#which i have no problem for the original characters | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

femmeinvelvet · 3 days ago

Text

I've got the Stone Butch Blues Blues

By Raven Gildea, 2003, originally published on playbutch.com

Leslie Feinberg set me up.

Not set me up as in "set me up with a hot date." Set me up as in Catch 22, as in "any way you play, you lose," set me up.

It all started in 1993, when I first read Stone Butch Blues. Don't get me wrong, great book, I loved it. It meant a lot to me. I'd come of age as a queer in the early '80s, in a college edjumacated feminist-lesbian world where sex and power were evil tools of the patriarchy and butch sexual power simply didn't exist. Really, you had to be there to believe it. We were the Incredible Invisible Butches - but nobody ever used that word. We were so invisible we couldn't even see each other - or ourselves. Ten years of that, and Stone Butch Blues felt like a lightening bolt illuminating the landscape in which I'd been travelling blind. "Hey look, I'm a butch! Wow, that really explains a lot...."

Discovering a piece of butch history didn't just give me a new sense of identity. It also gave me permission to be stone. I mean hell, I thought I just didn't like sex. But once I realized that I could be a top and didn't have to roll over for reciprocation, I liked sex just fine. I liked it a lot. I gladly claimed my stone butch self.

There was just one problem. Other people read the book, too. People I was dating. And what struck them wasn't how stone was a perfectly valid way to be. What struck them was this: a true butch is stone, and anyone less than stone is less than butch. A stone butch will melt in the presence of true love and intimacy. Catch 22 — Feinberg set me up.

Feinberg's focus was butch/femme relationships, but it's not just femmes who got invested in the "I Can Heal Your Wounds" syndrome. True, many femmes who had survived the gender and sexuality vacuum of the '70s and '80s had epiphanies similar to mine when we dykes collectively rediscovered gender. And a lot of us took Feinberg's word as gospel in defining What is a Femme. But I've found that queers of all stripes hold the deeply cherished conviction that butches are broken and need to be fixed. Especially those of us who are stone. After all, we're reclaiming sex here. Isn't being stone proof that something is wrong?

The idea that butches are broken leads us to the idea that all stone butches really want is to find The One - the one who can feel our pain, heal our wounds, and make us whole. This sets up our lovers as well as us: they've got to either be The One, or be failures, and we've got to demonstrate that they aren't failures by ceasing to be stone. The subtext is: "Once I know I can trust my lover, I won't need to be stone, so of course I won't be." Which means, of course, that as long as I am stone, I'm demonstrating that I don't trust my lover. Not a good relationship dynamic if I happen to like being stone, if I choose to be stone, if I find it personally empowering, if that's how I feel sexy. Even less good if I can't be a True Butch in the eyes of my community without being stone, and I can't be a True Lover unless I melt.

It also means, if the one I'm with is The One, I must have been stone with everyone who came before. That might work just fine if you're monogamous. My observation is that someone who's monogamous and a romantic - and I think Feinberg's character Jess qualifies on both counts - can rationalize meeting The One at least four times without having any trouble sleeping at night. But me, I'm a slut. A non-monogamous slut at that, and let me tell you, overlapping saves all kinds of time. I've dated approximately three people a year for the last twenty years. Even if you don't count the relationships that lasted less than six months, it's pretty clear that they can't all be The One.

Oh, but they all wanted to be. Feinberg set them up, too. During seven years as a stone top, I dated only two people who weren't invested in hearing that I'd been 100 percent stone 100 percent of the time until I met them. I dated only two people who didn't want me to roll over and spread my legs to prove it.

Now, let's be real, this is not entirely Feinberg's fault. After all, Stone Butch Blues is a novel. We were the ones who decided it was the word from on high. But who could blame us, really? A long line of butch mentoring had been broken, and those of us who had somehow turned out butch in spite of being maligned, reviled, and rendered invisible were hungry for someone to tell us how it's done. All we'd heard so far was "Butch is an oppressive reproduction of heterosexist patriarchal roles. Shape up and start acting like a girl. Oh, but could you fuck me first? Don't tell my friends, okay?"

It's no wonder that we took the only burning bush in that desert and invested it with the power of gospel. We youngsters were creating a culture based on something we'd never seen before. We failed to notice that there were a lot of different ways of being butch. We took the only blueprint we had, and engraved it in, well, stone.

And the blueprint said: "Thou shalt be stone until you find the one who heals your wounds and makes you whole." But even if you are the coupling type — and let's face it, many of us are not - what if you like being stone?

I'm not stone because I'm damaged. I'm stone because most of the time I like fucking other people a lot more than I like getting fucked. I have more fun that way. Having permission to be stone allowed me to finally really enjoy having sex, and I'm not going let anyone take that away from me. I don't want someone to heal my wounds. I want lovers who can give me room in bed to be sexy, and fully present, and fully myself, all at the same time. It was being stone that made me whole.

For a while I thought that the solution was to date pillow queens. I've heard a lot of talk in the past few years about pillow queens. It's never said like it's a good thing to be. After years of being pressured to flip, I had to wonder: what's wrong with a pillow queen? Hell, bedding someone who doesn't expect me to do things I don't want to do sounds delightful to me. But being stone doesn't mean I don't have needs. It took me a while to figure out that there is a difference between a pillow-munching bottom and a pillow queen. The difference is the word "queen," as in entitlement. A bottom is invested in making sure the top has a good time. A pillow queen is convinced that if she's having a good time, everyone else in the room must be, too.

The girl who expected me to go down on her all night, but wouldn't suck my dick? Pillow queen. The boi who, after I'd spent hours on my knees with my fist in his cunt, wanted me to give him a backrub? Pillow queen.

It's not that I think my lovers should be dripping with gratitude because I deigned to fuck them. I'm just saying that there are a lot of different kinds of reciprocation. I may not want to receive the same things I give my partners - after all, I tend to be a top, and they tend to be bottoms - but I do want my relationships to be equitable. No, I don't want to lie on my back with my legs in the air, and yes, I can have a completely satisfying sexual experience without ever taking off my pants. But I do have needs. I do want my output of energy to be met. I don't want a relationship that's a one-way valve, sucking me dry. But my needs are my needs, and I want them met on my terms. I don't want my partner, guided by some book about someone else's experience, to define them for me.

The narrative of stone butch mystique says that in exchange for sexual pleasure, my lover is responsible for creating a safe space for me to experience my pain. Hold it right there. What if I don't want to experience my pain? What if I don't want to process my emotions? Being expected to give it up emotionally can be as big a problem as enforced sexual reciprocation. Let's face it folks, there are emotional pillow queens as well as sexual ones.

I'm not saying that I'm never vulnerable. I sure as hell am, even though some would take away my butch card for admitting it. But I get the safety to show my vulnerability through lack of expectation. No expectation to be invulnerable, tough, baddass. No expectation to break down and cry just so someone else can be assured that they're being adequately supportive. I don't want to make myself vulnerable on demand just because it's on someone else's agenda. If I'm not feeling vulnerable, or if I'm feeling too vulnerable to show it, it's not a dysfunction. Nor is it an indictment of my partner. In fact, could be it's not about my partner at all. Remember, we are talking about my needs here. If this is about doing something for me, it needs to include things I actually want.

And speaking of needs, I'm pretty damn tired of hearing that stone butches need to be fucked, but we just don't know it. I call this one the myth of rebirth. You know, the idea that once we're properly fucked we'll be suddenly re-born as the penetration-hungry sluts we were always meant to be. Excuse me, but last time I checked, biology was still not destiny. Possession of my very own cunt does not obligate me to put things into it, and the words "I know what you need" are just as insulting when dykes say them as they are when men do.

Actually, I know perfectly well when I want to be fucked. But if and when I want it, it's on my terms, when the time is right, when I'm ready. I can enjoy and appreciate being fucked without wanting to do it very often. Getting fucked can feel good, and it might even make me come. But it doesn't make me feel powerful. It doesn't make me feel sexy. It doesn't make me feel that I'm fully inhabiting my body. Usually it makes me feel terrified. Mind you, I'm a perv. I know that on occasion, abject terror can be a good thing. But only if it's freely chosen and carefully negotiated. If I go there, it won't be on demand, and it won't be to prove my love. When I say in a clear and direct way that stone is working just fine for me, it's a boundary — not a challenge.

Of course, not all butches are tops, and not all butch tops are stone. Nor does stone have to mean all the time, every time, eternally. Far be it from me to say that no bottom should ever offer to flip a butch top, or that a bottom whose offer is declined should never ask again. Desire is slippery and malleable, and I'd like to think we are entitled to a little complexity. But if a butch top does flip, it might not be an earth-shattering revelation of trust and intimacy. It might not mean anything, other than "I want you to fuck me now."

Butch tops who aren't stone got set up, too. I've heard plenty of butches complain: "I told my girlfriend 'no' once, and she never tried again." Well c'mon, guys - let's not let our butch mystery prevent us from getting what we want in bed. Isn't that what it's for? It would be great if our lovers could read our minds - some of the time — but until that day comes, we're just going to have to talk to them. When I want someone to fuck me — and I have done my share of time on my hands and knees with my ass in the air — I let them know what I want in a clear, direct way. Like, for instance, "I want you to fuck me now." Try it, it's very effective.

Effective, but not necessarily easy. Being up front about our desire can be difficult when the common belief is that anyone less than stone is less than butch. Butches who want to be fucked shouldn't lose butch credibility because of it. No, wait: no one who wants to be fucked should lose credibility because of it.

Let's not waste any more time tearing each other down over what we want, in or out of bed. There are plenty of people willing to do that for us. For me, butch pride has been hard-won. Every day I've got someone trying to give me girl lessons. Because I also identify as trans and genderqueer, I often have dykes trying to give me lesbian lessons, and FTMs trying to tell me why and how I should be a man. And then there's the competition between us butches: our favorite game seems to be "Who is the Real Butch?" Not a Real Butch, the Real Butch. After all, it is universally acknowledged that there can be only one Real Butch in any room, virtual or otherwise. Our queer culture's Pavlovian response to butchness seems to be whipping out our yardsticks to see who measures up. Doesn't leave a whole lot of room for mentoring, does it?

Somewhere along the line, butch has become one of the most fenced in, closely guarded identities in the fenced in, closely guarded world of identity politics. I can hear the litany now: "Real butches only date femmes. Real butches are tops. Real butches are stone. Real butches don't cook, sew, cry, read, talk, feel...." Apparently the only two things a real butch can do are fuck femmes and work on engines. Oh, and drink. Let's not forget that one. Butch has become so narrowly defined that it's a wonder anyone claims the identity at all. The liberation I once felt at being given permission to be myself has somehow transformed into a dangerous high-wire act. Step out of line once, and SPLAT! Your reputation is ruined for good.

We've got a set-up that hurts us all, but it's not too late to change it. I want us to stop thinking of being stone as either a requirement for being butch, or some sort of pathology. I want us to stop seeing getting fucked as either a requirement for intimacy, or some sort of breakthrough. I want allies who aren't invested in telling me what I need and how to get it. I'm able to identify and willing to state what I need, and I want some credit and respect when I do. I want allies who will read Stone Butch Blues not as a rulebook, but as a starting place. I want allies who aren't invested in telling me how to be butch. I want allies who will stand beside me while I'm doing what butches have always done — saying, "To hell with the rules, I'm gonna be myself."

