#tl;dr yes he was sweet once. but it was a long time ago

[popiellart]

Hello!! I don’t know if you take OC asks but I keep thinking of your big dragon durge and thinking. Did he live outside of the temple like the canon suggests before coming to the temple as an adult? What was his life like before that? I remember seeing an art with Sceleritas Fel where he was an awkward teen, did he have a family and was he sweet once?

thank you, that's a fun question!! :D answer under the cut, cause long

yep, he had a foster family as a child, his foster father was a butcher (hehe. wink wink. etc.), somewhat impoverished, but generally loving. (he had another name than 'the dark urge' back then, but forgot what it was even before the lobotomy)

he was a surprisingly sweet child. giving off the 'well-socialized as a puppy' energy, you wouldn't pick him out of the gaggle of kids he was running around with, other than maybe visually (dragonborn are fairly rare, and he's noticeably pitch black from nose to tail, so he stood out a little)

the most violent thing he ever did was lightly nipping a half-orc girl when they got into an argument who's gonna be sarevok and who's gonna be jaheira when they played (he wanted to be jaheira!! and the girl looked nothing like jaheira either!!). didn't even draw blood

well, other than the wholesale slaughter of his foster family, of course. that's where his backstory diverges from canon - in canon, durge is left on their own until adulthood, but he was taken to temple immediately, hence the art you mentioned.

playing around with the 'why', but i'm thinking maybe this was malevolent on part of the other branch of the happy bhaalspawn family - sarevok telling orin to watch the pup, and to bring him in as soon as the first urge happens, hoping that the kid will just break down from the shock of murder and immediately meeting the cult of bhaal, and. well. the problem will hopefully remove itself

Which almost worked, words cannot describe how much the sweet, generally normal kid that he was, was utterly unprepared for the murder cult shit. he wasn't eating, he was scared shitless of his divine father, he was scared of the cultists, he felt sorry for all the victims, he was disgusted at all the rituals, Orin was tormenting him on the daily, he hated Sceleritas, and blamed himself for the murder of his parents, he prayed to Bahamut to send paladins to kill everyone and take him away or maybe kill him, too.

But since Bahamut couldn't be arsed and no legendary heroes dropped by the Temple, he ultimately came to a point where he had to make a yes-no type of choice, and he chose to survive. Knowing that he's destined to be the world-devouring antichrist, and his death would probably marginally improve the world, he still chose to live. Because, to be fair, what has the world done for him so far? His family is dead, and he's trapped in a sewer with a bunch of freaks. Maybe if gods didn't want the world destroyed, they should've done something back when he was still sweet, still redeemable, right?

(in that way, he's a parallel to gortash, who also has very little reason to feel fondness for the forces of good in the world - where were forces of good when a little boy was getting sold to a devil, yeah?)

Eventually, with time, he went from just surviving to living, slowly started getting a taste for the Bhaalist specials - hard not to, lots of positive reinforcement from murderous ecstasies, being constantly amongst the brainwashed cultits, it skews your view of the world.

Sceleritas was sorta helpful there, he hated the little thing so much he eventually snapped and killed it, and found out Sceleritas actually makes a great chew-toy, and with time his hatred twisted itself into sort of fondness.

By the time he was a full grown adult in the prime of his life, he basically forgot all about his childhood and even the early days in the Temple; he had the whole Dark Urge thing on lock, the victims were just meat, the cultists were in his sway, the previous cult leader was eaten, Orin was sat the fuck down, the only thing that lingered from those early day was the he never really stopped being scared shitless of Bhaal, although he long rationalized it away as simply part of worship and natural part of father-son relationship besides

[quinintheclouds]

YES YES YES YES YES

Spoilers for RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 6

THAT WAS SO MUCH MORE THAN I HAD EVEN LET MYSELF HOPE FOR

It really looks like this is the Volume the writers realized how many answers we’ve needed for years and years, and is answering them now. I wish it’d come sooner, of course, but since they can’t go back and fix the pacing or writing, I’m really impressed and optimistic about how Volume 8 is going!

BUT MORE SPECIFICALLY

I would like to GUSH about how they handled the Oscar and Ozpin scenes. We have needed, nay, BEGGED for this sort of development, and it’s finally here. There’s too much I want to rave about so bullet point time! 

[Note: I love the farmboy so this wound up longer than expected -- have a read more for your scrolling convenience -- TL;DR at the end]

We got confirmation that Ozpin has been pleading with Oscar to let him take over so he can burden the pain and torture instead. Oscar is the one refusing, choosing to take it himself because he knows Salem and Hazel will be much harsher on Oz. I thought that was the case, but I’m so glad they addressed it because otherwise we’d be wondering why Oz hasn’t offered. It does make me wonder, is Oz still able to take control without asking? Oscar was able to fight it in vol 6, and he’s come a long way.

Hazel is holding back -- at least, Oscar says he can tell that he is. This would keep in line with the battle at Haven, when Hazel was suspiciously playing defense and stalling by letting Ozpin monologue, then letting Oscar give a little protagonist speech... I mean, it sure doesn’t LOOK like he’s holding back. Look at this kid:

moving on before I cry,

Ozpin suggests he take over and try to escape.

Oscar says no, he has a better idea. “This is our chance.”

Oz: “Hm. Maybe you’ve taken one too many hits.” I like this for two reasons: one, because it gives us a taste of the ol’ lighthearted Ozpin humor we’ve missed since he’s been gone, and two, because it shows that he and Oscar think differently. They have different thought processes, ideas, etc. Oz didn’t immediately know what Oscar was planning.

Oscar explains that Salem can’t take on everyone at once, and thus has been sending people to infiltrate all of remnant first, to attack from within. 

I LOVE that they had Oscar come up with this, because it is so in line with his character development in Volume 7. Not to mention how in volume 6 he was the one to figure out how to defeat Cordovin’s mecha. It’s cool to see him as a strategist, because while he’s a sweet kid from the middle of nowhere, he’s proven to be really smart and quick.

Plus, this gives him agency. People wanted Ozpin to return and save Oscar, but this is so, so much better. Oscar’s idea, Oscar’s choice, and Oz gets right on board. They’re agreeing to work together, despite their unresolved conflict. “Ozma learned the importance of living with the souls with which he’d been paired.”

AND THEN, A MOMENT I CANNOT THANK RT ENOUGH FOR:

The captions don’t show it, but Oscar AND Ozpin said this in unison. Now, this and the few seconds that follow were a rollercoaster of emotions. Let’s break it down:

When they said this together, I was positively GIDDY with excitement: they’re leaning into the “like-minded souls” thing and calling attention to the situation! Surely this must be a sign that Oscar and Ozpin will indeed both exist when their souls are one, as they are both equally parts of the combination of lives that is Ozma. Well, maybe not equally (yet?). 

Then, my elation was replaced with dread. What if this was actually an indication of them “merging” in the way some of the FNDM interpret it will go, rather than how I think it does? Or what if that’s not what RT is doing, but what if the FNDM takes it as a sign Ozpin is taking over?? I can’t last the whole break without knowing!

AND THEN!!! Ugh, this made me so relieved. Ozpin says, in a slightly amused tone of voice with a trace of a laugh, “We certainly are similar, you and I.” YESSSSS more references to them being like-minded souls!! But still having differences!! 

“Maybe we have been presented with an opportunity.” I’m really glad they went the route where Oscar is changing Ozpin’s mind on things. Oz no longer thinks he knows best, and is allowing Oscar to come into his own. Now he’s seeing how far Oscar’s come and the person he is.

Related note: The commentary for the vol 7 finale said that it was Oscar’s speeches to Ironwood about fear and trust that made Oz realize he’s been keeping secrets and hiding out of fear, and inspired him to come back. This is so promising for Oscar’s character going forward.

[Side note: Would love more info on what Oscar meant in volume 7 when he said “these memories... you’re back, aren’t you?” because? Is he just referring to the scenes with things like how he talked about Atlas’ history as if he were there, or does he have access to Oz’s memories now? 2 chapters ago we saw that he doesn’t yet know the location of the Beacon Relic. So unless he was lying really well, he doesn’t have ALL the memories yet. So which ones does he have? RT EXPLAIN]

Next,

I would like to call attention to the fact that Oscar smiled here. After Ozpin said they were similar, I was worried Oscar would react the way he has in the past: sad and conflicted about his identity, worried he’s becoming less of himself. But no. Like we saw in Volume 7, THIS is who Oscar Pine is. His development was his own, and we get to see that when Ozpin returned because Oscar had made him rethink his choices. Oscar Pine is more himself now than he’s been at any other point in the series. 

It’s really brilliant how the writers have used these last 2 volumes to show that Penny, the robot, is one of the most human characters on the show; and Oscar, the boy cursed to death and rebirth with a soul that was not his own, is one of the most individualistic ones. It’s just really cool how they’re playing with our expectations of the characters. (They’re doing great with Salem, too!)

[Side note: Penny’s soul/aura was given to her by Pietro, and they still have distinct personalities and identities. It’s possible that’s a parallel to Oscar’s situation, but I do feel the merge’s completion will result in one remaining soul/identity - just not a “taking over” situation]

Okay, that’s the last of that rollercoaster I mentioned. 

Time to get on a new one!

At long last, this episode finally gave us something we haven’t had since chapter 4 of volume SIX*:

*(I am not counting the one second of "Oscar." *glowy eyes* *Oscar blinks and is back in control* in the vol 7 finale)

OZPIN IS BACK!!!!

First, HELL YES I WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN!!!

Second, wow, they can change really quickly now. At first it took effort and was super visible, then just shook Oscar up a bit with the glowy eyes, and now it seems almost effortless, seamless. The eyes glow and the transition is smooth. I like it.

We didn’t get to hear Oscar’s thoughts after Oz said “Oscar, please,” begging him again to let him take control. So we don’t know whether Oscar allowed it out of pain, exhaustion, their plan, or a decision to trust Oz and work together here. Alternatively, Ozpin may have simply taken over of his own accord. I wish the writers would give us more insight to Oscar’s thoughts, because those scenes already have him talking inside/to his own head, so leaving some of his thoughts out can seem intentional and open-ended, which could mean more dragging out answers, but I think this was fine. Not the worst case of this by far lol

WHEN! HE! SPOKE!

I was hoping for this with all my heart. Over the course of volume 7 in particular, we saw Oscar’s voice, mannerisms, and speech patters start to resemble Ozpin’s. However, he still sounds and feels like Oscar. Going back to Volume 5, heck, even Volume 6 (which is when we last saw Ozpin in control), the voice of Ozpin speaking through Oscar is similar, but distinctly different from how Oscar’s speaking now. So I’ve been theorizing and hoping, and it CAME TRUE! Ozpin sounds more like Oscar now, while still managing to clearly be Ozpin.

Right from the first “Hello,” it was noticeable. It sounded almost like Oscar. I know it’s the same voice actor when one of them is in control (same body, same vocal cords), but that just makes it even more impressive. This is the first time we’ve heard Ozpin’s voice speaking through Oscar since QRWBY yelled at him in the snow in vol 6. And I was NOT disappointed.

“Why do you follow her?” I’ll keep saying it, but he sounds so much like Oscar confronting Ironwood. 

“I know how you see me. But her? Look at what she does, how is she the answer, why not stop her??” This gives me serious deja vu to Oscar’s speech towards Hazel in the Battle of Haven (and his speech towards Ironwood in v7′s finale). That speech had given Hazel pause then, and this one does as well, now. Ozpin sounds angrier, though, more aware of just how far gone these people are, but knowing they can change.

Hazel calls Ozpin out for the same thing the FNDM has been, and honestly, it’s been a long time coming. Hazel’s motivations are extremely misguided, Oscar was right to stand up for Oz/Gretchen at Haven, and the show really needed to reinforce the Ozpin-isn’t-bad-actually thing. Now it’s all out in the open. But it’s Ozpin’s response to this that elevated this scene even more:

That’s it. Ozma has spent countless lives fighting a war that may be impossible to win. But if no one tries, no one will survive. The gods will destroy all of Remnant. Still, every single lifetime, he chooses to try. Like Oscar said in volume 5 (about Hazel’s sister but writing-wise also kinda about Pyrrha), “She made a choice! A choice to put others before herself. So do I.” Like-minded souls.

AND THIS!!! Good gods I’m glad he said this. The show went way too long before anyone even questioned the “You can’t” answer from Jinn. Nora mentioned it in passing earlier, which I liked a lot (though this really should’ve been discussed in volume 6, but better late than never). But here? We see that Oz never gave up, never planned on losing, not sending people to a battle he “knows they can’t win.” While Salem is immortal, she is not infallible. Not even the gods were. Salem can be fought. Even Hazel has a moment of hesitation, perhaps even realization, before Salem enters.

Salem manipulates Cinder, offering her the maiden powers she wants so badly, and Ozpin interjects. “You’ll only be helping her bring about the end, for all of you!”

I just wanted to show these shots because again, just as we’ve seen Oscar’s mannerisms become increasingly similar to Ozpin’s, now that he’s back, we get to see the other way around. Look at the surprise and fear on his face. Look at how he widens his eyes and raises his eyebrows instead of narrowing/furrowing them now. Listen to the sounds he makes when tortured or thrown about. Listen to the desperation and earnest passion held in his pleas. He’s no longer hiding -- he’s being honest with the people who scare him most, and truly trying to help them see the light. 

[Side note: Cinder is not showing remorse in this scene, but I wonder how she’d react to Oscar, not Ozpin, being tortured. In the same episode, we have Cinder being tortured with a shock collar, AND we have Oscar decide to try to appeal to the humanity left in these villains. Last time we saw Oscar, Salem was torturing him with intense, almost electric magic. She might not care, but I wonder...]

ANYWAY I’m done for now. Have a TL;DR that wound up being long too

TL;DR: 

Basically, I’m super happy with the writers for the detail put into these scenes: 

they confirmed Oz has been begging to take over and bear the torture instead

had Oscar come up with an idea himself instead of getting rescued or immediately escaping

had Oscar view his dire situation as an opportunity, reminding us of his optimism and capabilities as a strategist

had Ozpin not know what Oscar’s plan was before he explained it (this might change as the souls become one, but it at least shows they think differently)

Oscar’s plan to appeal to the villains’ humanity and infiltrate Salem’s forces from within lining up with his volume 7 character development

had Oz trust Oscar and put his faith in him, which is progress for Oz

Oz and Oscar speaking in unison and agreeing to work together

Ozpin’s comment about them being similar, not the same

had Ozpin take control to speak to Hazel

Ozpin’s speech to Hazel and Cinder as parallels to Oscar’s speeches to Hazel and Ironwood, which CRWBY said were the reason Oz realized his secrecy is out of fear of trust, and Oscar’s points are what inspired him to come back.

Ozpin sounding and acting more like Oscar just like we’ve seen happen the other way around (though with Oscar, he’s holding true to his own ideas/morals, with Oz meeting him there)

established hope for some of our villains to defect, setting it in motion.

[freckledbodty]

Stripping Away The Bloat - The Umibe No Etranger Movie Did The Manga Dirty

I finally got around to watching the movie of Umibe no Etranger - a movie I didn’t know existed based on one of my old favourite BL mangas. And oh boy, does this adaptation reflect a painful trend in manga to anime/movie adaptations overall. Allow me a moment to rant, if you will...

