#just also having the gay panic of the century

[magicpotatothoughts]

TGCF reread new finds #1

Xie Lian actively and consciously knows that he is attracted to HC the MOMENT THEY MEET in the Ox Cart. Like it’s not just blank gay panic, he knows.

His beauty was deadly like a sword, sharp and mesmerising. Xie Lian only met his eyes for a moment, then lowered his eyes in defeat.

MATE, normally wouldn’t you continue to be mesmerised and can’t peel your eyes away? That is, UNLESS YOURE WHIPPED. XL knows that SL's looks affect him to this degree. Defeat is the key word here.

Also

The distance between them had closed too fast. he suddenly didn't know what to do[...]Xie Lian blanked on the spot. He watched as the tall and slender youth walked away with his giant bag of junk as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, and it made him mutter inwardly, Forgive my sins.

Making a rich young lad carry your things? Making him sleep in your crappy temple? That doesn't warrant the weighty thought? FORGIVE WHAT SINS Xie Lian??!!!

Many village girls saw (HC) and blushed [...] Xie Lian didn't know what they were going to ask, but felt instinctively that it must be stopped at once, and cried, "No!"

Jealous jealous boi! XL WAS POSSESSIVE after ONE night spent together at Puqi Shrine. Didn’t XL just say to SL that he will have no problem in the love department because girls will throw themselves at him? Yo, why are you cock-blocking? Everyone says HC is insane, no XL is equally insane for the other!

Also, when HC revealed that it's his real skin after the Banyue arc, XL instinctively poked him. Then

He looked at his own finger then hid it away, betraying nothing of his thoughts.

What thoughts XL ?!! Explain yourself right now!

Jumping back to OX CART scene, Xie Lian's character development was foreshadowed when they were talking about the gifting of ghost ashes.

Book 1: Xie Lian sighed. "It certainly is painful to think about, to have given everything for love and lose everything in return."

This is what Xie Lian is most afraid of! Like even thinking back to Xie Lian pushing Feng Xin away in Book 4, he definitely operated under that mindset. Love is a risk, it's something to be feared. Even now 800+ years later, he still feels that way and doesn't allow himself to get close to anyone. It just hits so much harder thinking that he operated under that for so many centuries.

Then Hua Cheng says

"What there to be afraid of? If it were me, I'd have no regrets giving away my ashes"

Which I think really changed the way that Xie Lian thought about love. Book 5 Xie Lian completely operates with Love is empowering and isn't something to be afraid of.

TGCF isn't about XL realising his feelings, literally from Book 1 it's about him wondering if it's worthwhile to act on them.

Three things, is this person worth losing cultivation over for?

He needs the reassurance that this person must reciprocate his feelings.

Then HC changed his perspective on love from FEAR -> EMPOWERMENT.

XL is soooo self-aware (unlike SQQ from SVSSS and WWX from MDZS), he's an unreliable narrator in the way that he doesn't reveal everything to the reader, especially his own feelings until he was absolutely sure that there really was both a physical and romantic attraction. I wanted to make this post to dispel the assumption for XL it was easy to forego 800+ years of cultivation. It was not? He ABSOLUTELY thought about it carefully.

#honestly without the thousand caves reveal these two gays would still be 👉👈🥺 at each other #I was inspired by grimbravado's tumblr #tgcf #mxtx #heaven official's blessing #also these are my own perspectives #take it with a grain of salt #hualian #hua cheng #tian guan ci fu #xie lian #feng xin #fenglian #TGCF meta

[a-faggot-with-opinions]

Responding To The "Aromantic Manifesto"

So I found this aromantic manifesto earlier today and I have many thoughts and opinions about it. Mainly that it's really bad, and it is homophobic. It uses a lot of big words and complicated language to sound smart, but it's not actually conveying good ideas. I'm going to respond to it piece by piece. By the way, I am aromantic, but I am also gay, so that's the perspective I'm looking at this through.

The main points of this manifesto, as outlined in the beginning, are:

"Romance is inherently queerphobic."

"The organisation of queerness around the celebration and pursuit of romantic desires and pleasures reinforces queer oppression."

"Queer liberation must abolish romance as its long-term goal."

Point 1 is bad because the activism for lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights has LITERALLY been all about being able to love whoever we want to. We didn't fight for centuries to legalize gay marriage to have someone say that us loving someone else is inherently queerphobic. Implying that gay love is somehow oppressing someone else makes you the queerphobic one.

Point 2 is wrong because we've been fighting for our rights for literal centuries, and we've already decided that trying to repress our sexualities for any reason, is actually bad and contributing to our own oppression. The only way to make real progress in solving queer oppression is by expressing ourselves loudly. It's okay to dislike amatonormativity. I dislike amatonormativity. But that doesn't give you an excuse to be homophobic.

Point 3 is even more incorrect. That's because a movement that is fighting for people historically marginalized based on who we love isn't going to have abolishing romantic love as a goal. It's okay to be aromantic and not want romance. The problem comes in when you try to force everyone else to repress their romantic desires because you simply don't like it. That's bad.

The next part is extremely insulting to me as a trans person. They compare gay men wanting to date other men and not wanting to date women to gay men wanting to date trans men. Newsflash, assholes: trans men are men!

If straight people can’t help who they love, then neither can gay people. Nor, one might suppose, racists and transphobes, and people who find disability and fatness unattractive.

This is an obvious homophobic argument. They're implying by this that gay men not wanting to date women is the same as gay men not wanting to date trans men, implying that men who don't love women are misogynistic. It's transphobic to compare the experience of being gay to transphobia. Tell me you've never spoken to a trans person in your life without telling me.

Queer oppression is not just the experience of prohibited desire. It is also the experience of hierarchical and violent desire. It is also the experience of undesirability.

What the fuck are they even saying right here? Queer oppression is literally about the experience of prohibited desire and the lack of experience of expected desire. I can maybe understand where undesirability comes into play, since especially as a trans person I get cis people trying to equate my sexual attractiveness with my worth as a human being, but experiencing hierarchical and violent desire?

This reads as someone saying that queer romance is inherently evil and we're oppressing ourselves and we're totally at fault for our own oppression. QUEER ROMANCE AND SEXUALITY ARE NOT INHERENTLY EVIL AND SAYING THAT THEY ARE IS HOMOPHOBIC, IT'S 2023. Why is this even a hot take?

The next section talks about the "privatisation of love," which is a model for why they think that queer activism has been missing the entire point. Let's see what this author has to say about that.

While the domestic sphere fashioned by heterosexual kinship relations has been historically designated as private life, queer intimacies have instead been regarded as a matter of public concern due to moral panics associating them with predation and perversion throughout history.

This is a very sloppy, incomplete reading of the way that homophobia works. I'm not going to get into my theory of how homophobia works in this post, but anyone who's actually experienced homophobia in their lives will tell you that this ain't it. For one example of how that's incomplete, in recent years queer people have been encouraged by society and especially the right to hide our queerness and abandon our culture in favor of mainstream society. This isn't trying to make us a matter of public concern, it's trying to make us disappear. This isn't how oppression works.

This next section focuses on how romantic love is allegedly used as a hierarchy.

People who regarded as romantically attractive are invariably upward-mobile, white-proximate, gender-appropriate, able-bodied, slender/muscular etc.

Maybe. Just maybe. That is just a reflection of how society views people who aren't white, aren't gender conforming, are disabled, and are fat. Racism, transphobia, ableism, and fatphobia weren't invented by romance. The way that romance in our society works simply reflects those things that already existed. "I just find them unattractive" has been an excuse to discriminate against people for ages. That isn't because romance is inherently THE hierarchy, but instead it's because it's used as an excuse.

Often, calling romantic partners “compatible” just means their placements on the romantic hierarchy are relatively equal in privilege. Calling romantically unattractive people “compatible” with each other, on the other hand, easily sounds condescending.

I don't have much to say about this. This is simply not how romance works. While compatibility is not a great concept and I have critiqued it before, this ain't it.

Queer romantic ideals remain incredibly heteronormative, only celebrating the most privileged and “compatible” of queers and condemning more marginalized queer people all the same.

This quote is really interesting because it's pointing out a very real issue with society (the fact that society encourages assimilated queers) and tries to blame queer activists for it. No, we do not want to assimilate. Society wants us to assimilate, and some of us try to do so. However talking to most queer activists will reveal that we don't want to assimilate. We want to be treated with basic respect.

Queer romance does not resist heteronormativity as much as it assimilates queer desire, making us hold on tightly to whichever relative privileges we have and hate ourselves for whichever we don’t.

Hello? This is projection. This is exactly what the person writing this manifesto has been doing the whole fucking time.

By peddling the illusion that romance can be made queer, heteronormative capitalism forces queer people to try solve their problems of undesirability and unhappiness privately by finding the “right” partner, rather than directing their anger towards public action.

Gay people in the past got into romantic relationships that often got us killed. Did we do that because of heteronormative capitalism trying to force us to find someone? No. What the actual fuck are these people even talking about.

We propose aromanticism as a counterpublic that responds to queerphobic violence by mobilising public resistance instead of escaping inwards. Aromanticism is a principled commitment to finding radically nonviolent ways of relating to others.

There's so much to unpack in this quote. Firstly, the author believes that aromanticism is a choice. It is not. I was born aromantic and even if I choose to get into a relationship that does not make me any less aro. This is also implying that (gay) romance is inherently violent, which is Homophobia 101.

If you already have a romantic partner, we are not asking you to “leave” them, but to aspire to love them in a different, queerer way.

There's no such thing as more or less queer. If you're queer, and you love someone, congratulations, that's queer love. It doesn't become more queer if you call it something other than romance.

I'm not going to go over the last part, but this last quote is some icing on the cake of homophobia we've just eaten.

Just be aware that similar hierarchies of desirability exist in sex as in romance.

It shouldn't be a hot take in the year 2023 that claiming that all sex is bad is a very culturally Christian thing to do, as well as being very traditionally homophobic. Sex negativity is weaponized against queer people far more often that it is against cishets.

To conclude, I'm just going to say that this manifesto takes real frustrations that even I have with amatonormativity, and turns them into denial that romance exists, and blatant homophobia. It's also very hard to understand, so if I misinterpreted something, please do let me know. While I do think that aphobia is bad, being homophobic isn't a solution and is just going to cause us to be hated even more, as well as alienating gay aros.

#star speaks #aromantic #aromantic manifesto #long post

[forgiveness-in-the-misery]

Xander is genuinely an interesting character. It’s complicated because a lot of people now just see him as aged poorly or Joss 2.0 and completely ignore the actual show itself and why he is the way he is.

Between the books, not the comics, the actual books and the TV show you come to learn incredibly important things:

Xander had a goth phase for a while that is brought up in the books.

Xander struggles with depression and loneliness.

Xander’s bedroom was in the basement as far removed as a kid could get from their parents.

Xander’s parents fight frequently and violently.

Xander’s father is a cruel drunk who treats his son like an abomination.

All of the above literally explain why Xander is the way that he is….and current fans blatantly ignore and avoid that and it is mind boggling to me.

He wants to joke constantly and make awkward comments and jokes especially if he’s anxious or scared or uncomfortable. He seemingly doubts people aside from Willow could ever like him for himself so he settles for the role of being the clown. He wants to be seen and understood and loved and when Anya eventually offers him this he panics due to the fear that he will turn into an abusive monster like his father and ruin her. Xander ruined his relationship with Cordelia for essentially the same reason, the fear of ruining things, of dragging her into his family and this life that would result in depression and resentment for her. He cheated on her with Willow because Willow is the only person who knows him and knows his family situation and she is safe and comfortable and familiar and kissing her knowing she has loved him most her life at that point was manipulative and misdirected and wrong on his part…..but look at his home life.

