#and are usually only tricked into enjoying anything written by women to begin with

[pan-fangirl-345]

Books Bring People Together

Summary: A frustrated and stuck Kaminari comes to you for help, and it somehow blooms into something else along the way.

TW: I made Kaminari ADHD, so I'm sorry if there's anything wrong, I went off what my ADHD friends do and what a medical site told me. I myself am not ADHD, so again, I apologize if there's anything wrong with this. Small swears, and Mineta, which should be a warning in and of itself.

A/N: I have had this half-baked idea stuck in my head for months and I wanted it out, so I am giving you all this!

"Hey, um, (Y/L/N), can I ask you something?" Kaminari asked, sliding into the chair across from you at the common room table.

"Sure, what's up?" you asked, setting your pencil down on the paragraph you were reading.

"Um, this is kind of embarrassing," Kaminari admitted. "But, um, I'm having a really hard time with English right now, and I know that you're right behind Bakugou in grades."

"Where are you going with this Kaminari?" you asked, crossing your arms in front of your chest.

You had heard things about Kaminari, and after meeting Mineta and knowing that Kaminari hung around with him, you didn't have the best impression of him. You had just been placed in Class 2-A, and so far you had mostly hung around with what the other students were calling the 'Dekusquad'.

"I need someone to tutor me," he admitted. "Normally English isn't all that hard for me, but Shakespeare is whack and I don't understand half of it."

"You want me," you started, "to tutor you. Why not ask Bakugou? Isn't he your friend?"

"Yeah, but . . . Bakugou has . . . harsh methods, and I need someone who won't treat me like an idiot," Kaminari confessed.

"Alright," you relented. "Why don't we get started now? Do you have anything going on?"

"No, this takes precedent," Kaminari said, rushing to grab his things.

"Alright, here's my question for you," you said when he propped his book open. "Why don't you understand?" You saw the look on his face change and you winced. "Sorry, sometimes I have a hard time controlling the tone of my voice. Let me rephrase that question." You paused for a moment, thinking of the right words before you said, "What about this don't you understand? What's the one thing about this that trips you up?"

"The formatting for one thing," Kaminari grumbled. "Why the hell is printed like that?"

You chuckled, brushing hair out of your face. You had thought the same thing the first time you had read Shakespeare.

"Alright, how about you just read, and then you can ask me any questions while I work on my own stuff, alright?"

"That sounds like it might work," he admitted.

"If that doesn't work, feel free to let me know," you told him. "This is about what helps you remember the material better."

"No, like I said, normally this is really easy for me," Kaminari said. "Let's try it."

"Alright, and remember, if you have any questions, I'm right here."

"Thanks (Y/L/N)," he mumbled.

"Of course, I wouldn't be much of a hero if I couldn't help people, right?" you mused, smiling at him.

"R-Right!" he chirped, grinning back at you.

You both worked in silence for a little bit before Kaminari leaned back in his chair, rubbing at him eyes.

"You okay?" you asked.

"Yeah, sorry, I'm ADHD, so sitting still and trying to read this is a little hard," he confessed. "And I might be dyslexic, I've never been tested but sometimes reading is hard for me."

You frowned, biting the inside of your lip, running the situation through your head.

"What if I read it to you?" you asked, looking up from your chemistry homework.

"How? It's a play," Kaminari said.

"I used to be in a drama club in middle school," you told him. "It's set up like a script, or if we don't have the energy to act it out, it's not hard to pretend that it's a regular story."

Kaminari stared at you for a moment before he nodded.

"Yeah, yeah I think that might work a little bit better than me staring at the same paragraph for fifteen minutes without actually reading anything."

"What part are you on?" you asked Kaminari, moving to glance over his shoulder at the page.

"Portia is trying to convince Brutus to tell her what's going on in her house. I think."

"Oh, I adore this part," you muttered, mostly to yourself. "Alright, what has you stuck?"

"This part. 'I grant I am a woman; but withal A woman well-reputed, Cato's daughter. Think you I am no stronger than my sex, Being so father'd and so husbanded? Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose 'em: I have made strong proof of my constancy, Giving myself a voluntary wound Here, in the thigh: can I bear that with patience. And not my husband's secrets?' I don't entirely understand what she's saying."

Wow, English must've been his thing, he didn't mess up a single word, and he was able to read it fairly fluently, everything considered. It might have taken him a little longer than normal, but he had nailed it.

"Okay, so she's basically telling Brutus that she won't tell his secrets if he tells her what's going on, it doesn't matter if she's a woman or not."

"What was with the voluntary wound thing?"

"So, it depends. Sometimes, in plays, the women playing Portia will have a fake knife and stab themselves in the thigh, other times they pretend to slice themselves, depends on the director," you told him. "She basically cut herself on the thigh and said, 'If I can handle this I can handle whatever's going on inside your head.' Do you understand?"

"Yeah, but damn, this woman is a badass," Kaminari said, staring down at the pages."

"Right? Some people read that as psychotic, but it's Shakespeare," you told him, "everything in Shakespeare is psychotic to some extent."

"That's fair. Thank you for explaining that to me," he said.

"Of course, that is why you came to me," you replied, laying a hand on his shoulder for a moment before you moved back to your seat.

Kaminari, despite the things you had heard, was actually quite intelligent, it just took him a little longer to get the answer sometimes.

"Thank you so much for helping me," Kaminari murmured. "You were super helpful."

"Of course, I actually enjoyed helping you," you told him. "And if you need any more help, please, let me know."

"I will, thank you so much (Y/L/N)," Kaminari repeated.

"Have a good night Kaminari," you told him.

"You too!" he chirped before he headed up to his room.

You sat down at the table again, staring at the chemical formula in front of you.

So, if zinc only had one charge, positive two, and it was combined with thiosulfate, that meant that there shouldn't be the need for two of the zinc atoms, they would make the charge neutral.

You wrote the answer down, checking the textbook to make sure you were right. Polyatomic ions were a little more complicated than monoatomic ions.

There were only a few more questions, and then you could go to bed too, and you just hoped that there were no trick questions.

You were the last one in the common room, as usual, despite assuring Iida that you were right behind him when he went to bed an hour ago.

"Alright (Y/F/N), time for some good sleep," you muttered, shutting your book and gathering your supplies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You had been tutoring Kaminari for about six weeks, and he was definitely smarter than people gave him credit for. Sometimes he just needed a few minutes to think, or he needed something explained to him in a different way than everyone else.

Sero had been joining your little tutoring sessions too, and you had started doing them in Sero's room, since there were things Kaminari could mess with while he studied, and it was an environment where he didn't feel the need to prove himself.

"Hey, (Y/L/N), can you help me with this problem?" Sero asked, waving you over.

"Of course, what are we working on?" you inquired.

"Polyatomic ions, again," Sero said. "I need this extra credit."

"Alright, which one are you stuck on?"

"How do I figure out which Roman numeral goes here? Gold has multiple charges."

"You work backwards," you told him. "When you look at the formula, you need to figure out what charge dihydrogen phosphate has."

You gestured to the chemical formula.

"It has a negative one charge. Right?" Sero inquired, checking the list of common ions that the teacher had given them at the beginning of the unit.

"Right, and you have three of those ions, right?"

"Yeah, because there's a subscripted three outside the parentheses."

"So you have three of those, which means that those three together have a negative three charge."

"Right."

"So now you just have to figure out which gold variant has the right charge to cancel that one out."

"Well, there's only one gold atom, so it's gold three right?"

"Bingo, you got it."

"Oh, that makes it so much easier than what I was doing," he muttered, erasing the math he had been doing, writing down the way you had just shown him.

"(Y/L/N), can you come read through this essay for me?" Kaminari asked. "I think it's okay, but I need another eye on this."

"Sure, hand it over," you told him, taking the papers that he had handed to you.

You grabbed one of your signature blue pens and uncapped it, ready to mark anything you thought he could do better.

There wasn't as much as you were expecting. While Kaminari had a hard time interpreting things, once he understood, he was golden. He had a way with words, you noticed as you scanned through the paper he needed to hand in next class. You assumed that it gave him time to think about the right phrasing of things.

Other than a few grammatical and spelling errors, the paper was well written, and there was nothing major that needed fixing.

"Good job Kami, this is really good," you told him, ruffling his hair lightly.

He responded well to physical affection and praise, you had also noticed, and he made it easy.

Once you got past the typical shield he threw up, he was a nice guy with insecurities, just like everyone else.

He chuckled, leaning into your hand.

You noticed that the others didn't touch Kaminari as much as you did, despite having known him for much longer. They were worried about getting shocked, Sero had told you.

"Why though? He's never shocked me," you had told him.

"He can't control it sometimes, it builds up in his body and it needs an out."

"Well, that still no reason to stop touching him," you had mused. "If he shocks me he shocks me, it's really no big deal."

Kaminari had only shocked you once, during a thunderstorm when there had been a lot of lightning outside. He had gotten excited about getting a 90 on one of his tests, and had hugged you, giving you a slight shock.

He had apologized profusely, but you had waved his apologies off.

"It's okay Kaminari," you told him. "It happens to all of us sometimes."

You were finding yourself thinking about him more than you should've. You had become good friends with both him and Sero, and the other students had started coming to you when they had a question, but Kaminari was a little different.

It had started out with the flirty comments, but slowly those had turned into real compliments. He had been keeping Mineta away from you more and more, and he had even started laying off the perving with the grape rat.

He was a good guy, he really was, despite the playboy attitude. He was sweet, and he was just like every other person in the world.

"Thanks for tutoring us both," Kaminari said as the session was coming to a close.

"Yeah, you're really saving our asses," Sero agreed.

"Of course, come to me any time," you told them both, smiling as you made to head back to your own room.

"Hey, um, (Y/L/N), can I ask you something?" Kaminari asked.

"Sure. You know how much I love questions," you teased, smiling at him. Then you noticed his expression. "Kami?"

"Will . . . will you-" he chuckled awkwardly, messing with the seam of his pant leg. "Can you read something to me?"

"Yeah, of course," you said. "What is it?"

He handed you the book, and you smiled.

"My dad used to read this to me when I was little. I think that's why I love books so much," you admitted. "That was before . . . well, it doesn't matter now. Come on, we can head down to the common room if you want. Or your room, it doesn't really matter to me."

You had visited Kaminari's room on more than one occasion to return things to him, he tended to be a little forgetful, and he had often left things with you.

Despite the fact that everything you had learned about society told you that you should avoid being alone in a room with a boy, you trusted Kaminari enough to be alone in a room with him.

"I really like to read too," he confessed. "But sometimes my brain doesn't like to let me do it."

"I understand, it's okay," you told him, touching his arm lightly. "Are you sure that you'll be able to sit still long enough for me to get through any of it?"

Kaminari, after spending so much time with you over the last few weeks, had figured out how your voice worked, and he rarely got offended by your tone of voice anymore, which you were thankful for.

"Yeah, I like the sound of your voice, it helps calm me down. I think I might pay attention more if you read it to me."

"Alright, sure, let's go," you said, holding the book to your chest.

You knew this book like the back of your hand, and you had a feeling that Kaminari was telling the truth when he said he would be able to pay attention.

Kaminari followed you into the common room of the dorms, trailing just slightly behind, but he was in front of you the moment Mineta tried to get to you.

It amazed you how fast he could move sometimes, when he really wanted to.

"Get lost Mineta," you said. "I have nothing to say to you."

Mineta opened his mouth but a raised brow from Kaminari had him shutting it and heading to his own room so he could think his pervy thoughts in peace.

"I can't believe I was ever friends with that perv," Kaminari whispered. "I think I owe a lot of the girls apologies."

Kaminari glanced over his shoulder, and you smiled at him, linking your hands together.

You were proud of him, he had really grown lately, and you were glad that he was seeing how uncomfortable he had made the girls.

"I'm proud of you," you told him, and he beamed.

He responded well to praise, and being told that he had done a good job.

"Come on, we'll have to go to bed soon if we don't want Iida to lecture us again," you said, sitting down on one of the couches.

Kaminari sat down next to you, leaning his head on your shoulder as your propped the book open.

You didn't mind the fact that Kaminari was a little clingy, the contact was nice, and he always radiated warmth, though whether that was his normal body temperature or he ran hot because of his quirk, you didn't know.

You started the book off, barely having to look at the words as you read, changing your voice as necessary, stopping every once in a while to explain a word to Kaminari that he didn't understand, or to answer a question that he had.

It was nice, spending time with him like this, simply because he wanted to, not because he was going to fail a subject.

Somehow he had ended up with his head on your thighs, and you had one hand buried in his hair, brushing it away from his face, your fingers carding through it softly.

He was making a content noise in the back of his throat, and you smiled down at him, finishing up a chapter.

"Do you want to go to bed?" you asked softly, not wanting to disturb him too much, he had enough trouble sleeping as it was.

He hummed softly, leaning into your hands, and you smiled down at him softly.

You had never been one for crushes, they had seemed pointless, and there had never been a person who had caught your attention like this.

You had thought about it, of course, what it would be like to be in a relationship, but you had never thought that you would have to worry about it.

Well now you were worrying about it.

That nameless, faceless person that had been with you in those daydreams was starting to look frighteningly like Kaminari.

You had panicked when it had first started happening, until you realized that it would probably fade. You had had a friend in middle school who had a new crush every week, and you had assumed that it would fade with time.

It hadn't. That uneasiness that had popped up around him slowly melted into a nice warmth whenever he was close. You had started to stop worrying about whether he would like this, or hate that, and had started to show your true colors.

He had seemed to like you even more when you had started doing that, and you were glad.

But the only bad thing was that now you were noticing other things. His hands lingered a little longer than necessary when he helped you during training, his smile always seemed brighter when you made him laugh. His eyes always seemed to follow you around the common room, and he sometimes appeared at your side when you walked in.

You weren't sure if you just overthinking things or if he might like you back.

But this wasn't a simple crush anymore. You weren't sure what it was. It was a little too early to be love (even though it was just a rush of chemicals in the brain meant for human survival), but it was way past a simple crush.

Was there another step between a crush and love? Was this going to end with your heart breaking? Was there even a chance that he might like you back?

These were things that you kept in the back of your mind until you were alone in your room. Worrying about them in his presence made him worry about you, and you didn't want him to worry about you if he didn't need to.

"Kami, seriously, you need to go to bed."

"If I do, so do you," he told you, making you chuckle.

"I'll go to bed if you will. You are in my lap after all," you teased, pulling your hands away.

"That's fair," he murmured, stifling a yawn.

"Go to bed Kami," you whispered, standing up as soon as your legs were free.

They had fallen asleep a while ago, but you hadn't had the heart to move him.

"Alright," he mumbled, stumbling towards his dorm room.

You smiled softly, heading for yours.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You weren't sure what woke you up hours later. Maybe it was the three glasses of water you had drank before bed, or maybe it was the fact that your brain hated you almost as much as Kaminari's hated him.

You stretched, pulling a hoodie on over the tank top and shorts that you had gone to bed in, heading for the common room.

You weren't going back to bed any time soon, so you might as well get some studying done with a nice cup of tea or something.

You were almost surprised to see Kaminari sitting at the common room table with his books out.

"Denki? What are you doing?" you mumbled, wandering over.

"(Y/L/N)? What are you doing up?"

"I could ask you the same thing," you murmured, plopping into the seat next to him.

"Couldn't sleep, my brain went into overdrive the minute I tried to fall asleep."

"I at least got a good four or five hours in," you replied. "But it's Friday night, I should be sleeping in."

"What woke you up?" he asked, laying a hand on your thigh.

Kaminari, you had noticed, liked having his hands on you.

Not in the perverted way you had expected though. He liked having a hand on your thigh or on the small of your back. He liked an arm around your shoulders or his arm linked with yours when you all took class outings. He liked being close to you.

"No idea. It might've been a nightmare," you admitted. "I remember faint flashes, but it might've been something else."

"Are you going to be able to go back to bed?"

"Nah, I'll be up for a good while," you told him, leaning into his shoulder.

"Anything I can do to help?" he asked.

"Can you just . . . talk to me?" you inquired. "I like listening to you talk about things. Calms me down."

"What do you want to know about?"

"Anything. Everything. You."

"Did you know that I have a cat named Marshmellow?"

"What? No," you said, perking up a little bit. You had always been an animal person.

"Yeah. He's the spawn of the devil, but I didn't know that when I named him. All white, pretty blue eyes. Pure fucking evil," Kaminari told you, taking his phone out to show you a photo.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, he absolutely despises me," Kaminari said, handing his phone over to you. "Loves my sister though, so he isn't a complete psychopath."

"He's a cat, can animals even be psychopaths?" you asked, moving your seat closer to his.

"No idea, but it wouldn't surprise me if he is," Kaminari said, chuckling.

"You're right, he is pretty," you murmured, flipping through the photos quickly.

Kaminari hummed, but when you glanced up he was looking at you.

He had that look on his face, the look that he sometimes got when he looked at you. It was one of the reasons you wondered if he liked you or not. He looked like he was in pain when gave you that look.

"Denki?" you inquired softly.

"Hmm?"

"Why are you looking at me like that? Like you're in pain? Like you're hurt?" you asked.

You didn't like the way your voice sounded. That little hint of insecurity snuck in, your voice had that clogged sound it got when you tried not to cry.

You weren't sure whether you could handle his response to that, but you needed to know if being around you caused him pain. You needed to know if there was any chance that he hated being in your presence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Kaminari's POV)

Pain, huh?

Yeah, this was definitely pain, seeing her like this, swaddled in a hoodie he had left in her room accidently a week ago, covering her shorts, making her legs look a mile long.

He had tried to ignore it, tried to ignore the feeling in his chest every time he looked at her, tried to ignore the blatant male pride that came with seeing her draped in his hoodie, but he was only human after all.

Denki, after spending so much time with a girl that didn't tend to pull her punches, he knew how uncomfortable he had made the girls with all of his comments. He now knew how it made them feel when he said some of the things he had.

Denki never wanted her or any of the other girls to feel like that again, and he wanted to ignore some of the things that were running through his head, but she was making it hard when she looked at him like that, when she said his name the way that she just had.

"Denks?" she asked softly, moving to get a better look at his face.

Denki had never had a crush, not a real one anyway. He had had his eyes on Jirou first year, but that had been fleeting.

He was flirty, it was just his nature, but this feeling whenever he looked at her . . . that was completely new on him.

"Denki, are you okay?" she asked, putting her hands on his face lightly, making him look at her.

"Do you have any idea what you do to me?" Denki asked, placing his hands over hers. "I wasn't sure whether you felt the same way and I didn't want to mess anything up."

"Denki? What are you saying?" she asked, eyes bright with hope as she looked at him, running her thumb over his cheek softly, almost absentmindedly.

"I like you, (Y/F/N), I like you a lot, and this isn't some . . . three A.M. spur of the moment confession, but . . . it kind of is. The point is that you're smart, and all kinds of gorgeous, and there's so many things about you I wish I could list, but words aren't my thing, and I know that I'm rambling, but I really can't stop 'cause I'm terrified of what your response is gonna be and I don't want to fuck anything up and-"

"Denki," she cut in, smiling at him the way she did when she was fondly exasperated with him. "You have nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing. I like you too."

"Why?"

Even Denki was surprised by the amount of confusion in his own voice.

"Because you're a dork," she stated. "Because you're smart, even if people don't always see it right away. Because you want to be a hero, because you like to make a difference. Because in the end, you're a good guy, when you get past the playboy attitude and shitty pickup lines. Because you're cute and all kinds of soft. Because apparently I have a thing for hyperactive morons with screwed up hair."

"Rude," he muttered, but she smiled at him even wider, and he knew that it was worth it.

"Am I wrong?" she asked softly, swinging her legs around to get closer to him.

"No, but that doesn't mean that I'm happy about it," he mumbled, pouting slightly.

She gave a small giggle, something that rarely happened, and Denki smiled, wide and unburdened.

"So, what do you say about going on a date?" he asked, tucking her hair behind her ear to get a better look at his face.

"I think that's the smartest thing you've ever said to me," she teased.

Denki pouted again and she touched his nose lightly, making it crinkle in response.

"That wasn't a no," she told him, wrapping her arms around his neck softly.

"You know, this looks good on you," he whispered, touching the hem of the hoodie carefully. "And it looks very familiar."

"It does?" She pulled away to look down at it and her eyes went wide. "I didn't even know it was yours. I just threw it on on my way down here. When did you even . . . .?"

"I left in there like a week ago," Denki informed her. "I thought you had just kept it."

"I didn't know it was in there," she admitted. "But I'm not sorry that I'm in it, it's very comfortable."

"We can share custody," he murmured.

"We'll have to," she agreed. "I don't think I can deal with never wearing this again. You actually have good taste in hoodies."

"Why are you so surprised by this?" he asked.

"Because most of the time your style seems all over the place," she replied. "But that's not a bad thing. It makes you unique."

"Normal is overrated."

"A normal sleep schedule is not," she said, standing up. She grabbed his hands, pulling him to his feet. "Come on, we can chill in my room if you want to."

"You aren't nervous about having me in there?" Denki asked.

"No, because I know that if you try anything I can knock you on your ass. I also trust you," she told him, linking their fingers together softly. "Is this okay?"

"More than okay," he breathed, stepping close enough to brush their shoulders together.

He could get used to this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Your POV)

It was a rare day when you and Denki got a day off together. Being heroes was tiring, and schedules were always weird, so when you both got a day off together, you always spent them together.

"You're up early," Denki murmured, slipping in behind you from where you were sitting on the window seat of your apartment.

He wrapped his arms around your waist, burying his face in your neck.

"The baby woke me up," you said.

Said baby padded into the roof, tail high in the air, a smug look on that cute furry face as he jumped up onto the seat, curling up in your lap.

"Marshmellow, don't lay on my book," you muttered, pulling the book out.

"Told you, he's fuckin' evil," Denki murmured, kissing your shoulder lightly.

His shirt was slipping off your shoulder, and Denki treated uncovered skin like a target, regardless.

"How long have you been up?" he asked.

"Only an hour or two, and you looked so peaceful, I felt bad waking you up. I know that you've been getting more action than I have these last few weeks," you murmured, taking one of his hands, kissing his palms softly, leaning back into his warmth.

"I love you," Denki hummed.

"I love you too Denks," you told him.

"Read to me?" he requested, and you smiled.

"Always," you replied, finding your spot in your book again.

#denki kaminari x reader #denki x reader #kaminari fluff #kaminari x reader #kaminari x reader fluff #denki x reader fluff #mha #mha kaminari

[roublardise]

my "Crowley isn't attracted to women" take

for @spnprideweek - day 2 - mlm

cw: dicussion of homophobia & transphobia all in all I wanted to highlight how canon gay Crowley is bc I love him 💕 thank u spn for Crowley even tho he deserved better

in the last weeks I've realized there's a huuge consensus in the fandom for pansexual Crowley. if you're pan or not and wanna hc Crowley as pan, power to you! but what's bothering me is the non-discussion of it all. the way it seems obvious for everyone. whereas, to me, Crowley has been canonically gay all this time.....

disclaimer: I'm aware Mark Sheppard alledgely said he saw Crowley as pansexual, however I can't even take these words for canon without context. Especially not when a year later he'd say Crowley's sexuality didn't matter. The way Mark Sheppard talks about characters' sexuality is more a "why are people making a big deal let them be" than "the character doesn't care." Moreover, actors pov can't be taken as canon imo. Jensen Ackles thought Dean straight for so long when Dean's been bi all this time as well. Sometimes actors are biased by their own experiences & stereotypes!

disclaimer #2: on god I don't wanna start discourse lmao. I just wanna share my silly thoughts about a tv show & question the way Crowley's sexuality is written in this silly homophobic tv show. don't @ me about what's making you think Crowley is indisputably pansexual bc I assure you I already know your points

That being said, here's why I think Crowley is a bear, a gay man, a trans gay man actually, a homosexual, who isn't attracted to women & some food for thoughts about why the unquestioned consensus towards pan Crowley could have roots in both homophobia & panphobia.

I don't think we can think of Crowley as your usual demon. We know too much about Crowley's life as a human, and the numerous ways in which he acts un-demony, almost humanly after. Considering him simply like a demon with no concept of gender preference who would be pan “by default” wouldn’t be right with his character. But we also can't question his sexuality in the exact same way we would a human's.

It also can't be thought in the same way as angels': as once-humans demons do have a concept of gender. Crowley especially cares a lot about his gender presentation and the way he's addressed. Not only does he literally sell his soul for a bigger d*ck as a human ; as a demon he uses the same vessel where other demons are shown to move once they had to leave one ; and for the few hours Crowley's possessing a woman, he clearly states he should still be referred to as king.

This will all be used for homophobic & transphobic jokes in the show, but I'll get back to that later on. Gender does matter to Crowley's identity, and I think it could be extended to his sexuality.

I've seen numerous descriptions of it all saying Crowley's sexuality was "ambiguous" and I guess it is, as he never explicitly used any label. However "ambiguous" doesn't mean bi or pan. It doesn't mean anything besides the fact we can't draw a clear-cut conclusion of his sexuality.

Imo we can actually draw a clear-cut conclusion of Crowley's sexuality but yeh, I'm getting there.

----------------

Let's take a look at canon events around Crowley & sexuality!

His character introduction is him enjoying making a homophobe man kiss him for a deal

It is rumoured that he was a demon's lover (Lilith's)

He heavily flirts with Bobby

He french kisses Bobby for a deal and takes a pic

He never kisses a woman on screen (tell me if I forgot anyone!)

He flirts with every single man he sees, and even more strongly when it's making the other uncomfortable

The other parent of Crowley's son is never mentioned nor even brought up

He has two orgies that we know of

He has sex with a demon who's possessing a woman (Lola) when he was addicted to human blood

He dates, has sex with, and asks Dean to rule Hell with him. He's in love with Dean

On late spn he drinks fruity drinks

He flirts with and implies he had sex with an angel (Naomi)

He flirts with Death (Billie)

He's into BDSM

I'm not gonna go into details with all the sexual stuff he says bc there's a lot.... But it's always about gay sex. (once again, if I'm forgetting smth pls tell me nicely)

Now, with all that I'd like to question specifically the elements people use to say Crowley is canonically attracted to women.

He has two orgies that we know of

There’s the one Crowley has while he’s himself possessing a woman ; iirc it’s a foursome with two other men and one woman. Crowley still counts as a King, as the show makes sure we know, admitedly this dialogue implies we should still think of him as a not-very-manly-man.

Honestly, if one is convinced Crowley is attracted to women based on this scene.. okay. Personally I don’t see it because the orgy is unplanned, it’s an opportunity Crowley takes. Is he even attracted to the two other men?? Who knows. We don’t even know if Crowley even touches the other woman, there’re so many ways to have group sex. Even if he did, having sex with one woman doesn’t make it impossible for him to be homosexual.

The second orgy is with Dean. Crowley describes it then: “We've done extraordinary things to triplets.” It’s interesting how before I went to check, I thought it was clear the triplets were women. But not at all! I’ve been tricked by heteronormativity myself. So this is up to interpretation. Even though the way the show doesn’t make sure we know the triplets were women is pretty telling (as I’ll talk about later).

It is rumoured that he was Lilith's lover

Well, this is a rumour. In this relationship Crowley would know Lilith as a demon possessing a woman, and Lilith would know Crowley as a demon possessing a man as well. Who's even to say they met in their vessels to sleep together. That's the kind of cases in which the ambiguity of Crowley human/demon situation makes it impossible to draw any kind of conclusion towards Crowley's attraction to women. Also if anything Lilith is clearly a lesbian lmao.

He has sex with Lola when he was addicted to human blood

Same thing here, the relationship is one of demon/demon. Though we do now they do meet in their vessels to sleep together. Besides that, the sex happens while Crowley is at a low point. She's the one bringing him human blood, which makes the sex more of a transaction than anything. It does fit a very grey area of consent which would be fair to question.

We can't know for sure whether the demon possessing the woman was a woman as well, but let's say she was: 1/ Crowley having sex once or twice with a woman doesn't prevent him from being homosexual. 2/ What is he seeing if not a demon's true form? 3/ Wasn't he in a self-destructive mental state?

It's a stretch, imo, to assume Crowley was attracted to her.

He flirts with and had sex with Naomi / flirts with Billie

This one is so ridiculous to me bc Naomi is an angel and as a demon, Crowley sees her true form. We don't even know who was her vessel when they had sex.

The flirt thing is interesting however, bc iirc Naomi and Billie are the only "women" we see Crowley actually flirt with. During the orgies or the demon sex there's no flirt involved. It's interesting bc, as Cas would say: "Naomi's vessel is a woman. Naomi is an angel."

Same case for Billie who's a reaper then Death. Spn is pretty unclear about how the whole thing works but we know reapers are kind of angels. In any case, I won't go as far as saying Billie has any connection to gender.

