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marimo-o · 3 years

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ok so im making a long ass post about Abzu (the game) within the context of mesopotamian mythology because I'm insane. It's gonna be a doozy and likely incomprehensible so <3 below the cut it goes! There's gonna be TONS of spoilers for the game, and, like, I guess for the mesopotamian creation epic, so. Play Abzu if you haven't and if you wanna read the Enuma Elish that's also cool. Good for u

(a note from afterwards: it's long. like, REALLY fucking long, holy shit. if you actually want to read the whole thing, be. prepared or something idk take breaks! the last two paragraphs (i know they're walls of text pls bear with me) contain most of the important information. like, the final hurrah of my brain after working on this for multiple hours! So if u wanna save time and avoid some of the redundancy, just skip to those last two <3)

So "Abzu" referred to two things; the fresh water people got from underground aquifers (also as the void-sea which was underneath the Sumerian underworld, Kur), and the deity; he only appeared in the creation story, Enuma Elish, because a big part of that whole thing was that oh no! He dies! And that's also a thing I'm gonna touch on (sorry about the lack of accent marks in advance, it's not available on my current keyboard^ ^;)

I'm gonna start off with a brief tale of what happened with Abzu the deity, and then move onto how both the deity and the concept relate to the game!

So like I mentioned, Abzu the deity only really appears in the creation myth. The story goes that the Primordial Soup divided into two beings, with Abzu representing the freshwater and Tiamat being the saltwater. They were married, and together birthed some of the first formative gods! Some of these gods, jealous of Abzu's power convinced Tiamat to kill him (or, I thought it was started by Tiamat growing resentful of the younger gods, one of those). Either way, Abzu was killed, and Tiamat ended up lashing out, creating the first "dragons", or perhaps becoming one herself; with "poison instead of blood". She is killed by Marduk, the god of storms and the child of Enki (one of the first gods created by Abzu and Tiamat), and from her body the heavens and the earth are formed. Imagine getting killed by ur grandson lol cringe /j

Now! The waters itself! This also brings Enki into the equation, who kinda took over as god of the waters in place of his dead father. He's also the god of creation, intelligence, crafts, mischief, and more! Very important guy.

Abzu refers to both the groundwater reservoirs that people depended on for both accessible clean water and for some agricultural work, and also to the void-sea beneath the underworld, where it is said that Enki rests. He had a temple at Eridu, a now-ruined city, and I remember hearing somewhere that he lived in a temple in an underground aquifer? But I can't find wherever I read that anymore so don't take my word for it. Anyway, the basics of Enki as a deity is: child of Tiamat and Abzu, widely worshipped in his time, god of the waters, generally a cool and important dude.

And now. Finally. We move onto the game. My head hurts.

So, for a quick (post-writing: lol it's not quick) overview of the game; you play as a funny little diver, who woke up in the middle of the ocean and, as the player, are given no clues as to who or what you are. You explore through the ocean levels peacefully at first, and with the guidance of a scarred shark (painted as a bit of an antagonist at first with the audio cues) you make your way to wells at the bottom-center of each level that revitalize the space around them; as they progress, many levels start out as barren, empty landscapes that give you a foreboding, nervous feeling going in, before using an energy from yourself to rekindle the life. Huge coral growths, seaweed, and a myriad of ocean animals spring to life. The player character can also ride on the sides of the bigger ones! The game also puts a big stress on unity between yourself and the environment; there's not a whole lot you can physically interact with, but you can play with the animals there and, like I said before, ride on some of the larger animals. There are also "meditation spots", statues where you can sit and explore the wildlife from more of their point of view, able to follow them seamlessly and see what the different kinds of fish and such are called. It's a calming experience, and really the most interaction you get with some of the more timid animals, letting you still see them up close even if you can't get there as the player character.

The story of the game is told via writings on the walls, which you can light up and access by solving small puzzles regarding connecting reservoirs of glowing waters, similar to that of the almost cosmic area you go to between levels; one thing I read described it as a kind of "rebirth area", which I can definitely see hehe!

At the end of the game, you've held the shark in its dying moments, you've discovered a strange factory that builds the weird triangular prisms that deliver anything that touches them a shock, the little flashlight dudes that you've found over the levels, and little divers that uncannily resemble yourself, and you've seen yourself disassembled to your funny little mechanical skeleton, weak and slow as you try to walk on land, before you are rebirthed from the void-cosmic-water area once again, fully yourself. There's a wonderful ending sequence where you swim through all these rivers, bringing life with you as you go, with the shark once again by your side. The whole game, you saw no land when you poked your head above water, just miles and miles of water, but you've travelled far enough to reach a reservoir. You cut the chains to a central triangular prism, and it grows over with moss. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it, really, it feels like such a... grand gesture as you play through it. It feels personal.

Okay. Theory time. Finally, we're getting into the meat of it. Fucking hell.

So, imagine that you are this being. You're wandering an oceanic wonderland, observing and caring for what you need to, doing as any good little diver should. After a bit of poking around, you discover the start of the engravings on the walls; they tell the story of the people that were here before you, who built these temples and halls and used, or at least stored, the strange blue glowing "water" that you connect and move. It's a water of life, of sorts, one that they truly valued. You come to an impasse between areas, and this massive, scarred-up shark cuts in front of you. You're gonna stay hidden, that thing is terrifying! You try not to move. It doesn't spot you, or at least doesn't move to attack you. However, once it's safely out of view, you do follow it, and it leads you to a dark, desolate, empty chamber. This is wrong, you think to yourself. This isn't how it should be. There's a well, towards the bottom, and you approach it, taking... a fragment of light, from your chest, and imbuing that spark of life into the well. And, lo and behold, that intuition proved helpful, because the world around you springs back to life. Congratulations! You did it! And you continue to, as you work past puzzles and challenges and the appearance of these strange triangular mechanisms, that shock you when you get too close. These people worshipped a shark, as well, likely the same as the one you saw; the guide, now old and scarred, that brings you to where that spark is needed. Even later in the game, you see depictions of the triangular mechanisms, at first heralded as a positive, before these things are found to be the reason for this society's collapse. As if that wasn't perplexing enough, you see a depiction of a being that appears suspiciously similar to yourself, once again treated with reverence from the past civilization. In their hand is a ball of light, similar to the one shown when you revitalize the oceanic chambers. Well, that's certainly odd, you think to yourself. Perhaps this was a being that postponed the death of the civilization, or first allowed for those small chambers of life to exist in captivity instead of the open, natural landscapes you explored at the start. Regardless, it's now a relic of something long gone; but it still gives you something to think about. Later on, that strange coincidence of your similarities to that person are explained; you find a manufacturing plant, full of the vicious triangular mechanisms in each tight hallway, and right at the center of it all... multiple iterations of yourself, running down an assembly line, a spark not unlike what you saw before imbued into each of them. My, look at that; you've been responsible for part of this destruction all along, haven't you? Borne from that same ill that has been forcibly removing that spark from each of the places you've gone to. A bit inconsiderate of you, no? And yet... look at all the good you've done. You've rebirthed, revitalized, purified these ocean fragments, is that not enough? You are the keeper of these waters, regardless of the evil you had come from, despite the terrifying empty things may have reverted to. You, who trusted and followed the shark that seemed so scary at first. You, who followed it as it tried to attack a source of the evil, of the thing that was draining the oceans of their life. You, who held and comforted that shark as it lay dying, despite any fear you may have had. You, who attempted to traverse a minefield of those triangular machines, shocked over and over again and at the final moment, unable to make it to the finish line. You, who was rebirthed in full regardless by the oceans you'd cared for, by the void-sea you always returned to, to rest. You, who traversed a now-ruined citadel, temple, all of which had been flooded and had been dedicated to you. You, who brought life with you.

I hope you see what I'm getting at here. You're serving as a figure not unlike Enki, god and guardian of the waters. In the wake of Abzu, the avatar of the fresh waters, now confined to irrigation canals so as not to kill the younger gods, Tiamat lashes out. Her husband is dead, as far as she is concerned, and she goes to those younger gods to seek her revenge. The dragon, that which sucked the life from the seas and poisoned the waters. That which Marduk killed, to carve new life from. I would say that the shark is Marduk, even; given how the shark is the only one who is openly on the offense to those mechanisms, and who comes in at the endgame to finish them off, bringing new life with it. Even in how it all shapes up with the civilization before, in connection to the constructs; Tiamat was the mother of all in existence at that time. She was surely loved; but she turned hostile and violent. She could no longer be safely loved. And Abzu, both the glowing water we use to open doors and the light that we hold and the deep void-sea we enter between levels and father to all in existence, he was confined to small canals and reservoirs and put in a deep sleep so that he would not kill his own children. And by you, no less. Enki put him there. That is why you can use that water from the start; you lived in the Abzu, you came from it, and each time, that is where you return. That temple, now submerged and decrepit, is Eridu; the place where Enki was most worshipped. The other diver clones are the other gods, or perhaps the "dragons", now, that Tiamat had mothered. The smaller prisms definitely count in that "dragon" category; purely harmful beings that seek to destroy life. And in the end, indeed, you restore life; you and your son, upon killing Tiamat, return life to the world from her body. Perhaps you could not save those who once worshipped you, perhaps those structures will forever be in ruin. But there is no more danger, now; there is space to build and replenish. There is space to grow.

Fuck ok that was long as hell. Hi if u made it this far i love u. god fucking damn im never writing anything again after this. it took about as long as a full playthrough of the game, coincidentally!!

#my writing #abzû #abzu #giant squid studios #ancient history #the moss mumbles #im not joking this is horrible. like it's all just word vomit about sumerian legend -> the game -> the game again (but in second person)#and THEN we get to The Point. god christ

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fuckyeahcharmcaster · 4 years

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Post 666 on this blog

How about commemorating it by analyzing a recent Twitter thread by none other than Geoffrey Thorne, writer of the much-maligned (and deservedly so) “Couples Retreat”?

Immediately a falsehood - McDuffie never ran Ben 10 and Thorne never pitched/wrote for it.

It was Ben 10: Ultimate Alien (the rebranding of the series Ben 10: Alien Force) that McDuffie ran and Thorne pitched/wrote for. He should have used “franchise” rather than “show”.

REMEMBER THIS. It will be important later.

Hoo boy, here we go....

1. Given which episode it was, I wouldn’t call that “lucky”.

2. It seems like Thorne is definitely the guy behind the alleged spin-off Dwayne McDuffie proposed to the network. In regards to that I respect his passion, but not much else.

3. OK, some context is needed here: he is calling himself a “Charmcaster shipper” because this entire thread was sparked because one of his writer buddies who works on Supergirl was getting a lot of grief from Kara/Lena (”Supercorp”) shippers about how things have gone down on that show. But the problem is that this makes no sense - you cannot be a “shipper” of just one character. What he is describing is being a Charmcaster fanboy, NOT a “shipper”.

…..Where do I even START?

1. First off is the most glaring part: Thorne has completely re-arranged the order of events in his mind. The episode which making explicit that Charmcaster was evil and crazy, “The Enemy of My Frenemy”, aired BEFORE his episode, not after. Also, it wasn’t even separate by “a few weeks later”, it was literally just one week. I can’t believe he got this so wrong.

2. “There was much back patting when my Charmcaster episode came out”. HUH? I sure as Hell don’t remember much in the way of back-patting; most people were disgusted by it and also still upset about the previous episode. This is flat-out revisionist history on Thorne’s part.

3. I truly believe that Charmcaster being “straight-up evil and not a little bit crazy” was NOT meant to be the take-away from “The Enemy of My Frenemy”, which is why it ended in the way it did. But because what Charmcaster did in that episode was fucking genocide, that’s still exactly the take-away many viewers took away from it, and if even Thorne has come out and admitted that it was his take-away from it too, then you KNOW that episode fucked up.

4. “These were adults, mind you” - aaah, so in spite of him previously throwing shade at live-action folks throwing shade at animation because it was seen as “kids’ stuff”, suddenly he’s throwing shade at adult fans of an animated series for being emotionally affected by it. What a fucking hypocrite. I guess the millions upon millions of adult viewers who were outraged by what befell Daenerys Targaryen of Game of Throne are justified because that show is live-action, but there’s something wrong with adult viewers if they have a problem with this?

5. The biggest insight here: there really wasn’t any communication between the writers of UAF...and what’s more, Dwayne McDuffie didn’t bother tightening up the scripts enough to make them consistent, nor apparently did he tell any of the writers crucial information they probably ought to know when writing their episodes. Why was Charmcaster’s behavior so different in “Couples Retreat” compared to where “The Enemy of My Frenemy” left off? Because Thorne didn’t know about that episode. Why did Kevin suddenly act hypocritically scornful toward Charmcaster in “Couples Retreat” despite empathizing with her at the end of “The Enemy of My Frenemy”? Because Thorne didn’t know about that episode! Heck, it was clearly McDuffie who put in lines like “Charmcaster killed us” in the final script, since that little detail took Thorne completely by surprise when “The Enemy of My Frenemy” aired. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Dwayne McDuffie SUCKED when it came to this franchise!

Thorne then talks of rude fan harassments he got afterward, and on this count I’m actually siding with him because that kind of crap is never acceptable. But then he gets to this, which he claims was an email response he gave to a certain belligerent fan before blocking them:

Oooooh, now he’s doing the number thing! Convenient!

1. Maybe not intentionally, but you certainly have been spreading several falsehoods.

Also, you actually used the “Internet Tough Guy” routine? Really?

2. Solid point, but I do question just how many kids were “amused and excited” by the stuff that UA, especially in its second season, did. I especially question how and why a creepy, dysfunctional, possibly ephebophilic relationship is supposed to “amuse and excite” children.

3. HIGHLY presumptuous. Not every show has the same effort put into it, and even on shows were effort is clearly being put into one or more department, other departments may suffer. Game of Thrones is one such example: the writers there admitted to not giving a crap. No matter how stellar the acting, music, design, effects, etc. were the whole way through, the writing suffered more and more and it ultimately decimated the positive view of the series.

4. OK, I will personally agree with that statement. Others, however, may not.

Case in point, this excerpt from the South Park episode “Free Hat”:

George Lucas: These are my movies. I made them, and I have the right to do whatever I want with them. Stan: You're wrong, Mr. Lucas. They're not your movies. They're ours. All of ours. We paid to go see them, and they're just as much a part of our lives as they are of yours. Kyle: When an artist creates, whatever they create belongs to society.

For the record, I believe there is truth to be found in both arguments. I think the ideal stance is somewhere in the middle, where creators are allowed to be held more accountable by the public for the things they put out but are also not controlled and told what to create by fans. Sadly, at the moment I have no idea how such a system that would enable this would work.

I post this last part because the replies it got from two Supercorp shippers are hilarious:

In one ear, out the other. I almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost.

But that does bring up a good final point: while the fictional nature of fictional characters should absolutely never be forgotten to the point where real people are being hurt (the Star Wars franchise has plenty of horror stories where that has happened) and it certainly sounds like there were some verifiable nuts who went after Thorne, there’s a difference between that kind of insane harassment and customers being able to use a platform to call out the creators when they feel like a huge disservice to characters who mean a lot to them has happened. Simply asking for some basic consistency and integrity to be maintained with fictional characters, or asking for creators to stop stringing fans of characters along with false promises like queerbaiting, is not unjustified. Again, I must bring up South Park here.

Kyle: I think... they are real. It's all real. Think about it. Haven't Luke Skywalker and Santa Claus affected your lives more than most real people in this room? I mean, whether Jesus is real or not, he... he's had a bigger impact on the world than any of us have. And the same could be said of Bugs Bunny and, a-and Superman and Harry Potter. They've changed my life, changed the way I act on the Earth. Doesn't that make them kind of "real”? They might be imaginary, but, but they're more important than most of us here. And they're all gonna be around long after we're dead. So in a way, those things are more realer than any of us.

Fictional characters matter to people in ways that are real. Fiction can change the world.

And I don’t believe asking that those characters be treated well is a crime of any sort.

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kob131 · 4 years

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https://rwbyconversations.tumblr.com/post/626550438587678720/the-scarlet-letter-lets-talk-about-rwbys-male

Can’t even say I stan RT since I helped in developing your own break in RT’s abusive business practices.

So let’s start with a blunt statement: RWBY’s male LGBT representation has not been good. If the series’ handling of female LGBT rep is good (which… well there’s worse shows) and the general standard for how you write LGBT characters in a show like this, its handling of male rep has been… how not to. And Before the Dawn kinda solidified the idea in my head that the show’s handling of its male LGBT cast just isn’t good enough, either by the standards of when RWBY began in 2013, or today in 2020 when compatively massive steps have been taken over the past decade to show a more diverse list of characters… or at least a more diverse list of female characters.

So how do you make good male LGBT representation? If we’re talking about how something is done badly, you’d think some ground rules would be established. ... Yeah, he never does that.

It’s big romance is (unless the writers are very stupid) going to be between Blake and Yang, their first out character was Ilia, Coco got sent to the Book Dimension where she confirmed “I use my sunglasses to perv on women without their knowledge” which uh… yeah you can definitely tell RWBY is written by men… and Volume 6 had Saph and Terra being a good example of an LGBT couple without any real drama. In the last three years alone, the show has drastically increased its lesbian and bisexual characters, alongside even including its first out trans character in May Marigold (albeit only revealed on Twitter). In general, these depictions of sexuality have been pretty OK. Would have liked it if Ilia wasn’t immediately written out of the show after Volume 5 as it made her feel a bit more disposable than intended but whatever, subject for another day.

A. What examples do we have of Bumbleby being canon? One or two animation things and voice actors? Cool, when’s White Knight becoming canon.

B. I’ve heard Barbara say similar shit. Acting like that’s a male thing is fucking sexist.

C. I’m sorry but by every single standard of LGBT writing I’ve heard-wouldn’t they be considered tokens and flat caricatures? Since they’re so irrelevant and have so little character? They’re barely even characters INCLUDING their kid.

Sorry but considering how there’s no ground rules made for what is good LGBT rep- I can only go off what others have said. And so many, OVERWHLEMINGLY MANY, people have said Saphron and Terra aren’t good.

D. Okay the Illa thing is yet another example of why ground rules need to be set. Saphron and Terra BOTH are written out in Volume 6 so wouldn’t they get chewed out too? What makes Illa getting written out different or more disposable?

RWBY’s male rep though is a bit spottier. There’s the plant bois in Volume 5’s premiere, we nearly had Pilot Boi until some last-minute revisions, and… Scarlet.

Look about the same as the female LGBT audience to me. Why is this so bad?

“Why Scarlet’s a bad launchpad for male LGBT rep”

I don’t like Scarlet or how his sexuality has been handled. Scarlet’s homosexuality wasn’t revealed in the show, or by the writers, or even in anything that’s actually canon. He’s confirmed gay in his sole of dialogue in a non-canon fan anthology, where the manga’s Twitter team had to say that Miles suggested the idea and approved of it.

In short, Scarlet is Dumbledore’d, where his sexuality is revealed in out-of-show material and in a way that doesn’t make it supremely obvious (Miles himself never commented to confirm this so this news was limited in how far it could spread. I’m genuinely curious how many people still don’t know Scarlet’s gay), and Scarlet himself is a nothing character who was written out of the show after Volume 3 and only reappeared in Before The Dawn, half a decade after he vanished. Compared to Ilia, as this came out after Ilia’s entire arc in Volume 5, it’s not a great starting point for mlm rep. But things would have been forgiven if it had gotten better, if the show did have more male LGBT characters introduced, even just on the Saphron/Terra level of just being around for a few episodes before leaving. Then it would have been a misfire but then we could all say “Things got better.”

