#the velveteen rabbit would be real real then

[basilpaste]

i will probably never get a tattoo (as i am a little bitch), but i do know exactly what the tattoo would be if i got one.

#basil blabbers #i like to joke that my pain tolerance is low but like. its more that im always in pain so adding to it isnt helpful really. #anyways there are two ideas duking it out in my mind. #one would look really edgy though. because itd be the eye of the first oc i ever really made of my own. #but i was a child so its like. goopy and shit. #the other would be a velveteen rabbit quote lmao #'it lasts for always'. #or maybe the full quote. #'once you are real you cant become unreal again. it lasts for always.' #but thats kind of long aha.

[bluejaysandblackbats]

Five Little Ducks

Fandom: DC Comics, Batman

Summary: Bruce finds a magically de-aged Jason.

Chapters: 2/13

Characters: Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Stephanie Brown, Duke Thomas, Zatanna Zatara

Additional Tags: De-Aged Jason Todd, Magic, Babysitting, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff and Angst, POV Third Person, Bruce Wayne is Not Okay, Bruce Wayne Tries, Jason Todd Has Issues, Childhood Trauma

Chapter Two: Velveteen Rabbit

Bruce took Jason to the manor after pretending to check Jason's long-abandoned apartment. Bruce drew Jason a bath and dressed him in pajamas before parting the sheets on his old bed. "Mr. Wayne?" Jason whispered as he grabbed Bruce's wrist.

"Yes, Jason?" Bruce asked.

"Will you read me a story?" Jason asked.

Bruce smiled and nodded. "I would love to read you a story... Can you wait five minutes while I get cleaned up, and I'll read you a whole book?" Bruce suggested. Jason nodded excitedly. It was just the two of them in the manor. Bruce missed having children at home. Everyone had grown up or moved on.

He showered, picked a book from the library, and returned to Jason's side. "Mr. Wayne, what's that book?" Jason asked.

"Velveteen Rabbit," Bruce whispered, "Do you still-. Do you like this one?" Bruce recalled finding a beaten-up copy in Jason's bag when he took him in. He recalled the way Jason mumbled an explanation with tears in his eyes. It was his favorite when his mother was alive.

Jason nodded and patted the mattress. Bruce sat next to Jason on the bed and opened the book. "There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning, he was really splendid," Bruce read aloud. Jason responded to the lilt in his voice by nustling in close under Bruce's arm. Bruce continued to read, turning the pages between occasional glances at his sweet awe-filled face.

Jason stopped him halfway through the story, nearly jumping with excitement. Bruce smiled at Jason, who tried his best to regain his composure. "Can I read this part?" Jason asked. "It's my favorite part."

Bruce chuckled and nodded. "Of course, you can read this next part," Bruce replied.

"What is real?" Jason questioned in a sweet tone.

Bruce continued reading, paying mind to the following lines. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real," Bruce used a playfully rough tone of voice for the horse, and it amused Jason. Jason showed no signs of fatigue as the story progressed. At one point, Jason even turned his face to Bruce's side to cry when the rabbit was thrown out. Finally, though, the story ended, and Jason's eyes fluttered. He kissed the top of Jason's head and sat still for a while, waiting for Jason to fall asleep. Once Jason was fast asleep, sucking his thumb with a hand draped over his forehead, Bruce whispered, "You made me real... And you don't even remember, do you?"

He left Jason to sleep and sat in the living room, watching old videos of Jason on his laptop. Bruce had almost forgotten how warm Jason's presence was. Jason always said being Robin gave him magic, but Jason enchanted everything he touched. The whole manor came alive because Jason was warm and bright and everything that made life good. Bruce shed a tear at the thought of what he'd lost.

He would've stayed up all night, yearning for a time long lost, had he not heard the pitter-patter of bare feet down the stairs. "Mr. Wayne?" Jason called. "Mr. Wayne?" He raised his voice out of fear. Bruce stood up and waved, allowing Jason to run to him. Bruce scooped him up and wiped the boy's tears away, bouncing him on his hip to soothe him.

"What's wrong?" Bruce questioned. Jason hid his face in Bruce's shoulder.

Bruce rubbed Jason's back as he bounced from side to side. "I had a bad dream... Will you come back and stay with me?" Jason questioned.

Bruce nodded. "I can do that. I can stay with you," Bruce replied. He took Jason back to bed and fell asleep at Jason's bedside. He awakened to sunlight blaring through the curtains while Jason sat on the floor with Bruce's phone.

"How'd you know my whole name?" Jason asked as he talked on Bruce's phone. "Duke? Are you Mr. Wayne's friend? Is that how you know my name too?"

"Jason," Bruce called him, "What are you doing?"

"Talking to your friend, Duke. He's going to come and play with me," Jason replied.

"How did you-. How did you answer the phone?" Bruce asked.

"I picked it up, and it answered. I don't know how," Jason innocently answered as Bruce took the phone. "Duke-. Duke, stop laughing."

"I'm sorry, but-. Jason's a baby. I've gotta see this," Duke chuckled, "Is he cute? I bet he's cute as a baby."

"He's not a baby... He's a big boy," Bruce mumbled, "And he's adorable."

Jason stood on his tiptoes and hung on Bruce's arm. "I am a big boy! I can pour my own cereal!" Jason exclaimed. Bruce smiled and picked Jason up, holding him on his hip.

"Wow!" Bruce smiled. "Let's go get you some cereal. What kind do you like?"

"Honey smacks," Jason replied.

Duke chuckled. "I'm five minutes away... Tell him to save me a bowl," Duke replied before hanging up. Bruce took Jason downstairs and started making coffee. Duke arrived shortly afterward and watched as Jason made three bowls of cereal.

"Are you Duke?" Jason asked. Duke nodded. "Are you gonna play with me today?"

"Duke is-."

"Free all day," Duke interrupted as he met eyes with Bruce. "He is adorable," Duke mouthed.

Jason ate his cereal with a smile on his face. Duke sat with Jason and glanced at Bruce. "What's so funny?" Jason asked.

"You look like someone we know... Just smaller," Duke replied. Jason's eyes widened. "He's a lot older than you."

Jason danced in his seat as he ate. "Mr. Wayne read me a bedtime story last night. I like how he reads," Jason announced. Duke ate his cereal while he listened to Jason talk about Bruce's bedtime routine.

"Wow, it sounds like he's done this before," Duke teased.

Bruce shot Duke a glance as a warning. "Can I watch Clifford after breakfast?" Jason asked. A grin spread across Bruce's face.

"Sure, you can... Duke, who is Clifford?" Bruce asked. Jason covered his mouth to stifle a laugh.

"The big red dog," Duke replied, "I'll put it on tv after breakfast."

"Mr. Wayne, it's okay that you don't know Clifford. I think you'll like him," Jason reassured Bruce, "Unless you don't like dog shows. My daddy doesn't like Clifford. Or maybe he doesn't like cartoons... Mommy likes cartoons. She always watches Clifford with me, except when she doesn't feel good."

Bruce frowned. "Mr. Wayne, don't be sad. My mommy says she's gonna get better once Daddy comes home. It'll be different this time because she promised," Jason reassured. Duke lost his appetite. Bruce tried to smile for Jason, but he felt a pit at the bottom of his stomach. These were Jason's thoughts as a child. This was Jason before life took everything from him.

#fic #five little ducks fic #jason todd #bruce wayne #dick grayson #duke thomas #stephanie brown #batfam #angst and fluff

[gatheringbones]

I was wondering if you had any thoughts to share about why straight women are so drawn to subject-object het romances where the female lead is the object. My gut feeling is that they find the lack of agency (and by extension lack of chances to make mistakes) reassuring, but I'd love to hear your take on it.

that's the thing, it's impossible to pin on straight women, and the more I try the more I think I get lost in the sauce because the whole thing is so split and dissociative that not addressing the multiple universes of wishful thinking involved just undercuts what I've been trying to get closer to.

I keep coming back to the Velveteen Rabbit, the beloved object that becomes real, and patricia evans's Teddy Fantasy, the pretend person we project onto a real person whose dissonance from the fantasy provides grounds for turmoil distress and confusion, and julia serrano’s whole thing about how when you're a woman everyone has a stake in you being a woman. and when I go back to what harry hay was saying— straight white american culture pushes subject-object and object-object forms of relating onto the populations it oppresses and queer americans are uniquely situated to understand and articulate liberatory forms of love and attachment— the velveteen rabbit jumps out at me all the harder.

the rabbit doesn't really make choices, it's just good. it's more or less basically good and well-intentioned through a series of distressing and bewildering and ever more debilitating events. it turns out to be so uniquely and demonstrably good that its disabilities and deformitives are removed and it's raptured to real rabbit heaven. If I were to draw a kurt vonnegut fortune graph, the arc would have a real rise and fall to it, a real heroic dynamism in how circumstances are transformed, where tension is evoked and channeled and dispersed in interesting ways if what you're interested in is whether or not a viewpoint character you need to feel good about stays within the lines of what you consider to be morally correct or not. specific anxieties are summoned and soothed over the course of the story in ways people with those anxieties will find comforting and reassuring. so, so many people adore and attach and identify with that story.