The boy never saw what a relationship is meant to be. His parents were hateful and resentful. He didn’t grow up seeing love and he has a deep fear that maybe he can’t actually love somebody.

Even his relationship to Buffy feels like deep down she is who he wants to be more than wants to be with. She’s brave and strong and witty and smart and resourceful and can easily come across like she doesn’t have time to care what people think of her.

And because of the toxic masculinity of the 90s and the shit his own father tried to beat into him about being a real man….he resents that. He feels humiliated and resentful that this girl is everything he’s been told he should be. It’s why he gets so up in arms about Buffy breaking it off with Riley, because Riley is the type of man Xander grew up being told is a real man and he idolizes that.

Spike and Angel don’t fall into this role. Spike ironically enough like Xander we learn was soft and gentle and loved poetry and kind things and was mocked and teased by people for being the way that he was. Spike became a vampire and became blood thirsty but even seeing him with Dru through the centuries the gentle lover never died with his humanity, it comes out more and more as the show progresses and frankly it comes down to vampires have no need to care.

Once you have lived hundreds of years and may live hundreds more then the concept of gender norms and sexuality come to be meaningless human concepts.

Xander is this sort of tragic character who is trapped under so much fear and anxiety and grew up in a time when the worst things you could be is a woman or gay and he wanted badly to be masculine to be a hero to be brave and manly and all of that and it frequently ended up with him distancing from his friends, losing women who did love him and tried to understand him but he never let them close enough.

So anyway I really wish people would look at story more than 2023 social norms in a show made back in the 90s/2000s and also I wish the show had made Xander gay.

#buffy the vampire slayer

[morkofday]

Top 5 bl scenes (regardless of feelings about the overall bl, though obviously that can influence your opinion on a scene) :))

oh anon you really wish me to die? is that it? bc this is so unfair! but i tried my best. these are totally influenced by my feelings about the series as a whole, sorry about that.

-

My Top 5 2023 BL Scenes

I. Mork's Gay PanicTM (Last Twilight)

i have NEVER seen a character show such intense gay panic as mork is showing in this scene. man was shaking, screaming on the inside, blushing, looking, looking away, and looking again. he was DYING and he needed to take a deep breath to get through it all while i was holding my own breath for him. literally 10/10 execution from jimmy and sea. pure perfection. such a good scene.

II. The Proposal (Our Skyy 2 x 1000 Stars)

i'm pretty sure no proposal will ever top this for me (unless last twilight does something absolutely insane but that's to be seen). it was just so perfect for phuphatian. it was them, looked like them, felt like them. it was about finding the last missing star like it always is. i cried a bucket. i still tear up when i think about it. p'aof you truly are magic ♥

III. Jaewon's return (The Eighth Sense)

this scene is filled with so much love and joy and acceptance it leaves me breathless. it's a very beautiful and healing scene. after everything, these two deserved this. i also love the playfulness and intimacy of the lighting and setting. there's just something about lying on a bed like this with your partner, in the dark, safe from the world and reality.

IV. Yai's drunken confession (I Feel You Linger in the Air)

i know this is a very cliché scene but there is something so delicious about yai confessing his feelings while drunk. they've played this game for a while, a game of hesitant looks and touches, and then something finally gives. you hold your breath while watching the scene unfold. yai is bearing his heart and you fear jom cannot see it, but he surprises you by getting it right away. they're so sweet it hurts. they should get more time.

V. Heart speaks (Moonlight Chicken)

these two were always so uncomplicated amongst the chaos of moonlight chicken. their love was young and sweet and innocent. and so was their joy; easy and full of childish excitement. i love this scene for how pure it is, how filled with happiness and love. it's peak romance, peak heartliming. and one of my favourite scenes bc it fills me with so much warmth.

Bonus: WaiKorn's groundbreaking comeback

technically not a bl scene but heck, you cannot convince me it isn't. this is The biggest comeback of the century, hands down. p'aof didn't come out to play when he decided to serve us this during our skyy 2. this healed me, watered my crops, cleared my skin, fed my whole family, and left me with a grand inheritance. i am forever grateful. the brainrot will never end.

-

i have probably forgotten like a million very important scenes that should be here but these were the ones my brain provided me with tonight. thank you for sending this ask! i hope you enjoyed reading this ^^

#i hope you are well anon!! #also hoping you will spend the best new years #and that the upcoming year treats you well! #last twilight #a tale of thousand stars #the eighth sense #i feel you linger in the air #moonlight chicken #bad buddy #waikorn

[seth-shitposts]

pull you into dark corners? 👀

Absolutely 💙💚

🔞🔞🔞

So Pull You Into Dark Corners was originally just supposed to be a quick one shot (story of the century, lies we tell ourselves, other jokes we can try and take seriously), but we ended up estimating that it'll be longer.

It's one of the first that while we do have a considerable amount put towards it, much of it also needs to be revamped.

It's mostly going to be smut, but it got so much expansion because we wanted to set it up with a bit of plot, added too much plot so that the plot to smut ratio was disproportionate for what we were aiming for, and now we're also going to have to add more smut. This story WILL stay true to its orgins.

Fulcrum era Kallus, gay panic zeb, maybe wingman kanan.

Kallus and Zeb sneaking around.

Here's a snippet, but keep in mind bits might change up when we get back to writing this.

"And miss out on surprising ya with a visit? Especially in this cozy little space?" Zeb slides his hands from Kal's wrists to his hips, savoring how Kal takes a sharp inhale as he arches into Zeb's touch, "now, where's the fun n'that?" Kal rolls his eyes before looking at Zeb through the darkness. "Zeb…" He hesitantly wraps his arms around Zeb's shoulders, pulling himself closer to the rebel. As if he were to let go of Zeb, he would disappear, or alternatively, if he were to hold on too tight, Zeb would leave. "I really do wish that you'd take a bit more caution with your visits…" Claws slowly dragging up and down his thighs, Zeb rubs his cheek against Kal's, drawing a pleasant sigh from the man. A very grounding reminder to the agent that Zeb has no intent in leaving or cutting their time short. Contently returning the gesture, Kal can't stop the smile that touches his lips as he pulls a purr from Zeb when he nuzzles him back. "Needy little rebel."

This'll be a fun one, we just gotta balance it just right. But also trying remind myself (lexie), not to take it super seriously because Sebastian does want it to be more of a fun adventure rather than a super serious thing.

#star wars rebels #swr #alexsandr kallus #garazeb orrelios #kalluzeb #wip ask game

[instarsandcrime]

what fun words or slang do you hc for our hotel gang? 😊

(Like Husk using "chucklefucks" unironically for example 🤣)

Oh gosh, that's a good question! Let me go down the list here for as many as I can think of...

Char/lie:

-In the beginning of Va/ggie's fall, she was probably very in love and very awkward while she tended to Va/ggie's wounds. And as a fellow bisexual, would definitely throw finger guns and go "Hey...y-you?" before backing out and leaving. This has happened several times. The gay panic was probably too strong for her.

Va/ggie:

-For Char/lie I literally cannot think of anything except every Salvadoran nickname under the sun. I'm not even going to list them. Just think of any one of them and you've got it.

-Similar to Al/as/tor, but instead of terms of endearment it's terms of insults™

Al/as/tor:

-Purposefully calls Hu/sk names that put him down. In Loser, Baby there are a lot of insulting labels thrown his way, and I think after some time Al/as/tor did call him enough of those that purposefully also echoed other people to get under his skin a little more. Maybe some of those were Al/as/tor originals...

-Char/lie's are much more pleasant, but he especially likes to sneak in ma fée (my fairy, normally used for your child) as far away from everyone else as possible, and as close to Lu/ci/fer as possible knowing he's centuries old and knows what that means 10,000%. And as far away from everyone else because unfortunately, a small unfortunate part of him really does mean it.

Lu/ci/fer:

-Just. Just so many cheesy nicknames. He was once an angel, and angels are definitely sappy guys. 'Char Char', 'Stardust', 'Sweetie', 'Dear', 'Kiddo', 'My little girl', etc. Similar to Li/li/th! 'Lily', 'Darling', 'Love of my life', etc.

-Contrary to popular belief, Al/as/tor does in fact get a nickname. 'Him'. Everything else is just an insult so they don't count.

-I really enjoyed your fic Watch My Back and him calling Niff/ty 'little one'. I am sticking with that headcanon no matter what.

-Va/ggie gets extreme deja vu when Lu/ci/fer has trouble talking to her at first, knowing she's a big part of his daughter's life. So despite being straight(????) and not knowing our rich bi history, and without knowing Char/lie has done this, throws finger guns in the exact same way and goes "Hey...y-you?" before backing out and leaving. It's only happened once but Va/ggie definitely still remembers it.

Hu/sk:

-Oh An/gel Du/st. There are just. So many nicknames. I definitely agree with 'Chucklefucks' for everyone generally. Specifically, An/gel is much, much different and more personal compared to everyone else. He'd probably alternate between 'kid', 'loser', 'cher'-- in which he picked up Louisiana slang from Al/as/stor and will get away with it because he knows An/gel Du/st will never look up what it means (term of endearment for loved one)-- 'Ange', and probably when he learns his real name, 'Tony'.

-Calls Niff/ty 'the menace' or 'little menace' for obvious reasons.

An/gel Du/st:

-Calls himself 'gal' and 'dame' a lot. Fuck gender roles honestly, he's all for being called what he's rightfully deserved.

-He tends to share the 'loser' nickname with Hu/sk. But he does have others-- 'baby', 'sweetheart', and 'tesoro'. (treasure/darling). Which is unfortunate because he knows Hu/sk will look it up and get incredibly flustered every time it's used. NO ONE knows what this word means except Hu/sk and has no idea why he fled the room. At one point Pen/tious considers it a threat from secondhand observation.

-Leans a lot towards 'babydoll' and 'cutie' for Char/lie because he definitely sees her as a cute, shining ball of energy (and respects it, probably, considering where the show is going with him and redemption)

#non snz ask #ha//zb//in//ho//tel// #a/la/stor #an/gel/du/st #char/lie #va/ggi/ie #lu/ci/fer #hu/sk #ni/ff/ty

[wackulart]

Emperor Belos x male reader who was Evelyn’s brother and they were really close. They got split up but reader goes with Luz to the battle at the end of kings tide and they get reunited. I’m starving for Belos bro I’m so gay for this man

There there, dear anon.

I will do my best to provide Belos food for you

Also just so reader can still be alive since that was all in the past im gonna say that the curse is like a matching thing before they had split so they can be immortal too but they dont depend on palismen bc they have a bile sack so i can keep it sweet

Belos x Evelyn's Brother!Reader

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

Watching everyone gather for the Day of Unity had been the most terrifying display that you had seen in years. All of those demons and they had no clue what they were up against.

Luckily for you, a human girl and your great nieces who you'd never thought to see had tracked you down to inform you. You had no clue how they managed it, you've been in hiding for centuries after you had the most crushing argument with the love of your life and ran off after the confrontation with your sister and his brother.

You didn't stay long enough to know how it ended.

Perhaps it was better that way.

