#I can tell that both a cis man wrote this and that he's the most vanilla goddamn tool in the world just from this line alone

[memory-and-sky]

hobie x male reader """""""""dating"""""""" hcs?

okay this is something i can work on and get done relatively quickly. THANK YOU FOR THIS ANON! to everyone who’s sent in asks for fics, they are being worked on, i swear🙏 hope you like this though!

word count: i dunno, it’s a good chunk of headcanons

containing: explicit mention of homophobia, brief description of injury via fighting, small small small sexual reference, hobie brown x m!reader, could be cis or trans but i wrote this with cis males in mind

the rest of the headcanons are under the cut!

“dating” headcanons

hobie brown x male!reader

since Hobie lives in the 70s in Britain, gay rights weren’t really…. y’know, the best.

for your safety and his, the most he’d do in public is holding your hand. and even that was a big sign of rebellion. holding hands with a person of the same sex? how scandalous!

anyway, while holding your hand, he’d love to put both your hands in his pocket, especially if you run cold (like me :P).

he’d totally be the type to rub his thumb slowly on your palm, too.

Hobie knows a lot of people, especially in the queer and punk scenes. he gets invited to a lot of house parties, and feels safer to put your relationship on display more then, but he’s definitely not over the top with it.

a simple arm over the shoulder, around your waist, or a hand in the back pocket of your jeans, though he doesn’t need PDA to show your relationship off.

“Have ya seen this new patch on the ol’ battle jacket? Or this pin? Yeah, my lovely boyfriend made ‘em fo’ me. Gorgeous, innit?” [speaking to a random friend]

“Have ya had the pleasure of meetin’ my boyfriend yet?”

“I thought you said you hated labels…?”

“Mmh, (y/n)’s influential like tha’. Clearly ya haven’t met ‘em.” He’d say, undoubtedly with a smirk plastered on his face.

i really don’t think Hobie would get particularly jealous over you.

of course he loves you with all his little gay heart, but he doesn’t feel insecure or get upset at you or anything if you talk (or flirt) with another guy (as long as you communicate). if anyone is flirting with you and you seem really disinterested, he’ll totally intervene.

maybe hold you in a way that makes it clear you’re together, or explicitly tell the dude that you’re not interested.

but he doesn’t like treating you like an object he ‘owns’ at all, it’s why he’s pretty hesitant to slap the ‘boyfriend’ label down on your relationship right away.

and the 70s were a sexual revolution! revolting against gender norms and relationship norms, stuff like that.

if anybody ever dared ask you two ‘so who’s the man and the woman in the relationship?’ or ‘who’s the top and who’s the bottom?’ Hobie would be dreadfully disgusted and educate them immediately.

speaking of sexual revolution and whatnot, Hobie would be down for polyamory if you were.

you two have a very good line of communication, and if you wanted to open your relationship and communicated that to him, he’d be fine with it.

you’re so great, he gets how other guys might fall in love with you, too.

Hobie would give the best gifts, try and change my mind. whether it’s for your anniversary, birthday, or just a random gift, they’re always handmade.

maybe he’ll make you a piece of clothing like a shirt, hand-pick a bouquet for you, or even customizing/fixing one of your old clothing pieces with a bit of added Hobie flair.

Even small things, like a charm, pin, or patch have so much love put into them because he loves you!

touching on my first point again, homophobia was very present outside of the queer/punk scene, even in some aspects of the punk community he didn’t feel welcome at all.

usually, he’d tell people where to shove their opinion, but sometimes he’d feel completely unsafe to be himself around anyone.

yeah, he’s spider-man, but he’s also a very young adult. he could fight people, and he definitely used to, but he hated coming home to you being worried sick about all the horrible bruises, cuts, and scrapes on him.

back to the lighthearted stuff, he’s definitely the type of guy to cook for you.

doesn’t matter what meal it is, he’s gonna make it for you if he has the chance to. and he actually makes good food, despite living in Britain his whole life.

if you’ve got issues with trying new foods, his place will always be stocked full with your safe foods no matter what.

you’ll eat together, and he’ll gaze dreamily at you, wondering how he ever got so lucky to land such a stellar guy like you.

this man loves coming home after a long day, popping in a VCR for a movie of some sort (TV could be in your bedroom or living room, doesn’t matter), and just cuddling with you.

he doesn’t mind being either the big spoon or little spoon, but tends to like being big spoon cause he likes holding you close to him so much.

he’s very scrawny, but doesn’t mean he won’t love you all the same, and hold you tight.

one more thing, Hobie loves you above all else. he’ll protect you and fight for you anytime you need. when it comes to his partners, he does not play around!!

[horsegirlwarcrimes]

would u tell me a bit about some svsss thoughts, au‘s ideas or wips of yours?(<- half way through a 9 hour train/bus journey & really bored) please?🥺

i could tell u about my tgirl-sqq/sy au that i’m never gonna write, cuz i genuinely don’t enjoy writing? or maybe show u a picture of my sisters newborn (cutest baby u have ever seen)

omg PLEASE tell me ur thoughts on tgirl sqq I love trans sqq (any direction but esp transfem it's so special to me)

let'sss see, I have a lot of wip and au thoughts at the moment as I nervously procrastinate several important projects 😅

I had a cold earlier this week so I wrote half of a fluffy fic inflicting my cold onto SQQ:

“Liu-shidi is out at the moment,” Shen Qingqiu said, an awful rasp to his voice that Luo Binghe hated.  “Surely Shizun can call him back?” Luo Binghe pleaded.  “For what?” Shen Qingqiu asked, waving a sleeve. “A small cold? This master has managed worse. He’ll return when he returns, and until then it's not so bad.”  “But Shizun–” Luo Binghe tried to object, but Shen Qingqiu gave him a stern look that caused Luo Binghe to fold at once. He redoubled his efforts of looking sad and concerned and despondent as a quick countermeasure, and Shen Qingqiu sighed.  “It’s not so bad,” he repeated. “This master can still perform his duties just fine. Most likely it will pass before Liu Qingge even returns.”

outside of that, i have been on a major qijiu brainrot kick (i have a 8k fic for them i should be posting as soon as i decide if it needs a stronger dose of sqq or not + decide how to end it (sob)), and also reading a ton of disciple days/canon timeline bingqiu and having big feelings about how much i love them. ive also been returning to my unhorny women and gender studies liu qingge omegaverse fic that i am always contemplating but never actually writing, in which liu qingge is a not-like-other-girls omega in PIDW omegaverse and tries to marry shen qingqiu due to fantasy comp het

besides that, here are some concepts ive jotted down in my notes app this week loll:

dragon!YQY hoarding peak lords

this is literally all i have written down for this but i want it to be something SO BAD. save me dragon yqy. dragon yqy save me

Yue Qingyuan is cursed into an endless sleep The other peak lords call on Shen Qingqiu to enter his mind and wake him up as the person closest to him, only... SQQ actually barely knows this guy! He and Binghe take a dream journey through YQY's subconscious and eventually find that SJ is haunting him and eating his power which is keeping him asleep. They must either banish him ORRR.... Sun and Moon Dew mushroom time

i dont think ill write this so if anyone else does....... please take this idea and run w it haha

Sy transmigrated into the little palace Mistress??? Ahhh...

i THINK this came after reading stiltonbasket's SY!QWY fic, because i was thinking about the old palace master being a huge creep and shen yuan dealing with that from inside huan hua palace. i really see shen yuan going on a journey of gender discovery (his own gender AND the perils of misogyny that he never understood as a cis internet man(he thought he was cis at least)) and political intrigue as he tries to get to the heart of whats wrong with huan hua while dodging and or attempting to track down luo binghe. plot??? idk her

Deaf Shang qinghua!! Mbj doesnt notice

someday i must write this bc i love writing my favs as deaf or hoh. id love to explore shang qinghua as being both physically and culturally Deaf and how that plays into his interactions with the world post-transmigration, where there is even less accommodations or access for someone with a disability and he is cut off from his community, especially in terms of his work on an ding and relationship with his martial siblings. mbj not noticing a major facet of his life feels in character and like great drama lol, and i think the conclusion is definitely mbj learning ZGS that teaches him and he ends up liking using it way more than speaking verbally, both for sqh's ease and because he doesnt like to talk lol

i hope this is what u meant hahaha i could talk abt wips and svsss ideas all day. they are living in my head rent free 24/7 ｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ｡ i hope your trip goes by smoothly and quickly!!

[horizon-verizon]

At least, Cersei is the one to refuse to go public with their incestous relationship and isn’t out there proposing to marry Myrcella to Tommen, unlike Saint Jaime who call his sister ‘queen of whores’, treat her as his property, and victim-blame her (I tell you, he [Robert] loves me not/And whose fault is that, sweet sister ?), and never spare a thought for Tysha (or Bran for that matter), but thats normal, its because he’s a feminist and teenage girl-coded. No wonder he has some sympathy for Criston Cole, lmao. Do people genuinely believes Jaime is a victim of patriarchy and that his gender doesn’t favor him over Cersei ?? Insane. Can’t wait for him to die. It’s 2023, Jaime isn’t Adam and Cersei isn’t Eve, dude is a misogynistic, racist and hyperprivileged white man and his father’s golden boy. Funny how you all talk like Green/Criston’s stans when it comes to Cersei and Jaime.

*EDITED POST* (9/21/23)

Probably from this recent post that itself has 3 links to other posts where I talk about Cersei as a character.

Um...when did I ever either imply or directly say that Jaime was "a victim of patriarchy and that his gender doesn’t favor him over Cersei"? Or express that he was better than his sister, morally? Or express that Cersei deserved to die more than he did?

Perhaps you have that impression because I never talked about Jaime exclusively once, or you're just going off of what you recently read and horribly misinterpreted the purpose and argument of that post. If the latter, I advise you to reread. If the first, I don't write about Jaime much simply because he doesn't interest me as much as Cersei or Tyrion, no one asked me my thoughts about him, and I'm not thinking of him apart from his relationship with Cersei or Tyrion. His knighthood and masculinity are...not "easy", but direct enough for me to not dwell as much as his other siblings' issues. (look to this post by blankwhiteshield about Jaime) I generally care more about women, children, and other marginalized people in fiction, even when I do sympathize with some white cis straight men some of the time.

I mean pre-Brienne Jaime. That's just how GRRm wrote his arc.

For me, blankwhiteshield's posts about Jaime HERE and HERE both suffice to give me a picture of who Jaime is bc they fill in some blanks I had in my pre-existing assessment of Jaime. Which actually wasn't favorable, anon. I find Jaime to actually be very annoying, and no, I do not think that he is Cersei's victim. He is deluded in some ways as much as her and is not a good person because of the abuse and emotional neglect they all get from Tywin/Westerosi society. I actually should have, since again, there were blanks. You can take a look at those links as well.

Look, Cersei is evil & abusive AS WELL AS a victim of domestic abuse woman & of misogyny since childhood. These are not mutually exclusive nor does it NOT mean that her domestic abuse only and directly caused her power-hungriness and need to control if not every, most aspect of her life and those she sees will help her get or maintain control and a good image of herself. Neither the abuse nor misogyny against her erases the fact that she develops hatred towards women, going so far as to violently and sexually objectify them like w/Taena. (Her using what she's observed men do to affirm power and copying it). Or that she pinched her baby brother's penis at a very young age, showing her classist and blase willingness to target children/one of the most vulnerable groups for her own sense of control over her husband, family, etc., and political power. She is also very willing to sacrifice/risk the entire city for her own control of power, similar to Aerys II. Cersei is complicated and there is nuance to her character, but she is unmistakably evil simultaneously. What I like about her or what I find compelling about her (if you haven't read the post about it) is that I can understand her motivations, and relate in some ways, and from practically babyhood she's been trying to be essentially "good enough" and perfect through external, social values of competency BUT also as someone has said: her need for perfection and power and total love comes across as pure in its own sort of twisted way. Her emotions are so intense and uncontrolled and she remains totally unaware of her loneliness that she comes across as childlike.

I also find it very funny how you're criticizing show!Rhaenyra for wanting to marry Jace to Helaena (I presume, you don't specify but that is the closest betrothal to the one you make b/t Myrcella and Tommen) when you say: "At least, Cersei is the one to refuse to go public with their incestous relationship and isn’t out there proposing to marry Myrcella to Tommen". Because while this would have done nothing to assuage Alicent--which was what Rhaenyra was trying to do--it was also not that bad of a deal for Helaena or Jace themselves. I personally dislike it bc, again, we're erasing Rhaenyra's relationship w/Laena and how she ever made it so that Jace married Laena's daughter...but I digress. OR you probably were referring to Jaime expressing the desire to go public with their relationship, that conversation? Again, what does this have to do with my argument in the post I recently posted and that I assume you're responding to?

[jess-le-mess]

Feedist Kinktober - Day 23

(Prompt: Bonfire Bash 🔥)

[Content notes: Fat cis woman main character; thin cis woman love interest; f/f relationship; food/eating; mention of weight gain; short scene of erotic feeding and physical affection]

[Author's note: I wrote this back in September, before the word "dipshit" started trending due to Current Events, but it really is a good word.]