#het blogging #object-subject (toy rabbit and boy) ---> subject-subject(s) (real rabbits in rabbit heaven)

[landwriter]

Dream as The Velveteen Rabbit, loved to life by Hob:

Dream is an Endless. Hob has loved him for a long, long time, but nonetheless they are parted, perhaps forever. On this dark night of the soul, he thinks of his life with Hob, what more he would have wished for it, and cries. One of his tears is a real mortal tear, and from that tear a magical flower blooms, and from that flower The Fates emerge, and they say, in their strange and three-voiced way, that he has become Real to the boy that truly loves him, and now they will turn him all the way Real, and he will have a different ending. And although he may no longer rule the Dreaming and it is no longer a part of him, he still visits it every night, when he falls asleep next to the mortal called Hob Gadling.

It is known that an Endless may never love a mortal, but there are no such rules about a mortal loving an Endless, and no one knew the consequences of being really loved by a human, not just played with and set aside, except perhaps The Fates themselves, who were watching it all, and smiling.

@give-to-oblivion <3

#the sandman #dreamling #dream of the endless #hob gadling #velveteen rabbit spoilers #likely comic spoilers in comments etc bewarned #what if hob wasn't just the only being who saw dream as a person before his function #but the only one who could rescue him from its burden by loving him #just THINKING a lot about that #taking the concept a bit literally #although i also adore it as metaphor #it just goes SO WELL with the story holy moly #with show elements and....theoretical.....[sketchy eyes]....comic ones #my writing

[fandom-nursery]

Diavolo agere headcanons

Regresses between ages 4-8

Voluntary regressor 

Regresses as often as his work schedule will allow although he rarely feels like the amount of time he gets to be little is enough 

He wishes that he was able to regress whenever he wanted to but his duties as the demon lord get in the way frequently

He is typically a very energetic and enthusiastic little and loves to play! 

Incredibly talkative since he doesn't need to watch what he says while little and can happily to chatter on about all his interests and never have to be quiet or worry about how his words will affect how he is seen as a ruler by his subjects 

He can be a little bit spoiled and gets very bratty when he doesn’t get his way. He grew up as a prince and is used to people doing what he wants 

He craves attention. Growing up without a mom and with a distant father who was quick to be strict with him he didn’t get a lot of it and so will do everything he can to get it now even if it means he has to occasionally act out 

He hates being in trouble so much. He hates to disappoint and doesn’t like it when people are mad at him  

He gets lonely very easily and this results in him being a bit clingy. He likes to be able to see you 

When he’s big his memories of his regression get a little bit fuzzy. He will often admit things to you while small only to not remember telling you once he’s big again 

He will not nap. He gets to regress so rarely and he doesn't want to waste a second of the time he has with sleep no matter how tired he is. He can sleep when he’s big 

He is a little big for most to carry but he loves being in someone's arms and receiving physical affection any way he can so he would be more than happy to be carried if you are able to 

He is up for anything most of the time while little and loves to try new things including art, pretend play, and movie nights

He is very fond of novelty rubber ducks and has started a collection to keep him company in the bath 

He loves to go out and do things. He can’t do much in the devildom due to his status however, he has been able to go do things in the human world with you (and an additional glamor charm barbatos and lucifer both insisted on)

He loves animals and is enraptured by zoos and aquariums 

Diavolo is very active and games like catch and tag are a lot of fun for him. 

His favorite thing about being little are the moments where he gets to be held and cuddled and told that he is good and loved and that you will always be there to take care of him when he needs you 

Big fan of spaghetti and meatballs! Which is great because it’s a very easy meal to hide his veggies in since he usually throws a bit of a fit about eating them 

He gets very messy while little. When he’s big he has to constantly be aware of his appearance but when he’s little all of that pressure goes away and he can be messy without any consequences 

He can not resist purchasing toys for himself and Barbatos and Lucifer frequently have to talk him out of buying anymore. He is a real sucker for any stuffed animal or toy that he thinks looks lonely. Stories like corduroy and the velveteen rabbit really get to him 

He can not be left alone for too long. He spent so much of his childhood alone and while regressed he hates feeling lonely for even a second. If he’s left alone he will very quickly become sad and instantly go searching for someone. If he can’t find them right away he will often be overwhelmed with sadness and loneliness and end up sitting down and sobbing until someone comes and comforts him 

Barbatos insisted he have clothing outside his normal attire for the times he is regressed that can get dirty and be played in without getting ruined. Diavolo has no complaints about this although he can sometimes get fussy about which of his play clothes he wants to wear 

Barbatos and Lucifer have both known about his regression for a very long time. He doesnt hide anything from them usually and he was sort of hoping that if they knew they would volunteer to be his caregiver 

For a long time Barbatos and Lucifer were his caregiver however they are both so busy that between their work schedule and his he almost never got the time to regress. When you come into the picture and offer to help out with taking care of him he is over the moon  

He doesn't plan on using parental titles for you while he’s regressed and it takes you both by surprise when he does.

#age regression #fandom agere #obey me #cg!mc #obey me agre #obey me: shall we date #obey me age regression #obey me diavolo #Diavolo #Diavolo agere #age regressor diavolo #Little!Diavolo

[cloudlesbian]

9 people to get to know better

Tagged by @meatmensch

List 3 ships you like- spirk (star trek TOS)(and I'm seeing Janeway/Seven now tht I'm on Season 4 of VOY👀), abe takaya/mihashi ren (big windup), Xena/Gabrielle,

Honorable mentions: I haven't read BNHA in forever but like midoriya izuku/todoroki shouto and haven't read or watched an jojo's bizarre adventure recently but LOVE okuyasu/josuke

First ship ever- Bubbline is the first one I sought content for, and it brought me to tumblr. First I was insane abt was the main romance for the main character girlie in Inkheart

Last song you heard- the last song from this samba bossa nova album I was listening to it while drawing earlier :^D

Favorite childhood book- Dark Life by Kat Falls and The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Currently reading: Behind The Pine Curtain by Gerri Hill and Skin Deep: Real-Life Lesbian Sex Stories by Nicole Foster

Currently watching- Voyager (Star Trek), was watching X files until recently, Dungeon Meshi, and Symphogear (which I'm obsessed with now btw)

Currently consuming- a boba fish ice cream :^)

Currently craving- more strawberries for my breakfast tomorrow, and a nice warm bath. I made a bunch of art earlier with friends which satisfied a craving.

Tagging mutuals in my most recent activity~☆

@welldressedfae , @creepingsenseofdread , @bluecherryfanta , @witch-of-agnesi , @dingoskidneys , @chronicdilf , @lucyflawless , @dogwoodbite , @dearbisexual, @plethodon-uncia

No pressure to do this if it doesn't seem fun :^) and anyone who thinks this would b fun can consider themselves tagged by me!

#cloud posts

[unlady-like-12-25-36]

Romanoff's Delight

_Chapter 1_ Natasha Romanoff x f!reader

Warning: Mentions and descriptions of abuse, and eating disorder. I think that's it. If there are any more, I should add that's also a trigger warning, lmk. I do not control what you consume online. You have been warned!

A/n: If any of the content is triggering for you, do not read or skip the y/n pov part since that is the only part of this fic that I put a warning for. If you chose to read this fic and have been triggered, please seek help and do not send any hate to me or any other amazing mutual writers out there just b/c you chose to ignore warnings! I will come after you if any of you do! You have been warned!

A/sn: age gap relationship. Nat is 33 and r is 20. Sry if i failed to put this up earlier 😅

A/sn 2: This fic was heavily inspired by Bazzi's new album Infinite dream. If y'all are interested plz go listen to it on Spotify or apple music or anywhere it's available. Also, I found it interesting that there is a dessert out there called Strawberry Romanoff and its origin is really interesting. so I was inspired to name it after our fav Tasha Bear.

