#this is what we get for the desire to post a fucking identity key on our ao3 profile

[mantisgodsdomain]

mothiva bugfables is into vore

#source: so like we're 90% sure shes rattling around somewhere in here and she doesnt want us to know she exists or might have been writing #fuckin zasp vore fic #this is still uncertain btw we arent 100% sure we're even a system yet we uhh. we may or may not have scrolled through some blogs #had. some Thots. and then got a fucking headache related to those thots happening. a few memory loss happenings. #anyways we are so fucking mad and we are posting callout posts for our brain moth on tumblr dot com #we speak #this is what we get for the desire to post a fucking identity key on our ao3 profile

[millhavenn]

Reddit repost 2—Stranger Things subreddit.

There was a post about them yesterday, but it got locked because people decided to make it about a ship war rather than an appreciation of how great their friendship is.

Really looking forward to seeing them actually work together in season 5, because both should have pretty major roles hopefully. Will understands Vecna like no one else does, and I think that’s going to be key to beating him. And with both Mike’s girlfriend and best friend being important to the fight, there’s no way that Mike can’t be involved.

Hoping we can get a scene with Will being honest with Mike about how he feels, because his character deserves it. There’s a zero percent chance that Mike would be anything other than accepting of him, and Noah Schnapp would no doubt crush the scene, like he did with the van scene in season 4.

The van scene was one of my top 3 favourite scenes this season, because whilst heartbreaking, it perfectly displayed how strong their friendship is. The way Will was able to know how Mike was hurting, put his own feelings aside to recognise how important El was to Mike, and capture how important Mike was to both El and himself was beautiful. He knew how much it hurt him to see Mike in love with El, but he helped his best friend anyway. Unrequited love is hard, but Will powers through it.

Edit: Ok I didn’t plan on writing this much, it kinda just happened.

Yeah I was in that posts comment section. It is part of the reason why I made this. I wanted to see what exactly caused people to react in such a negative way.

I still don’t know what caused it. But this post is doing incredibly well, and I am glad. It is a very small step to bringing back some sort of calm to this community! Lol

I agree with everything you said. I am hoping and praying that a coming out scene is written into the script for season 5. After everything he has gone through, Will deserves the relief, comfort, and safety that comes with sharing your true identity to the people that will love you unconditionally.

A Mike + Will duo/partnership in season 5 would be AMAZING. I need to see them fucking up a bunch of demo(gorgon/bat/dog)s side-by-side. The two of them saving the world together (or helping to) would be a beautiful way to bring their storylines to a close—they both get their revenge on those that had caused them, and the people they love, pain.

It does not matter if it is platonic or romantic—the final blow should be theirs and I will die on this hill !!

I think the negative reactions come as a result of any perceived implication that their relationship is romantic; as whilst majority of fans are relatively positive towards their friendship, the common consensus around here is that it’s just that, a friendship. And whilst I personally agree with that judgement, the constant desire to turn any mention of their friendship into a ship war is tiring.

Seeing Mike get his hands dirty to defend El and Will from some monsters would be a sight to behold, and it’d be cool to see Mike confront Vecna similar to when he tried to take on Billy in the sauna in season 3.

In regards to the “final blow”, I’m about 99% sure this will still technically go to Eleven. But I don’t think it’ll be as simple as El holding out her hand and screaming whilst everyone cheers her on. There’ll be multiple layers to the fight, which is where the rest of the kids, and the adults will come into it.

That is really sad to me, but yoy are right. Hopefully that mob (sort of) mindset changes. I feel that I would be able to have many lovely discussions (such as this one) with users here if implications of romance were not taken so personal.

And the above applies to both sides.

For anybody wondering, my post is not alluding to a specific dynamic in regards to Mike and Will. Users have been lovely thus far of sharing their own interpretation of their dynamic in a mature, and quite beautiful, way. It makes me happy, and I hope it stays this way, even if for a little longer.

Is that wishful thinking?

Yes!! I say Mike Wheeler should be given a chainsaw in season 5. Nancy/Will teaching him how to shoot a gun would be great, as well. There is a lot of potential in season 5, if they choose to go the apocalyptic route, really.

Oh yeah, definitely. I am sure a bunch of powerless teenagers would not stand a chance against powerful entities, such as Vecna and the Mind Flayer, on their own.

That was a joke on my part, but it would be funny if Will just, like, walks up while Vecna is at his weakest, and hits him on the head with a random chair. Imagine going through all of that evil planning, nearly winning in your attempt to control the world, only to die by a random gay kid. I would cry

You definitely do see a similar mindset with other aspects of show. Whenever there’s a post celebrating Mike and El’s love for each other, you’ll usually find someone going out of their way to tell everyone how “fake” or “toxic” they are together. Like I get that Reddit is a platform for sharing opinions, but sometimes I wonder would it not be easier to just downvote and keep scrolling, rather than offering a factually incorrect assessment? Same thing here for when people suggest Mike has been a bad friend to Will.

Maybe just a healthy dose of optimism.

Honestly as long as we get a decent scene with Will standing up to Vecna, I’ll be happy. The poor kid has spent the past two seasons in the back seat.

TLDR: I agree with you big time, and that should be a mindset everybody has!

It most definitely would be.

I feel that there are people who do want to have proper discussions with others of differing opinions, hence why they do not downvote and move on, but it has become clear that it is not something which is possible in the subreddit. Regardless of your preference towards Mikes relationship with Eleven, or Mikes relationship with Will, you are going to receive an immature response. It is best to ignore.

There is a minority in this situation that does deserve more support than what they are currently being given, however, this does not make them innocent—I would know. I have started and partook in many arguments myself, and now that I look back on them, it was stupid of me to replicate the way I was mistreated onto other people.

Everybody in this subreddit needs to learn how to have a proper discussion before ever considering confronting another individual about their opinion. No one is ever right, and if that cannot be accepted, it takes a simple downvote and scroll to continue with the day.

Mileven, Byler, it is not as big of a deal as people here make it out to be—enjoy your ships in peace, and let others enjoy their ships in peace, too!

#byler #stranger things #anti mileven

[dykefever]

ok where to begin. This is a long one but I hope it's worth it?

1. I'm an embarrassingly huge stan and I've read all your stuff and I can quote some of them off the top of my head and my * husband * is vv familiar with you/your writing because I talk about it so much

2. I read the new Dorlene fic and it hit really hard because

3. I'm in my 30s and very happily married to a straight cis man, AND I just came out as bisexual

4. So I started writing my own "fic" with characters based on me/my husband to explore sexuality and identity, and also because I was an English/Theater major and haven't connected with that part of myself in so long and

5. I wrote my first lil femslash fic to explore my own sapphic desire for really the first time, and it was a really big deal to write and also nerve-wracking, like "am I doing * the gay * wrong?"

6. and literally a day or two after I finished, you posted Seasons in Desire

7. and it was, all of the yes. Right off the bat. The collarbones/shoulders. The staring. The nerves. The intimate friendship at the same time as wanting. But ESPECIALLY the role patriarchy plays in finding your way through desire and love and attraction. I didn't plan to include boys in my fic, but they just wrote themselves in ((ugh classic)) and in fact my characters' get-together arc is all wrapped up in the male gaze and expectation and comp het. And I high-key hated that at first. But I situated the fic in a specific time and place based on my real life, and I wanted to be honest about what lil 16-year-old me was really going through at the time. So seeing that same dynamic reflected in your piece, which is also very personal about your real experiences, was so validating and lovely and kind of empowering-- like, look at how amazing we are that we can find our way to love and desire women * despite * all the obstacles patriarchal society puts up to stop us.

So, yeah. Just, thank you for writing the Sapphic desire fic the fandom needs SO MUCH MORE of. And for inspiring me, personally, to get into writing and embracing my own identity.

xoxo Miss American Bi

hi hi !!!!! miss american bi, sorry this took a min to reply to but i wanted to have enough time to fully respond and i've been going back n reading this also because it has honestly moved me !

first off um hi to your husband!!! that is so sweet you talk about my writing to him and also the fact that you can quote my stuff oh my god!!! genuinely like in awe that you feel that way about my writing

and hello welcome to the community, figuring out your sexuality and such is tricky at the best of times and doing so while in a relationship is even harder!! i have some friends that have had a similar journey and just fuck yes for you! proud n happy for you<3

i've found writing about wlw/sapphics/lesbians to be a hugely validating experience and like this really beautiful exploratory thing to do with my desire and relationships so totally get you with writing out. i hope you continue to do so for yourself and find it continues to help :-) if you ever post anything i would love to read it !!

totally get you with male gaze n patriarchy making it's way into writing. it's unfortunately often a large part of queer women's experience when discovering their attraction to women. it has been for me at least and i wanted this story to be about discovery (dorcas finding herself to be lesbian rather than bi) (that's just straight up from my own experience lmao) and also how, especially in their early twenties, you can often be working through the complicated feelings of having attraction women (and not liking men in their case, although the role of the male gaze in queer women's desire is familiar for all of us!) while actually knowing and accepting this fact and living your life as a queer woman. i think stories can include this element of our experience while still completely centering the women and their relationship, which is what i was trying to do with seasons in desire! like, they are still working through their relationship with queerness but far more importantly, they want each other and love each other and will pursue and explore that <3

highlighting this also: look at how amazing we are that we can find our way to love and desire women * despite * all the obstacles patriarchal society puts up to stop us.

you're so right, it's fucking incredible!!!

completely honoured and floored by this message, that i inspired you to write n that this fic made you feel seen! keep writing n exploring yourself, i am cheering and whooping for you in embracing your bisexuality <3

p.s. re: collarbones and shoulders. always felt so frustrated how attraction to women is depicted generally in media. like queer desire is not rlly about these gendered body parts! it's so much more! wanted to write about that n how i feel regarding desire. just glad that resonated :-)

#i got this ask several days ago and every time i remembered it i was just like. oohh man i needa sit down #much love anon xxxx #answered #seasons in desire #dyke tag

[haleigh-sloth]

hi haleigh! i dont know if im missing something but i dont think iunderstand what exactly is going on with shigaraki right now—last we've seen him after his battle with sns he was angry, it was his hatred of heroes and all might, his desire to destroy that we saw, but right now he just seems so out of it? do you have any thoughts on how his consciousness merging with AFO might manifest in coming chapters?

Hi!

So, I don't think there is a super clear cut answer for what's happening with Shigaraki's mental state right now, and we can only speculate based off of what we have seen so far. But I will say that all we know FOR SURE is:

His inner world is a fucking mess right now.

Also: I am going to be linking to a TON of past posts I've made that expand on points I'm making in this post better, because this post turned out kinda long. But the links will help explain my thoughts better in case I skim over some details here.

So the very first tell tale sign we got that something was off was back in chapter 329 when he appeared for the first time in so. fucking. long. when he hinted at the notion that HE HIMSELF is not completely sure of who he is:

And I had kinda figured that there was a weird disturbing mental struggle going on between Shigaraki and AFO, and I was kinda sorta right:

Throughout the entire S&S fight, it was kinda hard to tell who was talking at times. But I think that the majority of the time it was AFO's consciousness:

--with a little bit of Shigaraki poking through at times:

And then at the end of that fight, we got a little more insight into what's going on beneath the surface:

And then we get back to the evil villain lair and we see Shigaraki, once again, angry about All Might (very early-Shigaraki of him):

And then a little bit further, we see that he's doing much, much worse:

And....low and behold, he shows up to the final battle with blank eyes, and he is extremely passive and pretty much does nothing when he arrives on the battle field:

So the conclusion I personally came to about Shigaraki right now is:

The mental fight for who is in control has resulted in a stalemate. In other words, there is no real identity present and his body is on auto pilot. He will probably act on instinct, as in he won't let himself get killed, he'll go after OFA (because that's what AFO wants, and AFO's desires are kinda ingrained in Shigaraki atm), and he'll fight whoever is in the way. The reason I think this is because in chapter 344, him JUST saying "Dabi" was very passive and there was zero urgency, and I'm pretty sure he was trying to warn Dabi that there was something underground to be weary of. Also, the introduction of completely blank eyes shows us that something entirely new is going on that differs from AFO being fully in control or Shigaraki being fully in control. Another reason I think this is because it's not just Shigaraki and AFO we're talking about anymore. Tenko Shimura has been identified as a possible identity that is fighting for control:

Which is new, because Tenko Shimura has not really been acknowledged in anyone’s dialogue as an alternative to Tomura Shigaraki, until now.

Now, Tenko and Tomura are the same person through and through. BUT--as you can see in Horikoshi's symbolism with children, we know that Tomura is a GOTDAMN LIAR . Tomura Shigaraki is the "mass of destructive instincts and frustrations" (Horikoshi's words not mine) and Tenko Shimura is the true identity that just desperately wants a hero to give him what he's wanted since he was a child and save him, in every sense of the word (body, heart, and soul).

So I guess, TL;DR:

The struggle for whose identity is in control seems to have resulted in this auto pilot zombie that MIGHT (key word there because this is just speculation) only be acting on instinct.

I think once Midoriya does whatever he's gonna do to save him (in the vestige probably), we're gonna come back to the real world and see Shigaraki's eyes go back to normal and that's when we'll know that 1) Shigaraki is back in control and 2) Midoriya reached him and got through to him, and brought him back.

Again, this is just what I think based on what we have so far. I think we will get better answers once we see what the HELL Bakugo is going to do facing Shigaraki without Midoriya. He's obviously going to have some impact on Shigaraki because they have unfinished business, and Bakugo is undeniably tied to the OFA/AFO plot line. So we'll probably get more insight very soon.

#bnha #bnha asks #anonymous #bnha 345 #shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #afo #all for one #boku no hero academia #bnha predictions #bnha meta #i guess #my hero academia

[itsclydebitches]

A great example of “RWBY+ can do no wrong” is the whole “Let Penny make her own choices” thing. They keep doing it over and over, yet while watching I never got the idea RWBY+ doing it was bad. They’re never called out, they never regret it, or anything. Ruby takes the scroll from Penny’s hand and answers Ironwood for her, and makes her human without her consent. I get the not killing Penny thing, BUT THAT’S THE ONLY THING THEY DO FOR HER. WTF?!

Yes let's take a hot second to unpack all this.

Now, I'm going to be focusing on late Volume 7 and Volume 8, but in reality this problem started way back during Penny's introduction. Namely, presenting her as a literal tool of the military who has to break the rules set down (go out, have friends, etc.) in order to be her own person. There's a small problem here in the form of making Pietro the shadowy scientist and then changing him into the doting father with no acknowledgement that he a) built Penny with the purpose of being Atlas' tool and b) went along with dictating her actions through that whole run. However, given that Pietro is a minor character we may never even see again, we have a much larger problem in the form of Ruby being entirely disinterested in Penny's plight. Ruby cares about making sure Penny feels real, not that Penny has all the freedoms a real person innately deserves. Admittedly, this is less of an issue back in Volumes 1-3 because RWBY was a less serious show then, Penny was a new friend, and Ruby was the teenager student. But come Volume 7 when our show is questioning the characters' morals, Ruby is an adult now, Ruby has her huntsmen license, and she supposedly has this incredibly strong bond with Penny, it's now a problem that she hears things like "Ironwood doesn't want me to have friends" and just... doesn't seem to care. Or do anything. Or suggest that Penny do something. It's a non-topic. Ruby only becomes interested in Penny's autonomy when that autonomy threatens Ruby's own goals. When Ruby is working for Ironwood, it's totally fine if Penny works for Ironwood too, no matter how she might be being treated. (Though, frankly, I think the show did a terrible job of establishing Ironwood's supposed mistreatment. The no friends rule makes zero sense when Penny is being sent to celebratory parties organized by Ironwood. So that's a whole other issue.) But when Ruby is against Ironwood... well, then Penny needs to be on their side. Of course she'd be on their side. It's presented as inevitable, despite the fact that it very much should not be. But the point is that Ruby cares about keeping Penny away from Ironwood and giving her an illusion of choice only once she is breaking away. Otherwise, Penny's autonomy is not her concern.

