#most important choice

[terranovathemust]

LIFE'S HARD

[coloursflyaway]

I think it's so interesting that when the Night Nurse goes through Charles' trauma, she does see him being attacked by the other boys, sees him running alone through the night, but she never sees him dying. That only comes later, when she is searching for love.

And there is no fear in that memory, even if there is pain, there is just Edwin and the light he is bringing, metaphorically and physically, into Charles' life, there is smiling and joking and listening to stories. There is Edwin.

So, yeah, I don't think dying was a bad experience for Charles. Not a good one, per se, but one that led to the best thing in his existence.

[janezebu]

I enjoy them :)

[blorbocedes]

at this point I think at a personal level we need to look at the BDS movement carefully and try to implement it in our lives. your local cafe can make a starbucks quality caramel macchiato without co-signing genocide. learn how to pirate if you wanna watch Disney+ shows. lots of other shoe brands than puma! you've never needed a sodastream water in your life. instead of hungover mcdo beef grease fries, order some delicious latkes. and so on and so forth....... the power of the US dollar, and the euro/pound is quite unparalleled. so use it! make it publicly embarrassing to be seen with these brands, for influencers to advertise it, force their hand until they publicly cut ties with an apartheid regime, or watch their stock price plummet.

[coloredlion]

“what you cherish most”

[elvyn]

Anyway, I finished Baldur's Gate 3

[idontmindifuforgetme]

Going to get into the habit of carrying my journal everywhere w me bc I truly want to soak up every snapshot of this transitional period where I’m just a 22 year old girl finding my footing and the only thing I’m tied to are the decisions I make and the path I carve for myself

[vaguely-concerned]

just had the thought 'in the end the most important thing varric taught rook was how to make a home for, with, and in other people' and then I had to go lie down on the floor and clutch at my head in unceasing agony for a few hours, as you may well imagine. hawke and the kirkwall crew........ in the end you kind of saved the world a bit in the most characteristically indirect and chaotic of ways. not by anything in particular that you did or achieved or accomplished (lmao imagine!), but just by -- having existed, and by the love that was always there, despite it all, in all its imperfections, even when no one was saved by it in the end. you're not here right now and you're not quite haunting the narrative but I hear your voices bickering and arguing and laughing from the other room. (and so, I think, does varric. all the time.)

'did you think you mattered, hawke? did you think anything you ever did mattered?' yeah actually, varric says with da2 and keeps saying through the series. you were here. and I loved you. and as it turns out that mattered more than almost anything in the world, no matter how long it lasted or how fucked up it was at the time or what else happens, because varric manages to pass that feeling, that intangible... home, that echo of you all as you were together, that love, hopefully the best parts of it, on to someone else for them to bring with them on their journey, with their family. and maybe the world will be kinder this time. you never know. merrill's line of 'Everything affects everything. We were born, a bunch of things happened, and now we're in a mess with our friends.' varric's greatest fear of becoming his parents. even through the wreck and the ruin of the world, ghosts upon ghosts upon ghosts of love -- malcolm hawke, who we never even see, but his life touched hawke's and hawke's touched varric's and varric's touched rook's and rook is passing it on to the family they're creating. the unbroken legacy of love shines through in ways that are stronger and stranger than any magic. help

[medi-bee]

isat pokemon au, my liege?

my rambling in tags

[wazzi2ya]

Octavia sees Blitzø as her replacement in Stolas' life. Blitzø sees Octavia as an addition to his own.

[genderkoolaid]

i think the problem that arises with "x desire comes from internalized oppression" stuff is not that it suggests we should be critical with our desired and how they are constructed. it's that some people have already decided the correct answer to that introspection. so if you Really questioned your own oppression you would know that Enjoying Sex Work Is Bad! and if you haven't come to that conclusion than you are still brainwashed. it is vital that we respect a person's ability to introspect on their desires and come to a different conclusion about them as an individual. & frankly choice feminism is still choice feminism when the focus is on Rejecting Everything Patriarchal instead of eyeliner so sharp it could kill a man.

