#when this is obvious not true. there are definitely comparisons you CAN make but those aren't them

[1pcii]

people who compare zoro to sasuke dont understand zoro, but also most people who use sasuke as a unit of measurement or point of reference to compare against don't understand sasuke either, I am in a tar pit.

[sensorydephrivation]

Amatonormative assumptions and the language of a hard launch: a rambly DnP essay thing

I have a lot of Discourse Thoughts about hard launching and all that, but there’s not much I can say that hasn’t already been said. This fandom is one that generally has significant representation on both sides of any major issue; any take you look for you can find someone genuinely believing. What I am interested in analyzing is how some people are insistent, whether or not they want it to happen or believe it will happen, that they haven’t Hard Launched, and others are equally insistent that they have. Because on the surface those should be completely contradictory takes, but a large amount of people believe each to be true.

I’ve seen posts making comparisons to PJ and Sophie, and I definitely think that’s a useful tool because it brings up the real question here: how do we speak about romantic and platonic relationships, and what underlying assumptions are at play when we use or don't use certain words?

Firstly, this issue is obviously mostly to entirely due to homophobia. Why do people assume PJ and Sophie are a couple just because they live together, even though they've never used the words? Because they're a man and a woman. Why couldn't DnP be publicly open about their relationship back in the day? Because they're gay. I'm not going to spend too much time on this point because it's obvious, but I feel like it's important to remember that Dan and Phil's relationship wasn't some Great Secret for no reason. They weren't no-homo-ing because of privacy or whatever, but because they weren't yet ready to face the immense challenges being publicly out sticks you with, especially in the early 2010s. If homophobia wasn't a thing, everything else I'm going to say in this post would still be true, but it would all be significantly less charged. Just remember that gay marriage wasn't legal in the UK when DnP met each other, and that 2000s pop culture overall was routinely, openly, virulently homophobic. Just keep that in mind. (Also, everything I talk about in this post refers to 2019 onwards, after they came out. I wasn't around for the no-homo era and can't speak on it. I'm also not going to be talking about the speculation around their relationship, because that's been talked about so much. It definitely is a factor in all of this, but you know that already)

Onto the main point of this post. The reason DnP haven't "hard launched" (that term itself is incredibly vague, but its popular meaning in this fandom seems to be explicit confirmation of a romantic relationship, which is how I'm using it here) while also having clearly done so is because their use of language does not line up with conventional expectations of how language around romantic and platonic relationships should be used.

The concept of "dating" as we think of it today is relatively recent, and language around it is even newer. The terms "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" only became prominent in the mid- to late- 20th century, and it took a while for them to gain the connotation (of almost always meaning a romantic relationship) that they have today. And yet people have still had romantic relationships for forever! How these things were described would depend on the society's norms around marriage and sex and often on the exact social dynamic of the couple. Today, we think we're better than all that and can find words for anything.

I'm no expert on what makes a relationship romantic vs platonic or even how to define those terms. I find it hard to define the concept of romance in a way that doesn't bring with it centuries of heteronormative amatonormative assumptions. And boy are there assumptions. (No, people who live together for life do not have to be romantically involved, that's a silly thing to believe.) When people see a relationship that lines up or does not line up with those assumptions, they expect it to have a clean, simple label. But the words we used for romantic relationships outside of marriage, due to how new they are, are completely not simple!

While these days they seem to be the most "unambiguous" terms to describe a romantic relationship, "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" are essentially euphemisms that can seem infantilizing and demeaning of the seriousness of a relationship. It's easy to see how they aren't for everyone, even if many people are fine using them for serious committed relationships. "Partner" is kind of ambiguous on purpose, thought like bf and gf, I think it's on its way to becoming a word with mainly romantic connotations. The term "significant other" is out of fashion these days, but just like bf, gf, and "partner," it's basically a euphemism that doesn't mean much in and of itself. We have no words to describe an unmarried romantic couple that aren't on some level unclear or unindicative of the actual nature of the relationship.

Dan and Phil have acknowledged that they were once in a romantic relationship, have made many many jokes about having sex with each other, and are committed life partners. On some level, you can take the combination of these things as a very clear confirmation of a current romantic relationship, which many do. Yes, this requires making a few assumptions, but they aren't the craziest assumptions in the world. In fact, as one can see from the PJ and Sophie example, they are assumptions that are often normal and expected to be made in social situations. So why do so many others not see it this way?

Well for one, we are a mostly queer community that understands the complexity of queer relationships and how these assumptions do not get applied equally. We see how these assumptions are often used against queer people to devalue their identities, especially those on the ace-aro spectrum and/or in queerplatonic relationships. We also are an extremely online community, familiar with the complicated layers of discourse around RPF and shipping, and hesitant to make assumptions in a way that could potentially damage relationships or invade someone's privacy.

But honestly? It's because DnP don't call themselves boyfriends. They don't explicitly frame their activities in romantic ways (e.g. call things dates). The terms they use and jokes they make, even in 2024, are not the sort of things we expect from the set of assumptions that go with a committed romantic relationship. (This is also where the discourse about whether or not they're open/poly comes from, but that's a topic for another day.)

The Date Night video stretches this to its absolute max. The game is full of cards about kissing and other things that fit cleanly into the set of romantic relationship assumptions, but they didn't use any of those cards. They only used things that were ambiguous, and tried to downplay the romantic implications as much as possible aside from the lampshading of it at the start of the video ("this is a great game to play with your best buddy as well" "phil says no homo" as well as the entire "ugh i can't believe they send us this" tone of the intro). The use of "partner" in this video is the clearest example of this. The game uses this word exclusively- after all, it's a standard, accepted, gender-neutral word for people in a romantic relationship. Phil confidently reads it off the card, with the "I don't care which set of assumptions this assigns us" attitude that's been prevalent over the past year and past few months especially. Dan avoids it half the time, and at the end of the video, seems to clearly mock the term, saying it in a silly voice and then comparing it to how stereotypical cowboys use the word. This stuck out to me; it made it very noticeable that they don't use that word at least in videos, and made me think about the connation of the word they do use-- "friend." That term, unlike any of the words I've mentioned so far, implies literally nothing. "Friends" can be people with a barely positive relationship or people with an incredibly meaningful relationship they center their life around. With no other qualifiers, it also implies that the people in question don't have a romantic relationship (are "just friends"), or even (because of amatonormativity) that their relationship is not especially deep or meaningful.

Dan and Phil have defined their relationship in quite a few ways-- or rather, Dan has, in BIG and in his interviews for WAD. These quotes circulate on here constantly as people discuss the meaning of them. I'm not really interested in talking about those as they've already been talked to death. I do think it's worth noting that we only get these things from Dan-- the one time Phil has ever spoken on his "current dating life" it was just to say "I don't want to talk about that, the door is closed." Obviously some of this is because the interviewers were pushy, but also I'm sure Dan enjoys his elaborate poetic metaphors enough to not be able to shut up about them haha. (Very unrelated but I wonder if this will come up if they end up doing interviews for TIT?) The thing is, these definitions show a deep, meaningful, complex, committed relationship. They include directly romantic terms like "husbands," "soul mates," and "normal gay relationship." You would think being willing to call someone your husband, even with a million other words around it, would mean you wouldn't have a problem calling them your partner, right? Yet these words do not reflect the language they use when speaking about each other in videos!

There are times when they say "friend" "buddy" or "mate" in a clearly humorous, ironic way, and seem aware that it isn't a term that makes people think of a committed, long term relationship. Other times, they use the word as if it is a fully accurate descriptor of their relationship-- in the glue story, Dan jokes about being ashamed to be seen as "the friend of the glue guy," and in How Phil Nearly Died, he quotes himself telling the hospital staff he is looking for "my friend." I use the hospital stories as examples because they are high-stakes (or seemingly high-stakes in the case of the glue story) situations and examples of how other people in their real lives perceive them. The way they choose to tell these stories to the internet is one in which the fact that a random hospital worker would likely interact differently with Dan if he was Phil's friendly roommate as opposed to his life partner doesn't matter. In other words: if they actually do call each other "friends" irl around strangers, those strangers probably have a very different impression of their relationship than we do. Their consistency in describing themselves doing so just means that they want to consistently use the term "friends" in their videos, not that they actually do that in real life. But to a viewer who is unsure about their relationship status, the fact that they are clearly life partners, no matter platonic or romantic, but in all situations opt for a word that does not imply that seems to be confirmation that their relationship is not clearly romantic, or at least that they don't want to refer to it as such.

If I have to draw a conclusion from all this, it's that DnP consider their relationship very complex and unusual (ymmv on if it is, lol) and have had to deal with a ridiculous level of scrutiny about it nonetheless. Again, Phil has almost never spoken on this, but Dan clearly dislikes any descriptor that carries with it a sense of assumptions about the nature of the relationship, hence why he uses like fifty contradicting ones or strange metaphors instead. "Friend" carries with it no assumptions. You can be "friends" and be in a romantic relationship-- plenty of people say "I married my best friend." But our society considers romantic relationships to be more meaningful and important than platonic ones. People assume that if you are in a romantic relationship, you would want to describe your relationship exclusively using terms that carry that set of assumptions, because that is the most important part about it. I honestly think Dan is being quite subversive in refusing to do so.

I have no idea if or when this will ever change, but I hope I've given enough context for those who are convinced they've already hard launched to understand why others are still waiting, and for those who don't think they have to understand why the issue is more complicated than it seems. This topic has fascinated me ever since I first started watching them, and I hope this post can help people reach a bit more of a understanding, rather than inciting more discourse.

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

TOM GLYNN-CARNEY INTERVIEWED BY HOLLYWOOD REPORTER MAGAZINE.

WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO READING THIS GRUESOME TURN OF EVENTS WHEN YOU FIRST LEARNED ABOUT IT?

"I knew it was coming."

"When it was coming, I wasn’t aware."

"But my immediate reaction was about how it came together by our amazing writers with this sort of amazing, theatrical, rousing, terrifying, unpredictable craftsmanship that I was very happy to be on the receiving end of."

FIRST LOOKING BACK ON EPISODE FOUR, WHILE IT SEEMED PRETTY OBVIOUS TO THE VIEWER, I'M WONDERING WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS GOING THROUGH AEGON'S MIND WHEN HE GOT ON SUNFYRE AND WENT CHARGING INTO THE BATTLE?

"He’d been a bit backed into a corner by all the things that have accumulated over time with being king, where his worst fears and insecurities were coming into plain sight and becoming true."

"He felt weak, and he was seen as weak, and kind of useless — with what Alicent (Olivia Cooke) had said to him (“Do nothing”) in his chamber, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back."

And he was just resigned: “I don’t have any option, I’ve got to prove myself in some way.”

"But you know, being the way he is, and not being an actual warrior with that sort of fearless courage that other people have, he had to numb himself and so he got blind drunk and jumped on a dragon."

HOW DO YOU THINK HE FELT ABOUT AEMOND'S BETRAYAL? IT SEEMED LIKE IT WAS CLEAR? I DID WONDER IF AEGON WAS TRULY SURPRISED...

"I think the moment of recognition was the fact that the fireball was coming at it."

"I don’t think he had time to think that he’s done this on purpose."

"If those thoughts are to come off, they will probably come later."

"As a viewer, I’m still unsure."

"I want people to make up their own minds."

THERE'S AN ARGUMENT TO BE MADE THAT SINCE THE BATTLE, AS DISASTROUS AS IT WAS, WAS EVENTUALLY WON, THAT HE SAVED THE DAY? AEGON THE HERO? OR NO.

"You’ve got to take them where you can get them."

"Yeah, he’s a hero."

WHAT'S THE PROSTHETIC PROCESS LIKE FOR YOU MOVING FORWARD?

"Long."

"Very detailed."

"I got to know my amazing hair and makeup team very well."

"I also got to know myself very well."

HOW DO YOU MEAN?

"The amount of time I was spending in that chair with those people in my own thoughts…. But yeah, [the prosthetics] really influences and informs my performance."

"It sort of instructs me how to move now."

"How you breathe, how you speak changes."

"I have a piece inside my mouth that I asked for to sort of distort my speech."

"So all this is great because it makes me feel like we’ve made a shift."

"Aegon has to have changed after this."

"We’re going to find a difference in him and and allow that to continue and [impact] his decisions and have a new approach to life."

YOU'VE MENTIONED CHANGING HOW HE MOVES. IN A PREVIOUS INTERVIEW YOU MENTIONED HOW AEGON USED TO MOVE DIFFERENTLY THAN YOU DO. WHAT WAS THAT DIFFERENCE?

"He’s a little bit more hunched."

"He is a bit narrower."

"I feel it’s a bit weak and more weaselly."

IS IT WEIRDLY MORE FUN TO PLAY HIM AS NOW? BECAUSE THIS IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH MORE THEATRICAL, IN A WAY.

"Yeah! It feels like we’ve transitioned from Richard II to Richard III, if that makes any sense to you."

"Almost like a level up — though on paper, obviously, it’s a level down."

"I think what he loses physically he gains emotionally and mentally."

"I’m trying to see it like that."

THERE'S OBVIOUSLY A PARALLEL THERE TO HOW VISERYS WAS AT THE END, INFIRM AND GHOULISH. DID THAT INFORM YOUR PROCESS AT ALL?

"I mean, it’s just fraught with danger, isn’t it?"

"Having a crown on your head."

"Something nasty is going to happen to you at some point."

"Isn’t it being not having my crown on yet?"

"There’s definitely a Viserys comparison, especially toward his final days and in bed."

"No quality of life whatsoever."

"It was only weeks, months before his dad was in that same position and in that same bed."

LET'S SAY HIS FATE WASN'T LITERALLY WRITTEN. WHAT, IDEALLY, WOULD YOU WANT FOR YOUR AEGON'S FATE?

"I want it to be, in an ideal world, for there to be an opportunity to prove himself and make decisions that he has made — not somebody else who thinks they know better."

"To carve out his own path as king."

"And then just see if he fucks it up as much as people think he might."

"I’d like to give him the space and the time to work it out."

"It’s a dangerous request because they could go horribly wrong."

"I think people underestimate him."

I FOUND IT INTERESTING THAT NOT ONE PERSON SAT BY HIS BEDSIDE OR HELD HIS HAND OR TRIED TO COMFORT HIM IN ANY WAY — AT LEAST NOT IN THIS EPISODE. SEEMS PRETTY HARSH.

"It’s desperately, desperately sad."

"Aegon is a boy in a man’s body and all he’s ever wanted is to be shown love and made to feel seen or not judged."

"All these things that he’s done in the past that have given him a reputation, I believe he’s felt that any attention is good attention."

"Unfortunately, he’s made a name for himself now — people kind of want to keep their distance and they see him as a poisoned chalice."

"At the end of the day, he’s a product of his history."

"He hasn’t had the emotional intelligence to be able to deal with that in a healthy way and move forward from it."

"Back then, therapy wasn’t really a thing, was it?"

"He’s been left to his own devices."

[brujahinaskirt]

You know, when it really comes down to it, the main thing that tears me to pieces about Arthur & John is encapsulated so nicely in the trope of the Lonesome Cowboy.

RDR2's storytelling is particularly masterful as it shows us that everyone is the mythic Lonesome Cowboy... but at the same time, I believe it manages to quietly suggest there is one true Lonesome Cowboy of the series.

And it ain't Arthur Morgan.

DEEPLY overwritten explanation below!

On the surface, Arthur is clearly set up by RDR2 to be our Lonesome Cowboy. He even sings the song. But is he really? Really, truly? Or is Arthur's brand of lonesomeness a clever model to help us, through comparison and contrast, begin to notice and understand another, deeper type of loneliness?