So that's where we're starting out which is pretty bad. Already Ruby's status as the contrast to Ironwood is falling flat, but the show admittedly helps smooth things over by giving us such an extreme. Meaning, we learn fairly early on that Ironwood want to hack Penny and take that autonomy away, full stop. Ruby doesn't. Ergo, Ruby is the lesser of two evils here. I can see why so many fans dismiss the scroll scene given its seemingly, comparative insignificance, but it definitely rubbed me the wrong way. Part of that is because Penny never gets to express her own opinions to Ruby. She gets to do it with Winter and, notably, Penny comes to a sort of, 'We can manage both' stance. The dilemma of going after Cinder or saving Winter and fighting Salem or saving the people of Atlas/the Relics are meant to mirror one another and Penny manages to achieve both. She saves Winter and keeps the power out of Cinder's hands too. Then, she's given the one key that controls the latter dilemma: the Maiden powers. So what will Penny decide? How does she view the situation to leave or stay? How will her decision regarding Cinder and Winter impact her decision about Atlas and Mantle?

It doesn't. We have no idea what Penny thinks outside of a 'I'm sad when friends fight' line (which, again, puts a huge damper on the idea that Penny was always Ironwood/the Ace Ops' puppet and should be glad to be rid of them). Penny is brought into Ruby's group and her opinions disappear because Ruby makes all the decisions. Whatever Ruby says goes and THAT'S why the scroll scene is so horrible. Because we just watched Penny deciding for herself what to do about Winter. We just watched Penny deciding to take on the Maiden powers, making herself the most important person in the Kingdom right now. And then Ruby picks her up and all that goes away. Penny is given the chance to decide things again when Ironwood calls and Ruby takes the scroll away, speaking on her behalf. It does not matter whether Penny actually agrees with Ruby's decisions here, the act of not allowing her to make those decisions for herself speaks volumes.

From then on Penny just stops making choices. Ruby is the one who talks her into forgetting about Ironwood and the Ace Ops. Jaune is the one who decides to split the team and Ruby decided they need to get Amity up. Pietro literally takes control of Penny's body to hack into the system. Penny gets cut off from the group due to the Ace Ops and Nora is the one who decides to help. Prior to literally being hacked, she was more of a puppet in their hands than she was with Ironwood because it's in Ironwood's employ that we actually see Penny pushing back: She's going to be friends with Ruby no matter what, she's going to challenge Winter on her views, she's going to take the powers because that's what needs to be done, etc. But that lack of agency is completely overshadowed by Ironwood's hack Penny plan. Everything looks better compared to that, even if what we're left with is pretty awful on its own. Remember, this is the point in the story where Ironwood is fully evil, post-shooting Oscar and the Councilman. The group can do whatever they want at this point and come off looking "heroic," simply by means of not being Ironwood.

The next time Penny makes a decision is when she stands up to Pietro. Note that prior to this everyone talked her into doing something she says she does not want to do: leaving the group to stay on Amity. Pietro suggests it, Ruby justifies it, Weiss says it might be for the best and Blake ends the conversation by saying they need to leave. Penny goes, "I guess we all have to do some things we would rather not." They all make that decision for her. So she goes, fights Cinder, and then Amity starts to fall. Pietro says, "You’re in no condition to do something like this. Even just the temperature out there could--" and Penny counters "It is our only option."

No, it's not. This is Ruby's option. You can very much not send the totally useless message out, supposedly risking your life in the process ("supposedly" because, again, why this is such a danger for Penny when she was just flying outside with Cinder remains a mystery). Penny treats Ruby's plan as something inevitable. They can't fall back after Penny hacked into the Atlas systems, Penny fought off the Ace Ops, Penny defended Amity from another Maiden. She has to go one step further and risk another death because the concept of saying, "Hey, Ruby's plan isn't feasible anymore" is just never on the table. Ruby is in the mansion sitting around while Penny does all the dangerous work to put her plan into action.

So she pushes back against Pietro in a way she NEVER has with Ruby, insisting that this is how she's going to live her life. Even Maria chimes in with a "we need to remember the big picture." (Wait, the potential death of a Maiden and the loss of the key to the vault isn't a part of the big picture?) Pietro is supposedly in the wrong because he cares about Penny, not the war, but if that's such a bad thing... then what does that make this?

We have a whole scene where Penny wants the group to destroy her to (again, supposedly) help them in the war - take her out as a threat - and they give a resounding, 'Fuck that.' Ruby doesn't want to see her friend dead for the sake of this war. Pietro doesn't want to see his daughter dead for the sake of this war. Yet Pietro is the one who is framed as too narrowminded. Penny standing up to Pietro is meant to be celebratory, but Penny giving in to Ruby is meant to be celebratory too.

And then, of course, once it's Jaune with a sword to her throat, Penny's desire to die is honored.

Then, finally, we have the Ambrosius fiasco. I've spoken at length about this already, but suffice to say we never got a scene where Penny expressed a desire to be turned human. As the above scene demonstrates, her desire to risk her life/die is ignored only when it's Ruby making that call. Otherwise, with Pietro and Jaune, Penny's agency is upheld (however horrible the circumstances). Does she want live a life with a flesh body? Does she have any other ideas how they might eradicate the hack? Would she prefer Ruby try to put her into a new android body first? We have no idea! We never see Ruby ask. We never see that Ruby cares beyond what she wants for Penny. They clearly had the time to hash out all these loophole wishes, but we couldn't have gotten a ten second scene where Penny goes, 'I'm cool with this'? Assuming that Penny knows what they plan to do and that she has no reservations prior to waking up with flesh hands doesn't work, not when her character largely revolves around agency and Ruby has not been showing her that particularly well.

Ruby decides that Penny is on their team (scroll scene). Then she decides that Penny will not die (contrast to Jaune and Pietro). Then she decides that Penny will be saved by stripping away a core part of her identity. Penny goes from being hacked to watching that part of herself actually die, glitching out while her friends smile about it. Ruby spent Penny's entire run insisting that she was a person just as she was, but then Ruby is the one to turn around and take that away from Penny, prior to leading her into a battle where she died again, likely because she was now a fragile flesh girl. Ironwood was given the extreme of trying to take Penny over completely, once he went full Bad Guy, but Ruby is the one who made decisions for Penny throughout this run, with Penny given no chance to speak up for herself. Penny, once at Ruby's side, subscribed to the overarching belief that Ruby is always right (fitting in nicely with Ren's arc of learning to stop questioning things). The story didn't even consider giving Penny different opinions, hesitations, anger, or anything that would truly jeopardizes what Ruby wants, because what Ruby wants is, consistently, treated as the only way to go.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas #death tw #suicide tw #violence tw

[steveyockey]

Non spn anon: thank you for answering my confusing question, sorry it was confusing 😅 I must say I’m so intrigued by all the Dean gender discussion posts I’ve seen so when I learned there was a satin underwear moment I was like ?!?!?!!!!! On SPN of all shows? Just so much to unpack here. Anyway thank you again 🙏🏻

okay like I know you didn’t actually ask a question but this ask has been driving me crazy because “on SPN of all shows” non spn anon you wouldn’t know this because you, of course, do not watch spn, but this sort of slippage occurs all the time with dean! as was written in the gospel of dean by tumblr user marcusantonius, the slippage occurs so many fucking times (he likes to wear nightgowns! he knows purgatory is name of a gay club in miami! he’s made everyone he lives with watch lost boys over thirty times! he recites rent lyrics! soft spot for dirty dancing [“swayze always gets a pass”]! loves doctor sexy aka the in universe equivalent of greys! weird kinky sex references about zorro masks and whips!) and with such an earnestness that it actually actively reconstitutes dean against the superordinate classification of Absolute Heterosexual Male the narrative leans on as his assumed identity! 

the thing about a lot of meta on gay/bi readings of dean is that. well. da miller has a piece called “anal rope” where he uses this understanding of coding as a difference between connotation and denotation, basically things that have the potential for a certain reading vs the literal text,

 “connotation... excites the desire for proof, a desire that, so long as it develops within the connotative register, tends to draft every signifier into what nonetheless remains a hopeless task — hence the desire assumes another, complementary form in the dream (impossible to realize, but impossible not to entertain) that connotation would quit its dusky existence for fluorescent literality, would become denotation.”

it’s the same problem sedgwick refers to as “We Know What That Means” in epistemology of the closet, 

“to have succeeded... in cracking the centuries-old code by which the-articulated-denial-of-articulability always had the possibility of meaning two things, of meaning either (heterosexual) ‘nothing’ or ‘homosexual meaning,’ would also always have been to assume one's place in a discourse in which there was a homosexual meaning, in which all homosexual meaning meant a single thing.”

and I have to say anon that back in fandom circa 2014 the panties thing drove me CRAZY because I felt like it was everywhere all the time in every post about bi dean or gay dean or queerbait or queercoding or endverse spiral but NO ONE would ever explain it! “We KNOW What That Means”!! it filtered out into every single fucking fic where dean discovers his sexuality, I swear to god I read so many stories where he had this big sexual identity crisis during which part of the realization would be the panties, just the panties, the fact that he liked them an illumination in and of itself. exactly as you articulated it, a “satin underwear moment.” most interestingly (to me, at least), the idea of the panties makes an appearance in twist and shout but in REVERSE with cas being the one wearing the panties (almost as though through some sort of metacognition the writers understood they were making a work so profoundly out of step with the actual characters the meaning of the panties no longer aligned with the dean they had written - but what about the panties had aligned with dean in the first place!?). 

what DO the panties mean! they could mean a lot of things! sexual domination symbolic castration transgenderism kink fantasy shakespearean crossdressing something something gender roles battering rams to masculinity redefinitions of masculinity transgression of masculinity permeability of the borders of masculinity — nothing about the panties is inherently anything, it’s just about what you as the reader understand their meaning to be, the connotation YOU confer onto the text on the basis that rhonda hurley made dean try on her panties and he “kind of liked it,” and, somehow, and perhaps this is the key, this knowledge is what will convince a future self of dean winchester that his present self is the same self. and of course on the one hand it’s obvious that the assumed private nature of this knowledge, that dean would not have told this story to anyone else and thus only dean and rhonda can confirm its veracity, is the motivator for dean’s admission, but where’s the fun in that! and besides, that does nothing to explain how it come so easily, and so comfortably, which is how a lot of dean’s sexuality is supposed to come to him and part of the project he is cultivating as the Absolute Heterosexual Male! he’s a womanizer he’s a ladies man, again, to quote the gospel, “lovable fucker, always fuckable,” and something about the panties does fit into that, into what has been denoted about dean and sex and how he desires, but! it’s been denoted so thoroughly to collapse the image onto itself, so insistently proffered over and over again that it begs a question of itself and of the very comfortability that dean purports to have in his sexuality and the manner in which he wants you to think he wants the girl in the zorro mask to slap him. so the panties, which could be a reassurance of this comfort in this firm Heterosexual-Though-Non-Normative-Sexually Identity, instead become an object that connotes, along with every other little tic, every slippage, every glance, a hidden truth, a discomfort, a necessity to insist that there is not a secret buried beneath the open-bookedness of his sex life. it isn’t even actually about the connotation striving to become denotation, but rather that the denotation itself lacks stability and so connotation becomes identity as the performance of this heterosexual self tips into parody. masculinity. what a beast.

#spn #ziz watches spn #the way I keep writing paragraphs about the cw tv show supernatural is inherently embarrassing #but the way I continue to very earnestly do it? camp #if you make it to the end of this post good for you I probably would scroll past it myself but #non spn anon

[bigskydreaming]

Sorry not sorry, but like can we please stop giving Liefeld credit for subtext people ADDED to his work as though that man gives a single damn about ace representation? 

Wherever you fall in terms of how you view Shatterstar’s sexual orientation personally, I think there’s more than enough room to balance your view of that with the reality that Liefeld ONLY started making a lot of noise about how Shatterstar shouldn’t be in a relationship because he created Shatterstar and he’d always viewed and written Shatterstar as asexual AFTER Shatterstar got together with Rictor specifically (with it being key here IMO that Liefeld in his original rants post-Ric and Shatterstar getting together like, NEVER specified aroace specifically, he always JUST talked about how their relationship was a deviation from how he’d written them because Shatterstar in his mind was supposed to be asexual, as though gay or bi aces don’t exist, like this is just one of many nuances that is lost on Liefeld and why its so uncomfortable to see him credited with awareness he literally has never demonstrated).

Like I’m just saying? Liefeld hadn’t written Rictor or Shatterstar in over TEN YEARS before they got together in X-Factor. Plenty of other writers had written them in between those two periods, and Shatterstar had been teased as interested in women at various points since Liefeld left X-Force without so much as a peep from Liefeld. 

Again, this isn’t to weigh in on what I think people ‘should’ view Shatterstar as or whether ‘official’ canonization of him as bi is set in stone, for whatever that means, especially since I can’t even off the top of my head remember if he’s actually identified himself as gay or bi in canon versus just advertised that he’s mlm of some sort.

Its simply just.....can we leave Liefeld out of it and not act like his perspective is so nuanced and unbiased? I mean hell, for the record this cuts both ways, because I’m similarly uninterested in giving PAD props for being the one to put Rictor and Shatterstar together in the first place, as a) PAD is a gross, disgusting, violently anti-Romani asshole and fuck that dude anyway and b) PAD has NEVER been as progressive as people hype and patting himself on the back for being more progressive than colleagues like Liefeld is IMO a hundred percent more relevant to his progressive character beats than any actual commitment to representing marginalized groups. Like, he hates Liefeld and always has, he’s very vocal about it, and there’s super uncomfortable undertones to the way he fired back at Liefeld years ago when all of this was going down after Rictor and Shatterstar first got together and Liefeld stood up when nobody even fucking asked to be like the spurned groom running down the aisle screeching I OBJECT when it was like, sir, this isn’t that kind of ceremony, we’re offbook here, please sit down.

But I just mean, you read the potshots Liefeld and PAD were making at each other back then, and the way PAD kept changing how he even referred to both Julio and Shatterstar without even missing a beat, like, he calls each of them gay and bi at different points in the freaking same interview not even in the vein of peoples’ sexuality can be fluid and people take time to find the label that fits them best, but rather more in the vein of ‘this is all academic to me and I honestly can’t be bothered to try and sit in each of these characters’ heads for a bit and sincerely parse out what I feel each of them have to say about their orientations at this specific point in their lives, I’m just here to piss off Rob and for the progressive soundbite hey you guys caught that soundbite right?’

....Its just....idk, to me at least its always very clearly come across as none of this difference of interpretation had ANYTHING to do with the actual writers being at cross purposes in their desire to represent various marginalized identities or experiences. It was two straight guys aiming for a gold star while trying to be all ‘gotcha’ at a long time professional rival simultaneously. Neither wanted to represent any of us, they just wanted to beat the other guy in their weird jousting match of My Impact Is Better Than Your Impact, The People Have Spoken.

And sorry not sorry, but personally, I believe that every marginalized person looking to these two characters and their relationship in different ways out of a genuine desire to just feel represented, like. Deserves better than what either of these two writers have to offer.

Anyway, my point ultimately is just whatever your view of Ric and Shatterstar and their dynamic and relationship over the years, I think there’s more than enough material and nuance in the work itself to stand on its own two feet, and just because these two writers put most of it in there doesn’t mean we owe it to them to make their motivations a sizable factor in how we interpret the work, when their motivations are BOTH super fucking suspect.

Like, if PAD and Liefeld and their ‘feuding intentions’ for Ric and Shatterstar were an AITA reddit thread, I’d just be circling the ‘everyone here is an asshole’ option and devoting my energies to hoping that neither of those writers ever goes near these two characters again. Their input is no longer needed, IMO. *Shrugs*

[seducing-a-vampire]

ON BEING HONEST AND WHY I THINK SIMON WILL BE THE FIRST TO SAY “I LOVE YOU”

Two things sparked this meta:

Baz yelling “you’re so beautiful” to Simon, but Simon not hearing it— the moment that lives rent-free in my head 24/7

Rainbow’s recent Fall for the Book interview, when she said that she thinks that Baz is “settling for Simon” in Wayward Son

Here’s something we all know: our guys really suck at saying nice things out loud to each other. For two people are constantly thinking nauseatingly sweet and loving things about each other, they almost never actually verbalize them. 