#dykeposting #butch lesbian #butch #stone butch #stone top #stone femme #lesbian #queer #lgbt #upload

81 notes · View notes

theotherchaospixel · 3 days ago

Text

so many thoughts running through my mind; just gonna spitball real quick

yeah, softlocks are no good. alternatively, you can only continue by going back to a previous time or save or checkpoint and trying again; this is back-tracking, and players might hate that even more than softlocks. also, don't wanna make it so the Orpheus player feels like they're having to protect or walk on eggshells around the Eurydice player; that's an escort mission, and is even more lowly regarded than softlocks & backtracking; i mean, team fortress 2 had an escort mission mode early in development, and it wasn't fun for this very reason: it's boring for both escortee & escorter.

that said, there are games which have made all of those types of problems interesting. stanley parable & portal comes to mind. those two examples at least use their story & dialogue to make the softlock less frustrating & more like an easter egg. bioshock infinite is one big escort mission, but your escortee can't be killed & in fact helps you a lot. team fortress itself uses the different classes & characters to make players naturally feel like they're working as a team, even though none of them particularly need to do so. legend of zelda uses weapons & tools as a prize in dungeons in order to make back-tracking feel different in technique than normal backtracking.

i'm also reminded of that one textpost i saw from forever ago which used the medium of item descriptions in RPG to imply a story, like it starts with "this blade means something to you, but you don't know what" to "your late wife's blade" as it levels up or you progress.

then there's like left 4 dead, where there's a respawn condition - if a player dies and is not saved, they can come back once a certain amount of progress is reached without them.

i'm imagining a version of this game where - as the eurydice character could conceivably die at any moment - the world is noticeably different in her absence, and noticeably different each time. like, the color red disappears when she's absent, or some puzzles require a different, much harder solution. that way, there's like... a point to the failure, but it doesn't completely negate things. it feels natural to me for it to be a horror game, where the horror is in not knowing, not having total control over the state of the game. maybe, like lethal company & some other games have done recently, include proximity chat that can just falter on its own, creating a sense of discomfort and worry based on the assumption that something bad happened. i mean, that's how the original myth goes: on the way back, they talked, but at some point, Eurydice went silent, and in his worry, Orpheus turned to look.

there also should be like a purpose for the Orpheus character: realistically, I think a lot of players would probably realize "oh, i can't look at Eurydice, but she needs to do something, so I'll just look straight down or straight up & let her do that." that's both lame & boring. so, maybe they have their own puzzles to solve, their own things to do. maybe they're not even playing the same game: maybe Orpheus is doing puzzles but Eurydice has to play a shooter, maybe Eurydice is doing platforming but Orpheus has to play a rhythm game, maybe Orpheus has to work with RPG rules but Eurydice gets free movement. definitely feels like there should be some asymmetry to the gameplay.

maybe there shouldn't be any voice chat. maybe there's story that the characters talk through, and there's things that the players can make the characters call out, but, taking a page out of journey's book, maybe it pairs up 2 players totally randomly, 2 players that may have never met before; that way there's stakes to being sure to play the game right, that way the state of the failure condition completely changes, where it stops being a failure to progress in the game & starts being a cessation of connection. i think you could get really psychological with that. you start playing the game, get paired up with someone you don't know, and continue through until one of you makes the fatal mistake of looking at each other, at which point the connection breaks and you have to live with the loss of this person you've gotten to know, gotten used to, and have to start over with someone new; your progress doesn't reset, but you - the player - are directly affected by the loss. much like the story itself. i mean, orpheus doesn't just die after losing eurydice, he doesn't lose his progress, but he does lose a connection that he may never get back.

fuck, i wanna play this now.

Here's a useless thought my head just supplied me with that I absolutely can't use.

Co-op game where if one player sees another, they die.

Both die? Just the one who does the seeing? Just the one who is seen? All players or just one crucial character? Do reflections count?

"Don't turn around. I'm right behind you. I'm going to put the mcguffin down behind you and go around the corner, I'll tell you when it's safe to turn around; let me know when you're looking away again."

#art #game idea

32K notes · View notes

adriberry · 12 hours ago

Text

Thinkin' About Blot Monsters

So I’m gonna dive in without a lot of pretense here since I've already talked about how in the Twst canon, Yuu is twisted from Mickey Mouse. And I've been stuck in the hellscape that is the battle maps of Lilia's dream in Book 7 for like a year now because, surprise surprise, I'm actually awful at this game, so I've gotten plenty of time to think about these guys:

I've had a suspicion that the blot discussed in game is a reference to one particular character from the Mickey Mouse comics canon for a while now and these guys confirmed it. The blot, the in world magical buildup and manifestation of a mage's bad feelings, when personified is twisted from The Phantom Blot.

And The Phantom Blot is the first real villain (not antagonist like Pete or Mortimer) to beef with Michael Mouse.

More Blot talk under the cut.

The Phantom Blot was introduced in the Mickey Mouse comics as a villainous thief with a camera smashing problem. He's sort of like a serial killer but instead of murder, he breaks the crap out of cameras and the police are trying to stop him. Mickey is also involved in stopping him for some reason (he was an adventurer in he og comics and also his best friend was Horace Horsecollar, not Donald or Goofy but that's a story for a different time). Now I don't know the details because I haven't read it, but I do know that from this comic on, if the Phantom Blot appears in a story with Mickey, he's getting his plans foiled by that mouse.

He increasingly gets more evil with every appearance, eventually seeking world domination and hoping to murder Mickey. He shows up in other comics too where his vibes are matched more like in Ducktales and Darkwing Duck where supervillains are more common.

He's also made appearances in a few cartoons with the most prolific being the Mouse Works short, "Mickey Foils the Phantom Blot" which sounds like it takes a few story beats from the original comic. It was also my first exposure to the Phantom Blot when it was the main cartoon shown in the House of Mouse episode "House of Crime" where he causes chaos at the club and kidnaps patroms. Since then he's been a cameo in the Mickey Mouse Shorts and a supporting character in DuckTales (2017).

As a side note, it's hilarious to me that a supervillain is targeting such a little guy because in something like Fantasmic where all the villains are going after Mickey, he's basically a powerful god of the Disney Parks. Like, imagineers originally wanted Mickey to walk on water during the show but the CEO at the time, Michael Eisner, said no mostly because the mouse would look too much like Jesus. In most of the other cases the Blot encounters Mickey, he's just a guy. He's a regular guy with really good or really bad luck, depending on how you look at it.

Anyway, if you saw these guys in Twisted Wonderland and thought "Woah, like in Epic Mickey!" you're actually right!! Because the Shadow Blot from Epic Mickey, the big monster that appears after Mickey accidently destroys Wasteland, is based on the Phantom Blot. Epic Mickey takes a lot from the old Mickey comics- including treating Horace Horsecollar and Peg Leg Pete as "forgotten characters" even though they've still hung around- because of its emphasis on forgotten and old concepts in Disney and Mickey Mouse history. Their original parts for their old series were mostly undiscussed by the Disney Company until after the game's release.

I am glad that the Phantom Blot is getting another cameo even though it's as a fucked up ink monster in another game. This would be the second ink monster appearance out of three through because apparently ink is an important part of Lorcana?? Just learned that while looking up the recent Lorcana card for him that inspired me to write this. Is he part of their ink lore too???

No real ending here, so have this picture of the Phantom Brat, the Phantom Blot's daughter. She has a Blot Doll. It's darling.

#twst & disney lore #twisted wonderland #twst #twst meta #let the phantom blot have a villainous board PLEASE

32 notes · View notes

my-stories-vault · 22 hours ago

Text

Love and War.

Pairing: Dean Winchester X Y/N Singer

Blurb: You must've read a lot of enemies-to-lovers, let me show how someone can be your lover and enemy . . .

Warnings/Trigger Warnings (18+): language, gore, major and minor character deaths, break up, major angst, surprise ending, the Supernatural Wars (TSW) spoilers.

Song Inspiration: Love and War by Fleurie.

Prompt: "Nothing is fair in love and war."

Challenge: This is a flip POV challenge but can be read as a standalone one-shot! To read this same chapter from the reader's perspective, head on over here. Original plot credits of this first chapter go to my dear friend, Hepza on Wattpad. Go and show her some love 🥰.

{ Main Masterlist }

Love and War.

The metal hit the floor, clanging in the loud silence.

'You were never good with swords,' I bragged, shrugging with my free arm. Her formal cold smirk disarmed my heart just as much as I had disarmed her of all protection.

'That's why I brought reinforcement,' she smiled with a sinister nonchalance. Her backup emerged from the tree line: Charlie with an archery set, poised in a shoot-to-kill position.

As dread and agony pushed beyond the other emotions, a futile plea pressed past my lips. 'Princess—'

'No, you don't get to call me that,' she barked with such acid that it burned my heart.

'Y/N—'

'Put your sword down,' she cut me off once again.

I vanquished the control of the weapon. Charlie kicked it out of my reach and into my lover's hands.

A lover that had turned into my enemy.

'That's it?' my voice quieter than I'd like it to be. 'You are going to throw all that we had out the window – just like that?'

I should be more raged, more bitter, I should probably be yelling at her for what she did, for what she is doing – but I can't. I can't be mad at her without knowing why she did what she did. I just love her too much.

'Oh, no,' she calmly raised her head high, her expression of stark hate – the same eyes that couldn't not hold love when they used to look at me – the same face I've woken up to for as long as I can remember, the same girl whose love has consumed my every cell to the point that I won't know how to live without her anymore.

But she seemed to have no problem turning on me.

'You already did me that favor when you decided to hunt me down for your father, Your Highness,' she snarled.

'How did we get here?'

A few days before . . .

I was in the middle of a presentation, stating a common point, when the doors to the meeting hall were rudely opened to one of the most blunt, and annoying brats I'd ever set my eyes on: Y/N Singer.

'Your Highness,' the guards addressed, looking about nervously, probably worried about their job status after this – and if I knew Bobby any well, which I did – they were probably wondering if they were gonna survive the day.

But I could honestly not care less as my eyes drew to the rugrat of the girl His Majesty Robert Singer liked to call a daughter. She was amusingly in her nightly undergarments, unafraid of the stares and the jaws she dropped as she stepped into one of the most formal meetings, amongst the most esteemed kingdoms from around.

'Bullocks,' Bobby harshly mumbled under his breath.

'Your Majesty,' one of the two guards that seemed to have been chasing the princess breathed out, 'we tried to stop the Princess, but she . . .' he trailed away, unable to find proper words, also busy panting – he probably had had to run after her.

She'd do that to you. She was one of the better warriors I had met in my life while traveling the world. She was definitely fitter than the poor bodyguards that seemed to have been assigned to keep her away.

Stopping her is like stopping a tsunami dead in its tracks – it's impossible. That's one of the reasons why I love this annoying brat.

'I got this,' Bobby groused – he didn't, but okay. 'Now go and do your damn duty.' He turned to his daughter (this is going to be fun to watch), 'Y/N, what are you doing here in your . . . ' he tried to bring a polite statement into fruition, and was failing miserably.

'My undergarments,' she supplied, unabashedly. And I had to hide my proud smirk behind my hand as all the nobles began exchanging awkward and uncomfortable looks. Some of the ladies were jealous, and some of the men resisted to check my girl out.

Not that I minded – she was indeed a sight to look at.

'Let me see,' Y/N continued, 'I woke up and the first news I received was, Your Eminence has canceled our breakfast together. So, I was wondering what made you ditch our daddy-daughter date; and here you are, canoodling with your comrades.'

Her eyes swept over the table, her gaze tainted with slight resentment, and suddenly I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes till I could see my brain.

I knew how much she cherished the time she got to spend with her father, especially after what happened to her mother – Bobby was the only family she had. And I loved that she held onto that with everything she had. But her methods sometimes were slightly . . . crass, for the lack of a delicate word. She lacked the tact she needed to get things done her way.

Sometimes it was adorable, sometimes I just hated it.

It was a little bit of both right now. Even though it was adorable: her reckless courage and her flaunted beauty – I was in the middle of speaking about, as she calls it, "the damn Dam" – one of the most important projects our countries ever took up.

'Here, put this bloody robe on,' the King huffed, extracting himself from it and draping it over his daughter's modesty.

She slapped the robe off of her, crossing her arms and humphing with one of the cutest angry pouts I'd seen her sport – okay, maybe I was over the fact that she interrupted us and now I was enjoying this a little too much.

'Not until we sort this out.'

'Gentlemen, give us the room please,' Bobby intoned in a resigned manner.

Everyone, relieved, scraped their chairs across the floor, dragging themselves away from the room when Crowley stated: 'Well, I don't mind staying for the show.'

Y/N rolled her eyes, as mine own narrowed at the bastard. I mean, same, but come on!

'Not now, Crowley,' chastised the father, then turning his elderly stern gaze towards me, a silent order written in them to shoo the people away so that none could become prying ears.

After depositing them on the other side of the door, I stood back to eavesdrop myself.

'Listen, my dear, you can't walk into a royal meeting like this and demand we have a meal together.'

'And you can't ditch me like a prom date, then have a tea party with your friends.' She paused, composing her wits into reasoning, 'Never let anyone treat you like a damsel in distress, or anything less – you taught me that, Daddy.'

I smiled at her, even though she couldn't see me, and decided it was time I let my presence be known.

'Sometimes you make me wonder – did I make a mistake raising you like a boy?' he was saying just as I pushed the door in.

'For what it's worth, Your Majesty, I find the hubris of our Princess very gallant,' I found myself saying in a formal format, a smirk playing with my lips, as Y/N shoot me a "not-funny" look.

Oh, look who's talking.

'If only her future groom would agree to that,' the King tiredly said, a small smile on his face, one that I returned with a tight one on mine.

'Now, if you are done with this jibber-jabber, Your Majesty, I would like to know how you're making up to me for my loss,' she asked with authority.

