#it literally makes me feel weird writing from his pov because he Would refer to himself as miles but

[maoam]

"Kishimoto make sasuke and naruto gay intentionally and not on accident" Okay then so why did he go on multiple interviews insisting that naruto and sasuke's relationship is brotherly and is inspired from his twin brother and that people shouldn't interpret their bond as romantic but platonic?? Source : https://twitter* com/uchihassasusaku/status/1419104011265974275?

If a writer writes homoerotic subtext in his material and expects people to read the material as romantic, he doesnt go around calling the characters "siblings" and asking people to not interpret their dynamic as romantic because then people wont read into his queer subtext like he wanted to

Ship what you want to ship. But stop acting like everyone should buy into your delusions. Kishimoto never said or implied that he wanted naruto and sasuke to be seen as gay but he did say many times that their relationship is brotherly

Ah, another shipper who ships a ship where creator implied twice they never kissed. And whose couple never had a meaningful conversation in a 700 chapter manga. And linking me to some SS stan who gave Elon Musk money for bluecheck mark. 🤣 A good ground to stand on. Okay, I will guide you by the hand since you don't seem to understand. It's okay, illiteracy is a common problem these days. I will put this in easy sections for you, with added links.

Also you and your "queer" nonsense... we are talking about gay, homosexuality. Not slurs.

About the interviews:

The Kizuna thing isn't even written by him, it's an article by another person. These books aren't written by the mangakas ever, they do not have the time nor is the article written from Kishi's pov. Shocker, people write a lot of things in anime merchandise that the creator isn't even involved in. [link] If it were written by Kishi, then an interviewer wouldn't have had to ask Kishi years later whether brotherly relationship was what he was going for with Naruto and Sasuke's bond, and Kishi wouldn't have had given such a cryptic answer where he mulls over it. Because he would have given the answers years back already. Also the fact that he's asked to define their relationship shows how weird it is to the readers. He NEVER told people to not interpret their relationship as romantic. And personally, I have seen movies and a comic where two characters referred to each other as brothers, and their creator referred to them as "soul brothers" but later revealed them to also have romantic feelings.

But I don't expect your mind to be able to comprehend things like this, it does require a little bit of 1+1=2 math. The interview about Seishi is about the feeling of empathy, not that they are literally Naruto and Sasuke's characters. It is one aspect. Kishi has joked about how Naruto and Sasuke are him and his editor too, because he will try to impress his editor. So? And he has said Kushina is based on his wife. So Naruto is him and Kushina is his wife? Why aren't you freaking about this freudian stuff? I know why. I also remember someone saying if Kishi REALLY saw his relationship with his brother as the exact same as Naruto and Sasuke, his brother would need a restraining order against him. It was funny and accurate.

I have wrote about the inconsistencies in his interviews and what shows that he definitely didn't write their dynamic as the same as with his brother despite having one aspect of it [link] and here is another post talking about it more deeply (they also linked my post I just mentioned) [link]. This post also explains how Kishimoto wrote Naruto constantly to do what Sakura can't for Sasuke, and she also included many links to my other posts where I talk about how Kishi wrote Sakura and Sasuke's dynamic, which you can also read if you feel like it. Unless you are scared of being proved wrong, you will read those right, or at least the linked post itself?

About how the audience perceives their dynamic:

The thing is, you and SS fandom don't understand how stories are written. Authors don't do stuff randomly. They use narrative and literary devices to tell their story. Kishi himself has remarked on it many times how careful he is about writing characters, how much he does research, how careful he is about angles etc. [link] If Naruto and Sasuke's relationship was written as brotherly in the text, in the manga, it wouldn't make a bunch of people uncomfortable. There wouldn't have been meltdowns after specific chapters nor would we have people saying when the manga was going on that they are annoyed by the "gay stuff". [link] [link] [link] (there are many more, but here's some collections for an example). Here's one more talking about the Japanese fandom. [link]

When Luffy was saving Ace in Impel Town/Marineford arc, no one in the dudebro community was uncomfortable nor saying it was gay. Eventhough it was a touching and dramatic storyline that showed us how much the two cared about each other. When Alibaba and Cassim were having their past and relationship unravelled in Magi, no one was uncomfortable. Eventhough it was tragic and dramatic and touching yet again. Because despite neither of these pairs being blood-brothers, they were WRITTEN to have a brotherly dynamic/development/relationship in the text, in their behavior. Which is why this also translated to the audience successfully.

If Naruto and Sasuke were written to be brotherly, they would refer to each other as such, including in Boruto, and would tell other people such as well. Hell, they would be proud to tell other people that this person they respect and admire the most is like a brother to them. But they don't. Naruto even told Hagoromo they aren't siblings, but friends. Sasuke said he has only one brother and that is Itachi. If they were brotherly, Kishi wouldn't make Naruto kiss Sasuke, even if accidentally, and have that to be their first interaction. He wouldn't say he wants to be the first one to have rivals kiss in shounen. Not a single brotherly relationship in media is written like this. You know, tropes matter. He wouldn't have Sasuke think fondly about the kiss as one of his most precious memories when he is dying, while years later implying more than once Sasuke never kissed Sakura lol. He wouldn't say Sakura had her first kiss stolen by her rival Naruto. He wouldn't make Sakura be jealous of Naruto's importance to Sasuke, while also giving her zero importance in saving Sasuke. He would not constantly make fun of Sakura by having her be thirsty/desperate for Sasuke's attention, any little crumb from him, while Sasuke ignores her and focuses on Naruto. Kishi knows how his writing comes off. Plenty of people, both men and women who weren't shippers, made jokes about Sasuke going "where's Naruto? hey Naruto" whenever Sakura speaks. Because Kishi made it such a constant dynamic with the three of them. People who have the basic amount of media literacy will get it, and thus all those jokes and memes were born. [link] [link] [link]

If they were brotherly, the anime studio wouldn't have them make eyes at each other while lyrics "please kiss me all night" play in the background, aside from all the other gay ops/ends with romantic lyrics to them. And since Kishi watches the anime, he would have probably point out it's weird. That's what I would do if I wrote about my relationship with my brother and people did that. Magi anime didn't have Alibaba and Cassim in romantic endings...

Kishi wouldn't put this in the movie he made if he wanted them to appear as brothers. Everyone was saying this looked gay/homoerotic when the movie dropped. I saw men on forums say "lol this looks so homoerotic, why did he have to catch Sasuke like that" and even in Chinese theaters people were giggling during this scene. Because it's so in your face fanservice. And Kishi said he cares about angles a lot in his story and that he redraws them if they aren't good enough to drive the message home. So what exactly does that tell you?

People usually aren't sexual about their brother

He wouldn't sexualize and put so much homoeroticism surrounding Sasuke's character, if Sasuke was solely inspired by his brother. You know, unless he had a questionable obsession with his brother. [link]

He wouldn't make Naruto literally get sexually excited when about to fight Sasuke lol [link] [link] that's so obvious Japanese men got amused, uncomfortable and even angry about it, if Sasuke and Naruto were him and his brother.

Romantic tropes/brotherly tropes are not the same

The fact Kishimoto's het couples parallel Naruto and Sasuke's dynamic is very evident. If "brotherly" relationship resembles romantic couples by the same author instead of the other brother dynamics he has written, guess what, it's not written as a brother dynamic lol. Again, proof that he didn't write their dynamic as brotherly. Both Mario/Saori [link] [link] and Minato/Kushina [link] [link] parallel Naruto/Sasuke and have the same tropes as them.

Raikage/Killer B is written as a normal brother relationship. Itachi/Sasuke is written as a complicated brother relationship with a lot of tragedy. Shikamaru/Choji is written as a normal friendship. Kakashi/Obito is written as a complicated friendship with a lot of tragedy. Naruto/Sasuke resembles the romantic relationships Kishimoto wrote, instead of these ones I mentioned. Even in their world, Naruto's actions are seen as irrational and obsession, and the weirdness of it all is constantly pointed out, by Sai, Kabuto, Sakura, Raikage, Itachi. This is a choice Kishi made when he wrote them. [link]

He also made a homage to Devilman and Akira/Ryo relationship that even people in the Japanese fandom noticed. [link] He specifically picked the chapter where Ryo admits having romantic feelings for Akira, and the fight (which parallels Vote2) ending with Ryo realizing how deep his feelings for Akira lie. Kishimoto would not do that if Naruto and Sasuke were based on him and his brother. Why would he pick a character famous for being gay for his best friend/enemy in a chapter where we finally get to see inside Sasuke's head?

Aside from paralleling Hinata's feelings towards Naruto in the Pain arc with Naruto's feelings towards Sasuke in the very next arc, he also foreshadowed a romantic double-suicide with Naruto and Sasuke during said arc. ROMANTIC. [link]

Sasuke on the other hand, was never satisfied with Naruto calling him brother or friend. If their relationship was strictly brotherly, they wouldn't need to ponder about the nature of their relationship, because that's not how any brotherly relationship is written in media. [link]

Kishimoto dislikes SS and talks about Sakura's "love" negatively more than once. [link] Sakura's love is selfish, toxic... yet this doesn't mean anything. Sakura wanted to save Sasuke, yet the one Sasuke said saved him was Naruto.

Now think hard. Use the modest intellect you possess. So aside from Kishimoto having Naruto show sexual attraction towards Sasuke to the point it made Japanese men uncomfortable, he also used romantic tropes (one of them being double-suicide which a writer Kishimoto admires is famous for because he mostly wrote romantic plays ending in that) and romantic parallels to show Naruto's feelings towards Sasuke multiple times, which he did not use for other male friendships in the manga. To the point many Japanese men wondered why Kishimoto "has to push homosexual agenda with Naruto's character", despite the fact he's supposed to be " a normal/good guy". All of these things somehow do not mean anything, nor do the multiple other things I have pointed out on my blog.

I'm not asking you to "buy" into anything, because understanding Naruto is a love story between Naruto and Sasuke and that Kishimoto does not even like Sakura let alone SS would require a little bit of reading comprehension and common sense. Which you and the person you linked sacrificed at the pink altar of Sakura worship, because to you not having anything in common with your partner nor having anything meaningful to talk about nor knowing anything about each other is somehow love. To you having someone else help and understand the person you love because you can't somehow makes an ideal relationship. You mistake Sakura's onesided melodrama for love. She has never said anything meaningful about Sasuke's character, neither has Sasuke said anything meaningful about her. Yet you believe Kishi wrote some deep relationship between them. How am I supposed to reason with someone like that? But your gaslighting doesn't phase me, I have seen all this before many times, it's old news by now. You can call me delusional all you want, but I trust my own understanding thank you very much. It's not like that much is even required, as proven by how many people, even the ones that don't have any need to (casual viewers, straight men, etc.) see it, still see it. Because it is that obvious that only desperate need to not see it blinds someone like you from seeing it.

I'm actually working on another post about Narusasu and Kishi's writing tools regarding it, so stay tuned 🩷

[shizukufangirl]

A/N - Hello sweeties, I couldn't write chapter 2 yesterday because of the poll, looks like you guys picked both Chuuya and Dazai hehe, I hope you enjoy this.

Chapter 1 ↑

.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*..・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*.・゜゜・✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

You were on your bed, thinking of how could you possibly join the Armed Detective Agency.. Hmmm... What if you pretend that you were evil, but want to be 'kind' now?.. No, too obvious.

what if you pretend to be an orphan who's an ability user?.. No, too weird, your 21 for goodness sake!

Hm... What if you just pretend to be a normal human who just wants a job?

That was kind of strange.. But for this paycheck you would do anything, literally.

And you decided to tell Chuuya your plan.

• CHUUYA'S POV •

Fuck.. Why do I feel this way.. Everytime I'm with them my stomach feels weird.. Do i- No!! I can't get distracted by them, I need to sign these documents..

*knock knock*

• 3RD PERSON POV •

As [Name] knocked on Chuuya's door, they couldn't help but think.

'Osmanthus wine tastes the same as I remember-'

(Sorry, what [Name] actually thought of ↓)

'Is there someone in the ADA that's gonna know who I am immediately when I walk in?'

"Come in" it was Chuuya's slightly muffled voice.

You opened the door and you swore you could see Chuuya's face Redden a bit.

"Oh, it's you.."

"The one and only, why is your face so red Chuuya? *gasp* don't tell me.. You have a crush on someone!"

"Wha-?! No I don't! It's just hot in here!"

"Yeah sure.. Anyways I have something to tell you...

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

"Really? That's the ''Genius'' plan that you made up?"

"Hey! That's the best one that I could think of!"

"Whatever.. This may be your weirdest 'plan', but it may work, good job"

Achievement Unlocked! - Praise from the big bad executive :3

"Yay! Thanks Chuuya!"

"Your welcome..?"

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

It was finally the day if the plan.

As you were walking down the street, you suddenly bumped into someone

They had messy brown hair, a long sand-colored trench coat, brown eyes and bandages literally almost every where

'Bingo'

"Oh! I'm really sorry sir, I wasn't looking at where I was going."

"It's fine..."

"Huh?"

"But Miss/Mr... Would you be willing to commit double suicide with me?"

Now that's a question our dear [Name] didn't expect

'This is the Dazai Osamu? He looks goofy..'

"THERE YOU ARE YOU TROUBLESOME BLOCKHEAD!"

Yelled out a voice that belonged to a man with dirty blonde hair tied into a low ponytail with glasses

His yell startled you, making you let out a little Yelp in Surprise.

"Oh! You found me Kunikida, Well done!"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN WELL DONE?!"

"I-"

"Ugh, I'm so sorry for his behavior, Mx."

"Aha.. It's fine."

"Did he do anything to you??"

"No! He didn't, he just asked me if I wanted to commit double suicide with him.. "

"Ugh that bastar- are you okay Mx.? You look troubled"

"Ah, about that, I'm looking for a part time job"

"Oh~"

The man, Dazai moaned hummed (?), he then looked at Kunikida as if saying 'you know what I'm thinking?'

Then Dazai suddenly said..

"Then.. Do you want to join the armed detective agency, Mx.?"

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

Hehe, can you tell that I forgot the entirety of episode 1? Did you also notice the genshin reference at the beginning?

Chapter 3 will be posted tomorrow, if I made any mistakes please tell me sweetie :)

Also, good luck on getting Alhaitham/Clorinde!

Also, question of the day ↓

[bluberimufim]

Hello! Just stopping by with a question about writing XD Do you have any characters who's role grew bigger than you expected? Any surprising changes your characters went through during the writing process?

Hi! This ask is a week old! Sorry for that!

Tbh the obvious answer would be Asha and Dora, who really began as tools to facilitate the plot and developed into major side characters with an unhealthy, self-destructive romance. I've talked about them a lot.

But this post is not about them. We all know of the war lesbians at this point.

I wanna talk about General Edward Fallin for a sec. You might know of him. I refer to him exclusively as "Theo's brother".

In the WIP that existed in 8th grade that would later become literally unrecognizable and turn into "Devourer of Souls", he was a major character and I liked him quite a lot. I felt like there was something interesting that I managed to hit with his character.