I ended up going through a lot of quotes and tracking some of the nice things that they actually do say to each other, and I’ll offer some very  r a m b l i n g  thoughts on what I think Simon and Baz’s respective paths indicate for AWTWB. 

I was interested in the intersection of when Simon and Baz are being honest to each other (aka saying some of the nice things that they’re always thinking) with when Simon and Baz are being honest about themselves (aka self-acceptance).

TL;DR, my prediction for their path through honesty is:

Simon’s self-acceptance (which starts at the end of WS)

Simon’s honesty to Baz re: love

Baz’s honesty to Simon re: love

Baz’s self acceptance

**Below the cut because it got super long, yikes**

Phase 1: Simon being nice/honest in CO

The first nice-ish interaction between Simon and Baz in Carry On is when Simon follows Baz up to the Mage’s office, and they find Baz’s baby photo:

“Here,” [Simon] says softly, holding it out to me. “I’m… sorry.” (204)

Simon tones down his initial hostility in this scene after he sees the photo. This moment, along with Natasha’s visitation, catalyzes a real change in how Simon views Baz, and it’s indicative of the larger shift (vulnerability → Simon seeing Baz as more than his enemy → Baz wearing jeans → oops I love him). This trajectory continues during their truce-- there are still a few moments of hostility, but honestly on the whole, Simon is pretty nice to Baz:

“You don’t want to hurt me,” I say, trying to push him back. “Isn’t that right? I’m sorry. Look at me, I’m sorry.” (210)

“I’ll help you,” he says (217)

“Baz,” I yell. “No! You’re flammable!” (238)

All of this culminates in the kisses in the forest, and Simon says a few more nice and affirming things around that point:

“They say your soul dies.”   “That’s tosh,” he says. (300)

“You’re not a monster,” I say. His face is cold as a corpse in my hand. “I was wrong. All those years. You’re a bully. And a snob. And a complete arsehold. But you’re not one of them.” (339)

“I won’t,” I say. I’ve never turned my back on you. And I’m not starting now.” (340)

Something that stood out to me after reviewing these moments is that Simon’s shift from enemies to lovers is actually pretty linear. As he learns more about Baz during their truce and they grow closer, Simon hates Baz less and consequently says nicer things to him, until he ultimately realizes he doesn’t hate Baz at all, so he kisses him and asks him to be his boyfriend. Weirdly logical behavior for someone so thick. Simon is being pretty open and honest, and this makes sense because Simon understands himself pretty well at this point. His big crisis of character comes in the next book. 

The thing is, at this point in Carry On, Baz has not said a single nice thing to Simon. The closest you could get is when he asks Simon to come to his house for Christmas, which is a great moment but is quickly muddled by their ensuing fight. 

(awesome thoughts about that moment here)

Baz has acted nicely, but he has remained sarcastic and aloof even after Simon kisses him. 

We get a few compliments of Simon’s power:

“You have to stop doing that.”  

“What?”

“Godlike displays of magic.” (348)

“You’re the most powerful magician alive-- who’s ever lived, probably.” (355)

I won’t repeat @super-duper-twelve’s brilliant meta on this, but this category of compliment is not ultimately that useful for their general communication.

Simon keeps pushing, despite the cold walls Baz tries to put up, and he asks Baz to be his “terrible boyfriend.” Honestly, it astounds me how much confidence Simon must’ve had to just shoot his shot there, because Baz was not giving him a ton of reason to think he’d go for it. Me as simon would’ve definitely been like: ok cool, nice kiss, he definitely still hates me though.

Phase 2: Baz being nice/honest

I want to be clear: it’s perfectly understandable why Baz, a flawed fictional character, is not nice to Simon. His trajectory from enemies to lovers is completely different, because he’s spent years loving Simon while acting like his enemy. He’s had great practice at that, and it’s the most relatable thing ever that he is afraid of getting hurt when he’s believed Simon to be an impossible dream for so long. This is also understandable when viewed through the lens of self-acceptance because huge facets of Baz’s identity are constantly being covered up and ignored by himself or by the people close to him (vampire, gay). He knows himself, sure, but he’s a very long way from self-acceptance.

Anyway, Baz does actually agree to be Simon’s boyfriend, and we get a couple of honest Nice Things that they say to each other during that brief period.

Unfortunately, this mutual honesty/niceness is incredibly short lived, because everything changes quickly after this: Humdrum, Mage, Ebb, etc. Simon’s world falls apart, and Baz is there to comfort him, affirm him, and (finally) be honest and nice. Their whole dynamic turns on its head. 

“You did it, didn’t you?” Baz whispers. “You defeated the Humdrum. You saved the day, you courageous fuck. You absolute nightmare.” (491)

“It’s going to be okay… it’s all right, love.” (492)

“You were the centre of my universe,” I say. “Everything else spun around you.” (506)

“Looking at you was like looking directly into the sun.” (507)

“You’re still Simon Snow. You’re still the hero of this story--” (507)

“It was brave. It was brave and selfless and clever. That’s who you are, Simon. And I’m not going to get bored with you.” (507)

“I choose you,” I say. “Simon Snow, I choose you.” (508)

To summarize and possibly oversimplify:

Up until the night of the Mage and Ebb’s death, Simon was the one pushing forward, being honest, and looking to break down the boundaries and walls between them. 

After that point, Baz finally feels ready to be all in with Simon, and Simon retreats inward. 

Phase 3: Wayward Son

We see this dynamic play out in Wayward Son, with almost no change throughout the whole book. Right from the very first chapter, Simon is thinking:

“Everything that happened with the Mage and the Hum-drum just made Baz more of who he was meant to be… He proved himself as a man and a magician. He proved himself right: The Mage really was evil! And I really was a fraud—’the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen,’ just like Baz used to say. He was right about me all along. “ (8)

I think it’s really notable that Simon can use his boyfriend’s words to justify his own worst self-doubts and self-loathings, because it indicates the consequences of them spending way more time insulting each other than ever being honest and affirming.

In Wayward Son, tender and honest moments between Simon and Baz are few and far between and mostly in the form of post-battle kisses. The only real communication that we see between them comes in flashbacks, wherein we see how much Simon has pulled back from Baz (the descriptions of his reaction to physical intimacy being one example of this). 

Even when Baz says nice things to Simon and affirms him, Simon’s presumed depression largely keeps him from believing and internalizing those things (through no real fault of either person. Again, very understandable ways for both of these flawed characters with traumatic pasts to behave!!!!!). Baz yells, “you’re so beautiful” to Simon, and he doesn’t even hear him (a gutting moment that I consider indicative of the general dynamic between them throughout the book).

Now, we get to Rainbow’s comments about Baz “settling for Simon.” I feel this. Simon is pushing Baz away and giving Baz basically nothing, and that is not a healthy dynamic. Baz is going through his own crap and self-doubt and self-acceptance, and Simon is not there for him apart from fits of jealous rage. As we learned in Carry On, it takes a lot for Baz to even feel remotely comfortable expressing his feelings for Simon, and with many months lacking that, it starts to wilt. 

What’s next: Prologue and AWTWB

Of course, the moment of truest communication in the second book comes at the very end:

“Why can’t you just admit that you’d be happier here?” “Why can’t you see that I wouldn't be happier anywhere without you?” (353)

I think the key to understanding what might come after this agonizing moment lies with Simon’s thoughts as he sits alone on the beach.

Before Baz arrives, Simon’s not thinking about his boyfriend. He’s thinking about himself. He’s contemplating his role in the World of Mage’s (hello, synopsis for AWTWB), and he’s taking a good, long look in the mirror. He’s starting to be honest about himself and accept himself (not perfectly, and I think this imperfect acceptance is reflected in his expressed desire to get rid of his wings, but he’s getting there). 

When Simon talks about Baz staying in America and being happy, Simon is not closing himself up and pushing Baz away, which he had done for so long and which caused so much miscommunication up to this point. Rather, this is a moment of true honesty on Simon’s part. 

Baz does need to learn more about himself and his vampirism. Simon recognizes this about Baz, just as Simon is trying to understand himself, too. In this moment, Simon is being true and vulnerable and speaking from a place of love. Baz refuses to self-reflect honestly and understand the truth in what Simon is saying, instead clinging to his love for Simon (without actually verbalizing that love). Throughout WS, Baz makes very stunted progress (see: his floral clothing as symbolism, being able to retract his fangs, meeting other vampires and learning about immortality and all that fun stuff), but in the end he doesn’t let himself actually think about that in any real way. Despite what Simon says, Baz has not yet “become more of who he was meant to be.” 

Importantly, this is in the “Prologue,” the beginning of the next phase in their healing and their relationship. As the balance shifts, this could be the beginning of real communication, but Simon needs to take the next step. At the end of WS, Baz is the one holding back. Baz isn’t able to accept himself honestly, so he won’t be able to fully let Simon in, either. 

Until Simon says “I love you,” they won’t get anywhere in their relationship. Simon needs to say it first, he needs to be vulnerable and honest in a way that he hasn’t been since before the Mage’s death, and Baz needs to understand those feelings in order to fully express his own. Then, I see Simon’s fully expressed love and support as a catalyst for Baz’s final self-acceptance. 

I think Simon will be unable to fully express his love for Baz until he has understood and accepted himself. However, Baz will continue to prioritize Simon/love over his own self-acceptance until either (A) Simon and Baz break up, or (B) Baz finally has confidence and security in their relationship because Simon has broken down the barriers of honesty and said “I love you.” Simon needing to say “I love you” first also gets at the idea of Simon needing to become someone that Baz deserves (per Rainbow’s words). 

So, I predict this as their path through honesty:

Simon’s self-acceptance (which starts at the end of WS)

Simon’s honesty to Baz re: love

Baz’s honesty to Simon re: love

Baz’s self acceptance

And then they will live happily ever after. The end.

*** Please let me know what you think and if this makes any sense!! ***

#carry on meta #wayward son #simon snow meta #carry on #awtwb #awtwb predictions #snowbaz #my nonsense

[mewtonian-physics]

my ranking of the alex rider original series (stormbreaker through scorpia rising) from ‘book i least enjoy rereading’ to ‘book i most enjoy rereading’ let’s goooo

spoilers for all 9 books under the cut

9. Ark Angel

...He went to space. He went to space. Also the entire plot could have been avoided if Drevin had actually bothered to provide a photograph of his son. I’m sure he had one. I still like this book but it’s literally so insane that I just don’t know what to do with it. 

It is however really funny that Webber just goes and gives a speech insulting this super high-profile ecoterrorist group and acts like it’s no big deal and then they kill him. Shock of shocks.

8. Skeleton Key

Okay, points to this book for terrifying the shit out of me. God damn it does that shark scene scare me. Also, points for making me feel a little bit bad for a man who wants to nuke his own country because he thinks it will fix the place up. I’m still not entirely sure how that’s supposed to work, but that’s probably a good thing. I feel like understanding his thought process would say bad things about me. Still, I actually did feel sorry for him, if only a little. Dude was clearly mentally unstable and I doubt his son’s death helped at all. I also got sad about what happened to Carver and Troy. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a cringe fail American who has the American release. So sue me.) What a nightmare that must’ve been to endure... Otherwise, though, I’m not super into this book. The opening is just kind of meh and the way it leads into the rest of the plot seems a little bit unbelievable. Also, this might be an unpopular opinion, but Sabina annoys me. I would not get along with her at all and I can’t imagine her as a girlfriend. Skeleton Key does, however, absolutely excel at the emotional scenes. 

Also, why are all the spy agencies so comfortable with sending in a 14-year-old? Especially when they outright admit that the other attempts have all died horribly? Bureaucracy’s a bitch.

7. Point Blank

Boo, Dr. Grief! Boo! We hate your white supremacy! I’m so glad you got a snowmobile to the face, you deserved it. (Perks of books written by Jewish people--we aren’t afraid to give the neo-Nazis an unpleasant death.) Anyway, this book definitely isn’t bad, but I wouldn’t really say it stands out in the series. It definitely does hammer home the point of just how trapped Alex is, since MI6 isn’t going to just let him go after one mission, and let’s face it, the plot with the clones is creepy as hell, if highly improbable. But I’m largely just here to see the neo-Nazi get snowmobiled. That’s right, I just completely changed the definition of a pre-established word. I’m a rebel.

Also, I hate Fiona Friend so much and overall think she just didn’t need to be in the book, but the line about ‘I’d rather kiss the horse’ made me laugh so hard. Alex, you sass.

6. Snakehead

Okay, let’s talk about how genius the plan in this book is. I love it! I love how Yu wants to kill the people involved in the peace conference without making them into martyrs, so he comes up with this whole elaborate plan to stage a natural disaster. It’s incredible. This dude was thinking so far ahead. And he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling kid... But anyway, I don’t see a lot of books where the villain really acknowledges that killing their enemies could just cause more problems for them via turning them into martyrs for a cause. Also, the way he’s so polite and soft-spoken while also being a complete monster... This book genuinely gives me chills. Extra bonus points for the part in the hospital, the absolute nightmare of having all your organs slowly removed and sold off and everyone around you is being so nice about it? ‘Oh, don’t worry, Alex, it won’t be so bad. Here, take your medicine. Do you need anything?’ Literally just. What the fuck. 

Also Ash can fucking fight me. You put your own godson in horrible danger on purpose! You killed your best friend! Bastard. 

...And just in case the book wasn’t disturbing enough, Yu’s fate at the end lives in my mind rent-free and I think about it on a concerningly regular basis considering that the chances of that happening to me are so low they’re practically in the negatives. Damn you, Horowitz.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention just how much I love the tagline ‘once bitten, twice spy’.

5. Crocodile Tears

Ah yes, the book that kickstarted my drift away from the church... I kid, of course. I drifted away from the church for completely separate reasons. But Desmond McCain is always going to scare the shit out of me. The ability to kill countless innocent people while blissfully quoting Bible verses (that he takes wildly out of context and uses for his own self-serving means) is... well, I could actually say a lot about what that reminds me of, but I’m here to rate books, not religion. Moving on. This book has some really stellar antagonists, and the plot is chilling in a way that feels a lot more realistic than most of the other books. Even if some of it is a bit farfetched (sabotaging a nuclear power plant? Really?), the idea of using disasters for your own profit... well. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on why that is so believable. The Poison Dome is also a really cool and chilling scene--even Alex, who has the luck of the devil, can’t get out of that one unscathed. Further scares come in with the fate of Harold Bulman--imagine having your entire existence wiped and your identity changed while you were asleep! The breakdown he has over it is almost enough to make me feel sorry for him, even though he was ready to exploit a teenager and make his life a living hell just to turn a profit. Note the word almost.

Also. The opening makes me cry. Specifically the line talking about how Ravi’s kids would ‘never meet Mickey Mouse’. I lose my goddamn mind every single time I read it. That little personal touch turns the scene from a statistic to a tragedy. Once again: Damn you, Horowitz.

4. Stormbreaker

Yeah, this one gets the special cover shot. And why not? What we are looking at here is the birth of a legend. Move the fuck over, James Bond, Alex Rider is on the scene now. Anyway, yeah, this book is pretty damn spectacular. It has its stumbles, but as the first book in a series, that’s to be expected. Still, it pulls you in from quite literally the first line and keeps you going right up until the end. (If you came here from my post of memes, you know how much the line ‘Killing is for grownups, and you’re still a child’ destroys me.) It has the debut of much-beloved characters such as, of course, Alex--but also Jack Starbright, and of course, the best MI6 agent of them all, which is to say Smithers. Hell, even Yassen Gregorovich, especially once you get through Russian Roulette... Man, that was a rough one. 

Seriously, though. This is a really good book. The scene with the Portuguese man-o’-war still gives me the chills to think about. (Have you ever looked up pictures of those things? They’re beautiful, but holy shit will they make you regret being born. Nature is funny like that.) 