Bobby smiled down at her fondly, 'I will make it up to you tonight, Princess. Promise.'

'I'll appreciate it if you keep to it,' she said.

'Of course,' he confirmed. 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a bunch of Royals to threaten for their lives in case they have any ideas of leaking what happened here.'

We both chuckled, and he shot me a look over her head – a silent warning that the threat applied to me too. I simply nodded.

'Dean, do you mind escorting my idjit daughter back to her room?' Bobby raised his brow at me.

'Dad, I can—'

But I cut the gorgeous e/c-colored Princess off, 'Not at all. It would be my pleasure, Your Majesty.' And my hand quickly gripped her arm before the protests I knew were begging to be told could leave her mouth.

I could feel her orbs boring into my back as I dragged her away, but if she was going to be stubborn – so was I.

Our rapid footsteps led us to her bedroom hallway, and as soon as I knew all the eyes were off us, I swiftly bent down to put her across my shoulders like a sack of potatoes, a grin tugging on my face as she squealed in surprise – her reaction the only reason why I did it in the first place. She was too nauseatingly cute when she was taken off guard.

'Put me down, Winchester!'

There were no signs of compliance until after we were inside her bedroom where I let her to her feet gently, speaking soon as our eyes met.

'Really?' I wondered incredulously, 'Ambushing a royal meeting by waltzing in your undergarments – you got some nerve, Princess.' I teased, the title meaning more than just that within the safe confines of her room.

It was the term that I used to refer to the fact that she had me wrapped around her little finger like the Princess she was. And I love her to bits for everything she is.

God, I'm screwed.

'I am a Singer, my love,' she goaded. 'It is in the blood.'

Fair enough.

I took her hand to twirl her around, letting her fingers go from mine so that she stumbled towards her wardrobe. 'Now get dressed,' I commanded in that voice she said did things to her.

She sifted through her clothes landing on one of the familiar morning gowns.

'No, not that,' I chided, 'you wear that too often.'

My eyes shifted to the mirror on the side; I started to fix my hair which seemed to have lost its lusture like I had lost my will to live after that goddamn meeting – sure, it was important, but dammit, if it didn't make me want to kill myself out of boredom.

'Fine,' she grumbled, putting it back for an alternative choice. 'How 'bout this?'

I glanced over, grinning for she had brought up another number she looked mighty fine in. 'Yellow suits you, sweetheart.'

She nodded before staring at me – a look that I took too long to realize than I'd like to admit – was ordering me to turn for some privacy. But then, perhaps, I wanted to ignore that look. But she refused to budge.

Oh, come on! I thought to myself, 'What, it's nothing I haven't seen before.'

She kept staring at me dryly till I gave up.

'Alright, alright!' I sighed internally, surrendering as I turned to instead gaze at the door. So much for that.

Anyways . . . 'So, daddy-daughter date. Really?' It wasn't the fact that she liked to do it, it was the fact that she actually chose to utter these words. If that didn't deserve a face, I don't know what did.

'Hey, it's a work in progress,' she protested, shuffling her limbs to get changed.

I scoffed, shaking my head, once again realizing how annoying she had been before, well. 'How I fell for you, escapes me, Princess. You are—'

'Enticing,' she suggested, with a smile in her tone.

I felt her tap on my shoulder. I turned to her, a smile on my face, as a chuckle left me. 'That's not the word I was looking for, but I won't complain,' I teased.

'Quit flirting and help me with this, De,' she reprimanded, turning about to display her unlaced corset.

My fingers pulled at the strings, but the smile never left me. 'Is it enough?'

'A little bit tighter,' she requested. I heeded. She said, 'So, how is the Dam Construction project?'

'Kicking our asses,' I murmured, working on tying off the loose ends.

'Yeah, I barely saw my father during the last couple of months, and of course, you . . . I feel like I forgot your face,' her tone is sad.

And I feel bad.

She is right. We'd had barely gotten time to ourselves these last few months and all because of this stupid project. Well, not stupid – but still. The disagreements just keep on piling and I just want is to get this over with – probably one of the reasons why I've been pushing to dedicate more of my time to this instead of other things.

For now, though, I'll settle for some humor. 'What are you talking about?' I try to sound playfully offended. 'You could never forget a face like mine.'

She ignored my clear self-appreciation, 'However, I do appreciate what you guys do.'

'Yeah, it's gonna help a lot of people. The river can replenish many monarchies. Kids don't have to walk miles to get water if this project is finished,' I end with a deep sigh. I really want this to work – helping people is what I'm passionate about, but the lack of enthusiasm my stick-in-the-ass colleagues share has been grating on my nerves.

'When you finish it,' she corrected me softly.

'Only if it's as easy as it sounds,' I complained.

'My love, you people are constructing a historical monument that is going to gather a primary waterfront and spread it across to regions that don't have access to it. It is obvious it is hard.'

'Not just the labor, sweetheart, some of the Kings are rebelling at the last minute: not to share water with the half-breed domains,' I huffed, now helping her with the gown.

'Some of them as in . . . '

'Gordon,' I finished for her, adjusting the wrinkles on her dress for her.

'Bingo,' she said as if she'd had that pegged.

She handed me the necklace I gifted her after I was done. It was my one-year anniversary present to her, and I loved that there wasn't a day that went by without it around her neck. I gathered her hair with one hand, brushed it away to the side, and then dangled the jewelry around her neck – the symbol of our secret relationship.

'You were never a fan of him,' I noted, clicking the lobster lock in place.

'He is a prick, Dean,' she ranted, 'No one should be a fan of him. He is self-obsessed and despises the small sub-kingdoms – top of it all, I don't like the way he sees me.'

A smile twitched on my lips as she turned.

'What?'

'You're so beautiful when you're angry,' I admitted, 'I couldn't get my eyes off you this morning.'

It was true – how could I look away when her eyes gleamed with the fight that inspires me to never give up?

'Shut up,' she blushed. She distracted herself by walking to the mirror to redress her hair for the day.

That's when I noticed it, 'You're wearing your Leaflet Crown?'

'Yes. Why do you ask?'

'You only wear this when you're going on hunts,' I managed as dismay clawed up its way into my consciousness, 'and last time I checked, your father forbade anyone from going into the dark forest.'

I know it was petty to bring up her father's warning in our conversations. But it wasn't like I could forbid her from doing something. She was a stubborn woman who got what she set her heart to. For the love of God, though, for once, I just wished she'd listen to Bobby or me. I worry, and I don't know how long before my worries turn into my day-mares.

'Oh, that,' she seemed not to notice my inner discord.

'Care to explain,' I pressed, picking up the Crown from her head.

'I was going to meet Charlie,' she assured, 'that's all, my love.'

'Ah, right,' I realized, 'Charollete, your Chief Musketeer. Her and her troop have been really helpful to us on the guarding duty at night. She's wonderful,' I end on the admission.

'I know,' she childishly booped my nose, making me smile again. She replaced the crown then marched off to the shoe rack, selecting one that matched.

Before she could slip them on, I plucked them out of her grasp. 'Here – let me.'

'Your wish is my command, My Prince Charming,' she teased, moving away nevertheless to plop down on her bed.

I would mind, but I'd honestly take any chance I'd get to touch her. I was so starved for her touch, practically a man in a desert. And I swear it'd kill me if she were a mirage.

I dipped down at her feet, taking her heels on my knees as I slipped the first shoe on her, and she initiated another conversation.

'How is Sam?'

'Sammy is happy, actually,' I said as if it was as much news to me as was to her. 'Away from all the castle drama – he got his gal, his hair is as long as ever – so, he's as good as he can ever be.'

'Same ol' Sam, huh?'

'Yeah, I would be lying if I didn't envy his guts to stand up to my father and give away his title for Jessica.'

'I fell for the wrong brother then,' she playfully offered.

'I don't know, Princess,' I smirked, taking the other shoe to her free leg. 'The shoe fits,' I winked, as her foot perfectly slid in.

She bit her lip to suppress the grin I knew was begging to burst on her face. Then, slowly, the corners of her lips turned down as she switched topics once more.

'Why did we decide to keep it a secret again?' she quirked her brow.

The unexpected turn made my face fall. I had an answer that I'd rather not give. But it wasn't one that she hadn't heard before. Something she gave me proof of, 'Oh, right. Your Dad.'

'He'd rather marry me off to the Harvells,' I declared.

'Wait, Joanna?'

I nodded.

'Wow,' she huffed, 'your Dad is shaking up the wrong tree on so many levels. Charlie is gonna be thrilled to hear this.'

Her undertone shocked me, 'Wait, Charlie and Jo?'

'Mhhmhmmmm,' she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

'Wow,' I was taken aback. Who knew Jo was gay?

With that, Y/N reverted back to her original point. 'I don't get it, Dean. What doesn't he see in me?'

Her defeated look hurt.

I climbed up next to her on the bed, facing her as my hands took up residence on both her cheeks and she leaned into them on reflex. 'It's not you, sweetheart. It's just—'

'The fact that we're not hunters, but scholars – I get it, love,' she brushed me off, scoffing, and pulling away from my touch as if it had burnt her. She put as much space as she could between us while still staying in the room.

I knew how frustrated she was getting by my defenses. At first, she'd hesitantly give in, and shrug the disappointment off, but as our relationship grew, she expected more. She had never expected this to be a secret for so long.

I hated that I couldn't give her my everything, I hated how much of a coward I was.

I should have called quits on this relationship long back – given that I couldn't provide her with what she wanted. She was everything that I could want – and yet, I barely had anything to offer to her. She deserves the world, and here I am, in fear of losing her, I held her back from everything that she could have.

And hell, if I wasn't going to try my hardest to keep her in my life, still. I honestly don't know what she saw me, but until she was going to have me, I was going to try my best to have her too.

I reached for her, gripping her by the arm and yanking her back till she was spinning on her heels and clashing against my chest, her hand twisted against her back to allow me leverage to hold her against myself with as little space as I could manage. I searched her face for any signs that this was the moment that she gave up on me.

Finding none, I finally spoke. 'You are it for me, Y/N.' Her eyes closed as a blush rose to her cheeks, ears, and neck, her head lowering as she basked in my commitment. 'You are my happy ending and always will be,' he whispered into her hair as my free hand came up to trace nonsense patterns against her cheek. An involuntary smile kicked my lips upwards as I could feel the honesty behind those words thrumming in every fiber of my body.

I waited for her to look at me again, using the opportunity of when she did to dip down and capture her lips prisoner against mine.

We both melted into the intimacy as I stole the breath from her lungs for as long as I could, feeling my heart accelerate, knowing that I could never want anything more than this, right here.

When the need for oxygen overpowered us, I let her lips go, not failing to hold her gaze in the promise of my words.

'I hate it when you shut me up like that,' she said half-heartedly.

I called her bluff with a cheeky smile, 'No, you don't.'

She shook her head with a smile she couldn't control herself.

'Mmm,' I grunt in discontent freeing her from my arms. 'I must go,' I sighed, 'because if I stay, we might not leave the room till moonrise. Don't wanna give your father and the committee any funny ideas,' I joked.

She shook her head in agreement once again.

I pressed a chaste kiss on her forehead one last time. 'Stay out of trouble,' I cautioned, as I walked backward towards the only exit of the room.

'No promises,' she smirked.

I rolled my eyes, God, this girl is gonna be the death of me.

The meeting ended and left me worse for wear. I antagonize everyone in the meeting for their role in irritating me, as I move to the stables to leave for the examination of the constructions being conducted for the damn Dam. Not to mention I was running low on men because the ones assigned by Bobby were late. By two hours.

It honestly pissed me off, but then I decided to simply screw it and take the men that I did have with me to gauge the progress of the work.

My soldiers flanked me on their horses as I lead the team down the winded roads and towards the riverside we were trying to stem and reap for our benefits when I received the message.

It was a fraction of musketeers under King Robert that had been assigned to me for guard duty returning from their camp where apparently the Princess had been safely taken to after the unexpected attack on her in the Black forest.

Safe to say, no longer did work matter as I quickly dismissed everyone, and hauled ass to the Camp following the piece of soldiers who retraced their steps to their tents.

They guided me down the beaten paths through the trees, rushing against the wind under my agitated orders to make haste.

As soon as the treeline cleared, the daylight blinded me as we spilled into the clearing. As my eyes were getting accustomed to the light, my glance swept over the place where all the clattering and clamoring of moving and training soldiers seemed rather unaffected by today's ordeals – a fact that estranged me considering I was about ready to burst from fear.

The team took my horse and one of the guys led me to the tent that housed the love of my life.

