#also sorry can’t really flag my post for cw

[korbydaze]

Ahaha I fell

Body hurty

[artfulmagic]

cw: blood, anguish tw: sui ideation  My Half-Year in Hell

You read that right: half of my year has been spent in a Hell of my own making, because I was naive and thought things changed for the better in regards to my own father, but I was sorely mistaken.

If you want to get technical, it’s been approximately 8 months since that fateful Memorial Day weekend my partner and I planned to take off, so we could move my dad downstate, so he could be closer to family and get the support and help he needed. To be frank, I thought after the loss of my mom and then my stepmother a few years later, I thought perhaps we could pursue a healthy relationship, that my feelings (or lack thereof) regarding my father would change. I was wrong.

A part of me is still uneasy talking about this as I’m not one to talk about my personal life very much, but I need to get it out there. I can only keep up the “everything’s fine” facade for so long. In truth, I am not fine. I haven’t been fine for months. In fact, I’ve been so miserable, I just don’t want to live anymore. Granted, I don’t want to off myself, but there are times I’d like to, to get away from this situation I decided to push myself into.

I was stupid. I always knew there were red flags: the fact that my father would mentally abuse my mother and call her names when she wasn’t around, the fact he’d start arguments with her if he didn’t have his way with something, the fact that he has a tendency to act affectionate in one instant (“lovebomb”) and then cruel the next, his possessiveness and distrust in regards to my mother, his paranoia delusions regarding other people thinking they’re out to wrong him in some way, the list goes on and on. During my childhood, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but I’m starting to wonder, is that really what’s wrong? He took the medicine he was prescribed, and while it calmed him down, he was still… him. Nowadays, he doesn’t even take it anymore. He says he doesn’t like the way it makes him feel, and that he’s fine without it.

During his stay here, I’ve tried to make it a point to get him re-evaluated, but he’s fought me on it. Being a Vietnam veteran in the US, he’s been immersed in the VA medical system for a long time, and he outright refuses to go back into it out of distrust. My partner and I have also spoken to him about a mental health evaluation outside of the VA medical system, but we’ve been fought on that as well. It probably doesn’t help that he and I have been both confrontational since he’s moved here, and anything that I try to tell him, he just throws right back at me.

At any rate, though, I’m past exhausted. I can’t even cry anymore, and taking out the rage and pain I feel on objects around me just seems pointless. I know that that’s not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it has been better than ending up wanting to physically hurt my father for all that he’s done and has said to me, or my mother up until the day she died.

There’s a lot more to this story than I’m letting on, but just getting this down in a way that’s cohesive has been difficult. I really need to talk to a therapist about all the issues I’ve been dealing with, and I’d like him to do so as well. I am not his therapist, and I’m no longer a child or a “precious baby” he needs to take care of; I’m just trying to live my life. That said, though, I think I have a plan. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, this plan doesn’t involve any bodily harm towards myself or towards him. I don’t want to reveal too many details for fear that he might somehow find out through this blog post or otherwise. Just know that I am beyond done with this situation, and my partner and I are taking our lives back.

I’ll keep you all posted. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and to all my friends who have had some inkling on what’s going on, thank you for all your continued love and support. I really do appreciate you all. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to talk to you about everything.

[getosgf]

Cooking without a recipe

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Fandom: tokyo revengers

Characters: mikey, draken, chifuyu, baji, mitsuya

My headcanons on how cooking without a recipe with them would go

Cw: some curse words

An: aaaaaaaa I’m so sorry for not posting for some time, life’s been kinda hectic these days and I’m still trying to finish some of the requests😭 also it’s my birthday today :) (Not proofread so sorry for any mistakes)

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Mikey

He had been craving chicken nuggets for a while now, so you offered to make some homemade ones with him

You found a good recipe online but he insisted following a recipe wasn’t needed

“It’s literally just chicken and breadcrumbs, we can just wing it” pun not intended

Oh boy

It had already gone wrong when you went shopping for ingredients

Instead of buying chicken cutlets, mf bought a whole ass grilled chicken

“Since it’s already grilled we can’t get salmon vanilla😁”

Cutting the chicken into bite sized pieces was a disaster

He somehow nearly stabbed you

You told him you’d take over the cutting from him and he could toss the chicken chunks into some egg and breadcrumbs

Literally the easiest task, right?

