#real talk: how many people think he was LYING about that whole story

[bb-eb-db-bb-eb-b-ab-f-b-ab]

more TDP season 6 finale spoilers under the cut!!!

never in my fucking LIFE never in my wildest DREAMS did i think i’d be an aaravos apologizer. but now??????? well,,

[lewyn-martell]

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[foone]

So, Bashir and Garak from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, won't you?

Bashir is the man who has one big secret and it's his entire life, and he has always assumed it will destroy him if it gets out.

Garak is a man made of fractal secrets. The cast-out student (and secret son) of the head of an empire-wide spy agency. He's stolen secrets from every power in the alpha quadrant. His own personal history is nothing but lies, possibly even to himself. He lies so completely it took Bashir visiting GARAK'S DAD to figure out that "Elim" is his first name.

If truth was a river, Bashir's is wide and free-flowing, with a real big meander where it goes kilometers out of its way to avoid a huge rock that we don't ever talk about.

Garak has dammed his river with endless pebbles of lies. There's no truth there, only more lies. This is a man who lies reflexively, who once claimed (in one of the few true things he ever said) that lying is a skill you must practice constantly.

Garak is such a liar I don't think he really understands how to tell the truth. When he was dying from his addictions, instead of admitting the problem he made of stories to try and scare his doctor off, to let him die. When an assassin showed up to kill him, he got the local police involved by attempting to (almost) assassinate himself first. Garak carries a big hammer labeled "lying" and every problem is a juicy nail.

These are not two different people, this is the same person at different scales. Bashir is one big lie in a Star Fleet uniform, Garak is a multitude of tiny lies in a lizard suit and a very fashionable outfit of his own design.

In Ancient Greek Mythology*, humans were single souls split into two bodies, male and female, forever searching for their other half so they can be whole again.

They may have been wrong about the gender and species, but Bashir and Garak are definitely two parts of the same original material. They were chiseled from the same piece of marble, cut from the same cloth, split from the same soul. They deserve to be together, not because they'd be good for each other (dear God, no. They are terrible for each other in many ways!) but because they're incomplete without each other.

* not to be confused with Star Trek, which is Ancient Geek Mythology.

[ladyloveandjustice]

To give my Real Opinion on the whole Clark vs Lois issue (since people are giving me theirs), I'm surprised it is an issue, since it's very clearly supposed to be an conflict where both people made decisions that made sense from their point of view but still hurt each other. It makes sense that Clark would be insecure about telling Lois this when she's acting distrustful of Superman, and it makes sense he'd freak out and not handle a situation where she was putting a lot of pressure on him well. It also makes sense that Lois would be angry (and probably humiliated) and upset that Clark not only lied to her face when she was begging him to tell her the truth, but left her where she couldn't help him when she was worried sick about him.

Honestly, I think a lot of you aren't being honest about how you'd feel if you had a friend who disappeared every time something dangerous happened, you spent a lot of time frantically searching and worrying about that friend each time, only to find out oh hey, your friend was well aware of how worried you were and was actually right there but they were pretending to be someone else instead of letting you in on what was happening. You'd feel played with.

And Clark also KEPT lying when she was basically saying "hey stop lying to me. I know." He did it instinctively. She was begging him to tell her, and he didn't. That's going to hurt, and that's going to be galling. She definitely felt she had no other choice than to do something drastic, because she can't enter a relationship with someone she knows is lying to her and here he is, refusing to come clean. She's a reporter, the need to know drives her.

"Lois isn't entitled to Clark's private information, they haven't known each other that long", sure, but Clark vanishes in dangerous situations and causes real distress, Clark has been discussing Superman with Lois and unconsciously trying to manipulate her feelings on him while not telling her the whole truth, and you'd feel weird if someone did that, you'd feel kinda violated! And even if someone told you they weren't doing that to laugh at you, wouldn't you be hurt and humiliated?!

When exactly IS Lois entitled to Clark's info? When they start dating? How many months is it okay for him to date her without him telling her he's actually the guy she spends every waking minute trying to interview? Would he have told her as their relationship got serious? Not knowing that is probably scary and if I was Lois I'd think twice about if I wanted this either!

And what's especially scary is that yeah, he did leave her behind to so he could possibly go get killed when she was begging him not to. That's terrifying. She was probably terrified the entire time she waited. He was able to take her choice away from her, and Lois does not like feeling helpless. Clark was scared of her getting hurt, so he enforced his will and so shewas scared for HIM. and then he refused to talk about those worries!

It's also pretty galling when she's already helped him out in several fights- she's proven she can be useful and helpful! I'd be mad too! I'm sure there was a little vindictiveness in her actions- you see how you like it when someone takes your choice away too.

At the same time, Clark is clearly not comfortable showing people his whole self. He still doesn't know who he is, and he goes into panic mode about it. He's very scared of people being hurt because of him. What he did made sense from his point of view. And I'm sure he's not happy to be forced to reveal his secret.

It doesn't matter 'who's more right'. It's not a game they get to win! They both violated each other's boundaries. Their feelings both make sense from their perspective, and interesting conflicts are complicated. And I like it when characters don't just react to everything flawlessly. There's a lot of drama in secret identities, and sometimes stories have conflict.

I do agree this should have happened later in the season or as a season 2 thing, but that's sadly just life in this streaming hell era. They didn't know if they'd get a season 2 to tell the story they wanted. We have to take the conflict as it is. And let's face it, if Lois had taken longer to figure out, y'all would be making fun of her for being dumb. Lois is for some reason always the butt of that joke even though nobody else can see Clark is Superman either- and when she does figure it out (as she usually does!) and has anything other than positive feelings about it she still gets blamed. Just enjoy having a character who can have complex feelings.

If you hate relationship conflict, there's stuff for you out there! Read Superman Family Adventures by Art Baltazar, it's very cute low stakes low conflict stuff and has an actual Himbo Clark.

[waterloggedsoliloquy]

protag johnny truant talks a lot abt his sex life and the girls he fucks, seemingly without a direct relation to what he footnotes. but theres always this weird dissociative vibe to it and a lot of ppl think he's lying to sound better than he is (smth he admits to having done, telling insane stories abt how he got his disfigurements is part of his (often unsuccesful) pickup routine), but i ask what does he have to lie about in footnotes no one is ever going to see? my theory is that they are things he thinks happened, or things he is afraid of happening, and writing them out is his way of assuaging the anxiety brought on by delusion or ocd

notably these alleged fantasies are not particularly flattering or satisfying. they are under bizarre or unideal circumstances, involve him feeling deeply ambivalent and lonely, and explicitly mentions not finishing. a woman he doesnt remember becoming friends with uses him as revenge sex on her fiancé. so i find it hard to believe hes doing it to bolster an image or even an ego. if they do happen, even in part, these are not healthy or even necessarily coping mechanisms that make him feel better. often they make him feel worse, lost, alone.

