#which isn’t entirely untrue I suppose

[elyfar]

Three eggs have arrived across the ocean from @pangur-and-grim’s shop!

[myuni-moon]

SAGAU: Reboot (part 2)

cw: violence

You’re not exactly sure where you went wrong, but you find yourself detained in the Knights of Favonius Headquarters. Perhaps it was the fact that you had no self-identification to show the guards that stopped you on your way in, or maybe it was your suspicious-looking behavior as you blurted out you had memory loss and stumbled into Mondstadt– which is not entirely untrue. Either way, the ending is getting chained to a chair in a dimly lit office with no way of explaining or protecting yourself.

You sigh, leaning back into your chair. The manacle around your wrist rubs against your skin, its chains clanging with your movement. Your current location is devoid of any windows, and you wouldn’t be able to tell if you were above or underground. The door is most definitely locked because you’d heard it click after you were left here. Furniture is also sparse; other than the one you’re currently occupying, only a metal table and another chair sit in front of you.

A candle is perched on the surface, illuminating your space enough for you to get the general idea that you are most probably in some kind of interrogation room. If you were to look under the table you are tied to, you’re sure you would see its legs bolted or nailed into the ground. Very characteristic of the cop movie you once stayed up to watch a few months back. Now that you think about it, you never really got to finish it. You passed out halfway in.

Just before the existential crisis of being locked up in the dark permeates your system, the door creaks open. The sound reminds you of the front door of your grandparents’ house– rickety yet unnerving. Your head snaps up in response. The silhouette of a man enters, and you silence a gasp threatening to escape your parted mouth.

The voice that accompanies it is mellow, deep and harmonic despite the annoyance in tone. “Look, it’s too early in the day for this. So do me a favor and just cooperate.”

Blue hair. Eyepatch. Pupils in the shape of a four-pointed star. Fluffy scarf.

You don’t know if you want to laugh or cry because Kaeya Alberich is standing in front of you with a scowl and irritation apparent in his voice. On one hand, this could very well be your salvation if you played your cards right. On another, Kaeya may just be one of the many characters you wish to never be with in this circumstance.

He doesn’t even bother to look at you, gaze scanning through a folder poised in his grasp. Kaeya just sits across from you in the once vacant seat, and you feel queasiness dance in your stomach.

“I am the Cavalry Captain of the Knights of Favonius. You are currently detained for suspicious behavior, according to reports.”

He sounds so monotone– uninterested and exasperated. It’s not at all like the Kaeya you’re used to seeing. Typically, he’s playful and sly which leans into the trickster role most players know him for. Just like everything you’ve experienced thus far, you’re stuck in a state of liminality. You’re teetering between the recognizable and the unknown.

It fills you with dread because you’re acutely aware that you have no understanding of the Kaeya before you.

“It says you entered Mondstadt this morning. When questioned for identification, you were unable to procure any documentation.” He raises a brow pointedly. “You claimed you had memory loss and came to the city for answers after seeing it from the forest you woke up in the northeast of the city– which would be the Whispering Woods. Is that all?”

You nervously blink, “Uh, yes?”

He throws the folder haphazardly onto the table. His actions are very unlike him. This Kaeya doesn’t seem to hide behind any carefree or cunning façade. He’s supposed to be somewhat refined, not at all openly aggressive. You expect him to play you like a fiddle, manipulate you into giving him the answers he wants behind coy smiles and faked enthusiasm. But he isn’t, and it’s making your skin crawl.

“I’m surprised they even put you up for interrogation,” he scoffs, “if it were me, you would’ve been killed on the spot.”

You freeze. “Excuse me?”

This is definitely not Kaeya. You tell yourself he mustn’t be. If he were, he wouldn’t actually hurt someone so suddenly. He didn’t even attack the traveler the first time they appeared, so why would he kill you out of the blue?

He clicks his tongue. “Don’t play dumb.”

Except you aren’t. You’re busy trying to reason out Kaeya’s shift in behavior.

He’s not supposed to be hostile– to a powerless civilian, at least. You have no way of protecting yourself, and you don’t have a vision or weapon. You pose no major threat, given you were easily detained; you don’t possess any valuable information that he could want either.

His earlier statement seemed personal, however. If it were up to him, you would’ve already been dead. He hasn’t done anything yet because something is stopping him, and he’s pissed about it.

You take a deep breath and decide to weigh your options. Your first option is to tell the entire truth about your understanding of the world you’ve found yourself in, and you’re not so sure what benefits that could give you. What you do know is that he could possibly take it as an excuse and send you to a worse fate than being sent to a video game.

The second option is, well, to play dumb. Answer all his questions while concealing the fact that you’re not from Teyvat. Truthful but not completely honest. Honestly, it’s your best bet. It’s the only choice you have that has an opportunity for a brighter outcome. You bite your lip, carefully picking the words about to come out of your mouth.

“I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

You meet his sharp gaze, and a fury burns behind his pupil. It takes a lot in you not to quiver when the chair from under him squeaks against the floor as he abruptly stands. Kaeya’s strides are slow, his heels clicking against the stone floor. He rounds the corner over to you; your heart drums with his every step.

When you look up at him, you find the devil standing in front of you. The space between you two is only an arm’s length. A bitter laugh escapes his lips. “Who do you think you’re kidding, huh?

“First, the traveler disappears without a trace. No one can contact them, not even that damn dragon.” What? “Then you show up within our walls, wearing their face. You have to know what you’re doing. Just what are you pests planning?” Whose face is he talking about? What does he mean by “pests?”

A burning pain spreads across your scalp, causing you to cry out. His hand has come to pull at your hair, forcing your head into an uncomfortable bend. Fear twists its way to your neck in the form of Kaeya’s palm pressing against your throat. Just a little more pressure and he could restrict your airflow completely.

“I don’t care if you’re involved with them or mocking us, I don’t think you’re leaving this room alive.”

[nekropsii]

Ok, don't get me wrong, i think your opinions/analysis have arguments, so you have reasons.

But i can't stop thinking, when you talk about fandom not interpreting things correctly, mostly dancestors, it feels like:

Fanon: i love the dancestors! They are all so nice!

You: aCTUALLY, they are all ASSHOLES, except mituna, latula, and porrim. The rest is crap and here is a long and detailed list with why:

And a the end of the list :but this is what makes them great as characters, because they have a narrative function to it!

Yep. And I stand by that. Firmly. What’s the problem here?

The Alpha Trolls - not the Dancestors, that’s literally every character in Homestuck - are largely not good people. Calling them nice is blatantly false and outright disregards almost every single scrap of text we are given. Mituna’s a good dude in a bad situation full of people he doesn’t really like, as is Damara. Latula’s literally never done anything wrong. Porrim’s just a regular person. Aranea’s pretty nice, and her actions during Game Over were a result of eternities of torment and desperation to be seen + heard, and is therefore not fully representative of her. Meenah’s cute, but a major fuckup that has committed some absolutely egregious crimes. That’s it, really.

The Alpha Trolls are Good Characters and (mostly) Bad People.

Are you maybe experiencing some kind of difficulty in understanding that there’s a difference between a character and a person? Because a fuck ton of people in fandom definitely do have that problem, for some reason.

A character is a plot device. It is a tool. Nothing more, nothing less. A person is a person. The difference between a bad person and a bad character is that a bad character isn’t fulfilling the role and function they are supposed to perform, and a bad person is just a shitty guy I do not want to be around. Conflating the two leads to bad analysis, and is also a primary contributor to apologetics, and all those god awful fanonizations that sand down every edge the character has until they’re pleasant people and totally unrecognizable. People think they have to like a character as a human being in order to like them as a character. Which is completely untrue, and is totally naïve to the fact that villains are popular for a reason.

A character can be a bad person and a good character - they fill their role and serve their purpose very well, but would absolutely suck to be around. Meenah, Vriska, Cronus, and Caliborn all fit under that label. This isn’t always a villain role, but it does tend to get taken up by villains. And anti-heroes, of course. Vriska is there, after all

A character can be a good person but a bad character - they’d be pleasant to talk to in real life, but they suck at fulfilling their narrative purpose. Just about every fanon version of a character is this. It’s more of a fanfiction thing than an actual real literature thing.

I am the biggest fan + defender of the Alpha Trolls you can find. The Alpha Trolls largely are not good people, but they serve their function very well. This is not a controversial statement because it is entirely true. Fanon is dogshit and totally wrong, 100% of the time. This is a hill I’m willing to die on because I’m literally just correct. There is not a scrap of text on this planet that you could procure to say Cronus Ampora is a good person - anything you could scrounge up is just baseless fanfiction and total garbage.

I do not see the confusion, nor do I understand the point you’re trying to make. These are facts that can and do coexist, quite regularly. Even within Homestuck. Again, Vriska exists. What now?

[dattuff]

Hi, I see that you ship Mileven, that's really cool! I've also seen that you've made quite a few anti-Byler posts, which is also totally fine. But I have noticed in many of those posts that you seem to believe Bylers don't have substantial evidence for their claims, which is untrue. Byler shippers are actually quite skilled in areas of media literacy and analysis, which is how we've collected so much proof. If you're interested in hearing what legitimate arguments Byler shippers have, I'd suggest checking out this huge list of evidence:

https://www.reddit.com/r/byler/s/RNOLvEEGcR

It currently has 180+ links, so I don't expect you to look at all of them, but even just a handful may equip you to at least argue against Byler better because you will be aware of what we actually believe. :)

Ok I read through some of them and this what I noticed.

^ mike was surprised because up until that point they’ve never said I love you to each other. The entire season he was trying to get the courage to say it, eleven picked up on it.

^ No evidence in mike lying whatsoever. As an audience where supposed to have an outside look and know a character is lying.

With eleven we seen her before mike arrive and after how she lied abt how she was doing.

For will in ep1 eleven states she doesn’t know who will is painting for at all, then in the van will says she does.

For Mike tho there’s nothing that indicates he isn’t interested in eleven. From the fact each season ends with them, they never have broken up/split up on their own terms. And in s4 he puts eleven basically over everything.

^The party didn’t really lose tho. Them losing would’ve been max and eleven dying. We know elevens strength is determined by love instead of hate like 001. If it truly didn’t work bc it was untrue she wouldn’t have been able to break free.

^This is already explained within the show itself. He doesn’t want to overstep bc he feels he’s not good enough for eleven and she’s gonna realize that and break up with him. He feels like he got lucky of finding eleven and she just stuck with Mike bc he found her first. He just doesn’t want to mess his first relationship up. Remember he’s 14.

^This is where I stopped bc this is so much of a reach it’s crazy. Mikes statement in itself says that if he expresses how he feels he thinks eleven will not feel the same. Aka leaving mike after him being at his most vulnerable. Him not outright say he needs her does NOT speak volumes bc of the fact of the entire season we see how much mike wants and needs her. Pretty much every arc mike has had shows how much he cares for and loves eleven. It’s subtext if it’s byler but for mileven if it’s not explicitly said then it’s not there? Very convenient

[quibbs126]

Well I haven’t made one of these in a while, but it seems like we’re back to it

*sigh* okay, so basically, here’s what’s going on with my life right now

So I finished up my current semester of college this week. I was on academic probation this semester due to my poor grades the semester before, and to fix this, I needed to: get my GPA up above a 2.0 once more, take a mandatory workshop during the semester, and have at least one meeting with my academic advisor throughout the semester. Once I did all that, or at least finished all the meetings, I would have my hold of my account removed and I could register for my next semester’s classes

But here’s the thing. I did the first two, I’ve gotten pretty good grades this semester, As and Bs in my classes (even if grades aren’t finalized yet, I highly doubt that it’ll change from that from when I saw them before finals). But I never met with my academic advisor throughout the entire semester. So I still have that hold on my account. And the semester’s over, so I don’t know what that means for me going forward

I tried looking for what would happen if I miss those meetings, and right now I’m not sure, but what I do know is “failure to meet the requirements of academic probation can result in suspension or dismissal from the university”. And so now I’m terrified that because I missed those meetings, I won’t be able to return next semester

But specifically what makes it so bad is that I had fully intended to come back next semester, I was not preparing for not being able to go back this semester. And worst of all, I told my parents that I had everything sorted out for next semester when they picked me up a couple days ago, I just had a hold on my registration because I hadn’t met with my advisor yet. Which isn’t untrue, but what I failed to mention to them is that I was supposed to do these meetings during the semester, not after, and that I was required to do them. So if I were to tell them the truth, they’d know I’d have lied to them

I know for a fact that the worst thing I do in their eyes is when I have a problem, but then I hide it from them and lie to them about it, saying everything’s fine when it isn’t, and only revealing the truth at the last second, meaning they have to scramble to try and get everything fixed. This is literally the main problem I had with them the last semester and two, and why my last couple days of summer felt horrible because I hadn’t applied for my loan this last semester yet and I had found out that day when they asked that the place I had been getting loans from was no longer doing them

