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ssa-babygirl · 4 years ago

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Out of my League [Part 6]

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Single mom!Reader

Word count: 3.3k

Summary: JJ gives you some bad news and Spencer feels like he’s only making matters worse. For both of you.

Warning(s): Angst, mentions of grief and death, allusions to relapse, swearing, mentions of drinking, this is lowkey a mess so i may have missed a couple of warnings

Author’s Note: IT’S HERE!!!! YAY!!! that’s the happiest you’re gonna be all chapter. The next one may take a bit of time and i am SORRY for that because this may or may not have a sorta cliffhanger you should just read it to find out!! also heads up there are a lot of perspective changes later on please just imagine how it would be cut together in a movie that’s how i wrote it OK ENJOY DON’T BE MAD JUST TRUST ME OK??

[Previous Part] [Series Masterlist]

Washington, D.C., 2011

(Reader POV)

You’d gone to three different funerals since moving to D.C. Three more than you would have liked, obviously, no one ever really wants to go to a funeral.

The first had been your father’s. You had Jamie and your mom, but you needed Spencer. He was out on a case and you couldn’t blame him for not being there, but he made up for it a million times over. Your dad’s death wasn’t unexpected, and while it hurt to say goodbye, it was relatively easy to move on.

The second had been for Aaron’s ex-wife, Haley. You didn’t really know her, but Aaron was your friend and you wanted to support him. That and Jamie got along very well with Jack, acting almost as an older cousin, and you know how important family is when you lose a parent.

The third and most recent funeral was the worst one: Emily’s. She was there one day, raring to go and take on the world, gone the next.��

The day you found out was just terrible. JJ had called you herself to tell you. You managed to stay calm until you hung up, when you practically threw your phone onto the kitchen table and collapsed into a chair, tears pouring down your face as silent sobs wracked your body.

Jamie ran in at the sound of you crying, “Mom? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

You shook your head, unable to speak. Jamie wordlessly wrapped his arms around your shoulders and held you as you struggled to regain your voice. When you could finally breathe and relay the news you just received, you choked out, “Aunt Emily died last night.”

Then Jamie started crying too. He curled up into your shoulder and sobbed into your shirt, soaking you to the skin, almost like he was little again. You crumbled at the sound of his whines and cries. Every part of your chest ached with the weight of your grief.

“What happened to her?” He finally whimpered.

“She has a dangerous job,” You didn’t even notice the tense you used, “A bad man was after her.”

“Well, is everyone else okay? What about Uncle Derek? What about Doc—”

“Everyone else is fine, baby, no one else was hurt. Doc’s fine.”

You sat still for God knows how long, silent, clutching each other like a lifeline, praying this was all just a dream and that you’d get a call from Emily telling you it was all some sick joke. Of course, you’d be furious with JJ, but at least there wouldn’t be a hole in your family where Emily had once been.

Your mother came over to help you cook, the same role you had taken years prior while your father was sick. She consoled you and Jamie for the next two days and then drove you to the funeral. You got out of the car and walked in silence to the church, clutching Jamie’s hand as you entered.

Aaron was the first at the door. He wasn’t one for hugs, but when he saw you, exhausted and barely standing, he pulled you and Jamie in tight. The hug was brief, but it helped, God, did it help. Dave was just behind him, and he didn’t hesitate. He ruffled Jamie’s hair and gave you a kiss on both cheeks. JJ was holding Henry in the corner, and Will gave you a weak smile. Derek and Penelope were holding one another, both shaking as they cried. Your grip on Jamie’s hand grew tighter, tighter, tighter until you saw him.

You then dropped Jamie’s hand as you ran over, arms open wide as your son followed close behind, “Spence--”

He returned your hug instantly, burying his face in your hair, “I’m sorry I didn’t call--”

You felt Jamie join the hug, but you kept your head buried in Spencer’s chest, “No, I’m sorry too, I didn’t know what to do.”

“Me neither.” He pulled away, wiping away some tears and sniffling, “I’ve just been holed up in my room reading Vonnegut all for the past three days.”

Of course, “What books?”

“Mostly Slaughterhouse-Five, it was her--”

“Her favorite,” You nodded as you spoke the last part in unison with him.

“Yeah. I read it out loud just…” His voice cracked and the words looked painful to get out, “Just in case she could hear me.”

Your heart broke imagining him wrapped in blankets, eyes rimmed red as they glazed over the worn-out pages. You ached at the thought of his voice cracking just as it did before as he read for hours and hours, begging the universe to let Emily hear him, “She did. And she loved it.”

“I just hope she didn’t realize I was crying,” he muttered, and it shattered you, “She wouldn’t want us to cry for her.”

“You’re right, but I know she’d be unbelievably offended if we didn’t cry just a little bit,” Spencer’s tearful smile was enough to make you feel slightly better. There was still hope.

Your mom took Jamie home after the wake, knowing that you needed time with the team to feel like a person again. You went home with Spencer. He shouldn’t have to be alone anymore.

“You’re really good at taking care of me,” he smiled weakly, sipping the tea you made for him.

“Yeah, I had a good teacher.” Your mother was always there when you lost someone. You had your ups and downs, but she was a good mom.

“Does it get easier? Losing someone?”

“No. It always hurts just as bad,” you sigh, “But moving on used to be a lot harder.”

“Do you still miss him?”

“Of course I do, but less than I used to.” You still talked to your dad sometimes, something you did as a kid when he wasn’t home, just telling him about your day or narrating what you were doing. Even after all these years, you still found yourself explaining to no one that you had to run to store and buy bread to make Jamie’s lunch.

“I see little pieces of him everywhere I go. Jamie has the same exact smile. His favorite book when he was little was the same one my dad read to me. No one ever really leaves. Family, friends, they stick with us.”

“I’ve never lost a friend before. When Gideon left, I knew he was out there. Same with Elle. I could have Garcia find them right now and call them up to see how they’re doing, but Emily--” his voice cracked too much for him to want to continue, so he dropped it altogether.

“Did I ever tell you about my college roommate, Juliet?”

“No.”

“We were best friends. We did everything together: Movie nights, parties, all that. The night of our last final senior year, we decided to go clubbing to celebrate.”

You told him the whole story. The drinking, the dancing, the guy. You don’t remember his name, but you remember trusting him. He was sweet and Juliet liked him, so when she came to you at the bar after dancing with him telling you she was going home with him, you let her.

“I was happy for her! She had just gone through a breakup a few months before, so it was nice to see her getting some,” you let out a weak laugh, “I remember the last thing I said before she left was ‘Okay, have fun, call me in the morning, we’ll get brunch. I love you.’” Spencer winced, almost as if he knew where this story was going. Given his line of work, he was expecting far worse, but he at least knew that we didn’t get lunch the next morning.

“I went home a little bit later, I got bored, so I got a taxi home.”

You close your eyes and sigh deeply, “I’m in the back seat when I get a call. It was Juliet’s phone.”

“She wasn’t calling you, was she?”

“No, it was the police. Juliet didn’t have a good relationship with her parents, so I was her emergency contact.” You had to plan the funeral, invite her parents, look them in the eye and lie to them that Juliet wanted to make amends with them. The horrified guilt on their faces almost made it worth it, “The car she was in got t-boned when the guy ran a red light. He wasn’t as sober as we thought he was.”

“She didn’t make it.” Spencer guessed for you.

“No. She was dead before they got her out of the ambulance.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. If Juliet hadn’t…” You still couldn’t bring yourself to actually say it, “I wouldn’t have moved home, I wouldn’t have gotten back with Kyle, and I wouldn’t have Jamie. I don’t wanna tell you that something good will come out of this, because that’s a horrible thing to hear, but looking for an opportunity to find something good can’t hurt.”

“I can’t just look for something new when all i can think about is how I should have been able to help!”

“You really think I didn’t blame myself for what happened to Juliet? That every night for years after I thought I could have done something differently, and sure, I could have, but it’s not like I knew what was going to happen, and I couldn’t keep blaming myself.”

“It’s not the same, you don’t get it.” His fingers ghosted over old scars on his forearms, scars you didn’t want to think about where they came from.

“I do, Spencer. Emily was my friend too. And because she was my friend, I know she would never let you blame yourself for it. She knows you can’t save them all. All we can do is save ourselves,” you took his hand in yours, he still tensed up, “‘cuz that’s all the people we lose want us to do.”

He turned his head up from the floor and met your eyes. Once you gazed into those deep hazel irises, the tension in his hand melted away. His shoulders slumped, and he let out a deep breath, squeezing your hand like a lifeline, “Thank you.”

“Of course, Spence.”

“I’m sorry for snapping.”

“You apologize too much.” You had nearly forgotten exactly what he said to you that night in the hotel bar in Vegas all those years ago, but clearly, he hadn’t, he couldn’t, and he didn’t, because after a few moments of staring into your eyes and slowly drifting towards you in peaceful silence, he closed the gap between you both and kissed you.

Spencer Reid was kissing you.

This was happening.

Nearly two decades of being friends--

Years of being totally, ridiculously, and most importantly, cluelessly in love with each other, Spencer Reid was kissing you. You were almost so overjoyed at that moment as you started to kiss him back that you nearly forgot that your friend was dead and you were supposed to be comforting him. This wasn’t comfort, this was what Kyle did to you all those years ago.

You broke the kiss before he did something he’d regret, “Spence…”

“Oh my god,” he removed his hands from your face and shifted his entire body away from you, “I’m so sorry.”

“No, don’t-”

“Oh my god, I’m an idiot!” He ran his fingers through his hair, pulling at the strands as his hands landed at the back of his neck, forcing his head to stare in his lap.

“No you’re not! Hey. Genius. Look at me.” He didn’t. “You’re not. You’re just in a bad place, I get it.”

“No you don’t. This time, you don’t.”

“What do you m—”

“Look, I don’t wanna kick you out but I really think you should leave.”

“Oh… yeah… sure… okay.” You slowly rose from the couch on weak knees. Whether it was from adrenaline or anxiety, you couldn’t tell.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be! Just… please, take care of yourself?” You glance around the room for your belongings, “Shower, eat something, get some rest, please. And call me if you need anything--”

“Y/N, please, just go.”

You felt tears sting your eyes as you reached for the doorknob. You turned your head just enough to look over your shoulder to say, “Goodnight, pretty boy,” before you left. You closed the door behind you and leaned against it, breathing heavily.

(Spencer’s POV)

Why was I kicking her out?

Why was I telling her to leave?

Why was I pushing her away?

Why did I kiss her?

Why did she push me away?

Why did she call me “pretty boy?” She never--

The pieces fell into place as they often do, all at once with the force of a car slamming into a pole at fifty miles per hour.

“Goodnight, Pretty Boy.”

“Goodnight, Princess.”

She remembered that night.

She remembered that night when I drove her home and put her to bed and--

And I told her I had a crush on her in high school.

And I almost said I loved her.

And I almost kissed her then.

God, I wish I had. Any time would have been better than now.

(Reader POV)

You didn’t know you could miss someone so much while they were behind just one door. You could’ve turned around right then and knocked and waited for him to be ready to talk about what just happened. About him kissing you. About you kissing back. About you stopping him. About that drunken night when you let it slip how pretty you thought he was.

You should’ve just waited.

But you couldn’t stand to be that close to him while he wanted to be as far away from you as possible.

So you ran.

You practically sprinted down the stairs and out of his building as quickly as you could, getting in your car and pulling out of the parking lot and getting the fuck away before you hurt anyone else, including yourself.

(Spencer POV)

I couldn’t just let her walk out like that.

I had to say something.

I had to go after her.

I had to get her back.

I needed her.

But when I opened the door, it was like she had never been there.

I leaned on my door frame staring at the staircase down the hall, wishing I had the energy to run after her, to catch her before she reached her car, to stop her from driving away, to tell her I was sorry, to beg her to please, please, come back upstairs and talk to me, but my feet were fixed to the floor and my legs were weak. I just closed my door with my back and slid down to the floor, unable to bring myself to cry anymore. I sat there for god knows how long until I found the energy to crawl over to the coffee table where I had left my phone, picked it up, and dialed a number.

(Reader POV)

You jumped slightly at the sound of your phone ringing, you shuffled through your bag in the passenger seat, desperately trying to find it before the light turned green. Some foolish part of your mind told you it was Spencer, you wished it was Spencer, you wanted nothing more than to turn your car around and talk it all out with him, tell him you were sorry, that you loved him, that you needed him, but your heart sank when you looked at the screen and saw the number.

It was a just fucking spam call.

You threw your phone back in your seat and beat your fists against the steering wheel, groaning and wishing the fucking light would just turn green already. When it finally did, you slammed on the gas a bit too quickly, sending the car jolting forward. You barely stopped the entire rest of the ride home, the universe must have sensed your impatience. As you finally pulled into your driveway, your skull felt as though it was packed with cotton, your tear tracks drying on your cheeks.

You raced up the steps to your door, fussing with the keys and trying to unlock the door as quickly and quietly as possible. You inevitably made noise as you entered, prompting a light to turn on in the living room. Your mom rose from the couch she had been sleeping on, her face dropping from annoyed to concerned.

“Toots, you’re home already? I thought you wouldn’t be back until morning.”

You had thought that you were fresh out of tears, but apparently, you still had more to spare, seeing as you broke the second the words left her mouth.

“Oh my, what happened?” She raced towards you, wrapping you in a hug, “Is Spencer okay? Did something happen?”

As confused and sad as you were, you couldn’t stop the smile that had suddenly appeared on your face, “He kissed me.”

“He what?” She broke the hug, holding your face in her hands and wiping tears off of your cheeks, “Then honey, why on Earth are you here?”

(Spencer POV)

“You kicked her out? Why?”

“Why do you think I called you, Jennifer? What do I do? How do I fix this?”

“Well, what exactly happened?”

“I freaked out, she came over, we talked, I,” I took a deep breath and braced myself for her reaction, “I kissed her—”

She almost choked on her coffee, “And you didn’t lead with that? Don’t you think that’s a little important?”

“I was trying to avoid reliving it for as long as possible.”

“You’ve wanted this since high school, why wouldn’t you want to relive it?”

“She pulled away.” There was no anger or sadness behind my words. I don’t sound hurt as I recount the scene, “She took my hand, I kissed her, she stopped me.”

JJ’s hand brushed over my shoulder and I flinched away slightly.