TL;DR: READ THE MANGA BY THE LOVE OF GOD IT’S WONDERFUL. Also the movie is super pretty, but here’s a semi-detailed look at why it still really didn’t do the manga justice. You bet I came with receipts.

A few important notes before you start: 

1. Remember this is just my opinion, and I’d love to hear other people’s point of view on the matter, whether you agree or disagree! 

2. I am not fluent enough in Japanese to read the original without a translation, so my thoughts on the manga are coming from fan translations, which 100% might have affected how I view this! The anime I’m a little more sure on as I can generally tell when the subtitles have deviated, but that does mean I may have missed something/something was lost in translation that means something I say here is incorrect. I’m very sorry for this, so remember this is my view based on the media types I’ve consumed. 

3. Also the manga cuttings I use are not the best quality because of tumblr’s sizing, so even more of a reason to go read the books yourself! 

I’m aware I’m very late to this party, but when I saw the other day that this movie had been made, I was horrified that I hadn’t known about it sooner. I read the manga years ago, and adored it - it’s genuinely a sweet and beautifully drawn romance, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone. With that, however, the movie was a huge disappointment to me and I just need to have a moment to gush in a less than positive way. 

The Pros: 

Let’s get this out of the way, I’d still probably recommend this movie to anyone who likes romance anime-style movies. It’s beautifully animated. Seriously, this movie is stunning, with wonderful expressions, bright colours, and a pretty well suited soundtrack too. The animation tries to match the original art style of the manga, and frankly, I think it captures it perfectly. 10/10. Gorgeous. Watch it just for the prettiness. 

I’m also a big fan of any BL/GL adaptations that get a little more into the mainstream. This movie is definitely a huge win in terms of representation, especially when the manga (on the whole) avoided the more negative tropes that the BL/GL genres have historically been known for. (More on that later...) So that’s a win, and I will take it. 

The Bloat Cut: 

To put it simply, this movie fell into the trap of what I call (in my head) ‘cutting out the bloat’. As a long-time anime and manga fan, who has seen countless adaptations over the years, it’s a common theme that tends to make or break an anime. 

‘Cutting out the bloat’ to me means that the adaptors cut out a lot of the ‘smaller’ moments and panels that are seen in a manga. This movie was thankfully very good at following the original plot and took us through the same beats that the manga did (many adaptations don’t bother doing that at all), but they left out a lot of the extra stuff - the aforementioned ‘bloat’. 

The bloat isn’t really bloat in that it is pointless, however: the problem is that these little moments and scenes are seen to be pointless by the adaptors. Again, understandable: they have a limited run time, and it’s hard to include every little tiny moment, especially when they are ones that are easily scanned passed. Some bloat cutting is necessary to make an adaptation viable at all, but sometimes, it can be hugely detrimental to the piece. Umibe no Etranger is a key example of this. 

Setting: 

I watched this movie without rereading the manga, and as such, I was quickly thrown off by how bad the movie was. This was one of my favourite mangas, wasn’t it? Had I really had such terrible taste? (Yes, let’s not go there, but this manga was not one of my high-school bad decisions). 

The characters felt strange. Personalities did complete 180s after the time skip and did some questionable things that I couldn’t recall finding issue with when I read the manga. The two main characters felt so hot and cold that it didn’t feel like the story I remembered. Even the pacing felt off and janky at times. 

After watching, I went back and reread the manga, and this is where I saw all the ‘bloat’, the little intricate moments and minor panels that were easy to overlook but made the story what it was. Here’s a few of the biggest examples I could find. 

Shun:

Oh, Shun. What did they do to you? 

Shun’s character was bizarre. In the first 15 minutes of the movie, he was bubbly, friendly, and even bold enough to flirt with Mio. After the time skip, he was sour, cold, and completely withdrawn from the world. I understood Mio’s confusion because after the time jump he was a completely different character. 

The manga is often focused on Shun and his inner thoughts, and he’s the one who is hurt the most by the bloat cutting. For starters, he wasn’t as over-the-top friendly at the start of the manga as he was in the anime, and we’re able to see his inner thoughts and worries that cause his reservations from the first few pages we meet him. We also get more hints earlier on as to Shun’s past that explain a lot of his behaviour as a whole, as well as getting little hints as to why he’s even more negative and exhausted after the time jump. 

Mio: 

The biggest bloat cut out in terms of Mio is the big plot point of the phone call. For context, before leaving for the time skip, Mio promises to call Shun once he’s gotten to his new home. In the movie, this is never really brought up again, focusing on the relationship in the present, but this was a huge point to leave out. I think it was cut out because it was explained in one short scene in the manga, and therefore easily mistaken for bloat. 

In the manga, it’s explained that Mio does call, but it’s Eri who answers, and there’s a very important conversation that sets up Mio’s whole character development and explains why he returns to the island set on having a relationship with Shun. Eri warns him that calling Shun, despite knowing that Shun has feelings for him, is cruel and unfair, and tells Mio he shouldn’t contact him unless he’s worked out his feelings. It’s a great scene, and a real shame to leave out when it explains firstly why Mio never called back, and secondly why he is so adamant about his feelings and love for Shun when he does finally return: because he saw Eri’s warning to mean ‘don’t come back unless you are serious’.

Relationship:

In the movie, Mio and Shun didn’t really seem to have a relationship until the drama kicked up and then it quickly seem to disappear again. Shun was extremely held back and reserved, and barely ever seemed to return Mio’s feelings (even in the scenes he was instigating) - he even totally avoided anything resembling physical contact at first. 

Compare this to the manga, where there are little hints of their relationship progressing throughout the chapters. For one, Shun is never as cold and blank as he seems in the film, and when he does seem that way, the manga quickly shows a glimpse of his thoughts to explain how he’s exhausted or distracted - without those little bloated thought bubbles, he just seems... a little cruel frankly.

A really good example of this is the beach kiss scene. In the movie, as Mio is about to kiss him, Shun suddenly announces that he’s hungry and avoids the kiss altogether, leaving Mio confused. 

In the manga, they actually do kiss - it’s their first kiss, in fact. Shun seems embarrassed and his ‘I’m hungry’ feels like more of a way to distract them both. He explains he’s exhausted (which is fair enough, this is a big thing for him to process on little sleep that his inner thoughts earlier in the chapter already set up) rather than just outright shunning him. (Ha. Shun. shun. Get it?) 

A more *noted* bloat they cut out is that Shun and Mio get physical in the manga way earlier than the movie, the touches just not quite being everything Mio wanted. Without those more tender moments, where they actually seem like a couple, it seems like Mio is chasing after Shun desperately, whilst Shun couldn’t care less about him. It detracts from the whole relationship. Below are some examples of the two of them actually seeming like a couple that were cut from the movie, including longing looks from Shun, Shun hugging Mio whilst he’s asleep, and Shun asking to kiss and touch Mio. 

The Issue: 

Bloat cutting always annoys me, but usually, if it’s not hindering the story, I don’t mind. What bothers me most of all in this movie, is that without these subtle little panels and moments, the relationship between Shun and Mio seems... forced, frankly. In the movie, Shun seems to be the instigator of the flirting, and then after the time skip he acts practically disgusted, avoiding a lot of Mio’s advances, and we don’t get to hear his inner thoughts like we do in the manga to explain why he’s feeling this way. 

In the manga, during these ‘bloat’ pieces, Shun is an actual willing participant in the relationship, and Mio isn’t just forcing his advances onto Shun. It’s natural. It’s not flipping between hot and cold, or suddenly ramping up after a big moment of drama, it’s slow and careful and a real relationship. 

This would be a bad change in any adaptation, but it’s especially so in this one. Anyone who is a fan of BL specifically is probably aware of the genre’s bad rep historically for having some... questionable consent issues. This manga didn’t have them. The movie? I’m not so sure, and that’s why it’s rubbed me the wrong way. I could spend another 1000 words talking about this issue as a whole, but I’ll leave it there, you get the idea.

Expected? Yes. Okay? Meh. 

There’s no real point to this post aside from to complain a little and point out just how much more the source material gives us. Cutting the bloat always happens, and I don’t want it to stop happening per say, that would be impossible, but I’d kill for adaptors to just take a little more time to work out what is unnecessary and cutable bloat, and what is something they should really keep in. 

The movie is still cute and beautifully made, so please go watch and see for yourself! Mostly, I’d highly recommend the manga: it’s got the same gorgeous art style, only about 5 chapters long, and the story and relationship is that little bit more firmly built. 

I’ll stop ranting now, and I hope this actually made sense? Anyway, congrats on making it all this way.

[sulkybbarnes]

I just saw your post about misinterpreting characters. It was tagged with Adam and Bucky (two of my favorite fictional characters) and though I feel like that when I sometimes read fanfics, I can never just put my finger on it and I'd love to read your take on it!

Oh lord where do I even start... alright, this might get long so apologies in advance, but I have nearly a decade’s worth of thoughts on this. The short answer is: both characters often get severely over simplified, stripped away from essential characteristics, and their understandable reaction to their respective trauma gets overlooked in order to make them more “palatable” and to favor other characters in fics. 

The long answer: 

Let’s start with Adam Parrish. We meet Adam when he’s only 17 years old and we learn that he is an abuse survivor who comes from severe poverty, and along the way we witness trauma that leads to Adam having a disability, and later on learnt hat Adam is bisexual. Adam’s character is very realistic to someone in his position, so that he’s flawed and has issues to work through as the series goes along. These issues are presented at the start of the series through two unreliable narrators: Gansey who is proud and often self-victimizing, and Adam himself who is very introspective and lives in fear of turning into his father. Thus the characteristics the text gives us is that Adam is “cold and calculating” which is courtesy of Gansey, and that Adam is lonesome and prone to anger/arguing with his friends which is Adam’s own worries and insecurities manifesting in his chapters. And yes sure Adam at the start is -understandably- angry with the world at large and feels as if he’s ten steps behind everyone and playing catch-up, but he’s also visibly self-aware and constantly trying to curb any anger and moderate his reactions (even when they’re justified). The book also shows us through actions that Adam is sweet and thoughtful from how he acts around Blue, and shows that he develops as the books go on to be more aware of his actions, more confident in his own goodness, and more willing to show love and allow himself to be loved in return. The later books (BLLB, TRK, Opal story, CDTH) all show an Adam who is kind (his interactions with Opal), thoughtful (his constant thinking about Ronan’s feelings and not wanting to act before he knows he’s as serious/sure about them as Ronan is), a good friend (I’m just gonna.. gesture at the whole Blue/Gansey thing and how gracefully Adam handled it when they didn’t even deign to give him the benefit of the doubt), and a very loving person (which we see in his every interaction with Ronan from TRK onwards). So that’s Adam Parrish, complex and flawed but inherently a good person and a good character. 

However, Fanon Adam Parrish is a different story all together because he is often stripped to whatever bare essentials would serve the fic he is in. SO, in fandom you see an Adam who is either cruel and cold, as to serve some infantilizing hurt angsty version of Ronan. You see an Adam who is angry and prone to lashing out, to serve posts about Gansey being an angel who’s faultless and constantly hurt by his friends. You see an Adam who is disrespectful and hurtful to serve posts about why it was okay for Blue and Gansey to behave the way they did to him. Or on the complete opposite end, you get an Adam who is demure, shy, and almost disgustingly helpless to serve in a fic where he needs saving or some misguided hurt/comfort thing. Adam also often gets stripped away in the latter fics from any rightful anger or sharpness that relates to his trauma. Said anger is treated as something that makes him an unlovable or annoying character (you can find these takes everywhere in trc fandom), and therefore people need to overlook it to make him more palatable to them. Adam’s anger, as we see in CDTH, is often turned inwards and is an on-going struggle for him because it still feels at times as him against the world. It’s one of the best things about his character if you ask me, because it is what he grows out of the most, and what he continues to face and develop against. This trait makes him human and shows his vulnerability. Adam in canon is touch starved and loves fiercely, but in fanon the anger he displays gets used to paint him as unfeeling or constantly angry. Even though Adam shows anger only as much as any other character in the series, and often in a way less explosive (Ronan) or hurtful (Gansey) or entitled (Blue) manner. And so the point is that fandom takes away the complexity that makes Adam Parrish who he is, and molds him into whatever is easiest to digest and shove into a box that works better for the other characters. Adam’s development and arc get completely overlooked most of the time. He is often misinterpreted as one shallow thing, when he is a beautiful mix of emotions that make him Adam Parrish, and make him endearingly and painfully human and real.

Bucky Barnes, my original fave guy, follows strongly along the same lines. All you have to do is change names and events from what I said before and you’ll get how fandom treats Bucky. What I adore about Buck’s character is that he was established instantly as fiercely loyal, loving, fun, a good friend, and someone who is so important to Steve that we see Steve take on a suicide mission to get to Bucky. The progression of the other movies deals with Buck’s trauma and shows all the new aspects to his character that stem from said trauma, while maintaining the undercurrent of goodness and humor that we saw from pre-war Bucky. But once again, the complexity of Bucky’s character and his storyline; the trauma, the PTSD, and the fact that m*rvel never lets him heal, all boils down to fandom only choosing what they find palatable about Bucky and leading with that. I have less to say about this only because I’ve been a fan for too long, and have learned to conduct myself so that I don’t run into upsetting posts anymore, and read fics with a tone and characterization that works for me, but there’s a lot of content out there that strips Buck of his characteristics so much that he might as well be an OC. I will say that you might get more leeway with content based on a movie, than you do with content based on a book (where everything is glaringly obvious in the text), but I still have to roll my eyes at most content I see for Bucky, where he’s either helpless and waiting for someone to save (did we watch the same movies??), innocent and naive in how he conducts himself (...did we watch the same movies?!), or he’s unflinchingly cool and cold and unfeeling (seriously, DID WE WATCH THE SAME MOVIES?!). So once again the endpoint is that Bucky’s misinterpretation comes from a shallow understanding of his character, or complete lack of care about how he’s portrayed so that only one trait -whatever is needed for a fic or a post- is central and amplified while everything else he is falls away. I’m not pretentious enough to say that people can’t just have fun with a character and write whatever they want about it, because they absolutely can.. I’m just saying that it’s not my cup of tea and I wouldn’t read it. In fact, I only made a couple of attempts years ago at writing Bucky myself and then decided that I would rather read well-written things about him, than try and get it right myself because I’d get all in my emotions about his character. 

Tl;dr The theme of having your autonomy taken away and fighting like hell to get it back, and remaining good along the way is what makes both Adam and Bucky so close to my heart. Their respective trauma and complexity is what makes me love them both a lot, and I wish fandom didn’t often strip them away of their complexity to make them easier for fandom to digest.

[nafeary]

Judging the Black Army’s Casual Clothes because I’m a Self-Proclaimed Fashion Guru

@stardust-dreamer13 gave me this idea quite awhile ago, so here we go sweets!

So, I thought long and hard about whether I should actually take this serious (as in historically serious) or just as a meme, but ultimately — considering it is an otome game that’s trying to make hot character and not historically correct ones — I won’t judge them based on fashion that was the norm in the 19th century (because who knows whether Cradle is in an entirely different time, ya know) and will add a few quips here and there.

