#alien in general has a very sexualized art direction

[madame-mongoose]

Do you think the alien from alien is hot? Asking for a friend

God yeah xenomorphs are like. Peak alien hotness

[bedknees]

I see ur kind of back in the eene fandom. Favorite and least favorite headcanons about the Ed's if your feeling up to it?

Lol hi. And yeah I'm here. Arcane has had such a relentless chokehold on my brain for the past year and a half and it's finally loosening it's grip (inb4 inevitable Season 2 promo shit lmao).

HCs for the Eds? Let's goooo-

HCs I like:

Ed

-I like the HC he has ADHD. It fits him well and has direct canon evidence. As an ADHDer, he fits a lot of the basic stereotypes.

-The kinda popular fandom idea that he will be involved in the filming or general crew of B-tier horror movies when he's an adult. Career path is honestly among the most likely. Can also dig him being an Art Bell-esque radio or podcast host of weird conspiracy stuff.

-Love when he's paired with May. I feel that they'd be the only Ed/Kanker combo that'd work imho.

-Even though he's a fun loving character at heart, I like the idea that we see more of that serious and angry side he showed in Little Ed Blue and BPS. Like as he gets older and more seasoned he learns to stand up for himself more. Not his default at all, but learns to put up with less shit.

-I don't see him caring much about gender or sexuality. I don't ever see him labeling himself or thinking much about it, but I also don't see him as fully straight or cis.

-Can see him really being into Astrology and star charts. He probably has an Ancient Aliens phase ���

Edd

-Like to think he starts taking college classes in his Junior or Senior year of high-school. Probably gets offers from Ivy-League schools, picking not the one he wants to go to the most, but the one that leaves him closest to home.

-I think it was @eddbedandeddy that came up with the idea that he has trichotillomania, where one pulls out clumps of hair as a very maladaptive nervous habit. Love this and I fully support the HC that it's why he wears his hat.

-Dig the idea he goes on to become a doctor of some sort.

-Is a really bad cook. Underseasons and overcooks a LOT. Usually keeps it to cup noodles, sandwiches, or takeout if the responsibility falls on him.

-Definitely has big bi or pan energy.

-Though he can't cook, Edd is very good with gardening and plants in general. Super good at keeping them healthy and cultivating them.

-Mellows out a bit when he gets older. Still a tad neurotic but not a full blown nervous wreck.

Eddy

(So warning: Eddy is my favoritest, most special little guy(TM) so there is a little bias for how many HCs I have for him compared to the others. Sorry lol.)

-It's funny when you think about it, because in terms of Eddy's personality after BPS it's actually pretty nebulous to nail down. Despite being one of the brashest, most outspoken characters he's actually the most mysterious when it comes down to who he truly is. He hid behind a facade for the majority of the show's runtime, after all, so what he truly is like underneath that leaves a lot up to the imagination.

-HOWEVER, I HC Eddy returning to his Season 1 and early Season 2 personality after BPS, with a decent amount of self reflection and maturity tacked on. I think how he acted in Season 1 is the closest to who he really is at the core. A good example of how I see Eddy (as a teenager, at least), is that he would share a lot of traits with Amethyst from Steven Universe, I guess? Closest example I can think of, tbh.

-He's closeted gay kid. Home of sexual. 👬🏳️‍🌈🌈 I used to see him as a bi, but rewatches changed my mind a lot. (Part of it is that he's always been my favorite and I was projecting tbh.) It takes him till his mid-to-late teens to start to accept it.

-Excellent cook. His mom's side is 100% Italian in my personal HC and she and her side bestowed a ton of culinary knowledge on him from old family recipes etc.

-Piggybacking off this, I see Eddy being a line cook for quite a while if not as his staple career. I can also see him doing car sales and bartending and even working at a deli. Bounces around jobs a lot, but always is employed in some way or the other.

-He loves baking and is very good at it. Don't give him shit about it or he will cry in private.

-Eddy is ADHD like Ed, but on the more impulsive and moody side of the large spectrum ADHD consists of. He also is bipolar af.

-Is heavily into music in general, especially as he gets older. He also has a penchant for musicals and Broadway, but he WILL get defensive if you tease him for it. But yeah, music is his biggest hobby and interest by far.

HCs I don't like:

Ed

-That he's too stupid to live. Leave him alone, he's dim but functional.

-The idea he can't function independently from Edd and Eddy. He absolutely can and is his own person!

-When fanfics or works in general make Eddy and Edd act like parents to him. He's their equal 👏

-Anytime he's explicitly third-wheeled when Edd and Eddy are paired. You absolutely can write the former two paired up without excluding him.

Edd

-When the fandom makes him an uwu softboy. Stfu. He's a little asshole with a smart mouth and a truckload of sass. Erasing that makes him so BORING 😴

-The HC that he will 'outgrow' Eddy and Ed and move on from them. He's right where he belongs and they complete each other. Stop.

Eddy

-Where do I begin? Firstly, him acting the same exact way as he does in the show after what happened in BPS. The entire movie was explicitly about Eddy becoming a better person and learning his lesson. At least show some growth.

-Him becoming an even more ruthless and corrupt scammer as an adult. Paired with the above point, but still.

-Any HCs that he's heterosexual 🤢

-MAKING HIM TALL.

-Fanart that makes him skinny.

I could go on but those are the main ones. Ty anon!

[girlsbtrs]

How Countercultures turn Politics into Culture

Written by Lila Danielsen Wong. Graphic by Paula Nicole

In 1969, an academic named Theodore Roszak published “The Making of a Counterculture” and coined the term “counterculture” in order to describe the ant-mainstream youth movements of the 60s. Counterculture’s are not inherently good or progressive, both the punks and the skinheads are countercultures. Counterculture just means, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a culture with values and mores that run counter to those of established society.

I’m not here to critique these movements. I am not writing this to critique how the Bohemian Romantics won respect for the arts because they mostly came from upper class backgrounds, and I’m not here to discuss the lack of intersectionality in the riot grrl movement. After starting this article I realized I had pitched a whole academic thesis, and maybe bit off a little more than I had intended to chew (why can’t I just pitch a listicle?). So, instead of focusing on the nitty gritty of what prompted these social movements and academically exploring their effects, I want to talk about the “culture” part of counterculture.

Nearly all countercultures are birthed around shared political ideas, but many seem to start within the culture itself, perhaps as a musical movement, a literary movement, a visual art movement, or even a fashion or aesthetic. As the movements expand, they come to encompass more of those aforementioned arts, and thus the politics that prompted the original movement become a culture. 

An early example of a western subculture is the Bohemian Romantics of Europe of the 19th century. In pre-revolutionary France, artists were lower class tradesmen. Artists were seen as dirty and immoral. However, in post-revolutionary France, disillusionment prompted young bourgeois men to reject the typical hierarchy and launch the bohemian artist lifestyle we are more familiar with today. A critical event on this timeline was Victor Hugo’s “Romantic Army,” or his mob of young men that he assembled to protest theatre censorship by absolutely trashing a theatre. The Bohemian lifestyle often manifested as wealthy young artists electing poverty to reject the traditions they were born into, and to spend their time creating art unrestricted. Bohemian fashion was more utilitarian and rustic than the upper-class styles.  The music of the Romantic era is categorized by its vigor and passion, pioneered by Beethoven himself. Beethoven challenged the strict and sometimes formulaic sonatas and symphonies of the past, favoring expression and inventiveness. Thus, prompted by the rejection of bourgeois values and principles, a culture was created: a lifestyle, an aesthetic, a literary movement, a new musical style. 

Nearly 150 years later and 5000 miles away from Bohemian France, the riot grrl movement was brewing in the Northwest United states. The riot grrl movement, created by a group of women working to combat sexism in the western Washington punk scene, was a counterculture within a counterculture. While the Romantic movement originated in literature, the punk movement, and then the riot grrl movement, was born as a musical movement. 

In 1970s Britain, the government was nearly bankrupt and giant cuts to social services were making life hard and creating a sense of alienation between the ruling class and the working class. British Punk emerged from this alienation. The youth used music to communicate their frustrations and anger. The rips and safety pins of punk fashion weren’t originally fashion, the punks just owned ragged clothing. The disillusionment with the political landscape and frustration with older generations resonated with youth all over the world, and it’s not hard to see why a Post-Vietnam and Watergate America would embrace the Punk movement with open arms. However, where British Punk was rooted in working class frustrations, American Punk took root with the middle-class suburban crowd, who, similar to the Bohemians, choose to reject the comfortable life they were born into. A notable difference that this created in the music was British punk had more pointed and explicit politically leftist lyrics, whereas this was not the focus of American punk lyrics. 

This is especially important to understand when talking about the riot grrl movement because they put the politics in American Punk lyrics. In the early 1990s, a group of women from the Olympia, Washington punk scene had a meeting to address the sexism they faced in Punk. They started writing lyrics centered around the sexism and misogyny they face in Punk and in life. They created their own literature through zines when they could not get coverage. They wore clothing specifically intended to look like what respectable women weren’t supposed to wear. Again, we watch a group of people turn their politics into a culture, as a way to spread and practice their ideologies. 

If you want a modern example of turning politics into culture via a counterculture, look no further than cottagecore (yes, really).

       As I said at the beginning, countercultures don’t need to be radically progresive to be countercultures. Cottagecore dwells on romanticized pastoral ideals of a fantastic yesteryear that never really existed. Cottagecore gained some traction on TikTok as an “aesthetic,” made up of imagery such as women in long button up dresses flouncing through fields and making picnics. Absent were the rise and grind aspirations of pre-pandemic America. Absent were any signs of the labor often associated with pastoral living. It is no surprise that a counterculture that emphasizes solitary retreat, rest, nature, and crafting blew up during the first year of the covid-19 pandemic during which many experienced forced solitary retreats, a change in work environments (not to mention the want to not work), and boredom that could only be remedied with solitary activities such as crafting and enjoying nature. The pandemic dismantled all of the systems of normal life as we knew it, and cottagecore invited us to grow from this space, perhaps embracing a simpler, slower life. This political message was so subtly delivered through our social media scrolling that if you weren’t paying attention, you might not have even realized cottagecore had political ideals at all. 

The rise of cottagecore is important in the conversation of how countercultures turn politics into culture because it showcases very blatantly how countercultures are not created, or at least do not catch on, without need and reason. Taylor Swift most likely did not create her surprise albums Folklore and Evermore (the unofficial cottagecore soundtrack) solely to cater to the cottagecore TikTok crowd, she created these albums as a form of personal escapism from how her own life was turned upside down by the pandemic, as a form of connection with her fans who were also experiencing the effects of the pandemic on their lives, and as art that represented certain feelings that came along with the pandemic. 

Her albums came about for the same reason that cottagecore really caught on in the first place: it was what some people felt that they needed due to the circumstances of the time. It was for this reason, I would argue, that Folklore won album of the year. It was indicative of the times. 

So, countercultures are born from a need. From this need comes politics, be it post revolution anti-bourgeois sentiments, mid-century British leftism, or a quiet call to slow down and reject hustle culture for a simple life. From politics comes art, and from art, culture. 

Let’s talk about this in terms of an up-and-coming counterculture, hyperpop. 

       Though Wikipedia currently defines hyperpop as a “micro genre,” hyperpop’s rise is looking anything but “micro.” Hyperpop is described in The Spectator as “catchy synthpop or bubblegum bass tune with elements of EDM and typically a focus on either queer culture or Internet futurism”. The term “self-referential lyrics” is often thrown around. In the least complicated words possible, hyperpop uses it’s sounds and lyrics to make a camped-up parody of popular music. Hyperpop pioneers that have some mainstream following include SOPHIE, Charli xcx, and Caroline Polechek. Hyperpop often uses carbonated synth sounds and vocal modulation, and many of the trailblazers are part of the LGBT community. 

What will hyper pop fashion and literature look like? What are hyper pop’s politics?

As for politics, there is something inherently political about queer artists carving out a space for themselves in pop music. Orange Magazine describes this as “pushing pop music to its limits and satirizing the gendered music industry. There’s an enjoyable sense of irony and juxtaposition.” 

       As for fashion, if we’re following the patterns we’ve established, hyperpop might bring gender non-conforming fashion that satirizes what’s been proclaimed normal. In terms of literature perhaps a Hyperpop literary movement will come from the controversial direction of Alt Lit, a community of minimalist writers that use the internet form and often reject intellectualized creative writing, create things that are weird for the sake of being weird, and use all caps and other purposeful spelling and grammar mistakes. A hyperpop literary movement might share the “self-referential” themes of hyperpop movement, while examining gender, sexuality, and personal identity in the internet age, seeing as the need to examine these themes in music indicates a need to examine these themes in other art forms. Maybe it will find creative ways to use internet platforms, as Alt Lit originators such as Steve Roggenbuck, a YouTube poet (well, a poet depending on who you ask), already have. 

What I find most exciting about hyperpop is that it has the potential to create a culture guided by music first, similar to the punks or to disco. Fashion and visual art and literature all inspired by the glittery new sounds created in music. Maybe hyperpop will stay a “microgenre,” but maybe we will get to witness the rise of something new. 

SOPHIE once said “I think all pop music should be about who can make the loudest, brightest thing. That, to me, is an interesting challenge, musically and artistically… just as valid as who can be the most raw emotionally,” and isn’t that a phenomenal thing to bring with us into a pent-up, fed-up, thoroughly exhausted, and newly vaccinated decade? 