Bonfire

"Fiction writing challenges are stupid!" Luke huffed.

Emma clicked her tongue. "No, they aren't! The mark of a true artist is being able to place restraints on creativity and create something of value! Of beauty!"

He just laughed. "Restraints? What are you, a cop? People should just write what they want without someone telling them what to write! All I'm saying!"

"What do you know about anything? You're a cis white guy! You're, like, categorically a dumbass"

"Ooh, ad hominem, the last refuge of an asshole."

Emma, my girlfriend, and Luke, my best friend's partner, do like each other. Really. They were both English majors in university, and anytime we get together to do couple stuff, they get like this.

After university Luke went on to become a lawyer, and Emma owns a bookstore so in some ways she feels like she's still "grassroots" and true to her English major roots while Luke "sold out."

I try not to take any sides in this battle. I was a Business major. I work for a bank. I love romance novels. I have no dogs whatsoever in this literary squabble.

Jasmine, with whom I've been sitting next to this entire time, just watching the bonfire Luke and Emma had started for us, squeezes my hand and smiles at their bickering. "Love them."

I wrinkle my nose in agreement. "So so much."

We're at her family's cottage for the weekend to celebrate the Fall Equinox, hoping for one last burst of summer before the chill of October fully sets in. We've got snacks, plenty of blankets, and good company.

Emma pulled a joint out of her pocket, lit it, took a puff and then handed it to Luke who took one too.

"Listen," she said, "I am just saying that people use writing to connect with others. If you participate in a challenge like that, you can connect with others. Find your tribe and shit. It's not all about being, like, Books Van Gogh or whatever the fuck."

Luke nodded. "Sure, but longer work is more meaningful. It comes directly from your heart, and good writing is always a reflection of the soul. When you write what other people tell you it's like selling out, but you don't get paid; kinda pathetic, isn't it?"

Emma snorted. "Yeah, says the lawyer. Come on man, just admit you don't know shit."

Luke grumbled.

"I think any writing can reveal something of ourselves. We're all works in progress, Luke, and any writing is good writing. You put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard or whatever, you're saying to the world 'Here I am. Love me.' And, like, that's beautiful, holy shit."

He thought about that, took another drag of the joint, and nodded. "Maybe so, maybe so."

Jasmine and I just shared a glance. It was kind of funny how similar we were, even down to our taste in partners, both of us apparently having a thing for kind of snarky lit snobs who think they know everything. Considering I was already almost thirty when we started hanging out, I felt pretty lucky to have found her.

We'd apparently actually been coworkers for some time before that, but Jasmine never approached me and I didn't know she existed.

I'd been thin my whole life, more or less, until I started seeing Cyn, my most-recent therapist. She helped me work through my issues around food, and my body to the point where I could at least accept allowing myself to feel pleasure. And building up my self-love allowed me to work through my fear of weight gain. And so once I gave myself permission to just live my life and do what I want nature took its course and I began to gain weight.

One day I was eating lunch, and processing my ambivalence at having to size up in my favorite jeans again while eating tacos from the truck across the street, a short, chubby Indian lady in a floral blouse appeared and slid into the seat next to me.

"How's lunch?" she asked nonchalantly.

"Good?" I replied, mouth full of food.

"Mm-hmm. Anyway, we should hang out sometime. If you want? I don't know how this whole 'making friends as an adult' thing works but, like, I have a good feeling about you, if that's not too weird to say. I feel like maybe we'd get each other, or something."

We went out for ice cream a few days after that, and have pretty much been talking regularly since then. She really helped me sort through my feelings on my initial weight gain; as a lifelong chubby girl herself, she sort of helped guide me with adjusting to life as a bigger person and I've been grateful for that.

But, like, we just have similar taste in food, books, and things like that too. She's really great.

"Hey sweetie, you hungry?" she asks softly, almost like she's scared I'm danger of starving. "I think the food should be done. Don't get up."

I watch her head over to the barbecue and start loading up a plate. She assembles a few burgers, adds scoops of some assorted dishes from the bowls set out on the picnic table, and finishes by dropping a half-dozen chicken wings on there. She then picks up a beer, cracks it open, and brings that over with the plate.

It's really a lot of food.

She presents it to me with a flourish. "Ma'am."

I take it from her, setting the beer haphazardly into the chair's cupholder, laughing. "It's a lot of food!"

I take a bit of a chicken wing and let the delicate lemon-pepper flavour hit my tongue, sending a now-familiar rush of through my body.

I moan a little, mouth full. "So good."

Jasmine giggles.

I look over at her, noticing that she hasn't yet gone to get food for herself. I point that out, but she says she's not really that hungry yet.

"You're always feeding me," I comment, as I tear into another chicken wing. "I swear you're trying to make me fatter."

She shrugs. "Oh, you know I just want to look after you. You're pretty much always hungry."

I laugh. She's not wrong. As I've gained, my appetite has increased and as I've let go of my old restrictive eating habits I've just completely forgotten what it's like to restrain myself around food. "Okay, fair."

"But also? I mean, yeah, I'm always hoping you'll fatten up more, love," she said, reaching over and giving my soft belly a rough squeeze. "You are just the most perfect fat girl there ever was. Well, other than me maybe. I just love ya, though. Never change."

I smile.

Emma, fresh off her battle of wits with Luke, comes over. "Hey babe, you doing good?"

"Mm-hmm." I eat another chicken wing, and wiggle happily in my chair.

"You got a little sauce or something on your face there," she says.

"Oh! Oops. Sorry." I move to wipe it, but she just takes my hand and pulls. I'm getting too heavy for her to actually get me to my feet, but I understand the meaning of her gesture, hand my food over to her, and then stand up.

Without a word, she leads me over to the side of the cabin, away from where Jasmine and Luke can see.

I looked at her quizzically.

"I may be a little high right now, but you don't gotta do that. It's fucking hot."

She leans forward and sloppily kisses my neck for a moment, and then finds a rhythm and begins to tenderly suck on it.

Then she takes a chicken wing off my plate, holds it up and says "Is it okay?" and then when I nod, tears the meat off the bone and begins pushing it into my mouth.

As I get through that, she looks at me again, and when I nod, holds the beer bottle up to my mouth and waits for me to tilt my head back, she holds the bottle as I swallow, forcefully holding it until the bottle is empty.

"Good girl," she whispers, feeding me the last few chicken wings and setting the plate down.

As I'm chewing, she grabs my lower belly and begins kissing all over my face. "Uhhh," she breathes. "You're so hot, god what the hell"

I'm caught up in Emma's sudden forcefulness, enjoying the moment. "Mmmm, I like this."

She's still breathlessly kissing me, touching my body all over, just randomly, desperately grabbing.

"Maybe I'm a bit high," she starts apologetically, "But god, hearing Jasmine talk about, like, feeding you, wanting to make you fatter, fuck, that broke something in me."

She bends over and picks up the plate again. Then with her hand she scoops some of what was still on the plate---mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, pickles---and pushes it into my mouth, tentatively, almost like she's not sure what she's doing.

I'm a little surprised by it, but I let the food into my mouth, let the flavour wash over me, and swallow it.

She keeps pushing food on me until I've finished all of the side dishes, and at that point I protest a bit but she feeds me the burgers Jasmine had prepared too.

When the food's gone, I'm standing there, very aware of my belly hanging forward, feeling heavy and full.

As Emma massages my bloated stomach, I let out a burp.

"Fuck," she says to herself. "Fuck."

She grabs my hand and squeezes it tightly, and then yells "Yo! Jasmine! You and dipshit good out here for a while?"

From the front yard of the cabin, I can Jasmine's giggle and Luke’s faint voice hissing "She's the dipshit."

Emma just looks at me, places a hand on my belly, her eyes filled with frenzied desire.

"Follow me," she says.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

honestly like. the more i take it apart and examine it, while going into it entirely is going to be A Post or Three of Its Own and will probably get its own thread: i think one of the reasons nine in canon upsets me so much is that i genuinely related to the version of him that made sense to me, when i tried to apply some continuity to his character from before his imprisonment vs after. he's actually the muse i wrote for the most prose for in this fandom, even more than five--which is saying something!--and he came to me pretty easily.

[longpost and Decidedly Harsh toward canon's depiction of him, but less ARGFMSKDKDKFK HATE than usual so much as 'man the awful way these people handled him was a waste.' believe it or not i'm actually pretty attached to him, but as the secret Better Version that lives in my head lmao]

the arc of his character could have been such a good one about how men and boys and the people around them are harmed by toxic masculinity, and examining the ways in which that's held up by other cis men, every other configuration of gender and AGAB, and both. he came through loud and clear to me as an example of a poorly socialized, abused, isolated homeschooler with very little life experience, who is throwing bits and pieces at the wall that he's cobbled together from the outside without understanding the experiences behind that kind of thing, to see what sticks. all this while having suppressed and sublimated his emotions so much that he doesn't actually recognize what he's feeling, and goes 'well, i guess this trauma reaction to killing people means i like killing people. let's go then!'

like... in canon, you can kind of see how the seeds of his trauma, and baseline personality, from before his capture might have gone septic in the process the way it does in canon. if he was already the kind of person who would spit that result out on the other side. the writers used his Acute Trauma as an excuse to go 'anyway his cêpan was a sexist dickhead under the guise of ~respecting women,~ and he got captured by pursuing a normal teenage crush and blames himself for it, and then he went through solitary for a year. so now he's a gleeful sexual predator who harasses john and thinks women are meat!'

and this becomes even more glaringly obvious when you set it next to how the aftereffects of his trauma are (not) depicted. this kid spent a year in solitary confinement--broken up by the intermission of mercy-killing his adopted dad after watching his torture--while not being fed enough and hurting himself on the forcefield on the regular. he's not going to immediately come out of that Ripped and an Incredible Polished Fighter; he's not going to come out of that a ~charming edgy debonair lovable asshole.~ this kid knows what the fuckin hat man looks like, dude. that's shit you come out of an emotional, physical, and psychological wreck, and not in a 'haha look how rude and boundary-pushing and violent and sleazy i am uwu' way.

he is barely going to be able to walk out of there on his own two feet. he is going to be hallucinating and not remember how to tell faces apart. he is going to freak out at anything like an enclosed space. he is going to be food-insecure. he is going to be constantly finding ways to self-harm when he feels at all out of control, and once again not in a 'haha i'm so quirky and edgy' way. he is going to have obsessive rituals and get stuck on repetitive thought patterns because you run out of shit to think about after a year with nothing to do but pushups, even before you add in the shiny new PTSD events to obsess over. which tend to take up all of your brain space even when you aren't isolated with them for long periods. he is going to be doing weird fucking shit after he gets out, bizarre and frightening shit that's not just 'being violent and a dick,' and other people will probably notice.

and all of this is before you factor in his backstory! (which, by the way, is not conducive to him coming out of his imprisonment an Unstoppable Highly Trained Killing Machine. he was taught how to actually fight opponents for Three Whole Ass Weeks before he got captured, and none of that was training against human-shaped opponents. i don't care how many pushups he does over how long, he still has had zero practice fighting Other People and that's immediately going to fuck him over in a fight. it's one thing to have him be dangerous because he makes up for lack of skill with being completely fucking berserk with zero regard for his own safety or anyone else's, but he's not going to be an unstoppable whirlwind of death. and you're not going to build muscle while you're being starved.)

and like. i could go on for a long time about how they fucked up his character to the point where seeing him onscreen anywhere outside his novella makes me instantly want to flip a table. but i think so much of what it comes down to--and i don't say this casually, i mean after laying out and examining all his scenes in the first series--is that he doesn't actually have an arc. he doesn't grow. the entire point of his character's existence is to be an awful person and never be held accountable, self-examine, or allowed to face any kind of real consequences for it.

it's genuinely fascinating to examine all the different methods they use to do this (which is for a whole post of its own), but he's not an exploration of culpability or responsibility--for past, current, and future actions--the way five's arc is. he's just a parade of all the abuse tactics and rhetoric the authors could think of, both direct and via enablement by people around him, to pour into one guy. nine is literally The Missing Stair: The Character.

contrast this with five getting nailed to the fuckin wall for things that are often, arguably, much less horrific or unhinged than what nine does. he's treated like a ~broken, irreparably insane monster~ by characters and narrative both. he's punished brutally and endlessly over and over and over and over no matter how much he tries to grow, or make amends, or even lay down and take everything that might be done to him as punishment because he Deserves It for, [checks notes] repeatedly having been groomed and manipulated for years. If You Can't Tell I am a Little Bitter

and it's not just other characters who suffer for it. the creators are SO invested in nine never being accountable, by himself or anyone else, that he is PUNISHED FOR IT when he makes even the slightest effort to unpack. when he has a moment of vulnerability during a breakdown over fucking up, he is restrained in exactly the same way as when he had to watch eight die. this so that he can have his self-blame literally beaten out of him to make him 'stop moping.' the writers don't care about his trauma, or being compassionate or fair in their portrayal of it, or letting him heal. the only thing they care about here is getting to write a Missing Stair as a good thing, and trying to get you, the reader, in on it by forcing you to like him.

anyway just. man. they did nine so fuckin dirty and their version of him brings down every other narrative around it. i know i rant about nine a lot but justice for my boy

[euphoricfilter]

Hi this is “afab doesn't equal nonbinary” anon

I went to twitter to check what was being said and it’s apparent that two situations are being conflated here.

