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brightlight-dazzlingeyes · 2 years ago

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the french exit | chapter 03

kylian mbappé x original female character [+18]

synopsis: alice is a lonely rich girl whose biggest fear is to become a lonely rich woman. ever since they moved to paris, her fiancé doesn’t seem to be interested in her anymore. so alice decides to find comfort in the arms of another man. warnings: cheating; angst; smut; i have never been to france; minors dni.

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Chapter 03 | Halley’s Comet

“I've been loved before, but right now in this moment

I feel more and more like I was made for you”

“It doesn't bother you at all?” Alice asks while playing with her engagement ring. They were laying in bed together, just staring at the ceiling for the last few minutes.

“No.” Kylian turns to face her and she follows his movements. “I'm not interested in having a relationship outside of this apartment. You give me everything I need just being here. I don't need more.” They’re facing each other, the light of the moon coming from the window is the only thing illuminating them.

“Except you do. You have other women. Women you travel with. Women you take to dinner” Her voice is low, almost a whisper.

“And I never promised exclusivity to any of them, did I?”

Alice is silent.

“What do you want from me? What do you want me to say?” Kylian looks genuinely confused and Alice feels like she knows him enough to read between the lines. It doesn't bother him because if she has someone to give her all the things he's not interested in giving, then maybe she wouldn't ask for them. That she should also feel satisfied.

“Nothing. You're not the problem, I am. I'm not happy cheating on David and I'm not happy being with him. I just don't know what to do.” She puffs. “Sorry to involve you in this.”

“I involved myself.” Suddenly his entire demeanor changes. He sits up on the bed, eyes never leaving her. “But of course you're not happy with him. How can you be happy with a man like that?” He starts touching the sides of her body, slowly removing the duvet cover she was hiding behind.

“Look at how you go back to him.” Kylian exposes her naked body and uses his own body to open her legs, looking at her core. “Look what I did. Look at how red your cunt is. And he doesn't notice.” He pushes a finger inside of her. “I would notice.” And another. “If you were fucking another man before coming to me I would know.” Kylian spits on her cunt and continues to roughly finger her. “I never see signs of him on your body. He's not fucking you is he?”

“He is.” Alice sobs, already lost in pleasure. “Sometimes.”

“Not enough. Not like you deserve. Not the way I am.”

“No.” She shakes her head.

“Tell me I'm better.” Kylian practically barks.

“You know you are.” From her point of view Kylian never looked taller, hovering on top of her, already three fingers inside of her body.

“I want to hear it from you.” He’s begging, in his own way.

“You're better.” Alice moans. “You're bigger.” Another sob as the French man continues to please her. “That's why I keep coming back.”

“Then you should be happy with me, baby. Let me make you happy.” He continued telling sweet nothing until she came. “Good girl.” He kisses her forehead and they cuddle. Her regret long forgotten, Alice fell asleep feeling safe and wanted in Kylian’s arms.

He wasn’t joking about decorating the apartment. She helped him choose artwork to fill the empty walls and a new couch. Soon enough the apartment had a complete new look; a mix of both of their personal styles. He gave her a key.

“I don't bring anybody else here.” He’s blushing when he says that. “So, I figured you should have a key. In case you ever feel the need to come here while I’m not around.”

The implications of that hit Alice like a brick. It made things official in a way. That place was officially their love den. She felt like the witness, the accomplice and the offender of a love crime. It still felt better than feeling like a victim, which was the case in her real life, back in her real home with her real romantic partner. So she took the key. Whenever Kylian was at an away game or simply busy, and David was, for whatever reason, stressing her out – she would find refuge in the apartment. It quickly became her second home. There were traces of her everywhere: clothes, personal care items, accessories and groceries. When David traveled, she didn't even bother going to their house.

At work, everybody was excited about the upcoming event. Mr Lavigne was hosting his party at The Grand Jardin of the Ritz Hotel. In one particular conversation, Clara slips out an important piece of information.

“Well, you were also at the Ritz last week.” Clara raises her eyebrows as she says that, grinning at Alice.

“What do you mean?” Alice was confused by the suggestion, she has never been to that Hotel.

“Sorry, I just – I saw David there last week and just assumed.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence after that. They both come up with excuses to change the subject and they never speak out about it again.

For the Lavigne Foundation charity event, Alice wore a Mirror Palais transparent silk black dress. The ‘Cascading Ruffle Gown’, was a request from Margot. The magazine was working towards promoting the brand and Margot claimed they wouldn’t find a better model for the dress. Even though Alice wasn’t used to wearing such riscké clothing, she fell in love with the gown and was so comfortable that when she wore it that evening it was like it was made for her.

“Holy shit.” David had his mouth open, he couldn’t stop staring at his fiance. They were in their living room getting ready, and he looked handsome in an italian tailored blue suit. His hair was slicked back and standing together they looked like royalty.

“You look like the first woman to ever wear a dress. Looking at you, right now, I cannot think of any other woman in history that ever wore a dress before.” Margot was helping her get ready, overseeing hair and makeup, to make sure everything was perfect.

They had a driver take them to the Hotel, where they had pictures taken by photographers at the entrance. Hollywood actors and European models divided the attention of the press, but as soon as Alice stepped out of the car, everybody held their breath.

“I told you, you should be a model.” David whispers in her ear, managing to elevate her ego even more, somehow.

Not for a single minute, or a single second, Alice considered bumping into Kylian at the party. All of her confidence went down the drain when she saw him. They were bound to run into each other in public again, but living in denial was so much easier.

He looked like a superstar and behaved politely and humbly with every person who approached him, Alice almost laughed out loud. So different from the man she knew. The one who only appeared behind four walls. At the same time, she also felt like crying. He was a complete stranger to her, that was the truth.

Even after all these sleepless nights and secret love texts, and exchanged keys and whispered promises. They weren’t really a part of each other’s life. He didn’t know her friends, he never met her boss. And then, there he was, softly speaking with Mr Lavigne, congratulating the man on the incredible work he was doing.

“Look who 's here! Mbappé!" David points out excitedly. She doesn't need to follow his gaze, she was already looking at the man for the past few minutes. He doesn't look at her, though. During the entire evening there wasn't a single glance thrown in her direction. She introduces David and Mr Lavigne and they immediately hit it off, naturally. They were both interested in the same thing: each other's money. The businessman expected a generous donation from the couple that night, and Alice’s fiancé was willing to please him if it meant making business together in the future.

When Alice couldn't hide her discomfort with the situation anymore, she excused herself to the toilet. She needed a time out to freshen up, maybe finally take the Valium pill her friend Lili gracefully gifted her a couple weeks ago.

“Every decent woman should carry drugs with her at all times.” She said at the time, only half joking.

As she follows the instructions to go to the toilet she hears a knock sound behind her that makes her jump in surprise, and then a familiar voice.

“Excusez-moi,”

They’re in an empty hallway, so distant from the party there’s no sound of people at all; still, Alice feels like she was caught committing a crime. She feels cold from the scare and then warm again when she realizes: she never saw him wearing a suit, and now that they’re alone she can appreciate it.

“Do you have any idea… Do you even know what you’re doing to me?” Kylian sounds angry and Alice blushes. “You look like a fucking sex goddess and I'm not even allowed to look at you.”

“You can look now.” She says softly, teasing him.

“Well, now I want to do a lot more than look.” He looks hungry. They reach for each other, carefully not to break the spell. When Kylian puts his hands on her, Alice feels like she’s burning. They share a deep kiss right in the middle of the hallway, not even thinking about who may see them. The kiss feels hushed, like they’re in a hurry. Kylian has his hands all over her body, he pinches her ass, holds her breasts. Alice giggles through the kiss, feeling immediate relief from being in his arms. Her eyes drift to the mirror beside them and he smiles.

“We look good don't we. We make a good match.” Kylian's voice is rough, still catching his breath from the kiss. Alice agrees.

“I can't go back there like this,” Alice pleads. “I need more.”

“What do you want, baby?” He looks worried and she almost laughs. Instead, she guides her hand to his crotch, looking at him with supplicating eyes.

“Please.”

He gets hard immediately, both inside his pants and in his behavior. He furrowed his eyebrows, looking angry again.

“Please what?” He asks, but she doesn't respond, still touching him on top of his pants. He still has his hand on her ass and takes the opportunity to give her a light slap. “Alice. Answer me.”

“Fuck me. Just a little bit. Just to… Just to remind me–” that I’m yours. In a parallel universe, not far from there, where’s just the two of them and their home, and their private world, they do belong to each other. I’m yours, take me. Alice thinks. Kylian drags her to a linen closet and once he closes the door she falls to her knees. Her hand goes back to his fly, but this time she opens it in a hurry, taking off his pants and underwear. She has her mouth on him before he can say anything.

“Of course. That’s what you needed.” He grunts. “A mouth full with my cock.” He holds her hair, guiding her movements. “You feel so good. So good. That’s what I needed too, baby.” When he feels himself getting close to an orgasm, he takes her off of him and they switch places. Kylian gets on his knees and takes off her panties, leaving her completely naked under the see through gown. “Fuck.” He almost says he loves her. Instead, he puts his mouth on her core and kisses her again. He’s hungry for her. Her pleasure and her taste are all he can think of. Kylian loses track of time and his mouth only leaves her after she pushes him off. He gave her two orgarms in a row and Alice started to feel oversensitive.

“Come here.” She asks and he obeys. He gets up and puts their bodies close together, they moan in unison as they feel their nakedness touching. He guides his cock toward her entrance and finds no resistance, Alice is drenched and lost in pleasure. He fucks her rough and fast, they can't stay there for much longer. So Kylian chases his pleasure and quickly cums inside of her. He uses his fingers to gather his cum running down her legs. Then he feeds it to her. Alice happily eats it all.

“Now you’re going back with my cum inside two of your holes.” He jokes while Alice has her eyes closed, sucking his finger for every last drop.

They get dressed and Kylian gives her a soft chaste kiss on her forehead before they part ways. Alice goes back to her mission of going to the toilet freshen up. She swallows the Valium pill before going back to the party.

...

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noodlesha · 1 year ago

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Fair Play (2023) - Just some thoughts.

DISCLAIMER - I want to give a disclaimer as this film does deal with SA and I will be discussing it, so please feel free to skip this one if this topic isn't for you, but I will give a warning if you would still like to read.

So, a couple of days ago I watched this film which was on my ‘to watch’ list for AGES, Fair Play which was directed and written by Chloe Domont (we LOVE a female writer/director), and it was so captivating the whole way through. The way this film got me invested in a hedge fund is mind-blowing because it became so much less about what the job was and more about the character dynamics – this could’ve truly been in any setting, and I would’ve watched this. I will be discussing spoilers so if you haven’t already, PLEASE go and watch the film, if you love films that discuss a complex dynamic between men and women, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

I truly appreciated how the film depicted women in power, particularly within a relationship, the movie starts with a very happy couple that have become recently engaged (Emily and Luke), and they work for the same hedge fund company where they keep their relationship a secret. Something we’re shown very early on is men and their reaction toward their failures – when their manager gets fired at the beginning, we see the man destroy his office in a fit of rage, yelling that the company needs him and that it is their fault and not his. We see this foreshadowed in Luke further into the film, but we’ll discuss that later.

After their ex-manager’s explosion, there are rumours around the office that Luke got the promotion in which we see Emily’s face as she hears this, and through the audience we see how she reacts positively to this information, you know as any NORMAL human would (I’m looking at you Luke…). Emily tells Luke without a hint of malice or jealousy; she is simply happy for her significant other in this moment.

However, when Emily gets called in to drink with a colleague, she’s surprised to find her boss gives her the promotion instead of Luke. We smash cut to Emily in the car and she tells Luke that she got the promotion instead, whom facilitates a VERY different reaction to the news and is stooped but eventually congratulates her. Not without asking if their boss had touched her, of course, because obviously women just can’t get a promotion because she’s good.

It’s from then we see this couple spiral out of love and become vastly different people than they started. Emily starts to earn a lot more than Luke does, she offers to take him out to dinner, she ends up coming home late, even goes to a strip club which fully blurs the line of gender dynamics and the idea of ‘masculinity’. Her success at work is shown through Luke’s myopic view of what a man should be like, and even challenges our view of what a successful woman looks like – when success is relegated by a male perspective, can it hinder our view of a successful woman?

When another PM is fired, we see Luke beg for the job only for the position to be filled within an instant by someone else (I thought this was hilarious by the way) and Emily tells him that instead of promoting him, their boss was considering firing him. Which speaks a lot to the fact that he was doing so terribly that his boss was going to fire him, and yet he was just so sure that he deserved that promotion (typical am I right?). It’s then where Luke goes missing, only to return to do the one thing he can think of to make Emily feel as he does – embarrassed. So, he reveals their relationship in the hopes that it gets her fired (which it does not) and publicly shames her in front of important clients.

Okay so I’m going to talk about the scene in which Emily is R-worded by Luke so please skip this paragraph if need be. This scene arrives when Luke has well and truly fired from their firm, and unbeknownst to Emily’s parents they put on an engagement party not aware of the tensions between the two. In this scene, we feel Emily’s rage and her nervousness to see Luke, he has completely transformed over the film, mind you in a very realistic manner. When Emily confronts Luke, we see his true feelings towards their situation, when he argues that she offered sexual favours to their boss, and in response she smashes a bottle over his head (rightly so). It’s then that she runs away to the bathroom where he follows, and they continue to argue before they start to engage in… acts – which parallels when we first meet them in the scene at his brother’s wedding party (in that scene they face each other, however in this scene Luke controls Emily). However, Luke starts to get rough with Emily, and she tells him to stop but he doesn’t and slams her down into the sink, leaving a massive bruise on her face.

Now, I’ve never liked it when films contain an R-word scene, particularly as it feels incredibly obtrusive, and while it gives the desired reaction (discomfort), it is also viewed through a male gaze most of the time where we focus on the brutality the MAN is giving rather than how the WOMAN feels in this matter. And in this scene, it’s a shame that it doesn’t seem like the latter; I just think I’m of the majority of people who feel that these types of scenes aren’t needed and it could’ve been portrayed a lot better – I also find it interesting that people reviewing the film tend to leave out this scene, instead calling it a ‘sexy’ or ‘erotic’ thriller, which just feels very pedantic in a way.

The next scene shows Emily covering her bruise and telling her boss at the hedge fund that Luke was a crazy stalker, whom she did date but became out of control. We see then the boss doesn’t care, because Emily is worth keeping there. When she returns to her apartment, Luke is there who appears nonchalant about what happened and tells Emily that he’s staying at his brother’s. Emily, enraged by this, demands he apologises for assaulting her and attacking him until he cries and begs for forgiveness for him (she is also in this scene towering over him and he is sprawled on the floor and I guess you could argue mimics her assault in some way). As his blood is spilled on the floor, the film ends with her telling him to clean it up.

I remember watching this film and thinking that it was really odd that it showed Emily getting her period a few times, particularly at the beginning, but after seeing the whole thing, it made more sense. The idea of a period is something quite powerful, when we think of blood spilling, I think we most associate that with violence and domination, which also coincides with a period cycle. The idea that people who deal with periods, spill blood monthly but it is not deemed as powerful. So when at the climactic end of the film when Emily slashes Luke and spills his blood (and makes him clean it up, what a queen); Domont had created this connection of a woman being innately powerful.