 Sources

https://monoskop.org/images/b/b4/Roszak_Theodore_The_Making_of_a_Counter_Culture.pdf

https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/When-the-counterculture-counted-2835958.php

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/periods-genres/romantic/

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/bohem/tlaboheme.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_subculture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_grrrl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roszak_(scholar)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism

https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/brief-history-riot-grrrl-space-reclaiming-90s-punk-movement-2542166

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/03/arts/music/riot-grrrl-playlist.html

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/06/19/riot-grrrl-movement

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/06/19/riot-grrrl-movement

https://wildezine.com/3528/opinion/a-brief-history-of-punk/

file:///C:/Users/8lila/Downloads/history_initiates_vol_iv_april_2016_01_brooks_alison.pdf

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/hyperpop/617795/

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/9595799/hyperpop-history-mainstream-crossover/

https://www.stuyspec.com/ae/hyperpop-the-defining-genre-of-the-digital-age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YRl4Kdnl2E&list=LL&index=4

https://theface.com/music/sophie-behind-the-boards-pop-scottish-producer

https://orangemag.co/orangeblog/2020/10/15/exploring-the-trans-roots-of-hyperpop

https://thebluenib.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-alt-lit-by-ada-wofford/

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pc-music-are-for-real-a-g-cook-and-sophie-talk-twisted-pop-58119/

[vaguely-concerned]

I’m watching Great Pretender on netflix and uh not for nothing but 

- this is some of the most distinct and beautiful art direction I’ve ever seen, in anime or in general, every now and then I have to pause to look at the stylization they employ in the backgrounds and just SCREAM 

you ever spend five minutes yelling at the top of your lungs because they’ve somehow made a random piece of background foliage look like a stunning stained glass paining? yeah....  

- the writing feels fresh and is also really funny, not to mention that it gives you some of that sweet sweet wish fulfillment in the same ways that Leverage does. (Leverage is the closest comparison I can think of in a lot of ways, actually) 

if you’ve been thirsting for some more found family con men stealing only from awful ultra rich people and delivering some delicious poetic justice along the way, look no further.      

- I love laurent so much because they gave me a (heavily implied) sad clown trickster mastermind character alienated from everyone because he’s a manipulative shit, however benignly he employs it, and I am predictable trash garbage....... I don’t even go for blondes but he’s a fucking delight at every turn I’m so angry about this innuendo-wielding frenchman my friends

- great and varied character design, especially for the women, which is such a nice change! 

- some truly  o u t r a g e o u s  queer subtext going on here (there’s a scene in the first episode that involves some... fondling of a gear stick and I honestly wondered for a hot second if I was hallucinating but then they just... keep going like that??? for the rest of the eps????? not in an uncomfortable way; one of my favourite things they manage to do with laurent is that for all that he’s a walking double entendre he’s also very sexually non-threatening and chill about it lol), and it’s like... the writing is so smart about other things, it would seem sort of weird for it to play uncomplicatedly into queerbaiting, so maybe they’re going somewhere with it? I guess we won’t know until the second half of the show is released, but I will say that the last time I had this ‘am I losing my mind? is this really what’s happening on screen right now or did I smoke something??’ feeling was yuri on ice, so, y’know. take that for what it’s worth. laurent has big disaster bi/pan energy, no matter what else happens     

- the credits are accompanied by freddie mercury singing ‘great pretender’ while Delightful Cat Shenanigans With Some Troubling Foreshadowing Slipped In happen to your eyes. honestly if you never see the show just watch that part, it’ll be a good time

[erisbaek]

Stucky Fic Rec [Part One]

So I decided to split the fic recs up into parts because they will be too long otherwise. In each part I will link the Google Doc that I am typing them up in, which is where I will constantly update as I read.  Within these fic recs, they’re mostly my preferences, so very few (if any) Shrinkyclinks, and ABO fics will be within them, as well as shorter fics, since I actively seek fics out that are longer than 10k (and completed)!!

The Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10wqr5s-CzkFzLidQgt-y4-cjudHWwVeVPWCedMjK7t0/edit?usp=sharing

The first part is formatted under the cut, if you’d prefer to stay out of the doc!

Lightning in a Bottle 

    Word Count: 63k     Rating: Explicit     Notable Tags: Shrunkyclunks, Road Trip!AU, Angst with Happy Ending     Warnings: Smut, Smoking     Synopsis: The problem, Steve thinks, isn’t so much his motorcycle giving up the ghost on a lonely stretch of highway through a lonely stretch of the country. He doesn’t mind stretching his legs or the prospect of hitchhiking. The problem is the roiling black blanket of storm clouds slowly spreading itself over the landscape headed his direction… Steve Rogers is looking to hitch on a highway abandoned by everyone smart enough to avoid a looming storm. Bucky Barnes is the professional storm chaser who offers him a ride.

It gets more complicated from there.

Perspective and Truth

        Word Count: 16.7k          Rating: Teen and Up         Notable Tags: Bodyswap!AU, Emotional Hurt/Comfort        Warnings: None        Synopsis: Bucky and Steve end up swapping bodies and learning a lot more about each other in the process

Carbs and Conversations

         Word Count: 48k          Rating: Teen and Up          Notable Tags: Hockey!AU, No Powers          Warnings: None          Synopsis: Bucky was just looking for a chance. A chance to get on the ice and play. A chance to escape from Hydra. A chance to redeem himself. He didn't include 'A chance to be friends with Steve Rogers' on the list. That would be ridiculous. Lucky for him, Steve seemed determined to be ridiculous.

So Loud and So Clear

           Word Count: 26.6k            Rating: Mature            Notable Tags: Get Together, Slow Build            Warnings: None           Synopsis: Bucky had been careful, after all, leaving no trace of his comings and goings. It was horrendously disappointing to know that Rogers had found him. Bucky was a lot better than getting caught by a guy who wore the American flag as a onesie. He just really was. “Don’t you – Bucky – Bucky,” Rogers started, and to Bucky’s growing horror, it looked like Rogers was on the verge of some type of emotional eclipse. Anger, sadness, something, and Bucky wanted nothing to do with it. “Hate to break it to you, bud, but I don’t remember ever living here and I don’t remember you.”

A Loyal Viewer 

           Word Count: 36.1k            Rating: Explicit             Notable Tags: Camboy!Steve, Punk!Bucky, No Powers, Long Distance            Relationship            Warnings: Smut            Synopsis: At almost exactly eight thirty in the evening, Steve settles on the bed before his camera and the computer. He signs into his account on Chaturbate and clicks the button that starts his stream.

In My Conditions, Love’s the Best Physician

             Word Count: 9.1k              Rating: Not Rated              Notable Tags: Shrunkyclunks, Pharmacist!Bucky, Russian!Bucky              Warnings: None              Synopsis: ”This situation is a little more delicate because I don't even know if he speaks English and I'm tired of going down to the pharmacy for constipation medication and allergy pills when I haven't sneezed since 1941.” Steve shouts. The room falls silent, and he turns back around to find four pairs of stunned eyes watching him. Tony, as always, speaks first. “He?” - Or the one where Bucky is a hot pharmacist and Steve keeps making up bullshit reasons to go see him.

Rare Is This Love (Keep It Covered) 

               Word Count: 66.7k                Rating: Explicit                 Notable Tags: Shrunkyclunks, Mechanic!Bucky, Slow Burn                Warnings: Smut, Canonical Character Death                Synopsis: It's 2014. Captain America has been out of the ice for three years and is trudging along, saving the world and trying to get used to living in the future. Steve thinks he knows how the rest of his life is going to pan out – a life of duty, which he chose when he signed up to be Erskine’s science experiment. But then, he meets Bucky Barnes: the out-of-this-world-gorgeous mechanic and war vet, who turns Steve’s life upside down and makes him question everything he thought he knew. Slowly, Steve comes to realize there is more to life than duty and punching Nazis. Just one problem though: how on earth does a 96-year-old virgin who only just realized he may not be entirely straight make the transition from crush to relationship? Cue healthy amounts of self-doubt, awkward flirting, pretty blushing, existential crises, emotional growth, and maybe, possibly, a sexual awakening.

Looking For A Place To Hide

                Word Count: 33.3k                 Rating: Explicit                 Notable Tags: Endgame Fix-It, 2012!Steve                 Warnings: Smut                 Synopsis:  It's 2012 and all Steve knows is that another version of himself said Bucky is alive. Steve will do anything to get his friend back, even if it means time traveling to 2023. He expects Bucky to be happy to see him, but instead he's wary, hurt. Turns out his Steve had left him for Peggy. How? Why? Steve can't believe it. Now he'll have to find a way to make sense of it all, and convince Bucky that it's the two of them to the end of the line.

The Wolf and the Sheep

               Word Count: 50.5k                Rating: Teen and Up                Notable Tags: Shield Agent!Steve, Winter Soldier!Bucky                 Warnings: None                Synopsis: Steve Rogers is a SHIELD agent who is recruited for a secret project: Becoming a handler for the Asset. Steve’s world is thrown for a loop when he discovers the Asset is an actual person and he needs to figure out who he is and what he’s going to do.

All Those Little Pieces

                 Word Count: 40.5k                  Rating: Mature                  Notable Tags: Alternating POV, Post CATW                  Warnings: Smut, Panic Attacks                  Synopsis: Steve has never forgotten Bucky Barnes. Not their childhood together, not the horror of the moment Bucky fell too far for him to reach, and not the way he's loved him all the while. Bucky has forgotten everything about Steve, at least at first. But there's still a feeling there, warm in his chest—and maybe now that he's found his way back to Steve Rogers and his sunny apartment, there's a chance it might turn into something more.

My Dear

                   Word Count: 29.9k                    Rating: Explicit                     Notable Tags: Post CATWS, Recovery                    Warnings: Smut                    Synopsis: The Soldier stares down at the floor, breathing hard through his nose. “And you still wanna fix me,” he says. Steve shakes his head. “There’s nothing to fix, Buck. I just want to bring you home.”

Living On My Own

                    Word Count: 26.1k                     Rating: Mature                     Notable Tags: Vigilante!Bucky                      Warnings: Blood and Gore                     Synopsis: James Barnes is back in the world and finds that not only has there been 1) an alien invasion, but 2) Howard Stark had a kid. One that dispenses unsolicited life advice, no less. Oh, and 3) Captain America is alive again, after getting himself killed by his own recklessness in a move so stupid only Steve could have come up with it. In which James learns to do laundry, turns into an accidental neighborhood vigilante and makes Tony Stark a happy grease monkey, all while he figures out where to stake his claim.

Chase the Lighting From the Sky

                      Word Count: 39.4k                       Rating: Explicit                        Notable Tags: No Powers, Age Gap, Farm!AU                        Warnings: Smut, Past Character Death, Animal Death                       Synopsis: If Bucky has to be stuck doing this ridiculous summer work program before his senior year of college, on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, then at least he’s got a hot as hell cowboy for a boss and host. Steve Rogers, owner of the Truth & Justice Ranch, is what Bucky’s completely theoretical but very imaginative bisexual fantasies are made of. Steve’s a widower though, and a nice guy in need of help, and no doubt 100% straight… so Bucky’s gonna work his ass off and keep his head down. But neither Bucky nor Steve are prepared for the friendship that forms between them as they work side by side. And they certainly aren’t expecting the budding feelings, confessions, and passions that summer heat and the loneliness of the great open plains stirs in each of them. What rages to life between them will shake each man to his core and will linger long after the storms and the summer have passed.

Cinder and Smoke

                       Word Count: 51.7k                        Rating: Explicit                        Notable Tags: Sheriff!Steve, Blacksmith!Bucky, Old Western                        Warnings: Smut, Period-Typical Homophobia, OC Death                        Synopsis: “They say there’s no law in Parasapa. Is that true?”

Art Thief, Heart Thief

                       Word Count: 58.8k                        Rating: Mature                        Notable Tags: FBI!Steve, Thief!Bucky Barnes                        Warnings: Smut                        Synopsis: Agent Steve Rogers is facing a series of art thefts that has him stumped, and looking for a break in the case. Convicted art thief and general high end criminal Bucky Barnes wants to make parole and happens to know all of the right people who could make Steve's job easier. So they strike a deal, mutually beneficial and entirely business. But a few days undercover, an undeniable growing chemistry, and some ill-timed Feelings entering the mix, and all bets are off.

Laws of Thermodynamics 

                       Word Count: 14.6k                        Rating: Explicit                         Notable Tags: Post CATWS, Recovery                         Warnings: Smut                        Synopsis: He never had to relearn how to love Steve Rogers. It might be the one thing he never forgot.

Abstract Art

                       Word Count: 26.6k                        Rating: Teen and Up                        Notable Tags: Friends to Lovers, Artist!Steve, Ex Sniper!Bucky                        Warnings: None                        Synopsis: They survive almost a year of torture together, cells side by side, banter and teasing and stories. They keep each other alive. Then everything changes. They tell Bucky that Rogers's been killed. He tries to piece his life together, to move on. Steve owns an art store. He's given up looking. It's over. Except it's really not.

We Discovered Gold

                       Word Count: 18.7k                        Rating: Explicit                        Notable Tags: Post CACW, Fix-It, Wakanda                         Warnings: Smut                        Synopsis: “So you got these safe houses scattered all over Russia?” Steve jokes into the soft hair over Bucky's temple, not pulling away, “Or did we just get lucky?” Bucky shakes his head and then replies, “Got myself a few. It’s been a long two years.” “Yeah pal,” Steve nods, burrowing further, “I hear that.”

Never Mind to Hold 

                      Word Count: 21.6k                       Rating: Mature                       Notable Tags: Soulmate!AU, Not CACW Compliant, Soulmarks                       Warnings: Brief Suicidal Ideation                       Synopsis: Steve didn't know the name of Bucky's soulmate. He wasn't even sure when it had appeared across Bucky's heart. But Steve knew it wasn't his name hidden under that patch.

Where There’s Smoke 

                      Word Count: 95.1k                       Rating: Explicit                        Notable Tags: Firefighter!AU                       Warnings: Smut                       Synopsis: Steve is a Brooklyn firefighter who is about to be saddled with a new, rookie crewmate. James Barnes is that rookie, just looking for a fresh start at a new station. Steve's friends think they know what's best for him...start dating his new crewmate. Steve thinks they're crazy...or possibly right. But events from James's recent past may pose a threat to any designs they have on each other.

