#is this just me pontificating about the nature of relationships

[deadhumourist]

Dinner with a scoundrel

Summary: You're a yet-unmarried woman in Regency times and you have another society dinner to attend. You meet a roguish stranger that turns the evening upside down.

Pairing: Lord Ezra X F!Reader - Regency AU

Warnings: Olympic level sassing, typical sexism of that time, mentions of food, pain-in-the-ass parents who want to marry you off, fingering. No physical description of reader apart from one mention of "cleavage" (but not breast size). Age not given but parents are clearly frustrated at reader not being married so could be anything from 20-40+ in my mind? Reader still lives with elderly parents because I have no idea how they did it in Regency times.

Rating: Mature/Explicit

A/N: This is a tongue-in-cheek smut story, you'll have to suspend your disbelief for some parts - for this story they have modern underwear, okay? We're here for a good time, not a historically accurate time. Thank you @just-here-for-the-moment for beta-ing this <3

Like this? Masterlist. Taglist link in bio!

-------

You stare balefully at your reflection in the mirror. You rarely pass up an opportunity to dress up and step out, but by gods tonight you are just not feeling it. Tabitha, your lady's maid, spies your lack of excitement and squeezes your shoulder.

"You would do well to have a sunny countenance tonight my lady, there will be many handsome suitors who will be vying for your attention."

You sigh deeply, the air seemingly rushing out from the very bottom of your soul. 

"That's what ails me, Tabitha. Strings of uninteresting men pontificating on even more uninteresting topics while I smile like a doll on a toy chest. It is so boring."

Tabitha meets your eyes in the mirror, her eyebrows pulled low in a measure of sympathy. 

"I can imagine, dear heart. But you will need to find a husband soon, your mother is grumbling about finding you a match herself. And you do look so beautiful this eve."

You smile at her wanly and look down at your dress for the evening. The deep crimson dress with the high waist frames your decolletage appealingly and the colour is well-suited to you. 

A flowery brocade interwoven with miniscule jewels are shaped into a pretty second layer which frames your form and adds a certain refinement. You smooth your hands over it appreciatively and fidget with the deep rose brooch that your aunt gifted you for your last birthday. 

"It is a pretty dress, I must confess. Perhaps tonight I will enjoy dancing and merriment and forget about the duties of a single girl."

As a last touch, you fasten your gold drop earrings and apply a touch more lipstick, patting a dot of shimmery powder on your Cupid's bow. If you were going to be bored out of your mind tonight, at least you would look good doing it. 

The carriage stands outside waiting, your elderly parents already inside. You scramble into the small space in a decidedly unladylike fashion and take a seat next to your father. The coach starts rumbling away, swaying slightly as the wheels move over the smooth cobbles. 

Trying your best to look out the window, feeling your mother's eyes boring into you, you turn her way. Unsurprisingly it looks like she has been sucking on a sour candy and she casts a disapproving eye over you. 

"Are we not making any effort tonight m'dear? Do you expect that a well-to-do Duke or Viscount will spare you a glance when you offer so little as a companion?"

Your mother and you grated each other's nerves in turn. The two of you had a good relationship when you were growing up but she was the equivalent of the ‘popular’ girl in society when she was a young woman. She was courted by the well-known eligible bachelors in the kingdom. She had everyone eating out of her hand back in the day.

The fact that you were completely unbothered by the societal structure and its obsession with marrying you off to the first man to look at you stuck in her craw in a way that made her passive aggressive nature flare up like a fire taking to kindling. 

“No, I expect a well-to-do Duke or Viscount to stop talking to me because they’re as interesting and attractive as wallpaper paste. Can’t I just find someone who I like?”

Then, tired of being accosted before even being greeted and with exasperation bleeding into your tone, you added: “Leave me in peace, Mother. You snip all day long and it only serves to wound me.”

Your Mother, now suitably chastised and very unhappy about it, turns her head to look out the window. The clack-clack of the carriage on the road is only punctuated by her mumbling to herself about her spoiled child who has never had to face the realities of being alone for the rest of their life. 

The coach eventually rolls to a stop in front of an impressive-looking mansion, the entrance already buzzing with other guests filing into the entrance. Footmen and servants bustle around them to attend to their every need. The next moment, the coach door swings open, and a footman comes into view, his gloved hand reaching out to help you down the two tiny steps of the carriage. 

Once your parents disembark, you smooth  your dress down again to look slightly less crumpled from the ride over. Walking ahead of your parents, you make your way inside and join the line of guests waiting to be announced. 

At the top of the staircase, the host announces your party and you make your way down the stairs slowly, a few heads turning in your direction. As you descend, you mentally note the usual crowd that are also in attendance for this ball. 

Lady Eleanor Fitzwilliam and her son Daniel, the most ineligible of bachelors due to a case of fainting spells and an overbearing mother. You pitied him on some level; the fainting spells could be treated but you could sympathise with the maternal problems, which were unlikely to go away on their own.  

Twins Simon and Cecilia Heatherwell-Boden, two of the nastiest pieces of work you were going to find on any guest list. Perpetual gossips and not above spreading malicious rumours, this twosome is best given a wide berth. 

Mary Isabella Winchester, now there is a peach. Sweet in demeanor and intention, you sometimes felt a twinge of envy at her. You were good acquaintances, but she seemed to swan through life without any challenges or difficulty, while maintaining her wide-eyed, innocent sensibility.

Turning at the bottom of the stairs, you reach out to take the proffered red wine from the waitron. And as night follows day, the first sip of the lovely burgundy blend is soured by the appearance of Sir Hugh Wellesley. A smarmy man who thought the height of fashion was his cow-lick of a fringe plastered to his forehead, and a trail of cologne that felt like a sensory assault up to 5 yards away. 

You took an impolitely long sip of the wine before allowing him to greet you. 

“My, you do look fetching this evening; much too pleasing among all the old ladies and lords. Aren’t you getting tired of these old bores?” he says. 

He laughs conspiratorially and it is evident the irony is lost on him. The stare that follows is on the uncomfortable edge of lascivious and you can feel your hackles rising at the impertinent gesture. He continues.

“I hope you will grace me with a dance later?” 

You hold up your finger in a sign for him to wait. With the other hand, you make a show of sticking your hand between the swell of your breasts, rooting around a little.

“My lady, whatever are you doing? He asks hurriedly, nearly breathless with consternation. 

“I’m fishing your eyeballs out of my cleavage, it’s been in there for the last few minutes and I would rather like them back on your face as good manners dictate.”

You smile at him - sugar laced with arsenic - and he pales before making up some excuse about going to see Sir Podlington standing by the window.  

From behind you, you hear a voice, the gentle lilting accent immediately setting it apart from everyone else. 

“Such a tongue lashing will surely break skin on lesser men. I would endeavour to stay on your good side should I dare a compliment in future.” 

“Bold of you to assume we will meet again after tonight, Sir….” you trailed off, waiting for him to fill in the blanks. 

“You can call me Lord Ezra.” 

You curtsy stiffly. “Lord Ezra” and you introduce yourself to him. 

He takes your hand and presses a chaste kiss to your knuckles; your eyes following the plush curve of his lips on your skin and for the first time you feel an inkling of the night perhaps not being a complete loss.

"Are you joining the other gentlemen in the hunt for a dear wife, or is it pure chance that you're taking your leisure here this evening?"

Ezra can’t help the flash of teeth as he catches your glib comment. You are arresting, a crimson rose with thorns in a dreary garden of magnolias, safe and chastened.

If he is being completely honest with himself, you’re also a brat, unused to being on the back foot, and he was nothing if not a betting man.  

"Tis leisure, but by my own misfortune I have been corralled by every mother to meet a simpering, sweet daughter that I have no taste for."

He secretly hopes you would take the bait, the double entendre tantalising as it leaves his tongue.  

You lift one eyebrow in question, intrigued by his choice of words. 

"Does sweet and simpering not suit you, Lord Ezra? Perhaps your taste lies more in ladies who spend time on their knees and backs and require coin in lieu of skill from their lovers?"

He chuckles heartily at your barbs. Not at all discouraged, he presses on. 

"Coin is but a function of my profession, dear lady. It says naught about my skill."

A laugh bubbles up from your throat, a light, airy thing that hangs between you for a few moments. 

"I cannot comment on your skill, but profess it to surely be lacking if there is no lady on your arm who enjoys its benefit. Peer endorsement is such a thing, isn't it just?"

You smile at him impishly. You just impugned his honour as a man and lover and he is just standing there laughing at you. The next move is his, and you wait patiently.

Lord Ezra feels a tingle of excitement simmering in his belly. While you are quick with words, your inexperience shows. With a smile firmly on his lips, he takes in the fast heartbeat in the hollow of your throat, the excited little breaths escaping your lips between laughs. The way your eyes trail him, oh don’t think he doesn't notice. He can still feel your soft skin under his lips. He wants to tease you to the edge of ruin and watch you throw yourself off it. 

The next moment, the dinner bell rings out and guests start drifting towards the stately dining room. A long, ornately decorated table dominates the high-ceilinged space, crystal chandeliers hanging down like droplets from a waterfall, the glass clinking gently as the open doors let through the lightest of breezes. 

The table settings suggest that no expense is spared, the silverware polished to a bright gleam and the plates pristine and placed just so, down to the last measurement. 

Place cards with neat calligraphy grace every table setting, and as you take a seat at your designated place, you see Lord Ezra smoothly sliding into the seat right next to you. 

You peer over at the place setting. Lady Fitzwilliam is not going to be pleased with the usurper - you pin him with a look and then nod meaningfully at the card. Lord Ezra follows your eyes, smirks roguishly and then tosses the offending card over his shoulder.

You can’t help but be amused and a little intrigued. Of course, the untamed curls that gathers in the nape of his neck, and the way he fills out the longer, black silk-woven coat that is so fashionable right now is dashing. 

He places his right hand on the table while the left reaches out for his wine glass - he takes a generous sip and you follow the gentle press of his full lips against the glass. He’s an enigma - well groomed but wild, a gentleman with a taste for dangerous disregard. You wonder why you haven’t seen him at other society events. 

During the soup course, he leans over to you, his mouth pleasingly warm from the meal as his lips brush the shell of your ear. 

“It is my unfortunate luck to dine on such mild meals when the most exotic mouthful is right next to me." 

You grin at him. “Lord Ezra you forget yourself, do not make assumptions about my interest.”

Like a Cheshire cat, his teeth gleam in the low light when he smiles. His eyes are on the middle distance as he speaks. 

“My lady, I believe that it will be you who forgets herself, her name and her oblivious objections.”

With his words you feel your dress skim up your thigh and the next moment there are fingers tracing from your knee up towards the crease of your leg. 

A knowing smile unfurls across your lips. You're no stranger to teasing and with those hands? Shifting forward just an inch, you widen your legs a little more, encouraging him to trail further. 

Lord Ezra revels in the enthusiastic consent; under so many pairs of eyes this is the best you can do and his eyes glint mischievously. 

His long fingers languidly trail up and down your thigh, letting the short nails scrape deliciously against the sensitive skin on each upstroke. You inch forward a little more as you relax into it, but Lord  Ezra is infuriating in his patience and pace. 

The salad course arrives. His fingers trail all the way up to your clothed apex and he flicks his thumb out and presses the ball of it to your damp underclothes. The angle is precise and devastating. 

The sudden pressure on your throbbing clit almost makes you gasp as you're bringing the salad fork to your lips. The gold glints mockingly in the low light of the chandelier, daring you to be quiet. His thumb increases and decreases pressure slightly, creating a gentle pulsing motion that feels like nothing and everything at once. 

You steal a glance at Lord Ezra, who is quietly biting into a plump cherry tomato with gusto. A few moments later, the wait staff take the salad plates away, and he mercifully stops the light pulsating pressure but doesn’t retract his hand. 

He leans over again just as the next dish of fish is placed in front of you. 

“It is advised to be careful with this course. So many bones, a peril each. Any disturbance could find you choking so attention is of the utmost importance.” 

You take a bite of fish, thinking that he would surely need to concentrate on the meal in front of him. But just as you start chewing, his thumb moves away, and you feel his middle finger slip in the front of your underclothes, pulling at it. He raises an eyebrow at you in question, as if to ask if you want to continue. Wordlessly, you lift yourself an inch so he can slip the offending garment out from under your ass. 

It takes a while for you to feel his hand again but when you do, it’s rubbing your slick all over your clit and dipping his fingertip into your wet heat. The gentle breach makes you inhale sharply, when you remember Lord Ezra’s warning from earlier and you try to breathe evenly through your nose. It proves to be extremely difficult under his patient but relentless attention. 

