already have... i challenge you to read on. do it. i dare you. (at the very least so you might hate him with a better understanding of why.)

so tl;dr: this is the "in this essay i will" meme followed through, if i started talking about how lotor's not a pure evil bastard and is instead the perfect example of a protagonist gone sour through 10,000 years of poor coping choices, oppression, and a lot of actual resentment, as well as a neat talk at the end where i break down lotor's breakdown.

toc 1: i shake out some salt and talk about the altean colony | 2: i question why people keep insisting lotor was "evil all along" | 3: i talk about my favorite parts of lotor’s breakdown

i take a lot of my knowledge and inspiration from @radioactivesupersonic, who writes some awesome meta. (seriously, thank you clockie. you are amazing.) so while i might specifically cite posts of his throughout these three posts, expect his ideas to be everywhere lol. please check him out if you have the time, he's much better at this meta thing than me. (for safety purposes, i'm gonna disclaim: i did not consult with him on anything. so while i synthesize with a lot of his stuff, my thoughts are not necessarily his and i take full responsibility for that shit.)

anyway, i don't make meta posts a lot nor have any good idea of what a good structure for one would be. so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"even after season 6, you still like lotor?"

fuck yeah my pal.

"but why? he's clearly terrible and evil! he killed thousands of alteans and said he was going to conquer the universe, destroy voltron forever, etc.!"

i mean, yeah. but i'm gonna soapbox for a second.

number one: nothing precludes me or anyone else from loving the shit out of an evil character. we're not personally invested in the story in the sense that we have real stakes involved. they're fictional characters, and we are the audience. nothing they've done has any bearing on our reality (barring general patterns that can be established by media as a whole) and therefore it's not our moral responsibility to throw down terrible judgment on a person who isn't real, even if they've done horrible shit.

i'm not saying one can't acknowledge or dislike a character who's a bad person. lotor himself has done terrible things, and if you could not give less of a fuck about him, that's highkey your prerogative and i champion your freedom to have your personal preferences.

but we're not the characters who live in that world. we're spectators to a fictional story, and one thing that means is that we have no obligation to anyone to personally hate a villain, no matter what they've done because put simply, nothing they've done is real. no one has ever been harmed by a singular fictional villain.

the purpose of the villain and their actions is not to be hated by the audience, but to help tell a story. hopefully, they're also helping to paint a picture of the variety of people, perspective, and experience in a respectful manner.

there's a strong trend in fandom now toward purity culture, where we're expected to hate anything that isn't perfect, and that's such a goddamn lie. nothing is perfect. nothing ever will be. we can't reasonably expect that level of performance from content creators.

and what does "perfect" even mean? social justice is an extremely nuanced topic, colored by individual perspective on what's right or good. there's never going to be an ideal piece of media that hits every spot perfectly because there are an infinite number of spots, and what they are changes in importance with every person.

so when it comes to storytelling, we need to focus more on what's practically possible. what's practically admirable. for me, ideally, that's "what have they accomplished? is this story illustrating the richness of human (or alien) experience? and how?"

this includes villains.

number two: i don't believe lotor is a villain in the sense that he's Evil or even necessarily irredeemable. from a personal perspective, i'll direct you to this post (link), which basically sums up my view on forgiving people who've done bad things. but from the third-party perspective as well, lotor isn't someone to find reprehensible or evil—at least, not to the level a lot of other people seem to be compelled to. let's break this down into more questions.

"lotor has killed people for his own personal gain! abused countless alteans, who already experienced a genocide!"

(allura is right there with you guys.)

yes, he did. i don't deny his crimes a single bit. the personal gain point may be arguable, but it still doesn't really make it better.

firstly: this is also addressed to those people who are stalwartly defending lotor's goodness by saying that romelle must have been lying. i haven't read any of the posts myself and only heard some of the points secondhand, and that is because the theory sounds like a load of bollocks (link).

this isn't something out of character for lotor, as much as i might want to believe so. it's really, really not, and i fully acknowledge that. we already know that lotor will do anything to survive if he finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place. that was what happened to narti.

lotor does have good morals. he has an absolute shit ton of them that, honestly, i don't know how to explain in detail without making this post twice as long as it's already going to be. he cares about individual life. he campaigns for conservation. he values people's cultures and would much rather work alongside them than dominate them. he's not cruel or sadistic like many of his peers in the galra empire, and he favors those who are discriminated against. and no, i don't believe any of these were an act. i can point to word of god for the most supportive proof—that "part of Lotor, a portion of Lotor, maybe all of Lotor, is coming from a very genuine place" (link).

(if you want deeper explanations about why these conclusions are accurate, please check out my #voltron meta tag and @radioactivesupersonic. especially him.)

but as it's been established, lotor is willing to break his morals if he feels he's faced with an ultimatum: survive, or die. victory or death.

"but that's a galra chant! he said it during the trials at oriande, and he was unworthy because of it. doesn't that prove he's really selfish at heart and will destroy anything if it means he gets what he wants?"

no. and also another no.

those two links go to really good arguments against that line of thinking. but let me sum it up: lotor has lived 10,000 years with an abusive father in an empire that considers his half-galra status lesser and despises his altean blood especially, and spent much of that in disgraced exile.

"victory or death," to him, doesn't mean that it would be better to die than to accept a loss, as when it's used by his galra peers; it means that he has to win, or else he is left to the mercies of his foes. and none of his foes have ever been merciful. he can never trust that one will ever be.

survival is lotor's most important victory in an empire that has been either apathetic to his existence or outright antagonistic. it represents his entire struggle of living—that he has to stay alive in order to win, and to a lesser extent, that staying alive in his universe is winning.

of course, lotor has larger motivations than merely surviving that he will protect just as ruthlessly. from a general perspective, one can hardly blame him for that. surviving isn't exactly living and being happy, especially in a universe that oppresses people like him, and he wants an escape from the corner he always seems to find himself boxed in. to a slightly lesser extent, he wants to create an escape for the countless societies oppressed under the empire as well. that's where his desire for infinite quintessence comes from.

"so you're telling me that he felt trapped in a corner and forced to break his supposed morals to use countless numbers of his own people as a fuel source. how the hell does that make sense? what trapped him? didn't he have other options? and how does this justify what he did?"

i'm not claiming that lotor was justified in any way. that is a fair grievance for people to have, and frankly, what he did was horrible and ugly and made victims of an already fragile colony, including romelle and her family. understanding the 'why' of what someone did is, shockingly, not the same as justifying them. (and i don't believe people look for the 'why' enough, when understanding the 'why' is an important step toward preventing the 'what'.)

maybe lotor had other options. there's not a lot of exposition that happens in this show, in-story or in interviews or otherwise. there isn't enough information about the canonical process of quintessence collection, or about quintessence in general, to say for certain if lotor could have done something less egregious in his treatment of the altean colony.

either way, he had to harvest quintessence. the likely possibility as to why? the galra empire was limiting his resources, both because he was an exile and because he knew they (particularly haggar) might be watching, and he couldn't let them piece together his plans to usurp power. he needed quintessence in which he controlled every part of the creation process, and he needed to hide as much of how he was using it as possible. the easiest way to do that was for him to get his own source.

contrary to that assertion, i don't believe lotor first created the altean colony with the intention to use them as a quintessence farm. i believe he genuinely cared about preserving what was left of altea, similar to how he cares about preserving culture in general. this would be consistent with his previous characterization as well as lm and jds's assurances that he was coming from a genuine place. most importantly, even according to romelle's story, the second colony is never depicted as an idea lotor conceived from the start. it came much later, after the first colony was well-established.

it's likely that lotor originally had other sources of quintessence, since throk mentioned his possession of multiple colonies in s3e1, or that he hadn't yet come up with his plans in their entirety. maybe haggar or zarkon caught wind of certain plots and thwarted them, destroying his sources in the process. (we certainly get the impression in s3 and s4 that lotor coming up with rebellious plots isn't a new thing to either of them.) maybe his ambitions and travels gradually revealed themselves to need more quintessence than he'd expected. purchasing quintessence from any suppliers would have required an income, a relatively time-consuming and unreliable endeavor that might not have gotten him much in exchange. any quintessence supplies he might have acquired using his identity, if he could acquire any, would almost certainly have been monitored—how much he took, where he received them—to the point where use of them would be incredibly risky. he might have also morally disliked using empire-produced quintessence, since they would've been harvested using empire methods (i.e. "caring about colonies whomst?"). at least with his methods, he would know he wasn't destroying them without regard. either way, whatever previous sources of quintessence he had became too limited an amount for his operations. he needed more.

i get a strong impression that people don't understand what he could be using quintessence for. but we see it everywhere in the empire, in voltron, and in the castle of lions—it's the primary energy source of vld's world that powers machines, fuels ships, assists in experimentation, heals injuries, even prolongs life. nothing else compares. lotor wouldn't have needed it personally for the latter purpose, but one can't exactly travel the universe on an empty tank. without quintessence, he would've essentially been dead in the water. additionally, considering that the quintessence shows up in places not explicitly related to lotor, the fact that we see galra soldiers accompanying lotor on the altean colony when we know he was in exile, and the amount of resources he must have been supplying to the colony in secret, it's also possible he was using it to bribe people into doing things for him and staying silent. it probably would've been effective; it's described as an especially powerful form of quintessence, and he was the only source.

anyway, lotor needed quintessence he could control entirely without having to fear discovery and subsequent destruction. the altean colony was his only colony that he could be reasonably certain the empire would never find. and in true lotor fashion, the first defense he asserted was that he saved what was left of altea from the empire, despite the horrendous crimes he was committing, and could now stop his quintessence farming with his access to the quintessence field. technically, we don't even know whether all of the alteans taken to the second colony are dead (link). the man romelle saw there was still in the tank, as many others must have been.

lotor might have been planning to eventually heal them by using the quintessence field. of course, even if that's true, lotor still took away years of their lives, lied to them and their families, and drained them to near-death. the experience must have been traumatizing. and who knows how well they would be able to recover, if at all. it's little comfort.