I won't deny that Johnny's parts can be hard to get through. He can be crass, misogynistic, uncomfortable, unhygenic, dissociative, painful, ugly, and sometimes there's just plain bad sex. But I think it's unfair to discount these sections as entirely discrete from and unrelated to Zampano's paper on The Navidson Record. Johnny's story is included in House of Leaves for a reason. It's a part of the whole. There's a lot to be said about Johnny, whose life has never had any security to begin with, whose life is a series of winding pathways that leave him substance reliant and unsure of his place in anything-- in space in time in other people's lives-- reading a book about a movie where this upper middle class nuclear family moves into a new house and immediately have their own sense of domestic safety completely and totally shattered.

Here he is, speaking about his disfigurements (the things he has to tell ludicrous, pulpy stories about in order for people to not recoil away from him):

"All of it true too, though of course scars are much harder to read. Their complex inflections do not resemble the reductive ease of any tattoo, no matter how extensive, colorful or elaborate the design. Scars are the paler pain of survival, received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury."

Here's him talking about that lady who has him as revenge sex:

"Before I left she told me our story: where we'd met-Texas- kissed, but never made love and this had confused her and haunted her and she had needed to do it before she got married which was in four months to a man she loved who made a living manufacturing TNT exclusively for a highway construction firm up in Colorado where he frequently went on business trips and where one night, drunk, angry and disappointed he had invited a hooker back to his motel room and so on and who cared and what was I doing there anyway? I left, considered jerking off, finally got around to it back at my place though in order to pop I had to think of Thumper. It didn't help. I was still hurting, abandoned, drank three glasses of bourbon and fumed on some weed, then came here, thinking of voices, real and imagined, of ghosts, my ghost, of her, at long last, in this idiotic footnote, when she gently pushed me out her door and I said quietly "Ashley" causing her to stop pushing me and ask "yes?" her eyes bright with something she saw that I could never see though what she saw was me, and me not caring though now at least knowing the truth and telling her the truth: "I've never been to Texas.""

I don't know. I just have a profound compassion for this guy. Maybe it's my own history with abuse and neglect and dissociation and unreality but it kind of shocks me to see how many people respond to this guy who desperately needs help and isn't going to get it, who is deeply terrified of other people and wanting them and hurting them or himself... as an imposition and annoying. It's such a fundamentally different read, one I hadn't even considered.

[utilitycaster]

Ok I'm probably going to regret reinventing 17th century European religious philosophy here but:

Ludinus's issue with the gods as stated to Imogen and Fearne (and I will state right now that we know he was lying or deliberately misleading at points in that conversation so I don't exactly take him at his word, but let's assume he does mean this) is that they did not prevent the Calamity. I have the following questions.

Does he have any loyalty/feelings about the Titans given that they would have killed all the people in the era of the Schism, ie, the gods averted that Calamity? My guess is no, which means that whole avenue of discussing the Titans was something of a dead end.

How should Calamity have been averted? The Prime Deities during the Age of Arcanum largely let people do what they wanted, which is what led to one of those mortals releasing the Betrayer Gods. Should the gods have struck down Vespin Chloras before he actually did anything, Minority Report style? Can the gods even predict based on the actions of a single individual or small group, because my guess is they can't, particularly since within the current stream of gameplay they absolutely cannot [ie, the reason the Changebringer can't tell FCG to stay or run is because Matt Mercer is the Changebringer and he doesn't know how people will roll; you do need to consider the medium here]. But if they could: so you think they should strike down mortals on the basis of thoughtcrimes? Or control them? In that case, why is Aeor a problem? There's a lot you can argue is justified once you permit the gods to override free will and kill people over mere potential for catastrophe.

On that note, Laerryn both was an unwitting architect of the Calamity (shorted on energy and then killed the Tree of Names, which served as a core planar defense system) but also averted the worst of it. Did the lives she saved by preventing the rise of Rau'shan and Ka'Mort outweigh the lives she took by destroying the Tree of Names? How should the gods have reacted?

Should, perhaps, the gods have all sealed themselves away earlier - perhaps post-Schism? If so, then the issue isn't the Divine Gate, now is it? Should the gods intervene or not intervene? Should they remove themselves or no? It feels like the issue isn't that they distanced themselves so that they can do less in the world, particularly if you wish to kill them, but that you really want to fucking kill them and they made that somewhat more difficult.

How do we know the gods (for example) didn't save Laudna? She was hanged and she's still alive; Morri would probably count this as saving her and I don't see the same desire to wipe out all Archfey. [real talk I find most discussion of Laudna specifically to be...incomprehensibly ignorant in its refusal to acknowledge that everything about it is player agency related, whether it's the story that the cast played out for Vox Machina or the decisions Marisha specifically made in creating the character, ie, do you think Matt should have said "well you can't play a Hollow One because that would mean the gods didn't save you" not to mention the fact that again, we are playing this within a game system where the existence Deus Ex Machina would in fact fucking suck ass; but even setting aside those reasons why this argument is stupid, it's still stupid. It's like a layer cake of stupid.] Again: do you want more intervention or less? Killing them guarantees less.

I'm assuming the problem with the Calamity is the vast loss of life, in which case, what's the math on how many people have been killed by the Vanguard or Imperium in the pursuit of unleashing Predathos? How many more will die?

If the release of Predathos doesn't result in the immediate demise of all the gods, and the Divine Gate is down, why isn't this a recipe for Calamity 2? What was the motivation for killing the gods again?

Should we kill mortal diviners who do not do all within their power to stop terrible things that may come to pass? If the issue is that some people have power without working for it, why haven't we killed all the sorcerers?

Should we be listening to a single word from someone who consumes random fey to live longer, and that's just the start of the CVS receipt of atrocities?

Is there a point where one's deeply held beliefs due to one's own personal trauma become invalidated due to one's actions as a result of that trauma? If so, why is the limit for Orym "is okay with killing people who are trying, directly, to kill you (which, frankly, isn't even a trauma response, that's just called not wanting to die, which I highly recommend as a personal philosophy), and gets upset when people defend those knowingly collaborating with his family's murderers" and the limit for Vanguard generals "family abandonment/just. buckets of murder of innocents./child soldier recruitment in multiple different contexts/eating fey as biohacking/destroying an entire city and the surrounding forest for hundreds of years (ongoing)/imperialism in multiple different contexts/I was going to make a gallows humor joke about how while neither exist in-world they've violated the Geneva Convention AND the IRB for testing on human subjects multiple times over but actually those both are in fact written in a lot of the same blood/probably some others that I'm forgetting"

[kdrama-mama]

Just sitting here thinking about how I don’t understand why Wedding Plan wasn’t more popular. The story was sweet, chemistry was excellent between the couples, it highlighted a real world issue many queer folks have to navigate, the NC scenes were sexy as hell - it was up there with one of the best BLs I’ve watched honestly.

I find it so weird how people shit on Mame so often for being “problematic” and yet they didn’t want to watch a series she put out that was totally unproblematic? The worst thing is Lom misleading Nuea and his mother, but if you listen, you realize he was very carefully *not* lying, and simply skirting the truth because he was in a very difficult situation. (Do they really love the “problematic” content but feel the need to publicly loudly pretend otherwise? Maybe)

Or they wrote it off completely because they didn’t like the kiss between the GL couple? It makes zero sense to me, and I have seen many people say that. There was a whole discussion on one Reddit thread I saw. And yeah, I agree that Katheryn did not do a good job with the kissing - Aya was clearly trying, but wasn’t given much to work with. But they weren’t the main couple, the main couple had excellent kisses, and they were so freaking adorable in all their other scenes. I really want to see Aya in a GL where she’s the lead.