He’s skillfully picking at the flaky meat in front of him, dragging it slowly through the butter-and-dill sauce and bringing it to his lips. The calm exterior betrays the traitorously skillful way his large finger plays at your entrance and clit, dipping and swirling, exerting just enough pressure and movement to keep you on edge. 

Sir Worthington, balding and lightly intoxicated, leans over to Lord Ezra and asks a question. You only see your companion nod his head a few times to show he’s listening before he answers the man. Without apparently paying attention to you above the table cloth, he wordlessly assures you he has not forgotten about you as his finger dips in deeper, languidly moving it until he is knuckle deep and grazing that spot within that you never manage to reach yourself. 

Sweat starts to bead on your brow from the sheer effort of looking neutral and you start wolfing down the rest of your meal to stop yourself from moaning out loud. 

Your mother pins you with a stare, from a few settings over, that could make a cactus wilt. Her lips are drawn into a tight line of disapproval as she eyes your plate and then your face, clearly very unhappy with the unbecoming way you’re stuffing your face. If she only knew. 

Lord Ezra straightens back up, and the servants come to take the plates away a second time. As the servant lifts the plate away from in front of you, you notice him looking over at you, mischief dancing in his eyes. 

You’re wrecked. This is the game he enjoys most - the barely-controlled breathing, the light trembling of soft thighs that frame a cunt that has been teased to within an inch of tolerance. He loves it. But you’re not tamed yet, he can see it in your eyes. 

The dessert course, a strawberry merengue nest laden with berry syrup, is placed in front of diners. 

You wait for Lord Ezra to lean over to you again but to your surprise, he doesn’t. He takes a bite of the merengue and while it melts on his tongue, slowly adds another finger to the already soaked one in your cunt. Your eyes shutter for a second at the delicious intrusion before they shoot open and you look at him pleadingly. You don’t know if you’re asking for more or less. 

As you bring your spoon to the dessert, he moves his hand, slowly pushing in, then dragging the two thick fingers out again. It feels incredible and you struggle to remember what it was you were doing. 

Lord Ezra hums appreciatively as he chews on a berry. You’re so wet he can feel your slick coating his hand to the wrist. Perhaps it is time now. 

After a few thrusts of his fingers, he pushes the heel of his hand against your engorged clit and you hiss loudly. 

Lady Podlington, to your other side, leans over and asks you “Are you quite alright dear?”

Oh god, this is the last thing you need while Lord Ezra is chasing you to a devastating finish. You make up a quick white lie. 

“The berries are quite tart, are they not? I have not tasted any as acidic this summer. ‘Tis good that there is so much syrup.” 

Lord Ezra, thinking of a different kind of sticky-and-sweet altogether, chuckles lightly on your other side. The sound makes your cunt clench around his fingers.

He’s relentless now. Thrust after thrust, he curls his fingers up to rub at that devastating spot, the heel of his hand gently pressing at your clit with every upstroke. You feel the familiar coiling in your belly, hot and overwhelming. 

But also panic, because you’re going to have your most intense orgasm ever with 40 onlookers. 

Anxiously, you feel the coil inside you stretch and stretch and you know you have a few seconds at best until you’re a writhing mess. 

You spot a fruit bowl nearby, and grabbing a peach, vault it over to the other side of the dining table, where it splashes loudly into an open soup tureen. The splash covers a handful of diners, and dismayed gasps and the scraping of chairs fill the dining hall. Luckily the ruckus directs all eyes to the offending disaster. 

Your cunt convulses painfully hard around Lord Ezra’s fingers, and you grab the tablecloth with the hand that isn’t clapped around your mouth to stop the loud moan from escaping. You try, but fail, to stop your hips from chasing his fingers. 

Lord Ezra revels in the moment your eyes pinch closed, your frown lines cease and your mouth forms an appealing “o” before you manage to cover it with your hand. You’re beautiful in your uncontrolled moment of bliss, and he slows down to work you through it. 

When your eyes open and your breathing returns to normal, he slowly extracts his hand from your heat, still lightly clenching in the aftershocks of a devastating climax. Not unkindly, he rubs a wet thumb over the side of your knee while his hand is on it, an act of reassurance and a wordless truce. 

You look over at him, your eyes blown out from pleasure, your chest heaving. Through parted lips you smile in defeat. You watch as he brings his hand up and sucks his finger into his mouth, swallowing your slick off it. He hums again, eyes closing in enjoyment for the barest moment. 

“The sweetest honey is harvested from the most dangerous bees; someone will need to inform the cook that his efforts this eve have been outshone. Wouldn’t you agree?”

---

Comments are reblogs are appreciated <3

#ezra prospect x reader #ezra fanfiction #ezra x reader #ezra x fem!reader #ezra x f!reader #prospect fanfiction #regency au #pedro pascal character fic #pedro pascal fics #pedro pascal fanfiction

[16ruedelaverrerie]

Your instincts are animalistic and your deductive reasoning skills are razor-sharp! And you were completely correct! Although, I do have to confess, there are more than enough typos and grammar mistakes to go around in things I've written... fics, sure, but also just... comments and tumblr posts and whatnot. My wake is LITTERED with errors. With fics I can go in surreptitiously and tend to them hoping that no one has noticed, but with alarming regularity I will edit a comment reply being like "Sorry to drop this notification in your inbox... I just spotted a typo and I had to fix it..." so you know, you were more lenient than you needed to be in your assessment of my punctiliousness, but you were STILL COMPLETELY CORRECT.

That having been said, you're probably somewhat off the mark with regard to my vibes as person! I mean, I'm not an intentionally bad person, you know, I don't go around being a provocateur, but mostly it's just that people tend to reserve a lot of the energy it takes to be amiable for the real-life relationships they have. Me, I treat all the people in my life like dirt and then I come on the Internet and kiss all the babies in town. (That's a joke! I don't treat the people in my life like dirt! But certainly I enjoy explaining myself or pontificating at length much much less in real life, and maybe something of that willingness to keep talking can read as amiability online. )

As a person who is DEFINITELY IN MY WALLS, could you earn your rent and hang out with my cat while I am away?? Saba keeps throwing up from boredom / loneliness / a desire to protest my absences, and I am as concerned about his GI tract as I am tired of blotting the rug.....................

(💓You are very sweet and this message was a big serotonin boost, thank you)

No! I didn't! That dating sim mockup remains, as it began, a one-off joke about grabbing Gavin by the throat more than anything else kjfld;hgkld If anyone passing by right now wants to hit up @kenoa-ajisai-no-niwa about putting something together, that would be awesome!

I am the way that I am, so I would only really feel comfortable writing for the game, rather than drawing-- but division of labor aside, I'm just generally anxious about collaborative ventures like this occurring at this stage of the fandom life cycle. I've been part of a few late-fandom projects of this nature, and they've all sort of... dissolved into tears. There's no established graceful way for someone to lose interest in a fandom and step away from their collaborative commitments, you know? The project falls apart without them, but it's also difficult to ask someone to keep putting their time and labor into something that no longer interests them, and won't earn them college credits or a paycheck.

When a fandom is young, there's enough energy in the air to push a project to the finish line, right? Several years into a fandom, I can't help but feel that these projects tend to sink into a kind of "Well... it's a lot of work... and who are we even making it for, anyway... is it worth doing all of this just so that we can get like three comments" is-there-anyone-out-there morass. That's not a rule, of course, just a regrettable pattern that I've personally experienced-- but it's what comes to mind for me, as I ruminate on the possibility of this hypothetical dating sim.

...And yet, I'd still probably write for such a hypothetical dating sim, if it were to hypothetically exist

#askbox #let me hear your fandom talk

[abonethrownfromthevoid]

i reaaaaalllly need to temper my disdain for any mention of "lore" and "worldbuilding" so that I can have a deeper relationship with some forms of art. I think it's just my exposure in the past to people that are very into lore and worldbuilding and things and such of and so and of that nature has shown me such meaningless (to me) engagement with art like obsessing over minutiae of some "world" or what exactly happened exactly in the exact story and timeline and pontification about what is "canon" within said "world". the best stories to me bring you into worlds but don't let you know everything, and you don't need to know everything, and you should sit in the not knowing. not even specifically sci-fi or fantasy worlds, any fiction is an alternate reality. I have always envisioned it as though a good fiction shows a fully different world filtered through whatever medium the fiction is created in. like the blinds are down on the window to another world and you're parting two slats and peeking through. and that's enough, and that's good.

#just a thought that's been rattling inside me for a while that i need to externalise 👍

[applesandbannas747]

same anon as before but thank u for the interesting response! and i’m sorry in advance for this long venting lol, but honestly i’m just really frustrated because i think fence could be as popular and mainstream as projects like check please or heartstopper if 1) there was good marketing for it, 2) if the releasing of the issues wasn’t so puzzling, and 3) if the storyline was progressing in a natural way.

rise makes no sense in context of the novels at all and im just? if they were going to have tie-in novels they should have been used to progress character and relationship development, not create an alternate world that’s never going to be addressed. even putting aside gross mischaracterization the novels literally cannot be canon so they’re just published for? no good reason i can see? they could have prequels (seiji and jesse or harvard and aiden pre-series) or been about the team bonding/getting better at fencing, or focused on side characters that won’t get as much focus in the comics (eugene! if he’s mostly being side-lined in the comics the novels could have been his time to shine instead of him being even more sidelined. or even bobby and dante or kally and tanner). there’s definitely a lot of characters in the comics and if it was getting overwhelming the novels could have picked up that slack but they didn’t so their purpose mystifies me — there was also clearly no reason to have nicholas and seiji as pov characters in those books because srb (and i do adore all srb’s other work so this is hard for me to say) was terrible at writing them. when she was good she was good (which makes me think if there had been more editing the novels could have been better) but when she was bad she was very very bad. since she was even worse at writing eugene i guess i should be glad eugene didn’t have a pov. but seriously if the novels were mainly just haiden it could have just been haiden pov.

idk i just used to love fence so much and always noticed there was never a huge following for it, which is okay because the small fence fandom is great!! but i’ve always thought it could have had a bigger audience. there is so much promise in the first issues of fence — kings row competing against exton, the revelation of the truth about nicholas, the reactions and results from that, character development for all the main characters, relationship development for nichoji & haiden, the team actually Becoming a team & the idea of seiji nicholas and eugene being the fencing team after aiden and harvard graduate. but i feel like we’re never going to see any of that. page time is spent on things that aren’t as important instead, and then it takes ages for the next issue/volume and like you said it doesn’t feel coherent or connected to the other issues anymore. it confuses me that all the edges in fence r being sanded down and that the interesting promises in it are constantly being put off.

i’m sorry for talking about this sm i have not been successful in getting anyone into fence irl 😭 i hadn’t read rise or the novels until this month and i reread vol 1-4 before i read the new stuff and it made me very nostalgic

Hi again! lmfao dude no need to ever apologize to me for vents about Fence because I am forever pontificating about it. I agree that Fence has (or, rather, had) the potential to be really popular to a wide audience and I think you hit the nail on the head. And so much of it is just such easy fixes--like putting any effort into marketing lol or when releasing the compiled issues as volumes, giving them all distinct covers and names would have been SO helpful. Reusing the issue covers for the volumes was a mistake (and again, that's something marketing should have been all over!!). and the storyline. oh man. yeah. that ship has sailed and I've had mental breakdowns about it--but if we'd stayed true to the original concept of Fence and BOOM and Pacat put more effort into reaching a wider audience, it could have been big. Another consideration here, of course, is the content-to-hiatus ratio, which loses a ton of fans, but I maintain that if BOOM had their shit together, they could have fixed that problem too! and it's so frustrating

GOD RIGHT??? The novels came in, ruined Fence, and then aren't even actually canon because they don't actually fit in the universe??? My theory is that since Pacat is a SRB superfan, he kind of let her go overboard and realized after the novels were published and he had to move his story forward post-Disarmed that he'd fucked up giving so much freedom to her. Because they called it canon--and he still says it's '80% canon' but it couldn't have happened. So the point of the novels was basically for Pacat to read fanfiction from his favorite author of his OCs--it did nothing positive for the story, the characters, the franchise, or the fans. and LITERALLY!!! I've always thought doing a prequel for the tie-ins made more sense. Like following the fencing team with Harvard, Aiden, Kally, and Tanner would have been so fun, or focusing on Kally and Tanner or Bobby and Dante would have been fun and would have left room for actual plot progression!! It was pure selfishness on the authors' part to do the novels how they did them. And if Pacat would father fangirl over SRB than write a meaningful story, that's his right, but it still bugs me that there was clearly no thought given to the consequences of the novels. So instead of dealing with them, we ignore them and pretend that they're still '80% canon' to make ourselves feel better for our oopsie. hahaaa I have nothing nice to say about SRB or her writing. I don't think she got anything right in Fence--except for hinting Eugesse, which you know she only did because she knew it was popular in the fandom and she wanted the hype and baited us with it lmfao But! I've always had issues with her even before she touched Fence--her blatant sexism in In Other Lands was disturbing to me when I read it (shaming and looking down on feminine traits isn't Woke or Revolutionary just because you assigned those traits to men in your "badass feminist society" and had all the women be grossly sexist and predatory) so it's not just me being an asshole because she ruined my favorite thing in the world <3 But I know she's very beloved among her fans and I'm sorry that she failed you in Fence when you love her other works so much. If there was one mercy from the novels, it was the lack of a Eugene POV even if it further proves he's not really part of the team/a main character...unfortunately that's a fair trade jkdfah

I always thought Fence deserved a bigger following than it ever got--and maybe having a bigger fanbase and more money being thrown at it would have helped BOOM commit to buying enough ahead to let Pacat and Jo actually work on it consistently and put out content more regularly. It really was setting itself up to be so fun and full of tropes the gays LOVE. i mean, sports 'manga' that's actually queer? All the fun tropes with rivals and 'becoming a team'? The classic character archetypes used smartly and effectively? I genuinely think it would have appealed to all the people who love Check Please and Heartstopper and Yuri on Ice. And it still does, I guess, but I feel like if Fence gets popular now, I'd be a bit sad to see all that love centered around a version of Fence I don't like (but that is pure selfishness lmfao I fully admit it). I just so love/d all the edges and conflicts in Fence and it's sad to see them sanded down in canon and resolved of screen.

