#well hate is strong. if it works in the narrative I can go with it

[leyavo]

| I am my father’s daughter | 13 |

PART THIRTEEN 💖 Dad!Price & Daughter!reader, eventual Soap x reader. 3k+ words

Previous parts -> [series masterlist]

TW: hurt/angst/mentions of abuse/ complicated father-daughter relationship

🔈Readers view of John is different, he’s come and gone in her life etc so she thinks he’s not that great. So don’t send me hate

| Please be aware that manipulative people are really good at twisting the narrative to look good and make others look bad! They know their targets, can be two completely different people that you wouldn’t realise what goes on behind closed doors. Trigger warning: LENA!! |

Lena’s POV:

Vodka lemonade. Lena Marston’s drink of choice, a companion she’d kept since her teen years. Where John had whisky, she had vodka and a kid, you. She likes to think that she’s a decent mother, enough to prepare you for the bad people in this world. You’re resourceful, a tad hopeful but it always works in her favour. So desperate for love that you believe every word she coats with sugar and when she does snap, you’re reminded of the harsh reality. Lena’s a realist, taking things for what they are. Whereas you’re an idealist, hoping that those around you will change for the better. That your mother will stop drinking and choosing men over you. That your father will come back and make everything right. As if taking her youth wasn’t enough, you’re still causing trouble for her now.

She thought she raised you better, maybe you are your father’s daughter. Someone who thinks they can change the world. Nobody changes, it’s laughable to imagine John any different, but as he sits opposite her with a non-alcoholic drink she can’t help, but laugh.

It’s been years since Lena’s seen John, a few phone calls here and there to lay the foundations. To complain about you, ask John when he’s going to pick his daughter up and have a word. Such an ungrateful girl. John’s age hasn’t ruined his looks, a head full of thick hair and beard. Doesn’t have to cover the grey hairs, dye his roots every month to appear younger. He’s not the one carrying stretch marks on his stomach or a scar from birthing you.

“Well how’s the wife, John? The boy…you always wanted a boy,” Lena asks, swirling the vodka around in her glass, ice cubes clinking together. She can’t remember the kids age or name and doesn’t care much to be honest. She’s thankful that she never had another.

John nods, “yep, all good. A three year old girl too.” His fingers drum against the table, sipping his beer without breaking eye connect with Lena.

Oh, that must ruin you. No longer daddy’s little girl and now you see John being the present dad that you’d only dreamt of growing up with. Another fantasy Lena told you to let go of years ago. Dreams don’t come true for girls like you.

He's not bothered to shred his jacket or remove the knitted scarf around his neck. Still the same man, gaze trailing Lena's features for any tells. John always reading too much into things or people and getting lost in the tiny details. Trying to connect them, losing the bigger picture completely. Not everything has to be so complex.

"You took money from our kid?"

And there it is…

Lena scoffs, “my kid, John. Ain’t seen you raising her.” She slams the glass to the table and points to her chest, sharp red nails jabbing herself and reminding him that she was there, not him. He’s always been too proud, wanting to be seen as a good and decent man. And in some ways maybe he is.

John leans back in his chair, gaze on his beer as if he wondering if it’s half full or half empty. There’s no way you’ve told him, he’d probably be less calm now than if you had. No, he doesn’t know everything and as per usual you’ve made it too easy for Lena. She’d thank you, but she doesn’t want to ruin the surprise. That or let you craft an excuse or hint at the truth.

“She didn’t tell ya? Of course she wouldn’t,” Lena chuckles, chasing the last remnants of her drink, vodka and lemon not as strong with the melting ice. “That ungrateful little shit stole that money from me, the last time she went back to him.” She sniffs, back of her hand swiping her nose. Her eyes sting, lashes clumping with tears and she feels the weight of John’s hand on top of hers. A heaviness she hasn’t had in years, but she’s laying the foundations. Dropping little pieces for John to pick up, make him overthink and draw his own conclusions. Anything to get him off her back.

His thumb brushes over her knuckles, light and soothing. “I didn’t know,” John says and Lena dares to glance up at him, his hand retreating back to his lap.

Phase one, plant a seed of doubt. Turn a bad thing sour. The moneys technically hers anyways, for all those years she had to raise you on her own. It’s not easy bringing a kid up without a father or the usual bricks and mortar. Half the time you were the reason Lena had to pack up her life again and search for the next place to settle. And as you grew older she noticed the way men’s eyes lingered on you instead of her. You were the one picking her up off the floor though, dragging her into the shower and sobering her up. You looked after her better than any man had and she wondered where you’d learnt that from. It wasn’t her, maybe that’s why Lena can’t stand you. She’s never been cut out to be a mother, didn’t have one like that either. So, how can you care for her better than she can?

Sometimes she sees her younger self in you and it twists her insides. A poison that coats the back of her throat, weighing on her tongue that she resorts to unleashing that venom on you. Lena tries not to think of being a teen with a toddler, lying on a mattress as you scream a fever. She can still hear those cries in the depths of a night terror, because to her you were a terror. No life and isolated from everything she once knew. The week days merging together till John called on a Saturday or Sunday, offering Lena a piece of her old self. His money the one thing giving her life.

Your teen years are what she loathed most. Lena refused to get you certain clothes, bought you a size too big so it swamped your body and said it would save her money in the long run. You are your mother’s daughter after all, she doesn’t want to compliment or encourage you in fear you’ll do better than her. There’s that spec of your father though, the spark of fire you strike back whenever one of her boyfriends tried to lay down the law. Never did learn.

“Fancy a smoke?” Lena asks, pulling a pack menthol cigarettes from her handbag. She slings her coat over her shoulders and smiles as John nods.

Another distraction, a break between the forced conversation and Lena wonders if you’d smell the lingering scent when John gets home. It’s distinct, something you despised.

The rain pelts on the awning outside the pub, wind whipping through the patio and Lena wades through the tables to heater. A warm orange glow illuminating above johns head as he stands in front of her and lights her cigarette, he reluctantly accepts one of her menthol ones, sparking the end alight with hers. He hates the smell of mint and tobacco merged, but Lena knows he’s too stressed not to smoke. His fingers have been twitching against his pint glass since he sat down an hour ago.

If he wasn’t married and loyal like a dog, she’d probably sleep with him. Anything to get him off her back. You’d definitely leave if you knew she’d had her claws back in him. The one scrap of hope you hold onto, John.

John exhales a cloud of smoke, head tilted as he watches the wind carry the fog away. “How much?” He asks, turning the cigarette in his hold.

“Don’t matter, we sorted it out. She’s an adult now John, needs to learn there’s consequences. Lord knows she should’ve learnt ‘em six bloody years ago,” Lena says, flicking her ash into the nearest tray on the table. She glances to John out of the corner of her eye, the muscle in his jaw flexing at the mention of six years ago. A testy subject for all involved, especially you. A turning point that solidified your hatred for John.

“Spit it out Lena,” he snaps, never one to beat around the bush with her. Hook-line and sinker. “You and her are always dangling that in my face, but I’m yet to be told what actually happened.” His nose wrinkles as he takes another drag of his cigarette, eyes narrowed at Lena.

His gaze doesn’t waver from her face, she’s not even sure he’s breathing as he waits for the verbal blow. Ash burning his fingers. He doesn’t want to miss anything.

“You really wanna know your kid?” Lena cocks her to the side, arched brow rising. He nods, crushing the cigarette under his boot. “She was arrested for the possession of drugs at fifteen, John. Went to a young offenders institute for months until I managed to get the charges dropped.”

John opens his mouth, but she waves him off. She relays the details, telling him of that night and the months that followed, answering his questions in between. Exaggerating certain parts to prove a point, that you’re not the good kid he thinks you are.

“That boyfriend of hers, you can thank him. She gave me hell for years John, I don’t blame you. I know you were working that huge case and couldn’t be home, but I did my best,” she says, wiping the salty tears rolling down her cheeks and leaning into john’s embrace as he wraps an arm around her. Too easy.

"I'm here now, let me help," he says, palm smoothing up and down her arm. She tucks her head under his chin and wraps her arms around his torso. It’s like she’s a teen again, clinging to John for warmth.

Lena releases a trembling breath. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still using. You know those mood swings and lashing out,” she mumbles into his chest. He tenses, slipping out of her hold and stepping back.

“What really happened between the two of you?” He asks, leaning down to try and catch her wandering gaze. “Kid, can’t even talk about ya’ without…”

“She’ll bleed you dry John and be gone before you realise,” Lena’s voice muffled, cigarette balancing between her lips as she dug through her handbag. “Your kids actual phone number, she’s got two.” She hands him a faded receipt, blue ink smeared on the crumpled paper.

John’s POV:

John thought if he saw Lena face to face he’d know, some sort of gut instinct to untangle the mess in his head. Dad intuition or whatever it’s called, but he doesn’t have that with you not yet. If anything, all he’s sees in Lena is you. You can’t be doing drugs, he checked your bag whilst you were in the hospital and if you had Toff would have added it to your medical notes. The mood swings, John knows are more trauma related. If Lena is lying what does she gain from doing so?

The smudged ink of your second phone number burns a hole in his pocket. Already stored in his contacts list just incase. He’s not going to bring it up with you either, knowing you’ll get rid of it and he won’t be able to reach you one day.

The mist of rain blurs John’s surroundings outside his truck. Window cracked open a fraction as he tries to get rid of the fogged up glass, old heater ticking away. Your bedroom light is still on, but John doesn’t want to enter the res house, not till he’s got his head sorted and he’s prepared. The last thing he wants it to scare or push you away. He knows if he reaches out too fast and close, you’ll withdraw. Maybe even leave him and never look back. Part of him doesn’t want to dig up that police report, it’s probably been cleared off your record by now as you were a minor and the charges were dropped. Doesn’t mean he’s not thinking about it though. His stomach twisting as he realises how alone you must have felt and he now understands why you think he wasn’t there for you. He knows he wasn’t there.

Lena’s minty scent clings to his clothes, he can smell it on his moustache and fingertips. The alcohol gel in his car not giving him much help, if anything he doesn’t even think it has a particular aroma to it. He curses himself for leaving his cigars back in his office, locked away in the top drawer. Meeting Lena wasn’t planned, the whole evening throwing him off as he sat in his truck at three in the morning. The missed calls on his phones unanswered, he’d warned Angie of that though and wasn’t expecting her to ring anytime soon. No, Simon’s number appears in the chain of notifications, on and off for the past two hours. A text of his return soon, always giving him an estimated arrival.

The next op isn’t his main worry though, but it should be. He hates to think it. There’s a niggling feeling that if John goes away now, you might not be home when he returns. The thought alone making him not want to have the have the talk. He has to though. A light tap against the glass draws him out of his thoughts and he rolls the window down. One skeleton gloved hand rests against the truck as Simon leans down to greet John.

“Work or the kid?” Simon asks, his gaze flitting to the line settling between johns brows as if he already knows. He wrinkles his nose, swaying in his spot as if the stench of minted tobacco has just invaded the thin layer of his mask. The cheapest cigarettes that are supposed to be left on the shelves, well that’s what Simon says.

John nudges his head to the passenger seat, watching Simon circle the truck and open the door. The old vehicle rocking as he fell into the seat and closed the door lightly. John’s lost count of how many times he’s had to fit the handle back on whenever Simon slams the door. The engine sputters to life and they don’t say anything till they’re out of the military base. Nothing but the open road and the darkness wrapping around them.

“Went to see Lena,” John says, the red light glaring at him and he slams the brakes, both of them lurching forward in their seats.

“And you came back with more questions than answers?” Simon replies, raising a blond brow at the captain. He’s never been a fan of John’s ex.

John fills him on the evening and everything Lena told him. Simon silent, nodding along as he listened. John can’t help, but see you in another light now and he tells Simon so. His mind wandering back to the shattered lamp, did you knock it off or break it? He knows you’re lying about your mum and he hopes you’ll pluck up the courage to confide in him. He doesn’t even want to go into the whole Johnny and you situation with Simon, he’s not ready for that yet. The one thing he definitely has to pull you up on.

“I just don’t know what to think,” John mumbles, fingers pressing against his temple and the dull pulsating ache. The past few weeks were weighing on him, work escalating and your unpredictable moods around him made him try ten times harder to accommodate your needs. Lowering his voice, stepping back and offering you more space in hopes you’ll come to him. He can’t keep saying later with you. He’s running out of time.

“She’s gotta have a reason to lie,” Simon pauses, holding a hand up and silencing John before he can offer his thoughts. “Think about it, she’s not had a stable upbringing and well, you don’t know the full story. You need to talk to the kid before you jump to conclusions.”

John nods, looping back round the streets and driving to the military base. The back of his throat burns, mouth dry as Simon’s words sink in. He doesn’t have all the information and you deserve to be heard. He owes you that much.

The truck rolls to a stop outside the res house, the light from your bedroom off. John removes the keys and holds them in his palm, elbow on the door panel. Simon exits the truck, walking round to johns side and he reaches over the door and pops the handle down opening it for him.

“Take a breather, then talk to her. It’s all fresh and amplified mate, just don’t interrogate the kid. With the right questions you’ll be able to figure out the situation.” Simon nods, advice given and he disappears down the gravel path to the main building without another glance.

