#Serenas is in a delicate situation :p

[safrona-shadowsun]

Safrona stiffened as Serenas rushed to her with quick steps, just short of a run. "I'm very sorry," the words tumbled out of the girl a little breathlessly as she presented an envelope. "A little fox brought it by and delivered it to me in the courtyard. I believe she might have been a courier?"

"Vulpera courier?" Safrona questioned as she carefully took the letter from her daughter's fingers. "Fully white in the fur, missing left ear? Little on the strange side?"

Serenas' apology shifted to puzzlement as her fingers were freed, left staring with an unnerved focus on a section of patterning on her mother's dress. "...yes. She, ah, gave me very strange mailing information? Something about an adult female gnome being perfect packaging size for shipping across the sea. And she proceeded to give me the exact measurements..."

"Sylvea..." Safrona released the name on a sigh as she began to pull the folded correspondence from its envelope sleeve. "One of mine based out of the Silvermoon office. And I'm assuming she didn't ask your name to at least confirm the recipient?"

"Actually there wasn't really a recipient," Serra explained, finally meeting her mother's eyes. "It was simply addressed to the Elysian Sojourn. I think she only gave me the delivery because I was the first one she saw on the grounds." The young lady chuckled on a nervous, soft breath. "I opened the envelope without even thinking, really. And then I caught myself when I realized just how rude that was, and I refrained from reading as I caught myself. I am very sorry, and it will not happen again." The girl humbly curtsied before her lady mother like an offending handmaiden more than the noble she had been raised to be in her homeland.

The unbelievable guilt on part of Serenas brought a helpless chuckle from Safrona as she finished reading over the letter. "Serra. You are fine. We will be fine. It looks like this one is looking to sit in for Confession and are just looking for direction. But even if it's more than this, we have our defenses. I will take care of it."

"Besides," Lady Shadowsun mused with the subtle upward curve of her lips, intrigued. "This "Kihu" seems to already be very familiar with Pandaria, or at least the tradition of the local language. Could be a very interesting one. We will see, won't we?"

A response would be delivered to the recipient's provided address and name by the same, strange white vulpera, giggling conspiratorily to herself as it was shoved into the appropriate residential mailbox.

Friend Kihu,

I appreciate the courtesy of a letter before arrival. The Elysian Sojourn is my personal home in the Veiled Stair of Pandaria, but I've opened it up as a resort for the traveler in need of an escape from the rest of the world. We are outfitted with a wonderful courtyard garden, full bar, and dining area. Public mineral pools are available here for you to enjoy, as well as private baths should you like to reserve them for a small fee. A live band also performs publicly on the week's end, and I'm always happy to see the Sojourn fill for it. And I do offer Confession freely when I am available in the evenings. I find it to be a lovely way to meet new faces and reconnect to old ones. You need only to bring your taste in drink. I provide many tastes in liquor and I have a deep fondness for a dark red myself, but I can provide the tradition of tea for you instead if that might be more your preference. I also insist that you leave any aggression outside my estate. The Sojourn is a place of peace, after all. If you are interested in arrival, please meet with a young Pandaren named Seon at the Tavern of the Mists in the Veiled Stair, and he will guide you to our gates when you present this letter. I look so very forward to receiving you here. -- Lady Shadowsun

{ @k-i-h-u }

[justanalto]

3, 13, 15 :P especially looking forward to your answer to 13, so make sure it's nice and long 😏

3. What loves do you tend to write about? Agape (unconditional, spiritual love), Eros (romantic, passionate love), Philia (affectionate, platonic love), Philautia (self-love), Storge (familial love), Pragma (enduring love like between long-married couples), Ludus (playful love, infatuation you feel during the “honeymoon period”), and Mania (obsessive love that leads to madness and jealousy)

