#Which is to say NOTHING of the gender of it all

[galacticwiseguy]

The first half of your post has nothing to do with the second half.

You'll notice that I specifically and explicitly said that if a specific person asks for only specific pronouns then those are the ones you should use! In this case, of you specifically and only want to be called he/him ever then it's not hard at all for people who know you to do that and that's what they should do.

But then you pivot to talking about misgendering! Which shows that you've completely missed my point. Using "they" can never be misgendering because it is not gendering. That's the whole point of "they," that's why we have it. It's the pronoun which does not gender. You can't be gendering someone wrong if you aren't gendering them at all.

You have every right to ask people "please gender me, I don't like it when people talk about me without gendering me" and they should respect that. But you can't claim that someone who is simply not saying anything about your gender at all is saying something inaccurate, you can just say that you don't like it.

If "they" isn't the universal pronoun, if that's not what you can use about literally anyone anywhere any time without saying anything about them or their gender, then what is? And if you say "no such pronoun exists"-- well that's simply unacceptable and must be fixed.

*grabs your hands and speaks to you in a tone that is so gentle* they/them pronouns stop being universal once you learn a person's pronouns. Sometimes that person's pronouns will include they/them and in that specific case you are allowed to keep using those pronouns for that person. In any case where you learn a persons pronouns and that person doesn't use they/them, you should no longer use those pronouns for that person. If you continue to use they/them pronouns knowing that person doesn't use them, you are now misgendering that person. Kindly stop doing that please. Thank you, I love you.

[pomefioredove]

Hello! Can I please get a #3 sugar cookie with frosting, sprinkles, and chocolate drizzle? Thank you and happy holidays! 😊

delicious yummy prompt... thank you for waiting so patiently, anon! here's one vil fic to finish off apvril

order #3, sugar with frosting, sprinkles, chocolate drizzle

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ are you happy?

summary: an unexpected meeting with fate, and your ex-husband tropes: only one bed, hurt/comfort, exes to lovers characters: vil additional info: romantic, gender neutral reader, reader is yuu, post-nrc, but also at nrc, DIVORCE!!! I LOVE DIVORCE!! this is long because angst

To the observer, to the other, to the hungry tabloid reporters and your own friends, it was simple: Vil Schoenheit had ruined your life.

Two years wasted on lavender-scented sunscreen and mud baths and a man who dumped you for a movie deal.

It was hard, and you told yourself you'd been through worse: overblots, burns, cuts, broken teeth and bruised ribs, even Crewel's make-up exams. But not even the end of the world itself could hold a candle to this.

This. Anger. This poisonous resentment that filled your lungs, forced bile from your throat, and left a bitter taste on your tongue. This sadness, this fear, this confusion. It left you feeling young again, in all the worst ways. If you closed your eyes, you could feel the drafty, mildewed interior of Ramshackle, the splinters under your cold hands, the moon which so resembled your own home's in the grinning, gap-toothed roof.

You had moved on from that. From Ramshackle, yes, but also from the hope that you might ever see your home again.

He had been there for you, of course. Consoling you, coddling you. Letting you ramble on about your culture and family and the place you grew up, and he was your sanctuary, your escape from reality, from the cold, broken world you had been brought into.

Vil was thoughtful in that way. Always thinking of you. For you.

There was a time when it was difficult- nay, impossible, to imagine yourself without him. He had swept you up in the luxury of loyalty, taken you under his wing like a true mother bird.

That was years ago. And now you're older, lonelier, the subject of pitiful whispers and prying eyes. Your luxurious life had plummeted down into the dirt, exactly where you started. No longer the spouse of a superstar, the sexiest man alive (named so six years in a row by Shaftlands Quarterly). No, now you were nothing but a name lost to internet forums and inactive fan blogs, and you're an employee of Night Raven College.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

More of a peer to the professors who had chastised you for being tardy and forgetting your books than to the students who were once your friends.

Another year of work, another year closer to death, another year further from home.

"And refreshments," Sam says, setting a crate of bottled cranberry cocktails (non-alcoholic, as explained on the label) on the table.

You raise an eyebrow. "Refreshments? Dire is going all out this year, is he?"

"Well, as it so happens, we have very special clientele," Sam smirks. "We want to impress the-"

"Donors," you both say, your own words accompanied by a sigh. "Why am I not surprised?"

Sam shrugs, and you almost smile, unpacking the crates with practiced precision. This wasn't your first family day, after all. Far from it.

"Who's it this time? Another prince? A billionaire heir?"

Sam doesn't respond. Your hands still, and you look over your shoulder at him. He's never one to shy away from work gossip.

Unless...

"Who is it?" you repeat. Sam tsks.

"Schoenheit's boy,"

Your fingers clench around the bottles, nearly crushing them between your dry, worn palms.

You say nothing.

Sam takes to helping you with the drinks, clearing the crate and dressing the table to avoid the awkwardness heavy in the air.

And, then, you speak.

"I didn't know he had children. Well, good for him. I'm sure he's very proud,"

"Positive," Sam deadpans, studying the forced indifference on your face.

"...I'll cover for you."

"Thank you," you exhale, hoping the tension in your body will carry away with your breath. It doesn't.

Cold. It's still cold here.

All of the renovations, all of the hours, all of the sweat and tears and bumps on your head and splinters in your fingers, and Ramshackle is still freezing.

And you even have a fire going. For old time's sake.

It's been years since you'd spent a night in your old dorm, but you couldn't bring yourself to take the long walk back to your apartment in Foothill Town.

Besides, it's a beautiful night.

The sky is clear, and the stars are out.

...Malleus had told you something about stars, once. That they don't change. For all of our worries and woes, for all the human drama in the world, the stars stay as they are. Smiling.