Years had gone by since you had left and you wished you could have changed things, you wished that you hadn't spoken such horrible last words to him, to your sister, to her husband.

The past was the past now, you had a situation to take care of.

The human girl, she said her name was Luz, along with you had been captured by a smaller demon that worked for the Emperor. In your hiding you had never heard of this Emperor but from what you had been told, he was no good. So you were prepared to aid the human in any way you could if it meant saving your home.

You were dropped in a room that you couldn't see from the other side of the orb you two were being held in. Luz had seemed frightened for a moment, but forced a determined look on her face.

One of your hands touched her shoulder and she looked up at you.

"It'll be alright." You whispered and she smiled back at you.

After an outside conversation died down, you heard another voice acknowledging Luz and slightly confused of who you were. That was until the field was dropped.

You saw Luz begin to prepare glyphs so you unsheathed your staff and held up a shield to give her time.

The Emperor had suddenly gone still and taken a step back. You didn't falter, but something began to tear at your chest as you saw him look at you with recognition. Your name left his mouth and you were caught off guard. He couldn't have known your name.

He moved towards you slowly and you backed away in confusion, then your eyes moved to his clothes, his face and back to his eyes.

No, no, it couldn't be.

Then you remembered that night all those years ago.

The night you had both created a spell to live together, as long as one heart beats the other will continue to live on. He called it marriage and you took it.

You glanced at the red that began to glow under his jacket sleeve and back to the orange sigils that glowed on your arm.

Luz had been watching everything, confused on your lack of attack and even more on the Emperor's. She saw your arm and squinted before pulling on your arm.

You looked back at her, dropping the spell as you tried to come to grips with what was happening. You couldn't speak, just shaking your head as if you would wake up from this strange dream. Luz looked away from you in a panic and tried to set off a glyph before you felt arms wrap around you.

The man who you hadn't recognized before, the man who you hadn't seen in years, the love of your life, your dearest--

"Philip?" You muttered and you felt him relax in your arms as you slowly wrapped them around him.

He pulled away to take to your face in his hands and smile at you. "My love, it has been far too long."

You kissed his wrist and felt tears well up in your eyes, you had missed him so much. By the way he had taken your hands and kissed the knuckles, you could tell that he missed you too.

The warm thoughts were quickly interrupted by Luz's cry to you.

"Look I don't know what happened between you, but you've seen what he's doing! We showed you what he's been planning and what he'll do to everyone, don't fall for this!" She begged.

Luz was right, despite what you had with Philip before all of this, he was currently trying to eradicate your world. He could already see the conflict in your eyes as he took you by the face and turned you from her to look into his glistening blue eyes.

He touched your foreheads together. "My love, I would never put you in danger. The day that I lost you, I have never forgotten."

Then he fell to kneel in front of you and held your hand. "Come with me. Let us leave this place and live out our dreams, let me show you my home."

Your heart sank as you looked at him and then you looked at Luz. There was no simple decision, either one would have consequences that would shatter your heart forever.

So, what should you do?

#CLIFFHANGER #I wanted to leave it up to reader on what they would do bc honestly that decision depends so much on the character #i think for my sona it would depend on which au #belos x reader #emperor belos x reader #philip wittebane x reader #toh x reader #the owl house x reader #x reader #writing #my writing #the owl house writing #luz noceda #philip wittebane #emperor belos #belos #toh philip #toh luz #toh philip wittebane #toh luz noceda #toh belos #toh emperor belos #luz the human #the owl house philip #the owl house luz #the owl house philip wittebane #the owl house luz noceda #the owl house emperor belos #the owl house belos

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Hi Theitsa! half Greek in America here, looking for translation help and you're the only blogger I know 😭

long story short: my family on my mom's side all practice Greek folk magic, with my great-grandma and(possibly my great aunt)apparently being "completely" a witch.

i grew up with it but i'm still learning the language and my family disowned me for being gay so I can't ask for help with research.

the most commonly used term for "witch" is "magissa"/ μάγισσα right?? is μαγεία more common for magic in general? when I'm using Google translate γητεία seems to be the most common term for folk sorcery.

and i see the practices of Circe referred to as μαγγάνεια??

thank you for your help if you know anything, I know it's a niche topic.

bless you!!!

Hii! Dear anon I'm very sorry for what your family did to you :/ That's nor fair at all! May you thrive and be always blessed in your life!

This topic is not niche, actually! The average Greek in the country has some basic contact and knowledge of such stuff either by doing some or by hearing of them. I haven't talked a lot about Magganeia/Vaskaneia in Greece so let's do a Masterpost!

(Greeks with deeper knowledge please add to this post and let me know if something is inaccurate! All I have is "average Greek" knowledge but well, someone has to make the start.)

People throughout Greece (as in the whole Balkans and the Middle East tbh) practice a lot of customs to bring good energy and good things to them or expel bad energies and bad things. The most prevalent being the ritual of xematiasma (the prayer for which needs to be passed down by the opposite sex on a full moon), or customs with bridal koufeta for young girls to attract a good groom, reading the coffee and the palm, explaining dreams (and having recorded oneirokrites), giving new year talismans for good luck (mati beads, pomegranate charms, horseshoes) and hanging them around the home, or baking a pie to St. Fanourios if you want to find something you lost etc etc.

Traditionally such practices in Greece are intertwined with local customs and herb knowledge and it's not a big "issue" like it would be for USAmerican (cultural or practicing) Evangelicals. In Greece it's acceptable to do many things that in the US would be considered "witchcraft" but here they're just "tradition".

For Greeks the basic stuff I mentioned in the first paragraph is widely accepted to the point many of them have fused with church practices through the centuries. Coffee shops where one can have their coffee and palm read - although not many - have lots of customers. Tarot readers also have a good clientele. I've heard Greeks dismiss such stuff as "nonsense" but rarely dismiss them as "evil". Actually, the comments about such practices being evil here are very tame and usually connected to the church - but not in the US way.

Our Church might have cried about such practices in the past but... who listens to the church on these things! :P (only a few do) Our insistence on keeping folk practice led to Greece having no witch hunts or any witches burnt for at least a thousand years now!

Map of witchhunts in early modern Europe (source)

There is a line here, too, of course. Like, if one uses a heart from a mouse wrapped in an oak leaf bathed in frog bile to expel the bad spirits (a spell I just made up) that's officially "witchcraft" and we find it weird at best. More mild stuff like burning wishes written on paper or letting garlic absorb bad energies and then burn it are middle ground and not outright condemned - I feel the Greeks have a great tolerance of what is considered "folk tradition" to them.

The fear of being "pagan" in recent centuries is a Western panic. Traditionally Greeks and their Church were most worried about harmful spells (which included harming an animal or human in the process) and calling demons to do your bidding. If you called a saint for help in a non-harming spell... hmm that wouldn't be that worrying I guess. As long as you didn't ask a priest's opinion, you'd be fine :P

The sum of acceptable and unacceptable practices by the Greek public can be called "μαγγανεία" or "βασκανεία". Because they include unacceptable practices as well, the words have a negative connotation.

"Μαγεία" for Greeks is connected more to the Western archetype of a wizard with a tall hat going around with a big rod shouting "abracadabra". It's connected more to fantasy and fairytales. Traditionally I don't think we used μάγος/μάγισσα for people who did such practices. Even today I've yet to hear Greeks who call themselves witches say "κάνω μαγικά".

I'd say μαγγανεία or βασκανεία are the appropriate terms for what your great-grandma practiced. The spells are traditionally called γητείες (sing. γητεία). The word γόης which now means "very charming man" meant "sorcerer" in ancient years. We just use it metaphorically today. These words all have the same linguistic root.

Nowadays I haven't heard men call themselves "μάγος" but some women call themselves "μάγισσα", and they do "ξόρκια" (comes from εξορκισμός, exorcism - the English version of the Greek word). I think "μάγισσες" practice more Western types of magic because they learned the spells from Western European or US books and videos. I don't know if a practicer of Greek folk spells would be called the same.

I must note that all the above is the reason why when USAmericans practice Greek customs to worship the Greek gods and call themselves "pagans" feels a bit unsettling to me. I suppose if you add crystal balls and tarot and crystals to the practice that would shift it more to the "witchy" side (although as a Greek I'm quite flexible :P) But more than once I've seen USians call themselves "pagans" for simple acts of worship which are very much non-pagan. Having a home altar with the gods along with some blessed items and candles burning... is Basic Christian Orthodox stuff too, a tradition unbroken from ancient years (εικονοστάσια με καντήλια, κεριά, λουλούδια, κομποσκοίνια).

At the same time, I understand that in their society this can be called "being pagan" so I'm not saying that my view is the only one that matters in this. But some knowledge of the Greek culture always helps if you're practicing its customs. It will also help the Westerners stop calling Orthodoxes "savage pagans" for our religious practices after a thousand years :))))

Thanks for making it this far! Get a small bonus: a great article on ancient Greek "bindings/wishes" which is in Greek and it will be probably still fine if translated through Google.

Some things might differ between areas and eras so that's why I welcome other Greeks to comment here with their own experiences and stories of "witches" (or whatever they called them) if their areas had any.

#vaskania #magganeia #folk sorcery #witchcraft #masterpost #answered

[inscrutable-shadow]

only then i am human (only then i am clean) - part one

contains: mild horniness, homoerotic blood drinking, minor nausea (no vomiting), swearing, gore, a disgusting amount of gay pining, whumptober 2023 days 11, 20, and 30 (animal trap, "you will regret touching them," bridal carry)

summary: The Culling War is over, and Thanatos is not the same.

Mariano doesn't have a same to go back to.

Bastian just hopes that he won't have to kill Thanatos when the vampire's ravenous hunger finally takes over.

It's been far too long since Thanatos has had a good meal, after all, and he loves getting himself in hot water.

beginning notes: whoo-wee! i started this as a whumptober fill, and it still is that, but it’s also so, so much more than that now. four times the size and now part of a series i hope to continue in the coming months. so many thanks to @crash-bump-bring-the-whump for letting me borrow his characters, fill his dms with screaming and gay shenanigans at all hours, and for betaing! i have so much more planned for our boys after this so stay tuned :)

also available on ao3! even though i've broken the fic into two, this section is 7.3k words so you might enjoy it more there. (plus you get the ending a day early)

Thanatos was rather surprised at how much fun he was having. When Madame Nocta had initially shown him his redistricting papers, he’d had to step out of the room to stop the choking panic from clawing at his insides. The image of his old life, of returning to his job and his apartment and his lover after so long away, had been the only thing keeping him going for so long that the idea of changing that image made him sick. “It’ll be quiet,” she’d assured him. “No one will know what you are. You can relax, recover. It will be good for you.” Thanatos hadn’t believed her, but now, as the damp wind ruffled his hair and sent ripples over the nearby lake, he was forced to admit this world was rather quaint.

He could almost convince himself it was just like home, at least, before the “engine of progress” had compressed every ounce of magic from the land. The countryside was littered with small villages of wood and stone instead of towering metropoles of metal and glass. The air held none of the heavy odour of burning oil; if anything, it crackled and pulsed with magic in the way the ancient forests had when the fae still inhabited them. If it weren’t for the various ruins that evoked to those in the know the aura of an advanced society, he would have believed it was the ninth century again. Wandering from place to place, offering his eyes, his voice, and his stories to anyone who could use him in exchange for a few coins, and flirting with people in taverns, it was quite akin to the way he’d lived before he’d met the Archfey. One could almost call it idyllic.

