I can clearly remember the moment I first realised my mother and I were living on completely different planes of existence. I was 7 years old and I came home from my school's first track and field day having placed second or third in every event. the teachers had been making jokes all afternoon about how many times they had to call my name. my friends thought I was cool as shit. my enemies thought I was cool as shit too, come to think of it. I was proud as hell. so I get home with the entire front of my shirt covered in ribbons like I was a military dictator who'd awarded himself every medal, I walk into the kitchen and tell my mum all about my day, and she goes "oh, that must be disappointing not getting any firsts." and I'm like no?? first of all the first place ribbons are red and I don't like red. second of all look at me. there's literally nowhere left on my body for accolades. I am fucking Jacked of All Trades. how could this possibly be a disappointment.
if you’re wondering why spellcheck and grammar check is worse now, it’s because they replaced it with AI! 🥰
now, instead of maintaining a comprehensive, nuanced, and human-maintained encyclopedia by which to check your document, they have switched to an AI that just compares what you’ve written to what other people write in, say, Google Docs, and use the most commonly used iteration.
ever have it change something like “all intents and purposes” to “all intensive purposes” or “should’ve” to “should of”? that’s why!
people make the same spelling and grammar mistakes so often, AI thinks that’s the way you say it because it is a PATTERN DETECTOR and cannot THINK let alone use language.
“You don’t know whether people relate to the breakfast program, because you’ve never fed anybody. You don’t know anything about the free health clinic because you never asked anybody. You don’t know anything about the good that a gun does you, because you never tried one. And we say that if you was born and if you said you didn’t like pears and you never tasted pears, you’d have to be a liar. You don’t know whether you like pears, but you can’t claim that you don’t like pears. The only way that anybody can tell you the taste of a pear is if he himself has tasted it. That’s the only way. That’s the objective reality. That’s what the Black Panther Party deals with. We’re not metaphysicians, we’re not idealists, we’re dialectical materialists. And we deal with what reality is, whether we like it or not.”
— Fred Hampton speaking about how you must practice your theory, or else it’s irrelevant, 1969.
So as it turns out your sense of self doesnt exist in a vacuum. You gotta actually use it and bounce it off of other people like echolocation to see where you are as a person and shit. So if you dont regularly interact with other people the echoes just get weaker and weaker and before you know it your personality is a blurry fucked up fog clone of its former self. which it sucks because this makes it really hard to interact with people again but yknow
one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become
I haven’t been on tumblr for quite as long as a lot of people but over several years I’ve noticed this interesting gradual sorta,, shift in the general culture? that it went from this mostly depressed, nihilistic outlook where people would regularly joke about hating themselves and being hopeless and depressed, to a wave of vehemence of “STOP hating everything actually the world is Good and you deserve love!!!” type posts, to now, where those aggressive ‘PSAs’ have faded away and instead I regularly see people romanticizing simple things like stars and hot tea and rainy mornings, and waxing poetic about their friends, and just trying to put love out there. and I don’t know exactly what that means (someone who knows more than me could probably say something smart about generational expression and trauma or popular perception of mental health and whatnot), but I do know that it makes my heart very full to see people learn to love the world and themselves by extension, and a whole userbase adopting healthier coping mechanisms, and therefore teaching the younger users to do so as well. I might just be following different people, but I really do think we’ve grown. everyone has grown. five years ago it wasn’t unusual for the next post on my dash to be a scathing commentary on why nothing matters or an anon ripping into someone they barely knew or someone complaining about how pathetic their interests are. now I have mutuals who get excited and spam reblog art of cows and friends I see tagging each other in pictures of frogs and strangers writing paragraphs about how much I matter. it makes me happy. idk. just an observation I wanted to make. I think people are good and everyone’s just trying their best at the end of the day
You are not safe from this. You, the person reading this, are not safe from this. No matter how educated or open minded you think you are, you are not safe from this. The moment you think you are safe from it is the moment you become the most susceptible.