The thought disturbs you. You hadn't let your mind linger on Malleus in years. You only had pieces of him, from the gossip of your coworkers, and even then, they had little to say.

That's how you heard about most of them. Your former classmates. Your friends.

It had been your fault. After you and Vil started arguing, after you were sure there was no saving your marriage, you had forced everyone away. You didn't want to see them. Constant reminders of what you'd once had. No, what you could have had.

He has a son.

A boy. Going to Night Raven College. No doubt a talented mage, like his father. Maybe he has more children. You don't know. You suppose you never will.

Had he married, then? Had his career suddenly not mattered as much as when you were with him? How long did it take? Ten years? One? A month?

You aren't important enough to be asking these questions. You'd always had a bad habit of obsessing over the past, what could have been, what should have been. You supposed it was only a symptom of what had happened to you. That's how Crowley explained it.

Trein had told you, once, sometimes, these things never go away. You never grow out of grief. Mourning makes itself a home within you, like a disease, or a memory, which are more often than not the same miserable affliction.

Would you be like this forever, then? Your body would age and change but your mind would stay here, in bed, in Ramshackle, memorizing the grooves in the wood grain of the ceiling? Dreaming of something else?

You had tried to live, to have an adventure. You had married the prince, you had escaped the tower, you had lived happily ever after. And now you're too old for adventures, and so you only think about other ones.

Perhaps you were suited for a life of pencil-pushing and paperwork. Student records and attendance forms couldn't argue with you, after all.

It made you sympathetic for Crowley, in a way, which was surely a sign of an impending psychotic episode.

"Ah, you're here,"

You shoot up in bed, eyes wide, and your back aches from the sharp movement. Even in the dark of the room, the fading light of day, you recognize him.

You could feel his presence, imposing and impersonal.

"You know..." Vil starts, sitting at the edge of your bed, but delicately, as if afraid he'll frighten you.

"This is the very last place I would've expected you to be."

You look up into the rafters, dripping rainwater and dusted with mold.

"...Likewise. What are you doing here?"

"Don't be foolish, it isn't a flattering look on you," he says. "You know very well I'm here to see you. I wouldn't have come for family day if not for you."

Something in your chest tightens, and the same thing on your tongue, and you forget to speak. He's happy to supply your words for you.

"When did my father ever come to one of these? They're wastes of time, pitiful panhandling attempts from that Headmage of yours,"

"You knew I wouldn't want to see you," you argue.

He smiles, smugly satisfied with your answer, as if you're saying all the things he expected you to. You hate that. "And you knew you wouldn't have a choice,"

Silence follows. Your fingers feel around the bed, finding the limp sheets and pulling them over your chest, like a small child hiding from a monster in the dark.

"You have a son," you say.

Vil hums. "And a daughter,"

"And?"

"And," he repeats the word, as if you had spoken it in another language. "And, what?"

"And? Unlike me, those children didn't come out of nowhere,"

Vil scoffs, though he seems more amused by your sarcasm than not. That's different.

He smooths out the black of his pants, and removes his woollen gloves. Overdressed, even for an event he despises. That's more like him.

"Their mother and I divorced six years ago," he says, as stern as he could, as if he would sooner die than give you the satisfaction of seeing him disturbed. "It was an amicable affair- unlike ours. We had simply fallen out of interest."

Out of interest. Not out of love, you note.

You frown. "Who was she?"

"An actress. We met on the set of the movie,"

You feel a shadow pass over you, a shiver up your spine. The movie, the final nail in the coffin of your marriage. You had been young, too young to marry, really, and you were unhappy with how much time he spent away from you. His career had always come first. The movie- a romantic drama that Neige LeBlanche (now married, happily settled and retired from acting) had passed on- was set to be filmed for six months, across the world from you.

You had begged him not to go. He had gone.

"No children of your own, I presume?" Vil asks, breaking the splintered silence.

"Grim," you say. "But... no human ones."

"Are you seeing someone?"

You won't give him the satisfaction. "I suppose you could say that,"

"Are you happy?"

You shift. The sheets bunch around your waist and the wind blows through the many broken windows in Ramshackle's walls. You're not quite sure how to answer that, and you're also not quite sure why he asked.

Are you happy?

"I'm better," you manage, "Than I was a few years ago. I'm back on my feet."

Vil hums. "I'm glad,"

You lie back down in bed, as if you might really fall asleep here, and dream of being anyone but yourself. Vil lies by your side and looking at the stars through the cat-sized hole in the roof above your heads, as if in understanding.

You don't look at him. "Are you happy?"

"No,"

You don't look at him. "Is it my fault?"

"No,"

You won't look at him. "Would things have been better if we never knew each other at all?"

That's the first time you've said that aloud. Sixteen years of feeling it in your throat and chest and fingertips.

Vil turns to you, and "Don't be stupid," is what he says. "I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't unmarry my ex-wife, I wouldn't unhave my children, I wouldn't forget you. And I know it's terribly selfish. I had always hoped you'd never go home, but when I'd gotten my wish, I took it for granted. I lost you. I've been divorced twice for the same reason- tabloids have made millions on my stupidity. We were children. And foolish ones, at that. I had always thought myself so mature- matronly. I wasn't ready. For any of it."

You look at him. "For any of it?"

"For any of it. And neither were you,"

He cups your cheek in his palm, not feeling for blemishes or dryness, but for the warmth of your body. "I can only hope that you might find it within yourself to forgive me,"

You can't. You don't want to. Forgiving him would be no better than saying goodbye, than finally letting go of yourself, the grief of the people and places you once knew. It would finally force you to grow up.

You aren't ready. You weren't then, you aren't now.

But there's a bead of sweat on his forehead, and a tremble in his lip, that betray something you hadn't even seen when you were married.

He's afraid.

Of what, you can't be sure. You don't actually want to know.

