Latest Posts by rachelcarrot - Page 5

Do you think Aro will ever have Chelsea break the bonds of the Cullens and make bonds for Bella, Edward, and Alice (and probably Renesmee too) with the Volturi? I just can’t imagine he would just leave the Cullens alone for all of eternity and give up such power

There's no way he'd give up. No way. Even if it's not in the stories it's just not how he's written.

I think he could have Chelsea do that. Like there is no too far for him. He will do anything.

An aro princess who gets a spell put on her that can only be broken by true loves first kiss so she just spends the rest of her life turning into a fuckin dragon at night there are no downsides to this fairytale they all live happily ever after the end motherfuckers

“Our sweet rescue baby Ruby Jane, comforting one of my foster kitties as he’s getting a bath❤️ It’s the sweetest. Enjoy!“

Video/caption by Stephanie Vice - SPCA Florida

Which of these wholesome Memes are your Favourite? :) 

Follow @memeuplift for more wholesome memes

Cinematic parallels

it’s time to look at some photos of pikas carrying plants and flowers in their mouths

Bitches be having an unhealthy obsession over fictional characters who have an extremely dark past and a million problems. It's me. I am bitches.

hi! i stepped out of dramione fandom for the last couple of years, and i was wondering if there are any new, well written and well characterized fics? preferably post hogwarts era but i’ll take anything, i just want to get back into it 😭

Here are some newer, completed stories that are fairly popular and definitely worth reading: 

Manacled By: SenLinYu -M- Harry Potter is dead. In the aftermath of the war, in order to strengthen the might of the magical world, Voldemort enacts a repopulation effort. Hermione Granger has an Order secret, lost but hidden in her mind, so she is sent as an enslaved surrogate to the High Reeve until her mind can be cracked. COMPLETE. (Dark, contains non-con)

Love and Other Misfortunes By: SenLinYu -M- Following the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione Granger has devoted her career to the rights of magical beings and works reluctantly with the sardonic ministry lobbyist, Draco Malfoy. But there is ancient magic at work in the aftermath of the War and its consequence will be severe if Hermione fails to look up from her legislation and notice it. COMPLETE.

All You Want SenLinYu - E- Eighth Year at Hogwarts was supposed to be Hermione’s. And it is, just not in the way she expects. Omegaverse fic.

The Right Thing To Do By: lovesbitca8 -M- Hermione felt the pounding in her ears again. She would see him for the first time since the Great Hall, gaunt and stricken at the Slytherin table with his mother clutching his arm. She hadn't meant to look for him. Not in the corridors, not beneath the white sheets of the fallen, not on the way to the Chamber of Secrets with Ron, but she was a stupid girl. (first in a series!)

Every Part of Me By: PotionChemist -M- Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy have been hiding a secret for the past five years. Something brought them together during sixth year and then the war ripped them apart. Four years after Voldemort's defeat, Hermione is married to Ron Weasley and Draco has recently married Astoria Greengrass. They reconnect at the annual Victory Ball... A/B/O fic. **Non-Con in Ch 40**

Queen of Swords By: ravenslight Hermione Granger is the weapon they never intended to create. And she will bow down to no one. / Voldemort wins AU. Slowburn Dramione.

Traditions by raven_maiden - E - Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy fell in love during the war. One year later, they're heading home for the holidays so he can finally meet her parents. There's just one teeny little problem: her parents think they're both Muggles.

Clean By: olivieblake -M- Malfoy's handsome face was contoured into a condescending smirk. "No faith in that giant brain of yours, Granger?" She looked up at him defiantly. "Maybe I don't have faith in you!" she said, raising her voice. Malfoy only looked at her. "You'll find I'm very surprising." Dramione AU, Year 6 with a slow burn and a killer twist. Book I of "This World or Any Other" series. COMPLETE.

The Commoner's Guide to Bedding a Royal By: olivieblake Objectively speaking, Hermione Granger knows Britain has a monarchy, just as she knows Prince Draco (the grandson of the King of England) is probably off somewhere living his royal life in total unrelation to hers. Seeing as she isn't delusional, she doesn't really expect to be his friend. She doesn't expect anything that comes after, either. Dramione, modern royalty AU. COMPLETE. (first in a series)

Sweetly Broken By: LadyKenz347 As the dust settles following the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco's confidence, belief system, and world are shattered. In an attempt to mend his broken pieces, he turns to vials that take the pain away. But once the high's are no longer so high and the lows get so much lower, Draco has to start a journey of healing and redemption that often hurts more than it helps.