So overall, this film was really something, I ended up enjoying a lot more than I thought I would, and while it does have some faults, it brings a very interesting topic through a very sleek and stylish manner. I would love to see what Domont does next.

#writing #writers on tumblr #writeblr #movie #movies #film #fair play #chloe domont #phoebe dynevor #alden ehrenreich #bridgerton #solo a star wars story #eddie marsan #rich sommer #i feel like i rambled a lot on this one lmao #also please give feed back #love yall

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branwendaughterofllyr · 2 years ago

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Branwen reads ASOIAF (again) - AGOT ARYA I

yeah, uh, it’s been a couple months. I spent that time FIGHTING for my life during the last semester since I’m in the final year of my degree and it’s only going to get worse from here. But I’m back and ready for GRRM to absolutely massacre me again. And it’s going to be a rough start, because I really don’t like this chapter and, believe it or not, I’ve already rewritten this summary at least once because I’m not trying to engage in ~the discourse~ too much.

And listen, I like Arya a lot. She’s always somewhere in my top five. I like the whole justice versus revenge narrative she has going on. I like feral little girls with knives. There should be more of them!

But this chapter is not it, y’all. Now, I’ve read quite a lot of 90s fantasy with spunky tomboy heroines in my day, and this chapter is like middle tier at best. If I’m gong to read 90s fantasy with a spunky tomboy heroine, I’d much rather go for the crème de la crème like Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce or even The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (which is actually 80s and the likely originator of a least a few spunky heroine tropes.) But I’ll freely admit that I’ve always been sensitive to men writing female characters who do a lot of hating on other women. Sue me.

ANd I guess I’ve come around on this chapter some??? I think it’s a pretty good piece of character writing and unreliable narrators upon reflection, but I still don’t have to like it.

So onto the chapter, I guess, though @alaynasansa has already summarized this chapter better than I ever could

That’s it, that’s most of the chapter.

But no seriously, Arya is a nine year old kid with a well-behaved older sister, who she resents for being well-behaved, and needs a lot of recess time to in order to pay attention in class. Give Arya scheduled run-around time, and I feel like half of the problems could be solved.

We open on Arya having crooked stitches, yet again, while Sansa’s sewing her perfect.

“Sansa’s work is as pretty as she is,” Septa Mordane told their lady mother once. “She has such fine, delicate hands.” When Lady Catelyn had asked about Arya, the septa had sniffed. “Arya has the hands of a blacksmith.”

Mordane, I’m begging, at least put the tiniest of effort in to not showing favoritism. We all know you’re Wenda the White Fawn and should not be anyone’s governess, but a shred of effort towards maintaining your cover. please!

Also, rip to all that Gentry foreshadowing struck down by the time skip being cut. You will be missed. 🫡

Arya thought that Myrcella’s stitches looked a little crooked too, but you would never know it from the way Septa Mordane was cooing.

The Starklings need to stop dogpiling on Myrcella. She’s done nothing to you??? She has like two character traits, both of which contradict each other, and she’s an incest baby. She’s got enough on her plate.

She studied her own work again, looking for some way to salvage it, then sighed and put down the needle.

I ask the same question every time. WTF have you done to your sewing, Arya? I’m assuming some comically big knot that would never exist in reality.

And then we get EVUL Sansa talking with her fellow preteens.

Sansa was chatting away happily as she worked. Beth Cassel, Ser Rodrik’s little girl, was sitting by her feet, listening to every word she said, and Jeyne Poole was leaning over to whisper something in her ear.

Beth is, what, ten? And Jeyne is the same age as Sansa. Keep this in mind when GRRM decides to fridge both of them. (The wiki refers to them as Sansa’s “more glamorous retinue” and who ever wrote that needs to be shot.)

So Arya wants to be included in the conversation, which fair enough, Arya. I, too, am a gossip hound.

“We were talking about the prince,” Sansa said, her voice soft as a kiss. Arya knew which prince she meant: Joffrey, of course. The tall, handsome one. Sansa got to sit with him at the feast. Arya had to sit with the little fat one. Naturally.

Now, now, Arya. Don’t go judging appearances, or you too will be almost raped at knife point. Also, people would (and do!) kill to sit next to Tommen instead of Joffrey, so.

“Joffrey likes your sister,” Jeyne whispered, proud as if she had something to do with it. She was the daughter of Winterfell’s steward and Sansa’s dearest friend.

It’s feeling sad about Jeyne hours.

I choose to believe that Sansa and Jeyne have one of these:

“He’s going to marry her,” little Beth said dreamily, hugging herself.

This chapter is just making me sad.

Sansa had the grace to blush. She blushed prettily. She did everything prettily, Arya thought with dull resentment.

Peak sibling behavior. Your sibling is literally just sitting there, and you're like “they’re doing this to spite me specifically” and half the time, you're right.

“Beth, you shouldn’t make up stories,” Sansa corrected the younger girl, gently stroking her hair to take the harshness out of her words.

I hope nothing happens to these sweet kids. 😬

“What did you think of Prince Joff, sister? He’s very gallant, don’t you think?” “Jon says he looks like a girl,” Arya said. Sansa sighed as she stitched. “Poor Jon,” she said. “He gets jealous because he’s a bastard.”

Is she wrong? No, we all read Jon I. We saw the breakdown. Sansa just succinctly summarized one of Jon's core character conflicts in one sentence, and I have to laugh a little. More Jon and Joffrey foiling. (Actually this whole chapter is JoJo foiling, really.)

“He’s our brother,” Arya said, much too loudly. Her voice cut through the afternoon quiet of the tower room. Septa Mordane raised her eyes. She had a bony face, sharp eyes, and a thin lipless mouth made for frowning. It was frowning now. “What are you talking about, children?”

Maybe Syrio’s greatest lesson was teaching Arya how to use her inside voice.

“Our half brother,” Sansa corrected, soft and precise.

EVUL Sansa. How dare you!!!!!! (Nevermind all the times the other Starklings call Jon their half-brother, shhh, Sansa is the evil Catelyn 2.0)

She smiled for the septa. “Arya and I were remarking on how pleased we were to have the princess with us today,” she said.

Look how smoothly Sansa covers for Arya!

One thing I’ve noticed about this chapter, is how chill Sansa really is to Arya. She’s just very relaxed and isn’t that interested in picking a fight with Arya. It’s such a contrast to their later AGOT chapters, when both of them are under immense amounts of stress. It seems that fist fights at the breakfast table is, in fact, not their default state.

Septa Mordane nodded. “Indeed. A great honor for us all.” Princess Myrcella smiled uncertainly at the compliment.

Somebody help Myrcella. She has no clue what's going on.

“Arya, why aren’t you at work?” the septa asked. She rose to her feet, starched skirts rustling as she started across the room. “Let me see your stitches.” Arya wanted to scream. It was just like Sansa to go and attract the septa’s attention.

Unreliable narrator Arya Stark. You were the one being loud three paragraphs ago. But love the commitment to blaming it on your sister, peak sibling behavior! (Is George an only child? He must have a sibling, he captures the dynamic so well).

The septa examined the fabric. “Arya, Arya, Arya,” she said. “This will not do. This will not do at all.”

I am once again asking what Arya has done to her sewing.

Everyone was looking at her. It was too much. Sansa was too well bred to smile at her sister’s disgrace, but Jeyne was smirking on her behalf. Even Princess Myrcella looked sorry for her.

Yeah, being the negative center of attention can be rough. I get it. But also, love the assumption that Sansa would of course smile at Arya getting in trouble if it wasn't rude, when she was covering for Arya five seconds ago. I will not be commenting on Jeyne at this point in time.

Arya felt tears filling her eyes. She pushed herself out of her chair and bolted for the door.

I am struck by how similar Jon and Arya are. Both them run out in tears in their first chapters. This is probably on purpose.

Arya stopped at the door and turned back, biting her lip. The tears were running down her cheeks now. She managed a stiff little bow to Myrcella. “By your leave, my lady.” Myrcella blinked at her and looked to her ladies for guidance.

Myrcella is literally just here. She’s only got brothers, she’s completely lost here.

“Just where do you think you are going, Arya?” the septa demanded. Arya glared at her. “I have to go shoe a horse,” she said sweetly, taking a brief satisfaction in the shock on the septa’s face. Then she whirled and made her exit, running down the steps as fast as her feet would take her.

Arya Snark makes her first appearance. Rip that gendrya foreshadowing.

I don’t know who’s more glad that Arya escaped that sewing lesson, me or her.

It wasn’t fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older; maybe by the time Arya had been born, there had been nothing left.

This is just what having an older sister is like. Most realistic thing George has ever written. This is peak realism.

Her hair was a lusterless brown, and her face was long and solemn. Jeyne used to call her Arya Horseface, and neigh whenever she came near. It hurt that the one thing Arya could do better than her sister was ride a horse.

The realism of the steward’s daughter name-calling the lord’s daughter aside (because, really? You don’t think Vayon is pulling Jeyne aside and nipping that in the bud?), Arya is usually covered in dirt and can mistaken for a stable boy and she loves riding horses, so I feel like this nickname might be for multiple reasons.

Well, that and manage a household. Sansa had never had much of a head for figures. If she did marry Prince Joff, Arya hoped for his sake that he had a good steward.

We’ll see about that, Arya! Sansa’s taking a summer class on how to run a castle in two books, and we’ll see what grade she gets.

(But love the hyper nine-year old asserting that she could be a better household manager than the patient eleven-year-old. Never lose that confidence, Arya)

Nymeria was waiting for her in the guardroom at the base of the stairs. She bounded to her feet as soon as she caught sight of Arya. Arya grinned. The wolf pup loved her, even if no one else did. They went everywhere together, and Nymeria slept in her room, at the foot of her bed.

I am not immune to the cute prehistoric killing machine and it’s cute little paws.

She had yellow eyes. When they caught the sunlight, they gleamed like two golden coins. Arya had named her after the warrior queen of the Rhoyne, who had led her people across the narrow sea. That had been a great scandal too.

Somebody smarter than talk about Nymeria’s golden eyes. Doesn’t Lady also have golden eyes?

Also, love Arya’s naming choice. When I was ten, I named my cat Cleopatra. Very relatable. (But also, what's the scandal? Did the septa sniff when Arya announced it? Seems like a fine and very Arya name.)

But a warrior queen and body of water. HMMMMM. The ship girl foreshadowing starts early.

Sansa, of course, had named her pup “Lady.”

Be still my heart. 😩

The boys were at practice in the yard. She wanted to see Robb put gallant Prince Joffrey flat on his back.

Have I mentioned how fond I am of Arya?

There was a window in the covered bridge between the armory and the Great Keep where you had a view of the whole yard. That was where they headed.

Another puzzle piece for the people meticulously reconstructing WF in Minecraft. Godspeed to them.

Jon is watching from the window, and Ghost and Nymeria have a cute moment that melts my frozen heart.

To her disappointment, it was the younger boys drilling. Bran was so heavily padded he looked as though he had belted on a featherbed, and Prince Tommen, who was plump to begin with, seemed positively round. They were huffing and puffing and hitting at each other with padded wooden swords under the watchful eye of old Ser Rodrik Cassel, the master-at-arms, a great stout keg of a man with magnificent white cheek whiskers.

I know that this moments gets a ton of callbacks, being a big moment of King Bran and dead Tommen foreshadowing, but look at the bundled-up seven year olds! SO cute!

“A shade more exhausting than needlework,” Jon observed. “A shade more fun than needlework,” Arya gave back at him.

I mean- we all know where this is going.

Jon had their father’s face, as she did. They were the only ones. Robb and Sansa and Bran and even little Rickon all took after the Tullys, with easy smiles and fire in their hair. When Arya had been little, she had been afraid that meant that she was a bastard too. It had been Jon she had gone to in her fear, and Jon who had reassured her.

I am not immune to Jon and Arya being adorable together.

Little Arya is afraid of being a bastard because she sees how Jon is treated, so she goes to him, and Jon puts all of problems to one side to comfort his little sister. Argh, my heart.

“Why aren’t you down in the yard?” Arya asked him. He gave her a half smile. “Bastards are not allowed to damage young princes,” he said. “Any bruises they take in the practice yard must come from trueborn swords.”

It’s- It’s irony. Becuase- because the Baratheon kids are bastards, and Jon is a prince.

(Is Jon actually a bastard, or is he true born through some horrible shenanigans? Let’s keep a running list.)

“Oh.” Arya felt abashed. She should have realized. For the second time today, Arya reflected that life was not fair.

I feel like this speaks for itself mainly. All of Jon’s siblings can be thoughtless when it comes to Jon’s situation.

She watched her little brother whack at Tommen. “I could do just as good as Bran,” she said. “He’s only seven. I’m nine.”

The sibling age hierarchy is so very real.

Jon looked her over with all his fourteen-year-old wisdom.

This will never not be funny to me.

“The Lannisters are proud,” Jon observed. “You’d think the royal sigil would be sufficient, but no. He makes his mother’s House equal in honor to the king’s.” “The woman is important too!” Arya protested.

Get em, Arya!

“Perhaps you should do the same thing, little sister. Wed Tully to Stark in your arms.” “A wolf with a fish in its mouth?” It made her laugh.

I- I can’t. What do you want me to do with this??? Because my mind is in fact a gutter. Someone put me out of my misery.

“Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords but not the arms.

This feel significant on multiple levels. The way that daughters and bastard sons are permanently slotted below true born sons in the Westerosi patriarchy. The way that a bastard son and true born daughter could consolidate their claims together to make a stronger one. Something something.

Prince Tommen was rolling in the dust, trying to get up and failing. All the padding made him look like a turtle on its back. Bran was standing over him with upraised wooden sword, ready to whack him again once he regained his feet.

Yeah, Tommen’s pretty toast. There can be only one apparently, and its going t be Bran.

Ser Rodrik has got to one of my favorite silly old men, with his silly little beard.

And then we get the Joffrey-Robb conflict foreshadowing that feels like they were actually supposed to have a more personal showdown but it got dropped.

Arya could see Robb bristle. His pride was wounded. He turned on Ser Rodrik. “Let me do it. I can beat him.” “Beat him with a tourney blade, then,” Ser Rodrik said. Joffrey shrugged. “Come and see me when you’re older, Stark. If you’re not too old.” There was laughter from the Lannister men.

Is this or is this not fulfilled by the war of the Five Kings? You decide, I guess.

The Hound is terrible, Joffrey is terrible, Theon has to hold Robb back from committing some serious treason, Jon has a cryptic description.

Jon watched them leave, and Arya watched Jon. His face had grown as still as the pool at the heart of the godswood.

Huh. Always interesting to see how Jon is identified with WF early on.

“You had best run back to your room, little sister. Septa Mordane will surely be lurking. The longer you hide, the sterner the penance. You’ll be sewing all through winter. When the spring thaw comes, they will find your body with a needle still locked tight between your frozen fingers.”

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, JON. DO not foreshadow your little sister like that. Now she’s definitely losing her fingers, if not her hand. You’re worst than Ned, I swear.

The chapter ends with a funny haha sitcom moment that does not make me want to gouge my eyes out at all.

It was worse than Jon had thought. It wasn’t Septa Mordane waiting in her room. It was Septa Mordane and her mother.

I’m laughing so hard, guys.

Conclusion: Uh. Arya is peak sibling behavior in every way, Sansa is actually very chill when her spirit animal hasn’t been killed, the Bran and Tommen see saw is real, and Jon is a great big brother when he’s not foreshadowing.

And no women wins under patriarchy?