TL;DR: This shouldn’t be taken too seriously, especially since fashion is very subjective and everyone has their own preferences!

Ray Blackwell

Lemme just stop my nosebleed real quick brb. Our black king KNOWS EXACTLY how smexy he is. Anyway, lemme be a bit more serious. While partially unbuttoned shirts without any vests and neckties are an excellent way to rock a casual look, the inticrate designs (especially in the shoulder/neck area) have enough class to show that he is The King. Also, it’s a very simple outfit that splendidly mirrors his personality. The buttons are also pretty quirky and I love that!

Final verdict: A strong start with our Kuro no King. Regal, but boyish! 10/10

Sirius Oswald

Oh my...this is the outfit that inspired this rather arrogant judging. In my previous post, I’ve made fun of the fact how utterly... dad-like this look is and not in a daddy typa way. The cargo pants aren’t usually astrocious, but when combined with a tealish (???) vest it’s horrendous to the core. Everything literally looks like it came straight out of the closet of my best friend’s American dad. The only salvation to this is the V-neck and his hot earrings.

Final verdict: You’re my second favourite, but bias won’t save you from this monstrosity. 3/10

Luka Clemence

Now on to Luka, my cute boi. I really like the boyish vibe of this outfit! The choice of colours is perfect imo; they don’t clash, compliment him well, and create the perfect atmosphere for a casual look (in contrast to colours like black). Once again, the detailing of spades and clubs only works in favour of his persona. The brooch makes his eyes POP like goddamn citrines, and the dirty white roundneck completes this outfit brilliantly.

Final Verdict: Perfectly captures his sweet, rebel persona! 10/10

Seth Hyde

Considering he’s our resident fashionista, I’m a little dissatisfied by this outfit. There isn’t really anything wrong with it, but it kinda fails in highlighting his personality, as I could see this on some random Highschool boy instead of on our overprotective mum friend. Plus point for the untied hair HOT and the specific cut of the clothes which does indeed flatter his body type.

Final Verdict: Dissapointing, but it could be a lot worse. 5/10

Fenrir Godspeed

Yes. That’s it. That’s the comment. The navy works in perfect synchronisation with his hair and eyes, and his brown—whatever the fuck that his??? Why does he have a second jacket with him??? Anyway, it’s fashion, and it works (although, I’m not the biggest fan of that hue...). The embellishments also showcase his rich boi background, while the breast pockets allow his boyish nature to peek through.

Final Verdict: Brilliant outfit, although I would have omitted that specific kind of brown. 9,5/10

[Red Army + Oliver]

[dreamii-yume]

Hear me out. Farena remarrying a young bride. Sweet, kind fragile and completely out of her depth in a foreign court. She’s being compared to his previous wife, and being mocked by the court, she doesn’t understand the culture and feels so alone. Enter Leona who sees this as an opportunity to get revenge on his brother. Suddenly he’s always by her side, giving her attention and being kind, until she starts an affair with him. TL;DR Farena getting cucked by Leona and his wife.

You’re guilty, you’re ashamed of yourself, Leona could tell with the way you cover your flushed face, reluctantly bouncing up and down on his cock. You’re movements were sweet and innocent, you were clearly the type to wait for marriage before having intercourse. But of course, that pathetic brother of his is probably too busy with the mountains of paperwork in his office to even lay a hand on you. Leona almost feels bad for you, and yet he growled as he pried your hands away from your face. He doesn’t want you to hide anuthing, you don’t have to be so ashamed of yourself.

It was Farena’s own fault for suddenly bringing in a commoner like you to royalty this recklessly. Leona can’t even blame you for being so distant, so out-of-place during these fancy gatherings with relatives from other countries. You’ll smile, waved at people, and look pretty when someone acknowledges your presence, but other than that, it was difficult for you to hold a conversation longer than a minute. You were a lot different from the previous queen, everyone can see how sweet and kind you were, probably why the King had set his eyes on you in the first place. However, you were now a royalty sitting on the throne and that responsibility would not be resolved with just kindness.

Leona’s sharp ears could hear those distasteful people talking from the distance, even if he doesn’t want to. The way they talk, saying how you don’t have what it takes to beat the previous queen, that you’re far more inexperience than expected, it stirs something within him. He’s not one to defend someone like this but if these people are gonna gossip around like teenagers, then why don’t they try walking in your shoes for once? Yes, you’re unfamiliar and inexperience when it comes to dealing with royalty but what were they trying to expect from a normal girl who just came out of a normal family? He doesn’t like the way that these scums were trying to make it seem like it’s your fault for not knowing.

Leona knows that you can hear them too, but just have enough patience to ignore them, honestly it’s a much more respactable move. Even with someone actively berating you, in the end, a smile was really all you can give. Farena would try to defend you but he just really God forgive him for saying how utterly idiotic he is at it that all Leona could do is face-palm at the attempt. Is this that charming feature you’ve fallen in love with? You wouldn’t complain though, you’ll keep that painful smile on your face and accept every little unnecessary comment about your capabilities. Every little thing. Everyday...

...It’s no wonder that you suddenly broke down in front of him one night. He just happened to stumble upon you in the hallways and as much as you want to try and hide your tears like always, you couldn’t. Countless of fresh, frustrated tears stream down your cheeks as it was enough to tell Leona that you were at your limit. Your shoulders shook as you continously wipe them away but they just kept coming. The way you weep, the way you were apologizing to him for bearing witness to something so unsightly of you, the way you couldn’t properly scream out your frustrations even at your breaking point had brought unbelievable amount of irritation to Leona.

Where has your dear husband gone off to leave you in a state like this?

Despite having that thought in mind, Leona found himself reaching for your cheek and wiped away your flowing tears away with his thumb. Although it was surprising, you couldn’t deny this one act of comfort, it was the first time that someone had done so since coming in here after all. Soon, that sweet gesture turned to Leona pulling you closer to his chest and stroking your hair, giving you warmth.

It started there, the moment you found yourself wrapping your arms around his waist. That was the moment that prompted you to unconsciously break your marriage oath to the King of Afterglow Savannah.

You didn’t expect your whole situation to end up this way and even if Leona told you to not be ashamed of yourself, it’s just really difficult not to. You were letting someone else, no, you were letting the Second Prince, your husband’s younger brother, your brother-in-law to touch you so sensually. But you couldn’t help it, he had been the only one who truly accepted you in this place and even if your Darling of a Husband had stated that he loved you, he was almost never there when you needed him the most. You couldn’t reject Leona’s advances, it was wrong but if it weren’t for him, you had probably given up a long time ago.

So...You’re only returning that favor...That’s all. That’s all there is to it, right...?

[prorevenge]

Bully me for months? I'll hit you where it hurts the most, literally.

I want to preface this by saying I'm not proud of what I've done here. To the casual observer, what I did might seem like justice, but, really, I wish it didn't have to go as far as it did. I want my story to be a cautionary tale of what happens when bullying isn't taken seriously. I don't want this story to inspire you to do what I did, but as to what happens when people don't make the right choices the first time. Also, TL;DR at the bottom, the quotes aren't exact, and apologies if this seems a little all over the place. It's not easy for me to bring up stories like this, but I felt maybe I'd do some good by sharing it.

For as long as I can remember, I had a habit of bottling up my emotions. My single father is a staunch believer in traditional masculinity, including the idea that men and boys shouldn't cry. By my early to mid teens, I succumbed to this outdated idea, and accepted my fate as a quiet, stoic drone that just took orders, respected authority, and did hard work (especially manual labor.)

Enter my high school, which had a huge problem with bullying. The worst kids by far were the trashy "gangsta" kids (their words, not mine) from the inner city who targeted anybody they considered weaker than them. I was a pretty muscular 15 year old, but that didn't stop them from saying things like "Dude, you're so fat," or "Wassamatta, fattie? Lose your Twinkies on the way over?" In class, it was mostly petty annoyance: taking my pencil, sticking gum in my hair, insults. They got physical when the teachers weren't looking. Tripping me in the hall and pretending it was an accident; slamming my head against the locker, hitting me with footballs or soccer balls and saying a fake "whoops, sorry!" By themselves, it didn't seem that bad, but enough grains of sand add up to a huge pile, and, at that point, I was up to my waist in it.

Of course, the school didn't do anything about it. Teachers would either tell me "I'll take care of it," and then nothing ever changed, or I'd get something stupid like "I didn't see it. There's nothing I can do" or "You know, if I stopped class every time a kid was acting up, we'd never get anything done." Sure, and if a tree falls in the forest, it didn't make a sound because you didn't hear it. My father wasn't any help either. He'd tell me things like "there's gonna be people like that everywhere you go," or "if you're crying about this, you'll never make it in life," basically telling me to go suck it up because there are worse things out there. As a kid, I was hurt by this, but I was 15, so my self-esteem had been run over by a Combine a few times by now. For months, I just kept ignoring and waiting, hoping my teachers would keep their word about dealing with this problem. Sadly, it seemed they'd rather prioritize pep rallies and Career Aptitude Tests than do their job in keeping kids safe.

By around Spring, I'd had enough. By now, my sadness and annoyance had transmuted into boiling rage that I'd been keeping in me for far too long. If nobody was going to fight for me, I'd do it for myself, literally. I devoted the majority of my weekend to prepping for a showdown on Monday.

One of the few good things about my father is that how knowledgeable he is in self-defense. He believed it was important for a man to learn to fight, so he had me take several different kinds of martial art classes. If I was gonna fight a bully, I had to make it a proper fight. I then researched about Krav Maga, a branch of martial arts that's basically a military-style form of self defense, meant to train you how to fight if you were ever in danger "outside the arena." No rules, no balanced teams, no referees; just you and your need for survival. One of the components of Krav Maga is knowing the body's biggest "weak spots," ones that maximize the most amount of pain when hurt. Things like the groin, toes, and eyes were obvious, but you could also hit the knees, solar plexus, and even the spine. Since my classes didn't teach Krav Maga (you had to be 16 at the time,) I watched many online videos, making mental notes of the techniques used. It was almost always the same kid or group of kids that bullied me, so I already knew what they looked like, and, more importantly, where to strike.

On Monday, I waited for the next chance to come for the bullies to attack. To my surprise, they kept quiet for the most part. Maybe this was one of my lucky days where I'd actually get some work done. Then, while I was crunching for an exam during lunch, one of the bullies, a regular, spilled my water all over my textbook, and saying, "Whoops, sorry!" As he and his pals started walking away laughing, I got a good look at the back of the guy's neck. I raised my fist, aiming for the middle where I'd likely hit his spinal column.

WHAM! I knocked the guy over to the ground. That's when all Hell broke lose. His friends tried tackling me away, and I tried remembering to hit all their weak points: eyes, throat, groin, and jaw. It was fairly sloppy attempt at Krav Maga given my inexperience, and the other kids trying to fight back, but it got the effect I wanted. Of course, I didn't come out unscathed. I got punched in the jaw, a bloody nose, a bruise to the forehead, and more than a few kicks in the family jewels. The other kids noticed us fighting, with some going to get a teacher while others watched in a mix of shock and excitement. Eventually, the principal and a few other teachers pulled us apart, and sent us to the office, after our injuries were treated.

The principal talked with us individually while the assistant principal called all our parents. When it was my turn, I explained what happened. At some point, the principal said, "Why didn't you tell the teacher?" At that moment, I just snapped, somehow managing to sound even angrier than when I was fighting a few minutes ago. "I ALREADY TOLD THE DAMNED TEACHERS, LIKE A MILLION FUCKING TIMES, BUT NOBODY WAS DOING SHIT ABOUT IT! NOBODY! YOU TELL ME OVER AND OVER 'I'LL TAKE CARE OF IT, I'LL TAKE CARE OF IT,' BUT NOBODY EVER FUCKING DOES! I WOULDN'T HAVE FELT LIKE I HAD TO DO THIS OF SOMEBODY HERE ACTUALLY DID THEIR DAMNED JOB FOR ONCE!" I got an extra week of suspension for yelling.

Much to my surprise, my father was rather quiet about the whole thing. Normally, my father had the temperament of a dragon, but maybe this whole fight touched his inner "macho man" that made him go easier on me.

On the car ride home, he said calmly, but firmly, "What happened? And tell me the truth." I told him, "They wouldn't stop picking on me, so I defended myself." I waited to hear my father make some snide remark about hurt feelings, but he just said, "Were you in danger?" I paused for a moment, and said, "...Yes." I knew I was exaggerating, but maybe this could open my father's eyes to see how much I was hurting. He was quiet for a minute, and then said, "I can't judge on your situation 'cause I wasn't there, but it's in a boy's nature to be aggressive sometimes, and it sounds like those bullies were just using it for harm. I also know you well enough t'know you wouldn't lay a finger on somebody unless you felt like you had to." I nodded, holding back tears. "Next time you're ever in that kinda danger, call me. Don't wait for the teachers to fail you again. I'll give 'em Hell." I was stunned, and, once I realized what'd just happened, I smiled. That's one of the few redeeming qualities about my father. As toxic and narcissistic as he was, he was an expert on bringing vengeance to those who deserved it.

During my suspension, one of the bullies' parents wanted to press assault charges on me, but my father threatened to counter-sue the school AND the parents for letting the bullying go on for so long. Thankfully, nobody had to go to court as the bullies' credibility sank faster than the Titanic. Once word got around that I fought back to stop the bullying (rather than the strong, quiet guy going psycho,) more kids decided to come forward to the principal about their experience being bullied, too, and how they also went to the teachers for help. This included a few girls who were being sexually harassed by these kids. This was a PR nightmare for the school that left a permanent stain on their reputation among the locals. In the end, the bullies got expelled, some faced charges for sexual harassment, and I got transferred to a different high school. I guess I'm a little proud that I inspired some other troubled kids to come forward, but I really didn't like violence. I'm built for self-defense, but I don't like hurting anybody unless it's to protect those I love. I would've much preferred if teachers actually did their job, and "took care of it" before I had to.

I did get a gift certificate for summer classes in Krav Maga for my Sweet 16. Thankfully, I've never had to use it yet.

TL;DR: Bullies spend months torturing me, and teachers won't do anything, so I researched and imitated an advanced martial arts to bring maximum physical pain to my bullies.

(source) story by (/u/aitacrybaby)

[pancakexspacexdragon]

Long ass post ahead. TL;DR I found an old set of questions and decided to answer them again 7 years later because why not.

1: What are you wearing?

2014: Some Shorts and a shirt I accidentally stole from my brother.

2021: Panic! at the Disco shirt and some running shorts

2: Ever been in love?

2014: Oh yes, sadly...

2021: pfft.

3: Ever had a terrible breakup?

2014: Not technically, but I once had my homecoming date hook up with another girl.

2021: hahahahahaha. Yes.

4: How tall are you?
2014: like 5 foot 1, maybe 2? I dunno.

2021: 5’4”, apparently

5: How much do you weigh?
2014: How about no...

2021: Who’s to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

6: Any tattoos?
2014: Yes! I got one on my left shoulder blade not too long ago. I often forget I have it, actually lol.

2021: I’m up to five, and six is planned.

7: Any piercings?

2014: I do. I have double lobe piercings, and my left ear at the top. No non-ear piercings. Those seem uncomfortable to get, tbh.

