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capslocked · 6 months

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KINKVEMBER DAY: 9

[prompt: problematic relationships]

male reader x nana

10k words

"Do you have any idea how long I've thought about it?" Nana slips a finger between the buttons of your shirt. "You, me - us?"

And here, you actually, truthfully do not want to know.

So, go ahead, cue up the sound of a mental rolodex spinning out while you start to list the very real, very valid, very adult reasons you should never, ever put your hands on her. (1) She's too young for you, (2) you're kind of a community figure, or at least someone who has to appear to be one, and more pertinently (3) she was your student not long enough ago - in your ethics class, the irony of which is not lost on you - and that makes it the kind of dirty, low thing you'd feel guilty for even masturbating to. Let alone actually attempt to live through, no matter how insistent some parts of you might be to the contrary, a point emphasized by the pressure of her finger against the dip just below your sternum.

"These... oh, how should I call them." Nana hums softly just before easing a bit of distance between the two of you, head tilting like she's in a trailer for this summer's romcom, and not, you know, trying to drag you into hell. "Filthy little fantasies?"

You're a high school teacher, interdisciplinary. Sometimes history, other times philosophy, you've also taught math - and once, egregiously, home economics when the faculty member whose usual duties consisted of teaching the class was out on a very sudden and scandalous maternity leave. But it's your love of literature that finds you in a bookstore near enough to the high school to sell more used copies of intro textbooks than actual novels.

You're paging through a book you'd say you're considering buying - if any of the store staff were to push the question onto you - when she appears at the other end of the fiction aisle.

You catch the look first of her dyed hair, this perfect shade of chocolate, to the edges, the fade-to-brown, cascading over where a more formal shirt would ostensibly have shoulders.

She smiles; it's pretty.

Then, you make the mistake of glancing down and seeing the modest rise of her chest beneath a crisp-collared sleeveless top; all your typical college-age tells but for the red flannel, rolled back down around her waist. Her fingers, long and thin, dangle from where a uniform button-down would taper off around her wrist, thumb rubbing lazily at her forearm. The briefest glimpse of her nails, all done up in acrylic - perhaps the most potent way to show contempt for an old dress-code.

You have, admittedly, also noticed the length (appropriately, the lack thereof) of her pleated skirt and those frilly stockings that ride so far up the creamy curves of her thighs that it has your stomach rolling and tightening when she shuts closed the book in her hands and says -

"Isn't it weird how most of the novels in the romance section are written by women?”

- she speaks with a slow deliberateness, like she'd only ever hoped to find one of her old teachers alone and slightly vulnerable in a used bookstore -

“Like, how do you think a man would even go about writing those kinds of stories?" She grins, because maybe this isn't really a question at all - not one meant for you, certainly. And for one wild moment, the rush of relief (she's not actually talking to you), then panic (she's actually talking to you.) surges through you.

But then the girl pushes another couple books along the shelf and continues.

"Because I'll tell you what, Professor - all this stuff," a flip-flip-flip of her fingertips against a leathery dustjacket, "about just feeling it, not being able to control it. It's all women, always women." Another wave of her hand to set another row of spines a-shuddering. "Do you ever think maybe people will get tired of listening to girls talking about feelings when what they really need to see is what guys would do?"

There are so many reasons you should turn and run.

So many little flags, flickering wildly in your mind. This is one of your students. Was it this fall? Maybe the last; she had sat front-center. Never slept in, was one of your best by several measures - not simply in regards to the simple repetition of classroom work, but by her insistence on getting in the kind of heated discussion where one might dig their fingers through the innards of your lectures. Not just good - fantastic.

"Nayeon," you end up saying, flat as your suddenly paper-dry mouth can make it - with just the tiniest hint of unease. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

And almost as if she knows that you're trying not to let your eyes dip any lower than the collar of her shirt, her shoulders do that lilting little move (hiking up and away just so), the one that your girls tend to learn a long, long time before your boys ever manage to figure out. She laughs out this pleasant sound, adds: "not that long, sir."

"Well," you're clearing your throat, looking around the bookstore like it might contain a way out, and eventually landing somewhere on her skirt, "you know how fast it all goes."

"Nana, by the way."

“I’m sorry?”

“Nana,” She gently corrects you again with this mischievous slant to her smile, and you start remembering: all the gossip and rumors, how she was being courted by these talent-scouts and labels. A prodigy, or as close to it as anyone from this town could ever get.

Your eyes are starting to sting again when she, this perfect-fit model of your worst impulses, runs her hand through her hair, tugging at the roots a little bit, a silver wristwatch falling slightly down the perfect length of her forearm. It almost hurts not to reach out and steady her. And it definitely shouldn't, but it has you breathing a bit faster. The rationalization: you are a man, and there is a perfectly ordinary part of you that might be aroused by any amount of smooth, inviting skin. That's fine. You're fine.

"Just for the record," Nana starts, still looking like she wants to put a hand forward and hook one long fingernail into the buttons of your shirt. "You were, like, absolutely one of my favorite teachers."

"I guess it's nice to hear I'm not a complete lost cause," you say.

She snorts. "Oh, definitely not." And maybe because, after all of the years you have been teaching these soon-to-be lawyers, politicians, and doctors, you've come to not look down on them for saying the wrong things so much. Though you do envy their absolute ability to say the wrongest of things - just so - just on purpose.

"Are you," you nod at the thick stack of paperback novels that she is still holding, and with which, suddenly, she's bashful and flustered - this perfect shade of pink blossoming through her cheeks. "Actually here to buy those?"

The response: a demure little shrug. A drawl. "We all have our vices, professor."

"I'm not your teacher anymore," and remembering at the last moment, "Nana, you can drop the honorifics, please."

She holds a book out, cover turned toward you, and your mind stalls - even your fingers slip a little where they are resting on the spine of your own paperback purchase. The title is an affront to literacy, and the art on the cover seems to have been produced only with stock photos, gaudy.

"Have you heard of it?"

"Can't say that I have."

"Well," she laughs and has the courtesy not to lay it at your expense, "it is so good." Then, without missing a beat, she twists her lips together, and finds the book flush against your chest. "I'm sure it beats reading textbooks and essays about the merits of Locke and Hobbes' life-after-death stuff all day, anyway. An hour if you can spare the time? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it"

And - ah, there it is. The push.

There is a zero percent chance that, after any of this, things will end neatly for either of you.

You still wonder, slightly, how long Nana will keep up the charade before breaking character - because there's no way in hell she doesn't see what she's doing: wrapping you around her pretty fingers, her shiny, manicured nails, twisting every chance you get to reject her into an excuse to linger that little bit longer.

But it's well over an hour spent at the cafe-end of the bookstore, where she orders an iced-coffee and fills you in on the details you don't really need to hear, what she's been up to these last couple semesters - playing twenty questions; questions about other faculty members, the school, if the school newspaper is still anything like it used to be (for the record: no), then coming back to if you've been seeing anyone lately. That last one slips in so naturally you can't stop yourself from taking a slow drag off of the straw in your drink and answering: "not recently."

Because no honest deed goes unpunished, or however the saying goes.

"Hey," her hands splay out over the tabletop, pushing the cold, condensing water of her glass, smudging where a finger drags a line through the pool.

Maybe she knows. How you're already caught, and there's no going back, which is to say you're perfectly free to watch, hungrily, where her throat moves, and then where her lips part.

"I’ve got the perfect thing for that," and for one unhinged, hysterical moment you picture it, Nana: lying back against a counter or maybe in the cushions of a sofa, panties thrown carelessly over her shoulder; heaving out this soft, heady gasp. You: pushing inside of her for the very first time, both of your legs bracing, the heel of her foot pressed into the small of your back - but before you can convince yourself that she can't be talking about that, and just barely before the air gets stuck in the back of your throat and you realize that you might be so thoroughly, tragically fucked -

"Read this." A snap back into the here and now. She is looking at you very pointedly, not naked - but beautiful and perfect as she leans a bit into the table and crosses those lovely, lovely legs of hers, and tilts the copy of that awful, awful filth at you.

"Nana, respectfully, this is drivel," you say, immediately and plainly, listening to Nana laugh out loud as you glean more than you need to know from the info on the inside cover. "They've crossed like five major genre boundaries for a hook-up. Why should anyone bother?"

"Come on." She waves it off with a careless gesture of her hands. "There's plenty of things to like. Maybe you should give it a chance - broaden your horizons, teach. Besides - the sex scenes?" She rolls her shoulders with the same shrug you remember watching so carefully all those times she made her way, out of the hallways and back into that front-and-center-seat she was always occupying whenever the bell rang. "So filthy. I can show you one of my favorites."

"Doesn't really seem like appropriate reading material for -"

"You said it yourself," her voice has a bright, saccharine tone, just on the right side of strained. And between sips of that straw stuck in the purse of her pert, little mouth, she draws that next sentence - the ice cracking, thinning under your feet -

"Not my teacher anymore."

Nana smiles; this brash, cock-sure thing that reminds you, as you try to clear your throat of the nerves making a bed there: you are actually so, so fucking gone on her. So far gone it hurts, when, with a flourish and a bounce and a complete, reckless lack of discretion, she starts paging through the first chapters.

"Who says you can't study these kinds of stories on an academic level? Think about it: sex sells. Whoever ends up writing, it's a whole lot easier and a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to do it all yourself." She looks up, this mischievous twinkle in her eyes, as she angles her fingertips down on the book and opens it - page after page of very obviously poorly-written sex. You look, not even consciously.

But of course, her fingertips drift lower and lower along the pages until it's evident: she doesn't have an exact page in mind, but only a particular passage -

"Here. Let me show you, just one."

"Alright, fine," you start - trying for an effect of exasperation, something to mitigate this god awful throbbing, "whatever - you get one, one sample paragraph and I'll, you know, whatever."

"Yeah, you'll definitely see. Just trust me. Just the one."

She drums her long, gorgeous nails against the table, then eases back with a finger highlighting the text.

You're screening and scanning the words as she tells you about the heroine in the story: a pretty girl who comes down with a bad case of infatuation for her teacher - unrequited, of course. And then, into a passionate affair, of course; all the most raucous, explicit details laid out over the table for everyone else to hear. She says it is about as nonchalantly as though she had been reading you the daily weather forecast and not an elaborate metaphor for - and here, you stop her.

"He cums on her desk?"

"Fucking hot, right?" She nearly snorts and gestures you onward, her eyebrows jumping - go on, go on.

So, you skim along: a heavy rush of nausea (alongside another) pulsing down around your gut at the thought of actually doing such a thing, your ears going hot and your legs crossing on instinct. There's not so much a breath of hesitation as Nana, cool, unfazed, and utterly unaware of the uncomfortable churning of your stomach and the simultaneous thrumming in your cock, takes another deep swig of coffee.

She hums, thoughtful. "Honestly? Kinda wished it happened to me like that. You were a good, good teacher, professor. I wouldn't have minded your hands all over me." You hear her laugh, and the entire universe collapses like the end-days. You are struck down with feverish conviction: this girl is the worst.

"Anytime you wanted," she adds, so carelessly.

There's a clunking sound, of glass on wood; a half a second where you almost lose control over yourself.

“Nayeon,” you let slip, the old name - a mistake of an invitation she grasps like a weapon. All coming to a glint in her eye that says she knows how you see it, how you can still picture her sitting with her hands folded over the skirt of her uniform, chest rising and falling beneath her cotton shirt. Studious, taking notes, acting every bit the naive sweetheart everyone believed her to be.

You shudder out some pretense of composure and settle back a few inches as she continues to coax a reaction out of you, prodding: "how many girls did you make confess back then, hm? Did it ever do them any good?"

"Dial it back, Nana."

Her expression is all feigned, gentle surprise. "But sir," she looks at you so innocently, "you said I should drop the honorific."

You want to argue that, you also want to tell her off for being such a brat - to demand that, instead, she cut the shit, sit back, and remember who you both are, but when, with a wink and a smirk, she's getting up out of her seat, Nana sets a gentle, reassuring hand on your shoulder as she pushes her chair back beneath the table. You get onto your feet, and when the two of you are stood close together like this - she's really and truly that much smaller than you remember. Waist so tiny you think you could almost, almost wrap two hands all the way around her; skirt rising all too easily when she tosses her weight between her heels.

"I hope you know what you’re doing," you tell her, sternly - the voice of a teacher whose patience is running thin.

But no matter where you look, the consequences are dire and immediate: an abject fascination, a kind of debilitating greed; the absolute fucking loss of ability to look her directly in her eyes. Not like Nana isn't staring right through you. There's no doubt some part of her relishes the feeling.

"Hey, what do I know?" This sweet, demure-like chuckle follows. "It's just porn, right?”

Eventually, Nana says to call it a night because the sun's long set into the horizon and the chill starts getting at the both of you.

She tells you while you're packing up your belongings to come by again sometime, her voice teasing as she explains that you should pick out a new novel to read for your benefit.

Which is possibly the ideal outcome, all things considered, if it wasn't for the way she found herself in your hands just a few paces into the parking lot - no one around to catch you, where you're gripping fast onto her wrist and pressing the lines of her body into door of your car, looming and ready to give a piece of your mind.

You know what you ought to say - things like don't bother, you've enjoyed her company, she's fun and sweet, and in a dozen different ways: be a good girl, and go home. You had your fun, didn't you? But she's practically begging, those huge, wide doe eyes that stare straight up into your soul.

"C'mon,” her voice lilts into a deeper, more purposeful register, “you wouldn't turn down a student on her way home, would you?

(This fucking girl.)

She speaks of propriety, like you aren't a man of your own principles - like you aren't reaching down to press a kiss to the swell of her lips like she undoubtedly deserves. To lick into her mouth and pull and kiss and bite until she's trembling, teeth caught in a delicate whimper. Or, that you aren't running your hands down her sides to find the backs of her knees and draw them upward, hooking your hips flush against hers.

She's all too breathless, watching you draw off her lips, fingers fast in your shirt, your hair - holding you close.

Then finally, a true, honest reflection of your heart. Nothing less than sheer and utter capitulation: "let me take you home."

Nana just nods before wrapping her arms around your neck and kissing you again.

It's definitely on you for expecting anything different, but Nana fucks like she talks.

Conceited. Brash. A little selfish.

The girl's sitting there on her kitchen counter with one leg hooked over your shoulder. She's stripped herself down to near nothing save for those fuck-off ridiculous panties: slick, shiny with a thick strip of satin between her lips, complete with white lace frills and all; the same ridiculous pattern as the thigh-high stockings clinging tight around the soft-gentle fat of her legs and the lace top of her garter. Her pussy - all tight and pink and soaked - has left this shimmering, shiny mess that's trailing down the insides of her thighs.

Your fingers are in the elastic of her panties, near bruising the curve in her waist where she's rocking, flushed and keening against your grip.

You tell her, "take these off."

"Off?" She repeats it back to you with the same little grin: playing dumb, the smart, charming ass she's been all night.

"I'd tell you what I really want to do to you," you start, pushing your fingers in a little harder, eliciting another pretty moan. "But I'm really, really sure you can fill in the blanks yourself.

"I hope you're not planning on being rough with me," she teases, running her hands all through your hair as she pulls herself against you - and of course, it's her audacity to insist, "no marks." She drops a chaste little kiss along the underside of your jaw. "At least, nothing that might show up on a camera."

Someone with a little less baggage might have done just that. Might have jerked her panties down a couple inches further - ripped the cloth, exposed her even more. You might have followed the waistline further along the perfect round of her ass, found those dips and dimples that, maybe, no one else has ever gotten to explore. You may have grasped at the ends of her hair and gotten your fingers in her pussy without ceremony - driven Nana to the very brink of her climax just before palming two greedy handfuls of that ass - shoving yourself right there between her lips and, lost to shame, put a fucking kid in her.

All the things she must be dying for you to do.