(I really wanna make a post about this proto-WIP but I keep procrastinating -_-)

From one WIP to the other, he was the one to maintain the most character traits (tbh competition is nonexistent bc they all changed so much - literally not even genders were maintained). He's always been Reiner's (part of Flick) father, Theo's brother, and a Master of the Order devoted to his work.

But he's a really minor character. He only appears in 2 scenes: one in the first half and one in the second.

Allow me to ramble about My Boy for a bit:

Ed is a bad person. He's an antagonistic force (not necessarily an antagonist) and is in direct opposition to Theo from a military standpoint. He is responsible for a fuckton of deaths and outright says he's willing to hurt people himself if it gets him what he wants faster. He denounced his own sister to the Order when they were teenagers, leading to her getting a death sentence and running away, he ordered his men to break Seth's cane in half so she literally can't run away when they capture her, and he stabbed Theo through the shoulder the first time he saw her again. He vaguely talks like a pissed-off mob boss. Good people don't do this shit.

But that's the surface-level stuff. Because once you listen to what he's saying, you start to see something else.

For an antagonist, Ed has a weirdly strong attachment to his family. And not in a weird way. When Seth straight-up asks him "why tf are you doing this" he just says "Whatever it takes, I want my children to grow up in a world without war".

He knows he's doing bad things, but he's willing to do them if it means the war will end faster and his family will be safe. His motivation is 100% to protect the people he cares about.

But I ain't no basic bitch. I'm not leaving it at that.

He feels like an antagonist because he's being seen from Seth's POV. Flick's POV is very different.

Reiner (who is part of the whole that is Flick) is Ed's youngest son, and he sees him fully as a hero, as do most people in his country tbh. He admires him, even when Allana's soul joins his because of divine fuckery (not getting into the divine soul fusion fuckery rn).

And I mean... can you blame him? Ed is a super-competent general who made his way up the ranks at a very young age, led an army against two demigoddesses at the same time and kept the upper hand, won a fight against a demigoddess and survived, was the first person to push for a (temporary) peace treaty and managed to maintain it for 20 years, and constantly does everything in his power to keep that peace in place, even going against the will of the gods themselves.

That sounds pretty heroic to me - not necessarily good, but heroic. Hell, that feels like a protagonist's storyline, almost.

I'm all about that perspective switcheroo. Theo probably seems like a horrible person from Flick's POV, before meeting Seth.

Adds that ✨flavour✨ to it, don't you think?

[missameliep]

OMG!!! This reblog ❤️❤️❤️

I was *this* close to literally turning into the live version of this Kermit the frog gif

Feel free to write a "novel" anytime you want, I love reading your reblogs and I'm saving this one feedback and every other you write to read whenever I'm feeling dismayed about my writing. Thank you! 💖

It was challenging to write about love in their world, because in some aspects it's so different from ours, the imminent dangers, the isolation from other colonies, being confined within the Tower, the lack of reference and loss of families... And writing friends to lovers was specially difficult to not succumb to some bad trope of miscommunication... And refrain from succumbing to desire and making them kiss too soon (because the author loves reading slow burn, but she also wants to scream at characters she writes for not kissing immediately).

I'm glad you noticed the subtleties, because since it's written in his POV, he doesn't know all the facts. He doesn't know what she's thinking. Both like each other but assumed from the start the other was not interested, which is understandable considering how young they were and inexperienced and crossing that line when you have limited options in friendship or if the consequences can be unbearable it can be unencouraging.

Malia recognized the feelings were there first, even if she couldn't name these feelings; but considering she was all about becoming the best warrior and going to the outside world to find her fathers, it wasn't weird that Troy would think she was not interested in boys at all (not to mention she probably said that a lot to him growing up!). But she is so desperate for any indication he could want her, that she throws that you love me the night before she's going to the outside world in a risky mission, hoping maybe he did. 🥺

And an indication these choices in writing their relationship and the slow burn probably worked is that you, my dear, the reader wants to grab them by the back of the heads and say “JUST KISS!!!” and that's the goal 😅

The part about Malia realizing that would probably be just a dream was one of my favorite parts to write, even if it was hard to set the right tone at first. Because it happens in our world, how many dreams growing up are merely dreams and not a goal you can actually pursuit? But in Malia's case, destiny had different plans for her and maybe she'll be able to pursue at least some of them ☺️

If they remained in the Tower... Wow... That would end up in an angsty slow burn with like 50 chapters and they only kiss in chapter 48! Because if they stay and Brynn doesn't die, they probably wouldn't feel compelled to take that step. Not that they don't have things to lose after they escaped, they value the friendship and each other's support, but in spite of it and because they lost and possibly will lose more, they take the jump.

Thank you so much for reading, reblogging and for being so supportive of my writing 💖

Safe - Chapter 5: Gazing at the stars

Book: Wake the Dead

Characters: Troy Hassan and f!MC (Malia Jones)

Rating: M (see notes bellow)

Word count: 5k

Summary: In the eve of Malia's 25th birthday, while Troy waits for his best friend to arrive, he reminisces about his feelings for her and hypes himself to ask her a fundamental question, considering the threats looming in the horizon.

Notes:

English is not my first language;

Troy Hassan belongs to Pixelberry;

Pre-WTD events (we've reached the eve of chapter 1);

Just like the book, the entire series is rated M because of triggering subjects: throughout there are mentions of death and violence compliant to canon;

TW: swearing; kissing; mentions of alcohol consumption and underage drinking;

Readers discretion advised.

Checking his watch again, Troy instinctively glances at the door behind him. The curfew started forty minutes ago.

Malia is late.

To spare the batteries, he turns off the flashlights and sits up. Rising from the blankets carefully stretched on the floor, he busies himself combing his hair again, despite it already looking perfectly styled.

By Tower’s rules, getting caught outside one’s room after curfew without permission was punished with extra work or less ration depending on the circumstances or recurrence. The imposed curfew was set an hour earlier this week, which means less time to have a drink or fraternize after the end of most shifts. But Malia is resourceful. She knows these corridors like the palms of her own hands, all the shortcuts mapped on her brain to avoid getting caught on camera and all the perfectly reasonable excuses if she gets busted.

Yeah, she got this. No need to worry. Not about this at least…

This past month, something odd is going on…

When someone runs a successful black market and has broken oh-so-many rules like he did, being on the lookout for Blackstock’s goons is mandatory, that’s why he has made a habit of paying bribes to get information from people working in the administration and monitoring guards’ channel. The messages exchanged are getting more and more incomprehensible. A few people went missing a couple of days ago. Rumors about the Tower becoming less tolerant with petty offenses and misdemeanors are getting stronger.  

There is an implied penal code within these walls, a set of strict rules expected to be followed to the letter. Unless you are on Blackstock’s good side or part of the guard, then you can disobey the rules and not get even a slap on the wrist. Troy cannot expect the same treatment being an expandable cog in the machine: he lacked the brains to the scientific and medical fields, the manual skills to master any craftsmanship, the aptitude to become a fighter or subservience to join Blackstock’s guard. Therefore, he’s not special or irreplaceable, and one cannot remain inconspicuous within these walls for long. Sooner or later, they will come for him.

So, he must be prepared for all the possible scenarios and outcomes; and it’s past the time to grow a pair and ask Malia the question that has been sitting at the tip of his tongue for weeks.

It’s a simple question. Definitely. A strategic one for that matter. Not romantic at all. So, it won’t be weird, he assures himself, combing his hair once more.

Heavy footsteps echo in the corridor, and a shiver runs down his spine.

Boots.

The guards are making rounds.

Troy can recognize almost everyone’s steps and differentiate the soles of the shoes of the colonialists and the guards’ boots. They always get the best ones and even better gear than the Scouts and Scavengers, while everyone else accepts whatever is supplied by the Tower. Well, not everyone, of course, or his business wouldn’t thrive.

Swiftly, Troy reaches for the bug-out bag hidden underneath the mattress of the bunk and his jacket hanging on a hook by the door and cracks the door only enough to peek outside and concentrate on hearing.

This section of the hallway is empty, he can’t get a look at the guards, though he recognizes the voices: DeLucca and Jenkins.

The crackling from a radio.

Indistinct conversation.

The words booze and wasted repeated very clearly, followed by laughs.

The sounds of footsteps fade away and the hallway becomes quiet again.

A relieved breath escapes his nose when the door clicks shut.

The guards are probably celebrating by themselves tonight, and hopefully not going after anyone...

Confident, Troy puts away his bag and jacket and lies on the blanket on the ground. Eyes closed, absently, his fingers raked his beard, nails scratching on his chin.

A few minutes later, the quietness was broken by the sound of light footsteps approaching the door. Sneakers. A smile pulled at the corners of his lips. Those are nice footsteps. Footsteps he’s always pleased to hear coming to his room. His fingers halted the idle activity to focus on the devices on the floor beside him and his heart raced in a familiar way.

It’s hard to say when things changed and less than platonic feelings for his best friend started filling his mind. Feelings that come and go, like the waves from an imaginary sea…

One chilly afternoon, Troy was working at the back of the supply room shredding pictures, when a very determined and serious eleven-year-old Malia marched up to him and dared him to kiss her.

“One kiss. 10 seconds. No tongue.”

Taken aback, Troy almost shredded one of his fingers instead of the pictures in his hand.

Kissing wasn’t something that would normally let him this astonished. Soon after his eleventh birthday he actually made a point of kissing as many lips as the many games of spin the bottle organized in secluded places around the Tower allowed him to. The disconcerting part was who wanted to be kissed by him: Malia, his best friend, who never willingly participate in any of those games of spin the bottle and declared a dozen of times boys grossed her out and there were more urgent matters in the world that didn’t involve exchanging saliva. Troy strongly disagree with both statements.

When he didn’t lean forward as commanded and asked for an explanation, she looked hurt but her firm voice concealed it well.

“Duh! It’s a dare! Then you pick the next one,” she pointed out what was supposed to be obvious. Apparently, this was like every other dare they challenged each other on a daily basis to pass the time. But it didn’t seem like it.

“Unless you don’t want to kiss me…”

Her challenging look was enough to prompt him to lean forward and press his lips gently against hers. It only lasted a few seconds. Probably ten. Not long enough to properly feel her lips or anything about the kiss, though he noticed her lips were softer than his own and weirdly not chapped by the cold. Despite it being brief, it weirded her such that she ran away afterwards without a word or waiting for the dare, probably seeking a place to throw up. If he hasn’t practiced enough, it could have damaged his confidence…

They never spoke about that. An unspoken agreement that their relationship would not include this sort of thing ever. He joined many kissing and make-out games afterwards and knows she has kissed and slept with a few guys over the years; thankfully, she was kind enough to never openly discuss those relationships or share many details.

When they were eighteen, in a boring evening during lockdown, he asked what made her change her mind when it comes to the whole sharing saliva business, and she offered a simple, “Scouts bond” and gulped the remaining of the sorry excuse of beer they were having.

Neither Malia nor Troy were scouts; she completed the training, but for some unknown reason wasn’t picked to join the scouts' team or the scavengers when she applied. Despite that fact, every single one of her closest friends, besides him, were scouts, and so were the few guys she casually dated over the years.

For that reason, how unfortunate that instead of the possible hundred other people with whom he could fall in love with, his heart chose her… Troy cannot pinpoint the moment his feelings changed, but by the time they were fifteen, pretending that feeling wasn’t there didn’t help.

The more Troy actively tried not to think about wanting to kiss Malia, the more his brain created countless scenarios where they would indeed kiss. So, he did the only reasonable thing in this situation: he tried to busy his mind, mouth, and body with people other than his best friend. But it became increasingly harder. Literally.

Running away from her when things got intense and outright making excuses to avoid combat practice entirely just made things even more awkward. Who would’ve guessed? Not him. He mastered the art of deflecting and not dealing with his feelings, and it was worth sticking to it.

After running out of excuses, Malia was not taking no for an answer, and he had no other option than accepting his fate.

They were the last ones in the small unventilated room. Every object, including the mattress he was currently lying on his back cradling his stomach protectively despite her punch barely touching him, was sticky and grimy with constant human contact over the years. A tangy smell of sweat and dirty socks hanging in the air always bothered him and somehow stuck to his clothes even when he would barely break a sweat during the lessons – unless he was practicing with Malia, then he would turn into a puddle of sweat and bruises.

“Come on, Troy,” Malia cried, her jet-black hair styled in uncountable small braids was pulled into two buns on each side at the top of her head, and the sweat glistening in her warm brown cheeks created dark stains under her armpits and at the front and back of her gray t-shirt. “Hit me. I’m a zombie!” She dragged her feet and moved like one of them, growling and tilting her head, and Troy let out a loud laugh.

When you’re safe and sound, mocking zombies can be fun.

Malia was the only reason he still trained.

Everybody, including himself, could see he was not going to complete the training. Even Brynn, who encouraged and cared about him as much as about her own sister, could see right through him. Too slow and sloppy, Troy wasn’t fit to be a scout. More than that, he had no desire in becoming one, when he knew one could settle comfortably in the Tower when others wished to become heroes or merely satiate their appetite for violence and destruction. If he still cradled the silly dream of finding his family or any memento related to them, perhaps he would be willing to dedicate himself as much as Malia, but that ship has sailed. Years ago, the Deniz confirmed the neighborhood where they picked Troy was too far away from the Tower and no scout would ever go there, and even if they did, there was little chance the house has not been raided after all those years, so, why bother?

Nevertheless, Malia would not give up on him; and this always stirred something inside him. He had two options. For one, he could come clean about not wanting to do this anymore and most certainly they would fight over this, because why wouldn’t he want to go see the outside world with her and kill as many zombies as humanly possible? Or he could enjoy her company once more. By next week, he’ll probably be kicked out after he fails another exam. In contrast, she’ll complete all the trainings and join the scouts in three years, and they’ll see each other less and less, if at all…

Troy got up, brushed his dirty palms against the rough fabric of the pants and wiped the sweat from his face on the sleeve of his t-shirt.

He retrieved the stick and circled her, trying to remember the lesson and the right position. One foot in the front, another in the back. Do I bend my right or left knee?

Malia was quicker than his memory or his reflexes. With a swift motion, the stick swiveled in his hand and hit his knee. The sharp pain made him let out a string of curses under his breath and she laughed.

“Zombies don’t do that!”

She folded her arms and countered, unable to refrain a smirk, “Maybe they do...”

“Admit it: you just like hitting me!”

In response to his complaining, her foot slipped under his, stealing his balance. Again, he collapsed to the ground with a groan.

This time, she pinned him down.

To make her point and light the mood, her mouth opened wide, and she pretended to bite his shoulder. “If you don’t pay attention, you’ll become dinner.”

Troy couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well, I’m a snack…”

Her body swayed with her giggles, and she beamed. Her eyes were glinting with pride. Despite being the same height, training made Malia stronger and more dexterous. She could take him and beat the hell out of him whenever she wanted to.