Moreover, the way Crowley flirts with them is pretty light next to everything else Crowley says to men. It's pretty personal, I'm aware, but I do relate a lot with the way Crowley flirts with them VS how I flirt with men just because (and I'm a lesbian).

Anyway! Both Naomi and Billie are supernatural creatures, which brings the count of women Crowley flirts with to... zero.

-> What I take from all that is that Crowley is attracted to men for sure ; to angels and demons ; and doesn't care about the genitalia involved in the sex he has. We have nothing about the kind of relationships he had as a human. His gender presentation matters a lot to him. The only long-term commitment he has is with Dean. I wouldn't even say he had a committed relationship with Gavin's other parent bc we don't know anything about them.

----------------

But what's my deal with homosexual Crowley? One can wonder, if Crowley doesn't care about bodies, doesn't that mean he can still be written as pan?

No! First because sexual attraction isn't about genitalia (even if transphobes would argue the contrary but they're transphobic so...). And second, well....

I would refer to this point as "how do I know Crowley isn't attracted to women? bc Dean is"

I'm convinced that if the show wanted to write Crowley as anything other than a gay man, it would have been way more obvious.

This is a show who wrote Dean catcalling a faceless woman on the street, for no other reason than to remind the viewers Dean was attracted to women & to balance it with the following homoerotic scene.

One could say spn doesn't have lots of women characters to begin with, but that's my point exactly: when spn wants to show attraction towards women, they do find women for people to be attracted to. Hell, they even give Gavin some girlfriend but never ever bring up the topic of Gavin's other parent. Even though an entire episode is dedicated to learning about Crowley's past.

What's important to understand Crowley's sexuality isn't the people he slept with ; it's the people he doesn't show interest in.

The absence of something is the presence of the thing, blablabla. It's a way to look at homosexuality that heteronormativity makes hard to see because, unconciously, we don't tend to question attraction towards the expected gender. One would ask for a 10 pages essay on why a character is gay, but one would need only a 2 sec kiss to assure a character's heterosexuality or attraction towards the expected gender.

----------------

In Crowley's case, his attraction to men is a huge part of his character right from the beginning (thanks god, at least no one's questioning that). Spn as a show that hears what the fans are saying and twists writing accordingly, is perfectly aware of that. Yet rather than pushing women at him along the course of the show to remind everyone how Not Gay Crowley is - the opposite happens.

Yeh, Lola, Naomi, Billie, they all happen in the later seasons. But even then, the show somehow can't write Crowley as attracted to a human woman.

What happens then is: not only does Crowley fall for Dean ; he engages in some BDSM play with Lucifer : and he switches from drinking only the finest Scotch to fruity cocktails.

The BDSM thing as well as the drink thing are choices rooted in stereotypes, that's how spn is! But it does canonize Crowley's homosexuality. They're depriving him of his "masculinity" as the show goes on, because they purposely write him as homosexual. I don't think spn would have ever written a bi or pan character that way.

We learned a few days ago that Crowley died in a gutter. He died in a gutter for a bigger d*ck. I'm just gonna refer to Oscar Wilde & Mika on this : "some of us in the gutter are looking up at the stars."

The "referred to as king" scene isn't about Crowley being a demon and so not caring about gender - it's the opposite. Other demons are the ones poiting out Crowley's vessel. This is a transphobic joke. It's the demon edition of the "gay boy in a dress" transmisogynistic trope.

Viewers aren't supposed to be on Crowley's side ; we're supposed to be giggling with the other demons while Crowley is being emasculated. Crowley gets a woman vessel because he's a not-very-manly-man, because he's a trans man, because he's homosexual.

And I know that bc Dean is written as bi, and all they're doing is reaffirming the way he does like women while being extra subtle with his love for men.

Meanwhile Crowley is losing influence and power, loses his authority as he loses his throne in Hell, gets humiliated by Lucifer, until all his character revolves around is his love for Dean. The way Crowley is then protrayed as some lovesick ex who can't move on is, imo, a straight man fantasy. Crowley's love is both used as predatory and as a tool to validate Dean's Peak Masculinity.

Spn has been burying their gays all along, and Crowley was right there being punished for not only being in love with Dean but for not being attracted to women. For never being able to be a "normal" guy. For never being able to be seen as a "normal" guy. For checking every homophobic stereotypes in the books. Crowley as a human dies because he's a trans man. Crowley as a demon dies because he's homosexual.

----------------

That's what leads me to be uncomfortable with the way the fandom seems to have a consensus towards pansexual Crowley. (Once again: idc about people's personal hc of Crowley as pan, I just want to think critically about the way no one thinks twice about it & accepts it as canon so easily. Hell, just bc I dared to ask what started the pan Crowley confirmation I got accused of erasing his pansexuality. All I did was ask a question.)

To me, it feels like erasing everything his character went through because he was gay. And it seems to be taken from a reasoning which is going to assume Crowley is attracted to women.

I mean: the reasoning would go "oh, Crowley clearly has a non-straight sexuality -> he's attracted to men -> he's pan" His attraction to women being accepted by default, without needing any backup. And when I look at the canon I see nothing implying he'd be attracted to women. Taking Crowley's attraction to women for granted is following an heteronormative thinking.

Being into people isn't all about who one sleeps with. It's about love. And when we look at what spn shows about Crowley's close relationships, the only meaningful one he got is with Dean. When Rowena wants payback for Crowley making her kill Oskar, she goes for his son.

And it's SO interesting to me because if angels can't be in love because they don't have a soul - can demons? as they're beings with a destroyed soul? And if so, how powerful of Crowley to still fall in love with Dean Winchester.... the power of gay love :) (Crowley 🤝 Cas)

----------------

To conclude all this with some more stuff to think about if, like me, you love questioning everything:

While it's not wrong per se to hc Crowley as pan, it can be worth questioning what's making us so sure we collectively just vibe with it? To me there's a few things: - As I was saying: heteronormative bias - Crowley being a non-fully-human character - Crowley being masculine (despite the show's attempts to erase that) - Crowley being into BDSM - Crowley flirting and making sexual remarks in every context

These, unconsciously, gives a vibe of a character who's "outside" of the gender norm, not making big deal of their sexuality, not even questioning it. This creates this idea of "ambiguity" around Crowley's sexuality. The way Crowley particularly seems to be really chill about sex, is a demon (so what does he know about gender?), and heavily flirty, ... is what most people will link to pansexuality. That doesn't mean thinking of Crowley as pan is being problematic™ ; this means in western medias that's what fills the "pansexual character" imagery (like basically: the Jack Harkness type).

However, when we look at it like that, none of these elements are defining of pansexuality. None of them are excluding him from homosexuality. If not stereotypes.

That's where it gets personal ; but it does make me feel like the huge consensus towards a pansexual Crowley (when there is no clear-cut evidence of it) is erasing the complexity of homosexual experiences. As I said at the begining: I'm happy if pansexual people can relate to Crowley ; everone's free to headcanon. But saying Crowley is canonically pansexual is a stretch - and a take rooted in homophobic stereotypes.

Imo Crowley may have been created with all these traits pushing towards a pan reading of his character. However, as the show went, he was clearly written as a homosexual man. The changes in his portrayal took a turn to be specifically homophobic. He gets imagery that only strictly homosexual characters got (such as drinking fruity cocktails like Aaron. Meanwhile Dean, on the same scene, is allowed beer & whiskey.)

We're used to taking spn's homophobic rep and jokes to make it our own. Yet it seems, when it comes to Crowley, the fandom doesn't see it.

Sometimes people aren't attracted to the gender heteronormativity expects them to be attracted to.......... sometimes people are gay and it's not an umbrella term.

#crowley spn #spn crowley #crowley #trans crowley #spn meta #supernatural #spn #so..... i went off once again #homophobia #transphobia #i just kept adding stuff to it lmao and i would STILL have stuff to say but this is enough #long post #spnprideweek

[talk1about7seventeen]

Warnings: Flirty situations, suave Taehyung, witty protagonist/ reader, romance.

Pairing: Taehyung x reader / suave!tae x witty!y/n

Word Count: 1744

Notes: Hello! Welcome! This was written in mind for my best friend (love you babe) but I hope you enjoy regardless! Remember, I'm not trying to be the most accurate with my depictions of Taehyung, yet a characterized version of the beloved K-pop artist. This is just for fun so don't think too much into it!

Genre: Romance ♡

Without further a-do, enjoy!

✲ﾟ｡.✿ • .ू • ❁.｡ू *ﾟ✲ﾟ• . *｡

The sky was alive as it always was in the early morning. Clouds danced amongst pinks and hues of gold, such a beautiful sight to wake up to. It was easy to be in a good mood in the city you lived, especially because of the skylight right above your bed where you could peer up into the sunrise yourself. You had made a great living for yourself to be able to afford such lovely apartment. It was at the top of the building, which is why you had a skylight in the first place. The window acutely placed against the ceiling, bringing light into the room so delicately that any movement may break the rays that glistened down upon you. Another day, another adventure. You would wake up with ease, brush your teeth, get dressed in something appropriate for the breezy Summer's day and make your way to the local coffee shop across the street. Yet, the feeling of your bed sheets was so much more alluring than anything else in that moment. The kind of calm that accompanied this room was enough to make any growing artist obtain their inspiration, and such you were.

"Okay." You spoke to yourself, mentally preparing yourself for the day ahead of you. Walking out of the room into the bathroom, you flipped on the light to get a good look at yourself. The short curls on your head stuck out wildly in every direction. Maybe you should have gotten that silk pillow case at the store when it was presented to you. Pillow cases aside, you had more important matters to deal with; today's look. You were feeling something more refined this morning. Maybe a touch of white, a hint of brown, or better yet---maybe lavender.

After brushing your teeth you went to retrieve the outfit of the day which ended up being a long deep colored brown blazer on top of a cream colored sweater slightly tucked into tan shaded long pants with not even a wrinkle on them. The pants in question fanned out at the end which gave you a more prestine and dare one would even say, artsy look. As you returned to the bathroom, you managed to tame the mess of curls on your head into a slick and neat style, one which you had done many times before. "There we go." You smiled at yourself. Over time you have really learned how to put yourself together. A wonderful trick you had learned from any art class; trusting the process. Sure, it may not look ideal at the beginning, but the end result would, if not most times, work out in your favor. You were beautiful, and you knew this. The confidence you radiated, a younger version of yourself envied. But there was no time for envy now, only self appreciation and admiration. You located a long bag you would wear on your shoulder with all the essentials tucked in neatly in each crevice. Now you were ready to start your day, and what better than something warm to sip on.

"Y/n! Good to see you dear!" The older women who ran the coffee shop bubbled at your presence. "Hello, Madam Loretta. Lovely to see your face again." You replied in a respectful tone. This women made you feel at home when you were far from it. Madam Loretta was a kind soul who had a knack for delicious coffee and you were surprised her shop wasn't as well known as it ought to be. "Not a minute late either. What will you be having today?" The women peered at you with curious eyes. Placing a finger on your chin, you pondered for a moment. "Surprise me." She nodded and made her way back to the coffee machine where she began to make your surprise drink, humming a tune you had heard many times before.

The shop wasn't crowded but it had a good amount of people there. One being a particularly interesting fellow you hadn't seen before. His style of clothing was similar to your own and his attention was being pulled from the book in his hand to the beverage in front of him. You watched him as you walked back to your usual seat, pausing when his eyes shifted to you. He looked you up and down for a second and gave a small smile. You shook your head out of your own thoughts and sat down at your seat.

You hadn't meant for the odd stranger to look at you, but now that was all he was doing. His coffee colored eyes swirled and glistened in the sunlight. They seemed warm and mesmerizing. You found yourself staring back. "Y/n, darling!" Madam Loretta called placing a coffee mug on the counter. Rising from your chair you walked up to her, trying not to look at him as you were moments ago. You dipped your head lightly at the woman and thanked her warmly. As you had almost made it back to your space, you heard a noise from where the man sat. "Hmm?" You turned to face him. He gently held up a hand a beckoned you over. Against anything you would have tried then, you were awfully curious of who he was and why he was looking. This was the moment you would let your interest get the best of you.

"You aren't very good at subtlety, are you?" He comments, his voice even and smooth. This caught you by surprise. "I beg your pardon?" He let out a chuckle. "Sit, please." Gesturing to the seat across from him, he watches as you move. You weren't sure if he was looking for something in particular but that wasn't of the utmost concern. You sat down, placing your coffee mug in front of you cautiously. "Well, is there something you need?" His smile grows. "My apologies, y/n, was it?" You nodded, looking at the cup in front of him. "Odd that you chose to order tea at a coffee shop." You commented. "They have it here, don't they?" He placed a hand on his cheek. "I suppose. What would they call you, stranger?"

"Ah, I've forgotten an introduction, haven't I? Kim Taehyung, ma'am, pleasure to make your acquaintance." Taehyung gave a little wink that made your heart race. Odd. "Well, Kim Taehyung, I wouldn't call yourself subtle entirely for you stared first." You say without issue, taking a sip of the coffee without breaking eye contact. It was rich and tasted of hazelnut. A smile spread across your face naturally. Taehyung caught this. "What's so funny?" He tilts his head to the side. "The coffee is good....it always is here." You would thank Madam Loretta before you left. "You should try it sometime, instead of getting a tea at a coffee shop." You teased lightly. Taehyung let out a small giggle. "I don't really like coffee." He said. Now this started to confuse you. "Then why are you here?" He looked around at the chattering customers, the prestine glass windows, everything and then back at you. "The atmosphere is addictive, is it not? Is that not why you're here?"

"A bold assumption, we hardly know each other, Kim Taehyung." He licked his lips softly. "For now." He set both hands crossed in front of each other on the table. "You are an interesting character." You tell him. "All the more reason to talk to me, I presume." You let out a laugh which catches him by surprise. "What a day already." You tell yourself aloud. "I'm glad you find me amusing." He smiles wider, showing his teeth which are perfectly straight. "I do. But I must be on my way." The time of your interaction has run short. You were too busy to keep this up much longer which caused a string in your heart to play a saddened tune. His frown made the song duller---or should one say, more sorrowful. "Can I meet you again?" You ask for a reason unbeknownst to yourself. This question causes him to smile. "You'll find me where the tops of the building meet the sky. And I shall be waiting for you there, dear y/n, I assure you." He tells you poetically. "Okay, Kim Taehyung, until then." He dips his head and gives a little wave goodbye as you walk up to the counter saying your grace to Madam Loretta, and then leaving soon after.

Art classes go ever so slowly this day, for your mind was on the suave man at the beloved coffee shop across the street. You weren't quite sure what he meant in his response before you had left but you were determined to find out. On beautiful days like this, you would walk up to the roof of your school and sit there as the sun left the sky, and today was no different. You walked up the stairs and opened the door with a firm push. To your surprise you weren't alone this time. A beautiful song filled the air. It was deep and moving. The voice could surely only belong to a professional singer, someone of value. You hadn't heard such a lulling tune in quite some time, it was enthralling. You scanned the area looking for who it may be, and there he was, Kim Taehyung. The door behind you shut with a loud click and the song stops abruptly. He turned and smiled as your eyes meet. "I hadn't expected this is where I would find you. You aren't following me, are you?" You walk towards him slowly. "Not at all. You aren't the only one who comes to appreciate the sky, nor will you be the last." You now stand side by side with him as you watch the sun decend over the horizon. You look out into the city with its towering buildings, and chattering tourists and in this moment, you feel like the art instead of the artist. "Meet me here again, y/n. I will wait for you and the sun."

"You're awfully bold, sir." He laughs. "One would ought to be." After that there were no words spoken, only the chirping of birds in the distance as the sun became a canvas for watercolors so bright that you would forget it wasn't a painting entirely. "I will." You tell him finally, and he smiles at this. Eventually, so do you.

#bts #kim taehyung #x reader #fanfiction #fanfic #bts fan fiction #taehyung x reader #romance #art #i hope you enjoy!

[sparklingdisneyprincess]

Having Amber know for weeks affected fans view of her and why it was not done well.

In the tags on a reblog of one of my posts, someone mentioned that the scene where Amber tells Mark she knew he was a hero was bad writing and I low-key agree. I plan on doing an analysis on that specific scene later, but today I wanted to get into why the way the writes handled that situation just wasn’t great.

Keeping in mind the context of who the writers are can somewhat explain the  thought process behind the decision. The creators of the comic book said themselves that's the comic book very often pokes fun at superhero stereotypes and tropes. One of the main stereotypes in superhero comic books is the main non-super female love interest being upset with the male superhero love interest for constantly flaking on her/being unavailable trope. In this trope the conflict is typically resolved when the female love interest is told or discovers in the moment usually by so accident that the male love interest was the superhero the whole time and the revelation is suddenly supposed to negate all the negative emotions that the female love interest was put through and everything just ends up fine. 

In today's time it wouldn't matter if he was a superhero or not. He still made her feel terrible, he still lied. I do think women today wouldn’t allow that to excuse all the hero’s behavior especially when it was evident that said behavior was hurting them. 

We know the writers like to poke fun at stereotypical superhero comic book tropes and plot points, and a good way to do that it to utilize trope subversion.

Trope subversion definition:

A subversion has two mandatory segments. First, the expectation is set up that something we have seen plenty of times before is coming, then that set-up is paid off with something else entirely. The set-up is a trope; the "something else" is the subversion.

Pure trope subversion vs Partial trope subversion:

Executing a “Pure trope subversion” means to follow the blueprint for “Trope subversion” to a tee. The writer sets up the story with essentially no hints that the outcome will be anything but traditional, and then proceeds to suddenly turn the outcome on it’s head in a way that was unanticipated. In the case of the “Partial trope subversion” it’s the opposite. The writer will drop subtle hints and clues teasing that the outcome will not be traditional for the trope. The hints must be subtle because the writers goal is still to trick the reader into believing that the traditional outcome will occur.

The main problem with them writing it as a pure trope subversion is that Amber ends up looking really bad and that people already didn’t like her as they wanted Eve to end up with Mark.

The set-up of the secret identity relationship trope leads us to believe that the female was mostly if not completely unaware that their male love interest is a hero. They often times are suspicious, but the dots don’t usually get the chance to connect before it’s all revealed. Going with that type of trope set-up leads the audience to believe that it’ll end like it always does. The girl will feel sorry for her actions and completely forgive the hero (even though I don’t find think that’s realistic), so instead of it going in that direction they subvert it. They have the female love interest (Amber) figure it out herself and silently not be in the dark for a period of time till it’s revealed that she knew. This is fine unless it’s written as a pure trope subversion because the traditional trope buildup includes anger over canceled plans, late arrivals, and feelings of neglect. That anger makes the female love interest look completely irrational in the case that she knew! (Though perhaps she was not truly angry over those things after she discovered the truth, but she was angry with him lying and couldn’t tell him that without saying she knew, so she expressed her anger through those situations instead of the main reason??? Hmm, I just thought of that and that’s an interesting theory for another time.) Anyways...

I found that the trope subversion making Amber look so bad to be a glaring issue that should have been weeded out in the writing room. They had to have known how it would be perceived. There’s no way they wouldn’t. The only logical reason they’d do this is if they plan to go through with what I suspected was happening at the beginning of the show, which would be that the writers are telling us that Amber is not Mark’s endgame and that she’s just taking up space until Mark and Eve eventually get together. The only problem with that theory is that they had Mark and Amber get back together at the end of the season which is another trope subversion. In the usual love triangle bait-and-switch trope the first female love interest the male superhero chooses gets booted out to make room for the second girl in the love triangle who he was apparently supposed to be with the whole time, however the writers didn’t got through with that trope. They instead subverted it (whether purposely or not) by having the original couple get back together and setting it up in a way that shows the couple potentially growing stronger, rather than him staying single and eventually ending up with female love interest number 2. The writers even took the subversion a step further by setting the outcome up in a way that showed potential for female love interests 1 and 2 to actually start a beautiful friendship instead of a rivalry. 

I’m honestly confused by what the writers wanted us to perceive. If they wanted us to root for Amber and Mark why set them up like that? To prove that they can move past it? But who will support the relationship after everybody now hates Amber? It is contradictory, so I’m very confused. I did write another post speculating that though Amber knew Mark was a hero, she did not know he was Invincible. The theory does shed more light on the situation and it resolves a lot of issues, but it still doesn’t negate the fact that the use of a pure trope subversion in this instance made Amber look really bad. Especially when people would sooner find ways to cancel her, rather than attempt to understand why she did it. To understand someone does not mean to agree with or support them, but it reminds you to humanize the other person, a value we are all owed. 

If the writers had not done a pure trope subversion and instead decided upon a partial trope subversion the fallout would not have been nearly as bad. If they had done a partial trope subversion they could’ve allowed Amber to be more patient in some of the later scenes, while showing that even though she’s patient, she’s also very upset. It would show more understanding on her part, however I think Amber was actually already understanding of his situation. What she did not understand was the lying and how it seemed that he didn’t even care enough to lie well. She was hurt that he didn’t trust her and during their relationship she was constantly questioning whether or not he was serious and if he actually cared about her and honestly we questioned it too as an audience! Imagine how frustrated she must’ve been those 5 months out of 6 when she didn’t know why he was lying to her. 

Amber and Mark didn’t have any relationship issues that I noticed aside from his secret identity. Their dynamic was interesting to watch in my opinion because Mark wasn’t phased by Ambers weird sense of humor and her having essentially no filter, in fact he embraced it and was also snarky in return. He liked that she has strong core beliefs and clearly enjoyed spending time with her. Even though Amber is sarcastic and pokes fun at Mark she finds his enthusiasm to be endearing and often laughs with and smiles at him. Heck, she even approached him first! They’re just two teenagers dating and it’s nothing too exciting like it’s usually portrayed in media. They text, go on dates, make out, enjoy the others presence without really needing to talk, it’s just nice normal dating stuff and it’s realistic and lowkey, and I really liked seeing it. Upon my first watch of the show I liked Amber and Mark together, but I didn’t see the chemistry. I think it’s because everything about their relationship needed to happen in the span of 8 episodes, but also that the reasons why their attracted to each other are very subtle. They don’t shove it in our faces, they just place it there and if you caught then you caught it, if you didn’t then you didn’t. It took me re-watching the episodes a second time to realize why Mark and Amber enjoy being with each other. The body language speaks volumes when you also pay attention to the little things that go on between them. I’ll probably make a whole other post about it because I think it’s something to talk about, but yeah.

In conclusion either the writers truly didn’t realize the outcome of their choice, the writers knew the outcome and did it on purpose to set the audience up to root for Eve and Mark, the writers knew and set it up in order to later on grow/redeem Amber and strengthen her and Mark’s relationship by having them over come it, or they didn’t think it’d be a big deal due to assuming that the trope subversion would take everyone by surprise and that we’d like it.

(If you made it to the end, I’m impressed cause this was long. Also, shoutout to the person who first brought up this topic in the tags. I didn’t realize I felt some kind of way until I started typing and couldn’t stop. It was honestly kind of cathartic😄 I didn’t tag you cause I didn’t know if you’d like that but, thanks for unintentionally giving me the motivation to write this!) 

#Aark #Amber Bennett #Mark Grayson #Mark x Amber #Invincible #SDP reviews #SDP thoughts

[roaringgirl]

Books read in January

I am keeping this as a little record for myself, as I already keep a list (my best new year’s resolution - begun Jan 2018) but don’t record my thoughts

General thoughts on this - I read a lot this month but it played into my worst tendencies to read very very fast and not reflect, something I’m particularly prone too with modern fiction. I just, so to speak, swallow it without thinking. First 5 or so entries apart, I did quite well in my usually miserably failed attempt to have my reading be at least half books by women.

1. John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974): I liked this a lot! I sort of lost track of the Cold War and shall we say ethics-concerned parts of it and ended up reading a fair bit of it as an English comedy of manners - but I absolutely love all the bizarre rules about what is in bad taste (are these real? Did le Carré make them up?).

2. John le Carré - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963): I liked this a lot less. It seemed at the same time wilfully opaque and entirely predictable. Have been thinking a lot about genre fiction - I love westerns and noir, so wonder if for me British genre fiction doesn’t quite scratch the same itch.

3. David Lodge - Ginger You’re Barmy (1962): This was fine. I don’t have much to say about it - I was interested in reading about National Service and a bit bogged down in a history of it so read a novel. As with most comic novels, it was perfectly readable but not very funny.

4. Dan Simmons - Song of Kali (1985): His first novel. This is quite enjoyable just for the amount of Grand Guignol gore, and also because I like to imagine it caused the Calcutta tourist board some consternation. Wildly structurally flawed, however. Best/worst quote: ‘Hearing Amrita speak was like being stroked by a firm but well-oiled palm.’ Continues in that vein.

5. Richard Vinen - National Service: A Generation in Uniform (2014): If you are interested in National Service, this is a good overview! If not, not.

6. Sarah Moss - Ghost Wall (2018): I absolutely loved this. About a camping trip trying to recreate Iron Age Britain. Just, very upsetting but so so good - a horror story where the horror is male violence and abuse within the (un)natural family unit.

7. Kate Grenville - A Room Made of Leaves (2020): Excellent idea, but not amazing execution - the style is kind of bland in that ‘ironed out in MFA workshops’ way (I have no idea if she did an MFA but that’s what it felt like). Rewriting the story of early Australian colonisation through the POV of John Macarthur’s wife Elizabeth.

8. Ruth Goodman - How to Be a Victorian (2013): I mostly read this for Terror fic reasons, if I’m honest. I skimmed a lot of it but she has a charming authorial voice and I really like that she covers the beginning of the period, not just post-1870.

9. Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story (2010): I read this on a recommendation from Ms Poose after I asked for good fiction mostly concerned with the internet, and I thought it was excellent - it’s very exaggerated/non-realistic and that heightening of incident and affect works so well.

10. Brenda Wineapple - The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (2019): What a great book. I had to keep putting it down because reading about Reconstruction always makes me so sad and frustrated with what might have been - the lost dream of a better world.

11. Halle Butler - The New Me (2019): Reading this while single, starting antidepressants and stuck in an office job that bores me to death but is too stable/undemanding to complain about maybe wasn’t a great decision, for me, emotionally.

12. Halle Butler - Jillian (2015): Ditto.

13. Ottessa Moshfegh - Death in Her Hands (2020): Very disappointed by this. I don’t really like meta-fiction unless it’s really something special and this wasn’t. Also, I’m stupid and really bad at reading, like, postmodern allegorical fiction I just never get it.

14. Andrea Lawlor  - Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017): This was really really hot! I will admit I don’t think the reflections on gender, homophobia, AIDS etc are very deep or as revealing as some reviews made out, but I also don’t think they’re supposed to be? It’s a lot of fun and all of the characters in it are so precisely, fondly but meanly sketched.

15. Catherine Lacey - The Answers (2017): This was fine! Readable, enjoyable, but honestly it has not stuck with me. There are only so many sad girl dystopias you can read and I think I overdid it with them this month.

16. Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall (2010, reread): Was supposed to read the first 55 pages of this for my two-person book club, but I completely lack self-restraint so reread the whole thing in four days. Like, I love it I don’t really know what else to say. I was posing for years that ‘Oh, Mantel’s earlier novels are better, they’re such an interesting development of Muriel Spark and the problem of evil and farce’ blah blah blah but nope, this is great.

17. Oisin Fagan - Hostages (2016): Book of short stories that I disliked intensely, which disappointed me because I tore through Nobber in horrified fascination (his novel set in Ireland during the Black Death - which I really cannot recommend enough. It’s so intensely horrible but, like Mantel although in a completely different style/method, he has the trick of not taking the past on modern terms). A lot of this is sci-fi dystopia short stories which just aren’t... very good or well-sustained. BUT I did appreciate it because it is absolutely the opposite of pleasant, competently-written but forgettable MFA fiction.

18. Muriel Spark - Loitering with Intent (1981): Probably my least favourite Spark so far, but still good. I think the Ealing Comedy-esque elements of her style are most evident and most dated here. It just doesn’t have the same sentence-by-sentence sting as most of her work, and again I don’t like meta-fiction.

19. Hilary Mantel - Bring up the Bodies (2012, reread): Having (re)read all of these in about 3 months, I think this is probably my favourite of the three. I just love the way a whole world, whole centuries and centuries of history and society spiral out from every paragraph. And just stylistically, how perfect - every sentence is a cracker. I’m just perpetually in awe of Mantel as a prose stylist (although I dislike that everyone seems to write in the present tense now and blame her for it).

20. Muriel Spark - The Girls of Slender Means (1963, reread): (TW weight talk etc ) As always, Hilary Mantel sets me off on a Muriel Spark spree. I’ve read this too many times to say much about it other than that the denouement always makes me go... my hips definitely wouldn’t fit through that window. Maybe I should lose weight in case I have to crawl out of a bathroom window due to a fire caused by an unexploded bomb from WW2???? Which is a wild throwback to my mentality as a 16 year old.