2021: Uh...double lobe, helix, forward helix, tragus, nose, and septum.

8: OTPs?
2014: Marshall and Lilly on HIMYM. I mean, I think that's what this is asking. Right?

2021: I’m still not 100% sure what this means but I’m doubling down on Marshall and Lilly.

9: Favorite show?
2014: I'm still recovering from the ending of How I Met Your Mother, but I also love Criminal Minds, and the Big Bang Theory.

2021: HIMYM, Criminal Minds, Stranger Things, and Masked Singer.

10: Favorite bands?

2014: I pretty much love anything, so I'll try to shorten it to Love and Theft, Newsboys, t.A.T.u, Beast, and Fun.

2021: My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, twenty one pilots, Maroon 5, Relient K.

11: Something you miss?

2014: Going to the park and just lying in the grass with my friends or crushes. I know, I'm Cheesy.

2021: Not having responsibilities or bills to pay.

12: Favorite Song?
2014: ...why do they even bother asking this? Tbh, “I'll Be” by Edwin McCain, and “Hello, My Name is” by Matthew West

2021: “you should see me in a crown” by Billie Eilish and “no body, no crime” by Taylor Swift

13: How old are you?
2014: Nineteen. I feel old.

2021: ...twenty-six.

14: Zodiac sign?
2014: Aries, barely.

2021: (not) shockingly, I’m still an Aries.

15: Quality you look for in a partner?
2014: Just someone who's willing to go on cheesy dates at the park, and love me for who I am. And a Christian. Yea, I'm one of those people. Sorry...

2021: dude just someone who’s gonna stick with me.

16: Favorite quote?
2014: It's actually a verse. I love Jeremiah 29:11. It's actually part of what's tattooed on my shoulder; right below a cross.

2021: “it do be like that sometimes”

17: Favorite actor?
2014: Uhhhhh. Matthew Gray Gubler, or David Tennant. I love them both :)

2021: Matthew Gray Gubler.

18: Favorite color?
2014: Green, or pink. Depends on the shade and whatnot.

2021: pastels. mostly green.

19: Loud music or soft?
2014: If I'm alone in the car? loud. Anywhere else I enjoy my soft music.

2021: If I’m by myself loud but if there’s others I like to keep it low enough so we can still talk.

20: Where do you go when you’re sad?
2014: My Room, or the park not to far from me. I like parks, if you haven't noticed.

2021: My room

21: How long does it take you to shower?
2014: Uh, probably about 10 minutes.

2021: Either 10 minutes or 45 minutes. There is no in-between

22: How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?
2014: About 30 minutes. I like to sleep tbh.

2021: Maybe 20 minutes at the most. Cutting off all my hair really took some time off my getting ready list.

23: Ever been in a physical fight?
2014: heck no.

2021: hell no.

24: Turn on?
2014: Cute shy smiles, and geekiness. I love someone who I can be comfortable with.

2021: dorks with a lame sense of humor. I am all about the dad jokes.

25: Turn off?
2014: Those guys who try to make you uncomfortable, or act like they're super cool. I guess that would be douches, huh?

2021: the “oh you should smile more” men.

26: The reasons I joined Tumblr?
2014: I was trying to find a place where I could post stuff without my parents seeing it tbh. I like having a place where like 2 people actually know me.

2021: Because where else can I release the true psychotic chaos within me?

27: Fears?
2014: Being abandoned. And darkness, for sure.

2021: Finding out people only stayed in your life out of obligation and not out of their own choice. And spiders.

28: Last thing that made you cry?
2014: The guy I liked totally looked past me and started telling me about this other girl, after I told him how I felt (not RIGHT after, it had been about two months...but still).

2021: My mom manipulated me into showing up to something I didn’t want to because “I should really go visit family”

29: Last time you said you loved someone?
2014: My best friend and I say I love you after we hang up the phone Lol.

2021: Other than normal parent “Love You”’s, it’s probably been about 3 years.

30: Meaning behind your Tumblr name?
2014: I'm short, totally socially awkward in new situations (and with old friends, now that I think about it) and Idk about the fox. I just like foxes, I guess...

2021: There is no meaning. I like pancakes, space, and dragons.

31: Last book you read?
2014: If you don't count my English Lit book, then it was probably "Only the Good Spy

Young" by Ally Carter, but I don't remember.

2021: oh geez. It was probably “George” or “Rick” by Alex Gino

32: The book you’re currently reading? 
2014: Nothing yet. I do have that last Gallagher Girl book to read though. I'll probably start it this weekend.

2021: Nothing. But I never got to that last Gallagher Girl book...

33: Last show you watched?
2014: The Big Bang Theory.

2021: The Masked Singer

34: Last person you talked to? 
2014: My dad lol. We were watching the NFL draft.

2021: Guy friend of mine. I went to his place for dinner and some video games.

35: The relationship between you and the person you last texted? 
2014: Good Friend

2021: hahahahahahahaha. We’re just friends.

36: Favorite food?
2014: Cajun. Blame my grandparents, that's what they cook a lot lol.

2021: Pasta

37: Place you want to visit?
2014: I wanna go to Alaska. Even though I know it's super cold.

2021: Europe. Specially Spain or France.

38: Last place you were? 
2014: I honestly left home like twice today, to bring something to my brother at the High school, then to bring him to a friends house. He has a better social life than me.

2021: Friends place to hang out. We played Stardew then ordered wings and watched a movie.

39: Do you have a crush?
2014: Yes. See question 28 lol. Also, there's this other guy who I got close to last year, but I haven't spoken to him in weeks, and it's killing me.

2021: See guy referred to in 34, 35, and 38.

40: Last time you kissed someone?
2014: Never. I have never kissed anyone. Well, besides like a kiss in the cheek from family. Yeah...

2021: wow it’s probably been about three years.

41: Last time you were insulted?

2014: Recently lol. I guess... I don't really pay attention, or care...

2021: I don’t know. Probably recently.

42: Favorite flavor of sweet?
2014: I'm just gonna act like this doesn't exist, cause idk what it's asking.

2021: Chocolate.

43: What instruments do you play?
2014: I can play the French Horn and Mellophone! I also want to learn the flute, but I can't unless I have something to practice lol.

2021: French Horn, Mellophone, and Ukulele. Still want to learn the flute.

44: Favorite piece of jewelry?

2014: My purity ring. If I forget to put it on, I can seriously feel the emptiness, and it bothers me...

2021: My septum ring! I feel like it’s the first piercing I got for myself, and not just something I thought others would like on me.

45: Last sport you played?

2014: Maybe Soccer? Idk.

2021: pfft. Sports.

46: Last song you sang?

2014: “I'll Be” by Edwin McCain. But I really don't sing well, so it doesn't happen much, unless I'm alone.

2021: “You Belong with Me (Taylor’s Version)” by Taylor Swift and I 100% sang it to my dog.

47: Favorite chat up line?

2014: I don't have one

2021: It’s been 7 years and I still don’t have one.

48: Have you ever used it?

2014: Since i don't have one, no.

2021: Nah.

49: Last time you hung out with someone?

2014: I hung out with my future roommate before I left college yesterday.

2021: When I went to the previously mentioned Guy’s house earlier today.

50: Who should answers these questions next?

2014: Well, I guess any of my followers can choose to, if they want.

2021: Bold of you to assume anyone’s actually going to see this.

[soemthingsparkly]

not necessarily AU-related but what are all the characters go-to coffee shop orders? bonus: what's yours?

OMG, great question, thank you! 

I went into a bit of detail with these answers, so I’ll throw them down under the cut! 

Hello welcome to Under-The-Cut, the most exclusive club on this side of Tumblr.

Okay, anyway, coffee orders!

Luke: 

I don’t think Luke is shy about his coffee order at all. If he’s feeling it, he’ll go all out with syrups, and cream, and toppings. Caramel or chocolate sauce? Why not both.

That being said, I think he’s the kind of guy who gets coffee on the move, so he’d be most likely to order and cortado or a flat white - short, strong coffees to keep his body working as fast as his brain. He’d also probably get oat or soya milk. 

TL; DR: Luke’s go to drink is an oat flat white/cortado.

-

Alex: 

Opposite to Luke, Alex is really shy when it comes to his coffee order. Deep down he wants the unicorn hot chocolate with sprinkles and chocolate buttons, but he can’t bring himself to ask for it. Not just because it’s a drink he associates with instagram girls, but because he doesn’t want to be a hassle. This means he usually just orders a latte or cappuccino. 

If he’s behind the counter, however, he will take three shots of coffee, warm silky milk, some hot chocolate powder, cream and caramel pieces, topped with chocolate powder and maybe a couple marshmallows.

TL;DR: When Alex isn’t working, he’ll go for a simple latte. 

-

Reggie:

Nobody expected Reggie to be the black coffee drinker, but that’s what Reggie orders. 

Of course, his parents have been arguing and fighting and school has always hard, but when he got to high school, it became almost unbearable. He has countless undiagnosed learning difficulties, so pours hours into study late at night because: It shouldn’t be this hard. Why am I so stupid? How am I not getting this?

So Reggie started drinking black coffee to help him stay awake throughout the day and now he’s maybe a little bit addicted. 

TL;DR: Reggie is tired, so he tends to drink black filter or americano (sometimes he’ll get a hit of syrup, caramel or vanilla, if he’s feeling particularly fancy). 

-

Julie:

Julie is, without a doubt, a frappé girl. She wants them as sweet and sugary as they come. The more aesthetic the better. Even if it’s ridiculously cold outside, she will hold her goddamn frappé with her gloves on if she has to. 

She doesn’t drink all that much coffee, if she’s at work and wants something warm (for once) she’ll have a chai latte or a hot chocolate.

TL;DR: Frappés. Cold, creamy, and sweet. Pink. 

-

BONUs ROUNd:

Jaz:

My go-to drink really depends on how I’m feeling at the time. I cut out milk a couple months ago, so I went through a long period of getting used to drinking my coffee black (yes, hello, Reggie). It kinda sucked at first, but then I got REALLY into our single origin guest bean - which my boss cancelled as of yesterday (I’m crying). 

I’m not a huge fan of our house coffee. It’s a triple origin blend and has quite an earthy flavour, which I’m not really into. So I started drinking my coffee with oat milk!

TL;DR: Either a black Americano or a oat latte with an extra shot :> 

-

Thanks so much for the ask! This was really fun to think about. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. 

(Also we had this weird rush at the end of the day so I didn’t actually get to answer any asks before we closed. Lots of frappés within the last ten minutes. It’s literally the most British Autumn day ever, what is wrong with these people.)

<3

[ermuellert]

what are your honest opinions on julian draxler's career?

personally i thought he was genuinely going to be a big star because he was this young wonderkid at schalke who won the world cup as a 20 year old (he didn't do much though to be fair) but it never really turned out that way ... he's not done terribly per se, he is playing for psg, living that sweet life en france, and somehow still getting callups to the german national team but i am just kind of sad that he never reached the full potential that he had ... i thought he would be the captain of the "new" germany generation, one of the leaders, but now he barely gets to play ... i am kind of extra worked up about his case because he seems like a nice and sweet person as well ... anyways maybe i just have a bad track record of predicting career trajectories, all the youngsters i thought would succeed haven't (yet), at one point i believed that julian weigl and max meyer would also be world beaters and here we are ... i don't know what it is, probably a mix of injuries, bad luck, and maybe just not working hard enough ... long long sigh

anyways if you read all that you're an absolute superstar because i really went and wrote an essay oops ... i look forward to your live blogging tomorrow as it is always entertaining ... lots of love xxx

i hope u know that deep down.... like. Deep Down... i am always always always craving to talk about julian...... like trust me... i promise essays on monsieur draxler are always welcome here because i used to write that much about him and sometimes still think that much about him too...

objectively speaking, i think he is doing alright! pretty good by a lot of standards probably, for most of the reasons u listed. he’s getting paid obscene amounts (probably more than he deserves at this moment in time), has a seemingly great personal life, and as u said, still getting his national team callups. 

my personal thoughts, on the other hand, are... well....... not really of the same sentiment. i already know i’m gonna write up an even longer essay so let me just tuck the rest of this ramble under a cut for the sake of my followers lmao

honestly for me... thinking about julian is kind of depressing. if you feel worked up about him, just know that i relate. he seems very happy where he is in his life at the moment and so of course i’m happy for him too but compared to the potential it seemed he had... it’s just a bit sad. mostly because it isn’t as though he’s an excellent player hindered by injuries (e.g. reus) or anything really beyond his control - i think a lot of what’s so disappointing about his career trajectory is really just to do with him and him only.

yes, his failed transfer to juve back when he was at schalke wasn’t his fault but to move to wolfsburg? i know hindsight is 20/20 but i almost wish he’d just stayed at schalke. the drama he got into while he was at wolfsburg really did not do any good for his image, putting aside the fact that he was putting in average (even inconsistent) performances for the team. at schalke, maybe he could’ve had more time to develop within a team he grew up in and just use his time there to work and work hard. (there’s something i want to say about mentality here but i’ll bring that up later)

then, when his transfer to psg was announced, i felt like that was some beacon of hope although honestly, i think anything compared to wolfsburg could’ve looked that way to me at the time lmao keeping up with that club just for him (and partly andré schürrle) was fucking painful my god

at psg he was off to a decent start and things were starting to look up! wasn’t starting every single match but he was playing fairly well and made quick friends with his new teammates (u know who lol) etc. but then of course any sort of rhythm/momentum he gained was totally thrown off by mbappé’s and neymar’s arrivals which i think were both only around half a year after his transfer. 

and so basically since then, he’s been “competing” for a spot with ney, kylian, and di maría.