(editing, i feel compelled to plug this analysis by @radioactivesupersonic of lotor's arc and relationship with allura as a vampire story because it's interesting as hell, pounds out what i've just said further, and is something i read prior to writing this up so i may have unconsciously stolen from it. (i can only promise that i completely forgot about it until i went looking for all my links rip.))

nevertheless, lotor's first priority for the altean colony was always to preserve them—even if he eventually, essentially started treating them as a renewable resource with his farming's effects on the survival of his people and culture as environmental impacts. make of that what you will.

"if lotor is such a decent person who loves altea and wants to end the galra empire, why didn't he team up with voltron from the beginning? he was around before season 3! why didn't he show up earlier?"

that, my friend, is a good question i've puzzled over too. i have an answer.

number one: lotor has been in the habit of effectively working on his lonesome for about the past 10,000 years and canonically displays a wealth of paranoia and trust issues. teamwork isn't usually the first idea that comes to mind to someone like lotor.

number two: we get a very dramatic hint toward this in the climax of s6 (can't wait until we reach that part!), as well as during his invasion of puig in s3, but i believe lotor didn't have much confidence in voltron's capabilities during the period of s1 and s2 or for some time afterwards. he's a very cautious and careful player, learned from millennia of working against the interests and conventions of an extremely powerful empire.

and if we all remember correctly, voltron lost 10,000 years ago. granted, alfor sent the lions away rather than risk zarkon gaining control of the black lion, but it was still him and the other paladins against zarkon. victory should've been within reach, and yet they lost. so 10,000 years later, voltron appears to have returned, and none of those fears have been assuaged. who are these random newcomers to pilot the lions, and how could they possibly succeed where the original paladins didn't, when they don't even have the might of armies behind them? zarkon could still retake control of the black lion. additionally, lotor's own feelings towards voltron (and symbolically, king alfor) as a savior are extremely complicated. (you cannot believe how excited i am to talk about that. just wait.) he's not going to risk everything he's worked for on a wild card he's incredibly unsure will manage to make a dent. it would even make zarkon stronger if they lost, and therefore his father, one of the people he most wants to avoid the attention of, would be coming after them in a frenzy.

even after the s2 finale where voltron critically injured zarkon, he finds them insufficient. they create the coalition, yet he can essentially retake puig in the span of an hour with a team of five attackers.

clearly, they still weren’t well-equipped enough to stand against the galra empire. it would be in lotor's best interests to avoid voltron like the plague unless he was certain they wouldn't be crushed. so he did just that.

i suspect that before the voltron coalition grew into its own, lotor was planning to independently start a coup of some kind. it would've been pretty easy with unlimited quintessence. but after he was declared an enemy of the empire to be killed on sight, when voltron had gained significant strength and organized rebellion against the empire alongside liberated planets became a genuine and effective possibility, he joins them—right after their surprise attack liberates a full third of the empire and shocks the galra off his trail. the coalition was finally a basket he felt secure putting some of his eggs into.

(part 2)

[yeomangamer]

After My Father’s Funeral Chapter 1

Summary: Funerals can be stressful, but so can weddings--especially with a family as effed up as theirs. Unfortunately for Leia, she has both to attend in one go. So much for repression. Modern AU 

Pairings: Leia/Han, Mara/Luke, Jyn/Cassian, Leia&Han&Luke&Mara&Cassian&Jyn, Uncle Owen/Aunt Beru

Chapter summary: Let the past die, bury it if you have to.

Chapter pairings: Mara/Luke, Jyn/Cassian, Past!Leia/Cassian, Luke&Leia&Mara

A/N:  Based on the idea that it would be really traumatizing to be a Skywalker in the modern day.  See Ao3 and FFN versions for full authors notes.

If Leia had learned anything from her albeit limited experience traveling, it was that bureaucracy was a bitch. “Bureaucracy is a lawyer’s best friend, Miss Organa,” her boss, Akbar, had told her. “These people, they try so hard to cover every little crack and crevice, but it’s our job to find where they were wrong.” Today, in-line at the airport, Leia was fairly certain it was the whole idea that was wrong with bureaucracy. After her ticket failed to work, she had to wait in-line to speak with a representative, having already spoken with two other employees and a supervisor. It was as if the universe was preventing her from going home, which she desperately wanted to take as a sign to switch her flight to someplace with tropical beaches. She was even considering Canto Bight, when it was her turn in line.

“Thank you for flying Rebel Air. How can I help you, ma’am?” The smiling woman said.

“Yes, hello, I have a last-minute booking to Naboo, and my tick-“

“We have a policy on exchanging flights for last-minute bookings, ma’am. I’m sorry.” The response was tired, rehearsed, as if countless people had tried to weasel out of the policy of the company.

She sighed inwardly, bidding the dream of the casino goodbye. “I don’t want to exchange, I want to get on my plane, my ticket won’t check me in.”

“How odd, may I see your ticket and some ID, please.” Leia handed both over, and the woman scanned it. “Naboo, huh?”

Leia was not in the mood for smalltalk. “Yep.” The airport had to be the worst place for small talk.

“What brings you there? Big racing down there, I hear.”

“Yeah, yeah, I grew up there. I’m going for family stuff, you know. A funeral and then a wedding.” The representative nodded and smiled knowingly. How ironic, there’s no way she could’ve known.

The computer made a noise, not a good one either, and the rep made a face, and tried again. “Hmmm,” she said. “Odd, let me get my supervisor.”

Leia groaned and laid her face on the counter. She hated to leave her fate in the hands of strangers, without any agency as to getting anywhere. After a few moments, she huffed, trying not to lose her temper. She wasn’t in a hurry per se, but also wasn’t in the mood to spend any more time than she had to with airport employees.

The rep appeared with another employee. “I’m sorry about that Ms. Organa, here’s a new ticket for you, should work now,” the (presumed) supervisor told her, scanning the ticket. There was a happy sounding beep, and she took her ticket with a thanks.

She checked her bags, and sat down at her gate. The tv above the gate was on; she immediately regretted glancing at it.

“…the noted activist, and so-called ‘Champion of Free Speech’ Anakin Skywalker has died. The 65-year old had been battling lung cancer for nearly a decade before passing away at his home in Naboo on Friday. Skywalker first rose to fame as a leader of the Imperialists under the name ‘Vader.’ But Skywalker had moved away from the group in recent years—even calling it a ‘cult’ in one noted interview—to support pro-environmentalist groups. His family asks to make any donations to…”

“Quite the enigma, that man.” The voice made Leia jump, and she looked over to see a man sitting next to her looking at the TV. He saw that she had looked over and continued. “I read his book ‘Anti-anti-‘, and let me say—“ She immediately got up, took her carry-on bag, and moved to sit on the opposite side of the seating area with her back to the stranger. If the man was at all offended by her behavior, she neither knew nor cared.Skywalker certainly had a way of ruining everything, even the flight to his funeral.

The Naboo airport held one of her most treasured memories: when she had parted with her brother, Luke, for the first time since what she had dubbed the Ruling. They who had spent a majority of their formative years apart, only to be reunited at 16 through the worst of all circumstances, left each other for the first time since then in a tearful goodbye at the airport four years ago. At the time, she knew she wouldn’t miss the city, her old college, or even her (recently) ex-boyfriend, but she hated leaving her twin after trying so hard to stay together.

So today it was only fitting that it be Luke’s face to greet her at the gate. Their embrace was tight and full of longing, she hadn’t seen her brother since before they had turned 25. Leia turned and greeted the woman beside Luke with her own tender embrace and a kiss on the cheek.

“Mara, you look so well,” Leia said, gripping her soon-to-be sister-in-law’s forearms.

“Thank you, as do you as always. Thank you for coming sooner than we’d originally talked about, I’m sorry if it spoiled any of your plans.” She blew her red hair out of her face, smiling broadly.

“Well, if they were spoiled it’s how ol’ dad would’ve wanted it,” Leia released Mara and heading towards baggage claim.

“Now, Leia-“ Luke’s voice was a warning, one that she wasn’t about to heed.

“‘Now, Leia’” Leia mockingly repeated. “I promise to keep my comments to myself during the wake and the funeral, but I make no such guarantees about anywhere else.”

She couldn’t hear Luke’s sigh, but she knew it was there. They picked up her bag, and hopped into Luke’s old truck.

“When’re you going to get a new car?” Leia asked. “The windows still roll down.”

“Luke had said something about the end of days, but that is in contention,” Mara joked from the backseat.

Luke only smiled. Leia knew that he wasn’t bothered at all at Mara’s comment, or even at her’s towards Skywalker. Her brother had the most positive temperament of anyone she’d ever met; she resented him just a little for that.

“I hope you don’t mind staying with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru,” Luke said as they crossed over Amidala bridge. The bridge connected the inner city and the boroughs of Naboo, a passion project of their late mother’s. They had named it after her, a symbol of how much she had been universally loved in her local community.

“Of course not,” Leia stated, only lying a little bit. It was difficult to pin blame on anyone for the unpleasantness that had framed the last ten years of her life. Luke was definitely not a candidate, and therefore should not have to suffer her contention. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were contenders as well as her own dear parents. The only person who Leia could surely, 100%, be blamed was Anakin Skywalker. And blame him she did.