Whenever I tried to engage on Twitter or a bit on here, it was like nobody was talking about it. Aya liked some of my tweets, and I honestly think she saw it just because so few people were tweeting about the episodes!

Or there’s people who wouldn’t watch it bc they thought Mame was using Boss, Noeul, Fort, and Peat for “clout,” when their cameos made perfect sense and were incredibly sweet moments for two of my favorite BL couples! I was so happy to have those sweet moments of closure for their stories.

Anyway, if you didn’t watch Wedding Plan for whatever reason, I highly encourage you to watch it! I’m sad I can’t get the special episode legally in the US, I would have bought it. I suspect she didn’t have it available in as many countries as Love in the Air because it was less popular.

[oldiesstationlover11607]

Okay bestie I need a fake dating fic ?! I can’t think of a good idea so please use your amazing brain 🫶🏻 Josh or Tyler I just want the tensionnnn the piningggg yessss

Faking it - Josh Dun x Reader

Warnings: Tension and angst lol

Word Count: 2532

A/N: Girl I am so sorry this one took so long 😭 I've been very distracted this week so haven't gotten as much writing done as I normally would. Hopefully this makes up for it <3

‘Josh Dun and Halsey are over! What’s next for the twenty one pilots drummer?’ 

That was the headline on the People post at the top of my Instagram feed three weeks before I was contacted. Josh and I had been friends in high school–long before he met Tyler or had anything to do with twenty one pilots. At that point in our lives our small group of friends would spend Friday nights at his house, recording demos for theoretical albums in a desperate attempt to pass the long Columbus summers. Most of us had lost contact since we’d graduated and gone off to college. In fact, I hadn’t had Josh’s real number in my phone for at least 10 years. I’d be lying if I said that hadn’t bothered me. Celebrities were supposed to remember their friends, they were supposed to keep in contact and see them every time they visited home. Josh lived in LA. Tyler lived in Columbus. But everyone knew he came back to see Tyler and his family as much as possible–no one had heard from him. 

Except me. That one fateful day that changed everything. 

“Hi Y/N. It’s Josh. Josh Dun. I don’t know if you remember me from school or if this is even your number anymore,” the voicemail started. “I’m in town for the next few weeks and I’d like to catch up with you. There’s something I’d like to ask you but you know, it’s one of those things best said in person.” The faint buzz of another voice sounded in the background. The audio went silent for a few seconds before he continued. “So… uh… flick me a text or call me back or something but I’d like to see you. Bye.” 

It took me three days and a conversation with every one of our old friends to respond to the message. Half of them told me to ignore it–that Josh didn’t deserve anything from me–but something inside me felt like he needed it. Most of the pop culture news sites had been giving updates about the breakup and Halsey had been posting near constant tweets about the situation. It had to have been difficult on Josh, he was one of the most sensitive people I knew, and according to TMZ, he’d been keeping quiet about the whole thing. I’d stared at my phone screen for a long time, his voice still playing in my mind long after the voicemail ended each time I played it. As usual, curiosity got the better of me. Against my friends’ advice, I texted him. 

“Hey Josh. I got your message. How about we go to Margaret’s for coffee?” 

Margaret’s was a small local cafe we used to go to on Friday nights in the fall and winter, coffee being the only thing that kept us warm. 

Josh responded almost instantly, suggesting a time. I agreed, nerves building as the reality of seeing him again after so many years set in. What would we even talk about? Did we still have anything in common?

The day we decided to meet, I found myself at the cafe ten minutes early, anxiously tapping my fingers on the table. When Josh finally walked in, I was hit by how different yet familiar he looked. The years had sharpened his features, his hair dyed a bright yellow, his arms covered in more ink than I remembered, but his smile—the same crooked grin—instantly melted the years away.

“Y/N,” he greeted, pulling me into a quick hug, his scent instantly bringing back memories of those long summers. For once the man in front of me wasn’t the man in all the news stories or playing sold out shows–he was just Josh. 

“Hey.” I smiled, feeling his arms wrap around me before we split off and sat into the cozy chairs on either side of the little coffee table I’d chosen. We talked about everything, our old friends, our lives since high school, and then, after what felt like hours of catching up, Josh cleared his throat and leaned forward.

“So… there’s actually something I need to ask you. And I’m aware of how ridiculous it might sound,” he started, looking almost embarrassed. “But I really need your help and I didn’t know who else to ask.”

I raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Go on…”

Josh took a deep breath. “The media’s been relentless since the breakup, and it’s getting hard to deal with all the rumors and speculation. My management team suggested that if I was seen… with someone else, it might get them off my back. Temporarily, at least.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. “Wait, are you saying… you want me to be your girlfriend?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “I want you to pretend to be my girlfriend. I know it’s a huge ask, but we’ve known each other forever, and I trust you. I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing this with anyone else. It’d only be for a little while, just until things die down.”

I sat back, processing the situation. Fake dating Josh? I mean, it wasn’t like it was unheard of for celebrities to stage relationships for the media. But me? I wasn’t exactly a part of his world anymore. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to be. But the look in his eyes—vulnerable, pleading—told me this wasn’t just a PR stunt for him. He needed this.

“Okay,” I found myself saying, surprising even myself. “I’ll do it.”

His eyes lit up in relief. “Really? You will?”

I nodded. “On one condition—this doesn’t get weird. We’ll stay friends, no matter what.”

Josh grinned, a hint of his old mischievous self returning. “Deal.”

And so, the charade began.

The first few weeks were awkward, to say the least. Paparazzi seemed to follow us everywhere, and we had to carefully choreograph our interactions—just enough affection to seem real, but not too much to make it uncomfortable. Josh would hold my hand in public, drape his arm over my shoulders during interviews, and we’d smile for the cameras as if everything was perfectly natural. 

The Paramore show was supposed to be one of the easier ‘dates.’ At least, that’s what I told myself as we entered the packed arena. The buzz of excitement from the crowd, dressed in a mix of colorful costumes and band tees, should have distracted me from the knot tightening in my stomach. Josh seemed at ease, smiling and waving to fans who recognized him as we made our way to the VIP area just above the main floor. But even then, I could feel the weight of the act hanging over us.

As the lights dimmed and the band took the stage, I felt Josh move closer, his arm casually draping around my waist. It was a simple gesture, one that would seem natural to anyone watching, but the second his hands slid to my hips, something inside me tensed. He wasn't doing anything inappropriate, but the intimacy of it felt wrong. I wasn’t his girlfriend—I was playing a part—and this level of closeness blurred lines I wasn’t ready to cross.

I glanced up at him, hoping to catch his eye, maybe give him a silent cue to ease up. But he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, lost in the music. For a brief moment, I almost forgot the cameras were on us, the spotlight that wasn’t really ours pressing in from every angle. Then, he leaned down, his breath warm against my ear.

“Look at the camera,” he murmured, his voice low, almost too soft to hear over the music.

