#it’s obviously to make people think harder about what they’re writing + make sure they aren’t using chatgpt but ughhhhhhh

[paperconsumption]

i hate that every vaguely interesting 200 level english class is all people taking it for their gen ed requirement bc then the professor adds a bunch of stuff designed to make the non majors actually participate and now i’ve got all this extra busywork

[inbarfink]

The deaths of all the Finch kids are really so unbearably tragic. It really speaks to the quality of the writing and storytelling in ‘What Remains’. They’re written as so vivid and human and real, but also so many of them died so young. They were children, it’s so much harder for me to do the whole ‘well, let’s appreciate the life they did have’ thing when the majority of them didn’t even have a chance to become the people they could have become. And yet the image of who they could’ve been if they survived is so vivid in my mind. 

Edith had that line about how she always imagined Molly as a girl she could be good friends with. Obviously if she didn’t die back in 1947 they wouldn’t really be at the same age group, but she’d be one hell of a Cool Aunt. I can only imagine her Weird Girl tendencies would’ve only grown stronger and stronger with age. Considering her fascination with animals, maybe she would’ve gone to study Zoology or Biology when she grew older? And since she was dissecting a sea star just before her canon death…

Sadly, I’m not sure if Barbara would’ve been able to resurrect her acting career. But there’s some subtle hints in her room that in reality she was more willing to move past it compared to her fictionalized version in that horror comic (which can’t be easy when you live in a room your dad themed entirely around your child-star years THANKS SVEN). That ‘horror convention’ seems to be an invention of the comic, Barbara’s actual room has a flier for a ‘Witch’s Ball’ at Orcas Island High School and a dress ready for it. 

Barbara Finch didn’t actually spend her last day on earth hopelessly trying to revive her dead career, she was hoping to have a fun Halloween party like a regular teenager. Maybe the fact that it was hosted by the Orcas Island High School Drama Club implies she still had an interest in acting and theatre. Maybe she could’ve ended up as a classically trained actress with the child-stardom as just a fun quirk of her past? Or maybe she just wanted to take part in the Witches Ball because she likes Spooky Things? And she could have found her way back into the Horror Scene in a different way, like being a writer or costume designer or something?

Maybe Calvin could’ve become an Astronaut like he always wanted? But I think Calvin might’ve been more enthralled with the fantasy of science fiction than the reality of space travel. I’m thinking a lot about how Sam described Clavin in Gregory’s memoriam as ‘lost in his imagination’. Maybe he could’ve become a science fiction writer or something?

Walter didn’t technically die young, but he still certainly lost most of his years to the Curse. Like, a big thing about the tragedy of Walter to me is realizing his original childhood bedroom was themed after “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and trains. 

Lil’ Walter did have an interest in adventure and travel, before his fears took it all away from him. If it wasn’t for the Curse, Walter could’ve actually something with it. Maybe he could’ve traveled around a bit and written about his experiences.

Lewis would’ve probably gone into game design. It’s not just how his fantasies manifest to us the players, but you can actually find books about game design and coding in his room. It seems that the problem was that his crappy job and his depression took away any opportunity he might have had to actually pursue this idea. Maybe if Milton never left, these three Finch siblings could’ve combined their creative skills together to make like, a very cool artsy game.

Speaking of which… man, Edith’s death stings the most because we got to know her far better than anyone else. And it’s not even the fact that she never got to share her all of her thoughts and creativity with the wider world that makes me the saddest. Getting to the end of the game and hearing just how much she was looking forwards to be with her son - even with all the hardships of being a teen mom, she was really looking forwards to it. To meet him, to share her stories with him. But instead, that worn old diary is the only connection between them...

And that’s like… part of what’s so great about WRoEF’s use of its own format. Like, the faux-interactive linearity of the Narrative Exploration/‘Walking Simulator’ is so perfect for selling this tragedy. The way each Death Flashback only moves forwards based on the actions of the Player, but it always moves on the same unchanging doomed path - really highlights both how stupidly preventable so many of these deaths feel and really make the Player wish there was a way to change them. After all, all they need is for Calvin to not swing so hard, for Gregory’s faucet to not turn back on, for Walter to not stand directly on those train tracks and everything would’ve been fine. But at the same time it’s so, so clear to the Player that this is an impossible wish. There is no other way these sequences can go - these deaths have already been written. The most you can you is linger, all you can do is delay the inevitable. 

But it hurts.

[blakbonnet]

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK: @adhduck

Please give it up for the nicest and one of the most creative writers in this fandom: Duck! I'm just such a fan because not only does Duck manage to write the softest, gentlest, loveliest Ed and Stede (both together and apart), their fics somehow perpetually keep me looking like 🥹 all the time ough. And they were very very nice about sharing their writing process with me:

What's your writing process like? Do you start with the beginning or the end? Do you write in order or as the scenes come to you?

Mostly it’s the Taika “look at a document for 8 hours and then close the document,” honestly. I’m a very slow writer and lose motivation very easily, so I mostly get by on the muse’s fire hydrant and forcing myself to write those fifty words even when every single one feels so bad.

I go moooostly beginning to end because even though I’m generally an outliner, I always end up with little details that will affect later scenes and I don’t wanna lose continuity or have to rewrite a bunch. However, I do definitely let myself do a [finish this scene later] and move on to the next scene because otherwise I will get really fucking stuck, and sometimes I’ll write a line or a paragraph I thought of that sounds really good and tuck it away for a later scene.

Favourite trope or headcanon you like to explore while writing?

Ooooooooh, I don’t know if this is a trope but there’s just nothing I love more than huge feelings contained in mundane stories, of feelings so big you can’t actually express them and so they’re this constant hum throughout the story. I also love writing about touch for both of them, how Ed gives casual touch to hide the deep well of desire for intimate touch, how Stede is so unused to touch and craves it so deeply. (Can you tell I just really like subtle yet overwhelming emotions? Maybe it’s the aroace in me idk but that shit hits HARD.) Oh, and I love a fuckin’ allegory or object to discuss all those big feelings, whether it’s monsters or gardening or peaches or what the fuck ever (I have used all of these lol).

Whose voice is easier to write - Ed or Stede? Why?

I think Ed’s voice comes to me faster because the way I personally speak is closer to Ed’s voice, but it also means I’m sometimes double-checking myself to make sure I’m still deep in his voice, not my-voice-but-Ed. Stede isn’t necessarily harder for me, I’m just doing all that double-checking to make sure I’m not slipping into Ed voice or, god forbid, Aziraphale-lite voice. So, idk! I love writing them both, the little details of each of their inner dialogues are SO important to me (Ed’s tangents and his pshh-I-don’t-care moments, Stede actively avoiding thinking about things he doesn’t want to face, etc etc etc).

Your personal favourite thing you've written that you'd like more people to read

For the longest time it was There is Love That Doesn’t Have a Place to Rest, mostly because it was posted the day before another fic and, while I find them to be siblings and equal quality,  the other one got way more attention. That fic is about the time between signing the Act of Grace and getting to the academy and I think I really nailed where the two of them are at.

However! (And I know this is cheating okay shh.) Nowadays the one that I wish people read the most is Not Only the Sugar, But the Days. It’s the sequel to my “offscreen 30 year slowburn friends to lovers finally get together” fic and I put my whole fucking heart into it, honestly. The two boys basically go on a bunch of dates to live out the teenage experiences they never got together and work through the biggest feelings and I just! Really want people to see it! (It also can be read as a standalone, which I didn’t advertise super well lol.)

What is the one word that you think you use a lot?

Unfortunately it’s probably “just” or “a little” or filler words like that. Also obviously if the word fuck counts then, yeah, that. Maybe warm? Or something about yearning??? If I have a classic word please tell me I’m fascinated by this idea.

Do you have a beta reader? Have they made you a better writer?

The person who beta’s for basically all my fics is Owen @trans-top-stede and they are sooooo fucking helpful and incredible. So good at catching all the little things I miss, making sex scenes make sense, reminding me positioning in general is a thing, cheerleading me on, etc etc etc. My fics are so much better for their help.

Why OFMD 🥹

Ed and Stede just fit so fucking well into all sorts of AU’s (they try to invent their own AU’s in canon, even) while also having so much fun space to explore within canon. Their range is also perfect perfect perfect for writing fics—they can be in the wells of misery and fluffy as fuck and obnoxiously cheesy and realistic all in the same fic, if you want, and it’s completely accurate to their canon selves. It’s also helped me to embrace being silly and cheesy and earnest because life is about being yourself and finding your people and feeling deeper, feeling bigger, feeling more authentically without fear of being too much. Fuck I just really love these boys. (Also they’re so pretty and the whole crew’s so pretty we WON.)

Please head over to @ofmdlovelyletters (who also made the header) and send your love to all your favourite authors (and authors of the week 😈 watch that blog for some special letters coming your way)

[cressthebest]

Crimson Rivers thoughts pt. 8

chapter 14:

1. “"Obviously fish have brains. All living beings have brains," Regulus tells him. "Well, except for you."”

ADKDJKSJSKS i’m sure that’s another moment in which regulus wanted to look to sirius as if to say “are you seeing this shit?”

2. 😭😭😭😭 james why are you still figuring out you might have a knife kink?? i been knew since before the arena. plsssss

3. 😭💀 the rocks in jars story

4. 😧 james killed someone for reg. no hesitation. that’s gonna haunt him forever

5. oh god, the tenderness reg uses with james after james murdered someone. he’s so gentle and worried for him. this is gonna haunt them forever

6. in reference to james committing murder: “He has the disjointed thought that his parents must have seen that, as well as Sirius. The last people in the world who would judge him for it, and he still wonders what they're thinking.”

JESUS THAT IS HEARTBREAKING. the people he cares most about isn’t judging him cause they’ve done the same thing. it just hurts

7. god, and now they’re face to face with death eaters. i can’t do this shit anymore

8. 😟😧 oh no.

“James can safely say he doesn't have a knife kink. Blade kink. Sword kink. Any of that—he doesn't have it. No, it's just Regulus he likes, and anything to do with him. When Mulciber has a sword to his throat, it's not sexy at all.”

9. reg’s threats are so scary

10. knowing reg’s loyalty to kill for sirius is fucking wild. he would murder everyone in that arena if it meant keeping sirius safe. and sirius did the same for reg.

11. 😧 shocked. oh my god. jaw dropped. reg is just hacking at mulciber with a hatchet

12. ✨evan✨☺️🩷

13. whoop there it is. in reg’s mind, he mistakingly referred to james as his boyfriend. it’s downhill from here

14. oh god, james is using his “it was self defense and murder is grotesque and not always clean” speech that he used to give to sirius all the time. i wonder how often he’s had to tell that to himself in this arena

15. GOD NOT THE FUCKING BEAR TRAP- JFC CAN THEY HAVE ONE MOMENT IN THIS ARENA???

chapter 15:

1. reg called james baby ☺️🥰💞

2. “"Sirius, you're going send something to fix him, or so help me, when I get out of here, I'm going to rip all of your hair out right from the scalp until you're fucking bald."” LMAOOO REG IS SO PROTECTIVE OF HIS NOT BOYFREIND THATS GONNA HAVE TO DIE ANYWAYS. and he threatened to make sirius bald 😭😭😭

3. “"I like you," James declares cheerfully, and Evan winks at him.” EVAN AND JAMES FRIENDSHIP EVAN AND JAMES FRIENDSHIP EVAN AND JAMES FRIENDSHIP

4. “Sometimes, healing is harder than being hurt.” godDAMMIT he’s right, and that cuts deep into my soul

5. reg and sirius are so like me fr in hating change. for them it’s the needing stability after a childhood of not having it, and for me, it’s autism.

6. reg is absolutely insane sounding and i’m 2000% on board for it

7. reg is willing to kill because they scarred james’ face but still says he hates every breath james takes. bitch. wtf do you mean you hate him? do you not get it yet?