21. China Mieville - Perdido Street Station (2000, reread): What a lot of fun. I know we don’t do steampunk anymore BUT I do like that he got in the whole economic and justice system of the early British Industrial Revolution and not just like steam engines. God, maybe I should read more sci-fi. Maybe I should reread the rest of this trilogy but that’s like 2000 pages. Maybe I should reread the City and the City because at least that’s short and ties exactly into my Disco Elysium obsession (the mod I downloaded to unlock all dialogue keeps breaking the game though. Is there a script online???)

22. Stephen King - Carrie (1974): I have a confession to make: I was supposed to teach this to one of my tutees and then just never read it, but to be honest we’re still doing basic reading comprehension anyway. That sounds mean but she’s very sweet and I love teaching her because she gets perceptibly less intimidated/critical of herself every lesson. ANYWAY I read half of this in the bath having just finished my period, which I think was perfect. It’s fun! Stephen King is fun! I don’t have anything deeper to say.

23. Hilary Mantel - Every Day is Mother’s Day (1985): You can def tell this is a first novel because it doesn’t quite crackle with the same demonic energy as like, An Experiment in Love or Beyond Black, but all the recurring themes are there. If it were by anyone else I’d be like good novel! But it’s not as good as her other novels.

24. Dominique Fortier - On the Proper Usage of Stars (2010): This was... perfectly competent. Kind of dull? It made me think of what I appreciate about Dan Simmons which is how viscerally unpleasant he makes being in the Navy seem generally, and man-hauling with scurvy specifically. This had the same problem with some other FE fiction which is that they’re mostly not willing to go wild and invent enough so the whole thing is kind of diffuse and under-characterised. Although I hated the invented plucky Victorian orphan who’s great at magnetism and taxonomy and read all ONE THOUSAND BOOKS or whatever on the ships before they got thawed out at Beechey (and then the plotline just went nowhere because they immediately all died???) I had to skim all his bits in irritation. I liked the books more than this makes it sound I was just like Mr Tuesday I hope you fall down a crevasse sooner rather than later.

25. Muriel Spark - The Abbess of Crewe (1974): Transposing Watergate to an English convent is quite funny, although it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that’s what she was doing even though I lit read a book covering Watergate in detail in December. Muriel Spark is just so, so stylish I’m always consumed with envy. I think a lot of her books don’t quite hang together as books but sentence by sentence... they’re exquisite and incomparable.

Overall thoughts: This month was very indulgent since I basically just inhaled a lot of not challenging fiction. I need to enjoy myself less, so next month we’re finishing a biography of Napoleon, reading the Woman in White and finishing the Lesser Bohemians which currently I’m struggling with since it’s like nearly as impenetrable Joyce c. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but, so far... well I hesitate to say bad since I think once I get into I’ll be into it but. Bad.

#book club

[timetoresurface]

EXCHANGE / JJK (1)

to give something and receive something of the same kind in return

Note: Something I’ve been dreaming about lately. I really took my time to write this and didn’t rush anything. The beginning is more natural than the last thing I started. I’ve already written ahead this time so more is yet to come. Show some love and don’t hesitate to criticize. @erisann is definitely an angel in disguise helping me getting better, so a little shout out to her for being so nice to me, I really appreciate it :)

Pairing: reader x Jungkook

Genre: romance, non idol AU

Warnings: none

Word count: 2250 words

PART 2 / PART 3 / PART 4 / PART 5 / PART 6 / PART 7

Summary: Yes, you are an exchange student. You noticed EF also organized trips to Seoul and you wanted something different than the same five people in your hometown. You came to the beautiful city to learn and relax, most definitely not to fall in live with one of the teachers. Definitely not the young extracurricular teacher who seemed to be good at everything.

*Y/N = your name *Y/C = your city/country

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

“Hi! I’m Y/N and I’m from Y/C.” You said. Introductions were made and you were the last one to go. “I don’t really have any hobby’s except for my love of k-drama’s and feeding my never-ending craving to learn new things.” All eyes were on you so a little blush crept over your face, nevertheless you continued with a confident smile. “I’m someone who loves to try new things but actually never finishes them as my obsessions are usually quite short-lived.” This was yourself in a nutshell. Nothing special, just an ordinary girl with a passion for life and all it has to offer.

“Thank you for charing Y/N. Now allow me to introduce myself.” The teacher spoke in a very strict tone and to be honest, it kind of scared you. You were going to stay here for five weeks and if the classes weren’t going to be fun, half of your trip would feel like a chore. There was nothing you hated more than obligations. Life was supposed to be enjoyable and any burden was too much. The teacher, you learned, was a forty year old man with a happy family. He loved to teach his language and its ways to foreign people as they have the same spark in their eyes as when children are learning something new. His own introduction was cut short due to someone rudely opening the door without knocking. 

“I’m sorry for being late.” He loudly closed the door and you expected him to take the last seat in the classroom. Instead you were taken by surprise when he went to shake the hand of your teacher and awkwardly stayed next to him. He couldn’t be a teacher, he was far too young to be one and definitely far too handsome. The last part being demonstrated by half of the girls in your class suddenly sitting up straight with a very excited look. All this commotion because of a pretty boy with pretty brown hair and pretty brown eyes. Your typical boy next door. 

“I’m Jungkook and I will be your extracurricular activity guide. I’ll teach you things like dancing, cooking and Korean calligraphy. I’m really excited to get to know all of you better and help improve your Korean along the way.” He concluded his little speech with a crooked smile that seemed to leave some girls without breath. You couldn’t really disagree with the fact that he was extremely good-looking but it was all a little too perfect. A handsome Korean boy with big brown eyes on an all-round pleasing face. His body clothed in all black was equally attractive, but deceptive. He mastered the lethal combination of a friendly face mixed with a bad boy attitude showing through his clothes. It felt like he had jumped out of a cheap romance novel someone would leave behind because of the lack off sex scenes or because of the awkwardness of the virgin writer trying to write an intimate chapter.

“After class you can register for extra courses of your choosing at the information desk. I’ll be there waiting for you.” The girl next to you had troubles keeping her breathing steady and you silently laughed. Women were so easily tricked. You had learned that lesson a long time ago and weren’t really willing to walk that path again.

“If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask them.” Jungkook was handing out some papers with extra information about his activities and if there were extra costs involved. When he handed you one of his brochures, his eyes locked with yours. You tried to remain calm and unbothered but deep down your heart wanted to skip a beat. He seemed more affected as the apples of his cheeks turned into the prettiest of pinks. 

“There are some interesting activities recommended to get the best experience of Seoul while you’re here.” These were his last words before he bowed and excited the room rather quickly. Nobody said a word as most of us were charmed by the young Korean, even the few men in your class. Luckily your teacher remained unaffected and simply continued introducing hangul. 

**

You hadn’t spend time in a classroom in a very long time and it showed. Everyone knew how to listen and take notes simultaneously  while you struggled opening the new pen you had recently bought. You could say you were delighted to hear the last bell that marked the end of the planned day and the start of whatever you wanted it to be. Everyone rushed outside and you could take a guess where they were going. They all went toward the information desk in pairs of two and you couldn’t help but feel a bit left out. It was only day two in Seoul and the fact that you hadn’t made any friends yet didn’t trouble you. It just didn’t feel right. You wanted to apply for every extra trip there was but some of them would be more fun with a friend by your side. You seated yourself in the sunlight while reading the paper Jungkook had given you a few hours ago. Some of these were worth thinking about. A weekend trip to Busan, Lotte world, a cruise on Han river, a trip to Jeju Island, to only name a few. The most difficult decision to make was between Busan and Jeju Island as you could only choose one of the two.

“Have you already decided what extra activities you might be interested in?” His voice interrupted your thoughts but you tried not to show.

“No, how can someone choose between Jeju Island and Busan? How do you expect us to decide?” You easily confided. His eyes glistered in the sunlight all the while his face remained serious. 

“Can I sit with you for a while?” He asked you, ignoring your question. You simply nodded your head as annoyance was creeping in your system like a bad virus. Once he was seated next to you on the grass and your legs almost touched he decided to answer your question. “I can not choose for you but I can tell you what I’m more excited about.” An awkward silence was shared between the two of you.

“Please go on.” It felt like he had waited for your spoken permission to continue.

“I am from Busan and I haven’t been back home in over a year. Even after more than a year here in roaring Seoul, I can never forget Busan and the waves crawling gently to the shore. I don’t know if there is a place like that outside Korea, but I can assure you that it will be worth it, you know.” The annoyance you felt before was replaced by sympathy but stirred with a bit of hesitance. Without him realizing, he was already breaking a few walls you had build around yourself. You noticed the wrinkles underneath his eyes and the worry lines on his forehead that made him look a tad bit older. Something inside of you wanted to get to know his motives and reasons for the life he chose.

“Why did you leave?” The question came out as a silent whisper almost blown away by the soft spring breeze. He didn’t look at you and you secretly missed his stare on you.

“I wanted to do something for myself, I guess.” His hand pushed back his brown hair while his eyes squinted trying to look at the sun.

“Most girl here are probably grateful for you choosing this job and Seoul over your beloved hometown.” The remark was made with a giggle and Jungkook laughed too. You would describe his laughter as warm and hearty. People think of laughing as a noise that comes from the mouth, but when Jungkook laughed it was nothing like that. The laugh was in his eyes.

“Most girls? Why not all?” He asked with a huge grin plastered on his face. Or maybe his laugh came from within, maybe it was just the way he was wired that humor was just so easy for him to understand and respond to.

“Some girls think you should do whatever makes you happy, even if they don’t get to see your beautiful face around here anymore.” You quickly stood up as the embarrassment started to settle in after calling him beautiful. “I shall register myself for some activities and I shall keep your advise in mind. Please stay and enjoy the sun.” You quickly excused yourself.

**

“So Y/N, I heard you had a private conversation with the handsome extra activities teacher.” The girl next to you remarked. Your class decided to bond together and not separately so now you were all having dinner somewhere in Seoul. You were all seated together at a round table and the drinks were flowing.

“He just asked me if I had already registered for any trips.” It was the simple truth but everyone seemed a bit disappointed. “But he is handsome so I might have missed a few of his sentences.” You quickly added and this got their attention back.

“Well, Amalia, it seems like we will lose. His heart has already been captured by this beautiful creature next to me. How unfair, she’s pretty and she gets the pretty boy.” Agate, the girl next to you, definitely had a bit too much to drink but the compliments were heartwarming.

“Oh no, but maybe she doesn’t want the pretty boy.” The girl named Amelia said slurring her words a bit. This conversation was getting a bit too weird for your liking.

“No, you girls can have him. Now please excuse me, I have to go to the restroom.” Right after your words the girls shrieked and took another shot out of pure happiness. 

After you had returned from your little break you deliberately seated yourself a bit further away from the shrieking twins. This act didn’t go unnoticed by some of your fellow students.

“I thought American girls were supposed to hold their liquor, or am I wrong?” The person who spoke was a British dude with dyed blonde hair. You took a sip from your drink before speaking.

“I think Americans always like to pretend to be good at everything. Image is everything, I guess.” The boy sure had a nice vibe going on. The blonde hair cupping his face just perfectly and bringing out the blue of his eyes.

“I prefer being good at drinking as it brings people closer. A lot closer than just having a good image.” His words started to slur but the twinkle in his eyes had gotten brighter.

“I prefer being a good drinker. My trade mark, you know, as my image.” The words were coming out slower than your usual quick witted self was so known for. There definitely is something in this Korean liquor that made you go drunk a little bit faster. The conversation with Alfie continued and you weren’t sure if you really got wittier as the evening wore on or if it was just the effect of the liquor making everything seem so much funnier.

You all struggled home together. The shrieking twins were behind telling everyone they loved them, you were clinging onto Alfie’s arm laughing uncontrollably and the others, well, they were also in bad shape. If anyone made it on time to class tomorrow they deserved a medal, and you weren’t going to get one, that was for sure.

“Byebye.” You waived them all goodbye as they struggled getting up the stairs. Luckily for you you didn’t need to struggle with unnecessary steps. No, your room was on the ground floor. But the only problem was to locate the correct room and this task proved to be more difficult than first anticipated. You tried to enter your room code but none of the doors opened. They only gave a red light meaning it was the wrong door or wrong passcode. 

**

After a trillion tries, or that’s how it felt, you seated yourself on the floor. It didn’t take long for your face to touch the cold floor, trying to cool you. You felt the wet hot tears fill up your eyes, your throat closed tight. Finally the tears split over and flowed down your face like a river escaping a dam. 

It felt like hours of you sitting there crying all alone in the dark. You barely noticed a door being opened. You barely felt his hands wiping away the tears that were still running down your face. And you definitely didn’t recognize the boy who the brown eyes belonged to due to the tears still streaming out of the corners of your eyes. He lifted you up so you sat up straight with your back against the wall while he squatted before you still wiping away the tears from underneath your eyes. 

“Hey, what is wrong? What happened?” His eyes showed the kind of gentle concern your mother used to have when you had fallen from your bike. He rested his hand on your shoulder and you let him.

“Korean drinks are dangerous.” Was the only coherent thing you could think of saying. A smile grew on his face as he finally understood the situation. You weren’t hurt, or maybe a little because you did fall of Alfie’s back while he tried to piggy back ride you out of the bar, but Jungkook didn’t know that of course. 

“You can’t find your room?” He whispered softly and you simply nodded your head. 

“I’m not even sure if I have a room. I tried them all and none opened.” You said while closing your eyes. You were getting sleepy as the alcohol was starting to wear off, leaving you with a headache and swollen eyes.

“I don’t know where your room is but I don’t think it is on the ground floor as only people who work here have a small studio.” His explanation made so much sense as all your fellow students had taken the stairs. You tried to hide your embarrassed face with your hands but he quickly grabbed your hands.

“I have a very comfy sofa where you can sleep on tonight and tomorrow I’ll discretely find out where your room is. Sounds like a plan?” From deep inside your chest, through every cell of your body, the warmth welcomed you like an old friend. But it was strange, because you never felt that way before. It kinda scared you, you know? Feeling the cold slowly leaving your heart or maybe it was because of the alcohol you saw a halo hovering above his head. Whatever it was, this boy charmed you more than you liked to admit.

Your eyes were getting heavy again and you could feel Jungkook helping you up and guiding you toward his apartment. He apologized for the mess but you didn’t care as long as you could lay your head on something soft. As long you could fall asleep to the sound of his worrying voice and the smell of his fabric softener, you didn’t mind a single thing. A blanked was draped over you and your shoes were taken but you were already gone to the land of dreams. Zzz

#bts #bts imagines #bts imagine #bts scenarios #bts scenario #jungkook #jeon jungkook #Jungkook x reader #bts x reader #bangtan #Jungkook fanfic #jungkook fluff #bts fan fiction #bts fanfic #bts fic #fan fiction #fanfic #romance #non idol au #jeon jungguk #jungguk x reader #bts jungguk #jungguk

[momo-de-avis]

Wordtober Day 4: Freeze

[This one is a bit longer than the others, mind you.]

My dearest Nieve,

Have you ever imagined what does the world look like when it freezes completely?

It’s something that has never really crossed my mind, curiously enough. Just a concept I never thought of. I saw this movie a while ago, a suggestion by an old boyfriend I think, about a man who had that power. Though not quite… he didn’t freeze the world, he froze time. And there was this voyeuristic element to it, because he was an artist and he enjoyed the peace and quiet of drawing the, I think he called it, ‘intervals of time’, and he went about lifting women’s shirts and painting their breasts, or pulling down their pants—it was a very skewed concept of sexual deviancy, if you ask me. Either way, it was framed around this notion of ‘guy just wants to appreciate women’s bodies so he freezes time’, because maybe the director was too much of a coward to call his fantasies ‘sexual assault’. I hated the movie, truth be told. My ex loved it, though. I wondered why, but never asked. To each his own, I suppose. And then I never thought about it again.

Now, let me tell you a story.

Last Friday, I didn’t really want to leave home at all. It was raining, really cold, and there were a few episodes on The Good Wife I wanted to catch up on. But… Jun was insistent on it. And you know how I am. A good, supporting friend. Plus, I might have been a little lonely. Ever since my flatmates moved out, living on my own, I have been missing that ruckus of two people shouting at each other over a lost game of Trivial Pursuit, or something. So, without them, most of the time, all I had was Julianna Marguiles.

Worst of all, it was Black Friday. And I hate Black Fridays. How the crowd goes ravenous for things, for materialistic things they will just throw away in five years’ time, how they all go animalistic on themselves for a price inflated for the sole purpose of being lowered drastically, with appeasing numbers like ‘50’ or ‘70’, splashed in red or yellow to make it all the more alluring, it just—it transcends me, honestly. I get the whole opportunity thing, of buying something you need on the advent of a big sale, but really? Really? You know what I mean. Those people, punching each other over a coffee machine, or a hair straightener, the majority of them don’t need it. It’s a greedy spur-of-the-moment thing. I try to understand it, really, but I can’t.

So, Jun really wanted to go to Black Friday last week, and I said, okay. I was willing to put up with an event I detested if only I was rewarded with some warm coffee or tea at a cosy shop and some nice catching up. It couldn’t have been too complicated, I thought.

Yet it was… far more than I can describe.

We got there at ten, and the crowd was already raging. If by crowd you imagine just a swarm of people wafting by violently like ants before winter, you’re severely down-playing it. Curiously enough, I noticed there was something new to the place. We went to the local mall, of course, but Jun wanted a new pair of skates, so our obvious destination was the sports store. And there, strangely enough, between Adidas and Nike displays, was a banner. It shined bright in blue and it was written with white letters that, for some reason, seemed to dance.

‘Special Show Today at 11 by Aleneus the Magnificent.’

 I laughed, of course. What kind of nerd would name himself that? What bloody LARPing, D&D, con attendee idiot would bother to name himself something straight out of a default Runescape character? And who the bloody hell was Aleneus the Magnificent? I thought: some trashed, bankrupted clown, at the end of his career, who was about to set up a kiddie show in the middle of the sports store. Maybe the manager had thought it would ease the frantic crowd and just take a moment and enjoy a card trick by some weirdo wearing a cape and pulling colourful scarves out of his sleeve.

I mean, this bothered me more than tit-spying lunatic from time-freezing movie.

The air inside reeked of body odour, absolutely unbreathable, and everywhere people ran and clashed against one another. Exactly what you’d expect of Black Friday, I suppose. I saw an older woman, clad in pink and the ugliest pair of crocs I have ever seen, entering a shouting contest with a suburban mum over one of those pairs of child sneakers that lights up at every step. Two guys—one muscly, clearly in the right store for him—and the other slender thought intimidatingly tall—reached over for the same pair of shorts and proceeded to try and conquer it through a game of tug-of-war. The shorts lost, in the end, being ripped at the centre, and nobody even bothered to call a worker or anything, they just tossed it aside into the pile of already discarded items. A group of teenagers started a brawl over a couple of pairs of Nikes, and it escalated to punches and scratching, until one of them bled slightly from the nose and security had to be called in.

Security had to be called in a lot, but the poor fellas waddled through the sea of rage, barely able to move, with warning shouts like you’d hear at a riot. Disperse! Disperse! Insane, I tell you. These poor chaps just marched on, at one point pushing people aside with swift enough force for a corridor to form, though even they weren’t spared the angry screams of customers just dying to get their hands on a 70% discount over some football team’s jersey. Even me, not being one for cops in general, I felt bad.

Now, imagine the poor workers, there. The sea of clothes scattered about, rising up to mountains of products either trashed under a brawl or left forgotten by some middle-aged, self-entitled office worker, who couldn’t even spare a second to fold a t-shirt back into place, just made you angry on sight. You’d see shoes being kicked around, boxes tumbled over, shoelaces spilling out like swarms of snakes, hangers thrown over their shoulders, footballs and basketballs thumping the floors loudly as one petulant child insisted they must try it out before deciding, only to kick it away and watch it hit a rack of sweaters and then the head of another angry customer who would turn back and scream, but got no answer.

I just wanted to get out of there, but Jun was set on getting a pair of skates, since the wheels on hers were too worn out and the boot was starting to come off, or something. So she spotted a pair on a rack, black, hot-pink and purple, and went straight for it. Though when her hand hit the boot, another came flying. This other person had, of course, been a tad too late, and I could vow for Jun’s first arrival, but that usually doesn’t matter to Black Friday attendees. With a violent tug, she plucked the skate out of Jun’s hand and then shoved her hard. She nearly fell, had she not bumped into my chest—but she was having none of it, of course. Even I was ready to throw hands. I mean, the face on that woman… Blistering self-entitlement, believe me.

This stranger—a woman that looked about her age, early twenties maybe, and quite fit—began to turn around, when Jun caught a grip of her ponytail and gave her a shove. Her neck almost snapped, and there was a cry, though in the midst of angry bellows, I couldn’t tell exactly if she had been that hurt. But in that moment, I began to panic, as the woman turned around with eyes glinting in fury and one hand raised. Now, I had not signed up for a fight, and the prospect of it sincerely scared the soul out of me.

Then, the speakers growled. Like someone was trying to use them but either a microphone or an old phone got too close and it wheezed and groaned and pierced all our ears. Everyone flinched—me included—like the sound shattered all our brains. Skaters fell on the ground forgotten, as did almost anything anyone was holding at all. And for a split second, everything was so silent I was starting to believe they did bring in riot gear and they were beginning to… disperse the crowd, I guess. It was just peaceful for one second a half.

It passed, and in the far end, between the sea of heads that jumped right back to tussling against each other for a new backpack, a figure appeared. Something cold then grabbed hold of me. He was a slender man, cartoonishly dressed in a top hat and a cape, and I suppose a typical magician’s outfit, modelled after some 19th century caricature—high-waisted pants and bland, white shirt, as you have. Ready to entertain a bunch of middle-schoolers with some cheap tricks. He smiled, too. And it was his smile that was disconcerting.

Nobody paid mind to him, naturally, but I was enticed. I was even ignoring Jun’s tussle with the woman over the pair of skates, and something drew me in. I walked. Amidst the ravenous tumble of bodies fighting each other, I pushed everyone away and walked ahead.

Have you ever felt you were doing something against your will? Your body is moving, but there’s a screaming voice inside your head that tells you to stop, yet you can’t answer to it. You just keep moving and moving, and the more you fight it, the more suffocating it becomes.

It’s frightening at first. But once you let it settle, it becomes… easy. Like walking up an escalator. It takes you where you need to go, not where you want to be. And to be taken where we need to be can be dreadful, but once you reach the destination, it becomes… comforting.

You might be wondering, at this point, Nieve—why am I writing to you? Why am I telling you this?

Oh, you will see.

The man raised his eyes from the crowd, and against all my expectations, found mine. I suddenly felt bad for all my prior misconceptions, upon reading his name—which, by all accounts, is quite ridiculous—because he was nothing like the stereotypical image I had composed in my mind. Something danced around him. Like the air rearranged itself, particles clashing against one another and atoms rubbing together to rearrange reality, but so faint, so slight, you could barely see it. And I was the only one paying attention to it. A soft vibrancy, like when you hear the humming of a television in another room before actually knowing it’s turned on.

I stopped, and his smile turned into a grin. Between the dimples of his amusement, something sombre fell, and I must admit, it was then I felt terror. Gripping, paralyzing terror. He leaned forward, his eyes now so close to mine I felt every muscle in my body contracting and tensing up, like the lid of a box smacking shut, and I looked into his deep, purple eyes. I remember thinking it was quite the unnatural colour.

He tilted his head and murmured: “Would you like to freeze the world over?”

I realize now he must have summoned me because, in the middle of this inane rumble happening inside a sports store, of people gnawing at each other like wild animals over a pair of sneakers or a new tennis racket, I was the only one grounded enough to pay attention. Because I didn’t want to be there at all. And he knew. Until that moment, I was quite shaken, terrified even, but then it felt like the truest, most honest beckoning amidst the rise of the Apocalypse. Like the archangel Michael handed me the sword of silver himself to decide upon the mortal souls who should enter Heaven. And besides, the confusion was brewing a headache in me. I just wanted everyone to be silent for a moment.

So I answered honestly: “Yes.”

He drew away, tipped his hat and cast one paralyzing glance over the crowd, and the world… froze. It just… stopped.

I cannot express to you, Nieve, how beautiful a sight it is to see a world frozen like God hit the pause button. Maybe tit-spying peeping Tom from the movie was onto something, because I have never before experienced such peace in my life.

Just try to imagine it. Chaos coming to a halt around you, all the sounds of the world sucked out of existence, and there’s only absence The people that, just before—minutes before—existed in a revolution of egoism, fighting and screaming and shouting over owning things, buying things, purchasing things, and things, and more things—suddenly turned into statues. I felt a queen amidst the blind.

I trudged down the cluttered aisles, stepping on discarded clothes and broken hangers, plastic cracking beneath my soles and fabrics caught into my fingers and hairs, and watched: hissing growls frozen mid-scream, clenched fists hoisted in interrupted challenges, even a couple of fingers gripping the hairs of one another. I touched the arm of a woman whose face was cast into stony anger, eyebrows pushed together in ravenous hatred, and she didn’t move.

The magician, or what was he, appeared next to me, calmly placed a hand on my shoulder and said: “Try hurting her.”

I should have fought it, I know, but I was far too curious to deny the opportunity. If one could freeze the entire world over like this, just to bring a moment’s peace, and watch the carved animosity of these brutes clashing over materialism, what else could one do with it? I mean, it’s wrong to do it, to take advantage of someone’s body who’s stuck into a liminal space between life and non-existence. I know that, I’m not a monster. But so is so many of the things these people were doing. You just had to look at the workers and cashiers there to understand it. And who’s to say they don’t deserve a little pain?

The magician produced an ice pick from his pocket; his hand touched mine softly—and, oh, I cannot express to you how cold those fingers were—and placed it gently on my palm. “Try hurting her,” he said again. The voice was tuneful, like a chirping bird, and I almost want to say it carried something charming with it, perhaps an enchantment of sorts (at least, he had the clothes to go along with it). But I’d be lying. I wasn’t moving against my own free will, anymore. I was too curious, and this world was too silent for me to let it go back to that irritable cacophony of screams and aggression from just seconds before.

So I did. I picked up the ice pick and pressed it gently against her puffy white skin; I felt the surface of her arm sink below the sharp tip as it pressed on deep into the flesh until the cold blade hit her bone and a silky thread of red sprouted from the puncture wound. She didn’t move; yet as I looked up at her face, I saw a tear sliding down her eye. Like a wax figure that somehow contained a soul inside of it, and upon the alien touch felt every pain a human could, only twice as hard. I thought I was enacting some proper punishment, I won’t deny. I saw that woman hit a kid with an empty box. It was an accident, but maybe if she hadn’t been so concentrated on shoving aside all and any who got to her precious ugly sneakers first, she wouldn’t have hurt a child—would she?

Do you want to know what I did next, Nieve? To each and every one of them? Because I did things. I simply relished in this immense power I was still unsure where it came from. So I did things.

Alright, I won’t tell you all of it. But I’ll tell you part of it. The muscly guy who played a game of tug-of-war and threw the ripped shorts apart, I poked his eyes out—oh, yes, both of them. That’ll teach him to watch where he throws things, next time. And the slender, tall man he fought—I pierced both his hands and feet. The woman with the ugly crocs? Who smacked three people that I could see with a plastic hanger? I broke every single one of her fingers and watched her tears run silently down her pale, reddish skin. The group of teenagers who had started a brawl? The one stuffing watches in his pockets—well, I stuffed socks down his throat—one, two, three, and four, and five, and six, until his trachea was so filled with cloth his eyes swelled and burst into red as he suffocated. At one point, I even stole money from a few of them and filled the pockets of every single one of the workers there. I think they deserved it.

There were more, but these, I think, are enough to paint the picture. Perhaps I’m more of a pervert than tit-spying freak from the movie.

I asked the magician then, after I had my fun, who had this amazing power. I certainly thought it had to be him, because he had called upon me, he had summoned me. But imagine my astonishment when he leaned into my ear and whispered: “You.” I asked how—how could it be possible, and why hadn’t I just… discovered it before. He simply said: “I gave it to you.”

We walked back to the doorway. Outside, the mall was packed full with people walking up and down the corridors, not minding the hell I had frozen over. As if they didn’t even acknowledge the existence of that store.

“You can do it again,” he said. “Whenever you like.”

I did, a few times, of curiosity, just to see how it works. And every single time, I watched their bodies turn rigid and stony, their muscles constrained by that burning wish of wanting to move, but utterly unable to. And me, their God, deciding what to do upon them as their lives hung suspended before my power. 

Though I’m not as greedy as I might sound. I didn’t do anything, this time.

When I was done, the magician chuckled briefly, tipped his hat again and said: “Use it wisely.” I watched him away, sliding through the passing customers, and in between the silhouettes, he disappeared. A flicker of reality, gone within a second. Maybe that’s all he had been. 