<! --- --- > - means the start and end of anyone's pov

Word count: 3,906 🤷‍♀️ If any of that matters. Also sry if it's very long for a first chapter 😅

________________

"Does it hurt?" Asked the rabbit. "Sometimes," said the skin horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real, you don't mind being hurt." - Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

_Earth 616 Norway_ 2016_

As Natasha arrived back at her safehouse from the store, she finished the rest of her coffee and briefly prepared herself before leaving the car for anything that could be secretly waiting for her inside. With a careful step, she entered her trailer house as quietly as possible while holding her gun in front as a safe way to take point of the area if it ever was unsafe. When Natasha had come across her bedroom, she had let her guard down when she had heard her friend snoring away on her bed. Just then, as she kept her movements as quiet as possible, a look of mischief bore her face as she got closer to see if her friend, Mason, was still asleep before lightly kicking him awake, causing him to gasp in surprise.

"You're in my bed."

"I'm.. I'm not under the covers," he says to justify his reason for sleeping on her bed, even if he wasn't under the covers. Yet, that didn't mean she wasn't unhappy about it.

"Got everything on my list?"

"Got passports, entry visas, a couple of local driver's licenses. Mix and match; you should be able to stretch it to 20 or so identities."

"Fanny Longbottom?"

"What?"

"What, are you 12?"

"That's a legitimate name," he says, chuckling. "We got a generator outside. It's petrol-powered, and septic tank will flush in a couple of weeks. But you know, I have a guy coming for that. You have to haul your rubbish into town. It's just a 20-minute drive. And I've got your basic hardware kit stashed under the stairs."

"Nice," she says as gratefully as she can without giving away how distraught she is at how easy it was for the Avengers to break apart and take sides over a political deal multiple countries had signed. However, that quickly fails as Mason immediately senses that not everything is ok. Or so he thinks, as Natasha had only ever called him when she needed something, nothing more. Though she longed for a family she's never had, the Avengers she strove so hard to keep together make it as though it wasn't as it seemed or something she hoped it would be.

As Natasha deflected Mason's attempts to get her to open up a little about how she felt about the situation, Mason soon realised that maybe he should stop trying as she's only kept him at arm's length—making him walk away disapprovingly. That night as she's settled in, she cracks a beer and heats a can of soup. At the same time, she watches one of her favourite James Bond movies on her laptop to comfort her as her concerns about her life begin to come to the forefront of her mind in the hopes of straying off any nightmares she might have tonight. With the stress of her situation and the mail brought from the Budapest safe house, the last thing she needs is a nightmare to deal with when she's spent the past few days staying out of Secretary Ross's radar.

_Earth 01 New York_2016_

<!--- Y/n's pov

When I returned to the house from school and settled in, my mind began drifting over to the many binders that contained photographs of our so-called family since I had lost all interest in finishing any of my homework. As I picked one off my bookshelf in my bedroom, I began to look through all the pictures of my very early years from the day they took me in. When I reached the end of my early years, especially my first picture in the whole album, I always found it strange that there was nothing written or even an image of how I was found or why I was left at their doorstep, leaving me to die potentially. However, as tempting as it is to think about all possible scenarios of why they chose not to tell me or leave anything regarding my origins, my feelings about my longing for a home, better life and relationships with other people that I could never have become increasingly evident. Let alone accept that I would never be accepted because I wasn't normal like everyone else. Especially the fact that I have eyes that are two completely different colours already says a lot. My right eye is green, while my left eye is brown. Heterochromia is what they call it. However, mine was complete rather than the normal variation of partial or split, leaving me to wonder which eye colour I was supposed to be born with since my body clearly couldn't choose one.

That night as I lay restless, I pulled out a picture of my beloved grandfather from underneath my pillow, savouring all the stories I'd heard about how close I was with him. And not to get too philosophically profound, but from observing families afar from my times outside, I'd like to think that from the time we were born, the world would feel it was in our hands. Something we can grasp within our hands, new, exciting, and worth exploring. Something I think we once had, our first experiences of the world take the form of love, some of its joy, and may even warmth. Others' first experiences, however, are of the less fortunate. They may not even know that feeling of love, joy or warmth until they become adults. However, at only five years old, nobody once told me to savour that sliver of a taste of love and happiness while it lasted.

Because once it's gone, you can never get it back. Since the day of my grandfather's funeral, I realised my childhood had ended, and so did a piece of my heart. From that day on, my family was never the same. Or should I say my "foster parents?" Ever since they had mysteriously taken me in, I've never really known what to call them since they've never felt like family to me, let alone be anything but parental figures in my life. I've known them to constantly fight while going on a spree of breaking anything they can get their hands on and treating me like I wasn't their own. That didn't mean I wasn't at least grateful for giving me some of my basic needs, no matter how much of that was out of pity. Since the funeral, they began to fight more often, my father's family started getting into each other's throats, and lastly, his family began targeting my mother again as if she were the cause of my loving grandfather's passing. And soon enough, I was also thrown into the deep end.

Little did I know, that would also mean that I would lose every piece of who I was or what it felt like was happening. Though that would be the first of many funerals, what struck me at the time was how I could never wrap my mind around others' perspectives of how or why people love to say and believe that children do not understand and have the concept of death. Still, to this day, I can't understand those others' perspectives of how children understand death. I've always seen it as a naive frame of thinking of how children see and understand the world. And quite frankly, I find that to be insulting. However, I am not a child anymore, and I find the feeling to be mutual regarding children. Nevertheless, that doesn't excuse them for condescending behaviour to outright call a child stupid for a concept they may or may not have. Yet, I may be biased to my own experience at that age, whereas I think children at five years old can somewhat grasp the concept of death just as much as they can understand love and joy.

In the year or two that followed, I began to have unhealthy feelings of self-consciousness, frequent thoughts of suicide and contemplated self-harm in many ways. At the time, I could not define the meaning of these feelings that were happening simultaneously. That is until I vocalised the word depressed to myself by asking myself if I was depressed. Yet, I was still in the process of understanding all those feelings and why I was always in a distressed state that caused me to cry myself to sleep, no matter how terrified I was to sleep alone at night. I even began weighing myself every week to see if I had met my mother's expected weight she wanted me to be causing my relationship with food to be compromised. Gradually, I started reducing the amount I ate every day. That's until I only ate half of what my small plate could contain, just like what my mother hoped I would. Yet the more guilty I felt about it as I craved more and ate more in secret.

As I grew older, those feelings of depression and its friend anxiety grew more unbearable, causing me not ever to eat whenever those feelings started to spiral inside my head and eventually led me to skip school altogether. I would also have days where I only ate two meals a day or did not even have a proper meal. I would even go on for days on meals consisting of peanut butter sandwiches or sandwiches containing only butter and sugar, only to briefly switch to appropriate meals as I was told by my mother to avoid any added blame or abuse.

To add to the pain I got through daily, my mother would even say the most demeaning things about me since the funeral, leaving me to feel like they were true even after all those years. And when I started to believe those lies, I began looking at myself in the mirror and seeing myself as the monster she saw in me. When I turned twelve, that's when I started to realise how twisted my mother's ways were. Then before I fully understood what was happening to me, I was found in an expected predicament of being forced to psychologically convince myself that I was romantically and sexually attracted to boys, not girls, when I was seen blushing one day at school over some boy I never even liked. In reality, I've always been romantically and sexually attracted to girls long before I was even aware that homosexuality was highly frowned upon. I even once cursed whoever had given me powers when they occasionally flared up. I never knew where they came from, much less who my birth parents were. Even at that moment, I questioned what it meant to be home or even to be a family. As the reality of the moment crashed down on me, that's when I knew the answer I'd been looking for lay within my heart. This torn-apart family, this house, and this life are none of those things I was made to believe. Hell, even this reality I was living in didn't feel real. Not when I spent most of my life without knowing what it's like to have feelings and be separated from the outside world.

Meanwhile, my older brother had it easy—way too easy for my taste, at least for me. I know it's shocking to me, too, to see that I'm not the only child. In fact, my brother, Dominic, is their only biological child. He's everything every parent wants in a child, even more so for a boy. Although I'd like to disagree, I'd admit I love him as much as they do. Both of us had our fair share of sibling rivalry and heartfelt moments. However, I can never agree on or bear at any given moment how easy it is for all of our family and extended family to argue and defend him as if he were their lord and saviour for the family's good reputation. Yet, I somehow put a bad name simply by breathing. That isn't to say that I despise him for being the golden child. It wasn't because of this toxic concept of family that made me love him, but what he did for me, or at least tried for my sake, as he was the only one in my dysfunctional family that saw me as his family whom he loved.

Since then, my days have felt like nothing but a constant mind-numbing nightmare. Though, the universe occasionally likes to sprinkle in bittersweet moments to mess with my mind to make it seem like I'm invertedly going insane. But if I were, I wouldn't be surprised if it was caused by the kind of life I have. Although lately, these days have felt a lot more gruelling than usual. You frustratedly sighed as you put your grandfather's photo underneath your pillow and got out of bed, knowing you wouldn't be able to go back to sleep anytime soon and that it's been hours since being woken up by your parents fighting again. As you rummaged around your room to find something to distract you, there was only so much you could do to make your life a little better.