Why should I care?

See, part of the job of a critic is to make the problems understandable to the audience. I emphasized ground rules because it gives the reader a base level understanding of what constitutes as good in this case. Why should I think Scarlet is bad when Saphron and Terra are on the same level and you said they were at least acceptable?

It… didn’t. Which is why when Before the Dawn released in 2020, a full two years after Scarlet was first confirmed gay, while the franchise had more than doubled its wlw rep, Scarlet remained the one male character in the entire franchise who had a name and liked men. I remember vividly a fake leak for After The Fall which claimed Yatsuhashi would come out to Velvet and admit to having a crush on Fox. And I remember as well how many people were disappointed when it was said to be false, because it would have been nice for Yatsuhashi’s character, especially after the fleshing out he gets in the CFVY books. If Yatsu had come out as gay in the books I’d like his writing enough to say he’s a good case for rep, albeit with the caveat of “This is all in side material.” But in reality, the leak was fake and Coco was confirmed gay instead.

I remember the same leak. Yatsuhashi also disappeared at the same time and even if he was fleshed out-he’s still irrelevant to the show so wouldn’t he be bad? And if it’s about having fleshed out characters, why did Illa whose a fully realized character get shaded while effective background characters praised?

Unfortunately, Before the Dawn proceeded to ruin Scarlet and made me at times feel genuinely uncomfortable as a queer man! Let’s talk about that.

And people said the same about Saphron and Terra and people get backlash for praising them over other lesbian characters.

I hate Before the Dawn. It’s… bad. I read it while on a vacation and the only solace I had about the entire thing was that I’d bought an M&M chocolate bar. The bar was finished before the book. That bummed me out. It’s not a very well written book, the prose is very Early 2010s YA Writer, none of the characters are memorable and there’s various Fun Incidents like “NGDO using children as bait for Grimm,” and “Neptune’s hydrophpobia being used as a threat to torture him and the scene is played for comedy.”

A. NDGO is repeatedly shown to be massive assholes in the book.

And B. I can’t really find anything wrong there. In one of my favorite shows, Justice League Unlimited, criminals get threatened with actual torture and even death and it’s treated as a joke. Yeah the context is different in that the victim are criminals but both the villains and Neptune get over it so quickly I see no real problem here. Especially since Jaune’s own low self worth was a joke up to Volume 5.

Theo was cool. I can’t wait to see him as written by good writers, he should be a highlight of the Vacuo arc.

Don’t go blaming E.C. Myers for this- Miles and Kerry helped. You’d have to call them shit writers too.

I had two hopes for Before the Dawn- “Don’t be bad,” and “Let Scarlet and Sage be well written.” I’d liked how After The Fall had handled some of its characters (barring, y'know, Coco perving on women), especially Fox and Yatsu who were surprising in how much I liked them. I was looking forward to seeing Myers give Sage and Scarlet similar treatment- two relatively nothing characters meant he’d have a blank slate to write them however he wanted, he could give them unique personalties and if nothing else it could be cool to see their Semblances.

You know how frustrating it is to see people blame Miles and Kerry for shit that Monty had a hand in and may have even been responsible for?

Yeah well we finally found the flipped version-

Miles and Kerry worked with Myers on the book. Just as Monty is just as much at fault as Miles and Kerry, they’re just as much at fault as Myers.

And then I read the book. (Sage fans I am so sorry for you, you got baited harder than Johnlock fans)

I thought we were talking about male LGBT rep.

Scarlet’s a giant dickhead in the book. It’s his sole character trait and his inner monologues go on, and on, and on about how much he hates Sun, how he revels in mocking him. Most of his dialogue is sarcastic put-downs about Sun and how lame he is, and Sun is never properly allowed to defend himself or point out how going with Blake meant he was able to help save Haven Academy.

You mean like how character criticized Yang for being so reckless even though she was trying to save Blake?

It shouldn’t matter what the intent or results are- Sun and Yang still did bad things and affected the people around them. They should be criticized, especially Sun here since A. He’s still doing it in the book, B. He hasn’t had any real flaws in the show which means his dynamics and interaction are limited and C. This addresses what people bitched at him about in Volumes 4 and 5 thus robbing them of the excuse to chew him out anymore.

(hey remember when Sun in Volume 6 expressly says to Blake “I was a bad leader for ditching Neptune and the others, and I need to work on that” only for Before the Dawn to have him staunchly refuse to accept that he let the team down? I don’t think Myers did but I do)

Remember how characters in RWBY don’t always learn their lesson, especially when it’s related to mental issues like...say....losing their parents and trying to run from their problems?

Also remember how MILES AND KERRY ALSO HELPED WRITE THAT BOOK?

Scarlet being a ratty bitch would be one thing if, again, the franchise had done more rep. He’d still be a badly written character, but it wouldn’t sting as much. But because Scarlet is still the only expressly confirmed male LGBT character in canon (the book teases that Nolan is gay but there’s never confirmation either way beyond him smiling at Scarlet), it means that he has to represent that entire ideal. So when the one gay man in Remnant is being an asshole and a snide loser, that means that by extension, this is how the franchise sees gay men. And that fucking sucks! I wanted to come out of Before The Dawn singing its praises, I wanted to like the book, but it was a massive letdown, especially coming off of the other big 2020 RWBY controversy involving gay characters.

Fun fact: LGBT people can be assholes.

In fact, Scarlet would be the ONLY LGBT character to be snide in the show. Kind of makes him unique in that regard. ...If he was an asshole in canon. When in canon, he’s portrayed as hurt and bitter over Sun’s repeated irresponsibility and doing what anyone would do in his situation.

So honestly, he’s pretty fucking human which I would praised BEYOND being LGBT.

Yeah. We’re doing this.

Remember, you choose to do all this.

Clover and Fair Game: Technically not queerbaiting. BUT:

But nothing. Once again, without any ground rules for what you constitute as ‘queerbaiting’- I only have myself to rely on. And just about every serious definition says Queerbaiting is baiting LGBT rep or pairings to get people to watch the show.

Issue? Not only was Fair Game not used to promote the show, there are other LGBT characters in RWBY. You can’t be queerbaited anymore than a straight person can be ‘straightbaited’ (We’ll be getting into SO MUCH MORE than this later...).

Let’s pre-empt this: Clover wasn’t queerbaiting, and Fair Game, while cool and I dig it, kudos to them for becoming one of the top 5 RWBY pairings on AO3 in one year that’s fucking impressive (I say with mild malice as an IronQrow main), never had a chance. The writing never seriously boosted it barring one interaction which was flirty (them talking in the lobby of the Schnee Manor), and everything else was out of show boosting through the social media teams and CRWBY hyping it themselves by saying they liked it. If you wanna blame people, blame the animators who went off-script with stuff like Kim Newman adding the wink as a deliberate nod to the Volume 4 waitress, or the social media team deliberately using the same policies for Fair Game as they do for Renora and Bumblebee.

So nothing I should give a shit about since marketing teams often work detached from the actual product and are notoriously CUTTHROAT.

It wasn’t Eddy’s fault that things escalated, and he himself has said that in retrospect, he should have warned people that this never had a shot.

But I can’t blame the Fair Game fanbase. Because Fair Game took off like wildfire. It came right as the fanbase began seriously asking for more male rep, Qrow’s pretty hot, and the Clover wink came right after the Great IronQrow Reawakening of November 9th, 2019. The rocket was primed, and they rode it to the moon. Finally, to these people, after seven years RWBY seemed to be doing something with mlm rep in show. People started getting into RWBY just for Clover and Qrow’s interactions. And if heroes were boring, Watts and Tyrian also had a fantastic dynamic that made Nuts and Volts one of the more popular villain ships overnight. Things seemed to be turning around! RWBY was remembering that gay men existed! You could hear the choir sing!

... You JUST said that show didn’t bolster the ship aside from one interaction (one that pales to the shit I use to say in private to fuck with people). It was obviously NOT meant to be a serious component of the show. If people got into a show for something it was never meant to stick to- it’s their own fault for when that part falls away.

… And for those people, that meant that episode 12 hit like Truck-Kun.

People got pissed. People were horrified. And it didn’t help that some members of CRWBY had said in the build-up that episode 12 would have some shots that made them nauseous (probably the Tyrian thumb thing) Out of context, it looked to these fans like CRWBY were basically laughing at their suffering, like they were saying “Lol, you thought you had a chance, get fucked, I hope your vomit burns on the way up.”

Yeah, Fair Game was never gonna be canon, and I think some people ran too far with it. But in the wider context of how desperate RWBY’s mlm community had gotten for basic crumbs of content? I can see why they’d run with what they had. The writers aren’t at fault for what happened, but CRWBY didn’t help matters. And that desperate mix of what felt like official backing from the crew, jokes about how cute the ship was, and the hope that finally the show would have onscreen rep? I can see why people ran with it.

Ah huh ah huh ah huh-

Now do that for the first three Volumes of the show with a bigger fan favorite, more build up and kill one half of it off at the end of the show’s big dark turn while the creators are even MORE unsympathetic.

Sorry but when compared to Arkos, this looks fucking minscule. And you invoked the Arkos comparison due to the numerous parallels. And just like with the Arkos fans, I’ll disregard this without a second thought.

‘But Mlm are STARVED for content-’

Then go somewhere else. I’ve been saying this to your Wlw AND Straight counterparts for years. You are not entitled to have ‘a meal’. The show didn’t advertise in universe around rep- That is not the point. This is like saying you hate nachoes because it dares to have chips instead of more toppings.

So why is the show more lackluster in depicting mlm characters?

I don’t think you ever answered that the question ‘is the show’s mlm lackluster?’ because you spent a third of this post talking about something you basically admit doesn’t count.

Money. Let’s be honest, most RWBY fans don’t care if the show doesn’t have good male rep. I’m willing to bet some of you reading this won’t care and just dismiss it as not being that big a problem.

I dismiss all the romance related shit as not being that big of a problem, so what?

I don’t think the writers care if the show doesn’t have good mlm rep because they’re not poaching that market. They’re after what they see as a bigger, more lucrative market, which in this case is female LGBT rep. That gets people buying games, watching shows, raising awareness and boosting awareness of your property, which means you make more money. In short: Two women kissing hits more markets and generates more attention than two men.

I’d believe that if not for the fact that there is barely any lesbian merch for RWBY, which would be the key way to cash in on that market and squeeze them for as much money as possible. In fact, there’s barely ANY shipping merch from Rooster Teeth. Rather unusual if they’re trying to cash in on a market.

‘Well what’s YOUR explanation?’

Easy: Misandry and moving goalposts.

Guys notoriously get shat on in the fandom more than women. Jaune is STILL being called a spotlight stealing MAry Sue and numerous people are siding against Ironwood because he’s a man. So making good male LGBT rep would just be inviting more pipe bombs in the mail.

And a large amount of people like to claim RWBY has yet to give GOOD female LGBT rep, constantly raising the bar to get what they want. And considering they make up the original hatedom in the show- they naturally hold more power.

Tl;Dr- You fucked yourselves out of good male rep by having male characters having any focus whatsoever be a death sentence.

Am I saying that Miles, Monty and Kerry deliberately sat down seven years ago and said “We’re not doing gay men because it won’t generate enough ad revenue and traffic to be worth the loss in revenue from homophobes?” No, that’s silly. But I’m saying that it’s less important for them, and it shows in the things that are small and add up. Things like Miles not verifying Scarlet’s sexuality or retweeting the manga account’s confirmation to spread the message (compared to how he enthusiastically confirmed Ilia being a lesbian himself during the Reddit AMA). It shows in how Pilot Boi would have been the first mlm character only to die in his second full episode until M&K were told about the Bury Your Gays trope. It shows in how Shannon believes that Ozma is “megaqueer” and Miles jokingly laughs it off instead of confirming it, leaving it to just be Shannon’s headcanon. It shows in how actor shipping is compared between the mlm and wlw ships, where Arryn and Barbara’s frequent pushes for Bumblebee are seen as “official confirmation that it’s endgame” while Michael and Kerry saying they enjoy Seamonkeys is treated as “well it would be cute if they did it, but they’re never going to.”

The whole point of AMA is answer questions, one of which was ‘is Illa a lesbian’ among SEVERAL others.

Yeah and Illa gets called a psycho lesbian.

Yeah and no other voice actor headcanon has been accepted. In fact, Kara pushes for White Knight and the writers don’t even so much as acknowledge that unlike Shannon. Also I dunno what ‘megaqueer’ means but his only on screen relationship was straight so that’s probably why it wasn’t confirmed.

Not the creators, don’t care.

I’m not gonna say anything like “CRWBY are gonna have Qrow end up with a woman like Robyn out of spite against the bad apples of the Fair Game crowd.” I’m not gonna say that I don’t think CRWBY cares about male representation in the series. It is, however, definitely a low priority for them, and because that leads to gaffes like Scarlet’s writing in Before The Dawn being offensive in his depiction, it only makes the contrast between the sexes all the more painfully apparent.

Again, the female side ain’t much better. Fuck, the straight side isn’t much better. This was never a focus of the show.

I’m kinda tired of waiting for Rooster Teeth to show that they do care about mlm. I’m kinda tired of RWBY’s male rep being written like it came from a 1993 time capsule where I have to enhance the screen to see a guy holding a sign of Sun’s abs or be content with the only onscreen rep still being the plant bois in Volume 5. I’m tired of how often the crew dances around answering basic questions about sexuality (and age, and birthdays, and heights, and so on) by treating it as a spoiler question, as if just wanting to know what way people swing would ever be a spoiler. I’m just… tired of all this. When the best mlm rep in Rooster Teeth’s history remains the two dads in Camp Camp who show up in a few episodes, that should say something really bad about your company and your biases (To say nothing of the recent Red vs Blue seasons and their blatant queerbaiting for Grif and Simmons and the whole can of worms that is Donut).

And their best rep in wlw according to some people is a psycho lesbian.

This is all just personal opinion that is next to useless without the basis needed for clear understanding. I don’t know what you would consider good male LGBT rep aside from a squeaky clean good guy...and many would decry that as condescending and unrealistic.

What can they do except ignore EVERYONE and just do whatever they feel like?

P.S. Someone’s representation is NOT their view on LGBT people. Especially since, as I have said, the reception of said rep can be outright contradictory.

I’d like to not feel like I’m borderline unwelcome because I’d like to see two men in this show kiss, and that the sole thing that represents people like me in this show is some British twat who complains about sand.

Oh fuck off. I’m also apart of a minority group (autists) and yet you don’t see me winging about how unwelcome I feel because there’s no autistic characters. I relate to characters like Ruby not because they have shallow autistic traits but because I constantly struggle with the same ideological dilemma Ruby does: the struggle to keep doing good in an uncaring, cruel world. THAT is what you should find relatable and welcome. Not something like sexuality.

I’d just like to feel like my sexuality isn’t a joke to Rooster Teeth (or at the very least, be like Donut and have it be a funny one). But at this point after the last few years? I feel like a very uncomfortable punchline to them. And it just sucks.

Cool-Welcome to club. You know, since EVERY sexuality has been used a punchline by Rooster Teeth.

Your sexuality should be the LAST thing that you use to find being welcome, especially with a god damn company. And you have no one to blame for your feelings but yourself here.

Your post is damn near useless and I don’t even know how honest that RT stuff is considering Miles and Kerry get away while E.C. Myers gets blamed for stuff you don’t like.

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cameoamalthea · 4 years

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The Traveler: Abusive, Gaslighting and Toxic or Flawed Character Critical Role E2103 SPOILERS

I will preface this by saying, as a survivor of abuse living with C-PTSD, I understand triggers and respect the feelings of anyone who was uncomfortable or upset by the way Artagan spoke to Jester.

Many in the chat commented things along the line of ‘he sounds like an abusive boyfriend” “toxic” “gas lighter”.

And to be honest, it’s fantastic that fans are able to recognize warning signs of abusive behavior. Fiction, even deeply flawed problematic fiction that actively romanticizes abuse (cough, Twilight, cough), is a great starting point to discus if a relationship presented is healthy and learn the skills to recognize red flags.

“Is that relationship healthy/abusive?” is a great question to ask about fictional relationships because analyzing the behaviors will give you tools to notice if your friends or partners are behaving in toxic ways and to evaluate if someone should be in your life.

That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy fictional relationships in media that aren’t healthy. You can. Fiction is also a place to just enjoy fantasies, including danger. Whether that danger is something, like a dragon or a relationship with a power imbalance, like a dragon but a really sexy dragon that is dating the protagonist.

It’s just important to recognize what wouldn’t be ok in real life, especially if it’s something certain romance books have presented as super deep love and stuff (cough, Fifty Shades of Gray, cough) when in real life, that’s abuse.

So let’s talk about Artagan’s behavior in Critical Role E2C103:

Let’s start by defining some terms:

Abuse: treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly. (source)

Gaslighting: manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity (source)

Toxic: any relationship [between people who] don’t support each other, where there’s conflict and one seeks to undermine the other, where there’s competition, where there’s disrespect and a lack of cohesiveness. (source)

Unhealthy: relationships where people may feel anxious, confused, uncertain and even unsafe (source - also great resource you guys!)

The relationship between Jester and Artagan, as it currently stands, is certainly unhealthy. He is not open and honest with her, leaving her to feel anxious, confused and uncertain. He knowingly put her in an unsafe situation without her consent (you cannot consent unless you are informed of everything you’re agreeing to ahead of time). Putting someone in a situation where they don’t feel comfortable is toxic and abusive.

Every person has a right to control their own body and comfort. It’s not ok for anyone to make you do something against your will, including by omitting information.

Ex) You agreed to go somewhere with someone but they decide that the trip is going to be longer, leaving you feeling trapped because you want to leave and did not agree to this. Even if this longer trip poses no risk to you, you did not agree to it.

Artagan should have told Jester about the dangers posed by the island before hand.

Game wise, he couldn’t do that because Matt Mercer’s plan was to trap the characters in a dangerous situation they could not escape or work around and had to face head on. As a DM he is playing a game where everyone playing consented to allow him to put their characters in danger because pretend danger can be fun (thrill rides, haunted houses, etc). The players have been very good at cleverly thinking their way around problems, which is fair and also good playing. Outsmart the Hag, outrun the Dragon Turtle, but Matt wanted to build his players a trap they could not escape, that would be challenging and scary. Because the object of the game for Matt Mercer is to give his players an exciting story and make their characters heroes.

Narratively, he didn’t because Artagan is a fey and does not have the same levels of capacity for empathy. It likely never occurred to him that Jester would be hurt because if she forgot herself on the island and joined the cult he would simply taker and those she cared about back to safety. In his mind, he has nothing to worry about in terms of her safety so she has nothing to worry about.

‘I’m not worried, so you shouldn’t be worried either.’ Is a toxic mindset because it invalidates another person’s feelings. You cannot control how anyone else feels and you should not force anyone into anything they don’t agree to even if it wouldn’t bother you. You have to ask them.

Which brings us to gaslighting. A form of abuse where the abuser goes beyond not acknowledging the other person’s feelings or taking their feelings into consideration, to actively trying to manipulate them into questioning their own reality.