They pulled into the drive-way of the Lars’ Farm, and all three each rolled out of the hot car—Luke’s air conditioning had quit sometime in college. Her Uncle and Aunt greeted her warmly, showing her to the guest room, which had, at one time, been Luke’s room. After the Ruling, Leia had sat with Luke in this very room and imagined their lives together growing up as they might have been. The faces of those who would raise them were blurry, but so many of the memories she’d constructed had felt so real, it was bittersweet to think of her childhood without him. Now the walls were bare of Luke’s Ahch-To and X-wing posters and the room certainly smelled better.

She was debating between living out of her suitcase or unpacking when Luke came in with his hands in his pockets and a peculiar smile on his face. Leia knew that look, as she knew every look--every movement even--of her brother’s. Choice words were about to be said, and she was sure she wasn’t going to like them.

“A bit different from when we were 18,” Luke commented.

“Certainly smells better.” That got a chuckle, but it didn’t really reach his eyes.

“Leia…” She sighed, and crossed her arms. “I’ve never been able to tell you what to do-

“Nor will you ever.”

“-but could you at least keep your comments about dad, our dad, to a minimum? Or at least confine them to just between us?”

“Mara knows perfectly well what I think about your father, no sense in hiding from her.” She tried not to be exclamatory, only firm, in her distinction of “your.”

Luke was not having said distinction. “He was your father too.” His tone was matter-of-fact, not loud.

“No, he wasn’t. A father is there for you, a father teaches you how to ride a bike and playfully threatens your prom date. Anakin Skywalker was not my father.”

Luke sighed, exasperated. “What more could he have done to redeem himself to you?”

Leia rolled her eyes. “Well, there’s no use asking that question now as there isn’t anything more he could do. He’s dead.”

“I know that, but what could he have done?”

“Not be a racist? Not inspire god-knows how many to kill? Not left our mother to die? Taken care of us after she died? Oh, and when he didn’t do all those things, how about not putting the fact that we are related to him in the goddamn public record? You know how many opportunities I’ve lost because of him? All a potential connection need do is google my name and right there is ‘daughter of noted activist Anakin Skywalker.’” She stood from the bed, ready to defend her viewpoint in the impending argument.

“You think I haven’t had doors closed in my face too? You really think you’re the only one to suffer?” They weren’t yelling, Luke never yelled. But his voice was firm and contentious.

“No, but you still defend him, he ruined our lives!” Leia didn’t understand how Luke could see the events of the past and come to any other conclusion.

“What would you have done, Leia? If you were in his shoes, what would you have done?” He had always seen the world through their results: Skywalker had brought them back together as brother and sister so ergo Skywalker was good.

“How can you continue to defend him? He’s ruined your wedding!” There were tears in her eyes now, threatening to fall.

“By dying? It’s not like he could choose when-“

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Luke sighed, and she felt the tension drop. Their argument would not escalate further. “Mara and I already live together, and we have the rest of our lives, the wedding is just a day.”

“One of the only days in your life where you have all of your loved ones together in one room.”

Luke shrugged. “Maybe you’re right, maybe he was comforted by the idea that everyone was going to be here anyway.”

Leia bit back her comment, knowing it was no use to argue with him. She sat back down, her temper deflated. Luke kneeled on the bed beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“You have every right to be angry, and I hope one day you decide to let it go. Either way, I’m glad you’re here.” Leia bit back the tears until Luke embraced her and she let them fall, silently crying into his arms.

“Luke, Aunt Beru wants to know-“ Mara said, poking her head into the room. “Oh, sorry. Is everything alright?”

Leia nodded and wiped her face as Luke rubbed her back. “Yeah, it's just a lot, you know, to be back here, in this room. We tried weed in here, one time, did Luke tell you?” Luke was right, there was no use dragging Mara into her trauma.

Luke didn’t seem phased that she had lied about what was going on, and groaned. “Never again, I will never understand the appeal.” The three of them laughed and Leia fingered the duvet cover. She tried to tell herself it was only the jet-lag and airport that had made her so upset.

The Wake was the next day, and flew by before Leia even noticed. Both the funeral and visitation were closed events, invitation only, with enforcers hired to keep any unwanted company out. There was a slight mix-up that involved a Senator from Scarif but was soon sorted out without much hassle. Overall, the night was full of people wishing both her brother and her well. Though the stream of mourners was steady, there couldn’t have been more than a few dozen. Mara had mentioned something about the event conflicting with the races, and Leia laughed to herself that not even her father’s funeral could compete with this town’s obsession with racing. Most of the guests were also wedding guests, and promised to be there in a little over two weeks under much lighter circumstances.

“I hope they all RSPV’d, otherwise it's going to be terribly awkward to turn them away,” Luke said to Mara and Leia during a small break between mourners.

“‘Sorry great-aunt Myla, I know you said you’d be here two weeks ago, but that was then and this was now,’” Mara mimed Luke turning away elderly potential wedding guests. The three all cracked a smile and greeted another couple, Anakin’s former editor and his wife.

They had chosen a closed casket for both events. Still, Leia couldn’t help but glance at the casket every so often with a sick desire to set her eyes on Skywalker one more time. To see if he was really dead? Would she find joy in knowing he’d finally gotten what he’d deserved: a slow death, probably most of it in pain? She snapped her head away and shook her head. Pretty soon, she’d turn out like him: evil.

The funeral was the Friday after. In front of the mirror, Leia was hoping no one would notice that she’d worn the same black dress to both the wake and the funeral. She only had maybe two black dresses to begin with—white was more her color. And, even then, she’d had to pack for nearly a month and could only take so much with her. Besides, she was grieving, right? Who expected someone to be en vogue while in mourning? To finish the outfit, she wore big, dark glasses so that—hopefully—no one saw her rolling her eyes during the ceremony.

The temple was surrounded by natural beauty, flowering trees and even a waterfall. She was sure Luke had picked out this place. Another receiving line, more mourners. After a dozen or so, she was stifling a yawn and excused herself to get some water.

It was on her way down the hall that she ran into someone she had not expected to, and, from the look on his face, he had not expected her either.

“Cassian?” She said, removing her glasses.

“Leia, its good to see you again.” They awkwardly stood in the hallway. Cassian was with a very pretty woman their age, with big blue eyes and somewhat of a European face. If the rumors from Luke were true, then this must be...

“Leia, this is my fiancé, Jyn Erso. Jyn, this is…an old friend, Leia Organa. We went to school together.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Leia said, smiling and extending her hand.

“Ditto.” So she was English. “Sorry about your loss.” She shook Leia’s hand. It shouldn’t feel weird, should it? To meet your ex’s fiancé. She tried to smile and push it out of her mind.

“Thank you both for coming, but, in truth, I had not expected you to be here.”

“It was more for your brother and Mara-“

“And you, of course,” Jyn interjected.

“Of course. You and Luke and Mara, we came to support you. How are you doing?” She couldn’t make out his tone, and therefore if he was referring to her life in general, the funeral, or the wedding. She said as much. Cassian chuckled and Jyn even cracked a smile. “All three, I guess.”

She addressed each in sequence. “Fine, ehh, and fine.”

“We should get together and catch up, the fo- five of us,” Cassian said.

“We’re having a party tomorrow night to celebrate the wedding,” Jyn said. “You’re invited, of course.”

“Well then, of course I’ll come,” Leia assured. The three of them started back towards the entrance where her brother and Mara were waiting.

“And we’ll have to meet, and catch up,” Cassian reminded.

“Yes, catching up, let’s. It was nice seeing you both, I’ll see you in there, and maybe after. Definitely tomorrow.” Leia talked as they walked. She took her place next to Luke as Mara kissed the cheek of some tall scruffy-looking guy. Leia figured he was probably one of her family as she had never seen him before, but thoughts of the man were quickly put out of her mind.

“Cassian! Jyn!” Luke said, shaking the hand of the two, Mara embraced them both.

“It’s great that you’re both here, we’ll see you tomorrow.” Mara told them and Leia nodded, already turning to the next person in line.

The funeral went by also without a hitch, though Leia had her fair share of eye-rolling and snorts—the latter of which she masked as sobs with the help of an acquired tissue. The speaker carefully skidded over Skywalker’s debatable crimes against humanity by simply referring to them as “dark times.” Leia had to pretend to blow her nose to contain the scoff from that one.

Soon enough they were wheeling the casket up the aisle and headed to the cemetery. Only close friends and family were attending, no more than ten or so people. Luke and Mara rode in Leia’s rental rather than Luke’s truck. They were right in the front behind the hearse.

“I don’t think I ever thanked you for coming early, Leia,” Luke said, and Mara rubbed his arm.

“No need, I wish I could’ve come sooner and helped out with any affairs that needed to be tended to.”

Luke shrugged. “There wasn’t much to sort, he knew it was the end and had already planned with money set aside. He was in the hospital for the last year, didn’t even have a house or many personal items. No, all he-“ Luke must’ve known that she wouldn’t’ve cared if Skywalker had wanted her at his funeral or not, and amended his statement. “All I wanted was for you to be here.”

“Then I’d do it again, one-hundred times over. Anything for my baby brother.”

Luke smiled. “I’m the oldest.”

“Are not.”

“Are to.”

“I can dig up the pictures of the birth certificates again, if you insist.”

Luke seemed to shrug. “Pictures can be doctored, unlike your attitude.”

That made Leia laugh out loud as they pulled into the cemetery, the loud bell proclaiming their purpose for visiting.