(ok reading that back i realize that whole recap of his career was not really necessary or at least. making it as lengthy as i did wasn’t but. i’m too lazy to go back and reword everything so bear with me lmao)

taking all that into account, i think yes, to some extent, he has some excuse for the stagnation of his career. he’s had his injuries and he’s been played out of position for large portions of time.

but i think what really frustrates me about him is that as a fan who’s loved him for years it’s really sad to see that what’s holding him back is not necessarily a lack of ability but just that he doesn’t have the sort of drive i wish he did. it’s been on display in his performances before - he can be lazy and invisible - but i think what’s worse is how that translates off the pitch. he’s just never really seemed to fight for a spot in the starting eleven. and if the rumors are true (as they do seem so) the parisian nightlife has not been doing him very good lmao

not only that though but i think he just doesn’t care as much about football as he does about ... image? money? i don’t know. i don’t know what the word i’m looking for is. i don’t think julian is a superficial sort of person and i’m not saying ambition is a bad thing at all, but when he couldn’t go from schalke to juventus (and that failed transfer was riding, presumably, a lot on his wonderboy status at schalke), he followed the money to wolfsburg. put in performances that understandably received criticism at wolfsburg, then very publicly made a whole thing out of wanting to leave and not being able to. then followed the money to psg where he just ... vibes on the bench. well, at least up until this season. but even then, if it weren’t for all the covid cases and red cards, i don’t know if he would be playing as much as he has. 

so tl;dr: i love julian a lot still and he’s still the same sweet dorky fuckboi-ish guy i’ve been a fan of since the start and i’m happy that he’s happy! the tragic irony is that what makes him happy - collecting checks while being a bench player - is also what depresses me quite a bit about him. he has his flashes of brilliance every once in a while where you can see that 17-year-old schalke wonderboy in him, so you know that hype from long ago wasn’t all a waste and that somewhere in there is a very talented, perhaps starworthy footballer. but he isn’t. not because he can’t but because he doesn’t really care to. and not in a dismissive sense i don’t think. i don’t think he thinks “ah who cares about being the best player in the world fuck that” but moreso in the sense of “ah i think i’m doing alright! that’s good enough for me.” and that sort of mentality is what places him (or at least, contributes to his position being) a tier below his peers who have proven themselves (e.g. kimmich, although that also brings up the whole “can that sort of fighter/die-on-the-pitch type mentality be taught or must it be inherent” kind of thing so let’s move on before i write an essay within this essay) at the end of the day i know not every footballer is in this sport simply for the sake of playing it, but from time to time thinking about him fills me with a lot of nostalgia and yes a tinge of disappointment because i can’t help but think of what could’ve been (i.e. what would’ve happened if he’d stayed at schalke? stayed there for good or stayed for a season or two more, developed even more hype, strengthened his abilities. had a successful transfer to a good, solid club and continued to hone his abilities, etc).

ok. now i’m done. i’m so sorry for putting u through all that and skimming this back i sound SO dramatic lmao but man i’ve been through like six-ish years of following his career so fuck it oh well

also if u wanna know how much i still care, know that after the “draxler to leeds united” rumors first dropped, i wrestled with my impulse control every single day for a week trying to stop myself from dming him on insta saying “i love you but get ur ass to leeds or i will kidnap u and get u there myself your football career is killing me but i love you and just want the best for u have a nice day xx”

[fabelyn]

Heaven Official’s Blessing: Why Read

“By the Heaven Official’s Blessing, No Paths are Bound!”

Official Summary: 

Eight hundred years ago, Xie Lian was the Crown Prince of the Xian Le kingdom. He was loved by his citizens and was considered the darling of the world. He ascended to the Heavens at a young age; however, due to unfortunate circumstances, was quickly banished back to the mortal realm. Years later, he ascends again–only to be banished again a few minutes after his ascension.Now, eight hundred years later, Xie Lian ascends to the Heavens for the third time as the laughing stock among all three realms. On his first task as a god thrice ascended, he meets a mysterious demon who rules the ghosts and terrifies the Heavens, yet, unbeknownst to Xie Lian, this demon king has been paying attention to him for a very, very long time.

Some noteworthy comments: 

Main couple is MalexMale, no explicit content, fully translated (244 chapters), by the same author as Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. Major themes: fate, human nature, limits of goodness and tragic consequences of one’s actions.

My add-on commentary to the summary: 

It’s not really a BL romance with a side of plot, but plot with a side of romance which happens to be BL (will get back to that later). It’s set in a world where outstanding individuals with outstanding deeds can ascend and become Gods (aka “Heaven Officials”). MC was the pampered crown prince of a rich nation, and ascended early. However, tragedy after tragedy strikes: war breaks out, famine, plague. MC fails to protect his kingdom and for his attitude is banished...twice. His closest friends abandon him, his subjects turn from worship to hatred of him, his parents kill themselves. From pampered prince, MC becomes a forgotten nobody, begging for scraps and a joke to all in Heaven. 

After 800 years (yes 800, MC gains immortality after first ascension) roaming the mortal realm in this situation, he finally ascends once more, now humble and self-deprecating. Between his desire to help and need to repay debts, he takes on heavenly tasks in the mortal realm (banish malignant spirits, solve mysterious deaths etc). Each new tasks seems darker than the last, and he slowly unravels unexpected secrets from the Heavens. Surprisingly, during his journey he is joined by a demon king, known to be ruthless and so powerful even the Heavens fear him, yet this king seems to want nothing more than to aid MC...

While the official summary does not manage to showcase this as well as the summary of GDC did, this story can get dark. It changes from very lighthearted (people fainting from MC’s bad cooking) to very tragic (the torture and deaths already mentioned). It has a lot of lore as the MC deals with not only other gods, but evil spirits and mortals.

One outstanding thing from this work is that it gives depth and limelight to many of its side characters, and all plotpoints are neatly tied in the end. the length of it (244 chapters) helps give the plot enough time to go great details and depth through its mini arcs that all culminate to quite the grand finale.

If the plot of the author’s most famous work (GDC) had a focus on misunderstandings and prejudice, this plot is about fate and human nature: how goodness can fail, as well as how experiences may or may not change people. It’s an Epic spanning Gods, Demons, Kingdoms, and over thousands of years of history.

(For those who have read Discworld, it's fun to note that the Gods/Heaven Officials here follow a similar system: belief is power. How many believers a god has can impact their wealth, power and even the gender they appear as. And lack of followers may even lead to death.)

On the romance: 

As said before, I see this as a plot with a side of romance that happens to be BL. This because while everything around MC goes through drama and tragedy and angst, the romance...does not. The romance is not the plot, that is to say, the plot itself is not about MC and his love interest navigating their love for each other; fighting then finally ending together. On the contrary; it is MC and love interest navigating plot that has nothing to do with their feelings, while MC slowly becomes enamored. However, it’s not possible to say that the plot would go on without the romance, as their love and working together is integral to overcoming many huddles.

In this sense, if you want to go read drama about romance, watch as two people fight, clash, misunderstand and slowly accept their feelings... this isn’t quite it, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation would be better. The romance is always there, but as a wholesome, sweet and mellow counterpoint to the suffering and darkness the plot metes out constantly (oh yes: the bizarre severity of angst MC goes through is not just pure coincidence). There will be no love triangles, no relationship-breaking misunderstandings etc. You may roll your eyes at MC being a little slow to figure feelings out, you might groan slightly at a silly misunderstanding, but neither actually harms their dynamic. I loved it, as it felt like a refreshing change from the usual BL romance and certainly a very needed levity all the bad luck haunting MC. Plus, my favorite couples are those that actually click without needing to insult and fight a lot.

Do note, and I fear I may be spoiling a bit here, it’s not that there isn’t angst and tragedy surrounding the romance, but that it is, in a way, “over”. You can only understanding by reading. You will hurt over the romance, yet already be relieved of that pain by the time the plot hands it to you.

Personalities: 

MC: in the present is a calm, self deprecating man. Humble but with a heart of gold, willing to sacrifice himself for others. 800 years ago, he had a golden heart but was impulsive, prideful. You will read the plot wringing those characteristics out of him, stab by stab through flashbacks. Also, MC has extreme bad luck. Dice he throws will always roll ones, but if he needs it to roll ones, they roll sixes. Lighting strikes where he goes, no shack he lives in lasts a month...

Love interest (hereon typed as “LI” for short). I fear giving too much away, but do feel who the love interest is is very clear early on so: If LI was the MC, he’d be a Gary Stu, but as the love interest he is so fun. Very powerful, very knowledgeable, very rich, very skilled. Demons bow to him, the heavens fear him, mortals even worship him. However, he cares for nothing, has no interest in helping anyone, is sarcastic and acerbic and ruthless. Except for with MC, which he treats on a golden platter, never harms even a strand of hair and will literally give everything to him (MC causes havoc in is domain then burns his armory down and LI doesn’t even frown)

Side characters: there’s quite a few, so despite there being noteworthy mentions I’d rather not make this longer. Let’s just say plot explores, using side characters, misogyny, prejudice, corruption, trauma, complicated morals, unfairness of fate, revenge etc

In fairness, some personal cons of this:

I dislike usage of too much capslock to demonstrate shouting, this does that. For people who are not used to eastern style writing, this might be a little different. It feels better than GDC, but there is a propensity for narration to explain things that might not feel good for some. And naturally, tons and tons of flashbacks as you start off at MC’s 3rd ascension but will eventually read in detail how his 1st and 2nd went, along with the banishments.

TL;DR: GO READ. 

Completed translations are up at novelupdates

An anime will be coming out this year (2020)

A manhua adaptation is ongoing

[ctl-yuejie]

sorry to bother, I come to ask for your insightful thoughts about the untamed. In ep 33 Wei Wuxian asks Lan Zhan if he truly believed him "back than", does he mean during his controversial path 16 years ago?And why do you think Lan Zhan doesn't answer him? Plus, in ep 42 we have a flashback about that night, when Lan Zhan told him it's not bad the feeling of sticking to the bridge till dark, it means he is answering that question and that he believes him for real?Sorry for the long question

hello, sweet anon!! i made you wait a terribly long time, but it took me a while to recall what episode the promise was made in and then to think of a satisfactory answer, not only to you but also to me.

I am definitely not an authority on this, I have read the novel only once, so all my meta knowledge is terribly limited. So take this as just my interpretation of the scenes you were referring to.

What I think he is referring to, is him asking Lan Wangji in episode 22:

“ I, Wei Wuxian, promise to never degenerate into demonic cultivation.Do you believe me or not?”

And he smiles almost like he always has, but there’s a tightness to it and we can see the urgency in his eyes. (yes, I am back on my gif by gif analysis bs because otherwise I do not have the words to describe this scene)

And Lan Wangji nods, slowly after Wei Wuxian’s eyes turn desperate for a moment. And we can almost hear the why? just by looking at his face. He is willing to trust Wei Wuxian but he knows that he is missing something, something Wei Wuxian isn’t willing to tell him. But he refrains from asking.

Wei Wuxian is clearly anxious about Lan Wangji’s answer, who seems to be still deep in thought when he decides to nod, despite Wei Wuxian’s behaviour feeling off.

And Wei Wuxian gives him a genuine smile and relaxes slightly....this scene is just screaming at us to see just how important Lan Wangji and his support and understanding is to Wei Wuxian.

But Lan Wangji is still in his thoughts and he doesn’t mind that Wei Wuxian notices that he might have just said yes, despite a better judgement that could’ve been made.

Wei Wuxian’s smile looks pained in the end and I do think there is the understanding of how Lan Wangji does hold reservations, but exactly about what and why he can only take a guess at. 

He knows that he is actually lying about not using demonic energy, because that is all that is left. And while I wouldn’t necessarily say that Lan Wangji really doesn’t trust him not to use demonic energy, he most definitely senses that something is off but he cannot fathom why. 

But I don’t believe this question was solely about whether Lan Wangji believes Wei Wuxian’s lie or not. I don’t think the question was meant literally. Besides all the things concerning his golden core that Wei Wuxian cannot talk about, what he really wants to know is whether Lan Wangji still believes that Wei Wuxian is doing all this to do good. 

So he lies about not using demonic energy because it would reveal too much and this is a path he believes that Lan Wangji won’t and cannot follow him on. We are not there yet, but I do think Wei Wuxian knows that he might isolate himself by going down this path and one thing he would never want Lan Wangji to do is sacrifice anything for his sake. Not the 3000+ rules that annoy him but give Lan Wangji comfort (at least at the moment), not his strict uncle (whom Wei Wuxian isn’t that fond of but he knows just how important family is) and also not Lan Wangji’s future as a respected cultivator. 

Lan Wangji truly believes that justice will prevail in the end with the old system and traditions in place, while Wei Wuxian has seen the cruelty all people and cultivators are capable off and is looking for a different way to achieve a just and peaceful future, while using the few resources he has.

Wei Wuxian deeply longs for someone who understands him, a place he belongs to where he is loved unconditionally. So this once he indulges these feelings and asks of Lan Wangji to believe in him despite telling a lie. He lets himself hope that Lan Wangji truly believes that he is still doing good and that he will understand him. 

In episode 33 he asks again:

“Did you really believe me back then?”

And there’s no answer. Lan Wangji is still conflicted. Maybe he is wondering himself whether he truly believed Wei Wuxian all those years ago. I can’t help but think that he might not want to answer because he’s not so sure himself if he really believed Wei Wuxian that time, but he also knows what that possible lack of trust has cost him. Now he knows how Wei Wuxian really and honestly wanted to do good, even by using demonic energy. If Wei Wuxian had asked now, whether Lan Wangji believes him he’d say yes in a heartbeat. Because he truly does, despite still not having all the answers. But back then? He’s not so sure himself. He has grown over these 16 years, learned that his sect’s rules are not there for comfort but can also feel painfully unjust (I mean, do not fraternize with Wei Wuxian as an explicit rule is some vindictive shit). 

It ultimately comes down to whether his believe in Wei Wuxian and his values is stronger than the confusion over some of his actions. 

Finally, in episode 42 we get his answer.

And he doesn’t say that he always meant it, when he nodded to Wei Wuxian’s question. Instead he says:

“The feeling of sticking to the single-log bridge til it’s dark, is not so bad.”

Which to me just emphasizes how he know understands that Wei Wuxian only ever wanted to do good and have Lan Wangji believe in the good in him. He has made the decision that he cultivation world can pretty much suck it if they stand against the values that he and Wei Wuxian share and believe in.

He still doesn’t know why Wei Wuxian resorted to demonic energy. It would totally make sense for him to be curious about it and try it out, even if that is a punishable act, but Wei Wuxian isn’t someone who wants power just for the sake of it or subdue people. He only ever used (at least when he was in control) demonic energy to protect people. And while Lan Wangji does not understand why Wei Wuxian’s spiritual power wasn’t enough to do so, he will stand besides Wei Wuxian.