"I do," You breathe outward, your warm breath visible in the cold air. Vil kisses your forehead, and sits in bed. You follow.

"I'd like to see you again. Preferably not in another sixteen years," he says, putting his gloves on, his touch becoming warmer and yet more impersonal. "I'll be visiting my son often. I'm trying to avoid becoming his manager, rather than his father. Lunch?"

Despite his indifference, the professional, confident way of his words, there's still a stammer in his voice, a crack in his lavender-scented mask of perfection.

He's aged, now. There are lines under his eyes.

And you nod. "Lunch. I'll... I'll have Di- The Headmage send you my schedule,"

"Hmph. Better to do it yourself," Vil smiles. "I'll be in touch."

He leaves you there, in Ramshackle, on your bed, the same one you had spent every night for years on, dreaming of something else. You can see your future from here. It's not awful.

Your fingers feel up your forehead, finding nothing but the residue of chapstick.

You hadn't even noticed he wasn't wearing makeup.

[my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction]

Hi! This is a (kinda nsfw) request for the Moon Knight Boys or only Steven, whichever you’re comfortable with!

So, reader is usually loosely trimmed or has fully grown hair „down there”. One day she decides to surprise her vigilante boyfriends and shaves everything off or maybe leaves a cute little heart on top?? Either way I’d love to know how they’d react.

(I myself am female but please write for which gender you’re most comfortable with)

~Cherry Bomb Anon 💖💖💖

Oh my gosh, I am so sorry, I realise now that I misread this!

Anyway, it's now Marc and Steven with the shaved heart.

Glue It Back On

Steven Grant x Marc Spector x gn!Reader • Rating: mature pals • Masterlist• ao3• want to be tagged? | request info • buy me a coffee? •

Warnings: This is just Marc and Steven having a conversation really, I'm so sorry, swearing, not beta read, please let me know if I have missed a warning!

Word Count: 851

“They’re gonna hate it, they’re gonna hate it. Fuck.”

“Shit.” 

“Fuck.”

“Shit,” Steven chews his bottom lip, “what if we shave it all off?” 

“All of it?”  Marc answers from the bathroom mirror. 

Steven nods. “All of it, like,” he motions with his hands. “Gone.”

“Bald?” 

“No, not bald Marc, it wouldn’t be bald, our, our-”

“Our balls would be bald.” 

“I was thinking more like, we just shave the top… bit?” 

“And nothing else?” Marc frowns in thought. “Wouldn’t that look-”

“Weird, yeah.” Steven sighs defeatedly. “It would. Like we just stopped halfway, and if we do it like a really neat line that will look like, ‘woah, too much effort here’, and if we don’t it’ll look a mess.” 

Marc nods. “Look, I know this isn’t helpful, but I don’t want to shave it all off. Because, one,” he holds up his forefinger. “I think it’ll look weird, you know like in porn, hairless balls just make me think of turkey wattles.” 

Steven pauses. “Wattles?” 

“Like the turkey red neck flappy thing.” 

“Oh, I didn’t know that it was called that.” He nods a little, then shakes his head, trying to stay focused. “You think shaved balls look like that?” 

“Kinda.”

“Kinda?” He says, unimpressed.

“Yeah, look, I’m not the vegan who gets freaked out by certain types of mushrooms-”

“We’ve been over this, I heard Michael say in the break room that mushrooms on pizza looked like slugs, and I can’t unsee it, it’s not fair to-”

Marc holds up his hands. “I’m sorry, okay, sorry, I didn’t mean to bring that all up again like that.” 

Steven nods. 

“They just look weird to me.” 

Steven’s lip twitches in a smile and Marc braces himself for whatever is about to come. “Is that what you say to yourself to justify only watching lesbian porn?” 

“Don’t.”

“Is it?” Steven grins. 

“I don’t just watch lesiban porn.” 

Steven scoffs. “Firstly, you do. Second, what’s wrong with watching lesbian porn?” 

Marc gives him a glare. “You’re the one that brought this up!”

Steven grins, enjoying seeing Marc squirm a little. “I did. So, why do you only watch lesibian porn?” 

“Fuck off.” 

Steven chuckles. “Spoil sport.” 

“You’re a bully.” Marc smiles. 

“What was your second point anyway?” 

“What?” 

“You’re second point? First was our balls would look like a turkey if we shave them, what was the other?” 

“Oh, I think it’ll itch like hell when the hair starts to grow back if we use the razor.” 

Steven nods, thinking. “Yeah, I bet you’re right on that one.” He sighs again, his shoulders slumping. “But what are we gonna do?” 

“We could glue it back on?” Marc says, only half joking.

“Marc.” He gives him the disappointed teacher voice. “We are not glueing hair back onto our.. Our… area.” 

“Area?” 

“You’re worried about it itching growing back, what the fuck do you think it’s gonna feel like with glue?” 

“Area? Steven, are we fucking three?” 

Steven puts his hands on his hips. “Is that what you’re focusing on right now?” 

“Well, yeah? Area?” 

“What would you call it then? Hmm?” 

Marc opens his mouth and then pauses.

“See, see?” Steven gestures at Marc, “What the fuck is it?”

“It’s the bit above the dick.” 

“Yeah, but what is that called? Like the actual name?” 

Marc thinks and then frowns. “Steven, I don’t fucking know, why is this important?”

“You made it important.” Steven grabs his phone from the side.

“What are you doing?” Marc sighs.

“I’m looking it up.”

“Steven.” 

“I want to know.” 

“Steven.” 

“All I can think of is pubic mound, but is that like, the word for everyone?” 

Marc shakes his head slightly as he pulls a face. “For everyone? What do you mean?”

“Like for all genders.”

“Oh…” Marc thinks again. “Maybe…” He leans forward as if he could see Steven’s phone from his angle. 