John's lucky to get two hours sleep, giving up as soon as the sunlight filters through the blinds. He makes his bed as usual, tucking the sheets under the mattress and sits on the edge. His suitcase stares at him beside the chest of drawers, his fingers turning his wedding band deep in thought. He glances to the clock reading seven forty and he rises from the bed, pulling his door open.

He walks into your room, expecting the the door handle to rattle and the lock to click, but it swept wide open.

“Come on, up you get Kiddo,” John says, tugging the duvet off you. “You’re coming home with me, no discussion.” He tosses the flimsy duffle on your bed, pulling your clothes from the hangers in the wardrobe.

You catch the hoody he throws at you, mumbling under your breath as you shove it over your head and accept your fate. He thought you'd fight him on it, but he doesn't give you the chance to.

Lena stirring things up 🥴 johns going to have the talk with kiddo in the next part 🫡 please note I am dyslexic so there may be errors/mistakes. I do edit multiple times but miss out things - Leya

Taglist: @unclearblur @enfppuff @elita1 @tired-writer04 @kaoyamamegami @gallantys @leon-thot-kennedy @trulovekay @harley101399 @misshoneypaper @rpgsandstuff @tomatto1234 @lolyouresilly @madsothree @astrothedoll @grandfartvoid @delaynew @mysteriouslydeafeningwerewolf @little-mini-me-world @exitingmusic @majocookie @elegancefr @jesskidding3 @thepowers-kat-be @frangiipanii @ye-olde-trash-panda @sleep101 @bluebarrybubblez @shitaaba @muraaaaaa @vajjaa @rafaelacallinybbay @jeannieboys @poetoflawed @idleviewer @darling006 @itsleeq

[seleneprince]

So, after going back to my reincarnations manwha phase and thanks to @la-patrona-magdalena's beautiful reincarnation au work, Don't Look At Me! (sí esto es culpa tuya pendeja) i'm afraid my head just got more ideas for drafts instead of finishing the ones i already have (i swear i haven't forgotten my other works, i write a little of each everyday, i just have the attention span of a fish hshshsh)

Anyway, to no one's surprise, my favourites are the ones about modern day people waking up as a novel's villainess or secondary character, and the ones where those same characters reincarnate in the past after dying. And so, to avoid that fate, they decide to take different decisions and sometimes atone for their mistakes against other characters, unknowingly changing the whole plot towards them.

Well...

Yandere! Batfam au where the former "villainesses" are Mrs Wayne, Batsis and Little Flower, Mrs Wayne's youngest daughter with another man. Stupid names, I know, but I can't exactly give them proper names yet. The plot about them is the same as my current au (because i love my ocs/reader-inserts too much and i always picture them when i imagine scenarios lol), except with a slight twist.

Mrs Wayne becomes known for being a snob, cruel woman who enjoys having power and uses it for her and her kids' benefit even at the expense of others. She has no qualms in enacting said power to humiliate others when she sees fit and even just to feed her ego. She's dangerous, twisted and too confident in her high-standing to realise her weaknesses. Her only redeeming quality in everyone's eyes is that she genuinely loves her daughters and has a good relationship with them.

Batsis, or the Wayne Heiress, is every inch of her mother's daughter. She acts like this stereotypical rich girl with everything handled to her in silver platter simply for being rich and pretty. She's manipulative and gets a kick out of treating people like pawns in her own secret games. A great actress who weaponises her looks and strong resemblance to Martha Wayne to twist the narrative in her favour and get away with anything she does. Her arrogance becomes her kryptonite.

And last, the Little Flower. Or just Flower. The youngest but not less dangerous. A spoiled and vain little brat used to being coddled and protected by both her mother and sister, growing up surrounded by luxury and a set of privileges that only belong to her through a stolen family name, which it's not actually hers. She charms grown ups with her innocent aura and cute smiles, but she hates when things don't go her way. And if determined, she can be as lethal as her mother. Her age is her allibi to avoid guilt for her acts. Until it doesn't work anymore.

Then surprise, the "protagonist" appears. It doesn't matter her name, for the fate is always the same. The Batfam become fond of her, obsessively so, and the villainesses, fearing their positions will be threatened, do everything in their power to get rid of the protagonist. Unfortunately, becaose of manwha logic, the girl survives everything and miraculously manages to get out by showing off how good and pure and so different she is from those three, slowly inserting herself in the narrative while they get pushed out away. Eventually, of course, the three of them meet their end. Mrs Wayne is murdered in a petty revenge plot, Batsis falls into a deadly trap because of her hubris and Little Flower dies in an accident. Their story seems over...until they come back, waking up in the past before shit went down.

Except it's not really them. The three new "villainesses" come from an alternative universe where they, well, they weren't great people either but things were definitely better than this one. Their memories are mixed with those of the real villainesses, and now it's up to them to prevent their horrible deaths and find a way to leave this forsaken family before the protagonist appears.

They do their damn best to avoid that fate, doing everything differently while also adapting to their new life and accidentally changing things. They're so focused on surviving that they don't realise their behaviour is drawing attention...too much attention. And the plot is going to change drastically as their family begins to notice them more. Will it be a good or bad change? The girls don't want to know.

But one thing they're sure of: This batfamily isn't the one they're used to...and they might not let them go so easily.

[sokkastyles]

This is a big rant feel free to ignore or block:

Zk hate is annoying. Zuko hate is frustrating but after a point you guys really need to consider that, according to antis, it is (in modern social media atla fan space) largely a reaction of how much ZKs have "hated on and mischaracterizes Aang, Mai and other characters". I know you might say "having an accurate reading of the worst behaviours of characters as presented is not hate". But the thing is, said reading is still subjective.

There are viral essays upon essays on Tumblr that categorically declare Aang an Abuser, assume the worst of him in Southern Raiders and you and other ZKs see it as accurate reading of Aang and why Kataang doesn't work. I am not going into the merit of those arguments, just that they are subjective and people who care for Aang as a character are bound to develop a strong bitterness for the sub fandom from where it all comes. Same goes for Mai because "Katara should punch Mai in the throat for being mean to Zuko" is not gonna fly well with most people. There is an onslaught of very bad faith interpretation of Zuko's actions in Southern Raiders because people see it as a reaction to years of hate campaign against Aang. "Aang is demonized so much for his words of caution in TSR but if anything it was Zuko who was the devil in there". That is how the narrative is sold on atlatwt and twitter is where most hate is created against Zk, encouraging ppl to create sock-puppet accounts and come after you guys on here. Ever since the NATLA renaissance it is the same pattern- antis take screenshots of anti Kataang, anti Aang, anti mai posts from you guys, post it on twitter and then hundreds of people jump on Zutara hate train, heavily mischaracterizing Zuko for good measures. Of course there is an undercurrent of disdain for Zuko's popularity with the general fandom, entirely unrelated with Zk, that propel some stans of many characters (Aang and Azula mostly) to hate him, but that's not the point here

Zutara was a big fandom on atlatwt like an year ago, and not saying hate wasn't prevalant even then, but zk fandom could still defend it against slander. But since NATLA renaissance, the modus operandi of antis is: take a screenshot from Tumblr that has a zk saying something absurd like: "Aang is as bad as Ozai as a father", invoke great sympathy for how a sole genocide survivor is slandered in favour of a colonizer prince and present it in such a manner that defending zk from that would come across as downplaying the pain of a genocide survivor (?) They have aced the art of weaponizing real world tragedies to be of use in ship wars and big-bad-zks-on-tumblr-calling-Aang-a-sexual-abuser does not help.

Zutara is an ultra popular fanom ship, no matter how much shippers toe the line it would still be hated because it invokes great insecurity in canon shippers, but is it possible to tone down hating Kataang, Aang, Maiko and Mai here as objective truths? Do you think it would work?

No, I don't think "toning down the hate of a fictional character" is a reasonable response to harassment, doxxing, bullying, and death threats of real people, because the problem was never the hate of the fictional character. If people are that invested in "defending" fictional characters to the point where they behave abusively towards real people, then the problem is with them, full stop.

I mean, as an example, I can just point to the places where you've mischaracterized my arguments right in your ask. For example, I didn't say Katara should punch Mai in the throat for being mean to Zuko. I said Katara should punch Mai in the throat for being a genocide apologist, in addition to her general apathy and treatment of everyone around her, including the guy she supposedly loves.

That kinda makes the "oh Aang is the poor genocide survivor and Zuko is the colonist prince" thing fall apart. It was a shit argument anyway, because, again, these are fictional characters in a fantasy setting, but even as it is, that argument doesn't apply to the context of the show because Zuko is well-loved for his role in ending colonization, doesn't apply to the criticisms because that isn't why Aang is criticized, and because, as I pointed out, a lot of the "defenses" of characters like Mai are, in reality, defenses of colonization themselves.

I'm not worried about people on twitter trying to make themselves look rational this way because those arguments don't look rational to anyone not embroiled in fandom nonsense. They look like what they are: gross trivialization of real-world issues for the sake of feeling superior about a fantasy cartoon. Try speaking that nonsense about how Aang is a genocide survivor so we have to ship him with Katara to a real person and it'll probably, rightly, get YOU punched in the face.

Further, I'm not about to change my opinions or behavior in any way to appease bullies. Because the thing is that if you try to appease a bully, then they know they can control you. Which was the goal all along, whatever pretense of moral superiority they try to use. People like this pop up in every fandom, it doesn't matter which, because the goal is to be a bully. Don't let anyone convince you that it's about anything else.

[shsl-hubris-guy]

got a totally random rush of Emotions about Chihiro's gender so hi let's talk about how the entire account of Chihiro 'totally being a cis dude guys' is told by Monokuma, the guy that later goes on to fake a suicide note and falsify an entire class trial just to be pissy. Ah yes top 10 most reliable narrators ever of all time, yes, yes, very convincing

Not to mention in the exact same fucking motive he's very obviously purposefully warping the truth and lying to the cast's faces?? Within the 'embarrassing memories' motive Mondo's is a warped version of the truth. "Mondo killed his own brother" but he didn't, and just about everyone is able to grasp that one. He indirectly led to the accident, but Daiya made his own choices. So wouldn't the same logic apply to Chihiro's motive? "He dresses like a girl but actually is a boy" sounds like you're actively warping her own life experience to send her into Despair.... which is Monokuma's primary character motive.... crazy how that works........

And now, a compilation of every line Chihiro delivers in her own backstory, without the narrative padding from Monokuma explaining to you why this is totally her hating being a woman and wanting to be a man

"Now nobody will be able to say anything about 'even though you're a boy'..."

"I'm... weak... Weak, weak, weak, weak, weak, weak, weak, weak...!"

"Now's my chance..."

"I'm going to get stronger... and accept who I am..."

"Strong enough so that when someone says 'even though you're a boy' it'll be okay. I'll get better!"

"Maybe talking to Mondo about it will help give me some courage..."

So yeah, once you pull out the unreliable narrator. You get like, 6 lines total. 1/3 of which specify that she IS AFRAID of people saying "even though you're a boy". Now, call me crazy, but if we're genuinely arguing that Chihiro is a cisgendered man, why the hell would she say the equivalent of "I need to accept being a boy. Gee, I sure hope no one calls me a boy while I do so!" That's. That's inherently contradictory. More than anything, looking at Chihiro's lines as the most reliable source of Chihiro's thoughts about herself, it starts to look less and less like a man who wants to rise above being gnc and be a true manly man, and more like someone who's about to get fucking outed and mocked by Monokuma and trying to do damage control, steeling herself to be called a man and strengthening her mind and body to prepare for said outing.

Earlier in chapter 2, Chihiro is already thinking of starting to try working out, but is too afraid to enter the lockers because she's well-aware she can only enter the boys' locker rooms. The inference that Makoto comes to is that Chihiro is an individual trapped in a killing game that couldn't defend herself verbally in the library the morning prior, and is visibly the physically weakest in the class. Ergo, perhaps she wants to be able to defend herself better? Well, neither of those facts that lead to said inference magically change after the discovery of her dick, so perchance, the reason she wanted to get stronger was still so she could defend herself both verbally and physically?? The ONLY reason you'd have to come to the conclusion she wants to reconnect with her assigned sex is because she is being actively threatened into it by Monokuma's motive, or if you take Monokuma's story at his word, that he'd speak respectfully of the dead. Just like he did with every other character in that game, right?

Also, it's worth noting that in the actual conversation-turned-spiral between Chihiro and Mondo before Chihiro's death, neither Chihiro nor Mondo actually talk about Chihiro's gender, only her strength and desire to destroy her weakness. Yes, Mondo is using he/him in the voiceover, but the entire class is atp, and again. Using that as genuine evidence falls flat because we see in that very same scene that Mondo WAS NOT completely present for that conversation. He saw Chihiro's willpower and spiraled, conflating Chihiro with his brother and lashing out in a ptsd-induced blackout.

Also also, if you're gonna argue Chihiro has no reason to need to get physically stronger unless it's to be more masculine, A) Sakura exists in the same game, and B) please god look up any statistics on the amount of violence trans teens receive. That alone is a perfectly reasonable justification for a trans woman to want to be able to defend herself, especially when locked in a place where you cannot escape your potential aggressors.

