#But he is literally talking about real people

[magicisrealandsoismyally]

Okay, thought we were being like, chill, but I guess that's a kindness only afforded to people you consider to be women, so I'm gonna break this down piece by piece here, a lot to address.

"purposely obtuse or intellectually dishonest"

right off the bat the fact I disagree with you means I'm being intentionally wrong and evil. There's no room for me to be misguided, or making mistakes, or being uninformed, I'm either playing stupid or lying. Got it.

I "either hate AFABs, or don't take harm against them seriously". Once again, another false dichotomy. I take harm against women incredibly seriously, I just don't think the biggest threat to women is trans women. I think we have the same enemies, conservative men in power. I said you were fueled by fear because I was trying to be nice. It's not just fear. It's anger. Misdirected anger. You, and many others, have decided the easiest thing to do is hate.

Yeah. It is in fact transphobic to demand sex segregated spaces given that a true biological sex isn't fucking real. That's why it's "Assigned male at birth" or "Assigned female at birth". I've been assigned a lot of things throughout my life. So have you. Are you going to tell me those assignments were always accurate? I mean hell, with the amount of cis people out there, their accuracy rate is definitely above 50%. Still not accurate tho.

Transphobia is both the people trying to murder us, and the people, who don't want us in spaces that are away from the people trying to murder us. You are aware that the same cis men wanna kill us both right? You've arbitrarily drawn a line in the sand because you are grossly misunderstanding how trans people work. The number one piece of advice I see on this site from transfems, is how to avoid being SAed. By cis men, by cis women, by trans men. It's so common, that it makes me question if I even want to be in spaces with y'all. You wanna talk about fear? I'm fucking terrified. All the time. The instant I come out to the world, I get to spend the rest of my life, knowing that at any moment, someone says anything negative about me? and my life is over. Because people like you, will believe them. Because the scary transfem must be the person oppressing you. Because its easy, to villainize the minority. And it's easy to decide he's a monster. And all the while, she loses everything just for being an easy target.

You wanna talk physical safety? 83% of genderqueer victims of fatal violence are trans women. People love to kill us.

AMAB privilege is not real. I was not socialized male. I think you have a perspective on how the patriarchy functions that hasn't seen the other side of the fence, so let me go ahead and elaborate on that. Being a Man, is something you can fail out of in the patriarchy. It's a club that is nigh impossible to enter, but really fucking easy to fail out. Under the patriarchy, I am not a man. I failed out of that shit at the age of 8 when I said I didn't like sports. When I did anything "girlie" at all. When I cried. I was a crybaby (according to my family) and a faggot (according to the other kids at school). And from that moment, I was a target. Always have been. I wasn't socialized male, I was socialized as a failed man. Most trans girls are treated that way from a young age. I did not benefit from the patriarchy I was shoved around. I have gotten into an absurd amount of fights that I never started because some fucking asshole decided to beat the shit out of the fag. I spent like a week on tumblr before hearing other shared experiences about this kinda thing. Literally not hard to talk to trans women about this stuff if you, yk, try.

"We don’t need to check genitals I would have no problem with the manliest most masculine most passing trans man in an afab space because no matter what hormones or surgery are involved they cannot rape and impregnate me with their penis the same way an AMAB person could."

How do you know he's trans. How. Tell me right now how you tell the difference between a cis man and a trans man with bottom surgery. Do that without being transphobic, please. Find a way. I'm looking for something hilarious to read today, it's been a long one. Because if you don't have a way, your entire transmisogynistic utopia falls apart here. You can't tell if someone is trans. It's about identity. You cannot tell if someone has a penis. No matter what you do. You cannot tell someone's assigned gender at birth.

And how wonderful, you mentioned prisons, just read about this one. Did you know when transfems are imprisoned they get placed with the most violent cellmates? It's a tactic to reduce prison violence. Give the most violent people their own live in target. They get called prison wives. It's called V-Coding. So yeah, prisons are messed up. For both of us. If only we could talk about that and unite to fix that oh wait that's literally the whole point of having transfems in feminist spaces, crazy how that works.

"Also trans AMAB people commit sex crimes at an even higher rate than cis AMAB people"

WHERE IS THE FUCKING SOURCE. I am tired of TMEs and their constant stream of libel demonizing trans women. All of your nonsense statistics is so fucking stupid. Where are you getting these numbers? The sex offenders list? The one that as recently in the 80s included anyone who crossdressed or hit on a person of the same gender even if they were reciprocating? I literally have heard cis lesbians complain about that shit on this site, you're not even being a feminist by citing sex crimes, you're being a cop. Fucking being trans counted as being a sex criminal for most of American history. Drag queens, trans women, and crossdressers get accused of sex crimes all the fucking time, you have no critical thinking god fucking damn.

"which again did not START segregated they became that way because AMAB people could t be trusted not to rape/assault AFAB ones"

Yeah no lmao, (this next paragraph is going to be USAmerican centric because yk, that's what I learned about growing up) they kicked literally all queer people out when women got the right to vote, both lesbians and bi-women had to fight their way back into these spaces in the decades prior. I feel like we forgot about the Ellen Show or smth? Like feminists did not fucking go to bat for her after she came out. Groups will turn on their supporters the instant they decide they don't need them. Mainstream Feminism turned on people of color and queer people who put their own movements on hold to support the women's right to vote so fucking fast. It's American history too, all I had to do to learn this was have a pulse in my US history class.

Also “capitalism is real because it impacts me in a negative way but all other forms of oppression where I might be considered the privileged one in the dynamic is just hysterical people distracting from capitalism”

Girl, reading comprehension, try it out for size. I did not say these systems of oppression are not real. I'm saying demonization and fear of minorities (like, yk, trans women) is a tool of the existing power systems to make you hate us and not your actual enemy, the people in power (like, yk, rich people who are usually cis white conservative men). You keep bringing up how awful existing systems like prisons are but you just, do not analyze who fucking set those systems up. Private prisons are owned by the rich, not by the trans woman you're yelling at who is 4 bad days away from giving up and killing herself.

If trans AMAB people don’t want to be housed with cis ones, they can do the legwork and create those spaces for themselves like AFAB people did they do NOT have the right to commandeer our movement and literally erase our rights and protections because not allowing AMAB people into these vulnerable spaces might give them the big sad.

Okay so first you tell me feminist spaces weren't originally segregated by sex, and now you tell me it's an AFAB only movement? Because I know for a fact trans people have always been at bat for feminism. American white women said the same shit to women of color between 1920-1965. Cause the instant we become expendable, y'all throw us aside.

commandeer our movement

Really? Do you genuinely think trans women could ever outnumber cis women? What cartoon candyville are you from where there are more trans women than cis women? How the fuck are we going to commandeer the movement? We're like, 0.3% of the population at most. What are you talking about.

YEAH MY GUY IM FORCED TO LIVE LIKE A FUCKING PREY ANIMAL!!!

Okay so for starters, transwomen are also in constant fear. We have literally been hunted, this is just, like, a historical thing. Second, I'm not a guy. Don't call me that. You cannot honestly tell me you're not transphobic and then proceed to use exclusively masc terms to refer to me. That's just wild. Playing along with the tranny does not make you not a trans ally. You're still a transphobe just cause you're fine with trans men.

Some fear is completely rational

Yeah. We're both completely justified in our fear. I do not build my politics off my fear. You do. That's the difference. No matter how terrified I am of TMEs, I still fight for y'all. Always have, always will.

Gender is literally fake and varies from culture to culture. Sex based oppression is real and fucks over the lives of AFAB people worldwide.

Ohh, damn, so close, you'll get it next time I'm sure. See the trick is BOTH OF SEX AND GENDER ARE FAKE. Genderqueer people just admit that it's about self expression. You literally just described how fallible sex assignment is by talking about intersex people, it's like, hella cultural. Sex based oppression is real. So is Gender based oppression. Because people are shitty about fake shit, all the time, we're on tumblr, the "death threats over shipping" website.

You cannot tell me you think you're not transphobic and then claim gender oppression isn't real. I feel bad for any trans people who have the misfortune to interact with you. I hope one day you realize you fought on the wrong side of history. And if not? I hope they speak of you in the same breath as the grown adults trying to stop Ruby Bridges from attending school, in the same breath as the cops at Stonewall. You have an excellent day. I probably won't, but what's new. I'm sorry you're so afraid. I'm sorry you fell for it when they told you who to be afraid of. I'm sorry I couldn't do more. If anyone wants sources on this stuff, i'll add links to posts getting into it, a lot of it's screenshots and i'm not about to make this any longer than it is. There's more ofc, but I can only cite what links I have on hand, y'all can do your own research, read like, any transfem blog while they still exist. https://www.tumblr.com/honeylemony/767694258735136768?source=share https://www.tumblr.com/marxism-transgenderism/767536279224270848/okay-ive-said-before-that-part-of-why https://www.tumblr.com/girldogmystic/766813723287502848/i-wanna-get-more-specific-with-this-according-to

"OP is a terf" is a thought-terminating cliche meant to keep you from questioning the status quo and keep you afraid of being labeled a heretic should you come to your own conclusions about anything.

[razorblade180]

Ekko Location

Ekko:*thousand yard stare*….

Caitlyn:(Should I tell him? No, false hope doesn’t do any good. Especially in this case.) *looks left*

Giant mural of Jinx

Caitlyn:….Ekko?

Ekko:What could you possibly want after everything?

Caitlyn:Hopefully, an olive branch. I have to tell you something but you have to promise to not get your hopes up, or tell Vi. This is something I’m trusting with you specifically.

Ekko:And how in the world did I get such an honor?

Caitlyn:Because if it wasn’t for one act of kindness, I’d be in your shoes right now.

Ekko:…What do you have to tell me?

xxxxxx

One month later. Somewhere across the water, in a nice quaint land known for its view of the ocean and mountains, a cloaked girl bobs her head to music as she roams the back alleys streets without a care in her mind.

Jinx: 🎶Do you ever wanna catch me?Right now I'm feeling ignored. *turns corner*

Jinx:So can you try a little harder? I'm really getting bor-

Ekko:*cloaked* !?….

Jinx:…..(Just when I thought I’ve wrangled all the voices. This is a low blow, me.) *closes eyes* (Just gonna breathe in and-)

Ekko:*grabs her wrist*

Jinx’s eyes immediately shoot open to see him right in front of her. She starts looking back, forth, everywhere; her thoughts trying to rationalize this moment because what do you mean he’s real!?

Jinx:Y- wha- how? How!? Fuck everything else. How?

Ekko:Let’s just say someone offered me a little hope. Honestly it was more like wishful thinking.

Jinx:Ekko, that’s not a “how” at all! You left Zaun to chase wishful thinking? That’s alone is crazy, but not as crazy as you actually finding me! I could’ve gone in any direction and stopped anywhere yet somehow you’re right here searching in the correct city? Gasps Did you put something in me?!

Ekko:What? No! Jinx, we used to spend literal hours talking about all the places we wanted go; the sight ls you wanted to see. Sometimes you rambled so much I never got a word in to say mine!

Jinx:So you’re telling you just remembered all that ramble and started flying to the places I yapped about!? Who the heck remembers stuff like that!?

Ekko:Me!! Since when have I ever forgotten anything!? Especially stuff about you!?