Let Them Eat Cake

                    Word Count: 31k                     Rating: Explicit                      Notable Tags: Shrunkyclunks, Pastry Chef!Steve, Sommelier!Bucky                     Warnings: Smut, Drug Use                     Synopsis: Steve picked up the piping bag and returned to the ramekins. Bucky left, though not without shooting one last look at Steve's wide back. Bucky could already tell Steve Rogers was trouble, not even counting the near-religious experiences he inspired among the staff. It wasn’t that Bucky didn’t appreciate him as well; he did. He just tended to appreciate people he found attractive from afar, because explaining the metal arm was hard, and because he didn’t really know how to handle letting someone in close. But that wasn’t why Steve was trouble, not really. Bucky wanted to know why their new pastry chef had gun calluses on his right hand.

Adrenalize Me 

                  Word Count: 58.5k                   Rating: Explicit                    Notable Tags: Vampire!Steve                   Warnings: Smut, Blood                   Synopsis: Leaning against the side of a wall, taking an indolent drag of a cigarette, there he stood. Watching Bucky with an inscrutable gaze. Staring at Bucky for long seconds, the blond seemed to consider him before breaking the silence. “You know, nice guy like you walking alone at this hour – people might think you were looking for trouble.” Trying not to shudder at the sound of that voice, which wrapped around him like smoke, Bucky managed a smirk, lifted a brow. “Well, if I was, it looks like I found it.” Two strangers meet in a dark club. One just happens to be a vampire.

The Change in Us 

                 Word Count: 23.4k                  Rating: Explicit                  Notable Tags: N/A                  Warnings: Smut                  Synopsis: “I’ve found your BFF,” Stark says without preamble. “My… what?” “James Barnes. Winter Soldier. Bucky. I don’t know, I don’t care, but right now he’s perched on the roof of the next building with a gun on me, and it’s not so much my idea of a relaxing afternoon, so could you get down here?” Steve hangs up and starts running.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

                  Word Count: 38.2k                   Rating: Explicit                   Notable Tags: Shrunkyclunks, Ex Army!Bucky                   Warnings: Minor Smut                    Synopsis: Many an odd critter and item have ended up on the front porch of the property Bucky house-sits in the Middle Of Nowhere, but a bleeding blond man is a first. A short inspection reveals the man to be none other than Steve Rogers; ex-Captain America, vigilante, and a wanted fugitive. Steve’s stay of a few days of recovery is prolonged, under instructions for him to lie low until the Avengers can sort out the mess that has become the Sokovia Accords. Bucky is pretty sure that he’s committing an act of treason by providing Steve a place to stay. He is also pretty sure that lengthy interaction with Steve makes one prone to impending headaches and possibly ulcers. And he is certain that he is, very assuredly, in danger of falling in love with Steve.

The Soldier’s Revenge

                 Word Count: 76.4k                  Rating: Explicit                   Notable Tags: Canon Divergence, Enemies To Lovers, Slow Burn                  Warnings: Smut                  Synopsis: Bucky Barnes turns himself in to SHIELD two years after dragging Captain America out of the Potomac River. He was deprogrammed in Wakanda and has been hunting down Hydra ever since, but he needs help if he wants to take proper revenge on his captors. He turns to his old enemies: SHIELD and the Avengers, but it'll take more than a few words to win their trust after the Winter Soldier brought SHIELD to its knees not long before. Now at SHIELD's mercy, the only thing that stands between Bucky and his revenge is the approval of Captain Rogers: a self-righteous asshole that Bucky barely knows.

The Best Way to Wake

                  Word Count: 42.2k                   Rating: Explicit                   Notable Tags: Canon Divergence, Slow Burn                   Warnings: Smut                   Synopsis: James Buchanan Barnes lay in a glass pod in the middle of the table, frozen since he fell. Steve’s hands were on the glass before he realized he’d moved. “Wait, Captain!” “Get him out,” Steve whispered, his hands searching for a clasp, a keypad, something. “Captain, we need to keep him in stasis—“ “I said get him out!” In which Bucky Barnes lay frozen in the Alps for seventy years only to be woken up a year after Steve Rogers was uncovered from the Arctic.

Latte Art and Slow Dancing in the Dark

                    Word Count: 89.5k                     Rating: Explicit                      Notable Tags: Age Difference, CIA!Steve, Barista!Bucky, Sugar                            Daddy!Steve                     Warnings: Smut                     Synopsis: Bucky is a somewhat well-adjusted former army sniper that got his shoulder blown out. He took his discharge and went home to finish school and is working on his international relations masters. His best friends and roommates (Nat & Clint) are CIA agents and tip him off that their local Sbux is hiring. He gets a job there and meets none other than the hottest guy on earth. So how does one get a date in the most top secret government location in the US? What happens when that guy is more than just a hot dorito and wants to give Bucky everything he wants? Bucky is going to have to figure out his shit and fast. That's what's up.

Laughter Lines

                   Word Count: 100.2k                    Rating: Mature                    Notable Tags: Bodyguard!AU, Slow Burn                    Warnings: None                    Synopsis: Bucky Barnes is a rising Hollywood star with a tragic past and a reputation for driving his bodyguards away. Steve Rogers is a veteran with the same tragic past and the need to get back out in the world. The two of them have been estranged since they were teenagers, so when Steve joins SHIELD as a bodyguard, he is less than thrilled when he finds out that Bucky is his first assignment. But how bad can it be? They're both professional adults, right?Wrong.

From Hydra with Love

                   Word Count: 21.2k                    Rating: Mature                    Notable Tags: Spies!Steve and Bucky                    Warnings: Smut                    Synopsis: Captain Steve Rogers is one of the best spies in the world - a marksman, a martial artist, an expert in strategy and tactics. There's not a lot he can't handle. Heck, he's even saved the world once or twice. So why does every run in with the mysterious Winter Soldier leave him feeling like the Bond Girl?

Goddamn Electric

                Word Count: 67.8k                 Rating: Explicit                 Notable Tags: Bodyguard!Steve, Musician!Bucky                 Warnings: Drug Use, Alcohol Use, Smut                 Synopsis: Steve Rogers works for a discreet private security company and gets assigned to James Barnes, a musician who takes the idea of 'sex, drugs & rock 'n roll' just a little too seriously.

There Was Something About Steve Rogers

                Word Count: 46.7k                 Rating: Explicit                 Notable Tags: Post CATWS                 Warnings: Smut, Panic Attacks                 Synopsis: The Winter Soldier knows Steve Rogers has deep feelings for Bucky Barnes, and decides that he can use that to his advantage to gain protection from the Hydra agents still trying to find him. What he didn't bargain for was actually starting to care about the man they call Captain America, or the strength of Bucky Barnes' memories as they begin to resurface.

Through the Mist

                Word Count: 14.5k                 Rating: Teen and Up                 Notable Tags: Soulmate!AU, Post CATWS                 Warnings: None                 Synopsis: He usually kept it covered. Whether it be with long sleeves, a cuff of some sort, or make up Natasha skillfully showed him how to apply. He didn’t cover it up because he was ashamed or because he was one of those people who didn’t like others knowing who his soulmate was- no. He covered it up out of respect. Respect for his fallen partner, and respect for himself because he knew looking at those swoopy lines of James B. Barnes on his wrist always made him crumble like his legs were kicked down. When he crashed into the ice all those years ago he thought he was going to see Bucky again- he thought he was finally going to be with Bucky without people giving them ugly looks and throwing slurs their way. He thought he was going to be happy again.

Take Me Home 

              Word Count: 78.1k               Rating: Mature               Notable Tags: Shrunkyclunks, Veteran!Bucky               Warnings: Smut, Torture, Referenced Suicide               Synopsis: “I’m so sorry, I’m gonna help you I promise, just don’t move, fuck, I ran over Captain America–” the man apologized, over and over, and all Steve managed to say was, “You’re really attractive,” before passing out on the guy’s lap in the middle of the road.

Where the Circle Ends

               Word Count: 29.8k                Rating: Mature                Notable Tags: Zombie Apocalypse!AU                 Warnings: Smut, Gore                Synopsis: In which the world has gone to hell in a zombie apocalypse handbasket and, in the middle of it all, Steve finds the one person he never thought he'd see again. Angst and feelings (amongst other things) ensue.

Our Souls (They Were Made to Last) 

               Word Count: 53.8k                Rating: Mature                Notable Tags: No Powers, Veteran!Steve, Doctor!Bucky, Ghost!Bucky                Warnings: None                Synopsis: Dr. James Barnes is too busy saving lives to actually have one of his own. When he finally agrees to go on a blind date, he gets into an accident that will change his life forever. Retired Army Captain Steve Rogers is depressed, and when he moves into his new apartment he finds it already occupied....with the ghost of its last tenant. To make matters worse, the ghost is adamant that he's not dead. As they navigate their way through their new living arrangements, can they save each other, before it’s too late? Or have they missed their one shot at a happy ending?

By Any Other Name

                 Word Count: 36.9k                  Rating: Explicit                  Notable Tags: Assassins and Hitmen!AU, Spies and Agents!AU                  Warning: Smut                 Synopsis: Steve was a good spy. It turned out one good spy didn't stand a chance against a rival security firm, a contract killer, and his own heart.

[dwellordream]

“In his notes on fashion for The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin comments, “To be contemporaine de tout le monde—that is the keenest and most secret satisfaction that fashion can offer a woman.” In one economical sentence, Benjamin evokes the sexual, psychological, social, and historical theories of fashion. By equating fashion with female “satisfaction,” Benjamin captures the debate between those who view fashion as a technology of women’s subordination and those who see it as a venue for women’s pleasure, invention, and power. To refer to the “most secret satisfaction” fashion offers not women but “a woman” evokes fashion’s psychological appeal to an interiorized individual who defines herself in terms of solitude, depth, and concealment, and clothes as intimate objects that activate desire and promote reveries of beauty, leisure, and power. 

Where psychology emphasizes the individual, sociology studies the group, and Benjamin links the two when he predicates the fashionable woman’s “most secret satisfaction” on being contemporary with “tout le monde,” literally with “everyone,” but also with the social realm of worldliness connoted by “le monde.” For sociologists, fashion is a distinctly modern phenomenon that constitutes group identity through imitation and simultaneously promotes an individualist ethos dedicated to relentless innovation. Fashion is a weapon in the battle for distinction when rank is no longer fixed by birth and sumptuary laws. For women who do not vie directly in the economic marketplace, fashion becomes a way to demonstrate facility with the rules of propriety that rationalize bodies in space and time.

The fashion that makes its female follower everyone’s “contemporary” confers historicity by marking the passage of time. Clothing styles identify eras, and thus fashion becomes an index of history. At any given moment, fashion imposes homogeneity, but over time it mandates constant change. That variability represents both the relentless innovation imposed by global capitalism’s drive for profits and the triumph of individual fancy over nature, tradition, and fixed authority. Since what is novel one day becomes passé the next, to conform to the movements of fashion is to embody history’s dialectic of old and new, maturity and youth, tradition and novelty, the eternal and the transitory. Barthes observed that even more than it expresses sex and gender, fashion signifies age.

Fashion confers membership in a generation and thus becomes a transaction between generations. Fashion can cause generational conflict when adolescents adopt fashions that alienate their elders, or, as in Victorian society, it can be shared between mothers and daughters. Victorian mothers consulted fashion magazines to dress themselves and their daughters in the latest modes. To help them marry men, mothers willingly draped daughters in clothes that exposed or accentuated breasts, waists, and hips. But the gaze solicited by women’s fashionable dress belonged most often to women, for Victorian manliness directed men to admire women’s bodies while deriding the fashions that clothed them.

Dense as it is, Benjamin’s aphorism about fashion is thus incomplete, for in probing fashion’s depths, he overlooked its surface: the most overt pleasure Victorian fashion offered women was looking at other women and being looked at by them. The elaborate color plates that circulated in Victorian fashion magazines and epitomized Victorian femininity depict women who solicit and return other women’s fascinated, admiring, and probing gazes, who lock eyes, walk arm-in-arm, and stand so close to each other that their hands and dresses overlap. Fashion plates were one of the most popular forms of imagery targeted at women, and by the end of the nineteenth century over a million women had been exposed to them in France alone.

Though similar to other types of images that depicted dress in detail (clothing-trade plates, costume prints, caricature), the term “fashion plate” is reserved for images that promoted fashion by depicting women wearing the most current clothing styles. Before the 1770s, European royal courts set and disseminated fashions by exporting life-size dolls garbed in actual clothes. Portraiture, historical surveys of national costume, and women’s amateur art paved the way for iconography to replace the clothes themselves. By the 1770s, French and British magazines supplying fashion news included hand-colored fashion plates. 

By the mid-nineteenth century, fashion plates were displayed in shop windows, sold as freestanding images, and appeared regularly in the women’s periodical press, often accompanied by patterns that enabled women to see and sew the latest dresses. During those decades, industrial innovations in fabric manufacture and the popularization of home sewing machines fostered an appetite for new clothes among the middle and upper classes and increased the pace of fashion. Fashion depends on quick dissemination in time and extensive distribution in space; a fashion is one only if many people simultaneously learn of it, adopt it, then renounce it. 

Like newspapers, fashion periodicals provided previews and updates of quickly passing events and were thus a crucial factor in the rise of fashion. Fashion flourished in a modern press organized around immediacy, vividness, novelty, and conformity, and women’s journals provided wide distribution for the fashion images that shaped collective taste. After the 1840s, increased train travel and the abolition of paper taxes expanded the market for all journals, including those reporting on dress trends. As Margaret Beetham has shown, the elite fashion publications of the 1830s were supplanted in the 1840s and 1850s by domestic magazines directed at a middle-class female readership and focused on daily household management as secular female morality.

After the 1840s, the most successful women’s magazines both represented the latest fashions and taught women household skills, thus mediating between aristocratic and bourgeois codes by reconciling display with regulation and restraint. As Beetham explains, women’s magazines were commodities that “gave entry into a world of commodities.” Their seriality promoted the endlessly displaced desire that fueled consumer society, and their regularity incorporated the domestic woman into the temporal cycles of a rationalized, industrial world. Many of the fashion images in women’s periodicals were produced by female artists. The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, which published fashion plates in each issue, advertised among its readers for women who could produce wood engravings, needlework patterns, and fashion blocks.

