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jenna0rtega27 · 1 month

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My request

Could you do a Wednesday Addams x reader smut

She catches you flirting with Enid and reads the text between you two, and later you come over to her dorm, it’s only her there, and she’s mad and silent.

She try’s explaining but is to angry to do so, ends up fucking you until she’s not angry anymore

G!p Wednesday btw

At the end enid walks in to see you two in Wednesday’s bed lol

Thank you so much.🖤

The love of his life

Masterlist

Thank you for asking +18 Wednesday x F!Reader (mermaid) Summary: Request Warning: Wednesday g!p, smut, penetration, rough sex, jealousy, slight mention of choking, dom!Wednesday, sub!Reader

Note: Sorry if this sucks. I am very tired today. But I still wanted to respond to a request so I hope you will like it anyway. Number of words: 1597

3rd Person Pov:

Y/n is sitting on a table outside. She is between Enid, Yoko and Divina sitting on Yoko's lap. And in front of her there are Bianca, Ajax and Eugene. It’s the weekend so no one has school.

"How's it going with Wednesday?" » Divina asks, turning to Y/n to give her full attention. She wraps her arms around Yoko's neck who also gives you her full attention.

" I don't know. Wednesday is less distant with me than the others. But she doesn't want us to show our affection in front of others. So we don't kiss in public. She doesn't even want to hold hands in public. » Y/n gives a sad smile to her friends. She wished Wednesday would show her love towards her more.

“And when you are alone? » Enid asks curiously. Y/n's cheeks reddened thinking about yesterday with Wednesday fucking her.

“To deprive her of that is a whole different person but I’ll keep that to myself.” »

Y/n and Wednesday have been together for 3 months. Even though everyone at school knows you're in a relationship, Wednesday still doesn't like to show love in public. But for Y/n it didn't bother her because in private, Wednesday showed her love. Y/n was truly in love with the goth and she knew she was going to end her life with this emotionless girl.

“Yeah good idea I don’t want to have too much explanation that could harm my hearing. » Adds Bianca with an expression of disgust. Everyone laughs at his comment.

“My shoulders hurt so much, yesterday’s fencing really exhausted me. » Enid complains while massaging her right shoulder which is painful.

“Wait, I’m going to massage you, you’ll feel better. » Y/n gets up and stands behind Enid and begins to massage her shoulders. Enid closes her eyes in happiness. It's been a long time since she had a shoulder massage.

" Yes like this. Just there. » Enid groaned slightly from the tension in her shoulders.

“Looks like you were fucking.” » Said Bianca laughing.

What no one knew was that Wednesday saw and heard everything. And she thought Y/n and Enid were flirting together. Anger surges through his veins. She clenches her fist and quickly heads to her dorm where she shares with Enid and Y/n. She goes back to her dorm and she does everything in her power not to kill Enid or Bianca or even Y/n. While pacing around the room, Wednesday sees Y/n's phone on her bed. The young goth had watched Y/n do her code once and she had held her back. She knew this information would come in handy one day.

Wednesday takes the phone and enters the code which is her date of birth. She goes to her girlfriend's messages and immediately finds Enid's name. Rocks form in his stomach.

Enid 🐺🌕❤️: I love you my dear

Y/n ❤️‍🔥🧜🏻‍♀️: I love you too my wolf

Enid 🐺🌕❤️: No you don't understand, I love you madly. I am so blessed to have met you.

Y/n ❤️‍🔥🧜🏻‍♀️: Stop it, you'll make me cry. And Wednesday is sleeping next door I don't want to wake her because you make me cry.

Wednesday closes the phone and throws it across the room. She's so angry you'd think smoke was coming out of her ears. Not only does she see her girlfriend flirting with Enid but they also exchange little words of love.

“Enid, I’m going to tear you into pieces and feed your flesh to the squirrels. » Wednesday serves her hands while injuring her hands from her nails digging into her skin.

" You're better? » Y/n sat back down in her place between Enid, Yoko and Divina.

“Yes thank you you were the best. » Enid smiles and kisses Y/n's cheek. “Oh no I put lipstick on your cheek. » Enid laughed softly. " Let me see. » Y/n searches in her pocket for her phone but can't find it. “Shit, I forgot my phone at the dorm. I will be back. »

Y/n gets up and heads inside the school to go back to her dorm.

When she comes home, she finds Wednesday standing between her bed and Wednesday's bed and looking out the window. His arms are crossed over his chest.

“Wednesday you haven’t seen my phone? »

“I threw it at the wall. » The young goth responds without emotion. Y/n frowns.

" All right? And why? » Y/n responds softly because she senses that her girlfriend is upset but she doesn't really know why and slowly walks towards Wednesday.

Wednesday quickly turns around and pushes Y/n onto the bed so she is sitting on the edge of the bed and Wednesday straddles her girlfriend's lap. The emotionless girl cups Y/n's jaw between her thumb and the rest of her fingers and squeezes.

“I saw your little interaction with Enid earlier and your messages between you and Enid. » Wednesday clenches her jaw and squeezes harder on Y/n's jaw. But then she notices the lipstick mark on Y/n's cheek and she immediately knows it's Enid's because of the pink color. Wednesday's irises turn even darker with anger and jealousy.

Wednesday forcefully pushes Y/n to lay her down and gets off of Y/n's lap.

" Take off your clothes. » Orders Wednesday, undressing too. Y/n immediately does as she is told and quickly undresses. Both women are now completely naked.

Wednesday climbs onto the bed and sits on top of Y/n between her thighs. “I’m going to remind you who you belong to. » Wednesday takes his hard cock and thrusts without warning into Y/n's dripping vagina. The young woman moaned in pain and pleasure at the same time.

Wednesday moves her hips with animal speed. “I'm going to remind you who can fuck you and put their lips on you. » Wednesday releases all her anger in her hip movement.

The young goth leans in and kisses Y/n. She sticks her tongue in her mouth and pushes it down Y/n’s throat who chokes her slightly.

" I'm near. » Y/n cries into Wednesday's mouth and clutches the sheets. Wednesday bites her girlfriend's bottom lip hard enough to draw some blood. She licks the blood and gets off of Y/n. The y/h/c girl moans and is sexually aroused and angry. “Get on all fours. » Y/n listens and gets on all fours. Wednesday feels even harder seeing Y/n's ass. She spanks her left buttock hard and Y/n moans in pain and excitement.

“You 'slap' is 'slap' to 'slap' me” Y/n moaned with each slap. Wednesday thrusts into Y/n’s vagina always without warning. She holds Y/n’s hips in place to help him enter her.

Y/n moaned loudly into the cushion. The young goth takes a handful of Y/n's hair and pulls it towards her so that Y/n's back is against her chest. Wednesday puts her hand on Y/n's throat and chokes her slightly as she continues to penetrate her.

“Tell me who you belong to.” » Wednesday whispers in Y/n's ear which sends shivers all over her body.

" Yours. I belong to you only. » The young mermaid said with difficulty with Wednesday's hand still on her throat.

“You’re right Cara Mia. You belong to me and only me. »

Wednesday pushes Y/n so that she is head on the cushions and butt in the air again. Y/n services Wednesday’s cock, a sign that she’s close. The girl with black braids moaned at the pressure on his penis.

“I’m going to cum.” » Y/n cries feeling close.

“Cum for me Cara Mia.” » Wednesday keeps her speed and rubs circles on Y/n's clit to help her cum.

Y/n screams and cramps her back while cumming on Wednesday's cock. The young goth moans and jerks off to cum in Y/n's pussy. The young y/h/c girl moaned as she felt the hot liquid invade the inside of her vagina. Y/n lays on her side with Wednesday lying behind her both tiredly.

“I didn’t hurt you Cara Mia?” » asks Wednesday, worried that she has hurt her girlfriend.

“Are you kidding, it was the best sex I’ve ever had. » Y/n smiled as she turned her head towards Wednesday.

“I love you so much Mio amore. » Wednesday kisses Y/n passionately. Their tongues dance together.

" I love you too my love. And don't forget that you are the only one on my mind. » Y/n replies, pulling away from the kiss and caressing Wednesday's cheek.

“Go get some sleep amore. » Wednesday kisses Y/n's cheek. The girl rolls her head over and falls asleep in her girlfriend's arms with Wednesday's cock still in her pussy.

The door opens slowly and Enid enters the dormitory. “It smells like sex in here. » Enid smirked seeing Wednesday's glare.

“From now on, I forbid you from touching or kissing Y/n’s cheek. »

“I can’t promise anything. » Enid laughed lightly without waking Y/n.

“If I see you flirting with Y/n again, I’ll destroy your stuffed animal collection and tell everyone that you and Ajax had sex in the school library.” » Wednesday responds without emotion.

“Okay, okay but I’m just telling you that Y/n is madly in love with you. So you don't have to worry. And I am madly in love with Ajax. But if you don't mind, I'm going to sleep in Yoko's dorm. I don't want to smell like sex all night long. » Enid hops and leaves the dormitory, closing the door gently.

Wednesday looks at Y/n and gently caresses her cheek.

“I’m madly in love with you too. » Wednesday whispers and she kisses Y/n's cheek lovingly. And she's sure she saw a smile and a blush on her girlfriend's face.

Y/n will be and remain the love of his life.

#jenna marie ortega #wednesday addams #g!p #jenna ortega smut #wednesday x fem!reader #wednesday netflix #enid sinclair #smut

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utilitycaster · 10 months

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So I've felt a little bit like I'm struggling a bit to see for myself where you and others are recognizing Imogen's self-centeredness. Like, it makes sense for it to be there once it's pointed out to me, but she has a lot of moments where she DOES consider whether or not she or the party are potentially bringing harm to other people or animals—so it wasn't difficult for me to come away from her character, at a surface level, thinking that her biggest flaw is being a cynic and not letting people in, and I think between fanon and judging her by past Laura PCs, I have some trouble getting a read on her. What are you taking into consideration as you observe her character and her choices, and how much do you think Laura's leaning into those things intentionally?

So I do think that I probably cover her selfish moments more than I cover her on the whole, both because I find those moments a particularly interesting part of her character and in reaction to the bad fanon of her as a long-suffering victim deprived of choices. I should also note that I don't think she's a black hole of self absorption, so much as she tends to perhaps not consider that multiple options all have a chance of hurting people in a way I find insensitive.

Perhaps an overarching theme is the psychic powers in that I think she is so used to picking up people's thoughts that she doesn't realize the power imbalance this grants. Like...I think she sometimes forgets that a conversation needs to be a two-way street and is not solely her reading thoughts, but an opportunity for others to get information about her and hear her feelings, and also for her to express that curiosity about others. Which is a weird take on self-centeredness! I think most people think of self-centeredness as someone who only talks about themselves, and Imogen is not that. But at the same time...a good example is when she sees her father, who is pretty clearly desperately lonely and isolated and has been abandoned by both his wife and daughter due to them having powers well beyond what he understands. I don't think she picks up on all the visual cues, and while she could read what he's thinking, I think she forgets the impact of a simple "how are you?" or the responsibilities of both people to engage with conversation. Like...yes, you can understand someone's upset by reading their mind, but what about talking it through? What about the benefits the other person gains by having to put things into words? That's often lost in Imogen's interactions.

When she's focused on getting information, all the niceties fall away, and if she doesn't want the information she doesn't have that sense of give and take that would obligate most people to still carry on a conversation. (I suspect this is also why the two arguments she's had with Laudna have both fizzled out so unsatisfyingly; you have someone who will rapidly cover up any unhappiness and someone who - in my interpretation anyway - doesn't take that into consideration.)

The conversation leading up to the solstice is also a big one; I think again that the underlying motivation isn't ill-intentioned, per se, when she talks about whether the Vanguard might be right. I think that comes from, as I've said, an idea of hypocrisy of words vs. thoughts not matching, whereas most of us would think of hypocrisy as a mismatch of word and action. I don't think she intends to hurt people here. But at the same time it's immensely hurtful to bring this up to someone like Orym, who has lost his husband and his father figure and nearly his own life, or to Laudna, who could have been permanently killed by Otohan. It's not that it's not a valid line of discussion even though ideologically I'm opposed; it's that I don't think she has that sense of tact here. Which is also understandable, in that 18-year-old Imogen was never spared people's thoughts about her, but that doesn't mean it's not selfish. And it stands out because, again, I feel that people who talk to Imogen are not granted that opportunity to talk through their thoughts and use her as a sounding board, but she (again - possibly unwittingly) expects others to be available as one for her. Sort of to your point - I think she often thinks about whether the party is going to hurt people but I don't think she thinks about whether she, Imogen, is going to say something immensely hurtful to a party member.

I also find that she's just...not terribly pragmatic, and I'll admit that this is just a strong personal preference on my part in that I find adherence to pure ideology without a clear plan to be selfish at worst, though just extremely annoying at best. It feels she shoots down or criticizes a lot of plans with no better idea in mind (this happened a bunch in Uthodurn/Molaesmyr so this might be recency bias) and that always in real life makes me go "ok so if you're the one with the good ideas, have one." The "what about people who don't follow the gods" line after Deanna and FCG had direct visions really made me go "girl this is not about you;" it's not that it's not a valid question but for real, girl this is not about you and I don't know, what about them? Figure it out yourself.

Writing it out I think that this is honestly not that different from what you might call cynicism. I think Imogen just...doesn't always get that people are in fact more than their collections of thoughts, and hasn't put in the effort to really get a sense of how non-psychics might interact with the world.

As for intentionality: I have to admit I'm not sure how much is an intentional analysis of how a psychic might behave. I think the view of hypocrisy is on purpose, but I don't know if the conflict avoidance with Laudna is motivated by that or by something else. I also wonder, but am not sure, if some of the subtle changes with Imogen after getting the circlet are her adjusting to not reading people's thoughts. Like, that puts the interaction with Deanna killing the goat in a new light, because that's an interaction where I don't fault Imogen, and I think it works well as her being like "TRULY WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT I CAN'T READ YOUR MIND." But Laura's played it close to the vest on 4SD and I have some again kind of personal...maybe not biases, but definitely hunches and doubts regarding backstory for Imogen, and I don't know how much she's thought it out.

And finally, also through writing this out, I do think some of what I say is again a personal reaction to not just fanon but the very "this person is RIGHT and this person is WRONG" nature a lot of fanon, especially surrounding Imogen, has taken. I think if there were a fandom environment in which (for example) it was more common for people to say "Oh, it looks like Relvin is someone who tried hard but was limited by his own knowledge, and his attempt to protect Imogen by keeping her in the dark about Liliana made things worse, and Imogen in turn saw his distance and increased it, and these are two people who love each other but have hurt each other pretty badly and don't want to deal with it because for a long time they were all the other had, and frankly Imogen is still all Relvin has" instead of projecting their personal daddy issues onto it in the service of the stripped of choice innocent but all-powerful failgirl narrative, I'd have a more measured response myself. "Insensitive in a way that quite likely is unintentional but often comes off as all take and no give, particularly in her one-on-one interactions with others" is probably a better way to put it, and I think that her cynicism is part of why she's like this.

#answered #burr-ell #cr tag #critical role spoilers #imogen temult

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 6 months

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Sadly, not enough of the world has paid attention to the plight of Gazans at the hands of Hamas. Now in a series of video testimonies the world can hear the voices of actual Gazans speaking out.

By: Yoseph Haddad

Published: Feb 5, 2023

It has been more than 15 years since the US and EU-designated terror group Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, throwing Palestinians with whom they disagreed from rooftops in the process.

Some in the West know already that Hamas and its leaders are Islamist terrorists that seek to destroy everything the West and Israel stand for: democratic values, freedom of speech and the press, and of course, LGBTQ and women’s rights. Sadly, not enough of the world has paid attention to the plight of Gazans at the hands of Hamas.

Now, in an unprecedented series of video testimonies called “Whispered in Gaza,” the entire world can hear the voices of actual Gazans speaking out about what life is like under the terrorist dictatorship in Gaza.

[ Hamas’ oppressive rule over women doesn’t allow Gaza’s girls or women to sing or dance in public (Credit: Center for Peace Communications) ]

As an Arab Israeli myself, who fought against Hamas in Gaza, it’s no surprise to me to hear these devastating testimonies of what I know Gazans experience under Hamas every day. Yet for years, many outside of Israel have not understood the barbarity and cruelty that Palestinians in Gaza face – not at the hands of Israel, but at the hands of their own tyrannical leaders: Hamas.

It’s hard to ignore the truth when Gazans themselves are speaking out, uncensored. In these clips, you can hear Palestinians sharing for the first time how Hamas steals money from civilians and private businesses, how they crush and imprison any person or group that calls for policy changes, and how, just as in the Islamic Republic of Iran, women are not allowed to sing, dance, or even hold hands with men in public.

The United Nations and its envoys, rapporteurs and investigators rarely comment (if ever) on how Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields in their fight against the Israel Defense Forces, but now that Palestinian civilians are sharing the horrors of living under Hamas, will the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres actually say something? Will the Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, condemn Hamas, or does her anti-Israel obsession make her blind to the suffering of Gazans under the Islamist terror group?

How about the foreign ministries of the UK, France, Germany, and other European countries? Will they take the time to hear the voices of the people of Gaza and listen to the hardships they endure living under Hamas?

The videos expose who Israel is fighting against – not the Palestinian people, but rather a terrorist group that is not just terrorizing Israeli civilians with rockets, but also terrorizing their own people through their daily oppression of women, prohibiting freedom of speech and the right to protest, and infesting Gaza with corruption and exploitation. Hamas controls the people of Gaza, depriving them of basic rights and freedoms.

We, Israeli civilians, and yes, Arab Israelis as well, see this as a direct threat to us. The terrorism and extremism that Hamas and its allies spread throughout the Arab world harms us as Arabs too. When rockets are fired from Gaza, they do not discriminate between Arabs and Jews. In fact, in nearly every round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, Arab Israelis were murdered by Hamas in terror attacks or rocket attacks. Hamas terrorism harms both Israeli Jews and Arabs, and the ideology of Hamas is indoctrinating future generations of Palestinians in Gaza with an irrational, dangerous hatred and lust for violence.

Sadly, many Palestinians are trapped under the brutal rule of Hamas, which is why these testimonies are so powerful and important globally.

In Israel, women are free, hundreds of thousands of people protest peacefully every week against the government, LGBTQ community members are respected and valued, and media outlets are free to criticize or support government policies.

But these personal stories from Gaza show that in Gaza it’s the polar opposite. Palestinians are being subjugated by Hamas day and night, and they’re saying this in their own words.

Now the only question that remains is, will anyone in the free world actually listen? Or do Palestinian lives only matter when Israel can be blamed?

Whispered in Gaza - YouTube

Voices from Gaza - Instagram

This series is what prompted the Islamic Fatwa Council to, one month later, issue a fatwa against Hamas and designate them a terrorist organization, holding them responsible for human rights violations in Gaza.

#gaza #gaza strip #whispered in gaza #voices from gaza #hamas #exterminate hamas #islam #islamic terrorism #religion is a mental illness

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reasoningdaily · 1 month

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RANKIN COUNTY, Miss. -- Former Rankin County, Mississippi, sheriff's deputies Hunter Elward and Jeffrey Middleton were sentenced in federal court on Tuesday after pleading guilty, along with five additional former law enforcement officers, to a total of 16 charges related to the January 2023 torture of two Black men.

Elward, who pleaded guilty to the most serious charge in the indictment -- discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence -- was sentenced to 241 months, or about 20 years, according to the Department of Justice.

"I hate myself for it," Elward said during the sentencing hearing, according to Jackson ABC affiliate WAPT. "I accept my responsibility."

Middleton was sentenced to 17.5 years or 210 months in prison for his role in the incident, according to the Department of Justice. The remaining four officers who pleaded guilty in this case will be sentenced during hearings on Wednesday and Thursday.

Michael Jenkins, who was shot in the mouth by Elward during the incident, spoke to WAPT on Tuesday afternoon after Elward stood up and apologized to him in court.