I think about just what he was often, you know. Maybe he was an agent of chaos, a trickster of some sort. Maybe he was a god, playing a prank on mankind by leaving this gift of immense power in the midst of chaos, waiting to see who would be worthy of possessing it. And he chose me.

When I turned my back to the sports store and walked home, the screams began. I can still hear them, Nieve. I can still hear those bellows of panic filled with just enough of a flutter of confusion as they wondered: where did all that pain come from?

Did you see the news article they published about it? ‘Black Friday Turned Bloody’. They just accepted, with no further ado, that these morons plucked each other’s eyes out and broke each other’s fingers over shorts and sneakers! There were a few mentions of something the press labelled ‘paranormal’, but the police just chalked it all up under ‘trauma’ or something. I mean, who cares, at this point?

I did leave Jun there, for pity’s sake. I didn’t want to hurt her, she’s nice, I like her. You, on the other hand, is quite the different story.

I’m sure, by now, you’ve figured out where I’m going with this. I mean, you’re one monumental bitch, but you’re not daft. Certainly, you remember—don’t you? We used to be friends when we were kids, in year nine, really close too. Until you decided you were too good for me. Oh, far too good for poor, ugly Suranne, with her thick hairs and bushy brows, and all that. Remember how it all ended? That day you invited me over for a study group at your house, only for me to find out it was a set-up?

I still have the scars on my body. They never really went away, and I’ve been forced to look at them every single day of my life since. Worst of all was erasing the mental scars you left me. Leaving school and some good years of therapy just didn’t seem enough. I think I found the right therapy, though. Freezing the world over can be chilling for others, but for me it’s just… peaceful.

But do try to remember, Nieve—how I cried that day and begged you to stop punching me, or how much I screamed when you pressed a burning hot rod against my skin to, and I quote you, ‘brand me like the cow I was’. Please, remember every single instance of pain you inflicted on me—the cuts, the pinches, the poking needles, the slaps—because, in no time, you will be the one feeling them. I will freeze the world—your world—and I will make it last three times more than it did for me, and you will feel every inch of horrifying, excruciating, humiliating pain I felt. And it will go on for so long your frozen body will try to wither and jerk itself free from me and nothing will happen, because that screaming, bristling terror you will feel will be all locked up inside that head of yours like in a panic room. No one will hear your thoughts, and no one will know your pain, and once you wake up, no one will hear your cries for help because I will make sure you will have no tongue for a plea.

You might think it a petty thing, to be given this power and then decide to use it in a quest for revenge, and one that’s over ten years old, but you know what? I’m not really one for heroism, anyway—never was. This world is far too big and complicated for me to go out and just become a vigilante or something. And I just… don’t care like that.

Then again, you did bring this on yourself.

So, please—do remember that day and keep the sordid details in mind because… I am coming for you, Nieve.

From your former best friend,

Suranne.

P.S.: I just remembered the name of the movie! It’s called Cashback, though it’s just dreadfully boring and too voyeuristic for me. Well, but—you know. Men.

__

Past Challenges:

Wordtober Day 1: Ring

Wordtober Day 2: Mindless

Wordtober Day 3: Bait

#wordtober #writing #my writing #creative writing #fiction #my wordtober

[theaceace]

@hairdryertrash I hope it’s ok, but I may have written a thing thanks your amazing response to my post about the archive staff people-watching. Specifically the bit about it being from an outside perspective. Also, I don’t have the guts to write a full statement/statement-worthy background for random passers-by, but hopefully this will do! Enjoy?

Statement of Millie Wardell, regarding a group of customers; recorded? Statement begins:

I wouldn’t call them regulars, because that would imply that they have any sort of discernible pattern or routine, which I can promise you they don’t. They’re never here at the same time twice, rarely all together, and every time I see them, they look worse. There are some things that are pretty consistent across all of their visits, but for the most part, it’s all just… random.

And yes, I know that pretty much nothing is ever really random – I did occasionally pay attention in school. But if there is any sort of logic to them and their decisions – their conversations – I haven’t managed to figure it out yet.

One of them’s been coming here for a few years, on and off – I can still mostly recognise him, although he looks pretty different now to when he first started coming in. I remember he was always sort of stooped, and a bit stuffy-looking, and I don’t think his glasses ever fit right because they were always sliding down his nose. Maybe that’s why he wears contacts these days. Somehow, when I think of him, I still remember him like that – not as he is now, with shadows under his eyes fit to swallow his hollowed cheeks, and scars littering what little skin he leaves visible.

He used to come in very infrequently with a few other people that I guess he worked with – I saw them much more often than I did him, but they haven’t been by in a while. They were lovely; always had time to stop and chat for a few minutes.

I’m pretty sure his name is Jon – I’ve just realised, I’ve been going on about this bloke and I haven’t even mentioned his name. But yes, I’m sure that’s it. He got coffee to take away a couple of times, and I remember writing it on the side of the cup thinking, yeah that seems about right. He looks like a Jon.

I don’t remember what the others were called – I’m not really sure that I ever knew.

These days, he comes in trailing after people I hesitate to call his friends, because he never looks overly happy to be in their presence. Maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to be here. Or they’re new co-workers that he has to make nice with or something, I don’t know. There’s a few of them, and they turn up at all hours, every combination of them imaginable; but always with Jon.

Today all four of the new ones are here. They come in quickly out of the heavy drizzle, quickly scuffing their shoes on the matt and shucking off their coats as they claim a corner spot in the window. It’s usually empty when they arrive – if you ask me, it’s because of the cobwebs that stubbornly cling high in the corner and on the ceiling, no matter how much we wave the end of the hoover up there. It never seems to bother them, though. That or they’ve never noticed, and I’m not going to be the one to point it out to them.

Jon usually orders for everyone, and it’s never quite the same thing twice.

He walks straight up to me; the line that had been almost to the door five minutes ago is gone. It always is when they arrive. He orders two coffees today (one in the largest size we do and as strong as I can make it, one with peppermint) one mug of tea (the only consistent item of his order, I know exactly how he takes it) and a large strawberry shortcake milkshake. I open my mouth to tell him that we don’t do milkshakes, but something makes me pause. I turn to look at the specials board, frowning, and sure enough – there it is. On the board that I wrote first thing this morning. I then open my mouth to tell him a little white lie that I’m very sorry, but we’ve run out, and close it again. There’s no point. I know the recipe. I know where the ingredients will be. I tell myself that at least today it’s a fairly sensible flavour combination.

Jon hands me the exact change before I have a chance to tell him the total, and then drops a couple of quid in the tip jar on the counter. In his defence, he’s always been a reasonable tipper, and I’m willing to forgive a lot for that.

I tell him I’ll bring the drinks over as soon as they’re done; he nods, heads over to their table, and I try very hard to focus on what I’m doing rather than the snippets of conversation I can hear over the radio. It’s a moderately successful attempt – people tend to forget about me when they’re having important, confidential talks. Not that these guys ever seem to talk about anything too important or confidential, as far as I can tell. Mostly they just people-watch.

Alright, look. I like a bit of people-watching; who doesn’t? It’s a pretty good way to pass the time on the tube, or waiting for a bus, or during a slow shift or something. But them? They people-watch on a whole other level. Like a competitive sport or something. Champion people-watchers, ha!

Sorry.

By the time I make my way over, they’ve finished talking about the fire at one of the BP offices that’s been all over the news – and for the sake of my sanity, I decide it’s best if I ignore the way they talked so familiarly about Jude up to her old tricks again. They all murmur thanks as I set their drinks down in front of them, and by now I have a pretty good idea of who is having what.

The extra-large, extra-caffeinated cup goes to the young woman sat closest to the window. She never meets my eyes, very rarely shifts her gaze from the outside world, but she is unfailingly polite, and always stacks everyone’s mugs to bring back to counter as they leave, so I think she’s my favourite. Her hijab today is a soft blue, and when she reaches for her coffee, I see that her nails have been shakily painted to match. Her hands are always perfectly steady, so I suspect it’s the handiwork of her – partner? Friend? I’ve never been too sure what the deal is there, but they seem to be getting pretty close. I’m glad – there’s always been a bit of weird vibe between them.

Peppermint coffee next – she always has strong flavours that one, but never anything too rich. I remember the first time she came in with them all, she ordered for herself; so that was already pretty strange, since everyone else had always just let Jon order for them. Normally it wouldn’t even register – people ask for weird things all the time – but for some reason, her word choice really stood out to me. She shivered a little, stared me down, and said she didn’t want anything heavy or cloying. She then gave her name as Daisy, asked for a takeaway cup, and marched unsteadily out of the door as soon as she had her drink in hand.

I mean, I just figured she was one of these people that was really sensitive to certain flavours or something, but now I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know what it is, and I suppose it doesn’t really matter. She’s never complained about any of the drinks, so I guess it can’t be too bad.

I smile at her and Daisy smiles back, quick and sharp and I’m taken aback all over again by how much yellow there is in her brown eyes; it takes me a moment to unfreeze my muscles long enough to put the drink down. The grin falters and drops. Without looking, her possible-girlfriend – I want to say Basira, but I might be wrong – reaches across and places a gentle hand on her knee. It looks like it should be reassuring, but she only twitches slightly and shifts until Basira’s hand slides away.

It isn’t hard to continue like I didn’t just see that slightly awkward exchange – I used to work in retail, I’m accustomed to pretending I didn’t see all kinds of things.

The milkshake I set down between the other two women – Helen has already produced from the miraculous depths of her bag a couple of those curly straws that make everything three times as hard to drink. I didn’t know they made them iridescent now, but they look pretty cool. She and… Melanie? Yeah, Melanie, they always share a drink, which is pretty cute. I try not to stare too much. Not just because it’s rude, and I don’t want them to think I’m being – I don’t know, homophobic or something – but because it always gives me a thumping headache.

And finally, I set Jon’s mug of tea down in front of him. He’s tucked the furthest into the corner, almost sinking into the ancient armchair. I barely hear him thank me as I turn to hurry back to the counter. Not that there are any more customers to see to; it’s just that I can’t bear to be so close to them all for any stretch of time. The prickling on the back of my neck becomes unbearable, and I always feel like I can’t catch my breath.

But that, of course, is their cue to begin.

It’s usually Melanie that starts off their weird little game – her movements unsubtle and impatient as she points out some poor passer-by. Pickings are slim today, and she points to the lone soul daft enough to brave the weather without a coat.

“Desolation,” she says boldly, like that’s a normal thing to say while pointing to a total stranger. I mean, I try not to judge them too harshly – apart from Helen, they all look exhausted, and I guess this is some sort of weird stress relief. But still. Desolation? What? I start wiping down the machine and idly sorting the dishwasher in an attempt to look like I’m not listening.

“Not saying I disagree,” Daisy says in a tone that sounds a lot like she does disagree and doesn’t care who knows it. “But we’re going to need a little more than that.”

Jon interrupts, an odd faraway look on his face at he picks up – oh shit, is that one of the corner spiders? Oh fuckfuck, it’s huge, what is he; oh, god, he’s put it back on a web in the corner what the fuck?

“Martin can’t make it,” he says, and I guess that means something to them all, because they nod with varying degrees of disappointment on their faces. I hurriedly turn back to stacking cups, and try very hard to forget that I ever saw the damn spider. If it’s still there by the time I need to close up I’ll have to get Ed from upstairs to come down and deal with it.

“Don’t think that means you’re getting out of it,” I hear Helen say, and it sounds like she’d smiling a little. Well, no. I’ve seen her smiles and none of them are little. They stretch wide across her face, although her eyes never seem to change shape with it.

“Yeah yeah, I know.”

I start to shuffle the cutlery around a little louder than is strictly necessary – I never like this part.

At first, I remember thinking they were some sort of weird writing or improv group or something. It’s not completely unheard of – we get quite a few, um, hipsters would probably be the polite way of describing them, so I just assumed that that’s what they were doing. But then I recognised Jon after a couple of visits as the dour academic-looking guy that hadn’t been in for nearly a year, and that theory sort of fizzled out.

So now I don’t know. The stories they come up with are – well, they unsettle me. Some of them are genuinely frightening, and I’ve woken up from more than a few nightmares to visions of insect swarms filling the pockets of all my clothes, and my shadow leeching up my legs leaving necrotic flesh in its wake, and my fingernails peeling away from my hands with long ribbons of skin still attached. Some of them are just a little weird, but I can never predict what sort of a day it’s going to be, so the less I have to hear, the better.

Maybe it’s a coping mechanism. From what I’ve heard about their job, it sounds intense.

I only catch snippets today. Melanie talks about a fever, about refusing to wear a coat in the depths of winter, then a jumper, about trips to a doctor, a specialist, about thermometers beeping too high to read. I don’t hear the end – I’m luckily distracted by the phone ringing. It’s with no small amount of relief that I chat about delayed deliveries – apparently there’s been some sort of tunnel collapse on one of the routes. Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see Jon sink further down into his chair when I repeat that, clutching his tea like a lifeline. Or maybe I’m just projecting, because when I turn to properly look, he’s once again sat staring intently outside with his elbows on his knees.

By the time I hang up, they’ve moved onto a new target. Helen and Basira argue good-naturedly about whether someone called Jared would be interested in this one; they keep going on about body-image. Daisy teasingly asks Basira for evidence, which starts them off again while Melanie laughs around her straw and Jon tilts his head, greying hair hanging low over his eyes.

For a while, their banter almost sounds normal. Melanie chimes in with a comment about how this person looked lonely, before tensing suddenly with a panicked look at Jon, who waves a hand like he needs to physically brush the words away.

“With the size of that bloody family she may already be, and no-one would ever know, least of all them,” Jon says, and Melanie’s surprised bark of laughter is echoed by Helen’s soft titters and a disgusted noise from Basira.

“Is that a yes?” Melanie asks excitedly, leaning forward so fast she nearly knocks her glass over. Helen steadies it, although I don’t know how – she doesn’t seem to move, and I know there’s no way she could reach from where she’s sat without moving at least a little.

“Better luck next time, I suppose,” Jon shrugs. “You too, Helen, Basira.”

“Tell us then, Archivist. Don’t leave us in suspense.” Helen doesn’t lean forwards, exactly, but I suddenly have the impression that she’s much closer to Jon than she was a few seconds ago.

Jon’s eyes flick between them – the only part of him that moves – before he looks at me. His eyes have a sheen to them, I realise. I’ve never really looked too hard before, always kept my gaze somewhere around the bridge of his nose, but now I feel. I feel.

God. I feel seen.

“What, it isn’t obvious?” He asks, and his voice is light. Teasing. I try to blink and find that I can’t.

Finally, finally, he turns back to them, and across his face, every one of his freckles – no.

No.

I will not say they blink, I won’t, I fucking didn’t see that, I –

“She’s for Beholding.”

I don’t hear anything else. I don’t know if they don’t talk, or if I’m just oblivious to the rest of their conversation, but they leave quite quickly after that. I go through the motions of closing up automatically, even though we should be open for another hour and a half. I can’t bring myself to care. I know there won’t be any more customers today.

I don’t know why I’m so unsettled. Of all the things I’ve heard come out of that man’s mouth, this is nothing. It’s nothing. I’m not thinking about it, I’m just focusing on sweeping, then mopping, and I’m definitely not, absolutely not, thinking about the horrendous itch that’s been burning at the outside corners of my eyes.

Except I am – I blink rapidly, although there are no tears gathering, and pull my phone out of my pocket. I don’t know who to call. My brother’s still at work, my parents won’t want to hear my rambling about this, and none of my friends are the sort of people to take it seriously. I don’t even know that I take it seriously. Honestly, I don’t even know what it is. I scroll down through my contacts twice before I come to a decision.

“Hello?” she says on the third ring, and I take a shaking breath.

“Hi, sorry, Georgie? Are you free? I think I need to talk to someone.”

#tma #the magnus archives #jon sims #melanie king #helen richardson #basira hussein #daisy tonner #my writing #sorry there isn't more martin #I did try to get him in there #also - how many headcanons can I cram into one ficlet? #answer - not as many as I would like #I hope this is ok? #if not I'm very sorry and pls tell me

[timespacehigurashi]

Harley Quinn: Mad Love -Review and Analysis

This book tried to be “The theory of Everything” rewriting and connecting many plots from several comic books, Mad Love, Gotham City Sirens and some newer stories by Dini. Many events you could remember have been changed one way or another.

The combination of those plots created contradictions in the book but at the same time exist some contradictions between what Pat Cadigan was doing and what Paul Dini was writing.

The first chapters about her childhood are hard to read, they are like a cartoon for kids, really for kids. Harleen didn’t have a trauma, by the way, it was a very slight thing. Her parents have troubles and they fight often, her father was a criminal and spent some years in prison before and then he was sent to prison unfairly again until she was 17, similar to Gotham City Sirens but this time he was a nice guy. Because of her father Harley’s opinion of the police is always bad, her view that Joker was a victim is justified this way though it’s too much extreme and we need to pretend the incident described as a cartoon was traumatic so that she can’t think logically

The novel created a story behind every detail like Harley’s mallet, reasons for many things that weren’t important at all.

Some changes:

Harley wasn’t involved with her teacher: It was eliminated and this time she was brilliant but young. Originally she wasn’t a competent doctor, in the novel she was probably insane already in a way can be confused with low intelligence by the reader. Kesel came up with the idea in the 2000′s but her insanity was more obvious.  

Joker is attracted to Harley: In the comic we didn’t know if Joker was attracted to her or not, some people think the Joker is asexual or even gay (though it isn’t canon) but in this novel when we have a Joker POV he thought she was sexy and beautiful. After they escaped from Arkham he says her constant hugs and general loving behavior make him to seem weak and they won’t make out unless that behind closed, locked doors.

Coney Island: There’s an attempt of connecting the original Harley and the new version in her solo book (2013-2016, 2016-).

In fact in this book like in Harley Loves Joker Dini is creating a light and a little cartoonish version of the events, a new biography for Harley. He establishes the structures for her solo and how she has to be written in future cartoons or light comics when she isn’t a threat. He did the same for serious scenarios when he wrote Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, this time is very deliberate though

There Joker and Harley don’t have problems of abuse or something but they’re villains doing terrible things. Those games are an alternate universe based on BTAS (the animated series) and people call them a more “adult” BTAS.

That said, while in Harley Loves Joker the story in Mad Love didn’t occurred, (the very first few pages showed a different outcome for the iconic scene with Harley wearing the red dress) the novel tried to add Mad Love but rewriting small details that change the tone of the story.

Harley and the accent: In the original Mad Love we got a surprise cause it results that Harley’s accent is fake, it isn’t her natural way of speaking. Those of us who watched the animated series assumed she was from Brooklyn because of her accent but the show never stated it explicitly. In Mad Love it was used as a characteristic of Harley Quinn and her insanity, at the moment Harley read the note Joker left her accent came back. Years later Dini wrote a new background in Gotham City Sirens giving her a family in Brooklyn making her accent natural but here she speaks like that cause she wants and learned it from a waitress when she was 7 ...though she’s from Brooklyn as well o_O

Harriet, Ivy and BabyDoll: March Harriet is another character created by Dini years ago BTW. Dini rewrote Harley and Ivy somehow in this novel, they didn’t meet in Arkham originally (though somebody else wrote they met there in GSirens). This time however Harley, Harriet, Babydoll and Ivy met in Arkham; after Harley broke Joker out of the asylum the girls escaped too and considered Harley was a friend so they asked her if she wanted to go with them. Harley and Ivy was turned into a new Gotham Sirens team though Harley preferred to go with Joker

Harley’s intentions: As you know in Mad Love Harley wanted to find out his secrets in order to write a book, in the novel she wanted to help him and the book would be about how the police and the system aren’t fair to him

Joker’s intentions: Why did he do it? in the novel cause he thought it was a great trick, his objective was to convince her that he could be saved cause he enjoy a good trick, no more no less. First contradiction, when he heard she had beaten Killer Croc (I know, I know xD) he thought she was the woman he had been waiting for, somebody wouldn’t bore him to death and was worthy of the effort it would take to destroy her

He was in his Evil man mode :D The book wants to be dark sometimes but almost immediately the tone changes cause there are two writers

Harley has two personalities: Some of her incarnations have had two personalities, The doctor and Harley Quinn (Kesel in the 2000′s and Arkham Knight). Here Harley can do things the doctor doesn’t remember, it wasn’t so a bad twist. On the other hand Dini has never used two personalities before, from Harley Loves Joker, Joker likes to combine her name “Harley Quinzel” meaning for Joker there weren’t 2 but just one person. Likely cause people believed Joker loved Harley but he couldn’t love Harleen. Here he calls her “Doctor Harley Quinn” so I found it very strange and kind of contradictory

The abuse:

It’s very weird but Dini took the time to modify the scene where he threw her through the window and Joker didn’t do it but the window broke when she rested against it besides it had a certain relation to what they know about Joker that

“According to his file he had absolutely no regard for anybody’s safety including his own, he risked his life jumping out windows or off rooftops to what should have been a sure death and survived by crazy-dumb luck, finding something to land on...”

It’s like they are telling two stories here. First of all Joker is not a wife beater in the novel, he never hurt her physically.

Joker wants to be scary so the band thinks he mistreats her but it was acting.

Moreover he isn’t against equality between women and men neither xD he’s against equality with anybody. This Joker is selfish, a jerk and part of his insanity is his need for attention (classic comics)

He’s rude and an ungrateful husband but Harley isn’t an abuse survivor in this story, then the next section of the book treats her like that when she’s back in Arkham. Do you see? Back and forth dark, light, dark, light...Depending on what section of the book you’re reading the story has a different tone.

We have the usual ending “It felt like a kiss” and right away we have a section of “serious” dramatic recovery and the added ending that was similar to Harley Loves Joker where Joker is a whipped husband. Joker wants her back affirming he loves her, begging, but Harley is angry at him, she stole his car and somebody recorded it. The book finished with this joke O_O ready for Harley Quinn the animated series or Harley Loves Joker, or even the beginning of the current Harley Quinn comic as written by Sam Humphries

...But they felt the need of adding another ending, we’ll talk about it later.

Contradiction: the writers forgot she was insane before Joker and that he didn’t do anything to make her lose her mind really but batman said it was his fault lol

Joker’s insanity: Based on classic comics and BTAS Joker wanted to kill Batman cause in his crazy mind he thinks if he does it Gotham will be his, he has an obsession here, Gotham, probably a little influenced by White Knight but it’s about the city instead of Batman. Harley’s obsession doesn’t have so much emphasis speaking of it.

Harley is straight: It wasn’t a change really but cause in the last years there have been stories where Harley is bisexual they included a transsexual character in a small role to please some readers who wanted "representation” while Harley is straight and she’s just interested in Joker

Harley Loves Joker: Harley‘s stinky enemy from HLJ exists here and she worked for a while with Harley in the Labs like in that comic

for the third ending Harley is in Coney Island killing bad mafia men, a bloody joke Deadpool style, she’s still a criminal more like Catwoman and she has a new name (Lieberman’s idea, HQ 2002)

Warning:

This did have many silly things like the swimming Therapy was suggested by “Harley” that was a good joke but it got too long and then everybody in the asylum taking it seriously...

They had interesting ideas like “the acting” but they weren’t developed, the writer(s) should have used some time there. The “woman power” feels pretty silly too, “Harlequinade” was feminist more subtly. The book wants to be about how a woman gets out of a bad relationship and only fans could understand there are some layers of meaning. It’s not the best organized book. Good for Harley collectors though

Well, that’s all for now, I had more to say xD but this post is long enough

#Harley Quinn #harley quinn mad love #joker #the joker #Mad Love #novel #madlove

[harryandmolly]

like the back of my hand - October-December 2019 (part five)

Summary: a relationship within a collection of moments

Warnings: NSFW, language

Word count: a modest 3.8k (next one is the final, guys)

November 12th, 2019

“You’re not… I mean, it’s not that you’re scared I could hurt you, is it?”

She can’t look up at his face. Her chest hurts at just the sound of his voice so she buries her face deeper into his shoulder, clenching her jaw.

“No. The best way I can describe it is… is that it’s not that I’m afraid of you touching me, it’s that I can’t understand why you want to.”

If she were looking, she’d see he looks stricken. He just tightens his arms around her waist and blinks sleepily.

“And, I just want to clarify, it’s not like I jump out of my skin every time you touch me. It’s not like that at all. I fucking love it when you touch me. If I had it my way, you’d never stop touching me. You have no idea how badly I crave your touch.”

His smile is melancholy when she does crank her head out of the crook of his neck to face him.

“The trouble I have stems from not knowing where the touching is going and not feeling secure enough to stop you when I get nervous.”

He nods. It makes sense.

“So… how can I help you?”

“I think I just need time. Time and itty bitty baby steps.”

He hears the humor in her voice and is relieved. “Itty bitty baby steps?” he snickers.

“Yep. Like—” she interrupts herself by grabbing his hand and planting it on her left breast. His eyes fly open.

“That. That’s a baby step.”

She eyes him mischievously and grabs his other hand and does the same with her right breast so both his giant hands are resting on her chest and she’s giggling maniacally.

“There. Look at that, that’s another one. Look at the progress!”

He laughs hard and realizes his body needs it. They’ve been bogged down with their emotions, holed up in his house for days without much respite from them. He drags her on top of him, simultaneously feeling a weight lift from his body as hers replaces it. She looks happy and relaxed and he wants so much more of that, so he nods.

“I can do baby steps.”

+++++++++

December 17th, 2019

Lilly’s been spending most nights at his place and leaving for work before he gets up. He ambles around and writes while she’s away and either cooks or orders something to have ready when she gets home.

Each night, she takes him a little further along with her. He is not an inexperienced man by any means but loving her like this has brought out the enthusiastic kid in him again. He can’t remember the last time he felt his knees quake when a woman took her shirt off in his presence. He’s sure the last time his mouth went dry when his hand was guided down between the legs of his partner was the first time it ever happened. It gives him a new appreciation for all of it – for the intimacy, for the arousal, for her.

She’s being careful with herself. She doesn’t want to spook the anxious beast in her gut again, so each night they’re together, she guides him a little closer, assessing carefully as she pulls him in and they explore together.

It’s seemingly unromantic this way, she figures, from the outside. She explains it to Lauren one night when Shawn is out with friends. Though fully supportive, she just doesn’t really get it.

“It sounds like it takes a lot of planning,” Lauren notes, hesitation in her voice.

“It’s really not as carefully calculated as it sounds. It’s more like… practice. Really, really fun practice. The problem with Patrick was we were going so fast I didn’t take time to realize how I was feeling. Now, Shawn puts me in control and everything just… feels good,” Lilly explains.

It’s good enough for Lauren.

That night, Lilly and Shawn take a healthy lead off second base and when she leaves him in the morning pink-cheeked and mostly naked in his bed, she can’t fucking wait to get home and reach third.

+++++++++

December 28th, 2019

“I don’t know that I have any specific sex fantasies.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, really, the only thing I want is to make passionate love in the Cinderella Suite in the castle in Disney World,” she answers earnestly, propping her chin up on his chest to watch his reaction.

Predictably, he’s delighted by her admission, sweeping her hair back so it tickles his stomach. “I definitely should’ve guessed that.”

“Yes, you should’ve,” you tease.

“So, what, you’d be in a ball gown and I’d be calling you ‘your highness’ or…?” he prompts.

“No,” she laughs, “I mean, I hadn’t really thought about that.” A flush blooms under those freckles he loves and he knows she’s thinking about it now. He makes a mental note.

“What about your pirate thing?” he reminds her, wanting to get some specific details from her. He realizes he sounds a little desperate, but getting her off is his new favorite thing and is becoming his mission in life. If he can do it in style for extra brownie points, he wants to know how.

They’ve been fooling around comfortably for a few weeks, enjoying their baby steps system more than Shawn imagined. Now that they were trading orgasms like candy, they were both more at ease talking about it.

She buries her face in his chest unexpectedly. He giggles and starts playing with her hair again encouragingly. “What is it?” he hisses.

“I should tell you something,” she begins to confess, fluttering her eyes at him and sighing in resignation.

“Ok,” he chuckles anxiously.

“I… have read a lot of romance novels.” She says it matter-of-factly, tilting her chin up and nodding a little as if daring him to mock her.

“Like… Fifty Shades of Grey? Or the old ones with Fabio on the covers?”

“I didn’t finish Fifty Shades of Grey and neither did any other serious romance enthusiast. But yes, I happen to like some of the older classic novels. I’m not entirely proud of this, you see, because they’re kind of trashy and not good quality, but worse than that, they are not representative of how women should be treated, or beacons of healthy relationships, for that matter.”

It was like she had been planning the speech to spill out at him at the right time. He shrugs.

“I’m not judging you, babe,” he reminds her.

“No, I know, and I felt like I was keeping this weird secret from you. It feels sort of shameful because you know how I am about feminism and this feels like a crack in my armor, sort of.” She sounds a little upset and he sees the crease form between her eyebrows.