"Something the matter?" She pushes her mouth into yours for a kiss that has all the urgency of a lazy Sunday morning. Your tongue against hers, languid and gentle at first; wet-sloppy, kissing and sucking on her bottom lip. You can feel her smirking when she says, "don't tell me you've forgotten how."

It's a lot, the effort you're putting in not to crumble - to crack at her taunts, snap your restraint, the temptation. You just wanna grab her pretty tits in both hands, shake her, and say: "shut the fuck up." But no - even in your wildest fantasy, you want to hear her first - beg you to make a wreck of her. So you force the words between your lips, dry and cracking:

"Not a fucking chance."

A laugh. "Guess I'm in good hands, then. Have to admit," Nana slides her hands down to hook under your own, bringing them lower. She grinds your fingers in slow circles over that one, aching, perfect little bud - a shock that has her curling tight inward until she's whining, clutching at her waist. "Not the - not the situation I had in mind."

Nana shifts her weight a bit more on one hip, guiding you through rubbing along the entrance to her slit - sloppy with precum, silky and aching - and when you place just the lightest pressure over all that hot skin, she opens her mouth:

"Ah."

Her eyes, her hair, her fucking mouth - you can’t look away - she’s so gorgeous it hurts.

Even the way she pants; the perfect furrow between her brows. And then, you dip a finger inside her, just to the first knuckle. It’s enough to make her whine, all shaky and high.

"Go on then, with how you’d pictured it," you press, already easing your digit in and out; slow, slick pumps that she is growing hotter, needier around. "I'm sure you've touched yourself to it more than a few times. The details and - stuff - must have been vivid."

"You haven't the slightest clue."

A brief kiss. You coax another shy sound from her, drawing a long sigh against her mouth -

"Try me, Nayeon."

"This is a lot closer to the truth than you’d think, professor." This time, no correction, she just smiles wide and tosses her head back, asking, sweetly, as if to absolve you of the responsibility. "Do you have any idea how long I've thought about it? You, me - us?"

Nana slips a finger between the buttons of your shirt and starts to pull.

On that detail, you actually, truthfully do not want to know.

"These... oh, how should I even call them." She hums softly just before easing a bit of distance between the two of you, head tilting like she's in a trailer for this summer's romcom, and not, you know, trying to drag you into hell. "Filthy little fantasies?"

"You know," you start. And by this point, her cunt's that much tighter. You've managed two fingers now, but no further, and she's making these desperate, punched-out gasps. Her clit's a swollen pink nub, jutting out from its soft hood. "I really had you pegged all wrong."

"Not - not at all. You can fuck me just fine, trust me - ah. Please, you can fuck me anyway you want."

And here, you grab a little higher on her hips, pinching her on the outside of a thigh, and begin working your fingers fast. You've never cared much for teasing, not really, but something about the way she squirms in your grip, tries to lean up and grasp onto your shoulders with shaking hands, it gets you smiling. It gets you grinning, even, especially the way she makes these pretty noises: a long, desperate little, "ah," at each press and thrust, her breath going high and uneven.

"Listen, Nana -" She squeals out loud when you push your fingers just a little deeper, a little bit harder. "I'm not going to talk about what a slut you've been today or how badly I want to spread you wide open," you can already tell it's affecting her: the sudden change, the subtle hitch in her breathing, the tremor where her thighs press together. "Tell me about you, about your little ideas. Let me help."

"Wouldn't be fair." Her pussy's getting tighter, urgent with want. And still:

"C'mon now. Humor me a little. There was probably-" you say, sliding down that ridiculous pair of underwear along her ass, tugging them over the curves of her legs - so slow and easy, all while you're not bothering with easing off. Nana moans again; voice pitched. "Lots. Lots and lots of dirty things - and, I'm willing to bet my career that they made you a hot, mess - an awful, soaking fucking wreck. Who could've guessed? You, of all people, with just the right kind of teacher's-pet-appeal, hm?"

And you meant it to be a joke, just some ribbing. But the question has her immediately tensing, looking at you very intently, no trace of shame as she snaps back -

"Your mouth." She rocks forward. "Your fucking mouth."

You shouldn't keep touching her, you shouldn't keep staring, you shouldn't push her flat on her back and shove your face right into her cunt, you should pull away before this goes too far - it shouldn't be your fingers drawing out sopping-wet gasps out of her pussy, nor should you press your tongue to her cunt, your mouth to all that delicate flesh and, at your first taste, shiver.

Nana laughs: shaky, nervous. Then, your fingers sink back into her pussy alongside your tongue, your lips, the way even your hot breath against her aching pussy has her all stunned, breathless - and -

"Please."

- right before she breaks off into a beautiful sound that catches her hard in the chest.

(A sound like you’re all she could ever want in this life, maybe the next; it’s this wordless plea.)

"Hah, I had - ah, had so much - hah - dirt on you, used to masturbate thinking - ah," and there, she arches her spine, forcing a sigh out, "thinking about how you might punish me." She laughs - nearly choking. "How you might break down all your veneer of being a good, moral man and fuck me raw and rough and - ah - fuck. Oh god, fuck."

You twist your fingertips up just so, right against this perfect spot in her, and all the sudden the entire line of her body seizes - stiffens up, the muscles in her thighs twitch as you both moan through the moment, the spasms reverberating in your own ears, loud and unashamed, right against her wet, wet clit. Your fingers are fucking and fucking and fucking away in her cunt, harder and faster and sloppier, every word, every groan, every gasped breath only making it easier to forget. To give in. And with every heavy slap and squelch of your fingertips digging in as deep as her body allows - you're sending her that much closer.

You pull back long enough to bite out: "cum whenever you want, Nana.”

She can’t, she can’t, she can’t, is what she’s trying to say, bracing against how your tongue moves around her clit, and she knows, there’s no use fighting it.

A kiss against her swollen mound and she writhes. “There you go sweetheart, cum for me.”

Nana comes undone. Gradually at first, then vaulting over that edge all at once. She lifts and lowers her hips - pushing your fingers into the smooth, velvety muscles of her cunt; rocking up and up again. It's a torturously slow kind of grinding, and her feet find purchase on either side of you as her toes curl, one heel digging into your shoulder. An assurance; a promise; a lifeline; that she might tremble and shake through it, moaning.

“Fuck,” and, “god,” and, “you’re gonna make me-” slip past her lips alongside all the assured gasped-out cries for relief - the orgasm sweeping through her, tearing her apart.

Back pitching, shoulders narrowing, face twisting, cinching tighter and tighter -

Until she collapses.

Until it’s over.

As she lays there, chest heaving, arm draped carelessly across her forehead and half over a kitchen cutting board - her thighs splayed open, fucked and spent - she's so, so beautiful.

And it’s in that sort of fucked-up-noodly-state where she just slides right into your arms - those long, slender legs wrapping tight around your middle. "Here's the deal," you say, grabbing hold of her hips and steadying her, as best as either of you can.

"Hm." This lazy, sated look, the way her tongue's dragged out - slow and slick - across the top of her teeth and bottom of her lips. "Go ahead, sir. I'm listening."

The lip service - that coy little appeal to authority that maybe you’re actually plenty fond of - it makes you stop for the barest of moments. This girl, she's unreal. How hard could you ever be asked to resist her?

She lifts a brow. "Professor."

So you continue:

"I'm going to get out of these clothes, and we are going to see what happens after that - if you have a preference for the bed or the sofa, now's your chance to pipe up. Or else -"

"Or else-" She repeats, shifting her weight around again. You can feel how she adjusts her heels to hang higher up your ribs, rocking her weight against your abdomen, against your cock - and the instinctual twitch that runs through your spine is turgid and rough. Like a shot. If it had a smell, it'd probably remind you of gasoline.

And then, maybe just to rile you up even more: "the dining room table makes a good impression of a teacher's desk, no?"

You slide your hand along the backs of her thighs until you have a good, tight, high hold on them and pick her up, leaving the panties, the stockings, all of it down where they can gather dust or whatever - she giggles, and tightens her hold around you like she doesn't need to worry about falling.

"I'd rather fuck you into a mattress to be perfectly candid."

Nana throws back her head and laughs - this real, honest-to-goodness peal of laughter, a hint of playfulness where there was usually just a practiced ease. "Oh. So forward."

(In all likelihood, you're both going to hell, and on the off chance you meet down there, you figure you'll fuck her then, too.

You've read the myths, the Greek tragedies, the ones that have these gods descending from the heavens on human women, for pleasure and nothing but, you've read those stories and plenty more - the details don't matter: it's always a bad, bad end for everybody involved.)

She takes you upstairs. And the two of you fall through the doorway to her bedroom, stumbling all the way.

Her apartment is simple and clean in the way all young adults try to emulate, all white countertops, but with pictures hanging in little, neat rows on the walls and the space void of anything with some sort of character or history.

You know because you're fumbling toward a dresser or desk or bookshelf in an attempt to orient yourselves, bumping and tussling, half-blind, on your path forward and all of a sudden there's a goddamn framed photo in your hand - not of her family, thank god. Though just about every other person in the picture is familiar to you, you remember every single one - but all you're capable of focusing on is Nana, Nayeon: not quite the same. The same glint in her eyes, the way her smile has a timeless kind of quality, the faint dimples in her cheeks.

And some wicked part of you is all too willing to ignore the whole timeline of events that has led up to you, Nana, like this: you want to pull her hair. You want to shove her around like she doesn't matter - is in any way disposable or replaceable; the most selfish parts of you wishing you could keep her pinned down by her slender neck; pressing a palm, bruising, into her collarbone as you start to work at your belt buckle and slacks with your other hand.

It's hard, getting a grip on yourself as Nana, sliding onto her bed and rolling across the sheets, pulls her stockings down the length of her legs - only stopping herself long enough to meet your eyes. Her throat bobbing.

“Of course,” she says, because your cock is hanging out by that point, straining and a little pent-up. "I fucking knew you would have a perfect cock."

"Flattery or sincerity?"

"Um, let's say both." She shifts around the pillow - that sweet little pout on her lips. Her gaze dropping from your mouth and running all along the length of your torso, lower and lower. Like her hands. And when her eyes flick up to meet yours, just when you're stroking at your cock, base and shaft, teasing yourself, well past the point of pretense, a devious smile spreads wide across her pretty, beautiful face. The implication: you aren't leaving here until you're cumming inside her.

And with a glimmer in her eyes, the sheer audacity, her fingertips ghost the underside of your cock as she draws up toward the head, "you're going to ruin me with this thing. You know that right?"

"A bit dramatic."

Nana moves to rest with the tops of her knees at the edge, her chin resting against the insides of her wrists, elbows propped up - poised, playful, everything she should be as the both of you regard each other a moment longer. "Can you blame me? It's not just that it's huge, I mean - I've barely even gotten a hold of it, and yet... god," she snorts. Her eyelids are heavy, mouth curved, almost a snarl as she drags her bottom lip through the grip of her teeth and sinks down onto the mattress.

"Say something filthy again," and this is a test, this is Nana testing you to see what exactly you'll get away with.

(Hint: it's a whole lot.)

She sighs. The image of indigence, innocence, everything pure and good you couldn't hope for. "Should I suck it or not? Or maybe, I don't know. Would you prefer me to beg for it first, ask if you'll put it in? Like, I think if you ordered me to put it in my mouth, right now, I wouldn't be able to say no."

"Really," the most sarcastic answer.

"Really," she continues. "For instance. If you came over here right now and guided me up and onto your dick and told me, specifically, that you were going to face-fuck me? I couldn't say no. No sir."

You could have her any damn way. You could have her, and you both know it.

"So tempting," you tease, mostly in earnest, "maybe another time, when my self-control isn't quite so lacking."

Nana hums a low, flippant sort of noise - like: whenever you're ready - and just how much trouble it gets you in, the mere suggestion, is what she is banking on.

"Hey," is her invitation, "I won't beg yet. You still want me to put my mouth all over it," and to emphasize, she slips her fingers between the plump pillows of her lips, smiling at how that makes you reach over the nightstand, accidentally pulling open a drawer, possibly reaching for the first aid kit, "or would you rather watch me stuff all these fingers in my wet, little hole."

A sharp inhale: it really would be fun, probably, but you can't take it.

"Nana," this voice, gravelly-ragged and harsh, "if you're planning to make me snap, you are, without question, on the right track."

"Then before that happens," she says, pulling you down into the bedsheets beside her. Your body flush against hers, the beat of her heart loud against your own; this gorgeous, pristine girl, so nakedly giving - this is an honor and a curse all rolled up together, no doubt.

And after a hot, wet kiss: "fuck me like I always thought you would."

(She was made to be like this; it's the only explanation.

Made for wanting. Made for fucking. Made to be loved and made to have her cunt fucked full - ruined by your fingers, your tongue, your cock. This absolutely perfect body, and all the delicious parts of her; this thing of desire, bashful and coy and that deserves all the world and, having none of the grace or courtesy to actually beg, orders, like she always knew she could:

"Like, right fucking now."

Or else.)

Then you're there - her hot mouth, her cunt, your fingers digging in bruising-tight all along the curve of her thighs where they meet her ass, hips, thighs, waist. She's pumping her soft palm and delicate fingers, slick with her spit and yours around the length of you and this isn't going to last long; not that there's any doubt you're going to leave her sore. But still, you drag the head of your cock across the swollen lips of her pussy, down through the plump swell of her clit until it rests where the ridge just begins and every slide, every pressure along every inch of your cock, the thought of being enveloped entirely in all that silky warmth is nearly the end of you.

A whimper, "professor."

You wrap your hands tighter around the smooth, firm muscles in her thighs; dragging your fingers back and forth across the supple skin there - just firm enough to elicit a reaction from the tension in her legs, until you have her flipped over on her stomach. Because if you're going to fuck her properly, it's going to be with her face buried deep into a pillowcase and you perched above her, holding her down against the sheets.

You watch her get her elbows underneath her, laying almost flat. Watch her trace the shape of her own jaw, her nose, her neck - the smooth expanse of her chest - as you straddle her thighs. With her ass pointed right up at you and the heel of her ankle gently grinding into the underside of your leg, you groan, placing both hands just above her ass. And once you're gripping the whole shape of her, you push your cock into her, just an inch, listening to the shift in her breathing.

She shudders, "don't tease - oh, please, sir-"

"Is this what you expected, Nana?" You grab onto her hair. Then again, when she tries to get her hands on herself. Her shoulders are high, tight. You just don't give her a chance; pushing yourself another inch, a couple. The pace, so gradual she starts making these soft, little breathless sounds as you stretch her tight pussy open. A few moments when she stops trying to bury her noises, her gasps - stops trying to angle her hips or squeeze or resist the thick shape of your cock where it is so, so hot and full inside of her - and there you stop. "What is it you had in mind, hm?"

"Ngh - oh."

Her cunt's clamping tight around just the first few inches of you. The tightness, the wet heat is staggering; how it pulls and begs with the words she seems reluctant to spill out.

So - you lift a hand, bringing it back down again onto the pale, rounded flesh of her ass with a smack, a gasp, and this wet sound from the sopping heat of her pussy, all aching and sobbing, "don't, fuck, stick it - fuck, put it - just. Just fucking get on top of me and pin me down - make it hard for me to breathe - do it, just. Like I, fuck, like I always wanted, sir, please-"

And you sink all the way in.

"Fuck." She bites into those consonants, a whole-body motion that pulls at the tension in her spine, the muscles in her legs. But her hips angle right up, and she presses her ass into the hollow of your abdomen and says, "thank you. Thank you. God."

"Don't get lazy on me," you say, grinding the tip of your cock in little circles; pulling it out and angling it down until it's prodding at all the right places to make her arch and shiver.

"Please," she says again, louder this time, almost a moan. "That. Fuck. Yes. It's."

"Yes, yes, I know. Nana, you-"

"Just use me. Whatever you like," she pants; then, once you've pulled yourself out to the tip, slowly filling her again, "use me like a fucktoy, alright. Because - fuck," Nana shivers, pushing her hips into yours. Her shoulders lower, as if by degrees, "please. Use me. Make it rough. Please, professor - use me however you want, I don't care - anything's fine with me - use me, as long and as much as you need, I. Please."