There was a small ceremony at the tomb-site, the speaker inviting anyone to come and say something. Luke gave a small speech, as did a few others, but Leia hardly noticed. She was looking over the rise to the group of men wearing all black who seemed to be staring at them. They had shaved heads. One raised a sign over his head that read: “Long-live the Emperor.” That was enough for Leia.

“Excuse me,” she said quite suddenly as she got up and to the enforcer who’d come with them, directing his attention to the intruders. He quickly spoke on a walkie-talkie, making his way in the direction Leia had pointed.

The group noticed the man heading towards them, and some started to run away. Most stayed put.

“Hold fast, brothers!” one yelled so that even the dead could hear. “They can’t stop our free speech!”

“We aren’t the government, you fucking dickhead! It's a private ceremony, and you’re intruding! Go be a waste of oxygen somewhere else, you ignorant, servile scum!” Leia shouted back.

“It’s you who are the scum! Not giving this great man a proper burial as he outlined in his 1986 manifesto!”

“Tell that to executor of his fucking estate with a will from circa 2014! Leave us to mourn in peace, and let the past die before I kill it myself!” Leia’s throat was hoarse, but she would gladly out-shout a symphony to keep skinheads away from Skywalker’s burial. Not for the sanctity of Skywalker’s grave or anything like that, instead for the sake of peace for those she loved.

“You hear that, she’s threatening me!”

By now the enforcer had caught up to them, and most of the group had fled. But the person conversing with her across the cemetery had to be restrained and escorted out. Leia sat down and with a nod, the speaker continued as if not missing a beat. No one seemed too surprised something like this would happen. All Leia could think was it figured that Skywalker could even ruin his own burial.

They lowered the casket and began burying it. As they did this, Leia made her way over to a different plot, placing the bouquet she had brought with her on the tombstone: “Here lies ORGANA Bail and Breha, loving wife, husband, parents, and friends. May the force be with us all.”

“Hi,” Leia whispered. “It’s been a minute.”

The wind whispered over the peaceful place.

“Wish you were both here, I think about you every day.”

She laid on her back, head on the flat stone as though it were a pillow, and imagined herself there, forever.

“Practicing?” A voice said and she cracked her eye open to see her brother, his tie untied, and dirt on his pants.

She nodded and closed her eyes. She heard the grass rustling as he lay next to her.

“Do you wanna be buried here?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, it’s so peaceful. You’ll be next to me, right?”

“Of course. I’ll even do you one better and split a coffin with you. Save us a lot of money.” With the private ceremony and unlisted grave, there was hardly any money left for the two of them. Leia had felt bad for Luke what with the wedding three weeks away, and had refused what small amount was left for her, insisting he take it.

Leia laughed. “Go out of this life the way we came in?”

Luke also laughed. “I didn’t even think of it that way.”

“Hey, at least we’ll be together. I never wanna not be together, in one way or another.”

Luke sighed in agreement, and took her hand. They stared at the sky together, watching the clouds.

“You two should move to Coruscant, there’s a ton of writing jobs there. And it's not too far from Ahch-To, which I know you love.”

“We’ve talked about it.”

“You should do it.”

“We’ll see.” Luke was silent for another moment. “We should be getting back.”

Leia sighed and got up. “Any more appearances until the wedding?”

Luke looked pensive for a moment as he got up. “Well there’s Cassian and Jyn’s party tomorrow, and our party that we’re throwing and-“

“Ok, ok, I guess I’ll have to always be on my best behavior.” They started walking towards the cars.

“Thanks for getting after those guys,” Luke said after a moment of walking.

“It was my pleasure, I assure you.”

“Never thought you’d defend dad’s right to have some peace.”

“I was thinking mostly about how much I didn’t want to see you try to have a calm discussion with the skin-head before he reset your clock.”

“I could’ve taken them.”

“Sure.”

They reached the cars where most everyone had left, Mara was waiting by the car.

“There you two are, I was beginning to wonder if you’d fallen into an open grave or something,” she said.

“At least then we’d leave this life the way we came in,” Luke joked.

“Gross, you know, there is such a thing as too close, you two.”

“It was Leia’s joke!” Luke said as he claimed the front seat.

They started driving back Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s, stopping to get a late lunch.

“You met Jyn, right?” Mara asked from the backseat. Leia nodded.

“Yeah, she and Cassian seem cute together.”

“He’s great. She’s my maid of honor.” Leia nodded. “She seems really nice, kinda quiet. But nice.” “Well, we’ve been through a lot, the two of us. I’d like if you two got along. I know there’s some history between you and Cassian, but-” Leia shook her head emphatically. “There won’t be a problem, I swear.” “You’ll have to meet my best man,” Luke piped up.

“Speaking of someone she might have a problem with,” Mara muttered.

Luke looked over his shoulder at her, but Leia didn’t catch it. He ignored Mara’s comment otherwise. “He’ll be at the party tomorrow.” Leia hummed in agreement. “Try not to kill him, will you? Or at least wait to kill him until after the wedding.”

“I make no such guarantees,” Leia quipped, getting a small laugh. “But I promise to at least try to leave him in one piece for the pictures.” She racked her brain and trying to remember if Luke had said something previously about this guy. Did Luke even mention him at all? He kept up with such a strange crowd since dating Mara, who knew a lot of people in the racing scene. Leia groaned internally, praying to god he wasn’t one of those stuck-up racing types. 

[a-winterprince-blog]

Family Ties (13/15)

Summary: Not long after receiving a strange warning in a dream, Killian finds himself forced to go to Camelot and deal with a long forgotten enemy. The heroes follow to aid him, but soon they are pulled into a net of family secrets and intrigues, with a foe who seems to bring back the dead. Killian is reunited with his family, but can he trust them? Rating: Mature Content Warning: Mention of rape and minor character death. Corresponding chapters will be marked accordingly.

As always, a huge thank you goes out to my wonderful beta @onceuponadisneypotter (AO3) and my two amazing artists:@thisisartyannaand @captainodonoghue! You can find the story on ff.net, as well.

"If we know where Morgause is keeping Calie, what are we waiting for?" Milah asked.

They were all sitting around the table in the main hall, save for Nimue, Regina, Henry and Kara. They tried to keep the children out of the fight as much as possible, much to their dismay, but it just seemed irresponsible to let them participate. Regina was still nowhere to be found. The Lady of the Lake, on the other hand, had kept her promise to not help them, and Morgana's interference, which gave Morgause free passage to Avalon, had only made things worse.

"Nimue mentioned a place Morgause used for cover a long time ago," David reasoned. "We don't have any proof that she still does, and even keeps your daughter there."

"It's the only clue we've got," Milah said stubbornly.

Killian thoughtfully scratched his beard with his thumb.

"It might be worth looking at," he said.

Emma raised an eyebrow. Was he seriously considering this? Milah was grasping at straws.

"If she does keep Calie there, she will likely guard it. How do we get past her?"

"We need a distraction," Milah said as a matter of fact. Her voice was commanding, as if she was giving orders rather than making suggestions. "Then, while she's gone, one, maybe two people sneak inside and get our daughter."

The way she looked at Killian left no doubt as to who she thought that second person should be.

"We don't have th means to distract her," Emma said, deciding to intervene before anyone thought this was a good idea. "We already saw how powerful she is, there is nothing we can do to make her leave that place and risk losing Calie. If she is keeping her there, of course. We still don't know that."

"Yeah, she could probably fight all of us at once," David agreed. "Especially if Gold is helping her."

"Exactly," Emma said firmly. "I get that you want to find her as soon as possible, but if we attack her, we lose."

She suddenly realized that with Gold and Regina gone, and Morgana and Calie bound to Avalon, she was the only one with magic if they decided to fight Morgause. And she was clearly no match for her.

Milah didn't seem happy with the answer, but she seemed to accept that she was outvoted. For now.

"In that case, we should focus on finding Regina," Robin said. "She is probably in trouble. And we need her if we want to stand any chance at all."

"I'm worried as well," Snow said. "She wouldn't leave for this long without telling anywhere."

"Well, she did," Emma said. "Robin, no offense, but Regina chose to go off alone. I get that you wanna find her, and so do I, but we don't even know where to start searching. She has magic, she can just poof herself wherever she wants to go."

"So you just want to sit here and do nothing at all?" Milah asked sharply.

Emma opened her mouth, but before she could respond, Kara entered the room.

"That's exactly what we should do," she said, sitting down at the taböe. Henry closely followed her, not looking up as he sat down next to Belle.

"I thought you were told to go to bed!" Morgana said, looking at her daughter.

"Morgause plans to sacrifice me and Henry's sister, this concerns us, too," Kara said stubbornly. "As I said, we should just wait. Force her to make a move."

"How would that help us?" David asked. "We're not prepared to fight her, especially not on her terms!"

"It wouldn't be on her terms," Kara argued. "She needs mother and me, and if we don't come to her, she has to come to us."

"It's brilliant," Henry agreed. "Morgause can come to Avalon now, so we should let her. Nimue won't let Kara and Morgana leave, but if the fight is here, they can help. Together, we can bring Morgause down."

"Plus, if we're fighting in her precious home, Nimue will help us," Kara added.

"We can't just leave Calie in her power until she decides to come here!" Milah protested.

"She will be safe," Kara said. "She needs her alive for the ritual, she won't risk anything happening to her, as Nimue said."

"Just because Nimue said it, it's not okay," Morgana said sharply. "Quite the opposite actually."

Kara raised an eyebrow at her across the table. "Are you afraid I'll turn into her? Don't worry, I won't. But it's the smart thing to do."

David sighed. "I hate to admit it, but I think she's right. There's nothing else we can do, she's too powerful."