"I'm glad he looked at me. I'm glad he see me," Jenkins said, adding that while he "feels sorry" for Elward's family, the former officer got "what he deserved."

Eddie Parker, the second victim in the case, told Elward in court on Tuesday that he forgave him for his actions, according to WAPT, and said that he is "satisfied" with the sentence.

Asked about his decision to forgive Elward, Parker said, "For what is given and what is done, I forgive that part, but other than that, he still did what he did and he has to be punished."

"I always stand up for justice and for what's right," he added.

Asked if he also forgives Elward, Jenkins told WAPT, "I don't know. No, no, because if he wouldn't have got caught he'd still be doing the same thing."

Former Rankin County sheriff's deputies Elward, Middleton, Christian Dedmon, Brett McAlpin and Daniel Opdyke, along with Joshua Hartfield, a former Richland police officer, pleaded guilty to 16 federal charges related to the torture and physical abuse of three Rankin County men in two unrelated incidents, according to a statement released by U.S. Department of Justice on Aug. 3, 2023.

The charges include civil rights conspiracy, deprivation of rights under color of law, discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice. The former officers agreed to sentences ranging from five to 30 years as recommended by prosecutors, but the judge is not bound by the agreement, according to The Associated Press.

According to the charging documents, the incident on Jan. 24, 2023, took place when a white neighbor claimed in a complaint to McAlpin, the chief RCSO investigator, that she observed "suspicious activity" from Black men staying at a nearby property.

McAlpin asked Dedmon, who was an RCSO investigator at the time, to look into the incident, and Dedmon proceeded to reach out to a group of shift officers who called themselves "The Goon Squad" because of their "willingness to use excessive force and not report it," according to the documents.

During the incident, the officers beat Jenkins and Parker, sexually assaulted them with a sex toy and shocked them with Tasers for roughly 90 minutes while handcuffed, according to court documents obtained by ABC News. Jenkins was also shot in the mouth by Elward, per the DOJ.

And while Jenkins was bleeding on the floor, instead of providing medical aid, the officers "devised a false cover story to cover up their misconduct" and proceeded to "plant" and "tamper with evidence" to corroborate their story, the DOJ said.

"The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims, egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect, and shamefully betrayed the oath they swore as law enforcement officers," DOJ Sec. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement on Aug. 3, 2023. "The Justice Department will hold accountable officers who abuse the public trust that is essential to public safety."

The officers admitted that on Jan. 24, 2023, they entered a home where Jenkins and Parker were staying in Braxton, Rankin County, Mississippi, where they handcuffed and arrested the two men "without probable cause to believe they had committed any crime, called them racial slurs, and warned them to stay out of Rankin County," the DOJ said in a statement on Aug. 3, 2023, announcing the guilty pleas.

According to the federal charging documents obtained by ABC News, sentencing maximums range from three years in prison for lesser offenses to life in prison for the most serious offense of discharging of a firearm during a crime of violence.

The two victims -- Jenkins and Parker -- spoke out during a press conference Monday morning about the enduring trauma of the experience as their attorneys called on the judge to give the former officers the "maximum sentence."

"I'd like to thank everybody for supporting us and believing in us," said Jenkins, who was shot in the mouth during the incident. "It's been very hard for me this past year. I'm just looking forward to justice tomorrow. I hope they do right. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst."

Parker, who is set to testify during the sentencing hearings this week, per his attorney, said that it's been a "hard year," and he's glad that the day of sentencing, which was delayed twice before, has finally come.

"Everything needs to be done right because everything was done wrong," Parker said. "What's done already, man, can't be erased; it can't be taken back. I relive this every day."

Malik Shabazz, the lead attorney for Jenkins and Parker, said that his clients have "been through a lot of trauma" and called on U.S. District Judge Tom Lee to give each of the former officers the "maximum sentence."

"The day of justice has finally come," he said. "That's an important day, not only in Mississippi, but this is an important day for accountability for police brutality, all throughout America. Police officers are watching this sentencing ... they're watching to see whether law enforcement in Mississippi and law enforcement in America will be held sufficiently accountable for their acts of torture and brutality," he added.

The officers have not responded to ABC News' requests for comment.

Dedmon, Elward and Opdyke also pleaded guilty to three additional federal felony offenses related to a separate incident that took place on Dec. 4, 2022, per the DOJ.

The U.S. The Department of Justice launched an investigation into the incident in Feb. 2023, along with the FBI, amid outrage from the community and as attorneys for Jenkins and Parker filed a notice of claim for a $400 million federal lawsuit. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation also investigated the case that led to state charges against the officers.

"It's in court, and we're fighting," Shabazz told ABC News on Monday when asked about the status of the lawsuit.

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pecadosarepiling · 10 months

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How did Dani end up at the Lounge?

While yes her dear Seilos is also a patron there, he was not the one to introduce to the Zabrak beauty to the others.

@storm89 @pixiestookourstardust @eyecandyeoz @by-the-primes @gran-maul-seizure @stardustbee

No, this began when Danica in search of knowledge and with a clever knack of sneaking into places sat in on the lectures of one Professor Vorka’adan, to no surprise one of the only Chiss members of the faculty. A hue of blue that reminded her of ocean water and black hair with a distinct streak of gray. Danica always glanced towards him. A set of glasses always perched about his nose. He was handsome Dancia admitted to herself, then again she did have a penchant for eyeing Chiss.

His classes were small, however the lecture halls were more than abundant in their space, Danica took to hiding away in the back. Scribbling away notes. She listened with great interest to what the Chiss Professor had to share. Oh how envious she was of the enrolled students…

She was found out at the end of the second week.

“This is not one of the courses that could be audited, Miss.” it was another of the students who more or less sneered at the zabrak. “Professor, you have a unneeded guest.”

Danica glared at the student who walked past with a triumphant smile.

The Professor walked over as Danica stepped out, discovered she was. “Miss I fear we must ask you…”

He looked at her, he had met Irodians…but this young woman. Bright red and with even darker red markings upon her face. A arrangement horns underneath soft curls, he would claim it was more as if she had a ivory crown. She was lovely…

“I meant no harm.” She apologies in Chenuh. Her voice was like velvet. Smooth and alluring.

“You speak Chenuh!” His gaze softened. A beauty and versed in such a language?

She smiles gently, “ A friend taught me…I do apologize sir, I just wanted to hear more. I know it’s not allowed but i just wanted to know.” She showed him her notes. Beautiful written and with annotations and questions all arranged. Truly a scholar. He dare say she would make a great assistant and of course a note taker for the advanced courses.

He would not wish to deprive such a hungry mind but rules were rules.

“You could enroll the next semester.” He attempted. “It’s too late for you to enroll at this time.”

Her smile cast into a frown, “ I am not a student here.”

“That’s very unfortunate.”

Her frown lingered and she took the notebook, “ Thank you Professor, it was nice while it lasted.”

“Wait miss…”

She turned back from the doorway, eyes bright and hopeful, “ perhaps you can be the class note taker…enrollment would not be required.”

She smile at that, a little half smile that set the day right.

“Well then if it’s possible I should introduce myself, Miss Danica Oppress.”

——

The student who had so confidently discovered Danica was stunned to see the young woman seated in front. How?!

“Everyone, Miss Oppress will be our class notetaker, do not assume that means you are excused from taking notes yourselves. She is doing so in behalf of student accommodations, but should you have a question it is likely she has it written down. “

Danica shot the student a smirk before giving everyone else a sweet smile.

“Oh she’s a cute one.”

“Hello Miss Oppress…”

—-

“Two of your students already asked me out.” She told him as she turned in a copy of the notes. Impeccable work.

“My they work fast.”

“Poor things were so disappointed to learn I’m married.” She said nonchalantly turning to a new page for notes.

“You’re married.” He repeated, trying not to let disappointment cloud it.

“I can say I’m married…” she said with a sigh.

Troubles marriage? What could it be?

“Should you ever feel want to share I’m here to listen.”

—-

Their relationship was steady, a flourishing friendship that consisted of deep discussions Over the lecture material as well as a bottle of wine decanted so the two could vent.

Ka’adan had learned much about Danica and not much at all. The biggest being…she could say she was married but that was the extent.

A fool to leave her. That was what he gathered.

He gave a comforting chat and a shoulder for her to rest on.

—-

It was a vintage wine and enthralling discussion over the literature that lead to a less than planned moment of passion.

Neither resisted and before they could stop themselves their clothes were all about Ka’-Adans office. Danica moaned as she was bent over his desk.

The sound of the desk scrapping slightly against the floor was telling…

He was atop her. Kissing her shoulders and thrusting his hips.

Friends with benefits became the term they used.

—-

It was after this encounter that Ka’adan learned that Danica’s appetite for the flesh was very much in need.

Take notes. Review. A drink sometimes, having a good bout of sex and call it a afternoon….

It was a fine arrangement…

“Really why don’t you enroll?” He has wanted to ask as she seemed to have no qualms about faculty.

“Tuition…rent…” a shy look, “ I’m trying to get funds.” A blush. “The holonet is lucrative.”

It took him only a few moments to realize what she meant. He felt only slightly ashamed to look it up later. Truly lucrative…

“ I can help, a scholarship for someone like you would be helpful.”

She knew he meant her previous academics, the Star pupil, always rivaling that boy he hears so much about, Ava, she would say with such sorrow.

A first love?

She geared toward humor, “ Oh Ka’adan I don’t think giving professors good blowjobs would suffice for a academic scholarship.”

The Chiss blushes purple, “ Danica! You know very well I don’t mean that.”

She laughed, “I know I know.”

He sighed, “ I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

She smiles at him, thank you on her lips.

——

“Here..” a box is presented to her, it’s contents have her gasping. A beautiful blue Satin gown….

“You shouldn’t have!”

“If you wish you can wear it tonight. There’s a place I want to take you too.” Ka’adaan waits as she prepares. As he knew it she looked beautiful beyond compare.

“Ah black tie? Truly you are spoiling me tonight .”

—-

The Lounge was all it was referred to, with a non descript building entrance and a elevator to take you to the main lobby. Danica was in awe. As if walking past in time. The art deco of gold elements and fan designs on the walls.

Where was Ka’adan taking her?

“Welcome Vorka’adan, we have been expecting you. Is this your guest you’ve been mentioning?” The host asked.

Danica felt her jaw drop slightly, another chiss?

“Yes, Awen this is Miss Danica. I suspect the other guests are here?”

“Yes right this way.”

—

A set of ornate doors and Danica is transported far away into a lounge. Glamor and the grandeur of the decor had her taken back. It was also the guests that had her mesermized…the familiar red eyes glowing and shades of blue all about. They dined and chatted at luxurious booths. Delicate glasses set upon tables…

“Everyone here is chiss?!” She whispered.

“Well mostly…there’s some special guests that are regulars. Possibly if you like tonight maybe even you?”

She glanced everywhere. Thankful for the dark red of her skin. A blush was bubbling. So many handsome chiss…

“Come along, there’s some Id like for you to meet.”

—-

To say the meeting was a triumph was an understatement. Danica was dazzling the guests with her perfect use of Chenuh and challenging more than one chiss to a debate.

“Ka’adan, truly did not do you justice. We thought he made you up!”

“I must admit Miss Oppress you are truly a gem.”

Danica was giddy. Getting compliments and praise from the group of Chiss. It did not help that she also continued to have champagne. The delicate flute emptying once more and her flirting becoming more and more heavy.

Danica started innocently, and with more champagne her flirtations becoming more pronounced.

She could not help it…surrounded by so many. A hand on her knee, she moved up to her thigh. She pouted her lips to tempt a kiss and she giggled when one kissed her cheek.

“ Kaadan mentioned you needed some help? We may be able to help if you like Miss…”

Her buzzed brain realized what was being proposed….

“Only if you want and with only your full consent.”

Danica should feel some sort of guilt, something akin to regret…but no. Nothing of the sort occurred…

She counted. 1. 2. 3 and 4 counting Kaadan.

“I’ll record, if you wish.” Kaadan proposed.

Danica counted again. 1 . 2 .3

—-

Private rooms in the Lounge told Danica that this place was more than a dinner and bar and it’s patrons spared no expense….

—

She was kissed deeply as two others removed her clothes. She moaned as they touched her and explored her.

“You’ve brought us a goddess.”

Danica blushed, “ Well if that’s so, I should be worshipped like one.”

—-

One cock deep in her cunt. Another she sucked off. The third happily being handled.

Danica was thrilled. All her nerves aflame and the second of many orgasms starting to rise.

“Stars, how can one only have you once?”

Danica thrilled in that, and rolled her hips causing the chiss to groan. “ Ahh you minx.”

—-

She lost track on how many times she was passed around, she just happily accepted being filled with a cock throughout the night…

She awoke refreshed and on clean sheets. A tray of breakfast set on the bed and a vase of 3 red roses.

Kaadan arrived with a cup of coffee.

Danica couldn’t look him in the eye, “ I don’t know what came over me.”

“Desires of the flesh…”

She blushed harder, “ to such a extent.”

“Well Miss Danica, your desires are others…” he handed her data pad. Danicas eyes widened…so many credits…

Not enough for tuition but not a bad start, “your performance on the holonet, is indeed lucrative.”

Danica considered it, “ If I continue I could make tuition…and probably also if more I could ensure my expenses are taken care of…and books…even rent…”

She blushed and looked to Ka’adan, “ would it be alright if I could be your guest again?”

“My dear Danica, the Lounge already welcomes you as a honorary member…”

And so her time at the Lounge began…

#smut #adult danica #dancia only wants chiss men 😂#adult dancia oppress #Danica x blue crew

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bluestringpudding · 3 months

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I, Basilisk

A trip once more into the absurd! This time, from the point of view of the Basilisk. (Mostly written at very strange times of night, when sleep deprivation was very much my friend.)

As a rule, I prefer to wake up for a week or so every fifty years, head out for a while, check on the castle’s plumbing, make sure the spiders haven’t made themselves too comfortable, that sort of thing. It’s a simple life but, when you’ve been cursed with death at first sight, it can be a struggle to find company. Not to mention that there's not nearly as much to do since Salazar isn’t around anymore.

This century was looking no different, though I must say it sounded like the students were getting more and more boisterous as the decades passed by. I’m quite sure Rowena wouldn’t have indulged in shrieking down the corridor between classes. Helga, maybe, but she was always the softest of the four.

Merlin, I miss them - even Godric, the sword-wielding pillock.

I’ll admit, I thought that Salazar's descendants had all died out. No one with the ability to understand me had been to the castle in hundreds of years. So imagine my unpleasant surprise when I was woken up by some snot-nosed little brat with a superiority complex.

Not many people realise that Parseltongue is not just to talk to snakes, but to command them.

Salazar knew, and he treated his gift with the respect it deserved. Tom Riddle had no such compunction. Not only that, but he seemed to think that my purpose was to harm the students. He kept ordering me to go out into the castle. I did my best to make sure none of the children came face to face with me, but to my shame I didn’t do enough.

It isn’t easy for a basilisk to go against a Parseltongue, but after that day in the bathroom I was willing to try. I lay in wait in the chamber, mentally preparing myself for the next time he tried to call on me with his forked tongue.

Except it didn’t come, and eventually the thrum of the castle’s magic lulled me back into slumber.

For a while.

I knew it was him when it started again; I could feel it in my fangs. I ventured out the nights he called me. I was going to find him – kill him – this time. He was going to come to me and I was going to tear him limb from limb, rip him up into tiny pieces so he couldn’t harm anyone again.

But he wasn't there. In his place he had sent a girl, a child barely twelve years old. She was no Parseltongue. If her flaming locks were anything to go by, I’d venture she drew a line straight back to Gryffindor himself.

Imagine my frustration when I knew it was still him in control, but I couldn’t get to him. I told myself to be patient. A narcissist such as him would only stay in the shadows for so long. What were a few more weeks or months to a creature as old as I was?

I could hear their chattering on the other side of the wall, that final night. I could hear his voice, speaking in human tongue. It made my blood boil – which, for something cold blooded, is quite the feat.

I’m afraid that in my haste to get to him, I did not make a dignified entrance, falling to the floor with a thud, winding myself in the process. I saw the girl lying on the floor, and another boy running away from me with his eyes closed. And to the left, the old sorting hat, a thing I had not seen in a thousand years, shortly after the founders has brought it to life. But I did not have time to dwell on the past; my target stood between us, not quite human, but there enough that I was sure I would enjoy feeling his bones snap.

I started towards him, but then a bird with feathers of flame swept towards me. I tried to dodge, tried to reach the one audacious enough to think that he could use me- me! - as a puppet. But the bird was too fast; its sharp beak pecked at my eyes so that I was now blind with rage and agony. He screamed another order; told me to leave the bird, kill the boy.

I was in too much pain to fight it, but I did what I could. I knew that dusty old hat had more to it than met the eye. I also knew what it meant when I heard the distinctive sound of silver against stone. Of course the boy was the sword wielding type.

It was too late for me anyway. My eyes were gone, and soon I would be too, with or without help.

At least, I hoped, as I fell on an old friend’s blade, the self-proclaimed heir of Slytherin would not win.

Godric always did get the last word.

#hp fanfic #basilisk #drabble

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sl1tcl1t · 6 months

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Life Update: Idk where else to write down my thoughts and experiences for almost the past year.

To get myself caught up with the last post I made from last year, it was my final year in HS and I never wanted to leave that rancid hél/hø\e so damn bad. I finally graduated and got into college. This freshman year is the absolute worst. On top of that, I couldn't get a dorm room, which is expected according to the hierarchy of classmen. But anyway, this year's schedule has been extraordinarily harmful to my physical and mentally. Since I don't have a dorm, I gotta commute to my classes every single day. In my case, I must drive all the way from the south to the city (1hr 30min on avg.) This is not a bad drive, unless u wanna beat the I-75/I-85 9 - 5 traffic. Which ALSO MEANS I gotta wake up at 4:00 am and leave the house by 5 if I want to arrive in time for my 8 and 10 am classes. Additionally, my last class during Mon,Weds, and Fri ends at 5pm. I don't get home till about 7. AND on top of all that, Tue and Thurs is when I work my part time shift. The latest my shift can end is at 7:30pm and it takes me at least 30 mins to get home. If I want to get the most sleep possible, I gotta be in bed by 9. My sleep schedule bc of this is incredibly fùçk3d up. Luckily, me and my friend made a little room for me to sleep in my car. Which is also another problem. Bc Im too damn sleep deprived, I oversleep multiple times and end up missing classes. Classes where I can't easily get a PowerPoint w/readily available info to write. I feel incredibly behind.

My mental and physical health has gotten progressively worse since I moved outta my mom's house. I really don't wanna get into grave detail abt my family, but TLDR; both parents are complexly problematic, but one's more flexible than the other. But, Jesus Christ Almighty, living with this man is insufferable. Nothing but complaining, guiltripping, nonchalant shaming, and being plain irritating. He brings a wave of negative energy anytime he enters a room. Granted, there are things that he complains about that are justified, but he's getting more and more senile everyday. So he just gets mad at anything now. It pisses me off but also makes me sad. Another thing is that work is overexerting my well-being whilst giving me such a low pay. For context, I work in a warehouse now. Lifting boxes every other day that are half the size of you will give you nausea. My feet have blisters and my hands are cramping. My calves burn, my entire arm is aching, and my head pounds harder than ever. My friend suggests that I might have burn out, and I believe it with every bone in my body. Working at a place that accepts newly hs grads, ofc there would be å$5h0lés my age and worse. The smell has gotten worse since I moved in w dad. He essentially lives in a white trash neighborhood, so the smell outside is horrendous. This smell has affected the inside of my house and now I reek. And the ppl at work love to remind me abt my smelly ass despite trying my hardest to mask it. I seriously cannot stand other day in there and hopefully I can get a new job this upcoming summer.

