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animehouse-moe · 11 months

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Link Click Season 2 Episode 4: Let It Unfold

As we enter into the heart of this season in terms of story, the opening of this episode does struggle a little bit with some all-too-convenient exposition about Qian Jin, which thankfully the latter half makes you forget all about. Potentially a bit of rough writing to give viewers information, as we slip into the past we shed those struggles and present a more expected but refreshingly different plot line. Certainly still a good episode, and certainly still a good bit to talk about.

So like I said, the episode itself doesn't start off incredibly strong by any means. It details all the information leading up to the current events: the phone missing, the picture Lu Guang has, Qian Jin's past, and so on and so forth. I don't think it's explicitly bad, but it feels like rushed writing for the story. A big old exposition dump from multiple parties, it feels like. Personally, I definitely believe they could have done a better job with conveying the information, but I also think it would take considerably more screen time to do so which is where this tradeoff stems from in the first place most likely.

Anyways, I'll just quickly expand on a few of those key details here.

Qian Jin's contact with Xixi. They're obviously aware of one another, but apparently were not working together explicitly at this moment. Qian Jin's surprised to hear that his lackey doesn't have Liu Min's phone, but isn't unaware of who's calling or shocked at the phone call when (presumably) Xixi makes contact.

Qian Jin's past. A by the books cop that gets turned sour after the death of a loved one. It's not a novel story by any means, but is clearly the foundation for some sort of interaction with Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi. It does make me wonder though if Xiao Li will play a role in talking down Qian Jin, or if Cheng Xiaoshi will take over Xiao Li himself, since he's the one who oversaw the murder case.

And the last piece: the weight of Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang's powers. Not quite exposition, but definitely the most important piece of dialogue through this front half. It continues to establish the regret and grief the pair feel over their previous forays into the past, and their hesitation and wariness of continuing with it once more. It's the natural conclusion from the first season, so I'm glad to see it referenced so heavily whenever the past arises between these characters.

Anyways, into the past we go with Cheng Xiaoshi as Xixi. I think similar to the first half there's not a world of stuff to talk about, but overall it's the much stronger and more put together sequence in the episode. The struggle of a single mother with a mute daughter is felt rather quickly through the story, and Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang are firing off piece after piece of information for the viewer to soak up.

Overall, it's a really solid sequence that teleports viewers back into the season 1 mindset as we explore experiences of the past and their regrets, challenges, and fears. Considering how well fitted it is to the overall idea of this season, I'm really curious to see how they move forward and how often we find ourselves diving back in time.

Regardless of my thoughts though, as I just said there's quite a bit of info here and there to take in, so let me highlight it really quickly.

We'll start off with this interesting notion. By pulse alone, the doctor could tell something was different with Xixi. This itself means that when Cheng Xiaoshi takes over the body of a person, they exert physical changes to some degree. Arguably only temporary changes, but a stronger pulse and physical capabilities were shown here specifically.

It's also just funny because Cheng Xiaoshi was worried about this specifically.

Next up is the eyes of the mother. This one makes things more complicated, as she shares the same eye color (but not pupil shape) with Lu Guang. Equally as interesting is the fact that Xixi's original eye color (that reddish-pink) does not come from her mother, but presumably her father? Considering that, is it possible that Xixi's father is the source of Lu Guang's abilities, and that the father (who has Xixi's eye color) is the one chasing Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang? That presents the question though of why a father would attempt to kill his own son, which is the right kind of dramatic for Link Click, if not a bit of a stretch.

Next up is our first callback to the opening, our stuffed animal. I know it doesn't look exactly alike the 3D one because of the style, but if you pay attention the design on the ears is the same. A rounded triangle on one, and a star on the other.

This indicates to viewers both the number of pasts we visit in this season, and also the order of them. We've started with the stuffed animal, will move onto the gun, and finish with the diary. Now, I'm unsure of who the diary may belong to, but I'm somewhat confident that the gun story will be related to Qian Jin who's past we learnt of today.

The next piece is this curious question: the deceased owner of a phone that was texted information about Qiao Ling. The name is Liu Lan, which has the same surname is Liu Min. Are they actually related? Is Liu Min the real brother of Xixi? It raises an incredible interesting question of just how things came to be, and if it actually is Liu Min that's Xixi's brother, or if there's any relation to Lu Guang. Incredibly curious detail to reveal, that I'm very interested to learn more about.

And last but not least, Cheng Xiaoshi's realization. Is it Liu Min's father that touches Xixi's mother on the shoulder? Or is it someone else that Cheng Xiaoshi would recognize? Whoever it is, their expression relays the notion to the viewer that Cheng Xiaoshi knows the person that's in front of them at this moment.

From here, we end the episode with (presumably) Xixi waiting for Cheng Xiaoshi to discuss things with him. Are they planning on airing out all of the pasts to provide a reversal of events? Knowing the past they now aim for the future? It's an interesting question to pose, but without knowing what it is that (presumably) Xixi wants to tell Cheng Xiaoshi, it's hard to say for sure what direction we'll be moving in with the next episode.

Building a mystery atop several smaller mysteries, all the while taking into account timelines and order of events can be challenging. So far though, Link Click S2 seems to have a pretty confident read on how it wants things to go down. At times it might be a little too literal with how it hands out information, but at its core it still aims for the heart like season 1 did, which leaves me very hopeful for how things go as we continue on here. Very much looking forward to the next episode.

#link click #time agents #shi guang dai li ren #shiguang dailiren #时光代理人 #cheng xiaoshi #lu guang #qiao ling #donghua #shiguang daili ren #anime recommendation #anime review #anime and manga #anime #shiguang #link click spoilers

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goldxnfemme · 2 years

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I'm new to the lesbian scene, I was jw what do butch and femme really mean? (Regarding your post yesterday)

Hi! I'm sorry I took a couple days to get to this, I've been wondering how to best, in the most complete way, address this, in the sense that I've answered this a few times and I keep adding more and more each time, it never seems like quite enough. I talked to my girlfriend, a fellow femme about this and she told me "I was thinking that you could surely write it just from your head and heart!" and she's right, I could, but to talk about these identities and pass only the subjectivity of my experiences and the bit of knowledge I have wouldn't do it justice. I will talk about it from those angles though, don't worry. I thought I could share bits and pieces of books that helped shape me into the femme I am today, I have mentioned those before, but I found myself with too many pieces, over 90, and I think that's too many for one post, so here and now I will promise to share those with you, not in this post, but in this blog and I believe sharing different experiences will help the general understanding. I am only one femme and my experience isn't universal, so we shall share the knowledge.

I have answered a similar ask before, here , hopefully the link works, if I miss anything, my butch/femme tag is also here, there I have a lot of resources there.

Butch and femme are complex and subjective identities (there are so many ways to be butch and femme , it's not one size fits all because everyone is a little different), and it's important to me that I don't diminish them into aesthetics, because I want people the understand that the center of butch and femme isn't looks.

Here's the center of these identities for me, what unifies us all, regardless of subjectivity, is that at the end of the day they are about community, about being there for each other, about taking care of each other, about finding safety in each other's arms when the world is still shitty towards you, about protecting one another in any way that you can and making sure they feel that sense of belonging in our community. Butch and femme are two sides of the same coin facing struggles and fighting to protect our counterparts however we need to.

In this case, I'll talk about these identities in lesbian communities.

Butch is authentic, transgressive, beautiful is its own ways, it's taking masculinity that for a long time was seen as only belonging to men and making it their home, their comfort, finding their true self there and giving it their very own meanings, much like femmes' femininity, their masculinity isn't one size fits all and it shows itself in different ways. Femme, for me, is taking femininity and making it your own, presenting yourself for others in your community, femme is strong, it's brave, it's fierce, it's demanding when we need it to be, it's making your voice heard for your sake and for others, because that's the important bit, it's all about community. Femme is being safety and community to butches and vice versa. Being femme is being proud. Femme is taking care of your community, it's making a home together where we all belong.

Butch and femme are about subversion and belonging.

It's not that without a butch I am not femme, or that we're necessarily attached, it's that their existence fosters my femmeness and brings it to its full potential, my place of belonging. Butches in general bring us something to contrast against while going both in the same direction.

The notion of that dynamic is important in its existence and application, regardless of romantic inclinations, the contrast, the mutual support and protection and uplifting, still should exist, being possible and necessary, while in a butch for butch or femme for femme, butch or femme4both relationship, etc.

Therefore those identities meet in their very own representation of lesbian gender and being there for each other.

Now I want to address a few misunderstandings I've seen about these identities*:

- you don't have to be tall to be a butch. There are no height restrictions in the butch identity, as far as I'm concerned. Short butches are still butches and beyond valid, your height doesn't determine how butch you are. The inverse is also true, femmes do not have to be short and petite, no height restrictions for us either.

- you don't have to be attracted to butches to be femme or to femmes to be butch, again not a requirement, but it's important to understand this is your community, regardless of romantic inclinations, the mutual support and protection and uplifting are deeply rooted in these identities, that is important.

- butch doesn't equal top/femme doesn't equal bottom. Butches do not have to be tops, butches do not have to be dominant, butches are not aggressive, at least none of the ones I know and have read about, butches don't have to have these characteristics attributed to "traditional"/stereotypical masculinity. These can be harmful stereotypes at times. Neither are femmes inherently submissive and agreeable to everything.

- in talking sexuality, stone butch and stone femme identities/dynamics/relationships are actually healthy and reciprocal, they're not selfish. And those boundaries should be respected. I have more about these in the butch/femme tag.

- femmes aren't always gender confirming. It is very frustrating for me that people still believe this, I'd say, more often than not, femmes are gender nonconforming, we can have complicated relationships with gender just like butches.

- you don't have to be physically strong to be butch. The butch identity isn't about your muscles. While I'm here talking about bodies, butches and femmes don't have to be white and thin, people of colour who have those identities are amazing, fat butches and femmes are such an important part of our community and history. Oh and disabled butches/femmes, you are so loved and valid.

In fact, when I talk about butch identity towards people of colour it reminds me of this piece from Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme:

hopefully readable, though I think you have to click on them to do so

- continuing, femme isn't hyper feminine all the time or even at all for some of us, butch isn't rough and tough and hyper masculine all the time or again, even at all. And that goes into what i said, those identities aren't looks, some femmes find comfort in hyper femininity, some femmes have a different version of their own femininity and that's okay, same goes for butches, there isn't a requirement of how masculine or feminine you have to be, masculinity and femininity are what you make of it, these concepts go through our experiences in life, our notions of self, etc.

- oh mind you, for some authors the idea of butch and therefore femme, in and of itself, is beyond the cisnormative standards. All of this to say, trans butches and femmes, you belong here. You're part of our history, to say that you don't is to ignore the importance and the work the trans community put in to get us here.

- butches can do whatever they want with their hair, wearing makeup doesn't make them less butch, not wearing makeup doesn't make femmes less femme, having short hair doesn't make femmes less femme, wearing clothes not traditionally considered feminine doesn't make you less femme.

At the end of the day each butch and femme are unique, you won't ever find one exactly like the other and that's what makes those identities beautiful.

*Of course I'm not covering all of them, there are just so many, but here's a few I've seen a lot and that were pointed out to me.

ID under keep reading.