Arthur thinks he's unlovable and alone because he lacks one specific type of love, romantic domesticity, which he has dreamed throughout his life and consistently been denied. But though his pain is genuine, the idea that Arthur is alone and unloved is almost laughable. R* shows us every single game day that Arthur is surrounded by people who love him, live with him, and depend upon him.

But that's the great irony of the RDR Lonesome Cowboy, right? Arthur feels lonely and believes he is alone because he is a "bad man" and nonbeliever whom "no one will have" (not even God, and he remains true to his atheism through the bitter end [and thank god for that honestly because the last thing I needed was a Come to Jesus cowboy game...]).

But the inverse is true, and his depression is lying to him; Arthur is almost never alone and pretty much everyone in his family unit actively enjoys his company and wants him around. And yes, many of these people are damaged and have trouble communicating that (though fewer than you'd think). And no, it isn't the same as getting married to one person and raising a family with them for the rest of your life. But lonesome? As in, emotionally and/or physically alone?

Nah! Come on, man! Not even close.

Arthur is more than just loved and needed: he's actually understood by those he chooses to let in, because Arthur is definitely capable of telling his closest confidants how he feels and what is lurking in his heart. We see him do this many times. Sometimes with surprising ease and honesty.

When Arthur is physically alone in RDR2, he's wandering at the player's command, and if he wanders for too long, he's eventually retrieved & lambasted by the people at camp who quite openly/forcefully tell him they missed him and worried about him. Even Low Honor Arthur is a popular man at camp, in his own way, the support beam of his strange family (though LH Arthur is more likely to selectively deny that support, or to provide that support with the caveat of verbal cruelty).

A messy run-down of some obvious examples to illustrate my point:

Despite Dutch's deterioration and manipulations, Dutch and Hosea openly dote on him and relish telling embarrassing family stories about their Big Man Old Guard son to each other. Hosea especially frets about and tries to care for Arthur, mostly physically but sometimes emotionally as well. Susan can be abrasive at best, but she also clearly favors Arthur, thinks often about his well-being, and is one of the primary worriers when he's away from camp for too long.

Abigail and Jack completely rely on Arthur for a significant period of their lives, and though Abigail struggles greatly with showing affection & vulnerability, I would argue her primary and most extraordinary mode of care and affection for Arthur is allowing him to help her raise her son. Sure, she needs the help... but Arthur needs the nuclear family experience of being heavily relied on, too, and Abigail makes it clear she understands that about him better than anybody else. (I'd go on to argue that being relied on in a family way is essential for Arthur's self-esteem and is how he can continue to function despite the massive clash between his true nature and his violent lifestyle, for which he constantly berates himself. But that's neither here nor there...)

The Girls (Tilly, Mary-Beth, Karen) actively worry about his mental health and invite him to share his burdens with them, comfort him (each in their own unique way), play games, dance, etc. They do this for Arthur we don't see them do for anyone else in camp (apart from each other, which leads me to believe Arthur is sort of an honorary member of The Girls, though I won't get too much into that here).

Sadie: "Aside from my [BELOVED HUSBAND AND SOUL MATE] Jake, you're the best man I've known."

Though Arthur seems more likely to trust & befriend women/non-masc men, he has masc men friends & confidants too, and most of the men at camp seem to rank Arthur as somehow more reliable than other members. Charles very obviously loves Arthur & vice versa to the point where I tried to pick one demonstrative example and couldn't figure out where to begin. Uncle is a pain in Arthur's ass, but when shit hits the fan, he knows (and tells him) that Arthur is the best man of them all. Lenny, while young, enjoys Arthur's company (though I would argue Arthur feels more strongly about Lenny than the inverse due to Arthur's tendency to protectively fuss over young people). Hell, Sean constantly tells Arthur, word for word, "I love ya, Arthur Morgan!!! I really do!!! I love ya!!!!" He's being goofy, but he's not joking! He said that!

And that's just a surface-level sampling of gang members. These threads run much, much deeper and we could spend essays analyzing each one, but my god this has gone on too long already.

One could argue that Arthur's story aloneness is at the moment of his death, but I can't quite agree. With Save John + High Honor Arthur path especially, I would argue Arthur has never been less emotionally (even spiritually) alone than when he chose to change the very nature of his death from a random consequence of his hard life to an act of love that gives his surviving core family (John, Abigail, Jack) a chance at happiness. In less peaceful endgame scenarios, Arthur might not actually die alone, or even have time to linger on his approaching departure from the world.

So I posit that Arthur is not, was never the Lonesome Cowboy. Arthur is loved as much as he loves others.

I posit that the true Lonesome Cowboy of RDR is John.

John Marston, who on the surface has everything Arthur ever wanted... but who, due to the nature of his heart and what he's seen, cannot bring himself to fully open up in a way that enables him to be truly understood and embraced by anyone, not even the person he comes to love most in the world (Abigail). There's a reason the epilogue feels so shocking and lonely, and while I do think Rockstar could have done a better job on the transitional cinematics from playing as Arthur to playing as John, that crushing loneliness and sense of discomfort and incompleteness is vital.

It feels awful. It feels like we just lost a limb and were thrown back into everyday life with no fanfare, no true honorable sendoff, no closure, no greater understanding of the world, no peace or contentment. And it feels that way because that discordant, jarring dis-allowance of grief is the ONLY mechanism that helps us feel how John must feel now. Because unlike Arthur, John cannot express or unfold or understand his own pain and loneliness. Not to us, the player, and not even to himself. He never grieves.

Of course, when Sadie and Micah drift back into his life, John snaps. He's never grieved! He's been emotionally alone through all of that, even when he has his family and friends, because he can't open up and let them in! He risks destroying his family in a way that would have undoubtedly caused Arthur extreme horror and anger because John's family is not and has never been a cure for John's loneliness, even though John truly loves them more than anything at the end.

John can't express it, so it's these lyrics themselves that serve as the fount of his grief: I ain't got no brother. No wonder Abigail has her own quiet epilogue rendition of this song (and she, too, is a profoundly Lonesome Cowboy in her way, just like Karen, Hosea, Javier, Jack, etc....). Once Arthur is gone from the world, so too is the only person who knew this deeply damaged kid well enough from his wild childhood to really even hope to see into John's heart.

tl;dr: Arthur thinks he's the legendary Lonesome Cowboy, but he's not. He's just lonely, not alone. In reality, the character who is fundamentally alone, truly lonesome, has always been John.

[dmagedgoods]

sorry i really really really want to ramble because my GOD Raphael has me in a chokehold. my christian grandma would probably get an aneurysm if she ever learns the amount of affection i have for a fictional nasty devil man

Raphael always striked me as... i def don't have the needed english vocab for this, but, yk, nudging? hinting? suggesting rather than forthcoming? a cat seeing the rodent go into its hiding place and simply waiting near it rather than pushing its paw inside. a cat staring at it's human when they cook rather than trying to steal the food bits by itself. yk????

he nudges us in the right direction, he knows one way or another we'll do what he wants us to do and so he waits and plays around rather than straight up DEMANDING we do something. he only goes yeah yeah so and so its YOUUUR choice yes YOUR CHOICE..... its like that thing he said with Mol, what was it? "to choose the only option she has left"

and i think in a romance it would be very much the same, in situations. i imagine if he goes in for a kiss, he... well, he won't *go in* for it necessarily. he'll move in just enough for OUR mind to think of it, then patiently wait for US to make the first move, and goddamn it I'm pouncing onto him alright!!! it reminds me of a post i saw a longass time ago about how flirting is basically saying horny/affectionate stuff but also having enough deniability to say "oh,no, thats not what i meant at all". and he's literally the personalization of that.

"did... you flirt with me?" "take it as you will, little mouse, all i wanted to say is [explains in still a vaguely flirty manner lmfao]"

and that opens up, like... how would he be when he's not patient enough??? if his patience is JUST running thin he'll probably pull us closer yeah but make it not too obvious and more almost like how you pull in a dance partner. he can't let us know he NEEDS to kiss us, hmmm? and when his patience is gone for sure i can definitely imagine him just straight up grabbing us tbh. you didn't give the cat enough attention so get ready to be clawed at until you give it a VERY MUCH DESERVED treat you ungrateful human

(cat-coded raphael believers unite)

so so so sorry to drop all this text on you i--- 💀

🏃🏼🏃🏼🏃🏼🏃🏼🏃🏼

Anon, you stay right where you are! Don’t you dare and run away! [Guards, close the gates!] I'm being silly omg, don't mind me. But never apologize for coming at me with Raphael thoughts, I love this so, so much! 💕 Also I wholeheartedly agree! Raphael definitely is an observer who likes to tempt action and then see it unfold, curious for the direction it will go. The comparison to a waiting cat really fits! After all, isn’t it that much more satisfying if the food is brought to you instead of taking it yourself? 😌 "To choose the only option she has left", that’s quite classical devil behavior if you ask me. - Making the deal with him appear like the last resort. Maybe moving a few things into place here and there, but ultimately just offering a solution in desperate times of need. Omg, I wondered about this so much, anon! Because yes! True! Raphael has time and I even think it will take him a while to come to terms with his own feelings (those feelings he shouldn’t have as a devil). The “tempt then wait and see” behavior plays into this perfectly and gives him the chance to declare it a mere game he enjoys. I imagined a scene where Tav or Durge teases him and he can’t resist anymore, loses his patience, and kisses them with demanding passion. But oh, I really, really like your idea too. Maybe even more, since you are right, that’s such a him thing to do. Offering, preparing “the deal” but it’s Tav/Durge who needs to sign it by claiming those tempting lips for a kiss. Or well, why not combine it: Tav/Durge teasing him, Raphael losing his patience (we all know he struggles with self-control when confronted in well-aimed manners), but stopping himself from the last step, his fierce need so very obvious and still holding himself back, because as you write: He can’t let them know he is internally shaking with desire and yearning for them. And the way I imagine him to flirt is quite similar to this, indeed. Sometimes just teasing or some flattery, sometimes lewd like the liquor in bellybutton line, but he has this suave demeanor that always creates a bit of distance and allows his prey to take a step backward if they are not willing to go there (yet). Tav/Durge needs to be quite courageous to get that next step from him. Of course, Catphael Raphael has to make it hard for them, probably because he enjoys it but maybe also because he’s not quite sure how to deal with it all himself. His usual duality of hidden insecurities and egomaniacal pride we love him for.

[snorkling-in-sodasea]

Moments of Stupidity 16

Well, since Full Moon came out, it was probably only a matter of time before this, huh? I guess I wanna say first is, I'm feeling rather different than when I first started.

At the beginning, I just wanted to vent. Let anger out. I mean, as much as I have people on the lookout for my posts - which I'm flattered by - I'm still just one of many posting stuff on this site. I'm definitely not the first one to share their dislike over what goes on in Helluva Boss and I doubt I'll be the last.

Over time, I watch the shows more and more and now pretty pictures and some good songs are the standard I have now because, irrational and angry or sane and calm, I still can't get behind the writing at times. Still, I continued this series of posts about stupidity in the shows because I was being fueled by people liking these posts.

Now I'm wondering if I'll just be disappointing one of my parents if I make these posts. Because I talked with them about something and they were right. No matter how much people don't like Vivienne, she managed to be successful and do something right, if she's managed to get A24 interested in airing her show and get that show on Amazon Prime. No matter who doesn't like that, that's still what happened.

Like Stephan King and J.K. Rowling, for example. Those two got their haters but they still got their fans because they're still doing something right, especially writing wise. You might not think that's a good comparison considering the examples I'm using but it's true in the sense that they and Vivienne still are successful due to their works because they all got their fans who helped them get that successful.

So yeah, I know that I can seem disappointing to my parent that I've been angrily posting about a successful show despite how it's not going to change that success and there's a very real chance that I will, should I tell them about it. Especially since I'm still doing at least this post. I guess I can still do this for fun or because I know people will still look forward to these moments of stupidity. I'll have to think on it

In any case, I started this post to still talk about how actions in the screenplay are dumb so I might as well deliver on what I promised. Thanks to anyone and everyone who bothered reading all of this, as well as those who don't get upset over the above.

Full Moon -

So there's D.H.O.R.K.S. first. They not only didn't get any better at interrogation since they got no real way of knowing that Keenie and Cletus were really telling the truth - and they weren't, especially about the exorcists - but there's also the suits. The suits obviously fit the cherubs but Agent One and Agent Two reasonably would never expect to meet them to give the suits to so that the battle suits could be used. I can't even think of kids being sent because they decided not to after last time. So who the fuck would Agent One and Agent Two put in those battle suits?

I guess there's the cherubs, too, for having been stealthy enough with the 'worried mother' bit but then be obvious as fuck when following Blitzo. I mean, the disguise as the mother was kind of strange but like Moxxie said, they weren't exactly covert. How could the cherubs think they would never be spotted when their upper halves were sticking out of the damn bushes?

Other than that, then the biggest moment of stupidity goes to none other than Stolas. Starting up the conversation the way he did is one thing (yes, really, it could be chalked up to Stolas being severely sheltered and alone growing up) but it's another thing entirely to make it sound like Blitzo is the one who makes it all about sex and getting upset about it. Seriously. Stolas is the one who made the deal that centers around sex. He's the one who always spewed sexual shit out of his mouth in most of season 1 and a couple episodes in season 2. He's the one Blitzo was talking about when he said 'don't make it anything more than you (Stolas) wanting me (Blitzo) to fuck you'. Even at the very first meeting that Stolas and Blitzo ever had, Stolas was the one who thought of taking Blitzo to his room and say that he's there to ravish him. How was it Blitzo's fault that that was on Stolas's mind? Yeah, Blitzo may have been the one to initiate sex but it sure seems like to me that he only did that because Stolas gave him the idea of sex being a possibility. Even if Stolas just said the 'ravish me' line as a joke, it still gave Blitzo the idea to have sex. (By the way, that's a very weird joke to make with a friend, especially one you had literally only one playdate with over twenty years ago). Naturally, by this episode, Stolas has practically conditioned Blitzo to make everything about sex when Stolas is in the picture yet this damn owl is upset that his confession wasn't being taken seriously

[hopeymchope]

I personally think Kaede is this most overrated character in DR. By a mile. For a character who only appeared in one chapter, she made a big impact on both the “true” protagonist of V3 as well as the fandom

I actually liked her at first. But the more I played, the more she started to get on my nerves.

It was incredibly stupid if her to plan a murder against the mastermind when there was no evidence that there was even a mastermind in the first place and it was her fault Rantaro died, even though she didn’t directly kill him.

Hope you get my opinion on her

I understand what you mean, even if I don't share your opinion.

(SPOILERS FOR DRV3 BELOW, OF COURSE)

It's an entirely logical leap for Kaede to assume that someone(s?) HAD to be behind the animatronic bears insisting they murder each other, of course. And I honestly kinda (stupidly) admire how she was willing to throw her hat over the wall on the matter of violently attacking the mastermind. The real problem is that... yeah, you're not wrong about dumb her overall plan was. Given how much was still uncertain about where they were and what was going on, it seems like making the leap to "anyone who can open this room MUST BE the mastermind" is a bridge too far, y'know? Even the assumption that the mastermind has to be one of the 16 students present is a large leap! At least I can attribute these assumptions to A) Kaede's established characterization as someone who's really aggressively gung-ho about her own plans/goals, even when it's to the detriment of herself and others, plus B) Kaede's complete blind faith in Shuichi, who came up both those highly flawed hypotheses. Hormones make you do stupid things sometimes, eh?