Who’s next? Bran? Thank god!

#This was very much a head empty no thoughts summary #so my apologies #genuinely just not a huge fan of this one #agot #Arya I #branwen reads asoiaf again

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scarletwitching · 4 years ago

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just curious, why aren’t u reading comics anymore? Is it cause wandas not in anything?

So, Ike Perlmutter... is bad.

This is hard to explain, not because I don’t know why I quit but because I cannot recall why I didn’t quit earlier. I guess it was the Spiegelman thing that did it, though that’s confusing because I remember quitting in July, not August. (2019 was 87 years ago, so who knows.) Sina Grace’s post had gone up that same summer. There was other stuff too. Things built on each other until I felt like I couldn’t justify it anymore.

It was probably inevitable. Or at least, it feels inevitable now. I considered it after the Northrop Grumman incident, but that was cancelled so fast that I didn’t even have time to process it. Things like that kept happening. I’d get mad about something, then it would whoosh by. But it was all chipping away at me. And it chipped and it chipped until one day, I was done. What’s that quote? Liking falling asleep, slowly and then all at once.

A couple of months after I quit, there was some internal role shifting that I don’t understand fully to this day, but was treated as “Feige is in charge of the comics now.” There was a lot of relief in the fandom at the time, and I remember thinking this should make me want to reconsider, it should make me want to at least wait and see if things changed. But I never seriously entertained the idea. Well over a year later, I couldn’t tell you what, if anything, changed.

Regardless, some things aren’t going to change. Did you see that photo of the guy storming the US Capitol holding zip ties? He had a Punisher logo on his chest. I’m not gonna argue about the political implications of that character or how much Marvel could actually do to put the genie back in the bottle. I’m more thinking about how, as superheroes have come to dominate pop culture, conservatives and liberals have both started adopting their iconography more and more. Remember that Dan Crenshaw ad? And the ICE tweet? I hate that shit.

The thing people love to do in this situation is insist everyone who disagrees with them is “misinterpreting” the characters and stories, but I don’t know how tenable that position is. I won’t pretend I don’t know why fascist insurrectionists love these characters. On the flip side, I can’t imagine an argument for why the person I saw call Amy McGrath “the real life Captain Marvel” is missing the point. I’d say they’re bang on the money, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. The white nationalists who think they’re vigilantes are obviously the worst (by several magnitudes). I’m not saying the cheesy liberal shit is the same as fashy right wing shit, just that I’ve grown exhausted with the way that society at large engages with these characters.

Is that the reason I quit reading Marvel comics? No, but it is a reason I haven’t started again. This stuff has become so obnoxious and omnipresent that it has tainted my feelings about the source material. Maybe part of my annoyance is that I know so much about the history of this meaningless nonsense that when I see people oversimplify it in order to slot them neatly into their own political views, I know it’s bullshit. Because it’s never as clear-cut as people make it out to be. No, Magneto was not based on Malcolm X, but yes, the Avengers kind of are ICE. But only that one time. (Fucking Hickman.)

It’s not just the general audience either. People in the supposedly enlightened part of this fandom downplay and excuse (and make snide jokes about) actual, non-fictional US war crimes under the guise of defending a fictional character. Do some people around here have any self-awareness about how embarrassing they are? It is vile the shit some of y’all will say with your whole chest, as if it’s completely divorced from the real world. The level of historical revisionism, the literal neocon talking points I have seen trotted out and presented as antiracism. I am begging certain people to PLEASE talk to an Iraqi. One (1) Iraqi. Any Iraqi. (Okay, maybe not any Iraqi.)

Actually, forget that. I don’t want to burden a single victim of US imperialism with some of y’uns, especially since you have proven time and again you cannot be reasoned with. Does that stuff affect my willingness to to buy Marvel comics? Yeah, it does. The fans may not be the company’s fault, but this attitude that real people’s suffering is just an exotic backdrop that doesn’t need to be seriously engaged with came straight from them.

More than anything, I’ve been thinking a lot about Capitalism (lol, of course, I have) and how I engage with this awful system I am forced to live in. Disney sucks. We all know it. The comic industry is exploitative. We all know it. How much do I really want to support them instead of giving my money directly to independent creators? How much more watered down, neoliberal, “more female drone operators” art do I need to experience in my life?

I’m not calling for a boycott or whatever. I don’t pretend to know how other people should live their lives. I’m not even sure how I should live my life. I just know that it’s been good for me to step back and evaluate what I spend my money on and how I feel about art that doesn’t live up to my values. Will I come back into the fold with a healthier attitude and more insight than I had before? Dunno. Will I eventually want to catch up on Immortal Hulk? Probably, but I’m guessing I’ll get it from the library when I do.

#anonymous #answered #Anonymous

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otterplusharchive · 4 years ago

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rey! do you have any recs for kdramas? i have never watched any, but i like lovable characters and romance ? thank you in advance!

I DO IN FACT HAVE DRAMA RECS HII not all of these will be kdramas, but ill start with the kdramas ive watched and enjoyed and ill include all the warnings for them that i can remember off the top of my head and a brief synopsis for u!

kdramas-

1. weight lifting fairy kim bok joo

this was probably one of the first kdramas i saw people post about in like 2015 and i watched a little bit of it in 2016 but then only just got around to finishing it last year. the basic gist of it is its about a young sports college weight lifter, kim bok joo, centering around her navigating through her life and trying to figure out who she is and what she wants in life and what she wants to be. her romantic interest in the show is a swimmer and they have a sort of rivals to friends to lovers, he is SO in love with her and its adorable. i absolutely loved the side characters in this show theyre all so fun and kim bok joos best friends and weight lifting team are especially delightful. my main warning would be that this show addresses eating disorders and theres a lot of mention of both weight gain and weight loss, theres also a plot point early on where kim bok joo has a crush on her eventual love interests older brother but it gets resolved and the older brother literally goes "i didnt realize you had a crush on me and if i knew that i wouldnt have been so friendly with you, it would be completely innapropriate for us to be in a relationship". overall its a really sweet and emotional fun show but if you have issues with weight talk id skip this one

2. tale of the nine tailed

this one is really recent from last year and i didnt expect to be so hooked by it but boy howdy did i get attached to all the characters and the wild plot. it feels hard to explain the plot but basically a nine tailed fox named lee yeon is living in modern day seoul and is working for the underworld finding paranormal spirits/creatures/other rogue foxes that are causing havoc on the world, hes resigned himself to living this life while waiting for his girlfriend who died tragically 600 years ago to come back to life because he traded his status as a mountain god in order to ensure that her soul would one day be reincarnated. a plucky investigative journalist named nam ji ah figures out that hes not human and shenanagins ensue because she looks exactly like his dead girlfriend oooooo whatll happen. the plot beyond that gets really wild and its hard to explain and is easier to just watch. if u enjoy paranormal adventures this one is good. my one big complaint and issue with this is that the immortal mountain spirit meets his original girlfriend when shes a child and she continues to visit him off and on as she grows up which is Hm I Dont Like That! but thankfully the present time romance our female lead meets him when shes about 30 if im remembering right. also warnings for general fantasy violence, references to child abuse, animal death, and abandonment issues

3. extraordinary you

HUGE unreality warning for this. if you have issues with feeling unreal or have paranoia/delusions about not being a real person id avoid this one just because of its premise

ok i know i said tale of the nine tailed was a hard plot to explain but BOY extraordinary you is even HARDER to explain. because its so wild but so good. its about a girl who realizes that she is literally a side character in a comic book, and the story becomes her trying to change the story to save her character from dying but it becomes a lot more than that. the romance in this is literally tooth achingly sweet and the show itself is very pretty, i loved the side characters in this one and the show was engaging and interesting to watch it became really layered and meta. super reccomend this one honestly. my main issues/warnings that i can remember off the top of my head were just one character being the classic controlling boyfriend stereotype, bullying someone specifically for being poor, unreality like i mentioned before, and then at the very end there was this love interest for a side character who got reincarnated from a past piece of writing that they had been in and put in the comic but she was a student and he was the school cook which is weird but thankfully they like barely interact at all and theres no real romance he just like recognizes her and its barely a thing at the end of the show but its still weird

4. mystic pop up bar

big warning for suicide, sexual harrasment (which is framed as being bad and the guy whos harrassing the girl literally gets thrown off a roof)

i havent finished this one yet and thats mainly because im not emotionally ready because this one makes me soooo emotional. if you like found family this is a good one. its about a pop up bar run by a woman whos been tasked with solving the problems of a certain amount of people in order to atone for her crimes in the past before dying, shes able to enter the dreams of people and solve their issues using the information she gets in the dreams. paranormal shenanagins ensue, she acquires a son and a husband and it kills me its so fun and quirky and fun despite handling dark themes and peoples problems. also very sweet the found family murders me

5. kingdom (netflix original)

i literally am not going to be able to watch any other zombie media because kingdom and train to busan are the best pieces of zombie media ive ever seen. warnings for gore and violence and just general horror aspects.

i absolutely love this one its so thrilling and well done, i love the acting and the way that this show looks its absolutely gorgeous. a zombie plague breaks out in joseon period korea where the emperor has died and then was brought back to life by the queen and her father in a ploy to try and keep their family in political power, the crown prince must find answers. a lot more happens and its very dramatic and good i love the characters in this one

cdramas

1. the untamed. if you follow me and you havent watched the untamed im begging you to watch the untamed. literally one of the most beautiful stories ive experienced in my life i am not joking when i say i cried multiple times over it. the main characters are canonically gay in love and have a son together please watch the untamed. handles a lot of dark themes, heres a tw guide

2. the sleuth of the ming dynasty

this is another one i havent finished but its fun so far, very gay, found family, food, and solving murder mysteries during the ming dynasty

3. hikaru no go (also known as qi hun)

havent finished this one, there is some propaganda about hong kong in the first episode but as far as i know thats the only instance of something like that in the show

this ones about the game go and so far its very sweet and fun, local boy awakens a ghost who was a master of the game of go hundreds of years ago and eventually is persuaded to learn how to play go with the aid of the ghost. im really liking this one so far its very cute and i love the characters in it. if youve watched the untamed nie huaisangs actor ji li is in this one!

4. the legend of yunqian

this ones very short and on youtube, all the episodes are about 5 minutes long and its a lesbian time travel fantasy adventure with a happy ending! funny and cute

jdramas

1. cherry magic

please please please watch cherry magic. the premise sounds very much like a weird yaoi kind of thing but trust me on this. trust me. it is so heart warming and sweet and i was so emotional about it and the growth of the main character.

adachi gains the power to read peoples minds on his 30th birthday based off a urban legend that if youre a 30 year old virgin that youll become a wizard. after gaining this power he accidentally finds out that his extremely popular and handsome coworker has a crush on him, and shenanagins ensue along with adachi having blossoming feelings in return. this show was really refreshing in a lot of ways, adachi is a main character who like.. is unsure of himself and insecure in a very kind of realistic way, he closes himself off and is afraid to reach out to people and through the course of the show we see him slowly come out of his shell and realize that hes likeable and lovable and that people want to be around him and its so nice to see. my main complaint about this show is that i dont really like the background couple, but otherwise this is a very sweet and refreshing gay romance that has a happy ending!

some others that i myself havent seen but that ive seen people talk about a lot and that i want to watch eventually:

- the legend of fei (cdrama)

- the wolf (cdrama)

- gaurdian (cdrama, not the kdrama one called goblin)

- healer (kdrama, i did watch some of this one but it was in 2016 and i never finished it so i barely remember any of it but i do remember liking it)

- nobody knows (kdrama)

- its ok to not be ok (kdrama)

sorry this is so long but i hope youll be able to find a drama u enjoy!!

#long post

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seyaryminamoto · 4 years ago

Text

Masterpost: answering a single anon in a single post

So. I wasn’t going to answer asks today but frankly, considering what I should be writing I’d rather answer asks, might actually get a laugh out of it. Most of all, because of what I intend to answer here.

To spare y’all from the pain and annoyance of having to read through any of my answers to we-know-who, I’m going to do it differently this time. All in one post. Because frankly, filling my blog with their TWENTY asks, no less (and it’s official this time, used to be sixteen but then I reblogged that post about conflict in stories and they went wild, as usual) isn’t worth anyone’s time. Hell, it’s not even worth mine, but procrastination is overpowering.

Here we go. If you’re not the anon in question and still want to read this, I hope you have fun.

This is a free world. That means multiple things some people can’t seem to accept. One such thing is that people have no obligation to even interact with each other, let alone to do what others demand of them, especially when they don’t want to. The fact is, being harassed (because, yes, there’s no other word for it) by someone has been a pretty irritating and stressful thing for me, to the point where it has impacted my ability to write...

And the harasser doesn’t give a single fuck about it and just keeps going :’)

With such introduction, I decide to engage my least favorite person in this site once again because clearly, ignoring them, blocking them, closing asks, deleting and rewriting reviews, is still not enough to get across the message that reiterating an opinion a million times doesn’t automatically make it more valid. So let’s see just what’s going on with this very much desperate person who apparently can’t stop seeking my attention:

First of all, I asked this person, point-blank, to address their asks, if they would continue sending them, to my main blog. Let’s see how that request turned out:

Oh my, astonishing! They sent it to Gladiator’s blog instead! And what a bigger shock: they’re, as usual, trying to control and direct what I write and how I write it. While sprinkling empty compliments that don’t mean a thing, such as claiming RESPECT for me and my work when every single ask they’ve sent is an outright disrespectful act against me, considering how many times I’ve requested, directly, that they stop this, and how many times they’ve ignored me. It even is extra poignant considering my request for them to send asks to my main blog instead, and yet they deliberately sent it to Gladiator’s blog. This is what RESPECT looks like, in this anon’s head. Fascinating stuff, isn’t it?

And then comes the mad onslaught that left me facedesking for days:

... I mean. Can someone please read this and tell me the person on the other side, with their vague condition, whatever it may be, has any idea what an apology even MEANS?

For someone who’s so obsessed with alleged consistency, you’re damn bad at it yourself, Anon. You can’t send four asks in a row, to the WRONG BLOG, demanding for explanations you don’t even care to read, because every single time I’ve taken your whining seriously you’ve disregarded all my responses and gone right back to the same BS as before, and THEN pretend you’re here TO APOLOGIZE.

You don’t feel any remorse. To this day, you don’t even KNOW what you did wrong. This is NOT expressing yourself: THIS IS HARASSMENT. Need me to define the word for you to understand what it means, seeing as it’s becoming abundantly clear your reading and interpretation skills are not the greatest?

Definitions of harassment:

1. (n) the act of tormenting by continued persistent attacks and criticism 2. (n) a feeling of intense annoyance caused by being tormented

I’ve said it before: PEOPLE HAVE HAD COMPLAINTS ABOUT THIS STORY, FAR MORE VALID THAN YOURS, AND I’VE NEVER REACTED THIS WAY. Care to guess why?

Because you NEVER stop. Because you keep going, constantly, never slowing down to think YOUR behavior is affecting a REAL LIFE HUMAN BEING. You’re obsessing over what happens in a fictional story that, by the way, is a fanfic, ergo, it obeys certain rules that general fiction does not. Among such rules is abiding by ORIGINAL characterization to a certain extent, and that means, hahaha, that Azula ISN’T an experienced character in any social or romantic situations because she ISN’T in canon, and there was no reason to change that, especially considering the worldbuilding I crafted, which makes it CRUCIAL for Azula to be careful with her virtue, despite she doesn’t want to be and realizes the whole notion of female virginal purity is absolute BULLSHIT.

