#it's so nice actually to have a doctor whose primary concern is my comfort even without me having to say/ask for that first

[supercantaloupe]

i actually had a dr's appt this morning (regular checkup) and. man do you know how relieving it is to hear her say "weight's not important, just as long as you're active" when asked if i exercise

[sleepymarmot]

The Untamed liveblog, eps. 8-15

8

The rabbit scene was already in the previous episode! What is this editing? Are these episodes from different cuts of the show or something?

Why is it unmanly to hold rabbits? Also DON'T THROW SMALL ANIMALS LIKE INANIMATE OBJECTS FOR FUCK'S SAKE

Ok but I'm getting concerned for these rabbits. Did Yi feed them before? Has WWX been feeding them since then? Are they gonna be alright? This is very important!

Does the phrase that LWJ keeps really mean "How boring"? That doesn't make much sense.

Oh so that's the name of the guy who hangs out with WWX... I've been wondering for several episodes

wtf is happening in the falling petal scene

I'm getting the feeling that a full-sized adventure got condensed into two scenes. WTF does "The Yin Iron deprived the peony, the leading flower, and the true Lady Florist was held in captivity" mean???

Anyway why are you sharing this top-secret info, that even your siblings aren't allowed to know, with a buddy from your class?

Clever trick, Wen Qing!

9

Am I finally getting a back-to-back fight?..

So, if the statues steals people's "spiritual cognition" (=souls?), and the Wen guy making them into puppets was a separate thing, then why did their spiritual cognition return not when the statue was subdued, but when Wen's bird was killed?

Wait, since when does Jiang Cheng know about the Yin Iron?

10

WWX is SO offended someone wants to be more smug and insolent than him

So now they're talking openly about the Yin Iron right in front of those two strangers...

How did they start the conversation at night in one location and continue at daytime at a different location, and not the one where the characters were heading

Seriously who tf calls their castle "The Unclean Realm"

Does Xue Yang's face not get tired from non-stop smirking? Is it frozen like this? Is he this world's Joker?

omg did LWJ just smile at hearing WWX's voice

Alright, when 10 minutes ago I thought "Meng Yao, sweetie, kill that clown", this is not what I had in mind

SOMEBODY GIVE MENG YAO A HUG (after some emergency medical care) HE HAS DONE NOTHING WRONG IN HIS LIFE. Can Xichen adopt him now?

11

Wow, the Jiangs seem to have an actually healthy family relationsh-- *the mother shows up* Uh, nevermind

Why is the Lan Grand Master suddenly dying?

LWJ gave up himself and the Iron shard just to save one traitor?!

I hope everyone enjoys their time in Morrowind! (They obviously won't)

12

*insert a quarantine joke here*

Wow, LWJ switched to the protective mode very unexpectedly (Is that because he just lost his entire clan and therefore the primary subject of his loyalty? and the next in line, to everyone’s surprise, was WWX?)

this beast is the least convincing special effect I've ever seen, including 60s Doctor Who

13

"stranded together and tending to each other's wounds while trying to repress your feelings" in a TV show instead of AO3 makes me feel like I'm in a parallel dimension

for a few wild moments I thought he was going to suck infected blood out of his leg

Just! Do! It! The long fucking stare where he's Considering killed me.

"Let's trigger your crush's PTSD to make him talk about it" and other useful therapy tricks

14

I really didn't get what LWJ was doing in the fight scene. He was describing a technique of killing with strings physically, right, not with the sound they produce? Which made me think he had a spare set of strings on his person, which would have been a refreshing change from all other fictional battle musicians who never carry backup, but from the montage sequence it was pretty clear he just collected bowstrings, and also iirc he summons his guqin anyway. But also it really doesn't look like he accomplished much behind injuring his own hand.

you can have hurt/comfort in both directions, as a treat

dude, just relax and don't try to make it less awkward

a whole-ass flashback to their Meet Cute, no less!

please do not flash back to That One Scene like it was something cute and ruin the whole montage

so he knew the main group escaped, then?

What's the cave timeline? Did it take the two of them several days to prepare the attack on the monster, and after WWX passed out, he hasn't awoken until the rescue, as the editing suggests? Or was there an unseen period of time where WWX and LWJ sat together in a cave, slowly dying from hunger and having no interesting conversations to show whatsoever? The former sounds a ton more convincing, but gathering arrows and bowstrings is a job for several hours, not several days...

I have already written a post about having mixed feelings in response to female characters written in a misogynistic way; here is just another example. Lady Jiang's shrill insults make me want to curl up, cover my ears and close my eyes to hide, or to shout back to chase her away. And at the same time I hate that someone deliberately presented a woman speaking her mind and reasserting her right as a co-lead of the household in an offputting way, to show how she's ruining the family by not being docile and submissive enough. And -- I still don't have anything to like in her to spite the misogynistic writing; should I invent something out of principle, or should I play along with the misogyny game?