Its similar to why you cannot put bad people in a class of their own. The moment you do that you stop being able to see the bad things that the people closest to you do a la "my best friend couldn't have said that racist thing, they're not evil."
The moment you think you are immune from this type of backslide into right wing nonsense is the moment you stop questioning yourself enough to keep yourself from backsliding into right wing nonsense a la "I mean im not antiscience, im vaccinated, I just think that fluoride in our water supply is imparting children's ability to learn as fast as they otherwise could without it."
Remember, being progressive means progressing, its about always moving forward. The moment you rest on your laurels and stop putting in effort to keep the progression is the moment you start becoming left behind.
You might be thinking, Tee, in your 2023 AO3 wrap up post, you said you wrote a ridiculous amount of HP fic this year - but what about reading? Well, thanks for asking, imaginary audience – as a matter of fact, I did indeed read a lot of Drarry fics this year. A fucking horrendous number of Drarry fics, in fact.
Below the cut are some of my favourites that were published in 2023, arranged by word count.
But first, a note: there is truly an overwhelming amount of talent in this fandom and this list only scratches the surface. These fics all gave me something that I was looking for and were my favourites for a number of different reasons. I hope you can find something new to love here (or reconnect with an old favourite), and that you enjoy these stories as much as I did!
If there’s a fic from 2023 that isn’t here but you really enjoyed, chuck it in the replies section so we can all see it!
🌸 AITA for being "obsessed" with my childhood nemesis? – @rainstormradish (4k, M) 🌸
Alrakis I [24M] attended a small boarding school in the UK. There was a boy in my year, a couple of months younger than me, and he became my nemesis after we developed an intense rivalry. My friend [25F] told me recently that our dynamic was "weird back then" and that "it’s even weirder" that I still think about him today. She argued that I talk about him all the time, but I believe the amount I talk about him is reasonable. AITA?
prongymcprongface i completely get what you mean. i had a nemesis (like a school one, separate to my other nemesis) and we had a dynamic super similar to what you are describing. having a nemesis is a very cool and normal thing dw about it. NTA
In which Draco asks the internet if he's being reasonable. Only one commenter is sympathetic. They start talking.
Read for: unique fic idea with a cool layout, humour, boys being idiots
🌻 Snug – @moonflower-rose (6k, E) 🌻
Potter can't keep his hands off himself. Draco can't look away.
Read for: Draco being Obsessed with Harry(‘s cock), Humorous Writing Style
🪻 Birds Behaving Badly – @peachpety (10k, E) 🪻
For eight years, Draco has been content living a quiet life of anonymity in Brighton, dodging pesky seagulls and enjoying the ephemeral boys of summer. And if these summer blokes just happen to resemble Harry Potter, it’s a mere coincidence—despite what his friends say.
But when a repeat one-night stand challenges him to face his desires, Draco thinks he’s finally over his years-long crush.
A seagull named Kevin thinks otherwise.
For: Unleashed!Fest 2023
Read for: hidden/mistaken identity, summer vibes, Kevin the seagull
🌸 Under the Confetti Mist – @azalealarae (12k, E) 🌸
Harry and Draco stay up late working on a Potions assignment in the poorly ventilated eighth-year common room, unaware that disinhibition is a side effect of the elixir’s vapor.
Read for: Sex Pollen, Drarry as Potions partners
🌻 Hellos, goodbyes, a thousand midnights – newskyillusion (13k, M) 🌻
The world, as Harry knew it, has ended.
At least he has a garden.
OR
Harry and Draco live through the apocalypse
For: Drarry Let’s Play Fest 2023
Read for: body horror, cosy vibes (just trust me, lol), Harry gardening, Powerful Harry, Harry and Draco relying on each other.
🪻 Amorous As This Lovely Green – @annanother-thing (14k, E) 🪻
Harry hates being a celebrity. Draco cannot find a single model that fits his vision for his latest line. They both make the debatable choice of trusting one PA extraordinaire/best friend, Pansy Parkinson.