Maybe Troy was not fast enough to counter her attacks, but he was quick to recognize the way she rejoiced in her own abilities any time she could beat him. Her face glowed. A bead of sweat ran down the curve of her cupid’s bow making her teasing smile and her lips much more tempting.

His heartbeats were oh! so loud. His body seemed about to combust right there underneath her, or worse.

In the past months, he realized the feelings he had for her were not a mere crush. A mix of the urge that fills his veins and inebriates more than booze when he gets with others in the back room of the supply room, and something almost familiar... If they weren’t living the end of the world, he would dare call it love. But since the world is cruel and things are what they are, he will not call it that. What does he know about love anyway?

This world is too messed up, and he won’t dare ruin one of the greatest things in his life. Or probably every good thing in his life, since messing up with Malia meant messing up with Brynn; she would probably kick his ass if he crossed her and make him regret every bad decision ever.

“What you’re staring at? Zombie ate your tongue?” her voice broke his musing, and he realized he had probably been staring at her. In vain, he tried to fish anything clever inside his brain and just let the truth roll out of his tongue...

“You’re so hot! I’m dazzled by your beauty.”

He regretted saying the words the moment they spilled out of his mouth.

Malia’s face contorted in confusion and her eyes widened. Surprise evident in her features for a very long second. Her brow furrowed, but then she laughed. Quiet at first then unrestrainedly loud. She laughed it off, and it hurt more than their ass-kicking session.

“You can’t flirt with a zombie, man!”

“Hey! It was worth trying…” he laughed it off too, smiling despite knowing his neck and ears darkened with the embarrassment running through his veins instead of blood, but certain that even if she noticed, he could blame it on the exercise. “I can be incredibly charming, you know. I got you that extra fake-flan, didn’t I?”

Fake till you make it, right?

“Yeah, but to be safe I think we should stick to tradition here and beat the crap out of drones!” Her eyes focused on his and she added, a little more quiet and much more concerned, “I won’t always have your back out there, Hassan, and I don’t want you dying because you’re too lazy to train...”

She sat on the balls of her feet and stretched her hands to him.

That was their thing: taking care of each other. It was good and enough. And the smile he offered when he took her hand was sincere.

“Alright. Let’s do this.”

They trained for another hour or so and Malia kicked his ass time after time. Troy went to shower with a bruised body and a bruised ego. Despite telling himself that the friendship is a better deal, sometimes that simply isn’t truth. And listening to the water running on the shower on the other side of that wall was like a torture session to him every damn time.

Confirming everyone’s assumptions, he never completed combat training, quitting before they could make him quit.

“You should’ve told me!” she snapped and walked away.

They didn’t speak for a week.

He probably should have told her way sooner that he never wanted to be a scout, and he definitely should have given a hands-up before quitting... but alas he was a coward and hoped against his better judgment that she would be understanding and forgiving.

After making him promise not to lie to her ever again, she forgave him, and he has been trying to keep his promise. But there are many things he can’t talk to her.

Despite Malia’s skills being far superior to his and pretty much everyone else their age, when she turned eighteen, she was not accepted at scouts or scavengers and would expend the next seven years in pest control, keeping the rats away from the hydroponics and the food at the storerooms. The gig made her miserable. But knowing she was safe a few stores down and not risking her life fighting zombies was not the worst possible outcome considering the available options…

The footsteps got closer. The door slowly opened, allowing the harsh lights from the hallway to flood the room for a second. Malia’s shadow projected into the opposite wall before melting with the darkness when the door closed again.

Even without looking back from his spot on the ground, he could envision the surprise in her face.

Surrounded by hundreds of tiny spots of light and even a crescent moon, the only noise in the room was a gasp quickly muffled into her palm. Her reaction was exactly what Troy expected: the surprise stole her voice.

Tilting his head back, he caught a glimpse of her silhouette glued to the spot by the door looking around in awe.

His heart raced. Partly excited by her presence, mostly excited for knowing her so well that her joy was definitely overflowing into a silly beam behind her hand.

“How did you –” her awed words died in her throat.

Once she had asked for the stars, and now he got her the next best thing.

Chuckling, he remained in his position and patted the spot on the blanket beside him.

“You’re missing the show!”

His invitation was gladly accepted and next thing he knew, Malia was lying beside him under the starlight sky he made for her. One of her long braids tickled his arm and her head was just a few inches from his.

God, he hoped she would just lie on his stomach or his chest like she used to. Why did she ever stop doing that?

“That’s amazing, Troy!”

“That’s not all!”

He fidgeted with something liying on his other side, and there were falling stars crossing the made-up sky on the ceiling.

“Wow!”

Even in the dark, he could make up her silhouette, the jaw hanging open and the mesmerized look on her face.

Rolling over, she faced him.

“How did you do it?”

His hands raised with a flourish. “Magic!”

She ribbed him. “Tell me!”

“Maly, a magician never tells…”

“Are you sure?”

Her hands reached his side and her fingers started poking him knowing how ticklish he is. He tried to hold the laughs and move away from her.

“That’s not fair!”

“Life ain’t fair, Hassan!”

“Stop!” he muttered between breathed laughs, trying to slap her hands. “The guards will come!”

“We do not want that, do we?”

She straddled his thigh when he tried to move further away from her, and her fingers kept working, and his body curled into a ball, however useless it was to protect him from her long and undeterred fingers.

“God!” he huffed, “You’re so annoying!”

“Surrender!”

“Okay!”

Immediately her hands retreated, and he breathed in, trying to regain control of his body.

“Why can’t you just say: 'Thank you, Troy!’ or ‘You’re amazing, Troy!’ like a normal human being?”

“Thank you, Troy!” she repeated in an annoying sing-a-song voice, “You’re amazing, Troy!”

“Why do I put up with you?”

“Because you love me!” she said slowly and deliberately, and he rolled his eyes.

“You’re lucky there’s not a lot of people to befriend and the coolest ones keep turning into zombies…”

“Jerk!” she slapped his arm. “You should sing me praises for existing in the same world you do!”

He totally agrees with her, but he won’t admit it and let it go over that beautiful head of hers.

Sitting on the balls of his feet, he pulled two glass jars over to the blanket and slowly twirled one of them. The little stars moved on the ceiling and her eyes widened inspecting the mechanics of the trick.

“Just a flashlight inside each jar, discarded pieces of cardboard, and my boredom translated in thousands of pierces…” he explained, while replacing one of the cardboards, and then amongst the stars was written ‘happy 25th birthday Malia’.

“I was gonna use that at midnight...”

Her head jerked back, and her eyes were fixed at the starlit sky.

“You remembered!”

“Have I ever forgotten?”

Birthdays are no longer celebrated like in the Old World. Except for a few milestones, which are related to studies and joining the work force at the Tower, but other than that, most people don’t keep count of the years anymore. But Troy does – at least for his, Malia’s and Brynn’s.

“It’s… amazing!” her voice had changed again to that unaffected tone he knows she uses when she’s not playing around. “Thank you, Troy!”

“I know. Now, lie down, the stars are shining.”

She complies and rests her head on his shoulder, and now he’s the one smiling like an idiot.

“Sorry for making you wait. –”

“Hey, I knew you’d come.”

“–I had to wait for Brynn to slip away for one of her furtive encounters. I wonder who she’s banging because it’s so not my sister to be disrespecting curfew and sneaking around… Then I had to take the long turn because of the guards… Lewis found some box full of booze and they were gathering somewhere on corridor C –”

“If you that interested in your sister’s sex life, I can ask around –”

“God, no!”

“Yeah, I figured.”

He handed her one of the ear buds.

“What is that noise?”

“It’s not noise, you ignorant! It’s Abba!” he explained. “Apparently a groove that made the old folks swing,” his explanation was accompanied by a wave of his hand to convey a dance move, the meaning lost on her. She had to watch that video he found months ago to get the feel of disco music and why he’s obsessed with it ever since.

They stayed in silence for a while enjoying the secret Old-World music Blackstock forbid. Troy clapped a hand against his thigh at the rhythm, and Malia’s head nodded while she hummed along. After a few minutes and two more songs, finally came the question he knew was at the tip of her tongue for a while now.

“Where’s Tony?”

“Working.”

“Why?” She removed the earbud and lifted her head to look at him. “There’s no night shift in the kitchen.”

“Really?” he feigned surprise and paused the song. “Then maybe someone bribed him to spend the night somewhere else… so we could start celebrating your birthday.”

She chuckled. “Look at you! Going all the way to pamper me… I thought you only cashed in favors when you wanted to get into someone’s clothes.”

“Pants!”

“Tomato. Tomato.”

“You just repeated the word…”

“You got the point.”

He did. He always did. In these two decades, he was under the impression he knew what she meant before she even said anything. Or maybe he was just being presumptuous. Though, he would bet it was the first one.

“Are you trying to get into my pants?” her question was lilting with laughter.

“Wouldn’t you want to know?” he managed to say without missing a beat or sounding offended. Years of practice made him pretty good in avoiding dangerous territory in this friendship, but he would never pass on the opportunity of teasing her too. Maybe one day his charms will work it's magic on her, if the smile on her lips were any indication of her being pleased by the idea…

“A celebration is in order! You’re finally out of rat duty!”

“Can you believe it? Seven fucking years!” she groaned.

“We still have that opening… I can put a good word about you…” He winked to get his point across, even though it was hard for her to discern it in the dark.

“Thanks. But I got another gig…”

He raised his face to try and look at her.   

“I’m finally going on my first scout mission tomorrow!”

“You – What?” he almost shouted this, disturbing the balance of her head on his shoulder.

“That’s when you congratulate me.”

“You’ll spend your birthday like that? Seriously?”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted!”

She stared him dead in the eye, and guilty washed over him.

“Sorry,” he sighed. “I don’t wanna be a jerk. I just thought we’d spend the day together like you said… There was this funny movie I wanted to watch with you… and we could drink and play foosball with Brynn…”

A little huff escaped her nose, indicating a smile definitely reached her lips.

“Rain check?”

“Can’t guarantee. I was supposed to burn it two days ago…”

“Then tell me what it is about. I prefer hearing you anyway…”

She wiggled and her head came to lie on his stomach. A wide grin parted his lips.

“It’s called Blast from the Past.” He started telling everything he could remember from the plot and quoted a few lines, while she looked over at him, his fingers played with one of braids.

“They had food stored for decades and a safe house?”

“Yep.”

“And they thought his family was crazy?”

“Apparently that’s the comic element.”

“What a strange world…”

She hummed and quietly stared at the ceiling.

“You wish your family prepared like that…”

“Don’t you?”

They chuckled. They both knew each other too well.

When the laughs subsided, they moved to their favorite pastime in lazy evenings like this: imagines about the Old World.

“Food?”

“I wish I could try real pasta. With those sauces and stuff... And not that shit Mack brought the other day… It was crunchy and not soft…” she replied. “My turn. Vacation?”

“I’d like to go to some place cold.” His mind drifted to the map folded and tucked inside his pocket. Flooded by sights of the lodge and the snowy peaks and the scent of snow and hope, he continued, “Hit the slopes first thing in the morning in those cool gears. Then, return to the bar, meet someone drop-dead gorgeous there for a drink and you know…” he trailed off.

“You?”

“Some place warm. Definitely. And sunny! I wish I could lie on the beach and feel the sun in my face and dive. Do you think there really are those colorful fishes underwater?” He hummed and she continued. “Then I’d enjoy one of those drinks in a coconut with little umbrellas…”

“By yourself?” he pressed.

“I wouldn’t mind some company. Are you offering?”

“It depends… what does it entitle?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she echoed his words, and he chuckled. “Get me to a beach and maybe you’ll find out...”

Despite him knowing this sort of teasing meant nothing, it provided the perfect occasion to ask her. He just needed to ask. Now or never.

“So, I’ve a question –”

“Yes, I still believe in merpeople, and no, that’s not why I chose beach over mountain.”

“Sounds fake, but okay.”

“We’re living in a creepy world full of zombies and whatever, why is it so strange? At least merpeople are pretty and won’t bite you.”

“Yeah, they’ll drown you… but whatever... that was not my question.”

“Seriously?” She raised her voice and her body to look at him more closely. “You always want to discuss merpeople theories…”

“Maybe later. Serious question –” He stirred and sat on the balls of his feet facing her and she rolled over and rested her cheek on her fisted hand to look up at him. “– We keep making plans about leaving, but… do you think you can really leave the Tower someday?”

“Why you ask? Are you in trouble?”

“Me? Nah!” he lied through his teeth, “Just wondering…”

“With you?”

“Maybe.”

“To go where?”

“Anywhere… maybe a fancy place in the mountains?” He winked and hoped it sounded playful and nothing like begging.

He could hear the rhythmic cadence of his heartbeat during the long pause, while her fingers twirled one of her long braids.

“I’m afraid the scouts’ missions will be all I’ll ever see of the outside world… because… well… there are no more vacations or safe places... Brynn will never leave the Tower… she keeps saying how awful things are outside… but we know things can be pretty fucked up here too… but I can’t leave Brynn… I can’t even look for my dads by myself, because I don’t remember their faces… so… Brynn’s all I got and my home is where she is… There you have it! I’m all talk… Fuck! It sounds even more pathetic out loud than inside my head! I'm pathetic!” She rolled onto her back, and her arm covered her face.

Hope can be a dangerous thing.

“You have a pathetic taste in music and your jokes are awful,” he said and proceeded to gently remove her arm, “but you’re not pathetic. You have your priorities straight.”

“You’re my friend, you have a moral obligation to say that.”

“I’m your best friend, it’s my job to deliver hard trues. If I’m saying you Malia Jones is not pathetic than it’s true. Cross my heart.” He made a show of sliding his finger over his heart, though neither of them really understood what that meant.

She smiled at him, one that wrinkled the corners of her eyes and her teeth dug into her lower lip, the way it always does in the rare occasions her tongue is emptied of words or maybe her brain is pondering way too hard about what to say.

“Troy…”

“Yeah…”

“Thanks… for tonight. But I should go… and I don’t want to piss Brynn off on my first mission.”

She propped herself from the floor, patted his shoulder and he watched her go. But instead of just leaving, Malia lingered by the door.

“Hey! Something wrong?” He crossed the distance, standing right in front of her. “Are you getting cold feet?”

“Of course not. I-I just forgot what I needed to tell you...”

“Woah! Age is hitting you pretty hard, Jones!”

“Jerk!” Her words were accompanied by a playful punch to his shoulder, and he laughed.

Shoving his hands into his trouser pockets, he bent a little to level his gaze with hers and looked at her eyes as casually as possible, despite the seriousness of his words. “Don’t die out there, okay?”

“Would you miss me too much?” she laughed.

“Believe it or not, it’s not easy to replace best friends around here... You hit the jackpot when you found me: I’m cool, funny, total eye candy, and best part I’m allergic to danger… unlike you. If I lose you, you know what happens? Next in line is Brynn and she does not get my jokes.”

“Oh, believe me, she gets them. She just doesn’t think they are funny.”

“Hmpf! You Jones wound me!”