So I wanna start off by saying that I wrote my first ask thinking this discourse was about fanfiction headcannoning but it seems someone has brought real life discourse onto tumblr.

The emasculation comment now makes sense too.

To put it shortly, Jungkook in real life is being called a woman, she/her, and a lesbian. This asian male emascalization.

This is up there with calling real life black women “men”.

It’s disgusting and I don't stand by it even as a trans person.

It seems some people -unfortunately white queer people- can’t see how joking and imposing headcannons on real people is an issue.

The only time headcannons and characterization can be used is on fiction interpretation of people.

I’d like to think that most readers and authors have the literature competency to know that writing and reading original characterizations that have BTS’s faces slapped onto them doesn't give us the right to then project them onto the real life members.

This is one of the rules of IRL People fiction.

You don't present these projections as truth in the real world and you ABSOLUTELY DON'T send them said content.

The real Jungkook we know and love is a man who is secure in his masculinity to explore his femininity. But he can only do that if it’s done SOLELY by him. Sexuality and Gender Expression is a PERSONAL journey.

By even delving into his feminine side he is taking back his power as a asian man in a world where asian men have been historically emasculated. But this only works if he is the only one with the choice to do it. It has to be initiated by him or else its bigotry.

When we start imposing what and how we think he’s supposed to express himself then we are becoming proponents of white supremacy.

So just like a trans person doesn't have to tell the world they’re trans, cis people shouldn't either. Like I hope that’s a thing we all understand? Right?

By joking that “Jungkook is gender” or any other weird shit, we’re actively commodifying his identity and essentially playing into Orientalism which is racial violence.

And just like I stated about some nonbinary people reaffirming binaries, white queer people have this tendency to try and put expression into a binary and unfortantely alot of afab grapple onto asian men, especially ones in kpop as their “new gender expression just dropped” as of this isnt a real fucking person.

It comes off like those weird geisha or asian android holograms/advertisements in video games/movies like Cyberpunk and Blade Runner. It's Neo-Orientalism.

So yes FICTIONAL characters who have Jungkook’s name and face can be nonbinary but don’t assume IRL Jungkook’s gender identity until he says so himself.

Even then, if he does come out as trans, we shouldn’t make a spectacle out of it. We should treat Jungkook like before; like when we perceived them as cis.

So I stand by what I said in the first post when it comes to FICTION.

But this is my post to say that whats happening on twitter IS EMASCULATION as what the other anons have pointed out.

With the new context, they are absolutely correct but they’ve brought it to the wrong person which is the author of this blog.

I want to apologize to that anon cuz I essentially argued a VALID point that they weren't making but at the same time what they’re arguing in relation to twitter is not what’s happening on this blog.

We’re conflating two issues.

Essentially we’re both right:

Jungkook can be nonbinary with they/them pronouns in FICTION

Jungkook is a cis man who explores femininity in REAL LIFE AND IS BEING SUBJECTED TO EMASCULATION

And honestly I’m concerned about IRL and it should definitely be talked about.

that was sort of what i was trying to get across. in no way shape or form am i projecting fictional jungkook onto him in real life. they’re essentially 2 different entities, and nothing i’ve ever written about him, be it his gender identity or how he’s presented is me being like hey this is real life jungkook and this is how i feel about him, which i assumed was just a known fact from writer to reader.

me writing gender fluid jungkook isn’t there to emasculate jungkook as a person in real life and his own gender identity, because of course like everyone else i’m simply a fan who has surface level knowledge about his own person and obviously don’t know everything that he hasn’t shared with us

i don’t agree with everything that everyone says on twitter, and i know that what some people see as jokes can come off as more harmful than funny, especially within this context and how people view men or women, or just people in general based off race and problems that have been around for so long that no one apparently wants to talk about and solve

not only gender identity but i think sexuality plays into this too but i won’t go too deep into that because it’s a whole new conversation that we could talk about a lot.

what the anon said about what happens on twitter wasn’t wrong at all, but within the context of what i’ve written i personally don’t think it was fit within what they were trying to argue, especially with their first initial statement made which was me being disrespectful to nonbinary people and then bringing race into it.

yes, people on twitter have the tendency to say weird, harmful shit, and yes i don’t agree with all of it. but i’m talking a fictional story 🕺and nothing i’ve ever written is me saying that yes that’s exactly how i view the members of bts, because it’s not. and i’m not sitting here saying that junkook is this or that in real life. there’s two very different worlds, and i’m fully aware of my boundaries as a fan and my thoughts towards real life jungkook aren’t presented through fiction

i agree!! i think especially with what happens on twitter it’s an issue that needs to be brought up more otherwise we’re just gonna get no where and it’s like a constant cycle of people just projecting and being weird and kinda harmful and just sad 😭

it’s just the anon hadn’t brought it within the correct context. and i’d just assumed we all knew that just because i’ve written something, i’m aware that it’s not me thinking that real life jungkook is that way

and i hope that everyone who reads my stuff, or the fic if i evidently decide to upload it, know that i’m not projecting fictional jungkook onto real life jungkook. i’m very comfortable within myself as a fan, i know where to step and i know what’s wrong and never once would i want to purposefully subject jungkook to being emasculated when i’m aware it’s such a big issue for asian men and a topic that i personally think should be brought up more especially within the twitter community who have a tendency to say things without thinking about the underlying issue of what they’re posting about

anon wasn’t wrong about twitter but there were a few other points i wasn’t totally in agreement with, but i hope bringing up the topic is kinda a way for everyone to think about the issues the more.

and i apologise that if any moment it’s come across that i’ve tried to either emasculate or invalidated any of the members of bts through what i’ve said or written or what’s been posted on this page, because really that’s the the last thing i’d want

[moss-the-irishman]

Thanks for answering this, don't worry about the time it took to respond. If we're going to talk about factors for bias, I'm a white Irish queer non-binary Aroace with autism (I don't know if the last part is relevant, but still). And I'm Gen Z. Essay under the cut:

While I don't know much about feeling extreme gender dysphoria beyond I know I'm a guy/male to a certain degree, but I'm not cis either, I agree with you that if Percy were to be a trans boy, he would have had to transition early on, and like you said, while it is not impossible for a trans person to start really wanting to transition quite early, the urge to change their gender can hit somebody at any point in their life, and if Percy got that urge early on, i.e. before The Lightning Thief, it would have made some notable changes in canon.

For example, when Percy was at Yancy Academy, he was put into a boy's dorm room. If Percy was a trans boy who hadn't transitioned from female, then that would have caused some problems. If they (As in Percy and Sally) decided not to tell the Yancy school board that Percy was actually a boy who was just born in a girl's body, then he would get put in the girl's dormitory, which would leave Percy feeling miserable and dysphoric. If they did try tell that to the school, then they would have risked getting judged by the board members, because as you said before, in the original point in time that the PJO books took place (2005-2010), transgender identities were barely understood then, let alone respected. Even if the board decided to let Percy be situated in the boys dorm room, he might have gotten badly bullied by the other boys in there, who didn't understand/believe the "boy stuck in a girl's a body" story (Unless Grover protected him from those bullies), which leads into my next point.

Finance. Given the money situation at home in TLT, I don't think Percy would have been able to transition (medically) to male before the events of the books. Sally worked as a candy store worker, which paid well enough if I remember correctly, but also, if I remember correctly, Smelly Gabe was the one in charge of handling the money at home, and we know that he spent most of their funds on gambling, alcohol, and cigars. Let's say if Percy was AFAB, and he and Sally found this out some time after Gabe came into the picture, they wouldn't have been able to afford transitional surgery/HRT because of Walrus man's spending routine.

And while we're talking about Mr. Ugliano, without getting to much into it, knowing him, he would most likely not show a lick, a shred of respect towards Percy's identity if he was told about it. Percy was able to piece together that Gabe was physically abusive towards Sally while Percy wasn't there after he saw him raise his and at her in warning near the end of TLT. Even if Gabe didn't outright do stuff like deadname Percy (at least in front of Sally), that probably would have been a point of contention between the both of them. However, in canon, when Percy comes back the their apartment, and is made to fork up the money he has in his pockets, he says something about hoping Gabe loses that money he gave him, and Gabe retorts, "Yeah, well your report card came back earlier, so I wouldn't try making any funny comments, Brain Boy!". This indicates that Gabe sees and commonly refers to Percy as a boy, which he probably wouldn't if he knew Percy wasn't a boy from the moment he was born.

With all of that being said though, you're also right that it's not outside the realm of possibility at all that Percy could be trans. Everyone has their own interpretations of Percy's gender, and I say Headcanon and Let Headcanon. I know I just wrote a whole essay about how I think Percy is AMAB, but if anyone sees this, you can go ahead and ignore all these facts I lead out and do you own thing. This is just my take and not everyone will agree with me. And that's okay. I like seeing trans headcanons for Percy. Just that my default for him is AMAB.

By the way @aki-bara, here's a link to a post I reblogged about someone who has four different versions of their headcanon for Percy's gender (The fourth one is well funny lmao)

also going to tag @pain-is-too-tired, who also thinks Percy wouldn't really worry about his gender identity that much.

A while ago, I made a small headcanon about Percy Jackson being Cassgender, and I'm only realizing now that your reply of "Send It" had meant you actually wanted me to elaborate. Lol my mistake, at least I'm here now.

I don't really think Percy really cares all that much about his gender identity, most of the time he uses He/Him and doesn't mind being called They/Them or other pronouns either.

I have been agonizing a little bit about about what I think his assigned gender at birth is though. When I first read the books, I interpreted him as AMAB (Since I am), but transmasc Percy is a very popular headcanon here on tumblr, and I've often found it rotating around in my head. I don't say that I dislike it, or that I disagree with it, I just hadn't thought about it before hearing about it. Do you have any strong opinions about what you think Percy's AGAB is? You seem like a good person to ask.

There's nothing I would love to do more than talk about Percy Jackson's gender identity. This ask is such a gift. Thank you. Before I share my opinion, let's talk about my biases. I am a white queer USAmerican. I'm also a millennial. Okay, glad we got that out of the way.

Anywho. I'll admit I don't personally see Percy as being AFAB.

By the time the books start Percy is 11, and his identity as a boy among his peers is well established. If he was AFAB this means he would have had to transition before the beginning of this book. And for that to occur he would (likely) need to have a strong desire to transition from a young age.

It's definitely not impossible for people to feel strongly about their gender identity from a young age. I'm not trying to suggest it is impossible!

But given everything we know about Gabe, and given that transidentities weren't something many people discussed or had knowledge of I think it is unlikely Percy would have felt comfortable discussing transitioning at home even if he did feel strongly about it. I think even if he did talk about it, Sally would have had to weigh his safety at home with Gabe against the benefits of being "out" and though I don't doubt she would support Percy's transition and stand up to Gabe for him if she understood how important it was to him... It would have changed a lot of stuff about his home life, so I just find it unlikely for thay reason.

It's definitely not impossible! And I'm not trying to tell anyone what their interpretation of Percy's gender should be

I think it's really cool how varied everyone's interpretations of the characters are and think there's so much value in seeing all these different ideas of who Percy is! This is just my personal opinion and explanation for why it's not my specific headcanon.

Actually, like you, I see Percy as being someone who doesn't give much thought to his gender identity. But my explanation of that and what I do think of his gender got SUPER LONG so I'm going to finish talking about it in a seperate post.

@irishskeptic Sorry it took me a while to answer. I have a really hard time organize my thoughts in a written format sometimes, but I really appreciate you letting me share my opinion on this. Thank you!

[onebeachday]

Sometimes, I get really respectful NSFW roleplay partners

Othertimes. Hm.