*examines every single one of my fanfics* *nearly combusts from thinking*

I can definitely say I write a lot of storge? May’s Golden Dragon is definitely nothing if proof of that, what with the familial bonds between May, Bobbi and Skye, not to mention the bonds between a lot of the staff. I feel like you can also find a lot of it sprinkled into my other works. So that one’s definitely for sure. May’s could also be considered an example of philia, too, depending on which way you looked at it -- you tell me on that one, actually. 

where’s the unrequited love because i’m pretty sure that one shows up a lot

There’s definitely a bit of pragma in there somewhere? Especially when it comes to Philinda fics, since I’ve only recently come to realize I write exclusively in AU. Maybe some ludus as well? Hmm. This is a good question, actually, thanks, Kat! 

15. Why physical quirks do your characters tend to have? Eyebrow raising, picking nails, biting lips, pacing, crossing arms, etc.

I definitely tend to recycle a lot of physical traits now that I think about it, LOL! Eyebrow raising is definitely one of them -- there’s a lot of eyebrow raising, often because it says so much in so little! I’m also fond of the one-cornered upward smirk and the soft smile. And light blushes. 

*taps pen* Hmmm, what else....ah, yes. There’s a lot of eye-rolling. And head-shaking. 

13. What traits do you share with your original characters or what traits do you wish you shared with them?

kat literally said to me “i’m gonna be mean to you on tumblr” while she was typing this ask, so. on this week’s day’s hour’s episode of kat and serena ruin each other’s lives -- 

i only have one original character at this moment in time, and it’s jade wong, who can currently be found in May’s Golden Dragon. what traits do I wish I shared with her? (yes, i’m purposely being mean and answering the second part first)

(warning: spoilers for may’s and cw for coming-out trauma, self-deprecation and anxiety under the cut. also just the general gist of homophobia and family dynamics)

first of all, jade’s hella tall. like, 5′10″ tall, so that’s a big one. i’m pretty short, so to be taller I think would be pretty cool -- see the world from a different perspective. second of all, by default, since may’s is set in new york city, jade lives in new york city, so I wish I shared that with her -- one of my dreams is to move to new york city for at least a couple of years, you know? also, i wish i could pull off the whole ‘leather jacket and motorcycle’ thing like jade does. i’m not tall, so i’m not sure i could ride a motorcycle without dying. and leather jackets are fucking expensive. and i wish i had a little bit of jade’s self-confidence in who she is. that girl’s got it in spades. outwardly, at least. i want what she outwardly projects. or at least to be able to do that. 

what traits do i share with her? this is where i sigh and curse kat for the millionth time under my breath. (it is a day that ends in -day, though, so am i surprised kat’s calling me out? no) 

i’ll come out (ha, see what I did there?) and state the obvious, of course -- jade’s a lesbian. in layman’s terms, as am i. jade’s chinese, as am I. we’re not the same age, although when I first started writing may’s, we were definitely closer than we are now. 

here’s where it gets a little tricker: it’s not so much a trait as it is a past life-defining event that we share in that jade and I have both experienced a not-so-swell coming-out story, and that said story has influenced how we look at life and the choices we make concerning the interactions with people we have. for us, it’s always been being too worried that we were too much -- too clingy, too overbearing, too present, too much of needing a person that we worry we become the toxic person we’ve read about. and you see that in jade: she worries about needing skye so much that she becomes toxically dependent on her, that so much feels right around skye, and that she goes to skye whenever she’s even the slightest bit down because skye’s that important to her. she worries that that is too much, and it’s on her for having been that way because she never gave skye the chance to set up boundaries, rather just barged right the fuck in. hence the return to belleview: if jade leaves, she learns for herself what it is to survive without skye as well as having known what it feels like to have such love in her life. and that it’ll be the kind of love to avoid in the future, because she’s sure it only hurts people. 