Beyond ‘I did something without taking your feelings into consideration and now you’re hurt but it’s not my fault because I didn’t mean to hurt you’ to “What do you mean I did something, that never happened” or “What do you mean I didn’t take your feelings into consideration, we talked about this and you said you were fine, it’s not my fault you don’t remember that.”

Examples of Gaslighting language:

1. “If you were paying attention…”

2. “If you were listening…”

3. “If you knew how to listen…”

4. “We talked about this. Don’t you remember?”

5. “I guess I’ll have to repeat myself since you can’t remember.”

6. “You need to learn to communicate better.”

7. “You’re being irrational.”

8. “Don’t you think you’re over-reacting?”

9. “You’re just over-sensitive.”

10. “Stop being so sensitive.”

11. “You’re too emotional.”

12. “You can’t take a joke.”

13. “You’re so thin-skinned.”

14. “You always jump to the wrong conclusion.”

15. “Stop taking everything I say so seriously.”

16. “Can you hear yourself?”

17. “I criticize you because I like you.”

18. “You’re the only person I have these problems with.”

19. “You’re reading too much into this.”

20. “I’m not arguing; I’m discussing.”

21. “I know what you’re thinking.”

22. “You should have known that this was not a good time to talk.”

23. “Why are you upset? I was only kidding.”

24. “Why would you think that? What does that say about you?”

(source)

Gaslighting goes beyond failing to validate someone’s feelings “I’m sorry you feel that way” to actively invalidating their feelings “Why do you feel that way, you have no reason to” However, the phrase “I’m sorry you feel that way” also known as a “non-apology apology” can itself be be gaslighting in certain contexts as it “may imply the person took offense for hypersensitive or irrational reasons.” However, a non-apology in personal relationships is not always gaslighting.

“Statements that use the word "sorry" but do not express responsibility for wrongdoing may be meaningful expressions of regret.

But

such statements can also be used to elicit forgiveness without acknowledging fault.” Not taking responsibility for how your actions impact others is manipulative, wanting forgiveness without accepting fault and realizing what you did wrong so that you won’t do it again.

Artagan is ABSOLUTELY an irresponsible person. He hates responsibility and is actively working to get out of his responsibilities (which is ironic, working to avoid work). He has never had to take responsibility for anything, even feeling regret may well be against his nature as a fey. He does not know how to apologize and he does need to learn.

Because it doesn’t matter that he did not mean to scare Jester, he did scare her. He scared her so much that he brought her to tears. If he does not recognize fault he cannot change the behavior that led to hurting her int he first place i.e. saying I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I should have told you implies in the future he will tell her.

Healthy relationships take work and a willingness to work on changing your own behavior.

Refusing to take responsibility can absolutely be a sign of gaslighting. (source) Especially, if responsibility is shifted onto the victim.

That said, failure to apologize the right way can also be a sign that someone does not know how to apologize or take responsibility. That is something that has to be learned.

Saying “I’m sorry you’re hurt” can be rooted in empathy, you regret that the person is hurt and can even be appropriate if it is not your responsibility.

Now here’s where things get complicated. Other people’s feelings are not always your responsibility.

This is important because as stated above, abusers may shift responsibility onto the victim. i.e. ‘Now you’re crying, can’t you see how much that’s upsetting me? Why are you trying to make me feel bad? Why do you want to hurt me?”

Making a victim feel guilty can be a tool abusers use to control their victim and keep them in the relationship or keep them silent about the abuse. Victims can be trained to see it as their job to make sure others are always happy and take responsibility for other people’s emotion. ‘I’m sorry I upset you,’ says the victim.

A healthy relationship is not simply taking responsibility is someone else is hurt. It’s knowing when to take responsibility and when to set a boundary because the other person’s feelings aren’t reasonable.

For example, “I can’t believe went out with your other friends tonight. I thought I was important to you. Why do you need any other friends, I should be enough. I’m really hurt.”

The correct response is absolutely “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I am allowed to have other relationships.”

You should absolutely NOT validate the idea that you don’t need anyone else and should have put them first.

If someone is asking you to do something that is harmful to you because it hurts them if you don’t agree, that’s not your problem.

Everyone has to learn to take responsibility for their own emotions, because there are times where a person’s feelings are something they need to work on.

The “non-apology apology” runs the gambit from gaslighting (suggesting the feelings are irrational), to avoiding responsibility and making yourself the victim, to failing to take responsibility and understand what you did wrong, to appropriate depending on the circumstances.

It’s not black and white, and we must be careful to avoid black and white thinking as that itself can lead to unhealthy or even toxic behaviors. (source). And because behaviors like “suddenly moving people from the “good person” category to the “bad person” category” are unhealthy, I think it’s useful to examine our response when fictional characters have flaws. It can provide a space to examine our feelings and behaviors.

Setting boundaries and leaving unhealthy relationships is an important skill, of course, but so avoiding dichotomous thinking.

“Dichotomous thinking often shifts between idealizing and devaluing others. Being in a relationship with someone who thinks in extremes can be really difficult because of the repeated cycles of emotional upheaval.” (Id.)

Many read Artagan’s response to Jester as gaslighting. However, it falls more towards the avoiding responsibility part of the spectrum.

That’s not healthy. Artagan should have taken responsibility.

“Please don’t ever think I’m not looking out for your best interests”

“Oh dear thing, I don’t mean to put you through this.”

“I’m sorry if you felt abandoned”

Is not taking responsibility. He did put her through this and hurt her, he did leave her in a situation where she feared he would abandon her and doubted if he was looking out for her best interests because he did not communicate.

That said, the conversation does not cross into gas-lighting because he does not invalidate the way Jester feels.

He takes action to address her concerns: Making a Binding Promise, a fey promise is like a devil’s contract. It’s deep unbreakable magic and not something a fey would give for nothing, but he does, freely, because he recognizes that she needs assurance that he will look out for her.

He takes responsibility.

“You’re right, I should have been a little more forthright with you with information.”

Yeah, he should have, and Jester calls him on it. She’s there for extra days, meaning more danger, because he did not warn her. When she realizes she’s yelling at him, she apologizes and he says:

“It’s alright.”

He does not invalidate that she’s upset and it’s fair thats she’s yelling at him. Instead he focuses on addressing what’s upsetting her i.e. fear of losing her memory and being left on an island enslaved to a monster

“I would have come back.”

And she’s ok, and she knows it’s the truth because he has promised her to come back and in this fantasy fey rules context, that means he cannot break his word. In real life, promising is not enough because actions show change and that takes time. And it is important to remember that abusers aren’t 100% awful all the time. Abuse is often followed by a honeymoon period. However, in the context of analyzing this scene Artagan making a promise is itself an action taken. He has a long way to be a good friend and what he did was wrong and his initial responses do not take responsibility. He should have said, from the start.

“I did not plan to leave you here. I will always look out for your best interests. I’m sorry I was not more forthright with you with information and put you in a frightening situation. I’m sorry for scaring you. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry I have not been there for you in the way you need.”

And while he did take responsibility and acknowledge what he did wrong, he didn’t accompany that with an I’m sorry.

To me, that comes down more on the side of flawed character rather than irredeemable abusive/toxic/gas-lighter.

Admitting you were wrong and the other person is right is the opposite of gas lighting and Artagan did that.

#Critical role spoilers #Artagan #The Traveler #critical role discourse #tw gaslighting #tw abuse

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mrs-mikko-rantanen · 5 years

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Stop Treating Me Like This

(Loooook! Semi canon writing!!!! May not end up in the final draft but enjoy!!)

Context: By order of the King, the crew of the Archangel have been scattered through the Keridwen countryside, for their own protection. Avanda has been places in the care of the one family that he trusts: the MacClydes. For the most part, the family has taken it well. Ewan, with his own demons, is a little more stressed than he should be.

[[MORE]]

Avanda sighed happily as she and Carrick walked back through the woods towards the boy's home. She grinned down at him and ruffled his hair.

"Thanks Carrick. I needed to get out of that house. I was starting to go crazy."

Carrick smiled and nodded back. "Ewan can get like that. He just takes his work very seriously."

"As he should. He has a responsibility, and he's holding to it. I just wish he'd give me some room to breathe."

They stepped up to the door, and just as they were about to open it, Adair flung it open.

"Car, take Paddy to the market. I don't care if you trade anything, just go." He glanced up at Avanda as he pushed the boys out. "He woke up. I know he would never hurt them, but yelling makes Peadair nervous."

Avanda furrowed her brow and pushed past Adair, storming through the house. In her anger, she was barely able to stop in time before smashing into Ewan.

The poor young man was a mess.

His eyes were wild with a mildly panicked look, mixed with some rage. His hair stood in all directions, after having slept for the better part of the day. His sword belt was slung haphazardly over his shoulder, and he was trying desperately to shove his left foot into his right boot. As Avanda rounded the corner, standing with her hands on her hips, he straightened up as well, the panic in his eyes dwindling a little.

"M'lady." His teeth ground a little, "Where have you been?"

Avanda shrugged. "I went out for a bit. I was tired of being placed ubder house arrest, so I went and got some fresh air."

Ewan dropped his boots. "Alone? M'lady, do you have any idea how much danger that put you in? What if someone had seen you? What if an animal had attacked you? What if--"

"I wasn't alone, MacClyde." Avanda cut him off. "Besides, anyone who had seen me wouldn't have recognized me, and I know how to steer clear of animals. I hardly think picking flowers puts me in too much danger." She brandished the bundle of herbs that she had collected at him, and he leaned back a little.

"But-you're-I'm- I'm supposed to--" he grumbled as his brain scrambled to find the right words. Avanda raised an eyebrow at him as she crossed her arms and let him think. Finally he sighed.

"I know it isnt easy, M'lady. But you are the princess. You were lost for so long, and now it's my duty to make sure that doesn't happen again. I know this house isn't much, but you have to stay here. I can keep you safe here."

Avanda had to fight not to roll her eyes. "I'm not the princess. At least, not the one you keep expecting me to be." Ewan frowned and she went on. "You keep acting like your home is too small, or too simple and plain. You keep acting like I need every possible need fufilled before I even ask for it."

She softened a little. "I may have been born a princess, but that isn't how I was raised. I didn't have my own room until last year; I slept in barracks with a hundred other girls. And when we were assigned to the Archangel? I still had to share a room with Carina, but At least we had room to move around and store things. And I had to fight to make it into the medical program. I may be your 'princess,' but I was raised a soldier. I can take care if myself."

Ewan's shoulders dropped a a little. "I'm sorry, M'lady."

Avanda could tell that he was hurt and winced a little. "It's fine. We just need to set some new boundaries, ok?"

"Yes M'lady."

"First things first, drop the formality. We're both soldiers, and as far as I'm concerned, equals."

"Yes M'la-" he stopped. "With time, lass."

Avanda smiled. "That's a good start."

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

Taglist! Let me know if you want to be added/removed!

@wallpatterns , @abby5577 , @foreverwayward , @sammyimpala-67 , @a-mess-of-many-fandoms , @dammitsammy , @jess---writes ,@rose-of-sharon-cass

#my writing #my ocs #avanda inspo #avanda alistairion #avanda #ewan inspo #ewan macclyde #ewan #story excerpt #renegade archangels

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ruffiorocks · 5 years

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Men can be SuperCorp and Agent Corp shippers to. They can support subtext!

So I put up a chat I had with my 34 year old straight as a ruler brother. His favorite Superhero has always been Supergirl, he still loves the 1984 film and we grew up watching it. Does that make him gay? Of course not!

But he really likes the Supergirl show. He's a bit behind so he usually gets a Monday morning rant from me about what happened. Or he catches up on YouTube.

My brother is a Supercorp shipper. He saw the chemistry instantly! He spends the majority of his time asking me if Kara and Lena have had anymore practically gay scenes. He also isn't a James Olsen fan, he thought Guardian was OK, but now he can't be dealing with him.

So last night my brother put on some YouTube clips. First he put on the Adam and Lena scenes (he really is behind ) and he was like 'Lena is the scientist!' 'Omg Lena and her mum!'

Next he put on the Nia and Maeve fall out scene. His mouth fell open when Maeve said the things to Nia. I told him the context, why Maeve was upset etc. He said he could see why she was upset and that she was lashing out in anger bur that didn't excuse what she said. I agree.

Next was Kara revealing her identity to Nia. He thought that was cool, but he also said that if Nia knows because she's a hero then surely Lena should know to?!

Then we had the Thanksgiving argument between Lena and James. I explained about he indictment and how Lena sorted it and he was outraged that James would speak to Lena like that! He was like 'what a d**k! He just left Lena in the hallway all sad!'

Then we had the break up scene. He didn't like James lack of support for Lena. (I explained context again) But he also saw what i saw and although we were both jumping for joy at this break up, we both saw that Lena seems to have picked that fight and done this on purpose.

Lastly was the Alex and Lena scenes. The first thing he's said was Alex looks more and more gay every episode. He then saw that Lena seemed to glance at Alex's boobs. He yelled 'MISS TESSMACHER!' He does this everytime she's on screen. Probably because he freaking loves Cat Grant! Then he expressed joy that Lena has Alexs support. Lastly he was like 'Alex, Lena, Eve team up! '

He thew in a few comments like 'Lena always saves the day!' and 'Lena should clone herself, give them all a different power and call them 'The Legion of Lena's!'

So, someone said his responses sounded fake. That I had just made up this conversation. I'd like to ask why?

My straight brother is apparently not capable of having the EXACT same reactions that most of us did? He isn't allowed to support a lesbian ship? Is he doing this because he thinks the characters are hot and would like to see them together? Maybe, but you know who else is doing that? WE ARE!

Straight Men are allowed to openly support LGBT ships. My brother thought Winn and James would be a great couple!

He also doesn't care for homophobia. I told him 2 years ago I was bi. Not everyone in my fam knows that. His reaction? 'Oh so you definitely like women then? That's cool!' Now we both openly drool over Katie McGrath and Gal Gadot.

That's another thing! My brother loves Wonder Woman! He loves the old Linda Carter series, he loves the animated character and he loves the movie and the movie version of her. Is it because she's hot and doesn't wear a lot? I'm sure it's a contributing factor! But I think the same thing. He also thinks that Wonder Woman is the best part of Batman V Superman. He likes them, but he sees that Wonder Woman is the star of that movie!

He likes that Superman came into the Supergirl show. I told him I liked him to but I don't want him there all the time because the show will become to focused on him. He got that, he didn't' like that season 2 spent so much time on Mon El.

So my point, just because someone is a straight 34 year old male it doesn't mean they can't see exactly the same things that we do. It doesn't mean they are instantly out to get us. It doesn't mean that they are only interested in the hot women. They can just enjoy the show the same as we can. They can be supportive. I'm sorry if some men have treated you badly in the past, but that doesn't mean every man is out to get you or put you down or take your power.

My brother is an LGBT ally, does he say dumb things sometimes? Yeah because it's new to him and no one is perfect. Is he a misogynist? I doubt it since he's spent the majority of his working career with our older sister as his boss. He even says I'm way smarter than him and asks my advice on things.

Men aren't all bad. I've met some damn right horrible lesbians, gay men and feminists. Lesbians that hate all men just 'because' then get upset if people are homophobic to them. Feminists that think all men should die out, that women should be the only ones with any power. That if a man holds a door open for you he is putting you down and dominating you. Or gay men that hate straight men just 'because'.

Now I'm sure that many members of the groups or even people reading this have been hurt by a member of one those groups or more. Maybe they offended your or worse. But that doesn't mean everyone in that group deserves to be put down. It doesn't mean they can't be allies. It doesnt mean they can't attend Pride and wear a rainbow in solidity.

I went off topic a bit there. So I'll just end this by saying if you tell straight men they aren't allowed to support you or you don't believe they could see the same things in a show that you do then you are alienating yourselves. You're the problem not them.

#lena luthor #supergirl #kara danvers #supercorp #anti james olsen #eve teschmacher #winn shott #agentcorp #alex danvers #lgbtq #men arent all bad just because they are men #men can see subtext to #men can have the same reactions as women #my straight brother is a supercorp shipper

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eerythingisshaka · 5 years

Text

Moronic Jealousy

(M’Baku x Reader)

Word Count: 4.6k

Warnings: Fluff and Smut,

A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY ATHENA!!! 🎉🎉🎂🎂🎁🎈💕💋

I fully intended on posting this on the actual day, had the plot and everything but this week was, whew chile! So after some selfcare, I finally got a story for you @muse-of-mbaku! Happy Birthday and I hope New Orleans treats you well. Continue to be great, break necks, and make moves! This is inspired by a part of A Different World episode between Jaleesa and Walter. Soon as I saw it on Prime Video, I been wanting to use it as fanfic fodder. It’s silly, so I hope you like it!

“So then I was like ‘Put the pussy on the chainwax!’” Michelle cackles out loud as you and Adriene look at each other, telepathically wondering if your friend has gone insane.

“Honey, why would you say that in traffic court? I enjoy the enthusiasm, but it’s misguided.” Adriene states, leaning into her glass of moscato.

“You just don’t get it. (Y/N), you get what I was trying to say, right?” Michelle looks to you.

After several seconds of gulping air to find the words you respond. “To me you just added a charge of animal cruelty on top of not having a working headlight, so I’d put you up for 3 years if it was my word, but Adriene is the jury here.”

Girls night is your favorite night of the week. It’s a tradition that has been hard to keep up with given the busy weekdays you all shared, but in a way that made the final connect all the more sweeter. And what comes with that is your favorite pastime: Drunk Courtroom.

“Man, you ALWAYS take Adri’s side in this.” Michelle pouts, blowing a 3B curl out of her face.

“That’s what the judge does! My jury tells me what to do- I think I need to cut you off of the Barefoot, cuz…” You slide the bottle closer to you on the coffee table.

“No, that ain’t my problem! You really bossy since your engagement to Timbuktu.” Michelle cheeses into her glass.

Your jaw drops, scoffing. “Oh my God, how many times I gotta tell you to stop calling him that! Especially now that he is my future husband, chill with alldat.”

Michelle giggles, pushing you a little. “Can I play a little?? You landed a gold mine, or should I say vibranium mine with him as your catch. See what happens when you put the pussy on the chainwax?”

“Once again. I. Don’t. Understand. That. Phrase.” You clap between each word in frustration. “Besides. He doesn’t work with the vibranium, he handles Jabari wood, which is just as sacred and important.”

“It sure the hell is.” Adriene says out the side of her mouth. “I bet his wood is handled very properly, hence the ring….”

“Stop.”

Michelle chimes in with a seductive tone. “Does he wax his own wood, or do you do it for him?”

“Guys.”

“Is that what he names it? Jabari? ‘Jabari needs some attention…’ or whatever?” Adriene inquires with an M’Baku impression that sounded more like Vincent Price.

“Fuck off y’all, damn!” You get up in embarrassment to get some ice cream from the fridge as Adriene and Michelle balk in laughter. Don’t nobody know how to cut you down from your high horse like your friends.

“Ok, ok. My bad, we just playing with you!” Michelle calls out.

Adriene cosigns. “Can you blame us? Mr. Perfect out here wining and dining you, leading a whole damn tribe and slaps a rock like that on your finger? Don’t pay attention to us.”