It was supposed to be different this semester, I was supposed to not fuck it up. And yet I’m doing the same thing I did before, I haven’t learned my lesson at all. And when they find out, they won’t let me go back, I’m sure of it. They didn’t really want me going back to college this semester either, because of all that had happened prior, so this new wrench in everything might just be what makes them fully say I’m not going back

And by the way, not a lot of this is hyperbole, at least not that last paragraph. A number of these things they did say to me. They’ve said verbatim that the problem is that I lie and hide things, and that I do it over and over again. I’m not just making stuff up, I know it’s what they’d say because they have before

I want to go back, I like it there. My best friend goes there, and quite frankly, I feel like I need her in my life more than anyone else. And I may not talk to a lot of people, at least not as much as I should, but I enjoy being around other people and at least getting the chance to talk to them. I like taking walks around campus, I like being able to go to the store and buy whatever I want whenever I want. I like being a person here and not stuck in my room, stuck with the same three people and basically only doing things when I’m told I have to. I just can’t take online school, I go mad now staying 4 months here in the summer

And what makes it even worse is that this whole situation was so avoidable. It really would have been no problem to just schedule appointments with my advisor, it would be so easy. The other things were probably the more difficult things to accomplish in all honesty. But I genuinely forgot about them until Thanksgiving, and I just couldn’t be bothered after that, because the entire semester whenever I did remember it, I thought, “I’ll have time to make that appointment eventually”, up until now when I don’t. It’s all my fault this is happening because I was so lazy I never bothered to do it. There’s no one to blame but myself for all this

I sent an e-mail to the account I think I’m supposed to send it to about my probation, explaining the issue of missing my meetings. They don’t respond on weekends, so I have to wait until Monday to get a response because I sent that email at 11 PM on Friday. So I’ve at least started to work it out

And a part of me recognizes that maybe I’m just overblowing things in my head; again, this was probably the least important thing I needed to do, especially since we were supposed to meet with our advisors to work on improving our grades, and I’ve done that all on my own this semester. So maybe it really won’t be that bad, and everything will work out

But I’m terrified it won’t, that I’ll have thrown everything down the drain for something so small, and that I’ll be found out and have to deal with last summer all over again. It was supposed to be different this break, I could finally rest from everything, and literally my own mistakes have brought it all down

I feel like it’s been eating me alive these past two days, especially at night when my brain thinks more about it. But I can’t tell anyone, since my brother won’t really understand, and I’ve already listed why I can’t tell my parents. And it just makes it worse, because I have to be alone in this lie. There’s no one to tell, to assure me things will be fine, there’s only me. Which is probably why I’m posting it here, at least you people aren’t part of my real life to make me feel worse

I don’t know if I can keep it up for another day or two. My dad hasn’t come and asked me about the situation today, but I feel like he will tomorrow, especially if we go out tomorrow, which I assume will happen since we didn’t today. And by the way, I’m a pretty bad liar and I crack under pressure, so “keeping it up” means literally avoiding my parents whenever possible. I have the trick of staying under my blanket when they come over to my door, because I’ve somehow confused them into believing I was asleep/taking a nap, but I won’t always be listening in and prepared to use it at a moment’s notice, they can creep up on me. Or again, if we go out, it will be something my dad asks about. My parents don’t really like to ask me about normal non school/stress related things unless they think I’m in the clear. Which at this point is less frequent and they already have something to question me on. And I know I’ll just bury myself further and get them more mad if things don’t work out, but I can’t take them being mad at me either and causing them more problems, especially since I’ve already been lying about the situation, just not as much as I would be if I lie tomorrow as well

Why did I have to do this, why do I have to be such a horrible person? Why couldn’t I have just done this before, there would be no problem otherwise

[bi-naesala]

Dismas and lovers

17. Vestal

That Junia, Dismas doesn’t understand her at all: one moment she’ll accuse him of being the devil trying to make her give in temptation, then the other she’ll flirt with him, getting awfully close in a way that makes her seem possessed despite the fact that she isn’t – he knows it for a fact, since he asked Alhazred to check for any demonic entities that she might be carrying within, but found nothing.

He’s trying to be understanding, but the situation is getting out of hand. It’s like there are two personalities inhabiting the same body, which leaves him confused and always on edge, having to overthink every gesture he directs her way, even the most innocuous one.

At first, he found this behavior amusing: she has obviously led a sheltered life with no lack of comforts, unlike him, who is well acquainted with the worst life can offer. Witnessing her having to come face to face with reality, now that she is on her own, is bringing him a wicked sense of vindication, like she’s been the true reason of everything that has ever gone wrong for him, but enough is enough: they’re in this together, fighting against things that none of them fully understand; there shouldn’t be place for doubt or friction between them, if they want to survive.

The only problem is that it’s hard to catch her alone, a bit because she’s often in company of her other fellow religious fools – the crusader, in particular, seems to go along with her splendidly – but also because she’s very adept at finding excuses to run away from him the moment they are alone, always muttering something about how she won’t fall for his tricks, or something akin to that. He doesn’t want to corner her – it would make him feel like an animal – but he supposes he has no choice, if he wants to clear this up once and for all. His sanity is at play, after all.

It feels like centuries have passed since the last time he set foot inside a church. He’s never been a great believer, but this is an emergency, so he only slightly hesitates before stepping inside.

He’ll never understand how people can feel safe in such a dark and creepy place, but he quickly discards this thought in favor on focusing on the task at hand – there’s no point pondering about things he has no actual interest in.

From what he’s gathered, Junia spends most of her time in the church at the confessional, offering her services in order to compensate for the lack of staff – who would even want to bear the weight of having to run a church in a place like this – which means that at least he’ll be able to talk to her in relative privacy.

Where is she? After all, this church might be small, but is plenty furnished – while outside, people die on the streets – though giving their pitiful state of disrepair, and the fact that not so many people attend church nowadays, it’s easy to assume that she has to be inside the one that looks less likely to fall apart at any given moment. He steps towards it then kneels to its side, just like a regular penitent would, knees screaming in protest for his decision – another sign of the fact that he’s getting old that he will ignore, in favor of considering himself still young enough to be able to kneel somewhere without having to feel it for the rest of the day.

His intuition is correct, as he soon hears a familiar voice. “Child of the Light, welcome. What afflicts you today?”

“We need to talk,” is all Dismas says. He hears a gasp and some shuffling, thus he prepares himself to run after her in case she tries to escape, but no attempt is made.

“You… devil!” she whispers however, making no effort to hide the disdain in her voice despite the low tone – she mustn’t want anyone one else hearing her. “You ambush me, in this sacred place!”

“Only because you kept running away when I tried to approach you,” he retorts. He already has a reputation for being a thief and an overall scoundrel – which isn’t entirely untrue – but even he has standards. “And now I can finally ask: what is wrong with you?” He adopts her same hushed tone, not wanting to cause a scene. There aren’t many people around, but with how fast rumors spread in this kind of town, he’d rather be prudent.

“What is wrong with… What is wrong with you?” She sounds so offended it would almost be funny, if Dismas hadn’t been directly involved. She immediately starts with her usual rants about him tempting her, being a devil, and other unflattering things that Dismas has heard over and over again. It’s time to put an end to this.

“I’m telling you, this is all in your head,” he says, finally. “I’m not even that interested in you!”

His words manage to shut Junia up, but her silence grows longer and longer, which begins to worry Dismas – he didn’t think it would hurt her that badly, in his defense.

He nervously looks around, but nothing has changed since he first stepped inside. He doubts the old decrepit lady praying all alone might help him in this situation; maybe he should call for someone else, a nurse more likely, but he wants to make sure that there’s an actual need for that. “Priestess, are you alright?” he whispers, receiving however no response, which certainly doesn’t help him feel more calm about the situation.

He doubts what he’s about to do is allowed, but he has no other choice; he gets up, knees protesting once again just as predicted, and walks around the confessional, until he’s face to face with the door, then he lightly knocks on it. “Junia, are you still in there?”

Still no response. Not knowing what else to do, Dismas opens the door, only to be dragged inside, before Junia slams the door shut once again.

“You are mad!” he shouts, uncaring of who might hear them this time, but he’s soon silenced by Junia pressing her lips against his own with an insistence that he would’ve never guessed her capable of. As ashamed as he’d be, admitting it to anyone, any kind of reluctance he might’ve felt about this quickly vanishes – he’ll blame the long years spent in solitude for it – and he lets himself go.

When she pulls away, he almost follows her, trying to chase her lips once more, but manages to come to a stop before making a fool of himself – not that standing there, too stunned for words, makes him look any better, but at least he isn’t saying anything that would make the situation worse.

For a moment, she mimics him, a determined shine in her eyes. “I’ll show you not interested,” she grumbles, then, before dragging him close once again.

When they get out of the confessional, it’s so late that nobody’s around anymore, which works in their favor because they can – on unsteady legs – make their way back to the barracks without anyone suspecting anything.

That has been a surprising turn of events, Dismas won’t deny it, but he can’t say he’s displeased about the results. Both he and Junia were in desperate need of a partner, a companion, though at least he doesn’t need to make up stories to justify it; he still doesn’t like that, but Junia has certainly made up for it with her enthusiasm, to the point that he might be able to bear having to play the part of the tempting devil if it means they get to repeat what has happened inside the confessional, and there will be at least a second time, given the way her eyes linger on his figure as he makes his way to his room. Even as he turns towards her, before stepping inside, she keeps her gaze on him; she even takes a step to reach him, but thinks better of it and she goes the other way, to her room, but until she disappears from his view, she keeps turning around to look at him, over and over again.

She will be back, he’s sure of it.

[caulfect]

RULE UPDATE + a quick explanation ,

please check out the new rule in my pinned! and if you’re interested in a quick rundown of why that’s been added, see the below contents.

though to set the record straight : no, nobody here is obsessed with him. he shows up in the main lis tags because he actively posts there, and it’s entirely understandable why people who don’t want to engage with him would want his new urls to block. nobody is stalking his posts and i’m not apart of @vinhlang’s supposed posse, i’m their fiance. personally, i think that if you’re bothered by an entire rpc that’s comprised of small accounts who have done nothing but openly support each other then that speaks more volumes about you as a person than three plus people. nobody here hated sunny. nobody sent him anon hate. and while not everyone adhered to his takes, nobody had to, which is what he fails to get. rp is all about meeting in the middle especially when you’re writing with people from the same fandom. there are many portrayals i don’t necessarily ‘agree’ with and i get over that because a.) i have my own portrayals for a reason, and b.) nobody here should be expected to follow my every whim when people range from canon compliant to heavily canon divergent. us supporting sunny’s metas and then having our own thoughts on the matter wasn’t shady, it was natural, and while i truly don’t care about what he does anymore i’m not going to let him say factually untrue shit about everyone else here.

pan’s issues with sunny were pan’s issues. pan never tried convincing me that sunny was ‘evil’ and i knew about their past well before i followed sunny and they followed me back. my partner’s issues from five years ago aren’t mine and the only reason my views changed on the matter was due to behavior going on in front of me and behind the scenes with other mutuals. despite what some believe, i’m extremely smart and capable of thinking for myself! also nobody here has ever been ‘inappropriate’ and it’s worth noting that since sunny’s own self imposed exile, there’s been no drama whatsoever and no supposed ‘vaguing’ on dash like he claims there was ( a thing he also did and engaged with, which he generously called ‘reacting’ instead )

anyway, this is done! if anyone wants evidence or details or my more personal account of the story, then mutuals are welcome to ask. i won’t talk about this publicly any further because this really just boils down to ‘internet drama that easily could be solved if the participants cared to solve it’ … sunny is not a dangerous person and this isn’t a callout, but if you’re going to lie and have my mutuals tell me about it, then i have every right to post this quick thing and wash my hands of it. my partner isn’t some mastermind and i’d suggest leaving them alone when they had nothing to do with the fallout, outside of seeing it from the sidelines. thank you!