…Scholars have characterized women in fashion imagery as passive and imprisoned, but plates depict them in the acts of writing, shopping, strolling, attending exhibitions, horse races, and the theater, playing badminton, rowing boats, traveling on trains without men, riding horses, and hunting with guns (fig. 3). Images of fashionable women, like those of well-dressed men, are not so much passive as impassive. The fashionable figure, arrested in the midst of leisure activities, embodies the unhurried pace and relaxed stance of a luxurious life. Fashion plates were images of women designed for female viewers, and that homoerotic structure of looking is intensified by the content and structure of the images themselves. 

…Fashion, often associated with a sexually charged inconstancy, becomes a respectable version of promiscuity for women, a form of female cruising, in which strangers who inspect each other in passing can establish an immediate intimacy because they participate in a common public culture whose medium is clothing. That collective intimacy extended to the fashion magazine itself, consumed by thousands of female readers separately, but simultaneously. A woman who looked at a Victorian fashion plate did not simply find her mirror image, for in that plate she saw not one woman but two. Fashion plates reflected her gaze itself, for in most, one woman stares at another who does not directly return her look. 

…Fashion plates linked visual pleasure to tactile enjoyment, making the desire to become fashionable as inseparable from an erotics of looking and touching as the plates make looking and touching inseparable from each other. Along with the female gaze they solicit and represent, fashion plates evoke a female world saturated by a tactile sensuality represented through carefully rendered drapery and studied contrasts between the soft, curved folds of clothing and the hard angularity of objects. Often accompanied by sewing patterns, the plates touched on the technical manipulations necessary to put fashion into practice: selecting, handling, and sewing fabrics, and measuring, fitting, and dressing bodies. 

Women touch in many plates; in some their figures are contiguous and overlapping, in others they touch the same object, and in others they touch each other directly as they clasp each other’s hands or wrap an arm around a waist or shoulder. Their proximity to the front of the picture plane intensifies the illusion that the viewer could reach out and grasp them, representing touch as the promise of an exchange, the transfer of modish beauty as an actual handing over of body parts or fashionable objects. That exchange never quite takes place, for the viewer cannot grasp the image, and the figures themselves are never shown completing their transactions. 

Instead, they are captured in the midst of them, limned by the very imminence that defines consumer culture. Fashion plates relegate the viewer’s desires to a realm of fantasy, in the sense of something imagined but not yet realized, a powerful promise of transformation and satisfaction that is never definitively fulfilled or thwarted. Although fashion plates link look and touch, the two are often asymmetrical. In paradigmatic fashion plates, one woman looks at and even touches another who either turns completely away from the woman looking at her or looks in her direction but not directly into her eyes. In many fashion plates in which women touch but do not meet eyes, tracing the direction of the apparently vacant gaze shows that the figure who seems to stare into space is looking not at nothing, but at another woman’s breasts, hips, or genital area.

…The convention of posing one woman to look at another who does not return her gaze creates an erotic atmosphere redolent of voyeurism. Like the beholder who looks at the fashion plate, the woman who looks at another in the plate does so all the more freely because she is unobserved. An aura of autoerotic reverie envelops many of the figures in fashion plates, inviting their beholders to indulge in similar meditations. Modern fashion has always been associated with fantasy, with whimsical invention and erotic fabrication; in fashion plates, the blank faces of the figures make them appear to be fantasizing, enjoying vision without consequence and looking liberated from acting. In some fashion plates, those blank looks allow obscene touches to appear as the polite gestures of everyday intimacy. 

…Fashion plates frequently depicted girls whose elaborate clothing and poised stances reflected their incorporation of maternal taste and discipline. Victorian culture represented girls as epistemological paradoxes, so innocent that they could be intensively eroticized without raising comment. But unlike images and stories that eroticized girls for a mixed audience of men and women, fashion imagery displayed girls in erotic dynamics with adult women for the delectation of a female audience. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault argued that the intensification of family ties in the nineteenth century also sexualized them, and fashion plates show that in the process all cross-generational ties were eroticized, including those between adult women and girls. 

…Designed to be objects of an appreciative female gaze inside and outside the image, girls in fashion plates also embody a desire to look at and touch a woman, a desire figured as both self-abasing and self-important. Fashion plates make evident the girl’s desire to be seen as well as to see; they activate a female pleasure in looking at women that triggers an equally strong desire to be looked at by them. Victorian fashion iconography disproves the still influential claims that men look and women are looked at, that only male viewers enjoy corporeal spectacles of femininity, that voyeuristic scopophilia is split from exhibitionistic fetishism, and that the beholder must choose between desire or identification. 

Fashion plates were popular because women who wanted to turn themselves into spectacles of femininity took pleasure in looking at images that reduced women to lovely bodies filling out beautiful clothing. Far from creating a utopian reciprocity that bypassed objectification and voyeurism, fashion plates trained Victorian women to assume the appearance of middle-class femininity by indulging their pleasure in looking at female bodies, their longing to touch them, and their desire to control them.”

- Sharon Marcus, “Dressing Up and Dressing Down the Feminine Plaything.” in Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

[luckyladylily]

Apparently the transphobic billboard CDPR was so happy to show everyone is fucking everywhere in Cyberpunk 2077. This studio is fucking gross and this game is such a trainwreck

Ok so I got this like a month ago or something and I have not answered it because I have lots of thoughts, and lots of them are not going to be popular. I am not mad at you anon, just a bit frustrated at the general situation, and I am going to be very direct.

To start, I am not defending CP77. I just don’t care. I don’t know enough about whatever is going on with the game to go either way, and whatever the case is CDPR does not need me to defend them. The only thing I do know about enough to create a well formed opinion is about the labor problems associated with the game which, honestly, matters more to me than virtually any insensitivity or similar blunders within the actual game.

So this is not about CP77. It is about the discussion of how trans women can and should be depicted in media.

I am going to make a bold claim. I do not think that the initial advertisement is transphobic. I think it was inevitably going to make a whole lot of trans women very uncomfortable, but that is not the same thing. It just isn’t that simple.

God there are so many layers here to cover all the bases. Look, I am going to do this by bullet point so I don’t have to explain and cite feminist and queer theory for 5 hours and ten pages. Trigger warning for people that might get dysphoric about bottom stuff.

Sex is not bad

Catering to sexual appetites and desires is not bad

creating content that appeals to those appetites and desires (meaning sexualizing material) is not bad

individual creations are not bad, it only becomes a problem as a large scale societal trend that erases other aspects of people.

many people find non or pre op trans women’s genitals sexually attractive

this is not a problem unless it is fetishistic

as trans people have come into the spot light over the last decade or so sexual attraction to women with dicks has made huge steps towards normalization.

we are past the point where we can or should assume that sexual interest and depictions of women with dicks are fetishistic

people just think we are hot

this makes people with bottom dysphoria uncomfortable because it draws attention to something that makes them dysphoric

dysphoria is a personal trigger, even when a particular trigger is wide spread

sexual interest in a trait that is a potential trigger for dysphoria is not transphobic.

There is a massive double standard for women with dicks vs women with vaginas - our sexuality is deemed far more dirty and is policed far more aggressively by everyone, including the left.

women with dicks should be allowed to be sexual without shame

people should be allowed to be attracted to our bodies without shame

people should be allowed to express that attraction in the art they create without shame

individual depictions of sexualized trans women are not transphobic, it only becomes a problem as a society wide trend that erases other aspects of trans women.

We have two seemingly competing interests: Allowing women with dicks to be sexual and allowing people to be openly attracted to them an express that attraction vs preventing a society wide reduction of women with dicks to sex objects

these are not actually competing interests - both forbidding the depiction of women with dicks in a sexual manner and society wide sexual objectification of women with dicks are symptoms of the same problem:

women with dicks are seen as especially dirty sexually and inherently tainted by the fact of their anatomy. We are reduced to our anatomy by both.

The ad features a trans women with an especially prominent attractive sexual characteristic - a big dick. We are not similarly offended by depictions of cis women with especially prominent attractive sexual characteristics, like large breasts, or similar depictions of men with large dicks. Because only women with dicks are seen as inherently dirty to this degree.

The depiction of a woman with a big dick is not transphobic. It is trans inclusive sexualization. Maybe it is trans inclusive misogyny, which is an odd idea but I hope you get it. I honestly don’t know enough to say either way in that case.

Many on the left still see the depiction of unique sexual characteristics of women with dicks as particularly crass and gross and openly oppose any depiction of such except under extremely narrow circumstances - the vaguely defined ‘done right’ way, which in practice means that all depictions of women with dicks being sexual is subject to policing and attack from the left.

While this protects some trans women from dysphoria, it alienates other trans women, stigmatizes us, and reinforces the idea that our sexuality is inherently and especially dirty.

The old rule of thumb that women with dicks should not be sexualized, created many years ago under very different circumstances, has outlived its usefulness

I have not been shy in the past about how I am a highly sexual trans woman. I am one of the trans women who feels alienated by the online left being so consistently offended by depiction of women with dicks, and the reaction to the in game ad is frankly extremely disheartening.

Go and look at it again. It isn’t even that sexualized! It is practically tame compared to typical sexual advertising. She is a pretty woman wearing a leotard with a big, tight bulge. There is nothing else sexual about the image. She isn’t making ‘come fuck me’ eyes at the camera. She isn’t posed in some lewd position. She isn’t even wearing something particularly risque. It isn’t even terribly exaggerated in size, it is within the limits of realistic sizes (if on the big end of the bell curve). Its just a woman with a big, tight bulge. Why is that so offensive? Your average shampoo commercial featuring bathing women moaning in orgasmic ecstasy at how much they love their shampoo is more sexually objectifying, but it isn’t about a woman with a dick so at most it gets an eye roll.

It is only seen as “hypersexualized” and offensive because the left finds the overt depiction of women with dicks offensive, that any depiction of a woman with a dick where you can tell she has a dick is hypersexualized. And this is from the people who are supposed to be on our side.

That image is very nearly the minimum sexualization you can have of a woman with a dick. There are two steps you could take to make it less sexualized: Make it less tight, or make it a bit smaller. But if you do both then you literally just have a woman with a normal size dick wearing tight clothes, and frankly ‘trans women can’t wear yoga pants because ew’ is just. I am not even going to entertain the idea. And yet this in game depiction of a woman with a dick is supposedly so hypersexualized that it is exceptionally transphobic and gross.

Trans women’s bodies are policed so hard, the double standard is unreal. The range of acceptable sexuality is so narrow it is practically non existent.

We need to be more careful about how we criticize sexual depictions of trans women because taking it on gut reaction is only making things worse. It is highly stigmatizing of trans women’s bodies and promotes the idea that any sexual behavior from a trans woman is hyper sexual and therefore potentially predatory. It works to confirm everything the right and terfs say about trans women being sexual deviants. We do not destigmatize trans bodies by throwing a fit and calling hypersexualization and transphobia every time one is depicted.

[boggirlsummer]

Wet Hot American Summer

August 18 Zoey and I thought we fixed the leak in my tent but we were wrong. I spent the early morning inching away from a puddle that finally pushed me out around 8 am - time to get up anyway. Too rainy to cook or make coffee and I left camp aimlessly. I could barely see anything through the smoke and clouds which threw a wrench in my non-plan to drive around and take photos out the car window. Grand Tetons and Montana and Wyoming were up there on my teenage bucket list (lmao, dream big!), mostly for the landscapes and western vibes and maybe a few cathartic renditions of Wide Open Spaces. I just hiked all summer so I feel like I earned a few days of all-american automobile tourism.

Cozy

Decision fatigue is a ball buster on solo trips (and in life) and sometimes I refuse to change course even when it’s clear that a plan isn’t going to work out. I drove around Tetons alternately listening to the directions and making random navigational decisions, so Google kept yelling at me to make a u-turn. Eventually I got annoyed with both of us and stopped for snacks at the general store. I’ve been making my way through all the kettle chip flavors and so far honey dijon is the best and korean bbq is the worst.

Drove straight through to Yellowstone hoping the storm would let up, but by the time I got there it was 50 degrees with rain expected all afternoon. I thought it would be SUMMER once I left the Bay Area, so all my sweaters and warm jackets are in vacuum sealed bags that I don’t have the space in my car to open. I wasn’t loving the idea of being wet and cold in Yellowstone all night so I talked the campground lady into refunding my site reservation and headed for Big Sky, Montana.

I felt bad leaving without seeing any of the Yellowstone sights so I stopped at Old Faithful on my way out. I knew laughably little about what I was looking at and when a bunch of people started gathering I thought to myself, is this thing gonna explode or something?? And ya turns out that’s the entire point, it shoots a bunch of water and steam into the air every few minutes. I bought a cup of coffee and watched halfheartedly. The only other attraction I know about is the rainbow glory hole and there was so much traffic to park in the lot I said screw it and went on to Montana.

No LTE between Yellowstone and Big Sky and I was without a place to sleep - luckily my sister was available to do some emergency concierge work for me. I eventually found a nice campground near town but the obscene number of bear country warning signs freaked me out. I backtracked to Big Sky to buy a $50 can of bear spray, what a rip. Feeling beat today so I made it up to myself with a bowl of chicken curry ramen and a Sapporo. It was no nugget curry, but it did the job ☺️

Reading the bear spray instructions before bed - you’re supposed to use it once a charging bear is two to three seconds from reaching you. Wtf. I can’t do anything in two seconds. Finished Year of the Monkey at last. Almost fell asleep with a candy wrapper in my pocket, instant death. Also I got my period and I’m worried this is going to attract the bears.

