#I thought it was internationally acknowledged

[theemporium]

i have heard of snakes and ladders before but it's not a board game we actually have in my country 😂

ITS NOT?

[baelabong]

𝖯𝗈𝗌𝗌𝖾𝗌𝗌𝗂𝗈𝗇 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗉𝗈𝗐𝖾𝗋

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Pairing: g!p Karina x fem! Reader

Synopsis: Y/N, a skilled prosecutor, takes on a high-profile embezzlement case against Jeon Jungkook, while facing off against the formidable defense attorney Karina. As the courtroom battles intensify, so does the tension and jealousy between Y/N and Karina, blurring the lines between their professional and personal lives.

Warning: sex?!

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The doors of your office open, a smiling Minjeong heading your way with a stack of papers in her hands.

“What’s up, gay-ass”, the woman in the suit chuckled

Rolling your eyes at your antics, you already knew what she was here for.

“Hand me the paper already,” you say with a playful tone

Placing the stack of papers on your desk, you eye the one on top taking it in your hands.

“Embezzlement?” You asked

“I know … but if you keep reading, you’ll see it involves Jeon Jungkook, that celebrity”

Nodding in acknowledgment she continues

“Getting accused of embezzling funds from charities he’s supported? Now that’s something”, Minjeong shakes her head

Being the most talented prosecutor alive, well Atleast that’s what you think, you nod.

“I’ll take it”

With a small smile Minjeong leaves you to it.

—-

Sat in your office, surrounded by stacks of files and evidence related to your latest high-profile case. The afternoon sun filtered through the blinds, casting a warm glow on the cluttered desk.

Glancing at the headline on your computer screen: "Jeon Jungkook Accused of Embezzlement from Charity" The article detailed the accusations against the internationally renowned celebrity, alleging that he had siphoned funds meant for a children's charity into his personal accounts.

The door to Y/N's office creaked open, and Minjeong her fellow co-worker stepped in.

"Hey, how's the case coming along?" she asked, dropping a coffee cup on your desk.

Sighing and rubbing your temples. "It's a mess. The media is all over it, and the evidence is all over the place.

Jungkook's fans are in an uproar, and the charity is desperate for justice."

Minjeong sat down across from Y/N, her eyes twinkling with curiosity.

"I heard Karina's defending him. That should make things interesting."

Y/N rolled her eyes, a small smirk playing on her lips. "Interesting is one way to put it. She's already been making her usual snide remarks during the preliminary hearings."

Minjeong leaned in, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "Just remember, your wife will NOT be happy about this," she teased, winking.

Y/N laughed, shaking her head. "Yeah, well, she can deal with it. This is work."

—-

Over the next few days, Y/N delved deeper into the case. She combed through financial records, interviewed witnesses, and gathered evidence that pointed towards Jungkook's involvement in the embezzlement scheme.

Despite the mountain of work, she found herself looking forward to the verbal sparring matches with Karina during their encounters.

One evening, Y/N was going through a particularly dense stack of documents when her phone buzzed. It was a message from Karina: "Ready for another round tomorrow? Don't be late. ;)"

YIN chuckled, typing back a quick reply:

"Wouldn't miss it for the world. Bring your A-game."

—-

Y/N stood in a quiet corner of the courthouse hallway, talking and laughing with her coworker, Mark. He was charming and funny, and y/n knew he had an interest in her. As Mark leaned in to make a joke, Y/N threw her head back, laughing freely.

Unbeknownst to her, Karina had just stepped into the hallway, catching sight of the interaction. Her eyes narrowed, and she paused, her expression a mix of irritation and something more difficult to read.

“What the fuck is she looking at?”Y/N thought, her laughter fading as she met Karina's gaze across the hallway. Karina's piercing stare sent a shiver down her spine, and she could feel the tension radiating from her.

Mark seemed oblivious to the sudden shift in atmosphere. "You should come out with us tonight, Y/N. It'll be fun," he said, his tone playful.

Y/N forced a smile, her mind still on Karina's reaction. "Maybe, we'll see."

Karina's eyes bore into Y/N's, and she could almost hear her thoughts. *Does she really think she can flirt with someone else right in front of me?* The thought was both thrilling and infuriating.

Y/N excused herself from Mark, walking briskly toward Karina. As she approached, she saw the flash of jealousy in Karina's eyes, and it made her heart race.

"What was that about?" Karina asked, her voice low and controlled, but Y/N could sense the underlying tension.

"Nothing important," Y/N replied nonchalantly, though her pulse quickened. "Just work stuff."

Karina's gaze flicked over to Mark and then back to Y/N. "It didn't look like just work stuff."

Y/N took a step closer, lowering her voice. "You're overreacting. Remember, we have to keep this professional."

You walk away from the taller girl, heels clacking as you entered the courtroom again.

The courts atmosphere was electric. The media presence was overwhelming, with cameras flashing and reporters jostling for the best spot.

Jungkook sat beside Karina, looking stoic and composed.

As you presented your case, you couldn't help but notice Karina's intense focus.

Every argument you made, Karina countered with equal force. Always butting in with your statements making your blood boil in anger.

“Your honour, my client did no such thing”, she kept pressing

After the cross examination, Karina asked for a recess, which the judge granted

Taking this opportunity, you cornered Karina in a quiet hallway.

"You know he's guilty, right?" You said, your voice low and challenging.

Karina smirked, stepping closer. "That's for the jury to decide, isn't it?" She paused, her eyes softening slightly.

"You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

You grinned

Karina leaned in, her breath warm against your ear. "Careful, someone might think you're flirting."

Your heart skipped a beat, but thank the Lord’s you kept your composure

"And what if I am?"

Karina's eyes sparkled with amusement.

"Then you'd better be ready for the consequences."

“The fuck, sorry but I have a wife”

With a scoff, Karina walks away turning her back on Y/n.

——-

The courtroom buzzed with tension as the trial resumed after recess. You exchanged a brief, intense look with Karina before the judge called the court to order.

"Counselors, you may proceed." The judge started

Stepping forward, you address the jury with confidence.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the evidence presented today will unequivocally show that the defendant, Jeon Jungkook, knowingly participated in an elaborate embezzlement scheme..."

As you continued your opening statement, Karina watched with a keen eye, her mind already formulating her counterarguments. When it was her turn, she rose gracefully, her presence commanding attention.

"Ladies and gentlemen, what you will see today is not a case of embezzlement, but a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of facts. My client is innocent..."

The trial progressed, with both sides presenting evidence and questioning witnesses. The tension between you and Karina was palpable, each one determined to outmaneuver the other.

"Objection, Your Honor! The defense is leading the witness."

"Sustained. Ms. Karina, please refrain from leading the witness."

Karina nodded, adjusting her approach with a confident smirk. You felt a surge of satisfaction but knew the battle was far from over. When it was your turn to cross-examine a witness, Karina was quick to interrupt.

"Objection, Your Honor! Relevance?"

"The witness's testimony is directly related to the timeline of events, Your Honor."

"Overruled. Continue, Ms. Y/N."

The courtroom drama intensified with each objection and counter-objection. You felt the pressure mounting, but you thrived on it. Karina’s every move seemed calculated to throw you off balance, yet you countered with equal precision.

"Objection, Your Honor! The defense is badgering the witness."

"Sustained. Ms. Karina, please restrain your line of questioning."

Karina shot you a glare, and you couldn't help but feel a thrill at having won that round. But she quickly recovered, pressing on with her case.

"Your Honor, I move to dismiss the charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence."

You felt your heart sink. The judge considered the motion, the courtroom holding its collective breath.

"Motion denied. Proceed with closing arguments."

You let out a breath you didn't realize you were holding. This was it—the final showdown. You poured every ounce of passion and conviction into your closing argument, determined to make the jury see the truth.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence is clear. The defendant is guilty of embezzlement. Justice must be served."

Karina followed, her voice steady and compelling.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the prosecution has not met the burden of proof. My client is innocent, and I urge you to deliver a verdict of not guilty."

The jury deliberated, and the tension was unbearable. When they returned, the foreperson stood.

"We find the defendant not guilty."

You felt a wave of defeat wash over you as Karina's team celebrated. The judge dismissed the court, and you gathered your things, your heart heavy with disappointment.

You stormed out of the courtroom, frustration and anger bubbling inside you. Karina caught up with you in the hallway, a smug smile on her face.

"Tough break, Y/N. Better luck next time."

You glared up at her before saying

“Get the fuck away from me Yoo” and with that, you stormed off back to the office.

——-

2:30 am

The clock read as you yawned. After the case ended earlier, you decided to do some extra work to occupy your mind.

Ding

Your phone vibrated as a text popped up.

R:

hey, why aren’t you back at the apartment yet

With a sigh, you closed your phone, packing up your stuff and locking up your office.

Pulling up to your penthouse, you received another text.

R:

Why aren’t you replying?

Deciding to ignore it again, you trudged to the door of your penthouse and entered, taking your time with removing your shoes and coat that kept you warm despite wearing a skirt and blouse.

You realized the lights in the living room were on. Hmm. Walking in, you were met with your wife giving you a stern look.

“Love, where have you been?” she inquired.

“That court case tired me out today,” you said, giving her a pout.

“Hm … is that so? So you weren’t with Mark just then, were you?”

“Give it up, Karina. I’m so sick of today’s bullshit,” you snapped. As if on cue, she stomped towards you, trapping you against the edge of the couch.

“Don’t fucking talk to me like that,” she growled, grabbing your jaw and making you look at her.

You stayed quiet as she continued, “Do you know how hard it was to suppress myself from killing Mark myself for even asking you to go out?”

Your eyes darted away, unable to hold her piercing gaze.

Having enough, she pushed you down on the couch, flipping you over and yanking your panties and skirt off.

You looked behind you as she reached into her boxers to grab her hard-on, the tip red and angry, leaking with precum.

She was even bigger when hard, you thought, almost packing 7.5 inches.

Karina didn’t waste any time. She lined herself up and thrust into you with a single, powerful stroke, making you gasp as she filled you completely. The sensation of her stretching you out was intense, and you could feel your tummy bulging slightly from the sheer size of her.

“Look at you, taking all of me,” she hissed, gripping your hips tightly. “So fucking pathetic. You think you can just flirt with anyone and get away with it?”

You whimpered, her rough handling and harsh words sending shivers down your spine. Each thrust was deep and punishing, driving you further into the couch.

“Tell me, baby, who do you belong to?” she demanded, her voice low and dangerous.

“You,” you managed to gasp out, your body trembling under her relentless pace.

“That’s right,” she growled. “You’re mine. Only mine. And I’m going to make sure you remember that.”