[poisonmushdude]

I’ll always be here

Aizawa Shouta x M!Reader Warning: Angst(?), general sadness and crying, Aizawa comfort :D, Use of ‘sweet boy’, not proof read A/N: I wrote this after breaking down in my room lol, so sorry if it not great I just needed it. I kinda wrote it in mind that the read was trans (FtM), but it can be read as a cis male reader.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Your quite sobs echoed in the quite house along side the sweet comforts your husband offered. Shouta, your beloved tired man, wasn’t the best with words. This was a fact you both new, and in moments like this he hated. He hated not being able to comfort you better as you squeezed his body like it would disappear. He hated how he struggled to calm down the once flooding tears that dampened his shirt as you stuffed your head into the crook of his neck. Not that he minded having you seek him out for his comfort. It was a honor that he thought himself lucky that he earned even after years of your marriage. So he tried his best as his rough calloused hands ran over your back. Drawing small circles when he would reach your shoulder blades. His other hand firmly holding your waste in a hope to ground you. Squeezing it as to give you something to focus on as he whispered to you.  “Let it out, it’s ok to cry. I’m here and I’ll always be here for you my sweet boy.” He whispered as he felt your grip tighten around his chest. You tried to squeak out something, maybe a apology, maybe a explanation. But you merely stutters out a “I-i... I-” before going back to his shoulder. The wet fabric cold against your heated face that was no doubt tinted red.  No one but he could see you like this. Not one person was allowed to see you the way Shouta was allowed to see you. Breaking down from your normal facade you put up to give the impression that you were fine. Most of the time you were, but life always took a toll. When it did you knew that Shouta would be there to give you the support that in the moment you need before anything else. After wards providing pain killers from the head ache you most likely racked up. Food if you want it, water, and something to distract you while you cuddled into him.  Eventually drifting off into a exhausted sleep when your heavy eye lids could no longer stay open. Shouta knew that life was tough, he understood it better then a lot of people. He knew what it was like to struggle alone, so if you allowed it he would be your stabilizer any time you needed it. He may be rough around the edges, but he loves you more then words could ever tell.

Thanks for reading my beloved reader :>!

[scorpio-hotch]

Dharma's Ex

I wrote a trans greggie fic!! As always thanks you to @softhairedhotch for helping and inspiring me <33 Writing this made me so happy, I hope you enjoy :))

Cis people please don't be weird!!

Trans!Greg Montgomery x Trans masc!reader

Word count: 3.5k

Content/warnings: smut (18+) oral sex, fucking with a strap, eating, the reader and greg both have had top surgery and is on t, all the characters are trans btw

You had wanted to move to San Francisco for a long time. As a queer trans man, you knew it was a place that would accept you. Not to say there were no problems there, but it was better than most other places. You had made the move a few weeks ago and you are finally getting settled. The apartment you lived in wasn’t great by the conventional standard, the elevator was always broken and the neighbors seemed a bit strange, but you liked it. It was quirky.

One day, you were making your way to your apartment when two of your neighbors made their way to you. “Hey! You’re queer right?” the taller of the two said “Well you obviously are but- oh no, wait, sorry, that came out super wrong! I’m queer too, trans, ya’know, and so is my friend here.”

You stand there very confused.

“Oh I’m Dharma by the way, you can use she or they pronouns, I don’t really care. And this is my friend Jane, they use they/them. Who are you?”

“Hi…?” you greet them, before introducing yourself.

“So are you new to the building?” Jane asks.

You nod, “Yeah, I moved in last month.”

“That's cool,” they replied.

You smile. Your new neighbors seem friendly. Jane turns to Dharma, “We gotta invite him to the party tonight!” they shout.

“Oh my god, we do!” Dharma turns back to you, “I’m having a party tonight at my apartment, you’ve gotta come! I think you’ll like it!”

“I’ll try to stop by,” you tell them.

“Great! I’ll see you there, it was nice meeting you!”

“You better come!” Jane shouts back at you as they go.

A few hours later, you decide to go to Dharma and Jane’s party. You go up to their floor and knock on the door. After a moment, Dharma opens the door. “You came!” they exclaim, “I’m so glad you could make it. Please make yourself at home.”

She pulls you into the apartment. It was interesting, which made sense. The room was full of people, most of them looking some flavor of queer or at least different. Dharma left you to go talk to someone else. After a few minutes you heard them again. “Hey!” Dharma yelled from across the room, grabbing your arm, “I’ve got someone I want you to meet! He’s my ex husband, you’ll love him- and you’re just his type.”

You let out a confused laugh, “You’re trying to set me up with your ex husband?”

“Yeah,” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

She pulls you across the room to a tall man with dark slightly messy hair in a green button down. He looked good, “Gregory!” she called out, “Meet this guy I met in the hallway today.”

“Dharma, I told you not to invite random strangers into your house anymore.”

“C’mon greg, just look at him,” she squishes your face, “he’s a weirdo just like the rest of us.”

Greg finally glances down at you. His face softens and he smiles at you. He puts his hand out to you, “Greg Montgomery, nice to meet you.”

You smile back, shaking his hand and introducing yourself. “So I hear you’re Dharma’s ex husband?” you ask.

He looks down and huffs out a little laugh, “Yeah I am,” he looks up at Dharma, “It’s a really long story.”

They both let out a little laugh. Dharma put her hands on both of your arms, “Well I’ll let you boys chat, have fun!” before walking off.

Greg turns back to you with an amused little smile on his face, “So she found you in the hallway today?”

“Yeah, I just moved into the building a few weeks ago, they asked me if I was queer.”

“They can be a little much sometimes. I’m sorry if they offended you.”

“Don’t worry about it, I am queer, trans too.”

He smiled at that, “Me too.”

“That's cool,” you respond, “I think I’ve met more trans people today, that I have in my whole life.”

You end up sitting down with Greg and telling him all about your trans journey. He listens intently as you tell him about starting testosterone and getting top surgery. After a bit, he starts telling you about himself. “I started t without telling my parents when I was 16.”

“How’d you manage that?” you ask.

“I don’t even know. Eventually they caught on and I had to come out. They didn’t really get it at first, they’re the upper class type who’s all about appearances. But they eventually came around, my dad before my mom. Then I got top surgery at 18 and everyone’s pretty supportive.”

“That’s nice,” you tell him, “And that was all over ten years ago?”

“Yeah, it’s crazy to think about.”

There's a lull in the conversation. After a minute you end up saying, “You really seem like a Greg.”

“Really?” he chuckles.

“Yeah, it’s cute and dorky-” you say before you realize the words coming out of your mouth, “Sorry for calling you dorky.”

He lets out another laugh and rests his hand on your arm, “It’s okay. You called me cute too.”

You smile up at him. You can’t help but feel connected to him. When you looked in his eyes it was like you saw some kind of recognition. It was strange but nice. After a moment of silence he says, “Your name suits you well too, it’s cute… like you.”

You feel your face heat up, “Thank you.”

You spend a while more talking about everything. You tell him about your job and your move to San Francisco and your life before that. He tells you all about his family and his job as a lawyer and about going to Harvard and Stanford. He also tells you about how he and Dharma were married for a year and a half before deciding to split up. “I love her, she’s my best friend, but we’re better off as friends,” he says, a fondness in his voice.

He tells you all about how their families are so different but are still close. “You’d love Abby and Larry,” he tells you, “If you keep hanging out with me and Dharma you’re bound to meet them.”

You smile at him softly, “I hope I keep hanging out with you.”

His eyes meet yours. There’s a softness to them. You can’t help but think about how beautiful their warm brown color is. His hand brushes over yours. His fingertips are warm and soft. “Do you wanna go get something to eat?” he asks.

“And just leave the party?”

“Yeah,” he says as he gestures to the lively party around you, “No one will even notice we’re gone.”

You smile, “Okay, let’s go.”

He smiles back, taking your hand in his. You both get up and make your way to the door. As he gets his jacket from the coat rack, you look back at the rest of the party. Your eyes meet Dharma and Jane who are both smiling widely at you giving you a big thumbs up. You drop your head and as you blush. Greg turns back to you and squeezes your hand, making you look up at him. “Ready?” he asks.

You nod. He smiles at you before opening the door and leading you out.

You make your way outside and to Greg’s car. He starts the car and begins backing up before asking you, “Anywhere you wanna go in particular?”

“Nope,” you tell him, “I’m still so new, I don’t really know anywhere.”

“I know the perfect place,” he tells you.

After driving for a few minutes, you pull up at a small diner. It looked quaint. Greg puts the car in park and gets out, you follow his lead. You hear a little ding of a bell as he opens the door. He holds it for you as you walk in. The two of you sit down across from each other at a booth and a waitress brings over menus.

Without even looking at the menu Greg tells her, “I’ll have a coffee and a slice of blueberry pie.”

She looks to you. “I’ll have the same,” you tell her.

A few minutes later she comes back with the coffees and pie, telling you to enjoy.

“So why here?” you ask, taking a bite of the pie.

“What do you mean?” he says, taking his own bite.

“This place has the best pie in San Francisco,” he tells you, “The second best pie I ever had.”

“Where’s the best pie you ever had,” you chuckle out.

“Reno,” he says.

You send him a questioning look. “It’s a long story,” he explains.

You sit for a while eating your pie and drinking your coffee. “I just think pie is a good first date,” he says, sipping his coffee.

“This is a first date?” you smirk.

His face flushes red. “I- I didn’t mean to assume,” he stutters out.

You chuckle and take his hand in yours, “Don’t worry,” you tell him, “I’m glad it's a date.”

He smiles at you, cheeks still red. You keep hold of his hand as you continue eating. It was nice. Not much is said while you eat. The silence was comfortable. It was nice to just be with him. After you both finish your pie he insists on paying. “It was really good pie,” you tell him as you walk out of the diner.

He smiles warmly at you, “I’m glad you liked it.

You make your way back to his car. You sit there for a minute after he starts the engine. You glance over at him, his eyes are already on you. You can’t help but admire his warm brown eyes. You think about how beautiful they would look in the sunlight or in the early morning after a goodnight of sleep. You spend a while longer just looking at each other before you let out a small laugh, “I’ve never done anything like this before,” you tell him.

“Me too- I mean, no… that- that's a lie, sorry, i just- i don’t… i don't know why, this is just- oh boy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

You lean forward pressing a soft kiss to his lips. As you pull away his lips chase yours and he cups your face with his hand and kisses you again. His lips are so soft and warm against yours. You could kiss him for the rest of your life and you’d be a happy man. Your hands make their way to the back of his neck, threading through his hair. You lean farther over the center console to be even closer to him. This time he pulls away. You’re both breathless with smiles on your faces as you press your foreheads together. “I-I’d like to keep doing that,” he breathes out.

“Me too,” you tell him, pressing another short kiss to his lips, “We can go back to my apartment… if you want?”

He pecks your lips again before sitting back in his seat. He takes the car out of park and begins driving. You can’t help but giggle at his eagerness. “What?” he asks, a smile on his lips.

“Nothing,” you laugh, “You’re just cute.”

He chuckles, taking your hand in his as he drives.

The drive is short. He parks the car and immediately pulls you in for another kiss, more desperate than before. You pull back, “Upstairs,” you mutter out.

You both make your way out of the car and inside. You’re both smiley and giddy as you take his hand and guide him to your apartment. You stand outside your door digging through your pockets looking for your key as Greg stands behind you with his hands on your waist, pressing kisses to your neck.

You finally find your key and unlock the door and pull Greg inside. You push him back against the door and kiss him deeply. His arms wrap themselves around your back, pulling your body flush against his. “Bedroom,” you’re able to mutter out against his lips.

You pull him back from the door and attempt to get to your bedroom without taking your lips off his. You stumble your way through your apartment but eventually you make it to your room, immediately pushing Greg back onto the bed. You straddle his hips as he lays back, your lips still connected. His big hand runs over your back under your shirt. You attempt to undo the rest of the buttons of his shirt. He sits up a bit to help you push the shirt off, leaving him in just his undershirt. “Too many layers,” you mumble against his lips.

He lets out a small chuckle before reaching down and pulling the shirt off. You sit back to look at his bare chest. He’s beautiful. You can’t help but stare at the long pinkish scars that run across his chest. You can see the self consciousness on his face at you staring. You pull your shirt off too, revealing a similar set of scars. He lets out a breath and moves his hand to touch your chest. His thumb brushes over one of your scars. “You’re so pretty,” he whispers out.

Your hand touches his scar, “So are you.”

You lean down pressing a soft kiss to his lips before moving to press kisses to his jaw and neck. His arms wrap around you and he lets out a small moan as you suck his skin in just the right spot. You make your way down his neck and chest, leaving a trail of hot kisses in your path. When you get to his scars you press a few soft kisses to each before making your way down his stomach, stopping when you get to the top of his pants. You look up at his face which is all flushed red. “Can I?” you ask, reaching for his belt.

“Please,” he sighs out.

You make quick work of his belt, pulling his pants off, leaving him just in his boxers. You press a few kisses to his thighs before asking, “Is there anything that makes you uncomfortable or you don’t want me to do?”

He pulls you up, giving you a deep kiss. “Anything you want,” he reassures you.

You smile, pressing another kiss to his lips before settling back between his legs. You look up at his face one more time before pulling his boxers down revealing his hard t cock. You press a few more kisses to his thighs before giving him just what he wants. You run your tongue through his wetness before teasing his t cock with your mouth. He lets out the prettiest sound you ever heard as his hand shoots to your head, gripping onto your hair. You give it a few more teasing licks before sucking it into your mouth. “Oh god,” he moans out, tugging at your hair.

His legs shake as you swirl your tongue around the sensitive area. His little moans and whines push you to move faster. Your hands grip onto his thighs so tight there will surely leave bruises.

