#some of ​y’all just seem to have a weird construct on woman who are sick in the head

[care666bear]

Unfortunately crash out over not having sole attention & cannot actually pay attention to where else ur attracted or I am no longer a sweet lover girl who just wanted to make art from all your tiniest bones

[uyuganyu]

“𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚” 1/5

CHARACTERS: Crown Prince!Todoroki x Midoriya!Reader, Prince!Bakugo x Midoriya!Reader, (slight)  Crown Prince!Todoroki x Regina!Yaoyorozu

PART 1 PART 2

WARNINGS: none for now?

GENRE: little angst, lotsa fluff, and maybe a lil make out shesh later ;)

WORD COUNT: 1.3k 

A/N: first time writing >.< I hope y’all find this and like it! I’m planning to divide this into parts! I got this idea from the manhwa “ The Justice of Villainous Woman ( What It Takes to be a Villainess )”.  English is not my first language, so please do not be afraid to correct me! Also accepting constructive criticism! Thank you, and enjoy <33

“You’ll be sent to the crown prince’s palace to be a regina.” Yes, I may be in love with the crown prince, Shoto Todoroki, but I know he loves my friend. “Father, I don’t want to compete with Lady Yaoyorozu. She’s my friend.” Oh, how I wish they would just listen to me. “Oh dear y/n, there is no such thing as friends in this place. You have no time to be making friends.”

 And that is how I’m here. Preparing a lavender soaked bath for yOuR hIgHnEsS. He has my heart, but of course I’m only the daughter of the duke his father is acquainted with, who was sent here for fun. For the sake of a competition. “Lady Midoriya, we will take care of this! Please go rest!”

 “No! It’s fine, I don’t have anything to do anyways! Would you like to join me for a cup of tea after this?” Father said no friends, but the maids are all just so cute and friendly! “M’lady, it is inappropriate for us to-“ “I invited you, so it should be fine!” As the tub filled with water, and the bathroom was scented by the relaxing scent of lavenders, I looked over to the tense maidens avoiding my eyes. “Please, do come and join me. It gets lonely every once and a while.” Showing them a sad smile that I could only show to close friends, which by now, I have lost. I closed the faucet of the tub and immediately erased any trace of me being there. Before I had closed the door to the hall, I said “I’ll be waiting in my room.”

 And I did. It took about 10 minutes before they had come into my chambers. “M’lady, we got some snacks from the kitchen! The weather outside is very nice and the flowers have fully bloomed. Would you like us to set this up in the garden?” Oh yeah, the roses are in season. It must be looking wonderful. “Sure! I’ll carry the-“ “No, your highness!”

 Your highness? “I apologize for yelling, your highness!” The petite girl bowing in front of me seemed to not know that she had just called me “your highness”. That’s just absurd. It’s kind of funny. “Your highness?” Oh no this is so mean. Why am I laughing at her? “No, no, it’s fine! It’s just weird that you called me your highness when I have no chances of winning over the-“ “That is not true, your highne- m’lady! It’s been months since you’ve been here and you’ve been-“ the head maid came in and covered her mouth immediately. “It’s improper to be yelling at the regina. Have some shame.” She whispered to the poor girl. I saw myself in her. Not being able to say what you want just because of hierarchy. “It’s absolutely fine with me, ma’am. She was only trying to comfort me for I was having doubts in myself about the competition.”

 “Still, your highness-“ again? “Please, address to me as ‘Lady’, I do not deserved to be called ‘Your highness’. I am merely a duke’s daughter. Now, ma’am, would you like to join us for some warm darjeeling tea in the garden?” They look surprised. Didn’t lady Yaoyorozu always invite them? “M’lady, it would be an honor to do so.” Oh no does this mean they’re committed to me? I hope it doesn’t. “You don’t have to bow down! I believe we’re all equals here, so please, don’t bow.”

 They responded with a quiet, almost unheard, “Yes, m’lady.” Finally, some company. Sitting in the garden while enjoying a cup of tea had never felt so nice. It truly is different when you have people around you, laughing, talking with you, and not judging you. What I didn’t expect to see was the crown prince looking at the scene of us laughing. Why did he look disgusted? Did he hate me that much? I chose to ignore it and proceed with tasting the cakes that they had brought with them.