Karina’s thrusts grew more forceful, her hips slamming into yours with a ferocity that left you breathless. You could feel every inch of her, the pressure building inside you as she took you harder and deeper.

“You’re going to take all of my cum,” she snarled, her grip on your hips tightening. “I’m going to breed you so you remember who you belong to.”

The dirty talk only heightened your arousal, the combination of pleasure and humiliation pushing you closer to the edge. Karina’s pace was relentless, each thrust sending waves of ecstasy through your body.

“You like that, don’t you?” she taunted, her voice dripping with disdain. “You like being used like this, don’t you, slut?”

“Yes,” you cried out, the intensity of the moment overwhelming you. “I love it.”

With a final, shuddering thrust, Karina buried herself deep inside you, her release hot and thick as she filled you completely. The sensation of her cum flooding you pushed you over the edge, your own orgasm crashing over you with a force that left you trembling.

Karina held you close, her breathing ragged as she whispered in your ear, “You’re mine. Always.”

[thesiltverses]

Out of curiosity, just how unstable/stable would the Peninsula be following the Glottage Incident? Not going to go into specifics about it to avoid spoilers. I'm working on a thing for the RPG set after it, and wanted to see what the showrunners thought would happen.

Oh, that sounds really cool!

Personally - although of course this is no more canonical than any other bozo's opinion - this is what I imagined would happen to the Peninsula after the events of the show (spoilers below the cut)

Assuming that there are no wild cards from the stuff we deliberately left open-ended (i.e. that the polluted winds aren't going to sweep east across the entire Peninsula and render it uninhabitable)...

With Carson and Val gone, a whole lot of load-bearing lies are likely to come crashing down very quickly. The remnants of the CLS government will be able to publicly declare that the Peninsula only won the war with the help of a highly illegal rhetorical god who murdered civilians, committed countless war crimes, and threatened to unravel reality. Likewise, the High Adjudicator's sex coma was already on the verge of being an open secret, and his private plane flying out of Glottage then crashing in the west is only going to lead to more searching scrutiny about just what the hell was going on there.

If the Peninsula was ending the war in a strong position, all of this might not matter - but with Glottage in tatters, a power vacuum, a decimated population, and the war's outcome looking less like a heroic victory and more like an internationally-condemned and chaotic embarrassment, I imagine the remaining Adjudicators would be pivoting frantically to become peace-loving, harmonious and sustainable-sacrifice types, with the condemnation for the war being unceremoniously heaped on Carson and the High Adjudicator's shoulders in their absence.

As a result, I can see Shrue (with their history of anti-war speeches) being quickly re-embraced and co-opted, maybe even actively canonised as a saintly figure by the newly-pacifistic political establishment - because after all, wasn't their speech really raging at the wastefulness, lies, and corruption of certain politicians? We should all have listened to them earlier.

I can't see the Parish being publicly acknowledged as the true perpetrators of the Glottage attack, however - it's far more politically useful to state that Val must have been responsible (because then the people of the Peninsula are also victims of Carson's lies and his horrific terrorist-saint run amok, we all suffered equally, and we can all just draw a line under this tragic affair.)

The lasting winners of the power vacuum are likely to be the major international faiths, which can quickly position themselves as neutral mediators and peacemakers between the leaderless CLS and Peninsula, while swooping in to play a more active role in both nations' governance.

All of that scandal and upheaval would also undoubtedly continue to energise the Woundtree / anti-sacrificial movement across the country which might even find a legitimate foothold in mainstream thought, but the ideological risks to that movement (being neutered or softened or co-opted) would be greater than ever.

So...definitely highly unstable, I'd imagine, but with no shortage of players rolling in from the wings, just as before, to try and transform all of this into a nice, simple, tutelary story of saints and scapegoats.

[reiderwriter]

This request is inspired by the season 1 finale when Elle and Morgan are on that tropical vacation:) could you do something where the team is somewhere like that for a case and after it’s closed they decide to stay another night and go to a club and the reader gets Spencer to dance with her and at first he’s really awkward but then they really get into it (can end however you want:))

A/N: I took this idea and RAN. When I tell you I was sitting furiously the entire way through this, I mean it 😭 thank you so much for requesting! 🥰

Warnings: smut, 18+ minors dni, semi-public sex, Munch!Spencer, oral sex (f receiving), unprotected sex, cum play, alcohol consumption, slight masturbation (m).

The sun was bright and hot in Jamaica. You'd landed a week ago for a case which had now wrapped and were enjoying the cool breeze from the sea and the hospitality of Derek Morgan’s hotel-resort-owning friend. 

Travelling internationally was always a little bit tougher than working on the domestic cases, but the international team was spread thin, and somehow, no case had landed on your desk until this one did. Graciously, the FBI had let you have another 24 hours before your return. 

You'd spent the day stretching out in the sun, an incredibly large beach umbrella set up beside you housing Spencer Reid who had let you know early into the trip that he burned easily. 

“All I'm saying is, I've read enough papers on skin cancer to know the sun is a deadly laser.” 

“A twenty minute game of beach volleyball isn't going to kill you, kid. Come on, these ladies are waiting, and I will leave your ass here.” 

“Stop bothering him, Derek,” you defended Spencer, partly because Derek was casting a shadow across you and cutting off your sun, and partly because you didn't want to acknowledge the pit of jealousy bubbling up in your body when the women threw themselves at Spencer. “Besides, do you really want Spencer on your team for a physical sport?” 

“Y/N has a point, listen to Y/N,” Spencer whined, nodding profusely at your words. 

Derek held his hands up in defeat and walked away, wondering how long it would take the two of you to sort whatever attachment issues you had out. 

When the sun had eventually retreated, and you'd pulled the beach dress you'd bought earlier that day back on, Spencer was still at your side. 

“You know, I think you caught some sun, Spencer,” you giggled, running a hand across his now permanently rosy cheeks and feeling their warmth. “Your cheeks are so red. It's like a grandma just pinched them and held on.” 

“I told you I could look at the sun and burn, and we've been out here all day,” he grumbled, pouting slightly. 

You beamed up at him, though. You hadn't forced Spencer out. In fact, you'd been fully prepared for him to stay inside all day reading. But when he asked you your plans at breakfast, he'd asked to join you, and you hadn't protested in the slightest. 

Walking slowly back to the main part of your resort, you softly hummed the music that travelled from the outdoor beach bar. The music had been constant throughout the day, and you swayed your hips in time to the music as you walked. 

“Y/N…” Spencer started, a few paces behind you. You turned to look at him. His usual wardrobe wasn't exactly the most beach friendly attire, so you'd hunted down a pair of board shorts and a short sleeve button down when you'd bought your dress that morning. You thought they'd hang awkwardly off him, but he filled them out surprisingly well. As he spoke, though, you found yourself unconsciously moving forward to straighten a wrinkle in his shirt.

 “I think Rossi, Hotch, and Prentiss mentioned they were going to get drinks in the bar this evening. Do you want to go, too?” 

Your hand stilled on his chest, and you looked up at him. It was golden hour, and the sun had halo'd him perfectly in its dying rays, showing off its beauty one last time. 

You had to recapture the breath you'd hiccuped out when he'd held your gaze, willing your heartbeat to stay somewhat normal. 

“Oh, great! That sounds like fun, I was just thinking about how I wanted to dance.”

“I know,” he whispered softly as you turned away cheerfully. You almost didn't hear it, and though you desperately wanted to turn around and ask him why, you continued ahead toward the twinkling lights of the bar. 

Three hours later, you were in your cups. You'd worked hard on your case throughout the week, and now it was time for distraction. 

Besides, you knew that sun and alcohol weren't always the best pairing, so you'd stayed hydrated on the beach. Now the sun had gracefully set, you were happy to enjoy a glass or two of your liquid joy. 

Pulling Spencer Reid onto the dance floor in front of all your coworkers was just another symptom of your piña colada buzz, and he followed you with a small hesitation and a small laugh of protest. 

“Y/N, I can't dance.” 

“Shhhhhh, you don't have to dance, you just have to sway. Just sway.” 

“By my definition, swaying is dancing.” 

You rolled your eyes at him but pulled his hands around your waist always. Your coordination faltered, though, and you landed awkwardly high on your body. Without a care in the world for the trail of fire you were igniting down your back, you slid his hands lower, until his hands were sat nearer to your ass than your hips, and you stepped in. 

With his arms in position, you threw your own around his neck, and absent mindedly began playing with the curls at the base of his neck. 

“Now sway, Spencer.” 

His eyes locked with yours, and he obliged. Your chest had pressed up against his after all, your bodies practically flush, and now that you were moving in time to the music, it was inevitable that he should, too. 

Time travelled quickly as you stood in the glow of each other, laughing and joking about each clumsy step, each bump from other dancers. Your coworkers had each come up to wave a quick goodbye through the night, but you were still there. Still swaying. 

You were sure that his hands had travelled the length of your body, the heat that burned you from inside out having filled your body a millenia ago. 

He'd spun you out a couple times, and you'd giggled in delight at the motion, letting your dress raise and spin in the breeze, and returning to a closer position than before, more intimate somehow each time. 

The two of you were so lost in each other that by the time the DJ was shutting his system down, you hadn't even realised the music had stopped. You were now simply swaying along to the sound of the waves crashing in and out. 

“Y/N,” he finally whispered into your ear as the sun again began to show its head. “Y/N, the sun is coming up.” 

“I know. I think…. I think I don't want to let you go just yet, though.” You kept moving together in that silence for a few more minutes, but now your eyes were locked. 

It wasn't a surprise when his lips touched your own. After all, you'd seen them coming. But the jolt of electricity it sent up your spine stole your breath anyway. 

You opened your mouth to take in some air, and he saw that as welcoming. His tongue tangled with yours as his hand lifted to tip your head back, his back already bent slightly to accommodate your height difference. 

His guiding hand wasn't enough, though, he was still not close enough. 

You subtly lifted your leg and his hand instantly dropped to your thighs, hauling you up into his arms as you wrapped your legs around his waist. 

“Our flight is in six hours,” you panted as his lips left yours, suddenly sober again. “We should get some rest.” 

He nodded in agreement, but he was already walking back to your rooms. You each had your own, but he hadn't relinquished his hold on you yet, and you knew he wasn't going to. 

Good, you thought, because logic be damned but you weren't planning on letting him. 

He carried you like that all the way to his door, as you pressed chaste kisses across his face, head, ears, hair, anywhere you could reach on his body. Places you appreciated because they were beautiful and lovely. 

You longed to kiss everywhere else, too. 

“Y/N, we're here.” He said, meeting your eyes once more. There was an unspoken question there. An invitation to leave if you didn't want this. 

Your answer was a hand in his hair and hips pressed back against his. It was all he needed as he blindly pushed into the room. 