ID: image 1 - text reading:

"While focusing on demonstrating butch and female masculinity's epistemological origins, many feminist theorists have interpreted butch as a way of "knowing, interpreting, and doing lesbian gender." Ontologically, these lesbian genders are seen as being "concerned with having an identity, and a kind of true self." Some understand it as both socially constructed "gender performance" and others as representing an essentialized heterosexual, biological, male identity that merely clones the referent. The expressions of one's gendered butch identity are intrinsically linked to culture and race. In Davis and Kennedy's classic Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community, they describe "a new style of butch, a woman who dressed in working-class male clothes for as much of the time as she possibly could, and went to the bar every day, not just on weekends. She was also street wise and fought back physically when provoked by straight society or by other lesbians." The political significance of this emergence lies in the visibility lesbians gained in the 1940s and '50s as World War II reshaped the American landscape, changing women's roles in relationship to work, gender, and family. Butch was a site of resistance to the heteronormative limitations on women. It was a place to embrace one's identity in a public way that allowed for alignment between the public and private self, a way of claiming space with your very presence. There is a long-standing history of butch representations that have helped solidify the iconic image of today's butch. The icon of butch identity was fashioned through historical narratives, poetry, biography, and classic novels such as Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, written in 1928 and long considered the most well-known lesbian novel, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles from Ann Bannon, which moved butch into mainstream consciousness in the 1950s, and Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues, set in the pre-Stonewall era of the 1960s, which solidified the archetype. This "butch raging bull, as Halberstam argues, is meant to "offer masculinity a new champion" drawing on the iconography of the white male boxer. These works created a narrative for what and how butch looks and feels that still holds significant cultural power today. The external signifiers - the class and racial location of these historical accounts and cultural references to bars and customs - locate butch identity. This locating of butchness within a specific culture, class, race, and ethnicity makes it difficult for the masculine of centre person of colour to enter into the narrative without their gender presentation, specifically their version of masculinity, being questioned. Attempts to disrupt this sense of "classical" butch continue to rely on representations and cultural location within whiteness and white notions of masculinity and femininity. As Halberstam points out, there is cultural value in marginalizing masculinities that divert from the master narrative. Even though Halberstam is speaking to heteronormative masculinity here, these diverting narratives have the potential to "dilute" the "authoritative power" of white butchness in the same way. As this narrative is pushed into the mainstream queer consciousness to construct butch identity, many of our experiences are left out. Supporting versions of masculinity that we enjoy and trust, many of these "heroic masculinities" depend absolutely on the subordination of alternative masculinities. This role of the dominant narrative being constructed and circulated while simultaneously preventing alternative narratives is an important factor in establishing fixed understandings of female masculinity and butch."

Image 2 - text reading:

“Halberstam goes on to address female masculinity's relation to whiteness and identifies it as a site of inquiry for "cultural studies" yet does not venture down the road of how the relationship to race critically alters female masculinity as a concept. The challenge in theorizing butch gender and identity is that to determine how it operates, you have to locate it within certain bodies and cultural and sexual practices. These various locations, when analyzed, become fixed and static through the work of the writer exploring their creation and development. A central argument in Female Masculinity is that masculinity "becomes legible as masculinity where and when it leaves the white male middle-class body." While a considerable amount of the analysis explores when and where the narrative departs from the male body, less attention is given to when and where it departs from whiteness. Unlike white female masculinity, female masculinity for womyn of colour is based on sites of power and systemic oppression - through masculinities of colour. The assumption that they can be resignified with equal subversive and revolutionary actions against white manhood is false. The ability to access masculinity pivots upon the ways in which gender intersects with race, and these gaps have been filled with many new ways of naming ourselves. In the last decade, the explosion of young masculine-of-centre womyn has created a demographic shift on the butch landscape, giving way to terms like "stud," "boi," "tom," and "macha" in California and the South, "dom" within the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region, and "aggressives," or "AGS" in New York. These identities represent a redefined female masculinity that is rooted in the experiences of womyn of colour and is more genderqueer than historical interpretations of butch. For some this raises the question: "What is happening to all of our butches?" I think this evolution highlights the fact that, for many of us who came of age ten or twenty years ago, and even called ourselves butches, we never felt fully rooted in that language and space. As a community, we have the opportunity to respond with an open heart to this evolution, ensuring that the legacy of butch as a social, political, and personal space continues to grow and thrive. But we must also concede its limitations. The title of this piece, "Masculine of Centre, Seeks Her Refined Femme," is a heading from the first dating profile posted using the term "masculine of centre." It speaks to both a historical legacy of butch-femme and a longing for a language different and new.”

END ID

#bellas butch/femme tag #ask #FAQ #sharing the knowledge series

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genericpuff · 9 months

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I have a question....So I like doing art and drawing comics. I usually go for a dreamy fantasy vibe like Lore Olympus did. But I want to try a new different style, I usually go for Watercolor brushes when doing my usually style but started using Oil brushes.

Can I have some advice on changing art styles and body details.

This is where I fully support the saying "good artists copy, great artists steal", because the whole notion of 'style' is just mileage + referencing. So really, if you're wanting to try out other styles and mediums, go find artists you like who work in that style and reference them! Do studies of them! Redline their JPG's! Experiment with brushes and see which ones get the closest! Analyze their work and reverse engineer it until it makes sense!

(of course, this is all for educational purposes, so don't go literally stealing any artist's work, if you do share anything that you've experimented on be sure to credit the original artist and link to their socials or something to pay it forward <3)

With LO, a lot of how I've studied Rachel's style (and I still do because man it's hard to nail) is literally just by taking old LO panels that I like and redrawing them. Whether it involves ground up "drawing what I see" or tracing (yes, I said tracing, it's completely fine if it's for learning!!), whatever gets the piece close enough that I'm happy with it. And then from there, I refine the process - if I did a lot of dumb little steps during the experimenting phase, then I do it again and again and again until I figure out what steps can be skipped and which ones can be kept. I was actually just doing this today earlier at work because I'm STILL trying to get Rekindled closer to that S1 LO look. There's nothing even really wrong with the art in Rekindled, I like it a lot, but I'm still far from my original goal. So I study, and I study more.

Also - and this isn't something that's always going to be doable but I suggest you try it - if you're working digitally, one thing that I find helps a lot with learning an artist's process underneath the final project is finding artists who sell their PSD/CSP/art files and brushes. Some artists do and it's so helpful for pulling back the curtain and seeing what they're really doing underneath that final result. There's a lot of great info you can get just by picking things apart and making a mess. Of course, that's only applicable to artists that sell their files, and they're for studying ONLY, for obvious reasons, but it's a great way to support those artists. Some artists I've gotten PSD's from include wlop and sakimichan!

I hope that helps!! Basically, just don't be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone and always be on the lookout for what you can learn from the art you consume :)

#ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything

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britanniabay · 1 year

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For those of you following One Night on Britannia on AO3, all I'll say is today is February 13th!!

In our glorious alternate universe, we all know what happened 41 years ago tonight! 😉🫠

In honor of such event, I decided to wear my "Feelin' Festive" shirt and a pair of double heart earrings to work today. Call me crazy, but I can't help it.

I also wanted to say many thanks to all of your wonderful comments. I am always hesitant about posting any of my writings, but many of you have surprised me that you've continued to read, comment and support my crazy notion! I apologize to @grandmaster-anne and @thiziri for also inciting waves of tears! This story isn't yet finished, as I'm still writing, but I'm also mulling over a few new ideas.

Have a great day! Enjoy February 13th in the alternate universe, and if you're lost reading this, here's a link to the "fannefiction"

Above is a photo from Cheltenham in 1993. This was referenced in one of the latest chapters. Again, folks, alternate universe. Live a little, laugh a lot, and share the love!

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kiefbowl · 6 months

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https://www.tumblr.com/imanes/181546472260/httpswwwtumblrcomdashboardblogluckystrabis?source=share

would you analyze this queen

>bc that one post about attachment to womanhood is still hurting people’s feelings, let’s keep talking about it.

There is a link they have at the top of this post that doesn't work for me, but otherwise I'm not sure what post they're talking about. So that might have some missing context. I also want to point out that you sent me a reblog of the op, and the reblog is dated 2018, so this is more than 5 years ago written.

>radical feminist notions of gender socialization correctly frame it as a traumatizing process.

Now there are two ways of interpreting this: 1. they are actually talking about radical feminists or 2. they are talking vaguely about the women online who may or may not call themselves either radical feminists, radfem, or terfs who might say any number of things.

Generally speaking, the idea that radical feminists talk explicitly about "gender socialization as a traumatizing process" is a little wonky. This isn't a tenet of radical feminism specifically as I understand it. Gender socialization has garnered a lot more discussion relatively recently in more explicit terms by public self identifying radical feminists because of the concerns of transgender ideas, sometimes even developing in response to ideas set forth by transgender activists. I don't think many radical feminists would hold tight to the idea that gender socialization is traumatic to men, since men are socialized to benefit from the sex hierarchy. If it's traumatic to anyone, it's women, though the idea that being socialized into womanhood is always and totally a traumatic experience just feels a little...rote. Not truly grasping the entirety of what socialization is. But to be clear, I don't think a lot of feminists go about making this point first and foremost, but rather talk about specific ways gender socialization is traumatic to women and girls (which is in service to argue the larger point that the sex hierarchy is real and that women are a marginalized class). I doubt op is truly interested in engaging with those ideas meaningfully, despite calling radical feminists "correct" about it.

The other interpretation is, well, "I read some tumblr posts that said this." I'm sure you have. Me, too. Some really intelligent women are on tumblr and they make a lot of intelligent posts about gender and gender socialization. I also know that when you have a little insular pocket online in any community, it's easy for those people to mimic what they say to each other unthinkingly. This is not a moral judgement on my part, and I don't think it's exclusive to feminists...it's inclusive to everybody (finally something that is!! the weak human psychology!! lol). My only point is, if you want to go find someone saying things that will make you mad, you can go do that online because you can find at least one person saying the exact thing you want them to say, so you can respond to it. It becomes an outrage machine, despite not really reflecting what a group truly believes, or what most people believe, or what is meaningfully understood. I only say this to suggest perhaps this post is one of those posts that is responding to a general sentiment they have vaguely seen and not meaningfully tried to understand and have reinforced by reading posts that are just sort of nothing burger but have the right words strung together in the precise way to make op cringe or whatever.

The point is, if you want to understand what someone is saying to truly understand it, you have to ask them. So if someone posts "gender socialization is traumatic" with not much else context, that's already such a vague sentiment it would behoove you to be intellectually curious enough to ask them "what do you mean? can you expand on this so I understand it?" And if you're someone who wants to be understood, it would behoooooove you to welcome the opportunity.

If you were to ask me if I think "gender socialization is traumatic" I would say "It depends on what you mean." So we're already hitting a wall to understanding each other. Anyway...

>a contradiction arises, in that case, when they assign positive moral traits to female socialization

This is another example where I'm not going to say this doesn't happen, but this is not an understanding within radical feminism. That doesn't mean a radical feminist couldn't believe this, it just means that the texts that support radical feminist ideas are not interested in sanctifying being a woman as some de facto morality. That is a ridiculous claim and proves that op is not interested in engaging with radical feminist texts as serious scholarly works. In defense of op, they are probably young and have never had their analytical skills challenged outside of, say, high school class. It does lead me to believe this person is responding only to vaguely feminist ideas they've seen in posts that have made them mad without trying to meaningfully understand them. So, +1 to me for guessing that :)

>(and femininity by extension)

Even more factually wrong than the statement above. op cannot understand when feminists discuss womanhood, that it is not an interchangeable word with femininity. Because in op's mind, femininity is innate, whether they realize they believe that or not is no matter.

>because, much like society in general, they believe that an ideally traumatized woman is able to access moral high grounds that other people cannot.

Truly offensive and in fact betrays that this is what op believes. op believes in a connection between morality and suffering. Why do I know that? Because they interpret this from ideas that have nothing to do with morality. If someone says "women are oppressed" they have not made a moral statement about women. If anything, they've made a moral statement about men. If you read "women are oppressed" and you read "women are moral" you have made that connection.

This is also a good time to point out that if this was something they were writing for school, they would need to then support their claim with sourced quotes. It's convenient that this is tumblr where they aren't compelled to do this. Who said this? When did they say this? How many of them said this? Did they say this explicitly? Are you extrapolating? What was the context? Where was it said?