For: Harry/Draco Career Fair 2023
Read for: Harry modelling lingerie, Hot Harry
🌸 Help! I'm a Hopeless Romantic! – @peachydreamxx (14k, M) 🌸
Draco turns from the bar, eyes latching onto Harry. He surveys him, one brow lifting, and Harry, like a deer in headlights, throws his hand up with the world’s most awkward wave. Draco just weaves out of sight, and Harry’s face burns as Ron pats him on the shoulder, then steals a chip. “He gave you a look, didn’t he?”
~ how to get over your crush
~ places that sell cake after 11pm near me
~ how to tell if someone is playing hard to get
A year in the life of Harry's shared moments, and private thoughts
For: Wheel of Drarry Mini-Exchange Secret Santa 2023
Read for: Harry’s Google Searches, Humour
🌻 Cool About It – @oflights (M, 16k) 🌻
Harry is so excited for his first date with Draco. But what follows isn't so much a date as it is an all-night odyssey including a malevolent lift, a Gringotts heist, a Sleeping Curse, a trip to the kebab shop, a lack of dancing, a Muggle drug, a rooftop pool party, a black eye and, eventually, a sunrise over a Quidditch stadium.
Read for: Humour, idiots in love, first dates
🪻 The Eighth Sin – @thehoneybeet (16k, E) 🪻
When Draco is sentenced to five years of house arrest, without magic, alone, the only person to visit him is Potter. But Draco’s beginning to doubt whether Potter is really there at all.
For: HD Wireless 2023
Read for: dreamy/sad vibes, caring Harry, a beautiful exploration of a relationship
🌸 What’s Mine is Yours – @fluxweeed (17k, E) 🌸
Harry loses something important. Malfoy helps him get it back.
Read for: smut so hot it’ll light you on fire
🌻 O Come, All Ye Faithful – toomuchplor (19k, E) 🌻
Aunt Petunia died, that was what began everything.
Or rather, Aunt Petunia was dying. In the act of dying.
In which Draco finds faith in the church, and Harry finds faith in Draco.
It's summer, and they're spending it at a lake, far away from everything. There’s swimming and a floating dock, cracked and warm in the sun. Fizzy drinks and fireflies. Sticky strawberry ice lollies and beach towels tangled under them.
Harry’s golden skin and love for The Grateful Dead and Fleetwood Mac.
🌸 Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage – @goblinmatriarch (E, 21k) 🌸
Lord Draco Malfoy may be a young man spending time in Dumbledore’s summer court, but that does not mean he needs to succumb to its licentious frivolity. He carries the burden of his lineage, the shadow of rumours, and the dignity of his betrothal to a good match. He is certainly not fool enough to be distracted by the dark curls and ready grin of the court’s stableboy, who seems to have taken up with every courtier who looks his way.
For: HP Bodice Ripper Fest 2023
Read for: Historical AU done right, Draco in a codpiece, more riding euphemisms than you can count
🌻 True Love Gave To Me – @epitomereally (23k, E) 🌻
It’s the first of December, and all Draco wants to do is make Christmas lovely for Scorpius. But then Harry Potter shows up, asking him to save the world, and it turns out they’ve almost saved the world a couple of times before. One-hundred and forty-four times, to be exact.
Or: what happens after the time loop?
For: H/D Erised 2023
Read for: time loop shenanigans, cosy vibes, adorable Scorpius (and his geese)
🪻 Nothing But You On My Mind – @moonflower-rose (29k, M) 🪻
Potter has been in Australia on an internship for almost a year, and Draco cannot wait for him to get back home. They'll finally have a chance to talk about their feelings for each other. What could possibly go wrong?
Loads, as it turns out.
For: HD Wireless 2023
Read for: Angst, Draco/Ron/Hermione Friendship, idiots in love
🌸 who will receive you in love's offices – @jtimu (30k, E) 🌸
A year in the life of Draco Malfoy, increasingly derailed by Harry Potter.