“I apologized immediately, she wasn't mad or anything, I just…” I trailed off, unable to admit that I just couldn’t look at her anymore. I never thought I’d get tired of seeing her face, but I had needed her to leave. When she pulled away, all I could think about was the sound of Alexa Lisbon sneering at me as Kyle and his goons tied me to that goal post.

“She wanted to help me, and I know she did, but…”

“She couldn’t.” JJ finished my sentence.

I shook my head, “Not this time.”

“But now you want her to come back?”

“And I don’t know how to tell her that because I fucked up.”

“What did she say after you told her to leave? Did she just go?”

(Reader POV)

“I told him not to feel bad and to take care of himself.” You hadn’t had time to tell him how much you wanted to kiss him but neither one of you was in the right state of mind for that.

“Right, yeah, and did he say anything else?”

You winced at the memory of how his voice sounded. “He kept telling me to leave, so I just went for the door and said--”

(Spencer POV)

“‘Goodnight, pretty boy,’” I grumbled, “That was the last thing she said.”

“Okay?”

“She never calls me Pretty Boy.” I told her the whole story. When I was done, her eyebrows were drawn together and lips were pressed together in a thin, worried line uttering, “Spence…”

“What?”

She sighed, saying nothing and smirking slightly to herself, but saying nothing.

“Jennifer.”

“She loves you, genius.”

“Then why’d she leave?”

“Because you told her to. And…” she hesitated, almost scared to say anything else. I was scared to hear it. JJ took my coffee away and dumped it down the sink, a silent indicator that I had enough and needed to go to bed.

She turned back to me and leaned over the table again, making sure I'd look her in the eyes, “She’d do anything for you.”

I just stared down on my hands on the table, unable to say another word, unable to defend myself, unable to fight anymore.

Because I knew she was right.

Taglist~~~

Lmk if you wanna be added! Some names didn’t work so if you don’t see your name as a tag just dm me a url and I’ll try to fix it

@lawnmoa @ellvswriting @baby-pogue @purelyprentiss @confused-and-really-hungry @thatsonezesty13 @deni-gonzalez @irjuejjsaa @randomfandomshitposts @bisoner @moonstarrnghtsky @smurfflynn @eldahae @t0xicllama @undeniablyyou @staplernpaper @theweirdobella @sammypotato67 @k-k0129 @helloniallslovelies @dazzlingnights @uhuhuh @booksarekindaneat @crimeshowtrash @carlgrxmes @collectiveuniverses @annesauriol

#spencer reid #Criminal Minds Reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x reader #Criminal Minds #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #criminal minds imagine #CM #cm fan fiction #cm imagine #mgg fanfiction #mgg imagine #mgg x reader #mgg smut #mgg #mgg angst #spencer reid angst

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ziracona · 3 years ago

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T2 was okay and it could have been really good—had some real moments. But it needed more script iterations, and it was too goofy. Goofy is fine in general, but Terminator works best as a sci-fi action-drama-horror mesh. That’s the peak atmosphere. Also just, they gave their new Terminator scary powers to keep him relevant, but there’s just...no way to really make anyone on screen look like a threat to Arnold Schwarzenegger you know? And they never overcame that and it throws off the whole underdog atmosphere. He just. Wasn’t scary. Not when he was trying to kill heckin Arnold the brick house.

I’m not gonna talk about T3 bc I feel like I don’t need to and I think I have a lot of support for that in the fandom, and I’m not gonna talk any Genysis bc no one ever should, and I know I have support there.

Dark Fate was fine, but I felt like they really didn’t have to kill off their Kyle expy like at this point the surprising thing and interesting one would be /not/ to kill him. That role has died in /every/ other film. Like we get it. But plot rehashes are only good if you have some kind of spin. Mostly though I just...would have liked T800 man’s personality in another context but you couldn’t ever sell me on him after watching him gun down a 10 year old in the open. Like what, he found a soul by being...bored? If you want to convince me of fundamental change in a person, you /gotta/ motivate it better. Show me. Don’t tell me and expect me to take your word. And there just wasn’t enough meet in some spots. I wanted more firm lore and a little less action. Like I’m not even a science-heavy leaning sci-fi fan but it still wasn’t enough. I liked it more than most of the others but it just wasn’t quite...meaty enough. Sarah still a queen. But T800 man didn’t sell and that was a real weak spot, and so was expecting us and Sarah to just...like and forgive him bc he had accrued a family. But also like. I enjoyed having a new protag, but feeling like so much, no, /all/ of the work and suffering of everyone in other Terminator films was for nothing bc it’s not even Skynet anymore it’s some other robots?? It kind just...didn’t really work. It makes everything more hollow like it’s not even Terminator anymore there’s no more Terminators. They should have just had it be Skynet but a different rebel leader, or more. Sarah goes on to mentor Dani instead since John is dead, /something/ to make it more the same franchise and not so hollow. Or if it’s gonna be gutted, go all the way and let us feel that, don’t blip it as a plot point once and keep rolling. There’s decades of character attachment for fans; either make that matter, or make it mourned because it’s dead. Don’t skim it and make it cheap. Also on a meta level it was kind of weird how they handled time travel compared to the norm for the franchise but I’m not going into that.

BUT. The Terminator? A cinematic classic. It’s just...such a good film. The characters work is solid the whole movie, and Reese and Sarah are both truly excellent protagonists also given ample time to explore and exhibit that. There’s so much you get in moments that show tiny things about them. The way Sarah handles getting canceled on and goofing with Ginger, her having a pet iguana she loves to cuddle, talking to the statue at work? And she’s smart and normal (I mean normal in a very complimentary way). Kyle is introduced almost immediately running from the cops, but even in the middle of a chase scene, he’s stealing clothes in a mall while evading flashlights, and little things like hopping while he runs to check shoe sizes give you so much right away. He’s clearly out of his depth but he’s smart and methodical and he holes up in a car he hotwires and has a ptsd moment waking up from a dream because of some heavy construction machinery. You don’t have him say much about himself at all but you get him taking a second to be nice to the kids and guard dog on his way back before a T800 attacks. Even though if you’re watching it classic, you have no spoken goal for Reese and all you know is he’s armed and /also/ looking for Sarah, like the man who has killed three people already is, you kind of aren’t very scared of him by the time he’s creepily following her into a night club. That scene is iconic too damn. Anyway. Her reactions to everything are so great. Only film I ever saw where I 100% felt the person on screen was reacting like anyone would to almost being killed and then getting kidnap-saved by some other guy claiming to be from the future like I’d bite him too, but you know, I’d also be pretty happy he saved me and also decide he was crazy and not like, dangerous, and try to keep the cops from killing him. It’s so cute he thinks anyone is going to believe him like hang in there Kyle baby, king. Love as soon as the Terminator hits the police station, he breaks out and goes to find Sarah, and she’s immediately like ‘so fuck this actually’ and looking for him too. The deleted scene in the motel woods. The slow character build. Him falling in love with her because of the picture where she always looked a little sad and he wondered what she was thinking about and you don’t find out till the last scene it’s him she was thinking about in that picture. A family can be two complete trauma disasters making pipe bombs in a motel. The top 5 cinema shots moment where you think they won and they think they won and they’re both injured and stagger to each other and collapse laughing and crying and hugging and it holds for like ten seconds before that fucking thing gets up and you see the rubble in the fire shift and Kyle sees it first. And the hopelessness and despair. Sarah just screaming no in rage because it’s so unfair. The little scaffolding fight?? Kyle doing what he does? Sarah winning with a broken leg? The picture? The heartbreak? A work of art.

Also just. They’re both attractive but like, they are not remotely airbrushed Hollywood pretty. Kyle’s got that big scar on his lip and they’re both sweaty and bloody and dirty and gross the whole film??? God yeah.

Terminator Salvation? Also a classic. You have a film not about the core cast exactly, but it’s very ensemble. You get early days war. And it’s from the very open a solid narrative about second chances and what it means to be human and they really do explore that the whole runtime. Markus dies and comes back more confused than you are in the apocalypse. Baby Reese is absolutely perfect. You get formerly executed for murder Markus somehow adopting like 20 year old Reese and 13 year old kid Star and they’re amazing. Rebellion drama, lore reveals. Reese’s devout faith in the cause and how fast he looks up to Markus and starts learning and Markus is like :[ but then he’s like ... :] because he god assigned two family members now. The tag team fights—how incredibly talented Star is. Guilt trip on a look to dropping cars, she’s super effective. Tbh Markus is just O_O to >:-[ the whole movie as soon as Reese and Star are taken and I feel it. You’ve got a guy who was killed for straying too far from human, come back as a machine, but he doesn’t know it, wondering if he deserves another chance and if he can change, and it’s really neat the way it unfolds. Even after losing so many friends to Terminators that look human, Blair refuses to believe he isn’t a human even if he’s also a machine and risks her life to save him, when they barely know each other. Markus getting like, tortured by the rebels, and still choosing to help them and be who he has decided he wants to be this time, even towards John. Even with better alternatives. And you have Star never having a moment of doubt, or Reese, and him getting to save them both, and them trying to help the other humans in line for extermination before he arrives. The hand hold with Star when his hands just metal. And he decides to die for someone he doesn’t even /like/ and who has personally hurt him a lot of times, because he knows the rebels need him to win. Anyway death row to death row but completely different people in the same body facing that same death differently are amazing if done well (see TWDG I mean ow) and it was a very simple core theme to latch to and very enjoyable executed and it got snubbed by fans when it’s the best sequel Terminator ever had.

#thus concludes my spoiler heavy rant for why Terminator Salvation and The Terminator are the best two Terminator films #the terminator #terminator salvation #ramblings #spoilers #twdg spoilers #long post #sorry I had no idea how long this was

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scandalsavagefanfic · 5 years ago

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DC Kink Meme Prompts List

Since the kink meme is getting a lot of attention and growing daily, I thought I’d post a convenient place where I can keep track of the prompts that I’d like to see filled again. I figure you’re all here because we share similar interests and this way, if you’re a writer with looking for a prompt, you don’t have to scroll through the almost 400 prompts that are currently posted.

So here we go. Beware, this is a kink meme. These are nsfw and some may be triggering.

JayDick Watersports - Filled HERE

sub!Jason & Dom!Dick are in a consensual D/s relationship that has a heavy Master/slave dynamic (whether 24/7 or primarily during sex is up to you!). They're on a stakeout one night, and it's really cold, and, aw, fuck, Dick needs to piss, but he doesn't want his dick to freeze. Good thing he's got his bitch there with him, right? Dick pissing in Jay's ass preferred just to show the level of not caring about Jay's comfort [it's still cold!], but totally not gonna complain about piss drinking, either, if Dick's feeling a little more charitable. Is Jay surprised because it's the first time Dick has done this? Is this a normal, expected duty that he performs regularly? That's up to you!

Tim/Jason A/B/O - Filled

In an A/B/O world where omegas are in charge and alphas are treated like animals, or kept as pets, CEO Tim decides to treat himself to a new toy and buys Jason. Feel free to go as wild as you like with the kinks, I'm pretty unsquickable

Tim/Jason Stalker!Tim - Filled on the Meme by anon and HERE (by me)

Older Tim, younger Jason, where Tim's stalking gets a little obsessive once Jason takes over as Robin, and he starts stalking Jason out of costume as well as at night. A little judicious hacking later and he's able to keep an eye on Jason's internet activity too. Once he finds Jason looking at gay porn he knows he's got an in. And he starts blackmailing Jason, online at first, but escalating every time he gets Jason to go a little further, until he gets him to submit in person.

Slade/Dick/Jason - Filled amazingly HERE

Dick's been with Slade for a while, and now that he's stopped fighting and given into his training, Slade thinks he deserves a reward. Every good boy deserves a puppy, and Batman's new Robin looks like he could fit the role perfectly.

Jason Todd - Object Insertion - Filled on the meme (art)

Honestly, that's all I've got for you. I just want someone making Jason take things up his ass that have no business being there. Consensual or not are both fine! Any ship, though definitely a strong preference for Roy, Slade, Tim, Kyle, Dick, Roman or Ra's. Preferably not underage, but I'm not entirely opposed.

Ra's/Jason - Filled HERE

Ra's test drives an undunked Jason. The boy must be useful for something, after all, and he looks so pretty in chains. ABO welcome.

Prompt- Pegging (Jason) - Filled HERE

Jason gets pegged by one (or more ;)) of the lovely ladies of the DC universe. And enjoys it thoroughly Pairing is dealer's choice. <3

Bruce/Jason

Bruce takes in Jason off the streets, but more for use as a personal whore than to be Robin. Bonuses for Bruce still adopting Jason and getting off on fucking his son. EXTRA bonus points for Alfred's unfazed acceptance/support of it and perhaps even his participation.

Jason Todd Intercrural Sex - Filled on meme

This man deserves more thigh fucking and so do we! All ships welcome!

No Title - Bruce/Jason, Dick finds out Bruce has been sexually abusing Jason

One of the other prompts made me realize that while there are a lot of fics where Jason discovers Bruce has been abusing Dick, there are none the other way around and suddenly I have a craving. So I would like for Dick to find out (maybe right after Jason returns, Dick catches them and overhears Bruce say something to indicate it used to happen regularly) that Bruce had been sexually abusing Jason since the moment he found him and try to save him. And like, because of his background as a child prostitute, Jason kind of thinks it's normal or that it's the only way he could earn love? Maybe Bruce implies that Jason is useless otherwise and he'd end up back on the streets if he's not useful. Maybe Bruce is even happy to point out that the reason he never even considered touching the others is because they were too good for it, pure and wholesome, while Jason was ruined goods.

Dick/Jason fuck-or-die bottom!Jay

I would absolutely kill to see a fic where Dick is forced to fuck Jason (for whatever reason but preferably not due to sex pollen/aphrodisiacs/drugs - I would prefer if they were both in their right minds please) Preferably they wouldn't be in a relationship or have secret feelings for each other and this would be mutual noncon/rape with a focus on how horrified they are that they're having to do this to each other. I would really, really like if it was bottom!Jason for this, but that there is acknowledgement that Dick is being raped here too!