LMFAO my dude I am sorry for rambling so much at you twice in a row now! Anyway, I'm always here to talk Fence uwu even though i can be harsh and unpleasant about things i don't like jskdfha

#jackshit #fence comic #thanks for the ask!!💜 #fence vent

[ignitesthestxrs]

i have a hypothesis that the introduction of the “reply” function to tumblr significantly contributed to the loss of ask culture. tags as whisper conversation set a tone (a often useful one! but one that maybe leans in an “anti-cringe” kind of direction) and then replies capitalized on that instinct to not loudly contribute to conversations. like, if you didn’t want to reblog someone’s post with commentary (personal post that felt weird putting on your own blog, anonymity, whatever), then you could follow up with an ask ((as currently demonstrated)). now a lot of that conversation is happening in the closed loop of the reply function - not private, but certainly not a public discussion.

are there structural changes that you think tumblr would need for conversational culture to make a bigger comeback (either generally or for yourself)? (i’m thinking also of the closed door nature of discord servers and other ways fandom might be getting more insular, but that’s a sidebar.)

YEAH you know what i agree with this. and like, there used to be no way to reply to replies lol so you would screencap it and then make a new post which, while onerous, did have the effect of continuing that conversation in public. which also therefore made not just the conversation accessible to followers but also the fact that u as the blogger were available for conversation clear.

i do think the sort of extra layer of distance and the visibility of interaction allows people to be like, oh this blogger responds in this way to people who approach them, so if i approach them in a similar manner, i know what kind of response i am likely to get. rather than worrying about like, how do i as an individual worry about how to get this individual person to interact with me, personally. the stakes are much lower! the relationship building has more of a chance to go through digital layers of smalltalk.

honestly idk that i am very good at Solutions so much as Pontificating about this kind of stuff, but i do think it requires approaching from the angle of understanding that the nature of community requires both give and take, and fandom as an ecosystem can't survive on content creators throwing material out to silent masses anymore than silent masses are going to feel fulfilled or connected to people who aren't making things for them to engage with.

i also think there is a siloing of like, consumers in one section and creators in another and never the twain shall meet, which is kind of anathema to how i have participated in fandom. i do think that participation in fandom requires some kind of active behaviour, even if it's just reblogging and tagging fic or a fanart, or sharing your opinions on a show. like it doesn't have to be Making Content, but it does need to involve Making Connections, even if that connection is just being a weird teenager who finds a blog they like and backreads through that person's content and now they're an expert on swimming rpf and ffvii even though they have never engaged in competitive swimming or played ffvii (look.)

but like so much of my fandom behaviour was modelled on watching other people be friends via sharing their thoughts and creativity with each other, and i have only ever made friends online with other people who reached out to me on that level - not just people who liked the same stuff as me, or people who admired from a distance, but people who engaged with the things i was making, and who made things - art, fic, meta, funny opinions, gifsets, interesting questions! - that i wanted to engage with. and i really do think the mechanics of tumblr allow for that range and depth of creative interaction in ways that a lot of social media doesn't, or can't, and maybe the key is just. trying to make use of that more? modelling the behaviour i want to see in the world? who knows

also god i cannot imagine anything worse than joining a fandom discord. discord is for me to have a dozen servers of 3-6 people each, some of whom have 1-2 of the same people in them in different configurations, so i can meticulously choose the perfect configuration of group chat to drop a link to a funny picture or article i found into. you could not catch me in a group bigger than like, 8, i'd fucking die

#hannah answers asks

[nelson-riddle-me-this]

5, 12, 13 15, 20 for movie asks 😋

5. A movie musical you like

I have an affection for Good News (1947) even though it's not great - I was obsessed with the soundtrack summer 2020 and it helped me find the motivation to register for (online) Fall classes when I was packing up my apartment to move home with my parents until the pandemic situation improved.

12. A performance you think is underrated

I think it's funny how in both Athena (1954) and Hit The Deck (1955) Debbie Reynolds gets the 2nd part and Jane Powell gets the lead. I get that Jane had been in movies longer and she's still a good screen presence (even if I dislike her as a person), but Debbie is far more interesting, funny, and natural onscreen AND a better romantic lead too. Though Jane's a stronger singer, she's very classical, and Debbie's less contrived, more pop, and sounds so much fresher than Powell or Ann Miller (also in HTD) for that matter.

13. A performance you think is overrated

Fred Astaire in just about anything

15. A movie ruined by the ending

Oh hmm, the first one that comes to mind is Divorce American Style (1967) - where Debbie Reynolds and Dick Van Dyke's characters share my maternal grandparent's names - Barbara and Richard. There's divorce and a whole mess of couples because of it, and at this group of people are all out together and start pontificating about how 'marriage is dying in this modern age' or whatever, and there's a beautiful moment where Barbara and Richard each, sort of independently, pull away from this circle of people spewing crap - turned off by what they're hearing. They turn to eachother and say some beautiful things about a relationship being work and that some people aren't willing to put in the work. And then they ruin it by saying something against women's liberation that mars what was previously a beautiful moment.

20. A movie you think looks beautiful

Princess Mononoke (1997) - I usually like to talk a lot watching movies at home with friends and family, but I find Miyazaki's movies are so captivating they don't facilitate that - what can I say that's more interesting than the gorgeous story and art unfolding onscreen?

[scarcityandabundance]

🔐 ii

Nearly a year since the first post on chastity.

R and I have been broken up since just after his birthday, on the conclusion of our Japan trip. I've only reestablished contact in early May, after over 3 months of silence. Perhaps last Friday was the first time we've talked since then that held the treasured easy rapport of the before-times.

We conversed for over 2h, about what's going on in our lives and about the state of society at large. The latter always came naturally; the pontification from students of the humanities.

I was however, surprised to hear he has held himself chaste since the ending of our romantic relationship. More chaste than he ever was while we were together, most certainly than while he was locked in the cage.

Chastity in the true sense, in that he has kept solely to himself since I left him. That he longer engages in the behaviour that gave me deep misgivings about our viability as long-term partners. He didn't hold me as precious while he had me (or at least that's what it felt like), but now is a monk who kinks on a purely non-sexual basis - in his own words.

How curious. Certainly he does not lack for opportunity, now that I've released the reins and set him free. I've believed that he lacked discernment, to be so free with lust/infatuations for multiple others, that I was nothing particularly special to him. I did think he would merrily go on his way after we've parted and he has, in most aspects.

But not in this; a major pain point of our previous relationship. I don't wish to speculate why exactly, so it's best to ask him when/if it feels right to.

Right now I'm rebuilding, as I have countless times before. I don't have the emotional bandwidth to engage in a romantic connection - there are longstanding things I need to get in order - and it's best not to be swept up and distracted.

But just maybe, we're becoming the people we need to be, in order to find ourselves to each other once more.

[themovieblogonline]

"You Can Call Me Bill" Documentary Screens at SXSW

The documentary about the life and career of 91-year-old William Shatner, “You Can Call Me Bill,” written and directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, screened at SXSW in Austin, Texas on March 16. The documentary was financed by Legion, which is fan-owned. The donors' names appear in the credits at the end. The documentary opens in a forest with the John Muir quotation, “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” The director did a nice return to this forest image at the documentary’s end, but the middle contains Shatner pontificating on a variety of subjects and many clips from his work through the years. The film had a structure that was projected onscreen: Prologue: The Miracle - Chapter 1:  Love, death, and horses - Chapter 2:  Masks - Chapter 3:  Boldly Go - Chapter 4:  Loneliness - Chapter 5:  So fragile, so blue The director explained that this structure corresponded to one of Shatner’s original songs. The best was the last, “I Want To Be A Tree,” which was Shatner saying he wanted to be cremated after death and then a Redwood will be planted in his ashes and grow into a mighty tree. If the structure seems a bit “loosey goosey,” it is. But, as Shatner says in the documentary, “Ooga booga should be part of our lives.” Shatner’s advice:  “Take care of the inner child.  That curiosity is what keeps us alive.  The search for love is what keeps us alive. Curiosity equals love.” In regards to Chapter 1, Shatner said, “Nature or animals or people are what keep us connected.” He emphasized the connectedness of life on planet Earth throughout the one-hour and thirty-six-minute documentary, which was released on March 16th after its first showing at SXSW. Acting:  Shatner says that “Learning the words is the work of the actor. The rest is just kicks.” When asked if he was a method actor who continued in the part after his work day, he responded, “The carpenter doesn’t come home and try to fix the dining room table.” So that would be a no. Regarding those who have imitated Shatner through the years, the verdict was “Every word is its own sentence.” Various imitators were shown giving his delivery their best shot, in the same way, that Christopher Walken is often mimicked. Shatner’s life philosophy:  “Everything is an adventure.” He added, “Do it fully, boldly, courageously. Limit your sense of regret.” In his discussion of loneliness, Shatner noted that he had “been alone all my life,” ever since his birth in Canada in 1931. He said, “Loneliness is endemic” and noted that he was talking about existential loneliness. Almost three years after the 91-year-old 'Star Trek' actor and his 64-year-old spouse divorced, William and Elizabeth have decided to give their relationship another go.  Shatner said: "'My wife… she is the zest of life.” Shatner’s trip into space with BlueOrigin on July 20, 2021, has played heavily into his becoming a proponent of trying to save the Earth. He talked about how he cried upon coming back to Earth and says now that he thinks now that he was grieving for the Earth. He commented on the “total denial on a global scale of global warming.” The director filmed half a day per chapter on a massive sound stage, using three cameras, building up to the “I Want To Be A Tree” song that ends the film. Shatner, himself, may have given the best review of this work saying, “I believe about 85% of what I say is good and the other 15% is bullshit.” Read the full article

[bodycountgame]

God, did Arthur and nyra really cheat on their partners? Was it while being in a loving, committed relationship? It's just I don't know how to look past that. Is there are any guarantee they are not going to the same to mc in a relationship?

I get this question quite a lot, and I also get asked whether MC will be able to bring it up in game. I don’t think it will come up again in game - mainly because, like, there’s just been a murder and MC kind of has bigger fish to fry!

In Body Count, like in real life, relationships are built upon trust. You have a limited amount of information about different characters, and you have to consider whether your MC will trust them. You might do that based on their past, or you might think that their present is more important - how your MC navigates these decisions is up to you.

Can you ever be guarantee how someone will behave in the future? No, not really - but you can choose to trust them. In Body Count, as in life, there are no guarantees going in about where people’s loyalties lie and how they might behave going forward. You just have to make decisions about whether, with the information available, you think that your character can trust the people around them and go from there – at risk of their pride or their heart or their life.

Don’t think your MC could trust someone who admitted to cheating on a partner? That’s fine! Don’t trust them. But life is rarely as black and white as that, so Body Count isn’t going to be either.