We also get the introduction of, of course, Alex’s patented sass (his response to Sayle saying he relates to the man-o’-war is HILARIOUS) and we get the inherent humor of Alex screwing up an alias one time and then just going by Alex for the rest of the series so he doesn’t do that again. Really, kid, I know you’re not a trained spy or anything but did you never play pretend growing up? Ever? You can’t pretend your name is Felix for a little while? That sounds like a you problem.

3. Scorpia Rising

I distinctly remember when this book came out, actually. I was on vacation at the time, and I remember my brother annoying the hell out of the poor workers at a bookstore we frequented there to see if/when they were going to get it in. They did, finally, and we bought it immediately, and I was of course absolutely desperate to read it. He got to read it first, though. -_-

This is a great book, an absolute emotional rollercoaster all the way through. The way Blunt tricks Alex back into service by staging a shooting was exactly the kind of cold, brutal behavior I’d expect from him. Seeing Julius come back was shocking, but very exciting, too. And Razim makes an incredibly chilling villain, with his absolute disregard for human life and his desire to measure pain. Also, seeing Smithers’s house was so much fun. Smithers in this book was just really fun in general, but he’s really fun in every book, so... nothing unusual there. But also, I want an unwelcome mat. Please?

2. Eagle Strike

‘But Penny,’ you might ask, ‘why is this book so high on your list? It has so much of Sabina in it, and you said she annoys you.’ That is true. What does not annoy me, however, is basically the entire rest of the book. I love the tense opening, and then reading through Alex’s real-life ‘playthrough’ of Feathered Serpent is still one of my favorite scenes. Cray is absolutely incredible as a villain, with the way that he truly believes in his cause--which is undoubtedly a good one! Yet the extremes to which he will go for that cause, and the fact that he very nearly succeeds, are what elevate him to one of the most dangerous villains in the series. That scene with Charlie Roper and the nickels is something I can never seem to stop thinking about. Actually, I think about it basically whenever I think about large amounts of money paid in small increments... 

Also, I really enjoy how he gets into the whole plot in the first place, and I really enjoy Smithers saying ‘ah, fuck it’ and helping him out anyway. Go, Smithers. You once again prove me right in saying that you’re the coolest adult in MI6.

The revelation that Yassen knew Alex’s father is one that absolutely blew my mind first time around. The way his life was threaded into the lives of the Rider family--he worked with John Rider, was saved by him, killed Ian Rider, and then died for refusing to kill Alex Rider--wow. Wow. It gets to me. It really gets to me. This book is a masterpiece. I heard that it’s going to be what the second season of the TV series is based off of, and I’m so hyped for that. We love to see it, we really do.

1. Scorpia

I don’t believe anyone who says this book didn’t get to them at all. I just think they are lying. I don’t think it’s humanly possible to not be affected by this book. God. Just thinking about it reminds me of why I don’t think it’s possible. I mean, come on. We get all this backstory about Alex’s parents, we get tricked along with him into thinking MI6 killed his father, then bam, that was a lie, and Alex may have just fucked himself over big time. Also, that plot is terrifying! (And I bet anti-vaxxers had a field day with it, huh.) Julia Rothman is a really great antagonist, one of the only ones who didn’t go and explain her plan in great detail to Alex--the fact that she didn’t actually being a plot point was something I personally found pretty clever. In general, this book is... I tend to hate when people say they ‘can’t put it down’ because it’s usually an obvious exaggeration, but that really is how I feel reading it.

And again. If that ending didn’t get to you... Well, I just think you are lying.

#alex rider #spoilers

[thedumpsterqueen]

Standards of Performance, Chapter 6: Buckshot and Tequila

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

AO3 Link

Finally, I write most of the chapter before the day I’m supposed to post it. This was mostly done on my laptop (which I’m not used to) as we just moved and my PC is barely set up, so forgive anything that looks weird or wonky. As always, I hope you enjoy. I love getting all your kind messages <3 (Also message me if you want to be on the taglist - I suppose I should be better about that!)

Summary:  You’re the BAU’s newest intern, desperate to prove yourself amongst an established team of much more experienced profilers. Agent Hotchner, the seemingly infallible team leader, sets strict expectations for your performance. He commands your respect without even trying, but is there something more to your relationship than a simple desire to impress your stony-faced boss?

Chapter: 6, Buckshot and Tequila

Chapter Summary: Events during a new case test your ability to keep your feelings hidden, and a night out takes an unforeseen turn. 

Words: 3736

Rating: Explicit, 18+. Warnings on AO3.

Pairings: Hotch x Reader, Hotch x You

Turns out, lying to Hotch was easier than you thought.

It helped that you were lying to yourself too, of course - that you pretended your gaze didn't linger on his form whenever he was in your vicinity, that the swell of pride in your chest when he agreed with something you said was purely professional. There were times, though, that the facade was much harder to maintain. The most recent case had been one of those times.

You had been tracking down an unsub abducting children in a rural Iowa town. Three kids had gone missing in the span of two weeks, and after Garcia matched the victimology and MO with neighboring states, it looked to be close to a dozen in the years before that. The case started off rough enough - locals refused to believe it could be one of their own, police resisted the BAU’s guidance, the usual - but it came to a head when a fourth child went missing during the investigation.

Thankfully, the team figured out the identity of the unsub relatively quickly. Reid did a geographical profile of all the locations where victims were taken and found a public health clinic that had branches in each area. Garcia cross-checked the employee records to find that only one doctor had done travel shifts at each clinic during the time the children were taken, and within minutes, you were rushing to his address.

The SUV carrying Hotch, Rossi, and Prentiss arrived long enough before yours that by the time you pulled up, they were already kicking down the door and entering the home. The first thing you heard after you flung the car door open was the deafening crack of a weapon firing, and despite your lack of training with firearms, it was apparent that it was not an FBI-issue pistol.

You would never describe yourself as fragile - you couldn't be, not in this line of work. But when you registered the implications of that sound, your knees buckled, instantly bringing you down onto the dusty ground outside the farmhouse. The rest of the team sprinted in, guns drawn. You faintly registered Prentiss yelling inside, then more gunshots, but your head was ringing so loudly from the visceral panic that you couldn’t make out anything specific.

When Hotch burst back out onto the porch, you thought you might honestly sob with relief. That is, until you caught the glint of the sun in the slick, dark blood dripping down the sleeve of his suit.

That was when you puked.

Something about the sight of Aaron Hotchner bleeding felt so wrong that even as you struggled to your feet and stepped over the pile of sick you left in the dirt, even as you got closer and saw the rivulets of blood drip down to his fingertips and dot the wooden floors of the porch, you felt like you were in a dream. Your mind couldn’t grasp the sudden shock of his mortality, that he could bleed, that he could die, even, and he very well might, depending on what vessels were hit. You made it up the steps, only managing to call out his name - his first name - your throat still burning from bile. Despite the chaos of the current moment, he still whipped his head around at the sound of that, as if hearing the name Aaron desperately falling from your lips was more attention-grabbing than the rest of the team gathering around him trying to stem the bleeding.

“It looks worse than it is,” said Rossi, peering through the holes in Hotch’s mangled sleeve. “It was just buckshot, and he barely hit you. Nothing a few stitches won’t fix.”

He turned out to be right, thank god, and later that afternoon, Hotch was freshly bandaged and sitting across from you on the return flight to Quantico.

So, yeah, the “lying to yourself” thing wasn’t going so well at that moment. Hotch was absorbed in paperwork while the rest of the team napped - because of course he was; even being shot didn’t sway his apparently relentless refusal to relax - and each time he winced at the movement of his arm, your vice grip around your chest tightened a little more.

He must have sensed you staring, because he looked up, frown softening slightly as he saw the concern on your face.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” he assured you with a half smile.

Teetering on an emotional precipice, too scared to respond for fear of falling over the edge, you went back to your reading. After a few minutes of listening to him write while not turning a single page in your book, he set his pen down and took a breath.

“You were screaming my name,” he said, quietly, despite you two being the only ones awake.

“What?”

“Earlier,” he clarified, “when we went into the house. I could hear you outside, yelling my name.”

You looked at him, incredulous. “Of course I did. I heard the shotgun go off. Clearly,” you gestured at his arm, “I had a reason to be worried.”

He shook his head and cleared his throat, as if you didn’t understand the question. “Dave and Emily were with me. Any of us could have gotten hit. You only yelled for me.”

Oh.

You shrugged. “You’re the team leader. It’s my instinct to call for you when something goes wrong."

It was a lie, and a bad one at that, but Hotch gave you an unreadable look and let the subject drop.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, and when you finally made it back to your apartment, you had no plans other than to sleep off the stress of the case and the embarrassment of Hotch calling your actions into question. Garcia, however, wasn't about to let that happen.

BAU-tiful People Group Chat

Garcia: *added You to the conversation*

Garcia: Ok, my lovely children, I know you’re all tired, but I miss your faces, so I’ll see u at Whimsy tonight at 9! Notice I didn’t use a question mark bc it is NOT a question!

You knew from overhearing the team talk that Whimsy was a bar downtown they liked to frequent, but you’d never been invited before. Despite your overwhelming exhaustion, the idea of going out with the team, of finally feeling accepted by them, was enough to make you amenable to the concept. It may have seemed insignificant on the surface, but Garcia adding you to their group chat was the biggest welcome gesture you’d received yet.

Morgan: Only if you wear that dress you know I like ;)

You lived for the day they would realize they were actually flirting with each other instead of just pretending to.

Prentiss: Garcia… you’re killing me… but you know I’ll be there.

JJ: Contacting the babysitter as we speak.

Morgan: Fuck yeah!!! Pretty Boy, you in?

Reid: Can’t we ever go somewhere quiet?

As the group chimed in with various iterations of, “Shut up, Reid,” you hesitantly typed out a text to confirm your attendance. You were excited, of course, but nervous to be the new kid at their favorite hangout. After today's events, though, the desire not to be sober won out over nerves.

You: I’ll be there! Thanks for the invite!

Rossi: Hope you kids are ready for me to drink you under the table, as usual.

Morgan: Eyyy, you KNOW we party hard! See y’all tonight.

____________

Turns out, Morgan was not exaggerating. Not even a little bit. By the time you arrived, 15 minutes late, everyone looked to be at least 3 shots deep. Garcia ran over to greet you, squealing, and wrapped you in a suffocating hug.

“I’m so glad you came! What do you drink? Tequila? I’ll grab the next round!”

You laughed and confirmed that tequila sounded great, and as she scurried off to the bar with Morgan on her heels, you had a chance to look around.

The atmosphere of the club surprised you - it was all glass and steel and modernity, packed with people dancing to something with intense bass - not the low-key joint you’d pictured the team wanting to unwind at. But as you watched JJ, Prentiss, and Rossi cheer on Reid as he threw back a shot, doubling over in hysterics as he coughed and sputtered at the taste, you realized that this place was just loud and energetic enough to keep them from thinking about anything other than work. In that way, you definitely saw the appeal.

“I come bearing shots!” Garcia yelled as her and Morgan made it back to the table. “Grab yours… here we go- whoops! Alright, everyone got theirs?”

She turned to you, grinning behind a pair of hot pink spectacles. “Cheers not ONLY to rescuing four kidnapped children alive, but also to our lovely intern and her first Whimsy outing!”

The team erupted in cheers and you smiled back, downing the tequila. You chatted with the group while Garcia ordered more drinks, and then more drinks, and soon you felt a pleasant buzz filling your head.

“Morgan, you better ask me to dance right now before I go find another man to do the job,” Garcia said with a wink in his direction.

Morgan grinned and mock-bowed, holding out a hand for her to take, and led her off to the dancefloor.

“Should we join them?” JJ asked around the table.

“Someone’s gotta make sure they don’t do anything worth getting kicked out for,” Prentiss shot back. You giggled and followed the girls, leaving Rossi and Reid behind at the table in the midst of a heated debate about childhood brain development that you couldn’t even hope to comprehend.

Not long after you started dancing, you felt a gentle tap on your shoulder and turned around, looking up into the stunning green eyes of a man who looked to be about your age. It was hard to really tell what he looked like in the dim lighting, but by the way Prentiss was giving you a thumbs up and mouthing, “Go for it,” from your side, he was good enough for you.

“Do you want to dance?” he asked above the music. You smiled and nodded in confirmation, letting him wrap his arms around your waist and pull you to his hips.

He knew how to move, that was for certain. He ground against your backside lightly, snaking his hands around your stomach. You weren’t used to this kind of thing - dancing with random men at bars, letting them touch you like this - but the combination of the music and the booze and the relief at the last case being over was making you feel more free than you had in recent memory.

You exchanged grins with Morgan, who was dancing a few feet away in a much more R-rated manner with Garcia. The man behind you (whose name you didn’t know, but who cared?) leaned down to kiss your neck and you arched against him in response, reaching up to run your hand through his hair.

Throughout the song, you had rotated back to facing the table where the rest of your team was sitting. You glanced over, saw Reid and Rossi still deep in discussion, along with another man in a black button-up with a very familiar side profile and-

Hotch.

Hotch was here, and as if the powers that be were insistent upon proving to you that the opposite of serendipity existed, at the exact moment you had that realization, he turned and made direct eye contact with you. Drunk, wearing a skintight dress, a random man grinding on your ass, and staring right back at your Unit Chief at the motherfucking Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Your heart dropped to your stomach, and if you had been drunker, you might have hurled tequila all over the dancefloor. Instead, you pulled away from the mystery man behind you, ignoring his shocked, “Wait!” and beelined to the bar.

“Tequila. Shot. Please, I’m sorry, just saw someone I didn’t expect to,” you blurted out to the bartender, swearing you could feel Hotch’s eyes on your back from across the club.

The bartender, probably having seen much worse, nodded in understanding and poured your drink. You gulped it down, wiped your mouth, and leaned on the bar to get your bearings.

It’s not weird. It’s not. It’s a bar, it’s outside of work hours, it’s perfectly fine that you’re buzzed and dancing and having fun. Everyone else is!

Really, it wasn’t that you were worried about your job, or even that he would judge you (he probably would, but that was unavoidable regardless of the setting), it was just that you hadn’t mentally prepared yourself for the possibility that he would come. He was in the group chat - obviously, if he had seen Garcia’s invite - but had never struck you as the social type, the kind of boss that would interact with his team outside of work.

“Did you see that Hotch is here?” Prentiss asked breathlessly, appearing at the bar beside you.

Apparently, you weren’t the only one surprised.

“I did,” you whispered back, despite the thumping music and the rowdy patrons making it logically impossible for your words to reach the table 20 feet away. “Does he usually join you guys?”

“Never,” she said, before thinking and correcting herself, “Not in years, anyways. When Haley… we used to drag him out, but we stopped after a while.”

“Why do you think he came tonight?"

She shrugged. “Who knows? Far be it from me to explain why Hotch does anything.” An idea seemed to pop in her head, and she grinned. “Maybe it’s because of you!”

“M-me?” Your reaction to the suggestion wasn’t nearly as nonchalant as you’d tried for, but Prentiss was too drunk to notice.

“Yeah, gotta help initiate the intern on her first night out, right?” She grinned and clapped you on the shoulder, then turned away to head back to the dancefloor, leaving you alone. You sighed, gathered yourself as much as you could considering the effects of the tequila, and turned around to go greet him.

“Hey, Agent Hotchner. Didn’t expect to see you tonight!”

“Yes, well. Thought I’d show up for a bit; it’s been a while.” He gave you a tight lipped smile then looked back down at his glass of whisky, the awkward energy palpable.

Probably because he just saw you basically dry-humping some random dude.

“Well, I’m glad you came! Feel free to, uh, come dance if you want! Morgan and Garcia are showing us all up,” you said, gesturing to where Morgan and Garcia were in fact drawing the attention of several onlookers.

He chuckled at that. “They’re certainly a sight to behold, aren’t they?”

You nodded in agreement and headed back to the bar, the brief conversation pointing you towards yet another drink. Talking to him was so easy , sometimes, and others it was like pulling teeth to get a human response out of him. Could you blame him, though? Your last one-on-one interaction was you basically inviting yourself over to his apartment with takeout and listening to him spill his guts about his dead wife and kid, and he probably felt uncomfortable with you after that, and then you went right to this case without any chance for things to go back to normal, and then he got shot, and oh my god, you didn’t even ask him how his arm was doing, how fucking rude can you be, dumbass? and-

“Whoops! Shit, I’m sorry!”