I stiffened. Even here, in this moment, we were still performing. I darted my eyes across the crowd, picking out the nearest lens trained on us like vultures waiting for scraps. I swallowed hard, forcing a laugh that sounded hollow to my own ears.

“Now laugh,” Josh added, his voice almost playful, but it grated on my nerves. Then, without warning, he pressed his lips to my neck, an action that was too intimate, too calculated for comfort.

I jerked back slightly, lifting my heel and grinding it down on the tip of his shoe—not enough to hurt, but enough to send a clear message.

“Watch it,” I muttered under my breath, just loud enough for him to hear.

Josh’s grip on my hips loosened immediately, his hands retreating as if he'd touched a hot stove. “I’m watching it,” he replied, his tone smooth but with a hint of defensiveness.

“You better be,” I shot back, trying to sound stern, but the words came out shaky. I didn’t know if I was warning him or myself. Still, a smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth, a reflex that came from trying to play it cool, even though everything about this felt far from easy.

He caught the smirk, his eyes finally dropping to meet mine, and for a split second, something unspoken passed between us. Annoyance, frustration—maybe a bit of amusement at how absurd this whole thing had become. But whatever it was, it was fleeting, buried under layers of whatever we were pretending to be.

“You’re a terrible actress,” Josh teased, his lips twitching into a smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Maybe I just don’t like my co-star,” I shot back, but there was no real bite to the words. If anything, the tension between us had only grown more complicated. I wasn’t sure if it was the act, the pressure of being watched, or something else entirely, but it left me feeling raw, exposed in a way I didn’t expect.

Josh’s smile faltered, and for a moment, he looked like he might say something more, something real. But instead, he just nodded, his gaze drifting back to the stage, leaving me standing there, caught between wanting to scream at him and wanting to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

As Paramore's set continued, we went through the motions—laughing, leaning into each other, playing the part. But beneath it all, there was a tension neither of us could ignore. The lines were blurring too much, and the more we tried to act like this was all just a game, the more it felt like we were both losing.

After a few weeks the articles started to slow. Things were slowly getting easier between us and we’d even managed to get a couple paps to catch us kissing. One afternoon, Josh invited me to a small gathering at Tyler’s place. It was supposed to be low-key, just the three of us hanging out—no cameras, no staged displays. Tyler had always been a grounding presence for Josh, and I wasn’t surprised when Josh mentioned he’d already told Tyler about our fake relationship.

“I want you to meet him,” Josh had said with a hint of pride. “He’s my best friend. And, well, it’ll feel a little more real if you’ve met him, right?”

So there I was, sitting in Tyler Joseph’s living room, sipping iced tea, and trying not to overthink everything. Tyler was exactly as I imagined—easygoing, warm, with a dry sense of humor that kept the conversation light.

At one point, he leaned forward, eyeing me with curiosity. “So, Y/N, Josh tells me you’ve known each other forever.”

I nodded, glancing at Josh, who was sitting beside me on the couch, fiddling with the string of his hoodie. “Yeah, high school. We were in the same friend group, used to hang out all the time.”

Tyler smirked, clearly aware of the irony. “And now you’re in a PR relationship.”

Josh groaned, throwing his head back dramatically. “Don’t start, man.”

Tyler chuckled but didn’t let it go. “Nah, I’m just curious. I mean, you two seem pretty comfortable around each other. Doesn’t look that fake to me.” He raised an eyebrow, watching as Josh and I exchanged a quick, nervous glance.

“We’re just good actors,” I said quickly, trying to keep the tone casual. “Right, Josh?”

Josh nodded, but the smirk on Tyler’s face told me he wasn’t buying it.

“Look, I’m just saying,” Tyler continued, leaning back in his chair. “Sometimes these things have a way of turning into something else. Just make sure you both know what you’re getting into.”

It was a harmless statement, but it lingered in the air long after the conversation moved on. I found myself glancing at Josh more often, wondering if there was any truth to Tyler’s words. Did we know what we were getting into?

As the evening wound down, Tyler gave me a knowing look before we left, almost like he’d seen something we hadn’t.

A few days later, Josh and I were walking through a park near his place, taking a break from the media frenzy. The crisp autumn air had a way of making everything feel a little clearer, and I found myself wanting to address the strange tension that had been building between us.

“Tyler’s not wrong, you know,” I said quietly, breaking the silence.

Josh glanced at me, his brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“About this. About us.” I waved a hand between us. “I know we agreed this wouldn’t get weird, but… doesn’t it feel like things are changing?”

He stopped walking, turning to face me fully. His expression was unreadable, and for a moment, I wondered if I’d said too much. But then, he sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he admitted softly. “At first, it was just this… fake thing. But now, being around you again, it doesn’t feel fake anymore. I don’t know what to make of it.”

The honesty in his voice made my heart skip a beat. I swallowed hard, trying to find the right words. “Josh, I don’t want to complicate things. We’re friends, and I don’t want to lose that. But lately… I’ve been feeling things I wasn’t expecting.”

Josh stepped closer, his eyes searching mine. “I feel it too,” he confessed, his voice barely above a whisper. “And I don’t know what that means for us.”

I could feel the space between us shrinking, the air heavy with unspoken tension. My mind raced with a million thoughts, but none of them made sense anymore. All I knew was that the line between fake and real had blurred beyond recognition, and we were standing at the edge of something neither of us had planned for.

“What do we do?” I asked, my voice trembling slightly.

Josh reached out, gently taking my hand, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. “We figure it out,” he said softly. “Together.”

I looked up at him, my heart pounding as I realized that whatever this was, whatever it would become, we were in it together. The charade was over—this was real now.

But as real as it felt, there was still the looming pressure of the media, the world watching our every move. And even as Josh’s fingers laced with mine, I couldn’t help but wonder how long we could keep this new reality to ourselves before the outside world caught up.

//

REQUESTS OPEN

[mariacallous]

The term “climate haven” never made much sense. After Hurricane Helene dumped 2 feet of rain on western North Carolina, many major media outlets marveled at how Asheville, which had been celebrated as a climate haven, had been devastated by a climate-related disaster.

Some in the media later reported accurately that climate havens don’t actually exist. But that still raises the question: Where did this climate haven concept even come from?

Well before humans began putting billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, entire populations would migrate toward better conditions in search of a place with milder weather or more fertile soil or the absence of drought.

Because of its speed and scale, however, human-caused climate change is especially extreme, and everywhere will be impacted by some degree of risk. There is no completely safe haven.

Which is part of how we ended up talking about the idea of climate havens. It’s wishful thinking. At least that’s what several experts told me after Helene laid a path of destruction across the Southeast and as Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida. As the impacts of climate change became more real and apparent, the media as well as local leaders started looking for a better story to tell.

“People are desperate for optimism,” said Jesse Keenan, director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane University, who described the concept of climate havens as a fiction. “It gives people hope.”

Keenan actually blames himself for helping to popularize the term. For a concept that feels so widespread now, it’s surprisingly hard to find much mention of climate havens in the media before 2018. That was when The Guardian quoted Keenan in a piece about where you should move to save yourself from climate change that used the phrase “safe havens.” Buffalo, New York, and Duluth, Minnesota, were Keenan’s suggestions.