But the true interesting part is "society in general." It's so fun to see in action MRA points infiltrating supposedly quote unquote liberal/leftist gender ideas...how does society in general demonstrate seeing the traumatized woman as the most moral person? Outside of your favorite genre tv scenes you're able to recontexualize to your heart's content. When a woman kills her abuser, how likely is she to serve more time than he would have if he had been sentenced to abusing her? QUICKLY!

>“i was socialized female” becomes an admission of guaranteed prosociality, a set of traits that are only ever harmful because they are at risk of exploitation via external forces.

Even if I didn't just argue that this point is moot because the previous points are not true or supported by evidence...hwuh?? What are they saying. Does this even follow from what they've said so far. "prosocial" is a word I had to look up, and it's a psychology word meaning "intended to help or benefit another person or group." They haven't talked about this at all. Also, prosociality is not really a form of the word, "prosocial behavior" is a phrase used.

So, to rephrase: "I was socialized female" becomes an acknowledgment (by feminists) that prosocial behavior is guaranteed, a set of traits that do not causes harm but are at risk of exploitation which would then cause the traits to be harmful [editor's note: to whom?].

Again...what? (I also cut the "via external forces" because how are you at risk of exploitation via internal forces lmao).

Even if I was to do a good faith read of this, it would be like "when feminists argue that women are socialized female, they are saying that women are socialized into prosocial behaviors." Which, yeah okay...but what of it? Prosocial behaviors are good therefore women are morally good because of femininity? This is just not a thing feminists really say.

>this is why many radical feminists view trans men as safer & more politically enlightened than trans women

The religiosity of op is apparent all the way through. The talk of morality, "politically enlightened"....etc etc. Feminists aren't really interested in who is more politically "enlightened." Trans men aren't included in feminism because of how safe they are or even how politically enlightened (whatever the fuck that means) they are...it's just that they're female. They could be the nastiest most awful person in the world and they're still included. Like come on now, did someone go to bible camp when they were younger? I think someone went to bible camp when they were younger. (It wasn't me)

>- because of their proximity (imagined or otherwise) to femaleness, to daintiness, to softness and benevolence.

boring sentence

>“male socialization” is synonymous with antisociality, and becomes lobbied at trans women as a whole when individual trans women do things that radical feminists deem “unwomanly,” from having controversial political opinions to committing violent crime.

Feminists don't care about womanly-ness. I know op thinks we do, and specifically "radical feminists" because that's who they said (I haff to laff), because they see the argument that feminists have that "woman are female, and women are socialized into femininity" as saying "women are feminine, which includes being female", but anyway...let's talk about how they include in "unwomanly" committing violent crimes???!!!???!! whuahauhahah???? Is it perhaps not more sane to think that women are concerned about violent crimes men commit because of the harm they cause not that they aren't feminine behaviors???? A deeply unserious post I am regretting writing 1K about it.

>the gender socialization model becomes a way to moralize sex assignment by prescriptively linking particular experiences of trauma to particular personality outcomes.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, it's a way to describe OPPRESSION BASED ON THE AXIS OF SEX!!!! AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MORALITY OF BEING BORN FEMALE!!!! TRAUMA IS A SIGN OF MISTREATMENT HELLO??????

Here's a fun tip when analyzing the work of someone: if they start talking about the moralizing within an argument that is not about morality, they are in fact the moralizing one and do not know what they're talking about. Go ahead and disregard whatever they're saying, they don't do their homework and will never seriously try to understand anyone without bringing up morality.

>it is no longer a theoretical framework meant to honestly and meticulously analyze how children become gendered subjects.

weird online speak, why do people talk like this. how "children become gendered subjects"....okay. Well they become gendered subjects, you weirdo, by gender socialization...they thing you pointed out "radical feminists" were correct about as being traumatic? also why meticulously. again the religiosity...we must suffer through the virtue of hard work by being meticulous. I would guess that when this was written op was 16 years old, had definitely been to bible camp once, and had their own laptop that their parents didn't monitor, and are deeply afraid of being a bad person more than anything in the world (but only as judged by their peers).

>it is now used to reproduce the very gender roles that proponents of the framework claim to be against.

10 second fart noise this conclusion is not supported by your own argument. In this essay, I will talk about how women are always nice and that means feminists think women are always good. In conclusion: feminists meanie weanie actually. Yeah okay buddy.

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dye-it-rouge-et-noir · 11 months

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GoldenEye: Rogue Agent and more Rogue Agents

Art of Jonathan Hunter from GoldenEye: Rogue Agent! (The game!)

A 580~ word meta revolving around Hunter and the rogue agent archetype in James Bond is under the cut! I will admit, this isn't up to par to my typical essays (no proofreading + I'm sleep-deprived), but I felt like GoldenEye: Rogue Agent deserved a meta/ramble.

The notion of a rogue agent has been implemented in the Bond franchise in a multitude of installments. This includes the titular James Bond in License to Kill and a plethora of other characters utilizing this archetype. Particularly, the 2004 EA game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent exemplifies this archetype through the main character, Jonathan Hunter. Indicative of the game's title, the player takes on Hunter's role as a rogue agent who was denoted as too brutal for MI6 by M. He works in tandem with other characters of this archetype whilst also providing a unique take on the formula.

Many characters of the rogue agent archetype within the series develop this role due to conflicts with their superiors. Placing Hunter in comparison to other characters, he shares many similar aspects that serve to establish him as this role. For example, ex-KGB operative Nikolai Diavolo from another EA game entitled Everything or Nothing, shares Hunter's quality of being overly brutal which catalyzed their status of rogue agents. Though brutality is not inherently a part of the archetype, it demonstrates one form of conflict between an agent and their superior. Despite MI6 and the KGB being different organizations, the two sharing a similar conflict demonstrates how the notion of a rogue agent is not necessarily linked to one particular group. To further elaborate, the implementation of a rogue agent in regards to MI6 utilizes the organization's familiarity to the player as a means to establish him as an imposing figure. In the case of Diavolo, the same is done to illuminate how ruthless he is in comparison to other KGB agents (like mentor [Zorin], like student) in the series.

Moreover, Hunter particularly parallels Alec Trevelyan as an homage to the movie Goldeneye. While Trevelyan's conflict stems on a more systematic level, the two still are placed in opposition to English intelligence. Not only is the backdrop of MI6/England implemented to establish their respective characters, but they also both share a personal vendetta. In the case of Trevelyan, he was betrayed by the English government whereas Hunter personally lost his eye due to Dr. No. Similarly to the trait of brutality between Diavolo and Hunter, a grudge is not needed for the archetype but can act as an origin for it. In addition, this establishes their respective character motivations which in turn fuels the plot.

Distinct from other rogue agents, Hunter suffers a secondary betrayal from Goldfinger due to the former's potential danger. In addition, towards the end of Rogue Agent, Blofeld and Scaramanga discuss how they potentially created a newfound threat to SPECTRE through facilitating Hunter's endeavors. This parallels the beginning of the game with Hunter being deemed as too brutal for MI6's operations. Regardless of his affiliations, Hunter has been deemed as a threat for the danger he poses to his superiors no matter who they are. This contrasts those with a more stagnant allegiance such as Bond returning to MI6 or rogue agents having their own affiliation. Though in the case of the latter, the rogue agent in question will formulate their own side after being jeopardized/betrayed in some way. This is similar to Hunter's circumstance considering how he aligned himself with Goldfinger. However, the critical difference of another betrayal implies that Hunter will inevitably only have himself in the end. No matter where he stands, he is marked as a threat by both sides.

He is alone with no one to trust him and no one to trust.

#007 fest 2023 #007 fest #007 #james bond #goldeneye: rogue agent #my art #my ramblings

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horce-divorce · 8 months

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This is high on the list of stupidest fucking things I have ever seen. "entrepaneurs" will literally sell you mud inside a bead for $20 fucking dollars.

I was initially speechless about all of this. Oh the tragedy of my grandfather's illness really just inspired me to make a product. Not something useful or related to his illness whatsoever. No it was a cheap, fugly silicone bead bracelet, I was just sooo inspired by the highs and lows of life and I thought this tacky piece of fucking plastic needed to exist to lift others up. I made sure to bastardize a Hawaiian word for My Brand because it just wouldnt be inspirational if I used English. Yeah its made a ton of fucking money, obviously.

I know this company started in 2013, but how do you make so much money on PLASTIC BRACELETS that 10% of sales amounts to almost $10 million? Is this Claire's for rich kids?? Idk how to dig up the real numbers on their profits but boy if I did I'd be so curious.

This is the CEO btw. He turned 30 in 2021 :)

what I'm MORE curious about is, like, what is this genre of bullshit product called, and why this is successful? I mean, I know why, but I want to lay it out in plain English. Are we still calling this shit "snake oil"? Cause this falls solidly into but also beyond the snake oil category for me.

I get ads for stuff like this a lot, or Zox, or the related "health and wellness Lifestyle Products" that these brands inevitably always end up putting out alongside their Exclusive, Exquisite, Collectible, Grounding And Balancing Jewelry. There's some perfect storm of "business sector nepo babies* Starting Their Own Companies" and "American laypeople with no health insurance desperate for absolutely anything that will make them feel better" that coalesces, somehow, into these Health Bead Success Stories. These obviously share some kind of space with like, crystal healing energy infused water bottles and shit. *and I know nepo baby is used wrt celebrities usually but isn't it kind of the same thing when they have rich business owning parents and they end up also having a very successful business? Or is there no specific word for that because that's just capitalism and privilege working as intended lol.

I feel very strongly that this is exactly the type of business capitalists have in mind when they say, "just start your own! Its so easy!" I feel strongly that this kind of brand helps fuel that bootstraps myth that Anyone Can Do It. See, look at this idiot kid, all he did was slap some mud into some bracelets and he's already secured his unborn children's future privilege. There's a "certificate" on the website "confirming" the quality of the materials and everyone eats it up! It's that easy! You just make some ugly beads! Anyone can do it!!!! You just bullshit about anything and people will buy it!!!!! Why don't poor people do this every day!!!!!!!

Not a link btw ^ lmao. 'Watch our sherpas' in your imagination, which is where they live. There's no actual video.

I must add a reminder here that it costs tens of thousands of dollars to summit Everest. The CEO does seem like the kind of person who would summit everest and never shut the fuck up about it, but how much water would the team have to cart back down with them to make that profitable? Even if there's only a drop in each bead, you can only attempt to summit Everest about once a year due to the weather conditions. How many bracelets would they have to sell to justify summitting everest for a fucking production material? I guarantee you no capitalist is doing that rofl.

Btw the only reason I'm even entertaining the notion to this degree is because I saw actual honest to goodness comments on their IG page trying to argue "yeah but I think I saw a video where they tested it and proved the mud came from the dead sea?" Like. Babe...

I guarantee you that an average, everyday human with no ties to wall street cannot "start a business" like this and achieve the same success. You can WATCH these attempts happen in real-time on Instagram, there are a TON of jewelry-specific small businesses to choose from, even. There are thousands upon thousands of talented artists on insta who make exquisite work and who are about to close up shop because they cant keep up with the IG algo, or Etsy fees and scammers, or whatever. Those people have to learn everything from scratch and they don't get nominated for any fucking awards. More often, they get jerked around by Etsy until they can't take it anymore and then retire from posting about their hobbies.

I would love to know where this guy outsources his actual production to. I would love to know how much money this company actually makes, and how much of that was brought in simply due to the fact that this kid already had connections. (He has expanded into the adaptogen health tonic sphere too btw!) I would love to know how many BS, cheap, outsourced trinket-making companies that just sell beads, or whatever, actually exist and make a profit. It must be a good racket.