In the aftermath of it all, Draco opened an antiques shop. Sort of. Mostly, though, what he did was repair work. People brought him their grandparents’ charmed silverware or a pocketwatch which was meant to show the stars at your birth but now only held the time, and he would fix them. It was quiet work, a little lonely, but for the repeated intrusions of one Harry J Potter.
Read for: brilliant deep dive into magical theory, smarty pants Draco, enemies to friends to lovers (emphasis on the middle step), poetry references by the bucketful, a version of Draco that lives rent free in my mind
🌻 Half Sick of Shadows – @starquestingfordrarry (39k, E) 🌻
Harry and Draco have been sleeping together for months, and it's fine. It's enough for Harry.
But when things finally start to feel like the more Harry's been hoping for, a strange tapestry project has him worrying he won't ever get the chance.
Or: the one with sheep, dragons, and a whole lot of weaving metaphors.
For: H/D Career Fair 2023
Read for: Alvin the ram, Harry carving wooden dildos, magical tapestries, atmospheric vibes, an artfully created world
🪻 Now I Know In Part – @dodgerkedavra (39k, E) 🪻
Harry Potter is the savior of the Wizarding World. Draco Malfoy is a reformed Death Eater turned Ministry Curse-Breaker. Five years after the War, they're brought together by another mysterious curse.
Only this time, Harry's the one who needs saving.
More specifically, he needs Draco.
They have one month to break the curse, and the clock is ticking.
Read for: Draco taking care of Harry, Cottagecore vibes, bucketfuls of sweetness, great smut
🌸 Nothing Gold Can Stay – @moonflower-rose (40k, E) 🌸
One summer evening, Harry Potter vanished in the middle of dinner with his friends. Four days later he came back. Sort of.
Draco Malfoy is on the case.
For: H/D Erised 2023
Read for: Alternate Universes, Married Draco/Harry, Non-Painful Angst
🌻Sharper than a Sea Serpent's Tooth – @goblinmatriarch (40k, T)
Draco expects his research trip to Crete to focus on the ecology of ward design, with perhaps some cheeky visits to the elusive sea serpents and the odd sleepy beach day. Instead, he encounters a Past he's spent over a decade trying to outrun, and a familiar scowl under glasses and a scar. Featuring just so much imagining being on a hot, sunny beach for your winter pleasure.
🪻 LA, Who Am I To Love You? – @epitomereally (42k, E) 🪻
Harry’s summer in LA is not going as expected. Pansy Parkinson keeps inviting him to parties in the Hollywood Hills and harassing him to finally go to the physical therapist, Blaise Zabini keeps slipping new strains of his company’s magical weed into Harry’s pockets in hopes of an endorsement, and Draco Malfoy keeps having sex with everyone but Harry.
For: HD Wireless 2023
Read for: Werewolf Harry, Incubus Draco, Acquaintances to Friends to Lovers, Interesting Location (LA)
🌸 A Pulled Down Shade – fast_brother (43k, M) 🌸
Harry does not like Draco Malfoy, not even one bit. Never did and never will. That is, until he finds himself married to him.
For: HP Soulmates Fest 2023
Read for: HUGE Grounds for Divorce vibes! Angst, Harry working through trauma, Harry fighting for Draco
🌻 The Waiting – @oknowkiss (43k, E) 🌻
It’s been almost ten years since Draco Malfoy disappeared during a routine Curse Breaker training exercise. Harry, his partner in more ways than one, is determined to figure out why. As the past resurfaces and the present fades into confusion, Harry discovers the only thing more unreliable than memory is love.
🪻 The Unplottable Time Conundrum – @writcraft (45k, E) 🪻
When the past starts bleeding into the present at Grimmauld Place, an old academic article pulls Draco Malfoy out of his life of luxury. Haunted by the memory of a fleeting post-war kiss and thrust into the ghostly spaces inhabited by Unspeakable Harry Potter, Draco’s easy life is about to get a whole lot more complicated.