You thought he'd throw you down on the bed, but he was much too gentle for that. 

Instead, he sat himself down, taking care to make sure you were comfortable even as his tongue twisted and writhed against your own. 

With this new position, you could try to relieve some of the tension that had been burning in your body since you'd first pulled his hands to you. Your hips moved in slow circles, pressing down into the now obvious bulge in his pants, picking up speed with each caress of his hand. 

He'd pushed under the hem of your dress, his hands on your bare thighs gripping you tightly as you used his body to get off. 

You both moaned and whined through each wet kiss, the gentleness of your earlier encounters chaste in comparison with the animalistic need pulsing through yourself. 

You nearly growled when he lifted your hips again, but you let him continue his motions as he lay back, guiding your hips higher and higher until you straddled his face. 

“Shit, Spencer-” You lost the words as his fingers pulled the two ties holding your bikini bottoms in place, effectively discarding them and leaving you bare. You gasped as you held yourself above him, but he was strong and insistent.

Wrapping one hand around each of your splayed thighs, he pulled your core to his mouth and began to pleasure you. Your hands jolted to the headboard so you could steady yourself. 

Your dress still remained, spread across the bed and obscuring his face from view as he flicked his tongue against your clit, like a flower decorating the Emerald green sheets of the bed. 

“Spencer, fuck,” his hold on your thighs loosened now that he knee you weren't going anywhere, one hand sliding down to his own neglected cock. 

The looser grip meant you could move, just slightly, and so you began to ride his face. 

You moved your hips back and forth as he flattened out his tongue, and you heard the music that had carried you into the night start up again. 

Your moans were melodic, a tribute to your lust for him, an offering made to show him how truly desired he was. 

You came with a shudder, the full weight of your body falling down onto his tongue, but he didn't stop. 

His tongue started moving again now your hips had twitched to a stop, prolonging your orgasm by an eternity. 

You finally rose up on your knees when you felt a second orgasm begin to build, craving something different this time. 

He didn't come out from under your dress so much as rip the thing off of both of you. 

You'd already rid yourself of your bikini top earlier in the dar, so you sat bare above him as he pulled you again into his lap, his cock now free from his pants. 

Your lips came together again as you hovered over him, his length running through your folds, readying himself for the sweet moment he'd finally be inside you. 

“You taste sweet,” he said before you sucked on his tongue, desperate to taste your joint lust. 

The music played once again as he pulled your hips lower down and sheathed himself inside you, but louder, a crescendo of perfectly resonant notes sounding one after the other. 

You were too lost in it to be any help to him, and he kissed away your fatigue as he lowered you to the bed, gently placing your head on the pillow and smoothing the hair out of your face before pulling out until only the tip of his cock was inside you and again pushing in. 

His rhythm was steady, pulsing through your entire body. You felt the pleasure of his body inside you everywhere as his lips returned to your ear. 

You thought he would talk and say something again, but his teeth found you instead, his to gue licking the spot where your neck met your lobe before he gently nipped the side of your ear. 

He couldn't talk, but he didn't hold back any moans. 

Your whimpers, his groans, the steady rhythm of your hips meeting and pulling apart, the sound of your arousal slick between your legs, all joined together in a symphony of love as your hearts sang to one another. 

“Y/N,” he finally moaned, and hearing your name on his lips like a prayer was enough to send you over the edge. 

“Spencer! I'm cumming again, Spencer. Please don't stop-” You begged even as your body tensed up beneath him. 

He continued that rhythm, not letting your music end until it was absolutely necessary. 

But as the sun shone through the curtains again, you knew you were reaching the end of this song. 

“Where should-” he couldn't form the full question, elbows holding his weight off of you as he held back the full force of his orgasm. 

“P-Pull out,’ you whispered, and he did. 

It took him only a few strokes to find completion on your stomach. He sat back on his knees, mindful not to press his weight back down upon you. You wrapped your legs around his waist and grabbed at him anyway, needing to feel his lips on yours one more time. 

You wondered if your entire life would now be the moments in between his kisses. 

“Y/N, our flight is in 5 hours.” 

“We can sleep on the jet. We can't do this on the jet,” you said pulling his head back down for a kiss as you heard the music start up once again. 

[tosomeonessomeone]

Duo

words・ 2.1k /pairings・ Bang Chan x reader / genres・ fluff / warnings・ none

A spacious meeting room crackled with anticipation in the heart of the JYP Entertainment building. Seated at the head of the table, JYP himself beamed with enthusiasm, introducing you, an internationally acclaimed visual artist, to the members of Stray Kids. "Everyone, I'm thrilled to have [your name] here with us. She's an incredible visual artist known for her unique aesthetic," JYP announced, gesturing towards you.

You expressed your excitement, "Thank you, JYP. I'm thrilled to collaborate with such a talented group." The members of Stray Kids turned their attention, curiosity, and excitement evident in their expressions. Standing beside JYP, Bang Chan welcomed you warmly, "Hey, [your name], glad to have you on board." You acknowledged with a smile, "Thank you, Bang Chan. I'm honored to be a part of this project."

JYP set the stage for the collaboration: "Now, I've brought [your name] on board to collaborate with all of you on the aesthetics for your upcoming album. Her vision will bring a new dimension to the visual storytelling of Stray Kids." Felix chimed in, expressing his anticipation: "That sounds awesome! I can't wait to see what we create together."

Han asked, "So, [your name], any hints about what you have in mind for us?" You shared your vision, "Well, I was thinking of exploring a fusion of vibrant colors and abstract elements to reflect the dynamic energy of your music." Seungmin approved, "That sounds intriguing. I'm all for it!"

JYP concluded, "Great! Let's make this collaboration one for the books. Now, let the creative discussions begin."

As the meeting wrapped up, the stage was set for a creative journey that would redefine not only Stray Kids' visual identity but also the connection forged between you and the members in the artistic tapestry of their new album.

As days went by, the collaboration unfolded between you, an acclaimed visual artist, and Stray Kids, creating a masterpiece in the making. The studio walls resonated with beats and melodies as their music production set the backdrop, guiding the strokes of your creative vision.

One night in particular, the studio was alive with the rhythmic pulse of Stray Kids' latest track, each beat resonating through the air. You were seated among the members, your eyes focused on the speakers while your mind translated the music and dance into vibrant images. Excitement filled the room as ideas flowed freely.

Lee Know nudged you. "What do you think of this beat? It's like nothing we've done before."

You smiled. "It's incredible. I can already see a visual story unfolding with this rhythm. Maybe we can play with contrasting colors to highlight the dynamic shifts."

Chanbin nodded. "That sounds cool. Let's experiment with that."

The collaborative energy was palpable as everyone contributed their thoughts, blending the worlds of music and visual art seamlessly. As the night progressed, members excused themselves, leaving you and Bang Chan engrossed in refining the visual concept.

Bang Chan leaned back. "It's amazing how your ideas add a new layer to our music. I feel like we're creating something special."

You expressed gratitude. "Likewise, your music is so inspiring; it's like a canvas waiting to be painted."

Hours slipped away, and it became apparent that the two of you shared a dedication that extended beyond the project. Others left the studio, leaving just you and Bang Chan surrounded by the quiet hum of creativity.

Bang Chan leaned against the mixing desk. "We've been working together so closely, and I just realized we're '97 liners. That's pretty cool, huh?"

Smirking, you replied, "It is. No wonder we click so well. It's like there's an unspoken understanding between us."

Bang Chan smiled. "Maybe it's the '97 connection. We should celebrate being part of the same year."

You both laughed and in that shared moment of realization, the connection between you two deepened. The conversation flowed effortlessly, not just about the project but about life, dreams, and the shared experiences of growing up in the same era.

As the months unfolded, your collaboration with Bang Chan evolved into a friendship beyond the studio walls. The dynamic energy of Stray Kids' music parallels the camaraderie blossoming between all of you.

One evening, after a productive day in the studio, the group decided to grab dinner together. The casual outing marked the beginning of a tradition; over time, it became a regular occurrence. The laughter and shared stories flowed effortlessly, creating a tapestry of memories that linked you to each member.

As the bond deepened, you and Bang Chan found yourselves spending more time together outside of work. The formalities of addressing each other by your professional titles gave way to the comfort of first names. Christopher became "Chris" in a moment of fondness; he bestowed upon you a playful nickname that echoed through the group.

Chris shot you a sly grin, "From now on, you're officially 'Peanut.' It suits you."

You burst into laughter, loving the vibe. "Alright, Chris, Peanut it is."

Chris, still grinning, leaned in, "Perfect! Now, you've got a nickname that fits."

You playfully rolled your eyes, "Fits, maybe. Legendary? Doubtful. So, do I get to give you a nickname in return?"

Chris leaned back, totally up for it, "Oh, you're up for the challenge? Bring it on, Peanut."

You thought momentarily, then smirked, "How about 'Captain Crunch'? Because you're the leader of this ship."

Chris erupted into laughter, "Captain Crunch, huh? Not bad, not bad at all. I can get behind that."

The nickname banter kept going, each name more ridiculous and hilarious. It became a symbol of the easy camaraderie that defined your friendship.

The banter continued as the night rolled on, and the group found themselves in fits of laughter. Stray Kids, a family on and off the stage, reveled in the shared moments that solidified their bond.

Seungmin teasingly chimed in, "Peanut and Captain Crunch are the duo we never knew we needed."

Felix nodded, "The legends of nicknames! You guys should start a business."

The vibe stayed playful, turning even the most mundane topics into sources of amusement. The inside jokes and shared laughter became the glue that held your tight-knit group together.

Later, as you all split, Chris pulled you aside.

Chris, still grinning, said, "Captain Crunch, it's been a great night. Let's do it again soon." You chuckled, "Count on it, Peanut. The nicknames will keep coming."

The shift in your relationship didn't go unnoticed. Stray Kids' members and fans began to pick up on the growing closeness. The term "power couple" started circulating among the fans, playfully acknowledging the unique chemistry within the group.

Seungmin teased, "(teasingly) Looks like Peanut and Chris are taking over the world." Felix grinned in response, "(grinning) The power couple vibes are real!"

The Stays, known for their keen observation skills, passionately shipped the friendship between you and Chris, filling social media with playful comments and fan art. This transformed your collaborative project into a shared narrative extending beyond the studio and stage.

Inside jokes and shared glances fueled speculation even during fan meetings and events. The bond between you and Chris became a topic of affectionate banter, firmly rooting the power couple narrative in the hearts of fans and within the close-knit circle of Stray Kids.

Lee Know chimed in, "(grinning) Hey, [Your Name], make sure you keep up with us. You're hanging out with the young and wild crowd now." You rolled your eyes with a smile, replying, "Young and wild? I can handle that."