This is not to say that he isn’t critical of Wei Wuxian’s actions and that good intentions justify all means but it is enough to believe in Wei Wuxian and be with him to uphold their shared values.

tl;dr: I think it is about how in episode 22 Wei Wuxian swore to never use demonic energy and asked Lan Wangji to believe him, which was a plea to believe that he was doing good and not demonic energy in particular and now, over the course of 16 years Lan Wangji has figured out that he believes in the good in Wei Wuxian and will stand beside him.

my tl;dr got also unnecessarily long and I kept you waiting for forever but somehow rl didn’t let me get around to writing down all my thoughts and feelings until now.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

I love schitt’s creek but I didn’t like David and I didn’t love David and Patrick. This point was hammered home for me in S6 when David didn’t even ask Patrick if he wanted to move to NY and just told him, and only decided to stay when he realized that he personally didn’t want to live there. I felt like by the end of the series, David was the only character who still wasn’t a good partner/friend. But...I’m curious about your thoughts because no one else thinks this!

i’m flattered that you want my thoughts, anon! (this became an essay so it’s behind a cut now.) i’m also potentially an excellent person for you to have asked about this, because i am an autistic and consequently self-focused person who was with an incredibly giving, supportive partner for more than a decade.

and while i definitely identify the most with stevie and twyla, david is also a lot like me in how firmly he believed he wasn’t worthy of love and wouldn’t find it, and how hard it was for him to give an inch, ever.

so what i think is that the whole family begins the show as incredibly selfish people with a lot of complexity, and by the end are wonderfully less selfish, but still flawed. 

moira learns to appreciate having ‘normal’ friends and to verbalize her love for alexis, where her affection for johnny and david has always been clear. johnny SEEMS less selfish than his wife and kids, but we see with twyla that even he takes a lot for granted. stevie is where we see him open himself up.

alexis is completely self-centered and self-protective in the beginning, and learns to take risks and prioritize others, but she doesn’t become a completely different person--she plans to go with ted, sure, but she doesn’t stop complaining the whole time the plans are underway.

and that’s why david's behavior with patrick doesn’t bother me as much. patrick has this amazing, supportive family who gave him birthday parties and worried they were horrible parents because he didn’t come out to them right away...and in response, patrick is this amazing, well-adjusted boyfriend who wants to be there for david. he expects a certain amount of effort on david’s part, but he loves david as-is; he doesn’t expect david to be like him.

so the david/patrick relationship is imbalanced, but i would argue that it’s supposed to be, just like the alexis/ted relationship was always going to be imbalanced. when one partner is more self-focused and it takes them deliberate effort to be less selfish, while the other partner is happily giving and compromising and open, it can’t be a perfectly equal relationship. 

but speaking as someone who can be as selfish as david, i firmly believe that doesn’t mean those kinds of relationships aren’t just as loving and happy, as long as both partners accept each other for who they are. and i know for a fact that some people, like patrick, fall in love with someone and want to prove to them that love is worth compromise and work and trust even if they’ve never been good at it in the past...because i know somebody like that in real life. 

even though it doesn’t come naturally to me--i had to learn how as an adult inside my first relationship--i’m capable of offering other people sympathy (like david does for stevie when her aunt dies) and of saying i was wrong (like david does with his olive branch) and worrying about someone else more than myself (like he always has with alexis in dangerous situations and like he does when he realizes patrick hasn’t come out to his parents).

i may not be GREAT at those things, but i’m better at them now than i was years ago. and david is better at them by the end of the show than he was at the beginning. when he assumes that he and patrick will get married and move away to new york, it’s not as though he had malicious intentions and didn’t care what patrick wanted. the problem was in the assuming--patrick was so often content to go along with what would make david happy, david expected he would be happy to do that this time too. 

i’m not sure i would agree that his scene with stevie is entirely about david only deciding to stay once he didn’t want to live in new york, though. imo that scene is about stevie getting david to admit why he feels like he HAS to go to new york, and thus why he would ever even consider uprooting the life he’s already built with his fiance...which isn’t therefore just a scene about what david wants. it’s stevie trying to make him understand that what he has is worth staying for, compromising for, changing the idea in his head of what his future would look like. 

and for david, that’s a huge deal. the house isn’t a place that proves david ‘won’ so he should selfishly stay in schitt’s creek because he gets to live in a cute house. the house proves he won because it’s a symbol of everything he has with patrick, of how much patrick loves him and puts him first all the time. if you look at it like that, david staying in schitt’s creek is his attempt to give something up for patrick for a change, like alexis with ted. 

and sure, it’s not a perfect analogy because ‘giving something up’ in this case means marrying the love of his life and living in his dream home...but as originally planned, alexis’s six months on an island with her boyfriend wouldn’t have been the world’s biggest sacrifice either. what matters is that both were huge steps FOR THEM. 

so, was i surprised when he tried to move patrick to new york with him out of nowhere? yes, because i thought he’d evolved a bit more than that in terms of shared communication. but it also didn’t seem out of character for him, not when david’s pre-show trauma ran so deep that it was constantly popping back up as a result. 

despite my general saltiness when it comes to the way the series ended with alexis and stevie alone, i do love david and patrick, and david in general. he was actually the first character i liked, when dan made me laugh with his delivery of the ‘bob cratchit’ line. liking him turned into loving him as soon as he declared that he didn’t want to be the victim of a hate crime. and i couldn’t be anything but all in for the ship, once patrick started aiming those hearteyes of his at david. 

if you don’t like david and can’t support david/patrick because you yourself wouldn’t ever want to be with someone like david? i get that! i really do. you could definitely argue that patrick deserves a partner less selfish and more considerate of his needs. 

but for reasons i absolutely cannot explain, as i was as baffled by it as david, sometimes people as sweet and kind as patrick fall in love with the stubborn and love-starved, and they’re willing to put in more than their fair share of the work to make a relationship last. it happens. and they can both be happy together.

tl;dr yes david is incredibly selfish but he and patrick make sense to me and i love them

[baenxietydad]

blood by the middle east || the songs

Date: August 12th, 2020

tl;dr: Nemo meets his mother’s family.

@justkeepdancing-nemo​

KYUNG-OK

 Kang Kyung-ok did not cry. 

When she came into the world in 1938, she was silent and the nursing talents feared her mother had delivered a stillborn. She didn’t even weep when her oldest daughter, her beautiful So-yeon, had been slain because the healing talent she Promised to couldn’t just die instead. When that same coward took her only grandchild and whisked him away to who knows where her eyes didn’t even mist. 

Instead, white hot rage lived where grief and tears should have. Tears made a woman weak but anger made her strong and Kyung-ok would take strength over looking sympathetic anyday. When she heard the voice, the heavily accented Korean-speaking voice of her only grandchild for the first time in fourteen years, Kyung-ok burst into tears. It only took a couple hours to arrange flights to England from Daegu for the following week. 

She was not an emotional woman. While her husband and youngest daughter had expressed having the flitters over meeting Nam-min, she would admit to nothing of the sort. Margaret Thatcher had nothing on Kang Kyung-ok, for the fairy was harder and colder than the prime minister could have ever been. 

She blamed her luck for making her that way. 

Kyung-ok loved her husband, her daughters, and her Hollow, but the rest of the world could burn and she would light a cigarette on the flames. She did suppose it wasn’t very fairylike of her, but neither was being a lawyer. 

And neither was absconding to England with your fledgling. It was a marvel So-yeon’s dimwit partner made it this far. Did he manage to learn English? She was willing to bet not. 

Kyung-ok has never hesitated once in her life but standing outside of the apartment Nam-min told Soon-ja to come to, her fist couldn’t ball up to knock on the door. 

What if he’s too much like my daughter? What if he rejects us? Thoughts she never allowed until now, when they were too loud to drown out. 

“You speak more English.” Kyung-ok said to her only living daughter. “Knock.”

NEMO: 

Nemo was gonna meet his grandparents. 

The news still hadn’t sunk in. This was all a dream-- finding the address, writing a letter, getting the call from Aunt Soon-ja just a week and a half later. Nemo had clung to the phone so tightly he feared he’d break it. He clung to the words of his aunt and grandparents, though, even tighter. It’d been a bit of a strange conversation-- mostly in Korean, but a couple of English words and phrases sprinkled in by a flustered Nemo. Sometimes his aunt had to translate for his grandparents. But Nemo was never more grateful for Appa’s insistence on Korean, because he knew enough to hold the best bits of the conversation close to his chest. The most important bit of all? 

When his grandparents asked if they could come see him. 

“Yes,” Nemo said without hesitation, his heart clenched, his hope rendering him nearly breathless. And then: “I--you should come for my dance recital at the end of August.” 

And they were. 

They were arriving today, though because it was tourist season, Nemo knew they booked a hotel in the Next Town Over. Nemo was all flitters while he waited. Every hour he checked the clock and tracked their journey to himself. Now, they’re in England. Now, they’re taking the train from London. They must be in the Next Town Over by now. Now, they’re on the train again-- 

In between each burst of nerves and excitement, a thought of Appa struck. Guilt followed in the aftershocks of it, Nemo grinding his teeth and pulling up his texts with him. He probably should tell Appa all about this...and you know, he meant to. He meant to tell Appa when Aunt Soon-ja called. And he meant to tell him when the trip was made. But he kept putting it off. 

He just couldn’t get Appa’s face out of his mind when Nemo mentioned his grandparents the first time. He’d been so upset. Nemo couldn’t risk…

He would tell Appa, just after. This meeting wasn’t about him anyway. It was about Nemo.

When the knock on the door came, he strangled an anxious, excited scream, spinning around in place like he was about to take off and hit his head on the ceiling. Stay breezy, jingles! He thought to himself, sucking in a breath and then darting to the door.

He could feel his heartbeat in his ears.

Before he could, like, pass out from excitement, he flung open the door and stared up at the strange faces of his long-lost relatives. His eyes widened. For a flit, he froze. 

“O-oh, um-- 안녕하세요! (ahnyeonghaseyo)!” Nemo quickly bowed to his grandparents and aunt. 

 KYUNG-OK:

 Kyung-ok would later wince at her grandson’s accent; the child of her beloved daughter, her Korean daughter, speaking Korean like a tourist who at least did his homework. She couldn’t help it. It was in her nature as a lawyer, as a fast-flying fairy, as a marginalized woman in her society, to demand the best. It was her duty to identify weaknesses and rip them out. 

The one weakness she’d yet to tackle in herself, however, was her hurt over what pathetic Bae Mu-yeol did. She effectively lost her daughter twice when he took away all she had left of her. Part of her wasn’t even sure her grandson would’ve been alive. 

After all, his father had tried to die. Who’s to say he wouldn’t have tried taking his son with him a second time? 

Seeing him in the flesh was more than a reunion. It was witnessing a resurrection. 

“Nam-min!” Kyung-ok rushed forward to hug him, not caring if he stiffened in her arms, she’d only hug him tighter.

 Her English was lacking so she just spoke to him in Korean. Hopefully the parasite that latched onto her So-yeon at least taught him Korean. 

“Do you remember us? Oh, probably not. Sweet boy, you’ve grown so tall! You look so much like your mother.” Who, also, looked a lot like Kyung-ok herself. Yes, this was So-yeon’s son. “You have her facial features.”

 NEMO: He didn’t know what to expect. The little he read in Eomma’s journals did not paint his grandparents in the friendliest light. He knew that they had been disapproving of Appa as Eomma’s partner, partially because they wanted her to find a fast-flying talent. Eomma argued with them, was frustrated with them, but she still talked to them--at least in what Nemo was able to translate. So maybe they’d be strict and overly formal. He braced himself for that.

Instead, his halmoni rushed forward and drew Nemo into a hug.

“Oh!” Nemo squeaked. His eyes widened. His halmoni only squeezed him tighter. It took one extra flit for Nemo to fully melt into the hug, but then he did-- wrapping his arms back around her and squeezing just as tight.

And Nemo let go of the few things he read in Eomma’s journal.

He wasn’t Eomma, nor Appa. That stuff was sixteen years ago. This was Nemo’s chance, and that chance was a beautiful, fresh spring morning, full of nothing but potential. Nemo would do whatever he could to make sure these relationships bloomed.

When Halmoni pulled away, Nemo’s cheeks flushed and he had tiny tears sparkling in his eyes. He giggled shyly, ducking his head briefly.

Appa always said he did look like Eomma.

“Really?” he spoke in Korean. At least he knew that word--though he felt bad, knowing he’d have to use mostly informal Korean because that’s how he spoke to Appa. “Thank you. I--o-oh, I should--do you want anything to drink or eat?” Nemo’s blush deepened. “You’re probably so tired from traveling too, please, come sit down!” 

 KYUNG-OK:

 Here, she couldn’t contain her surprise. Clearly he spoke Korean regularly but Bae Mu-yeol did not teach him how to speak to his elders. No matter. There would be time for that. Kyung-ok, soon enough, would teach him right. 

“We’re okay, Nam-min,” she assured him, patting her husband’s hand for him to agree. 

“Yes, the trip went smoothly.” Young-chul said, awkwardly, like he was speaking to a stranger and not their late daughter’s child. 

Kyung-ok quickly cut in and gestured to the third guest in Nam-min’s home as they sat down. “And this — this is our other daughter, Soon-ja, your eomma’s sister. She speaks English very well so if you run out of Korean that’s okay.”

Of course, Nam-min knew all of this. He’d written to Soon-ja, by some miracle found her address in one of his late mother’s belongings. Hard to believe his father left such things lying around. 

“Oh, Nam-min, you must have been so scared of your terrible father and what other secrets he had when you found out about us.” Kyung-ok cooed, petting Nam-min’s hair like he was a prize show cat. To her, he may as well be. Nothing was more precious than her only grandchild— her hopes for Soon-ja giving her any were about as dead as her respect for anybody in the Bae family. 

Nam-min, of course, was a Song. 

 NEMO: 

Nemo expected the insult.

He couldn’t blame his halmoni either. How could he blame them when Appa’s lies chased Nemo out of his own house? Even though he still planned to have dinner with Appa and fix things, he couldn’t expect his grandparents to do the same. But Appa was not a part of this. So Nemo could take the mention of him and put it to the side. At least, for now.

(Course, there was a squirming urge in him to try to fix things between Appa and his grandparents anyway. If nothing was healed, would he be able to have a true relationship with the Songs if he forgave Appa…? He didn’t want to choose. He shouldn’t have to.

But that problem could wait.) 

“It was pretty awful,” he admitted now. His hands curled into fists on his lap. He was sitting quite straight, perfect ballet posture. His sentences had to be just as careful and poised, if only because he had to think about them twice-over in order to make sure he got his Korean correct. “But I’m...I’m hoping that I can make up for all the time we lost. I want to look forward, not back. That’s what...fast-flying talents do, right?” 

“Aiya, you sound like a little adult!” chuckled his aunt and she flashed him a teasing smile. 

Nemo blushed, but he grinned back. 

 KYUNG-OK:

 “My little flower, you have grown.” She marveled at his words. “You are too grown. You are talking like a true fast-flying adult.”

Now that wasn’t a good or a bad thing, it simply was an observation. Nam-min was grown beyond his sixteen years and only reminded her of her daughter, and how this was truly her son. It was like having So-yeon back. 

“I brought some modest gifts. You deserve more but we weren’t sure what you like.” Kyung-ok said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a plastic bag full of photographs. “These are pictures of your Eomma growing up. And some of you as a baby.”

A beat. 

Young-chul spoke. “I don’t know what to ask you first. You are...not the fledgling I last held.”

 NEMO: 

The pictures were not modest gifts to Nemo. His eyes widened and he held out his hands at once, taking the plastic bag. He opened it and fished inside--

The first picture he pulled up was a black and white picture of toddler Eomma. Nemo sucked in a breath. She looked so young. She did look like him--not so much now, of course, but when Nemo was about her age, maybe 4 or something. Tears pricked at his eyes. 

Had Appa ever seen these? I could show him, thought Nemo. At dinner, when we...maybe after everyone meets everyone but-- he would really like these. 

“Thank you so much,” Nemo said as he flipped to another picture. He sucked in another breath through his nose so he could keep his tears back. It’d be such a bad impression to start blubbering like a fish. 

He met the soft eyes of his hal-abeoji next. Young-chul. He hadn’t read as much about him as he did about his halmoni and his aunt (Eomma complained a lot about her eomma, but loved her sister dearly). Of the three, Nemo thought he was the most nervous for his hal-abeoji simply because of the mystery. He didn’t seem cold, though. Maybe a bit out of place. But there was a lot here that was new and strange-- Nemo among them.

He didn’t want his hal-abeoji to be a stranger to him though. 

He smiled again. “I--I know, I feel the same,” he said and chuckled as his face turned red because it was awkward (!!) but that was okay! Nemo could handle awkwardness, he flew straight into it and burst through the other side. “I can just start talking though. I actually talk a lot, that’s--that’s something about me. Um, you know that I dance. I’m also-- still involved in the Pixie Hollow here.” He knew the Songs lived a mostly human life, but maybe they’d find this interesting? “I had to put off my testing for a year because of...well, my--wing, but I’m training hard now, still. And going to school here. I won prom king.” He flushed bright red as this popped out. Yah, would they even know what that was?!