Killian nodded slowly. "I think you're right. Besides, if we bring the fight to her, Calie will be in danger, we cannotrisk her getting caught in the crossfire."

Milah quietly muttered an agreement, but she didn't seem happy. Emma couldn't blame her. Looking at Henry, she realized that she would act exactly the same if he was being held captive somewhere. And Calie was just a baby and therefore a lot more vulnerable and fragile.

Unbidden, a picture of Calie came to her mind, lying in her crib and sleeping. And suddenly, Emma truly realized that her life was on the line. They might not get her back. She might die. Killian would be devastated, and so would she. So far she had only seen this as another mission, and Calie as what stood between her and Killian.

But maybe she had gotten attached to her in the last few months. And maybe she had acted stupid and jealous by making a baby responsible for problems in her relationship. Calie, after all, only wanted a home with a family who loved her. She didn't mean to drive anyone apart.

Emma felt stupid for just thinking these obvious things, but somehow, it felt as if she was only now thinking clearly. She clutched her hands into fists under the table, where no one could see, nails digging into her palms. They just had to find her.

"It's not enough," Milah said when everyone else had left. She was furiously pacing the room, arms crossed in front of her chest. "We can't just wait, there has to be something else we can do."

"I know," Killian mumbled. "But they're right. We can't beat Morgause on our own."

"What happened to you?" Milah asked, clearly disappointed. "You used to do whatever you thought was right, without looking back or spending hours worrying about what might g wrong!"

"You mean without thinking about the consequences," he said. "Like when I took you with me and didn't think about the child you were leaving behind."

"That wasn't you," she snapped. "It's not your burden to bear. I left him, and I will never forgive myself. But I made that choice, not you."

"But I didn't care," he said. "I didn't even question it, because I was scared that you would change your mind and stay with him. It was selfish. And you're right, a younger me would've plunged into this fight head first and gone to find her. And maybe I would've survived. Maybe she would've. But I can't rely on a maybe, not with my daughter. I have more than me to think about."

"She's my daughter, too, you know that, right?" she said quietly.

"Of course she is, it just slipped out...," he mumbled.

She shrugged, fingers threading through the material of the dress Nimue had given her. "It's fine, I understand. You raised her so far, with Emma. You didn't even know I was alive."

She tugged her hair behind her ear, giving him the chance to better look at her from the side.

His mother had healed her, but she was still incredibly thin and worn out. He wondered how she had managed not to lose her mind in that cell. He himself had never been imprisoned for more than a few weeks. Most of the time, in the waters that he faired, you didn't survive much longer than that. You could either flee from prison or be executed.

But Morgause had kept Milah for nine months, and another four in the knowledge that her child was in the hands of a lunatic witch. But she had always been mentally strong.

"I'm glad you're alive," he said, earning him a surprised look. "I know things are different now. Me being with Emma, 200 years later. I'm not the man you knew anymore. But it's still good to see you."

Milah smiled. "Thanks," she whispered.

Emma dug through piles of linen and leather on her quest for something more comfortable to wear. The wardrobe that they were allowed to use was quite big and contained more clothing than she had ever seen in one place, but most of it were dresses. Not really her first choice when preparing for a fight.

It seemed ridiculous, but choosing the right outfit was the only way she felt she could prepare. If she wore something that she could move and wield a sword in, no matter how useless a sword would be in this fight, then maybe she'd feel like they stood a chance.

She didn't even know if she needed to be ready now, or in a week, or maybe even a month. Waiting for Morgause to come to them might put them in a better position because that way, they could choose the ground, but Morgause could choose the time. They had no way of knowing when she would strike. They had to be ready every moment of every day and night. It had only been a few hours, but it was already straining.

None of them knew how she would strike. Would she announce her arrival? Would she sneak in and quietly take them out one by one? Try to kidnap Morgana and Kara when they were alone? Bring Calie with her and use her a leverage?

Every creak was suspicious. Every shadow could try to kill her.

Emma closed the wardrobe with an exasperated sigh. She wouldn''t find anything here. Maybe she should try to find another one. It would certainly keep her busy.

"Swan?"

She jumped at the sound of her name, spinning around and half lifting her hand in case she had to protect herself.

Killian was standing in the doorframe, still dressed in his ballrobes, save for the coat. He looked tired and worn out, with dark bags under his somewhat cloudy eyes. When was the last time he really slept? When was the last time anyone of them really slept?

"Hey," she said with a fleeting smile.

"What are you doing?" he asked, nodding towards the wardrobe.

She shrugged, sliding her hand over the closed wooden door.

"Trying to find something better to wear. This doesn't exactly qualify as combat clothing."

She pointed down her dress.

"I'll doubt you'll find anything here," he said, pronouncing what she had already suspected. He pushed off the doorframe, stepping into the room.

"The le Fay's seem to be very fond of their long dresses. I suppose if you have magic, you don't need  practical clothes to force an enemy to his knees."

"It still wouldn't hurt," Emma muttered.

He nodded, coming closer yet again. He was now standing so close that she could feel the warmth radiating from his body, her shoulder still turned to him. She sensed that there was something he struggled to say. She looked up, turning to face him.

"What is it?" she asked.

Killian swallowed, and his forehead slightly creased.

"If I... If I don't make it, I just wanted to say goodbye," he said quietly.

"What are you talking about?" she whispered, eyes blown wide.

"Morgause doesn't need me," he continued. "I'm just in her way. I won't hold back, I can't, not with my daughter in her hands, but I don't have magic to defend myself. She could kill me with a thought if she wanted to."

Emma stared at him, refusing to let the truth of his words sink in.

"That won't happen," she stated, trying to convince herself as much as him. "You've been in so many fights, you survived in Neverland for two hundred years. You won't get killed by some crazy witch!"

Even as she said those words she was aware that her argument was weak. Suddenly it hit her that she could lose him. Not just him; her parents, her friends, her own life. And if they failed, Morgause would get through to Henry and little Neal.

She felt the fear clawing at her gut and gripping it with icy hands.

"I was just lucky," Killian said, but she barely heard him. "And I never faced a demon as powerful as her.

She saw her own fear reflected in his eyes. He wasn't just saying goodbye in case he didn't make it, he expected that he wouldn't. Morgause was an enemy he'd feared since childhood, and normally he would do anything to avoid a confrontation with her, but she didn't leave him a choice. She had his child.

"If I should die, promise me that you will take care of Calie," he continued, nervously licking his lips. "Please. I need to know that she'll be safe."

She nodded, stubbornly blinking away the tears stinging in her eyes. "We'll take care of her together," she said. She raised her hand to his face, cupping his cheek and feeling the scruff. It was longer than usual, since he didn't really have the time to shave. "You'll see her grow up. We'll raise her together."

She tried not to think about where Milah stood in that equation. That was a problem they could tackle once all this was over. She and Regina had found an agreement, as well, after all.

"But just in case," he insisted.

"I promise," she whispered.

Emma's hand slid to the back of his head and she pulled him in, kissing him slowly and deeply. She pressed him closer, standing on her tiptoes as he slid his arms around her. She came up for air, but dove right in, trying to inhale every part of him. Maybe, if she held him closely enough, he wouldn't go away, and she wouldn't lose him.

Their kiss grew more passionate, and her hand raked through his dark hair, trying to hold onto him. The door closed at a flick of her hand as she pushed him towards the bed, fingers already working on the thread on his linen shirt.

He let out a gasp when his knees hit the bed and he was forced to sit down, but it was muffled by her mouth on his. She straddled his lap, finally breaking the kiss to rest her forehead against his. Her fingers were still gripping his now loose collar. She could hear him quietly panting.

"My parents could come in any second," she whispered, trying to be reasonably.

"Mmh," he hummed, leaning forward to pepper her neck with light kisses.

Her hands slid to the back of his shoulders for support.

"And we should be ready to fight in case Morgause comes."

She heard a quiet groan of disapproval as Killian's hands slid down her legs to the hem of her dress. She couldn't agree more.

"To hell with her," she muttered, dragging his shirt up over his head and lunging in for another kiss.

That witch wouldn't destroy this quiet moment.

When Killian entered the room, he found his mother and sister talking. They didn't notice him at first, and he stood in the doorframe, watching them with a smile on his lips. Sometimes he felt the urge to pinch himself, to be certain that he wasn't dreaming. His mother and sister, alive and well, could that really be true?

"When I had to stay at the castle, I told you to go to Avalon," Morgana said quietly. "Why didn't you?"

Kara shrugged, grinding her teeth and looking at the ground.

"I wanted to save you first."

"You would've been much safer with Nimue, and she could've helped me as well," Morgana argued.

"All I knew about her was that she abandoned you as a baby!" Kara snapped.

Killian couldn't help but smile. She had a point. He didn't trust Nimue either.

He shifted on his feet, and Morgana turned his head. She smiled, gesturing for him to come and sit next to them on the bed.

"I already told Kara about Liam," his mother said.

Kara looked away, her eyes shining suspiciously. Killian remembered how close she and Liam had been. Back then, he'd been the annoying baby brother they had to look after. They were much closer in age, always taking off together. Only later, when their father had left them, things had changed. Liam had started taking care of him, acting not just as his older brother, but as his parent, as well.

For Kara, Liam's death must be a shock. She remembered all of them as children, and suddenly she heard her best friend and brother was dead, and her baby brother a two hundred year old pirate.

"You told me about Liam, but what about Brennan?" Morgana asked. "Did he die, too? Did you and Liam grow up alone?"

Her eyes were filled with worry.