[ghelgheli]

Genuinely confused what you are talking about. The “majority of us” was not hidden, it was very intentional. There will always be people out there who use “transandrophobia” in shitty, untrue ways the same way there will always be people who use “transmisogyny” in shitty, untrue ways (including ones Serano has addressed). “Transandrophobia” isn’t even a unified theory so much as what unites a bunch of transmascs asking to be heard and taken seriously. But I haven’t seen a single person use it to say the transphobia we experience is completely disconnected from transmisogyny entirely in the past year I’ve been engaging in the subject. Of course the two are interconnected. We only take offense at the idea that transandrophobia is *entirely* misdirected transmisogyny. I feel that anyone can talk over anyone identities aside, so I’m not sure what you’re taking issue with there. It’s not clever, it’s just what seems to be happening to me.

it's interesting that the "majority" of transmascs are alleged to endorse transandrophobia-language (which majority? this is what i meant by hidden. where are they? this would make for an even grimmer world, by the way) and yet only a minority of these are doing so in "shitty, untrue ways". the pie chart gets to shift its proportions as is convenient, when even brief experience (which apparently you are not talking over, but i am) makes clear the investment that the transandrophobia-"bunch" has in transmisogyny. this is a commitment not to being heard, but to grounding their experiences in essentialist claims that their oppression is unique by dint of biological fact

it isn't sufficient to acknowledge that anti-transmasculinity and transmisogyny are "interconnected": as the article i linked argues, the former is a trojan horse for smuggling in the latter. serano's understanding of transmisogyny, as i have pointed out at length, is limited at best, and i am unconvinced that the specter of "shitty, untrue" usages of transmisogyny represents any systemic harm against transmascs in particular; this, of course, is unlike transandrophobia rhetoric which is leveraged against tma people here on the daily. either transandrophobia is a framework with specific and precise claims that get to be evaluated on their own terms, in which case these claims typically amount to afab wombyn-ism about experiences that are supposed to be unique because of ostensible biological truths that only apply to ppl who were afab; or it is "what unites a bunch of transmascs asking to be heard and taken seriously", in which case it is the manner of this bunch's engagement that must be evaluated—and this, unambiguously, has been engagement that derogates tma people and is uninterested in addressing transmisogyny, while constantly visiting empty accusations upon their inboxes.

[thislittlekumquat]

I mean, you can scientifically prove live exists because it’s a chemical reaction that happens in the brain

Now I agree things don’t need to happen in physical reality to have canine, all of morality is something humans made up

But the problem is basing that morality on patently untrue things like a god, or claiming morality is in some way unchanging because it comes from a Devine source is, at best, unproductive

As for the “you can’t disprove his” claim? Tgat kinda depends which god

Can I prove absolutely no god of any kind can possibly exist? No, because the definition of “god” can be so vague as to be as you said unprovable

But a specific god if interpretation of god? I can disprove that

Let’s say as an example a Norse pagan believes thunder is caused by Thor’s mighty hammer smashing against his enemies, I can very easily prove the scientific processes that cause thunder and lightning do not involve a magic hammer and exist entirely without Thor

One could still argue a version of Thor exists, one that has no control over lightning whatsoever. Or that Thor is actually just a metaphor if some kind. But at that point it’s basically a completely different god then the one stated to exist at the start of thus hypothetical

Same goes for the Christian god, sure, I can’t prove “a” god doesn’t exist, but I can prove Noah’s arc didn’t happen, I can point out Adam and Eve weren’t real and that humans evolved via natural processes, etc, and that like 99% of what the supposed god is said to have done in his book didn’t fucking happen. And if you believe that’s all just a metaphor why are people worshipping and preying to a metaphor? I find moral value and guidance in the works of Terry pratchet but I don’t fucking prey to granny weatherwax or claim she’s real

Just like I can prove the earth isn’t flat.

And the more we learn about the universe, the more useless and irrelevant even a theoretical god becomes. Even if one DOES exist he doesn’t do shit, even the “feelings in our heart” are just chemical reactions in the brain.

Was the OP you mentioned being far too mean and purposefully edgy? Absolutely, and ableist to boot, doesn’t mean anyone should have to pretend untrue things are true.

[variousqueerthings]

Personally, I think that's a hell of a bird.

Heaven Sent! (we'll do Hell Bent separately!) it's an episode! that is going to be difficult to talk about! because yes it is good, but I am. I have mixed feelings about it, because I think parts of it rest on everything leading to this point and as we know, looking back at M*ffat's era, everything Did Not lead us to this point. however, if we pretend that it did and do some creative reading of narrative, that is how we'll try to engage with this story

luckily I have a system! otherwise this would become totally incomprehensible (although, this could still happen... watch out)

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 10/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored, or given agency to her emotional interiority): 1/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 7/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 5/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 5/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 9/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 8/10

isn’t trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 10/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 6/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 6/10

FULL RATING: 67/100 (if I can count….)

according to this rating's system this episode is worse than Face The Raven, which is patently untrue on a quality level, but we're looking at some very Specific criteria, so what canya do

OBJECTIFICATION: Clara is a figment of the Doctor's hallucination and he's not weird about her. I mean, also why would he be, because this Doctor has not been categorised as a lech (I have a theory that it was very much Capaldi's influence that lead to lechery going down basically 100% by this point -- I mean, he did say he didn't want to have any will-they-won't-they with JLC because she's just way younger than he is, and that is incredibly fair, if kind of funny, because of course, regardless of the age of the actor, the Doctor-as-character is usually always much much older than all the Companions. BUT THAT ASIDE LECHERY IS OUT! SCHOOLTEACHER COMPANION IS IN!)

PLOT-POINT: that being said... I know Clara is "dead," and that this episode isn't about her in the slightest, but I get this feeling... you know that one Twitter thread that comes around on this site sometimes about someone who was at a funeral and the dead woman's husband gave eulogy and spoke entirely about himself/what his wife gave to him, and not a single thing about who she was as a person. that's... that sums up Clara to me, and this episode really hammers it home

the Doctor is out for revenge for Clara, but this episode gives us a Doctor who's so sad she's dead, and yet not a single thing in this episode explores that particular sadness. Instead, that sadness is a catalyst for an exploration of the Doctor, with Clara's ghost doing exactly the same as Clara did throughout her run as his Companion -- asking him questions that only he had the answers to. Clara is dead, and yet this barely feels different to her presence, in *spins the wheel* under the lake/before the flood or idk, the caretaker or listen

and the thing is, that Clara wasn't originally categorised like this, and there are still episodes where she has emotional reactions to things (cold war my beloved), it's something that I think actually got worse throughout her run, rather than better, which is a shame, because for the most part everything generally was getting better throughout Twelve's era

COMPLEXITY: this is both quite simple and quite complicated, but it's complicatedness comes from things around the episode, rather than the format of the episode itself, so. divide it into two

in the episode itself, the Doctor wakes up in a transporter, explores a weird cog-like castle, eventually discovers that there's a massive wall of stuff that'd take, ooh 4 billion or so years to punch through that could be the escape, and proceeds to punch, while a mysterious creature stalks him, kills him, and he manages to send himself back through the transporter to start again

this is super cool and brings up a bunch of questions about various things -- the nature of life and linear time (after all, the Doctor doesn't remember being killed over and over and over again, but also kind of lives for 4 billion years), the Doctor's relationship to dumb, stubborn perseverance in the face of complete hopelessness, but also to avoiding their own pain by continuing on and on and on, there's the oddness of the castle itself and the creature within it which is surprisingly toned down for a M*ffat-written thing, allowing Capaldi to take the centre without distractions, and then there's also the Doctor's monologue, because this is almost entirely Peter Capaldi, and so a neat little insight into ways the Doctor interacts with situations

there's even stuff that I usually dislike with M*ffat that I enjoy here -- the idea of monologuing genius who does some seemingly random shit that turns out to be Very Clever And Necessary is such a M*ffat hallmark, but in this one it works because the Doctor is working through problems with themself. yes, one could say there's a meta-look-at-me-I'm-so-clever element to it, since there is an audience (us) but because there's no internal audience, we get to see how this technique functions not to show off, but to do a multitude of things, like stave off fear in a tense situation, make a distraction, resist loneliness, simply help the Doctor understand a situation by verbalising it, etc

so yes, woo to this plot, woo especially to Peter Capaldi and to Murray Gold for supporting the narrative so well, the music really is part of what Makes this episode

2. the second, wider plot concerns itself with "why is the Doctor here," "what is this place," who set in motion the events that killed Clara," "who the fuck cares about the Hybrid plot" (pedantic, I apologise), "what is the Hybrid," things along those lines. they are. technically important questions. and some of them are well-answered -- what is this place? it's the Confession Dial, and the Doctor got stuck in there by being teleported from the end of the last episode (genuinely had forgotten until I reread the transcript of Face The Raven, woops, but we remembered again!) and the people who hired Me, as it turns out, are Gallifreyans, because at the end of the episode, the Doctor returns to Gallifrey

and that... is next episode fuckery, but I will say that I did scratch my head about it at the end of this one. how'd they hire Me from wherever the Time Lords are stuck? did we miss an episode that explained that actually the Doctor did find the Time Lords?

for that matter, there's this short before the season starts where the Doctor is chatting with The Sisterhood Of Karn, and we last saw them back in s7 in the Eighth Doctor short -- they're the ones that made the War Doctor. And they turn up in the first episode of this season as well, and again, I'm like. wait did I miss something here?

I think that this season has a lot of that for me, there's a lot of questions I have that I will make a separate post on. things that may very well have been properly built up and explained and I just missed, but genuinely at the moment I'm going... huh?

and for this purpose, end of this episode, it's... wait how'd you just get back to Gallifrey??? I thought you were still looking for it, how'd the Confession Dial get there?

while the s5-7 arc certainly had a lot of things that went "eh trust me, this'll aaaaall lead somewhere" and then... I mean, kinda did but badly and last-minute, s8 didn't really lead into the events of s9, so the whole Hybrid and Confession Dial was this season's... mystery I guess? except idk why it suddenly matters, why did Davros bring it up?

maybe I need to rewatch that episode. but also seriously where did Gallifrey come from???

I also question the plan to put the Doctor in there -- so he's in there in order to interrogate him on the Hybrid but... is that.... really the best way to do that??? I don't think that makes a whole lotta sense unless I missed something there as well. I mean, this creature kills the Doctor, it doesn't really set out to torture for information, even though the Doctor interprets it as such. the intent is lacking in logic I think

point is, if we ignore the wider plot happening around Heaven Sent, it's thematically strong. ignore why the Doctor is there and the episodes around it for a second, have a good time (well, the Doctor isn't having a good time!)

also wtf was with that creature in there. I mean, it was cool and all and it made the plot go, but... why was it there again? maybe I'll add that to my questions post

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: we learn bits and bobs about the Doctor in this one, like for example that they didn't run from Gallifrey because they were bored but because they were "scared" (which I'm sure surprised nobody, but the point is hearing the Doctor admit it outright -- therapy under pain of death, literally), and generally that they're afraid of dying

technically this episode is the least lore and plot heavy of the three at the end, when you think about it. it's very much there to make you read into the Doctor, because there's no one else there

I think. if there was one thing. I would have really really wanted from it, in terms of this point. it's an understanding of why the Doctor was travelling with Clara, beyond "she's my friend." I feel like on sooome level I can suss out why Clara travels with the Doctor (she is emotionally all over the damn place and seeking those thrills without thinking about consequences), but I never did understand the Doctor travelling with Clara in s9. it feels like they're together in that season because... well, they were together before. and there's this "duty of care" line that comes up a few times this season, which is kind of a new one from the Doctor at Clara, considering their last two seasons together, and I kind of wish there'd been a bit on that

I get it, this is an episode All About The Doctor, but it's set nearly immediately after Clara dies. even as the Doctor is essentially resurrected over and over again for billions of years, to them Clara died a few minutes ago every single time. there's something slightly jarring to me about making this relatively quiet, contemplative, philosophical episode all about the Doctor, with Clara functioning as a crutch to the Doctor's emotions and explorations... but she's dead. it goes back to what I was saying about the eulogy. this episode tells me nothing about Clara and the Doctor, other than that he's sad she's dead and she asked questions (but even then, these questions aren't actually being asked by Clara, he's just imagining it's her)

COMPANIONS MATTER: see I put this one at a five, because I acknowledge that the Companion doesn't always have to be there and that is true, AND although she's not there she does help out about as much as she usually does

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: I've scored this one quite highly, despite it literally being "all about the Doctor," but it's only "all about the Doctor" because it's the Doctor's Confession Dial -- the next episode may score somewhat lower on this point, because then we really do get a fair bit of Doctor is centre of all important events and we all just orbit around them, but in this case it is fair

and if we actually look at what the episode is saying about the Doctor, it really does follow a fallible, questioning person who needs time to figure out what's happening, and then is like "the answer is to really painfully punch for 4 billion years" which... yeah that tracks

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: this episode isn't very classic lore heavy. idk if it should be, considering it's about the Doctor, but it might have taken up too much space in a relatively stripped back character study. it does interact with the "ran away because I was bored" line which goes as far back as Two, so there is that less in-your-face reference, that also adds to the Doctor as we've gotten to know them in especially nu!who

“SEXINESS”: C U R E D of bad sexy talk (at least, until Husbands of River Song, but even that is shockingly parred back)

INTERNAL WORLD: we're in a Confession Dial, specifically the Doctors. maybe the Confession Dial should've gone up in lore, but I'm going for it as a world for now. the Doctor's confession dial is a turning castle with an endless ocean beyond it. I don't know if all Confession Dials are the same, or if it's just this one

I do actually have questions about how it's meant to work, because in the next episode (yes, cheating) the Doctor says it's meant to be this meditative, important process, and it was abused in order to "interrogate" them about the Hybrid, so is big clockwork creature always there? or is that a the Doctor must suffer special or???

idk what the consensus on the inside of the Confession Dial is. do we like this design? does it make sense for the Doctor? is it the Doctor's own mind that supplies the imagery? lot of questions I have there, add those to the question-pile

I like the Confession Dial as Vibes, but I don't know what the imagery of this place has to do with the Doctor as character, is basically my summary of this point

POLITICS: there's not really politics in this episode, which means.... let's look for the politics that's not in here. No, in many ways it doesn't need to be politically focused. it leaves us with the writing of female characters, which wasn't greaaaat but not technically the point eitherrrrr but also it Culminates in this one, so I do have to mention it on this particular point.