 “M’lady, I hope you don’t mind us asking, but how come you never talk with your highness?” I glanced over to the crown prince and saw him sort of listening. “Well, Lady Yaoyorozu is my friend, and I don’t want to be in the way of their relationship. That is also why during room sharing, I always escape in the middle of the night.” I took another small glance and he wasn’t there anymore. “Now that you know, please do help me next time.” Saying things I don’t mean with a smile is hard. Why did it have to be Momo?

 The maids were looking at me with pity. I don’t like being pitied, but I understood why they felt that way.

 •

 Yaoyorozu is a dream come true. She’s a goddess, with a great heart and intelligent. But all that was pushed into the gutter when I first saw the other regina from the house of Midoriya. She was in the garden, admiring the roses that mother had planted, even tending to them as if they were her own plants. I had heard from his brother, Izuku, that she was in love with me. “But how come she ignores me like I’m the plague?”

 Izuku looked confused before saying “Honestly, I don’t know what goes on in the head of my own little sister, sire. But, I think it has something to do with lady Yaoyorozu being her friend.” Somehow everything was kind of connecting. I had neglected her, too. Come to think of it, who dances her during parties? Regret was starting to settle in my heart.

 I asked one of the servants to send her a bouquet of roses from the garden. What I didn’t expect was for her to return it to me. As I neared her chamber, I heard laughter. From her and a man. “That voice sounds awfully familiar.” Walking up to her door, it suddenly dawned on me how he had obviously been prioritizing Yaoyorozu. Her door looked so beat up.

 “Shut up shitty woman! Stop teasing me!” Is that duke Bakugo? What is he doing here? I knocked on her door quietly and didn’t expect anyone to hear. She opened the door and looked at me with wide eyes. “Your highness! I wasn’t expecting you! I, uh, have a guest. Is tonight our room sharing? Allow me to fix my room-“

 “Hey, half and half bastard.” Aggressive as ever “Katsuki, back to your seat at once.” She sounds like his instructor, but wait, Katsuki??? “Are you two close?” She still looked very puzzled as to why I was asking her. “We grew up together, your highness. Please excuse me, as I have to calm down the angry porcupine.” She curtsied and smiled at me. That smile. That goddamn smile.  I knew it wasn’t very genuine, but it was enough. I’ve neglected her way too much. I heard more yelling on the other side of the door, and it made me wonder if she would be like that towards me too.

 Tonight is indeed room sharing night. Maybe I’ll be lucky and catch her leaving the room. Before I knew it, evening came and we were in our sleepwear. She looked very agitated. Though I understood why she was feeling that way, I can’t help but get hurt. Had I really been that mean to her to the point she doesn’t like being around me? “y/n, are you okay?” she looked at me with panic “Yes, your highness!” has she always been like this? Just moments ago she was pushing king Bakugo into his carriage, how come she’s all fidgety now? 

“Your highness, should I get the royal doctor?”  “Do I look sick?”  she looked at me with hesitation evident in her orbs. “No, your highness. But you’re acting very unusual, your highness.”

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

going off the back of that post that i reblogged last night about being a virgin/not dating/not having had a relationship by your 20s should be normalised and not shamed.... i thought I’d make a separate post bc meh anyway.

but yeah going off that post, I hate how when I was 17/18 and 18/19 when I had guys approach me on facebook for sex/a relationship/to date etc the question i had the most from all of those men (who at the time were in their early-to-mid 20s) was “are you like waiting for marriage or some stupid fucking bullshit for losing your virginity? like why the fuck haven’t you slept with someone yet? you’re 17-19! you’re obvs broken and let me/us (the us part was when it was 2 dudes, one trying to set me up with his friend) fucking fix you! what the fuck?” and then obviously that rant devolved into my typical point of “you should’ve fucked someone by the time you were 15!” bullshit rant that all of these men rattled off after the marriage/virginity question.

but no. i’m not waiting for marriage to have sex/lose my very non-existent purely social construct virginity. no. i’m not waiting for it to be “special” bc I know a lot of losing your virginity is MEANT to be awkward and funny and uncomfortable, unlike all the media around it making it seem seamless and perfect half the time.

but you know what I’m waiting for? a person that fucking respects that, in a sense. a person who doesn’t fucking think their stupid fucking mostly good-for-nothing genitals (ok in these cases it obvs a dick) will magically control me and “make you (me) into a real woman who loves real dick, real men, and real sex” which is something that “I’ll give you sex lessons in my car” guy literally said to me in 2014 when he was angry at me for not having lost my virginity by 18/19. im waiting for just like the bare minimum respect level that SO MANY MEN fucking refuse to fucking meet that it makes me fucking sick.