“Hey, Thanatos! There you are,” a voice called from behind him, and he turned to see Bastian pushing through the market crowd toward him. “Thought I’d lost you for a bit. Crowd too much for you?”

There was one major difference between this world and his own, and here was a prime example of it: one could tell just by looking that Bastian was a dragon. If the prismatic hair and the horns weren’t a dead giveaway, the shimmering scales certainly were. He wasn’t the only one, either. A vampire blended right in among the varying peoples of this world, and Thanatos didn’t even bother to wear the glasses that obscured his eye color and slitted pupils anymore. He still became rather on edge in the market crowds, but even that he was doing much better with than he had a month ago. He’d been able to drift from stall to stall with the crowd for almost an hour before he’d felt claustrophobic.

Thanatos nodded acknowledgement of Bastian’s presence and alighted from the fencepost. “I just needed some air. Find everything you wanted?” If he recalled correctly, they were supposed to be replenishing supplies after an unfortunate encounter with a river (that had not at all been Thanatos’s fault).

Bastian only shrugged. “He’s the one shopping. Weather’s turning. Ought to get back together with Mariano and head out before it gets too bright for you.”

The sun here burned much brighter than Thanatos was used to, and even cloudy days pricked uncomfortably at his skin. The locals had been kind to him, though, and no one had hesitated to offer him shelter or clothing or food that he inevitably had to refuse. The hat that he was wearing and had reinforced with a layer of Shadow had been forced upon him by a kindly old woman who had noticed his discomfort while he was carrying her shopping for her on a not-so-cloudy afternoon. She couldn’t have known that his refusal to put a square millimetre of exposed skin in direct sunlight was an aversion to screaming immolation and subsequent death, but she’d pushed her hat onto his head anyway, and called him a sweet young man who needed to take better care of himself. That sort of behaviour had by far been the norm, and for that, he was grateful.

“That little basket all you’re getting?” Bastian asked, edging a hand under the fabric cover, but pulling it back when Thanatos swatted at it.

“The two of you have been very kind. I thought that perhaps I could repay the favour by taking care of dinner for tonight.” It had been a long while since he’d had to cook anything, but he still remembered some of the things his mother had taught him, oh so long ago, and he felt the need to provide something other than diverting conversation for once.

Bastian walked ahead of him in the crowd, forging a less constricted path for Thanatos to follow as the pair threaded their way back to the meeting point. “You don’t even eat. How’re you gonna know if it’s any good?”

“I’ll just have to have you taste for me.”

“Sure thing.” The dragon grinned in that toothy way of his, and Thanatos allowed himself a small one in return.

He’d come out to the two of them during the second week. Not about his taste for men: the reality of that oozed from his pores and was apparent in every movement. The wistful stares he threw at every young man who looked even a bit like the Archfey left little room for doubt. About his taste for blood. Thanatos had violated Clandestine Accord and clued two mortals in on the fact that he was a vampire. It hadn’t phased them at all. There were very few things that could rattle Mariano, and Bastian was a dragon. A vampire wasn’t a threat, and so he didn’t care. Thanatos had felt silly for even being slightly anxious about it. The way they looked at each other, talked to each other, to him, he just knew. They’d felt safe. Thanatos hadn’t felt safe in decades. Not since the Culling War.

Twenty-five years of paranoia had turned an easygoing, charismatic Thanatos into a nervous wreck of a man who jumped at every shadow. He’d heard Tenebrus and the Council talking about him: the psychological effects of his job had made him nearly useless at it, and they were planning to replace him. The war had ended before they had the chance, but still. He knew he wasn’t the same man his Archfey had fallen in love with. That thought alone made him want to shatter into a thousand porcelain fragments, but living here had started to fill in the jagged gouges the war had left on his soul. The people were kinder, didn’t treat him like a monster even when they couldn’t know he was one. (Not like home. On Earth Four, even the slightest deviation from the norm had put him at risk of discovery.) He wasn’t constantly on the defensive anymore.

The crowd opened up a bit, and he could now see slightly further ahead. Ah, there was Mariano. His dark hair rose up above most of the bobbing heads of the market-goers, and the soft lines of his face were broken slightly by a brow furrowed in concentration. Comparing products, perhaps? He’s rather particular about the supplies. He was still deep in discussion with a shopkeeper, though from the amount he was carrying, it seemed as if he must be nearly done with his shopping. “I’ll be right back, found something I want to pick up,” Bastian leaned down to whisper in his ear, melting into the crowd again before Thanatos could even respond. He felt a bit nervous in the crowd by himself, but he could see Mariano, at least, and the hat would probably make him easy enough to find again. He found a quiet spot between two stalls, where he was offered a seat and an apple by an old woman selling fruit. With a smile, he accepted the former, but of course not the latter.

The market had been set up in the hollow shell of some ancient building, and most of the shops on this side of the square were peddling foodstuffs of some kind, set up on the raised ground on either side of the makeshift thoroughfare created by the terrain. This particular ruin gave Thanatos the nagging sensation that he was late to catch a train. He supposed it’d be a long time before he saw another train, given his reassignment. It would have been strange to go back to his Earth after a quarter-century of war, anyhow, let alone live in the cottage without the Archfey. He wasn’t even sure he knew how to fit himself back into a fast-paced mortal society now that he’d had the fear of other people forcibly drilled into him. There hadn’t been a moment in the last decade or so when he hadn’t been acutely wary of other vampires out to give him a glowing recommendation to the nearest Reaper. Relax, Than. There aren’t any other vampires in this area, he reminded himself. He had a hundred miles of clearance before he encroached on anyone else’s hunting grounds. Anyone who wanted to mess with him would have Mariano to contend with, anyhow. No one had got through him yet.

“Do you like it?”

“Hm?”

The laugh was like birdsong, and it came from a girl, about nineteen, behind the fruit stand, helping the old woman set out more goods. “You were staring, mister. Do you like the hairpin? My mother made it for me.” Like most of the denizens here, her skin was a deep ochre, with matching eyes that held a mischievous smile and an effortless charm.

He had been staring; he realised. The pin was an array of jasmine-like blooms on a fastening of ebony and amethyst. It looked like something the Archfey would have worn, not in the early days of their relationship when they’d been doing the courtship dance of fey prince and vampire, no, this was something ae would have worn to a coffeehouse date or to the cinema, a coy reminder of the power that lurked behind the mortal disguise. Thanatos summoned up a smile and gave a wry chuckle, hoping his expression didn’t seem tortured. “You remind me of someone, that’s all.” Oh. It was easier than he’d expected to become the charming vampire once again. Maybe he really was getting better.

The girl returned his smile. “Someone you like?” She turned away a little, then met his eyes again.

“Someone I love.”

The grief must have shown through in his eyes for a moment, because the girl’s smile turned sad. “What happened to them?”

He hesitated, deciding how much of his pain was worth pouring out to a stranger. “Gone. Said they would return, but, well. I’ve had to move, and I fear we may never be reunited.” His gaze drifted away toward the shifting clouds. Bastian was right. The weather would clear up soon.

“Take it then,” she said, and his brow furrowed as his eyes returned to look at her. She took his hand in hers and pressed the pin into it. “My mother made it as a good-luck charm. Maybe it will bring the two of you back together.”

Why would she give something like that to a stranger? Part of him wondered if it might be some sort of trap, but he pushed the thought away. Humans weren’t like vampires. Every gesture of goodwill wasn’t a secret power play with them. Sometimes they did these things on a whim, or even out of kindness. It was a foolish thing for her to do, though, so he demurred. “Oh, miss, I couldn’t possibly take such a precious heirloom—”

“Surely you won’t refuse a gift,” she countered, and the expression of mischief on her face melted the last of the ice in his heart. Maybe things truly were looking up.

Thanatos bowed. “Then I shall graciously accept. However,” he added, setting his basket down for a moment, “allow me to return the favour. A charm for a charm. My partner gave this to me a long time ago. It, too, is good luck. May it bring you winds of fortune.” He removed the earring from his right ear, a dangle shaped vaguely like a wreath. In truth, it was a ritual sigil, one of the Archfey’s smallest and subtlest protection blessings. Woven directly from aer magic into metal, he’d worn it for almost two hundred years, and he credited his continued existence a significant amount to the Archfey’s protection rather than any qualities he himself possessed. For a moment, he questioned why he would give away something so precious on a whim, but the girl’s gift had struck a chord with him, made him feel as if the dark days might be over. That was worth the loss of the charm.

The young woman accepted the earring and worked into her own ear, and the two of them shared a smile, and a laugh, and a blush. One couldn’t fault Thanatos for finding comfort in the sweet moment, but of course, the universe saw fit to punish him for allowing himself to relax. “The fuck you think you’re doing, dipshit?” a gruff voice called from behind him. And here we go.

He went for his usual disarming smile. “Ah, you must be the boyfriend.”

“Fiancé,” the young lady corrected mildly. Of course he was.

The fiancé in question wasted no time in invading Thanatos’s personal space. “You gotta be stupid to chat up another man’s girl like that.” He folded his arms, probably trying to look intimidating. It was sort of working.

Thanatos’s eyebrows raised. “If that’s what you think flirting looks like, my condolences to your lady-love. I was nothing more than cordial. Aren’t you just the strapping young man though,” he purred. “I cannot fault the lady’s taste.” Now that was flirting. The tried-and-true Thanatos method of getting out of this sort of tight spot was to play up his flamboyance until their discomfort outweighed their indignation. “Baffle them with his bullshit,” as it were. It usually worked long enough for him to work out some method of escape.

“Leave it, Javier. He’s not bothering me. We were just talking,” the girl said, annoyed.

Javier was not dissuaded. “I don’t want random guys feeling like they can talk to you, Violetta. And that didn’t look like talking.”

Thanatos saw this as a chance to cut back in. “I assure you, I have no interest in absconding with your sweetheart. My intentions with her were purely platonic, for my tastes lie elsewhere, if you take my meaning.”

From the way Javier picked him up by his collar, Thanatos got the idea that he might not have understood some of those words. “Are you saying you don’t think she’s pretty? Take it back right now!”

Oh, by the celestial river… Annoyance ignited in Thanatos’s chest, and he was firing back before he could think about it. “I didn’t say she wasn’t pretty, you oaf. I said I was fucking gay! By the Divines, humans grow ever more stupid. I’m married too, if it matters—”

“Is there a problem here?” Oh, thank fuck. Mariano, his knight in shining armour once again. Part of him orchestrated these scenarios intentionally just to have a chance to see the mage work. Bastian was hanging back, presumably to watch the show. He gave Thanatos a little wave and a grin and appeared to have found himself some sort of drink. Typical Bastian.

Javier looked Mariano up and down. Tall and broad, the dark-skinned mage certainly carried his share of scars, from the clearly deliberate burns on his arms to the blade-mark under his jawline. Thanatos thought it added charm to the soft lines of Mariano’s face, especially when he smiled, which was often if Thanatos had anything to do with it. He was not smiling now. Mariano’s default expression was blank, unreadable, which combined with the silver-white pact rings around his dark irises and his subtle but not-insignificant musculature lent him quite the imposing air. Even behind the dark-rimmed glasses, it was clear that Mariano was not a man to be trifled with.