“What is it you like about them?” he asks.

After a brief pause, she gestures wistfully. “They’re just so… sweepingly romantic. Like, I’m not necessarily envious of these women or their situations because usually they’re trapped without options in one way or another, but it’s this crazy passion that seems so… inviting. There’s this one book I’ve read, god, fuck, maybe over a dozen times. It was written by a married couple in the 90s. It was this cult classic that went out of print for the longest time and only a few years ago it got republished and has this whole new life now.”

“I want to read it,” he says confidently, nodding at her. Her eyes bug out.

“No! No, you can’t read it.”

“Why not?”

“Because then you’ll see what a phony I really am with my principles and my intersectionalism and my sex positiveness.”

He laughs. “I won’t read it to judge you, I just want to know you better. C’mon, you love this book, how bad can it be?”

She winces, looking at him hesitantly, he takes one of her hands and rolls her fingers between his, insistent.

“What’s it about?” he murmurs, nodding at her.

“A young American girl during the Revolutionary War named Merry lives with her British aunt as social outcasts. Anyway, the aunt takes Merry on a trip to… New York, I think and then tricks her and says they’re moving back to England where Merry can live in a real community and get married and be a proper lady. Then the night before the boat leaves, she gets kidnapped by these pirates and winds up on their ship as a hostage and things get… complicated.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Well, that sounds good.”

“It’s… very dreamy. I mean, you know about my pirate thing. But Merry is held against her will and is all soft and virginal on this pirate ship and, y’know, the whole consent thing wasn’t as big a deal in the 1700s—”

“I’m not grilling you, Lil, I just want to read the book.”

“Shawn, you don’t even like to read,” she reminds him. He shrugs.

“I know, but I’m gonna try. What’s it called?” He reaches for his phone and pulls up his notes app.

She stares at him, trying to decide if there’s anything she can say to get out of this. She knows, of course, if she really felt that uncomfortable with him reading the book, she could tell him and he’d back off. But something curious stirs up in her gut at the idea of sharing this part of her with him.

“The Windflower by Laura London.”

He types it in and saves it, gratified. “Got it.” He plants a grateful and comforting kiss on her head, hauling her up his body to have her feel a little closer. She snuggles into his neck and closes her eyes. As she begins to drift off, a thought occurs to her.

“Have you ever read erotic fiction?”

“Uh… I’ve read fanfiction?”

“Smut?”

He snorts indelicately. “Yeah.”

“Ok. Don’t read it anywhere in public. Just… trust me on that.”

He smiles against her forehead, curious about this novel’s power over his level-headed, feminist-minded, incredibly sweet girlfriend.

++++++++

December 31st, 2019

“God, I’m such a miserable west coast bitch now,” Lilly sighs, stepping out of the car and folding her arms childishly. Shawn follows her with a shaky smile, nodding at the driver before he leaves them on the side of the road. Shawn tunes out the rest of Lilly’s gobsmacked reaction of her own inability to deal with the familiar New England cold as he looks up the long driveway to a slightly dilapidated Victorian home glowing with light and throbbing with sound.

She suddenly realizes he stopped listening to her some time ago. She frowns at the house. “Shawn?”

“Sorry. Nervous.”

She looks up at him and sees, yes, he really is.

They’ve flown to Boston for a hybrid occasion: New Years, Anna and Chris’s engagement and Nate’s insistence on a “family” reunion. She wasn’t originally planning on bringing Shawn until he asked to come. She assumed he’d want to do something a little more glamorous for New Years, or at least spend some time with his family. Plus, it was a little intense, this en masse meeting of her friends from college, all of whom had not been gathered like this since… 2015?

He got dressed up for the occasion, too. He’s wearing a fucking pea coat for crying out loud, how could he possibly be nervous about this?

She takes his hand and squeezes it. “You weren’t like this when you met my parents,” she reminds him.

He nods. “Because parents like me. Always have. I’m great with parents. But your friends are… I mean, there’s no guarantee.”

She’s enchanted by how worked up he is about this. Her heart’s exploding under her violet sweater as she pulls him forward, crunching their boots on the melting ice crystals wedged in the gravel driveway.

“You already know Lauren. She’s the biggest one you had to win over, anyway. Nate will try to give you a dad-style talk about your intentions. Naomi is so chill, you won’t have a problem at all. Serena’s going to talk your ear off about music. Andy… just don’t start talking politics with Andy and you’ll be fine.”

They climb the salted steps and she walks in like she belongs there and she does, so it’s up to her to help make him feel welcome as much as it is up to her friends.

The house is banging with people and music. It’s cast in a dull yellow light from old fixtures that gives it an ‘80s teen movie feel. They ditch their coats and Lilly nods at a group playing beer pong, none of whom she knows or is close to.

“Were all your college parties like this?” he yells in her ear, placing a hand on her lower back as they climb the stairs to the second floor from where the music emanates.

She shakes her head. “No, they were hotter! We crammed this many people into an apartment instead of a whole house. I saw a girl get fingered against a fridge once sophomore year. It was nuts!”

He laughs at the manic delight in her eyes. Her best friends are close and she’s feeding off their energy, she’s in her environment. He wonders if this is how she felt watching him on stage that first time in Barcelona.

They step into a big kitchen diner filled with people that Shawn mostly towers over. They both hear it before they see it. A blur of dark hair and perfect eyebrows comes shrieking into view, launching into Lilly and knocking them both against a garbage can. Shawn steadies them, feeling a little unsteady himself as Lilly’s attention is taken away.

They scream at each other unintelligibly for a few seconds before the woman composes herself and sticks a confident hand out to Shawn.

“Hi! I’m Serena. It’s really nice to meet you.”

Shawn’s memory clicks. He turns on his easy charm. “Oh hi! You’re Serena from New York, right? You work at Lincoln Center?”

She looks surprised and flattered. “Yes! Wow, Lil, did you give him flashcards?” She throws an elbow into Lilly’s side as she’s being greeted by other casual acquaintances.

“Don’t need to, he’s just a good listener,” Lilly teases, pressing a finger into Shawn’s chin dimple as he grins. He ducks his head bashfully.

“C’mon, let’s go find the boys. Nate’s going to cry, you know that right?” Serena starts, leading them through the throngs of sweaty twenty-somethings.

“I can’t believe he got everyone here. It’s a miracle. Even Mackenzie’s coming by for a few minutes.”

“Well, you can’t blame her for wanting to get the fuck out of Manhattan on New Years.”

“True. Is Hallie here?” Lilly asks.

“Hallie’s here somewhere. I don’t know what’s going on with her and Nate; he said he’d fill me in later. Also… Patrick’s here.”

Lilly doesn’t react, though Shawn watches her carefully. She nods. “I figured he would be.”

Serena throws an arm around her shoulder. “Alright, Hollywood, let’s go see your friends!”

He loves watching this. She’s totally overwhelmed with excitement at seeing these people, people who knew her and loved her during some of the most formative years of her life. He’s on the periphery for a little while as she catches up and trying to remember names as Lilly lobs them at him.

“You need any name drops, I got you,” says a voice next to him. He looks down, all the way down, at diminutive Lauren as she sidles up next to him with something pink in a Solo cup, her cheeks flushed and eyes dancing.

“Thanks, Lo,” he chuckles, nodding at her beverage, “Whatcha got there?”

“Vodka, lemonade, cranberry juice, sprite, I have no idea what else.” She stares at it suspiciously before handing it to him for a sip.

He looks around the room, locking eyes briefly with the second tallest person here, who he figures is Patrick by the way Lilly described him. He nods and smiles, looking back down again when Lilly tugs on his sleeve to introduce him to another round of grinning strangers.

A few minutes later, Naomi’s mixing drinks and they’re at the bar watching her do it with pizzazz.

“How you doin’, sport?” Lilly whisper-yells over the music, shrugging an arm around his waist possessively. He smiles at the gesture and swings his arm around her shoulders, bringing her in to kiss her head.

“I’m doing great. Your friends are funny.” He gestures with his chin toward Anna and Lauren grinding to Ignition Remix.

“And you haven’t even met her favorite yet!” says a voice behind them.

She whirls and throws herself into a portly guy of medium height with dark hair and a thick beard. He squeezes her hard, smiling warmly at Shawn over her shoulder.

“Shawn, so nice to finally meet you. I’m Nate.”

Lilly looks prouder than she has all night when they shake hands and Nate slaps him on the back welcomingly.

“I’ve heard so much about you and your rescue missions and your epic Valentine’s Days,” Shawn jokes, hoping he doesn’t sound weird or jealous. Nate beams, going crinkly around the eyes.

“We do have some good fuckin’ stories,” he says, looking at Lilly fondly. It’s Shawn’s turn to smile at that.

“Shawn, can I grab you another drink?” Nate says, turning on a dime. Shawn nods, startled. Nate hurries away.

“He’s such a southern gentleman sometimes,” Lilly chuckles, backing into Shawn’s chest as someone squeezes past them, “Born to be the perfect host.”

Shawn holds onto her hip to keep her there. She bites down a smile, her mind flashing back to a couple weeks before. They had been in bed watching Arthur Christmas and he was playing with her hair and rambling about his plans to fly to Toronto for Christmas, talking over the movie like he didn’t care that it drove her crazy. She rolled on top of him to shut him up and they made love for the first time with British elves shrieking about saving Christmas in the background.

It was perfect because it wasn’t. He wasn’t sure exactly where she was going until she reached for the condoms in his bedside table. He didn’t ask her verbally if she was sure – they just stared at each other panting for about a minute until she got impatient. It was the first time, so it wasn’t magic, it wasn’t sparkles and angels singing, it was giggling and grunting and awkward but he made her come twice with his fingers and tongue before they did it in earnest. Their baby steps completed, she felt like she had slain a dragon. They had sex every day that week to celebrate until they parted for the holiday. Tonight she fully planned to celebrate with him again since they were getting so goddamn good at it.

The night wears on in what Lilly says is a typical fashion. Several peripheral players begin to bail after the midnight countdown, during which everyone made out recklessly for a little longer than appropriate, even on New Years. Shawn’s ears were pink for an hour after. It was down to those members of the college pep band and friends that Nate specially invited, complaining they had been astray too long. They sat in a bulbous circle and played kings and then never have I ever, during which time Serena had the fabulous idea to declare that never had she ever written a song about Lilly. The group hooted and hollered as Shawn and Patrick shared an awkward glance over their sips of booze. Lilly went beet red and tossed her head back in response.

“Never have I ever had sex with a celebrity!” Anna shrieks, pointing at Lilly and Shawn across the circle. They both drink and roll their eyes in sync. Shawn picks a Cheez-it out of the box next to his feet and chucks it at Anna. She catches it in her mouth and winks at him.

“We said no targeting, Anna!” he accuses, narrowing his eyes at her playfully.

“But you’re such an easy target, Shawn,” Serena sighs.

“It’s true,” Lilly coughs into her drink. He looks down at her, feigning betrayal.

“You too?!”

“Never have I ever had sex with a celebrity at an awards show,” she shoots back, raising her eyebrows as the group reacts with rousing laughter and pleas of “oh god, who?!” “where?!”

Shawn wrinkles his nose and gulps down the last of his drink. “I’m so wasted,” he admits over the din. She strokes a hand up his thigh and flutters her eyelashes at him.

“Good. Want to go fuck in Nate’s bathroom?”

He blinks. “Really?”

“Abso-fuckin-lutely.”

+

They do fuck in Nate’s bathroom, so vigorously in fact that she rips the breast pocket of his button-up shirt and it’s hanging off him as they saunter back downstairs together, smirking in unison at the cheers of approval from her friends.

At some point around 2:45am, Patrick slides into a conversation Shawn is having with Naomi about the lyrical content on SM3. He stays long enough to offer a backhanded compliment to Shawn about the production strategy and tell him he thinks his boots are cool. Shawn’s glad he’s drunk enough not to feel the need to corner him and bark in his face about how he treated Lilly once upon a time.

Then around 4:15am, he finds himself outside with Nate embracing the cold air as a break from the heady, boozy steam of the overheated party house.

“You have the best girl in the whole world, you know,” Nate mumbles, shaking his head out toward the Boston skyline. Shawn smiles to himself.

“I know. I got really fucking lucky.”

“Lilly is the best friend in the world. She’d kill for anyone in that room and they’d do the same for her. She wasn’t… she was so good at friendship but the whole ‘love’ thing didn’t come as easily for her. I don’t know why, she’s amazing. I know you know that. I had a feeling life was saving up something special for her. I think that’s you, man.”

Shawn blames the moisture in his eyes on the gallon and a half of gin he’s sure he’s consumed by this point. He returns Nate’s firm handshake and clears his throat as they walk inside. On their way in, he bumps straight into Lilly who has his jacket in hand.

“Oh, I was just coming to bring this to you,” she says, wrinkling her brow at the look on his face. He takes the jacket from her hands and puts it down on the table, taking her face between his palms instead and planting the kiss to end all kisses on her as the room cheers again.

“I love you, Lil,” he promises. Taken aback and certainly off-kilter from the killer kiss, she nods in a daze.

“Same.”

Taglist: @the-claire-bitch-project @crapri @smallerinfinities @blush-and-books @abigfatmess @charliesclout @ashotofblues @kitykatnumber @herecomethefeels @stillinskislydia

#shawn mendes #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes smut

[guysgirl-boymom]

Totally unnecessary Loki Fan Fiction idea

I saw Avengers: Endgame this passed weekend.  Don’t worry, there will be no spoilers here.

Anyway... I love Loki, but who the hell doesn’t.  I couldn’t resist a lil fan fiction with Loki.  Granted, I haven’t actually written it out in story form, it’s mostly all my ideas written with some detail to it... but also missing a whole lot of detail.  Think of it like a fluffy Outline. But I digress.  Enjoy... I hope:

Basically, Loki encounters a woman that he doesn't give two thoughts about.  But this woman continues to appear in proximity at every turn.  They begin to flirt and there is chemistry.  It isn't until the woman betrays him by using his own tricks against him that he falls madly in love with her.  It is in that moment of betrayal that Loki silently pledges his life to her.  In some way the woman can feel this oath and she returns the sentiment by becoming a 'double agent' to save Loki.

I am thinking of making this woman Freyja, another Nordic God.  She is in my line of sassy-ness and sexual playfulness.  Some things I've found on her:

"Thank you for giving me the passion to love my lovers, to cherish life's joys and pleasures."

"Freyja is associated with beauty, love, sex, gold and magic.  From her hall, called Sessrumnir she rules over the field Folkvangr, where she gathers half of the warriors that are killed in battle as well as women who had a noble death. The name Freyja means 'Lady'  and she is said to have many other names including: Gefn (the giver), Skjalf (the shaker), and Valfreyja (lady of the slain).  

Freyja is a member of the Vanir ruling family. Her parents, Njord and Nerthus, are both fertility gods.  She has a brother, Freyr, who is the bringer of prosperity and wealth.  Her husband Odr is frequently away traveling while Freyja cries tears of gold in his absence.  With Odr she has two beautiful daughters, Hnoss (jewel) and Gersemi (treasure). Personifications of lust and desire.

 As a great master of seidr, Freyha is the archetype of a volva, a female shaman of Norse religion.  Although the practice of seidr was usually related to woman one of Feyja's apprentices was Odin, the leader of the Aesir.  After she moved to Asgard, Odin made her a priestess of sacrificial offerings.  

Freyja's sexual appetite is well known and she has had numerous lovers among the gods and mortals.  She was irrisistable to all, even Frost Giants desired her and wanted to marry her (Remember this!).  At a celebration, Loki even once accused her of sleeping with all gods and elves present, even her own brother Freyr.  She also has a strong lust for gold and was once called Gullveig (made for gold) by the Aesir."

There's more but it just about sleeping with dwarves to get a gold necklace.  Anyway, what really jumped out at me is the part about "Frost Giants desired and wanted to marry her."  Loki is a freaking Frost Giant (at least in MCU) so HELL YEAH he would fall in love with Freyja.

Of course, I'm taking some liberties on this version of Freyja is she'll be set in Loki/Thor's generation, rather than Odin's apparently.  And, she won't be married with two kids.  Well, actually, the married thing can still happen which will be the first time of betrayal.

She is sent by her husband to seduce Loki so that she can get into Odin's vault to steal something (not sure what yet).  Freyja falls in love with the energetic and playful Loki.  He actually makes her laugh and feel something.  She had lived centuries with her husband and never felt a damn thing.  

The Asgardians are caught off guard when Odr arrives but no one is more surprised than Loki when Freyja breaks free of her fake chains and kicks Loki's ass.  At first he is angered that she betrayed him but the quickly fades when he realizes that someone pulled one on him, doing exactly what he would have done.

Freyja manages to disarm Loki's staff and points it directly at his chest, "Kneel before me."  Her eyes seemingly twinkle as she says the words, the heat of the battle flushing her cheeks with excitement.  Loki doesn't resist, he can hardly subdue his grin when he kneels before her.  This is when Loki makes his silent vow to Freyja. In turn, this is when Freyja decides she will very shortly betray her husband for any chance to be with Loki.

The Asgardian council (I don't know what else to call it) are disappointed when Freyja reappears with the changed up Loki.  She delivers him to her husband, Odr.  

Just before Odr can enact his final plan to steal his desired object, Loki jumps into action.  Before Odr can react to Loki, Freyja disarms her husband.  As Loki fights Odr, Freyja quickly unlocks the chains around the Asgardians, including Thor and his ass kicking friends.

When Odr finally realizes the betrayal by his wife he commands his remaining troops to attack Freyja.  She can certainly hold her own but there are a tad too many opponents.  Loki gets distracted by Freyja's fight which allows Odr to land a very powerful blow to Loki.  This gets Odin and Thor's attention who turn their attention to Odr. With Odr already engaged Loki goes to Freyja's side (not a rescue, but by her side).  They fight together seamlessly, nearly perfect… until Loki (not so) accidently punches Freyja.  A little pay back for her betrayal.  

Odr is finally taken down, killed by Odin.  The Asgardians win.  Once all the excitement finally settles down, Odin banishes Odr's people.  Before Freyja is banished forever she throws herself on Odin's kindness.  With Frigga at his side, Odin decides to grant some leniency on Freyja.  Emphasis on some.  Thor is a little irritated.  He opens his mouth to object but Frigga calmly raises her hand for him to stay quiet.

Freyja turns to Loki, not sure how he will react.  Though she betrayed her husband to save him, she did betray him first. To Freyja's relief Loki eagerly grabs her hands and holds them tenderly.  "As long as I live I will be by your side."  Loki reaches one of his hands to stroke Freyja's cheek as her heart soars with joy.  But slowly Freyja feels a heavy weight encircling her wrists.  "But you must pay a little for forcing a God to kneel in his own domain."  Loki cups Freyja's cheek and then gives it a little pat.

This was Loki's first time to betray Freyja.  Her eyes widen in disbelief as Loki graces her with one of his mischievous grins.  Freyja's shock melts at the sight of his grin.  To Loki's relief Freyja returns the smile.  Suddenly, Freyja throws her chained hands up and hooks the back of Loki's neck with the chain links.  Thor is the only one who reacts defensively but again Frigga subdues him.  Freyja pulls Loki close to her, closing any gap between them, their faces only inches apart.  "We're going to have so much fun, my love."  Freyja whispers as she pulls Loki's lips down on hers.

Freyja is imprisoned for a short time, to learn a lesson of course.  Once she is released, Freyja and Loki are quickly wedded and they share the next blissful several centuries together.  That is until one day she must be imprisoned in sleep due to some sort of poison inflicted on her.  Loki is desperate to do anything he can to save her but nothing seems to work.  The only way to slow/stop the spread of the poison is to put her to sleep while they find an antidote.

Oh fiddlesticks.  I meant to add a part where Freyja damn near gets herself killed to save Loki.  In turn, Loki has to impart some of his Frost Giant powers on her.  Oh oh… I was originally thinking of doing this during the fight with Odir, but now I'm thinking it is Loki's Frost Giant powers that put Freyja in a protective sleep. This is the first time Loki realizes he has these Frost powers and this begins his questioning of his lineage. Fast forward a few more centuries and enter the Thor and Avengers movies where Loki goes off the deep end.  Still no closer to finding a cure for his beloved wife, Loki does what he does best to honor her equally mischievous appetite. He even steals a line or two from her… ;)

If you would be so kind to drop me a line and let me know what you think that would be greatly appreciated.

#loki #freyja #odr #odin #thor #frigga #fanfiction #more of an outline #fluffy outline #creative writing

[preserving-ferretbrain]

I, Whedon

by Dan H

Monday, 23 February 2009

Dan on Joss Whedon, Nice Guy Syndrome, and the Man!Feminist~

So what with the release of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon's new series about how men treat womenthere's been a certain number of people on this site talking about good old JW's much vaunted feminist credentials. While none of us would go so far as

actually calling him a rapist

a lot of us get a little bit uncomfortable with the way he tries to pass off scenes of hot women wearing skimpy costumes as empowering.

A few of us have spent a while trying to put our fingers on exactly what we find so frustrating about Joss Whedon, and now our esteemed editor and I have started to rewatch Firefly, I think I've worked out exactly what it is:

Joss Whedon thinks exactly like me.

Or, to put it another way, Joss Whedon thinks exactly the way I used to before I grew up, got a girlfriend, and became less of an insecure douchebag.

Basically, Joss Whedon's portrayal of women tallies almost perfectly with the phenomenon known generally on the internet as

Nice Guy Syndrome

.

Just to clarify, the term “Nice Guy Syndrome” has two essentially contrary meanings (check out the

Urban Dictionary Entry

. Its first use is the perceived phenomenon whereby women date “jerks” because they're stupid/insecure/oppressed by the patriarchy/have Stockholm Syndrome when they should really be dating “nice guys” like – well – whichever guy is using the phrase. The second meaning of the phrase is the phenomenon of creepy, insecure guys who can't get a date because of the messed up way they treat women (usually by pretending they want to be “

friends

” with women they actually want to sleep with) who ascribe their lack of sexual conquests to their being “too nice”.

It's this second definition that I'm talking about here. I know exactly what these guys are like, because I used to be one and, to be honest, part of me probably still is.

To lay it all on the line, both for the women in the audience who are wondering why the fuck these creepy guys are following them around, and for the men in the audience who are wondering why women find them so creepy, the key points of Nice Guy thinking are these:

Respect For Women is Paramount: The basis of Nice Guy thinking is the idea that Women must be Respected. It is the duty of men who Respect women to protect women from men who No Not Respect them. A woman is, of course, powerless before a man who Does Not Respect her, she can be saved only by the intervention of a Nice Guy.

Women Do Not Enjoy Sex: This is the central, axiomatic tenet of Nice Guy thinking. Sex is a service a woman performs for a man. Ideally she will perform it willingly for a Good man (i.e. me) who cares about her and Respects her, but frequently women are tricked or forced into providing sex for Bad Men because women are Stupid.

Men Are Evil, Male Sexuality is Evil: To be sexually attracted to a woman is fundamentally disrespectful. After all, women don't like sex, they only provide it out of a sense of social obligation. Therefore a man who respects women will do his utmost to suppress any sexual desires he has, and he will certainly not tell a woman he is attracted to her (a really Respectful relationship has to grow out of friendship remember). Nice Guys tend to idealise lesbianism as the perfect non-exploitative relationship for women, they tend to do this to give them an excuse to fantasise about hot chicks doing it.

Women Are Weak and Stupid: The reason it is so important to Respect women is because you, and only you, are capable of protecting them from the undeserving men who would demean them. Women are not capable of protecting themselves, or making their own decisions. A woman who has sex with another man is effectively being abused. A woman who has sex with you is wilfully degrading herself for your benefit.

In short, this all adds up to one fucker of a Madonna/Whore complex, and a totally sexist worldview which is inextricably bound up with the belief that you Truly Understand Women.

Enter the Man!Feminist

I'm not going to get into the “can men be feminists” argument here. What I am going to say is that in my experience guys who pride themselves on their ability to understand women are guys women want to stay the fuck away from them. Men who self-define as feminists should, at the very least, take a long hard look at the way they think about women.

Anyway, this was supposed to be an article about Joss Whedon. Where to begin.

Joss Whedon is a feminist. And how. His shows are packed full of “strong women” and feminist themes and sisters doing it for themselves. Unfortunately they're also packed full of examples of fucked up Nice Guy logic.

I'm going to start with the big issue here, which is Whedon's portrayal of male and female sexuality. It isn't universal, but there is a strong tendency in Joss Whedon's works to view male sexuality as evil (see point three above) and female sexuality as play-acting (see point two).

I'm not going to count Angel and his Curse, that was a specific plot-event, and it was supposed to mirror a classic teen issue (“I had sex with this guy and he totally changed!”) but after the Angel drama, Buffy's next sexual encounter is with Parker who, while manipulative, is direct and honest about the fact that he's after sex. Of course the way he treats Buffy is horrible, but that's sort of my point – he's the Nice Guy's classic idea of the “jerk” who extracts sex from women by trickery. And of course corn-fed Iowa boy Riley only realises his own attraction to Buffy when it manifests in his punching Parker in the face (thus allowing the worthy Nice Guy to overcome the unworthy Jerk and claim his reward in the shape of hot Buffysex). Then of course Riley gets written out for being too boring, and Buffy gets with Spike.

The Buffy/Spike arc is telling, particularly when taken over the course of seasons 5-7. Like Parker, Spike is quite upfront about the fact that his attraction to Buffy is sexual and it's this as much as the fact that he's a soulless killing machine that makes their relationship so destructive. Buffy clearly doesn't actually enjoy having sex with him (see point two) she's just reacting badly to her traumatic resurrection experience. And of course Spike's Evil Male Sexuality finally culminates in an attempt to rape Buffy (because remember folks, all men are

potential rapists

). Then between series six and seven, Spike gets his soul back, effectively redeeming him, and his redemption, of course, manifests as his no longer being overtly sexually attracted to Buffy. His redemption arc culminates, in fact, when Buffy gives Spike the “best night of his life” by lying platonically with him while the world burns.

There's a bunch of similar examples in Buffy, Oz isn't allowed to have sex with Willow until he has first proven himself worthy by refusing to have sex with her, and of course when Willow gets together with Tara, Oz is effectively retconned out, with Joss insisting that Willow is definitely gaybecause, as per point three, lesbianism is inherently empowering. Faith's promiscuity is deeply intertwined with her psychological scars, and Anya's love of sex is presented, along with her literal-mindedness and love of money, as a mark of her ex-demon “otherness”.

Now I should stress here that I'm not saying that Joss Whedon has done anything wrong with his portrayal of the characters in Buffy. Like my earlier article on

race in fantasy

this is basically a call for people to be honest about their assumptions.

Anyway, that's Buffy. Next stop: Firefly.

Madonna, Whores, and Sacred Prostitution

The first thing I should say is that there actually are some reasonably sexually active women in Firefly. Wash and Zoe's relationship is clearly healthy and functional, and Kaylee has been heard to bemon the fact that she “ain't had nothing 'twixt her nethers don't run on batteries” (although that line was from the movie, and has been denounced by fans as out of character).

But if you're going to talk about sex in Firefly you really have to talk about Inara.

Inara, for those who haven't seen the series and couldn't work out what was going on in the film is a “Companion”. Companions are kind of space-Geishas, super-high-class prostitutes who are trained in – well – pretty much everything (possibly including espionage and martial arts, if we're to judge by Saffron, the evil Companion who appears in the episode Our Mrs Reynolds). Companions occupy a ludicrously exalted position in the society of the “'verse” (as Whedon cutely calls it) roughly equivalent to modern movie stars or corporate high-flyers. Whenever Inara walks into a room, people flock around her saying “oh my Lord, a real Companion, I've never seen one before! You're so amazing and empowered!” We are told at great length how the Companions are valued and respected, how a companion always chooses her clients, and how they basically have a free pass to go anywhere and do anything within the Alliance.

But every two episodes, somebody will smack Inara and call her a whore.

Not only does Mal (which means bad, in the Latin, by the way) constantly condemn her profession, but most of her clients treat her like property, or try to “take her away” from her fantastically prestigious career, or just generally treat her like shit. This is completely stupid. It's like having a series set in the present day in which one of your characters is on the board of directors for GSK, and having every third person they meet treat them like a street drug dealer. It's also a classic example of the way that Whedon will try to have his cake and eat it when it comes to these sorts of issues.