TLDR Chihiro is legitimately more believable as a trans woman, and every intervention attempting to explain otherwise comes from a character defined by his love of twisting the truth for the sake of causing suffering. Hi hello does anyone hear me

[yarrayora]

i like how falin being a maiden to be saved, a reward to be coveted, isn't a point to criticize in dungeon meshi. because we have various other female characters who are written as having their own agency

we have marcille, of course, whose story can be observed since chapter 1. how she's not depicted as the "girl team member" but "part of the team". when you're writing a protagonist group where there's only one female character among the male cast, you can always feel this sense of alienation in the writing, like she doesn't belong in the group as the story focuses on the rest of the boys. the way masashi kishimoto writes team 7 is a major example

but marcille is still allowed to be a "typical girl" who doesn't want to eat gross things and enjoy feminine clothing without forgetting the fact that she's a multifaceted person. she's a researcher who isn't afraid to get dirty when it's something relevant to magic and her goal, even though she's also grossed out at the idea of feces being used as fertilizer for crops

and when falin comes back as a monster who can't speak, it's still not a point to criticize. oftentimes stories involving female characters losing their speech (or, well, becoming disabled in some way) is meant to make her vulnerable, a fragile 'something' to be protected. but this is not an argument about how chimera falin is super strong, because that's a shallow way of thinking that ignores the fact that being a Girlboss doesn't ensure your female character is written as a fully realized person. this is about the fact that almost right after that Izutsumi joins Laios' party.

She joins late in the game, so it'll be easy for her to only be tacked on as an afterthought. A notable example would be Okumura Haru from Persona 5, where her character gets overshadowed a lot by the other party members' more colorful personalities, as if the writer wasn't sure how to integrate her into the already developed dynamic.

there's also how she's written as a sweet and shy girl yet the way her school uniform is designed betrays that image. it's heavily customized even compared to the trendy girl like ann which means it's impossible for her outfit to not go against school regulation. not something an obedient girl would have done. which makes me wonder if they couldn't decide on her writing until last minute.

but Izutsumi is different. her involvement and her own personal story arc eventually intertwines to the overarching plot. she hates having her options limited. she hates having responsibilities to uphold. she hates eating veggies! she hates that people expects her to do things their way! she wants freedom to do whatever she wants!

but in the end she learns that to have the freedom to choose, she has to uphold her responsibilities. starting from the simple things like taking care of her health by eating balanced meals, not just the ones she enjoy. she has to do work to get enough money for her food and travels. and she has to learn how society works so she can live independently. she has to learn which desire she has to prioritize that she can balance out with her responsibility as a living being.

her own self-realization culminates into her giving advice to laios that leads to him steeling his resolves to become king.

so you have Falin, who gets turned into a monster that cant communicate her desire and needs while under the mad sorcerer's control, and in exchange you get Izutsumi, the 'beastman' who knows exactly what she wants and throws a tantrum about it without shame, not understanding that what you want isn't always what you need. i think it's a really cool parallel!

this is a prime example of how tropes that get associated with misogynistic writing can be used as a proper tool that serves a narrative when you have more than multiple female characters having their own character arcs

in fact, you can apply this to pretty much every other things. when you're writing gay characters, having only one of them and they act camp can make people raise an eyebrow at whether this is meant to be a caricature of gay people or not. having two of them and one acts camp and one acts normie can be read as a bias against gay people expressing themselves. writing multiple gay characters, all with different personalities and desires will avoid accidental stereotyping.

even the minor female characters, be it the canaries or namari, help show that the way the narrative treats Falin isn't born from thinking that women are an alien breed compared to men. that her lack of agency means something for the themes involved.

[kingdom-of-sins]

Okay but imagine Fourth Wing characters as F1 drivers...

Xaden: Son of a very talented but disgraced driver, and by disgraced I mean Fen Riorson discovered some kind of corruption and race fixing but FIA somehow put all the blame on him and boycotted him from everywhere. And now Xaden is the best driver and has multiple championships, exposing FIA at every step without even trying. Break rules but all within the "law" so no one can kick him out. The sponsors are crazy about him. If the sport loses him then they will lose more than half the funding and sponsors. He even won races with very poorly built cars.

Violet: One of the nepo drivers who everyone thought would fail and tarnish the Sorrengail name. Her older brother is a retired two time champion turned strategist, her sister Mira one time champion and now more focused on F1 Academy for female drivers, her mother Lilith is the legend, multiple championships and the first woman champion, her father a F1 legendary reporter. Everyone was expecting her to fail just because she didn't look much confident and looked a bit fragile, everyone talked about how she is in the sport because of her family name. Her first half of her debut season went terrible, multiple DNFs and car damages, but the second half was complete opposite. She went from P18 in the championship to P4. She even went wheel to wheel with Xaden in a few races and shared podiums, proving everyone wrong.

Liam: He is the guy who treats this sport as his hobby which he is really good at. A born racer with a heart of gold. Multiple race winner, finished second in championships twice. Everyone takes him as a competition but he takes everyone as play dates. He was seen with Xaden outside of racing many many times, a strong pure bromance. If you hate him then there is something seriously wrong with you

Bodhi: Cousin of Xaden so sometimes gets overshadowed, but if anyone is going to shine in the darkness aka a very wet race or chaotic race, it's him. People try to push the Xaden vs Bodhi narrative but it always fails. Most people underestimate him and then are left with shocked Pikachu face when he comes out as the star of the race.

Garrick: He is the type of driver who either starts working out or takes a long nap when a race is delayed. Multiple race winners. Has a lots of fans, owner of a gym chain. Got a couple of race bans and penalty points but could care less. Has a mechanic background so knows a lot about cars.

Imogen: No one does it like her. The risk taker, the badass winner. You think you hate her but you actually realize you love her. She is the reason there is a sea of pink at the grandstands. Hated Violet when she first joined but a year later both were seen go karting together kicking Garrick and Xaden's ass. Calls out bullshit and whenever she has the mic the FIA drowning in their own sweat

Rhiannon: Got into F1 with pure talent and least funding. Had to struggle a lot in the junior series because of the lack of sponsors and funding, but her talent put her on the map and got just enough sponsor for a team to pick her. Then her talent did the rest of it. Now she has multiple year contract and multiple sponsors. Best friend of Violet but they always race wheel to wheel, even crashed into one another but absolutely no bad feelings. Rhiannon even abandoned her race once after Violet crashed just to see if her best friend is okay

Ridoc: He is the reason FIA had to come up with "no cursing or use of bad language" in the team radio. He gives names to his cars. Listens to the most obnoxious music and makes everyone else listen to it as well. Master in wet races. Talks to his car while racing. Friends with everyone. He is the guy you love to interview. Got fined for calling the stewards "babes"

Sawyer: The polite guy who is a beast on track. Everyone thought he would be quiet and barely manage to win but soon became a fan favorite. A true gentleman, with a hint of mischief. Ridoc often gets him in trouble during interviews. He is the type of guy your mom and sisters would trust to drive and drop them at home safely

Cat: Another nepo baby. She started off with lots of haters because of her aggressive racing style and superiority complex but no one can deny that she is an excellent driver. Can go wheel to wheel with all the star drivers. There is a rivalry between her and Violet, but they are currently frienemis, rivals on track, complementing each other's outfit off track.

Jack Fucking Barlowe: If he doesn't crash and DNF then he finish below P15. Somehow FIA always pardons him and he just gets much worse. There is not a single driver on the grid who likes him. Got punched by both Violet and Cat and that says a lot

Aaric: The breakout star of the year. Came in as a rookie and finished P5 in the championship. Somehow he can always predict other drivers' strategies. If he has a better car he would always be on the podium. Pure talent but lot to learn. Garrick's new gym partner

Sloane: She and her brother's childhood dream was to drive for the same team, be teammates, and race each other. And they both made it happen. Has the record of scoring the highest points by a rookie on their first race.

Dain: His dad was a former one time champion and he dreams to be just like his father. Has been raised to be a champ. He has won races but never got close to winning a championship. Everyone knew he had a huge crush on Violet but after a "incident" on track which involved him, Violet and Xaden, his friendship with Violet had been hanging by a thread. His father is very critical of him but worse on the other drivers, even tried to sue Xaden when Dain lost a race due to time penalty for track incident between him and X

[hauntingofhouses]

We all already know Mizu and Akemi are narrative foils. But you know what? Lemme just say it, here's what I think:

Taigen and Mikio are foils.

Not necessarily to each other as individuals in the way that Mizu and Akemi juxtapose each other, but mostly in the contrast between their relationships with Mizu.

I've covered specific parallels between Taigen and Mikio in other posts I wrote; but as the number of parallels I'm noticing between them keeps piling up, I'm compelled to just compile them all in one post. So! This is, thus, the post in question.

First of all, let's look at their similarities.

1. Their status in society is the same. They are both samurai who lost their honour and have dreams of reclaiming it.

2. They are also both diligent as they strive to achieve this goal, they both care deeply about their work, but here as they begin to contrast, as the work in question and way they go about their goals is different:

For Mikio, his work is in taming and rearing horses; in order to prove himself, he must tame Kai—a willful and strong horse—and present it to his lord. For Taigen, his work is in sword fighting and martial arts; in order to prove himself, he must kill Mizu—a willful and strong swordsman—and present her dead body to his lord.

In the parallel above, not only are Taigen and Mikio contrasting each other, but Mizu and Kai are placed in comparison as well. And of course, Kai is Mizu's horse, and represents her. Which is why, when later, Mikio sells Kai off, it represents the way he is tossing Mizu (and their relationship) aside.

From there, the rest of the details of their character begin to contrast and juxtapose each other more clearly. So let's look at those differences, shall we?

Their backstory:

Mikio was a great samurai who was banished. A somebody to a nobody. Taigen was a fisherman’s son who rose to the top. A nobody to a somebody.

2. The first time we meet them on-screen:

Mikio is an adult. An older man. Mizu's superior in age. He is Mizu's to-be husband. A love interest. Taigen is a child. A young boy. Mizu's peer in age. He is Mizu's bully. An antagonist.

3. Their maturity and growth:

Mikio is mature, but stuck in his ways. Taigen is immature, but capable of changing and learning.

4. Their overall attitude:

Mikio is generally relaxed, easy-going and unfussy. Taigen is uptight, irritable and severe.

5. How they talk to and conduct themselves around Mizu:

Mikio is aloof, soft-spoken, and serious. Taigen is obnoxious, brash, and sarcastic. Mikio is quiet, speaking only when spoken to, even when Mizu turns to smile at him and shows openness to be near him. Taigen is loud, talking while others are silent, even when Mizu turns from him and shows no interest in conversing with him.

Mikio doesn't show much of who he is to Mizu throughout their marriage, despite their growing affection. Taigen openly shares his traumas and life story to Mizu during their brief alliance, despite their mutual antagonism.

6. Their external vs internal selves:

Mikio is calm, gentle, and considerate on the outside. Taigen is hot-headed, rude, and selfish on the outside. Mikio is cowardly and deceitful on the inside. Taigen is brave and loyal to a fault on the inside. Mikio tells Mizu that he wants to know and see all of her. But he scorns and betrays her, the woman he loves. Taigen tells Mizu that he wants to duel and kill him. But he endures torture to not betray him, the man he hates.

9. Their hair, a symbol of their honour:

Mikio's topknot is untied by Mizu during their spar. This humiliation occurs in private, the two of them alone in a rural location where no one can see them. Taigen's topknot is cut off by Mizu during their duel. This humiliation occurs in public, the two of them being watched by many others in the Shindo Dojo.

10. Their power dynamic with Mizu:

Mikio believes he is Mizu's mentor. He teaches her to throw knives, how to ride and care for horses, and about the tactical benefits of using a naginata. Taigen believes he is Mizu's equal. He views Mizu as a samurai like himself who received all the same teachings he did, and who possesses the same values.

11. Their perceptions of Mizu:

Mikio sees Mizu's feminine side first. He sees her as sweet and gentle, but also clumsy and incompetent. Taigen sees Mizu's masculine side first. He sees her as terrifying and deadly, but also strong and skilled.

12. The way they approach sparring with Mizu:

Mikio only spars with Mizu once. As the fight progresses and she is beating him, he tries to put a stop to it. When she teases/provokes him, he starts taking the fight personally and seriously, finding no enjoyment in it. Taigen spars and brawls with Mizu all the time. No matter how many times Mizu beats him, he doesn't back down. When Mizu challenges him with a chopstick, he is eager to compete with her and gladly rises up to the challenge.

Mikio and Mizu's one and only spar is a friendly match; Mizu is smiling and having fun while he grows increasingly frustrated. Taigen and Mizu's last-seen spar is a playful wrestling match; both him and Mizu are having fun and laughing.

Mikio cannot deal with Mizu being better than him, so he scorns her and walks off, avoiding her thereafter. When Taigen cannot deal with Mizu being better than him, he follows her to observe her moves and continues training in hopes to eventually beat her. After being bested by Mizu once, Mikio leaves her and sells the horse he'd previously gifted to her. After many times losing to Mizu and fighting alongside her, Taigen commends her and admits she is better than him.

13. When Mizu pins them down in a friendly spar:

Mikio sees Mizu's whole face objectively. Taigen stares at Mizu's mouth and eyes.

Mikio gets angry when she kisses him, throwing her off of him and snapping at her, calling her a monster. Taigen gets aroused, apologising, so she pulls herself off of him.

14. Mizu's blue meteorite sword is a reflection of her soul. She believes most are undeserving to face it, let alone hold it. And on that note:

Mikio is the first person (chronologically) that Mizu fights against using her sword. Taigen is the first person (we see on-screen) that Mizu fights against with her sword. Mikio is the first person (chronologically) to ever hold her sword, as she passes it to him, letting him wield it. Taigen is the first person (we see on-screen) to ever hold her sword, as she passes out, and he picks it up and carries it for her.