WRONG

When I tell you this mf licked his fingers EVERYTIME he dipped a chicken piece into the beaten egg

Anyway

You went on to frying the chicken after you banned him from the kitchen

He was kinda sad about it

But it was the right thing to do

To cheer him up a bit you put a flag on the top chicken nugget on the plate

After taking your first bite you realized you forgot the seasoning because of the chaos💀

He fought for his life on the toilet that night (don’t eat raw egg kids!)

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Draken

You were incredibly hungry after getting back from driving through the countryside on the back of Draken’s motorcycle

He offered to make his special hot curry for the both of you

Since you were absolutely famished, of course you couldn’t reject his generous offer

You watched him get all the ingredients he needed

You asked if he needed a recipe, to which he replied that he’d already made it so many times, he knew the recipe by heart

Growing up without parents made him a fairly good cook

He began with cooking the rice

Then he cut the chicken and vegetables into bite-sized chunks à la gordon ramsey or so he tried

You offered your help, but he refused to let you lift a single finger

A true gentleman

He cooked onion and garlic in a pan until they became fragrant

He added the chicken and vegetables to the pan

While he was preparing the grated apple and honey for the curry roux in a pot with water, the smell of something burning began to fill the kitchen

“What’s that funky smell, did you just fart- SHIT THE PAN”

He RAN to his vegetables and tried to save them from completely burning to a crisp

He successfully saved them after turning down the heat and burning his fingers trying to toss out some black pieces of carrot

He was so focused on flexing his cooking skills on you, he totally forgot he was, indeed, cooking

You helped him pour ice cold water on his burned finger tips to ease the pain, which he secretly really appreciated even though he tried to act chill about it

“You’re always so overly worried, it doesn’t even hurt” ow ow ow ow ow ow

He went on to add the curry roux with the chicken and vegetables and turned off the heat

When the curry roux pieces were completely dissolved, he served the curry with the rice on the fanciest plates he owned aka not made out of paper

Even after some trouble, the dish was absolutely delicious

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Chifuyu

He wanted to make a Swiss roll with you for a long time and you guys finally found the time to do it

At first you were really working together as a team

But later on he wanted to play dumb

“Can you please show me how to make the filling? I don’t know how to do it :(“

He does, he knows how to do it, he just likes to see you mix all the ingredients and explain everything carefully to him

It’s when he started to throw compliments your way mid-explanation that you knew what he was doing

So you told him that it was his turn to put everything you just told him into practice :)

Boy was dumbfounded, flabbergasted even

He was CONVINCED that he could just let you do all the work

Didn’t try to play dumb after tho, he was already caught once, chances of him getting caught twice were too big

But he was actually useful after you put him in his place

Some mistakes were made here and there like adding too much red food colouring, making the cake batter red instead of pink

Rolling up the Swiss roll almost failed miserably, the cake nearly broke

But everything turned out fine after a lot of screaming and panicking from both of you

The time had come for the cake to rest in the refrigerator for a couple of hours

Guess what

Mf couldn’t wait and ate half of it by the time the Swiss roll was actually done resting💀

He didn’t help you clean up either, said he was too sick to move

Never baked anything with him after

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Baji

Just like most days, he was realllyyyyyy craving some peyoung yakisoba

One problem tho

He didn’t have any at home, nor did he have any money, nor did he know how to make it with the ingredients he had

So he texted you to come over and buy some yakisoba for him

Since you know that him trying to cook on his own would result in the kitchen being on fire, you accepted his demand request

You showed up to his home with a backpack filled with peyoung yakisoba

He tried to reach for the packets in your backpack but you flicked his hand away before he could manage to grab them

Not even a thank you? Tch

Anyway, you prepared some boiling water for the instant noodles before he tried to eat them raw

“They’re crispy that way! What’s wrong with crispy noodles?!”

