Been thinking about Jasper today as one does and I really think, in a way, Jasper’s inner strength outpaces even Carlisle’s. Maybe Jasper doesn’t have Carlisle’s physical self control, but to fail at something regularly and keep getting back up takes a remarkable amount of inner strength. Anyone who has struggled with addiction knows how exhausting it can be to relapse over and over, and your heart is in it, but sometimes it’s not, but you can’t just stop trying etc. When I think about it….Carlisle may have perfect self control, but he’s never failed. He doesn’t understand the crushing weight of failure and the strength required to keep trying. Jasper does and I think a case could be made that he’s one of the most dedicated of the Cullens.
so fucking humbling to be like “no I like that character a normal amount” and then you can literally feel your heart rate spike at a mention of them like a dog that just heard the word “treat”
One of the effect of elementary watson being a woman on sherlock is that hes always making caveats about murder suspects like a man caved his skull in. Or a woman. women can also cave skulls in 👍 he set the building on fire. Or she. I would never imply women cant set building on fire
people on this website be like “it’s actually school’s fault that i don’t know how to read because i wanted to write my essay on the divergent trilogy and that BITCH mrs. clarkson made us study 1984 instead. anyway here’s a 10 tweet thread of easily disproven misinformation about a 3 year old news story and btw, who is toni morrison?”
i KNOW most of y’all are lying about being in the gifted program as children because none of you could pass the basic reading comprehension assessment they give third graders today
this post is mean and I never read divergent or whatever the fuck but 1984 sucks and is rape apologism so if somebody wanted to write about divergent or whatever good for them
this reply is like literally exactly what op is talking about lol. like firstly ops point isn’t “1984 is good”, ops point is that analysing complex stories teaches you how to form opinions and think for yourself. and like secondly in 1984 you’re supposed to think damn it’s fucked up that he’s thinking that way about her, i wonder if this ties in with the central theme of “a society like this will fuck you in the head”? (this is the thinking for yourself part). like do you think orwell just put that in for fun? do you think that just because winston is the protagonist you’re supposed to agree with everything he does?
You know I feel like this post just gave me an epiphany for what is wrong with how Tumblr Fandom/Internet Fandom responds to media-or not *wrong* but makes it very hard to respond to anything but a morally correct, and heroic protagonist.
When an English teacher, or reader, taught or picked up 1984, it wasn’t with the intention they were going to love the protagonist. They picked it up with the intention of reading a whole story and trying to grasp the theme or catharsis from the story. If the protagonist was a *shitty* person it played into the the themes or the story, because it wasn’t about morally judging the book or *liking* or feeling attachment to the protagonist. Sometimes and often times, books were just about gaining another perspective.
No one read Lolita expecting to endear, or like, or be inspired by Humbert. You are supposed to be upset by his behavior, you don’t read Lolita with the intention of being inspired. You read it to learn more about what the fuck is going on inside someone’s head when they behave like that. How children get sucked into abusive situations. Or read “The Great Gatsby” not because they want to fall in love with Gatsby or Nick, but to better understand and analyze the experience of the 1920s or destitution of the American Dream.
A lot of internet and fandom culture has changed that though. When we say something like “I love the Great Gatsby” it comes with the idea or association that means you must *love* or relate to one of the characters. And maybe you do, but the first assumption is not longer about the quality of the work or themes, or cathartic impact-it’s about character admiration. And with that character admiration, in tumblr stan culture, or kin culture, or exalting characters with fanart/romance/so on you don’t just ‘admire’ or find that character ‘compelling’ it now translates to ‘you LOVE that character’ or you ‘DIRECTLY relate to that character.’
You can’t say “I love how Humbert is written, it’s so fascinating and dark”, without it directly translating you somehow relate to a child abuser or condone his actions. Taking in media has become an act of worship and connection. We no longer watch meant to just see the story as a whole, we watch expecting to connect to a character and if we offer them our “worship” as it’s become, as opposed to just attention or interest study as it traditionally was, it means we are condoning the character or saying we directly empathize with all their actions.
I think that’s why there is often now so much fuss over *toxic* characters or not. Or whether that classical novel is showing good or bad things anymore. We’re treating the characters as people we should love or want to draw or write about. Sometimes a story is just about getting the the theme or catharsis or learning another perspective. We don’t NEED to like the character. Or we don’t HAVE to like a character to be impressed by how they’re written or intrigued by their behavior.