15. Then, last but not least, in Fowler's fortress, when she is drugged and in pain, she hears Ringo's voice in the dungeon. She then follows it to an open cell:

Mizu first sees Mikio as a hallucination, the sight of him haunting her and causing her to lose her grip on reality. Her eyes glow a surreal blue to represent this. Her Mama appears then and says Mizu's name accusingly.

Mizu then sees Taigen, but he is real, the sight of him a relief and grounding her back to reality. Her eyes return to their normal blue colour to represent this. Taigen looks at Mizu weakly and says her name softly.

Then, later, when facing Fowler, her revenge awaiting her, she instead chooses to follow her conscience (represented by Ringo's voice in her mind), putting aside her vengeance for a time, in order to save Taigen.

So that's basically all the ones I've noticed so far, but even then, I feel there's already so much that forms a contrast between these two.

What makes it especially incredible about these juxtapositions is that Mikio was Mizu's husband, the man she had fallen in love with, the one person she had ever been intimate with, the man who made her begin to accept herself, to put down her desire for vengeance and instead live a life of peace and happiness.

So for Taigen to have so many parallels with him... Do you see what I'm saying here!

Not to mention that Mizu clearly already has some burgeoning attraction to him, as indicated by how she thinks of him when asked about her desires. And Taigen clearly has shown interest as well (see: him getting a boner after their spar, him holding her hand and telling her, "We're not done yet.").

And on the topic of speculating future possibilities of this relationship, this post by @stromblessed has pointed out yet another parallel between Taigen and Mikio:

Mizu promises Taigen to meet him for their duel in autumn. Mizu fell in love with Mikio and duelled him during autumn.

With all that said, I do believe Mizu and Taigen's relationship is definitely hurtling towards something. But whether they will actually end up together in a sustainable relationship and have a happily ever after? Well, that is a whole other story; we'll just have to wait and see.

[jecook]

Dabihawks Fanfic Recs #4

(In no particular order)

Fic Rec List #1 Fic Rec List #2 Fic Rec List #3 LoV Found Family List

it is what it is (until it isn't) Starship_Phoenix @starship--phoenix Complete Rating: T Words: 7,811 Chapters: 1/1 Summary: Dabi hates Hawks. Hawks hates Dabi. But then Hawks surprises Dabi with a trip to the mountains. With the captive audience he's always been waiting for, Dabi lets Hawks know just how he feels about the HPSC's new "Buddy Program;" society's new alternative to life-sentences. He also discovers just how he feels about Hawks.

Notes: Everyone loves an unreliable narrator, and Dabi has no clue what is going on. Soft story, bitter Dabi, and overall lovely winter read. Star weaves a tightly written narrative absolutely worth reading.

hit and run DrAphra @draphrawrites Incomplete Rating: T Words: 11,740 Chapters: 3/? Summary: A hit and run, of all things, is what changes the course of Dabi’s life.

Notes: I have reread this fic more times than I can count. I am an enjoyer of some serious hurt + comfort in the form of amateur first aid, so Dabi struck by a vehicle and left with only Hawks to care for him is the best meal in the world, to me. Aphra writes injuries and tending to them with precision that might make some squirm but truly brings a wrecked character to life. A must-read for lovers of sad, wet rat, injured blorbos. 

Kintsugi Stormysilverfox Complete Rating: T Words: 47,976 Chapters: 9/9 Summary: Dabi, person-roasting, hero-hating, A-ranked villain, is an omega.

It’s not necessarily a problem, only Hawks is fairly—hm, positively—certain that the pyro has no idea. It’s obvious what the HPSC would say. You’re an alpha Hawks, extort him, use a command on him. That was an unspoken order to honeytrap him then, since a command would only be as effective as Dabi’s affection was strong. Better not to tell them, better to pretend he hadn’t realised.

All his plans disintegrate around him when Dabi starts nesting in his apartment. Ironically enough, his biggest concern is dislodging him before he settles permanently, not exploiting him. He’s well aware that an omega will not give up their nest once it’s started, enemy apartment or no. And all without alerting Dabi to the fact that he’s even nesting at all, because Hawks has no desire to be cremated along with the other evidence once he realises.

Accidentally falling in love with him wasn’t supposed to be in the cards. Hawks fucking honeytrapped himself, like a moron. This was exactly what they taught you not to do.

Losing him to the Commission isn’t supposed to happen either.

Notes: Listen to me: are you nervous to read A/B/O? Open your mind to Safe For Work Omegaverse. This fic is soft, comforting, and honestly? I’m due for a reread. Like the title suggests, this fic is healing. A story to put you back together again, Kintsugi is a comfort read.

as we lay among the forsythias Goldtinted Incomplete Rating: M Words: 92,961 Chapters: 4/5 Summary:

“You used to love blabbering on and on. What happened to you, Keigo?” It’s the second time Touya has ever used his real name. He’s not as startled as he was the first time he heard it. The element of surprise is gone, but Hawks still feels something small and sharp stab at his chest. He wonders what Touya’s endgame is here. “I fought in a war.” He says simply, shrugging. Touya laughs again, louder this time, a cold, harsh sound that reverberates across the barrier and around the room. The guards behind Touya start to move forward, and Hawks can sense shuffling beyond the door behind him. “Well guess what, birdbrain? I did too.”

As the dust settles after the war, amidst social turmoil and societal reform, between three centimetres, seventy-eight square kilometres, and a dance of thirty odd steps, Hawks and Touya slowly recover. In the process, they find themselves falling in love again.

Notes: I totally thought this fic was complete until I started writing this rec. I’m shocked - I felt so fulfilled by this story that I just… imagined it must have ended. Well, still go read and support this fic and give the author lots of love for a wonderful post-canon that lives in my heart forever. Also, the narrative structure is so cleverly crafted and worth reading for that alone, not to mention the arc Dabi and Hawks take in this fic.

One more time (and maybe you’ll get it right this time) juurensha @juurensha Complete Rating: M Words: 19,677 Chapters: 3/3 Summary: “…sure,” Dabi says finally, “Do you think the answer is still with you joining the League of Villains?”

“Of course it is! Or else why do I keep rewinding to this moment here?” Hawks spits out, flinging his arms around. “But you know what? This time I need a break. I’m just going to go on vacation, and both you and the Hero Commission can go to hell, and maybe this time I’ll be able to tell what resets everything. Or who knows, this is what solves everything.”

Notes: More than just moving, this fic is a technical achievement. Not a spoiler–this is a time loop fic told from the POV of Dabi, despite Hawks being the one looping. I’m a fan of interesting story structure, and this one certainly delivers.

Minutes to Midnight Bacchant @transhawks Complete Rating: T Words: 51,645 Chapters: 7/7 Summary: "Something’s wrong," Hawks thinks again. "And this isn’t the right place to figure it out."

An unknown quirk that only shows itself as a mysterious tattoo on his arm sends Hawks careening into different worlds, all seemingly designed to make him ask himself what if he'd made different choices in his life. In each life, he learns a bit more about himself, and who he could have been, and gets closer to answering the biggest question of all: just who is Takami Keigo?

Or

Takami Keigo will travel to different dimensions, break out of simulations, challenge the established rules of quirk science, and bring a man back to life before going to therapy.

Notes: I tricked you! This one isn’t dabihawks! I’ve lured you in with sweet, sweet dabihawks only to show you this fantastic Hawks-centric fic. I know. Detestable. Well, if you’re reading this list, I assume you enjoy dissecting Hawks like a frog in a middle-school science class, and this fic does just that. Bacchant is a master of writing meta about our favorite murder bird and does so here through a collection of alternate lives he could’ve lived. The journey winds in ways you might not expect, and the ending those twists deliver will stick with you. For fans of Hawks, definitely give this fic a read.

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Lastly, after fives rec lists, a shameless self-plug: I'm Haslenoot on ao3, if you'd like to take a glance at my work, as well <3

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Don't forget to leave those kudos, comments, and subscribe where applicable! And if you feel so inspired, fic recs are a great way to engage with fandom, support your peers, and preserve fandom. While I love searching ao3, it can be a lot for people new to a big fandom! Many of readers enjoy rec lists, but often they can be hard to find or locked within Discord servers. Fic rec lists are findable through search engines. I've read fics off lists that are years old, which is, in a way, an archive of the fandom at that time. So make lists! Post them publicly! Hype up your friends!

And as always, happy reading!

[inamindfarfaraway]

I love how Paul's character in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals is defined entirely by a lack of desire, or desire defined only as 'not what I don't want'. "What Do You Want, Paul?" is a big joke about what a terrible narrative protagonist he is. But it's deeper than that. Throughout the show, even in the smallest, most insignificant phrasing, this man only ever expresses wants in these negative forms, as if he's incapable of feeling attraction in itself rather than simply avoiding what he dislikes. And only avoiding! He never says that he hates anything, either! That would give him passion, drive, perhaps the goal of actively removing that thing. No, he exclusively uses the verb hate in past tense.

He doesn't like musicals, singing, dancing or public performances. He makes this very clear, to the point that it's one of his most significant character traits. At no point does he ever talk about liking any media.

He doesn't want to do social activities.

He doesn't want to give away his money. About both this and the above, he can provide no logical explanation or moral justification. He just doesn't feel like them.

He always gets black coffee because it has "no cream, no sugar, nothing in it"; that is to say, he might not necessarily love it, merely prefer it over its sweeter or more complex alternatives.

He doesn't believe that Emma should have to sing and dance at work - he doesn't want her life to be so unfair and annoying to the both of them.

He doesn't want to obstruct the workings of his office (saying "that's the last thing I want" triggers "What Do You Want, Paul?").

He says, "I wanna go home!" when Mr Davidson is singing at him, but means that he wants to be somewhere safe and not stuck in this incredibly uncomfortable situation.

He doesn't want to die.

He specifically doesn't want to die in Clivesdale, because fuck Clivesdale.

He doesn't want to join the Hive.

He doesn't want to leave Hatchetfield, even when it's the site of an alien invasion that is his personal worst nightmare. He actually says that "All things considered, I like Hatchetfield", arguably an exception to the standard. However, he's also well aware of the town's flaws and problems. He grew up one of its poorer residents, attending the inferior, underfunded Sycamore High School where he casually admits the students "hated [themselves]" and having to watch its more respectable rival Hatchetfield High's school play. He has no strong investment in his tedious middle-class office job. He doesn't get along with some of his fellow townsfolk, like his coworker Ted and all the employees of Beanies except Emma. He awkwardly evades giving to charity and the homeless every morning on his way to work. His life is decidedly not one of utter bliss, and yet it's good enough for him in that he doesn't have the energy, ambition or imagination to want anything more. Since he's "been here [his] whole life", his affection for his hometown could be more an aversion to everywhere else or the hassle of travelling. Sticking with the devil he intimately knows.

He doesn't think badly of Emma, and says so because he doesn't want her to or believe that he does after learning that she helped make a "hated" experience of his happen.

He doesn't want to let Bill die, which is why he goes with Bill to rescue Alice. His heroism and proactiveness at the turning point of the end of Act One start to notably erode his apathy, but his phrasing reaffirms his negative motivations: "Hey, it's not like you're asking me to go see Mama Mia!", "Emma, there comes a time in every man's life when he has to draw a line in the sand. And I will never be in a fucking musical."

He doesn’t want Bill to blame himself for Alice's endangerment, stay in the area once Alice is revealed to be a vessel of the Hive or kill himself.

He doesn't want to do some light reading on the universal truth of love and the strength of the human heart.

He has no positive motivation. He breaks one of the most basic rules of being a fictional character, let alone the main character the audience is supposed to root for. He isn't just an antihero, he's an anti-protagonist. Although this could easily make him boring or unsympathetic, he manages to seem relatable. Real. Human. He captures so genuinely an ordinary person living an ordinary life suddenly trapped in a horror story. How many of us can honestly articulate "one concrete goal that motivates all [our] actions"? Even if you can, you wouldn't undergo a narratively fulfilling and thematically cohesive arc related to that desire the way a fictional character would. We're all essentially just trying to survive each day. To make or keep our lives however we define 'good enough'. We may not have a crystal clear picture of our ideal life, but I bet we all have a long list of things we don't want in it. We're all Paul. He even says, “I want what anyone wants”.

What more appropriate antagonist for this man to face, then, than a force that exists to strip people of their autonomy, their individuality, their personhood, and force them to play archetypical characters in a conventional narrative? The Hive observes that Paul is an anti-protagonist and takes offence to this. It seeks to convert him into his antithesis, the "bold" "leading man" of its musical who the audience can "sympathize with". The Infected highlight this in the opening song, in which they eagerly anticipate and prepare the audience for his entrance... and he misses his cue. He isn't following their script. Perhaps that's why the audience is able to believe in this average, unassuming antihero's potential to succeed, to defeat the Hive or at the very least escape it, despite how fraught and grim the situation becomes. The story certainly proves itself to be cruel to its characters; but Paul doesn't operate like a normal character. The Hive promises to fulfil people's desires and make them happy throughout the play. Charlotte, Bill, Hidgens and Ted's deaths are connected to, by either direct causality or thematic relevance, their respective desires for Sam's love, Alice's safety, world peace (and the glory of a musical career) and Ted's own survival. Paul is uniquely immune to this pattern of death related to a core motivation.