She chuckled and theatrically flipped her hair over her shoulder. With a smile and no warning, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face against the side of his face, not minding the beard grazing against her skin. Awkwardly, Troy leaned into her touch. But before he could wrap his arms around her, she pulled away. The embrace ending too quickly and too unpredictable as it began.

“Night!”

[kayfarafey]

So, I just saw this email in my inbox:

Posted something good, huh? Of course it'll be good...

Seriously, I love the whole fic. The way they are relating to each other, how Phoenix is talking about Trucy...Very touching and relatable. I like this here in particular:

"Still, the human mind tended to dig its nails into traumatic memories and drag them out into the light as a reminder of the agony one’s been through, trying to keep the recollection sharp so the body still knew what to do if it happened again."

"He’d come to terms with those things years ago, but the mind remembered, always foisting them upon you at your most vulnerable, chronic and incurable, no matter how long you went without a relapse."

This is just so universally applicable. In real life, definitely, yet we can also apply it to any AA character who has a particular traumatic backstory. Barok comes to mind, but there are others, of course. It's real. Many of us have been there at least once in our lives. Thank you for these words.

I can also appreciate how calm and reasonable Edgeworth is in this fic. Or the subtle yet significant change from Edgeworth to Miles, and from Wright to Phoenix.

Question for you: When you're not writing fics, do you prefer calling him Edgeworth or Miles?

"'I am not interested in what else I could have,” Edgeworth said firmly, “if it is not you, Phoenix Wright.'"

Edgey, this is so profound.

ZIEKSY. LOML. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

aa brushes around trauma a lot but doesnt exactly follow through (especially in the main games but dgs does not go anywhere near as hard with kazuma's death as it should) and that's kinda lame! phoenix especially doesnt get a lot of closure so i wanted to throw in an "of course he empathizes, and that's what makes it so significant that edgeworth is letting phoenix support him in this way" sort of thing

the way people react to grief and trauma is never linear and it's important to recognize that even though it hurts and even though it feels like you're regressing, sometimes its just your brain going "jesus christ, remember that thing that was horrible? i sure do. don't forget that it happened; don't let your guard down" and it doesn't mean you're any weaker for it, AND it doesn't mean that you should feel bad about that reminder affecting you!

also as for whether i refer to him as edgeworth or miles outside of fic:

[butterflydm]

wot reread: the fires of heaven (chap 51)

 spoilers through the fires of heaven; vague references to the future and to one of the themes that is explored in the series but I try to keep it spoilers-lite

1. lol, back to the constant pipe-smoking. From Rand again, this time. Pipes sound so uncomfortable, always being clenched in the teeth like that. I suppose you get used to it? Sounds uncomfortable though. We also learn that ten days have passed since our last Rand & Mat chapter.

2. Selende (I think she’s a random Cairhienin noblewoman) is snuggling super-close to Rand and, for whatever reason, he doesn’t seem to feel like he can tell her to back off the way that he was willing to do with Berelain back in Tear? Not sure why, because he’s definitely still uncomfortable.

3. They’re really hammering in how unseasonably hot that it is right now. Ugh, I feel my doom approaching. Go away, hot weather. I disapprove of what you mean in this narrative.

4. Ah, he finally scares her away by talking about how saidin is gonna make him go crazy. Here he thinks about why he’s not just asking them to leave -- it only works very briefly and then they chase after him again. He’s also thinking about how he wants to build up his forces in Tear and then go after Sammael when and how he chooses, rather than rushing off in a temper.

5. Rand’s PoV of the information diet that he’s been put on: “Egwene gave him hints of things, but she saw matters from the White Tower, wherever she stood. The Aes Sedai point of view was not his.”

6. Berelain is marching north from Tear with a small army to help him. Her letter to him asked after Perrin, which baffles Rand somewhat and makes me sigh in resignation. Rand thinks it might be a good idea to put Berelain as the person in temporary charge of Cairhien, since he’s reserving the throne for a person he has not yet named on page.

7. We learn that Andor/Morgase (actually Rahvin, though no one here knows it) has claimed “half our lands west of the Alguenya” in the name of Andor. We also learn that apparently Rand was tempted by the first of the ladies that Colavaere sent to try to cozen him, until he realized who was sending them. The Maidens sent those who tried to sneak into his chambers away because they think he’s with Aviendha and Aviendha (harshly/violently) chased away the one that she found because she believes Elayne owns him. Jordan’s weird-ass gender relations strikes again. I really do dislike the whole “this person is claimed as my sexual/romantic property, regardless of their own feelings or whether or not I treat them well, so everyone else must stay away” vibe that happens a lot and that Jordan seemed really into. I cannot tell him this for obvious reasons but: hey, Jordan, your kinks were not Universal Truths about the Human Condition!

I certainly have my own share of Things I Like to Write/Read about, but I do my best not to make it sound as if that’s just How All People Are. Though I suppose I’m not the best judge on whether or not I’m successful, lol.

I do understand, from a hormonal standpoint, why Rand would have been tempted by the Cairhienin ladies at first, because his engine is literally getting revved every night by Aviendha undressing in front of him (apparently with great satisfaction these days? honestly, I wish I could get a glimpse of Aviendha PoV to know WTF she’s thinking in these moments; her motivations don’t make sense to me!) and he probably doesn’t even feel like he can take care of it himself because he’s pretty much never alone. He’s smart enough not to actually do anything, but I get why he’s tempted.

8. Ugh, I do dislike that the Maidens don’t respect Rand’s privacy when it comes to Moiraine, Egwene, & Aviendha wanting to talk to him? They don’t even give him a courtesy warning when it’s one of those three coming in, they’re just let inside his chambers. And this from Egwene is exactly what I mean when I say that I understand why Rand is frustrated: “You know what you need to know. And I will not tell you what you do not need to know.” That’s so condescending and frustrating beyond belief.

And it’s hard to try to untangle how Rand’s mental state is... which parts of his mental state is affected by the taint vs the clear trauma vs his frustration with how other people are constantly trying to keep him on an information leash. Those three things all combine together to cause him even more mental stress, I would expect. Anyway, it’s been six days since Egwene talked to Rand. And just... Rand’s frustration with how little he’d being told is so obvious and he gets absolutely nothing back from Egwene and Moiraine except a frustrating brick wall of calmness.

9. Anyway, he has received two letters from Tar Valon, one from Elaida and one from Alviarin. Elaida’s letter is short: she’s sending Aes Sedai to Cairhien to ‘escort’ him to Tar Valon with honor and respect. Alviarin’s is longer: very fawning, lots of compliments, and says she wants to serve him. He suspects Moiraine may have already read the letters as she barely looks at them. In the two letters, Rand can see the split in the White Tower and the presence of White Tower spies in the city. Moiraine actually gives him a compliment here: “You learn quickly. You will do well.”

10. Yeah, Rand has been heavily affected by his recent bout with the taint, I think. He’s now deliberately using Moiraine, Egwene, and Aviendha’s presence to throw Mat off balance and frighten him. Shadow Rising!Rand would be disappointed in him. Even early Fires of Heaven!Rand would be disappointed. Anyway, Rand sent for Mat four hours ago (as soon as he learned Mat was in the city) and now Mat is arriving.

And, again, we have random people calling Mat ‘Matrim’, pls just let people have nicknames. How did the Aiel even find out that his given name was Matrim, anyway? When he asks to go to Rhuidean in book four, he is specifically asked what name he calls himself and he says “Mat. Mat Cauthon”. Is it just That Well Known Even To Aiel that Mat is short for Matrim? Did Moiraine or Egwene tell them?

11. Actually... huh. Rand losing his protectiveness over Mat (which has come across as a normal level of protectiveness that isn’t at all controlling) coincides fairly closely with Rand’s increasing OVERprotectiveness over literally every woman who exists in the world, even his enemies who want to kill him (and this overprotectiveness of his IS frequently controlling; just ask the Maidens). That’s... interesting.

I’d chalk it up to Jordan changing characters’ backstories and relationships between books, as he has done before (ex. Rand and Egwene’s constantly changing backstory), except that it’s definitely been happening over the course of The Fires of Heaven (because Rand was protective over Mat when it came both to the Darkhound attack and to Moiraine’s interest in Mat’s medallion at the start of the book).

Three possible factors spring to mind, though I’m sure there are more:

Rand’s exposure to saidin/the taint itself is what is causing his weird overprotectiveness towards women, and his lessened care towards the lives of men. This theory has textual evidence but it’s mostly coincidental -- that it seems like Rand’s changes are tied to when he uses a lot of saidin.

This also may be related to Jordan’s thing about how queerness is for adolescence/single-sex environments and heterosexuality is for grownups. Because the other big event that happens in this book is Rand losing his virginity to Aviendha. And Jordan DOES have a weird thing about being queer as something you ‘grow out of’ and then go be a ‘happy heterosexual’ (the primary example being Siuan/Moiraine to Siuan/Gareth & Moiraine/Thom, but pillowfriends in general tend to follow this idea). Once Rand sleeps with a woman, his protective feelings for his male friend are now considered a hindrance to his life rather than an important part of his emotional landscape and must be tossed away. (this would likely be subconscious/unintentional on Jordan’s part tho) - and this is not a hang-up that is solely Jordan’s, to be sure. There was a huge thing a few years back where Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey fans got very frustrated with the game-makers for forcing a m/f relationship on the main character in one of the DLCs (when you had previously been allowed in-game to play the character as 100% gay if you chose, as all the romance was in the player’s hands). The ‘achievement’ for doing the DLC and having a kid with the forced m/f love interest was even called ‘growing up’, iirc.

Does Lews Therin actually know how to have friends? Legit question. At least, does he know how to have friends who are men? Because thinking back about what we know about his relationships with men during the AoL, I don’t think he has ever thought back to a strong friendship like Rand and Mat had growing up. We know he had people under his command and we know that a LOT of men were jealous of him but... did he have any friends? So it could be that LTT’s lack of understanding of How Friends Work could be contributing to Rand’s actions as LTT’s personality gets more space and time in the driver’s seat, especially when Rand doesn’t notice.

12. I will continue to evaluate as I go on. But I do note that Perrin was removed from the friend group the next book after he was paired off with Faile (he decided he couldn’t live without her at the end of TDR and then was off to his own storyline in the start of TSR); and now that Rand has officially lost his virginity, we have the upcoming separation of Rand and Mat as friends who actually get to hang out in the next book. It’s just... a potentially interesting pattern.

And one of the hallmarks of toxic masculinity is the notion that men are supposed to be stoic and aren’t allowed to share feelings with each other, only with their romantic/sexual partner, who is supposed to take on all the emotional load of the relationship (*cough* Min *cough*). And Rand is very much an exploration of the dangers of toxic masculinity, so I wonder if this is actually an intentional part of that or if this is just one of those things that Jordan thought was Just The Way The World Is.

13. Rand would like to inform us that he can see Mat’s sweaty chest because of his half unlaced shirt. Thx for the info, Rand. Mat is also wearing a silk scarf to cover up his scar from being hanged by the Eelfinn. Mat finds some security out of touching his medallion while he’s in the room with Moiraine. We learn about the Band of the Red Hand here! People (well, sigh, ‘young men’) are lining up to join. Moiraine tells us the Old Tongue name: Shen an Calhar and that they were the last to fall when Manetheren died, guarding Aemon himself.

I feel so cheated out of a ‘Mat raises Manetheren’ plotline tbh. It would have been so much more thematically appropriate than Perrin doing it. Perrin is simply not attached to the Manetheren history that way that Mat has been from the very beginning. Perrin should have been given his own narratively-relevant plotline, not taken the one that seems tailor-made for Mat!

14. Ah, the reason that Mat has only just gotten back to Cairhien is that he went to scout what was going on with the Andorans to the south/west. “Andoran supply wagons burned, outposts destroyed. And three battles. Three battles, and three victories. With small loss to your own men, though outnumbered.”

15. And Rand has a glimmer of realization about how hard he has gotten when it comes to using men, including his friends, but it’s quickly gone from his mind. Ah, MAT is the one who brings the news that Morgase is ‘dead’ (from his scouting mission). Also, Mat saying that he’s glad Elayne isn’t here to hear about her mom being dead. Aw. Also: ha, love that Rand’s plan to try to ‘soften’ Mat failed and Mat’s back just goes up. Weirdly, I also wonder if some part of Rand isn’t trying to sabotage his own plans? Because Rand SHOULD KNOW that it would just put Mat’s back up to corner him like this? It always did in the past, and it did for Rand too. It’s a Two Rivers thing. And that really does make me wonder if this is LTT’s influence, because RAND should know what Two Rivers people are like, but LTT wouldn’t.

16. Gaebril has declared himself King of Andor and of Cairhien. Okay, it also sounds like no one has officially declared Morgase dead; the official word is the Morgase is the one who made Gaebril king, but everyone is talking about how no one has seen Morgase for weeks. And Mat already knows that Gaebril was the one who wanted to have Elayne killed off back in TDR.

17. Rand’s first thought is that Elayne will ‘never forgive him’ for letting Morgase die as Rahvin’s prisoner. It makes him “quiver with fury” thinking about it. His temper is also getting worse, I think. Again, dead heat between whether this is the taint or the ptsd; though the taint is also used as a metaphor for ptsd sometimes. He is immediately too angry to go through with his plans to go after Sammael methodically and wants to go take revenge for Elayne’s sake RIGHT NOW. And he blames himself for Morgase’s death as if ‘his own hand had been on the knife’. Moiraine does convince him to hold off until ‘tomorrow’ instead of going right now to kill Rahvin.

18. Rand kicks Asmodean out when he starts playing a song called “The Fool Who Thought He Was King” and then tells Moiraine, Egwene, and Aviendha to leave so that he can talk to Mat alone. Egwene and Aviendha want to come help him with Rahvin (and Rand is still boiling over with anger inside) but he tries to tell them it’s too dangerous. And here, they call him out on being controlling & overprotective, like I just talked about above! It’s so much more extreme than he used to be at the start of this book. He did still try to protect the Maidens but he wasn’t hyper-focused on preventing Every Woman’s Death in the World like he kinda is now (he wonders here, when Moiraine mentions Lanfear, what he’ll do if she’s there with Rahvin). Rand DOES finally give in and say that they can come the next day with him to kill Rahvin. And then just as fiercely as he was trying to AVOID putting Egwene & Aviendha in danger, he tells Mat that he MUST go into danger, no choice involved. Very very changed from the start of the book!

19. Moiraine talks to Egwene and Aviendha and tells Egwene that she thinks that she handles Rand’s temper well (lol I doubt this somewhat; I guess it’s not the WORST she could have done but she could have done better too) and that Rand needs people with him who won’t be driven away by his rages (true but also... like, maybe we could TRY therapy? just a little?).