#me #capitalism is amazing

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yngai · 1 year

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❛ you think i’m weak don’t you? ❜

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE « 𝘈𝘊𝘊𝘌𝘗𝘛𝘐𝘕𝘎 .

it was through no fault of his own, her job has always been to find the weak link, look upon a structure for a crack to pick at, an easy access point . john, a man with a soul too large for his employers to countenance, annette, a woman so trapped between a failing marriage & too many schemes to break herself free of her work she found respite at the bedside of a pretty coworker in a pencil skirt, leon, a chance meeting in midst of hellfire that wasn't meant to end with him the rube & yet his coercion into government service made him that much more useful & now— luis serra navarro .

no one has a gaze as piercing as hers, seeing that bleeding heart in his chest as a perfect organ to jimmy the lock with, get her foot in the door of los iluminados where her undercover work would be a waste . she isn't donning robes & cursing herself with a tapeworm . luis' need to make good on his sins both here in spain & abroad at umbrella . she can recount the sorrow in his e-mails, the desperation, every line begging a dead friend for help only to find her & her employers at the other end, wesker ready to strike a deal for his rescue at her behest . the consortium knows he wants luis to be another of his many pet scientists, slave away at one of thousands secret research projects they're still trying to uncover, that's why they sent her in after krauser, to ensure neither luis or the amber fall in the wrong hands .

she remembers her report, how his history betrays an enthusiasm she once shared, an echo of the days she was a young undercover agent at umbrella, so very ignorant to the true extent of their pharmaceutical developments, thinking the future they promised a genuine possibility, that even if she were a traitor her work was meant for something greater . the darkness that john would unveil for her would rip those notions from her mind as she played on his infatuation, as she promised him an escape too, a life together outside arklay free of umbrella grasp on their lives . it's funny almost, she wants to laugh & she settles on a sing-song hum, something aloof, darkly mysterious & deeply practiced . she hasn't thought about john in a very long time, he was just the first mark .

“ i think you're becoming a liability . ” another way in which they parallel, though the mirror held between them is one way, all she lets him see is ada wong, “ if you keep misplacing the sample, ” she brandishes a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket, marlboro reds, one placed between her lips, a stylish flourish seeing it lit by a zippo . after inhaling, she blows the result into his face, “ you won't get that smoke break you've been begging for . ”

#red9 #* file // : 2004 — ( 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐋 𝟒 . )#lots of thoughts about how luis' extend lore now makes him a parallel to ada even more so than the original #and to john #poor john

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ilykirara · 2 months

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Hey! So, I was wondering...will you elaborate on the memory of spears that the Reader had involving Sektor?

And if it isn't too much...can you please share some writing tips??? 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙇

Your storytelling is superb, (especially in the bi-han's perspective chapter) and I'm sitting over here wondering like...how does she make it flow this nicely???

Honestly, I mean it. Thanks in advance if you do.💗

Hello! I just finished skimming through my story to answer HHAHA. I'll admit, I get forgetful about what happens in my story and I usually have to like briefly skim my published chapters whenever I'm writing the next one

So, the 'certain memory' was referring to a spear interaction with Sektor in chapter Daggers, Spears, and More Smoke. It was a fun Easter egg and I wanted to incorporate how Sektor and Cyrax have different opinions regarding how the Lin Kuei should function WHICH will link back later into the story... waayyy later. Reader already interacted with Sektor once and finally met Cyrax later on which sets up some stuff that I won't spoil :D

I really like it when stories/plots link back to stuff that have already happened so I tend to do that... not even tend to I consistently do that in my story. I think it also serves as a great reminder for what has already happened in Kombat Hearts since I post like pretty much monthly HHAHAA (I'm planning on posting two chapters at once when i next update, or really closely because of how the plot is right now)

Thank you so much for the compliments!! Your words are confident boosters and readers like you motivate me to continue writing (*^▽^)/★*☆♪ I'll explain my writing process and mention some tips (I hope thats okay!)

I think my best chapters so far are Is It Getting Cold in Here? and En Passant (which is a title that has a hidden inference to reader's current relationship with Bi-Han!). For specifically En Passant and Bi-Han's background, what I did was I briefly planned out what I wanted to happen between reader and Bi-Han (ie how does this affect them?). I actually do short character analysis profile sheets of the different love interests on Notion — I'd share but it contains like all the spoilers possible for my story.

Using the little information we were given about Bi-Han's past from the game, I built on it by jotting down what I think would cause Bi-Han to eventually cause his betrayal. For me, it definitely stemmed from his father figure — to me, his core reason for becoming so cold was because of his father's cold treatment that burned out Bi-Han and to cope with the burn-out, he froze his heart and feelings so he could convinced himself that all his suffering was so he could surpass his father and reform the Lin Kuei (and he got to the reforming belief after making the correlation that the Lin Kuei was essentially dying out because his father was becoming more lax but was still making Bi-Han complete hardcore regimes. Why does Bi-Han have to spill blood over his training sessions whilst the actual Lin Kuei assassins sit idly waiting for the next mission?). He's the type to make sure that he's suffering for a reason, everything he does is for a reason. I think the past of Bi-Han explains the majority of my thoughts so I won't go too deep into that.

In terms of technicalities when I was writing the perspective, I made sure to add information that I could reuse later into the story, and I had to make sure I re-mention information I already said in the previous chapter to make sure there's no plotholes (or at least... I think so :D). I also had to consider the different connections that Bi-Han had and how they affected eachother. I had to consider domino effects too and how it would eventually affect Bi-Han's development. Basically, everything has a meaning. I really love story plots that have intricate meanings, or even several meanings which is why my work tends to be quite descriptive

At the start of writing Kombat Hearts, it was actually my first time dedicating myself to writing violent, pure action-based fight scenes. I had to search up how to write fight scenes, and one of the tips said to not make fight scenes too long - a page will do (size of a standard book page so I kinda had to go well that seems long enough on Notion). I think that really helped me because I do understand how fight scenes can been really dragged out and boring. It was difficult at first because Mortal Kombat is fulllll of fighting but limiting how much fighting I put in my chapters allow me to focus on other stuff (e.g. how the characters are feeling and how the aftermath rolls out). To write fight scenes, I'd actually watch a short video on insert character gameplay and incorporate canonical moves. Highly recommend if you're stuck

Okay, to make sure I answer your question I'll actually say some tips :D

I tend to write my chapters a bit at a time (mainly because I don't really have the time to sit down and write it in one go) which allows me to have mini breaks in between and recheck my work with fresh eyes. I think leaving your work for a day is great because you give your whirring mind a break and you can look back at your work with a different perspective

Imagine yourself in your reader's position. This is what I tend to do when I figure out the plot of each chapter. As a reader myself, I know we want action and the drama and the juicy stuff, and if you're like me who posts monthly, you have to consider how your readers would feel if they waited for a month only for a chapter to be super meh. IMPORTANT NOTE if you're like me who's doing it for fun and for free, be indulgent! Yes, consider your readers because your readers are what allows your fanfic to be noticed and to be loved, but you're (presumably) writing the fanfic so you yourself can fan about the characters. Honestly put your love into your writing and people can instantly tell and appreciate the effort that you put into fleshing out beautiful stories for anyone to read

Do character sheets, doesn't matter how detailed it is. It helps you stay on track and serves as a reminder for what you want to write. I tend to accidentally go off the rails in my plot and at one point I'm like... hold on this will mess up my plot and I have to go back to remind myself what I want to happen and why

In terms of writing styles... I think a large reason why I write like that is due to the media I consume. I really love poetic material and shows that have depth to them. I just finished Hannibal today and I absolutely LOVED some of the hidden meanings in the episodes. Before Hannibal, I watched the entirety of Adventure Time and I loved the different meanings and life lessons behind the show/Finn in the later seasons. I think. writing styles largely come from how you absorb literature/story plots.

I'll also add on that my writing style came to me somewhat naturally and I have a strong affinity English and social sciences (I'd add humanities but I don't particularly enjoy history). But, with tons of practice and personal passion I developed my skills. I don't remember who said this, but it's like building an art skill. You have to train your eyes to recognise what you're drawing looks off and how to improve it. For me, when I'm writing, I make sure that what I'm writing looks right to me aesthetically

To be honest, some of the plot in my story comes from personal experience/my experience of the world and with other people. I use this story as a way for me to express my feelings sometimes and it is cathartic (e.g. Bi-Han's whole thing). I think it gives the story more realism and also I hope my story is cathartic for people who may have experienced something similar

That's most of the tips I have so far — i probably have more but i need a prompt to think of more xD. If you have any more questions or have anything specific you want to ask, please ask!!! It's 23:18 for me by this paragraph and I think I've been typing for an hour, but I loved every minute of it!!!! Thank you for the question and the support :)) if you need any help, feel free to drop me a message and I'll try to respond ASAP

#THANK YOU FOR THE SUPPORT #It means the world to me fr #kombat hearts #its so late for me i wont know how coherent this is until tomorrow HHAHA

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icharchivist · 5 months

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Id is incredible

I also wonder if he's fully Astral or half like Orchis, since his mom is and we don't know his father

Unless it's Rolan

Which would be crazy

She kidnapped him so he'll finally pay his overdue child support

But he's definitely hot and interesting and I so hope he becomes playable

I REALLY DO LIKE HIM A LOT..

i'm still at the end of chapter 8 so obviously spoilers for those 8 first chapters // and don't share spoilers to after that (but i think anon is a viewer and it's vague enough) BUT YEAH

I still think about that one scene we get of Id's dreams where he sees Lilith wake him up and tell him they'll be together now, it did feel like a first meeting of kind.

honestly when we didn't know Lilith was an Astral i wondered for a sec if he wasn't a Golem of type, because it reminded me a bit of that.

I feel like he probably isn't a primal though because else his reactions to Lyria and the Primals we meet would be slightly different.

but also the notion of "Life Link" in his boss battle where he ended up fusing with a bahamut-type monster? (or avatar type?)

maybe, even without being a primal, he may be the result of Lilith's (and Rolan's? they used to work together after all) experiments of some kind, and then he was to see her as her mother.

If Rolan is involved, it seems Lilith did everything so that Id only knew her as her parent and nothing else.

Rolan mentions he thinks Id is a human who's been kidnapped by Lilith at some point if i recall, but it was before we knew he had a connection to Lilith so who knows if he lied or if it's true yaknow?

I feel like the implication is that Lilith isn't his blood/birth mother, but that either because he was adopted or created, he sees her as such.

and if he IS a human who was adopted there's definitely something that Lilith did to him because his "Link" to transform like that isn't normal at all no matter what he is.

but yeah he's definitely hot and interesting and i do like that he's grown to care about Lyria. Just like Katalina before him <333 ignore your master who wants to rewrite history and destroy the skies, just care for the girl.

anyway can't wait to see more of him!

#ichareply #ichafantalks gbf #ichablogging gbfr #anonymous

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donutloverxo · 3 years

Text

Good little girl

*gif is not mine*

Note - Requested by @holacia2 and a part two to good little wife. And special thanks to @gotnofucks for all her help! I'm so overwhelmed with all the love that fic got I hope y'all like this little follow up as well❤❤

Dividers by @firefly-graphics.

Summary - Married life isn't always easy. Will you be able to solve your problems?

Warnings - 18+ only explicit sexual content, younger woman/older man, daddy kink, soft dark!Andy, SO MUCH MISOGYNY, housewife kink, innocence kink, (accusations of) cheating, arranged/forced marriage, spanking, possessive Andy.

Pairing - Mob!Andy Barber x reader

Word count - 4.9k

Masterlist is linked in the bio and the pinned post!

You handed your mother the brownies you had baked, she thanked you, telling you how it was so unnecessary, before Andy placed the wine you had gotten on the way over on the kitchen counter.

“Why don’t you go keep your father in law company, Andrew?” your mom told him. He only nodded before making way to his boss.

“So? How are things going with him?” she asked. “You are positively glowing honey! Do you have any good news yet?”