I think if internet culture could learn to view stories as small insights into other lives or single takes of one perspective instead of purposeful moral inspirations we’d be a lot less worried about how toxic or not toxic they are.
every day i think about how rosalie hale was so powerful and so controlled that as a newborn she murdered her rapists and managed not to drink their blood. jasper could never. bella looked like she struggled more with that mountain climber dude than rosalie did in her flashbacks. and EDWARD could ABSOLUTELY NEVER. so he should keep his bitch ass mouth CLOSED when referring to rosalie bc she has more power and control and influence in her pinky finger than he does in his whole body. god bless.
Ficmas25 Day 3: Fallen Angel Alice (High School-verse)
Good evening!
Tonight we have the Fallen Angel Alice High School AU. This begins much darker than the OG Angel-verse, but gets to incorporate so many things I've wanted to play around with for so long.
This is also a look at a first draft - a little all-over the place, lots of different scenes. It's wonkier than I normally post, but I think the vibes are immaculate. Probably more appropriate for Halloween, honestly, but whatever. I'm also gutted to discover the original cafeteria scene was lost at some point, so I had to reconstruct it.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and this is just the 'intro' into this verse - it's low on the list of priorities right now, but I have a Vision that will be achieved at some point. <3
--
A new town, a new home.
She forgets how many there have been over the years. She has her system down to a fine art - pick a small town, one of those towns that is easily forgettable, that became an acknowledged place by sheer force rather than planning. A place where everyone wants to escape, but some people are as part of the fabric as the rain or the dirt. Those are the best towns to get lost in, even better than cities.
Cities are too full of secrets, of watchers.
Pick a small town and show up as an orphan, a runaway, a lost girl. Back in the old days, she’d be sent to the church, maybe given a job. These days, there are systems in place and it takes little to no energy at all to make her face unknowable to the camera, to make sure that her photos in all the different databases never match up. She tells them that she’s fifteen, gives herself five years before she has to disappear again. And she’s sent to live with a family, a family who will house and feed her.
She’s careful, very careful - her tattoos remain covered at all times; all her clothes are high-necked and long-sleeved and she refuses anything else. Too many questions she doesn’t want to answer, even though her markings have faded so lightly against her skin - most of the time.
The Webers - Aaron and Camila, with their three children, Angela, Isaac and Joshua - seem kind. They live in a nice brick house two streets over from the center of town. The social worker promises her that the Webers are a good foster family, one of the best in the region. That she’ll love them. That they’ll take good care of her so she can finish high school without moving again.
(Washington has been hell on wheels, honestly - the Webers are her fourth family in two years. The Jamesons, the Browns, the Thompsons… all miserable failures. Not that she blames the Thompsons. Adrian was only a kid, it should never have happened…)
The Weber twins - Isaac and Joshua - are five years old, and completely identical. They seem delighted with her presence, begging her to play soccer with them, to play Lego. Angela plays with them, to make sure Alice isn’t overwhelmed with their enthusiasm. Maybe this place will be good, maybe she’ll be okay here. She might have to go to church, which she hates - watching people pray and call upon angels to make their lives kinder feels like torture when she knows exactly what those monsters are capable of - but maybe she can do it, just so she can stay.
She's so tired.
//
It’s a Wednesday when Edward slams down the tray on the Cullen lunch table with a scowl on his face. Bella carefully sits down beside him, her face hidden by a curtain of hair.
“What’s up your ass?” Rosalie asks, pushing fruit around the cup with a spoon, not looking up. He and Rose have always gotten the same food, since Jasper's first round of high school when she guided him through the ropes - a fruit cup, a soda (orange), packaged pretzels, and a packaged cookie. It's a proven solution to the stench of human food, and it makes the twin thing more convincing to humans.
“New girl in biology,” Edward said stiffly.
“Man, you have no luck in that class,” Emmett said, looking up from his phone. “Or too much luck? Do you want to eat her or f…”
Edward shot Emmett a look of pure malevolence as Bella hid a grin. At least one of them had a sense of humour.