Sure, listening to music does help cope with the noise, but not enough to make it better by any means truly. For drawing, it's nice but not enough to give you some substance to occupy your time and mind before wondering when it's safe to go back to sleep. Then there's writing. Many of us use a powerful tool that some take for granted. At the same time, writing can give us pleasure. Yet, people don't know that writers such as myself write and create these imaginary worlds because we crave to be able to not only have a better life but also to wish to live in a different world without any setbacks. However, this hour wouldn't be great to do as well since, you know, it requires peace and being able to hear yourself think. As your parents' fights got a bit louder as the night dragged on, you resorted to listening to music, daydreaming of what it would be like to live in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with a few changes, and absentmindedly making paper stars.  

Little did you know that your and Natasha's life would change that night as you added more green stars into your jar while she wrote in her journal.  --- >

After Natasha had written in her journal for the night after watching two James bond movies, the power in her trailer home faded out just as she was about to start another film. "oh great.." she grumbles while her cat, Liho, briefly looks at her as if asking what she's complaining about before going back to sleep on the couch.

She gets up and changes out her pants for cargo joggers, a light jacket, and light-up gloves that wrap around her hands so that she doesn't need to bring anything else before putting on her boots to assess the issue or if she begrudgingly needs to get more gas for the rest of the night. As she stepped out, she was met with a gush of cold wind that immediately made her shiver, and she wished that the power to her safe house didn't go out until morning. Yet, like all adults, she puts up with it and grabs the hardware kit from under the stairs. After assessing the issue, Natasha begrudgingly cursed Mason for getting her a crappy generator that's said to last for 12 hours when it only lasted for five hours when the tank was full. She detached the generator link, put her empty gas container into the passenger seat of her car, and drove into town for more gas.

When Natasha came back, Liho eagerly greeted her once she opened the door, causing Natasha to always pick her up so that she could even step inside the house. And just like always, she fondly smiles at Liho's antics every time she comes and greets her. Even if Natasha wasn't gone that long, she has a small reminder that she has someone always waiting for her at home, furry companion or not; it's one of the small things she cherishes. Once she has gotten herself comfortable on the couch again, this time with Liho in her lap, she unexpectedly let out a yawn before clicking on a popular series on Netflix, Stranger Things, to watch just until she falls asleep.

Meanwhile, y/n finished making another green paper star and dumped it into a jar containing other paper stars she had made. Deciding that it was enough stars for the evening, Y/n securely screwed the lid back on and decided to return to bed. However, after she got up and stretched, she let out a big yawn before taking off her headphones, hoping that her parents had finally gone to their bedrooms for the night. As Y/n ensured they were asleep, she sighed in relief before peeking at the clock to see what time it was.

3:00 A.M.

It read in bold red, making it mock Y/n for even being awake at this hour, just like it did to Spongebob. With that thought, Y/n let out a deep breath as a subtle gesture to remind herself that she'll be ok. Worries and stress still plagued Y/n, even in the back of her mind, so Y/n grabbed Ryan, her stuffed lion, into her arms and finally went back to sleep.

As Natasha decided to opt for her bed instead of the couch that night, she finally lays peacefully asleep with Liho curled up at the foot of her bed. As both women drifted deeper to sleep, Y/n and Natasha found themselves at two different ends of the same ethereal dreamscape.

"Woah… Where am I?" Y/n says, astonished at how ethereal everything looks. As a feather falls near her eye, she looks up and sees flower petals of all different colours and white feathers rain from the sky.

Not too soon after, she's greeted by her stuffed lion that Y/n loves to hug at night, only to take the shape of an actual lion not too soon. Puzzled by what was happening, Y/n got on the lion's back and took her to a waterfall that lay within a bushy groove well beyond the luscious flower field. When she gets off the lion's back, she pets its head before hesitantly walking into the body of water, where the waterfall fills a large pond. Y/n becomes perplexed at seeing her opposite reflection in the water as she stands in front of the waterfall. Her reflection showed the same raven hair she had. Yet, her skin was soft and fair, with greenish blue eyes and freckles littered across her face's sinuses, unlike Y/n's mismatched coloured eyes and smooth olive skin.

Then, as if on cue, the sun shone brighter, revealing a mysterious figure standing in the cave's shadows behind the waterfall. When trying to get a better view of the person, Y/n felt like they were compelling her to get closer. However, as she got closer to the mysterious person, the farther they were, making it seem as though it was impossible to get to them. Almost as if it was the definitive embodiment of chasing a shadow. Finally, as Y/n had stopped putting effort into catching up with the person, she found she had been able to get close enough to reach out to them. As she did, they began to fade away just before she could get a glimpse of them.

However, she felt at a loss before Y/n could process what had happened. At the same time, Y/n found herself at the end of the cave with a door embedded into the wall. She felt a sense of familiarity as she took in the door's regal yet indigenous design. Yet, she couldn't place where she may have seen it before. The door had a wonderfully crafted natural walnut-coloured frame, a gold border that laid flush underneath the natural walnut frame and added to the gold frame was black steel moulded into swirled designs. Next, the doors themselves had a beautiful smooth espresso oak wood finish, and on it was a big heart-swirled design at the top made out of the same black steel on the gold border. Finally, the handles were made out of gold with a curve towards the end. With open-minded curiosity, Y/n approached it and gently opened the door. Behind it was a bright passage that resembled something similar to what Tony Stark would design. Then without hesitation, she walked through the door while her lion walked along with her as moral support.

On the other hand, Natasha was in the middle of a debilitating nightmare. During the point of the agonising part of her nightmare, she was abruptly relieved of her pain and entered an ethereal-like dream. It was so abrupt that it took her a bit more time than usual to adjust to the natural bright light of the sun, only to realise that white feathers and flower petals of every colour fell from the sky. As Natasha takes in the beauty of the luscious flower fields, a marbled-coloured pig with a collar appears to greet Natasha with an eager oink. But then, the pig began rooting at Natasha's calf as if telling her to walk in the direction to her right. At first, her reaction was to shoo away the creature. Doing so only encouraged the pig even more. After much-rooted insistence from the pig, Natasha gave in and followed the pig into a forest just after the field of flowers and into a clearing within the forest's heart.

In the clearing, there were boulders; some covered in moss surrounded the edges of the clearing in a particular order. And on those boulders were engraved symbols, except for the one directly in front of Natasha. On that large boulder were a door that was embedded into it and the only one that was heavily covered in moss and a few mushrooms and cosmo flowers. To her discontent, the door had the same design as the ones from her time in the Red Room, making her quite hesitant to approach it to see what was on the other side.

Similarly, Natasha also felt compelled. Only when she was in front of it did the door open itself. There, as she stood in front of the open door, it showed nothing but a bright passage waiting to see what awaited her. At that moment, she closed her eyes and exhaled deeply before going through the door. Yet, because of the amount of blinding light at the end of the passage, she kept her eyes closed only to realise that the blinding light turned out to be the sunlight coming from her window, that she forgot to draw in the blinds last night. However, as Natasha was about to pull in the blinds to get more sleep, she quickly realised she was not alone. On instinct, she reached for her gun to quietly assess if the girl sleeping next to her was hostile. Still, Natasha doubted that the girl was hostile when she saw her hugging a quirky orange bear in her sleep.

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

taglist: @adi06lena @mrscromanoff @togrowoldinv @procrastinatingsapphictrash

dm me or drop in an ask if you ever want to be added to this series. Or if y'all just want to talk, my inbox is open. So don't be shy talk to me.

#natasha romanoff #natasha romanov #natasha romanoff mcu #natalia alianovna romanova #natasha x reader #natasha romanoff x female reader #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff x y/n #black widow #black widow x y/n #black widow x reader #black widow x female reader #black widow x you

[hellebore-petall]

I haven't been able to share much of my thoughts on arc 11 yet because I've been busy with a number of things this past week that take up a lot of brain space (working in a youth shelter as my actual job is sometimes the most chill thing and sometimes chaos and this week has been a peak chaos week), but I have been Ruminating™️ in the background like a gently simmering stew and I have finally put into words what I found so profound.

There are a lot of big obvious metaphors and plotlines that struck me (fuck capitalism and unionize are always my mottos, and any story of positive religious faith does something to my religiously traumatized ass), and the PCs of course are an absolute delight and I could wax poetic on them forever (and I will do that, when I have time to finish my arc 11 playlist and Uquiz. Thank you Haley and Gus for the extended break between arcs it gives me more time to work on them before the next arc brainrot sets in).