Until:

"I can't leave without Emma”, “a friend of mine."

"Is there a chance of something more?"

"I think so. I'd like there to be. I want there to be."

He wants Emma, her life and her happiness and maybe, just maybe, her love. He wants to love her. To spend time with her. For the first time ever, he wants more out of life, not less. He's a little bit more of a character. After the Infected reprise the "Did you hear the word?" section of the opening song, building up to his appearance, this time he does enter the theatre, coming down the aisle just as he was meant to. Right on cue. Paul is now vulnerable to the narrative - the Hive's narrative. And the Hive's control.

Still he resists, even while doubting if he was ever really happy before. Not only does he use his final words, fittingly, to declare that he doesn't like musicals, but before that he firmly refutes the Hive, and the philosophy behind it and all the pressures and temptatations it might represent: "It doesn't matter what I want." What matters is the good of the world. Emma. Love. Hope. Freedom. Integrity. Humanity, which must be wonderful if we can make sacrifices like this for all the right reasons.

Rest in peace, Paul Matthews. You were the opposite of a conventional protagonist, but a true hero.

[spirantization]

I'm surprised at the hate that Sokka's character arc from NATLA is receiving. To me, Sokka's development and characterization was one of the strongest adaptations the series made.

In the original ATLA, Sokka's character arc revolves around him unlearning his own misogyny. He makes pointedly sexist comments throughout the early episodes like "Leave it to a girl to screw things up!", "There's no way a bunch of girls took us down!", etc.

Sokka's comments have a strong narrative purpose: they give a platform for women in the show (Katara & Suki mostly) to refute his attitude. Katara emphasizes traditional "women's work" (cleaning, cooking, sewing, etc), which forces Sokka to confront its inherent value. Suki is able to prove to him that women can fight too and he learns to respect female warriors. It's a great character arc and it's well-executed.

It's also characterization that is in direct response to the culture and feminism of the 90s and early 00s. The representation of women in the media at that time was...oof. It was not great. One-dimensional love interests whose only purpose is being saved by the male protagonist, mostly. Female protagonists were not as common, and certainly not ones who were depicted as being able to fight, and certainly not in cartoons. Female protagonists in animation were almost exclusively princesses.

ATLA was progressive in this regard. Katara was a complex female character in a time when there were not a lot of them, in media in general but especially in animation and kid's shows. (I grew up in the 90s; there were no characters like Katara in animation on screen for me.) ATLA incorporated the zeitgeist directly into the story, which is why we have Sokka learning to overcome his sexism in his interactions with Strong Female Characters.

If you go back and watch the original cartoon now, Sokka's sexism feels a bit dated. It's a very 90s, Girl Power, "girls can fight too" style of social commentary. It doesn't match with the media landscape of today. We've got 20 years of media with female superheroes behind us. If your message is "girls can fight too!" the response for the most part is going to be "yes, we know that. And?"

So imagine you're adapting the original ATLA for a live-action remake. You want to keep Sokka's character arc intact, but you want to update it for the 2020s. So what do you do? You look at the conversations that are happening today.

The 90s were about "girls can do everything boys can do", but the 20s are over that. The conversation is more about gender: gender expression, gender roles, gender dynamics. What does is mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a man?

Sokka's character arc in NATLA is focused on this question: What does it mean to be a man? At the beginning of the series, it's his identity as a warrior that defines him. He needs to be the warrior, the protector, the leader. He's constantly trying to reaffirm this part of his identity, and it's completely tied up in his perception of his value as a man. Instead of his interactions with Suki being about "how could girls possibly be warriors", it shifts to Sokka saying "I'm ALSO a warrior" and trying to justify that to Suki (and mostly himself).

His arc over the series is about him accepting other aspects of himself and relearning how to define his masculinity. He can still have value as man without being the greatest warrior. He can still have value as a man by using his skills as an engineer. He can still have value as a man by offering compassion and kindness to others, like the little girl with the doll & Yue in her final moments. Instead of rigidly defining himself by a specific set of gender roles & expectations, he learns how to define himself through his own strengths and qualities.

I know there are a lot of people who are upset at this change to Sokka's characterization, and the most common thing I see is that it results in changes to Katara's character and her anger in response to Sokka's comments. I think there are valid criticisms to be made about how the show handled the adaptation of Katara's character, but I won't go there with this. In terms of Sokka and his characterization, it was well-done and thematically consistent with the original. It's not an exact port, and it never needed to be. It's still a feminist arc that centres on unlearning harmful misogynistic worldviews, but the focus has shifted from external (roles of women) to internal (his role as a man). And his journey is one that people would benefit from seeing represented.

[quoigenic-anon]

Let's talk about linguistics! About semantics specifically.

Immediate warning: I'm not a professional, like, at all, I'm speaking merely from my experience about subject I was interested in for a while.

What is a word? It's a basic element of language that carries meaning. It's a bunch of symbols (or even one symbol, like "I") with a meaning. You can easily tell "bskejewjg" is not a word, because it carries no meaning.

But where does meaning come from? The easiest way to interpret it:

1. An individual suggests what a certain combination of sounds/letters refers to (it can be an object, a concept, other...)

2. Society accepts this suggestion. Or even a significant part of society accepts it and starts using the said word in sentences, giving it context.

You know, every word starts as a neologism. "Doomscrolling" used to be a neologism, but now it's used a lot and has become a common word.

It also applies to coining! A person suggests a word/term, and society accepts it. Or at least doesn't go against it. And the coined term should also be used by someone to still have a meaning, but it's not a problem, because usually the coiner or the requester uses the term.

The important part is accepting the meaning of the word, which leads to word existing. Basically, it's an agreement. Just like social contract: unspoken, but implied.

Do you remember when someone suggested "pseudomates" as an alternative word for "alters/headmates" for endogenic systems? One of the main reasons it didn't stick (besides implying endogenic headmates are fake) is that there would be no agreement with the usage of "pseudomates". Even if someone really used this word, it wouldn't stay for long.

So, why am I talking about it?

Yes, it all comes to "radendo", and my take is that it's not a word.

We haven't seen a proper coining post (I literally scrolled the whole "radendo" search tag on Tumblr, it's not that long even with reblogs included), so the only way to find out the meaning is... Sigh... Anons. And the-dino-that-cannot-be-named.

Let's see what we have here...

So, "radendo" means "created/protogenic/spontaneous systems"? Wait, let's keep researching...

Wait a second, does "radendo" actually mean "the one who believes in created/protogenic/spontaneous plurality"? Like, in a "pro endo ≠ endogenic" way? "Radendo" means holding a certain belief?

As you can see, there's inconsistency in the actual meaning of "radendo". If it was coined (which means given a definition) then why are there these inconsistencies?

I don't see agreement. I don't see a significant part of society that accepts the suggested meaning of this bunch of symbols. All these "pro endos who coined this term" are nowhere to be seen or heard.

Suggestion is not enough. There has to be usage. There has to be an object, a concept behind "radendo" for it to be a word. And there has to be acceptance of the implied meaning.

Well, we all know that syscourse community (if we can even call it a community) disagrees with the suggested meaning.

It means "radendo" is not a word.

Also, honorable mention:

These are also not words for the same reasons. Pretending the word exists doesn't make it exist so easily, it's not how language works.

There's a post by about how the usage of "radendo" is inherently incorrect in context of "radendos are not endogenic" narrative.

Also, do you know where this bunch of symbols came from?

From this post. Yes. It's not even made up by that anon. It's the very first mention of "radendo" on Tumblr. I have no evidence, but I have a strong belief that the "radendo" anon just took this word to use.

(VERY IMPORTANT: don't go to these people. Don't send them anon hate or anything. I swear, if I discover they start receiving hate after this post, I'll get so disappointed, I do not condone it. They have NOTHING to do with this discourse.)

You know what's funny? Because of this discourse, "radendo" actually gained a meaning. Not through suggestion, but through association. It's just the way language works.

"Radendo" now means "anti-willo".

"Radendo anon" = "Anti-willo anon".

Thanks for reading!

[lyinginmeadow]

Imprimere sole I Chapter 12

a/n: took me long enough, but it's here. Not really happy with it, but hopefully you'll like it Warnings: Difficult themes, alcohol abuse, strong language <- Chapter 12 - did I cross the line ->

Summer break was almost over, the heat slowly dying out, and the sun was peeking through the clouds less and less. We spent as much time outside as the weather and our workload allowed us to. 

Balancing the life I led with the pack, which laid a heavy burden in the form of keeping a secret and having a best friend who couldn't know said secret, was delicate and stressful. I promised not to spend time with Sam, who so badly hurt her, but now that I knew why and how strong a bond like imprinting was, I couldn't exactly blame him. I did, however, let my disdain for how he handled it be known.

He knew my stance and respected it. He knew it wasn't ideal, but he hurt Emily by that point, and he couldn't stomach hurting Leah in the same way. In his eyes, the pain he caused her was better than the physical danger he now posed. 

Emily tried to mend her relationship with Leah. Telling her it happened when she was mauled by the bear, and that Sam was there for her every step of the way. Clarifying that their feelings developed after he had broken up with her. 

That obviously didn't go over well, and since then, Leah stopped all contact with her cousin.

I winced thinking about it. Of course, she wouldn't take that version well. Her cousin stole her boyfriend, who would take that lightly? And since Leah was my best friend, my sister, I stood on her side. But I couldn't forget how Emily helped me when my world felt like it was falling apart. I knew now that she tried to fight the bond, just like I had, but it didn't work. 

Imprinting was for life, and the only thing that could break it was one's death. I could almost feel it pulsing with my every breath, like a lifeline connecting me to the one thing that mattered more than life itself.

Letting the engine die out, I dug the keys out of the ignition, staring ahead. Clearwater’s house was huge, compared to Paul’s or Sam’s, having four bedrooms, a cozy kitchen always smelling of fresh bread, and a living room playing with different colors of artwork and rugs that overlapped.

The outside planks were painted with a fresh coat of white, and colorful flowers decorated every windowsill. I sighed, stepping outside to be met with Seth’s contagious grin. “Lizzie!” He yelled out, his arms already around me, almost knocking me to the ground. 

“Hi, little S.” He looked up, his face lightening with another one of his grins. The world might be cruel, but it didn’t seem to get to Seth just yet.

And I hoped it never would. 

He let go, almost jumping up and down with energy only a child could have. “I need to show you the new game I got. Come on.” He tugged on my hand, toward the house. 

“She’s my best friend, Seth. Let go of her before you bore her to death.” Leah finally passed through the front door, a rare smile decorating her sharp features. 

She made her way to us, almost forcing Seth’s hand away. He glowered at her, which didn’t last long before the signature grin returned. He snickered something back under his breath as he went around to the backyard, soaking up the sunlight while it lasted. 

“Come on, let’s go to my room.” She ushered us through the house and up the stairs before I had the chance to say hello to the other residents. 

Leah’s room was an utter chaos, just like it always was. CDs everywhere, just not on their designated shelf, clothes hung over the chair and papers all over the desk.

She plopped on the bed, the springs groaning under her weight. Her smile faded, replaced by a small frown. There goes the good mood she tried to keep for Seth’s sake. 

“I hate it here.” She grunted. 

I chuckled, rolling my eyes as I sat on her chair, moving the clothes to the floor. “As if the world doesn’t deserve it.” 

“More like Sam deserves it. Can you believe his nerve?” She narrowed her eyes, her face twisting into an angry expression. If I were the target of her eire I might even fear her.  

But alas, that was not the case. 

Yet. And hopefully, it never would be.

I didn’t want to talk about him, or Emily for that matter. Guilt twisted deep in my stomach, tightening in a knot. My lips formed and folded into a thin line. “I really can’t.”

“And she stole him. Right after we broke up. If that isn’t a bitch move, I don’t know what is.” She shook her head, barring her teeth. “Ugh, and now like it isn’t enough, I’m sick. The universe is really fucking with me right now.” She grumbled, turning to lay on her stomach. 

A smirk formed on my face. “Nothing like screaming fuck you universe to deal with that issue.”

She laughed, breaking into a cough. Alarm bells shot through my body as I jumped to her, making sure she was alright. But she waved me off, inching away as her coughs lessened in frequency.

“Are you okay?” I said, worry lacing my voice.

She nodded, clearing her throat, her eyes glassy with tears. She moved to stand up. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’re burning up.”  My face scrunched as I tried and failed to convince her against her already planned idea.  

“Don’t be a chicken, come on.” Her fingers enclosed my wrist, already tugging me toward the door. She took the stairs by three, not caring I almost fell multiple times. 

Typical. 

Ignoring Sue’s calls of disapproval, she dragged me into the forest, despite my protests. The trip to the cliffs was quick, especially since it was quite close and she was almost running to get there. Branches were lynching our faces and hands, leaving red marks that stung, but she didn’t seem to care.

But I should have, since it would be the first thing I would have to explain to Paul, and his angry expression that would certainly follow. 

She screamed just as we got there, yelling at the top of her lungs like a crazy person. The curses left her lips so effortlessly, it was almost impressive. 

I laughed, joining her, not caring that the wolf ears might hear. I found myself hoping they would. 

The last week of summer break rolled around and Leah didn’t seem to get any better. Sue decided it was for the best to put her in quarantine, not letting anyone have any contact so she could get rid of the nasty bug. Thankfully, they invented phones for this exact reason. 