Undeterred, likely due to a lack of basic survival instinct, Javier pressed on. “Sure is. Your friend here’s about to eat shit for fucking with my girl. Unless you’d like to eat it for him?” Now, that was borderline suicidal. If he hadn’t known Mariano as well as he did, Thanatos would have expected a bloodbath.

Mariano looked up at Thanatos, still dangling in the air with an expression that read “I’m sorry, please save me again.” He didn’t speak, just removed his casting dagger from his belt, held it up, and ignited the blade, his war mage’s magic shooting up through the hilt and heating the metal until it glowed. A single eyebrow shifted, challenging Javier to try him.

“You really don’t want to fight him,” Thanatos supplied, helpfully.

Javier looked as if he might try it anyway, but Violetta read the situation correctly. Smart girl. “Let’s just go, Javier. I’m fine, it’s not worth it!” she implored, pulling on his arm.

A moment’s hesitation, then the brute relented. “Whatever,” he spat, and threw Thanatos down. The vampire sat down hard in the dirt, hat askew, but that was better than having his neck wrung on what had otherwise been a fairly pleasant afternoon. His basket was down here too, fortunately undamaged. “Let’s go, Violetta.” Javier stalked off, pushing through the crowd.

Thanatos let out a heavy sigh of relief. He took the hand Mariano stretched down toward him and allowed himself to be helped to his feet. “You okay?” Mariano asked, observing his slanted hat and open collar. Thanatos felt the heat rising in his face.

He cleared his throat. “Quite all right, thanks to you, once again. Just in time, too.” He had to stop doing this. As entertaining as it was to be rescued time and time again, the risk to his person was too high. Mariano might save him, but not necessarily before he was seriously damaged.

“You have to stop doing this, I’m not always going to show up right when you need me, you know.” Mariano picked up the basket from the ground and handed it to Thanatos, who suddenly thought he might repeat the whole procedure again tomorrow.

“Oh, but you do it so well! The spectacle, the cinema! You play quite the dashing hero,” he enthused, attempting to distract from how hot he suddenly felt under his silk shirt.

Mariano looked away, probably looking for his dragon in the crowd. It was difficult to tell with Mariano, but Thanatos got the idea he might have said something wrong. Fortunately for him, Bastian returned, amused as usual. “Thought you were going to teach him a lesson. Too bad you let him get away.”

“Wasn’t worth it.” Mariano shrugged. “He was just a blowhard, and I’m sure Than started it, anyway.” He accepted his bag back from Bastian and instinctively sorted through it, as was his habit.

“I’m sure I resent that remark!” Thanatos spluttered, but before he could really get going with his retort, Violetta pushed her way back through the crowd toward them.

“I’m sorry about him. You didn’t deserve that. I should go, but here, take this. For your friend with the pretty eyes.” She pressed a meat bun into his hand and vanished again.

Thanatos blinked in momentary confusion, then held the pastry out to Mariano, who also seemed confused. “Me?”

“I think it’s relatively clear she didn’t mean Bastian. No offense meant, of course.”

Bastian grinned. “None taken. Eat it, Mariano, looks good. If you won’t, I will.”

“But your eyes-” Mariano began, meaning Thanatos’s crimson ones rather than Bastian’s white-silver.

“Oh? Taken your fancy, have they?” It came out more flirtatious than he’d intended, he was having trouble shaking off the performance. “Alluring as they may be, I already have a gift from the lady, and I can’t eat it anyhow. Take the bread and the compliment, mortal mage.” One would have to be blind to fail to acknowledge that Mariano was attractive, in Thanatos’s opinion, but Mariano didn’t seem to process it the same way.

“I- okay.” He didn’t seem convinced, but he always looked like that.

Better to just distract him, then. “Good show, Mariano. Another innocent man rescued, another reward earned. Let’s move on before I am reduced to ash, eh?” That was something he was actually worried about, not just a diversionary tactic. The clouds were moving uncomfortably quickly, hurried on by the wind.

“Wouldn’t want to have to scoop him up off of the ground. That’d take ages,” Bastian joked. Mariano laughed, and all was right with the world again.

#

As Bastian had predicted, the sky was nearly clear when the sun finally slipped below the horizon. The particular corner of the glade where they had built the fire was sufficiently shaded for Thanatos not to have to focus on protecting himself from the light. Not that he had much else to do than leaf through his well-worn copy of Theogonia, which had managed to survive the war tucked into a corner of his briefcase. He didn’t need to read the pages anymore, so many times had he been over these same words in the two thousand years since this particular edition had been published, but turning the leaves and skimming the familiar passages was of comfort to him, a habit he’d developed to unwind after a long day. The woods were quiet except for the soft chirping of insects and the scrape of Mariano’s knife against the whetstone.

“Is it done yet?” This was the fourth time Bastian had asked in the last hour. Thanatos didn’t blame him. The tantalising aroma of slow-cooked meat rising from the stew pot filled the air and stimulated the appetite. His sense of smell had shifted since becoming a vampire, but if one thing had remained the same, the scent still took him back to his childhood, helping his mother by the stove.

“Not quite.” Thanatos gave the pot a stir and tested the meat with the spoon. “About ten more minutes.”

Bastian groaned. “That’s what you said ten minutes ago.”

“No, ten minutes ago I said twenty minutes.”

“Fifteen,” said Mariano, inspecting the blade’s edge in the firelight.

“Hm?” It was the first time Mariano had spoken in an hour or so. Thanatos hadn’t even known he was listening.

The scraping resumed. “You said fifteen minutes. Ten minutes ago.”

“Did I?” Thanatos couldn’t recall, but if Mariano thought so, it must be true.

“Yeah.” There was a beat of silence, and then the rustle of a page and the scrape of the whetstone.

The pot simmered happily despite Bastian’s impatient scrutiny. “Can’t we just eat it now?”

Mariano laughed. “I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait, Bastian. We can’t all eat raw meat, you know. Though maybe next time pick something that doesn’t take as long, Than.”

Thanatos gave a snort of mock-indignation. “Genius cannot be rushed, mortal mage. This is an heirloom recipe passed down to me by my mother.” They’d had servants to cook for them, of course. A magistrate’s wife would never have been expected to do that sort of thing, but Thanatos’s mother had loved every part of the process from selecting ingredients to serving. She’d taught him to cut vegetables and to know when meat was tender. It was incredibly rare for him to need to use those skills, but his hands knew what to do. In a way, it was as if his mother was still alive.

True to his estimate, the stew was ready in about ten minutes. Bastian would have been happy to eat the meat before it was cooked, and if Thanatos was careful, he could sip at the tomato base without making himself ill, but it was Mariano’s opinion that mattered.

Fortunately, the mage’s first spoonful earned a smile. “It’s good!”

Thanatos sighed with relief. “I’m glad you find it so. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve had the occasion to cook, you understand.”

“It doesn’t show. It’s just too bad you can’t taste it,” Mariano said, attacking another spoonful. That dispelled the last of Thanatos’s worries that he was just saying it to be nice. Even if that would have been out of character for someone so straightforward, the apprehension was habitual.

“Oh, I remember it well enough. Enjoy it in my stead.”

“Doesn’t it make you hungry, watching other people eat?” Bastian mused, though most of his attention was caught up in finding more bits of tender meat to fish out of the stew, which Thanatos took as a victory.

He shrugged. “Mortal food is, at best, unappetizing to me at this point. My senses of taste and smell are so altered that it doesn’t register to my mind as consumable.” He was hungry, though, he realised. It had been three days since he’d eaten last: though he’d gone out yesterday and the day before, he’d been unlucky and had found no one else wandering the wilds.

House Iuventae contracts rarely came with non-sapient sustenance clauses. The Shadow could tell the difference, and if Thanatos tried to cheat, it would punish him for it with days of nausea and cramps. It was for that reason that he preferred to eat every other day if he could. A human could survive a litre of blood loss much more easily than two or three. It looked as if he’d actually have to kill today if he didn’t want to lose control of himself later, though. He’d made peace with the concept millennia ago — or so he told himself, but drinking only prepared blood during the war had brought back a vague discomfort. Prudence told him to avoid specific details when discussing it with the others, regardless. He didn’t want to know what they’d truly think of him.

Oblivious to Thanatos’s introspection, Bastian had come up with a theory of his own. “But if you dried it out or whatever, made it into flour, couldn’t you make, say, blood bread or some shit like that?”

“Well, yes, actually. House Nocta does extensive research on alternative ways to prepare blood. Whether it’s edible depends on one’s specific contract. I have a special provision that allows me to consume most liquids, but anything solid makes me ill, blood-based or otherwise.” He didn’t regret it. He was happy to never taste cake again in exchange for still being able to drink wine. The stew he was sipping at was still rather flavourless, though.

“It’s so interesting that your people have found different ways to work with your condition,” said Mariano.

Was it? Thanatos had never thought so. “Necessity is the mother of invention. But enough about vampires. Shall I read you out a story tonight?”

This got Bastian’s attention. “Do the one with the king and the wild man. I like that one.”

“Ah, yes, the epic of Gilgamesh.” He didn’t have a copy of that one in his carpetbag, but he could do the first hour or so from memory, and pick up the book from the Archfey’s later if he needed it. (If he could bear it. The sight of the empty house had made him feel hollow the last time he’d been.) He shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and when next he opened them, his voice had changed to that of the orator. “This is one of the oldest stories in the world, about two thousand years older than me, even. Translated from the tablets of an ancient civilization, large segments of the story are missing, but what we do have tells the story of a mighty king and his quest to discover the secret of immortality. Let me tell you of a man who had seen everything, whom the god Anu had granted all knowledge, who had seen secrets and hidden things, even from the time before the Flood.”

As usual, his audience was rapt, caught up by his words and taken to a time five millennia in the past, when giants walked the earth. He’d go hunting later in the evening, once the magic of ancient fable faded to that of the sandman’s sleep.

#

Thanatos leaned against a tree and tied his hair up into a low ponytail. He’d left his travelling jacket back at the camp as well, leaving him in just his silk shirt, tie, and trousers. The less restricted his movement was, the better, and it had the benefit of making him look younger and less careworn. He hated this, really. When he talked and laughed with Mariano and Bastian, he could pretend that he was perfectly ordinary, still fully human, but when he hunted, it was clear that he was anything but. He wasn’t even an ambush predator like Tenebrus or most other hunting vampires, the sharpening of his senses and the way his night vision flattened everything into shades of grey save for outlines of delicious scarlet around everything with a heartbeat was of little use to him. All it did was remind him how little humanity was left in him.

In his element, Thanatos was a honey trap, an attractive, confident, charismatic man whom others would gladly follow into a dark alley for a tryst — with perhaps a little hypnotic encouragement. It fit his personality quite well, and he’d been able to carve a niche out for himself in both vampiric society and back on Earth Four. He was the very picture of a Iuventus, a man of words taken with alcohol and sex and other pleasures of the flesh. Or at least he had been. Before everything. He wanted very badly to return to feeling like that man. (If he thought about it too hard, he’d realise that luring people into the night to be devoured was also rather monstrous, so he didn’t.)

Right now, his priority was to return to the village and civilization. He was still getting back into the rhythm of pursuing prey, hunting instead of being hunted. It felt good to be out at night instead of having to worry about the sun surprising him. He decided to just try to enjoy the sense of freedom. Moving at a vampire’s speed, the wind singing through his hair, the moonlight lightly caressing his skin. All the horrors of the war: the daily grind of waking up, infiltrating a location, and running away that made him feel as if the dust and grime of the road soaked into his soul. That was all behind him now. He was an ordinary vampire now, without obligations or debts, free to eat and sleep and do whatever else his heart desired.