The girl was too stunned to speak. Ekko told no lies and he had a point, however, what the hell? How was she supposed to respond to that? She told absolutely nobody that she was leaving and left no trace, yet somehow wishful thinking from probably the world’s most annoying enforcer and childhood memories was enough for Ekko to find her in a little over a month. Jinx could only squint at him in disbelief. Sure, she could definitely break free of grip and make a break for it, yet this moment only gave her the strength to exhale tiredly before him.

Jinx:Anyone else know?

Ekko:Nope. You think people have time to chase hypotheticals?

Jinx:So you just left??

Ekko:Told them I needed some air. Had to move quickly. You don’t exactly stay in one place for long.

Jinx:…..Alright. Out with it. I know you have some rehearsed lecture and rant you’ve prepared in case you actually somehow weren’t crazy and found m-

Ekko:*hugs her* I can tell at you later.

Jinx:You really just might be crazier than me.

Her entire body relaxed as she finally put her arms around him. Despite all odds, he really was right here. Leave it the Boy Savior to yet again foil her schemes.

Jinx:At this point I should call you Ekko Location or something.

Ekko:I this point, I should put a fucking bell on you.

Jinx:I’d still get away.

Ekko:And I’d find you again.

Jinx:Heh, yeah. *hugs tightly* You would, wouldn’t you?

[thoughfullovercreator]

Sorry not sorry. But some people need to read this.

Tw: when I am employing the word « delusional » I am not referring to the medical definition of it.

What I am going to be saying is going to be disliked by some. But I don’t care.

I am going to be talking right now about a phenomenon that I’ve been seeing ever since I started reading mangas and watching anime’s and it has always bothered me.

And guess what ? I am not the only one being bothered by that, which reassures me.

The problem is the following:

Each time there’s a genuine friendship between two male characters or even two females in a manga/anime, people dirty it by gluing on it, their own fantasies and making it somewhat romantic/sexual, by inventing a « sexual tension » between these protagonists.

Always happens in the anime/manga universe.

…and I am going to tell you why it’s a problem/bothersome situation for many :

The problem is that it renders the story less deep and genuine and more people are influenced in thinking that, a male character, by being nice to another male (same for females), is romantic or whatever.

Like some of y’all are sexualising everything. Get it together !

This is, most of the time (actually 99% of the time but okay), LITTERALY delusion because the authors have never, ever meant for their characters to be viewed as anything but genuine friends/acquaintances..

It distorts the story for nothing and, in my opinion, it is disrespectful to the creators of the manga, to just take their characters and create a quiproquo on it. Sorry not sorry to say it.

As an example, let me take the « Dazai x Chuuya » fans.

The readers go as far as to totally disregard the fact that, Dazai, since literally the first episode, has implied that he was not attracted to guys. On top of that, he’s kinda depicted as the guy who likes women. Never ever was anything that would make him attracted to Chuuya as a male.

(It also happens for JJK and others… )

Therefore, you’re disregarding the genuine and complex aspects of a potential friendship and understanding between them, to glue on it what you would have wished it to be : a romantic or sexual attraction. It’s a projection of what YOU would have WANTED it to be.

It is actually immoral to distort a character’s sexuality like what ?! It becomes a habit and people do it also for celebrities. It’s kinda going too far.

It’s not for you to decide.

When it’s « not a big deal » for some, it could actually represent a big deal for many. And make many people uncomfortable.

Respectfully :

You wanna do your fanfics ? NO PROBLEM really ! be our guests ! but do it in the context of a fanfic, after putting on a disclaimer, as a respectful gesture for the creators behind mangas !

(On the other hand, when people write « character x reader », it doesn’t distorts the original story cuz Y/N just doesn’t exist).

BUT rubbing it down our throats without any context as if it was a general truth provided by the creators, that « these characters are in love/sexually attracted to one another » NO. Keep it for yourself or your group of friends if y’all agree on it.

Again, many many people feel as uncomfortable as me regarding this. It’s kinda also getting out of hands.

It’s getting out of hands especially when I see fandoms like the Black butler fandom where they imagine a « sexual tension » between Sebastian that is an adult and Ciel that is 13 !

Like it or not. I am not sorry for being respectful and realistic.

Some decency is needed :

Not everything is okay with what people are doing on the internet. You can have your « dirty thoughts » but don’t expose them, not everyone wishes to hear about it. Some things have to stay between you and yourself.

Kids/ teens :

And kids/teens (all those below 18) y all need to get off your phone a little and go play outside or meet your friends (for teens ig) if you don’t wanna end up in depression at an early age or with extremely poor social skills.

At least take a real book like ones at the school library and learn things. Instead of learning how to .. by reading explicit content cuz you never listen when we tell you that a certain one shot is +18.

Again, I am not sorry. I am pissed.

[rnadett]

I love how Ekko's stans project their hatred onto Caitlyn, but completely turn a blind eye to Heimerdinger, who was, by the way, the embodiment of white male privilege.

The basis for this claim is most evident in the fact that he receives almost ZERO hate from the fans, even though for 200 years he couldn’t be bothered to cross that damn bridge and see how far behind Zaun was compared to Piltover. Not even after Jinx and Vi’s parents died in the civil war. He was like "Yeah, that's none of my business"??? But if a female character breaks down because, her mother was murdered, suddenly everyone loses their mind. Now, that’s the real hypocritical attitude and misogyny.

Also, the fact that no one has criticized Ekko and Heimerdinger’s interaction speaks volumes.

Ekko knew that the professor was the most influential man in Piltover for >>>GENERATIONS<<<, yet there was no confrontation between them.

Imagine if that mf had even once stepped out of his bubble before Vander's and Silco's character was even born—none of this shit would've happened. And yet, he gets away with it and the writers gets away with it.

Overall: None of Cait's actions was the best but some of you just really hate women and let men get away with everything.

Edit:

This tweet reeks of hypocrisy and reinforces exactly what I wrote above. The fandom forgave Heimerdinger and portrays him as the Piltoverian who took responsibility for his actions, even though his redemption wasn't on-screen either. The guy literally only lifted a finger after being kicked off the council, and even when they shifted to an alternate universe, there was no ON-SCREEN evidence that he initiated any changes in Zaun. He spent the whole time singing songs, and people felt sympathy for him because he died in the end — which, frankly, was the least he could do.

No one looks past the façade because they see a cute autistic grandpa, while on the other side, we have a grieving young woman who’s being exploited. She didn't need 40 or 200 years to realize the weight of her actions and is fighting tooth and nail to rewrite the future.

This is what I was talking about when I mentioned misogyny. Everyone forgives the grandpa figure for everything, and even Christian was able to comment on a tweet that painted him as the only Piltoverian who took responsibility.

[viktortittiforov]

FYI, this is very similar to what you have to undergo in the czech republic in order to access medical and legal transition, and until this year(!) trans people living in CZ were also legally required to get medically castrated ("sterilized") in order to change their gender marker. the country kept that condition even after the european court of human rights ruled that it is a human rights violation, and only scrapped it this year after a czech trans man went to the czech constitutional court with it (i am not naming him because afaik his name is unknown to the public, i think he wanted it that way but am not sure).

as a czech nonbinary person currently trying to access medical transition and to change my legal name to a gender neutral one free of charge, i can confirm it's fucking hell. the humiliating, irrelevant, unscientific, pathologizing side of it is already well-described above, but i wanted to talk more also about the more practical difficulties. those obviously differ between CZ and UK and my experience is within CZ, but i think it may help you get an idea of what a person having to go through such a process really has to undergo, because even though i've known i'm nonbinary for 10 years and have been out as trans and nonbinary + well-informed about the state of czech trans healthcare + a part of the czechoslovak* trans community for about 6 of those years, it was not until i actually experienced this process for myself that i fully understood what an Ordeal it is. and i have (or have had) very close friends who i have seen going through it in real time.

buckle up. this will be long.

(and sorry to OP if i'm hijacking your post. i'm sharing the CZ context in order to also further illustrate the UK one, because i believe they are similar, not to derail the convo in favour of CZ. my intent is for people to better understand what trans people in certain countries have to deal with + for people to know that having access to free trans healthcare is really not all sparkles and rainbows (even as it is still a privilege that many trans people all over the world don't have).

we don't have GICs in CZ. so, in order to even get hormones, you have to:

go to a sexologist. sexologists are the main gatekeepers of medical transition in CZ and yes, it is very bizarre and based on some really old notions of what branch of medicine transness falls under. i also really do mean the word gatekeepers, not just because you have to go to them but because they really do gatekeep something severe. the majority of them are very cis- and hetero-normative (and also sexist), enforce normative gender expectations, see transness as a pathology (though what kind of pathology varies from sexologist to sexologist, some lean more towards sexual deviance, others towards mental illnese, etc), are suspicious of trans people not wanting (certain or any) medical interventions, and do not recognize nonbinary people as being "real"/valid/whatever word you want to use. there are literally 3 (three) sexologists in the country who are widely known in the czechoslovak trans community as being mostly OK (=not the things just listed or at least not as much as all the other sexologists). when i was starting my journey towards HRT (at least a year and a half ago now i think, probably closer to two years), i first contacted the 2 (out of those 3) which are closer to me; none of the "OK ones" are based in the city i live, and i live in the 2nd largest city in CZ. neither of them was accepting new "patients"* for the foreseeable future. luckily the third one was accepting new people, but he is basically on the other side of the country from me, so about 4–5 hours away by train or bus (=an 8hr roundtrip). this is annoying, exhausting, and expensive, as i've had to go see him at least 3 times by now and i still have not gotten a fucking testosterone prescription from him.

it's not easy to get the average sexologist to take you seriously. the three "OK ones" are significantly less gatekeepy and distrustful, but you usually have to do some convincing there, too. that includes dressing the "right" way, giving the "right" answers, having the "right" expectations of transition, etc. you learn what's "right" from the wider trans community and what's "right" is very, very, very normative. for most czech sexologists, you really for real have to prove not only that you're "trans enough"*, but also that once you transition, your current "pathological trans self" will become "normal" enough, gender conforming enough that you will cease being a treat or a disruption to the prevailing social gender order. it's literally designed to be a normalizing process. i have an MA in sociology with a focus on gender studies and for one of my uni essays i conducted a critical discourse analysis of the most prominent czech book about transness penned by czech sexologists, so i think i'm qualified to say this. the whole thing is very foucauldian but let's not get too philosophical here (i will happily tell you more if you ask me though).

if you're lucky and the sexologist believes you may indeed be trans (because of course they have to believe you and of course they're the ones who decide what the truth is), they will (eventually; usually you need several sessions for them to "be sure" or whatever) give you a referral to 3–4 other specialists: a psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist, an endocrinologist and an internal medicine physician. from each of these, you have to get a report for your sexologist.

from the clinical psychologist, they need a report confirming that you are indeed trans (they give you the official diagnosis) and that you don't have any other conditions which you might be confusing for transness, e.g. schizophrenia, psychosis, etc. you don't need me to tell you how fucked this is for e.g. schizophrenic trans people. it's not always a certain no-go for them, but they will have an even more difficult time accessing medical transition.