But why am I explaining anything anyway? You won’t understand it, because you don’t want to. You claim, constantly, that you’re asking things OUT OF CURIOSITY, as if that makes ANYTHING better, when the truth is you’re just here to impose your cursed opinions on everyone else, especially me, and pretend you somehow own this fic and ship and your demands mean more than anyone else’s. Meanwhile, oh, I understand you PERFECTLY: you don’t want Sokka to ever have any experiences with any other women because you only believe in pure, untainted love of virgins who wait for each other and don’t ever make mistakes or are forced into unwanted situations. Because, again, you can’t understand that those sorts of things CAN happen. Because you don’t see there’s nuance to human beings, nuance I attempt to capture through my characters too.

I said it semi-jokingly, back in my past answers, now I say it directly: IF YOU CAN’T STOMACH THESE SITUATIONS AND CAN’T ACCEPT THEM, THIS STORY IS NOT FOR YOU.

An M-rated story doesn’t owe you any apologies for being what it is. An M-rated story, at the end of the day, is a STORY. You are a human being who should be capable of controlling not only your impulses but your reactions to things, at least to some degree, and yet you refuse to. You, in fact, continue to prove you CAN’T control yourself in the least because hey, just now, halfway through writing this post? I got THREE MORE ASKS by you. No less than three. And you finished them off, again, with a pretense that you’re going to stop pestering me...

... But hey. You said that at the end of the last ask I pasted up there. Hmm. And yet...

You came back, over and over and over again? :’)

RIGHT ON ALL ACCOUNTS! So... how do TWENTY ASKS, after claims that you’d finally stop, count as “regret”? You’re not changing at all, anon, because YOU DON’T WANT TO. You don’t, to this day, see what you did wrong. You don’t get it. And you won’t get it. So how about we just keep going with the next four?

Oh! But hey, you actually switched blogs this time. Super sweet of you to finally listen to ONE thing I said. Very nice.

I’ll just point out: I received the last NINE asks I’ve pasted here in a SINGLE DAY.

Nine. In one day.

I only ever got that many asks in a single go during review parties (admittedly, there were more than that, but still). The fact that you felt the need to send me NINE ASKS, to beg for forgiveness with a completely dishonest apology, is all the proof of harassment anyone could possibly ask for, right? If you weren’t an anon and at least had the GUTS to own up to your opinions, which you seem to consider absolutely sacred and completely correct, you’d have never gotten away with this. Ergo why you don’t have those guts, and why you keep sending anon reviews and asks too.

The fact that you’re so obsessed with this problem, to the point of believing Sokka’s best sex was with JUNE? We’ve literally finished an entire arc of Sokka and Azula banging across the Fire Nation with no restraint, with the two of them repeatedly remarking this is the best time they’ve ever had, and you’re so completely obsessed with this problem that you apparently think Sokka angrily fucking someone WHILE DECEIVING HIMSELF INTO THINKING IT WAS SOMEONE ELSE is... better? Are you FOR REAL? Are you seriously THAT BAD at reading?

Please, click here. I can’t even stand it anymore. It’s not even for my own sake but yours. You need it.

Also... you’re projecting so bad. Like, so bad. June’s teasing in that chapter is 100% intended to piss them off. The fact that she starts asking for Azula to lend her her “second boyfriend”, AKA Rui Shi, should tell you just how much stock June puts in what happened between her and Sokka: SHE DOESN’T GIVE A DAMN. She’s honestly more entertained by pissing off Azula as a consequence of it than over the sex she had with Sokka, especially considering she even lost her temper with him after he started apologizing in 28. You’re so completely beside yourself you can’t see ANYTHING clearly?

If you REALLY need it spelled out, no, Sokka wasn’t June’s best sex. June has probably done anyone and everyone she ever wanted to, and chances are she absolutely found someone, or several someones, who actually wanted HER, for HER, just as much as she may have wanted them. And that, you insecure mess of a human being, would absolutely make for a much better lay than what she got with Sokka. Why don’t I outright state this in the story, you’ll ask? Because despite what you may believe, this story ISN’T a love triangle between Azula, Sokka and June! Oh my, the horror! We’ve literally spent 198 chapters building up the story and developing Azula and Sokka’s relationship but the ONE TIME encounter with June apparently makes her that pivotal for your whole existence?

Dude, I literally don’t look at 28 AT ALL these days, because I don’t care to. Because even when I wrote it, it hurt me so bad having written it that I was crazy about getting to everything else so I could put it behind me. Whenever I reference it, I do the same way I reference ANYTHING ELSE. The only person who seems to think I’m doing it to further torture anyone IS YOU.

And yes, did I just say it hurt me too? Oh, my, what a SHOCKER! The fact is, that scene is only as intense as it is because I literally couldn’t bring myself to write it. It wasn’t until it came to mind that Sokka COULD imagine Azula in June’s place that I finally found the way to do it: it wasn’t just Sokka imagining Azula instead, it was ME. Because if it had been anything else? I wouldn’t have been able to write it at all. I basically wrote it as hatesex Sokkla because I NEEDED to in order to write it. “THEN WHY DID YOU EVEN WRITE IT?!?!?”, you’ll scream, I’m sure: BECAUSE I TREAT MY CHARACTERS AS HUMAN BEINGS WHO MAKE MISTAKES AND DO THINGS THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE. BECAUSE SOKKA WAS IN A DARK PLACE AND DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT AZULA WAS FEELING OR THINKING. BECAUSE AZULA WAS IMPULSIVE AND CONTROLLING AND COULDN’T REALIZE THAT THE MORE SHE TRIED TO FORCE SOKKA TO BEND TO HER WILL, THE MORE HE WOULD TRY TO BREAK FREE.

But all this is clearly too complex for you. Can’t even fathom understanding anything remotely close to characterization and conflict within relationships, no. You’re something else entirely.

And so, we move on to the post-apology Anon: you DO realize that forgiveness is something earned? I mean, it’s kinda funny because Sokka actually earned his own. He spent ages working for it, and even AFTER Azula told him he was forgiven, he still feels so bad about having hurt her that, to this day, he regrets it. Being FORGIVEN was not a condition for him to feel remorse. He regretted his actions because HE KNEW THEY WERE WRONG. Because he’s an actual, decent human being who, when faced with a catastrophic mistake, actually wants to amend it and wishes he had acted differently despite he can’t take anything back anymore.

But you? You can’t even begin to understand what regret means. I guess another dictionary definition would help?

Definitions of regret

1. (v) feel remorse for; feel sorry for; be contrite about

2. (v) feel sad about the loss or absence of

3. (v) express with regret

4. (v) decline formally or politely

5. (n) sadness associated with some wrong done or some disappointment

So, your attempts to beg for forgiveness fall completely flat. And I say it in plural, ATTEMPTS, because in case you think I’m daft and forgot your old reviews and asks, I didn’t: THIS ISN’T YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT TO APOLOGIZE FOR THIS BULLSHIT. I thought I should clarify that, because heh, you have claimed you won’t come back, you have claimed you’re sorry, you have said many platitudes in the past that actually had no meaning... and I could tell they didn’t, which is why I never answered them. Because there was no way someone who had exhibited such obsessive behavior would actually control themselves and get over their issues after MONTHS of persistent harassment.

And so, you didn’t disappoint, because I had zero expectations that you’d actually abide by your apologies. Empty apologies, again, because to this moment you don’t even know what you did wrong. You don’t get it. To put it in the way I did for someone else who talked to me about this mess:

You could be complaining to me about something else entirely. You could be here, demanding that I explain why I’ve been writing Sokka killing people, for instance. You could be disregarding all sense, reason, historical precedents and what-have-you as to why a warmongering, canonically genocidal nation like the Fire Nation would ever have a system like the Gladiator League and enslave other cultures to do their bidding.

And if you came back with those complaints PERSISTENTLY, FOR A YEAR, I’D BE JUST AS ANGRY AS I AM NOW.

It’s NOT about the situation you’re throwing a fit over. It’s NOT about me having it out for you. It’s about YOU not knowing limits or boundaries, going as far as you constantly, consistently have, ever seeking to twist my story into whatever warped, fucked up perception you’ve developed over it, without ever slowing down to think that your actions and your behavior are affecting someone else. I’m not just a rambling robot who can’t seem to stop talking or writing or whatever you may think I am: I’m an actual person with a FUCKLOAD of problems, who literally just had the WORST year of her life, and you just decided to continue adding to the pile, never slowing down to consider that your feelings, and your opinions, and your pain, does NOT invalidate other people’s, let alone does it make you EXEMPT of hurting others. Which, heh, if you knew how to read, you could’ve even LEARNED this from Gladiator! :’D

Because Azula, so hurt as she was, took to hurting Sokka too, in many, many ways. And Sokka, once he understood how wrongly he had judged Azula, simply let her hurt him because he thought he deserved everything she threw at him. Later on? Azula realizes all the pain she caused Sokka COULD have led him to choose the White Lotus over her. She’s in a life-or-death situation, unable to fight back, and the ONLY reason she doesn’t get screwed over and captured by the enemy is because Sokka decides she matters more to him than joining forces with sketchy people who are out for revenge. But what if she’d hurt him more than she had? What if she’d done WORSE than she did? Maybe he would’ve been so hurt too that, at this point, he would’ve chosen the White Lotus and not only abandoned her but handed her over to her nation’s enemies! :’) oh, the horror. Is it really that unthinkable? Why, it’s not to me. And why not? Because if Azula had been as unforgiving and unyielding as you are, if she had been so obsessive over whatever caused her pain and refused to move on... this story would SUCK. BADLY.

Makes you wonder what that says about your mentality, doesn’t it?

Alas, after all this digression as to why your behavior is absolutely appalling to me, let’s see what you did indeed, right after your absolutely shallow apology that was obviously not sincere, because you don’t regret having bothered me at all, you just regret that I won’t abide by your whining...

Is THIS what an apologetic, remorseful person looks like? Really, now? Honestly, if Sokka were half as bad as you are, he would’ve slept with half the Fire Nation by now while constantly coming back to Azula like “Oh woops did it again, sorry!”

Yes, I can honestly make the link pretty easily. Must be why you keep assuming he’ll ever be with someone else, because if you were in his place, you would do exactly that :’) beautiful how things just come full circle, isn’t it?

That ask came as a response to another, potentially ill-intended one, potentially sent by you too. An ask I answered with a whole list of unique things Sokka has done for Azula. Not only did you NOT understand the list’s purpose despite you may have even been the one to ask for it... but you took a line directly referencing OBVIOUS events like chapters 64, 69 and 93, moments in which Azula either put a stop to opportunities where she and Sokka might have ended up going too far, and he accepted it without complaint... or Sokka himself put a stop to them, KNOWING that Azula would be taking a huge risk if she gave herself to him completely as she does from 97 onwards. That you literally took something that was SO VERY OBVIOUS, and twisted it into chapter 28 again speaks LENGTHS of how absolutely messed up your perception and interpretation of this whole story is. You have issues. Serious issues. And I’m not saying this just to be an ass, I’m saying it because it’s clear as day that if you CAN’T stop linking absolutely everything I say or do to chapter 28, whether it’s being referenced or not (and in this case, it was NOT), the problem isn’t me, IT’S YOU.

And here we go again. You are actually trying to POLICE the Sokkla fandom at this point? An ANON? And hey, you returned to the Gladiator blog! Which means you were so pissed that I didn’t answer your previous asks and your phony apology because I KNEW you’d come back that even your teeny, tiny behavioral correction was pulled back because you were MAD. And you HAD TO MAKE YOUR OPINIONS KNOWN, AGAIN.

Do tell, are you the same ass who harassed a pretty new friend I’ve made in this fandom? An honestly solid writer who happens to feature Sokka having other, prior relationships to Azula because, haha, if you work with CANON settings, that’s basically guaranteed since Sokka already has canon relationships before even knowing Azula exists? And then, even if in those experiences Sokka ends up going “... I bet it’d be better with Azula”, you STILL take this as a slight and you consider it a reason to go around harassing writers and potentially even THREATENING to report their content because you’re mad that Sokka isn’t exclusively Azula’s in every single story you pick up?

The worst part is, I actually wrote at least 2 stories in my Saturdays’ oneshots where Azula and Sokka are each other’s first everything, absolutely so. And I got nothing from you for it, not even a teeny tiny “HEY THANK YOU YOU FINALLY WROTE WHAT I WANTED TO SEE!”. No, you only come out of your hole to ATTACK writers. To tell us what to do when you think we’re not doing it right. As if you had the SLIGHTEST right to tell ANYONE what to do.

I literally have been here for EIGHT YEARS. I’ve been creating content for this ship for that long, when nobody else was anymore. I won’t take credit for the ship’s rise in popularity, despite yes, it’s far from a major ship no matter how far we’ve come... but my story didn’t reach the heights it has out of sheer dumb luck. I worked my ass off with Gladiator in every way I could to make it a story of the scope and depth it deserved to be, and the fact that people who didn’t even ship Sokkla were interested in reading the story all the same has always been something I take pride on. A ton of multishippers read this story, and support Sokkla too: neither you nor ANYONE has any right to demand or claim or pretend that someone else has no right to be part of this fandom or to set guidelines as to what their content should be. There’s LITERAL stories out there of Sokka having a goddamn HAREM, just so you know, with Azula included amongst the women involved in it... and you’re here, throwing a fit over people featuring Sokka having one-time encounters and brief relationships with other girls before committing completely to Azula.

I’ve been here, working my ass off for Sokkla, not only in writing but literally developing my art skills to the best of my ability so I could ONE DAY create the visuals and images these two evoked for me...

And yet I don’t feel I have any right to tell ANYONE how to make their content.

If there was a set number of words in fics or artworks someone needed to make for a ship to prove themselves worthy of obtaining the skill of GATEKEEPING, I am 100% positive I have more than outdone that limit.

And yet I DON’T play gatekeeper. I NEVER have, and I NEVER will. People can create whatever they want to create, whether I enjoy it or not is up to me, and if I DON’T enjoy it, I DON’T read it. If there’s Sokkla content out there I can’t even STOMACH? I would ignore it and move on with my life. You? You make it your whole life’s crusade to attack people over anything that tickles you wrong. That’s how it works, isn’t it?

Unless you’re planning on pulling a Scooby-Doo-esque twist where you remove your mask and reveal you were a known Sokkla fan and content creator all along, which I find ABSOLUTELY unlikely, then this means you haven’t done anything, ANYTHING, for this fandom beyond sending anonymous harassment to people who are actually taking time out of their lives to create content for this ship. The main reaction I’ve seen at you from ANY of us, whether anons like yourself or actual content creators like myself, is that you have too much time on your hands and need a better hobby. And I agree, completely.

So, where people like me and my fellow Sokkla creators are actually making content that convinces people, if not to ship it, to at least CONSIDER this ship a possibility... you’re out there, in hiding, pretending you have any right to tell us what to do and going ignored on most accounts. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if I had any respect for someone, and they either stopped responding to me or started responding by telling me to leave them alone, I’d feel like such stain of garbage I’d never even try to interact with them again. While people absolutely can be different and react differently to things... I can’t see how, exactly, you have any respect for me when knowing you’re a problem for me has never stopped you and most likely never will.