Skeezy Ric Grayson

One specific fic I read has completely coloured my perception of Ric, and now I'm just desperate to see him being a total creep. Perving on his siblings and former friends. Would love to see him not take no for an answer, especially with someone who doesn't want to fight back because "it's still Dick in there somewhere, I can't hurt him" or something like that. Preference for Wally (HiC who?) or Jason, but Tim, Roy, Babs or Donna would be okay, too! A/B/O with Alpha!Ric would be a bonus but isn't necessary.

Cassie/Rose bondage spanking and D/s, semi-dubious consent

Cassie has had enough of Rose mouthing off and causing trouble, so she ties her up with her lasso and lectures her. Rose mockingly asks her if she’s going to spank her for being a bad girl, and much to her surprise, Cassie does. They both enjoy it much more than expected

Nyssa/Talia

Nyssa/Talia, set post-Death and the Maidens, Talia restrained while Nyssa gets her off, begging to be allowed to reciprocate. Bonus points for twisty fucked up Nyssa POV with all kinds of big global megalomaniacal justifications for what she's doing and how important it is to the greater good. (Reposted from old DC kinkmeme)

Jason Todd/Dick Grayson/Roy Harper/Koriand’r

Kori loves watching her subs play with each other and rewards them well for good behavior

JayTim hatesex

Jason and Tim having incestuous-sibling-rivalry-hate-sex against the memorial

Any Bats/???, Alfred has to clean up

Poor Alfred often gets stuck cleaning up the mess when any of the family bring partners over. The crackier the circumstances the better!

Slade/Jason identity porn

Slade and Jason fuck while in costume as and pretending to be Batman and Nightwing respectively

Kyle Rayner/any

Kyle winds up working as a stripper somehow. Some other heroes find out and pay him a visit

Batfam/Jason; non con or resigned-to-his-fate cumdumpster!Jason

Could also be Earth-3 Owlfam/Jason. A/B/O welcome but it doesn't have to be. Would appreciate any one or combination of the following: dehumanization/objectification, humiliation, public sex, breeding kink, restraints, fucking machines, cum enemas, lots of cum in general, size kink... I just want something unapologetically filthy. I'm pretty much good with everything but scat.

Dick/Tim non/dub-con, universe hopping

Dark Dick from a dark universe ends up in the main universe, where he is delighted to find a brand new Timmy to play with, who unconditionally trusts his brother and doesn't know he's been replaced. Cue Dick slowly luring him in so he can have his fun. Tim doesn't realize until it's too late, or doesn't realize at all and has no idea how his beloved older brother could do this to him. Main universe has fully platonic, familial relationships within in the batfam. Feel free to imply/state anything you like about the dark universe. Grooming/slowly warming Tim up to more and more touches, crying, overstimulation, bondage, or any combination thereof are all bonuses

Young Justice S3 Dick/Jason omegaverse

Alpha!Dick Grayson is stuck on a mission and somehow has to help the mysterious Red-Hooded omega through his heat. But they have to stay quiet in order to not wake the pup Damian sleeping right next to them. Preferably there's an identity reveal in there where Dick finds out the omega is Jason Todd under the mask.

Addict!Roy Harper Noncon

Noncon (or possibly dubcon, if the manipulation is clear enough to readers) with Snowbirds Don't Fly era!Roy Harper as the victim. Could be an OC, another Titan, a Leaguer, a canon villain... Dealer's choice! Looking for something that really focuses on how he's being taken advantage of, rather than just "can't technically consent because he's high, but is totally into it."

Woder Woman/Batman, Rough Sex

Bruce loves it when Diana is rough with him

Bane/Bruce, violent noncon

Something set during Knightfall, where Bane decides to take “breaking the Bat” even further by raping Bruce and possibly also his precious little Robin

Jay/Tim bdsm AU, sub Jay

What it says on the tin. Was thinking maybe also an arranged marriage of sub Jason to dom Tim Drake, to cement a business union but also because subs aren’t full citizens.

Robin!Jason/Bruce Somnophilia

Bruce drugs his new little Robin and slips into his room. He takes his time with him, enjoying Jason before carefully opening and fucking him. Would be great if Jason wakes up towards the end but can't do anything but take it- maybe because of the drugs, maybe because of the way Bruce is holding him down, or even because he likes it.

Sidekicks/Villains noncon glory wall

Any sidekicks you want—Speedy, the Robins and Batgirls, Kid Flash and Impulse, the Wonder girls, etc.—being displayed in a glory wall, leaving their holes open for fucking. Interested villains can pay to fuck any hole they desire, and they enjoy wrecking the sidekicks and filling them with come

Robin!Jason/Villains & Henchmen?

Robin Jason gets captured and tied up by the villain of the week, who decides to take advantage of the situation. Robin is blindfolded and groped/fucked by the villain and maybe some henchmen while waiting for Batman to rescue him. Batman finding a bound and blind Jay too tempting to resist is a bonus.

Dickjay daddy kink

Older! Dick and bottom! Jason. Jason came back years later and Dick is around 40.

OmegaJason/Batfam first heat, lactation

It's Jason's first heat and the alphas of the pack know that his milk is on its way soon. All it needs is a little encouragement. A few knots and some nipple play should do it. His milk tastes perfect as it starts to flow.

Jason/Dick, Jason/RomanSionis, Hooker!Jason & Officer Grayson

So this is based off a discussion from AGES ago in the jayroman discord server that I still think about to this day XD A no capes au in which Jason never gets picked up by Bruce and ends up a crime alley prostitute who somehow along the way caught the eye of Black Mask and winds up working for him. And Black Mask has basically the whole city in his pocket, including the police force, which is why it’s so annoying when this little upstart, Officer Dick Grayson, starts to try to challenge his hold on the city, the little goody two-shoes denying any and all bribes and refusing to back down in the face of threats. And it should be easy to squash one annoying little bug, but somehow all attempts have failed and he can’t openly go after him without risking his reputation as a clean, law-abiding businessman, a reputation that’s slowly starting to unravel thanks to the dogged efforts of Officer Grayson, because the little shit is annoyingly not as stupid as his attempts to go after Roman would make him seem and despite all of Roman’s power and having basically the entire police force and the various other government officials Roman has in his pocket against him, he has made far too much headway in his endeavors So Roman gives Jason the job of seducing Dick, because if bribery and threats don’t work, video evidence of an officer fucking an underage hooker makes excellent blackmail material, and should be enough to take him down for good if he ever steps a toe out of line again Except no matter how Jason tries to seduce him, Dick is just too decent a guy to take advantage (Ex: Jason: *shows up wearing even more revealing clothes than the night before.* Dick: “You must be cold, here, take my jacket.” etc.) And before he knows it, Jason finds himself growing weirdly fond of the infuriating idiot with his stupid puns and painful sincerity

Roman Sionis/Jason Todd, AOB noncon impregnation gang rape

Intersex AOB verse. Roman wants to punish and claim the upstart omega, so he plugs Jason’s cunt and lets his men anally rape Jason until the omega begs Roman to breed his pussy

TimKon, a/b/o, alpha!Tim, bottom Conner

Humans have a/b/o. Kryptonians do not. Alpha!Tim thinks that he shouldn't bother Kon about Tim's rut. Kon thinks otherwise. Whether Kon can keep up with Tim (superpowers got to be good for something, right?) or is overwhelmed is up to anon :) I am absolutely unsquickable so whatever extra kinks are fine with me. Just please top!Tim only. Please, my crops are dying.

past romanjay now mobJay, gangbang

After getting tired with his new toy, Roman decided to just give his subordinates a chance to have fun with it. But mostly he just want to see the red hood to get more humiliated after destroying his empire.

Damian Wayne/Jason Todd, bestiality

It's time for Damian to introduce his new acquired pet to the pack, Titus and Ace.

Tim gags and spanks Damian

Red Robin has to take Robin out on patrol because Batman is away, Damian is reckless and keeps disobeying orders so Tim punishes him while having him gagged for being mouthy. can progress to something more sexual but doesn't have to be. Damian secretly enjoying it is a bonus.

Deathstroke/All the Robins

Slade really has a thing for fighting and chasing after Batbrats…

Rose/Jason mommy kink edging and pegging

Jason wants to be a good boy for mommy, Rose rewards his good behavior

Jason Todd/Kyle Rayner hatesex - Filled

I’d love some rough, angry, violent hatesex between these two. Bonus points for snarky asshole bottom!jason and kyle using his ring to make restraints/other kinky constructs ;)

Flashpoint!Father Todd/Incubus!Dick

Incubus!Dick seduces Father Todd. Jason holds out longer than most but Dick prides himself on being irresistible. He’s never failed before and he doesn’t plan to start now. But maybe, instead of his usual dine-and-ditch MO, Dick think’s he might like to savor this meal for long. Jason falls so beautifully. (bottom Jason please) Catholic aesthetics, blasphemy as kink, church sex (altar, confessional, pews, etc)

Flashpoint Thomas Wayne/Father Todd

Thomas Wayne as Batman bends Father Todd over the altar. In uniform. (At least for Thomas. It would be super hot if he strips Father Todd out of his robes first. Maybe everything except his rosary?)

Jason/Tim rape

Tim ties down Jason and rides(rapes) him. Pls let Tim use Jason as nothing but a mere meat dildo.

Titans/Dick, Titans/Jason, Titans/Tim consensual gangbang - Filled

The not-so-secret tradition of team bonding by fucking the current Bat on the Teen Titans is well-adhered to, especially given the enthusiastic consent of all participants Feel free to include any or all: garden sex, pool sex, power use, DP, riding, pegging, toy use, CBT, nipple play, cockwarming, CFNM/CMNM, and consensual somno All other kinks welcome excluding scat, watersports, emeto, ageplay, vore, and anything else bloody

Thomas Elliot/Bruce Wayne (Rape/Non-con)

Bruce doesn't realise how obsessed Thomas really is with him. Leads to Hush raping Bruce. Can be when Bruce knows who Hush is or when he still doesn't know.

Evil!Dick and Jason, noncon or dubcon

Jason comes back to his safehouse and is surprised to find Dick already there. After the initial surprise, Jason is quick to find out that there's something... off, about this Dick. He's not acting like his usual self. It turns out this isn't the usual Dick that Jason is familiar with, instead, he is a darker version of him (drugged? Talon from Earth-3 that somehow ends up in the main universe? other possibilities? all welcome options!), and this Dark!Dick is obsessed with Jason and wants to fuck him... and he doesn't take no for an answer. So there's a setup for a non-con or dub-con(in case Jason also has a crush on main Dick) for you. Restraints (gags, ropes, tapes etc.) are also welcome but doesn't have to be present.

Kon-El/Lex Luthor Daddy Kink DubCon

Lex genetically programmed Kon to need his daddy to fill him up when he created him. Lex made Kon to check all his boxes (ie Superman, something he made, a gifted teenager). Kon can’t actually consent because of programming, and he doesn’t want it until he’s getting it. Can be simple daddy kink or full of abdl. Bonus points for trans!Kon

Guy Gardner/Bunch of Aliens possible Dubcon/Noncon

Macho, hotheaded, shit-talking Guy is the embodiment of hyper-masculinity, and that arrogance of his gets him into a lot more than just a bar fight. All of Guy's enemies seem to be of the huge, muscular variety, so let's see the most stocky lantern get put in his place. Does he secretly love it? Does he outright hate it? Maybe all that shit-talking was just a ploy to finally get someone to "punish" him right. The choice is up to you. Maybe it's a bunch of random aliens Guy's ticked off in a bar. Maybe all that showboating's pissed off Kilowog or Arkillo. Maybe Lobo's still put out after being tricked one too many times by Guy. Perhaps, Atrocitus's still kinda harboring a grudge for Guy kicking him out of the Red Lanterns. Then there's always the way too touchy Dementor with his Vuldarian kin. I'm all for any other kinks or situations, I just would prefer no bathroom stuff. Go absolutely wild.

Black Mask/anyone, bathroom control, omorashi - Filled on meme

I'm a simple person with simple needs: Roman controlling whether or not someone's allowed to piss. can be consensual or noncon torture, the victim can end up pissing themselves or make it to the bathroom safely. just as long as Roman's in total control of the situation, and smug about it. bonus points: tears, begging, banter, degradation, embarrassment, additional torture, anything else along those lines. watersports only, please, no scat!

Roy Clones/Dick gangbang omegaverse

YJ season 3 episode 4 has excellent gangbang material just so you know Add omegaverse to it and its perfect Noncon/dubcon is accepted also

Titans/Jason Gangbang

Prefer comics based more than the show but either is fine. Dick and his friends welcome the new Robin the Titans way, by breaking in that hole. New kid is always the team toy, and it's even more fun now that it's Nightwing's bratty kid brother. Consensual or non con, dealer's choice. Double (or triple) penetration, dirty talk, and powers used for sex are favorite kinks but I'm good with pretty much anything.

Willis Todd/Jason Todd, Mob/Jason; Incest and forced underage prostitution

Willis pimps out his kid for cash and drugs. Catherine either pretends she doesn't know or knows and helps/doesn't care. And like any good salesman, he makes sure to test out his product to make sure it's up to snuff.

Make it cruel and awful and hopeless. Dehumanizing and degrading. Jason is just a hole to sell and use. belting in sensitive areas, beatings, violent sex, cum play, blood play... I just want something dark and nasty.

____________________________________________________

Woo! Ok. I’ll try to keep this up the best I can. I’ll link/mark when prompts are filled so that you guys can check it out if you want (all filled prompts can be reached by the link in the title, but some have ao3 links that I put on the “Filled” note).

I’ll also reblog this with any new prompts that come up or if I find I’ve forgotten one.