The Gloriana Set ThebeMoon - M- The War is won, and Hermione Granger is back at Hogwarts as an “Eighth Year”, feeling reckless and determined to shed her prim bookworm persona. She will do as she pleases, and anyone who doesn’t like it will see the business end of her wand. Also returning is Draco Malfoy, universally hated but determined to restore his family’s name. Hermione’s hopes for a quiet school year are quickly dashed as she contends with mischievous First Years, killer plants, enchanted hair accessories, a totally inappropriate Moaning Myrtle, renegade Death Eaters, a nice vampire, a poorly named study group, a depraved party, and mysterious, threatening blood messages on the castle walls. We have redemption, partial redemption and (sadly or hilariously) no redemption at all. Throw in a snarky, disturbingly attractive Draco with his own secret agenda, and we have a very slow-burn Dramione with a side of who-dun-it. COMPLETE!

The Best of Me By: MrsRen -M- Officially, Hermione Granger was killed in action during the Battle of Hogwarts. Unofficially, Draco Malfoy has never stopped searching for her. Years after the war during a mission in France, his salvation comes in the form of a little blond boy and a familiar half-Kneazle. [COMPLETE.]

Could This Be A Fake? By: smithandbarrowman -M- A cold and ruthless businessman, Lucius Malfoy expects the same of his son. However, when Draco enlists the help of his father's greatest rival, a game of deceit begins. But what happens when Draco no longer wants to play? (Muggle AU) 

Five Dates By: smithandbarrowman Five Dates, that's what she offered. Five chances for him to prove himself. Five chances for her to fall even deeper.

Hot for Teacher By: MotherofBulls -M-  Draco is a single dad trying to raise a teenager. Little does he know that his son has a crush on his own childhood nemisis who has taken up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts. Draco tries to juggle parenthood, awkward situations, and his own budding interest in Hermione Granger. WINNER Best Comedy, Summer 2017 Enchanted Awards. (sequel: An Indefinite Amount of Forever)

A Second Look By: RiverWriter -M- Her best friend's life was a mess and she would have done anything to make things better for him and his sons. So, when she found her former enemy in a similar situation her heart went out to him as well... and the beautiful blond baby in his arms didn't hurt his case. It was certainly enough for her to give him a second look.

Pretence By: camnz -M- Marriage Law fic. Normalcy was an unrealistic ambition when everyone must return to Hogwarts for their final year after the war. The pretence impossible to continue as all are called on to save the wizarding world - yet again, by law, this time. 

The Calm to Her Storm By: writerspassion18 -M- Death isn't easy, and Hermione is barely keeping herself afloat after Ron is gone. After an unlikely friendship between her kids and Draco Malfoy's son brews, something unlikely blossoms between Hermione and Draco too.

The Troublesome Thing About Time By: LadyKenz347 -M- Draco Malfoy has just arrived from twenty years in the future and insists on speaking to his wife, Hermione Granger. The only problem is that the Draco Malfoy she knows is still the snarky, button-pushing boy upstairs-and not the man in front of her now.

To our followers: if you’ve got a favorite Dramione fic completed in the last few years, feel free to share with the anon in the comments!

-Elle

i am deeply, deeply proud of this

Now YouTube has a habit of recommending me the weirdest stuff recently, but today i got this on my recommendations

And about halfway through listening to this, I went and read the comments, literally I could not stop reading I was there for hours, here are some of my favorites

🐯🥺

Men: Your Consent Matters Too

Fellas, listen.

You don’t have to do anything sexual that you’re not interested in. Moreover, you don’t have to explain why. “No” is a complete sentence.

Not interested in getting pegged? You don’t have to. Monogamous and not into the idea of another partner? Okay. Not sure about period sex? Cool.

And if your partner decides to question or mock your maturity or your masculinity or your sexuality because you say no? It’s time to re-evaluate the relationship. See if you don’t deserve better than that.

my ancient greek history professor is making us post memes weekly. i swear to god

“It never fails. Every time I talk about supporting my trans child, someone screams “That’s child abuse!” No. To me, increasing your child’s risk of suicide EIGHT-FOLD is abuse, which is what you do when you don’t affirm trans kids. I’ll keep my child alive and happy, thanks.”