You looked at the person you’d just bumped into in the midst of your internal crisis.

“Hey, it’s you!”

The man you’d been dancing with earlier, now much more obviously handsome in the brighter lights of the bar area, grinned in recognition.

“Hey, I thought I’d scared you off there!”

You laughed and shook your head. “No, I’m sorry. Just saw my boss and freaked out a little bit.”

“Oh shit, your boss is here?” he asked. “That’s uncomfortable, damn. I’m sorry.”

“No worries, it’s just… yeah. Anyways. Wanna pick up where we left off?” you asked, more desperate than ever to get Hotch out of your head. If he didn’t want to see you having a wild night, he shouldn’t have come to the club.

He took your hand, looking pleased. “Lead the way.”

It really was so much easier, you thought, to let yourself feel attraction for guys like this. Uncomplicated, willing to take what you give them, no backstory to speak of. They weren’t riddled with tragic history, unattainable in both position and personality, not to mention impossible to even imagine ever returning your feelings. Guys like Cooper (you’d finally learned his name somewhere amid the grinding and groping) were easy and fun and they didn’t keep you up at night agonizing over whether that thing you said at work was impressive enough.

But then again, they didn’t give you the roller-coaster feeling in your stomach that Aaron Hotchner did every time you locked eyes.

And lock eyes you did - an increasingly frequent number of times, actually. It seemed like whenever you turned to face his direction, he was staring you down. He always went back to his conversation with Rossi and Reid, but you noticed that he seemed to get more and more pissed off with every song that played. His frown was deepened, his expression dark, and you could tell even from a distance that his knuckles were white from gripping his glass.

You shrugged it off as Hotch being Hotch - who knew what that man was thinking? And besides, you were trying to forget him, damn it. At least, that was until a particularly raunchy song came on and you were in the middle of getting your ass felt up, when you felt a hand squeeze your shoulder and whip you around, bringing you face-to-face with your boss himself.

“Hey, what’s going on? Is something wrong?” you asked, utterly bewildered as to why he was interrupting you.

He ignored you, instead staring down Cooper, who very quickly decided Hotch wasn’t one to fuck with and walked away.

“Hotch! Is there a case? Should I grab the others?”

He shook his head. “Can you come with me, please?”

Perplexed, you acquiesced (not that you had much of a choice, with the way he was gripping your elbow) and followed him through the crowd, out the back door, and into an alley. He let go of you then, sighing and crossing his arms.

Your mind was wild with questions - did you do something you shouldn’t have? Get too drunk? Everyone was drunk, though, and you weren’t even half as wasted as some of the others. Did Reid or Rossi tell him something bad about you? Were you about to somehow get yourself fired off the clock?

“The boy you were dancing with was bad news,” he said, after an uncomfortably long period of silence.

What the fuck?

“What the fuck?” you repeated, this time out loud, and you knew you shouldn’t be talking to him like this, but you were too caught off guard to conduct yourself more appropriately.

“He was a drug user,” Hotch said, as if that would explain everything.

“A drug user,” you repeated back, no less confused.

“Cocaine,” he continued. “He was high - his pupils were dilated, he was rubbing his nose, and he's been to the bathroom several times.”

“So… you’re going to arrest him? For doing cocaine?” you asked, still baffled as to what he was insinuating.

“What? No,” he said, “I’m trying to warn you not to get involved.”

You had entered some parallel universe, you decided. There was no other explanation for your boss, a man you’d known all of four months, dragging you outside a bar on a Friday night and telling you not to dance with a hot stranger because he was on cocaine.

You took a deep breath, trying to calm yourself before you really did get yourself fired. “Sir, I appreciate the concern, but I don’t think it’s really any of your business.”

His face hardened at that. “It is exactly my business,” he said, eyes boring a hole through your skull, “to watch out for things that may compromise my team.”

“Compromise your team?” you repeated his words again. “I was dancing, not getting engaged to the guy.”

“Should I allow you to dance with a sexual sadist if it’s just dancing?” he pressed, using the stern voice that usually caused any sort of dissent to whither and die right in your throat.

It didn’t work this time, probably because he was acting fucking insane. “Are you seriously comparing a sexual sadist to a guy who does cocaine while he’s out partying?”

“It’s not just while he’s out partying, by the way he conducted himself, he was a chronic-”

“It doesn’t matter!” you said, nearly yelling now. “You had no right! I'm sorry, what are you, my dad?!”

His eyes flashed at that. “If I hadn’t already had to sit through an 8 hour surgery not knowing if Garcia was going to make it out alive because her date shot her, then perhaps I would have no right. But as it stands, I do. Please be more careful with who you associate with, even if it’s just dancing.”

He spat that last part out, more vitriolic than you’d ever seen him, and stalked back inside. You were left outside in the alley, alone, reeling from confusion surrounding the entire interaction and shock at the emotional charge he’d leveled at you.

Reentering the bar, you saw that Hotch’s seat had been vacated and his jacket was gone. You rolled your eyes, and on your way to the bathroom, nearly ran into Cooper again.

“Hey!” he said. “What was that all about? You good?”

You looked up at his face and for the first time, noticed faint traces of white dust around his nose. He looked keyed up, jumpy - his pulse racing and visible on his carotid. You sighed.

“I’m good. Just not in the mood right now, sorry,” and pushed past him into the bathroom.

Hotch was an emotionally stunted asshole with a control complex, but he was also never fucking wrong.

#hotch x reader #hotch x you #aaron hotchner x y/n #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner imagine #hotch #hotchner fanfic #criminal minds smut #thomas gibson #agent hotchner #mgg #jennifer jareau #emily prentiss #spencer reid #dr reid #criminal minds #david rossi #derek morgan #slow burn #fanfiction #writing #ao3 #criminal minds headcanons #sub!reader #standards of performance #dom!hotch #daddy hotch

[nightswithkookmin]

I am a hard Taekook shipper but recently Jikook have been melting my heart by being so cute and cudly and loving. I understand and i am sorry for so mhch hate from Taekookers but trust me Taekookers are a bit shaken right now. I cannot disclose my name here but i would like to say if Jikook is real or they decide to come out which i higly doubt then i am 100% in support and also ur page helped me open my eyes and see a diff sude of shipping which is needed alot more. I am Loving Love ryt now.

C'est la vie!

So sorry for the late response love. You've always been on my mind.

I get not every Taekooker is wild and rabid just as not every Joker is sane and fake woke. Lol.

I mean I'm still holding on to my grudge against your people for storming my business pages and leaving shit reviews on my books- and laughing about it? What was that? Damn. Had to change my author name and everything and I've since been publishing under an alias- let me tell you, it's no fun at all.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have called y'all's ship dead- but honestly it dead, it dried up like a drop of sweat on a dessert. What can I say? People just don't want the truth, lol- had these angry thirteen year olds and fake woke Jokers coming for my ass and my business ass on the flamingo app. Chilee. Your people don't want to be civil. Sigh.

Some people just have no sense of personal responsibility and when they get called out for it they slap you with the whole, 'no one asked you to put yourself and your business out there' - this creepy behavior and mental adroitness is not far from rapists blaming girls for wearing short shorts and mini skirts or thieves blaming people for not putting up a fence and shit to protect their property. It's fucked up.

And don't get me started on what they do to Jimin or JK... or even Tae- not to make you feel bad or anything. It's just my people suck, your people suck, we all suck square- don't apologize for it unless you plan on doing something to change it?

As for Taekook, yea I don't think there is anything wrong with shipping them. They have a beautiful bond, they are both visuals and both funny as hell. If you won't ship them I will. Lol.

Just know the reason you are shipping them? If you are shipping them because you genuinely believe they are a couple too then you need to stop shipping them and start supporting them?

And once you start supporting them then I think you'd sooner realize there isn't anything there to support in the first place. Lol.

I support Jikook because I believe with my full chest they are real and are closeted- emphasis on closeted. And for the record, they are the only queer couples in BTS.

Tae lost his queer card when he accidentally outed Jimin on that radio show. 'I think he likes men' yea, straight up het behavior. Lack of homo sensitivity.

Did you see JK's reaction when JM was asked to spill tea on their pervy behaviors behind cams? My butt quivered. Chilee, I thought he was gone out JK too. Damn.

I think the word real and closeted have come loose and cheap on these streets these days. I don't think most of these shippers when they throw it around fully understand the term or realise what it means and what it takes. If they did, they wouldn't randomly be labeling every ship as 'real' within the fandom.

If you believe Taekook is real and that they are equally hiding their sexuality as well as their relationship within the group, then you should understand how severe and traumatizing this fact is and would be for them as gay men?

The thing is, they are not just hiding parts of themselves and their identity for the sake of their careers or military or whatever if they are real, they are lying to millions, millions of people at a time about who they really are by keeping their identity a secret. Secrets are lies honey, however way we want to see it.

If they are real then they are concealing their true identity away from not just their families and friends- if they haven't come out to them, but acquaintances from work, businesses who wouldn't work with them otherwise, brands, sponsors, Heads of states, their fans....

It's one thing for a heterosexual to keep their heterosexual relationship a secret, it's another for a queer person to keep their queerness and or queer relationship a secret.

A lie as heavy as this is bound to take a toll on them, no matter how good they are at hiding it. A secret gets heavy before it gets easy. Not to sell you on anything but do you see any such secret taking a toll on Taekook? Because I see it taking a toll on Jikook.

Do you believe Taekook are closeted? Because I believe Jikook are.

Being closeted means they have to carry the guilt of knowing that each time they pander to heteronormative roles in variety shows or interviews, or imply by omissions that they are straight, or make generalizing statements about their sexuality to avoid addressing their sexuality directly or give it away, that they are lying to people and spewing half truths- seven years in a roll.

Being closeted is not a joke. It's heavy. I think you need to grasp this before you claim it for anyone.

People like to throw the 'closeted' phrase around willy nilly but fail to comprehend its weight and complexity and consequences especially for people that they believe are actually queer.

It's not easy lying to people about who you are. Unless you are a pathological liar and a psychopath, it's like drowning each day you wake up. You die a little each time. Your sexuality is a huge part of your identity and when you deny it for so long by lying and suppressing it, it's like shutting out a peice of yourself and silencing your own voice. The more you push it aside the louder it screams and the harder it fights to come out.

It's a state of constant internal struggle. You wake up everyday contemplating whether to risk the perfect life you've spent years building just so you can turn off the guilt that comes with keeping a secret of this nature.

And each time you get better at omitting or generalizing and evading questions that hint at your truth, the more you hate yourself and the more guilt you feel. This guilt can become a driving force that pushes you to make risky moves and take impulsive actions such as 'borderline outing your relationship'- does that sound like Taekook to you?

If you are not driven by the love you feel for your partner, you are driven by the guilt and neither is a great place to be if you are queer.

You lie everyday, you get caught up in the lies and soon you start believing in the web of lies you've woven around yourself such that you don't even recognize who you are or why you are, anymore. As such, you are constantly searching for yourself, to reconcile the bits you've hidden away and perhaps forgotten, and you keep exploring your identity because you are unsettled- honey, that sounds more like Jikook than Taekook to me but c'est la vie.

Being closeted is not about moments that get cut by editors, or less interactions, or being seperated or seated further apart from eachother. These are just ship street parlance. Being closeted is an attitudinal, internal attribute rather than external manipulations or influences- it's a science. Lol

Coming out may be risky for any of these boys if they are real, but I promise you hiding is much harder for them.

And so When I look at Taekook, and I see how beautiful they are yet I don't in God's honest truth see them 'dealing' with any or all of these struggles Jikook deal with or have dealt with at one point, in my opinion- forget the homophobia, the wanting to come out, the low key microaggressions they deal with even within the group- 'the Jk never stops crying,' 'the real men don't do this and that talk' talk, the toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia traits JK and Jimin used to exhibit in their early days talking about 'real men don't twerk,' 'real men don't wear rings on their pinky'- all the times Jimin have had to defend his masculinity or even femininity, or stand up for Kook's within the group. 'Men, men, men. What is men?'

Jikook are the only two within the group that in my opinion have struggled most with their identity, with embracing aspects of themselves; you hear them complain about 'living a lie' 'tired of hiding, lying' and all these are themes consistent with closet behavior that they've both explored in one way or the other and even as of 2020 they are still dealing with or 'exploring' their identities perhaps as a means to reconcile their true selves? I'm really struggling with this post because I don't wanna get salesy on your ass. Lol.

Don't get me wrong, Tae struggles and deals with issues too- mostly with loneliness, lowkey depression in my opinion, lowkey bullying- sometimes, lol and he often expresses a desire to find someone and be happy and yet 'his supporters' don't recognize that...

You can wait till Jikook come out officially as queer, if they ever chose to, to support them- Or you can choose to support them and love them now because that's what they need in order to officially come out as and when they choose to? Ok I'm being salesy. Lmho. I'll stop. Don't mind me. But think about it.

Ship whatever ship you want but support Jikook. It's all I'm asking. And by support, I mean don't exhibit any anti homosexual attitude towards them- deadass. You and I gone fight, square up toe to toe, if you do. Lol.

People don't need to be afraid of Jikook. They just need to treat them as human beings and not reduce them to a mere ship. They are a ship too yes, but they are more than that if you ask me.

You sound nice. I love you. I'm glad you enjoy my posts. Merry Christmas and cheers to our ships.

Keep supporting Jikook. Jikook is real.

Signed,

GOLDY

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

In Defense of Smashing Cameras

We are making ourselves vulnerable to attack.

More seriously, we are making each other vulnerable. Photographers at demonstrations will soon outnumber demonstrators, those who are willing to take action. This is something we need to take a stand against. Cameras are tools of surveillance, and whether it is us or the enemy that wields them, we are participating in our own surveillance. Groups and individuals who have an interest in publicity and photo opportunities need to recognise the fact that they can make everyone else vulnerable to repression and less effective. One group’s photo op is unwanted Twitter publicity for the 100 people surrounding them.

It is not a question of the desires of the few dictating the safety of the majority; it is a question of the politics of these desires. A protest is an attack, or at least, the threat of one. Considering this is a show of our strength, we need to seriously consider: what makes us less strong, less effective, what makes the collective-in-movement less powerful and more at risk? And here it is the cameras, which are continuous with techniques of surveillance.

Stopping for photos when you are part of a big group puts everyone at risk, risks separating those you are walking with from the safety of large numbers, and risks everyone behind you also being subjected to the penetrating eye of the journalist’s lens. This not only subjects others to your desire for publicity or fifteen minutes of fame for your actions (an ideological position it should not be assumed that every member of a collective action or formation desires), but can also lead to people who are ready to do something interesting feeling hesitant, after spending an hour with their every footstep, flag wave, and expression documented and disseminated by the multitudinous horde of camera clicking parasites.

Publicity is one issue. If we are on the streets we are in public; we are surveilled. We can’t escape this. What we can control is intelligible visibility. The reason we mask up is to become opaque, to elude intelligibility. Being photographed against our will is a direct attack against our attempts of obfuscation and ought to be treated as such. Cameras are tools of the surveillance state and dominant forms of control that our very presence on the streets seeks to dismantle.

Photographs at actions of our actions weaken us and consequently weaken our ability to act. This is not paranoia; it is a fact. For every police photograph, there are ten more incriminating ones on twitter. For every official observation, every surveillance camera pointed our direction, we are doing ourselves the injustice of allowing ourselves to be recorded, disseminated and documented by our peers, in the name of free speech or journalistic impartiality, entitlement, whatever you want to call it. And it has to stop.

This isn’t an innocent game where you spot yourself on Facebook and marvel at how rebellious you look. The reality is people face jail time because of foolish Twitter posts. The other reality is that sometimes it’s not just foolishness. There are journalists at demos who aren’t just capturing their bit of riot porn to excite /Vice/ readers. Some photographers explicitly try to capture faces, try to catch you in the act. These people are scum and should not be protected simply because we believe that journalists have some kind of impartiality, some right that is above our desires to protect ourselves.

