Your Father Teaches You How To Be The First One To Walk Away. Leave, Before They Realize You Were Not

queens and kings, kings and queens

- m.c.

adam’s kisses are always reflect exactly what he feels. no jokes, no bullshit. when he kisses, he is trying to say something with it from the very moment he begins to lean in. to adam kisses are one of the many ways he can express what he’s feeling towards certain people. with blue, he was never able to say all of the things he felt, nor could he convey them through a kiss. sometimes he regrets it, other times he’s a bit glad he didn’t have the chance to let blue completely see into him that way. with ronan it was so much different. with ronan, adam is completely unable to hold back. he’s speaking a thousand words per second with each kiss and ronan, a master of all languages understands it all. 

ronan’s kisses are softer than anticipated. ronan is a boy that shines from miles away without even trying to, a true child of the moon in the fact that not all the beauty in him is due to the light of those surrounding him,  but they do illuminate him in ways he couldn’t achieve on his own. this is not a well known fact unless you are one of his close friends, so when adam and ronan kiss for the first time, adam isn’t completely surprised. he knows ronan more than ronan thinks he does, but he is still taken aback by the way ronan melted into him, easily accepting and taking all adam had to give. in ronan’s opinion there was no room for him to put up walls when it was between him and adam, adam and him. and though ronan did not have any secrets to share through kisses the way adam did, their kisses were still very much a conversation. adam would pour words into every kiss “i need you, i need this, we need each other” and ronan would press back, his arms around adam’s neck, his hips pressed into adam’s, and the way he’d bite down on adam’s lip, everything was an answer. every move was a thousand “yeses” spilling back into adam.

adam:

gansey: adam i would die for you

The blood on my teeth begins to taste like a poem, like religion, like the way you look at me.

Sean Glatch, from “Caffeine, Pt. 1,″ 4:41 (via lifeinpoetry)

Why The Raven Cycle isn’t getting any diver$ity cookie from me.

This contains mild spoilers, and text from The Raven King.

The way Henry was introduced in BLLB was unforgettable. We saw him making an offhand rape comment. This is pretty common. See All For the Game series by Nora Sakavic where their lone!good!moc could be seen making the same proclamation throughout the series. I am willing to let it slide, maybe, this is not about race.

Moving forward to The Raven King, we get to know Henry Cheng better. He’s half Chinese and half Korean. His mother Seondeok is a Korean dealer of illegal antiquities. White authors can’t seem to write East Asians without associating them with mob, yakuza, and mafia? Another example: All For the Game series by Nora Sakavic

This is the part where it gets nauseating. 

“Principles? Henry Cheng’s principles are all about getting larger font in the school newsletter,” Ronan said. He did a vaguely offensive version of Henry’s voice: “Serif? Sans serif? More bold, less italics.”

Blue saw Adam both smirk and turn his face away in a hurry so that Gansey wouldn’t see, but it was too late.

“Et tu, Brute?” Gansey asked Adam. “Disappointing.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Adam replied.

It was explicitly stated Henry’s second language is English. I’m going to assume Ronan is mocking the way Henry speaks, the intonation or accent of his voice. Whichever fucking way I look it is racist. Nobody even called Ronan out. The gross thing, the author made it into an “inside joke” for pynch.

This didn’t end right there. We have another pynch scene where they made a punchline out of Henry’s ethnicity.

“Adam made puerile jokes at Henry’s expense (He’s half Chinese? “Which half?”) and sniggered clannishly; Blue called them on it (“Jealous, much?”): Gansey told them to put aside their preconceptions and think about him.

Really? This made into the final publication? Minority’s ethnical identity isn’t a subject for crass puns.  Blue and Gansey’s meek intervention is not going to pacify me. I’m not here for this. Once again, this become a “cutesy” pynch scene.

These vile ~scenes~ about Henry’s otherization serves no purpose. It doesn’t contribute anything to the plot. You can reason out the narrative is implying Adam and Ronan are jealous (of Gansey’s new attachment to Henry,) but the author could’ve made a different approach of executing that. This is deliberate.

Another troubling scene with Henry and Blue

It was this: Blue, teetering on the edge of offence, saying, I don’t understand why you keep saying such awful things about Koreans. About yourself. And Henry saying. I will do it before anyone else can. It is the only way to not be angry all of the time.

Great another Korean character written by white author who might or might not be experiencing internalized racism. Sounds familiar? See Ellen Oh’s intake of Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell.

I see a lot of bloggers here are now clamoring for Henry, maybe it’s because he’s greatly sculpted, or because he’s Asian and his characterization speaks to you. If your reason is the latter, I have news for you. There are plenty of Asian authors specifically Chinese, and Korean, who are out there doing a spectacular job at it. Here are some of them; Jenny Han, Renee Ahdieh, Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo, Ellen Oh, Maureen Goo, Marie Lu, Lydia Kang, Amy Zhang, Celeste Ng, S. Jae-Jones, and more.

The gods are right here, as far-fetched as it sounds: everyone’s a god, no kings, no crowns, just us, one being, infinite and holy,  gods, messed up, lonely, squashed, stressed out, dumbed down, raging, wasted … Same as it ever was: brand new ancients.

Kate Tempest, Brand New Ancients (via antigonies)

The creatures here don’t seem to like us.

cain saying “am i my brother’s keeper” right after he killed him is so funny. it’s GOD. he SAW THAT

Noah: *is here*

Me: (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

look how many teeth / you have—the better to swallow the sky

Emily O’Neill, from “where St. Francis tamed the wolves,” Curious Specimens (via lifeinpoetry)