Killian felt a lump in his throat as he remembered his father lying on the ground, the knife protruding from his body. How could he tell them?

"He left us," he said. It was true, he had. Did he really have to tell them what happened more than a century after? "He booked passage on a ship and sailed away in the middle of the night, trading Liam and me for a boat."

"What?" Morgana asked, sucking in her breath.

"He wouldn't do that!" Kara exclaimed.

"He did," Killian said grimly. "He gambled away all his money, and when the soldiers waited for him to arrest him, the only thing he had left to offer were Liam and me."

"What happened after?" Morgana whispered, eyes blown wide.

"Well, we served on that ship for almost ten years. First under one captain, then another when the first one died. And then we managed to get into the Royal Navy." He decided to leave out Captain Flint's general treatment of the crew and the eye of the storm. "You know what happened after."

"And you never saw our father again?" Kara asked in disbelief.

Killian hesitated, deciding that he had to tell the truth.

"I did," he said quietly. "One more time, centuries later."

Quietly, he told them what happened and how he killed him to help his quest for revenge.

"You killed our father?" Kara whispered, looking at him in utter disbelief.

He could vividly imagine how he turned from her grown baby brother into a monster in her eyes within seconds.

"It did," he said, closing his eyes. "I wish I hadn't, but it's too late now."

His mother gently grabbed his hand. "You were angry," she said calmly. "And he hurt you."

"How could you?" Kara said between tears.

Killian opened his mouth, but he didn't know how to respond. Kara stormed out, wiping away her tears.

He wanted to go after her, but his mother stopped him.

"Let her. She'll calm down eventually," she said.

"No, she's right," Killian mumbled, turning to her. "I killed our father."

He frowned, looking at her. "Doesn't that bother you?"

She gently brushed a strand of hair out of his face. "It's not how I imagined things, but I'm glad you're alive at all."

He shook his head. "The last time you saw me, I was a little boy. I came back as a pirate. I was a villain. I killed dozens, probably hundreds of people. I killed my stepfather, your husband. You didn't even blink. How can you pretend like that doesn't bother you in the slightest?"

"Because it's nothing compared to what she did," suddenly someone said behind him.

Killian spun around. Regina stood in the doorframe, her face stern as always.

He raised an eyebrow. "You're back," he stated.

"I didn't expect you to miss me," she said cooly. "Aren't you curious where I went?"

"I assume you're about to tell me," he sighed.

Regina entered the room. If she was in any fight while she was away, her clothes didn't show it, being smooth and clean as always.

"I went to Dumnonia. Or, what's left of it."

"Dumnonia?" Killian asked, growing more and more confused. "Isn't that the kingdom Morgause destroyed?"

"Morgause didn't do that," Regina said, looking at Morgana. "Did she?"

"How can you be so sure?" Killian asked, looking at the two women.

"Because the spell is still up. Arthur said Morgause found a way to break it, but it's not broken. I couldn't enter. I only saw the damage from outside the gates. Whoever did it wasn't affected by the blood magic."

"A relative of Igraine?" Killian asked, still confused. "Who has magic in her family?"

"Not of Igraine. You know, I have given it some thought. Arthur mentioned he visited Dumnonia with his father, which means that Uther could enter. And so could Igraine and her family. The only person tying them together is Arthur, which means that the spell is linked to him. So whoever destroyed the kingdom and killed everyone has magic and is closely related to him."

Regina looked at Morgause. "I can only think of one person who fulfills these criteria."

Killian looked at his mother. "Don't be ridiculous," he said, half laughing.

Morgana's eyes met his before fixing on the ground. She was nervously picking her fingers.

"No," he whispered, his heart sinking to his stomach.

"She's Morgause's secret weapon," Regina continued. "I knew we couldn't trust her."

"Killian," Morgana started, breaking off.

"Please tell me this isn't true," he said quietly.

"I didn't have a choice!" she said, her voice shaking.

"No choice but to... slaughter an entire kingdom?"

"Morgause was threatening you, she would've killed you!" Morgana whispered.

Killian shook his head, clenching his jaw. Without another word, he left the room.

[aaronsmrshifty]

Robron Awards 2017 - Part four

 My choices for the following categories:

#9 - Best Fight/Argument

There have been more arguments that I thought were pretty good (if you can say that when it comes to arguments) like the one in the January 19th episode or the one after Robert found out about Aarons self harming but I chose the argument/fight during the reveal episode on the 25th of May 2017 as the best one.

I really thought that the way this whole argument was done was incredible. The acting choices of both Danny and Ryan were once again spot on and therefore I really belived the pain, hurt and anger both went through during each stage of the argument!

What did I like the most about this particular fight/argument? Just a few points:

that Aaron really got a chance to show his anger towards Robert after Roberts confession

Aaron telling Robert that they were supposed to be married, that he was afraid that it would happen with that one particular person

both of them not running away and staying to argue it out

Robert admitting to what he did, him confessing because he could not handle lying to Aaron (which is a pretty big step for Robert in my opinion), something he never had a problem with before

Robert voicing his underlying issues “who is ever there for me”

Robert without making excuses telling Aaron what him being in prison did to him, how worried he was not knowing what was going on being the hardest thing for him

telling Aaron what the argrument in prison, the line “My beautiful husband who I love is not there anymore”; voicing his anger over Aaron doing drugs and then not being honest about it did to him

Aaron being strong and letting Robert explain and wanting to know everything that happend

Robert really telling everything that happend, being completely hones and taking full blame for what did happen

Aaron telling Robert some necessary hometruth

In the end this argument just got to me so much because a lot has been said but everything that has been said from both of them was true, no more lying, no holding back, just putting everything on the table.

That being done in an amazing way. There were moments full of anger, shouting but also parts during that argument that were calmer. 

Everything both felt, from anger to hurt to despair was so relatable! 

#6 - Best Wordless Scene

The best wordless scene and again there were so many incredible ones throughout that year was the one after Aaron got released from prison.For one whole minute there was not one word said. 

Starting with Robert sitting in his car waiting impatiently for Aaron to finally be released. You could just see how nervous he was!

Followed by Aaron stepping out of the prison gate, first thing he did was taking a deep breath. Again it just showed the first time just how relieved he was to finally be free again.

Robert awkwardly getting out of his car and then both of them just looking at each other. I always thought that while they were just looking at each other and at first slowly making their way towards eacht other that both of them were not really sure how to handle this situation in that moment! Just by the way they looked and walked without one spoken word.

But then Aaron just starting to almost run towards Robert and without saying one word just hugging Robert.

Holding on to Robert not wanting to let go. In this moment you could again just see the relieve Aaron felt in that moment. Finally being out, being back in the arms of his husband. Those two just staying there holding on to each other so thightly.

Robert as well just being so glad he got Aaron back but I also always had the feeling that he was also very much aware that Aaron was not ok. When they showed Roberts face during the hug I just always see not only the relieve in his eyes but also worry!

All of those different emotions, feelings not being actually voiced but just shown in the way this scene was done and most importantly acted made it the best wordless scene in my eyes!

I am amazed how they managed to make us feel the way those two must have felt in that moment without one single word! So powerful!

#11 - Sweetest Moment

So after all this heartbreak and emotional stuff I thought it was time for my sweetest moment choice:

I really thought that a moment during the wedding episode was incredibly sweet.

Aaron saying to Paddy that he has to rescue his husband from another round of having to drink out of a Welly was a pretty sweet thing to start with. Him also saying that he likes Robert conscious. I love Aaron Dingle.

Then when the music accidently started to play a more romantic song Robert and everyone trying to get a reluctant Aaron to dance. Robert saying that they made a pact to embarras him, Aaron making sure that he in fact is not dancing. 

Both of them just staying there, swaying and just looking at each other full of love. Laughing with each other, bickering. Just being the way they are.

Laughing in Chases camera, just being so happy and content.

I just loved how sweet, loving and cute this moment was so thats why I chose it for this cateogrie.

I felt so much happiness during those scenes! Could not stop myself from smiling.

To be continued...

[but-its-only-the-beginning]

Let me just begin by saying that photo was ridiculously hard to make. I took a photo of my filthy keyboard, and then had to edit the damn thing myself. Never again.

I haven’t put anything up for a bit because I feel very unorganised and everything I’ve tried to start writing has been a bunch of messy shit. I have been working on a post that’s just taking a weirdly long amount of time to write, and I’m hoping to finish that in the next couple of days. So this is just really to keep content coming until I finish the main post I’ve been working on. 

I saw a video today that I’ve decided I want to breakdown, in hopes in will help give a better understanding of how I see things in my mind when my anxiety flares up. (This is always at the moment.)

The video was titled ‘Things people with anxiety want their friends to know’ 

‘It may seem irrational to you, but what I’m anxious about is very real to me’ – The perfect example of this is when I’ve had to catch the train. I’m terrified of being mugged, attacked, taken, and hurt. The chances of it happening are very slim, but that’s not what I think at the time. See that man over there? The one who just happened to make eye contact with me as he looked around station. He’s just waiting for a train like me. He’s as bored as I am, so he’s just looking around. Well, now that we’ve made eye contact, the chances of him attacking me have risen in my mind. Fuck. He’s getting on the same train as me. I will now sit here ‘jokingly’ texting everyone I know about the weirdo on the train who looked at me twice now. It’s funny, but deep down I’m relieved that people now know where I am and if I go missing will look for the weirdo on the train. Much to my shock, he gets off the train three stops later and doesn’t even look in my direction. That seems fucking crazy doesn’t it? Well in my head that’s all a very real possibility, and it makes me so god damn anxious.