I’ll admit, this one actually made me laugh. Like... you’re seriously trying to tell me that a sex scene was way too good and that’s why I have to change it. I actually disagree on every account, because the last time I revisited 28 I thought the scene was absolutely distant from my best work? I’ve written soooo much smut recently and literally any of those scenes kicks 28 out of any “best smut” contest by MILES. But... heh. This one, apparently, was too good.

I mean... thank you? For telling me that my smut skills are apparently that great they need to be toned down? Fascinating, really.

But again, “it sadly seems to be a too late to write chapter 28″. Sadly?

SADLY?

You can stick your sadness up where the sun doesn’t shine, dude:

SOMEONE WHO THREW SUCH A FIT OVER THEIR REVIEWS BEING REWRITTEN SHOULD

NEVER

TELL SOMEONE ELSE THAT IT’S TOO BAD THEY CAN’T REWRITE ANY OF THEIR CONTENT.

EVER

You can’t pretend, again, that you were EVER sorry for ANY of what you did... while still trying to tell someone they should rewrite their content. Honest to gods, you’re an asshole. You are. And if you think I’m one too, great, I own up to it gladly. But you’re the one willingly intoxicating their brain with my content, only to consistently go MAD over it, and then unleash this kind of illogical nonsense right back at me. I know art can generate a myriad of responses, but I am NOT responsible for your immaturity and inability to handle serious subjects and topics that SHOULD MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE. If you don’t KNOW how to deal with the fact that there’s a lot of questionable, dislikeable things in this world, then my damn story is the least of your concerns because you’re well on your way to leading a VERY miserable life, Anon. Better get ready for it, will you?

And again, the Gladiator blog. Again, pretending to be well-mannered, and also, again, using the world “sadly”, same as the ask above. Like... man, what on earth is wrong with you. Are you seriously this masochistic? Do you also drink arsenic for sport? What on EARTH brings you the belief that asking how far or how much was done between Sokka and his previous one-night-stands would help you IN ANY WAY, WHATSOEVER?

I think I’ll answer that question, for once, with actual quotes, taken right from some of your favorite chapters, no less:

"When you and Ruon Jian got married, was he…?" she asked. Mai only raised a confused eyebrow, and Azula had the distinct feeling that Mai knew what she was talking about, but would force her to blurt it out anyways. She sighed: "A virgin."

Ty Lee's hands flew to her mouth as Mai raised her eyebrows. To Azula's astonishment, she merely shrugged.

"I don't know. I never asked," she said. Azula snorted.

"Then you're smarter than me. By far," she grunted. Mai smirked.

And as things digress there into Azula explaining what happened, let’s skip that and go straight to Mai’s direct answer:

"I've never asked Ruon Jian about whether or not he had anything serious with other girls before me because I seriously don't care," said Mai. "If I knew about it, I'd probably have a bout of jealousy like yours, I suppose… but it's in his past, and he left them behind to make me his present and his future. So, whatever he might have experienced before, with however many women there were, isn't something I'm overly concerned about."

"You're awfully mature compared to me if that's the case," said Azula, slipping her fingers through her hair again. Mai smirked.

"You've been complimenting me quite a lot today, Azula, that's not like you…"

"Shut up," Azula grunted. Mai chuckled.

:’)

This is the only answer this ask warrants. The fact that you’re so immature and so obsessed as to want to know more about what happened with something you HATE is completely cringeworthy and absurd. If you want to get angry imagining Sokka having wild sex with every woman who crosses his path, go ahead and do it, but do us both a favor and torture yourself, and yourself alone, with those thoughts rather than coming back TWENTY TIMES to my inbox looking for MORE reasons to get angry. You’re honestly unbelievable.

You know, that reading comprehension site I linked up there? Courses, 20% off! Seriously, perfect fit for you. You need it, direly.

Like... how can someone read a story built on the premise of Azula literally defeating Sokka painfully in battle to the point he’s left unable to move, taking Sokka away from home, turning him into a slave, being objectively responsible for the WORST TWO YEARS OF HIS LIFE... and then come to my inbox asking if Azula will ever hurt Sokka?

Dude, you’re off the deep end. You can’t even pretend you have a grasp on reality if you SERIOUSLY THINK Azula has NEVER hurt Sokka. Like, seriously, it feels like you’re reading this truncated version of Gladiator that’s only chapters 28, 111, 112 and perhaps 123? Is that what’s going on?

I’ve had Sokka and Azula arguing over ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING, whether for humorous or for serious purposes, since the very beginning of the story. Their first serious falling out is LITERALLY caused by the direct conflict of their worldviews clashing in chapter 12. Their second falling out was indeed caused by women: by Azula’s discovery that Sokka didn’t want to fight women, which of course, doesn’t bother you in the least because you and I both know that’s NOT what your problem was.

I could literally run through the whole story listing every single argument they’ve had, every single time they’ve hurt each other if that’s what you want: their first time? It literally comes from a very serious argument where Sokka believed he had reached the pinnacle of his potential as a fighter and feared Azula would need someone else to achieve her goals instead of him.

AND YOU’RE SERIOUSLY HERE ASKING IF THEY’LL EVER ARGUE OVER ANYTHING ELSE.

You don’t read this story. This ask absolutely proved it to me. You only read chapter 28 and everything potentially connected to Sokka having anything with other women. You don’t CARE about anything else, simply. Because if anything actually had ANY impact on you? You’d say something about it. But the only thing that touches your weird heart is Sokka sleeping with anyone else or having any potentially romantic interactions with someone else, whether he rejects them or not.

You don’t care about Gladiator. You only care about your ego, and the validation of your worldview and puritanic morals.

And to that I say, fuck that noise. I write whatever the hell I want to write, and you’re not going to rope me into playing it safe just to please insecure harassers who don’t know boundaries and are completely incapable of empathizing with anyone while demanding everyone should understand their feelings.

Final note on this matter: you, also, have no idea what love is. You plain and simple don’t understand it. You’re even more confused by what love should be than Azula was at the start of this story. You don’t get it, AT ALL.

All you want is for them to get even on things? You literally asked me, when I was in my angry spree of deleting your bullshit, to make Azula and her future husband have happy consensual quality sex with who knows how many orgasms... because it was only fair!

AGAIN: YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND LOVE IN THE LEAST.

If you think love is about getting even, you’re seriously an asshole. If you think love is about both people being 100% equal in social regards and experiences, you don’t even UNDERSTAND human relations. Do you live in a bubble, by any chance? Maybe you do! You must have zero contact with anyone other than people with your same puritanic beliefs, right? So that means you assume everyone who’s different from you is fundamentally a bad person? I take it?

Like... literally at this point I think you’d hear about someone who was abused in their childhood, molested, and your reaction would simply be “Oh wow I hope someone molests whoever they end up marrying too, so that way they may be even in the future and been molested by the exact same number of people, otherwise it’s not really love”.

This is fucking sick. I’m not holding back at this point, it’s SICK. It’s TWISTED. It’s VILE. Your mentality is absolutely repulsive to me. You don’t know what love is, and you have the most literal, obvious change to understand it better by reading this story properly, but instead you just read chapter 28 over and over and over again, isn’t that right?

And here’s the evidence of that. You really want me to answer that last question?

No, it doesn’t bug me to read that AT ALL. Because unlike you? I don’t obsessively reread 28 while disregarding everything else in the story. Unlike you, I don’t revisit the chapter every day to pick apart every line to look for reasons to get extra angry at those developments.

Most of us, when faced with things we DON’T like in fiction? We move past it. You, instead, dig yourself into a hole and continue digging, and then pretend to hold other people responsible for whatever impact this may be having on your psyche. Because yes, you’re holding me responsible for whatever trauma or insecurity this is awakening inside you when you continue to pester me as you have: if you’re an adult, you should have the tools and brains to determine what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior, as well as to curate your own experiences with media, with fandom, with EVERYTHING to do with these communities. If you choose to look for things to hate instead of things to love, THAT’S ON YOU.

And if you’re allegedly looking for things to love but can’t find ANY that suit your purposes (which... is bullshit. Clearly, your only priority is “Sokka must be a virgin who never had anything with anyone else”, and such stories DO exist, which I guarantee considering I’ve written at least THREE of them, where it’s absolutely stated that Sokka’s first and only one is Azula)...

Well, it’s funny. Because when I got here? I was looking for some very specific fics so I could explore whether or not Sokkla made any sense. And I didn’t find them.

Which resulted...

... In me writing the very stories I wanted to see.

Oh, my. Imagine taking your impulses and channeling them into something productive rather than looking for reasons to get angry 24/7! Must be such a NOVEL CONCEPT for you!

Seriously, you have no right to dictate what anyone does. Again, worth bringing up because you INSIST on the rewriting matter. Even if you’re claiming you’re done asking for it, you somehow KEEP bringing it up. And then you act like me mentioning 28′s events here or there in the story is absolutely outrageous... but you just go right on ahead and do the same thing yourself, don’t you? Funny how much of a hypocrite you really are, isn’t it?

The fact that you’re bringing up something I have NEVER written, and have NO INTENTIONS of ever writing, as some sort of stupid, ridiculous argument to be made AGAINST the post I literally reblogged TODAY... is just absurd beyond belief.

The fact that I ever even wrote Sokka cheating on Suki with Azula, which I DID, still bothers me. Because yes, it made for a good story, but the truth is, it doesn’t sit well with me. It worked in The Reason, worked in my collab story with a friend, but it doesn’t mean I feel 100% happy with that choice. Even if the cheating only amounted to a kiss in The Reason, and then a lot worse than just that in the other story, it’s still not cool! :’) I know this!

... And yet no one, NO ONE, has ever caught me writing Sokka cheating on Azula. In fact, when my collab story with my friend seemed to start moving towards that angle I BEGGED her not to do it, and then she didn’t, and my heart was deeply relieved and blissful for it. Because not only did it mean we wouldn’t have to deal with the very controversial and unsettling notion of someone in a good relationship cheating on their significant other... but because in that story, it also showed how much he had grown, and how he was truly devoted to Azula despite he hadn’t been to Suki.

But alas, I have my qualms with that concept, of course I do. And I don’t like it. Ergo, I’ll never write it.

Which begs the question as to WHY, exactly, you’re so obsessed with the notion of Sokka cheating on Azula? Like... do you get off on it? Are you wanking at the idea of Sokka and June every single night and then wake up feeling like crap and then take it out on me, by any chance? Is that what’s going on? Because I’m seriously starting to believe it is.

You clearly don’t understand anything about storytelling, which is probably why you don’t have the guts to create your own content in the first place. But the fact that I reblog a post about how conflict in a story is GOOD, and your first thought is “THEN THAT MEANS YOU APPROVE OF SOKKA CHEATING!” actually says A LOT MORE about you than it says about me. You need help. Clearly, the therapy site I was sending you to the last time wasn’t much good, was it? I guess you just ignored it in the end. Hopefully the reading comprehension one will suit you better, right?

Fuck you, seriously, for coming to someone who has been working this hard for this long, for a ship that they’re completely devoted to, to spout this kind of senseless shit. To think you seriously ever believed I’d accept your half-assed apologies when you’ve been doing this sort of bullshit for this long... you’re a piece of work. If you have the time to write that BULLSHIT into my inbox, at the very least use that time to look INWARD and ponder just what your damn problem is, resolve it on your own, AND LEAVE ME THE HELL OUT OF IT. Someone as immature and unstable as you has no business reading M-rated fiction, and I honestly rue the day you ever clicked my story. Both your life and mine would be countless times better if you simply had scrolled past it.

And on and on we went today. The THREE MORE ASKS that arrived as I was typing this insanely long response. Which resulted in you bumping the total, successfully, to 20. MIGHTY NICE OF YOU TO PROVE ME RIGHT! :’)

Now then, getting serious here... I must say your priorities are fucked. Like. Really fucked.

You’d rather Sokka tries to KILL AZULA than have a one-time sexual encounter with someone?

Like... you’re here, condoning VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN to that extent...? :’D and then you... you actually have the balls to whine because apparently him hurting her feelings is WORSE?!

Are you EVEN LISTENING TO YOURSELF???

You know, I think I have to offer you some REALLY good advice right now: go watch Naruto. Seriously, all of it. Go watch it, and enjoy your sweet loins’ release once Sasuke and Sakura start trying to kill each other, ONLY TO END UP TOGETHER AT THE END! :’) They were both 100% faithful to each other too, in the sense of Sakura getting depicted as a girl who can’t ever get over the guy she had a crush on when she was 6, no matter if he tries to kill her or her friends once he starts to go off the deep end, and Sasuke getting depicted as a guy who treats everyone like garbage, even the people he loves, because his manpain story somehow validates him being absolutely toxic to everyone he knows, so that’s absolutely up your alley! 100% the love story you’ve been looking for! You’re gonna LOVE IT.

Man, I just can’t believe you. I really can’t believe you. You’re seriously asking me to feature Sokka trying to kill Azula because that’s more acceptable to you. There was a story out there, you know? With Azula basically using Sokka to commit suicide, impaling herself on his sword and dying? You should just go look for that too, perfect fit for you (though it may be gone from the depths of this wretched site by now, which tbh I’d be grateful for, since it was the most unsettling, disturbing read).

Also? Thank you, truly, for all the remarkably shallow compliments you’ve thrown at me to “soften” your “criticism” (which, again, is whining, not legitimate criticism). Calling me a capable writer is super NICE of you, especially after all these months of persistent harassment and constant repetition that I should rewrite whatever you don’t like. I mean... that’s definitely the way someone treats a capable writer, isn’t that right?

“The problem isn’t conflict it’s what the conflict is”, the anon says. I’ve been writing a story for 8 years, 198 chapters and counting... and I’ve had a ton of different types of conflicts for Sokka and Azula to deal with. If your problem is “I don’t like this conflict”, FINE. But... hey. There have been THOUSANDS of other sources of conflict across the story, so many I don’t think I can even promise I’d ever take my time to count them all... there’s whole ARCS with conflicts regarding world politics and the war’s consequences and both Azula and Sokka completely changing their worldviews as they realize their realities are soooo much more complicated than they ever knew...!

Ergo. There ARE other conflicts. There are SO MANY of them that there’s no point in even listing it all out.

And yet you are obsessed with the one conflict you didn’t like, outright acting like THIS IS THE ONLY CONFLICT THERE EVER WAS, as proven by that preposterous and mindless “when will Azula ever hurt Sokka” ask. The one development you were pissed at, because it tickled your loins the wrong way. Oh yes, I’m a capable writer, I could’ve done things differently...!

BUT I DIDN’T!

And aren’t you thrilled that I didn’t? You would be a complete nobody in this fandom if this hadn’t happened, because otherwise what would you POSSIBLY have to complain about?! To harass someone about?! You’d be SO BORED! You’d be so unknown, nobody would even be aware of your existence...!

Though.

Wait.

You’re an anon.

You’re unreachable and nobody really knows who you are.

... So never mind, you actually still are a complete nobody in this fandom and your only attempt to even take part in it is to be a negative, irritating presence that literally makes people facepalm, laugh and ridicule you to the extent I and many others have laughed at you.

And yes, that post I reblogged was 100% worth reblogging. Why? Because it hits the nail on the head:

I DIDN’T WRITE 28 SO YOU’D BE HAPPY WITH SOKKA.

I DIDN’T WRITE THAT CHAPTER TO MAKE PEOPLE THINK “OH WOW WHAT A WHOLESOME SITUATION”.