Our concern is not concerning the so-called right to take pictures in a public place. We could care less about this boring defence that photographers resort to when critiqued. Our question is not: what are your rights in public? Rather: where do you stand when it comes to social struggle? How do you act to further revolt? Simply put, journalists do not have any political right to a “spectacle”. They have the ability to participate in a moment of revolt and they forgo that capacity by consigning the event to a digital memory rather than a future possibility. While photographic evidence has been useful in the past, we maintain that by prioritizing documentation, in ignorance or indifference to its effect on an action, journalists are not comrades in the present.

Spectators do not act. Time and again, photographers actually inhibit the unfurling of events by standing right in front of an action, rushing forward, blocking your way to support your friends and documenting your attempts to do so. Eyes without bodies do not move, but they may propel enemies. When you take a photograph at a demo before anything actually happens, if something does happen, the police can use that photograph to construct a narrative and build identities. You could spotlight someone involved in something that hasn’t even happened yet, highlight that crucial piece of evidence the police will use to solidify their case against us. To inhibit possibility and limit potential is not something we should simply accept.

It’s time to fight back. This is a call out for people to stand up against those who are putting our lives in danger. People who take photographs and post them online, without blurring faces or cropping out identities, put us at risk and we should not be complacent. In other countries with much stronger movements, complacency is not so dominant; people often smash cameras they see pointed at their friends and deliberately documenting them. They destroy cameras because they recognise that these instruments can and do lead to arrests and arrests can ruin lives and destroy a movement. Why tolerate an instrument that supports and reinforces our oppression? Our surveillance? We should learn from our friends across Europe, who are so much more adept at rebellion than we are, so much less complacent.

That said, we are not luddites. To the contrary, we love a good photo and we cannot dismiss the seductive qualities of images in the age of spectacles. There’s a reason we call it riot porn. We’ve even printed and framed the memories we love best. We recognise the importance of documenting certain struggles, to spread the message, to share with our friends abroad, to help ignite the fire of rebellion. Photos move enemies, but they also move us. This is not a critique of cameras /as such/, but of a particular and dominant usage:

“Arms as inert objects do not exist. What do exist are arms in action, i.e. that are used (or waiting to be used) in a given perspective…. Behind the thing there is always the individual, the individual who acts, plans, uses means to attain ends” (Alfredo Bonanno, “The Refusal of Arms”).

We have friends who we trust to take good photos, but the key word here is trust. We consider them part of our struggles and think of them as partisans and accomplices in social war. Assuming then that you want to participate in social struggle as a friend and have committed yourself to the camera, here are some proposed guidelines:

1. Contrary to what many protest-photography tips tell you, don’t get up close.

2. If there are faces in your shot, blur them. A simple swirl in Photoshop won’t do. We’re talking scrambling such the police cannot reverse the process.

3. If there is distinctive or identifying clothing in your shot, blur them.

4. If certain identities stick out (the few black bodies in a white protest, the few visibly disabled in a seemingly able-bodied demonstration, etc. etc.), delete the photo.

5. If you choose to participate as a spectator, then realise your participation is secondary to those actively engaged in the moment of revolt. This means you should step aside, even if it means losing that ‘wining’ shot.

6. If possible—and it usually is—ask for consent or indicate that you are taking a photo so that we have an option to turn away or decline. Yes, we get it. We are in a public place and you don’t have to ask, but realise that failure to ask makes us suspicious of your motivations and provides us with added reason to assert our capacity for opacity.

7. Your camera is a weapon. Friendly fire is not acceptable.

8. You are a partisan in social war. Become involved in the struggles you choose to document. Should they be documented? If so, how should they be documented to spread their capacities? Become a comrade and earn the trust of those around you. Excepting professional activists, for the vast majority of us, this is not a career.

9. Photograph the police.

10. Infer more guidelines from the analysis above.

Until a conversation about protest photography becomes more pervasive, until guidelines like these become more common, until the burden is on photographers and not on active participants, until then…

This is a call for people to smash cameras. Time and time again we see our friends being taken away because someone chose their five moments of fame, the titillation of seeing his photo of our fucking faces making it onto the pages of Vice, the Evening Standard, the Guardian. They choose that above standing next to their friends and accomplices and fighting against the surveillance state that controls us all. Maybe the hack is on our side; maybe they think they are spreading the word, spreading the revolt. It doesn’t matter. For right now, all they are doing is contributing to a climate of inaction, of fear of action, spreading information that those who seek to bring us down will use against us. Next time you see someone thrusting their lens in someone’s face, getting a little too close and personal, blocking your path to assist your friends so they can get a winning angle, we ask you not to stand idly by.

Fight back. Protect your friends.

#smash cameras #pdx #portland protests #defendpdx #surveillance #spectacle #jounalism #policing #communism #anarchism #direct action #black bloc

[gifted-burnout-archive]

Vices (Part Two)

Word Count: 2.8K+

Author’s Note: So... You guys made this shit blow up last night... Kinda feeling like this is my viral moment, and I am shocked and eternally grateful. As such, I decided there was no better time to provide Part Two than now. (Side Note: I said last time this would probably be a three or four parter, but I’ve written almost all of it now and it’s looking for like six or seven soooo... Yay, I guess?)

Warning: Discussion of murder, rape, and violence. Graphic depictions of all three. Extensive discussion of drug abuse, drug withdrawal, and general angst.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Summary: As Dr Reid reaches three years sober, a case comes to the BAU that his old vice Dilaudid plays a key role in – the only witness to the murders is a young woman who abuses the drug to forget. Can Spencer break through to her and catch their killer before he strikes again?

Read ‘Vices (Part One)’ here. Explore the Masterlist here.

Part Three is posted! Check it out here.

--

“So, Y/N, how long have you been addicted to Dilaudid?”

--

“You can’t arrest me for this. I know my fucking rights.” Y/N spoke into the empty room, looking directly at herself in the mirror, just hoping she had met someone’s eye contact in the hidden room on the other side. “So, either let me go, or arrest me for something I didn’t do, but I’m not waiting anymore!” Her voice rose, and she stood up, kicking her chair back against the wall and beginning to pace.

She had been in the same room for 5 hours and 13 minutes now, 4 hours and 41 minutes of which had been alone. One of the other agents had brought her in some food and a jug of water about 2 hours ago, but it hadn’t been touched, Y/N had left it to go cold on the metal table. Like she was going to eat anything these bastards gave her.

“Can someone turn down the AC? It’s so fucking hot.” She called out again, finding herself quickly losing breath and becoming tired out from her pacing. It only took a few more moments for the nausea to kick in, and she rushed over to the trash can in the corner of the room, throwing up what little was in her system along with a ridiculous amount of bile.

They had poisoned her, that had to be it.

“I… I invoke my right to a lawyer!” She managed to call loudly enough to be heard before throwing up again, pure water and acid this time. It burned her throat in the wrong way, not like alcohol would: it wasn’t smooth, everything about the vomit was sticky and dry, and it came up in bouts, leaving her mouth tasting like methanol and week-old bread.

“We didn’t arrest you, you were not read Miranda Rights, and thus a lawyer won’t be necessary.” She looked up from her perch over the trash to find the definition of tall, dark, and handsome stood by the door. Two guards came in after him, carrying a cot bed, setting it up in the corner of the room before disappearing. The FBI agent shut the door behind them.

“I want to go home.”

“We can’t let you do that, Y/N.” He sat himself where Dr Reid had sat hours before, and Y/N spit into the bucket one last time before pulling her chair back to the table and taking a seat. Once she had settled herself, even taking a sip of the water provided to her, the Agent introduced himself. “I’m Special Agent Derek Morgan with the FBI.”

“Y/N Y/L/N.” She responded, looking longingly at the cup of water in front of her, Derek knowing she wished there was something stronger in the plastic tumbler.

“Y/N, I need you to be honest with me about what you’ve taken in the last 48 hours.” Derek moved right on to his desired line of conversation, and Y/N let out a cold laugh, rubbing her arms up and down over flushed skin.

“You’ll arrest me, if you haven’t already.” She responded, and Morgan pulled something from his back pocket, sitting the paper on the table.

“If you cooperate with the FBI, I have permission to ensure you won’t be charged on confession of substances used, sold or held by you.” He said simply, and Y/N snatched the paper from the table, reading over the statement provided. Three signatures sat at the bottom of the page, two of which the woman recognised: Police Chief Knowles and Detective Caldwell. The final signature was familiar, but only after reading the name below did it click.

Aaron Hotchner.

“All I have to do is sign, right?” She said softly, looking up at Agent Morgan, who held out a pen to her. She took it quickly, scrawling over the dotted line left blank for her signature, before handing back both pen and paper.

“We need your help in solving a case.” Morgan said quietly, taking a moment to listen, Y/N assumed, to the voice in his ear. He seemed to frown a little at the message he received. “Excuse me a moment.” He quickly got up, opening the door to let the police officers from before back in. This time, one brought a pillow and blanket, while the other collected the trash can full of Y/N’s vomit, both leaving within twenty seconds. Not looking at her, not acknowledging her. But Derek Morgan kept his eyes trained on the side of her head until he closed the door behind him.

“Morgan, do you have her signature?” Hotch asked as the Agent stood outside the door, Hotch followed closely by Agent Caldwell from the viewing room. Morgan nodded, handing over the paper to Hotch and Caldwell, the pair stopping to examine it.

“That’s it. That’s the signature.” Caldwell said softly, causing Morgan to raise an eyebrow.

“Why did I just have to lie to that woman?” He asked, and Hotch tucked the paper into his pocket.

“We needed to be sure. She kept her signature while using the identity provided by witness protection. She’s been in and out of LAPD’s jail for the last eight years.” Hotch explained, leading both Morgan and Caldwell towards the IT room, where Garcia was set up. “If she has ever been admitted to hospital, we have the signature she would use to sign in and out, even if she kept fake names.”

“Hotch, that doesn’t explain why we still have her in custody.” Morgan was confused, but a small cough from behind him garnered attention. Reid stood in the doorway.

“We need her sober before we question her. Average length of withdrawal from Dilaudid takes 2-3 days. If we don’t find proof when we catch this unsub, we need a witness whose sobriety won’t be questioned in court.” Reid explained, taking a few steps to stand beside Morgan, giving him an awkward smile in greeting. The pair hadn’t seen each other all day, with Morgan going from crime scene to crime scene with Prentiss, and later Rossi, looking for behavioural patterns from their unsub.

“Can that withdrawal period be affected by anything? Other drugs she’s taken?” Morgan asked, and Reid nodded.

“The sooner we know her vices, the better.” Reid agreed with Derek, and Garcia let out a small yelp.

“Bingo!” She said with a smile. “Seems like Y/N has been using two separate names for her hospital visits and her police encounters. Elizabeth Colt and Rachel… Rachel Durham. Wait, wasn’t she?” Garcia looked up at Hotch, the stern face man nodding.

“Rachel Durham was one of the victims from twelve years ago.” He glanced over at Reid, who nodded, heading towards the interrogation room once more. “Y/N knew another one of the victims.” He paused for a moment, looking to Caldwell. “Is the Durham family possessions still in evidence?” He asked, and Caldwell stumbled a little over his words in response, trying to process the new information.

“I think so. I’d have to check with Knowles…”

“Do it. Take Morgan with you, and Prentiss. We won’t get anything solid from Y/N while she’s high, the next best thing is the family we know about. Garcia, run a full check on the Durham family. I want everything you can find. What churches they attended, extra curriculars, favourite shopping spots, schools, jobs, neighbours, enemies, anything you can find.” Hotch ordered, Caldwell leading Morgan towards the evidence lockup, and Morgan gesturing for Prentiss to join them. The brunette shot up right away, leaving her conversation with JJ and Rossi about the press release and following behind.

“What’s going on?” She asked, looking back to see Hotch talking in quiet voices to Rossi and JJ.

“Y/N knew Rachel Durham. We have the job of searching through evidence.” Morgan said, stopping by the locked door to Evidence, taking a moment to pull on a pair of latex gloves. Prentiss did the same.

“And Reid?”

“Interrogating.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Prentiss asked, the pair following Caldwell into the room, taking a moment to look around at the rows upon rows upon rows of shelves, each stacked with cardboard boxes.

“Hotch said-”

“I’m asking what you think.” Prentiss restated, and Morgan sighed, the pair a few steps behind Caldwell as he led them towards the back of the room.

“I think it’s too soon to ask him to face that demon without him wanting to solve it.” Morgan admitted. “And I’m worried that Reid will be more interested in saving her than our next victims.”

--

“You’re not Agent Morgan.” Were the first words Reid heard as he entered the interrogation room, Y/N sat in the far corner, cradling the bin in her arms. Her face was ghostly pale, the dark circles under her eyes and bleeding lips making her look like a corpse in a horror movie. Reid remembered when he looked like that, and it made his stomach twist into knots.

“Have I disappointed?” Reid asked, taking a seat on the floor, his back leaning against the cot, the pair now at the same eye level.

“I don’t know Pretty Boy, you hear to tell me I can go home?” She asked, and Reid looked down, answering the question for her. “So, why did they send you in? Seems like Derek is more an interrogator than you.”

“I have experience dealing with your… Condition.” Reid answered. “I need to know what drugs you took. Aside from Dilaudid.”

“The contract still stands?” She asked, and Reid nodded, though he wasn’t quite sure what she had been offered. Y/N took a moment, sitting the trash can back on the floor, hugging her legs into her chest. Her vision wandered, eyes glazing over as she involuntarily shivered, her fingers scratching at her shoes.

“Y/N…” Reid got her attention again, and her head snapped up. “What drugs?”

“Uh, right… In the last 48 hours… I took, uh, I took Dilaudid 4? 4 times… I was drinking a little… Someone offered Vicodin but… But I didn’t take it.” She said softly, tears welling in her eyes. Reid instinctively moved closer to her, placing a hand on her knee. It hurt him to see her breaking apart so quickly.

“We need to keep you in police custody for another day or two, Y/N.” Reid said softly, her tear-filled eyes looking into his own.

“You can’t. I need to go home.” Y/N said again, and Reid took one of her hands in his.

“Y/N, where is home?” He asked, and the tears fell.

“I… I…” She stuttered, closing her eyes, and taking a few deep breaths, no doubt something she was trained to do after her trauma. “A halfway house… If I don’t make it there before 11, they’ll give my room away.” She said softly, and Reid nodded.

“How about I send my friends JJ and Dave over? They can collect your things; you can stay here until it’s safe.” Reid suggested, hoping to be met with some sort of smile or nod. Instead, Y/N froze, taking a moment before looking back up at him.

What sadness had filled her was replaced with anger.

“You… You’re keeping me here to get me clean.” She started slowly, and Reid stood himself up, turning to head for the door. “Aren’t you?”

“… Yes.” Reid confessed as he opened the door, Y/N letting out a blood-curdling scream once he was on the other side of it. He locked the door quickly, jumping away from it as Y/N fists bangs on the wood, incoherent yells of defamation and hate filling the precinct.

JJ rushed over at the yells, placing a hand on Reid’s shoulder.

“Was I... Was I ever like that?” He asked, not able to draw his eyes from the door.

“Never.” Rossi answered for JJ. “But from what Garcia was able to find in the two sets of medical records, Y/N has been on the drug since her coma.” He informed, Hotch walking from the viewing room towards the trio.

“How is that possible? Dilaudid is rarely given to kids…” JJ asked, and Hotch answered.

“The US Marshall in charge of her protection was recovering from a back surgery. He was given a month’s supply, only ever took a few. When the pill bottle went missing from his cabinet, he thought he had thrown it out… Seems like Y/N got to it first.” Hotch sighed. “It’s late. Everyone get to the hotel, be back here at 7, sharp.”

“Someone needs to phone halfway houses in LA, find out which one she was staying at and collect her things. And it might be an idea to have a female officer watching her tonight.” Reid suggested through a shaky breath. “Someone to watch her whenever and wherever.” Hotch and Rossi agreed, the four bidding a goodnight to Knowles and Caldwell. Morgan, Prentiss, and Garcia soon joined them, the team stepping into the SUVs and heading back to the hotel, all in desperate need of a good night’s rest.