But apart from all this, the cherry on top of this shit show was today after work. I got off early and wanted to visit this little gravesite around in my area to take pics and upload on here. I chickened out. It's too damn dark for me to take any so I walked around, contemplating life per usual. I decided to go inside the convenience store. I asked if there were any sleeping pills/melatonin and the guy had asked a question that made my mind go blank,

"Are you homeless?"

Never in life would I hear those words issued to me, but if I'm gonna be completely honest, I live at my dad's house, not paying any bills or insurance (yet), I sleep in my car majority of the day, and I have the worst pay to labor ratio. So technically, Imma borderline broke ass freeloading bum. But anyway, I was even more in shock when he rang my items. I forgot my wallet in the car and told him I was going to run out n grab it, but he just gave me the bag with an empathetic, "it's okay". And now I feel like a piece of shit to completion. Bc in hindsight, Im not HOMELESS, but it damn sure feels like I am.

I can't believe Im turning into every person I've met in the workforce. Ppl who just live paycheck to paycheck and just let the days past by; not doing anything but working. I use to make fun of those ppl at my last job as a cashier while in HS, but seriously, I got the realest reality check of my life. I really cannot live a life like that for 30+ years if I can't figure something out by graduation. Else I'm better off with maggots in my eyes and my skin wilting in the ground.

I'm done ranting, I need some sleep.... GN and happy Halloween ✌🏽

#personal vent #vent #rant #vent post #tw vent #anxiété #ranting #quick life update #life update #real life #this is me #i got nowhere else to put this so i'll keep it here #this is real #this is rough #this is reality #thus is life #revelation

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thoughtswithsophie · 2 years

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revealing: too much of me

Society continuously reminds me how big my body is or how big it once was. How well I fill up my skinny boyfriend's sweatshirt that I took from his closet, it's cute that I thought it would fit. Or how much my fat is disturbing my neighbours on the plane when I swear, I'm contorting myself to only take up the space of my seat, but how dare I have only reserved one seat. Society will constantly bet on how long it will take me to gain all the weight I've lost or how greedy I am when they hear my stomach growl without knowing it's been 8 days since I ate my last apple.

I constantly have to pay attention to how solid the chairs are in classrooms and conference rooms. I need to make sure that I sit near the door that is hopefully in the back, because God forbid I have to pee during class; I wouldn't want to interrupt everyone with my fat body. And gym class, she won the most flexible contest? She was probably lying. Did you see how fat she is? A therapist seems like a promising career for her, not too much physical activity. I'm sure she was bullied, so she can relate. Oh, a sex therapist? A sexologist? Wow, she is pretty for a fat girl. I've heard fat women are freaky. Poor girl is deprived. She can't get her own man, so she has to get a career in sexuality. It goes on and on and on… even our closest friends can behave as though these struggles are personal, not social (Dark & Aphramor, 2022). Fat phobia is so deeply entrenched in society that its perpetuation is normalized and even hoped for. You wouldn't want to dare embrace your fat body because you would be glorifying obesity. The shame of these comments and embedded hatred of fat bodies in society has lingering effects and are amplified based on the amount of non-conforming identities one holds, whether it'd be race or gender presentation. Fat bodies are categorized in limiting boxes that restrict behavioural norms of what we can and cannot accomplish.

Not only is fatness dictating what one can do as a hobby or career, but so does race. White supremacy refuses to associate blackness with success. Lizzo, a successful fat black woman, is constantly bashed for her size and criticized as over the top. She is hyper-sexualized – as society does with black women. While most oppressed groups and white women experience a lack of inclusion due to size, class, disability, etc., comments of hate towards Lizzo majorly come from white men or boys. This could represent their fear of losing power and giving a platform to a fat black woman, which expresses fear of blackness and fatness. It is their tactic to repress in hopes of eliminating.

Let’s look at Rachel Wiley’s piece, For Fat Girls Who Considered Starvation When Bulimia Wasn’t Enough (2015). She had dreamed of being a ballerina but constantly saw her body as too fat to accomplish this. Whether it had been said to her by her mother or society, Wiley purged herself in hopes of one day being small enough to become a dancer. This notion of needing to be a specific size to be entitled to roles such as dancers is socially constructed to keep fat bodies from getting positive attention. One's body size must remain thin, or else it isn't deserving to accomplish powerful things. Later, when she was told her perfect teeth – the only thing her mother said was perfect about her – would be damaged from purging, she starved herself as she had to find other ways to reach her goals. This very well-written piece portrays how eating disorders are normalized for fat bodies. It also demonstrates how fatphobia wishes to harm and inflict pain upon our bodies. It rather see us suffer than live in a society where bigger bodies are appreciated.

youtube

Relationships with female members of my family have always been unhealthy and hard to maintain. In the previous post, I talked about my grandmother's wish to pay me for my weight loss. This was not a single event but rather my entire life. I know my time in Toronto has been successful when I get "complimented" on how my face looks skinnier when I return home. I, amongst many other fat girls, have very surfaced level relationships with thin parents. This expectation and admiration of slim bodies carry a lot of shame. Let's look at Khloé Kardashian; she comes from a very successful tight nit family. I am not saying she has a surfaced level relationship with her entourage, but they seem to focus immensely on body image, which correlates with a thin normative ideal. She was bigger than her sisters and was bullied for her body. She got plastic surgery to lose weight, and people still attacked her image, saying she didn't look like herself anymore.

These narratives damage fat women's sense of self; we are dammed if we do and dammed if we don’t. Our entire existence feels like it doesn't belong to us as we spend our life changing our body for our acceptance – a shell that contains our spirit but fails to be recognized as something temporary.

Lucy Aphramor (2022) explains that she was educated as a dietician and found that it normalizes fatphobia as well as body shaming (p. 4). These structures idolize a white skinny and pure culture, alienating and assimilating anything outside their ideals. Body shaming culture is built on medical systems that evaluate the worth of bodies, also creating eating disorders. I remember I was 9 years old when I had my first appointment with a dietitian. A tall skinny blonde woman shamed me for having 3 meals a day with snacks in between. I absolutely adored salads, but she refused to believe me because the narrative says fat girls don't eat healthily. As the weeks and appointments added up, I developed an eating disorder, though I didn't know that was what was happening at the time. Either dissociating from my body and binging because if I disconnected, the shame wasn’t as painful, or not eating for days. I often didn't eat until my homework was done, and even then, I counted every calorie. This idea that women need to have a small frame as it is part of the feminine ideal bleeds into all areas of social resources. I have never experienced healthcare where my body size was not used to explain the pain and discomfort I was feeling during my visits. I have endured severe illnesses due to physical abuse and trauma but have been told to lose 10 pounds, and I would feel better every time I entered the emergency room and doctors’ offices.

I want to speak of a part in Rheonna Nicole’s The Fat Girl (2016):

"Mama afraid her mini-me will be larger than life, so she make her play basketball

Scared she would fail

Too late she already scoring triple-doubles

Black

Overweight

And female."

She relays the hardships that fat women experience in a normalized fat-phobic society while speaking as a Black woman also experiencing racism. Her mother was terribly afraid of her daughter's size, forcing her to play basketball which white supremacy labels as a black male sport as they hold labels of being wild and untameable. This is a stunning comparison to Black fatness as animalistic, feeding into dominant racist tropes about Black women and their dehumanization. I have briefly discussed the fetishization of fat bodies in a previous post, but Nicole (2016) speaks of her increased fetishization because she is Black. Colonial notions of Black female bodies oversexualize them while saying they are sexual deviants. She speaks to how her mother's lack of appreciation towards her body and fear of fatness represents her inherent failure as she represents 3 incredibly oppressed identities in society.

I include blackness in this blog post, as Black cultures have helped me appreciate my body. As I mentioned in my first post, moving to Toronto was a cultural shock for me as a fat woman. This was the first time I had experienced life surrounded by people from different cultures, and the first time I realized my presence in classes, musical events, and art shows was appreciated. I was expected to show up as myself, a French, Queer, Fat, musically inclined woman – for the first time in my life, I had experienced acceptance of all these identities I represented. Again, recognizing I hold significant privilege for being white, this acceptance meant a lot after coming from a small, oppressive, conservative town. Despite their constant exclusion from society as the colonial ideology ignores all fat bodies, especially Black women’s bodies. They so kindly accepted me as they understood what it meant to be bigger, have curves and be sexualized in a patriarchal, fat-phobic society. Although Black men could still fetishize my fat white body, they appreciated me and saw me beyond the limits of my curves. I speak of these unique experiences as they have allowed me to immerse myself in an excluded culture; cultural dissociation made me feel more at home.

I want to bring in Annette Schlichter’s Do Voices Matter? (2011) in this conversation. A society that excludes us from employment avenues and opportunities, hobbies, medical resources, and accessibility also holds an expectation of how we should physically behave and carry ourselves as fat women. Fatness is associated with laziness, an unmanaged body, and a lack of elegance. Our voice matters on an extreme end as we are taking up too much space. We have to avoid being ‘too’ loud, but we can’t be 'too' quiet either because then we're seen as insecure, and when this happens, comments are made about our bodies and how much better we would feel if we only lost 10 pounds. Our voice should be assertive, so people take us seriously, as society fails to see fat women as responsible and ambitious. So, must be assertive but can’t be too assertive because then we’re a fat woman taking up too much space AND being a bitch or a bully: "Who does she think she is? She's fat; she should look at herself first before giving me attitude." Which involve stereotypes of the angry fat black woman, the sassy black woman with attitude, or the loud manly fat body of colour. As a fat white woman, I recognize that my race gives me the privilege, so I don't have to suffer racism. Not only do we have to adjust how we react to or perform our identity around people because our existence makes society uncomfortable, but we are forced to contort ourselves into boxes that don't feel familiar to us.

I want to be surrounded by people who understand and respect my experiences and existence. I want to be honoured as both fat AND beautiful, not beautiful for a fat person, nice for a fat person, quiet for a fat person, or in shape for a fat person. I learned that I showed up differently once I was no longer ashamed of myself. With the help of other beautiful, strong, independent, loving, intelligent, capable fat women, I have allowed myself to love my body as I strive to make patriarchal, white supremacist, fat-phobic, colonial systems uncomfortable with my presence. Us fat women need to unite in love and use our powerful voices, regardless of preconceived notions, to dismantle oppressive systems. I live to dismantle these structures by embracing my beautiful queer, fat, femme identity.

Here are beautiful beings that show how fatness and femininity can be embodied in everyday life. From unapologetically being themselves and 'calling out' fatphobic, racist, and sexist comments to speaking and sharing their musical/artistic talents, embracing their interracial relationship publicly, and making content promoting fat power and confidence.

Jess Kelley @Therealmrskelley

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Vanessa Duchelle @Tresduchelle

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Simone Mariposa @simonemariposa

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Dani DMC @Itsdanimc

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References

Button Poetry. (2015, Nov 30). Rachel Wiley – For Fat Girls Who Considered Starvation When Bulimia Wasn’t Enough [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw_NRdAdlio

DMC, D. [@itsdanidmc]. (2021, October 1). The woman who does not require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet. ITS ME. IM HER. [Instagram photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/CUf9BNUvbj-/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=d3049c31-bd43-49e2-af08-fd25ce555a99

Dark, K., Aphramor, L. (2022). Fat Politics as a Constituent of Intersecting Intimacies. In Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, 11(3). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2022.2045789

Duchelle, V. [@tresduchelle]. (2022, October 20). En plus d’avoir des nouveaux vêtements, comme cette chemise, @boutiques.clairefrance a aussi un nouveau compte Tik Tok (@boutiquesclairefrance) et le 24 octobre prochain, il y aura un tirage d’une carte-cadeau de 100$ parmi leurs abonné.es!! Perds pas de temps, abonne-toi. [Instagram Photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj6faDarNGh/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=c6537e84-1efc-4eed-9d36-0fb69ec7aef4

Kelley, J. [@therealmrskelley]. (2021, October 6). Ok I need y’all to freak out about these dresses with me. This Target haul turned out so much better than I expected it to!! Which piece is your favorite?! [Instagram photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/CUsiJkXFedd/

Mariposa, S. [@simonemariposa]. (2021, November 2). The South is just too good to me. Spring 2022, I’ll be an ATL shawty for good [Instagram photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/CVy4_TIpnOH/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=ee042d21-241a-49e9-ac85-3eb95f7a7413

Schlichter, A. (2011). Do Voices Matter? Vocality, Materiality, Gender Performativity. In Body & Society, 17(1), 31-52. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X10394669

Spencer, C. (2021, Aug 17). Music Star Lizzo Breaks Down Over Racist and Fat-Shaming Slurs. The Hill, Changing America.

Poetry Slam Inc. (2016, July 7). Women of the World Poetry Slam 2016 – Rheonna Nicole “The Fat Girl” [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RUt6-_hBpg

#Youtube #Instagram

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testudoaubrei-blog · 3 years

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Well, it’s not quite a master’s thesis, but this is (the first of) a series of posts on why Catra and Adora are the best love story in the history of kids TV animation and maybe the greatest love story in the history of TV. This may in some ways be faint praise - romance on TV is generally not very good compared with books or movies. Often it’s just some will they/won’t they sexual tension that is defused by getting characters together and re-heightened by breaking them up. TV is full of nearly shark jumping pointless dramas like Sam and Diane (Cheers, holy fuck am I dating myself, though that was technically before my time), Ross and Rachel (Friends, which was no Cheers) etc, but also some less annoying couples like Ben and Leslie (Parks and Rec) or Amy and Jake (Bk99) who are mostly just kind of cute and fun. Other shows, like the X-Files, teased viewers for years with unresolved sexual tension. In kids shows most romances are, appropriate for their target viewers, mild, sweet relationships based more on self-conscious flirting and blushing than on complex and conflicted feelings or deep passions - which is pretty realistic when the characters are young teens or even mid-teens. Some of these relationships are really well done - Finn and Flame Princess, Dipper and Pacifica (yeah I ship them), the early stages of Katara and Aang (before the showrunners imbued this childhood crush with cosmic significance), Steven and Connie, etc. Catra and Adora, though, are different. Their love story is not a side plot or a sub plot, it’s the heart of the show. It isn’t a childhood crush, it’s a very messy and passionate relationship between two young adults. She-Ra is an emotionally complex lesbian romance just as much as it is a thrilling action/adventure show. Everything about their relationship is baked into the show’s plot, its themes, hell even its musical score. The dramatic tension between Catra and Adora is not the result of stretching out a flirtation for ratings, but a coherent dramatic arc that runs through the entire show. As Noelle said, he made Catradora so central that execs couldn’t take it out without ruining the show. And the show is better for it. In this series of posts I’m going to try to show why, as well as showing why She-Ra is such a fantastic love story.

First off, let’s talk about how Catra and Adora’s character arcs are foils for each other, and how they come together and apart through the series. This is actually a post that I’ve been working on for a while but I keep summarizing the show rather than cutting to the chase, so I’m not going to recite many plot points so much as sketch out what’s going on with the dramatic structure at the time. But also, let’s talk about what each character’s arc is saying, and how they are commenting on each other. Spoiler alert: Catra’s arc is a subversion and critique of stories of empowerment through ruthless self-assertion and revenge, while Adora’s arc is a subversion and critique of chosen one narratives and stories of self-denial and self-transcendence.

When the show starts, Adora and Catra are shown as rivals and friends - their first scene starts the recurring motif of them reaching out for each other as one of them dangles above an abyss, as well as establishing their flirtatious banter and easy camaraderie. We quickly learn that these two young women plan to conquer the world together. These scenes and later flashbacks show Catra and Adora as deeply enmeshed in each others lives, to the point where neither of them (but especially Catra) have clear identities outside of one another. There is so much genuine love on both sides before Adora leaves, but also resentment, envy and fear, especially on Catra’s side, as well as a protectiveness on Adora’s side that deprives Catra of her autonomy. They are both being abused by Shadow Weaver - Catra physically and emotionally, Adora emotionally. It wouldn’t be too much to say that Shadow Weaver holds Catra hostage to control Adora (this is why critiques that Adora abandoned Catra to be abused are actually kind of messed up, since they accept Shadow Weaver’s premise that Adora is responsible for what Shadow Weaver does to Catra). In addition, Catra and Adora actually see the world incredibly differently. Adora already sees the world in terms of right, wrong and her destiny to right wrongs - this is why it’s important for her to accept the Horde’s obvious lies - she couldn’t keep living if she didn’t. Catra, on the other hand, sees the world solely in terms of survival and personal loyalty - everything for her is about preserving herself and the person she cares about - Adora.

Then, when Adora finds the sword, she leaves because it’s the right thing to do. Catra doesn’t even have a concept of ‘the right thing to do’ being something she should care about, or perhaps, something she can care about as an irredeemably evil, awful fuck-up. So at Thaymor neither one understands where the other is coming from, and Catra and Adora begin to part. This is the first turning point in their relationship. Adora chooses duty over what she desires, Catra chooses to protect herself (such as she sees it) and nurse her sense of betrayal and abandonment.

Their relationship until Promise is a kind of weird Frenemy thing that is fascinating to watch and sold me on the show. Neither one wants to fully admit to themselves that the other is now their enemy, neither one has given up on changing the other’s mind. Each is furious at the other, and desperate to see her again at the same time. There’s a lot of heartache and just as much sexual tension, especially at Princess Prom. Both of them come alive when they fight each other (more about that in a later post). But they’re already growing apart - Adora embracing her destiny as She-Ra, Catra rising in the ranks for the Horde. Adora now has the purpose she always wanted, plus other friends and a sense of being chosen to do something great, while Catra now has power - the means to protect herself from people like Shadow Weaver as well as the vindication she had always been denied, and even the opportunity to beat Shadow Weaver at her own game.

The next turning point is Promise. Holy fuck, this episode. It’s an episode that is even more heartbreaking after you’ve watched the show because you know just how much worse things are going to get, and yet, it’s a necessary part of both of their character arcs. Even through season 1 Catra and Adora had remained very much enmeshed in each others lives in an increasingly fucked up way as they grew apart but refused to turn away from each other. Even though they aren’t -exactly- a romantic couple (Adora doesn’t recognize and acknowledge her feelings until the last episode of Season 5), Season 1 of She-Ra is one of the worst breakups I have seen on TV. As I said in a couple of previous posts, this is the kind of shit that the Mountain Goats write songs about. Everything that was poisoning their love for each other even before episode 1 bubbles to the surface and combines with them fighting on opposite sides of the war to make a truly fucked up situation. In the end, it’s Catra that makes the choice to turn away from Adora. This isn’t a -good- decision. It’s spiteful, and destructive, and based on an outright deluded understanding of their relationship (inspired by Light Hope’s manipulations and her own issues), but it’s in some ways a necessary decision. Catra has been so wrapped up in Adora for so long that she isn’t going to be able to figure out who -she- is without cutting Adora out of her life. And the same is true of Adora.

But each of them do this in about the worst way possible. Catra embraces destruction, ambition, manipulation and outright cruelty, turning the tactics of her abusers against them and against everyone around her. She first triumphs over Shadow Weaver and manipulates Entrapta into trying to corrupt Etheria itself. Meanwhile Adora ‘lets go’ and commits herself to the self-denying mantle of She-Ra. Over the next several seasons, their respective paths will nearly lead both Catra and Adora to their deaths (in the Season 4 finale).

For the next season (counting season 2 and 3 as one) Catra and Adora are still closely linked, but as enemies. Still, there’s more than enough flirtation between them (that ‘Hey Catra’ in the first episode of Season 2 is something else), and especially on Adora’s side we see her hold back with Catra, and often take responsibility for the harm Catra inflicts, just like she had when they were kids. Yet they still drift apart - after facing off every other episode in Season 1, they spend less and less time on screen together through season 2 and 3. Catra continues her ascent to power and descent into villainy while Adora becomes more of a stressed out mess as she takes the fate of the world and the wellbeing of everyone she cares about on her admittedly broad shoulders. Catra’s one moment of vulnerability is rewarded by Shadow Weaver’s betrayal and her exile, then Catra triumphs in ruthless badass fashion through sheer desperation and aggression. In the Crimson Wastes, we see Catra at her most independent, and she almost seems happy. But once Adora shows up and Catra hears about Shadow Weaver, she’s sucked back into the worst of her resentments, and she makes very clear that being happy is less important to her than making sure Adora is miserable.