Inara is a classic male fantasy, but more than that, she's a classic Nice Guy fantasy. She's a woman you can have sex with without feeling bad about it. Indeed the whole Companion ethos is constructed around the assumptions of the Nice Guy worldview. Respect is paramount, and the whole thing is sublimated in ritual to ensure that respect is maximised at all times. The companions do not enjoy sex (you never once see Inara have an orgasm). The role of the companion is to select men who she considers worthy and allow them to have sex with her. It's “empowering” only in the sense that the Companion is always detached from the whole proceedings, the perfect untouchable being who briefly lowers herself to be with her client

Put simply, it's a very male idea of what female sexuality is and should be, and viewed as an ideal of female sexual behaviour, it's actually kinda creepy. Inara doesn't choose clients who she's attracted to, or people she thinks will satisfy her sexually (a number of her clients in the series are virgins she's been hired to make a man out of). Her decision to service somebody or not is almost entirely a judgement of their moral character which, yet again, is a pillar of the Nice Guy ethos, where sex is a reward for good behaviour.

And needless to say, Inara is always underneath.

Dirty Girls

The final element of the Nice Guy ethos is the most controversial and the most destructive. Deep down, all Nice Guys believe that women are weak, stupid bitches who don't know what's good for them.

This is the bit I'm going to get most flak for trying to pin on ol' Joss, but bear with me.

The really dangerous thing about the Nice Guy ethos is that it leads you down circular lines of argument like “I'm a nice guy, so there's nothing wrong with the way I'm acting towards this girl” or – to relate this back to good old JW “Joss got an award from Equality Now! That means nothing he creates could ever be sexist in any way”.

To put it another way, Nice Guys like to believe that the world is divided into Nice Guys and Jerks, and that the only reason that there are any problems with sexism at all is because of the Jerks (and that incidentally part of the reason there are so many Jerks out there is because women keep having sex with them, so really the women are to blame).

To put it yet another way, Nice Guys believe that there are Good People and Bad People, and everything the Good People do is Good and everything the Bad People do is Bad.

Let's bring this back to Whedon.

In the Firefly episode Shindig, Inara hooks up with an evil man named Atherton Wing. Atherton Wing acts like the stereotypical Jerk. He takes Inara for granted, gloats about the fact that everybody wants to have sex with her but only he gets to, and keeps going on about how she's his because he bought and paid for her. He asks Inara to come and stay with him to be his Personal Companion, and she considers it even though he is patently evil. Finally Mal baits him into calling Inara a whore, at which point Mal punches him and they wind up in a duel.

This then leads to the following exchange

Inara: You have a strange sense of nobility Captain. You'll lay a man out for implying I'm a whore but you keep calling me one to my face. Mal: I might not show respect to your job, but he didn't respect *you*. That's the difference. Inara, he doesn't even see you.

First off, see that word “respect” again. Remember guys, that's what it's all about. You respect women, other guys don't. How do you know? Well you know you respect women, don't you? And the other guy treats them differently to you, so the other guy must not respect women.

Secondly, look at what happened here for fuck's sake. Inara, a Companion, one of the most highly paid, high-status individuals in the entire 'verse, falls in with a Bad Man and she is completely incapable of extricating herself without Mal's help. She's supposed to be the goddamned poster child for female empowerment in the series but the moment she's faced with a man who (horror of horrors) “doesn't respect her” she becomes totally powerless and has to be rescued by Mal. Mal who, let us not forget, calls her a whore, pays no attention to her wishes, and generally treats her very, very badly.

But it's okay, because he respects her. Just “her” of course. He doesn't respect her choices, her career, her wishes or her privacy, but he respects “her” as a kind of abstract entity. But in the Whedonverse that's the way it is, there are Bad Misogynists who Oppress Women and there are Good Guys who fight against them. The idea that an otherwise sympathetic character could have an attitude towards women that isn't appropriate (or even, shock horror, that Joss Whedon could have attitudes that are not appropriate) is simply unthinkable. He's a feminist, therefore he cannot be sexist. He respects her, therefore his actions are respectful.

A big part of Joss Whedon's problem is that he wants at one and the same time to have empowered female characters and also draw attention to the fundamentally disempowering situations women often face. As far as it goes, this is laudable, but he frequently lacks the subtlety to do these ideas justice. Worse, because he is so fond of presenting Good, Virtuous, Powerful Women versus Bad Oppressive Misogynists he frequently falls into the all-too-common trap of presenting abuse and oppression as being direct causes of virtue or, worse, empowerment.

To bring this up to date, with a final example the pilot episode of Dollhouse sees Eliza Dushku taking on the persona of a shit-hot hostage negotiator. Said shit-hot hostage negotiator became a shit-hot hostage negotiator because, as a child, she was abducted and sexually abused. By drawing a direct line between childhood abuse and adult success, Whedon confuses empowerment with obsession. The shit-hot hostage negotiator literally would not have become the woman she was without the man who abused her. She owed her success to him absolutely. By entangling his female protagonists' successes so intimately with the indignities they suffer at the hands of his male villains, he creates a world in which women are defined only by how men treat them, and the only choice he gives them is whether to accept or reject the roles men put them into, and that is anything but feminist.Themes:

TV & Movies

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Whedonverse

,

Minority Warrior

~

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~Comments (

go to latest

)

Arthur B

at 11:28 on 2009-02-23

Its first use is the perceived phenomenon whereby women date “jerks” because they're stupid/insecure/oppressed by the patriarchy/have Stockholm Syndrome when they should really be dating “nice guys” like – well – whichever guy is using the phrase. The second meaning of the phrase is the phenomenon of creepy, insecure guys who can't get a date because of the messed up way they treat women (usually by pretending they want to be “friends” with women they actually want to sleep with) who ascribe their lack of sexual conquests to their being “too nice”.

I'm pretty sure the first definition was invented by guys who fit the second...

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Rami

at 15:23 on 2009-02-23*agrees with Arthur*

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Rami

at 16:30 on 2009-02-23I read part of

a book once

that argued that the "Nice Guy" effect goes beyond just sexual relationships -- that it's a kind of dysfunction that views *any* interpersonal interaction as an implicit contract of that nature. So you get thought patterns like: "I did well in school, therefore I deserve my parents' affection"; "I organize group activites and provide pizza, therefore I deserve Extra Regard and Love from my social circle"; "I Respect and Honor women, therefore I deserve for them to want to sleep with me".

There was lots of his argument that I'm not sure I agree with but it all seems to hit very close to the

geek social fallacies

, which is to say, very close to home...

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Dan H

at 19:08 on 2009-02-23Interesting, you might have a point there. It ties in rather nicely with good old Joel from Surrey and "I worked hard at school so I deserve to get into Oxford."

On another point (and I know it's a bit gauche to be suggesting further reading for my own article - sorry folks) it strikes me that one of the few times I've seen the "empowered prostitute" thing working in fiction is in Jaqueline Carey's otherwise awful Kushiel series. It works there, I think, for all the reasons Inara doesn't work: people genuinely treat the high-status prostitutes with respect, the main character seems to actually enjoy what she does, and enjoy it in the "get off on it" sense as well as the "derive spiritual fulfillment" sense.

Clue: when you compare unfavorably to Jacqueline Carey, you are in trouble.

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Nathalie H

at 20:37 on 2009-02-23Ooh, good article! I think I agree with everything you've had said (which is not as common as I'd like when it relates to feminism) - I think you've explained the things that bother me about Joss.

I'd like to follow up on this:

"The companions do not enjoy sex (you never once see Inara have an orgasm)." - that is true, but that may be because of US TV limitations. It's probably also worth considering Inara's one episode of sleeping with a woman, which according to your Nice Guy code appears to be the best thing for women...she appears to be enjoying herself, but then she always /appears/ to be enjoying herself. All we learn is that 'people are surprised' and 'people think two women is hot', which...yeah.

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http://rudecyrus.livejournal.com/

at 20:58 on 2009-02-23Don't you mean "hot-shit hostage negotiator"?

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Nathalie H

at 21:15 on 2009-02-23(Follow up to previous comment fail - should be "you've said", and agreeing not being as common as I'd like relates to men's viewpoints rather than yours personally. Should not comment while I'm watching TV!)

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Shim

at 21:27 on 2009-02-23

Not only does Mal (which means bad, in the Latin, by the way) constantly condemn her profession, but most of her clients treat her like property, or try to “take her away” from her fantastically prestigious career, or just generally treat her like shit. This is completely stupid.

Agreed. Actually, if it were just Mal, I could sort of forgive it. You could construct some... thing... where Mal was meant to be unconsciously hypocritical about his sexism, being as he is a bit erratic anyway, and disliked the "Companions" bit as part of the culture he's rejected, so kept undermining it (which... isn't that difficult). Trouble is, as you said, Inara

only

gets respect at the plot-convenient moments. The rest of the crew barely notice her or are entirely blasé about her, even the posh kids (who you'd expect to be inclined towards the normal hierarchy) don't seem to show any deference. And the culture shows none of the etiquette rules you'd expect, or explanations for why Companions have special status, to help suspend disbelief.

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http://descrime.livejournal.com/

at 23:24 on 2009-02-23The problem with Companion -> Geisha -> female empowerment is that geisha weren't empowered. They had status, but that's hardly the same thing. The geisha were slaves. Their knowledge/skills and their behavior was all scripted around what men wanted and would pay for. They were taught to repress emotion and reflect only what men wanted to see. It was only the top geisha "stars" who got to be choosy about their clientele. I don't find any of that particularly empowering.

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http://wormwood-pearl.livejournal.com/

at 09:42 on 2009-02-24I

submitted this to reddit"> :)

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Dan H

at 14:29 on 2009-02-24

Their knowledge/skills and their behavior was all scripted around what men wanted and would pay for.

The Companions, however, seem to live in this special magic world (or "post patriarchy society" as the "Whedon is totally feminist" crowd like to call it) where "what men want and will pay for" magically overlaps totally with "what the Companion wants to do" which also, weirdly, seems to overlap entirely with "her lying there looking motherly while the guy lies on top of her and thrusts like a sixteen year old."

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Rami

at 14:39 on 2009-02-24@wormwood-pearl: Yay! Someone actually used the bookmarking feature! I knew I put it there for a reason...

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Wardog

at 15:06 on 2009-02-24I think is a really interesting article, Dan, and I really want to say something about it ... but I'm not sure what to say. I think I'm still just traumatised by Nice Guy Syndrome... as A WOMAN I should know about this stuff, right?

Also I think it's slightly dodgy ground to try and establish what lies "behind" Whedon's presentation of women. After all, this has changed a lot over the years. Although Buffy was probably self-consciously constructed to be a "feminist" heroine, Early Season Buffy is "empowered" almost by chance. I mean, she's a bubbly 16 year old who worries about cheerleading and boys, and just happens to kill vampires competantly on the side. I suppose what I always liked about her is that being into cheerleading and worrying about boys (i.e. being a person) was never really presented as a hindrance to her being good at her job. Set that against someone like Starbuck who is "strong" only when she's pretending to be a man, and the rest of time is a nuclear-explosion sized mess. Or, for that matter, bloody Cameron in House - the fact she is a woman (and thus, inclined to be over-emotional when she should be professional) is always portrayed as some kind of hindrance to her doctoring.

Sorry, this is a heap of undigested thoughts.

Talking about Firefly is also awkward because there just isn't enough of it. I mean, we never really find out what is with the Companion Guild - if it is EVIL and OPPRESSIVE, or if they're secret ninja assassins or what. And we never really see what Whedon was trying to do with Inara - admittedly what he seems to be starting to do is rather depressing. I think there's also a lot of like in Inara, if not for the messy virgin/whore issue. None of the women in Firefly are standard hotties - Kaylee is adorable and girly, Inara is poised and graceful, Zoe is Amazonian, and all of them are clearly very good at their very different jobs. I love Kaylee's touchy-feely mechanical skills.

It's just there's so much that's awkward and unfortunate in Inara. She's gets all hot and flustered over Mal, which leads to her behaving like an idiot a lot of the time. *None* of her clients ever seem to respect her (the first guy whinges that she's sped the clock up to cheat him of his cash, Atherton Wing is an arse, the guy in Canton has an overbearing father who keeps hustling her to just get on with the bonking), except the one woman to whom she gives a back masage while they talk about the softness of each other's skin (which is, of course, what lesbians spend all their time together doing...). Kaylee is all awestruck about how wonderful companions are but, again, she's a woman.

Anyway, I'm babbling now.

But, yes, v. interesting article.

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Dan H

at 17:18 on 2009-02-24

Also I think it's slightly dodgy ground to try and establish what lies "behind" Whedon's presentation of women.

Oh absolutely, but I thrive in slightly dodgy ground.

Much like the Rowling Calvinism article I don't actually mean to say that I know for certain that Joss Whedon thinks about women this way, just that I keep getting the *creepy impression* that he does, and I know from first hand experience that thinking about women this way is in no way incompatible with self-defining as a "feminist."

Which I suppose makes this sort of a meta-article really, the whole point of which winds up being "guys who self-define as feminists, Joss Whedon included, should take a good honest look at how they actually think about women because guys, there is a non zero chance you are a creepy asshole."

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Wardog

at 16:28 on 2009-02-26Much like the Rowling Calvinism article I don't actually mean to say that I know for certain that Joss Whedon thinks about women this way, just that I keep getting the *creepy impression* that he does, and I know from first hand experience that thinking about women this way is in no way incompatible with self-defining as a "feminist."

To be fair to you, there is definitely something "off" with the Whedonverse.

I am more forcibly struck by it than ever since embarking upon the second series of Veronica Mars - of may be one of the most successful "empowered" women I have seen on television. Veronica has a lot of strengths and a lot of, quite interesting, weaknesses to balance them out. I think what I like best about it, actually, is that she is a *person* I can admire and, in some respects, aspire to be more like. The key word being "person" not "WOMAN".

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Sonia Mitchell

at 23:05 on 2009-02-27

I think what I like best about it, actually, is that she is a *person* I can admire and, in some respects, aspire to be more like. The key word being "person" not "WOMAN".

Reminds me of the comments beneath your article on

Mesuline

(I've been playing with the random button too) re. gay characters in fantasy. The OMG we're including empowered women/gay people/disabled people/etc! being a step up from invisible but still some way off Veronica Mars (as you describe her - not that I've seen VM). Not sure if I'm in total agreement as it applies to Firefly (not seen enough of Buffy to comment) but this is definitely an interesting article.

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http://arkan2.livejournal.com/

at 15:30 on 2009-02-28Just when I think your reviews can't get any more brilliant, you come out with something like this. Your insight and clarity are matched by few others of my acquaintance (and several of the rest are also on this site, I might add). I salute.

There are a lot of specifics to this article which I will address later, when I have more time and cognitive energy at my disposal to give this wonderful essay they intelligent response it deserves.

For now, I feel obligated to render Kyra a friendly warning re:

Veronica Mars

. Warning: the following material is heavily biased, and if you really want to continue watching with an open mind, I suggest you don't read it, I just thought I should give you the option of knowing what you're (probably) in for. (Like I said, very biased, you might find yourself disagreeing when you see it yourself.)

Veronica Mars

starts out good, but somewhere by the beginning of the third season the main character devolves into (and this is my feminist cred taking one for the team, but some things have to be said) a real

bitch

. She treats the people who love her like crap, even when they go to heroic lengths for her benefit, and constantly plays the victim whenever they do not comply with her wishes (well, that last one may just be her boyfriend). Oh, and she keeps making the same mistakes about mistrusting people based on total hearsay (the way she dumped Logan at the end of season 1) over and over and

over

and over again.

On a show where at least half the cast are lovable jerks, you wouldn't think this would be a problem, and it probably wouldn't: except that the writers obviously intend us to ascribe to Veronica's view of reality. Logan and Dick and Vinnie and all the other jerks are lovable

because

they act like jerks, and the writers make it clear to the audience that they're supposed to be jerks. Veronica is vile because she's a jerk, and the writers make it clear to the audience that she's supposed to be heroic.

To invert your message, Kyra, and use Whedon to illustrate a point about

Veronica Mars

: the difference between Veronica and all the other jerks in the cast is like the difference between Mal and Jayne on

Firefly

. They're both jerks, but Jayne is an admitted jerk, whereas the writers keep trying to tell us, despite all the evidence, that Mal is a Nice Guy, who's maybe just a little rough around the edges.

Also, in season 3, Veronica goes off to college, and one of the overarching themes of the season is her interactions with campus feminazis. I wish I were making that up.

... Wow, I didn't expect that to turn into a rant. [insert chagrined smile emoticon here]

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 14:49 on 2009-03-02I'll confess to not being very familiar with Whedon's shows, but I still found this article very interesting - the Nice Guy logic seems to be fairly common in popular culture (and society in general). Then again, the Whore/Madonna logic isn't exactly new...

One of the things that annoy me the most, is that Nice Guy logic gives women basically two options: you can be with a Jerk who may do things like beat or rape you, or you can be with a Nice Guy, who'll never do that sort of thing, but who is just as controlling as the Jerk. Either way, you can't win, because having a partner that treats you like an equal is out of the question. (Unless you're a lesbian, of course, and then you don't have to have any nasty sex, because women are totally sexless, you know.)

Also, when women choose macho Jerks, it's seen as a proof that 'we want men who treat us badly', because that's the way of nature, isn't it? [insert eyeroll here]

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Dan H

at 14:55 on 2009-03-02

Also, when women choose macho Jerks, it's seen as a proof that 'we want men who treat us badly', because that's the way of nature, isn't it? [insert eyeroll here]

It's *science*. You can't argue with *science*.

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http://arkan2.livejournal.com/

at 00:30 on 2009-03-25Reply to “I, Whedon”

For someone so obsessed with punctuality in person, I always seem to join these parties at about the time the music has gone on its fourth repeat, the refreshments are down to the crumbs, the organizers are beginning to put away the balloons and decorations, and even the diehards are beginning to think it's time to go home.

Still, now that I've finally put together the time to say what I have to say, I'm damn well going to say it.

So first, I'm linking Kyra's article

Consuming Problems

, which I just read last week. In Kyra's first comment she says:

Possibly it's the weird transaction to which popular culture tends to reduce relationships: the man gives the woman romance, in return she gives him sex. When both should surely be mutual activities =P

Which is an interesting perspective on the those Nice Guy assumptions. (Personally, I'm all in favor of romance, although “embarrassing and awkward”? Yeah, definitely.)

As for the main argument … well, that's about six hits to the self-esteem in rapid succession, especially that “Heartless Bitches” essay. As if I didn't have enough problems with insecurity. Oh well.

The really dangerous thing about the Nice Guy ethos is that it leads you down circular lines of argument like “I'm a nice guy, so there's nothing wrong with the way I'm acting towards this girl” or – to relate this back to good old JW “Joss got an award from Equality Now! That means nothing he creates could ever be sexist in any way”.

It's just a slightly modified version of the privilege self-defense mechanism “I'm not sexist/racist/heterosexist/classist/ableist/ageist/whatever, therefore I'm not part of the problem and I don't need to do anything differently.” The upgraded version is “I support women's rights/the NAACP/give money to charity/etc. therefore I'm doing my part for equality and I don't need to do anything differently.”

Whedon's portrayal of sexism as being the sole province of the Misogynist-of-the-Week makes him an enabler. The none batshit-crazy misogynists in his audience (i.e. more than 99.9% of them) can breathe a sigh of relief, suitably assured that they are not in any way a part of the problem.

To put it yet another way, Nice Guys believe that there are Good People and Bad People, and everything the Good People do is Good and everything the Bad People do is Bad.

I think that basically sums up what I just said in the last two paragraphs. And maybe that explains Mal and his behavior: sure he's objectively no better than Jayne, but because he's Good/a member of the

Elect

(yay for referencing my first ever ferretbrain essay!) everything he does—including insulting Inara and kicking helpless prisoners into engines—is automatically Good, too.

Nathalie H, notice also in that one scene where Inara is with another woman, they talk about how great it is to be “just us girls,” away from men where they can “be themselves.” (As my sister pointed out, apparently Inara

really is

that melodramatic when she's just being herself.)

Which I suppose makes this sort of a meta-article really, the whole point of which winds up being "guys who self-define as feminists, Joss Whedon included, should take a good honest look at how they actually think about women because guys, there is a non zero chance you are a creepy asshole."

Exactly.

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http://arkan2.livejournal.com/

at 15:06 on 2009-03-26Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this. A while ago I read an

essay

by internet columnist Karen Healey about the portrayal of "strong women" in

Buffy

,

Angel

, and

Firefly

. As I recall, the comment thread also contained something about female sexuality in particular being depicted negatively.

From what I saw, it doesn't exactly fit the Nice Guy Syndrome model, but it's another way of looking at the portrayal of women and sexuality in Whedon's work that doesn't come from either the "Whedon can do no wrong" or the "Whedon is a rapist and everything he does is misogynistic" camps.

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Wardog

at 16:17 on 2009-03-26Interesting post, thanks for the link.

There's also a link to

to this

in the article ... which makes me hit the wtf button.

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Arthur B

at 16:24 on 2009-03-26Kyra, that link is incredible. Curse the day that

Firefly

was cancelled and we were denied this genius.

Inara: NOOOOOOOOOO DON'T LOOK AT ME I HAVE THE DEATH CUNT

Mal: I KISS YOUR DAINTY HAND FOR I AM YOUR PURE WHITE KNIGHT WHO RESPECTS YOU, EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE THE DEATH CUNT

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Wardog

at 16:28 on 2009-03-26I *know*, I *know* - it's awful! Makes me actually relieved they stopped Firefly when they did - and that's heresy!

What gets me is:

Mal: INARA, YOU FILTHY WHORE ... oh, you've been gang-raped ... my mistake, you're not a filthy whore.

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Arthur B

at 16:39 on 2009-03-26It reads more to me like:

MAL: Inara, I do not like you, because you are a slutty slut who sluts about the place.

INARA: Oh no, Reavers! I must turn myself into a chemical weapon so that none may touch my venomous DEATH CUNT.

MAL: Inara, I like you now, because you can't slut about the place thanks to the DEATH CUNT which

beckons to me in my dreams but I can never ever have it because it is unattainable, unattainable like you are, sweet Inara, let me place you on this pedestal and kiss your sweet hand, yes, let Mal take care of it, let Joss Mal take care of it all...

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Dan H

at 23:27 on 2009-03-26Tragically it's even worse than that. Comedy DEATH CUNT jokes aside it's basically

MAL: Inara, you may think you're a strong independent woman who is able to make her own choices, but really you just want a man to treat you like a woman.

INARA: No Mal, I really am a strong independent woman and I make my own choices and am totally empowered.

[ INARA gets GANG RAPED by REAVERS ]

MAL: See!

INARA: You're right! My horrific abuse experience has made me realize that your perception of me is more accurate than my own!

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Dan H

at 23:28 on 2009-03-26(Of course, it's not Joss Whedon, it's Tim Minnear. I bet Joss Whedon was all like "no Tim, don't do that, it would be totally fucked up", but then the networks were all like "no, put it in, we want to mess your show up" - this being of course the only possible interpretation of any flaw in the works of the Great Man).

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Arthur B

at 23:42 on 2009-03-26I think we're agreed that the story requires one or both of Inara and Mal being completely pathetic, just in different ways; given that it was never filmed, I suppose we'll never find out for sure...

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Wardog

at 09:29 on 2009-03-27Of course, the other rather indicative thing about this idea is that it's an anti-rape weapon that only works *after* you've been raped. Flaw, much?

It seems to me rather illustrative of much of Whedon's thinking on this issue - i.e. that punishing people for committing rape is more important than preventing rape happening.

Sigh.

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 10:02 on 2009-03-27I like how its effectiveness as a deterrent is completely undercut by the fact that nobody knows she has the frackin' weapon. Way to prevent rape, jackass.

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Dan H

at 11:30 on 2009-03-27

It seems to me rather illustrative of much of Whedon's thinking on this issue - i.e. that punishing people for committing rape is more important than preventing rape happening.

This, again, is why I'm so iffy about Joss Whedon's attitude towards women. It's not that he hates women or is anti-woman, it's that he's the kind of guy (as are a great many of us, I think) who is really into the idea of protecting women or, better still, punishing men who don't treat women "right".

For a lot of guys "girl gets horribly abused, I beat up the abuser, she is eternally grateful and we have teh hot secks" is a fantasy and, as a fantasy, it's relatively harmless (in the sense that fantasies aren't real, and any guy with half a brain eventually works out that other people's abuse experiences aren't about you). The problem comes when you try to dress that fantasy up as feminism.

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Arthur B

at 12:54 on 2009-03-27

I like how its effectiveness as a deterrent is completely undercut by the fact that nobody knows she has the frackin' weapon. Way to prevent rape, jackass.

This is almost precisely like the anti-rape device in

Snow Crash

, which fails horribly for similar reasons. Supposedly, the idea is that if Mr Potential Rapist doesn't

know

whether any particular woman possesses a vagina dentata, or whatever the hell it is the weapon is meant to be, then he's going to play it safe and not rape anyone.

This doesn't really work in universes with insane space rapists (especially insane space rapists who are perfectly willing to continue gang-raping someone after the first few guys drop dead screaming OH GOD IT'S A TRAP SAVE YOURSELF). The whole point of a deterrent (other than you don't keep it secret -

vhy didn't you tell the world, eh?

) is that the person it's deterring needs to have some kind of self-preservation instinct and the capacity to understand the threat, and as I understand it it's debatable as to whether the Reavers possess either.

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Arthur B

at 12:56 on 2009-03-27(I should add that it doesn't work in our world either, because a potential rapist never knows whether a woman is carrying a gun, or a knife, or whether he'll be caught for his crimes and shanked in a grimy jail cell.)

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Viorica

at 16:05 on 2009-03-27I . . . I . . .

. . . I have no words. So after Inara has learned her place and understands that Mal will only respect her if she's had her sexual freedom taken away, what? They have sex?

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Dan H

at 16:47 on 2009-03-27I don't think that the implication is that they have sex (can't blow that good ol' will-they-won't-they now can you), but it's still clearly supposed to be a touching, romantic scene and not

as creepy as all fuck

.

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Viorica

at 22:19 on 2009-03-27I . . . okay, I'm not at all averse to hurt/comfort, but the idea of people being drawn together due to the girl being sexually abused is just . . . EW. EW. EW.

(Incidentally, this far from the only instance of this sort of thing in Joss's work- last week's episode of Dollhouse had a women sobbing on the floor as her boyfriend cradled her after a fairly sexualised attack. It wasn't nearly as bad as this, but it was still kind of creepy.)

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Dan H

at 22:29 on 2009-03-27As ever it's all about context and awareness. Ultimately there's nothing intrinsically wrong with hurt/comfort (as I understand it is called in fandom), there's not even anything *specifically* wrong with a guy who likes the idea of "comforting" vulnerable women (with his PENIS).

It's when he lies to himself about the "with his PENIS" bit and pretends that his attraction to hurt and abused women comes from his EMPATHY with the FEMALE CONDITION that it gets skeevy.

Incidentally I'm really loving typing "with his PENIS".

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Viorica

at 23:24 on 2009-03-27Well in the Dollhouse example there had quite a bit of comforting done (with his PENIS) before the attack or the cuddling, so as I said- not nearly on the same level.

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Wardog

at 21:53 on 2009-03-28I really really badly want to participate in this discussion because I want an excuse to say 'with his PENIS' ... but I can't think of anything ...

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 09:35 on 2009-03-29I'm just enjoying mentally removing the quotation marks.

Incidentally I'm really loving typing with his PENIS.

Heehee, I'm a child. :D

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Morgus

at 18:33 on 2009-12-06I think the problems that you have with sexuality in the Whedonverse stem from the fact that the sensibility portrayed is essentially traditional. Everybody's monogamous, the only lesbian couple is an outlier in every way, and the protagonist wants nothing more than to be normal. The symptoms of "nice guy syndrome" overlap with "traditional, 'safe' relationship syndrome."

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Morgus

at 18:34 on 2009-12-06Now that I think of it, I have never seen a genuine polyamorous group potrayed in media outside of porn. Whedon's "problem" may not be that he's a "nice guy," but that he's a product of Western society.

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Morgus

at 19:00 on 2009-12-06This gave me a great thought about liberalism in general. It's not really about accepting people who are marginal, it's about creating an ideal of normalcy that everyone, presumably, can agree with and conform to. Or at least that's the goal of "mainstream" liberalism.

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Wardog

at 09:25 on 2009-12-07I'm not sure more polyamory in the Whedonverse would help with his portrayal of sexuality.

Also maybe I'm being down on pornography here, and admittedly my knowledge of it is perhaps less than yours, but I can't really recall many genuine, functional and loving polyamorous groups portrayed in porn either. Unless you are counting the device that everyone fucks everyone else as polyamory (something, I suspect, most practising polyamorists would take issue with).

And finally saying the problems with somebody's atttiude to / portrayal of something springs from the fact they are "a product of Western society" is about as helpful as pointing out they wrote their text a certain way because they had two arms. We are all products of the ideologies that shape us - that's, uh, kind of the way it is.

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Morgus

at 00:10 on 2009-12-09>Also maybe I'm being down on pornography here, and admittedly my knowledge of it is perhaps less than yours, but I can't really recall many genuine, functional and loving polyamorous groups portrayed in porn either.