As a general, if there were political undertones in this episode, what do we think they could have been on? the ethics of Gallifreyan society prompting the Doctor to run away? the philosophical nature of the Doctor's tendency to run? ideas around trying despite it being all-but-hopeless as something one could relate to real-world causes? I'm spitballing, I'm not saying this episode needed that. I'm just musing

FULL RATING: 68/100 (if I can count….)

the more I think about this episode, the more questions arise -- most of them in connection with what happens next, but I do think it's flawed to not think about what happens next if one is trying to do a deeper dive into the story, as I'm doing. one can enjoy it as its own thing for its strong themes, Capaldi's acting, the music, the Vibes, but I do think it still suffers from aaaalmost every M*ffat limitation (minus the outright sexism) in that it sets up questions that will never be answered and goes more for Vibe than... idk what to call it, this is Doctor Who, but... realism? wider internal world consistency?

this is a good episode, and I think I'd enjoy it a heck of a lot more if it was a standalone, a la God Complex (which did some similar things to this episode, and personally is still my favourite of the M*ffat era), but all the questions keep bursting in

still, that's a hell of a bird (do we ever apply this story to Doctor Who gifsets/fanfics and the like? I'm sure we do, I just haven't engaged with Twelve-era much because this is only my second watch of it)

actually another question: why is it called heaven sent?

[loungemermaid]

Posting the newest chapter of The Loneliest Time because of the whole ao3 thing

Chapter Five: Fade Into You

Word count 3k, rated teen for dumb Katniss pining

Katniss pov

We are living together. There is (slightly) more touching. There is no sex. Nothing even really close to it, not since our deep kissing in the woods the other day. He keeps me quite literally at arms length. I may be wrapped in his arms or sprawled across his chest when we settle down for bed but by the time morning, lilac bright, streams in, he’s halfway across this absolute ocean of bed. Laying on his stomach, or back to me.

Maybe I’ve misunderstood, misinterpreted him. Maybe he’s less um, physical, that way. Maybe we will never have sex. Which is fine. It’s just unexpected. Kisses he takes and gives freely. His arms are never too far away, if I need to be tangled up in them. He sweeps me up and sets me on his lap often, but if my hands start to roam or linger, he catches them and holds them to his chest. His own (big, strong, delicate) hands are never not firmly on my arms or my waist, as far away from my breasts or my hips as he can get. Maybe he’s just as uneasy with all these things as I am. I appreciate the space but I. I notice other couples. I notice other mens’ hands, caresses, shrieked giggles from other women. I remember things my parents did. I want that. And I might be very sad if it isn’t ever like that.

I take to writing all my desires in a notebook. When he asks I tell him it’s journaling. Private. Things about the Games, things that haunt me in dreams. Which is not altogether untrue. His chest, the tiny flashes of hip, his thighs do haunt my dreams. They too send a thrill down my spine. Just for entirely different reasons. Mmm. The broad expanse of his back.

There are other things I imagine. Things I have to create out of wholecloth, because I’ve never seen them. Peeta’s coloring is all in one theme; dawn. He is all white puffy clouds, golden beams of light, dusty pink, lilac. I wonder if the theme continues. If he’s rosy anywhere else other than his lips. If his heavy golden curls, bright as breaking light, blanket him anywhere else. The hair so thin on his arms and legs, and he’s never not wearing a shirt. I wonder how much is on his chest, if any. I don’t remember any in the Arena, but that’s been months. And Peeta’s grown since then.

He is impossibly more broad. The line of his jaw is sharper, his arms wider, his shoulders more square. I say impossible for two reasons. One: we have not been doing any exercise. Our walk the other day, our failed attempt at a picnic, has been the closest we’ve gotten. Unless he’s leaving the house and hauling bags of flour without telling me. Since he still needs his cane sometimes to balance, I doubt it. Not that he wouldn’t have the strength to, just not the footing.

The other reason is he’s still only sixteen. I don’t know when his birthday is (when I asked he only replied in summer, so I suppose I missed it this year) but it’s a young sixteen. I’m wracking my brain to remember if Rye or Soren were this big at his age, but I wasn’t particularly interested in the other Mellarks, so I don’t have either one of them memorized the way I have Peeta. Gale is still taller, but much thinner built. Up and down, as they say. Straight up and down. Peeta is shorter but he already looks like a man. Like the pen and watercolor illustrations of lumberjacks or blacksmiths you’d find in those types of books, the ones passed around the housewives of the Seam, with dogeared pages and underlined passages and plain covers. Prim always wanted to read them, she didn’t understand why she never could. Hazelle read them plenty, why didn’t we? My mother made some excuse when the question came up, which helped because it always left me stammering. I didn’t read them either, but I’d seen them left open a few times, felt my face burn clear to the next day at the lurid words inside. As I chew on my pen, waiting for Peeta to get out of the shower, I realize I might as well be writing my own plaincover novel. Not that anyone but me will ever see these words.

We’re preparing for Soren’s birthday party, and we’re avoiding family. Avoiding isn’t really right. Just…not inviting conflict. Soren is only a little less than a year older than Peeta, so this party won’t be very big, I’m told. Nothing like a nineteenth birthday party.

No matter which side of the tracks you’re on, that’s the one birthday everyone celebrates. Your birthday of aging out, of freedom, of cheating death. They can have a sort of dark theme to them. Lots of images of skulls and bones. Peeta tells me in Town there’s flowers that symbolize death and life, usually weaved together into a crown. Not unlike a Victor’s crown. When I was younger, I must have planned my Nineteenth half a dozen times. After my father died, I didn’t have the taste for it. And now I’ll never have one. Not really. Oh I’m sure I might have a get together, maybe even a cake or something, but it won’t be a Nineteenth. Neither will Peeta. We’ll have to plan something extra special for the others, then, for Soren’s and Prim’s.

Gale’s is, of course, sooner. But I don’t know where to go with that, how to navigate it. Today is Saturday. If things were normal, I’d be seeing him tomorrow. But I don’t know if he wants to see me after last week. I don’t know if I want to see him. I file it all in my brain to chew over later. Worrying about it right now won’t do, so I’ll just worry about it later. I tuck my diary under my pillow, set about redoing my hair. This braid didn’t quite turn out right.

Peeta opens the door, hair curling up, robe slightly damp at the collar, steam swirling all around him. He’s sighing deeply, nearly panting, and the sound is absolutely delicious, sending shivers down my spine. Sympathetic vibrations; sometimes when you sing at a glass, you can break it with just your voice. Peeta’s sighs can break me. His skin is flushed sunset pink, and he heaves another sigh(my heart vibrating along with it) as he collapses on the bed, fluttering his eyes closed and just breathing. “I’ll never get tired of havin’ unlimited hot water.” He pants out as he scrubs at his face again.

I am absolutely transfixed, frozen as if caught in hovercraft beam, just staring shamelessly. He’s completely covered, but just by that thin flannel. Flannel that’s sticking to his thighs and chest because of the water. The water that was so hot Peeta’s skin is still steaming from the contact, minutes later. He rolls his eyes over at me. “Um, Katniss.”

“Yeah?” My voice catches in my throat.

“I need to get dressed.”

“Uh huh.” I’m chewing my pen again.

“Katniss.”

“What?”

“Please leave the room so I can get dressed.”

“Oh!” I scramble for my journal and pen, which both fall out of my hands approximately five times. “Sorry!” I call as I run down the stairs. What had come over me?

The walk down to the party is, well. Excruciating. My skin feels like static, everywhere, and I can’t look at Peeta. I can’t look at him because he’s wearing a navy blue shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves cuffed up. He’s using the cane today, sleek polished dark wood with a gold handle. The Capitol wouldn’t want anything less than pure elegance, even when it came to basic necessities like a mobility aid. His hair is perfectly touseled, having wriggled free of the gel from our walk. He tries once or twice to smooth it back but gives up shortly. “I need to cut it. It’s getting long.” He says with a chuckle, and it’s only then that I realize that I’ve not only been staring down the road, I’ve been doing it in pure silence.

“I like it. Long. But I also like it shorter. It’s your hair and you should do what you like with it. But I like it longer.”

That rambling, stuttering mess earns me another one of the increasingly common looks of absolute confusion he’s been giving me as of late. “Okay.”

I wince all the way to my toes and I have to shake it out of my fingertips, shake out that feeling. “Sorry. I. Sorry.” Another shudder hits me and I have to shake it out again, shake my head to clear it. I have to stare at my shoes to calm down, have to shove my hands in my pockets. It’s a pretty dress, what I’m wearing. Orange and brown plaid, down to my knees with a full enough skirt to dance in. For once I’m also wearing enough underskirts with it, so it flows from my hips. The top is sleeveless, and quite revealing, so I’ve paired it with a thin cream turtleneck, along with stockings, of course. I think Cinna would be pretty proud, though he’d hate that I’m still wearing my boots with them. I can’t help it, I can’t walk in those pretty shoes he sent, not all the way to town and then go dancing after. These are about to give up the ghost. I’ll have to talk to Delly about some new ones. Again, I could have some top of the line, machine stitched boots from the Capitol, but these are my hunting boots. To hunt in boots from the Capitol would be like hunting in a sequin dress. Besides, it’s good to spend my money in town.

We walk near silently the rest of the way, and I can’t help but wonder what I did wrong.

The party is in some little patio, from some restaurant that went under before I was born. There ain’t many in town; there’s no need. No one has any money. Mostly they’re for the very few Capitol tourists that scurry around come Reaping Day. Not exactly enough to sustain a business. Every once in a while, someone might go to one to celebrate something, but even then, that’s Townie kids. So, when this one went under, apparently no one rushed to take its place, and it has, according to Peeta, become the official unofficial place for teenagers to get drunk and dance. Shortly after we arrived, a glass was placed into my hand, a glass I’m still nursing. I’ve been holding up this little corner of the brick wall for a while, watching as everyone flits about, the conversations overlapping and rushing like a waterfall, Rhett Galbraith’s fiddle barely able to keep up. My eyes keep flitting around, because surely this isn’t legal. In fact, I can think of about three reasons why it ain’t, but then again, if I can manage to pay off Cray with a few turkeys, I’m certain a few kids could scrounge up something to make the peacekeepers look the other way for a birthday party. I should relax, but I’ve never quite known how to do that, especially in a crowd, especially when I’m the only non blonde. Well, except for Rhett and the band, but they were probably hired to be here. I take another sip of my drink and wrinkle my nose. It is, by only the most generous of definitions, a fruit and honey wine, made by Pepper Brookshire from the fruit that doesn’t sell at the grocery. It tastes awful, but she’ll get there, probably. It’s only her third batch, and she is only seventeen after all. She might make a decent outlaw yet, once she learns to balance her spices. I’m just about to go up, talk to her, offer to forage for her when Peeta catches me again. “There you are. Been looking all over for you.”

I stuff my free hand in my pocket again, rock back and forth on my heels, resolutely staring at a spare bit of straw on the ground. “I’ve been here.” I say, and it sounds meaner than I meant. I try and soften. “Did you get to catch up with some of your friends?”

“Mm.” He takes a sip from the jam jar serving as his wine glass, tries to hide his distaste of it, and I can just about pick out his real thoughts then. That the distaste isn’t just Pepper’s melomel. It’s that none of these people have been by a single day since we got home. Not to chat, not to ask if Peeta wanted to hang out. I’ve occasionally been over to Madge’s, but not a soul has come over to visit Peeta. “A little. Been wanting to talk with Delly but she looks…busy tonight, so.” He flicks his eyes over to Delly and Soren, who are caught up in the most awkward kissing I’ve ever seen, and that’s counting the replays of my own kissing.