8. 😐 bitch, yet another self indulgent moment that reg calls a parting gift

9. evan and reg team!! 🐈‍⬛🫱🏻‍🫲🏾🐍

10. comparing james to the sun >>>>>>>>>>

11. reg being the best seeker during hide and seek 👀

12. EVANNNN NOOOO

13. 😧 evan says he’s reg’s friend. shit i’m about to sob at one am as i’m writing this. and reg jsut lost the best friend he never got to have

14. god, reading from sirius’ pov now IS making me sob.

15. LMFAOOO I SHOULD NOT BE LAUGHING OVER THE BURNING TREE

16. shame on me for not realizing that the author of crimson rivers also wrote just lovers. i just realized that. like, while reading authors notes. i feel so fucking stupid rn

[starbeltconstellation]

Since you are a passionate jedi fan, I would be interested in your opinion on a thing I noticed on AO3. There is a fanon that is inspired by Ancient Greek scholars having had sex with their pupils. In the fics there is a special night in which the masters have to fuck their padawans because it is tradition. Sex and AO3, you ask? What's new, you ask? What is new is that the writers explicitely write in their notes that the institutionalized fucking of the padawans is their way to show how corrupt and morally bad the jedi are. But how is something that fanfic writers completely made up to get more readers (because sex sells) a critique of the jedi in canon? No matter what answer I come up with, it is weird. Are these fanfic writers fetishizing a law allowing teachers to fuck their students, feel bad for their own arousal and try to shrug it off by making themselves believe that they are just writing these sex scenes for a "good cause"? I mean, if they hated the jedi so much, why would they write about them? The MCU or DC would get them more readers, right? I simply can't come up with a satisfying answer to why this mental gymnastics exist. I know this is a very long ask, but please address it if it is of any interest to you as well!

Hi, anon! 👋💕✨

Sooooo deeply sorry for the long wait time. 😭😖💔 Things just got away from me, and I kept putting off my response because I wanted to make sure I had the time to give the nitty gritty of my thoughts on your ask.

And as a pro jedi fan and a SW fan in general… I just have to say… ew. 😭☹️🤢💔

And it’s not necessarily that I’m trying to SHAME people that write darker or more sexual stuff (even though there are some things that just genuinely baffle me why ANYONE would enjoy writing something so horrible, but then again, I’ve never been a fan of horror movies, sooo… 😂🤷‍♀️).

And look, I’m aware that fiction is separate from reality and not necessarily a show of a person’s morals (it’s FAKE, at the end of the day), but at the same TIME, I believe people on this app and just in fandom spaces in general sometimes purposely plug their ears and sing “lalalala” by pretending that how we interact with the world doesn’t shape our perception and psyche to SOME degree.

And this isn’t me saying that if someone writes something like “noncon” or “whump” that they’re going to go out and hurt anybody! That’s the EXTREME reaction that conservative panic tries to drum up by pretending that people have no self control and need to be shielded from “corruption 🙄” or something like that. But what I DO believe is that seeing stories (whether love stories or family stories in general) WILL affect how someone can come to view relationships. This is on a tier scale, obviously. Kids and teenagers will have a harder time grasping why “365 Days” is not a modern Beauty and the Beast movie. 😭🤦‍♀️ BUT… with ADULTS… it’s easier to separate fiction from reality… in a CONSCIOUS way. But for me, from a psychological standpoint, if a person grows up with a specific attraction to certain toxic love stories that are PRESENTED as healthy when they just aren’t—it’s POSSIBLE that they can unconsciously seek out someone who fits that mold. I don’t think this is the NORM—but it IS a possibility, and that’s why I think it’s so important to recognize yourself and your own wants and needs in the real world and ask yourself “Does this make me feel safe and happy? Or just obsessively DESIRED?” and other things such as that.

Anyway, I got a little off topic (which I often do 😭😅), but my POINT is my disgust isn’t necessarily about these writers’s choices on exploring such darker themes in their work if they truly want to—it’s THEIR fic, at the end of the day. But what DOES disgust me is (yes, dear anon, you guessed it! 🙃🙃) that apparently writers are USING this trope to create even MORE anti Jedi rhetoric when there is already SO much of it in the community in general (and that god awful ‘The Acolyte’ show only made the hatred and genocide apologia worse, even though I do acknowledge the show wasn’t given as much of a chance as Ahsoka and The Mandolrian shows were).

Just as The Acolyte had to INVENT an entire scenario where the “EMPATHETIC SPACE MONKS 😭🤦‍♀️” of the galaxy apparently cover up a massacre which DIRECTLY parallels Anakin Skywalker’s descent to the Dark Side—which makes NO goddamn sense that it’s truly LAUGHABLE—you have brought to me a fic trope scenario where the writer has apparently INVENTED something that was NEVER canon to show how “corrupt 🙄” the Jedi Order is—before they stand back and go “haha! 😌 See? SUCHHH horrible people.”, as if they didn’t just invent that scenario in THEIR own head to justify their bias against the Jedi and their way of life.

It’s very similar to the uncharitable views that certain parts of the SW fandom (specifically the Anidala and the radical Anakin fans) have towards the Jedi in regards to NONCANON info that we do NOT truly know (such as why Anakin never visited Shimi all that time), before just CHOOSING the most uncharitable and mean spirited view of the Jedi that they can, which is saying—“Well, the Jedi Order must have a strict policy on NEVER seeing your birth family again, or they’ll be kicked out! 🤪🤪”, when there is NOTHING in canon to ever give any indication of that. It’s literally fanon that has somehow all but become canon in the eyes of the fandom, and I haven’t the foggiest clue how it happened (yes I do. 🙄🫠 It’s because SW fans LIKE Anakin, so of COURSE they don’t want to admit he was in the wrong or that he could’ve taken things too personally or the wrong way—so they settle on, “Those mean Jedi must’ve bullied him and kept him from his mom! 😡🤪”🙄🤦‍♀️).

Fans will make something up out of thin air—literally twisting themselves into KNOTS to try and excuse Anakin’s choices while blaming everyone else to pretend it’s not his fault and he didn’t truly have a choice (COMPLETELY untrue)—while at the very same TIME, giving absolutely NONE of that courtesy to the Jedi Order themselves. The Jedi’s actions are nitpicked to DEATH. Everything they do—choosing to fight in the war to save lives instead of sitting on the sidelines to watch the galaxy burn, not worshiping the ground Anakin walked on to try and teach him humility and grace and respect, literally putting their LIVES on the line RIGHT BESIDE THE CLONES each day on the battlefield, Mace going to arrest Palpatine before realizing the man would never be convicted at a corrupt trial—NONE of it is ever enough.

They are 10,000 strong (NOT taking into consideration how some are younglings or retired Jedi), and yet they are judged with the sharpness of a knife that they cannot solve every damn trillions of problems in the galaxy.

They are a literal DROP in the ocean. It is LAUGHABLE to expect them to somehow be able to end slavery throughout the galaxy in the Outer Rim without the backing of the Republic’s help (which they definitely would NOT choose to help the Jedi, and even if somehow they DID, it would STILL be a long and tedious thing that would take DECADES to fully accomplish), and it is even MORE ludicrous to BLAME the JEDI FUCKING ORDER of all people for the Clones’s situation, like they could just stroll into the Senate building and wave their lightsabers around to suddenly give the clones their (deserved) rights, or to expect them to somehow—what? Kidnap all the clones (because a lot of clones would sadly NOT go willingly because of their brainwashing indoctrination that this is what they were ‘made for’) and run from fighting in the war? Where the hell do people expect them to GO? How do people expect the Jedi to be able to take CARE of all those people (INCLUDING their own) in such a situation without the Republic backing or the Temple walls?—be able to just magically give the clones rights or to just magically be able to say no to fighting in the war as if that would somehow do ANYTHING for the clones instead of just placing them under the rule of men like Tarkin.

The one thing I will concede is that (WHILE being in the war, because YES, despite what some people believe, it was UNAVOIDABLE. Palpatine definitely made sure of that) the Jedi probably needed to learn to get more into politics to control their image in the eyes of the public (ironic, considering how many people blame them for their own genocide by saying they were ‘too involved in politics 🙄’ when the TRUTH is that they did everything to AVOID being in the political sphere because they heavily disliked it). There is a bit of (gentle-hearted) naïveté here, because they all assume that the citizens of the galaxy will just SEE that the Jedi are trying to protect them. But people get selfish and greedy REAL fast when their lives become affected badly by things happening around them. And the more the war dragged on, the more citizens of the galaxy (disgustingly) latched onto Palpatine’s slowly growing propaganda that the Jedi were somehow the big bad villains of the war and not like—oh, I don’t know—the fucking SENATE. 😭🙄🤦‍♀️

My POINT is that—you’re RIGHT, anon. This fic trope you’ve brought up is (while HEAVILY ew in my eyes 😭🤢) just one part of a growing infection of the SW fandom where it’s becoming the “edgy” take to blame the Jedi (the VICTIMS) for their own genocide, instead of placing the blame at the politicians’s feet, where it belongs. Palpatine wasn’t able to gain this power ALONE. The Senate makes it EASY for him. Because they’re all out for themselves at the end of the day (YES, even Padmé, who would’ve taken Anakin’s tusken massacre to the grave if she’d had the chance), and even the ones that DO care about the bills they’re trying to push to help change things STILL are in such a position of privilege (ironic, considering fandom pretends the Jedi Order is ‘privileged’, when they are anything but and are more of a ‘model minority’ group struggling desperately to keep the soft power they have to at the very LEAST have a place at the Senate’s side to TRY and make them see reason sometimes) that they forget about the little people suffering underneath them (Padmé has to be REMINDED of this by one of her handmaidens at one point).

The point is that George Lucas intended the SENATE to be the corruption of the Prequels that brought about their own doom. Not the fucking JEDI. 😭🤦‍♀️ But somehow, SW fandom has rewritten their memories to somehow believe this to be true. But if they’d watch ANY George Lucas interview, they’d see this is not the case. And people are allowed to have different interpretations of stories at the end of the day—but what IS ridiculous is how certain anti Jedi fans SHAMELESSLY try to rewrite history by outright STATING that it WAS GL’s original intent to portray the Jedi as ‘corrupt 🙄’, which is just… SO far from accurate that it’s laughable.

But yeah, at the end of the day, the REAL ‘villain’ (besides the Sith) of the prequels is the SENATE, because THEY are the ones who should be doing their jobs, but who are INSTEAD lining their pockets or kissing up to the clueless citizens of the galaxy come election time, while apathetically expecting the Jedi Order to solve all the problems that the SENATE is too damn lazy and selfish to solve.

The one conclusion I can make is that if the Jedi HAD realized they’d need to play the game of politics to keep in the public’s good graces—then you bet your ASS they would have been on intergalactic interview after intergalactic interview subtly “hinting” at the clones’s lack of rights and plight to try and stir up public outcry—because THAT is how you get true change. By changing things from WITHIN the very public itself. Because THAT is the only thing that will make the Senate LISTEN—is if they’re at risk of losing votes later on down the line.

Anyway, I of course went on the longest of rants once again. Lol. 😂😅 But I hope the long wait time was worth this response! 😊❤️💕

-

To any readers that stumble across this and are curious enough to check out my fic:

-

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[imaginejamesandsirius]

Can you write about James absolutely hating valentines day because it’s a day where he has to keep watching people try to woo Sirius... little did he know, Sirius only has eyes for him <333

Sirius is laughing. 

The audacity of that traitor, just laughing the laugh that’s supposed to be only for James to hear, because of something Luca—or was it Liam?—said. James knows he could’ve come up with something much better, something that would’ve made Sirius laugh even harder, then turn to him with those beautiful, glittering grey eyes and cheeks flushed from the cold and the alcohol and the joy.

But he can’t, obviously, because Liam the utter dipshit is taking over Sirius’ life. James and Sirius were supposed to restock on some of their pranking supplies that day while the rest of the student population were busy locking lips and celebrating at Puddifoot’s when the slimy git decided it would be a good idea to replace James in Sirius’ Valentine’s weekend plans. As if watching people make passes at Sirius wasn’t annoying enough already. And then stupid Sirius with his stupid face that James stupidly can’t say no to, decided to stupidly agree to a stupid date at Three Broomsticks.