“Prom king?” echoed his aunt in English--because Nemo said it in English. “You mean like the, like in the American TV shows?” 

Nemo nodded a little frantically and laughed again. He rubbed his neck. “Um, it’s kind of stupid…”

“No, that’s good! It means--” she looked at her parents and translated into Korean, something like: “Nemo is very popular in his human school, his peers elected him to a title called Prom King at the end of the year.” 

“I don’t think I’m very popular,” Nemo said in English, still flustered. But pride was blossoming, petal by petal, in his chest. He did want his relatives to think he was popular-- well-liked and respected. No need to mention the whole vampire thing or, er, the Burn Book, haha. 

 KYUNG-OK:

 Now that was some good news!

“Of course you’re popular and well-respected. You’re from the Daegu Song and Kang fast-flying families.” Kyung-ok said quickly. “It’s genetic.”

As fraught as her relationship with her youngest daughter has always been, she was proud and thankful that she spoke English so well. This would be a disaster without her. 

“Do you have any video of your dancing?” Young-chul asked. 

 NEMO: 

Nemo glowed at the praise. He glowed at the mention of the other family names, Song and Kang. They were unfamiliar to him, but didn’t they seem almost like medals that he’d like to win? Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow--and maybe not ever once his grandparents found out he couldn’t even test for fast-flying, but for now, they seemed attainable, like Nemo could deserve them. He could be this polished version of himself: Prom King Nemo (who didn’t ruin prom), popular, well-respected. 

What better way to keep all that praise comin’ then with dance? 

Nemo beamed and nodded fast at his hal-abeoji. “Yes! I--is it okay if I pull it up on my phone? I don’t have a laptop and my hyung is studying at the library here,” he said sheepishly, as he got out his phone to pull up the Youtube app. 

“I, ehm, have a couple of solos, but also there are a few pas de deux with my friend, Ashlee.” 

KYUNG-OK:

“Show us, please. We would love to see your dancing.” Kyung-ok said, a part of her thankful her grandson had something to show her how wonderful he was that didn’t involve having to visit the Hollow to see. 

As a fairy, she knew she’d be welcome. As Kang Kyung-ok...ah, well. If Bae Mu-yeol saw her, it wouldn’t end well. For him.

“We will have to take you to the ballet in Seoul.” Young-chul said.

Kyung-ok’s eyes darted to him, as if to tell him to shut his mouth, before Soon-ja caught onto what they were planning behind her back. It wasn’t like it would hurt her, she just, was too much like So-yeon. She didn’t see their late daughter’s partner for the monster he was and would not agree with what she and Young-chul had decided.

“When you visit.” Kyung-ok added smoothly, smiling at Nam-min as he went to find the videos on his phone. “Aigoo, I can’t get over how much you look like your mother, Nam-minnie. Doesn’t he look just like your sister, Soon-ja-yah?”

“You can tell whose genes were stronger.” Young-chul added with a chuckle, loosening up little by little.

NEMO: 

The ballet in Seoul. 

 Nemo held back his squeak of excitement, though he looked up at his grandparents with a huge smile. His insides felt radiant as sunshine. Could such a thing really happen? Before, dreams of Korea, of Seoul, of his birth Hollow in Daegu had to remain dreams. It was simply too expensive for Nemo and Appa to fly there and then to fly back. He figured...maybe after he began his apprenticeship and cut back on his dancing...maybe he could keep working and gather together savings with Appa for some kind of trip. But that would have been years and years away.

 His grandparents though had human money. His halmoni was a lawyer--they earned lots. And so going to the ballet in Seoul might not be a distant star anymore. He could reach it and turn his wish into reality.

 “I’d love that. I want to see everything in Seoul,” enthused Nemo, and then he handed his phone over to Soon-ja, who made the video on Youtube bigger for them. He kept talking as the video started. “I want to go to all the places Eomma talked about in her journals. Like her school. I’d love to walk on the campus and-- go down to the river, or see the old marketplace where she’d buy food. Everywhere!” 

 KYUNG-OK:

 “You lived in Seoul. Your parents went home to Daegu to have you and then after you were two weeks old traveled back to Seoul.” Kyung-ok said. “So-yeon was going to enroll you in human preschool shortly before she…”

 Now, she talked about her daughter’s death often. It wasn’t new, it wasn’t usually too difficult. But she’d never talked about her with her grandson before. 

 “I’m sorry, this is all so emotional.” She said, nervous-laughing and wiping her watering eyes. “My daughter loved you so much; and I loved her so much, even if we didn’t agree on...anything.”

 NEMO: 

Nemo’s eyes filled with tears too.

 It didn’t take much to make him cry. He’d already nearly wept all over his relatives when they appeared. But without fail, seeing others tear up tapped into Nemo’s own emotional well. His tears surged forth and he scooted on the couch so he was closer to his halmoni, reaching out to grasp her other hand in one of his. This was all instinct too and honestly, for a second, Nemo forgot exactly what was happening here-- that this was his magic-line-- that despite the distance between them, he and the Songs were connected by the twisting winds and the seasons. Right now, that didn’t matter. Nemo just saw someone who needed a hand to hold. And so he gave his halmoni one. 

 “Me too,” Nemo said, smiling as his eyes shined with tears. He sniffled a little. “I understand and I know my eomma loved you very much, no matter what. I also know she’d be really happy we’re getting to finally talk.” He grinned brighter, looking at his hal-abeoji and Aunt Soon-ja too. “I really can’t wait to spend so much more time with you.

 Soon-ja scrunched her face and then-- “Oooooh, I can’t help it! C’mere!” She moved swiftly over to Nemo’s other side and pulled him into a tight hug, making Nemo laugh. 

KYUNG-OK:

 Ssi-bang. 

Little Nam-min was holding her hand and comforting her and Kyung-ok couldn’t contain her tears any longer. One trickled down her face and Young-chul wiped it away with his thumb. 

She chuckled, embarrassed, and sniffed. “It’s so unfair, what happened to my daughter. She had so much to offer the world - the human world! - those humans screwed themselves almost as badly as they did us.”

“I’ll never forgive Bae Mu-yeol for not saving her and her unborn fledgling.” Kyung-ok wiped her eyes one last time and refused to cry any further. 

“Yeobo, I’m sure he tried.” Young-chul said gently. Now, he hated the sparrowman too but perhaps expressing their full contempt for Nam-min’s abeoji wasn’t the right move. 

“Not hard enough!” Kyung-ok snapped. “What kind of healing talent can’t, eo? Or make their son’s malformed wing better?”

She kissed Nemo’s cheek. “You must have had to work five times as hard to succeed.”

Young-chul cleared his throat. “I’m surprised you know Korean so well.”

 NEMO: 

His halmoni said a lot of things, a lot, and she said them very quickly. Maybe if Nemo hadn’t already been emotional, he would have more clearly realized what she meant by unborn fledgling. Maybe if she spoke more calmly and more slowly, then he would not think she really just meant baby, that she meant him. 

 Or maybe if she didn’t say that one word, which immediately consumed any other thought. 

 Malformed.

 That one word sunk into Nemo like razor-sharp talons. 

 Don’t overreact, Nemo thought almost instantly after that initial shock. Still, he sat almost unmoving as Halmoni kissed him on the cheek. He barely felt the affection in it. His whole chest was tight, and he swallowed, blinked, took a short breath into his nostrils. 

 It’s not like he hadn’t expected something like this.

 Why would he be upset anyway? He didn’t like it when pixies condescended about his wing. He didn’t need his grandparents to call his wing beautiful or special the way that Appa did, so maybe this was better. But then-- he didn’t like pixies talking about it at all. It wasn’t their place to decide how Nemo should feel about it, so shut up, y’know? If you needed to make a comment (and why would you?), call it his right wing, or his small wing. But only Nemo got to call it lucky, if he felt like it. And only Nemo got to call it ugly, if he felt like it. Otherwise, keep his wing out of your big, stupid mouth. 

 Malformed felt especially cruel. 

 Maybe it was a translation error? 

 Don’t overreact, Nemo thought again. His grandparents were still kind-- just upset. They loved him, even if his wing was...his wing. 

 (Still, Nemo yearned more than ever for Appa. Appa, they said it was malformed, he wanted to cry, like he was a fledgling again tattling on all the mean comments the rest of the fledglings in his class said. They’re right. I’m malformed.)

 Nemo swallowed. His smile returned, though it was tiny now. “Appa didn’t want me to lose touch with my culture,” he said dutifully. His eyes darted from Young-chul to Kyung-ok. “I...know why you’re mad at him and you deserve to be. But he wasn’t a bad appa to me-- for the most part. I want all of you to…” agh, what was the word? What did he want to say? His hands twitched on his lap. “It would be nice if we could all talk and...have a brand new start.” He finally said. 

 “That’s a good idea,” jumped in Soon-ja, and she sent a look at her parents. Nemo knew that look. He looked at Appa like that when he needed Appa to not totally freak out about something. And okay, maybe a fresh start would be difficult, but not impossible-- at least his aunt was on his side. 

 KYUNG-OK:

 Kyung-ok frowned at Nam-min’s suggestion, barely biting back a scoff or a bitter laugh. 

 “I’m sorry Nam-min, but there is no fresh start for your father. We want to be in your life, not his.” Young-chul said. 

 “That’s right. Flower, your father— you have to understand. Not only did he take you from us, but he let our daughter down that day.” Kyung-ok said. “I can’t forgive the sparrowman that couldn’t save her and her child.”

 “That was even more cruel than hiding you away. We love you, Nam-min. But we hate him.”

NEMO: 

Nemo had grown up defending Appa. The instinct kicked in his gut, sharp and insistent. He meant what he’d said to his grandparents; he understood their anger. He understood if they could not forgive Appa for many things. Grief made people do many thorny and dark things to cope. Like Appa, trying to die in the river. 

 For his grandparents, they blamed Appa for their daughter's death. They shouldn’t. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right--

 Nemo looked down, clenching his jaw as these protests swelled inside him. 

 “He did everything he could to save her,” Nemo said after a breath-- his voice solid, though he remained perfectly calm. “I know you can’t forgive him-- I won’t make you either. But he’s still my appa and he’s gonna be in my life,” he finally settled on. If they hated Nemo for that-- well… 

 He thought of Sindri and their conversation before all this. I think it’s better to try even if there is a small chance things could turn out not great, because the chance that something good will happen is there too. If you don’t try, you’ll always wonder and you’ll always be sad.

 His hyung was right. Nemo just had to be himself, and it was up to his grandparents to accept him or not.  

 KYUNG-OK:

 “Oh, Nam-min.” Kyung-ok sighed, petting his hair again. “There’s so much you don’t understand.”

 Like how, like the selfish coward he was, Bae Mu-yeol tried to drown himself in the river rather than live with his failure. How he was a trashy bartender while their daughter was a scientist, and he clearly coasted on her coattails and took advantage of the comforts such a brilliant wife gave him. 

 (It was his hard work that provided So-yeon her education but Kyung-ok would never admit that.)

 “We love you. But your father is not a good man. He tried to...he tried to commit suicide, Nam-min. He would have abandoned you. What fairy does— I’m sorry.” She stopped herself. “I realize I am letting my hatred for your father hijack this reunion. I just.”

 She clapped a hand over Nemo’s. “You are a Song. You are your mother’s son. And we love you and miss you and want to give you the world. You deserve better, flower. Better than him. We want to be your family and I will tolerate your leech of a father’s existence but...do not ask me to make nice with him.”

 NEMO: 

Well, this explained why Appa took him away and told Nemo his grandparents were dead.

 They’re as good as dead to me, he’d said when Nemo confronted him. How could Nemo ever forget? Those words had an echo that came back to him over and over. 

 His fingernails dug into his palms as he clenched them tighter. This war between Appa and the Songs had made Nemo so lonely, didn’t they see that? Appa should have never have kept Nemo from Eomma’s parents; and Eomma’s parents should not have driven away his appa, even if they had disapproved of their daughter’s choice. 

 Instead, they’d rather hate each other. 

 Nemo wanted to keep arguing-- but Halmoni clasped his hand and the urge grew much smaller and softer, easily blown away. You are your mother’s son, she said, and he wanted to cling to those words and to every memory of his eomma that his grandparents could give. We love you and miss you and want to give you the world. He clung to that too as if it were a safe place he could go, instead of the worry and pain and loneliness he endured for these last few weeks. He even forgave Halmoni for the insult to his wing. That wasn’t the Halmoni he wanted; he wanted this one, who was warm and who would protect him.

 And even if this honesty was painful, at least that’s what it was: honesty. No lies or half-truths or flimsy excuses.

 Maybe over time, too, Nemo could be a bridge that brought Appa and the Songs back together. He wouldn’t give up on that-- just...needed patience. 

 “Okay. Tolerance is good. I can work with tolerance,” Nemo said-- kind of meant it as a joke, didn’t know if his grandparents would laugh. “I just don’t want to lose any more family.” 

 KYUNG-OK:

 “You have us, Nemo. You have your fast-flying family— well, and Soon-ja.” She cast a playful smile over at her daughter. 

 Kyung-ok kissed Nemo’s cheek again and looked at him with love just beaming at him from her eyes. She loved him. She did.  Even if he wasn’t a perfect fast-flying child of her daughter to cling to, he was still So-yeon’s child. 

 “You have us.”

 NEMO: 

Yes, he had them-- a halmoni, a hal-abeoji, and an aunt, after sixteen years. Nemo beamed again and then wrapped his arms around his halmoni in another hug, squeezing her even tighter. His heart raced in the best of ways. It didn’t matter if they weren’t perfect-- Nemo wasn’t perfect. All that mattered was that they were his. 

 “Thank you, Halmoni!” he said. As he pulled away, he was blushing. “You’ll...you will come to my dance recital, right? My appa will be there but I want you there too.” 

 KYUNG-OK:

 Without her permission, Kyung-ok’s smile grew wicked. A dance recital he said? Attended by Bae Mu-yeol? Oh, wasn’t that just glorious. She could show up in a fine but sensible dress purchased in England, make the parasite keenly aware of her presence and her permanence in his son’s life. 

 It would, in hindsight, be an occasion that would serve as a warning of what will have come next, but was yet to happen. 

 She cleared her throat before her daughter could latch onto the wheels turning in her head, and once again smiled sweetly at Nam-min. 

 “We wouldn’t miss it for the world. We don’t have to be back in Korea for two weeks, I made sure of that.”

[porchwood]

Hi just so I understand cause i keep waiting for it and it doesnt seem likely to happen have you kind of fallen out of love with wtm? and everlark in general tbh? cause ive been following you for a while now and you always had lil quotes and pictures and things that reminded you inspired you whatever it was about katniss and wtm and now alllll it is is gadge i followed you because personally i love what you did with everlark and im just wondering if thats gone and not foreseeable any time soon?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to answer this… It’s afair question - to a point. If you’re more of a drop-in person (like me) thanlive-on-the-dash, coming back to find my blog awash in Gadge might have beenquite upsetting. There are several reasons for the current state of things:

1. Life has been driving me into the ground since December26, 2013. (Yes, going on six straight years.) If you were a WtM reader from thebeginning, you may recall that I was pretty energetic and prolific in 2012-2013.Oh, there were tough times, but nothing like what started on the aforementioneddate (a car accident where I was in the “bystander” vehicle and it still got totaled)and has continued relentlessly ever since. Sometimes adversity leads to greatcreativity and sometimes it turns you into a depressed, exhausted, reclusivelump, and the past 5+ years have seen periods of both from me. These past 18months have been exceptionally awful (and expensive), resulting in very littlewriting at all, about any pairing.