I bite back a laugh. “That’s. An interesting development.”

Peeta smiles. “Mmm-hmm. They uh, signed their contract earlier today, apparently. A two year engagement. They’ll be married the July Fifth after their Nineteenths. Guess they’re getting used to each other.”

“I always thought that-” and I stop myself from following that line of thinking, because the look Peeta tells me both confirms it anyway and tells me it’s best not spoken about. I take another sip. Right. I can’t help it though, so I try and ask discreetly. “So, they both are?” I whisper, and Peeta only nods, and only once. “Better that way, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely.” He whispers. “It. No. It’s much better this way.”

Technically, legally, no one is supposed to mind who marries who. We all have the freedom to marry who we choose, or not at all. But that doesn’t mean everyone is going to like your choices here. Whether that’s intermarriage between Town and Seam or same sex marriage. Delly might be alright, not a ton of Town families mind their daughters being lesbians. Saves on dowries, I suppose, and it’s built in childcare. A lot of townspeople send their children to stay with their lesbian aunts or neighbors before school(that’s actually how Peeta and Delly met. Peeta’s aunt Rooba married Sutton, a family friend of the Cartwrights, and they babysat them both for years). With boys it’s different. Maybe because they’re expected to carry on the family business, maybe because it’s seen as unmanly, whatever the reasons, it always causes a stir. Another reason I’m becoming more grateful I grew up in the Seam. You might get some old people saying it ain’t right, or that it’s a waste, but honestly it usually works well for gay couples in the Seam. It’s not uncommon for a gay couple and a lesbian couple to share households, pitch in everything together, save up money for their nieces and nephews, and not have to work nearly as hard as other young couples just starting out do. It’s something I’ve considered once or twice before, but I couldn’t do it. I don’t have the heart for it.

But the reason Peeta told me to hush wasn’t because of society at large, it was because of his mother. If she found out that her favorite son was gay…well. It wouldn’t end well. I wonder if she’d actually kill him. That’s happened before, once rumors started to spread about someone, next thing you know a “wild dog” had gotten out, or they’d died of “fever” or some other equally thinly veiled excuse that no one believes. For the Mellarks it’d be almost too easy. They have pigs. All it’d take is one good push while Soren was out feeding and that would be that. A tragic accident that no peacekeeper would ever think twice over. I shudder into my drink, look into Peeta’s eyes. Yeah. A lavender marriage would be best. I set my drink down, not really wanting to pretend to drink it, and maybe it’s because of the music, or the way the kerosene lamps make Peeta’s hair shine like gold, or maybe it’s the slight chill in the air, or the tree frogs and mockingjays singing in the distance, or maybe it’s just because I can’t stop thinking of how he looked out of the shower, but I stick my hand out. “I know it ain’t proper, me being the one to ask, but do you wanna dance?”

He blushes like sunrise, like the first gentle rays that peak out and burn the sky bright pink. “I think I can let that go, just this once. Yes, I’d love to dance.”

And we do. It’s not perfect. It’s probably not even very good. I only know fast dances and Peeta is still a little unsure of himself, a little unsteady. But it feels good. It feels like the parts that have been missing, it feels intimate and close, like more of our hearts are stitching together. I’m humming under my breath before I know it, this song I haven’t heard in years. It’s more Town than Seam; they prefer older songs usually. Classical music, songs before the Dark Days, before the Fall. It’s slow, repetitive, and I think it’s supposed to be a woman that sings it, but Rhett’s brother is doing a good enough job at it. I know people are looking, and I don’t care. I want so desperately to be closer to Peeta, for him to quit this pulling away, to stop all these chaste kisses and put his hands on me. To touch me. To stop holding back. I nuzzle my nose in his chest, breathing in the familiar scent and feel the warmth enrobe me in fondness. “Fade into you” I sing, my voice crackling like fireplace embers, because I want this moment to just be for us, but it’s not, because there’s people around. Always someone around, always people watching. But I can’t help it. If I don’t say(or sing, in this case) it I’ll go mad. “Strange you never knew.” And I’m begging. I’m begging he gets what I mean by that. I’m pleading with the universe that he feels what I’m trying to say, the things I don’t have words for. That I could just press all this emotion from my chest into his and he’d just know.

But he doesn’t. He drops my hands and runs off, and I don’t follow him. He leaves and I don’t follow him because I can’t stop the tears running down my face. He leaves and I run the other direction because I love him and for some reason, we can’t ever talk about that.

[zorilleerrant]

so Jason says this outright, and there’s every reason in the text to believe it because later writers take it and run with it, but the problem is that I think this was intended to be untrue within the story. Jason’s an unreliable narrator. (we know this and everyone writes him this way, which is definitely at least in part due to his inconsistency when he first reappears.)

what I think was actually intended, although it doesn’t play well with the text/art as published (due to inability to engage with emotions, probably) is that Jason feels conflicted about killing the Joker, and chalks this up to either not having a strong moral stance about killing, or feeling that this should outweigh that strong moral stance. but the conflict is actually just a strong (traumatic) emotional reaction to seeing this man over and over again.

because we see the Joker goading Jason, who has an extremely intensely violent reaction to it, which I think is supposed to simulate emotion, but doesn’t convey it in as much nuance as the writer probably intended. then we see it come to a head when Jason positions his own life against the Joker’s, which... doesn’t make sense from the stated standpoint of wanting Batman to kill the Joker for him.

if Jason wants the Joker dead, that has nothing to do with his own death; the exception to this would be if he’s too emotionally overwrought to live in a world that also contains the Joker. I really think this is meant to illustrate how afraid Jason is of him, how terrified he is of living in a world where he always has to look around every corner.

if he wants Batman to do it to prove his love, it makes no sense that it would be just as good (or second best) of an outcome for Batman to kill Jason, because he would still break his rule, but that doesn’t prove anything in any direction, it’s just confusing. for Jason to think of these two extremes as diametrically opposed outcomes, he would again have to be so afraid of the Joker that he thinks of living in a world where the Joker is still alive as a fate worse than death - and moreover, he would have to believe that Bruce also saw it that way and understood what that meant.

combined with Jason’s still remaining protective instincts, even towards people who personally mean nothing to him, it’s very inconsistent for him to make a decision about an objectively dangerous person for selfish reasons. he isn’t being selfish the rest of the time; he’s being pragmatic, or emotionally driven, or acting on instinct, or however you want to read it, but he isn’t pursuing any other goals to feed his bloodthirsty impulses.

so obviously the Joker is being treated as an exceptional case, it’s just that an exceptional case just because he feels like it doesn’t mesh with any of his stated goals, and it also seems at odds with his other actions and choices. taking over a criminal empire is entirely unnecessary to a confrontation between Batman and the Joker, and putting in extra effort to, say, make people not sell drugs to kids? also a distraction from the plan that takes up a lot of time and effort which could be used to pursue revenge

(obviously that’s a very complicated question with no clear answer, especially given how inconsistently Jason is written, and so people who want to read that as the exception to the rule, or that he’s just pretending to protect people so he’s allowed more leeway, or that he wants to feel good about himself so he can have an excuse to do violence without thinking he’s a bad person, all perfectly valid interpretations. I just don’t think most people are writing Jason as selfish or self-centered in that way.)

now, a lot of this is predicated on the fact that Jason can’t and shouldn’t expect Batman to kill people, so he must think of killing the Joker as one of the exceptional cases where there’s gray area. revenge is definitely not a gray area. however, protecting people, especially children (Jason, despite being older at this point, is definitely reliving his childhood here) who are directly in danger is a gray area, and expecting Batman to act in self-defense or defense of his children isn’t a bizarre and confusing assumption for Jason to make. but it requires him to have an attitude that’s never outright stated, and where the emotions aren’t explored enough to leave it clear, and so I think most writers took the more explicitly stated portions as more canon.

what I think Jason is meant to be pursuing in UtRH is instead the protection of Batman: that’s why it’s posited as a choice between killing the Joker and killing Jason. he needs Batman to do it - for personal satisfaction, he tells himself, because then he doesn’t have to think of himself as weak - because he can’t do it himself. he wants his dad to save him. he wants to give Batman a second chance to do what he failed to do the first time. the Joker wants Batman to put feelings above morals. Jason wants Batman to realize his feelings and morals are already in line with each other.

kicked out of the jason todd enjoyers meeting for the twenty-seventh time in a row after reminding everyone he intentionally avoided killing the joker multiple times because it wasn't personally satisfying enough

[shawty-writes-a-little]

Young love

Aemond Targaryen x betrothed!reader

Word count. 2.5k

Summary: Aemond pulls a harmful little prank on his wife to be but things don’t escalate well (PURE FLUFF)

Warnings: Idk made up horror stories? Slight cursing

An: this was supposed to be a Halloween blurb

—

Aemond had settled to the dinner parties over and over as one of his princely duties. Of which included a marrying a lady of a suitable house. He had been aware of that and wasn’t resistant at all to oblige when it came to fulfil it. Hence they say sat at the grand table for the celebration of joining of two houses, soon to commence marriage of y/n and Aemond. They had known each other for a while Aemond had rather some sentiments involved with those kind gestures and love y/n held for everyone and everything in her eyes. His feelings for y/n grew more than quite a lot. As the dinner table escalated more into the celebratory grounds it left only the two of them at the table. Y/n nervously fidgeted with the ends of her dress while Aemond was unaware what conversation to strike.

Normally it was so easy to start a conversation with y/n, she’d always listen she’d always have an input ever so welcoming and calm he had found that to be one of the very first things that made him develop feelings for her. “Pretty cold this evening isn’t it?” he started off catching her attention. Weather wasn’t the general centre of most their conversations but as it got tense full for Aemond to initiate a conversation he went with the most common one.

“Yes!” Y/n said turning her head slightly from her chair to face him “10th of the full moon! My old nan used to say it’s the month of the spirits.”

“Month of the spirits?”

“She used to say this time of the year is when the dead come to visit…the evil ones rather-she had all sorts of stories about them. She believed them to be true” y/n chuckled shifting in her seat “Can’t blame old nan for telling her marvellous storytelling can you?”

“I don’t entirely disagree with your old nan” Aemond reply with a smirk on his face as he took a sip from his wine cup. Obviously he didn’t believe them to be true like y/n but he had came across the information lady y/n was known for a few jests and pranks…why not then?

“You can’t possibly be serious” at first she laughed moving further in her seat to get a clear look of his face which had unchanged expressions. “Evil spirits?”

“I don’t confirm all of them exist…or exist at all but I do believe not all stories are entirely untrue” his lips curled into a smile as y/n laughed again. The sight of her laughter could get him through everything he believed.

“Sure” she shook her head in obviously disagreement lifting her wine glass from the table.

“I too wouldn’t believe the stories but I lived through one I can’t bring myself to deny its existence.” This perked up y/n’s interest but only at a slight because she strongly believed spirits don’t exist other than old nan stories.

“Lived through one?”

He nodded leaning a bit closer to her “A few years ago the city watch was troubled with the missing accounts of young women in king’s landing—missing. Right from the entrance of their houses be it the merchant’s wife or a servant girl they were never seen again. This facade went on for a month or so until one moonless cold night like this one a trail of blood appeared from the forest borders—a long trail” his voice turned raspy to sound more intimidating as he continued “It was the witch’s cottage. She used these beautiful young girls to maintain her own youthfulness-“

“Used them? How so?” Y/n interrupted him midway contemplating later after she asked the question if she wanted to know the answer to that.

“The details are much darker than you could imagine-much much worse than your mind could process.” By this time he already had y/n believe every story her old nan told her was true but Aemond was making this up for the sake of a followed prank. “The witch was executed—the whole city was there to witness it but it is believed she still lurks the corners around this cold dark time of the year.”

Aemond’s face was quite closer to y/n being seated in their own seats beside each other, had they been talking about something else y/n would be completely flustered with how he looked at her, with how close he was to her but as of now she was beyond speechless. Y/n never took herself to believe in these hoax matters or stories made up to scare the little ones for their mischiefs but coming from Aemond? For all she knew of him Aemond wasn’t one to make up false stories given how serious he was.

“And where are you lost my betrothed?” He spoke leaning back into his seat a little farther from her face.

“Oh umm-“ she cleared her throat shaking her head. Surely even if what Aemond said was true it’s not that a witch was to pounce upon her this instant. Or at any instant for that matter. “That was-well” she let out a nervous chuckle looking for the right word.

“It’s alright my love you’re safe here on the insides at the red keep.” He finished the sentence for her.

“The insides?”