August 19 I broke my own rule. I drove to Bozeman this morning and had a chicken fried steak at the Western Cafe, “The Last Best Cafe.” I had a nice chat with two old guys at the bar, initiated by ME! We talked about my trip so far and books (I was reading Walden Two and one of the guys had Woman in the Window with him, and we agreed that both authors are pretty nuts). Good time all around and then one of them secretly bought my breakfast 🥰 I’ve only ever had creepy men buy me drinks at bars so free CFS with no strings attached was a revelation. My smile lit up the cold dark streets of Bozeman.

Too early for hostel check-in so I killed some time hanging out in a coffee shop and wandering around Main Street. When I’m alone in a new city I usually get on the apps, it’s fun to hang out with a real LOCAL and have an AUTHENTIC experience. I did this on my first night in Sydney last year and my date won $7,000 at a bar raffle he’d been going to every week for three years and then bought us a night’s worth of top shelf shots, bad coke, and dumplings. Obviously I was his good luck charm so I should’ve gotten a cut of that $$$ but whatever… Eventually we went back to his depressing loft outside of the city. It was barely furnished and full of his shitty art and luckily he didn’t have any condoms so I was able to decline sex without feeling guilty (I had condoms of course but didn’t disclose). He tried to fuck me again around 4 am and I was so confused I thought he must have found a condom while I was briefly sleeping. He had not. I snuck out at 6 am and caught the bus back to the city. Not the most restful night but nice to get away from the hostel for a little while. But ya I updated my Hinge location to Bozeman and got hella conservative men swiping on me 🥴 My profile isn’t anything crazy but I don’t think I’m giving off Megyn Kelly vibes. Are they playing some sort of sexual bingo? Are they out to stealth me? Seems sus.

If you are a man on Hinge with a naked photo on your profile I WILL screenshot it and I WILL make a collage of my collection once I have enough material and I WILL sell it as a NFT and I WILL make $0 cuz y’all are freaks. This is the tamest one I’ve got, text me if you want a photo of a naked man covering his junk with a pineapple.

Ooooieee hostel is grungy and subterranean and not the kinda place you want to spend many conscious hours in. I took myself to the movies to escape - another thing I really missed last year. I saw The Night House, which I would describe as an architectural horror? I’ve been thinking about architecture a lot lately, this cool site Zoey sent me has some interesting interviews and stuff. In the movies I ate an entire bag of sour gummy worms and a box of junior mints.

Had a freaky bookstore experience earlier today, not the first time this summer. I originally wrote a longgg paragraph about synchronicity here but I got self conscious and started wondering if hearing other people’s stories about synchronicity is like listening to them talk about their dreams. I personally love talking about dreams (call me and tell me about your crazy dreams!!) but things definitely get lost in translation and sometimes they’re straight boring (like when my old coworkers and I used to dream in Excel, fucckkk). So I get why people find it annoying and here at Bog Girl Summer we can’t afford to alienate any of our readers. All I will say is that I walked into a bookstore today with synchronicity very much on my mind, went to the psychology section to buy a baby Jung text, and there saw a literal sign that said “Staff Pick, Introductory Jung: Synchronicity.” So yes, I bought it. Don’t forget y’all - I have a psychology degree so please don’t come after me about confirmation bias and all that lol. It’s very possible that in this summer of upheaval I’m desperate for some kinda sign that I’m on the right path. Let me have this one 😘

I also bought this postcard which spoke to me because most days I feel like I’m trying to drink out of a firehose

[arecomicsevengood]

Seeds

Before I read it, I had this idea I could write a review of Ann Nocenti and David Aja’s The Seeds for the Comics Journal, but the book just sucked too much. It had basically nothing going for it, or even decipherable as an advancing plot. One thing wrong with it is there’s this sort of conspiracy element, or this “no one believes the news” anymore element of it, but Nocenti didn’t want it to be about “fake news.” Donald Trump has rewired the narrative, so now entire types of subject matter feed into this propaganda machine simply by being addressed. Nocenti’s best work does not shy from topicality, addressing the currents in the cultural air, but this time the modern world feels too hot to handle.

I ordered the Daredevil: Typhoid’s Kiss trade paperback, reprinting a bunch of Nocenti’s work with the Typhoid Mary character from the nineties. The longest story in there is a miniseries with art by John Van Fleet. It’s partly about post-Tarantino video-store employees turned filmmakers kidnapping Typhoid Mary to use her as the subject of a documentary about serial killers and violent media. It’s also about Typhoid Mary working as a private detective trying to track down a killer of prostitutes, who the police don’t care about, and are maybe the actual killers of themselves. Storywise, it’s a pretty cool attempt to address real-world issues of the day within a pulp context.

Van Fleet’s art is pretty boring and bad in a way that’s distinctly ahead of its time. While the miniseries itself probably wouldn’t exist without the precedent of Elektra: Assassin a decade before, (a spinoff about a female Daredevil villain created by the writer during their run on Daredevil where that character defined their run) all the photoreference that’s probably actually just photo backgrounds run through filters sets a precedent for the Alex Maleev/Matt Hollingsworth Daredevil stuff to come a decade later. And it’s frequently annoying on a page design/panel background level. Like in terms of how the panel borders sort of default to grid shapes so there ends up being things that “read” as panels but that don’t actually do anything for pacing. It’s just fitting the narrative into regimented design choices.

This maybe only happens the once. But the art is also just super-stiff throughout, with a very chunky line that eliminates any real nuance. There’s a bunch of characters, but a lot of them are indistinguishable from one another, and that’s because the linework is about as muddy as the color palette — It kinda seems like he’s working with models and photo reference but also doesn’t have that many models to work with so he’s having them play multiple roles, but also his work basically seems more like photoshop filters than actual drawing? There’s a bunch of stuff that I think sucks, basically. But you can also draw a direct line from what Van Fleet is doing in Typhoid to what Aja does in The Seeds. All these choices that are meant to be classy and dignifed, a move away from the excess of superhero comics. The covers of Typhoid are just portraits of the main character, interchangeable from one issue to the next, which was a move that again, was ahead of its time: This is what so many Marvel covers in the 2000s looked like, the Tim Bradstreet Punisher covers probably being the go-to example. It’s pretty dull but it’s nice they’re not super-sexualized.

While the choices arguably suit the subject matter in Typhoid, which is at least partly about movies, in The Seeds, the story doesn’t really make any sense because the visuals seem so steeped in unreality. The premise is that a tabloid has photographed an alien, proving aliens are real. There is really nothing within the context of the story that explains why the news outlet would have enough gravitas to be convincing and have this be an actual news story. And the book is drawn in Photoshop, which is itself a photo-editing software, so the “reality” of the book is defined by the very medium that people recognize as why images can’t be trusted. This contributes a level of irony that could maybe be worked with if the book itself wasn’t so ugly and dull. The whole thing looks like some Banksy bullshit. Outside of word balloons, text appears in the large all-caps typeface of image macros. I don’t have scans of The Seeds because I gave my copy away on account of there not being any reason to keep it around.

The book is beyond dated at the time of its release. Partly this is due to the speed the cultural conversation has been moving for the past five years.  It’s been a difficult time period to work on a work of fiction about the news, certainly, and not only has the comic been a long time in the making, the writer has also been away from making comics for decades now. If the authors had been able to make this as a serialized monthly comic, it might’ve stumbled into timeliness, or the predictive, but as it is, the reading experience feels like a bunch of different, disparate ideas that do not really cohere into a narrative. Leaving aside how the book seems to emerge from a general cultural gestalt of the the 1990s, when The X-Files and Weekly World News were objects of discussion, every major plot point or news story chosen for thematic resonance is approximately fifteen years old. I believe 2005 was when I started to hear about colony collapse disorder. This bee metaphor has been lapped by a Honey Nut Cheerios campaign at this point. (A few years back, boxes of cereal came with seeds of wildflowers you/children could plant.)

Darin Morgan’s episode of The X-Files revival “The Mengele Effect” ably addresses all the issues with how cynicism and conspiracy theories feel different now, all the issues that Nocenti seems terrified of and hopes the audience doesn’t think of when reading her humorless X-Files throwback comic. That episode’s great.  Much of The Seeds seems like it was better done in the decidedly not-great Transmetropolitian. There’s something so dated and sad about this comic’s idea of a cool journalist protagonist: People barely smoke cigarettes anymore! I know no one wants to draw people vaping, but the imagery this book wishes meant “cool, urban, woman” reads as nostalgic affectation in 2021. That so much of the commercial landscapes of our cities has been replaced by vape shops was one of the biggest clues we were already living in a dystopia three years ago.

Nocenti, when she was working regularly, got to be a pretty effective writer for having a monthly deadline wherein she could speak on the issues of the day as they were happening. In the absence of a regular gig, this rare chance to speak her mind gets hampered by how much there is to talk about, and how complicated it all is. If it’s too complicated to address in an ongoing superhero comic, a one-off graphic novel with vaguely commercial ambitions turns out to be a worse space for it. It’s so much sadder than anything in this dream-of-the-nineties comic that the authors were given the grace to make something only under the conditions that doom it to failure. Real people made this work of fiction, and I don’t know what the fuck they’re even talking about, and that’s a more complicated narrative than the journalists in this comic who… stumble upon a story and then need to take to back because it’s too important or something? I don’t understand what this comic is about. It’s clearly gesturing at being about a bunch of different things, but what they get from being in juxtaposition with one another, I don’t know.

In interviews in advance of the release of The Seeds, Nocenti talked about how this was the first time she got to make a comic that didn’t have to have fight scenes or conflict in it. But reading Typhoid it’s clear how conflict ties the story’s disparate threads together. But also while reading Typhoid I kept on thinking about how visually, the Steve Lightle shit that preceded it is so much cooler! Here he is, bifurcating a page so two narrative threads can be told with different approaches to stoytelling:

People sometimes talk about how crazy it is that Nocenti started her Daredevil run immediately following up the Miller/Mazzucchelli Born Again run with a fill-in drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. But I don’t think anyone has pointed out that, since these Typhoid Mary team-up comics appeared in Marvel Comics Presents, she’s basically following up Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X, and Steve Lightle is totally capable of doing that! Even if these comics are kinda whatever narratively, Nocenti comes up with dense enough narratives to give him shit to do. She’s a good writer within the context of the harsh strictures of early nineties mainstream comics. Which I know seems like a harsh diss! But being a writer that makes work that consistently gives a comics artist something interesting to do is a difficult job that many people are just not interested in doing for various reasons, so it should be recognized when it’s attempted and accomplished.

It’s also interesting that the whole visual approach where both Steve Lightle and Barry Windsor-Smith shine is dependent on flat color. The changes in storytelling made to accommodate the shifts in visual language in full-color mainstream comics didn’t really benefit anyone, and now needs to be outsmarted. In The Seeds, we’ve got this pretty dull reading experience that superficially in its two-color print job and nine-panel grid, looks like it might be influenced by Mazzucchelli’s work in Rubber Blanket and City Of Glass. And we’ve got a black and white Barry Windsor-Smith comic coming out from Fantagraphics in a few weeks that I really hope blows it out of the water.

[thesorceryman]

Possession is defined as ‘‘the belief that an individual has been entered by an alien spirit or other Para human force, which then controls that person and alters his action and identity. The word Jinn in Arabic (Alujonnu in Yoruba "borrowed from Arabic word JINN") refers to something that is (concealed and hidden from the human eyes ) in Al-Qaamoos Al’muheet ( which is the biggest Arabic dictionary of all times ) said this about the word ” JINN ” { Jannahu al-layla } which means ( the night covered him ) ( or concealed him) so this word simply means some being who is Hidden from the normal human eye. JINNS (demons or devils) are unseen creatures that are believed to exist in all major religions and have the power to possess humans and cause them harm. Jinn possession can manifest with a range of bizarre behaviors and unusual movements which could be interpreted as several different psychotic, non-psychotic mental disorders as well as feelings of the implant by foreign bodies or aliens. They do, common with humans, such as they also have the ability to, however, possess some characteristics in the ability to think and reflect. Similarly, choose between the path of good and the path of evil in the same manner as humans.

These are conscious beings, which are invisible, among the ordinary people they are known as ‘fairy’, ‘giant’, ‘genie’, ‘ghost’, ‘JINN’, ‘elf’, ‘aliens’ and various other names are given to them depending on the image they display. The people think that they are the SPIRITS of the dead people, so they try to establish contacts with them by calling them. Last but not least, these conscious beings introduce themselves as ’BEINGS FROM OUTER SPACE’ to those people whose level of knowledge is insufficient to be able to buy their stories. The JINN takes its existence, its liveliness, and its ‘self’ conscious from the absolute ‘SPIRIT’. With regards to the perfection it possesses within the consciousness, it is something that comes after the ‘HUMAN BEING’ in the whole universe. It is fully aware of its own consciousness only after it can enfold itself in the periphery (the body of light). This, in a way, can be considered as the birth of the JINNS concerning their structures.

Their death in the absolute sense takes place right at the moment of the doomed event, just like human beings. Their death in the simplest sense (i.e. the kind of death we know in general) takes place whenever their periphery (body of light) gets isolated from them at the end of their planned life span. The JINNS can understand the death of each other simply by finding out the loss of another jinni from their group. Even though their lifetimes are as long as the humans in reality, due to their structure and some properties they possess, this period could be as high as the age of 700-1000 when compared with us. In actual fact, when their life span of 60-70 years concerning their own unit of time is compared with our unit of time, we can see that it amounts to a life span of nearly 1000 years. Due to their structural behaviour, they also possess quite sophisticated potentials and some of them are even more superior to humans in terms of their conscious level. However, it is known for sure that the superior human being is much more superior to the most superior JINN. Concerning their character, they are weaker than humans. They are more inclined to display such behaviours, which can be considered as negative. In general, they deal with such activities. Despite this fact, there are also good ones among them as well as the ones who are more religious and even ones who are saints although this is very rare.

Their most significant characteristics and pleasure is to manipulate the weak points of the people, make individuals depend on them and make them do what they want, make them serve as well as worship them as if they were their servants.

So what are the ” Elemental Spirits “ ?