As someone more familiar with Japan than China (fantasy or not), it breaks my brain every time I notice people wearing shoes inside lmao

For the first time in this show, after I thought "give him a hug already", a character actually did it on screen

15

After watching 7 episodes in one day, I am finally skipping the opening sequence for the first time

even when the mother fights the bad guys, she somehow does it in a shitty classist way. the purple whip and the combat handmaidens are cool tho

the trio screaming for their father departing to certain death was the first thing in the show to make me cry

kinda wild how the show fluctuates between: 20%: a compilation of time-tested relationship tropes :) 80%: well that was nice while it lasted but back to the plot. HELLO NAUGHTY CHILDREN IT'S PARENT DEATH AND CLAN DESTRUCTION TIME

--

Unrelated to anything above, I'm still hoping for a scene (maybe near the end of the flashback for maximum dramatic irony) where WWX says jokingly to LWJ "Whose funeral have you been dressing for?", with the answer hanging in the air but remaining unsaid: "Yours, Wei Wuxian" (wouldn’t work at the point I’m at rn, for example, because he’s currently mourning his entire clan)

[illuminating-dragons]

Lay Here In My Arms (3/14): The Battles In My Heart

Summary:  Being in love with someone means your brain, your heart and your body are involved. Freddie Weasley faces obstacles with two of the three. Luckily, his heart is strong enough for all of them.

Mild Sexual Content (high T- low M)

Pairing: Fred Weasley II/ Rita Scamander (Fading Scars)/ Pierre Dwayne (Fading Scars) 

Read it on AO3

           There was a certain inborn prejudice in Freddie’s family about people called Rita. And Tom, but that was fairly universal (with the One Exception of Tom the retired bartender).

           So one summer when Rolf introduced his niece as Rita Scamander, Freddie was prepared to dislike her.

           Rita went to Beauxbatons, a choice no one in her mainly-Durmstrang-alumni family understood. But she absolutely loved it there, and somehow listening to her talk about her school was so fascinating that Freddie hardly got a word in edgewise. He didn’t really want to.

           Freddie’s desires were simple. He wanted to make people laugh, he wanted to understand how people thought, and he wanted someone who would love that he was a Slytherin. Not someone who would accept that wearing green and silver wasn’t the end of the world; someone who understood the values behind the green and silver, and shared them. In a family that accepted him and Lou but still wore mainly primary colours, Freddie longed for a meeting of the minds. He hadn’t even found it in his own house; none of the boys interested him so far, and the girls were either too ruthless or too serious for his liking.

           Rita, on the other hand, reminded him a bit of Aunt Gabrielle, whose exploits in France’s fashion scene left many people gawking. Aunt Gabrielle had several piercings, swore fluently in six languages and did everything in her power to make herself look ugly (she never did succeed). She was also one of the kindest women Freddie knew. She worked for animal rights, including delivery owls and familiars, and fought fiercely for the rights of refugees from dark wizards all over the world. Voldemort, it turned out, was not alone in his quest to ‘purify’ wizard kind, though his fellow monsters had differences in the ones they considered unworthy.

           So when Aunt Gabrielle met Rita and they got on well, Freddie knew she was the one.

           It took some convincing. Rita was dead set against a relationship, and it took a few letters to understand why.

           I wasn’t born Rita Scamander, her letter said. I was born Rita Karkaroff. Mum and Dad adopted me when I was five, but I still have Death Eater blood. It’ll be too much scandal.

           Freddie’s response was blunt and to the point. I love you.  

           Falling into bed with Rita was a whole other challenge. To Freddie’s surprise, he was actually quite nervous about sex. He’d always enjoyed flirting with other interested parties, but other than a few dates had never gotten very far. Rita was enthusiastic, and Freddie wanted to please her, but he panicked the first time she took off his shirt.

           Rita backed away immediately. “What’s wrong?”

           “I don’t know,” Freddie said hopelessly.

           He talked to his father, and George was a bit surprised too. He questioned Freddie carefully, more frightened of the answers than Freddie, but nothing had caused it. Freddie was just…afraid.

           “I don’t really know how to help you, son,” George confessed. “Do you want to go see Aunt Hannah’s friend?”

           ‘Aunt Hannah’s friend’ was a doctor, a woman sworn to secrecy by the Ministry to show them how to do psychiatry the Muggle way. Freddie had never been good friends with her, but Dr. Selma proved to be quite helpful.

           When Freddie managed to spit out his issue at last, Dr. Selma looked thoughtful. “Freddie, have you ever been to one of the magical Mind Healers?”

           “No, ma’am.”

           “I see. Freddie, I think you might have anxiety. That’s what’s causing the panic.”

           “Anxiety?”

           That started a two hour discussion, during which Freddie was amazed to learn that no, not everyone thought about their to-do list constantly; no, it was concerning that he couldn’t sleep because his brain wouldn’t ‘turn off’; and yes, it was worrisome that every time his heart rate went up he felt panicked, even when it was from playing Quidditch…or being intimate.

           He was eighteen that year. Eighteen, with family, friends, and an amazing girlfriend. How could he dare to feel unhappy?

           “Brains are complicated, Freddie. Yours is different.”