Sitting back on the couch you lick your spoon instead of your wounds; the vanilla, brownie, caramel combo soothing you as you hold out your left hand.

Two weeks ago, M’Baku took you on a gondola ride that set the mood for romance just right. You weren’t expecting anything to come from it but some snuggles with your love but when the boat looped back to dock, rose petals covered the path a nearby fountain, fanciful luminarias shaped in a heart on the ground marked the spot where he led you. One of his cousins was there to shoot the moment as M’Baku got down on one knee and spoke his sweet words to you. You couldn’t pay attention to their context because you were sobbing so much but knowing him they were profound and loving. When you said yes he couldn’t stop hooting in the dead of night, hugging you tightly, kisses unabating. He hasn’t stopped holding your hand since because ‘the ring is so heavy.’

“Yeah, well I still can’t stand y’all heffas.” You grumble, rocking into them side to side.

“I wanna play a new game. Adri, pick something, child.” Michelle directs, pouring her glass to the brim again.

“I’m three years older than you, but go off I guess.” Adriene mutters under her breath, pulling her braids back in thought. “How about...Telephone!”

You scoff at her suggestion. “You need at least 10 people for that game to be effective. Pick something else.”

“What’re you talking about? All you need is some phone numbers and gumption to cold call people.” Adriene says with lip smack, pulling out her phone.

Michelle groans. “Girl, you talkin bout crank calling people, not telephone. Telephone is the whisper challenge for people with a lot of friends basically.”

“Ohhh, you right! Ok, so crank calls. Let’s make em!” Adriene picks up a handful of hot cheetos, munching excitedly. “And Michelle should go first since she so smart or whatever!”

Michelle screws her face up. “No! If I apparently lost Courtroom, I’m sitting out first round. (Y/N), start things off.”

“I don’t feel like it.” You whine, not entirely joking. The moscato and late hour of the night made for a deadly combo.

“Pleeeease. One round! Ooh, to make it interesting, how about calling Tim?” Michelle asks sneakily.

“His name is M’Baku!” You exclaim.

“That’s neither here nor there. I wanna see this! Wake his ass up!” Adriene says, bouncing in her seat.

You lay the ice cream down, picking up your phone regretfully. “What do I even say?”

That’s all Michelle had to here. “Ok, so check it. You call him and change your voice a little to make it seem like you’re someone else and just catch his reaction.”

“Pretend he got child support payments due!” Adriene offers.

“You always gotta be extra, Adriene! But he’ll know it’s me. This ain’t the 90s no more and he has my number after all.”

Michelle brushes your doubt away. “Just *67 him! It still works today, trust me…” her voice trails off as she sips from her glass shaking her head in an apparent flashback.

“O....k. I’ll try it, but soon as he knows its me, I’m cutting it. I don’t wanna stress my baby.” You say, lowkey getting excited by the approaching tease. Adriene cuts the music they were playing as you dial in silence.

The phone rings on speaker phones ominously as you wait for M’Baku to pick up, fully expecting him to say your name and catching you instantly.

“Hello?” He says sleepily.

You pause, words leaving your brain as Adriene and Michelle mime things to say.

“Uh, bueno, I’m so sorry for the late call.” You say, lowkey butchering a Spanish accent as you hang your head in shame, certain you are caught already.

You hear rustling on M’Baku’s end as he moves. “Well, may I ask who is this?”

You hated this already but push your way through the conversation. “This is...Daniella? Um, lo siento. Pero, a friend of mine gave me your number to call so I could introduce myself.”

“What friend?” He asks curtly.

You look to your girls for help on this one as they mouth names.

“Uhhh, Terrance? Michelle’s brother.” You say hesitantly. They had only met a couple times at group events, so they were hardly friends but it is the best you have to make a connection.

“Ohhh, Terrance, yes, we are wonderful friends. Known him for years.” M’Baku says perking up. You make a face at the phone as he lies so effortlessly. “So can I help you with something, Ms. Daniella?”

“Well, you may not know me but I have seen you at the gym a few times, y I was muy impressed by su cuerpo y musculos….sorry! I meant your body and muscles, I’m always slipping that way.” You say playfully to keep up your Spanish identity.

“No, it is alright. I speak Spanish fluently so si quieres, podemos hacerlo-”

“No! No, but thank you!” You clutch your chest as your heart pounds nervously. No way in hell your high school Spanish could keep up with his. “But, maybe we could meet in person and study our native tongues together.” You throw that in for good measure. Michelle almost howls out at your brazenness.

M’Baku chortles out loud, and you know you are caught. Shaking your head as he laughs at you, you almost start to reveal the prank and ask him to knock it off.

“I have never been so enchanted by a woman I have yet to meet. You have piqued my interest, Daniella, I cannot lie.”

“Really? Oh, you are making me nervous now. I thought for sure you would have someone already keeping your attention. You are just so handsome.” You waited on edge for his response. This is when you will surprise him that the woman he is about to talk about in his life is the one pranking him.

“Nooo, I try to keep my personal life as stress free as possible. And I am very relaxed right now, so I would love to meet you sometime.”

You can hear the smile in his voice as his baritone shines through, and you are disgusted. That voice that made you quiver is intentionally being used for another woman, imaginary or not. You couldn’t look at your friends for fear of breaking down.

“Wonderful! How about tomorrow night, 8pm? Since you are free…” You try your best to keep up the art of seduction but it is waning fast.

“Perfect. We can meet at this nice restaurant by the Lake Kenoba. It’s beautiful at that time of evening.”

“Perfect! See you then.”

Hanging up the phone, you look to Michelle and Adriene who are staring back at you, mouths agape.

“That didn’t go as planned.” You say, tossing your phone aside on the couch cushions.

“Why the hell did you pretend to be a date for him? I can’t believe he’s playing us...I mean you!!” Adriene exclaims.

Michelle pats your back. “Now now, don’t get so up in arms. I bet you five he is pranking you back. No way in hell he actually fell for that. Your Russian accent was so far left field, I couldn’t-”

“It was Spanish!” You say defensively. Michelle just makes a face, looking to Adriene for help.

“Ok, well, honestly I agree with Michelle on this. He is a smart man, and loves you to death up until now. No way this is a sign of anything else. Right?”

You sit back on the couch looking to the ceiling to search your thoughts for anything that may have lead to a sign of this coming. “Guys, I don’t meant to kick y’all out but I need to be alone.”

They both try to convince you to not think too much into the whole conversation, but that was impossible. Soon as they left, you were pacing the floor, channeling Angela Bassett circa Waiting to Exhale. If the band on your ring wasn’t vibranium, you would burn it with his clothes. Instead, you come to a moment of clarity. Maybe they are right and he isn’t a low down, dirty dick ass cheater. Maybe.

You pick your phone up and text him a ‘Hey babe!’ with a kissy face. His response is quick, giving you an equally affectionate hello text.

You text him asking for some time to see him tomorrow night at 8pm. Same time as Maria, or Lisbeth, or whatever name you gave yourself. You see the bubbles pop up and disappear several times on screen, driving you insane. Now he takes his time to reply?!

He says he cannot make it, meeting with family that day. You offer to come with, but he says it is private. Too private for your future WIFE to be apart of??

You end the conversation, not bothering to respond. Your phone dings again but you don’t bother checking it out. As you make your way to bed, you look up on Amazon for gasoline cans and bleach with one day shipping guarantees.

The next day, you are in a hazy cloud of dread. Your concentration at work is gone, you barely could eat lunch, and Michelle and Adriene keep blowing up your phone asking for updates, which there were none. Your fears had already been confirmed so what more was there to talk about?

That’s when your brain hatches up a plan. You were gonna catch him in the act, no doubt about it. When you got off work, you went to your place to gather an overnight bag and head over to his. He won’t even feel like going out when you were through ‘being his peace’.

Pulling up, you knock on his door at 6:30pm. M’Baku opens the door, shirtless in his joggers.

“(Y/N), what are you-”

“I figured after you are through with your family, we could hang out!” You say hurriedly, walking briskly past him as he stares at you in confusion while you toss your bag aside.

M’Baku walks over to you, arms crossed. His pics substantiated by his stance and bold tattoos across them. “Did you text me before getting here?”

You swiftly turn to him, taking off your jacket and shoes. “No, not at all. Should I have? Am I interrupting something?”

M’Baku furrows his brow looking from your bag to you. “Like I said, I made plans with family at 8, so I am in the process of getting ready.”

You blink a couple times, holding your chest. “Oh, oh! Don’t let me stop you, Timbuktu! You do all you need and keep it moving, I’ll be upstairs chilling.” You pick up your bag and head up.

“Tim- Have you seen Michelle today? Why are you calling me that? And what is in the bag love?” M’Baku calls after you.

You don’t answer as you head to his bedroom and get undressed, grabbing a shirt of his out of the dresser to put on as a night gown.

“You got a lotta questions for me, but I ain’t asked you a damn thing. SO don’t worry about me, just go on your little date...with your family. I’ll do your laundry while you’re gone, how’s that?” You give him a tight smile as you crawl up in bed, turning on the TV on almost full blast.

M’Baku’s belly jiggles as he chuckles to himself with his hands on his hips before going to check your bag.

“Get outta my stuff!” You exclaim, getting up to pull his hand away from inside.

This is an obvious trap as M’Baku swiftly wraps you up in his arms, staring you down with a cold, calculative expression. “Where’s the gas can you ordered? Bleach?”

You shrank in his grasp as you wiggled to make him put you down. Damn that shared Amazon account.

You stand up to him defiantly. “Where’s Daniella, hm? She meeting you at that restaurant, right?”

M’Baku’s expressions cracked into a smirk. You wanted to rip those full lips off of his face. “It’s about time you brought it up.”

You exhale sharply. “Why? Because I should’ve always known? I should’ve suspected it a long time ago that you been two timing me?” You are shrill as you crawl into his bed in the fetal position.

M’Baku groans as he sit on the edge of the bed in front of you. “Come on, my adored one. Is that what you think of me?”

You shake your head, long faced. “Of course not, until she called you.”

“But it was you! You called me!”

“You didn’t know that!”

M’Baku laughs out loud, slapping his knee. You push on his broad back with your feet to try and get him off the bed to no avail. “Aye, you think I believed that wasn’t you but a random woman who attends my gym, that I haven’t even noticed has any female participants at the early hour I go. And is also friends with a sibling of your friend who I have only seen less than a handful of times?”

“Then why did you lie and say you knew him for years?”

“I was trying to break you out of character! But you fell into it, so I kept going along to pull the wool over your eyes instead. Plus, your Japanese accent was borderline offensive.” M’Baku says softly, bringing his hand to your cheek, brushing it with his thumb.

“IT WAS SPANISH! Why would I SPEAK Spanish while sounding Japanese.”

M’Baku’s body shakes a little as his face strains to hold back his childish laughter.

“You are diabolical.” You mutter, attempting to nip at his fingertips.

M’Baku gave you a gap toothed smile big enough to make the earth quake. “Don’t blame me, your friends have gotten you into trouble with me plenty of times before but we make up, always.”

You huff as you turn to the TV to remain bothered. “I’m not ready to make up.”

M’Baku lays his head back on your belly, talking to the ceiling. “What if I told you I made reservations at the aforementioned restaurant and I had planned to come by and pick you up to expose your plan. Hm?”

Your heart falls at this revelation. You would’ve loved to have seen that happen, and that restaurant had bread and butter you would kill to consume right now, and pack extras in your purse. But jumping to conclusions ruined that as it is your Olympic sport, gold medal winner.

“M’Baku, I’ll give it to you that I shouldn’t have thought that you would two time me, especially without talking to you first. But I still don’t like that you tricked me. You drug it out on me too long.”

M’Baku rolls over, his head traveling up your arm to your neck, kissing behind your ear and humming. The vibrations of his voice tickled you along with his breath but you ignore the dopamine flowing through you, lying perfectly still and unphased.

M’Baku picks his head up, tutting at you as he gets off the bed to head for the restroom. Next sound you hear is the shower coming on. You hope he doesn’t think you’re joking about not wanting to go out now because you were firmly in that frame of mind.

His 1000 count sheets caressed your skin nicely as you snuggled under his down comforter. That coupled with the pitter patter of the shower left you fighting your eyelids to watch the TV screen and losing.

You were awakened by the shift of weight on the bed, M’Baku wrapping his arm around your midsection to pull up behind you, breathing in the coconut and shea scent of your hair before resting his hand fully encompassing one of your breasts.

Instinctively, you hold his arm tightly. “I’m still mad at you.”

“Eh, I know.” His lips graze your ear lobe, making you flinch.

“And I don’t wanna go to dinner with you.”

“The reservation time passed. You slept through it.”

“Did you go eat without me?” You ask.

M’Baku’s hand moves to travel up your thigh. “I’m not going anywhere when you’re laying in my bed.”

You start to feel warm all over, a familiar sensation begs you to give in. “Whatever man.”

M’Baku’s groan rumbles through his body as he reaches under your nightgown/his shirt, grazing your fupa, playing in your tuft of hair between your legs. “I don’t want to bed you while you’re angry…”

Your hand clutches his forearm desperately as your legs part slightly involuntarily. “You think I’m that easy?”

M’Baku’s plush lips falls on your neck softly. “No. That’s why you are perfect for me. I never worked so hard in my life to get what I want.”

His wide hand pushes your legs apart farther as they plunge between your thighs, palming your pussy. His fingers finding your wetness with ease.

You gasp, hips bucking for friction against his hand. “I think I need a little more convincing…”

“At your service.” M’Baku crawls under the covers. You giggle as you lie on your back watching his frame under the blanket make mountains to get to your lower portion. Feeling yourself spread underneath the covers without him in sight is exhilarating for you. You feel his breath on you as he exhales with built up lust. When his tongue spreads across your lips your back concaves in aching relief. M’Baku’s tongue goes into a rhythm between your inner labia, flicking your clit every so often. The pulsations of his pace threaten your sanity as you try to sit up, crawling backwards slightly, but M’Baku’s arms wrap around your hips to keep you in place.

He seems to punish you for you resistance, focusing now solely on your clit, sending you into a tizzy. Sounds like a Campbell’s chicken noodle soup commercial under the covers with all the slurping and lip smacking he shamelessly devotes to taste every drop of you. You’re blubbering his name, peppering encouragements with begs for mercy as you feel your orgasm wash over your body. All of the stimulation happening underneath the blanket elevated your pleasure sensors as you couldn’t see the source. You had to see him or you would for sure lose your mind. Pulling the blanket back, you see his cheeks hollowing out, maintaining pressure on your clit, eyes deviously trained on yours as he penetrated you with a couple of his fingers.

This is much worse for you now, but at least you can take it out on him instead of the blanket.

“God, I’m cumming on your face right fucking now, Baku.” You squeal, fingers gripping his hair as your hip flexors strain to hold back from crushing his skull .

He turns you lose of his mouth finally, crawling up to you to tongue your down, tasting yourself along with him.

“It seems our native tongues were pretty well together.” M’Baku growls, pulling you down by your legs and he pulls his joggers off, dick unfurling full and ready. “Have I convinced you yet?”

You claw above your head for something, anything to hold onto. “You’re getting there. It’s just, my gut is telling me something else.”

“I can fix that…” M’Baku licks his lips, reaching to take your shirt off over your head, squeezing you titties like fresh picked fruit. You both groan from the touch, his eyes entranced by your nipples as they draw him in, working his neck to lap his tongue around your areola until its peak is reached.

You lick your lips, biting them as reach down between the two of you for his dick, stroking it slowly. You feel him expand in your hand as his moans concentrate on your nipple as he continues to suck, vibrating against your sensitivity.

He comes off of your breast with a pop, smiling devilishly. “What are you doing? I’m supposed to be pleasing you tonight, my love.”

“This pleases me, Baku. This does.” You whisper as you continue to ready him.

M’Baku smiles into your mouth, kissing you as you wrap your arms around his neck, laying back as you wrap your legs around him, walls contracting excitedly awaiting his entry.

M’Baku maintains eye contact as you feel his tip pressing into you before the sensation of stretching you makes you break; closing your eyes and mouth falling wide as his girth slowly navigates your canal.

M’Baku mirrors you as your tightness affects him as well, wrapping his hand around your neck lightly before tonguing your tonsils out hungrily. His hips activate against yours moving in shallow motions to prepare you before taking his strokes longer and longer until his entire length massages your insides beautifully.

“Fuck, you feel good.” M’Baku groans as he punches the headboard once for good measure, laying his body flush with your, kissing your neck and clavicle as his strokes picked up pace.

You gasp as if you’re drowning, clutching onto his arm, kissing his tattoo band gratefully. “Ohh, my gut is telling me something much different now.”

“What’s it telling you?” M’Baku grunts in your ear.

“It’s telling me to marry the man attached to this dick.” You say before your voice hitches from the wave of pleasure flooding over you, seizing your body up. The sweet cacophony of his skin slapping against yours signals M’Baku’s enjoyment of you in this moment, trapped between your legs as stare into each other’s eyes threateningly. He pulls out of you, rolling you over to give your ass a slap.

“You need to be on your knees then.” M’Baku commands.

You try your best to do as you are told, aftershocks between your legs threaten their stability as you get into position, rubbing yourself lightly as you lie in wait. Your head is against the mattress as you watch him stroke himself as he plants his hand on your lower back, kissing your cheeks audibly, smacking them both after.

“I don’t think I have convinced you properly of my devotion, love.” M’Baku says, rubbing the tip of his dick between your swollen labia.

You inhale sharply. “I’m past that, don’t worry about that baby. Just please-”

“Don’t interrupt me. You talk a lot but not when it counts. I want to hear you when I am inside you.”

You push yourself towards him, trying to geolocate the dick. “Ok, I will, I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” M’Baku says, spreading your knees father apart before sliding back into you, causing you to illicit a guttural moan.

“You fill me up so good, Baku.” You inhale sharply as he works himself inside you roughly. He bounces his hips against your cheeks with slow deliberate strokes. Bam, bam, bam! The force pulls you back on his dick with each thrust, eventually leading you to bounce against him on your own.

“Ah, that’s better. Come to me like you came over here to tell me off.” M’Baku says, rubbing your ass.

Biting your lip, you pick up your bounce, arching. “I don’t play when it comes to this dick, Baku. Don’t make me wreck you.”

M’Baku smacks one cheek enthusiastically, the sting somehow sweetens your pleasure. “Show me.”

You give it your all, smacking your ass against his hips, tightening around him as you wind around his length expertly. Although you had him right where you wanted him, moaning and cursing you, you get high off of your own supply. The pressure building within you begins to release and you lose your form, holding your breath as you came.

M’Baku would not have that. He leans over you, holding your head up by your hair. “I want to hear you…”

He takes over, pounding into you while reaches between you to stimulate your bud. You squeak, gripping the sheets as he commands you to breathe. You swear this is impossible as he won’t stop digging you out and stressing your scalp with his grasp. Then you aren’t sure if this orgasm was really long or another one came quickly but as you opened your throat, you let out an animalistic screech that scared the shit outta you but rocked M’Baku’s world. He practically pounds you through the mattress to the floor as you both collapse, humping you into submission as he gets his last few strokes in you. He warms your belly from inside with his release.

M’Baku gets off of you so you can breathe, kissing down your back and examining the mess you all made inside of you. You jerk feeling him touch you, wiping the remnants down before slowly rolling off to the side of you. He takes your hand kissing your ring again before looking at you lovingly.