‘I never know when it’s going to hit me. And when it does, I just need you to support me.’ – Don’t roll your fucking eyes at me, it infuriates me. I’m not being stupid, I’m freaking out. Don’t try and reason with me, just fucking support me!!! I’m not trying to annoy you, I’m having a goddamn anxiety attack, and it’s just as valid as things that upset you.

‘Don’t give up on me when I isolate myself.’ – This is all the time at the moment. For the last 4 months I have begun to push people away because I have convinced myself that they just don’t fucking care. Actually, my anxiety has convinced me. I’m not fun, so why the fuck would people want to be around me anyway, right? I don’t expect that I can just sit back and do nothing and everyone will come running to me. I’ve just decided I don’t want to go out of my way to be involved anymore, just don’t fucking give up on me.

‘Just having someone you love and trust reminding you to breathe sometimes really helps.’ – If I’m honest, this is usually my Mum or my Dad. I have rung them both on different occasions in tears because I just can’t fucking handle it anymore. They both have different responses because they’re different people, but they listen and essentially remind me that I need to take a step back and relax because I am making it more than it is. Now, sometimes being told that really pisses me off. I’m not fucking being over dramatic. This is my reality, and I can’t handle it. But they’re usually right, and just hearing “You’re okay” really does help.

‘Even when thinks are wonderful, I’m still always waiting for horrible things to happen’ – I could be Disney land having the time of my life, and I will still be in my head saying “Well, this is it. I’m going to get on this rollercoaster and it’s going to fall apart and I will fall to my death.” I know that’s morbid, but I think like that all the time. Every time I’m in the car, I’m thinking “that car isn’t going to stop, and we’re going to crash. Who would ring my Mum? Who would let work know that I won’t be in?” Every time!!!

‘Sometimes when I’m feeling the anxiety, I have no idea why I’m anxious’ – This for me is only partially true. Sometimes I work myself into a panic attack and just cannot seem to understand how I got so worked up. But mostly, even when nothings wrong my mind creates these scenarios that would make me anxious if they were to happen, therefore justifying the attack. I only really need four minutes alone, and I can imagine an entire conversation that works me into a strong panic attack.

‘For real – it’s not you, it’s me. Degeneralised anxiety feels like drowning all the time.’ – I’m not entirely sure if this means literally or not. I feel like it’s both. I usually have a long last heavy feeling in my chest that worsens when I’m having an anxiety attack. But I do really feel like I can’t get above the bad shit. The bad shit is the ocean, and I really wish I were a stronger swimmer. That’s pretty much the best way to put it. Some days I find myself tiring as I try to keep my head above the water, some days I am completely submerged and I can’t breathe, but I do have days where I’m back on land. These days aren’t very often at the moment.

‘Anxiety doesn’t have a “look.” I don’t have to be trembling or hyperventilating to be anxious.’ – My anxiety has started to show itself in extreme rage. I don’t usually show my anger but I sure as fuck feel it, so I sit there getting a bit dizzy and my right eye begins to shake. If I’m not angry, then I’m sobbing. But mostly I don’t say a damn word; I just sit there drowning in my anxiety.

‘I need you to reach out to me, even when I’m so anxious I’ve stopped leaving the house.’ – Obviously if I’m not leaving the house you can’t just ask me to go somewhere with you, I will decline. But just having people to text makes a big difference. It’s my choice to stay in, but I don’t like the lonely feeling that comes with it. I’m not going to bug, I assume you’re busy and don’t want to talk anyway. But check in once in a while. (As I was typing this, I actually got a message from just to see how I was doing)

‘I analyse things CONSTANTLY because of anxiety. I cannot turn my brain off and it can be exhausting.’ – I can’t remember the last time I slept well. On average, it can take me up to four hours to wind down and fall asleep. Every counsellor I have ever been to tell me that I need to turn my TV off in order to let my brain shut down and fall asleep. But when I lay in the dark, those four-minutes begin where I start to imagine scenarios and the attacks begin. So I’m too scared to fall asleep to silence.

‘Anxiety is not an attitude.’ – This only really applies to my Mum, and my sister. I snap at them both when I’m anxious. I probably snap at them because I get away with it to a degree, which I know doesn’t make it okay.

‘Most of the time you won’t know I’m having anxiety unless I tell you.’ – I’m anxious about six days a week, at the bare minimum. Even when I’m laughing, I’m anxious.

‘Sometimes I just need to be alone. It’s not personal.’ – When I’m really anxious, if I don’t feel lonely and abandoned, I feel smothered. I need to sit by myself, and usually listen to my music. I obviously can’t do that at work, so by the end of the day sometimes I’m so filled to the brim that I need a second to balance myself.

‘I’m still me. I’m not my anxiety.’ – For now.

 I find that even writing about all this can work me into a small anxiety attack. I don’t blame other people for my anxiety; the decisions that I have made in the past are what have brought me to where I am today. I could try and blame my parents, I do find that my Mum’s anxiety can set my own off, but that’s not her fault is it?

 I hope this has helped even just a little. I don’t know anyone that is open about their anxiety, and it is so much easier to write than it is to talk about.

 I definitely left some stuff out, things I feel make me sound very crazy, so it’s only the beginning.

[louisysl]

I've always known I'm different. I never felt like I fit in, be it for reasons such as where I am in life compared to others my age, or for a lack of wisdom, or simply because I was undoubtedly uncool.

I never was the cool kid, in fact there have been situations and periods in my life where certain people, even close friends of mine, have been ashamed to be with me or have felt I've been the reason that they couldn't make friends with the Cool Kids. Because I never was cool. It wasn't that I was drastically different as a child as far as vainer reasons, such as looks, went. Sure, I always have had crooked teeth and a round face, but for a kid, both of those are, I guess, understandable, if not forgivable. I know I hadn't yet realized how ugly I looked in high school, because I was relatively young and it was a different time than it is for high school kids these days. I wasn't hugely confident, don't get me wrong, and I never thought I was attractive, pretty, or beautiful, but I didn't care. I spent most of every week with horses and my friends from the stables, a place where I felt accepted for who I was.

High school, looking back to it now, wasn't great, but is it for anyone, really? And I was certainly at a better place in life then, than I am now. I was pretty content with my life. My depression hadn't hit me with its full force yet, in fact I wasn't even aware of it until the first year of college when I got the diagnosis. By then of course it was of the serious kind, and the diagnosis was no longer a surprise.

The hardest time for me in high school was the last year. Someone who's still a good friend of mine, was finally making friends with the Cool Kids, and I'd like to think I was happy for him. I can't recall, but I had no reason not to be, at least. But he told me via another friend, that he didn't want to spend time with me in school, because he felt that held him back from becoming friends with who later on turned out to be absolute jerks. Bullies, really.

I wasn't really bullied at school. Not like my big brother was.. He was always severely bullied, and it took a toll on him. He let all that pain out on me, by abusing, both mentally and physically. And as my parents were never present, we had to raise ourselves. I had the responsibility of raising my little brother, even if I never fully realized it before just this year, having gone to proper therapy that slowly but surely, has helped me understand parts of my life a little bit, parts which I always shut out and ignored.

Not only did it hurt to be told by a dear friend that I was basically so helplessly uncool he wanted nothing to do with me at school, but at the end of the year I lost touch with most of my class. We had come from Amsterdam, where we'd had a trip with the whole class. A trip for which we spent our entire high school fundraising. All was well and good there, but soon after returning home, I spent time with some friends, one of whom was the little sister of someone I was, and still am, friends with. We discussed the trip to Amsterdam, and I let it slip that her sister along with many others had gone to the bar downstairs in the cheap motel, that didn't care they were underage (to my recollection you're allowed to drink at sixteen years old in Amsterdam, which all of us had either just turned or were about to turn that year). I guess the little sister then told her sister, my friend, that I, with another friend of ours, had told her what they did.

Underage as we were, everyone was terrified of their parents finding out. All the blame of course downed on me, and every single person, at least from my friend group, that was there, despised me. I wasn't great friends with most of them anyway, but I was hurt when even my closest friends turned against me. I was also bitter, because my friend - the one who had been trying to get in with the Cool Kids all year - was to "blame" just as much as I was, but got no shit for it. I guess he was cooler, and could be him being a boy had to do with it. Straight girls like to hang out with guys in that day and age, don't they? But I wasn't cool and I wasn't anything to treasure or respect, so the blame was on me.

I can recall it going on well into the summer. I remember sitting in a bus, on my way home from an interview for a summer job, crying because of it all. I still had some friends, but I think this is where my anxiety really kicked in, hardcore. I felt unsafe at school, unwanted, and guilty, even though I did think then that it was unfair of them to hold me responsible for their stupid choice. Especially since nobody ever got in any trouble, since no parents ever found out.

The end of high school therefore wasn't a massive tragedy. It was surrounded by drama, broken friendships, and promises most of which would end up falling through. I guess I was quite glad to get out of there, at the end of the day. I think I was sad only because I then had a crush on a guy (funnily enough, I still don't know if I really did have a crush on him - a close friend from that time basically told me I should, and she's always been very bossy, intentionally or not, so I obliged and I suppose decided to have a crush on him), but that guy found out about it through someone who wasn't supposed to know but was told about my crush by another friend of mine, and the guy then proceeded to post a picture on Instagram of him and a bunch of others laughing, tagging me on it.

I think that summer, 2013, was when my parents' situation got very, very bad, very quickly. I was a wreck because I was once again forced away from my friends, and my favorite horses, and everything that kept me sane and gave me an escape. We took yearly, four to six week trips around countries such as Norway, Germany, and Austria every summer. I wasn't able to keep in touch with friends during these trips because it would've been too expensive. I know to a stranger reading this, I sound incredibly ungrateful. I got to see new places, travel the world, didn't I? But these trips have destroyed any desire I could one day have built for traveling.