The real difference here, beyond anything else, is that this is no longer the game it was; the very instant she was sprawled across the mattress with a line of drool dripping into the sheets, all her bright, polished glory has vanished, leaving this bare edge of her exposed - the girl who lives solely to be fucked and used by your cock, her cunt leaking, begging for more. Reduced to the basics and nothing else.

"Your fucking cunt, Nana, the goddamn clench - you feel - it's-" (So fucking good, is what you can’t quite say, because she’s tight and wet and her tiny pussy is quivering like mad every time you bathe your cock in its scorching heat. Over and over.) It’s hard to think; you’re truly - truly - fucking her, but you can’t ignore the tautness in her spine either, bent below you. There are probably tears beading down her cheeks, but there's no helping the raw instinct screaming through the core of her being, pleading with you to pull yourself free, before sinking hilt-deep into her again, again, again - to a chorus of sloppy, loud, nasty, fucking whimpers and moans.

Like music.

It's easy after all, how her pussy gives way to you. How she molds around you - sleeves onto you like a glove - like there was only one cunt in the world you should ever be fucking up and fucking apart.

"It's incredible. Fuck. Just that perfect."

Nana, as best as she can, trying to stay steady, braced against her hands and knees, is raising her hips.

But it's clear with the way she's slipping all over, slicking the sweat off her palms and rocking her ass back into your thrusts, a cry falling out of her, unbidden, when she speaks and not.

"Please," she pants, through tears probably, this breathy-shivering. A renewed enthusiasm for your grip on her - where, in another place, you'd worry about leaving marks behind - for the feeling of your weight slamming down into her, driving the air from her lungs.

The sheets are a crumpled mess, pillows knocked from the mattress, where the two of you are shaking it apart.

You're pulling her apart, slowly, thrust by thrust into her sopping cunt, and in a promise of how you'll put her back together, you get your mouth on her shoulders, her neck, kisses in her hair, behind her ear - Nana just whimpers, curling her toes and ankles along the backs of your knees, her face against the pillow and gasping, "thank you - thank - thank-"

And when your palm smacks against the generous swell of her ass, again, she keens so perfectly for you.

It's a breathtaking sight, so good, so perfect: her flawless ass pitched high, round and flushed pink. The flutter of her eyelashes and the tears and drool. The outlines of her pale white cheeks sent into ripple after ripple, and then the way you can slide one hand forward between her shoulder blades and slip it into her hair, nails raking her scalp, grabbing a handful of hair in your fist and tilting her face - to the side, enough for her cheek against the pillow and the way her hips try to press against yours; try to chase the pleasure; this brash, gorgeous, slim-waisted, well-curved, exquisite young woman - like everything.

"Please," is all she says as you fit your chest up tight to her back and mouth at her neck - lick all along the sweat. "Please."

You can't take it anymore, can't keep watching this masterpiece, can't stand the molten heat wrapped around your cock every time the drag in and out of her pussy pulls sets every nerve on fire. Right in her ear: "I'm cumming, Nana, I'm cumming inside this tight, little pussy."

A short gasp, "yeah."

"Yeah. Inside, Nana. Cum inside, you -" You twist your fingers against her scalp and find purchase, an excuse - a means to yank her head around and lean into her, teeth against skin, that familiar coiling in your gut and the burning sensation that flows right alongside every slap and smack of her hips on your skin.

"Fuck me." You watch her bite down, swallow a sound, try to say: "fuck your load so deep inside me it’ll be all I think about for weeks, let me feel it, all that hot, all that sticky, fucking cum"

And you drag your hips, these final, punishing drags through her drenched cunt. Her fingers are white knuckled and fisting the sheets, until the very second you've pressed every ounce of your own body's worth into her own, when you're collapsing her spine and pushing her face into the bedspread, this wave rushes through your ears like the buzz and hum of insects and waves and things out of sync - the high, the peak -

And then:

Sobering, subjugating silence.

In fact, you're shuddering; You're cumming, spilling pools of thick cum deep inside of her. It's all in that warm, filthy sensation, a heady, hazy, desperate thrill when her own cunt seizes in its climax around you, trembling, throbbing, quivering, clenching; drawing everything out and taking your cock deeper - even while the whole of her is thrashing and bucking, all of this messy with her pleasure and her voice caught up, writhing and breathless.

"God-" is the last thing out of her mouth before you can kiss it quiet, tug on her lower lip and open her up like a present - messy and breathy, crying out, you're making this mess inside, this beautiful fucking mess - as the whisper you feel against your lips:

"Inside me, like that."

As you groan, deep and hot, "filthy fucking cumslut-"

Right on the verge, riding out every twitch of your cock and each flex of your hands at the skin around her ass, her waist, back and shoulder blades; even after you've caught your breath, you keep pumping more and more inside of her, you don't stop, won't, and even when you manage it, pulling out the head of your cock - you can feel every slick detail - just the slit and rim, resting the throbbing head of your cock at her swollen little mound, feeling the length of her fucked-out pussy spasm at the emptiness and trying to grasp around nothing - empty, tight and aching, sopping.

There's her hips, just this, right there; the line, the silhouette. Her thin waist and the curvy swell of her ass, jutting out straight - the cream-colored flesh dusted pink. The lithe, soft line of her stomach and the insides of her thighs a little farther along, sweaty and inviting.

She's so pliant in your grip, even though she's trying her best to curl herself backward - to angle your spent cock back into the ready, welcoming warmth of her slick, wet pussy - and once the afterglow has begun to wear away, that same greed and yearning takes its rightful place. A glimmer in her eyes. The unmistakable need and drive.

"One more," she says, wiggling her hips back into your stomach. "For me."

(The truth: you can't refuse her, not as she bites her lip and twists, all that soft hair splayed across her face, stuck to her tear-damp skin.

One more, because you both still want it. One more, because in the dim glow and evening air of her bedroom, everything that happens now matters just as much as anything that happened before.

One more, because you need her again.)

When she wakes in the dark, you figure her bed will be empty.

Nana will realize that you're gone. Of course you’ll be - it was never going to go differently; the sex had to end at some point. After all, if you stayed, eventually she'd start saying something you'd find a fault in or your skin would be so sensitive she couldn't stand not running a finger up your spine and maybe kissing your hip.

The reasons to go always outnumbered the reasons to stay.

The world would catch up and someone would find out and that's the sort of gossip that might leave both of your careers in shambles. Or else, you'd do something you couldn't come back from, the moment the heat of the sex left your body and her cunt, god, her perfect little cunt was spent - slackening - and the moments-after-haze, her legs locked up and her arms a bit sore, would clear up. Then you'd look at her, or else the shame would win out - the guilt and you'd call it quits. She won’t blame you. She can't.

But then again,

Her heart won't fall completely to pieces, because:

You've stayed. And it isn't an easy position, even if she is easy.

Here she is, though: sleeping on her side with her wrists crossed in front of her face - peaceful and quiet, probably tired enough to sleep without dreams. The dark has long since settled across her bedroom, save the pinpricks of stars in the sky out her window and a sliver of moonlight. You can see her, or you could reach out and run your hands all along her calves and thighs, but you don't.

Nana's shoulders slump forward in the faintest of sighs, and there it is - the slow, gentle swell and fall of her chest.

Here's how you got here:

In this scandal-in-waiting of a relationship. Here's the stupidest possible path, where a bright-eyed student with a crush fucks her older professor just once, and somehow you both find yourselves coming back for more, like maybe your very, very bodies belong together - a maddening compulsion.

Even once you've managed to work through the idea of your cum all inside of her, a seedy, twisted corner of your mind murmurs how it makes the most sense. To stick your cock inside of her again.

Where she can show you the way it can look; the mess and the texture of the slick, white spill - dribbling out of her pussy in the afterglow, onto her palm, and down the crevice in her ass and lower.

It's the phone calls probably - and not just the phone sex - late-night talking, conversation and every once in awhile, the kind of hot, hard fucking that gets you in trouble, but also a reason to be with each other again. Not just the quick fucks but the nice ones - the days, the late nights and mornings and what have you: all the casual intimacy of it. All the sweet nothings exchanged.

The after-sex cuddling, with her straddling your lap;

The sensation of her thighs sliding into place around the tops of your legs, her arms tucked around your neck;

The kisses you don't take and kisses you'd be okay with, all the promises made to love you as many times as necessary, however necessary, wherever.

That's all here too.

Again:

She is young. But, who the fuck are you to say? Who the hell can tell you she doesn't deserve the least rotten, least painful, most promising love she can find in this particularly fucked-up world?

Who else is going to keep the both of you safe and hidden?

And who else, despite everything, seems to like having a secret that they're sure only you know; every glance or accidental touch with her eyes brimming, alive, and the whole of her bent like a bow-string - all held back and wound-up tight.

To the point her spine will shiver and shake; you know how it can be.

"Are you actually going to buy those?" Nana asks one day, dangling on her toes, chin rested comfortably in the sweep of your shoulder.

When she crowds the swell of her hip and her breasts and her entire body into your back and snakes her arms around your shoulders, you think there's nothing else in the world you need.

"You called them drivel," she adds, almost pouting - which is a look you're slowly trying to inoculate yourself against because the moment it comes up, you have a knee-jerk reaction to drop anything and everything and carry her off someplace else. To have a place where she could, could, could -

"Hah," you roll your eyes, not taking the bait. There's a shelf-full of campy, smutty romance novels in the dollar bin. "It is. The story was less than complicated, but I couldn't figure out what the hell two or three characters' plotlines had to do with one another, and sometimes you just want a little guilty pleasure, you know?"

"Ooh. So," Nana smiles, the devious sort. "I guess there is some honesty in you after all."

"Come on, this one at least has an original story," and it is a shameless attempt, "plus-"

"I know, I know. Fine. And if it is so terribly bad, well, I suppose I can use your chest as a pillow to take a nap," she says, before throwing this particular glance over her shoulder.

The cashier doesn't need to ask if the two of you want your copies of 'Wild West of the Heart' or whatever-the-fuck this one is titled, scanned separately.

All of that, those paperback-cover love stories and TV drama plots, these are the sorts of things you do just for Nana; as the two of you wait in long lines, get carried along, get bumped and pushed, like every other ordinary-person thing you've done for her ever since.

("Honestly, this isn't my kind of thing either," you tell her in the aisle of a grocery store once. The fluorescent lighting only accentuates the blush high on her cheeks. "don't make me fuss over something like this."

"Have a little sympathy," she insists, nudging the handle of the shopping cart against the inside of your shins. "A girl like me isn't good for much else.")

It's not romance, really, that's such a fucked up way to go about describing any of it, but then there's Nana, bouncing on her heels and prattling on, this girl in the spring of her life who is full to the brim and bursting with the most chaotic and eclectic sorts of thoughts and passions -

So, what.

"Really," she adds - another side, another angle on an issue the two of you had an hour ago while cooking breakfast. "Just, think about it. Would you honestly put all this effort into somebody who doesn't make you laugh at least as much as they irritate you? Because like, you would never tolerate some self-obsessed jerk long enough to eat their burnt, terrible pancakes every day of the week."

"Fine. Maybe." You sit across the table. "You're right."

Nana blinks and this look of wonder crosses her face as she grins. A moment of triumph for her and that was more than the honest truth. It's still strange, admitting defeat in any argument here or there, or that the two of you make an actual decent couple - together. The kinds of things that come naturally to other people.

"Any more caveats to all of this, professor?"

"You’re gonna end up bent over that counter again if you keep pushing it, kid."

The both of you break out laughing and then you finish your coffee, or she stabs the last few pieces of cantaloupe on her plate, or you kiss her neck, and just -

Everything.

#wooah smut #nana smut #kwon nayeon smut #el7z up smut #kpop smut #male reader #capslocked kinkvember #woo ah smut #woo ah nana smut

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flightfoot · 2 months

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Adrien Angst Fics and Series that finished in 2023

So I love some good Adrien angst and hurt/comfort, and I figure a bunch of other people do as well! Hopefully these fics scratch that itch! They're all from the collection I set up earlier for the fics from 2023 that I recommend! I've got 31 fics in here. It's a popular genre that I like a lot, there are a lot of fics for it!

home is where the fight is by @rosie-b

Nadja Chamack’s voice greeted Adrien as he sat up straight, wiping his clammy hands on his pants and ignoring the black kwami floating by his shoulder. “—shocked to see our heroine fall in battle today, taking a direct hit from the akuma just as she detransformed. Parisians are torn between blaming Hawk Moth and Cat Walker for their roles in this tragedy, which ultimately revealed the civilian identity of Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng.” Adrien turned off the TV and lowered his head as his vision blurred. Written for Ladrien June Day 7: Injured

I adore this fic! Which shouldn’t be a a surprise, it’s no secret that I love Sentiadrien Enemies AU. Adrien’s so worried about Marinette getting hurt, and wishes that he could help keep her safer, could tell her what’s really going on or get rid of the ring or something, but he can’t. Still, he IS able to find clever ways around some of his father’s more problematic orders. Loopholes for the win!

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Guilty by Association by @rosie-b

Marinette respected Adrien’s strength and courage more and more every day. No matter how many times people threw nasty words or literal tomatoes at him; no matter how many companies refused to work with him anymore; no matter how clear it was becoming that he would never be forgiven for his father’s crimes, he chose to greet new people with a smile and hope that this time, someone would recognize the kind heart hidden behind his hated name. She wished she’d had the chance to meet him before she’d accidentally ruined his life. Written for the Ml Writers Guild September event ‘back to school’

I love how Marinette keeps reaching out to Adrien, trying to protect him, even if it doesn’t always work. To let him know that she’s in his corner at least. Hawk Moth had to be taken down, but the consequences for Adrien… she never wanted anyone to get hurt in the process.

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oh, look now, there you go with hope again by @ladyofthenoodle

After the defeat of Hawkmoth and his accomplice, Chat Noir, Marinette is ready to return to her normal life, but she can’t escape Adrien Agreste, who was sentenced to a fate many consider worse than prison: public school. Specifically, her public school. Still, that doesn’t mean she has to interact with him, does it? Except, if she doesn’t… who will?

I love a good enemies au, and seeing the aftermath of an enemies au… that’s rare. She’s wary of Adrien, but with how he’s being bullied, and how he’s just taking it in the hopes of being accepted, she can’t help but reach out to him.

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Disintegrated Pancakes by @scribeofrhapsody

Adrien had started expecting the family breakfasts. He had NOT been expecting his father to collapse in the middle of one.

I’m shocked I haven’t seen more of this sort of thing, with Adrien finding out his father’s Monarch via seeing the Cataclysm wound. I love that Alya gets involved in this, being the person Adrien runs into after fleeing the room, and then Adrien getting to talk things out with Gabriel and Nathalie. Thankfully Gabriel is at least not completely incapable of being reasoned with here, or things could have gone worse than they did. It’s a nice little read, though with an ambiguous ending (at least at the time when I write this).

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with this ring by @thelibraryloser

She thought “you and me against the world” had sounded like lopsided odds before, when she hadn’t even dreamed “you against me” was a possibility. Or maybe she had dreamed it, but at least in those dreams he’d had cold blue eyes and a stark white mask. The villain she’d fought today had looked at her through her partner’s own bright green eyes. It wasn’t meant to be this way.

Short and sweet Sentiadrien enemies canon divergence fic here! I adored Marinette finding out why her kitty seemed to have “betrayed” her, and the righteous anger on his behalf once she figured out that it wasn’t of his own free will. Her comforting Adrien about it was just… really good. It’s a Hawkmoth Defeat fic too, so the immediate aftermath gets covered as well. Adrien needs a hug.