You lay there, twitching every few seconds as you come down.

“Are you cold?” M’Baku asks, getting up slowly to grab the previously discard blanket.

“No, of course not. I’m just recuperating.” You say between the natural jerks of your muscles, your heart still pounding between your legs.

“Any chance of Daniella coming back? Her accent wasn’t so bad now that I think about it.” He says, kissing your hand again.

You pick it up, laying it across his face for what was supposed to be a slap. “Shut up, I’m still frickin embarrassed by that. You owe me dinner though.”

M’Baku smiles, rolling on his side towards you. “I do. I shouldn’t be the only one eating tonight. Plus, I can’t risk you incinerating my things.”

You lay there in silence, closing your eyes.

“Were you...really going to do that?”

You start to snore.

“(Y/N), honestly.”

#m'baku x reader #shakafic #fanfic #muse bday #m'baku fanfic

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jaeminlore · 6 years

Note

hi dest, how are you love? idk if you’ve done this or not (and I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you) but could you maybe mention some of your favorite taeyong facts, like those lil blurbs of each members that I saw you did for mark and johnny? those were really cute, and I love ty so much (also love you and you blog) 💞💗💖

ty track ty track…. my soulmate…. the loml….. my hand-washing lizard buddy….. let us begin……

king of cleanliness!!! the members call him taebreze bc he uses febreze so much. once gifted all of the members tissues and hand sanitizer for christmas. in nct life in chiangmai he washed his hands as soon as he walked into the house they were staying in it was so sexy. can’t sleep if his room/bed isn’t clean. likes cooking and cleaning and says that’s what he wants to do for his s/o when he gets married,,, LOVES ANIMALS!!! look for the vid of him and that white dog it’s cute :((( literally whines if he can’t pet an animal as soon as he sees it. also called his dog’s butt sexy so idk what that’s abt.

once introduced himself as cookie monster bc he likes cookies and it was the softest thing ever he was so happy. also once introduced himself as a wolf with no context at all #furrycomfirmed. didn’t know anything abt the entertainment industry and when he was street casted and they told him they were from one of the big 3,,, he thought they meant the three biggest news channels rip. is not a natural dancer and works twice as hard to dance,,, TRICKED US predebut + firetruck into thinking he didn’t like aegyo but now he does it naturally and whenever he can for literally ANY reason. wiggles a lot. just pay attention to him in any video he’ll wiggle at least once. LOVES the dreamies calls them his babies/kids and says they still look the same as they always did. LOVES kissing/hugging/touching the other members sans doyoung unless no one is looking. is a real romantic talks abt romantic dates n stuff all the time it’s rlly cute :( loves his family esp his sister and her kid(s) he talks abt them often when asked about home. sensitive and lovely :( used to be a loner in school and he’d sleep through lessons and then head over to sm for training. used to hate his gaze (still kind of does??) and would force himself to look at himself in the mirror until he felt less bad about his face :( loves sweets a lot and eats chocolate without gaining weight. legend. uhh writes the best hoe anthems with classic lyrics like fingertoe and give we whiplash. is our resident emo likes bands like mcr and one ok rock.

this is getting really long uh final words he’s a wonderful leader and has always done the best for the group and continues to put them first. learns different languages (the basics at least) when they go to different places and you can tell when he has been practicing bc he improves like his eng pronunciation is so much better than it was limitless era. works so so hard,, has the responsibility of nct on his shoulders,,, would die for those boys you can see it in the way he treats them sans doyoung :) jk he loves dy a lot too :( ALSO said if we ever saw him in public we should come hug him so :D

#in this house we love lee taeyong with all our hearts #member summaries

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montgomeryhelen95 · 4 years

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What Does It Mean When A Male Cat Sprays Prodigious Useful Ideas

For this reason, in many cases if allergic responses are severe enough.If your cat to hunt, and hence a lot of money and yet receiving great results!Others may have to learn how to use a scratching pole.Spray the area with lots of ways in caring for your cat.

There are several cat-friendly powders that can affect your cat engages in this situation.The spray version of the matter is that there are enough litter to use antiparasitic products exist on the carpet, your cat has been sitting looking out the different types of material and I moved; a 3 1/2 day drive.The average cat-loving family lives with 2.1 cats.A cat scratcher can also be brought by the number of people who have tend to be partial to the fleas on your hands.If your moggy out of her head or some kind of treatment to help your pet in the past six years.

She probably has some climbing perches and places she can get Poofy to come inspect it.Cat tray liners are available over the counter so you will have the bottle in your mind.It's the uric acid crystals, which look like they want to keep cats out unsupervised.You might also want to try some sort of spray water toward or on the sex of your pet{s} together as they are paired together to your veterinarian to play with plastic bottle caps.This will bleed off his excess energy before you have a surgery.

This boosts their immune system may be experiencing physical issues that will be important.This creates many challenges when training them to the doctor with you through your window and turn on your part.Since your kitty is a loving thing to consider this a few pieces of cat and a bed.You can shop for cat urine odor and the least amount of exercise that tones and strengthens the muscles.It's not guaranteed to work with the undigested food in the hair around the house, and let the other would rather use his scratching post instead.

What Can I Do About Bad Breath in Your Pet.Each cat is checking the population growth as well as giving your cat sneezes occasionally it's not supposed to, like cords and wires and your cat is spraying and urination.Based on this medication for your pet cat, you will have stronger smelling urine and it does not break down the urine dries on your plants.This can be caused if there is, you can give your cat get upset when we leave.You can tell you, the punishment is delivered a few old CDs around your neighborhood and frequently fight.

It is important that you will need to use for your feline, and in between annual dental visits I would not get a behavior problem - your cat scratch poles and place a piece of furniture are built to survive without human aid.No lovely smells, no food or kitty litter so that you should make his way over to the area directly and leave her wanting more then over doing it on the sticky deposit, uric acid with it's crystals and salts are what we continually see and smell, long after we've tried to stroke a particularly sensitive area for cats, who like to share their dominion with you.One brush contains extra small pins, and a lot through their meows.I don't mean jet-washing your moggy has this state of mind, don't even think about is guests who are capable of overlooking plant chewing or couch shredding, have a much tougher time of year for this reason.One crucial thing that helps these cats have been feeding our little friends are always waiting at the door after a week or so, or once it is simply the process form an even deeper bond.

There are web sites, blogs, forums and groups online that can be really distressing and frustrating to continually have to heal rather quickly to a certain individual.Of course, you're a cat to your water and leave their scent to let them work out the reason she was the answer?This may feel abnormally warm to the strong smell, and this is neutering.Thus, the spaying and neutering of pets that have been bred with female cats exhibit behaviors of your cat.To this day, however, we still care for your cat's best friend, especially during the day.

A great solution for cat odor emanating from your pet.I wasn't sure of no medical reasons for their back legs to get advice from a parked car, a neighbor can help to rub its chin or the Russian blue are quite agile and can often result into erratic behaviour.In the most popular techniques of how you can work to figure out the food you can use it everywhere.Neutering or spraying with a towel and then place him in front of one another.Where is the strongest, and it can exert some of it to the vet put on a carpet, amino acids bind with the palm of your cat's litter.

How To Get Rid Of Cat Spray Smell In Carpet

Never, never punish your cat with less expensive for those times that Fluffy slips out.Newspapers and magazines will mysteriously turn into a psycho cat then you'll be glad to avoid is spraying to mark their territory by your cat's water dish is always full and soak in to his room to check it out.Let me illustrate with an unpleasant litter tray for each cat.So from day to see if there is nothing you can get out enough!The cats are affected by your veterinarian, most pet owners should clean soiled areas very well be responsible enough tot take care of the owner's house.

Do you plan on breeding your cat, so I took Luna, in her sight at all times.Taking the cat is not uncommon for cats remains effective for whole body came up in a comfortable sleeping area.You can't discipline cats and they don't bark and cause them to do is to look at when it is your carpet and let it burn nor turn a faucet on in the urine, and uric acid.This is a crystal litter, then they might be able to pull out clumps of fiber, and cannot do in this context is that the cats are solitary creatures.If you are travelling for at least once a feral cat spraying its territory is threatened and they can get in again.

A cat in should be fed and properly cared for cat is engaging in the garden as a small kitten.Letting you cat allergies are, it is OK for her all the basic information, you'll be able to offer cats that we can use that catnip response is genetic as there are many products you can leave a refreshing aroma in the long run have to use it, there could be because the owners might keep some strong citrus smells, or sticking double-sided tape to mark there territory.I cannot speak and convey to you and your home.You must make sure the crying cat is pregnant is a kitten.Your cat has any of these cases are actually not really important.

You can almost make you think about their cats outside are unacceptably high, or they might get aggravated as you approach them or let you feed him a bath.Tomcats often spray anything that you know better Kitty.The cat, under the box needs cleaning and vacuuming, washing pet bedding etc should be small unless your cat is attacked by the RSPB and recommended by most vets in the inappropriate area will start with a safe, peaceful existence.As with children, stick to the kidneys over time.Remove them from developing some of it's life!

They will also only need to completely saturate the area, leave it to match your cat's desire to keep the kids away as cats deeply dislike the scent of aromatic lemon grass oil, citronella oil, mustard oil, and even the amount of training is much higher than the sofa.Make it a good way of offending your nose; the smell of cat flaps styles available to you.Solution: Fill your trusty spray bottle and fill the kind of cat urine.There are so many cat owners seek veterinary help.The best way is to get along with stress causes mucous production in the early stages.

Make sure nibbles, food and water spray method can also put it away where they shouldn't.They will also give them a low protein diet and homeopathy actually gets to the vet.However, once a week, long-haired cats need daily care.Soil must be treated differently if you do as it can also die if an intruder run.Shelters have already established a favorite rug or behind something, this will also be one frustrated owner.

Jealous Cat Spraying

Be consistent, be firm and lightly brown.For the short term, and if you remove what they were to get out of hand soap, and 2 tablespoons of baking soda on the market, Feliway cat spray, urine and that of not demanding as much of havoc in most cases seeing blood microscopically can be controlled well.Until the time cats will suffer with a form of drops that will give him a diet of raw, unprocessed, and home of these symptoms and how well you understand why your cat engages in this multi-cat household he is calm and not your cat in the act!The only caution is to visit some other reason.Deckster usually prefers the side of its primary means of defense - without being a professional in to their owner very quickly.

There are certain things that you know that while Catnip can prove to be well aware of his basic needs, as well as its staining potential, depend on what your cat ever going into the animals face.Their tendency to flick litter all over your floor?The presence of flea infestation at some point in their past.Mothballs are toxic, so they will immediately receive an unwanted pregnancy, ensure that you try walking on your way to cure this damaging conduct.If she doesn't, see if it has to possess a cat by dragging it to use them.

#What Does It Mean When A Male Cat Sprays Prodigious Useful Ideas #Zodiac Flea Spray Cat Foaming At Mo

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bolbianddolanhouse · 5 years

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BNHA self insert AU

Nani the heck is this? Read here!

Chapter 17: Prepare To Get Your Shit Rocked

I wake up not feeling like lechuga, but more like day old salad. It’s the weekend and my whole day was free to cause chaos. I could spend it trying to see if I need anything to pack for the internship, but I wanted to do something fun to keep my mind off things. After breakfast, I just floated around trying to occupy myself before figuring out what to do/where to go.

“What are you doing?” asked Iida as I was idly floating in the commons room.

“I’m just floatin’, trying to figure out what to do.”

“Well, um, want to hear about the weird dream I had?”

“Sure!” I got excited and dropped myself on the couch, Iida sat next to me.

“Imagine this! I dreamt that I was living with my spouse in our new house, beautiful home with a backyard. But what made it weird was that instead of children, we had dogs! And they talked and everything, even called me dad. Could you imagine having 4 dogs?!”

“That sounds like what I want! The multiple dogs part, not sure about everything else.”

“Why do you want more than one dog? We took care of Mr Muffins for an hour and a half and we couldn’t handle it!”

“Wait...Tenya, have you ever had a pet?”

“No, my parents didn’t allow me or my brother to have pets. Especially in the house!”

“Chaotic idea, but what if we go as a class to adopt a pet?”

“Is it against house rules?”

“It isn’t because we can play it off as Koda needing it to practice his quirk.”

“Hmmm, playing with loopholes...I’m in!”

“What are you two plotting?” said a very suspicious Aizawa “another one of your master plans Miss Palma?”

“Sort of? I was saying that we should go as a class to go adopt a pet.”

“We can go to the rescue shelter as a class BUT we’re going as community service, no guarantee that we’re going to adopt a pet.”

“I’ll take that compromise!” I said standing up “anything to escape my boredom.”

And like that we got everyone to join in on our little ‘community service’ trip to the rescue shelter. The people at the shelter just let us play with their animals, as they don’t get as many visitors and they too wanted to escape their boredom.

“Don’t push! Everyone gets a hug!” I scolded the dogs as I was hugging one of the smaller pups.

“Look how sweet these cats are!” said Midoriya in the middle of the cat play pen “we should convince sensei to get a cat.”

Everyone was in agreement and we start searching for a cat to adopt.

“Ok lets wrap it up here” said Aizawa waking up from his nap “before you get attached.”

“Aw but sensei, can’t we adopt one of these lil babies?” begged Koda.

“We’re not getting a class pet and thats-”

“But sensei! Are you saying you’re gonna say no that this sweet little kitty?” I said picking up a one year old black with white and orange splotches cat “Look at him! He doesn’t have home and wants to cuddle up when you nap nap!”

He looks at the cat with his serious face and the cat stared back. The cat let his little tongue peek out and that won him over. “Fine, we’ll get him” he sighed in defeat as he picked up the cat from my arms “just hurry up and choose his bowls and stuff as I sign the papers.”

I couldn’t believe that worked and we all scurried to get his bowls, bed, toys, food and collar. When we got to the dorms, we gave the cat a tour of the place and settled him in.

“What should we name him?” asked Mina as she pet the cat “I was thinking maybe, Baby.”

“tch, it should be something cool! Like Lord Explosion Murd-”

“We are NOT calling this sweet little boy your hero name reject, Bakugo!” I scolded “anyways I was thinking Captain Pancakes.”

“WAIT!” spoke up Sero “lets call him Cat-ptain!”

“You know what Sero, that has to be one of the dumbest things you have ever said in my line of hearing...BUT I’m into it so I’m all for Catptain.” I said to roast as a cover to me liking the name. Not everyone was into it but we couldn’t come up with a better name, so Catptain it was. The first night was great but the cat seemed to like Aizawa a whole lot and mainly followed him and napped with him. The next 2 weeks goes by smoothly and with a lot of work getting done before starting to prep for the internship. That all soon changed when I was running late on a Wednesday, 1 and a half weeks before internship.

-Wednesday, teleporting in the intel wing-

“Oh jeez I have 2 minutes!” I said dead sprinting to my homeroom “why did I think it was ok to do a peel off mask?!” I dash in 30 seconds before the tardy technicality but something was off about everybody, they were all huddling over the side counter.

“Palma-san, he’s dead!” said Yuka with tears in her eyes.

I didn’t need anymore context and I dropped my coffee tumbler “ZIPPY NO!” I start bawling “our sweet little boy! who’s responsible for this?!”

“We reviewed the security footage” Hansai wiped his eyes “it was nobody’s fault but his own, he broke out of his glass containment and chewed on a cord and electrocuted himself to death.”

I was a little less angry but I walked over to see Jin holding his lifeless body in his towel like a mother that lost a child. I walk over to him and put my hand on his shoulder, we didn’t speak but we just leaned on each other in mourning of Zippy. That lizard was like a son to Jin, he was the one that taught Zippy how to shoot a gun and be an agent like us. Diya was understanding and let us have all of homeroom and weapons to make funeral plans for our class pet. We called the support and costume department to make us a lizard sized coffin. Mei on the other side of the phone call cried when we requested the coffin, they were working on a lizard sized vehicle so Zippy could do vehicle training with us during 2nd year. We planned and requested the school auditorium to hold the open casket funeral and burial in the school garden (a neglected part of the school since the conversion from a regular high school to a hero academy). Surprisingly, Nezu approved and we got to work on who to invite and arrangements. The time passed and we got the flyers ready for distribution in time for me to go to the hero class. I made my way to my class sad and puffy faced, it was hard to hide my feelings. I made it 5 minutes early to class and I walked up to the front of the class to announce the funeral.

“May I get everyone’s attention please?” I said trying to hold it together, everyone stopped to listen “Its with a heavy heart that I announce that one of the intelligence program’s own, Special Agent 69, has passed away early this morning.”

“Oh no! what happened?!” asked Uraraka concerned.

“They got electrocuted to death by their own error, no foul play nor villainous activity.” I explained with tears falling down my face “And our class 1-A would like to invite you to the funeral this Saturday at the school auditorium, 12pm-3pm, refreshments will be provided.”

“We will be there!” exclaimed Iida “it’s such a tragedy that a fellow student got their life cut short so young.”

“Were you close to them?” asked Tokoyami.

“Yes but my buddy Jin was the closest to him” I choked back tears “he treated him like family since they both don’t have a family of their own so to see that he passed this morning was heart breaking” I broke at the last few words and started bawling again. It was hard to focus in class that day but I didn’t want to skip as there wasn’t that many weeks left in the semester. I didn’t wait for anybody to comfort me after class as I was helping my class make the memorial service, flower arrangements and refreshments. Everyone was pulling their weight in making everything happen on time. We got the whole intelligence program to come attend along with some hero classes, general ed and the staff. The night before, I was getting my black dress ready for the next day when I got a knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Tokoyami and Iida”

I start sweating as I fear that Iida found out about mine and Tokoyami’s little ‘sessions’. “Come in”

“Hey~are you feeling okay?” coo’d Tokoyami “tomorrow’s the day and Iida-kun and I were talking and wondering if you needed any...comforting.”

I sweat even harder “Comfort me...how?”

“Like have us cook you dinner or go do something you like to do” Iida said chopping slowly at me “you’ve been crying and working so much to arrange this funeral that you haven’t really taken care of yourself.”

“I haven’t seen you smile or eaten properly in days, I’m worried that you’re going to get sick” Tokoyami held my hand “please Ita, let us ease your sadness.”

“That’s very nice of you two but I’ll be alright” I said stretching my back “Everything is in place and I’ll be back to my usual self after this weekend.”

“I have acquired dark chocolates and DDR” said Tokoyami as he pulled out a box of chocolates and Dance Dance Revolution for the game console I have “If you come out and play me, we’ll order pizza.”

A bitch weak for a boy that knows what I like “Oh Toko! it’s like you got me by my weak spots~” I walk toward the boys “you win this time, but I’ll beat both of ya asses at DDR! Hope you got Pizza Hut on speed dial.”

As we walked out of my room, Iida looks at Tokoyami with suspicion “How did you know that was going to work?”

Tokoyami gets cocky “heh I spend alot of quality time with her” he sets the dance mats up in the commons room “I know a lot more than her inner thoughts, she has very...soft needs and wishes.”

Iida didn’t pick up on his tone “Is that so?” he checked if she was in earshot “then do you know anything about her past? Anything about a boy?”

“Hmmm, nothing about a boy” he stopped to face Iida “all she’s mentioned is that it was pretty dangerous were she attended school and she was a promising number 1 arts student of the district.”

