#flora asks

[bubblerise]

why ruby so cute?

because she does her rubesty!!

[obirains-archive]

Fir, fern, and bonsai for the floral ask? ❤️💐

Mia ! ! ! 💕💖💟💓💕💗💞 

fern: if you could turn to anyone for guidance, who would it be?

The lion turtle from AtLA!!! I find Aang’s character arc so, so compelling as someone who really struggles to maintain a balance of I think is right and what I fear is necessary. The idea of the lion turtle not only understanding Aang’s reluctance to take a life (which is a totally valid concern that too often gets dismissed and even ridiculed by the fandom!) but also equipping him to administer justice while still solidifying the value of his ideology, and the legacy of his people is just *chef’s kiss*

bonsai: what is something you could spend hours, even days doing?

I haven’t worked on language learning much in the past few months, but there have been stretches of weeks where I didn’t do anything in my free time but take grammar notes, make flashcards, and practice speaking alone in my room like boo boo the fool I’m hoping to take it back up during the schoolyear!

fir: which tropes/archetypes do you find the most and the least compelling?

I'm a simple girl who enjoys a good hero's journey, as well as a good corruption arc. Dorian Gray? Beautiful. Azula? Stunning. Anakin Skywalker? Here for it. I’m also a hoe for masculine men who are willing to be emotional with one another (RE: the Lord of the Rings). I know morally gray protagonists are super in right now but I’m such a slut for people who are flawed but genuinely always try to do the right thing (RE: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Aragorn).

On the other hand I really despise the super badass woman who rejects all traditionally feminine things, as well as the bad boy -> sad boy trope. In my opinion the first isn't really a character, but a shallow reaction to the damsel in distress trope that was and is designed to give men a feeling of power and importance. So there came the badass fighter lady- but incidentally the only qualities that make up her character are qualities men will respect :/ I think AtLA's Suki best summed my feelings on it: "I am a warrior, but I'm a girl, too." I'm all for women being good fighters and mechanics and strategists! But when Hollywood writes them it's still for the male audience imo lmfao

Okay i started on the bad boy trope and then couldn’t stop so, trigger warning: rape and also I’m coming for Kylo Ren’s throat and also the whole ass sequel trilogy, y’all. Reylos, read at your peril. Mia, I am so, so sorry for hijacking this lovely ask :/

Bad boy -> sad boy trope is at best lazy writing and at worst an implicit affirmation of rape culture (and so I don’t understand why it’s so prevalent in the romance genre which boasts of so many female writers!). The bad boy is a young (usually aged 17-35), very conventionally attractive male who exhibits patterns that range anywhere from socially unacceptable to explicitly abusive. He often receives a half-assed "my mom died" and/or "my dad was an abusive alcoholic” which is meant to explain his behavior. If this were followed by an exploration into consequences and familial patterns, I’d be on board. But usually it only results in his love interest “understanding” him more deeply and writing off his abuse tactics because, in a way, it’s not really his fault. Besides, he’s still young, and wants to do better. It’s rarely addressed again. 

Fact: while everyone needs to feel loved and no true love is truly wasted, your love will never fix the Bad Boy. The only thing that will is years and years of therapy. 

Unfortunately there are too many good examples of the Bad Boy -> Sad Boy trope, but this is a Star Wars blog so I’m gonna talk about Kylo Ren again. Sure, he got a “redemption arc” (which was such bullshit and an insult to all redemption arcs. It’s not even an arc; it’s a fucking U-turn in the middle of the last installment of a trilogy. Make. An. Effort.), but he had his ardent fans and defenders long before TRoS, even after TLJ when he made the choice, of his own free will, to continue his path to the dark side and the legacy of murder. 

(Side note: remember when Snape got a semi-redemption in TDH and people got pissed at Rowling because it seemed like she excused his horrendous behavior? I’ve been saying this for years and I’ll say it again: if Snape were a younger, more attractive man portrayed by Adam Driver, he’d have an army of supporters. I’m not saying Snape was a good person, or even that Rowling pulled off that redemption. But Kylo Ren committed crimes 1000% worse than Snape ever did. Given that they were both in their thirties when they died, you can’t even use age to defend Kylo as a lost, immature young boy and demonize Snape as a grown-ass man who should have known better. The only real difference between them is that Snape struck us as an unattractive, older man whose flaws struck a personal chord in readers (many of whom undoubtedly had a teacher who picked on students out of spite), and Kylo Ren is played by Adam Driver and I guess mass murder is a less personal crime to many audiences? The double standard simply disturbs and distresses me.)