James scowls harder, hoping the intensity of his glare could yank the tosser out of the seat that should’ve been his. All that happens is Luca taking Sirius’ amusement as a sign to inch closer, sliding his hand up his knee. And Sirius just smiles at him, all warm and inviting. James wants to throw up. Maybe he could even aim it at Liam and call it an accident. Even Sirius wouldn’t be nice enough to continue entertaining a bloke covered in vomit.

His train of thought is interrupted when someone bumps into him from behind. “What the bloody fuck,”  comes a muffled swear with a faint Welsh accent, telling James that it’s just Moony. Belatedly, he remembers that he’s under his cloak. “What—oh, don’t tell me, Merlin and Morgana, is that you under there, James?”

James pokes his head out and grins sheepishly at an exasperated Remus and a bemused Regulus. “Hello, kind sirs, how may I help you?”

“What are you doing here? And why the hell are you hiding?”

James sniffs. “Well, I would’ve been with Sirius, but seeing as I’m so unimportant that he replaced me, I’m bored. Also, I’m not hiding, I’m just preventing this beautiful heirloom from my ancestors from collecting dust.”

Regulus snickers. “The way that thing gets used, there’s no way it would collect dust, even without you using it to spy on my brother.”

“I’m not spying!” 

Remus hums, quickly looking around. “So you’re just creepily watching his date under your cloak so he doesn’t notice you?”

James sniffs. “I need to make sure my replacement meets my standards.” 

“Salazar’s saggy balls, you’re transparent as fuck. You ought to be ashamed,” Regulus says, dragging them to a secluded booth. He digs his feet under James’ arse for warmth.

“I'm sure I don’t know what you mean,” James replies hotly, poking Regulus in the ribs as retaliation.

Remus raises an eyebrow. “You mean you’re not jealous?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Really?” It should be illegal how Regulus could inflect so much emotion into a tiny word. He had no right making six letters sound so disbelieving. 

“I just want to spend time with my best friend, goddamnit, without a random blonde wanker hanging off of him. Why is that such a big deal?”

“Last I checked, I’m one of your best friends and you never mope around when I go on a date,” Remus remarks.

“First of all, you’re this close to getting removed from my list of best friends, and second, I like Regulus even more than I like you. There’s no need to mope because it’s Reggie. Louis or Liam or whatever is not Reg.”

“As flattering as that is, you still aren’t making any sense,” Regulus says. “If you’re not jealous, then why does it matter who he’s dating? S’not like they’re getting married.”

James, who had resumed glaring at Sirius’ table, swirls around. “You think they might get married?”  he nearly screeches. “There’s no fucking way I’ll let—”

Regulus and Remus each grab an arm to pin him down. “Nobody’s getting married, bloody hell, how can you still be in denial?” Remus grumbles. “You’re even worse than Sirius.”

“I’m going to pretend like I know what that means, only because the alternative is Sirius keeping secrets and I don’t like that,” James says, yanking his arms from their grasp. “I’m calm now, you don’t need to keep holding me.”

The moment the two sit down, James dives under the table and makes a run for it. Regulus nearly gets a hold of him, but James’ Quidditch reflexes are enough to pull away. 

Regulus turns to Remus, eyes wide. “Should we—” 

Remus pauses, then shakes his head. “Not our responsibility to talk sense into those two. Honestly, for two students at the top of the class, they can be such idiots sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Okay, maybe a little more than that,” he concedes with a laugh. 

Regulus smiles. “Do you think they’ll finally confess?” he asks into the crook of Remus’ neck. 

Remus kisses his dark curls. “Not counting on it.”

“Hel-lo gentlemen,” James sing-songs as he squeezes into Sirius’ side of the booth, effectively blocking Luca’s hands from moving further up. “Nice day out, innit?”

“James Potter,” Sirius’ date greets with a smile that’s strained at the edges. 

“That’s me!” James says brightly. “So what’re we having today?”

“Prongs,” Sirius hisses under his breath. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Crashing your date,” James says. “Why?”

Sirius presses his eyes closed, breathes out, and then stands up. “I’m so sorry, Louis, to cut this short. If you’ll excuse us.” He pushes James out of the booth and drags him outside.

“What the hell, James?” Sirius asks, furious. He begins pacing back and forth, hands clenched at his sides. “I was enjoying my date. Why did you have to come and ruin everything?”

Something heavy falls to the pit of James’ stomach. “I’m sorry, I ruined everything?”

“Yes!” Sirius snaps. “You talk about Lily all the damn time, and now that you’re finally dating her, you decided you’d rather spend Valentine’s ruin my chances at having a nice boyfriend?”

James blinks. “I’m not—we’re not—we broke up weeks ago, Pads. And we were supposed to spend Valentine’s together.  Not with Lily or anyone else.”

Sirius pauses, taken aback. “Well, just because you don’t have a date doesn’t mean I can’t. We hang out all the time, why can’t I spend Valentine’s with someone I like? What’s wrong with me dating someone?”

“I don’t mind it when you date all those random birds,” James says, voice quiet. Nothing about this conversation is going as he expected, and he’s torn between equal amounts of anger and hurt. “I just don’t like Liam.” He doesn’t bring up the fact that up until now, he had thought that Sirius had liked spending time with him, preferred it even, to the company of others. He doesn’t bring up that he would rather spend time with Sirius than anyone else because it feels clingy when Sirius clearly doesn’t seem to share the same sentiment. 

“Louis,” Sirius corrects. “What, because he’s a bloke?”

James sputters. “What? No—it’s not—I don’t—Pads, you must know I don’t care about that.”

Sirius scoffs. “Then what is your problem?”

“Louis is,” James says. “I just don’t like him. I don’t want him to be dating you. I don’t want you dating him.  ”

“If it’s not because he’s a guy, then what is it?”

“I don’t know,” James replies miserably. He feels off-kilter and can’t get the right words to come out. “I just don’t know.”

“So it is  because he’s a bloke. There can't be any other reason why,” Sirius sneers, voice icy. James knows the Black’s ability to be cold and aloof remains in Sirius, but he never expected to be on the receiving end of it. It makes his thoughts screech to a halt. A lump forms in his throat, making it impossible to speak.

At James’ silence, Sirius laughs humorously. “Just great,” he spits out. “Of bloody course you’d be a fucking homophobe. As if the universe doesn’t hate me enough.” 

James opens his mouth to correct him, to tell him that that has never been and would never be an issue, that it’s something else but he just doesn’t know what. When he looks up, though, Sirius has already stormed off, leaving behind a cloud of confusion and hurt. 

“Remus told me I’d find you here,” Sirius says. He’s swaying on his heels by the door to the Room of Requirement, which currently looks like the Potters’ living room. He looks hesitant to enter but stubborn enough to not turn back. James turns to look at the dancing flames in the fireplace, knowing Sirius would see it as an invitation to come in.

“I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions too fast,” Sirius begins. “Or, well—I mean, I still would like to know why you don’t like Louis, but I didn’t mean to call you a homophobe.”

James doesn’t respond, taking some time to mull over his answer. Sirius sits cross-legged on the ground next to him, knees close enough to touch.

“Pan,” James blurts out. So much for coming up with a thoughtful response. Upon Sirius’ confused look, James clarifies, “I’m pan. Would be kinda stupid to be a homophobe, don’t you think?”

Sirius nods slowly, looking away for a moment and swallowing harshly. “Good for you. Um. That’s—that’s great. Obviously. That would be rather stupid, yeah.”

James looks at him carefully. “Erm, does that change things?”

“No!” Sirius exclaims. “Of course not! No, it’s just great. Now that we established that we’re both single and queer, I can finally take you to those Muggle pubs and hook you up with a gorgeous person of your dreams.” 

James turns away, knowing Sirius’ words are futile. Now that he’d had some time to think since the disaster of the morning, it was obvious why he felt so angry at seeing Sirius on a date. The person of his dreams wasn’t some stranger at a pub, but Sirius himself. He could imagine Regulus and Remus’ gloating faces when he told them. 

“That won’t help,” James says.  

“Maybe not, but as I always say, a good shag here and there can make life a lot better. Even Remy agrees with me now.”

James tries but fails not to think of Sirius in dim-lit alleys with handsome men on their knees. “Remy is a horny little werewolf who gets his back blown out by Reggie on the regular. Obviously now he thinks that’s the solution to everyone’s problems.”

Sirius stills. “Godric’s tits, James!” He summons a throw pillow from one of the sofas to hit James with. “I don’t want to think about what my baby brother does with his boyfriend—Merlin, gross, I need an Obliviate. Why the fuck would you mention that ?”

“You don’t seem to have a problem with them fucking when you’re asking them about it,” James teases. “You ask Regulus himself. Why is this worse?”

Sirius’ pale skin pinks immediately, which makes James’ stomach sink. “Because this is about Regulus and Remus,” he says, voice eerily steady. “When I ask, it’s just about Remus.”

“Oh,” James murmurs. “Oh, hell, I shouldn’t have brought that up. I know you said you’re over Moons, but—"

“Wait, no,” Sirius interrupts. He pushes himself onto his knees in front of James. “That’s not what I meant at all.” 

“Sure,” James says, standing up quickly. He doesn’t believe Sirius, of course, having caught him looking longingly at Remus one too many times whenever they hang out. There’s a tight feeling in his chest that’s not going away, this horrible jealous thing. He wants to hit Sirius and grab him and kiss him, and he wants to punch Remus too for good measure. He likes Remus, he loves him even, but fuck if it wouldn’t be nice if Sirius stopped wanting everyone but James for once. 

“He’s probably right,” James says after a while, Sirius still on the ground. The firelight dances off of Sirius’ handsome features, illuminating the slope of his nose and the downturn of his lips. 

“Obviously,” Sirius says after a beat, fixing him with a calculating look. He’s still blushing, but whether that’s from the heat or the memory of Remus, James isn’t sure. It makes James burn something fierce inside. 

“Sorry,” James says again, once he’s determined that it’s most likely because of Remus. “I know it must be hard, especially with your brother in the picture—”

“Fuck’s sake, Prongs, would you shut it about Moony,” Sirius says, smacking James’ thigh with the pillow again before grabbing his hands where they lay uselessly by his side. “I’m not into Remus anymore. That was years ago, and anyway, I’d never do that to Reg. Do you ever even listen to me?”

James shrugs, looking anywhere but at Sirius on his knees between his thighs in front of him. “You’re the one who still thought I was dating Lily.”

“I know you broke up, but I thought you’d be back together by now,” Sirius admits. “It’s just—you and Lily, I dunno, just work.  It always gave me hope, I think, to see how you two came to be friends. Like maybe I’ll also find someone I love who loves me that much someday.”

James wants to throttle him. Wants to yell at him that he already has someone who loves him, someone who knows him better than anyone else, someone who’s right there if only Sirius wanted him back. Instead, he blurts out, “What Lily and I have isn’t like you and me.” Realizing how that sounded, he quickly adds, “Or you and Remus.”

Sirius groans, letting his head fall onto James’ hip. James’ knees almost buckle at the warm breath on his legs. “You seem awfully insistent that I still fancy Remus when you’re the one who doesn’t like Evans anymore despite being so hung up about her for years. You could just, I dunno,  ask  me like a normal person.”

James jerks back, hating himself for the hurt expression flitting across Sirius’ face at the motion. Sirius blinks up at him for a moment, maintaining eye contact as he tilts his head curiously to study him. Then, seemingly after finding what he’s looking for, he leans forward to follow James’ motion. There’s a determined quirk at the corner of his mouth, but the tenseness in the set of his shoulders betrayed his nerves. 

“Wh—what do you mean?” James manages to ask, voice weak. Sirius rolls his eyes and smiles softly as he reaches out to curl a hand just above James’ knee.