That kind of strengthens my point about truly alternative relationships being completely foreign to society as a whole. And no, I have never seen any such relationship in porn.

>And finally saying the problems with somebody's atttiude to / portrayal of something springs from the fact they are "a product of Western society" is about as helpful as pointing out they wrote their text a certain way because they had two arms. We are all products of the ideologies that shape us - that's, uh, kind of the way it is.

I guess I really should have been more clear about my "thesis." Marriage exists more or less to inhibit sexual competition, and that, I think, is also the core of "nice guy" syndrome.

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Arthur B

at 00:18 on 2009-12-09Woah! That's an awfully simple explanation you're offer for an awfully big concept. Is marriage

really

that simple?

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Morgus

at 07:13 on 2009-12-09Anything on top of what I said is purely subjective, IMO. Kind of like Marx's "false consciousness." Economic motives are everything, questions of race and religion are distractions.

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Arthur B

at 11:23 on 2009-12-09Yes, but even if you restrict yourself to the material benefits of marriage it's still more complex than reducing competition. What about children? Obligating people to look after their own kids through a powerful social expectation that people should only have children within a marriage has historically been a big deal, for example.

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Rami

at 19:36 on 2009-12-09

Economic motives are everything, questions of race and religion are distractions.

There's a lot more to the 'economic' motives of marriage, IMO (including financial motives) than sexual competition. And inhibition of sexual competition is just as subjective as other motives (like those Arthur mentions).

That kind of strengthens my point about truly alternative relationships being completely foreign to society as a whole. And no, I have never seen any such relationship in porn.

Surely by definition an 'alternative' relationship is one that is foreign to society as a whole ;-)?

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Morgus

at 02:52 on 2009-12-12>What about children? Obligating people to look after their own kids through a powerful social expectation that people should only have children within a marriage has historically been a big deal, for example.

I view the desire to increase the size of one's herd the ultimate manifestation of material greed.

>There's a lot more to the 'economic' motives of marriage, IMO (including financial motives) than sexual competition.

By "economic" I mean "materialistic." Status within society, building up of one's social group, etc.

>Surely by definition an 'alternative' relationship is one that is foreign to society as a whole ;-)?

My point (which you are distracting yourself from perhaps on purpose) is that relationships are essentially homogeneous. That is also the great lie of our "consumer choice." Yes, there is, on the surface, great variety, but our place as a consumer and the seller's place as a seller is essentially the same regardless of one's choice of product or venue. One's desire does not make one an individual, especially if it's for what everyone else wants. Vast resources are wasted to hide this fact.

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Guy

at 03:39 on 2009-12-12@Morgus: I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the Marxist/Materialist worldview, but I also think there's a problem with evaluating it as an ideology if you don't have some sense of what it would take to demonstrate it to be incorrect. I mean, OK, we can start by looking at various social phenomena and saying, "Yep, that's part of the economic base, that's only part of the social superstructure, that thing over there is base..." &c &c. But if somebody picks out some example and wants to argue that it shows that not all relationships are fundamentally driven by economic motives or structures, how are you going to respond? By what criteria are you going to judge the validity of their counter-example? If you say it's "self-evident" that it's invalid, or the criteria of validity boils down to "proper materialist interpretation = valid, other = not valid", then you end up stuck in the bubble of a self-validating ideology. I know it's a big ask, but, can you say anything about what your criteria of falsification would be?

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Morgus

at 07:27 on 2009-12-12>I know it's a big ask, but, can you say anything about what your criteria of falsification would be?

Self-sacrifice of one sort or another. Priesthood doesn't count, that brings great status. (and wealth) Kind of like Yukio Mishima, he said that he did not believe in the sincerity of Westerners, since they kept their sincerity locked within their torsos. He was referring, of course, to seppuku, which he ended up committing quite publicly.

Another less gruesome criteria would be the degree to which a person is individuated. If he/she pursued goals or had a way of thinking that had nothing to do with the world of the "people" or any established group or immediate, simple-minded self-interest. In short, I would accept a person who had displayed an ability to transcend the linearity that arbitrarily limits the human condition.

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Wardog

at 15:51 on 2009-12-12Lol!Rand.

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Morgus

at 19:59 on 2009-12-12Nope, Ayn Rand only acknowledged "rational" self-interest, IOW simplistic money-grubbing. Even if there were rules governing this idealized quest for money, the basic motive was inherently banal.

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Rami

at 22:44 on 2009-12-12Still don't quite follow. But...

By "economic" I mean "materialistic." Status within society, building up of one's social group, etc.

given the above and your implication that "rational" self-interest != self-interest, I'm thinking our basic definitions of key terms differ too much for me to understand your point unless you expand further.

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Morgus

at 22:55 on 2009-12-12I really don't know where your confusion's coming from. I'm not a proponent of simple-minded self-interest, and I've said so repeatedly. "Rational" self-interest is another form of simple-minded self-interest dressed up as logical positivism. Long story short, I dislike banal motivations veiled as heroic, transcendent things.

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Arthur B

at 23:02 on 2009-12-12But given your views on the purpose of marriage, it sounds like you don't believe that people by and large have any non-banal motives...

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Rami

at 23:47 on 2009-12-12

I really don't know where your confusion's coming from.

Well, for instance, you said "economic interest", and seemed to mean by it something different from what I mean when I say "economic interest". You also seem to understand "rational" self-interest differently. Extrapolating from that, I would expect that your definition of "simple-minded self-interest" would differ from mine too, so I have no definite idea of what you mean when you say it. How are you defining "simple-minded"?

I dislike banal motivations veiled as heroic, transcendent things

I don't know which culture you grew up in, but in mine marriage is always understood as a useful thing that serves certain functions. Not heroic or transcendent.

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Morgus

at 01:14 on 2009-12-13>But given your views on the purpose of marriage, it sounds like you don't believe that people by and large have any non-banal motives...

Yes, that is precisely my point. Those who conceive of better things are great people.

>How are you defining "simple-minded"?

Linear, unimaginative, gotten from some other, still more mundane source like your church, your parents, or corporate America.

>I don't know which culture you grew up in, but in mine marriage is always understood as a useful thing that serves certain functions. Not heroic or transcendent.

"But marriage is about love! And sanctity and shit!"

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Morgus

at 06:34 on 2009-12-13And back to the point. Nobody's disputed that Whedon's sensibility is traditional, they've disputed only my wording of my criticisms.

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Rami

at 07:01 on 2009-12-13

Nobody's disputed that Whedon's sensibility is traditional

Well, I'd not call it traditional per se

1

, but I don't think anyone was arguing about that to begin with -- I think we're mostly agreed that it's problematic.

they've disputed only my wording of my criticisms.

Well you did make a few other assertions beyond "the sensibility Whedon portrays is traditional" ;-)

[1]: Assuming Anglo-American 'tradition', yes, there's a good deal of overlap with Nice Guy but I really don't think either is a pure superset of the other...

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Wardog

at 19:33 on 2009-12-13I also rather think this discussion that wandered rather far from the original article. Shall we rein it in?

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Morgus

at 23:12 on 2009-12-13yeah okay mom

And btw all the 4 bulletpoints at the beginning of the article could easily describe the Victorian view of human sexuality. Just sayin'.

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Melissa G.

at 00:19 on 2009-12-14

yeah okay mom

Um, that was rather rude. And Kyra makes a valid point. This has nothing to do with the original article anymore. And the discussion doesn't seem to be going anywhere so why not just put an end to it?

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Morgus

at 00:58 on 2009-12-14Strange how the Internet both disinhibits people and makes them more overly sensitive. That was really my way of jokingly backing out of this while reiterating my point.

If you don't want to move us off track any more, then don't respond to this. I am done.

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Rami

at 02:36 on 2009-12-14

That was really my way of jokingly backing out of this while reiterating my point.

Try appending a ;-) to indicate humorous intent, it works better on the Internets :-)

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Morgus

at 03:06 on 2009-12-14noooo you are off track

oh shit so am i

edit: I just looked at my first post. It comes like 9 months after the one before. It appears that digression is healthy.

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Rami

at 03:29 on 2009-12-14

noooo you are off track oh shit so am i

WTF???

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Arthur B

at 03:41 on 2009-12-14

I just looked at my first post. It comes like 9 months after the one before. It appears that digression is healthy.

Here on FB, we don't mind if the conversation on an article peters out. We're not against someone resurrecting a discussion if they have a new point to make, but we also recognise that there are times when nobody has anything useful to say and it's best if people stop posting for a while.

This is one of those times.

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Arthur B

at 20:36 on 2012-11-30Super-special three year necro because I finally started watching

Firefly

and uuuuuuh...

I mean, maybe I'm not being fair and I'm judging it in the light of the article but the Inara/Companion stuff is just toe-curling and I 100% see Dan's point about it being a kind of Nice Guy fantasy (right down to several of her clients apparently being Nice Guys).

On top of that I'm having trouble sussing how she even fits into this culture. Most people think Companions are awesome, but they only seem to mention their existence when Inara happens to be in the room - so far I've yet to see an Alliance officer griping about his long tour of duty and daydreaming about hooking up with a Companion he'd employed back home or anything like that. On top of Mal being unceasingly unpleasant about her profession, Shepherd seems to disapprove when he first meets her, so even though Shepherd comes around fairly quickly it still seems as though there's some social stigma attached to it (because where else did Mal learn that "whore" was a word you could use to insult people with?) but this only seems to come up when Whedon needs Mal to be unpleasant to Inara. Unless there's an episode which unpacks all this late in the series (or a diversion revolving around it in the movie) it doesn't seem we ever get any insight into the history of the institution and how it came into being and got to the level of social acceptance it has, which would seem to be an obvious and necessary thing to work out considering the amount of work which has clearly gone into figuring out other aspects of the future history here. On top of that, I don't feel that I'm getting enough indications as to whether Mal and Shepherd's disapproval of the concept pegs them as conservative but in line with a substantial body of feeling in the general population, or markedly old-fashioned in a way which makes their view of the subject eccentric or extreme, or so far out of step with public opinion that they're being kind of nuts about it - in other words, I haven't the slightest idea what level of social acceptance the Companions are meant to have.

It feels, in fact, like something Whedon ham-fistedly patched in because he wanted prostitutes in his space Western without the consequences of having prostitutes, in the same way that the Reavers are his way of having a culture of people living out in the wasteland with a reputation for brutal atrocities against settlers without having Native Americans portrayed in the way they were often portrayed in the nastier sort of golden age Westerns, and how the Browncoats were a way to have a Confederacy analogue without the slavery angle.

I dunno how I feel about all that. On the one hand it's obviously a step up from having an unreconstructed Western with all the nastier setting elements intact. On the other hand, seeing the main character giving the old "We [the South] Will Rise Again!" line and having his belief that the war was about freedom from central government meddling be actually justified gives me shivers.

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Arthur B

at 20:43 on 2012-11-30Ew, I'm watching the "I don't respect your job but he doesn't respect

you

" episode.

Between this and the fact I have seen literally nothing so far to make me imagine that the Alliance as a whole are evil aside from the River thing (and nothing to suggest that that isn't the responsibility of a small conspiracy within an otherwise benign society rather than evidence of all-pervasive corruption) and I'm beginning to think that the only way I'm going to enjoy this show is if I regard Mal as an unutterable prick who deserves whatever horrible stuff happens to him.

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Michal

at 00:24 on 2012-12-01Well Arthur, there's a certain a "major" plot twist in

Serenity

that bears a striking resemblance to a short story by Michael Moorcock. Which means you'll just have to watch it to the end now to find out what that resemblance is.

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Arthur B

at 01:25 on 2012-12-01Unless it involves Simon and Inara merging to become an androgynous Antichrist who consumes the world, or Mal having a breakdown where he almost but not quite accepts the fact that he murdered the whole crew and dumped the bodies in the cryo-berths, or Vera the assault rifle killing Jayne, turning into a humanoid form and declaring "Farewell, friend, I was a thousand times more evil than thou", I think I'm going to be disappointed. ;)

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James D

at 06:39 on 2012-12-01

On top of that I'm having trouble sussing how she even fits into this culture.

Well first of all it's important to note that there are regular ol' prostitutes in Firefly too (as you'll see in one of the later episodes), and the Companions look down on them just as much as Mal does. I get the idea that Companions are basically just like highly-trained, high-priced prostitutes controlled by a central body who requires them to undergo regular health checkups and pass various tests before 'licensing' them (these details are mentioned). Regular prostitutes can't get these licenses, thus they're looked down upon. Because of how beautiful/smart/good in bed the Companions are, they're in absurdly high demand and can basically pick and choose from a large pool of potential clients. More cultured types give them a moral pass, more conservative, old-fashioned types like Mal and Shepherd Book (who have presumably had little exposure to Companions due to living out in the boonies) tend to be less approving. It seems like the whole "Companion" thing is Whedon's ideal for legal prostitution, rather than a separate thing altogether.

In principle I don't really see anything wrong with it, but the whole Nice Guy angle is definitely creepy. Also, I think Mal taking issue with Inara's profession was set up as a conflict that would initially keep them from getting romantically involved despite obvious chemistry, but would eventually resolve - Mal would later loosen the stick up his butt, come to terms with Inara's profession, and they'd finally hook up. Of course, it ended after only one season, so who knows what would have happened otherwise.

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http://jmkmagnum.blogspot.com/

at 07:20 on 2012-12-01I could see that working, but they went WAY overboard on making Mal disgustingly judgmental and disrespectful toward Inara. It doesn't feel like they have great chemistry that if Mal could just get over his superficial hangups they would be great together; it feels like Mal is sexually attracted to her and has an attitude of "If all your life choices and personality were different, I wouldn't have to look down at you." And so more than rooting for him to modernize his views, I root for him to get the hell away from Inara and let her live her life.

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Dan H

at 13:44 on 2012-12-01@Arthur

On top of Mal being unceasingly unpleasant about her profession, Shepherd seems to disapprove when he first meets her, so even though Shepherd comes around fairly quickly it still seems as though there's some social stigma attached to it (because where else did Mal learn that "whore" was a word you could use to insult people with?) but this only seems to come up when Whedon needs Mal to be unpleasant to Inara.

It should come as no surprise to those who know anything about Whedon fandom that I've heard people cite this very issue as evidence that the way Mal treats Inara is *one hundred percent okay*.

Because, you see, Firefly is set in a post-patriarchy society, and so when Mal calls Inara a whore, he isn't using a misogynistic, gendered insult in order to assert his superiority over her, he's just expressing his entirely rational, entirely well-founded disregard for her profession - just as you might call Jane "mercenary" or Book "preacher" or for that matter call Simon a "quack".

This, after all, is the ideal of all social justice movements - to get to the point where we can be as racist and misogynistic as we like but it will be okay because everybody will be equal anyway.

@James D

Regular prostitutes can't get these licenses, thus they're looked down upon.

I agree that that's how it seems to work in the setting (and I'm aware that all you're doing here is pointing out how things work in-universe, not arguing for any particular interpretation of it), it's just that this makes things *even more* fucked up, because it means that Mal's attitude problem goes from being "looks down Inara because she is a prostitute, which is wrong because it is none of his damned business whether she is a prostitute or not" to "looks down on Inara because he *mistakenly believes* her to be a prostitute, when in fact she is a Companion, which is okay because Companions are special."

Kyra and I have just watched Easy A, which suffers from exactly this problem. It's about a girl who gets a reputation for being a slut because she lies about losing her virginity. She spends the entire movie being horrendously slut-shamed, which the movie seems to feel is wrong *only* because it is based on a factual error - as in the reason it's wrong to slut-shame this girl is because she isn't a slut, not because slut-shaming is wrong *in general*. It's full of horrible scenes where she pontificates whether maybe pretending to be a slut is as bad as really being a slut, and people say things like "I know you're not really a whore, because a real whore doesn't know she's a whore".

It seems like the whole "Companion" thing is Whedon's ideal for legal prostitution, rather than a separate thing altogether.

Pretty much this, but once again that just creeps me out even more. Ironically, Whedon here is arguing for exactly the kind of ridiculous straw man "legalized prostitution" that Chester Brown was arguing against in

Paying For It

, where legalization isn't about providing prostitutes with better working conditions, or proper legal protection, or any level of social acceptability *as a whole* - it's just about making sure that the only people who are allowed to be prostitutes are really hot.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 14:33 on 2012-12-01

the reason it's wrong to slut-shame this girl is because she isn't a slut, not because slut-shaming is wrong *in general*.

It's been years since I saw

Easy A

, but I still get slightly sick thinking about it. What a disgusting piece of filth. It's strange the way it seemed to completely miss what's actually wrong with slut-shaming, as you outlined, but to clearly understand how gross slut-shaming is and how pathetic and hypocritical slut-shamers are. It's all the worse for almost managing to be decent.

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Dan H

at 15:04 on 2012-12-01It kept coming *so close* to redeeming itself. There's the bit towards the end when she talks to her mother, and she's like "oh yeah, I was a total slut in high school" and you believe for about ten seconds that it's going to point out that there would have been *nothing wrong with that*. Then she follow up with "I had a very low sense of self-worth."

The very last line is, in fact "it's none of your damned business" but in the context of the wider film it seems a lot like she's saying "it's none of your business whether I have sex with my current boyfriend, because what goes on in a conventional monogamous relationship is understood to be private, in a way that the broader details of my sexual behaviour are not."

Gah.

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Arthur B

at 15:59 on 2012-12-01Watched

Our Mrs Reynolds

last night and yeeeeeeeeeah I think I'm done.

Note to

Firefly

fans about to write in with "but it gets so good in episode 7/10/14/the movie!" - I'm not interested and I'm not going to read what you have to say. The series is just too much of a slog and too prone to fall over its own incoherent setting and Minority Warring for me to devote any more time to it.

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James D

at 17:49 on 2012-12-01

Pretty much this, but once again that just creeps me out even more. Ironically, Whedon here is arguing for exactly the kind of ridiculous straw man "legalized prostitution" that Chester Brown was arguing against in Paying For It, where legalization isn't about providing prostitutes with better working conditions, or proper legal protection, or any level of social acceptability *as a whole* - it's just about making sure that the only people who are allowed to be prostitutes are really hot.

Yeah, it also would have been nice to see, say, a male Companion, or a Companion that isn't traditionally attractive. To be honest the whole thing just doesn't seem terribly thought-out; it seems like he just wanted one of the crew members to be a prostitute, since it's unusual/shocking/challenging/etc. at least for the basic cable crowd.

You have to remember who his initial audience was here; I don't know how much you non-American types know about regular Fox programming, but it's generally "edgy" in certain specific ways (see: the Simpsons, Family Guy) and very conservative in others. You might even say they're edgy in a reactionary way, what with Family Guy often pushing the line in terms of what racist/sexist/homophobic jokes it can get away with (despite its superficial white guy liberal leanings in general).

So Whedon decided he didn't want to make her just a regular prostitute, that would be too gritty and/or unsympathetic (either for his taste or for Fox's), instead making her a "special" prostitute, and attached some half-assed ideas about the sex trade in general. But really he never does anything with those ideas - Mal never has to explain his fundamental assumptions about prostitution being immoral, because I think his attitude was meant to be a stand-in for the average Fox viewer's. Not that that excuses Whedon or anything - just that I think he bit off way more than he could chew given his medium, and probably should have scrapped the whole idea.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 18:04 on 2012-12-01

it's generally "edgy" in certain specific ways (see: the Simpsons, Family Guy) and very conservative in others.

Not to mention

Glee

, created especially for the mainstream America that most certainly is not homophobic, racist, sexist, or bigoted in any way, but does think it's a bit unfair that minorities get treated better than everyone else and should really stop whining.

"I had a very low sense of self-worth."

There's nothing wrong with being a slut as long as you hate yourself for it. That way the Nice Guy you decide to settle down with when you get tired of sex with Alpha Jerks can reassure you that you're a good person after all for seeing the light and deciding to devote yourself to him. He will be in charge of your virtue from then on, you'll have his permission to feel good about yourself.

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Jules V.O.

at 02:20 on 2012-12-02

Of course, it ended after only one season, so who knows what would have happened otherwise.

Actually, we *do* know what would have happened otherwise:

gang rape by reavers.

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Daniel F

at 11:23 on 2012-12-02

Watched Our Mrs Reynolds last night and yeeeeeeeeeah I think I'm done.

But you didn't even get to

Heart of Gold

or

Objects in Space

!

It got worse, I'm afraid.

Quite early on while watching

Buffy

, I reached the conclusion that Joss Whedon is at his best when he's not consciously trying to be feminist, and when he's not thinking about gender issues at all. The more he tries, the worse the end result. In the context of

Firefly

, I found that the show is at its best when Inara is not in the plot. I don't know about the best, but

Ariel

is still the episode I enjoyed the most, and it starts by inventing an excuse to exclude Inara for the duration of the episode.

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Dan H

at 11:35 on 2012-12-02

Actually, we *do* know what would have happened otherwise: gang rape by reavers.

Worse: Gang rape by Reavers, the primary narrative purpose of which was to allow Mal to demonstrate *how good he would be for Inara* by *not being disgusted by the fact that she had been raped*.

This little titbit made me particularly uncomfortable because I suspect that "girl I fancy gets raped, I am totally supportive about it, she totally has sex with me" is a far more common fantasy than any of us would like to admit.

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Michal

at 13:49 on 2012-12-02What is up with anti-rape devices in science fiction that only work while you're being raped? First the dentata in Snowcrash, then this thing.

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http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/

at 14:51 on 2012-12-02Well, I don't know if this is what Stephenson or Minear had in mind, but what occurs to me in the face of both of these stories is that if you're in a situation where you're going to get raped, there's no reason to believe that that's where it will end, and a device that doesn't protect you from rape but does incapacitate or kill your attacker might save your life. In theory, anyway. In practice, that kind of thinking assumes that there's only one attacker and that you're going to be in a position (and in a state) to escape once they're taken care of, neither of which strike me as reasonable assumptions for the sort of situation where such a device might conceivably be of use. I suspect the actual appeal for writers is the ironic reversal - the attribute that supposedly makes women vulnerable makes them dangerous - hence the popularity of the vagina dentata trope in general.

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Arthur B

at 15:27 on 2012-12-02I seem to remember that in

Snow Crash

the dentata is mentioned as being there for deterrent purposes - because rapists never know who's got a dentata, they don't know whether they're going to lose a dick in a rape attempt.

In practice, as I mentioned upthread, rapists these days never know whether someone they're targeting is carrying a gun or a knife or mace or whatever. Doesn't stop 'em!

Also the discussion of the device in

Snow Crash

seems to assume that rape always consists of complete strangers attacking you and humping you briefly in an alleyway.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 16:12 on 2012-12-02Knowing that a potential victim might be armed probably fails to move them because they can't actually imagine a weak, helpless woman knowing how to use a gun or knife properly. I would guess the image of vagina dentata working effectively is exponentially more vivid.

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James D

at 20:12 on 2012-12-02Also you have to be in a position to use a knife/gun/mace/whatever effectively, which if the rapist gets the jump on you might not be an option. From what I understand, the dentata just works without you having to do anything except insert it beforehand.

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Dan H

at 23:30 on 2012-12-02

Also you have to be in a position to use a knife/gun/mace/whatever effectively, which if the rapist gets the jump on you might not be an option. From what I understand, the dentata just works without you having to do anything except insert it beforehand.

Of course the flip side of that is that the dentata only works in the case of actual vaginal penetration. If it's meant to be used as a way of incapacitating a rapist so that they can't harm you *after* they've raped you, it's still in practice far less reliable than pretty much every other kind of cybernetic weapon implant you might want to get. If it's meant to be a deterrent, it's one that is - without wanting to think too deeply about the details - easily circumvented.

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James D

at 23:39 on 2012-12-02

If it's meant to be a deterrent, it's one that is - without wanting to think too deeply about the details - easily circumvented.

The obvious solution is to have dentata in every part of your body. FOOL PROOF

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Arthur B

at 01:23 on 2012-12-03Uh, is it just me or is this getting kind of unnecessary?

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Wardog

at 10:06 on 2012-12-03Well, it's slightly more entertaining that thinking too hard about the doomed hypothetical future of Firefly. I mean, I know there's lots to dislike about the show, and the gender politics are all Whedony and unpleasant, but ... uh ... I quite liked it.

That doesn't mean it's not wildly problematic in very many ways, and perhaps the only reason I like it so much is because it didn't have a chance to go horribly wrong, but I thought it was fun and witty, and actually I was pretty passionate about it when it first aired. Or rather after it was aired and cancelled.

I think it's harder to watch in retrospect because The Whedon Problems have sort of developed over time. It's easy to downplay how fucking awesome Buffy, and some of Angel, was in the light of, well, Dollhouse and Whedon deciding he was god's gift to feminism. Before he basically decided that liking to watch hot women run around in tight fitting clothing was morally equivalent to raping them and that sent him off on a Nice Guy Minority Warrior spin ... he did good stuff.

I miss that guy.

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Arthur B

at 10:40 on 2012-12-03Eh, I find Whedon's wit to be kind of grating personally. (In particular, I find that the more it comes out in his writing the more the characters end up sounding like the stock Whedon characters he's been using since the early days rather than distinct individuals.)

Possibly this is a "you had to be there at the time" thing because I came onboard

Buffy

fairly late (mainly catching episodes when I happened to be in Dan's presence and the show happened to be on) and I don't recall having a reaction more positive than "eh, this is OK". I guess maybe I'd be more appreciative of his stuff if I'd got on the Whedon train earlier (say, during the early

Buffy

period or something) but as it is my first exposure to him involved more mediocre stuff so even his better material just ends up reminding me of the mediocre stuff, if you see what I mean.

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Robinson L

at 15:30 on 2012-12-03

Arthur: as it is my first exposure to him involved more mediocre stuff so even his better material just ends up reminding me of the mediocre stuff, if you see what I mean.

Yeah, that makes sense. Ptolemaeus and I recently re-watched the first three seasons of

Buffy

, and even that wasn't as great as we remembered. (Even in his early years, Whedon had an inflated sense of his own profundity.)

I also am quite fond of

Firefly

, despite its more deplorable elements (e.g. the protagonist), but I can see how you'd come to the conclusion that it's not worth your while, and it really doesn't get significantly better. As Dan has already mentioned, in some places it gets even worse.

Kyra: Before he basically decided that liking to watch hot women run around in tight fitting clothing was morally equivalent to raping them and that sent him off on a Nice Guy Minority Warrior spin ... he did good stuff. I miss that guy.

Me too. Still, there's always the

Avengers

movie/

Avengers Assemble

.

Dan: Because, you see, Firefly is set in a post-patriarchy society, and so when Mal calls Inara a whore, he isn't using a misogynistic, gendered insult in order to assert his superiority over her, he's just expressing his entirely rational, entirely well-founded disregard for her profession - just as you might call Jane "mercenary" or Book "preacher" or for that matter call Simon a "quack".

Apart from not really being an at all accurate picture of what social justice movements struggle for (as you point out), this argument is also ludicrous just on the face of it, considering how many villainous cartoon misogynists Whedon populates the

Firefly

'Verse with to make his hamfisted gender commentaries.

This little titbit made me particularly uncomfortable because I suspect that "girl I fancy gets raped, I am totally supportive about it, she totally has sex with me" is a far more common fantasy than any of us would like to admit.

Well, there's nothing wrong with fantasies, even about stuff that would be highly messed up in the real world, so long as you don't try projecting those fantasies onto the real world ... like by portraying such a fantasy as series drama, for instance.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 18:04 on 2012-12-03

Buffy

worked for me when I first watched it because I'd never seen anything like it before, and I often had no idea where it was going. There was a brightness and innocence to it that made it genuinely fun. Buffy's pathos felt warm and real and unavoidable, not hard and dry and bloodless like it did in the later seasons. I don't think this is all hindsight on my part, even though I haven't seen the show in at least five or six years.

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Bookwyrm

at 04:54 on 2013-01-27Hi! This is my first time commenting here. I came across this short story after reading this article. Its probably unintentional but it kind of reads like a cautionary tale against this sort of behavior.

http://www.halloweenghoststories.com/featured/index.html

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/yeKsQ_cNqux16s489peIhdzZ2dSaOlA-#da226

at 03:40 on 2013-08-05I will use Buffy for most examples as I am more familiar with this, his longest running project. . .

Rape is all about power. The rape scenes in Buffy are no different. Buffy was the one with the power. The chosen. The heavenly, loved, good one. She trained Spike to be sexually violent with the rapes she performed on him. Pushing and degrading him; beating him and demanding he perform sexual acts. She was the one in control, with all power. When Spike broke emotionally and reciprocated, he was judged to have shown how evil he had been, was, and always would be. A double standard that is dangerous to encourage.