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Nothing Else Matters by LiquefiedStars

Marinette couldn’t figure out Chat Noir. He was supposed to be her partner, but instead ended up working for Hawk Moth. Still, her heart betrayed her and when a strong connection forms between them, Ladybug goes to Chat looking for answers, finding out more than she bargained for.

Sentiadrien enemies AU fic! He never wanted to fight against her, but Gabriel caught him before he could transform for the first time, and with his father using his Amoks against him, he had no choice.

I like that there’s a solid explanation for why Fu let Adrien keep his Miraculous even though he’s been working against Ladybug, I don’t often see explanations for that that I’m satisfied with.

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Slowly Fading (from my misery) by @wehadabondingmoment

“You’re looking awfully deep in thought today, minou.” Ladybug’s gloved hand stroked over his hair and Chat Noir closed his eyes with an unstable breath. He got like this sometimes. Lately, it had been getting worse. Or: Gabriel likes using the rings to order his son around. After a while, it starts having effects on Chat Noir as well. (The more often Gabriel commands Adrien to act a certain way, the more it gets ingrained in his mentality. He suffers because of it.)

This is a gorgeous fic. Adrien’s been puppeted around, forced to obey orders for reasons he doesn’t understand, for so long, so often that a lot of times his own body doesn’t even feel like his. A lot of residual orders keep on bubbling up and stopping him from doing what he wants to do, and he just… doesn’t understand why. Considering how Adrien looked in Pretension when Gabriel forced him to go to his room so he could talk to Marinette alone, and how desperately Adrien tried to head back there but couldn’t make himself open the door, how terrified and confused he’d seemed, I think his feelings here, his mindset, is pretty close to canon.

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all of your flaws and all of my flaws (are laid out one-by-one) by @coffeebanana

Ladybug and Marinette have both been acting strangely since Monarch’s defeat, and Chat Noir would give anything to know why—to be able to help them. He just…didn’t expect his answers to come when Ladybug drags him to his father’s statue in the middle of the night along with a bag full of spray paint.

If you felt unsatisfied with Adrien being left in the dark about Monarch, with Ladybug lying about Gabriel being a hero, this is a great fic to read. Marinette’s breaking down keeping this secret, seeing people treat Gabriel as the hero she told people he was, until she finally snaps and has to do SOMETHING, has to tell SOMEONE the truth.

Which Chat takes pretty well! He knows how persuasive his father could be, and he’s mostly just relieved at finally hearing someone say that Gabriel wasn’t a hero. It’s still a lot to cope with though.

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Falling (sick) with you by @chocoluckchipz

Nothing would be easier than taking a pair of earrings off an unconscious Ladybug. Doing so would bring his mother back and end their decade-long strife. He shouldn’t be hesitating when a chance of a life time presented itself to him. He should not be looking for excuses and reasonings as to why spending another twenty or so years fighting this woman rather than pleasing his father and giving his mother another chance at life was not such a bad idea after all.

Ah, I love a good enemies au! Even when they’re enemies, Chat is unwilling to hurt Ladybug. Though honestly, he makes himself out to be more of a villain than he actually is, it’s pretty obvious to everyone that he’s not trying as hard as he could to get her earrings. There’s very good reason for that.

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adrien agreste and the consequences of tweets making fun of yourself by Anonymous

Well, Adrien thinks, what’s the worst that could come from a few poorly thought-out tweets lightly ribbing his own civilian identity?

I love the focus here on how people just assume what Adrien’s thinking and feeling and act on his behalf, without actually waiting to see what HE wants, and Adrien’s growing frustration. How they create a version of him in their heads, but don’t care to check with reality to see whether he actually wants their “defense”.

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what makes a human (am I?) by GraceM_TheStoriedLife

Adrien comes to Marinette’s out of nowhere. Usually Chat is her rock. Tonight, it’s her turn. (Or, in which Adrien discovers some secrets he’s not prepared for and Marinette is as Marinette-y as always.

So Adrien discovers he’s a sentimonster and immediately runs to Marinette for support. It’s as cute and angsty as you’d expect. She is, of course, very supportive of him. Also some discussion of Gabriel being abusive, since both she and Nino had been trying to get Adrien to see that. Especially with how, exactly, Adrien found out he’s a sentimonster. He can relate a little better to Felix’s experiences now than is healthy, I’ll just say.

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Vengeance Noire by @phiellydinyia

After a horrific argument with his father, Adrien escaped from the mansion with his heart in pieces. In hindsight, it made sense why an akuma was sent his way. He shouldn’t have let his emotions get the better of him. But he never expected Plagg to be even more upset than he was. He never expected his own kwami to be akumatized. To become the threat of a city he swore to protect. And what’s worse is the fact that Chat Noir can’t jump in to save this one. But Ladybug can. And that’s why he has to find her as quickly as possible, suit or no suit.

I love some good Adrien angst, especially with a delicious side order of Plagg and Adrien’s bond with each other. Even as Adrien’s barely functional, though, he’ll do everything in his power to save Plagg, even if Plagg wishes he wouldn’t go quite that far.

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This Distance Between Us by @coffeebanana

After defeating Monarch, the search for the Peacock Miraculous brings Ladybug and Chat Noir to a hotel room in London. But it’s hard to enjoy the victory when Ladybug can’t figure out why Chat’s been so quiet, why he seems so sad. How’s she supposed to help if she has no idea what’s wrong?

This is a great Sentiadrien fic, with Chat freaking out about it and feeling like he’s not worthy of Ladybug’s affections, but not telling her what’s actually wrong because he thinks she won’t want him anymore if she knows. Of course, he’s wrong about that.

Also there’s a pretty intense confrontation with Felix, pissing Chat Noir off is a bad idea.

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Rocking the Cat-Eyes by @buggachat

“I like being a girl.” “That’s the alcohol talking,” Marinette snorted. “I’ve always been a li’l jealous,” Adrien admitted. “… Of what?” “That you get to be a girl,” Adrien murmured, “and I don’t.” — When Marinette and Adrien host Girls’ Night at their apartment, Adrien is easily welcomed to attend as “one of the girls”… but has a bit too much to drink. Some drunken confessions are spilt, some assumptions are made, and most of all… Adrien is confused.

This is a great Genderfluid!Adrien fic. Marinette actually figures out that Adrien’s not entirely cis before he does, and tries to let him know she’s supportive… but unfortunately Adrien comes to some incorrect conclusions…

Anyway it’s a lot of fun, and Adrien rocks a dress and makeup!

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Family by @unecoccinellenoire

“You know,” Nino grins, “if you need advice on being a big brother in a year or two I’m sure I could help.” The bottom of Adrien’s stomach dropped out. — Adrien struggles with the concept of his father and Nathalie having children.

So this is a world where Adrien and Marinette managed to defeat Gabriel, taking his Miraculous, with them giving him an ultimatum: they won’t out him as being Hawk Moth so long as he doesn’t cause any more trouble and does right by Adrien. Gabriel does, in fact, move on finally to Nathalie, giving Adrien a lot of mixed feelings to deal with. He still loves them both despite everything, but he’s also angry at them and he definitely does NOT want them to have children, both because he thinks they’d like any biological child they had more (he’s also harboring guilt from indirectly being the cause of his mom’s death), and because frankly, they screwed up too much with Adrien for him to want them to inflict that on another child.

And then there’s also Adrien dealing with the realization that he’s a Senti on top of that and wondering why he and Felix look the way they do, what Emilie’s reasons were.

It’s mostly just Adrien getting to talk things out, navigating this emotionally fraught situation he finds himself in now that the dust is settled.

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When Secrets Come Undone by SortaArtsy

Ladybug promised not to tell Adrien… but she never promised not to confide in Cat Noir. What happens when Ladybug unintentionally vents to the one person who wasn’t meant to know any of it? ****MAJOR SEASON 5 SPOILERS WARNING! **** May not be season 6 compliant when it comes out.

This is a “Adrien finds out what everyone’s been keeping from him post-S5″ fic, and I think it’s handled really well! He feels very hurt, betrayed, and disbelieving initially about being a Senti and his father being Monarch (…mostly being a Senti, it ain’t that hard to believe that Gabriel was a supervillain), and is angry at everyone who kept it secret from him, but he still handles it well, going and talking to the people involved, getting their reasoning and perspective.

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Wanted: Catnap by SortaArtsy

Adrien Agreste has barely been sleeping, trying to be everything expected of him. What happens when he spreads himself too thin? Sick!Adrien/ Cat Noir

Adrien’s just pushing himself so hard, trying to do his regular duties, until his illness forces him to rest. I love how concerned everyone is over him - even GABRIEL eventually relents and wants him to rest. It’s just cute and nice and fluffy.

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a winter so warm by @rosekasa

winters were hard for even the best of vampires, but at least adrien had marinette to keep him warm with her cuddles. december was going to suck without her. so it was only to be expected to get extra cuddles in before she left, right? (well, not really, considering those heating supplements he was taking, but she didn’t need to know about that).

This one’s mostly just cute cuddly adorableness! It’s basically like all those “Marinette gets the Ladybug trait of needing to cuddle up to someone for warmth”, but with Adrien instead. And of course featuring Marinette being a very talented witch who just wants to help Adrien stay warm when she isn’t there XD.

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and I thought I heard you sing by @into-september

When Hawkmoth has been defeated and unmasked, Marinette is left with two problems and no solutions. First, that Adrien is further out of her reach than ever before, and no-one can tell her how to get to him. Second, that Cat Noir is far more troubled than she knew, and the only thing she can do is wait for him at the place they agreed to meet.

It’s your classic “Hawkmoth’s defeated and taken into custody but that means Adrien’s in for a rough time” sort of fic. Everyone’s worried about Adrien and wants to give him what comfort and support that they can, but he’s being hidden away from everyone (which I mean, honestly that’s a good move), so that’s not really possible. Plus, Ladybug’s noticed that Chat’s having a tough time in his civilian life, which worries her.

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Betrayal by @jennagrinsoverml

MAJOR EPHEMERAL SPOILERS!! Ladybug planned to use Viperion’s power of Second Chance to get Chat’s identity to Su-han without Chat knowing or agreeing. Of course, then the world went crazy, and she didn’t go through with it. But when an akuma exposes Ladybug’s plan to Chat, he doesn’t know that. He just knows that his Lady betrayed him. He deals with his feelings in the best, most mature way he can think of. He disappears.

So I, like a lot of others, wanted more follow-up on Ephemeral, and particularly on the betrayal of trust it was for Marinette to try to trick Chat Noir into giving up his identity to a third party without his knowledge or consent (I wrote my own take on that at the time, called Transcient, that I’m proud of). This fic did a good job of exploring that, with Adrien reacting in a manner that made sense to me (repressing his negative feelings about the situation as much as possible and trying to justify it to himself, but still feeling terrible despite his own best efforts), and how Marinette realized that she messed up, since Luka keeping it secret that he knows hers and Chat’s secret identities caused her to be upset as well. It did a great job of exploring those negative feelings and letting everyone talk things out, explain their viewpoints, and rebuild their relationships afterwards, which is something I really value.

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I’ll give myself a name (something stupid and pretentious) by @bbutterflies

Nino looked at the number and didn’t recognize it. Usually he wouldn’t answer, but he had nothing better to do – and could still really use a distraction – so he did. “Hello?”

“Hey, Nino.”

Nino stood up quickly, chest tightening. He knew that voice. He’d been waiting to hear it again for over two years. “Adrien?” he whispered.

“Yeah. It’s me."

When Monarch is defeated (and revealed to be Gabriel Agreste), Chat Noir immediately goes missing. Adrien disappears not long after. When Adrien finally shows up in Paris again, Nino would do anything to make sure he doesn't disappear again.

Ah this is lovely, Adrien’s been in a lot of emotional turmoil since Monarch’s defeat, convinced that everyone would hate him, SHOULD hate him, for not realizing that his father was the villain, and should hate him even more for disappearing like he does. But slowly Marinette and Nino get through to him, convince him that they just want him back.

And also Adrien and Nino smooch. Multiple times. So that’s a bonus XD.

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Two Steps Back (One Step Forward) by @buggachat

Sure, Adrien hadn't been texting her as often as he used to. And sure, Nino noticed it too. But just because Adrien had struggled with depression in the past, didn't mean he was struggling now. Surely, he'd tell her if something was wrong. Right?

Marinette just missed him, and she had a tendency to catastrophize. Surely, he was fine.

But if he wasn't... well, she wasn't above hopping on a flight back to Paris to make sure.

—————

Marinette's at an internship in New York, and Adrien has a depression relapse.

Once again buggachat comes out swinging with a fic centered around Adrien being super depressed and his friends charging in to help him, despite him not wanting them to because he feels like a burden. It’s not easy and Marinette goes through a lot of emotional turmoil, especially since his apartment is in bad enough shape that it can’t be changed to something that a human should be living in without also going shopping, but gradually she helps drag Adrien out of the hole he’s gotten himself stuck in. The emotions are on point and just... if you want to read a hurt/comfort fic with Found Family helping one of their own who’s struggling and doesn’t think they deserve it, this is a great fic to read.

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If only I could break free by megetstoread

It started with Adrien being upset about going away, but led to a lot of revelations.

Another Sentiadrien fic here! After telling Adrien that he’s being sent to London, Gabriel takes advantage of Adrien being distraught to akumatize him. Luckily Ladybug’s right there and deakumatizes him before he can even do anything, but it shakes both her and Chat, leading to her allowing him to tell her a lot more about his home life than usual, and for her and Adrien to investigate to see whether there might be more to Adrien’s inability to stand against his father than just psychological abuse.

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Dr. Walker & Kitty Hyde series by @pearl484-blog

Summary of the first fic, Rain Falls, Everybody Lies:

Chat Noir loves the rain. He loves the danger. He loves the excitement, and he especially loves how much Catwalker hates it.

Jekyll and Hyde AU

Adrien AUGreste Entry 3: Rain

So like the summary says, and the title indicates, this series is inspired by the popular conception of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - not how the book actually goes, but how it’s portrayed in popular media, with Jekyll splitting himself in two, with a “good” side and a “bad” side.

During Kuro Neko, instead of just changing his appearance through changing his mindset, Adrien took more extreme measures, sealing off his “undesirable” characteristics, his anger and sadness and all his sharp edges, into the ring so he could assume a more placid, genial persona that’d be more accepted - Cat Walker.

But Chat Noir’s still there, taking over whenever Adrien gets too testy, and desperately trying not to be pressed out of existence entirely. With embodying Adrien’s sealed anger and snappishness and rebelliousness, he’s not too kind to the other heroes - he already felt looked down upon and ignored before this, and seeing them accept Cat Walker while he’s fighting for his life doesn’t endear them to him either.

The series isn’t unfair to them - this isn’t a case where one party is entirely in the wrong and another’s entirely in the right. Marinette, Zoe, Nino, and all the others - they did wonder about what was going on with Chat, but he wasn’t in a position where he could see it, and he did have legitimate questions about how much Ladybug would budge on things, if he’d told her what he was going through. It’s a series that emphasizes characters hurting and lashing out in some terrible ways, but that hurt still being respected, and working things out, trying to get everything to a better place.

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The Parable of the Caller by @nemaliwrites

A week after Hawk Moth’s identity has been revealed, Adrien finds himself with nowhere to go, nothing he can do, and worst of all, strange gaps in his memory he can’t explain. In a stroke of luck, he stumbles upon a burner phone filled with voicemails from one of the Saviors of Paris: Chat Noir himself, who disappeared following Hawk Moth’s arrest.

But with each new voicemail Adrien listens to, he’s forced to confront the fact that there might be some kind of connection between himself and Chat Noir — and discovering it might leave him more broken than before.

I absolutely adore this fic, it’s a fantastic character study for Adrien! Basically in this universe, Ladybug and Chat Noir talked about who should be Guardian, with Chat eventually convincing her that he should be the one to take it on, primarily due to the whole “the Guardian gets amnesia about Miraculous-related matters” situation, and wanting to protect Ladybug from that. Then he finds out Gabriel is Hawk Moth, they take him down, and he relinquishes the Miracle Box and his guardianship to Su Han - all without having a Reveal with Ladybug, since well, he’s not in the greatest shape mentally at the time.