The fact that Rey ends up falling in love with him, too, is perfectly on brand for the Bad Boy -> Sad Boy trope in the worst way possible. The first hints came in TLJ, when Kylo’s tragic backstory based entirely on some of the most blatant character assassination i’ve ever seen in my life holy shit elicited her compassion. This was followed by Kylo choosing the dark side of his own volition (not Snoke’s influence! After that choice, he should not have been redeemable), and then, of course, Rey falling in love with him sometime during TRoS. Given that torture scene in TFA, their “love story” made me (and still makes me) sick to my stomach. That scene screamed rape metaphor: Rey restrained and stripped of her agency, Kylo “You know I can take whatever I want” Ren forcibly penetrating her mind in what we know to be an excruciatingly painful process, obviously without consent. The fact that Rey can use her miraculous Palpatine Force powers to fight back doesn’t mean a damn thing; for all intents and purposes, it was rape, clean and simple. Never, by the way, do we see Kylo having to atone for his actions. Never does Rey hold him accountable for what should have been an extremely traumatic incident (I mean, yeah, she relates to him like you would a villain, but not as if he had targeted her personally and taken advantage of her, which he did, dammit).

I’ve also seen the argument that more or less divides Kylo Ren and Ben Solo into two different people, as if Rey’s love story is with one and not the other. I’m aware that this depends on your interpretation of what the dark side actually does to you. I’m of the opinion that the dark side doesn’t kill you like Yoda and Obi-Wan say; there’s too much evidence, for example, that Darth Vader was still Anakin Skywalker- twisted beyond recognition, perhaps, but still one and the same. A love story with Ben Solo (especially given the timeline of the sequel trilogy) is necessarily a love story with Kylo Ren, a rapist and a mass murderer who happened to be portrayed by Adam Driver. 

For whoever made it this far: I do not hate you if you support Kylo Ren or if you ship Reylo. But I do find them extremely problematic. If you take issue with any of my points, I’d rather you message me privately rather than reply to or reblog this post. Thx!

[foxmagpie]

flora thingies! willow, fir, lily, elanor (weirdly compelling bouquet, tbh)

i had to look up some of these flowers! elanor is so pretty, i love it forever now.

willow: what do you find haunting, but beautiful?

i really love boxes of old vintage family photos in thrift stores, and i usually buy a handful of ones that stand out to me and hang them around my classroom. these people are probably gone and i don’t know anything about their story—not their name, or where they were from, or what they did with their life—but now i have this single preserved moment of time, usually of joy. them showing off a new fur coat. posing with their new baby. a candid of two women laughing at the kitchen table, a half-eaten pie between them. i also buy vintage postcards that people have written on. i just really like having a piece of someone else’s story that’s a mystery, but there is something haunting about the idea that these are mementos that have been abandoned, passed on, and forgotten by the living people closest to the people in the photographs.

flora asks

fir: which tropes/archetypes do you find the most and the least compelling?

i was just rewatching gilmore girls the other day and talking to my bff about how i don’t care how much of an asshole logan is, or how much he would absolutely drive me crazy in real life: i absolutely love his archetype of charming, full-of-himself, smart-but-lazy party boy who goes toe-to-toe with the love interest and helps her loosen up a bit. that’s the good shit.

lily: what is your love language?

perhaps unsurprisingly, i express love through words of affirmation. in terms of how i like to receive love, though, it’s acts of service. i have a lot of anxiety and/or executive dysfunction about doing fairly simple tasks, so if someone does it for me (or helps me do it) then i swoon.

elanor: if you were a literary genre, which would you be?

contemporary, mundane, slice-of-life!

[harry-leroy]

I'm late to this but cactus, dogwood and lily?

Thank you so much for these asks, Macy! I appreciate you sm! (I also miss you! - hope you’re doing well (as well as can be expected for everyone eheheh) 

CACTUS: In what kind of environments do you thrive?

Environments of healthy rivalry, man. I dig that. I like to make a friendly competition of a lot of things. I turned my freshman year seminar class into a competition between me and three of my friends to see who could get the best score on essays, and boy did I want to win that. We had a scoring system where first place got four points, second three points, third two points, fourth one point - so everyone was getting some kind of reward for at least finishing. Our professor thought it was awesome. I still think about that - like twice a week. (I also turned my best friend’s fun party game at her sixteenth birthday - the fun trivia game about the birthday girl - into a competition. I won hehehehe she is MY best friend) (Also when I was having a breakdown in astronomy senior year - and by breakdown I mean that whole class was one collective breakdown, I’m okay - I turned the roll call into a competition. How fast could this class get through roll? We played the Olympic theme song. I’m not kidding you can ask my friends and everyone who put up with my shenanigans). 