2. Writing WtM takes a lot out of me. I don’t know whether thisis common knowledge or not, but it’s the gospel truth. I love that world, Ilove that version of Everlark, but every chapter requires so much hard work, itmakes me tired just to think of it. Not to mention, over the past couple of chaptersEverlark have been pushing for more intimacy than the plot/timeline allows, andso I’ve been struggling with how I want to handle that. Do I fight them andstick to the plan? (I can’t advance the timeline for several reasons.) Do I tryto figure out a cheat for them? They’ve got minds of their own and have changedmy plans multiple times, but this is something they genuinely can’t have, and Ihave to fight them on it. ☹ Which is sad, frustrating, and exhausting.

3. I’m a multi-pairing shipper, and have been from about 3chapters into WtM. Which means that my Everlark fics almost always feature asecondary pairing (or more than one), and sometimes I’ll get a plot bunny for afic about a pairing other than Everlark. Most writers in the THG fandom exclusivelywrite their OTP, whatever the plot bunny, but I find that some plot bunnies don’tfit Everlark as well as they do another pairing. (This is why I’ll never write aBeauty and the Beast Everlark fic unless Katniss is the “Beast,” if you will.)

4. The Everlark fandom is…tricky. I’ve never fit in there. Idon’t write Everlark the way the majority of fans see them (except for Peetabeing “sweet,” I guess), I hated the movies (I refuse to see MJ 1 or 2), and I’vemanaged to really rub some people the wrong way over the years –unintentionally, and for a variety of reasons – all of which leaves me feeling kinda down about Everlark in general. Don’t misunderstand me: I love Everlarkand WtM, but it’s really isolating to be this sad little island of unpopularopinions and unwelcome side-ships. That’s the part I really wish I could makeyou understand. For six years I’ve had Christopher Plummer in my head saying, “You’llnever be one of them,” and he’s so, cruelly, right. I want to cry every time Ithink of Embracing the Season (my E-rated Everlark modern AU oneshot for Lovein Panem - lots of daring for me!) because I poured heart and soul into that andit still wasn’t the Everlark that people wanted.

5. About a year and a half ago (when Strawberry Time reallytook off of its own accord) I participated in Gadge Day 2017, working my buttoff to find and schedule (and tag) over 100 carefully chosen Gale/Madge/Gadge aestheticposts, and for lack of a better way to say it: it turned on my Gadge-dar. After that, thosekinds of posts just leapt out at me whenever I had a chance to scroll, and forseveral months I wasn’t sure what to do with that. With a little encouragementfrom @ghtlovesthg, I came up with #march madgeness – wherein I turned my Tumblrinto Madge/Gadge-land for one month, and it was a blast. (Side-stepping Gadgefor a moment: Madge is a highly underappreciated and underused character,especially in fic/on Tumblr and I love splashing the dash with Madge-love.) Thenext month I launched a run of pent-up Everlark posts (i.e., regularprogramming), but I missed my Madge, so I instituted #madge monday – one day aweek when I could splash the dash with Madge/Gadge. At every juncture I gavepeople tags to block if they didn’t want to see this content (though I stillget unfollows every time I post, alas). I participated in last summer’s THG Reread– on the fringe of it, but my posts (reblogs and meta) were strongly Everlark-focusedagain during that time. So there’s definitely still been Everlark on my blog,but if you’re just dropping in (or for that matter, glancing at my archive), you’regoing to see a majority of Madge/Gadge.

6. Frankly, Gadge is fun. It’s a completely different dynamicthan Everlark, with less pressure to create something transcendent, and whenthe chips are down, I’m more likely to work on something that isn’t my six-years-runningopus. This spring, in the midst of lots of awfulness, I finally wrote a piecethat I’ve had in my head for years – The Best Part of Waking Up – with a differentpairing featured in each drabble “chapter,” including Gadge, Luka/Johanna (whoI’ve been wanting to put out there for AGES) and Jack/Raisa. I haven’t beenable to write quickly in years, and I think I finished those three “chapters”in about two days, maybe three. I completed the Raisa drabble in a couple ofhours and I consider it one of the best things I’ve ever written. (Honestly, ifa pairing was going to topple Everlark in my heart, it would be Jack/Raisa, i.e.,Mr. Everdeen/Mrs. Mellark. I love them to distraction.) Once upon a time I could drabble/sprint Everlark too – notoften, but I could manage it. Maybe it’ll happen again someday, but for thetime being, when I write in quick eager bursts, it’s usually about aside-pairing.

7. Because I just need to say it: about a year ago, I set up a secondary Tumblr for almost all my side-interests and ships outside of THG. When I first joined Tumblr, porchwood was just a fun page where I posted whatever struck my fancy (pretty things, funny things, whatever I liked), and over the next few years, I honed it into a pretty “writer’s notebook” for WtM and my other THG fics (related quotes, aesthetic posts, writing check-ins, etc.). When Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out, I shared a handful of posts pertaining to a new ship (not a new direction for my blog or writing, just sharing my excitement) and it was made very clear to me that people didn’t want to see that content on my page. So when I started watching Voltron: Legendary Defender, I had a sneaking suspicion people wouldn’t want to hear about those ships either. So I started an entirely new Tumblr for that content, and every so often I accidentally post something to the wrong page, which I immediately correct in horror, but people still unfollow. Point being: this blog is THG (and a few personal life updates) ONLY, with a pretty consistent aesthetic. I hide literally everything else that I’m interested in so you don’t have to be bothered by it. Is it really so unacceptable for me to have side-ships (complementary to the main pairing, not threatening to them) in the same universe??

8. Believe it or not, I’ve been working on WtM all along,just not making any massive strides. I tried to chip away at the current chapterduring Camp Nanowrimo last July, and it was a disaster. I thought joining awriting group would be helpful, but I didn’t realize that Camp Nano is basicallya lot of writing sprints in which you try to churn out as many words aspossible, which you then report to your “cabin” – and that’s the onlyinteraction with your fellow writers. I can’t write like that anymore (seeabove) and especially not when it comes to WtM, so I got discouraged veryquickly and sort of drifted away. I reattempted Nano on my own in April and wrotealmost 15K words, but in that instance I was really just using the Nano platform toset and reach a goal (which I didn’t ☹ ); I wasn’t in a cabin and didn’t interact with anyother writers, except my friend @ghtlovesthg, who read the finished portion.

9. I want to finish this dang chapter so much, and frankly, theonly way that’s going to happen is if life gets a little better and I holemyself up with my laptop for hours on end for weeks at a time – and somemagical being comes to support/cheer/comfort me while I do so. It’s currentlysitting at about 25K and I anticipate it will need to be at least double that,which is beyond ridiculous, but that’s the nature of WtM. The chapters are asmany words as it takes.

TL, DR: I still love Everlark and I’m still working on WtM, but my life has been extremely difficult for a very long time and I don’t have a great Everlark lifeline. Gadge and all my other ships are fun, and most of the Gadge you see on my Tumblr is aesthetic stuff for themed days/months/occasions. Anything non-THG goes on my sideblog.

[kokichi-and-co-imagine-blog]

*dramatic point* You there! *dramatic pose* Grookey, Sobble or Scorbunny?

Ooh boy…

My friend, you don’t know what you unleashed. 

Before we get started everyone, a quick and obvious Disclaimer: Know that the opinions on the starters are strictly my own and are just that, OPINIONS. They are not fact, they are not the be all and end all. Ultimately, it comes down to taste, and having different tastes is fine. And if your opinions on the starters differ from mine, that’s great. It’s only a game after all and it’s only designs for fictional magical animals. Now, with that out of the way…

Let’s get started.

Scorbunny:

When the starters were first revealed, Scorbunny was the one that jumped out to me first. Might have something to do with me seeming to like fire starters the most in general. The Charmander line (though don’t get me started on how I feel on how much Game Freak seems to pander to this thing. GIVE OTHER POKEMON LOVE GAME FREAK!!!), Cyndiquil line, Chimchar line. That’s three out of seven before gen 8. Admittedly, water types also tie that number (Oshawott line, Froakie line, Popplio line), but in gen 6 I was also a big Fennekin fan and in gen 7 I was all aboard the Litten train till I found out that they had to make my precious kitty stand on two legs. Don’t get me wrong, I like Incineroar, but I was really really hoping for some lean tiger/leopard/cheetah looking pokemon on all fours. Wasn’t a fan of the bipedal choice, but that’s just me. Though I will admit, the Heel idea was a good one.

Anyway, back to Scorbunny. Scorbunny was the first that popped out to me. It looked energetic and sweet. I was slightly worried though with the bandage on its face that this meant we were going back to fire-fighting types but I wasn’t too worried.

After a little while though I ended up changing who I wanted to use as a starter. Blame the fan-artists for that one, the flood of small cute comics for a certain water lizard (we’ll get to Sobble in a moment) kinda shifted the tide. 

By the time the 3D models were leaked, I wasn’t really planning on using Scorbunny anymore, and honestly the models didn’t help. Raboot was okay, perfectly fine design for the awkward middle stage. But Scorbunny… I don’t know, Scorbunny was WAY too human like for me. I’m not even entirely sure HOW to describe it, it just gave off that impression and it didn’t sit well with me.

When the official 2D art came out it helped a bit, but by that time I had already started the game and chosen my starter. And still, the human like feeling is still too present for me to be completely comfortable. I don’t know, it reminds me far too much of human sports anime protagonists. And I get it, that’s kinda the point with it being a soccer player but I can’t really help how I feel. I have warmed up on it though.

Admittedly, the line probably has the best, at least in terms of gameplay, signature move of the starters. And it does look freaking awesome.  

Sobble:

Ooh boy. Ooh boy.

Warning in advance guys, this is going to get kinda ranty. 

As I mentioned above, after a little time sitting with the starter designs, I ended up finding myself liking Sobble more and more. Sobble’s design is adorable, and it helps that I’m also at times feeling tons of anxiety and social intimidation. All the fanart helped too. This little guy stole my heart. I thought it was going to be perfect.

And then the 3D models leaked. 

I was not happy.

Drizzile… once again, a decent awkward middle stage, though those oven mitts for hands I was not fond of.

But Inteleon. INTELEON.

Listen, I get what Game Freak was going for. Spies are a major thing in Britain, from 007/Bond, to MI6 in the Mission Impossible movies. And it makes sense from a story stand point. The shy, easily intimidated Sobble grows up, becoming a super suave and confident spy. It fits. It honestly does.

BUT WHY DOES THAT DESIGN LOOK SO UGLY?!

Now, before we go on, going to rehash the disclaimer above. This is my personal opinion on Inteleon. If you love it, good for you. I am legitimately happy for you. It’s good that you like it, can enjoy it. I wish I could. I do not like it when I dislike a Pokemon, any Pokemon. Especially when the reason I dislike it is simply because I’m not a fan of its design.

But Inteleon. I can’t help it. I just hate it:

Those freakishly long and WAY too human-like hands on a lizard that, while I know were purposely designed, look like gloves. Yes, it goes with the spy motif, but to me it just looks awful.

The stick-thinness of its entire body. Like, its body literally looks like a rail, it’s arms and legs look like a stick-figure’s. It doesn’t even have any real shoulders! (admittedly, part of this may have to do with some… bad memories. My father passed away 4 and a half years ago from colon cancer and during the last few months of his life, he was anorexic. Scarily so. So yeah, might be some repressed stuff going on there. Of course, I could be over-analyzing this and it has nothing to do with it. Who knows?)

That stupid looking cape. Yes, I know it’s a membrane that acts as a glider. Actual lizards have this, and it helps with the spy theme. But to me, all I see is a stupid tiny cape. 

Seeing it in 3D made me just give up on the line. I just couldn’t get myself to like it. Even now, with official 2D art, I can’t get myself to like it.

And of course, that brings us to the final starter. 

Grookey:

There’s a reason I saved Grookey for last. Grookey was the exact opposite of what happened to Sobble for me. 

When I first saw Grookey I was not a fan. Oh sure, it was kinda cute, but something about the design just felt off to me. I think honestly it was the mouth. It just reminded me of a beak for some reason. Still does occasionally, though I’m much more okay with it now. But yeah, it was the least impressive to me of the first stages. I din’t hate it, but it didn’t get a reaction out of me. So I thought I wasn’t going to even consider it.

Then came the 3D leaks.

 And that changed.

Thwackey is my favorite mid stage starter this gen, and definitely ranks high up in mid stage starters over all. It looks really good, like a perfectly natural progression that doesn’t need to rely on teenage awkwardness. Yes, the teenage awkwardness is a perfectly fine design strategy, but I’m so much happier when it isn’t necessary. Thwackey just looks like an older Grookey that is now seriously considering drumming. And I love it.

And then Rillaboom. I will admit, at first sight I wasn’t blown away or head over heels like I am with some final stage starters (Infernape, Primarina, Greninja and Decidueye just to name a few), but I was fine with it. I was okay enough that I felt like going Grookey was an okay final option. Admittedly, I did consider boxing my starter for the first time ever, but after a while things changed. And I genuinely began to like Rillaboom.

The name is fun. Rillaboom is nice, and when you combine it with the usual “Go _!” you of course get Go, Rillaboom! Or, Gorilla-boom. That is a stealth pun I can appreciate.

Rillaboom’s design also grew on me. It’s a drummer and a good one. Usually I’m not a fan of Pokemon carrying around equipment as part of the natural look to them (way too many questions on how that works biologically to me) and at first this kinda turned me off when I saw the drum, but I’ve come to like it. It probably helps that the official 2D art doesn’t have it, which makes me think it isn’t a natural thing it just gets. And those dreads made of shrubs and vines. It’s nice. Plus, a grass gorilla. Thank you for this perfect opportunity to make some Dragon Ball Sayin nicknames. (My current one is named Broly. Rillaboom really reminds me of the new DB Super Broly who I really like, as opposed to the old DBZ one. But that’s a character analysis for another day.)

Ultimately though, it just has the most Pokemon-esque feel to it. I’m not a fan of people in general saying “Oh, that Pokemon is awful because it doesn’t look like a Pokemon!” but sometimes I get it. I understand that urge. And while I never would say a Pokemon is objectively awful for any reason, ESPECIALLY that reason, I can still understand it. And that’s what the other starters felt like to me. Not really like Pokemon. They are decent designs, well thought out ones. But I personally don’t like them, especially on a Pokemon.

So ultimately, TL;DR I’m on Team Grookey.

Closing Statements:

So, I know this has gone on quite a while, but I think it’s really important I end this discussion with a certain message.

It’s okay to like a Pokemon. Any Pokemon. And it’s also okay to dislike a Pokemon. Any Pokemon.

Human beings have tastes, and we all have different ones. I’m going to like certain characters, art, music, etc. that you may or may not like, and vice versa. And this is fine.

Ultimately, be kind and be respectful. 

We’re all still people and fans after all.