“Ah yes bunch of guards have reported to seeing the witch or whatever personality that might be at the night by the backyard garden-they often don’t go for duty there.” Aemond knew the guards don’t stand for duty the backyard gardens not because of a made up witch story but because nobody ever visited the small backyard garden and it had a much larger wall for any intruder to ever enter from there and he was so sure y/n wouldn’t ask anyone to confirm his made up charade.

—

The celebration ended as the night gathered and everyone retired to their bedchambers. Y/n’s mind had already traveled off the witch story Aemond told not paying much mind to it later even though it lurked the tiny corner of her mind. Before she could even change out of her dress there was a knock on the door. It was a servant on behalf of her mother and father who asked to meet her in the gardens. Strange. Given she had just bid them farewell for the night what must it be at this moment? The servant insisted it was a pressing matter so y/n didn't hesitate longer. Following the servant through the hallways to the gardens but not a soul was present there.

Before she could ask the servant if this is where her parents requested her to see the servant was gone. She turned to all sides looking for the servant but she only found herself at the dark corner of the garden and the lantern the servant had left on the floor. It was eerily quiet not even the night crickets made a sound. The chilly dead of the night feeling didn't help either. Before she’d barely took two steps towards the keep a low growl made her stop in her tracks. At first she wasn’t sure she heard it right but then there was another. Every fibre of her being begged her not to turn around but she did nonetheless. Now is when she thought of Aemond’s story. The back gardens.

It was too dark to see anything past the light of the lantern in her hands that went out only a few inches from where she was holding it. And the gardens further in were so dark you could barely make our a silhouette. “Is anyone there?” She asked raising her lantern shocked at how not so affirming her voice just came out. There was no answer just a louder growl again. Some other time y/n would’ve had the normal perception of the growl—an animal perhaps. But right now she was sure it was some evil spirit and was praying to every god in her head as she stepped backwards hastily.

She couldn’t make out what she felt but something made her loose her balance. The witch. Falling to the ground the lantern in her hands blew out as well. The growls grew much louder as she tried to stand up to make her run for the inside again but this time she subconsciously fell onto the grass again. She crawled further as the growls seemed to grow closer to her not having the time to stand up and run this time. She felt a block on her way back in the very so open garden but it didn’t seem to be a pillar. The witch.

This time she shrieked thinking these were her final moments. “Spare me! Please I beg of you!” Tears ran down her face as she begged for her life to the faceless sounds that surrounded her. She remembered what Aemond had told her about the witch earlier, ‘she used the young and beautiful girls.’ “I swear to the gods I’m not even that young neither as beautiful as you would like please spare my life!” She tried to negotiate with the spirit as she lied about her age and appearance.

This time a laugh broke out. It didn’t sound like a woman. Y/n screamed again, it’s a warlock then. “Alright that is enough.” A voice spoke from behind her which she had assumed was the witch herself but she knew that voice, very well. Aemond.

Lighting up the lantern that was on the floor Aegon held it to her face laughing uncontrollably. She looked back to confirm and it was in fact her betrothed. Aemond lent out his hand for her to stand up but she swayed it away standing up herself.

“You were really THAT scared of some pups?” Aegon spoke between his laughter as he patted the three dogs that surrounded them, which y/n thought to be spirits.

Her heartbeat was yet to fall back to normal she could almost hear her heart beat as if it was about to fall out. She looked at Aemond confused still very scared and now puzzled given barley a few moments ago she assumed she was about to die.

“This was only meant to be joke we didn’t gather you would truly be this scared—“ Aemond began as he gently tried to place his hands on top of hers for whatever comfort.

A joke? A joke?! Y/n yanked his hands away from hers furious and just as upset “Fucking cunt.” She muttered pushing Aemond out of her way as she ran inside the palace. Aemond watched her leave and run with a pace as if the spirit was still chasing her.

“Y/n wait—“ he called out but she was already gone. He stood guilty of his actions because he never intended to make her cry. His older brother still on going laughter pulled him out of his thoughts only to feel much worse. Aegon was rolling on the ground with unstoppable laughter “She must’ve thought the witch story was true” Aegon said to him panting in between his words. Which only made Aemond feel worse.

No, Aemond ought to make it right. Leaving Aegon to his remarks and jest about the whole prank he followed back into the keep. As he walked the halls back inside the keep to Y/n’s chambers he went through things he could say to console her somewhat. Thankfully for him the guards by her bed chambers still hadn’t returned, Aegon had set up the servant and the guards to leave as Aemond managed the dogs, both of which he regrets now.

Gently knocking on the door frame he called her name “Y/n it’s me Aem-“ before he finished his sentence y/n opened the doors.

“Come to gloat?” She asked as it broke his heart to see her face full of tears again. Stepping inside he shut the doors behind him, “I am truly truly sorry for happened it wasn’t my intention to hurt you in any way.”

Y/n exhaled shrugging her shoulders as much as she wanted to believe what he had to say she had another reality to her mind “My prince” odd. She had only ever called Aemond by a title as formalities when they weren’t alone so this seemed odd to him. “If you do not wish to be married to me you can simply ask of it. I understand if you desire someone else or don’t wish to be married at all or aren’t very fond of me. I understand the pressure and the duties but you could’ve simply asked me rather try to scare me off that way.”

Aemond stared at her for a moment completely baffled she thought this had anything to do with not wanting a marriage with her. “Do you really think anyone could ever not be fond of you?” he scoffed “How did you even manage to convince yourself that I of all people wouldn’t be fond of you?”

Confused she stared back at him “I don’t understand”

Aemond took a step closer to her this time holding both her hands in his as if they were glass. Her fragile touch. “Everything about you is maddeningly lovely, I consider myself the luckiest man in Westeros who gets to call you his, forever. How could I ever desire anyone else? You are the dream of my life, the only dream-ever since I’d met you. I am every so terribly in love with you. And what happened-I truly didn’t know it you’d be hurt this way, to see you cry is the last thing I want it was supposed to be a prank as I was told lady y/n of house *your house* had a knack for pranks. I hope you can forgive me for the unpleasant—“

Y/n closed the distance between them, brushing her lips against his. To Aemond’s surprise this was far from the reaction he expected but more than welcomed it. Wrapping his arms around her waist he leaned in further into the kiss.

“I love you, Aemond.” She smiled feeling butterflies saying it for the first time to him. Young love. He kissed her again hoping the world would go on leaving them unbothered when he had her this close to him.

“Though” she pulled away from the kiss for a moment to speak staying just as close “I would like to mention I wasn’t that scared with your little prank-“

“If that is what you want to me believe” he nodded as she laughed and it melted his heart to see her content. “Though Aegon might not let it go that easily” he told her as she huffed burying her face by the crook of her neck as they stood in her room in each other’s embrace and if just for now, everything seemed perfect. For Aemond it truly was. Every moment spend with her was perfect.

—

Feedback is MUCH appreciated (literally dying for some validation) <333

Tagging: @stuckinaf4nfiction @softieekayy @dumdaradumdaradum

[arodabi]

I kno all this ship talk is getting annoying but i just wanted to make a post explaining why the way alloros treat aro characters bugs me specifically. And then I’ll shut up, maybe

I want to make it clear that i do not care if a couple assholes online write fanfic where aro character kisses ppl or is in romantic relationships. Y’all are right, some fanfics here and headcanons there don’t matter. I’ve been in fandoms where small groups of fans got mad that a character was a lesbian and started blogs just to post about how actually she was 100% straight. That’s still bad and I’m not here excusing those ppls homophobia, but it was also like a small drop in the bucket compared to how much fan content existed portraying her as a lesbian and canon enforcing it as well. At the end of the day it didn’t change her identity.

And i haven’t seen this as much but i have seen some ppl declare Todd bojackhorseman (one of the most prominent asexual characters) to actually be allosexual bc they hate ace ppl or something. I also honestly don’t give a shit about that. Not only do most people know that Todd is canonically ace, he has multiple plot lines in the show about being ace. Saying he’s not is just factually untrue.

But when a character doesn’t have those plotlines, when they never say asexual or aromantic, when all the in canon confirmation we have is “it’s just not my thing” or “I’d rather have a dog than children” or “I’m not x identity I’m nothing” or even just an external tweet from the creative team confirming it, it’s a lot easier to erase their identity. Fuck, I’ve seen a character say “i am incapable of feeling romantic attraction, i never have and i never will” and ppl still not only deny that they’re aro, it’s not even questioned that they’re alloromantic. Every time i post offhandedly about peridot from Steven universe being canonically aroace, i still have aspec ppl every time comment about how they never knew she was canonically aro bc the entire fandom continues to deny and erase her canon identity.

Ppl say “uhhh one fanfic isn’t gonna change a characters canon identity sweaty :)” “one persons headcanons don’t negate canon :))))” but when Everyone does that it does erase their identity! When nobody acknowledges it then a bunch of aspec ppl don’t even know they’re being represented! Fandoms will take scraps of tweets or one line references to enforce and prove their ship or head canon is actually canon, but when writers say “this character has never been in love” or “this character cares deeply about others but would never dream of dating or marrying anyone” then it’s “uwu but that doesn’t prove anything! U don’t have to be a heartless aro to not be a fan of dating uwu”

When the only confirmation we have is a line or two and everyone wants to steamroll over that bc their ship is more important to the point where PEOPLE LITERALLY DONT EVEN KNOW THAT CHARACTER IS SUPPOSED TO BE AROMANTIC then i have a problem! That is erasure! You are taking away our representation! You literally are doing that! And not to get into speculation but if a bunch of creators see that people fucking hate when a character is canonically aspec, they might not want to give us rep if the whole fandom turns and says “fuck you for doing that, you’re ruining my experience” i’ve seen at least one creator say “I’m not gonna confirm this characters identity because it will piss people off” when that character was previously known to be aromantic. So thanks for that i guess. I’m glad at least that there was backlash to ppl erasing yelenas identity, enough backlash to get aromantic to #2 trending which i have never seen before. At least now people are aware of her identity, at least aspec people know that she shares our identity, and when it inevitably gets erased in the MCU, at least we’ll know to be pissed about it. But for many others, ppl just don’t know, because everyone chooses knowingly or unknowingly to cut that characters identity away from them, bc idk they think someone being aspec is boring or smthn

My final conclusion i suppose is just, if a aspec representation falls in the forest and nobody ever acknowledges it, does it benefit the people it’s representing

[himbodiaz]

March Buddie Fic Wrap-Up

a list of my favourite fics from this past month

[ ✓ complete | ☆ series | ☼ one-shot | ☾ multi-chapter]

October | November | December | January | February

< 3k

all the reasons we'd be mad by @rewritetheending (withoutthetiger) [G | 1.3k | ✓ | ☼]

"There’s a stretch of silence while Buck snuggles even further under the three layers of fleece blankets covering them now, Eddie following his lead, the two of them still on the couch in Eddie’s living room where they’d landed after Buck had driven them home from the hospital. Christopher is with Pepa for the night, which is just as well when midnight rolled past them a while ago and neither Buck nor Eddie has made an attempt to move.

They should be in bed by now. Their own beds, probably, though Buck has his doubts about that tonight.

'Who told you?'

It’s Eddie’s turn to snap his head toward Buck, and it’s far too sudden for a body that remains partially frozen from head to toe. He winces, then fights to come back – again – his eyes asking questions before he’s said anything at all.

'Nobody told me anything,' Eddie whispers. 'What am I supposed to know?'"

Because I adore 3x15, written for the prompt "I love you - said with a hoarse voice, under the blankets."

driving slow on sunday morning by @queerpanikkar (archerincombat) [G | 1.3k | ✓ | ☼]

“Doesn’t count,” Buck tells him softly, reaching out to draw a finger over the line of his eyebrow; a painter and his muse. “You’re still dreaming.”

Eddie’s eyes flicker open, hair mussed and hardly there. Half of his face is still hidden and he gazes at Buck like he hung the stars in the sky for them to look at together. “Yeah,” he replies, giving Buck a sleepy grin. “Must be.”

not yet (but someday soon) by @probieeddie (intotheblue) [G | 1.4k | ✓ | ☼]

Eddie’s instinct is to deflect, but he’d promise Buck and himself to talk about the things that bother him so– “You keep telling everyone you love them,” he blurts.

Buck’s brow furrows, and he takes a step back. “And that’s… a bad thing?”

“No, god, of course not,” Eddie says, catching Buck’s wrist and tugging softly until Buck steps back into his space. “I just…”

A small frown appears on Buck’s lips. His head tips ever so slightly to the right. “Just what?” he asks.

“You keep telling everyone… except me.”

(Or: Buck starts throwing out casual 'I love you's to everyone except Eddie)

the stars shine for the two of us by @clusterbuck (lecornergirl) [G | 1.7k | ✓ | ☼]

“So you hate kissing booths then?” Hen asks, fixing him with a curious glance that darts to Buck and back so fast he thinks he might be imagining it.