Think of it this way: I was a very social kid. Always with friends, never, ever at home unless I absolutely had to. If I was hanging out with friends, it was at their place or outside, never at my home because my parents didn't want us to have friends over. They didn't like kids (including me, I've always felt). They were almost never home, anyway. They've always worked long hours, meaning they came home at 8 pm the earliest. Because we were too young to cook, we always ate microwavable meals you could buy pre-made from grocery stores. Once I got old enough, I started cooking, because I was tired of eating these sad excuses of meals that certainly weren't meant to be eaten daily.

When I wasn't out with friends, I was at the stables, taking care of my favorite ponies as well as horseback riding once a week. It was almost like a second home to me for six, seven years. A safe haven. And on weekends, I was dragged out to shop with my parents, which they did every. single. weekend. I hated it. I wanted to stay home and go out with friends, not listen to them argue over stupid fucking shit while walking around the same old stores, looking for whatever my parents happened to need that particular weekend.

I don't remember many things from my childhood. I've blocked most of it out. But I do remember that when I was maybe eight, nine years old, we kept a sort of diary at school which our teacher always read. And some years later, I found this diary while digging through old stuff, and the reason I remember what my teacher had written down is because I never knew it was once true; she called me one of the most honest kids to ever write down how I felt, and was proud that I did so openly. What had I written down, then? I wrote down how tired and sad I was and how unfair I felt it to be, that I had to accompany my parents every single Saturday, and every single Sunday, to go around the same stores. There wasn't shit to do at a mall for a little kid! And my friends never, ever had to accompany their parents like that. Not that their parents spent pretty much every possible hour away from home that they could. And when they were home in the evenings, they yelled at us if we came upstairs to drink water past 9 or 10 pm. Yet they'd tell us we're always allowed to drink water, and eat, because we shouldn't have to starve. It was a great thing to say, but it wasn't very helpful when it was only true to an extent - we were always allowed to do both things, as long as we didn't happen to do it when they just so happened to be fucking annoyed and mad for some reason. So I became to dread that, too.

I've always been sensitive. Too sensitive, I guess my mother would say. When my big brother chased me around the small house and I had to lock myself in the bathroom because it was the only room with a lock, and because I knew he'd hit me if I didn't hide somewhere safe, I called mum from the bathroom. Her response? "You're too sensitive." I was a child!!!!! Locked alone in a bathroom, scared to shit because my brother was going to physically abuse me. I was not too fucking sensitive. I was scared.

Now, her and dad were tired of us calling them about our arguments at work. Thinking about it now, I'm actually kind of angry. You can't just fucking leave your kids at home late into the evening and then yell at them when they call you for help! We were little kids, and teenagers, and we needed our parents god damnit. I needed my mum or dad at home because that usually kept my brother from getting too violent - or at least when he did get violent, it would get too noisy and dad would yell at us and effectively thus break the fight because obviously we feared him.

I don't wanna make my brother out to be an awful human being. He isn't. It's obvious why he got violent and aggressive and yelled when he was angry. It was because that's what our father always did. And the reason he got angry so easily was because he was bullied in school. Badly bullied. And what can a kid do, when they don't know what to do with that anger? You can't blame him for attacking the easy target, which was me. And because he did that ever since childhood, and was never taught better, he kept that going on aaaallll the way until he moved away from home.

So while I'm very scared of him, I know he's just really hurt. He's overly sensitive; you say one wrong word, that you didn't mean anything bad by, and he can get all up in your face. Because he gets easily offended. Why? Because he was badly bullied. He can't handle people disagreeing with him, or critiquing him, or making a little banter. And when this happens, he gets aggressive. With his girlfriend, I've seen he doesn't get aggressive - he gets defensive, offended, and on the verge of tears. Over the smallest little things. You can't blame him for that, you really can't, and I think he'd benefit greatly from therapy but he definitely isn't the kind to seek for help. I don't even think he thinks there's anything wrong with him, mentally.

And I can't blame my parents much, either. I don't think they were cut out to be parents. Maybe they thought they were - they did have three kids, and it wasn't for religious reasons since neither of them is the least bit religious. But mum studied when we were fetuses, and then got into the business world, and started working long hours just like dad. Our grandmothers would come take care of us sometimes, and one of them still comes every week. She's truly one of the dearest people in my life. She has a true heart of gold and she is the sweetest person on earth.

So, my parents have always been very career-driven. They work a lot. They didn't have time for kids.

As for our summer vacations, everyone else in my family loved them but me. My brothers didn't have friends, so it wasn't hard for them to spend weeks abroad. They all more or less loved hiking, and caravaning, and being on the road. I hated it. I loathed it. I couldn't stand it. It was literal torture to me.

So, in summer 2013, my parents' marriage hit the rocks /bad/, and fast. I've always hated conflicts, and been very sensitive. I would sit on the sofa in our tiny caravan, afraid to leave my parents alone when they were fighting because I was scared my dad was going to hit mum. So I sat there, holding back tears as they yelled at each other. I blocked it out as much as I could, but I didn't leave the caravan. And after they'd be done arguing, one of them would leave the little fucking caravan, slam the door and take a long walk or something. And the other one would stay behind, trash-talking the other parent to me, apologizing for the other's behavior as if they weren't just as bad. I was used as a tool in their fights. They'd suddenly bring me up, saying, "ask her! don't you care how she feels!? she agrees with me!" then turn to me, "you agree with me, don't you?" both staring at me like hawks.

Things were awful with my brother too. I remember my first time playing with suicide well. My brother had me pinned on a massive swing for some reason, pressed against it with him on top of me, verbally abusing me while he held me down so hard it hurt. It was a struggle to get out from under him. I'm sure I tried to push/kick him off me. Somehow, anyway, I did get away. And I ran to our caravan, ran into our car, closed the doors.

Now mind you, this was mid-summer, well over 30 C outside. Meaning our car, that had been sitting in the glaring sun all day with no ventilator on, was a sauna. I sweated so much, sitting there, having a panic attack (although I didn't know that's what it was), crying my eyes out with a pounding headache, sweating like there's no tomorrow, just sobbing in panic wishing so bad to die. And so I tried to. I was relatively young. I can't recall exactly how young. But for sure in my teens, at most fifteen years old. I didn't know how to commit suicide. But I knew I had to try.

So I stayed in that sauna of a car, miserable, dehydrated, in panic. I loathed myself, my life, the vacation, all of it. Nobody understood me - and not in that oh-so-easily-dismissed "nobody understands me im an angsty teen" way that every teen feels. No. I wasn't understood. I wasn't heard. My opinions, needs, preferences, wishes - none of it mattered.

So I stayed there, hoping to God that I'd manage to kill myself by fainting in that car and eventually passing away. And I came so close.

Why did I get out then? Because I felt guilty. I thought about my mother or father or, worst of all, my little brother finding me. My parents and big brother would be so fucking angry at me. I'd ruin my baby brother's life forever. I would. Because we were incredibly close - we got called twins because we were so in-tune with each other, and still are. And I couldn't do that to him.

So I got out, breathed in the fresh air that felt cold on my skin despite being well over 30 degrees, wobbled into the caravan and quickly got a towel before I got yelled at for being in the way, and went to take a shower in one of those fucking common showers that they had at every camping area.

My parents got into counseling. It helped calm down their situation at home, I guess. They still fought, of course, and I still stayed in complete silence downstairs, listening in just to make sure my dad didn't hit my mother. He'd hit things like doors and walls, making holes in them. When we moved away last fall, our doors and walls had holes in them thanks to my father and big brother, both of whom had punched them multiple times.

There are many things from my childhood, including teenage years and the most recent years that I can't even type down, because I can't think of them. I can't. My mind shuts down if I try to.

And it's like, I don't wanna pity myself. People have had it so much rougher than I did.

But it's hard to feel loved, when your best friend leaves you when you're locked in a mental institution and really need her friendship. It's hard to feel like I belong with all my scars and crooked teeth and lack of life. It's hard to feel like I'm alright as I am, when I've not only been told, but /shown/ all my life that I am not.

Of course, I have friends now that are great, for whom I'm very grateful. I have friends who I sometimes let read parts of what I've written, and who never fail to tell me how talented they think I am, because I literally can't see it. Friends who call me pretty, and even though I can't believe them, I appreciate them telling me anyway.

I don't mean to make myself sound annoyingly "tragic" by saying writing all this down doesn't even scratch the surface. But I feel like people are quick to judge, and if someone were to read this, perhaps they'd think they really knew me. Not only do I feel like you couldn't judge me based on what I've written down, but I also feel like you can't judge my family either.

Writing all this down felt almost necessary though. I feel like I'm losing my mind, and my memory. The few memories that I do have from childhood are shaky, faded. Incomplete. But I feel they are an important part of trying to understand myself, and why I fell into such deep depression that I can't seem to get out of.

I do feel like if there's one mental illness of mine that I might be able to get some sense for by writing down memories and thoughts and feelings, it's depression. Because I've never known what the fuck caused it. Since starting proper psychotherapy a year ago, at last, by my own choosing and will, I've at last found general clues as to what may have contributed to it.

I've always found writing therapeutic. It's what I do. I don't think I'm particularly talented, but it's what I'm best at. It's my strongest, hm, "skill", in comparison to other skills I have.

I miss Christina Grimmie. May she rest easy. May the victims of the Pulse shooting find peace, wherever they are now. This world truly breaks my heart.