[3-aem]

universal healthcare is not broken and anyone trying to convince you it is is delusional and a dckrider for big health insurance. yes there are wait times but waiting for care is Not the same as being denied care.

in america your physician prescribes care and an insurer can still cuck you out of it because someone across the continent who has never met you can say: doesn’t seem medically necessary. Leaving you to handle a bill that is wildly inflated by the same insurers that just denied you.

let me drill it through your head you can pay thousands a year in premiums and still end up sick and financially burdened for years by One incident. no insurance company is Avoiding going broke by denying claims. theyre doing it to profit off your misfortune and your illness. Because healthcare fundamentally does not cost the amount that they claim it to be.

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

Wei Wuxian and Narrative Agency – Part One

For Xiantober Day One: Genius… albeit stretching the prompt so it refers to MXTX and MDZS itself, but at the end of the day it’s still about WWX – so no harm done!

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

The narrative is a very active player in MDZS’ story. How it presents information, what it chooses to show and omit, often reflects important facets of its themes and characters – Nie Huaisang, for instance, is so good at hiding behind his mask that not even the narrative can hold him accountable; the present day’s storyline as a murder mystery and the slow reveal of information about the past both prompt the reader to think critically about the truth of events, when the importance of thinking critically is an important theme; and the dangers not thinking critically (and instead basing conclusions on rumours without much evidence) are shown by tricking unquestioning readers into the very same trap the cultivation world falls into, as the information given by the title, summary and in-universe rumours – which contradicts how we see actually Wei Wuxian act – turns out to be false.

But nowhere do I love this trait more than in its treatment of Wei Wuxian – and, more specifically, in its way of emphasising his agency. We’re not just told how much his active choices define his character, and we’re not just shown this in-universe through his personality, worldview and the events he causes. I’d argue that this aspect goes a step further, and shapes the structure of the out-of-universe narrative as well.

There are two main ways this happens: one, in how the aspects of Wei Wuxian’s life that are shown and hidden directly tell us what’s important about his character (which is good writing but isn’t necessarily tied to this shaping of the narrative), which is what we’ll explore today; and two, how what’s shown and hidden reflects what Wei Wuxian himself prefers to dwell on, resulting in the narrative respecting his own thoughts and feelings on matters (which very much is tied to it). We’ll explore this at a later date.

But as for now – let’s explore my favourite aspect of MDZS.

(Here, narrative agency will be considered the ability of a character to meaningfully influence their events and the story they’re in.)

Tragedy, Circumstance, Choice

If we simply look at Wei Wuxian’s backstory in a vacuum, it seems almost typically tragic. His  parents died in circumstances beyond his control, he was left alone as a child with nobody to care for him, he was forced to grow up fending for himself on the streets, he was faced with abuse when he finally was taken in… as with all typical woobies, everything simply happened to him, and none of it was good. It’s just another example of the lack of agency being used for sympathy points, right?

…Except there’s one problem with that idea. We don’t actually see any of this.

It would’ve been easy to start the flashbacks during these times. We’re telling the story of Wei Wuxian in (largely) chronological order, and these are likely important experiences for him! But instead of starting in his street days, or evenat the moment Jiang Fengmian took him in*, we start at the lectures in the Cloud Recesses. That’s not even something mentioned in, and therefore something that’s able to disprove, the rumours at the start of the novel. So why is this the case? 

Well, there are multiple reasons – the main one being that MDZS is also Lan Wangji’s (and Wangxian’s) story, and having the flashbacks open with their first meeting is very satisfying. But I want to focus on something else.

This period doesn’t have to be shown, because what happens to Wei Wuxian, especially out of his control, isn’t what’s important about his character.

We’re not even at Lotus Pier here, where Wei Wuxian certainly has more agency than he would’ve had as a young child, but where the harm caused by Madame Yu is still completely out of his control. Here, he has agency! Though there are consequences, he is free to act, and what happens to him is a result of those actions and not of circumstance. Yes, he gets punished more than others who also take those same actions (due to classism); yes, it’s not his choice to be picked on by Lan Qiren in class (yet look how he responds, twisting the situation to his advantage and ending up tricking Lan Qiren into letting him leave, which is what he wanted to do. He is not at all helpless here!); yes, these choices have been influenced by his learned mindset from Madame Yu that punishment is arbitrary and will happen anyway, so you may as well do what you want regardless. But there is cause-and-effect here. It’s not circumstantial tragedy.

Therefore, instead of our first impression of past!Wei Wuxian being that of an unfortunate woobie, it’s of someone who has the freedom, ability and will to choose and act (and that’s after these initial tragic events have taken place). This is compounded by the fact that before we see any of his backstory, we get a similar impression of him in the present day.