He really should have learned his lesson from earlier in the day. Stay on your toes, don’t stop to enjoy things. Don’t dare believe you’re out of the woods. You developed that paranoia for a reason. It was his own fault he was now lying on his back on the forest floor, his ankle held fast by a metal cord. One moment, he’d been darting through the trees trying to cover distance, and the next his head had hit a tree root and sent stars exploding behind his eyes. How long had he been unconscious? Ten seconds or ten minutes?

The impact alone might have killed a mortal, but Thanatos was merely concussed. Confusedly, he tried to pull his ankle free, and only succeeded in tightening the cable around the unfortunate limb. He would leave this part out whenever he told the story afterward, but in truth, he panicked. The idea of being trapped again, being captured again, was too much for him. His nails scrabbled for purchase in the soft loam, fighting to take him somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t here. His vision tinted red, his own too-loud heartbeat overwhelming his heightened senses. It felt as if it were another person who was thrashing and kicking, desperately trying to get away and only tightening the wire until it cut down to the bone.

He flinched at the snap of a branch, close, too close. “Well, well. Look what I got here. You ain’t a cougar, are you, buddy?” The voice was rough and belonged to a banjo-string sort of man now crouching three metres away.

This should have been his salvation. If Thanatos had been in his right mind, he would have turned on the charm and begged this man for help. But no. He’d been hungry too long; his Shadow was too close to the surface, converting his stress response from fawn to flight. He didn’t even know what small indication he must have picked up on, or perhaps he truly was the animal for which the trap had been originally purposed — but before he knew it, he’d drawn back toward the tree, hissing and baring his fangs.

The man only grinned. “Who-wee, ain’t you a feisty one? Hold on, red eyes, dark hair… You’re the fucker Javier was tellin’ us about, tryin’ to muscle up on his girl. Oh, he’s gonna love this. What kind of freak are you, anyway, with teeth like that?” Oh, fucking fantastic. They’d set him up on a world where people didn’t believe in vampires, and here he was screwing it up. “Eh, doesn’t matter. Wait ’til I get Javier and the guys. It’s gonna be a riot! Not like you have much of a choice but to sit, though, huh?” The man laughed cruelly and wandered off.

Alone again. Thanatos was used to how this sort of thing went by now. The hunter would come back with a group of men, and they would kick Thanatos around until they were tired of him, and then they would probably “kill” him and dump his body somewhere. He’d wait until they left and drag himself off to lick his wounds. It would be tolerable. He would just have to endure.

#

Mariano was pacing again. Bastian watched him for a few minutes, hoping he would come back to bed, but eventually gave up. “Something on your mind?”

“Than’s not back yet.” Bastian had to admit that was strange. Thanatos had never been gone for over four hours before. He’d usually slip away an hour or two after dusk and return just after midnight, blood-drunk and stifling hiccups. He should have been back three hours ago.

“You want to go after him?” Mariano nodded. Bastian had already got to his feet. He knew Mariano well enough by now to know he couldn’t just stand by. “It’s a lot of ground to cover. What if we don’t find him?”

“He probably went back to the village. We can start that way and fan out if we need to. It’s all well and good if he comes back on his own, but if he’s in trouble…” Mariano trailed off, his pensive gaze wandering toward the forest and taking his feet with it.

Bastian doused the fire and moved to catch up. “I’m sure he just fell asleep somewhere,” he commented, but knew as soon as the words were spoken that they were false. Than didn’t sleep anywhere he didn’t feel safe, and definitely not by accident. When they’d first met, the two of them had spent three days in a stalemate waiting for the other to fall asleep first. It had become clear by then that Thanatos wasn’t even slightly a threat, but Bastian had had to be the one to give up on the whole thing. Than hadn’t seemed like he could, even if he’d wanted to. Even utter exhaustion couldn’t convince his body to rest if it wasn’t safe.

No, it was much more likely that he’d managed to get himself into a situation he couldn’t get himself out of. At this point, it happened so often that Bastian wondered if Thanatos did it on purpose just to enjoy the privilege of having Mariano rescue him. Not that he could blame him. Mariano took on the “knight in shining armour” role quite handsomely, all shining blade and “put him down” and “let him go.” If the mage didn’t have such a tendency to hurt himself while taking care of others, it might have been worth trying himself, but he’d seen what lengths Mariano would push himself to in order to save him. If the idiot got himself killed, it’d be much less fun.

Tracking Thanatos wasn’t difficult. The vampire didn’t have any particular abilities that lent themselves to obscure a trail. He’d been moving quickly, but not particularly quietly. They heard the commotion up ahead before they saw it: a group of about ten people, talking and yelling and throwing spears, rocks, and crossbow bolts, all centred on a tree at the edge of the clearing. The place looked like a war zone. Broken branches littered the forest floor, some splashed with dark red. Black liquid pooled in some places and flowed in others, streaming down from holes in the surrounding trees that looked like they’d been punctured with incredible force. A mass of dark hair and torn fabric, stained with blood, lay at the foot of the central tree. The same black liquid guttered weakly into a half-dome in an attempt to stop more projectiles, but couldn’t hold its shape and joined the rest of the dark splatters on the ground. Surely that wasn’t…?

Another rock bounced off of the figure’s shoulder, leaving behind a line of red that spilled down the pale skin exposed by his ruined sleeve. He shifted and some of the hair fell to the side, revealing a single scarlet eye, darting from side to side, searching for an escape. The leader of the pack, recognizable as the brute from earlier in the day, hurled another stone that struck the wounded creature across the temple. A yelp of pain rang out, but then the shape was silent.

“I think I finally got him!” Javier exclaimed. “How much do you think they’ll pay for his head?”

Mariano had already come to his conclusion. “Leave him.” Despite the lack of exclamation point, his voice was clear and cold and had an impressive volume that carried it well enough to make the rabble stop what they were doing.

Javier turned to see who had spoken. “You again? Seems like you really want trouble. Why do you care so much about this monster, anyway? All it wanted was the steal our people away in the night. I did this town a favour by exterminating it.”

“You’ll regret laying hands on him.” A statement of fact, not a threat. Mariano never threatened.

Javier snorted. “I don’t think so. Maybe I should take care of you, too, for protecting that thing. Boys!” At his command, the scattered hunters left off taking potshots at Thanatos and aimed their weapons at the new threat.

Bastian loved watching this part. Mariano fought like a wild thing, with a magic that was hungry, ruthlessly efficient and utterly without mercy. In some ways, one could say he fought like a dragon. Bastian couldn’t afford to be distracted watching his mage work, though. Rescuing Thanatos was more important, and so he refocused, his new objective heavily discouraging any of Javier’s goons from running to his aid.

#

Mariano let out a deep breath and put his magic away. The smell of charred flesh rose over the scent of the forest at night — more of which was Bastian’s work than his, if he was honest. “We’re all clear now, Than. Are you all right?” The figure by the tree made no sound, and Bastian threw Mariano an inquisitive glance. He elected to approach, wanting to see if that last rock had knocked the vampire unconscious.

Unconscious he was not, and the speed at which he withdrew toward the perceived safety of the tree surprised even Mariano. The curtain of his hair obscured his face, and it was a bit unsettling the way the glowing red eyes watched Mariano through the tangle, pupils narrowed into slits with none of the good humour or charm he was used to seeing in them. If the vampire weren’t wearing Thanatos’s clothes — or, rather, what was left of them — he’d almost believe it wasn’t Than he was watching at all. Thanatos’s eyes showed no recognition, only wary apprehension, as if he were waiting for Mariano to reveal threatening intent. Was he too far gone to realize who they were?

Mariano continued to approach, slowly, giving Thanatos time to track his movements. “You’re safe now,” he murmured. “It’s just me. It’s Mariano, you know me. Bastian’s here too. Let him see you, Bastian.” Bastian approached as he was told, but Thanatos backed away, which pulled taut a thin wire around his ankle. The metal had cut into his flesh to the point that white bone was visible amidst the mess of pink and red. “That hurts a lot, doesn’t it? Let us help you. We’ll get that off of you and get you somewhere we can treat it, okay?” He could only hope that their potions would work on a vampire. It didn’t look at all treatable otherwise.

Thanatos remained silent. That was the weirdest thing about it. The Thanatos Mariano knew rarely stopped talking: his presence was a constant stream of words about everything and nothing, almost as if he were afraid to stop. Right about now, he would usually apologise profusely for needing to be rescued at all and be on the verge of composing an epic ballad about their combat prowess, maybe a little worse for wear but trying hard not to show it. As Mariano approached, all he could hear were the harsh exhales forcing themselves through the vampire’s nose. That it wasn’t broken was a miracle, considering the state of the rest of his face. Thanatos did a good job of not looking like a corpse most days, but the bruising mottling his cheeks and over his eyes appeared distinctly post-mortem. Tear tracks, long dried, were visible under the blood and dirt. And yet, through it all, he looked not fearful exactly, but… vigilant. Distrustful. He hadn’t given up at all. He was just waiting to see what else he would have to endure.

Mariano tried again. “Thanatos? Bastian’s gonna get that cord off of you, okay? And then you can just come to me. We’ll take you somewhere safe.” Thanatos still didn’t seem to hear, but Bastian’s approach certainly got his attention, eliciting a growl from deep within the vampire’s chest.

“Doesn’t seem like he wants our help,” Bastian murmured, slowing, but not stopping.

“He’s just afraid.” This was a sound like a cornered animal, not like a predator, ready to fight if he had to, but wanting to avoid it. “We can’t just leave him like this. He’ll understand once the wire’s gone.” At least, he probably would. “It’s okay, Than. Come to me, you’ll be safe. You trust me, right?” Mariano could only hope Thanatos did. It certainly seemed like it, given how quickly he’d started to account for the mage in his plans. Would that trust be able to cut through whatever was going on with him?

The growl became louder as the distance between Bastian and Thanatos closed, and escalated into a hiss when he got close enough to touch the wire. It was Mariano’s turn to fill the air with words, anything to distract Thanatos long enough for Bastian to do his thing. If Than tried to run again, he’d probably make everything worse. “Eyes on me, Than, that’s it. I know you’re scared. He won’t hurt you. We’re friends. You know that. You remember us. We’re going to get you out of here, and then we’ll make your leg stop hurting.” Mariano extended a hand toward his injured friend, proving that he held no weapon and no ill intent. It was up to Thanatos to believe him, if he even could right now.

Everything happened at once. A rush of dragon fire, the twang of metal parting from metal. Thanatos lunged toward Mariano at lightning speed, covering the distance between them before Bastian could even shout a warning. White-hot pain, a burst of warm blood, wet, lips, tongue, breath, a dull thud, blackness.

part 2 up tomorrow!

taglist: @athenswrites, @albatris, @thethistlegirlwrites

#original fiction #my writing #writeblr #coy writes #whumpblr #coy whumps #whumptober2023 #whumptober 2023 #no.11 #no.20 #no.30 #tw nausea #gore tw #animal trap #“you will regret touching them.” #bridal carry #wip: ieiunusverse #rwtv: kingslayer arc #wip: rwtv #the culling war #thanatos iuventus #mage of violence #dragon of diamond #feels kinda crazy posting this after working on it for four months lmao

[alias-milamber]

Time for some virtue signalling from the Ace Cis Guy.