It’s a real treat to see Adrien’s thoughts and feelings about one of the Heroes of Paris leaving him all these voicemails, treating him like this close friend for reasons he doesn’t understand, and just seeing Chat Noir as this outside person. He’s got a very different viewpoint on Chat when looking from the outside than he would from the inside, with being able to see his heroic and good qualities far more easily when he doesn’t know that he is Chat.

Also Marinette’s struggling in the background of the fic with the loss of her partner and guilt over sending Adrien’s father to prison. It gets touched on at various points, and you can tell that she’s having her own story off to the side that we’re just not entirely privy to, what with this tale being told entirely from Adrien’s perspective.

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call it even by @anna-scribbles and @sha-nwa

After a year of dating, there is one thing Marinette knows for certain: it's her and Adrien against the world. Through it all, Adrien is kind, patient, and endlessly understanding—even as she tries her best to keep her secret superhero identity hidden from him along with the rest of the world.

Nothing could ruin it, not even the supervillains of Paris: Hawkmoth and Chat Noir.

(adrinette dating // ladynoir enemies au)

This is one of those fics where Adrien and Marinette are REALLY going through it emotionally, with them starting off with wildly different perceptions of each other when untransformed, and then reckoning with the person they love the most being someone they think of as a villain, with all the betrayal and doubt that involves. Especially with Adrien having been lied to extensively by his father, and not knowing who or what to believe.

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drowning (in plain sight) by @buggachat

Everybody had expected Monarch's defeat to be a moment of triumph. Nobody had expected Gabriel Agreste, unmasked and mind frayed from continual abuse of the miraculous, crying out to all who would listen and making Paris certain of one thing:

His son, Adrien Agreste, is one of his sentimonsters.

And now he's missing.

Nobody can find him— not even the superheroes, and not even his closest friends. But Marinette, Nino, and Alya aren't ones to give up so easily. They'll find him, no matter what it takes.

(But, geez, would it kill Chat Noir to lend a hand?)

I’m sure everyone saw this one coming. If there’s one thing buggachat’s good at, storywise, it’s capturing raw, tumultuous emotions, frantic breakdowns as the characters desperately try to navigate bad situations. This was a real treat to read, as I’m betting most people reading this will agree, given just how popular the fic has been. It also has a ton of fanart, both by buggachat and by random fans, if you go looking for it (there’s a drowning in plain sight tag which I’d advise perusing).

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Eventually by @lucid-ao3

Adrien’s life has been dictated by rules, monitored, and controlled for years. He has learned to compartmentalize. It’s not that bad. It always gets better, eventually. Doesn’t it?

Recovery can be an unexpected obstacle when you didn’t realize you were being hurt in the first place.

OR: How Adrien lives and copes with the emotional abuse inflicted on him over the years, and how he ultimately could overcome it.

If you want a good “Adrien doesn’t realize how abusive his father is but slowly buckles more and more under his tyranny, until things come to a head, and he actually gets the HELP HE NEEDS” fic, this is a good one!

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Not a Monster at All by @book-sandwich

Adrien Agreste overhears a conversation he shouldn't, and a revelation sends him falling onto the terrace of the only person he can trust: his good friend (?) Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

Takes place sometime after the first two episodes of season 5!

As you can probably guess from the title, this is a Sentimonster Adrien, Monarch takedown fic. Adrien’s going through a tough time, and Marinette’s just trying to be there for him as his whole world’s collapsing around him. Unfrotunately, they still don’t know what the object is, or how likely Gabriel would be to control Adrien if he hinted that he knew the truth, which leaves Adrien in a precarious position - still not having done an identity reveal doesn’t help matters.

It’s a really solid fic for the genre, though since it started up before the later parts of season 5, there are a few things that don’t match up with the canon information we obtained later on.

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Awaken by InkyIbis

The previously white butterfly, now oozing black and purple as a conduit of the butterfly miraculous powers, flutters softly within the silvered-gloved hand.

It sits there for a long time.

"Go, my akuma," The soft sigh pushes the butterfly, the akuma, out towards the despair of a love not returned. The same ache within his chest. On a level so great that he's willing to sacrifice the city to mend it.

It's okay if he's the villain for now. He'll force the miraculous of creation and destruction to be revealed, and once he gets his hands on them, none of this pain, none of his loss, will ever happen.

This is essentially a canon rewrite for Miraculous (specifically seasons 1 and 2, with a bunch of the events mixed around) that focuses primarily on Adrien, with his relationship with Nino being the main driving relationship of the fic. (Don’t worry, Marinette’s still treated fine, she’s just not the focus). This is the best “rewrite Miraculous with more of a focus on Adrien” type fic I’ve seen, with it reworking the plots of the episodes so that they’re different enough to be their own distinct thing - it’s not trying to just rewrite the canon episodes but from Adrien’s POV, there’s a lot of lore changes going on as well, and things occur in different orders.

Like lorewise, Chat’s given a more important role in cleaning up the mess the akumas leave, with his power helping to cleanse akuma victims and he and Ladybug needing to use their powers in tandem in order to cast Miraculous Ladybug. There’s also no Miracle Box holding the kwamis. Instead, Chat sometimes surpasses his limits and ends up summoning kwamis, which is dangerous to him, but very useful.

What really makes this fic great though, is its focus on Adrien’s emotions. You really get a feel for Adrien’s insecurities, especially when it comes to not feeling like he’s good enough for Nino, with not wanting to bother him when he absolutely should, with feeling like he’s not a good enough friend to him, and then there’s dealing with all of Gabriel’s usual abuse on top of that.

Speaking of Nino, this is an Adrino fic (though several characters get crushes on Adrien, Nino’s the one who matters most for this), though a slowburn one. Nino’s clearly head-over-heels for Adrien, but Adrien has like, no context for what a romantic crush feels like and is basically viewing Nino the way he viewed Marinette in canon prior to season 5. He clearly cares for him a lot, including romantically, he just... doesn’t get it.

Anyway, if you want an interesting canon rewrite fic from Adrien’s perspective with Adrino as the main pairing, this is a good story to pick up!

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one does not love breathing by @wackus-bonkus-maximus

All of Paris watched as Hawkmoth murdered Chat Noir, taking the Black Cat Miraculous for himself. Ladybug swears revenge, but her enemy—and every miraculous in his possession—disappear without a trace.

Six years later, a new team of villains launches an attack for the last remaining Miraculous: Volpina, armed with new powers; Queen Bee, with questionable loyalty; Argos, the new holder of the Peacock Miraculous; and Cat Walker, who Ladybug hates the most.

Takes place after S4 - Strike Back.

This is a simply phenomenal fic. You get to explore a lot of different perspectives, like Felix, Kagami, Marinette, and Adrien’s, just to name a few, and see their different thought processes and plans and priorities, and how it can cause their plans to collide with each other, even when they all ultimately are aiming for a good outcome for everyone. The characters are pretty complex and can mess up at times, even when they’re doing things (or not doing things, looking at you Luka) with the best of intentions. It was a joy to read and a real nail-biter the whole time, I actually wrote a fic for it halfway through just to resolve some of the tension for myself, One Does Not Love Shadows.

It also features the version of Luka I’ve connected best with to date, as he feels like Luka, but also is a lot more fleshed out, and can make some major errors while simply trying to avoid missteps. It’s helped me get a better handle on a character who I’ve generally had a lot of problems with really understanding.

It is an M-rated fic, though I think Wackus is being overly cautious on that front. There’s no sexual content and I wouldn’t put the violence or gore above a T-rating, so I wouldn’t let the rating scare you off.

#miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic rec #adrien agreste #angst #adrien angst

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burst-of-iridescent · 2 months

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I’ve been reading a series where a guy is in a near identical situation to Katara was in The Southern Raiders. But what I find interesting is that no one really tries to stop him and the fandom considers it completely justified. I can’t help but think despite it being two different series and fandoms that Katara’s gender has at least something to do with this. When a male character wants to seek revenge and kill the murderer to do it, the narrative and fans justify it but when it’s a female character she’s vilified, seen as out of control and letting her emotions get the better of her. I hate when people say Aang was right to say what he did and try to stop Katara from making her own choice. It doesn’t help that we know Bryke is misogynistic based on well everything to do with their female characters post series after they didn’t have the talented writers who actually understood the characters helping them. And sure I know Bryke themselves didn’t write The Southern Raiders but we know from script leaks that there were more shippy Zutara moments that were cut and I think we know who’s to blame for that. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they still influenced the more problematic parts of that episode. Such as Aang and Katara never talking about or resolving their conflict, Sokka calling Aang wise beyond his years and never talking about or resolving his side if things with Katara, and even Zuko weirdly agreeing with Aang at the end that “you were right about what Katara needed.” Even though she literally just told Aang a second ago that he was wrong and she would never forgive him and doesn’t know why she couldn’t kill him. If you couldn’t tell I have rather mixed feelings about TSR episode.

Sorry for the ramble. How do you think their conversations (Katara, Aang, and Sokka) would go if they were to talk about it all after the episode?

oh misogyny definitely plays a part - just compare the way people react to inigo montoya from the princess bride vs katara in tsr - but i think the bigger issue is the overt narrative framing of the episode.

on a first watch, tsr appears to push a very simplistic idea of "violence = bad" and strongly favours aang's perspective, which encourages the viewer to see him as being in the right while katara and zuko appear to be in the wrong. the fact that aang never changes his perspective and both zuko and sokka are (forcibly and very uncharacteristically) made to take his side by the end naturally inclines the audience to do so as well.

it's only with a closer reading that you see a more nuanced take which highlights the flaws in aang's thinking and treatment of katara. katara herself makes it clear that what aang wanted her to do would not have helped her find closure, and she began her healing process without ever forgiving yon rha - which is exactly why i hate people attributing her decision not to kill yon rha to aang when she explicitly stated she did not and would not ever do what he wanted her to!

these are the same people who will also blame zuko for being a "bad influence" on katara, as if the only reason she hunted down her own mother's killer is because zuko convinced her to do it. katara isn't some weeping willow to be bent to the will of zuko and aang; her decisions are her own, not based on the whims of the boys in her life. can we please stop stripping katara of all her agency in the one episode that actually focuses on her trauma and healing?

rant aside, i do wish that katara had talked to sokka after this episode and i imagine there would be some apologising on both sides. sokka - a realistic sokka, because my god was he wildly out of character - would probably check in on her and admit that he was afraid for her safety and well-being. katara would likely apologise for the "you didn't love her the way i did!" remark and i think it would've been nice for them to finally talk about kya and for katara to bring up the conversation she overheard from the runaway about how sokka confessed to seeing her as a surrogate mother.

(imo the impact hearing that would've had on katara was largely downplayed in the show, and is likely part of the reason she reacted to sokka the way she did in the southern raiders, but that's a post for another time.)

the katara-aang conversation would probably have gone the same way that it did in canon, because the issues with their dynamic in tsr are part of the underlying problems with the kat.aang relationship in general. i would've liked to see aang have a little more of a reaction to katara saying she never forgave yon rha (he doesn't seem affected at all in the show), and for that to maybe prompt him to really reflect on what he said.

but ultimately what really has to be tackled here is aang's idealization of katara and his focus on clinging to air nomad values at the expense of those from the other nations - and those problems run too deep to be fixed in a single episode or conversation. the southern raiders would have been a good starting point, but unfortunately the finale never engages with these issues, and so what could've been a great arc ends up going nowhere at all.

#anti kataang #zutara #katara #the southern raiders

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solradguy · 7 months

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Mr. Badguy I have a question as a guilty gear lore baby. I have been told sol/ky is problematic and I do not know why I fear. Could you please explain

Oh boy. I'm probably not the best person to ask about what ships are and aren't problematic because I honestly... just don't have the energy to care about it that much, it's like infinitely easier to block/blacklist and then move on. I don't know how people have the free time to get as worked up about it as they do.

Anyway. So, Ky's age before Missing Link (the earliest in the timeline of the games' stories) is generally the biggest problem. He was 20 in ML and a teenager through the Crusades. I think he was probably at least 18 near the end of the Crusades right before Sol left but that's pushing it. Anything with Ky and Order Sol's bad weird. I won't argue that at all, Ky was a kid and Sol was very much an adult, on top of the physical and mental power imbalance between them. Not good. Luckily, I really only see HOS/Ky stuff from the really early fandom (<2006) and IIRC their ages were still pretty vague back then so I'm just gonna chalk it up to no one knowing, especially in the EN fandom where it was a lot harder to find/get official information.

Between Missing Link to like late GGX/early GGXX I don't see what the problem with shipping them then is; they were both adults at that point and there wasn't even the power dynamic between them that there was during their Holy Order days. This, I think, really just comes down to personal reasons for not liking it. Which is fair.

After GGXX it gets... complicated.... Ky marries Sol's daughter but it's vague on when exactly Sol pieced it together that he even had a kid and that it was Dizzy, of all people. Ky definitely did not know she was Sol's kid until at least like partway through Xrd, when they both kind of put the pieces together and had a crisis over it. So shipping them after this point, between the timelines of Overture through Strive, you've got the issue of Sol now being Ky's father-in-law.

But the canon never straight up says Dizzy is Sol's kid (it is VERY HEAVILY implied though) and Sol and Ky both end up being dads together for Sin...?? It's like ASW is playing gay chicken with whether or not Sol and Ky are still shippable from an ethical standpoint lol Whatever that saying is about having a cake and eating it too, etc.

I saw the email for this ask this morning and I presented the Sol/Ky situation to my mom as if they were real people (she doesn't know anything about GG) and she was like, "That's a hell of a love triangle but I guess if the guy (Ky) and the daughter (Dizzy) got divorced and the daughter is alright with it, and it's consensual between the men, then it's weird but it's not as bad as some other relationships I've seen."

That's kind of how I feel about it too...? It's messy as fuck lmfao But I guess if there's a way to like write it so that Dizzy doesn't end up needing lifetime therapy then like... go for it....? I guess....???

I don't ship Sol/Ky because I think their dynamic is WAAAYYYY more interesting keeping them as rivals-turned-friends, and I like Dizzy too much; there's too big a chance of her ending up getting completely devastated by it. But as far as "problematic" Guilty Gear ships go, Sol/Ky's in the like... "People are wasting time arguing about this?" tier, imo. It being Thee biggest GG ship throughout the series' entire history is something to be considered, too. It's unavoidable, even the official art contributes sometimes. I often wonder why they decided to make it weird by throwing Dizzy into the mix because I know that, from digging through old forum archives, that change made a lot of people furious hahah

Disclaimer because the reading comprehension on this website is abysmal: I DON'T SHIP SOL/KY. IT'S FUNNY AS A JOKE BECAUSE IT'S AWKWARD BUT I DON'T SHIP IT IN SERIOUS CONTEXTS BECAUSE IT'S JUST NOT THAT GREAT A SHIP AND THE FATHER-IN-LAW THING MAKES ME A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLE.

#asks #Sighing as I yet again walk into the lion's den posting something like this

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darklinaforever · 2 months

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No because once again, you are just repeating like parrots the same arguments over and over again that have already been dismantled and I don't care. As one of these anonymous messages says, it must be tiring and boring to post the same thing 24/7...

I know the definition of grooming as well as the true meaning of what is implied in a historical context. And obviously not you. I already did an entire post explaining this book and show grooming bullshit :

But all you care about is appearing morally superior and you look like a bunch of ridiculous fanatics. Or some ridiculous bigot, because I'm pretty sure it's the same person sending these stupid messages over and over again.