This changes everything. Catra completely breaks with reality and tries to kill Adora, herself and the world rather than lose to Adora and Shadow Weaver (I do think it’s important to remember that she does that after Shadow Weaver nearly kills her). Catra betrays everyone around her when she exiles Entrapta, threatens Scopria and lies to Hordak. Then she flips the switch. When Adora tries to fix things, Catra fights to her own death to make sure that the world disintegrates with her. For her part, Adora fights first to understand what is wrong with the world and then to fix it. Finally she tells Catra that destroying the world is her choice and she has to live with it, decks her, and then sees her off with a death glare once the portal is closed. With this, Adora writes Catra off even if, as she says later, she never never hated her. By doing that, Adora casts off the guilt that had dogged her and takes responsibility for her own life rather than someone else’s - this is actually a huge step for her, and one that will become more important in Season 4.

Season 4 is in many ways the nadir of their relationship. They only see each other once during the entire season, in Fluterrina, when Adora tries to blast Catra, much to the latter’s shock. There’s a sense in that scene that Catra is trying to have the same flirtatious enmity she used to have with Adora, and Adora is having none of it. Catra almost seems hurt by this, which is an early hint at how isolated Catra is beginning to feel. Catra spends the rest of the season at her highest and lowest. On the one hand she spends most of 12 episodes winning by every standard she has ever claimed to care about, besting Hordak himself in single combat and making herself co-ruler of the Horde and coming within a day’s march of ending the Rebellion. In many ways it is the ultimate empowerment fantasy - the abused young woman has defeated her abusers, showed up everyone who doubted her and forced everyone to respect her. But I think it’s striking that the show starts with her and Adora dreaming of conquering the world together and in Season 4 Catra nearly succeeds in conquering it alone, almost like she was trying to live out her old shared fantasy while proving she didn’t need her former best friend.

At the same time, Catra is clearly miserable. She’s always been unhappy, but in Season 4 we see her completely isolated and lying to herself and everyone who will listen in a desperate attempt to justify her actions. Turning the tactics of Hordak and Shadow Weaver against them to gain power and then against Scorpia and Entrapta to maintain it haven’t vindicated Catra, they’ve made her more and more alone as Entrapta is exiled and Scorpia drifts away. Meanwhile Catra reaches out to Double Trouble, and her interactions with them reek of a kind of desperate desire to have someone in her life (the feeling of their interaction is of an unhealthy casual relationship where one partner becomes emotionally invested and the other takes advantage of that while denying the other the closeness they desire). As people leave her, one after the other, it becomes clearer and clearer that Catra doesn’t want power at all - she wants connection, friendship, love, and power is a very poor replacement. As I said in my long Catra rant, Season 4 is both her ‘Walter White as a Catgirl’ season and the beginning of her redemption. Everything comes to head when Sparkles destroys everything Catra has tried to achieve, Double Trouble delivers those harsh truths and Horde Prime shows up and makes it all irrelevant, just highlighting how futile all her struggles and sacrifices and crimes have been.

Meanwhile Adora spends Season 4 becoming her own her and her own woman. After telling off Catra, she grows more and more disillusioned with Light Hope and critical of Glimmer (though the latter has more than a shade of her old habit of taking responsibility for others - Adora’s development is not linear). She’s gained the courage and confidence to strike out her own path, not just follow a destiny. At the season’s end she once again breaks with her best friend to do what is right, and discards the destiny that she was being prepared for. But in this case she isn’t chasing one packaged destiny for another, instead she’s making her own choice and literally shattering the thing that she thought gave her life purpose. It’s badass, and heartbreaking, and along with decking Catra and jumping after Catra into the abyss (see below) it’s the perfect Adora moment.

In many ways Season 5 starts with Catra and Adora farther apart than they have ever been. They aren’t even enemies anymore, they’re completely out of each other’s lives. And both Catra and Adora are lost at the beginning of Season 5 - Catra is useless and alone on Prime’s ship, completely defeated despite ostensibly being on the winning side, and she goes through the motions of her normal plotting without any particular conviction and none of her normal flair. Meanwhile Adora is even more miserable and self-destructive than usual, throwing herself at Horde Bots and working herself until she drops of exhaustion. In a very real way they both stay lost until they have a chance to help the other. Catra takes responsibility for what she’s done and what she can do, saves Glimmer (at least partly for Adora’s sake), apologizes to Adora, and sacrifices herself. Adora only seems to come alive when she decides to turn around, face Prime, and save the cat. And when she does, Catra and Adora’s arcs, which had separated so completely in season 4, come crashing back together to end the series.

Adora during Save the Cat is such a contrast with the uncertain, hesitant and self-destructive wreck we’ve seen so far in Season 5. This is possibly her craziest plan in 3 years of mostly cazy plans, but she never wavers or questions herself. Even when Chipped Catra appears and we see Adora’s heart break while we watch, Adora doesn’t back down or relent. She keeps at it even as the tears stream down her face. She fights better trying to save Catra without She-Ra’s powers than she fought at the Battle of Bright Moon with them. Catra’s just about as desperate - we see her cry and plead, and now is probably as good a time to any to point out how amazing a job both VAs did throughout the show, but especially in this episode, and how good a job the board artists did.

Seeing each other for the first time in a year, and only the second time since Catra blew everything up, Catra and Adora are probably the rawest and least restrained we’ve ever seen them. There’s barely any banter, no bravado, and no pretense that they are anything other than two women who desperately need each other (Prime doesn’t help with ‘You broke my heart’.) Then Catra is flung to her death, Adora jumps after her, breaks both her legs in the fall (we see her crawl to Catra, as though she couldn’t walk) and becomes the real She-Ra. It’s such a triumphant and deeply queer moment seeing a woman transformed into a warrior goddess to protect the woman she loves, and it’s the reason that, as dark as it is, Save the Cat is my Comfort Food episode.

Let’s not sleep on Taking Control, though. This episode is like a microcosm of what this show does best, especially the A plot with Catra and Adora. Catra’s reversion to lashing out at everyone and her refusal to be open to Adora shows just how much of a struggle this whole ‘being good and trying to connect to people’ thing is. Catra’s outburst gives Adora a chance to stand up for herself and refuse to be Catra’s punching bag, while also not trying to control her. Adora’s ultimatum gives Catra a chance to reach out to Adora (quite literally), and allow herself to be vulnerable. In this episode, we see just how far Catra and Adora have come since the messed up stew of their relationship in Season 1. Adora lets Catra be responsible for her own actions; Catra lets herself be vulnerable to Adora and takes responsibility for her actions. They’re both better people and better friends and better partners than they were, and the show has shown this in a strikingly nuanced and realistic way.

The important thing to note in the next few episodes of Season 5 isn’t just how much closer Catra and Adora get to each other and how much they flirt (So much. So much, y’all) but just how -happy- they are. We see both of them transformed in the other’s presence. Basically, since they’ve parted, both Catra and Adora have been defined in no small part by how miserable they often are. They have both had their triumphs and their lighter moments, but there’s been a sense of melancholy dogging both Catra and Adora since episode 1. And now that they’re together again, that lifts, somewhat. Catra’s verbal barbs have lost their venom, and she can openly show how much she cares for Adora and even Bow and Glimmer. She’s still herself - snarky, cynical, somewhat devious - but she’s not engaged in a self-destructive zero-sum struggle with everyone around her. Meanwhile Adora has spent 4 seasons being a neurotic and sometimes nearly joyless mess who takes responsibility for everything and often doesn’t let herself enjoy anything other than the odd BFS group hug (exceptions include trying to uh...impress Huntara and reveling with the butterfly ladies of Elberron in Flutterina). Around Catra, though, she’s a cocky, swaggering jock who gives as good as she gets. It’s a side of Adora we’ve only seen hints of before, and one that’s so much more confident and joyful even as the world is ending around her. Apart, Catra had tried to protect and vindicate herself with power and conquest, while Adora had tried to forget herself in duty and sacrifice. Together, they can be themselves again. This dynamic is crucial to the show’s portrayal of Catra and Adora’s romance because it doesn’t just show how much they love each other, but how they’re -good- for each other now that they’ve grown as people, and that they are so much better than they were when they were apart.

Until Shadow Weaver shows up. Their old abuser reintroduces tensions but even then things are different than they were. Now Catra isn’t just resentful of how Shadow Weaver prefers Adora - she’s protective of Adora, which is clearest in Failsafe when she calls Shadow Weaver out for being willing to sacrifice Adora. And while Adora takes the Failsafe, it isn’t to follow her destiny or because she has a death wish - it’s because she loves her friends, and she is the only one who has any hope of doing this and living (though Catra’s suggestion that Shadow Weaver take it is a good one). And finally, when Catra leaves Adora, it isn’t because she hates Adora, nor, despite what she says, is it because she really thinks that Adora chose Shadow Weaver. At least, not exactly. It’s because Catra loves Adora, and can admit that to herself, and can’t stay around and watch the woman she loves sacrifice herself rather than choosing Catra. Before Catra leaves, she asks Adora ‘What do you want?” It’s a question that echoes Shadow Weaver’s speech in Episode 1: ‘isn’t this what you always wanted since you could want anything?’ As much as Adora has grown as a person, and defined herself and stood up for what she thinks is right, she still has never answered that question - it’s never been ‘what do I want’ but ‘what do I have to do?’ and that’s how Adora answers Catra’s question. This is Adora’s last gasp as a self-transcending hero, letting go of what she wants (not that she ever dared articulate what that was) in order to do what must be done. And it nearly kills her and dooms the universe, because Adora can’t be the hero that she needs to be by being anyone less than herself.

But it’s losing Catra that inspires Adora to tell off Shadow Weaver for good (not that she’d ever really warmed to her after season 1). And it’s love for Adora that inspires Catra to stand up to Shadow Weaver and demand that she do the right thing. In both cases, Catra and Adora aren’t just standing up to their abuser, but holding her to account for the harm she’s caused, and it’s the love that they have for each other that inspires them to do this. In Catra’s case in particular her refusal to let Shadow Weaver weasel out of finding Adora is a much greater triumph over Shadow Weaver than beating her up and breaking her mask in Season 1 - it’s proof not so much to Shadow Weaver but to Catra herself that Catra really is better than this and that she deserves better than this. It’s not turning her abuser’s tactics against her, but truly holding her to a moral standard and demanding that she do the right thing.

And then there’s Catra and Adora together at the heart. Catra has already come back for Adora and stayed to the end, choosing to die with her even if she can’t share a life together (not out of some death wish, but because Adora needs her). And Adora, who’s been avoiding answering the question for three fucking years, finally let’s herself want Catra when Catra finally confesses her love (breaking the last of her self-protective shields) and asks Adora to stay -for her-. And by admitting what she wants, Adora can truly be at peace with herself and be the hero she needs to be, lesbianism saves the universe, The End.

So anyway, that’s how Catra and Adora’s stories are woven together and how they compliment and comment on each other. Narrativiely, Adora and Catra start together, come apart, find something of themselves, and truly find themselves and each other when they are reunited. Thematically, they are critiquing seemingly opposing narrative tropes - empowerment narratives and narratives of self sacrifice. But by showing the flaws in both types of story and showing how neither self-seeking empowerment nor self-negating self sacrifice can actually make us happy, She-Ra asks and answers more profound questions than most prestige dramas for adults do. I’ll get into how the show sells the idea that the power of love can bring us happiness (and save the world) in a future post. But next up, I’m going to celebrate just how much Catra and Adora’s relationship revels in ambiguity, complexity and contradiction and so tells a grown up love story in a kid’s show.

#she ra #she ra spoilers #she ra adora #spop #catradora #she ra netflix #she ra and the princesses of power #goat ship #long #meta

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gladerwolfstarkimagines · 3 years

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Mine: Azula x female reader part two

You and Azula start your relationship and manage to keep it a secret...but a new development means Azula has to take drastic action or risk losing you

Part one here

Your POV

You winced as Zuko’s strike hit your shoulder again and Zuko laughed that he’d made contact yet again, this was the first time he’d ever managed to strike you more than once in a session and he was enjoying it. “What's the matter y/n? Is the student becoming the master?" he called as you massaged your arm. You resisted the urge to roll your eyes and just smiled "don’t get cocky junior i’m just having an off day". Zuko just snorted and carried on attacking you. You wondered what he would do if you told him the real reason he was winning. That his sister had kept you up all night due a late-night visit. You had enjoyed it greatly but were now feeling the impact of it.

You’d been dating Azula for nearly eleven months now and it had been the most exhilarating time of your life. Azula constantly kept you on your toes and you knew you were utterly infatuated with her. The nice thing was, the feeling appeared to be mutual, Azula would find time no matter how small to have a moment with you each day and you loved seeing her let down her walls and be vulnerable. Apart from a few close calls with Ty lee and Mai (Ty lee never knocked before entering a room) your secret had been kept safe and actually made the whole thing more intimate and private. It made the moments you were alone all the more special and you both made sure to show the other that...hence why you were moving a bit slower today.

The timer rang and you struggled not to sigh in relief as Zuko stopped making you focus. You walked to the water bottles and took a long drink fiddling with your shirt. You were a mess sleep deprived and even your clothes were irritating you, you tugged at your collar agitated and Zuko stepped closer. "What’s that on your neck?" Zuko asked and you blushed immediately grabbing your collar and dragging it up higher. "Nothing". "Oh my god is that a hickey". "No!" you cried and Zuko laughed "it was wasn’t it! That’s why you're getting so embarrassed...and i bet that’s also why you're so slow today, you were busy last night!". "Hey i don’t comment on the state of you when Mai’s paid you a visit do I?". Zuko blushed and you nodded to him defiantly and then glanced at the clock "hours up" and made your way to the changing rooms. "Aw don’t go y/n, i’m sorry i teased you i didn’t mean to upset you" Zuko called. You saw he was seriously worried and smiled "it’s okay i’m not upset but yes i am tired". Zuko laughed "i don’t suppose you'll tell me who he is?" Zuko asked and you sighed inwardly. "Nope" you grinned "you haven’t accessed that level of friendship yet! That comes with a level 8 membership". "Of course" Zuko said rolling his eyes "wait does Mai know? Is she level 8 yet? Azula surely does i bet she’s like level 300". You paused "Azula knows but Mai doesn’t". "Azula knows who is it?" Zuko asked. You nodded your head seeing no harm in telling the truth when Zuko was so clueless. "Wow i so want to know who it is! Do i know him?". You nodded your head slowly "now stop digging, i won’t tell you anymore and you know you have to keep this a secret right? Nobody can know you know not even Azula!". Zuko frowned "but why can’t she know i know?". "Because she told me to keep it quiet to protect myself and if she finds out i told you I'll never hear the end of it! So please Zuko promise me you won't....". "I won’t go bragging to Azula that you told me i promise!". "Thank you" you smiled and Zuko nodded "no problem....i’m near level 8 right? Like level 6 at least" and you laughed “whatever makes you sleep at night”.

That night

Finally the time came when you could sleep. You climbed into bed early, buried yourself in your cushions and fell asleep almost instantly...but your night was not going to be an undisturbed one. You were woken up by a movement and felt someone crawling into your bed. You opened your eyes and saw a familiar topknot in the darkness. You immediately sat up and crossed your arm "no Azula i can’t!". Azula’s face appeared in front of you and she smiled “hello to you too” and kissed you softly. “Azula no” you said sharply and she leaned away smirking at you "are you refusing me?". "I don’t want to but honestly i’ve been exhausted all day and i can’t have another day like this, I need rest! So please can we rain check?". "Relax i’m just here because i sleep better next to you. No funny business i promise" Azula smiled and you relaxed. You sighed happily as Azula wriggled her way into your arms and settled against your chest. "So are you saying i exhausted you?" Azula asked "i wore you out huh?". You went bright red and Azula laughed "it’s your fault you know, you’re too damn irresistible". "Well now i’m too damn tired so close your eyes so you’re not tempted". Azula smiled "fine" and pecked your lips before returning to her comfy position against you "night y/n". "Night Azula" you smiled kissing her forehead and fell back to sleep.

Azula’s POV

Azula woke up earlier than you so slowly and carefully worked her way out of your arms. She admired how adorable you looked asleep before she left your room and started with her daily tasks. She always got in 2 hours of firebending every morning and woke up earlier than her father or Zuko. By the time the rest of the palace was stirring Azula had been awake 4 hours already and almost all her morning tasks were complete. So when Mai stumbled into the dining room yawning Azula rolled her eyes. “You seriously just woke up” Ty lee asked “it’s almost afternoon”. “Hey I only went to bed 6 hours ago” Mai shrugged sitting down to grab some coffee. Ty lee began to argue with Mai about how unhealthy that was and Azula watched mildly amused. Azula watched her friends and soon lost track of time, it was time for her daily intimidation of the nobelmen so she went to stand up when a thought made her pause. You hadn’t shown up to breakfast...you always did, you were one of those responsible people who ate breakfast every day and bragged about it to people like Mai and Azula who could never be bothered to. Azula turned her attention back to Mai and Ty lee and tapped her finger on the table agitatedly waiting for them to finish speaking. Mai noticed and glanced up at her mid-sentence “can we help you?”. “Does either of you know where y/n is?”. Mai blinked confused but Ty lee just nodded “yeah her parents are here, so she’s probably with them. I saw them arrive this morning”. "They are?" Azula asked confused "why are they here?". Mai shrugged "maybe they've found her a suitor?". Azula tensed. Your family had been searching for that for a while so for them to drop in unannounced...Mai had to be right. Azula stood up abruptly knocking the table and Mai and Ty lee jumped. "I have to go" she called and rushed away.

When Azula reached your room she found you sat beside your mother listening to your father with a bored expression on your face. You noticed her first of course and Azula saw you perk up immediatley. "Princess Azula!" your mother cried spotting her next "princess it is lovely to see you again". Both your parents bowed and Azula let them, it never hurt to remind people of her power. "Rise" Azula called "so what brings you here?" she asked but she'd spotted the photo of a man on the table. "We have finally found a suitor worthy of our y/n!" your father smiled. Odd for the fire nation but your family treated you like the prize you were. You’d had multiple offers over the years but your parents had refused them all saying they weren’t good enough. Azula picked up the photo and read the name "well tell me about him" she said sinking into the chair on the other side of you "you don’t mind if i stay do you?" she asked. Your parents both hesitated but neither would dare tell her to leave. "Of course not princess". Azula smiled thinly “so he’s rich of course”. “Yes, his family have multiple estates and a lineage stretching back to the....”. "Firebender?" Azula interrupted and your father nodded "yes he and all his family". "How strong?" Azula asked. When your parents hesitated she sat up "how strong a firebender is he?". "I...i’m not sure but he is supposed to be skilled". "Skilled is not a precide measurement" Azula commented "y/n’s suitor needs to at least come close to her master level if not then they simply cannot be allowed near her, so i ask again what is his level?". "We don’t know but he is coming here tomorrow we could perhaps ask for a demonstration?". Azula smirked "that is an excellent idea...". your father smiled pleased but it dropped when Azula carried on "i will face him in an agni kai to see how strong he is".

Your POV

Azula’s demands had left your parents flustered and they rushed away to warn your proposed suitor of his show the next day leaving the two of you alone. As soon as they went Azula acted as if the whole thing didn’t happen and you smirked at her. “Why are you smiling at me?” she asked and your smirk broke into a grin. “You’re seriously going to challenge Saoko to a fight over me?” you asked and Azula rolled her eyes but was blushing "it’s not a fight over you more because of you". "Well either way can i ask you don’t". Azula paused clearly worried at your meaning and you quickly shook your head "not that i want him, of course I want him removing as a potential suitor for me but i’d prefer that wasn’t done by killing him". Azula huffed "i wouldn’t kill him". "Well maim or seriously injure aren’t ideal either". Azula huffed "so what i can only lightly bruise him?". You laughed "Azula you are smart enough to work out a solution without needing aggression, just think" you smiled pushing back a strand of her hair "or just leave me to my fate". You smirked as Azula grabbed your waist rapidly "never" she spat and you smiled. You knew you could think of a way out of this yourself but you liked the way Azula was looking at you and the way she clutched you as if you were the most precious thing in the world. “So save me” you said softly and Azula nodded "i will i promise".