“See? You’re interested now.” 

He nods. “Yeah.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Don’t get too excited about it.” He huffs.

Steven rolls his eyes, and then quickly reads. “Okay, it is the pubic mound for everyone.” 

“Okay.” 

“We’ve learnt something.” 

“Doesn’t really help with our current situation, does it?” 

Steven puts his phone down and rubs his eyes, “Ugggghhhh, what if we just say, ‘Love, I tried to shave a heart into my pubic hair because I thought it would be funny and sweet and now I’m like what the fuck have I done?’” 

You knock on the bathroom door and both Steven and Marc jump at the same time. 

“Erm,” Steven scrambles with the towel around his waist before he opens the door with a flourish. “I-”

“I got back about ten minutes ago.” You give him a soft smile. “I’ve been listening to your side of the conversion, with rapt attention.” You tease playfully. 

Steven closes his eyes and chuckles bashfully. 

“If it’s any help,” you give his cheek a quick kiss. “I think the heart sounds lovely.” 

“Show them!”

Steven rolls his eyes, turning his head to pull a face at Marc’s reflection. “You wanted to glue it back on a second ago.” 

Thank you for reading!

Taglist:

@pleasurebuttonwrites @raven-rk @campingwiththecharmings @lonelyisamyw-0love @romanarose  

@steven-grants-world  @blushingrn @to-be-a-sunshine  @angel-of-the-moons @minigirl87

 @lunar-ghoulie @silvernight-m @autismsupermusicalassassin @reallyrallyauthor @basicalyrandom

@alwaysmicado @spxctorsslxt @novarosewood @hammerhead96  @mylittledelulucorner

@queerly-anxious  @swiftiegirliepop @oscarssimp  @eternallyvenus @lounilu 

@pigeonmama @iolaussharpe-24 @chaithetics @sub-aro @faretheeoscar

 @queerponcho @twwcs @ingoldthewizard @ominoose @ierofrnkk

@have-you-seen-my-sanity @missdictatorme @musicalnacho @buckyssugarchick @lemonzestinmydrink

@sonotpractical @junggoku @julesonrecord

If you'd like to be taken off the tag list please let me know here

[lorynna]

It almost seems like how a person is socialized is dependent on their sex because of previously mentioned sexist stereotypes that are ingrained in your patriarchal society, that's interesting isn't it?

Trans ideology is not only pro gender roles as in actively promoting and upholding sexist stereotypes but the very crux of all of their arguments is dependent on gender. Never have I ever met a trans activist who could give me a definition of what a woman is without it being circular "a woman is whoever identifies as a woman" or "a woman is someone who likes/acts [insert stereotype about women]"

Being gender critical means being aware of gender being a social class ascribed to sex and wanting to abolish/break gender roles. Gender are the stereotypes and social expectations imposed on your sex, which differ tremendously wether or not you are female or male. To say those have no effect on how the individual is shaped under those circumstances would be a lie.

Most radfems are gnc women = gender non conforming women. Radfems actively break harmful gender roles by showing that being a woman has nothing to do with what standards society has decided to impose on you. They're women simply because they're female.

What are trans activists doing to break gender roles? Saying they are not women or men simply because they do not conform to stereotypes? Making more and more categories until they find a way to fit in?

It is so freeing to speak the truth and say "You're female/male so you're a woman/man. Fuck gender roles. Be who you are, no matter your sex. It does not determine your fate when we acknowledge how being female is an oppressed sex and how many women suffer under the patriarchy because they are female, rather it gives us the means to address it. You cannot change what you don't acknowledge. Woman and man are not genders but biological realities."

[madamscream]

Many people think that the sloth is the slowest moving mammal on the planet. It’s actually me. Anyways, here's that list of erotic fanfiction I promised @trashy-corvian way too long ago. It's not complete but I've somehow become sort of busy and I figure I can always do a part two!

Since we’re talking about my favourites, there’s going to be a lot of Barbatos, monster-fucking, and dominant!reader. I Know What I Am About.

Will offer the pairing(s), a blurb, and information on reader gender if that’s relevant. As for kinks, please check the tags in any fic before reading, I literally have no way of accounting for everyone’s tastes and I enjoy some odd things. 

If a fic covers most of the cast but excludes some, I’ll list that instead of a pairing. None of the links have anything sexual with Luke, but I’ll still list him in the exclusions if I’m listing exclusions.

Lessons in Demonic Anatomy by Sexxica (tumblr)

MC has no gender, their genitals are not mentioned. Luke, Raphael, Mephistopheles, and Thirteen aren’t in the fic, but everyone else is.

One of my favourite, if not my very favourite smut fic because… I like reading about people jacking off, and this is basically a list of my favourite characters doing that. They are all amply aware they’re being watched, it’s all consensual. A+, have kinda wanted to write my own fic along a similar premise since reading it.

—

wear your independence like a crown by Koumine (thesecretsavant) on Ao3

Lucifer x MC

Written in second-person, the reader has a vagina, gender-neutral though Sir is the chosen title for MC.

I’m pretty eh on Lucifer, but people write some really tasty smut for him. A friend sent me this one, and they were correct to do so. By and large, it’s a collection of explicit scenes between the two that take place over time. It’s well written and the author has at very least done a lot of research into BDSM relationships if they don’t partake in them personally, which is always nice to see in a BDSM fic.

—

Mammon's First and Mammon’s Second by Avatar_Saiki

Mammon x MC

Gender neutral MC, no genitals mentioned for them.

Set shortly after the taming of Cerberus in Nightbringer. Mammon gets a blowjob. Genuinely really good characterization of the brothers and the MC is fun. The blowjob is nice, but I like the conversation between Asmodeus and Mammon ABOUT the blowjob best, because it’s honestly pretty cute imho.