“So, what’s the problem?” he asked, more to stop an argument than because he cared about the arrival of another teenager into the maelstrom.
"…I can't hear her thoughts," Edward admits and Emmett guffaws, loud enough that two nearby tables fall quiet.
"What are the odds?" Emmett shakes his head.
Before anyone else speaks, the new girl walks into the cafeteria trailing behind one of Bella's classmates. She's slight in every possible way, bordering on ill. He's never seen a girl who looked so… hunted before.
Rosalie is staring at her with a critical gaze, and Jasper cannot help but join her.
Except…
She's slight, wearing ill-fitted clothing and is clinging to her schoolbooks like a lifeline, trailing behind one of Bella's classmates. And she's… gorgeous.
The pristine planes of her face, the glossy black curls that frame her face, her blue eyes seem to swirl and shift as he looks at her, but he’s sure it’s his imagination. She’s ethereal, in a way that isn’t human - even something as simple as watching her walk across the cafeteria feels special.
Fuck.
"That's not human," Rosalie says finally.
Edward nods. "I suspected as much," he says, relief evident in his voice. "Lore Lay? A young Makva?"
"What?" Bella looks around at them, her eyes wide.
"We aren't the only things out there, Bella." His words are slow, and he's resisting the urge to turn back around and look at the girl; he wonders if that's part of it.
"Man, there's tons of things!" Emmett puts down his phone and leans forward. "You should see some of the things that Carlisle has brought home. He was giddy the day he met some Skinwalkers, not many of them left. Our kind don't do great with Wendigos, puts us in a weird headspace. Everyone hates a Kupua, but cryptids are the most polite? Like, super nice guys. Jas really likes dryads, it's funny as fuck."
That incident was one of the most humiliating that he's ever lived though, and Jasper wishes Emmett would stop bringing it up.
Bella is staring at them with her mouth open.
"You should ask Carlisle sometime," Rose says, and there's a whisper of mischief about her. Edward snorts and even Jasper chuckles.
"Never get Carlisle started," Edward explains to a still-stunned Bella. "Even Esme has asked him to stop. We have a friend in Alaska, Eleazer, who is helping Carlisle put together a compendium - they started it in the 60s, and it has its own table in the library."
"You think she's safe?" Jasper finally asks, nodding behind him and forcing himself not to look at her again.
"We'll keep an eye on her and let Carlisle know tonight," Rosalie says. "Do we know anything else about her?"
"She's Angela's foster sister. Arrived on Saturday," Bella finds her words. "Angela said she's quiet but nice - her name is Alice."
Alice. The name sounds right, almost like he knew it before Bella spoke.
He looks over again, and she's seated beside Angela with a tray in front of her, but she's hunched over and small, eyes fixed on the tabletop.
//
She knows there’s a vampire two seats behind her, and one across. He sits as straight as a board and keeps watching her like she's going to vanish. He smells like wood varnish and mock-vanilla, sugar that burns, and she sneezes twice. She refuses to look at him, not even for a second. She's run into vampires before, and they haunt her nightmares.
Alice wishes he wouldn't stare. She prefers to be forgettable, maybe this school is too small. Maybe she’ll have to make herself more pathetic, less of a novelty and more of a sideshow here. Maybe she should stop talking, or talk to herself. Maybe she’ll have to skip classes and hide in the library. All tricks to be left alone, to be cast aside.
Forgettable.
She doesn't want that vampire anywhere near her. She's confused why they're in a school at all, but there's something dreadfully sad about a teenage vampire trapped in a loop of the life they should have led, never getting the chance to graduate and grow up. Just walking around in a state of decay, hoping they'll find a way to break out of their prison.
She doesn't judge.
She's done much worse things than anything a vampire has ever done.
//
The dream is a new one, and she’s roaming through the woods, the world grey and grim. There's a tall shadow ahead of her, moving further away but for some reason, she's following it - trying to catch up to it, even.
When she wakes up, her tattoos itch, and the ones on her chest are raised and red. She's too frail for them to rearrange themselves these days, so infection and discomfort are their preferred flavour of warning.
(If she ever remembers who she is and where she came from, she's going right back there to hurt them, for the decades of suffering they've inflicted on her.)