it also means that there’s a lot of self-deprecation on both of our ends -- that neither of us deserve the love we’re capable of receiving, and can only give and give while we relish whatever we get in return. we both fall really easily, and when we do, we go hard. there’s a lot of “of course I would be the one to do this, don’t know why I could expect anything fucking else from it” of self-fulfilling prophecies, a lot of “you deserve a lot better than the shitshow that is me” (read: belleview). oh, and a lot of running away from people we like because of said deservedness, fear of commitment, and fear of how deeply we love. (again, belleview.) 

and something I haven’t really had the chance to touch on yet but want to is the way jade experiences the world after her coming out? the explosiveness of her coming out has resulted in the fact that she now needs to overexamine every facet of her life to make sure that she doesn’t upset her precarious family situation, that no one besides her immediate family can find out lest she ruin the delicate balance that is her family politics. (family for us is twisted, too: what do you do when you know your family’s not going to be supportive, but you can’t detach from them because you’re still living with your parents and the relatives’ opinions matter greatly to them because of the close-knit structure of your family?)

and it’s extended to how she sees the world: can she be sure that this space she’s going into is accepting and one she can exist in? can she be sure it won’t turn on her? the lesson her mother (and mine) indirectly taught was you can never know. you can never know where the safe spaces are for sure and you need to treat every space like it’s a volatile one because even the seemingly safe spaces can be rife with hostility. even if it’s passive-aggressive hostility.

all in all, kat’s pretty on the nose when she says that I self-project a lot, so who jade is is a pretty good idea of who I am, emotionally. give or take a couple of backstory events and facets.

thanks, kat, I guess? lmao jk. thanks for being mean to me. let me know if i missed anything and i’ll be sure to tell you

edit: i did forget something, we’re both touch-starved as hell

edit pt. II: you can always be sure we mean the words we say when it comes to serious emotional depth.

[slushofficial]

MEET CHELSEA KIM... slush’s leader and main rapper.

birth name --> chelsea serena kim

korean name --> kim song hee

nickname(s) --> chels, mamabear, winnie

stage name --> n/a

date of birth --> january 16th 1994

place of birth --> edison, new jersey, united states

ethnicity --> south korean

nationality --> south korean, american ; duo citizenship

zodiac --> capricorn

mother --> kim yi jin

father --> kim ji hae

sister(s) --> n/a

brother(s) --> ryan kim (b. 1992), leo kim (b. 1998)

pet(s) --> ruby (french bulldog)

position --> leader, main rapper.

outside of slush --> television host; from 2015 - 2017 she hosted after school club.

solo? --> n/a

faceclaim --> jang da hye / heize

hair color --> naturally light brown, currently silver

eye color --> brown

height --> 5′6

piercing(s) --> multiple ear piercings, her belly button and her smiley.

tattoo(s) --> multiple hand tattoos, very small and delicate, and one medium sized butterfly. a small flower on her wrist and a flame on her hipbone.

style --> classy, beige tones, comfortable clothing, jeans.

characteristics --> long nose, heart shaped lips. slim face, dark eyes.

glasses? --> no.

sexual orientation --> closeted bisexual to the public, more open behind closed doors.

relationship status --> single; recently gotten out of a four year relationship.

disorders --> obsessive compulsive disorder, talked about in the media.

eating habits --> when the group lived together rose constantly cooked, and whenever she didn’t they’d all be out eating almost every night. now she lives alone it’s rare she cooks for herself, but she tries to eat three times a day even if it is instant noodles or she’s going out.

sleeping habits --> pretty good

drink? --> social ; she likes wine, red and occasional cocktails

smoke? --> no

drugs? --> tried weed once when she was sixteen, didn’t like it

favourites --> chicken ramen, sushi with salmon and tuna, fried seaweed, the color red, pink lipstick, sweet scents, fall. tea, rain at night, and dogs

living situation --> living with her best friend; aiden.