from the psychiatrist, they need a report confirming you are lucid and don't have any conditions which are potential contraindications to HRT and/or surgery. this can be the conditions already listed above, but also conditions like intense and unmanaged depression and/or anxiety, which might worsen at the start of you taking hormones. i know this because i have depression and anxiety and my sexologist wants to be sure i am stable enough to go on HRT before he gives me the goddamn prescription. this seems like it makes sense on the surface, but it also... completely disregards the fact that a) anxiety, depression and similar conditions will often be improved by HRT in the long run because yknow, less bad gender feels, and b) depression medication also tends to first make your symptoms worse before it makes them better, and no one makes such a fuss about it.

from the endocrinologist, you need a report confirming that you don't have any hormonal conditions which might be contraindicative to HRT, i.e. which make it so that long-term (often lifelong) HRT would be risky/dangerous for you. it's not like there has to be zero risk or danger and many conditions are (i think) just potential, not absolute contraindications, but yeah. this is about the only examination/report that i think is justified and good and makes sense, but it still kind of sucks because at least in CZ, there is not nearly enough endocrinologists to effectively cover demand/need, much less endocrinologists with a good understanding of trans healthcare, and for some reason many are notoriously judgmental cunts eager to insult and belittle people, apparently. more on this later.

finally, from the internist, you need a report confirming basically the same thing as the endocrinology examination, but for conditions pertaining to internal organs and the effect HRT may have on them. this also makes sense and it is also not always needed if there's no reason to suspect (e.g. from your family's medical history) that you have any such conditions. however, it's shitty because for many people trying to access transition this is the first time they get referred to an internist, and a medical condition might suddenly be discovered which complicates their access to HRT. it's obviously good that the condition is now known, but it's shitty when it's so unexpected. my ex-gf (a trans woman), for example, found out she has a condition that makes it more likely she will get blood clots, which sucks because HRT increases your chance of getting blood clots (if i remember correctly). she is now on HRT, but had to wait a lot longer because several subsequent tests needed to be done, and she initially thought this last examination would just be a formality. (this problem with unexpectedness also applies to the results of the endocrinology exam, of course. but this is a wider problem of doctors being unwilling to sign off on preventive examinations...)

if you already go to one or some of these regularly, the sexologist will give you a paper requesting these medical reports instead of a referral. this is lucky, because usually all of these specialists are as difficult to access as the sexologists, or even more so, and if you already visit one you will be spared some waiting time. but it's unlucky if the person you go to is very uninformed about trans stuff and also uncooperative (i am experiencing this with my psychiatrist).

if you have any other chronic health conditions, you will need to also check whether those aren't contraindications. for example, i have some chronic eye issues so i have to get a report from my ophthalmologist, which is going to be fucking difficult because i bet they have no idea how eye conditions interact with HRT and they will most likely be unwilling to research it (even though that's literally their job). it is necessary, i get it, but it fucking sucks that i have to be the one "negotiating" with them about getting this report, said negotiating being tragically close to begging sometimes. czech doctors, and i think doctors in general, sadly often have little respect for their "patients" and believe they always know better, which makes it difficult to get them to do what you need them to do (as i'm sure many are aware).

most of these other specialists, at least in CZ, are similar to the sexologists or even worse, i.e. not only will you usually have to wait months for an appointment (if they even agree to offering you one and don't just tell you to try elsewhere), but they are uninformed about trans healthcare and uninformed about how to respectfully treat trans people, or even straight up transphobic, sexist, queerphobic, etc. perhaps because of this they are often uncooperative and unwilling (more than usual). there are exceptions and when you are nonbinary, you either have to seek those out or lie (=say you're binary trans), but obviously you can only lie to some of the specialists or it'll turn up in the reports and your sexologist is gonna read it and grill you about why you lied (if you go to an enby friendly sexologist and they know you are nonbinary, ofc. if they don't know either, then you can lie to everyone, but that can be stressful obviously). also even the specialists who aren't actively hostile will most likely misgender you if you don't pass, and sometimes even if you do; i've heard of endocrinologists who refuse to respect pronouns until the person has been sterilized and had their gender marker officially changed. apparently until it's legally sanctioned, it's not real, or i don't know.

in case of the sexologist and endocrinologist you will need to keep seeing them long-term so they can keep an eye on your health and well... on you generally, ig. the visits will be less frequent and shorter the longer you take hormones, i am led to believe, but yeah. and this is also good, i think (despite the aspect of being monitored to some extent), but it means your choice of sexologist and endocrinologst has to be strategic and you can't just say you will just go to that notoriously shitty guy near where you live because it's convenient and he can offer you an appointment relatively soon, unless you want to go through the ordeal of finding a new endocrinologist again immediately after your first appointment with that shitty guy.

all of this sucks, the doctors give you reports and requests and referrals but they don't know what the other doctors want, they are not satisfied with the reports (the extensiveness of them or the content itself), they say they can't help you. it's exhausting. apparently they can't just write or call each other to figure it out. you need to do all of that yourself.

that's the ordeal you have to go through just to get HRT. if you want surgery, in CZ you usually have to literally go sit in front of a panel of "experts" so they can grill you on your transition so far, what surgeries you want or don't want and why, what your expectations are, etc. yes, again. and these "experts" change somewhat for each hearing, and they usually know jack shit about transness or trans healthcare. from what i've heard they're very conservative. there's ways to get around this totally meaningless interrogation and afaik most people get the panel's approval and are only in that room for a short while, it's apparently very surface level unless you give them a reason to doubt your transness. but people have to wait months for their hearing. it's a further test of patience.

this is the route you have to go if you want to transition free of charge. i think it's great that CZ has universal healthcare, but universal healthcare comes with a lot of gatekeeping and hangups and problems, bcs the country wants to make sure you are only getting a given treatment if you really need it; and of course, the doctors are the judges of that. also, at least so far, free transition that falls under universal healthcare is predicated on transness being defined in the ICD (international classification of diseases) as a medical problem. it has to be pathologized and medicalized in order for it to be free. it doesn't have to be that way, but right now, it is that way, and it sucks. pathologization plays a huge role in making transness non-threatening to the social order.

oh, and if you're rich and able + willing to pay for transition? in CZ, you can get fucked. afaik, private, self-funded transition isn't really available or perhaps even legal. i might be wrong, and i do personally know one transmasc person who paid for their own top surgery and had it done at a private clinic, but they still faced a TON of unwillingness because the clinic was really worried about being sued. if you have the money (or were able to get it via donations), you will most likely need to go abroad, and if you're planning on returning to CZ after, you will almost certainly have difficulty getting legal recognition (shall you seek it).

whether legal recognition is desirable or necessary is a whole different discussion, of course. i don't want to get into it in this already ridiculously long post, but i wanted to at least acknowledge that legal recognition is by no means neutral and/or unproblematic.

if you managed to read all the way to the end, i salute you. you must be tired. go eat an apple or something.

*czechoslovakia stopped existing over 30 years ago but CZ and SK people still largely intermingle and many slovak people migrate to CZ. i am specifying this because annoyingly enough, many people on this US-centric site still do not know czechoslovakia is no longer a thing, so in case my addition gets some attention, i want this to be clear. please do not talk in the tags about how this is your first time hearing about this. i most likely will not see it since i am not OP but i have seen it happen a lot in posts about CZ and/or SK and it's really not funny or quirky that you didn't know. it's quite insulting, actually. if you want to share the fact that this is new info to you, share it instead with your friends who also may not know, so that they learn. thanks. (yes i'm bitter)

*the term patient implies a hierarchy & is pathologizing = is far from neutral; putting it in quotes to disrupt its seeming neutrality.

*trans enough = see transnormativity; link leads to an open-access academic article introducing this concept but you can definitely find simpler explanations online if you're not familiar with it.

What in the academic fuck is a GIC assesment

A GIC assessment (Gender Identity Clinic) assessment is the psychiatric interrogation you have to go through in Britain if you want permission to medically transition (and some aspects of legal transition too). Also called a Gender Dysphoria Assessment.

It involves answering a bunch of medically irrelevant, repetitive, deeply humiliating, repetitive questions like how you masturbate, what you wear when you masturbate, your sexual history, your childhood history, what toys you played with as a child, your employment, the clothes you like to wear, your relationship with your partners and family, etc. The classic is "Do you imagine yourself as a woman when you masturbate?" It also involves various psychiatric tests to check whether you're psychotic, which are deeply stigmatising. You will likely have to suffer this interrogation more than once if you want certain medical and legal doors to open. If you do not answer these questions "correctly" you may be refused transition.

If you want to get it for free, you'll need to wait several years, possibly decades depending on where you live, to be admitted to a Gender Identity Clinic.

If you want to go private, it will cost you about £500 a go, maybe more. (It's not technically a GIC Assessment unless it takes place at an NHS GIC; otherwise it's just sparkling humiliation.)

At the end of your interrogation you will - if you answered correctly - be diagnosed with "gender dysphoria." There is no way for them to check whether the answers you gave were truthful or whether you just told them what they want to hear. In Britain, about a third of trans people surveyed said they lied or withheld information during these assessments. There was no way for the 2015 American Psychiatric Association Working Group on gender dysphoria - the cis people who created the diagnosis* - to know that the interview data they based it on wasn't also full of people telling doctors what they wanted to hear! The unreliability of that data, some researchers have said, calls into serious question the use and sense of the diagnosis! * Fun fact: Ray Blanchard and Kenneth Zucker were both on that working group!

The NHS spends somewhere between 20 and 90 million pounds a year (depending on how you count it) on doing this.

Contrast that process to, say, the treatment pathway for menopause, where a cis woman who wants hormone replacement therapy can just get it from her family doctor 🙃

If you'd like to know more about this, I spoke about it here in more detail with citations

And wrote about it here

[plaidos]

I really like dropouts content overall, but there was a bit in a season of Dimension 20 (Starstruck) where an exploitative, deceptive man (Dan Scrap) dressed up as a woman (Danielle Scrap) to invade a space designed to exclude men in order to reap the benefits of that space. Like that's THE narrative transphobes use, and there Brennan doing it as a bit and the rest of the main cast laughing uproarsly about it. It made me feel nauseous. There definitely is a transmisogyny issue at dropout

this is the kind of stuff im talking about — i like Brennan, he’s funny, he’s a good comic, but a mistake like this isn’t just a “he said the wrong pronoun by accident” type thing — it betrays a foundational misunderstanding to what transphobia is and how/why it functions the way it does. now that makes sense, Brennan is a cis man without these experiences, he isn’t an activist or a sociologist, but you know maybe that is the perfect demonstration of how he isn’t the best pick for a “deconstructive pastiche of Harry Potter” tabletop campaign — maybe a real life trans woman would be a better pick? somebody who has actually had to contend with bigotry a day in their life, even, maybe!

given how often Dimension 20 players (including the MisMag party!!) make jokes about feminine men stuff like this seems really glaring to trans girls who would’ve been prospective fans. i don’t feel comfortable watching that shit! it feels like a bunch of TME people patting themselves on the back for being good allies without paying attention to how to correct the wrongs in question, like a totally superficial distinction.

i’ve heard that Dropout specifically apologised for this instance, but i really don’t think that fixes the problem. the fact that “a man calling himself a woman’s name and pretending he’s a woman to sneak into a women’s space” is a story that made it far enough into play that there was actual discourse over it is a big fucking deal, not just a small mistake, but the literal exact same type of transmisogyny that Dimension 20’s players are supposed to be deconstructing… so why do we have players who don’t even know how to not REINFORCE those biases? Surely a cis man who literally cannot functionally or materially identify transmisogyny should not be your top pick for a “harry potter without the bigotry” campaign?

it’s cool that other marginalised demographics are represented in MisMag (and Dimension 20 in general) but let’s be totally honest with ourselves: JK Rowling didn’t join the KKK, she isn’t rallying against abortion rights — she is pouring millions and millions of dollars into criminalising specifically transfeminine existence. it is unequivocally a bad look to seemingly intentionally exclude transfems from a commentary on her works, and an even worse & transmisogynistic move to double down on a second season without a transfeminine player, especially after the (totally unaddressed!) backlash from transfem fans the first time.