Azula’s POV

Azula met Saoko off his airship along with your parents and scrutinised every detail of him looking for everything and anything she could use against him. Your parents were extremely friendly but Azula didn’t say a word to him, she just watched. The first stop was the gym to see his firebending and Azula sat anxiously on her seat waiting for him to display his bending. He entered with your father and took centre stage. He bowed to Azula and then began his show.

Azula was not happy. He was no master but definitely better than most benders. Finally he left the stage and your parents began excitedly talking about how brilliant he was. Clearly in their mind this proved the match to be perfect, Azula disagreed. “Such strong fire bending abilities!” your mother gushed “y/n is sure to like him”. Azula stood up and both your parents looked to her. "He is skilled" Azula agreed and your parents nodded at her pleased. "But not enough" Azula said simply "y/n cannot marry him". Your parent's shoulders deflated and they looked at Azula helplessly "but princess..he’s the best there is". "Best there is? So you want your daughter to settle? She's not that important?". "No of course not just...we don’t want her to get too old...of course we want a powerful firebender but the only ones her age that are of a good rank are in the royal family. Azula knew they meant Zuko and she felt the bile in her stomach rise. She hated the idea of you with anyone but with Zuko...that reopened an old wound and she was not about to play that whole game again. No she would end this now. Azula sighed and closed the doors after dismissing the guards. "I didn’t want to have to be so frank but i see i have no choice, i do not wish for your daughter to marry any man, ever". Your parents froze "but...why?". Azula paused "y/n is my best friend, she is my closest companion and she is always there when i need her. She is the only person who can keep up with me physically and mentally and i would not have her taken from me, ever. I need her far more than any man could and so i simply will not allow her to be taken". Your parents froze conflicted by their sexist ideals and Azula’s commands. "I....if y/n married she could still be on call for you". Azula shook her head "no she wouldn’t and so there is only one solution y/n will stay on as my lady permanently and in order to pay you for your loss i will pay you her dowry". Your parents paused "but....we have to pay her dowry it is not...". "Yes i know typically the girl’s family is expected to pay a dowry but that always confused me. Women are what keep the family growing, surely the family that lost their daughter deserves more compensation? I never got the system but i plan to correct it, i will pay you your daughter’s worth in full for your agreement to pass her onto me. I will promise to always house, fund and see no harm ever comes to her. She will always have a life with me and she will become part of my household. You must understand she will no longer belong to you in the sexist sense, her problems will be my problems and any injustices to her will no longer affect you but me. She will be under my protection completely". Your parents looked at one another before shrugging "this all sounds agreeable". Azula nodded "excellent i will have the contracts drawn up! This is the amount i offer, is this suitable?". Azula handed them a piece of paper and your parents gasped "Azula this is more than triple her dowry this is far too much". Azula shook her head "it is y/n’s true worth...well at least her worth in am economical sense, of course she is worth far more than gold" and she walked from the room.

Your POV

Your parents had told you Azula’s deal and you struggled not to burst into happy tears. Azula was so clever she’d somehow basically asked for your hand and they’d been blind enough not to see it as a proposal. This deal would mean Azula’s influence would always protect you and you’d never be forced apart, it was a perfect solution. You walked to the contract signing practically bouncing and when you saw Azula you gave her a big smile. Azula smiled back at you before she was all business again. The contract she’d drawn up was basically a marriage contract without the union. You didn’t see how your parents hadn’t noticed all the terms were the same but ignorance was bliss. Azula signed the document and then your father. Finally Azula passed you the pen. She smiled as you took it eagerly and signed harshly. Your parents smiled and hugged you. "Well i suppose you will stay in the palace now?" your father asked and Azula nodded "i already have a living area renovated for y/n in my own private wing". 'Well i guess this is goodbye for now" your mom said sadly hugging you. "I didn’t think it’d be like this but....". "I’ll be happy" you smiled and your dad nodded "then that is all that matters". "I will show you out" Azula said softly and she led them away.

Azula’s POV

When she returned you were reading through the contract. "Second thoughts?" Azula called and you smiled "you know the wording in this...it makes a lot of talk of how i am now your property". Azula paled "i’m sorry i had to use that language so your father couldn’t claim he still had a hold on you if he later changed his mind". You nodded your head "i understand". Azula watched as you kept reading and she worried the contract would be too much for you, after all you’d not even been dating a year yet. “This contract....it also feels a lot like a marriage proposal” you said watching Azula and she looked down. “Again that’s just for formality, I know there’s a lot of talk about how our arrangement is indefinite but I want you to know...if you ever do want to marry someone, if we ever...i won’t stand in the way, even if it is a man". You laughed "If I ever did want to get married it would never be to a man but a woman" you said looking at Azula pointedly "that i could imagine". Azula smiled "really?". You nodded your head looping your arms around her neck "but if she already technically owns me does it even count?". Azula took the contract from you and threw it into the fire "i do not own you i never will, you are free and you always will be, yes?". You nodded your head awestruck "yes....all because of you". Azula shrugged "maybe but i do not need a reward unless you can think of something i will like". You grinned "i have an idea" and kissed her softly "why don’t you show me our new quarters so i can show you?". Azula’s heart started beating faster and she blushed despite herself. “This way” she smiled taking your hand and she led you to your new life together.

____

If anyone can destroy the patriarchy let's be honest it’d be Azula.

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octopus-reactivated · 2 years

Note

Could you write some whump for Berry being so sensory deprived? Like the entire package deal gagged, blindfolded and tied up and suspended from the ceiling. Thanks.

Thank you for the ask!

I had 'blindfolded' on my card, so i marked it as done!

Berry is the lapdog from guys i have to choose one! drabble.

his takes place before his first Master, during training

Tw/cw: Pet whump, sensory deprivation, gaged, bound, brief mouth whump mention? brief self-harm mention.

It went just as that: day after day learning new rules and fixing his behavior. He never resisted and trainers told him many times that it made his life so much easier. He still was getting punished from time to time, just so he won’t forget anything but except that, the training went quickly and smoothly.

Today he was petted by the Trainer, and he was leaning onto the touch, just as he was taught to. But then it ended suddenly. He dared to look up.

“Something… something is not quite right” Trainer said

“I’m sorry, sir. Can you tell me what I did wrong so I could correct myself?”

“Aww, aren’t you the goodest boy? Trying so hard to follow orders”

149 was happy with the compliment, but he knew he still lacked something and he had to fix it.

“Thank you sir, may… may i know my mistake? Please, i want to correct myself”

“Like i said: Trying so hard. But if i’m correct it’s not something that can be fixed with trying”

149 shivered. How was he supposed to get better then?

“That calls for other measures. Follow me” Trainer said and 149 jumped from his floor place, ready to go.

They went through a few hallways and staircases. 149 unknowingly got closer to the Trainer, scared of an unknown place.

Soon they arrived at their destination. Another room, similar to 149’s cell, except this one was slightly bigger and there were… things at the ceiling.

“Now, do you want to be good?”

“Yes sir!” He answered eagery.

Trainer smirked.

_____

He was told to go into something that looked like a sleeping bag, it was fluffy and one rope connected to the ceiling. When he was in there, the trainer tightened the belts around him. Then the blindfold was put on, and then - fe felt gag in his mouth.

“You gonna wait for me here, love, you understand?”

Boy could not answer, so he just nodded.

“Good” He felt earphones on his head and then he felt rope moving, then his feet disconnected from the floor, then he moved up for a little bit and then everything stopped. He may have heard the door clicking or may have just imagined it.

_____

He suspected that the belts around him would get uncomfortable, but no, the bag he was in was fluffy enough to protect him from belts digging into his skin. But it did restrict his movements. Also he could not see nor hear anything. He was lonely, but there was something more… he craved something else. 149 didn’t know what that was, but lack of it was more and more unbearable.

_____

The longer he hanged, the longer he felt like he just wanted to feel anything. Even if it was pain it was better than overwhelming emptiness. He wanted ropes to dig into his skin and make him bleed. He wanted the gag gone, so he could bite his tongue. He wanted the blindfold off, so his eyes could get tired from white walls. Anything, just give him anything to feel.

_____

His blindfold became wet and heavy from tears. He knew that it was to make him better and he wanted to be better, but 149 wished, just wished that any second Trainer would come and say that, that he was good enough already. Or that the Trainer would say that this is not working and decide to use other punishment. Or that 149 somehow failed and he will have to be taken down for punishment.

Just… just that it would end.

_____

The amount of relief he experienced when he felt movement was hard to describe. At first he thought it was just an illusion, but then the blindfold came off and he saw Trainer smiling.

“Sir” he cried out as soon as the gag was taken away too and leaned onto touch like his life depended on it.

Trainer chuckled

“This is it. That was what you were lacking” He patted 149’s hair “But now you’re ready”

#Berry #whump #whump writing #my writing #BTHB #BTHB: Blindfolded #guys i have to choose one #Pet whump #Berry is a good boy

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elidereads · 3 years

Text

You Came For Me (NSFW Elriel Fanfic)

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Summary: The night after Azriel rescues Elain from Hybern Elain goes to his tent to make sure he's okay.

Word Count: 5,800

Warnings: NSFW

Notes: This is my first fanfic. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated it. 🖤

AO3

She couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she shivered remembering the things she was trying to forget, the feelings she wanted to scrub away. She couldn’t make herself trust that she was safe. She tried to focus on Nesta’s steady breathing and failed. Sounds that had once assured her of her safety now felt meaningless. Nesta had always been her safe haven, the only person who wouldn’t fail her or leave her. But the last time they had slept in this tent Elain learned that she was not safe. The cauldron could find her anywhere.

Not that it was Nesta’s fault, really she only had her own stupidity to blame. Her heart and mind warred with themselves, trying to decide what feeling made her cringe more, fear or shame. If she had allowed herself to see what everyone else saw, that Graysen now detested her, then she could not have been so easily lured. But last night she hadn’t wanted to accept that his affection could be anything but true. Even now a part of her brain defended him, reminding her that Graysen had been the one to lead her to the cauldron, is was the cauldron acting alone. She felt an internal embarrassment for continuing to defend Graysen to herself, that she allowed her stupid heart to create some hope that wasn’t there. She was pathetic.

Everyone in her village had grown up hearing terrifying stories of the Fae above the wall. She had always believed them to have godlike strength. Nothing could, or would, break them. Often she envied them. She was always the meekest of her sisters. Everyone assumed she lacked an opinion on anything, just doing whatever her sisters, mostly Nesta, wanted. In reality she lacked confidence in herself, she always told herself that letting her sisters lead made them happy, why should she push back. But she could imagine herself gaining everyone’s respect by becoming Fae or revealing some secret magic. Now, that secret dream made her feel even more pathetic. She had become Fae and had gained no one’s respect. She was still told what to do more often than she was asked her opinion. The lack of any transformation into the strong female she had imagined she truly was only added to her shame. No, even as Fae she was pathetic and boring. Perhaps Graysen had tired of her before her transformation, he just now had an easy excuse to end their engagement.

How many times did she need to suffer embarrassment in front of these people she barely knew? Starting with Graysen making the very public proclamation that he did not want her. Then, she made herself a further fool by wandering off and getting herself captured. In some ways it would’ve been easier if she had died in captivity. Then she could have been spared everyone’s pity that was so palpable she could almost see it hovering over them as they looked at her. But no, because of her stupidity she had to be rescued forcing Feyre and Azriel to risk their lives to save her.

Azriel.

Although now she thought very courageously about her death she had to acknowledge that that had been a very real fear just a few hours ago. She would swear she felt the world shift when she saw Azriel appear in the tent in Hybern’s camp. She had never felt relief like that. His presence had a way of making her feel like the person she imagined herself to be, certain, fearless. He looked at her as if he knew her. Well maybe not her, not the her that everyone saw, but the her she wanted to be, the heroine in her daydreams.

She exhaled loudly and rolled over, trying again to fall asleep. Mother, she was pathetic, creating some romantic scenario in her head where Azriel was the one person who saw her. He was probably the angriest with her. He suffered the most injuries attempting to rescue her. Would he resent the fact that he was injured before the battles had even begun? All because Elain couldn’t let go of her fiancé. What if Azriel’s injuries hindered him in the battle? What if because of Elain’s rescue he couldn’t fight as well and he …

Elain sat up quickly.

No she couldn’t think this way. She would have to speak to him, ensure he was fully healed before he could be allowed to fight. Surely the others had thought of this but if they hadn’t, she wouldn’t allow that to happen, couldn’t allow it. If there was a time for Elain to speak up it would be now. Well not now, not in the middle of the night with everyone sleeping, but now in there proverbial sense. Would he be angry with her if she was the reason he couldn’t fight? It didn’t matter. She was sure he was angry with her anyways.

Maybe that was why she couldn’t sleep.

She slowly pulled back her blankets and set her feet on the ground. Keeping her eyes on Nesta the whole time, making sure she didn’t stir. She pulled a blanket off her bed and wrapped it around herself as she moved towards the entrance of her tent. A part of her brain was warning this was a very bad idea. If she was worried about everyone being mad at her then she should definitely not make it worse by wandering the camp at night. Again. But another part of her brain, likely the sleep deprived part, was urging her on. Telling her a conversation with Azriel was the only way she would be able to calm down and get any sleep. She slowly pulled back the tent flaps and, with one more glance at Nesta, Elain slipped out.

She was almost positive Azriel’s tent was to the left of theirs and Cassian’s to the right. Too soon she and began to doubt herself. Was he sharing a tent with Cassian? Or Mor? Possibly even both. This was a bad idea. She couldn’t even knock and announce herself because how did you knock on a tent. She would just need to go right in.

She began to turn back to her own tent suddenly Azriel was there at the opening, catching her off guard and leaving her standing there speechless, like an idiot.

“Elain?” Azriel seemed to exhale her name after a few seconds of silence.

“How did you know I was here?” A perfectly appropriate greeting.

“My shadows. They patrol while I sleep. They told me you were outside my tent but I didn’t … are you okay?” Azriel’s eyes narrowed as he ran his gaze over her, looking for a source of harm.

“Yes. I’m okay. I just … I wanted to see you. To apologize.” Azriel gave her a look of surprise as a wind whipped through the camp causing Elain to pull the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“Come in. Please.” Azriel quickly opened the tent further and stepped to the side so that Elain could get out of the cold.

At first his tent seemed smaller than hers, but she saw that was due to the amount of things he had inside. Not that he was messy, but he had a desk covered in neat piles of paperwork. Armor on a dummy in the corner and an impressive display of knives lied out on a small table top. A fire burned near the middle of the tent, immediately warming Elain as the tent flaps closed.

“Are you okay?” Azriel asked again.

Elain turned away from his things scattered throughout the tent to look at him. “Yes. I promise you I am okay. I couldn’t sleep and I wanted to … I hope I didn’t wake you. Were you asleep?”

“No I wasn’t asleep. I was reading.” He motioned to his desk of papers and Elain caught him wince as he lifted his arm.

“Please sit down. I’m sorry I made you get up. Are you okay?” Everything came out in a rush. Gods. What was she thinking coming here and bothering him in the middle of the night. She touched his arm, gently guided him to a chair and sitting herself down across from him.

“I’m fine. You don’t need to worry.” She noticed how he slowly lowered himself into the chair.

“You’re not okay you’re hurt.” Elain reached to touch his bandage before catching herself, leaving her hand hovering between them. “Is there anything I can get you? Maybe some tea?”

“I’m fine. You don’t have to get me anything.”

“Please. I would like to help.”

Azriel paused, ready to repeat his no, before seeing that accepting the tea from Elain would help her more than himself.

“Some tea would be great. Thank you.”

Elain busied herself bringing water to a boil over the fire and, after Azriel’s shadows brought her the dried tea leaves, making a pot for the two of them.

“Cups?”

“Over there. There are drawers under the table with the knives. They should be in there.”

“Thank you.” She located the cups as the tea steeped in the pot. As she poured the tea she realized how calm her body not felt. Perhaps she shouldn’t have come here. She suddenly felt exhausted and very ready to sleep.

“Here.” She set Azriel’s cup on the table in front of him. She blew on her own and began to take a sip before thinking better of it and setting it down. Finally, with nothing else to busy herself with, she looked at Azriel. He was already looking at her.

She wasn’t sure where to start.

“I’m sorry.” She decided to lead with the phrase she couldn’t stop repeating. “My foolishness put Feyre and you in danger. I will never forget myself for that.”

Azriel closed his eyes, as if steeling himself for what he was about to say. “You have nothing to apologize for. It isn’t your fault the Cauldron tricked you.”

“If I hadn’t been such a fool about Graysen it wouldn’t have been able to trick me so easily.”

Azriel shook his head. “It is not foolish to believe the best about the person you love.”

Elain grimaced. “I don’t love him.”

“You don’t?” He responded, slightly tilting his head to the side.

“Well,” she blushed. “Perhaps a part of me does but no … not anymore. I see the situation for how it is. How everyone else sees it.”

Something in that statement made Azriel pause. He looked away from her, as if considering something. “Does it matter how everyone sees it?”

“A few weeks, even days ago I would have said no. It only matters what we, or I, felt but …” She gestured in a direction that she believed was south. “Before today I thought everyone was wrong and didn’t understand what we had. Now it appears I was the only one wrong. When the majority of the people in your life disagree with you, at some point you have to admit it’s probably you who’s wrong. Don’t you?”

Azriel didn’t say anything from a few seconds, continuing to stare at something on the ground, before responding. “That logic makes sense.”

They lapsed into a brief silence where Elain attempted to drink her tea again. This time only slightly burning her tongue before turning back to her next question for Azriel.

“How bad are your injuries?”

“They are fine.”

“I could see you grimacing as you sat down. Please Azriel, be honest with me.”

He raised his head when she said his name and met her eyes. “They are bad, but I have had worse. Rhys, however, has already implied that he doesn’t want me in the battle if it starts tomorrow.”

Elain started to apologize again but he waved her off.

“It’s fine. I don’t plan to listen to him. I will be fine.”

That caused her to gasp. “You cannot fight tomorrow. Not if it’s not safe.”

He offered her a grim smile. “I don’t think battles are ever considered safe.”

Elain did not return the smile. “You know what I mean. You are already injured from rescuing me. You’re already vulnerable. If you were to hurt yourself more, I couldn’t…” She trailed off, not being sure what it was she “couldn’t”.

“I will be fine. I have seen many battles and survived.”

She felt her anger grow, both with herself and his casualness. “You shouldn’t have rescued me. You are more valuable than me. Your life means more than mine.”

His grim smile quickly changed to something close to a glare. “My life means nothing compared to yours.”

Instinctually she reached out to touch his arm, wanting to offer him comfort in any way she could. “How could you say…” But when her arm touched his she was too overwhelmed with images to speak.

They reminded her of the dreams she had been having. Ever since she was Made every night she dreamed like she never had before. Dreams that were as vivid as Feyre’s paintings. Sometimes that how they started. She would be looking at one of Feyre’s paintings and not realize she was dream until it came to life or pulled her into it. Some of the dreams were filled with light, the warmth of the sun, the feeling of a new day. Some filled with shadows and whispers, hidden objects that she could never find clearly.

Surprisingly the dreams of the sun were the ones that preceded her worse days. Days filled with anxiety and unease that made her long to go back to sleep but also made her afraid to. These are the days she spent her time in the garden. Dedicating complete focus to her plants and flowers, working through meal times and until the night was so dark she could no longer see the roots. It wasn’t until day turned to night that her heart stopped racing.