You lose yourself in between his legs, enjoying giving him so much pleasure. You lick through his wetness, moaning at the taste of him before wrapping your lips around his t cock once again. You can tell he’s close. “Cum for me, baby,” you tell him as you suck hard on his t cock.

He let out the prettiest high pitch moan as he cums on your mouth. His whole body tenses before he goes limp. You press one more kiss to his t cock making his hips jerk.

You sit up wrapping your arms around his shoulder and press your lips to his. “What do you want now, baby?” you ask.

“I want you-” he stutters out, “I want you to fuck me.”

You smile and kiss him deeply. You reach for your bedside drawer as you kiss him, feeling around for what you need. You pull out your strap and harness. Pulling away from the kiss you sit back pulling off your pants and boxers and getting into the harness. You make sure it's all secure before kneeling over Greg. You run your hands up and down his thighs before asking, “Ready?”

“God, yes,” he moans out.

You tease the strap between his legs a few times causing him to let out a small little whine before you line the cock up with his entrance, pushing in slowly. Once you’re fully in, you still for a moment, leaning down to press a kiss to his lips as he adjusts. After a moment he starts whining into your mouth, “Move, please.”

You start with slow thrusts as you try to get a rhythm. You can feel the strap rub up against your t cock with every thrust. You start to speed up, leaning forward so you are chest to chest with Greg. His arms were tight around you, clinging to you. You could feel all the moans and sounds through his chest. It just urged you to go faster and harder.

“I’m close,” his voice higher than before, “so so close.”

You keep fucking into him, fast and stready. You bring your hand between your bodies to jerk off his t cock. You were pretty close too, from the feeling of the strap against your t cock and just the image of Greg falling apart under you. His legs shake and his arm tense around you as he cums with the prettiest moan. You fuck him through it, trying to make it last as long as you could.

When his sounds of pleasure turn into discomfort, you slow your thrusts to a stop. You take a moment to just hold each other. Greg was compleatly fucked out. His body limp and his eyes blown wide. You didn’t think it was possible for him to get more beautiful than he was when you met him but you were wrong

You brush his hair off his sweaty forehead. “Feel good?” you ask, your hands playing with his hair.

“Mhm,” he hums out.

You stay like that, just holding each other for a moment. Greg breaks the silence, “You didn’t finish.”

You brush your hand over his side, “It’s okay.”

He sits up slightly, moving you to his side, “Do you want to?”

He lays you back on the bed, “Don’t worry about it, there's always next time.”

“I like the sound of next time,” he says as he hovers over you, “But I wanna make you feel good right now.”

He presses kisses to your neck, making his way down your body. He shows some sweet attention to your scars. He kisses all the way down your tummy. When he gets to the bottom he gently helps you take the strap off, before pressing kisses up your inner thigh.

He takes a moment to just look at you before pressing a kiss to your t cock. You jerk your hips up at the feeling. He lets out a small chuckle into your skin as he wraps his arms around your thighs, keeping you in place. You can’t help but moan at the feeling of him wrapping his lips around your t cock and swirling his tongue around it. He starts bobbing his head up and down. You get lost in the pleasure. His mouth feels so good. Your hands make their way to his hair, tangling themselves in the soft strands.

He continues to suck your t cock. You feel the pleasure building inside you. You’re so close. You tug on his hair making him moan around you, pushing you over the edge. You moan out, clinging onto him in whatever way you can.

As you come down from your high, you feel Greg pull off of you. He lays next to you and wraps you up in his arms, pulling you to his chest. He presses a sweet kiss to your lips. You can taste yourself on his tongue. You wrap your arms around his shoulders, never wanting to be apart from him again. After a moment he pulls away from the kiss, resting his forehead against yours. You both have sleepy smiles on your face. “We slept together before marriage,” he chuckles out.

You pull back a bit, “I’m sorry,” you start to apologize, “I didn’t know you were religious. Fuck- I’m so sorry-”

He presses a kiss to your lips, “Don’t worry, I was kidding… well kinda, I wanna get to know you before I marry you.”

You get a grin on your face and wrap your arms around him again, “So you wanna marry me someday…?”

He smiles back, “Yeah, someday… At least a month or two.”

You press a giggly kiss to his lips. “I think I can wait a month.”

“Good,” he responds, kissing you back, “I look forward to you being my husband.”

“I look forward to you being mine.”

[thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai]

Coming back to this post because of the wonderful reblog from @ectobiologay and because they brought up a point about the feminine/masculine portrayal of Eros which was a bit unclear in my first post. (I hope it's okay if I @ you because I don't know how to respond to tags and if it's not okay, just tell me and I'll delete that post, anyway thank you so much for your long tag-comment ❤️)

The first two times Yuuri skates Eros, he uses the "atashi" (female "I) pronoun, which is tied to the character he portrays aka the beautiful woman who seduces the playboy and stops him from going to the next town. However, when Viktor tells Yuuri to skate Eros as himself, he switches back to "boku" (male "I), which is the pronoun he uses for the rest of the time. The fact that he skates Eros as himself, indicates that he discarded the character [the woman] he portrayed at first as he no longer needs it to express his Eros. Of course, that doesn't tell us anything about whether he skates this routine less femininely, but it tells us that he now pours everything of himself into this routine and if this includes skating it in an effeminate way that would be different from a purely feminine performance if that makes sense (at least, both terms have different meanings to me, but I think we could split hairs over that, lol). The fact that Yuuri uses the "atashi" pronoun in only two instances and drops it the moment he no longer needs it, implies imho that he only used it for a role that was supposed to help him grasp Eros. I'm getting a bit cold-hearted and technical now because I look at this through a scientific and a writing lens (and I hope this won't attract hate from whoever will read this because I've stepped on anyone's toes in my ignorance): If for instance Yuuri were genderfluid (like me), the "atashi" pronoun would appear more often throughout the show and also when he's not skating Eros. He might even choose to dress femininely when his gender changes. I can't speak for other non-cis genders (if anyone reading this post can say more to this, please do enlighten me), but as a writer I can say that if a genderqueer character is well-written, we see typical patterns regarding their presentation and their pronouns (or a lack thereof, looking at Zoe Hange from AoT) to convey their genderqeerness to the audience. So far, the cold analysis of the little data the source material provides; I believe the gaps in the show and the lack of queer labels imho leave plenty of space for non cis-male Yuuri headcanons that can coexist with his canonic characterisation (I better don't mention how often I made a straight character queer although the source material didn't hint at it in any way but just because I wanted them to be queer).

I wrote a meta analysis that dives deeper into Yuuri's exploration of the Eros routine and how Eros evolves over the course of the season. You can read it here if that interests you.

There are quite a number of male YOI characters that could be described as the "effeminate gay man" stereotype due to how they present, not just in isolated instances but constantly and I'm looking especially Viktor, Chris, and Phichit (I wonder if the creators were aware of that). But except for characters like Yurio or JJ, most characters don't seem to care about how they present.

Apologies for the long reply, I struggle keeping it short. I'm always too happy to discuss my special interests and the queer representation of the YOI characters is a super exciting topic.

One of the many things I love about YOI is how it ignores gender norms. Like Viktor wearing androgynous costumes as a junior because it matched his looks? Lovely. Yuuri learning how to dance like a woman as he explores Eros? Great! Let this boy do whatever he needs to find his unique Eros expression. Mila practising lifts on Yurio? Please give me more.

None of these form a pattern that indicates anything about these characters' gender or, more generally their queerness (spoiler: these could apply to a number of labels or to none; gender is a societal construct and the reasons to not want to conform to it are various), the show is that vague and it seems a deliberate choice. Viktor eventually changed his style and image. Yuuri finds his unique, masculine expression of Eros in episode 6 when he seduces Viktor with his own charms (as conveyed through the use of the masculine pronoun "boku"). These characters live in a world where gender norms don't matter and where everyone can express themselves and explore certain aspects of their personality without anyone telling them that it's not "appropriate" for their gender.

And you can spin this further. If Viktor wants to wear a women's yukata because he loves the flower print, he can do that. If Yuuri wants to do ballet in pointé shoes because it challenges his sense of balance, no one can stop him. (In my fics, Viktor wears such shoes for that purpose and because he loves the laces.) If Chris wants to wear an evening gown and high heels because he loves how it emphasises his thighs and his bum, he can just go for it. If Yurio wants to wear a mini-skirt to ripped jeans, no one will bully him for it. If Mila wants to skate in black skates because it matches the colour of her costumes better than white skates, no one would care (same goes for white skates for any of the male characters). If Phichit wants to wear make-up, no one would give him strange looks.

The beauty of Yuri on Ice is that the characters are free to do these things without having to fear judgement or repercussions. They are free to choose how they want to express themselves, be it for image reasons, because of a character they portray in their figure skating routines, because it ties into a certain aspect of their queerness, or because they just prefer this over a traditional expression. In the world of YOI, it just doesn't matter. I would love to live in that world.

(You might notice that I don't count hair length as gender norm because for many people it's a stylistic choice. I'm thinking of all the metalheads and women with pixie haircuts, which have been normalised in most societies I know of.)

[nightfoot]

So I’m not a historian, but I just finished posting my medieval AU fanfic that included a medieval trans character, so I thought I’d ramble a bit about some of the research I did prior to writing it.  There’s this idea that Western society believed in an absolute binary of men and women until Stonewall happened and introduced Western cis people to the concept of gender not being rigidly set in stone, but that’s just not the case.  So here’s a brief overview of some specific cases I found along the lines of “Medieval and early modern people were thinking about gender too.”

The first is the one I think about most often.  This is actually a little bit after the medieval period, in the 16th century, but still interesting.  There was a person in the little town of Vitry-le-Fran ois who lived as a man. He was married to a woman and worked as a weaver.  Tragically, his marriage lasted only 5 months before someone recognized him as “[birth name]” and he was tried and condemned (for the crime of using a dildo).  But, he was given the option to go back to wearing skirts and live as a respectable woman.  He rejected the offer, and chose to be hanged rather than live as a woman.

I just think about him a lot, and how much I wish he could come to the 21st century and see how the world has changed.  He is also the person I always think about when I see the claim that all trans men in history were just “women trying to live with more freedom.”  Because if it was only about trying to live a better life, then choosing any life at all would be better than death. 

The second story involves another person from France in 1601.  Thankfully, his chosen name was recorded - Marin began sleeping with a woman while they were both working as chambermaids in Rouen, but after a few weeks, he told her he was in fact a man, and proposed marriage.  Before their marriage, though, Marin was accused of sodomy for being a “woman” trying to marry another women.  However, he plead his case and asked for a medical examination, and after a genital exam, the doctor declared Marin had “a hidden but functional penis.”  I read this as him being intersex.  The court demanded he dress as a woman for 4 years in hope that the situation would clear up, but after those 4 years passed, he was allowed to go back to presenting as male, married his wife, and lived the rest of his life as a man.

This story is interesting because it demonstrated that people in 1601 were ready to accept “huh! sex and gender are complicated! I guess it is possible for someone to change from one thing to another!”

And the reason they accepted this is because of the “one sex model,” the idea that male and female are just two ends of a spectrum and all humans fall somewhere on that spectrum with the potential to shift position.  This model is not exactly correct, because they also believed that it had to do with body temperature and that if a woman’s body temperature raised too much she would spontaneously grow a penis, but it is very interesting that 400 years ago, academics realized that sex is much more complicated than “you’re either A or B” but in our enlightened 21st century, we have to argue about that again.

Cross-dressing saints are also common in hagiography.  One example is Joseph von Schönau, a celebrated monk who joined the abbey of Schönau in 1187 after a life of travel in Europe and the Middle East.  What’s interesting is that during his deathbed confession, when he came clean to the priest about all his other secrets and sins in life, he said nothing about his sex.

There is another story I recall that, for the life of me, I can’t find the source for now.  In that one, a saint lives his entire life in an abbey as a man. During his life, a local woman accused him of fathering her child.  He could have easily disproved the accusation by explaining that he didn’t have a penis, but instead accepted the child as his and accepted the shame and disdain from his fellow monks.  They only realized he couldn’t have been the father after his death. 

My next two stories are fictional:

The first is the 13th century French story Roman de Silence.  This is the story of a woman whose father needed a son to inherit, so when she was born, he decided to raise her as a boy.  Throughout the story, personifications of “Nature” and “Nurture” argue over which of them determines who a person is.  Throughout the story, Silence becomes a knight, captures Merlin in a prophecy twist (of the “no man can defeat Merlin” sort), reveals her sex in the end and marries a king.  I actually think it’s more interesting to read Silence as a trans woman, despite being what we today would “assign female.”  She was assigned male by her father, and grows up feeling conflicted about this.

Silence isn’t an example of a real life trans masc knight, but the story overall is exploring the question, “What exactly is it that makes someone a man vs a woman?”  This says to me that Medieval People Were Thinking About This Too, and the idea that man and woman could be more complicated than looking at a baby’s genitals has been around for a long, long time.