On the matter of how you feel Rantaro's death is her fault, I'm not sure whether I can agree with that. Are you assuming that if Kaede had never set up her rolling-ball trap, Rantaro would've been allowed to explore the behind-the-scenes areas totally unimpeded? That feels unlikely to me. Perhaps there'd be a convenient way to prevent this from being an issue, like shutting off his access to the hidden door. But I think he'd probably retain his access only to become trapped/captured and then murdered by Tsumugi in a way that could be believably pinned on somebody in the cast, regardless of whether it was Kaede in the Library with the Shot-Put ball. Doing this would keep any behind-the-scenes areas that are not yet ready for exposure (at least not this early in the show) neatly under wraps. I also think Tsumugi would want to move fast to prevent last game's "winner" from getting very far a second time, given that he's A) clearly a threat, and B) killing him early will provide good shock value for her audience.

Ultimately, I've probably posted or reblogged enough posts over the years explaining all the ways/reasons I love Kaede as a character. I love her flaws and how distinct they are from the now-standard "I'm just a regular guy full of self-doubt and low self-esteem" issues of our numerous boy protags. And even without any point of comparison, I love me a character who's determined in the face of certain doom, extremely obvious about her crush, doesn't take any shit, and is very possibly autistic. I definitely still feel the protagonist-swap twist would've been far more effective if they'd put Shuichi in her role and flipped the script so that we take her over when he dies. If we started off as a boy struggling with his self-esteem and somehow wound up with gung-ho autistic heroine who charges in before she even thinks? That'd be a TOTAL inversion of my expectations.

[stainedglassthreads]

I adore your take on the scaramouche 3.3 questline! I was just wondering what your opinion on the cutscene was when he was reaching for a his own hand and then was grabbed also by himself. In the english version he talks about purging worthlessness, but in chinese it is about worthless things not breaking/being broken. This change is interesting and shifts the meaning of the scene imo... (1/?)

(2/?) At first I thought the part grabbing onto him was what he had wanted to leave behind but then realized he couldn't. Yet that doesn't make sense in the context of the scene and definitely not in the chinese version. Then I thought it was him wanting to drag his broken mind together, and perhaps not realizing that other part of himself was there as he did look shocked when he was grabbed, but that grabbing was also what drew him out and made him realize his ambition...

(3/3) idk, maybe im just overthinking the entire scene, but i adore this questline and his character a lot, and want to decode it, and seeing as i really enjoyed your deconstruction of the plot, i thought i'd ask your thoughts... (of course there is also the comparison to that one famous painting of god handing over wisdom, but i haven't thought about that parallel enough to make a proper connection...)

There was this short story I had to read in school once, when I was much, much, much younger. Maybe around 10? It was a short piece about a little girl, but there was this one piece of it that's kind of stuck with me, about how aging. And which has, funnily enough, rung true for me more and more every year since I was an adult. It talked about how when you turn a certain age, you're not just this age. Even once you're 30, there's also a 22 year old, a 17 year old, a 10 year old, and a 3 year old all inside of you, wanting to react in the ways they would normally react. Rather than having a birthday and suddenly being A Year Older And Wiser, I feel like aging is more... slowly wrapping one year around the others and calling the accumulation of them all whatever year you are. 

We'll come back to that concept.

In my analysis, I talked a bit about how Scaramouche's reasons for wanting to destroy himself were never clearly stated, but the events and his words immediately preceding said instance gives us a couple of options for why he did so. I think it's a similar concept here.

Maybe he was trying to piece his mind back together, and suddenly realized his old self had to come along too, like it or not, as you said. There were a few other thoughts that came to my mind.

The thing that originally came to mind when I watched that scene for the very first time was... it kinda looked like Scaramouche was hanging onto Wanderer for dear life. Like in those scenes in movies and books where a character is kept from falling off a cliff only by another character holding their hand, and the one holding onto them has to convince them to climb back up. Scaramouche wanted to annihilate himself, but Wanderer wants to embrace his sins and purpose. Wanderer needs to accept Scaramouche and bring him back-- convince him to climb back on top of the cliff in order to protect the Traveller and Paimon.

Another thought I had, tying back to the dialogue in the cutscene, is. Perhaps it was about Wanderer recognizing what others thought of Scaramouche, recognizing what Scaramouche thought of himself, and then seeing himself as he truly is for the first time.

Paimon and the Traveller are, for obvious reasons, the 'moral heart' of Genshin Impact. Paimon tends to be more compassionate and empathetic, while the Traveller tends to be more vengeful and grudging. But those two's reactions to characters seem to usually be what the game wants us to think of those characters. And at one point during the quest, Paimon feels confused because Scaramouche was a really bad person, but she doesn't feel he deserved to be completely erased from history.

Scaramouche was awful. Wanderer can see that clearly, from what everyone told him about his past incarnation. Maybe at first he, too, sees Scaramouche as 'a worthless thing to be disposed of,' like he perceived so many others as going. Or maybe he just saw himself as a 'worthless and broken thing', after all the trauma he went through.

But seeing Scaramouche clinging onto him, REALLY seeing him, maybe he also realizes that that part of him is... still there. No matter how he feels about what he did and who he is, that person is a part of him which cannot be disposed of.

Which ties into a related idea he had. Scaramouche had a blank slate, forever cut off from Inazuma and the Fatui, and he didn't take it. He shuns his past names, but embraces his memories and sins. And when he wakes up again, in many ways he is and isn't the same Scaramouche. He's working with Nahida and the Traveller, but understands it as a transactional relationship because he's 'useful' to them.

He's turning over a new leaf. But he's not a new person. He's building off of who 'Scaramouche' was to become something new. Scaramouche will always 'be there'. A shadow, an echo. But as Nahida said, someday the future as the Wanderer will be much longer and bigger as the past where he was 'Scaramouche' and 'Kunikuzushi'.

He 500 years old and has a new name now, and a long future ahead of him of trying to do and be someone new. But there'll always be the cruel, arrogant, self-loathing, vengeful, broken puppet inside of him. And inside of that there will always be the young kitten who wanted to belong. But he can wrap the Wanderer around that, and keeping wrapping his next years around it again and again. 

That's what I felt like the cutscene was trying to convey. But I think people will all have their own interpretations of it.

And thank you so much for sending me this ask, it was a really fun subject to talk about! I was never a huge fan of Scara, but I really enjoyed this Interlude. ^^

[punkscowardschampions]

Java Pt.3

James: Please

Ava: There is no alternative, this lesson, this day, this school

Ava: all of it is out the window for now

James: I don’t dare to speculate on what, if anything, wouldn’t fade into utter insignificance in comparison

Ava: A dangerous game sounds about right

James: But order me to focus and I will

Ava: I do care, however hilariously and unbelievably hypocritical that sounds given

Ava: I don’t plan to distract you permanently, sadly

James: That is sad

Ava: But tell me I can and I will never leave you alone 

James: I plan to keep telling you

Ava: Talking to you is one of my new favourite things to do 

James: I’m glad to hear your present will be well received

Ava: I feel thoroughly spoiled, I think I’ll swing by when you have to go back to work, thwart the neighbours 

James: I’d appreciate that, I can’t vouch for them needing to be indulged as wholly as you deserve

Ava: As long as we’ve lived here, I should know more about them than what time they usually put their bins out and their takeaway habits, but I do not 

Ava: That’s [ze postcode], right?

James: What were your career aspirations when you moved in? I’ll have to stop picturing you reporting on said neighbours throughout childhood in light of those revelations

Ava: 🤭

Ava: I am sorry to have let you down though, I had too many flights of fancy to stick to any one career

Ava: What about you, were you always a budding author?

James: I’ve definitely let you down myself because I was determined to play rugby for years

Ava: What position did you favour?

James: [idk about that AT ALL sis but tell her because you 1000% played until you left school]

Ava: I am thankful your face has seen no permanent damage, that would also be very sad

Ava: You didn’t want to join the Uni team?

James: The adult compliments spurring me on to childhood glory had long since dried up

Ava: Ah, I see

James: And it would be unfair to pledge my time to something else knowing how many obligations are shoehorned into my days and nights as is

Ava: Totally

Ava: not to mention there really is a whole culture around it as a Uni commitment, a culture that’s not exactly suited to who you are now, in most ways

James: Yes, I was avoiding mentioning that facet for obvious reasons

Ava: Nance’s last, God, at least three boyfriends have ALL been the cliche rugby boys

Ava: I really can’t imagine you having to socialise with any of them sober, if they ever are

James: It isn’t who I am anymore 

Ava: Yes, I know

Ava: it’s their loss, my gain

James: Mine too, you’re a much better conversationalist than anyone I’ve ever met on a pitch

Ava: I will happily take that compliment

James: I take pleasure in giving them to you

Ava: I’m quite fond of returning the favour

James: I’d be enamoured by you even if you did so infrequently

Ava: I can tell you’re only used to one very specific type of compliment, yes

James: I haven’t always been famed for my conversational skill either

Ava: I get it, too

Ava: Skin deep is easier, that’s as far as some people want to take things

James: And it is true that sobriety makes opening up notoriously challenging, but as far as I was concerned, the alternative wasn’t straightforward, be it the setting, the substance, or my urge to combine both adversely, behind the added complications

Ava: If being inebriated started to feel like you couldn’t ever close the book, that’s a much worse feeling and predicament, I think that’s a given, should be

James: It should be, and yet

Ava: No need to expand, people don’t like the potential of having to examine their own relationship to any given substance, heaven forbid

James: By no means exclusive to this postcode, lest I forget, because the persistence of my social circles to remain ignorant and claim it bliss is especially emphatic

Ava: It is almost certainly an epidemic 

James: I’ll look out for your first piece about it

Ava: Really have my parents despairing over my choice in course

James: I’m no stranger to parental anguish should you require a shoulder to cry on

Ava: Thanks, appreciate it

Ava: My sister COULD get herself together in those two years and stop being the primary/only concern but it’s looking unlikely 

James: It would be extraordinarily hypocritical of me to pass comment on your sister

Ava: It’s cool, it must be weird, it is

Ava: that you’re Teddy’s brother

James: Yes

Ava: Not that weird though, unavoidable, really

James: It may be jarring to see you in your school uniform as well, it doesn’t mean I’d prefer to stay away from you during those hours

Ava: I’ll have to see if I can fit a change of clothes into my bag perhaps

James: I’m asking you to make bigger allowances for me

Ava: If I wanted easier, I could find it but I don’t

James: Ditto

Ava: I’m glad it’s you

James: I can’t wait to see you

Ava: If you want to take my clothes off really quickly, to avoid the conflicted feelings, I understand that too

James: I’m in no conflict about why I’d want that

Ava: I can’t wait either

James: Thank you for keeping me company, it’s lonely here

Ava: You must be decades younger than nearly everyone who works there

Ava: What’s it like?

James: I expected the beginning to be daunting, no-one informed me however that the feeling wouldn’t abate and I’d be increasingly out of my depth

Ava: Nepotism doesn’t also come with you gaining your father’s years of experience through osmosis or something

Ava: A better job is nice and all but I don’t know how you’d not feel that, because it’s true, how are you meant to catch up with a snap of his fingers?

James: I can’t ascertain whether or not the gauntlet he’s designed for me to run is supposed to be an exercise in humiliation, acting as an elaborate I told you so, or if he honestly believes every demoralising task will serve to break and rebuild me, and thus is an I told you so, in that, totally contradictory sense

Ava: I’m sure he thinks it will all serve you well, in the long run

Ava: If the ends justify the means will remain hotly debated

James: He’d proclaim the ends always justify the means, shunning any sort of debate

James: [compare him to an author how y’all have before, but in a v shady way lol]

Ava: I know a lot of people that sound just like him

Ava: Nothing is black and white though, as anyone who plans to make their money in print will let you know

James: Except the tasteful decor of this office, naturally

James: fantasy notwithstanding, I can’t imagine you here

Ava: I won’t insist, if for the myriad of perfectly valid reasons, you don’t ever want me there

James: Demand I’m where you are, I’d rather be

Ava: Would if I could

Ava: Your presence in [whatever class you’re in] would cause quite the stir, I selfishly want to keep that excitement for myself

James: It often did, but I’d sooner uphold my earlier statement about not existing before you and I found each other

Ava: Happily

Ava: it feels true, like my parents should be able to tell how different everything is since they left

James: I’m equally, selfishly, thrilled that secret is being kept for the moment

Ava: You don’t need to worry, my poker face is as strong as my feelings, they won’t have a clue, no one will

James: I’ve yet to witness your poker face, it’s mysteriously absent when you’re with me

Ava: I feel that subtle shade, boy

Ava: I’ll have to show you how ice cool I can be now

James: It isn’t an insult, far from it

James: coincidentally, like the way you’re going to be far from cold

Ava: You wanted me to expose myself, that’s what I want too, with you

James: No masks, it would be a real affront to your appearance

Ava: I want you to look at me more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else to

James: The flashbacks of every second I’ve been able to are the single reason I’m managing to get through the instances where it isn’t possible

Ava: You start to feel like a dream, a very beautiful one but a mirage nonetheless

James: Typically I’d say perhaps I am, because my life has been an imitation, but now you make me feel too undeniably substantial for that to be something I’d accept as true

Ava: You’re very real and very alive, I can attest heartily to both

Ava: My heart just demands I be dramatic about our forced separation, clearly

James: I’m happy to be alive, in any case

Ava: I’m glad you are too, and at the same time and place as I am

James: I’ll admit, it’s surreal everything has come together this perfectly

Ava: I feel so lucky

James: We are

Ava: And as no one knows, we can’t even be accused of being insufferable about it

James: You’re aware of my stance with regards to suffering you, Ava

Ava: I am 🥰

Ava: I’ve reread so many of the things you’ve written or said 

James: I’ve rewritten and rewritten, I don’t know if I’ll ever do justice to all you are in print

Ava: Your attempts are worth much more than a thousand words themselves

James: Tell me what time it is, please

Ava: [do, and thus how long you have, which is hopefully not long by this point]

Ava: I’ve not been shirking my responsibilities

James: Reread what a good girl you are

Ava: God, I love it when you call me that

James: I love how much your behaviour warrants it being said

Ava: You’re very easy to behave for, you might call it a privilege to

James: Mine to have you, yes, I would

Ava: No, mine

James: I’ll willingly fight with you whenever this is what they consist of

Ava: I can’t promise an entirely convincing performance if I have to pretend I don’t enjoy letting you win

James: No performances, we agreed

Ava: Right, and I can’t fake anything here, there’s no room for it

James: I’d find some room to dutifully sit or stand at the back if you’re doing a play or concert at school, but that’s the sole exception

Ava: Really

James: I care to support both you and the arts

Ava: You are so

Ava: I couldn’t possibly subject you to it but the fact you would

James: I insist you subject me to it

Ava: James

James: There are things I’d like to get to know about you which happen outside the confines of your bedroom, or lunch breaks spent in cars

Ava: You can get to know me any way you want, I would like that very much

James: Good

James: so you’ll audition for the end of summer term play?

Ava: Yes, I will

James: Has it been announced?