The concept gained more traction a few months later, when Mayor Byron W. Brown referred to Buffalo as a “climate refuge” in his 2019 state of the city address, followed by outlets like Bloomberg and Quartz referring to Buffalo as a climate haven. The New York Times did a whole spread on “climate-proof Duluth,” a slogan Keenan wrote as part of an economic development package commissioned by the city. He told me it was just a joke that got pulled out of context.

It’s hard to know how responsible one professor with a knack for marketing was for the mainstreaming of the climate haven concept. But it’s easy to see why local governments would latch onto it.

The Census Bureau estimates that as climate change warms the planet over the next several decades, 100 million will migrate into and around the US. Increased flood risk may have already pushed several million people out of coastal and low-lying areas across the US, as wildfires start to raise questions about migration in the West.

Inland cities, namely those along the Rust Belt that have been losing population for years, see an opportunity to pull those people in.

“The idea of a climate refuge itself is kind of an escapist fantasy,” said Billy Fleming, director of the McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “To the extent that a climate refuge even exists, it’s not a particularly physical or geophysical phenomenon. It’s social and economic.”

Fleming added that, for these would-be climate havens, attracting new residents is a means to pull in more tax revenue and create wealth for the community. “It’s about keeping the real estate machine churning,” he added, “which is the thing that pays for everything else in the city.”

The real estate industry has taken notice. Quite coincidentally, as Hurricane Helene was bearing down on the Southeast last week, Zillow announced a new feature that displays climate risk scores on listing pages alongside interactive maps and insurance requirements. Now, you can look up an address and see, on a scale of 1 to 10, the risk of flooding, extreme temperatures, and wildfires for that property, based on data provided by the climate risk modeling firm First Street. Redfin, a Zillow competitor, launched its own climate risk index using First Street data earlier this year.

The new climate risk scores on Zillow and Redfin can’t tell you with any certainty whether you’ll be affected by a natural disaster if you move into any given house. But this is a tool that can help guide decisions about how you might want to insure your property and think about its long-term value.

It’s almost fitting that Zillow and Redfin, platforms designed to help people find the perfect home, are doing the work to show that climate risk is not binary. There are no homes completely free of risk for the same reasons that there’s no such thing as a perfect climate haven.

Climate risk is a complicated equation that complicates the already difficult and complex calculus of buying a home. Better access to data about risk can help, and a bit more transparency about the insurance aspect of homeownership is especially useful, as the industry struggles to adapt to our warming world and the disasters that come with it.

“As we start to see insurance costs increase, all that starts to impact that affordability question,” Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s chief economist, told me. “It’ll help the housing market move towards a much healthier place, where buyers and sellers understand these risks and then have options to meet them.”

That said, knowledge of risk isn’t keeping people from moving to disaster-prone parts of the country right now. People move to new parts of the country for countless different reasons, including the area’s natural beauty, job prospects, and affordable housing. Those are a few of the reasons why high-risk counties across the country are growing faster than low-risk counties, even in the face of future climate catastrophes, which are both unpredictable and inevitable. It’s almost unfathomable to know how to prepare ourselves properly for the worst-case scenario.

“The scale of these events that we’re seeing are so beyond what humans have ever seen,” said Vivek Shandas, an urban planning professor at Portland State University. “No matter what we think might be a manageable level of preparedness and infrastructure, we’re still going to see cracks, and we’re still going to see breakages.”

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build sea walls or find new ways to fight wildfires. In a sense, we have the opportunity to create our own climate havens by making cities more resilient to the risks they face. We can be optimistic about that future.

[highfantasy-soul]

I'm really glad they went the route where Sol never apologized for what he did or admitted any fault.

It would have been nice and clean and feel-good for him to have realized what he did was so incredibly wrong, but the thing is, a lot of people don't get that closure. The person who hurt them genuinely will not entertain the idea that they were wrong.

They will use their 'love' for the other person as justification for any and all of their actions, they will refuse to accept blame, they will ignore the person they hurt crying and screaming at them that what they've done hurt them yet still look that person in the eye and say 'no, you're wrong to be upset at me over this - I did this because I love you, what you're telling me now about the real effects of my actions, I am refusing to listen to - you must be wrong to feel the way you do'.

With the Jedi as a whole, they're held to such a high standard. They're told they must be perfect, yet also the fact that they are Jedi makes them perfect and so provides no leeway for falling short of that standard. For many people, that leads to a disconnect in their mind where they cannot accept that they might have done something wrong because if they didn't live up to the perfect standard, in their eyes, the entirety of themselves and the system will crumble under that.

Of course WE know that's not true, people are going to make mistakes no matter what organization they're a part of - but if you aren't given the space to make small mistakes and learn from them - and talk about how that made you feel and learn to work with your emotions in a healthy way, then the pressure compounds and compounds and suddenly, a BIG mistake happens and you're unable to face it. So you justify, you rationalize, you make every excuse in the book - many times being enabled by others in the group to keep silent about your failure and coming up with twisted logic to make it 'ok'.

I think if Sol had been allowed to admit what happened on Brendok to the council and if the Jedi actually cared about their people, hopefully gotten him the therapy he needed, the events of the story would never have taken place. Osha being trained as a Jedi wasn't worth the cost - and she would have agreed. If you keep refusing to address the issue and try to just cover up and cover up the mistake, it's going to explode at some point.

The one who was lied to will snap and the one who did the lying will have lied to themselves for so long that they won't be able to admit any fault or it might snap them.

They've GOT to hold onto the idea that they can still be a good person and if they admit they messed up, in their mind, they won't be a good person anymore. And if that's what your entire self-worth is based on, it's almost impossible to admit any fault.

Allowing people to admit their mistakes and get help for them is healthy and good and helps people actually be good people rather than just put up the appearance of being a good person.

[beanghostprincess]

You know, One Piece is all fun and happyness untill you learn that the world and themes are actually some of the darkest and most depressing things that were ever put on paper. The biggest potrayal of this tho is the fact that many characters have different running gags and quirks that are actually products of their horrible past trauma and messed up life.

Luffy- Wants to befriends literally everybody because of his fear of being alone and picks fights with all the people he doesn't like because he wants to protect his friends.

Nami- Her greed and kleptomania were developed because her mom literally died because sge was poor and was never able to give her and Nojiko all they wanted/needed.

Usopp- Makes absurd lies about everything because as a kid he had to keep lying to keep his mother happy and when she died he kept on doing so to keep himself safe.

Sanji- Puts all women on a super high pedestal because growing up women like his mom and sister wrre the only good people in his life and men like his Judge and his brothers were fucking awful.

Brook and Robin- Super S tier dark humor to cope with S tier dark trauma.

In other words, One Piece is just a comedy passing drmatic anime, but I think we all already knew that.

Ah, yes, I love this topic so much.