I need a healthy rival in my major, man. Not like we’re competing - but we’re both pushing each other to become better academics, better people, y’know? I feel like I’m in a weird place where I’m an undergraduate but I’m doing some things that the graduate students are doing as far as research is concerned, and it’s a weird and lonely place to be. I feel like I could be motivated to do a lot more if I had someone in my year (or a senior or sophomore) at my university who also was research motivated like me.  Academia is a space about sharing and equality, YES - but I also need a pal in my field of study, a study buddy if you will. (It’s not a rivalry about power - if you see what I mean. It’s like a work out buddy but we’re training our brains!). 

(This probably comes from the fact that I was a competitive swimmer for twelve years and these healthy rivalries happen all the time - you’re both pushing each other to become better and at the same time celebrating each other’s achievements. It’s kind of a lot of fun!) 

DOGWOOD: How do you feel about your hometown?

We’re going through a lot right now. I come from an incredibly privileged town in North Texas that has seen numerous incidents of racism, homophobia, antisemitism, the like. We have an incredible group of young people who have organized to implement antiracist change in our school system (which is MUCH NEEDED - our town has its reputation and fame nailed to this school system because we’re #1 in a lot of things and we’ve developed this language around being the best- damaging, yeah?). However, we have an obstinate (and incredibly privileged) school board who has voted against the measures. These young people have been in front of the administration building every day since, protesting, and they are my heroes. 

However, I still consider this town to be my home more than my university town - I don’t think I’m ever really going to settle where I’m at right now. As I’ve said a lot, I don’t love it here. There’s something familiar about my small town that I like, and I’m excited for these young people who are going to make it an even better place to live. 

LILY: What is your love language?

Healthy rivalry. Probably words of affirmation or gifts hehehe I love giving gifts. I always drain my bank account at Christmas time because I just love giving people things. My parents chastise me for it, but will I listen? no hehehehe. 

Thank you, Macy! <3 

[missmaxime]

birch citrus and rose!

Thanks for these! <33 birch: what gives you hope when you’re feeling down? Such a happy question to kick off this asking game! I’m kind of prone to having a few depressive days a month, if you catch my drift. I usually watch, listen and/or read things that spark joy. I’m prone to not write when I’m feeling down, but I like to paint or draw to still keep my creative juices flowing. Force myself to go take a walk or bike in nature, or do some yoga. If we’re being less practical I’d say I always keep in mind I’ve been through worse and also don’t rush myself to a must-feel-better mindset. Things can take time and that’s okay. citrus: what is a trait you can’t stand (in yourself or in others)? I’m absolutely allergic to bad work-attitude. It drives me absolutely insane, there are few things I loathe more in a person (aside from, you know, obvious things like being a murderer or liking Coldplay). I’m not saying everyone should be super ambitious or aspire to be a CEO or something, but do your best at work, have fun, be nice to your colleagues, be a teamplayer when your job is working in a team, try to improve even though that might take a while or if it’s hard. Find a new job if that’s an option.  In myself it’s probably the fact that I am super adverse to asking for help. This applies to about everything in my life; work, personal, etc. It’s not even like I have some kind of youth trauma (I think? Grew up in a lovely family? Always had friends? Is Gifted Child a trauma?), there’s just something rooted deeply inside my psyche that feels like I should be able to do anything and everything myself. In a lot of cases that could play out positive, but I know it can make my loved ones feel alienated sometimes, or I take on too much work than good for me. rose: what is the most important quality in a partner? I think if I have to boil that down I’d say mutual respect, a (mine - preferably) sense of humor, and having their own life besides the one we share (in terms of social life). I haven’t had a lot of relationships, and both of those ended for unrelated reasons to these, so I can’t really spoon up an example. Oh, and be into women. The times I went on dates and people weren’t upfront about exploring something new (which I’m fine with, but don’t lie about that when I explicitly ask you about it) is staggering. Ask me Flora Asks!

[exy101]

🤨are we mutuals? I forgot.

your only hobby is burning down cabins

mutuals let me be bitchy to you

[janichroma]

Hey flora! do you play fortnite in your free time?

Fortnite this, fortnite that... why can’t people just say “two weeks” like everyone else? The people on this planet sometimes, I swear...

[obirains-archive]

Hello darling :) forget me not + wisteria?

Hey, Cristina!! 💕 💕 💕

forget-me-not: what is the memory you most cling to?

I’d just returned to college after Christmas break; my dad had come with me, and it was my birthday the next day (and he was flying back home). We made a whole almost-birthday evening of it and had one of the best hugs I’ve ever had in my life :)

wisteria: how do you define beauty?

idk if this will make any sense but I think it’s whatever strikes us as the perfect combination of the human and the beyond human, kind of like a veil of two entwined fabrics through which we see all of life. That’ll be different for everyone, of course- beauty is a subjective topic- but I do think we all desire and admire what’s familiar enough to keep us grounded and sure that it’s real, as well as what’s beyond our understanding and what hints of something greater that we can’t yet see.

🌳 flora asks 🌳