Ava: Not yet

Ava: Probably after half term, here’s hoping it’s not something terribly dreary 

James: I’d almost forgotten half term

Ava: You’ll be busy in a different way then, occupying a toddler must be a task and a half

James: I’m worried I’m raising a hater of the arts, she loathes her ballet lessons

Ava: Oh no

Ava: there are a lot of other classes and clubs for her to cycle through, there will be something that suits

James: She’s fond of football, I haven’t the slightest idea where the passion has come from, thankfully I wasn’t eager to show my face on the rugby pitch or I’d have saving of it to do with the entire team

Ava: That’s cute, and plenty of people would argue that football is art, so there’s still hope

James: Or you’re my last hope, which is fitting

Ava: Making me blush again

James: You need a spotlight on you, truly

Ava: I hope I get a part now

James: I’ll have to buy the film rights to my own book otherwise

Ava: I don’t want anyone but you to be you though

James: Nepotism coming to my rescue once more, because I absolutely wouldn’t be given the part without it

Ava: No one could do you justice, pale imitation springs to mind

James: I’ll be wearing an imitation blush if you don’t cease your flattery of me

Ava: I’m sorry, I simply feel very passionate about how uniquely wonderful you are

James: Oh Ava

Ava: [updated countdown moment]

James: You intoxicate me, I shouldn’t be working

Ava: I wish I could write you a sick note, with words more or less to that effect

James: I wish you would, I’d love to read it

Ava: Okay, hang on

Ava: [write him up a needlessly detailed sick note listing all the reasons he can’t possibly work in the sauciest manner obvs]

James: I’m inspired to call in sick, despite having no symptoms left to cite because I’ll be keeping all of those to myself

Ava: A sudden fever is a possibility

James: You’d tend to me, wouldn’t you?

Ava: Dutifully

James: Your capable hands are the best place for me

Ava: I am determined to do everything in my power to make you feel yourself again

James: No less than everything will do

Ava: Is that right?

James: Absolutely, I think what I’m afflicted by may be incurable

Ava: This won’t stop me from trying, everything, just as you said

James: You’re very driven, I know

Ava: Yes, and I can’t lose you

James: I’d fight to stay with you

Ava: I know it, you can be steadfast yourself when pursuing what you want, at least in my experience

James: And you’re all I want

Ava: I’m yours, whether we’re fortunate enough to be together or being kept apart, always

James: It will hold me together

James: it is

Ava: Because I need you

James: I’ve never had something this reciprocal, everything you need from me I need from you 

Ava: I haven’t either

Ava: Your appetite matches mine, exactly

James: More shared tastes than we’ve had a chance to even realise yet

Ava: But we’re going to discover everything

James: We must

Ava: This no longer feels in any way optional

Ava: the disservice to myself and to you by us not being together is unthinkable right now

James: I’m not sure it ever was

Ava: I’m giving my poker face a little too much credit there, true

James: I’m recalling how immediately drawn to you I was

Ava: You kissed me

James: The impulse was too strong to suppress 

Ava: How immediate never wanting you to stop was didn’t even shock me somehow

Ava: it felt too right

James: It didn’t occur to me that perhaps I shouldn’t return to your house

Ava: It was reckless of us, I think we can admit that now

James: I was overcome by the longing to

Ava: I know I would have said anything to bring you back, near enough did

Ava: Reckless doesn’t equate to regret, far from it

James: No, I’d be as indiscrete again under the same set of circumstances

Ava: We had to both risk what we did

Ava: to get here, to have this

James: Not doing it would have posed a bigger danger to me

Ava: Saying it wasn’t an option makes me sound a little dangerous myself

Ava: but you would have had to give me a much clearer no, and I could tell you needed it too

James: I shouldn’t say I don’t and haven’t needed a drink, because it’s pressure and manipulation, but it’s still a fact in addition to being both of those things

Ava: I’m proud of you, if that’s an appropriate thing to say? I’m not well-versed but you should be proud of yourself, if it isn’t 

James: My lines are blurred, but appropriate or not, it’s appreciated

Ava: I know how much you wanted to, when you came over

James: I was going to, but at the last minute I had the car turn around

Ava: I’m really glad you did

James: It wouldn’t be right to tell you why, I am mindful of that much, the existence of that line

Ava: You don’t have to

James: If we discuss it I’ll have to do something about it and I don’t know what there is to be done

Ava: If you knew what to do, drinking wouldn’t be the go-to solution, so, that makes sense

Ava: Even if it takes time, I don’t doubt you’ll work it out

James: I suppose it’s become dreamlike too, how bad things are

Ava: I’m sorry, James

James: But that doesn’t protect me, not really

Ava: Things can’t and don’t stay one way forever

Ava: it will change, I can guarantee that

James: So can I

Ava: Being at the point that’s comforting, not frightening is a good sign

James: Nevertheless, our countdown is the better one

Ava: [update]

Ava: You can kiss me again

James: Perhaps your watch will stop

Ava: Less dramatic than my heart, which feels more plausible at this point

James: Actresses are allowed to be dramatic

Ava: Will I be allowed to sit in your lap instead of my own seat?

James: I’ll protect you if the driver opts to make his own reckless decisions

Ava: I know it, you’re too capable it’s horrifically attractive 

James: You’re too dear to me to be risked

Ava: You do make me want to be a little reckless but

James: You have some freedom to, I’m sincere about keeping you safe from harm and the source wasn’t specified

Ava: I don’t think the driver would be that offended

Ava: I just can’t wait

James: I’m leaving in [however long]

Ava: Then you’ll be all mine

Ava: Until what time?

James: [tell her, I assume it’s an hour, maybe an hour and a half because you’re posh and your dad’s the boss]

Ava: Best to set an alarm, I won’t be counting those seconds

James: I’ll set you as my alarm sound telling me you’re proud of me again

Ava: I don’t even want to point out that that isn’t going to make you want to leave

James: It would be impossible to encourage that

Ava: You can only have a goodbye kiss if you leave, the most encouragement I have when I don’t want you to

James: Oh, I think that could work, perhaps

James: now I’m proud of you

Ava: That does feel good

James: Hence my suggestion, you will be of me for going back

Ava: Very, it’s going to be so hard

James: Torturous 

Ava: You’re going to have to encourage me to focus on my work or I don’t think I’ll be able to think of anything but you ever again

James: I’m looking forward to helping you with your homework, I’m being hyperbolic here, hopefully, but I swear I can’t recall handing a single piece of my own in

Ava: You’re planning to redeem your bad boy image via my own academic record, are you

James: In conjunction with helping you run lines until you’re off script, obviously

Ava: You would be an incredible teacher

James: I’d homeschool my daughter if not for the giant spanner that would throw into being available to drive around London with you

Ava: Socialising is important, is what I will say to avoid feeling any sort of guilt about commandeering your tutelage 

James: She’d counter that I should’ve got her a puppy for her birthday like she demanded, I don’t doubt

Ava: I only just got one for mine, she has some years to wait 

James: I’m waiting for a garden, personally, we’re lacking in any grass at all

Ava: It’s a lot if you’re the only one that will be looking after it

James: Unfortunately I have many years before she comprehends my reasoning, for the foreseeable future, I’m just being mean

Ava: A thankless task, I have heard

James: You’ll be grateful for my efforts, at least

Ava: And I happen to know you’re very nice, I won’t hesitate to remind you

James: I’ll try to resist setting you a ridiculous amount of extra reading assignments

Ava: Don’t

James: Okay, I’ll compromise by reading half of them to you

Ava: I would love that so much

James: I’m going to enjoy it too

James: [write her a little scene setting of that adorable one cos we know y’all would be so snuggled and cute while that’s occurring IRL and then there’s the reading it to her from a distance and making coffee for her as though she’s there etc from the OG and both are valid and thus being included, not soz]

Ava: Fuck

Ava: I want that every day of my life

James: A chapter every night without fail, it doesn’t matter how busy either of us are or where we’re spending said evening, I promise that as a minimum

Ava: Storytime over everything, it’s so important

James: I’ll start recording one for you straightaway, once I’ve finished it’ll be time to go

Ava: I shouldn’t have even doubted you’d have a book ready, I know exactly how prepared you are

James: I’m similarly convinced of your readiness for me, always

Ava: You know me inside out

James: Yes

James: [but shh and go read aloud sir so you can actually record another slay book rec for her]

Ava: [send him a photo of you impatiently waiting because dying about it]

James: [sending her a pic back of his broken watch dial but it’s when he’s clearly in the car on the way to her school so it’s an omw]

Ava: I cannot wait to run to you

James: [tell her where to meet you cos it was your school too so you know where it makes sense to pull up nearby so you’re not getting every kid there gawking at you]

Ava: I will be waiting there, however impatient you know it is

James: I’ll be there as soon as I can, however out of my control traffic is

Ava: I won’t leave class until [a point in his journey that makes sense]

James: Because you’re a good girl

Ava: I have never behaved so well, you are entirely to credit because I want your praise so desperately

James: I’m as stubborn when it comes to my resolve to give you everything you want

Ava: And that’s why I have to ensure I deserve it, I can’t let you reward me unduly, it wouldn’t be right

James: I’m so relieved at this opportunity to reward you relentlessly

Ava: No one wants to be the bad guy, I couldn’t do that to either of us

James: It’s the role our driver was born to play 

Ava: I trust him to be off book yet word perfect

Ava: I’ll only resent him a perfectly normal amount for stopping us, I promise 🙃

James: I have established trust in your conduct, no matter his, or indeed my own

Ava: I approve wholeheartedly of yours

James: Thank you

Ava: Thank you more, for everything you are

James: [me like however impractical it is because london traffic would cockblock y’all harder than this, I gotta have him turn up because he’ll say something too extra rn otherwise, soz but it’s the ily curse]

Ava: [run towards this car like you said you would because you’ve both made sure that you’re not being perceived as much as you can so you gotta]

James: [excuse us to this driver because he has every intention of letting this man take them somewhere he can leave them to be feral in the car and have the actual lunch break java aren’t but we all know James isn’t gonna have chill until they get to that destination, however near or far, thank god for the privacy partition honestly because yeah, he’ll immediately be taking off the blazer I imagine her wearing because picturing get even uniform vibes not even because of said uniform and any potential ick but purely because he’s gotta run his hands over her body as if he hasn’t touched her in a million years as he helps her into this car (and into a makeout sesh) and it’s in the way]

Ava: [I’m sure you have a blazer, is typically the vibe these days and it isn’t necessarily hot enough you’d be without it, help him take it off purely to put your hands over his because you need to SQUEEZE his hands right now because no amount of words could begin to convey how !! you are here today]

James: [obvs he’s gotta direct her hands to where his missing shirt button is that he’s been rocking all day in the office like a scruff alongside his broken watch lol because he’s likewise !! and what better way to express that than by poking her finger through said button hole to feel how his skin has been not at all casually peeping there, while also switching up his kisses so they’re on her neck and the lovebite he did where his shirt collar fell when she was wearing it because all the reminders are necessary]

Ava: [we love everything about this missing button moment, thinking about how it could have happened, picturing him in his office how he looks now, the tiniest exposed skin being somehow even hotter than anything more blatant, making a small noise about it all, burying your own face into his hair, not at all casually smelling his shampoo, nuzzling your face into him, as if it might be an attempt to keep quiet but you just want to as much as all that, not soz driver]

James: [catch this boy whispering in her ear about how earlier when they were being extra and he wasn’t touching himself in his office he was touching this shirt in all the ways to feel even closer to her, much like how she did when she was wearing it, encouraging her to again now ofc, but he can’t just be talking, oh no he’s gotta do the absolute most while he’s there so shamelessly all up on her ear, treating her earring like a nip with how he’s running his tongue over it etc, which is all the more ridiculously !! because she was at school so it isn’t a statement piece like the bday necklace was, it’s probably such a chill stud or something that he’s doing all these antics to]

Ava: [mirroring the things he is telling you unconsciously here, so sincerely replicating as if this is all brand new and just what you want to do because how he describes it makes you feel it, very gently and slowly undoing some of these other buttons, like you can’t possibly risk another coming off, guiding his hand to your thigh and his name because have to remind yourself that happened as much as you want to him, because obviously one of the many things you were doing whilst also trying not to touch yourself at that time]

James: [we do love some unconscious mirroring hence I can fully imagine him either untucking her shirt if she’s wearing it baggy to be tucked in or if it’s more fitted and thus not just going under it and thoroughly running his hands over her body the way he did when she was getting in but with her bare skin this time and as gently and slowly as she was undoing those other buttons, until his hand is guided to her thigh and then he’s GRIPPING said thigh almost hard enough to leave finger bruises next to his name because can’t forget that happened and we’re not over it, doing a GASP as he stops kissing her for a sec so he can properly STARE down at it]

Ava: [leaving his shirt on, just undone, because as blatant as you are being, you’re not trying to make this boy get fully naked in this car, you just had to, thus you’re touching his body too, like it has been a thousand years always, LOOKING up at him when he’s looking at his name because you have to read his face and know how he feels about it really because first showed him over messages]

James: [the lack of chill being displayed here but y’all managing to be subtly feral is too real, the driver is welcome that you’re not ruster levels of extra or tancy levels of rude and not giving a fuck, case in point though, he is still being very !! because we all know that while maintaining that EYE CONTACT his hand is going further with touching her thigh, first to feel how turned on she is rn and we all know she has been this entire time and convo, and then to fully take her underwear off because as an unspoken I need to keep these more than you to get through the rest of my day and everything she said about how much she loves to share, the LOOK this is being communicated via as he puts her underwear into his trouser pocket BYE]

Ava: [we’re being very reserved in comparison to how we want to be behaving because you’re so right, at the point of turned on where you feel beyond it because you have been all day and not been able to do anything about it, hence your bottom lip is literally trembling because you’re shaking about this thigh grab before he’s even got your underwear off, at which point you will be actually dying, crawling into his lap with the urgency of needing to like you’re gonna hit the deck if you don’t cling onto him the way you blatantly are]

James: [the girls are really holding back rn sir and that’s entirely for your benefit mr driver man, you don’t even know how lucky you are, he could be being so much more dramatic than the way he’s rubbing his cheek against her bottom lip like he simply can’t bear to look at it without being able to do more about it, or the way he’s BITING his own to shh himself when she’s crawling into his lap because he was visualising it for ages when he was at his desk and now she really is there and he’s dying about it, going from his lip to BITING the collar of her shirt once she’s there because need all that fabric to muffle the noise he does]

Ava: [like, are we still making out with the sauciest of energies back here? Absolutely, but you mind your business with any judgment when we wanna be being SO feral right about now; kissing his cheek with such fervour when it is against our lips, covering his whole face in this flurry of kisses that you can’t hold back ‘I missed you so, so much’ blurted out as unavoidably, your voice sounding almost hoarse from the restraint that all this has taken]

James: [‘I’m going to miss you’ meaning when he goes back to work but also we know after that because you can’t come home to her and you’ve also been reminded half term looms which you’ll be busy af during, hence kissing her like his life depends on it for a minute for the more he hasn’t said before he issues this driver with instructions of where to piss off basically which is blatantly somewhere closer than he originally told him because cannot wait that long soz you gotta go take a lunchbreak ASAP hun, his voice having such a similar energy, that’s a given]

Ava: [the verbal equivalent of 🥺 because obviously that’s the craic but you can’t think about it so you have to really make sure you both get lost in a makeout once this driver knows where y’all are going]

James: [hopefully where you’ve decided to send him is close by because this makeout is going to be getting more and more !! with every second, doing the most with it because it’s all you’re letting yourself do rn, including all the cliches like unhooking her bra and touching her up while her shirt stays on and taking her hair down from whatever updo she was rocking for this school day purely by how dramatically they are making out and his hands are in it]

Ava: [it’s gonna have to be because there’s no getting ‘round the lack of underwear we have on now, you’re both thinking about it in the most obsessive way and there’s only so long you can ignore this, hence you are moving in a way that really doesn’t allow him to, not fully]