[clownzaf]

I know that people love to headcanon Tim as a child of Athena, I personally like to headcanon him as child of Hades due to his similarities with Nico and the fact that dead seems to follow that kid like a motherfucker but never actually reach HIM.

But hear me out.

Tim as a child of Dionysus. And he gets claimed during the Bruce-quest.

When he was in Gotham monsters were a usual thing. You never knew that they were there for your godly blood, you just thought that they were things created by pollution or something like that. And when he became Robin fighting things that wanted to kill you while saying weird things was more usual than a hug (not that that was a hug standard for Tim).

But then everyone started dying. His parents, Kon, Bart, Steph, BRUCE. Everyone. Every. One.

And Tim…Tim couldn’t seem to reach madness. I mean YEAH he wasn’t doing great by any standard, but he knew madness, he grew up in madness, and he wasn’t going mad.

The cloning was just a treat.

And during the Bruce-quest, everyone thought he was crazy, he was casted away because everyone thought he was crazy CRAZY Tim can’t he crazy! He knows that! He knows that in his blood that going crazy isn’t a chance for him. He made everyone crazy when they were around him (hence Jason. He knew that Jason was mad at him from the start, but going near Tim lighted a flame inside him that Tim is sure isn’t completely Jason’s) but Tim couldn’t go crazy. He could ACT crazy. But never too serious.

And then, in the depths of Greece, he met his dad. His real dad.

He always knew that Jake wasn’t his dad. The blonde hair his mother forced him to dye since he was 5 and the purple eyes his father forced him to hide with contacts told him that. But Tim grew up looking up at Jack, even if Jack didn’t love him, he was the dad that decided to (figuratively) stay. And Tim loved him till death.

But when that man appeared, Tim knew, with only a moment of stares, that that man was his father. They talked a bit, too. The man knew about everything Tim was doing, and that creeped Tim out, but when the man made appear a glass of wine for Tim (and one side for himself) and Tim drank it, he knew what he was.

Something on the flavor, on the feeling. It was Tim. It was home. Something he hadn’t feel in a long time.

He spent the rest of the quest feeling sure that he would make it, because somewhere on the heavens his dad was looking out for him, he promised he was. And this time it wasn’t a figuratively sentimental bullshit. His dad was really helping on the heavens. And Tim was gonna make it.

He saw him again when the quest ended. He appeared in all of his godly glory while Tim was living in the nest. He opened a can of soda and sat on his couch like he wasn’t a man Tim has only met twice, but that was ok, because that was his dad, and he was choosing to visit him. (Also, he wasn’t going to say no to a literal GOD) .

He yapped for two hours about the kids at the camp his dad forced him to work at ( “HE IS SUCH AN A-HOLE SOMETIMES TIM YOU DONT UNDERSTAND-“) and the more he talked about that camp, the more invested Tim got. At the end of it the man, his dad, just looked at him in the eye and said “y’know if you were there we could do this more often. Yer a better listener than that centaur. Also, I think your brothers would like having you there”

He leaves immediately for camp after that. The family thinks Tim decided to leave them for not believing in him, so it’s a shock when he comes back after the summer being great with a sword and with a Tan his skin haven’t known before, not even after fighting crime during the hottest days on San Francisco, and he was happy, like actually happy. A kind of happy he never was with them.

Tim made friends there. He was friends with Annabeth, a girl from the Athena cabin, who honestly thought that Tim was one of them after they had a talk about strategies on the field and all that, and was about to fist fight Dionysus for claiming one of her brothers. She still called him brother, but now she understood that Tim was a Dionysus kid. And her boyfriend Percy. They talked all night about the weight of being a leader and having your people die without you being able to do anything. Percy talked about a boy named Ethan and two girls named Zoe and Bianca. Tim talked about Steph, Kon and Bart.

Tim told him about the Bruce-quest, and Percy told him about the time he was ready to fist fight a good to get his mother back from the underworld.

He also fully loved his brother. Pollux was great and made him feel welcomed to camp. They talked during lunch and Pollux showed him every single thing that made camp especial. He also teached him how to make fun of their dad without turning into a dolphin, so yeah. They got along like a house on fire.

He also made friends with a girl from the Aphrodite cabin. Her name is Drew. She was kind of an asshole and tried flirting with him, and THEY DID GET TOGETHER FOR A BIT, but after some time they decided they were better as friends. And friends they were. Best friend even.

He never told the Batfam any of this.

So after some months in Gotham there’s a cult going around calling themselves “Children of Dionysus” and doing atrocious things.

Duke walked in on Tim trashing the training room of the cave, and later on Jason walked in on Tim having his fourth bottle of wine.

Tim was FURIOUS. Not only that was disrespectful to his dad, but to his brother and himself too. He was going to pick every part of that little cult and trash it.

There he meets Bernard. Then they get on a relationship.

When a sathyr comes to take Bernard to camp Tim goes with him, excited to have his dad meeting his boyfriend.

Dionysus has never been more uncomfortable than when he had to claim his son’s boyfriend in front of him. It wasn’t that hard before! But now they had those things against incest on the human world and he knew this wouldn’t be pleasant to any of his sons.

[quillandtea]

Tonight’s thought

Let’s talk about Nicola Coughlan, Jake Dunn, Luke Newton, and this whole messy situation. Because, honestly, I’m baffled, frustrated, and trying to make sense of what’s real versus what people want to be real.

First, let’s address the Lukola fans (myself included): there’s this belief among some fans that Nicola and Luke are secretly in a relationship. The proof? “Crumbs.” Literally crumbs. What are crumbs, you ask? They’re the little moments people cling to: behind-the-scenes clips, interviews, photos where they’re smiling at each other, or moments where their characters (Colin and Penelope) are obviously acting and showing their chemistry. And yes, their chemistry on Bridgerton is undeniable—it’s what makes Polin work. But let’s be real: they’re actors. Their job is to sell their attraction so people will watch the show. That’s the point of their work.

Outside of playing their characters, WT (walking and talking outside of work or being seen interacting) is also thrown in as “evidence,” but even then… they’re colleagues! Of course, they’re going to have some level of friendliness. So where’s the solid proof? Why is this idea of them being secretly together so persistent? Why do we cling to the crumbs but never acknowledge the lack of an actual loaf?

Now let’s flip the narrative to what everyone is actually talking about: Nicola and Jake Dunn (JD). There’s been so much speculation and, honestly, the evidence there is glaring. Pictures of them in Malta, NYC, concerts, dinners with friends—and not just casual group shots. There’s that one where they’re holding hands outside a restaurant, and you can’t convince me they were expecting paparazzi there. And her phone screensaver? Him. She even just posted a photo to her 6.5 million Instagram followers with him casually in the background. Are we really going to pretend she didn’t know what she was doing there? Isn’t that confirmation at this point?

Here’s where I’m stuck: if Nicola wants to keep her life private (which is absolutely her right), why is she feeding the narrative of being in a relationship with JD? She hasn’t done anything to deny it, and her actions seem to support it more and more. Posting a picture with him in the background, allowing herself to be seen holding hands with him in public, attending multiple events together—these aren’t the actions of someone trying to shut down rumors. If anything, it feels like she’s subtly confirming the relationship without outright saying the words. Why is she adding fuel to the fire if she doesn’t want people talking about it?

And let’s be honest, if she were doing all of this with Luke—public outings, dinners, intimate moments, social media posts—the fandom would absolutely lose its mind declaring them a couple. So why is the narrative different because it’s JD? Why is this relationship so downplayed by some fans when she’s doing all but holding up a neon sign that says, “Yes, I’m with him”?

Here’s where I’m torn. Do I want her to be with Luke? Absolutely. They’re adorable together, their chemistry is off the charts, and yes, it would be a fan dream come true. But… if she’s with JD, it’s honestly upsetting. Let’s address the elephant in the room: he’s 13 years younger. Thirteen. That’s not a small age gap, especially when she’s closer to 40 and he’s just barely into adulthood. It’s hard not to feel frustrated about it. The power dynamics, the life experience gap—it just doesn’t sit right with me.

And what if she comes out she’s actually with JD and confirms a long-term relationship? What excuse would fans have then? How would Lukola survive off these crumbs if the whole loaf is clearly JD? Would people still deny it or cling to some “oh, they’re just friends” narrative?

This whole situation is just confusing. I like Nicola and want her to be happy, but the mixed signals are maddening. If she’s with JD, I can’t help but feel disappointed for personal reasons (again, that age gap). If she’s not, why does it look so much like she is? Why is there so much effort in keeping it vague? And why does Lukola live off crumbs when there’s clearly no solid proof?

Maybe I should just leave and block anything related to Nicola and stick to reading Polin fanfiction. At least there, we know how the story ends. This is what happens when you ship real people—it’s exhausting, messy, and makes you question why you cared in the first place.

[godmadeaterribleerror]

Chapter 2 - Sick and Full of Pride

Mini-Series Masterlist

Tags: Dean Winchester/Female Reader, Sam Winchester/Reader (platonic), angst, fluff, mutual pining, smut, Dean's got the Mark of Cain, uh oh.

Summary/Warnings: You, Dean, and a sleeping Sam drive back to the bunker. Usual Warnings, plus light smut.

Author's Note: Dean driving does Things to me have a whole chapter with it.

Title from Drive by Halsey

Word Count: 5k

Read on A03!

Chapter 1 - Chapter 3

You’ve been in the car for almost eleven hours. The drive home was supposed to be eight, Dean is by no means going slow, and—as he’s told you many, many times—he doesn’t get lost, so you’re starting to suspect that you won’t be home any time soon.

As such, you’re now trying to find a reason to very casually and inconspicuously bring up that, if you’re looking at another three hours in the Impala, you’d appreciate it if you and Dean could make the team effort to kick Sam into the back so you can move to shotgun. You rarely get the opportunity—it arises exclusively when Sam wants to sprawl across the larger bench, you made Dean pie to get on his good side, or Dean and Sam are fighting, so Sam loses shotgun privileges—so you plan to take full advantage of this one.

Dean beats you to it. He’s been drumming on the wheel for about an hour in a beat you can’t find any real pattern to, he keeps shifting in his seat, and when he meets your eyes in the rearview mirror, there’s something that’s not quite stress—but close to it—on his face.

“Do you, uh, you wanna come up here?”

You blink, leaning forward between the seats to whisper in his ear. Don’t want to wake up Sam, and, really, any excuse to whisper with Dean is one you’ll take. “Yeah, but,” you glance at the sleeping lump of Sam. “What about Goliath?”

Dean shrugs. “He can sleep in the back. He’s lanky,” Dean says your name, shooting you a small grin, and you almost fall forward. “And I want you up here.”