warning: this next part mentions suicide/self-harm.

like y’all I went through a lot with my stalker constantly harassing me with his “will you fucking hurry up and fucking consider that wonderful weekend of sex down the coast, so that I can be the first to have your virginity???!!! (and also so that I don’t try and kill myself, you selfish bitch!)” act. like why in all honest fuck would I give it to a guy that consistently threatened me with his suicide/generally threatened self-harm each time I refused to touch him? why would i give it to the guy who made me terrified that he’d punch me in the face if i ever called that bullshit out or generally criticised his behaviour in any way, shape, or form???? why would i give it to the boy who DEMANDED in first two days of knowing me, that i “hurry up and get on the pill so that I can fuck you!” and then followed that up with refusing to use condoms and then the “we’ll get married & have kids one day bc you’re girlfriend material” line, as if he was going to trap me at 16 with a kid to be his baby mama, and then never let me go to uni etc bc i obviously had to be stuck with the kid while he fucked off and fucked around with other girls.

like y’all 16 year old me mentally read my stalker for fucking FILTH each time he pulled his bullshit acts. she knew that he was abusive/manipulative/controlling etc. why the FUCK would she give him the satisfaction of “being the first to fuck you (her)” like she was some gatekept special unicorn or other fucked up shit???? virginity is used to control women by these creepy manipulative men. and the men mentioned in the first half of this post all were like “like yeah he sounds fucking yikes, but you should’ve just fucked him anyway; to be normal and to not be a fucking stuck up, frigid virgin bitch like you are now! you should of just given the guy a chance!!!! 🤬🤬🤬🤬 maybe he would’ve treated you right if you fucked him and gave him what he wanted!!!! lower your fucking standards!!!!😡” like no????????? and y’all are really going to excuse suicide threats/self-harm threats and other violence towards women, over a woman not having lost her virginity yet???? what THE ACTUAL FUCK IS FUCKING WRONG WITH YOU?????? you are MOTHERFUCKING TRASH and you need to FUCKING LEAVE.

then yes there was the less yikes clear braces guy at catholic school. but all the same. 14/15 year old me DID NOT LIKE HIM in that way at all. I didn’t want to fucking touch him, because everything about him disgusted me (which was super fucking rude I’ll admit, but yeah).

but why the fuck was she expected to give up her virginity/have a relationship at all etc with a boy that she NEVER had feelings for???? why was she ALWAYS dismissed (typically more often by male students, but also by some female students and then eventually teachers) when she said she didn’t like him???? and even after she fucking dumped him???? WHY THE FUCK IS IT SO FUCKING HARD TO BELIEVE GIRLS/WOMEN when they say that they DON’T LIKE and NEVER LIKED someone?????

but other than that, why was I expected to give myself to him??? I had boys who always said to me “I bet you’d love licking the shit out of his braces. yeah get that nasty shit out of there for him with your tounge... I bet you dream about it” and other vile shit about this guy’s psoriasis etc, and other shit like that for 3 straight fucking years..... and then those boys fucking wondered why i’d fucking slap them and storm out of fucking class.... and then they always pretended to act all nice after it. why the FUCK was i expected to endure that?????

this is the relationship where the WHOLE year group pressured me into it (or at least I felt super pressured by my entire year) bc even the other half of the year started to harass me about it. whenever i told anyone to fuck off about it, they’d just push it harder. it was a fucking mortifyingly awkward and awful relationship where i never answered his texts.... where he would spell my name wrong although I was his “best friend” (although yes autocorrect but you wouldn’t over sight that in a text to your girlfriend, right?) and where I constantly faked sick or totally ignored his advances for dates...... by actually going over my friends houses, instead of going to the movies with him.... and then when he moved schools at the end of 2010 I felt like it was my fault bc I’d dumped him???? so he’d lost a good friend after that??? idek man teenagers suck lmao

but in the whole story about clear braces guy, I think you can see the underlying thing there was that i OBVIOUSLY wasn’t ready for a relationship, and honestly I don’t think this guy was either..... considering that when he asked me out over the phone he seemed awkward about it I suppose.... like we’d been pressured into FOR 3 YEARS of constant harassment from our year group..... so he felt like he HAD to ask me out finally. and then when he made it “facebook official” i gagged... and then snapped and then yelled at him. i was fucking livid. i cringed at the couple selfie he took of us at the end of one PE lesson after the “fb official” disaster. it was a fucking nightmare lmao.