Ugh, after Moiraine leaves, Aviendha asks about whether or not the Aes Sedai in Salidar really will help Rand and Egwene warns her not to say that name in front of Rand, because he needs to be ~prepared~ first and, yes, the taint is definitely causing an increase in Rand’s temper and his paranoia, but the compete lack of trust he gets from everyone around him who claims to care about him doesn’t help, especially when they all trust each other so much more than they trust him! Egwene does think that she’s doing this for Rand’s own good, to protect him from the Aes Sedai, but she doesn’t at all consider giving Rand this information so that he can make an informed decision. And Egwene justifies this based on how Rand is behaving now but they were doing this to him BEFORE he overdosed on the taint as well. Rand has been getting the runaround from Aes Sedai since before he even knew/believed that he was the Dragon Reborn.

Egwene’s ‘protecting Rand for his own good’ thing here does very much mirror what Rand is attempting to do with them tho. They continue to be very much paralleled in their actions/behaviors.

20. Mat gets special chambers as the “young hero of the battle against the Shaido”. The argument with Rand lasted for hours, it sounds like. But Mat has noticed that he can’t seem to AVOID battles right now. The sound of the dice pretty much always means another battle over the rise, these days. He wonders if maybe he can take a ship to escape things, but figures he would manage to find a battle there, too. Anyway, what Rand wants Mat to do is take command of his Tairen army (as they move on Illian, I think?).

21. Melindhra is there in his chambers. When he tells her that he’s going to be going away for a while, ‘for Rand’ (though he’s still pondering the idea of escape), she’s annoyed. She tells him that he needs to leave behind Rand’s shadow. As soon as he mentions Caemlyn in relation to Rand, she attacks without warning. I do note that Mat’s initial thought of where to ‘escape’ to is Tear (even as he realizes that would definitely NOT remove him from Rand’s influence). When he sees her pull a knife, he instinctively throws one of his own -- a killing blow that he immediately regrets. Even as she’s dying (and tells him she always liked his ‘pretty eyes’), she tries to bring up the dagger for one last attempt to kill him, but it hits the foxhead medallion instead. He realizes that she was a Darkfriend because she says he has “the Great Lord’s own luck” when her attack fails.

22. Mat thinks about how he’s never killed a woman (...I assume he means in this life and not the past memories because I absolutely DO NOT believe that every single one of those past battles was genuinely a man-only affair). He thinks about how all he ever wants from his time with women is “a smile, a dance, a kiss, and to be remembered fondly”. He realizes that the dagger hilt she used had golden bees on it, the sign of Illian/Sammael. He thinks that she attacked because she connected him going down to Tear with him leading an army against Sammael, but the readers have additional info!

The intent of the Lanfear-Rahvin-Sammael-Graedal plan was to aim Rand at SAMMAEL, not at Rahvin, so once Mat showed that Rand was about to go off course and head to Caemlyn instead, she was the person planted to kill Mat so that Rand would get angry enough to continue to chase Sammael, who is expecting him, and not Rahvin, who is NOT expecting him.

But that is the end of Melindhra. As far as Mat’s ‘evil girlfriends’ are concerned, she is definitely my favorite, so I am kinda sad to see her go here. Goodbye, Melindhra. Also, in totally depressing news, he straight-up just sits there with her dead body for hours. Oh, bb.

[evansbby]

Bestie your poyt drabbles make my heart swell - is it weird that they do that considering Steve’s all dark and fuckboy alpha? Maybe so, but I love POYT and Steve and omega, and your latest POYT drabble has me getting even more invested in their relationship and journey 😍!!!

Firstly, the feature of Steve Jr, STAWP, MY HEART CAN BARELY TAKE IT 😭, omega being his stuffie mom 🥺 Her needing to cuddle him to give her some courage to face that group of alphas 🥺 Her fixing his bow tie and feeling sad when she sees he has a lil boo-boo from the loose thread 🥺 Her upset when Steve doesn’t respect their stuffie son when he doesn’t call him by his actual name and coldly refers to him as a stuffed animal 🥺 Steve Jr really is was (😭😭😭) her only consistent source of comfort and emotional support 😭

Bahahaa Sam is so DONE with Steve and omega’s bullshit 😂😂😂 Him just tryna live in his own damn house without having to hear or see Steve being a horndog for omega 😂 Stop (don’t) that was so funny 😂

Omg I really like how you write poyt from omega’s POV because dang I’m so confused with Steve’s intentions - like if he was genuinely being sweet and comforting at one point or if it was an act to get her to put her guard down and submit to his wishes - I know we won’t know the answers because she’s always wondering if the nice things he does are genuine too!!! Basically, I really love reading the series and drabbles from her POV and I really love how you unravel their thoughts and actions throughout 😍❤️

Thank you for another amazing funny sweet n sexi poyt drabble ❤️

Bestie your reviews mean EVERYTHING to me, you have no idea!! The way you focus on all the details just makes me so happy!!

Also lmaooo, Steve acting tough in front of his friends, pretending he didn’t literally give Steve Junior his name😌😂 and yes, Sam is so done bc this man has to listen to those two go at it CONSTANTLY. Worst part is that Steve doesn’t give a fuck… he’d fuck omega on Sam’s bed just to annoy him (omg that gives me a thought: imagine Steve fucking omega on Bucky’s bed… Bucky would never change his sheets ajdjsjsk)

Also, Steve was kind of comforting her in his own way, bc he knew omega would be hurt by what Sam said. But he was also being super condescending, saying she cooks and cleans for him… so he’s basically reinforcing what Sam said anyways… so he’s basically being a dick 😭😭

Thank you for this lovely review ily😌😌💘💘

[thnxforknowingme]

Miles To Go - reflections

So I did this for In Orbit, and I guess I'm doing it again - I have a lot of thoughts about the story I wrote! Like, literally 1500 words of thoughts, so don't say I didn't warn you.

It's bizarre to have lived with this story entirely on my own for so long, and now to release it all at once and see people's reactions as a whole. I'm so much more used to posting longer fics one chapter at a time, and getting responses as I go.

I've also just been so close to this fic, that I feel I've lost some perspective on what about it might land or be significant for other people (although that's always an element of sharing fiction - we each bring ourselves to a story and see it in different ways). Something I struggled with were the most overtly sad/angsty parts of the fic - writing out the words that sum up Kurt's grief, especially in chapters 1 and 11, almost seems to dull the emotion's impact for me. The thing about pain and emotion is that they're so much bigger than words - trying to capture them in language always feels like a doomed effort (John Green has talked about this before, especially in reference to Turtles All The Way Down). So seeing that people did have emotional reactions is gratifying (sorry for making you cry, but also thank you for crying!).

Because I enjoy learning about the process of stories being developed, I’ll force my own creative process on you. Once I’d determined the approximate route that Kurt (and Blaine) would be driving, I made the following outline:

I initially planned this as a 10-chapter fic, and thought that I could fit everything that happened in SLC, Vegas, and Death Valley into a single chapter. Ha! I also wasn't really sure of the ending yet - I eventually cut the 9th chapter idea here, because I didn't think that showing Kurt's solo drive back would be particularly valuable. I always knew that this fic was going to be longer than 10k, the minimum word count for the bang, but my estimations kept expanding as I wrote. "20k, probably," I thought, which then became 25, 30, and finally landed around 35k.

I knew this was largely going to be a Kurt fic, since it deals with his grief, but I toyed around with giving Blaine some POV chapters, too. But since he showed up pretty late into the fic, and I wanted to really be in Kurt's head most of the time, it just didn't make sense to change speakers. I considered having Blaine narrate just for the final chapter, but again - I needed to check in with other New York characters and where they were in their grief, and it would have been weird to just have that be told to Blaine by Kurt. It was so tempting to have Blaine POV for his reconciliation with Cooper, but since I had already determined the story was going to be all-Kurt by that point, I instead had to awkwardly have Kurt eavesdrop. Ah, well.

While Kurt's emotional journey/growth was pretty much determined from the start, since it's the main focus of the story, I also wanted to give Blaine some depth instead of just having him be the Love Interest. He needed a compelling reason to be trekking across the country, and I think it made it a more interesting story when they were both dealing with shit, instead of Blaine just being a sounding board for Kurt's grief. It seems like it's a common thread in my stories that if Blaine doesn't meet Kurt until later in his life, he ends up more repressed and unhappy...while S2 Blaine is so outwardly confident in himself (mostly with regards to his sexuality, but also his musical talent), I think I imagine that without Kurt's stubborn individuality and the transfer to McKinley, Blaine would have remained more buttoned-up and eager to please. In this case I thought that his parents might have seen Cooper's career as somewhat of a failure, and pushed for Blaine to pursue something more practical than performing arts. And in this particular universe, he went along with that. Psychology is still a way for him to help people, even minus the 'making art' aspect.

Since Kurt seemed to be Blaine's inspiration for moving to New York in canon, it made sense to me that this version of Blaine wouldn't have considered it. Coming out of several years at Dalton, he would have gone to a nice Northeastern school somewhere else (although still within visiting distance of NYC, for my purposes). I also just didn't want it to be too convenient, for them to end up living in the same city so they could live happily ever after at the conclusion of this plotline. It seemed more in line with the spirit of this story for them still to have to work at it, for things to be imperfect but still worth doing (and doing long-distance better than they did in canon, hopefully).

Finally, Cooper isn't mentioned in the prompt, but it just made sense for me to bring him in since the boys were heading to Los Angeles. I loved recreating the Big Brother dynamic in this universe (starstruck Kurt, snippy Blaine, oblivious Cooper). I also wanted to provide a more lasting impact from that interaction than canon did - after their reconciliation, it's important to me that Cooper does keep trying, that the brothers do keep in touch and build a strong relationship.

I mentioned this in a comment on the fic somewhere, but I also struggled with if/how to incorporate Kurt's tattoo into the fic. In canon, he gets it as an indirect result of Finn's death, and for understandable external reasons, canon decides to turn it into a joke by having it get botched. I liked the idea of Kurt getting an "it gets better" tattoo, not only because of the mostly sexuality-related reasons he lists in canon, but also because it could be tied more directly to his grief - knowing that he's been through terrible hardship before, and that this trauma, like all things, will eventually get better. That's a little more desperate and tragic than it was in canon, so hopefully that's tempered by the fact that it was still the result of questionable drunken decision-making. God, not to blow my own horn, but I love that Las Vegas chapter.

Not to get too personal, but the assignment of this prompt for me to write came at like...an eerily fitting time in my life. I was far enough away from the largest period of grief I've ever experienced for me to be interested in this plot - I very often draw from my own life in my writing, and I'd reached a point where I was ready to examine and toy with some of my experiences with loss through fiction. I don't think I made anything up about Kurt's experience of mourning - pretty much every thought he has about death and loss is one I've had myself. Then, literally a day before getting assigned this prompt, my family experienced another loss (we're doing fine, I'm doing fine, all things considered, it wasn't unexpected). So these questions and concepts that I was working with while writing felt very present and real to me. We lose people, and we struggle to process that, and somehow life goes on. Sometimes life going on feels deeply unfair, and sometimes it feels like a welcome distraction, and sometimes it feels like a miraculous gift.

I wouldn't call writing this story 'easy,' per se - as with all writing, there was work and thought and problem-solving that went into it - but in some ways I do think it came easily to me. I was cramming to write it all before I went on my own month-long trip which occupied the majority of April, and my writing pace was sort of insane, by my standards. I got to a point where I was aiming to write a thousand words a day, and I was hitting that goal. It certainly helped that my work hours were essentially nil, since it's the off-season for my job, but more than that it was just that I was so inspired, that I had so many ideas for this story that writing them out just came naturally. I don't know that I could have written this story as well as I did at any other point in my life, so the stars really just aligned for this fandom event and this prompt and my life and my writing.

I am also always a slut for travel narratives, for stories where the setting is present and important. I've never written a road trip story before, and I loved making this one. The locations helped build the plot and the mood, and the emotional arcs worked so well with the movement across the country (everything is stripped down and bare in the desert, so of course that's where we'll have emotional confessions and the reveal of personal secrets!). I often appreciate having an internal time constraint for my stories (a narrative that has to happen over a summer, or over a semester, or over a two-week vacation). This story sort of had that, but also provided a unique dynamic with the ever-changing setting. And of course I love the opportunity to bring a story into California, even if it's parts of the state that I'm not as familiar with.

If you've made it to the end of this post, on top of already taking the time to read my story - you are a saint, and I am virtually sending you a warm, homemade cookie of your choice. I loved writing this story, and I'm literally overwhelmed with the response it's been getting. Thank you for your attention and your kind words - I'm glad you could find enjoyment or emotion or connection through this fic.

[livixbobbiex]

Popular BOTW theory debunked!

Hi, Zelda fandom. I’m really sorry this has to be my first post, but I want to clear up what seems to be a very popular fan theory as completely untrue. 

I only got into the game recently, but I’ve seen a lot of people talking about how in the Japanese version of the game, the quests are written from Link’s perspective and in the style of a diary.

Not only is there no actual proof for this (that I can tell), it’s actually quite misleading. No offence to the OP, but there’s a lot of slightly off things being shared. Particularly as I’ve seen big YouTuber theorists also make points based on this “fact”, I really wanted to, as a person who speaks Japanese, clear it up for you. 

Japanese Pronouns 

So the main issue here is that Japanese as a language functions differently from English (plus a lot of other European languages). If you’ve ever taken a Japanese class, you’ve probably started a sentence with “watashi wa~~~~”. The thing is, actual Japanese people rarely do this. 

Pronouns just aren’t necessary in Japanese often. You use context alone to figure out the subject. For example, “I went to the shop” would be more like “shop went” in Japanese. The “I” is clear enough. If the sentence wouldn’t be clear, a name is usually used, but failing even that a pronoun can finally happen. They’re more of a “reserved for necessary times” word function, not one that appears in almost every sentence. 

The issue with Breath of The Wild 

So taking a look at Link’s adventure logs in Japanese (both the main and side quests - I haven’t completed them all on this save file yet but I went through more than the original theory post did anyway), there’s no pronouns anywhere. No version of “I” that I can find, and no “you” either. I spent quite a long time reading them all, and I just don’t see it. 

I think some of the confusion might have arisen from the “tai” verb ending (which means ‘to want’). Yes, this is more associated with first person. It’s not a confirmation though. You can still use it when speaking to someone. 

The main ACTUAL difference with the English (aside from some lines being cut) is that the style is written way more formally than Japanese. That does not automatically mean first or second person. It’s just a very interesting style choice difference from the translation team - who made it more formal in other countries. It’s really funny, by the way. It talks about Link being a hot woman at one point - maybe I’ll translate some at some point. 

Remember how I just explained context? BOTW literally doesn’t have one. It could just as easily be taken as “you” or “I”. So, whilst I think that it’s fine to theorise, it’s quite irresponsible to push the canon narrative here. A lack of “you” doesn’t automatically equal an “I”. 

Diary? 

The only real incriminating thing is the menu being called something like “adventure notebook/memo/etc.”. That being said, I don’t think this should necessarily be taken literally. It’s not that dissimilar to the English anyway. The actual section headers are more like “main challenge”, “side challenge” which would be out of place in an actual diary. 