But now she was sure she was not asleep. She could feel Azriel’s arm and hear the crackling of the fire in his tent. Smell a combination of musk and sweat that she noticed whenever he was close. But what she saw was out of place with the war time tent.

Golden, barely-there sunlight coming in through the windows. Another fire in a different hearth. Windows left open, light grey curtains blowing in the breeze. A garden could be glimpsed through the windows full of red roses. A soft moan that sounded vaguely familiar. Was it her own? She looked around to see white sheets were gripped in her hands. She felt a heat climbing through her body starting at her core. She felt something between her legs. She moved her gaze down her body. Heavy breathing moved her peaked breasts up and down as she tried to find air. Scarred hands on her hips. A head of dark hair between her legs. Another moan. She couldn’t help but move her hips in time with his tongue.

Her dreams had never felt this real.

“Elain?” She heard someone call her name, but she wasn’t sure who. She could still feel a tongue moving between her legs, bringing her to the edge of something she had never felt before. Her body began to shake at the feeling, getting closer and closer to a feeling that wasn’t familiar with but was desperate for.

Then her body was truly being shaken.

“Elain!’

Her eyes fluttered. Had she closed them? She tried to focus on why she was shaking.

“Elain? Are you okay?” The scarred hands were no longer on her hips but on her arms. Holding her firmly, shaking her gently. Azriel’s head was no longer between her legs but looking her earnestly in the eyes.

“I … yes. I think. I’m okay.”

“Did you have another vision?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Have you been having many?”

“I’m not sure. I have dreams every night, but I’m not sure if they are visions. They aren’t like this.” She motioned to the air as Azriel lowered his hands.

“What was this one of?”

She hesitated.

“Even if it doesn’t make sense it may be important, for the war.”

“It was of us.” She couldn’t help but answer.

Azriel gave a brief pause, concentrating on keeping his face neutral. “Who do you mean by ‘us’? You and me?”

Elain nodded.

“What were we doing?”

A description of the images flowed out of her. “We were in a house, I’m not sure where. It was peaceful and beautiful. There was a garden outside. We were in bed.” She could feel a blush creeping up her chest to her cheeks. Why did she answer his question. She could have deflected. She must not be fully awake.

Azriel’s cheeks began to blush as he sat up straighter. “Oh. And what were we doing in bed?”

Was it a repercussion of the visions that they had to be spoken whether she willed it or not?

“We … your head was between my legs and you were…”

Azriel stood up suddenly, effectively cutting her off. “I got it Elain. Thank you.” He quickly walked over to the fire and angled himself away from her.

After a few moments of taut silence Elain braced herself and stood. “I don’t know why I said all that. I’m sorry I’ve made things uncomfortable for you. I will go now. I’m glad you’re okay.”

But before she could make it more than a few steps Azriel was behind her. Placing his hand gently on her arm, quickly dropping it as she turned around to face him.

“It’s okay. I know what it’s like being a seer. Some visions must be spoken.”

Elain raised her eyebrows. “Are you a …”

“No.” Azriel cut her off. “But my mother is, I know what it’s like.”

“Did all of her visions come true?” Elain asked, pink staining her cheeks again.

“I cannot remember if all of them did, but I believe most. Although, not often in the way she suspected.”

“Oh.” Elain breathed. The air filling with tension and words left unsaid, until Elain had to say something.

“I would not be upset, if this one came true.” She surprised herself speaking so boldly, but she supposed the vision of the possible future gave her courage that her feelings would be reciprocated.

“Elain.” Azriel repeated her name in a rough tone she hadn’t heard him speak before.

She wasn’t sure who moved first.

His scarred hands were on either side of her cheek, pulling her towards him.

Her hands found his shoulder blades, pulling him to her.

A few touches they had shared before. His hand on her elbow. Her hand on his shoulder. Their fingers brushing. Always they had been gentle, reverent even.

This time their lips clashed. A different kind of reverence, as if their bodies were made to worship one another’s.

The line between sin and sanctification had never been so thin.

With Graysen Elain had been always been demure, unsure of herself. She had rarely felt much pleasure of her own and had the vague impression that he didn’t expect her to have any.

With Azriel she felt uninhibited, she could be herself with him. Elain Archeron, the naive, mortal girl and Elain Archeron, the high fae, the seer. Either way Azriel knew her and accepted her. It drove her confidence now.

Her hands moved to his chest, broad and firm. She had been held against it many times when he winnowed her, but she would never forget how it felt earlier today when he rescued her from Hybern’s camp. Now she allowed herself to give into the temptation she had felt so many times before and ran her hands over it. Unbuttoning the top of his tunic.

His tongue ran across the seam of her lips, urging her to open them for him. She did so eagerly and when their tongues met they both exhaled quiet moans. His hands moved down her hips, over her ass, gently squeezing before moving further down to the backs of her thighs. He bent slightly to get a hold of them and life her up. Pulling her closer to himself, so that their bodies were perfectly aligned. Her hands moved from his chest to circle his neck, one hand threading through his hair.

She felt his pause. His uncertainty in what she wanted next. She pulled his mouth away from his only far enough to speak. “Take me to bed.” Azriel emitted a louder groan before moving his mouth back to hers as if to claim her. After a few steps he was gently lowering her to the bed before positioning himself on his elbows above her, ensuring no weight was put on her. But she didn’t want to be treated so gently. She wasn’t afraid of the weight of him, of this. She pulled his neck down towards her as she lifted her hips up to his. Her body responding on it’s own.

Azriel shifted to one elbow so that he could move a hand to her cheek, gently, down to her neck. His hand circled her neck and he squeezed, lightly. Now it was Elain’s turn the moan, the idea of being at his mercy making her come undone. He squeezed harder before releasing and moving his hand down her body, pushing down her loose nightgown until her breasts were exposed. He broke their kiss to look at them.

“Gods.” He muttered before moving his mouth to her neck. Kissing and nipping until he reached her breasts. She arched her back, begging him to take them into his mouth. He looked up at her as his mouth hovered over her right nipple. His breath causing it to tighten, nearing pain. He kept eye contact as his tongue darted out. Barely licking the peak. Elain trembled and moaned his name.

“Azriel.”

It was his undoing. His mouth covering her nipple, a hand moving to the other. He sucked and bit until she couldn’t stop writhing beneath him, then he moved to her other breast and repeated his worshipping. She felt ready to explode from the feeling on her breasts alone, not to mention the hard length she could feel through his pants when she rubbed against every time his teeth closed around her nipple and she couldn’t help but rub against him.

“Take off your clothes.” She managed between breaths. She knew she was shaking too much to manage removing them herself, not to mention she wasn’t sure how to remove them from his wings.

He removed his mouth from her breast and lifted his head up so that he could look down on her and meet her eyes. He paused, as if he wanted to capture the moment like he was afraid that when he moved to take off her clothes she would suddenly disappear. She gently placed her hand on his cheek, hoping to offer reassurance through her touch. He lowered his head to place a gentle kiss on her lips but raising himself to stand at the end of the bed.

He made quick work of his clothes and she pushed her own night gown the rest of the way off her body. The soft blues of her gown melting into the dark greys of his clothes at the end of the bed. She barely had an opportunity to take in his hard length, standing straight at attention.

Then he was on her again. Without the barrier of clothes every inch of their skin is touching. Elain had never felt so alive. Like her skinning is on fire and freezing at the same time. Every inch of her taut and screaming for more of Azriel. In any way. In all ways.

He leaned forward to leave another kiss on her lips before moving down her body, leaving a trail of kisses between her breasts, her stomach, above her sex. When he was between her legs he looked up at her. “Is this what you saw in your vision?” He didn’t wait for her reply before his mouth was on her. He wasted no time kissing her legs, her thighs. Suddenly his lips and his tongue were between her legs, her sex, exploring her, feasting on all her. “Gods Elain.” Azriel moaned into her, causing her to write more. “What do I taste like?” She had to ask, had always been curious. Her question caused Azriel to moan again, she felt the vibrations in her core. His tongue dove into her, as if he was trying to distinguish her taste. “Sugar.” She laughed gently at his general assessment. Something, anything, sweet. She wondered how he would taste.

His tongue was unrelenting. Licking her up and down. Moving between her folds. Pushing into her. There wasn’t a spot of skin between her legs that his tongue didn’t touch. Over and over. Her hands moved to his hair, gripping it hard enough that she was sure he must be in pain. But he didn’t relented. She couldn’t help as her hips began moving on his mouth, riding his tongue. He brought one of his hands to her ass, helping to lift herself onto him. She didn’t spare a thought for the fact that they were only in a tent, did not stifle her shouts with the fear of being overheard. She became overwhelmed with the feeling that she was about the explode. Her body barreled towards some kind of release, but there was some a part of her mind that seemed to hesitate, fearing there was something she wasn’t doing right, that her sounds were too loud or her writhing too much.

As if sensing her hesitation Azriel moved his hand from her ass to her clit, rubbing it while his tongue moved inside her.

She saw stars.

Her hips bucking into him as he helped her ride out her orgasm. He continued to lick and suck her until she had all but stopped moving. Once he saw that she was exhausted he left one chaste kiss on her before moving back up her body until they were eye to eye. They held their eye contact until Elain lifted herself up to kiss him on the mouth, tasting herself as she did. “You’re right, like sugar.” She offered, surprised that her own voice was deeper and scratchier than usual. Hopefully that wasn’t an indication of how much she had been screaming.

Her declaration pulled another groan from Azriel as he moved to kiss her more deeply. After a few tangles with their tongues she pulled away, bringing her palm to rest on his cheek. “I’ve never felt like that before.”

“Never?” He asked with a slight raise of his eyebrows.

She laughed softly. “No. Never.”

He kissed her again, at first gently, before she was lifting herself to deepen the kiss. To take more of him in. She wasn’t done devouring him, having him. Tension began to find it’s way back into her body, her veins. The satiated bliss she felt just moments ago being replaced with the need for more. One hand remained on the back of Azriel’s neck, gently holding his mouth to hers while her other moved down his body. Over the planes of his broad chest, down to his solid stomach, further down until she could feel course hairs and then her hand found what she had been looking for, had been so curious about. The touch of her hand caused Azriel to hiss.

“Are you okay?” She began to feel embarrassed that her inexperience had somehow hurt him. She and Graysen had had sex yes, but there was no extra touching aside from what was needed. She had been content with what it was, but the orgasm Azriel had already given shattered all illusions of satisfaction she had had with Graysen. She now knew how much she had been missing.

Azriel moved his hips so that his hard length was again touching her hand. “With you I am always okay.”

Her lips turned up in a smile as she kissed him again, capturing his moans with her mouth and she touched his length with her fingers, her hands. Running them up and down him. Marveling at how hard he was, with skin smooth as silk. She wrapped her hand around as much of him as she could and squeezed, pulling another moan out of Azriel. He bucked into her hand once, twice. “Fuck Elain. Fuck.” He moved his mouth to her neck and bit down on the skin between her neck and shoulder, causing her to gasp as the pain and squeeze him harder.

Suddenly he was pulling her hand away from him. “If you keep doing that I’m going to explode.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” She went to move her hand back to him, but he caught her wrist.

“It just depends on what you want.” Azriel didn’t make it a question, not wanting to push her in any direction she didn’t want to go. He wanted to be sure it was completely her decision, her call.

“I want this. I want you.” She had felt that draw towards him, that longing, ever since he first showed up at her father’s estate. Cassian had been the Illyrian who had caused her paused, caused her palms to sweat and her legs to tremble with fear at his presence. But upon seeing Azriel in the doorway she had felt a calm wash over her and had somehow known that if Azriel was with Cassian, then she had nothing to fear.

“Have you ever?”

“Yes. With … yes I have.” She didn’t want to ruin this by speaking Graysen’s name. She didn’t want any thoughts of him in her mind ever, much less in this moment.

Azriel nodded, understanding, before lowering himself, lining himself up with her.

“Stop me if it hurts.” She nodded but he before he moved he looked her in the eyes and repeated himself. “Ask me to stop.”

“You won’t hurt me in any way I don’t want you to.”

He kissed her as he pushed into her, slowly, only a inch but still causing her to gasp. He pulled out slightly before pushing in further. Her gasps mingling with his moans. On the next push her eyes fluttered close, a pain mixing with the pleasure. He moved his left hand to where they were joined, his right staying by her head where is elbow was propped. He moved his thumb between her legs, above where they were joined, he rubbed her until she began moving on him, arching into him, wanting more.

Then he gave her more.

He pulled out nearly all of the way before sheathing himself inside her fully. Pushing her legs wider to accompany his hips. Her hips arching up further to meet his as she let out a loud moan. When he had allowed himself to picture this with Elain he had imagined going slowly. It was an image he had tried to stop himself from thinking but one what often came to him in the time between waking and dreams, when he didn’t have full control of his consciousness. But now that he was inside her, her perfect tightness surrounding him, all rational thoughts were gone and every instinct he had took over. He kept himself from unleashing completely, but only barely.

He squeezed her breast as he moved inside her. She pulled his hair. The sounds coming from her mouth were better than anything he could have imagined. No matter how much he wanted this to last all night he knew he would not last much longer. He raised one of her legs slightly, so that he could push deeper into to her and also be closer to her. He kissed her mouth, her jaw, her neck. Grazing his teeth down to her pulse point, he bit down, claiming her in all the ways he knew how.

The sudden pain of his bite mixing with the wild pleasure she felt every time he reached a spot deeper inside her pushed her over the edge. She clenched around him, bucking wildly to ride out that final explosion of pleasure, moaning her first coherent words.

“Azriel.”

The feeling of her coming around him, the sound of her moaning his name, brought Azriel over his own the edge. He spilled himself inside her, glad for her clenching walls milking him till he was thoroughly spent.

He stayed on top of her after, catching his breath. Hearing her labored breathing in his ear, feeling her breaths gently moving his hair. He gently kissed her cheek, ending their passionate fucking with something so sweet she struggled to catch her breath.

Then he moved, pulling himself out her. She groaned at the absence of him. He got up and walked over to his wash basin. Dipping a cloth into the water before returning to her and gently wiping her between her legs. After he was finished he tossed the cloth back towards the bin. It landed on the floor near by and he didn’t bother picking it up. Instead he turned back towards her, taking her in as she lay bare in his bed, starting at her toes and ending with her eyes, as if committing her to memory. Then he brought his hand to his face, as if wiping at the shadow of hair covering his jaw. Finally he sighed, seeming to reach some internal decision, and picked up her nightgown from the floor and holding it out to her.

She frowned as she took it from him, hoping that he would lie down next to her instead.

But he caught her disappointment, as he seemed to catch all of the emotions written on her face.

“I don’t want you to leave. Never that. But if Nesta wake and you aren’t there, there would be hell to pay.”

She smiled at that truth. “Do you think I can get in without waking her?”

“I will put you in your bed with my shadows. She will never know.”

Elain pulled on her nightgown and picked up the blanket she had wrapped herself in to come to his tent before turning to face him.

For a moment they both looked at each other. Trying to read each other.

Finally Azriel broke the silence.

“Was that like your vision?”

She blushed. “Yes. Well. It was similar but we weren’t in this tent, we were somewhere else and I didn’t see us do everything.”

He offered one of his rare smiles. “Good. So we don’t have to be worried this was the last time.”

“No.” She agreed, returning his smile. “We certainly don’t need to worry about that.”

#elriel #elriel fanfic #elain x azriel #azriel x elain #azriel #acotar #fanfic #elain archeron #elide reads #elriel smut #a court of thorns and roses

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pigeonp0st · 3 years

Note

Hey can you do a fic where reader is under mind control of some sort from an enemy and is forced to attack Nat and the rest of the avengers and Nat has to talk her out of it and calm her down something rlly intense and angsty pls

Natasha Romanoff x Reader #6

Words: 2,177

Warnings: Agnst

(tell me if there’s more I should add)

Notes:

I realized after I finished writing that I didn’t have Nat talk R out of it like you asked...I solved it in another way...i’m sorry!! I hope you enjoy anyways, thanks a lot for requesting (and sorry for spelling mistakes...there’s probably a lot) also sorry for this in general...I’m disappointed in it and the ending...I was sleep deprived and delirious for half of it...

———

It was supposed to be a simple mission, and a simple day. You and Nat had planned to head to the beach for the first time in a long time afterwards and everything. It was supposed to be a good day.

Good day...ha.

The sad truth is, is that things don’t always work out the way you expect them to. Sometimes things go horribly wrong.

Sometimes you get mind controlled by the ‘big bad’ and hurt the people you love most. Or maybe that stuff only happened to people like you. ‘Heroes.’

——-

You were conscious. That was the cruel agonizing part of it all. It’s that with every swing of your knife, every landed hit, every plea that fell from their lips, you knew what was happening.

You knew what was happening but could do nothing about it. Well...you could, technically, but it hurt. It hurt to fight. The pain was similar, you imagine, to what it feels like getting burned alive and then ran over eighteen times.

You didn’t think you could do it. Your will power wasn’t that strong. You would probably die trying to gain control—

It hurt. It hurt. You didn’t want to. You couldn’t, you—

Natasha. Natasha was saying; “fight it, Y/N, fight it,” and to you and to the pain that fighting the mind control caused, she may as well have been saying, “die, Y/N, die”

And yeah. Okay. For her, you will. For her you must.

Tears were running down your cheeks, it was the one thing the mind control didn’t have control of. It was...weird. Weird feeling such an immense amount of pain, such an immense amount of suffering, and being unable to show it. Unable to scream. You were silent, but your body felt loud, your head felt loud.

For a long minute you couldn’t hear them, you couldn’t even register the things you were seeing, all you knew was pain, everything outside of that was illegitimate.

Then, silence. For a brief, blissful moment before it was gone again. Nat’s arms were around you, and you were shaking, but completely still otherwise—finally, finally, you weren’t hurting them— “You’re okay,” Nat whispered, and how could that concept, in a few moments of agony, become something so foreign. Have you ever been okay before? Have you ever lived without this much hurt?

———-

“Nat,” you croaked, the words shaking almost as roughly as your body. “Natasha, kill me.”

Those three words, said with an immeasurable amount of desperation, were just as much not your own as your body was at this moment. They were said in a moment of pain.

Somehow, Natasha knew that. She knew that. She knows what you look like when you’re experiencing physical pain. It’s been seared into her mind countless times, but that doesn’t prevent her heart from aching as much as it does when you start begging.

“Natasha please, please baby, please. Somebody, please! Before it—”

And then you were screaming, and Natasha hates how it’s even worse than the begging.

Somehow you’ve managed to gain control of your vocals, but your body isn’t yours again, she realizes it when you start struggling against her arms…it’s a terrible thing to realize.

“Stop,” Nat yells, so obviously terrified and raw that half of the Avengers freeze where they’re circling you. “Stop fighting it, it’s okay, it’s okay.” She holds you as tightly as she can, with her eyes screwed shut. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

And god, she hates the way it sounds like a goodbye too, but she just knows that even if you could register her voice right now, you aren’t going to listen.

You’re going to keep fighting to protect her and the others, because it’s what you’ve always done.

So Natasha takes a deep breath, in and out, and tries to think about her options. She tries to think about her options with you struggling and trying to reach for your knife, and the Avengers circled around her with nothing but ashen expressions that speak of nightmares to come, and she doesn’t know. She just doesn’t know.

There’s no safe way for her to knock you out for a long period of time, not ones that won’t cause long term problems afterwards, but she doesn’t need any because suddenly your body stops struggling, and stops moving, and you’re slumped unconscious in her arms.

It’s a great relief for everyone until Natasha lifts her hand from your pulse, and says, shockingly and terrifyingly devoid of emotion; “I think she’s going into shock.”

——

Everything is a blur to Natasha after that. She recalls yelling, lights, arriving at the hospital, a countdown of; one, two, three, and then she’s sitting in a seat next to your hospital bed wondering when everything went so wrong.

——

All Natasha hears when she closes her eyes is you screaming in agony at the top of her lungs, and all she feels is the phantom touch of your cold ashen skin against her hands.