can y’all see that this SHOULD NOT HAVE FUCKING HAPPENED AT ALL if we’d just left been left fucking alone to be friends that talked every day???? like yes he had his story of having a crush on me since the start of 2008/year 7, but I always felt nothing like that for him. EVER. we were just two metalhead friends bonding over parkway drive and marilyn manson and emo kids bonding over adtr and other bands which everyone else was into anyway.

like I did feel sorry for him in my class bc no one would sit with him, bc he was a bit weird (the braces thing didn’t help him either). he talked to me too bc most of my class was scared of me and my very dramatic screaming matches with teachers/emotional outbursts that would get me sent out of so many classes for most of year 7. but i always, ALWAYS saw us as just friends. basically it was just my group that believed that I didn’t like him (well eventually) bc they always got up and moved away whenever braces dude came to sit with me at at lunch/recess. like my group was embarrassed for me or something???? idek man.

but yeah. my point with braces guy is that why fuck should I have been pressured into that??? and ESPECIALLY why the actual fuck did it have to be a fucking whole year group level of sustained harassment for 3 straight years, where on every fucking level I WAS FUCKING IGNORED by everyone????.... and where that sustained harassment made me feel as though if I’d said no, i would’ve been called a selfish bitch/whore/slut bc teenagers are dumb as fuck. like even teachers started pushing it from time to time by 2010. i fucking hated it. why should a teenager be harassed ON THAT LEVEL FOR THAT LONG while still being invalidated..... and then still be expected to have a good view of relationships and sex exploration after that???? like it warped my views so much.... and then gave me a big part of a horrible fucking year long depressive episode in 2011..... and also gave me a weirdly obsessive and deathly obvious crush on one of the very popular pretty boys who had pushed me into that relationship anyway.... especially when that said boy gave me a flirtatious comment when I was “going out” with braces boy. like how the fuck is any of that healthy???? why was I expected to lose my virginity to someone I never had feelings for in the first place????

so yeah. this is my view on why people never having had a relationship/never had sex/not lot their virginity by their 20s should be a more normalised thing not to be shamed for...... and why teenagers should NEVER be harassed to have relationship that they don’t want, fucking period. just relationships in high school are fucking awful.

[uisceb]

Got another Agentreign prompt filled for y’all out there! 

@oddcoupler222 said “anything with jealousy.”

Anything, you say? Well then here, have this bit of weird angsty jealousy...

Temptation

Reign wasn’t about to admit this to anyone—certainly not to the AI of the dark priestess from Argo City—but there were times when she couldn’t help but be a little jealous of Sam.

It was only very small degrees of jealousy at first, mostly because she hadn’t quite gotten a handle on fighting Sam’s control yet. Sam had had near iron-clad control over their shared body for almost thirty years before Reign was even able to struggle to the surface for so much as a minute. And even then, Sam was strong, stronger than she had any right to be. Reign could only hold on for a few moments here and there, never so much as a full day before Sam reclaimed what Reign had been taught to believe was rightfully hers.

In those beginning months of struggling to the surface, Reign shared in Sam’s disorientation. Just as Sam couldn’t remember Reign’s actions, Reign couldn’t recall Sam’s. Sometimes a blurred image would cross her mind, but nothing solid. At the time, all it was was annoying.

It wasn’t until several weeks had passed, several weeks of trying to grasp control for more than a few moments at a time, that Reign started to wish she could remember Sam’s episodes.

She blamed it almost entirely on who she would eventually come to learn was a woman called Alex Danvers. A human. An enemy. Something that needed to be destroyed.

But there was evidence of her in Sam’s life that gave Reign pause.

The first incident was the curl of seven numbers written in pen on Reign’s hand when she awoke one afternoon. A phone number. Reign rolled her eyes. Wasn’t that what phones were for? Couldn’t those numbers just be entered into the little devices themselves? What, were humans in the habit now of writing their numbers on one another’s skin as some mark of claim? Or was it just laziness; either Sam, or whoever this other person was, had lost their phone.

Reign didn’t read into it too much. She didn’t have Sam’s memories, but she had a general understanding of the world around her due to the heavy stream of information the AI provided her with that outlined everything from human evolution, to war, to yes, even high school. From what she could recall of said information, writing phone numbers on hands seemed like the sort of thing a love-sick adolescent might do. Humiliating to think that the ego with which she shared this body would act in such a way.