'In here, Prince Dean,' he saluted, leaving me alone.

I had started screaming even before I had entered, 'What were you thinking?!'

'De—' she jumped up to sit, her eyes widening at my outburst.

'I particularly told you not to go into the forest or anywhere near it!' I yelled, feeling rage eat me up, thinking of the thousands of possibilities of what could have gone wrong – of what could have happened.

She could have been dead. Dead!

'Is this some kind of joke to you!?' I exclaimed, my body running so hot that I could have a fever, my chest heaving under the relentless stream of anger that had built up in my heart, and the lump in my throat threatened to choke me. 'You could've died!' I shouted, feeling tears prick the back of my eyes.

I kept on venting and she took it silently, watching me, 'You just never listen to me! You have this incessant need to be brave, to do it all by yourself, to-to be a freaking warrior! Well, guess what? You're life just isn't yours! It's mine, too, alright?! You're my life, and if something happened to you, I-I-I . . . I won't . . .'

I looked up to see her staring at me with guilt glazing her eyes. I doubt she was even hearing what I said.

'Say something!' I snapped at her.

She flinched out of her thoughts, shock, and fear marring her breath-taking features. And I felt that my anger was unjustified toward her. I took a deep breath, composing myself as I let my rage flare out of my nostrils, paving the way for the overwhelming fear I had felt on my way over when my mind had been reeling with thoughts of desperation over losing her and the pain that would follow.

All I know is that I never want to feel that again.

So, I kneel in front of her.

As scary as it is to love someone as much as I love her, I need to calm myself and be there for her.

'I'm sorry,' my gruff voice told her. My apology was supported by my hands as they went to her knees, rubbing circles there and my gaze lowered to anywhere but her face – my head heavy with shame and guilt of having exploded on her.

'Me too,' she apologized, her hand going forward, probably unconsciously as she started stroking my hair. 'I should've been careful,' she muttered.

The pressure in the room melted off, leaving the reality of the situation to settle heavily over me. My shoulders slumped under their weight, 'I just . . . I don't know what I would do if anything happened to you,' I voiced my biggest fear.

There. It was out in the open.

It was as simple as birds chirping and insects buzzing – I'd lose it; I'd lose myself if I lost her.

Everything that I did, that I'm doing, and that I will do – that was for her. I did it knowing that when I was done, I'd be going back home to her. To the promise of a love that consumed me, that made me the happiest guy in the world, to the woman of my dreams, and to the keeper of my heart. I'd be destroyed without her, and that was nothing short of a fact.

And that thought petrified me – chilled me to my very bones.

I've never had to think much about it before. She's been reckless but never came been this close to death. She's been hurt – but this was much worse.

She's been with me for as long as I could remember – we were kids when we were friends, and ever since it only blossomed into more. So much so, that I could never again imagine my life, my future, without Y/N in it.

She let my head go, and grabbed my hand from her lap, squeezing it tightly. 'Dean, I'm here.'

The hot lump that had accumulated in my heart thawed, letting the sweet grasp of relief grip me. I took a deep breath cherishing her hand on mine.

I swallowed, pushing my tears back – unwilling to let them make an appearance. 'And I couldn't be more grateful for that fact. Don't ever scare me like that again,' I gritted out, looking up just in time to see her nodding.

That's when I noticed the injury above her eyebrow, on her forehead.

'What happened here?' My hand instinctively raised to its level, my thumb levitating above the wound – one that'd surely leave a mark, one that was temporarily covered with herbs that imposed medicinal properties and benefits.

'The stupid Phantoms,' she blurted.

My heart lurched in shock, and a tendril of fear fizzled down my spine.

'Phantoms?' I quizzed, eyes wide.

She rushed to explain, 'Yeah, I rode the outer banks to reach here soon. I swear, I didn't even cross the border or step foot into the forest! Yet, they attacked us. Poor Phillip took most of the hit . . . Do you know the fire-forged sword didn't do a darn tooting to them—?' she cut herself off, waiting for my reaction – perhaps expecting another outburst.

But I was out of those, and tired – we both had had a long day – so, I tried to lighten the atmosphere. 'You were never good with the swords,' I decided.

She relaxed before delivering a playful punch to my shoulder.

I breathed out, 'Thank God Charlie and her men made it on time.' I made a mental note to send her a fruit basket for saving my life.

'Yeah . . . I . . . Yeah . . . ' she cleared her throat, firing a question at me. 'How did you get here so fast?'

'I was already on my way to examine the constructions at the Dam when they informed me there had been an assault on the Princess – I lost it,' I licked my lips, shaking my head. 'I couldn't stay there for a minute,' or I would have suffocated, 'I left there and rushed here,' to find my breath, I completed in my mind.

It dawned on her, 'Wait, does that mean—?'

'No,' I replied, already knowing where her mind went, 'your father doesn't know. I specifically ordered the men involved in the construction and Charlie's troop not to tell. If they break it, they know the consequences.'

'My hero,' she mocked, placing a hand over her heart.

But I didn't have it in me to smile.

My thoughts wandered off as I bathed in her presence, consoling myself constantly that she was right here in front of me.

'I would be lost without you, Princess,' I revealed, without even realizing that I was speaking it. I looked up into her e/c orbs, waiting for her to say something.

'Dean, I'm here,' she repeated. 'Am not going anywhere, and I'll always come back to you,' she traced a hand over the shadow that had grown on my cheeks.

I leaned into her hand, a sigh involuntarily escaping me. 'I love you,' I confessed.

'I love you, too, My Prince,' she conveyed.

The admission made my lips stretch into a huge smile – the kind which starts to hurt your cheeks, and one that the woman I loved mirrored.

You would think that we must have said it pretty often but being Royals and all, saying it out loud was not a constant courtesy everyone was awarded with. It was freeing to finally be able to say it again. And it was equally as exhilarating, if not more, to hear her say it back.

She leaned down to press her lips against mine, our eyes fluttering shut as the intimacy of our words spread to our actions – a kiss that was slow, passionate, and full of happy promises. If love were an action to me, I'd describe it with this one kiss.

And if it were up to me, I'd never let her go.

But the tent was barged into and our moment was disrupted.

'Oh, sorry!' Charlie exclaimed, looking as flustered as I was probably feeling.

Red painted my cheeks and neck and slightly tinted my ears, as I struggled for a reasonable explanation to the Chief Musketeer who could potentially ruin my chance to be with Y/N.

'Dude, if the tent is rocking, don't come knocking,' Y/N reprimanded.

And once again, I was reminded of her reckless and straightforward personality.

'I'll . . . I'll come back later. You carry on, then.'

I jumped to the rescue, 'Oh, no. No. There is nothing to carry on. I was just . . . uh, I was helping Princess Y/N to practice breathing exercises.' I dumbly answered.

God, never let me be a spy.

'Huh,' Charlie nodded, biting her lip to keep away her smile at the blatant lie – something she won't point out simply out of respect for the Royal.

'My love, she knows,' the h/c-haired woman broke to me, barely able to suppress her own glee and amusement at my pathetic attempt to keep our secret hidden.

'She—what? You know?' I quizzed.

'Yup,' she gave me a mischievous grin. 'Who do you think gave her the suggestion to wear sexy lingeries to your little rendezvous.'

Well, that was information. Incriminating one, at that.

Y/N was the one blushing now, 'Okay, shoo, get out of my tent, Commander, I think you have pressing matters on hand.'

Charlie lingered, 'I have more embarrassing stories, My Liege – if you're interested – you know where to find me.' And she fled before my love could utter another word to save herself from any further embarrassment.

I had my up-to-no-good smile in place as Y/N looked down at me, already glaring. 'Don't even think about it,' she terrorized.

And I burst into peals of laughter – the full-body shake kind. I was having too much fun imagining what all I could find out about her.

'Okay, sweetheart,' I said in a final tone, 'I have to go check on something, too. You take good rest, alright? I'll come to check on you once I'm finished,' I promised.

'Till then,' she dramatically leaned back against the armrest of the couch she'd been lounging on, 'I'll be here,' she put her arm over her face, performing more theatrics, 'waiting.'

God, I'm in love with a dork. An annoying, reckless, kind, passionate, stubborn dork who's now the reason I live.

I shook my head, retracing my steps out of the place before my breath hitched and I just knew I had to do this – I retrieved my steps just so that I could scoop her curious and confused self into my arms and kiss the daylights out of her.

I kissed her senseless, I kissed her like there was no tomorrow, I kissed her with everything that I had, with every cell that loved her, and every thought that worshiped her.

When I pulled away, it was safe to say we were both dazed.

I smirked softly, winking at her, before at last, I made my exit.

True to my word, I ended my work as quickly as I could manage; I needed to see her. I headed back towards the palace - arranging a small care package to the best of my abilities before discovering Juliet and sending her on a mission - to find Y/N and deliver her to me.

The note attached was sober: Meet me at our place.

It was this blossom tree near the small creek. Almost as gorgeous as the woman who was going to meet there.

Hearing her feet approaching I got down from the tree I was waiting in, silently, wondering if she would notice me before I snuck up on her.

She didn't fail me, spinning on the balls of her feet, the arrow already notched with a fatal aim.

My lips tugged heavenward as I offered the white roses I carried in one hand, forgetting momentarily what I'd called her for. 'I come in peace. I gather Juliet delivered my message with success.'

'She's feisty to everyone else,' she mused. 'How you enticed her eludes me.'

I smirked, feeling my chest swell with pride, when: 'Kneel.'

I was on the ground before my mind could even process the command. My knees buckled at just the smile of this woman, I could give my life if she asked for it - surrendering to her was too small in comparison.

'Surrendering so soon, My Liege?' she mocked, drunk on power.

'I will always kneel for my Queen,' I loyally commented, making a cute laugh bubble out of her, a hot blush rendering her ears and neck red.

She lowered her weapon, and we reshuffled our positions into a more comfortable stance where we could sit under the tree, arms wrapped around each other.

The blossom leaves broke from their home to cherish the love we held, fingers entangling and detangling, the moon reflecting its eternal shine into the water beyond us, its lustrous shadow shimmering and thrumming with endless possibilities.

'I didn't find you in an occupied moment, did I?'

'Nah,' she casually denied. 'I was scaring away another noble my father brought in to meet with me.'

My chest tightened with anxiety before relaxing again. 'Just the usual then,' I tried to joke.

My mood turned pensive as I plucked one of the leaves from the ground. 'Do you remember the day we found this place?'

'Of course I do! How could I forget? We tried to climb up the tree, and I got this,' she rolled up her sleeve to flaunt the scar on her right elbow.

'We were so young and carefree,' I muttered. 'Good old times.'

'De . . . What is it?' she picked up on the shift.

'My Dad wants me to marry Jo,' I blurted out quietly. 'He's planned this whole engagement ceremony to announce it to the citizens tonight.'

'What?' A pause, 'What did you say!?'

'What did you want me to say Y/N?' I deflected.

'I don't know,' she said. 'Something between - "No, I don't want to marry Joanna", or "I am in love with the daughter of King Robert"?!'

'It's not that easy!' I suddenly got defensive.

She scoffed, 'Nothing was easy for us, ever, Dean.'

I shook my head, feeling the weight of the conversation slumping my shoulders - an action she subconsciously mirrored as the reality of the situation kicked in.

'We should tell them!' she exclaimed in desperation. 'Both of our fathers.'

'I can't!'

'What do you mean "you can't"?!'

'You know,' I struggled to gain a footing in this argument. 'I can't do that!'

'Why?' She ranted, 'Because we are from two entirely different nations who just depend on each other? Is it because we are not hunters? You, of all people, know that your kingdom cannot survive without our lore knowledge! You need our expertise as much as we need your men! That is the deal.'

'I know very well about the deal, Y/N,' I snapped. 'That is not the problem!'

'Now what,' she shoved me back in an accusatory tone, 'your father wants our resources and not the Princess!?'

'He wants to unite Harvelle's nation with ours,' I reasoned, 'It would be a resourceful arrangement for all our kingdoms.' But even as I said it, I felt my throat close up, my eyes prick, and my heart crumble a little in the agony under the light of the prison sentence I was putting on myself.

'You can't be serious,' she argued. 'You're honestly considering this offer!?'

'I am not! As a matter of fact, I have no idea what to do!' I breathed out, worried that if I didn't rush this confession, I'd break.

'Let's elope!'

I don't think I heard her correctly. 'What?'

'You heard me,' she confirmed.

'Are you out of your bloody mind?' I glared down at her - finally noticing that we two had stood up unknowingly, trying to win an argument by physical intimidation - a natural reflex.