What is your problem ? You're bored ? Why are you spying on my accounts like that ? Seriously, why are you so obsessed with me ? I imagine him on the lookout for the slightest post on Daemyra that I make ready to pounce like a predator on its prey. My god, this person(s) must not have a life. It's sad. 😂

What do you expect ? That between the insults and the repetitions of the same stupid arguments over and over again for a long time I actually delete my account to please you ? Or that I suddenly say : Oh but my god you are right ! You delivered me from evil ! Daemyra is such a groomer ! Daemon is a monster who doesn't love anyone ! 😱😂

By the way, here is again the little free quote from GRRM Martin's book on Daemon, his favorite character whom he considers to be a gray and complex character. So your Daemon is BAD BAD BAD, well the author himself tells you no :

Over the centuries, House Targaryen has produced both great men & monsters. Prince Daemon was both. In his day there was not a man so admired, so beloved, & so reviled in all Westeros. He was made of light & darkness. To some he was a hero, to others the blackest of villains.

You really look like a bunch of disillusioned idiots. It must be hard when the true creator himself doesn't agree with you on what the character is.

It must also piss you off that these interviews for the series exist, right ?

There's no point in booing me because I say something that has already been said by the directors and screenwriters themselves. I don't agree with everything they say or do in this stupid adaptation, but at least we can agree on some points.

Oh, and I have already said I don't know how many times that I recognized that Daemyra had toxic aspects in the series version, except that, so what ? This will prevent me from shipping the Daemyra version of the series maybe ?! No. Love is not necessarily something pure, we have to stop the bullshit, especially in fiction. On the other hand, I maintain that there is nothing toxic in the book version. There is no such thing as a brothel. It's an invention of Mushroom. There is no voluntary abandonment of Daemon for 10 years. In reality he was banished under penalty of death. There is no Daemon leaving Rhaenyra to deal with childbirth alone. He was by his side in the books. There is no strangulation either. And once again, the age difference and the incest aspect are not real arguments as to a possible toxicity in their relationship, due to placing the relationship in its fictional and historical context from which GRRM draws inspiration, namely the feudal era, where age differences and incest were included in the customs of the time for specific reasons. Especially if we are in a family where incest has no impact due to their MAGIC BLOOD ! These elements are not evidence of toxicity. Open a history book. An age difference and incestuous marriage in a historical context does not necessarily result in toxic abusive relationships. This is bullshit.

Also, I don't have the impression that you will understand that the show is not the book. I always distinguish between the two and obviously you don't. Because what exactly do you believe ? That if Daemon cheats on Rhaenyra in the series, my world will fall apart ? No. My posts on Daemyra will continue because the book will always exist. You know, the book that has a different canon from the show, therefore implying that the canon of the series cannot interfere with that of the book. But you didn't remember the difference between the two. You prefer to mix it up to fix your pathetic vision.

The series is already shit. Even for the Daemyra relationship they messed up on a lot of points. And I'm not even going to start with the greens, Alicent etc. It is a disaster. The series itself is full of inconsistencies.

I will add that in reality you do not care about the so-called abuse that Rhaenyra suffered from Daemon. Otherwise you would care what Alicent and the greens team did to her. But you don't care. You even expect the show to write scenes of stupid abuse between Daemyra over and over again. Because you don't actually care about Rhaenyra. The proof tells you that no one can love the whore of Dragonstone, a nickname literally coming from the greens team. Bunch of hypocrites.

Once again I recommend going to the tumblr of @la-pheacienne and of @horizon-verizon to educate you on what the character of Daemon and the Daemyra relationship really is. The posts of @stromuprisahat are also pretty good in general on Fire and Blood.

The antis are really crazy. The bitch who should close her account apparently well she tells you to go fuck yourself and buy a life.

@aleksanderscult

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ryuichirou · 5 months

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Replies

A lot of NeigeVil today! Well we always get Neige-related asks when we post him; in-universe and in real life, Neige stans never miss 💪😔💕 I’m glad you enjoyed the sketch!

There are always some Azul and Jamil and some other stuff.

Anonymous asked:

Vils face simultaneously says ‘oh sweet seven he found me.’ And ‘seven above kill me now.’ And I’m living for it

Every time Neige is being friendly with him, Vil has to physically force himself to count to 10… But when Neige’s appearance is this sudden, he immediately gets both of these thoughts stuck in his head lol

Thank you so much!

blackbutlerfandomnerddomain asked:

Oh fan will go NUTS seeing Neige glomp Vim

Absolutely, magicam will crash because of everyone’s reactions lol

They’ll change their profile pics to this moment.

They’ll be spamming this clip everywhere for weeks.

They’ll write threads overanalyzing every little gesture that occurred during this 2 second long event.

It’s going to be bad lol

Anonymous asked:

NEIGEVIL I LOVE NEIGEVIL ♥️♥️♥️

Same same!! Thank you <3

Anonymous asked:

Ngl that art of Neige hugging Vil from.behind gives me some kind of unintentional (?) stalker Neige vibe and I'm here for it like it seems like he came out of nowhere and ambushed Vil

Maybe I just like the idea of Neige doing a bunch of questionable and problematic things because it's such a contrast

Yeah, I get it! With Neige, everything is innocent at first glance; on this particular sketch he just saw Vil at some event (maybe red carpet?) and got excited because he haven’t seen him for some time. But the moment when Neige notices Vil, he stops thinking about anything else, rushes through the crowd of people who are clearly busy doing their own celebrity thing, and just jumps on him, startling him and all. It’s serious tunnel vision lol And of course once he sees him, he won’t be able to look at anyone else for the entire event. Can’t blame him though…

Still, it’s kind of a mild thing. Neige deserves to do more suspicious and questionable things lol

hipsterteller asked:

okay...either the pineapple pizza ((its like stoner food for me)) made me hallucinate cause...why does Neige look like Pee-wee herman?

The resemblance is accidental – I don’t even know the guy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anonymous asked:

Has Azul everthought of kidnapping Jamil before? The tweels will likely be interested

Oh the tweels would cooperate happily, this sounds like a fun plan, especially if Azul has something interesting in mind for Jamil~ “Gentlemen, we’re going to kidnap Jamil-san”… quite intriguing, isn’t it??

In all seriousness, I don’t think Azul ever thought about it in details, but I also don’t think it’s out of the question for him. If he has a good reason (or just wants it very badly and comes up with an excuse), he definitely won’t hesitate. The idea of Jamil being trapped and unable to run away from his advances sounds wonderful, especially if Azul gives Jamil an ultimatum, i.e. if you cooperate with us, we’ll let you go. That way he could savour Jamil (wink wink) while he haggles with his own pride and considers Azul’s offer.

It won’t go as smoothly as Azul expects though lol

Anonymous asked:

How about Azul being jealous of Jamil being with Ruggie? Like I am sure at least he can take his opponent down easily since he isn't a higher class.

I think Azul doesn’t even realise that Ruggie could be a rival to him and doesn’t really consider him a threat, at least at the very beginning. But if they are put in a situation in which Jamil constantly chooses to partner with Ruggie, it’s definitely going to offend Azul. He knows that Ruggie has his strengths and a decent level of knowledge, since he helped out with the Lounge a couple of times, but he still thinks that he is better than him.

He won’t just jump straight to disposing of Ruggie though; he’ll try to win Jamil over at first. You know, trying to make Jamil see just how much better of a match they are compared to Jamil and Ruggie. But it’s Azul we’re talking about, and he can get quite petty lol

Anonymous asked:

Seeing this post (https://www.tumblr.com/ryuichirou/735069892134551552/just-be-grateful-he-doesnt-have-a-lower-half)

Made me think of a twst x monster high au with malleus x Rochelle Goyle (in gen 1 she has a boyfriend but for the sake of the au she doen't)

Don’t know anything about Monster High, but yeah I see, she is a gargoyle girl…

Well, someone might write a fic about it lol

Not us though, since we’re not really into Monster High or het ships.

#replies

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danggirlronpa · 4 months

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Oh, are we talking about trans headcanons??? I see someone already mentioned transfem Kazuichi, which I'm a pretty big fan of! But have you guys considered transfem Fuyuhiko? I think there's a lot of potential in that - in the fact that even in canon there's a lot of him not feeling like he really fits as the Ultimate Yakuza, and that he has to play a role to be so... I think it lends well to a transfem headcanon. Another I could see would be transfem Mondo, with how much in canon he plays up the masculinity, it could be something preformative in a transfem headcanon. I'm also a fan of transfem Kokichi & Shuichi, too - I've seen people headcanon the both of them as nonbinary, transfem, AND transmasc, and honestly? Love that for them, tbh.

I also am a big fan of transfem Makoto!!! I usually headcanon him as genderfluid, but I could also see him be a trans demigirl, tbh. I respect transmasc headcanons too even if I don't usually ascribe to them for Makoto specifically! I kind of like to think that the fact that Makoto's door gets stuck is a very funny quirk of fate in the event of him being genderfluid/nonbinary - even his door, which is supposed to be a men's one, doesn't ascribe to a binary! & Makoto using she/they/he pronouns is so real to me.

I also love to see Kiibo exploring pronouns in fics. Like, in canon they use he/him (at least in the localization) but I like to believe they experiment with different ones for a while, just to see if they like them.

I also tend to see Hajime as nonbinary, using he/they pronouns too! That's not exactly a transfem headcanon, but yeah.

I also love the idea of nonbinary kaede as well - using she/they pronouns. Maybe in the event of transfem Shuichi or Kokichi, she helps them explore their gender at first.

I could also see Tsumugi as being genderfluid or otherwise genderqueer in some way - she defaults to she/her but she doesn't mind other pronouns, and oftentimes go with he/him when complying a male character.

This one's more controversial, but I also love the idea of nonbinary Junko with possible internalized transphobia. Like, I think the fact that she keeps making alter egos that are male (Monokuma, Shirokuma, and Kurokuma) lends well to this, but I also keep going back to that line monokuma said about being neither male nor female because there's no gender in the animal kingdom. Incredibly nonbinary thing to say. Of course, I think how Junko handles being nonbinary is somewhat dependent on what you headcanon Chihiro as - but if you headcanon Chihiro as a transwoman and Junko as transphobic towards her, it could somewhat be from internalized transphobia- like, her having the idea that "if I'm fine with being a woman even though I feel like this about it, you should be fine with your assigned sex too!" Or even the idea that she cannot fathom why someone would WANT to be a woman in the first place - like, what reason would you have to subject yourself to it if not malicious ones or weakness? Since she is so disconnected or even discontent from "womanhood". If you see Chihiro as nonbinary, Junko not understanding or even being bitter that they get to reject the binary but she doesn't could also make sense, and her putting them in the "male" box would almost be from jealousy and spite. If you headcanon Chihiro as a transmale, it becomes a) somewhat hilarious that Junko, the big bad of the series, accepts their gender and b) Chihiro could be the person who teaches her about this stuff in a pre-despair setting, and maybe even make her realize she's nonbinary. I know it's.... slightly problematic to headcanon the main villain of the series who has shown she is possibly transphobic (depending on how you see Chihiro again) as trans, but I think it's... fine if you also headcanon other characters as so and not just the villains. Plus, I'm nonbinary myself, so I think it's allowed.

Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head! I love trans headcanons <3

There's so much good stuff here!! I can't address all of it, but a couple of my favorites:

I LOOOVE transfem Mondo, it's one of my absolute favorite transfem headcanons. The way it changes that trial from "horrifying trans panic" to "the tragedy of someone with extensive internalized transphobia meeting someone who is further along on their journey and lashing out in unrealized jealousy, ultimately destroying the version of themself they wish to be"...MWAH. The type of tragedy that can only belong to someone transitioning. The consequences of self loathing, both in harming others and harming ourselves, made manifest! But with GENDER.

I'm sure this is just part of the rest of that line, but the phrase "they canonically use he/him pronouns" is so funny. Power to K1-B0 for being incomprehensible wrt gender just in general. Love that agender kid

I am actually a big fan of transmasc Junko! (And I'll use he/him for Junko real fast to emphasize this point) I think the idea of Junko as someone who experiences a huge amount of dysphoria when he's perceived as feminine, who then goes out of his way to present himself as a champion of gyaru culture and hyper-femininity, making it so that, even if he one day receives the mental health treatment he obviously needs, he will always be associated with this incredibly female-oriented culture...that's despair. That's the type of shit you do at rock bottom. I have BEEN there my man. EDIT:

we are on the EXACT SAME PAGE anon 🤝

I actually did, genuinely, think Shuichi was a butch girl until I played the game, and was SO excited to finally see rep of my actual high school self. Wearing hats to cover dysphoria-inducing hairstyle? Emo makeup to escape the Social Makeup Norms? hangs out with kaede??? that's one of us right there

#asks #anon #talk to the mod #long post #transfem shuichi #transfem fuyuhiko #transfem makoto

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sterekshaven · 2 days

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I don't get it... like, fucked up as in fucked up(tm) or as in problematic? because ohhhh boy.

What's the point lol. The other day I saw other poll blog with a ''proshipers don't interact'' among other rude things on the bio. .... mind you, the polls were ship polls. Like?

i am genuinely so fucking tired of the antis and the purity culture and people who can't differentiate fiction from reality. i don't think this one is actually very anti or purity oriented at all (considering what it's about), but fandom in general has been so gd affected by it all that even fucking Sterek is considered a "problematic" ship by far too many people.

that same blog had another most fucked up ship tournament in February too, and they had Sterek in it back then too, and i'm just gonna add some of my own tags from my reblog of that here:

#there isn't even any propaganda as to why they're so fucked up #like they're competing against ships like Wincest and Hannigram #so we have these codependent Actual Brothers who are obsessed with each other #and we have this Serial Killer who gaslights and manipulates his bf and tries to frame him for murder and stabs him and plans to eat him #and then we have Sterek! where uh well Derek is a lil older than Stiles and Derek's family died so he's a bit sad i guess? #oh and yeah they don't always agree on everything either! #jeez so fucked up!

just. HOW. the fuck. does Sterek even come close to comparing to that? (and i say this as both a Wincest and a Hannigram shipper, i'm not dissing them at all, i'm just fucking flabbergasted x'D)

ANYWAY. i checked the blog for any sort of info about it, and all i could find (okay i maybe didn't look very hard) was an ask they got about it, copy pasting that one too:

ask:

Hi, are we voting for which fucked up pairing is worse? Or which fucked up pairing we like more? Or is everyone voting for whatever reason they like?

answer:

I do intend for the first reason, but I’m alright with the third one too haha

so yeah, idk. i mean, sure, i'd say both Stiles and Derek are pretty fucked up (though not much compared to other characters *looking at Wincest and Hannigram again*), what with their trauma etc, but the ship itself? no. just no.

but i have also been called a pedophile for shipping them (lets not get into how angry it makes me that people misuse that word so fucking badly), so it's gotta be "Problematic" right? *bangs head against wall*

okay, i've ranted enough, so to answer your question: fuck if i know *shrugs* x'D

#ask #anon #someone: *asks me a question*#me: *rambles incoherently for half an hour* anyway yeah idk #sorry x'D

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purecalcium66 · 7 months

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this game is extremly fanartable for some reason??? (please don't ask me about the background i cannot explain it either, Im not a good backgrounder)

by accident i finished Infinite sooner than i expected, so here under the cut is my opinion/rant about this game, as someone who knows next to nothing about politics, racist stereotypes and all the problematic stuff the game tired to show. Just a really casual opinion, i just needed to write somewhere. Don't take it seriously if you want to read it please.

in advance: sorry for any mistakes, english is not my native language and im writing this straight from my heart so im not thinking about grammar rn

first thing: I reeeeally enjoyed this game, which after reading so many negative comments i did not expect. It has its flaws, but everything has flaws. Of course it isn't better than the first and second Bioshock, but i dont really consider it as a continuation of the first two games? Rather like a stand alone title. It's soooo entirely different, and as much as I prefer Rapture, Columbia is incredibely pretty and i had to stop every 10 seconds to take a screenshot.