It was simple enough to get rid of, of course. Her initial bouts of punishing the guilty were geared towards those who had the sort of wealth that made them immune to any feeble human constructs of justice. New to it all, she started with them, killing silently, effectively, then disappearing before a scene could be made. There was a feeling of great satisfaction that purred in her when she washed their blood off her hands, and once it was gone, so too was the idiotic phone number.

Some weeks later, as Reign was starting become just a little bit stronger, she awoke with a cotton ball taped to her inner elbow with a bandaid. When she peeled it off, she was greeted with the sight of a tiny purpled cluster of veins—the site where a needle had punctured her skin.

It was during times like these that Reign remembered how pathetically fragile her body became when Sam took control. To think that an ordinary needle could puncture her skin was ridiculous.

To make things even more ridiculous, when she looked over at the nightstand beside Sam’s bed, there was a small bag full of lollipops, and on them, a note which read very simply: Feel better! -Alex

Now, there were many things Argo’s dark priestess had advised Reign of. Ignoring Sam’s personal possessions was a big one. If possible, the dark priestess recommended she awaken when she wasn’t at Sam’s home, so she wouldn’t be tempted to associate any of those possessions as things with any meaning. Most importantly, she said, keep far away from Sam’s child. Ignore drawings of hers that Sam had kept hanging on the fridge, and for the sake of all they were working for, do not look at pictures of her.

Reign didn’t mention how difficult it was for her to be able wrestle control over the body she shared with Sam, loath to think that the dark priestess might find weakness in her. It was always easiest to awaken at night, when Sam had drifted off to asleep and had very few defenses to hold Reign at bay. Typically, Reign was able to disappear from the house before taking in any of her surroundings, but this time, her eye caught on that bag of lollipops and its note from Alex. It seemed such an odd mix between impersonal, and deeply personal. For the life of her, she couldn’t tell which it was.

Annoyed by her uncertainty, she took the skies and hunted—violently, brutally, carelessly. A mess was made, a spectacle of horror. Reign was able to keep control of her body for nearly a full 24 hours—the longest she’d ever succeeded in.

But eventually, as always, Sam dragged her back down again.

When Reign awakened a full two days later, her body was marked in a way that troubled Reign. Light bruises the shape of fingerprints, marks on her neck, chest, and inner thigh. And on the nightstand again, lollipops, but this time arranged into some pitiful imitation of a bouquet, and another note from Alex.

Reign knew what it all entailed, of course, but it unnerved her to see her body so marked. It wasn’t too far of a stretch to believe that Sam would have tried to find physical comfort following such a long, disorienting blackout due to Reign’s violence. It would be terrifying as a human who was unaware of what was happening to keep losing time, and if Sam was as smart as Reign thought she must be…there had to be a part of her that might be putting certain pieces together.

It was still strange, and so human, to think that a human would go to another human for comfort, and that these marks would be the result. Sam’s frustration, or fear, or possibly even unknowing guilt, must have manifested in something rougher. Humans sometimes enjoyed their own pain, after all.

As the days and weeks passed, Reign began to sense a pattern to the way Sam took comfort by the marks—or lack thereof—on her body. When Reign slaughtered, Sam awoke needing rougher sex from Alex. When Reign hunted silently, Sam found comfort in something softer, gentler. Just as Reign was getting flashes of memory from Sam’s life, Sam must have been starting to get flashes of—probably not memory, but feeling.

Reign ran her hands over the marks, foolishly imagining she could rinse them off when she rinsed the splatters of blood from her skin. Sam was able to fight her off so many nights now, held in someone’s arms—held in Alex’s arms. The thought was disturbing. Reign had seen, time and time again, the way people reacted when they witnessed her attacks on others. They would hold each other, like they could keep each other safe from her that way. And in those split moments, Reign would be unable to detect the sin in them. They became almost innocent.

Someone was holding Sam like that when Reign was caged away in her mind. Someone was protecting her from her fears. Pathetic and disgustingly human as those fears were, this person, this lover, this Alex was there, holding her to make them go away.

And she was making Sam much too strong.

Reign questioned the dark priestess of Argo—with careful wording so as to seem unmoved and simply curious—if there was a way for her to stay wakeful when Sam was. The priestess paused, hesitant to give her a full answer as if concerned that if Reign viewed Sam’s life through her own eyes, the human side of her might influence Reign’s understanding of right and wrong, of justice.

That hesitance was answer enough in and of itself. There was a way. Reign simply had to find it.