- Amanda Jette Knox 

http://www.transstudent.org/graphics

I never thought I would end up shipping 2 cats but well here we are 🤣🐈

The Eternal Couple 🖤🧡

Saaya and Cleopatra have been courting for 4 years now and whenever they are together it’s a sight to behold. They live in India’s Kabini forest.

They are so beautiful.

& they have children together too!

Also, fun fact: Saaya means the ‘Shadow’

Photographs taken by Mithun H.

This is hilarious 🤣🤣

twilight au where smeyer is inserted into the world of her self-insert: or, who killed bella swan?

that fateful day at forks high began like all days at forks high did: by being described in excruciating, slow-paced detail.

today was no exception. after having a nightmare, bella got up, greeted the vampire in the corner (she was very observant), had a human moment, ate pop-tarts, slipped on a patch of ice, & scrabbled to her truck.

but today didn’t feel like a normal day. not bc the classrooms were empty or bc posters had been pasted up around school announcing a new student. instead, bella’s observant, effervescent mind made her feel this narrative setup in her bones. it was almost as if bella had the qualities of a third-person omnipresent narrator instead of a regular teenage girl.

sure enough, as soon as she stepped into the buzzing cafeteria, mike clasped a hand around her shoulder. “hey, bella!”

as you could probably guess by now, mike was in love with bella. she was an arizona girl that liked the rain. since girls from dry places didn’t like wet places, bella was not like the other girls.

“you’re just in time,” he continued. “the new girl’s about to arrive.”

bella chewed her lip. “oh. new girl?” she just had a nightmare about a girl, so it was weird that there was a new girl, just like in the nightmare she had. it was almost like bella was narratively  set up to have the power of premonition. almost.  

after rejecting several of mike’s sexual advances w/ patience & deference (as a good woman should), her eyes caught her statuesque white vampire bf from across the cafeteria.

today, edward’s eyes were a dandelion lemon starburst honeydew mangalope yellow, her favorite color. he wore a sleeveless white button-up that complimented his white undead face.   in one hand he held a red apple which he kept with him at all times in case an allusion to christianity or greek mythology popped up.

bella bit her lip, yearning to raw dog this edwardian gentleman.

“hey edward,” she said, going for a kiss & getting rejected, “did you catch the thoughts of the new girl yet? everyone’s talking about her. i think something’s up.”

but on the other end of the table, alice flailed around with a permanent marker, scribbling on a lunch tray.

edward gazed at the apple as if it were a symbol symbolizing his crisp, sweet desire for forced symbolism. “you’ve nothing to worry about,” he murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“wait a sec. alice is having a vision,” bella said, eyes narrowing. “something’s up.”

“you’re too stubborn & observant for your own good,” edward murmured, looking angrily down at the apple. “like eve observing the serpent in the garden of eden.”

“she has incredible power; i can see it,” said alice, still flailing & seeing. emmett leaned over to glimpse her work. “& her name is stephenie…meyer?”

emmett said, “anyone else feel like alice’s drawing looks like joseph smith?”

& as if on cue, she entered.

bella’s mouth dropped open. a rush of estrogen washed over her. “holy crow,” she whispered.

with her brown hair & brown eyes & brown lashes & plain-but-beautiful face, only their fashion choices separated bella from the new girl. while bella wore a t-shirt & khaki skirt, stephenie dressed less like a feminist whore with her floor-length white maxi skirt, ivory turtleneck & beige cardigan. she also didn’t wear makeup. she was not like the other girls.

“persephone,” murmured edward, golden molten butterscotch honey topaz eyes glittering.  

she was gorgeous in a heterosexual way, like how bella felt about rosalie. like, so attractive bella could cry. but only because bella was insecure about her looks, not bc bella was gay or bi or whatever haha

bella touched his white forearm. “i told you to stop calling me that.”

“not you,” murmured edward. “stephenie meyer. the angel, come to hell. she’s as beautiful as you, my love.” bella’s heart melted. he lovingly rejected her kiss.