"Hm, I was thinking we could bake blueberry scones. I'm getting tired of the different types of muffins. What do you think?" Emily turned her attention from the fruit in the supermarket in Forks, bringing me back to reality. 

I offered to drive her since we needed groceries, and the little shop in La Push didn't have a large enough selection. Not to mention how I avoided being seen with anyone but Paul by everyone, not just Leah. Sue and Harry, who knew about werewolves, were still bitter at how Sam handled it. And I didn't want to be put in an awkward position of choosing, even though I knew that I should choose Leah.

It shouldn’t even be a question.

We've had many conversations about this topic with Paul. And all of them ended with us disagreeing. He insisted that Sam couldn't do anything about the bond, and his breaking things off with Leah was the best-case scenario. I suggested that breaking up over the phone is cowardly. 

Paul, of course, pleaded Sam's case, but I didn't want to hear it. He could have waited for her to return. And Emily could have tried harder to just be friends at least till the end of summer. The secret was delicate, but I still reprimanded them for not telling Leah. It would have made things so much easier.

"I'm game, we could grab strawberries and raspberries, too. Put them in the freezer so we have different dessert options for the next week or two." She hummed in agreement, bending to pick up what I suggested and putting it in the cart. We swiftly went through the shopping list, picking up snacks we intended to eat on the way back to Em's house.

"We're such wifey materials." I nudged her with my shoulder, laughing. Her head went flying back in response, agreeing.

"They should put a ring on it."

Emily and I exchanged conspiratorial looks, "Oh, they'd better one day or we're stopping all the baking and cooking. Defenestration." We laughed again before we finished loading the car, leaving the supermarket behind us.

It was only in good spirits. Paul and I weren't even officially back together, but his almost dying put things into a different perspective. I still gave him grief from time to time, but we couldn't stay away from one another.

After baking, the boys ate the whole batch in one sitting; if it wasn't for Emily's foresight, we wouldn't have had a single scone. Paul ate by far most of them, but to his credit, he wanted to share for a kiss or two.

He wanted to accompany me back home, but Sam ordered that they needed to get back out there. He apologized to me after, but I already knew the drill. Before Paul could try to defy his order, I intervened, saying he would be patrolling all around, and that would keep me safe, too. "Be safe," I gave him a soft peck on the cheek, he melted in my arms, and let me go home without another question.

I parked my car in the driveway. Dad wasn't home yet, shocker. However, Leah sat on the porch stairs. My smile faltered when I spotted her expression. Anger was shining in her features, but what really made me gulp was the deep sense of betrayal that flashed in her eyes. I put two and two together quickly, wincing. She saw me shopping with Emily.

Stepping out of the car, I tried my best to keep a friendly spirit. "Hey there, soldier." I made my way to her, a cautious smile playing on my face. Her expression hardened further. She stood up, taking the next few steps toward me.

"How could you?" She spat.

I winced, "Leah, it's not like that."

"Oh, spare me that bullshit! Were you laughing with them? Behind my back? Oh poor Leah, all alone now that we can kick her to the curb." Her words struck hard just as she intended them. 

I never got a taste of this side of Leah because she was always kind to me. We fought from time to time like any friends would, but never over something serious. And I didn't know if my betraying her like this could ever be overcome.

I pleaded, “I would never do that to you, I’m your friend.”

“You're not. You might not know, but friends don't stab each other in their backs.” I could see her shaking with anguish, and she had every right to be angry with me. I broke her trust by fraternizing with not only her ex-boyfriend but also her cousin, who stole said boyfriend.

"I-I'm so sorry. I know they both hurt you deeply. I understand that, but they're..." I tried and failed to find words. How do you tell your best friend that she is not the one for him? That fate decided that her cousin was better suited for the one she still loved. 

I took a deep breath before I continued, "I'm not exactly their biggest fan either, but when Paul got hurt, she helped us through it. She saved his life, I owed her." I couldn't tell her the truth, and it had broken my heart into pieces.

"No, you don't understand, if you did, you would tell me no matter what. How about how I'm hurting? I heard you two out there, wifey material." She spat in my face, "I want nothing to do with you. You're dead to me." She twisted, running in the direction of the woods from the situation. The glimmer of her tears glistened on her cheeks, mirroring my own.

I shouted, running after her, "Leah, wait." 

She didn't stop, running deeper into the woods. Well, there went my plan to avoid it now that I knew what kind of predators loomed within it. Ducking to avoid a branch smacking me in my face, I continued to follow her. She yelled at me to leave her alone, but I was never really good at following orders.

She suddenly turned to face me, making me stop abruptly, heels digging into the moss-covered ground. We were at our spot, and memories came flooding in as laughter echoed in my mind, the memories now tainted with today’s argument and the quilt that kept my throat thic with tears. 

Did she come here intentionally, or was it a cruel accident? "Elizabeth, I swear if you won't leave me alone..."

She was shaking with anger, baring her teeth. Her gaze bore into mine, making my mind go blank. The terrifying truth lay before my eyes, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it from happening. "If you think I'll do that, then you don't know me."

She snarled, "I don't know you, because my friend would stand by my side."

"I'm sorry, okay? I didn't have a choice." I winced right after the words left my mouth. I sounded like Paul, and I hated it. The irony was laughing in my face. Where was my quick wit when I needed it? On vacation, or maybe it was my conscience telling me to stop lying to Leah. 

A manic laugh sounded from her lips. "I fucking hate you."

I shook my head, "You don't mean that."

She stalked closer, sneering, "I mean every word of it." I never saw her this angry, not even when she spat in Sam's face every insult possible after returning from the family trip. 

"I never wanted to hurt you. Let's both calm down and talk about it." My hand extended toward her, coaxing her to consider the idea. My eyes locked with hers. She stopped, seemingly to think about it, her gaze glazed over. 

But then she shook her head violently, blinking the confusion away. "Calm down? What, you want to have tea, too?" She yelled, and she trembled more with anger with every step she took toward me.

My eyes widened as I retreated. The familiarity in her approach was so tangible, and I was stupid for not trying harder to make this transition easier. It shouldn't be happening; it shouldn’t be possible. But in the end, that was the world we lived in. 

"Leah, I need you to stop!" I exclaimed, putting my arms up in a meek attempt to shield my face and hoping I was far enough. 

Her whole body flinched, stopping her. She stayed there, frozen for less than a second. The sound of breaking bones resonated around us, echoing between the pines as she phased. Her clothes shattered in the process, covering the moss ground like confetti.

When the snapping of the bones subsided, it was replaced by whining and shuffling of paws. I blinked to regain control over my body, the shock freezing me in place. "It's okay. Look at me, you're gonna be fine." I said softly, taking cautious steps toward her. Her frightened gaze snapped to me. "You're not alone in this. There are others, and they will help you. You can probably hear them, too." 

God, I hope they were patrolling like Sam said, because that would mean they were definitely on their way as we spoke. I didn't know how volatile freshly phased wolves were, so being near one without a backup was probably not the smartest idea. 

One I wouldn’t hear the end of.

She kept looking around, unease settling in her gaze. I extended my hand toward her, palm up in surrender. "I promise you're gonna be fine. It seems crazy, trust me, I know. But they will explain everything." I whispered calmly. 

She cocked her head. "I'm so sorry it happened to you, too." She whined, taking a step toward me. I was mere inches from lacing my fingers through her silver fur. She was quite stunning as a wolf, which reflected how beautiful but stern she was in her human form. 

Her ears flattened as she bared her teeth, making me flinch my hand away. A growl sounded behind me. Go figure, Paul would ruin my chances of calming her down. I narrowed my eyes at him, but his attention was on Leah, who was still baring her teeth, softly snarling.

Jared and Sam appeared on either side of her, no doubt explaining what had happened. Paul stepped closer, leaning down to nudge my side. "I'm fine, geez." I rolled my eyes. He huffed, nudging me again. 

"She wouldn't snarl if it weren't for you lot," I grumbled, but I was thankful they came to help her through it. I had no idea how confusing and painful it was to phase for the first time. 

My mind kept returning to the whole incident. Was it my fault? Was I the trigger for her shift? How was it even possible? Sam always insisted that the gene was strictly present in males throughout their history. 

Maybe I could have prevented it. But it raised a question of whether she would have wanted me to. The guys learned to live with it and saw a purpose in it, even if it still seemed like a curse some days. 

So many questions that no one could answer. At least not now.

Paul hadn't left my side when Sam and Jared took steps back. Leah looked at me, her head bowing slightly, her eyes mirroring a silent plea. "It would be useful to have access to your minds. I don't have that, however, I'm guessing clothes would come in handy once you shift back, huh?" I offered with a small smile. It was the least I could do. 

She huffed, her head cocking slightly. "On it." I turned to leave but stopped. "You'll be the best of them, I know it." I smiled when she barked back, agreeing with me.

The couch dipped and groaned underneath my weight as I plopped down with a heavy sigh. The day had been hectic and emotionally draining, and I wanted nothing more than to sleep it off.

Putting the pillow over my face, I screamed into it, emptying all the air in my lungs until it hurt. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I lifted it a few inches, taking a deep breath. “Assaulting a pillow?” 

I jumped at the intrusion, the pillow landing next to me on the floor with a quiet thud. I stood up so quickly that dizziness overtook my body, making me sway a little. “John.”

His narrowed eyes followed my every move, the smell of alcohol reaching me in seconds, making the meeting that much more uncomfortable. Paul’s father wasn’t inherently a bad man. Or a man someone would fear. That didn’t mean he was kind, especially when he was drunk. 

He was the type to promise one a white picket fence, band ring flowers on an ordinary day, with breakfast in bed. And maybe, he was like that for the time being.

Before he became a father.

Before he let alcohol destroy that persona.  

Paul didn’t like to talk about him, other than a few sarcastic remarks in a casual conversation as his form of coping. He didn’t remember a time when he had a loving father. And maybe that was part of the reason he enjoyed being in a pack. In a family he didn’t have before. 

Paul didn’t spend much time here, and neither did I. Charlie didn’t trust John to be around his daughter, especially since he was unpredictable with the alcohol. And as much as he didn’t particularly like Paul, he was always welcoming to him. Or he tried to be. 

Paul’s father glovered before me, his watchful gaze not leaving my form as though I would steal if he wasn’t looking. “You sound surprised. You do know this is my house, right?” 

Flustered, I inched to the door, not wanting to intrude. “Yea- I mean, yes, of course. Paul said-”

The man of the hour interrupted from behind me, clearly not enjoying the meet-up. “You weren’t supposed to be here.” He made his way to me, frowning, his palm resting reassuringly on the small of my back. 

“No need to be hostile, Paul, I was just asking a simple question.”

He narrowed his eyes at his father, grumbling, “You’re never just asking. Got laid off from work or what?”

“Paul-” I said, getting interrupted. “Listen, boy, just because you got all buff and have a tattoo doesn’t mean you get to disrespect me.” 

“Nothin’ to respect.” Paul bit back.

“You-”

“Okay, that’s enough. We’re leaving. Thank you for having us.” I put myself between them. Today was already stressful enough, there was no need for a fight that was preventable. It was my fault that I agreed to meet here instead of at the pack house or my home.  

He sneered in my direction. “Don’t speak when you’re not spoken to.” Which prompted an immediate reaction in the form of a growl from Paul.

“Why don’t you heed your own advice?” The sentence left my lips before I had a chance to stop it. Words so quiet yet resonating just loudly enough in the small space. My hand flew to my mouth just when Paul snorted.

The atmosphere shifted as though the sentence was a lightning that was about to be followed by thunder. Anger sparked in John’s already irritated gaze as red rushed to his cheeks and ears. 

I took a step back, getting stopped by Paul’s tense hand. “I- We really should be on our way.” 

John’s angry eyes followed my every move, his chest heaving with deep breaths. “What did you just say to me?”

“You heard her,” Paul answered in my stead as he looked down on him, leaning forward, his nostrils flaring.

The tension seemed to rise further as the two entered a staring contest that neither one was prepared to lose. My fingers closed around Paul’s arm, squeezing it tightly to remind him of the danger he posed if he couldn’t get the emotions under control. 

He didn’t budge, but his form lost some of its tension as he took a deep breath, letting me know he was in control. But that control could be easily snapped like a rubber band.

And he probably knew it, too. 

“We’re leaving.” John’s eyes snapped to me instantly as he inched closer. My instinct fought with the pride burning deep within me. “Calmly. And you’ll let us, right?” I added, cocking my head, my eyes boring into his. My back straightened, not letting the fear-mongering strategy get to me. 

His face became unreadable within a second, a blank stare replacing the angry expression. His body went rigid, muscles under his shirt constricting as he took a step back.

It was disrespectful and Charlie probably wouldn’t be thrilled to hear about it. However, a man like John Lahote didn’t deserve respect even if he craved it. 

Before I could say anything else more incriminating, Paul’s fingers were already digging into my hand, closing around it to drag me out of the house. He almost buckled me into the passenger seat of my own car, frantic to get far away as quickly as possible. “Hey, hey, no. Paul- stop.” I put my palm over his struggling hand when the buckle wouldn’t budge.

“It’s okay, you’re fine. Let’s take a deep breath together.” He glanced up, meeting my eyes as he followed my direction. It took him a couple of tries before his erratic breathing calmed down. “It’s not your fault,” I whispered, squeezing his hand in mine.