“Jamie,” he says softly. “Jamie, Jamie, Jamie. You think too much, do you know?” His eyes are lit golden-bright, and James wants to kiss him. Then Sirius’ other hand finds the pillow he had hit James with before and places it under his knees. 

“What are you doing?” James breathes out. Sirius only shakes his head, pulling James closer and brushing his knuckles just above James’ waistband. He hitches up his shirt to expose a sliver of skin, then presses his lips just under James’ navel. 

“Fuck,” James gasps. He realises belatedly that his hands had come up to tangle in Sirius’ hair, gripping him in place. 

“You could’ve just asked me,” Sirius repeats, tongue slipping between his lips to wet them. James shudders. “Instead of using your cloak to spy on my date and be jealous and miserable all day.” His tongue darts out again, sliding hot and wet and perfect up the dark smattering of hair that leads down beneath James’ boxers.

“How—oh—how do you know?” James asks, mind a mess of scrambled thoughts as his world narrows down to Sirius and his slick tongue and clever fingers working his boxers down. He’s sure he’s hallucinating because the Sirius he knows likes men Remus and Louis, blokes who take up less space in a room, who are quieter and more thoughtful and don’t resort to petty things like sabotaging their best friend’s dates because they’re in love with said best friend. Sirius doesn’t like guys like him, who are selfish and hopeless and—

“Stop. Thinking.” Sirius emphasizes each word with a harsh swipe up his cock with his tongue. James whines, high-pitched and demanding, and Sirius smiles up at him. 

“You look so pretty like this, Prongs,” he whispers between sucks. James swallows. 

“Oh,” he gasps. “But you’re—oh, yes, fuck, you’re a natural at this—but you’re in love with—with Remus?” His words end up more of a question as Sirius tongues his slit, but Sirius gets the message and pulls away slightly, glowering. 

“For the love of Merlin and Morgana and all that is holy, would you shut up about Remus,” he tells him forcefully. James nods, unthinking, laser-focused on the line of spit between Sirius’ reddened lips and his dick. Sirius notices and his features soften, an indulgent smile on his face, and squeezes James’ fingers at his sides. 

“In case this doesn’t clarify things, James Fleamont Potter,” he says quietly. “James. Jamie. Prongs. My gorgeous, idiot best mate, my partner-in-crime. What the hell makes you think that there’s ever been anyone but you?”

James stiffens and pulls away. Sirius lets him take his time to gather his bearings. “Don’t joke about this, fuck, Si, if you’re joking—”

He shakes his head. “No. No, Prongs, this is it. I—I love you, okay?”

“For how long?” James rasps. His mind is whirling. 

“Does it matter?” At James’ insistent look, Sirius sighs and looks away. “Fourth year, I think, is when I knew for certain. But it started even before that.”

“You’ve loved me for this long?” James breathes. “Holy shit, Si.”

Sirius turns away, cheeks reddened. “Does it matter?”

James sits on the ground in front of him, taking his face into his hands. “Yes, it does, you bloody mutt. I thought you were in love with Remus this whole time.”

He shrugs. “That was just an excuse to hide that I was in love with you since I first knew loving blokes was a thing.”

“Damn,” James whispers. “Oh my god, Si, how did you manage? I only just realised how I feel about you today, and I already lost my composure, like, twenty times.”

Sirius laughs, and James feels something inside him settle into place. “Well, as a reward for my patience, can I continue what I started?” he asks, gesturing to James’ lap.

James smiles. “Sure,” he says. “As long as I get to return the favour. And first, I want to do this.” He takes his glasses off before turning Sirius’ face to his and tentatively pressing their lips together. He’s sure he’s never felt anything half as wonderful until Sirius wraps an arm around him and presses in close. And then he’s finally tasting Sirius, and can identify a hint of himself, and then his brain stops working. 

Sirius pulls away, after what could’ve been hours or minutes. James chases after him blindly, sparking a chuckle out of Sirius. “Prongs?”

“Yeah?”

“Happy Valentine’s Day.” When James looks up at him, he’s grinning cheekily. His eyes are sparkling and his cheeks are flushed, and James idly thinks, I made him look like this.  A surge of affection bubbles up in him, and he quickly places kisses all over Sirius’ face, prompting more laughter and kisses. 

“I love you,” he whispers into Sirius’ back, hours later when they’re both sated and sticky and riding the high of requited love. Sirius turns to face him, hair wild and face open. 

“I love you too, James,” he murmurs, and James feels giddy with the knowledge that Sirius was only in love with him, not Louis or Remus or all those other people he’d pulled in bars. That this was just for the two of them. James and Sirius, Sirius and James. As it always had been, and as it always should be.

[pynkhues]

You write such great Louis meta that I was curious about your opinion on something. I’m not sure if you’ve written something about this before or not so if you have please disregard!

The show is very clear with us since the first episode that Louis is capable of violence against those he loves most obviously including Paul and Lestat. But I also see a connecting thread with Louis conflating/connecting sex and violence as well. The scene at Antoinette’s is the most obvious but when I started thinking about it, it seems like this is a common thing for him. The murders in the park in Paris, where he’s seeing dreamstat. The 128 boys in SF. Maybe his relationship with Armand, even. Maybe with Jonah, where he was biting his own arm to keep from killing him (probably also because of hunger so I’m less sure about that one, or maybe that’s part of it too).

I started thinking about this reading analyses of the long face lyrics and people’s confusion about Lestat calling himself piano and Louis forte. And on the one hand I’m like *shrug* maybe it’s not that deep or it’s meant to irritate Louis- and on the other I’m like welllll Louis does kind of come at him aggressively sometimes, so maybe this is Lestat’s actual pov.

Thank you for your kind words, anon! And yeah, I definitely see what you mean and agree. I’m not sure if it’s necessarily the conflation of violence and sex themselves, but I do think an enormous part of Louis’ character is about the repression of self until that self explodes violently out of him. To me, it’s ultimately that that feeds into Louis’ complex relationship with power and control which is often reflected in exertions of physical autonomy, both over his own body and the bodies of other people (and not even just sexually – a huge part of his relationship with Claudia is in his platonic dominion over her body, from having Lestat make her for him in the first place, to trying to control what she eats, what she wears and, most significantly, her role within the family unit [her transition to sister is, after all, just a placation. Dreamstat proves that, just as the coven calling her a feminine denouement of his name ‘Baby Lulu’ is. She is always her father’s daughter]).

Louis’ repression vs Louis’ oppression

One of the most interesting changes that the show has made is in changing Louis’ race, and while there has plenty said about that, the shift from the book as a purely repressed character, to one who’s repression is fueled by racial and societal oppression has elevated not just the character, but the show. Louis’ limitations aren’t just the ones he internalizes anymore, they’re externalized – when we meet him, he hasn’t picked a role as he has in the book, it’s been a role forced upon him by the era, the city and the systemic structures in place around him. He has to play the tough pimp down in the Black brothels he himself runs to cement his social power there, but he also has to play subservient, placating, and second-class to white society to gain any social power there.

The result is Louis represses different parts of himself as a result of oppression twice over – he’s repressing the softer, loving parts of himself working the part of Storyville he has power in, while repressing the harder, more ruthless parts of himself working the part of Storyville he doesn’t, to say nothing of having to repress his queerness in a religious household and a homophobic society. I think this makes him a melting pot in more ways than one, because it makes his authentic self hard even for him to identify within himself. He spends so much of his time code switching and repressing different parts of himself, yes, to survive, but also to advance which I think is a less talked about part of his character.

Like, Louis’ not just a survivor of his situation, he’s an ambitious man who seeks to elevate his social position and gain social power. I do think that’s partially borne out of the implied fall from grace his father had, and being pushed into the role of family patriarch at a pretty young age, and his singular rage at being locked out of NOLA’s upper echelons in the 1910s through 40s, but I also think it’s just a vital part of his character. Louis’ a social climber first, and a capitalist second! It’s one of the things that I find most interesting about him, and I love that the show leant into it with Louis actually gaining social power through his relationship with Lestat, even if it doesn’t always look like it (i.e. him having to play Black employee to his white husband at the opera).

Louis leverages that social power (and Lestat’s whiteness) to allow first professional advancement through the acquisition of The Fair Play Saloon – both his biggest competitor and a symbol of the white society he was locked out of, and turning it into The Azaelia, but also I’d argue the perception of personal advancement through having Lestat make him a child, something he also believed that he was locked out of as a gay man. Claudia's not just self-affirmant to Louis, but a symbol of achievement over society in the same way The Azaelia was, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she was born out of the death of it.

Okay, but what’s that got to do with body autonomy, sex and violence?

Yes! Right! Get back on track, Sophie, haha. Look, both Louis’ survival and advancement are really determined by his ability to control himself and choose what to be and when. Like I said above, he has to repress different parts of himself to be able to work different parts of society, and I do think there’s a resentment of the fact that he has to do that at all. He can’t float through life authentically because he’s not granted the same privilege of straight, white men, and even when he has someone who passes for that on his arm, he’s still limited in how he’s able to wield Lestat’s social power out of the house in that particular era.

That – understandably! – stokes an enormous amount of feeling. Yes, rage is a big one, but I also think grief and hurt and sheer weight, and Louis as a character tends to repress all of that too. He struggles to self-manage his emotions because he’s never been allowed the space to, and even when Lestat tries to give him that space, Lestat has exactly 0% capacity to understand him. Louis and Lestat are very, very different characters from very, very different eras and countries, and I think fundamentally don’t understand each other, despite loving each other deeply, and in a lot of ways, that’s probably part of the appeal for them.

Louis though I think does view managing his emotions as intrinsically linked to controlling himself / his body, which comes to this point that Louis presents himself as a very cerebral character, but he’s not really. He might talk a lot, read a lot, enjoy art a lot, but Louis’ always been both practical and physical. How he handles himself, how he processes trauma, how he hides from himself and others, hell, how he enjoys himself isn’t necessarily something he thinks about, it’s something he does, and usually does with his or somebody else’s body.

He hides his sexuality using Miss Lily's body, he represses his vampirism with an animal diet, he combats feelings of powerlessness, boredom, malaise with exertions of power, pleasure, comfort over and with other people’s bodies, whether that’s making Lestat turn Claudia (an exertion of power not just over Claudia, but Lestat too), the scene at Antoinette’s (significantly being after an enormous loss of power with Lestat’s act of abuse), murdering Lestat at the Mardi Gras Ball (and saving him / grabbing Claudia too), depending on Claudia for his own happiness in Europe, grabbing Santiago’s tongue at the restaurant, his D/s relationship with Armand and using Armand’s body to perform power over the Coven, the murder of the coven and Alderman Fenwick to process trauma and oppression, the 128 boys in San Francisco with Armand waiting at home, the rocks in his ankles, the comfort of the embrace in the reunion with Lestat. Hell, even the interview becomes a physical act given the way he flies Daniel out and then weaponises his Parkinson's against him.

We spend so much time with Louis playing passive as he narrates the events of his life in Dubai that I think it can be easy to overlook how physical he actually is as a character, and the importance bodily autonomy plays in his connection to himself and his connection to others. The fact that that can and does manifest aggressively / violently sometimes (particularly after periods of feeling powerless, traumatised or overwhelmed) is absolutely a part of that, but even beyond that, I think he does have a real physical vocabulary that he often tries to depict as more cerebral because I think it makes him feel more in control of himself.  

So yeah, I think you're right in that Lestat thinking Louis' forte probably is pretty accurate to how Lestat sees him.