           Mum and Dad were equal parts relieved and horrified when he told them. Relieved, because it meant they had a name for what was troubling their son, and they could learn to help with it. Horrified, because they hadn’t known before.

           “I didn’t know myself,” Freddie reassured them. “I didn’t know that was something I could have.”

           He started seeing Dr. Selma once a week, and they worked through his anxiety. Freddie confessed his worries about his body (he was definitely the plainest in his family; plain was almost worse than ugly); he talked about his worries about how he could take on his father and uncles’ legacy when he had so many bad days; and he talked about how terrible he felt that these problems bothered him so badly in the first place.

           “My parents lived through a war! My family lost so many people; I’m named for my father’s dead twin! How can I sit here and say I need any kind of help?”

           “You’re fighting your own battles,” Dr. Selma said. “Just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

           Freddie cried then.

           Rita was patient, endlessly patient, and she came to a couple of sessions with him. Then she went a couple of times on her own. They didn’t talk about everything that went on behind Dr. Selma’s door, but it was enough knowing that they were being honest with each other about everything else.

           “Some secrets are okay,” Rita said. “Some hurt you too bad to keep.”

           Freddie kept going to counselling, and eventually started taking pills, pills that helped the worst days be as manageable as the good days. He became more comfortable talking to his family about his worries, and he was very proud when both Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron asked for his therapist’s name.

           And he and Rita learned to be comfortable with their own bodies, with each other’s bodies, including their brains. Intimacy was slow, but it felt earned.

           The first time they had full intercourse, orgasm felt like triumph.

           Freddie had been helping in his father’s store as his treatments happened, and when his appointments with Dr. Selma turned from weekly to biweekly, then to monthly, his Dad had an idea.

           “We need someone new to run the store in France, Freddie. Hector wants to retire, and I think you’d be a great fit.”

           Freddie swallowed hard, thinking about moving to a new country where he didn’t know the language well, into a job where he had to represent his family’s name. Then he thought of Aunt Gabrielle, who was established in Paris, of Rita who wanted to start her own clothing business, and of how much fun it was working with his family, even if they were a continent away.

           By September, he and Rita were across the Channel, with a small flat above the jokes shop and a robes store a few blocks away, right next door to Garments de Gabrielle. Rita worried she was stepping on her mentor’s toes, but Gabrielle’s work was different, avant-garde in the materials and patterns. Rita still used wool and cloth and silk, but the colours were what defined her works; clever combinations and designs that were sold to anyone who liked them, regardless of gender or creed. She experimented with Muggle clothing too, and Reveille was soon doing as well as the joke shop.

           They bought a nicer flat, close to the Tour D’Eiffel, and they ate macarons and went to the wizarding depanneurs for fresh bread and potion ingredients. Freddie became fluent in French, while Rita still stumbled over French but communicated well with the Eastern European clients who came on a certain Quidditch star (and former Triwizard Champion)’s recommendation. Freddie still had rough moments and bad days, and Rita still pulled away sometimes, worried they were making a mistake, but they soothed each other and found places and moments of calm, of peace.

           And then came Pierre.

           Pierre Dwayne, who damn near knocked Freddie off his feet with how attractive he was. Rita was enchanted by him too, this polite Frenchman who was nearly a foot taller than both of them. He worked for Rita nominally, helping her organize her cloths and lift boxes of materials, but he spent a good bit of time at the joke shop. Freddie was frightened for the first time, frightened that Rita might leave not for herself or her father’s name, but for him. And Rita became fractious, wearing her best clothes by turns and old raggedy ones by others, reasoning that Freddy could leave if he wanted to.

           When Freddie’s parents came to visit, Angelina picked up on the tension. And when she saw Pierre, she understood what might be going on.

           She pulled her son aside that night and told him a story. A story of two couples who’d met on the Quidditch field, and who had separate lives and children, but sometimes came together in bed, because they fit together.

           Freddie had never dreamed that his parents had been unhappy in their marriage. They’d always seemed so happy.

           “We are happy,” Angelina promised him. “But sometimes you love more people than your partner. And sometimes, when you’re lucky, you can find a way to work that out. I’m in love with your Dad; I’m not really in love with either Oliver or Katie. But I love them both dearly, and it’s nice to find a way to get all that you want.”

           Freddie called a meeting with Rita and Pierre the next day. It was a strange conversation, but it was necessary, and it brought about an interesting routine.

           Pierre kept his own life, but he spent nights at their place quite often. It took a long time for Freddie to be willing and able to have sex with both his lovers at the same time, but he watched until he could.

           Freddie still had bad days, and he still had moments where he was terrified he would lose everything; Pierre, Rita, the shop, his family, his mind. But the moments passed with long walks, talking with Dr. Selma and sex itself. (Ironic, that it once scared him).

           But they grew fewer, and he knew how to cope with them, and the day that Rita told him that she was pregnant and not positive whether he or Pierre was the father, he was able to laugh, hold her close, and promise that it was his child either way, and he was looking forward to being a dad.