Wheton's simplistic view that Buffy is justified in her treatment of Spike because he is all evil, encourages the viewer to subconsciously believe that anything they do to a person they define as "evil" is justified. The slayer and the vampire are on fairly equal footing physically. They should both have been judged as rapist or neither should have been judged as such. It doesn't matter that Spike was an evil vampire without a soul, for the character arch had already surpassed that basic premise.

The positive message of equality and forgiveness, even atonement for past acts, are given lip service in the series but they become superimposed with the concept that one evil act makes us, and everything we do, always and forever evil. The second message is even more simplistic, juvenile, and dangerous, for it demonstrates that certain chosen few are not to be judged by the same criteria as everyone else. It stereotypically enhances the fact that, in Whedon's world, the privileged, regardless of their sex, is all-powerful. Evil men show it, good men keep it hidden, and those with power don't even have to acknowledge it. Huge fallacies.

A good man can perform acts of evil, and an evil man can perform acts of good. It is the nature of the beast. Therefore man, being defined in this context to include both sexes, is neither good nor evil. There is just man, in all his imperfections. If you attempt to judge a man's entire moral compass by one single act, or even a lot of acts during one period of his growth and development, then you do not judge the man. A man should be judged on the total sum of his parts for the development he has achieved to date, with the understanding that new experiences will have an effect and will alter and change him. Man is not a stagnate creature. He is not the man he was; nor is he the man he will become.

Though Whedon had ample time, in Spike's character arch, this level of development was never achieved and any time the journey was begun, the Spike character was reset to ground zero. Almost like James Marsters brought more depth to the role than was intended and so the character was punished for the transgression. The same hold's true in all Whedon's excellently casted series.

I wasn't sold on the rape concept and couldn't even suspend my disbelief long enough to see the scene as anything more than an end of season rating ploy. I viewed Inara's rape episode in Firefly with similar trepidation, and there are numerous instances in Whedon's work from which to extrapolate.

I won't even get into the glaring inequality that appears when you view that both Angel and Spike were working to become “champions”, a telling word that. Whereas, if she hadn't been chosen by outside forces, Buffy would have been an airhead. Other than to say the men were the “earners” while the woman was “the little girl to bestow gifts upon but not capable of walking the path on her own.” Which is further demonstrated by the fact that the slayers had watchers and the champions choose their own path.

As for empowering women, the all powerful slayer, does not even have the strength of character to live her life in the open and instead hides in the shadows to obtain the sexual relief that Wheton's male characters flaunt and mostly take for granted. The message being that women should be ashamed of their sexual appetites and must work to suppress and hide them, least they be found out and the woman subsequently fall from grace. Inara is allowed to have sex, but not to enjoy it, and has to be paid to perform it. Faith, being Buffy's foil, is showed as the unstable and nasty, common, girl, who repeatedly falls outside of the norms and morays society demands. Thus, is she to be despised, because she openly pursues such sexual liaisons. Faith is also written as crude and unacceptable because she isn't diplomatic and she repeatedly shows human qualities that keep her from being chosen one material.

Even employment is harangued. Their are many women in food service who are intelligent, warm, and friendly. That are working to better themselves because they were not born into privileged circumstances. Many are working for their families survival, and if that isn't a noble act, I don't know what is! Joss portrays them as end of the line, throw away characters. Social services is also not immune to his prosaic view of woman. He had an opportunity to show that we all fall on hard times and can struggle and overcome. He failed to do so.

True empowerment comes from knowing if we do what is necessary, with dignity and decency, even if we never climb any higher on society's perceived social ladder, we are worthy and have overcome, regardless of the outer trappings of our souls.

His views are too cut and dry, to one-sided and are mired too much in the upper crust motif of his life. Good actors of both sexes, who journey outside Whedon's work morality, appear to be left behind because they manage to raise questions, to shine the light of inquiry into the character they portray in ways that Joss Whedon will grudgingly capitalize upon, while he reins in the character to assure that those questions remain out of focus and unexamined. Then, those actors seem to be condemned and dropped by the wayside as quickly as feasibly possible. I would question his level of devotion to his supporters who constantly ask for, but never see, the actors they have grown to love receive any roles with substance. The individual talent pool that is not being taped seems to grow exponentially.

So, is this all evil/all good concept he repeatedly embodies in his work, Joss Whedon's internal beliefs manifested? Scary thought. I watch Joss Whedon's projects for enjoyable escapism. His works are not my answer to the feminine mystique. Nor is he my guru.

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Arthur B

at 13:14 on 2017-08-31It feels timely to dust this one off since

this wave just broke

.

To be fair, by this point

even the Torygraph kind of gets that Joss isn't as good an ally as he proclaims himself to be

. But it kind of feels like a sea change has happened.

Whedonesque has shuttered

, and whilst the decision to close isn't overtly connected to the open letter the fact that they suggest donations to a C-PTSD charity when Kai's open letter talks about how she had to work through that kind of points to it being a factor.

There's separating the art from the artist, of course, and more power to you if you feel able to do that, but Whedon's proclamation of his woke bae nature isn't art, it's self-promotional rhetoric, and whilst the fact that someone has behaved badly and caused harm to others shouldn't in principle have any effect on the validity of their arguments - truth is truth even if Hitler is saying it - it's hard to look past the hypocrisy, especially when his feminist talking points are so tied to the image of himself he promotes.

You don't get to claim the brownie points for being One Of The Good Guys unless you actually are a good guy, and Dan's diagnosis of Whedon with Nice Guy Syndrome in retrospect seems dead on.

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Robinson L

at 00:00 on 2017-10-31On the one hand, this is sadly consistent with the increasingly dubious quality of the feminist discourse in his works—and makes all the messed up sexual politics, especially concerning consent, in

Dollhouse

that much creepier. (I’m a little amazed that

Telegraph

article didn’t cite any examples from

Dollhouse

; it seems such a natural choice.)

On the other hand, up to this point I could’ve seen Whedon as basically a decent guy whose feminist analysis isn’t as sophisticated as he thinks it is. I didn’t think the occasional bouts of awfulness in his storytelling necessarily reflected back on him as a person. Maybe I’m too naive.

In any event, I’m sure I’ll still retain a soft spot for

Buffy

,

Angel

, certain elements of

Firefly

which don’t involve the main character, and the first

Avengers

movie. But, well, yeah, this really sucks, no pun intended.

(By the way, I clicked the link for the

Telegraph

article and it took me to the donotlink site. I copy-pasted the tinyurl provided on the donotlink site into url bar, and it took me directly to the

Telegraph

article, complete with the regular url. Does that mean I did something wrong?)

Oh yeah, final thought:

While none of us would go so far as actually calling him a rapist

I remember at the time, we generally agreed this accusation was a tad overblown—I certainly thought so. In light of Ms. Cole’s revelation, though, it seems eerily close to the truth.

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Arthur B

at 10:25 on 2017-10-31

I remember at the time, we generally agreed this accusation was a tad overblown—I certainly thought so. In light of Ms. Cole’s revelation, though, it seems eerily close to the truth.

Yeah, in retrospect I still can't get onboard with, eg, assuming a particular character is a rapist and an abuser based solely on the fact that they're the white partner in an interracial relationship, or for that matter armchair diagnosing Whedon as a rapist based solely on the content of his work.

That said, I can totally see merit in saying that a particular work expresses a rape culture worldview, and doing so doesn't necessarily amount to accusing the creator of rape. It is unfortunately the case that it's completely possible for someone to perpetuate rape culture and rape apologetics without themselves being a rapist; that's kind of how rape culture perpetuates itself to begin with. And it's going to be pretty hard to keep what Kai's had to say out of mind when tackling Whedon's work from here on out.

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Robinson L

at 20:30 on 2017-10-31Oh yeah, I didn't mean to imply I agree with the

reasoning

in that post, even in hindsight. You're absolutely right that an artistic work can promote rape culture without the artist(s) behind it being rapists - there are numerous such works out there.

I just find it morbidly interesting that, even though I still find the logic which led up to it faulty, the accusation itself ultimately proved not so far off the mark as I originally assumed.

#Ferretbrain #Joss Whedon #Dollhouse #Firefly #Buffy the Vampire Slayer #Dan H

[ellana-ravenwood]

Hope - Wolverine x Reader

Because I haven’t written anything with Logan in a while, and because his return back to life inspired me (no offense to “Old Man Logan”, Laura, Daken, Jimmy and all those people but...I missed the original Logan so damn much <3, I’m just so fucking happy he’s back, only good news lately. Anyway, I’ll shut up or I’ll ramble about his resurrection and the fact that the has an infinity stone and all that shit for HOURS...OK I SHUT UP NOW). Here’s a story with my first favorite superhero ever (still my favorite, with Bruce right on his ass), because I just needed to write about him in those tough fucking time I’m going through. Boom. Hope you’ll like it :

You can find my masterlist here : @ella-ravenwood-archives

_________________________________________________

************

-Oh my God...Logan ? Is it really you ?

Ororo Munroe just couldn’t trust her eyes.

Logan...But was it really him ? He has been gone for so long, almost three years now, that all hope for him to come back was no more ! It happened before, in the X-Men, that one of them would “miraculously” come back from the dead, but it usually wouldn’t take that long !

But...Was it him ? She couldn’t be sure, she saw too many things in her life not to be suspicious !

Was it Mystique playing a mean trick on her ? Or maybe another shapeshifter or something/someone of the like, that just thought it was funny to bring back that damn “hope” to the Wolverine’s friends ?

-Yes ‘Ro. It’s me.

His voice, his smell, the way he was standing, his half-smile...a shapeshifter could copy all of that to perfection ! Especially one that knew him well, like Mystique for example.

Oh but his next words ? His next question ? The first thing that came through his mind as he just supposedly came back from the dead, and made his way back to the X-Mansion...Convinced Ororo Munroe that it was really one of her best friend. That it was really Logan...

He just had to ask :

-Where is she ? Where is (Y/N) ?

And Ororo knew it was the real Wolverine.

She lunged in his arms and he hugged her back, smiling. Everything was kind of a blur in Storm’s mind but she thinks she remembers calling the rest of their friends over, her screams getting carried by the wind all through the mansion.

Kurt was the first one to arrive and...he bursted out in laughter at the sight of his best friend standing there, alive !

-Hey Elf.

Logan said with a smile...He didn’t had time to say anything else because Kitty jumped in his arms too, and the rest of the X-Men arrived.  Suddenly, they all started to ask him a million things, all at the same time, while all he wanted was to know where the love of his life was, where you were hiding...Maybe you had class right now, unaware of the commotion Logan’s return was provoking !

Soon enough however, the noise of it all attracted the entire school !

Everyone cheered the Wolverine’s resurrection (he was gruff and tough, indelicate and sometimes downright mean...but no one was fooled by his rough demeanor anymore, at the Jean Grey’s school for higher learning. Everyone knew he actually had a heart of gold and liked and admired him...though most of them would never admit it).

Logan knew he had a lot of explaining to do but...he couldn’t right now. He had only one thing on his mind and, scanning the crowd gathered around him, couldn’t find it. He couldn’t find you.

Where were you ? Did something happen to you ?

He knew you, how curious you were. Even without knowing he was back, you would have come running after hearing all of the noises everyone made !

But you weren’t there, which could only mean one thing...

Logan felt sick. Everyone touching him and asking him questions not helping. The only one he actually wanted to be touched by, and to touch, was you. The only one he wanted to talk to, though he loved and missed his friends, was you. And only you. Only with you was he always comfortable to do all of that...

And you weren’t there.

But oh God he was gone for three years, a lot could have happened in this three years, but only the worst came to Logan’s mind. Where were you ?

The Wolverine wished with everything he had in him that what he feared wasn’t the truth, that you weren’t...No. You couldn’t be. He finally came back, found his way back to life, he couldn’t live without you...You couldn’t...he...you...He couldn’t even think the dreadful word. No. Impossible.

And so, he asked again :

-Where is she ? Where is (Y/N) ?

The room suddenly went silent, and the way they all exchanged looks that seemed to mean : “should we tell him ?” made Logan’s heart sink.

-What ? What is it ? What happened ? Where is she ?

************

3 years earlier, right after Logan’s “funerals”, at the X-Mansion :

“Broke” didn’t even begin to describe the state your heart was in.

You had tried to distract yourself, but everything reminded you of him...

You tried to read, only to be remembered that he loved to read, and that some of your favorite times of the day were when you two would read in silence together, you curled up against him, enjoying your book and each others’ presence.

You tried to go for a walk, but wherever you went you couldn’t help but think about all the hikes and such things you went with Logan, just the two of you.

You tried to watch a movie, or anything on TV, but you kept reaching next to you to grab his arm and cuddle against him, just to be reminded that...he wasn’t there anymore. You just couldn’t reach for him, snuggle against him, kiss him, ask him to go get the pop corn cause you were too lazy to do it...He wasn’t there anymore. He would never be there again.

You tried to go on the most dangerous X-Men missions available, and almost died a few time, but each time you were being reckless, you could hear his voice scolding you in your mind : “You almost died you idiot, what would I do without you (Y/N) ?! Be careful for God’s sake !”...But he would never tell you that anymore, and hearing him in your head like that hurt too much.

Oh you tried everything to take your mind off the pain, but whatever you did, it reminded you of the fact that your Logan would never come back.

Damn stupid idiot...He had leave for over two hundred years, saw dozens of his loved one die (mainly from unnatural causes), and yet...It was so unfair. Why did he have to die on you ? Why did you fall so hard in love with him ? Just to be hurt ?

Of course it was completely selfish, all the things you felt right now. Completely and utterly selfish. But you couldn’t help it.

You had just lost the love of your life...A man that was definitely not suppose to die before you !

Fuck his healing factor that gave you the false hope he’d always be there for you. And fuck it for disappearing...

You let out a dry chuckle as you remember the day things got serious between the two of you...

Oh it had been difficult to crack his shell, to get close to him, to convince him you weren’t going anywhere and that even without him your life was in constant danger (after all, you were an X-Man !).

And it had been difficult for him to resist you, to push you away when all he wanted to do was to spend his life by your side.

Since the beginning, since your first meeting, there was an undeniable attraction between the two of you. Not just physical. It was as if you were made for each others. And truly, you were.

And one day, he realized that too. He just couldn’t resist you...

Seven years of bliss. Logan was starting to hope that with you, it would be different. That you really were the one that would break the curse, the bad luck he had in love since he was born...You always completed each others.

Oh and if he was honest with himself, Logan knew since he first laid his eyes on you that you were his soulmate. The love of his long and miserable life. You instantly eclipsed every women he ever loved (which made him feel guilty, because he never loved any of them like he loved you). And everything was so bright with you by his side. He felt truly happy, for the first time since a very very very long gone time. For the first time in forever, Logan had hopes and dreams.

He wanted to built a life with you, a real one, not the nomad one he lived for those past decades. A house ? A dog ? Kids ? He wanted it all. And when he lost his healing factor, he saw it as a blessing...Because it meant he could grow old with you, and wouldn’t suffer to age so slowly as you would age normally, and eventually leave him, die, of natural causes. Yes. Loosing his healing factor meant that he could grow old with you, finally live his life as if he had only a short one...

But that wasn’t meant to be apparently...Logan had many ennemies, and when they heard about the loss of his healing factor ? All Hell broke loose.

And he had to go away, to take care of all this business, to protect you (because there really were too many people after him and, for once, you just couldn’t convince him to bring you with him...He couldn’t protect you as well as he used to, even though you could handle yourself fine, he just wouldn’t risk it. Just the thought of loosing you was too hard to handle !).

He promised he would come back, and with a last loving kiss on your lips, he was gone.

He broke his promise. He would never come back.

The idiot got himself killed, fighting someone else’s battle. And though you knew he finally had a well deserved rest...you couldn’t help but be angry at him. He didn’t keep his goddamn promise !

And here you were. Alone. And oh you wished you had died instead of him, perfectly knowing how selfish it was of you to think such a thing.

But you couldn’t live without him, could you ?

-Are you ok, (Y/N) ?

As soon as Kurt Wagner asked the question, standing in the door frame of your room, he realized it was a stupid one. Of course you weren’t OK.

He had just lost his best friend, and he knew the pain you felt was a thousand time worst than his...He couldn’t even imagine it !

You turn toward him and, your face soaked in tears, you smiled at him. Genuinely smiled. And in a weak voice you say :

-Yes, yes I am. He’s at peace now you know ? He won’t suffer anymore, he won’t hate himself so much and all of that you know ? I’m Ok Kurt. Or at least, I will be. Thank you for asking my dear friend...

Your voice broke at the end of your sentence and you fell in his arms, holding onto him as if afraid he was going to teleport somewhere far from you and leave you truly alone.

He hugs you back against his heart, trying to support you the best he can. He knew you were lying. You’d never be OK. He might have lost his best friend, which hurt like Hell, but you lost the love of your life.

He hugged you tight that day, all the way up until you went to bed.

In the morning, you were gone, leaving everything you owned behind.

No notes, no messages, no letters, no nothing.

You simply vanished, not even taking one of Logan’s thing as a souvenir or something of the like. You left everything behind.

You were just...gone.

************

-What do you mean, “gone” ?!

Logan asked, hitting the table of the dining room with his fist.

Kurt gives a quick look to his friends gathered around, Logan’s closest friends too. Ororo, Kitty, Piotr, Hank...They avoid his gaze. Of course they do, they don’t want to be the ones to explain that you disappeared to a very on edge Logan.

-Exactly that Logan. We have no idea where she went. She just... -Kurt snaps his fingers together- disappeared, just like that. And in three years, there has been no sighting of her...

-Please, don’t tell me she...

-No Logan. She isn’t. She has to still be alive. If she wasn’t, we would know about it. She’s still an X-Man. And one of our most powerful and famous member at that. If she was...you know, then we would know.

-And yet there has been no traces of her for the past three years !

Logan stood up from his seat and punched the wall, his fist going right through it with a loud thud.

-Logan, mein Freund...

The man ignores his best friend as he tries to stop a surge of anger from overcoming him by throwing a chair across the room, shattering it in hundred pieces !

-How can you know she’s alright if you haven’t even heard of her in three fucking years ?!

Here goes the window, as he elbows it, blood running along his arm before the wounds close quickly.

-You got your healing factor back...

Kitty remarked as Logan proceeded to destroy the table in front of her, not at all fazed by his action. She was used to it. It wasn’t the first time that she saw Logan try to control his rage by destroying everything. He yells :

-Why didn’t you look for her ?!

-We did ! Who do you think we are ? But you trained her. You know damn well that if she didn’t wanna be followed, there was no way we could find her ! Besides, her capacity to resist telepathy truly made it impossible to know her whereabouts !

The Wolverine turns to Ororo, who spoke, and growls savagely. Storm doesn’t even utter a movement, sure that her friend won’t hurt her, knowing he’s just distressed and this is his way to deal with everything...After breaking a few other pieces of furniture, Logan finally calms down and falls to his knees...

-How do you...How do you know she’s all right ? Please...Please tell me she’s alright...

His friends look at him empathetically. They know how much he loves you, they saw hot it destroyed you to loose him (they knew it was the reason you left the Manor)...And it broke their heart that they couldn’t help him.

That they couldn’t reunite you two...however, they knew someone who might be able to help.

Slowly, without making any brusque movements, Kurt gets closer from his friend and...oh he wasn’t expecting this reaction.

Logan pulls him down into a tight hug, and it reminds Kurt of the night before you left, as the Wolverine holds onto him just like you did.

There’s a heavy silence, broken only by Logan’s attempt to muffle his soft cries...They all witness his pain, fear and distress. Because yes, what if you werent’t alright and they just would never know ?

Finally Kurt finally speaks again :

-Go talk to Laura, Logan. Go talk to your daughter.

************

The only reason Logan went to the X-Mansion first, was because he wanted to see you...otherwise, he would have come here. To the apartment he gave to his daughter. To see her. See if she was alright.

According to Kurt, Laura had hinted a few times about being in contact with you, and you being fine. She wouldn’t tell them exactly where you were, but she did reassure them and...why would she lie about such an important matter ?

Whatever reasons you had to stay away from them all, they understood...

Logan knocked without even thinking about the girl’s reaction. After all, she didn’t know he was back to life ! Also, there’s actually were low chances she was home, though he smelt her body odor, it might just be the new smell of the entire apartment and...The door opened.

The door opened on an angry Laura, all claws out.

-Who are you ?!

Logan doesn’t even take one small step back, and looks at his daughter. In three years, she didn’t change much. Though her hair have grown a lot. She’s wearing a female version of his costume and he can’t help but smile.

-So...you’re the new Wolverine ?

She only needed that. His smell and the sound of his voice. And the smirk on his face. She only needed that to know that it was him, the real him. She didn’t even care to know how...It was him. He was back. Her dad was alive...

She retracted her claws and jumped in his arms. His own arms closed around her body, and he squeezed her against him. Damn he missed that little squirt.

************

-She’s in the Canadian rockies. I don’t know where exactly, but she’s over there. Has been for three years. She calls me sometimes, from a payphone, a different one each time. She checks on me you know ?

Logan couldn’t help the surge of love he felt for you right in this moment.

Back at the school, you left everything behind. Your belongings, your friends, your life...Everything. You didn’t take ONE thing that could remind you of him. But there was one thing you just couldn’t leave...And it was Laura.

Over the years, the girl came to see you as her surrogate mother, and you as your girl. And though you were away, you just couldn’t help but check on her. Regularly, according to Laura.

Logan’s daughter told him she didn’t try to locate you, knowing you needed to be alone. She told him that she was waiting for you to be ready, and if it had to take decades, then she’d wait, and would be satisfied with you calling from times to times.

Laura told him that there was an unbreakable sadness in your voice, no matter what. Every time she talked to you, you tried to act happy and all, but you just could never hide this hint of pain buried in your voice. You would ask her to tell you everything about her life, while never talking about what you were doing, all alone in the Canadian rockies.

You would make sure she was alright, and sometimes, Laura lied. Telling you things were just fine while she just really wanted you to come over, to hug her, to help her going through her own struggles...but she knew you needed to be alone, to mourn on your own, and she would feel to guilty to tell you she wasn’t ok, because she knew you would run to her as soon as she would tell you that, leaving your retreat while not ready to do so yet.

Laura and Logan talked for hours, the Wolverine catching up on his daughter’s adventures of those past three years...And he was right, SHE was the Wolverine now. Haha. How ironic.

After making sure Laura was ok, that her life was on track (and after making a mental note that he had to have a little talk with a certain Angel, who was dating his kid), Logan left. He stayed a day and a night at his daughter’s, and promised he would come back soon.

This time, he intended to keep his promise. And he also intended to bring her mom, you, back with him as well.

************

The Canadian Rockies, today :

Waking up wasn’t getting any easier.

Whoever said that “time healed all wounds” was an asshole.

Because it has been three fucking years, and waking up was still difficult.

Getting the will to move, to go on with your life, to leave those damn mountains...it was too much.

This morning, like every morning those past three years, you crawled out of bed and pondered for a moment the thought of ending everything right there and then...But you couldn’t. Because there were still people that were alive and that needed you.

Laura. Daken. Ororo. Kurt. Hank. Kitty...You didn’t talk to some of them for over three years, but...You just weren’t ready to. Whatever they were going to say would remind you of him, and you just...couldn’t.

You dragged yourself out of the little shack you build. It wasn't a bad place to live. You had made all the thing you needed to live comfortably, just like Logan showed you...Logan.

You shook your head. No. You had just woken up, you couldn’t already think about him ! Why, oh why was it so damn difficult to get over him ?!

Sure, he was the love of your life, and all that cheesy shit, but surely, after a while, it should feel less painful right ?! Why was all of this so damn difficult ?

In anger, you throw the glass bottle you had meant to fill at the nearest stream against a tree and...You freeze.

-Wow there, are you trying to kill me again ?

A hallucination. You had tons of those.

You often thought you saw him, walking casually in the woods, as he would do when still alive...but whenever you ran after him, he disappeared.

You also heard his voice more than once. When you were thinking about him too much, you could almost imagine him right there, talking to you, and it would sound so real that you’d look all around to see if he was really there.

Yes. This was just an hallucination.

He approached you shyly, as if afraid you’d run away, and his steps make a noise on the floor as they move a few rocks and such...You couldn’t move, scared that if you make a move to go and join him, he’ll disappear.

Just like he always did in those past three years.

But as he was coming closer and closer...This hallucination smelled like him. That was a first. Usually you’d see and hear him, but never you would smell him...You wondered if...As he arrived within reach, your hands raised as on their own accord, and brushed his chest.

That was also a first. You’ve never been able to feel him like that before.

Was this a dream ? Were you still asleep ?

You pinch yourself harshly and...it hurts. Wh...what ?

He smiles fondly at you now, and startles you as he says :

-I just now realize that this might not be the best - oh sorry for scaring you sweetheart- that this might not be the best way to...tell you I’m back.

This time you take a step back, and he still doesn’t disappear. His voice...his voice never sounded that real before. But it’s impossible, is it ?

For the first time in three years, a thing you forgot makes its way back in your heart. A feeling you hadn’t felt for a very long time.

Hope.

Logan seems to have an inner struggle, teared between the need to jump on you and take you in his arms, and the want of not scaring you or traumatize you with his sudden reappearance.

But oh this isn’t a traumatism. And you know you will get over the initial shock very soon because...this is real right ? He’s really here right ?

You don’t even think about the fact that it could be Mystique or anyone of the like, as you suddenly lunge for him, and he catches you. He always caught you...He can feel his flannel shirt getting soaked with your tears, and tears of his own start to well up in his eyes.

-Logan...

The sound of your voice pierce through his heart. And oh how he longed to hear it again, to hold you again...He kisses the crown of your head repeatedly, making your very being tingle.

-You’re not easy to find you know, sweetheart.

He whispers in your hear, and you smile. Well, you did learn with the best didn’t you ? You make a mental note that you’ll probably will have to thank Laura, because who else could have put him on the right track ?

Your grip tightens around him, and you let go of three years of pain. “Time heal all wounds”, fuck that. There’s no wound to heal anymore. Because he’s back. You hug him against you, and he returns your heated embrace, and you can let go...you can heal, because the scar disappeared.

You pull away a bit, and you kiss him fiercely. He answers, of course he does. Kissing you back with passion, and in that moment, you know it’s him. Only him could sweep you off your feet like that.

You drag him with you in your cabin, and he follows. Because he waited for that for a long time, and you had missed him for three damn years...He follows, and that night, he made love to you as if there was no tomorrow.

************

No tomorrow.

You wake up with a start, to an empty and cold bed.

A dream. This was all just a dream. And oh what a cruel one it was...

You could almost feel him around you again, feel his lips all over your body, feel his hands roam every inch of your skin, feel him inside you...But it was all a dream.

He wasn’t there. He would never be there. You had to print that in your damn head. Logan was gone. Forever.  

You sigh, and sit up in your bed. Waking up didn’t get any easier, every morning you smell the smell of bacon and eggs being cooked and...Wait, what ? No.

Every morning you smell the cold mountain air, and feel despair spill from every pore of you. Every morning waking up is more difficult than the morning before, and you constantly think about just not existing anymore. Every morning without Logan is pure torture, and definitely never smell like bacon and eggs...

You stand up, suspicious, and go to your small kitchen to find...Him.

He only wears his boxer briefs, as he would always when it was just the two of you somewhere. He’s cooking breakfast, like he used to, humming a song softly, thinking no one could hear him.

And everything comes back. He is alive. Really alive, it wasn’t a dream !

You lunge forward and go to wrap your arm around him, your head laying on his bare back. You know he’s smiling, as he takes hold of one of your hand and kiss its knuckles.

-Morning sweetheart.

-Morning...Logan.

He turns around in your arms, and your faced with him.

He smiles. Bends down. And his lips brush against yours in a soft kiss, just like he always did right before telling you that...

-I love you, (Y/N). Always.

You can’t help but smile, and you answer :

-I love you too.

You loose yourself in his embrace.

************

Later, when you’ll really be sure that he’s back and that you’re not just crazy.

Later, when you two will have spent enough time together in your cabin, and will go back to Laura, to your friends.

Later...Later he’ll tell you everything. How he fought his way back to life and all of that.

Later. Because right now, only the fact that he was there, alive, counted.

Because right now, you couldn’t be bothered with explanation or anything of the like. Right now, you just wanted to feel it once again.

Hope.

He felt it too, in every pore of his being.

Finally. Again. Hope.

Because the love of your life came back.

Because you two were one one again.

Hope.

________________________

*Grumbles about how her story is pure shite* I still hope you liked it. And hum. Yes. Here. Logan is back. 

#Wolverine is Back #LOGAN IS BACK #Wolverine x Reader #Wolverine imagine #Logan x Reader #Logan imagine #Wolverine fanfic #Wolverine reader insert #Logan reader insert #James Howlett x Reader #James Howlett imagine #Logan Howlett x reader #Logan Howlett imagine #Wolverine alive #Wolverine back from the dead #Wolverine resurection #oh yeah #reader insert