But I wouldn't say One Piece is a "comedy passing dramatic anime". One Piece is both comedy and drama. The drama doesn't hide behind comedy at any moment. You don't have to actively look for it or read between the lines to understand the characters. I think Oda is an amazing writer because he manages to just tell us/show us about his characters in the clearest and most obvious of ways. He throws hints at us over the episodes to then explaining it to us very carefully how his characters are built. This is why I find so difficult to understand why people (mainly from the general audience or, y'know, dudebros) don't get the characters in the first watch/read. An example of a comedy passing dramatic show would probably be just any sort of satiric comedic show in which they don't actually address the drama but instead make jokes about it. Like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (God I love that sitcom).

I know what you mean, though. You're talking about the whole "making jokes/running gags about something when the reason behind them is actually way deeper". And I agree wholeheartedly.

Luffy has abandonment issues and that's why he keeps wanting to protect his friends and hates being alone, Nami sees money as safety and comfort because her mom died because they lacked money, Usopp's lies come from trying to make her mom happy because his dad left them, Sanji has an obsession with women because they're the only ones who never hurt him, Brook and Robin have no filter when it comes to dark humor because they've been alone for so long that the only way they have to cope is jokes and nobody gets them except them... And also:

We treat Zoro's relationship with Tashigi as comedic at some points but he has so much trauma regarding his best friend dying that he can't be close to someone who looks like her.

We make fun of and exaggerate Sabo's love for Luffy to the point of brocon/possessiveness because he literally spent most of his life having forgotten him and when he remembers his brothers, one of them dies, so of course he wants to look after the little one.

Boa's love for Luffy exists exclusively because she feels safe around him and it's the first man who has never seen her as a sexual object.

And a lot more of these but, basically, Oda is great at character building and writing because these are not things that you have to read between the lines. These are not exaggerations for the reader to understand what's going on with the characters. These are just trauma responses that constantly happen in real life. It's just a well-written story with awesome, realistic characters, and I absolutely love it.

[disasterarea-podcast]

Okay, I know I probably don’t need to explain this to all of you, but also I want to talk to *somebody* about how I wish I had the sort of pull that would let me see “Society of the Snow” before it ends up on @netflix on January 4th.

“Alive” came out when I was in high school. I was a sophomore, I think? I just know I watched it a bunch for historical reasons (disaster! Survival! Struggle!) and superficial reasons (I was sixteen and Ethan Hawke was in danger!). It was on HBO a lot back then. Or it felt that way, because I watched it every time it came on.

As per usual, I watched the movie, so I went and got the book. (I have an Audible credit, so I’m preordering the audiobook of “Society of the Snow” for work. It comes out in a couple of days, FYI.) The movie is … sanitized, to say the least. They can’t avoid the eating of the dead, or showing it on occasion. But in real life, the situation was more blatant, because … well, who are you going to hide it from? They ate everything else, or at least tried to, before resorting to the dead. And then when they did resort to the dead, they ate it ALL.

The thing is, Uruguayan culture was heavy on beef. “Alive” (the book) describes it the way the Irish depended on potatoes. Eating the dead was difficult, but as Catholics they were able to talk it out and tie it into the rosary and taking the body and blood of Christ into their own. I’m not even a Catholic anymore, but I think even my latent Catholic training might kick in just a tad to help reassure me in a situation like that if I had doubts. (Note: I have been doing this podcast for WAY too long. Survival cannibalism wouldn’t even make me bat an eye at this point.)

My point is that in the real situation, the survivors used everything. And I mean everything. There were only three or four parts of the body they couldn’t eat - I think the genitals were on that list, but don’t quote me on it - but the rest? They picked the bodies clean. They needed to. There’s a photo of the survivors sitting outside the plane, hanging out, smiling for the camera. It’s usually edited. Everything else is kept, but what is usually clipped or blurred is a very clear shot of a human spine, not a spot of meat left on it, just … lying there. It might as well be an airplane seat, or a discarded jacket, or any of the other items scattered about.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for every single one of the people who went through that ordeal. The details are traumatizing enough without having lived through it. Every time somebody makes a “rugby players eat their dead” joke, I cringe.

So here I am sitting watching “Alive” again, because fuck it. The thing is, I have a fondness for this movie based a lot on high school and watching it lots and it introducing me to a survival story I’d never heard of. But I would always be the first to point out I’d love a redo. It’s not as accurate as it could be, it’s in English, it misses out on things like Carlitos Paez’s father searching for him and the others the whole damn time and the reception after they came back.

I’m hoping “Society of the Snow” has all of the things the first movie lacked. I want to see the reception when they came back. I can’t wait to see Carlitos playing his dad, and I hope we get that moment where he reads the list of survivors over the radio and his voice breaks when he gets to his son’s name. I hope we get the reality of survival cannibalism — that it’s not murder, that it’s not pretty, that you might get a little blinded to the horror of the reality.

The trailers for “Society of the Snow” gives me hope it does the story the justice it deserves. There are so many disaster stories that, while they may have gotten TV movies, I would love to see done for the big screen. Hillsborough. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. The Galveston Hurricane. The Johnstown flood. But honestly, the trailers for “Society of the Snow” look gorgeous and respectful. Let’s do more movies like this for more disasters.

[monstersinthecosmos]

Okay I don’t want this to be like an obnoxious millennial assumption because I’m positive that every generation has things like this, but the way autism and ADHD was treated for us in the 90’s and how it affects adult diagnoses is like, imo, so integral to our coming of age and the stories we tell and the way we’ve gotten to know ourselves, even the way it relates to our job market and economy and how we operate inside it, and especially the way a pandemic uncovered it for so many people and exposed the cracks and revealed that we were all just barely functioning and held together with popsicle sticks and anyway

I say that because maybe it’s the un-diagnosed 90’s child in me but I feel particularly emotional about Keith’s arc in learning that he’s part Galra, and the way even the creators said they made him sort of prickly because of his biology, and I just !! Think so much about Keith’s neurotype as a part Galra!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cause something about being diagnosed later in life is like, looking back at all the other ways you tried to handle yourself, all the missteps, maybe even misdiagnoses. Like, how many times did you try to treat ANXIETY without realizing you didn’t have an anxiety disorder, you just can’t deal with your family blaring the TV from the next room? How many times were you told you were lazy, or lying, when you didn’t know what executive dysfunction is? 

Keith is such a lovely rich character because his prickliness is EARNED—we know what happened to him, we know he’s traumatized, we know he’s been treated poorly by many people in his life. We know that he grew up thinking that he’d been abandoned by one of the people who should’ve loved him the most, in the whole world. He even questions that in his vlog—he makes the connection that he has trouble with people because of his mom. 

But I just wonder like, how much of it is just his biology. Not understanding the body he’s in, being completely ignorant of one whole half of his culture. Had he ever mutated before the TBP fight? Did it take him by surprise, did it frighten him? ((* This is head canon territory LMAO there’s no way to really know—like, is he able to do this because he just spent so much time with Krolia, or does Shiro going That’s the Keith I remember mean they used to have really primal sex that turned his eyes yellow? Lol)) 

Like when we talk about even the most broad generic terms of saying someone is neurodivergent, we don't even need to put a real life label on Keith. Like he's literally not human! Of course his brain looks different! Of course he functions differently! And I wonder how much is nature v nurture -- if he knew the truth about his mom, if his dad had lived, if he'd been allowed a normal childhood, would he still have been a weird kid?