That's the first day the twins don't ask her to play with them. They just watch her and whisper. Mrs Weber calls them shy. But some children see too much and she already knows that the boys are aware of what she is. She pretends she’s shy, and is very polite and sweet and the picture perfect house guest. She helps them clean up their Lego before dinner, and is happy to give them the remote, to let them take the last slice of cake, anything to make herself seem benign.
It doesn’t work.
Isaac is the first, waking up screaming the house down little more than a week after she arrives - faster than usual. The entire house is running to his aid.
“Alice was standing so close and she kept groaning and moaning and her eyes were black!” Isaac sobs in his mother’s arms, and everyone stares at her.
“I-I was asleep,” she manages, and she paints an innocent picture, with her hair in messy braids, and pink pyjamas. “I swear, I’d never harm you, Isaac.”
But the little boy buries his face in his mother’s chest, still crying.
“I’m sure it was just a nightmare,” Angela agrees. After all, why would Alice be tormenting small children?
A nightmare, of course. Everyone is shuffled back to bed, and Alice hurts. It happens every time.
—
The nightmares started happening every night or two. Soon Joshua joins Isaac. Always the same; Alice leaning over them with empty eye sockets bleeding black blood, groaning and moaning. Just terrible dreams for no reason. Both the Webers check on Alice at night, put bells on door handles, and there is no sign their newest foster child is haunting the boys at night.
It doesn’t help. The boys call her a witch and a monster, and draw her spewing black energy and evil, and Mrs Weber talks about taking them to see a child psychologist. The Webers admit there is no evidence Alice has done anything, that the boys have just decided she scares them.
And every single night, she dreams of that shadow figure, standing there waiting for her to catch up - his? hand held out for her to grab. For some reason, she's not afraid of it. Even when she rolls over to the screams of children, it doesn't feel like she's chasing after the devil.
It feels like maybe she's looking for someone.
//
Alice wakes up to screaming again.
It’s just past two am, and Isaac and Joshua are sobbing for their mother. Their bedroom is at the other end of the house; easy enough to pretend they haven’t woken her, especially if she pulls a pillow over her face.
She doesn’t even remember what she was dreaming. Just a fading sense of unease.
(The tattoos on her arms are burning; a beacon of guilt and a confession.)
She lies in that neat little bedroom decorated in gingham, buried under a purple daisy-print duvet, picked out intentionally to be sweet and girlish. Innocent. The same as everything the Webers have bought her. She hears Camila Weber trying to comfort the boys, promising them there is no such thing as monsters.
That’s a lie, but she’s not a monster. She’s just cursed.
Her bedroom door creaks open and she knows that Mrs Weber is peering in, to make sure she’s still there, asleep. Not terrifying kindergartners. Mrs Weber waits a moment, and she doesn’t move an inch. Then her bedroom door closes again, and Mrs Weber goes back to the boys to reassure them that Alice is asleep, and they’ve just had a bad nightmare. Everything is fine, and they are safe.
(It's happening again, and she doesn't know how to stop it.)
//
The morning that Mrs Weber finds the dead rat on Joshua’s bed, its organs spilling onto the sheets, that they realise this is serious. There is mud on their carpet, fresh when the boys wake up. It’s demeaning to have her shoes checked, but she allows it to calm the boys.
Alice pretends she doesn’t know that they suspect her of something. When Mrs Weber invites her to do her homework at the kitchen table, or help with dinner, or help with the laundry, she doesn’t acknowledge that it’s so the woman can keep both eyes on her.
She pretends not to notice that she’s not really allowed to be alone anymore; Angela, or Mr or Mrs Weber stay with her. The boys eat dinner earlier, refusing to eat at the table with Alice. She says nothing when Mr Weber goes through her room, or when the camera appears on the console table outside the bathroom.
(If she knew how to stop it, she would. Whatever it took; but every single thing she's ever tried just made it worse. Not even death wants her.)
//
“Mom and Dad don’t know what to do.” She hears Angela telling her friends in the library; she’s in the alcove with her history book. “The twins are so afraid of her, they keep telling us Alice is going to murder us. They found a dead mouse on Joshua’s bed two nights ago, its head practically severed.”
“Ew,” Lauren cuts in. “She’s cutting up dead rats?”