In the end, it was simply discipline, and trial and error. She was never able to fully see or feel everything Sam saw or felt, but there was something. She caught her first glimpse of Alex frantically spraying the fire extinguisher at Sam’s stove during what was clearly a dastardly cooking mishap. Reign had never seen any particular use in appraising a human’s appearance, but it was hard to ignore that almost overwhelming spark of charm in Alex’s guilty smile. Nearly burning down Sam’s house, and Reign still felt a pull toward her.

She tried to shut the feeling down quickly, and accidentally shut herself out of Sam for nearly three days straight.

She tried once again to focus. She knew not to try to be wakeful when Sam was around Ruby because that more than anything could sway her feelings in the most monumental and self destructive way possible. But around Alex? She did her best to navigate through the treacherous labyrinth of Sam’s mind to get a glimpse of her life.

She listened carefully, taught herself to catch on to Alex’s voice, open just a tendril of awareness in Sam’s otherwise controlled self when she was around. It was never anything complete, and it changed every time. Sometimes she saw them together as if watching them from above, naked bodies intertwined, the flex and play of muscles shifting, straining under pressure, under pleasure.

Other times she could feel it, the drag of Alex’s fingernails down her arms or pulling her hair, lips skimming over her skin, sharp teeth nipping, tongue licking searing hot stripes of pleasure, fingers delving inside her. At times like these, she could never get a full picture, only flashes of color, sparks of mischief in dark brown eyes. Reign let herself float, sharing the pleasure Alex gave Sam, almost content to let Sam have control over their shared body if it meant feeling all this.

Of course, that thought left a sour taste in her mouth. Being subservient to a human? Unthinkable. And being subservient for such a base, trivial thing as physical pleasure? Disgusting.

But in those moments after, when she could feel Alex’s arms around Sam, knowing the way they looked, the way it mirrored those humans who loved and tried to protect each other from her…that suddenly didn’t seem quite so trivial, quite so base.

Temptation. And not just temptation of physical pleasure, temptation in something simultaneously softer and harder, somehow felt more deeply.

Clearly, Reign thought, Alex needed to be gotten rid of. She knew her face now, she could recognize her if she saw her—and she did. She met her in battle several times, only to be thwarted time and again by Supergirl. In these times, she would flee, and lose control, falling back into Sam who fell back into Alex’s arms, and it felt so good that Reign soon became sickened by the thought of ever having wanted to hurt Alex at all.

There came a time when Reign was finally able to wear Sam down, almost completely. Sam had fooled her once before, though, always proving herself to have one last bit of reserve in her to keep fighting her off. So Reign wasted no time in executing justice—not just upon the individuals responsible for the state of sin in the world, but upon the world itself. She would destroy those who had hurt, and those who tried so foolishly to protect the ones they loved, who would hold each other the way Alex held Sam. She would make the entire world feel the weight of her name, why she was called Reign.

But of course Alex was the one to bring her down, the one to shoot bolts of Kryptonite all through her veins, sending her pitching down into the Earth, hard enough that Sam’s body would have broken without Reign’s presence.

She arched in agony on the concrete as another series of jolts went screaming through her veins. She gasped for air, finding none, only pain, only fire in her lungs. A needle was thrust into her throat, and thick, black liquid wormed its way through her. She fought for air with which to scream, hadn’t known such pain as this even existed.

But then Alex’s hands were on her, and a splash of hot tears fell to her throat.

“Sam?”

Alex’s voice, broken and high-pitched.

“Sam?”

Vaguely, Reign felt her grip on Sam’s mind slipping—felt her body slipping away. Her vision of Alex was clearing, becoming separate, as if she were seeing her with her own eyes again. But with the clearer vision, her ability to feel Alex was leaving her. Alex’s hands were on her, weren’t they? Or were they on someone else?

Reign realized with dulled pain that she was seeing them, seeing both of them, seeing Alex and Sam, as if she were no longer a part of Sam at all. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she wasn’t at all, because now Sam and Alex were looking at her, as if she were a separate entity, her own body.

Reign looked down at herself through her searing, choked-in breaths and saw the way that black liquid  was shooting thickly through each twist of her veins. They’d found a way to separate her from Sam, to give her her own body, to kill her.

Reign continued desperately to draw in air but found it more and more impossible with each passing second. She stared at them, at Alex holding Sam tightly, at Sam holding her as well, grateful to be free, grateful to be alive, and tried to imagine that it was her. Those hands, Alex’s hands, those were made for Sam. They were made to protect Sam, to love Sam, and they would for years, for decades, for a lifetime.