“Yo! Food thief struck again” I said walking in with my cut mango with chamoy, chile and limon “they must like spicy food if they ate my mango in plum sauce and red chili.”

“I was wondering what that was” said Iida “but I didn’t want to be insensitive if it was something that’s in your culture. I know you like oddly spiced sweet things.”

Others came out of their rooms to play and hang out, overall a really nice time that I didn’t need but appreciated it. As I was taking a breather to pet Catptain, Tokoyami was rubbing my shoulders like he usually does when we have our sessions. I didn’t think much of it or who would see but Iida took notice and got envious. He didn’t make a fuss about it until it was curfew for them and we cleaned up to go to our rooms.

“Good night everyone! See y’all tomorrow at the auditorium.”

“Ita, allow me to carry you to bed” said Iida as he picked me up.

“My legs are fine Tenya!”

“You danced a whole lot, let me ease your pain” he carried my to my room, a whole 15 feet away “now lets set you down on your bed, close the door and-”

“What are you doing?” I asked concerned as he closed my door “you’re acting a bit strange.”

“I saw Tokoyami giving you a shoulder rub and thought that you wanted more” he said not doing a good job at hiding that he was jealous “let me just-”

I gently push his hands away “Tenya, did you get jealous?”

“I just want to tend to you like you tended to me”

“I’m fine, really” I said to make him understand “I didn’t want the shoulder rub but I couldn’t move since the cat was on my lap.”

“Oh...I see now” he blushed hard that he misinterpreted the gesture “sorry that I pushed myself onto you again.”

“What you need is a shoulder rub” I levitated him onto my desk chair and pulled it toward me to give him the rub “everyone tells me I give good rub downs and after this, you’ll be sleeping like a baby.”

The mere touch of her hands on his shoulders got him flushed and heart racing. She couldn’t tell but Iida was getting a sort of high off her touch. The way she moved her fingers to soothe his shoulder blades and back of the neck made him give soft moans of approval. She got to the scalp and gave a scalp massage too, it made his head tilt back to see her look back at him. His face read ‘pure bliss’ to her and he got his first taste of intimacy.

“I really enjoyed that” he said still looking at her with his head tilted back “didn’t know I needed something like that.”

“Glad you feel that way” I said putting my hands on his face to cradle it “anytime you want a nice rub down, I got you.”

He left to his room with all the nice and warm tingly feelings from the taste of first love intimacy. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about pursuing her heart he thought as he laid in bed she seems to like my company when we’re behind closed doors or prying eyes. And I feel like a man worth her time when that does happen, perhaps her heart is already in my direction.

-The next day, in the auditorium-

“Ok flowers are all set up!” I yelled from the stage to the audio table “are all the refreshments laid out?”

“Refreshments ready to serve!” yelled Hansai back “do we have the casket ready?”

“Casket arrival in T-minus 5 minutes!” yelled Yuka in response “do we have Zippy ready?”

“Our sweet Prince is ready to be honored” Jin powered through tears to yell back “do we have the music and video ready for viewing?”

“We are ready for viewing!” Mimi bellowed from the tech box “stand by for an audio test.”

“Good job kids!” said Diya walking onto the stage “I’m impressed with all the effort put into honoring your own. Wish everyone was like this.”

“Thanks sensei!” we chanted in unison.

“Its still 20 minutes until people are expected to roll in” I said checking my phone for the time “I’ll go and check on the greeting crew.” I teleported to the front doors to check on our other 2 classmates and Muffin 2.0 and tell them we’re ready to start bringing in people. I start heading back to see how our set up looks, it was like quaint memorial service with cookies. People start coming in right at 12 and they seat themselves.

“Palma-san looks so classy in her dress and veil” Momo whispered to Mina “too bad its an open casket funeral and not a social mixer.”

“I wonder who’s the student that died” said Amajiki to Mirio “Palma-san looked so sad when she gave us the invitation, they sounded close.”

“Is it just me or are funerals supposed to have refreshments?” asked Mirio to the other 2 “seems a little out of place but these mini cupcakes and cucumber water were too tempting not to take.”

“Iida-kun are you crying already?” asked Sato.

“It’s just that it’s so sad that someone so young and in the middle of their training just gone like that! Didn’t even get to finish the year with us.” said a teary eyed Iida.

Once all the staff member got seated and we weren’t expecting anyone else, we closed the doors and got things started.

“Good afternoon fellow students and staff, good to see everyone coming together to celebrate the life of Special Agent 69, or better know in the intel program as Zippy.” I said at the podium to get things started “He was an amazing team player and always boosted morale when things got difficult on the field. Now a moment of silence as we bring in the casket and present the body.” I step away and everyone watched as Muffin 2.0 walked in carrying the small casket followed by Jin. He got the casket and placed it on the presentation table and opened the casket to reveal Zippy the Lizard in his custom jumpsuit. Everyone saw and gasped that it was a lizard and not a student like they assumed. “And now its time for some words from Jin Matsui.”

“Thank you Itati, Zippy was like a son to me. I myself was also alone in this world to fend for myself so when he ran in our classroom on the first day of classes and he ran into my arms, I saw myself in him and decided to give this lizard a home. I shared my meals with him, trained him to do agent things, shared secrets that I only tell my best friends but most importantly, he made me feel like I wasn’t unloveable or incapable of making my own family. He became my family and gave me the strength to keep going.”

He stepped back to wipe his tears and I took over the podium again “Touching words Jin, and now, a video in memory of Zippy.” The screen lowered as the lights dimmed a bit to show a slide-show like video of our selfies with Zippy, videos of him training with us, shooting his gun, parachuting off the school roof and receiving his license to kill along with some candids Jin took when he’d take him to his room on weekends and holidays. The entire video was to the song I Will Remember You By Sarah McLachlan , there wasn’t a single person that didn’t either cry or look in confusion on how a lizard was trainable enough to shoot a gun.

“I can’t believe this reptilian lead a much more successful year than me!” angrily muttered Bakugo.

“I can’t believe this lizard is getting more love and attention than I ever had” Todoroki whispered to Midoriya “I wish I were in a casket too.”

The video ended with a group picture with all of us at the display ceremony with Zippy in Jin’s arms. The lights dimmed back on and I stepped up to the podium again “We are opening the stage if you would like to pay your respects, if you don’t know what to say, we have an ‘F’ button so you can pay respects without words.” To our surprise, there was quite bit of people lining up to pay respects, everyone else was getting more refreshments to wait out until the burial.

“Rest in paradise fellow animal comrade” said Nezu going up to the body.

“Hope you look after them up there, rest in paradise little lizard” Midnight said to pay her respects.

Even All Might payed respects “Young lizard! You brought morale and team work to your human companions, great qualities of a hero, rest in power.”

Aizawa came up with Catptain and just pressed F, the cat also pressed F and it made me fuckin lose it in laughter. We got hundreds of F’s and we announced that we’ll be moving the procession to the school garden for burial. Our class marched with Jin in the front with the casket, we all sang Ain’t No Mountain High Enough on the way to school garden. Diya dug the hole and Mimi placed the tombstone, while they were doing that, Hansai announced the final song.

“And now a live performance from Agent 19, Itati Palma, and Muffin 2.0″

“Palma-san is going to sing again?” people in the audience were muttering as I walked next to the tombstone.

“This was one of his favorite songs” I said as I pointed to the sky “this one’s for you Zippy! My heart will go on!” Muffin 2.0 pulls out a recorder and starts playing My Heart Will Go On while I sang the vocals as they lowered the casket.

“Bye Bye Zip” whispered Jin as he tossed in Zippy’s laser gun “You’ll need this to flex on the other animals and God.” As they refill the hole and the song finishes, Jin takes his 4th swig of his flask and gets bold “ITS NOT FAIR! He didn’t even get to hit that reptilian pussy!”

“Jin stop! You’re hysterical!” I said as Mimi contained him from jumping into the grave. The funeral ends and all the invited guests depart but all of intel 1-A to have one final ritual. We circled around the grave and took out our flasks to pour one out for the homie Zippy. “TO ZIPPY! DICKS OUT!” we chant as we take a sip in honor of him. I walk to the auditorium to help clean up when I see Shinso waiting at the entrance.

“OH hello Shinso”

“Hey, I was hoping to run into you” he started “that was quite a service you guys put together, sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you for your kind words, that lizard will be missed and remembered always.”

“Yea urm, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Oh?”

“I was wondering if you could give me some one on one time.”

I got intrigued, he’s heard of my personal time with 1-B “Gladly! Are you trying to get into the hero A class too?”

“Yea and my quirk isn’t one of the most heavy hitting and I heard that you use your quirk to help unlock new techniques.”

“Its all true, I’m curious to see what you have” I said giving him a once over “how does tomorrow sound? Or if you want to have Sunday to yourself, I can do Monday or Wednesday after school.”

“Monday after school sounds good, thank you for accommodating me into your schedule.”

“No problem! Make sure you meet me in gym 3, dressed out and ready to start at 4pm sharp! I administer tardy punishment if you’re late.”

“Right! See you then.”

I clean up the auditorium and go to the low key kick back at the intel dorms. We just drank beer and cooked some food to just get our minds back to the upcoming internship. We exchanged were we ultimately chose to go for our internship, Mimi was going with a seaside branch and Jin was going to Hokkaido. Talking about it made me excited to go again. Fast forward to Monday after school, I change into my pink track pants and white fire-proof tank top with matching shoes. While I was changing, I was getting curious on what kind of quirk that boy has, was it fire? Something to do with inflation? I keep thinking possibilities as I walk into the gym floor, It was just 5 minutes until it was time.

“I’m here!” panted Shinso as he ran in “I didn’t know we had so many gyms!”

“Oh yea hehe we have like 6 gyms” I recalled but then refocused “you’re on time, lets get started!” I sat down in the middle and pointed to the space in front of me “come, sit and discuss what you want to work into with me.”

“Um ok well” he said as he sat down “I have a sort of manipulative quirk and it’s great as it is but I don’t know where to start to make it better.”

“Manipulative? is it like hypnotism?”

“Yes and No”

“Um, well lets have a spar to see how it affects me and how you work it into your fighting” I levitated up to my feet “take your stance and I’ll count us down.” We take our sides of the marked lines, he takes his stance and it’s a bit strange but it’s fixable “ready? 3,2,1 GO.” As I try to circle and mirror him, I see he doesn’t move but his eyes follow me, like he’s scared of me.

“I don’t like your pants, they’re too pink.”

I yelled back “nobody said you had to like them” for a second I felt my body tense but then I shook it off and kept moving.

“How did that not affect you?!”

“What?!” I said as I looked around to see if he deployed a sneak attack, nothing “what did you do?!”

“I’ve got my quirk activated and you’re answering my answers but you aren’t brainwashed shell of a person” he said like his world is collapsing “what are you?”

I cocked my head to the side in confusion “Your quirk is Brainwash?” I think about it a little and didn’t get it either “ask me another question.”

“Umm ok.... Do you want to grab dinner after this?”

“No thanks, its my turn to cook dinner” I answered and again, slight tension but no mind control “hmmm, why doesn’t it work on me? Or at least, not fully.”

“I don’t understand” Shinso fell to his knees “I’ve spent my whole life having people fear me because of my quirk and how villainous it is BUT HERE YOU ARE un-phased by my abilities like a gust of wind to a brick wall!” he started to cry in frustration “AM I JUST A DELUSIONAL WEAKLING TAKEN PITY BY YOU?!”

“No thats not it at all I-” I couldn’t finish my sentence, I was frozen in place. I saw everything Shinso commanded me to do, he had me crawl and do a cartwheel. I broke out of my controlled state when he held my hand.

“I can’t believe it worked that time!” he looked at my excitedly “what do you think was the thing that made you fully in my control?”

“Think it was fully on truths” I realized and came up with something “quickly, ask me a question.”

“Ok...um, What are you cooking for dinner?”

“Fruit salad and left over pizza” a quick on the fly answer “Ask me that same question now.”

“What are you cooking for dinner?”

“I’m not actually cooking anything for dinner, I just didn’t want to go out tonig-” boom, I figured it out! Shinso squeezed my hand to break me out of his control.

“You lied the last few times?” he asked me like I just killed his pet fish “why would you lie to me?”

I breathed out “Look, it’s not that I lied to hurt you. I lie to hide my feelings, my next move and my past, its like my defense mechanism. When you said you didn’t like my pants, I got a little offended because I think they’re a cute shade of pink and they make my butt look good. When you asked me to dinner, I said that because I didn’t want to go out this week as I have an internship to go to this weekend. And when you degraded yourself because I wasn’t responding to your quirk, I really wanted to reassure you that maybe I was the problem and that you aren’t a pity to me, I want to help you because you asked me and dammit I’m going to work you into the best fighter on the field!”

Shinso was taken back by the gesture “If it doesn’t fully work on some people, then what do we work on?”

“For now” I said getting in fighting position “lets test your close range, dodge my attacks.”

We train for an hour and I arrange another session on Wednesday, same time. I couldn’t shake what Shinso said when he was degrading himself. Poor dude really needs all the help and confidence to take the advancement exam.

-Thursday, in the dorms-

I come back late from my one-on-one time with Monoma and I was not having it.

“Palma-san its nearly dinner time, is everything alright?” asked Jiro, she was in the commons room along with some of the other girls and Aoyama.

“Yea, I’m good but Monoma is really getting on my nerves” I groaned as I put my duffle bag down “like, whats the point of asking me for help if they’re just going to degrade me and not follow my advice!?”

“I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long without refusing your services” said Momo “Why do you still insist on offering to help him anyways?”

“We have the same quirk and I know how hard it is to develop techniques for it” I took off my shoes and sighed “he doesn’t even have mastery in the quirks he has available to him, don’t even get me STARTED on his close range.” I start making my way to my room “I’ll be out soon for dinner.”

“Ok Palma-san, I’ll save you a seat” Uraraka promised and waited until I closed my door to talk to the others “alright so is it just me or is Monoma requesting her help too many time for it just needing help.”

“Kendo-san said that he’s talking about asking her out” Momo recalled “but if Monoma is this irritating to her, I don’t think she would say yes.”

After dinner, I started packing for my 2 week internship. I was asked to pack different changes of clothes for plain clothes and under-cover work, it was a lot to pack and I was wondering just how was high profile was this agency. Everything was ready right on time to go, I had to surrender my earpiece as it can’t reach to the others.

“Welp, have fun and be safe you two” I said to Mimi and Jin “text me when you get to your destination?”

“Yea, I’ll miss you guys” Mimi said as she brought us in for a hug “It’s going to be our first time being separated for a long period of time!”

“Oh shit you right” Jin realized “but this time we’ll be reunited and it’ll be all good.”

Because of how small our program is, not everyone is taking the train to their destinations. Mine is just 4 cities east of the school, so I got picked up by my scouter in a town car. Mimi’s is in Osaka, she had to take the train. Jin got picked up and taken to a private air hanger to get flown to Hokkaido.

“Miss Palma, you are going to like Best Jeanist” said Jinko jeans man “he’s very excited to meet you.”

“He is?” I questioned “I thought agents aren’t supposed to interact with the head hero of the agency?”

“Well, you see, we have a developing agent squadron. It’s not very big but he interacts with them personally, he’s very picky on who he wants on his team.”

“Oh ok I see now” I turn to the window “I hope I don’t disappoint then.” Another hour in the car and we arrive in a corporate looking building, I didn’t know what I was expecting but I was getting excited.

“Alright here we are Miss Palma, we’re going to get you settled in your quarters then have a full tour as requested by you for quirk purposes.”

“Okay, thank you for considering them!” I said getting my luggage “In America, usually requests like that get ignored.”

“You’ll be happy to hear that we fulfilled all your requests” he leads me into the building “the boss himself made sure of it, he even got you your own quarters”

“Oh? I didn’t request that, I’m fine co-habiting with the others.”

“He did that because we don’t have any other females on the team, out of respect for you and how young you are” he turned to the living quarters “he made a room just for you” he opened a door with the sign that said ‘Agent 19, UA Intel’ “Here’s your quarters, furnished for comfort and a bouquet of lily, lavender and white sage. Get settled and come out to the blue door down the hall for the tour.”

“Alright thank you umm, Mr. Jinko Jeans?”

“Oh?! OH! that was close, I’m Jinko Punky, Best Jeanist’s right hand side-kick.”

“Jinko Punky huh? Alright thank you, I’ll be quick.”

I leave my door open in case of anything and to let others know that I’ve arrived. I hear people walk past my room as I put things away, I can’t see them but they see me. I hear them say things like ‘she’s so tiny?!’ ‘reminds me of my daughter’ ‘boss wouldn’t tell us about her abilities, wonder what she has?’ ‘Boss gave her flowers too! Is she royalty or something?’. I finish and I send a text to the others saying that I got settled. I walked out and see all the others, all men that tower in height to me, all wearing denim something.

“So you’re Agent 19?” said the man in a jean jumpsuit “so small and soft around the edges, like a puppy.”

“What is your name Agent?” asked sternly the man in a jean vest.

“Um, I’m not comfortable giving such information at the moment.”

“Let her be, she’s doesn’t have to tell us anything” defended a man in jorts.

The man in the jean vest walked in front of the only exit, blocking it “She’s not allowed to the leave until she gives us a name!” he turns to me “I don’t trust you one bit agent! I don’t know how you gained the interest of Jinko BUT you are not going to be treated special here!”

Playtime was over, I was going in with my true self “Please sir, I need to report to Jinko Punky for a tour and I do not wish to keep him waiting.”

“Then you better start talking little girl.”

I was going in for the kill, I sighed and levitated him to the side and opened the door “I did ask nicely” I walked to the hallway and turned back to the others “sorry about that y’all! I promise I’m sweeter than this.” I walk down the hall to the blue door, meanwhile the others were murmuring about what I did.

“She’s a telepathic! And so polite” commented the jorts man “I feel like I was in the presence of a unicorn! I can’t wait to see her full power!”

“Shut it! I don’t care what she is” growled jean vest man “don’t get fooled, it could be a ruse to take us down from the inside!”

I get my tour of the place, got aquatinted with the other agents. I told them about my encounter earlier and they said not to worry about him, it happens all the time when an agent comes through to relay information. I feel more welcomed as they invited me to eat at their little area during every meals. I go to bed and see that Mimi and Jin got situated already too, Diya sent a group text letting us know that everyone got situated and all updates about each other will be sent in a daily text from him. It got me in a better state of mind as I drifted to sleep...what could happen in the next 2 weeks?

-End Chapter 17-

#bnha #mha #self insert au #not canon #chapter 17 #will update regularly #ask me anything

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flyingcookierambles · 3 years

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forgot if i already talked about it but i guess i honestly didnt like wolf children/boy and the beast that much lol and i think i finally figured out why

ok so ill have my original post and short convo i had with this one guy and then write about my feelings after those two that provide some context.

ok real quick so wolf children and the boy and the beast are both from award winning anime director mamoru hosoda!

wolf children has a single mother with 2 kids who are werewolves/shifters since they can change whenever they want. she’s a widow because her husband was walking around the city in wolf form, scared ppl, and got killed by animal control in tokyo. she and her kids move out to the rural boonies on a small homestead where she farms and stuff so that her kids can have space to be their wolf forms and run around without fear.

the boy and the beast has a human child fall into the hidden magical parallel furry world and get raised by this beast/bear furry? i...forget what his adoptive dad’s species is lol, sorry its been a long time since ive seen the movie.

spoilers for the ending but. here.

wolf children - yuki, the daughter, decides to stay in the human world with her mom and go to high school. ame, the son, decides to live his life as a furry/wolf boy protecting the forests.

boy and the beast - adoptive father sacrifices himself for protag, fuses spirits/hearts/whatever with protag so that they’re not really separated even in death, then the protag and dad defeat the antagonist and the protag decides to stay in the human world with his human girlfriend.

soooo. yeah. the movie ends with the families splitting up and the two cultures of mundane humans and magical creatures separating forever.