“Do you think she did it?” Jessica asks in a voice that isn’t quiet enough.
“I don’t know! Mom’s not letting her do anything alone - she has to do her homework at the kitchen table, and all her chores are in the kitchen or the basement, and I invite her into my room to watch TV - plus Dad put cameras in all the hallways and common areas that are motion-detecting. She literally has a shower and goes to bed; she never goes near the twins or their bedroom. Dad’s gone through her stuff, there’s nothing there. We don’t know what’s happening, or why the twins are so afraid.”
“She can’t stay with you, though. Not if it’s that bad,” Lauren said callously.
“That’s what Dad says, but Mom feels awful. That one of the kids in her last foster killed himself, and before that she was just kicked out, and one of her foster parents had a heart-attack… like, Mom wants to give her a stable home since she's so nice and had such a bad time. But I know Dad’s already reached out… looking for a temporary placement or something til they can move her.”
Alice felt cold. It was best that way, that the Webers would make her leave. Especially before something terrible happened. But the sting of rejection, the unspoken blame… it weighed on her.
“Have they told her?”
“No, I think they're going to talk to her soon. Dad wanted to have a family arranged before they told her though.”
//
Camila Weber looks miserable as they tell her she has to leave. That the boys are having such a bad time, they need to work out if they’re burnt out from foster kids coming and going, if there’s some kind of trauma or mental illness, that they need to focus on them.
She talks softly and agrees, and thanks them for their hospitality. A doctor from the hospital - Cullen - and his wife are taking her in as an emergency placement until they can find something permanent. She should only be at the Cullens a few days.
Maybe she cries a little bit as she packs up her things. She doesn’t take any of the things that she picked out for the room, just her clothing and her school books. One more night and she leaves this poor family behind.
//
Isaac throws hot coffee on her that last night.
Mr Weber is helping Angela with her essay at the table after dinner; she’s finishing the washing up as Mrs Weber makes coffee. Mr Weber likes his coffee scalding, so hot that it tastes sweet with heat.
Isaac marches into the kitchen, where she’s just washing dishes. She screams as the coffee splashes on her legs, the plate breaking in her hands and all over the floor, the mug is broken too, and Isaac screaming at her.
Monster, monster.
For a moment, it’s chaos and Mrs Weber is trying to grab Isaac before he cuts himself, Mr Weber is holding Joshua back, and she flees down into the laundry, in the basement, to climb into the laundry sink to run cold water over her legs.
The blisters are red and ugly, down the sides of her legs. Getting her leggings off was agony. She cries and then Mrs Weber and Angela are there, looking horrified.
“Oh sweetheart, we have to take you to the hospital,” Mrs Weber says. The blisters are big, and the heat has burrowed under. It minds her of Chicago too much, and that makes her want to vomit.
“It's okay.” She doesn’t want the hospital. She hasn’t got the energy to go there right now, not when she’s about to leave.
“The social worker needs to document this,” Mrs Weber is shaking her head.
“Don’t.” She doesn’t want the Webers to be on some kind of watch list or forced hiatus because she’s spoiled their family. They were perfect, and she doesn’t want to ruin it. She’ll heal fast, she always does. She doesn’t need a hospital.
//
Her chest hurts when the social worker pulls up outside the Cullen house. She was still considering running again when the Webers got up this morning. Maybe Texas or New York again, starting over a little earlier.
But she left it too long, and now she's here for a while - until they can find someone willing to take in a foster child who always happens to be present when death and harm are near.
Her arms are itching again.
She follows the social worker into the house, hears the Cullens introduce themselves to her with her gaze fixed on the parquetry floor. The social worker sighs when she refuses to speak, mostly because she's suddenly recognized the smell permeating the house and she wants to scream.
Vampires.
//
It's only when the social worker's car has pulled down the drive, and they're all seated in the living room that she takes a breath and looks up.
Remember, you can hurt them way worse than they can harm you. Remember Philadelphia? Whatever happens, you'll be fine.
And Alice has to hold in a scream. They are the walking dead, rotting corpses of men and women who died in terrible ways. The blood, the decay… she can see it all.
The red-haired boy and the blond boy are looking at her in horror as she practically falls off the couch to get away from them. The only way she can identify them is blinking rapidly to get enough of their features to place them.