“Oh.” You flush, but force yourself not to read into it. Sam’s asleep. Asleep people are worse company than awake people. “Okay.”

“You’ll talk to me, right? Up here?”

He sounds a little nervous, and your words fall out in a rush of reassurance. “Of course I’ll talk to you. I lo-” You catch yourself, and focus your attention on a dial on the dashboard as you continue. “I like talking to you. I’ll always talk to you.”

“So yeah?” Dean’s voice is casual, but he’s not looking at you anymore. He’s staring at the road—which he probably should’ve been doing the whole time—and his grip has become white-knuckled and tight on the wheel. “You’ll come up here?”

“If you can get Sam out, sure-“

Dean pulls off the side of the road, pushing his door open, and stomping around the hood of Baby. You’re a little dumbstruck, not entirely sure what’s happening, and a small rap of Dean’s knuckles on the window pull you back to your senses.

You push your door open, frowning up at him. “What-“

“Let’s go.” Dean’s hand moves to your arm, but he flinches back almost immediately, like you’ve burned him. Even in just the streetlights, you could swear he’s blushing. “C’mon, Sweetheart, need some backup.”

Once you’re out of the car, rubbing your arms and watching Dean and Sam exchange low words—Dean’s sounding urgent and Sam’s just sounding a little irritated—you try to look up and down the street for some clue of where you are. It’s mostly bushes, yellowing grass, and telephone poles—so literally anywhere in the Midwest—and this old dirt road isn’t really that different from any other dirt road, but it still feels familiar. Like you’ve been on it before. And the track marks on the upcoming path look suspiciously similar to the track marks behind Baby-

Sam stands up and shuffles to the backseat with a few grumbling sounds, and Dean holds the door open for you.

“M’lady.” He makes a wide, sweeping gesture to the seat, and you give him an amused, dry look as you walk up to his side, trying not to get high on how incredibly real his boyish, proud smile looks.

“You’re very cheesy sometimes, you know.”

“Yep.” He doesn’t seem bothered, and his eyes never leave yours as you climb into the seat. “Part of my charm.”

There isn’t a good answer for you to offer him that isn’t God, it really is, so you just make a half-hearted shrug and sink into yourself, letting Dean close the door and return to the wheel.

The first few minutes are silent, and the longer you look at the passing fields, the more you feel like you’ve seen them before.

“Hey, Dean?”

He hums, and you turn your head to see his gaze flicking between you and the road.

“Do you know how much longer we have left? Before we’re home?”

“Few hours.” He shrugs, and it’s a loose movement, which is a good sign. “Traffic’s a bitch.”

You glance out the windshield to the completely empty, dark street. “Traffic.”

“Yep.”

It’s not worth pushing him on. You’re fine here—you’re fine anywhere if you’re next to Dean—and Sam looks a little more comfortable, so if the drive ends up going until morning, you won’t care that much. You might become a little more worried about Dean, but you’ve gotten used to being worried about Dean. You’d rather the worry be about he might be losing his sense of direction, or developing short-term memory loss, because we’ve definitely taken this right before instead of he’s shattering glass and doesn’t seem to do anything but look sad and it’s going to make you cry.

“So, um,” you keep your eyes on the dial from before, because looking at Dean while you talk to him is never a good idea. “You’re still feeling okay?”

“I’m feeling great. Whatever hocus pocus shit Rowena did worked wonders, Sweetheart, I’m feeling amazing.”

You smile, and something that’s been tight around your heart for months loosens. “That’s really good, Dean. I know you didn’t want to try this, but-“

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” You see another loose shrug in your periphery, and your smile grows. “I gotta listen to you and Sam more, sometimes your ideas can actually be good.”

That makes you look up at him—primarily to glare—and it’s immediately a mistake. The shadows and ripples from the streetlight, cutting over his lips and jaw and cheekbones in the night, are making him look somehow more attractive, and you think it’s because of the joy. Dean’s grinning between you and the road, and there are no burdens pushing his shoulders down or weighted over his handsome features, and his whole face looks happy.

“Um,” you swallow, unable to tear your gaze away from Dean. “What’s the betterlust feel like? What does it want?”

Dean pauses, and he clears his throat in a deep, rough sound that is incredibly unproductive for actually focusing on his words.

“Feels like the bloodlust, I guess. I don’t, uh, it’s like a hunger.” Dean runs one hand carefully over the wheel, glancing at you with darkened eyes you can’t read, but want to watch you forever. “But for really specific things. And if it doesn’t get those things, I get…” He trails off, shaking his head slightly. “I feel like shit.”

“Like a craving?”

“Exactly like a craving.” Dean shoots you a grin that’s all pleased teeth, and you couldn’t look away from him if you tried. “Kinda like when we’re on a stakeout and suddenly you want a burrito, and if we don’t get you a burrito you start to get all mean and whiny.”

“I do not get mean or whiny-“

Dean chuckles, shaking his head. “You get very mean and whiny. I ain’t gonna forget when you threatened to castrate Sam because he brought you a salad.”

“And I won’t forget that you backed me up, Winchester. You offered to get my knife.”

“Because you were being mean and whiny, and I’m not looking to ever get castrated.” He gives a fake, overdramatic shutter. “The loss of Dean Jr. would hit many people very hard.”

You flush, whacking his arm. “Asshole, I was not going to castrate you-“

“You would.” He shoots you a wink. “But don’t worry about it. I appeased the monster, and everything’s intact and functional down there.”

It takes effort to roll your eyes, because you know he’s not even taunting you on purpose. Dean has no way to know that you’d never castrate him—you probably weren’t going to castrate Sam either, the point was more to put the fear of God in him for thinking salad was an acceptable alternative to burrito—because the monster he was teasing you about lived in your abdomen and only roared for him. It reared it’s head at the deep, rolling sound of Dean’s voice, grew warm and sensitive at every brush of a big, rough hand on your skin, and was fed by any sliver or scrap of attention he threw you. The only way to truly appease the monster was to let it out of where you’d trapped and desperately ignored it, and the only way to let it out was for Dean to look at you, and not stop.

But you’d learned to deal with that. As long as the monster was tended to, kept in line and from falling out of your mouth with a shout of Dean! I love you! Please look at me, because I really, really love you! You’d be fine.

“Fine.” You sigh. “I’ll give you mean, but I have never been whiny in my life-“

He gives you a flat look of amusement. “You’re a little whiny right now, Sweetheart.”

There’s no way for you to win this argument, Dean’s backed you into a corner you’re more than happy to be in—it means he’s smirking at you, unbelievably pleased with himself, and he’s drumming on the wheel again—so you just roll your eyes.

“Shut up.”

“Uh huh.”

You flip him off, he lets out a loud laugh, causing Sam to stir in the back seat.

“Dean,” you hiss, your hand shooting up to cover his mouth. “Quiet-“

He scoffs, pulling your hand down. “Sam’ll be fine, he’s slept through more than me laughing. Don’t know where the hell his hunter instincts go when he knocks out, but nothing short of a hurricane is gonna wake him up now.”

“I know that, I’m just,” you glance at your hand, back in your laps as still buzzing where your palm had covered Dean’s lips. “He’s been really tired.”

Dean’s grin drops slightly, eyes flicking between you and the road. “What about you.”

“What about me?”

“Are you tired?”

You pause, trying to get a read on your own body. Your eyelids do feel heavy, and your body does have that strained feeling of exhaustion between your muscles and bones, but you’ve been more tired. And moments like this—just you and Dean, talking without any worries or sadness or pain—are so rare, you don’t want to miss any of it.

“I guess. But-“

“Get some sleep,” Dean says your name in a stern voice, his attention fixed back onto the road. “We’ll be home soon.”

You blink at him, and realize he’s taking the first left turn in almost three hours. “I’m fine, Dean-“

“You and Sam have been working overtime for me,” he grunts, shooting you a firm look that’s not angry, but firm. “You both deserve some rest. I’ll get you up when we’re back.”

You’re going to argue—to push back and try to explain that you can sleep later, you’re not really that tired and you’d choose talking to Dean over almost anything—but he turns up the music and that’s it. You’re not moving him on this, and if he thinks you need rest, he won’t talk to you until he deems you’ve rested.

It’s insufferable, and annoying, and so fucking impossible to fight with how he won’t stop looking at you with concern, until you sigh, curl into your seat, and pretend to close your eyes.

You’ve gotten good at faking sleep around Dean. At keeping your eyes just open enough to watch him like, admittedly, a creep, and savoring the moments where he’s just himself. He’s not trying to perform the big hero and protector and fighter role for you and Sam that he’s so good at—despite what he seems to think—because you and Sam are both, allegedly, asleep.

Well, Sam’s definitely asleep. But you’re drifting, toeing the careful line between the hazy fantasies that run through your head on loop and the reality of Dean, right next to you and so damn pretty.

He’s always so pretty, and right now he’s alive. He’s purely Dean—entirely himself, which is and always has been more than enough—and it makes his every movement electric. Every dart of his tongue over his lips—pink and full and probably soft and well fit on your own—makes you salivate, and that makes you wish he’d run a broad, thick finger over your mouth, wiping away the slight drool.

He’s drumming on the wheel again, and it turns into some sort of rhythmic lullaby, moving you higher and higher until everything is Dean.

It’s his strong, firm arms wrapping around you and flexing as he moves the wheel, and pinning your hands above your head with big, calloused hands you could swear keep brushing over your cheeks. It’s those lips that drive you insane pressing small, soft kisses all over your body before moving to your lips and turning desperate and rough. Dean’s tongue down your throat and his nose suddenly bumping against your clit.

He’s moved, down, down, down your body—you can feel marks that never really formed but are still sensitive and blissful from Dean’s presence—and suddenly you’re so needy you might die from it. You can still see Dean—the actual Dean, his eyes locked on the road in reality but focusing only on you in your head—and you can’t focus on anything else. His hands gripping the wheel are suddenly holding and kneading at your hips, but still deep inside you, pumping in and out in the same rhythm of the song.

It’s mostly fantasy now. You can smell the leather and whiskey and amber of Dean, your Dean—not your Dean, not your anything unless it’s here, in your half-dreams—and hear his humming, feel the heat radiating off his body. And it’s all feeding into each other, and now you’ll never come down. It will just keep being Dean’s hands on you—tossing you around like a ragdoll but touching your skin in a way that’s painfully careful—and body caging yours in. His full lips sucking and nipping at your neck and breasts and inner thighs, his tongue flicking at your nipples and clit and running over your teeth. Dean hold you down, up, under him or above him or against him, touching you however he wants because God, you’re not needy and desperate by any means but it would feel so good for him to use you. To be the cause of his post-sex swagger walk—as you and Sam have deemed it—or receive one of those cocky winks over breakfast. To hear him praise you, or praise him, or do anything he asks because he always does most anything for you.

Except this. This one thing—playing with you until you’re screaming his name and seeing stars—is the only thing Dean hasn’t done for you. Won’t do for you. You’ll never ask of it, you won’t be able to handle it when he says no aloud in a deep, gruff apology, and so you’ll just live here. In fantasy, where Dean’s attention is fixed on you and never strays. Because in this fake world, it’s only you and Dean, and you could like that forever.

And, right before sleep pulls you under, you could swear that Dean’s eyes on your are deep and blown-out with hunger, and realer than anything else in the world.