My favourite fictional story is Yde et Olive, another 13th century French romance.  This one tells the story of Yde, a princess being forced into a marriage she hates.  Rather than go through with it, they dress as a man and run away.  Over the course of Yde’s adventures, they learn how to fight with a sword, take down bandits, and end up as a knight in a foreign king’s court.  The king is so impressed with Yde that he arranges for them to marry his daughter, Olive.  Yde confesses to Olive that the marriage will never work because of his sex, but Olive says she doesn’t mind and will keep their secret, which, y’know, #Bi Princess.  But someone overheard the conversation! And now the king will have them put to death for same-sex relations! (even though... he’s the one who insisted they marry).  Yde prays to God for a miracle, and God responds by magically transforming Yde into a cis man.  The day is saved and Yde lives happily ever after as a man with his wife.  They have a son named Croissant.

My research mostly focused on transmasc stories, but I have to at least add the suggestion to read up on Choisy, an 18th century French transfem person.  She wrote a novel (Histoire) about a child who was raised as a girl with no idea that having a penis meant people would think she was a boy.  When her mother eventually tells her that she is “male,” she simply does not believe it.  She goes on to marry a Marquis, and realizes she must tell him that she is allegedly male, only for the Marquis to tell her that he is, in fact, "female.”  They go on to live happily ever after as a t4t couple.

Anyway, as I said, I am not a historian and this is not academically rigorous, but some interesting stories I came across while researching.  I wouldn’t say any of these suggest that trans people were common and accepted by broader society throughout history, but they do show that people over the centuries have been thinking about gender, what it means to be a man or woman, and how the line between those can be blurry.  This is far from being a 21st century exclusive discussion.

Unfortunately, hand-wringing hysteria about trans people is also nothing new, because I also came across several instances of medieval writers fretting about the idea of “men disguising themselves as women to sneak into convents and have sex with nuns.”  Truly, the world never changes. 

Sources:

Ferguson, Gary. "Early Modern Transitions: From Montaigne to Choisy." L'Esprit Créateur 53, no. 1 (2013): 145-57.

Hotchkiss, Valerie.  “Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe.” Garland Publishing, 1996.

[telehxhtrash]

I tend to see a lot of people say that Togashi will leave things uncertain and ambiguous in between Killua and Gon, and while it’s a possibility, I honestly don’t think it’s the most likely thing to happen, and if it did, ambiguous wouldn’t be the correct term to call it.

People often say that Togashi likes to play with ambiguity when it comes to queer matters. Yes, Togashi likes to play with gender. We get to see that through Kite, Pitou and Kalluto in HxH (although its arguable because Kite is definitely not cis). But when Togashi decides that a character is queer, or that there is a relationship going on between two characters, he doesn’t leave it ambiguous.

Togashi has created queer characters in 3 of his main works : Yu Yu Hakusho, Level E and Hunter x Hunter. And everytime he created those characters, he made damn sure that everyone knew that these characters were queer. No room for any sort of ambiguity.

The first examples I have are from Yu Yu Hakusho, with a character named Miyuki, and the other is from Level E, with a character named Kyoko Mikihisa.

For these two characters, Togashi made it so that they emphasized themselves that they were trans. It’s painted extremely clearly, that they were born in the wrong body. There’s literally no room for any sort of ambiguity here.

Togashi could’ve easily kept things ambiguous. There are plenty of ways he could’ve done it, keeping the character’s gender confusing. But he didn’t. He made it EXTRA clear that these characters were trans. This is mostly why I genuinely don’t believe you can describe Togashi’s queer rep as “ambiguous”. Because when the characters tell you themselves that they are, it’s canon. It’s not ambiguous.

Now, sometimes, Togashi likes to play it more subtle. He doesn’t make his characters say “I’m gay” or “I’m trans”, but he finds another way to say it.

In YYH, Togashi wrote a gay character : Itsuki. And he’s canonically gay, because when talking about another man, Sensui, he mentions that he sees him as a lover.

It’s subtle. It’s not ambiguous.

Same thing for Alluka, Alluka never comes on screen and says “I’m a trans girl !”. The reason we know that Alluka is canonically a trans girl is because the Zoldycks insist on misgendering her, while Killua emphasizes that she’s a girl.

And once again, it’s subtle. Not ambiguous. Even though I’ve seen a lot of redditors say that “Alluka’s gender is ambiguous”, Togashi is literally doing his utmost to highlight subtly that yes, Alluka is a trans girl.

But subtlety is not canon’s enemy. Not everything has to be painted clearly for it to be canon. Sometimes, you just have to piece every little clue together yourself. Just because the word “trans” is never canonically stated in HxH concerning Alluka, it doesn’t make her any less of a trans girl. Because as the audience, we UNDERSTOOD from the subtext and from the clash in gendering that she is trans.

So, yes, Togashi likes to be subtle. But subtlety doesn’t make things any less canon.

I’m drifting a bit to non-queer matters, but I also want to talk about two relationships in Togashi’s work that were canonically romantic, but subtle.

The first is Meruem and Komugi. It’s canon that the nature of their relationship was romantic. They never did couple-y things, or even kissed. But it doesn’t make the nature of their relationship ambiguous. Because it was once again, subtle, but drowning in subtext that Togashi deliberately put there.

Togashi paralleled Killua saying that him dying with Gon would be a shinjuu (lover’s suicide), only for it to not happen in the end - but Togashi wanted to throw that word in. So we could have it at the back of our heads. Because when Meruem and Komugi died, it was a shinjuu. It was two lovers dying by the same method with the belief that they’d be united in the afterlife. Meruem only cared about spending his last moments playing with Komugi. They both said that they were only born to experience this moment, of being in pure bliss as they die together. When Komugi replies to Meruem and says that she’ll join him in death, she uses an old phrasing used to accept marriages proposals. They died holding hands.

It was subtle, but canon. Because of all these clues and all the subtext Togashi planted, it is undeniable that their relationship was romantic. And they never kissed, never said “i love you”, but we still know : and that’s the beauty of subtlety.

Because yes, romance can be subtle AND canon.

Another example of a canon romantic relationship that was never officialized by a kiss : Keiko and Yusuke in Yu Yu Hakusho. Correct me if I’m wrong, but while they kissed in the anime, they never kiss in the manga.

But a relationship doesn’t need to be canonized by a kiss. I’ve never seen/read YYH, but while I was doing research, I read that their relationship grew naturally over the course of the manga. That they grew together, were affectionate with each other, but never told each other the nature of their feelings. Until one specific moment towards the end of the manga where this happens:

All of this came naturally. No big confession, just a confirmation of what they both felt. And no kiss either ! No hand holding, no true “romantic” actions, either before or after that chapter. Just feelings. I’m quoting one of the post I used as reference, but “On one hand it's beautiful to finally hear it, but on the other, it's not even surprising. You find yourself caught off guard by how easily you're willing to accept that these two have felt this way throughout the entire series.”

And while it’s subtle, because you’d expect at least a kiss or something, it’s canon and undeniable that their relationship is romantic. It’s clear that the two of them are in love, even if they never kissed. Because it was clear from the beginning that this was where their relationship was going : all the building up to that one moment where they both basically tell each other “oh yeah, btw, i love you”. A simple confirmation of what they both knew, and of what we as readers knew too.

I guess my point is that Togashi can insist on the nature of his characters and relationships. He insisted that Miyuki, Mikihisa and Alluka were trans. But sometimes he also likes to be subtle, and not put everything plainly. But the subtlety doesn’t discredit its the canon legitimacy.

Now, onto what it means for Killua and Gon. 

I emphasized that Togashi liked to highlight when his characters are queer. There are absolutely NO DOUBTS that Miyuki and Alluka are trans girls, Mikihisa a trans man and that Itsuki was gay. It’s in canon. But they were all brought up differently, and it was either confirmed by them saying it themselves or by the context and subtext surrounding their queer identity.

But Togashi never left it ambiguous. We always had canon confirmation that they were queer. What I’m saying is, there’s a very, very high probability that Killua is gay and in love with Gon. We’ve seen it in the incredible amount of subtext deliberately placed by Togashi. And like I said, Togashi never left the nature of his queer characters ambiguous. So it’s highly likely that Togashi will confirm in canon at some point that Killua is gay. 

Now, while it’s likely Togashi will canonize Killua being queer plainly by either him saying it or subtext (just like Alluka), it doesn’t mean that his relationship with Gon will be canonized plainly too.

I mentioned earlier that Komugi/Meruem and Keiko/Yusuke’s relationships were subtle, while undeniably romantic. So maybe this will be the case for Killua and Gon’s relationship too. It looks like Togashi’s style for writing romance is show, not tell, thus making it a possibility that it’ll be the same for Killua and Gon.

But I can assert with 100% certainty that Togashi will NOT leave their relationship ambiguous. Maybe it’ll be subtle, but NOT ambiguous. Just like Meruem/Komugi and Yusuke/Keiko.

Killua and Gon’s relationship is the backbone of HxH, and it’s very clear that Togashi’s intent from the beginning of the story was to canonize it as a love story. When Togashi wrote Killua, he incorporated elements of Tanabata, a legend about two lovers, in his story, and made Tanabata his birthday. Togashi queer coded Killua from the beginning, and I honestly doubt that he would never canonize it, when it was his intent to queer code him from the beginning. He made the both of them have an extremely deep relationship, being each other’s most important person. Combine this with all the subtext, and yeah, it’s pretty clear that HxH is a love story.

So yes, Togashi wouldn’t leave ambiguous something he planned from the beginning of the story. Especially since HxH is his first chance at writing a manga and being able to do everything he wants with it. Especially when Togashi’s gay manga got turned down 30 years ago.

I mentioned Togashi never leaving stuff ambiguous, but rather either putting it plainly or more subtly. And honestly, I’m thinking it’s going to be a mix of both for Killua and Gon. A mix of subtlety and undeniable proof of the romantic nature of their relationship. Exactly like Yusuke and Keiko’s relationship. 

I feel like Killua and Gon’s relationship perfectly mirrors Yusuke and Keiko’s, and I can totally picture it following the same patterns. By having their relationship grow even deeper as they reunite, with no explicit romantic gestures, just deep, deep feelings. Until ultimately, they both confirm it one way or another. 

I could literally picture Gon turning to Killua, telling him out of the blue something they’ll do when they get married, Killua being confused but Gon saying something like “Well, I wanna get married to you Killua. Don’t you want to?” and Killua almost choking but saying that yeah, he’d like that. Plain and simple. No romantic gesture. No kiss, no hand holding, no feelings confession under the stars. Just a mutual assessment of what they both already knew.

But honestly, I’m saying all this to try and be objective, but I’m not in Togashi’s head. Togashi could also very much go absolutely crazy and make Killua and Gon share a kiss, hold hands, affirm their love out loud, Because it’s his first chance at being free to do what he wants with his manga. And because he’s been wanting to draw a gay manga for a while, he might want to emphasize that HxH is queer.

Especially when it seems like Togashi likes to incorporate shoujo elements in his work.

And as @/sincerelysamedt mentioned in her wonderful post, queer relationships are often dismissed as platonic in media, and that it’s important to overplay it to canonize it efficiently. And Togashi is probably aware of this. Hence Killua’s stuttering, blushing, the constant gay poetic lines Gon tells Killua about how he’s so glad he met him, Killua’s inner monologues comparing Gon to light itself, multiple characters highlighting their mutual love, a date under the stars where they mutually affirm their want to stay together and travel the world while they both blush.........Togashi didn’t have to go THIS hard, but he did.

These panels highlight the difference between the subtle relationships I talked about above. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Togashi represented Yusuke or Keiko having internal monologues about how they wanted to stay with the other forever or poetically comparing each other to light. It proves that while Togashi likes to play it subtle, he's also not afraid to put extremely cliché shoujo tropes and heartfelt moments in his narrative too. Maybe he’s aware that internalized homophobia might pose a problem to the narrative he’s trying to convey, and thus he might be enclined to overplay it. 

When you keep in mind that Togashi most likely wrote Killua and Gon with the intent of making their relationship a love story, you can see that he’s never really written with the intent of being ambiguous or even subtle, providing us with multiple intense scenes of mutual devotion. And that’s one thing that’s leading me to believe he wouldn’t shy away from delivering highly emotional scenes that would canonize their mutual love. Because their relationship has never truly been portrayed as subtle, or ambiguous, it’s just.... developing.

So yeah, it could go either way ! Either Togashi will decide to paint it subtly like every relationship he’s painted in the past, or he’ll either decide to go all out and maybe show us an extremely heartfelt confession under the stars, maybe even an on-screen kiss (the latter option being highly likely considering all the very emotional scenes between them we’ve already had) - (EDIT : i wrote a post on why i believe there’ll be an explicit confession if you want to read it !)

But one thing is certain : it will never stay ambiguous, because Togashi has never painted any of his queer characters or the relationships between his characters as ambiguous, Subtle, yes. Ambiguous, no. 