#and that's all i have to say on that xoxo #is this just me pontificating about the nature of relationships #yeah kind of! #there are no Guarantees in life anon #FAQ

[destroyyourbinder]

Unriddling the Sphinx: Autism & the Magnetism of Gender Transition

When people note that "trans children" tend to have autistic traits and that children with an autism diagnosis (particularly natal girls, but also boys) are massively overrepresented in the population that is referred to assessment and treatment for gender dysphoria, many trans people's (and allies') response is that it is a kind of dehumanization and denial of agency to claim that autistic people cannot be transgender, do not have the right to seek gender transition, or that they may be vulnerable to being exploited by the transgender healthcare system. Most recently, this claim has come up again with regards to a recent piece by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, where among many other things she notes the enormous increase in child referrals to gender clinics, including a disproportionate number of autistic children, to explain her reticence to endorse the political stances of modern transgender movements.

This is my response as an autistic woman, who was once an autistic child, who is a lesbian with experiences of gender dysphoria and who once wanted to transition to male.

-----

1.

Recognizing our vulnerability to social predation and to cultural systems that we do not understand because they were not made for us is not offensive. As autistic people, it is key to claiming our autonomy as a particular kind of disabled person. We often do not recognize our limitations in reference to greater social systems not because we are "too stupid" (i.e. cognitively or intellectually limited) but because we have different value systems than neurotypical people and hierarchical institutions built for their benefit. Autism is a pervasive developmental disability, and it is a way of being. It is not merely being a "regular person" minus various clinically defined psychological capacities or skills. It is a difference across all domains of life, and as a disability that causes differences in our social and sensory perception it is also a disability that causes differences in what we want and what we care about. Both those who exhibit condescending "concern" for autistic people and those people who naively defend our right to do whatever we see fit miss this component of being autistic. It is not that we are merely vulnerable because we are missing parts of our decision-making or social skills apparatus. It is not that we are merely being unfairly denied what we want to do, and our autism is immaterial, just some excuse for the denial.

It's that we aren't recognized as having wants, only "special needs". It's that we aren't given the skills to know what it is that we want, or that it might be different from those around us. It's that we are never told how to get what we want in safe and healthy ways, or that there is even a potentially safe and healthy way to get it. It's that we are deemed automatically pathological and empty of internal experiences as autistic people. It's that we're not given any help on how to navigate our deep differences from others and how to navigate being deprived of social resources and networking in a way that doesn't tell us to just cover it up and deal with it. It's that most people who dedicate their lives to "helping" us do not care about any of these things, merely that we can be trained to act in a way that doesn't disrupt the lives of neurotypical people. Given this context, it is far more insulting to me to insist that having autonomy renders us somehow invulnerable to exploitation than to correctly perceive that we are in fact an intensely vulnerable people. By nature of our disability, we are always on the margins of social resources and social networks, and exercising our autonomy unfortunately often puts us even further outside social acceptability and social protection rather than somehow shielding us materially from the consequences of living a self-actualized autistic life. Few autistic people are prepared for this when they begin trying to make decisions "true to self" in adolescence.

I believe nearly every autistic person is traumatized from the consequences of living in this world and what others do to us. Clinicians do not usually recognize that autistic children and adults can be traumatized, that there is even anything there to traumatize. (Why else could they feel so comfortable shocking us, shackling us, or feeding us bleach?)

-----

2.

I think because we are not neurotypical we often struggle to understand just why a neurotypical person would feel ok excluding us, or maybe even anyone. Many of us autistic people have little impulse to do such things, and if we do, we rarely have the social power to make someone that we've cut out of our lives unemployable, unable to access medical care, food, housing, and so on. But neurotypical institutions are set up, from top to bottom, to create hierarchies of value with extreme material difference between the top and bottom. They are set up to stratify the "worthy" people from "unworthy" people.

Autistic people are almost universally considered "unworthy" in these systems, and to the extent that we can curry favor from them we must consent to our exploitation: to entering into a transaction on neurotypical terms, where we can get some sort of worth through providing a "benefit" to this hierarchical resource system which is not made according to our value system or for us whatsoever. This is common to all marginalized people. But it is often particularly poignant to autistic people, who struggle to find community with any social group of human beings. There is no "elsewhere" for us, there is no "home". We are stuck, as they say, on the "wrong planet", and the spaceship was destroyed.

The idea that exercising our autonomy would protect us from this world rather than render us more vulnerable because we are refusing to transact correctly or refusing to provide a benefit is utterly absurd. Our autonomy is perfectly compatible with our continued social ostracization and exploitation. It usually coexists with our continued social ostracization and exploitation.

In social skills classes-- or just the wild, wild world-- you are not taught how to deal with the fact that everyone will hate you for being you. You are taught to be someone else. You are not taught about your native autonomy. You are taught about how to put your hands here or here, how to choose between actions that are condescendingly and ridiculously normal. You are not taught how to take responsibility in a way you understand, that is harmonious to your own values and others'. You are taught to hold yourself accountable for your abnormality.

So forgive me if I do not believe for one second that impersonal, well-funded medical systems that were built off of medically experimenting on intersex children and adults (the nightmares wreaked by John Money at Johns Hopkins) or psychologically experimenting on behaviorally aberrant children (UCLA, where behaviorist torturer of autistic children Ivan Lovaas tinkered with gender nonconforming children alongside conversion therapist George Rekers) have autistic people's self-defined well being in mind.

And forgive me if I do not think informed consent clinics have autistic people's self-defined well-being in mind when they're more interested in rubber stamping hormones while shielding themselves from legal liability than assisting autistic adolescents and adults, who have an intrinsically different way of understanding gendered social norms, navigate the enormous complexity of how to interface with the single most fundamental social fixation of the neurotypical world as someone who will always and automatically fail.

-----

3.

I do not think most gender clinicians even have the first understanding of what it means to be autistic and what this does in and of itself to your understanding of gender and sexuality. What J.K. Rowling said in her piece-- a straightforward accounting of facts-- is far, far less insulting to me than what Diane Ehrensaft-- one of the premier "experts" in the United States on pediatric transgender cases-- published in a peer-reviewed journal on autism. In a 2018 letter to the editor reading remarkably like new-age material on Indigo Children, she writes that she likes to call autistic transgender children "Double Helix Rainbow Kids" and declares us "freed" from the restrictions of gender as "more creative" individuals. This article ends with an anecdote about an eight year old autistic female child with limited language use who begins speaking, making eye contact, and relating more appropriately with clinic staff after she is socially transitioned by her family. Ehrensaft muses, "“Could gender be an alleviator for the stressors of autism?”

She is not the only one to pontificate about the magical changes a gender transition brings on autistic children. Norman Spack (the first clinician in the US to use GnRH agonists on gender dysphoric children as puberty-suppressing drugs) claims in a coauthored, peer-reviewed 2012 paper (insults upon insults, in the Journal of Homosexuality) that in his clinical experience the symptoms of comorbid diagnoses--including "problems with social competence"-- "decrease and even disappear" with gender treatment. In the same paper, this passage appears:

Although the question of whether gender dysphoria is simply a symptom of an autism spectrum disorder has been raised by mental health clinicians in the field, we feel it is equally worth questioning the validity of an autism diagnosis among transgender youth, particularly of those diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder. Perhaps the social awkwardness and lack of peer relationships common among GID-Asperger’s patients is a result of a lifetime of feeling isolated and rejected; and maybe the unusual behavior patterns are simply a coping method for dealing with the anxiety and depression created from living in an “alien body,” as one patient described it.

Do autistic trans people-- who rightfully protest against mainstream autism organizations focusing on a "cure" for autism rather than respectful accommodations for our differences and medical needs-- know that very well-connected, very respected, and very powerful gender doctors are claiming that gender transition cures the symptoms of autism? Do autistic trans people-- who rightfully discuss the implications of denying that someone can both be autistic and hold a meaningful gender variant identity-- know that it is an active clinical debate as to whether or not their disability and all its struggles is "just" a result of somehow ending up in the "wrong body"?

If they do not, they should know that this is how doctors are perceiving the pervasive issues that the children in their care are having: not as the result of a life-long, stigmatized, but eminently livable disability, but as the result of a mystical gender failure that can be medically corrected. That essentially, the disability "goes away" so long as outsiders no longer perceive a problem with a child's conformity to gender norms. That either an autistic girl somehow is transfigured into a non-autistic child through transition, or more likely, an autistic girl's autistic behavior is unfitting for her as a girl but not for her as a boy. That the "proof" of pediatric transition's effectiveness and standard of an autistic child's happiness is how much the child wishes to participate in neurotypical society on neurotypical society's terms.

I cannot pretend that this isn't ludicrously disrespectful to autistic people, or that it isn't a total erasure of our experience as human beings. To these gender doctors, the fact that a girl might see the world in a different way and care about different things and thereby struggle in a world not made for her does not matter whatsoever, except maybe as a tokenistic "journey" she can go on alongside her wonderfully progressive and affirming doctors. What "autism" is for them is a particularly severe and inconvenient social adjustment problem which can be forcibly corrected through body modifications, should an autistic child or adult rightly note that they can't do gender right and this is causing problems for them. They are more interested-- like in a long history of abusive and even deadly "treatments" for autism-- in correcting the problem for them than for the autistic person. How convenient for neurotypical people both the gender incongruous behavior and the social noncompliance goes away once you medically modify a child to look like the other sex.

I cannot be anything but sick that "increased eye contact" is a sign an autistic child needed medical meddling in the intimate process of navigating and negotiating their sexual and gender development. I cannot trust that these doctors aren't missing enormous parts of their autistic patients' experiences, if this is what they are so gleeful to report as a positive transformation and their justification for disrupting and surveilling children's bodies. What do they think of autistic people and those who are gender non-conforming if they are so willing to believe that existing as a person with a stigmatized disability is actually just a misdiagnosis for the pseudoscientific condition of being a man in a woman's body, or vice versa?

----- 

5.

It takes many, many years and quite a bit of luck and support for most autistic people to fully understand and come to terms with how their autism affects them and sets them apart from both individual neurotypical people and neurotypical society at large. It takes years-- often far, far into adulthood, especially for those abused under a medical model or for those who went decades undiagnosed-- to understand the differences between social and non-social aspects of this disability.

It takes years to not resort to chalking up all of your own distress and difficulties to being a "retard".

I have not met an autistic woman yet who did not have extreme difficulty integrating her autistic differences in values with a broader sense of self that includes whatever version of herself she uses to navigate a world in which women's values are simultaneously invisible (since she has no right to determine them herself) and nitpicked to death (since it is important she complies).

In a world like this why would it not be difficult for autistic people to know when it is they are being fooled or exploited while participating in transgender communities or while seeking transgender health care? Autistic people-- especially those who are dependent on caregivers or health systems for basic care, as well as those who depend on the goodwill of their families, employers, or welfare benefit institutions to remain as independent as they can-- have to make continual compromises just to maintain enough acceptability to communicate with the outside world nonetheless do things like "make a friend", "go to the doctor", "find a job".

I do not think neurotypical people understand or care that when I speak or write it is always with a similar effort as with a second language. Language-- whether it is verbal or nonverbal, with all the extensive symbology of the neurotypical world-- does not ever get to be something other than "translation" for me. As someone with an Asperger's-profile of abilities who has studied the neurotypical world intensely for years, I have the opportunity to translate in a way that allows others to understand me at least some of the time. Many autistic people who are more affected live in the world which gives "autism" its name, where nobody cares to do the translation for us and we are left totally and utterly alone.

The 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (who, perhaps not coincidentally, was likely autistic) was fixated on questions about the meaning of communication. About whether a language of one could make any sense, about what it would mean to speak about something hidden from everyone else or perhaps even ourselves. In a famous passage debated vociferously, he wrote, "If a lion could speak, we would not be able to understand him."

Many have resolved the question posed by this statement by claiming that for fuck's sake, a lion is a lion, and has nothing to say.

-----

6.

Gender transition appealed to me because it was cloaked in the farcical notion that there was some version of me and my body that could finally speak directly. I never quite understood the whole Adam and Eve story as an autistic child-- just don't eat it!-- but if there truly were a serpent's apple for autistic folks it would consist of this promise: that there was a world where the glass and the fog would dissolve, that we weren't covered in a repulsive and bumbling slime made of our own desires to understand, that instead of our words and hands glancing off the skin of everyone around us we could do that magic everyone else could and hold someone's heart in our hands. I was fooled because like many struggling autistic people, I wanted the problem to be me. Because then it was fixable. I would let them take my only body (which was such a sensory drag) to convert me into one of these blessed transponders that normal people were, receiving and sending all these messages like shooting stars blazing through the unimpeded vacuum of space. Without my femaleness and without the Difficulties That Should Not Be Named, I could send whatever message I wanted to whoever I wanted and it would be received, I could be gregarious, important, sexually compelling; my will and autonomy wouldn't be stifled by 140 pounds of dumpy, itchy flesh with an overbite and slack hands.