#DC Kink Meme #long post #too many things to tag #content and trigger warnings apply to some of the prompts #enter at your own risk #mostly Jason Todd centric #but others that I liked too

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counterspelling · 5 years ago

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time for another angry tros post

why in the everloving fuck was kerri russell’s character codenamed MARA if she wasn’t skymom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the disrespect!!!! it’s not enough to name a random jedi kid jacen, or to name a new character in tros jannah, or a girl in the mandalorian winta........... they really went and codenamed another nobody mara????? why??? what’s the point????

luke and leia really went all that fucking time NOT telling rey about her parentage??? when they knew how important it was to her?? how desperate she was for information about her parents?? after everything THEY went through about birth family drama?? they really thought that was a good idea?? rey is more than her family name, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to know. and HOW did they know she was palpatine’s granddaughter. like kyle, he’s a snoke acolyte, okay, so maybe at some point he’s taken into their confidence. but how the fuck do luke and leia find out

everything with leia was just. so bad. all of her scenes were so stilted, they would have been better off just cgi’ing her. and this movie isn’t technically their fault, but the fact that they’d already spent two movies completely wasting her. having her send her non-force sensitive husband to confront their murderous son, standing back and sending rey to her twin, literally never once doing anything but standing around and reacting to people around her. if leia trained as a jedi, we should have SEEN THAT. i did not wait my entire life to see jedi leia on screen and then never get it. and her death, completely unexplained except that for some reason reaching her son kills her.......... it’s fucking padme all over again. god, they just completely fucked everyone in the ot, so badly, but holy fuck does star wars hate women

still just generally really pissed off that they brought palpatine back at all. not just in the sense that they tried to fucking woobify kyle ron and stopped him from being the ultimate villain that they should have, but that disney continually shits on star wars’ legacy. anakin DESTROYED THE SITH. there was a whole prophecy. it took him 20 years, but he fucking did it. he killed palpatine. and now, like everything else disney has set up over the last few years, it means nothing, because he DIDN’T actually kill palpatine, just like everything luke and han and leia fought for is meaningless, because 30 years later everyone was still in the exact same place. a low-rent resistance without a lot of support, the jedi order slaughtered through treachery, fighting an overly powerful empire bent on slavery and destruction (also why i could never get into rebels. luke is a new hope, the presence of a jedi for the first time in 20 years is supposed to be a big fucking deal. hard to have that same shock and awe when kannan and ezra are formally joining the rebellion, meeting mon and leia and lando, prominently waving around lightsabers. if disney wanted to make stories about jedi choose literally ANY OTHER TIME PERIOD IN STAR WARS HISTORY. I AM SO DESPERATE FOR STORIES ABOUT JEDI. just in the right time, and not in this singular 50 year period where there shouldn’t be jedi, jfc)

the OTHER major problem in bringing palpatine back is yet again, they’re trying to top the “no, i am your father” moment, which is just never going to happen. that was a once in a lifetime moment. everything disney does is trying to bigger and better. it’s not just death stars that can destroy planets, it’s a million star destroyers! kyle ron and rey have a force bond unseen in generations that lets them trade items across the galaxy! force healing has always been a thing but now they can instantly heal death! star wars doesn’t have to be X-TREME to be good. its best moments have always been about its character beats. luke saying he won’t destroy his father, leia and han’s i love yous, anakin’s despair over leaving his mother behind to become a jedi. it doesn’t always have to be BIGGER and BETTER. E V E R Y T H I N G about tfa said that rey was a skywalker, that luke was her dad. the music, her dreams of an island, calling his lightsaber to her, their lonely upbringings on desert planets, their instant embroilment into a conflict much bigger than they are but that they quickly become central to. but because rian johnson is so up his own ass and so insistent on proving how clever he is, he couldn’t follow through on that. even though star wars has always been a fairy tale, and it’s never been about tricking audiences or proving them wrong or throwing out foreshadowing as a red herring. lucas is maybe the most straightforward filmmaker of all time. that’s why bad guys have names like sidious and maul and plagueis. subtle, he is not. and it’s one of my favorite things about star wars. and disney just doesn’t care

the fact that they gave us so many luke/rey parallels and STILL STUCK WITH SHITTY REY PALPATINE. rey flying in his x-wing wearing his helmet, rey leaping away to safety on the millennium falcon from an evil skywalker offering his hand asking them to join the dark side, rey’s fear of the darkness within herself.................. all of it meaningless, apparently

i am so eternally angry at the way they treated rey. removing her teeth, linking her story so inextricably with the man who tortured her, irrevocably tying her narrative to that of a man’s because apparently star wars just can’t handle a trilogy without a white man in a central role. the rey in tfa is a completely different character than the rey from tlj and tros. she couldn’t stand on her own merits? they respected her so little they had to force her to share her trilogy with a murderer who abused her, and try to call that love? to make her journey about a forced bond with him, when he only ever tried to murder her and bring about her downfall? that they would VALIDATE his gross treatment of her by having her kiss him........................... how they made a trilogy more sexist than 70s george lucas, i will never understand

the main movies are the skywalker family saga. that’s what they told us. ending the last movie with two palpatines facing off............. if they already said fuck anakin and everything about his legacy finally ending the rule of the sith, they should have at least let his GRANDDAUGHTER be the one to ultimately fulfill the prophecy. i really cannot believe they fucked anakin and all the skywalkers in this way. the final living skywalker descendant killed all of his remaining family members and THAT’S what we’re going to have to live with from now on. everything anakin and luke and leia struggled and fought for, everything they overcame, all meaningless because one fucking sociopath is such an edgy piece of shit that he’d rather build a shrine to his grandpa’s burned helmet and get stuck in teen “I HATE MY FAMILY” bullshit because...... his life was unfair, somehow??? he just really loves murder??? tyranny is cool??? who knows! not us! jaina didn’t get erased from canon for this. the skywalkers deserved better and so did we.

#tros #tros spoilers #sw negativity #star wars

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sumukhcomedy · 4 years ago

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I Should Be Grateful to be Killed in America

I am the child of immigrants. When you are a child of immigrants, you’re fed the story of the “American Dream.” My parents came to this country for more opportunity than they could get in their homeland. As a result, it’s my role to continue with that “American Dream” in whatever capacity that I can and to build on all the success and sacrifice that they made.

On October 3, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It paved the way for my parents and so many other individuals’ immigration to the United States. It followed the virtues of what the Statue of Liberty came to symbolize with its poem “The New Colossus” representing the Statue as a welcoming mother to the poor and downtrodden. Immigrants from a wide variety of countries were now able to come to America holding on to this dream. For the sake of history of us, many of us can credit Johnson for signing this act while still also disagreeing with him on Vietnam. It’s the kind of constructive criticism necessary to evaluate a President, leadership, and history.

I don’t know what my life would be like if I was born, grew up, and still lived in India. I imagine, based off my cousins who lived there, that it would be okay. Of course, I’d be an entirely different person. I’m not an Indian citizen. I’m an American. As a result, with that, comes a load of very different feelings than I would have if I were an Indian born in India.

Patriotism in America and how it is defined is pretty clear. It’s about pride. It’s about freedom. It works intertwined with the military and expressed a lot by those with or connected to those with a military background. I don’t know what wholly drives them to love the country they live in so much. Having been born in and growing up in America, I certainly have felt that same sentiment. So I support those Americans. But, in loving and appreciating America, I also yearn for the country to be better. I yearn for anything that I love including myself to be better. I want a better life for myself and for others and for my nation.

As I parse through what is going on in America now, I can’t help but think of how I and likely so many others of color are perceived. And, for a certain realm and perspective of the country, it’s clear I’m either not wanted or should be grateful even to be here.

When the “birther” movement began to question President Barack Obama’s citizenship, it seemed fringe and silly. Unfortunately, it ultimately led to President Obama feeling the need to prove he was born in this country and an American as if such steps wouldn’t have been taken in the past privately anyway as a constitutional requirement to run for the Presidency. When the highest profile person of color not just in this country but in the world and the first President of color isn’t even immune to the foundation of his nationality and his American pride being under question, what chance do the rest of Brown and Black Americans have to this same susceptibility?

Such sentiment has clearly grown only worse under President Donald Trump as these “birthers” are now in the White House. They’ve infiltrated their party’s platform into telling what the perspective of white Americans should be toward Brown and Black Americans. That perspective is racist. If you question the very fiber of our being (being Americans), if you kill us but defend the killers, if you say there is just a few bad cops but a whole load of bad protesters, how else are we to perceive how you feel about our American lives?

For a certain segment of the American population, I am either better off being less or not existent as an American. And the segment of the population that believes appeared to be already quite existent or has only grown under President Trump. Whether that means them telling me to go back to my own country (which is America) or substantiating me getting killed in this country, that’s fine to them. Instead of condemning whoever would kill me, they would choose to analyze what my existence was as a Brown man to determine I deserved death. “Well, he drank a lot in his 20s. He deserved to die,” they may say. “He was with a white woman in the wrong place. He deserved to die,” they may say. Who knows the endless illogical conclusions that could substantiate my murder?

I often have brought up Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing because it should have been a seminal moment for anyone growing up in America in my generation. How do you react when you think of McVeigh now? How did you react when you thought of him in 1995? Pure evil? Well, McVeigh’s perspectives are now more at the forefront than they have ever been and more normal than they have ever been. It’s why the President, who has become more anti-government as the head of American government than we have ever seen from a President, can defend Kyle Rittenhouse. It’s why if Dylann Roof, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold may have even more sympathizers today. McVeigh killed 168 people. Imagine if instead of condemning him, Americans sat sifting through the rubble of the 168 bodies, finding ways from those 168 dead to substantiate a killer’s actions. It’s sick, discriminatory, dangerous, and frightening.

What I can’t get over with is simply how U.S. leadership and those that blindly follow it are telling me how to be as an American. And what that is telling me is to be less than them and aspire to not constructively criticize American leadership. I criticize what I love (including myself) in order to make it better. Why wouldn’t I criticize the country I grew up in and love? Why wouldn’t I criticize our President just as I would criticize his opponent Joe Biden? I simply don’t fall in line to America under a belief that it is an all-perfect nation because it is not. And to keep my mouth shut, to love America and the flag, and to accept the perspective of its current leadership as being the way to do it is strange since it is actually the opposite of the freedom of speech and the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that this administration and its patriotism claim to supposedly so love.

Yes, I’m grateful to be an American. But I am an American. As such, I deserve the right to equality. But right now, I feel as if I could be killed and a good portion of the country won’t seek justice for me. It’s because they feel like I shouldn’t have been an American to begin with. I should rest on the laurels of what America provides me and just be happy that I got lucky enough to be an American to begin with. I should simply be desperately grateful for what America provided.

I should just be grateful to live in America. And, as a result, I should also be grateful if I’m murdered in America, too.

#black lives matter #blm #equality #lyndon johnson #mlk #immigration #barack obama #donald trump #joe biden #democrats #republicans #usa #timothy mcveigh #kenosha

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thought-loop · 5 years ago

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An Irresponsibly Long and Occasionally Corny Love Letter

Okay, so this is going to be a long one. I’ve found myself in a situation where my life is the best it’s ever been, and it feels so incredibly surreal waking up to it every morning. I’ve been wanting to talk about it for a while now, and I want to make sure I get it all down on record before the memory is too distant.

If you found your way here through a link I sent you, this is written for you in particular. This is an extended thank you to you, and I want you to know how you’ve touched my life.

Fall 2019 was my 7th semester in college. It was a dark time in my life. College burnout was hitting me hard, and my mental health suffered as a result. I routinely skipped my classes and slept in until 2pm. I felt like a stranger in my own college, and I dreaded studying. I had no friends in the CS department that I regularly talked to, and this made me feel like an island. My grades in the fall were abysmal, and my grades in the spring were even worse. By the time May came around, I was in jeopardy of failing out after 4 years.

I was determined to finish what I started. I picked up 18 credits over the summer, and three of the classes were my third and final attempt to pass them. Summer of 2019 was do or die. I was in too deep to give up, so I kicked things into high gear. When summer session began, I hit the ground running. I spent the first few weeks getting waaaay ahead wherever I could. I studied like I had something to prove, because I did.

As a result, I became an active member in class GroupMes answering questions and helping others (in addition to ranting and posting memes). I had always loved these groups, and they made up most of my social interactions. As an introvert, I generally have a hard time putting myself out there and making friends. But these groups felt very approachable, and they gave me a place where I felt comfortable reaching out. I took better notes if I knew someone else would see them, and the study guides I posted were lauded. Helping others in the class not only kept my understanding sharp, but it also energized me. I had inadvertently made a name for myself in these forums. Around exams and project due dates, I was regularly getting 5-10 DMs a day from various people. This was a massive and welcome change to how I’d been studying for the past year. It made me feel like I had something to offer as a person. For the first time in a long time, I felt valued and validated.

But it went a step further than that. Eventually I wasn’t just getting messages from people with homework questions. I was getting messages about everything. I know a lot of people who were hit with AI violations for McDaniel’s second project, because a lot of them reached out to me about it seeking advice and comfort. I’ve had people consult me about switching majors before they spoke with an advisor. Hell, I’ve been asked for relationship advice in a GroupMe DM from someone I had never met in the flesh. I don’t know how or why, but somehow I had become a confidante for a significant number of people who I’d never even met. And I was (and still am) always happy to talk with people about the things they’re dealing with. As the daughter of a therapist, I feel energized by opportunities to help others with their problems.

In any case, I was taken aback. It’s hard to accurately describe the gravity of what I experienced without coming across as factitious posturing, but it’s difficult not to when the people around me have made me feel like I’m on one. I brought it up with other friends who were active in these groups, and they said they didn’t have this experience of having their peers message them out-of-the-blue to talk about their thoughts, problems, dreams. I recognized that lot of people began to see me as someone they respect, someone they can trust with their baggage, someone who they can open up to _even _about their more embarrassing predicaments. It felt like I was given a special role that no one else knew about, and one that was really hard to explain.

Even describing it now, it sounds like I’m blowing smoke up my own ass. But I just want to make it known that this has been a borderline religious experience for me. During the months leading up to this point I felt completely alone. I felt like a failure. I felt like a waste of space. I stopped taking care of myself. When I started posting study guides and answering question in GroupMe, I was doing it for my own benefit as a last-ditch effort to stay in the major. I had no idea that so many people would huddle around me in the way they did. I’ve shed tears reflecting on the overwhelming amount of support and love I’ve received from people I’ve never met, DMing me spontaneously to just check in on me and see how I was doing. It’s an incredible feeling knowing there are people who think of me and are looking out for me, and I’ve never experienced anything like it in my 23 years on this earth--at least anything of this magnitude.

So that was my motivation for writing this. It’s a difficult experience to talk about (it doesn’t really work in casual conversation), but I had to find a way to let the people who’ve impacted me know how much they’ve impacted me. I’ve had conversations with so many amazing people, and I want them to know how amazing they are in my eyes. My life has been changed in a way that I could never imagined, and I will think back on this experience fondly for years to come.

I want to take a moment to get sappy and name some people in particular, for various reasons, as individuals who I’m especially grateful for or that I have particularly fond memories of.