——————

Dean was starting to get the hang of this. It was surprisingly easy to do most of what the betterlust demanded, because they were things Dean already did all the damn time. Driving was an obvious one that he’d latched onto almost immediately—something in Dean’s brain had always felt a little easier to live with when he drove, and his hands never felt dirty when he was holding Baby’s wheel—and was easy to feed. Dean had to drive, because that’s how they got around. She and Sam knew him well enough to not try and ask and drive themselves, and it was part of Dean’s job to drive them between cases and the bunker, so satisfying the betterlust had pretty much been handed to him as a quick, easy fix.

But the trick seemed to be not feeding it too much. Taking just enough to satiate the betterlust into something that didn’t make him feel sick and hot, but keeping it from going overboard, because it was really fucking easy to go overboard. To get in the car and know that the drive could be short, but Sam had knocked himself out and She probably wouldn’t be far behind, so if Dean missed two or three turns or drove in an overly complex circle for two hours, nobody would stop him. They were only an hour from the bunker, nobody seemed to be upset by the additional time in Baby, and driving sent Dean’s head into some sort of humming, blissful joy he’d never felt in his damn life. It was like the quiet ease of driving had been duplicated, amplified, then shot right into his blood.

And two or three turns turned into nine or ten, and two hours became four. And She didn’t fall asleep, and the betterlust started to get hungry again. He couldn’t stop glancing in the rearview mirror at Her drop-dead gorgeous face that couldn’t be his, and wanting her. Wanting Her to say one word to him, or smile at him, or sit just a little closer so he could offer the betterlust something. Anything that wasn’t this starving, tortuous, ugly need for Her. Closer closer closer, never close enough and She needs to be closer so Dean doesn’t rip off his own skin from how it’s boiling or pull out his tongue because it’s starting to cave in with words he’s not allowed to say.

Dean didn’t trust himself to talk to Her, but the longer she was awake, within his reach, and invading his head with Her everything, the closer he felt going batshit insane. He had to keep himself in fucking check, and figure out what he could be allowed to do with this.

He could not be allowed to touch Her. Touching Her was dangerous. Touching Her made this high feel like he’d died in the best way possible. Touching Her was like all the simple easy of driving and the sweet taste of pie and humming strength of a good drum line in a song that pounded in Dean’s chest were rolled into one thing that was soft and warm and just real good. The betterlust fall entirely silent just when his hand brushed against Her’s, then became loud and feral when the contact was taken away. Touching Her was so good that it made everything else became pointless. Touching Her was the best, so Dean could not be allowed to touch Her because then he’d never stop.

And this wasn’t dangerous. It was just driving, and everyone knew Dean loved driving, and Dean felt like he could walk away from this. That, when they parked and She and Sam shuffled back inside, Dean was strong enough to ignore the hungry voice in his head and itch in his hands to just start driving again. Just like how he’d eat a cheeseburger, but he didn’t always need to eat a cheeseburger. He’d eat pie, and then walk away. Dean could control this. The betterlust was easy to feed, and better to feed—She’d really nailed it on the head with that—and nobody got hurt.

As long as Dean kept himself under control, nobody got hurt.

So Dean could talk to Her. Be near Her with the knowledge that, if he let his gaze linger on Her peaceful, sleeping face for too long, he’d be more of a goner than he already was and never be able to look away. It was safe to do in the car, where he could pull his attention away because of safety and immediately offer the betterlust some more driving the fill the loss of Her. Dean could keep driving, and look at Her in moderation, and nobody would have to freak out about certain people being in love with certain other people, or an annoying, third person who was a massive lump in Baby’s back seat getting a smug I told you so face.

Sam was wrong, though. There wouldn’t be anything to be smug about with Her and Dean, because Sam was wrong. As they neared the bunker—for real this time—it was just Dean, the rumble of the engine, and the music, Dean fell further into his head. Usually the music could drown his thoughts out, but the betterlust was so determined to have Her that he needed to grab it and shout that having Her wasn’t a fucking option. Dean could offer the betterlust whatever it wanted, except Her. He tried to reason with it—She’s too good, Dean isn’t close to good enough, and She doesn’t want him so he can’t lose her over something dumb like feelings—but it didn’t seem interested in Dean’s flawless, rational logic. The betterlust just wanted Her in every way possible, and Dean couldn’t get Her, and this might be worse than the bloodlust. This was unfixable, and Dean wanted it just as much as the betterlust, and his chest was going to cave in on itself and take his heart down into his stomach, pressing it to tiny pieces and pushing it out so everyone could see how little control Dean had over his own goddamn body.

He’d have to get through this. They were only ten minutes from the bunker, and he’d work out how to see Her in moderation, and She wouldn’t get uncomfortable from how much of a sick, twisted, perverted son of a bitch he was, and he’d have Her as he was allowed to and never lose Her. He’d do every other thing that fed the betterlust, and nobody had to get hurt. The whole point of this was to stop the hurt, so Dean would get a fucking grip and live with what She and Sam had worked so hard to get him.

Then She started moaning. Dean thought it was just a noise of discomfort at first—he even slowed down so he didn’t disturb Her—but then she did it again, and it was breathless and needy and he was going to die. He could feel his face turn red, feel how his jeans were suddenly painful to wear and all the blood in his body was focused and throbbing where Dean needed Her, and all his plans of keep Her close but still at a manageable distance went out the window. Her lips were parted as Her breathing became heavy, She was squirming slightly in the seat under the touch of whatever the hell was doing that to her in her dreams, and Dean might have be forced to jump out of the car if he wasn’t already pulling into the bunker.

There was a long moment—right after he turned off the engine—where the only sounds were Sam’s snoring and Her moaning, and Dean wondered if this was hell. If Rowena had actually just killed him in that kiddie pool, and he was being tortured with Her looking and sounding and being like something he wanted to eat but was just out of his reach, all while his little brother slept in the back seat.

Dean adjusted himself in his seat—hiding his boner from Her view and blocking Her from Sam’s—and cleared his throat as loud as he possibly could.

Her eyes blinked open—hazy and blown out from either sleep or Her dream—and even Her adorable, sleepy yawn made Dean twitch in his pants.

“Hey,” She rolled a little onto her side, pushing herself upright, and Her voice sounded airy and soft and Dean could not look Her in the eyes. “Are we home?”

Dean grunted, nodding, and he had to get out of here. If he didn’t, he’d either kiss Her or explode. “Just parked,” he muttered, clenching his fists on Baby’s wheel in a slow pattern that usually calmed him down, but right now was doing jack shit. “Gonna go get some food.”

She hummed, leaning forward into Dean’s periphery with an expression he recognized as Her Dean, please be okay one. She was trying to kill him.

“Are you-“

“I’m fine. Hungry.” That wasn’t a lie. Dean was starving, just for something that wasn’t exactly food. It was right at his side, and probably wet and bitter in a way that would be so fucking good, and moan and whimper like a song, would shiver at his touch and grind on his hands and face and cock and-

He had to get out of here.

“Got pie in the freezer,” Dean said, pushing Baby’s door open in the way that he always yelled at Sam about. Too rough and reckless, practically punching her open, and he didn’t have the time to chastise himself or apologize to his car, because he had to go. “Wake up Sam for me.”

“Dean-“

“I said I’m good.”

“I know, but can you, can you please just look at me-“

Dean’s head turned of its own will, and it was the biggest mistake of his life. Her face was still slightly flushed, and she looked so nervous and worried, and her eyes were scanning over his face the same way they did in his dreams. Where he’d be covered in blood, and She’d look him over with care that never seemed to waver with doubt, and guide him into the shower. Strip them both, pull Dean under clear, steaming water and kiss him as all the blood was washed away. He’d be allowed to roll Her nipples between his fingers, and shove his knee between her thighs, and kiss Her until she said his name-

“Dean-“

He had to shake his head, force the spell of Her out of his vision and head and blood, and grab the betterlust by the throat to stop it from grabbing Her face and pulling it to his. She wouldn’t want that, and She shouldn’t do things she didn’t want to do, and Dean couldn’t be near Her like this. He still couldn’t control himself, and all of this had been a mistake because he could hurt something bad and sit in the guilt and hatred but still have Her, but now he couldn’t have Her at all.

He wasn’t even sure what his excuse was, but within the next ten seconds he was half running out of the garage, into the bunker, and locking himself in his room like some sort of feral animal. A beast that had to lock itself away from the people he loved, because they didn’t deserve him and he couldn’t force them to do more for him, and couldn’t stand to ask for what he wanted and be denied.

But he could get control back. He could find the smaller things that the betterlust wanted and keep feeding them. Drive and eat and maybe watching some fucking TV. Listen to music until he went deaf and work on Baby and stay the hell away from Her. She was dangerous to him. Not Her herself—She was awesome and cool and hot and Dean wanted Her on his face or lap or under his body, which was the problem—but the way the betterlust seemed to tunnel vision onto Her. The way Dean would just look at Her and his whole body would start to ache and boil and twist until he was talking to Her. And the more he spoke to Her the more he needed to touch her, and a little more control would slip, and eventually he’d just be unable to leave her side.

The distance was going to hurt Dean more than Her anyway. He’d figure out how to control this and immediately seek Her out when he did—She probably wouldn’t even notice he was avoiding Her—but until then he had to stay away. He’d agreed to this for things to be easier, not for himself, but for Her and Sam.

Staying away from Her would be easier for everyone. No complicated, emotional, chick flick conversations. No rejection. No showing Her that he wasn’t the strong, immovable man she was friends with and being tossed out onto the curb. Dean didn’t ever want to lose Her, this would make Her walk away—She wouldn’t want him, because she’d seen every single part of him and nobody would want them all—so Dean had to keep himself under control.

And it would be fine. Dean had control now, and he could feed the betterlust with so many other things, so this would be easy.

End Note: Answer to the last note - I am incapable of writing a short and sweet chapter, I had to make the whole mini-series an extra chapter, send help.

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[iwannascreameurekaa]

"if it's okay for poc to be cast as originally white characters then why can't we cast white people for poc characters"

Great question I have a wonderful answer for you

to start this is about a post I saw about Leah playing Annabeth Chase in the Percy Jackson show. Someone in the comment section was complaining about it and saying that they think a white person should be casted for Hazel if there's ever a live action heros of Olympus. This person claimed that if race has no meaning when casting a black perosn for Annabeth, then why would it matter for Hazel?

here's where this person is so incredibly wrong that it confuses me on what their brain is used for if not to make a complete thought. Hazels race was one of the most important things about her backstory

Hazel was a woc in there 1940s she went to a school for colored children. She legit experienced segregation. The whole reason that she had a connection to Leo is because she went to school with his grandfather sammy and the only reason she knew sammy was because of that school for colored children. Just that is enough to tell her that yes her race does in fact have a meaning and isn't something you should change

then the person in the comment section started talking about Frank.. then Leo and then piper. Basically they ranted on and on about any poc character

Let's start with Leo now. I'm bringing back the hazel point because again the only reason that he and Hazel had a funky connection at the beginning of moa is because of that school for colored children. Leo's Hispanic heritage is also important when concerning how his life with his mother was up till he died. One of the reasons he ran away from his aunts house was because she was religious and constantly called him the devil.

what about Frank? Well his Chinese heritage connected him to Poseidon which made him related to Percy which isn't massively important but you know it's a plot point so I see no point in getting rid of it

and piper? One of the first things we find out about piper is that she is bullied for being cherokee. The FIRST thing we see of piper interacting with characters besides Jason and Leo is her experiencing racism. It is insane that some people think that's just a thing that could be thrown away. Her Cherokee heritage also relates to her main character development in the trials of Apollo and lots of her "wisdom" is old cherokee stories her grandpa would tell her

and tell me one fucking moment in the series where Percy or Jason's race was important. Other than them being Greek/roman because they're all Greek and Roman so shut up

oh but since everyone's complaining about Annabeth being black in the show that must mean that her being white in the books is SOOOOO important

... it's not. In fact she's literally 1000x tanner than most of y'all depict her in the "canon" fanart so... yeah. And those of y'all saying "what about her being blonde that's her main character thing blah blah blah" I'm sorry is this the 2000s??? Blondes being dumb is a horribly outdated stereotype that is only ever used in a joking manner now back when the lightning thief was written in was a thing used against blonde women but now it isn't.