Everything.

Of course this mf doesn’t even know how to prepare instant noodles, so you had to do everything on your own

It was for the best tbh, he’d probably manage to screw up the most simple steps

But you let him empty the sachets with seasoning into the noodles, since banning him from the kitchen would be useless

He’d just keep coming back

However, you were right about him screwing up simple things

Instead of first opening the sachets, he just tossed them in, unopened

You didn’t have the energy to get mad at him tbh😐

You chased him out of the kitchen with a dough roller and fished out the seasoning sachets

He finally left you alone, so you were able to finish preparing the yakisoba

You insisted on just ordering takeout pizza for him next time

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Mitsuya

It was your birthday and so he decided to bake you a cake

He turned to pinterest for some inspiration to bake the most aesthetic cake you’ve ever seen

After scrolling for hours in search for the perfect cake, he decided on baking a matcha white chocolate cake with green frosting and decorated with edible flowers

He got the ingredients and got straight to work

First he made the batter with utmost precision, even without a recipe to follow along

Not even a tiny piece of egg shell in the batter, what a professional

Has this cooking playlist that he hums to while baking your cake

This man has incredibly steady hands, meaning that when he poured the batter into the heart shaped cake form, no batter was spilled

Like when he finished baking, he didn’t even need to do any cleaning up, the kitchen was still clean af

When the cake was done baking, he put on those cute lil oven mitts and successfully got the cake out of the oven

Even while his little sisters were dangling from his legs, he managed to decorate the cake with an inhuman precision

To top it off he wrote a sweet happy birthday message on the cake :)

Delivered the cake personally to you in a cute green box, matching the cake

Possibly the best cake you ever had, period

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[the-creeps-blog]

[Social Media Headcanons]

Our next handful of headcanon posts are prompts found from the blog @nothingbutprompts​ , just wanted to give credit for the ideas :)) Sorry but you might get a little tag spam from us ;D

DISCLAIMER: Nsfw mentions, so 18+ only please! ageless or minor accounts dni CW: mentions of transphobia/homophobia/misogyny as well. Characters with this content will be flagged with 🤍

Headcanons under the cut - 

Slender - 

Slender has an account on every social media platform the pastas have JUST to monitor and shi, he doesn't post anything anywhere

Let’s be real, slender wouldn’t even know how to use them

he's one of those people that thinks a comment is a dm so he's commented on a pasta's public post somewhere once scolding them and he didn't know everyone could see it

thats it, still doesn't post or anything LMAO

He’d post on someone’s post like “please delete this photo, I am in the bottom corner and I do not like how I look it in. Thank you -slender man”

He always signs off with “-Slender Man” eventually it shortens to “-S.M.”

As if all of them don’t know that’s his account

He also gets salty if they don’t follow them back

he'd confront them in the mansion like "BEN, pardon my intrusion of your.. videos..game.. but I must ask why you are not on my friends list on this Tik.. tiktok? tiktok place. Are you not part of my family? Do you not wish to be associated with me?”

Laughing Jack - 

LJ doesn’t have anything against the gamepastas or anything, but electronic entertainment just isn’t his thing unless it’s like a live show of a circus on TV or something similar like a movie.

He prefers physical or real life activities like board games, sports, stuff like that so he wouldn’t even have a phone or get on any computers

he would have a tiktok account that BEN made for him but he NEVER uses it cos he, again, doesn’t even have a phone or anything

He DOES like tiktoks tho, the funny fever dream type shit someone will occasionally show him but he couldn’t be bothered to check tiktok himself

Eyeless Jack -

Uses YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter

Eyeless Jack posts stuff about surgery, what he does to do it, and has occasionally posted a video of him actually operating on someone

Though it gets taken down on tiktok 24/7 lol he gets mad pressed about it. He hates TikTok for it

He went on a really long 10 minute rant about how Tiktok is dumb for taking it down cuz it’s educational ON tiktok

YouTube and Reddit is where most of his surgery vids go to now, he uses TikTok to talk about surgeries and medical procedures since he can’t show them.