Nate: You were the first friend I made in those forums back in fall semester, and even though we only briefly see each other, I still consider you a close friend of mine. You were the only person I talked to in my classes for a long time. You were there when I felt most alone, and I’ll always remember that.

Jimmy: Between you, Nate, and I, we’ve always been the Meme Gang in our groups, probably annoying the shit out of everyone else. We’ve become sort of partners in crime in our classes this semester, and it’s been a wonderful partnership. You’ve become my study buddy of choice if I ever need help because I know I can count on you.

Vernika: I remember you messaging me back before summer session even started to establish a friendship, and I’m so glad you did. I would never leave my house if it weren’t for you inviting me over between classes, letting me sleep on your couch because of my nightmarish sleep schedule, and otherwise being an awesome person to hang out with. If it weren’t for you I also wouldn’t have met Evelynn or Kyle who I literally owe giant chunks of my grade to.

Ajinkya: We haven’t spoke in a while, but I still wanted to thank you in particular. Back when I was doing McDaniel’s third project, you stayed up for hours with me helping me debug my code. It probably seemed like nothing to you, but I still have fond memories of working with you.

Chris: When Evelynn first introduced us, the first thing you said to me was, “Wait, you’re not _the _Chloe are you? The one from the GroupMes?” You made me feel like a rockstar then, and you _always _make me feel like a rockstar to this day. Even when I’m bombing hard, your positivity is infectious. You have a unique style of communicating that motivates me to act and keeps me from being too self-deprecating.

There are so many more people I could talk about and so many other experiences that impacted me, but this post is already getting monstrously long and I’d actually like for people to read it. But I just wanted to express how fondly I think of you all in particular. Most of you had stuck your necks out for me long before you had even met me and made me feel welcome in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

To those reading this, thank you for indulging me. These are things that I’ve been holding inside for a while, and it feels good to finally get it out there. If any of you ever need someone to lean on, even years from now, for whatever reason, you know where to find me. I wish you all the best.

From me to you,

Chloe

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rabtownsend · 5 years ago

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CW for some slurs, and general small-town casual prejudices

sub-tumbling (is that a thing?) this post I just saw claiming that shows like Family Guy and South Park are directly responsible for eroding empathy and instilling alt-right belief structures in young people.

Here’s what I think about that. I’m a leftist. Definitely a socialist. Would not necessarily describe myself as radical. Am a feminist. Am anti-fascist. Am anti-capitalist. Hate libertarianism. Do support trans rights. Do support sex-workers’ rights. And I do have complicated, sometimes contradictory feelings about a lot of things in between any one of those subjects and belief structures.

I can attribute a lot of that to my upbringing, sure. My parents were both Canadian Liberals. Both teachers.

Maybe my mistake - before I even begin - is that when I was young, and I saw the other kids in my small, conservative town calling other kids “stupid jews” and “faggot” - I never had the sense that they actually hated jews or homosexuals. Rather, they had just found some new way to call someone (who, statistically speaking, was probably not jewish or gay) an idiot, in a non-sincere way.

I didn’t see them as being truly hateful toward anyone, just ignorant. And certainly I was bothered that they were so ignorant about the meaning and connotations of those terms. And I was bothered because when I’d asked my father what words like those meant, he had explained how they were used to hurt other people.

So, that was already the context I had before South Park premiered in 1996, when I was 10 years old.

I was not allowed to watch it until I was 12, and only then because my friend Leo watched it (presumably, his dad had watched it, and told my mother it was okay).

But very specifically, the thing about South Park is that the show was always punching up. And here, I have to make a distinction between the show and its characters. The characters you are supposed to identify with, are Stan and Kyle. They are the straight men. So when a character like Eric Cartman - who represents all of the kids I grew up with who called other kids “faggot” or made fun of them for superficial reasons, without truly knowing or understanding the origin or consequence of their words - calls Kyle a stupid jew, you are supposed to be outraged with Kyle, not thinking “this Cartman character is hilarious, and I should behave like him.”

And obviously, a lot of kids I knew, as I went on to high school, had taken Cartman as the role model, rather than the bad example.

Let’s talk about Family Guy for a minute. I have thought episodes of Family Guy were funny. But as it came out a bit later, when I was a bit older, I was more able to see it for what it was (and is still) - a platform for Seth MacFarlane to shit-disturb, and champion what my friends over on Mastodon have amusingly rephrased as “freeze peach,” free speech without consequences.

In Family Guy, Peter Griffin is supposed to be the Cartman character.

Wait, let’s scoot back a second. Both characters are supposed to be the Archie Bunker character. The character you love to hate. The character who says inappropriate things, while the good, but less developed characters react with outrage. You’re not supposed to sympathize with them, but some people - people who still believe what a character portrayed as an idiot/out-of-touch curmudgeon seems to believe - will think they are being catered to.

So, Peter is supposed to be that. Only there are no straight-men on Family Guy - except Lois and Meg. The two women on the show who are physically beaten on screen or constantly verbally abused by the male characters on the show. Punishing them for being straight-man characters, on the rare occasion that they are that. Not to mention that the humour in Family Guy is almost never situational. It is almost always a cut-away joke - a thing which South Park rightly criticizes it for, in the Cartoon Wars episodes.

And knowing that South Park’s use of Cartman as an Archie Bunker type has been misinterpreted, for whatever reason, why have I stuck with it for so long?

At the heart of South Park is satire. Like, real satire, not the “satire” that alt-righters claim to use.

The parents on the show are shown as largely incompetent and driven by impulse/fear. The boys are, by contrast, progressive and wise. Cartman’s offensive behaviour has consequences for him, in ways that Family Guy characters never face consequences. For every scheme he enacts, he is thwarted, either by one of the other boys, or his own folly (in a Seinfeld-esque kind of way). Characters he offends on the show are quick to make him face consequences.

And, unlike Family Guy, South Park’s political leanings are more anarchist than libertarian. While Family Guy’s creators would champion free speech in the name of a racist joke, South Park only champions free speech in the name of valid criticism or in the service of making a moral point.

The underlying theme of many South Park episodes is to think for yourself, or that blindly following authority or acting out of fear is foolish, and has negative consequences.

Stereotypes are used and sometimes stretched to ridiculous proportions on South Park, as a means of demonstrating how stupid and ridiculous it is that we believe or rely on those stereotypes in media.

I won’t say that South Park hasn’t made missteps, but I find it hard to believe that it could train anyone to be anything but a critical thinker with anticapitalist, leftist leanings.

As always, a great deal of media is made with one intention, and misappropriated by ignorant people, who don’t fully comprehend that they are seeing something critical of a certain way of thinking, because comprehending that requires the capacity for abstract thought, which the ignorant, typically, lack.

I could see how Family Guy might encourage alt-right beliefs in young people, because it is edge-lordy, and it champions free speech over good conscience. I don’t know that I’d place the onus on the show so much as on the viewers for failing to make a more discerning choice. After all, one of the most popular shows on television: The Big Bang Theory, routinely mocks higher education, interest in niche subjects, makes a joke out of sexual harassment, and plays with misogyny. And it was propped up by a laugh track it didn’t deserve. The majority of Americans decided it was their favourite show. Far more so than Family Guy or South Park, and definitely since at least the mid 2000s.

I dunno, guys. This just feels like another “video games cause violence” argument, from people who don’t play videogames.

You know what I don’t think? I don’t think eating squid causes peritonitis. I’ve never eaten it. I have no reason to believe that it would cause peritonitis. But I sure don’t like the idea of eating squid, so it sure would be helpful to pretend that I don’t eat it because it might cause peritonitis. If only I were willing to live that kind of lie...

#rab thoughts

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the-cerwyn · 7 years ago

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Golden Roads, Chapter X:

Special thanks to @morethanjustwords, @meghanxbrownbarrow, @littlpeggy, @badgershite, and @tigerxsouls supporting me through these chapters. Your likes and reblogs were very much appreciated.

This last chapter details what occurs in Cley’s final day in Goldgrass, and his decision before the Battle of Bastards.

The next key events happened in rapid succession within the past few days: The First Flint’s openly enjoyed the battle as well as its victory, the results surely boosted a confidence that was tarnished when the Starks fell from grace. Donnel gladly took the gifted Stout reward, and even went as far as to volunteer in taking the prisoners of the conflict to the Wall, the sentence Lord Stout had given them. The heir himself was content with how the events laid about; even informing the Flint’s Finger, that his table is always open to his cousin.

As for the Condon lancers, once the conflict was resolved, Ser Kyle sent them back to Condon land. He gave his regards to his brother, considering the calvary units were the most helpful in ensuring no bandit had escaped the wrath of the allied forces. The bannermen of Flint’s Finger stayed for the moment, as the Cerwyn had intended to return them personally; considering he was to head to the steadfast after this visit, it all worked in his favor.

Several more days passed as they all reveled in their success, it had been a week from the battle until it was brought up again to Cley in a unnerving manner. The Cerwyn lord had been sitting casually upon the seating of where he had told his old friend quite a bit; eyes glazed over to the golden fields, he was in a relaxful bliss. The cold Northern air gently swept across the back of his neck, twirling the curls of his hair ever more. The young adult lord took in a deep inhale of the incoming air, sighing pleasantly as the wind was moving past him. His state of Nirvana was broken when he was tapped blunty on the shoulder, snapping him back to the reality of Westeros. It was who you’d expect, Rikkie, warm smile etched on her face. The Cerwyn formed a sheepish one, knowing she had caught him off guard. He prompted: “Surprised you didn’t try to unleash a new prank on me as I was daydreaming”.

She gave a chuckle, taking a seat next to him. Her fair voice would of sounded honest… if it wasn’t her wielding it: “Who, me? Well someone needs to make sure you don’t gather dust. If I left you to dream, you’d never get up; that and, your reactions amuse me”.

Cley gave a light snort to her response, musing back to her: “So I’ve been told. People tell me often I’m amusing… one of my redeeming qualities, I suppose”.

“And we all know how few of those you have, you need it truly”. Rikkie proceeded to lightly tease him a bit, much to the Cerwyn’s expense, not that he didn’t really mind it.

The lord laughed it off, if no one had ever meant him no harm, it’d be Rikkie. If anything, she was just looking for a response to tease him over. He paused for a moment, as if he were pondering over something. Cley decided to be a bit straightforward: “Do you mind if I’m decisive for a moment?” The long time companion gave the other a puzzled look, before silently prompting the other to continue.

“I’ve… noticed, you’ve been here for some time, and you much rather be much closer to where events are occurring. With the war over and my castellan position open… I’d like to offer you a role among my household. As castellan of Castle Cerwyn”. It was… something out of the ordinary, of course it was. But there weren’t many others who could feel in such a position. Ser Kyle was his Master at Arms, Allister Condon was his Captain of the Guards, and his cousin Ulfric lead what few elites the Cerwyns had left. It only made sense that they were heavily among their house, as the Condons were very close and loyal to the Cerwyns.

A mix of surprise and exhilaration filled the Condon lady’s eyes, personally taken aback by the offer. Cley was at times, insightful, but one his truer traits was his empathy towards others. He could probably make friends with even the most cruelest of people if given the chance, trying to bring out whatever good he would see in them. At times, Rikkie felt as though the Cerwyn acted more of a Southern lord than a Northern one… but she’d quickly remind herself, no Southern lord would be able to handle and carry the burdens Cley has had to deal with. He was a lord of the North, in his own way, in his own right.

“I… accept, Lord Cerwyn. But may I ask… why come to me?”

It was a fair question. There could be other people in mind, others she was not aware about. Or it could be seen as some attempt to get closer in a way. But… that’d feel wrong. They were old friends. Just because the Cerwyn himself felt some sort of detachment, some sort of… need for companionship, shouldn’t mean he could use such power to obtain such. To test a lord’s true outlook on responsibility, give him power, see what he does with it. This was a time to establish better connections, not… to give some form of a desperate, anguished declaration of fondness. They deserved something better than that. She… deserved something better than that.

“Because… you’re family, Lady Condon. As much as my uncle, as much as Ulfric. We may not hold the same last name, but your family is kin to mine. I owe you that much”.

She seemed… understanding, of Cley’s words, giving a gentle nod to his response. After a moment of letting such information process, she inclined: “Well, Lord Cerwyn, what’s our first task?”

“We leave Goldgrass tomorrow, and we head to Flint’s Finger to make sure they are well. After that... We head back to Castle Cerwyn, I feel as though there’s more work to be done there”.

“My lord, I urge you: Allow me to take three hundred Condon lances to the Stark encampment. Our numbers could aid them drastically, we may even be able to bring an end to the Bolton bastard. I personally will rip off his bloody head and bring back here, as revenge for our fallen!” The grizzled Condon lord proclaimed to the Lord Cerwyn within the small council meeting, as his niece and unimpressed brother watched his display at Cley’s sides. The only one who looked interested was the Cerwyn’s bastard cousin, Ulfric.

“As much as I would… adore, revenge upon the Boltons, we aren’t even sure these are the Starks. Who’s to say this isn’t a ploy by Ramsay Bolton to root out the unfaithful?” Cley brought forth this inquiry to the Condon, while admiring his tenacity, they needed to stay cunning on this sort of matter. Jumping into the fray would not help them now.

“If I may, my lord, my brother and I have seen plenty of rebellions within our days. Robert’s… the Greyjoy’s… this is the North’s version of a rebellion. To break away from the Botlons who tighten their grips around our necks. This could be our way out of this damn mess!”

Cley is quiet for a moment, before Ulfric involved himself. “Well… how bout’ this? Give me… a force of the Cerwyns, the Condons, and the Flints of Flint’s Fingers, and I’ll lead em’ into this encampment myself. Allister… is Lord of Condon, and you, Cley, is Lord of Cerwyn. We can’t risk any of you dying, so… why not me? No one’s gonna miss a bastard”. His tone was… although rough, sounds certain. Like he planned this out. This... was the sort of end he has fantasized about.

The Cerwyn however, was not liking what his cousin had to say. In a wretchedly, unhappy tone of voice, Cley responded back to his cousin: “I’d miss you”. He had lost too much family to say otherwise. This was it. They were all that’s left. Bastard or not, there were only three Cerwyns left.