“she’s a god,” said alice, eyes shifting. “i can see it. she controls the universe. she’s rich, mormon, & fulfills her domestic duties just as a good woman should. i’m 100% straight but stephenie meyer would be my dream girl, hands-down.”

bella’s blood froze. wasn’t bella supposed to be alice’s vaguely homoerotic girl friend??

emmett’s eyes narrowed. “anyone else think she looks weirdly like bella?” but rosalie was too busy admiring her reflection in the face of her pearlmaster 39 diamond rolex watch w/ 18ct white-gold index dial & diamond-set oyster band, edward was ruminating over his soul, alice was still flailing, & jasper was daydreaming about licking daddy jefferson davis’ boots like the spineless confederate he was, yee haw

so only bella heard. panic bubbled in her chest. “what? stephenie meyer looks nothing like me.”  

at the sound her name, stephenie’s eyes locked on the cullens’ table.

edward’s sexy pale white hard marble triple-double-diamond vampire bod crumpled to the floor.

“edward, what’s wrong?” asked alice. she was concerned about edward because he apparently had redeemable traits that made the cullens care deeply for him, it’s just not relevant to bella’s story

“oh, god,” edward moaned in a murmur. “she’s reciting the word of god.”

the ripe, juicy, succulent, voluptuous red apple had smashed to bits in his clenched fist. this symbolized edward willing to do anything & everything to destroy his temptations so long as it fell within the confines of a PG-13 storyline.

“i’ve got to marry her,” he murmured possessively.

“if i wasn’t a product of stephenie’s festering insecurities, i would say she’s as pretty as me,” snarked rosalie. “but i’m too vain & catty for that.”

bella’s knees wobbled at rosalie’s voice. visions of rosalie stepping on her neck blipped through bella’s mind, which was def a real thing that could happen bc rosalie was an absolute goddess of a vampire with heels higher than the empire state building & thighs thicker than the brooklyn bridge, heterosexually speaking

“right?? if you put bella & stephenie next to each other, the only difference would—” emmett couldn’t finish his sentence bc all the cullens sans edward had a medical condition that prevented them from saying more than 25 words per 400 pages of text; it’s very common, you can google it

“we are not the same,” said bella, her voice rising. “edward, please! we don’t dress the same, act the same—you know we aren’t the same, don’t you?!”

edward turned broodingly to bella. “do you believe in god, my love?”

“i don’t know.” all bella knew of religion was her mother’s fad diets. “i’m either a keto or a lutheran. do lutherans have gods?”

“all my life i thought i was a soulless monster,” murmured edward. “& we could get into a thematically relevant debate about what it means to have a soul, but the detailed account of your morning has made it impossible for me to make a compelling case without sacrificing important exposition, so let’s forget i brought it up after this conversation. the point is, i’ve discovered i do have a soul. & she has given it to me.”

“wh-what are you trying to say??” said bella. “what does she have that i don’t?!”

“thoughts,” murmured edward. “not her own thoughts, but—”

“all she does is recite scripture!”

“she doesn’t just recite scripture,” murmured edward. “she is scripture. my scripture.”

he cried a single tear. bella’s tear—yes!, the same one he had eaten that fateful day in the meadow. it tumbled from his chiseled white cheekbone, crashing onto the bits of smashed apple below.

“no!” the true nightmare had just begun. edward didn’t love bella!

she passed out.

october

november

december

january

these were the only months bella learned in primary school, but she listed them all to make sure she didn’t have a concussion

meanwhile, the cullens & the student body of forks orbited stephenie, praising her & quoting the bible & reassuring her that, yes, despite her hoarding an absurd amount of wealth (& giving nothing back to the indigenous ppl she wronged), she would definitely be getting into the kingdom of heaven

what if stephenie had come to replace bella? what if stephenie was bella? or what if none of this was real? what if bella had passed out in the woods again & was being carried back home by a bare-chested sam? (no doubt the rosiest scenario, but hey, a girl can dream)

&, as if on cue, the cafeteria doors burst open.

“i heard there’s a new girl in town.”    

“jake!” bella said for no other reason other than to identify jake.

jake loomed in the doorway, a hulking eight feet & fourteen inches. instead of sporting his bare rippling abs & tight jorts, he wore a rippling xxxxxl t-shirt with Mormon Boys Are My Favorite Toys printed in rainbow lettering. over that he wore a turtleneck sweater. over that he wore a pinstripe suit w/ a monogrammed lapel; in fact, it seemed that every inch of jake’s typically objectified, UNDER-EIGHTEEN body was clothed.

behind him stood the quileute teens, all scowls.