James: [mhmm, it’s giving when they had that hookup against the door before he left that was essentially a dry hump but so much more than that rn, it’d be a hookup if not for the clothes he’s wearing, this driver has gotta bail for everybody’s sake because the second he does there will be no stopping them, he’s already ramping it up atm by touching her indecently under that skirt, first his name again, but then he’s going from again travelling up her thigh for another how turned on check to just shamelessly going for it and testing the poker face she mentioned]

Ava: [leave get out, driver, we need to hook up, you really shouldn’t have said about that poker face because you’re in no condition to show you weren’t bullshitting right now, doing such a grumpy face at him like BUT HOW DARE YOU]

James: [we’ve gotta be mean and say that she’s here having an orgasm before this driver leaves just because of how loud she’d wanna be and cannot and how much they’ll both be !! about this, so he’ll be here doing the most to make that happen like it’s his job unlike the 9-5 he’s done nothing for today haha, including giving her such a daddy LOOK about her grumping and shhing her in the hottest way as if she’s said something too in protest, vocally and with his finger on that pouty lip, 1000% a finger that has been inside of her because obvs]

Ava: [OBVIOUSLY, because you’re being SO well behaved, you can only tease sucking on his finger by licking up the length of it and kissing the tip as you LOOK back at him, leaning in like you’re going to kiss him again but you are getting up in his ear because if all you can do is heavy breathe through this then he has to hear it, even if this driver mustn’t]

James: [we love this for you, this driver is fully able to go about his business unbothered despite how dramatic y’all feel and are subtly acting, some characters could and would never, he will be kissing her again but only the most indecent cheek kisses of all time OFC, no notes, but then we’ll be nice and finally let y’all be alone and actually hook up in this car because you’ve earned it huns]

Ava: [the way you are gonna be ripping this boy’s clothes off the second you are alone is so feral, thank god you already unbuttoned his shirt because you don’t need to be wrecking all his clothes and it is entirely necessary to hook up the moment you can]

James: [so titanic coded of y’all again, immediately steam this car up because frantic is the word, I guarantee he has never located or put a condom on quicker in his life, speaking of, I would like everybody to know that because they used them all up he has replaced them with even fancier ones because they are the first he has bought specifically with her in mind and therefore they’ve gotta be the best in terms of giving her pleasure and feeling like he isn’t wearing one as possible, just an unspoken but very important gesture for how unlike other hookups from his POV this is and you’ll both feel the difference ASAP so I’m sure that combined with how restrained you’ve had to be up to now will mean this is the first official java feral quickie]

Ava: [my boo says I have an announcement and she is so real and right for that, such a small, adorable detail and that is exactly the sort of bear he is and that’s why we love him, me here like y’all are not gonna need a minute never mind an hour lmao, hence we have got to laugh when we’ve got enough recovery in us to be able to because the way we died SO hard and SO fast there is so real it’s like oh okay]

James: [me like oh but they will doing my own evil laugh because the sort of bear he is, once he’s joined in with her laugh and has taken a minute look around this car in disbelief at the carnage of their clothes strewn everywhere and how steamed up and titanic-esque it do be he’s gonna see her underwear hanging a lil way out of his pocket because of the way his clothes were pulled off and he brought his wallet out at the speed of light and that iconic visual is gonna make him turned on again and ready for round 2, so this time, wanting to take his time compared to that !! feralness, not instigating the 2nd hookup yet but lying her across the length of this seat (we all know he requested a boujee and bigger car for this precise reason unlike Teddy who uses cars like that always for the flex and because money is irrelevant) and really appreciating her nakedness in the way he couldn’t before, once again memorising every detail and kissing all over her body rn, no doubt also slowly and lovingly taking off an item or items of clothing he missed taking off her when they were going at it]

Ava: [ah the memories of the chaise and the bar just FLOODING back right now, hence we’re here with our hands ALL up in his hair, thank god a boy’s hair is an easier fix than a girl’s because it is getting messed up right now, doing the shakiest sigh ‘so, how has your morning been?’ like lol because have barely said a word in this car and y’all aren’t planning to say much, we all know it]

James: [mhmm, he is 100% this bitch always, it cannot be overstated how he’d now be spending what felt like 50 years to just softly kiss her on every piece of exposed skin her body has to offer him, stopping to look up at her to smile so genuinely though because she’s adorable for asking it and caring and also this has been one of his better mornings for all the reasons and they both know that ‘productive in the manner I wish all of them could be’ because he didn’t get any work done but he got to stay in touch with her]

Ava: [nodding and smiling back because hard same ‘what I don’t know by now, it’s too late to find out’ because you’re doing your exams at this point, your actual lessons are basically over and you’ll just be studying and coming in for exams as and when, just putting it out there how lowkey available you can be whenever he can]

James: [it’s true tea and in that sense we’ve timed this java reboot really well and y’all are welcome, pushing her hair out of her face how he do like he’s gotta see this smile even better but he’s here holding her face after so we see you sir ‘you haven’t had me to help you with your revision’ said like now he is he’d teach her everything she doesn’t know but it’s a flirty way not an actual thinking he could way, we all know he doesn’t have that ego]

Ava: [smiling at him even harder before you’re nuzzling your face into his hand and just gazing at him adoringly nbd ‘you did promise’ like I have not stopped thinking about all the things you said you want to be involved in, don’t you worry]

James: [a nod with heart eyes before he’s manoeuvring himself from where I imagine he was literally on the floor of this car basically in order to dramatically gaze at her lying on these seats when he wasn’t leaning to kiss her everywhere and be extra, to be with her, closer, lying with and more or less on top of her, thinking of a revision question and asking her it like a big nerd because we all know he’s gonna kiss her if she gets it right]

Ava: [lucky you’re clever because what an embarrassing cockblock if you kept getting them wrong lol, you won’t, we know it, it’s okay, just having such a marvellous time being horny lil nerds; tracing his lips almost as if you’re tracing where yours just were on them ‘how am I going to help you though, can’t exactly get an internship’ tapping now like you’re pondering because you’d love to be able to make his work less shit for real but you know you probably cannot]

James: [my boo says awkward if you flopped haha, but thankfully that’s not happening, far from it ‘That’s a trick question’ said like those aren’t allowed but he’s looking at her like omg girl you’ve already helped me more than I can ever express because true, so true in fact he’s blushing a lil about it but we can pretend he’s just flushed because of the makeout and the fact he’s gonna keep asking her questions that she’s gonna keep getting right for a sec until he can’t help but give her so many compliments about how intelligent she is so poetically, in her ear whispered again even though the driver is gone and they are alone now because need to go back over the lovebite on her neck and make it bigger and more seen when she’s wearing her school shirt instead of his, half term does clearly loom but we’re intent of making the most of however many school days she has left to show that off]

Ava: [saying ‘more’ without even meaning to say anything at all, hence you’re blushing now too but you’re not stopping him nor is it stopping you from pushing the same spot on his neck because you’re not allowed to but you certainly are THINKING about it]

James: [when she says that and it’s clearly involuntarily as is her blush, both of which we love to see and hear, this boy moving as involuntarily about it and that meaning by pure chance and positioning that his 🍆 brushes against her thigh where his name is written, doing a lil moan when he realises, but it spurs him on to a new fun game of being even more restrained than earlier because then he’s gotta start rubbing and grinding against her on purpose, doing everything he can without ending up inside her, loving the fact he can pant the way she did in his ear before openly against her skin as he does this cos the driver isn’t here now, not to mention holding her face and guiding it to his pulse point cos giving the gal her own challenge of how hard she can go without fully giving him a lovebite which btw me and Win think she accidentally should as not only is he blatantly egging her on with his antics and definitely at one point saying ‘it’s okay, darling’ and even ‘please’ we all also know he doesn’t care if she gets carried away when he’s made up his mind to never go near Chlo again and therefore thinks she’ll never see it or be bothered BUT obvs jemily and Win are aware of this evil timing of the family holiday and him potentially having to take Jay swimming or to the beach etc so we simply must let it happen soz not soz]

Ava: [we’ve let you live hardcore thus far, jemily and winola gay have simply gotta start causing drama effective immediately I’m afraid lol, Win said they should be going to a Soho House type vibe of place and maybe it was a whole fam jaunt ‘cos clearly Sunday lunch did not happen because James did not go home and everything was in shambles so it gives that Chlo is trying SO hard with everything… that way she gotta decide if she’s gonna freak at this lovebite or just pretend it was her when we all know it wasn’t lmao]

James: [agreed, it just fit too well with the timeline of things and how extra java have been from the off to not do, but now I’ve put that out there we can leave them and skip if you want because we know what the vibe is for the rest of this lunch break etc, they will just be hooking up until he has to go back to work and actually do some]

Ava: [sounds good baby, go us]

[sandersontheside]

@the-fandom-nerds oh goodie, I was hoping someone would ask! before I start, this comes from what I remember from my brit lit and poetry classes in college and a dash of my own research, but I'm not perfect and there may be things I've missed!

Buckle up, this got long.

So, to really understand sonnet 130, we have to start with medieval literature, and the notion of courtly love. If you've read any Arthuriana you might have come across this concept. Essentially, courtly love is a very idealized concept of romance. It is love that is expressed through acts of valor, or poetry, but is never consummated, therefore remained pure. In the Arthur lore, this is Lancelot's love for Guinevere. And this idea was super popular. It was especially popular during the Elizabethan Era, when Shakespeare was writing.

Elizabethan and Renaissance poets would use courtly love in their poems a lot. Especially in sonnets, which was super super popular during this era, and was usually a form associated with love poems and romance. There was a very specific set of imagery used in these sonnets. And these were often not Shakespearean or English sonnets. These were Petrarchan, or Italian sonnets, if not in actual structure, then definitely in imagery.

And this brings us to sonnet 130. Shakespeare is tapping into all of the same imagery of these love sonnets. Snow white skin, damask'd rose, eyes like the sun, these are all comparisons used commonly in these courtly love sonnets. In fact, if you google it, you can find specific poems he's picking on. But, obviously, Shakespeare is not being very flattering towards the mistress in this sonnet. In fact, at first glance, this poem is kind of mean.

Because it's satire.

Shakespeare is making fun of these love sonnets, by using their flowery language and making it insulting. He is undermining this classic romantic imagery and turning it on its head. But what really makes sonnet 130 special, in my opinion, is the final couplet.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare

These two lines turn this sonnet into more than a joke. Not only is Shakespeare playing with the imagery, he is ending on a very intense note, by basically saying that those other poems are full of shit (false compare) and that his love for his mistress is rare and better, and more real, because his love is more truthful, because doesn't need to engage in wild hyperbole. He is really shitting on other poets of the time, while also ending up with a poem that is a lot more romantic than you would think on first glance.

Alright, so prinxiety. Roman, though he is named for the much later romantic period, has always had some pretty obvious knight energy. In the Valentine's Day episode with fake!Valerie, Roman's idea for romance is slaying a dragon. That is, in fact, a perfect example of courtly love! Demonstrating love through feats of bravery. Roman is exactly the poet that Shakespeare is satirizing.

At least, on the surface. Or when it comes to C!Thomas' potential love life. Or when pretending it has to do with that, to be more accurate to the Valerie situation. But when it comes to Virgil, the opposite is true. One of the things that makes prinxiety a great ship, imo, is the enemies-to-friends arc. They really know each other, and their flaws, and they're honest with each other. That's how their whole dynamic works. It's not the kind of over the top romance that Roman might expect, but maybe it's better.

Plus, I think Virgil would appreciate a poem like this. Virgil values honesty very, very highly. He sees through hyperbole and verbose metaphor, and would have trouble believing it, anyway. He would roll his eyes at a typical love sonnet. He just wants to hear he is appreciated in simple, honest terms.

So, yeah, I think that's the gist of it! I hope this makes sense lol

shakespeare's sonnet 130 ("my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun...") is prinxiety coded to me

[holdontwstistakingovermymind]

Dressing Up As Their Movies for Halloween: Alice in Wonderland

This is like in a self-aware MC au. You know you're in a Disney inspired property, and chose to go as Alice for Halloween this year. The dorms also know who your costume is thanks to your stories.

There will be other parts to this of people like it. Idk how well this will do though so I may loose motivation and drop it 😭 thanks for reading

♡

Cute Alice outfit.

(If you want a traditional version, it's actually pretty simple to put together compared to other costumes. However, getting something "Alice inspired" is much easier. You just need to get Che'nya's help stealing from a certain someone's wardrobe.)

Trey is very quick to give compliments. He most likely puts the connection together right away and enjoys seeing you in something a bit more frilly then your usual wear.

Ace and Deuce will definitely take a few minutes to understand what character you're trying to portray. It's oddly familiar, but they can't pin point why.

^They have short attention spans and probably didn't really listen to any of the deeper detail you gave when retelling the original Alice in Wonderland story.

(^^Ace was too focused on making comparisons between the Red Queen's tyranny and Riddle's own rule while Deuce was simply just caught up in the scandal.)

Cater has probably already asked you about your costume before you revealed it to the others. Whilst a bit disappointed that he can't exactly match with you -his plans for halloween already spoken for- he takes a lot more pictures for his social media then usual.

^^Admittedly no one outside knows what the hell the costume is supposed to be of because many people already dresses like that, but the dorms do, and that's all that matters. They're really all he's trying to show off to.

Riddle definitely blushes a lot at first, torn between being flattered that you chose the supposed hero from his story and also insulted for that same reason.

Also he's CONSTANTLY readjusting your outfit whenever something is out of place. He says it's because you're currently representing his dorm, so you must be more presentable. You both know that's only half true.

If you wear a wig, Ace will definitely pull it off at one point. There's no mercy behind those eyes.

Begging for help is useless. Especially from Deuce, who will just shake his head and shrug. (<Though, he probably suggests that Ace looks better with it on.)

Trey will help you readjust you wig when you do, eventually, get it back. He'll smooth it down and comb out any tiny knots, but you'll need Cater to make it look good.

Riddle probably does brag a little about your costume to the other dorms. It's not super obvious, of course, but put a bunch of your boyfriends in a room and eventually people start comparing.

(^ Of course, if you believe a good chunk of them are also dating, this is only funnier.)

Trey thankfully saves you from any actual confrontation with other dorms -several of which are desperately trying to change your costume choice. You can guess who.

Probably one of the more comfortable costume options. Ace suggests this is a good reason for you to wear it more often.

Most of the pictures taken of you in your Alice outfit don't involve anyone else in costume lmao. It's like someone ordered family pictures. You just look normal amongst the cards. Which is a noticeable difference in comparison to your usual Ramshackle uniform.

Every cosplayer's dream. Until you ask Riddle to have a tea party and he takes it too seriously.

Especially great if you dress Grim up as Chesire Cat. Che'nya may get a kick out of it but Ace and Deuce will never let the little magical rat bastard live it down.

[nothorses]

This is an earnest question I promise, but do you think that trans men do have any access to male privilege. I've seen discussions ranging from trans men having male privilege to trans men getting conditional male privilege to trans men not having male privilege and I'm not truly sure what to believe. I'm incline to believe that they don't have it since tbh a lot of arguments regarding trans men's male privilege sound a lot like passing privilege arguments to me (which is also very much not a thing since if people find out you're in trouble) but that's how I view it and I just want other perspectives. I've been around for basically all other queer discourses on this hell site so the "do trans men have male privilege" argument has gotten me to raise my eyebrows a bit.

I think "passing privilege" is a good comparison, tbh, and it's what I usually compare this to.