“Cley… don’t, don’t get bloody dramatic on me”. Ulfric hesitated for a moment, feeling nerved by his half cousin’s choice of emotional words. He may of not felt the same about himself, but his lordling family member felt quite highly of him. The younger man only made this harder for the other to fall through.

“No… No. I am going to get bloody dramatic on you. Because this is it... Alright, I've got to say my piece now... Okay?” The Cerwyn paused for a moment, trying to get his words together. Finally, he found his voice: “Look, we all in this room, we love each other. We’re a family, not through just blood, but through bonds. We want what's best for each other and I know that, I am very thankful for that. What I want... what I want, what I need... is something stable”.

All eyes were on him, and they were dead silent. They wanted to hear what he had to say.

“We… don’t know, if this is the Starks or not. One raven does not confirm them being back. But I know… I know the Starks. If it is Sansa… or Jon, they’ll come to me. Face to face. They know me. And they would ask me directly. They would give me their case. And they would know, I would full heartedly support them… But… just a letter? We need more than that. So… this is what I declare: We wait for them. We wait for the Starks to come to us. And if they do, we give them our help. I’ll send Cerwyn and Condons to assist them, along with Ulfric and Allister, to fight on my behalf. But until then? Until they come to us? We stand our ground. And we wait. My father and mother did not die for me to throw my life away to an assumption”.

The small council seemed content with his answer, and it would appear, the meeting was adjourned. His friends and family filed out of the war room, leaving Cley alone as he pinched the skin between his nose and eyes, giving out a heavy sigh.

Old Gods… he hoped this wouldn’t bite him in the arse.

#((This... THIS IS IT.))#((I FINALLY DID IT.))#((DONE.))#;;dabbles #;;ooc post #;;musings #( x. honed and ready. )#ttgot fanfic

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luucarii · 7 years ago

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Fire Emblem Echoes Ramblings

Okaysss so hopefully this won’t be as long as my Persona 5 Ramblings (I’m honestly going to start a “Rambling” series where I just give my opinions on games and anime and just other shit soo)

spoilers and bitching abroad my friends.

edit: most of my bitching is toward the story not the game itself. The gameplay is amazing, save for some few nitpicks I mention down below.

Fire Emblem Echoes. A game I’m extremely conflicted about. Now, this is coming from someone who has only played Awakening and Fates. Echoes was… okay. I don’t think I’ll go back to replay it for a while. Like a long, long while.

Echoes physically drained me after about Act 3. Maybe it was because I was a little high on Persona 5 at the time, maybe it was because I was finishing up school. I don’t know for sure.

Everything just grew so repetitive. The constant “rout the enemy” missions, the lack of memorable map layouts, the lack of memorable anything really. Nothing really stood out to me.

The story, was an extreme slow burn and the amount of exposition was incredible for how simple the overall layout was. The title screen cutscene that plays where Alm and Celica are talking about Duma and Mila perfectly explain what the whole game is going to have you accomplish. Duma’s the bad God and is going mad and with the help of Mila you (or Alm and Celica) are going to have to put him down. I get why they had to have all this fluff in the beginning with the prologue (to establish Alm and Celica’s relationship even though their relationship wasn’t exactly executed properly I feel but I’ll get into that later) but all the other shit involved like why Alm has a Brand and the Masked Man (two “plot twists” that literally anyone could have seen coming - YOU GET THE MEMORY OF CONRAD’S “DEATH” THE BATTLE BEFORE/AFTER YOU MEET HIM HOLY SHIT ITS SO OBVIOUS) was just a bore to me.

The battles were quickly forgotten as well as the named villains you fight. Besides Berkut (who is probably the best villain in the damn game even if he isn’t the main antagonist) and Jedah (who was obviously the main antagonist considering all the cutscenes he was in) I literally only remember Fernand because of his death near the end of the last dungeon. Everyone else who had names and who you were forced to fight are just footnotes because there’s nothing memorable about them. They’re just commanders for Rudolf’s army or are apart of the Duma faithful. Removing their names wouldn’t affect the plot at all.

I feel like the plot as a whole was an attempt to make a simple plot more complex and failed in process. It’s literally a Mila vs Duma fight but all this extra stuff made it drag on longer than my 33ish hours of playtime. And I’m very disappointed because after Fates and Awakening (two games that I genuinely enjoyed) I was looking forward to Echoes. From the trailers and screenshots I was interested in the whole concept of dueling gods but the execution was just subpar for me.

Now, I have one more gripe with the overall story. Alm and Celica. Specifically their relationship. In my personal opinion, Alm and Celica’s relationship seems so forced from the minute the prologue starts. I’ll admit there are a few sparing cute moments here and there but I feel they’re quickly overshadowed once you realize they had only been friends for maybe a good 3-5ish years as children before Mycen took Celica away. You honestly expect me to believe that they continued to want to see each other after 8+ years of being apart? You honestly expect Alm, Gray, Tobin, Faye, everyone to remember Celica from childhood when she was taken away from them at such a young age? I… I just can’t buy it. You can also argue that their fates were intertwined since they both have the Brand and they are the “Children of Fate” but I still can’t swallow that without any lingering thought of bullshit. I never shipped Alm and Celica because I can’t see any actual romantic development with them besides them obviously caring about each other. The fight at the beginning was just a plot device to drive them away from each other and having Celica get momentarily possessed at the end and have Alm kill her was just another cliche and having Mila save her (when to be honest, Celica was better off dead) just made me shrug and say “she’s one of the main protagonists, obviously she won’t die.”

Guys, Nintendo. If you’re going to establish a relationship in one of your games, for fuck’s sake make it at least somewhat likable. Shulk and Fiora (even though Fiora can get a bit bitchy sometimes), Reyn and Sharla both from Xenoblade Chronicles, Link and Zelda from Skyward Sword (specifically). These relationships had development. They grew. Yeah, they had a fight here and there but that wasn’t the only basis as to why they’re loved as a couple. Shulk and Fiora while yes they had their fair bit of problems (mostly the whole revenge relationship plot) you can still see them let their hair down and have fun and Fiora teases Shulk a lot throughout the game. Reyn and Sharla start as a sort of friends while Reyn has to work himself to show Sharla that he can be a man to take care of her after the stuff with Sharla’s fiancé (story shit I won’t get into because spoilers). Link and Zelda (while if only in the first few cutscenes) you can see Zelda poke fun at Link, you can see the care she has for him, HELL THEY EVEN HAVE A FAKEOUT KISS AT THE BEGINNING. During SS you see Zelda grow as she begins to realize her role and Link meanwhile is risking his life all for her, all so he can get back to her.

Alm and Celica, I feel, have none of this. Guys, having them fight at the beginning of the game just to drive a wedge in between them and have them come back together at the end doesn’t make them a good couple if the reason for the fight was overall shit and hypocritical on Celica’s part. Just… ugh. I’m sorry to any Alm/Celica shippers but I just don’t like them together.

Maybe it’s my bias because I really really don’t like Celica as a character but either way I don’t ship Alm/Celica and there’s nothing that can convince me that they’re good together.

Now, this is already long enough so I’ll sum up the rest of things about Echoes that disappointed me.

The Supports. Don’t get me wrong, the voice acting is absolutely amazing, one of the best I’ve seen this year. But just… the lack of them compared to Fates and Awakening is so disappointing. Now I get Echoes was based off one of the older games so it’s not completely fair to compare the supports to that of recent games but there’s literally a maximum of 3 supports per character and the supports do literally nothing to show off character. Fates and Awakening’s supports had 3 (4 if it was a marriage support) short bursts of dialogue away from the main game to establish character, likes, dislikes, compatibility with other characters the works. These supports, if anything, are lighthearted pieces of fluff to distract from the somewhat serious tone of the game.

Enemy Variety and Class Variety. Again more I can’t exactly complain about since Echoes was based off an older game and thus took aspects from said older game. But… the amount of Dread Fighters and Barons I saw in the last dungeon just made me hate the classes as a whole (despite two of my best boys Tobin and Kamui being Dread Fighters with Brave Swords who fucked EVERYONE up with crits). Fates and Awakening had such a fun cast of classes, my favorites being Nohr Noble and Assassin and dropping the number of classes just… ugh.

Also, one last quick note. The suddenly difficulty spike is one of the main reasons I considered dropping the game midway through. I played on Normal/Casual (I’m still a newbie leave me alone…) and although I died once, there was a bunch of times where I was sitting in frustration of not knowing what to do. Though as a strategy game, you’re kinda suppose to do that so…

OKAY ENOUGH BITCHING ABOUT THIS GAME, LETS GET INTO THE SHIT I LIKED…which is going to be a few short paragraphs…

The Voice Acting. Holy shit the voice acting. Not only is it featuring some of my favorites (Cherami Leigh, Max Mittelman and the like) but nearly every line is spoken beautifully. Special props to Alm’s voice actor Kyle McCarley who brought me to near tears with some of his lines. Absolutely incredible.

Bows!!! BOWS ARE ACTUALLY GETTING LOVE! I rarely used archers in Awakening but I did pick up using them in Fates (Takumi and Kiragi are incredible) and I fell in love with them here in Echoes. Finally they’re not just limited to 2 spaces and they can hit as far as 5 and just… Python and Leon were my main favorites.

Dungeons. It’s a nice break between battles and they’re interesting locals. But please, Celica, that weird squeak that you have while attacking… just… please stop.

The Design. The character design is something I can’t NOT praise. Everyone looks incredible. While the cutscenes I feel lag a little compared to Fates and Awakening you can’t deny they still look amazing for a 3Ds game.

The Soundtrack. I’m a sucker for good music (one of the reasons why I love XC, Okami, Botw and the like) and a good majority of the tracks on the ost I’m completely in love with. The credits theme especially “The Heritors of Arcadia.” Props to Bonnie Gordon (Silque’s VA) she did an amazing job.

Verdict. Overall, Echoes was okay for me. It was different compared to Fates and Awakening and I knew that going in. I knew there was no marriage system, I knew they were getting rid of the weapon triangle, I knew it was going to be similar to the older games to close divide between the fans before Awakening and after Awakening. And it was a good different in some ways but in most other ways just disappointed me. The fact that I had to force myself to marathon the last dungeon just so I could finish the damn game speaks miles. I was drained. I didn’t want to continue but I did just for the sake of saying I beat it. It didn’t feel like 30 hours of game play for me, it felt like months (which in actuality was nearly two). Like I mentioned, I doubt I’ll pick this game up again anytime soon (while Fates I replayed and beat nearly 6+ times, 2 for each path and Awakening I’ve replayed maybe 3 times I can’t remember). It could’ve been so much more, I feel, if they didn’t try to shove Alm/Celica down my throat and if we could have had some more character development. But eh, that’s just me.

ALSO IM REALLY HAPPY MAE AND BOEY ENDED UP TOGETHER.

#ari speaks?#fe echoes #welp not as long as my p5 ramblings but still pretty long #idk how to feell

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tellerford13 · 8 years ago

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MO ASTOR- CHAPTER 25

We don’t own the bikes, brothers, or any “related” Sons of Anarchy, trust us, if we did we wouldn’t have the time to write. No money is being made from our stories. So, please don’t sue. It’d be a fruitless endeavor indeed. That being said, Harley, Journee, and any other newbies are ours, and we don’t share. :Whispers in creepy voice: “My precious.” The universe This reality is a mix of cannon, and our own ideas. We strive to keep the boys cannon, but since we will be shifting around some of the events, that will reflect in our writing and their personalities as well. It’s our goal to provide you with quality fiction, and solid, fleshed out OFC. We appreciate constructive criticism and love LOVE reviews, they are a writers life blood and definitely help encourage us and inspire us. We will be posting on our Tumblr where we’ll have fun pictures from time to time as well. http://tellerford13.tumblr.com We’ll also be taking requests for one shots, preferences or imagines for all things Sons at our other Tumblr, so check it out and send your thoughts!http://tellerford13oneshots.tumblr.com/ And just for fun, we’ve decided to start a Pinterest for the story! So if you want a glimpse at our girls and see into our world, check it out! https://www.pinterest.com/tellerford/

A/n: Thank you all for the incredible support you’ve showed us. Telford’s birthday rocked and she thanks you for the kinds words.

Mo Astor Chapter 25

Lee

My phone rings and “Thank you for being a friend” plays, making me squeal. She’s here!

I hit answer. “You’re home,” I breathe the words like a prayer. There’s so much I want to tell her, hear, and discuss. It’s been hell having her away while my worlds completed shifted.

“I am. Why aren’t you here?”

“Because you have a husband now. You two need time to settle in and continue your honeymoon over the weekend before its time to head back to the daily grind.”

She snickers. “You’d be the only one who thinks that. Jay ambushed me and talked me to death on the way down, and then Gemma demanded we show up at the family dinner. So, get your ass over here we need to talk.”

“What about Chibs?” I ask. The last thing I want to do is make him feel ignored or disrespected. Journee and I together, are a lot. We practically have our own language, and it leaves plenty of folks feeling left out. “He took pity on me and went to say hi to the boys at the club.”

“Say no more. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

I’m like a teenage girl on her way to her first slumber party as I stand from the couch, grab my purse off the table, and rush to my car. We’ve both had so much happening in our lives. It’s time to get caught up and reconnect. She’s as much my anchor as Charming, and the Sons are. There’s power in loyalty and familiarity.

I crank the engine and all but peel out the driveway. I whip into her driveway and pause. It’s no longer her house. It’s their house. My best friend is a married woman. Mrs. Journee Telford. It’s funny…I can remember her writing that name in an elegant font in notebooks and on a countless number of loose leaf pages when we were teens. Who would’ve thought we’d end up here one day?

From the minute they admitted their feelings they’d moved at hyper speed. It’d be too much for anyone else, but with these two it made perfect sense. Why beat around the bush when you’d been putting in all the work for years.

The only thing that had kept them from being an official item before was labels. There had been many nights when I saw Chibs leave her room in boxers and a t-shirt, and the look in their eyes never screamed just friends. I’m over the moon for both of them, but it’s a dynamic change I’m still feeling my way around. I’ve never had much reason to spend a ton of time around Chibs, and I’m waiting to see what kind of husband he’ll be.

Some men like to keep a woman mostly to themselves. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. They have a lot of time to make up for. Still, the thought of losing my best friend in any way sends me into a slow panic. I push the door open and climb out walking toward the door as I try to outrun my fears. I’ve been left alone so many times in my life, I’ve almost come to expect the relationships that mean the most to me to eventually end.