Chanbin smirked, "Bang Chan is practically ancient compared to us. And now you're here too. Are we forming a seniors' club?" Chris laughed, "(laughing) Watch it, Chanbin. I may be a bit older, but I can still outdance you any day."

The banter continued, creating an atmosphere where age was merely a number, and the shared laughter became the universal language. You embraced the teasing with good humor, occasionally firing back with playful retorts.

Han grinned, "(grinning) [Your Name], I bet you were around when dinosaurs roamed the earth, right?"

You said, "Well, I did attend their farewell party."

Seungmin smirked, "(smirking) It's like having two older siblings. You and Chris are the wise elders guiding us through the chaos."

You chuckled, "Wise elders? I'll take that as a compliment."

Far from being a source of discomfort, the age jokes became a bonding ritual that reinforced the sense of family within Stray Kids. The members teasingly dubbed themselves the "young and reckless" crew while you and Chris took on the roles of the seasoned mentors.

Even the Stays, ever vigilant and participative, joined in on the fun, creating memes and fan art that playfully exaggerated the age difference. The fans affectionately dubbed you and Chris the "Eternal Youth Duo," embracing the humor and warmth that defined your connection with Stray Kids.

In the heart of Seoul, amidst the bustling city, your private art studio became a haven for creativity during the collaborative project with Stray Kids. With long days in the recording studio and nights spent perfecting the visual aesthetics, the studio transformed into a shared space for art, music, and genuine camaraderie.

Han, Chanbin, and Bang Chan, the Stray Kids' producing trio, often found solace in your art studio. The walls adorned with your vibrant creations provided a backdrop for their brainstorming sessions and moments of relaxation. Hyunjin, with his passion for the arts, joined the mix, creating a dynamic environment where creativity flowed freely.

Bang Chan, in particular, often lingered after the others had left. His supportive presence became a constant in the studio, where the echoes of music and art intertwined. As you painted, he would sit nearby, offering encouraging words and genuine admiration for your work.

Sitting on a stool nearby, Bang Chan observed your latest work in progress, his eyes tracing the delicate strokes, appreciating the intricacy of your art.

He remarked softly, "You know, every brushstroke tells a story. Your art has this unique way of capturing emotions."

You smiled in response, "Thanks, Chan. Sometimes it feels like I'm chasing perfection, and I get frustrated when it falls short."

Nodding understandingly, Bang Chan replied, "I get that. The struggle to create something that truly resonates can be overwhelming. But trust me, what you're doing is already extraordinary."

As the conversation shifted, you found comfort in the shared vulnerability. Bang Chan opened up about his challenges in the studio—finding the right beat and crafting lyrics that resonated. The exchange became a dance of mutual understanding, where the struggles of art and music were laid bare.

You gently remarked, "It's funny, you know? I see you as this incredible producer who effortlessly weaves music, yet you also face moments of doubt."

Smiling, Bang Chan replied, "The creative process is a journey, and every artist, no matter how experienced, has moments of uncertainty. It's what makes the final creation so special."

The intimacy of the conversation deepened, the vulnerability weaving a bond that transcended the boundaries of collaboration. As you both faced the challenges of your respective crafts, the studio became a sanctuary for shared struggles and triumphs.

Reassuringly, Bang Chan said, "We're in this together, [Your Name]. Your art inspires me, just like I hope our music inspires you."

You replied gratefully, "Likewise, Chan. Let's keep creating, even when it feels like we're stumbling in the dark. Maybe that's where the most beautiful things come to light."

The shared understanding lingered in the air, turning the art studio into a cocoon of creativity and companionship. In those intimate moments, the struggles transformed into stepping stones, paving the way for artistic excellence and a connection that resonated beyond the strokes of a brush or the beats of a song.

After weeks of intense work in the warm glow of your art studio, the air filled with the comforting scent of paint, Bang Chan sat, his expression clouded with frustration. Lyrics eluded him, and doubt cast shadows on his usually confident demeanor.

Noticing his struggle, you set aside your brushes and walked over to him, reassuringly touching his shoulder.

"Hey, Chan, it's okay," you said softly. "Everyone faces creative blocks. You're a brilliant producer, and this moment of uncertainty doesn't define you."

Bang Chan sighed, looking up at you with gratitude. "I appreciate the support, [Your Name]. Sometimes, it just feels like I'm not doing enough."

You smiled. "You've created incredible music, Chan. Remember the impact you've had on people's lives. You're not just a producer but an amazing human being."

Your sincerity sparked a warmth in Bang Chan's eyes. The term "power couple" that fans playfully threw around seemed to carry new weight, and he was struck by the realization of the connection you shared.

"You know, [Your Name], we make a pretty good team," he reflected.

Smirking, you replied, "They're not wrong about that."

[coldpintglass]

Ship bingo: southkane!!!

Oh Southkane my beloved 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿⚽️🦁👔

What was it you said recently about them Laura? 

“Theirs is a deeply ethical age gap power imbalance boss/employee workplace extramarital affair” 

What is it that makes two (let’s be honest) quite strait-laced and otherwise “reserved”men such an interesting ship? 

Gareth full on embracing and being as mentally/emotionally supportive as he can to the squad. We can certainly debate how successful he was bringing England to glory BUT he certainly was well liked and respected as a result of this angle (until the recently). This has got to be down to his calm, level headed and actually very paternal role (especially with younger players). With older players (think Hendo, Walker etc.) you’ve got a more “normal” gaffer role that Gareth plays. You can sorta draw a line in the sand between with WHO and WHAT role he leans his managerial style too. 

A good chunk (probs 50% at least) of his motivation for being a very hands on supportive manager comes from the ‘96 euro penalty. The other two reasons are he failed as a manager at a club level and he has personally watched/played for England when they were REALLY not doing well internationally. He is absolutely driven by a need to fix things and probably sees this as a “duty” as opposed to a dream job. He has to prove it can be done for himself AND the country. 

Despite having a level headed and calm approach to managing, it doesn’t mean he’s necessarily right OR fair in judgements. He absolutely has favourites, he tries to go with what his team thinks works but has no qualm overriding it if he doesn’t like it.

And who better represents that last point than Harold?

Harry Kane is one of the best strikers produced by England. Individually he has a glittering number of achievements (ie Golden Boot from the WC 2018). But he’s never won anything as part of a team. And boy, does that fact follow him. 

He is exceptionally hard working and  determined. In his chat with Gary Neville on the Overlap, he says he used his left foot to score exclusively for 6 months to train himself to be able to score with either. That’s NUTS. He also has no qualms saying he WANTS to go down as a legend, he wants to be able to reach a level like Messi or Ronaldo. 

As an individual, Harry is a nice(ish) lad. He loves being a husband and a dad. He feels representing England is a joy, it’s duty and it’s a privilege to do so. He takes being captain VERY seriously and tries to mirror support similar to Southgate (and I’d argue a bit more successfully)

Harold is a noted teachers pet. Hilariously so. Responds, respects and acknowledges authority like it’s breathing. Every manager loves working with him because they say jump and he’ll say how high. 

Gareth has been part of Harry’s international career since he was part of the U21s!!!! These guys go way back, and how electrifying must it be to be able to mold/support/shape someone like Harry into the England captain you want to lead the country? Gareth is just besotted with Harry through and through, the line between loving him as a son vs as your favourite student gets blurred big time. 

Harry Kane is Gareth Southgate’s favourite and it’s not even close (every time someone points this out, Jordan Henderson gets a headache) 

So together you have:

Two men who see playing/managing England as a duty more than a job, complementing each other wonderfully. Harry has said winning with England is great than a trophy with a club, he damn well means it. 

Managing England completely redefined Gareth’s history and public imagine (until recently lol). Harry Kane is THE best goal scorer for England of all time and love his country evidently. Their England careers have made them folklore hero’s 

A man who’s gone through the agony of being the face of England’s failure and is determined not to let that happen to any of the next generation (although well I have more nuanced thoughts on this but I digress), who saw Harry Kanes penalty miss in the WC and his life flashed before him, desperate not for history to repeat itself.

A man who only wants to do his country proud and tries so very hard but well, as we saw recently, that’s not always enough. 

Harry’s also generally good at holding himself together and his emotions but I think that’s been slipping lately as the weight of two big Euro failures and the real vocal negative response from the public is starting to eat away at him. Who better to turn to then the man who’s put you in that position? 

Also we started to see some cracks in their otherwise very picture perfect relationship as captain and gaffer. Some of the comments during the euros about each other got a bit….. pointed. And what is it about footblr girlies LOVING some angst huh? 

They’re both doomed by the narrative and impossibly similar and all in all it makes for such wonderful (and hot lmao) fiction. They probably het their unique experiences more than anyone else should. 

Finally:

Age gap, HELLO!!!!! I’m a shallow woman and not above admitting that little taboo element between these two makes it’s sooooooooo delicious. Opens it up to some utterly fucking hot kinks as well AND it gives adds a bit of interest to both men. 

Infidelity from either man is unlikely due to their characters and therefore fun to explore with each other 👀 Obviously it’s nicer to go with the No WAGs element but lmao be real. Come on now. You’re  shipping real people…. 

Neither of them (Southgate especially,  sorry Gareth) are classically handsome. Which tbh means I kinda like it a bit more, feels a bit more…. Likely? Does that make sense? 

I can see a case for either of them being a bit more in love than the other - blind devotion vs proud teacher, both are great tbh!

Sorry just want to say it here but both of them are cringe and a bit too earnest to a degree that I think Harry styles off as endearing but Gareth it comes across as off putting whoops ahahah 

Anyway. Wow okay. Southkane manifesto over I guess! I bet there is something I’ve missed which is hilarious considering how fucking long this is but please feel free to add in anything or go ham!!!! 

[theculturedmarxist]

[...]

A long time ago, while conducting research for my master’s thesis on how the economic reforms of [French President] Emmanuel Macron had closed the circle started by [François] Mitterrand, I came to realize that the old Thatcherite idea, “There is no society, only individuals with the freedom of choice,” had become so commonly accepted in contemporary society that both right– and left-wing neoliberals today feel no need to emphasize it. 

Social surveys have also found a shocking lack of empathy and solidarity among communities in the U.S. and Western Europe, exactly at the time the dominant political narratives have begun to insist on inclusiveness and tolerance toward others. Subtle distinctions in definitions can often reveal commonly understood and yet unspoken differences between terms that we prefer to use: Inclusiveness does not necessary oblige solidarity or empathy, just as tolerance in the absolute sense means merely withholding action based on existing animosities, which are acknowledged by the very need for the usage of the term in question. Tolerance, indeed, does not have to mean understanding and accepting increasingly distant “others.”  