Even though the story was... uh.... well, some plot holes were so wide i could fit my whole fist through them, but nevertheless it was overall, enjoyable. Im pretty sure, that even the creators got lost in that lore at some point, and im still cannot tell what exactly happend at the end...? I went crazy when i attempted to make a timeline of events. But the idea of tears and all that dimension travel was pretty interesting i think. Anyway. Plot twist was forced, and that Rapture cameo at the end was too, as much as i dont want to admit it (even though i almost pissed my pants from excitement when i saw my favourite city in its full glory again). Burial at Sea might add something to the story i guess, but from what i heard, it only adds existential dread to the fans of the series. I will see about that soon. Even if its really that bad, at least I will have a loooong snappies taking session with those georgous graphics hehe.

Also im really dissapointed in how both Comstock and Fitzroy get disappear forever 5 seconds after they appear in person, like come on, i hoped to see more of them than just some rambling over the radio (the voice acting was amazing though, as usual in Bioshock).

oh and also the boys of silence appeared for only one location? Their design is so cool! After watching the trailer I expected much more! The design was inspiring as hell.

oh also Skylines were the best thing that happened to this game imo. Amazing feeling.

and last but not least: characters! This time i did not really get attached to the characters as much as in the previous games. I liked Elizabeth and Booker, they are pretty solid, i think, and i would totally cosplay as any of them if i had someone to cosplay the other one with me. And the other characters? The Twins were really fun, Songbid was badass, and Daisy was cool too, before she appeared in person for 5 seconds. They all were not nearly as fun as the characters from the first game.

Whoever read this whole, I love you, but please do something better with your time. Stay safe guys, and remember to slap a bald head from time to time (it helps keeping your mental state well)

#bioshock infinite #elizabeth comstock #im losing my grip on reality with every post #booker dewitt #sorry #too late tho #bioshock #calcite art #2k word rant lmao

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damiemontclair · 6 months

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I've had this post in my drafts since sunday. My mom and I have just been harassed by our neighbour again today so. I'm going to post it. Because thats 3 times in five days and I am sick of it and of being treated like I'm appropriating words that don't apply to me by people I talked to about this.

Theres this common misconception that you cannot experience xenophobia if you are x ethnicity in a country where x ethnicity is the majority. Or that a white person cannot experience xenophobia. But here is the thing. Xenophobia is not racism. Xenophobia means the fear of foreigners. And you can absolutely be the same ethnicity as someone while still being foreign.

I am as white as my neighbour. And yet my neighbour is from here, and I am not. And that is A Problem.

We have...

Been reported by neighbours over a minor violation of the law regarding our hedge (one which, btw, every other (German) neighbour indulges in) and sued by the state because of it (this happened right after my parents bought the house. It had never been a problem for the 30 years before that)

Had the police called on us by a neighbour multiple times for a variety of reasons, incl. made up ones

Been yelled at

Been insulted (we have some very creative neighbours, gotta give them that much)

Literally been told that we, as foreigners, don't understand the law (my father read up on it extensively). Multiple times. By multiple people.

We have a german name for making reservations. Otherwise it's anyones guess what people will write down.

Have had our names knowingly, on-purpose mispronounced by teachers for a cheap joke at our expense.

Been told by teachers who also taught french as a subject that 'this is x class not french i won't translate this exercise for you if you don't get it' (failed that class btw bc 2 years of german 'classes' was not enough to get the material)

Been told by teachers 'oh wow, I didn't expect you to get top grades with your accent' (my sister consciously keeps up her accent)

Been told various other rather problematic things by teachers considering it was a bilingual school with its fair share of french students

And a variety of other things I am too tired to make myself recall.

So yes. A white foreigner in a majority white country can experience xenophobia. It just looks slightly different from what you might expect. Amd yes, others have it plenty worse. It is no less xenophobia and I am done pretending everything is fine just because it could be worse. We had our neighbour come ring our bell to cause trouble two days in a row this weekend. She came by again today to start shit with my mother. We have her on tape as she calls us a bunch of stuff. We're not talking to her anymore until she apologises. I recon she'll die before she does so. She never wanted foreigners to buy the house next to hers. We've been living in this house for over 18 years. I am tired.

#tw xenophobia #I guess.#damie talks

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local-queer-disappointment · 1 month

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hey if you feel comfortable explaining publicly, why are you a proshipper? i don't feel strongly one way or the other and i'm just wondering what your perspective is. no pressure and i don't mean to be invasive or anything like that! just curious :)

It's alright! I personally don't really participate in ships most people would consider "problematic" (unless we're counting enemies to lovers), which I think is part of the reason why it took me so long to even bother investigating the issue and forming an opinion in the first place. "Proship" just means I don't believe in things like lolicon or incest fic or whatever most people agree is gross or bad irl (though irl it would be pedophilia not fetish which is completely disgusting and assault to be absolutely clear) should be wiped off the Internet.

Why do I believe this? Well, for one, lobbing accusations at fic writers hurts real victims. I won't go too heavily into the watering down of terms like "pedophile" and "rapist", but it's been especially bad in the past few years, even outside this kind of discourse that most non-fandom people don't even know about.

Also, many rape victims, especially those assaulted as children, suffer from intense "taboo" sexual urges and/or distressing intrusive thoughts (especially compounded by things like OCD). Most therapists would agree that fanfiction is a good place to explore this! As long as it's properly tagged, you have a very low chance of hurting anyone else, and thoughts like this don't just "go away" if you ignore them, no matter how much antis would like that to be the case.

Okay, but not everyone who reads this type of stuff is a victim, right? Some of them are definitely just doing it to get off. You are absolutely right to think that! As I said before, I'm not a part of these "problematic" incest or shotacon or whatever communities, but even I, "uninformed" as I am, wouldn't make such an obviously false claim. So, here's the way I think about it:

1) first and most importantly, there is no evidence-based link between reading incest or loli/underage whatever to being an actual abuser or rapist in real life, as of the last time I checked (like a few weeks ago). If any antis are hiding some sort of peer-reviewed study I'm not aware of, I'd be happy to talk about it, though. You can say "it's common sense" all you want, but personally, I'll take the scientific process over that any day.

2) like exploring trauma, fanfiction (and, to an extent, things like animated hentai or whatever) is most likely the safest space to BE if someone is truly "attracted" to lolicon or shotacon. It's the only porn that's guaranteed not to be exploitative, because only one person (the author) is involved in making it.

Oh jeez, this is already a bit long-winded. Hope this answers any questions you have, and I'm happy to answer more asks from you or anyone else!

#proship #antis dni #or rather #if you DO interact you uh probably won't like it.#but yk #I'm not your mom #do what you want just don't threaten and harass people lol #discourse #olly answers

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felassan · 1 year

Text

Some more snippets of interest and insight from Mark Darrah, from an older Mark Darrah on Games YouTube video where he was livestreaming playing Dragon Age: Origins some months ago -

Chat asked Mark's thoughts on the quantum state of Kieran. "I think they're gonna collapse Kieran down. Probably what actually happens is they're just gonna push Kieran into the background."

Chat commented on being sad that the Inquisitor won't be the main character going forwards. "I mean the main character doesn't have an arm, kind've makes some of the classes a bit tricky".

Chat commented that any quantum character basically guarantees that we're only going to see a cameo of them going forward. "Yeah, if they're quantum they're going to be pushed into the background for sure." Chat then mentioned Sera. "I don't think Sera's quantum, or not very quantum." "Yeah, we don't typically bring back romance options in major roles because they, you have to sort've deal with that quantum. That's not the worst thing".

"I wouldn't expect to see Shale again because they are so custom, but they're also quantum aren't they, can't they die in Orzammar? Like if they were building a golem rig for some other reason then I could see it. Everyone is quantum basically. That is why actually so often followers do not reappear, is because everything is pretty quantum".

"I don't think we'll see something like the broodmother again, I don't think it fits with the tone that the game is striving for anymore. The stuff before the broodmother, that I could, that sort've stuff, that kind've creepy tone stuff, I could see that being something that occurs again. But the broodmother itself, or something like that, I'd be surprised."

Chat asked "How canon is Darkspawn Chronicles? Did that team just go nuts and completely leave the map or is 'Wade is a Desire demon' actually a lore nugget?" Mark replied, "Darkspawn Chronicles obviously can't be canon." "That's a valid question. I suspect at this point the team would treat it as non-canon so anything that's revealed there would be considered completely non-canon, but I mean I would've at the time assumed that any lore revealed in it would be considered canonical assuming it was something that happened before the branch from reality. But I think they would probably at this point treat it as totally non-canon".

Chat asked "Why couldn't y'all hire the DA:O Warden voice actors? I heard the voicing is why they didn't include the Warden in DA:I with Hawke". Mark replied, "The Warden is a quantum character in DA:I, the answer as to what to do about the Warden from a voice acting perspective is a very open question. Do you leave them silent? Do you voice them? All of the answers are not great. I think if you're gonna have them in a relatively major position, you better have an answer to that question." "Yeah, I suppose you could hire back the voice actors. It's a lot of different voices, so that can become a problem as well. I don't know that people consider those exactly as the voice of their character. I mean I certainly don't. I mean yeah, they are technically, but. Yeah, it could be done." Chat commented here that "literally any option is going to disappoint someone". Mark said "Yeah, that's my feeling as well. No matter what you do with the Hero of Ferelden in another game, it's going to be problematic. You know, if you brought the Hero back you could just keep them silent and you could actually even give a reason, like 'oh yeah, they've survived but the Blight has taken their vocal chords', or whatever".

Chat then mentioned again about the Hero of Ferelden having many voices in DA:O. Mark paused to explain "the problem of why they're probably not gonna use the voice actors from DA:O. First of all, there are a lot of them which means you have to bring back those actors. The Hero of Ferelden is a very quantum character, might be married, might be alive, might be dead, might be not married. The other reason is that people are basically used to their character being quiet for all of the conversations, so if you bring them back and voice them there's going to be some people that are going to be upset by that. So it could happen, but not as a major perspective, it would be as a cameo at most so that's what I would say is, that it's unlikely but it could happen. But I doubt they would just hire these voice actors back, it's too many and it would require too much wrangling, so there you go."

"The reason why Hawke doesn't do much in DA:I is for the same reasons, we don't know how you built your character, we don't wanna have them do something iconic that isn't appropriate to the way you built your character."

Chat said, "Ideally, BioWare would release something before DA4 where we can create our Hero, Champion, and Inquisitor ahead of time, and then just import them in". Mark said, "Because the character creators have changed so much it has been discussed to add something into the Keep. I'm not sure if they're going to maintain the Keep or not, but add something into the Keep that would be a character creator for previous games to kind've bring them up to standard. I think that's a good idea, even if they don't end up showing up in the game, just to have sort've standardized the look for everybody. Yeah, but I don't know if they're gonna do that to be clear. There was a conversation about it, but I don't know whether that'll actually happen, because that requires getting something that either runs Frostbite in a web browser or a standalone application to make sure it looks like how it's supposed to look."

Chat said "A person who decides to pick up DA4 who hasn't played the other games is unlikely to start up from DA:O and play all the games AND DLC before DA4 to get hype." Mark replied, "No, I wouldn't, certainly the Dragon Age team is not building [DA:D] with the assumption you've played all the games previously. That's always a concern, that people think they have to do that and then it just closes the door to new people entering the franchise." "I would expect DA:D probably won't even expect much DA:I knowledge given the time between games." Chat said "Most people who will pick up DA4 as their first Dragon Age game probably won't even use the Keep". Mark replied, "Yeah, the expectation is that most people would not use the Keep, but that's actually not so bad because there's lots of, we know what the default player looks like for DAII and DA:I, we have canonical choices so that's not too problematic". "Some people definitely will play everything but you don't want that to be a barrier to new people playing the game".

[source]

He also talked more generally about DA:O and the franchise and things in general. These bits are collected under a cut due to length -

Dragon Age sets up a lot of consequences to things such as lyrium and the Taint. They "don't always play it off for the player very well"

[on DA:O] "What I would say on why do enemies have stamina/mana is, because the game is built perfectly symmetrically, which is why. Should you do that? No you should not do that but that's why everything is just built in this way, everything is completely interchangeable, which sounds like a good idea, but in practise is basically unbalanceable. It does mean that you can have an enemy or an NPC enter into your party, everything can be done in both directions without a concern, because everything is interchangeable, but I don't think it's worth it. DAII swings the pendulum way too far the other way, it's so asymmetrical it's basically incomprehensible. I think DA:I hits a good balance. It's kind've what's happened I would say with D&D. Third edition D&D, very symmetrical, fourth edition ridiculously asymmetrical, fifth strikes a balance"

Chat asked if the BioWare team ever ran any DA TTRPGs as part of development or just for fun. "I don't know, I've never run a DA tabletop"

"I think Flemeth has always been Mythal, I don't think she was retconned into existence"

"You were asking before about why everyone has stats. It allows to basically do what just happened there, the templars are just marked as people, when the combat starts they can just join in without throwing the combat completely out of whack"

Chat asked "'If you were to give us a 'Citadel DLC' for Dragon Age, what would your dream DLC include?" Mark replied, "I think that the last DLC in DA:I is pretty much in line with being like a Citadel-style. You get to interact with all the followers again, it provides a lot of closure, so it's a pretty good version"

Chat asked "'I was wondering how did you get the game to run? I tried playing it on my new computer i9 with a 3090, but it keeps crashing?" Mark replied, "So are you wondering how I got DA:O to run? There's a fan-made patch which I think I tried to install. The big reason why it's unstable is that it's limited to [...] or if you can't get that patch just drop your settings down. If you set the settings up to something that your game is capable of running it's going to use too much memory and it'll over-run 4 gigs, there's a memory leak in there, so if you drop it down to something a little bit less and it'll run pretty well. I've had some crashes, not too bad. It's not an official patch so you won't find it on the EA website. Honestly, if they ever remaster, that'll be one thing [...]"

Remastering the first three DA games is a much more difficult prospect than remastering Mass Effect was. "That's not to say it won't happen but it definitely is a whole extra mess"

"I do not miss the BioWare forums. They were out of control. It became pretty hard for a lot of devs to interact with the forums in a positive way even with the positive people for sure"

Chat said "I was always curious, do devs tend to play their games after the release or is it just not the same after all the hardships of the development and testing?" Mark replied, "Honestly, devs, it's a mixture, some devs do, but I think most actually don't, either they've played the game many many times before it released or they just reticuled onto something else. I would say on average probably no, but it does happen"

Warrior abilities are way better in DAII and DA:I than they are in DA:O

Is lyrium technically blood magic? "That's one way of thinking about it"

[on quantum characters] "Oghren is in DA:O - Awakening because he's one of the few characters that's definitely still around after DA:O." "I think he might be the only one or one of the few from DA:O that is definitely alive for Awakening". "Re-establishing new followers for an expansion isn't the best. You know, they wanted somebody."