But what really struck me was just the simplicity of Scenda's rise to godhood. I mean, the process itself, the plane jumping and all that, was incredibly difficult. But the way it all boils down to the fact that Scenda, at her core, is an "inanimate" (and I mean that loosely because she was made to "think") object who was loved so much she became "real." She ascended (pun absolutely intended) beyond her purpose and became so much more. It brings to mind stories from childhood (because that is an incredibly common trope in kids stories), like The Velveteen Rabbit. It is a story I have told in my own writing. In the story I am currently writing, there are a number of characters who started out as enchanted inanimate objects (such as dolls or statues) who become increasingly more sentient and independent through the love and help of those who care about them.

Back to The Velveteen Rabbit, this quote in particular seems appropriate:

“Real isn't how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

As a person who finds a lot of sentimentality in objects, it's a story I can relate to a lot, a story that touches me in a very particular way. Scenda becomes "real", becomes her own being, because of the belief and devotion of her acolytes, and because of Suds' love and soul most of all. Suds LITERALLY loved Scenda so much he poured his soul into her, and if that's not a metaphor, I don't know what is.

The point is, it's a comforting story. Maybe it's the callback to childhood, maybe it's my attachment to various sentimental objects in my life currently, but it does something to me. I went through the entire arc thinking what Scenda was trying to do was some evil capitalist thing Albion Rail was attempting, like carving a country sized spell circle or rune that would ensure their evil grip on the country grew ever tighter, but it was so much more wholesome than that. Scenda wanted to become more fully herself, she wanted to be free of the restraints Albion Rail put on her and become who her acolytes have always believed her to be, who she knows she is meant to be. (That can also be a whole metaphor for queerness, now that I think of it, but that would be a whole other post).

I know I am going to be thinking about this for a long time, and it makes it all the more striking that I decided to name my new car after Scenda. So I'm going to end this unintentional essay by thanking Haley and Gus and the cast of arc 11 for crafting such a beautiful and profound story. Every arc blows it out of the park, and this is absolutely no exception.

#unprepared casters #off the rails #petall ponderings

[that-banhus]

Ten Books To Know Me

Rules: 10 (non-ancient) books for people to get to know you better, or that you just really like.

Tagged by @landwriter​, whose list I am pillaging for reading tips. In no particular order: 

Paladin of Souls - Lois Bujold. Cordelia Naismith is still my favourite of her characters, but the World of the Five Gods series is so kind. Bujold does religion better than anyone, and in a deeply humanist way. The exact inverse experience of reading Maria Russell’s The Sparrow, though both are phenomenal. 

Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges. The short story collection version of someone leaning in and going “would you like to hear a fucked up thought about set theory? No? Time?”

Watership Down - Richard Adams.

I was (understandably, I think) leery of books with rabbits after my Mom insisted that the first time I’d broken down sobbing over The Velveteen Rabbit was a fluke, and I’d misunderstood the point of the book, and then tried reading it to me another two times. I cried every time. HER point is that the bunny became real at the end, so it’s a happy book. MY point is that to the boy, the bunny was real the whole time, and that from his point of view it was essentially one of those horribly moralising 19th century fairy tales where the main character’s best friend dies horribly half way through but they go to Heaven so you’re expected to be happy about it. Except in this case, they’re burned alive. Watership Down was the runner-up for most traumatic childhood book about bunnies, but it made no bones about what it was. It knew when it was being brutal, and did it on purpose and well, and I love it still. It also was one of several deeply formative books for introducing me to my favourite trope: stories-in-stories.

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien. Yes, I know, everyone’s favourite, etc etc. Still, I read it young enough to sort of grow up along it as a trellis. I can’t put any of my favourite medieval works on this list per the rules, but Tolkien’s the reason I could read them as an adult and go oh, but you’re familiar. Also, the older I get, the more the whole ‘no kindness is ever wasted’ element makes me verklempt. 

Jackalope Wives - T. Kingfisher. I know, it’s not a book, but you’ll forgive me for that once you’ve read it, for free, right here: https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/jackalope-wives/

How good was that? Right?

Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers. I’ve never related to anything or anyone more than Harriet Vane as I read this, belly down on the grass in the Oxford botanical gardens this summer, in the middle of having a Bad Fucking Time romantically. Sayers’ characters are complicated and human, a little too smart for their own good sometimes, and prone to self-sabotage and overthinking. This book is so profoundly good at capturing the absurdities of love, and the negotiations of self that requires, while still being very tender about the whole thing.

American Gods - Neil Gaiman. I’ve never been in the US for longer than three months at a stretch since I was three, and growing up, it was largely mythological to me. America was Where Stories Happen. I read Stardust first, and possibly like Good Omens best of Gaiman’s, but American Gods put words to a lot of the experience of looking at the US from a one-foot-in-the-door-one-foot-out perspective.   

Caedmon - Denise Levertov. Once again cheating, this time it’s a poem:

http://www.southernhumanitiesreview.com/denise-levertov-caedmon.html

I’m also a tremendously basic poetry person in terms of liking Donne, Blake and Eliot. Mmm, weird feelings about God and/or WWI.

The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver. Possibly my favourite ending in anything I’ve read ever? I can’t say anything concrete without spoiling it, but the book starts out big, and then, at the end, gets narrower, and narrower down to a fine point, and - look, it’s very good. It has opinions about how we tell stories. The Bean Trees is also very good, though it’s been near a decade since I read that one, and I remember it less.

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley. Look, it has stories within stories, and a big, gothic, sweep of thought and emotion. It feels big, and deep, and bigger and deeper every time I go back.

Special mention because almost everyone who follows me is into Sandman: Doomsday Book - Connie Willis.

Would you like to CRY about the middle ages, and how people were people always and how no kindness is wasted? I bet you would. Maybe only read this if you’re feeling stable about pandemics again, though. I’m giving it another few months personally before going back.

-

I am, as usual, a tiny bit late to the tagging game and have lost track of who’s already been tagged. HOWEVER, I have a bunch of lovely amazing mutuals and new followers and if you want, please consider yourself tagged (that way I can also see who’s interested in maybe being tagged in the future, and get to know you better?)

#special mentions to half a dozen exceptional sci-fi/fantasy series i had to cut #Le Guin's left hand of Darkness #Ann leckie's ancillary justice #and Seth Dickinson's traitor Baru cormorant #particularly #also #landwriter's prev tags: tamora pierce #tiny six year old me spent SO MUCH TIME hitting things with sticks pretending to be a knight

[docholligay]

I love your discussion today. How do you find your people? Any tips and tricks, or did you get lucky? My people are out there! I want to find them!

There is an element of luck in all our lives, up to and including the fact that we're all still this side of the dirt, so yes, i would say I've been lucky, and I do think of myself as a scandalously lucky person, but some of that is luck and some of it is how I look at life.

ANYWAY, I cannot do anything about your luck, but I can tell you some of the things that have made me more likely to enjoy a wide group of found family, close friends, casual friends, and friendly acquaintances, all of whom have a valuable part in my life and my enjoyment of it. I am largely a very happy person I do in fact credit a lot of that to the fact that I have a lot of positive social interactions in my day to day.

So, how do you find your people?

Firstly: What makes you a great friend? I talk a lot about being aware of why you're fucking annoying, and I do believe that and try to practice it--it helps me understand why someone might not want to be my friend--but it's also important to recognize why you're fucking GREAT as a friend. What do you bring to friendship?

I, for example, am an extremely enthusiastic person. Win an award? Get a paper accepted? Get married? Run a new time? I am absolutely the one who will be like, "Oh that's so cool! That's fucking awesome, I had no idea you were so smart/fast/sexy." I will want you to tell everyone, I will tell our mutual acquaintances, I will be your cheerleader. I also love to plan parties and trips! I am so delighted to plan an outing for us together, I just want your company. I am very generous, and a great cook, and when my friends need help, I can and have moved heaven and earth to go help them. I am funny and great at small talk and not boring, for sure. These are areas where I fucking SHINE. I try my best to show them to my advantage when I'm making friends. Like yes, it will take me 4 months to send a package I've had ready for you, but once you get it it will be lovingly packaged and also very thoughtful, and it wasn't something you were expecting, so.

Secondly:

I regret to inform everyone that, much like is constantly told to lesbians on her about getting a girlfriend: In order to make friends, you have to talk to people. People cannot love you if they do not know you.