Nintendo straight up used the word for “diary” in other places, so I feel like if they really wanted this effect they would have committed more to it. 

Link’s Memories - the nail in the coffin

I know this isn’t the main part everyone seems to have been talking about, but it’s still on the same menu and presented in a similar way. If you go to Link’s memories, they’re pretty much all very explicitly in third person.

Apologies for the zoomed in picture, I was talking to a friend on instagram and I didn’t know I would make this post at the time. It’s pretty simple to fact check though. 

It literally says, clear as day, “Zelda and Link”. Some of the other memories specifically reference Link as “he”. This is all under the supposed “diary” menu, too, so unless you want to argue Link is experiencing some dissociation from his past self- 

What I actually think 

I admit I’m not a long term Zelda fan, however from what I understand Link is really meant to be the player, right? Is that not part of the REAL reason he has no spoken lines? It would be really strange to me for Nintendo to straight up directly spell out Link’s thoughts like that. It seems very intentionally up to interpretation. 

Japanese “I”, when it is used, is problematic because it’s gendered. I’m sure a lot of fans of Japanese culture are aware of “boku”, “ore”, “watashi”. If Link is supposed to be the player, they can’t really use a pronoun like that as it’ll alienate a portion of the audience. 

From what I can see, the origin of this is from quite a small twitter post, where a Japanese fan shares their thoughts on the idea. If the theory was something obvious that spoke for itself, why would they be making a “did you notice this” post? Again this furthers the “interpretation” idea. 

It would be really weird for translation teams to make this much of a change anyway. The formality thing was stylistic, but I doubt they could get away with this severe of a meaning change. I have a LOT of harsh things to say about how much they messed up like most of the cutscenes (for real it’s shocking), but this I don’t think would have been changed so much. From my knowledge of the industry, anyway. 

Summary TLDR 

I’m really sorry, but the original theory is pretty wrong. Well, let me put it this way. I think, if you want to ignore the memory context, you can headcanon that the adventure logs are from Link’s POV. No matter the case, I still think they are represented of his feelings in some way. The adventure log being Link’s POV is a theory only, not a FACT. 

The only way it can actually be proved is if one of the writing staff has actually stated the intent in an interview or something, and I have yet to find one.  

[bookwyrminspiration]

Do you think that anyone is going to die in Book 9? We haven't had a death in a while from the "good guys." (I believe the last one was Forkle 1) The only people I can think of could die would be Dex, Linh, (Maybe that explains the short POV), or maybe Amy. idk, I feel like Sophie is gonna have a hard time in the next book, with the way that the last book left off. But, Shannon might not have time, so I have no idea.

[Image: Screenshot of an anonymous ask. In all caps, it reads: "Sandor will most definitely die at the end of the series I don't want him too but ive been going thru the books and there is so much evidence it will happen." End description.]

I hope you two don't mind me combining these asks, they're just so similar and my thoughts cover both of them!! Because Sandor dying is one of the one's I feel is most plausible in the coming books, rather than talking about it in two different places it's easier to mesh both your asks!

The last death we had was, you're right, Mr. Forkle in Lodestar, but that was in book five and we're coming up on nine, so it's been a considerable length of time. It doesn't feel like we can keep going at this rate and have everyone consistently come out alive at the end of the day. You know all those kids games like Pie Face and Don't Break the Ice? it's like that. the longer things go on, the more the anxiety build because with each passing turn, the game gets more risky and you have a lower chance of escaping unharmed. In the same way, we've been moving along without incident through the series and we're just waiting for everything to blow up in our faces.

First, I'll discuss a few of the characters the first ask brought up! Dex is an interesting one; I could see there being an aspect of "he could only cheat death once" in reference to the time he was presumed dead. I think his death, based on how he's incorporated into the story right now, would serve as a way to make Sophie feel guilty and responsible because she wasn't paying enough attention to him. I don't think it would be a satisfying conclusion to his story, though. There's an element in writing when a character dies, generally you want it to be because it's an appropriate ending to that characters journey and story, a culmination of their triumphs and losses and their past. We had this in a sense with the first Forkle because all his accomplishments had led to a meeting with the leaders of the world alongside Sophie, and he had gone down protecting someone else and the future, and while part of that was for its impact on Sophie is does make enough sense with his character to be satisfying. I don't think we're quite there with Dex yet, so maybe it would take more of an approach of those sudden deaths that are meant to show that life isn't a story, that sometimes people die for no reason and you can't do anything about it. But enough about Dex, onto Linh!

Same as Sandor, who I'll talk about later, I think Linh might be more plausible as far as going down protecting her friends. We've seen in Neverseen and Nightfall that she has no problem going past some of her physical limits to ensure the safety of others, so I could see a scene where things are getting intense but she just keeps pushing herself further and further past the edge, just promising herself she'll hold on a little longer, just a little longer for her friends because they're counting on her. I think it'd be the kind of death where no one realizes what's happening to her until it's too late and she's given all she can give. Everyone would be so caught up in the fighting and just trying to survive that they wouldn't realize until a few moments later that no one can find Linh, that she hasn't said a word. I don't think she'd give any sort of final words goodbye, she'd just show her love for the people she surrounded herself with through her actions.

Amy I'm personally a little iffy on, just because we've already had so much drama with Sophie's human family that it might feel like "seriously?? you can't give them a break?" Sophie had to loose her human family, endure them being taken and tortured, then loose them again. Adding Amy's death on top of all that seems a little too close to older events to have the dramatic effect Shannon would want. There's also the matter of her being very disconnected from the elven world and all the drama, so there'd need to be a lot more connection back to her in the next book for this to be something more plausible. But! not completely off the table!

that's not to say all of these are completely improbably and can't happen at all, just that I think there might be some better options for deaths that would have a better effect on the story! But I do like all your suggestions and there's a lot I could talk about for each of them individually!!

So now, onto Sandor. Personally, he's one of the characters I can see dying the most believably. and the reason the second ask found "so much evidence it will happen" is likely because Shannon has literally admitted to planning to kill him off in every book since he's been introduced! I don't remember where exactly she said this, but I do know she shared this lovely bit of information a year or two ago. So not only have there been plans to kill him, there have been hints of those plans throughout the series.

some of my reasoning: he's a bodyguard; his line of work is literally in physical combat and protection, opening him up to a lot more opportunity for injury and disaster. I mean, he's already fallen off a cliff, and that was when he wasn't as emotionally invested in Sophie as he is now. On top of that, both Sophie and the fandom have gotten attached to him--he's been here even longer than Tam and Linh. So it would have that emotional impact and guilt from Sophie that Shannon would want to show us, same as it would have with Dex. The difference here for me, though, is that Sandor's death would be a better ending to his story than Dex's would (not that it was a bad suggestion! there's just a lot to it). In the same way I suggest Linh die protecting her friends, I think Sandor would die protecting Sophie. I simply have trouble imagining there's a more believable way for him to die.

He's been protecting her and getting hurt in her place for so long, I think it would be fitting for him to be doing the same thing he always does, but this time it's just...a little too much. A little too late. A little too bad. I think he'd be the kind to have a few final words instead of Linh, to thank Sophie for his time with her and to remind her that it isn't her fault. The little things like that.

and then jumping back to the first ask to round this out: I think we've had enough time and build up throughout the past eight and a half books that even if number nine is the last one in the series, Sandor could be killed and there would be enough time to figure all that out. he doesn't have a bunch of weird background stuff going on like Kenric or Forkle did that would draw out his death over several books, so I personally think Sandor specifically could be killed in the next book and it would make sense timing wise. All the others feel a little different though, so depending on who Shannon wants to kill, whether or not it would work out would change.

Those are just a few of my thoughts on death in the keeper universe! I don't know if it's possible to keep going and have everyone survive, but the tension has been mounting and we know Shannon is okay killing characters so there's a lot to take into consideration!

[sheikah]

Hello! I'm sorry to ask this, but can you explain what spoilers you mean and the thing with Darklina? I just read the first book in the series; only managed to finish it because of The Darkling - love him. But I stopped reading the series/world after that one. So I'm a bit unsure if you mean spoilers regarding the books or the show? I'm a little late to the part. Reason for asking as an anon is because I got blocked by another when I asked a question about The Darkling...

Wow, someone blocked you for asking a question about the Darkling? I honestly don’t know how some people get through life being this sensitive haha... Relatively speaking he’s far from the worst villain out there??? 

Anyway, sorry it took so long to answer this. I wanted to get some distance from the spoilers so my answer wouldn’t be so emotional haha. Spoilers for ROW under the cut. Also, since you say you’ve just read the first book, I’ll be making brief mention of key plot moments from Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising as well, so those would be spoiled for you, anon!

We don’t have all of Rule of Wolves yet, obviously, but people with early review copies posted photographs of pages on Twitter, and I’ll link them below

From those pages, we can gather the following:

The Darkling (as we know from the ending of King of Scars) has returned in Yuri’s body but basically looks and sounds like his old self.

A darkness/blight much like the Fold is spreading and killing. Nikolai and Zoya need the Darkling’s help with combatting it because of his magical power/past experience with merzost.

In the early parts of the book they keep him prisoner in a cell flooded with sunlight to prevent him from summoning shadows.

At some point during the story they trust him enough to release him. They bargain with him. He will help them in exchange for a meeting with Alina Starkov. Bear in mind that prior to this Alina would have assumed him dead.

They are concerned by this request but they agree. In the Darkling’s POV he muses that he needs to meet with her to “get his power back” or something. Not sure how this make sense since Alina lost her own powers. 

Anyway, so far, none of the above bothers me at all. But then...

When they meet with Alina it’s one of the most bizarre and OOC encounters I could imagine. Mal is there, and the Darkling randomly, out of nowhere, comments on how they’re related and Mal is like “lol we all hate our relatives amirite???”

Alina’s reaction to seeing the Darkling again is... no reaction at all. She doesn’t seem shocked, happy, upset, nothing. This man who loomed so large in her life and her destiny, this man she was forced to murder in Ruin and Rising... is BACK FROM THE DEAD, and everyone is just sitting around like it’s afternoon tea.

The Darkling looks at her and comments that she looks different. Here is the first thing to really and truly pisses me off: Alina says the reason she looks different is because she’s happy now and “[he] never really saw her that way.” As in, Alina was never once happy around the Darkling. If you just read Shadow and Bone, you know this is obviously not even remotely true. But it isn’t treated like a lie from Alina in the narrative. It’s treated like the truth the big, bad Darkling deserves to hear from her. 

Eventually they come to an agreement and the Darkling agrees to help at the cost of his own life. [Here is where I want to interject something. I’ve seen a lot of people insinuate that Darkling stans are upset because Leigh killed the villain of her story. In other words, they’re suggesting that we’re stupid for being upset because obviously villains die. I just want to say for the record that I 100% expected the Darkling to die in Rule of Wolves. That is not the issue here.]

Before the Darkling sacrifices himself (something that is, at least, somewhat framed as a selfless act to save Grisha and Ravkans), some truly odd writing from Leigh. First, he tells a whole bunch of people his real name. No one asked??? He just tells everyone. A lot of Darklinas are angry because prior to this, his name was a secret only known by Alina. It was something they shared, an intimacy, and it was significant because in “Demon in the Wood,” the Darkling’s backstory, we see the target his true name put on his back all his life, and that Baghra cautioned him to tell no one. So him telling Alina was a gesture of trust. Him telling everyone destroys that.

The second weird thing about the death scene is that he basically screams something along the lines of, “I’m not sorry.” Again, this feels so weird. Like deliberate spite from Leigh. Making sure not to redeem him before killing him off.

So I don’t know all the magical/lore details, but when the Darkling sacrifices himself it is in some ritual where his body is pierced and mutilated by a bunch of magical tree branches??? Supposedly he will continue to exist this way in some sort of eternal super-hell where he just suffers in pain without dying forever, all to keep the darkness from spreading. Zoya and Nikolai bear witness.

This last part is the part that upsets me the most, more than anything else I guess. So later, at the end of the book, Zoya is with Genya and Alina. Zoya reveals that she’s been having nightmares wherein she sees things from the Darkling’s point of view--destryoing Novokribirsk, etc. She realizes how easy it could be to lose yourself with the kind of power the Darkling--and now Zoya herself--possesses. She wonders if he really deserves this eternal and unimaginable suffering and torture. Zoya proposes letting him out to mercy kill him. Genya and Alina are doubtful, but even Genya is swayed before Alina is. And this is the heart of the issue for me. Zoya, who loathes the Darkling more than anyone, is the one having mercy and taking pity on him, while Alina is utterly apathetic to his suffering. Alina, who wept openly over his body and held him as he died. Alina, who honored his last wishes and saw to it that he had a funeral of honor alongside what the people believed to be a literal saint in Ruin and Rising. Alina, who struggled with wanting and feeling for him all the way to the end of the trilogy, whose last word in the trilogy was his name. Alina, who had compassion for the animals she had to kill for the amplifiers. That is Alina Starkov. But the Alina Starkov in Rule of Wolves is completely unaffected when this man she seemingly used to love is being tortured literally forever. She couldn’t care less. And so all of this together feels like a deliberate slight to Darklinas, and that’s why we’re angry. 

Anyway, Alina eventually agrees that the Darkling can be freed and killed, so Zoya says they’re going to replace the Darkling with the relic heart of a saint or something, and hire Kaz to steal it. So SOC3 is coming.

We did get one tiny crumb of Darklina. In the Darkling’s POV, he admits to himself that the real reason he wants to see Alina again is because “with her, he was human again.” He also ponders on why she was always able to defeat him and best him, and thinks that it’s because of something more than her stubbornness and bravery: “something he knew the name of a hundred lifetimes ago.” Most people are interpreting this as him finally admitting to himself that he loved her. It’s something!

Pics for reference.

[coldtomyflash]

Hi! I'm the anon who asked you about advice for speech patterns with OC characters--absolutely love love loved your advice btw, it wasn't too much at all! I'm just struggling to write a character who grew up really close with their siblings and trying to not make them sound like either of them while still sounding like they grew up together. I want to be able to write dialogue without using tags sometimes and be able to know which character said what. Any more suggestions?

How many shows have you watched with close siblings recently? If any, spend some time analysing what they do in depth. And I’m asking about shows because actors can help you get a very clear feel for differences in character and tone, and should be easier to analyse from that approach than books would be.

I’ve recently watched Supernatural, with the two main characters being brothers who have spent literally almost the entirety of their lives (save for a stint to college for one of them) by each other’s side in close proximity. Nonetheless, I don’t think I’d have any issue telling who is speaking in a fic even if the dialogue had a sum total of zero (0) dialogue tags -- even (maybe especially) if the whole fic was just dialogue back and forth. I could most definitely write a fic as such, partly because I can hear their voices in my head if I were to close my eyes and try, and being able to “visualize” those voices makes it so much easier to ensure they stay distinct from one another. 