You know a certain group that is targeted and deemed dumb because of how they look? People of color, specifying black women.

Annabeth Chase being black is probably one of the best casting decisions ever, and I say this knowing that race wasn't the main thing when casting. Leah is the perfect person to play Annabeth and I will die on that hill. She has the script determination and the emotional range that makes her the perfect candidate for Annabeth.

If Annabeth Chase were real she would love Leah and she would hate you all for saying Leah isn't her.

Rant ended. Get your heads out of your asses before you say more racist shit.

[love-hold]

want to relive some of the top moments of the 2024 atp season?

(all mentioned events from my atp poll)

1) daniil medvedev and melbourne

- was this the cause of danya’s 2024 season downfall? probably. he played four five setters, two of which he started two sets down. his match against emil ended at around 1 am. he beat z*erev in the funniest way possible. he earned himself a new record stat: playing the most sets ever at a slam (31) in the open era. and from two sets up once again, he lost a heartbreaking slam final. but the fact that he managed to reach the final is incredible: i really hope his sufferings get rewarded. maybe 4th times the charm?

.

2) the great bee invasion of indian wells

- i don’t know how this happened. i don’t know why this happened. why did the bees solely target carlos? why were they there in the first place? is carlos actually winnie the pooh? this event doesn’t seem real, but it sure gave us the best memes of the year. shout out to lance, the bee man.

3) indian wells quarterfinal: rune vs medvedev

- people underestimate how fucking hilarious this interaction was. holger hit a defensive body shot but danya didn’t see holger’s apology. in classic danya fashion, he 1) snake-eyes holger and 2) mocks rune’s famous short-shorts. the best part: this beef lasted approximately an hour. “if you want we can talk about this in the locker room ” “there is no reason to talk about it” oh okay then. worlds shortest tennis spat.

4) madrid 2024

- this was the atp’s cursed tournament of the year. /@/fritzes has a lovely post about this so do check that out! ill just simplify this chaos here for now. carlos lost to rublev and jannik withdrew half an hour later. jiri received a walkover to the semis after daniil retired, and then jiri gifted a walkover himself to FAA. in total, FAA received 3 walkovers on route to the final, two of which were the QF and SF. andrey ended up winning the title, uncharacteristically calm. is this a new rublev? no. he was playing with tonsillitis, antibiotics, baby food, and a dream. what an absurd two weeks.

5) holger rune versus the ATP

- holger vs jannik on monte carlo clay never fails to deliver drama. in response to his unfortunate scheduling situation—having to finish two matches in a day due to rain delay and leaving him without proper rest for his match against jannik (who later won)—holger leaves a salty reply on his twitter account. i hope he never gets a socmed manager.

6) corentin moutet

- i can’t believe this didn’t get voted more, moutet during clay season was absolutely fucking hilarious. not only was he the first victim of rg’s new umpire head camera (him being a tennisblr hit post makes this even better), but in madrid, he caused a scene with the poor umpire bcause of his dire need for coffee. i also believe this match against shang was also the match where he managed to get hit by a sprinkler on the opposite court. to top it all off, in rome during his match against djokovic, his phone alarm randomly goes off mid match. even novak was amused.

i’m not even done. this man nearly bageled the unstoppable jannik sinner in round 4 of the french open. this man reached 5-0 AD-40 but somehow, the carrot head managed to save two games, denying moutet that bagel. i’m kinda mad that jannik clutched it: that would’ve been the funniest stat of the year.

7) tomas machac and his shorts

- okay i will give credit where credit is rightfully due. machac defeated djokovic in geneva. he beat alcaraz is shanghai. he won olympic gold for czechia in mixed doubles with his….…um…….with katerina siniakova. he probably has even better accomplishments this year, i just don’t know them at the top of my head.

but he will eternally be remembered as booty shorts machac. his shorts were literally shorter than katerina’s in paris. is it a distraction tactic? gives him better speed? is it effective? who knows. he pulls it off, i guess. (honorable mention: his antics against jannik in shanghai)

(source)

8) the resurgence of stefaniil

-what a great time to be a stefaniil truther during the laver cup this year. i think pictures speak louder than words, especially in this case, so enjoy. and for the video, please play it with audio.

9) hubert hurkacz

-hubi was so unhinged this year oml. he started his year by making iga cry at the united cup after poland’s doubles loss against germany. at roland garros, he attempted the most awkward, failed attempt at a coup. the words “hey G…” will follow his career just like “small cat” follows daniil. grigor’s expression of complete bewilderment and “really man? you’re doing this?” was the cherry on top.

oh i’m not done. i truly don’t know what possessed him at wimbledon this year. after fucking up his knee during his match against fils, he goes on court after a quite lengthy MTO and decides to dive AGAIN. he promptly retires on match point. like brother what. my favorite part of this situation is wawrinka and monfils both getting caught shit-talking hubi afterwards, saying something is wrong with his head. oh hubi

he disappeared for a little bit due to that injury but at the tail end of the season, he delivers one last hilarious moment. would love a look into his brain.

10) jack draper and jannik sinner: puke besties

- oh the friendship that rocked the tennis world. this relationship is fascinating: jack is full of swag and jannik is the literal definition of swagless (it’s okay we still love him for it.) this friendship saga is a two part experience. it first began in montreal with dinner doubles…and the infamous ass slap heard around the world. jannik reveals that he and jack are “good friends” which first of all, carlos alcaraz found dead in a ditch. THEN a month later, they’re projected to play each other in the USO semis and even more details are revealed. wdym they text each other often? WHAT DO YOU MEAN JAN AND JACK COOKED PASTA TOGETHER? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON???

then the actual semi itself: horrendous. for them, not tennis wise though because those first two sets were actually pretty competitive…until jack threw up the first time, bless his heart. two historically-known sickly victorian children playing during the humid day session: that’s a recipe for disaster. at least the net hug was cute. (honorable mention: the anna & jannik bf memes that emerged)

11) taylor fritz vs arthur rinderknech

- okay this moment needs some context. flashback to roland garros, round two, 2023. taylor fritz is facing the last french man remaining in the main draw, and as per usual….the french crowd is being french (no offense), rowdy and rude. taylor keeps his cool until he wins the match and he:

hot. i mean what who said that.

honestly, this is an iconic image, biases aside. could it get better than this?

yes. yes it can

flash forward to wimbledon 2024, r2. both taylor and his french nemesis are projected to meet again, and rinderknech has a few words to say.

yeah taylor wasn’t going to take that. after taking the win against rinderknech, he came up to the net and dropped the best comeback of the year:

what a year. and there’s many more that i missed. i might make a pt. 2 but the WTA version is next.

[nekrotiize]

It's a controversial take because everyone's stupid but I'm never going to stop calling fandom + shipping culture homophobic. Fandoms are consistently extremely homophobic, and shipping culture is consistently even more homophobic.

Yes, the way fandoms center men so religiously is obviously misogynistic. The only people who deny that are themselves misogynists. But the aggressive centering of men and the resultant fixation on male/male dynamics lends to this slimy coating of homophobia that nobody talks about. The misogyny is an issue, clearly. But gay men are, to most people in fandom, toys. We are sex objects to coo over. It's intensely voyeuristic. Every god damn interaction is scrutinized to hell and back, and the second a man shows any kind of emotional connection with another man, it gets pounced on, and he gets thrown into a mill that flattens him down to one of three deeply heterosexual yaoi tropes that are fandom's only way of processing the existence of gay men.

It doesn't even matter what that man is. A disconcerting amount of time, people will start fawning over the idea of literal rapists being gay with zero critical thought applied. As if gay men being painted as and assumed to be sexual predators isn't a method that's been historically used to literally legally murder us. (What the fuck do people think "Gay Panic" means, even?)

Gay men aren't given the ability to be human beings in fandom. We're not afforded nuance. We're accessories, we are constantly objectified, and no one ever takes the time to consider that we have cultures, and that we are real human beings. We keep getting shoved into the most heterosexual boxes physically possible for the easy digestibility of people who do not want to see us as human beings. Semes- sorry, I mean Tops are the taller, older, more masculine, capable men of the relationship. Ukes- oops, sorry again, I mean Bottoms are the smaller, younger, more feminine, and totally useless women of the relationship. It's painfully yaoi. Gay men in fandom are never given the opportunity to be regular men, because people are too busy turning everything into homophobic, misogynistic fetish porn of our existence to be normal for five seconds.

There's something comedic about how many people in fandom want to say they're progressive, accepting. Safe. How fandom is welcoming of everyone. Look, we've made all this representation! And every time, gay men are sex objects, the women are scapegoated to hell and back, the headcanoned trans men are always skinny white softboys not a single day over 21 maximum, lesbianism is maybe acknowledged 0.5% of the time and largely for brownie points, bisexuals are across the board made out to be overtly horny and often sexually aggressive, fans of color are harassed out of the community left and right, anyone on the aro/ace spectrums is called a freak and a killjoy for not participating in shipping, characters on the aro/ace spectrums are heavily included in shipping content with the excuse of "aros/aces can date/have sex like normal people, too!" with zero regard for what our love looks like, and there isn't a single accepted trans woman headcanon to be seen.

Fandoms are circuses full of dirty little liars with cotton stuffed in their ears and Shipping Culture is a disease.

And if you criticize either of them, the most annoying white liberals you've ever seen will start clutching their pearls because how dare you criticize something that's free?! Don't you know a lack of price point immediately negates any criticism?! Just laughable.

[demon-country]

The fact that I have already seen a good number of people complaining about how mean Stolas was supposedly being to Blitz in his song and thinking that he legitimately believes that Bliz is a wretched little worm that he owns is just. Utterly baffling. I'm genuinely unsure how anyone could miss the fact that it was an act. It was all a ruse he threw together on the fly in an effort to protect Blitz, wherein he pretended to be a big, bad, masterclass manipulator who was just using Blitz as his pawn.

For anyone who doubts it, here's the truth straight from the song writer's mouth:

This is literally the same exact ploy he pulled in Truth Seekers. He came in at the last minute and put on a big show to convince the people threatening Blitz and the rest of I.M.P that he was a big, scary demon who was so much more powerful than them (which he is) and practically owned them as his minions used to carry out his evil deeds (which he doesn't).