A question must be asked: Are we now, through ideological terminology, searching for exactly those things that we are in fact missing in our social reality? The need to define ideological terms prompts this question in that it arises only when certain notions have left the sphere of unspoken social consensus—the very frame of political and social thought. 

In his latest book, The exiled terms, Todor Kuljić, who is among the most internationally recognized Serbian sociologists of the previous and current century, explains how four decades of neoliberal reforms have influenced significant changes in the language we use to discuss ideology and politics, noting that all the terms previously connected to class inequalities, Marxist ideologies, and collective struggles of the working class have been systematically replaced with less critical, less “communist sounding” terms.

In sociology curricula, the terms “exploitation,” “revolution,” and even “humanism” have been almost completely forsaken, while we can see increased usage of words such as “transition,” “transformation,” and “social exclusion.” The term “transition,” a case in point, normalises poverty and corruption in countries that need to be convinced that they will be much better off when they adopt neoliberal economic models. 

The famous comedian George Carlin put forward a notion that there is a cultural tradition in the United States of constantly inventing new terms, and “exiling” the old-fashioned terms, which derives from the constant need to make the brutalities of everyday life more easily accommodated. “Americans have trouble facing the truth,” Carlin once said, “so they invent a kind of soft language to protect themselves from it.” If poor people used to live in slums, to cite one of Carlin’s standup routines, “now ‘the economically disadvantaged’ occupy ‘substandard housing’ in ‘inner cities.’” 

Anthropological studies have shown that this tendency has certain connections with the totemistic belief of the earliest human societies that, by changing the way we verbally identify a certain aspect of reality we can change the reality itself. It appears that this has never been more relevant than in the case of the modern culture of political correctness, which proposes that we accept social problems as consequences of our subconscious thoughts and/or individual actions, and try to solve them by changing the language we use to define them—while never searching for their material causes.

Professor Jordan Peterson has claimed that modern-day political culture developed in a manner in which the previously presumed need for objectivity was replaced with subjective feelings and perceptions, while the very understanding of material reality has been, through relativization, reduced to little more than an inconvenience that can be regulated by state legislation and group stigmatization. On the other hand, Slavoj Žižek holds that it is precisely the abandonment of the collective (ideas) for the individual (interests) that has led our increasingly globalized political culture down this path. The neoliberal, postmodern left has merely followed the neoliberal right of the eighties in the project of eliminating undesirable terminology related to physical, class, and social reality—depending on the preference of each—from the common frames of political debate, since a consensus on understanding material reality is the first and necessary condition of the collective political struggle.

Žižek also claims that the phenomenon of New Age leftists striving toward zealous political correctness merely contributes to depriving formal and informal human relationships of what is the very essence of humanity. This is because following the increasingly strict standards of Newspeak, as Orwell would put it, necessarily increases the distance between people by making them focus on their differences, thus continuously reinforcing the same barriers neoliberal leftists wish to break free of, while, at the same time, leaving them unable to overcome the tensions of every-day interactions through humor and other forms of releasing the burdening contents of the individual and collective subconscious. 

Further, if we take into account the previously mentioned thesis of Professor Kuljić, we can also propose the question: To what extent is the modern neoliberal leftist obsession with political correctness a consequence of the absence of a language and terminology by which young people could articulate the actual causes of their fear and anger and the need to express political radicalism? Of course, leftists of this persuasion remain thoroughly within the existing frame of the globally dominant ideology and never challenge the economic and political system.

At the same time, neoliberal right-wing policies continue to insist on the previously discussed narrative of personal responsibility—or, rather, personal “guilt”—not for the problems of cultural inequalities, which their leftist counterparts remain unable to relate to their actual causes in material reality, but rather for the position of the individual in the new economic order. Now in social media we witness the rise of an entire generation of young conservatives who present success and failure in life—mostly defined by the acquisition of wealth rather than personal happiness—as a consequence of individual decisions and actions, entirely decontextualized and removed from one’s personal circumstances, class background, and social context. 

Unlike the previous authors of the self-help books from the early eighties, these new “life coaches” of the internet are heavily engaged in the relativization of ethics, with some going as far as to conclude that those who stay employed in times of low wages and worsening labor conditions, instead of risking their financial existence with private business gambles, have no one but themselves to blame for being exploited. Thus, in a perverted sense of logical framing, they arrive very close to an argument used by ancient Greek philosophers to justify slavery: “An Athenian would rather kill himself than become a slave.” 

Neoliberal leftists legitimize the unfair treatment of others for personal gain with the condition that you address respectfully the same people whom you are exploiting—and, as well, disregard solidarity as the core value of the left. Contrarily, the neoliberal right wing insists that participation in the hierarchy of social and economic power is a goal necessary to achieve and a matter of personal choice, and not at all of social reality. It is as though they, the neoliberal right wing, have forgotten with how much effort traditional conservatives tried to uphold the principles of ethics—even if many of those principles were not part of the initial humanist–Enlightenment agenda, or universal values as Immanuel Kant would define them, but served only to preserve position and ensure reproduction of the upper classes—as though there truly was no society anymore. 

Not even the Prussian militarists of the old German Empire ever went so far as to assert openly that there is no common good, not even a universal moral code, and that, rather, you should seek to enrich yourself at the expense of others just to prove your own capabilities to a society you don’t even believe in anymore. But modern-day conservatives have crossed this line by seducing today’s ever more fearful youth with the promises that, if they prove capable enough, they can assume the role of the oppressor themselves and exploit the weak, who deserve their fate for failing to seize the “boundless opportunities” of some neoliberal economic paradise.

Thus, prevalent neoliberal left– and right-wing ideologies have not just disregarded, fragmented, or redefined traditionally universalist principles of ethics; they have also forsaken many “core values”—an emphasis on collective solidarity or personal liberty, common wellbeing, or individual morality—which defined the differences between the significant left– and right-wing ideologies of the previous two centuries. Even more important, humanity has been almost completely exiled from the sphere of ideological priorities—in favor of politically correct formality in the case of the New Age left, or, in the case of the New Age right, in favor of a convenient indifference to social problems. The value of humanity, in the sense in which it was understood during the course of the 20th century, will therefore have a hard time finding its way back into the ideological frames of the new world order. 

Luka Filipović, among the youngest Serbians ever to earn his doctorate, holds a Ph.D. awarded by the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade. He has published numerous articles regarding the history of labor movements, communist parties, neoliberal economic reforms, and political turmoil of the late 20th century in Europe and Serbia. His book, Eurokomunizam i Jugoslavija 1968-1980,(Eurocommunism and Yugoslavia 1968–1980), is published this month by the Institute for Contemporary History in Belgrade, where Filipović currently conducts his research.  

[collapsedsquid]

I recently spoke with the Kyiv-based journalist Leonid Shvets, whom I have found, over the years, to have a knack for pithily formulating the views of the Ukrainian mainstream. He told me that conversations in which Americans came up with scenarios for Ukraine to surrender drove him up a wall. “Why don’t you surrender to the Chinese?” he said. “Give them Florida. You have lots of states, what’s one state less?” Florida, of course, was a complicated example. “Or, if you’re so eager to make a deal with the Russians, why don’t you give them some of your land? Give them Alaska.” He thought that anything short of total defeat for Putin would just mean that the war would start up again. “We went through this already in 2014,” he said.

“Here’s the problem,” he continued. “If we freeze the situation where it now is, not along Ukraine’s internationally recognized border but along whatever line the front happens to be at, then we acknowledge that internationally recognized borders are just a kind of fiction, which you can ignore. That’s a very bad lesson. And, second, if we put the borders in this new place, then we’re in a situation where this new border is worth even less than the internationally recognized border. Maybe a new military operation will move it even further, move it over here, or move it over there. So at that point it is just totally without meaning.”

Shvets acknowledged that people in Ukraine were exhausted after a year and a half of war. “No question, every day the war goes on is, for us, specific people who are lost, and specific houses that are destroyed. Absolutely. But we are not yet ready for defeat.” He went on: “There may come a point where we need to negotiate. But from where we are right now, that point is not visible to me.”

There are dissenting voices within Ukraine, but they are seldom heard from in public. One former official, who asked that we disguise his identity, told me, “The dialogue is not just toxic. If you are not jumping up and down with the mainstream, then you are an enemy.” The former official was not an enemy, but he did blame the Zelensky administration for its lighthearted and irresponsible attitude toward the Russian troop buildup in 2021. The former official was getting his family out of the country and making preparations for what he believed was an imminent attack. Meanwhile, Zelensky was telling people to remain calm and citing Ukraine’s sovereign rights. This, the former official said, was a grave miscalculation. “When there’s a crazy person next to you with a Kalashnikov, you don’t start talking to him about the U.N. Charter!”

The former official believes that the Istanbul talks were the best chance at a more or less stable peace. “Back then Bakhmut was a beautiful city,” he said. “Mariupol was under Ukrainian control.” But now “there is no win-win solution any longer,” he said. “Someone will have to lose.” He hoped it would be Russia. But he feared it could be Ukraine. I asked him when public opinion might begin to turn. “When every single person knows someone who has been killed or wounded,” he replied. The country was getting there.

For Charap, the Ukrainian position on when to stop fighting is decisive, but it’s an evasion of responsibility to pretend that the U.S. can’t have an opinion on the matter. “You have to do this with the Ukrainians,” he said. “You can’t do it to the Ukrainians. But to suggest that we have no ability to influence them in any way is disingenuous. Like, we feel it’s O.K. to advise them about everything under the sun, but not war termination?”

[moviemunchies]

I saw this go up on Hulu, and I decided it might be worth checking out. Historically, I am not really a murder mystery person; on the other hand, I found things like the Benoit Blanc movies and Only Murders in the Building to be fun, so I thought I’d give this one a shot! A high-budget, stylish murder mystery set on a luxury cruise liner–there’s potential here.

It only lasted one season, though.

Hm…

Death and Other Details is about our heroine, Imogen Scott, who is on a luxury cruise with the Collier family, who pretty much adopted her after her mother was mysteriously murdered during her childhood. There are plenty of colorful characters on this cruise, including Rufus Cotesworth, an investigator once hailed as “The World’s Greatest Detective,” but who failed to solve the murder of Imogen’s mother. When one of the guests on the cruise is murdered, Imogen and Rufus must team up again to find the killer–and how it connects to what happened years ago in Imogen’s childhood.

Alright, so here’s the thing: despite being billed as such, and people comparing it to things like Only Murders in the Building, this is not a murder mystery. Okay, it has one, and it’s a mystery about a murder, but the story on the whole is not that kind of story. It’s more of a crime/conspiracy thriller. The events of the murder all tie into a larger web of deceit and an internationally-reaching crime boss who keeps having his name passed around.