“Mom!” you gasped.

Over the past seven months you had only seen your mother a handful of times. You were still a bit upset with her for marrying you off to an older man you barely knew, a man who you thought despised you so much he refused to even touch you.

You knew she didn’t really have a say in it. Your father never really valued her opinion, there was no way she would’ve been able to stop it but she hadn’t even so much as tried.

“No, I don’t. And I won’t any time soon,” you huffed.

While being a mother was something you’d like to experience someday, you didn’t know if you were quite ready for it yet. Which was good because Andy didn’t want kids for the next few years either, he had taken you to a doctor to get you on birth control as soon as the holidays were over.

He stated that he wasn’t ready to share you just yet. That he wasn’t sure he wants his kids to be a part of the mob, which you didn’t want either.

“Oh, but you have to, cookie. I need a distraction. Being a mom is all I’ve ever known and ever since you left the house has been so empty.”

“Well, what about daddy?” you frowned. He had never really liked spending time with your siblings or your mother, but to leave her be on her own like that.

“He’s always with Charlotte,” she rolled her eyes. “I would’ve been fine with it, he’s always been like that, can’t expect him to change now, but he brought her here, now, to a family dinner.” She sighed in resignation.

You had heard a familiar high pitched annoying laugh upon coming home, but you thought that to be one of your brothers floozies.

Charlotte, or Cherry, used to be a good friend of yours in college. Before you brought her home for the holidays of your freshman year and she decided to shack up with your married father, who was almost thrice her age. You lost touch with her after that.

“I’m telling you, honey, a kid is a good way of securing your marriage and starting a family. You are young now... but you will grow old someday. Andrew’s a good man... but he is still a man at the end of the day.”

You scoffed at that, “I won’t have you talking that way about my husband! We are already a family, we’re in love each other and he’s nothing like dad.”

She gave you a teary smile, “Young love--is just so innocent and beautiful. You always see the best in people, cookie. I hope I’m wrong about this. Any man would be an idiot to not appreciate you.”

“Andy does appreciate me. And take good care of me, ma...” you trailed off.

He did take good care of you. After the night you consummated your marriage he brought you breakfast in bed. He hadn’t kept his hands off of you for the past few weeks, doting on you any chance he could get, telling you he loved you every chance he got.

But you wondered... did he love you?

The kind of love you’d only ever read about in classical novels. The kind of love you’d dreamt of having ever since you could remember, the kind you thought you once had with someone, but didn’t. You didn’t love Alex the way you love Andy. You were in love with the idea of Alex. You knew Andy now. You knew how kind, passionate and fierce he was, your love for him consumed every single part of you. Where you would literally die for him.

But did he love you for you. Or was he just lonely because it was Christmas. You had avoided taking the tree and the decorations down, begging him, even dropping to your knees and making love to him with your mouth, you didn’t know much but Cherry had taught you that you could get men to do anything for you just by kneeling before them.

While he was very obviously pleased with your passion, returning the favor tenfold, till your thighs burned from his bread and you were shouting for him to stop, he still took the decorations down. He said he wanted to start anew this year. He made a resolution to be the best husband he could.

But you were going to protect your heart this time, hope for the best but still prepare for the worst.

Unfortunately, you had been seated next to Cherry. You found out that your father was living with her now and that while she had hoped he’d leave his wife for her there, but apparently there was no such luck.

“They never leave their wives do they,” she shook her head. “Oh I’m sorry! I shouldn’t be saying these things to you...”

“Its alright,” you shrugged. It would be hard to see your mother be unhappy but there was never any love between your parents. Your mother had learned to live without him and find happiness in other things, and other people, she was just a bit more sneaky about it.

“Well...” you hesitated “how do you keep a man?”

“What kind of question is that?” she giggled. “There are many ways to keep a man but you’ll have to be a bit more specific...”

You ended up changing the subject. The kind of questions you wanted to ask were not suitable for the dinner table, and you didn’t like the way Andy was staring daggers at the pair of you, almost displeased with the two of you chatting.

***

You smiled at him from the passenger seat when he put his hand on your knee, giving it a light squeeze. He had been quite the whole ride home so you decided to speak first.

“Can’t believe Cherry’s like my... step mom.” You laughed out loud at such a ridiculous notion.

“Step mom?” he furrowed his brows, turning his head to look at you.

“Oh I’m just joking,” you waved him off. “Dad would never leave my ma. He’ll move on to another one soon enough.”

He hummed, nodding, “Alright. I was just worried she was troubling you at dinner.”

“What would you have done if she was? Would you swop in like a knight in shining armor and save me from the big meanie?”

“You know I would,” he smiled.

You had asked for a piggy back ride from Andy from the garage to your home, he rolled his eyes and tried to say no but then gave in when you used your princess eyes on him.

He placed you on top of your bed, kissing the tip of your nose, he started unbuttoning his shirt to get ready for bed.

“Andy... um... Daddy?” you corrected yourself instantly.

He liked you addressing him as that whenever you both were alone, he had warned you that you would receive a punishment if you ever failed to comply.

You didn’t know what his punishment would be and you didn’t plan on finding out anytime soon. You’d withhold all affection from him if he ever dared take away the platinum card from you, or lower your allowance as your father had told him to at the dinner, ‘to tame you' supposedly.

But that wasn’t a very good plan... what if he just looked for love elsewhere.

“What is it, honey?” he asked.

“Um... do you think... you would ever take a mistress?” you gulped and prepared yourself for his answer.

“I wouldn’t...” you sighed in relief, “one woman is enough trouble.” he said flatly.

“Daddy!!” you whined, stomping your foot on the floor and folding your hands over your chest.

And he had the audacity to laugh. His laughter at your expense only fuelled your anger. “Do you want to sleep on the couch tonight?”

He finally stopped laughing, “Look at you being a big girl,” he tried to pinch your cheek but you swatted his hand away. “You don’t wanna be daddy’s little girl anymore?” he pouted.

“No... no I do!” you answered all too eager. “I’m sorry...”

“I’m sorry too, honey. I shouldn’t be making fun of you.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” you hugged his hard stomach, rubbing your cheek against his undershirt. “It’s mean, and you promised not to be mean to me.”

“I was just teasing,” he cooed, stroking your hair. And while you knew that and secretly enjoyed it even, you still wanted a serious answer out of him.

“I intend to keep my vows forever. There is just no way I could ever want anyone who’s not you.”

“Really?” you propped your chin on his abdomen, looking up at him through your lashes.

“Promise.”

***

“Um... I’m here to see Andy,” you told the lady sitting outside of, what you had been told was Andy’s office, you assumed her to be his secretary Erica.

You always packed a lunchbox for Andy, always remembering to leave a sweet note for him and he would always call you to thank you for it. You also made sure to have dinner ready before he got home on the nights he wasn’t taking you out on the town. It was just your duty as a good wife.

But Andy had been working way too much the past couple of weeks. Where he would be gone before you wake up and be back when you were already in bed. You knew his job was demanding, working for your father and being a partner in a law firm, the job was like a mistress, stealing your man away...

So you simply decided to make his favorite, food pack it up and come to him to eat it together.

“Mrs Barber! It’s so nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you,” she gave you a toothy smile, shaking your hand.

You would’ve been happy, elated that Andy talks so much about you at work. If you hadn’t smelled her perfume. So familiar... you couldn’t quite place it at first but then you remembered.

The night you had slaved away, hoping to profess your love to your husband, when he had rejected you and smelled of chanel.

“That’s a nice scent...” you wondered out loud.

“Oh thank you! I love it as well,” she said, taking in a whiff of the inside of her wrist. “It’s the new chanel one!”

“Hmm....”

You almost didn’t hear Andy calling for you. “What a nice surprise.” He kissed your cheek.

You set the food before him, thinking of telling him what was on your mind.

Was he really so cliché to have an affair with his secretary?

Could you really blame him though? Although you had been married for almost seven months, you were strangers living under the same roof for the majority of them. He wasn’t really cheating... but what if he was still doing it?

“Honey,” he shook you to get your attention. “What’s up with you today? I have a meeting in a few minutes.”

“You’re always working.” You complained.

“Well...” he grinned, grabbing at your thighs and pulling you on his lap, “I have to. If I had the choice I would never come into work, I would stay home forever, between your legs, right... here,” he snaked a hand up your leg and stroked the inside of your thigh. “You would like that wouldn’t you?”

You nodded, “I’ve been so lonely without you.”

He hummed, biting the shell of your ear before speaking into it, “I know, honey. I miss you too. But you do still remember the number one rule right?”

“Yes, daddy. Never touch myself without your permission.”

“And why is that?”

You whined, to embarrassed to say the words, “Because... it’s your... pussy.” You replied in a small shy voice.

“That’s right, sweetheart. It’s mine to do whatever I want with,” he cupped your mould, just to demonstrate what he meant but then frowned when he felt your soft curls and wet slick against his palm.

“You’re not wearing any panties, sweetheart.” He noted, surprised to your boldness.

“Um... I must’ve forgot.”

So maybe you had ulterior motives behind coming here. Your body was used to be doted on everyday now, and to not have his touch for so long was agonising. You had hoped to maybe bend down to pick up a napkin that fell ever so conveniently and flash him, it would work, he would be driven mad.

“Forgot huh?” You nodded in reply as he gathered your slick in his fingers, tracing your labia with them. “That’s too bad, If you had left them on purpose I would’ve cancelled my meeting and fucked you right here. But since it was just an innocent mistake I wouldn’t do that,” he retreated his hand, placing a soft kiss on your hair. “Thanks for lunch.”

***

You were determined to prove your worth to Andy. If he did have a mistress, whether it be his secretary or any other woman, he would forget all about her when he saw how you could do everything for him.

You had went all out today, baking a pie and a four course meal from scratch, lighting up candles, the pink babydoll that Andy had gifted you was under your dress.

He was as always exhausted when he got home, his face visibly lighting up upon seeing you, you took his hand in yours taking him to the couch and making him a glass of whiskey, you handed it to him before kneeling on the soft rug.

“You work so hard, daddy,” you murmured as your fingers worked on unzipping his pants.

He looked at you in confusion, shaking his head, “You don’t have to do that, honey,” cupping your cheek in his plan, stroking your cheekbone with his thumb.

“But I want to make you feel good,” you blinked at him.

He groaned, unable to say no when you looked so willing to please him, but at the same time he wanted to do more with you. To cuddle and watch a movie and talk, it felt as if he hadn’t in ages.

“Very well,” he nodded.

With the green signal from him, you licked your lips, tasting some of your minty gloss, taking his length out of the confines of his underwear, you took a minute to simply marvel at the sheer size and beauty of it.

You licked a stripe up the underside of it, suckling at the crown, you remembered that he liked that the best, at least from the way he twisted his hand in your hair, pulling at it till it caused a slight burn to your scalp.

You slurped his precum up before he pushed his hips up till his tip hit the back of your throat, causing you to gag around him, didn’t take him long to come down your throat.

His neck and cheek covered in a crimson blush, his chest heaving as he threw his head back against the couch.

“You did good, honey...” he rasped. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

He absolutely loved the dinner you had made for him. But when you subtly, because you were raised to be a good lady and wife, tried to coax him to make love to you before bed, he.... rejected you.

Sure, he was kind about it. He told you he was simply tired and would make it up to you. But it was still shocking how a man as insatiable as him would ever say no. You truly didn’t know what to make of it.

***

“Oh... I don’t know about this... it’s a bit too bold for me,” you bit your lip.

“Just try it on! You might end up liking it!” Cherry urged you, putting the bright red lipstick on you without waiting for an answer, “There is nothing more classic than a red lip. Or a red anything. Men go crazy for it.” She told you.

You simply hummed through closed lips as she put some finishing touches on it. “Doesn’t that look nice?” she asked, holding up a mirror before you.