Though, perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised, since pretty much everyone I've seen talk about that scene fails to realize that that and his "who dares threaten my impish little plaything?" and "what's the matter, demon hunter? Never seen a real demon before?" comments were nothing but an act and he didn't actually believe any of it, too.

In Mastermind, he was trying to make sure that all of the blame would be put on himself, so that, as shown above, they would give Blitz the same treatment the others got when Blitz claimed they had nothing to do with it and were just following his orders.

In Truth Seekers, he was trying to intimidate the humans and make them so scared he wouldn't need to resort to violence to stop them. Why else would he put on that whole horror movie display and announce himself and his relationship with Blitz at all, if his entire goal was anything other than to incapacitate them with fear? If all he wanted was to get I.M.P out, he could have quickly and easily killed them without saying a word. Calling Blitz his plaything and saying that he was a real demon served to a) establish that he was the kind of person who had playthings, because that's the kind of cruel, domineering creature that most humans expect demons to be, and b) further intimidate them by implying that he was exponentially more powerful than the demons who just decimated their whole entire team.

He didn't mean any of it either time (except for when he called Blitz an idiot, maybe); those weren't things he actually believed. Why would he legitimately think of Blitz as his plaything and someone he owns when in both cases it was far enough in the timeline that he was already in love with Blitz and wanted a real, genuine romantic relationship with him and not just the fleeting taste of one he got while restrained by the full moon deal?

Those were classist/racist things to say, of course, and that was the point. That was language he deliberately used because it fit the persona he was using to appear villainous. Where he went wrong the first time and how his actual internalized racism came into play was in how he didn't for even one single second think about how those statements would look to the members of I.M.P, because he'd never once had to think about the fact they must get those kinds of demeaning comments all the time and had no way of knowing that he was faking. Calling them "little creatures" while he was scolding them probably wasn't part of the act though, and he didn't realize that it was classist/racist to say those things at all, regardless of intent, so he never apologized or reassured them that he didn't actually believe Blitz was his plaything or that they weren't real demons.

But with the power of hindsight and a more omniscient view of the characters that we get later on, it's so clear to see that all of these comments were only said as part of his theatrical portrayals of a villain, rather than things he truly believes, because he doesn't talk like that after Ozzie's when he realized just how much he had unintentionally been hurting Blitz. Don't fall for his ruse, guys, especially not when it's as blatantly obvious as it was in Mastermind.

[watchingsunrises]

Ziam is real, climb on board

For the first time, we’re experiencing a genuine influx of people looking into Ziam, the real relationship between Zayn and Liam. And honestly it’s about time. It’s always been so beautiful and devoted and consistent and visible to those willing to invest and find out for themselves. It’s also been so unseen and dismissed and a bit buried by Larry too. I’m a Larry too, but right now I’m all about Ziam. I’m really happy Ziam is getting there deserved time seeing some light.

I’m not here to convince anyone. Ziam isn’t new, it has been around and discussed and real since 2012 when we believe their relationship started extending beyond friendship. There is an existing treasure trove that can be sought out by people willing to open their mind and examine it, especially from Zayn and Liam themselves. Right from the start and up until present day. 

The truth is we are experiencing a moment we weren’t expecting. First with Liam’s death. Now with Zayn touring for the first time ever as a solo artist. 

People are interested in Liam and that is a normal reaction. People are noticing a lot of things that don’t make sense and are curious and questioning that. People can’t make sense about his relationship with his “girlfriend”, the public PR performance at his funeral of a select group of celebrities (all aligned with Modest, Simon Jones PR or existing narratives regarding the boys) and of course the narrative around his “son” Bear.

Usually when things don’t make sense, there is a good reason, we know this with Larry too, and so in the same way people should look and critically engage. Gaps can’t always be filled when we are dealing with public media narratives that then clearly don’t align with who a person really is consistently as a human. It's pretty hard work for all involved to contain a decades plus closet, in times like this. That is a big part of what people are noticing with Liam. They should question public narratives and media. Liam wanted to be seen and heard for who he really was, and celebrating and talking about Ziam right now is one of the biggest parts of seeing and knowing Liam. Its not disrespectful if you've done the work to see and know, just like with Larry.

Now we also finally have Zayn touring for the first time ever as a solo artist. Seeing him on stage after a 10 year wait is kind of exhilarating and like any of the boys you get a reminder on stage of who the person really is, really leaning in and hearing the lyrics live and seeing his being. Zayn is very definitely coding to us in a way that he hasn’t been able to do so before. He knew we would be looking and he wants to be seen. He is literally telling us that he is honest and truthful in his music. Zayn’s public narrative has never made sense either, it's all the same closeting stuff. Copy of a copy of a copy.

The narrative set up for Room Under the Stairs was actually quite strange, and in reality it translates very poorly to the lyrics and the emotions. So many gaps and things that don't make sense. In the future I will share some analysis on RUTS. I’ve been immersed in the album non-stop since May. The album to me is mostly about his closet - the pain it has caused him, the effect it has had on his relationship, the pain and effect it has had on his long term partner, the ways in which he has had to reframe his mindset to live within the reality of his closet, the ways he has changed his lifestyle to focus on the simple things in life to help his mental health impacted by his closet (and other things). Yet throughout all that heartbreaking pain, he still talks about his person, his lover, he refers to 'they' in many key lyrics, he brings his partner into the lyrics clearly, lyrics that clearly refer back to past and present times. Its the same person, it always has been in Zayn's lyrics. He tells them and us that he wouldn’t change anything despite all that pain, that their love has been worth it, that he is devoted, that their love was like stardust from the start until forever. The most specific songs relating to his person haven't been included on the tour setlist - How it Feels, The Time, False Starts, Something in the Water and of course Stardust. They are the strongest songs on the album, the ones that have made me cry non-stop for the last 6 months. I suspect he rearranged the setlist, they would have been too hard to sing live. Instead we see a few B sides we wouldn't have expected on tour. I hope more people will listen to RUTS, it's absolutely devastating, empowering and life affirming and you can really see and feel who Zayn is.

Enjoy your Ziam journey if you decide to take it.

[sunshinetomioka]

He also said Jayvik was a bromance (which is a term I really dislike as I've always seen it used by cis men to discredit mlm ship) and now homophobic fans are using it as an "own" (you can't tell me he didn't know it would have this effect)

And like in all good faith we need to take a step back and realise a lot of (again) cishet men who are "ok" with Caitvi as a ship but against Jayvik because (according to them) it has no logic and that it's just bromance (and now adding the asexual part) are homophobic and riot never really tried to do something about it.

You just gotta see how they treated K'sante, barely writing a good lore about him, just throwing in there he had a boyfriend and just completely ignored him during the heartsteel era. Like cool there's a bunch of lesbian but honestly I'm wary about it since LoL is mostly aiming at cishet dudes like... Arcane did make a lesbian ship not sexualised and feel like an actual real couple but there's lot of underlying homophobia in the community.

Also back on the literal ableism, I've seen people explain that Viktor was aroace cuz he ignored Sky (?????) and was too focused on hextech (he was literally trying to save himself from dying ???) and yet they'll say that if you don't have the vision then you didn't see well ??? And it's also something I've seen talked about with Jinx :///

Sorry for ranting on your post OP :') it's just so frustrating.

I'm not a fan of Viktor being asexual because that reinforces a lot of stereotypes about this community.

Apparently the co-creator of Arcane said that Viktor is asexual right after the show ended and people started shipping jayvik... Sorry but it looks weird!! Are you trying to stop people from shipping these characters? Because it won't stop!

You know, disabled people, people with autism and people with mental illness are often portrayed as asexual because they think they're incapable of falling in love or that they don't deserve to be loved. Furthermore, with disabled people reinforce the idea that they aren't desirable. People can't imagine the idea of them having sex, enjoying intimacy.

Sex education condemned that with Isaac's character!!

I mean sure, it's okay to headcanon Viktor as asexual (more if you are asexual, we need more ace representation), but I don't think the co-creator of the show is doing that in good faith. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know that asexual people can fall in love, have a partner and even had sex (obviously depends on the person).

Also, sure make the guy in your show dealing with no feeling emotions and become some kind of machine the ace representation of your show, how original! Never seen before!!

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

i've seen zks be like "if we were self inserting we would've been doing so with mai since she's such a blank slate character" but the thing is mai *does* have a personality, it's just an unconventional type of personality they can't personally relate to as much as they can with katara or jin

Katara also has a personality - one zutarians constantly disregard for the sake of self-inserting. Hence them constantly going on and on about how "No 14-year-old girl would go for a bald 12-year-old instead of the hot, older guy with a cool scar."

I wouldn't even say Mai's personality is unconventional, it's just personality that sexism says girls should not have. Being all nurturing and soft and vulnerable with someone else doesn't come easy to her, she doesn't react with too much emotion to most things, yet she will speak her mind when something isn't to her liking - and most things are not to her liking because, despite her apathy, she's not exactly someone people would discribe as "easy going". If Mai was a guy, especially a conventionally attractive one, she would be super popular, much like her boyfriend who could be a real bastard sometimes.

You just have to look at all the zutara fics, fanart and meta that constantly make Mai out to be an uncaring, cruel, and downright abusive person for doing things like not pretending to like something just because her boyfriend was the one to get it for her, or getting cranky, or asking Zuko to get her food, or simply getting mad at him when he unfairly accuses her of liking someone else... and then act like Katara is the "better woman" for supposedly being super easy going and "only wanting love"

Zutarians want a doormat girl that they can use to not only ship themselves with Zuko, but also to CONSTANTLY suck up to him. Katara just happened to be the one that was there from the start and, more importantly, didn't actually interact with Zuko that much, so she doesn't ruin their fantasy of "ideal girlfriend for precious boy Zuko" (extra ironic considering that, if Katara really was that passive instead of stubborn and strong-willed, Zuko would fucking hate her).

Because Zuko and Katara are rarely seen truly talking to each other and having to deal with their clashing personalities/goals, zutarians just pretend the negative scenes were "repressed sexual tension" to ignore the simple fact that these two characters genuinely hated each other - Zuko hated her for being a foreigner that dared to put up a fight against his nation's imperialism, and Katara hated him because imperialism killed nearly everyone in her tribe, including her mom - and then hyper focus on the few positive scenes, taking them out of context to make it romantic.

More importantly, they can pretend that they were TOTALLY thinking about each other during all those scenes in which they're dealing with literally any problem, as if Zuko and Katara were each other's "saviors", even though their arcs have nothing to do with each other -and since these are the overwhelming majority of the "scenes with zutara subtext" they are PERFECT for people who like self-inserting because they are completely blank slates.

But Mai? There are entire episodes in which her romance with Zuko is a super important part of the plot - and she speaks her mind regardless of whether Zuko likes what she has to say. She can be bossy, she can be cranky, and she is her own damn self (which Zuko canonically likes). More importantly, the show doesn't take the easy route of "every problem in their relationship is caused by something outside of their control, like the war or an obviously evil romantic rival that is totally coercing one of them into a relationship" - aka the lazy excuses Zutarians use to justify why their ship was never canon, let alone endgame.

Mai's personality is not easy to erase because she has an actual dynamic with Zuko, something Katara didn't have until the very end of the show and thus it naturally didn't get fleshed out enough to threaten the idealized version of it zutarians came up with in their heads. If Mai had been a one-off character like Jin, with only enough time to be charmed by Zuko's cluelessness, they would LOVE her.