When I imagined myself as a man I didn't imagine myself like most of the childhood boys I managed to ingratiate myself with, who lisped, repeated themselves, and tripped over their own shoes. I imagined myself as a musician who was absolutely magnetic, I imagined myself as a writer with a legacy, I imagined myself telling other guys they were stupid shits and they could fuck off. I imagined being able to hold onto a football without dropping it, being able to smoke weed without getting a migraine, being able to talk without squeaking or letting out a little drool.

I thought I would finally be a human being with no embarrassments and nothing that could get me bullied in the bathroom between class. I thought when I would say "no", other people would listen. I would enter whatever mystical world it is that Ehrensaft names, made of messages and meanings, where every twist of word and piece of clothing said something, connected by a fine filament back to that Necronomicon filled with the runes of social symbology. And it would make sense.

I would become a lion, not a house cat. And the lion would speak. And we would understand him.

-----

7.

It is a neurotypical narrative that this is what transition can do for you, because it is what someone else's transition does for neurotypical people. A gender transition is magical because it decodes the lion. It unriddles the sphinx. The autistic person must be happier now, because the neurotypical person is happier now. (And who has an empathy deficit?)

But if I have learned to be afraid of anything as an autistic person it is not my own neuroticism and fixations, but those of the so-called "normal people". Forget double helix rainbows: being an autistic person is like your DNA is a converted school bus trundling through the world in spray-painted glory and the whole world has an HOA. I understand why autistic people who see themselves as transgender see "concern" as the busybody stupidity of the neurotypical world. They aren't wrong. But it exists alongside other mundane and brutal busybody stupidities, such as grant funding, progressive saviorism, and psychiatric god-complexes.

To understand and resist what the neurotypical world communicates to us about our worth is not to protest back to them in their own language. I am an autistic woman and like many other autistic women I am tired of not only making myself more palatable but translating my existence into something intelligible to outsiders, who are both men and the non-autistic. Radical feminists miss one of these; trans activists and allies miss the other. But I am irrevocably othered from both.

When you are autistic you are taught only one symbolic structure. It is not your own, but it is the only medium you will ever have to communicate with any complexity. More sinisterly, it becomes the only medium we have to communicate to ourselves, the only medium we can use to work around the silent and jumbled parts of our bodies and minds. Am I hungry? It is not always obvious. To ask the question I find myself translating, even when alone.

My fantasy about lions and men was that whatever world a lion lived in and whatever he had to say, he did not need to translate, and especially never to himself. When a lion says something he does not stop to ask if he means what he says or who is saying it. When a lion looks into the water hole and sees his own reflection, he does not need to reconcile anything. The lion does not need to speak to understand himself. A lion is made of teeth and blood and claws and the lion just does.

I do not use the symbolism of transgenderism to explain the little gaps and incongruities that are my problems with gender, with my sexed body, with sexuality. It is not only a language born of neurotypical neuroses and regulation, but it is always and forever fundamentally a translation. As an autistic woman I have spent my whole life avoiding these dual facts, through both my time thinking of myself as trans and while trying to understand this whole thing afterwards: I am my body and I am not my body. Because I speak, but I do not understand. Because I understand, but I do not speak.

I will, unavoidably, always have to translate to speak and understand. But my autonomy requires that at bottom I must respect the native communication of my own body and mind. I refuse to use force or coercion to get it to talk, to interrupt its silence, to confabulate stories on its behalf, to speak for it using assumptions it cannot confirm or deny. I have to make peace with the fact that sometimes the blanks of my body or the redacted corners of my mind will say nothing. I have to make peace with the fact that translation is always inaccurate, that something is always beyond that constellation of symbols and words. The autistic body and the autistic mind have their own boundaries, and I refuse to believe that exercising my autonomy requires breaking them.

I do not know if J.K. Rowling knows this. I hope you do.

#writings #autism #detransition #reidentifying

[stetervault]

Hello! Do you do rec lists? Would you be willing rec some Steter fics that aren't the most common/popular ones? If not, no worries!

Technically this isn’t a rec-finding blog lol but I do make rec lists sometimes if someone asks and I have the time and I feel like it. Here are some (I think?) less known Steter fics, oldies that people may have missed or forgotten (Idk how well I succeeded, I just picked a bunch that have significantly less reads/bookmarks than the really big fics):

Fear (Doesn't Mean I Can't Fight) by azerblazer

Peter is the damsel in distress, the Sheriff is the hostage, random unnamed hunters are the bad guys.

Stiles has a bat, a hoodie and a willingness to do anything to protect those he's loyal to.

Bring it on.

A Lean and Hungry Look by kototyph

The woods aren't the only place you find wolves.

You're Mine, Valentine by orphan_account

In which Peter decides to court Stiles, and does so by leaving him hearts.

Bloody ones.

Zodiac by Green

"You know, Taurus and Libra make a good match," Peter says with a sly smile.

Stiles looks away. "Yeah. I looked that up, too."

Surviving Peter and the Zombie Apocalypse by Nopennamesleft

Its the end of the world and Stiles has run out of luck. He saves a werewolf from certain death. Will they begin to rely on each other to survive or will the wolf just eat Stiles for a midnight snack?

He Is A Villain By The Devil's Law by neglectedtuesday

Stiles’ lungs are burning, blood is pumping through his veins and he’s pretty sure that if he stops running then he’ll just keel over into the gutter. But God does he feel alive. The sirens are wailing, loud and clear. Just one more block. One more block. Stiles ducks down an alleyway, the bag full of bank notes swinging behind him. It hits his side with a dull thud. The alley smells like cat pee and yesterdays trash so Stiles breathes shallowly through his mouth. He continues walking down it until he reaches the end. It opens out onto the street. He stops just shy of the exit, waiting. He waits a bit more. Then he kicks a can lying idle on the ground. He whips out his burner phone, punching in a number.

“Where the fuck are you?” Stiles growls, “Where’s my goddamn getaway car?”

“Change of plans Stilinski, you’re gonna have to get away on your own. Also ditch the phone.”

Fascinated by lemonstiles, migratoryslashfan

Stiles pontificates over Peter's naked body.

Night-blooming Flowers by imriebelow

Peter always gets what he wants. Stiles learns to live with it.

None of These Things (Are Happening) by Horribibble

After years away, Stiles returns to Beacon Hills just in time to put Isaac's insides back where they belong.

It's cute how people think he's trustworthy.

-

Peter can smell the violence inside him, the urge to do something grand and possibly cataclysmic. It’s there—mixed with a balance and natural calm, but in the undercurrent, it’s there. He has seen things beyond the scope of Beacon Hills’ petty horror show. He has learned things.

The Terrible Things We Do (For Love) by rospeaks

Being a demon, he’s seen some of the pretty nasty things that humans are willing to do for love. Things that, were he still alive (and human), would make him hesitate to be in a relationship with anyone lest his partner start getting some funny ideas. That said—

"This seems a little desperate for a kid your age," he says to Stiles.

Spin, Sweet Clotho by ChuckleVoodoos

Oh, it’s a beautiful thing to watch, the way they dance around each other, spun in sugar and glittering glass. Like a fragile little fairytale, a tender rosebud just waiting to unfurl. It makes Peter sick.

Because love is a fairytale, and his dear darling nephew does not deserve a happy ending.

whisper by tricksterity

Stiles was tired.

He was done of people pushing him and his pack around. They’d already lost so much and he was damned if he’d let them lose anyone else, especially to this psychopath who had no reasons for what he did other than he liked it.

And that’s when the whispers in his mind grew louder.

Remember Darling, All the While by Sang_argente

It was fire, ice, electricity. It was the first kiss, the last kiss, and every kiss inbetween. It was lips parting, tongues sliding, hearts beating.

Impress Me by ToAStranger

Their new English teacher has gone missing.

Falling Upward by moonstalker24

There is nothing quite like flying. There is a calm and a peace found in the sky that cannot be found on earth. All the chaos of the world is below you and there is no sound save that which the propeller makes as the engine turns it. You are free and unfettered and the clouds are close enough to touch; all you need do is stretch out your hand to grasp them.

Stiles takes Peter flying after he gets out of Eichen House.

Sweeter Than Gingerbread by taylorpotato (Stetallison)

The saying goes that lovers who commit suicide together start their next life as twins. Perhaps that's why Stiles and Ally feel the way they do about each other.

The Shadow Effect by Mysenia

What was the fun in being a twin if you couldn't trick a person or two?

Deep under by Sashaya

There's a reason Stiles knows so much about drowning. He'd rather not remember why...

All the World's a Stage (but the light design is subpar) by BonesOfBirdWings

Peter Hale is a successful Off-Broadway actor, and Stiles is a stage lighter who literally falls into his life.

Peter smiled at him. "Thank you, Stiles. But should I take this to mean that you don't want a meatball sandwich from Banh Mi Saigon?"

Stiles' mouth dropped open. "You - I - Yes, I want! Oh my god, you do the best apologies! Can you piss me off more, please? I accept all future apologies enthusiastically!"

Peter chuckled. "I'm sure that won't be a problem, dear boy. I've been informed that I'm an asshole by a very reliable source."

Stiles beamed. "But you have good taste in food, so things balance out?" he ventured.

Peter threw back his head and laughed. Stiles' grin brightened in answer.

The D.C. Backroom Deal by septima_sum

Stiles is a regular prostitute with moderate life goals – until his current client makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

Strange Duet by BelleAmante, thiliart (thilia)

The past three years have been a series of shocking, or not so shocking, successes for 2018 Tony award winner and two time Grammy nominee, Stiles Stilinski. You don’t typically find classically trained opera singers singing alternative folk rock to crowds at Coachella. Nor do you find indie singer/songwriters winning best actor awards at the Tony’s for their Broadway debuts. Stilinski has made it his lifetime habit to defy and exceed all expectations.

-or-

A Steter fic loosely based on Phantom of the Opera

Hold Me Down by sneksonaplane

Waking up in Peter Hale’s bed was weird. Waking up in Peter Hale’s body was even weirder. Stiles had been disoriented and confused when he’d found himself in a plush, king sized bed in an unfamiliar bedroom instead of in his own room (and seriously, why did Peter even need a king sized bed? Why would anyone need a bed that big?) It had all come back to him when he’d glimpsed the body he was inhabiting, one that was shorter but more defined than his own, and older, and kind of hot.

OR

The one where Stiles and Peter swap bodies, Peter relives his adolescence, Stiles suffers, and then suffers a little less when he discovers Peter's fetlife profile where he's listed as a submissive seeking a daddy.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night by Guede

This is a ghost story. It’s not straightforward.

Put My Faith in Something Unknown by Twisted_Mind

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, suspended between thought and action, unable to feel. At some point, he becomes aware that there’s a hand on his face. A warm palm cradles his jaw, and a thumb brushes across his cheekbone tenderly.

The Rest of Our Lives by mia6363

“I don’t know, as a kid I watched a lot of movies, you know? And at first I figured like… I’d be on some great adventure that would take me away from it all, you know? Like Indiana Jones comes around and is all, ‘Hey Stiles, buddy, come with me we’ve got to go save the world.’ Then… you and… everything happened… then I just… I figured I’d die before I was eighteen.”

Enemy Action by pprfaith

Once is chance, twice is coincidence and three times is far too many bodies on the ground.

Buy Me a New Pair by Julibean19

"I don't practice law much these days."

"And why is that?" Stiles asked, wondering why a handsome and presumably successful lawyer wouldn't want to continue working.

"I've been drawn away by more pleasurable pursuits," Peter said, lips quirked upward as he spoke.

Tale as Old as Time by wynnebat

The one in which Lydia's got better things to do than be Belle, Stiles is a much more likeable Gaston, and Peter is a beast but not quite beastly.

The clothes make the man by FeelingsDusk

The trick to sneaking into a building where you shouldn’t be is to make it seem to all eyes like you should. Stiles has been doing this since he was a little older than toddler and he wanted to get back his Batman action figure from the evidence room in his dad’s Police Station.

(Spolier alert: just like back then, Stiles gets caught.)

Smile Like You Mean It by NinaRooxx

After sulking about the changing weather over the autumn, Stiles notices that despite the weather getting colder, Peter’s wardrobe isn’t changing at all.

Swing by ShippersList

Stiles wants to fly.

Angels, Devils, and Peter by Triangulum

Everyone has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. They give advice, help guide their human through life. They tempt, they listen, they offer help. Everyone has one of each. Everyone except for Stiles.

OR

Stiles and Peter are murder husbands.

love and madness by sinequanon

Peter and Stiles haven’t seen each other in months when the alphas ask them to meet up to look over an abandoned house. Now, they’re going to be seeing a lot of each other for quite a while to come.