And I don't mean, 'venting about your life online' that will give you, of course, friendly contacts, but I'm going to tell you the truth of that matter: Every person you meet online is only a sliver of that person, not even in some intentional underhanded way, just, we have so much more distance to craft what we want to say and how we want to say it, how we want to present ourselves. We all do it. They also are MUCH less exposed to what might make you a challenge. Which we also all have! But you cannot feel known, and loved, and really treasured, until you've gotten the opportunity to get under someone's skin. The love is truly in that. You'll all hate me saying that. That's fine.

This is not to say online friends cannot become real, in some sort of Velveteen Rabbit via our Google Overlords! There are people I knew online, some of whom I barely fucking knew, REALLY, and I met them in person and came to like them a lot! Some of them I count as very close and would drop everything to help, immediately. BUT, the opposite has also been true. I have met up with people I very much liked online, and in person I was like, "Having to live with your individual quirks and annoyances is too much for me. The vibes are not there." And people have felt the same of me!

Anyway, back to an actual tip: Be open to friendship and opportunity. These people I am now friends with? Some of them I wasn't even close online to, they just hit me up when I made an open call to meet up. And we hit it off splendidly! But I had to be open to the opportunity of making an open call, and they had to be open to the opportunity of answering it. They had to show up.

In this vein, so, I just saw someone at my boot camp class yesterday, who I was friends with in high school but I hadn't seen in forever. We chatted, and he still seemed like a very cool guy, and so...we made plans to go get a drink. Not vague plans, but, "Oh hey, I'll be back in town next Saturday." I am very well known for jumping on these moments and opportunities. An acquaintance had a book on her to-read list I really liked, so I asked her to tell me when she starts reading it, and I'll reread it, and she can come over to my house for wine and a chat. She was touched and delighted.

So, if you are chatting with someone and they're like, "Oh, I've always wanted to try 'x cafe'" that is a fucking stellar opportunity to go, "Oh, me too! We should go next week, are you free Thursday?" I legitimately credit my social circle to my expansive and, somewhat daring (we'll go into that in a minute) seeking of chances to discover someone wonderful.

You CANNOT wait for someone to court you. You have to pursue their friendship. The people I like to be around, I make it an effort to be around when I can, though of course I am not perfect at this. I drop balls too, I'm human! But I make time for zoom calls and visits and coffee dates and also. Also! I send people emails of little things that make me think of them, or notes, or postcards.

Okay onto being daring. The hard part of this is that, being this open to opportunity means you are also open to hurt. To rejection. And it hurts! It hurts badly, but it is part of the cost of finding your people, is giving people the opportunity to say, 'You are not my people." If someone doesn't answer any of your efforts to connect, you may have to let it go, and that of course is very sad. I have gotten my feelings hurt badly because I thought someone was SO cool, and they thought I was just, annoying and argumentative, which, I mean obviously, but they did not find it charming ahaha. It is allowed to hurt, but it also has to be okay for people. There’s someone in my congregation who really really wants to be my pal because we’re both Under the Rainbow, and I just DO NOT CARE for the cut of their jib. I feel bad about that, but, I could never actually be their friend. It happens to everyone who tries to make friends, at some point.

So, look for people who like some of the things you do, or who you find interesting to talk to. I met people through writing, through autocross (competitive driving car club thing), through running, through wine tasting, through travel. Be an interesting person with interests that require you to do things, and you will be far more likely to meet people like that. Join meetup groups, library book clubs, one of my greatest tips for finding friends is to get out there and do things.

Also, the more people you meet, the better you’ll get at figuring out if you’ll hit it off with someone. Or at least I have! I have figured out what I TEND to like in people, and what people TEND to respond to in me, and what makes me just too nuts.

But yeah, you can’t hit if you don’t swing.

If you meant something more specific, let me know!

[antihibikase2]

Velveteen Rabbit

Out of all the stories you were told as a child, the tale of the Velveteen Lopunny was one that always brought you to tears- a beautiful story of a beloved toy, one that turns grim at the mention of an illness befalling one of its main characters. 

You hated that story.

You hated it so much that you didn’t know how it ended.

You did not care if it made the Velveteen Lopunny real.

It needn’t suffer for such a thing to be accomplished. 

All you knew was that, eventually, the stuffed doll had to be taken away from the child who owned it, to be burned to ashes as to prevent the spread of the plague.

Just thinking about it made your body tremble, in hatred of the cruelties of the world and all its injustices- to subject a faultless being to such a fate, as if punishing them for a crime they did not commit..

It sickened you to your stomach.

So much so that you recall refusing to leave your house the day after you were told that story in daycare. It upset you so much that your teacher had to come over and formally apologize.

But it was not enough. 

She was only the messenger, she could not alter the fate of the Velveteen Lopunny, the fate you wished to change.

Embarrassing as it may be to remember now, you remember your parents humbly requesting for that story to never be repeated.

And little Cheri was such a quiet child, always so behaved, never making too much of a fuss. 

Ideal, compliant, obedient.

Like a little doll. 

Like the little toy from the story.

Accepting of its fate. 

Unquestioning. 

Innocent.

Your parents’ request was honored as a result. 

Anything for little Cheri, who did not ask for too much.

Looking back now, you felt awful for the way you reacted, but you could still feel your heart drop when you think of faux velvet burning to a pile of ashes, never to be held or to be loved again.

Even when you were a young teen, when you pretended to be understanding of the velveteen Lopunny’s fate, tried to argue with yourself that it was for the best- you knew that was not what you wanted deep down, no matter how logical it may be.

And perhaps, it was not just because your heart was soft.

Deep down, maybe you were aware of the horrors you would be subjected to, the role you were forced to play.

And just like the stuffed rabbit, beloved and real, you would be taken away from those who adored you.

You would not be given a quick and easy death, to be discarded into the flames.

Why would that be the case? 

You were special after all.

The narrative’s beloved gift.

The favorite.

The stitches that hold the seams together are slowly cut, one by one, until you unravel like a present and bare your insides for the world to see; the pure white cotton stuffing, almost like snow, spills onto the floor and melts into a puddle.

And you find that your velveteen skin is not velveteen at all, but pretty porcelain not meant to be loved or to be cherished, only to be worshiped as an ornament, away from prying hands. 

Your cotton stuffing slips through your fingers, unlike gentle and soft pieces of cloud, and you find that your cotton stuffing is a liquid that stains your fingers with a deep dark red.

For all your heartbreak and sentimentalities that laid with the beloved toy, you found yourself as nothing more than an accessory for all of eternity, your mere existence to be admired rather than to be loved.

And if you were not meant to be loved, you were not meant to be real.

When you hear of the tale of the Velveteen Lopunny once more, a hushed story whispered to your students, you wished you hadn’t been so upset when the ending is revealed to you, just as the truth had.

You find yourself only regretting that now, as you stare at your blood-stained hands, hands that turned a deathly white.

...

Even if the doll was taken away from the child, to be burned to ashes with the rest of their belongings, its wish had come true and it was reborn.

The same could not be said for pretty porcelain dolls, whose value and existence vanished the sooner that cracks started to show on their perfect forms.

#bw/bw2 rewrite #fic #surrealism cw #death cw

[barbiemoviestrivia]

hey Alan!! did you watch the live action Barbie movie? what did you think of it? also i love how coincidentally you share a name with one of the male Barbie dolls (Allan, Ken's friend) :D P.S. do you think there's a Nutcracker cameo in the movie? bc i haven't spotted him 😔

Regarding the Nutcracker, I didn't seem him yet but I'd really be suprised if there was one since the movie seemed to be more about relating the doll and culture rather than relating to Barbie movies and animation.

As for main thoughts, I'm kinda reserving any analysis until I see it on constant repeat once it's on high quality digital media. For now, my main sentiment was that it was good but great since I found myself trying to follow two stories rather than one:

Barbie's story of existential crisis after experiencing real-life issues

Ken's story of changing Barbieland after being influenced by a difference society

My first impression was that I find Barbie's main conflict of effectively becoming more human to not be integrated enough into Ken's main conflict of feeling like a second-class citizen. I would have rather they picked Barbie's story and develop that to its fullest since I like that internal struggle. Maybe some merge of Velveteen Rabbit, Pinocchio, and probably Toy Story, in how Barbie's learns about self-love as an adult and self-identity formation rather than love-from-a-girl and identity-imposed-during-playtime.

However, after seeing it, I couldn't help but feel that the biggest difference-maker in terms of story and character was Ken since it was his conflct that really centered around Barbieland and the Barbies. Ironically, my lasting impression was that this movie was KEN.

Whatever thoughts I have right now, my main thought is that I'd have to think about it more. But, goes without saying, Allan was the best character :D

#barbie 2023 #barbie movie 2023 #2023 barbie #2023 barbie movie

[princess-of-the-corner]

I’ve always really disliked the idea of Adrien and Felix being Sentimonsters.