Elementals spirits are what some call the Nature Spirits or Devas or the Faeries . this type of Spirits have only one element to their nature usually Air, Fire, Water and Earth , so Djinns are part of the Fire Spirits.

Yes, the Spirits of the Four Elements are divided into four categories, earth, air, fire, and water. Let us look at each of them in turn.

1. EARTH: Earth spirits, that is the beings, which relate to rocks, stones, minerals, precious gems, hills, and mountains are traditionally called in English ( Gnomes ). All aspects of the solid physical structure of the planet come under their domain. Although they can be found within rocks, they also have the freedom to move around but generally stay close to the ground. They are a) Gnomes b) Kobolds c) giants d) mountain spirits, they are short about 1 to 2 feet tall and thy look old with full beard those are the Gnomes or the Ghulz, the other type are bigger and bit taller, most of them live underground, under the trees or on hilltops.

2. WATER: Water spirits are connected to all liquids, but their presence can be felt in a much more powerful way by streams, rivers, lakes, and, of course, the sea. They are traditionally known as Undines, they have males and females. but their females are shining as if wet, is female, nude and without wings, the exquisite limbs gleam through the white auric flow, the arms are particularly long and beautiful, and she waves them gracefully in her flight. She is about four feet in height and her general coloring is silvery-white, with gold stars around the head.

3. AIR: The spirits of the air are connected to all gaseous substances but like water, beings are best sensed in winds and breezes. Because air moves so quickly they can be difficult to pin down. They are known as Sylphs in tradition although the perception of a ‘fairy’ with tiny wings that can fly is a close approximation to how they appear to children.

These live in the element air and are like light in the atmosphere. Sensitive to the movement of the atmosphere, they have a sleepy consciousness. Their task is to transfer light to the plants. The stream of air caused by a flying bird creates a sound they can hear. They like birds flying through the air. Sylphs are connected to movement in space, like modeling and directing the wind. Elves (or fairies) are more connected to the expansion of life in their area.

4. FIRE: (these are what most people call the JINN ) Fire spirits can be found in volcanoes in nature but also in any fire, from candle to inferno. They are known as Salamanders or Vulcanii and are the most difficult of all of the elementals to connect with, being said to the only associate with philosophers and adepts of the magical arts.

Possession worldwide is found more commonly in women and marginalized groups and maybe a vehicle through which they can express their complaints in a context in which they can be heard. Spirit possession generally occurs in cultural contexts in which the self is more likely to be fragmented. Whether or not possession is itself seen as pathological is dependent on the cultural context in which it occurs; by no means are all cases of possession seen as signs of illness. Being possessed by demons or evil spirits is one of the oldest ways of accounting for bodily and mental disorders. The idea that spirit possession and mental illness are related has a long historical legacy.

Possessed individuals sometimes exhibit symptoms similar to those associated with mental illnesses such as psychosis, hysteria, mania, Tourette syndrome, epilepsy, schizophrenia, or dissociative identity disorder; this includes involuntary or uncensored behaviour. Since possession is not normative in Western cultures, it is the cultural context that determines the distinction between psychosis and the spiritual. Spirit possession is a culturally specific way of displaying symptoms of psychosis, dissociation, social anxiety, etc., and is a fairly global idiom of distress. That is, whereas a person with psychosis in the West may believe he is being controlled by a computer, a member of a community that beliefs in spirit possession may believe his body to be taken over by a demon.

How does JINN possess people?

1. Weak spiritual protection

2. Hexing and cursing

1. WEAK SPIRITUAL PROTECTION : The JINNS establish their connections especially with nervous women following the time they’ve given birth to a baby or during illnesses accompanied by high fever or during accidents. This is because during those periods, the brain is busy with the extra activity taking place in various parts of the body and therefore the human being simply cannot have control over the brain’s activity in a desired manner. As a result, the JINN takes over the control in the related part of the brain at that particular weak moment by becoming visible

to the person in whatever form he likes and force him/her to do whatever he desires.

Sometimes this act of forcing can take place by the impulses that the JINN sends to the part of the brain that is connected with the faculty of pain centre and making the individual feel that pain. At other times, by triggering the centre of fear, JINN could make the individual even more frightened so that the individual can do whatever they desire. Most probably, what is simply being carried out is that they send out light signals to a certain centre in the individual’s brain and therefore create the desired effect. Whenever the mediums go into a trance, they experience exactly the same situation. This is the reason why they are asked to relax and let themselves loose in the first place. Here, the objective is to decrease the control that the human being has over his

brain. In this way, the JINN desired to be contacted would be able to possess the individual more easily. In such connections, the women particularly say that the JINN becoming visible before their eyes appear as a very handsome man.

The JINNS who establish contacts openly with the women or the young girls usually marry them and have sexual intercourse with them. During these connections, the women see the JINN as a solid object and have a sexual contact with it as if it were a male from the human kind. However, as the JINN do not have a tangible solid physical body, then the following question comes to the minds.

How on earth the JINN who cannot even be transformed into a complete physical object can manage to satisfy a woman belonging to the human race during this connection?. Under such conditions, the JINN stimulate the part of sexuality centre in the brain of the woman involved and cause her to get satisfaction. As a matter of fact, all the scientists who work in the field of physiology know very well that when an electro shock is applied to a certain centre of the brain, it is possible to make that person do whatever you want. In fact, these are just the sort of contacts, which do not only take place between a woman from the human kind and a man from the class of JINNS. There can also be a sexual relation between a woman from the class of JINNS and a man from the humankind as well. Moreover, it is also said that the JINNS have homosexual contacts too. In all of these connections, the point which is usually discovered in common is that a member of the JINN makes a contact with a human being only for the purpose of fulfilling his selfish desires on the human being forcefully. In general, the people who have been forced into such positions do complain about this. These events take place without consent of the individual.

In such cases, especially when there is a connection between a woman from the human kind and a man from the class of JINNS, the woman isolates herself from the world outside and most of the time she wants to stay in a room.

2. HEXING AND CURSING: These are done by individuals who possesed power to manipulate or control JINNS to do whatever they want. In this case, the JINN is sent to forcefully ententer the body of the victim and do as it pleases. The victim will exhibit some of the symptoms listed below.

SYMPTOMS OF POSSESSION

1. Hearing voices

2. Erratic behaviour in one's words, deeds, and movement.

3. Being quick to get angry or weep with no apparent cause

4. Seeing metaphysical objects

5. Irregular menstruation in women

6. Constant headache

7. Frightening nightmares which include seeing various kinds of creatures such as ghosts, or apparitions, seeing oneself falling from a high place, seeing people in strange forms and snakes.

8. Insomnia, anxiety, and fear upon waking.

9. Talking loudly in one's sleep, or moaning and groaning.

10. Having sex in dreams.

All these symptoms still need to be examined by a professional or priest before establishing the fact that truly one is possessed by JINN through reading or divination.

Nowadays, the medical science cannot diagnose these cases and therefore they try to cure the patient by means of applying electro-shock for the sake of the positive science. However, in these cases too, hardly any result can be obtained. At the end of the electro-shock process, there is a disorder and an agitation in the brain cells of the individual causing a state of calmness. This of course does not mean that the person has been cured, it is because of the disturbance that she had due to the shock. Generally, it is seen that the people who have good healing powers can correct such situations by way of prayers, spells and ritual blown upon to the depressed person.

If you're experiencing any of the symptoms above or needs spiritual help, contact me. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @thesorceryman

[bnwthinking]

Unpopular opinion probably, but I really feel like I can’t trust anyone who isn’t bi anymore. All the shit that’s lobbed at us: the gatekeeping, the policing, the assumptions, the prejudice, the incredible misogyny directed at bi women, the erasure, the indifference, the nitpicking of everything we do....I’m over it. I don’t want anything to do with the LGBT community anymore honestly, because they’re the ones who made me hate being bi. The toll it’s taken on my mental health is high and I realized I have to disengage. That makes me feel real grief because I wanted to take pride in who I am, I wanted a community...but after seven years of bullshit, I just don’t have the energy. I don’t even want to call myself bi anymore, I just want to replace my sexuality with an empty void. I want sexuality to be an alien concept to me completely. I regret coming out to the very few people that I did and I regret all the sapphic art I have drawn, even though I have shared none of it. Hell, I hardly even want to draw women at all anymore, and that used to be my favorite thing to do. It all just makes me feel shame. Blargh.

Am I taking this all too seriously? Am I too inside my head? Do I “just wanna be oppressed so bad” like they all say? I just don’t know anymore.

I’m sorry to dump this all on you, Mage. You seem like one of the very few people who actually loves and cares for your fellow bi women and I needed a sympathetic ear so badly. I felt like if I didn’t tell it to someone it would just punch itself up out of my head. If you want to delete and not respond to this I totally understand.

ok so first off, thank you for trusting me a rando online with this, i am always happy to hear if you need to share. 

and secondly, darling, you are absolutely not taking this too seriously. biphobia is a big issue, you’re allowed to think it is a big issue and you do not deserve to suffer it. sapphic spaces online right now, lgbt places generally, are not doing enough as a collective to stop people like you from getting hurt. this is on us as a group and we are failing. i know you don’t want to be oppressed because i don’t either. i have spent many a night going from ‘i wish i was only gay’ to ‘i wish i was straight’ to ‘i’m so glad i’m bisexual and fuck everyone else’ -- and i don’t know anyone else who is bisexual who hasn’t felt this way. it has been a battle for fifteen years now for me personally. and it does feel like a battle and you should acknowledge that. i also totally get the wanting to just un-come out thing and it is part of the reason i am so bold in identifying as bisexual these days -- because no one wants us to be bisexual.

and i feel similar to you about the lgbt ‘community’ -- they make me feel worse than any cishet ever could, worse than my parents calling me a lesbian, or my aunt asking me why i don’t have a boyfriend. we are supposed to be one people and yet no one will throw bisexual women under the bus quicker than rad lesbians. talking about the facts of our experiences is important, even in the face of the noise. 

i wish i could tell you something that would fix this. that either ‘the others gays will get better’ or ‘fuck it let’s just defect’ but i don’t think either is great. i do know how it feels to be alone when you’re supposed to be surrounded by people with shared experiences. you are not alone in this, you’re not even a minority. bisexual women have been silenced for years and we have to learn to be loud again, i think. no one else seems to want to help us. i hope you feel better about some of this soon, i know how bad it can effect you. i have a chronic illness and i almost ended up in hospital writing my everything wrong with the masterdoc pdf. take care of you and in the nicest way, fuck everyone else. if surrounding yourself with bisexual company is what you need to do right now, then that is okay. lesbians and gays and straights love hanging out in little groups, which is fine but we should be allowed to do it to. 

i mean, i’m not gonna say never talk to a monosexual again lmao but having more bisexual friends than lesbian ones, learning about bisexual history, and dating bisexual people has changed my life as an adult.

anyway, i’m here whatever you need and i’ll be thinking about you xx

[libertariantaoist]

We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. "I'm this way because my father made me this way. I'm this way because my husband made me this way." Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.

My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm -- as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.

A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.

The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture

Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is the past, not the dizzy present, that is the best door to the future.

For all the feminist jabber about women being victimized by fashion, it is men who most suffer from conventions of dress. Every day, a woman can choose from an army of personae, femme to butch, and can cut or curl her hair or adorn herself with a staggering variety of artistic aids. But despite the Sixties experiments in peacock dress, no man can rise in the corporate world today, outside the entertainment industry, with long hair or makeup or purple velvet suits.

Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their ''evil'' look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it.

Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?

I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passe abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.

If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis.

My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, destroyed liberalism, because of our excesses.

The airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan - it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.

Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo.

The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair.

The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens.

We need a new kind of feminism, one that stresses personal responsibility and is open to art and sex in all their dark, unconsoling mysteries.

Something went very wrong in feminism ... Every revolution eventually needs a new revolution. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to get rid of feminism. I'm trying to reform it, to save it, to bring it into the twenty-first century, in a way that allows the sexes to come together instead of being alienated from each other, that allows sex to be HOT and not have, like wet blankets of sermonizing thrown over it.

An enlightened feminism of the twenty-first century will embrace all sexuality and will turn away from the delusionalism, sanctimony, prudery, and male-bashing of the MacKinnon-Dworkin brigade. Women will never know who they are until they let men be men.

[Catherine] MacKinnon is a totalitarian. She wants a risk-free, state-controlled world... Literature, art, music, film, television - nothing intrudes on MacKinnon's consciousness unless it has been filtered through feminism. ... She is a Stalinist who believes that art must serve a political agenda and that all opposing voices are enemies of humanity who must be silenced. MacKinnon and [Andrea] Dworkin are victim-mongers, ambulance chasers, atrocity addicts... [they] are fanatics, zealots, fundamentalists of the new feminist religion. Their alliance with the reactionary, antiporn far right is no coincidence.

All fear of "offensive" speech is bourgeois and reactionary. Historically, profane or bawdy language was common in both the upper and the lower classes, who lived together in rural areas amid the untidy facts of nature. Notions of propriety and decorum come to the fore in urbanized periods ruled by an expanding middle class, which is obsessed with cleanliness, respectability, and conformism.

I think that this new global technology is not risk-free. This is why we must resist anyone who tries to take over or oversee the Internet. Once you get a consolidation of power, then you are one step away from fascism. The minute you have a power vacuum, you have the military step in.

Capitalism is an art form, an Apollonian fabrication to rival nature. It is hypocritical for feminists and intellectuals to enjoy the pleasures and conveniences of capitalism while sneering at it.... Everyone born into capitalism has incurred a debt to it. Give Caesar his due.

Read More

[tokumusume]

tokumusume’s list of best and worst movies and dramas watched in 2019:

There’s a new category this year. Inspired by kpopalypse, welcome the Honorable Mentions! Movies that weren’t exactly bad but also weren’t good. Movies and dramas are qualified to enter if I watched them for the first time this year, not that they were released this year. Click on ‘keep reading’~~

Best Movies:

1.      Parasite

Another masterpiece from the director of Snowpiercer (let’s pretend Okja never existed). A poor family con their way to a rich household. Choi Woo-Shik from The Witch (see below) is the eldest son and mastermind, fabulous as always. Definitely the best movie of this year. For me, movie of the decade.