“quick!” said jacob, throwing bella a shopping bag. “put this on & follow us!”

bella dropped the bag because she was clumsy, then she tripped over the bag because she was clumsy. bella was so clumsy. then she pulled out a bowling shirt, cuffed jeans, & doc martens. meanwhile, the crowd of students grew louder, larger.

“if you want to get out of here alive, you’re going to have to dress like the disaster bisexual you are,” said jake over the growing cheers of the student body. “now!!”

“jake, i can’t, you know i’m too het for these clothes!”

“het?? ok, strong disagree,” said leah, poking her head out from behind jake’s nine-foot-five frame.

at the sound of leah’s voice, stephenie shot her a glare. she & leah were natural enemies. for reasons.

from the back of the pack sam shouted, “we can have a healthy nuanced discourse on sexual orientation after we escape smeyer—hurry!”

“steph-en-ie! steph-en-ie!” cheers & howls drowned out the wolfpack. bella slipped into her new attire & bolted out of the cafeteria.

“wait, solike, what just happened?” bella asked. she could run alongside the pack even though she lived a completely sedentary lifestyle & was just described as clumsy. “who’s the new girl & why am i pretending to be bisexual?”

“‘pretending’?” leah smirked

jake said, “it’s smeyer. she’s writing a new book.”

“smeyer?”

“if you say her full name, you summon her.” jacob’s voice dropped to a murmur. “she’s trying to destroy her world.”

“her world? you mean ours?”

“not yet.” jake shook his head. “it’s her world. we are her world. & the more she adds to it, the worse it becomes.” they burst through the side door into the gloomy afternoon. “we’ve got to take back smeyer’s canon before it’s too late.”

“wha—holy crow, she has a cannon?    what?”

“jake, c’mon,” said sam, car keys jangling in his hand, “we can talk meta later. smeyer’s going to follow us if we stick around.”

bella’s head spun. “w-well if she knows where we are, who we are—how the hell are we gonna stop her?”

whipping out a pair of shades from the folds of his monogrammed lapel, jake said, “well honey, lemme tell ya.” he slid the shades over his steely eyes. “first things first: we reclaim her characters.”

Keep reading

Dear teen girls,

Stop abusing your boyfriends and yes what you are doing is abuse.

Stop:

Yelling at him in front of his friends 

Hitting or slapping him when he does or says something you don’t like

Telling him he doesn’t have a choice when it comes to decisions that involve both of you 

Telling him he can’t hang out with friends because you don’t like him

Telling him to not talk to other girls even if they are his friend

Forcing him to spend every moment with you 

Belittling him and pointing out all his flaws

Calling him stupid or making fun of him for making a mistake

Threatening to break up with him if he doesn’t do what you want

Being emotionally manipulative and crying until he does what you want

Accusing him of cheating every time he’s not with you

Blow up is phone if he doesn’t text you every five minutes 

Telling him you are the must thing that has ever happened to him and no one else will love

Physically attacking him when ever you are mad

Forcing him to have sex despite that fact that he said he didn’t want to

Invading his privacy by going through his phone

Getting mad at him for changing his password and demanding he tell you what it is

If a guy did any of these things to a girl it would be considered abuse but since its the other way around its considered normal. Throughout High school I saw many girl treating their boyfriends like shit. Sometime even physically abusing them in the hallways and no one trying to stop it because its a girl attacking a boy. 

Boys: If your girlfriend does anything on this list leave her. It is abuse and you deserve better.

Girls: if you find your self doing anything on this list to your boyfriend you need to knock it off because you are being abusive. 

this is totally appropriate and necessary to start teaching

Reading about abusive men and the way they think. Very unsettling and an incredible book so far. Here are my very professional notes.

I personally wanna see less 'you are not a burden/it's not work to love you' and more 'you are worth the work it takes to love you.' I KNOW I'm a burden sometimes. that isn't such a terrible thing! humans are strong. we can carry burdens. and it is work for me to be there for my friends, but it's work I'm willing to do.

we need to acknowledge this because pretending love isn't work will never make people like me feel less guilty for accepting love. we need to talk about it so people don't feel bad for having boundaries and not always being up to do the work. we need to accept it so we can properly appreciate what others do for us and what we're doing for them.

yes it does take work to love you. but guess what? you still deserve love, and you deserve people who are willing to do the work to love you. it doesn't make you bad. all love take work. and everyone is worth it.