The door opens, and we hug. Her scent is familiar, and her embrace is tight. My anxiety eases back. This is Journee. She’s never let anyone come between us. Why would now be any different? Because he’s her dream come true. She pulls back, frames my face and brushes our lips together. I hum.

“Well, hello to you too, beautiful.”

She smiles. “Those pretty blue eyes are looking stormy. Come in and talk to your Journee.”

“Are you still mine? I think your husband might disagree,” I say playfully.

She studies me in that scary calm, still, way that makes one feel like she’s peering into your soul.

“Me belonging to him now doesn’t and never will make me any less yours. After all, we’ve been through together, the bond we have is unbreakable. If you’re worried about things changing, don’t. I talked to Daddy about this early on.”

“You did?” I whisper humbled by the actions she’d taken on my behalf.

“Yes, babe. So stop worrying.” She frowns. “You don’t seem like yourself.” She wraps an arm around my waist, and we head inside. She closes the door, pauses to enter the alarm and leads us to the couch. We sink onto the cushions and curve into one another.

“Spill, babe.”

“You’re supposed to be telling me all about Scotland.”

“And I will, right after you tell me what’s got you so antsy.”

“There’s a lot of changes happening, and we both know I’m a creature of habit,” I say glumly.

‘Uh huh. And this has nothing to do with the little head to head with Wendy.”

“Ugh, Of course, he told you.”

“Yeah. I heard his side. Now I want to hear yours. Are you okay?”

I sigh and glance up at the ceiling. “She’s right. I mean, no we weren’t fucking around behind her back, but if I was her, I’d be pissed. We’ve been so busy with our own happiness. We didn’t give a second thought to hers.”

“Ugh, Stupid bitch is still fucking shit up.”

“Down Mama Telford. I know she made the mistake of touching your man, but she’s also knocked up with Jax’s kid. We have to tread lightly—.”

“No, you need to set boundaries and figure things out before this kid comes and she runs or does something else equally stupid. J was all she had. When you came out at the wedding, the last of her hope was stripped away. That puts her in a dangerous place.”

“Shit no wonder she came out breathing fire.”

“That girl slept, ate, and lived, Jax. Even I can admit he was wrong for doing her the way he did. He had a loyal woman. Just because she let him walk all over her didn’t mean he should have. But that was the old Jax.”

Her words hit home as they line up with the same things swirling in my brain. “You see the change too?”

“Yes, thanks to you. You’ve always challenged him and forced him to be a better person. A man who thinks shit through and remembers his humility. Now that you’re together that effect increased tenfold.”

I sit up and lick my dry lips. “I see someone I know, but then don’t when I look at him these days. I was worried maybe I was projecting.”

“Oh, no, you got that boy sprung.”

“What?” I chuckle.

“Oh come on, he makes cow eyes at you.” She blinks slowly and widens her eyes making me giggle. “He does not.”

“Oh, My God Are you kidding me? He thinks you’re sexy, he wants to date you, he wants to marry you,” she sings.

“Thank you Miss Congeniality,” I say already feeling lighter.

“Look, I’m just calling it how I see it.”

“Right.” I shake my head as I wipe away a tear.

“Feeling better?”

“Much.”

“Want to tell me what had you uptight?”

“How fast this is all going. I don’t let people in like this, but he was already behind my walls, and now he’s infiltrating...” I trail off unable to speak the words out loud.

“Your heart?” She says.

I nod my head.

“Trust me, babe. When it’s meant to be, and you’re with the right person, it won’t matter how much time goes by. This isn’t a bad thing.”

“Yet,” I say quietly.

“Honey he’s not like any man you’ve ever been with. So, stop comparing him. He’s always been there. Why would he not be more committed now?”

“Because this shit never ends up well for me.”

“Do you remember Kyle and the various men who came before him?” she asks.

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

I shake my head unable to answer her.

“We both deserve to be happy. We have our wounds. They’ll lead to doubts, and us picking ourselves apart until we don’t know which way is up and which is down. But we’re lucky because we have something most people don’t.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I ask

“Each other. I’m here to tell you I refuse to let your past ruin your future. Search your heart and your memories. Would Jax even start this with you if he couldn’t see it through?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

“You know he wouldn’t. My brother is many things, but being reckless with his girls isn’t one of them, and I’m not talking about the warm bodies who’ve played placeholder in the role of girlfriend. I’m talking about You, Gemma, and me.”

I sigh. “It sounds good logically. But.,,” I shake my head.

“We’re far too used to pain and disappointment, but this is our time to be happy. In no universe would I find everything I ever wanted and you not have the same thing. Our worlds are connected.”

“I’m so fucking scared. He could break me. I always hold back with men. I can’t with Jax, and that terrifies me.”

“That’s how you know he’s the one,” Journee says as she squeezes my hand.

“After everything happened with Wendy, he left. I know he needs space sometimes, but it scared me.”

“You know I won’t share his thoughts. That’s his job. But I can say this. You’re not the only one who’s scared. This is new to him, and he’s trying his best to rise to the occasion and be what you need. It’s a learning curve, for both of you.”

“Why the fuck do you make it seem so easy.”

“Cause I’m outside of it, not in it, and I know you both.”

“What the hell am I going to do?”

‘Sit back and enjoy him slaying the dragon for his lady fair.”

I huff.

“When the time is right you guys will find your comfortable spot. Both of you are complex people. It takes time to get through all those layers and wade through those crowded heads on your shoulders.”

“Fuck you’re already old, married, and wise.”

She shoves me, and I laugh as I chew on what she said.

“Seriously, though. I appreciate your input. I’m going to… quell my stinking thinking.”

She smiles. It was an old phrase we’d both adopted from my Gran.

“Good. Did I help some at least?”

“You helped immensely. Thank you for helping me walk through it. Enough about me. I want to hear all about your trip.”

“Fact number one, Filip is a fucking beast in bed. That wedding night was no one off.”

I can’t help the squeal that leaves me lips. “Are you serious?”

“Me and my Kitty are dead serious. I can’t even walk right.”

“Wait. You’re serious.”

“Umm. Yes.”

“Well, now I just have to see it for myself.”

“Lee,” she whines.

“Nu uh. Get your ass up and walk for me.”

“So demanding,” she says with a wink as she eases into a standing position.

The pronounced hitch in her giddy up has me giggling on my back on the couch.

“No sympathy!” She flings a pillow at me, and I clutch my stomach.

“I’m sorry. It’s too good.”

She rolls her eyes and I sprawl out on the couch and blow her a kiss.

“Since you’re here, you can help me with this slide show I have to put together for Ma.”

I shake my head. “She couldn’t wait to get all her children together again.”

“Typical Gemma. Tell, don’t ask.”

“Hope your old man knows what a crazy family he married into.”

“He has one of his own.” I listen as she launches into her tale about his nephew Padric and his mother, Chibs’s sister, Greer. I tear up when she tells me had a chance to speak with his daughter and how they’ll keep in touch now.

I wonder if she realizes she’s given the man everything he could’ve wanted.

#sons of anarchy #sons of anarchy fanfiction #Jax Teller #chibs telford #Mo Astor

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justanotherwannabeclassic · 8 years ago

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Hi! I saw your post about Killian being the most "pure" onscreen sexually &I've thought about this for a while. They've deliberately left his sexual exploits vague & while I think he has probably been pretty sexually active, it's like a problematic spectrum & to keep him on the right side of "viable savior love interest" they had to keep him screen pure in some respects. We don't see a lot of his villainy but its implied. That he's a male polarizing character plays into perception as well...

What’s always fascinated me about the Captain Swan relationship is that Killian has taken over the traditionally “female” tropes generally associated in a hero/significant other television relationship. As you’ve mentioned, even though we can assume he’s been sexually active, narratively he’s the “pure” prize more or less for Emma. We see this a lot in fantasy genres with genders reversed -- the men are allowed conquests, while their loves pine. Think the Odyssey, even, where Odysseus fucked six million goddesses, while his wife remained chaste for decades. Furthermore, Killian acts as the cheerleader. He supports Emma, encourages her to be with her parents, and basically “loves every part” of her, including her magic. Very rarely is he the one saving the day, and even when he does, it is in conjunction with Emma. What’s also fascinating is that he also played the role of the “fridged” love interest. “Fridging” is a term that references when a female character is killed for no reason other than to give emotional growth to the hero. It comes from a Green Lantern comic where Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend was murdered and stuffed in a fridge. Also, not long before that, the made Kyle’s beloved predecessor go mad and kill everyone. The Green Lantern writers were making a lot of bad decisions, okay? Anyway, back to the point: Look at Hook’s deaths. Basically, every one served to develop Emma’s emotions and to drive her story forward. They had nothing to do with him at all. So Once subverted the awful female character death trope by making it a man, continuing to put a twist on the Captain Swan relationship dynamics.And, Nonnie, I agree that they developed Hook is such a way to make him more palatable as a love interest. Honestly, one of the reasons I think Swanfire never took off was because of the inclusion of Tamara as an obstacle for Neal and Emma. As long as she existed, any development between Neal and Emma was tinged with worries of “emotional cheating” on Neal’s part, which wasn’t a good look. Hook never had that problem, because his past love interest was, to quote Hamilton, “super dead”. Devotion to a lost partner can be seen as romantic. Feelings for your ex while you’re engaged isn’t.

#captain swan #killian jones #anti-swanfire #to be safe #also there's a weird green lantern tangent in there that I refuse to rid myself of #damn you 90s Green Lantern #Anonymous #s replies to things

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theartofblissfullydrowning · 6 years ago

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Day One: Part 3

Do you know that sometimes I looked at you while we were playing games or you were driving or out somewhere and thought “you know, maybe we could be together. Maybe I need to lighten up a bit?” I’d see you in a different light. It would catch me sometimes while we were laughing about things. I wish you would have stayed a bit to see that video I sent you. It was basically us. Every time I saw you with Alex or Kelsey. I just remembered how it was in the beginning for us. And we talked about that before you left, about how it was a love story. I wish it never ended the way it did and that we ended up living happily ever after. I had no idea how much you loved me until your mom told me you’d always tell her about me and she asked about me all the time. That broke my heart. No one loved me the way you did, you know? I knew that’s why you always hated to see me with other guys. And I really hated to see you with other girls, too. There are things that will always be just ours.

I wonder if I was on your mind that night and how I would handle things. You knew how attached I was to you. I know you were probably in a different state of mind at the time but I wonder what your last thoughts of me were. I’m sorry I didn’t respond when you messaged me. I have a lot of guilt over that. If I would have been there we could have talked. I hope you didn’t feel like I was ignoring you. I hope I wasn’t a part of this. Hopefully, though, you knew I really loved you. Really, no matter what was happening, all we had was each other, and it was so hard to get through the past few months without you. You were the only person I would really to with things and you weren’t there. You were the reason my heart was broken this time. And then Tee went the day after you and I always thought you’d be there for that.

I loved you so much and I’m so sorry I didn’t show you that enough before everything happened. But I think you knew. we were both stubborn as shit. We were in other relationships and hated it. I feel like you never connected with Kelsey or Alex. I never really connected with Bryan or Mark. But in all of that we were still there together. They all knew the role we played in each other’s lives and they knew that if we had to decide that we’d choose each other over them. That was the biggest thing with us. You never made me feel like you would choose someone else over me.

And then you always looked after me and I never gave you enough credit. I remember when you drove all the way to my house after you heard I was in the psych ward for feeling suicidal. And you brought me some of my stuff back but I turned you away. That was so wrong of me to do and I’m sorry. I lost my job and had nowhere to go and you took me in and said “we can figure out rent later”. No one has ever loved me like you did.

And now I’m the one left to carry on all of our memories on my own and live for both of us. It breaks my heart every time I see you offline for so many days on Steam. It was just 200 the other day I looked. It put a quantifiable measure on it. 200 days without my best friend. 200 days that I’ve been here alone without you. I see games that I wonder if you ever played that I know you would like. I see games that have just come out that you would have loved. You’ll never see the next Elder Scroll or the next season of Game of Thrones. You won’t be at my wedding. (Which was maybe supposed to be our wedding.) But still I feel your spirit in me talking to me when I need someone or just in the back of my head telling me you’re proud of me for things I’m doing now or telling me to be careful with things just like you used to .

I miss our talks and the memes and the nonsense. I miss having someone to go to when things happened. I miss having someone to vent to about everyday things.I miss having someone to escape reality with and laugh with. I miss the way you smelled and the way your sheeps and pillows smelled when you’d give them to me when I slept on the couch. I miss the margaritas and board games and Neely and Mark Gormley and doing the time warp with you. I miss playing songs on uke and guitar. I miss just laughing. It means a lot to me that I was able to share that with you and that we were able to have so many good times even if the only people we really had were each other.

That was the hardest part for me. That it was just us. We were the only people we had. We were like twins. We had our own language and so many inside jokes. No one has ever been like you were to me. I’ve never had a best friend for that long and have never been closer to someone or had someone understand me as much as you did. That’s why this hurts so much. I don’t know if I ever will because with us it was so effortless.

I still have so many sore spots but they’re healing up. It doesn’t mean they won’t still hurt or remind me of you but it’s the little things that remind me of you. So many things. Something every day. Even stupid little things. Memes, songs, words, things everywhere. Every day it’s like I say goodbye to you again but you’re still here in some sort of way. Part of me tells me you want me just to move on and be happy again. That’s what you said in our last conversation, that we’ve all had our low points and that I’ll be in a different place soon but I had no fucking idea how low it could fucking go until you left. I thought I knew sadness, I was a little experienced in grief, but never to this level. I still sit there on the same spot on my bed I was in when your mom messaged me. I remember I had just made some dumplings. It was about 1:30pm on a Wednesday. I had just brought them in my room and sat down and hadn’t taken a bite and your mom messaged me and I was immediately concerned but I jumped and called her as soon as I got that message. My mind immediate went to you had either died or had gone missing and she hadn’t heard from you. And I called her and her voice sounded shaky. I said “what’s going on?” and she said “Kyle passed away.” A knife went though my fucking guts. “What? How?” “He hung himself” She was trying so hard to keep from breaking down. I said “thank you for letting me know” and I sat there in shock for a while. And then I screamed. I texted Bryan to let him know. He was at work. I ordered beer and got smashed and cried and screamed and punched things. Bryan was a little upset. I thought about killing myself too that night because the pain was unbearable. I looked for Derrik online but he hadn’t been on in a long time. I was fucking frantic and a fucking mess. The most I’ve ever been. And I so much wanted to call you or message you or see you because I was so upset because you were the person I would go to and you weren’t there. And then I woke up hungover as shit the next day and Tee couldn’t walk and wouldn’t eat which was her favorite thing to do so I knew it was her time too. I had to take her to the vet and couldn’t even remember what year it was becuase nothing seemed real. It was a double edged sword because I just wanted you to be the or to message you and just let you know because she loved you so much and you loved her too but every time I would pick up my phone to I just had to remember you weren’t there and realized you were lying on some coroner’s table dead. My best friend. My world. My love. Dead. Cold. Alone.