Warm Inside and Out by HiddenOnyx

Gender neutral MC, implied to have a vagina in some of them. Luke, Raphael, Thirteen, and Mephisto are not included.

It occurs to me I’m sort of handing out a very public kink list. Anyways, this is a series of drabbles about cockwarming with the cast.

Kinktober: Obey Me Edition by InvertedPhantasmagoria (tumblr)

Possibly varied on the pronoun/genital situation, honestly not sure. Everyone but Luke, Raph, Mephisto, and Thirteen.

I will not lie, I haven’t read every entry because I just don’t like some of the kinks. The ones I do like are very good though! To no one’s surprise, chapter 31 is my favourite. They’re good at capturing desperation, which is something I enjoy GREATLY.

How do you like your tea? by wubzee

SolomonxBarbatos

I’m a sucker for aphrodisiac fics. Barb + Golden Hellfire Newt Syrup + Solomon’s a bastard. I’d say this is pretty non-con. It’s been a while since I read it properly, but skimming through… it’s pretty non-con.

carpe dick-em by wubzee

LuciferxSolomon (though I don’t think that ever happens actually)

Okay… so… to be fair… when I initially asked someone for the link to the Lucifer erectile dysfunction fic they mentioned, I was not actually aware of the clown fetish aspect. I like clowns just fine, but I am not personally horny about them. Despite the fact that there is next to nothing in this fic I would ever seek out, I did end up really enjoying it. And I’ve just noticed wubzee is on here twice so maybe I should read the rest of their stuff.

Arvandus writes really good Barbatos fanfiction. Also other things too, just… I have a particular area of interest.  As far as smut…

Of Love and Pacts the smut is great, of course, but I read this and my brain has not stopped riffing on the concept since. Making a pact mid-intercourse? Fucking amazing, no notes. Other things also, but it’d be kinda wild to put spoilers in my fic rec…

The Divine is fun because the first half of the fic is a date, deals with mortality, and made me cry like a baby. Then the second half hit me with some of the best-written smut anyone’s ever put to paper. Amazing. I wish all fics were like this… or maybe I just wish someone would pay Arv millions of dollars to write fics about Barb as a full time job.

Really can’t go wrong with earthliving, aka another-lost-mc

If I had to pick favourites… 

Angels at the Door tops the list. Something about characters listening to someone fuck the person they’re into and jacking off to it the next room over is entirely too lovely.

For Your Ears Only I don’t have any specific praises for this one, the whole thing is very nice.

Put A Spell On You I may or may not rotate the bit about Barbatos excusing himself around in my head More Days Than Not 

Got Milk? probably isn’t a favourite out of all their works for me personally but it did spark a very long series of daydreams and thus Must Be Mentioned

Human by getosubaru

Barb x MC, no pronouns but MC has a vagina

I asked a friend for their favourite fics and they happened to drop this one in my lap that I’ve been looking for for AGES. It’s pretty vanilla compared to a lot of the other stuff but it kicked down the door and made a home in my brain.

Various things by frenchfry_writes

Special shout out. They no longer write for the fandom, but they wrote good fic for a lot of very niche kinks that I like a lot and several that will make me tap out of a fic instantly. Often wrote AMAB or trans male reader. I’m not really warning for specific kinks in this list, but piss and vomit are a lot for many people (me included and I’m actively into omorashi) so like… they write for various watersports and emeto. Be aware of that. 

---

Special note: There’s one I skimmed my entire Ao3 history trying to find to no avail, to my severe distress. It’s largely about learning through experiencing how courtship works in the Devildom… Mammon leaves MC the heart of a big bird on their bed, then kills a guy for them. Levi kills a BUNCH of guys for them and they do the nasty while one of the corpses is floating in his floor-to-ceiling aquarium. If anyone knows where I can find that one again, I’d really like to have it back, it had some interesting world building :c I really hope it wasn't deleted.

EDIT: cosmicstarlatte comin' in clutch "the levi fic (you can then click the author for the others): https://archiveofourown.org/works/38520418"

[thosearentcrimes]

Read Too Like the Lightning, part of the Terra Ignota series, by Ada Palmer. I generally try to be a lot nicer about books written by living authors, on the off chance that they read what I'm saying. For example, I tried not to be very mean about the Baru Cormorant series, which I thought was pretty bad but had some strong points I could highlight, but I was perfectly willing to go in on Madame Bovary. All I can say is, I tried. You see, Too Like the Lightning is straight up terrible, and it is basically impossible to find anything nice to say about it at all.

Too Like the Lightning is an unbelievably stupid book. Now, I don't require total scientific fidelity from my science fiction, not unless the author signals I should. But I do think authors should be at least broadly aware of what laws they are breaking to get what they want, and Palmer very clearly isn't. Basically everyone has the predictive/prescient powers of Dune characters through mathematical oracles, despite this being provably impossible. Everyone travels in cheap supersonic private jets that probably also have VTOL capability, which are powered by Fucking Magic presumably, the author sure as hell doesn't seem to care. This wouldn't be as annoying if the book didn't spend so much time musing on the deep sociological effects of the FM-powered aircars, while entirely forgetting that evidently both Fucking Magic and oracles apparently exist and should probably affect society in some way also. There's also more minor points. At one point, the first of the aircars is analogized to the Nina and Pinta and Apollo XI, all of which were notable exploration vessels, not technical breakthroughs. The appropriate comparisons would be to something like the Kitty Hawk Flyer or Stephenson's Rocket or some of the Trevithick machines. Sure, it's a minor error, but for a novel this pretentious, all errors are serious. There is no appreciable narrative reason for this error either. If the book were edited, perhaps someone would have noticed.