Did Anne Boleyn not actively seek to become his queen? (not a rhetorical question; genuinely confused)

    No, Anne Boleyn did not seek to be Henry’s queen, not at the beginning, anyway.

    The first year of Henry and Anne’s relationship can be better described as sexual harassment in the workplace than a romance. Anne spent most of 1526 trying to tactfully dodge Henry’s advances. She had told him she would be no man’s mistress, but he didn’t respect that.  

    In February, he made a public declaration of his interest in Anne, hoping the fawning attention of the court would pressure her into giving into his advances. it didn’t work. Anne still would not become his mistress. Henry now spent more time in his wife’s quarters than he had in years, but it was to visit Anne where she couldn’t escape his attentions.

    In May, it got so bad that Anne actually quit her job as a lady in waiting and retreated to Hever, where she refused to answer Henry’s letters and sent back his gifts. Henry’s letters to her at this point are full of pouting complaints that she won’t write back to him.

    Henry still wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and chased after her. He went to stay with a cousin of Anne, Nicholas Carew, whose house was a convenient distance from Hever so he could ride over at his leisure. It wasn’t like Anne could refuse to receive him at the house. She refused wherever she had agency, but in this she did not. No one could refuse the king admittance.

    Anne had to walk a delicate balance. If she had offended the king, it would have put her entire family’s future in danger. She undoubtedly faced pressure from her family and friends - who were benefiting from the king’s attentions to Anne with a stream of offices, appointments, and titles - to keep the king “happy” and not anger him. And so Anne had to remain polite and friendly, smiling while she tried to duck away from his reaching hands.

    Anne wanted what every girl of the era wanted, to make a good marriage. She was intensely religious, something that’s often forgotten in her on-screen portrayals, an evangelical with a reformist zeal. No matter what the king offered her, she would not sleep with any man unless he was her lawfully-wed husband. But she couldn’t find a husband while the king was pursuing her. No man would ask for her hand and risk enraging the king. And the longer the king chased her, the less people believed Anne could still be a virgin. Her reputation was just as ruined as though she’d been the king’s mistress in truth.

    Later writers, seeing how things turned out, have posited that Anne planned the whole thing from the start, “luring” Henry away from his wife with her sexy feminine witchery. They imbue her with supernatural foresight, as if she somehow knew if she ignored him, refused him, and left court, it would drive him mad with lust and he would leave his wife for her. But that’s ridiculous.  Anne could not have possibly hoped Henry would make her his queen when he was chasing her back in 1526.

    In the past, Henry had always gracefully backed away when a lady indicated she wasn’t interested in being perused by him. Henry had a very fragile ego and was pained by being refused. His way was to sniff around and drop hints, and if the lady was cool toward his overtures, he would step back quickly and pretend the whole thing never happened. “Interested in her? Huh! Me? No way. Maybe she was interested in me, but I wasn’t into her!” 

    In Anne’s case, he wasn’t taking the hint. Anne was as blunt as she could be without being outright rude, but he kept coming back, offering her larger gifts, and promoting her family members to higher offices with greater income. Her family must have despaired when Anne left court because it put her prestigious career as a maid of honor in danger, but even that drastic move wasn’t enough to push Henry off his course.

    Thomas Wyatt, who watched the whole thing and may have been in love with Anne himself, wrote a poem about it, Whoso List to Hunt. He portrayed Anne as a deer, fleeing for her very life, with Henry and others in pursuit. But Henry has already put a collar around the deer’s neck, proclaiming the prize as his own, whether she likes it or not. And though Anne seems “tame,” she has a wild longing to be free. But later writers have portrayed it as though it was the deer luring Henry into the hunt.

    While everyone knew by 1526 that Henry wanted to divorce Katharine (he’d stopped sleeping with her years ago and had told several people he thought his marriage to her was invalid), everyone fully expected his next wife would be a princess of the blood, someone who would bring him a huge dowry and an alliance with a foreign power. A king marrying a mere gentlewoman for love? The idea was ridiculous. All the time he was trying to arrange Henry’s annulment, Wolsey was planning the king would marry a French princess. Even he, who probably knew the king better than anyone, didn’t think Henry would really marry Anne.