Cause like, even seeing the way Shiro is able to get through to him, we see ways that he allowed for thrill seeking, and he didn't judge Keith for stealing his car. It reminds me of like, what we know now about asking children to sit still in school, and how perhaps some children would do better with standing desks. Shiro wants him to behave and succeed, and doesn't judge him for being a car thief, and gets through to him by bringing him cliff diving. And it just feels like this clue, you know, that nothing is wrong with Keith, he's just living in a weird place where people don't get him.

It’s just really special to me, because there’s so many pieces in the sequence of events of Keith’s character arc, and I know I’ve said this a handful of times now, but I really sincerely believe it’s the only thing the show really nailed. Accepting himself during the BOM Trial -> MOMENTS later learning something very important about his biology -> spending time with Krolia -> coming back to pilot Black when he’s READY and WANTS to (unlike the first time, when he resisted) -> becoming a pragmatic strong leader by the end.

Gosh idk. 

I don’t really have anywhere to go with this, it’s just something I was thinking about today and it gets me real emotional. Like, Keith must have had these moments, re-evaluating who he’d been before he’d known, finally understanding why he was Like That, and it’s so healing to imagine him accepting his past self and forgiving it because he understands now. 

[aspoonofsugar]

Alyx - The Protagonist

Yang: But she was kind of a mean person, right? She lied and cheated her way through most of the book. Weiss: She was trying to survive. The morals of those old stories are so simplistic.

This exchange is interesting, especially because it is not the first time characters interpret Alyx in opposite ways.

Oscar sees her as a child who goes on an adventure, is changed by it and struggles to go home:

Oscar: I thought the idea of falling through Remnant into a new world was exciting. I never understood why she was so sad when she finally made it back home. But now it makes more sense.

Ozpin sees her as a girl, who runs away from her problems in a fantastical dimension:

Ozpin: I was recently reminded of an old fairy tale. A young girl flees the consequences of a choice, to a magical place. But, having never learned from her initial failure, she only succeeds in spreading it.

All of these characters project parts of themselves on Alyx:

Oscar sees her as lost, because he himself feels lost and away from home.

Ozpin describes her as a coward because he himself has run away into Oscar's subconscious.

Yang criticizes Alyx's tendency to lie and cheat because she sees these 2 attributes as the worst of the worst. She is conveniently ignoring she herself has been omitting information about Raven. Not to count that lie, cheat, survive are ideas that apply to Raven specifically. This means there is a part of Yang she herself is not confronting.

Weiss sympathizes with Alyx and refuses the moral of the story as too childish. Which kind of adult would truly believe that lying and cheating to survive is wrong? Except that Weiss's whole arc revolves around her embracing childishness once again and finding the hope and wonder that was stolen from her as a child.

So, everyone sees Alyx as a part of herself, but who is Alyx really?

ALYX - THE CHARACTER

Alyx is no-one, just a shadow:

Just an empty silhouette that can be filled by anyone:

This is what characters are, especially protagonists that are meant to carry a whole story on their shoulders:

Blake: I've read so many stories... I never thought I'll be the moral of one.

Characters are in stories to teach people morals and to convey messages. Basically, they all have purposes:

Blake: Have you ever heard the namy Alyx? Little: Alyx... Is that a purpose?

Maybe this is the real reason why names equals purposes in the Ever After. It is because characters are their purposes in a story... and yet, people are much more. So, what happens when a person ends up making their sense of identity overlap with their purpose?

Little: And is to Ruby Rose your purpose?

They lose themselves. Like it is happening to Ruby and like it has most likely happened to Alyx.

Weiss: What did Jinxy want from Alyx? Blake: Her saddest memories and her happiest.

Jinxy wanted Alyx's saddest and happiest memories. If a person loses both, they lose their past self. They lose who they are. It is probable Alyx chooses to leave the previous "her" behind, but can't forge any new identity, trapped forever to be a character. A protagonist. A fairy tale.

RWBY - THE LEGENDS

Blake: We are doing the same thing Alyx did. We are ruining everything!

Here, Blake is talking about RWBY's predicament in Ever After. She thinks that since they know how the story goes, they should be able to avoid Alyx's mistakes. She is frustrated they can't and overreacts. Why is she so emotional about it?

Because Blake is not talking about the Ever After. She probably means this:

Weiss: Maybe Jaune and Winter were able to get them out. Despite everything. Despite us.

RWBY has seen the adults fail at Beacon, so they strived to be better. They learnt from their mentors' mistakes, grew stronger and chose a different approach. Only to fail in the exact same way.

Blake and Weiss are having opposite reactions to the Ever After, but deep down they are dealing with the same sense of failure.

Blake is filtering it through a fairy tale. They must do everything perfectly here in Ever After, because if they can't, what good are even they?

Weiss is dealing with it by refusing the fairy tale. They messed up so royally in Remnant, that who cares what happens in this bizzarre world, which isn't theirs?

What about Yang and Ruby?

Yang is reacting the same as ever. She is going with the flaw and cracking jokes:

Ren: It's okay to be afraid, you know. You don't always have to hide it with a joke.

Ruby is choosing to push forward:

Ruby: We may not know exactly what's going on, but for whatever reason, this place is putting us on a similar path as a book we all read as kids. I say we follow it and stop pretending we know what we are doing.

She is given the role of Alyx and she is determined to fulfill it. She is stepping once again in the role of a protagonist. And yet, to keep on following an already pre-established script without putting that much mind to it isn't the right answer.

The fairy tale should be a chance for Ruby to face heself: who she was, who she is and who she wants to become.

What if you could leave Ruby Rose behind, shed like an old coat? What might happen, if you don't?

Isn't it interesting that the metaphor of an old coat is used? What is a little red hood if not something similar to a coat? A mantle (similar to that of a superhero for that matter) that Ruby chooses to wear? Who is she outside it? Outside her allusion? Outside her fairy tale?

The same goes for RWBY as a whole. They aren't in training anymore. They are Huntresses and are slowly growing into legends. They saved Haven, protected an ancient Relic, decided the fate of a Kingdom. Ruby is famous worldwide as the young Huntress who is challenging Salem. They are growing into more than just themselves. And yet, this is extremely dangerous, because losing one-self in a bigger tale is rather easy:

Pyrrha: For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all.

This is why they are in a fairy tale they all know deep down, even if they have forgotten. It is so they can reconnect with whom they are. Metaphorically, they are going back to The Girl Who Fell Through The World, so that they can look at it from a different perspective. What teachings would they learn that they missed as kids? What will they discover?

What's sure is that they won't get anything if they keep refusing it (Weiss), not taking it seriously (Yang), being too worried about doing everything perfectly (Blake), following the script without thinking too much about it (Ruby).

ALYX - THE PERSON

RWBY must find themselves again and it would be interesting if they succeed by finding Alyx, as well.

In general, I think Neo, Jaune and Alyx are all characters the protagonists must "find" if they really want to figure out the world and their current situation. It is easy to see how this may work out for Neo, an enemy mad with grief, and Jaune, a friend traumatized and lonely.

What about Alyx?