[soft-for-them]

husband has a real ring to it ♡ sam wilson x male reader

anon: hey so like, being sam wilson's husband (or new husband) at your wedding??? (sorry it’s a bit short...)

i haven’t specified if the male reader is cis or trans but there is a bit in here where the reader compares themself to steve, whether you see this as the reader being trans or cis is up to you.

the gif has no significance it’s just a good gif... also there is a HUGE lack of sam content out there. people get you shit together and write about my fave man. not proof read.

It is an odd time.

The country you now stand in is completely foreign to you. Nat can speak the language; you think it might me some form of Russian. If you could guess you think you might be in the Ukraine or a country that was once a part of Soviet Union.

None of the on the run Avengers will tell you exactly where you are for you safety but you don’t care.

All you care about right now is the blazer you just tried on is too wide at the shoulders.

Even Steve says the shoulders of the jet black jacket are too wide even for him and that saying something coming from a man who was artificially made to be the spitting image of masculinity and heroism.

Sometimes you do get jealous of the super soldier and how he came to be.

Once a skinny and short kid now the second most handsome man you’ve ever seen, sometimes you think ‘if only i was as strong as Steve and not a useless civilian’.

Thought if anyone hears your negative thoughts in this small, cramped room off the side of a small abandoned church you would be done for. 

Natasha, Wanda, Steve and Sam have always loved you and they don’t tolerate your pessimism at all. None of them will take your self-loathing especially on this very day.

But that’s the thing, you’re not self-loathing today. You push away any non-happy thoughts and put on a genuine smile.

It may not be official in the eyes of the law for your other half is a wanted war criminal but your getting married to your long time boyfriend Sam Wilson today and nothing will stop you from doing so. You have both promised that he will properly marry you but for now you have agreed to exchanging rings.

‘Where did you find this place?’ you ask Nat as she takes you too big blazer from you.

The place is completely and utterly abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Plants have caved in apart of the roof but the stained glass still absorbs and reflects light making the rotten pews look like the seats of a king.

‘I knew you might not want to get married in a church but this is the safest place I could find, that with the fact this is no longer a place of worship.’ She walks over to you and tucks a handkerchief into your white dress shirt pocket.

Regardless of if your religious or not you know this place is a perfectly acceptable place to trade rings with the man you love.

Nat looks you over and smiles, her arms wrapping themselves around you in a rare hug.

‘You look very handsome (y/n).’ she mutters.

‘Even with my beard?’ you half joke, referring to the scraggly hair growing back on your chin from shaving it off the week before for a disguise.

‘You have a better beard that Sam and Cap put together.’ Her tone is joyous but utterly serious which makes you smile grow even bigger.

You do not feel any negativity, all you feel is utter euphoria in your wedding attire.

‘You ready to go’ she whispers like a happy mother about to marry off her only son.

All you do is nod as you let her lead you out to the alter where you both wait for Sam and Cap to arrive.

Wanda sits in a front pew; she very obviously misses Vision and if it was up to you he would be here to celebrate for you had befriended the synthetic man before the ‘civil war’ happened.

But alas none of you can risk you all being found out on your unofficial wedding day.

For a moment you all wait in silence looking up the stain glass of some kind of saint.

This isn’t the place you want to get married in but you can see it’s charm even if it’s been abandoned, ransacked and left to rot.

You can imagine Steve giving Sam a prep talk, for he had given you one about an hour before.

When Steve had talked to you he seemed like a overjoyed father, even with the tears in his eyes, you’re still thankful the super soldier talked to you.

Your waiting is cut short as the side door that you and Nat had came through opens to show both Steve and Sam.

Steve walks out first, holding the door open for Sam then Sam walks out, his eyes automatically on you.

‘Ow, I though Steve was going to walk you down the aisle.’ Wanda quips to Sam despite her brooding feelings.

A short conversation goes on between Sam and Steve (probably another pep talk) but all you can focus on is Sam looking at you as he talks to Steve.

Steve pats Sam on the shoulder, which turns into a hug, then he lets him go.

 Sam wears a suit very similar to yours; a simple black suit that could be found quickly and very easily without being detected by Tony or an of the American government.

The woman in the small mum and pop shop where very kind to you both despite their being a language barrier, they had helped you get the suits for a good price.

Much like you also Sam wears no blazer jacket, with you don’t mind considering you can see every muscle through the hand made white shirt.

‘Where’s your blazer?’ you ask.

He walks right out to you and holds your hands. His hands are cold but you assume it’s from standing around in a derelict church for a while.

‘It was too small in the shoulders.’ He smiles, the gap in teeth showing.

‘Ah, that could have been my blazer Sam.’ You laugh grabbing the attention of the others. You all laugh at the mishap of the mixed up blazer but that doesn’t really matter.

Wanda stands up and passes both of you the rings; one single silver band with your name carved on the inside for you and a much fancier looking ring for Sam. Despite Sam’s ring looking more expensive it’s actually very cheap.

He had quickly bought it when you were all hiding out in China, Sam had quickly realised that he had a ring for you but he didn’t have one for himself. He’s had your pure silver ring for years now waiting for the right moment to give it to you.

 ‘How do we actually do this?’ you whisper whilst the other sit down on the pews.

‘I don’t really know, maybe when just exchange the rings and say something.’

‘Like vows? Do we kiss?’ the questioning isn’t really that serious for the two of you are smiling like idiots.

‘Well all I can say is that I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you-’ Sam begins saying as he slips the silver ring on your finger, ’-I love you my husband.”’

’Wow… husband has a real ring to it.’ You beam as look down at Sam’s hands, you fingers nimbly placing his ring on, ‘-Does this now mean I get to kiss the bride?’

Your joke not only makes yourself laugh but you can hear the laughter of the other in the background.

‘Gladly.’ Is all Sam say before holding your face and kissing you.

.

.

.

honestly i don’t think this is the best thing ever but i’m posting it.

i’ve been writing a lot of ftm trans reader requests today so i kind of automatically wrote the reader as trans at first. i’ve changed it so the reader can be cis or trans but i just putting that out there just in case i’ve forgotten to change something. (sorry)

also i know that many people have different types of weddings and cultures so i’ve tried to make it as ambiguous as i can, that why it’s not a technically legal wedding.

anyway, sam is the best and i would love to write more fics for him!

[samhatch]

Thank you for tagging me @achaotichuman!! You are so sweet to think of me! I'm still pretty new on tumblr and A03, so I don't have many others to tag, but I just followed @fangirleaconmigo who has some amazing fics!

TELL US

The story you're proudest of

Fire Amid Snow: I don't have many fics to my name, but I really love the one shot I did of a Lucien/original non-binary character. I think it's some of the best smut I've written, and I adored the opportunity to glorify and worship non-cis bodies.

Your story that's gotten the most love online:

Definitely The Fox and The Hound, my Tamlin/Lucien smut fic. I wrote it after finishing the first ACOTAR book, so it doesn't follow canon at all, but I was inspired by @nocasdatsgay's fic A Sunbeam Shining Bright Into The Night.

Tease a current WIP or idea you're working on:

The last chapter of The Fox and The Hound is coming out this Friday! I'm so excited to give these characters a happy ending. Here is a little limerick that is featured in the chapter that Tamlin writes about Lucien:

There once was a young man named Lucien Who was full of ideas and solutions. They called him sly fox Thinking outside the box, But he fills me with naught but confusion.

There are many more limericks in the chapter! Don't forget, Tamlin is known for writing dirty limericks...

Your top 3 fandoms:

1. ACOTAR (currently) 2. Star Trek (all time) 3. Lord of the Rings (literally obsessed)

Your top 3 ships:

1. Tamlin/Lucien from ACOTAR (currently) 2. Shiro/Keith from Voltron (fight me) 3. Meg/Than/Zag from Supergiant's Hades (OT3)

Rec someone else's fic:

Ah! There are so many!!

I recently made a post about Posada Remix, and it is my current obsession. I need to rewatch and replay The Witcher series.

The sexiest fic I've ever read is Like A Man Possessed , a Shiro/Keith real world AU that is pure smutty goodness.

Mama's Boy made me ugly cry, and I just want to hold poor Tamlin and tell him it's going to be ok.

Pick one!

Fluff or Angst

Angst, all the way! I want to suffer when I read.

Oneshots or longfics

Generally I like oneshots, but that's just because of my short attention span! There are a few long fics that I've been enjoying, and once I start reading them, they become my new obsession!

Canon compliance or canon divergence

Both are excellent. I love a good "real world" AU, or if a writer is so talented they can integrate their story into canon, that's absolutely amazing!

AO3 or FF.net

I use AO3, I've never dabbled in FFN, but maybe I should! Let me know if cross-posting would be a good idea for me.

Tag game for fanfiction authors!

Thank you so much for the tag @angelosearch! I'm going to tag @goforth-ladymidnight @praetorqueenreyna @achaotichuman @yaralulu @goldheartedchaoticdisaster @thedickgraysons @chunkypossum and whoever wants to join pls! I'm really bad at remembering who are all the writers!

TELL US

The story you're proudest of

I have two fics that I'm especially proud of!

Wildflowers, which is my ACOTAR prequel. It's my first fanfiction written and posted online, and the first story I wrote start to finish. I tried my best to give depth to the world and the side characters. I do think some people are turned off by the main characters/ship, but it's so much more than that. It's also spawned so many side stories which is so exciting!

Regrets, which is my first SUPERBAT that I ever posted. I think it's a really good reflection of my style which balances emotion, humour and intimacy. I'm so happy my first attempt at writing my OTP turned out SO WELL.

Your story that's gotten the most love online:

The answers are the same as above, but for different reasons.

Wildflowers has gotten a lot of praise for multiple elements in the story, and I feel like those who read it all found different parts to enjoy. It's one of those stories that are really fun to talk about, and there's so many little nods here and there. It makes me happy to see that readers are noticing them. Wildflowers also has original additions (like family members of the main characters) that everyone loves as much as I do!

Regrets has the most kudos, but like mentioned above, it's a classic ship and a good balance of fluff and angst elements! I had so much fun writing it, and I think that came through in the piece.

Tease a current WIP or idea you're working on:

I've been wanting to tease NEEDLE & KING (wip title, subject to change), which is the prequel/side story for Rhysand's parents.

It was supposed to be a shorter, contained story about their romance, but now it's become a lore exercise, an exploration of cultural displacement in fantasy, starts off as a female-focused cast, etc.

Chapter 1 Flying

At the end of the world, Lilith thinks of nothing. No home to yearn for, no family to miss her—at least, not for long—and no future to look forward to.  She stands on the edge of a mountain’s peak, one of two Wolf’s Fangs, and feels. The world comes into her through the howls of the wind and the bite of the cold against her barely covered arms. Clouds stand between her and the bottom, if she could even see that far on a clear day. Her life, until now, has been a series of instances that have happened to her rather than experience. The absence of her father, the death of her mother, the fear that looms above her—she is at the mercy of everything around her. Here, the ice demands her wakefulness. Here, the skies challenge her. Here, every breath is earned. The height of the mountain is the only time she feels alive, so what is that feeling when she steps off its edge and careens downwards. Down, down, down, she goes with a whistle—a force against gravity. At the bottom, reality will come crashing down, but she can solve that problem quite easily. Just… fall. Her black wings strain against the fall, and she grits her teeth. It’s not in her nature to fall; she will never accept her fate. Lilith wages war against nature itself, demanding her muscles to yield to her will. A loud flapping noise signals her success, the membranes of her wings cradling the air itself to take her in an arc, a low swoop and then up again. She glides through the clouds, occasionally drawing her dark wings to herself and allowing herself to plummet before catching herself again. Lilith had taught herself to fly. It was the only thing she can control in her small, small life. Her flights have no destination, and they are timeless. She flies for as long as she can. She pushes as far as she can go because she never knows when it will be her last time.

Like any draft, this may be subject to change. The first scene I usually write for any draft is the one that 'sets' the tone of the story.

Fun fact - Lilith is a name/character that pops up in all my stories either as some weird writing signature/nod, or as a main character. She's a hyperfixation that started with Diablo and never left, but she's become her own phenomenon for me and my writing.

Your top 3 fandoms: that I write in... ACOTAR & DC Comics. I currently don't have time to write in a third one, woops.

Your top 3 ships: If it's what I've written for, then the answers are Tamlin x Rhysand, Bruce x Clark and Orm x Clark. If it's what I enjoy personally, then it's all of the above + many, many crackships.

Rec someone else's fic: Without a doubt, the people I've tagged above have amazing fics. I haven't had a chance to read their works in their entirety, but I've participated in challenges with them, creeped on their works, and they are SO GOOD! Please go check them out! Their fics are on my to-read, but part of my writing process is to just write without reading, so once I'm done my current fic, I will be going through each work to add comments and properly devote the love and attention they deserve.

Pick one!

Fluff or Angst - I cannot NOT write angst, but I believe that both (one into the other) create incomparable emotional depth.