The ideological and historiographical (more on this later) background is also just kind of dumb. The book is trying to make some tedious liberal points and also say that we need to have very serious discussions about like sexism and racism or whatever. What the content of these discussions is supposed to be is extremely unclear, and as far as I can tell simply the existence of them will basically fix things on its own because discussion is magic and leads to Truth and such, except, of course, when the narrative needs for it not to. Also destroying a book is kind of like killing a person, and other trite garbage. Anyway, where the book actually ends up is in my opinion quite far from the apparent intent, but unfortunately not in a very interesting way. Suffice to say, if I wanted to read kinda racist gender-normative rapey fiction with clockwork twists scattered around, where all the characters are secretly serial killers (notably Mycroft and the Saneer-Weeksbooths) because that makes them edgier or something I guess, I suspect I could still do a whole lot better than Too Like the Lightning, for example by reading self-insert Wattpad romance novels about pop stars, or werewolf erotica, or self-insert Wattpad erotica about werewolf pop stars. The incest is boring as hell and cowardly, too. It's a book that's trying to shock you, but the author doesn't know how to actually do that because, again, just not very good at writing at all. It doesn't help that the pacing is so horrible that none of the shocking twists actually land, especially since absolutely nothing keeps actually happening. Sure, Too Like the Lightning is the way it is for a reason, but so is the werewolf erotica, and helping other people jack off is a far more noble pursuit than jacking yourself off.

If the book is so stupid, why do a lot of fairly intelligent people seem to like it so much? Well, a lot of those people are Rationalists it seems (or close enough to it), and Rationalists have insanely bad taste in fiction for some reason. Actually Rationalists have insanely bad taste generally speaking but it's especially marked in fiction. And it's obvious why Rationalists would like the book, it treats intelligence as a comic book superpower the way they do, there's group homes and libertarianism and all sorts of other stuff they like. But there's a more fundamental feature that I think a certain kind of nerd loves about Too Like the Lightning. It's the omnipresent didactic tone, just like with Baru Cormorant, though here it's somehow even more obtrusive. Some people evidently like it when the author has a character read an encyclopedia entry for a paragraph or two for no particular reason, or pointedly make and then exhaustively explain a reference. I suspect it's because if they knew the reference, they feel like very clever students who read ahead, and if they didn't know the reference they feel like they are learning. I think it might be a form of high school nostalgia, the nerd version of student athletes unable to move on. Which is normal I suppose, I still think about doing amateur theater after all, but it does seem kind of embarrassing. To me, at least, the didactic tone always feels insulting regardless of if I knew the reference or not.

This insistence on transforming most of the characters into condescending lecture or encyclopedia entry delivery mechanisms understandably has serious consequences for the readability of the novel itself. It is impossible to believe that any of the supposed 10 billion people in the Hives that we barely ever see any actual traces of are actually persons in the eyes of the author or the narrative. Nor are most of the several dozen very important characters we do meet, to be fair. There is a single character, Eureka, who reaches the dizzying heights of "is an actual character" and she barely shows up. Thisbe is the only other one under consideration, but, eh, nah. Everyone else is functionally just a rhetorical device, because outside of the exposition most of the novel is poorly stylized as philosophical dialogue in Enlightenment style.

According to the Author's Note, Palmer sincerely wants to be participating in the Great Conversation. Now, this is a lost cause from the start. You cannot engage in a conversation by just parroting the words of others, and if you don't have any ideas of your own (and it is quite reasonable not to, there are so many people and so few ideas to be had), then a bare minimum would be the ability to rephrase or synthesize them. Now, maybe Palmer can do this, in lectures to students. Or maybe not, I have known instructors like that too (especially in history, lately). All I know is that Too Like the Lightning is no thoughts, all cliches. But if there were original ideas, the framing device would interfere anyway. You fundamentally cannot participate in a conversation while maintaining plausible deniability for everything by hiding behind your fictional characters, as Palmer does with Mycroft. Whenever I object to, well, more or less any feature of the novel, its fans can always say that actually I just haven't been paying enough attention to the unreliability of the narrator. This objection tends to be either false or irrelevant, but it's a pain in the ass to prove, and the only reason it is possible in the first place is that the author is actively refusing to stake out a position to be held to.

For what it's worth, I don't think it's out of cowardice. Palmer seems to have noticed that the tradition of the conte philosophique and the genres that take off of it includes a lot of different styles and narrative devices, and has ultimately decided to use most of them, invariably quite poorly. I've read conte philosophique, and it does not read like conte philosophique, sorry, the writing is all so painfully 21st century. Ironically, the one major device for philosophical stories I can think of that was not used, the travelogue, is the one I think is clearly most appropriate to the sort of worldbuilding-based speculative fiction Palmer is engaging in here, both from a practical and a historical perspective. The eclectic stylistic muddle makes the novel much longer without giving it any additional depth, the styles do not complement each other, and also the author very obviously does not have the skill required to pull any of it off. Authors, unless exceptionally competent, should pick at most one gimmick per work. Might not have helped here, but it's good practice either way.

One of the techniques that gets talked about with regards to the book is the unreliable narrator, probably because the device is referenced in the book right at the start. In fact, contrary to what people insist, it is not really present in the sense I would understand it, of a narrator styled as deliberately deceiving the audience in order to promote his own agenda. Since the narrator of Too Like the Lightning, like basically every other character in the novel, evidently only actually has an agenda or motive as an informed attribute, there is no way for the reader to reason their way to the implied meta-narrative of what "actually happened", because I'm pretty sure that meta-narrative doesn't actually exist. As far as I can tell, the only actual function of the extremely tedious and obtrusive in-universe narrator is to justify telling the exposition in a particular twist-preserving order, which, again, is not what the unreliable narrator is.