"Alice, what's wrong?" The woman - Esme Cullen - gets up to go towards her, the edges of broken bones nearly piercing her skin as she walks; the left side of her rib cage is crushed to nothing and her dress hangs loose over the space. The side of her head was a mess of blood, bone and brain matter, and Alice might truly faint.
Her arms are burning.
"Esme, don't!" Edward, the red-head, the one that stares at her in class. "Alice, it's okay. We can help." He's blue and white, half his body eaten away by disease. There's blood on what remains of his lips.
"No you can't." Her voice is a whisper. Her hands are getting hot, too.
"Jasper, can you?" Edward asks, and she looks back over at the blond boy only to see more of the others - bloody organs spilling from the abdominal cavity of the big guy, his face shredded to ribbons and one eye burst open like raw fruit; and the blood pooling in the lap of the blonde girl, her bones broken and bruises blooming on her like ink. They're the youngest; the decay is still creeping onto them.
But the blond boy, Jasper. And Dr Cullen…
They are old. They've been dead such a long time; Dr Cullen is little more than a skeleton in a suit, his tongue and eyes shriveled and blackened. Jasper still has tissue holding together parts of him; she can make out part of his face that is mottled with death, tendons and fascia still clinging on.
Whatever Jasper is trying to do to her, it doesn't work because he's shaking his head and Edward's moving closer, and they're all trying to reassure her.
Her hands are too hot and she cannot hold it back a second longer.
There's yelling as the black spills out of her, sharp and angry, making them back up. Dr Cullen is gasping and clinging to his wife, staring at her with his empty sockets.
The angry energy crawls around the room, keeping them away from her like a prowling dog. They've seen her now, all of her - the black eyes and the tattoos like ink that cover her arms and chest, the vile curse that she's carried for so long…
They're silent and staring, and the horror and unease in their gaze feels like condemnation. They know everything, and that's too much.
So she turns and runs. Upstairs, because she has nowhere else to go. In through the door where her backpack sits, and straight into the closet, where she huddles under a shelf, quivering.
This is why she hates vampires. She sees exactly what the venom took from them, exactly who they were the moment the venom touched them. How horribly and painfully they died, and how long they've been trapped.
If they try to feed from her, they will die in the most grotesque way possible.
And for the first time in a while, Alice lets herself cry.
//
After a few hours, Jasper decides to ignore Carlisle's request to leave Alice alone until they can figure something out.
Instead, he goes into her room.
She's still crying, but stills the second she hears the closet door open.
"Are you alright?" he asks awkwardly, standing over her. All the darkness has faded, and she's just a teenage girl again.
"Please, please go," she whispers, her face in her hands. "I can't…"
"Can't what?" He crouches down, careful to give her enough space. "Control it? Carlisle is very good at helping with control. Trust me."
"No."
"Then what?" Jasper wants to ask a million questions. Why doesn't my gift work on you? Why can't I stop staring at you? What are you?
Silence.
"I see it all, how you were when you died. How long you've been dead." She's whispering into her hands. "Whatever happened to your sister and your mother… your brother's stomach was just spilling out and I cannot see more people hurt. I'm so, so tired, and I have nowhere else to go."
There's a dawning sense of realization about who he's standing with, what Alice is. He remembers Maria's stories, about how dangerous angels were and to leave them well enough alone - they kept to themselves… But sometimes there were crimes so heinous, they became something worse. Something far more dangerous and volatile.
It's hard to think that with Alice still weeping into her hands, wearing a sweater with a heart on the front. When she's crying because she keeps seeing how they all died, and she's afraid of that. When the worst outcome of what happened downstairs is that Esme's outrageously expensive couch might be a permanent shade of grey from now on.
For some reason, he reaches out and rests his hand on her ankle, his fingers brushing the skin left bare by her sock. She flinches but doesn't pull away.
"It's going to be okay," Jasper says, and he realises that he means it. "You're in the very best place, we can help you. I promise."
She nods, but he knows that she doesn't believe him. But he also knows that Alice has given as much as she can in that moment, and he rises to leave.
"Call out if you need anything. Esme will bring you some food soon," he says. "She'll leave it on the dresser if you'd prefer."
Alice doesn't say anything and he quietly leaves the room.
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