'I am not the one thinking about marrying another girl,' her gruff voice threw the acid words in my face, betrayal and hurt making her tone shake.

'I can't,' I clenched out, ignoring the last statement because if I thought about it for even one second, I wouldn't be able to do this.

'You can't, or you won't?' she challenged.

'I won't,' I rose up to the bait. 'I am not going to disobey the King's commands.'

'For the love of everything on earth, Winchester - you're not just his perfect soldier!' she screamed with venom.

'I am neither a love-struck teen,' I yelled back. 'I am a Prince. I pledged to put my country and my people before my own desires.'

'And I didn't?'

'You wouldn't be talking about eloping if you cared for your people! Your Father should've knocked some sense into you instead of pampering you,' I gripped.

'And John is what, Father of the Year? He handed you a Silversword and told you to scare away the wolves you were mortified of when you ran to him for shelter!' she emotionally wagered in my face.

'He was teaching me to fight back,' I offered.

'You were eight years old, Dean,' she pointed out as if that was supposed to make me change my answer.

Anger ran white hot in my veins, making all logic rush out along with the steam coming out of my ears. 'At least he is not like Bobby!' I glared, frustration oozing out of me in waves. 'Do you know he was the reason behind the delay of the Dam Construction? He wanted to include all the small towns so no one could be left out, all half-breeds and special kinds included. It took me a month to convince all the other Nobles - and now the raw materials are exhausted! That's why we need the help of Harvelles'. If not for his soft-ass nature, we wouldn't be in this mess—!' I blamed.

My words took a hit when the sting of a slap echoed on my face. My head had turned with the force of it, but when I righted my gaze onto her - she was furious, and I was hurt by her action.

A profound silence descended, the water of the creek gently waving, coddling our tensions that kept on increasing with the increase in the misunderstandings we were spectacularly failing to resolve.

I looked at her as if she were a stranger, shocked that she would hit me. I never thought in a million years that she would hit me.

That's when I knew I had gone too far.

My hand was already inching towards the warmth on my left cheek - probably leaving a bruise in the shape of her palm there. 'Y/N . . . ?'

'Don't,' she raised her hand as if to physically stop me from speaking. She was recomposed in her demeanor. 'Seems like you've already made your mind, Your Highness. I have nothing else to say. Marry any girl your Father shoves his finger at, and be his little puppet. But don't you dare talk about my Father like that,' she ended, punctuating by abruptly and promptly exiting.

What had I done?

The engagement ceremony dragged on. My royal attire felt heavy against my bodice - like if all the weight of my emotions were cut into cloth, this is how it would feel.

Jo was nodding and smiling politely at the people coming up to congratulate us - a tightness around her eyes from stopping herself from crying.

And ironically, she was the only person here who probably understood me.

This felt wrong, and I wanted to cry.

Jo's hand was wrapped with mine, but we both were tense under each other's touch - that's not how love should feel.

Love is when you could feel all your worries evaporate as soon as you just see the other person enter a room. Love is when you feel like the happiest human alive to just feel them love you back. Love is when you feel invincible if they support you. Love is what breaks you when they leave you.

Love is Y/N.

And I just seemed to have lost her.

I blink my eyes rapidly even though there's no water to blink back. I don't cry very often, and today I really feel like I want to.

'Oh, honey, congratulations!' another royal smiled sweetly.

I nodded, barely returning a ghost of the same smile.

'When's the date?'

'As . . . soon as we can marry,' I gulped. 'King John doesn't want to waste any time.'

'That's lovely!' she cheered.

Jo cleared her throat, her eyes rimmed red, voice thick. 'Can't wait.'

'You two are so lucky to have each other. Your love is like no other,' she boasted.

'Thank you,' we both said in unison, mirroring the fake gratefulness, our shoulders slouching as soon as she left.

'I can't take this anymore,' Jo murmured. 'My Liege, can we take a walk?'

'Uh, yes, of course. Princess,' I add in courtesy, hating that I have to call her that.

Joanna dragged me away from the dull and pretentious party, functioning only because of the open bar, teeming with equally jealous and hateful nobles.

She took me to the serenity of the garden where the plants, closer to the dead than living, still seemed to understand better the need for calmness we both desired and shared.

Down, ways away from the dying function, nearing a pond, my mind wandered off to what I had just given up. The water, always soothing, now a staunch reminder of my greatest woe.

'Are we screwed or what?!' she burst out, derailing my train of thoughts.

That's when I noticed Jo was crying, silent tears descending down her rosy-with-anger red cheeks.

'Jo . . . ' I trailed off, failing to find words that would ease her.

Because nothing would. Neither of our happiness was gonna survive this marriage and that was a fact.

She sniffed. 'Charlie never wants to see my face. She told me it was too hard, that I don't know what it feels like to date a Royal. Well, she doesn't know what it feels like to be a Royal!'

I scoffed involuntarily, 'Oh, trust me, a Royal won't understand this either.'

She met my agitated gaze, 'Y/N freaked?'

I wasn't even surprised that she knew - Charlie must have told her. Charlie can't keep secrets when it's with people she loves.

My hand raised instinctively to my previously slapped cheek. 'Something like that,' I dropped my hand.

'What are we going to do, Dean?' she sobbed, 'I don't like you! Hell - I don't even like boys! I love Charlie, Dean, I love her, and I can't live without her.'

'I don't know,' I repeated from earlier that evening.

'What do you mean, "You don't know"?!' she started pacing. 'This isn't right! Our parents are forcing us—!'

'No one's forcing me,' I cut her off.

'Fine! But you can't tell me you're happy with this marriage. I mean, don't you love Y/N? I've seen how you look at her, how you treat her, how you talk about her when she's not there - she was your first!'

The pinch in my chest tightened. 'Sometimes you have to sacrifice—'

'For who? Our selfish parents!?'

'Jo!'

'No! Dean, our parents got what they wanted! They married for love!'

'And look how that ended,' I raised my tone to match hers. 'My Mom and your Dad are gone - they're dead! Leaving our parents to exist as shells!'

'They died in accidents, but you want us killed. This marriage will kill us, Dean; it will kill me!'

'Apparently,' a third voice interrupted. 'It will kill King John, too.'

We turned to Castiel holding up a bloody arrow, the crimson making me dread the answer to whose life it took - but what made my breath hitch was that the arrow was decorated with a Phoenix feather.

'Prince Dean,' he addressed. 'It seems your lover has declared a war against us.'

No, no, no! This cannot be happening. That's impossible, absolutely not. No!

Things went to the crapper hella quickly.

My mind raced as I tried to swallow that in the last twenty-four hours I had almost lost the love of my life before I broke up our years of relationship, gotten engaged with a lesbian, and almost had my father murdered by who everyone assumed was the woman I loved (forgive me if I didn't want to jump to conclusions), leading to our advisors issuing an order to enslave her by my hands - there was even a bounty and everything.

Our soldiers have been fighting with one of our closest allies come dawn - the only reason why they received the news they did: My mentor, my Uncle - Bobby was dead. That's what our soldiers told us.

What even is this?

As we rode the horses through the forbidden forest, I couldn't help but feel the pit in my stomach grow. Something was wrong, and by God I swear, if something happened to Y/N . . .

She was the only one unsafe right now. Dad and Sammy had been granted protection, but she was out there, alone, no doubt being hunted by whoever killed her Father and I was not losing two of the few people I cared the most about in one night.

On our way, I lost the assistance of Benny and Cas - separated, the former by the soldiers of the Singers, and the latter by the devils of the forest. I rode alone towards the location the Princess was last seen at - and jackpot!

Her sword was out and swinging before I could demand her attention, my reflexes making me move on my own, and soon our weapons were clanging - then, sooner, I had disarmed her.

Her sword clanged against the half-cut tree stump. 'Should've stuck with archery,' I taunted, the tip of my sword levelling with the heart that once belonged to me.

She raised her hands in surrender - but I couldn't tell if she was playing along or actually being sincere. 'Come home with me,' I said before I could stop the words from toppling out.

'Home?' she spat out. 'Mine is burnt to the ground in flames, love. There is no way home anymore!'

'Come with me,' I offered. 'To our country. I'll talk to Father—'

'You mean as a slave?' she challenged.

My mouth dropped slightly, the words dying in my mouth, unsure myself as to how that would work. I wondered why I would even say something like that to her - her arrow was found in my father's chest. What more could I need than that to acquit her?

But deep down, I knew this couldn't be it. She loved her father, she knew what it meant to be devoted to the last parent you had. How could she even do that?

And obviously, the attack on the Singer Palace was not her. What was the story behind that? Something was going on, and we needed to figure this out - together, whether we wanted to or not.

'What, cat got your tongue?' she quipped.

'I don't see the way around, sweetheart,' I informed. 'You are unarmed, and even if I let you battle me, I don't think it is gonna do you any good – you were never good with swords.'

'Yeah,' she shrugged smugly, 'that's why I brought reinforcements.' Her gaze flicked to the side to reveal Charlie with an archery set, a Phoenix arrow pinning me as its target.

I was so preoccupied on getting things straight with Y/N, I didn't even notice her lurking in the shadows. 'Not gonna lie,' I said, 'I'm impressed, sweetheart. You did get me.'

'Drop your weapon, My Liege, or I'll need to run an arrow into your leg,' warned Charlie.

'I would do what she says; as you know, she's a woman of her word.'

Unwilling to heed just yet, my eyes darted to my peripheries – wondering if my soldiers would ever show up.

As if reading my mind, 'Oh, don't worry,' Charlie snarled, 'they aren't gonna join us, Your Highness, your Knight Benjamin, and other soldiers have been taken care of by none other than our Captain of the Royal Guards.'

Captain Garth Fitzgerald, I thought in annoyance.

'Come on,' I stalled. 'A fight between my vampire knight and your werewolf bishop? Somehow I feel bad I have to miss it.'

'Kneel,' My Queen's order interrupted us.

And every rational thought flew out of my mind as I threw the towel in. My sword clattered out of my hand and the ground dug into my skin as I looked up at Y/N, surrender encompassing my every fiber when I looked at her regally towering over me.

Somehow, I always knew she would be the death of me – but what's more, is that she's that one person who made me feel most alive.

Charlie kicked my sword for her to grab.

I smirked, 'Come on, sweetheart,' I goaded. 'You aren't gonna hurt me – we both know that.'

Just to prove a point she slashed the metal across my left arm, crimson seeped out of the horizontal, somewhat deep, wound, making me hiss.

But it shouldn't sting as much as it did, right?

'I would reconsider that theory.'

She's bluffing. 'Princess—'

'NO! You don't get to call me that. That is allocated for the people I love.'

And Charlie might as well have shot the arrow into my heart. Unwillingly, my eyes welled up with hurt.

How could she even say that?

'That's it?!' I gritted out, practically shouting. Pants began to slowly heave my chest in strain, 'You're going to throw all we had out the window just like that?'

'Oh, no, you already did me that favor when you decided to hunt me down for your Father, Your Highness,' she made sure to highlight the emotional distance we had nurtured in just the last day with the formality and venom sugar-coating her every word in an acidic way that was meant to burn me from the inside out.

'That isn't fair,' I said in a low voice, close to a whisper, pissed off that she was lecturing me about how she doesn't love me anymore just because I'm hunting her down.

She tried to kill my father for God's sake! . . . I think.

A fog seemed to be collecting in my mind, stopping me from thinking straight.

But either way, was her love for me so fickle and weak?

'Nothing is fair in love and war, My Prince.'

'How did we get here?' I muttered, already exhausted.

'You killed my father, Dean,' she explained.

My head snapped up in shock. 'What!?' I spluttered. 'Are you insane? Y/N . . . where did you get that from?'

'You burned the man who practically raised from ashes,' she cried out, her eyes wild with grief.

'Y/N, I didn't kill King Robert!' Sweat beaded my forehead, and I felt my heart accelerated its beating.

'Then what was your locket doing there?' she brandished my amulet as proof . . . the amulet that when I'd gotten out of shower earlier, yesterday in the evening, had been missing.

I had thought I had misplaced it and would've searched for it later since I was getting late for my own engagement ceremony. A locket that made her think that I had the blood of her father on my hands.

I struggled to speak, 'I . . . uh . . . .'

'You never go anywhere without this,' she claimed, 'tell me where you were last night!'

I couldn't believe my ears, feeling a part of me shatter. 'You think that less of me?'

'That didn't answer my question.'

'Fine,' I felt my throat close up, 'yesterday, there was an assault on the King at the ceremony. I was busy finding the assaulter and putting them to rot in jail. Turns out, it was the woman whom I dreamt of spending the rest of my life with.'