The novel really does consist almost exclusively of dry narration and loredumps. Nothing ever happens in this miserable 460 page slog. I really mean this, nothing actually happens and nobody really does anything except flit around irrelevantly at supersonic speeds. A bunch of characters talk to each other, or talk at each other, or read the encyclopedia at each other. But it turns out none of that actually matters, because enough of the characters are basically omniscient (except for all the stuff they can't know otherwise the story falls apart, even though there's no conceivable way they wouldn't know) that there is no appreciable difference between characters talking at each other and thinking at each other, which they also spend way too much time doing. None of the dialogue serves to develop the characters, because, as discussed earlier, there aren't any. None of the dialogue serves to establish the plot or stakes, because the plot gets retconned every other chapter with yet another tedious twist so there's no real point in following the intrigue, which I'm pretty sure consists mostly of plot holes by the end anyway. Worst of all, a consistent pattern in these retcons is that it becomes clearer and clearer that an alarming number of the conversations in this book are actually functionally just a guy talking to himself.

It kind of makes sense that the novel is more or less entirely people talking to each other (well that and poorly done metatextual horseshit) because it turns out the novel endirses a fundamental theory of historical change consisting entirely of people talking to each other, specifically, a variation on Great Man Theory that says change happens because the most important members of the very real and existing natural aristocracy get into a room together in order to figure out what's going to happen next by finding the smartest bestest boy from among them all and all just doing what he says, and then maybe some other stuff that doesn't matter happens after who cares, all of the actual persons have made their decisions. History of ideas people are basically all wacky, but this seems extreme even for them, so I sure hope Palmer isn't actually teaching anything like this. In addition to being based on a variant of it, Too Like the Lightning references and then explains its own reference to Great Man Theory, and naturally has its own Great Man in the narrative itself, the guy talking to himself from the last paragraph, and boy is he unbearable.

The guy in question, Y.U.D.D. MASON, is genuinely in the running for the most insufferable character ever written. I wouldn't mind him being written like a particularly annoying teenager with delusions of grandeur who has evidently somehow read both far too much and far too little philosophy so much if the novel did not take every single opportunity to make it absolutely unquestionable that this horrid little git is in fact an unparalleled superhuman intellect omniscient oracle capable of outright mind control through speech alone. And no, that's not a unreliable narrator thing. My understanding is that somehow this gets much worse over the course of the rest of the books, which I will not read because frankly 460 pages was an unreasonable test of my patience and commitment to reviewing everything I read and finishing everything I review. Apparently at the end he starts a civil war and becomes God-Emperor of Humanity or whatever, who even cares.

Look, a persistent obsession with Mars, nonsensical car-based revolutionizing of transportation, references to De Sade, excessive confidence in mathematical oracles, these are not the preoccupations of a serious thinker, these are the preoccupations of Elon Musk. Musk really is a convenient example of the sort of Great Man that actually exists by contrast to the ones you get in fiction and in Carlyle. Richest man on the planet, widely acknowledged power behind the throne of the most powerful state out there, owner of what was once (you know, before he bought it) regarded as the online public square, AI magnate, rocketman, surely here we have the Great Man of our time? Except, wait, we know him. We know him from his irrepressible habit of Posting, his now decades of pathetic self-promotion, his desperate need to turn himself into a living meme to get the attention he never got from his father, and which he in turn will not give to his two dozen kids. He is a massive loser whose aesthetic interests consist of the most accessible symbols of coolness and futurism that he can find, up to and including the glyph 'X' and memes that got old over a decade ago. What does it say about Too Like the Lightning that half of its aesthetic language is not only shared with this fucking loser, but is even projected out to the 26th century? Nothing good, that's for sure.

It is my opinion that novels should be edited. Unfortunately publishers do not seem to agree. Editing could never have made this book good, but it might at least have informed the publishers of the scale of mistake they were in the course of making. This novel was a lost cause the moment it was accepted for publication, which happened by a mechanism I am still quite unable to explain. The Author's Note does contain a very helpful list of the extraordinarily many collaborators allegedly responsible, of whom I would pick out for particular discredit the editorial decision-makers and the peers who apparently encouraged the creation of the work. That this book was written was a mistake, that it was published was a travesty, that it got sequels is an absurdity. The existence of Too Like the Lightning is an enormous embarrassment to the entire genre of Science Fiction, whose reputation was frankly already quite bad for very good reasons. Anyway, I'm never going to read Worm that's for damn sure.

This novel made me afraid to write my own intended stories, for fear that they will end up like this. Ordinarily, this is where I mention what kinds of person might enjoy the novel, recommend it to someone even if I did not like it myself. Frankly, I think I have provided enough information for people to figure out whether or not they would like it, but I have to confess that I do not think anyone should read this book, including the ones who would enjoy it. It's not for moral reasons or anything, I just think the book is that bad.

[kittyit]

jojo siwa rant

first of all I think big brother is a terrifying and disgusting show and shouldn't exist. I am a huge hypocrite bc I love certain reality tv but as a child I saw some big brother and was overwhelmed by the frightening darkness and it remains that way. what a perfect crystallization of the way celebrities are a lower caste we treat like toys and laugh when they break. so anyway. no one can know a woman's secret heart. yet I find myself enraged by people apparently having no concept of very physical people who are clingy and have an imperative they experience as biological to cuddle. I feel Internet Commentators are more likely to be touch averse won't say why.

literally jojo is an incredibly physical person. you can observe this in dance moms. a lot of dancers are! You can also observe in basically every reality TV show which are form of modern Colosseum and a torture chamber for both unstable and talented people to "make good TV" that people begin clinging to each other immediately. and yes it is a little more unusual for a gay person to do this with the opposite sex but far from unheard of. you know nothing of hags (REAL hags not TikTok ones) and other odd homosexual arrangements. cuddling is not fucking. holding each other tenderly in a fish tank is not having sex. so many people have no idea of the gender politics of the normie lesbian. She might be saying her gf won't mind for an actual reason

so jojo gets crazy lesbian-hating lesbian-raping charged attacked in front of the ever seeing eye. there is a fucking theymab in her ear supporting her about it. is he gay? could she THINK he's gay (common misconception for the unenlightened and in danger female person)? the shit she's saying is literally the most common lesbian gender crisis we have nowadays. her fucking gf is nb!