Not This Again by RebaK1tten

There's a rumor that the last episode of the show will have Peter getting killed, again. Perhaps to give him a redemption arc or something.

A Light at the (Near) End of the World by ladyoneill

The world he grew up in has ended in a supernatural war that devastated the human population. A survivor, Stiles lives a solitary, quiet life in Wales until there's a knock on his door.

Through Space and Time by MaroonDragon

When Stiles pulls the body of Peter Hale into his ship, he doesn't expect him to be alive. He also doesn't realise he might have gotten more than he bargained for.

His Color by SushiOwl

“Darling, have you been carrying a throw-away comment I made in your mind for almost four months?”

Stiles’s face felt like it was one with fire now.

After You by FlyAwayMeow (rjaejoo)

It’s true that sometimes what you want the most, you can’t have and that you’ll miss what you once had all along when it’s finally gone.

After breaking his engagement to Chris, Peter heads to New York to start over. He meets Stiles, a young author at his publishing house who helps him piece his confidence back together. When tragedy strikes, he discovers how to finally let go of his past and have the family and future he's always wanted with the pieces already in his life.

Looking After You by Slayer_of_Destiny

Can Peter be a chance for Stiles, can Stiles be a second chance for Peter? When Peter offers Stiles a relationship will the younger man take the chance with the werewolf?

Maybe We Both Are by lavenderlotion

The first time Stiles lets his fingers brush against Peter he wasn’t expecting the response he got. They were sitting on Stiles bed researching something. Or, they were researching. Now they were just talking. They did that a lot these days, just talked. They also ate together a lot. Or got coffee.

these words bear my scars (paint your love on my skin) by WindyRein

One day butterflies and childish codes change to I'm sorry you're meant for a murderer and he won't realize for years how much that changed his life.

Before you let go (and the light takes you in) by Issay

Stiles makes one last errand - goes to leave flowers on all the other graves. Fuck, so many graves. The grief is as endless and as inescapable as the sky.

He goes home and there is a thing wearing his father's face, waiting for him in the kitchen.

The Lady of Lightning by kiranightshade

"Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside"

Can You Use Lube For That? by AlreadyBoss

“You think your what is haunted now?” Surely he'd misheard. There was no way-

“My vibrator,” Stiles answered with alarming sincerity.

Well. He hadn't misheard after all.

Pianist Envy by Bunnywest

Stiles is the piano player.Peter can think of other things he'd like to see those hands do.Shame the guy's straight.

Everything You Deserve by Areiton

You think about it. More than you should, you think about it. About what would have happened, if you had bitten Stiles instead of Scott.

Home by Ragga

Don't be like him, they would say, and then add, or else you get burned.

Unable to bear the whispers any longer, This One left. He forsook those who forsook him, left him bear his scars alone, the scars he bore for his herd. It was better to be alone, stay off the currents, than swim with those most undeserving of his loyalty. So mote it be.

That is, until he met That One.

Lord Peter by Therapeutic_Steter

Peter rung out the rag before gently placing it on his mother’s head, reaching over to feel his father’s equally flushed features.

“Such a good boy,” his mother said, patting his arm with what little strength she had remaining. His father smiled softly at him even as his fell unconscious. Peter pushed back the lump in his throat, smiling shakily for his mother before venturing out into the living space.

knit me together by nezstorm

Peter asks Stiles to stay the night after a really awful day.

Warriors by CinnamonLily

Peter is ten years old when humans discover Azure, a planet not unlike Earth. From there on, he wants to learn everything about their new neighbors and the planet itself. It takes him over twenty years to get to Azure, but when he does, it's so worth it. His anthropologist heart is happy, and a new acquaintance in the form of an Azurian called Stiles might just make the rest of him happy, too.

#teen wolf #steter #rec list #fanfic rec #ask #anonymous

[kellykline]

Jack prefers Dean's parenting style? I think you're right 😯

sgdjdb yay thank you! 

DISCLAIMER: i know Dean has been a really awful piece of shit to Jack. Objectively I am aware of that and I hate him for it. BUT the narrative the show is telling is that Jack thinks of Dean as one of his fathers. honestly i am not qualified to pontificate on how exactly the two issues of Jack’s lack of autonomy and Dean’s abusive behavior intersect with each other. but I choose to believe that Jack is his own person with his own thoughts and feelings and that he has a sense of right and wrong, even if it is largely or entirely based on the Winchesters’. So if he says Dean is his dad, despite everything, I will take my cues from him and follow his lead. 

as another aside, katsidhe wrote up a really good post on the subject of how Jack feels about Dean’s honesty versus Sam’s reassurances a little while ago! there’s also a follow-up going into more detail about Sam and Jack. these posts have been a big influence on this one and generally how i feel about their relationships!

i feel like Jack responds better to actions than words. most or all of the scenes we see of Sam/Cas and Jack together involve them sitting down and having a conversation together. i can’t pinpoint the moments, but i remember multiple times when Jack feels frustrated with Sam and Cas’s attempts to comfort him and he snaps at them for it, because Jack doesn’t like being babied or coddled. since Dean doesn’t try to reassure him as often, he doesn’t get snapped at as often (if at all). 

this is also why 15.15 Gimme Shelter was so good, because Jack and Cas actually go out and work a case together! they’re doing things! yay! (also when they played Connect Four that was good too.)

in 14.07 Unhuman Nature,  Cas and Sam were VERY worried about Jack. he has issues with his self-worth and making people worry about him. Dean was worried too, obviously, but he channeled it differently.  he takes Jack fishing and teaches him how to drive. it’s pretty obvious that Jack really enjoyed that.

i've seen some people say that Dean didn't deserve to spend that day with Jack. Which-- I get it. I know. I know why people say that. on a certain level i agree. But I disagree with people who say that it was disingenuous of Dean or the writers to do so. Dean has been at peak fatherhood levels throughout the beginning of Season 14. Dean is also the only one of The Dads™ who has that kind of spontaneous, unplanned fun. It fits in with Dean’s history of hedonism! 

Not to mention how significant it is that Dean lets Jack drive the Impala! Baby is not just home to them, she’s family. It is a vital indicator of Dean’s regard for Jack as family that he lets him drive! Not even Cas has ever driven the Impala, and Dean’s been calling him family for years! i feel like Jack’s gotta be aware of this, right? right??

The fishing trip and Dean having told Jack previously that he did the same thing with John... bro don’t even get me started. Jack really values this moment as a family kind of thing. both for him and Dean as well as for Dean’s memory of John. i can’t say more than that or i’m going to lose my cool. 

all of this of course makes it so much more aggravating how awful Dean is being in 15.17

this one isn’t so much evidence as it is a fun addition. in 15.08 Byzantium we see that Jack’s heaven is that brief moment that TFW 2.0 spent on their road trip to Dodge City in 13.06 Tombstone. You know, the hunt that Dean really wanted to go on and Dean was super excited for the whole time. (also TFW 2.0 eating burgers up against the Impala in Jack’s heaven versus Dean and Jack eating burgers up against the Impala in 14.07..... the parallels.... )  the specific memory was of Dean teaching him to read a map. You know, Dean doing something with Jack!

TL;DR You could dismiss all of this as being the writers’ incredible hard-on for Dean and Dean apologism. But I do think they they genuinely value Cas and Sam as Jack’s fathers. It’s just that Dean is a different kind of father for whom actions speak louder than words. And Jack is the kind of son for whom actions also speak louder than words. 

This post is kind of a mess and it’d be better if i’d actually watched Seasons 13/14/15 recently. But I’m on Season 4 in my rewatch, so I’ll get there soon! maybe i’ll do another rambling write-up then.

#i went back and watched some of seasons 13/14 for this and i was SO emotional #i'm open to discussion and criticsm and all that! #i want to Talk About Jack!!

[ohifonlyx33]

decided to give Walker a chance...

Okay, I opened this up expecting it to be offensive to Texans, because Hollywood industry hates the Lone Star state... but I quickly started to really like it. I really liked seeing a bit of the family dynamic and seeing rural life semi-represented. Loved the musical choices and settings too. But those homes are way too fancy unless they are supposed to be rich. And as I watched it more, I slowly became less enchanted...

Sometimes the dialogue feels natural and then... sometimes I cringe. Lines like “pal” and “stinker” feel a little forced coming from Walker because no one says “pal” and literally only my boomer parents call me stinker once in a while and I hate it....  Also Jared doesn't know how southern to go. Sometimes he drops it and doesn’t feel authentic, and sometimes he goes to far and sounds like a bottle of whiskey punched him in the throat. When he gets it right, it’s good though. I’m willing to give this kind of stuff time and grace to improve. 

I feel they're setting his daughter up to be the activist in the family? Maybe not. I’d much rather they focus on the family relationships. A daughter in pain because her mother died and her father is emotionally broken. I also like the son... he’s a good kid. And I like the way Walker is estranged from his kids and dealing with a lot of pain of his own and trying to find a way back to his family.... Now if I can just start to buy that Jared is their father, it could be very compelling.

Geraldine could be an interesting civilian character... Want to know more about her to see. And I’m curious to know about Walker’s wife. Even though I totally could tell that Emily was gon' die, I wasn’t mad about it. Just a little sad... Coulda been sadder tho. Also I just found out that she was played by Jared’s real life wife??? I’M 💕🥰 ThAT’S SO cUTE

Not crazy about the casting choice of knock-off Beto lookalike being the guy in charge of everything... just seemed like they were trying too hard to make him Spartacus. But oh well. That’s not really a problem with the show so much as me rolling my eyes. 

Also continually bringing up race and gender for Micki to try to give her extra cred got a little tiring... Hopefully they're just getting that out of the way before making her an awesome character? Because I liked Lindsey Morgan as Raven and I think Micki could be a great character that breaks a lot of stereotypes... But I have a feeling they'll use her as a token Mexican-American Woman to pontificate about whatever political policies Hollywood wants to push from feminism to immigration... and she’ll probably always be perfectly “correct” and there will never be room for disagreement. She deserves better than that... I also really like Micki's boyfriend... He seems really cool, and they have really good chemistry and banter. But I might be worried that trouble is coming for them... Waiting to see if he's got a part of the story besides his relationship with Micki and where it goes.

And guessing by the jabs at religion and religious people, they'll likely imagine or stereotype Texans however they want, including painting religious folks and law enforcement in whatever light they want. I'd actually be impressed if they showed more than one opinion in a positive light. But I know better. Overall, not the best not the worst. Sometimes the character’s lives feel lived in, other times the actors and script are very awkward and stiff. Sometimes it comes off as down-to-earth and heartfelt, other times it feels soap opera-ish and borderline preachy. I think for a CW show, it's balanced. But for a show about Texas Rangers it's wildly unbalanced. Maybe give it a 7/10 if I round up the 6.5. I’d watch a few more episodes at least.

And Jared is no Chuck Norris, of course.

#cw walker #walker #walker cw

[robotslenderman]

OTP Meme

Yoinked from @aelwen​.

Starting off with my Super Problematic Arturo/Olivia, will probably do the same quiz with other ships as well.

For those who are not aware: Arturo kidnapped Olivia at the end of CoNY while trying to figure out what to do with her and ended up keeping her around, and she’s blood bound to him (for non VTM fans, that’s basically a love potion). So yeah, there’s a huge power imbalance and a drug-induced Stockholm Syndrome here, and one half is a megalomaniac. There is a shitton of dubcon.

You have been warned.

DISAGREEMENTS.

Who is more likely to raise their voice?

Arturo, but like, that’s not saying much. I can see him only raising his voice when he’s pushed almost to his limit and even then only to say something like “DON’T INTERRUPT” when he’s in a monologue or a “NO” to cut someone else off.

Who threatens to leave but never actually does?

Neither of them.

Who actually keeps their word and leaves?

OLIVIA LOL. Arturo has known she’s been wanting out since the beginning but the blood bond kept her compliant until Qadir and her Coterie finally got their shit together and busted her out. Arturo may have gone completely apeshit trying to get her back but then once he knew the blood bond had timed out, gave it up and let her go.

Who trashes the house?

Neither of them. Toreadors do not trash their own house and Olivia too desperately wants to please Arturo to get messy even if that was her style.

Plus, you know, they have ghouls to clean up after them.

Do either of them get physical?

ngl for the first few months Olivia keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop on that, since Arturo absolutely bitchslapped Sophie at the end of CoNY, but after a while she realises he’s not typically violent and calms down.

How often do they argue/disagree?

Almost never, due to the blood bond. Olivia occasionally pushes it, but never goes too far (by Arturo’s standards). She’s too chemically wired to want to please him to full out disagree or argue.