The first few weeks were a blur. All I did was cry and not sleep because I was terrified to because I was afraid of nightmares or even just dreaming of you and waking up and not having you there. Luckily I had one person there I could talk to who sort of looked after me and we’d only been talking for about a week so it was a lot to dump on him but he got me out of the house and was there and really supportive of me.

I don’t leave the house now. I can’t drive without thinking of you. I’ve had to drive the roads I used to take to your house and stop myself from breaking the fuck down. I’ve thought about driving to the houses you lived in and just sitting there in the driveway or parking lot and just pretending for a little bit that I was coming to see you and that everything was okay again, just for a moment, forgetting what happened. I’m glad I never went to your house you died in because I probably would have gone there, too.

It’s been really hard for me to get close to anyone since then. As I’m sure you know. It was never easy before you left. Neither one of us really bonded with anyone other than each other. I’m glad I got to meet Derrick and I hope you really know he came all the way out there and said that was never how he wanted to meet you but that he was glad he was there. I met David, as well. I think I remember you telling me about him. And if you’re still around like I know you are that you know what happened with that and I’m sure you laughed about it but both of us were so broken up and your mom was worried about him and wanted him to be safe so I guess we both just got our minds off things. But I’ve lost friendships and alienated people because of how I am now. I get too drunk and act too obnoxious. You never cared because we always did it together, but I don’t think I ever broke down and screamed at you or sobbed my face off in front of you. You would have never let that happen.

I wish so much that you were still here. Like I said, I wish I would have messaged you back that night when you messaged me. Not waited so long. We used to joke about offing ourselves all the time but I never thought you’d actually do it. You could have called or messaged me again. I wonder why you didn’t say goodbye. I wish I could see what led up to that or what you doing and thinking. I hope you went out knowing I loved you more than anyone else in my life. I’ve looked at our last conversation so many times and it was probably the most beautiful one we could have had, recounting our friendship and everything. And our whole story. AND how beautiful it was and how we’ve both grown in the past 5 years. I still remember your last few things you said to me. That we were meant to evolve and write our stories. I know that’s what you would have wanted me to do and I hope you would have done that too but you saying that to me as one of the last things is why I”m still here.

These days I know I have to keep living for the both of us. I have to keep living and keeping our memories alive so they don’t die. I have to carry on your memories. I’m glad I took so many photos of you even though you hated it because I can still look back at all of those moments we shared and have tangible evidence and can look back and put myself back in every one of those moments for a second. From when we went to the strip club with our Blu cigarettes feeling cool with our $12 to the day I found that wedding dress, to our trip to DC, to you calling me on messenger, or us sharing margaritas, and I still have all those videos you hated about you getting the sock out the fan. You hated them but now that’s the only way I can hear your voice and hear your laugh.

And you know I fucking hated Alex and I still absolutely despise her now. I’m not blaming anything on her but she did not treat you like you deserved to be treated. She didn’t appreciate you. I never really liked her. She was way too young and immature. She was obnoxious and she tries to play it off like you two had a nice time before she left you that night. If she wasn’t so concerned with her friends she wouldn’t have left. Your mom said the two of you got in a fight and I believe that more than anything. I don’t think you did what you did for absolutely no reason. There was something that set it off and I feel like she was a precipitating factor and how she acted at your memorial service was awful and no one like her. And I was the only one to stand up there and actually say something about you. I read my letter and so many people came up and hugged me like I was your family. I basically was. Derrick wanted to get up there but he said he couldn’t and I understand why. I was anxious and it was so fucking hard but I had to do it because of the days we’d talk about how you’d be the only person at my funeral. I know you’d do the same for me. So many people told your mom that my letter really touched them. I have no idea how I was able to get up there and do that but I feel like you were with me that day and you allowed me to be strong, but do you know how hard it was to sit there after all the guests passed by and go look at my best friend reduced to nothing but ashes in a box? And now ashes that sit on my book case?

I hope you’re proud of me. I know you don’t want me to hurt anymore and you feel a lot of regret over it just in the way that it hurt me and upended my life. It sounds selfish but I know that if you knew how much I’d endured that you wouldn’t have done it, I just know you weren’t in your right mind that night so you didn’t think about it. As much as you don’t want it to hurt it always will. You will always be a part of me. You will always be the one who loved me and knew me the most. Your love was the most unconditional that I’ve ever known. I didn’t even know how deep it was until your mom told me you’d talk about me all the time and she always knew what was going on with my life.

You have no idea how much I miss you every day. I wear this moonstone ring on my finger in memory of you. I’m going to get those thieves guild shadow mark tattoos we always talked about getting together. And those last words you said “we were meant to evolve and write our stories”. I’ll have the money to do it now with my new job. Maybe I can get them to mix your ashes in with it so I can always carry you with me.

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graceivers · 7 years ago

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Review #25 - November 9

November 9 Author: Colleen Hoover Genre: Contemporary Romance Rating: ★ Recommendation: not worth it; once was enough Summary: Fallon is an actress who has difficulty finding on-screen work these days given her changed physical appearance. Ben is an aspiring writer with a big secret. After meeting briefly, they agree to meet each other one day a year until they are twenty-three. During this time, they ‘fall in love with each other’, but that secret Ben’s hiding might just ruin everything.

Female Lead: There are two major things about Fallon that must be discussed. One okay thing and one horrible thing that Hoover did that made this character absolutely insufferable. First, Fallon’s insecurities. This is the first Hoover book I’ve read, but I’ve read enough summaries and brief reviews on Goodreads regarding this book and her others to know that this is Hoover’s theme: battered and insecure girls. Fallon has scars from fourth-degree burns over a large section of her body. She was previously an actress, so appearances mean a lot. The okay thing was that her insecurities are understandable. Having her passion/dream and self-confidence taken away from her because of her scars makes sense. Getting attached to Ben who doesn’t try to ignore the fact that she has these scars and subsequently makes her feel beautiful regardless is understandable. Wanting attention and acquiring self-confidence through validation from others is relatable. These are all the things that made Fallon’s character work.

The biggest problem with Fallon’s character? THE ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE, DEMEANING, AND BELITTLING WAY HOOVER WROTE AND TREATED HER FEMALE CHARACTER. I’m a feminist, people. Let’s put that out there. And I have a serious, serious issue with the way Hoover treated Fallon’s character because honestly, this female lead was manipulated and used to prop up the male hero and make him feel better about himself for all the damage he has done. I mean, after everything Ben had done to Fallon, she not only forgives him but also apologizes! THIS IS DISGUSTING. Why is Fallon apologizing to Ben for treating him the way she did when she found out the truth? He deserved it and worse! The fact that Hoover made the female apologize to the male when the former did nothing wrong compared to the latter makes this book really unforgivable to me. This girl is the victim here, but Hoover turns it around and tries to make us feel for the guy instead. NO. WRONG ANSWER. Fallon does not deserve to be treated this way by Ben or Hoover for that matter. She is not a prop; her purpose in the book should never be to ease the conscience of the male who wronged her. Absolutely not. No thank you. Male Lead: Never have I been so infuriated with a character before on such a deep level. There have been plenty of other jerk male leads who are a dumb and annoying and make terrible decisions, but Ben takes the cake. He’s the worst kind of character that does not deserve the love and attention he receives from Fallon and all you readers that classify him as a book boyfriend. You think this guy is boyfriend material because of the way he speaks in prose and makes Fallon feel beautiful and special? You’re wrong. I am honestly and genuinely sorry, but you are so dead wrong.

Ben is invasive and not in a good way at all. He manipulatively inserts himself into Fallon’s life. He rarely if ever asks for permission or consent, and even when he does, it’s beyond the point of doing so. He makes Fallon cry more often than not. He took her dress off without an absolute yes from her. HE IS NOT FUNNY AT ALL. Almost every time he opened his mouth to tell Fallon about how she should not care about what other people think, I was like WRONG ANSWER. He wants people to laugh at her? He tells her that it’s her fault the way people treat her with her scars? WRONG ANSWER. WRONG ANSWER. That is not endearing. That’s insensitive and disgusting, especially considering the particular role he played in Fallon’s life circumstances overall. I don’t care that speaks in a ‘beautiful’ way. Hoover was smart in making him a writer so he could talk that way, but that does not excuse his horrendous, manipulative, and invasive behavior at all.

It is clear to me that Hoover cared a lot more about making a redeeming and ‘book-boyfriend’ worthy male than writing a solid female lead. Ben is given so much slack and leeway; he’s given a substantially more important part of the overarching plot line as well as receiving all the secondary plots for additional angst and emotions from his reactions. Maybe in other circumstances I would’ve generally ignored this, but I cannot here when Hoover clearly wanted to make a shrine for Ben who does not deserve one and basically sacrificed Fallon to build that shrine. I’m so angry and disgusted. Plot & Writing: November 9 was messed-up on so many levels. For an innocent-, romantic-, and borderline comedic-sounding plot, this book is not any of those things. It’s dramatic and angsty and not in any of the ways I enjoy. And yeah, Hoover alludes to the major plot twist in the summary, but good God, I never expected the plot twist to be so revolting.

The one okay thing I somewhat enjoyed was the structure of the book and all of its meta references. I liked the fact that it was meta, however, I did not like that despite the fact the characters were cognizant of comparing their relationship to common romance novel tropes, those moments were reduced to nothing. I mean, the characters constantly talk about the pitfalls of instalove, and yet their relationship was exactly that. And I’m supposed to believe in it and support it? It does not matter that it’s been five years since they met. They’ve spent less than those five days together—as people, as strangers, as friends, or as a couple. They don’t know each other, and while I can be as much as a hopeless romantic as anyone, Fallon clearly should’ve gotten to know this disgusting jackass—excuse my language—before ‘falling in love with him’. I didn’t believe in their relationship prior to the plot twist, and I certainly didn’t believe in it or care for their relationship at all after knowing it. In fact, I would say I was adamantly against their relationship. I wanted Fallon to keep her distance. I wanted her to move back to New York. I wanted Ben to suffer for the rest of his life knowing that was what he deserved after everything he said and did to Fallon.

I said a lot about how I felt Hoover did such injustice to her female character, but I must add some more. I really, honestly kind of resent Hoover for writing Fallon the way she did, and I am genuinely unlikely to read any of her other books—no matter how highly rated they are on Goodreads—because if her pattern of broken and insecure women continues the way it did here, I am not going to put myself through that. It was shockingly horrible the way Hoover treated her female character with such little regard. To me, Fallon was genuinely a prop to make Ben feel better about himself. It was all about Ben and what Hoover could do to redeem him and have him forgive himself at Fallon’s expense. I mean, why else was Fallon the one that had to fly to California to see him every year they met up? Why was Ben given the angsty secondary plot and emotional turmoil when Fallon was the real victim? Why was Fallon the one that had to sacrifice and make him feel better? Why was Ben allowed to talk to Fallon the way he did? Why did Fallon take it just because he was the first guy that paid sexual attention to her? WHY, HOOVER? Why did you deprecate your female character so much? It was so sickening that I almost felt personally attacked as a female. Again, I understand that Fallon was attached to Ben because he made her feel beautiful when no one else did. But Jesus, knowing the reasoning for why he was there that day in the first place? His poetic words of love are all negated. I get why Fallon found self-worth through Ben’s attention, but no woman should ever devalue herself so much the way Hoover disparaged Fallon. I repeat. NO WOMAN SHOULD EVER DEVALUE HERSELF THAT WAY AND ONLY SEE HER SELF-WORTH AND VALUE IN CATERING TO A MAN’S NEEDS.

Also, because this is me, the sex scenes. They were not explicit and kind of faded to black. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and I’m all for it, really. But did it seem like they didn’t use protection? Yes. I know condom isn’t exactly a sexy word, and again, Hoover didn’t write descriptive sex, which is fine. But it felt like they didn’t care and that there was no protection. Not okay. Secondary Characters & Plots: KYLE KESSLER, I MOURNED YOUR SHORT BUT AWESOME LIFE. Seriously, Kyle was the only character I loved and cared about. Well, him and Jordyn. But alas, Hoover made Ben use Jordyn too, so that was annoying. The only other secondary characters that stuck out was Fallon’s father. He was not a great dude either. The two seconds we saw of Fallon’s mother and her friend, Amber, were so negligent. I mean, it seemed like Hoover tried to give Fallon a supportive and strong female friendship, but clearly she didn’t care about any of the females in her book to write it convincingly.

The secondary plot of killing off the amazing Kyle Kessler? I hated it. I hated it not only because Kyle and Jordyn certainly didn’t deserve that, but also because it was so painfully and disgustingly obvious that Hoover only made that decision to increase the level of angst for Ben and Ben only. Hoover only wanted Ben to feel sad; she only wanted us to feel sympathetic for Ben. I did not buy any of it. Favorite Part(s): When Kyle decked Ben. Seriously, if we can just copy and paste that single line over every single line of every single page, I would be so much happier and would give the book like a four and half star rating. Kyle, you were the only sane and good one. Final Thoughts: I genuinely do not understand why November 9 is the highest rated book I’ve read on Goodreads. It does not deserve any of the tears or praise it has received. I am so mad at the characters in the book, at the disgusting overall storyline including the plot twist, and at Hoover for her horrendous anti-feminist writing. My recommendation is stated above: not worth it. In fact, the recommendation should read: NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND FIND SOMETHING ELSE THAT DOESN’T BELITTLE WOMEN IN FAVOR OF MEN. And I stick adamantly by those words.

#book: november 9 #author: colleen hoover #genre: contemporary romance #rating: one star

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