[beaverdrea]

so i was writing this misty defence essay anyway…

first of all. the girls wouldn’t have gotten rescued even if misty hadn’t destroyed the transmitter. the wilderness didn’t want them to leave. so they don’t. until they have served their purpose to it.

second of all. of all the reasons to do something awful. misty had a pretty fucking good one. all her life she has been excluded, even in the yellowjackets. she was never seen as anything by anyone. just this annoying little unlovable girl who doesn’t do anything. when they crash, misty is everything to them. she knows what to do. the girls (at the beginning) have this appreciative love for misty, they are so grateful for her. misty has never and i mean never felt loved. not by her parents. not by her peers. no one. for the literal first time in her life, misty is appreciated. when she hears van talking about how useful she is, (a level of praise, respect and admiration she has probably never heard about herself before) misty snaps and is overwhelmed by this love. she doesn’t know how to handle or accept this love (as we see throughout the whole show (it takes her like a day for her to adjust to having a best friend, something she says she’s never had before). so, misty in this high of acceptance and gratitude, she does what most teenage girls would do in this situation, as makes sure she stays loved for as long as possible. of course the situation is extremely blown out of proportion, because they’re in a fucking plane crash, but imagine it on a smaller scale. imagine if you wanted the admiration you would get from getting your soccer team to nationals so bad, that you broke a girl’s leg because she wasn’t a good player. oh wait. that’s exactly what tai did. they are so many parallels in this show. the writers are literally trying to get us to understand misty, which is obviously hard for a lot of people because we only actually see her actions, we can see her thoughts or reasonings.

third of all. (you don’t actually have to read this all i’m just extremely passionate about this show). omg. misty is loved again. while the girls still respect misty for helping them tactically, time and time again, they are getting a bit annoyed tired of her. as you would of anyone that isn’t god themself when you’re stuck starving in the wilderness. all misty wants is to be loved, as she is genuinely probably the best friend on the whole show. but crystal starts to see her. not as an annoying gear holder for the team. but as a friend. misty’s first ever real friend. ever. and she’s 16-17 mind you. and they share everything with each other. almost. they have about two weeks-one month together, as we can determine from the show’s timeline, until misty and crystal make a promise to *always* be best friends and love each other, no matter what. misty is young and naive and very autistic coder and doesn’t understand that crystal could still be mad if she told her what she did. so she tells her. and suddenly she’s alone again. misty in no way intends to kill crystal, she is in this haze of wanting, needing to be loved again and only wants to threaten crystal into being her best friend again. and when crystal is gone for good, misty feels utterly alone. through all of this, she is still trying so hard to be enough for everyone. she pushes and pushes to be loved, respected as a peer, but it never seems to work out. no one ever really respects her after this, except walter (for a little while) but misty still tries harder than anyone else to be loved. like she loves.

i think this deserves a list of shit misty’s gone through, to wrap up this rant. (also if you still don’t like her after this, it’s genuinely fine. some people never will. it’s just about trying to understand her character. but once you do, if you still don’t like her that’s totally okay. also not a single character in yj is a good person. that’s the whole point of the show.)

-bullied by everyone she knows her entire life

-excluded even in her own team

-been in love with someone who she thought could never love her back, gets lied to, gets her hopes up, then gets her heart crushed again.

-tried to stay loved for longer, realised what she’d done, regretted it so badly

-thought she would be respected, got her hopes up, got her heart crushed

-been excluded by her team, even out in the wild

-still being untrusted, even after trying everything she can to fix a mistake that mari made

-being told she’s only being kept alive because she’s handy

-seeing and doing so much horrific shit that no one should ever have to go through (big one)

-seeing the people she’s loved (mostly unreciprocated) die one by one

-going back to the real world, only to be/feel even more useless than she was before.

-accidentally killing the one person who tried to love her back!!!!!!!!!

all this said, i may have forgotten or missed things. everyone in yellowjackets did shitty stuff, misty was just the autistic “not beautiful” one, who got one of the worst chances to do one of the worst things.

thank you for coming to my ted talk… misty defender for life.

[maxlarens]

as someone recently diagnosed with autism (after thinking i had it for about 3 years being peer reviewed by autistic friends) i totally see why you think Max might be! i thought so too!

i think with sports people signs might be overlooked because they’re into sports as it just seem like they’re really dedicated to the sport and it’s just seen as that not anything else. Like sure he’s a bit particular about fabric but man can he kick a ball (i think some one else suggested this but idk where i read it)

i do also see what you mean about presenting more on the ‘girl’ side because it’s not as obvious and it’s not just for girls. I also have ADHD and my dad realised when I was diagnosed that he might have it too because he recognised some of the symptoms in him - not as bad - but he wasn’t the stereotypical hyperactive person either - he’s 60.

I’m sure there’s no way his dad/family would have been looking for the signs, my parents didn’t notice and as far as I know none of my teachers did and it was the 2010s so I doubt they knew better in the 2000s.

Obviously I’m not saying he has it! I doubt he will/hope he’ll never read this. He does not need to be on Tumblr

yeah I think it’s so easy for people to write off an interest in sport/involvement in sport as something very very “normal” for boys. because it’s culturally normalised. and when it presents in a way that isn’t like the autism that’s been shown to the world as the majority (i.e: very “low-functioning”, non verbal, obvious stims, etc) i think it’s a lot harder to identify within yourself, or be identified by others around you.

and i know my parents intentionally didn’t try to get me checked for anything when i was younger because of the stigma around it. and i’m only two years younger than max. and he had a dad who was hellbent on making him a formula one champion and probably wouldn’t have had a favourable view of autism.

idk its interesting to think about and talk about that. though i’d never want it to catalyse into real pressure against him to reveal a diagnosis or to get diagnosed/not diagnosed whatever the case is.

[heartintact]

here’s a wishlist with a few plots based on guts by olivia rodrigo that i’d really really love to write! (you know the drill, ♡ or hmu if you want to plot any of them). all of them can be f/m or f/f (except for lacy, lacy is definitely sapphic):

get him back! “i wanna key his car, i wanna make him lunch, i wanna break his heart and then be the one to stitch it up”. gimme two muses who are absolutely obsessed with each other, they can go from love to hate so quickly it would give anyone else whiplash and they wouldn’t have it any other way. we can make them as crazy as we want to (i seriously mean this, please). muse b “won” the last break-up and now muse a is determined to get them back only to be the one who breaks their heart for the last time. but the game is harder than they think and it’s easy to forget the motive once they’re back together.

lacy. muse a is completely, irrevocably in love with her best friend, muse b. but of course, they won’t talk about it. gimme sapphic codependent doomed relationship where you’re not sure if you want to marry your bestie or just be her. gimme pining as they get ready to go out partying and sleepovers with wandering hands and the desperate desire to get someone’s approval but also the self-hate that comes with needing someone that much when they might not get it. it’s all so angsty and beautiful and intimate.

making the bed. “and i tell someone i love them just as a distraction, and they tell me that they love me like i’m some tourist attraction.” basically a self-sabotaging, heart-breaking plot where muse a and muse b thought they could get into a situationship and keep it casual, without developing real feelings but they obviously failed. i’m thinking it could’ve been a summer or winter love kind of thing that ended up terribly ‘cause they were being overly cautious with their emotions and ended up getting the other deeply hurt. we could begin once they meet again (on the next summer or winter break?) and the damage is already done.

all-american bitch. muse a is completely amazing at playing the “perfect girl” role, always smiling softly and saying the right thing even if it’s just a massive façade. deep inside, she’s full of anger and has a desire to seek revenge (for what, you may ask? idk, let's plot!). then comes muse b, who can see right through her act and is determined to bring out that honest, horrible and mean side of her.

bad idea, right? muse a and muse b broke up recently. it was the right decision, all their friends are happy about it, they were not good for each other. that doesn’t stop the constant texts asking each other to come over, the sneaking during parties for a quickie and the jealousy when they both start going on dates with other people. basically i’m dying for the bitter comments and the falling for each other and the “this is never going to happen again” promises that neither of them believe.

[sungbeam]

requests, the third round

a/n: yk,, i always say im not good with requests, but sometimes, i really do just need a whole system reboot and to look at other people's ideas 💀 so this is me trying 🤸‍♀️

NOW OPEN FROM TODAY, SEPT. 5TH TO FRIDAY, SEPT. 8TH !! NOW CLOSED

some ground rules:

✶ remember that i am Not Good At Requests. if i don't end up getting to yours/give up on them, then i'm sorry. if u want a guaranteed fic, u prob shouldn't come to my inbox :')

✶ this is my mainly sfw blog; pls keep all requests pg-13, suggestive at the most. here's a sample of how far i'm willing to go for the sake of readers on this blog.

✶ i'm very much willing to write about death, grief, violence, and blood, to an extent. pls do not send a request romanticizing toxic and/or abusive relationships, bc i will delete it.

✶ i write fem reader at default, but i am very much open to gn reader too. just be sure to specify!

✶ would i write a love triangle? a love square? a love octagon??? (yes, i'm bringing this back) if u want it, and i have the energy for it, lmk LMAO

✶ ONCE YOU HAVE SENT IN A REQUEST, i will update this post below the cut with requests i've received so far. pls check there for if i've seen your ask :]

how to request:

send a prompt(s)/au/song inspo/etc + genre(s) + desired idol boyo(s)!!

— i'll write for anyone from the EIGHT groups i have a masterlist for LOL (prob an emphasis on tbz but maybe this'll get me back to ncity, who knows)

— some prompt ideas: dialogue. question starters. fluff. hozier for vibes. from a villain. werewolf by night quotes.

request queue!

— if u told me i don't have to use all the prompts, i still put them down just so i have all the ideas in one place ^_^

lee hyunjae x "you feel like home to me" x debut/predebut era — from anon

jung wooyoung x "i could keep you safe. they’re all afraid of me" x "there’s nothing sweeter than my baby" x fluff, suggestive — from @jaehunnyy

lee hyunjae x e2l x "i don't understand why you have to torment me every second of the day! you were a sweetheart when you left, obviously life happened and now you're a devil! what the fuck, lee jaehyun?!" x "you don't understand how i think of you everyday when we were apart" x "i'm not saying that i'm using you but could you fix me? put me back together?" — from anon

kim sunwoo x e2l x spy au x angst x "working together again, it’s just like old times." x "clean yourself up. you're getting blood all over the place." x "the only one who gets to kill you, is me." x "enemies make the best lovers, you know. " x "why is it whenever we see each other, you’re covered in blood?" — from @shakalakaboomboo

hwang intak or yoon keeho x “it’s okay, you can touch me. i won't break.” x hurt/comfort — from anon

eric sohn x bffs2l x "was that your first kiss?" x "you can kiss me, you know." — from @mosviqu

eric sohn x “i’ve never cared for anyone the way i care for you” x “promise me you’ll still be here when i wake up?” — from @ericlvr

lee sangyeon x spy au x "what are you doing out here by yourself?" x "you gonna be a good girl for me?" x "they're dangerous? well unfortunately, so am i." x suggestive/action — from @winterchimez

choose an idol boy 😋 x actors au x e2l x happy ending by svt — from 🌷 anon

idol boy selection in progress x corpse bride au x horror — from 🌷 anon

lee juyeon(?) x soc/helnik au x "i fell in love with the fire long ago." — from @hqrana

xu minghao x "when i was a child, i heard voices… some would sing and some would scream." x "i’m standing in the ashes of who i used to be." x shang-chi au x angst and/or comfort — from @tranquilpetrichor

jacob bae or ji changmin x hozier's francesca x hurt/comfort, angst x a love that endures — from @zzoguri

ji changmin x new year's day (taylor swift) x fluff, comfort — from anon

jacob bae x band au x secret muse/songwriter au x vancouver by big naughty x busking — from @hongyangi

choi chanhee x e2l x she fell first, but he fell harder trope x banter/teasing — from @richasdiary

lee hyunjae x royalty au x poor girl/servant girl x royalty/prince au — from anon

lee hyunjae x bad boy good girl trope — from anon

kevin moon x older brother's best friend x secret relationship x "good morning, sleeping beauty." x "is that my shirt?" x "you look good like this." x "are you trying to get us in trouble?" x "are you sure this is a good idea?" x fluff, suggestive — from @confuchan

lee juyeon x "we can't keep doing this" x bffs 2 lovers — from anon

choi beomgyu x heartbreak girl by 5sos x angst, uber fluffy ending — from @loveliestfelix

lee jeno x best friends 2 lovers x dress by taylor swift — from anon

eric sohn x hands by flatsound x angst with or without a happy ending — from anon

eric sohn x “is that my shirt?” x fluff/suggestive — from anon

lee hyunjae x "you can hold my hand, if you want." x zombie apocalypse au — from anon

kim sunwoo x sweet nothing by taylor swift — from anon

[classic80sand90smovieloves2]

Young!Max having a crush on you would include~

(Not my gif)(Requested by my brain who wouldn’t let this idea leave it)

(Ah yes, the bi lifestyle: loving both women and Robert De Niro respectively)

- Moving to a different borough during his late teens gave Max the perfect opportunity to start fresh and find himself a girl who didn’t know what he looked like during his more gangly and awkward phases of adolescent growth. And that’s exactly what he did; though whether or not he was still gangly and awkward is definitely up for debate. 