The argument goes that trans men who pass are treated like cis men, and cis men have access to male privilege, therefore trans men also have access to male privilege.

The most obvious counter-argument here is that trans men don't always pass, don't always want to pass, aren't always even capable of passing, and that passing is also highly contextual and situational; there are very few ways to live your life such that nobody in it knows you're trans, or treats you like you're trans, and doing so requires some rather extreme life changes and restrictions to what you, as a person, are able to do and say on a regular basis.

i.e., trans men don't have male privilege- but can they still access male privilege in certain situations?

The other counter-argument here, which people seem fairly reluctant to address, is that this argument leaves room for the claim that trans women (and most other trans people) also have access to male privilege. If trans men are getting male privilege when others perceive them to be cis men, doesn't that mean that trans women also have access to male privilege when they're perceived as cis men?

A lot of folks avoid this argument by pointing out that trans women don't want to be perceived this way (which isn't 100% true; some are closeted intentionally, others may just literally want to be seen that way- though that is definitely a small minority). But that erases the trans men who also actively don't want to be perceived as cis men, and who feel stifled by the inability to express and embrace their trans identities (hi! I'm one of those!)

To make this argument work, we have to do one of two things:

Redefine our concept of "privileged people" as including everyone who is ever capable of accessing any of even the most incidental forms of privilege- down to stuff like "not getting catcalled"- which rely exclusively on how you are perceived by the specific person enacting gendered treatment in that particular situation. This, of course, includes "women who are not traditionally attractive" as "privileged people" by our own example, and carries some troubling implications when you apply the same logic to others as well (are androgynous 6 y/o girls with short hair "privileged"? Are pre-transition trans people "privileged"? Are closeted gay kids "privileged"? etc. etc.)

Decide that this specific (largely imagined) minority of trans men- the ones who transition, pass, leave the trans community entirely, never interact with anyone who knew them pre-transition, never get close enough to anyone for them to find out they're trans, never have any medical needs relating to reproductive systems, and never seek medical care that may require them to show a doctor their body- are the standard for the way we discuss and define the entire rest of the community, and that everyone who does not conform to their experiences is an outlier. And even these men are often required to give up committed relationships, sexual relationships, and a good deal of medical care in order to live out this invented ideal; if they don't (and many of even the most stealth trans men don't!) they will still be perceived as trans men by someone, at some point.

At the end of the day, society does not want to see us as men. It will do everything in its power to figure out our trans status and treat us the way it wants to. If we somehow get away with being treated like cis men, even for a moment, I think we might just have to accept that this is not inherent to the experience of being a trans man. I'd rather see these situations as outliers, rather than a large swath of trans people's lived realities and identities.

[yoooespinosa]

hi! i don't know if you write for cedric diggory but i saw in your post that it could be any pair (and also because i love your writings!!). so if it's okay with you, can i please request cedric x ravenclaw!reader. where the reader feels insecure around ced because she's the new gf and is a bit jealous of cho (because they're both in ravenclaw), so ced comes and reassures her that she has nothing to worry about.

a/n: Thank you for your request! Definitely got off track lol.

Ordinary, that’s how you would describe yourself while looking in the mirror. No matter how many times you pinched your cheeks for a flush, pluck your eyebrows or even lather your face in expensive face masks, you couldn’t help but feel ordinary.

You see a dull girl looking back at your reflection, what could you possibly have to offer?

Bringing your face closer to the other you, you try and look. To look and see what he can possibly see.

No matter how hard you search, you find nothing. You sigh, a pout to your lips.

“What’s wrong?” A gentle voice interrupts your heavy observation. “You’ve been staring at yourself for close to an hour.”

You almost groan, you must look like a weirdo.

You turn to face the girl that was leaning against the door frame that leads into your shared bathroom.

She was beautiful. Everything about her was beautiful, her eyes, her hair, her cheekbones, the shape of her lips, even her voice was beautiful. Cho had to be perfect. It didn’t help that she had such a good heart.

She was so perfect, you wanted to strangle her. How could Cedric, your beautiful boyfriend, go after you when he had a girl like Cho before?

You couldn’t possibly comprehend it.

You open your mouth to answer her, but then cut yourself off. “Nothing important.”

You pass by her concerned gaze, heading to your bed, letting your insecurities run wild once your head hits the pillows.

If you had stayed any longer you might have asked something stupid like, “am i pretty?” and you didn’t need the possibility of your fears being confirmed.

Cedric and Cho had broken up a year ago. They both agreed they were better off as friends. A few months after their breakup, he took a liking to you. He did everything in his power to win your affections, it was easy to fall for him. Cho had been supportive of it too, even helping him woo you.

So you don’t know why you have these doubts, even when your months in with Cedric.

You’re not even sure when you started the comparison of yourself. Always questioning everything you did, ‘Did Cho do this?’ or ‘Did he prefer to do this with Cho, rather than you?’

You even started comparing yourself to all the other girls that still shamelessly flirted with Cedric. Knowing he was taken didn’t seem to stop them. It didn’t help that even they were beautiful. You were scared that maybe one day he’d see it too and leave you for them. Or realize he made a mistake with breaking things off with Cho.

You felt like a shadow compared to him, Cho and every other pretty girl that glanced his way. You felt as if you were watching him live his life, while you sat quietly, watching for a little tell sign of his doubts of you.

But he gave away nothing. He gave you everything though. He gave you his love and you wondered why that wasn’t enough to kill those running thoughts.

He looks at you with nothing but love and admiration in his eyes. Yet, you still tear yourself apart every night. Thinking of solutions on how you can just be better. You pick yourself apart, until your numb.

You fell asleep with the echo of your unanswered why’s.

“Ready?” Cedric asks, taking a hold of your hand.

You hum in agreement, letting him pull you up.

You both just finished lunch and planned on heading to his dorm to hang out there. You hadn’t brought up any of the thoughts that were burning through your skull the other night and you didn’t plan to.

You focused on the path ahead, not noticing the stolen glances from the boy next to you.

Entering his dorm, you both take off your shoes and place them next to the door. You put your bag down and just take in the room. Trying to let the familiar space sooth your nerves.

“You’ve been feeling alright?” He asks, looking at you through his lashes.

“Fine.” Nodding your head, but you think the bags under your eyes speak a different truth.

“Cho’s been telling me that you’ve seemed off,” He paused, then adding “lately.”

You faintly wondered why he said it like that, but inwardly shaking it off as you processed his words.

“You and Cho talk about me?”

You wanted to ask that they talked in general, but you knew they did. You weren’t sure why the thought filled you with a sense of dread, why your chest compacted in with it.

That little voice in your head was making up all these sinful scenarios, flashing before your eyes that you almost felt like you were going to be sick.

“We’re friends,” He says gently, almost like he sees how fragile you are, how one wrong word could be the downfall. “she’s your friend also. And she’s just been a little concerned.”

You chewed on your lip, cutting up your gums, stopping yourself from saying anything you’d regret after. “Nothing to be concerned about.”

He sighs and stares at you for a second longer, it seemed like he was searching for something that you weren’t sure you wanted him to find, so you turn your eyes away.

You heard his footsteps walking to the other side of his bed, followed by the sound of his drawer opening.

“Here,” You looked up to find him holding a brown cable knit sweater, your favorite one he owned.

It brought a small smile to your face, making an ounce of relief flood his chest.

You mumbled your gratitude, then taking your leave to the restroom to change. A shadow fell over his eyebrows, you’d always just change in front of him.

He didn’t linger on the thought for too long once he heard the click of the door and your light footsteps.

You made your way to his bed, gently prying the sheets open and sinking into the warmth. You turned your back towards him, closing your eyes, and letting the sound of the changing of his clothes fill the air.

A dip to the side of you and arms enclosing in on you, dragging you into more warmth. Yet, the coldness in your chest stayed.

You clenched your eyes shut and prayed for sleep. This was your favorite part of day, these naps with Cedric, his dorm room empty and the chance to be alone without anyone in sight to compare yourself to.

But even with his arms around you and the smell of him surrounding the space you were in, didn’t stop the whispers of the troubled.

He must of felt how tense you were, different from the way you so easily melted into him.

“Y/n.” He whispers, you felt him shift behind you, his arms loosening.

You clenched your eyes tighter, trying to even out your breaths, but even you knew that it was not possible to fall asleep that fast.

“Y/n,” He hovers over you a little, looking at your face with an unimpressed expression. “i know you’re not sleeping.”

You unclench your eyes, steeling yourself, for the conversation you knew was bound to happen. Opening your eyes, you met his soft bright ones. His eyes, that spoke everything you wished you’d just believe.

“Yes?” You mumble softly, peeking at him through your lashes.

He stares at you a second longer, then kisses your cheek. “Talk to me.”

“About what?” You were never good at playing oblivious.

“About what’s going on in your head that’s making you look at me like that.”

You furrow your eyebrows, “Looking at you, like what?”

“Like i’m a stranger,” He mumbles sadly. “like i’m someone you should be wary of.”

Guilt washed over you, you didn’t know you were so translucent. You never wanted Cedric to be affected by the problems you were inflicting on yourself.

“That’s not true.” An obvious lie.

“It is.” He corrects you. “You can talk to me, you know that right? We’ll never fix anything, if you don’t talk to me.”

He was right, no matter how much you didn’t want to talk about this. You knew you needed to at some point. And it was looking as if that time was now.

“I just-“ You tried again. “Do you ever have, i don’t know, doubts?”

“Doubts?” You turn so your laying on your back now, him still half hovering over you. “About what?”

“Like,” A long sigh escapes past your lips, unwilling. “Do you ever regret getting with me?”

He gapes at you, almost looking offended of the question. “Why would you even ask that?” He sits up, causing you to follow.

“I don’t kn-“

“Do you think i regret it?” He rephrases, “Do i make it seem like regret it?”

Every scenario of him and you together flashes in blurs through your head and no he didn’t, the opposite actually. He looked at you as if you were the sun, as if you were brighter than the sun.

“No.” You mumble weakly, ashamed that even that revelation didn’t seem to dampen your insecurities.

“Then i’m confused on what brought this on.”

“Why are you with me, when you can be with someone as beautiful as Cho.” You meant for it to come out as a question, but it sounded like a statement.

Maybe you did mean to say it like that, it’s what you believed, the only thing you weren’t questioning the truth of.

You hear him get up and you feel as if your heart stopped beating. This is it, this was what you were preparing yourself for, you thought to yourself. Eyes already blurring.

Then a warm hand in yours, pulling you up. You stumble a little, but he steadies you, always keeping you grounded. Next thing you know he’s dragging you along to the bathroom. Confusion is clear on your face.

“What?” You mumble more to yourself.

He brings you in front of the mirror, the full body length one in the corner of the room. He stands behind you, towering over your smaller frame.

“Look at yourself.” He demands softly, when you don’t cast your eyes away from his.

You oblige, catching your own eyes. You furrow your eyebrows.

“What are you thinking about right now?” He asks, his hands ghosting over your waist.

“How could you possibly love me when i can’t even love myself?”

He looked pained by your words, that you could even have those thoughts.

“I’ll love you enough for the both of us.”

You give him a weak smile, “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Then i’ll help you love yourself.” He adds, desperately. “I’ll make you see what’s to love about you.”

He grips you harder, taking away the response you had.

“Look,” Because your eyes had ventured to his once again.

His thumbs brushed over your body, the side of your face, until they landed under your eyes. Covering the dark circles from view, he smoothed them out gently.

“Your eyes,” He began softly. “they have to be the most captivating eyes i’ve ever seen. They were the first thing i noticed about you, the first thing that pulled me in.”

His fingers brushed over your nose, curving in with it.

“This adorable nose,” He pinches it softly. “home to the freckles i could spend all my time counting.”

He brushed over your cheeks, leaving a pink blush. His fingers stopped at your lips.

“Have to be the most kissable lips out there.” He drags your bottom lip down with his thumb. “I could spend hours just kissing you, these lips.”

His knuckles brush over your neck.

“Where else am i supposed to leave my marks that show everyone your mine?”

He spends an hour at least, going through why he loved every feature about you. Talking about the way you bewitched him with your looks, with your heart.

“Can’t you see how you’re the cause of my euphoria?” His chin was resting on your shoulder, his eyes burning into yours, you never felt more loved than right now.

Those whispers dimmed in comparison to his loving words.

His hands were still roaming slowly over you, like he couldn’t get enough, you were sure he couldn’t get enough.

“What do you see?” He whispers, once your eyes take yourself in again.

“I see-“ You think for a second, really think. “I see potential.”

Potential to love yourself. Potential to accept the love he gave you. Potential to feel worthy to have him. Potential to see that he picked you.

And from then, every so often he would drag you to the mirror and do it again. Adding something new each time.

Until potential turned to beauty. Undeniable beauty. Until the whispers were nothing more than the self assured.

[aronarchy]

I found an interesting thread which expresses a similar idea:

This will be unpopular to those who still believe in the international nation state paradigm, but one of the silliest performances we have to witness is the ICJ “ordering the people committing genocide to stop committing genocide.”

States, governments, and the paradigms based on them have always been defined by a mystical belief that governments are non-human entities that commit no wrong, which can be trusted to treat themselves fairly in comparison to the people they wrong.

It’s mystical because it stands in complete contradiction to the logical structure of government as a hierarchical entity: as a hierarchy of rulers vs. ruled, by definition one class of people do not apply to themselves the same analyses and restrictions applied to another.

If we carry out the consistent observation that governments are organizations made up of human beings too, then, who holds the governments accountable for their crimes which they commit against various populations?

The scope of this far more than “sometimes governments commit crimes.” State governments as a form of social organization, like capitalism, are premised on a fundamental injustice that appears throughout the institutions and social lives of the societies which have them.

The ideology of liberal non-violence today is premised on the further contradictions of the idea that one should “reject violence in all its forms.” Such an ideology obviously not only is meant to place whole populations at the mercy of governments who brutalize them… but also, as a contradiction, ignores the violence of governments themselves. If liberals consistently believed in non-violence, they would be clamoring in government to dismantle the police and the military.

Liberals are possessed with the belief that only some political ideologies are violent. In reality, most of all political ideologies believe in violence. Where they differ is when and how to use that violence. Liberals believe only governments should use it, which again places them in uncomfortable waters when they have to deal with the subject of populations being brutalized by governments, such as Palestinians by Israel. And it’s worth mentioning that governments don’t just commit crimes “sometimes,” they commit crimes ALL the time.

Recently people have become more aware in addition to Palestine of the Uyghurs, Tigrayans, Congolese, immigrants at the American border. It seems like there is a never-ending list of crimes governments are committing against their populations.

This fact is more obvious when it comes to governments who colonize and conquer other peoples, like Israel in Palestine, but it’s true of governments’ relationship with their own citizens too, when they pass legislation that makes people poor, homeless, or die.

It was famously asked “what is fascism but colonization applied to the metropole?” You can reverse that idea: For governments to colonize other people, they must have first colonized their own people to mobilize them against others.

People often throw around the word “anarchist” as a synonym for criminal, murderers, and rapists, but who has committed more murders and crimes than governments? Was it anarchists who started WW2, brutalized their way throughout eastern Asia, colonized all of Africa?

The same people who make fun of anarchists as being “utopians” since anarchy “requires people to be innately good” are also the same people commanding genocidal governments to stop committing genocide, and expect governments to hold themselves accountable.

They claim that people are inherently bad and selfish, so they require government to hold people accountable, but that falls flat on its for two reasons: first, if people are inherently bad, what makes us think that putting some humans in charge of others is a good idea?