But even still, as Reign felt herself being coaxed closer and closer toward death, she imagined it was Alex’s hands on her instead, coaxing her there, and holding her just as she would always hold Sam.

[valamerys]

I really enjoy your blog so is it okay if I ask you top 10 pet peeves in novels? It can be tropes or even a niche moment in a particular book. I like writing myself and would appreciate the help.

hmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM sure, I can come up with some things! bear in mind I read almost exclusively fantasy, and mostly “low” ie not game of thrones fantasy at that, including a loooot of YA, so my items will reflect that.

Top (YA, Fantasy) Fiction Pet Peeves:

1) Unnecessary post-apocalyptic setting  WHY THE FUCK. DO PEOPLE KEEP DOING THIS. WHAT DOES THIS GAIN ANYONE. WHAT IS THE POINT. Red Queen, The Selection, The Queen of the Tearling, and that weird TV show The Shanarananaharahahananaaa Chronicles all do this. It’s, frankly, a cheap-ass bid for Dark and Gritty points, and also an excuse to set things in America But Fantasy, and it’s always bad and awkward. This isn’t planet of the apes, just make your damn fantasy world; you don’t have to try to make it more ~realistic~ by putting the ruins of the statue of liberty in the background. That’s stupid and you’re stupid.

2) One-note characters  Mostly present via The Bitch or The Bully stereotype, but also seen in The Bratty Brother, The Sweet Sister, The Spacey DGAF Parent, and the Eccentric Wise Elder. I get that there’s not time to flesh out every single person your protagonist comes into contact with, but certain archetypes are so fucking boring and done to death that I tune out immediately. It’s not 2004 anymore. The game has evolved. We can do better. We can be more interesting.

Related to the sweet sister trope, I’d like to bring up this text post from my other blog:

3) When the protagonists’ actions/ choices do not affect the plot  Alright, this one isn’t even a pet peeve, it’s basic narrative construction. Your story is supposed to be about your protagonist (or your two or three protagonists, in a multi-pov story, but for simplicity’s sake we’ll talk about one) and their arc, how they change and grow. a) If their actions never have consequences, how the fuck do they, like, learn things? and b) if their actions have no bearing on the climax of the story, how the fuck does the story demonstrate that they’ve changed, or come to a meaningful conclusion that’s related to that? Sure there’s weird literary exceptions, and certainly some fantasy in particular is more plot than character driven, but if your character is honestly never proactive, particularly through the ending of the book, uh, i have a major problem and so should you.

4) The Mandatory Feminism Stuff  we should all know these by now. “Not Like Other Girls” is bad. Hating on corsets and other femme paraphernalia is bad (and moreover i personally resent it because I love corsets). A book with a female protagonist and no other important female characters (or only evil female characters) is bad. A high fantasy series that builds its worldbuilding on a raging patriarchy for the purpose of elevating a few specific women into positions of power for superficial RAH RAH FEMINISM points while not addressing systematic oppression is really, really bad. Defining female empowerment as only one thing (IE picking up a sword and Proving Yourself just as badass as all those scoffing men!!!) is bad. I’m very tired and I want to read about women-- different kinds of women, with different moral alignments and interests and abilities and ethnic backgrounds and ages and sexualities and beliefs-- helping each other and being forces in the world and in each others’ lives. That’s it. That’s all I want. I have no clue why that’s so elusive.

5) Characters being flippant to the point of stupidity because........ that’s cool, i guess?  Homygod, I am so sick to my teeth of characters who would get their asses kicked IRL for being obnoxious and overly glib be appraised with “wow, you’ve really got some nerve! I like you, kid!” or some variation therof. Mouthing off to superiors/ royalty? Charging into a fight on a stray heroic impulse despite everyone with a brain and their mom telling you you’re going to die because you just picked up swordfighting on tuesday? flagrantly and thoughtlessly disregarding engrained cultural things because they don’t align with your conveniently 2017 sense of social justice despite you living in an analogue-medieval world? Not cute. It will get you fucking killed. If your character doesn’t seem to grasp that, I’m going to think they’re a dumbshit, and if the book rewards rather than punishes that, I’m not going to take it very seriously. (obviously there are exceptions to this, particularly if your world doesn’t take itself very seriously, but if you expect to instill a real sense of danger in day-to-day life, your protagonist doesn’t get to be exempt from that because they’re hot and witty.)