Not exactly. But there’s a reason he doesn’t want to do the kissing booth, and it’s not a reason he’s about to say out loud to his entire team. So he jumps on it.

“Yeah,” he says. “I just think—kissing should be for a reason, you know?” Which isn’t even untrue.

“Cute,” Chimney says. “I always knew you were a romantic.”

“Is raising money for charity not enough of a reason for you?” Hen asks.

“I just—” Eddie says and chances a look at Buck, hoping no one catches it. Buck’s face is impassive, revealing nothing, but Eddie’s pretty sure Buck hasn’t looked his way since he said the words kissing booth.

So that’s something.

i can't numb this heart full of splinters by @capseycartwright (wafflesofdoom) [G | 1.7k | ✓ | ☼]

“You know,” Eddie’s voice was quiet, as he spoke – quiet, and tired, and reserved in a way that Buck hated. “It’s usually nice to follow with an explanation when you say something like, Eddie, I’ve done something terrible, and I can’t take it back.”

or - a post 5x11 coda where buck confides in his best friend about the taylor-and-lucy of it all.

even though we changed (i'm still here with you) by intotheblue [G | 1.8k | ✓ | ☼]

Buck sighs and tips his head back against the sofa. “Things are good,” he says, abandoning all pretext. It’s not like he was fooling Maddie anyway. “I’m not going to mess that up.”

Maddie takes his hand in hers and squeezes. “You’re right, you’re not, because he loves you too,” she says.

“You don’t know that.”

“Buck,” she says flatly, “everyone who’s ever met either of you knows that.”

“Shut up,” he says, but there’s no bite.

“Answer one question,” Maddie says, “and then I’ll drop it, I swear.”

He sits up and chews on his lip. “Fine, one.”

“When’s the last time Eddie asked you how the apartment hunt was going?”

third row back by withoutthetiger [G | 1.8k | ✓ | ☼ ]

"Still. Here he is. Exhausted after his first session. Or first session this time around, anyway.

Eddie’s eyes snap open when he hears a child cry on the far side of the parking lot, and the shock of sunlight is enough to make him wince, though the kid’s misery keeps him company for a while. When everything quiets again, he thinks he should start the truck and drive home, but his arms don’t quite cooperate, his hand tight around his phone.

He isn’t ready to talk, but if there’s anything Eddie learned today, it’s that he can survive having someone else nearby.

He isn’t ready to talk, but he can’t stop himself from tapping Buck’s name, a text sent before he wonders what else he can survive."

Set in early 5b, offered as the loosest possible interpretation of the prompt "writing each other love letters."

is this body even mine? by @onward--upward (r_holland) [T | 1.9k | ✓ | ☼ ]

Eddie doesn’t wake up screaming on his first day back at the 118 after the shooting – he gets up like normal, eats a piece of welcome-back cake, falls into his place in the firehouse like nothing ever happened.

Life moves on. What’s that saying? Time heals all wounds. He’s healed – everything is fine.

Except that the more time that passes, the more Eddie’s grip on himself breaks.

first i want a kiss (and then i want it all) by lecornergirl [G | 1.9k | ✓ | ☼]

Except it’s five a.m. on the morning of December thirty-first, he’s sitting on the couch in the firehouse loft, and for the first time in his life he’s thinking about making a resolution.

He’s sitting on the couch in the firehouse loft, the one just starting to be worn-in enough to be comfortable, and he’s looking at Buck. When is he not?

It’s not the kind of resolution he can put into words. It’s not the kind he’d put on a list or painstakingly etch in calligraphy in a bullet journal or hang up in his house in cross-stitch, or however it is that people document their resolutions in the age of instagram. Maybe it’s more like an intention than a resolution.

But Eddie looks at Buck, and he knows. By this time next year, he’s going to have figured out how to tell Buck about—all of it. About the fact that he’s in love with him, and the fact that he dreams about a life with him, today, tomorrow, five years from now. Ten years from now, twenty, fifty, if the good lord allows him to make it that far.

the best of your dreams cannot grow by @probieravi [T | 2.2k | ✓ | ☼]

Buck remembers it all, and it should be a good memory, it should be the best memory of Buck’s fucking life, except—

Except Eddie is gone.

(or, buck wakes up alone.)

i wonder if she knows that i touched your skin by sunshinexbomb [M | 2.2k | ✓ | ☼]

“Do you want to stop?” Eddie asks, words slow and surprisingly steady.

The thing is that he doesn’t—Buck really, really, doesn’t want to stop and that’s the problem. He searches Eddie’s face, not exactly sure what he’s looking for, but Eddie’s impossible to read at the moment. All Buck sees is familiar brown eyes, pupils blown with want, and Buck can’t deny that he wants too.

Buck swallows thickly against the lump in his throat and shakes his head.

In which Buck and Eddie both make some bad decisions.

when we're on the phone and you talk real slow by lecornergirl [E | 2.3k | ✓ | ☼]

“I miss you too,” Eddie says, soft. “But I’ll be back soon.”

“I know,” Buck sighs. “And the sooner I fall asleep, the sooner it is.”

“Is that how time works?” Eddie asks.

“Time is fake,” Buck says. “It feels sooner. That’s what matters.”

“Okay, I see your point,” Eddie says. “But, counterargument—what are you wearing?”

wearing me out this time by @adamsparirsh (catching_paper_moons) [E | 2.8k | ✓ | ☼]

“I have a girlfriend,” Buck protests, albeit rather weakly. Lucy shrugs.

“Break up with her,” Lucy purrs into his ear, “and this can be a regular thing.”

(or, Buck has a breakdown.)

note from drew: this contains a bucklucy sex scene, if that's not your jam, click away. and if i see anyone say rude things to grace about it, i'll simply just stop making the wrap ups. don't like, don't read, people <3

keep me on fire by @henswilsons (hammersmiths) [T | 2.9k | ✓ | ☼]

It’s—enough, to have him blinking out of his reverie, the second between the give of the bat against something, the sound of broken glass against the floorboards, and then he’s no longer on the street, or in the helicopter, or the ambulance, and he’s just back in his living room, his dark blue living room, and—

And Buck. Buck is here.

Buck, hands raised above his head. Buck, eyes wide. Buck, the same colour as the dusky floorboards.

Buck. Is here. And Eddie nearly hit him with a baseball bat.

“Oh fuck,” Eddie breathes, and the bat slips from his grasp.

or, Eddie breaks down. Buck is there.

3k-7k

devotion (defined by you) by @tawaifeddiediaz (tkreyesevandiaz) [G | 3.1k | ✓ | ☼]

Buck’s making a cup of tea when the sound of the lock reverberates into the apartment.

Prompt: untying your lover’s tie, using it to pull your lover into a kiss

wonder what it's like by catching_paper_moons [T | 3.2k | ✓ | ☼]

“Here I am,” Buck says, blinking rapidly. “I, uh. I have a question.”

Eddie’s heart could jackhammer through his chest if he’s not careful. He swallows. “Okay.”

“You don’t have to answer it.” Buck’s voice shakes so minutely Eddie wonders if he made it up. “But if I don’t ask it I think I’ll kick myself forever.”

(or the soft moment they deserve to have.)

the sight that flashed before me was your face by @tenisperfection [T | 3.4k | ✓ | ☼]

Eddie goes to therapy after he has a sleep paralysis episode and hallucinates the Buck from the day Eddie got shot. pre-Buck/Eddie.

forever is a long time (and i want to spend it all with you) by @eddiediazisascorpio [G | 3.7k | ✓ | ☼]

Three moments captured on film. Unfiltered, unscripted, and recorded in the hands of a man who doesn’t want to miss a thing.

Buck buys an old film camera and thinks about his future playing out in the present.

so bad to pretend (only for today) by withoutthetiger [G | 3.8k | ✓ | ☼]

"Eddie is a sucker. Probably in a million different ways and for a million different reasons.

And at least half of the ways and reasons have something to do with Buck.

This afternoon, they’re in Buck’s Jeep, just pulling into the parking lot of some fancy schmancy country club to which they absolutely do not belong, and suddenly Eddie thinks he may have really screwed up when he didn’t push harder for details after Buck told him that he’d be picking him up for a day of innocent fun. And when Eddie spots flower gardens along the side and a gazebo toward the back, it only makes him more concerned because it looks like they’re at a wedding venue and—

'Okay, so, this place is having a massive cake tasting today and the website said there would be all of the traditional wedding flavors like vanilla buttercream and chocolate raspberry, plus red velvet and carrot cake, and then some cupcakes, and even unexpected wedding stuff like cream puffs and cheesecake, and I totally signed us up because, hello, free dessert.'

Cake. Wedding. Wedding cake. With Buck.

'But we’re not engaged.'"

all the remaining breaths by @renecdote [E | 3.9k | ✓ | ☼]

Buck blinks up at him, lips kiss swollen and curls coming loose against the pillow, the picture of sinful temptation. “Eds,” he says, patiently amused. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Eddie replies automatically.

“Right,” Buck agrees, because he knows that, “but I’d really, really like you to fuck me right now, so maybe we can save the ethical discussion for sometime after we’ve consummated our own marriage?”

In which Buck has fun facts and Eddie has opinions on the history of consummating marriages. And also there is sex.

everything's coming up milhouse by hammersmiths [T | 4.0k | ✓ | ☼]

LAFD Updates (@L*A*F*D_Metro) LAFD Alert: Red-level traffic on Gardiner Road this morning. If you are trying to get into the city centre consider taking Westerley Lane.

buck 🔥🔥 (@firebuck) so true bestie

or, Eddie mans the LAFD Twitter account. Buck tries to be supportive.

open the blinds, let me see your face by @trippedandfell [T | 4.7k | ✓ | ☼]

It starts, as most of Eddie’s problems have lately, with therapy.

or: Eddie does yoga, makes some new friends, and falls in love.

ripping all the skin from my bones (have mercy) by @extasiswings [T | 4.8k | ✓ | ☼]

Eddie can’t sleep.

I don’t even think about him anymore, that’s what he said months ago when he landed in the ER with a panic attack. I don’t even think about him anymore.

Not a lie.

Not the truth either. But not a lie. Not quite.

He doesn’t think about the sniper. But he thinks about the shooting. He has hours every night to replay it over and over now that he can’t seem to block it out, the lightning strike of a bullet slamming into him, the icy numbness of bleeding out on hot asphalt.

And Buck.

Buck’s mouth, his face, his white shirt, splattered with blood, eyes wide in shock and horror.

Buck.

What are you afraid of?

baby, come make me alright by r_holland [T | 5.2k | ✓ | ☼]

Buck’s memory exists in fits and starts. Flashes. Bangs. Colours and voices. Nothing quite coalesces into anything solid. He remembers waking up in the morning, the warm weight of a broad chest at his back, the dry press of lips to his shoulder. He remembers school drop-off, remembers going through the Starbucks drive-thru, a gentle hand on his knee as he rattled off their orders.

He remembers walking through the firehouse doors. Things get a little bit scrambled after that. Like the eggs they had for breakfast.

Holy fuck his head hurts.

i thought i loved you (it's just how you looked in the light) by @breakdowndiaz (asgardiun) [G | 5.3k | ✓ | ☼]

He loves the kitchen sink and the drying rack on the counter, because he always washes and Eddie always dries and sometimes when he dries he chips the grey bowls and breaks the white plates, but it doesn’t matter because he bought the set second hand and really, they don’t need more than three plates, three bowls, three mugs, and three forks.

“Just three?” Maddie asks.

“Yeah, me, Christopher, and Eddie,” he says, like it’s obvious.

Maddie gives a knowing smile. “And Taylor?”

He shrugs. “It’s not like the four of us hang out."

“So who’s plate is she borrowing when they leave?” Buck stays quiet. She sets her mug on the table. “Moving out might help, but no matter where you go, you’ll only have three plates.”

(In which Buck hates his apartment, breaks up with Taylor, and makes a long overdue confession.)

tying you to me by @rarakiplin [T | 5.4k | ✓ | ☼]

“Diaz?”

The man — and it is Eddie Diaz, Buck can’t not see it now — blinks, and in a split second his expression shutters closed. “Buckley.”

Buck wonders if he looks different without Diaz’s blood on his face.

or, eddie and buck meet each other at rock bottom

in case of emergency by @homerforsure (allisonrw96) [G | 5.7k | ✓ | ☼]

“You spent a great deal of time considering what you wanted for Christopher if something was ever to happen to you. Did you ever once give yourself the same consideration?”

“Well I was going to be dead,” Eddie answers. “So it didn’t seem like there was anything to think about. Either I’d be alive and I’d handle it or I’d be dead and it- It wouldn’t matter.”