It’s also not entirely confined to this ship? There’s an episode where Imogen and another character hop off for a day on nearby Malta, which makes for wonderful scenery, but makes me think that it undermines the entire schtick the show’s going for–a story confined to a specifically limited location.

I am also quite frustrated in that the show has one major way of starting drama: putting characters in an affair. There are other sources of drama, to be sure, but that’s the one that comes up constantly, as if the writers couldn’t think of any other way to make characters interesting than, “Hey, look! This person’s having sex with someone they’re not supposed to!” Even if this is your kind of drama, I think it happening so often in this show would get old rather quickly. There came a point when the show revealed two characters are secretly sleeping together, and by that point I was so bored of the “twist” that I didn’t realize it was meant to be a surprise at all.

Random side note: I do appreciate that this is a show with a sketchy priest, and he is not Catholic. At least, I don’t think so? It’s unclear. One character speculates he’s Episcopal. Given he has an openly-acknowledged son who is a social media star and not a scandal/requires explanation, and that he keeps changing shirt colors, it seems like ‘Catholic’ is not what they were going for.

When we get to the end of the story, there’s a massive twist that doesn’t feel quite earned. TV Tropes tells me that some people saw it coming because of one detail, but me being bad with faces, I didn’t notice it. Either way, I don’t think this twist works, because it asks us to go back and revise way too many things and doubt the intelligence of most of the cast of characters in the show. The unreliability of memory is a motif in the show, sure, but there’s only so far you can take this. Showing the audience one thing over and over, and then saying that actually it didn’t happen like that, is pretty close to straight-up lying to them and doesn’t make a good story.

I wanted to like this show more than I did. It didn’t work though; despite the show clearly framing itself as clever, most of the important uncovered secrets amounted to love affairs, and the resolution didn’t feel earned. I wasn’t a fan of how it wasn’t even really a murder mystery to begin with, but a crime thriller. The performances are good, I guess? Yeah, it’s stylish, I guess, and there’s sex, though if you need more to your television mysteries than that (and I hope you do), we can do better than Death and Other Details.

[skepticalarrie]

Sorry this got kinda long but; Do you think that in 1D days when they were told/forced to distance and they were younger and perhaps more naive, it looked like they were kinda raging against the closet/management in whatever way they could and trying to show fans in the best way they could they were together? Rainbow bears, serenading, tattoos ect, whereas nowadays it looks to me as if they want to remain quite private about their relationship and instead of trying to convince people they are together like back in the day, the ‘proof’ we get now; queer coding, bluegreening and clothing coding (like Louis wearing maison shirt for H shirt for example) is less for proving to Larries and fans and just more like Louis making a gesture from himself to H and parallels in lyrics and the way they speak about certain topics so similar isn’t them trying to convince people of anything or intentional it’s just them being themselves and naturally we can all make the connection? Like now they’re Not necessarily trying to piss off their management (especially considering they’re probably more friendly with their individual mangers now than they were with modest) and more just being themselves as best they can. And they know that the people who actually get it will get it and they have nothing to really ‘prove’ because the fans that know, know. Probably just accepted that in order to have successful careers and keep their teams employed they can’t really come out in this still majorly homophobic industry and probably value their relationship enough to keep it for themselves, that they’ll just accept having to stunt for the foreseeable(as much as it sucks, especially lately, bleugh)

Things like the Umbro shirt for example I always thought it was more of an oopsie moment than internationally for fans/Larries. I don’t think Harry specifically went out that particular day to be caught by a random fan wearing it or else he would have worn it somewhere more public or for a media day or something. I think that was like an oops moment for them.

I just feel right now that they’re being quite private and not everything they do is connected to proving ‘Larry’ but naturally we’ll still see the connections because there’s too many. Disappearing at the same time, being so similar in mannerisms and how they define fame and success, lyrics and not wanting to say what they’re about this time around. Of course it could just be because they’re not in the band anymore so naturally the ‘proof’ we get is no longer looks and serenading and instead things you have to piece together and have knowledge of, but anyway those are my thoughts

Hi, anon! I like your thoughts, this is a very interesting discussion. In my opinion, I don't think they ever did it for us or to piss off management. Not really, or not directly. You're making everything a little too much about us, sometimes we forget it's their closeting, their fight, their relationship. We're just watching it, we don't have any active participation in it and what we know doesn't even scratch the surface of what they really have. So I think the way they felt the need to communicate so intensely at times was always about themselves, and how they were feeling. To make what they had valid, acknowledged, and somehow express their love. They were obviously so much more oppressed before, everything was so so so cruel and rough, so I think the natural reaction to this much repression was to scream louder, to fight back. And the fact we got involved, we listened to what they were saying, is just a plus, they ended up feeding from our reaction as well... and I believe that's where the bears came from. They wanted to educate people about the industry about gay rights, they wanted to make sure people were aware that this kind of things were happening and it's still happening. But it was never about us or giving us proof.

Now they're older, their relationship is more solid and mature. They went through hell and back. I fully believe they're much more in control of what they want. So maybe there isn't much need to feel what they have validated or to express that so intensely. Although it is still there, the colours, the songs, the coded clothing. It's their way to make it real and it's lovely, they need to do what they feel like doing. I wonder how many things they do it only for themselves that we have no idea of. The only things we're picking up are the stuff we already have some sort of knowledge about it, there's so much stuff we could never possibly make sense of. It just hit me one of these days that we've seen them more as solo artists than in the same band by now, more separated than together. The only thing we have to piece things together is a few hundreds of videos during 5 years of their relationship. And that's a speck of dust compared to their reality.

I talked about this several times, but I'm sure there are many reasons why they're not out, it's not that simple and I think it's very plausible if privacy is one of these reasons. I fully believe they love to express themselves like that and feel acknowledged by us, but what they have is still theirs. This is the kind of thing you only realise when you get to a certain level of maturity. And to be honest, I would also want to protect that if I was them. They have this fraction of fans who know about it and acknowledge it, and look how complicated that is already. So, good for them!

[washoepine]

I’ve been watching What’s New Scooby Doo lately and I have some thoughts.

Fred Jones truly is one of the most autistic coded characters in this franchise.

His ongoing joke in this series is that he can bench 220, and this always comes up unprompted. He’s also working on benching 221 and good for him.

Fred Jones is a big professional wrestling fan and apparently keeps his mat wrestling gear on him JUST IN CASE he’s at a show and the company needs a fast and sudden substitute wrestler (this was a plot point in an episode I’m not joking)

Fred is the one who does most of not all of the driving because he’s the one that owns the Mystery Machine.

This doesn’t mean Fred is a good driver. In one episode he drove over a decaying, wood bridge that started to crumble as they went over it. Once on the other side he just goes “Can I drive or what? :D” as everyone else had years shaved off their life.

There was a pilot who let Fred in the cockpit to see the controls and he immediately caused the plane to make a nosedive. Daphne and Velma both buckled up as soon as the offer was made.

I legitimately don’t understand how the crew for Velma looked at Fred Jones and went “this is an asshole man-child” when he’s literally just a guy.

No really, how do you look at this man and go “yeah he’s a raging douchebag”? babe there are no thoughts happening.

The show completely ignores that Cairo is a city that is literally right next the the Pyramids of Giza and went with a desolate village for the sake of story telling

Two episodes previous they fully acknowledge that there are several cities on the continent of Africa (they never state what country they’re in and just keep saying Africa as if it’s not the second largest continent)

Shaggy’s character completely changes when he’s playing mini golf and I think that’s just really funny.

This show is aggressively 2002 and happy for her on that.

They rely on tropes and stereotypes for certain locations way too much and that concerns me even for a show that’s 20 years old. (They definitely went there with Mexico and New Mexico)

Speaking of the Mexico episode, why a worm????? Why is there a cult for it?????

I haven’t watched this episode yet, but apparently the gang is at a haunted lighthouse in the Midwest and I already know they’re not going to be on the Great Lakes. EDIT: THEY’RE IN WISCONSIN

The entire gang has to be super well off because they travel internationally A LOT. I want to know what the budget for travel is alone.

I feel like they break a lot of laws when they go solve a mystery.

There’s probably also a lot of OSHA violations.

So far every villain has been a white person and good for her on that.

There’s a lot less real estate crime as the motives for the monsters. One person wasn’t done with their research and decided that instead of owning up they would fabricate a whole ass alien hatching from an egg instead. Iconic.

There were also two guys who dressed up as ghosts to make more money on their haunted tour rides.

Every time someone tries the change the structure of the group, things go wrong almost immediately. Truly the case study of “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it.”

So far in the series they’ve had two IRL bands which is Simple Plan and KISS.

I legitimately forgot how much of Simple Plan’s discography this show has. How much money did WB drop on this show???

I’m still on season 2, but it feels like they have to have a racing episode at least once every season.

The second racing episode played Hot by Smash Mouth and I recognized that song as soon as it started up. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.

Overall a fun show. Just gotta look past “Aggressively 2002” and some interesting decisions in writing.

There’s uhhh more but god there’s a lot to unpack.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Bernard Lane

Published: Aug 13, 2023

Denmark has taken a step towards caution in gender care by offering a form of counselling rather than medical treatments to the main patient group of teenagers with no childhood history of distress in their birth sex.

Official acknowledgment of a change in treatment policy was given on May 31 by the Liberal Party Health Minister Sophie Løhde during parliamentary debate of an unsuccessful resolution seeking a total ban on medical transition of minors.

Ms Løhde said that medical treatment at the Danish central gender clinic in Copenhagen—the Sexology Clinic—would only be offered “if the child or young person has had gender dysphoria since childhood.”

“If the gender dysphoria has started in connection with puberty, the young person may, among other things, be referred to a process of reflection or clarification,” she said.

“This process is often finalised without medical treatment, as the indication for treatment is not considered present.”

The dominant patient profile internationally is adolescent-onset dysphoria, chiefly affecting females, but the (limited and contested) evidence base for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors mostly derives from past studies of classic early childhood-onset dysphoria typically among males.

Gender distress that appears at or after the onset of puberty, often following online immersion and transgender identity declarations among school friends, is commonly referred to as Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) following the 2018 preliminary study of American public health researcher Dr. Lisa Littman.

Dr. Littman’s work is well known in Nordic countries. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare last year referenced her 2021 detransitioners study and declared that the very low rate of treatment regret claimed by youth gender clinics “no longer stands unchallenged”.

Sweden and Finland are the most advanced in the post-2019 Nordic shift to caution, while health authorities in Norway are under pressure after the country’s independent healthcare investigation agency declared in March that medicalised gender change for young people was “experimental” and should be confined to clinical trials.