He actually uses clothing and editing to hide every inch of skin and non-human characteristic because he wants to share his surgical and medical knowledge without being called a monster all the time and people ignoring his knowledge

Because of this he actually gets a simp following because “ooh mysterious faceless man with handsome voice” loll

he has an alt account on Reddit under an entirely different alias as his main accounts so they can’t be linked together as the same person. On this alt account he’s entirely open about being a cannibal and how humans organs taste and such.

on a more wholesome note, he likes the sense of humanity his fan base on social media gives him when they talk to him or comment on his posts as if he’s just a normal being. Afterall, he used to be one although he doesn’t remember his human at all except for a small few details. He doesn’t crave to go back to that life, but it’s nice for him to know what it was somewhat like. It gives him a feeling like he knows himself a little better now.

Homicidal Liu - 

Liu would have Reddit, YouTube, Tiktok, Twitter

Liu doesn't have any specific kind of post, he just occasionally posts about whatever mostly just comments and views other people's stuff

Hoodie / Brian - 

Hoodie would have Tiktok, Twitter, Tumblr, and OnlyFans (lmao)

This man, Hoodie would make thirst traps and doesn't even hide the fact that he's Hoodie of course he hides his true identity though, he's gotta have a normal human identity to go get groceries and shi for the pastas

Has Jane cover his tats with makeup so he isn’t recognized in public by his tats

His posts on OnlyFans are literally the same as his tiktoks, they’re not even NSFW, that’s the joke and that’s what’s funny bout it

He has a  hybristophiliac following on TikTok since his fan base clearly knows he is very much the real Hoodie.

Tails Doll - 

TD uses Twitter and TikTok

TD, like Liu, just occasionally posts but his posts are cryptic and meant to be creepy or uncanny, but his accounts' main purposes are to comment and view other people's content

Jane the Killer - 

Jane would probably have like every social media you can think of, at least the main ones

aesthetic monochrome type posts, but retweets/reposts gossip

posts her own pics from neck down in monochrome filter

follows Brian and makes fun of his thirst traps, also makes fun of his following for liking a literal murderer

🤍Masky / Tim - 

Masky/Tim has 4chan and reddit for sure, as well as Twitter of course

bullies tf out of anyone he can on his main acc, bih doesn't even have an alt

misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic posts 

it's a wonder he hasn't gotten his account deleted yet, but he's definitely been cancelled

Glitchy Red - 

Glitchy has twitch, tiktok, instagram, and twitter

streams pokemon nuzlockes, except he occasionally cheats on them

if anyone points out how he could potentially be cheating, his smartass would find a way to dispute it since he’s so tech savvy

he posts clips of his twitch streams on insta, twitter, and tiktok, they’re pretty much just plug platforms for him

but he has an alt pokemon fan acc on insta

Strangled Red - 

Steven also uses twitch, tiktok, and twitter

He streams pokemon nuzlockes as well, except he couldn’t be bothered to put in any effort of cheating so he actually got really popular for his absolute meltdowns over losing or things not going his way

I’m talking screaming so loud into the mic it pops and gets grainy, throwing chairs, the good stuff

He already had a small following because of BEN, he’s definitely the one screaming at BEN for putting his cat on the mic iykyk

plays Osu! and gets a fanbase simping for his hands and he thinks that shit's weird af but funny as hell

a simp made a Master Hand and Crazy Hand joke as reference to smash bros ultimate and he calls the fan base crazy hands because of it

Jeff the Killer - 

Jeff the Killer uses twitter, 4chan, reddit, tiktok, tumblr

likes ranting, and posting opinions and shi on twitter, 4chan, and reddit but also real weird shit on twitter like just what he's done in the day uses tiktok and tumblr not to post, but just to go through JTK simp content to fuel his ego and pride

Bloody Painter - 

Bloody Painter uses insta, twitter, tiktok, deviantart, tumblr, and amino

just art everywhere, the occasional opinion on current topics on twitter, on tiktok he posts timelapse paintings and art challenges