Trans people are people. Trans rights are human rights. Gatekeeping medical access behind moral panic is abhorrent and the UK Government's recent astroterfing[1] at its conference is a direct echo (to the phrase in some cases) of Margret Thatcher's opinions on gay rights in the 80s, and will go down in history with the same grace.

I'm incredibly lucky, and I've had trans friends my whole adult life. My very first meeting of Internet Strangers (a David Eddings fan gathering in a YHA arranged on usenet in 1998, when I was 17) a trans women named Gaia carefully sat me down as a person she didn't recognise, introduced herself as herself and asked if I knew what [transgender] meant, and gave me an introduction to the concept (I hadn't asked, and I later knew it was part of Gaia's process of establishing safety in groups. I don't know where she is now, but I hope she's doing well.)

(I say [transgender] because it's not the term she used, and I'm not going to go into a deep dive on a quarter century glossary of changing terms I'm not qualified to explain correctly)

(Did I know trans people at school? Probably. I don't know if I did, and if I did I was probably not kind to them. One of the advantages of aging is the way it's slowly clouding over the memories of the prick I was as a child)

Since then, I've known, been friends with, loved, hated and played with people who are trans. In a couple of cases, I've not known they were trans until they felt the need to decloak[2] in defence against the shear amount of bullshit that's started to be slung at trans people in the last few years.

And yes, it's escalating. The friends I have that began their transition last century did not have it easy, but there was not this towering tsunami of hate blocking out the sun above them.

I have nothing but respect for anyone attempting to become their authentic self, and specifically for those who transitioning is part of that[3].

Words are cheap, and I try to back up mine with support of projects, art and the people behind them. But also, I think that part of being an Ally is that occasionally it's valuable to stand up and say that you are one in public. To say that trans rights are human rights, and that the things that governments are doing to imply - morally and legally - that that is not the case are wrong.

Choir, consider yourself preached at. Feetnete follow.

[1] They don't believe it. They don't believe anything. They're just saying things other people have written for them to say, which will make specific people vote for them. That it'll make other people not vote for them doesn't matter, they weren't going to vote blue anyway.

[2] Nobody "Always Knows". They may suspect, but experience suggests that anyone who guesses is going guess wrong without considering the consequences.

[3] This includes the trans people I know who are in other ways complete wastes of valuable carbon in my experience. I don't have to like your authentic self in order to respect its achievement.

[7] You've read too far.

[incomprehensiblelentils]

i need recommendations for some lesbian movies. My wife wants to watching something gay, but is tired of gay men's movies

oh gosh I am so sorry I'm just now getting to this - I was out of town the whole weekend and got back yesterday evening, when my brain was melting out my ears from the heat. without further ado!

I have categorized this list into a few sections:

Well-Made/"Good" Movies I Can Vouch For

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019): you have probably heard of this, but in case you haven't, it's a French historical drama about a painter who is commissioned to do a wedding portrait for a reluctant bride-to-be. It's lush, emotional, bittersweet, and breathtakingly shot. Content warnings: mention of a minor character's suicide, brief abortion scene featuring a secondary character, one scene of the leads doing drugs together.

Saving Face (2004): This is a lovely film about a young Chinese surgeon who is juggling her secret relationship with the drama her mother causes. Content warnings: intergenerational trauma.

Carol (2014): Again, you've probably heard of this one - it's another historical drama, this one based on Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt. A young aspiring photographer is captivated by a mysterious woman named Carol. After Portrait came out I find myself not as enamored of this one (I think Rooney Mara is not very good in it lmao), but it's a lovely film worth a watch. Content warnings: period-typical homophobia, Carol's shitty husband.

The Half of It (2020): From the director of Saving Face, this is a high-school coming of age movie inspired by Cyrano de Bergerac, in which a second-generation Chinese girl ends up volunteering to write love letters to her crush, "from" the jock who is also in love with said crush. Some really beautiful stuff about immigrant Chinese families in here, and I was really touched by the friendship between the two leads. Content warnings: racism, homophobia, bullying, intergenerational trauma.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017): This is based on the life of William Marston, creator of Wonder Woman, and his partners Elizabeth and Olive. I am given to understand that the relationship between the two women was probably not romantic IRL, but I really love the way the movie treats both the triad and the women as a couple. I also think the BDSM stuff is cute. Content warnings: age gap/power differential romance (two professors and their TA), homophobia including a brief violent attack, brief cancer subplot towards the end of the film.

Summerland (2020): A WWII movie about the bond between a reclusive writer and the young boy she is reluctantly forced to care for due to the London evacuations. I will spoil this for you because it gave me severe anxiety: the lesbians both live to the end, and they get to raise their son together! My main complaint is not enough Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Content warnings: WWII imagery/setting, parent death (offscreen but significant part of the plot), brief child peril.

The Favourite (2018): This is a weird little black comedy about two cousins who are vying to be the favored paramour of Queen Anne in 18th century Britain. It's some fun fucked-up drama. Content warnings: animal abuse/death (toward the end of the film), manipulation, non-consensual drugging.

I Can't Think Straight (2008): I haven't seen this one since college but I remember liking it - it's about two women, one Palestinian and one Indian, who meet and fall in love despite unlikely circumstances. Content warnings: cheating (one character is engaged to a man).

V For Vendetta (2005) - in case you forgot, this has lesbians! Content warnings: torture, attempted sexual assault, hanging, child death, panic attack, homophobia/dead lesbians

Birds of Prey (2020) - Harley Quinn is canonically bisexual! Also I love this movie. Content warnings: cartoonish violence, graphic torture including of a child, child death (implied/heard), implied sexual assault by the villain (of a minor character).

Booksmart (2019): High school comedy about two best friends who decide they're sick of being dweebs and want to go to a cool party before they graduate. I think it's largely delightful and I love the lesbian character's story. However, the subplot with the teacher who has sex with her (19yo) student is BAD and I won't defend it, nor will I judge anyone for wanting to skip based on that. Content warnings: extended non-con drugged sequence (played for laughs/nothing bad happens to them), aforementioned age gap/power differential romance (secondary characters).

But I'm a Cheerleader (1999): Clea Duvall and Natasha Lyonne star in a satire of conversion therapy camps, also featuring young Dante Basco. Personally I think it keeps things light and silly enough not to trigger me with the religious rhetoric. Content warnings: conversion camp setting and corresponding conservative Christian rhetoric, general homophobia, uh, RuPaul is here at one point?

In the Heights (2021): This movie is very much not perfect, chiefly for the colorism in the casting choices. BUT I like that Daniela and Carmen are gay now. Content warnings: racism, prejudice against undocumented individuals, grandparent death.

Movies I Think You Should Watch Maybe - Are They Good? I Couldn't Say!

D.E.B.S. (2004): This is a deeply silly movie about an all-girls' spy school in which the star pupil falls in love with international supercriminal Lucy Diamond, directed by queer icon Angela Robinson and featuring lesbian grandma Holland Taylor as the headmaster. Content warnings: cartoonish (PG-13) gun violence.

Imagine Me & You (2005): This was baby's first f/f movie for me, and so it has a very special place in my heart even though it is Problematic because it's about a lady cheating on her husband with Lena Headey, and also nobody remembered bisexuality exists so they say "lesbian" pretty exclusively and that sucks. Lena Headey and Piper Perabo are so good together though, and I genuinely like everyone in this movie. Content warnings: cheating (one character is married to a man).

Happiest Season (2020): Do not @ me this is MY movie!!! Kristen and Mackenzie are PERFECT. Content warnings: homophobia, manipulative behavior, one weirdly intense interrogation scene with mall cops that frankly should've been cut, mentioned fish death.

A Simple Favor (2018): This movie...it is batshit. If you like trashy drama, you will probably like this movie! Linda Cardellini plays a lesbian artist and I love her so much. Content warnings: manipulation, murder, incest (adult half-siblings not raised together), intense discussion of murder-suicide, gun violence

The Falling (2014): This movie is also batshit and not good, but I need more people to watch it, because I've seen it four times and I have no idea what it's trying to say. It features Maisie Williams and Florence Pugh as British boarding school teens who have an intense "friendship" and then suddenly everyone in the school starts having collective fainting spells. Please, I just need to find the person out there who gets what this movie is doing so they can explain it to me. Content warnings: unexplained medical issues (fainting), seizures, incest (consensual? sex scene), attempted suicide, grief, discussion of sexual assault and trauma therein (secondary character)

A New York Christmas Wedding (2020): This movie is ALSO batshit in a completely different way than the other two, and again, I need someone to explain it to me. It's, uh, sort of It's a Wonderful Life but with a bisexual heroine, and some batshittery along the way? Content warnings: suicide (secondary character), teen pregnancy, weird pro-life vibes, parent death, way too much church, homophobia, Chris Noth

Movies I Haven't Yet Seen Which Have Been Recc'd To Me

Crush (2022)

Pariah (2011)

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)

Fear Street Trilogy (2021)

The Handmaiden (2016)

#mrdistracted #sometimes I watch movies

[rightous-int]

Is that just me or this years artfight is just about kinks?

CAUSE IF YOU THINK SO THE ANSWEAR IS YES. AND NO. NOW SIT DOWN IMMA TALK.

As we all know vampires are about accepting your repressed, inner sexual desires.

We've seen interview with a vampire both movie and series and pleaseeee watch the movie cause its superb books are amazing as well but watching Brat Pitt have gay panic under the teeth of Tom Cruise is a holly experience

We have seen also what we do in the shadows we've seen shit ton of vampire aus so i dont have to touch that subject....

.....

Oooor i can-

Anyway so vampires as a creatures from rural myths and legends

were always seen as undead for this world monsters who under the moon light were catching Young women, man and children, turning them into one of them and passing this curse on or straight up eating them up and out.

Ring some bells balls?

With that being said we can easly see why queer community in the second half of XX century adopted their asthetic. And after a few decades vampires became sexual icons in modern popculture what we can observe in Twilight saga, Dracula or in MORBIN TIME

So vampires have to always answer one question if they accept their true nature and live against humans or they try to fit in risking their true identity being found. With the gift of immortality they often also have to face loss of their loved ones.

You Can feel why we can find in them queer closure

Alright BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FURRIES i mean ukhem WAREWOLFS

//making that joke in the name of the furries as a closeted furry imma come out one day

So for me warewolfs are about being mentally ill or neurodivergend

Why?

They are often born this way and having promise of a normal life, they always must be warry of the time when they turn into a monster and their true nature comes out. It cant hurt them but if they are not carefull and not issolate from their loved ones they can hurt them and destroy everything they could accomplished when they were 'okay'.

As a person with borderline personality dissorder and audhd i can see myself in this fear. People with anger issues, depression or other various dissorders can find it relatable.

The question for warewolfs to answer is whether living with humans and 'threatning' their lives is better than issolation from everyone.

But dont worry our warewolfs we have A PACK HERE AND WE WILL BE LIVING TOGETHER IN FORESTS CAWABANGAA

#artfight #artfight 2023 #art #ocs #oc #vampcore #interview with the vampire #interview with a vampire #vampires #warewolfs #the vampire chronicles #the vampire lestat #vampire #vampire vs werewolf #remus lupin #harry potter #9/11 #gerard way #twilight

[evil-feather]

Perekoo Angst

!!TW for heavy topics and homophobia!!

So since I'm scared as shit for our/my rights in my country and while my mental health is down anyways, I came up with this scenario/prompt.

We know that the people who live in Devil's Acre are probably from the 20th century or older which means anything other than their heteronormativity society is seen as a threat.

Now we have Isabel and Alma in all of this who have the problem of being Ymbrynes which means they kinda have to stay "neutral" or otherwise lots of people won't take them seriously anymore and/or will question their leadership.

And ofc they are also scared of the judgment and unacceptance that would definitely come with making their relationship public.

But with that also comes hiding your identity and sexuality and being scared that people might "catch you" one day.

In the scenario there's this entire protest thing against lgbtq people but there are also people who are protesting for lgbtq rights. There would probably be more people who are against it though, because of the mind of the society and because most lgbtq people were just scared and hiding.

So there is this rather small group of supporters and this big mass of protesters against it in front of the ministries building.

And inside in a small office on the upper floor is Isabel, crouched down with her back against the wall while she can quietly but clearly hear the protesters in the background. She may be pretty confident about her sexuality or the way she expresses herself by now, but these things still scare the hell out of her… they could kill her after all or worse, the people she cares about.

It's when Alma knocks on the door and comes in to find the other Ymbryne in this state. She locks the door and sits to calm Isabel down, suggesting that they could go home and get out of this overwhelming situation. But Isabel denies it, saying that she doesn't want to bring these thoughts home, not wanting to connect any negative thoughts with the peace and safety that the loop brought her. Therefore they stay in the room just being in each other's presence and trying to calm one another.

Eventually they fall asleep until they get woken up by some angry knocking. In panic about being seen together Alma hides in one of Isabel's huge wall cupboards (shush, gay cliche i know), because the risk of being seen while flying out of the window is too high.

From this point it could go two ways tbh.

Protesters come in and are just angry in general. They had  decided to storm the ministries building and smear offensive things on the walls of the old building. Either they are angry because they know about Isabel due to her being so open about everything or they are just mad in general and in this rage they blame random stuff on Isabel, why she was still here, why her door was locked, if she was hiding something, etc.

Again two possible ways to go, either the protesters just riot and throw some stuff around and by that also knock down some wall cupboards (where Isabel has to pretend like she doesn't care that much) or they just talk shit about Isabel and then leave.

Either way it leaves the two Ymbrynes scared and traumatized as fck.

After the protesters have left again, Isabel straight up locks the door again and rushes to Alma who's clearly as terrified as Isabel is.

The last picture is just the two Ymbrynes huddled together again, both being absolutely terrified while you can still hear the people running through the building in the distance.

Isabel apologizes over and over again, that she said no to just going home and leaving this all behind, and Alma tries to calm her as best as she can, while trying not to hyperventilate herself.

How they actually get out of this, if they just wait until everyone is gone or Alma creates a small pocket loop away (idk how fast she can actually make them tbh), is really up to you guys, whoops.

-----

I had this really detailed in my head but I can't really get myself to write anything more….story like? I'm currently more in the state of staring at my phone but not being able to get one sentence written down and even this post here took me DAYS to write, which is ridiculous.

Yeah so in case anyone wants to actually write or draw something based on this, feel free to use it :)

In case I traumatized tf out of you now, then I am terribly sorry for that! It's just that this has been stuck in my head for Days and because I am just shit scared that we are going back to this fcked up mindset.

#like yeah i might have chronical depression #but that doesnt mean that i will die just because some shitheads out there think two women kissing is unnatural #mphfpc #miss peregrines home for peculiar children #miss peregrine #alma peregrine #alma lefay peregrine #miss cuckoo #isabel cuckoo #perekoo #angst #tw homophobia #ymbryne #ymbrynes #wlw #in case you were wondering #how fucked up my head is #this is how

[gisellelx]

Twilight Advent, Day 4

Masterpost/prompts

Dec. 4 - Pick a Twilight couple (canon or AU) and tell us/draw their favorite way to snuggle.

Well, that intriguing parenthetical opened up a rat's nest of intertwining (and kinda nsfw? and also slashy--you've been warned) headcanons, here, so, sorry, please buckle up. I've been meaning to write about the role headcanons can play in fic writing for awhile, and at some point an even longer writing meta is due, but today I'll get straight to the point even though this will in no way be brief--I enjoy writing fic precisely because it lets me think about characterization in a deep and complicated way. I'm always writing fic to get at the characters first and the situation second. It's even embedded in the title of my tumblr.

When I write an AU, I don't consider myself to be writing a different version of the characters. I consider myself to be writing the same characters, with all the same personalities, motivations, concerns, and fatal flaws, just having gone through or going through different circumstances. Kairos Carlisle is "Sensitivity" Carlisle is Patroclus Carlisle is Ithaca Carlisle; same guy, different situations. It’s why all my AUs have a clear point at which they’ve diverged from canon—I’m experimenting with the character by changing their world and letting their world change them.

So the underlying headcanon. Carlisle is badly, badly touch-starved. His nurse cuddled him and snuggled him—and he was with her for a long time—but he eventually left nurse and went back to London and to his father, who was much more concerned that Carlisle be saved than that he feel loved. They had little to no physical contact. Just at the very moment when he might have married, become sexually active, and had children of his own to cuddle, he gets stripped of his human life and for his own safety, has to separate from humankind altogether for many years. Then, he finally finds friendship and companionship, but in a man whose touch violates every snippet of his privacy. And still he stays, far longer than he ought, before setting out again for another century and a half, until he brings home a seventeen-year-old boy and spends three entire days just holding him.

Carlisle craves physical contact with those he loves.

Edward does not care for this. He's turned at the very moment in his development in which he is perfectly primed to be absolutely mortified by parental physical contact (and there's no small amount of gay panic on both their parts about it anyway). So it's still mostly just the occasional shoulder pat; the joy and surprise when Edward hugs him on occasion.

It's not until Esme arrives, and after they navigate their collective fears and traumas, that he manages to actually be touched. To have someone who hugs him, and strokes his back, and runs her fingers through his hair, who kisses not just his lips but his head, his shoulders, his chest. Sexual intimacy is his first real physical intimacy of his very long life.

So. For this prompt, a canon snuggle, and an AU snuggle for this guy for whom touching those he loves is his source of highest joy:

He could lie naked with Esme forever. And he tries to, a lot. Although they know their children are a little squicked out by the idea of hearing or sensing them having intercourse, and of course that's one reason they go to great lengths (islands!) to be separate from them, a big part of the reason they often totally relocate in order to have sex is that Carlisle really wants to just lie there, with both their clothes off, for as long as he can possibly get away with it; days if they can manage it. So they leave so that nobody has to worry about having to scramble back into pants or a dress at an inopportune time, so that he can just place his head on Esme's breasts and they can interlock legs and he can just get lost in not being entirely certain where his skin stops and hers begins. In Kairos, he finally gets to have the physical intimacy with Edward he's always longed for. This AU takes place in a world in which he had a sexual partner for eighty-five years and so his intimacy with Edward takes a different form, not to mention that Edward is still quite bashful about it all. Their favorite snuggle is to sit on the floor, with Carlisle's back against the couch and Edward using him as a recliner as he sits between Carlisle's legs. Clothes, no clothes; doesn't matter as much to these two. From there, Carlisle can run his hands through Edward's hair, kiss the nape of his neck or behind his hear, and bury his nose next to Edward's scalp to inhale his scent. They're not altogether very different things than what he would prefer to do in a fatherly way in canon; the difference is that in the AU world, the chips have fallen such that this time, Edward is willing to let him.

#twilightadvent22 #my headcanons #meta #writing #characterization #carlisle cullen #carlesme #carlward

[uranianrights]

Something just slotted into place for me – discourse about gay sex in the renaissance came from a concern with sin, while discourse about gay sex during the enlightment came from a broad movement of documenting the natural world

in the first case you have renaissance classicists trying to position an enlightened chaste homosociality in opposition to both "base" heterosexual desire and to the "vice" of gay sex

in the latter, you have the rhetorical category or Nature and Natural and trying to position gay sex in relation to that rhetoric, as well as a the desire to categorise the natural world extending to a desire to categorise sex and sexual acts in a scientific sense. As in sex became a category for scientific inquiry in a way it hadn't been previously, meaning that gay sex was then included in a broader documentation of human sexual practices

This enlightment and early 19th c trend then led into the specific medical preoccupation with homosexuality in the mid to late 19th century and into the 20th where we get terms like "homosexual" and other sexuality terminology, which was probably also tied to the preoccupation with a healthy national population which dominated a lot of 19th century thinking (by which I mean both the moral panics about prostitution and STDs and the ways this relates to eugenics being mainstream science in this period)

[loveyourownsmiilee]

I have a coworker who is in her mid-50s who is a general 911 viewer and the other day I brought up the fact that there can be a possibility of Buck and Eddie getting together romantically. She really hated the idea and said that she will stop watching because she watches the show because she wants to envision herself with one of those men and it’ll turn her away completely if they make them gay her words not mine. I myself am gay ’ we got into a heated discussion. Basically I love your coworkers

Yikesss what the fuck?!? Honestly I’m so sorry your coworker seems like a real bitch? First of all she must be outta her mind if she thinks she has a chance with a fictional character. Like miss ma’am they don’t exist irl. Second of all, this is the 21st fucking century. LGBTQ representation is literally everywhere. If you’re gonna be turned off from a show you watch BECAUSE TWO ATTRACTIVE MALES ARE ROMANTICALLY INVOLVED then maybe you should turn off your tv and go outside and get a reality check. The fuck. It’s weird bc Linda, my coworker, is also in her mid 50s and she is a casual viewer who never ever once believed Buddie would happen romantically. UNTIL SEASON 5. She can’t deny the closeness and the domesticity between the two. She can’t deny that none of their other relationships have succeeded the way their relationship does. She can’t deny that Buck is a whole ass other parent figure to Christopher.

Now ok also I understand where your coworker may be coming from. And sure this can be a concern for other general viewers as well. But unfortunately the writers have literally backed themselves in a super tight corner. They are in season six and at this point in time it just does not make any sense narratively to introduce a brand new love interest for either of those men because they will not have enough time to develop their characters, develop their relationships to make the general audience believe that there is a genuine all encompassing love there. They had Buck date a woman for a whole ass year and we saw how they did not work whatsoever and we saw him grow and learn from that relationship. They put Eddie with objectively the most “ideal woman” that they could have put him with and showed how that did not work as well and how that was leading him to have full on panic attacks at the simple idea of marrying her. The writers could have done anything they wanted in the last couple years to distance these two men and reaffirm that they are just best friends and coworkers. But instead what they have done time and time again, is develop them more as a whole family unit including Christopher. They’ve tied Buck to the Diaz boys legally. They’ve had Buck be Eddie’s main support system when he was at his lowest. Even if they did introduce any sort of love interest for either of those men, there is still the question of how that love interest is going to compare with the relationship that they have with one another. Any new love interest, in my opinion, is going to pale in comparison and I think these writers fully know that as well. So whether the general audience likes it or not, there’s a very real possibility it’s happening. Either that or they’re gonna leave Buck and Eddie single throughout the entire series and I would truly hate that bc both of those men deserve to find true love and happiness, which they already sorta found in each other. So if your coworker doesn’t wanna watch two beautiful people fall in love, then she can close the door behind her ignorant ass. We all will be celebrating their love when they finally get together 🥰

#juju answers #anon asks #buddie #sorry you have a shitty coworker #sending you all my love 💜