--

That night, while the rest of the team slept, Spencer tossed and turned in his hotel bed, never quite able to shut off his mind to grant himself rest. After a few hours spent attempting to reach peaceful slumber, Reid gave up, opting to stare at the ceiling and spin the chip gifted to him the night before between his fingers.

They had another four days to solve the case before another family died, before another girl was raped like Y/N had been, forced to watch this unsub kill her parents before being murdered herself, Reid thought, sitting himself against the headboard as he realised the key fact he had been avoiding.

Y/N wasn’t lucky enough to die.

Only a few blocks west of Spencer, Y/N also couldn’t sleep, no matter how much she wanted to. Instead of a case weighing on her mind though, it was the cravings for a fresh fix. She had been counting the seconds from her last glance at a clock when Officer Isabelle Gomez accompanied her for a bathroom break. It was 11.52 at night then, and one of the other officers was packing up Y/N’s possessions into one of those evidence boxes.

It had been 6 hours, 43 minutes and 13, 14, 15 seconds. 17, 18, 19…

“I need to go to the bathroom…” She called out, looking into the mirror, knowing her security detail was on the other side. When no answer came, she tried again. “Please? I feel sick again… I think it might be diarrhoea.” She said with as much worry she could muster in her voice. It wasn’t true, but she knew the last thing any officer wanted to do at 6.36 in the morning was clean up her shit. A crackle came first, followed by a voice through the speaker.

“Give me a minute, I need to find a female officer.” A male voice stated, and Y/N shook her head.

“I… I’m sorry, I don’t think I can wait. Please?” She begged, hearing a sigh on the other end.

“Fucking junkies…” He muttered, the intercom turning off and a few moments later, a rather fat police officer opened the interrogation room door, gesturing for her to hold out her hands. Y/N did so willingly, the officer slipping the cuffs onto her thin wrists and leading her towards the women’s bathroom down the hall. “You have five minutes. I’m not staying a second overtime.” The officer stated, and Y/N nodded thanking him before entering the empty bathroom.

Had Y/N been sober and thinking rationally, she would have known her scheme was a bad idea. She really would have. But she had been sobering up for almost 24 hours, and if the vomiting and fever wasn’t enough, the cravings and oncoming headache were. So, with little remorse or worry for her own safety, she headed into the end bathroom stall, using the toilet to boost herself up onto the cubicle wall and open the small window of the second storey room as far as it would go. It was a squeeze, the front of her body pressed against the window ledge caused grazing, but thanks to her ‘junkie’ frame, too skinny for her own good, Y/N managed to get herself hanging out the window, dangling from the ledge a good 20 feet from the ground in an alleyway beside the precinct. Below he, the dumpster, and piles of trash.

If she had any other option, she would have taken it. But she didn’t, so Y/N let go and let her body go limp as she fell, her blow softened by bags of office waste.

From there, Y/N took a moment to scour the ground, finding a loose bobby pin amongst the trash to open the cuffs. And then? She ran, and kept running until her lungs burned and her legs shook. Once the police station was out of sight, she faded back into the surroundings, making her way towards the one place she knew she could get a good fix.

--

Tags: @alliyjane​ @gia-kerks​ @thatsonezesty13​ @l0ve-0f-my-life​ @bethanyb1110​ @mjloveskids666​ @studentdying3267​ @rottenearly​ @spencerreidisdaddy​ @ladyravenclaw​ @britishspidey​ @random-thoughts-003​ @sungieeeeeee​

#criminal minds #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x reader #fanfiction #spencer reid #fanfic #dr spencer reid #cm #cm fic #angst #fluff #eventual smut

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Beyond the Corona Walls Part 2

Part two is here, so let’s get on with the rest of the stupid shall we...

You can find part 1 here - https://rachelbethhines.tumblr.com/post/624977559380213760/tangled-salt-marathon-beyond-the-corona-walls

Summary: Rapunzel and the group return to Vardaros to find Eugene, only to learn about his engagement to Stalyan, leaving Rapunzel heartbroken and regretting her decision on rejecting Eugene's marriage proposal. However, after being encouraged by Cassandra, Rapunzel returns to Vardaros and stops the wedding between Eugene and Stalyan. Meanwhile, Adria gives Raps another piece of the scroll and an ominous hint to her future. 

So Why is the Baron Still Operating If Both Raps and Eugene Know Who He Is?

Keep in mind this guy still has a house in Corona that they know about, he’s still a crime boss who’s criminal actions still affect their kingdom, and they both have the ear of the man who is in charge of running things and who has had a vested interest in cracking down on crime for the past 19 years. So why hasn’t Frederic gone after this dude? You can’t say it’s because he’s hiding out here, when he has a base of operations and living quarters in the kingdom itself. And if it’s because he has money, then that’s just further proof that Frederic is corrupt. 

The Writers Undermine Themselves When They Try to Make Conflicts Lopsided

So the writers are trying to have their cake and eat it too in this episode. They want to make Stalyan just unlikeable enough so that the audience won’t hold Eugene accountable for his past actions, but not so unlikable that she’s irremediable later. Hence the excuse that the blackmail is her dad’s idea and that she still believes that Eugene is really in love with her and is just playing hard to get. 

The problem is, by having Stalyan still aware of the situation and complacent in this plan instead of fighting against it, the audience isn’t inclined to see things her way and less inclined to give her a second chance when they try to pull her redemption later. 

Moreover, this also undermines Eugene’s character arc as well, because him learning to be more responsible has to include acknowledgement of his past wrongs. Instead all he does is make excuses or look vaguely guilty over shit that’s only implied not stated. There’s no outright admittance of wrong nor apology for the way he treated her. 

Staylan can’t be sympathetic later on if don't show things from her perspective in the now and Eugene can’t grow as a character if he doesn’t realize what he’s done wrong specifically. 

Context Is Key 

Yeah, that’s a lot of screenshots, I know, but you need to hear/read the line in full. Because there’s not enough context within the episode to make this line work. 

What does ‘someone like you’ mean? What was his relationship with Stalyan like before the break up? When did the break up happen? Why did he leave her at the altar? Why is she still trying to be with him after such a thing? Why wouldn’t Stalyan believe him when he says he’s really in love with Raps? And why, oh why, are we going with this ‘marriage is a prison’ metaphor when the person saying it wants to get married herself? To the very person she’s saying ‘don't get married’ to, no less! 

Now we get hints to answer some of those questions, but none of those hints are in the actual episode itself. Hence the main failing of the episode. That’s because the writers still don’t want to admit fault in their mains. Because, at the end of the day, for all of their talk about how ‘it’s not a kids show’, they can’t or won’t tackle actual mature topics like ‘relationships are hard and failed ones can be the fault of both parties or neither party’. 

‘Contrived Misunderstanding’ Is Literally the Dumbest Plot Point Ever

Unless you are the Bard of Avon risen from the unholy grave himself, don’t fucking do this. Even then I still criticize Shakespeare heavily for bullcrap like this. It’s lazy and more over it’s not fun. 

We already know what the ending outcome is going to be so there’s no tension to be had here. It’s just a cheap way to have conflict between the mains without having them actually address shit or grow as people. Instead of having believable conflicts where people have competing needs or desires, they just throw Stalyan in here to be a scapegoat; and then throw the Baron in here on top of that to be her scapegoat. 

So Let’s Talk About Staylan’s Thought Process Here

Okay, if we’re to make any sense of Staylan’s actions here, we have to answer some of those above questions. 

What does ‘someone like you’ mean? What was his relationship with Stalyan like before the break up?

We honestly don’t know what their relationship was like. We never see them before the break up, only afterwards, and that’s not a good indicator of anything really. All we know are five things; 

Eugene wasn’t a very good person during his Flynn Rider days

He is hinted to be a former womanizer in both the movie and during certain points in season one (the threesome joke in TRoS comes most to mind)

He left Staylan at the altar instead of being the bigger person and breaking things off with her respectfully

He’s known Staylan since they were both teenagers (he’s had a crush on her since they were 15/16) and they’ve been in some sort of long term relationship for some undetermined amount of time

They use to pull jobs together, with Staylan sometimes goating him on, possibly taking charge most of the time.

That’s it. That’s all we got. You can’t really judge Stalyan based off that information alone. All we get from this is that she’s sometimes bossy and probably a little spoiled, but so is Rapunzel honestly, and neither of those things mean that they’re abusive on their own. If anything, knowing those things actually puts Eugene in more of a bad light, but he’s pulling the woobie card here; so you’re not meant to think about those things in the moment which is manipulative writing.  

When did the break up happen? Why did he leave her at the altar?

Now here’s the million dollar question, because honestly the show doesn’t give us a consistent time frame of events and contradicts itself all the time. Some have argued that the break up happened eight years ago when the Baron screwed Eugene and Lance over during that robbery flashback in TRoS. Yet in Flynnpostor the Baron says that he had hired Eugene to steal the crown in the movie indicating that they were still working together all the way up until he met Rapunzel. 

So which is it? Cause either answer drastically changes the context of his relationship with Staylan, their subsequent break up, and informs the motivation behind Stalyan’s words and actions. 

Why is she still trying to be with him after such a thing? Why wouldn’t Stalyan believe him when he says he’s really in love with Raps?

Here’s what I think went down, and what I think the writers are trying to poorly imply here. 

Eugene and Staylan had a tremulous on again/off again relationship for several years; where she’d be bratty and controlling and he’d cheat on her and/or leave, only, for whatever reason, to come crawling back and she’d ultimately ‘forgive’ him and they start at square one. The ‘leave her at the altar’ can’t be a one and done thing otherwise she wouldn’t be conditioned to take him back so readily, nor believe his relationship with Raps isn’t serious. 

In fact, if we take ‘stealing the crown for the Baron’ thing at face value then it implies he stood Stalyan up just to be with Rapunzel. Which makes sense as no self respecting woman would wait around for 8 flipping years. One year is already pushing things as is, but if Eugene has a history of con artistry and cheating then, yeah, she could convince herself that Eugene is pulling a scam and still loves her instead. 

To Staylan’s mind, she’s just trying to convince Eugene to give up his cushy life of royalty to live with her in a less comfortable but ultimately ‘truer’ way of life. She doesn’t see it as asking him to choose between her and Rapunzel cause she doesn’t see that what he has with Rapunzel as love. She thinks he’s faking it, like always. She thinks that ‘Eugene’ is his latest con and that Flynn Rider is his true identity. 

And why, oh why, are we going with this ‘marriage is a prison’ metaphor when the person saying it wants to get married herself? To the very person she’s saying ‘don't get married’ to, no less!

Well the real reason is cause the writers have really messed up ideas about marriage, but the in universe reason is that Staylan sees ‘love’ as ‘unconditional acceptance’. Eugene, or ‘Flynn’, doesn’t have to pretend with her. She knows every awful thing about him, been hurt by him, and she still takes him back, and vise versa. Their on again/off again relationship has convinced her that putting up with mistreatment means that you must really love that person. She doesn’t understand that people can change and grow and that being in a healthy relationship requires both of those things. 

That’s the only interpretation of their relationship that actually makes sense of Stalyan’s actions to my mind. Feel free to interpret it another way if you’d like, because we really have no clue. Just don’t try to pass off you’re interpretation as fact. And if you still see Staylan as the only person in the wrong here; I have to ask you to ask yourself why? Is it the manipulative writing, is it cause she’s not conventionally ‘nice’ like Rapunzel, or is just cause you see her as a threat to New Dream? Because holding her actually accountable for her actions is one thing, calling her ‘a child abuser’ (fandom’s words not mine) just cause she’s a bitchy and bitter ex is another thing entirely. (also they’re the same freaking age what the hell tumblr) 

This Song Would Hold More Weight If They Gave Us an Actual Real Interpersonal Conflict 

I’m just going to split ball a few ideas here, just to show what we potentially missed out on..

Stalyan is blissfuly unaware of the Baron’s plot, meaning Eugene now has to wrestle with admitting the truth of his past actions to her, along with keeping Lance safe, and trying to figure out a way to save his relationship with Rapunzel 

There’s is no Baron involvement, Stalyan is his ex, but he comes to realize that they have more in common than he and Raps does. Meaning that the narrative has to actually address his and Rapunzel’s relationship issues; like their lack of communication and their seemingly conflicting life goals 

Once again, no Baron involvement and Stalyan is his ex, but she’s just a victim Eugene screwed over when he was still Flynn Rider. She warns Rapunzel of what he use to be like and she has to confront the fact that she rushed into a relationship with someone she barely knows while he has to confront the fact that simply giving up his ways isn’t always enough and other people are still hurt by his actions 

Dump the ‘ex’ plot altogether and have Rapunzel meet someone new instead. Have her question if a committed relationship is what she wants, and if Eugene really is the person for her. Address the fact that she has no experiences to in which to judge their relationship by. 

What makes these options stronger is that there’s no clean cut bad guy (except for the Baron). There’s no right or wrong answer to the problem; no easy solution. The less sure an outcome the more tension you can add to the conflict, and these conflicts can go any number of ways; from a temporary break up to a reaffirmation of love.  

That’s mature. That’s complex. That’s not reaching for the easy low hanging fruit. The creators seem to think thing dark, edgy, and shocking is ’deep’ but it’s actually quite shallow, especially when you constantly present one sided conflicts like today’s episode. 

Your Name Literally Means ‘Lettuce’, Rapunzel

Unlike some fans, I don’t mind Rapunzel being jealous and hypocritical. As I said before, I like my heroines to have actual flaws. The problem is that the show goes out of its way to justify her bitchiness instead of calling it for what it is. 

I Don’t Usually Bring Shipping Into These Reviews But,

Eugene and Lance have the healthiest relationship in the show. Like there is zero competition, here. Outside of a few ‘not-so-serious’ crack pairings, like Pete/Stan/Willow or Caine/Trevor, I don't really have any other ‘canon’ ships. I’m like 90% of the time shipping crossover pairings and 90% of those are Varian ships.   

But this is still a flaw because it’s not intentional. The writers genuinely think that New Dream is a healthy romantic pairing and that Cass and Raps are a genuinely good friendship/sibling relationship, but they aren’t. And before you say anything, Casspunzel, isn’t the intent of the creators; regardless if you or some of the non-writing staff ship them. Like, it’s okay to ship them, but they aren’t intentionally written to be romantic any more than Lance and Eugene. 

My point in bringing up all this up is this: A bunch of male writers only knew how to portray a male friendship well; not a female friendship, not a sister relationship, not a mother and child relationship, not a father and child relationship, not a gay romance, not even a het romance. That tells me that the creators on this show have an extremely limited world view. Which you need to expand upon if you have any inspirations as a creative writer.   

You’ll Have an Ice Sculpture of Shorty at Your Wedding, Raps. 

You don’t get to judge, woman. 

I Usually Love the Art Direction on the Show, but, Not Gonna Lie, I’m Disappointed We Didn’t Get an Actual Wedding Dress for Stalyan

This is animated in what? Toonboom? Flash? Would it really have been that time consuming just to make a palette swap of her regular dress here? I mean you made a bunch of new character designs and gave Raps a new outfit just for this episode so clicking a few new swatches on an already existing model doesn’t sound that hard. 

But yes, I’m nitpicking here. That’s cause I hate where all this is going, and I’m trying to put off the inevitable. 

Deactivating the Rocks Was a Mistake 

Like I said, making the rocks no longer a threat means that our heroine no longer has a reason for her quest. You’ve just ended your main conflict and now we’re going to have to sit through a whole season of watching the creators spin their wheels trying to find a new one. While also invalidating both the previous and future conflicts cause all she had to do was touch a rock and that’s it. That’s what this whole story amounts to. 

Also you’re telling me that the main hero was just now willing to risk the life of a bunch of innocent bystanders just cause she be jelly? 

Lack of Remorse Undermines Stalyan’s Future Appearances 

If you want to pawn off the blackmail stuff onto her dad then you need to have her stand up to her dad on screen. Because we get no indication that she learns anything from these events in this episode, we have no reason to root for her redemption later. I mean she’s literally declaring revenge here. 