6) Also, characters being stubborn. This goes with my last point, because it’s another trait people seem to think is like cool, or something? That stubborn people are stubborn because they’re Strong? that it’s a flaw but it’s actually a Cool Flaw, like in job interviews when they ask your weakness and you say “i’m just TOO hard of a worker, ha ha ha”? U see this a lot in female characters written by people who are uncomfortable writing female characters, i think because, again, it mistakenly reads as Strength on some really superficial level, and because the banter and petty conflict that arises from it temporarily distracts from weak overall characterization. If you’re going to write a character being stubborn, that’s great! But understand that a) it’s a real flaw that can genuinely blind them to good ideas and cause unnecessary friction that shouldn’t be treated as endearing, b) it’s not a replacement for other elements of characterization!! and c) it’s the flipside of being assertive, which is a good thing: no trait is only a flaw or a strength, and so any trait a character possess in abundance should both help and hinder them at different times, with maturity level tempering the bad, to a degree. stubbornness is no different.

7) Sexual assault (or the threat of it) all over the fucking place. Do i have to explain this one? Of course ownvoices books about sexual assault survivors are good and necessary but we are all sick to death of "fun” fantasy worlds where the female characters exist under the constant and unending threat of rape, where sexual assault is common as window dressing and the love interests are Super Special Feminist Snowflakes for being so revolutionary as to take consent into account. fuck that. that should be the bare fucking minimum. i am so tired.

8) The Six-Pack Sex Appeal Golem  Honestly, I am not here to hate on love triangles, because I am ALL ABOUT the romance and the more the merrier. But what i do really, really loathe is the incredibly narrow parameters that have come to exist for male love interests, to the point where they all tend to feel like the same guy in need of anger management: a little broody, smart, serious, jealous and protective to a fault, if we get his POV we get real creepy sexual thoughts out of nowhere while he acts vaguely standoffish and probably a little patronizing to a woman whose Attitude gives him a boner. This man does not experience emotions that can’t be interpreted as darkly sexual, or possibly A Little Bit Vulnerable, just for that one scene of mandatory backstory reveal. I recently reviewed a real bad romance novel and described the hero as “a barely-consistent golem of toxic masculine ideals” and that’s what I’m talking about here. MAKE YOUR LOVE INTERESTS WELL-ROUNDED AND UNIQUE CHARACTERS LIKE ALL YOUR OTHER CHARACTERS. Forget what’s “sexy,” I wanna see the male love interests be Soft and Weird and cry in an unattractive way. For further reading/ a great case study of the Masculine Golem, please just read this article about how abysmal the romance in ROAR is. (For what it’s worth, I actually think SJM manages to avoid this in the ACOTAR series. Rhys and Tamlin suck but they are still mostly consistent characters, not just shells inhabited by the spirit of heterosexuality. your mileage may vary, though.)

9) Secret Superpower/ She Was The Missing Princess/ Queen All Along  I think this is a trend that’s slowly but surely passing from YA, but for a while you couldn’t throw a rock in a bookstore without hitting a trilogy where a long-lost missing princess was established in chapter 1 and you spent the whole fucking first book knowing the orphaned heroine with a murky past was gonna turn out to be the princess and you were always right. Queens are also a huge fucking thing right now, although they don’t tend to follow that exact formula. See also the character’s discovery of a superpower catapulting them into a new exciting life-- basically any discovery of a Cool Sexy birthright as a catalyst for a plot is kind of played out and boring, at this point in time? This ties into my earlier point about wanting characters’ choices to shape the plot; it’s so much easier to have them reacting to external forces, especially dramatic, aesthetic ones, i get that, but you’ll get a more original and interesting story the more you resist that urge. And everyone is fucking tired of secret princesses and can spot them a mile away, y’all.

10) OMG magic is outlawed!!! BUT WAIT THE PROTAGONIST HAS SECRET MAGIC! CAN SHE RISE ABOVE PERSECUTION AND HER PROBABLE ROMANCE WITH THE PRINCE OF THIS POORLY-THOUGHT-OUT TOTALITARIAN REGIME TO LEAD ALL MAGIC-HAVERS TO FREEDOM AND ACCEPTANCE???? If you do this i’m going to come to your house and pour a cup of soda on your head. This is dumb and I can’t believe I’ve seen it multiple times. I’m not even explaining this it should be obvious.

Honorable mentions go to: Excessive mentions/ descriptions of eye color, really tired ways of describing kissing, elemental magic is super fucking overdone, instalove, and Training Montages