You smiled, it did look different. Maybe different was what you needed. “It’s very pretty. It makes me feel... confident?” Which was strange. Because how could a simple lipstick make you feel confident?

“See! I told you. Confidence is the key to sexiness. Now, let’s talk lingerie.”

***

“Honey, I’ve been waiting for over fifteen minutes,” you heard Andy call out to you from the bedroom.

“Just a minute,” you said, perfecting your edges with a lip brush.

This was something you had never done before. You wore a lot of lingerie for Andy, but most of them were cute pastels or white nighties or babydolls. Nothing like what you were wearing right now...

A sheer black lacy body suit that clung to your body, leaving literally nothing to the imagination.

Top that off with your red lip... you looked like some kind of dominatrix. Cherry told you that most men secretly wish to be dominated. Although you highly doubted your daddy would want anything like that. Or would he?

“Alright, I’m coming out,” you announced, before shyly stepping out, your eyes trained on the floor as you twiddled with your fingers to maybe distract you from your nerves. “What do you think?”

He was speechless. His jaw almost dropping on the floor when he saw you like that. So far from his sweet girl. You were just as much beautiful and sexy, and while it wasn’t something he was used or prefer to he would welcome it if it was what you wanted.

He extended an arm to you, ready to tell you that you were sexy, that he wanted to spend hours worshipping every inch of your body, that he wanted his cock stained the shade of red you wore on your lips, that he was ready to make up for being away for weeks.

Until he saw... that.

He lowly growled your name, making your head snap up to look at him, “What did you do to your pussy?” Because from what he could see, through the sheer material, there was nothing where your pubic hair used to be.

“Uh... I uh... waxed it...” From the tone of his voice you could tell that he wasn’t too happy about it. “Do you not like it?”

“Like?” he scoffed, shaking his head. Taking a seat on the bedding, “C'mere, let me take a closer look.”

Hesitantly, you walked the few strides it took till you were standing before him.

He studied your mould, trying to take the fabric off so he could see it more properly and then tutting when he couldn’t even open the stupid thing.

“Wait, it um... opens here I think,” you interrupted his scrutiny, undoing the zipper that was on your side and taking the suit off of you.

He sighed in resignation when he saw what you had done, making you regret your ever spending so much money and going through all that pain.

He parted your lips apart, running his fingers along your vulva, acquainting himself with this new strange feel of you, “When did do this?” his blue eyes looked up at you.

“Just a couple of days ago. It’s just hair... it’ll grow back in like three weeks.”

“Three weeks?” he scoffed.

You could feel your eyes getting misty. You tried to go all out for him, to please him, be completely naked and vulnerable before him, only to have him get angry at you.

“You don’t like it,” you sniffled.

His furrowed brow softened when he saw you crying, pulling you down till you were straddling his lap, “The question isn’t whether I like it or not,” he explained, his thumb wiping your wet cheeks, “I could... maybe live with it. But I wouldn’t prefer it.”

“Okay,” you nodded.

“But for you to have done this,” he touched your newly waxed skin and almost winced at the smoothness, “You must’ve let someone else see you naked. See what belongs to me.”

“Bu - but they were all women...” you stammered, squirming in his lap as his fingers toyed with your clit.

“It doesn’t matter,” he tutted, pushing two fingers inside you, “Only I get to see you. This is MY pussy. Only I get to decide what to do with it. Do you understand?”

You nodded, holding onto his tshirt as he twisted his fingers inside you. “So-sorry, daddy.”

“No, honey, since you were bad you don’t get to call me daddy. For tonight you will address me as sir. And of course you’ll have to be punished.”

“Punished?” you pouted. “Can’t you just let me go since it was my first strike? I’ll be good from now on I promise!”

“No, you have to learn your lesson. Come on,” you yelped as he manhandled you so you were face down across his lap, “What is your safe word?”

“Unicorns” you giggled. You thought you were so witty for coming up with it. Since he for some reason was jealous of your unicorn stuffie.

He hummed, stroking the soft skin of your butt, “How does twenty sound?”

Your eyes went wide as you gasped, looking at him over your shoulder, “No!” you said.

He didn’t really plan on spanking you... did he? He liked swatting your ass here and there, and truth be told you liked it too. But you had never been spanked or even hit as a punishment.

“Well, if not this then maybe we can make you go a week without cumming.”

Your gasp was louder and even more incredulous this time. You could most definitely take twenty swats, but just the thought of not being able to finish, after knowing what an orgasm with Andy feels like, made you shiver.

“You will count each one, and then thank me for it. You are grateful I’m teaching you, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” you nodded.

“Do you know how to count to twenty? Or would I have to teach you that too?” he asked ever so condescendingly as you huffed.

“Of course I do! I was just two semesters away from graduating college!” Never mind that you learned that in kindergarten.

“That’s good. Are you ready?” he asked, cracking his knuckles as he got in position.

With a nod from you he delivered the first slap to your right buttcheek, the sound of it reverberating in the room, his palm stinging slightly as he stroked the skin he had just punished, it was already warmer.

“One, sir. Thank you, sir,” you held onto a moan, it wasn’t half as bad as you thought it would be...

You jerked forward as he unceremoniously hit your other cheek, since you were unprepared for it, and he was much more brutal.

“Tw-two, sir,” you sniffled.

You considered throwing in the towel and saying your safe word by the time fifteen rolled around. Your behind was on fire, while you couldn’t see it, you just knew it was bruised. But you wanted to be good for Andy and it was wrong of you to do something that drastic without his permission.

“Sixteen...” you hiccupped. You could feel your slick running down your thighs but at this point... you just couldn’t bring yourself to care.

“Do you want a break?” he asked, taking pity on you.

You nodded frantically, “Yes please! Can you... can you touch me? Down there?” Since the pain in your throbbing pussy was unbearable. If you didn’t receive any attention, you might actually burst.

“Down where? Here?” He had the audacity to play down, while you were suffering, and touch the back of your knee to patronise you.

“No!” you whined.

“Well then you’ll have to be a bit more specific, princess.”

“In my... between my legs... my pussy...”

“Are you sure you deserve it though?” he asked.

You thought about it for a moment, before coming to the conclusion that, “No I don’t. Not until I finish my punishment.”

“That’s a good girl,” he praised, his hand massaging your raw ass as your heart swelled in pride.

“Nineteen, sir,” your mind was hazy. It didn’t even feel as if you were in your reality anymore... it was as if you were floating, while you could still hear and feel him spanking you, for some reason it wasn’t as painful anymore.

“The last one, doll, hang in there,” he said before delivering the last swat.

You whimpered, “Twenty, thank you, sir,” willing your nose with the back of your hand.

Andy collected your weak form in his big string arms, rocking you back and forth in his lap as he kept whispering soft praises in your hair, “My sweet beautiful doll,” he pecked you on your lips.

“Sorry about your pants, daddy...” you said when you realised what a wet mess you had made on him.

He shushed you, “Don’t you worry about that right now. Do you want to take a bath?”

You pouted, your red lip jutting out, “No.”

He chuckled, kissing your forehead, “Do you want daddy to fuck you?”

“Yes,” you nodded.

“We have to be careful about your butt, baby,” he said as he gently placed you on the mattress.

Your head on your pillow, besides your two most trusted stuffies--your unicorn and teddy. Andy only allowed you two in the bed after complaining they made it hard for him to cuddle you. You demanded he buy you a shelf to display them or you would go back to your old room. Which of course made him comply instantly.

You made grabby hands at him, impatient to have him closer to you, but then were glad he took the time to take off his tshirt so you could ogle the wide expanse of his chest, the light scattering of fuzzy hair over it, his numerous tattoos along with one of your name, which marked him as yours forever.

He took a hardened nipple in his mouth while his hand tweaked the other, nudging your legs apart to make room for him, he placed his length at your entrance.

Slowly pushing into you, letting you get accustomed to the size of him. Although your pussy was always so welcoming to him, he knew you often struggled to take him.

You whimpered at him, tears rolling off of your face. “What’s wrong, honey? Does it hurt?”

“No... it’s just so good,” you sniffled.

“Okay, just hold on,” you held onto his shoulders as he slowly fucked in to you.

Your pussy clamping around his length, the soles of your feet digging into his ass, “Can I come, daddy?”

“Of course, baby. You earned it.” He groaned, his hips hammering against yours as you bit his neck, letting out a muffled scream.

You hummed against his neck when you felt his warm release fill you up, he pulled out of you, frowning when he looked at your naked and hairless pussy, dripping with his cum.

“From now on I’ll be picking out your clothes,” he stated, rolling off of you and pulling you into his arms.

“Okay, daddy,” you hummed.

“And no more surprise bikini waxes.”

“Mmm...” If that’s what you had to do to get in trouble and be punished, then so be it. “We’ll see.”

***

Three days later

“Lotion time, doll,” Andy said, pausing the movie you were both watching to go get said lotion.

He had rubbed your lotion on your backside when he spanked you and decided that he wanted to be the one putting your body lotion on you from now on since he had too much fun doing it. He insisted on doing it twice everyday since it was still very cold.

You followed him to the bedroom, lying face down on the bed a he squeezed some on his palms, rubbing them together to warm them up.

You winced just a little, your skin still a bit sensitive, you even had to sit on a pillow the time.

“Will you be going back to work tomorrow?” you wanted to know.

He didn’t like the sadness in your voice, “Yes,” he sighed. He hated leaving you all by yourself.

“I’ll be all alone then.”

“Didn’t you want to go back to college?” He remembered you telling him that your parents forced you to drop out so that you would marry him.

“I do actually. Hate leaving things incomplete... maybe I can even go to a law school and become a lawyer like you!” you perked up.

“You’re not working for your father though, you’re too good for that world.”

“You’re too good for him too.” You said. “Maybe I can work with you.” And you and him could be like a power couple. It would be so exciting.

Tags will be in the reblog! Click the link in the bio to be join the taglist or shoot me an ask/dm. Comments and reblogs are really appreciated! ❤❤

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#andy barber x reader #good little wife #steve rogers x reader #andy x reader #andy barber x oc #andy barber x you #chris evans x reader #steve x reader #defending jacob fic #andy barber fic

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redphlox · 3 years

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Dabi's fear of feelings and connections

Dabi is a walking contradiction; he says he doesn't care about anyone, but his flames, which are linked to his emotions, demonstrate otherwise when Twice is killed. Dabi brushes off the news that Natsuo could have died because of him but still refers to him affectionately as Natsu-kun. Touya went around calling Endeavor out for neglecting his children but still trained to regain his approval and attention anyway. He lashed out at baby Shouto, admitted Shouto had done nothing wrong, and then attacked him again years later. He cries blood while thinking about his family but doesn't go home to them or change his actions which hurt them even more. Dabi wants to destroy hero society for a better future but it's obvious he doesn't plan to live long enough to see that future.

The gaps between his actions and his words are a result of dissociation and repression. It's not that Dabi is emotionless. Actually, he feels too much and he's afraid of his feelings because they've done nothing but hurt him emotionally and physically. He literally almost burned to death the one time he had a burst of emotion on Sekoto Peak and in order to prevent a repeat of that, he operates under the flawed notion that safety lies in repressing his feelings and pushing people away. He lies to himself and others and therefore cannot reconcile with his true self and can’t trust others.

In this meta I'll discuss how Dabi deals with his unprocessed feelings of betrayal and neglect by denying himself connections with both his inner wounded child and those around him. I'll also address a few misconceptions surrounding Dabi because dismantling them is key to understanding him. Contrary to popular belief, he does not want to kill his father, he never wanted to be a hero for his own sake, and he doesn't hate Shouto or his family. At its core, Touya's hurt stems from discovering that his relationship with his father wasn't based on unconditional love. This realization destroyed his sense of self so much it caused him to start fearing his own feelings and being close to others because of the link between his emotions and his self-destructive quirk.