Originally Mass Effect: Andromeda was going to have procedurally generated planets. "They never really were, that feature was never really given enough resources if that was the goal. I think they had some early stuff that was kinda cool but it was never ready for primetime"

"One of the interesting things about Mass Effect is it was always in its DNA imagined as a kind of Star Control thing. It never really was that, but there was always that underlying thing. So I think in ME:A that's what they were trying to capture, that Star Control stuff, but yeah, it is pretty hard to tell a story in a procedural world. Doable"

"There's a story behind the ending of ME3 but that's not my story to tell"

[pls note this video was from 1 year ago, so the call being referred to here took place 1 year ago] Chat said "During the recent earnings call EA said that there's going to be a major IP release. I mean, I don't want to be all too optimistic, but I literally couldn't think of any IP other than DA". Mark replied, "About the earnings call, it's possible that it's DA, it could also be something like Bad Company, a remaster of Battlefield Bad Company. I can't think, because they said remaster, so I can't think of what else it would be other than DA, Bad Company, everything else is either so old that it would have to be a remake. I don't know what it could be but I could imagine it being bad company. They have a ton of IP, I just don't know what they have that, it would have to be less than say 15 years old to be possible to do a remaster as opposed to a remake. Could just be that they're mis-speaking. I guess it could be Army of Two, that would be weird. They've already announced Dead Space, so I don't think it's that"

[source]

(pls note that in places there is a bit of paraphrasing of the info, the best source is always the primary source with full quotes in their original context)

#dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #long post #longpost #mass effect #mass effect: andromeda

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masonscig · 1 year

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can i ask why people in the fandom seem to really dislike mishka? (censoring her name and such) this is not meant in an offensive way to you or to anyone else, i’m just new here and kind of confused. like did she do something legitimately wrong or are people just irked by the writing of the new book? hope you have a great day <3

OH yeah sorry i can definitely see how that's confusing to new people LMAO

so, it's a bit of both imo – i've been here since 2020, shortly after book 2 dropped, so my perspective is a lot different than newer fans

so, one of the reasons i censor her name, is because tumblr changed the search functions – used to be, when you looked up something, it was only things that were in that exact word order in a tag – so if you spelled t/w/c wrong in some way, it'd only show up results that were misspelled, if that makes sense

but now, it's like if you look up any word, random posts that mention it anywhere in the post will show up too – and i would rather not open myself up to the m*shka bootlickers bc i just do not have time for that LMFAO

i rarely maintag things these days because i just don't want to be perceived by so much of this fandom, but that's just a me thing

also, in terms of what she did "wrong"... on top of problematic stuff in text, there's a few things i can think of off the top of my head:

encouraging white/washed art by reblogging on to her dev blog while knowingly having the official skintone palette locked behind a paywall (patreon)

when called out for the above, they did vet their pieces i guess – by only reblogging black and white pieces, and art of detectives. then they stopped reblogging art completely

posting a white hand for a morgan instagram edit – and taking hours to delete the harassment in the replies, some of which being actually racist comments with slurs pointed at black people

in a q&a video, referred to m as an "attack dog", which was super insensitive, considering the consistent comparison of m to an animal across all platforms (text, tumblr posts, patreon content)

her treatment of f over the years, both in text and outside of it. her asks were a huge reason that the fandom has an infantilized view of f and they don't even consider them to be a love interest (much less one that gets physically intimate). they see them as a child. this bullet point is a massive one that would take too long to explain. i could probably write an essay on how problematic it is to immediately "other" your singular black character by literally making them an otherworldly alien, but i do not have the time

how she writes nb/trans characters. from what my friends have said who code dive, they get the same dialogue and variants that women do. obviously if you don't code dive or play with nb characters you probably wouldn't notice, but there are a good chunk of people in the fandom who play with nb oc's so... this is something that should be better, but it's not

to add to the above, she said she was getting sensitivity readers but... did they do anything? look at book 3 and tell me if they actually did anything (i have a feeling maybe those sensitivity readers were white queer people)

overall, it's very hard to explain and condense the fuckery my mutuals and i have seen both m*shka do over the years, and what her fans have let slide/incidents they've coddled her up during.

sadly, she doesn't take hard stances on things. she just lets things happen and that just. doesn't bode well if your argument for all these mistakes is "ignorance". if she's getting 10k a month on patreon plus sales (not to mention the fact she's a grown ass woman), then... it's the bare minimum to ask for her to be mindful of her audience and to do better.

and also book 3 sucks xoxo

#the last line was a joke btw i just thought it'd be funny LMAO #TY FOR THE ASK I HOPE U HAVE A GREAT DAY TOO <3 #i know i have other asks to get to but i jumped at this one bc i should probably clarify this for anyone following me LMAO #but yeah all in all it feels like the fandom is back at square one bc of rampant whitewashing #no im not tagging this as fandom critical this is m*shka critical #also i'm not linking receipts or anything bc it's exhausting – ask anyone and they can tell u im not lying #IF THERE'S ANYTHING ELSE I MISSED SOUND OFF IN THE COMMENTS HATERS <3333333 #asks

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vergess · 5 months

Text

An anonymous user asks:

hello, i was wondering if you could pass a message along to vee? if this is inappropriate to ask i am sorry, but I am honestly too embarrassed to ask any of the Jewish people in my life irl and I think you’re of an age you would understand the question. outside of the “possibly killed his girlfriend but also it might have been someone at the party the night before and so many drugs were involved thing” sid vicious wore… well you know the shirt. i grew up listening to the Sex Pistols and romanticizing the statement “knight in rusted armour” but as a risk of sounding terminally online is it problematic? asking from a place of good faith because you’re not going to sugar coat things but also aren’t going to get out the pitch forks unnecessarily

So! This is based on only my vague (like 1 hour research) understanding of him and his contributions to punk rather than as a guy who comes up a lot in pop culture, like in fanfiction and video games. That all in mind!

If you truly feel you deeply relate to his music, then there's no reason to stop listening to the stuff you already own or anythig drastic. But oh boy are some of the claims I'm reading about egregious.

The good news is, the are what's known as "shock jock" behaviour: controversy seeking rather than a genuine support. This is still very bad to do, don't engage in it. It creates safe environments for actual heartfelt nazis to grow their numbers.

But you have to remember, in the 1970s, it was Not Popular to be a nazi. Not like it is today. It was common enough that everyone sort of know a guy, sure. And antisemitism was getting really bad again in europe. But nazism? Specifically? It wasn't Cool. It was controversial.

Not like today. My goodness we live in the worst fucking timeline.

Whatever. Nazi symbolism was a quick way to cause a controversy back then, is the point.

Logically one can assume the same is true of, for example, writing a song about an extermination camp. Egregious yes, but egregious on purpose because the feelings of jews were not considered relevant compared to the controversy that it would cause.

But fucking shit though, some of this is hard to read about.

This is why it's so important as contemporary punk enjoyers to viciously push back against nazis co-opting the space.

So, in private and with regards to your personal emotions to the artworks? Go enjoy what you enjoy! You aren't hurting someone by privately listening to music.

But in public? As my GF put it, if I heard someone was like... hardcore into this man's work, like to the extent of attending cover band concerts for example? I would expect them to be vocally and passionately anti-nazi before I could trust them.

And, I totally see where someone who just knows the man off google search results would think of him as "guy who maybe killed his Jewish GF after writing songs about extermination camps."

To be clear, I agree that the most probable "suspect" was that someone had a really bad trip. Who? No one knows; everyone was high.

But I see why many Jewish people would be uncomfortable with him, based on a cursory understanding of the situation.

Which is why, if you take your appreciation for his work from private to public, you must. MUST! Be 100% ready to do whatever it takes to keep nazis out of punk in today's world, and to combat antisemitism when it arises in your local spaces.

That's the part that matters.

And in my opinion? Based on the way you approached this, you're doing very well informing yourself on the subject. You had some idea of the issue, and you reached out to someone you trust. I appreciate you doing so.

Also, if you like me mostly knew this guy as, "oh, the anarchy in the UK guy, from guitar hero"... don't feel bad, my friend. I literally had no idea either. I recommend as further reading the short book/essay collection "Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk" by Michael Croland.

#Automatic OP tag

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schraubd · 10 months

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The Neo-Neo-Manicheans

There's another one of those open letters going around, where mostly right-leaning Jews issue a jeremiad against alleged intolerant left censorship in the field of ideas. This letter, apparently organized by the JILV's David Bernstein, purports to acknowledge "the illiberalism and threats to academic freedom emanating from the political right, and in no way downplay these dangers," but for undisclosed and oh-so-mysterious reasons chooses to "focus our attention on ... the political left". Knowing the organizers and scanning the signatories, I can say with confidence that the median participant in this letter absolutely downplays the dangers of threats to academic freedom emanating from the political right. In part, that's evidenced by releasing a letter like this at all right now -- at a moment when the danger from the right is cresting while the most problematic behaviors from the left are receding. But more to the point, essentially the only time the likes of Bernstein "acknowledge" right-ward threats to academic freedom is in a parenthetical aside in the midst of yet another broadside against the left. It is no surprise that parallel letters like this decrying threats to academic freedom and open intellectual inquiry are not organized by Bernstein nor signed by his coterie. Anyone who genuinely believes David Bernstein does not "downplay the dangers" of right-wing attacks on intellectual freedom should please peruse my excellent selection of bridges for sale.

But that's not what I want to focus on. The letter for the most part is a series of banalities about the importance of intellectual freedom and teaching students "how to think, not what to think." There is, however, one more substantive political critique to be found in the penultimate paragraph:

The ascendency of an ideology that reduces people to “oppressed” and “oppressors” and categorizes individuals into monolithic group identities poses a particular threat to the Jewish people. In this stark, neo-Manichean worldview, Jews are frequently grouped with the privileged, and Israel is dogmatically singled out as an oppressor-state–a shallow dichotomy that foments new variants of antisemitism and reinforces old ones.

This is worth diving into, and my counter-critique will be stark: the median participant in this letter does not, actually, oppose this "neo-Manichean worldview". They in fact demand it. Far more than most of their putative adversaries, they insist on exactly this sort of sharp divide of the world into oppressed and oppressor -- but one where Jews fall always and solely in the latter camp.

To be honest, anyone who has paid attention to how this discourse proceeds can see this. Consider how a statement like the following, which self-consciously rejects as to Jews the "neo-Manichean" division where group identities are either totally oppressed or oppressor.

Some people try to reduce people to absolute, monolithic, and eternal categories of "oppressed" and "oppressor". But this is absurd, as the Jewish example demonstrates. Surely, in the context of White supremacists searching for synagogues to vandalize (or worse), it is evident that Jews are experiencing oppression (and oppression specifically derived from the perception that they're "not White"). Equally obviously, in the context of ability to access the suburbs in post-World War II America, Jews sat in a comparatively privileged position vis-a-vis racial minorities (a privilege tied to the general treatment of Jews as "White"). The former doesn't falsify the latter; the latter doesn't falsify the former. Like any group, Jews are not always oppressed or oppressor; their relationship to these categories will be highly contextual based on place, space, and time.

Whatever else one might say about the above, it is not "neo-Manichean". Its entire point is to reject the notion of some eternal and unyielding oppressor/oppressed binary. Yet that very rejection is, for many, the problem. The evergreen response to any suggestion that Jews could ever be White or enjoy White privilege in any context -- "was my grandfather 'White' when he was sent to Auschwitz?" -- underscores the point: that retort is based precisely on the notion that Auschwitz generates an eternal, unending claim to the "oppressed" side the binary at any point in history, even one miles away (literally and metaphorically).

While there are some people who genuinely adopt a "neo-Manichean" view of Jews that essentially denies that Jews can ever be truly oppressed, some formulation like the above paragraph is, I think, considerably more common -- one where the ways that Jewishness interacts with privilege and oppression is layered and contextual. Now to be sure, even that inquiry can be done well or poorly -- it's entirely possible for someone to acknowledge that context is critical and nonetheless do a bad job of assessing the relevant context that applies to Jews in a particular case. But that vice is not a vice of neo-Manicheanism; it's struggling at the hard work of doing layered, nuanced, contextually-informed analysis. By contrast, the vice of those who are infuriated that Jews can ever be deemed complicit in oppressive and unjust structures are very much engaged in a form of Manicheanism -- they just want to invert the binary.*

It's similar to something I observed about the call to be "even-handed" or recognize "both sides" in discussing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Recognizing "both sides" is all well and good, and there absolutely are plenty of actors who are justly critiquing for failing to be even-handed. However, it's also the case that frequently the minute someone does proactively criticize "both sides" (by, say, criticizing war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas), they're accused of "equating" and blasted for that. Turns out, the "both sides" critics don't want to hear criticism of "both sides", they want to hear criticism of one side -- the other side (and let's be honest: the Jewish community has plenty of tolerance for one-sided criticism in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict -- so long as the "one side" is Palestine). To the contrary, the very act of engaging in "two-sided" criticism is taken as depriving Israel of its entitlement to be viewed solely as the aggrieved party; the injured; the, well, oppressed.

What is happening here? In part, the problem is a simple lack of intellectual sophistication. But I think something deeper is going on, that's related to the critics' malformed understanding of what they take to be the "neo-Manichean" worldview (a malformation that itself is inextricably tied to some deep-seated racial resentment).

I can't find it anymore, but years ago someone (maybe Jamelle Bouie?) made a crack about what conservatives believe about the Black experience at elite universities -- he said something like "Fun fact: if you're Black at Harvard you don't even need to go to class. They just give you As and White women." Many critics in the Bernstein mold fundamentally believe that the patrimony of oppression as enacted in "neo-Manichean" American academia is a sort of complete capitulation where any desire is automatically met, any plaudit given away as an entitlement, any discomfort immediately scurried away, and any critical resistance dispensed with. To be "oppressed" is to be automatically agreed with and catered to; to be "oppressor" is to endure endless pushback and struggle sessions. This outlook generates the following syllogism:

Oppressed groups are, under the prevailing ethos, entitled to a patrimony that includes being automatically agreed with and treated as perfectly and inherently righteous;

Jews are group that has endured oppression; therefore;

Jews are entitled to be treated as perfectly and inherently righteous and automatically agreed with.

And the fact that line #3 obviously does not characterize how Jews are treated is understood to mean that line #2 is being denied.

Now, the actual flaw in the syllogism is line #1 -- this account of the experience of oppressed groups is off-base to the point of being delusional. But it's also worth underscoring the payoff of line #3, which is precisely a demand for Manicheanism -- just one that, again, puts Jews on the other side of the binary. The misbegotten understanding of how "other" minorities are treated ends up near-inexorably leading to an expressly Manichean demand. The core motivator here isn't a defense of liberal values, it's jealousy -- a (mis)perception that those groups which are truly recognized as "oppressed" get this wonderful bounty, and rage that Jews don't receive it as well. Indeed, I strongly suspect that racial resentment is doing more work in motivating letters like this than any actual desire to protect the interests of Jews in academia.

No wonder that the complaints of Jews not receiving this largely mythologized deference are so frequently paired with the constant wail of "if it were any other minority group...." But in reality, this is the mirror image of the too-common but nonetheless twisted sense that the Holocaust was a sort of bounty for Jews; something we were lucky to experience because now (supposedly) everyone listens to us and nobody can challenge us. In either case, there is a concocted understanding of the experience of oppression that mutates it into an advantage. That it doesn't reflect reality is irrelevant; it becomes the foothold for leveraging grievance and entitlement even as it purports to rail against grievance and entitlement.

The notion that Jews -- or any group -- is always, ever-and-eternally, "oppressed" or "oppressor" is obvious nonsense. Every person and every group will find themselves at times in systems and contexts where we are unjustly advantaged and ones where we are unjustly disadvantaged. Teasing out those connections, figuring out how they work and how the interact with one another when they inevitably crosscut, grappling with what obligations and duties and responsibilities are and are not generated by them -- these are hard questions, and even people considering them in good faith won't always get them right. But the critics of the "neo-Manicheans" are not actually interested in asking the hard questions and thinking the hard thoughts. They have created a strawman and have launched a campaign to receive an entitlement that does not exist. Far from being critics of a Manichean divide between "oppressed" and "oppressor", they are among the most rabid enforcers of it.

If you want to break out of Manicheanism, the place to start is by dispensing with childish notions about how we actually treat persons enduring oppression in our society. They are not catered to, they are not given free passes, they are not just "handed As and White women." Until people dispense with that fantasy, they're always going to indulge in grim cycles of entitlement, grievance, and resentment.

* The only possible exception might be an assertion that any discourse which speaks of any group as "complicit in oppressive and unjust structures" is wrong. Such a view, which would preclude us from saying, inter alia, that "Germans oppressed the Jews during World War II" or that "American slavery was a project of White supremacy" (#NotAllGermans and #NotAllWhites, respectively), essentially obliterates the ability to talk about antisemitism at all and thereby is far more threatening to the safety and security of the Jewish people than the "neo-Manicheans" ever could be.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/TuESXOh

#academia #anti-semitism #Jews #racism

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