If the purpose of his tragic past was to earn him sympathy points, to make us pity him due to how much he was influenced by events out of his control, this would’ve been a terrible way of going about it… and it’s this that betrays the true reason for its existence. Because now, the flashbacks instead show us how little these tragedies define who he is! From the very start, Wei Wuxian isn’t someone defined by circumstances out of his control, but rather by who he is as a person and by what choices he makes in the present day (which is both a mindset in-universe, and a nice little out-of-universe detail that lines up! Because out-of-universe, this means he’s not defined by sympathy points from a backstory, but rather by his great character writing… aka, by who he is as a person and what choices he makes). And this refusal to be defined by tragedy is a conscious choice on his part, too – but we’ll explore that more later. 

The important thing is that this idea of Wei Wuxian isn’t because of what exists in his past, it’s because of what parts of his past are shown to us (as well as what he chooses to do, with agency, in the present). 

Now, if this relationship between what’s displayed and what’s omitted was just a one-time thing, I might’ve considered it a cool detail or a nice way to establish a character, but not something the narrative is actively focusing on. But it’s a pattern that continues throughout the flashbacks. What, arguably, are the two other most important times in Wei Wuxian’s life where he doesn’t have enough agency to meaningfully influence his circumstances? His three months in the Burial Mounds (before escaping – he managed to assume some control of the circumstances but not enough to substantially reduce his suffering in his time there), and his loss and death during the First Siege. And we’re not shown either of them! We skip to when Wei Wuxian has emerged from the Burial Mounds and is torturing the Wens, or we skip to the present day – both times he has agency once more, because, again, what he’s like without it doesn’t matter enough to be shown. 

Furthermore, I’d argue this does actually contrast the other tragic events we see in Wei Wuxian’s later life. Things do go horribly wrong, but it’s either due to choices he knows the consequences of (see: rescuing the Wen Remnants in the first place), or instances where he still has some ability to act in the situation and influence it within the limitations. If he’d had no ability to influence circumstances at Qiongqi path, he would have died in the ambush; if he’d been unable to do that at Nightless City, he would’ve died then, too (of course Lan Wangji helped him escape as well). The attention drawn to him losing control of his actions in both instances is very interesting, but intentional or not, it’s still his actions influencing the plot. And that influence happens to be detrimental. The very ability to act and influence, at a base level,  is not taken away (though, of course, that doesn’t make these events any less tragic).

So, so far, the narrative seems to be telling us that the ability to act and choose is key to Wei Wuxian’s character. And it’s doing it through omitting his moments without agency in favour of instead showing us his moments with it. 

Let’s see if this is echoed in the text itself before we go further – because even with this pattern, nothing would end up mattering if Wei Wuxian’s agency wasn’t actually that important to the story itself. But thankfully it is, and that first impression we get of Wei Wuxian in the Cloud Recesses turns out to very much be accurate! Though there are defining circumstances out of his control that occur, such as the massacre of Lotus Pier, the majority of the important events of his life are due to his own choices. He didn’t happen to be forced to cease traditional cultivation and solely use guidao, didn’t happen to lose his Golden Core in a fight with Wen Zhuliu or due to some force in the Burial Mounds, it was his own choice to give it and his spiritual powers away. He didn’t tragically happen to get targeted by the cultivation world, it was a result of him acting on his morals and protecting the Wen remnants (a choice which he was fully aware of the implications of). He isn’t a protagonist to whom things simply occur, and that activeness and agency is my favourite thing about him. 

That’s not to say that the times Wei Wuxian doesn’t have agency, or feels like he doesn’t have any, don’t exist at all, either – but they are rare enough to have attention directly drawn to them in his internal narration:

Or else what could he do? He could do nothing. He was powerless. Lotus Pier had been destroyed, both Jiang FengMian and Madam Yu were gone, and Jiang Cheng had disappeared as well. He was the only one left, alone, with not even a sword in his hands. He didn’t know anything, he couldn’t do anything! For the first time, he discovered how little his power was. In front of something as large as the QishanWen Sect, it was the same as a mantis trying to stop a chariot. - Chapter 59, EXR translation

(And even in this circumstance, note that he still does force himself to act – to carry on searching for Jiang Cheng, to place his faith in Wen Ning – and does accomplish his goal (albeit with the help of others)! So even in dire situations, he isn’t simply passive. This is actually also the case with his time in the Burial Mounds, almost certainly the First Siege, and even his days on the streets as well (Chapter 20: he did actively fight with dogs to get food despite their danger and his growing fear of them, rather than just waiting and hoping to somehow receive some more). He can’t influence or immediately influence his circumstances, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.)