Secondly, if governments can hold themselves accountable, then that is a tacit admission that societies of people can hold themselves accountable without government oversight, thereby demolishing the idea that “government is necessary to hold people accountable.”

The absolute central and fundamental injustice of governments is the injustice of all hierarchies: that some people control the decisions which govern the lives of others. Hierarchies are inherently anti-liberation, anti-equality, anti-justice.

These all have very real consequences about our attitudes towards the ICJ, the UN, towards our attitudes to both governments of particular countries and international organizations as well.

It at once eliminates all the faith people put into these organizations, since they have a vested interest in self-reproducing themselves, and since they themselves are defined by injustices and crimes, that necessarily means self-reproducing crimes like the bombardment of Gaza.

Notice, for example, the ICJ ruling “commanding Israel to halt its aggression.” Is the ICJ forcibly stopping Israel, sending troops, affirming the right of Gazans to pick up weapons to defend themselves? No.

To do so would undermine the frameworks from which the ICJ derives/justifies its authority, the frameworks which are based on the assumption of governments and nation-states, which requires a belief in their inter/intra accountability.

To add to this, it’s for this reason that it doesn’t matter how you spin hierarchy and authority: it’s still authoritarian and hierarchical. Your “democracy” where people vote for a ruler and then ignore politics for 4 years isn’t actually a democracy.

.

I don’t believe in “international law.”

“Abolish the courts” applies to both “domestic” courts as well as foreign/global legal bodies. I’m not sure how any reasonable and compassionate person can look at, for example, some panel of privileged adults judging a child or teenager on whether they should be locked up for killing their abusive parent, that they have the power to do so, that the survivor’s revictimization or freedom depends on the feelings of these remote privileged adults and not feel that this entire system and this entire notion of “judging” is a sham, is inherently a risk to the autonomy of the vulnerable and oppressed. How arrogant is the presumption that some outsider, merely because they have power and respectability and legitimacy, can have the full picture of the interiority of an oppressed person who’s been through and/or going through hell, who should be the foremost expert on their own situation and the epistemic authority regarding themself, as if their experience of “abuse” or “oppression” cannot be considered “real” until some outsider validates it first?

And likewise I found it deeply depressing and cruel that the Palestinians or their allies have to go to a court in an entirely different country to argue and plead for Palestinians’ basic rights and persuade a group of privileged people to acknowledge them, hinging their prospects on which ruling they would decide on, when they should not have to do that in the first place, and they should have autonomy and not be beholden to the potentially negative, oppressive judgment of some outsiders in the first place! That is a travesty.

I don’t say this to imply that the efforts of lawyers defending the oppressed in front of a court are easy, unimportant, irrelevant, entirely unimpactful, or callous, or that there is no context where invoking the language of “illegal under international law” or “war crimes” is useful or helpful in discussions or raising awareness; they are working within an unjust system trying to give the victims the best chances they can have in it, and preventing things from being even worse. Likewise, I respect lawyers who defend child abuse victims or adult domestic abuse victims or sexual violence victims etc. But we should interpret such situations with a basic understanding that that is not all activism can offer, nor should trying to game the system more in our favor be the ultimate end goal.

I also don’t say this to imply that international law/the UN and individual nation-state law/state governments are identical. There’s a key difference in that the former lacks the same kind of enforcement power the latter has, and is not set by a single cohesive entity with unilateral interests and power to wield. But the other similarities are there. (“International law” derives its own legitimacy from the consent of nation-states which sign on to it, which in turn derive their own legitimacy in doing so from the purported consent of their governed, which is necessarily invalid.)

[the-original-skipps]

Fluffy Alphabet A-Z

Sano Manjiro aka Mikey

Note: Thank you so much for 100+ followers. I wouldn't have been able to get his far without your support. I'm super overjoyed and glad that you guys take the time to read my writing. I love you all very much as promised I hope you enjoy the fluffy alphabet! 💗

A ctivities - What do they like to do with their s/o? How do they spend their free time with them?

> Mikey likes to go for rides on his CB205T and he likes to bring you along. He just loves the feeling of the wind passing and your presence behind him. Maybe sharing some snacks while you both watch the sunset or the starry night sky, talking about random things. He just generally likes being around you even if you're both just sitting in silence.

B eauty - What do they admire about their s/o? What do they think is beautiful about them?

> He admires your determination and strong will. Since Mikey is mentally weak, he admires those traits in other people. No matter what you'd always be there to scold him or comfort him. It reminds him of his older brother.

C omfort - How would they help their s/o when they feel down/have a panic attack etc.?

> Mikey instantly knows if you're feeling down, he just senses it. He'll bring you somewhere where they could both be alone maybe a park or he'll drive somewhere and sit you down. Mikey won't force you to tell him what's wrong but if you do he'll be listening intently. He's not the best at comforting people but makes sure to let you know that he's here for you.

D reams - How do they picture their future with their s/o?

> Now this is a hard topic to answer. Mikey has pictured a future with his s/o, living in peace after all the rush during his teenage years. However, he doesn't see it happening because he knows it's best if he keeps his s/o away from him in the future.

E qual - Are they the dominant one in the relationship, or rather passive?

> I'd say he's both but mostly on the passive side. He lets you take the lead since he doesn't know much about being in a relationship. He'll be given advice and teased by his close friends but he'll keep their words in mind.

F ight - Would they be easy to forgive their s/o? How are they fighting?

> Mikey is pretty stubborn and doesn't like losing. If it's a petty harmless arguement, if he's wrong then he'll muttering an apology to you and completely forget about it. It's difficult to get into a serious argument with him unless it's something concerning him or Toman. Say the things he needs to hear even if himself doesn't agree with you. Then he'll leave to give himself space and think about things. Be patient with him because eventually he'll come around.

G ratitude - How grateful are they in general? Are they aware of what their s/o is doing for them?

> Mikey is very grateful for you being by his side even though he thinks he doesn't deserve it. He appreciates every gesture you do for him from the big things and to the little things such as making him lunch or fixing his hair or just being by his side when he feels he's losing himself.

H onesty - Do they have secrets they hide from their s/o? Or do they share everything?

> Mikey doesn't hide things, if you ask him something he will directly answer you. He has no trouble talking about a past event since it already happened. Even though he doesn't want you getting involved with Toman, he still tells you about how they're doing or what they're up to. The only things he wouldn't share are his true feelings and his dark impulsivities since he doesn't want to scare you.

I nspiration - Did their s/o change them somehow, or the other way around? Like trying out new things or helped them overcome personal problems?

> Just by being by Mikey's side you are a positive influence on him. It will take a long time but little by little he tries to open up about his true feelings and tries to rely on you more. Everytime you sense he's distancing himself, you would have to drag him back and knock some sense into him.

J ealousy - Do they get jealous easily? How do they deal with it?

> Mikey is definitely the type to get jealous easily and his childish tendencies tend to come out. If he sees you getting too friendly with someone he'll keep staring until he's had enough and say "(Y/N) is mine, hmph!" With a cute pout on his face. Be sure to coddle him afterwards because he might give you the silent treatment.

K iss - Are they a good kisser? What was the first kiss like?

> Mikey has no experience whatsoever. He has no idea how kisses work. It'll be super rare to get a kiss from Mikey since he's not used to being affectionate. If you're lucky he'll peck you on your cheek or kiss your hands occasionally. Your first kiss with him wasn't planned. Both of you were alone and you were just admiring him as he talked and pressed a light kiss on his lips. He was instantly shocked by what you did as he traces over his lips with his fingers but inside he's feeling all warm. He never knew kisses from you would have this kind of affect on him.

L ove Confession - How would they confess to their s/o?

> It took long time for Mikey to realize that what he felt towards you was more than just friendship. He confessed this to Draken and he replied "huh, obviously you like them you idiot. Hurry up and go tell them." In which Mikey replies by telling Draken to do the same for Emma. It happened when he came to pick you up from school one day on his motorcycle and brought you to the riverside. "I finally understand what I feel, (Y/N). I like you... You don't have to give me an answer right away, I'll wait however long it takes..."

M arriage - Do they want to get married? How do they propose? What would the marriage be like?

> Another hard topic to answer. When Mikey fell for you he fell hard. As much as he wants to spend the rest of his life in peace with you, it won't happen. That is until he goes through "certain changes" and let's say he did. You'll be riding with him on his motorcycle on Christmas until he stops at a certain place. He'll start talking about his past and the times you've spent together. Then talking about how much he appreciates you and thanks you then pops the question. The wedding will be small and privately held with only people close to him and you are invited.

N icknames - What do they call their s/o?

> It is known that Mikey gives nicknames to those who are close to him. It depends on what your first name is. He'll most likely you use the first syllable of your name plus -chin, -cchi or -chy. Only when he's serious will he use your real name.

O n Cloud Nine - What are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?

> Honestly, it can be really hard to tell unless you really observe Mikey. You would notice he stares at you longer, or everytime your name pops up in a conversation he's interested. Draken is definitely the first the notice this change in Mikey and teases him for it, while Mikey denys it. The others will slowly start to notice this too. Especially, when he bought an extra taiyaki and gave it to you. Takemichy's jaw dropped at the scene.

P DA - Are they upfront about their relationship? Do they brag with their s/o in front of others? Or are they rather shy to kiss etc. when others are watching?

> Mikey won't be announcing to everyone that he has an s/o. However, if someone asks he'll answer honestly. I wouldn't use the word "brag" but he will say nice about you to others. For Mikey, intimate gestures such as kissing are only between the two of you. If someone catches the both of you, Mikey wouldn't be pleased.

Q uirk - Some random ability they have that's beneficial in a relationship.

> You wouldn't have to worry about anyone trying to flirt with you or trying to hurt you not when Mikey's around. Mikey cares deeply about you and would give his life to protect you. You wouldn't have to worry about other people trying to flirt with Mikey either since you already have his heart, he'll simple brush them off. He's loyal.

R omance - How romantic are they? What would they do to make their s/o happy? Cliché or rather creative?

> As I have mentioned earlier, Mikey has no experience with relationships. You would have to teach him things. Still there will be moments that might seem simple to others but to you, you know it's a way Mikey shows his love for you. For example, draping his jacket over your shoulders or buying an extra snack so you could have some too. If he's not busy with Toman matters, he would want to spend his time with you.

S upport - Are they helping their s/o achieve their goals? Do they believe in them?

> Mikey would genuinely support your dreams and passions, telling you to never give up on them. He believes in you with his whole heart, and he knows you would be able to make your goals come true.

T hrill - Do they need to try out new things to spice out your relationship? Or do they prefer a certain routine?

> He would like to try things he never experienced before with you, like taking pictures at the photo booth or going shopping for matching keychains. That being said, what Mikey likes the most is the constant reassurance that you're here for him. Routines like going riding on his motorcycle or just talking with you, it what he like most. He's scared that one day you'd leave him so these mundane routines assures him.

U nderstanding - How good do they know their partner? Are they empathetic?

> You would think Mikey is the forgetful type but he actually pays attention to things. He'll notice you eyeing a certain item in a store or if you're lying to him. He genuinely cares about you and would like to know everything about you, even the shameful parts. Mikey has a hard time with emotions, he may not fully understand your troubles but he'll assure you that he'll be there for you.

V alue - How important is the relationship to them? What is it’s worth in comparison to other things in their life?

> For Mikey to actually want to establish a relationship with someone. It means he sees you as an important person in his life. However, certain things would have to come before you such as his family and Toman. It is something you would have to understand when dating Mikey.

W ild Card - A random Fluff Headcanon.

> Whenever he looks like he's spacing off during Toman meetings while he is paying attention to what's happening his mind can't help but wander towards you. About what you're currently doing or if you're at home safely. Before he starts the engine of his bike, or has nothing to do he fiddles with the keychain on his keys. It's the matching keychain you both have.

X OXO - Are they very affectionate? Do they love to kiss and cuddle?

> Mikey is not known to be the most showy when it comes to showing his affections. It's the little things he does for only you, that shows how much he cares about you. Mikey secretly likes the affection you give him even if he denies it. It surprises him everytime you hug him or kiss him but he never stops you or tells you to stop. Just don't do it in front of Toman. Even if he doesn't want to, cuddle him as the big spoon and it'll make him really happy. Since he's so used to keeping a strong facade, cuddling with you gives him the impression that with you maybe he doesn't have to do that.

Y earning - How will they cope when they're missing their partner?

> Mikey will still act as the strong charismatic leader of Toman, where nothing fazes him. He won't outwardly show that he misses you but you can tell by the way he fiddles with his matching keychain or stares off into the distance that he misses you. He might even unconsciously blurt a quiet "I miss (Y/N)...."

Z eal - Are they willing to go to great lenghts for the relationship? If so, what kind of?

> Mikey is willing to give his life away to protect you. Just you being with him is dangerous enough who knows who might be out to get him and easiest way they can do that is by getting you. If your safely is at risk even he likes you he would have to break up with you, keep you away from the danger. Because he utmostly cares about your well being and if anything happens to you, it will destroy him.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your posts about Napoleon’s death and it’s quite timely given its the 200th anniversary of his death this year in May. I was wondering, because you know a lot about military history (your served right? That’s cool to fly combat helicopters) and you live in France but aren’t French, what your take was on Napoleon and how do the French view him? Do they hail him as a hero or do they like others see him like a Hitler or a Stalin? Do you see him as a hero or a villain of history?

5 May 1821 was a memorable date because Napoleon, one of the most iconic figures in world history, died while in bitter exile on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon Bonaparte, as you know rose from obscure soldier to a kind of new Caesar, and yet he remains a uniquely controversial figure to this day especially in France. You raise interesting questions about Napoleon and his legacy. If I may reframe your questions in another way. Should we think of him as a flawed but essentially heroic visionary who changed Europe for the better? Or was he simply a military dictator, whose cult of personality and lust for power set a template for the likes of Hitler? 

However one chooses to answer this question can we just - to get this out of the way - simply and definitively say that Napoleon was not Hitler. Not even close. No offence intended to you but this is just dumb ahistorical thinking and it’s a lazy lie. This comparison was made by some in the horrid aftermath of the Second World War but only held little currency for only a short time thereafter. Obviously that view didn’t exist before Hitler in the 19th Century and these days I don’t know any serious historian who takes that comparison seriously.

I confess I don’t have a definitive answer if he was a hero or a villain one way or the other because Napoleon has really left a very complicated legacy. It really depends on where you’re coming from.

As a staunch Brit I do take pride in Britain’s victorious war against Napoleonic France - and in a good natured way rubbing it in the noses of French friends at every opportunity I get because it’s in our cultural DNA and it’s bloody good fun (why else would we make Waterloo train station the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening in 1994? Or why hang a huge gilded portrait of the Duke of Wellington as the first thing that greets any visitor to the residence of the British ambassador at the British Embassy?). On a personal level I take special pride in knowing my family ancestors did their bit on the battlefield to fight against Napoleon during those tumultuous times. However, as an ex-combat veteran who studied Napoleonic warfare with fan girl enthusiasm, I have huge respect for Napoleon as a brilliant military commander. And to makes things more weird, as a Francophile resident of who loves living and working in France (and my partner is French) I have a grudging but growing regard for Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy, especially when I consider the current dross of political mediocrity on both the political left and the right. So for me it’s a complicated issue how I feel about Napoleon, the man, the soldier, and the political leader.

If it’s not so straightforward for me to answer the for/against Napoleon question then it It’s especially true for the French, who even after 200 years, still have fiercely divided opinions about Napoleon and his legacy - but intriguingly, not always in clear cut ways.