You’re okay now, Natasha reminds herself. You’re going to be okay, but there’s something deeply traumatizing and everlasting about the moments where you’re sure everything won’t be—the moments you’re almost sure the love of your life won’t be.

Hearing someone you love beg you to kill them, seeing the person you love most in so much agony, it’s...scarring...but Natasha will be strong. She has to be, because being weak hurts too much, but more importantly; you need her to be.

As traumatizing as the experience was for her, she knows that yours was just as bad—if not worse. You were strong for her, so she’ll be for you.

Like protecting her to you seemed like your only option, even while you were hurting so much because of it, it’s Natasha’s only option too.

So she’ll keep it all together, until you’re back to normal and she doesn’t have to anymore.

——-

Natasha startles when you wake up. She physically startles, because the first thing you do is start sobbing, sobbing hard enough to make Natasha concerned that you’ll start hyperventilating.

“Are you okay?” Natasha asks, up from her seat in a flash to be by your side, “is he still mind controlling you? Are you still hurting?”

You aren’t looking at her, Natasha realizes with a large amount of grief. You won’t look at her, but you’re shaking your head no to her questions, and she supposes that perhaps you are okay—physically.

She wants more than that for you, so she sighs, heavily and sadly— because she can’t protect you from this anymore than she was able to protect you from the mind control—and wraps her arms around your distraught form.

“It’s okay,” Nat mumbles, and then winces and corrects herself because it’s so clearly not. “It will be okay.”

That she is sure of, but you aren’t.

“Natasha,” you force out (Natasha tries not to remember the way you said her name yesterday), “You’re covered in- you’re covered in bruises and cuts...baby, i’m so sorry.”

Your voice cracks on sorry, and Natasha closes her eyes to prevent her own tears from falling. “It wasn’t you,” she whispers fiercely, “i’m not mad at you. Of course i’m not.”

“You should be.”

You pull away from her then. Natasha feels the loss in her heart, she’s sure.

All she wants to do is hold you in her arms and never let go, but with the amount of unjustified shame you’re feeling she doubts you’ll let her.

“Your arm,” you stutter, “did it need stitches?”

Natasha won’t lie to you, so she says nothing—instead she tries to meet your haunted eyes. It’s a useless attempt.

She knows what you’re remembering, and she hates it. “The cut on my neck...it wasn’t that deep. It shouldn’t even scar.”

“I didn’t ask you about the cut on your neck, Natasha.”

Natasha tenses where she’s standing, caught off guard by the loathing in your voice until she realizes that it’s not directed at her, but at yourself.

Your eyes finally, finally, meet Natasha’s. They’re tear brimmed, scared, and unbelievably angry. “I’m going to kill him,” you rasp brokenly, “Natasha, i’m going to kill him.”

——-

Nat says nothing. She just continues to stare back at you.

“He had no right, Natasha, he had no right to do that to me,” your face is crumbling now, anger turning back into devastation in an instant. “Nat, why—why was it me? I—god, i’m so angry, i’m so—i’m so sorry. I’m sorry, i’m sorry. God...what did I do?”

Natasha still says nothing, why isn’t she saying anything? You want to yell at her, you want her to yell at you, you want—you want.

“Is Clint...is he okay?” You ask wobbly.

You remember vividly the moment you stabbed him, and the betrayal on his face, the betrayal on everyone’s faces until they realized you weren’t in control of your own body.

“He’s okay,” Natasha says simply. Then, “the man who did what he did to you...Wanda is handling it. She’s able to block out his mind control.”

“Okay.”

“Can I hold you?”

“What?”

Natasha shifts where she stands, looking down. She’s never looked more uncertain. “You didn’t seem to want me close before...I wasn’t sure…”

Oh.

“Nat,” you whisper, heartbroken, “I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust I’m me.”

Natasha tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear and leans down to kiss your temple. You want nothing more than for her to get away from you. You don’t want to hurt her ever again. You can’t. “Oh baby,” she laughs a sad sort of laugh, “you’ve been handcuffed.”

And that, for whatever reason, starts another wave of unreleased tears, but you're laughing now too...if only at the insanity of your situation.

You feel restricted by the handcuffs, trapped in the way you were during the mind control, but you also feel safe. Safe from doing harm, so you allow her, between breaths, to join you on the hospital bed.

She lets out a relieved breath when you do, both because she’s allowed to hold you, and because you’re laughing...yeah it might me a manic sort of laugh, but it’s something.

Something is better than nothing. It’s a start.

——

“Natasha, I can tie my own fucking shoes.”

Nat looks up at you from where she’s crouched by your feet, raising a questioning eyebrow. “Then why’d you ask me to do it?”

“W-What? No I didn’t.” Mind controlled. You were mind controlled again. Fuck—

“Yeah you did,” Natasha reminds gently, “while you were eating your disgusting jello.”

Oh. Yeah.

You release a shaky breath, laughing quietly all the while, because wow. Wow. You’re losing your mind. “I totally remembered that...they just slipped something into my jello…”

Natasha watches you carefully for a few moments before rolling her eyes and getting to her feet. “Tie your own shoes.”

“Asshole,” you mutter bitterly under your breath. Natasha pretends not to hear you and simply presses a kiss to the top of your head.

“I love you,” she confesses quietly. Natasha’s been saying as much over and over again since you first awoke.

“Now I feel like the asshole. Just go get the discharge papers.”

Finally, Natasha laughs.

——-

You’re healing still, emotionally, the Avengers and Natasha are very aware of that. They’ve been as gentle as they can possibly be with you since you left the hospital a couple of weeks ago, but now—now it’s time for an intervention.

So naturally, you press the big red emergency meeting button Steve hides in his room and force everyone to meet in the living room.

“I’m not sad anymore,” You announce to them all when Wanda asks why the fuck she was woken up for.

The grumbling immediately quiets.

“Well,” you pause, considering, “I...am. Deep down. I’m tryna work through it but it’s kinda hard now that I'm forgetting a lot of what happened.”

Natasha sits up at that, alarmed. “You’re forgetting?”

You wave your hand dismissively. “My mind is blocking it out. I’m traumatized...but pretty okay otherwise.” The others don’t look convinced, so with an annoyed groan you relent. “I’m thinking about seeing Steve’s therapist. You guys should too.”

A chorus of protest instantly comes forward, not to your surprise...but Wanda...Wanda does surprise you.

“I am, too.”

Then Natasha, “I...was actually considering it myself.”

Well then.

“I’m also considering making my own sitcom,” Wanda continues, resting her head in her hand. “What do you guys think?”

“Stick to therapy, Wanda. Stick to therapy.”

At that, everyone comes forward in agreement.

You’re sure, in that moment, that with these people you’ll be okay.

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infernallegaycy · 4 years

Text

Writing Psychotic Characters

Hi! I’ve seen a few of these writing things pop up recently (and in the past), but I haven’t seen any on psychotic characters—which, judging from the current state of portrayals of psychosis in media, is something I think many people* need. And as a psychotic person who complains about how badly psychosis tends to be represented in media, I thought I’d share a bit of information and suggestions!

A lot of this isn’t necessarily specifically writing advice but information about psychosis, how it presents, and how it affects daily life. This is partially purposeful—I feel that a large part of poor psychotic representation stems from a lack of understanding about psychosis, and while I’m not usually in an educating mood, context and understanding are crucial to posts like this. A lot of this also relates to writing psychosis in a modern-day setting, simply because that’s where bad psychotic representation tends to mostly occur (and it’s the only experience I’ve had, obviously), but please don’t shy away from applying this advice to psychotic characters in sci-fi/fantasy/historical fiction/etc. Psychosis is not a wholly modern phenomenon, nor would speculative fiction feel truly escapist without being able to see yourself reflected in it.

Please also note that I am not a medical professional nor an expert in psychology. I simply speak from my personal experiences, research, and what I’ve read of others’ experiences. I also do not speak for all psychotic people, and more than welcome any alternative perspectives to my own.

*These people, in all honesty, aren’t likely to be the ones willingly reading this. But there are people who are willing to learn, so here’s your opportunity.

(Warnings: Mentions of institutionalization/hospitalization, including forced institutionalization; ableism/saneism; and brief descriptions of delusions and hallucinations. Also, it’s a pretty long post!)

Up front, some terminology notes: “Unpsychotic” refers to people who are not psychotic. This includes other mentally ill and neurodivergent people. Please try to avoid terminology like “non-[identity],” as much of it is co-opted from “nonblack.”

Also, “psychotic” and “delusional” will not be, and should not be, used to refer to anything but respectively someone who experiences psychosis and someone who experiences delusions. Remove these words as insults and negative descriptors for anyone you dislike from your vocabulary.

In addition, I generally use adjectives rather than person-first language because that is the language I, and the seeming majority of other neurodivergent and mentally ill people, prefer. Others might describe themselves differently (as “people with psychosis,” for instance). Don’t assume either way—I’d generally suggest you say “psychotic person” first, and then correct yourself if the person in question prefers different terminology.

1) Psychosis is a symptom, not a disorder.

As a term, “psychosis” describes any number of symptoms that indicate a break with reality, such as delusions and hallucinations (I’ll go into more detail about this in a bit). It commonly occurs as part of several mental and neurological disorders, including but not limited to:

Schizophrenia

Schizophreniform disorder (same symptoms as schizophrenia, but for a shorter period of time than 6 months)

Schizoaffective disorder (combined symptoms of psychosis and a mood disorder, but not enough to completely fill the diagnostic criteria for either)

Bipolar disorder (typically as part of manic episodes, but it can also occur in unipolar depression and depressive episodes)

Personality disorders, including borderline personality disorder (for which transient paranoia under stress is part of the diagnostic criteria), paranoid personality disorder, and schizoid personality disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Dissociative disorders (though psychosis =/= dissociative identity disorder; if you want further information on the latter, which I do not have, please seek out another post!)

Psychosis can also occur with forms of epilepsy, sleep disorders, metabolic disorders, and autoimmune disorders. It tends to be a major part of neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In addition, it can occur when not related to a chronic health condition; things like sleep deprivation and stress can induce temporary psychosis, as can drug use and medication.

This isn’t to say you necessarily need to define a disorder for a psychotic character, as some psychotic people (including myself) primarily just describe ourselves as “psychotic,” and some aren’t diagnosed with anything specific. However, if your psychotic character is a main/perspective character, I definitely recommend it. Chances are, someone with that disorder is reading/watching, and I’m sure they’d love to see a bit of direct representation. In general, you probably should at least have something in mind, because psychotic symptoms and severity/onset can differ greatly.

Some psychotic disorders’ diagnostic criteria explicitly exclude others (someone cannot be diagnosed with both schizophrenia and schizophreniform disorder at the same time, for instance, though the latter can develop into the former), but comorbidity is possible—and often common—among certain disorders and other neurological/mental conditions. Rates vary, so definitely research this, but in short, it is very much possible for psychotic people to have multiple disorders, including disorders that don’t include psychotic symptoms. (Personally speaking: I’m autistic, ADHD, and OCD in addition to being psychotic, and I’m physically disabled as well.)

I’m not here to do all the research for you—if you want to know more about specific psychotic disorders, then by all means, look them up! Go beyond Wikipedia and Mayo Clinic articles, too. Talk to people who have them. Seek out blogs and YouTube channels run by people with them. Read books about psychosis by psychotic people**. Pay attention to how we describe ourselves and our disorders.

And if you want to write characters with those disorders, especially if you’re writing from their perspectives, then please for the love of God, hire a sensitivity reader. For authenticity, I would recommend seeking out someone with the same disorder, not just anyone psychotic.

**If you want a fiction recommendation: I don’t actually know if the author is schizophrenic like the main character, but I really enjoyed and related to The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Content warnings include, but might not be limited to—it’s been a while since I read it—unreality, self-harm, suicide, abuse, and mentions of transphobia. I haven’t personally read any autobiographies/memoirs/essays yet, so I don’t have any to offer, and quite a few that came up through a cursory search seemed only to focus on being an inspiration to neurotypical people or were from a perspective other than that of the psychotic person in question. If anyone (preferably psychotic people) has any more recommendations, fiction or nonfiction, let me know!

2) Not every psychotic person has the same symptoms.

As mentioned, psychosis consists of symptoms that involve separation with reality, which can present as positive or negative symptoms. Every person’s experiences with these are different, but some generalizations can be made. I definitely recommend reading studies and articles (especially directly by psychotic people) describing experiences and presentation!

I’ll start with positive symptoms, which refer to the presence of symptoms unpsychotic people don’t have, and can include hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thoughts, speech, and behavior.

You probably know what hallucinations are (perceptions of sensory information that is not really present), but you might not know the specifics. Types of hallucinations include:

Auditory (which tend to be the most common, and are probably the form everyone is most familiar with, primarily as “hearing voices”)

Visual

Olfactory

Tactile/haptic

Gustatory (taste)

Somatic

Some types with regards to bodily sensations get a little muddled from here, but some forms of hallucinations you might not have heard of include thermic (hot/cold), hygric (fluids), kinesthetic (bodily movements), and visceral (inner organs).

(Note: Hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations, which occur when falling asleep or waking up, are not related to psychosis and can occur in anyone.)

As mentioned, there are some forms of hallucinations that are more common, but that is not to say that everyone has the same hallucinations. A lot of us have auditory and/or visual hallucinations, but not everyone does. Some have tactile, olfactory, or gustatory hallucinations instead of or in addition to more common forms (hi! Auditory hallucinations are pretty rare for me, but I constantly feel bugs/spiders crawling on me). If you write a psychotic character that experiences hallucinations, then you should definitely do further research on these types and manifestations of them.

You’re likely also familiar with delusions (a belief that contradicts reality), though again, you might not know the specifics. Delusions can be classified as bizarre (implausible, not shared or understood by peers of the same culture) or non-bizarre (false, but technically possible). They can relate to one’s mood or not.

Some people only experience delusions and no other significant psychotic symptoms (this occurs in delusional disorder). Delusions differ between people and tend to be heavily influenced by environment, but there are some common themes, such as:

Persecution

Guilt, punishment, or sin

Mind reading

Thought insertion

Jealousy

Control

Reference (coincidences having meaning)

Grandeur

Certain types of delusions are more common in certain cultures/backgrounds or certain disorders. I can’t really go into details about specific delusions, because I try not to read many examples (for a reason I’m about to mention), but if you plan on writing a character who experiences delusions, I definitely recommend heavily researching delusions and how it feels to experience them.

I would like to note: I’m not sure how common it is, but I’ve noticed that I personally have a tendency to pick up delusions that I see other psychotic people talking about having. Just kind of, like, an “oh shit what if” feeling creeps up on me, and before I know it, that delusion has wormed its way into my life. Just in case you want some idea of how psychotic people can interact amongst ourselves!

Another quick note: Delusions, by definition, are untrue beliefs; this does not mean that anyone who has ever been delusional is inherently untrustworthy.

Disorganization of thoughts/speech and behavior is more self-explanatory. Problems with thinking and speaking tend to be one of the most common psychotic symptoms, sometimes considered even more so than delusions and hallucinations. There are a lot of ways thought processes can be disrupted, and I honestly think it would be kind of difficult to portray this if you haven’t experienced it, but some common manifestations are:

Derailment

Tangents (which you might notice me doing sometimes in this very post)

Getting distracted mid-sentence/thought

Incoherence/“word salad”

Thought blocking (sudden stops in thoughts/speech)

Repetition of words/phrases

Pressured speech (rapid, urgent speech)

Use of invented words

Poverty of speech/content of speech

(Note that thought/speech disturbances aren’t necessarily exclusive to psychotic disorders. They tend to be common in ADHD and autism as well, though symptoms can be more severe when they occur in, for example, schizophrenia.)

Behavioral abnormalities can include catatonia, which presents in a number of ways, such as mutism, echolalia, agitation, stupor, catalepsy, posturing, and more. Episodes of catatonia last for hours and sometimes longer, which usually requires hospitalization and/or medication. This tends to overlap heavily with symptoms of autism spectrum disorders, which can be comorbid with conditions like schizophrenia.

Negative symptoms, on the other hand, refer to the absence of certain experiences. It can include flat affect (lack of or limited emotional reactions), generally altered emotional responses, a decrease in speech, and low motivation. Most of these speak for themselves, and I’m not honestly sure how to describe them to someone who’s never experienced them in a way that isn’t very metaphorical and therefore kind of unhelpful. If any other psychotic people have suggestions, feel free to add on/message me!

Not every psychotic disorder involves or requires both positive and negative symptoms (to my knowledge, manic episodes of bipolar disorder mostly only include positive symptoms), but many psychotic people experience both. And, as expressed multiple times—and I really can’t stress it enough—every person’s experience with psychosis is different.

If you interview two psychotic people at random, chances are they aren’t going to have the same combination of symptoms. Chances are they won’t even have the same disorder. Therefore, if you write multiple psychotic characters, they shouldn’t be identical in terms of personality or psychosis.

There are also some qualities of psychotic disorders that may not necessarily be diagnostic criteria but are prominent in people with these conditions. These also vary between disorders, but cognitive impairments and similar traits are fairly common.

3) In a similar vein, daily experiences can vary greatly. Psychosis can be a major part of psychotic people’s lives, but it doesn’t always affect daily life.

For some people, psychosis occurs in episodes, not 24/7; you may have heard the term “psychotic break,” which tends to refer to a first episode of psychosis. This is especially true of disorders where psychotic symptoms occur under stress or during mood episodes.

For other people, psychosis is a near-constant. It can wax and wane, but it never completely goes away. These people might be more likely to invest in medication or long-term therapy and other treatment methods.

Psychosis’s impact on everyday life can also be affected by insight (how well the person can tell they’re having psychotic symptoms). There’s not a ton of accessible research—or research at all—into insight and how it affects psychotic people, and I’m not a big fan of describing people as having high/low insight because I think it has the potential to be used like functioning labels (which, for the record, are bad; plenty of other autistic people have written at length about this), but just something to keep in mind. It’s a sliding scale; at different points in time, the same person might have limited or significant awareness of their symptoms. Both greater and poorer insight have been linked to decreased quality of life, so neither one is really a positive.

Just something to be aware of: Yes, sometimes we do realize how “crazy” we seem. Yes, sometimes we don’t. No, it doesn’t really make things any better to know that what we’re seeing/thinking/etc isn’t real. No, people with low insight shouldn’t be blamed or mocked for this.

As such, the diagnostic process can vary greatly. Psychotic people aware of their symptoms or how their lives are being impacted may directly ask for a diagnosis or seek out information on their own. Other times, family or friends might notice symptoms and bring them up to a mental health professional, or someone might be forcibly institutionalized and diagnosed that way.

My professional diagnostic processes have been pretty boring: Over time, I just gradually brought up different diagnoses I thought might fit me to my therapist, whom I started seeing for anxiety (which I no longer strongly identify with, on account of my anxiety mostly stemming from me being autistic, OCD, and psychotic). I filled out checklists and talked about my symptoms. We moved on with the treatment processes I was already undergoing and incorporated more coping mechanisms and stuff like that into therapy sessions. Hardly the tearful scenes of denial you’re used to seeing or reading about.

Other people might have very different experiences, or very similar ones! It all depends! I generally don’t really like reading scenes of people being diagnosed (it’s just exposition and maybe some realization on the PoV character’s part, but it’s usually somewhat inaccurate in that regard), so you can probably steer away from that sort of thing, but you might find it useful to note how your character was identified somewhere? I don’t really have any strong opinions on this.

I’d also like to note: Everything I publicly speak about having, I’ve discussed in a professional therapy setting, just because of my personal complexes. However, I do fully support self-diagnosis. Bigotry and money are huge obstacles against getting professional diagnoses, and if someone identifies with a certain disorder and seeks out treatment mechanisms for it, there’s no real harm being done. If someone is genuinely struggling and they benefit from coping mechanisms intended for a disorder they might not have, then I think that’s better than if they shied away because they weren’t professionally diagnosed with it, and therefore didn’t get help they needed. With proper research, self-diagnosis is fully ethical and reasonable.