- A pretty girl is a pretty girl but Max definitely has an especially stiff hard on for girls; or boys, who are “sinners”. He likes rambunctious people who get down and dirty, and who can hold their own against his equally unsavory “business practices”. He doesn’t see himself leaving this job of his anytime soon so he’s looking for someone who can roll with the punches, or at least someone who knows when to duck. 

- Max adheres to a pretty hard ‘love at first sight’ policy, if he likes someone, he likes them the first time he sees them, and it only spirals from there. That’s what’s good about him: your personality will be a plus but it technically doesn’t even matter. Whoever you turn out to be is irrelevant; he loves you from the beginning and he’s determined to love you no matter what. 

- For obvious reasons, the way Max goes about his crushes all depends on the type of person he’s managed to fall for. If the girl is sweet then he’s gonna find it a lot harder to get close to her, but if they’re on the “sour” side, he’ll find it a lot easier. He just knows how to handle and appeal to those types of characters a lot better. 

- He doesn’t really know how to act like a gentleman without it coming off as awkward and insincere so he’d probably just play into the whole “rapscallion thing” and teasingly make himself out to be some sort of thug: all the while behaving in an obviously good natured way so you; the “good girl”, don’t actually see him as a threat or think he’s willing to hurt you. He might pull your leg or act unceremonious and uncivilized but that’s just his personality; and the personality of most teenage boys in your area so it doesn't scare you off. 

- Although, as I said before: Max is typically attracted to people who aren’t very innocent and sweet. You don’t have to be born with a “how to pick pocket” pamphlet in your brain, but having a mind that conjures up insults and quick comebacks will definitely help your case.

- When you meet him for the first time, he’ll undoubtedly manage to get a rise out of you and though you’re trying your best to scare him off; what with all your insults and other signs of verbal distaste for him, all you manage to do is draw him and make him want to know you even more. 

- Unfortunately for you, Max’s usual method for making new friends is trying to prove that he’s better than or just as good as them. Impressing them by triumphing over them and making sure that they don’t write him off too quickly; even if it means that they initially dislike him. 

- Max isn’t shy in the slightest: he’ll interject himself into your life as soon as possible and probably piss you off in the process, all before redeeming himself in one way or another; forcing you to drop your animosity towards him against your own better judgement.

- If you’re the type of girl who’s willing to do some terrible shit for some money, he’d probably tease you about being “just a girl” but wouldn't miss the opportunity to get close to you; either convincing you to join forces with him after seeing how much potential you have or taking you in under his wing/letting you join his makeshift business after you approach him yourself. 

- He uses this newfound relationship of yours to get closer to you and otherwise cockblock you. Oh, what’s this? You’re talking to another boy? Time to call you over when he really doesn’t need to and either divvy up your cash or brief you on your next set of shenanigans. 

- He’d make jokes about your “new romance” with another boy but would grow annoyed and act somewhat betrayed whenever you’d blow him off to hang out with them. He’d never come up with an arguably valid excuse; mainly because he didn’t have one, but he’d say something along the lines of how the two of you are partners and that you need to stick together and trust no one else. 

- Sometimes you’ll get into fights over his possessiveness or in your eyes; his moodiness/pushiness, but you’re never able to stay mad at each other for very long. You’ll walk down the street, swearing you won’t talk to him for the rest of your life but a few glances from across the road as he works for his mother; seeing the way he stops in his tracks to stare at you and the way his eyes hold a hope that you’ll approach him, and your resolve breaks little by little; even if you really want to punish him.

- Working for his mother gave him a surprising amount of strength and he likes to use it to his advantage from time to time: picking you up and helping you down from places regardless of whether or not you actually need him to; playing chivalrous. He always feels a wave of pride wash over him when you look to him whenever you need some help; especially if there’s other boys there that you could have or maybe even should have asked. It inflates his ego to consider the fact that you think he’s the strongest one in the vicinity.

- Whenever him and his mother drive around town; particularly if you aren’t very close yet, he likes to smile down and offer you a ride: helping you up happily if you shyly agree and sitting thigh to thigh as you ride on the little step in back.

- He walks you home and to school a lot as well; even though he doesn’t go himself (I think?). He gets up early to walk with you yet plays it off like he has things to do whenever you ask why he’s awake; even though his job doesn’t start for another hour or he took off just to come and take you. 

- His arm around your shoulders while he guides you around town. He always makes a joke out of it, slinging his arm around you while he makes some sort of teasing comment, but it allows him to be affectionate with you and scare off potential suitors all the same.

- He’s kind of a little asshole but he’s also sort of cute with it. Like yes, he pushed you into a pool of water; clothes and all, but he did jump in after you and the two of you did have a lot of fun. They’re the sorts of things that you brush off as stupid situations that all guys get into with their male friends; things you’d know nothing about since you’re a girl and always left out of them, but it’s definitely more of a “stupid things guys do when they have a crush” sort of thing and an attempt to tear down your walls and get closer to you. 

- He looks back at these moments fondly and thinks of them as proof that you have to like him back or at least be close to realizing that you have all along. He imagines that you can use them as evidence to choose him over someone else or that you’ll both be able to think back of them years down the line and reminisce about how the two of you fell in love. 

- He’s definitely stolen some kind of jewelry for you and though you have to hide it from your mother; knowing you’d never be able to explain or come up with an excuse, you still wear it every day and night. 

- If you’re particularly small or of the innocent variety then he’d definitely be fairly protective of you: acting like your knight in shining armor and keeping an eye on you, making sure you stay relatively out of trouble and always having your back against the dangerous fools of the city.

- Him getting into a fight over you is pretty much inevitable. The minute a guy disrespects or threatens you, he loses his temper and winds up rolling around on the ground with them; getting in as many punches as he can. 

- It isn’t often but he’ll occasionally get himself into worrying situations just to have you show that you care for him; especially if you’re a ‘play it cool’ type of person. He’ll pretend to drown or say something about him being in danger or he’ll purposefully scuff himself up to see if you’ll notice and care: and he’s always ecstatic to see that you do; even if you merely make a joke about it or pretend like you care a lot less than you really do. 

- There are definitely times during your friendship where you jokingly pretend to be husband and wife: jokingly because he’s absolutely only joking. He’s just calling you dearest for the bit haha. It’s so funny when you rest your head lovingly on his shoulder and stroll with him arm in arm. Finishing each others sentences really takes this comedic routine to the next level haha.

- Your ability to momentarily fluster him is unmatched; even if you don't quite notice the fact that you’ve made him nervous or the reason you've somehow attained this new skill.

- He’s got a lot of pictures of you on his camera. Most of them are joking, a sort of “oh, come and model for me” brand of over exaggerated poses, but he’ll also occasionally catch you off guard with a quick “look over here” and a flash of the light. Sometimes you’ll take them purposefully and try to look tough or cool; something he finds particularly adorable, and other times he’ll use the excuse of wanting to see how well it works to get close ups and candid photos of you. They’re some of his most treasured possessions.

- He looks you up and down and watches you under his lashes a lot: and if you were ever paying enough attention to notice or were just a bit more knowledgeable when it came to romance; you’d easily be able to tell that he was in love with you just from those little looks alone. 

- He spies on you but he’s a whole lot better at not being caught then Noodles is so sorry but you’ll probably never find out about his creepy occasional habit.

- At some point, he learns the usefulness of a bra and subsequently hands you things he needs you to hold and/or hide. Later looking at them like “oh dear, this has touched the tit of the woman I love” or sneaking glances at you as you dig everything out of your shirt once you've both gotten away from the scene of the crime.

- Okay, but him dressing you up in his old hand-me-downs in an attempt to keep you safe and make it easier for you to run and him falling even more in love with you as a butch, soot and sweat covered little girl; head over heels for you the same way a normal boy would react to seeing a girl in her Sunday best. 

- Speaking of clothes: at some point, you’ll find yourself in love with another boy; enough to where you’re attempting to dress up and make yourself more presentable, and though you insist it’s for another reason entirely, he’ll know why you’re doing it immediately and the thought of it will kill him. He'll feel betrayed and like the guy is unworthy and he’ll probably make comments about how “if a guy doesn't like you in your normal clothes then he wont like you in a fancy dress”. And though the comments bother you, you try not to take them to heart: responding with something like “I don’t know what you’re talking about” or how “if anyone if going to like [you] they’re gonna have to realize you’re a girl.”. 

- I don’t think that Max would confess, I think he’d just lay one on you one day and keep kissing you until you melted or wrenched yourself away from him; if only to look at him in surprise and ask what he “did that for”.

“Cause I wanted to.” He’d say out of breath and you’d pause before saying something like ‘oh,’ or ‘you could have asked’; as you took into consideration exactly what he was trying to tell you. 

“Can I” He’d respond and after a small pause, you’d agree and he’d grin; glancing down at your lips before crushing you to him once again. 

[hypnotisedfireflies]

Hi ! First of all, I love your fics, thank you for creating the amazing Driftersverse !

I was wondering, how would Joel react if someone was hitting on/flirting with Tess in Jackson ? Or how would Tess react if someone was hitting on Joel in Jackson ? 🤔 Just someone trying to shoot his shot even if they know Tess and Joel are "partners" 🤔

Hi anon!  Thank you for a fun ask. :)

It’s really funny because the jealousy/possessiveness trope is actually one of my favourites to both write and read about but I just don’t feel it for them in this story.  I think it’s because I wanted to establish this bond between Tess and Joel, this thread of total trust in all things that they actually feel so secure in their relationship they have literally zero fear of anyone else being a credible threat.

Tess used Keisha for the lulz in Sioux Falls, frequently leaving Joel to his own devices to suffer awkwardly:

“You are so sure of yourself that I wouldn’t – can you not be a little jealous, Tess?”

“No,” she laughed. “She’s not your type.”

The only time she did feel jealous was at the situation, not of Keisha herself:

Nothing Keisha had done so far had made Tess feel even the smallest twinge of jealousy. But today, sitting in the stupid diner with her sister-in-law’s broken heart and pretending even harder than usual that there was nothing romantically substantial between her and Joel - performing that there was nothing romantically substantial – she experienced a stab of jealously powerful enough hurt.

For Joel’s part, the only time in the story he has any doubts is when he finds Tess’s secret cache in Dusk.  He’s confused by the presence of a romantic poem that he’s never seen before and is obviously precious to her:

“Are you jealous?”

“I don’t know. Never felt jealous when it came to you. Never had a reason not to trust you.”

Lachie even presumes Joel might have been jealous of his time with Tess, which Joel shuts down without anger or pause:

 And no. I did not fuck her, because I'm sure that's crossed your twisted -"

So really, for all the messed-up codependency and thrall they have one another in, Tess and Joel really do trust one another so implicitly in Driftersverse that being jealous of the other isn’t something that even crosses their minds.  So at least that’s healthy?  Lol.

"You're not her type."

Would people hit on them in Jackson?  Probably, yes.  Jackson is a small pool of people and let’s face it, they’re both hot af.  (Everybody in Indy was fucking one another by the time they escaped, with the exception of them, because they were all trapped with each other and had basically nothing else to do.)

Tess would still make a game out of it.  If it got to the point where the person didn’t get the picture or they became too aggressive she’d be like, “Okay, fun’s over, you need to get the fuck out of here now.”