    In 1527, Henry asked Anne to marry him. Two things are important to note here. First of all, a royal proposal was not a request. A woman did not turn down a proposal of marriage from a king. She just couldn’t. (Ask Kateryn Parr, who was in love with another man when the king proposed.) It’s not like today, when a woman has agency in deciding her marital future. In those days, if a man of appropriate rank and wealth approached for a marriage, the girl’s father would decide if the union was good enough and if it was, the girl was expected to accept. If his rank was much higher than her own, or her father’s, the girl and her father had no little choice in the matter. They could appeal to higher authorities, such as the king or cardinal, and they might put a stop to the match, but the girl’s opinion on the matter was inconsequential. In this case, there was no higher authority to whom Anne could appeal if she didn’t want to marry Henry.

     Secondly, once Anne had accepted, they were legally bound to one another. A betrothal was almost as legally binding as a marriage itself, requiring a dispensation from the pope to dissolve. Once she had accepted, Anne had to put her effort into furthering her marriage. If the king had changed his mind at this point, Anne would have been ruined. Few men would have been willing to take the king’s discarded “mistress,” and even with a papal dispensation freeing her from the engagement, her marital prospects would have been dim.

    In short, there is no evidence whatsoever that Anne had a grand, cunning scheme to make herself queen. It would have been a ridiculous plan, and incredibly reckless. “I’m going to risk inciting the queen’s hatred, the king’s anger (potentially ruining our family), and destroying my reputation around Europe on the off chance that this time Henry won’t back away when I refuse him. Because I’m just so awesome, he won’t be able to quit me, you know.”

    Humans have a tendency to look back at events once they’ve occurred and see a master plan behind it all, but there’s simply no evidence of it. Instead, what we see is a young woman harassed in her workplace to the point of quitting her job, but was still unable to shake off her boss’s attentions.

There are three breeds of cat:

Chonk

Goblin

Yeah that looks like a cat

i’m so proud of anyone who writes fanfic.   i am immensely proud of anyone who types out stories they want to see for characters that are not their creation, or their property, but that inspire them to delve into a difficult medium with which they likely have little experience or comfort. i have to be proud of that because fanfic is ultimately a thankless line of work. and it is work.  it’s work for people who’re good at writing, trained in it. so imagine how difficult it is for beginners, the impaired, those with even a modicum of self-doubt?  in that way, they are no different from any other author. writing, literature, is an art form with an ugly legacy of snobbery. academics and laymen alike still argue about what sorts of writing should and should not be considered ‘canonical.’  add to that odious environment the level of disdain, apathy, or ignorance most non-fannish people have toward fan works and you have a near-permanent, repugnant shroud of You’re Not Real encompassing the whole endeavor.  a shroud under which, miraculously, fan works are still produced with vigor and regularity, and largely without access to agents or editors who’re paid to polish. just as miraculously, these writers often receive, from their friends and peers and strangers, the sort of praise one associates with bestselling authors.  it’s miraculous because fanfic writers have been obliged to believe, from the moment they set finger to keyboard, that what they are doing is a sideshow. at best, they are hobbyists with some talent but no real standing. at worst, they are self-indulgent amateurs, muddying the waters of a true craft.  like many authors of original work, fanfic writers will never have a millisecond of calculable fame for their efforts. they may step out of their borrowed sandbox and create original work, or they may not, but there is no scenario in which they emerge feeling like an accepted member of a celebrated tradition.  even in the rare instance of pop culture turning its eye on some speck of scintillating fan work, it’s still mocked.  it’s still a sideshow, just with a brighter spotlight. so, yeah, i am proud of anyone who can absorb the reality of all the above…and still write. 

The Hunger Games, Actual Teen style!

On the left, 15-year-old Josh Hutcherson.

On the right, 16-year-old Jennifer Lawrence.

Think how much creepier it would be to see them killing other kids when they look so squishy-cheeked and little.

there’s something endlessly hilarious to me about the phrase “hotly debated” in an academic context. like i just picture a bunch of nerds at podiums & one’s like “of course there was a paleolithic bear cult in Northern Eurasia” and another one just looks him in the eye and says “i’l kill you in real life, kevin”