'What?' she stepped back in the exclamation. 'That is crazy – I was at the camp with Charlie. Mopping in heartbreak because of you.'

'In the entirety of the seven regions – you are the only one who uses the Phoenix feathered arrows,' I told her, feeling black dots dancing in front of my eyes as a throbbing pain between my ears made me aware of the unnaturally strong headache.

'Dean, I didn't try to kill John . . . ?' it sounded more like a question than a statement.

'That'd explain the bounty on your head, Princess,' Charlie pitched in – helpful for once. 'Connect the dots – it's like the worst murder mystery cliché ever; someone's trying to turn both of you on each other.'

Of course, I realized. My body slightly swayed and trembled on my buckled knees. Something is seriously wrong.

'But the real question is who could do that—' Charlie's throat was slit in the middle of her speech. Her eyes were dead and closed before her body hit the ground in the pool of her own blood.

'Charlie!' I heard myself scream along with Y/N.

The voices were getting farther away from me, somehow. My limbs thrummed with heat as if my muscles and organs were liquefying in one big pile of goo, yet it felt like I was being weighed down under tons of lead.

'She's too smart for her own good,' a hated familiar voice answered, 'and to answer her question – that would be on me.' His troops littered the area behind, guarding the Alpha male I would like to do nothing more than gut.

'Gordon, you filthy animal!' Y/N yelled, lunging forward to attack.

The crew he brought surged to meet her but I forced myself on my feet: 'Make a move on her – you'd be dead before you hit the ground. Do I make myself clear?' I used the steeliest voice I could muster, making them halt.

'Why am I not surprised these were your shenanigans?' Y/N scoffed, her feet unconsciously gravitating to make her stand next to me.

'You know,' he said, 'I'm gonna take that as a compliment, Princess.'

My mouth went dry with the effort of simply standing and talking, 'Why are you doing this, Walker?'

'Why do you think – it was all because of that damn Dam!' he confessed.

'You were all in for that since day one,' I argued.

'No, Dean, you were all in. I am not. What was I supposed to do – stand up against all of the other big nations? Even I'm not that foolish. The river starts in our nation – it is ours. I'm not going to share it with the malodorous half-breeds.'

'You nasty racist—' I stopped Y/N before she could recklessly get herself killed.

'You better think twice before you do what you intended to do,' I threatened, 'because my—'

'Your rescue?' he scoffed with a laugh, 'Benjamin and Garth? Oh, they are on their way to reach where her Mother and Father went,' he pointed at Y/N to make her angrier. Translation: they're dead.

'Now,' he explained the climax of his diabolical plan just as my weight was beginning to get too much to keep on my feet. 'It is time for me to settle my tabs with you two love birds then I will tell your Father that she killed you, and boom! All that union crap and the Dam project will be closed.'

'Not gonna lie, I'm shocked your malevolent brain can plot like that – only if you had put that to good use. I always thought you had it in you. In fact, Gordon, I had my eye for you . . . for a long time,' Y/N stepped out of my reach, lying as she went.

But my brows furrowed when an ache seemed to start spreading from my heart and flowing through my blood to other organs. The taste of warm rusted metal soaked into my taste buds.

Oh, shit.

Y/N apparently hadn't noticed. 'Now you stand here, sounding all smart with your devilish grin – it's so intoxicating,' she stated in a sultry voice.

With the little adrenaline I had left, I caught the sword Y/N threw at me in time - a feat she managed to accomplish as she had neared them with her distracting flirting. I used the momentum I already was in to plunge the sword into the first guard who came at me.

The second one took longer – more prepared as we sparred in quick flicks of our wrists, dancing on our feet in the art of war. My vision was seemingly getting hazier and I knew not how much longer I could hold my ground – but I couldn't leave Y/N alone to fend off for herself.

With her as my motivation, I swiped the man's sword from his grip by using the hilt of my weapon to his wrist bone that cracked under the pressure. I, then, applied a left hook and proceeded to behead the man with another fatal blow.

Y/N had already taken care of the third guard. There were only three plus Gordon. If we killed him, she would be okay. She was going to be okay.

But in the meantime, Gordon had taken advantage of our distraction to point Y/N's own weapons against her - her bow and arrow.

'Nice try,' he appealed to our attentions.

A small, almost inaudible gasp left me as my heart beat inhumanly fast. More blood gargled up my throat, the acidic burn left in its wake. I felt my knees buckle – this time involuntarily, an action that I followed by purging blood from my system – silently gaging and choking, as my body was wrecked with painstaking seizures.

'You're not gonna win this fight, Gordon. It's two against one. Us against you!'

'Yeah, I won't worry about that,' he smirked in confidence.

'Y/N . . . ' my voice came out strained, wheezes escaping my body as I grappled for any kind of comfort I could find in what's probably and horrifically my last moments alive.

'Dean!' her voice broke through the ringing in my ears. What just happened?

My hands were shaking miserably, unable to hover me over the bloody vomit. So I leaned sideward, a motion that made me dizzy, and I would have struck my head harshly on the ground had it not been for her.

She turned me till she was propping me up against her folded legs, her arms holding most of my weight up. But that was honestly enough for me. I was safe again.

'Dean, look at me, love,' her panic-stained voice pierced my hearing, her dainty fingers slapped my cheek lightly – the opposite cheek she had slapped me on just yesterday.

Huh, well, I'm positively fucked, was all I could think.

My eyes were dry and stinging with tears all at the same time, claret dripped from the corner of my mouth still. I could barely keep my eyes open – but I had to.

I need to see her one last time.

Because God, she's gorgeous.

Her h/c h/l hair fell in waves around her frame, singling out the beautiful features that composed her face. The now glossy e/c eyes, the small adorable nose, the thin pink lips, and the ever-glowing s/c skin.

'What did you do?' she was yelling.

'Me?' he asked with hysteria and amusement. 'Oh, no, it's all you, Princess Y/N. Once I knew he was after you, all I did was paint a pinch of black widow venom on his sword. To kill you on the spot, of course. Because I knew your Romeo won't be able to do that. But fate had other plans. You are the one who marked his pretty skin, so don't pin this on me,' he shifted the blame.

She truly is the death of me, my dying brain thought it was funny to remind me.

'Y/N,' I whispered, wanting to tell her so much.

I wanted to let her know how much I loved her, how sorry I was for the fight the previous night, how much I want to marry her, how much I would have loved to settle down and have kids with her, how much I want her by my side to rule our kingdoms, how fortunate I think I am to have her as my lover, how she made me the happiest man on the planet to let me hold and have her.

But all that comes out is a repetition of her name, like a chant – a prayer that saved me, and will save me. I've worshipped her for as long as I can remember, why stop now when I was dying?

'Save him, please,' I heard her plea as sleep fought to take me under.

'Now, where's the fun in that?'

'Oh, my God,' she sobbed, looking down at me as water glittered on her cheeks. I wish I could raise my hand and wipe it off – I wanted to tease her for this, make her laugh one last time. But it was impossible to move; my nervous system and organs shut down one by one. 'Dean, my love, stay with me,' she begged me.

I could only grunt in pain.

Her hand squeezed mine.

'You did me a favor, Princess. Now it's my time to seize the chance and finish the job.'

My mind took too long to process this, only realizing what it meant when an arrowhead poked out of Y/N's right lung, gory with her blood, making her gasp. But she didn't budge from my side.

I opened my mouth to scream at her to leave – to run. To save herself, but my vocals failed me terribly.

'You will pay for this,' she promised, but she didn't move, looking down at me in her arms.

My helplessness finally overwhelmed me. The woman I had sworn to protect was going to die – and I could do nothing to save her.

Tear broke their barriers.

This was it.

'I . . . love you,' I choked with all the remaining energy I had.

'My love . . . I love you, too . . . .'

A/N: Me from the first time I tried the first-person POV - I've tried not to harass its originality, so all the mistakes and drama-queenness is mine 🙃.

Anyhow, if you're new to my page and you don't know, this one-shot is intrinsically linked to my series The Supernatural Wars, Purgatory Series, and another in the works. If you're interested in diving into a whole new world, do continue to Part 2!

Tag List.

@stoneyggirl2 @hobby27 @globetrotter28 @aylacavebear @emma1998sblog

@stanzie

25 notes · View notes

literaryvein-reblogs · 5 hours ago

Note

sorry not sure if i put in the request, but do you have something on prosopagnosia (face blindness)? i'm not entirely sure how i would describe the faces... thank you 🫶

Writing Notes: Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia - A form of visual agnosia in which the ability to perceive and recognize faces is impaired, whereas the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively unaffected.

Also called face blindness.

A condition where you have difficulty recognising people's faces.

The term was originally limited to impairment following acute brain damage, but a congenital form of the disorder has since been recognized.

Can be distinguished from prosopamnesia, which is an abnormal difficulty in remembering faces, even though they are perceived normally: The condition may be congenital or acquired.

Awareness of the disorder was greatly elevated with the bestselling book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (1985) by British neurologist Oliver Sacks.

Symptoms

The main symptom of prosopagnosia is having difficulty recognising faces.

You'll still see the parts of a face normally, but all faces may look the same to you.

It affects people differently.

Some people may not be able to tell the difference between strangers or people they do not know well. Others may not recognise the faces of friends and family, or even their own face.

To people with prosopagnosia, people all look the same (barring hair color, skin pigmentation, body shape, and very specific details such as scars). The fact that people generally don't have a distinctive outfit or hairstyle makes interacting with people extremely confusing for them.

Other symptoms of prosopagnosia can include difficulty with:

recognising emotions on people's faces

recognising people's age and gender

recognising characters and following plots in TV programmes or films

recognising other things, such as cars or animals

finding your way around

Difficulty recognising faces may make it harder to form relationships, or cause problems at work or school. This may affect your mental health and may lead to social anxiety or depression.

There's no treatment for prosopagnosia, but there are things you can do to help recognise people.

tell people about the condition before you meet them

ask people you're close to for help identifying others

ask people to introduce themselves when you greet them

use people's voices or body language to tell them apart

make a note of distinctive features about a person such as hairstyle, jewellery or accessories

use name tags or write down the names of colleagues and where they sit at work

Prosopagnosia usually is permanent.

Some persons with acquired prosopagnosia, however, spontaneously recover facial-recognition abilities.

This could be the result of either physical recovery from injury, with eventual restoration of brain function, or reorganization of the facial-processing locations in the brain.

Prosopagnosia lies on a continuum and stricter vs. looser diagnostic criteria employed in prosopagnosia studies in the past 13 years have identified mechanistically very similar populations, providing justification for expanding the criteria to include those with milder forms of it.

It is important to use a combination of self-reported daily-life difficulties and validated objective measures when diagnosing prosopagnosia.

There are pros and cons to relying just on self-reports because it can be challenging to judge your own abilities or relying solely on objective lab measures that may not reflect everyday life.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

It's alright, only received this message. The other may have gotten lost. Hope this helps with your writing!

#anonymous #prosopagnosia #agnosia #writing notes #writeblr #literature #writers on tumblr #writing reference #dark academia #spilled ink #writing prompt #creative writing #light academia #writing resources

21 notes · View notes

artist-issues · 2 days ago

Note

Who is your favorite character from each Star Wars trilogy and why? One character from the prequel trilogy, one from the original trilogy, and one from the sequel trilogy. ✨

Okay so:

PREQUELS: Anakin Skywalker

I know it’s basic but he’s the best character.

The whole thing he’s prophesied to do is “bring balance to the Force.” And I think everybody like, tries to interpret what that means, as if it’s some big mystery, but if you just look at his character, it’s perfectly spelled out.

In Anakin’s time, the Jedi rejected attachment. The Sith rejected faith. Both are because of a fear of a lack of control (from two different directions.)

The Force is out of balance because Light wants to have abandonment of passion and call it peace, and the Dark wants to have all passion without selflessness. Both are faithless, in their own way.

And Anakin comes in and he’s like a mini-object lesson for that same problem. Except, before he falls to the Dark Side, Anakin is the only one with the potential to have both. He has attachments and passion, but he also wants peace. He (correctly) wants his attachments to be the “why” behind his power.

(I know everybody calls this concept “grey Jedi,” but I think that’s unnecessary and categorizing it sort of ruins the nuance in an otherwise really-nuanceless-straightforward franchise. Ironically.)