2.      The Witch Part 1 The Subversion

This movie is amazing, hard to describe without spoilers. A perfect mix of Stranger Things and Hanna. Choi Woo-Shik can come to my house and kick my ass anytime. I can’t wait for part two.

3.      Death Trance

Visually stunning, kinda like Amemiya Keita’s style in early Garo or Mad Max. I wish the movie was longer and the characters were better fleshed out, Ryuen the monk and the little girl had so much potential... The most interesting thing about this movie is how sexualized the main male character is compared to the female ones, and apparently, the swords were designed to look like veiny penises (can’t find a source for this info), and yes, they do look like veiny penises. The final showdown is heavy with sexual energy. Have I already said that Ryuen deserved better? #RyuenRights

4.      Gintama 2: Rules are made to be broken

The barber shop scene is a fucking cinematic masterpiece. I never laughed so much like I did with this movie. The way it doesn’t take itself seriously, the meta jokes, everything is perfect. Even better than the first one.

5.      Kingdom

While I think that some fight scenes were way too long (like the bamboo forest one), the dynamics between Shin and Hyou/Eisei were highly entertaining, at least in my shipper eyes. I like that (SPOILER) the King of the Mountain People is a woman and not once they try to call her Queen. She is a King. Hashimoto Kanna is adorable as a Ten, Kanata Hongo does a great job as Eisei’s psycho brother, Sakaguchi Tak waves his sword around, the usual stuff but with added layers of dirt and sweat.

6.      Bravestorm

A movie I lovingly call “Japanese Pacific Rim”. Full of Kamen Rider stars (Hino Eiji! Misuzawa Haruka! That girl from Heisei Generations, the one with a sword! She has a sword in this as well!) and giant robots (god, I love giant robots!), I waited so much for this movie and it exceeded my expectations. I just wish I could’ve watched in theaters, it had a limited showing in my country.

7.      Twelve Suicidal Children

What begins as a murder mystery ends with a twist you won’t see coming. All of the actors are amazing, but special mention to Sugisaki Hana and that guy from that one boy group I forgot the name but can’t be bothered to Google.

8.      Gakkou Gurashi

Four girls and their teacher try to survive the zombie apocalypse trapped inside the school. This one destroyed me for days.

9.      Forest of Love

I’ve watched some Sono Sion movies but nothing prepared me for this. Be aware of extremely gory sequences and sensitive topics. Hinami Kyoko is so amazing as blue-haired, punk girl crush Taeko that I totally didn’t notice she was AkibaBlue in Akibaranger.

10.  The Host

After watching Parasite I decided to go on a Bong Joon Ho binge and watched this horror movie. Not as good as Snowpiercer and Parasite in my opinion but heart-wrenching nevertheless. The little girl is the star of the movie.

11.  The Hungry Lion

A story about the dangers of social media and slut-shaming. I want to punch Mizuishi Atom in the face.

12.  Cromartie High

A little absurd comedy about yakuza-style high school boys (played by middle-aged men lol) forming a club to battle aliens summoned by themselves just because. It made me laugh like a child. A hidden gem.

Honorable Mentions:

1.      River’s Edge

Depressing as fuck. Warning: the cats die. It’s not graphic but it’s traumatizing. Yoshizawa Ryo is a gay boy who sleeps with old men for money. There’s a graphic sex scene (not Yoshizawa, sadly) where my only thought was “That thing is gonna get stuck in there! Use a condom!” Can’t remember much from it except for these three scenes.

2.      The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

Yamazaki Kento has the acting chops of a dead fish but it comes handy for playing a teen with psychic abilities and zero social skills. Hashimoto Kanna is one of the prettiest girls in Japan. Yoshizawa Ryo with white and blueish hair looks more like Sakata Gintoki than Oguri Shun in the Gintama live action. The end is a huge let down but the fun ride is worth it.

3.      Ano ko no, Toriko

Congratulations to Yoshizawa Ryo, he has FIVE movies in my list of favorite movies this year! This is to make up for crowning GIVER as the biggest waste of time of 2018, this list is totally not biased, lol. “Ano ko” could be just another romance movie but the (very) little insight into how the entertainment industry works and not focusing on school life made me love it. Poor Sugino Yosuke being left behind again, when will this boy get the main girl?

4.      Monstrum

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it’s pleasant enough to fill a rainy afternoon with a lot of blood and spilled guts. Hyeri of Girl’s Day is the heroine and Choi Woo Shik is the commander she falls in love with.

5.      Weirdo Go

I confess I watched this one just to see Ji Li (aka my snake son Nie Huaisang) dressed as a woman but it was enjoyable and not that problematic.

6.      Real - Kanzen Naru Kubinagaryu no Hi

Directed by the same guy that did “Creepy” and “Before we vanish”, there are lots of twists you won’t see coming. And a dinosaur. A fucking dinosaur.

7.      Tomodachi Game: The Final

The movie loses its focus halfway through then picks up again minutes before ending. Yoshizawa Ryo delivers again as the sadistic Yuuichi, much like his role in Gintama. The plot twists are the star of the movie.

8.     The Living Dead

Sorry Wen Ning. I saw the plot twist coming in the first 30 minutes of the movie, not very smart of the writer. His personality did a 180° turn for worse and I’ll demote the movie to an honorable mention for it. Gao Han is cute though, I would like to see him as a better character.

9.      Backstreet Girls

Some recycled scenes from the drama to situate the viewers, a completely new story for the movie, it is certainly funny and enjoyable, if you can get past the forced gender reassignment surgery background and transphobic jokes (you shouldn’t get past it btw). I like the soundtrack.

Best Dramas:

1.      The Untamed

Do I need to say more?

2.      The Tale of Nokdu

This Korean romance had everything to be a mess but it wasn’t!!! *claps* I don’t hate the main female character and the whole palace politics actually kept me interested until the end. The complete shift of atmosphere mid-season was strange at first but ultimately very welcomed.

3.      The Naked Director

Netflix original Japanese content is amazing. This one is a look at the life of a legendary porn director in the late 80s, I learned a lot about the history of Japanese porn and censorship (yay pixels!) and went looking for his, erm, works. Very graphic, 69/10 don’t recommend watching with people in the house.

4.      Channel wa Sonomama!

I don’t remember it well but it’s about a news station and what is like to be a journalist and it was very interesting and funny.

5.      SCAMS

Forgettable. Sugino Yosuke with black hair cons old people via phone calls.

Worst Movies and Dramas:

1.      The cat in their arms

The cats spend 90% of the movie in human forms, and halfway through it they simply abandon the cats’ plot to show a fucking long montage of a weird guy painting a picture of a nude girl. It’s also super creepy to see a grown-up man acting like a cat, getting belly rubs and eating cat food from a bowl. Yoshizawa needs to choose his roles more wisely.

2.      Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

A waste of Suda Masaki’s talent. Can Japan stop casting Tsuchiya Tao already?

3.      Samurai Marathon

Almost two hours of dirty men running through a forest. Maybe Japanese History experts will enjoy it, because I certainly didn’t.

4.      Lady Vengeance

While there are legit great moments, I didn’t find this “classic” to be anything special. The animal cruelty was too much for me.

5.      Hot Gimmick

This movie makes Bohemian Rhapsody’s editing look like a work of art. There are more flashing cuts than a T-ARA music video. I have no idea who likes who, who’s banging who, what even are they saying. Too much poetic shit for my like. I wanted to see Shimizu Hiroya naked. I was bamboozled.

6.      The Divine Fury

While some parts were interesting, at the end I still don’t know if the protagonist is possessed by a demon (if yes, then why would he help a priest destroy his friends?) or if he was blessed by God when his father died and talked to him (the glowing hand thing, why and how??). The exorcism parts are really, really scary, or maybe I’m just a chicken, but I had to avert my eyes. The best (only) part is that the protagonists are hot. Hello Woo Do-Hwan, you can sacrifice me to Satan any time…

[interesting-blog-name]

FKA twigs MEGAREVIEW (LP1/M3LL155X/MAGDALENE

FKA twigs is a British R&B and art pop singer who came up as a backup dancer for various artists’ music videos, and decided to start her music career, releasing her first official EP, EP1, in 2012. I am not familiar with anything she’s done except for her feature in A$AP Rocky’s Fukk Sleep, so I don’t know what to expect, even though I’ve heard good things. I’ll be listening to her two studio albums and an EP she released between the two, chronologically.

 LP1

I love it.

Although twigs isn’t fond of being categorized as an R&B artist, specifically alternative R&B, as she has stated in an interview with The Guardian, there really isn’t much else to be used to describe her music, and the term is pretty convenient to embody most of the sounds in LP1, so I’ll most likely be using it. The album is a mixture of strong, dark electronic production and twigs’ beautiful falsetto singing, taking form as either the sexually charged, euphoric vocals you hear in the chorus of Two Weeks, or the hymnic elements her voice has in Closer and the intro Preface. These two key elements constantly clash and form something way more impactful than what they’d be individually, and give the whole LP a soothing and simultaneously dark and dizzying atmosphere.

The highpoints in the album are when the two combine into grand moments such as the ending of Lights On, where the production amounts into a huge chunk of pure bliss, sounding like there are tens of different sounds all in sync with one another, or the processed, multi-layered chorus in the next track, Two Weeks. Another great quality to the production style in the album is that it gets to be adventurous when it wants, how it wants, whether by pulling back completely and minimalizing its role to let FKA twigs’ voice shine on Hours, or on my favorite track Pendulum, where the whole song is built around this unstable knocking and simple yet effective manipulated keyboards, completely fading out at times leaving the high-pitched vocals to themselves.

The lyrical themes are all built around love and passion, with varying levels of aggression to romanticism (Lights On, Two Weeks vs. Hours, Give Up) or regret, such as in Numbers, which showcases how far into the electronic side the production can go, with erratic drums and beeping at the start, progressing into some gorgeous synths under some of twigs’ most heartfelt singing in the project. The exception is Video Girl, the most personal track here, where she sings about her time as a backup dancer and the struggles that came with her intent on achieving fame. The lyrics hit hard and it serves as a really nice intimate moment in the album.

For the tracks I don’t like as much I have the two closers: Kicks and One Time, the latter being only available in the deluxe version, which is not on streaming platforms. Kicks, from what I could tell, is all about being enough for yourself, specifically sexually. Without the grand ambitious production from the rest of the album, this outro is left with okay vocals and an odd theme that doesn’t go anywhere, backed by some slightly annoying production decisions, and a nice chorus which is definitely the best part of the song. One Time, on the other hand, is just really bland compared to the craziness of the rest of the album, as it is the most stagnant and uneventful of the tracks.

The sound of LP1 is definitely intriguing, and I consider it a nice introduction to an artist I have high expectations for.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Pendulum, Video Girl, Two Days, Lights On

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Kicks

  8.25/10

“You’re younger than I am broken. I dance feelings like they’re spoken, so my conversation’s not enough.”

 M3LL155X

Read as “Mellissa”, this EP was released in August of 2015, and features 18 minutes of music spanned into 5 tracks, and I love to say there’s not one track here I don’t like

What surprised me about M3LL155X is how “explosive” twigs seems to be compared to LP1, where most of her tracks were sung in a comfortable, soothing falsetto tone, in here she isn’t afraid to let her voice carry out a lot more, which brings some much appreciated strong emotions and power to the songs here, great examples being her fast delivery on the hook of In Time, and her enchanting finish to Mothercreep.

The EP starts with Figure 8, which places the listener dead center in the chaotic instrumentals the project has to offer, with a banging bass right at the beginning. The track slowly progresses from its slightly angelic cadence into the weird, choppy vocal effects in the latter half, giving the track a nice finish. What I find a little underwhelming are the lyrics, sometimes they come off slightly meaningless, at least at first glance, but I feel they could have been used better, maybe to convey meaning other than love and relationships, which is done in the last two tracks, but not in such an effective way in my opinion, specifically on Mothercreep, a track supposed to be a mature hindsight to twigs’ mom’s decisions to her daughter’s life, which doesn’t come off as super personal in a way it could have. Like I said, however, the ending to this song is gorgeous, and I love how the song waits to bring in that climax, it really ends the EP on a huge high note.

To me the best the EP has to offer is In Time and Glass & Patron, the first being this infectious, addictive, ever-evolving fat banger, I just cannot get enough of it at all; and the latter being the weirdest, most electronic-influenced song here (I mention the umbrella electronic genre very carefully because I know fuck-all about it), with the oddest but most interesting progression here. That isn’t to undermine twigs’ vocals, as they are as good as ever, I just wish in tracks like this and I’m Your Doll, where she reaches some great vocal inflections, she’d make more use of them, but to me they feel like the vocals are somewhat teasing themselves to the listener, when they could’ve been used to a much greater extent.

I love this EP, I love its aggressiveness and how it surprised me, but I know, even as good as it is, that all the potential here could have been used a bit better.

 RANKED TRACKS: In Time, Glass & Patron, Mothercreep, Figure 8, I’m Your Doll

 8.15/10

“Paper cut it, I feel the slightest rip is a river that’s overflowing me”

 MAGDALENE

Bruh.

I don’t even know what to say honestly, I’m completely blown away. This is heaven.

From the start, I thought this album was gonna be alright, but immediately after home with you I knew this shit was something else. This is by far her most cohesive, beautiful, emotional, greatest album overall. I seriously don’t even know what to say, I’m writing this immediately after my second listen, and I love almost every aspect of it.

I guess I’ll start by the things I liked the least, which were probably the tracks sad day and holy terrain, even though these tracks are at least great. The melodies in sad day are so unique and entrancing, really the only thing I didn’t like as much was the production, which felt like it could have gone a bit further. For holy terrain, I have mixed feelings towards it. While a part of me feels like it was a little weird, a bigger part is amazed at how well these two worlds merged with each other to form a track as beautiful as this; again, it doesn’t stand out as much as some others, and I think twigs sounds a bit like Ariana Grande at the beginning of the hook, but fuck me some moments in this song are insane.