I WROTE IT BECAUSE IT WAS MEANT TO DETONATE CONFLICT AND SPEED UP CHARACTER GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT, WHICH IT DID.

And the thing is? Maybe, in the future, I’ll write other stories, just as I wrote the Saturdays’ stories, and Sokka won’t have either meaningful or worth mentioning encounters with anyone else in them. Maybe I’ll write original fiction, and there won’t be any twists like what happened in 28!

But you will never get over this.

You will never care about any other content beyond this.

And that’s your failing, not mine.

If you would rather obsess over what makes you angry, that’s on YOU. But I’m damn sure I wrote a pretty reasonable conflict, character-wise, that was not only consistent with characterization but with the slightly darker take of the Avatarverse I’ve been working with. Not only that, but I NEVER skipped the consequences of their actions. I literally had them facing those consequences for whole arcs. Sokka assumed he’d never have a chance to be with Azula and made his peace with it, WITHOUT EVER PRETENDING HIS DEVELOPING FEELINGS FOR AZULA WERE ANYTHING THAT ENTITLED HIM TO HER LOVE IN RETURN. But oh, that’s too complex for you to understand, isn’t it? The fact that Sokka actually loves Azula for her, and not for himself, that he devotes himself to her in every imaginable way, that he fights people who dare disrespect her, that he would stop at NOTHING, even coming close to killing someone, to keep her safe despite he’s completely against killing people? That all means NOTHING to you.

And again? THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM. THAT’S YOUR FAILING. THAT YOU’RE SO OBSESSED WITH 28 AND CAN’T MOVE PAST IT IS NOT MY FAULT, IT’S YOURS.

Because I damn right moved past it. I’ve moved so far past it I literally don’t ever THINK about that damn situation until your stupid asks start arriving. Heck, maybe if you didn’t ASK so much about it, I’d stop bringing it up in recent chapters of the story :’) how do you feel about that particular kernel of unexpected information? Maybe you’re impacting the story in a whole shocking manner by inception-ing 28 into my head all the time and that’s why I can’t seem to stop throwing in lines referencing it for you to go completely BONKERS over. How about that? :’)

Say... how exactly do you think this fic is special? Literally all I know is you think I’m a capable writer who can create something perfectly catered for you, and yet ALL the feedback I’ve ever gotten from you is “REWRITE 28 AND EVERYTHING ABOUT SOKKA HAVING ANYTHING WITH OTHER GIRLS I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS I’M GENUINELY CURIOUS THIS IS LEGITIMATE CRITICISM SIGNING OFF BYE”. Your compliments are completely devoid of meaning because they’re literally just a handful of “you’re a good writer” and you don’t even say WHY you think I’m good. You don’t ever come here to tell me how much you enjoyed a certain scene, or how happy you are with a certain development... No.

Because when Sokka and Azula got married? What did I get?

“HOW CAN YOU LET SOKKA AND AZULA GET MARRIED NOW WHEN HE SLEPT WITH SOMEONE ELSE IN CHAPTER 28?!”

I wish I had screenshots for those, but you and I both know the truth, you irksome anon, and the truth is you did exactly that. And with every new development in Shu Jing, I got yet more reviews and ask(s), persistently whining about how UNFAIR it is that now Azula apparently is locked in marriage with this unfaithful man who has been unfaithful to her a grand total number of ZERO TIMES ever since their relationship began! How DARES he even think about marrying her?! Scourge of earth, let’s murder him in cold blood because DEATH IS BETTER THAN CHEATING!!!

If you think highly of Gladiator for ANY REASON, you’ve kept those reasons well and safely tucked away in the depths of your broken heart or shared them with anyone but me. Look at all these asks, damn you, and tell me at what point in time did you convey ANYTHING beyond “why don’t you write what I want you to write?”, huh? Because hell, I don’t see it in any of them. Literally nowhere. No backwards (: emojis are compliments or evidence of how much this story allegedly means to you. All I know is that you hate 28 and everything about it.

And you see...

I don’t give a flying fuck.

I don’t.

You can hate 28 all you want.

You can hate June.

You can hate Sokka.

It is, INDEED, a free world.

But you have no right, NONE WHATSOEVER, to commit to this level of harassment as you have, for A WHOLE YEAR, and pretend the problem is that I, Seyary, the “evil super-sensitive author who writes Sokka sleeping with other people and doesn’t even break a sweat but then crumbles to pieces when “negative” feedback arrives”, can’t handle your comments properly.

I’ve said it before, damn you: NO ONE NEEDS TO REITERATE THEIR OPINIONS A MILLION TIMES. NO ONE. NOT YOU, NOT THE PEOPLE DEMANDING FOR THE PLOT TO KICK INTO HIGH GEAR, NOT THE ONES WHO THINK THIS SHIP IS GARBAGE, NOT ANYONE.

NO ONE HAS ANY RIGHT OR REASON TO COME BACK PERSISTENTLY THORUGHOUT A YEAR TO HARASS SOMEONE NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES THEY’RE TOLD TO STOP IT.

Point being: HATE WHAT YOU WILL! But keep it the fuck off my blog. And if you CAN’T? Get used to these responses. Because you’re going to get them, constantly. I guarantee it.

I know your damn opinion already. I know it by heart and I damn wish I didn’t. You are perfectly free to go read all the other stories where I’ve had Sokka staying faithful to Azula, with Azula being his first, or with Azula being much more experienced and sleeping around while Sokka stays mostly chaste... but you don’t. You come back, every time, to my miserable inbox that must cry every time you show up in it, to make these demands and pretend you have any power over what I should be writing.

Again, no, I have no idea why this story matters to you at all. And at this point? I’d rather NOT know. Because I’m 100% sure the only thing that matters most to you is chapter 28. So you know, go ahead, wank to it again and cry yourself to sleep. It’s kind of fascinating to have written something that has such a visceral emotional impact on a complete and total stranger. Makes it clear I’ve made a lot of progress as a writer if I can fuck up someone’s life to this extent with what I’ve written.

Yeah. Sure. You really think I’ll buy it? You really think this is goodbye? Oh, no, Anon. You can’t stay away. You’ve been told to, you’ve been asked to, but you can’t.

So no, I’m not wishing you good luck back. And I’m certainly not wishing you any fun with my fic, because it’s more than clear that the only source of entertainment it provided you was chapter 28, seeing as it’s the only impactful thing I apparently ever wrote. And someone who’s that obsessed with one of the chapters I most disliked writing despite I knew the plot would benefit from it in the long run simply can’t deserve to have fun. So... good suffering over Gladiator, if anything? Go ahead and continue to wrack your brain while trying to unravel why, oh, why would ANYONE ever write what I wrote and still call themselves a Sokkla shipper?!

I dunno, maybe go on and write something similar yourself. Could be you’ll finally figure out what your problem is if you take to writing the cheating storylines you’re so very much obsessed with. Only, heh, I can guarantee I’m not touching anything you write, out of principle more than anything. I plain and simple don’t want anything to do with you... but as I don’t intend to close my inbox again, it seems I have no choice, do I?

Good fucking luck sticking to this alleged goodbye... but we both know you’ll be coming back very soon, won’t you? No worries, Anon, I’ll be waiting this time. Let’s see if you can break your 20-ask-streak record next time, shall we? :’)

It’s December 13th, at 2:32 PM, in my location. Let’s see how long it takes you to come back, shall we?

EDIT: I neglected to check constantly so it definitely arrived earlier than this, but officially received a response at least 2 hours after this post went live.

Didn’t I call it? Yep, absolutely called it.

#I need a name for this anon #though I guess stalker-harasser anon would work?#yep #stalker-harasser anon #there we go #honestly it feels so utterly backwards to still talk about this to this day #and yet #it never ends #:')#here we go have this dumpster fire of a post #I'm legit going to time this shit #and report right back to you all #once the stalker-harasser comes back #it's the only genuinely hilarious part of this whole thing after all

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hi-im-dazey · 4 years ago

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Today I read two fics.

One was almost a really engaging read, ruined only by the fact that the author wrote the main chunks only, (and really well; very well, as a matter of fact) but did nothing in between to make a narrative out of it. Just four or five disconnected chapters that start after the main action has happened, then skips ahead with no emotional labor or cost to the next “fun thing to write”...

it was the “I really want to write theses scenes but have no interest in connecting them together in a larger narrative, also here’s a bit at the end where I hint at a big reveal and then I get distracted and DO NOT REVEAL THE THING”

It left me confused because I thought I’d skipped something at the beginning when there wasn’t actually a beginning to skip, and annoyed because of the build up and no follow through at the end.

As well as the bits themselves were written, it was an annoying five minute almost-read. It needed at least three more scenes to make a full satisfying story, and probably would have been better presented as one shots in an AU. (and I am serious here, the bits were REALLY Freaking good, just disconnected and it needed more to make the context and world building clear.)

The other one did my least favorite thing:

“the older male”, “the younger male”, “the blond female” over and over and over.

The rest of it was romantic tooth-coating, possibly rotting, fluff (which I was totally in the mood for as I’m having a Day,) but the fluffy comfort of it kept being interrupted by the lab-coated clinician leaning over the maze proclaiming that the younger male was doing “x” and the older male seemed to be doing “Y”

Look, I know sometimes you can’t think of ways to describe people, and you think it gets boring to keep saying “He” or “She” or “They”. Or maybe you are sick of typing the absurdly long name you thought was pretty when you started but now you can’t even tell if you are spelling correctly (or consistently) ‘cause you have written it so much it’s stopped looking like a word to you...

BUT

I am begging you, when you do your editing pass PLEASE, do a “find” command and search for “male” (and again with “female”) and critically look at the paragraph each one is in and see if maybe a name would be better, or another description (maybe even an action) or pronoun could work here?

Is the female kneeling? Hey how about calling her the supplicant? Or maybe she’s embarrassed from having to kneel... maybe he likes that... so instead of

“The older male looked at the blonde female kneeling.”

you could say

“He enjoyed the sight of the blush that flooded her skin as she knelt before him.”

Or maybe he doesn’t like it at all:

“He felt as awkward with her show of supplication as she did.”

Instead of clinically describing actions, connect us to them with how they both feel. Or what they are doing...or using names, or colloquialisms

“Geoff jumped out at him. The kid screeched in terror and ran away as fast as he could.”

makes sense and has more emotional involvement than:

“The older male jumped out and scared the younger male”

Try to only use clinical sounding descriptions when it makes sense. Are aliens studying human mating rituals? By all means go to town with “males” and “females”. Are we being told the intricacies of horse breeding? Used sparingly, it could work.

But if the point of your story is warmth and romance, “male” and “female” are the cold speculum and rubber glove you weren’t expecting.

Even if it’s a kink fic about speculums and rubber gloves, be careful with them.

(also it’s not ambiguous at all and you’re not allowing for the flexibility of gender identification your readers might have. An occasional “he” or “she,” or a skilled use of “they,” is a little easier to gloss over in your “reading mind” than constantly being slapped with the rigid labels of MALE or FEMALE. All fiction is self insert, you need to allow people to slip into the tone and characters at will, rigid labels kick them back out.)

Tone is so important, please protect your tone.

Don’t jar your readers out of the lovely “everything else” you wrote.

#writing tips #tone matters #keep your fluff fluffy #connect your dots #all fiction is self insert #if readers can't lose themselves in your world they won't keep reading #don't accidentally kick them out with tone shifts #find and replace is your friend #hot side hot #cold side cold #words have definitions and tones #master both #no I will not link the fics #so don't ask #I am not trying to call anyone out #just offering tips #use them if you find them helpful #your mileage may vary #i will say both fics are years old and by writers who haven't put anything up in a while

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spoopy-moose · 5 years ago

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Cynical Review: Spn 15.03

Time for me to be negative again! Yay!

Read below the cut for more of the same. (You know the same old, anti shit)

Let’s start things off with something at least a little positive.

The writing improved so, so much from last week, at least I am engaged this week, which was a good sign, not spending half of the time on my phone (although admittedly I watched half of this on my phone so). Last week tasted like a Buckenlemming episode and this week is the refreshing water after tasting shit.

Yet another reason for them to fire Buckenlemming.

I liked the Sam and Rowena bit, though I don’t feel it was that deserved of him to have a massive sendoff for her, the relationship here, although it has been growing, has always kind of been a bit of “yeah we hated each other and now we have to tolerate each other because we need to survive”, never really shown to be any stronger than that. Though in all honesty, Rowena’s death scene had me tearing up a little bit, she was a constant for me, now she isn’t here. Her character arc was the best for me because the writers had actually allowed her character to grow and develop instead of constantly switching sides (Crowley) or just decided to be good one day (Ketch).

RIP Rowena, we will miss you, one of the last well-written female character of the show.

Now, that’s enough fun and games, let’s get down to business.

Let’s start with the storyline, my main problem here is that the conflict they set up at the end of season 14 is pretty much...done, as of 15.03. The ghosts, which I though popped up all over the world, are gone, Belphegor is no longer a problem, Chuck is left all alone by Amara. Which begs the question, now what?

What story are they going to pull out of their ass at this point, I am really tired of storylines set up in the previous season, only for them to be resolved by episode two or three the following season. I know the fandom shits a lot on season 7 and 11, but at least they had a goal to focus towards, something that was started in the previous season, then continued to be the big threat in the following one. The recent seasons just feel like...they just feel messy in terms of plot. A few fillers here and there, a few plot episodes that seem barely relevant to one another and then a finale, promising a big storyline that gets resolved in the first two episodes.

Another thing is the lore, why haven’t we heard about this horn thing before, Crowley was king of hell, Lucifer pretty much created hell and yet we’re just hearing about this now? I don’t have the time nor energy to delve into the wiki to find out exactly where we could have used this horn, or what other pieces of lore contradicts it, but it wouldn’t have been hard.

We also need to address Belphegor, that female demon that I can’t be bothered to learn the name of and Ketch. Personally, I’m glad to see the back of Ketch, seeing as if they kept him around, Buckenlemming would have found some way or another to get him and Rowena together by now. Ketch overstayed his welcome, he had no character development, it was just like if the writers suddenly woke up and said: “what if Ketch...but good?”. It’s as stupid and pointless as most of the writer’s room. On the subject of Belphegor, he was entertaining but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t glad to see the back of him. It was another pointless power grab, more dumb demon/hell drama that we don’t need. If we’ll dealing with god this las season, hell is pretty much the pond compared to that. Some more “ooooo who’s the ruler of hell now” shit would make this a pretty boring season.

Last but not least, we have the ongoing Dean/Cas bull. This is more meta for me, as in canon, I’m very glad that Cas decided to turn his back on them and walk away, considering how shitty Dean’s been treating him forever this season. But I’m really afraid that they’ll have Dean going like “uwu I’m such a bad person I want to kill myself plz come back promise I won’t abuse you” and Cas come crawling back.

(Cause if you haven’t noticed, is how the writer’s room treat Dean, like their personal wish-fulfilment vessel)

But do, the two people who read this post to the end, take the time out of your day to be in the mindset of a Destiel shipper, to imagine how little brain cells you would have to have to see this as romantic. Please, put yourself in their shoes, see through their coloured glasses, think about how hard they have to theorise now to get this ship up and running again.

#anti supernatural #anti spn #spn #supernatural #spn spoilers #anti #enter at your own risk #anti destiel #destiew #anti dean winchester #dean is abusive in canon

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heartofadragon · 5 years ago

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Introduction to Jade Frollo and Jynn Sparrow

Trigger warnings: Abuse, mentions of physical and emotional abuse. Please do not read if sensitive to subjects such as this.