For: H/D Erised 2023
Read for: House Magic, The Order of the Pheonix, Haunted House vibes, Drarry in their 30s
Harry Potter, returning member of the Oxford University Boat Club, has two goals for the spring of 2005: beat Cambridge, and beat Draco Malfoy. Perhaps not in that order.
Read for: Muggle AU, Sports AU, Competitiveness, Damn good writing
🌻 Everybody Hates a Tourist – @wolfpants (51k, E) 🌻
On a stag do in sunny Brighton with the Gryffindor lads, the last person Harry expects to run into is Draco Malfoy. After a glimpse of Malfoy’s Muggle life in Britain’s gay capital, Harry’s curiosity gets the better of him and he finds himself returning to the seaside again and again, drawn to the city, drawn to this new version of Malfoy that Harry barely recognises from school.
Meanwhile, Draco’s just trying to live his big and best queer life: working for the weekend, chasing hot men, getting lost in Brighton's nightlife, and making friends with the neighbourhood cats. Why does his former school rival and crush have to show up and spoil everything?
For: HD Wireless 2023
Read for: beautiful relationship building, Harry finding himself, Draco living his best life. I won’t lie, I’d read the back of a cereal box if wolfpants wrote it – do yourself a favour if you haven’t already
🪻 from love, obviously – bizarrestars (52k, M) 🪻
"I just mean, doing the right thing because it's right is better than doing it because…"
"What?" Draco challenges, amused. "Better to do it because it's right as opposed to doing it because it's not wrong? Please enlighten me on what the difference is."
"You're the difference," is Harry's answer.
(Or: Draco Malfoy comes up with a plan, drinks a lot of tea, and fails to fix a clock. Somewhere along the way, Harry Potter falls in love with him, which wasn't a part of the plan at all.)
Read for: Unhinged Draco, Harry being resigned to Draco’s antics, Weasley family feels, fast pacing
🌸 Terrible People – @getawayfox and @wolfpants (52k, E) 🌸
What happens when Harry and Draco end up on the same Muggle gay cruise? They certainly didn't plan for it to happen (but their friends might have). They're stuck with each other for a week, they might as well make the most of it, right?
Featuring a holiday-long game of Truth or Dare, a very ill-judged FWB proposition, decades-long pining, lots of gin, and a small pair of green swimming trunks.
Read for: Gorgeous Art , RomCom vibes, Gay Cruise, Friends with Benefits to Lovers
🌻 Nights With You – @the-sinking-ship (58k, E) 🌻
Draco is mortified when moments prior to departing for the most anticipated destination wedding of the year, he is cruelly dumped. But when he learns that Harry Potter has, at long last, split with his horrible boyfriend, Draco is certain his luck has changed. Never a man to squander an opportunity for revenge (and what would probably be a spectacular shag), Draco vows to make Potter his for the weekend.
Now all Draco has to do is convince him.
Read for: Fake dating, mild size kink, international location (Italy), mildly unhinged Draco, hot Harry
Note: This is the fic that made me set up a Doc for everything I’d read to make sure I wouldn’t lose it to the wide realm of the internet.
🪻 Rookie Moves – peu_a_peu (75k, E) 🪻
Aurors Potter and Malfoy crack the case.
Read for: Humour, Enemies to Coworkers to Lovers, Unhinged Draco
🌸 How To Train Your Malfoy – @fencer-x (93k E) 🌸
Good manners dictate that, when one’s best friend Apparates onto one’s doorstep holding the unconscious, haggard body of the schoolyard bully and begging for sanctuary, one ought to invite the two of them in for a cup of tea. Harry Potter sometimes wishes he weren’t so polite.
For: H/D Erised 2023
Read for: Dragon Animagus Draco, Harry taking care of Draco, brilliant writing, a funny as fuck premise – I wanted Draco to stay in his unhinged dragon form forever
🌻 Symptom of Your Touch – NoxNoir (115k, E) 🌻
St. Mungo's Healer Draco Malfoy is used to being pushed to his limits when providing aide to the ailing, but when an unexpected encounter with an out of character Harry Potter throws his life out of balance one night, he is forced to ask himself how far he's willing to push his own levels of discomfort to be of aid to a man in need of help that only he can provide.