I mean, I don’t think the concept itself is inherently bad, but that clearly wasn’t something the writers had in mind before the introduction of the Peacock Miraculous. We only see hints of Adrien being a Sentimonster after the theory became popular in the ML fandom. There aren’t any moments in seasons 1 or 2 where we can go back and say “oh, now that we know he’s a Sentimonster, that makes a lot more sense.”

And it honestly makes the whole show and it’s world building all the more needlessly complicated and convoluted. Like, if Adrien was a Sentimonster the whole time, and Gabriel had his Amok, how the heck would it even be possible for Adrien to disobey his father and attend school in Origins?

YEAH NO LIKE

So!!

In /theory/, I don't mind the plot of 'they were Sentimonsters all along'. I don't mind the idea of other added in characters like Kagami or Zoé being Sentimonsters.

Honestly I kinda love the existential discussion that can come from such characters. At what point does programming become a person? Is artificial life truly real? So on and so forth. Anything from the Velveteen Rabbit to Chobits to I, Robot.

But yeah there are. There are so many plot holes.

Adrien is able to disobey Gabriel for the first two and a half seasons. Not even 'wiggle out with loopholes' but just straight up disobey.

Gabriel and Nathalie never sense that Chat Noir is a Sentimonster.

When Gabriel suspects Adrien of being Chat Noir, he doesn't use the Amok to force Adrien to tell the truth.

The Peacock Miraculous can casually create Sapient Life. This is not an issue for Ladybug killing them though.

So on and so forth.

Hell, Sentimonsters weren't even introduced until /the last five minutes of Season 2/.

Which brings me to another point re: the lack of setting this up: the actual lack of setup.

Let's compare this to two other recent series that did mystery/reveals WELL. Gravity Falls and Steven Universe. SPoilers for both of these ahead.

Gravity Falls had the reveal of Ford overall.

They set this up from episode one. The mystery of the Author of the Journals, Stan seeming to know more than he lets on, etc. Throughout the next season and a half, we got little hints to all of that. Some more subtle than others. But enough that the fandom caught on!

And it was a good mystery that even when we thought we were going to be proved wrong, thanks to Alex Hirsch trolling us with McGucket, there was still enough evidence to it.

Which made everyone scream when Ford actually showed up and confirmed that Stan had a secret twin who wrote the Journals.

Steven Universe had the reveal of Rose Quartz being Pink Diamond.

Throughout just Season 1, we are introduced to hints. Gems can shapeshift. Rose had secrets. There was a Gem Rebellion that Rose was the leader of. The Diamonds exist. Old ruins on Earth show an insignia with white, blue, yellow and pink diamonds, while modern ships show only white, blue and yellow. All sketches of Steven/Rose's Gem include it being diamond-shaped but just pointed inward.

And even when we get the reveal of Pink Diamond's existence, though thinking that Rose killed her, that's still a good reveal that made sense and builds up the next half of the mystery Rose being Pink.

These were great! They were good mysteries and had the fans going very early on!

And again, compare it to ML, who doesn't start this big mystery/reveal until half way into Season 3.

#ml leaks

[laurelindebear]

I love seeing your tags when you reblog things from me; you look at things so in-depth, in ways that I don’t usually consider!! You’ve got quite a fascinating mind, and I love when you share that

why bears?? Do you really like them, and if so, what’s your favourite kind of bear and why??

Eee thank you so much! <3 I do enjoy waffling in the tags of posts. Sometimes it's just useful things for me when I attempt to find something I know I reblogged, and sometimes it's nice to just sorta whisper my random opinions and experiences into the void in a quiet way. (Also, 'you've got quite a fascinating mind' is definitely the nicest way anyone has said 'girl you are weird and kinda crazy'! 😁

Gonna do a cut because this got way too long, oops:

I do love bears, for a couple reasons I think. They were my favorite animal as a very young child, probably because of teddy bears. There's a photo of me, it might have been my first birthday, in my crib holding a bear I called Big Brownie over me, and my 'comfort blanket' as a toddler was a Winnie the Pooh I called Brother John (because my dad in particular would sing 'Are you sleeping, Brother John' to me to get me back to sleep when I'd wake up in the night.) I took him everywhere with me and literally loved him to death a la the Velveteen Rabbit - when my mom couldn't sew him anymore she used band-aids, and when that got too ick he disappeared one night. They got me another Winnie, but it wasn't the same. (Sidenote, I have always been Like That about teddy bears and plush toys and The Velveteen Rabbit broke my heart and I'll never be normal about it. Ask me about seeing Toy Story with my sister sometime...😅)

My parents used to record my sister and I on cassette tape sometimes too. In the oldest one, my sister (still a chatterbox) was going a mile a minute but I was too shy to talk. The only thing they could eventually coax out of me was 'I 'uv beaws' (I love bears). I have no memory of this, but I like that it's my first recorded words!

After that I went through the inevitable monkey period (kids love monkeys), then went dinosaur-mad, then landed on snakes and dragons, but bears were always still there. I'd chase my sister around the house pretending to be a 'mad bear' sometimes when we were being silly. When I was on my study abroad summer in Paris I took a 'what is your sexual animal' quiz in my roommate's Marie-Claire one afternoon while bored and the result was she-bear (this basically translated to 'asexual'.)

When World of Warcraft came out and I picked a druid as my main character, I found I liked tanking best, which happens while shapeshifted into a bear. I found the teddy my avatar is based on at Woolworth's one day and took her home just because she sat like a real bear on all fours and she became my tanking buddy, and that kicked my love for bears off again in earnest. I definitely relate to them as a kind of 'representative animal' or mascot because they tend to be solitary (introvert), they are fiercely protective of their loved ones (yep), they sleep half the year and binge-eat the other half (depression, yooooo), and while they are large and dangerous and so I like to think of them when I need to be and feel strong (like when I'm tanking), they are also teddy bears, which are harmless and soft and whose whole purpose is to be comforting and bring a little passive kindness (which I like to be and also for all of my rage I too am generally harmless and a wimp.)

And lastly, when I found my first grey hairs in my mid-30s, much earlier than expected (mom and grandmother did not go grey until well into their 70s), the only thing that made me not-insane about it was to think of it as my grizzle. Which brings me to the last part, which is that I love pretty much all bears but I think brown bears/grizzly bears are my favorites, because they are just...so Very Bear, a lot of my teddies are brown or blonde, and because they live in both North America and in Europe, just like me as an immigrant.

#asks #replies #bears #accidentallylita #thank you again! <3

[shoutyourporpoise]

been letting my thoughts percolate on the Barbie film since I saw it over the weekend and: for one, I want to clarify that I had a lot of fun watching it. and for another, I am critiquing it because this is how I engage with movies I’m trying to actually think about. Complaining is my love language. The Barbie movie is funny and it also takes itself seriously and tries to establish that it’s making a Point, so I am also taking it seriously and evaluating it as such. Also this post is gonna be a total mess bc it’s just me tangenting over and over. Uh. Okay now that I’ve written it out it’s long as all fuck lemme add a readmore.

the way they handled Sasha from a costuming perspective bothered me. She’s introed to us dressed in all black tee and jeans, and over the course of the movie she undergoes Barbiefication with her top becoming a deep maroon and eventually ending the movie in a bright pink dress, which I should add is if anything even *more* girly than the pink pantsuit her mother Gloria ends up with. In this way, the film conveys her rejection of Barbie as not just a lack of connection with her mother, but as a disconnect from *her own* femininity which it implies she’s distances herself from because she thinks it’s shameful to be what the world thinks a woman is. Did they have to do that? We see other Barbies who don’t wear pink but manage to convey a very slick, costumey version of their job and I would not have minded seeing a camp Goth Social Justice Barbie costume by the end of the film.

but I think the thing that sticks in my craw the most is how Sasha’s Barbie Takedown Speech (which is supposed to be a mirror to Gloria’s Contradictory Womanhood Speech*) is grounded in real criticisms people have of Barbie, which is blunted by the fact that Barbieland as shown in the movie is explicitly more diverse than Barbie is now. The comment Sasha makes about body image issues to Stereo Barbie is supposed to be seen as clearly ridiculous once she goes to Barbieland and meets Barbies of all body types including fat ones, when I know for a fact that at present the “curvy” Barbie body type on the market is like at BEST someone on the edge between midsize and plus. And that was introduced alongside the petite and tall makes like…I think less than a decade ago?

it’s also the fact that Stereo Barbie is metatextually both an individual doll and the representation of Barbie as a collective. She defends herself to Sasha by citing the other Barbie’s’ accomplishments because for her they are all inseparable and almost interchangeable. In theory this is how every Barbie works, but by having Margot Robbie (“Stereotypical Barbie”) be the one to go out into Los Angeles and get Velveteen Rabbitted into being real by the Ghost Mother-God of Ruth Handler** it also sets an interesting tone for Sasha’s critique because she’s not just yelling at some white woman, she’s yelling at a white woman who represents a collective of Barbies that are more diverse than she is and also critically less Real than she is.***

also I know the part where Sasha calls Barbie a fascist is supposed to be funny bc it’s a very Teen Angry thing to say to someone you disagree with but. I mean lol she goes back to Barbieland to find that the Kendom**** has taken over and then goes “we must return everything back to our Ideal Past where the Kens were merely decorative and to do this we must hatch a plot to prevent them from voting” lmao. Obviously after that she has the conversation with Ken and they have the briefest scene going “maybe we should all be equal and individual” but WILD thing to see after the fascist line. Also uh. Sentiment is cool and all but where actually do the Kens live. Are they back to being homeless.