Overall, although they do influence him, Wei Wuxian is very much who he is in spite of his circumstances, not because of them. We’re shown the importance of his agency both in-universe by the major impacts his choices have on himself and the plot, as well as by narrative presentation – important periods where he lacks the ability to meaningfully influence anything are often mentioned but not directly shown, which suggests that such moments and circumstances aren’t as important to understanding Wei Wuxian’s character as moments where he does have this agency are. And I’d argue this works very well. Depending on the version of the story you consume, you may end up having different interpretations as to how much circumstances were at play nearer the end of his life – but nobody comes out of MDZS thinking about Wei Wuxian, the poor bearer of yet another generically tragic backstory.

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

—

*We are shown this moment in more detail in Chapter 23… but even then, it’s through the framing of Wei Wuxian remembering Jiang Yanli’s narration, not through a flashback proper or even him remembering the experience itself!

[soveryanon]

Original manga:

Anime adaptation:

Merch that understood the assignement:

[deadchannelradio]

my fanfiction abortion morgue is gaining another jayroy victim that is not long enough to clean up for ao3. this was going to be a very long and meandering noodle about in the river that is jason's mental health and trauma and relationships of all types and healing and the asexual/aromantic spectrum (not that that's the verbage jason would use or language hes even aware of) and low sex drives all that beautiful muck and mire but i have not put a single word on it in well over a year now. so i'm letting her go. be free little fish.

-

They’re better now, anyways, better than they ever were before. Jason had a crisis a few months back, stopping himself from reaching reflexively for his phone to give Dick a call about- nothing important. And then he had realized that he had reflexively gone to call Dick about nothing important, and had gone and stared out the window for 15 minutes, trying to work himself into a different, less horrifying conclusion than the one gathering in his brain like an avalanche. Roy had come home in the middle of it, taken one look at his face and dropped his bag on the floor with a thunk.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Who died?”

“I like him,” Jason said, somewhere between incredulous and horrified. “That cunt, that motherfucker- he made me actually like him-,”

“Who?”

“Dick!” Jason had shouted. “That piece of shit, I want to spend time with him, hours out of my actual human life that I can’t get back-,”

Roy had proceeded to laugh in his face for a solid ten minutes, positively gleeful about Jason’s horrible emotional crisis. “He does that to you, man,” he said once they’d settled in, still chuckling as he cracked open a can of soda, posted up on their couch with Ethiopian takeout in his lap. “One minute you’re sitting there thinking oh my god, this guy, he’s so loud and annoying-,”

“And he never fuckin’ stops moving,” Jason groaned from his spot laying on the floor below him. “His body or his mouth. And he chews loud, he’s obnoxious on purpose, and he’s a model and dated Kory but half the time he dresses like something a goodwill dumpster threw up-,”

“Have you seen his new shoes?” Roy asked. “I dress like dogshit, man, but those things-,”

“Wally got them for him,” Jason said, and then immediately slapped his hands over his face, horrified that he knew that. Roy laughed again. “He’s constantly in your fuckin’ business! Constantly! Last time I saw him he knew the social security numbers of the baristas in the coffee shop I’d been going to-,”

“He gets enabled,” Roy muttered, shoveling injera into his mouth.

“He gets enabled!” Jason said. “Everyone enables him! I enable him! And god, his fucking- puns, man, his quips, we’re all guilty of it but this is a fight, not comedy hour, and even if it was you’d get booed off the stage-,”

“He texted me what he said to Mr. Freeze two weeks ago and I wanted to eat my phone,” Roy said. “It’s amazing no villains kill themselves after he hands their asses to them, I would be humiliated.”

“He sucks!” Jason snapped. 

“He sucks,” Roy agreed. “And then you look around one day at your life-,”

“And you go oh shit, I think this motherfucker’s alright!” Jason mimed hitting himself in the face with Roy’s abandoned house slipper. “Fuck! What’s fucking wrong with me?”