This is because the writers and actors have done a great job of giving them really similar speech conventions in some ways (as a baseline example, they both use the word “dude” in exactly the same ways) but also have their own quirks (for example, one has what’s almost a catchphrase of “so get this” and the other doesn’t really say that). Each voice is distinct, and it’s a lot less about specific word choice and more about how the way they speak relates to their character and character’s identity: hesitations, pauses, voice raises, cut-off words, interrupting the other, longer or shorter sentences, etc.

So pick out some things that you think both (all? not sure how many there are) of your sibling characters would have in common, and some things that would be unique about them. Does one use bigger/more erudite words than another? Does one swear more than the other(s)? Did one internalize the use of “so, like” from their peers where the other(s) didn’t? Does one raise their voice more than the other?

And do they all refer to things using some common terms? Do they have inside jokes and references that you can use to show how close they are? Does one tease the other more? Is one more terse than the other? 

I think you should be very clear about who these characters are inside your mind, and work to let that influence their voices as they come out on the page. Make sure that you’re writing dialogue as a fluid and living thing, rather than rigid. What does that mean? Look at these examples:

“you do not know what it means to me,” he said.

“you don’t know what it means to me,” he said quietly.

“you don’t know what it means to me” he said, voice quiet, pausing every second word with eyes downcast.

“you don’t... you don’t know what it means,” he all but whispered, so quiet that the faint “to me” was almost lost to the floor as he lowered his head.

Right, okay, I think I’ve got your attention. You’re seeing how there’s different ways of conveying hesitation, tone. Now let’s put that into a conversation without dialogue tags, and you can tell me if you think it’s obvious who’s speaking and how these individuals are different:

“you’re not going and that’s final!”

a pause, and then,

“you don’t... you don’t know what it means,” he all but whispered, so quiet that the faint “to me” was almost lost to the floor as he lowered his head.

“you - dude - what? where is this coming from? since when - ?”

“i... nevermind.”

“no, not nevermind! talk to me!”

“i shouldn’t’ve even brought it up.”

“yes you damn well should have, you - “

“would you - ...”

“would i what?”

“i... just would you ... stop... demanding. okay? i get that you’re worried, i do, but it’s...”

“[name]?”

“it’s my decision.”

(And scene)

Okay so obviously I’m in the mood to write something maudlin because idk what that even is, but I hope it managed to convey that one character is raising their voice (exclamation marks, short imperative sentences) and is worked up in a way that has him agitated (he cuts himself off it ends with “-” rathe than “...”). You know that even though he might be close with the other person, he is different than him, and is used to giving orders or taking charge.

whereas the other (let’s assume younger) brother here is hesitant, quiet, using a lot of ellipses (...) as he trails off, even after he cuts himself off you get the impression that he wants to say more but is hesitating to. the “okay?” could be interpreted as a louder “okay?” if it was said by the other, because it’s in it’s own sentence and not just modifying the previous sentence, but here (hopefully) you get the impression that it’s this character taking a second then pushing what he’s saying a bit. not “just would you stop demanding, okay?” but “stop demanding. okay?” by separating it, i’ve made it a question rather than a command. 

this younger character is also using qualifiers and adverbs (”just would you” not “would you” or even “would you just”) to soften his speech, whereas the older one is using swears to intensify his.

but neither of them are using any particular word choice here that would stand out, and they’re both comfortable with contractions, and repeating each other’s words back and forth in a way that makes it seem like they’re probably comfortable using the same language (nothing is in scare quotes when they quote/repeat things back to each other). there’s nothing here that stops them from being raised close in a way that means their speech is similar. 

So - that’s uh, my weird advice, i guess. get their voices in your head as best as you can, in a way that matches the character and their personality and their role as a sibling to the other (as well as the mood and emotions within each scene!), and do your best to write your dialogue a bit fluidly so that all those little idiosyncrasies that create tone (hesitations, pauses, full stops and new sentences, questions, exclamations, interruptions, etc) all come through naturally without requiring dialogue tags and description to make it come to life.

Final piece of advice on this: trust your reader. unless you screw up the order of who’s talking, they should be able to follow it back and forth. you can toss in a dialogue tag here and there if it gets to be an especially long exchange, or do what i like better and toss in other information about how they’re feeling or responding or what they’re seeing to help situate the reader in the correct PoV, but for the most part readers can follow a flowing conversation so long as they know who spoke first and you keep the back and forth exchange clear. 

[finn-on-the-side]

I binge watched a playthrough of RE7 last night, and took notes while I did so. Enjoy my stupid thoughts out of context.

Warning for spoilers of course.

I’m watching Jacksepticeyes playthrough for context.

Jesus, Ethan gets even more hand trauma??? My man gets a knife clean through it.

Motherfucker just axed his wife!!!!! No! I love her!

We get one phone call from another woman and our wife disappears 😔

Did the Beneviento manor take inspiration from this house? This feels like a gross rundown version of it

MORE HAND TRAUMA?????? a screwdriver through it this time. Ethan, honey, don’t you not even have mold powers yet? How the hell Does the first aid juice keep that hand functional?????

HIS HAND GETS CUT OFF IN THIS GAME TOO????

“Welcome to the family son” daddy? Jk jk

Weird dinner scene? Lukas sucks and I hate him. Jack is off his fucking rocker. The mother is also off her rocker but in a less violent way? Grandma is very specifically on her rocker right now

Daddy’s coming a calling. Ethan’s leg gets cut off????? And this motherfucker offers him some of the fucking first aid juice??? And it worked????????? In RE8 I accepted that because he is half mold. Isn’t he half mold cause of the end of this game???????

I know Damn well that if I wrote for this motherfucker, I could make Elliot simp for him. They’d never forgive me for it either.

I love you Zoe, are you going to betray me?

“You don’t know him, but get the feeling he’s an asshole” halshsoshoshsia lmao I fucking knew it

The whole garage scene is actually so fun. This man is fucking insane. Also? Caught on fire? Blew his own brains out?

Zoe my beloved, please don’t betray me.

This whole house really does make me think of the Beneviento manor.

Evaline? 👀

Mia my beloved, you deserve so much better than this.

Alshlsha Ethan fucking canonically refers to Jack as daddy at least once, I’m having a stroke

Horrible mold men, I hate them

Travis 🥺 he deserved better. He did his best to help Courtney

This motherfucker (jack) in ironically uses groovy while trying to kill someone

He is??? Theoretically dead?? If he can regenerate from just a pair of legs, that’s real fucking impressive

Ooh, Lucas has shown up. Does no one in the game know the word ‘dad’ or ‘father’ cause they keep just using daddy

Marguerite just telling you to fuck off and closing the door? Peak of comedy

I am trying to eat fruit! Stop showing me bugs !!!!!!

I’m able to accurately describe one of these characters as Moth Mommy. I hate this

Horrible awful big lady. This section has so much grossness and awfulness

Thank god she’s finally dead. She has a great horror design, and I hated it

Creepy little girl. Creepy creepy little girl

Come on Zoe, don’t betray me now. I got you the arm. Hopefully this makes more than just one serum.

Lucas you mother fucker. He sounds like such a creep.

So can granny teleport and move herself or is one of the family members moving her?

He’s a creep!!! I cannot wrote fluffy content for any of these characters. I’d only write for them if I were to write darker content.

Jack was a marine????

Clancy! Poor dude

I’m angry now because the whole Clancy segment was actually really good cause I love villains who are clever and deal in puzzles and riddles and shit, but Lucas is a fucking creep

This man is the fucking blueprint for heisenberg and I’m mad

I am so angry that this fucking creep is exactly my type for fictional villains

Jack is still kicking??????

🥺😭 Zoe doesn’t betray you, but you have to choose between her and Mia. The playthrough I’m watching chooses Mia, but I’ll find a clip of what happens if you choose zoe

POV switch to Mia my beloved. Wait if you’re playing as Mia, are you able to choose Zoe in the other segment? Would you play as her here?

Mia lore????? Bamf Mia my beloved

I think Evie needs a hug

Ghost? Jack comes to say hello? Zoe was also there so I assume that means she died after we left her

“He doesn’t love you” he literally fucking came out here to Louisiana and has been continually risking his life to save her??? After 3 fucking years??????

I have a hard timing blaming small children for shit like this, especially if they had a shitty childhood, so evaline deserves sympathy.

Chris?? You are not nearly as wide as you were in Re8

Clancy DLC?

This one is actually really fun, I like games like that. Also Clancy seems real handy! Shame he dies

This ones real cool too! The one with Marguerite. I really do like puzzle games. I think Clancy deserves better

Jack and Marguerite sharing a tender moment:

Clancy bleeding out beside them:

Watching the daughters dlc now. What I’m understanding is that Lucas fucking sucks, and Zoe deserves better.

Poor Clancy, the 21 dlc was super cool but poor dude. Lucas sucks and I hate him

[bondsmagii]

I ventured to Twitter searching he vicious Eli ever tag and there e are so many bad takes about his cheater, it’s 10 times worse than on tumblr.

People don’t seem to understand the point of Eli character and just seem to disregard his trauma.

Some of the takes ranged from “Eli betrayed Victor on sight” to “Serena deserved better than Eli to Eli was at fault for what Serena did to him”

Some people are even saying he would be republican and I get that he is religious , but he doesn’t strike me as that type, if he were I doubt he would have ever been interested in studying medicine.

Some also just disregard what Eli went through, it’s weird seeing how people cheer for Serena, Marcella and Victor who are also pretty awful people, yet they claim to hate Eli supposedly for the same reason.

I understand that Eli can be a more uncomfortable character because of his religious trauma, I think he is a type of character that people may not be able to sympathize that easily at first because the narrative was biased more towards Victor, because it was told from his POV. I also believe some people are simply put off by his fanaticism and some simply attribute it to his ego instead of it being a response to the trauma he was put through as a child and maybe the fact that he doesn’t has flashy powers as the other character may also feeds to this attitude the fandom has towards him.

It still disappointed me how many people missed the point of Eli’s character, because seriously there were so many bad takes about him.

first of all I have to admit I'm not sure what you expected when you went in there. there's only one place with worse takes than Tumblr and that is absolutely Twitter; I have seen brainrot of terrifying proportions when it comes to Eli Ever on here and I absolutely dread to think what's going on in the inhumane scientific laboratories that is Twitter.

with that being said yeah... people just. do not comprehend Eli at all. I hate how pretentious is sounds lmao but the way a lot of people criticise him, it's clear they don't get him at all. if you dislike him but like, you understand where he's coming from, fair enough. I understand where Victor is coming from and I think he's a fascinating character, but I hate him. that's just a case of writing making you feel things, which is you know. what's supposed to happen. but a lot of people just get on like Eli is this complete spoiled brat who woke up one morning and decided to be evil, and they deliberately mischaracterise him and also Victor in order to make this work. I do not understand it at all.

generally I think this comes from a complete inability for these people to understand the literal point of the books, which is that there are no nice people in it and everyone is a villain. the series is literally called Villains and Victor explicitly says that there are no nice guys involved. the only time Eli is referred to as a hero is in the news reports, where he's deliberately manipulating events to make it seem that way; people have taken this at face value, I think, and are genuinely seeing it as if Eli is lying about being a hero that means the hero must be Victor, because these people are absolutely incapable of reading a story without strict, simple parameters. there has to be a hero and there has to be a villain. if Eli is evil, that means Victor has to be good. they cannot comprehend that both Eli and Victor are terrible people, and that they each have their own reasons for being that way. if anybody decided to be evil, it was jealous, power-hungry Victor, who wanted what Eli had and murdered Eli's girlfriend to get it. meanwhile Eli, abused as a child and abused and tortured by the man he thought was his best friend, goes completely off the rails because he believes that becoming an EO corrupts people (like it did Victor, who Eli explicitly says no longer exists now -- he feels like the real Victor was murdered by the demon he became after becoming an EO) and it triggers his religious trauma because at least in religion it makes sense. there are demons, and then there's god, and if Eli is fighting the demons that means god's on his side, right? it's very, very simple, I mean a middle schooler could get this, but here we are.

also if anybody says that what Serena did to Eli was anything but rape, I don't trust them at all. Eli explicitly says he does not want to sleep with her, and she forced him via mind control. that's rape, people. no debate. log off.

[bellaslilpapercut]

Eclipse reread part 3 bewr bewr bewrrr! Covering the entire rest of the book in ONE post so buckle on in baybee: 

1. Absolutely everything about chapter 15 (wager) is disgusting. To a certain extent I appreciate how successfully meyer captures how frustrating assault is as a woman, how futile it feels to fight against it. But at the same time the way she handles the aftermath is unbelievably disappointing and infuriating. Charlie doesn't get up to help his own daughter, Jake trails after Bella into the house and sticks around, there's just no relief or reflection that feels satisfying. Bella can ask where the justice is when she finds out Jake isn't aging but just ignores Charlie defending her assailant? And to some extent I get it, I've shut down after assault before to the point where it took years to recognize that some of the things that happened even were assault. But when there's a pattern within the series of men being narratively rewarded for assault and abuse and women being punished for reacting to abuse it feels like the narrative is reinforcing the status quo of women<men. I'm not stupid, I understand when a book is trying to make me uncomfortable and I don't need villains to be punished to know that they're villainous. This doesn't come across that way at all. Meyers handling of misogynistic abuse and violence lack the nuance to make me believe that she sees this violence as something to be critical of rather than something that just happens to women. And again, because it's a pattern in her writing, women getting no reprieve from gendered harm, I don't believe she's making a statement. There's just no self awareness and that's the key difference between a story like Brave New World or Lolita and Twilight.

2. Also this quote that precedes the assault is just so so frustrating:

Bella is not mean for setting boundaries! She isn't stringing you along! I would love to hit meyer in the head with a rolled up newspaper. Anyway.

3. Bella keeps saying things like "this would be annoying if it weren't so scary" in regards to having her clothes stolen by vampires that want her dead and having to lie to people around her, again because dozens of vampires want her dead. And y'know after the third time she said she would be annoyed if she weren't scared I'm just left to believe she isn't scared at all. I don't feel rising tension, the newborn army feels like a minor nuisance and even after they connect it to victoria (who still hasn't shown up at all) I'm just like...okay well get on with it then! Meyer makes bella "shudder" (I'm still tempted to make a comp of every time she shudders in this fucking book lol) instead of showing us her actual fear. I don't believe she's scared, I don't care about the "threat," and I don't believe anything bad will happen to Bella. There are Literally No Stakes here. I'm not invested in this story at all.

4. Alice is a bad friend lmfao

Girl, you're psychic you know she wanted to wear red why are you just dressing her up for your brother.

5. Okay returning to point 3 because I read chapter 17 and had an epiphany: Bella says she isn't scared for herself and I get that I do. But smeyer also hasn't shown us that she's selfless- just that she doesn't care if she dies. If bella actually cared for her human friends, in any way, I would believe that the newborn army was a scary threat because the people she loves might get hurt. But I don't believe that she cares about that I only believe that she- like Edward- has a weird martyr complex.