It is possible she might stay in the background as a symbol. However, some hints suggest there might be more to it:

Weiss: He's adorable! Blake: And a lot older than I remember from the book

The world they are in isn't exactly the same of the fairy tale. Jinxy is much older and Little isn't in the original fairy tale. This is why they have no idea who Alyx is. How can they? They are too little to remember. They are in the Ever After, but in a future version of it. This ties with the idea they are confronting their childhoods as adults. It might also be there is a reason for it plot-wise.

Everyone seems to have their own idea of what happened to Alyx. Maybe the whole point is that they will have listen to Alyx's own version of the story.

THE GODS - THE WRITERS

These meta-themes are important outside this volume and for the story, as a whole. After all, let's not forget the Gods allude to the Brother Grimms. This means they are symbolically "the writers" of the characters. Through this lens, then, the whole conflict between the God of Light especially and Salem can be summarized as a writer not being able to write a character.

The God of Light wants Salem to learn an important lesson, so he comes up with a punishment and an obstacle for her to grow. This is how usually a writer approaches a character arc. However, Salem refuses to change, as the God of Light wants. She refuses to learn the theme he desires. If anything, the result is the opposite of what the God of Light expects. Why is that so?

Because the God of Light is dumb and not such a great writer on his own :P To write humans well he needs his brother's help. That is because humans are a mix of light and darkness, of selflessness and selfishness, of logic and emotions, of mind and heart. He approaches Salem as if she were to function exactly like him, but she is much more similar to his brother. Emotional and driven by her personal wishes.

So, the Gods are the writers and RWBY and the others are characters in their hands. When is it that a character overcomes their author? When they end up communicating something their author did not see coming. In this way, they surprise the writers and help them grow. This is probably how RWBY is gonna solve its conflict.

The girls will end up embodying a theme and a teaching the Gods and Salem did not account for. In this way, they will defeat them, symbolically.

At the same time, a meta-reading can very well apply to RWBY's most existentialist themes.

Let's consider these 2 lines:

Weiss: We are not in a book and even if we were we know how it ends, right over there.

Cinder: Oh, come now. Even if you know how the story ends, that doesn't make it any less fun to watch.

Even if all lives end in the same way (death), it doesn't mean they are not beautiful and worthy to be lived. Even if you know how the story ends, it doesn't mean you should not live it fully. You should dive deep into it, embrace wonder and go through it to the very end. Skipping pages means you are just giving up on new opportunities to grow and bloom.

[eddiediazismyhusband]

i really want a fic of eddie realising him and buck have been falling in love the entire time.

I keep seeing posts (and even had someone tell me) that it’d be unrealistic for Eddie to be in love with Buck and not realise. Like not even think of him as an option. 

But that’s such a real queer person thing- i’ve lived that experience. I’m a women and despite all the times I admired other women it took forever for it to click for me.

I mean I grew up with accepting parents and kind friends and even queer people on tv. I remember looking at girls as much as I looked at boys. And yet I still had the reoccurring thought “I could be gay, I mean i’m not- but I could be. But most people aren’t gay and i’m most people”. (gay being used here in my head to mean “not straight”) AND YET despite it all I didn’t realise i was Bi until I was much older.

And even then, I’d had at least two long term crushes without realising they were crushes before it clicked. 

(I kid you not- it took a drag queen talking to me like i was a toddler for it to click, but that’s a whole other story SO-) 

Whether or not Eddie already knows he’s gay (or demi or whatever) doesn’t really make a difference, cause it’s that same sort of heteronormative internalising that causes these feeling to not be understood. 

Especially for Eddies character who’s had this messy norm with Shannon for so long, a stable thing to grasp (even when their relationship was a mess) and then her death and him chasing to find that weak grasp to SOMETHING again- something that can be another excuse to not go looking for himself. 

Like he’s internalised this behaviour of, “if i’m in a relationship, I don’t have to look deep and figure out why it’s not working” and never quite realising that maybe the reason it’s not working is cause he’s trying to replace something that was never really real.

(Speaking of, Eddie and Shannon are the epitome of loml by taylor swift. I mean- “we were just kids babe” “from one kiss to getting married” “something counterfeits dead” “what a valiant roar, what a bland goodbye” “i’m combing through the band of lies- “i’ll never leave” never mind”) 

babe you are speaking to the POSTER CHILD of raised in a religious household and convinced themselves they weren’t queer until it was staring them in the face

the biggest issue is that most (again i said most before yall try to jump down my throat) of the people who are against buddie are either straight people who don’t understand the nuances of queerness, or queer people who didn’t grow up in environments of oppression and have never felt the need to hide themselves

i used to tell my parents i had crushes on girls only to later realize that it was because i just had a genuine platonic connection with them (two of whom are my best friends and are also queer women) and i used to get confused about what the difference between attraction and admiration was— something a LOT of queer people go through without realizing.

comphet is literally such a widespread phenomenon that people truly don’t realize just how common it is— like even queer people don’t realize they probably know several “straight” people who are still lying to themselves bc sexuality isn’t black and white— it exists on a spectrum. I’m not saying that to invalidate anyone’s straightness, im just saying i know multiple men who are my dads age (60s +) who only recently came to the realization that they were gay.

it’s genuinely so disappointing to see some of the people in this fandom pushing homophobic talking points from history just to disprove a character’s implied queerness bc they view that character’s queerness as a threat to their ship.

anyway, i agree eddie and shannon’s relationship is soooooo unconscious lavender marriage coded to me and there are SO MANY beautiful TS lyrics that apply to that… another song that i really feel like captures Eddie’s pov of the relationship is Home by One Direction… especially these lyrics:

[groupielove21]

God, there really are so many people who don't understand Eddie Diaz in this fandom and I find it hilarious after this last episode.

Up to this point, Eddie Diaz only knows that he loved one person in his life: Shannon.

Are you going to tell me that if you lost the love of your life completely unexpectedly and found someone EXACTLY LIKE them on the street, you wouldn't stop to talk to them, ask them for a date?

Eddie is human, he's not thinking this, he's following his instinct (something he himself said last episode always ends badly for him) and he doesn't care what others think because he already knows this is a mistake.

Lying to Buck is just one example of that because lying to Buck is Eddie lying to himself, still trying, even in part of his life, to remain the perfect person he thinks he should be.

And the saddest thing of all is that this whole situation with Kim is not going to go well on their date because she is not Shannon.

Kim probably drinks a different wine, is allergic to some food Shannon loved, doesn't want kids, and Eddie is going to freak out, because he cheated on his girlfriend by going on a date with his ex-wife's ghost for no reason.

And that is going to lead him to question everything, how although this did not work for him to replace Shannon, it served him to close his story, he is going to question why he feels so ashamed for having failed all the teachings he received throughout his life (Catholic guilt arc), how he probably made Buck angry by lying to him and now he has to fix it because he hates Buck walking away (and he's going to think about why exactly that bothers him so much), how he's going to have to leave Marisol and with that go back to alter Christopher's life.

So yeah, Eddie cheating is pretty out of character, but it makes him even more real than anything else could have and brings him closer to becoming that version of himself that he's been trying to be all his life.