To understand Dabi we have to understand Touya. In 291 we see through Endeavor's flashback that Touya was eager to train under him and carry his legacy. It's implied by the fact they’re working on ultimate moves that not only is Touya a willing, eager participant but that the two have been training together for quite some time. In 301 we learn that after Touya's quirk started hurting him Endeavor not only abandoned the training regime but also abandoned Touya both emotionally and physically. Instead of using the time he spent training Touya to help Touya find a new hobby or purpose in life, or just hanging out with his kid, Endeavor chooses to remove himself from Touya’s life. When Touya confronts him about the change of routine, Endeavor is seen putting on his jacket and leaving the home, his body turned away from his son.

Maybe Endeavor had errands to run, but my point is that he was in Touya’s life one minute and then gone the next. Touya says so himself: why did Endeavor change his mind all of a sudden? The abrupt change in attitude was jarring for a 4-5 year old to handle. To Touya, training = love, so he felt compelled to keep training and demonstrate his worthiness despite the fact that his quirk was hurting him. To Touya, the pain was worth it if it meant hanging out with his dad again.

But why? Well, Touya was Endeavor's #1 fan, genuinely so. His admiration and fondness for his father was genuine, and he didn't question the triumphant look on Endeavor's face when Touya said he wanted to learn the ultimate move. Before his quirk started burning him, Touya had no idea he was born for his father's ulterior motives. He had no reason to question his father's attention. Touya lived under the impression his bond with his dad was genuine and special, and he probably felt lucky that his father was willing to share something so important to him (heroism). Even after the training stops and Endeavor stops paying attention to Touya, Touya still wears his merch and vies for his attention. Most kids see their parents as larger than life and Touya was no exception. Keigo Takami admired Endeavor the hero, and Touya Todoroki admired his father who just so happened to be the hero Endeavor. Since being a hero was such a big deal for Endeavor, it was a big deal for Touya.

But that's where Touya's story becomes tragic. His father is a flawed, flawed man with many insecurities and fallacies that he pushes onto his family. I’ll get to those in a moment, but as intelligent and observant Touya is to catch on that Endeavor never set out to marry to become a father, he is too young to separate himself from his father’s expectations. Touya realizes he was born for a purpose and Touya will be damned if he doesn't fulfill that purpose even if he knows it's wrong. His father's ‘love’ meant that much to him. For Touya, it's not about becoming a hero for the glory. It was about his relationship with his father because, as I mentioned earlier, Touya was his #1 fan in the sense that he loved Enji just for being his dad. There were no conditions tied to that. “You are my dad, and I love you.”

But that wasn’t a sentiment that Touya felt in return, and that hurt Touya. He internalized he wasn't good enough, that something about him was inherently wrong. But more than that, his world came tumbling down - he felt betrayed and lied to: his father didn't love him like Touya needed him to, and this truth destroyed him. Their relationship was a lie, a farce, and it hurt so much Touya became obsessed with not hurting anymore because he couldn’t get away from it.

Touya’s motivation to become a hero didn't rise from being inspired by All Might like Shouto. Touya’s thought process wasn’t "I want to be a hero to help others or be like All Might" like Deku. No, Touya only wanted to be a hero because he wanted his father to be proud of him for surpassing All Might. Notice that Touya's obsession with beating All Might slowly diminishes from “I can surpass All Might” to “I can surpass All Might like Shouto, too” to just “look at me, Endeavor.” It was never about being a hero per say, but about his relationship with his father. Touya realized that Endeavor isn't his father first, but a hero, and he understands that he has to be a hero too to fit into his father's world. Even upon realizing that his father was using him, Touya still wanted to be part of his life, still wanted that bond. Touya, in his desperation to be loved and accepted again, could look past his father's selfishness as long as he regained that approval. Touya could pretend the relationship was real as long as he stopped feeling so unlovable.

This is unhealthy thinking, of course. Even if Touya somehow managed to regain Endeavor's approval, the relationship would still be one-sided and dissatisfying because he wouldn't be able to ignore the truth. But, this is how he rationalized his insistence to keep training in his 4-5 year old mind and this line of thought stuck with him as he grew up just as those feelings of inadequacy never left him.

This is precisely why Natsuo's drowsy "can't you go talk to our sister?" hurt so much. Touya was already emotionally fragile, and hearing that felt like being rejected all over again when it was actually Natsuo just trying to sleep. Touya was hypersensitive to any words or actions that could be interpreted as dismissive. His trauma wouldn't listen to logic that Natsuo was 8 and too young to understand, that he was tired - no, Touya's brain said, you're being rejected again! This is also why he also stormed away crying from Fuyumi after she expressed her concern for him.

In Touya’s mind, why couldn't anyone just agree with him that he was good enough? He heard "your dad's right and you're not good enough so why try" not "I care about you, your father is wrong, and I don't want you to keep getting hurt" whenever Rei tried to get him to stop training because that's the message he got from his father, too. Nevermind that it infuriated Touya that his mother could stand there and preach to him when, from his perspective, she couldn’t take her own advice. All Endeavor ever did was teach him to turn up the heat, so why should it matter that doing just so hurts him? Touya didn't understand NOT training his quirk because he had been taught that raising his firepower was ideal in all situations. Those two statements didn't make sense to a 4-5 year old, a 13 year old, and it still doesn’t make sense as a 24 year old.

To take Endeavor's lack of self awareness a step further, because it's important to understand Endeavor to fully understand Dabi, Endeavor has yet to realize his own inherent worth. He doesn't have to prove anything to his family, especially his kids. They love him unconditionally, without special reason aside from the fact that he's theirs and he's himself. However, Endeavor is so obsessed with proving himself that he doesn't realize he never had to, and he projects this onto his children. They must prove themselves by winning the genetic lottery, by being useful to his plans, by surpassing All Might.

The irony that to be a great father he doesn't have to be a hero at all is ugly because Endeavor has no identity outside of being a hero. Endeavor has said before he wants to be a good hero and father to make Shouto proud, but he fails to realize he already had this in Touya all those years ago and it still left him unsatisfied. The issue isn’t his role as a hero, it’s his inner self. In 301 Endeavor literally reaches out to Touya to talk him out of training and hurting himself, and Touya allows his father to touch his shoulders because he wants a bond with his father - any bond. Shouto, on the other hand, wouldn't allow Endeavor to touch him in 167 and slaps his hand away because he doesn’t want Endeavor’s approval. Endeavor doesn't realize Natsuo carries deep abandonment and neglect issues because he wanted to be accepted by his father too (light novel #5) but was ignored. Endeavor doesn't realize he was always good enough by default and that by projecting onto his kids and trying to be the top hero he’s doing the opposite of what he wants. He just keeps pushing away his family.

It’s important to point out Endeavor’s illogical thinking because Touya learned some of these same ideas. Touya repeatedly tries to prove himself without realizing that he was always good enough by default. The problem wasn’t his quirk or his body, but his father’s flawed thinking and self-worth issues. Now as an adult, Dabi is selfish because he's Endeavor's son and emobidies his most negative characteristics. Dabi thinks of his flames as Endeavor's, and he thinks of himself as an extension of Endeavor because that's how Endeavor set him up for life. Touya has no identity to fall back on after his father casts him aside. He was supposed to be Endeavor 2.0, but now that title is Shouto’s. Dabi doesn’t hate Shouto as a person, but he has tricked himself into believing Shouto is their father’s puppet. Shouto is a doll being used by their father with no self agency, and Dabi is going to break all of Endeavor’s toys. It’s nothing personal against Shouto, it’s just Shouto’s bad luck that he happens to be Endeavor’s masterpiece. This is why Dabi doesn’t hurt Shouto when they first meet at the training camp, and why Dabi stops attacking Shouto after Endeavor passes out - it’s not about Shouto. It’s about Endeavor, and breaking Endeavor. Touya is still there trying to be part of his father’s world, only this time not as a hero but as a villain who will end his own suffering. He doesn't want Endeavor to die, he just wants him to suffer, to ruin his dreams. Dabi thinks of it as justice.

But because Touya is still there, there is still that goodness in him, too. His connection to Fuyumi and Natsuo is still there, repressed and compartmentalized. It’s why he calls them affectionately as Fuyumi-chan and Natsu-kun. Touya’s pain is so great he has decided he’d rather end it than to carry on and look elsewhere. He's stuck, rightfully so. He recognizes his mother is a flawed person and ultimately doesn’t blame her for being a victim - she could have done more for her son, but he still sees her and his other siblings, even Shouto, as people who fell victim to Endeavor’s abuse who don't challenge their situation. Dabi sees himself as someone who does stand up to the abuse but doesn’t realize he still wants his father’s attention. He's always wanted it. That's why he went around at 13 condemning his father's treatment of his children but still trained to prove himself. This is part of the reason he became a villain.

Not to mention that Dabi literally can't cry. He has no way to release those emotions, so instead of trying to let them out, he pushes them down. But that doesn't work and is detrimental in the long run. In 290-294 we saw Dabi's flames burn so hot during his confrontation with Endeavor and revealing himself as Touya that his burns have spread. Dabi is afraid of his feelings because of their connection to his flames, but he also uses his feelings to his advantage. He wants to go out in an inferno along with Shouto just to hurt Endeavor and put an end to his own suffering and Endeavor's career. This is why Dabi doesn't bother calming himself down or denying that he never forgot how he was treated when he lived at home. Dabi became emotional in that battlefield, smiling maniacally instead of crying because he physically can't cry. In his mind, if his feelings are going to destroy him, he might as well use them to prove a point. After all, he has experience being used. It's why he was born.

I'm not saying any of these actions or thoughts are healthy or correct or condoned, by the way. Trauma responses don't make logical sense and usually aren't healthy. Knowing how the mind responds to trauma, it's understandable that Touya still wanted his father's attention even if it was abusive. In fact, this is how children often respond to abuse. Their caretaker/parent is all they know and they cling to these figures. Often times when authorities try to remove a child from their abusive parents, the child doesn't want to go because this parent is all they know and they do feel like they love their parent/caretaker. I’m not saying the authorities got involved in this case, because obviously they didn’t, but this same mentality of abused children can be applied to Touya. Touya, in his four year old mind, probably convinced himself that if he was good enough everything would go back to how it used to be.

So, to sum up Dabi’s character, of course he doesn't make any sense. He’s still that hurt 4-5 year old who is trying to protect himself from ever getting hurt like that again while still wanting his father’s validation. Of course he doesn’t want to get close to anyone, not even the League. He doesn't want to be vulnerable or let people in or form connections because the last time that happened he was let down, forsaken, and it hurt so much it literally made him lose control of his quirk to the point he almost died. When Twice is killed, Dabi consoles himself by saying he didn't care anyway, all to prevent another emotional fire. Dabi is a master of compartmentalizing and boxing away his feelings - this is probably why, 310 chapters into BNHA, we have yet to have a few chapters in his POV or his backstory. He's disconnected from himself. He knows his plot to get justice will hurt his siblings and mother and to live with himself and move forward he represses those feelings.

Because of his father not showing up on Sekoto peak, Dabi has to live with physical disabilities due to his scars and memories of burning alive. He doesn't want to go through that again so he lies to himself that he doesn't care about anyone or anything. He denies that he's still in pain while simultaneously seeking validation of his pain. He acts like he doesn't care about his family but still calls them affectionate names. He acts like he hates Endeavor and calls him by his name but still wants his attention. He decided long ago that he would die destroying Endeavor's career because that was the thing Endeavor cares about most of all in this life. It's a "you hurt me so I'll hurt you" mentality. He has tricked himself into thinking this is justice, failing to realize this won't make him feel better if he doesn't die by his own hand along the way.