Joel would miss it entirely if it was a woman flirting with Tess.  I seriously do not think he’d pick up on that.

Historically, people left Tess alone and didn’t flirt with her because Joel was scary and he (and sometimes Tommy, when he was still present) kicked the shit out of anyone who got close as a preventative measure – something Tess had no idea about until much later.  Joel was acutely aware of the dangers that faced her, as a woman, in a lawless world. From The Knight of Cups:

"You ever think what people like him will do to someone like her?"

His motivations for those preventative attacks were rooted in fear for her safety as opposed to jealousy.

So while he would not necessarily hold fears that Tess would be reciprocating any flirtation, he would probably struggle not to go back to that old way of dealing with interest in her.  You can bet Tommy has put the hard word on him that he cannot do that kind of thing in Jackson.  So Joel would be giving these people his asshole eyes from across the room and lbh, that’s probably enough to scare them away anyway. 

I hope that answers your ask, anon!  I am plotting an AU Outbreak-didn’t-happen-they-still-meet story and the jealousy trope does play into that one in a big way – different circumstances, I can work with it this time! So yeah, that’s a thing, whenever I can get there. :D

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I got a really interesting reply to one of my posts the other day, and that reminded me that Last Week Tonight s09e10, from last May, is one of my favourite episodes of that show. Certainly my favourite of the last couple of seasons, and one of the best they’ve ever done, I think. I decided to re-watch it today, and write down some stuff about what I think makes it so good.

First of all, obviously the two issues discussed are important. I’m pretty sure that episode was meant to be just about the then-upcoming Philippines’ election, but the draft of the decision to overturn Roe v Wade was leaked that week, so they added a story about that as well. My guess is that they’d been working on the abortion story anyway, presumably knowing this was coming since Amy Coney Barrett got confirmed on the Supreme Court, but had it planned for a future episode and made a last-minute decision to add it to that one in light of the surprise leak.

The abortion story was huge, obviously. It’s one of the biggest historic moments in American politics in my lifetime. Much bigger than, say, the election of Donald Trump. Because this is the overturning of something that’s been this way for decades, and getting it back in place will take a lot more than four years. It’s also a really, really big deal. Abortion rights are tied to pretty much every other aspect of life in a prosperous society – education, employment, socioeconomic mobility, domestic violence, child and family poverty rates, obviously short- and long-term health care, obviously social and economic gender equality, and stability of life in general.

Americans who were very young when this was changed are going to grow up in a world where it’s normal for Roe v Wade to not exist, and that is going to create a fundamental shift in the culture with incredibly far-reaching and long-term consequences. It moves the Overton window, moves what rights people think they’re inherently owed. Even if states where it remains legal, it becomes up for debate instead of inalienable. It’s a reminder what at one time or in place is seen as a fundamental right that needs to be open to everyone, can, in a different time or a different place, be debatable or just not there at all.

Every time there’s a federal election in Canada, the news covers whether certain populations are being disenfranchised, including the prison population. They covers ways that prisoners’ constitutional right to vote, arguably (and it’s a strong argument, in my opinion) the most inalienable right we have in a democracy, is being functionally denied to them because Elections Canada is failing to cater to them. Yes, a prisoner could technically write a letter to request a mail-in ballot, get it, and send it in. But even then there are problems with prisons not treating that mail with the appropriate care, not postmarking it correctly, letting it get lost. And it only works if they prepare many weeks in advance; sometimes the process of getting and sending in a ballot from prison can take longer than the election campaign, which means the vote can’t be counted. Some prisons offer polling stations in there, but even then it often isn’t open for long enough for everyone to use it. Therefore, there are several organizations working to make sure every single prison has a polling station that’s available to every single prisoner.

CBC ran stories about this in the last two Canadian federal elections, and I always found it interesting because I have an uncle who lives in America and was in prison for a couple of years there, and he can’t vote at all. Not just couldn’t vote while he was in prison – he can’t even vote now that he’s been out for quite a few years. And not just that voting isn’t made accessible enough for him, that they put up barriers that makes it harder to vote on a practical level. He’s just not legally allowed to vote.

It’s so different – here, we’re arguing about how it’s not fair that it’s hard for them to access this inherent democratic right, which compromises the entire concept of democracy if it’s taken away. There, apparently some states are debating about whether to give them the right at all. Which is an interesting view for the country of “no taxation without representation” (and to avoid falsely claiming too much high ground, it’s also interesting that in Canada, a lot of the athletes I coach are immigrants, here completely legally but with some status besides citizenship, they and their families work and pay taxes but still can’t vote, and it’s almost like taxation’s ties to representation matter less when a statistical majority of the people affected are not white).

That’s something I thought of when Roe v Wade was overturned. How soon people will be used to this, and the debate in many American states will stop being about how to make abortion accessible on a practical level, it’ll become whether to allow it at all. For almost my whole lifetime, I’ve seen news stories in the States and in Canada (again, Canada can’t claim a lot of high ground on this one) about how it’s a problem that so many people who want to access their fundamental right to health care in this way are blocked due to everything from not enough clinics to high costs to mobs of threatening protesters who block the entrances. But soon, like with prisoners’ enfranchisement, it will just be the status quo in many American states that if the debate ever comes up at all, it’s about whether to allow it, not how to make it accessible.

Anyway, those are some rambling thoughts on why the first story in that Last Week Tonight episode was of monumental importance. The second story, about the election in the Philippines, was also incredibly important, though I’m not going to say so much about it just because I don’t want to be that Western person giving my views on a story about a country I know little about, where most of my knowledge comes from that 20-minute Last Week Tonight segment. I do have a little more than that, CBC covered the story at the time, but not enough for me to actually know what I’m talking about. Having said that, a small amount of knowledge around the world about this is better than none, so I think it’s very good that they did that story.

Both stories illustrate what Last Week Tonight does well, which is tell a story from something closer to the beginning than what we often hear. They back up and give context, not just recent context but historical context as well. Why is this happening and how did we get here? That’s something I find interesting to know about everything, and for small things that I like, digging up all the history is allowed to just be interesting. But for big issues with actual impact, understanding historical context is much more than just an interesting hobby - it’s vital. Forgetting historical context is a massive underlying cause of, not to overstate it (and I don’t think this is overstating it), pretty much every major problem in the entire world. Both the abortion story and the Philippines’ election story were stories about what happens when we ignore historical context, and this episode make an effort to cram a summary of as much history as possible into two twenty-minute segments to try to kick a small dent into the problem.

Okay. So that’s the important stuff in this episode. The important, globally impactful issues that the episode took on. But aside from that, I’ve realized that about 3/4 of a year later, a number of little bits from that one episode have stuck in my mind and my vocabulary, even if they didn’t take off for the rest of the world. I can think of three in particular, which ends up being quite a lot for one 40-minute episode of television.

First off, the beginning. I still remember when I started this episode – I was house sitting at the time, and sitting in the bedroom of that other person’s house with my laptop, not prepared for this. It had been a long week of getting angry about things, including about the American abortion draft leak, and I knew Last Week Tonight would spend some time validating my anger, and that would be a bit difficult in the moment but make it easier overall. However, it doesn’t start that way. It eases into that with some silly jokes about pop culture or whatever, so I sat down expecting that.

He came straight out with: “I’m John Oliver, thank you so much for joining us, look, it’s been a truly terrible week.” Writing that down now, I’m not even sure why it hit me so hard in the moment, but it did. Because he has done lots of shows after some fucking awful weeks, but still starts with some kind of joke. It marked this out as special, showed awareness of the gravity of the situation, right out of the gate. He then told us this week had been so bad they were going to make the unusual move of having two main stories, because they couldn’t leave one out. And then he jumped straight into the first one, without doing the usual opening pop culture jokes.

Then he reminds us of the episode they did, in an early Last Week Tonight season, about the erosion of access to abortion. In that episode, they had a running thing where he kept saying he knew it was depressing, but he had a video of sloths playing that he’d show us at the end, as a reward for us sitting through this harrowing story. The episode did end with some absolutely adorable sloths in a bucket, it was lovely.

In the May 2022 episode, he told us: “If you’re expecting something similar this time, I’ve got some bad news for you: Those sloths are dead now.” The original abortion episode aired in February 2016, and that line is just such a perfect encapsulation of how the world has changed since February 2016. In February 2016, the big threat to abortion was a rule that said it could not be carried out in a facility with hallways that were too narrow. People were fighting tooth and nail to avoid having that rule pass, because it would make it harder for people to access their constitutionally guaranteed right. Those sloths are dead now. On the 2012 American election campaign trail, Mitt Romney was accused of using coded language that could be interpreted as racist if you can decode the dog whistle, and this was seen as a big problem. Those sloths are dead now.

Personally, I think that should become an actual meme. I think “those sloths are dead now” should be understood to mean things have fallen so far that what seemed like a big deal years ago is completely gone and we’re in a different world.

It doesn’t have to be about politics, either. I almost used that in a post I made last week, about what comedy I got into in 2022. I said I listened to Daniel Kitson’s stand-up shows on from every year between 2004 and 2009, in chronological order. Throughout them, he built up this beautiful world that he lived in of fun and magic and community, and of course there was melancholy and frustration and uncertainty, but it had an underlying theme of being so sure that he’d surrounded himself with what he loved. Then, according to the Bandcamp catalogue, he just drops off for four years, and comes back in 2013, like: all those sloths are dead now. In that case, it didn’t mean the whole world had gone to shit. It meant his friends moved away and had kids and apparently this is just what life is like until you die. But when explaining how bleak it felt to go straight from 2004-2009 to 2013 in his shows, I almost said it was like when John Oliver re-visited the abortion issue six years after his original episode on it and just said “all those sloths are dead now.” I didn’t say that in my post, because that post was already way too long and I didn’t want to add an explanation of what this Last Week Tonight reference means. Therefore, I think that should take off as a meme so we can all use it and be understood without having to stop and explain it. If I say “all those sloths are dead now”, that’s what I mean. Glad we’re all on the same page.

Next, still near the beginning, John Oliver quotes something that says abortion is not entrenched in the United States’ history and traditions. I knew what his response would be before he even said it, because I know what the correct response to that is and I know John Oliver gets these things right. The correct response is 1) America does, in fact, have a long history of people getting abortions in one way or another so that statement is incorrect, and 2) that’s not the point, it wouldn’t matter if it were true, we should not base today’s rights on what’s rooted in tradition. John Oliver expressed that point as:

“Even if that were true, which by the way, fuck off, the framers probably left off the specific right to abortion because they couldn’t anticipate it being such a massive concern.”

Unlike with the sloth thing, this was far from the original version of that way of putting things, but it’s something I really like. Because I really hate the oversimplifications that occur in public discourse, so in the arguments that I’m having in my own head with everyone else in the world for every moment of every day (and sometimes out loud or in writing as well, but definitely always internally), I am constantly adding caveats and “okay, three things about that”, and “well in this case it would be this but in that case it would be another thing” and “even if that were true, it would still be like, but if it weren’t true then this, and also a secret third thing, does that cover all the bases?”

This is a very tiring way to go about life, so I really like it when comedians do that thing where they pretend they’re about to go into a complicated explanation of something, and then say “fuck off” instead. It’s not a bit that John Oliver invented, and it’s definitely not a bit that he invented in May 2022 (I’m fairly sure I’ve heard him do it as early as 2007), but it’s one he quite likes and I enjoy it every time. It’s just wonderfully cathartic to hear someone say, “Actually, I’m not going to waste my time engaging with your bad faith argument, I’m going to say fuck you and move on. So fuck you.”

Again, this is unlike “all those sloths are dead now” in that John Oliver did not invent it. Hari Kondabolu has a bit I like, where he says that sometimes people ask him why he doesn’t do an accent when quoting his parents during a stand-up routine, and pauses like he’s about to go into an nuanced explanation of how the way his parents speak is not inherently demeaning but in a culture that demeans Indian accents he doesn’t want to play into that, and then he just says, “And the reason I don’t do the accent is because fuck you, that’s why.”