Say it with me; It’s a lack of setup and resolve. 

Nothing Is Resolved

Rapunzel tries to hold an honest conversation for once and Eugene just shuts her down. Yet, this is presented as a form of positive growth for him? The whole point of their relationship problems is their lack of communication and Rapunzel not being assertive about what she wants. But sure, let's have them still not communicate and have Eugene actively talk over her in order to drag out this plot point that doesn’t need to be dragged out. 

Stop Treating Marriage as a Trap

Okay, first off, she was about to ask you to marry her, you dolt, so stop assuming. Second off, this a really bad lesson and the fact that Rapunzel now feels pressured to lie through her teeth about what she really wants contradicts this whole ‘Rapunzel needs to choose for herself thing’ the story’s got going on.  

I want to make it clear that the writers threw in this ‘forced marriage’ plot not teach Eugene responsibility, you know the thing he actually needs to learn, but to teach him that ‘marriage is bad’. Even though respectfully asking the person you're already in a committed relationship with to marry you is not in any way, shape, or form the same as a bitchy ex blackmailing you into doing something you don’t wanna do. 

Marriage is Not a Trap; Stop Treating It As Such. 

Oh Look, Now It’s Eugene’s Turn To Have His Feeling Ignored

Yes, how dare Eugene have an opinion that different from Raps. 

Remind me again which relationship was the toxic one? 

‘Destiny’ Is Not a Reason

Like ‘destiny’ in a narrative sense means that there’s either an unavoidable consequence for not fulfilling it, a fate that can’t be avoid no matter how hard you try, or a prophecy to help show the characters what needs to be done. It’s a tool to create tension and foreshadowing. It’s not a goal in of itself. But the series never expands upon this ‘destiny’ stuff. It’s treated like an end all and be all for the characters actions, but that’s not how its supposed to work. 

So, What Was the Point?

You’ll hear me ask this question a lot during season two. But for this episode specifically there’s barely anything worthwhile to the ongoing narrative here. 

None of the mains learn anything, none of the side characters learn anything, the Baron and Stalyan wind up not adding anything to the overall narrative, and Vardaros and its inhabitants never come back into play after this season. So what was the point? 

The only reason why I don’t recommend skipping the episode altogether is because of Adria’s introduction, the DK flashback, and the scroll pecice. But all of that is so divorced from the episode’s A plot that it might as well not have been here.You could have taken nearly all of Adria’s scenes and fitted them into another episode. Meaning, you could have easily cut all of Vardaros, the Baron, and Stalyan out of the show and it wouldn’t have made a difference to the story arc. 

Conclusion

I’ll give the opening this much. It lets you know what your in for for the rest of season; lots of filler, a disconnected arc, and no Varian (or other main threat) to be seen. Ugh! 

#tangled #anti-tangled #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #stalyan #eugene #rapunzel

[gatheringbones]

Juno Roche, from “Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure, and Relationships”, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2018:

“I needed to have control over my newly created vagina. I put up metaphorical barriers and warning tape signalling to the world that this was still a fragile place. Over the next few months I felt elated, depressed and confused in equal measures. I imagined that I was the kind of woman who wanted to feel a penis slide inside of her. I was definitely heterosexual and I imagined that this would all be straightforward and that questioning my sexuality or even my gender makeup wouldn't ever be something that I'd have to face or deal with. The script was simple: Bits of my body felt wrong, so change them and then get on with being an incredibly binary heterosexual woman who happens to be looking for a husband, hopefully one with an average-sized penis that my vagina can comfortably accommodate. I assumed that now I had the body, a much-more-in-line-with-the-way-I-felt body, things would be easy: I would find a man. He would desire all of me, not just some of me. He would be a nice man, a kind man, a handsome man. We would make virtual babies (lots of them) and then in turn spoil my dogs, making them our family. It would all be plain sailing. Post-vaginal landing, everything would work out fine. I assumed binary and I assumed heterosexuality.

That was the script. The truth was that as time went on I just didn't know anymore who I fancied, desired, or wanted to be fucked by. Did I even want to be fucked anymore? Was I heterosexual, bisexual, was I a lesbian or was I all of the above and then some? It seemed as time went on, my vagina rather brilliantly posed as many questions as were answered. 

I assumed very early on, by the way, that my vagina must be nonbinary— poetically so due to their possession of two symbolically different representations: penile and scrotal skin made vaginal, perfectly inter-binary.

I knew that my being HIV positive might get in the way. For many people it's still an unknown hurdle that they are unwilling to step over. Sometimes it's because of fear, sometimes because of ignorance. I can't blame people, as I do not know how I would react in their shoes, and besides, blaming is shaming and it leads nowhere. Yes, it hurts to be rejected by someone because of my HIV status, but in truth there is no loss because they would never be right for me. For some people I think that the intersection of trans, HIV, and middle-age is just easier to walk away from than negotiate.

But I don't think my current dilemma is due to that intersection. In truth, I never get close enough to anyone for them to find out. I honestly believe that my dating, relationship and sex dilemmas are centered around my own feelings of confusion about my sexual identity. I'm not sure who to approach or how to approach them. I'm not sure if I have to tell someone I'm trans or that my vagina has a different construction, or how to have sex with someone who may have a trans body like mine. I assumed simplicity and didn't prepare myself for new levels of ambiguity and unexpected exploration of new lands. (...) So, and this is a confession, I think that I am probably quite inexperienced at becoming more experienced. I, for many years, did versions of the same very limited repertoire.

My lack of experience prepared me to be a binary, vanilla heterosexual, which is exactly what I presumed I was and would be in my post-vaginal town.

I'm sure that there would be some people interested in me but I am bewildered by my emerging world of choice and, if I'm honest, slightly terrified about how to have the kinds of sexual and loving relationships that have opened up in front of me. When it comes to these new frontiers, I am hopelessly naive and despite my past— it's well-documented, I feel quite timid about the spaces I have never even imagined exploring. 

Nothing is a given anymore. I seemingly find lots of people attractive, and the further I have moved away from focusing on my own genitals as being key, I have had to move my focus off others' genitals as being a place to find love, sex and desire. Genitals alone weren't going to provide the answer. If I find lots of different people attractive— cis men, cis women (especially handsome, butch lesbians), trans men and some of the nonbinary community— what does that make me and what should I do about it? What dating site should I join? Is there a dating site? Is there a label for me that fits at 50 and naive, and at 50 should I really be open to a new label?

Am I not being silly to be over 50 and experimenting with new labels?

I'm sure there is a word, or a label, and I'm sure there are spaces into which I could fit, but part of this exploration is about allowing myself all of the options without tagging myself or restricting myself to exist in one box. If I look back, I can only see restrictions I placed on myself, further implemented by society, which operates in an incredibly limiting way. I can only see transparent yet rigid boxes in which I placed myself, often for no reason, other than for fear of experimentation.”

#juno roche #trans literature #lesbian literature #wasteland radio #gender stuff #terra preta

[whitehotharlots]

Andrea Long Chu is the sad embodiment of the contemporary left

Andrea Long Chu’s Females was published about a year ago. It was heavily hyped but landed with mostly not-so-great reviews, and while I was going to try and pitch my own review I figured there was no need. Going through my notes from that period, however, I see how much Chu’s work—and its pre-release hype—presaged the sad state of the post-Bernie, post-hope, COVID-era left. I figured they’d be worth expanding upon here, even if I’m not getting paid to do so.

Chu isn’t even 30 years old, and Females is her debut book, and yet critics were already providing her with the sort of charitable soft-handedness typically reserved for literary masters or failed female political candidates. This is striking due to the purported intensity of the book: a love letter to would-be assassin Valerie Solanas, the thesis of which is that all humans are female, and that such is true because female-ness is a sort of terminal disease stemming not from biology but from one’s inevitable subjugation in larger social contexts. Everyone is a woman because everyone suffers. Big brain shit.

But, of course, not everyone is a female. Of course. Females are females only some of the time. But, also, everyone is a female. Femaleness is just a title, see. Which means it can be selectively applied whenever and however the author chooses to apply it. The concept of “female” lies outside the realm of verifiability. Suggesting to subject it to any form of logic or other means of adjudication means you’re missing the point. Femaleness simply exists, but only sometimes, and those sometimes just so happen to be identifiable only to someone possessed with as a large a brain as Ms. Chu. We are past the need for coherence, let alone truth or honesty. And if you don’t agree that’s a sign that you are broken—fragile, illiterate, hateful, humorless.

Chu’s writing—most famously, her breakthrough essay “On Liking Women”—establishes her prose style: long, schizophrenic paragraphs crammed with unsustainable metaphors meant to prove various fuzzy theses simultaneously. Her prose seems kinda sorta provocative but only when read on a sentence-by-sentence level, with the reader disregarding any usual expectations of cohesion or connection.

This emancipation from typical writerly expectations allows Chu to wallow proudly in self-contradiction and meaninglessness. As she notes herself, explicitly, meaning isn’t the point. Meaning doesn’t even exist. It’s just, like, a feeling:

I mean, I don’t like pissing people off per se. Yes, there is a pleasure to that sometimes, sure. I think that my biggest takeaway from graduate school is that people don’t say things or believe things—they say them because it makes them feel a particular way or believing them makes them feel a particular way. I’ve become hyper aware of that, and the sense in which I’m pissing people off is more about bringing that to consciousness for the reader. The reason you’re reacting against this is not because it contradicts what you think is true, it’s because it prevents you from having the feeling that the thing you think is the truth lets you feel.

And so she can get away with saying that of course she doesn’t actually believe that everyone is a female, the same as her idol Valerie Solanas didn’t actually want to kill all men. The writers, Chu and Valerie, are just sketching out a dumb idea as a fun little larf, to see how far they can push a manifestly absurd thought. If they just so happen to shoot a gay man at point blank range and/or make broader left movements so repulsive that decent people get driven away, so be it. And if any snowflakes complain about their tactics, well that’s just proof of how right they are. Provocation is justification—the ends and the means. The fact that this makes for disastrous and harmful politics is beside the point. All that matters is that Chu gets to say what she wants to say.

This blunt rhetorical move—which is difficult to describe without sounding like I’m exaggerating or making stuff up, since it’s so insane—papers over Chu’s revanchist and violent beliefs. Her work is soaked with approving portrayals of Solanas’ eliminationist rhetoric—of course, Chu doesn’t’ actually mean it, even though she does. Men are evil, even as they don’t really fully exist since everyone is a woman, ergo eliminating men improves the world. Chu goes so far as to suggest that being a trans woman makes her a bigger feminist than Solanas or any actual woman could ever be, because the act of her transitioning led to the world containing fewer men. Again: big brain shit.

I’ll leave it to a woman to comment on the imperiousness of a trans woman insisting that she is bestest and realest kind of woman, that biological women are somehow flawed imposters. I will stress, however, that such a claim comes as a means of justifying a politically disastrous assertion that more or less fully justifies the most reactionary gender critical arguments, which regard all trans women as simply mentally ill men (this line of reasoning is so incredibly stupid that even a dullard like Rod Drehar can rebut it with ease). Trans activists have spent years establishing an understanding of transsexualism as a matter of inherent identity—whether or not you agree with that assertion, you have to admit that it has political propriety and has gone a long way in normalizing transness. Chu rejects this out of hand, embracing instead the revanchist belief that transness is attributable to taking sexual joy in finding oneself embarrassed and/or feminized—an understanding of womanhood that is simultaneously essentialist and tokenizing. When asked about the materially negative potential in expressing such a belief, Chu reacts with a usual word salad of smug self-contradiction: 

EN: You say in the book that sissy porn was formative of your coming to consciousness as a trans woman. If you hadn’t found sissy porn, do you think it’s possible that you might have just continued to suffer in the not-knowing?

ALC: That’s a really good question. It’s plausible to me that I never would have figured it out, that it would have taken longer.

EN: How does that make you feel? Is that idea scary?

ALC: It isn’t really. Maybe it should be a little bit more, but it isn’t really. One of the things about desire is that you can not want something for the first 30 years of your life and wake up one day and suddenly want it—want it as if you might as well have always wanted it. That’s the tricky thing about how desire works. When you want something, there’s a way in which you engage in a kind of revisionism, the inability to believe that you could have ever wanted anything else.

EN: People often talk about the ubiquity of online porn as a bad thing—I’ve heard from lots of girlfriends that men getting educated about sex by watching porn leads to bad sex—but there seems to me a way in which this ubiquity is helping people to understand themselves, their sexuality and their gender identity.

ALC: While I don’t have the research to back this up, I would certainly anecdotally say that sissy porn has done something in terms of modern trans identity, culture, and awareness. Of course, it’s in the long line of sexual practices like crossdressing in which cross-gender identification becomes a key factor. It’s not that all of the sudden, in 2013, there was this thing and now there are trans people. However, it is undoubted that the Internet has done something in terms of either the sudden existence of more trans people or the sudden revelation that there are more trans people than anyone knew there were. Whether it’s creation or revelation, I think everyone would agree that the internet has had an enormous impact there.

One of the things I find so fascinating about sissy porn is that it’s not just that I can hear about these trans people who live 20 states away from me and that their experiences sound like mine. There is a component of it that’s just sheer mass communication and its transformative effect, but another part of it is that the internet itself can exert a feminizing force. That is the implicit claim of sissy porn, the idea that sissy porn made me trans is also the idea that Tumblr made me trans. So, the question there is whether or not the erotic experience that became possible with the Internet actually could exert an historically unique feminizing force. I like, at least as a speculative claim, to think about how the Internet itself is feminizing.

Politics, like, don’t matter. So, like, okay, nothing I say matters? So it’s okay if I say dumb and harmful shit because, like, they’re just words, man.

Chu can’t fully embrace this sort of gradeschool nihilism, though, because if communication was truly as meaningless as she claims then any old critic could come along and tell her to shut the fuck up. Even as she claims to eschew all previously existing means of adjudicating morality and coherence, she nonetheless relies on the cheapest means of making sure she maintains a platform: validation via accreditation. This is all simple victimhood hierarchy. Anyone who does not defer all of their own perceptions to someone higher up the hierarchy is inherently incorrect, their trepidations serving to validate the beliefs of the oppressed:

I like to joke that, as someone who is always right, the last thing I want is to be agreed with. [Laughs] I think the true narcissist probably wants to be hated in order to know that she’s superior. I absolutely do court disagreement in that sense. But what I like even better are arguments that bring about a shift in terms along an axis that wasn’t previously evident. So it’s not just that other people are wrong; it’s that their wrongness exists within a system of evaluation which itself is irrelevant.

Chu has summoned the most cynical possible interpretation of Walter Ong’s suggestion that “Writing is an act of violence disguised as an act of charity.” Of course, any effective piece of communication requires some degree of persuasion, convincing a reader, listener, viewer, or user to subjugate their perceptions to those of the communicator. Chu creates—not just leans on or benefits from, but actively posits and demands fealty to—the suggestion that her voice is the only one deserving of attention by virtue of it being her own. That’s it. That’s what all her blathering and bluster amount to. Political outcomes do not matter. Honesty does not matter. What matters is her, because she is her. 

This is the inevitable result of a discourse that prizes a communicator’s embodied identity markers more than anything those communicators are attempting to communicate, and in which a statement is rendered moral or true based only upon the presence or absence of certain identity markers. Lived experience trumps all else. A large, non-passing trans woman is therefore more correct than pretty much anyone else, no matter how harmful or absurd her statements may be. She is also better than them. And smarter. And gooder.

Designating lived experience and subjective feelings of safety as the only acceptable forms of adjudication has caused the left to prize individualism to a degree that would have made Ronald Reagan blush. And this may explain the lukewarm reception of Chu’s book.

While they heaped praise upon her before the books’ release, critics backed off once they realized that Females is an embarrassingly apt reflection of intersectional leftism—a muddling, incoherent mess, utterly disconnected from any attempt toward persuasion or consensus, the product of a movement that has come to regard neurosis as insight. The deranged mewlings of a grotesque halfwit are only digestable a few pages at a time. Any more than that, and we begin to see within them far too much of the things that define our awful movement and our terrifying moment.