Who is the first to apologize?

Olivia, for obvious reasons. Arturo does apologise from time to time, but rarely, and usually accompanied with an eyeroll inducing monologue pontificating about something or other. (Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the monologue itself is not an apology.)

SEX.

(Headcanon interlude -- vampire sex is basically blood drinking, whether mutual or not, given how aroused both drinker and drinkee become. They can have “human” sex with blush of life, but it’s not nearly as satisfying without the blood drinking. So yeah keep in mind I’m not talking about human sex here, even though there might be some of that accompanying the blood drinking.)

Who is on top? Who is on bottom?

Olivia on top. Kind of hard to suck the blood from someone’s throat if you’re on the bottom.

Any kinks?

They’re vampires, what do you think?

Who has the strangest desires?

Arturo thinks he’s weird as shit for enjoying it when she cuddles up to him lmfao.

Who’s dominant in bed?

Arturo, despite positions.

Is head ever in the equation?

Nope. Although I’m sure if Arturo managed to get her back when she escaped he might’ve been relieved enough to do it.

If so, who is better at performing it?

N/A

Ever had sex in public?

He never lets her out, so no.

Although... he does have ghouls, and he treats them like he’d treat a portrait on the wall. Olivia is often mortified by the stuff she’ll do in front of them when the blood bond’s at full strength.

Who moans the most?

Definitely Arturo. It’s vampire sex, Olivia’s too busy drinking blood to make noise.

Who leaves the most marks?

Neither, they heal too quickly.

Who is the more experienced of the two?

With mortal sex it sort of balances out -- Arturo was apparently a canonical playboy when he was alive, but obviously that stopped forty years ago so that evens out there. With Olivia, she’s slept with a few people but got too wrapped up in work towards the end of her life to have a sex life.

Plus, Vampire Sex Is Different, as I’ve said a million times already, so... they’re not blushing virgins but neither of them are at a level where you can say either of them is more experienced than the other. Sure, Arturo has Panhard drinking from him too, but in my headcanon her drinking from his wrist is not sexual even by vampire standards. Olivia was the first he let bite from his neck.

Do they ‘fuck’ or ‘make love’?

I think there’s far more emotion in it than Arturo is ever willing to admit.

How long do they usually last?

As long as Olivia can draw it out without diablerising him, lmao. He does get into the habit of keeping himself topped up for her when it gets sexual though.

In human-sex terms, well... vampires have way more stamina than humans. But again, not as satisfying, so they tend to leave that for when Arturo’s low on vitae or when he has a few hours free (which isn’t often).

Rough or soft?

Soft.  Unless Arturo’s been to visit Panhard or Adelaide. Olivia gets bitey when she’s jealous and Arturo finds it endearing.

Is protection used?

Really?

Does it ever get boring?

By mortal standards, certainly. But drinking/being drunk from by a vampire feels so good that for them, no, it never gets boring.

Where is the strangest place they’d have sex?

Anywhere the ghouls are working. Olivia dies inside a little once the post-nut clarity kicks in. The ghouls just GTFO and don’t make eye contact for a while.

Arturo doesn’t think of them as people...

FAMILY.

Do they plan on having children/or have children?

Jesus fucking Christ my blood ran cold just READING this question. Nope nope npoe NOPE. Even if they could have children, NOOOOOOO. GOD, NO. NOOOOO. NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE

As for childer? Vampires are single parents by nature, so they’re not raising any together. If anything, Arturo is seriously considering adopting Olivia as his childe by the time she GTFO’s. 

(For non-VTM fans: I swear that is not as fucked up as it looks. “Childe” = vampire who hasn’t been a vampire for long. It’s a mentor/mentee relationship, not a parent/child relationship, despite the terminology. Vampires seem to be way more likely to have romantic/sexual entanglements with sires/childer than anyone else because of the power imbalance and how fucking dangerous it is to get involved with a vampire on your level. Why yes creatures who drink blood from humans are fucked up, what tipped you off?)

If so, how many children do they want/have?

I’m charging you for my therapy bills.

AFFECTION.

Who likes to cuddle?

Goes without saying that the blood bond makes Olivia a cuddle slut, but Arturo enjoys it way more than he is willing to admit.

Who gets naughty in the most inappropriate of places?

Arturoooo. Those poor fucking ghouls.

Who struggles to keep their hands to themselves?

Arturo.

How long can they cuddle until one becomes uncomfortable?

They’re vampires.

What is their favourite non-sexual activity?

Arturo is a slut for headscritches.

Where is their favourite place to cuddle?

The sofas near the windows overlooking New York.

SLEEPING.

Who snores?

They’re vamps, they literally sleep like they’re dead. VTM vampires are easily mistaken for corpses unless you know what to look for, such as the fact they don’t stink and that insects and scavengers aren’t helping themselves.

My headcanon is that younger and higher humanity vampires sleep more akin to something like humans, and so younger vampires like Olivia might sometimes wake during the day (altho quickly pass out again), move in their sleep, or dream, or accidentally use blush of life. Closest she comes to snoring is by accidentally using blush of life in her sleep and therefore breathing.

If both do, who snores the loudest?

N/A

Do they share a bed or sleep separately?

Sleep separately, up until the first attempt to bust Olivia out, at which point Arturo gets clingy and insists she sleeps next to him in his bed. It’s not like he’d wake up if any ghouls showed up to liberate her, but it makes him feel better.

If they sleep together, do they cozy up together or lay far apart?

Cozy up.

What do they wear to bed?

Olivia is still in the habit of wearing PJs, but Arturo just wears whatever he was wearing that day.

Are either of them insomniacs?

No, it’s extremely difficult for vampires to stay awake when the sun comes up.

Can sleeping pills be found by the bedside?

Nope, they wouldn’t work.

Do they wrap their limbs around each other or just lay side by side?

Depends on how clingy Arturo’s feeling that night.

Who wakes up with bed hair?

Both of them.

Who wakes up first?

They both wake up around the same time.

Who prepares breakfast in bed for the other?

Arturo will fucking murder any ghouls that bleed all over his bed, so neither.

What is their favourite sleeping position?

Arturo likes to cling to Olivia after the first liberation attempt.

Do they set an alarm each night?

No need.

Who has nightmares?

Olivia, due to her young age, is able to dream from time to time and therefore gets nightmares. After Arturo, she gets way more -- although that’s not because of any trauma from the Arturo incident (although she’s definitely spooked by it, the blood bond actually protected her from the trauma it would cause because of the nature of how trauma forms), but more because of the idea of oh god what if someone WORSE than him puts me under a blood bond?!

Can a television be found in their bedroom?

Arturo. Despises. Modern. Television.

Who has ridiculous dreams?

Olivia is the only one out of the two of them that dreams. For Arturo, being older and with lower humanity, it’s more akin to being put under anaesthesia.

Her dreams aren’t that ridiculous, though.

Who sprawls out and takes up most of the bed?

Olivia doesn’t sprawl, but she does move in her sleep so I suppose she’s closest.

Who makes the bed?

The ghouls.

What time is bed time?

Up to half an hour before dawn, depending on their mood and if they feel like just curling up and talking before they black out.

Any routines/rituals before bed?

Not really. Arturo likes to go over his schedule, have a sip from a ghoul, but that’s about it.

Who’s the grumpiest when they wake up?

Arturo, if he’s dreading something that night.

WORK.

Who is the busiest?

Fucking Arturo is always running around feeding his one million ghouls and three blood bonded pets, and feeding himself to keep them under his control, and that’s not counting when he’s getting up to schemes or schmoozing in Elysium. Dude is pretty much out of the penthouse from dusk to dawn most of the week and when he’s at home actually working he’s shut up in his study.

Olivia? Bored out of her fucking mind at home binging on Netflix or books. After working 70+ hours a week when she was alive she is not used to having this much free time.

Who rakes in the highest income?

Arturo, obviously. Famous architect with a shitton of shady “associates”.

Are any of them unemployed?

Olivia.

Who takes the most sick days?

They don’t do sick days.

What are their jobs?

Arturo’s a Harpy, if that counts as a job (think vampire socialite), and also an architect.

Who sucks up to their boss?

Arturo is the boss, even if he pretends not to be at Elysium.

Olivia had to do a lot of sucking up in life. She does not miss that bit.

Who is more likely to turn up late to work?

Arturo. He does what the fuck he wants.

Who stresses the most?

Believe it or not, Arturo. He’s got a lot of balls in the air and works hard to keep himself from dropping them. After Hope’s failed attempt at getting Olivia out, he gets even more stressed out.

Do they enjoy or despise their careers/occupations?

Olivia does not miss her job but also doesn’t know who she is without it, now.

Arturo enjoys his job. He’s always enjoyed it, but after being Embraced he became completely obsessed with it.

Are they financially stable?

Yep. Famous architect who designs for both kindred and kine elites? Yeah.

HOME.

Who does the washing?

The ghouls.

Who takes out the trash?

Ghouls

Who does the ironing?

Ghouuuuls.

Who does the cooking?

Nobody, they just munch on a ghoul.

Who is more likely to burn the house down just trying?

I’m not shitting you when I say that Lucas, one of the ghouls, is most likely to try and sneakily cook something on Arturo’s never-used stovetop when he’s out and accidentally fuck it up in the process.

Who is messier?

Arturo, but that’s not saying much. He tends to pick up after himself if he doesn’t have to go out of his way to do it, and there’s ghouls to do the rest.

Who leaves the toilet roll empty?

My headcanon is that vampires do, in fact, pee because they need to get rid of metabolic waste somehow. So that’d be Olivia.

Who leaves their dirty clothes on the floor?

Arturo, if it doesn’t upset the aesthetic of the room too much (fucking Toreadors). Olivia did start leaving her stuff around for the ghouls but it stressed out Arturo so she stopped.

Who forgets to flush the toilet?

Neither of them.

Who loses the car keys when it comes time to go somewhere?

Arturo usually takes the subway, but if the ghouls are driving him somewhere it’s definitely Lucas who fucks up the most.

Who answers the telephone?

They don’t have a landline. Olivia doesn’t have a phone.

Who mows the lawn?

They have a penthouse.

Who does the vacuuming?

The ghouls, usually Alex.

Who does the groceries?

Nobody, although the ghouls sometimes stash stuff in the fridge Arturo keeps for the aesthetic. It doesn’t bother him as long as they keep their shit put away.

Who takes the longest to shower?

Olivia likes to shower almost every day out of habit and because the warmth is soothing.

Who spends the most time in the bathroom?

Arturo. This is the guy who wears glasses he doesn’t need because he likes the aesthetic. No way in hell he isn’t in there for ages preening himself.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Is money a problem?

Not at all.

How many cars do they own?

Arturo almost certainly has something fancy and hipstery that he barely uses.

What’s their song?

LMFAO sorry this question made me laugh my ass off because a PERFECT song appeared in my head immediately:

 “Every Breath You Take” by the Police

but unironically, and with total awareness of the actual fucking meaning of the song.

Specifically, the cover in minor key. The really creepy one by Chase Holfeder.

(There is a reason, other than the blood bond, that Olivia hangs the fuck tight and waits for Qadir to get her out instead of making a break for it herself. And there’s a reason why she bolts to the other side of the country when the blood bond wears off. She ain’t taking any chances.)

Do they live in the city or in the country?

New York City, baby.

Do they own their home or do they rent?

Own it. It used to belong to Charlotte, Arturo’s sire. He got it when she carked it.

Do they enjoy their surroundings?

Arturo’s a Toreador so I see him as having a love/hate relationship with his surroundings depending on what they are at the moment.

As for Olivia, it’s fancier than she’s used to but mostly the cabin fever drives her crazy from time to time.

What do they do when they’re away from each other?

Arturo gets up to all kinds of shit -- Elysium schmoozing, bossing ghouls around, doing architecture/engineering work, researching, making deals with Kaiser, feeding Adelaide and Panhard...

Olivia? Mostly Netflix binging, hanging out with the ghouls, and wishing she could go out for a fucking walk or something.

Where did they first meet?

At Elysium. Arturo was one of the people she talked to that night. She said his glasses looked good on him when he was bitching about them. He said “you bet they do.”

Who spends the most money when out shopping?

Arturo tends to make less purchases but moves more money when he does.

Who’s more likely to flash their assets?

Neither of them, dear god.

Any mental issues?

what do you think

Arturo: I would be here all day.

Olivia: she actually winds up less traumatised than she thought she would once the blood bond wore off. The blood bond actually protected her in that way -- trauma needs fear to take root, even if it’s fear after the fact. So while she was very nervous in the first few months of captivity, once she realised Arturo wasn’t going to hurt her or anything she settled right down and isn’t scarred by that. She is scared that she’ll have to look over her shoulder for the rest of her life, she is scared he’ll try to take her back, but she’s not scared of him, if that makes sense?

But the whole “wow, anyone could do this to me and they could be a lot worse than he ended up being”? Yeah, that fucking terrifies her, so she does end up with a lot of trauma around that afterwards. Yeah, she was a captive for a while, but... she ended up very, very lucky in who her captor was, and she knows it. Arturo didn’t go out of his way to be nice to her, but he wasn’t a complete asshole either. Worse he did (dubcon, captivity and blood bond aside) was snap at her every now and then and be self-absorbed.

She actually finds it pretty hard to deal with life after captivity because... well. There’s a lot worse than Arturo out there. She’s an orphan. Kindred are pretty fucking horrible and she doesn’t have Arturo protecting her any more.

Sometimes the gilded cage was way easier to deal with. Sometimes she really, really misses not having to fight for her survival. Sometimes she wants to go back. She often wants to go back.

So yeah -- there is some trauma there, just... not the trauma she expected to end up dealing with. She expected to feel violated and to hate the guy. She doesn’t. She didn’t expect to feel lost, scared and exposed without him. She does.

Who finds it amusing when the other trips over?

Olivia, not that she’d ever show it. Sometimes it’s just satisfying to watch the puppet master deal with tiny little wrenches in the works like that.

Who’s terrified of bugs?

Olivia hates them.

Who kills the spiders around the house?

Arturo rolls his eyes and gets a ghoul to do it.

Do they have any fears for their future?

Arturo, once he realised how attached he got to Olivia, was terrified of losing her.

Their favourite place?

They both like the couches in the haven that sit next to the huge windows that overlook the city.

Who’s more likely to surprise the other with a fancy dinner?

Every now and then a ghoul gets some really good vitae as a treat for Olivia.

(So yeah, neither.)

Who pays the bills?

Arturo.

Who’s the tallest?

Arturo.

Who’s more likely to just randomly hop into the shower with the other?

Neither.

Who wanders around in their underwear?

Neither.

Who sings the loudest when singing along to the radio?

Olivia sings under her breath when it’s just the ghouls around, but not loudly, and never in front of Arturo.

What do they tease each other about?

Ooof, Arturo likes to rub salt in the wound by calling her his little pet, but ofc blood bonded Olivia doesn’t feel hurt by that. It’s not until post-New York that she’s like “DUDE WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT???”

Who is more likely to cringe at the other’s fashion sense at times?

Arturo, naturally. I think it’s physically impossible for a Toreador not to cringe at someone’s clothing every now and then.

Who crushed first?

... Both? Sorta.

Olivia naturally had the blood bond, but Arturo was the first that actually caught genuine feelings.

Olivia did have some genuine fond feelings even after the blood bond wore off, but not enough that she let that stop her from GTFOing to LA.

Any alcohol or substance-related problems?

You mean, aside from Olivia’s literal addiction to Arturo’s blood? The one that compels her to have strong feelings for him to the point that even though she’s captive and could walk out the door at any time, she doesn’t?

Yeah, I’d say that���s a substance problem.

Who is more likely to stumble home, drunk, at 3am?

Arturo, if he was desperate enough to feed on a drunk, but even then -- blood has a very low alcohol content compared to actual alcohol, and while I HC that vampires are sensitive enough to alcohol that they can get a buzz from drinking from someone drunk enough... it’s just a buzz.

Who swears the most?

Arturo.

#tumblr games #Olivia Martin #Thomas Arturo #I'm like the ONLY person in the Arturo tag lmao sorry #VTM

[misterbitches]

wow an essay

i am a sarawat stan first and foremost so let’s jot that down. 

so i watched this 2gether the series spoilers video on youtube (here)...that user does some re-translations or like more accurate translations. it’s a good format, explaining little things via a video. it’s very nice of them to do especially because subtitling IS hard.

as an aside: i, personally, don’t think subtitles are a big deal since... i mean i don’t really usually feel BLs are good or have substance—and it’s a valid thing to feel because many don’t and bla bla bla my politics. and a huge chunk of that is dialogue. and i think the fan culture of these shows really perpetuates that. it’s quick subbing in general so people can sate their needs about a couple.

i think that’s mostly fine if there’s a substantial story where the actors have chemistry and you can feelthe emotions. so if a BL is marginally good or “good” it would be nice to have good translations but just think about it—they know what people want and as quickly as possible and they know what girls would like to see. it’s even reflected in those stupid FB groups or filming people. anyway whatever i digress.

2gether the series feels pretty good so far. like on an emotional level.

i am really interested in thai media now so i’d like to see it grow some more (btw there’s amazing thai filmmakers like auteurs and ones that speak out against the government. very famous thai filmmaker who is gay apichatpong weerasethakul and a recent—to me—female filmmaker anocha suwichakornpong both political and moving thinkers anyways...)

idk i like the vibe of the show! i read someone criticizing and their crits were valid but i didnt feel the way i usually do about a lot of BLs which is just so cringe and displeasure. i also know like culturally some shit hits different. i think they talk SO FUCKING SLOWLY but the cadence is diff than an eng speaker.

the show seems tranquil. like they really do make it a romcom setting? like with the shots and stuff (ver complex writing here.) i loved that car scene it was so fucking teen romcom. 10 things i hate about you inspired. now that i know some major spoilers from that video, and that user was kind enough to give context, it makes it more fun for me.

it also seems like the actors are so much less shy and ashamed to be in this show. although i think that it’s valid to feel differently about portraying a same-sex couple, i think it’s only valid in the way that it will be a new type of relationship you’re exploring. an actor’s job is to act (how good they are...well...) it is to reflect people. and humans are humans. gender is important for everything we do but not being straight is also normal. it can be different but it IS normal.

when actors can’t do their fucking job, being comfortable with particularly non-straight shit, i think part of it is because they feel it is out of the norm. and it shows. and it sucks. so although it’s a big deal, it’s also not, and they’re portraying people in this situation that’s unique to them in this show. that’s all they need to do. christ. 

and being an actor is hard but you also push yourself. it’s no how do u feel abt the man thing. it may be new but DO YOUR FUCKING JOB. but also society bla bla and they capitalize off of the taboo’””” nature of this atmosphere and exploit female interest and homosexuality while shading it. BUT ANYWAYS—

given them being NORMAL about something that IS NORMAL though may not reflect themselves exactly (WHICH IS WHAT ACTING IS) i hope they continue with not fucking around with wife/husband which subsequently goes to top/bottom. i am over pontificating over who does what when we all have sex in different ways but especially assigning femininity to something doing with penetration. it bothers me so fucking much.

it makes it clear that we are women solely because we are penetrated by penises. so we live for [cis] men. get the fuck out of here. this is a huge, HUGE thing i hate in bl fandom or w/e. i think it makes the female reader feel secure but it’s just insulting and gender politics about fucking...this isn’t queer theory 101 ok (i h8queer theory)

the show is fun. i saw a quote where bright said something along the lines of, ‘it’s supposed to make you feel warm. remember it’s a romcom!’ i hope that energy continues. and i really like win’s vibe as a person and as tine. they fit. theyre so cute. i love them :)

#2gether the series #sarawatine #tine x sarawat #2gether

[cosmic-navel-gazin]

No banner doodle this time but I’ll make it up to you on next ones I promise.

In which I chronicle my Legacy of Kain journey and bridge it with your boy Adam Warlock, and Thanos too for a bit! (Part 4 of many, BIG SPOILERS for Soul Reaver 1 and 2)

Part 1

Part 1.5

Part 2

Part 3

As mentioned in Part 3, we have postponed our revenge on Kain and let him be for now, forcing History to take on a new course (this was only possible by having two incarnations of the Soul Reaver Sword meet in the same time, thus allowing a paradox to happen). Both the Elder God and his agent, the Time Guardian Moebius, are pissed at me now but hey, it's fine.

You see at this point everyone and their mother keeps telling Raziel that the only way to restore the land of Nosgoth to health is killing Kain. The entirety of Soul Reaver 1 was Raziel rising from the abyss to get revenge on his brothers and Kain for sentencing him to "burn forever in the bowels of the Lake of the Dead". But Kain tells me that killing him and vanquishing vampirism is not the solution to stop the corruption that sweeps the land, and that the people who have been guiding me have ulterior motives.

Things do not go as expected for Raziel however, and as we go and demand Moebius to send us further into the past to observe history with our own eyes... he plays a little trick on us. I just really love how during this entire scene we think we have the upper hand on the master manipulator himself, and then he pulls this face right as we're about to time travel again:

Like, we know since Soul Reaver 1 that Moebius is not to be trusted, but damn him and his poor old man façade, I underestimated him hard. Not gonna lie, I was legitimately afraid here after that smile. xD

So, instead of sending us to the past like we asked, he in fact sends us 100 or so years into the future. And things don’t look too good:

We witness the decay of the land and it seems our good old friend and benefactor, the eldritch cosmic being known as the Elder God that recruited us to eliminate vampirism in Soul Reaver 1, has been doing quite well for himself.

* Legitimately jumped when that last eye popped out.

But as as we travel through time, we see that his power and reach has only grown the more corrupt the land became, with his tentacles rising above the water and beyond the Pillars of Nosgoth.

This is a hallmark of the series but I just love the highfalutin and pompous speeches these bastards give about themselves. A lot of the lines from the characters remind me of the way Thanos, Adam Warlock and some of Marvel's cosmic entities conduct themselves, how they pontificate with certain mannerisms and the flowery words, the high and mighty tone, making up new titles for themselves every now and then. 

The Elder God goes:

"I am the hub of the Wheel, the origin of all Life, the devourer of Death."

All things one should have on their CV. 

And I really like Raziel's answer here:

"... or maybe you're just hungry - could it be as simple as that? Wouldn't that be poetic irony? The great adversary of the vampires turns out to be the biggest parasite of them all." 

Soul Reaver 2 has this more sarcastic Raziel that delivers burns left and right, but without becoming one-note or too overbearing I feel like. Just the right dose of snark at the right moments.

I'll leave the short confrontation between Raziel and the voice of Judge Claude Frollo here for you to go listen to:

Oh and fun fact, Tony Jay, knocking it outta the park as the Elder God here, also voiced another neverending hunger-stricken entity, this time for the the Marvel Universe: that's right, your boy Galactus in the 1994-96 Fantastic Four Animated Series. Awesome.

And so we rebell against Moebius and the Elder God, and are on our way to try and get the big picture here on the Pillars, vampires and the crusade against them, and who exactly is orchestrating these events. My boy Raziel seems to be learning not to jump to reckless assumptions and actions like he did in Soul Reaver 1 and I'm proud of him (more on that later though). Now it is not his self-righteous indignation and lust for revenge that guide his actions, he’s tired of being used and his priority is merely to seek out the truth.

So while on Nosgoth's nightmarish future and after a bit of fighting and exploring, we get another meeting with Kain. I found it funny how he refers to both him and Raziel as "irritants here" to the eyes of History (or whatever force/entity turns the wheel of fate), after Raziel decided to let Kain live.

It's not exactly the same thing, but the label of "irritants" reminded me on how both Adam and Thanos gain the "outside the norm" brand and how they keep pissing off the cosmic powers that be with their shenanigans, messing with the laws of physics. And now Kain and Raziel have pissed off "History" and the ones who have been choreographing everything.

*These panels refer to Adam only specifically, but Thanos joins in later on as I'm told:

*Shout-outs to @adamwarlock​ that slaved away at my expense finding these panels for me.*

Then, Kain warns us that we're in a very precarious situation, that "History", despite the paradox, will try to go back to its original course, " finding the path of least resistance while admitting only the slightest alterations", and that if it can't, it will destroy said "irritants". Raziel does have a bit of faith in the fact that his "unique resurrection" as a wraith, that has made him virtually indestructible, may even the odds stacked against them. On the topic of his unique nature in this world, I just want to reaffirm how death holds no real grasp on both him and Adam, in the sense that although they can both be defeated and destroyed, they always come back. Here, more stuff that might as well come from the other's mouth:

Raziel goes:

"Why do I survive one trial after another... on and on in an endless succession of humiliating deaths and resurrections?"

I love my absolutely clueless soliloquy boys!

*This deathless state is also something Thanos joins in on this due to his unique relationship with Mistress Death:

*Damn it, the post got too long again so I’ll link here to the second half of this once it’s up*

#the infinity legacy #soul reaver #legacy of kain #raziel #adam warlock #kain #thanos #soul reaver 2 #marvel comics #marvel cosmic