My friend and I started writing a Descendants RP...

My current characters are:

Jynn Sparrow

Jack Sparrow

Claude Frollo

Jade Frollo

This is my Introduction to my OCs Jynn and Jade. Enjoy!

"Je vous salue, Marie pleine de grâce ;

le Seigneur est avec vous.

Vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes et Jésus,

le fruit de vos entrailles, est béni.

Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu,

priez pour nous pauvres pécheurs,

maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort…"

Crack.

“Non...Je vous...salue, Marie pleine de grâce ;

le Seigneur est avec vous.

Vous êtes bénie...entre toutes les femmes et Jésus,

le fruit de vos entrailles, est béni.

Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu,

priez pour nous pauvres pécheurs,

maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort!”

The soft droning of a young mademoiselle obediently reciting the sacred, holy words taught to her long before that day could be heard if one were to listen hard enough whilst creeping along the upstairs living area that lay above Frollo’s Creperie. Whilst her words were soft and quiet, the unmistakable sound of an unknown object cracking against the subject of this torture in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit soon followed after every recital of the French prayer.

With every crack against her frame, the young mademoiselle was urged to put more and more feelings and sincerity into the words. It was already beginning to be a struggle to form the sacred words with her lips that had to be pressed ever so tightly together to stop her from letting out cries of anguish in pure agony. Her eyes were squeezed shut tight to stop the beast of a man subjecting her to such torture from seeing her cry; she did not want to give him anymore perverse, sick, sadistic pleasure that he was already getting from this.

The innocent mademoiselle was kneeling in front of a makeshift wooden altar on which lay many religious items: a cross fashioned from iron, goblets made from tin, rosary beads made from wood and glass and the most terrifying of all was the heavy, leather-bound Holy Bible that the young woman had been on the receiving end of a blow from many times in the past. Her hands lay atop the altar as she knelt on the uncomfortable, splintered wooden floor below her tiny frame; her body was shaking...though it would not be known as of yet whether it was from fear, genuine coldness or due to the fact she had been forced to hold that position for a number of hours.

The hands atop the altar were pressed together tightly and her fingers laced together in prayer, though that was not enough for the tyrant conducting this operation. He had taken his heavy, metal-crafted rosary beads from around his neck and wound them around her wrists until they could no more to keep the hands of the young sinner together in prayer. The beads were tight and dug uncomfortably into the soft and pale flesh of the young woman’s tiny, sparrow-bone wrists.

The young lady at the altar was frightfully petite. Her loose, white dress hung shapeless around her non-existent chest and body, her wild locks that hung around her face and down her back were raven-coloured and very dishevelled. The locks atop her head reached her lower back and hid the pale face that was streaked with stray tears. “Please Papa...I cannot do this anymore...I am tired...I beg of you, let me rest…”

The heavy footsteps of a man in leather boots freaked behind the girl, yet no words were spoken, The silence frightened her the most for she did not know what La Bête was going to do to her next. Of course this man was not a raving monster with thick fur and sharp fangs...he was an ordinary man of the church wearing flowing robes of fine, coloured material and a white piece of cloth draped around his neck to show his position as a man of God. The face of the supposed man of faith was thin and firm; he looked remarkably like a bulldog chewing a wasp most of the time and especially when dealing with his young daughter that knelt in front of him, begging for her release.

“How many times have you prayed to Our Lady? And don’t you dare lie to me…” the man stalked in front of his victim and placed his hand out, holding her chin in his right hand before kneeling down to her, looking straight into the tiger’s eye-like hues that stared into his own. The eyes of his daughter held a mix of amber, brown and yellow; the man of God could have sworn that on occasion he had seen the flames of hellfire in her eyes and as a result, she must be persuaded to see the light of the Lord. “I can always see when you are lying, petit oiseau…God can see when you are lying also...choose your words carefully.”

The sniffling young lady took a deep breath and swallowed the choked up tears that were desperately attempting to escape her. “Seven, Monsieur Frollo…” she whispered, awaiting the approval of her father.

Claude Frollo. The righteous man of Paris. Subjected to life on the Isle of the Lost with a daughter that had the devil waiting for her to go to sleep so that he could enchant her soul with images of free will, the taste of butter and finery. Of course, Claude Frollo was no stranger to the workings of the devil...for he had seen them all whilst residing in Paris. The one he remembered the most was the time a beautiful siren in the form of an “innocent” Gypsy girl serenaded and enchanted him into committing acts that he would never usually get involved with...he wished to separate himself from the licentious, lustful crowd of France, yet in turn he found himself engaging with them.

Oh how he longed to possess the heart, body and mind of that Gypsy...yet it was not to be. Therefore, he had to give her a cruel ultimatum and when that did not work, he simply took what was his. The result? A broken heart, shattered reputation and a spawn of Satan himself living under the roof of the only piece of French culture he had managed to force upon the piss-poor island.

Seven, Monsieur Frollo…

“And just how many ‘Hail Mary’ prayers are in our rosary, little bird?” Frollo asked his pathetic, snivelling daughter as he let go of her face and stood up to his full height, looming in front of her. “ten ‘Hail Mary’, one ‘Lord’s Prayer’ and a ‘Glory Be’...” his daughter responded, swallowing the last of the choked up tears inside of her and staring up at her father. “Then that is what you shall recite…”

“But-“

Frollo ignored the protest of his daughter and returned to his place behind her as she began to recite the words forced upon her once again. The last three prayers to Mother Mary, then a prayer to the Father and a last but not least, a Glory Be. She bowed her head in silence as she exhaled a sigh of relief.

“Please may I go now?” she asked. Frollo, in turn, untangled the rosary beads from his daughter’s wrists and motioned for her to stand. She did so rather shakily as the leather boots she wore creaked across the floor as she headed for the door, unable to contain her anticipation of being out of the presence of her father.

“Are you forgetting something, girl?” Frollo crosses his arms atop his chest and awaited for his daughter to turn. She did so rather slowly before seeing her father dangling the leather belt with the heavy buckle made of iron that had been cinched around the long, white dress that she was wearing. Walking slowly towards her father, the young, plain girl held her hands out to take the belt from her father.

Quick as a flash, the towering man crossed the belt over and whacked across her soft, white hands with the leather belt before pressing it into her hands. His daughter closed her eyes, allowing a tear to escape her left eye. “Thank you…” she whispered. “Get out of my sight…” Frollo was quick to respond and the young woman wasted no time in practically flying out of the room and across the hallway to her own simple room that held nothing but a bed, a single wardrobe and a similar altar to that in the makeshift church she had previously been to. There was no window, nor no mirror. The only colour in her room was the decorated, purple, silken scarf that held beautiful designs of celestial images on it that she kept hidden under her bed. The only thing she had of her mother.

Still sniffling, the young lady sat on her bed in silence. She heard her father in the makeshift church, humming to himself. It was not long before he creaked downstairs to the creperie, an attempt to earn them a living. Claude Frollo’s daughter lived a rather lonely life...though it would not be lonely for long. Outside of the small room, on the streets of the isle, she heard clamouring, restlessness...something happened, though this was not out of the ordinary, there were always fights breaking out at some point or another on the isle.

“Jade! I require your help down here!” Clause bellowed up the stairs and immediately the one now known as Jade slipped a pale blue apron over the white dress and quickly pushed her tousled locks into a bun before running downstairs.

Maybe one day...I will be free of all of this...of him…

*****

“So...whatcha got for me today huh?” a cocky, female voice rang out from behind a ruby-red, velvet curtain etched with golden lace. “Jewels...lots of precious jewels…” grunted a man with an eye-patch over his right eye, a tattoo of an anchor on his left, muscular bicep. He leant his arm on the wooden, splintered counter of a run-down looking shack. The shack was attached to the wreck of a ship with a sign on it reading “Sparrow’s Curiosities” and underneath that, it read “Got no cash? We’ll buy your precious items for coins.” Of course, words were misspelt and the punctuation and grammar was horribly inaccurate...it was obviously written by someone who was not the most literate one on the isle…

Heavy boots and jangling bags of coins could be heard moving about as a young woman with wild, curled, brunette hair mixed with violet, sea-green and dark blue streaks and a pirate hat on her head stepped out from behind the curtain. She had a slight, healthy tan to her face, yet her eyes were piercing emerald. “You ain’t gonna try and screw my dad over again this time are you?” she asked, leaning her arms wrapped in leather bandages on the splintered counter. The girl was wearing a black shirt that was cut off at the sleeves and had a buckled belt made of brass and leather around her waist, showing off the curves that she was gifted with. At her side lay a long cutlass that was carefully bound in place by a belt hanger.

The pirate in front of the counter pushed a woven bag of gemstones down in front of him and the girl and awaited her judgement of what he had brought in. Opening the bag, she looked inside of it and watched the sparkling gemstones glimmer in the dimmed light of the shack. Bringing out one of the stones, She examined it carefully. “Are you trying to fuck with me?” she asked, green eyes fixed on the gemstone then at the man.

Bringing her hand up above the table, she slammed it down, the gemstone making contact with the wooden table...as it did, it shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces. “Fake...it’s just glass, you sea slug!”

The girl drew her cutlass with a satisfying scrape as the metal sword was drawn from it holster. “Get out of here before I shish kebab ya…” her voice was low, a growl, as she stared at the man in front of her who swallowed hard. “Goddamnit...I need money, I ain’t got nothing valuable…” the man began to plead with the younger woman, something that was never expected to happen at all. “We ain’t a charity...so get out of here, Bucko…”

The man went to take his bag of gemstones but the girl quickly pulled the bag off of the table. “You know the rules...you try to screw us over and we keep the item free of charge...call it compensation for wasting our time…” she winked, clicked her tongue and headed back behind the ornately dressed curtain where a man was sitting at a table counting golden coins. His hair was braided and on his head, he wore a scarlet bandana. He had a neatly trimmed moustache and beard and wore typical, brown pirate attire with black leather boots. His grubby fingers held in brown leather, fingerless gloves counted golden coin after golden coin.

“Dad?” the girl asked as she entered, clutching the bag of jewels. Her own leather boots squeaked as she headed towards the man known as her father. The notorious pirate laughed heartily as he heard his daughter’s voice; she was his ultimate pride, joy and one love other than materialistic objects. He had taught her to cheat, lie, steal and swindle and everyday he saw her put his teachings into action.

Standing up, the pirate turned, his face visibly pleased to see his daughter as she clutched a bag of gems. “So...what do you have for me?” The pirate’s smile grew as his daughter set the bag on the table where the gold coins lay.

“Ha ha!” The pirate laughed again as he opened the bag and checked the gems for authenticity. “How much did this cost us, hmm?” he asked, suddenly feeling sick at the thought of how much his daughter might have given the punter for these beauties. “Nothing at all…” His daughter smirked as she responded to her father.

The father looked visibly concerned. “You didn’t offer him anything else did you...do I need to track this man down…?” The growing protection from the father heightened as he thought of someone violating his daughter in exchange for a few...very...stunning gems…

His daughter scoffed in response and looked visibly disgusted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Nah, I used this…” she fumbled in her pocket and flicked a shining blue gem to her father. The father examined the gemstone and then turned to his daughter…

“Fake gemstone trick? You little beauty…” he rushed to his daughter and grabbed her by the face, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Well, well, well. Looks like I have taught you extremely well! Tonight, the rum is on me!”

#descendants #descendants evie #jay descendants #descendants roleplay #descendants oc #ben descendants

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mutantsrisingrpg · 5 years ago

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Congratulations BECK! You’ve been accepted as EUROPA with a FC change to ELIZABETH OLSEN.

Bea’s skeleton was one of my favorites when I wrote it, and you definitely brought her to life and reminded me so much of why I loved writing it, Beck! I love the straddled lines between facade and feeling, of power and control, of protection and obedience that you explored through her eyes. There’s a tangled web she left in her wake, and her ties to others outside the mob only give her an extra dimension I can’t wait to see you explore!

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: Beck

PRONOUNS: She/Her

AGE: 22 in January!

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: GMT. I am in my final year of uni, so admittedly there will be times where i’m not as active as I would like to be. Though no doubt writing will be the only break I have from work so i’m gonna want to write as much as possible lmao

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Beatrice ‘Bea’ Einfalt // Europa

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cis Female She/Her

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

Bea is a cataclysmic event of her own making. It is hard to tell how solid she really is, and how much of the forced calm demeanour is just an optical illusion. As if this carefully balanced and closed off exterior is like a thin sheet draped over a gaping hole, of something much emptier and bleaker beneath. It was once such a conscious effort to keep those walls high, to keep herself two steps away from everyone else. That distance soon became a comfort, second nature, a feeling of security. Was that security for her or whoever she was distancing herself from though?

She would have been happy to play on no ones team. Stay a free agent but more importantly, keep herself far from anyone she could remotely care about, for fear of hurting them too. In her mind she’s the the pin of a grenade, finger on the trigger, a molotov cocktail waiting to be thrown. Her’s is a mind so shredded by it’s own teeth that sometimes, there are glimpses to be seen through the holes and tears. Her expression slips carelessly for a moment and something twisted and suffering is there instead, peering out from the body that has been forced into a prison.

Bea is similar to a flower growing through the cracks on the side walk. Other flowers look nice with their neat and pretty garden beds, but rest assured this wild flower had to fight like hell to be where it is now. It takes an observant eye to take a moment to appreciate the violet growing by itself and see the little beauties in her simplicity.

BIO:

Beatrice does not have an origin story; nothing is known about the girl she used to be, before she came to Chicago that one fateful day- a skin-and-bones rag doll girl dragging herself and her sister through the world, starved and desperate. At least, that’s the truth everyone has been led to believe.

There was always something off about the Einfalt girl. Something unsettling. People had been talking about her since you first came into this world, bright eyed and big lunged. There never seemed to be a reason for you to cry, but she was one of those babies desperate to be heard. She came rocketing into the world begging for attention, but her cries got quieter every year until she was quiet enough to make some adults around her uncomfortable. No wonder she had so few friends growing up. The kids called her mouse. Oblivious to her social ranking among some circles. Kids didn’t care that her father was quietly raising in political rank. They didn’t care that she became so quiet at home because he was so loud about what he saw as terrible world issues.

Growing up the word ‘mutant’ was always followed by ‘freak’ or ‘menace’ or ‘problem’. They were made to be the monster under her bed, the creak of floorboards at night. Bea can’t count the times her mother had to tuck her back in at night, begging her not to listen to her father and his wild thoughts. It wasn’t until years later that she found out why her mother was so gentle when her father was cold and angry.

Everything had always just felt so empty to her. The houses lined up one after another. Straight like the teeth every one of your father ‘associates’ seemed to smile at you with. Everyone seemed to be trying so hard to cling onto the façade that they were happy. They might have been. She herself was happy enough but she never understood why it just felt so ungenuine from everyone else. Her life was silver spooned perfection, but she always felt like a dove in a cage. Raised to be gentle but with fiery strength burning her your skin, threatening to burn its way out.

Bea’s childhood never seemed like anything to think twice about until you were older. To her, everyone had full days of classes, learning languages no matter how hard they were to comprehend. She was raised amongst wealth, the few friends she had were just as busy learning through the days, leaving little time to play. It was years later when she realised her father was trying to mould her into his own shadow. Unaware that she was everything in life he seemed to hate.