Roy laughed at him, again. “Dick Grayson Derangement Syndrome gets us all in the end,” he said. Jason curled a hand around his bare ankle, and Roy looked down to smile at him, the smallest touch making his whole face bloom open like a rose. Jason had to look away from it, wanting to say: stop. No. You know I’m not enough. You know I’m not like you. You know I can’t give you enough.

He’s been wanting to say that a lot, these days. Toss Roy off the sinking ship with a lifeboat before he has to wake up one day, years on, and realize he’s wasted years with Jason, who can’t love that loud.

He wanted to call Dick about it, which was another horrible realization. Hi big bird, I’m having boy problems. Dick would probably tell him that it means more that Jason has to try, that wanting to try for it is selfless, makes it more significant, which is the kind of thinking that lands a motherfucker in bed with Barbara Gordon, who is enough like Jason to warrant a comparison, but not enough to call her and ask what he should do. Babs loves like the Bolton Strid, and sometimes Jason isn’t sure he loves at all. Not like that.

Jason isn’t nearly as selfless as Dick is convinced he is, not deep down. Because he doesn’t want to let Roy go at all.

It’s late, well into the witching hours, and they’re laying in bed in what was formerly Roy’s bedroom but now holds them both, blinds cracked to let the streetlights through. Jason doesn’t like the dark. Roy’s threatening to buy an eyemask. Jason thinks it’s stupid to blind yourself to potential attackers. Neither of them have brought up going back to sleeping separately. Roy’s nose is pressed between Jason’s shoulder blades, breath humid through his shirt. Not asleep yet, but close. Jason’s books are proliferating on Roy’s shelves, his boxers in Roy’s laundry basket, garrotte wires coiled next to bow strings on the desk that has framed photos, past-Jason’s mouth a little white slash in the bar of orange streetlamp.

Something is clawing at the inside of Jason’s chest, scrabbling like a wild little animal. Trying to dig its way through his spine, into Roy. It hurts.

He shifts, turns over, pushes Roy over onto his back and rolls on top of him, propped up on his elbows to look down at him. Roy grunts, half-awake and confused, but takes his weight. He blinks blearily up at Jason, a crease between his eyebrows- Jason must look intense right now. “Jaybird?” he starts, quiet.

Jason knows this feeling- as all-consuming as it is- is fleeting. It’ll be gone in the morning, and he’ll forget it was ever here. He won’t be able to recall its bite until it comes back around again, like Halley’s comet. He should say something now, while he has it. While he feels it. So Roy can know it’s real. He just doesn’t know how to describe it.

“Jase,” Roy says, sounding more concerned, “Jason, what’s-,”

“Something in here,” Jason interrupts, putting a hand on his own chest, a thudding sound of muscle on muscle, “Wants to eat you.” God, he feels dumb. He’s not good at this, he sounds so much better in his head. His words come out of his mouth sour and curdled and stupid, there’s a reason he doesn’t try to talk about this shit-

Roy lights up, slow at first, then all at once, his face creasing up in his smile like old paper, following familiar folds. Jason feels his toes curl next to his calves, his feet pointing and flexing in excitement. Jason wishes he could make himself smile back, anything other than the dead-eyed concentration he knows he’s wearing right now, but the weight in his ribs is too real and too wild for that- if his teeth come out this might get literal. He wants to crack open Roy’s sternum with his bare hands, climb in like a contortionist and slam it shut behind him.

“Really?” Roy asks, small and soft and giddy. Jason nods, serious. Roy’s teeth dig into his bottom lip, smiling so wide his nose is wrinkling up, little inky lines in the artificial twilight. “Cool,” he says. 

Jason’s hands spasm in the sheets next to Roy’s head. “Roy,” he starts, “Can I-,” stops. Doesn’t know what he wants. Maybe just to look at him until the sun comes up, just to watch the light turn his freckles from a smear in the dim to pinprick-sized marigolds. Maybe to go to sleep on him like this, the thunder of his heart under Jason’s cheek. Maybe he wants everything. Maybe he wants to be the greediest son of a bitch in Gotham. 

“You can do anything,” Roy promises, and the sincerity in his voice makes the thing chewing on Jason’s lungs shake. “Anything you want. I’ll let you do everything.”