“He was drunk. Again.” He rasped.

My lips formed a thin line. When his father didn’t drink, he was a shadow of the man he once used to be. Almost pleasant to be around, some might even say kind and we thought that since he stopped drinking, he would get his life together. But that was obviously not the case. “I know.” 

He shook his head, letting it hang low, as his jaw locked again. It was apparent how devastating it was to see the ongoing destruction of a man Paul once knew. “I shouldn’t have suggested my place.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t know,” I said with a sympathetic smile. He didn’t answer, only returned the smile that didn’t reach his eyes. There was a beat of silence before he let go of my hand, slipping into the driver’s seat and hurriedly leaving the house behind us. 

The forest blurred around the car, the radio filling in the silence that stretched between us. Neither of us was sure how to break it or if we even should. When we finally made it to Emily’s, the pack house was lit inside, the silhouettes of moving residents letting us know how many of them were actually present.

It was I who decided to speak out first. “Well, today was shit.”

“Yea, no kidding.” He chuckled, leaning back in his seat. 

I glanced toward the house, counting only two people of which I knew none were the person I was looking for. “How’s Leah?”

He sighed, expecting the question eventually. He now had access to her thoughts but also knew my stance on breaching that sort of privacy. I didn’t need details, my only priority was to know if she was alright. “Could be better. She phased back, but she doesn’t want to see anyone. Especially Sam.”

“And me.”

His face scrunched, apology evident in his features and voice. “Yea, I’m sorry, beautiful.”

“No, I get it. I totally deserve it.” I sighed, throat tightening with tears. Not willing to cry, I blinked them away. “I just don’t know how to fix it.” 

taglist: @92-tillinfinity, @yiikkesss, @claudiamoscatoo

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading update: October 2024

hello, ahoy, and welcome to my October reading recap.

I made a real effort to focus on spooOOOoooky books this month, in the name of the season; you may even recall that I started early and read some spooky stories at the tail end of September. (read Carmen Maria Machado's comic The Low, Low Woods, btw.)

I've never been great at sticking to a theme but I think it helped that what gets classified as "horror" can vary greatly, so I never really got bored of the genre. I did get disappointed more than once by how Not Spooky some of these books turned out to be, but that's a totally different question.

right at the end of the month you'll notice a couple of outliers with Caped Crusade and Luster, which happened entirely because I was out of library books and on the road for a conference, so I was reading what I could get my hands on! I've been working on rereading Caped Crusade on and off for a couple months and I bought Luster at a cool indie bookstore in the town I was visiting and then inhaled most of it on the way home.

ANYWAY. to the books!

And Then I Woke Up (Malcolm Devlin, 2022) - this is a novella with an interesting spin on the zombie story, where the "zombies" are actually people who have started suffering hallucinations that fill them with paranoia and force them see other people as monsters. so, like, there were never any REAL monsters, but a woman looked at her young son and saw him as a cannibalistic monster, so she killed him. so who's the real monster? it's very deep. this story's explanation for this is "the narrative," an idea so strong that it simply seems to take hold of anyone who's around a sufficiently charismatic ringleader who drives them to join in their delusions and kill innocents who don't share their worldview. it's not a super subtle zombie metaphor, but I guess very few zombie metaphors are. it's fine.

Through the Woods (Emily Carroll, 2014) - I truly wholeheartedly wish I had more to say about this but it's just a very charming creepy collection of comics. my favorite was the one that was the scariest, involving humans getting taken over by body-snatching worm monsters, but on the whole it was a very minor creepy factor. the art's great the whole way through.

Happy Medium (Sarah Adler, 2024) - Happy Medium is October's romance novel as picked by my patreonites, and I will admit: my hopes were not high going in. a conwoman posing as a psychic clashing with a skeptical hottie goat farmer didn't ping me as a great mix, but honestly? HONESTLY? it kind of served. there was a much more well-rounded emotional core to this book than I often encounter in my romance novels; at risk of sounding like a cornball it genuinely had a lot of heart. the conwoman is actually extremely charming, I was rooting for her in a big way, and her emotional journey goes so far beyond just falling in love with the goat farmer. I'll happily claim Happy Medium as my #1 romance of the year unless a challenger arises in the next two months, but it's not looking likely.

The Ones That Got Away (Stephen Graham Jones, 2010) - this is a collection of Graham's short stories that was published long before he became a huge name in horror with books like The Only Good Indians and My Heart Is a Chainsaw. and as much as I hate to say it, I think I personally prefer his longer form fiction. none of these short stories were bad, per se, and they're incredibly stylized and polished, but I think I like Jones' work a lot more when it has time to simmer out. I may have also been biased by the fact that I was desperately seeking something scary to read, because while Jones plays with some pretty narsty concepts, the horror tends not to hit until a last page reveal that recontextualizes everything that's come before. which is cool! but not scaring me as much as I wish it was.

The Salt Grows Heavy (Cassandra Khaw, 2023) - a lot of people told me I should read this because it stars a killer mermaid and a plague doctor, which are two aesthetic archetypes I love, and I will give this to Cassandra Khaw: I liked this a lot more than their other book, Nothing But Blackened Teeth. which is clearing a very low bar, since I didn't really like that book at all, but I do think Salt is genuinely a pretty marked improvement. the prose is still kind of torturously overwrought in many places and I desperately wish that Khaw would put the thesaurus away, but there's like. a Concept here. the core is fun.

Tell Me I'm Worthless (Alison Rumfitt, 2021) - this book is by far the scariest I read, because the horror is hatred and bigotry and a fucked up, evil house that brings out the very worst of everyone who steps inside of it. this book gets so fucked up and bloody and downright nasty in its exploration of the characters and the underlying bigotries that turn them against each other and drive them apart. I don't want to spoil anything, but the book follows a white trans woman named Alice and her mixed race, cis ex-girlfriend Ila. in the past Alice and Ila entered the evil house with their friend Hannah; that ended with Hannah dead and missing and Alice and Ila both scarred and traumatized, each certain that they were raped by the other. so that's what this book is like! not a lighthearted undertaking, but one that I could. not. put. down.

A Sunny Place for Shady People (Mariana Enríquez, trans. Megan McDowell 2024) - what is there to say? Enríquez is my short story queens, and her new release absolutely lived up to the precedent set for me by The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which was originally published in 2009 but not translated into English until 2021. this collection is sooo aptly named, because many of the stories are obsessed with the terror of places: hotels haunted by memories, neighborhoods filled with ghosts, junkyards where bodies are hidden, towns abandoned and taken over by something sinister. also, completely detached from the quality of the writing, this book has one of the most striking covers I've encountered this year. the screaming yellow cover and bold purple text looked SO COOL under the purple string lights in my bedroom, which was a little +1 to my mood every time I saw it :)

Thirst (Marina Yuszczuk, trans. Heather Cleary 2024) - I think if I had to pick a favorite book from my spooktober reading, Thirst would edge Tell Me I'm Worthless out by just a hair, because I'm just SUCH a sucker for a modern gothic. this novel is split into two chunks. the first is narrated by a vampire (hinted to be one of Dracula's infamous brides) who flees the Old World and crosses the sea to find safety in a young Buenos Aires, where she struggles to figure out how to slake her thirst and escape from loneliness while avoiding detection in a modernizing world. ultimately she seals herself away in a crypt to escape the relentless pace of change around her, and that's when our perspective shifts. here we join a modern woman with a young son, an ex husband, and a dying mother, who's struggling under the pressure of grief as she watches her mother waste away. she ends up accidentally reawakening the vampire from the first half of the book, and you can imagine things get weirder from there. honestly, for me, the part of this book that's most brilliant is the latter half and it's deep meditation on grief, but the historical portion of the book also plays the vampire gothic to the hilt. delicious!

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture (Glen Weldon, 2016) - this is a really fun piece of pop culture history, tracking how Batman came to be DC's little #1 it boy alongside the developing prominence of nerds and fandom as a cultural force to be reckoned with. as I said above, this was a reread for me, because I wanted to circle back now that I've actually read most of the major comic events discussed in the book. Weldon weaves between Batman in comics, TV, and movies to examine on how one portrayal influences another - for instance: the goofy '66 TV series saw a huge backlash in comics, which went way dark to reinforce a grim and serious Batman for 'real' fans who objected to the show making Batman a joke to much of the normie population - and I think that's a really neat lineage to trace. while I think Weldon is sometimes a bit too transparent with his own disdain for certain adaptations, he overall has an extremely levelheaded approach to Batfandom and a conversationally informative approach that I really enjoy. of particular note is the fact that Weldon is himself a gay man, making him one of the only writers I trust to talk about why he personally dislikes Joel Schmacher's movies without getting homophobic about it.

Luster (Raven Leilani, 2020) - this book!!! this was one of three novels recommended to me by Bonnie at Snowbound Books, and Bonnie if you are on this website I owe you my LIFE because you were 100% correct. I was obsessed from the very first line and it only gets better from there; Leilani's prose is painting a searing, witty Sistine Chapel to render her protagonist's miserable life in vivid color and detail. the short version is that our 23 year old hot mess finds herself jobless and homeless and ends up moving in with her married boyfriend who's 23 years her senior, where she forms a powerfully weird connection with his rage-filled wife and develops a bond with the couple's nerdy adopted daughter, as the two of them are the only Black women in the excessively white neighborhood. (spoiler alert: she also realizes that her married boyfriend is a fucking loser.) it's a simple enough premise but the execution is bananas in its flair. I couldn't believe this is Leilani's first and so far only novel; if she ever drops another I'll drag myself through barbed wire to get my hands on it.

Juniper & Thorn (Ava Reid, 2022) - I first became aware of this novel via twitter thread of Reid's that made its way to tumblr, in which Reid bemoaned being harangued by readers who were shocked that her dark fairy tale retelling had, you know, dark shit in it. having now read the book, I have to say: these people are fucking pussies. going into this book I was under the impression that there was full on-page father/daughter rape happening, which is actually NOT the case, so you can breathe easy if incest is a hard no for you. what's actually here is a wizard dad who's emotionally abusive, non-incestuous sexual abuse in the backstories of the main character and her love interest, some moderately explicit consensual sex, some bulimia, and [spoiler alert!] admittedly a lot more cannibalism than expected. it's not a lighthearted romp but it's also like, come on. come on. grow up. in terms of the actual book, rather than its controversy, I didn't LOVE it but I'm still compelled enough by the world building (particularly Jewish author Reid's Hueli people, who are a fairly obvious stand-in for Jews down to people claiming that they have horns and using phrenology to prove the have an unfair advantage at making money) that I'm going to check out Reid's earlier novel, The Wolf and the Woodsman, a novel set in the same world. it felt a little repetitive in places and the characters were largely pretty predictable, both of which may be a byproduct of trying to encapsulate the vibe of a classic fairy tale, but I had a good time reading it.

[pruneunfair]

"My feelings on" part 5. How to get my husband on my side and how it properly tackles abuse, eating disorders, and relationships.

Another super popular manhwa that I can understand why it's so beloved. The Borgias were actual people in history that inspired characters like the protagonist Ruby, and the title itself already feels different since the world of OI is all about being a perfect badass woman, funnily enough, HTGMHOMS does this better than most.

Rudbeckia/Ruby starts off with the behavior of the og fls that a lot of OI make fun of. She is surrounded by what appears to be loving family members and is already being prepped to be married of to Izek, she looks excited and ready to do whatever her family wants until her inner monolog reveals how she really feels about them especially her older brother Cezar. She hates almost all of them and her real reason for being excited for marriage is so she can get away from her abusive household and avoid death which shouldn't be hard since the transmigrator doesn't plan on poisoning her sister in law like og Ruby did. She's a master of hiding her feelings already which is attributed to her past life in a similarly abusive adoptive household.

Right off bat, Ruby is shown to be strong in the mental sense. Not only is she walking on eggshells she also suffers from an ED (likely bulimia), there a quite a few scenes where she's throwing up, refusing to eat a lot, or in later chapters, eating a lot more out of stress. Her family too is whole new level of psychological horror. They aren't cartoonist evil, for example Pope Borgia is usually kind to his daughter and treats her with respect until he feels like she's defying him, all of a sudden that kind caring nature is gone, then he becomes threatening, or her older brother Cezar who has been abusing her for years both physically and sexually, he keeps her in place through fear, intimidation, and attacking her on occasion which is only enhanced after he kills Rubys bird and feeds it to his turtle which gives Ruby a phobia of turtles. It's actually heartbreaking with how eerily realistic it is when these types of people are easily placed like normal family members in certain scenes, because that's often how abusive family members blend in, almost no one knows what they are really like and if you looked at a first glance without context, you'd think "Ah yes, that's just a brother next to his siblings." They're never truly gone, they just know how to hide their true colors so well.

This is why Ruby is so much stronger than a lot of people give her credit for, she's dealing with all of this at the same time and her only hope of respite is being as far as possible from her home country. It's easy to jump to the conclusion that Ruby is just a weak stereotypical protagonist everytime you see her pretend to fawn over Izeks presence but if you read further, you'd know that Ruby doesn't like it any better but she thinks she's doing what's right to avoid Izeks Wrath since she's the only one who knows what he is the one who kills the og Ruby in the novel.