Lost Silver - 

LS also has accounts everywhere for the tea and shi yk yk

Lost Silver has Reddit and 4chan but not under his name

has a single post on insta of an image of his cyndaquil or celebi that's very blurry and a caption of a smiley face :))

Ticci Toby - 

Ticci Toby uses twitter, tiktok, tumblr, instagram

posts funny fever dream like videos on tiktok

Judge Angels - 

Judge Angels uses tumblr, twitter, instagram, tiktok

posts angel and pastel gore aesthetic stuff

doesn't post on tiktok, just watches other people's content

Follows Helen on everything and likes every post

Sonic.exe - 

Sonic.EXE uses reddit, 4chan, twitch, twitter, tiktok

tiktok posts are funny skits occasional cryptic video reddit and 4chan is like sonic fan shit or snuff videos of his victims 

twitch streams sonic games and the EXE mods, definitely boasts about having numerous mods dedicated to himself

🤍 BEN DROWNED - 

BEN DROWNED uses twitter, tiktok, twitch, reddit, 4chan

he's literally the kid who put his cat on the mic LMAO that's the video that got him popular on twitch he's streams LoZ, pretty much any shooter game 

BEN absolutely despises Fortnite because of the fortnite kid jokes and everybody accused him of being one

almost got cancelled for saying tranny but he IS trans

Sally Williams - 

Sally isn't allowed to have social media but she uses tiktok anyways and JUST tiktok

she would accidentally expose herself to the rest of the pastas by quoting a meme off of tiktok

-OUR OCS BELOW :)-

Valerie (OC) - 

Val would 100% be an influencer

Val uses insta primarily, she runs an onlyfans, she also uses twitch, and TT but she rarely posts on it

Iris Meadows (OC) - 

Iris uses tumblr, pinterest, and instagram for aesthetic posts, she uses tiktok just to comment on friends' posts and shi she doesn't post anything on tt herself

Iris 100% is a garden / plant and cottagecore aesthetic blog

Post written by Admin Dina

Everything written down is agreed by the both of us though, it is our headcanons. <3

[servicetopkaradanvers]

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place to say this, but I don't know if there is. And you're a smart person and critical thinker who has talked about this before. If this is totally weird, you can just delete it ofc. I've never properly watched Supergirl but I started reading fanfic around the time my mental health got real bad so it was a comfort thing I didn't bring too much thought to. I really identify with Lena and in the past, part of me has understood her actions-

and I know that they're wrong. The anti-alien rhetoric is obviously an allegory for racism or homophobia. She's violated people's basic human rights. And I'm scared that I'm a bad person because sometimes, I kind of get it. Which is insane because i'm a lesbian enby of color, i mean i get targeted by most of the -ist/ism actions. And I'm also too tired to think about things critically all the time. Supercorp was my comfort fic, content thing-

I knew it was problematic (the whole James thing makes me sick to my stomach, scared and sad) but I didn't know that Lena as a character was written that way. The metaphors never really clicked in my head because I never thought about it, but now I feel absolutely horrible about myself because I like and identify with Lena. I'm not really sure how to move on from here- I'm just tired. I wish there could be just one thing, one piece of media that wasn't prejudiced (granted sg is not the place to go if you want decent rep and the like) and all of those things I said earlier. Its just me somehow trying to justify how I felt and empathized with something I shouldn't have. So yeah, sorry that was really long. I hope you have a lovely day- sorry for the spam

FIRST of all, you’re fine, babe! Both in sending me this and in enjoying The Bad Media. That’s my thesis here: You’re fine. With this in mind, let’s unpack this big ol suitcase:

We’re living in a fandom moment where more than ever before, we’re thinking about the ideas we consume in fiction and how they may or may not affect us. This is a net positive! Fiction is not reality, but it undeniably impacts it, so for this and many other reasons, we should always think critically about what resonates with us and why. Does this mean dissecting every facet of something to find all the ways it might fall in line with oppressive power structures? Absolutely not.

You, as an individual, do not owe anyone an explanation for why you enjoy anything. Period. How you relate to a given character or why you like them is nobody's business but your own.

Supergirl, as a piece of media, is singularly awful in its lackluster lipservice to progressivism while simultaneously refusing to deliver any progressive themes. Socially and politically, it is a useless liberal wet dream. Kara is an immigrant from a dead culture working as the muscle for a secret FBI offshoot with zero accountability for all of the other aliens in diaspora she has rounded up and dumped into a cell without trial. Alex is allegedly a lesbian, but the key points of her endgame relationship are constantly deemed not important enough to get screen time, which is made even more absurd when examined from the angle that this series is marketed directly toward LGBT people. An embarrassing percentage of villains on this show are women of color, which is particularly loud when there are only 2 women in the main cast who aren't white. And "main" is extremely generous, given that Kelly is just there to Give Advice Good and everything M'gann says and does is as dry as toast.

My point here is that the whole show is rotted to its roots, and whatever quietly libertarian or even fascism-enabling bullshit they push onto Lena in a given week is par for the crusty, shitty course. Kara deciding that she's ok with the alien detection device because "there are bad aliens" is a lovely (read: awful) microcosm of why this show sucks so fucking hard. "People are entitled to their opinions" is for debates on whether pineapple goes on pizza, not for whether we should casually out, endanger, and disenfranchise our [insert minority metaphor here] because some of them are mean.

But what I would love for this fandom to wrap its head around, and what I hope you understand, anon, is that just because it happens on the show, doesn't mean we have to give a rat's ass about it. What the hell is The Canon, anyway? Especially in the case for Supergirl, which can't even get its own continuity right. Especially for an IP that has been rebooted dozens of times before and will be rebooted again in the future. We can just decide that Lena realized the horrible injustices she enabled through her position of power. We can even decide that they just didn't happen at all! This is all fake. It's not set in stone. Who came up with it, anyway? A network with a list of buzzwords they want included and a couple of D-tier showrunners cranking down caffeine to meet an absurdly tight deadline. It's not special. I can guarantee that you care about it infinitely more than they do, and you haven't even watched the damn show.

On a more personal level, people who are hurt, depressed, or traumatized have always and will always look for themselves in fiction. Myself included! And despite what lofty platitudes there may be on the matter, suffering does not make us kind. It does not make us better. Sometimes it's just suffering. Often it pulls us further from who we are meant to be. Often it just makes us "worse."

Trauma has made Lena emotionally brittle. A lifetime of manipulation and abuse has taught her to compartmentalize herself and lock her feelings behind a maze of doors. When she does let love in, she accepts it so wild and vulnerable that she can't see the red flags behind the rosy lenses. She latches so hard onto people she deems virtuous that she holds them to a standard none could fulfill. Her pain has to go somewhere, so it oozes out of her, into Non Nocere, into the post-reveal rift. She's a powder keg, and Kara spent 4 years shoveling more gunpowder onto the pile while holding the match between her teeth.

And despite these fatal flaws that make perfect sense through the eyes of Lena's trauma, she is so full of love. Like Kara, her suffering did not make her kind. She is kind in spite of her suffering. These are the characters we are drawn to when we're hurting. Lena’s trauma is an inextricable part of her, but it is not all of her, and neither are her mistakes.

There truly is not and never will be a piece of media that is absolutely innocent of the harmful structures thrust upon us by society, because we ourselves also participate in that society whether we are critical of it or not, whether we strive to change it or not. I'm flawed. You're flawed. Bettering ourselves is not a journey toward an ultimate destination of perfection. It is a garden we nurture in an endless labor of love because the joy that comes from seeing it flourish and change vastly outweighs the work we put into it and the weeds popping up around its unkempt edges. This is a lesson Lena herself could probably stand to internalize. Probably with lots and lots of therapy. Lots. And lots.

So, to circle back to the start of this? You're fine. You recognized the logic in a traumatized character's mistakes because our own gravest errors more often than not stem from the ways we have been harmed in the past. It's what makes Lena (or, at the very least, the many adaptations of Lena that exist in this fandom) a good character. She is, to her core, characterized proof that a crumbling foundation and poisonous soil do not define us. