#saying that it has so many flaws it hopelessly sucks I have no right to use words and put them together like that

[lieutenant-amuel]

Do you have a favorite chapter in your Gabe fic?

First I want to say I’m not going sentimental with this answer by saying “I love all my chapters equally, this story is so important to me after all <3” because I’ll be lying if I say it. There are chapters I don’t like, there are chapters I enjoyed writing yet I’m quite indifferent to them as stories and the other way around when the chapter itself is great but writing it was painful.

In the whole I do love this story, and I think everyone has already noticed it. But I obviously don’t like every single thing about it and if I had a chance to change some details, plot elements, or anything, I probably would (although no, I actually wouldn’t).

Anyway, to answer your question, it’s actually quite complicated because I do have several favourites x) I think objectively my best chapters are the ones that have two parallel storylines (plot A and plot B) whereas “linear” chapters are usually weaker because I tend to put too much stuff into it (The Fencing School and The Chess Elective are quite good examples of it. Although I love Frida’s arc in both chapters). But with some exceptions of course.

One of my favourite chapters is The Nameless Girl. I love both Gabe and Valerio’s stories there, I revealed a very important part of Valerio’s backstory and illustrated his positive side that he hadn’t showed in a long time, I introduced new characters who are very entertaining to me, it has good action and is quite adventure driven (Gabe’s story). Plus, I think this is quite a good ending for Gabe’s short storyline of realizing that solving the hideout mystery did more harm than good for him which was mostly for the reason he hid it from his friends and tried to do it alone. And I do love the scout camp setting.

Another favourite is Questions and Answers (despite the fact it has a sucky title). I did a good job with symbolism and paralleling Gabe and Valerio’s stories, both of which are also very good and I love them. It has a great scary story The Man in the Cloak, it has good humor, action, and a mystery with the riddles Gabe heard in the pyramid (they all are foreshadowings, if you try to solve them, you’ll pretty much figure out the core plot events). It has an absolutely fantastic scene of Valerio’s breakdown that I was extremely excited to write, and after my friend pointed out the flashback transition of Valerio closing and then opening his eyes, I started to appreciate it more too because it actually turned out very nice.

The Secret Hideout as a beginning of the best storyline (in my opinion) this fic has so far. Once again it has two plots, and they both are great. I created my own cipher for this chapter which marked the beginning of me enjoying it so much I created at least five more different ciphers that I probably won’t even include in the story. I expanded Avaloran Royal Guard system because I always thought a lot about it even if my headcanons basically have nothing to do with the canon. Both the ciphers and the Royal Guard are important parts of WBTL “worldbuilding”, and I’m actually pretty proud of myself for creating the sort of my own lore for this story. I’m repetitive but the fact that Gabe’s story is quite action driven in this chapter also makes me enjoy it.

The Eagle and the Crow is great for shedding light on Emilio’s story and making him more sympathetic which is important given he used to be the main antagonist for quite a long time. I showed his emotions, his struggles and tried to explained why he treated Valerio the way he did. I don’t know how I can explain why I love it but the entire scene of Emilio and Valerio meeting for the first time (starting with Emilio hesitating to open the door to the staffroom because he’s not sure whether Valerio has arrived already and ending with Emilio overhearing Valerio and Señor Murillo’s conversation). I don’t know it just was extremely entertaining to me to write how their relationship originated and it also has quite many lines that I personally find funny (“I don’t chuckle after every sentence” *chuckles*, “my favourite colour is green”, “this stupid game with those stupid questions”). The last scene of the flashback where I integrated short words into the narrative to illustrate how Emilio’s interest towards Valerio arouses (observation - concern - suspicion - goal) is probably one of the most powerful scenes I’ve ever written. The very first scene where Valerio reveals details of his past to Emilio is also great, and I’ll always be proud of this short fragment where Valerio describes what it felt like to be burnt.

That unforgettable feeling of the flames melting into your skin and spreading the burning pain from deep within your body. So, the only thing left for you is to scream. But you can't. As your lungs are squeezed by a suffocating embrace of smoke that doesn't let you take a single breath of fresh air. Yes. That's impossible to forget.

And how can I not mention the story The Eagle and the Crow. This is a metaphor of Valerio and Emilio, and I think this is very smart. Anyway, Emilio and Valerio’s relationship is absolutely fascinating to me so writing it (and reading about it too) always brings me joy.

And I think that’s it. I know you possibly asked me for one chapter but at this point I actually cannot choose between those four x) They all embody different aspects of this story that I absolutely adore, and I really wish to make more chapters of the same quality in the future.

As for other chapters, I love them too to a greater or lesser extent.

Some of them are very close to my most favourite chapters, I also find them great but they’re more chill and it makes them less exciting in my opinion. Those are Día de los Muertos, A Burglar, The Last Ship (although this chapter is just filled with different symbols and foreshadowings for Valerio’s story so I think I’d put it higher in my list), The Scout Camp, The Past Is In The Past, and the latest chapter The First of September.

Some have great concepts but I personally don’t like how they’re written in a stylistic sense (to put it short they’re just sucky written but are good stories, and well, it’s fixable so I won’t be too harsh on them). Those are The Essay Topic and The Chess Classes.

Some are great but as I mentioned above, include too many scenes which makes them overwhelming and quite difficult to summarize and navigate through (even I, the author, sometimes forget which chapter includes a certain scene). Those are The Fashion Show, The Fencing School, and The Chess Elective.

Some are good (but not great lol) story wise but are written poorly. Those are A Trip To Maarswik and Gabe’s Birthday.

Some are bad and nothing can help them but they were a base for the future chapters so I cannot remove them and am learning to appreciate them lol. Those are A New Beginning and The Long-Awaited Letter.

And some have an honorable mention because I now have conflicted feelings about them x) Those are the first three chapters: A Tale of the Dragon Slayer, The Baking Disaster, and The Olaball Practice. They were meant to show some of my Gabe headcanons but atmosphere wise they’re extremely different from the rest of the story so I think if I were an actual writer, I’d just create a separate collection of short stories to illustrate how Gabe’s childhood, without a bunch of my original characters and complicated plots, looked like (because I do have a few more ideas that have nothing to do with the main plot and I plan to put them somewhere in the beginning if I write them).

Anyway, as I was saying, I do love this story in the whole. My main issue about some chapters is just the way how they’re written whereas plot wise they’re absolutely great and I wouldn’t change anything about them. They’re the part of the established story and of the story I genuinely love (although now when I often come back to the old chapters, I can clearly see why nobody read it lol). But well, ugly descriptions and awkward dialogues can always be fixed as I keep writing and gain more experience in this field so I really don’t want to be harsh on myself. The story itself is good, and I think this is all that matters.

Thank you for this ask! And sorry for giving such a long answer ajhdnfjfk.

[bangtae-sohotddaeng]

nugatory | p.jm. | drabble

pairing: jimin x reader (ft. taehyung)

rating: m (18+)

genre: smut | angst | college!au

summary: Park Jimin is many things. Park Jimin is a responsible, smart, handsome and musically talented Taekwondo black belt. Park Jimin is Kim Taehyung's best friend. Park Jimin is a good friend. Park Jimin is a compulsive matchmaker. Park Jimin is many things – but he is not the guy you should be sitting in a car with, right now.

warnings: swearing + sexual situations (nudity, semi-public sexual acts in a car, fingering, penetrative sex) + possible allusions to some infidelity if you squint?

word count: 3.2 k

note: y’all. i couldn’t let butter!jimin keep ruining my life without acting out a bit, could i? this one started off as a pwp, but then i ended up combining it with a plot i had in my head for a while, and this turned into more plot and less porn, but. i’m okay with that, tbh. also! i’ve used one my older styles of writing (going back to 2016-ish) with this one. hope you all like it~ 🥺💜

— masterlist

— feedback is always appreciated!

Park Jimin is many things.

He is an astoundingly handsome, cheerful – and yet somehow mysterious – psychology major that you shared Freshman year's communications class with. He is the only rich kid among the majority on campus that doesn't flaunt his wealth to scholarship kids like you. He is kind, helpful, generous – did you mention handsome? – perfectly athletic and perfectly aesthetic.

Park Jimin is a responsible, smart, handsome and musically talented Taekwondo black belt.

He is also someone that gets excited at the prospect of claw machines at fairs. He is also someone that looks at the universe with galaxies in his eyes. He is also someone that doesn’t realize he will always be more exquisite than any art his best friend might ever create.

Park Jimin is Kim Taehyung's best friend.

He is the guy that stood next to Kim Taehyung when Taehyung asked you to the Freshman dance. He is the guy that told you Kim Taehyung has the most gigantic crush on you. He is the guy that set you up on the first of your many dates with Kim Taehyung.

Park Jimin is a good friend.

Park Jimin is a compulsive matchmaker.

Park Jimin is many things – but he is not the guy you should be sitting in a car with, right now.

"You really don't have to worry about me, Jimin," you mumble, eyes flickering all over his face – you always tend to drink him up the best you can, whenever you can. “I know I stupidly called you here, but I was just in shock. I’m okay, now. I’ll be fine.”

"No, I do have to worry." His fingers thread through his hair, your eyes hopelessly follow. "This was stupid and reckless of Tae. I'm sure he'll come back to his senses soon."

You blink. Jimin really has absolutely no grasp of this situation. But he obviously thinks he knows everything, which is making this conversation progressively difficult.

(His muscles bulging beneath his jeans and the t-shirt he wears are a contributing factor in making this conversation difficult, too, you won't lie.)

You breathe out, partly to collect your thoughts, and partly because you've been inhaling too much of his heady cologne and it’s making you think about—

Things. 

It's making you think about things. That you should have no business thinking about. Because you and his best friend have been going on dates. The same best friend who is currently, as you speak, on a date with someone else. Alluding to the reason why you have called up Park Jimin to see you in a confused panic, after ten, at night, at your place.

"Taehyung – he, um. He didn't see us going anywhere. We'd been on nine dates, but… He said he didn't think I was actually as into him as he is into me. He didn't want to go on like that." 

Jimin’s lips part. His brows hike up. You shrug, forcing your gaze away from the gloss on his lips.

“It’s been that way for a while. We were barely even texting. I think he has concluded that I don’t like him like that.”

Jimin rests his forearm on the steering wheel, almost leaning over the center console to catch your gaze. "Do you?"

His eyes pull you in like always and you're lost, just staring into their depths, as your mind ceases to think up thoughts that don't involve you and him naked and tangled up with each other in—

"Sweetheart?"

Your intake of breath is sharp, short and cold. Your insides are just as warm, turning everything in your head into incomprehensible mush. "Y–y–yeah?"

"Are you into Taehyung the way he is into you?" he whispers, and you follow the shape of his lips as they move. “Because you must know, he’s liked for a whole semester.”

You lick your lips, mindlessly nod, and then reach out with a finger to trace his cupid's bow. He doesn't pull away, he doesn't even flinch. "What do you think?"

His warm breath washes over your fingertip as you press it against his lower lip. His body jolts when your nail rims the plush cushion. "I… think he's my bestest friend in the world and he's basically in love with you…"

You shake your head, and your other hand travels past the console to grip his thigh. Your nails dig in. His breath catches. "He's on a date with someone else, as we're speaking."

"I just—he was so into you, I thought you'd be good for each other." 

Past the cloud of, well, something incomprehensible, there is disappointment in Jimin's gaze. And that is how you know he means it. You shouldn't be surprised, really, because Park Jimin always means everything he does, he doesn't have a single conniving bone in his body, but you still are. Part of you has hoped against hope that he set you up with Taehyung to get closer to you, himself. Which – sounds like a really flawed plan and doesn't really make much sense, now that you think about it.

But you still hoped.

Now—

Now, though. Now you know otherwise.

"How can I be good for someone else when I have never even been good for me?" you don't know why you confessed to that, but the words just tumble out of you and you let them. "I'm a mess, Jimin," you whisper, accentuating your point by massaging his lower lip by your index finger. "I destroy people, and I nearly destroy myself in the process. I am an emotional and psychological train wreck. He's better off without me. Anybody would be better off without me."

Jimin grips your hand on his thigh with his own. “Not anybody,” he murmurs, and through his furrowed brows and muddled eyes, you catch an emotion you have been well acquainted with for years, now.

Longing.

Your heartbeat picks up as Jimin massages small circles on the back of your hand. You remove your other hand from his face.

“Yes, Jimin, anybody,” you say with conviction, even as you desperately hope for him to offer himself up as an alternative. “Everything is a wreck inside of my head. I can’t do relationships, I can’t even date someone without messing up.”

His pupils expand and his tongue flicks at his lower lip. His hand tightens in a grip on your other hand. His gorgeously bleached hair curl over the side of his head. "You don’t have to date, then.”

You scoff. “Taehyung would never go for—”

“I’m not talking about Taehyung,” Jimin’s voice comes out three octaves lower. “And you’re not talking about just anybody.”

You nearly stop breathing as he brings his free hand to your face, pushes a tendril of your hair behind your ear and traces a knuckle down the side of your face, your jaw, to hold your chin.

“You say you’re not good for you. Can you try to be good for me, then?" He pulls your face closer to his. “Would you let me save you from destroying yourself? Let me try to take care of the wreckage, hmm?”

Your body spasms when he reaches for the hand you’d retracted, pecks your finger before pulling it into his mouth. His tongue swirls, his teeth scrape and his eyes roll back as he sucks. He lets go with a pop. 

Boy, would you let him take care of whatever he wants.

"Can you, sweetheart? Can you be good for me?" He sounds like he’s at the brink of something, just teetering on the edge, waiting for you to flick a finger before he free-falls.

Well. You’ve been teetering for years now.

"I want to be.” You don’t sound like yourself when you speak.

And you don't sound like yourself when he pulls you on top of him. You don’t sound like yourself when your back hits the wheel, your thighs cage his, your hands instinctively twirl in his hair, and –

Your core presses up against his length. 

He's hard and straining against his tighter than sin jeans. You claw at his t-shirt. He takes it off in a swift, smooth motion — agile and rhythmic in everything he does.

You don’t feel like yourself when your eyes feast him. Because how could you ever get this lucky? How could you ever get to feel Park Jimin’s shirtless self beneath you? You had long since succumbed to your destiny of perishing in pining.

And yet, here you are.

You lean back to marvel at his toned, chiseled angles, you let your fingers smooth over every groove and crevice and line of sinew muscle you can reach. You trace his tight abdomen, nails scraping at the last of his eight-pack before veering towards his toned v-line. You shiver at the dark promises it leads to, looking up to meet his eye. And you shiver more when his feral gaze catches you.

Then he pulls you into a kiss and you're lost.

He tastes like stale coffee and breath mints and bad decisions –

He tastes delicious.

His tongue plunders your mouth, teeth bite into your lips—he pulls, pushes, drinks up, feasts. You throw your all into the kiss, meeting him in the middle with your tongue swirling with his, teeth latching on to suck at it. He groans into your mouth – all loud, and guttural and manly. And then he stops. Pulls away.

His wholly black eyes dig into yours. His lips are wet, swollen and bitten. You did that.

"You have to at least talk to him—"

"I have another important business to tend to, currently."

You grind against him and make your point. He bites down on his lip. His arms snake around your waist to cage you against him, he pulls you down on him. 

You don't recognize yourself when you moan.

Your shirt is off, your shorts are pulled down and your panties are pushed to a side—

"You can never tell him." Park Jimin glides two fingers over your wetness, making a bigger mess of you. "Never."

You don't intend to, because what you do with Park Jimin in your apartment's parking lot at eleven pm on a Saturday night is nobody's business but yours. 

His fingers part your entrance and slide in you abruptly, and you see stars. Your head tilts back on a long, drawn out moan, Jimin’s fingers picking up pace inside you. You rock on his hand, you claw at his arm, you desperately latch onto his shoulders and rest your forehead against his to ground yourself. He watches you with his half shuttered eyes threatening to eat you up whole. 

His lips press into yours, tongue swiping through your mouth, curling up behind your teeth – it's messy, it's sloppy, it's the most arousing kiss of your life.

His lips drag down the column of your neck, tongue licking at the sweat droplets quickly gathering above your collarbones, his fingers curl inside you, his teeth latch onto your shoulder.

You explode under his thumb's press against your clit and sob into his neck when he drags its nail over the sensitive bud. “Jimin, Jimin, too much~ ah!”

He presses some buttons in his fancy car and his seat inclines. He pulls you to the backseat with him. “You okay?” he breathes on your face, hovering inches above you.

“Never been better,” you truthfully breathe back, heart coiling in your chest at the radiant grin he rewards you with in response.

A blast of hot air hits your forehead, your thighs and your shins. You jump, realizing he has turned some sort of hot air blower on. “For privacy,” he says, gesturing to the rapidly fogging windows, and then flicks a switch to make the air stop.

You both gaze at each other. Your eyes flicker all over his face to save every last bit of it to memory. You self-consciously swallow when you see him do the same. “Jimin…”

He leans down to sponge a kiss to your sternum, and then your hips buck into his as his tongue licks a path on the wells of your breasts peeking above your bra. A breathless moan leaves you when he scrapes his teeth over your cloth covered nipple.

You both pause for a moment, wide eyes locking in surprise.

And then you’re ravenous.

He strips you bare when you tug at his belt, and you rush to return the favor. You struggle with getting his boxers past his plump ass as he grips onto your flesh, peppering bites down your hips, squeezes your boobs, licks at your nipples—

You grip him, warm and heavy, and glide your thumb over the leaking tip. His head falls into your nape, fingers digging into the flesh of your ass. “Jimin, ple~ase,” you moan.

He plucks out a golden foil from his wallet, meeting your eyes as he tears the packet and rolls the condom onto himself. 

Your hands are pinned next to your head in a flash, his tongue teases your pulse point, teeth toy with your earlobe, and you writhe in want under him, eyes watering at the sweet torture.

And then he fills you up with a single thrust.

You freeze on a gasp.

His hair hangs over his eyes, irises lost to the lust storming in his pupils, his mouth gapes open, his chest is heaving.

“You good?” His voice is deeper than the ocean.

You've never been more turned on in your life.

He hisses at your frantic nod. “Words.”

“Yes. Yes, oh my God, Jimin, move—”

He thrusts into you at an unforgiving pace. Your whole world literally tilts off its axis as he meets that spot inside of you, and your body wrings beneath him, twisting up to hold onto some buoy to ground you, but he is unrelenting even as you grip at his neck — his teeth encase his lower lip, brows furrow and eyelids flutter as he drives deep into you.

You groan at the sight, moving your hips to meet him. You rock with him, never catching your breath, and your nails just dig dig dig into his meaty back, drawing patterns all over the smooth, delicious surface.

Your release closes in on you, and you chase it with your mouth clamping onto Jimin’s neck, your eyes screwed shut as you groan into his skin, until—

He draws back, standing on his knees above you like goddamn Adonis in this goddamn huge SUV of his, and the sight of sweat droplets trailing down his neck, framing his pecs and racing down his tight abs has your whine of protest dying in your throat as you gawk. His lips are parted as he breathes, a couple of sweat soaked hair strands sticking to his brow, and his eyes — 

Oh God, his eyes have an animalistic gleam in them as he hooks his arms beneath your knees, and drags your hips to him.

You cry out when he enters you at this angle, every thrust pushing at what feels like your cervix, and the pleasure is so blinding it's almost painful. One of his hands maneuvers to your center, a finger rubbing at your clit, and you yelp out a distorted version of his name, completely unwarned when waves over waves of hot, sweet, toe curling climax crash into you.

Jimin chases you into completion, his broken moan of your name filtering to you through the post-orgasmic buzzing in your head. His lips connect with yours as he relaxes your legs. You both pant into each other's mouth after two, lethargic, sticky kisses.

Your sweaty bodies make a disgusting sound when you detach, and both of you scowl together, laughing when you catch each other’s expressions. You sit up on jelly legs, barely able to sit on your ass when your sensitive center protests. 

You both dress up in silence, although you don’t feel it to be awkward in the least.

You’re still mulling over how to frame in words what you have felt for him for nearly three years, how to tell him and even what to tell him when you’re such a relationship-phobe, when Jimin releases a long sigh.

You look up in surprise. That was not a contented sound. It was one of… was it defeat?

Jimin looks at you with a serious face.

Your heart plummets.

One of the many things that make up Park Jimin is also his brutal morality. And right now, you can see it in his face that he thinks he’s done something wrong. Your shoulders hunch up in subconscious defense — you will not say a word, you decide.

“Taehyung is my best friend in this entire world,” he begins, stomping firmly on any remaining embers of hope left in your chest. “He can never, ever, ever know this happened, okay?”

You give a numb nod.

“I’m sure he’ll come back around and try to talk to you again. If that happens, don’t feel like you owe me anything, okay?”

You look up to find Jimin’s eyes searching your face. He looks so soft and grave and sad, that it hurts to look at him. You look down and nod again.

“I — I feel like you two will happen, you know, when the time is finally right.” His words sound stiff. Practiced, even. “Don’t let this come in the way of that.”

Even though you decided you wouldn’t say anything, your mouth is nearly bubbling with too much to say, at this point. You take a deep breath. “And what if he doesn’t come back. What then, Jimin?”

Jimin looks at you with wide, clueless eyes. “He…will. At some point.”

“And what about until he comes back? Am I expected to wait around?”

Something crumples in his expressions. “No, of course not. You can do whatever you want. Even after he comes back, you don’t owe anybody anything.”

“Whatever I want, you say?” you ask him quietly, your heart thudding in your throat.

Jimin swallows, obviously catching on. “I mean…I guess?”

“You guess?”

He licks his lips and his gaze zeroes in on yours. “Whatever you want, yes. Certainly.”

“Great.” You take his acquiescence for what it is, and grab his wrist. “Okay, then. Until he comes back, right?”

Jimin nods, haltingly, gaze switching between your hand and your eyes. “Right.”

You feign a smile you don’t actually feel because something about this doesn’t sit right with you. This boy, you realize, deserves a lot more than being someone’s dirty little secret. He is Park Jimin, after all, a guy that is so many things that you could never run out of listing them and— 

Park Jimin is a gorgeous celestial metaphor in himself.

Because he may look at the universe with galaxies in his eyes, but he is your only galaxy, and all your stars shine at you through him when he smiles. 

Park Jimin is many things — but he is not the guy you want to just casually fuck.

But your pathetic self would take anything he would allow.

And so you pull his hand and stumble out of his SUV, sharing shy glances with him as you pull him with you up the stairs, all the way to your dorms.

Park Jimin is many things—

To you.

nugatory (adj.) – worth nothing or of little value.

[aziraphales-library]

Hello! I am new to the fandom and I was wondering if you could recommend me anything to start with, specially if there is some pining there

Hi, welcome to the fandom! Here are some of my personal favourites - with lots of pining, of course - to get you started!

An Angel who did not so much Fall In Love as Settle Into It Gradually by TheLadyZephyr (G) Crowley was standing in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets, looking a little lost. Aziraphale eyed the distance between them. Five steps. Five steps, and six thousand years, and a battlefield spanning an eternity. The story of the little moments over the millennia that shape an angel’s regard for a demon, and the way he slowly, with great reluctance but inevitable surety, falls in love.

you play with my feelings (right from the start) by PenroseSun (G)

There were three things of which Crowley was absolutely certain: 1. Aziraphale, being an angel, was required to be kind and loving towards all things, even when those things were flawed or sinful or fallen. 2. Notwithstanding that obligatory kindness, Aziraphale would never, and could never truly love a demon, in any meaningful sense. 3. Despite this, Crowley was desperately, hopelessly, in love with him.

Let Sleeping Snakes Lie by Blue_Sparkle (G)

Aziraphale confesses his love for Crowley when he can contain it no longer. Oh, not to the demon himself of course. To a sleeping snake.

Just This Once by Arinia (T)

An idea came, slowly at first, before filling up his heart, setting every nerve alight. It might be another decade, another century even, before he saw Crowley again. No one had come to rescue him from Above. No one had chastised Crowley for wasting a miracle from Below. Perhaps, just this once... The streets of Paris are soaked with blood, and Aziraphale realizes just how much he owes Crowley for saving his life.

What They Say About Assumptions by DragonGirl (T) While it’s true that God bestowed upon the angels the divine power to sense love of all kinds, that does not mean they were given the ability to sense exactly who or what that love is directed at. A minor design flaw that hasn’t been much of an issue. Until now. Or: Aziraphale has known that Crowley loved someone since the beginning. He’s also spent most of that time believing that someone was a demon.

i've found a way (a way to make you smile) by curtaincall (T) Crowley worked in Sales. He had never intended to work in Sales. It had just sort of happened. One moment, there he’d been, a newly minted university graduate off to change the world, exquisitely useless Philosophy degree in hand, and now here he was, having sauntered vaguely downwards into a Hell that consisted mainly of cold-calling new customers and sucking up to existing ones. AU based on The Office.

Pray For Us, Icarus by Atalan (G and T) For three centuries, Crowley has been reincarnated over and over as a human with no memory of his past. Aziraphale has tried to find a way to restore him to his true self, but all he seems to do is hurt them both. This time, he only means to steal a brief moment when he walks into Crowley's flower shop. But Crowley can't let it go...

Divine Intervention (aka God Ships It) by TheLadyZephyr (G) There’s a battle strategy devised by humans many millennia ago that's designed to overcome an adversary who is particularly well entrenched. Some walls are too tall and thick for a frontal assault, and must instead be bested through sheer dogged stubbornness. Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t know it, but they were about to be put under siege. Fed up with an angel and a demon who are still avoiding any talk of Feelings, God starts to interfere. When it comes to the ineffable plan, sometimes things need a bit of a push.

We also have a collection of personal mod recs you can find here

These are only a handful of the wonderful fics from the astoundingly brilliant writers in this fandom, so do follow this page for more great recs regularly! 

~ Mod B

[blazedgraysons]

pov

Insecurities suck, but that doesn’t stop Grayson from loving you.

A/N: so this definitely is not a comfort fic I wrote because I've been feeling insecure. anyways, i'm manifesting a person for every single one of you who will love you in all of your pretty and ugly too. 🕯

Word Count: 1.2k

Warnings: unedited writing and an overwhelming amount of fluff. also, let’s pretend G still has his projector if he doesn't. 

It wasn't hard to notice the change in your attitude. You were quieter, smile not completely reaching your eyes. You were spending more time on Instagram, scrolling through countless 'models' and influencers' pages. You were working out more, eating less, wearing an unusual amount of makeup for your day-to-day routine. It was starting to worry Grayson.

"Are you filming me right now?" He nods his head, bulky Canon in hand as he follows you around. You pause, covering your face and ducking behind the cabinet.

"What are you doing, Angel? You look fine." He moves to shut the cabinet, but you stay still, iron grip holding it in place.

"Can you at least wait until I get ready before you start shoving a camera in my face?" Your tone is snarky, biting, and unfamiliar to the naturally loving voice you speak to Grayson with.

"C'mon Angel. The fans want to see your pretty face." You snort at that, dry laughter coming out as you look at him. "What's so funny about that?"

"Just the fact you think I'm pretty right now." You gesture to yourself, and Grayson takes a moment to seriously look at you, unable to pick out anything different than how you usually look.  

"What -- What are you talking about?" He's walking on eggshells, scared that the wrong thing might tip you over and upset you even further.

"I'm stress-breaking out from tests, I don't think I've washed my hair in two weeks, and I'm pretty sure I'm still putting on quarantine weight." His heart breaks hearing you criticize yourself, listening to you list off these practically unnoticeable flaws about yourself. Call it rose-colored glasses or being hopelessly devoted to you, but he could never see anything imperfect about you. While you could've stood there all day, listing the things you hated about yourself, he could've stood there twice as long, listing the things he loved.

"Angel, those things don't matter. You're still perfect, flawless actually." You laugh again.

"Wish I could see me the way you see me then."

You should've known Grayson wasn't going to drop it.

What you thought was just a minor outburst, a culmination of stress and emotions building upon you was something that stuck to Grayson for the rest of the week. He doesn't say it in so many words. Still, He tries to show it in his actions: leaving you little notes with your morning coffee, telling you how pretty you are when you first get up, affectionate touches when you're getting ready or going to sleep.

You don't put two and two together, just believing his new outburst of affection for you was just a random habit that started. You finally understand one evening, walking into an empty house.

"Amour?" You turn on the lights, noticing a picture next to the space you usually leave your bag and shoes. You pick it up, seeing it's a picture from your two's first date. Grayson had taken it of you, claiming he wanted to document the moment he knew you were his future wife. You were smiling, holding an ice-cream while trying to cover your face from the sun. You flip it over, confused when the only words on the back were 'your smile'.

You set your stuff down, taking a few steps when you almost slip on another picture. Flipping on the light to the living room, you see it's another picture of yourself, one you didn't know existed. It's from a random vacation the two of you had taken, you just waking up in a hotel bed. Your hair is sprawled out, slightly tangled from a wild night's sleep. You flip over the pic, noticing another message of just 'your hair when you first wake up.'

You look down, noticing a trail of pictures. Each one of you. Some are screenshots from vlogs, others are photos that you forced Grayson to take for your Instagram, most are candids that you didn't know existed. Each had a message on the back, listing moments from the photo taken or a physical attribute—all something that Grayson loved about you.

You move to the next photo, quickly shuffling it to the bottom of the stack to hide. It was a photo Grayson took of you before a month-long trip to Australia, claiming he needed something to get through his "lonelier" nights. It was you naked, still hazy from your orgasm. You're laid out on his bed, one arm lazily covering your eyes. It was always Grayson's favorite picture of you, and seeing it in this context, you understood why. You flip back, seeing a scrawl of 'your body' with a rushed drawing of a women's figure next to it.

You continue down the hallway, picking up every picture, and reading the notes that accompanied, melting as he continued to list things he loved about you, qualities you had never thought about before. Finally, you reach your bedroom door, pausing to see the photo taped to the door. It's you, holding flowers out to him. You smile at the memory of that day, remembering how you claimed it's criminal that no girl had ever bought him flowers before. You picked out a bouquet from the park, grabbing sunflowers and daisies on your walk before handing it to him at the end of the date. It was free and definitely ugly, but he still kept it, placing the flowers in a vase in the kitchen and would not let anyone say anything about it. Turning back the picture, you see a tiny daisy taped to the back.

You open the door, expecting to see Grayson waiting for you. Instead, his projector is on. Flashing through more and more pictures. Most are of you; some are of the both of you, smiling and just looking so in love with one another.

"Hey, Angel." You jump, growing used to the silence and not expecting the sudden arrival of your boyfriend. He's holding his board, clearly just having come back from skating. "Didn't think you were coming back 'til later."

"Amour. What is--" You gesture around yourself, dropping some of the pictures you're holding. "What is all this."

"You said you wanted to see me how I saw you. So, I showed you."

He moves over to you, holding you in front of him as you both watch the pictures continue to flash on the screen.

"I know you don't believe me sometimes, but I honestly think you're perfect. I don't see anything wrong with, never did, never will. Instead, I see a strong, smart, stunning woman who lightens up every room she walks into. Who isn't afraid to remind me when I'm a dick and who's always the prettiest girl when she's in a room, by far. One who loves others even if they're not always deserving. And fuck whoever makes you think you're not any of those things. You have about a hundred pictures that show otherwise."  You couldn't have stopped the tears that were streaming down your face, even if you wanted to.

"Fuck, I love you. Thank you, amour. For this and just for being you."

He kisses you softly, holding you tighter and refusing to let go.

You hope he never did.

[sleepless-in-starbucks]

Hi could you talk more about why youd recommend not watching ww84?

Sure!

warnings for under the cut: spoilers for WW84 and a bit of the first wonder woman; i only saw WW84 once a few days ago + it’s been a hot sec since i saw the original so if i get a few details wrong i apologize

tl;dr with no spoilers: WW84 is a poorly executed movie that insults its viewer with its messy and self-proud plot, bad character/relationship portrayals, and offers a personal slap in the face to a majority of its audience in their various discriminations, generalizations, and plot points.

the first point is the racism, made well by the post i reblogged here, (edit: found a second post that goes more in depth here) so i’d just suggest looking at that for that matter

next is just How they portray wonder woman in this one

i really appreciated the way the first movie portrayed diana because they did very well in keeping true to her Amazonian raising and life while still clearly showing she was a woman

when i say this i mean that a lot of media has a tendency to either make women who are very fem and keep to traditional gender roles or women who more or less shun femininity and attempt to largely fulfill only male gender roles

diana in the original is a warrior, strong and fierce, but still a woman, not trying to shun that or anything. she wears styles that suit her while still being woman’s styles (she doesn’t force her way into a suit), she talks of and addresses her womanhood proudly and without issue, etc

i want to note here i have no issue with female characters who act extremely masc and reject femininity- i love them tbh- but it’s important to remember that it’s not inherently against womanhood or anything to be a strong fighter who doesn’t stick to every stereotypical social gender norm

and the first wonder woman movie shows this very well

WW84... oh boy

first of all, wonder woman’s changing outfits every other scene. even between scenes where it makes no sense! i’m not saying she can only wear one set of clothes but Geez this was too much

not to mention an entire scene dedicated to her helping steve pick a fashion look? i understand this was to highlight the ‘80-ness of the movie, and it would’ve been fine if it seemed diana was helping him pick a period appropriate look, but it was clear she was trying to help him pick a ‘fashionable’ look which. wonder woman? from the island without a sense of popular outfits or fashion? what?

and the amount of focus on her wearing high heels.... ugh

i’m not saying you can’t have a badass woman who also likes social gender norm fem things but it felt clear that wasn’t what they were going for

wonder woman in the first movie liked practical fashion and not only were many of her outfits not that, her high heels? one hundred percent not practical

it didn’t fit her character and felt horribly out of place, clearly just the producers / directors / whoever going ‘oh, wonder woman is a woman how can we show this? fashion! high heels!’ and i hated it

(warning: imma be jumping from thought to thought as they bump into each so uh... enjoy the train-of-thought style of flaw informing)

and starting at the beginning like.... wow that scene had no purpose

wonder woman cheats in a competition and is punished for this by losing it in the end. except. this is stupid for two reasons

as the audience is shown she didn’t cheat on purpose. she made a mistake, lost her horse, and made a strategy to get back into the race despite this. honestly? i thought the story was going to be a lesson in ingenuity in the worst looking situations. but it wasn’t, which is bad storytelling, because the lesson is then based on a point that isn’t even that true

it is literally Never important again later. unless you count what was going on with the wishstone as ‘cheating to victory’ which i dont. that’s not even what the villain did. he wanted to take over the world. there’s no victory there you get without cheating. wtf. why did that message even happen

going into the actual story we meet the cheetah pretty quick, when she’s still whatever-her-civilian-name-is

and the cheetah... she’s such a bad villain

she doesn’t have the same backstory as she does in the comics

in this one, she uses the wishstone- which is a whole ‘nother thing in and of itself- to wish to be like diana, because ig being smart as hell but social awkward as hell too is so bad you need to desperately wish to be someone else? i hate that trope, but onwards-

she gets that, but in exchange for not only diana’s likable personality she also gets her wonder woman powers (and she loses her glasses, because pretty and cool means no glasses, right? /s), she loses her kindness bc of the rules of the wishstone- in exchange for your wish, it takes smth u care about a lot from you; for her, it was her kindness

this makes her villain! just because she lost her kindness. yep. honestly not a good look regarding all those people out there who are low/no empathy and can still be wonderful nice people but i digress

at one point she complains about why she needs to keep her power rather than go back to being just Her and i fucking wanted to scream

she has like. half a dozen degrees, clearly a couple of friends even if she’s awkward, and she’s got a life that was perfectly okay before she made the wish. as someone who is also socially awkward as hell, it infuriated me to here her acting like it was the fucking end of the world she couldn’t be more extroverted or whatever. there are ways to work on that!!! the movie trying to convince the audience she had a legit reason to not un-wish her wish (for the good of the entire world) was stupid and insulting

also her transformation between ‘looks human, wearing cheetah-pattern clothing‘ to ‘humanoid with cheetah fur/skin/appearance’ literally just. happened. for no reason. that was stupid

y’know what else is stupid? the wishstone. it was clearly just a plot device, and a poorly executed one at that. it isn’t even consistent in how it works

and they did a whole side thing with like. how it had the language of the gods written on part of it and it appeared in random locations across history around the time of great tragedies and,,, that was it???

they never explored the divine connection??? who planted it or why??? how it location traveled or anything????

like i said. poor plot device

i move on now to steve

oh boy steve

he’s brought back to life by diana’s wish on the wishstone, but... it causes him to come back in someone else’s body, quantum leap style. this is. weird. and is never ever addressed by him or wonder woman except once in a throw away comment. like. diana and steve kiss and are implied to have sex while steve is in someone else’s body and neither of them seem to care. this is not good!!

and then his relationship with diana? HORRIBLE

in the first movie they were barely starting to fall in love, only barely a couple even if that. more importantly they were friends, and that night he died diana didn’t lose a potential lover so much as she lost her first non-Amazonian friend

but WW84 portrays their relationship as if they were not only already a couple, but one close enough that even after forty years since steve’s death diana is still completely and hopelessly in love with him to the point that she’s literally hanging off his arm as soon as he’s back and making love that very night

it plays again once more into the misrepresentation of wonder woman’s character (how stereotypically hollywood female to fall over herself at the sight of her love interest) and it wrecks their relationship, which had been a lovely friends-who-could-be-more

what they should’ve done was focus on that friendship, build it back up after the long gap for wonder woman, and then started to rebuild that possible romance (and tear it down at the perfect moment... right when steve had to go again... ah that would’ve been lovely)

but they wanted to go in full-haul on the romance and it just felt. wrong and weak to me. diana’s refusal to consider giving up her wish (to get her powers back and save the world) is bc she doesn’t want to let steve go again, which makes more sense in the context of a first and true friend rather than a hastily slapped together love interest

steve’s character was generally good tbh but the way he played into the story? bad

moving on... the main villain of the movie? sucks. he’s just. fucking awful

despite a motivation being given that he wants to have money, he launches into wanting to take over the world for no real reason. he takes advantage of people for this and almost destroys the world he wants to rule for it. the main reason he stops this is for his son, who up until now he largely ignored and didn’t seem to care that much for outside of basic obligations. and the movie dares try to make him sympathetic by throwing in the fact he grew up poor and was bullied and not liked which i HATE

lots of people are/have been poor. lots of people are/have been bullied (myself included). that does NOT justify them DESTROYING THE WORLD TRYING TO TAKE IT OVER. can it be used to show the audience why he does what he does? yes. but to use it and clearly try to make it a reason to hand-wave-away what he did? NO. FUCK NO

also fucking. y’know how wonder woman took down this villain? she talked to him and the world. she gave a stirring speech while she laid slumped against a wall, not injured, just too weak to beat a bit of wind. she talked and she looped her lasso around his leg so she could talk to the world to to convince them to give up their wishes

once again... the mischaracterization

in the first movie, wonder woman gives a stirring speech while fighting Areas. it’s done in her battle, beating the god of war up while reminding him of what she stood for, who she was, why she would keep fighting for a broken world

it was BEAUTIFUL. it was MEANINGFUL. it was BADASS but SINCERE

this was weak. and it clearly wanted to be more than it was

the whole movie wants to be more than it is- it wants to have an important meaningful message like the first movie, about wishes for the self and war and the world and whatever. and it wants it so badly it does it horribly

the message is ham-handed yet messy and unclear and not right. it doesn’t make sense, and it feels poorly plotted. the movie thinks it’s more than it is and that makes it very hard to watch

and to finish my rant off... WW84 lied to its audience

did you see any ads for WW84? i did. they were bright, vibrant, funky music, stunning moments, action and intrigue. i was thrilled for a movie like it

the actual movie isn’t that

it’s not nearly as action filled, it’s not as ‘80s-focused as it leads you to believe, some of the most prominently featured moments barely matter

the lightning swing? pointless, as at that point in the movie wonder woman’s learned how to fly and does it for no reason but the trailers

and that cool suit? introduced in a random myth for no reason halfway through the movie, brought in at random with no explanation, only there for show and the trailers

WW84 is not the movie is lead people to believe it was, and the movie it is is poorly executed and insulting to a variety of peopler/minorities

if you’re gonna watch it, pirate it. i can give you a link. just don’t give dc your money or your legit views for it

[broadwaycutie16]

Earlier today, I watched a video by TheTake on YouTube, exploring and deconstructing the “Nice Guy” trope in popular media.

Basically, the trope explained the Nice Guy trope and how toxic it really is, devaluing the girl’s feelings in a relationship and promoting male entitlement. Now, I’ve heard many people in this fandom complain that Adrien Agreste is the embodiment of this trope. The underdog sweet boy, pining after a girl who has rejected his feelings multiple times, persisting in his romantic advances towards her despite her making her disinterest clear.

While I must admit that Adrien does check many of the boxes for the standard Nice Guy, I quickly remembered who else in the show, besides him, checks out many of the same boxes, and perhaps a few more than him. Someone who exhibits many of the same behaviors of the Nice Guy, but whose less-than-healthy attitude of love is often overlooked and/or pardoned by most of the fandom, while they bash Adrien for similar behaviors.

Can you guess who it is?

It’s Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

I know what you’re thinking. How dare I accuse Marinette of such a toxic mindset! She’s the hero of our story! She fights off the bitches that are bad for Adrien and yet he doesn’t even give her the love she deserves! Adrien is the one who should consider himself lucky that she adores him! Hashtag Marinette Deserves Better!

But you see that right there? That, my friends, is what makes Marinette Dupain-Cheng, in my opinion, more of a Nice Guy than Adrien Agreste.

The whole purpose of the Nice Guy trope is to make us root for the underdog. Because who doesn’t love a good story where the loser that everyone expected to fail spectacularly ends up winning it all in magnificent fashion? Almost every movie has it’s underdog. With sports movies, it’s the unathletic wimp with a skinny, small, and/or weak body. In high school movies, it’s the outcast weird kid who’s been ostracized by the popular crowd for their unusual interests and/or attitude. In romantic comedies, the underdog is the hopelessly romantic Nice Guy who adores the girl and worships her like a goddess, as opposed to the cooler, more aloof, more sociotially successful man who takes her for granted. And since the cardinal rule of feel-good films is that underdog must end up getting what he’s been wanting throughout the whole movie, the movie then directs the story narrative to favor the Nice Guy’s desires, manipulating the audience to cheer him on and, in the process, blatantly dismiss all his unhealthy behaviors and obsessive traits, like stalking the object of his affections or trying to edge out any competition he has.

Sound familiar? That’s because that’s exactly what many Marinette stans who are also Adrien haters do.

I’m not saying Marinette is a bad person, but as far as Nice Guys go, she has shown us many red flags. She often stalks Adrien, trying to sneak into parties she has not been invited to just to see him, or following him to his house when he goes to study with one of her enemies. She often tries to keep away any girls she sees as competition for Adrien. With Chloé and Lila, it’s semi-justifies, because they can be total bitches. But not Kagami.

Is Kagami kind of cold? Yes. Can she be competitive? Absolutely. But she is not evil. Many Adrienette shippers often hate on Kagami, saying she is a stone cold bitch who will stop at nothing to “steal” Adrien away from Marinette. They misinterpret what she whispered in Marinette’s ear during Frozer. Kagami said, “The reason you cannot stand on your feet is your hesitation. I never hesistate.” Adrienette shippers translate this to, “He’s mine, bitch. Back off, or I’ll kill you.” But what she’s ACTUALLY saying is, “I know you like Adrien, but I like him, too, and I’m not gonna just back off out of curtesy while you fumble the ball. So if you want Adrien, you’re going to have to win him from me fair and square. That means you have to suck up whatever insecurities you have and really work to win him over.” She knows Marinette loves Adrien, but Kagami loves him, too. And she’s not just gonna wait around for Marinette to get over her nervousness and ask Adrien out of curtesy. She’s telling Marinette that if she wants Adrien, she needs to get herself together and go after him while he’s still available.

Kagami is not a bad person. She is simply lacking in social experience to properly express her emotions and desires without coming off as an ice queen. And yet, many Adrienette shippers view her through the same toxic lens as many fans of romantic comedies view love rivals of the Nice Guy. If the rival is even the tiniest bit self-serving or emotionally detached, they are automatically dismissed as bad people and therefore, less worthy of the main love interest than the Nice Guy. Thus, viewers are quick to pardon any attempts made by the Nice Guy to sabotage or undermine his rival as a necessary evil, something that must be done so that “true love” can prevail. Like say, I dunno, setting the rival up to be humiliated at a fancy party, despite all that they did to supposedly deserve such treatment was show up to said event, which they were invited to, and act friendly towards the main love interest, because they ARE friends?

If the scenario seems familiar, that’s because that’s exactly what Marinette tried to do to Kagami in Animeastro.

One thing I’ve noticed about this fandom, is that people seem to have a double standard when it comes to Marinette’s negative behaviors vs. Adrien’s. In Glaciator, Adrien seems to accept Ladybug’s rejection, claiming that her friendship was what mattered most, then takes back everything he said in Frozer, acting salty towards Ladybug for her earlier second rejection. After that, the whole fandom was on his case, calling him a jerk and a liar.

Am I happy Adrien went back on his word like that? Of course not. But in that same episode of Frozer, Marinette accepts that she may not be more than Adrien’s friend, and even helps him on his date with Kagami, despite her heartache and despite how everyone thought she was crazy for doing so. Super sweet, right? Except when Animeastro happens, she goes back on her mature acceptance and teams up with her worst enemy, all for the purpose of embarrassing the same girl who she supposedly accepted Adrien might like instead of her. Funnily enough, no one in the fandom seemed to give her any flack for that, despite the fact that it was an exhibitation of the same possessive, hypocrital and selfish behavior that Adrien displayed earlier on, which everyone hated on him for.

Many Marinette fans are projecting the same toxic, biased mindset onto her that fans of romantic comedies project onto the Nice Guy. They excuse any negative behaviors done by the protagonist, insisting that it’s for the greater good, all while hating on the love interest for not immediately falling into their arms. They prioritize the needs and feelings of the Nice Guy/Marinette while completely disregarding those of their love interests.

Marinette stans insist that she deserves Adrien’s love more than anyone else, bashing Adrien for overlooking her in favor of other girls. After all, Marinette has done so much for Adrien, while all Ladybug does is reject him in favor of some other guy, despite how he’s put his heart and life on the line for her. That means he should just cast aside his feelings for Ladybug and settle for Marinette, right? Well, by those standards, shouldn’t Ladybug do the same? After all, Chat Noir has risked his life for her several times and made it clear he adores her, while all Adrien has done is ignore her feelings in favor of other girls, even though she’s been right there the whole time. If Adrien should ignore some of Marinette’s stalker tendacies and easily-jealous nature, shouldn’t Ladybug be able to overlook some of Chat Noir’s less-than-acceptable behaviors?

Marinette fans often share the mindset of Nice Guy stans of romance as a moral issue, harboring the idea that goodness and unwavering affection should automatically earn romantic feelings. They believe that being nice to someone automatically means they owe it to you to love you back. Sadly, life isn’t that clear cut. Love is often given to someone, whether they deserve it or not. It’s both the best and worst part of it. This close-minded, morally black-and-white mindset is given to fans by the Nice Guy, as it’s his expectation that his being kind to the girl and showering her with romance should mean that she should know he is the one for her.

Sadly, this thinking by the Nice Guy is often hypocrital in the movies, because the same Nice Guy is attracted in his crush at least in part to some sort of superficiality (ex. she’s beautiful, popular, dresses well, is the Cool Girl who drinks beer and watches sports while looking hot in a tank top and short shorts). He says she’s superficial for not wanting a dork like him, but it’s not like he’s looking around for some socially-awkward, plain-faced girl on his own level or lower and falling for HER because of HER kind treatment of him and the intensity of HER feelings. Fans get upset when Adrien the teen heartthrob doesn’t give Marinette her due attention, but it’s not like they’re clamoring for her to settle for Nathanael in “Evillistrator” or Nino in “Animan”, even though they had intense feelings for her and were kind to her.

Because of the partial superficiality of the Nice Guy’s attraction to his crush, he has this fantasy built up in his head. He puts her up on this pedestal, much like the pedestal Marinette puts Adrien on. It gets to the point that he’s in love with the IDEA of her, this image of a perfect angel that he’s made her out to be, and not the real her. He refuses to admit that she is flawed, much like how Marinette overlooks Adrien’s doormat attitude and overwillingness to forgive, seeing him instead as the perfect boy who can do no wrong. This is a set up for disappointment later on, as when the love interest does not do what the Nice Guy expects from her, like instantly return his love, the illusion that he has so carefully crafted for his pleasure is shattered, and everything goes downhill.

Many people blame the love interests for not instantly favoring the Nice Guy once he’s shown his romantic dorky side, thinking they should pick up on the feelings right away, like it’s their job to know who they should be with immediately upon meeting them, that it’s their fault they miss the signs. But this misconception shifts blame away from the Nice Guy for not properly acting on his feelings. This is where the Nice Guy becomes his own worst enemy. He automatically convinces himself that he’s below the girl’s standards and gives up before he even tries. He hesitates to act on his feelings, much like Marinette is so certain that Adrien is out of her league that she lets her insecurities get the better of her and avoids confessing to Adrien or even talking to him because she’s sure she’ll mess up before she even tries. Then when the girl doesn’t immediately realize that she is loved, despite getting no clear signs or even the words “I love you”, she is blamed for leading the Guy on, much like how Adrien is blamed for not recognizing the mixed signals from Marinette as affection.

Even after Adrien has told her that he loves another girl, Marinette still decides to keep pursuing him, much like Chat Noir kept pursuing Ladybug even after she told him she loved someone. Yet, while Adrien is bashed for not immediately accepting her choice and working to move on, Marinette is pardoned from not accepting Adrien’s feelings in the matter. Viewers excusing all her Nice Guy traits while prosecuting Adrien for displaying all the same traits is what makes Marinette, in my opinion, more of a Nice Guy than him. Because the Nice Guy is usually the one that shippers root for, despite the warning signs of their behavior and the fact that the love interest has said flat out that they are not into them that way.

Do I think that Marinette is a bad person? No. Do I condone Adrien’s behavior over hers? Absolutely not. But these are fictional characters. We can’t control their flaws or talk some sense into them anymore than we can change the past or rewrite the movies that have sold us this one-sided mindset. I don’t hold their flaws against them and act like their imperfections define their whole character. I focus on the good they do, and if the characters forgive them, I forgive them, because they’re the ones who choose who to forgive, who to love, who to be friends with. So kiss off, Adrien salters. Y’all are a bunch of hypocrites. Peace out.

[dessarious]

Misconceptions, Miscommunication, and Misinformation Pt80

Inspired by @ozmav Maribat AU

AO3   Beginning   Previous   Next

Robin watched everything unfold with a smirk on his face. Superman had been getting worse and worse over the years, believing he was the only one that knew right and wrong. That he was the only one capable of making decisions. Robin had never understood why the rest of them put up with it, especially when they all complained anytime Superman wasn’t there. Well except for Green Lantern. That idiot was the biggest suck up he’d ever seen. Watching Tikki take the Man of Steel down a peg or two was far more gratifying that it should have been.

He did wonder how much of this was for show though. The Kwami were unpredictable at best but he didn’t think Tikki would just create four more people Marinette would have to be responsible for. She was already struggling with having to find a place for herself to live and even knowing she had contracts and money coming her way she was not currently in the best position to buy a place large enough to house this many people. That wasn’t counting food and other ongoing costs. Then again, he’d never really had the impression that any of the Kwami besides Kaalki paid attention to things like money so it was entirely possible Tikki didn’t even realize the burden she’d be placing on Mari.

“I won’t allow you to just unleash these creatures on the world.” Robin could only roll his eyes at Superman’s insistence that he had any say over this situation. Though at least he’d said ‘I’ so the rest of the Justice League could just leave him to his own stupidity. Robin actually took a step back when Tikki’s eyes flashed red.

“You won’t allow it?” The Kwami’s voice was low and dangerous. Almost everyone shuddered at the sound. “I know you’re used to being the most powerful being in the room but we are Gods. Discorde has already proven just how ineffective you and your super powers are. Do not make the mistake of assuming you have any control over us or this situation. My Chosen has given you the courtesy of keeping you informed, do not mistake that for weakness or an invitation to interfere in our affairs.”

Robin would admit he’d never thought much of Superman’s intelligence. When you can literally overpower anyone you don’t necessarily think too hard on how to do it. The Kwami may well have the same limitation overall, but Tikki at least knew her holder wasn’t invulnerable. Marinette had always been forced to out think opponents and he had a feeling a lot of Tikki’s holders had been similar. As such the Kwami knew not to rely on brute force alone. Superman still hadn’t learned that lesson. When he moved it was without warning and straight at Tikki. Robin only had enough time to shake his head at the hubris before everything went to hell.

The Kwami of Anarchy and Darkness stepped forward while Tikki just had a satisfied smile on their face. Tikki and Jett both gestured at the same time and suddenly Superman was in a cage and two black masses attached themselves to his eyes. He stumbled around inside the enclosure trying and failing to break through it before attempting to wipe the darkness from his eyes. Everyone else watched, most with shock and fear, but Wonder Woman just looked resigned at this point. Lyccen stepped up to the cage.

“Did you know the body is simply a system? To be more accurate it’s many systems that work together in perfect harmony. Digg has always been so proud of how orderly and efficiently everything functions. I’ll admit it is quite remarkable. Unfortunately there is one rather large flaw. Introduce one foriegn body that a system can’t handle, or have one of those many systems fail and the entire body has a tendency to collapse into complete chaos. Take the brain for example. All I have to do is disrupt one connection and you lose the ability to move.” Robin watched the Kwami point to the hero's neck and Superman dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“You can’t do this to me! All this does is prove my point that you’re all too dangerous to be left in the hands of children.” Most of the Kwami let out sounds close to growls, and Robin heard Discorde let out a hiss as well, but Lyccen simply gave a thoughtful hum.

“You think so do you? Correct me if I’m wrong but you were the one to attack Tikki unprovoked. You are the one that’s been convincing the rest of this organization to try and meddle in things they otherwise wouldn’t. You’re the one lobbing threats and tantrums in every direction. How exactly are we the problem in this situation? I think you should just admit you feel inadequate since we can destroy you with barely a thought and move on. It will make things easier for everyone.” Superman sputtered out denials and curses, most less than coherent. “Well then, I suppose I could see what I can do to your other systems. Did you know it only takes one tiny change to make your blood see the rest of your body as an enemy that needs to be destroyed? Do you want to know what it feels like to be eaten away from the inside out?”

Everyone looked decidedly uncomfortable but no one spoke up. Whether from fear or something else Robin couldn’t be certain. He was busy studying Lyccen. They didn’t appear to be enjoying this. Honestly all the Kwami looked like this entire situation was just a bother that they couldn’t avoid.

“How dare you threaten me! Reverse this at once.” Lyccen crouched down to frown at the hero in confusion. Robin had to wonder how screwed up Superman’s thought process was that the Kwami of Anarchy couldn't seem to grasp it.

“So sorry, but that’s not my thing. I disrupt order but I can’t restore it. Digg could but given the way you’ve been treating our fellow Kwami I very much doubt you can convince him to help you, isn’t that right?” Digg just grunted from where he stood, hovering protectively around Tikki. “Perhaps if you apologize and promise to leave the Guardian alone we can come to some sort of agreement.”

“That’s coercion, I won’t stand for being manipulated and neither will the rest of the Justice League.” Robin looked around and almost laughed. At this point even Green Lantern seemed to see that this was a lost cause. No one spoke up.

“Hmm, well I guess I can’t help you then. Once Digg’s made up their mind they rarely change it. Guess you’re stuck as you are.” Lyccen didn’t sound smug or happy, they were just stating a fact.

“That’s enough. You can’t reason with someone who won’t be reasoned with but that’s no excuse to descend to their level. Release him and return him to his original state. Now.” Mari’s voice was clear and confident, but Robin could see the way her grip tightened on Discorde and Viperion. He wasn’t sure if she was worried they would ignore her or just wouldn’t be able to do as she said.

“Yes Guardian, we hear and obey.” All five Kwami spoke in sync and suddenly Superman was back in his seat looking extremely confused while almost everyone in the room gaped at the display. Marinette’s look was oddly blank and he had a feeling she hadn’t actually expected that to work.

“Your concerns are noted if unnecessary. If it will make you feel better I will allow Batman and Wonder Woman to check in with me as I see fit to monitor the situation. You have no authority over the Miraculous, nor will you ever, but I’m not so petty as to deny you the reassurance you so obviously need.” Marinette’s voice was just the proper blend of firm, concerned, and innocent that no one could really take offense to it. It took all his self discipline to keep a straight face as Superman just stared at her, looking hopelessly lost and confused.

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[raccoon-wizard]

Proud & Safe

Whoever you are and whoever you love, know that you deserve happiness and safety and love much like the other person does. Love and peace to all human beings <3

Prompt: imagine Loki feeling female one day and shape shifting accordingly. Someone makes a mention of how you, his girlfriend, would react to her "current state", eventually leading her to feel a little insecure about whether or not you'll accept this side of her.

From @imagine-loki :)

DISCLAIMER: I am not genderfluid myself, so it is possible that my depiction is not entirely correct. If you happen to see some inaccuracies, please let me know and I shall correct them.

Characters: Loki, the Avengers, you

Type: Fluff

Warnings: Language and sexual implications.

Notes: I am well aware that Pride Month is almost over, but ours isn’t until August, which I have no idea why. Anyway. Whoever you are and whoever you love, know that you deserve happiness and safety and love much like the other person does. Love and peace to all human beings <3

When Loki woke up that morning, he wasn’t feeling… well, he. That day, Loki’s mind saw the world as a woman. Making sure to make the body’s appearance match the mindset, she shapeshifted accordingly. Looking at her entire figure in the mirror, she realised she didn’t own any women’s clothes, and the men’s ones just didn’t fit her. She rummaged through her closet and found a dress that Y/N must have left behind. She sighed and put it on, noticing that it actually fit her quite well, though it was a little shorter than it was probably meant to be. Smiling to herself, she left the bedroom and headed to the kitchen to make herself her everyday cup of tea.

As she was stirring sugar into her beverage, she heard footsteps near her.

“Damn, did Steve finally get laid?” Tony’s voice asked her. She turned around rapidly, murdering him with her glare. “Holy shit!” he gasped. “Reindeer Games?”

“Good morning to you too, Anthony,” she greeted him, folding her arms on her chest. “You were saying?”

“I… I’m sorry,” he stuttered. “What’s… why are you…”

“I’m a woman today,” she shrugged.

“Oh… okay,” he mumbled and began preparing his own breakfast in silence. “Does Y/N know?” he wondered after a few minutes.

“I haven’t seen her yet,” she explained.

“You sure she won’t freak out?” he raised his eyebrows. “I mean, you haven’t been together that long, but… you know, this is a kind of thing that be… problematic.”

“Is it?” she stopped dead in her tracks. She didn’t even consider that. Among gods, her condition was rare, yes, but accepted as a pretty normal thing. After all, they were ancient magical beings. It never came to her mind that humans could be less accepting.

“Yeah, I mean…” Tony sighed. “It depends on the person really, but there’s many people who struggle because of this kind of thing. Ever heard of the Pride?”

Tony spent the morning explaining human’s relationship with gender and orientation. He showed her many clips of these Pride Parades, which seemed to be celebrating the rarities such as herself. But he also showed her what people did when they disagreed. When they saw differently gendered people as monsters, nature’s flaws, freaks. She nearly broke into tears when she read what some people were capable of. It made her wonder whether Y/N would be understanding enough, the fear eating her alive.

As if on cue, a group walked into the kitchen, consisting of her brother, Captain Rogers, James Barnes, Samuel Wilson, and Y/N. They all went for a run each morning, insisting that a group jog was much more fun than a solo one.

“Good morning, sister!” Thor greeted her before she could do anything. Hide under the table perhaps. The rest of the group froze, Y/N included. She stared at her, her mouth hanging open slightly, the shock in her eyes slowly changing into pure anger. Loki’s throat tightened and she turned away, staring into her cup.

“Why the fork does my dress look so much better on you than it ever has on me?” she asked.

She turned back, tears in her eyes, confused. “What?”

“You look absolutely amazing!” she exclaimed. “That’s my favourite dress, I thought no one could ever wear it better! Rude!”

“Maybe ‘cause his… her legs are kinda longer,” Sam suggested.

“Hey!” Y/N’s head whipped around. “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about, asshole.”

Y/N’s words made Loki’s heart flutter and a smile creep up her face. She watched as Sam tried to defend himself, rambling hopelessly. She caught Y/N’s eye and smiled even wider. Y/N dismissed Sam and walked over to her, grinning.

“So, girlfriend,” Y/N whispered softly. “Were you ever going to tell me about this, or was I supposed to find out like this?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise that you Midgardians don’t… that it’s not considered normal here,” Loki tried to explain herself. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Offend me?” Y/N frowned. “Why should it offend me?”

“I… Stark showed me some… videos of what people sometimes think about… people like me,” she stuttered. “And what they do.”

“Babe,” Y/N sighed and gently cupped Loki’s cheeks. “Yeah, there are people like that. And they suck. But me and the rest of this team, we would never, never, hurt you, do you hear me?” she asked gently, putting a strand of hair behind Loki’s ear. “Not in a million years. You’re safe with us. With me.”

A tear slipped down Loki’s cheek as she blinked. “And it wouldn’t… change what we are?”

“Of course not, darling,” Y/N smiled. “You think I was with you this whole time just for that dick?”

Loki chuckled, blush coming up her cheeks.

“That would be pretty shallow of me, wouldn’t it?” she continued. “I mean, it was a pretty impressive bonus, but…” Loki laughed out loud this time, the rest of the tears falling down. “You know, it wasn’t the point.”

There was now a genuine smile on Loki’s lips.

“That’s much better, isn’t it?” Y/N asked, leaning in to kiss her tenderly, noting how much softer her lips felt now.

The rest of the people were still in the kitchen as well, politely trying to ignore them, but failing for the most part. When the couple noticed their barely masked side glances, Y/N smirked.

“Darling, how about we get out of here and go shopping?” she suggested. “As much as I adore that dress on you, you need your own clothes.”

“That sounds like fun,” Loki nodded. Y/N grinned widely and grabbing Loki’s hand, they ran out of the kitchen towards Y/N’s room. “I need to take a shower first, I stink,” she explained and disappeared into the bathroom. Loki sat on Y/N’s bed and waited, listening to the sound of her singing from the shower and smiling. A massive weight was lifted off of her chest, her heart swelling with relief and happiness.

She looked around the room - she knew it well, she had spent many nights there before, just as many as Y/N had spent in her room, but through woman’s eyes, she saw it differently. She noticed a little desk with a big mirror and make up sprawled all over it.

“Y/N?” she called.

“Yes, babe?” Y/N responded after turning the water off.

“Would you mind if I borrowed your make up?” she asked shyly.

“No, not at all, help yourself,” Y/N said. “I’ll be out in a moment, I just need to dry my hair.”

“Thank you,” Loki smiled to herself and sat down in front of the mirror.

She soon found out that it was much more complicated than she had anticipated. Mascara seemed to want to go everywhere but her eyelashes, the colours didn’t suit her and she nearly stabbed her eye out with eyeliner. And not to mention the disaster that the lipstick caused.

“You’re hopeless, aren’t you?” she heard Y/N’s voice from behind her. Their eyes met in the mirror and she could see how hard she was trying to fight back a smirk.

“I… I’ve never tried using these before, I just thought I’d wing it,” she explained, looking down at her hands with smears of different colours.

“Would be much simpler if it were like that, wouldn’t it,” Y/N chuckled and pulled a chair next to her. “Here, let me,” she mumbled, grabbing a bottle of make up remover and a few cotton balls. She gently rubbed Loki’s failed attempt away before starting over.

“You’re a lot paler than me, that’s why the colours don’t quite fit,” she explained. “It’s not like you really need make up when your skin is that flawless anyway. We can get you your own if you’d like though.”

Loki didn’t say a word, worried that if she moved even in the slightest, she would ruin Y/N’s work. She felt her fingers grazing her skin and different brushes move around and enjoyed the sensations.

“Ta-da!” Y/N grinned. “What do you think?”

Loki opened her eyes and looked at herself in the mirror. It was definitely better than what she had attempted first - the mascara was where it belonged, the eyeliner was perfectly straight and the lipstick that Y/N had chosen fit her much better.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I… I feel beautiful now.”

“You shouldn’t need make up for that, babe, you are gorgeous,” Y/N smiled, lightly pecking her lips, careful not to smear the lipstick. “Like seriously. You’re just… wow. That’s perfection right there.”

“Do you really think so?” Loki wondered.

“Of course, hot stuff,” she insisted. “You have everything a girl could want regarding looks. I’m not sure if I want to bang you or be you.”

Loki blushed for the second time that day. “Sh-shall we go then?” she stuttered.

“Sure,” Y/N nodded.

They went to the mall together, spending the entire day just wandering around, trying on clothes that they deemed nice. Y/N was swooning over Loki the whole time, which made her feel a lot better about the whole situation. The adoration in her eyes was something she was not used to.

They even went to a lingerie store, a place that she had never thought she would visit. They both got a few things for themselves, helping the other one pick the best looking ones.

"By the way," Y/N said from the changing room. "Do you prefer a different name in this form or is calling you Loki still fine?"

"No, Loki is fine," she replied while checking herself in the mirror.

"Great," Y/N grinned. "Didn't wanna be saying a wrong name tonight."

"Heaven's sake, Y/N," Loki rolled her eyes, but there was a playful smile on her lips.

"Oh, that sounds lovely," Y/N continued flirtatiously. "Remember that for me please. I want to put these pretty little things to use as soon as possible if that's okay with you."

"Absolutely, darling," Loki chuckled.

And truthfully, that night, Loki's name echoed from her bedroom walls, along with whispered profanities and Heaven's sake, Y/N.

A few months later, Loki, this time in his male form, took Y/N for a walk around the city. After all, it was a beautiful  day; the sun was shining and there were only a few fluffy white clouds on the gorgeous blue sky. But it confused her significantly, seeing that he hated going out and he didn't really know the city. But whenever she tried to ask about it, he shushed her, smirking mischievously, which only made her curiosity rise.

"Come on, do you really think I'm buying the just a walk bullshit?" she tried again. "I'm not dumb. I mean, I am incredibly dumb, but not like this. What's going on, babe?"

"Well, we're almost there now, so I might as well tell you," he sighed in defeat.

"Almost where?" she frowned.

"Do you remember how Stark showed me what people did to people like me?" he asked.

"Of course I do," she nodded. "Oh! We're going to burn some asshole's house down, aren't we?"

"No, darling, although I would love to do that," he grinned. "No. But I decided that it's absolutely unacceptable. So I decided to help."

"How?" she wondered.

"With Stark's help, I bought a house," he began explaining. "And I turned it into a secret hideaway for those who find themselves in danger because of who they are and who they love. And no asshole can ever find it."

"So… how do the ones in need find it if it's so secret?" she questioned.

"Brilliant question, love," he smiled. "It is protected by magic. Only those who need it can find it. When they get, for example, kicked out of their home because of their identity, they will be drawn to the house without even realising. They will just sort of… wander in. And they will be safe until they are ready to leave. Or they don't have to. They can stay forever."

"But… there's so many queer people who need help, can they fit?"

"That's another great trick," he told her. "Strange helped me with that one. It is always big enough on the inside, no matter how small the outside might seem."

"You built a forkin' TARDIS and you didn't tell me?!" she gasped. "Okay. So it's big enough. But what if there's a gay kid in, like, Nevada? Can they get in too?"

"Absolutely," Loki nodded. "It actually transcends this reality in a way. The entrances are all over this world. I modelled it after Yggdrasil."

"Oh my God," she choked out. "You… you just singlehandedly saved the world."

"I wouldn't exactly use that phrase-"

"No, you did!" she insisted, throwing herself at him and squeezing him in a hug. "You took one of the biggest struggles of modern humanity and solved it just like that. You're the best person to ever walk the Earth and you're not even from the Earth."

"You haven't even seen the house yet, love," he laughed, kissing the top of her head. "Come on, we're almost there."

He led her through the suburbs of New York, full of rich people's homes. At the end of one street, she spotted a building that wouldn't be much different from the rest, save it for the gigantic rainbow flag hanging from the balcony.

"Are you sure The Straights will completely miss this place?" she asked. "This is pretty obvious to me."

"Don't worry, only those who are meant to see it will," he explained. "Every possible threat has been accounted for. This is the safest place on Earth."

[shoesandtoes]

On.. Solo Traveling

Hello. This is my first blogging since forever. Lately, I have too many things to do, too much time to spend for nothing, and countless unplanned plans.

This time I would like to share my thoughts about solo travel because the topic has been hovering around my drenched head like Tse Tse flies at the dessert. I once wrote about the topic years ago, but it was more like a travel note/documentary in another blog, which is now set as private.

Well, I’m a newbie in the solo travel thing and honestly, I sometimes feel embarrassed to think how foolish I was when I was a bit younger to do solo travel. Where the hell did the gut come from? I recall the time when I enjoyed myself while everyone else had fun with their friends or family. I might look pathetically lonely. However, I hopelessly needed some getaway from everyday business and I had no friends – so it did happen.

Truth be told, I needed some approval from others. My job sucked at the time, I felt like a douchebag and useless for doing thing I thought pretty superficial, everybody seemed like putting all blames on me whenever things went wrong. In short, I was a mess. I missed the time like when I was a college girl: trying to act smartly, the prestige of being a campus journalist, and managing to get sensible GPA. In short, I was haunted by an illusion that I am really someone. Turns out, I’ve been hallucinating and schizophrenic, showing off here and there but actually the here-and-there was merely in a tiny place right in the corner of my brain. Well, why did I need approval? Did I need or want?

Okay, I gave up. I wanted the approval. See? I was just practically a selfish single creature who wants the whole world to see that I can do everything on my own. Who the heck did I think I was? A goddess? Wonder bloody woman?

Recently, I watched a YouTube video entitled The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton from The School of Life. In the last minutes of the video, he talks about traveling alone. Starting from a late night motorist café, where some people stay up late on their own, having conversation with no one but themselves and the barista (to order some drink), he says on the video that it’s such a pleasure to be alone without being lonely. I agree that one of the most torturing moments of traveling alone is feeling that I’m the loneliest person on the planet while everyone else have a vacation with their loved ones.

But it can be a relief that I’m “a stranger among strangers.” I can relate what De Botton says, that being out of our habitat where no one knows us is somewhat relaxing. I forget what the reason he proposes, because I have my own opinion. I have flaws here and there, and I’m kind of an awkward person, I don’t know how to start a conversation, and I suck at almost everything. But being in a completely different atmosphere, I can be whatever I want. Well, I’m still that insignificant little person. But at least, I don’t have to get insomniac because of what other think or say, since I’m sure that the chance of us crossing path for more or recognizing each other when we accidentally meet in different occasion in the future is nearly zero. That kind of thing – being indifferent about other people’s judgment – is something that I can’t do when it comes to people I meet and see every day. I may think or get insulted when some strangers says bitter things to me, but it may last for only a second, because I am sure that we won’t meet again. The otherwise won’t happen if I encounter familiar faces.      

To conclude, I have no plan to travel, especially solo-travel for the time being. Now I’m trying to be more sensible and less impulsive in everything I do. I’m a thirty-something now, for God’s sake. I need to look through what really matters and profitable for me. I don’t loathe solo-travel, but if I have to do it later in my life, I’ve got to do it right.

 Image: https://www.silverkris.com/solo-travelling-women-fulfilling/

[princesssarcastia]

Hi!  I'm here to rec you a thing.  Arguably one of the best things ever, tbh.  

This is an HP Ginny + Harry centric series about the aftermath of the war.  It follows the author’s magnificent Slytherin!Ginny AU, which you should also read right the fuck now if you haven't already.

The way @annerbhp shapes Ginny and Harry into viscerally real people, with strengths and flaws that feed off of each other, who are struggling to deal with the aftermath of a whole fuck ton of trauma—of growing up and becoming adults amidst a whole fuck ton of trauma—is honestly enrapturing.  I just feel completely sucked in every time I read anything in this series.

And it’s not just Ginny and Harry that I love, its the way everyone else feels like a real person, with real lives going on off-screen that sometimes have nothing to do with the main characters.  The way there aren’t any loose ends, the way everything makes sense and has purpose, even if that purpose has nothing to do with the plot. 

Not to say that the plot isn’t absolutely fantastic, because it is. I  The wizarding world is a messed up place and @annerbhp explores that so weeelllllllll, I love sinking my teeth into their worldbuilding.

Harry and Ginny’s relationship absolutely feels real, too; it’s hard and rewarding and they suck at it sometimes but they care so much about each other that they’re willing to make it work.

My favorite part is, of course, how Ginny is just such a captivating character that I wanna cry sometimes when I read her monologue.  She’s so strong and messed up, arrogant and hopelessly self-deprecating in turns, and cares so much about her people (which includes so many more people than you might think).  

Anyway, tl;dr this series is so amazing and you all should go read it right now.

[mikazukikannagisjourney]

Spiritual Log 2.0 November 26 2019

Subtitle: My personal essay on “The troubles of having BOOMER PARENTS,” actual or boomer-ized 😂

Hi everyone, so... This is the part 2 I was talking about... I have been planning to make this post since the OK Boomer thing popped out, which was around early this year? But I never got to, basically because life. Also because my writing app keeps crashing and just when I have written 4 pages of stuff or so, it died, and I didn’t get to save anything. I have to quit with the device, boot up the PC and do it because I cannot rest and I will not rest until I had this post up and running. So here you go, an account of having actual boomer parents lol But not all of them ok? Just most of them. Mine, at the very least. You don’t have to read this long-ass full-of-triggers post but if you need to feel validated because nobody  listens to your pain, it’s OK, feel free to read.

Disclaimers: I am writing this mostly for sharing and to give comfort to basically everyone who got negatively-affected deeply by the boomers in their lives. I am not putting any blame, just putting this info out there. Also, I am using the term "boomer" in its original sense, which is the shortened form of BABY BOOMERS aka the kids who were born around the time of World War II, most especially those born AFTER the war has ended. Also, don’t feel sad if you feel like your parents or other adult guardians just don’t get you. It’s bound to happen, and it’s better to just focus on the people who understand and get you better. Sometimes, if not most of the time, we just have to let go of expectations that the people we expect to understand the most because we’re related aka family members will do just that, but instead are the ones who will make us feel alienated the most. That’s quite painful at first, but very liberating once you get the hang of it.

OK, so before we get off-track, I shall start the premise of this post by saying that anyone who acts like a typical boomer aka isn’t open-minded, is too-fixed in their ways, isn’t open for discussions, has no ounce of creativity whatsoever, has no room for compromise or even agreeing to disagree, well, they’re boomers I guess? But what I will write here is an actual account of having actual boomer parents aka Pluto in Leo folks so yeah, you might wanna check out my post on that, right here. Then go back here lol

To start this post, I would like to mention that if you were led here, one way or another, I am here to tell you that this is no coincidence, the divine realms want you to reach your highest potential, but first to have to feel your lowest lows, through the eyes of other people. I will try my best not to make this a heavy post, but it might turn into one because I will be letting out my personal experiences and be at my weakest, even weaker than a soggy piece of bread. Please bear with me.

I don’t know who initially coined the term “OK boomer” but honestly, the phenomenon of youth infuriating the older generations is nothing new. This has been going on since time immemorial, which undoubtedly lead to steady improvements in science and technology. Unfortunately, when it comes to making connections, it pretty much just made understanding other people with large age gaps grow much harder, thus pushing them further apart. As a rebellious and hopelessly crazy child of boomer parents, this is how I faced my early life and even my life right now. It’s a way of living.

I don’t know exactly why boomer parents are just so hard-headed about things like work, stability, education, social standing, marriages, the lives of other people, the superficial stuff that pretty much other Pluto generations (again, see my post here lol) seem to not put that much energy into. They just had the best of luck by getting to choose their end goal, and following a straight, narrow-path to success that actually worked for them well. Go to school, get a job, get a higher education, you’ll get promoted, and then you’ll become a boss. Get married, have kids, buy a very large house and a really fast car, and you’ll be so happy. Climb the social ladder under all costs and you will find respect and success. That’s what these boomers swear by, because these life formula were something that they were able to easily get. Easy promotions (they will tell you that they worked “hard” for it, yeah like 2 years or so. I have been a work slave for more than 10 years and got nowhere so yeah, “hard work” is extremely subjective), easy grades (remember, so many breakthroughs came after their time so younger kiddies have to learn a whole lot more garbage in school), basically they had to struggle less than younger people have to do right now because there weren’t as many people they have to compete with. 

Don’t expect boomers to ever feel your pain. I mean, if the tried and tested formula worked for them, they cannot see past the idea that it just doesn’t work for you. They will never accept the fact that you can see all the flaws and holes in the system, they were simply conditioned to believe that what they learned worked for them, therefore what they did was right and you should just suck it up like they did. It will never occur to them that you were just being your honest self, that you wanted something that aligns more with high-vibrational energies like REAL teamwork, emotional support, caring for the well-being of others, stuff that they never had to contend to because they were all cut-throat and had to be selfish AF when they were your age. They would blame dead-tired folks like us as lazy, unproductive, haven’t worked hard enough (with all your MS degrees and PhD’s and hundreds of seminars and congresses and certifications and competitions that you undertook) and all that downplaying yadah-yadah even if the only thing you haven’t done literally is to sell your soul to the devil just to get a measly raise. The system failed you tremendously even though you followed what your boomer parents told you to do, you did your best to live the most honest and straight path you could ever do, and yet you still didn’t get anywhere while the unscrupulous people were rolling in the deep by passing through all the loopholes in the system. This is something that boomer parents will never, ever understand and is something that we, as spiritually aware and awakened people must come to terms with and be open to accept.

Of course, don’t get me wrong. I am not shunning the idea of having a great, easy and abundant life. I have been doing my best to get to that point. I mean, yeah, sure it would be nice to have some food everyday, a house to live in, maybe feel a bit better than scraping each and every day, not get judged by other people, but honestly, once you start falling into the rabbit hole of waking up to what reality really is (spoiler alert: it’s not what you were told it would be, because you already tried EVERYTHING and nothing just worked out for you) it just makes even more nonsensical. These vague ideals of what happiness truly is (for these boomers) just aren’t exactly worth expending any energy into. Besides, based on my own experiences, no matter what I do, no matter how much I try to please everyone there are always a lot of people, including my own parents who just have so many negative things to say about me, so why even bother lol. SO I just gave up. I let them do whatever they want, I mean, it’s not like I have any good reputation left anyway. Besides, if I DO decide to show who I truly am, I just let my output and my work speak for myself. Whoever deems it ok can judge me however they would like it to be judged. It’s not like I never had issues like this before. And I have been so used to doing things on my own and not exactly relying much on other people so this is pretty much like my second skin. Being happy in it, gaining confidence, and ultimately using it to shield myself from the negative stuff the rest of the world throws at me is what I do a lot of.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. I mean, as a kid I just couldn’t stand the idea of having to grow up at the speed of light because the parents aren’t exactly being parents. Most, if not all of the boomer parents out there, including my own have been hard pressed to do what they want in order to get ahead in their lives. No holds barred, no morality concerns, the most important thing is getting the results they want. Always be on top. Always succeed. Being Ok with failure is for losers. Zero cares on how the processes have been done, as long as they have their preferred outcome. I cannot stress how RESULTS are extremely important, alongside perfection at all costs. Certificates, awards, merits are things that are very important to boomers because they signify a sense of aptitude. Even if those credentials were all fake. Or even superficial. But that’s what they deem important. I can’t even tell you how many certificates, awards, trophies, all that stuff that my parents accomplished are here in our home, and yet you can count how many family pictures there are in here. Spoiler alert, my right hand has more fingers than we have family pictures here. It’s pretty sad, but I could safely say that for my boomer parents, it is very clear to me what their priorities in life were, and still are. And that’s something that I have been having a hard time moving past from, but I am doing my best to heal from that. It’s a deep wound, but I want to believe that I am going to be OK. Of course, because everything that stems from childhood is very hard to remove and is quite painful to do so, especially without any form of mental health practitioner aid, and, well, it’s an uphill struggle for everyone.

As a boomer’s kid, the very thing I could remember since childhood was doing a lot of stuff by myself, learning to do stuff on my own. We basically live and breathe DIY, so living by ourselves typically pose no problem. A whole bunch of us Pluto in Scorpio boomers’ kids had to typically raise ourselves, on our own, like self-raising flour lol but no, really, like we have to take care of ourselves a lot. No internet back then, phones were but a luxury and so were Cable TVs and gaming consoles, encyclopedias and other sources of information were limited to libraries (unless your family was rich enough to buy the latest set). Everything we learned, we learn through trial and error. No manuals,little to no instruction guides, no walkthroughs nor playthroughs, no cliffnotes. Not enough adult supervision. We just play outside with our peers, or on our own. Because the boomer parents are always out and about, chasing their careers, making a name for themselves, earning the cash they want so they can go out and take vacation breaks, buy the house and car that will make others envy them, that sort of stuff. 24/7 non-stop work because no work equals no pay and no pay equals less money to pay for loans, and less money to enjoy. This also means that no quality time to spend with kids, or get to know them, every interaction just consists of shallow stuff like how was school, did you get top grades, you’re not doing hard enough, stuff like that. Pretty shallow, if there even has any kind of interaction. Most of the time, they bring home extra work, so good luck getting some form of help with school. Of course, again, I am basing these on my own experiences, so you might wanna take a look at your own life experiences and compare them, see what makes sense aka what resonates.

For me, what I find really hard and painful is that I just cannot connect with my parents. And they have no intention of connecting with me in any way, shape or form. I have always been very keen and vocal on what I want, what I need, why I hate things, why I love things, why I hate getting hugs and kisses from my boomer parents’ friends, how I get bullied at school or elsewhere everyday, and why for some reason I could strongly feel the hidden intent of everybody, which is why I hate going out in public as well. Of course, telling these things to boomer parents can be a source of nightmares, because they would simply tell you that YOU ARE WRONG. Period. No questions asked. THEIR WORDS ARE AUTHORITY. Because for boomer parents, their children are just EXTENSIONS  OF THEMSELVES, and THUS THESE CHILDREN HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT TO EXPRESS ANY OPINIONS THAT DIFFER FROM THEIR OWN BECAUSE THEY ARE DEEMED INCAPABLE OF THINKING for THEMSELVES. Basically boomer parents assume that their children will always agree with them, thus bypassing the need to confirm and verify their actual wants and needs, even if in reality the children have actually very opposing and differing ideas. Hence the boomer parent tagline “I KNOW YOU MORE THAN YOU KNOW YOURSELF” comes to mind. If the boomer parent does actually receive very, very differing and even polarized opinions from their children because they kept assuming that they know what the kids want or know, THESE people will always find a way to tell you that what you feel, what you hear, what you know ARE ALL WRONG. They will always tell you that YOU HAVE NO EXPERIENCES IN LIFE SO DON’T EVEN BOTHER TELLING THEM THINGS THAT THEY WILL NEVER AGREE ON. Everything that they know is fixed and anything that contradicts their knowledge is JUST WRONG. Yep. Even more so if your parents are teachers, and because they teach other people and have high authority over them, they have grown accustomed to the identity of just being accepted without any complaints or dissention. A really horrible combo when you’re a genetically rebellious kid and your parents are boomers. What’s even more ironic is that they’re always out when you need people in your life, so you go to whoever is available to help you, thus you forge better connections outside your home, and in turn you absorb the ideologies of other people, because they make sense to you a whole lot more than what your boomer parents believe in. And yet they would and will always dare tell you that you’re basically not their child because you think so very differently from them. lol the irony is never lost on me. I find it usually funny when I exercise my Gemini detachments but when I fall into my Cancer abyss (it sucks to be a Cancer Venus) I just get all downtrodden and yeah, waterworks spill out. I had the cursed fate of having academic people as my boomer parents so I really had zero chances of being heard and understood. Even now. So in the end, why even bother?

IF you ask me, it’s because of the social conditioning of LOVING YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS EVEN IF THEY DON’T LOVE YOU BACK, AND DO NOT SUPPORT YOU NOR YOUR BEST INTERESTS is a very, very strong factor. Never mind the toxicity of relationships, I mean, those toxic relationships were very well-forged during childhood, so those things become quite normal, even if they should never even be to begin with. That is something that I have seen not just with myself but with a lot of people. People who keep putting up with jerks. People who end up in dead-end jobs and seeing the light in their eyes slowly die. Even worse, people who got hurt so much by others that they literally turn into the very thing that hurt them the most. It’s just so painful to see all of these, all because of the skewed ideals that FAMILIES SHOULD STICK TOGETHER THROUGH EVERYTHING. ALWAYS SUPPORT YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS, even if they do you wrong. Even if they treat you like dirt. Even if they just suck the life out of you. Even if they just use you as an emotional crutch. Even if they don’t see you for who you are. Even if you mean nothing more than a tax break to them. 

I apologize for sounding like a ranting, ungrateful lunatic but I just had to let that out.I just feel so dead inside just typing all of those up, because to be honest, I got a lot more moral support from a random dude that I chatted with and never remembered the identity of ever again, than my own kin. Honestly, I’m about to turn into my mid-30s by 2020 and yet I still have to deal with these so much issues from my past while still doing my best to live and even thrive on this 3-dimensional realm, and for me, having to look at what screwed me up while NOT PUTTING BLAME on my boomer parents have been the most taxing thing I had to do since trying to win even an ounce of their affection way, way back. I am literally one heartstring away from giving up. I have been trying to see the light and to be honest, I can’t right now. What bothers me even more is that a lot of the spiritual community posts, articles, and videos kept invalidating the shitty stuff that happened to me when I was a lot younger, and the phrases that say “That is for the highest good, all are one, we are all from Source, everything is for the expansion of the Creator” seriously if I’m not in the best mood and my friendly demons have been running amok in my head because I haven’t played with them for a while, I would shun these posts and think that I would very much want to shove them all down in a tight box and throw that into an exploding volcano like seriously I don’t need this kind of crap right now. 

So if you’re in that phase right now, don’t worry, I got your back, you’re not going crazy, what you feel is valid because feelings rarely lie, if they ever do. You are beautiful, handsome, wonderful and awesome, and what you feel is not what you are. It’s OK to fray, as long as to your true self, you stay.

Well I hope that affirmation above calmed you down.

To sum up the boomer issue post:

This is mostly a post for the people who have been swimming upstream because the world we live in has really gone down to the dogs. Nothing makes sense and despite being silenced we strive to make ourselves heard and be known. For typical renegades and rebels, having issues with authority is one of their key themes in life, and in all honesty this can actually break them. Even just having them heard would mean a lot, but if you have boomer parents, well you’re better off signing up to go to Mars, you have better chances with that. This is because most of the boomer parents or even authority figures in general are not the kind of people that would readily give in to others that disagree with them, or even want to work with other people by sharing the space, the power, and the control. They likely see this as a threat to everything that they have done in the past, and as such, anyone and anything that strongly opposes their beliefs will ultimately end up getting crashed and burned, with no questions asked. Unless you vagrantly manipulate them by stoking their fragile ego like sucking up to them and agreeing with them all the time. They’re not that impenetrable as they want you to believe, but then again, why would you even use such low-vibrational tactics when you can just move on from them altogether. Their time on earth is pretty much near the end of their rope so just let them have their moment, and focus on yourself instead. Lay your foundation of living your best and highest-vibrational life. Or at the very least, just living an honest life and living your inner truth, guided by your highest and true Self. The joy you will find from that will be so much more worth it, so I support you in that goal.

Thank you so very much for stopping by, and reading this very long, personal post, and I pray that you find the healing you seek.

With love and hugs from Source above, I remain your Soul sibling,

Mikazuki

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Nildungsroman

by Dan H

Saturday, 27 September 2008

Dan finally identifies something that has been bugging him.~

I've always had a problem with Modern Fantasy. Not in the sense of "published within the last five years" (although there is also that) but in the sense of "set in the real world, only with magic and shit, which most people don't know about". Possibly that's Urban Fantasy.

This whole thing struck me while I was reading Cassandra Cla(i)re's City of Bones, which funnily enough seems to have a lot of traits in common with a certain other modern fantasy series that the author may or may not have heard of, and which I may or may not have said a few things about in the past, so these comments are slightly biased towards those two august tales, but I'll also be talking about other elements of the Geek Canon, including Buffy, Tolkein and Star Wars.

As ever, contains spoilers.

The Hero's Journey: Ur Doin It Rong

For what it's worth, I'm not actually a big fan of Joseph Campbell. I think the observation that lots of different myths have lots of things in common rates somewhere between "dog bites man" and "Bishop of Rome Espouses Nicene Creed" on the duh-o-meter. On the other hand, the Hero With A Thousand Faces One Of Which Is Luke Skywalker does nicely identify a basic structure which can, at the very least, make sure that a mythically-slanted story doesn't suck donkey balls.

Very broadly, the Hero's Journey has three stages: the departure, the initiation, and the return. The hero starts out as Joe Ordinary (or possibly as Joe Destiny), then goes off into the Crazy World of Magic Shit, then comes back a better and more complete man. Along the way he has to get eaten by a whale and meet a goddess, but that's basically the deal (any inaccuracies can be attributed to my not actually having read The Hero With A Thousand Faces and thus getting most of my information from Wikipedia).

Star Wars, as you probably already know, was based very, very, very (very, very, very) closely on the classic Campbellian journey (right down to including the trash compactor scene pretty much entirely to tick the "hero goes underground and bad shit happens" box). Early season Buffy actually holds fairly closely to the model as well, both in terms of its overall arc (at least in seasons 1-5) and the structure of individual episodes. An episode of Buffy usually opens with our heroine facing a Typical Teenage Problem, then getting drawn into a supernatural event which allowed her, at the end, to resolve her Real Life problem as well as lay the smackdown on some vampires. As I've argued before on Ferretbrain, I think Buffy lost its way around the point it stopped bringing everything back to the real world.

And that, in a roundabout way, is what I think is wrong with Modern Fantasy. If you blinked you might have missed it, so I'll say it again more explicitly. A lot of Modern Fantasy seems to be at least loosely based on the Hero's Journey, and while it does the departure and the initiation really well, it seems to write the whole "return" bit off as a waste of time. Modern heroes leave their home and family, descend into the underworld, and bloody well stay there.

Now I admit, part of this is going to be structure. In a TV series about fighting vampires (for example), you'll always get to the point where you can't view "going out to fight some vampires" as anything but routine, and you can only escalate so far before you have to play the "real life is the greatest battle" card or the "fighting the very essence evil itself" card (neither of which worked). On the other hand, part of it seems to be an issue with people actually missing the point of the Hero's Journey. I'm going to talk about both these phenomena, because I like to hear myself talk.

Sunnydalization: Myth Invades Reality

If, like me, you wasted your entire undergraduacy watching Buffy videos, and can quote pretty much the entire seven series end to end, including the "grr-arg" bits with the mutant enemy logo, you'll probably remember the bit in Prophecy Girl where Willow finds two dead bodies in the student lounge in Sunnydale High and, despite having seen at least a corpse a week for the past series, gets totally freaked out. When challenged about it, she says:

"I'm not okay. I knew those guys. I go to that room every day. And when I walked in there, it... it wasn't our world anymore. They made it theirs.

And at that point, Buffy changed subtly but irrevocably. Prior to that scene, Sunnydale was the real world, and the Hellmouth was the place where the monsters were. Every week, Buffy would battle the legions of hell, and every week she would come out and go to class and we would see exactly what she was fighting to protect. We'd see Jonathan and Cordelia and Harmony and the rest, all going on with their totally normal lives, totally unaware that little Miss Summers had been saving their collective assi.

After that moment, though, it all changed. Things got bigger and scarier, and the Demons didn't go back into their box. Buffy may have defeated the Master at the end of Season 1, but she failed to defeat the Hellmouth, and as the seasons progressed the line between the "reality" of Sunnydale and the Underworld of the Hellmouth became more and more blurred. In season three we are told that the mayor "built this town for demons to feed on" and by the end of season seven the two are so inextricably linked that the final closing of the Hellmouth actually destroys the town.

As I said above, I ultimately think this is an inevitable effect in a long running series. The first time a vampire attacks somebody on school grounds it's scary. The twelfth you just start to wonder why the school is still open. The Sunnydale body count became something of a running joke ("if we train hard, keep focus, and don't have so many mysterious deaths, Sunnydale is gonna rule") but while it was funny it also began to undermine the point of the show. What started out as a nice little town threatened by a supernatural enemy became itself a seat of magical corruption. By the end of series seven there is literally nobody normal left in Sunnydale, they've all evacuated because of the effects of the Hellmouth (even the more sympathetic demons get out of town).

What this means is that, by the end of the series, Buffy has literally nothing left worth fighting for, except possibly Joss Whedon's ropey feminist doctrine. The later series of Buffy fall flat because, as Sunnydale itself becomes a place of evil, the Slayer loses all contact with the real world.

Mugglism: The Family Romance

Ultimately, though, I can forgive Buffy for its structural flaws. What I have more trouble with is the peculiar tendency in a lot of Modern/Urban Fantasy to treat the Fantasy World as just flat-out better than reality.

The chronic offender in this case is, of course, the Wizarding World of the Harry Potter series. Harry is rescued from the dull, dreary (and psychotically abusive) Dursleys, the "biggest load of Muggles" Hagrid has ever seen. He is then taken away into the wonderful Wizarding world where everything is fabulous and magical. He then discovers that he is a figure of the utmost importance in said world, and people either treat him with awe or loathing, both of which he finds equally affirming, while the infallibly wise guardian of his new world assures him that he really is all that and a bag of chips. Meanwhile the author informs us in interviews that everything in the Wizarding world is indeed superior to everything in the real world.

Oh, and just to forestall the inevitable "but the Wizarding world is really dangerous" apologia, there are two things to say about that. Firstly, until Rowling writes a scene that actually reminds me of the Holocaust, instead of just vaguely alluding to people making Nazi salutes, real life has Rowling licked when it comes to being dark, man. Secondly, horrors of actual, non-school-based wars aside, "like the real world but nastier" is yet another way of saying "like the real world but better". I'm going to hark right back to my third ever Ferretbrain article here and say that one of the things that really impressed me about Pan's Labyrinth was the fact that the really scary thing in it was not the Faun, or the Labyrinth, or the dude with the eyes in his hands, but the brutal mass-murdering fascist.

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes. The "fantasy is better than reality" style of Urban Fantasy usually winds up being a version of the (Freudian, and therefore almost certainly no longer reputable) idea of the Family Romance. The belief, common in young children, that their parents aren't their real parents, and they're actually something different and special. Of course most of us then grow up and realise that our parents are pretty okay people, and that being a Magical Princess probably wouldn't be that great, and actually there's some pretty radical stuff in the real world which we could be getting on with (like writing for webzines or playing World of Warcraft).

A mythical journey in which the Hero leaves the real world and then never comes back is always going to seem, to me (and therefore to anybody who matters), to be fundamentally juvenile. 

Pan's Labyrinth would have been completely meaningless if Ofelia did not ultimately end up confronting Vidal (albeit hopelessly), and the Lord of the Rings loses a lot of its impact if the Hobbits don't go back to the shire. Harry Potter may save the Wizarding World, but muggles like me have no reason to care about that. Stories like the Potter series work absolutely fine, as long as you're still labouring under the illusions that you're a beautiful unique snowflake, and the only people that matter are you and the few others you're willing to accept as equally special. The moment you - not to put too fine a point on it - grow the fuck up, and realise that everybody else (yes even the teachers at your school, yes even your parents, yes even the kids who are mean to you) are real people with their own lives and ideals, you have to let go of the belief that your secret world is the most important one.

I've not yet finished City of Bones, much less the whole "Mortal Instruments" series, but it's shaping up to go the same way as potter: a long story about somebody totally failing to grow up.

In Conclusion: Why Americans Damned Well Should Be Afraid of Dragons

Roleplayers in the audience will probably know that White Wolf Game Studio used to publish, as part of their risibly-entitled World of Darkness line a game called Changeling the Dreaming. It was a game about, like, the loss of innocence and the death of dreams, man. Players took on the role of Changelings, fairy spirits in human bodies, who were slowly losing their beautiful-unique-snowflakeness under the crushing "Banality" of the modern world.

As games went, it was alright, it fetishised childhood in a slightly iffy way, but otherwise was decent Guns and Wizards Urban Fantasy fare. What bugged me about it, though, was the way it essentially divided everything in the world into "Banal" (soul destroying and imagination crushing) and "Glamorous" (drawing on the power of the Dreaming, the wellspring of human imagination). In particular, what bugged me about it was that it assumed that "imagination" was associated purely with the trappings of medieval fantasy. An artist who paints grim cityscapes and urban decay is Banal, an artist who paints forests full of dancing elves is Glamorous. 

Who Wants to be a Millionaire is Banal wish-fulfillment tapping into people's desire to get something for nothing. The hundred or so fairy stories about farmer's sons who get fantastically rich because of a stroke of good fortune are totally inspiring and bring out the best in humanity.

In her article Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons? Ursula le Guin observes (perhaps correctly) that the Fantasy genre is looked down upon in America, and that this is perhaps indicative of a society too obsessed with industry, productivity and profit, and distrustful of the imagination. Fiction in general, and fantasy in particular, encourages the reader to stop thinking about how they can best make a million bucks before they're forty and start thinking about any one of the million other things they could be doing. As Le Guin puts it:

"Fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial... They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom."

Of course the important thing to remember about this particular essay is that Le Guin is using "dragons" and "fantasy" as a shorthand for "fiction in general", and you could the mistrust of Fantasy in the twentieth century with the mistrust of the novel in the nineteenth. A lot of fantasy readers (and, by extension, some fantasy writers) go further. Like Changeling they come to view "elves and dragons and shit" as being synonymous with imagination, and to view imagination as the only virtue required in humanity, instead of as part of a healthy, well rounded personality.

Sensible proponents of Fantasy argue that it is perfectly okay to like dragons and wizards, and that the presence of fantasy elements does not make a story frivolous. Less sensible proponents of fantasy seem to want to argue that it is perfectly okay to like nothing except dragons and wizards, and that fantasy elements make a story more meaningful by their mere inclusion. This is particularly common in fandom and geekdom, where people are massively more inclined to focus on the details of a particular setting (elves, vampires, wizards) than on the actual contents of the narrative (destruction of rural England, coming-of-age in small town America, why suicide is totally heroic).

Obviously, I don't want a return to the nineteenth century, I don't want a world where nobody reads fiction, or where it isn't considered perfectly okay to pick up the odd bit of Laurel K Hamilton if you feel like something light and pulpy, but I am deeply concerned about a Fantasy genre that is coming to view fantasy as an end in itself. That's fine if you're aspiring to nothing more than light holiday reading, but a lot of fantasy (even, or perhaps I should say especially children's fantasy) takes itself very seriously, and it's ludicrous to try to deal with "real" issues in something that's totally divorced from the real world. You can't show us the reality of war in a world where everybody acts like an overgrown five-year-old and people only die when the author is trying to make a point.

Fantasy is not factual, and because it is not factual it must remain true, and the truth is that the real world matters, and that real people are amazing, and a Hero who doesn't return is no hero at all.

Themes: 

J.K. Rowling, Books, TV & Movies, Sci-fi / Fantasy, Whedonverse

~

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Arthur B

 at 15:31 on 2008-09-27I'm reminded a little, in fact, of Terry Gilliam's 

Tideland

, which kind-of repudiates the fantasy-as-an-end-in-itself stance he took in some of his earlier films: in that one you have plenty of people who use fantasy as a means of escaping from the world around them, with the result that their lives are completely stagnant and horrible, and you've got the protagonist who uses fantasy to endure the world around her whilst still progressing through it, so she comes out the other end more-or-less unscathed and with a potential adoptive mum to boot.

You've glossed over an aspect of the Hero's Journey a little, which is that when the Hero returns to the everyday world he isn't just a fuller and more complete man, he actually enriches the everyday world by the fact that he's gone on this journey in the first place. 

Lord of the Rings

 is an exceptionally good example of this; not only are the Hobbits better people for having gone to fight Sauron, but when they get back they solve the Shire's problems and then (for the most part) become its primary movers and shakers for the next generation. Arguably, part of the problem with the way Buffy developed was that whilst Buffy's own real life problems were often solved by her adventures, she didn't so much enrich the community by her adventures so much as prolong the death throes of the status quo: things gradually get worse, and worse, and worse in Sunnydale until it all goes to shit. Harry Potter's magical studies not only have no beneficial effects for his community in the mundane world, he's actually legally prevented from letting that happen.

I think the problem with Hero's Journey type narratives in fantasy set in the modern day is that "it's the modern day, but with vampires" seems far too close to the real world, if you see what I mean. Back in the day it was sufficient for the hero to walk a long long long way away and people could accept that "oh, OK, way over there is the land of magic and adventure". The problem with the likes of Buffy and Potter is that the land of magic and adventure is 

right on their doorstep

, and this actually makes the return to the real world slightly problematic; because the vampires and werewolves and death eaters are in such close proximity (physically and in terms of always getting in each other's face), you'd expect the hero to be concerned about them all the time. The reason 

Narnia

 does the Hero's Journey so well is precisely because Narnia is a mythic otherworld which it's non-trivial to get to, and I would argue that that's a requirement for any mythic otherworld in a Hero's Journey-based story: if you can get to the Hellmouth by walking down the street then that's not so much a Hero's Journey as a Hero's Morning Jog.

I suspect the answer is to use a different myth for modern-day fantasy. 

Supernatural

 seems to get a lot of mileage (no pun intended) out of the old Lone Ranger/Fugitive "Eternal Wanderer" story (which has the advantage that it's a lot easier to adapt to television, because you can spin it out for as long as you damn well like, whereas the Hero's Journey pretty much demands an end point).

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Andy G

 at 20:52 on 2008-10-05Great article! That really put the finger on something that had been bugging me, except actually I hadn't realised it had been bugging me until I read the article. I was just wondering how you think Star Wars would fit into the pattern of the Hero's return, as you'd given that as an example of one closely written to the pattern, but it doesn't seem as clear-cut an example as the LotR or others where the magical world/magical powers are left behind?

Possibly a stupid question as you have clearly read a lot of stuff ABOUT fantasy (where on earth do you find it? I mean I do like to read fantasy, but I can barely ever find anything interesting written about it - except on Ferretbrain, of course) but have you read On Fairy Stories by Tolkien? It covers a lot of the themes from above, and it's one of my favourite essays with some really well-made points.

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Arthur B

 at 21:15 on 2008-10-05As far as I can tell, the supposed precise mapping of 

Star Wars

 to the Hero's Journey is a bit ropey, and came about mainly because John Campbell was all "Hey, 

Star Wars

 fits the Hero's Journey perfectly" and George Lucas said "Oh... really? I mean, yes. Yes it does."

So working out where all the various bits and pieces fit in is sometimes tricky, but I think the Hero's Return is very much there, although it's pretty much described in a single scene - it's the bit at the end where they're all getting their medals and all the rebel forces cheer them. Having ventured into the depths of the Death Star's chasm and faced the dark lord, Luke emerges victorious and the community (said community being the rebellion) is enriched for it. That's all you really need for the Hero's Return - tenuous, I know, but so's the entire Hero's Journey idea to begin with.

(The end of Return of the Jedi is interesting in this light, actually - the community is having a big party, but Luke isn't really part of it - he's off at the edge, burning his father's body and communing with ghosts, his experiences finally alienating him from his community because he's endured so many things that have no parallel in the common experience of the war - hundreds of people can claim they were involved in the attack on Death Star II, for example, but only Luke actually saw Darth Vader's true face.)

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Dan H

 at 16:29 on 2008-10-06

Possibly a stupid question as you have clearly read a lot of stuff ABOUT fantasy (where on earth do you find it? I mean I do like to read fantasy, but I can barely ever find anything interesting written about it - except on Ferretbrain, of course) but have you read On Fairy Stories by Tolkien? It covers a lot of the themes from above, and it's one of my favourite essays with some really well-made points.

I've not read it actually (I'm far less well read than I pretend to be, I just shout my opinions loudly and hope people assume I've done some research).

As for Star Wars, the "real world" if you want to call it that in the SW saga is (IMO) the Rebellion, the big deal is that while Luke goes off and learns from Jedi Masters and confronts Darth Vader, it's the regular guys in the guns-and-bombs shooting war that he comes back to. Our Esteemed Editor also points out that Luke's return to Han and Leia is a quite literal return to family at the end of the series.

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Sister Magpie

 at 20:38 on 2008-10-30Great article! I've been catching up and had just read your review where you asked why someone would have to add fantasy to New York City to find a sense of wonder--quoting that paragraph that's a beautiful image strangely undermined by the addition of werewolves, fairies, vampires and mermaids. (Central Park, Chinatown, the Hudson River are all far more interesting.)

I've always liked "our world, but with magic" in terms of books starting in our world rather than a totally different secondary world, but I totally agree with this--because as you say, setting something in our world and adding magic doesn't have to mean that our world is the world that sucks or can't hold it's own. A sense of home is always present in LOTR and that makes the Shire stand up as just as wonderful as any magical place.

It reminds me of the book Hatchet that I had to read a couple years ago for a thing I was doing on YA books. I have only ever read that book, but there are several in the series. It's not fantasy, it's about a boy who survives a plane crash and must survive alone in the Canadian wilderness. But in the end he's rescued and there's other books, some of which follow a "what if?" scenario where he never leaves the woods. What struck me about the synopses of the later books was that the main character pretty much wound up going off to live in the forest. He didn't like civilization any more and preferred his solitary life. 

The idea seemed to be that the author enjoyed the more "real" life experience of fighting for your survival, hunting your own food etc. But I thought it made the whole series a failure by not realizing that the point of a Vision Quest is to find out how you can help your community. Deciding to be a hermit--a fine choice in other contexts--is here just selfish and avoiding the responsibilities of being an adult in the community.

It's just important to make the distinction between this really being a flaw in Urban fantasy and it being just something urban fantasists can use it for.

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Dan H

 at 15:25 on 2008-11-17Hiya, sorry it took me so long to reply (this just in, doing NaNo is 

hard

). Thought I'd clarify one particular point:

It's just important to make the distinction between this really being a flaw in Urban fantasy and it being just something urban fantasists can use it for.

Oh absolutely. By "a flaw in Urban Fantasy" I basically meant it in the specific, subjective sense (as in "this is something I consider to be a flaw in the works of urban fantasy which I have personally read") not a fundamental weakness of the genre.

I find it particularly infuriating since so much Urban Fantasy is either targeted at children or "young adults" and if there's one thing that young adults *don't* need to be told, it's that being an adult is for losers.

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Sonia Mitchell

 at 01:52 on 2009-06-25Once again I know this is old, but I hadn't read any Campbell when you wrote this. I'm rehashing now I've read enough of 

Hero With a Thousand Faces

 to comment. Not all of it, I have to add (psychology texts bore me) but a fair amount (I'm also cribbing the exact terms from 

here

 because it's been a few months since I touched the book).

And while I agree with the points you make, Dan, I don't think HWATF backs them up. It's not a check-list of ingredients for a story, but a variety of factors of which some (not all) can be found in a given hero's journey. Refusing to return 

is

 a valid stage of the journey, even if it makes for an unsatisfying narrative. I agree that it marks Harry out as an immature hero, just as I think it does Achilles and the Sandman and the Pevensies (who never intended to return home in TLTW&TW). For most of us there does come that point where we stop thinking Dorothy's mad for wanting to go back to Kansas (we grow the fuck up, as you so rightly say), but nevertheless according to Campbell heroes who don't return are still heroes. 

Suicide 

can

 be 'totally heroic' in the classical model Campbell's following, which isn't using heroes as role models. Working in the chivalric model, which I think maybe you are, naturally it isn't. And Harry Potter seems to strongly invite one to take the chivalric viewpoint, right up to telling us how 'gallant' Harry is for protecting a(n extremely competent) woman with an unforgivable curse. If nothing else, the cosmetic details (suits of armour, portraits of damsels, Arthurian treasures and constant references to Merlin) are knightly not classical, and invite one to take a certain perspective (there might be an article in this, actually...). 

As far as I can tell, the supposed precise mapping of Star Wars to the Hero's Journey is a bit ropey, and came about mainly because John Campbell was all "Hey, Star Wars fits the Hero's Journey perfectly" and George Lucas said "Oh... really? I mean, yes. Yes it does."

Which I'd say is the right way to do things - treating. HWATF as a tool for analysis rather than an instruction manual on how to write fiction. I think consciously ticking off the elements of the hero's journey would make for a rather boring (not to mention contradictory) story, since the natural temptation would be to take them far too literally. I'll take tenuous any day :-)

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

 at 16:20 on 2009-09-10Great article and it immediately reminded me of Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar trapesty, which is a bit narnian in its basic plot, has some slight elements of urban fantasy and I thin generally is a surprisingly awesome take on what seems on the surfce to be an awfully cliched fantasy world. Commenting on heroic suicides, I think this one has one brilliantly haunting example and a few others might qualify as well.

But really made me recollec this is the development of Dave, who is kind of an average guy compared to the rest of the cast and doesn't get any cool pwers or even the girl or anything. But in a very awesome ending, without any sense of needless fanfare, you know that he'll return back to the real world and things will be okay.

I won't explain more because I'd hate to spoil it for any one and I guess it would be a bit tedious.

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[ladyloveandjustice]

Summer 2017 Anime Overview: Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul and The Reflection

My classic anime overview posts are making a comeback! I watched 7 different anime in the Summer 2017, so we’ve got a lot to talk about- so much so that I’ll do a couple anime each post rather than just doing one giant post.

I fully believe in saving the best for last, so we’ll rank and review these anime in order from worst to best. Which means we’ll be starting with the anime I found the weakest out of what I watched this season. Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul and The Reflection. Are both of them bad anime? Or are they just not quite as a good as the other fare? Let’s dive in and find out!

Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul

Yep, this was easily the worst anime I watched this season. Not animation-wise, the art was very nice (though not quite as good as its prequel). But story-wise? WOW. It’s been a while since I’ve seen an anime- or a story period- end that badly.

And unlike a lot of people, I didn’t really come into this anime expecting much. Rage of Bahamut: Genesis, the first season, was a beautifully animated but incredibly shallow adventure romp with a messy ending that managed to be both cliche and nonsensical in how it fridged the main female character. It was fun for the most part, but also eyerollingly trope-y and sloppy storytelling wise, with fairly 2D characters. I came into this season expecting much the same. And for the first half-ish of the anime that was what I got. It certainly wasn’t well written, it was sexist, it was cliched, but it worked okay for what it was, which was a silly swords and sorcery story where you could just turn your brain off and enjoy the eye candy. 

There wasn’t much to the characters, but they were pleasant and likable enough. Nina, the lead of the story, was just kinda dragged along by the plot and didn’t have much going on (her main conflict is that when she gets turned on by a dude she turns into a dragon yes i’m serious), but her gung-ho attitude made her fun to watch. There was also an wacky all-lady prison break midway through the show that was kinda awesome.

 (I should note though, one of the characters is a very fantastical take on Jeanne D’Arc. And she’s portrayed  as someone who sucks at fighting if she doesn’t have the gods on her side because women are weak or whatever I guess! She finds some fulfillment only when a god pulls a Virgin Mary on her and forcibly impregnates her with an angel son. After this, her whole character revolves around her son. I had a lot of problems with that for obvious reasons).

But then. OH BUT THEN. I thought the first season’s denouement and end was messy, but I HADN’T SEEN NOTHIN’. Not only was this ending horrendous, it managed to damage all the characters involved (except for the zombie girl, Rita, who is too cool to be ruined by anything) and even basically damage the first season. If I cared enough to go back and watch that season, this ending would make it a sour experience, basically, just from how thoroughly the plot and characters from that season were mangled by this follow-up. Nothing redeemable was left in its wake.

Basically the whole story was overtaken by one of the most poorly conceived love interests I’ve ever seen. Nina’s beloved, Charioce, was a super sexy dude who had a few tiny flaws, like how he’d, y’know, massacred an entire race and also slaughtered, enslaved and tortured yet ANOTHER race (even putting them in gladiator style death matches for entertainment) and unjustly imprisoned a literal saint of a woman and told her he was only keeping her alive so he could murder her small child in front of her. 

But you see guys, he danced with Nina a couple times and is super hot and his mom’s dead which is sad so it’s okay that he did a little genocide, tried to kill all Nina’s friends (one of whom was ten) and threw her in jail. I’m serious. That was the shows logic. Turns out the reason for all this was it was some plan to unseal the dragon a character had been sacrificed to seal for the next hundred years in Genesis. (So he effectively rendered her death totally meaningless). He unsealed it just so he could kill it for good . The only explanation we get for his double dose of genocide was that ONE of the races has a superweapon he needed to kill a dragon. Yep, no explanation given as to why he needed to do kill all those beings or enslave them or put them in death matches or personally torment a woman who did nothing to him, but the show sure treated it like it explained everything and meant we were totally supposed to forgive AND feel sorry for this sexy, sexy tyrant.

(In the end, the genocide and slavery ends up being a footnote: everyone loves Charioce because he killed a dragon, the demons are being payed low wages instead of being enslaved so everything’s fine now, no justice for those who were slaughtered, no consequences for the oppressors, no reparations made, no word on whether the death camps and many other atrocities even stopped happening, nothing.)

Nina being in love with him damaged her irreparably as a character too, even though she was perfectly okay before that- it was just so infuriating that she could set aside all the people he killed and the fact he’d tormented her friends because he was a smexy dancer. I get what they were going for-a kind of starcrossed Disney ~love isn’t rational~ type thing. And “love isn’t rational” is just the laziest writing copout ever, I’m so sick of it. 

You can sell a romance where one party has done horrible things and the other one loves them anyway if you have the writing skill. But in order to sell that romance as understandable, you need to make the audience like that character too. The character needs to be actually endearing and interesting in some way.That way when so-and-so is tormented about how she loves him despite the things he’s done, the audience is tormented for the same reason. But there was no reason for Nina to be hopelessly in love with Charioce. Dude had the personality of a wet paper towel- I don’t think he emoted once the entire anime, even when he was on the verge of death. He didn’t offer her any invaluable support or guidance to Nina either. Yet she at one point said she’d choose the ENTIRE WORLD over him if it came down to it. A guy she danced with like twice! 

The worst thing about the Nina/Charioce romance is how a bunch of characters were literally sacrificed for it. One of the main characters of the show got himself killed shielding Charioce from those he had wronged, despite the fact Charioce had done absolutely nothing to warrant such devotion and said character didn’t even have a meaningful relationship with him. It was a comically anticlimatic death too, it was out of nowhere, the other characters barely emoted about it with even his supposed best friend basically shrugging it off. 

The other person sacrificed solely to add drama to Nina and Charioce’s lurve was Nina’s ten year old friend, who was unceremoniously shanked from behind  after being a major character for most of the season. It was so cruel and pointless, I felt sure a magic resurrection was coming for the kid, but nope- he was killed off solely to cause some drama between the good guys and Charioce because the genocide apparently wasn’t enough to make our heroes mad at him. Nina does finally get mad at him, but only for ten minutes, then she and almost everyone else instantly forgave him upon learning he didn’t TECHNICALLY directly kill this one kid.

 Even though he HAD been trying to kill the kid ALL SEASON and the bounty he put on this kids head was still pretty much the direct cause of his death. But nah,he didn’t like, specifically tell the killer “hey go murder this small child” , he just heavily implied anyone who did it would get a reward from him, so it’s all fine. Even the kid’s grieving mother and father figure eventually forgave Charioce about this for no apparent reason. 

Speaking of pointlessness, the cherry on top of the shit sundae was that the dragon all these characters were sacrificed to kill? The one whose death was supposedly the payoff worth all this genocide and melodrama? It was revealed in the last minute of the story that Charioce DIDN’T EVEN MANAGE TO KILL IT. Rendering the entire mess of a narrative COMPLETELY MOOT.

Seriously, if you want to see how overfocusing on badly written heterosexual romances can destroy an entire narrative, this series is a prime example. If you want to see an example or writers thinking a male character can be forgiven for any atrocity and win the female lead’s heart as long as he’s stoic and sexy and manly about it, this series will show you. This show demonstrates the worst pitfalls of romance narratives- writers seem to think as long as it’s an attractive man and woman getting together, they don’t have to bother with characterization or logic to sell their connection.

it’s a real shame- poor Nina could have been a compelling lead. There was stuff there that could have been developed into something cool had the writers cared at all- she could turn into a dragon, it was mentioned she was looked down on for not being fully dragon, she came from a rural village and was fairly innocent and didn’t know much about the world, her father died tragically- but rather than explore any of that, it was decided because she was a woman, her entire arc should be about her swooning and crying over Bishie McKillsaLot, never mind anything else.

Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul could have been a shallow but entertaining show like its predecessor. In the end though, the only thing entertaining about it by the end was how hard it crashed and burned. 

The Reflection

The Reflection isn’t quite as bad as it’s reputation in the anime community right now suggests. Which is not to say it’s a good show. It’s not good. But it’s definitely far from the worst anime I’ve see and has a few interesting aspects.

This show is a collaboration between an anime studio and Stan Lee, (who I guess really likes being involved in anime- he’s done this before with Heroman) and it follows a group of superheroes. The basic premise is that three years ago, a strange light and smoke hit people around the world. Some were killed, some gained superpowers. Those who gained powers were called ‘The Reflected”. The world hates and fears them, in true Marvel style. Now a villain named Wraith is kidnapping people for mysterious reasons. 

The Reflection is a messy show, which is apparent just from the animation. The colors are very flat and the lines are very thick, which seems to be an attempt to capture the classic comic book feel. But the thing is, old comics chose to have a bright color palette, or at least a highly contrasting one, for good reason. if you do that kind of style with a dark color palette, it ends up looking very muddy. Unfortunately, that’s what The Reflection chose to do. This was especially egregious in the last episode, where having the darkly colored characters against a dark sky made it very hard to tell what was happening.  On top of that, the animation was very limited in general.

There’s also a lot a standard superhero stories here that are not given a fresh spin- we have the angsty product of a lab experiment, the shallow, show-offhero who learns superheroing is SRS BUSINESS after his loved ones are killed due to his negligence and most disappointingly, a main villain whose only motivation is that he wants to plunge the world into a vague, generic sort of darkness.

Some stuff is just straight up not explained, which made the finale confusing- we see a flashback that is supposed to make us forgive a character for his actions, but it’s so incoherent and quick it reveals nothing. Nor is the villain really explored in a way that makes sense (save for an extremely on the nose message about “darkness”, which was repeated so often in the episode I got sick of hearing it), his actions are unclear and the whole thing is just generally clunky. It seems like they chose not to explain a lot of stuff (and end on a cliffhanger) in hopes of getting a sequel, but you can leave mysteries and openings for a possible season 2 without being opaque and hard to follow. In fact, a final episode like The Reflection’s is way more likely to turn fans off than leave them wanting more.

However, The Reflection does have a few interesting ideas and good moments. One of the main heroes, Lisa, has a wheelchair that transforms into a giant robot, which is rad as hell and should be included in every superhero narrative from now on. Her personality is also endearing- she’s a determined, fiery, geeky girl who loves comics. Her whole storyline where her father is all protective of her due to her disability and she tells him doesn’t consider her condition tragic and proves she’s actually the one who can protect him is fairly heavy handed , but it’s a very positive narrative, and I’m especially glad to see it in an anime after being burned HARD by the ableism in Yuki Yuna is a Hero. She’s sadly sidelined after her introductory episode (it’s especially strange that her comic book fandom never comes up again), but still remains a good character.

There’s also a character who was blind, except he can see the silhouettes of people who have superpowers and thus pick out when when people are superpowered that way- that’s another good concept and I liked that his wife was the physically strong and imposing one of their partnership, though she didn’t get as much characterization as I’d like (in fact, she pretty much had none outside her relationship with her husband). The episodes revolving around Lisa and this pair were definitely the strongest of the series.

The lead of the story, Eleanor, also had a lot of potential. She had the heart of a hero, but she was desperate for validation and because of that desperation she ended up having an identity crisis where she developed an alternate personality. If her psychology had been explored more, that could have been a really interesting concept- but it wasn’t really explored at all beyond generic “this personality is the darkness within me” so it ended up being more on-the-nose and boring than anything. Still, I appreciated Eleanor’s scrappiness and in the hands of a more competent show, she could have been really great. 

The other characters were duds though, unfortunately- the villains were generic and kinda just there. The hero X-On drove a lot of the plot, yet we learned pretty much nothing about him and he had no personality other than being kind of a dick. The magical girl squad was a fun touch and I loved seeing them kick ass and save the day, but they didn’t have distinct personalities from each other or much thematic significance to the story.

Basically, there’s nothing offensive or repellent about The Reflection. I have to give it points for trying something different stylistically from the usual anime fare. It’s a show that could have been good if it had been executed a little better and given more room to breathe. However, it wasn’t, so it ended up being a very clunky, forgettable anime.

[xsocietydropoutx-blog]

Dear TVD

Warning: the following blog might be very unfocused and somewhat confusing, but that's only because I have a lot to say.

It doesn't take much to create a bad show. However, it's pretty difficult to make it good. Creating a good show from the start takes effort, talent, and luck. But you know what is super easy?

Creating a good show, and then ruining it completely.

At first, Elena is the type of girl that could make a gay guy go straight again. Just incredible. And Stefan is the type of person that would make that same man gay again. Damon, however, is the ultimate villain. Killing and tormenting people for no good reason at all.

Then, for no good reason at all, Elena starts to have feelings for Damon. Why?! He literally killed her father (or attempted to), slept with her birth mother, killed her brother, raped Caroline and abused her, tried to kill Bonnie and was responsible for the death of her grandmother, all for Katherine.

For 150 years, he was in love with her, and then all of the sudden he forgets all about her and moves on to Elena? Are you freaking kidding me?! How is that even logical?

Damon is constantly blaming Katherine of the person her became, and each time he does that, I don't know if I should roll my eyes or laugh out loud. She didn't teach him how to kill, and he was just a bad person ever since he decided to ruin Stefan's life after his transition. Plus, take Klaus for example, he was abused as a child, but not once did he blame Mikael of the person he became (only Ester, but rightfully so). Damon had no excuse of his actions, and that pisses me off.

One of my favorite characters in the show were Lexi, and of what we know, she was Stefan's best friend for over a century. And then, Damon killed her. Two episodes later, it was all forgotten. WTF?! But, when Stefan "killed" Enzo (it was a freaking self murder for crying out loud!) Damon never forgot about that, but completely ignored the fact that he left him for dead before.

Plus, Lexi is 360 years old. Remember when she went to help Damon in New York in the 80? She is a lot smarter than they made her in that scene in which she falls for Damon's crap. She would've known better.

I feel like the writers don't even know the character's personality half of the time, and just constantly change it. It's really confusing an frustrating. One minute, everyone is being mature and reasonable, and the next, they go back to kindergarten.

Normally, characters develop for the better, such as: Caroline, Jeremy, Klaus, Tyler and... well, I think that's it.

The characters that were regressed: ELENA, DAMON, BONNIE, MATT, STEFAN (sometimes) and the list goes on and on and on.....

From being the ultimate dream girl, Elena became a freaking doormat. Always obeying to Damon and being his little bitch. That's not love, my friends. That is freaking twisted.

Damon went from being a fifteen year old to being a ten year old. Makes a lot of sense, right? Plus, he is supposed to be the older brother, but not for once in the whole show did it look like that. Could've fooled me with Stefan being the eldest. Plus, in his human life, he was actually kinda nice, what the hell happened to that?! Oh yeah, Katherine. Not.

Stefan was often treated very poorly for making one bad choice. Damon has slept with so many people for so long and killed more than all of the originals combined, but when Stefan slept with Rebekah in season 4 and Katherine in season 5 people treated him like he is Satan.

Damon is the type of man you fall for in the middle of high school, change your whole personality for just to have his attention, and then he leaves you broken. That is a terrible massage to the next generation.

Stefan, however, is the perfect gentleman. Kind, smart, loving, respectful, honoring, and since he's a vampire and this is a television show -  a tormented soul that needs to be fixed. Just like Elena.

And they were beautifully broken together. Their ripped edges fit together, like they were meant to. It was more than perfect. It was EPIC.

But, sadly, other people didn't think like that. They thought that the man who is the bad guy should be the one to get the girl, because she can fix him. Have you watch the film Gone Girl? There was a sentence there that really stuck to me. "He took and took from me until I no longer existed." That is the definition of Delena. He has taken everything from her, her freedom of choice, her emotions, her family, her personality.

"That's murder."

I have also noticed how most of the fans ship Delena only because of Ian and Nina. I have asked one of my friends if she would've still shipped Delena if Paul was the one to play Damon, and she shook her head and said; "Hell no!"

I don't know if it's just me, but I've noticed that after someone dies and becomes a vampire, they become a whole different person. I hate that. You might as well have just taken the character and left it dead. I felt the fact that their emotions are heightened and whatever, but that doesn't change them.

And I don't know if it's just me, but the sire bond between Damon and Elena is based on feelings, and they didn't say what type of feelings. For all we know, they could've been hatred. Which makes a lot more sense.

I have also noticed something that happened in TVD a lot more than it should have. Once it appears as if the character has no where else to develop, it's been killed off. Jenna, Tyler, Kol, Vicky, and the list goes on. Again.

That is how they solved so many issues in the show - love triangles, characters made for one episode alone, stuff like that. And that is so immature and stupid to make a character only to kill it off.

I just have to say this: what Nina did was kind of a bitch move. Leaving the show while you're the lead actress is kinda like a company's CEO decides to quit all of the sudden. I completely understand her decision, but I think it's really something only Hollywood stars can afford to do, and that I like you spit in the fandom's face.

The show is called the vampire diaries - the diary of the vampire - the vampire is Stefan. The show is about him, not his serial killer psychopath of a brother!

By the way, the fact that Nina left doesn't mean that Elena had to go. With all of the traveler stuff, they could've just made Elena go into different body. That would've solved a lot.

A very big part of Delena's relationship is the sex. The reason their relationship even started is sexual attraction. That is a terrible message to send the future generation - have I mentioned that? I think I did. - and if Elena would've been transformed into a different body, that would have been a huge obstacle in Damon and Elena's relationship, and an opening for Stelena.

The doppelganger storyline wasn't as main as I thought it would be. In fact, I'd hoped that during her coma, Elena would have visions of the past couples and that we might get to see a few, and that they would make her understand how special what she had with Stefan truly was.

The more I write here, the more I understand I don't even like Elena anymore. I just want Stefan to be happy and the happiest I have ever seen him was with Elena.

And I just realllllyy wanna see Damon get what he deserves.

To be honest, I didn't watch the 7th and 8th seasons of the show. I promised myself that I would only if I felt like the ending was worth it. Frankly, it wasn't, so I have no intention to sit in front of my laptop and catch up, because there is no reason to. The ending sucked. Stefan was supposed to live happily ever after. If not with Elena, then by himself (Sorry Steroliners, but KLAROLINE IS LIFE) he deserved to live. I had hope that Damon would finally take the responsibility of being the older brother and finally do something for once in his whole wasted life, and help his little brother be happy, but of course not, Stefan must "Sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of other's right?" as he said in the finale of season 4. Too right.

Stelena was love, and respect, cherishing and loving the other person, especially their flaws. It was about concurring all and saving the people you care about, but remain loyal to yourself.

Delena is sex, sex, and some more toxic sex. It's putting yourself first and not caring about the amount of people that you hurt. THAT IS NOT WHAT THE SHOW SHOULD ENCURAGE!

People say that the type of people you like onscreen, especially serial killers, says a lot about your personality. Delena fans, who support this abusive relationship? They are like the watchers in Nerve, pressing on the YES button to kill the soul of an innocent girl. That is what they did to Elena. 

I asked my nephew today about his favorite super heroes, and he said "Spiderman, superman," ect. When I asked him of the joker, he said "NO! I don't like him, he's scary!"

And when I ask my friend - the delena fan mentioned before - she says "The joker is awesome, I love the bad guys."

I don't want him to grow up in a world in which in youth he is taught to help others in shows like Dora and Spiderman, and then become a teenager in a world that likes films with criminals and serial killers. Damon represents just that.

And let's be honest, every single one of the problems in the show would've been solved if Damon died in the first season.

To sum up, the show shouldn't have gone on without the main character. And I don't know if it's because I'm just hopelessly in love with the originals' accent, but I intend to watch the originals (I haven't watched the 3rd season of it as well, because I assumed that they would be linked and that I would get confused.) but I have hope that they writers will redeem themselves in the 4th season and maybe give us all the better ending we deserve.

Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. I have no friends and I need someone to talk to about this lol.

P.S. is it just me or we still have no idea who stood on the bridge the day Elena and Jeremy's parents died? IDK...

[sarahburness]

How I Escaped the Negative Thought Loop That Kept Me Down and Stuck

“You will never be free until you free yourself from the prison of your own false thoughts.” ~Philip Arnold

Do you ever doubt yourself?

As if no matter how hard you try, it’s never enough. Do you always tell yourself that you could do more? Or that somebody else is doing more, so why aren’t you on their level?

I’m not good enough.

Do you keep your thoughts to yourself because you feel as though your opinion doesn’t matter?

I’m not smart enough.

Or how about when you’re casually scrolling through social media? You see beautiful people taking such awesome photos and they look so happy.

I’m not attractive enough.

These rapid-fire negative thoughts incessantly remind us of our faults and flaws. These negative thought loops are like water to fish. We’re swimming through them. Every day. All the time.

This year I was practically drowning in negative thought loops. My grandmother died. Shortly after, I navigated my parents through a draining divorce process. Post-divorce, my fiancé and I moved back in with my mom to support her. Money was scarce.

I downward-spiraled into negative thought loops, constantly blaming myself for being a disappointing grandson, son, and partner, and an overall disappointment.

I didn’t like myself, and you needed more than a powerful microscope to find an inkling of self-esteem within me.

Negative thoughts that loop on replay are dangerous because when you say something over and over again, you believe it.

And if you’re like me, these beliefs can be paralyzing.

The Comparison Trap

In today’s age of technology and social media, scrolling is second nature to us.

Is it really surprising?

After all, you get to see all the awesome things that other people are doing. Incredible photos and videos taken by beautiful people doing amazing things.

I wish that were me.

That awe instantly transforms into envy, and suddenly you feel like your life is lacking.

But we keep doing it. Every day, we scroll, seeking out our next hit of dopamine and envy—which social media offers in abundance.

I did this every single day, multiple times a day, and mostly as an escape.

I immersed myself in somebody else’s carefully curated life to distract myself from mourning my grandmother or quenching the fires of my parents’ divorce.

From waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, I would scroll endlessly, comparing my life to the lives of others.

I had fallen into the comparison trap. Like a moth to fire, I was hopelessly addicted and in awe of the lives that other people lead.

Why can’t I be happy like that person?

It’s a terrible thought loop to replay in your mind. To believe that your life is lacking simply because your life is different from somebody else’s life—it’s an awful way to live.

Struggling to See the Positive

What’s difficult about negative thought loops is that sometimes you don’t feel like you’re deserving of your victories.

This year I graduated college, but I didn’t attend my walking ceremony because I didn’t feel proud of myself.

I don’t deserve this.

Also, I started working for a law firm, the first of many steps in building my career, but I never celebrated when I got the job because I didn’t feel worthy of it.

I’m not good enough.

It is just so sad that I was unable to celebrate my blessings simply because my mind was flooded with sorrow and disillusionment from tending to my family.

Instead, I sunk into a miserable slump.

I think the best way to describe this feeling is like walking through life in haze. Everywhere you look is foggy and distorted. I was unable to realize my victories or be grateful for my blessings because a veil of negativity was draped over my eyes.

It wasn’t until a conversation with an old friend that the haze cleared and I could see life with clarity.

Learned Helplessness

We met for lunch and she shared with me something she’d learned in class.

Psychologist Carol Dweck performed an experiment in which a fifth-grade classroom was split into two groups to solve a given problem.

The twist was that one group of students were given a set of unsolvable problems. No matter how hard these students tried, they were unable to succeed at the task.

In the next round, when they were given a set of easy problems, many students either took longer than the average or gave up entirely.

What happened?

The earlier round with unsolvable problems caused the students to equate trying with failing. Helplessness became a learned behavior.

I think a lot of times we do this to ourselves with our thoughts.

I would tell myself repeatedly I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. And when it was my turn to bat, I’d run away and quit because I knew that I’d strike out anyway.

I was entrapped in a fixed mindset.

I convinced myself that no matter what I did, I would always be destined for failure. That my life would never amount to anything meaningful and I would never be happy.

It wasn’t long before my frustrations with myself transformed into anger over the unfairness of it all.

My job performance declined. My relationships suffered. I was at a loss. My moods swung back and forth between flatlined indifference and anxiety-wracked mania.

I needed to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset—to understand that the past doesn’t have to repeat itself, and that I have a say in what happens if I choose to learn and grow. But I didn’t know that then.

At this point I realized it was time to seek therapy. This was one of the best choices I made this year because it opened a gateway to the wonders of mindfulness and gratitude.

Finding Gratitude

Who knew something as small as practicing gratitude could transform my thought process entirely?

Too often we allow our negative thought loops to overwhelm and consume us. And it’s because we allow ourselves to be our thoughts.

However, we are not our thoughts. They’re just thoughts!

Practicing gratitude helps you escape the negative thought loop because it encourages you to seek out what is good and right and beautiful in your life.

With each day I counted my blessings, I was slowly releasing myself from the negativity that had shackled me for several months.

Life will always be riddled with hardships. It’s inevitable. But to still summon the resilience to tell yourself that everything is okay, things will get better, I have people who love me, I know that I’m strong; and most importantly, to truly believe that you have the courage and ability to create a positive shift in your life because you can still practice gratitude despite your struggles… it’s beyond empowering.

Surround Yourself with Positive People

“You cannot change the people around you, but you can change the people you choose to be around.” ~Unknown

I recently discovered this quote while listening to a podcast, and it resonated with me.

You really can’t change the people around you.

If you try, you’ll end up disappointed. How other people behave, how they feel, what they think—these things are all beyond your control.

But you can control who you surround yourself with.

It has been said that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

If you’re mostly around people who complain a lot then, chances are, that you will complain a lot.

I was exactly this type of person. And these were the type of people I surrounded myself with.

I would always be moody. I was a true pessimist. I would combat every silver lining with criticism and some statement about how unfair life is.

And to tell you the truth, being negative sucks. It’s exhausting.

After hearing this quote, I tried something outside my comfort zone: I met new people.

Being highly introverted and shy, this was difficult for me. But I did it. I joined clubs at school. I met positive and ambitious people with dreams and goals.

I am convinced that positivity is contagious. The warm aura gained by practicing gratitude and welcoming abundance in your life touches the people around you. And this gratitude and abundance mindset slowly replaces those negative thought loops.

I didn’t want to be in a slump anymore. I wanted to be driven, motivated, and well… happy. I learned that the key to achieving this is to seek out other people who want the same things you do.

A Better Headspace

It is reaching the end of the year and I am faring far better than I did at the beginning. If I had to name one thing that I think you and everybody should do more of, it’s this:

Be kind to yourself.

There’s a lot of truth to whoever said that we are our own worst critics.

That is why I advocate that we also be our own best fans.

Every time you criticize yourself, remember to also praise yourself. Practice gratitude and remember the countless blessings in your life. And realize the past doesn’t have to repeat itself. You can learn, you can grow, and you can do more than you think.

Reflecting on this year, I now see that I am beyond blessed. I have a college degree. I’m soon to be married to the love of my life. I’m steadily working on my career.

There are so many things in my life that are going so beautifully right.

The same is likely true for you. You just need to remember them.

About Dan Recio

Dan Recio loves sharing actionable tips on achieving your goals at Motivationalist so that you can build the life you want.  Set yourself up for a productive week with his free guide: 7 Sunday Habits to Conquer the Week.

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