Growing up with so much fear of even the word ‘mutant’. When her powers reared their ugly head, Bea was rightfully terrified. If her father ever found out about her, it was unimaginable what he would do. A quiet child, her voice hadn’t raised in years. So when her mother dropped a glass, and Bea came running into the kitchen, treading on the sharp scatterings, her scream was surprising. In more ways than one. Bea will never forget the way her mother was propelled across the room, or how calm she was even as Bea couldn’t stop crying. Pressing a cloth to the back of her mothers head to stop the bleeding, all her mother could do was try to reassure her it was okay. The story of the mutant gene in their family was a long one, but Bea’s mother managed to tell the tale before her father got home.

Life was always going to be difficult after that point. Bea went from quiet to almost silent, terrified if she spoke something awful was going to happen again. It took years for her to allow her mother to tell her more about their family, about her mothers own power. It wasn’t until her little sister, Ellie, showed signs of the gene that anything really kicked off, however. Where Bea had kept this secret so close to her heart, it was basically sewn into her. Ellie was never as subtle.

The day their father found out was the end of it all. For someone who’s voice felt like a caged bird, a locked away box to never open. She had no trouble using it when she found her father ready to turn over her sweet, harmless little sister to people that would no doubt poke and prod or even worse. There was no literal blood on her hands that day, but Bea will never forget the light leaving her father’s eyes, or the way her little sister cried and clung to her.

Bea would never have gotten away with this normally, and her father was no normal man. A politician with strong Anti-Mutant views was always going to be well known. It was her mother that took the fall. Persuasiveness weaved through her DNA, literally. Convincing officers and officials that she was the one to do this was easy. Too easy. While some looked deeper, suspiciousness rampant, others were just glad to have this cruel man out of the way.

It’s been years since that day that Bea and Ellie were made practically orphans. Several cities, several lives. Bea’s mother is granted a visit once a month that never goes unanswered, and hearing the pride her voice when Bea mentioned The Jem Family eases a hole in Bea’s heart each time. Guilt still rages rampant at where her mother will be for the rest of her life. Now that she’s older however, knowing that she took out a horrifically evil man, and saved so many mutants? Makes it all a little more worth it. What if the truth is revealed, however? There will still be her fathers supporters, even years later, still digging for the truth. Each day Bea works that little harder, to work on her own powers to protect herself and her sister in case that day comes.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

When there was no one in the world Bea could trust besides her sister. It was a small, lonely world. Then there was her introduction to Jem and those involved. She went from having no one, to people who actively wanted to know and care for her. It was far too much all at once, and frankly Bea pulled away more than she wanted to. Sensible distance was always kept from people, but it felt like she was digging a ravine between her and them all. The first to start building a bridge was Shae. When Bea took a step back, Shae stepped forward. When someone would usually write her off as too broken, too distant, too uncaring. Shae was always there. Never pushy but always actively trying to get to know Bea. If her life was a constant storm, Shae was the sun behind the clouds. It was impossible to make friends, and Bea will admit that was on purpose. It was a comfort to be unknown. Now its a comfort to know she can call or visit Shae and be understood and wanted. She’s the one person in the world that has some idea of what might have happened in Bea’s past, however no matter how close they become, Bea knows she’s always going to keep Shae that little bit away from the truth.

EXTRA:

Pinterest Board here!: https://pin.it/fnymedfualhdfq

Her father raised her with every intent of moulding her into his own shadow. With his wealth he enrolled her into more classes than a child was ever capable of keeping up with. This included languages like German and French. As a result education is exhausting for Bea, and she avoided going to further education and instead learns in her own time. Alone.

There are very few people that can pull a full, engaged conversation out of Bea. She isn’t rude, she’ll always talk to people when talked to first, but her interest is often elsewhere. She’s well aware this makes her come off as uncaring at times, and she doesn’t bother to correct people.

There’s fear of the unknown weaved between her bones, born from years of fear. But there’s an adventurous streak that brings out the bold and the brave within her. New experiences and the thrill and power that come with them are calculated and thought out butare often craved.

She’s not naive, she knows how this world works. Its good at times yes but there’s so much bad and so many people that fall under that darker side. That she knows to keep her wits about her at all times. Those she has befriended still know only what she wants them to know about her.

The memories are never going to fade, everything a constant reminder of the past. However the longer she spends pretending her past didn’t exist, the easier it becomes to believe it herself.

Theres a rage inside Bea she tries so hard to pretend doesn’t exist. It built her entire childhood, when she had to face fear every single day. Or as she lacked the friends she needed. The comfort she needed. It exploded out of her when her father threatened her sister, and ever since Bea has tired to lock it away. The only person who ever saw that anger since then was Ciara and it keeps Bea up at night that she saw that side of her. No matter how angry their break up, she knows she could have kept more control.

ANYTHING ELSE: A FC change to Elizabeth Olsen please?

#accepted #accepted: europa

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iluvtv · 6 years ago

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Mom Guilt

Since today I will be tackling the taboo topics of both guilt and remorse I may as well start with my own caveat; I apologize.

I'm going to do some mom-splaining here...

Recently I watched the first ten episodes of both I'm Sorry and I Feel Bad. Both shows are Momedies and in case you hadn't noticed I am far more fluent in the more ego-centric brand of SWF Humor. No matter, intrigued by these curiously similar premises and my general obsession with female comedic powerhouses (including the women behind these titles) I assumed I had nothing to lose (ten hours on the sofa aside).

In full disclosure, while Andrea Savage's I'm Sorry wasn't exactly a show I fell for immediately, the stellar cast and the unapologetically hilarious style of Savage's parenting was enough to keep me watching. A clever choice indeed, by the final episode of Season One I felt pure sadness that I had no more episodes to watch and apologetic that I hadn't immediately understood the show's intentions. While my earliest notes state I am impressed by the cast they also indicate confusion towards the uneven tone. Or to be as authentic as Savage my actual notations read as such:

"So many snappy quips.

Cast is epic...

Hope show gets better.

RN all just parents talking shit"

As I struggled to grasp I'm Sorry I also started dabbling with I Feel Bad. A show I found so problematic that no matter which lens I looked through I just wound up feeling... well, bad.

My ability to embrace the intentions behind I'm Sorry was aided through Savage's interview on Dax Shepard's (wonderful) podcast Armchair Expert. Her voice allowed a clear point of reference, making it much easier to deduce the ambitions behind her creative portrayal of just how humorous motherhood is.

The feminist credo she passes to her daughter doesn't hurt the show's hilarity either. Savage's offbeat parenting hacks towards inciting female power seemingly misfire, all the while actually breeding a totally self-actualized kid who will proudly push back on the agenda. Amelia patiently explains to her mother "Ariel doesn't need a voice because she is the prettiest."

Savage makes this whole process just so darn relatable.

So, maybe I am just an ignorant audience and I still don't get I Feel Bad. Maybe a few interviews and episodes later I'll be espousing this show as the sleeper hit I knew about all along. But for now, as a woman who very much does not "have it all" I couldn't help but feel insulted by I Feel Bad's beautiful, successful protagonist, Emet. This is a mom who spends each episode lamenting her inability to "do it all" while somehow managing to round off each half hour by achieving whatever seemed implausible earlier in the day. Along the way, her funny, nuclear (though, to be fair racially diverse) family, comedically (and again, to be fair, often judgmentally) applauds her missteps.

Somehow each episode lands like a small punch in the gut. By episode six I was pretty sure I was being Sheryl Sanberg'ed all over again.

Emet's successful gaming illustration job, sweet and loving husband, goofy dad, terribly hands-on mom and mostly self-sufficient children (we hardly ever even see the baby) is all just a little much. This is a working mom that makes leaning in look suspiciously like lying down.

So, is I Feel Bad actually the minority mother's manifesto it was built as or is it just another major female guilt trip?

Admittedly here, Savage's television alter-ego which is practically exclusively based in reality is a wildly talented and beautiful comedienne, married to a successful lawyer with a cute (if sometimes obnoxiously inconvenient) daughter. In spite of this the show somehow just doesn't feel overdone. Instead, her down to earth approach to life and incessant and often deprecating commentary induce both cringing and appreciative nodding. Even I understand her plight and I am a single woman living in a one bedroom apartment writing a blog for free.

Perhaps this can be attributed to the humor. Savage's commitment to every joke intrinsically carries this series.

Once I finished listening to her and Dax chat I was entirely smitten with this woman. She sees the world through satire tinged goggles, she is attracted to banter and surrounds both her work and home life with this ethic.

Realizing the comedians on her show were mostly improvising I embraced the occasional awkwardness in tone for all it was intended to be.

It is this constantly improving unrehearsed dialogue in which, I'm Sorry thrives. The show has a fabulously charming Curb your Enthusiasm feel but I suppose I need to quantify this statement.

I understand charming to mean Judith Light telling Andrea Savage to go fuck herself during a geriatric Zumba class when Savage (the youngest person in the room by some 20-odd years) requests to turn up the A/C. Or charming like when your newly not racist four-year-old daughter runs into the "grown-up" dinner party in blackface (the very same exclusively invited guests who just discovered you probably peed on your hands to alleviate the "jalapeno burn" you acquired whilst preparing their guacamole) only to announce that she is "Fat Albert!" Charming like when your best friend gleefully squeals, "I'm just so excited to see what you have planned next! First piss guac, then blackface. Its probably going to be something antisemitic!" Charming like 7a at the fertility clinic watching men leave the waiting room one by one to go masturbate in a cup and appreciating the experience as nothing more than amazing content."It's kind of like the reverse walk of shame," Savage announces gaining hearty laughs from the other patients and causing her husband to shrink into his chair, muttering; "please don't engage the room."

This is the kind of parenting I can comprehend.

I'm Sorry features a team already skilled at doing improvisation with one another and while it does take a bit for both viewer and actor to fully grasp the unpredictable tone of a real-life mom, it's bumps and misses are a welcome side effect of both the show and actual motherhood.

This story focus' on the perils a funny mom who writes crass humor for a living might actually have to face. Her writing partner, Kyle (Jason Mantzoukas) wonders how she can go from "blow jobs to kindergarten" and her husband teases: "Moms aren't supposed to be funny. Don't you watch TV? Get more hairy and tired."

All teasing from loved ones aside, this show works because Andrea is not actually perfect. She explains in the first episode that she is "disgusting" and later acknowledges she is on an equal playing field with a woman she once accused of being a "garbage person". These fallacies lead to a character who is both likable and entirely relatable; I too am struggling through a semi-charmed life with plenty to apologize for.

Most notable perhaps, is the final two scenes of season one when Savage accidentally changes her email signature to her favorite (just for laughs) porn picture of a girl biting a man's dick (this is a pic she utilizes as an ongoing gag in many different facets and even unwittingly exposes her four-year-old daughter to at one point in the season). Without realizing her mistake, she shoots off an email to the elite kindergarten her daughter was just accepted to, informing them how thrilled her family is to join the school next fall. Spoiler alert, the season ends with her begging for redemption.

But that's the thing, we don't know if she'll get it and if the Dean's face is any indication Amelia's future here looks highly doubtful.

And while this is an error perhaps enhanced for the comedic effect her apology does sound genuine. She hadn't quite meant for her humor to hurt her daughter's future, an intent likely all decent mom's can relate to

Far less avant-garde, I Feel Bad follows the mainstream sitcom throughline in which conflict is presented, dealt with and solved all in the matter of one episode. Personally, I have no problem with this tactic, designed of course to give us a fresh start each week. The problem here lies with the premise of the show. How badly can you really feel about an error which only takes 28 minutes with commercials to rectify? But what really grates at me here is that our protagonist hasn't so much as fixed her problem as she's found a grovely way to make it redeeming. If anything, it's more insulting that Emet’s cute creativeness has all but rendered her infallible.

For all the enjoyment of Andrea's apology-prompting endeavors (Amelia sharing the gossip of her mother's stretched out vagina to her pre-school chums. Andrea and her mother commiserating about being stuck in successful marriages all the while knowing they'd be at their very best as sexy widows), Emet’s missteps just prompt angst. She left me wondering if I was somehow failing at life. Why wasn't own annoying TV family rallying around my picturesque existence, rooting for me as I lamented my imperfections?

Case in point: during I Feel Bad's holiday episode Emet allegedly feels bad because her kids don't know about their own culture.

I say allegedly here because in actuality she displays zero remorse for her kids' minimal grasp on both Judaism and Hinduism. What Emet actually seems concerned with (as is true in almost every episode) is not her children's well-being but rather how she comes across to the world. In this particular episode, the person she is most concerned with impressing is her Mother in Law. She does this by hiding her own mother inside a Casino.

In some sort of off-beat coup Emet pays the Indian side of her family to silence through Paula Abdul tickets and a $300 credit card charge at CVS ("just imagine how long that receipt is?!" her husband laments) and while admittedly this is a good hush approach if you ever are interested in buying my silence it's also kind of a not-so-cute, dare I say asshole move to try to embrace one culture by buying off another (sounds like some kind of ass-backward deal #45 might brag about).

All this is of little concern to Emet and her husband though. Instead, the mezuzah on the door, the brisket on the table and expensive Hannukah decorations in the yard are effective enough, causing one Grandma to swoon while the other returns with a carefully calculated revenge approach aimed at convincing her grandchildren (those kids we allegedly are all so worried about being culturally out of touch) that Diwali is the cooler holiday.

Shenanigans ensue.

The pageantry culminates in a backyard, multi-generational family paint war. Of course, everyone winds up laughing and bonding about Emet’s lies and oddly accept equal blame for her dishonesty, each adult copping to their own inability to raise a future generation to be more woke.

Now everyone is happy, they have created new (and obviously better) traditions and all the while the stereotypical old Jewish couple visiting Emet’s inlaws remain indoors blissfully unaware o the commotion, chatting amongst themselves about what a good brisket "the Indian woman has prepared."

And scene.

Did Emet really ever feel bad that her kids are cultural ignoramus'?

Absolutely not.

Can everyone get behind her scheming, lying and flagrant consumeristic overspending because she said she did? Absolutely.

And her family is colorful and happy. Problem solved, yay!

How bizarre.

I may live 1,000 lives and I will never get away with holiday mischief like this.

I'm Sorry but I can't help but Feel Bad.

And so I suppose now is the time to reflect on the actual difference between the two phrases from which each show hails its title.

Similar, sure but fundamentally, "I feel bad" and "I'm sorry" (not the television shows per se, though it does pertain here) the actual implications behind these phrases are very, very different. If someone feels bad they crashed your car that somehow has an entirely different ring to it than they're sorry they crashed your car.

Karen R. Koenig a licensed psychotherapist I found online (the best place for psychobabble) explains the phenomenon as such:

“I’m sorry,” usually indicates that people feel regret or remorse for having caused pain: they wish they hadn’t done what they did...This mindset is different from someone feeling guilty. That is, people can feel momentarily badly that they did something wrong, but not regret it. The guilt comes from recognizing that what they did was wrong, but not from actually feeling sorry that it happened. Guilt often arises only because someone gets caught. My take is that most of the time, abusers experience momentary guilt, but little more."

If this doesn't prove I Feel Bad is just the gentle sit-com equivalent of gaslighting I'm not sure what does? I get enough of that noise when I read the news, thank you very much.

#armchair expert #dax shepard #andrea savage #i feel bad #nbc #im sorry #trutv #jason mantzoukas #hulu #netflix #curb your enthusiasm

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