Speaking of which, while Izek isn't my favorite ML ever, I still was shocked to find that I liked the typical cold nobleman persona on him. Unlike a lot of ML's Izek is allowed to be flawed and his negative traits and moments aren't brushed aside, they cause some issues like Ruby going out of her way to appear dainty and sweet so Izek won't kill her. He acknowledges how he has hurt her and grows from it and doesn't push her boundaries. It's possible for the cold Duke archetype to work but a lot of the time, the whole war hero past gets thrown to the side for baseless fan service or they're just unapologetically abusive. Izek however is in the in between. His cold and dangerous persona stays consistent but that doesn't make him one note and he gets to have geninue moments of care for those in his life rendering Izek to still be likeable.

Ive noticed that the narrative also makes sense instead of twisting itself for a stupid chance at a fan service plot. An example is Ellen and Freya.

An unfortunate sideffects from the fandom was on and off hatred of Ellen for considering what Freya had to say, taking her side or not even choosing a side at all. The readers know that Freya tried to get Ruby killed by tricking her into going into a monster infested forest or when she tried to frame Ruby for poisoning her, but does Ellen know that? Realistically she's not going to immediately turn her back on Freya since they were childhood friends along eith Izek but that doesn't mean she screams at Ruby either. Ellen does care about Ruby but she knew Freya longer than she knew Ruby. From her perspective, it' makes sense that Freya would be innocent.

But perhaps the best part about Ellen that makes her my favorite character is how she notices the little details on others. She's the first to find out that Ruby has an eating disorder and it's not out of nowhere either, Ellen and Izeks late mother also suffered from a eating disorder that Ellen witnessed more than once so it gives an explanation on how she can tell what Ruby is going through.

Side characters are treated just as well as the main cast too. From the other guards to the friendly monsters to minor antagonist and even the children are all given attention to be their own beings, it doesn't have to be a lot since most of what I mentioned are minor characters but then you got characters like Ivan who has a life outside of just being by Izeks side.

Out of all the side characters I gotta say the monsters are my favorites. It makes me wish there was a side story where Ruby successfully runs away forever and lives as a little witch with monster companions.

Of course like all media, HTGMHOMS has its flaws but I think I'll chill on this one since the flaws aren't large enough to ruin it and I want to stay positive on something I like for once.

Conclusion: This is a story that does such an amazing job with its commentary. Instead of just saying "Cezar abused Ruby in the past! Feel bad for her now!" For example, we are given actual flashbacks to respect the show don't tell rule. Other characters besides Ruby suffer from their own traumas and they get their own arcs on their hardships and how they recover from it, it handles eating disorders and trauma responses in a respectful way that has an actual effect on the plot. Most of all, it does all of this with the type of protagonist that has been deemed as "weak" before in the manhwa community. Ruby isn't a boss girl who is always successful and smart. She makes reckless decisions, she cries, she isn't always able to one-up her enemies like Freya. She's a human woman stuck in a world that's not her own but she still rises to the task at hand even with all her blunders. Ironically making her more feminist then many of the female leads before her.

[aotopmha]

I don’t know if you are still answering questions about your takes with AoT and observations of the fandom. I just wanted to ask about if you’ve noticed this fandom reaction as well. I finished watching AoT some weeks ago and was surprised when I checked about people’s complaints about the ending. I wasn’t really sure myself about the twist about Eren becoming the villain, but I did find it compelling in certain ways. I thought many fans would hate that, but instead I got the impression most fans who hated the ending actually hated Eren breaking down at the end and admitting to not knowing what he was doing and not killing 100% of humanity outside of Paradis. It’s like many fans preferred Eren to be a “strong and wrong” chad fascist man rather than a kid who was driven to madness and despair who knows what he is doing is wrong but cannot help it (and a sick part of him deep down wants to do it). This shows that the genocidal monster isn’t who he truly is, but what destiny and perhaps guided by the entirety of Eldian intergenerational trauma with Ymir, wants him to be. It’s hard for me to imagine the adorable but mentally unstable boy we cared about for three seasons just completely succumb to evil like that.

Oh yeah, all asks are welcome all of the time.

It just takes a while for me to get to them sometimes and I was away from AoT specifically for a bit.

Yeah, that's 100% it. A section of people just hated the ending because the story ended with Eren dropping his facade.

I think it might still be my favourite part of it because of how it rips apart the fascist idea of the cult of personality.

One of the cornerstones of fascist ideology is a central infallible personality to rally around and particularly the ones who subscribe to those ideologies really, really don't like it when the truth of their humanity is laid bare.

Eren isn't an infallible god-like figure here to save humanity, he's a stupid angry child who wanted to dismantle an oppressive system so noone had to suffer its consequences anymore, but went about it in the only way he saw to be right, which happened to involve destroying the world.

And looking at the historical and modern membership of fascist movements, it's for the most part made up of stupid and/or angry men who need a scapegoat for their personal issues/suffering (which sometimes is very valid, which is why the movements can be so effective).

I think the story ultimately posits that unintelligent and rash decisions aren't going to dismantle a long-standing oppressive system without a lot of damage, but as I'm also realising on my revisit, that oppressive systems can not truly be defeated by throwing away your human connections.

And I think the ending also irks the more left-leaning people who think revolution is the be-all-end-all solution to all of the world's issues, when history shows it's often just a stepping stone of many sacrifices dotting the way.

For the same group, the refusal to completely disvow Eren by the narrative and characters can be seen as an endorsement of his actions.

(This is the part I've personally been thinking about a bunch. Even with the anime changes, was the story too sympathetic towards Eren?)

I think it pisses off a bunch of groups because it's an imperfect answer by someone who is clearly working through these ideas themselves.

For example, it can also be seen as a shutdown of revolutions in general.

If the sacrifice is so great, to the point it might destroy the world, why try to change it at all?

But then, during my current rewatch, I was reminded of just how consistent the mantra of "If you can't sacrifice anything, you can't achieve anything" is and I think this is just taking that principle to its biggest picture negative conclusion.

It's limited by Eren's tunnel visioned perspective rather than portrayed as something to not strive for at all because of the potential consequences.

Also, not sure about the phrasing of "adorable" and "completely succumb to evil" because to me it feels like it downplays what Eren did, but Eren being a little shit is a really important part of the series to me in hindsight because it also deconstructs the idea of a "perfect soldier" (Reiner is the more literal commentary of this, same for any of the irrational decisions especially Mikasa and Levi made).

Marley's soldier statue is hollow because there is no perfect hero to follow.

In the end our "heroes" all had to kill a bunch of people to get where they needed to get, still didn't completely disvow Eren because of personal reasons and the strongest conclusion reached was that they had to make the best of what Eren gave them.

The military isn't the perfect protector of the people, it's made up of people who happen to be irrational actors susceptible to corruption and driven by their personal experiences.

Thank you for the ask!

[starving-soulzz]

I’m expanding here on some logistical problems I had with Episode 2 of The Last of Us, but I’m also going to be mentioning some potentially triggering content with references to SA or any other type of physical trauma and I’m just trying to protect anyone from mentions they don’t want to see. It deals with the trauma of helplessness as well. Adult themes abound.

This is a little critical but not . . . not in a cruel way? This was just my take and confusion and anger that I needed to put somewhere or I was going to combust. It is a bit of an emotional analysis of the writing choices and the cause and effect of why this has disturbed some people, such as myself, to such a strong degree.

For some context for those that didn’t play the game, it was Joel and Tommy patrolling together that day. There was no attack on Jackson. Joel DID save Abby, they went back to her place and Tommy and Joel gave their own names.

Major criticisms at the time were why the hell would they save Abby, trust a situation where they were outnumbered and then just give away their names?

Now. The writers TRIED to account for that criticism. They added the scene in episode one where Joel is like, ‘fuck more people we gotta keep this ship afloat’ and Maria telling him 'You were a refugee once too' as if her saying that is going to change his fundamental survivalist nature in the final hour.

They also changed it to Dina being there because her calling Joel's name is much more forgivable and this is the only change that worked as far as I can tell.

Because the other big change is the attack on Jackson. The hope the writers had, I think, is that Joel would be so distracted by it that he wouldn't notice the walls closing in around him.

The problem with that is a fundamental lack of understanding about trauma response and Joel himself.

He survived so long because when he's under pressure he becomes MORE discerning, not less. We saw it all through season one. Hyper vigilance is a trauma response, and one we have seen in him, meaning he should have picked up on Abby's general weirdness and especially on her insisting that they get to the lodge so her friends could help. The Joel we know, would have been like, "Who are these people and why the fuck would they even want to help?"

And this is all outside of the logistical trouble that the writers went to some lengths to prove how useful Joel is with his contracting knowledge so he appears to be if not THE lead contractor at least one of them and it's heavily implied that he's the most knowledgeable. So why the hell would they send that guy out, deaf in one ear, old as shit, valuable as hell, on a routine patrol?

Same with Tommy, though I’m not sure he does patrol in the show and I can’t bring myself to re-watch it to check , he is out with Ellie though at one point in the first episode, outside the walls?. . . anyway, he obviously has respect and his loss would create a power vacuum which is a dangerous thing in a fragile system like Jackson. It just feels like sending your generals out to dig latrines across enemy lines. It makes no sense???

I do allow that Joel might have insisted on patrol but I find that easier to believe of game Joel than the softer show version. Show Joel is very aware of how his hearing is a liability and it was proven to him twice in season one by not hearing the kid that almost killed him in Kansas City and sleeping on the wrong side when Henry and Sam got in.

I know from a writing standpoint that Neil Druckman needed to create a righteous fury in Ellie to tell the story that he wanted to and yes, killing Joel was the only way to do that, but, in effect, he manipulated the narrative to go against common sense and characterization to force the result he needed, rather than finding a way that actually made sense for the character.

And I hate to say it, because of how well crafted Season 1 was, and how beautifully character led, but essentially? This was bad writing. And I think maybe this is part of the reason so many people are feeling particularly betrayed here.

And it frustrated THE FUCK out of me. Because it's so unnecessary? Like knowing all of this the question then becomes, but why was THIS the story that needed to be told with the second game?

The first game was beautiful in that it found light in the darkness and ways toward healing, at great cost but still, the light was there, the hope, the possibility of love and safety and even the loss of that hope is covered when Joel himself snuffs out the Fireflies and the literal hope for humanity in the potential for a cure. It was already there.

But then the individual hope, the light that Jackson represents, the whole relationship between Joel and Ellie . . . the moments of brightness and the potential to not be a victim to your trauma for the rest of your life.

Then the second story comes in just to say "HAHA J/k actually there is no hope and we all end up sad and alone, buried in or killed by our trauma, and nothing we do has any purpose actually?"

Like, fuck off?? And the reason I’m so adamant about that point is because. . . of what follows, probably.

I’m going to be careful with my language here because I don’t want to assume anyone elses experience, and I don’t want to assume that its just a specific type of trauma that this might touch on. I also might be completely insane so there’s also that. Like I’m allowing that I’m maybe the only person that experienced this this way, and that’s fine too.

I’ve thought, at length, about how Joel potentially became a stand in for some survivors, maybe particularly of SA, that never had anyone say, "It's ok. I've got you." His holding Ellie after she’s faced the potential of that created this little space where safety could exist for some survivors on a deep elemental level especially because so many of us, after any type of trauma, didn’t have that right after . . . or never had it at all.

And in the end, this feels like the most fucked up part of it all because the way this was done, the way he was killed, was almost designed to re-traumatize people? Holding Ellie down and not letting her stop what was happening? Massively triggering for so many people who actually have been held down and unable to stop what was happening.

And this is an aside but it’s something like 45% of women and 65% of men that were sexually assaulted develop PTSD. Veterans who saw combat? A generalization there is 4-17% develop it, with some sources putting that number as high as 31.6%. The common thread? The soldiers that were disarmed or held down, unable stop what was happening, these were the ones much more likely to develop the disorder.

This place is full of people asking days later, "Why am I still so fucking upset over this?" And again, I am not assuming anyone’s experience but maybe, it's not his death really.

Well, it is, to a degree, but also he wasn’t just a character. He was a place of safety that we never had. It's that sense of safety that he represented being brutally ripped away, not just from Ellie, but from a great many other people that he came to take the space for. The space they needed to feel safe in a world where many people, maybe especially traditionally masculine men?, don't listen about trauma and don't make space to even say, "I'm here."

I’ll get a little more personal past this point so feel free to stop here if you’ve gotten this far.

I used to get sensory flashbacks of what happened to me and for a week after I would be a mess, feeling as if the event had just happened all over again. I’ve done the work and so much therapy and they are rare now. But that sick feeling, like I’ve just been hurt like that? I’ve had it all week.

And look, yes. I understand that I’m responsible for the content I consume. But season one gave me a gift before I knew how it was going to end. And I find myself now, despite my mind, because trauma functioning doesn’t deal in logic, spending this time now casting about for a new anchor for safety.

Because until this week? I didn’t realize how deeply this had rooted into me. The safety he represented. I understood it logically but now I’ve got the mess of recovery and trying to make sense of my own emotions and logic doesn’t really live in your guts. The way that moment in a show became a part of my trauma recovery architecture wasn't something I could control either. So to say I simply shouldn't care so much about fictional works or whatever, doesn't really work? It was an instinctual salve for a person who was living in fear.

This is actually the most vulnerable thing I’ve ever written and posting it is daunting as hell. I almost feel guilty for it. Apologetic for my own emotions. But to pretend that it didn’t affect me this way? That’s not honest. And not a way I’m interested in living anymore.