Oneshots or longfics - I prefer reading oneshots, but I cannot stick to one chapter for the life of me.

Canon compliance or canon divergence - I have the worst memory, I couldn't be canon compliant if I wanted to...

AO3 or FF.net

[variousqueerthings]

Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part 1 of 3

Disclaimers and trigger warnings: 

1. These fairytales are European, although there’s often overlap in themes globally. I know European fairytales better, which is essentially the reason I’m not going to branch out too far. I opted to also stick to Western movies so as not to narrow things down, but also in particular “waves hand towards all of Ghibli” amongst many others. There’s a reason the guys in Ghibli are so gender.

2. TW for discussions of rape culture and rape fantasies

EDIT: FUCK I’M A GOBLIN CHILD! FORGOT TO PUT A MASSIVE MASSIVE THANK YOU TO @mimsyaf​ WHO HAS BEEN THE NICEST, KINDEST EDITOR ON THESE THOUGHTS AND CONTRIBUTED SO MUCH TO THEM AND GENERALLY IS A WONDERFUL PERSON!

Part 2

Part 3

1. Introduction

I recently wrote a little thing, which was about Daniel as a fairytale protagonist – specifically one that goes through some of the kinds of transformations that are often associated with female protagonists of fairytales.

I used quotes from Red Riding Hood, Labyrinth, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Dracula, which, as an aside – the overlap between fairytales, horror, and fantasy and the ways each of those genres delve into very deep, basic questions of humanity and the world is something that will always make me feral. I will be generally sticking with fairytales though. Also I am very excited about some of those Labyrinth concepts going around!

I’m going to use “feminine” and “masculine” in both gendered (as in relating specifically to people) and non-gendered (as in relating to codes) ways throughout this, depending on context.

To be binary for a moment, because sample-sizes of other genders are low, women are usually able to fall into either feminine or masculine arcs, although sometimes the masculine-coded woman can become a “not like the other girls” stereotype and the feminine-coded woman a shallow cliché – in both cases they’re also under more scrutiny and judgement, so it’s always worth asking “is this character not working for me because of the writing or because I have ingrained biases? (Both?)”

Men don’t often get feminine-coded arcs. Because. Probably a mix of biases and bigotry. But there are some that seem to have slipped beneath the shuttered fence of “Sufficient Narrative Testosterone,” and Daniel LaRusso is one of them.

2. Some Dude Comparisons (Men Doing Manly Action-Hero Things like being trans symbolism and loving your girlfriend… seriously those things are hella manly, I wish we saw more of that onscreen…)

a. Neo

Much like Neo The Matrix, whose journey is filled with transgender subtext and specifically and repeatedly references Alice In Wonderland, Daniel doesn’t go through quite the kind of hero's journey usually associated with Yer Standard Male Hero, especially the type found in the 80s/90s.

Neo is my favourite comparison, because of the purposefulness of his journey as a trans narrative and the use of Alice. But I’m sure there are other non-traditional male heroes out there (but are they trans tho? Please tell me, I want trans action heroes).

Neo “passes” as a socially acceptable man, but online goes by a different name - the name he prefers to be known by - feels like there’s something inherently wrong about the world around him and his body’s place in that society, and then gets taken down the rabbit hole (with his consent, although without really “knowing” what he’s consenting to) to discover that it’s the world that’s wrong - not him. And by accessing this truth he can literally make his body do and become whatever he wants it to.

Yay. (The message of the Matrix is actually that trans people can fly).

Neo is – kind of like Daniel – a strange character for Very Cis Straight Guys to imprint on. He spends most of the first movie unsure about what’s going on, out of his depth, and often getting beaten up. He is compared to Alice several times and at the end he dies. He loses. He has to be woken up with true love’s kiss, in a fun little Sleeping Beauty/Snow White twist. Yes, after that he can fly, but before that he’s getting dead-named and hate-crimed by The Most Obvious Stand-In For Normativity, Agent Smith, and being carried by people far more physically capable than he is (people who also fall outside of normative existence).

Trinity and Neo in The Matrix. The fact that a lot of the time neither of them is gendered is something. Literally brought to life by true love’s kiss.

I’m not about to argue that Daniel LaRusso is purposefully written along these same thought processes, so much as the luck of the way he was written, cast, directed, acted, and costumed all came together in the right way. And this is even more obvious when compared to That Other Underdog Fite Movie That Was By The Same Director as Karate Kid.

b. Rocky

The interesting thing about Rocky is that he is (despite being a male action icon) also not written as a Traditionally Masculine person. Large portions of Rocky – and subsequent Rocky films – are his fear and insecurity about fighting vs his inability to apply his skills to another piece of work and wanting to do right by his girlfriend (and future wife), Adrian. The fighting is most often pushed onto him against his will.

Much like in Karate Kid there is barely any fighting in Rocky I. Most of it is dedicated to how much Rocky loves Adrian and the two of them getting together. The fight is – again like in Karate Kid – a necessary violence, rather than a glorified one (within the plot, obviously watching any movie like this is also partly about the badassness of some element of the violence – whether stamina or the crane kick, it’s all about not backing down against a more powerful opponent).

Rocky is played by Sylvester Stallone. He’s tough, he’s already a fighter (albeit in the movie not a great one yet), he’s taking the fight for cash – so although he’s also soft-spoken and sweet, you’re aware of the fact that he’s got those traits that’d make a male audience go “Hell Yeah, A Man,” or whatever it is a male audience does watching movies like that… cis straight men imprinting on oiled muscle men sure is a strange phenomenon, why do you wanna watch a boxing match? So you can watch toned guys groaning and grappling with each other? Because you want to feel like A Man by allowing yourself to touch the skin of other men?

Apollo and Rocky in Rocky III. This sequence also includes prolonged shots of their crotches as they run. Sylvester Stallone directed this. This was intentional. Bros.

Daniel LaRusso is not built like that. But that doesn’t really have to matter. Being smallish and probably more likely to be described as “pretty” than handsome, and not having a toxic masculine bone in his body does not a feminine archetype make. It just makes a compelling (and pretty) underdog. 

c. Daniel

So where does the main difference really lie? Between Rocky and Daniel? Well, Rocky has the plot in his hands – Daniel, largely, does not. Rocky is acting. Daniel is reacting or being pushed into situations by others. Just like our boy Neo. Just like Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Snow White – just like some of the women in some contemporary(ish) fairytale films like Buttercup (Princess Bride), Dorothy (Wizard of Oz), or Sarah (Labyrinth).

This isn’t a necessary negative about stories about girls and women, so much as looking at what it is girls and women in fairytales have/don’t have, what they want, and how they’re going to get it. It’s about power (lack of), sexuality (repressed, then liberated), men, and crossing some taboo lines. It’s also about queerness.

3. The Karate Kid Part One: Leaving Home

Daniel LaRusso is a poor, skinny, shortish kid (played by a skinny, shortish twenty-two-year old) who doesn’t fit in after having been taken away from the home he was familiar with against his will. Not every male protagonist in a fairytale leaves of his own will, and not every female protagonist leaves under duress – Red Riding Hood, for example, seems perfectly happy to enter the forest. However generally a hero is “striking out to make his fortune,” and generally a heroine is fleeing or making a bargain or being married off or waiting for help to arrive. She is often stuck (and even Red Riding Hood requires saving at some point).

Daniel then encounters a beautiful, lovely girl on the beach, puts on a red hoodie (red is significant), is beaten up by a large, attractive bully, loses what little clout he may have had with his new friends, and generally has a mostly miserable time until he befriends and is saved by Mr Miyagi. To do a little Cinderella comparison: Miyagi is the fairy godmother who pushes Daniel to go to the ball in disguise as well, and that disguise falls to pieces as he’s running away.

Then Daniel asks for help, Miyagi gets him enrolled in a Karate Tournament, and starts teaching him. Daniel wins the tournament and gets the girl, the end.

While Daniel has chutzpah and is a wonderful character, none of the big events are initiated by him, except for the initial going to the forest/beach (and within all of these events Daniel absolutely makes choices – I’m not saying he’s passive): Lucille takes them to California, Miyagi pushes him to go to the dance, Miyagi again decides to enroll him in the tournament and trains him, and only because Kreese doesn’t allow for any other option, Ali is the one who more often than not approaches Daniel, and even their first encounter is pushed by Daniel’s friends.

Daniel really is at a dance/ball in disguise and receives a flower from a girl who recognises him through said disguise, it’s unbearable! It’s adorable! I get it Ali, I fucking get it!

Daniel’s main journey within this – apart from not getting killed by karate thugs (love u Johnny <3) and kissing Ali – is to learn from Miyagi. He’s not necessarily a full-on feminine fairytale archetype at this point, although there are fun things to pull out of it, mainly in the context of later films and Cobra Kai: the subtext of karate and how that builds throughout all the stories, the red clothes, the themes of obsession, his being targeted by boys whose masculinity is more than a little bit toxic and based on shame… more on all that coming up.

He doesn’t technically get a home until they build him a room at Miyagi’s place, but he definitely leaves the woods at the end of this one, trophy lifted in the air after being handed to him by a tearful Johnny and all.

And then they made a sequel.

4. The Karate Kid Part Two: Not Out Of The Woods Yet

Daniel’s won the competition, Kreese chokes out Johnny for daring to lose and cry, more life-lessons are given (for man without forgiveness in heart…) and Daniel and Ali break-up off-screen, confirming that TKK1 was not really about the girl after all, which, despite Daniel and Kumiko having wonderful chemistry, is also an ongoing theme. Daniel enters the screen in The Most Baby-Blue Outfit seen since Tiana’s dress in Princess and the Frog? Or that dress in Enchanted? Maybe Cinderella’s (technically silver, but later depicted as blue)? 

(Sidenote: At everyone who says Sam ought to wear a callback to that suit,  you are correct and sexy).

Surprise, Miyagi’s building him a room.

Double-surprise, Miyagi needs to go to Okinawa.

Triple surprise, Daniel reveals he’s going with him, because he’s his son dammit.

The Karate Kid Part Two is maybe the least Daniel-LaRusso-Feminine-Fairytale-Protagonist of the three, because it’s not really his movie. Daniel runs around with Kumiko (aka the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen), continues to be The Best Non-Toxic Boy a middle-aged Okinawan karate master could ask for, lands himself another Built Karate Rival (twice is just a coincidence, right? Right?), and eventually doesn’t die while wearing red again – twice: When Chozen almost strangles him to death at the Miyagi dojo and then during the final fight. The Saving Of The Girl (both the little girl in the storm and Kumiko) actually puts him in a more traditional masculine space than the previous movie did, even if the main theme of the film is about compassion and kindness and by the end, once more the boy whose masculinity is built on rockhard abs and matchsticks is on his knees. Daniel just has that power over big boys. It’s called kick/punch them in the face hard enough that they see stars.

There’s an aside to be made here about how much Daniel really is an observer in other peoples stories in this, although he is the factor that sends both Chozen and Kumiko into completely different directions in life (Chozen and Kumiko main characters when?) Anyway he comes out of it presumably okay, despite being almost killed. Maybe a few therapy sessions and he’ll get over it. Too bad Terry Silver is lurking around the corner…

5. The Karate Kid Part Three: The Big Bad Wolf

Alright people have written Words about the third movie. It’s fascinating. It’s odd. It’s eye-straining. It’s like olives – you’re either fully onboard the madness or it’s too off-putting for you (or you’re like. Eh, don’t see what all the fuss is about either way...). It’s basically a non-consensual secret BDSM relationship between a guy in his thirties (played by a Very Tall twenty-seven year old Thomas Ian Griffith) and a 17/18 year old (played by a shorter twenty-eight year old Ralph Macchio).

Also recently we got more information on Mr. Griffith’s input on the uh… vibes of the film. Apparently it wasn’t just The Sweetness of Ralph Macchio’s face, the screenplay (whatever that amounted to in the first place – release the script!), the soundtrack, the direction to not tone it down under any circumstances, the fact that Macchio categorically refused to play a romance between himself and an actress who was sixteen, no: it was also TIG coming up with fun ways to torture Daniel’s character and suggesting these to the director. Clearly everyone has fun hurting Mr Macchio (including Mr Macchio).

The point is that aaallll of that amounts to that Intense Homoerotic Dubiously-Consented-To D/s subtext that haunts the movie and gives a lot of fun stuff to play with. It’s also a film that – if we’re analysing Daniel along feminine-coded fairytale lines recontextualises his role in this universe.

The Fairytale goes topsy-turvy. Through the looking glass. Enter Big Bad Wolf stage right. Karate is a metaphor for Daniel’s bisexual awakening. 

“Oh, when will an attractive man touch me in ways that aren’t about hurting me?” he asks after two movies of being hurt by boys with rippling muscles. “Why do men continue to notice me only to hit me? Do you think wearing red is making me too noticeable? Anyway, Mr Silver looked really good in his gi today.” 

Daniel’s diary must be a trip.