It's also used nicely in this antidote to the Jordan Peterson fans’ cries of “But any argument against Peterson that doesn’t involve watching many many hours of his lectures so you know all of his talking points and can respond exactly to every single thing he’s ever said is just lacking nuance, you can’t just hear him say something misogynist or transphobic or racist and say that’s wrong, that means you don’t have a deep enough understanding, you’re just throwing surface-level insults at him because you don’t understand his depths!” Spoiler alert: Even if you do watch many many hours of his lectures so you can know exactly what you’re talking about and engage with all his points, they still won’t accept any criticism of him, I had a waste a lot of my own time to learn that and I highly recommend that no one else bother to do so. Listening to a band reply to those cries with “Call this our ad hominem and go the fuck away” is very satisfying, if you happen to have wasted too many hours thinking anyone would be swayed by genuine discussion.

Anyway, the point is that John Oliver saying that in that episode, and in that way, now comes into my mind every time I do that, saying “fuck off” instead of making a point that I cannot be bothered to make. So that’s another really small moment from this one episode that has endured for months with me. But there was one more thing like that, a bit from near the end of this episode that I liked so much I cut out and saved the clip at the time.

Personally, I believe this one should also be a meme. Later on when I was listening to the post-Oliver Bugle episodes, and heard a bit that seemed relevant, I cut that out and put them together. So you can click that link to see how the original video clip sounded, and the sort of thing I mean when I point out the versatility of that phrase as a meme. But I think all we really need to have that meme take off is this gif:

I think there are many contexts in which this is an appropriate reaction gif. So here you go, internet, that one’s yours to keep.

Finally, it’s somewhat common for people to make jokes about how Netflix will give a stand-up special to anyone who wants to talk shit about minorities for an hour, but I’d like to give some credit to Last Week Tonight for going as far as to mock up an image of what a fictional one of those would look like. It’s a very accurate parody:

All that in one slightly extended episode - this one was about 40 minutes instead of the usual 30-ish. And that is my thesis on why s09e10, in May 2022, is one of the best Last Week Tonight episodes of all time.

[thestobingirlie]

(Same anon complaining about fruity four)

Oh my god, the casual homophobia in teens these days, especially from within the community. I'm older genZ, at 25. I have been openly queer for over a decade.

When I first came out all the homophobia I saw/ experienced was from outside the community, casual use of the f and d slurs, using gay as an insult/ synonym for bad, using fruit/ fruity in a derogatory way, and your typical hate crimes/ hate speech.

Now, most of what I see/ hear comes from LGBT+ teens. I have heard teens in a pretty conservative town asking other people (Including adults) if they're fruity. Loudly discussing how strangers are "obviously queer" without caring who is around. And the whole trend of "Is he y'know *limp wrists*?" And the push of micro labels onto almost everyone, who don't want or need to use them.

This links back to the whole "fruity four" thing, because all of these things are used in so many fics for them. Eddie will be limp wristing at everyone. They'll all be describing themselves as fruity. Steve will keep using the word queer to describe his sexuality. Yeah, sure creative liberties and whatever. But it feels unrealistic for a group of teens in the mid '80s. They wouldn't be using all these things that are common in kids now, because they were used in a very derogatory and dangerous way in the '80s. They're teens in a small town in the '80s, they probably wouldn't feel comfortable reclaiming the word queer, let alone half the other stuff they get written as doing when they're written as queer. And they wouldn't be well versed in queer culture of the time, let alone that of today.

i think the reason for this is that these teens are only experiencing queer culture online. the most they get in real life is a commercialised version of pride. all they really know are tiktok comments, where it’s encouraged to imply someone is gay, and loudly discuss what a celebrities sexual orientation might be. outing someone isn’t seen as bad because coming out is seen as a necessity now. i’ve even seen people say that it’s morally wrong and lying not the tell someone you’re gay, which is just insane.

i’ve even seen this post critiquing the word queer because it’s “too vague”… wtf. and yeah! there’s this weird thing where people expect you to totally analyse every aspect of your sexuality and gender and have the perfect word to describe it, and if you don’t totally fit what they think a sexuality is, you’re wrong. and it’s so tiring.

some fics just make it so obvious that they’re writing from a 21st century perspective. like, i’m not saying to write the teens being violently homophobic or anything, but you’ve just got so many st teens treating sexuality with a gentleness and understanding the complexity of it that they just wouldn’t have.

like, robin always knows what bisexual is in fics, she knows the word for it, and she knows exactly what steve is before he even knows. and eddie is flagging and knows exactly what every colour flag mean and he’s a sado dom in small town indiana. and it’s like, get a grip.

i think, when it comes to like robin and steve, it wouldn’t be until they left hawkins, and moved into a city and actually started interacting with queer culture that they would start to refer to themselves with labels. i think in a town like hawkins, where an identity is used to insult you and you really don’t have any other queer people around, it’s harder to just call yourself a dyke or queer. (which is why i love stobin in their 20s exploring queer culture and being able to feel comfortable in themselves and the way they present, because they just really couldn’t do that in the teens).

[wonkyreads]

I used to write reviews here instead of just Goodreads. I’m hoping to going back to that, but to be honest, I moved last year and don’t have space for my books. This means I stopped taking pictures for the BPCs, so I stopped taking pictures of my recent reads, so posting here felt pointless. I like ranting here, though. Next year, I will attempt to keep that up.

For this year, take an end of the year top worst and best. (And keep in mind these are obviously just my opinions! This list also doesn’t reflect the books I DNF’d because I don’t consider them read personally.)

Top 10 Worst Reads of 2022

10. The Themis Files by Sylvain Neuvel

- So this is a sci-fi trilogy where a girl accidentally discovers a giant mecha hand buried deep underground and grows up to be a scientist and studies/digs up all of these mecha pieces. The first book is genuinely good, but the arguments and plot lines the author decided to take with the rest of the series progressively pissed me off more and more, though. Not a bad series, just ultimately not one I enjoyed.

9. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

- I feel I’m gonna piss a fair amount of people off with this one, but it won’t be the last time in this list. With how popular this book is online I don’t feel the need to explain what the plot here is. The writing of this book was beautiful, definitely, it was the content I couldn’t stand. I’m a fan of angst. This was not angst. This was throwing a shelf’s worth of terrible things into a sack and shaking it up to see what happened. This was actively attempting to make people feel things in a way that felt so over the top and transparent that I found myself hardly caring at all. To me, this reeks of romanticizing queer trauma and just trauma in general. I’m just not here for it. Show me redemption or healing, they’re harder to write anyway since it seemed all Yanagihara cared about was the mechanics behind the story and not the story itself.

8. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini

- This book is kind of a modern classic and it’s just… I’m not sure how I was supposed to sympathize with the main character. This is the story of Amir and Hassan, two boys in Afghanistan in the 70’s. Hassan’s father works for Amir’s, but the book spends a large amount of time trying to guilt you into feeling bad for Amir, our main character. That’s kind of the whole plot (without spoilers) as I remember it if I’m being honest. The writing was fine and I’ve liked Hosseini’s books in the past, I just disliked the main character so much it kind of ruined everything. I disliked feeling guilty for not liking him. It all kind of got in the way of the message for me.

7. The Bodyguard by Katherine Center

- Hannah’s a bodyguard and Jake’s a down-to-earth movie star who seems to have a stalker problem. I adore the concept, but I think my main problem with this book is that I hyped it up for myself and told myself I’d love it. That and the premise felt like a promise of some kind of danger and by the time anything actually dangerous happened it was so ridiculous I laughed at it. It’s the over-the-top kind of romance I tend to not like, though. I fully admit to skimming the epilogue because I also kind of hate romance novels that do that.

6. We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange

- Sunday Brennan gets into a drunk driving accident and then must swallow her pride and move back to New York where her large Irish Catholic family pretends they don’t need her either. This book is about family secrets, but all I really remember about it is that it did this really bad, gimmicky thing where every chapter ended with the same exact sentence, usually dialogue, that the next chapter began with. When it’s done a couple times to show that we’re in the same scene we just left only in a different perspective, or better yet the two perspectives don’t hear the dialogue the same way, it’s fine. But it was every single chapter. Every one of them. I’m also super picky about domestic drama books like this. Hard pass for me.

5. A History of Wild Places by Shae Earnshaw

- Honestly, I’m not sure how to some this up without spoilers so I’ll just say it’s a cult-y mystery told in multiple time lines. This is the second book I’ve read by Earnshaw and both were promising starts with disappointing developments for me. For me, the book was too predictable to be satisfying and, worse, often it felt like the most boring option was constantly being chosen. The concept was originally very promising, but the closer I got to the end and realized the twist wasn’t going to be fun or interesting, the more reading the book started to feel like a chore.

4. There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

- Oof. I don’t know how I picked this book up and didn’t expect it to be a teen slasher. I’ll watch a slasher any day of the week (including the movie made from this book), but reading them is kind of boring. You know the tropes, so when they’re followed it’s anticlimactic. I also found some of the character interactions hard to believe, which didn’t help raise my opinion any. I’m just harsh on thrillers and any books involving “small towns.”

3. Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

- When his BFF Eddie, and definitely not his boyfriend, dies of apparent suicide, Andrew moves into Eddie’s old house with Eddie’s friends to find proof that Eddie’d been killed. There’s also some supernatural stuff and dark academia themes. This is another opinion I feel will make enemies, and it’s one I’ve actually posted here before. I read this book so early in the year that I’ve forgotten most of the specifics about it. What I remember disliking the most, though, was along the same lines as A Little Life. So much felt like it was just there to romanticize queer pain and what was left outside of that was a disappointingly slow mystery that didn’t really surprise or scare me. I think the conversations this book attempted to have were interesting, I just also think it failed to pull it all off. I didn’t believe or feel these characters. I didn’t care for how much it read like Ronan (of The Raven Boys) fanfic. I was consistently annoyed with smart characters avoiding the plot line or making idiotic choices. Also, I’m still traumatized by how obsessed literally everyone was with Eddie, I’m genuinely avoiding books using that name now. All around, absolutely wasn’t for me.

2. Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma

- Romance is not my genre. Romance that is so over-the-top crazy unrealistic is super not my genre. This book follows Kareena and Dr. Dil in a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew. Kareena is supposed to get married before her younger sister and her family is pressuring her, also her dad is selling her childhood home. Dr. Dil hosts a TV show and wants to raise money for his community clinic. I disliked Dr. Dil so, so much and Kareena was so inconsistent. The book felt so unedited and contradictory that I was constantly annoyed with it. The balance between show and tell was nonexistent; you can’t tell me what these characters are and not back it up and expect me to like them or believe them. People’s reactions were crazy over-the-top sometimes and if I have to ask of people actually act like that in real life, I’m already frustrated. I adore The Taming of the Shrew. I could watch 10 Things I Hate About You on repeat. I wanted to love this book so, so badly and was so utterly disappointed in what I got.

And last, but certainly least:

1. Verity by Colleen Hoover

- Verity was one of my most recent reads (I, regrettably, listened to it while icing sugar cookies for Christmas) and it follows Lowen attempting to write the end to a book series she’s never read before by snooping through the original authors memoir manuscripts. Or something. I have never read a Colleen Hoover book before and bought this one through audible years ago because everyone seemed to love it so much. This book has a 4.4 rating on Goodreads. I would just like to know how. Honestly. Talk about unbelievable characters! There were so many unnecessary gratuitous sex scenes in this book and just.. laughable suspense. A lot of the “twists” in this book were so predictable, but I do have a few questions; namely, how the fuck did Jeremy’s milquetoast ass get two women to become so obsessed with him so fast? Also, do people actually think like Lowen does? Holy shit. No really, I have SO many questions and I’m fairly certain none of them are the kind Hoover intended for me to have. I could go on for hours but I’m attempting to avoid spoilers and also it’s a fairly loved book and I don’t want to verge into the territory of yucking someone’s yum or anything, I just genuinely don’t understand. 4.4! Jesus Christ!