Systematic reviews of the evidence base undertaken in Finland and Sweden showed it to be weak (as did reviews in the United Kingdom).

“[Although in Denmark’s parliament] the issue of gender reassignment for children and other identity policy topics seems strongly divided into blocs, we feel that this is by no means the case in the general population, when the seriousness of the matter finally dawns on people. Many simply did not know that this was happening”—Danish Rainbow Council post, 2 March 2023

Denmark’s point of difference is that the call for an end to medical transition of minors is being spearheaded by a mainstream LGBT group, the Danish Rainbow Council, launched in 2022 under the leadership of transsexual Marcus Dib Jensen. The organisation is pledged to child safeguarding and recognition of gender dysphoria as a mental disorder, while opposing the extremes of gender ideology.

In May’s parliamentary debate, Minister Løhde faced pointed questions on gender medicine from politicians Mette Thiesen and Mikkel Bjørn, both members of the populist Danish People’s Party.

The minister presented the treatment policy change as an evolution influenced by developments in the field and clinical judgment. She was not specific about which medical treatment was being withheld from patients with adolescent-onset dysphoria (or ROGD), nor the timing of the policy change.

She noted that the Sexology Clinic had “become more reluctant to offer hormone treatment” to young people.

“This reluctance manifests itself particularly regarding young people with gender dysphoria that arises in connection with puberty.

“I think it is a positive thing that there is [such] a response to research and experience… both in Denmark, but also abroad, which we must follow closely. And this knowledge and experience lead to adjustments in the current treatment options.”

The group LGBT+ Danmark, whose slogan is “Global Queer Solidarity” and which campaigns for “better gender-confirming treatment”, told GCN that the minister’s remarks referred not to a change in general treatment guidelines but to “an adjustment in the practice” of the Sexology Clinic last year.

GCN put questions to the clinic and to Denmark’s health ministry.

Big change

A recent commentary article on the minister’s remarks posted by the Danish Rainbow Council’s deputy chairman Jesper W. Rasmussen said:

“It is important to understand how significant it is that as many as 80 per cent of the children who previously underwent gender reassignment surgery will now, in the minister’s own words, no longer be able to undergo this controversial, irreversible treatment. “Since [the minister’s comments], we have received several emails from relieved parents of ROGD children, and in the coming months we will keep a close eye on whether these children continue to be free from hormonal sex reassignment. “We will do this by regularly requesting access to the treatment statistics from the Sexology Clinic [at the specialist hospital Rigshospitalet].”

The resolution for a total ban, put up in March by the populist New Right party after all other members of parliament had ignored apolitical appeals from the rainbow council, was not expected to pass in the government-controlled chamber.

But the council argued that the result was significant because public debate had been unleashed and the authorities were put under pressure.

The council suspected that the de-medicalisation of adolescent-onset (or ROGD) cases had been enacted without formal announcement in 2022, thereby explaining a sharp decline that year in the number of minors undergoing hormonal treatment.

Roughly 80 per cent of the 341 minors who had undergone medicalised gender change from 2015 to 2022 were believed to be in the ROGD category, the council said.

Since 2015, when Ms Løhde was also health minister, minors have been able to undergo irreversible medical gender reassignment without parental consent from the age of 15.

“A top [American] pediatric psychiatry organization has nixed at least three panels with leading European psychologists about Europe’s move away from chemical interventions for children with gender dysphoria, raising questions about the politicization of American medicine and underscoring a clinical divide between the United States and much of the world”—Aaron Sibarium, news report, The Washington Free Beacon, 11 August 2023

Future unknown

In 2021, Sexology Clinic consultant Dr. Mette Ewers Haahr gave an interview to the Dagbladet Information media outlet in which she acknowledged “a lack of research” relevant to today’s mostly teenage female patients and her concerns about why these girls wanted to change gender.

“We see that treatment helps young people in the short term. But we lack knowledge about what happens in ten and 20 years. Or when they want to have children. What happens when they fall in love and start to have an active sex life?” Dr. Haahr said.

“Transgender young people assigned female have, for the most part, no active sex life. Not even with themselves. How will their sex life develop and does this affect their perception of their gender? We have sometimes seen in young people that gender and sex life interact and change together.”

Dr. Haahr’s comments about the weak evidence base prompted the rainbow council to ask why the authorities had allowed such a confident regimen of paediatric transition to begin in 2015.

“As adults, we must dare to step up and say stop this madness. We castrate and sterilise children and physically destroy their otherwise healthy bodies to alleviate a psychological discomfort that is usually temporary and, if not, can be treated with a sex change on the other side of puberty,” the council’s June 2 comment said.

No surgery on minors

In May’s parliamentary debate, Minister Løhde also said that under new referral guidelines, it would no longer be permissible to offer transgender surgery such as mastectomy to children under age 18—“an option that, by the way, has never been used in Denmark.”

She said the country’s “entire guidance on health care for individuals with gender identity issues” was being reviewed.

GCN asked the Danish Health Authority if a systematic review of the evidence base would be undertaken.

A spokeswoman for the authority said: “We are in the process of updating the existing guideline and we will consult leading experts in that revision.”

In a post on a Danish study dealing with trans identity and suicide attempts, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) said:

“It remains to be seen whether the Danish Health Authority will take a cautious approach to the treatment of gender-dysphoric youth like the growing number of their European counterparts, or whether Denmark will choose to align with the current direction supported by a number of U.S. medical societies that assert that medical gender transition should be widely available for all youths who desire it.”

Copenhagen psychotherapist and former teacher Lotte Ingerslev, who writes the blog Transgender: the Fine Print and is a member of SEGM, told GCN that the Danish health minister’s May 31 remarks were “very, very important.”

She said the minister had represented this policy shift “as simply a result of the doctors ‘following the evidence’, and not a complete and utter break with their previous approach.”

Ms Ingerslev said this appeared to be a government tactic for “evading responsibility for the utter disregard for children’s bodies and lives.”

Nonetheless, she said the policy change meant “that teenagers will no longer be able to expect to get hormones as a quick fix for their loneliness, autism or inner homophobia.”

But she said these concessions to caution by the government and the Sexology Clinic were not enough and “the transing of children needs to be stopped completely.”

“Otherwise, the general public, schools, day-care centres and parents of gender-non-conforming children get a message from the state saying that gender-non-conformity is a sign that a child is ‘trans’, which goes against all evidence,” she said.

Opt-out females

In her 2021 media interview, the Sexology Clinic’s Dr. Haahr wondered aloud about why female patients are disproportionately represented in gender clinic caseloads.

She worried that for some girls, transition was more about “opting out of the feminine than opting into the masculine”, and more to do with physical discomfort than a different gender identity.

“When the birth-assigned girls reach puberty and their bodies change, some of them start to have these thoughts. Maybe the outside world has started to react differently to them because their bodies are suddenly sexualised,” Dr. Haahr said.

“They may not get as much speaking time, they’re belittled if they take up too much space, and certain girl things are expected of them that they can’t identify with. And then they feel really, really bad about their feminine bodies.

“Unlike the children [with early-onset dysphoria], who have experienced themselves as a different gender for as long as they can remember, we see that some of the [teenage] girls… have only had these thoughts for six months and are determined that they need body modification treatment. And then it becomes really difficult to figure out what it’s all about and what the right thing to do is.”

She said she paid particular attention to whether these girls had suffered traumatic experiences such as bullying, assault or sexual abuse.

“Abuse during adolescence and childhood can lead to alienation from one’s body. That’s where we need to be extra vigilant.”

She said today’s teenage female patients sometimes used formulaic language seemingly not their own when explaining why they wished to transition—it was like “listening to them read from a Facebook manual”.

She defended Dr. Littman’s 2018 ROGD study, which generated an international backlash from “gender-affirming” clinicians and trans activists, as well as pressure for the journal to issue a “correction” which in fact left the Littman hypothesis unchanged.

Dr. Haahr’s gender clinic colleague, chief physician Astrid Højgaard dismissed the ROGD hypothesis and objected that right-wing groups were enthusiastic about the idea of trans social contagion.

But Dr Haahr said: “It is not my impression that Littman has done the research to appease the right wing or because she is transphobic, but because she thought the phenomenon should be studied.

“I think that if we can’t talk about this very large increase in the number of birth-assigned girls seeking to change their bodies during puberty, then it’s going to be a problem for all transgender people in the future.”

[secretgamergirl]

I am so done with clips of terrible people.

"So earlier this week, I saw a video from Greg Smith, or Skullshelf Statuary as he calls himself, entitled 'Are Women the Real Fascists?' and after watching it in full, I have to say I didn't find any of his arguments to be particularly persuasive. So as you've all seen me do several times before with his videos, I'm going to spend these next two hours playing quotes of his inflammatory hate speech, and nitpicking them like I'm a college professor hoping he will try a little harder next time."

I'm not trying to call any one person out here, but I would like so very much to never see anything like the above again. I don't even mean I don't want to watch a big long video essay along these lines. I literally don't want to even see a link to one, or an article along these lines. I want to live my life in such a way that I am blissfully unaware that Skullshelf Statuary even exists. Can we please all collectively work on that?

The most obvious case against this sort of thing is that at the end of the day, you're amplifying hate speech. You could make the argument that it's not like the target audience for this sort of thing are the sort of people who are going to internalize Nazi propaganda, and actually I'd like you to commit right now to whether you want to make that argument so I can keep you intellectually honest later. Accepting that as true for argument's sake though, you're still shifting the Overton window by accepting whatever ridiculous propaganda statement today's disingenuous scumbag is lazily dressing up like some sort of intellectual argument. It WAS some statement so plainly false and hateful it didn't merit even merit acknowledging it, but here you are, acknowledging it, treating it like a serious platform worthy of discussion, and having that discussion. You're personally shifting the window there. Also particularly when you repeatedly name this creep and play clips of him, you're really encouraging recommendation algorithms to funnel more people to his channel. The one he posts all these rambling propaganda pieces to as probably his sole source of income, and not just for people watching/reading your takedown piece, people in general are more likely to have it shoved on them now.

This brings us to my most selfish reason for grumbling about this. I personally do not want to ever see this. Like, I have done my time. We are coming up on the 10 year anniversary of a statistically significant percentage of the people who get paraded out in these things having a quite specific and violent obsession with me personally. Nazi scumbags who have made big public displays of trying to find where I live, find compromising photos of me, hiring detectives to follow people who were going to meet up with me, weird sexual stalking crap, trying to crowdsource how to hire a hitman on an unlisted message board... hell I've literally stood like a foot away from people at conventions who were trying to work out how to identify me knowing I was going to be attending and how to ambush me or whatever. Some of these are big names too. Like, every day I see reporters and comedians and such dunking on internationally famous sad little fascists that used to talk to me pretty regularly back when they could do convincing impressions of functioning human beings, and it is not terribly great for my PTSD to just get ambushed with their photos under headlines or in video thumbnails.