Jason drops his head against Roy’s chest with a grunt like he’s just been punched, unable to choke it back. He pushes himself up- Roy makes a quiet, sad noise, grabbing for him- and fumbles the bedside lamp on. He wants to see everything. Roy’s pupils are huge, even in the light he’s flinching from, irises that strange half-color, too dark for blue or green and too flat for hazel and too light to be brown. His cowlick’s sending his hair in every direction at the left temple, and he’s still smiling at Jason, like he can’t help it. Jason doesn’t know what to do, now that he’s here. A restaurant with an infinite menu. What he wants is strange, probably. Not how normal people want things, not what they want. Jason is off-putting, sometimes on purpose, frequently not, and he doesn’t know how this will come across. But Roy said he could have anything. Whatever he wanted. Giving up all of himself, for nothing. For free. 

Jason should take it. Roy will stop him, if he needs it. He puts his mouth on the cowlick, not a kiss, tucks his nose into Roy’s hair and breathes in deep. The nothing-smell of hair that’s not clean but not dirty. Roy’s hands are pressing into his lats, his legs spreading and crossing behind Jason’s thighs, holding him there. Jason curls both his hands around Roy’s skull, presses gently, cradling his head- all of Roy is in there, somehow, and he needs to be careful with it. His skull feels too small to hold something so important, too fragile. 

Jason drags his thumbs over his eyebrows, presses a thumbnail into the scar bisecting the left one- string snap, Roy told him, nearly took that eye out. Roy’s looking up at him still, and they’re close enough that Jason could count his eyelashes, if he wanted. He runs his fingers over Roy’s ears, feeling the cartilage, gently pinches the flesh of his earlobe, over the hole where he used to have gauges. He moves down to Roy’s neck, puts his hands around his throat, doesn’t squeeze. He feels it when Roy’s breath hitches. Roy shuts his eyes, swallows, his Adam's apple moving under Jason’s palms. 

Jason bites him where his neck meets his shoulder, hard. He thinks about being normal, trying to make it a hickey- but Roy jerks hard beneath him with a strangled noise and that thing in Jason’s chest makes him hold that position until Roy stops moving, until the bolt of his jaw aches. He lets go, spit shining around the deep purple indents in Roy’s skin. Roy lets out a shaking breath, eyes still shut.

Roy already knows he’s an inscrutable freak, Jason decides. He’s going to do everything he’s ever looked at Roy and thought about doing, everything he thought might be weird that he’s ever refrained from. Roy won’t run.

If he does, well. Jason will chase him. Roy is the one who said he was locking Jason down, said nobody in or out. He can’t get too mad if Jason takes him up on it.

He presses his nose near Roy’s armpit. The sharp, live smell of his sweat in Jason’s lungs, muted by whatever axe deodorant he uses that always makes Jason think of a cold wet morning. He rubs his mouth over Roy’s deltoid, teeth dragging. Jason pushes up and kneels with his thighs on either side of Roy’s torso, picks up an arm, runs his hands over Roy’s bicep, digs his thumbs into his elbow. Puts Roy’s thumb in his mouth, tastes skin and salt, bites the draw calluses on his fingers, gentle. Does the other arm too, to keep it even. Roy’s breathing slow and even, looking at Jason again as he shoves his mouth into Roy’s wrist until he can feel the pulse against his lower lip. Roy’s trying to caress his face with that hand, can’t quite manage more than a brush of his fingertips against Jason’s ear. 

Jason knows what he should say here. What he hasn’t been saying, because he knows it’s not the same as how Roy will say it, thinking that it will somehow be a lie because the meaning’s different. But it’s words, which are only stories. There is nothing in a story that is a lie, and no analysis that is wrong, with supporting evidence. Which Jason has, which Jason has always had. Roy at his right shoulder. Never wanting anyone else at his back. Saying to Dick: if there wasn’t Roy, there wouldn’t be anybody. The way they keep finding each other at the lowest of lows, facedown in bottles or looking down barrels of guns to see if they can spot the bullet. Standing there feeling stupid in the holes they’ve dug, pickaxes in hand, before turning and finding the other, just as deep as they are. Saying: gimme a boost and I’ll give you a hand.

Even if he doesn’t mean it in the same way, he means it. I want you, I want you, I want you. The inflection changes the meaning, but only by the barest degrees. 

“I love you,” Jason says, and he’s not lying, because he means them, even if it’s not always how he thinks he should.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Fun little game whenever you come across a shallow parody of YA female protagonists: take a tally of the traits she has and see how many apply to Luke Skywalker.