I do not want to debate this, and any attempts to force me into a discussion about professional versus self-diagnosis will be ignored.

Anyway! I can’t really identify any specific daily experiences with psychosis you might want to include, because as mentioned, everyone has different symptoms and ways they cope with them.

Some psychotic people might not experience symptoms outside of an episode, which can be brought on by any number of things; some might experience symptoms only under general stress; some might have consistent symptoms. The content of hallucinations and delusions can also shift over time.

Psychosis can also affect anyone—there are certain demographics certain disorders are more likely to occur in, but this could just as easily be due to biases in diagnostic criteria or professionals themselves as it could be due to an actual statistical correlation. If you want to figure out how a psychotic character behaves on a day-to-day basis, then you’re better off shaping who they are as a person beyond their psychosis first, then incorporating their psychosis into things.

(A note about this: I consider my psychosis a major part of me, and I firmly believe that I would be a very different person without it; that’s why I refer to myself as a “psychotic person” rather than “a person with psychosis.” However, there is a difference between that and unpsychotic people making psychotic characters’ only trait their psychosis.)

4) Treatment for psychosis differs from person to person. The same things don’t work for everyone.

Some people are on antipsychotics; others aren’t. Medication is a personal choice and not a necessity—no one should be judged either for being on medication or for not being on medication. There are many reasons behind either option. Please do not ask psychotic people about their medication/lack thereof unprompted.

If you want to depict a psychotic character on medication, then research different forms of antipsychotics and how they affect psychotic people. I’ve never been on medication and don’t really plan to be (though if I ever do, I’m definitely taking a note from Phasmophobia’s book and calling them “Sanity Pills.” Just to clarify, I don’t want unpsychotic people repeating this joke, but if you want some insight on how some of us regard our health…), so you’re better off looking elsewhere for this sort of information!

I’m not going to get into my personal opinions on institutionalization and the psychiatry industry in general now, but institutionalization is, while common, also not necessary, and many psychotic people—and mentally ill and neurodivergent people in general—have faced harm and trauma due to institutionalization. Again, I can’t offer direct personal experience, but I recommend steering clear of plotlines directly related to psychiatric hospitals.

I would also like to emphasis the word treatment. Psychosis has no cure. It is possible for psychosis to only last a single episode (whether because it’s only due to stress/another outside factor or because it is treated early), or for symptoms to be greatly reduced over time and with treatment, but for the most part, psychotic people are psychotic for life.

However, with proper support networks and coping skills, many psychotic people are able to lead (quote unquote) “normal” lives. What coping mechanisms work for what people differs, but some psychosis-specific coping mechanisms might be:

Taping webcams for delusions of persecution/surveillance (which is honestly also just something everyone should do with webcams that aren’t in use)

Covering/closing windows for similar reasons

Using phone cameras/audio recordings to distinguish visual and auditory hallucinations from reality (most of the time, a hallucination won’t show up on camera, though it’s possible for people to hallucinate something on a camera screen too)

Similarly, removing glasses/contact lenses to check a visual hallucination

Asking people you trust (because of stigma and delusions, this might not be a long list) to check for symptoms of an oncoming episode

Avoiding possible triggers for psychosis (for example, I don’t engage with horror media often because a lot of it -- both psychological horror and slasher-type things -- can trigger delusions and hallucinations)

I’d also like to mention that treatment isn’t a clean, one-way process; especially with certain disorders, it’s normal to go up and down over time. I’d honestly be really uncomfortable with a psychotic character whose symptoms don’t affect their life whatsoever. There are ways you can write how psychosis affects someone that are… weird, which I’ll touch on, but overall, I think it’s better to actually depict a psychotic person whose symptoms have a clear impact on their life (even if that impact is, say, they’re on medication that negates some of their symptoms).

Just to reiterate: I am not a medical professional and cannot offer real-life advice regarding treatment, especially medication. Please do not ask me too detailed questions regarding this.

5) There are a lot of stereotypes and stigma surrounding psychosis.

The way psychosis is perceived both by general society and the field of psychology has changed a lot over the years, but even now, it still remains highly stigmatized and misunderstood. Wall of text incoming, but it’s important stuff.

Typical media portrayal of psychosis tends to fall into specific categories: The scary, violent psychotic person, or the psychotic person who is so crazy you can’t help but laugh. There are other bad depictions, but these are generally the ways I see psychotic people regarded and represented the most, so I want to address them directly.

Let’s talk about psychosis in horror first. Psychosis is often stereotyped as making people aggressive and violent. You’ve all seen the “psychotic killer” trope and depictions of people who are made violent and evil by their psychosis, even if it’s not explicitly named as the case. You’ve all seen “psychotic” used as a negative adjective, used synonymously to murderous, evil, harmful, violent, manipulative, etc—maybe you’ve even used it that way in the past. There’s no denying that the way society regards psychotic people is overwhelmingly negative, and that leaks into media.

If you are considering giving a violent, irredeemable antagonist psychosis, consider this: Don’t. More or less every psychotic person hates this trope. It’s inaccurate and, needless to say, rooted in ableism.

There are racialized aspects to this as well. People of color, especially Black and Latine people, are already stereotyped as being aggressive, violent, and scary; there’s also a history of overdiagnosis (and often misdiagnosis) of schizophrenia in Black people, especially civil rights activists. White and white-passing people will only be singled out if someone notices us exhibiting psychotic symptoms, but Black and brown people are already under scrutiny. Be extra cautious about how you write psychotic characters of color.

I’m not saying you can never give a psychotic person, say, a temper; in some cases, it might even make sense. Spells of uncontrollable anger are part of the diagnostic criteria for BPD, for example, and irritability is a common trait of manic episodes. Some delusions and hallucinations can affect aggression (emphasis on can—it would be inaccurate to imply that this is always the case. Once again, each person has a different experience with their psychotic symptoms).

But when the only psychotic or psychotic-coded characters you write are angry and violent, even when the situation doesn’t call for it, then there’s a problem. When you want to write a schizophrenic character, but only in a situation where they’re going on a killing spree, there’s a problem.

Studies have shown that no substantial link exists between psychosis and violence. There is a small association, but I think it would be reasonable to say this is partially because of the stigma surrounding psychosis and various other overlapping factors; no violence or crime exists in a vacuum. In addition, though I can’t find any exact statistics on this, psychotic people are susceptible to being victims of violence (likely because of this very stereotype).

On this note, don’t use mental hospitals as a setting for horror, especially if you plan on depicting the mentally ill patients there as antagonistic and unhinged. As mentioned earlier, institutionalization is a huge trigger for many psychotic people. True, psychiatric hospitals have definitely served as a source of trauma and pain for many in the past, but mentally ill and neurodivergent people have been (and are) the victims in those situations.

Also, don’t do the “what if it was all a delusion” thing. I know this is most common in ~edgy~ theories about children’s series, but… yikes.

In the same vein that you should avoid depictions of psychotic people that are ripped straight from a bad horror movie, don’t push it too far into comedy either. You’ve heard “psych ward” jokes, you’ve seen “I put the hot in psychotic” jokes (a supposedly humorous instance of that psychotic as a negative descriptor thing), you’ve heard people say “I have anxiety/depression, but I’m not crazy!”

Even other mentally ill and neurodivergent people constantly throw us under the bus, as can be seen in that last one. We’re the butt of plenty of jokes—we see things that aren’t there, we talk to ourselves, we believe things that are just so wacky you can’t believe anyone would think that way. (Even when we don’t.)

If you have to write another character laughing at a psychotic character for their symptoms, then have it swiftly criticized in the text, and try not to imply the reader should find psychosis funny either. Treat psychotic characters’ symptoms with sympathy and understanding, not ridicule.

Psychotic people literally cannot help our delusions/hallucinations/other symptoms. If something we think/say seems “crazy” to you, chances are it does to us as well.

(We’re talking about portraying psychosis in fiction, but this applies to real-life treatment of psychotic people, too!)

Also, I’d like to note—all of this is about the way unpsychotic people view psychotic people. If you see a psychotic person laughing at themself or viewing their symptoms as scary, then that is not an invitation for you to laugh along or go beyond symptoms and think the person is scary for being psychotic. That’s the thing about gallows humor; you have to be the one on the gallows.

Moving on! In romance, there is often a presumption that love can cure psychosis. This is false. No matter how much you love (whether romantically or platonically) and want to help a psychotic person, that alone will not “heal” their psychosis. Please do not depict a psychotic person having to be cured to be happy or in love. It doesn’t work that way.

This doesn’t mean you should stray away from romance in general—I personally would definitely like to see more portrayals of psychotic people being loved and supported, especially in romantic relationships. I’d prefer it not be in spite of their psychosis, either; it would be weird if someone loved a person because of their psychosis, but I don’t think you can really love someone whom you disregard such a large part of either.

Point-blank: Psychotic people are worthy of love and affection, and I think this should show in media as well.

In relation to relationships, I’d also strongly advise steering away from writing family members and friends who see someone’s psychosis as harder on them than for the psychotic person, unless you want to explicitly disavow this behavior. Sure, it probably is difficult for other people to witness my psychotic symptoms. But it’s harder for me to have them.

I’m not sure if this is a widely-held belief, but some people also seem to think psychosis is less common than it is. Psychotic people are all around you, and if you read that as a threat or anything like that, you might need to do some self-evaluating. We exist, online and in person, and we can see and read and hear the things you say about us!

Specifically: By the NIMH’s statistics, roughly 3% of people (3 out of every 100) in the United States will experience psychosis at some point in their lives. Around 100,000 people experience their first episode a year.

This also means that it’s possible unpsychotic people reading this will end up developing a form of psychosis at some point in your life as well. Yes, even without a genetic basis; yes, even as a full-grown adult (see how common psychosis is in neurodegenerative disorders). Now this one is intended as a threat (/hj).

Also, you can’t always tell who is psychotic and who is not. I imagine there are a lot of people who wouldn’t know I’m psychotic without me explicitly saying so. Set aside any notions you might have of being able to identify psychotic people, because they will definitely influence how you might go into writing a psychotic character, and they will definitely end up pissing off a psychotic person in your life. Because… you probably know at least one!

People often regard psychosis as a worst-case scenario—which, again, is something that occurs even by people and in works that uplift mental health in general (something I’ve mentioned before is The Bright Sessions, in which a telepath is misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and has an “I’m not crazy!” outburst). I’ve talked about treatment already, but I just thought I’d say this: Psychosis is not a death sentence nor a “fate worse than death.” It may be difficult for unpsychotic people to understand and handle; it is harder to live with. But being psychotic is not an inherently bad thing, and psychotic people should not be expected to act like our lives are constantly awful and hopeless on account of stigma.

I think that’s all I have to say, so thank you so much for reading, especially if you’re not psychotic! I hope you’ve learned something from this, and once again, fellow psychotic people are more than welcome to add on more information if they’re willing.

#sparrow.txt #pseriouslypsychotic #actuallypsychotic #writeblr #writing advice #writing tips

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goldheartedsky · 3 years

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I told myself I wasn’t going to make a post like this—that I wasn’t going to stoop to the level of making call-out posts—but I really can’t stay silent after what has happened in the last day or so.

The TOG fandom has a serious issue with excusing antisemitism and allowing people who have painfully hurt marginalized groups to continue to ignore, dismiss, and refuse to acknowledge their limits of intersectionality in regards to social justice. I have seen it myself, been on the receiving end of it, and have talked to other Jews in this fandom about what’s been going on and it needs to start being addressed.

Now, I’m not going to name names or tag people (mainly because I have been blocked by almost all of them for this very issue) but if you message me I will gladly tell you the users involved in this. Also, if you have doubts of any of this’s validity and would like screenshots, feel free to reach out to me here or via Discord and I will share them.

A lot of this started when a member of the All&More server had brought up the scientific and medical “discoveries” during the torture and medical experimentation that took place during the Third Reich and how a lot of the origin of it isn’t taught. LR made a comment saying that “we are three-dimensional creatures who are stuck moving forward in time and can’t go back” and added that not using the research won’t make past horrors not happen. When the original user added that there has been a movement in medicine for removing Nazi scientists names off discoveries and that progress was slow moving, she deflected the conversation onto herself, saying “Not using research won’t make my family not harmed by the Japanese” and then immediately pivoted into admitting that, from what she understood, there weren’t any particularly valid scientific discoveries made by them. She then said, in regards to said Nazi atrocities, “Take it, learn about it, put it in context, and then own it and transform it.”

A Jewish member of A&M voiced their discomfort about possibly taking medicine that was a direct result of the murder of their grandparents and other relatives, to which LR said, “Still stuck in the 3rd dimension, still moving forward in time.” I brought up the fact that medicine was built on antisemitism and racism and that starting over would be better than a lot of the procedures we have now. There is a longstanding issue in medicine of disregarding black pain and so much of what we have now is created by eugenicists—including Nazi scientists. There is still a lot of Jewish trauma due to medical experimentation and that is oftentimes dismissed.

LR then made a flippant comment about “Does this count as Godwin’s Law?”—which is about how all internet discussions lead to someone being compared to Nazis/Hitler. When called out on the inappropriateness of the comment, she did not respond and was backed up by one of the mods of the server. There was no apology made nor an acknowledgment about the casual antisemitism of the comments she made and the dismissal of Jewish trauma/pain.

Now, fast forward a couple months when I was contacted by a third party who had not been in the server at the time but had joined and heard about what LR had said there. H said they were friends with LR and had concerns about antisemitism and would like my perspective. I explained what had happened and offered screenshots if they would like them, which they did. They thanked me and apologized that it got to a point that I felt unsafe in the server and had to leave, which I appreciated.

A couple weeks later they reached out to me again and offered to broker a conversation between LR and myself because the situation wasn’t sitting well with them. I was skeptical (because I had been blocked at that point) and didn’t have a lot of hope that this conversation would actually take place but I felt a responsibility to try and be the bigger person and deal with what had been said head on, so I agreed to sit down and have a discussion with her as long as there was a third party in the chat as well—given our history.

After a couple weeks of back and forth with H and hearing that LR had said that she would “think about it”, she finally agreed. I was asked for a time and date and I gave my availability and was told she would be asked for the same. A couple days later, I was suddenly told LR would only be comfortable with this conversation if H acted as a “literal go-between” with us copy-pasting our responses in their DMs so we can “sit with the message and everyone can get to them when they can” rather than it being a session with an actual back and forth and was asked if I was okay with that. I honestly said no, because this was supposed to be a situation where she and I sat down and discussed what she said in the server, not a back and forth message relay where the conversation got dragged out for days or weeks or however long it was going to take. I said if she was serious about meeting me halfway on this, she needed to be able to sit down and actually talk.

H copy-pasted my response to LR and came back that she had backed out of the conversation, which part of me had expected from the beginning—even though all I wanted from this sit down was for her to understand how hurtful the antisemitic comments were and an apology.

These comments that were made in the server are not a secret. It’s pretty well known what was said and again, these were all on record, not privately made in some DM. She has still not owned up to the comments she said, nor has she ever apologized for them. She has ignored message after message about them and blocked more people than I can count. Many of the people defending her when the discourse begins have also been messaged about the comments she’s said and also either block people or ignore the messages completely and refuse to acknowledge them.

Now, this being said, in the most recent conversation about fandom racism, someone brought up the post that was made reducing users on ao3 to faceless, nameless numbers without saying who they were, what they had done, and how they were specifically contributing to the problem of racism in this fandom. They made the comparison of other situations like HR looking at pay stats to see how to fire and included “Nazis, capitalists, and colonizers.”

This is not an invalid argument. There have been other Jews in the fandom who specifically voiced feeling uncomfortable for the exact same reason. However, another person, LT, decided to specifically make a post calling the OP out and drag them for having the audacity to liken it to the Shoah (which, mind you, this person is not Jewish nor did they decide to capitalize Shoah or the Holocaust as they should have). She received a reply saying, “you’re offended by antisemitism? Here’s LR’s (someone LT has agreed with multiple times over racism in fandom) track record of antisemitic comments” which outlined everything I delved into previously.

LT said that they were “unaware of this incident until a couple days ago” but agreed that it was an upsetting display of casual dismissal of Jewish pain and hoped that LR had apologized. She was then called out for being aware of it and still continuing to reblog LR’s posts even after knowing about the comments and was linked to my post clarifying that LR had not apologized and refused a discussion about it, to which LT said that she had gotten “quite a different version outlined in the post linked and corroborated by a third party” and “felt uncomfortable” making a value judgement, insinuating that I was not being truthful about my side of the story.

I messaged LT off-anon and said that I was not lying nor over-exaggerating about what had happened in the server or about the following discussion about trying to broker a conversation with LR, and was immediately blocked by her. I am also not the only Jew who has sent her messages about this topic, only to have their messages ignored.

Now, am I surprised that I was immediately blocked after voicing my issues with what LT had said in that post? No.

She has a history of making antisemitic comments, most of which happened during the brunt of the Israel/Palestine discussion happening, which included statements such as “You cannot be considered indigenous if you hold a position of power”, that, despite having been displaced for 2,000 years, the Jewish diaspora was “integrated” into their respective communities (a wholly untrue statement), as well as linked to and promoted a website with extremely antisemitic articles including one about “Spartan Jews” and how Israeli Jews are violent to “send messages to their deprived self-esteem” that they won’t be victims again. Half of the comments on the site’s front page included such hits as “Death to all Jews” and “Wow, I had no idea this was happening—I guess it is true that Jews control the world and the mass media.” This website was repeated in multiple posts as “unbiased” and “a good resource” for other people to truly know what was going on.

Jewish dissent on the content of some posts and that website went unacknowledged and dismissed.

Being that LT is a relatively big user in the TOG fandom, her posts got circulated frequently. Seeing things like that touted as unbiased was extremely triggering for me and multiple Jews in this fandom that I’ve spoken to.

Now, the reason I made this post in particular was because I have seen a lot of echoing of the sentiment: “no matter how much you disagree with their sentiment, aligning yourself with racists is...well aligning yourself with racists.”

This statement NEEDS to become intersectional. If we are criticizing the work of people because of who they hold company with, why does that end at racism? If we are going to have a discussion about racism in this fandom, why are we letting it come from people who have openly said antisemitic things, people who have stood by them and supported them in silence, and people who have silenced Jewish voices speaking up about this issue.

These are not separate issues. This is a really good post regarding the white washing of Jews in social justice discussion and it comes full circle into the medical experimentation discussion. Jews were not seen as white during the Holocaust. The Nazis were trying to cleanse the Aryan race because they did not view Jews as white. They experimented on them because they did not view them as white and, thus, disposable.

Every Jewish diasporic community is still vulnerable. Even though the US has half the world’s Jews, over 50% of the religiously based hate crimes are consistently anti-Jewish even though Jews make up 2% of the population. Chinese Jews are still holding their holiday celebrations in secret due to government crackdowns. The attempted genocide of Beta Israel was less than 50 years ago. Across the Middle East and North Africa, Jewish communities are barely hanging on after centuries of attempted destruction. These are not just Jewish issues but racial issues as well because when people make the sweeping generalization of “Jew” and they only mean white-passing Ashkenazi Jews, it erases so much of our community.

I absolutely agree that this fandom needs to have a discussion about race and portrayal in fic and what we can do better moving forward—and I want to see that done—but we also need to acknowledge what so many people starting this discussion have said and the marginalized groups they have hurt along the way. I see these posts come across my dashboard and know exactly who they're coming from and what they think of people like me. If we are going to say, “No matter how much you disagree with their sentiment, aligning yourself with racists is aligning yourself with racists,” then we NEED to be saying, “If you are aligning yourself with antisemites, you’re aligning yourself with antisemites.”

We all need to move forward. But that means moving forward together. Jews included.

#i just really needed to get this off my chest #I really don’t want to start shit but some of this has been bothering me for months and I can’t stay quiet anymore #I’m just so tired #intersectionality includes Jews pass it on

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