Read for: Draco taking care of Harry, Pining, Unrequited love, buckets of sexual tension
🪻 Recursion – Tessa Crowley (132k, E) 🪻
A process is recursive when it defines or contains itself; e.g., the Fibonacci sequence, which determines the next number as the sum of the previous two.
But not all recursive processes are mathematical. Recursion can happen in a temporal context when, for instance, the powerful magical force that is true love drags you back in time so it can create itself, endangering the fate of the Wizarding World—not to mention the very fabric of space and time—along the way.
Read for: Canon Retelling/Divergence, time travel, Slytherin Harry, a truly insane amount of physics/magical theory/intelligence. This fic was too smart for me in the best way. If you liked Chaos Theory read this – it’s even better!
🌸 Cut From the Sky – @mallstars (150k, E) 🌸
"I'm stuck in a time loop, reliving November 2nd. This is the 111th time I've lived through today."
Draco stilled. His moody eyes, the tension in his hands where he gripped onto his umbrella, the careful mask of blankness flickering over his face — everything about him was so difficult and so very dear to Harry.
"Ah," said Draco, "and?"
Note: no rec list for this year could be considered complete without including this one.
Read for: Harry at his most loveable, a relationship story told a hundred different ways, atmospheric worldbuilding, Trans representation.
🌻 In the Blood – BiscuitBrunch (225k, E) 🌻
Harry Potter thinks Draco Malfoy is a slimy git of a defense lawyer, who couldn't care less about doing the right thing.
Draco Malfoy thinks Harry Potter is a filthy pig of an Auror, who couldn't care less about doing the right thing.
They fight, fuck, fall in love, and fight some more.
When they're on the brink of getting their shit together and starting a family, a blood curse surfaces that threatens the lives of Draco and their unborn child.
Read for: badass lawyer Draco, deep exploration of a relationship, working through trauma, slice of life, mpreg
"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:
If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.
'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?
This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).
But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."
- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.
bitches be like “this is the best piece of literature i have ever read” and it’s either a book that took them six weeks to finish or a fanfic they read at 3 AM
“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.”
Sally Rooney, Normal People / Before Sunrise / The Lakes - Taylor Swift / Frances Ha / Paramore / Billy Joel - Vienna
You can tell by the reaction people have to Penelope asking Colin to kiss her whether they ever experienced being a wallflower/insecure fat girl at a party or not.
Because you say it's pathetic, I say it's relatable, no matter how desperate it may sound. If you've never had your insecurity eat you up from the inside (but also the outside, as Portia literally told Penelope that she was delusional for thinking she was gonna find a husband in her third season out) to the point you genuinely, wholeheartedly believe no one will ever love you unless you physically change, then obviously the scene is off to you.
But Pen literally told Colin she felt stupid for thinking she's gonna find a husband (she just started believing what the ton and her mother said) and that she knows no one would want to kiss her. And for a romance girl like her, do you think the thought of never having a kiss, never experiencing that passion, would be easy to bear? I can so relate to being the most romantic of the bunch but also being the loneliest and aching for physical and emotional romantic love.
She is so vulnerable and so real in that moment but y'all gotta bitch about it because it doesn't make sense to you. It doesn't make sense to me either because she's gorgeous, but that's the thing - no one ever told her she's gorgeous and actually meant it. And even if they did, there must be 10 more people who didn't that keep that insecurity in her, specifically her sisters and her mother.
Nicola said this one was for the wallflowers, and it truly is, so if you find scenes like this cringe, you just don't relate to the character enough to feel it and recall moments when you had the same thoughts as her.
anyone else just woke up one day and realized that our time on this earth is limited and that they really really really want to live despite every bad thing that happens and proceeded to have a break down or is it just me