Anyway. Anakin is a great character because he has all these seemingly-contradictory traits warring inside of him. He’s the most powerful Jedi who ever lived, but he’s the most vulnerable emotionally. He’s a gifted strategist but he’s personally impulsive. He came from slavery and hates being told what to do, but he thinks that people who won’t submit to a peaceful regime should be forced to. He’s cocky enough to try any hare-brained scheme with zero experience, but he’s insecure enough to always have to prove something to the Jedi Council and even the woman he loves. He likes everything to be simple, black-and-white, and extreme, with nobody handing down complicated caveats or restrictive orders—but he falls in love with a ruler who’s also a politician. Fate has assured everyone that he is the Chosen One, but his allies still generally never really know what to expect from him. He’s fiercely loyal and won’t leave Obi Wan or Padme to die because of his attachments during the war, but those same attachments are what ultimately cause him to betray and attempt to murder those same two people.

All these contradictory traits create an intensely interesting character—and the perfect character for a story like Star Wars, the perfect character where “BALANCE BETWEEN TWO THINGS” is the main symbolism.

Also all of Star Wars is about the Main Point: Faith Triumphs Over Fear.

Anakin’s biggest, hardest problem was that he only ever had faith in himself, his own ability to make everything turn out all right. And the fear that he wasn’t enough, and if he wasn’t enough then therefore nothing would be all right, caused him to fall. He just had to have more power because more power = more control and more control should, in a faithless worldview, = less fear. But of course it doesn’t. It actually just piles more weight on.

And then of course it’s faith that allows him to give up power and control. Which is turning back to the Light. But it’s Light untainted by detachment-rules, because when he turns back, he does it for love of Luke, his son. It’s awesome. He’s the best character in Star Wars.

ORIGINAL TRILOGY: (it’s cheating to say Darth Vader after all that, isn’t it) Luke Skywalker

I don’t mean for it to be all the main characters, I just think they did the best job on the main characters.

Luke is my favorite because he’s got the same problem as Anakin, but from a new, less angry angle. Instead of being told he’s the Chosen One, he thinks he comes from nothing and is nobody. And he wants to be somebody. He wants to do something big and epic and noble, he feels like the world is going by without him, when we first meet him.

Then the moment he learns that his father was a powerful Jedi, a living legend, that dream takes shape. And that shape is “Jedi.” Just in time for him to also lose his loved ones. And the whole movie, A New Hope, everyone is telling Luke, “wait! Come back! Slow down! Don’t just rush off!”

But Luke is never appreciating what he has while he has it. Luke is never slowing down and learning (philosophically.)

He’s always looking ahead, trying to see the next challenge he will face, trying to rush out ahead and save the people and things he cares about from whatever danger is coming, trying to see beyond the horizon. He’s focused on the future, and what he can do to affect it.

But then he has to learn to let go of his own ability, his own skill, and “Trust the Force.” Something outside of himself. Which is something not even his father Anakin could ever do. So he switches off his targeting system and blows up the Death Star.

Luke is brave and takes action, leaping into danger and working hard to believe in everybody—which is awesome, for a Star Wars hero. Because taking action is, in its way, faithful and not fearful. And, believing in the good in others is a faith-based decision, too. And it’s where he starts to be different from his grudge-holding, control-freak father. But both those traits—action-taking and belief in others—can become fear-based, also.

So he turns out to grow up in front of the audience’s very eyes with what, ladies and gentlemen? Another inner conflict that needs balancing. Conflict between faith and fear.

And the fact that Luke is a farm boy who feels like his potential is unfulfilled when we first meet him, and then our final beat with Luke is him throwing away his potential to cut the villains’ heads off, is such a good character arc.

(And I’ll never shut up about how Mark Hammill got his own character wrong, because The Last Jedi was an excellent way to wrap up Luke Skywalker as a character.)

SEQUELS: KYLO REN

I want to be very clear here.

I think Rey is an incredible character. And Finn. And Poe. I think all three of them are. Especially Rey and Finn. I think so much heart and no-brainer Star-Wars-iness is infused into those three characters, that I could easily answer this question what I love about any one of them and what makes them my favorite. Easily. It’s like, a five-way tie.

But Kylo Ren pulls ahead because he, as a character, was an often re-tread concept, but he makes it feel new and real. Actually, I should probably have said Kylo Ren AND Rey are my favorites from this trilogy. Because they really are two sides of the same character.

But! Kylo Ren is the pick.

He’s excellent in too many ways to count. But the best way is that he refuses to learn from failure. Which is poignant, because it ties back into Faith Triumphs Over Fear from a new angle that his predecessor-characters hadn’t explored yet.

He’s so desperate to escape the legacy he grew up under that he can’t learn from it. And that’s tragic, because the things he might learn would actually help him to feel the legacy as a helping hand, not a burden.

I mean, think about it. It’s the Sequel Trilogy. That means, by definition, audiences were going to come into this trilogy expecting to be shown something UNDER THE LEGACY-UMBRELLA of the Trilogy that Came Before. In that film-legacy’s shadow.

So then you have a villain, a main character, who is a literal representation of that? He’s not just the son of Leia Organa, hopeful inspiring-voice of the free world—he’s not just the son of Han Solo, hero who saved the world and won the heart of a princess despite scumbag origins—he’s not just the nephew of Luke Skywalker, heir to the Jedi Legends and Most Powerful Warrior in the Known World—

—he’s the grandson of Darth Vader, the monster the world needed saving from. The man who used to be Anakin Skywalker, powerful Chosen One corrupted against all odds.

That’s too much famous legacy for one young character with incredible powers. He literally couldn’t have done anything OTHER THAN make “I’m Never Going to Live Up to What They Hope, So I Might As Well Lean Into What They Fear” his new identity.

It’s like if Kylo Ren represented the Sequel Trilogy, and the Sequel Trilogy said, “I can’t live up to the legendary movies that came before me, so I might as well not be them,” but then the whole time you, the audience, are desperate to see traces of the legendary movies that came before buried inside. The same way Leia, Han, Luke, and Rey are desperate to see traces of Ben Solo in Kylo Ren. Ben. Named after the guy who meant “HOPE” to Leia, his mother.

HOPE he’s going to turn out okay! Like I HOPE these movies can make me feel the way their predecessors did!

That’s their villain. A guy who lets pressure from legacy twist him up. Genius. Success.

But away from the meta, back to that Main Point:

His whole tragic origin brings sharp focus back onto the original Main Point of Star Wars: “Faith Triumphs over Fear.”

Because Leia lost her son by sending him away. Why’d she send him away? Because she was afraid of the evil he might fall to, so to control the outcome of that scary scenario, she gave into fear and sent him away. From Ben’s perspective, she had no faith in him.

Neither did his father. Until the end. When he let go of his fear, listened to Leia’s plea to “bring him home,” and let faith that Ben Solo was in there get himself stabbed. But his final act was to caress Ben’s face? Not fear? Faith that this monster who is actively stabbing him is still his son?

Just like Luke didn’t have faith in Ben Solo—he saw visions of Everyone He Loved killed by Ben, just like his old visions of Han and Leia dying by Vader’s torture, and he showed that moment of fear and lack of faith to Ben, and THAT is what led to Ben’s fall.

Everyone is afraid of Ben Solo’s commitment to and potential for darkness.

Except Rey.

She never actually knew Ben Solo, but she still has faith he’s in there, because a glimpse is all she needs—he thinks that’s weakness, the same kind of dream that keeps her waiting for her parents.

But if the third movie hadn’t ruined it, he would have learned that it was never weakness, it was strength—strength that outpaces fear. The fear of failure that’s been defining his whole character since the beginning.

Those are my faves! Thanks for asking! Sorry if it was boring that I picked the Three Main Male Lightsaber Characters.

22 notes · View notes

gwenllian-in-the-abbey · 21 hours ago

Note

How would you (if you were Ryan Condal) have fleshed out book Aemond in s1 without woobifying him too much?

Good question anon!

If we're going book!Aemond and keeping the book timeline, I think there's very little chance of woobification because Aemond plays a much more overtly antagonistic role in F&B from the start. I think lots of HotD fans, even those who have read the book, kind of mentally default to the show version of Driftmark, but the book version has him pushing a 3 year old into dragon poop and he's absolutely beating the shit out of Jace when Luke-- who is 5-- runs up and slashes his eye. Baela and Rhaena aren't there so there's really no "stealing Vhagar" plotline, and while it's 2 on 1, Aemond won the fight, taunts them by calling them bastards, which makes them engage again, and is once more winning the fight when Luke gets in a lucky shot. The same criticisms of the adults still apply of course, and Viserys is still equally useless at acknowledging Aemond's injury, but it is harder to feel sorry for the guy when he is the one doing the bullying and the bullying just so happened to backfire horribly. And I think that while it is true that for Alicent, this incident proves once and for all that Viserys does not care what happens to her children, what book!Aemond takes from this is that he will never allow himself to be beaten by someone he considers his "lessers" again (and the Strong boys are half his age, so this is a humiliating defeat, not necessarily something he'd want to be coddled over). There is this fanon idea of Aemond, is the dutiful son who does what he is told, who does everything right but gets shat on for it, and who finally gets sick of playing by the rules and snaps. But Aemond (and I'd argue this even applies broadly to show!Aemond) is actually quite defiant and combative from the start, often to the detriment of himself and his family. Not only is he not as competent as he believes himself to be, he causes a lot of his own problems and then gets mad when others do not want to help him fix them.

I do not necessarily think Aemond needs a sad backstory to be a good character, and I've never cared for the show's take on his villain origin story. The bullied kid becomes a mass murderer is a tired trope in 2025 but I think it falls flat with Aemond in particular for a number of reasons that I won't get into here (and Aemond's messy and incoherent S2 arc is a direct product of the show's inability to pull off his heel turn-- I could write an entire post about that in and of itself). I think if I were adapting book!Aemond, I would lean into Aemond's problems with authority and the massive chip on his shoulder that comes from him being a powerful, warlike, ambitious man with no outlet for his ambitions. Not only is he not the secondborn son, he's pushed further down the line of succession by Viserys keeping Rhaenyra as his chosen heir. He's never knighted, despite being an excellent fighter, is not betrothed during Viserys' lifetime so he will have no holdings of his own, and although he accepts his role as the "enforcer" of the family, he clearly believes he would make a better king than Aegon, whose claim he must nevertheless uphold. And to be clear, I do not believe book!Aemond has studied history and philosophy (or the Valyrian language for that matter) to any greater extent than Aegon has, he is simply a warrior whereas Aegon is not, but to Aemond that is all that matters.

So I would show Aemond as man who has followed the tenets of Westerosi masculinity but who has not, in his own view, reaped the rewards that he believes should be his due. I would juxtapose this with Aegon, who is the eldest son but who has never been treated as an eldest son and therefore does not even attempt to perform the swordbro variety of Westerosi masculinity because what would be the point? It would get him nowhere and worse than nowhere, it might cast him as a true threat to Rhaenyra's inheritance. Aemond's disdain for Aegon therefore would come not from Aegon's failure to embrace his "duty," because there is no duty for Aegon to embrace, and Aemond doesn't care about duty anyway, he cares about power. Aegon's hedonism makes him soft in Aemond's estimation, and that is what Aemond cannot tolerate (which is not to say he does not love his brother, he just does not respect him). In contrast, Aemond has learned that there are few problems that violence cannot solve provided you have an unlimited capacity for violence, and his cruelty grows in proportion to his ability to enact violence upon others. The more he is enabled by his family (who also cannot tell him no or punish his misdeeds in any significant way because Vhagar is too important to the war effort), the bolder he grows. Remember, there is a reason why Aemond, much like Maegor, turns his nose up at the idea of making a trip to Dragonstone to claim a hatchling (which, despite Viserys' condescending phrasing, is very likely how Aegon claimed Sunfyre). No mere hatchling will do for Aemond, it has to be a war dragon. He needs to be, if not the one wearing the crown, then the one with the most firepower, the one who cannot be refused.

Even Aemond's one canonical romance, with Alys, is one in which he claims her as a "war prize," and Alys feeds his ego with visions of the future, giving him an excuse to abandon his allies and family. He takes Alys along with him when he seeks out Daemon, as she has become a sort of talisman, proof that he will emerge victorious-- she has seen it in her visions, after all, or so he believes. Soon the war itself becomes secondary Aemond's own self aggrandizement and his need to justify all of his previous acts with ultimate victory, not for the greens, but for Aemond himself. And again, I would contrast this with Aegon, who undergoes a transformation during the war, his sense of self shattered and pieced back together again in a way that he never truly recovers from. He shows himself to be tougher and more tenacious than anyone expected, but the cost of this transformation is his body, his health, his dragon, and most of his family. In the end Aegon is exhausted by the effort it takes to survive, clinging to the last shreds of his humanity in his refusal to execute a child, and increasingly more concerned with how his family is remembered than with his own legacy, commissioning statues for his brothers yet none for himself.