-- before she became a trainee, chelsea had wanted to become an author

-- her parents moved to the states shortly after they were married

-- she speaks english as her first language and korean as her second (both fluently), however she also knows french from studying it in school, a little bit of japanese and some madarin

-- her favorite tv show growing up was sister, sister

-- she became a trainee when she was thirteen after being scouted while on vacation in seoul with her family

-- she recently moved because of her ending a four year relationship

-- it was rumored she was dating im jaebum from got7 but nothing was ever confirmed or denied

-- she produces some of slush’s music and wants to get more into producing.

-- she’s definitely a momma’s girl

-- very protective of her younger brother and the slush girls

-- almost got into a fight outside a club a few years ago when a guy tried hitting on eunjae

[theconservativebrief]

Adam Driver has it, as did Carrie Fisher. It fuels Themyscira and her Amazons. Imperator Furiosa and Mad Max both have it. Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor wield it, as does Angela Merkel. So do Tilda Swinton, Cher, and Cate Blanchett. Johnny Cash had it, same with Prince and David Bowie. LeBron James, Serena Williams, and Katie Ledecky have it, too.

If you look hard enough, it’s everywhere around you. So is its absence.

We are talking about Big. Dick. Energy.

Big Dick Energy (BDE) is the unavoidable subject of the minute on social media. What began as a joke inspired by the death of one of the premiere possessors of BDE has since sparked an all-consuming cultural urge to determine who possesses it and who is lacking — as well as the urge to define it, which raises some trickier questions.

What is BDE? Does one need colossal male genitalia to possess it? How do we spot it? How does one obtain it? And why would one want to?

No doubt, the concept of BDE and the discussion it ignites are entertaining — but beneath the initial jolt of faux-erotic titillation and scandal is a bigger conversation about how we talk about masculinity and admiration. BDE is as fascinating as it is frustrating, in that you don’t need to be a man or have prodigious genitalia to possess it, nor does it necessarily refer to anything sexual, but rhetorically it’s still very much dick-dependent. And as we sort various members of society into those who have BDE and those who don’t, it ultimately says a lot about us and what we value.

A warning to those with delicate sensibilities: This piece includes some colorful descriptions of male junk.

BDE’s origin story begins with death. This month saw the death of chef/author/food personality Anthony Bourdain, a man known for his taste, intelligence, and irreverence when it came to food and travel. Bourdain had pure grit coursing through his veins, and the courage to try to change the way we look at the world.

And when he died, Twitter user @imbobswaget coined the term Big Dick Energy to eulogize him:

we’re talking about how anthony bourdain had big dick energy which is what he would have wanted

— vampire workday (@imbobswaget) June 9, 2018

At first glance, remembering Bourdain’s legacy in connection with his genitalia might seem crass, but it works because Bourdain wasn’t afraid to be crass and humorous when the situation called for it. It’s not hard to imagine Bourdain laughing, possibly in a Vietnamese phở shack, if someone told him he was going to be remembered for having the air of someone possessing gargantuan reproductive organs.

That tweet went viral, amassing over 6,000-plus “likes,” but it took another factor to make BDE taxonomy inescapable: the alleged mythic proportions of Ariana Grande fiancé’s penis.

In a screenshot of a since-deleted tweet — which may or may not be photoshopped — Ariana Grande, a sentient affogato with a four-octave vocal range, intimated that her fiancé Pete Davidson’s Pete Davidson is around 10 inches long. This rapidly invited speculation that the magnitude of Davidson’s endowment might be one of the reasons Grande and Davidson got engaged after a short time dating, as Twitter user @babyvietcong noted:

Pete davidson is 6’3 with dark circles, exudes big dick energy, looks evil but apparently is an angel, and loves his girl publicly the only thing wrong w him is that he’s a scorpio but anyway…..id married him within a month too

— Tina (@babyvietcong) June 23, 2018

That tweet also went viral, further cementing BDE in the public consciousness.

But the thing to remember here, even though Grande’s tweet about Davidson refers to literal inches, is that Davidson and Bourdain are connected by the concept of BDE — emphasis on the E — as opposed to literally possessing big genitalia. It’s more about attitude and personality than it is anatomy.

“What we’re talking about is really more of an aura, a vibe,” Allison P. David wrote for The Cut. “There are men with Big Dicks, but who do not ooze BDE. There are men with average to little ones who can have so much BDE you’re surprised to find that their wang does not touch their knee.”

BDE is not about brandishing large, flapping genitalia when someone insults you, or constantly proving to people that you possess a BD. BDE is the complete opposite. It’s the self-confidence to know that a colossal endowment isn’t a measurement of one’s value. BDE might stem from having a literal BD, but it’s not dependent upon any sort of genitalia. And in fact, perhaps the epitome of BDE is the complete security of not needing other people’s benchmarks — wealth, intelligence, beauty, or a BD — to know one’s own worth.

Any suspicion of tryhard vibes kills BDE, as does the kind of cockiness that speaks of insecurity: the true BDE-haver is respectful to those around them, but with swagger. Someone with BDE will never text an unsolicited dick pic, because it would simply never occur to them.

But if we’re talking about aspirational levels of confidence and security when we talk about BDE, and how BDE isn’t necessarily dick-dependent, it raises the question of why we’re all so enamored with making it all about the D.

Rihanna demonstrates the feminine strain of BDE at this year’s Met Ball. AFP/Getty Images

We’ve established that BDE is an emotional rather than physical attribute: Rihanna does not have a dick, but she has BDE for days. Bourdain’s eagerness to learn from those around him was part of what gave him BDE. Chris Evans’s lack of arrogance is why he is the Hollywood Chris who most often makes the BDE list, while Hemsworth’s jock vibes and Pratt’s faint smarm disqualify them. (Pine maybe has BDE. It’s a debate the public deserves to have.)

Needless to say, any hint of misogyny destroys BDE. No one involved in the building of Gilead had any BDE whatsoever (they had the opposite, what you might call Tiny Hand Energy), but Themyscira, the island of the Amazons in Wonder Woman, runs on BDE.

That is why the inverse and the spawn of BDE is toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is what the Good Men Project calls “the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly ‘feminine’ traits — which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual — are the means by which your status as ‘man’ can be taken away.��� It’s the belief that in order to be a “real man” you must be strong to the point of cruelty and never feel anything, and it underlies violent and damaging ideologies like that of incels and the alt-right.

Toxic masculinity is an unsuccessful attempt to mimic BDE, and then furious resentment when that mimicry becomes impossible. It is the belief that you are owed the kind of easy confidence that comes with BDE, and then a desire to destroy the world that has not granted it to you. “I was not born Chris Evans, so fuck you all.”

But while BDE and toxic masculinity are opposites, they come from the same not-great source (your fave is problematic, meme edition), which is the belief that men’s worth is in some mystical, Freudian way linked to the size of their penises.

Reducing men’s worth to their bodies is not harmful in the same way that it is harmful to do the same to women: one of the ways that the patriarchy systemically oppresses women is by reducing them to their bodies. Joking about big dick energy does not reinforce systemic sexism. What it does do is reinforce a system of masculinity that eventually leads to toxic masculinity. BDE as a quality has nothing to do with actual dicks and is valuable regardless of the actual genitalia of its possessor, but our collective cultural impulse is to link it rhetorically to penis size. The dick part of BDE is just a metaphor, but that metaphor is not value-neutral.

On the other hand: As far as reinforcing the gender binary goes, making jokes about which celebrities have big dick energy is a pretty harmless and entertaining pastime, and here in the dark days of 2018 we need all of that we can get. And labels aside, BDE is all about celebrating a masculine-coding energy that is constructive rather than toxic, and respectful rather than violent.

Anyway, Cate Blanchett has BDE, and so does Stanley Tucci.

Original Source -> How Big Dick Energy explains modern masculinity

via The Conservative Brief