And even with the ones I don't have a personal history with, I mean, the playbook never changes. Not a single one of these people has had a single original thought since flunking out of humanity. It's just an endless sea of interchangeable losers who got taken in by other losers with a bunch of BS about how their lives would be perfect and magical if not for These People being their secret enemies who hate everything they like, like everything they hate, and secretly control everything. And really it's all just... so incredibly dumb and baseless that even when someone buys into it, it's not like there's a single reasonable argument that props any of it up, so they always just resort to the exact same stupid projection and rhetoric where they just make a person up to get mad at and you just get So. Damn. Sick. Of. It. It never changes. Oh and of course if you're one or more of the many flavors of people they hate and want to see dead, any time they're talking you can see and hear that murderous hate, and it just really isn't pleasant. Like, you ever catch a spider the size of your whole hand crawling along the floor and you freak out and toss a tupperware container over it, and then it's just flipping out and doing speedy little laps around the perimeter? Like you can be reasonably sure there's no way it's going to get out of there and pose an actual threat to you, but it's still gonna make you anxious having it skittering around all agitated at the corner of your vision while you're trying to brainstorm how to safely get it out of your house entirely. It's like that.

Of course, you could also make the argument that while obviously someone like me is overly familiar with this whole song and dance, the average person on the street has probably never even once watched a nazi ramble on for 4 hours trying to work out how to phrase a call for genocide in a way that sounds reasonable enough to be socially acceptable, and perhaps such people need to be shown an example in the wild and have all this BS picked apart. Well first of all, HA! I GOTCHA! Admit it! You totally took it for granted that the sort of person who's going to sit through some hour long leftist think piece dismantling a nazi's incoherent arguments isn't the sort of person who'd actually be susceptible to the propaganda being dismantled, didn't you! You made a note of it to yourself three paragraphs ago, and it's too late to try and wiggle out of it now and assume we aren't just preaching to the choir with these sorts of things! You can't go turning around now and claim it's impressionable folks new to all of this wandering in here!

And really, if you didn't take that for granted, you probably should have. Hour long video essays and big long articles (like, you know, this one) aren't exactly casually absorbed media you just stumble across. I mean, OK I do, otherwise I wouldn't be griping about this, but like... I'm a trans woman with a long history of activism and journalism and such. Most of the people who produce this stuff I'm griping about are people I know and am on good terms with, and the rest are like, one personal connection out from there honestly. Hell I once helped David Futrelle with the research for one of those We Hunted the Mammoth articles, and I don't ever want to just resolve the problem of seeing these things by blocking people because when they aren't doing this sort of thing there's a chance they'll do some big hour or three long video on, I dunno, the Siren games and how they force you to consider situations from the differing mindsets/perspectives of all the various playable characters and save me from eventually having to record that myself. Point is, I'm the sort of audience you have for this sort of long-form video essay. You need to have at least some kind of pre-established parasocial relationship or something for someone to even sit still long enough for that level of analysis, and it's not gonna be their first rodeo.

And honestly, even if it was? Like, I dunno, some random soccer mom who does not engage with the news or social media or the one guy in her town with the absurdly large truck covered in bumper stickers and flags just decides OK tonight I am going to sit down and spent an hour or two randomly engaging with this big intellectual takedown of a fascist scumbag? You have to ask yourself, is some rambling windbag just trying to fill airtime and get his check from youtube even worth it? Like if the goal is to wake people up and force them to come to terms with how we share the world with some truly awful and dangerous people and it's surprising how much power and influence some of them have, you want to focus on the ones who actually use that to put innocent lives in danger. I don't care if someone is blissfully unaware of a guy who can barely put a sentence together and clearly didn't actually watch the movie has a take on that new TMNT movie being compromised by whatever weird conspiracy theory he's pushing, but if you're shining your harsh light under a real heavy rock like that person who lurked on various TERF forums for a year collecting shockingly monstrous quotes, or you want to put together a supercut of all the times that one woman who hosts all the nazi rallies has just looked directly into a camera and begged anyone watching to start walking around shooting trans women on sight, or you want to add some sort of commentary to that leaked group chat video from the anti-abortion group where they're being so candid and casual with their cartoonishly evil brainstorming I need a better phrase than just "mask off" to describe it. Like, mask off, plus all flesh peeled away from their flaming demon skulls or something. Anyway yeah, if you want to urge people to take a good long look at THAT sort of thing, by all means carry on. Nohing good's going to come from giving attention to just the vapid blatherings of losers who lost their critical thinking skills though.

Oh and I keep forgetting to beg for money at the end of these. I'm seriously close to the living on the street line, and my health is too poor to last in those conditions.

[kamianya-ttv]

There’s been so much lately in the queer community with “this version of this identity is not okay!” (Mspec lesbians, non-binary femmes, heterosexual aromatics, asexual heteromantics, etc etc etc). The one I just saw was claiming pansexuality harms the community, a take I haven’t seen for a bit and thought we had finally moved past. I’m not reblogging because I don’t want to have the hate part of the post on my feed or platform the OP (though there was a WONDERFUL rebuttal to it and I am sad I just lost the rebuttal’s author, because they deserve kudos)

Doing this always leads to greater exclusion and FAR more harm to the queer community than inclusion. It also often ignores actual queer history. Especially right now, when we’re under so much threat internationally, pointing to other queer people and going “this identity or this way of performing the identity is harmful/ridiculous” is so unhelpful. It tears us apart when we need to work together.

The only exception to this, IMO, is pointing to people being bigoted (speaking of, hey trans community, we need to acknowledge and deal with the racism gdi). It is ALWAYS the time to acknowledge and deal with and fight bigotry.

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 4/5

Book Blurb: From internationally bestselling author JULIE JOHNSON... a bewitching new standalone romantic comedy set in magical Salem, Massachusetts!

GWENDOLYN GOODE LIVES A CHARMED LIFE.As owner of an occult shop in downtown Salem, Massachusetts she’s accustomed to all things odd and otherworldly. But when a bloody animal sacrifice is left as a warning outside her place of business, the police seem to think Gwen might be the target of some truly evil-doers. Suddenly, her sunny existence is riddled with danger in the form of crazed pagans, rogue employees, and nefarious henchmen. And there’s only one man who can protect her until the storm passes...

GRAHAM GRAVES HAS NO TIME FOR WITCHY NONSENSE.Not in his love life, and definitely not in his line of work. Despite the ever-present oddities of his hometown, the private investigator and acclaimed police consultant prides himself on staying objective in every case that comes across his desk. That all changes when Gwendolyn — a woman who gets under his skin like no other — finds herself in the crosshairs of dangerous criminals. Graham is determined to make her safe, even if her presence tests his steely resolve. But as their mutual dislike sizzles into unexpected attraction… he becomes even more determined to make her something else: HIS

BAD LUCK CHARM is a total standalone romance of 450+ pages, featuring cameos from a fortune-telling parrot, a modern day pirate, and a coven of well-meaning octogenarians. With characters that leap off the page and plenty of spooky twists and turns to keep you guessing, fans of Johnson's previous Boston Love Story series in particular will adore this blend of heat, humor, and suspense.slow burnenemies to lovers grumpy/sunshinewitchy vibes zany side characters small town charmspicysuspenseful laugh-out-loud funny 

Review:

Gwendolyn Goode is the owner of an occult shop in Salem, Massachusetts, she’s friendly, sunshine and sweetness personified.... unless it comes to Graham Graves, the attractive private investigator who Gwen had a crush on since she was 10 until she overhears him telling her best friend he thinks girls like her were freaks and didn’t want to be set up on a blind date with her and now they treat each other but ice. Gwen goes out of her way to avoid him as much as possible, but it’s kind of hard when his best friend is dating her best friend.  Graham suddenly comes into her life again when she becomes the main target in a case, and this time it seems Graham is not backing down or letting her bolt from him like she normally does. Graham is here to stay and to make her finally acknowledge the chemistry between them, if she’d just give him the time or day. Gwen believes she can’t be in a long term relationship, she can’t have a serious one after her childhood, but somehow Graham wants nothing more than to prove to her that he’s here to stay, and he’s been hers since the moment he met her... he’ll just have to find a way to not only convince and prove it to Gwen but to also help her catch whoever is killing animals and people and is targeting her. This was a really sweet romance mystery story and I liked how much Graham worked towards proving Gwen that he was going to be there for her and how serious he was about their relationship. He really won her over and I thought it was really cute how hard he tried and how he did call her out on her tendencies to push people away and withholding herself from having serious relationships because of her fear of getting hurt. He really went above and beyond in getting Gwen to realize that he was very serious about her and that he cared so much. Overall, really cute! 

*Thanks Netgalley and Johnson Ink, Inc. for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[dernarrleid]

[Rainbow][umber] @ Grimmer

MEMORY PROMPTS | accepting!

[ rainbow ] for an LGBT memory. & [ umber ] for a repressed memory.

🌈 Listen. He's more familiar with feminine presenting individuals but that's mostly due to them approaching first. Strictly speaking, his first and only relationship was his wife, who he only married for the sake of having a wife. There were times where he was unfaithful, but it was purely mission oriented man or woman and there was no moral ties to his wife as a person. Obligation, sure, so he didn't embarrass the both of them. At the time, he couldn't have cared less about her given his career and even entertained the possibility of leaving her in the dust on a few missions he thought were going south. Things didn't change, but he couldn't deny his sense of duty when she was pregnant, having a son in his life on some level mattered but his programming didn't give him the ability to love. All that to say, romantically, Wolfgang does not know because it almost never comes up. He hasn't died in my portrayal of him, so he never quite has that revelation of "oh, I have feelings. I definitely do, I just don't acknowledge them." Sexual compatibility matters, but it's not geared toward a specific gender.

🤎Man, Kinderheim is all consuming at this stage. In my main verse, he's unstable. He has problems controlling his other personality, and it comes out whenever he's in extremely stressful situations. The events of the anime haven't happened, so again, there are none of these aha moments that make him secure in his humanity. He still believes he's a monster and still smiles as though his psyche isn't crumbling. But, BUT he doesn't let that stop him from having compassion. And that's the memory, or collection of memories he represses. There no specific memory in his travels that's significant to him because he actively remembers information but not how he feels. As a former spy, he keeps himself grounded long enough to keep his demons at bay and honestly adopts that facet of his life more. He's still a journalist, although internationally now because None of the characters interacting with him are in his domain. I think this causes subsequent nightmares now because he's literally forcing trauma down, and one day he's going to regret it.