In Aemond's final days, he does not negotiate, he does not coordinate with his armies or his Hand (who is of course long dead due to Aemond's refusal to ), he does not lay patiently in wait or spring any traps; he burns the countryside indiscriminately in search of one man, an effort which brings him no closer to his goal. As he burned the countryside, Aemond must have felt like a god on dragonback, immortal and unstoppable, and yet mere months later the dragons (and Aemond) are no more. I would portray him as a man with more power than sense, whose actions helped ensure that an army that had no real reason to keep fighting would nevertheless refuse to surrender. Ultimately, Aemond and Vhagar can be viewed as a cautionary tale about the might makes right aspect of Targaryen dragonpower. Aemond thinks he can ignore the existing power structures because he has Vhagar and no one can stop him or punish him, and yet his misuse of that power dooms his faction, much as the Dance itself speeds the end of the Targaryen dynasty.

#asks #book!aemond #aemond targaryen #aegon ii targaryen #hotd critical #team green #show!aemond stans i'm sorry please hear me out before you take out the pitchforks #book!aemond was a not a gentle soul #nor was he a victim except that one time he lost his eye to a five year old #warriorbro chadgon truthers i'm also side-eying you

20 notes · View notes

buttastic · 2 days ago

Text

so over the past few days I read this comic called mary tyler moorehawk by dave baker and I think I have to talk about in a more formalized sense but I don't want to do it on a platform where I'm connected with actual comics people so here you go tumblr. there's gonna be a lot of spoilers for mtmh here (and to a lesser extent of house of leaves and rant: the oral biography of buster casey) because it's impossible to talk about this thing otherwise

here we go

the first thing I will say about it is that it takes rather a lot from both mark z danielewski's house of leaves and chuck palahniuk's rant: the oral biography of buster casey.

this is not a problem for me. if anything, this is the opposite of a problem for me. I love those books. I've been wanting more comics and specifically more big published graphic novels that do the kinds of post-modern structural weirdness that these prose novels do. but that kind of gets to my problem with it:

there are completely vanilla straight-forward comic pages and then there are hol-esque prose sections and never do the two intertwine.

the story is this: à la house of leaves, a journalist writes about the production of his favorite canceled-after-9-episodes tv show, mary tyler moorehawk, in an alternate 5-minutes-to-a-hundred-years future dystopia à la rant. this leads him to try and track down the original creator of the characters, where he discovers that mtmh was originally based on a comic. the structure then bounces back and forth between sections of this comic from plot points long past where the show cut off and journalistic sections where the narrator interviews people and does a bunch of junior detective stuff. that is the Plot and Structure.

the Premise is that dave baker, the actual author/cartoonist who lives in our world, receives a package in the mail that contains the manuscript of the book we're reading, that was delivered to him by dave baker, about his quest to find dave baker. I wish I could post screencaps of the intro, but alas hoopla doesn't let you take those so I'm stuck with what other people have posted.

but so anyway this entire book revolves around dave baker doggedly extolling the singular genius of dave baker while dave baker kind of shrugs at the camera. it's breathtakingly narcissistic in a way I almost respect.

the dystopian future that this takes place in is one where owning physical objects has been made illegal--for environmentalist reasons?? we'll come back to the bonkers politics in this. but so the primary entertainment is either fascist propaganda films or hologram web streaming videos with no stories where you watch people do mundane activities that I have to imagine is some kind of dig at tiktok. the only option outside of that is the way of the physicalists--people dedicated to the cult of illegally hoarding physical art objects from before such things were purged. the only people who are allowed to own anything are corporations, who can own anything including people, but honestly if we think too hard about what it means to live in a world that truly owns nothing this whole story starts to fall apart.

like it seems like mostly it's illegal to own art? but people are described as drawing several times so art SUPPLIES are at least acquirable, somehow? but whatever, not what this is about.

but so anyway somebody gets the bright idea to revive the old ways of tv shows (except they have to broadcast them onto dishwashers instead of tvs, since dishwashers are one of the few things people are allowed to own. also, somehow, broadcasting is meaningfully different than streaming) but also along with this she revives all of the evil predatory shit tv companies do verbatim, which feels really weird.

like the book is about dave baker (the journalist)'s quest to figure out why his favorite tv show was canceled and he lives in this dystopia where art is illegal and he managed to illegally watch this show because his uncle knew a guy who knew a guy and he has to dodge police raids to even talk about this stuff--

--but the reason his favorite show was canceled is because a tv ceo tried to claim perpetual rights to someone else's comic characters and that person left in a huff?

like idk! do something interesting with your setting! I actually do not think trying to combine the approaches of house of leaves and rant is a bad idea. they both feature people talking Around an object/person that is never directly depicted but still shines through anyway, and both have elaborate metanarratives running at the same time. there's a lot to work with there!

so I think the mistake here is trying to combine the Worlds of hol and rant. hol takes place in a world that is basically identical to our own to try and get you to wonder if the navidson record actually happened, or at the very least if johnny truant actually found someone writing about it. rant takes place in a scifi near-future to continuously bait and switch you with wondering how far removed this reality actually is from our own. both of these are extremely Core To What These Books Are About.

mary tyler moorehawk, on the other hand....seems to just be using these as a fun aesthetic to explore?

mtmh makes extensive use of hol-style footnotes, but they never really go anywhere. they're extra set-dressing but they always immediately resolve themselves and are almost completely ignorable. every once and a while one will loop back around, but never in a way that's plot-critical.

the scifi setting is completely incomprehensible unless you've also read rant and know kind of what it's aping. in rant there is a big cultural divide between upperclass people who do their media consumption by plugging sensory recordings into jacks in their brains to feel things second-hand and lowerclass people whose brain jacks have been rotted out by exposure to rabies (listen it's chuck palahniuk) who have to actually experience things in person if they want to feel anything.

like, I feel like this is what mtmh is gesturing towards with the divide between hologram tiktoks and Real TV but it feels sooo telling that baker decides to replace palahniuk's focus on real sensation to one about....watching better tv

I don't want to get too in the paint of defending chuck palahniuk here because I am on record as hating that bastard (and I do. even if I do like the book rant for the most part. it's complicated) but rant is at least a book About something. rant is a book about feeling everything you can and defining who you want to be when other people have already made up their minds about what you'll be and also the AIDS crisis. house of leaves is a book about love and grief and obsession and rampant un-checked obsessive-compulsive disorder.

so what's mary tyler moorehawk about? that's easy: comics! sort of.

at least, it wants to be about comics. mtmh is trying to weave you a tale about how discovering the right piece of media at the right time in your life can Change you and make you realize how wonderful art can be. problem number one with this is that in mtmh the medium that touches people is a tv show, not a comic, but we'll come back to that. problem number two is that this revelation doesn't Do anything for these people except teaching them that they like art now. nobody except genius auteur dave baker attempts to actually Fix anything about their situations or society, and a constant throughline in this is is that fictional people are better than real ones.

I just think that's really sad? that's really sad. in the end of the book dave baker the journalist takes back his own findings and dave baker the comic genius' loose pages back in time to deliver them to our world dave baker, who is apparently the younger self of the coolest guy who ever lived. (I found This whole plot weirdly derivative of the scott pilgrim anime but what's another one here, right?) dave baker the genius tells dave baker the journalist (these ones are actually different guys) that he needs to make sure mtmh gets published as a comic, not as a highly corporate work to get butchered, and to foster a future where art and artists by extension are protected by society.

well that's all well and good, but what does art Provide in this universe, exactly? mostly, it seems like the primary functions are escapism and validation, the two most toothless things anything can provide. in the face of this horrible dystopia we must endeavor to Feel Better About Ourselves In A Way That Makes Us Feel OK About Avoiding Other People. great, awesome

I know I'm avoiding talking about the comics thing once again, but let's circle back to what this dystopia actually is. oh god tumblr is eating my shit let's see if I can reconstitute this

so things are described as fascist and corporate in mtmh a lot but the actual things that happen—loss of private property for environmentalist reasons, a focus on communal experiences instead of private ones, the death of consumerism—feel pretty unambiguously leftist. it's not enough for me to call this comic right wing, but it IS enough for me to call it centrist hand-wringing about how art won't be able to exist under communism. but whatever. this book is not really interested in making grand political statements.

so if there's no point in a better future, let's imagine a better past. finally, let's talk about mary tyler moorehawk's relationship with comics.

the climax of mtmh occurs when journalist dave baker finally tracks down auteur dave baker and discovers that mary tyler moorehawk—the beloved, deeply flawed, and obviously meddled-with tv show he dedicated his life to—was originally based on a much longer, infinitely more nuanced and elaborate series of comics.

this is the crowning achievement of this entire book. the world opens up under our protagonist and he learns to no longer be content with shadows and to walk out of Plato's cave. everything this book was trying to do crystallized for me at this moment, because of how much it mirrored my own entry into comics. for me, it was the feeling of discovering my favorite anime were based on manga. it was hearing that the guy behind invader zim also made comics. it was learning who jack kirby was and how hard he had to fight to make his art. it's the Core Thesis of not only this book but all of cartooning—that indie comics are a beautiful realm of possibility that are one of the few modes of expression that can exist completely divorced from corporate oversight and executive meddling. it's beautiful!

and it's maybe 3 pages out of this 250 page book?

I've been talking almost exclusively about the prose side of this book so far. the other half is the actual comic Mary Tyler MooreHawk, the one the show is based on.

it's a fun, cute pulpy adventure comic about a family of do-gooders repeatedly trying and failing to save the world.

it gets bleaker and bleaker as it goes along. where the prose half is potentially the more interesting half, I think the comic half is the more compelling one, where a recently aggrieved bunch of adventurers keep losing more and more but decide to pick up and keep trying anyway because it's all they can do.

the style is fun, both visually and in terms of genre. it's kind of a pastiche of all kinds of adventure comics from different decades and different countries, though this does mean it dips into some pretty racist tropes near the beginning.

it, like the prose, is much better on emotionality than politics. unfortunately for it, I think it gets bogged down in what the other half of the book is doing. it's a petty simple and compelling story but elevating it to being The One Story That Will Save The World shines a lot on a lot of its inadequacies, some of which I don't even think are actual inadequacies.

pinning the entire media revolution on what appears to be a flimsy children's serial is summoning my inner "read another book" guy and I don't even think it's a bad children's serial. I think if the prose part had talked up more about the parts of this comic that we don't get too actually see at all instead of presenting a small section of it like a mic drop it would've gone over better.

because at the end of the day, mtmh is just a pretty conventional comic. even in-universe it seems like the thing that was novel about it is that no one else was making comics. this kinda gets at my big picture problem with this whole book:

I have been talking about the structure and maneuvers of this narrative purely in comparison to prose novels.

part of this is on me. I could really easily compare the included sections of comics in this book to the black freighter sections from watchmen, for example. but that's not really the most interesting part of watchmen, is it?

I see in mtmh a deep and abiding desire to do something different with comics as a medium, or at the very least a desire to do something different and also showcase comics. but the problem with that is that it derives most of its big maneuvers from and expresses them through prose.

I found this comic because I was reading through reviews over on solrad the other day and found this one by elias rosner. I was getting annoyed about 1) this book being an obvious house of leaves pastiche and then not getting talked about by someone familiar with house of leaves, and 2) the assertion that this book was more about tv than comics when it seemed obvious to me from the premise that this a book about the way comics are devalued.

but the more I read of this thing the more apparent it became to me than while it has massive respect for comics as a cultural heirloom, it either doesn't know or doesn't care about the interesting structural and narrative maneuvers unique to comics and defaults to drawing from prose.

grant morrison has been churning out bizarre post-modern comics since the 80s. we live in a post-homestuck world. pick up a michael deforge comic. read even just a scott mccloud book on the possibilities of comics? read anything. read shoujo manga with brain-breaking panel setups. read webcomics interrogating what it means to be a comic. read abstract comics. read weird comics. comics comics COMICS! there's so many of them!! they're all so interesting and weird!!!! come on man!!!!

anyway. I think there's a part of me that really wants to like this book. in a lot of ways, I feel like I was the target audience. but I also think it had ambitions that were not at all matched by the level of skill and effort baker could put into it. idk. I've only ever read one other book by dave baker, everyone is tulip, which struck me as a solid but weirdly copyright-dodging retelling of real life musician poppy's real life abuse. maybe I'm just destined to always be frustrated by this guy.

#comic review #I guess is a tag I can have #tumblr has been fighting me on posting this all day

16 notes · View notes