Eddie doesn't have an emergency contact. Frank challenges him to do something about that.

i could spend a thousand nights here by wafflesofdoom [G | 6.0k | ✓ | ☼]

It was a silly admission to make, Eddie knew, but he’d honestly forgotten to think about what would come after – after the love confession, after his feelings were out in the open, and so he'd been entirely unprepared for Good Boyfriend Buck.

or - seven times Eddie experiences Good Boyfriend Buck and one time Good Boyfriend Eddie has his time to shine.

i just wanna tell you how i'm feeling by probieravi [T | 7.6k | ✓ | ☼]

Buck thrusts his phone into Eddie’s hand, opened to their text thread, and—oh. It’s a picture that Ravi sent him that Eddie obviously sent to Buck immediately, because it was—actually, he doesn’t really know why he sent it to Buck. Ravi sends him random shit like that all the time, from memes to TikToks, and usually, Eddie just reacts to the messages with a laugh or a thumbs up and leaves it at that.

But Frank’s been telling him to express himself without words, since Eddie is, according to Frank, emotionally constipated sometimes, and so—he just sent it without thinking.

Eddie glances at the picture, mouth quirking a little in the corner.

“It’s a meme,” Eddie says, raising an eyebrow at Buck. “I know you know what that is. You’re the one who taught me what they were.”

(or, healing through shitty memes sure is cathartic.)

8k+

in the drive way with the engine running by @hattalove [T | 8.2k | ✓ | ☼]

It’s a recent development, is the thing. Buck didn’t know to look for this; didn’t know to recognize it until Eddie was smiling about his breakfast date and it felt like the bottom was dropping out of the world.

He didn’t know to look for it, and there’s not much he can do about it now.

or, eddie goes on dates. buck spends his nights babysitting and waiting for him to come home.

accidentally killing an octopus is just fishing by @hmslusitania [T | 8.6k | ✓ | ☼]

Buck gets injured on a call and winds up taking some time at the hospital. Fortunately, his hospital roommate makes it much more bearable.

it's golden, like daylight by rarakiplin [T | 8.7k | ✓ | ☼]

“Hmm,” Buck hums, and Eddie feels the vibration of it under his mouth. Buck’s nose nudges against the side of his head. “Have you thought about that?”

Eddie laughs against Buck’s shoulder, unwilling to lift his head. “Thinking? Right now?”

“Shut up,” fingers dig into his ribs, “I mean, would you want to? Be married again?”

or, the sun comes up

if i'm honest, it felt like love by @littlespoonevan (allyasavedtheday) [M | 9.3k | ✓ | ☼]

“I- it felt good, right? And neither of us are really in a place to want to date right now but maybe. You said you needed comfort so maybe that’s all it has to be?”

“You mean this could be a…regular thing?” Eddie looks confused but not at all opposed to the idea which is more than Buck expects, honestly.

He nods. “Just. When we need it, y’know? Because I don’t want to go back to how I was before but sometimes it’s nice. To spend the night with someone. Or- or be close with someone. And I trust you. I mean, you’re my best friend.”

The few seconds it takes Eddie to think it over feel like the longest of Buck’s life but then his grip tightens imperceptibly on Buck’s waist and he nods.

“I don’t think I could imagine trusting anyone else with this right now.”

Buck and Eddie try friends with benefits. It's great, easy, exactly what they need. Except for the fact they're in love with each other.

the stick-around by derryfacts2 [T | 9.7k | ✓ | ☼]

Buck takes it to the grave.

He doesn’t mean to. It’s just—with all that time he spent teasing death, all the motorcycles and factory fires and blood-coated grenades—death gets impatient, in the end. Right as he’s starting to take life seriously. After he puts his name on the lease, buys life a ring, like, I’m in this for the long haul. Death gets jealous, and Buck falls through a second-story floor onto a derelict wrought-iron stair rail, and his femoral artery begins the quick but methodical work of leaking out the next fifty or sixty years of his life onto the charred tile floor.

keep going, keep going come what may by @evanbucxley (iriswests) [M | 10.7k | ✓ | ☼]

Buck doesn’t remember the details. It’s all foggy, mostly – how he got here. He barely remembers the events leading up to this: almost like he’d gone to sleep one night and woken here, a cruel reality, a prison of his own making. He thinks it could be hell: Eddie had warned him of hell, once, but then there are times where he’ll feel a brief sting in his arm, or the wind run through his hair, and it feels less like he’s a wayward soul and more like an asshole who got the short end of the stick, all things considered.

or; buck is the last man on earth. he’s dealing with it.

say you were made to be mine by @elvensorceress [T | 11.7k | ✓ | ☼]

Eddie’s never believed in soulmates. Sure, people have them. It’s a thing. The first touch of one soulmate with another leaves behind remnants of that meeting — the color belonging to one soul, and the color belonging to another, swirling on the surface of someone’s skin where they’ve met.

But the colors disappear upon second meeting. So, what does it even matter?

It might have bothered him as a child when all his friends had found at least one person. Abuela would sit him on her lap and tell him someday. Someday he would meet a person and he’d know that person would be in his heart forever. She was the only one who knew the truth — that Eddie did feel left out. That he did wish for love.

It's Valentine's Day 2018, and Eddie saves a man from choking to death in the middle of a restaurant. It's only after the man is rushed away by paramedics that Eddie realizes his hands are green. The man he saved is his soulmate. And he doesn't even know his name let alone how to find him.

once, twice, right by @thatbuddie [E | 13.4k | ✓ | ☼]

The first time is unexpected but convenient. It's fun. Eddie's still technically married, and they're just learning how to become friends.

The second time is comfortable but exciting. It's warm. They're best friends, and Buck starts to believe they can maybe become something more.

The third time is inevitable but convulsive. It's heartbreaking. They're further apart than they've ever been, but Buck's heart is in it all the way.

(or Buck and Eddie try being friends with benefits three times during the course of their friendship. It works and it doesn't.)

your heart of gold by @woodchoc-magnum [G | 15.6k | ✓ | ☼]

Christopher's POV, in which his Dad is sad, and all he wants is to help - and maybe play matchmaker, a little bit.

right on time by @henwilsonmd (tuckergreen) [T | 22k | ✓ | ☼]

Eddie’s been back at work for about two weeks—his time after quitting had passed in a seemingly idyllic week of spending time with his son which got rudely interrupted by a full-scale mental breakdown that ended with tears and hugs and Buck lovingly bullying him into going to therapy again. Then therapy had brought even more tears and confusion and slowly ballooning financial concerns that culminated in Eddie undertaking the frankly painful process of reapplying to the LAFD and completing an equally painful remedial training course.

And everything was fine until—Eddie started having a problem.

(summer break, queer awakenings, and learning to let yourself be happy: a story in four acts)

breathe by @kitkatpancakestack [M | 33k | ✓ | ☆ | ☾]

After Eddie Diaz has a breakdown in the middle of a grocery store, he's forced to face the fact that he might not be dealing with his PTSD as well as he thought. At the urging of his aunt, he leaves to spend the summer in a small California beach town, where he meets a bright-eyed, blond-haired surf instructor who reminds him what it feels like to be alive.

circles all the way down by archerincombat [M | 70.4k | ✓ | ☾]

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bobby,” Buck bites out. “He took three months off. Saw a physical therapist. Did a few sessions with Frank. Clearly, he’s doing great.”

Bobby chews his lip. “If you’re sure,” he says finally. “He just looked a little off at that car crash, is all.”

“I would have noticed,” Buck insists. “It’s Eddie. I would’ve noticed.”

Or, healing doesn't happen in tandem

Okay, so first things first: Thank you SO much to each and every author on this list. Every month when I’m making these lists, I’m always reminded how much high quality fic this fandom creates, and how grateful I am that I get to read it. You put so much time and effort into creating something, and I can’t believe that I get to be so lucky as to read it. So, thank you, I cannot tell you how much I love and appreciate you for it!

If you’ve been paying attention to my wrap-ups, you know I’ve been including a submission link on the past few, and that it’s missing from this one. That’s because I literally haven’t gotten around to reading the fic that was already submitted, and I want to eventually, but I just don’t know when that’s going to be. If there’s a fic you really want me to read, or one you think I would really like, feel free to shoot me an ask, or tag me in it!

Anyway, I hope this wrap-up is helpful for anyone looking for new fic! MWAH and happy Sunday <3

(as always, if any of the links aren’t working or are incorrect, please let me know and i’ll fix it asap!)

[kdinjenzen]

I normally don't break my blog's character in asks but I'm gonna make an exception here. How can you continue to support and advertise, in good conscience, for a company that has repeatedly baited and insulted its LGBT+ fanbase? Especially after they had Robyn basically lie about Clover's supposed flaws to berate Qrow - and on a meta level the audience that were mourning the representation they were explicitly promised - for feeling sad about his death?

So I appreciate the fact that you felt strongly enough about this to break your blog’s character in asks to bring this to my attention by answering this as openly and honestly as I can.

Firstly, Clover was never written as gay. Never. Not for a single second in his conception was Clover ever intended to be a love interest for Qrow nor was Clover ever written as a gay man. Period.

Secondly, Clover was never ever stated to be “explicitly promised” representation for the mlm community. That is an entirely untrue statement with no actual basis for truth behind it. There’s no documentation of this anywhere, there’s no draft where he was, none of that is true at all in any way, shape, or form.

Third, I have also stated many times that I do understand how a misunderstanding in how the audience perceives a character vs what the actual written intent was can hurt, saying that I’ve felt that burn before, and very much understanding how a fandom can feel a bit upset by it. But the fact that various creators, for many shows, have come forward to say “hey, not the intention” - such as the case with many folks feeling Jenny was trans-coded in My Life As A Teenage Robot, which actually took the creator 21 YEARS to actually acknowledge that fact despite it being spoken of many times - and expressed their concerns and understanding toward those communities affected by it... shows a sign of actually caring. Of which many folks working on this show did the same thing and did so immediately after the first sign of the misunderstanding.

Fourth, as the voice of a character that is a blatantly stated and explicitly promised bit of representation for an entirely underrepresented community of people it’s extremely frustrating to see a character that was never intended to be seen as and surely was never ACTUALLY written as a representation for a marginalized group of people being held up as an example of representation while my own character, who actually is a real example of representation, being constantly demonized and overlooked.

Fifth, the cast and crew of the show (including myself) have received more death threats about this than I think most of you care to actually acknowledge. Am I saying that you, specifically, issued any of those threats? No. But the fact that a lot of folks just forget that that happened is pretty telling to me.

So you asked “How can you continue to support and advertise, in good conscience, for a company that has repeatedly baited and insulted its LGBT+ fanbase” ... the answer is because the actual representation for the LGBTQIA+ community that was explicitly stated and promised  was actually handled incredibly well, had time and care put into it, was thought about from concept, to design, to casting, to written dialogue. And that representation was not hidden, not coded, but bluntly stated both by creators outside of and inside of canon, and proudly on display in the show. 

The final big reason that I can firmly state all of these things? Is because this isn’t just a fictional situation. The people behind the scenes making this show possible actually stood up, stood by, and have put more effort into actually supporting the LGBTIQA+ community than most folks will ever even know or see. In a very real and tangible way these people have physically fought for the rights of people like me to be able to do what I do and, more importantly, to actually be able to live my actual real life with less fear of being actually harmed.

To top it all off, I’m deeply hurt by how things are said by the fandom some days.

I see all the comments saying May isn’t good rep because she doesn’t look or sound manly enough to be a trans woman and that Joanna or Robyn looks more trans than May does and worse being said about her.

Clover being mlm was always just a head canon that the fandom leaned into, it was never ever stated to be canon at any point during the production of the show or creation of the character.

I do understand the hurt that some folks feel about it, trust me I do, but I’ve received death threats over this head canon while actually having put time, effort, and part of myself into actual on-screen representation ... having had that real work ignored with me and my co-workers continuously being harassed despite not a single shred of tangible evidence to back up the reason for the harassment.

TLDR: 

Clover was never intended to be seen as gay, ever, and the fact that the fandom latched onto this head canon and has pushed it that it was always actually canon, in a very negative way, has only harmed both the fandom and staff.

Having a head canon is great, I love them, but seeing a creator (or group of creators) explicitly come out and debunk that head canon as to not spread a toxic and hurtful message that could easily spiral out of control and blatantly ignoring it because it doesn’t fit in with your own narrative does not make that head canon into canon and will only make getting actual intended representation for that group much harder in the future.

It is desperately hurtful to have poured so much work into having a character that is actually a representative (and a promised one at that) of a marginalized group entirely ignored by the community because of a head canon for another character, and in doing so has only made that (very rare) bit of representation feel ironically invisible.