I was a little indifferent towards thousand eyes at first, but I’ve come to appreciate a slow, ascending intro to this mindfuck of an album, and the track right after that, home with you, is pretty much perfect, I have nothing bad to say about it. I love the alternating between processed and raw vocals, and it just ends so beautifully, it’s seriously otherworldly.

“Otherworldly” is actually a great word to describe almost anything here. mary magdalene is a gorgeous look into the ethereal feminine theme this album is solidified over, and sounds like something you’d hear as you ascended into heaven after dying; fallen alien is aggressive like something out of M3LL155X, but even more polished and fits perfect into the context of the album, and after it starts a nearly flawless outro of three tracks: mirrored heart, daybed and cellophane. This is pure emotion, I cannot describe what I felt while listening to these three. The first is probably one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, or at least that’s what I feel right now. I have to be extremely careful not to listen to this too much, so it doesn’t lose its magic on me.

daybed is much simpler instrumentally, with an ambient undertone to the track that just really fits my personal tastes. The lyrics in this track are raw feels, in fact the lyrics in MAGDALENE in general sound much more mature and fleshed out, and I absolutely love it, it’s heartbreak, bittersweet beauty in every direction, all connected by this weird theme of something greater than humanity; if twigs’ intent was to make herself look extraterrestrial with her art, but at the same time undeniably human, then I think she succeeds, because, to me, it feels like she is the music, it feels like she pulls these songs straight from her soul, and that’s why it’s so alien, because it is incredibly human.

For the closer, cellophane absolutely wrecks your heart with a gorgeous piano ballad, and I’m very happy I never heard this song, considering it is the lead single to the album, because it just added so much emotion to the outro of one of the best albums I’ve heard. I seriously cannot get enough of it, and I think I’ll go sleep for a while now just to clear my mind a little bit. I’m sorry if these three “reviews” haven’t gone super in depth with the albums, but I feel like if I talk about them any longer they’ll lose some of their beauty to me, plus I’m not doing this to be perfectly objective, just to share my super biased, super inexperienced thoughts on what I listen to. So I guess just listen to them. They’re awesome. Peace.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: home with you, mirrored heart, cellophane, daybed, mary magdalene

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: none

 9.45/10

“Aching is my laughter, busy is my pastime, telling is my silence, blurring my horizon, smothered is my distance, careful are my footsteps, possessive is my daybed.”

[fatalism-and-villainy]

because I'm thinking about my boy today: Celegorm

1: sexuality headcanon - biiiii (by far the most straightforward of my orientation-type imaginings for the House of Fëanor…)

2: otp - I don’t have one, but there are lots of ships involving him that I can get into - Celegorm/Aredhel as a sort of experimentation thing in their youth, though I don’t personally see it as “true love”; Celegorm/Oromë can be fun in that I’m into god/mortal (well, not “mortal” in this case but you know what I mean) ships or mentor ships, though it’s not necessarily my actual headcanon; possibly some sketchy variation of Celegorm/Orodreth or Celegorm/Finrod (or more like, Celegorm getting Overly Friendly with Finrod when he wants to make both Finrod and Curufin very uncomfortable); most consistently, Celegorm/Curufin, but I only see it becoming sexual once they’re at Himring and their relationship has become suuuuper unhealthy and all the cracks are showing :))

3: brotp - well, Curufin, obviously - I have a lot of feelings about how their personalities contrast and complement each other, such that they function so well together (personally and politically) when they’re in sync, and how they can let their personal vulnerabilities show with each other in a way they can’t with other people, because each knows the other will pick up the slack for them. And how their knowledge of each others’ unspoken insecurities and flaws gives them so much power to hurt each other, by the end. Aredhel as well - I don’t have as many headcanons about their relationship, but I like the idea of them bonding in Valinor over their sometime-alienation from their immediate families (we’re told Celegorm goes to learn from Oromë instead of visiting the halls of Aulë with the rest of his family; Aredhel I can see disliking being the only girl, and sometimes feeling left out when her brothers spend time with the sons of Finarfin. I don’t think this is a major source of angst for either of them, but it is a sort of common ground that their friendship is built on). I also really like the idea of Celegorm teaching Amrod and Amras to hunt when they were younger. In general I think he was deeply fond of all his younger siblings, and really wanted them to look up to him. 

4: notp - That’s difficult, given that I’m pretty versatile with who I can ship him with - I guess canon Celegorm/Lúthien, though I wouldn’t be opposed to it in some sort of AU setting (which I think you’ve done?) 

5: first headcanon that pops into my head - While Celegorm’s interests were mainly turned towards the natural world, and he wasn’t as emotionally invested in material culture as was common among the Noldor, he was very fond of textiles, and when at the market enjoyed running his hands over them, testing their durability, etc. (He was a very tactile person in general.) Fëanor hoped this would lead to a study of his grandmother’s craft, but Celegorm’s interests were turned towards practical uses rather than visual art (and he wasn’t much of a creator), to his father’s disappointment.

6: favorite line from this character - “Then Celegorm arose amid the throng, and drawing his sword he cried: ‘Be he friend or foe, whether demon of Morgoth, or Elf, or child of Men, or any other living thing in Arda, neither law, nor love, nor league of hell, nor might of the Valar, nor any power of wizardry, shall defend him from the uprsuing hate of Fëanor’s sons, if he take or find a Silmaril and keep it. For the Silmarils we alone claim, until the world ends.’” - I just had to include the bit about him drawing his sword XD - but the way his speech here is then compared to Fëanor’s speech in Tirion after the Darkening is so interesting to me, the way he inherited his father’s charisma/ability to stir a crowd, and the way his political/rhetorical methods are similar to Fëanor’s in that they both involve being super direct and soapbox-y (in contrast to the more subtle manipulations that Curufin favours). And it’s just a fantastic moment.

7: one way in which I relate to this character - I relate to his restlessness and craving for movement/the outdoors, especially as a remedy for getting stuck in a mental rut. 

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character - Everything. Everything about him gives me secondhand embarrassment. 

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave? - Absolutely the second

[korora12]

Tagged by @corisanna

1. What is your favorite relationship type to write/read? Romantic, platonic, familial, and any subtypes.

I like romantic relationships that don’t rely solely or primarily on physical attraction, but instead on a deep similarity between the two characters. I like when two people meet eyes and realize that “You understand me. You get me better than anyone else I’ve ever met, and I feel less lonely knowing that someone else sees the world the same way I do.”

2. How much or what kind of research do you do for your fiction? If you don’t write, has a fic ever made you curious enough to research something?

Only as much as is necessary. I usually use research as a springboard for inspiration when I hit a block, letting myself wander the fields of Wikipedia until I stumble upon something that knocks the block loose.

Of course, sometimes I research stuff just for fun, with no relation to my writing whatsoever, until some random point down the line where it suddenly does and I’m super happy I already know [Random Fact #237].

3. What was the first work of fiction you remember becoming completely engrossed in?

Hmm. Probably Animorphs. I remember doing everything I could to hunt down the numerous books in the series (back in the ancient, pre-Amazon Prime days). I’d prowl the various school and public libraries near me, ask for specific books in the series for Christmas and birthdays, and even buy the occasional book at the yearly Scholastic Book Fairs, using what little money I got for an allowance.

I made it most of the way through the series, but then there was one book, near the end, that I couldn’t find, no matter how hard I looked. And it was an important, plot-changing, book that I had to read before continuing. Which meant I never actually finished the series.

Of course, nowadays you can find them all online as pdfs. Maybe I should revisit the series sometime and finally finish it. I already know how it ends, but I still feel like those last few books deserve to be read.

4. What work(s) had a lasting influence on you or your writing style?

Going back to Animorphs again. There is a straight-line connection between me reading that series as a child, through my elementary school friends Brooke, who was obsessed with dogs, and Caitlin, who was even more obsessed with dolphins (I used to find pictures of dolphins in magazines and cut them out just to give to her), through my Grandma’s love of science, all the way to my decision to study Zoology in college. If I had never read those books, I wouldn’t have developed the passion for animals and animal behavior that has shaped my life for over two decades.

Also, stylistically speaking, I really respect that series for how it treated its readers. Its target audience was grade schoolers, and yet it never shied away from showing the realities of violence and war. I don’t know that I’ll ever write children’s literature, but I’ll always have this series to remind me of what kids are capable of understanding and handling.

5. What kind of sound environment do you prefer for writing/reading? Silent, white noise, music with/without words, sitting in a public place with the ambient noise of humanity, etc.

Depends on how well my brain is cooperating. Pure silence is ideal, but more often than not there’s some manner of song stuck on repeat in the background of my mind, and the only way to drown it out is with non-lyrical music of some sort. Usually I try to pick songs that match the mood of whatever scene I’m trying to write.

6. Are you or do you like authors who are teases, in story or out?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’m a big fan of the Death of the Author trope, so I tend not to get too worked up by whatever the author may be saying and just let the story speak for itself.

My first instinct is to say that an author shouldn’t worry too much about what their fans think and should write the story they want to write, and it will find readers that appreciate it. However, I recognize that the nature of serial online writing, such as fanfiction, changes the game a bit. Such authors have a much more immediate, direct connection with their readers than authors who release one or two physical books every year or so. Some authors take that to an extreme, turning stories almost into a dialogue with their readers, each new chapter in some way defined by how people reacted to the previous one. And that doesn’t even touch on Quests, a type of story on forums sites such as Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity that require player input on a regular basis to continue. In these types of situations, I can hardly blame an author for playing with their readers heads a bit. The reactions they have can be a form of entertainment all their own.

7. Have you ever experienced a “the characters write themselves” or “character rebellion” mental state?

Not yet. For the time being, I remain in complete control of my universes, but I recognize the hubris of assuming this to be a permanent state.

8. Do you have a favorite franchise crossover? Like Bleach/Harry Potter, Madoka Magica/Card Captor Sakura, etc.

I don’t know if I have a particular favorite. I was really fond of Secret Trio for a while, which is Danny Phantom, American Dragon Jake Long, and Randy Cunningham 9th Grade Ninja. I’m still very fond of the Disney/Square Enix megacrossover that is Kingdom Hearts, despite being very disappointed in the most recent game in the series. Then there’s Kino’s Journey/Anything, mostly because I love Kino’s Journey, and I love seeing her response/reaction to various other worlds.

Also, Stargate/Anything. The only reason I ever started watching the show was because I’d read several different fics, all in different fandoms (Avatar, Yu-Gi-Oh, Star Wars, Naruto), and all of which crossed over with Stargate. Despite the similarities, both being sci-fi stories set around the turn of the millennium involving mind-controlling aliens, I’ve yet to see a good Stargate/Animorphs crossover. It’d be pretty easy to do, too. There’s a point in the Animorphs series where they decide to bring knowledge of their guerrilla war to the attention of the US government. If they’re already in the Stargate universe, I’m sure the president will quickly pass the problem along to the experts, and suddenly you’ve got the perfect setup of adults who think they know how to handle the problem, are mostly right, and don’t want kids fighting in a war, vs child soldiers who have no intention of giving up the fight so near its end, even if the adults are more competent than they expected.

I’m gonna have to write it myself, one of these days, if no one else gets around to doing it.

9. Do you remember anything about the first fanfic you ever read?

Two Halves by DameWren. My first fandom was Naruto, and my first fanfic was a NaruHina fic that both introduced me to the concept of fandom, and also sold the ship for me in a way that I’ve never shaken. I remember very little beyond that, except that it managed to correctly predict that Naruto would go on a training trip, despite being written before such an event happened in canon.

10. Is there a work of fiction that you are annoyed doesn’t have much if any fic? Like Bizenghast.

Kino’s Journey, Cowboy Bebop, Double Arts (just never got enough attention in general)

11. What fictional character do you strongly identify with?

Weiss Schnee, from RWBY. While I’ve never been accused of being rich, I am a middle child with a much older sister that cut ties with the family when I was young and a younger brother that I never got along with while growing up. My parents were also abusive, my father physically and both of them emotionally, and they taught me a number of unhealthy ideas about race, amongst other things, that I’ve had to put serious effort into unlearning. And I have, since becoming an adult, traveled long distances across the world, partially for my own benefit, and partially to distance myself physically from a family I’ve never felt particularly close to, resulting in a drastic personality shift that took a couple years to complete, but ultimately left me a very different, and much better, person.

So, yeah, Weiss is basically my favorite RWBY character, and one I really need to write more often, all things considered.

That was fun! I’ve never been tagged in anything like this before. My turn for questions!

1. What is your the most recent fandom you’ve gotten involved in? Have you made any content for it?

2. Do you have a favorite AU/plotline that you love regardless of fandom (ie. Peggy Sue, Coffee Shop AU, Space AU, Self-Insert)? What about it do you like?

3. If you write, how do you go about deciding a character’s sexuality? If not, do you ever have any sexuality headcanons for characters?

4. What’s the longest fanfic that you’ve ever read, beginning to end?

5. How often do you make something you’re proud of? Doesn’t have to be writing, just has to be something that wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t made it yourself.

6. What are your opinions on OCs in fanfiction?

7. What is your favorite storytelling medium (ie. television, written word, spoken word, video games, song, etc.)?

8. What was the last song you had stuck in your head, and what was it about?

9. Do you prefer reading/writing stories set in fictional worlds, or stories set in the real world/real world analogous (ie. Supernatural or Marvel Comics)?

10. If you could bring one fictional character into the real world, who would it be and why?

11. Pick your favorite of the questions I was asked to answer for yourself.

I just realized that I don’t know how many of my followers are writers. I guess @hunkygoddess @tmifangirl21 @queendarktigress @ladyvallhalla @i-mushi @xekstrin @shinobicyrus and anyone else who sees this and might be interested. No pressure, it’s just for fun!