*hey how come hearing about how womanhood is multifaceted and contradictory deprograms the Barbies from patriarchal Ken conditioning…into agreeing with one another completely? None of the Barbies were like “hey I meant it I liked taking a Brain Vacation where I didn’t need to bear the load of decision making?” None of them were like “What the Ken’s did was wrong but maybe we can talk to them the same way you’ve talked to us to make them understand this hurts them?” None of them were like “love y’all but I am not sitting through 4 hours of guitar to turn my friends Ken against each other through making them jealous?” No??? Women are complex and contain multitudes but those multitudes all align? Or am I supposed to accept that they all agree because even after exposure to both patriarchy and the “antidote” of feminism they are still insufficiently Real to think complexly?

**also given the opening of Barbie mentioning that she was groundbreaking because she was a doll that represented an aspirational adult woman so girls were no longer consigned to motherhood it is VERY interesting that they had her introduce herself at the end of the film as Barbara Handler***** rather than her canonical name of Barbara Rogers, thereby cementing herself as Ruth’s daughter. Why frame Ruth as the mother to her creation just because she named the doll after her real-life child? Why not emphasize that she, too, broke the mold of motherhood by becoming a businesswomen and creative entrepreneur? Like cool cool get a pithy jab in about the double mastectomy and the tax fraud but why not engage more deeply with her as a businesswoman given that the film’s opening volley is that women are capable of being things other than mothers?

***and they’re less Real in more ways than one! If you look at posts showing which doll each Barbie represents, you will see that many of the women of color are either playing a racebent version of an existing doll, are an amalgam of other doll concepts, or are created from whole cloth. Again, Sasha’s speech is grounded in real-life critiques of Barbie, but the film’s more diverse casting undermines that speech because in *this* universe Barbie is less of a tool of white hegemony. Did you know that besides the red-sareed doll from the Dolls of the World collection, we didn’t see an Indian Barbie until *last year?* If you were going off the impressions of the movie you might not have known that!

****also I get that it’s supposed to be a twist that the enemies aren’t the Mattel executives; it’s Ken learning about patriarchy and bringing it back to Barbieland. And we’re supposed to be like “oh cool Will Farrell’s character genuinely cares about inspiring little kids with Barbie!” but it *does* leave the issue of the boardroom being maidenless still very much there which I guess is solved by…they have the ghost of Ruth Handler there? …I guess this is one of those lines you’re not allowed to fully cross if you’re making a movie approved by Mattel?

*****yep I get the joke to the ending line and it’s funny in the moment but now I’ve thought about it for more than two seconds and like. Okay so the setup for the punchline is that when she’s catcalled by guys IRL and then mentions she doesn’t have a vagina (and Ken doesn’t have a penis) so they’re all smooth down there. Given her total lack of knowledge of the world outside of Barbieland how do. Any of them know what a vagina is to deny having one. I assume Midge has a detachable belly bc that’s what her doll was too, so she doesn’t…have a vagina either. And because the gynecologist joke happens after she becomes Real what does that say? That your genitals are what make you Real (or worse, that a vagina is what makes you a real woman because you cannot call upon the lack of one to protect you from catcallers)? Is Hari Nef’s Dr. Barbie trans? What does that imply would’ve happened to her if she became Real?

Okay wait now I’m on *this* thread of thought. So Dr. Barbie is horrified when Stereo Barbie’s feet go flat to point of fake-ralphing alongside all the other Barbies, so that implies she…wasn’t assigned Ken at birth? Because otherwise why would a Barbie having flat feet be so shocking to her? Are there no possibilities for transition in Barbieland are you either a Barbie or a Ken (or Allan)? Actually yeah hey Barbie’s feet going flat is sort of an aspect of her body not conforming to her gender isn’t it??? They could’ve done something there maybe.

And look I know casting Hari Nef made a number of people very angry and that it’s a stone on the scale for letting trans people just play roles that have nothing to do with their transness which is cool but also why *didn’t* this movie have anything more than a passing nod to Earring Magic Ken and then call that a day for representing the franchise as it is? The racial casting attempts to make the franchise more diverse, so why not do the same for gender and sexual orientation? There are actually already two Barbies released for the BMR1959 60th anniversary collection who have “Ken” builds; why aren’t they in there; get them some rep!!

I guess this is maybe a lot to ask of a film with a runtime under two hours but given how it hyped itself up I didn’t see it address the whiteness baked into the Barbie franchise or how it reifies cishet ideals beyond the implication that everyone acts Like That because it’s how girls are expected to play with their Barbies. When they went to the Real World (cinemasins ding implying LA is the real world) I wish in all the facets of womanhood they showed us we got to see ANY queerness made explicit. I would’ve eaten my own fingers to see a butch on that screen.

…I guess at the end I feel about this the way I feel about Legally Blonde? It’s trying to have a dialogue with both itself and with the culture in which it’s made re: attitudes towards femininity and it’s a VERY fun watch but ultimately lies back on existing ideas about gender without bothering to interrogate it as much as those who love the film claims that it does.

#Barbie movie spoilers #Barbie movie #Barbie #temeritiveRaconteur #tokophobia #emetophobia #long post

[thenightling]

Okay...  more petty drama from The Sandman Facebook group.   For those who would like to know what's going on this week... J. K. Rowling has made some statements that have been seen as very hurtful by the LGBTQ+ community, mostly trans.   It is easy to believe that J. K. Rowling is probably a TERF.   I already forbid bigoted and anti-trans ideology in the group but that wasn't good enough for some people.   A person named Em Newman, for example started to demand I ban all mention of Harry Potter. Needless to say, I refused.   This is pretty much impossible since many people feel Neil Gaiman's The Books of Magic may have inspired aspects of Harry Potter, and some dialogue in the eleventh episode of Sandman (Netflix series) mention J. K. Rowling.  

Also Neil Gaiman, himself, has a pretty strong anti-censorship stance and I respect his views.   I will ban hate speech but I cannot ban things like "I always wanted to attend Hogwarts."

Em Newman decided this meant that I am transphobic and they and their friends formed a new Sandman group "The Sandman without Terfs."   But that wasn't the end of it.  Em Newman started to call random members of my Sandman group names.  They called me a "Snapewife" for some reason.   (I GUESS that's someone who crushes on the Snape character from Harry Potter).   They started to post my picture on their group and elsewhere with this claim, including in the Facebook group "Poor people simping for capitalism." They even started to call one of my group moderators a "Token trans" because she's a trans woman.   This is what ultimately lead to my banning Em Newman from The Sandman group. Because Em Newman posted about me elsewhere, this lead to a surge of trolls in The Sandman group for the last day or so.  In fact, just three hours ago, if you scroll down my personal Facebook, to the Velveteen Rabbit post you'll find a comment from Em Newman with their doctored picture of my Facebook profile image, calling me a "Snapewife."   I barely know what that even means so I'm not sure why they seem to think it's such a clever insult. I'm forty-one-years-old.  I'm not that into Harry Potter.  I just refuse to forbid it's mention!  And I certainly do not condone a lot of J. K. Rowling's statements or beliefs.  I hadn't even liked her since she decided Native American Skinwalkers were just animagi under a smear campaign from Shamans with no real power.   I don't defend J. K. Rowling, I just refuse to ban the mention of Harry Potter.  That is all.

If you scroll down on this attached post from my own Facebook wall you’ll see how Em Newman has now decided to stalk me and post on my personal wall.

https://www.facebook.com/amanda.pike.96/posts/pfbid0FQsLZq6VhPSBLhf6VWwh2GwXKwEgqTeg5SRU1y43iCHXP1VmtGQ1R6XKzgJfAzfUl

#Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Fandom #anti-J. K. Rowling #Anti-Harry Potter #WTF #The Sandman #The sandman fandom