6. The Mirror chapter also reinforces this. I can’t stop thinking about how much more impactful it would have been narratively if it had been Angela in Bree’s position (because she’s the only human friend Bella seems fond of but if Bella showed interest in any of the other humans, honestly any of them would do). Imagine the moment where the newborn vampire first lifts her head to look into Bella’s eyes and it’s someone she knows. Someone she cares for. There should have been consequences for Bella beyond “Jake got some bones broken and now I feel bad :(” which was also a shitty punishment because smeyer is inflicting physical trauma on an indigenous character just to make Bella feel bad. Okay. Anyway, it would have built the tension I was missing for- quite literally- over 300 pages of this book if Bella’s friends and classmates and Fork’s residents had been going missing the whole time. Suddenly, at the end of the battle, there’s Angela. Or Jess. Or Katie fucking Marshall. Someone Bella knew should have been there and maybe I would have cared about this book at all.

7. Going back in time to this quote which comes before the battle:

UGH!!! SHUT UP SMEYER! She literally poisoned Jake’s character from the moment she made him a main character and she has zero self reflection to see the damage that she’s causing here. I’ve said before that I don’t think Jake’s actions were a romantic deal breaker and that stands out now more than ever after reading Eclipse. THIS is the moment that Bella realizes she’s in love with Jake too. Smeyer not only sees abuse and aggression as romantic, she also lacks the braincells and reflection to see that she’s playing directly into racist stereotypes. Edward got to grow up- marginally- but Jake had to remain aggressive. I still don’t think she ever once meant to villify Jake- I think that there was no way in a hell a racist woman could ever successfully portray an indigenous character. His tenderness is tainted by the aggression she forces on his character and in the end he never had a chance because- again- he was being written by a racist woman with fucked up views of indigenous people.

8. Okay, I get it. They’re like Cathy and Heathcliff. Fine. I buy it.  

This isn’t even the last time she compares them to Cathy and Heathcliff. Kate Bush isn’t gonna write a song about you, meyer! Give it a rest! (Also lol at “like wuthering heights”)

9.  Jumping right to the end here because to be completely honest the only actual event in the entire book was the newborn battle. Jane was a bitch, fine. Edward talked at Victoria and bored her to death (presumably) and the action never felt very action heavy. I knew if from the “best friend (and werewolf)” line that this book was presumably written for idiots given how little is left to the imagination at any given time. I can’t stand when books treat the audience like dummies and I especially can’t handle YA books that do this. Teenagers aren’t stupid!! Young adults can pick up on subtlety in literature!! AND young adults can handle suspense and action. smeyer doesn’t do either well and the editors never once said “hey you know teens aren’t stupid right? like your audience will pick up on hints that you scatter you don’t have to forcefully explain everything?”  

10. Smeyer can’t stop interrupting herself even in the very last sentence of the book proper:

What, pray tell, is wrong with “Where it would stay for the rest of eternity.” Why did you have to sow doubt in the sentiment right after Bella made her For Real Final Decision???? And why the em-dash!? Again: the editors of the twilight saga are my nemeses but also my favorite conmen. What were they paid for?

11. Back to the editors real quick: if i was given a draft of eclipse I would instantly say: this story is almost 400 pages of nothing, you need to play with the structure of the story. You need to build suspense and if that means playing with POV like you randomly start doing in the epilogue, then do that. Or you can play with the plot. Nothing happens for 300 pages. It takes 300 pages to get to the newborn battle and nothing that happens before the newborn battle makes me feel worried about it. Again, kill off some humans, raise the stakes, do SOMETHING. This was so painfully slow to read because meyer tried to center this book on a love triangle that I didn’t even believe in myself. And even then, it took 14 chapters for the love triangle to get real action (as in an Event, not necessarily physical action). 

12. The epilogue. Oh man. Was the r-slur really so acceptable in 2007 that not one single editor questioned its use? I won’t type the quote in full but Jake refers to his fake arm sling as r-word. Like??? What? And THEN smeyer has him call Leah a “bitter harpy.” Shut up. 

In conclusion, nothing felt like a bigger waste of time than Eclipse. Genuinely, to be completely honest. Two (2) important things happened, at least in Bella’s narrative (I agree with Vinelle that the Volturi debacle was important from Carlisle’s perspective, it adds nothing to Bellas and Bella learns nothing important from it.): 1. Bella made a decision, she chose Edward. Who could have seen that coming? Whaaaat? 2. Rosalie told Bella her backstory. Not that Bella even used that to reflect on her decision to become a vampire but hey, at least it felt like an important moment. Jasper’s backstory only mattered for the newborn battle which didn’t matter at all (and it never informed his character and no one ever brings up that the confederacy was a terrible dark stain on US history (along with the rest of US history but that’s a full dissertation or two on its own)). I can’t imagine a way to improve this book as a standalone book. You could split up the plot (using that term loosely) so that New Moon and BD are both a little longer and BD a little more organized. But without completely changing the plot beats in Eclipse, its just pointless.

[dwellordream]

A Six of Crows Review: Joost and Inej I

This marks the beginning of my review of Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Before I go any further, I want to provide context for my experience/knowledge of the book and its fandom. Six of Crows was published in 2015 when I was 16. I picked it up in a bookstore and read the first few chapters idly while shopping, before putting it back down.

At the time, my dislike of what I’d read was probably primarily fueled by the realization that it was by the same author as Shadow and Bone, which I had tried to read a few years before and disliked, and because at the time I was aging out of the YA genre in general and had very little patience for many of its familiar tropes.

In recent years, Six of Crows and its companion and predecessor series, the Grisha Trilogy, have become one of the most popular YA series online. The avid fan response and promotion of it on social media no doubt led to the Netflix series being greenlit and it is obviously trending at present due to the success of the series. With all that in mind, I’ve decided to try Six of Crows again and see for myself what all the hype is about.

Some more caveats: I am 22 years old. I am aware Six of Crows is YA literature intended for a middle and high school audience. I will not be holding it to the standards I would hold an adult grade fantasy book, in terms of prose, themes, or content. I am aware that I am not necessarily the target audience for the book and these reviews are in no way intended to shame or disparage anyone who enjoys the book.

Criticism is a healthy part of any fandom and does not necessarily constitute hate. I will likely critique elements of the book in my write up. That does not mean I have a personal vendetta against the author, publishers, or the TV show. Please do not take this as a personal attack if you’ve enjoyed the book. This is just intended to promote discussion and to gather my own thoughts.

If you follow me, I am tagging this as ‘in review’ so you know what to block if you don’t want to see my posts on your dash. I will be going through 1-2 chapters per weekend. This weekend I will be looking at the prologue, aka Joost, and the first Inej chapter.

Jumping into things, here is Joost:

The prologue is our introduction to Ketterdam, the setting of Six of Crows. It’s been a very long time since I read Shadow and Bone and so all I really know is that Ketterdam is a city in an island known as Kerch, based off the map. The major countries or kingdoms of the mainland to the east appear to be Fjerda, Ravka, and Shu Han, though it is unclear how they differ from one another at this point.

Ketterdam through Joost’s eyes is a sinister and dreary place, a city under a grimy night sky and full of dangers. Joost works as a hired guard for a very wealthy man named Hoede, who keeps grishas, powerful magic users, as indentured servants. Joost is infatuated with one of them, Anya, a healer, though he knows she is not likely to return his affections and furthermore cannot wed without the permission of her owner. We also learn that grishas are at risk for being kidnapped and sold by slavers due to their value. However, the indentured servant system of Ketterdam thus far doesn’t seem to be much better than slavery, given how little freedom the grisha have.

Overall, the prologue is supposed to give us a sense for the setting of Ketterdam and interest us in the main hook of the novel, which seems to be a mysterious substance that grisha can ingest to heighten their powers for the benefit of their masters, though it has the risks of making them uncontrollable. How well is this done?

Through Joost’s perspective we can glean several things; Ketterdam is a dirty city with rampant income inequality, full of crime and corruption. Magic is an established system within Ketterdam, but the magic users do not seem to be at the type of the hierarchy despite their powers, which suggests they are a minority to the extent of which they can still be controlled by the elite class of non magic users, if they have enough money and power.

It is also very obvious through the references in the prologue that Ketterdam is heavily based off the Netherlands during the Golden Age, which was Amsterdam’s (Ketterdam… Amsterdam… not subtle) economic and cultural boom during the 17th century, aka the 1600s. Notably the world’s first stock exchange began in Amsterdam in 1602, and it was a major port and trading hub for the Dutch East and Dutch West India Companies.

It is not clear if Ketterdam is also intended to be a 1600s-esque society, timeline wise, but we know that rifles are common place and there is a thriving merchant class who rule as opposed to old aristocracy, which seems to indicate a Renaissance style setting, as well as the urban environment in general. (That said, from the advertisements for the Netflix show, they seem to have updated it to a more Victorian-era 1800s society, in terms of fashion and general aesthetics).

Overall, the prologue does its job. It gives us a vague idea of what Ketterdam is like, how the society is structured, and who holds the power. It also ends on a suspenseful cliffhanger, leaving Joost’s fate unclear. Where it falls flat is that I think a little more time could have been spent fleshing out Joost as a narrator, even if this is his only showing in the book.

His internal monologue comes across as a bit dry and mechanical, as if the author is aware he is just a means to an end to start the book off with a bang, and he quickly turns into a walking camera (just there to report events to the reader, with no internal input from him), for the second half of the prologue, as we switch to just watching Anya and Hoede through his eyes. That said, it’s not a major problem, as Joost is clearly not intended to be a main character, and his narration still effectively conveys what is happening and sets the dark tone of the novel.

What I would have liked to see from the prologue is perhaps the POV of Anya herself, or the small child she is being forced to experiment on, as that might have been a more compelling and immerse introduction to Ketterdam and its dangers rather than the fairly bland and neutral Joost, who doesn’t really feel like a character so much as a bland stand-in for the reader. If we were put in the shoes of Anya, suddenly called upon by her power hungry employer to participate in this unethical test, or in the shoes of the small boy caught up in the middle of this, it might have been both more thrilling to read and given a more gritty sense of what it’s like to be on the lowest rungs of Ketterdam’s society, at the mercy of the most powerful.

Moving onto Inej, we run into some similar problems. After Inej’s first chapter, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about her, other than that she was an acrobat as a child, that she is part of the street gang known as the Dregs, and that she intensely values loyalty. This isn’t a problem, per say, but while that’s all good to know, it doesn’t give me any sense of Inej’s actual personality, which doesn’t exactly bode well. Like Joost, she comes across more as a walking camera and occasional tourist guide as opposed to a human character with her own worries, hopes, and fears.

I think this may become a recurring problem with Bardugo’s writing - ie all tell, no show. Inej is good at telling things. She tells us where we are as we follow her to the location of a stand-off between rival gangs, she tells us that Kaz, their leader ‘doesn’t need a reason’, though she never exactly explains what that means other than that he is widely feared, she tells us that she is very fond of her knives.

But in terms of writing, we shouldn’t have to be force fed all this information via her internal monologue, which, again, entirely cuts out once the action picks up, just like Joost’s. While I don’t need her thoughts on every threat or gunshot, it would be nice to feel as if she hadn’t just vanished from the story completely as soon as the dialogue starts.

We also meet Kaz and Jesper, though I couldn’t tell you much about them utter than that Inej clearly admires, even venerates Kaz as an accomplished intimidator and chess master, and that Jesper is clearly the joker of the group.

It also feels incredibly weird that this parley between gangs in happening in front of the city’s stock exchange. Inej tells us this is because the Exchange is one of the few remaining neutral territories, but it’s also heavily guarded, which means every time a gang wants to parley, they have to pay out the cash to bribe all the guards to very pointedly ignore a meeting between rambunctious and trigger happy street gangsters on their literal doorstep.

I understand why Bardugo chose this location, wanting to contrast the violence of the gang members with the economic injustice that the Exchange and its merchant rulers represents, but it just seems a bit silly. They couldn’t meet at the docks? In an alley way? This is like picturing the American Mafia hosting a public meeting at the New York Stock Exchange with a bunch of cops twiddling their thumbs nearby.

The foreshadowing that Bollinger is the traitor (‘I’m not going to bet on my own death’) also seems very heavy handed and a little much, but I’ll let it slide.

It’s also not really clear while Inej is present at this meeting in the first place. Kaz commands her to keep watch from above, but he has also put a contingency plan in place that doesn’t even involve her, having bought out some of Geels’ men from under him. Why put Inej looking down from above if you’re not involving her in this plan? Her only role seems to be to watch, and she doesn’t even have a gun she could play sniper with. It just seems like a hamfisted way of getting Inej out of the danger zone so the author can have her as a passive spectator to the violence that follows.

This is my main problem with this chapter. It’s supposed to introduce us to Inej, but really, it’s introducing us to Kaz. Which is fine, but as he also has a POV in this book, it seems a bit lame that her own chapter is completely overtaken by showing off A. his smarts and B. how dangerous he is, despite being dismissed as a young ‘cripple’ by the likes of Geels.

Geels is also… not a greatly done villain. I get that he’s supposed to be small fry and is just a precursor to much more threatening opponents, but his every line of dialogue feels designed to show off how cool and Machiavellian Kaz is in comparison. He doesn’t seem like an actual hardened criminal who has underestimated his opponent, but a somewhat cheesy cartoon thug who unironically says things like “How are you going to wriggle your way out of this one?” with his full chest. The effect is comical, and not in a good way.

This chapter also shows off Kaz’s sadistic side in full display, which is probably one of the only interesting things about it, though it would be nice if we got any input at all from Inej on this… instead she completely vanishes from her own narration, to the point where she might as well not be present at all. Kaz has no qualms about tracking down his enemies’ weakness, such as lovers and family, and threatening them.

But the open horror and shock Geels reacts with seems incongruent, as if Kaz were the first up and coming gangster to actually consider threatening someone’s family or girlfriend. That seems pretty par for the course for violent criminals trying to claim territory and unnerve their rivals, yet Inej and Geels himself react as if no one had ever thought of sinking to the level of ‘do what I want or I’ll kill your loved ones’ until Kaz invented it. It just feels a bit silly and on the nose.

Really, my overarching issue with this chapter is that it’s not about Inej at all, it’s just an introduction to the Kaz Brekker fan club. I don’t automatically hate Kaz as a character, but his introduction is heavyhanded and comes at the cost of any establishing character moments for Inej. The most we get out of her is her brief pangs of sympathy for Bollinger despite his treachery, and her brief reference to her childhood. Maybe future Inej chapters will totally change this, but right now, it’s not a great sign of what’s to come.

I can think of about a hundred things Inej could have done or said this chapter to develop or establish her personality at all, but all we got was her briefly holding a knife to someone, and her briefly saying a prayer for Bollinger. I think it would have worked much better had this plan to catch Geels with his pants down been Inej’s invention or at least worked out between her and Kaz, rather than her just there to play lookout and admire how cool Kaz is.

Or at the very least, we could have seen the scene referenced where she searches the crime scene of the assassination, instead of that getting two lines and an entire chapter being devoted to what boils down to a pissing contest over which gangs gets rights to a certain neighborhood.

Next week, we will look at Kaz I.