I only have to think about my French neighbours in my apartment building to see how divisive Napoleon the man and his legacy is. Over the past year or so of the Covid lockdown we’ve all gotten to know each other better and we help each other. Over the Covid year we’ve gathered in the inner courtyard for a buffet and just lifted each other spirits up.

One of my neighbours, a crusty old ex-general in the army who has an enviable collection of military history books that I steal, liberate, borrow, often discuss military figures in history like Napoleon over our regular games of chess and a glass of wine. He is from very old aristocracy of the ancien regime and whose family suffered at the hands of ‘madame guillotine’ during the French Revolution. They lost everything. He has mixed emotions about Napoleon himself as an old fashioned monarchist. As a military man he naturally admires the man and the military genius but he despises the secularisation that the French Revolution ushered in as well as the rise of the haute bourgeois as middle managers and bureaucrats by the displacement of the aristocracy.

Another retired widowed neighbour I am close to, and with whom I cook with often and discuss art, is an active arts patron and ex-art gallery owner from a very wealthy family that came from the new Napoleonic aristocracy - ie the aristocracy of the Napoleonic era that Napoleon put in place - but she is dismissive of such titles and baubles. She’s a staunch Republican but is happy to concede she is grateful for Napoleon in bringing order out of chaos. She recognises her own ambivalence when she says she dislikes him for reintroducing slavery in the French colonies but also praises him for firmly supporting Paris’s famed Comédie-Française of which she was a past patron.

Another French neighbour, a senior civil servant in the Elysée, is quite dismissive of Napoleon as a war monger but is grudgingly grateful for civil institutions and schools that Napoleon established and which remain in place today.

My other neighbours - whether they be French families or foreign expats like myself - have similarly divisive and complicated attitudes towards Napoleon.

In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.

The split in French opinion is closely mirrored in political circles. The divide is generally down political party lines. On the left, there's the 'black legend' of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the 'golden legend' of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napoléon Institute, once explained at a talk I attended that French public opinion has always remained deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France, Boudon observed, rarely refer to Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.

On the left-wing of French politics, former prime minister Lionel Jospin penned a controversial best selling book entitled “the Napoleonic Evil” in which he accused the emperor of “perverting the ideas of the Revolution” and imposing “a form of extreme domination”, “despotism” and “a police state” on the French people. He wrote Napoleon was "an obvious failure" - bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was booted out into final exile, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argued, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them, but up to a point, "He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it," For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality.

At the other end of the spectrum have been former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, an aristocrat who was once fancied as a future President, a passionate collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and author of several works on the subject. As a Napoleonic enthusiast he tells a different story. Napoleon was a saviour of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived. Advocates like de Villepin point to Napoleon’s undoubted achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a centralised and coherent administrative system, lycées, universities, centres of advanced learning known as école normale, chambers of commerce, the metric system, and an honours system based on merit (which France has to this day). He restored the Catholic faith as the state faith but allowed for the freedom of religion for other faiths including Protestantism and Judaism. These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution. As it is, these Napoleonic institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the modern state.

Back in 2014, French politicians and institutions in particular were nervous in marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's exile. My neighbours and other French friends remember that the commemorations centred around the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the traditional home of the kings of France and was the scene where Napoleon said farewell to the Old Guard in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) By all accounts the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba. The cost of the Fontainebleau "farewell" and scores of related events over those three weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local château, a historic monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.

While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially marked nor celebrated. For example, over a decade ago, the president and prime minister - at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin - boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest military victory. Both men were known admirers of Napoleon and yet political calculation and optics (as media spin doctors say) stopped them from fully honouring Napoleon’s crowning military glory.

Optics is everything. The division of opinion in France is perhaps best reflected in the fact that, in a city not shy of naming squares and streets after historical figures, there is not a single “Boulevard Napoleon” or “Place Napoleon” in Paris. On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's red marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred there during France's Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.

There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon but as far as I know there is one narrow street, the rue Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine in the old Latin Quarter. And, that, too, is thanks to Napoleon III. For many, and I include myself, it’s a poor return by the city to the man who commissioned some of its most famous monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Pont des Arts over the River Seine.

It's almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story.

How Napoleon fits into that national story is something historians, French and non-French, have been grappling with ever since Napoleon died. The plain fact is Napoleon divides historians, what precisely he represents is deeply ambiguous and his political character is the subject of heated controversy. It’s hard for historians to sift through archival documents to make informed judgements and still struggle to separate the man from the myth.

One proof of this myth is in his immortality. After Hitler’s death, there was mostly an embarrassed silence; after Stalin’s, little but denunciation. But when Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, much of Europe and the Americas could not help thinking of itself as a post-Napoleonic generation. His presence haunts the pages of Stendhal and Alfred de Vigny. In a striking and prescient phrase, Chateaubriand prophesied the “despotism of his memory”, a despotism of the fantastical that in many ways made Romanticism possible and that continues to this day.

The raw material for the future Napoleon myth was provided by one of his St Helena confidants, the Comte de las Cases, whose account of conversations with the great man came out shortly after his death and ran in repeated editions throughout the century. De las Cases somehow metamorphosed the erstwhile dictator into a herald of liberty, the emperor into a slayer of dynasties rather than the founder of his own. To the “great man” school of history Napoleon was grist to their mill, and his meteoric rise redefined the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

The Marxists, for all their dislike of great men, grappled endlessly with the meaning of the 18th Brumaire; indeed one of France’s most eminent Marxist historians, George Lefebvre, wrote what arguably remains the finest of all biographies of him.

It was on this already vast Napoleon literature, a rich terrain for the scholar of ideas, that the great Dutch historian Pieter Geyl was lecturing in 1940 when he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. There he composed what became one of the classics of historiography, a seminal book entitled Napoleon: For and Against, which charted how generations of intellectuals had happily served up one Napoleon after another. Like those poor souls who crowded the lunatic asylums of mid-19th century France convinced that they were Napoleon, generations of historians and novelists simply could not get him out of their head.

The debate runs on today no less intensely than in the past. Post-Second World War Marxists would argue that he was not, in fact, revolutionary at all. Eric Hobsbawm, a notable British Marxist historian, argued that ‘Most-perhaps all- of his ideas were anticipated by the Revolution’ and that Napoleon’s sole legacy was to twist the ideals of the French Revolution, and make them ‘more conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian’.

This contrasts deeply with the view William Doyle holds of Napoleon. Doyle described Bonaparte as ‘the Revolution incarnate’ and saw Bonaparte’s humbling of Europe’s other powers, the ‘Ancien Regimes’, as a necessary precondition for the birth of the modern world. Whatever one thinks of Napoleon’s character, his sharp intellect is difficult to deny. Even Paul Schroeder, one of Napoleon’s most scathing critics, who condemned his conduct of foreign policy as a ‘criminal enterprise’ never denied Napoleon’s intellect. Schroder concluded that Bonaparte ‘had an extraordinary capacity for planning, decision making, memory, work, mastery of detail and leadership’.  The question of whether Napoleon used his genius for the betterment or the detriment of the world, is the heart of the debate which surrounds him.

France's foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, put forward the thesis that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. "And I would say also pâtissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative millefeuille that we inherited." Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is called ‘a napoleon.’ Tulard’s works are essential reading of how French historians have come to tackle the question of Napoleon’s legacy. He takes the view that if Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and feudalism would have returned, Tulard has written. "Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his plough." In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he served as a constitutional monarch.

In England, until recently the views on Napoleon have traditionally less charitable and more cynical. Professor Christopher Clark, the notable Cambridge University European historian, has written. "Napoleon was not a French patriot - he was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed any deep affiliation with the French nation," Clark believed Napoleon’s relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent.

Did he stabilise the revolutionary state or shut it down mercilessly? Clark believes Napoleon seems to have done both. Napoleon rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favour, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on.

His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs (€6.5 million or $8.5 million in today's money). He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as ‘a child of the Revolution.’ By crowning himself emperor, the genuine European kings who surrounded him were not convinced. Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.

These days Napoleon the man and his times remain very much in fashion and we are living through something of a new golden age of Napoleonic literature. Those historians who over the past decade or so have had fun denouncing him as the first totalitarian dictator seem to have it all wrong: no angel, to be sure, he ended up doing far more at far less cost than any modern despot. In his widely praised 2014 biography, Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts writes: “The ideas that underpin our modern world - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on - were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman empire.”

Roberts partly bases his historical judgement on newly released historical documents about Napoleon that were only available in the past decade and has proved to be a boon for all Napoleonic scholars. Newly released 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote that still survive are now used extensively to illustrate the astonishing capacity that Napoleon had for compartmentalising his mind - he laid down the rules for a girls’ boarding school on the eve of the battle of Borodino, for example, and the regulations for Paris’s Comédie-Française while camped in the Kremlin. They also show Napoleon’s extraordinary capacity for micromanaging his empire: he would write to the prefect of Genoa telling him not to allow his mistress into his box at the theatre, and to a corporal of the 13th Line regiment warning him not to drink so much.

For me to have my own perspective on Napoleon is tough. The problem is that nothing with Napoleon is simple, and almost every aspect of his personality is a maddening paradox. He was a military genius who led disastrous campaigns. He was a liberal progressive who reinstated slavery in the French colonies. And take the French Revolution, which came just before Napoleon’s rise to power, his relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? I agree with those British and French historians who now believe Napoleon seems to have done both.

On the one hand, Napoleon did bring order to a nation that had been drenched in blood in the years after the Revolution. The French people had endured the crackdown known as the 'Reign of Terror', which saw so many marched to the guillotine, as well as political instability, corruption, riots and general violence. Napoleon’s iron will managed to calm the chaos. But he also rubbished some of the core principles of the Revolution. A nation which had boldly brought down the monarchy had to watch as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, with more power and pageantry than Louis XVI ever had. He also installed his relatives as royals across Europe, creating a new aristocracy. In the words of French politician and author Lionel Jospin, 'He guaranteed some principles of the Revolution and at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it.'

He also had a feared henchman in the form of Joseph Fouché, who ran a secret police network which instilled dread in the population. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere, stifling political opposition. Dozens of newspapers were suppressed or shut down. Books had to be submitted for approval to the Commission of Revision, which sounds like something straight out of George Orwell. Some would argue Hitler and Stalin followed this playbook perfectly. But here come the contradictions. Napoleon also championed education for all, founding a network of schools. He championed the rights of the Jews. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, laws which kept Jews cooped up in ghettos were abolished. 'I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France,' he once said, 'because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country.'

He also, crucially, developed the Napoleonic Code, a set of laws which replaced the messy, outdated feudal laws that had been used before. The Napoleonic Code clearly laid out civil laws and due processes, establishing a society based on merit and hard work, rather than privilege. It was rolled out far beyond France, and indisputably helped to modernise Europe. While it certainly had its flaws ��� women were ignored by its reforms, and were essentially regarded as the property of men – the Napoleonic Code is often brandished as the key evidence for Napoleon’s progressive credentials. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, 'the ideas that underpin our modern world… were championed by Napoleon'.

What about Napoleon’s battlefield exploits? If anything earns comparisons with Hitler, it’s Bonaparte’s apparent appetite for conquest. His forces tore down republics across Europe, and plundered works of art, much like the Nazis would later do. A rampant imperialist, Napoleon gleefully grabbed some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and allegedly boasted, 'the whole of Rome is in Paris.'

Napoleon has long enjoyed a stellar reputation as a field commander – his capacities as a military strategist, his ability to read a battle, the painstaking detail with which he made sure that he cold muster a larger force than his adversary or took maximum advantage of the lie of the land – these are stuff of the military legend that has built up around him. It is not without its critics, of course, especially among those who have worked intensively on the later imperial campaigns, in the Peninsula, in Russia, or in the final days of the Empire at Waterloo.

Doubts about his judgment, and allegations of rashness, have been raised in the context of some of his victories, too, most notably, perhaps, at Marengo. But overall his reputation remains largely intact, and his military campaigns have been taught in the curricula of military academies from Saint-Cyr to Sandhurst, alongside such great tacticians as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Historians may query his own immodest opinion that his presence on the battlefield was worth an extra forty thousand men to his cause, but it is clear that when he was not present (as he was not for most of the campaign in Spain) the French were wont to struggle. Napoleon understood the value of speed and surprise, but also of structures and loyalties. He reformed the army by introducing the corps system, and he understood military aspirations, rewarding his men with medals and honours; all of which helped ensure that he commanded exceptional levels of personal loyalty from his troops.

Yet, I do find it hard to side with the more staunch defenders of Napoleon who say his reputation as a war monger is to some extent due to British propaganda at the time. They will point out that the Napoleonic Wars, far from being Napoleon’s fault, were just a continuation of previous conflicts that arose thanks to the French Revolution. Napoleon, according to this analysis, inherited a messy situation, and his only real crime was to be very good at defeating enemies on the battlefield. I think that is really pushing things too far. I mean deciding to invade Spain and then Russia were his decisions to invade and conquer.

He was, by any measure, a genius of war. Even his nemesis the Duke of Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of his time was, replied: 'In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.'

I will qualify all this and agree that Napoleon’s Russian campaign has been rightly held up as a fatal folly which killed so many of his men, but this blunder – epic as it was – should not be compared to Hitler’s wars of evil aggression. Most historians will agree that comparing the two men is horribly flattering to Hitler - a man fuelled by visceral, genocidal hate - and demeaning to Napoleon, who was a product of Enlightenment thinking and left a legacy that in many ways improved Europe.

Napoleon was, of course, no libertarian, and no pluralist. He would tolerate no opposition to his rule, and though it was politicians and civilians who imposed his reforms, the army was never far behind. But comparisons with twentieth-century dictators are well wide of the mark. While he insisted on obedience from those he administered, his ideology was based not on division or hatred, but on administrative efficiency and submission to the law. And the state he believed in remained stubbornly secular.

In Catholic southern Europe, of course, that was not an approach with which it was easy to acquiesce; and disorder, insurgency and partisan attacks can all be counted among the results. But these were principles on which the Emperor would not and could not give ground. If he had beliefs they were not religious or spiritual beliefs, but the secular creed of a man who never forgot that he owed both his military career and his meteoric political rise to the French Revolution, and who never quite abandoned, amidst the monarchical symbolism and the court pomp of the Empire, the republican dreams of his youth. When he claimed, somewhat ambiguously, after the coup of 18 Brumaire that `the Revolution was over’, he almost certainly meant that the principles of 1789 had at last been consummated, and that the continuous cycle of violence of the 1790s could therefore come to an end.

When the Empire was declared in 1804, the wording, again, might seem curious, the French being informed that the `Republic would henceforth be ruled by an Emperor’. Napoleon might be a dictator, but a part at least of him remained a son of the Enlightenment.

The arguments over Napoleon’s status will continue - and that in itself is a testament to the power of one of the most complex figures ever to straddle the world’s stage.

Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years?

In France, at least, enthusiasm looks set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore. Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, has described France's fascination with him as ‘a national illness.’ He believes that the people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. As he wrote, “He was born from the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator.”

In France, Guégan aptly observes, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. "Our age is suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia,"

Here I think Guégan is onto something. Napoleon’s stock has always risen or fallen according to the vicissitudes of world events and fortunes of France itself.

In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends, issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. It's about the industrial revolution. Man does not make history. History makes men. Or does it? The study of history makes a mug out of those with such simple ideological driven conceits.

For two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain as he has swung like a pendulum according to the gravitational pull of historical events and forces.

The question I keep asking of myself and also to French friends with whom I discuss such things is what kind of Napoleon does our generation need?

Thanks for your question.