(og post) original post from my kitsu:

“ok, so like after watching wolf children tonight, im left with a bunch of questions and, idk maybe i dont understand the ending, but like. what. i also have a copy of the boy and the beast and watched it a while go. and like. i feel like, out of his two movies, they were overall very good. however, the endings always leave me with a ton of questions and mixed feelings? is mamoru hosoda just going to be “that guy” for me? you know, “that guy.” like, he’s an ok dude but you have mixed feelings about him? is it still worth watching his other movies, the girl who leapt through time and summer wars, at this rate? idk???? edit: …. i realized i also borrowed mirai from the library, am i going to watch the whole thing and then be like. what.“

response to this one guy, pseudonym:

I didn’t like wolf children and while I overall enjoyed the boy and the beast I did feel it was lacking something. Give summer wars a go though as in my opinion it’s easily his best film, that said I haven’t seen Mirai.

my responses:

“ that’s interesting. hmm im trying to figure out what i didn’t like about his endings for these two movies and i think it might be the whole separation thing? but the weird thing was that i didn’t mind the family separation thing in maquia, another family drama oriented anime? so idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ????? what about you?”

pseudomym:

“I haven’t seen Maquia. It’s been a while since I watched either film but I just remember Boy and the beast feeling generally a little uninspired and wolf children feeling hollow having nothing going on but cuteness and idealization of the mother character that I couldn’t get behind. It also fell into the annoying and well worn trap of insisting the daughter come to terms with her wolf side as necesary but the boy’s arc is to go reject his humanity and abandon his family to live in the woods as a young teen and the mother learning to accept his really stupid decision. Fuck that, thats a shtty life decision and it should be treated accordingly.”

my response:

i agree with some points! like, i get that the mother was a hardworking single mother who needed to give her kids some more freedom and also isolation in life to hide the whole werewolf secret, but when ame was just like “imma drop out of elementary school,” and hana was ok with it, i was just staring at the screen like “no, why are you letting him do this?” i feel like my issue with the boy and the beast was that ren decided that “humans and monsters need to live in their own world,” and left forever when i was thinking “no man, you can have both, work in the human world on weekdays and just go back to the monster world on weekends or something, you have basically nothing in the human world but this random girl you met and whatever the japanese version of the GED is.”

so. after thinking about it. literally for a few years. i realized. the reason i don’t like these movies, or at least their endings, since the premises sounds interesting enough for me to try them. is probably because im projecting my own weirdo complex identity issues on them. (own ramble lol) (other ramble on kitsu) (transracial tag on main) (racial imposter syndrome with NPR’s Code Switch) (all mixed up what do we call people of multiple backgrounds, also on NPR’s Code Switch)

so. as you can hopefully see. i. am currently in a pretty big identity/culture crisis. and. i think that the endings of these movies rubbed me the wrong way because their solution was to choose one over the other. like. there’s no room to try to make it work, to try and have a balance between the two worlds.

as mentioned above, in wolf children, why the heck not try to make it work? be a furry forest protector and still visit your mom because you’re in the same area. in fact, ame is literally the stupidest kid/literal elementary school drop out because, instead of trying to help the forest with actual laws and such because bc, its sad but let’s be real, capitalism and bulldozers can affect the forest more than one kid trying to larp as the big bad wolf of the forest. and you know how ame could’ve tried to protect the forest in a more substantial way? literally just. finding a balance between the human and magical werewolf/animal world and becoming a botanist/biologist/ecologist/forest ranger. someone who can bring some actual solutions to fixing issues in the forest with science. instead of like. “feeling the forest vibes” or whatever the heck was even happening there.

and then also as mentioned in the boy and the beast, protag-kun leaves behind all his childhood friends and the ppl who helped his adoptive dad raise him, practically his adoptive aunts and uncles, behind for a random girl he met, his birth dad and step family, and whatever a japanese GED is. like. again, why not try to make it work? have two cultures????

you dont have to choose one over the other!!

i’m sure that mamoru hosoda didn’t mean to be like. idk. insensitive to people of mixed races/cultures, etc., esp. since japan is not a very racially/culturally diverse place so he probably didn’t even have this mindset when making these movies, but the message in the movies’ endings that you have to pick one culture, country/world, family, etc., over the other because they’re just too incompatible is just. absolute bullshit. do i care that they’re werewolf and magic furry world culture? no, i think you can and should still try dude.

like. i have. a bunch of intersectional race/culture/adoption issues, but am i going to try to have some balance and learn about all of them and live with them? yeah????? do you realize how stupid it is to me to think about like. having to pick between cultures???? its just like. to me, picking one over the other would be like forcing me to stay with white americans or just like. go back to china. like the boy and the beast protag did or someshit????? like???? i can try to balance them??? tisn’t that the whole point of like. chinese american/ immigrant created mixed culture/experiences, esp. for ppl like me who are transracially adopted and have complex life experiences???? wtf??????

like. i would love to learn more about my birth country and all but im not going to be an absolute dumbass like the boy and beast protag and move to another world/country just because “its where i’m from” or “i have biological family there.” i cant speak the language, i’d leave all my friends and family oceans away, how the heck would i even live??

anyways TL;DR - as a person with some complex feelings about identity, and culture, and a person greatly interested in intersectionality due to my lived experiences, mamoru hosoda’s movies and their bullshit anti-intersectionality messages, again most likely unintentional but my brain read it as this, make me not like his movies.

#movies i guess #anime n junk #rant lol

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nowhere-hunch · 4 years

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I watched ‘Hamilton’ on Disney+

I’m not really a fandom person, but I would say I hang out online in a lot of “fandom-adjacent” spaces. Maybe a better word would be “lurker”. So although I was separated from it by many degrees, I’m aware of some of the insane stuff that came out of the Hamilton fandom during its heyday. Which makes me a teensy bit nervous about posting this on Tumblr - “the room where it happened” you could say (yes, I’m very funny, I know). But I’m hoping I have my blog settings right to make it hard for people to find and I won’t use any tags, so I should be fine, right? To be clear, I like Hamilton and this whole thing is positive toward it. It did get pretty long though.

First of all, I’m a little surprised that there’s a Hamilton fandom at all. Theatrical shows aren’t really the most accessible medium, especially for the demographics that we associate with fandom. The stage shows that I see with fandoms usually have other media associated with them as well, either that was based on them or that they were based on. For example, Les Mis has the book and multiple movies. That said, I’m not necessarily surprised that inaccessibility itself didn’t prevent the formation of a fandom. These days there’s plenty of ways to pirate things, plus you could argue that the cast CD of the musical that was released counts as an alternative media — since most of the dialogue is in fact part of a song.

But, being an inaccessible medium for so long has had an effect on the stories that are created for it. The demographics of people who are watching Broadway shows are probably different than those of people watching primetime TV. The historic events and people in Hamilton aren’t given much if any explanation or backstory. Several times a character is introduced that the audience is supposed to be excited about just because we already know the name: Alexander Hamilton or George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or whatever. For those specific examples, it kind of makes sense. Just by living in the U.S. you tend to get an idea of who those people are (they’re the people on the money). But people like John Laurens are given the same treatment (or lack thereof) in terms of backstory. I think I learned a little about John Laurens at some point in AP U.S. History but then I passed that test and literally never thought or heard about him for nine years until I watched Hamilton.

Hamilton is not a play that is meant to teach the story of Alexander Hamilton; it’s a play that is meant to use the story of Alexander Hamilton in order to teach something else. The historical people and events that are mentioned briefly are meant to provide context for what’s going on with the main characters. “OK I know that the Boston Tea Party happened in the lead up to the Revolution so if they’re talking about that now, I know where we are.” It seemed weird to me that it became so popular when it assumed a good deal of knowledge on the part of the viewer, but I think there are (at least) three factors that makes that not too much of an issue.

One, as I said earlier I did learn about John Laurens and other kind of minute details about the Revolutionary War in high school. If “fandom” is stereotypically mostly made up of students in middle school/high school/college, it might be the case that this background knowledge is actually more accessible to them than to the average Broadway patron, who would have been out of school for even longer than me. If this musical had been about some other figure that isn’t included in an integral part of the American public school curriculum, it probably wouldn’t have seen as much success. I believe that Linn Manuel Miranda had a goal of expanding and making more diverse the audience for these shows, so this choice of subject material makes sense.

Two, Hamilton is simply a solid musical. I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t see a lot of musicals and really isn’t and never was into theater that much, but that’s the point — to the untrained eye of someone fandom-adjacent, it’s a very enjoyable piece of media. The songs are catchy, the jokes are funny, the emotional parts are moving, there’s at least a couple of performers who sound really good to me, not that I have any idea how to tell. If you think about it for more than three seconds it’s hard not to get blown away considering how much skill it must have taken to write that entire story in rhyming verse! That’s the kind of thing Shakespeare did, or even Homer — both of whom produced works that had a big impact on their era’s version of “pop culture”. I wonder if this points to something in the human brain that makes us want to engage more with stories told in this way?

Three, I think fandom (in general) had been primed for stories like this by a series that had one of the largest fandoms during the time just before Hamilton came out: Hetalia. Hetalia is a comedy manga and anime series where each country in the world is personified by an immortal (kind of) human character. It deals a lot with history and real-world people and events— if you were a fan, your “canon” material was not only the manga and anime but also real-world facts about countries’ geography, culture, and history. Since the characters for “England” and “America” (the U.S.) were some of the most popular, the Revolutionary War specifically was the subject of a lot of fan works.

Unlike Hamilton though, Hetalia is presented in a format that was made for fandom and its story reflects that as well. It has a huge cast of characters, many of which are barely developed at all in “canon” but still have a reason for viewers to connect with them (“I’m from that country!”), opportunities for creating OCs, etc. that encourage fan activity. Through Hetalia, many people were introduced to the idea of using knowledge of history for fandom purposes, which was obviously a big part of the Hamilton fandom. What’s unfortunate is that, while there wasn’t much more to get from Hetalia beyond its fandom — in fact you could strongly argue that there was more “artistic merit” in a lot of fandom content than the series itself—for me the Hamilton fandom and all of its weirdness overshadowed anything that was said about the interesting things Hamilton had to say to its “traditional” audience.

I think one property of a good piece of media is that it has different messages and takeaways that are relevant to different people consuming it. Hamilton is like this. The central theme of the story is the idea of “legacy”, but there are several lenses it provides to investigate with. For example, it has many messages about race and national origin that may resonate most strongly with different people, including:

People of color are absent from the legacy of the founding of the country they live in. It’s weird to watch actors who are people of color talk about defending slavery, but it’s no more weird than having groups of all white people do the same (which is how it actually was).

Various founding fathers have a legacy of being people who valued freedom, but they owned slaves and/or supported the institution of slavery.

Alexander Hamilton’s legacy as an immigrant is celebrated, while immigrants today are regularly treated in horrifyingly inhumane ways.

I’m positive there are people who can write entire books about how the show addresses any one of these. For me though, the theme that resonated the most was the idea of legacy through a historical female perspective, as portrayed through the relationship between Alexander and Eliza Hamilton. The gist of it is this: Alexander Hamilton married Eliza Schuyler and frankly did not treat her well. His most obvious offense is cheating on her multiple times with a woman who “seduced” him (“Lord, show me how to say no to this” — dude you literally just did: “…no…”), but even this is actually a symptom of his fatal flaw: he cares about his legacy more than her. It is brought up multiple times that he chooses his work over his family responsibilities (there’s a whole song about it), and at the time he starts his “affair”, Eliza is actually away on a family trip that he decided to skip in order to keep working even more.

His obsession with legacy causes even more hurt for Eliza because it is inherited by their oldest son, Philip. Philip challenges someone to a duel who was criticizing his father. Based on how she talked to Alexander, saying she would rather have him alive and unknown than dead with a legacy, we can assume she would be against this. But Philip goes to his father for advice, and rather than discourage him, Alexander gives him advice on how to act that will make him look the best to people remembering it (shoot into the air, it’s a bad look to kill someone and if they have any honor they will do so as well). Philip is killed in this duel. Alexander cries at his bedside while Eliza next to him wails — the cheating has already been revealed at this point, and she and Alexander haven’t “made up”. Aaron Burr, who is a foil to Alexander Hamilton in many ways in the story, illustrates the differences in their priorities in a more subtle way. Before the final duel, in which Alexander himself is killed, Burr states as he works himself up that he must win because, “I won’t leave my daughter an orphan.”

Throughout, the viewer kind of overlooks Eliza. We know she is a woman living in the 1700s and so her agency is limited. She can’t divorce Alexander or really do anything to hold him accountable for the pain he has caused her. Her defining characteristics are things like “kind”, “gentle”, and “patient” — as described by her sister who sets her up with Hamilton in the first place. After the “Reynolds Pamphlet” is released (in which Hamilton publicly confesses to his affair), she sings a song about being sad, we’re told that there’s no record of how the real Eliza reacted to the information, and after a while she and Alexander make up. To us it seems like she just kind of takes what happens to her without resistance — it doesn’t really matter if that’s what she *wanted* to do because it’s what she *had* to do. We see a lot of female characters like this in media, especially media created or set in the past, and while there is now some backlash against them, there’s not much to complain about when it’s “historically accurate”.

But that all changes at the end. The climax of the play is the duel in which Hamilton is shot and killed. After that is the “big finale” song, but since Alexander Hamilton is dead, who sings it? Eliza. We are told that Hamilton dies with Eliza and her sister Angelica by his bedside, but we don’t see this. We see Eliza come back alone and sing about what she does for the remaining 50 years of her life. We learn that she is the one who gathered his writings, interviewed people who knew him, and did other research to share his life story. In effect, she wrote the story that the musical was based on. After seeing again and again that Hamilton cares about his legacy more than Eliza, it is revealed that Eliza is his legacy. Now we realize that when characters sing “You can’t control… who tells your story,” they don’t mean that in some philosophical or metaphorical way. The individual responsible for passing on your legacy after you die could literally be anyone, even the people you see as hindering it.

I cried during the final song. Actually these specific lines:

Eliza: I interview every soldier who fought by your side Soldiers in background: She tells our story … Eliza: I raise funds in D.C. for the Washington Monument Washington: She tells my story

Now, Washington in particular probably didn’t need her help to tell his story (I mean, he’s on money), but the way the lines are sung gives a sense of the kindness or love that is expressed when another person knows or tells your story. How many people have lived and died who are now totally forgotten about? Eliza did the work to save people from that fate. Alexander Hamilton I don’t think would be described as a “kind” person, even in this musical, but there is kindness in his legacy thanks to Eliza.

And, the final song contains the final plot point, the final part of the epilogue: after Alexander’s death, Eliza founds an orphanage.

I help to raise hundreds of children I get to see them growing up

Want to talk about legacy? Go to the memorial service for a teacher who worked for decades. Go to a birthday party for a 90-year-old who has 10 kids, 50 grandkids, and 150 great grandkids. They might not have their stories written down in books, but they get to enjoy legacy during their lifetimes. In the end, it turns out that in a way, Eliza is a foil to Alexander. While he makes himself and others miserable working to build a legacy that he won’t live to see, Eliza lives her life in service of people who she loves and who depend on her though she is not remembered now. Which of them made more of a difference? Which of them would you rather be?

This is kind of a radical message: that these two types of “legacy” are both valuable in some ways. For a long, long time in history, the kind of legacy that Alexander wanted was generally not available to women, people of color, etc. The “people in power” highly valued this type of legacy, so they reserved it for themselves. As the years went on, people fought for equality, and one of the issues was, although not necessarily stated explicitly, “We want to have valued legacies too!” It seems the response was a kind of reluctant “OK, I guess we’ll open up some opportunities for you to make contributions that will be recorded in history like ours.” For many women and other groups, this was actually great. Many people had wanted those opportunities for a long time, and it’s good that they are available to those who want them. So, it’s hard to say in absolute terms that this wasn’t a good thing. But at that point, we started to see a lot of media with “strong female characters” who are tough and sarcastic and ultra-skilled at combat or whatever that all add up to, “You will be admired and your legacy valued if you forget about girly stuff and just do what men have been doing all along.”

But encouraging everyone to value legacy in this way has created a culture where a lot of things send the message “Be more like Alexander Hamilton” while very few if any say “Be more like Eliza Hamilton.” It’s pretty radical to suggest that maybe the way that Eliza and people like her have been building legacies for all this time was actually good and beneficial and shouldn’t be completely abandoned for Alexander’s way that has always been presented as the most valid.

I think the reason that this resonates with me so loudly is that I am a middle class white woman and grew up as a “gifted” student, and in our modern “enlightened” world, I feel the pressure that historically has been on white men to create some tangible legacy that will live on after I die. But in media, in stories that are fundamental to my culture, in my own family tree before pretty recently, I don’t see women doing this. I have modern society saying to me “You need to make a legacy for yourself.” while the culture that has built up over centuries consistently sends the message “women don’t get legacies”. What Hamilton is saying is “They do have legacies, just not the kind society has taught you to value.”

And actually, I would argue, it goes further, showing how women have found power and agency by refusing to leave a legacy in the traditional sense. The only time in the musical where Eliza talks about her own legacy is in the song “Burn” that she sings after finding out Alexander cheated on her. It includes these lines:

I’m erasing myself from the narrative Let future historians wonder how Eliza Reacted when you broke her heart … The world has no right to my heart The world has no place in our bed They don’t get to know what I said I’m… burning the letters that might have redeemed you

The first time I watched it, I assumed that “erasing myself from the narrative” was a metaphor for her burning the letters. But after watching the ending and knowing that Eliza was actually the one who did the work of passing on “the narrative”, it’s clear that she meant it literally. She knows how much Alexander values his legacy as much as we the audience do, so she’s hitting him where it hurts. Normally, when perspectives are missing from historical narratives we are told it’s because of carelessness (either nobody asked or someone lost it) or external censorship. In Hamilton, we are told Eliza’s part of this story is missing because that’s the way she wanted it. In her time and place, she doesn’t have the opportunity to speak out against her husband or otherwise get justice, but she has still found a powerful way to “get back” at him. Her side of the story is missing because of her agency, not her lack of it.

Initially, Eliza telling Alexander’s story is interpreted as an act of love, very romantic. But thinking back to “Burn”, you have to remember that in the 50 years Eliza lived doing that work after he died, she never “redeemed” him for the bad things he did to her. In that light, you can almost see spite running subtly through the love. “I will do everything in my power to make sure people don’t forget you because I love you (and I want them to know what a jerk you were to me).” I don’t think Eliza hated Alexander. In the play it is clear that she does love him, but she does have reasons of her own for recording his legacy besides blind devotion or adoration. For this, in a way, Eliza herself is in a way redeemed by Washington and the soldiers in the final song, even though her motives aren’t completely “pure”, these men are benefitted by (and in the song appreciative of) her work.

As I said, there are a lot of themes in Hamilton that could be talked about at length, but this one is the most interesting to me, or at least the one that I’ve found myself thinking about the most since I watched the show. I want to talk about one more thing and bring us back to where this discussion started: the Hamilton fandom.

The most notorious example of “craziness in the Hamilton fandom” was the whole “hivliving”… thing. There’s a great video about it on YouTube that really does press that “gossip” button in my social primate brain just right. I highly recommend giving it a watch.

That may be… if not the culmination then the climax the of the insanity in the Hamilton fandom. If you didn’t watch the video, here is a very very brief synopsis:

Within the Hamilton fandom, there are two groups of people who support opposing “ships”: fans of Hamilton/Laurens and fans of Hamilton/Washington.

Members of the Hamilton/Laurens faction make a habit of harassing Hamilton/Washington fans using “social justice” rhetoric (i.e. “Your ship is problematic”). It seems agreed upon by those outside that most if not all of their accusations are baseless, but it persists.

One vocal member of the Hamilton/Laurens fans, claiming to be an HIV+, bisexual, bigender, muslim victim of sex trafficking living in India, also runs a blog called “hivliving” about, well, living with HIV. Since blogs like this are rare, the blog becomes a popular and well-loved resource.

Someone named Ursula discovers that the person running the “hivliving” blog is not in fact an HIV+, bisexual, bigender, muslim victim of sex trafficking living in India, but a white 18-year-old college student living in the U.S. When confronted and pressed, they come clean to their followers.

In the aftermath, someone realizes that Ursula is associated with people in the Hamilton/Washington faction of the Hamilton fandom, and so word starts spreading that Ursula investigated and confronted hivliving due to revenge over “shipping wars”.

More rumors come up and eventually, the story transforms so that the commonly known version is: “Hivliving was pretending to be an HIV+/etc. person and was exposed by someone who wanted revenge for them criticizing their cannibal-mermaid-AU fanfiction.” All the “normal” people have a fun time laughing about how insane people can be online.

Because of this negative attention, Ursula is forced to abandon fandom.

Seriously though, watch the video if you have time.

If there were a lesson to the hivliving story, it would be about legacy. It would be a cautionary tale about how a legacy built on good intentions and serious work can be turned completely around through no fault of your own. I don’t have much to add to that, besides noting that it is a weird coincidence that it happened in a fandom for a show that itself put so much focus on legacy. Hamilton fans, in telling the story of hivliving and Ursula, shaped it to serve their own ends (vilifying fans of a rival ship), much like Eliza shaped Alexander’s story in telling it for her own reasons. But the last thing I’ll note is this: the fans largely shaped the story by adding things, Eliza shaped the story by leaving things out.

#media

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jonathanalumbaugh · 6 years

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What I learned

January 13th, 2018, 7th issue. A roundup of what I learned this week, sources linked. Published weekly. All blurbs written by yours truly unless otherwise noted. Grouped in quasi-random order.

Design

Land art is awesome. — 10 Female Land Artists You Should Know

There's free money out there for projects! — The Complete Guide to 2018 Artist Grants and - Artwork Archive

Better design can help guide the user to what they want to do, while leaving them in control. Bad design lets them flounder. — Hawaii missile alert: Blame terrible interface design for the Hawaii debacle — Quartz

Looking at a familiar environment through a photo can give us a new perspective. — January Cure 2018 Assignment 7 - Photograph Your Home - Apartment Therapy

Design-centered companies like IBM seem like the ideal, if there must be monoliths like them. — IBM’s Quest To Design The “New Helvetica”

Things that are interactive get more attention than things that are static. Things that are interactive in strange and unexpected ways, probably even more so. — Ikea’s New Ad Is A Pregnancy Test You Pee On. Really.

The impact of simple choices ("this font or that one?") is important. — The importance of typography in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

International fire code/OSHA guidelines for evacuation floor plans are a thing that exists. — Is there a Standard for Emergency Evacuation Maps? - NFPA Xchange

Basic principles of animation apply to more than just animated films. — Making CSS Animations Feel More Natural - CSS-Tricks

CNC made houses cause quite a stir in the comments section. — The PlyPad: CNC Machine Yourself A Tiny House - Hackaday

Design nostalgia looks to an era that never existed, a charicature of an era that wasn't as glorious as it's made out to be. — That font you hate is coming back in style - The Outline

Git

Yes, a section dedicated solely to all the things I learned about git.

Git is a powerful way of managing projects that have releases, ongoing development, and multiple team members. — A git Primer

Use "git checkout" to use files from a different branch in the current branch. — Git: checkout files or directories from another branch – clubmate.fi

This was supposed to help me deploy my website. — Git: copy all files in a directory from another branch - Stack Overflow

Git can also be used to automate deployment of web apps or websites, especially powerful when combined with post receive hooks. — Setting up Push-to-Deploy with git - Kris Jordan

Order of operations: git commit > git pull > merge whatever needs to be merged > push to server. — When do I need to do "git pull", before or after "git add, git commit"? - Stack Overflow

Finance

In systems of continually growing complexity, administration becomes more and more difficult. — An Alleged Theft of a Billion-Dollar Fund Grips ETF World - WSJ

A lot about retirement accounts. — Congratulations, Your Income Is Too High: Non-Deductible IRA Conversions - Part 2 - Seeking Alpha

Ethereum is a crypto-currency that is built to be used for smart contracts, which function as multi-signature accounts, manage agreements between users, store information about an app, and more. — How Do Ethereum Smart Contracts Work? - CoinDesk

Scandal

In a shitstorm of bad apologies for terrible assaults, a victim accepts her harasser's apology. — Dan Harmon’s apology to Megan Ganz was a moment of self-reckoning - Vox

Excerpt: “We are talking here about destroying all the ambiguity and the charm of relationships between men and women,” explained the writer Anne-Elisabeth Moutet... “We are French, we believe in gray areas. America is a different country. They do things in black and white and make very good computers. We don’t think human relationships should be treated like that.”

What I learned: I'm not really sure.

— Opinion: Catherine Deneuve and the French Feminist Difference

In the almost every one of the differing opinions about Ansari's wrongdoings, even the ones who decry his accuser, there is at least some shred of truth. — The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari

Social media

Facebook has shifted its focus from personal connection to advertising. Can it be saved? Probably only by killing it. — Facebook Can’t Be Fixed. — Facebook (FB) is using an old drug dealer tactic to keep its users hooked to News Feed

In a society anxious to be texted back, we value the ability to put off replying. — How It Became Normal to Ignore Texts and Emails

youtube

Algorithmic systems like Youtube feed off of its users preferences. If we don't like it, it's our fault. — Making a Better YouTube

There is a new dialectic, or at least one that has been brought to the fore by the over-availability of news: virtue signalling vs. engagement. Every inflammatory headline begs to be shared with righteous opinion attached, and every time one is it fans the flames of the 24 hour news cycle. Maybe before long, it'll be called the 1400 minute news cycle. — Seriously, You—Ok, We—Need To Stop Watching The News This Year

Massive systems like Youtube are now almost completely run by algorithms that are exploitative. It's not that there is aberrant behavior in the algorithm; it is built to be exploitative, and it's now being taken to its natural end. And yes, as users, we are complicit. — Something is wrong on the internet – James Bridle

We need to consider the root beliefs collectively held by society that have given rise to the services that now run our lives. — Lost Context: How Did We End Up Here?

Life

A catch-all category for stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else, or fits in too many other categories!

There are points in time that we're more likely to work to push beyond our current capabilities; perhaps by preparing for them, we could push even farther. — The Bizarre Motivating Power of Aging Into a New Decade

Spiciness is carried to our brains through nerves in the dermis on our tongues, not through taste buds. — Did You Know That "Spicy" is Not a Taste?

Alcohol hits the bloodstream very quickly (~90 seconds) but takes hours to be fully released into the bloodstream, so BAC can climb even after the last drink. — Here's Why You Vomit After Drinking Alcohol And How To Feel Better After Getting Sick

Discomfort and fear keep us from enjoying ourselves. When we experience them, slow down, check them at the door and forge ahead. — I Was the Youngest Person at the Dump - Kathleen Ann Thompson

The authors argue that inequality is almost the same as it has been for decades, the top 1% is simply receiving their large slice of the pie in salary, rather than in increasing shareholder value pre-Reagan tax changes. — A new study says much of the rise in inequality is an illusion. Should you believe it?

Making room for opportunity to occur is the first step to seizing opportunity. — Opportunity Knocks When You Least Expect It. - Kathleen Ann Thompson

What I learned: The internet is a utopia; it does not physically exist, it's a virtual space that enables the amplification of the moral outrage that is a tool of self-absolution. And now we are no longer able to shape the internet, what we made now shapes us. Excerpt one: "The utopian ideal of the internet—unregulated access to information, pure connectivity—now feels antiquated. Also antiquated: trying to determine if the internet is simply good or bad. Possible and necessary: thinking more deeply about how it’s rewiring our brains and warping our experience of time, about the vistas of reality it’s revealing and creating, and what to do with our positions therein, so that we do not go mad from it all nor flee altogether." Excerpt two: "Communicating every thought about every moral conflict has become so effortless, even obligatory, that it feels like nothing could possibly be informing our reactions beyond the conflicts themselves." Excerpt three: "The myriad reckonings we’re desperate for might be cultivated in the kind of safe space Kaufman describes. Not a literal dream state, but somewhere where you don’t feel watched or compelled to perform. Somewhere private, or where you’re listening to one person at a time rather than a ton of little representations of people all at once. Somewhere where the discomfort of moral responsibility can’t be mowed over with the stimulus of an outrageous story. Where, if you’re disturbed to come upon a transgressive thought of your own, the next move is to pick it apart, rather than to go online and project an image of yourself as perfectly evolved." — Rookie » Editor's Letter

Automating repetitive tasks using whatever tools at hand is a powerful way to reach past a productivity plateau. — Schedule Tasks on Linux Using Crontab

Giving our viewers "everything" is doing our audiences a disservice. Shows like Twin Peaks make us work to understand. — ‘Twin Peaks’ Episode 8 Explained: Recap & Top Theories

B teams at Google (teams that were not composed of top performers) made more significant contributions to the company than its A teams, once again proving that soft skills are incredibly important. — The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students

Figure out your most productive hours and be prepared to work on your most important projects in that time. — Work During Your Hours of Peak Productivity

Google may not be explicitly evil, but it is starting to force web developers to do things the Google way. — Web developers publish open letter taking Google to task for locking up with web with AMP / Boing Boing

Psychology

I have no idea what's going on here. — Carl Jung Was Alt-Right

Contradicting perhaps decades of psychology, personality (as measured by OCEAN, or the "Big Five") shows downward trends in all traits except agreeableness. — Study of 50,000 people shows personality changes throughout life

A free "Big Five" or "OCEAN" test! — Understand Yourself - Personality Test

Beginnings, endings, and other psychological landmarks are powerful times to take advantage of in our lives. — You’re Most Likely to Do Something Extreme Right Before You Turn 30

#Weekly Digest

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christinemeany-blog · 7 years

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I like mystery stories,here is one of them.

The May 2006 MWA-Colorado Chapter meeting featured a talk by Dr. Johanna Gallers, a psychiatrist and trained FBI profiler. She has taught at Metropolitan State College, Mesa State College, California State University, Northridge and several other colleges and universities in Colorado and Los Angeles; and received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles in 1984. In private practice for 22 years in New York City and Los Angeles, she founded and directed a counseling center in Los Angeles that specialized in treating survivors of sexual and physical abuse. Additionally, she served as a consultant on a congressionally mandated study of the effects of combat exposure on Vietnam veterans, as well as a training coordinator and consultant to a number of organizations specializing in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in various victim populations. In 1991, Dr. Gallers completed specialized training in Criminal Profiling and Crime Scene Analysis provided by the FBI. Gallers opened her presentation by saying that the psychopaths among us are born, not made. While serial killers tell a consistent story: violent home life, abuse as a child, bad parenting, etc., there must be a genetic predisposition inborn in a person's brain before a serial killer will emerge. "Whether or not someone becomes a serial killer or a non-violent psychopath, that's where environment comes in," she said. "There are psychopaths among us who never turn violent. Those are the ones who grew up in healthy homes with good parents. But they're still psychopaths. It's in their brains." Decades of study has shown that this genetic anomaly alters the way emotions are processed in the brain, she said. In normal people, inside the Limbic system of our brains, the amygdela processes negative words and images. However, the amygdela does not work in the brains of psychopaths. This birth defect leaves its victims to process such stimuli in the visual cortex, and the emotion that should accompany the perception of violence is just not there, and cannot be developed. It's like they're watching a two-dimensional movie throughout their lives, because there is no depth to any of their experiences. Gallers used the example of language. There's denotative language, which is limited to definition of words; and there's connotative language, which allows us to bring an emotional context to the words we use. Psychopaths cannot respond connotatively or even understand the reference. "A psychopath will say the words 'I love you' because he knows that's what a woman wants to hear, and it will lead to a positive result," Gallers said. "But he will not be able to feel the words. He will not really understand why those words are so important. That doesn't matter to him, as long as they get him what he wants. Words are manipulative tools." The vast majority of psychopaths are male (90 percent), and the few female psychopaths have different brain-wave patterns than males, so whatever it is that triggers this genetic trait is limited to men, Gallers said. There are other physical and psychological traits they all have in common. They all have a very low resting heart rate. As children, there is a consistent pattern for every one of them: fire setting, late-age bed wetting and cruelty to animals. They all meet the clinical definition of malignant, narcissistic extroverts. This definition is quite specific. Malignant narcissists internalize a self-hatred that leads them to compensate by creating a grandiose fantasy life. They fantasize that they're perfect. And they burn with resentment when they're reminded that they're not. "We all know narcissists, people who need to be the center of attention. They might be boring but they're not psychopaths," Gallers said. "But malignant narcissists need to exact revenge for the wrongs they perceive. As children they will begin to fantasize about taking hostages or hurting others. There is usually a psycho-sexual component in their fantasies from a fairly early age." Of course, with this kind of diagnostic precision, the question of what to do with the knowledge becomes problematic. "Today we can pick these kids out very early on," Gallers said. "Teachers know who they are. Therapists know who they are. The problem is, there's no cure for it, and parents generally do not want to hear that their child is a psychopath." Making the issue particularly thorny is the fact that therapy is useless in such cases. There is no drug that will make the amygdela "switch on." Therapy in fact will exacerbate the problem, because a psychopath will learn just that much better how to manipulate words in therapy. "They'll be brought in for treatment to deal with obsessive-compulsive behavior," Gallers said."Well, they're not necessarily stupid. They will learn what to say and how to say it to get the appropriate response from a therapist - that is, that they're OK and they can stop coming. Once they've succeeded at conning the therapist, their fantasies can continue and in fact will become more grandiose." "Their obsessions are often sexual in nature as well," she said. "And it's very often violently sexual. The stimulation needs to be over the top in order to have an effect, since there's no emotion behind it." As fantasies progress, and the psychopath falls deeper into the spell of his own narcissistic need for gratification, there's more of a risk that violence will ensue. Only a very strong sense of discipline can make a difference. Especially in cases where the child is in an abusive home, perhaps exposed to violence or sexual activity as a young person, there's almost nothing that can be done to keep such a child from turning into a killer, Gallers said. "So what do you do? There's no cure. The only appropriate thing to do is put them in military school and teach them discipline and how to take orders so they don't turn violent randomly. They become assassins, snipers, killers who are trained to only kill on command." As to the issue of being extroverts, Gallers said that applies to the psychopath's need to have external stimuli. The internal life of a psychopath is stunted by their inability to feel true emotion and to feel empathy. So while they might be loners, they are actually extroverted in that they base their feelings of self-worth on what others think - or on what they believe others think. "With some few exceptions, these are not articulate, socially adept people," Gallers said. "They need to express their grandiose fantasies somehow. Violence allows them domination. It allows them to express revenge for slights. It allows them to be in control." Control, in fact, is very important to the self-image of the malignant narcissist. "Psychopathic killers are very organized. They bring their weapons with them, they've planned everything out, and they don't leave bodily fluids or other evidence behind. This makes it extremely difficult to catch them," Gallers said. "It takes meticulous police work, and even then luck plays a part. Disorganized killers usually are caught right away. They are impulse-driven. They leave forensic evidence that's easy to track and they leave other clues behind. Organized psychopath serial killers are a different story all together." One small relief in considering the careers of serial killers, Gallers said, is that while they are never cured, they eventually do stop. "They outgrow it," she said. As an example, she pointed to the BTK killer in Kansas. "He was not going to be caught," she said. "It had been more than a decade since he'd killed, and he wasn't interested in killing again. He was done killing. But his narcissism got him caught. He wanted to tell the world he was a successful serial killer. He made the conscious decision to allow himself to be caught, knowing he would spend the rest of his life in prison, because he had to be recognized as this notorious, successful killer." Gallers peppered her talk with references to many well-known serial killers, including Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer. Her training has brought her in contact with many serial killers and with the investigators who profile, track and catch them. "When we're faced with a serial killer's handiwork, there's really not a lot we can do but to study the victims and figure out everything and anything they might have in common," she said. "We start with a thorough crime scene analysis, and then a victim analysis." The choice of victim will tell investigators quite a lot about the killer. For instance, the Green River Killer chose prostitutes, women who were easy prey. This was a murderer who was looking for people who would not be missed quickly. On the other hand, a killer like Ted Bundy looked for victims to make a statement. He chose college-educated, attractive, desirable women who lived fairly protected lives. He did so because they took skill to hunt and kill. He admitted as much to the FBI officers who interviewed him before he was executed. In America, with a few exceptions, our serial killers are white men, she said. White men in this culture feel a sense of entitlement and empowerment, and the psychopath serial killers in this population feel that they are, for whatever reason, kept from this position of power. They are angry and feel entitled to take lives in order to show the world that they are powerful. The psychopaths who do not turn into killers in this population become the unethical CEO who plunders his company's assets or the con men who find power via other means. Besides the choice of victim and the specific crime scene analysis, profilers and other investigators hunting a serial killer consider the signature behavior exhibited in each murder. This is different from the Modus Operandi, the M.O., which can and does change as the killer learns and the situations alter. But what never changes, Gallers said, is the signature behavior: the ritual around the killing that allows the violent psychopath to live out his personal fantasy. "There are two kinds of profiling," she said. "There's Inductive profiling, which is the generalized categories we've been talking about - like white male, between 25-35 years old, bad youth. There are many inductive profiles in FBI files. "Then there's Deductive profiling, and each one of those profiles is unique and developed strictly by the evidence. The investigators drop all preconceived notions and consider the scene, the M.O., the victim analysis, everything specific to the crimes at hand, in order to make the profile of an individual killer." What with all the talk of serial killers, rapists, pedophiles, and other deviant behavior, the mystery writers listening to Gallers were a sobered bunch as she wound up her presentation and answered numerous questions. Gallers tried to reassure us. "The thing to keep in mind is that there are really very few serial killers. There are very few people who kill," she said. "And most people who kill will kill only once and never again, because they killed for a specific reason. The taboo against killing is very much alive and well and operating. Perhaps only one percent of the entire population is made up of psychopaths. We hear more about serial killers because we're better now at catching them, and the media is very good at publicizing them."

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