“It’s something that I’m not ready, necessarily, to be open about or upfront about, but it has to do with gender and how do I feel,”

“Essentially, you have female, you have male. I’ve met a lot of females, love them, don’t feel like them. Met a lot of males, love them, definitely not them. Met a lot of people in my life that are nonbinary, and these beautiful nonbinary people are who I feel the most like and… I don’t know, it’s not something I want to say about myself yet, but it’s something that is confusing and that’s probably why we were talking about it last night.”

and everyone from every camp is scrambling to say she's not a lesbian, was NEVER a lesbian, was just a scheming lesbian or straight person (?!) the whole time. we are watching in real time a very common modern lesbian experience. siwa has been relentlessly mocked for being lesbian. even by other lesbians! the disgust that flooded my body when tegan and sara mocked her!!! for being cringe and stupid and not knowing anything about lesbian history or culture. it's fucking moral luck that any of us know the things we know and most of us did not before.

once I watched a video of Abby from dance moms reacting to JoJo's, explicitly lesbian music video and they were literally hundreds of comments being like oh my God, Abby why didn't you rip into her? Why are you being so nice? As if they literally expected her professional contact to mock her the same way everyone else was. And what was the craziest thing to me was that abbey was actually being incredibly homophobic, she was physically cringing from every homosexual interaction and obviously viscerally uncomfortable. but homophobia is so invisible to these people they just said the same 8 funny jokes about how ABBY (abusive mother figure) wasn't being MEAN ENOUGH about the CRINGE AND FAIL video.

yes, jojo said fuck the L. Why wouldn't she? What has identifying as a lesbian done for her? She doesn't need to identify as a lesbian to have a girlfriend. Other famous lesbians mercilessly mock her and tell her she doesn't fit in. Regular lesbians say the same thing. Men who identify as lesbians and their bi/het women partners who identify as lesbians also join in. lesbian is a porn category. "queer" lesbians have rejected her en masse.

yes she said fuck the L. I've said it before with my actions. A lot of lesbians have. Any lesbian who ever didn't identify as lesbian. Every lesbian who chooses comfort convenience and/or the spectrum of "safety" to not speak up for lesbians is saying fuck the L, I'm gonna do me and my thing. moral weakness abounds. I just believe in innocent until proven guilty for calling women not lesbians. And it happens so so so quick now and en masse and with complete confidence. Most lesbians have conversations with other lesbians remarking oh don't you think so and so might be bi giggle giggle gossip gossip. This is not that. It is rage and hatred of lesbians from non lesbians and lesbians are acting in a pretty ugly way too a lot of the time

nobody knows but jojo siwa if she's gay or not. Not me and not any other internet commentator. The lack of perspective and CONTEXT OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS DRIVING ME INSANE

[louisinart]

rewatching ofmd s1 and I'm absolutely blown away by how much Jim comes into themselves by the end of season two. Knowing the character they become its really stunning to see how disengaged and cynical they are at the start of it all.

Their motivations are almost entirely reactive, to escape Spanish jackie and then to live out their nanas dream of justice. The while time they are in survival mode, moving quickly and efficiently and quietly. Ultimately, moving how they were trained to and nothing else. Because it works! It works so well that I didn't consider something might be missing.

But in season two they're made to be messy, loud. They are stuck on Ed's Breakdown Ship and so have to act differently than they ever have. Not just because they are yelling and screaming and covered in blood cutting a guys leg off, either. They're connecting and caring and critiquing and supporting, they're emotionally engaged in a real way that they very much weren't in season 1. Every day on Ed's ship is horrible, but at least they're present for it. Every day pushes them to be in survival mode but they refuse. They tell fang a story, they kiss Archie back. When Ed says "kill or die" they say "no."

And then, after all that, when they finally get to rest again? Yeah, it's a rough transition, but once they get through it they're absolutely fucking teeming with life. They're painting on a mustache, they're creating conspiracies, they're crossing boundaries to get olus girlfriend back. When the dust settles Jim is inhabiting themselves in a way we haven't seen in the show previously. There is a richness to their character that feels incredibly natural and earned, to the point that I didn't even notice it until I went back to season one and realized how lost they were.

Its pretty obvious that this show is about Ed and stedes collective mid life crisis, but it wasn't until now that I realized its also Jim's coming of age

[sailorsun546]

gender is limiting or whatever vessel said

[guidingthulite]

guys if the next n25 event is kanade5 and kanade helps mizuki in a way no one else could because kanade is what brought n25 together in the first place and gives mizuki strength to face her fears can you all go "alma you're so smart" and "alma we love you and your infinite wisdom" and "alma i'm going to draw kanamizu for you"

[princehendir]

You could write a crazy gender studies paper on just the character creation screen of fo4

[andiv3r]

Sometimes I see something that reminds me that other people are using this website in a drastically different way from how I am

[matteoberrettini]

cute guy winked at me while he was wearing a milan tracksuit........ i might self combust

[feline-evil]

Dick or no dick confirmation Pickles was always going to be trans to me anyways; if he's swingin' somethin that's phallo babes, if he's not then his t-dick fat. What's not to get.

[dullahandyke]

Who is Bláthnaid youve been Bláthnaid posting recently who is she?

Girl (gender-neutral) in my noggin <3

[evreeone]

the joke is that i did not sleep at all