Dabi is full of resentment and spite, both of which take root from feelings of abandonment, betrayal, and the loss of a purpose and the realization that he wasn't born to be loved for who he was but as a tool for his father. The first betrayal he suffered was in the form of realizing his father didn't love him genuinely, and this was identity-breaking for him. He never recovered from it. The second betrayal, the reinforcer, was his father not showing up to Sekoto Peak. Since then, Dabi is reliving his trauma over and over again the more he uses his quirk and the more he faces Endeavor. To be saved, Dabi needs to accept that he is loved unconditionally and needs to be validated that he was right to feel thrown aside and used.

#dabi #touya todoroki #toya todoroki #shouto todoroki #shoto todoroki #bnha #bnha meta #my meta #endeavor

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Could you expand a bit on the "death of expertise"? It's something I think about A LOT as an artist, because there are so many problems with people who think it isn't a real job, and the severe undercutting of prices that happens because people think hobbyists and professionals are the same. At the same time, I also really want people to feel free to be able to make art if they want, with no gatekeeping or elitism, and I usually spin myself in circles mentally thinking about it. So.

I have been secretly hoping someone would ask this question, nonny. Bless you. I have a lot (a LOT) of thoughts on this topic, which I will try to keep somewhat concise and presented in a semi-organized fashion, but yes.

I can mostly speak about this in regard to academia, especially the bad, bad, BAD takes in my field (history) that have dominated the news in recent weeks and which constitute most of the recent posts on my blog. (I know, I know, Old Man Yells At Cloud when attempting to educate the internet on actual history, but I gotta do SOMETHING.) But this isn’t a new phenemenon, and is linked to the avalanche of “fake news” that we’ve all heard about and experienced in the last few years, especially in the run-up and then after the election of You Know Who, who has made fake news his personal brand (if not in the way he thinks). It also has to do with the way Americans persistently misunderstand the concept of free speech as “I should be able to say whatever I want and nobody can correct or criticize me,” which ties into the poisonous extreme-libertarian ethos of “I can do what I want with no regard for others and nobody can correct me,” which has seeped its way into the American mainstream and is basically the center of the modern Republican party. (Basically: all for me, all the time, and caring about others is a weak liberal pussy thing to do.)

This, however, is not just an issue of partisan politics, because the left is just as guilty, even if its efforts take a different shape. One of the reason I got so utterly exasperated with strident online leftists, especially around primary season and the hardcore breed of Bernie Bros, is just that they don’t do anything except shout loud and incorrect information on the internet (and then transmogrify that into a twisted ideology of moral purity which makes a sin out of actually voting for a flawed candidate, even if the alternative is Donald Goddamn Trump). I can’t count how many people from both sides of the right/left divide get their political information from like-minded people on social media, and never bother to experience or verify or venture outside their comforting bubbles that will only provide them with “facts” that they already know. Social media has done a lot of good things, sure, but it’s also made it unprecedently easy to just say whatever insane bullshit you want, have it go viral, and then have you treated as an authority on the topic or someone whose voice “has to be included” out of some absurd principle of both-siderism. This is also a tenet of the mainstream corporate media: “both sides” have to be included, to create the illusion of “objectivity,” and to keep the largest number of paying subscribers happy. (Yes, of course this has deep, deep roots in the collapse of late-stage capitalism.) Even if one side is absolutely batshit crazy, the rules of this distorted social contract stipulate that their proposals and their flaws have to be treated as equal with the others, and if you point out that they are batshit crazy, you have to qualify with some criticism of the other side.

This is where you get white people posting “Neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter are the same!!!1” on facebook. They are a) often racist, let’s be real, and b) have been force-fed a constant narrative where Both Sides Are Equally Bad. Even if one is a historical system of violent oppression that has made a good go at total racial and ethnic genocide and rests on hatred, and the other is the response to not just that but the centuries of systemic and small-scale racism that has been built up every day, the white people of the world insist on treating them as morally equivalent (related to a superior notion that Violence is Always Bad, which.... uh... have you even seen constant and overwhelming state-sponsored violence the West dishes out? But it’s only bad when the other side does it. Especially if those people can be at all labeled “fanatics.”)

I have complained many, many times, and will probably complain many times more, about how hard it is to deconstruct people’s absolutely ingrained ideas of history and the past. History is a very fragile thing; it’s really only equivalent to the length of a human lifespan, and sometimes not even that. It’s what people want to remember and what is convenient for them to remember, which is why we still have some living Holocaust survivors and yet a growing movement of Holocaust denial, among other extremist conspiracy theories (9/11, Sandy Hook, chemtrails, flat-earthing, etc etc). There is likewise no organized effort to teach honest history in Western public schools, not least since the West likes its self-appointed role as guardians of freedom and liberty and democracy in the world and doesn’t really want anyone digging into all that messy slavery and genocide and imperialism and colonialism business. As a result, you have deliberately under- or un-educated citizens, who have had a couple of courses on American/British/etc history in grade school focusing on the greatest-hit reel, and all from an overwhelmingly triumphalist white perspective. You have to like history, from what you get out of it in public school, to want to go on to study it as a career, while knowing that there are few jobs available, universities are cutting or shuttering humanities departments, and you’ll never make much money. There is... not a whole lot of outside incentive there.

I’ve written before about how the humanities are always the first targeted, and the first defunded, and the first to be labeled as “worthless degrees,” because a) they are less valuable to late-stage capitalism and its emphasis on Material Production, and b) they often focus on teaching students the critical thinking skills that critique and challenge that dominant system. There’s a reason that there is a stereotype of artists as social revolutionaries: they have often taken a look around, gone, “Hey, what the hell is this?” and tried to do something about it, because the creative and free-thinking impulse helps to cultivate the tools necessary to question what has become received and dominant wisdom. Of course, that can then be taken too far into the “I’ll create my own reality and reject absolutely everything that doesn’t fit that narrative,” and we end up at something like the current death of expertise.

This year is particularly fertile for these kinds of misinformation efforts: a plague without a vaccine or a known cure, an election year in a turbulently polarized country, race unrest in a deeply racist country spreading to other racist countries around the world and the challenging of a particularly important system (white supremacy), etc etc. People are scared and defensive and reactive, and in that case, they’re especially less motivated to challenge or want to encounter information that scares them. They need their pre-set beliefs to comfort them or provide steadiness in a rocky and uncertain world, and (thanks once again to social media) it’s easy to launch blistering ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you, who are categorized as a faceless evil mass and who you will never have to meet or negotiate with in real life. This is the environment in which all the world’s distinguished scientists, who have spent decades studying infectious diseases, have to fight for airtime and authority (and often lose) over random conspiracy theorists who make a YouTube video. The public has been trained to see them as “both the same” and then accept which side they like the best, regardless of actual factual or real-world qualifications. They just assume the maniac on YouTube is just as trustworthy as the scientists with PhDs from real universities.

Obviously, academia is racist, elitist, classist, sexist, on and on. Most human institutions are. But training people to see all academics as the enemy is not the answer. You’ve seen the Online Left (tm) also do this constantly, where they attack “the establishment” for never talking about anything, or academics for supposedly erasing and covering up all of non-white history, while apparently never bothering to open a book or familiarize themselves with a single piece of research that actual historians are working on. You may have noticed that historians have been leading the charge against the “don’t erase history!!!1″ defenders of racist monuments, and explaining in stinging detail exactly why this is neither preserving history or being truthful about it. Tumblr likes to confuse the mechanism that has created the history and the people who are studying and analyzing that history, and lump them together as one mass of Evil And Lying To You. Academics are here because we want to critically examine the world and tell you things about it that our nonsense system has required years and years of effort, thousands of dollars in tuition, and other gatekeeping barriers to learn. You can just ask one of us. We’re here, we usually love to talk, and we’re a lot cheaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

As a historian, I have been trained in a certain skill set: finding, reading, analyzing, using, and criticizing primary sources, ditto for secondary sources, academic form and style, technical skills like languages, paleography, presentation, familiarity with the professional mechanisms for reviewing and sharing work (journals, conferences, peer review, etc), and how to assemble this all into an extended piece of work and to use it in conversation with other historians. That means my expertise in history outweighs some rando who rolls up with an unsourced or misleading Twitter thread. If a professor has been handed a carefully crafted essay and then a piece of paper scribbled with crayon, she is not obliged to treat them as essentially the same or having the same critical weight, even if the essay has flaws. One has made an effort to follow the rules of the game, and the other is... well, I did read a few like that when teaching undergraduates. They did not get the same grade.

This also means that my expertise is not universal. I might know something about adjacent subjects that I’ve also studied, like political science or English or whatever, but someone who is a career academic with a degree directly in that field will know more than me. I should listen to them, even if I should retain my independent ability and critical thinking skillset. And I definitely should not be listened to over people whose field of expertise is in a completely different realm. Take the recent rocket launch, for example. I’m guessing that nobody thought some bum who walked in off the street to Kennedy Space Center should be listened to in preference of the actual scientists with degrees and experience at NASA and knowledge of math and orbital mechanics and whatever else you need to get a rocket into orbit. I definitely can’t speak on that and I wouldn’t do it anyway, so it’s frustrating to see it happen with history. Everybody “knows” things about history that inevitably turn out to be wildly wrong, and seem to assume that they can do the same kind of job or state their conclusions with just as much authority. (Nobody seems to listen to the scientists on global warming or coronavirus either, because their information is actively inconvenient for our entrenched way of life and people don’t want to change.) Once again, my point here is not to be a snobbish elitist looking down at The Little People, but to remark that if there’s someone in a field who has, you know, actually studied that subject and is speaking from that place of authority, maybe we can do better than “well, I saw a YouTube video and liked it better, so there.” (Americans hate authority and don’t trust smart people, which is a related problem and goes back far beyond Trump, but there you are.)

As for art: it’s funny how people devalue it constantly until they need it to survive. Ask anyone how they spent their time in lockdown. Did they listen to music? Did they watch movies or TV? Did they read a book? Did they look at photography or pictures? Did they try to learn a skill, like drawing or writing or painting, and realize it was hard? Did they have a preference for the art that was better, more professionally produced, had more awareness of the rules of its craft, and therefore was more enjoyable to consume? If anyone wants to tell anyone that art is worthless, I invite you to challenge them on the spot to go without all of the above items during the (inevitable, at this rate) second coronavirus lockdown. No music. No films. No books. Not even a video or a meme or anything else that has been made for fun, for creativity, or anything outside the basic demands of Compensated Economic Production. It’s then that you’ll discover that, just as with the underpaid essential workers who suffered the most, we know these jobs need to get done. We just still don’t want to pay anyone fairly for doing them, due to our twisted late-capitalist idea of “value.”

Anyway, since this has gotten long enough and I should probably wrap up: as you say, the difference between “professional” and “hobbyist” has been almost completely erased, so that people think the opinion of one is as good as the other, or in your case, that the hobbyist should present their work for free or refuse to be seen as a professional entitled to fair compensation for their skill. That has larger and more insidious effects in a global marketplace of ideas that has been almost entirely reduced to who can say their opinion the loudest to the largest group of people. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but at least I can try to point it out and to avoid being part of it, and to recognize where I need to speak and where I need to shut up. My job, and that of every single white person in America right now, is to shut up and let black people (and Native people, and Latinx people, and Muslim people, and etc...) tell me what it’s really like to live here with that identity. I have obviously done a ton of research on the subject and consider myself reasonably educated, but here’s the thing: my expertise still doesn’t outweigh theirs, no matter what degrees they have or don’t have. I then am required to boost their ideas, views, experiences, and needs, rather than writing them over or erasing them, and to try to explain to people how the roots of these ideas interlock and interact where I can. That is -- hopefully -- putting my history expertise to use in a good way to support what they’re saying, rather than silence it. I try, at any rate, and I am constantly conscious of learning to do better.

I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for letting me talk about it.

#history #long post #anonymous #ask

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