I don’t know who needs to hear this but you can’t “ruin” 2021 by making hopeful statements about it, people on the internet are not making prophecies, bad things don’t happen because you dare to hope for good things.

I know all the jokes are fun but I would like to earnestly and sincerely remind you that none of it is real. Nothing anyone says, hopes or “predicts” about the year to come has the power to cause future events. You’re allowed to say that you hope 2021 brings good things for you. You will not be somehow punished for that.

stop unironically putting biggest gaudiest patronuses on my dash i cant do this anymore

“together, strong as the wind are our shattered hearts.”

[gif description: four gifs of Grinpayne and Dea from The Grinning Man. In the first gif, Dea stands with Grinpayne kneeling by her side, with his hand clasped tightly in hers. She puts her free hand over his left shoulder. In the second, he looks at her hand for a moment as she continues singing. In the third gif, she kneels down next to Grinpayne and helps him to his feet. In the last gif, Dea puts her hands on Grinpayne’s chest, and he pulls her closer, warily eyeing Ursus offscreen before looking back down at Dea in his arms. End description.]

Once again thinking about Grinpayne and Dea, and how he never grabs or pulls/pushes her anywhere if she’s headed his direction, but she finds her way toward him on her own and he waits for her or meets her halfway, or she holds on to him. And how I feel like that tells us a lot about their relationship in just the first few minutes.

In Beauty And The Beast, once they start playing together, Dea walks over to where Grinpayne is on her own, and she’s the one to initiate the puppets kissing and to reach out to touch Grinpayne’s face, and say “dance with me!” Then, once there’s the transition from puppets to Them, Dea looks a little lost. But the moment Grinpayne starts singing, she smiles and reaches out to find him, and he meets her there. Then there’s all the ways they hold eachother through the song, and it’s all so sweet and tender. Not once is Dea forcefully and physically moved from one spot to another.

When they’re cuddling in the cart, and Dea’s doing…whatever it is she’s doing, playing with Grinpayne’s hair maybe?…and she notices he’s hurting, she gets up with him too to get his medicine. Grinpayne snaps at her that he’s fine, and Immediately apologizes. The following conversation has Dea reaching out to grab his shoulder, she puts her hands on his chest and adjusts his shirt collar a little, and they start to hug. When they’re headed back onstage, she grabs him again and says, “whatever you’re doing, I’m with you.”

B&TB performance again, he can hardly keep upright because he’s hurting so much, Dea’s holding him up and keeping him standing. He breaks away, she follows behind him, they hold hands when addressing the audience. When Grinpayne starts sinking to the floor, she only lets go to talk to Ursus, then she finds him again, holds his hand, helps him up.

When he’s taking his medicine in the cart afterward, she comes up to him and they hug. After Josiana’s letter, Grinpayne kisses her, and she calls out to find him as he’s leaving.

She goes off on her own to find Grinpayne, while crashing a wedding and a stained glass window. Grinpayne is shocked to see her—but he doesn’t get up and grab her, he stays kneeling there with his hands outstretched so she can find him like she always does. When he’s apologizing to her, Grinpayne sits next to her and only takes her hands once she’s done singing. When Grinpayne says he sees himself in Barkilphedro, Dea mouths “no, no” and kisses his hand.

In fact, Dea initiates almost all the touching and dancing and hugging and kissing.

I’d say the only exception of “hardly anyone physically moves Dea from one point to another” is with Ursus. He takes the Beauty puppet from her and holds it where she can’t reach, and she physically climbs up him and hangs off his arm to get it back. In the tower, Ursus grabs or attempts to grab Dea a couple times, then outright drugs her and carries her off. He holds her back when she tries to go after Barkilphedro. And then he tried to drug her again, but Mojo stopped him, and in the following conversation there’s some parts where Ursus gets up in Dea’s face—and vice versa.

Now; why is the contrast between Grinpayne and Ursus’ different approaches to physically interacting with Dea so important?

It’s about respect. This is not to say that Ursus doesn’t respect Dea’s autonomy (though drugging her was a bad move on his part). But, having grown up with her, Grinpayne knows that Dea needs to find things and people when she wants to, not on other people’s terms. He holds his hands out for her so they’re the first thing she touches, instead of running into him or possibly tripping over him when he’s on the floor. He doesn’t push her off of him, doesn’t grab her by the arm and drag her anywhere.

This is a real issue many blind people have—being manhandled by sighted people who try to help where it’s not needed, or they think we’re just incapable of finding things ourselves. It’s infuriating and dehumanizing.

So it’s nice that Dea is never treated that way by Grinpayne, and that in-character and in the narrative she’s allowed to be independent, to the point of riding on wolfback to crash through a massive stained glass window so she can tell her boyfriend about something fucked up she just learned.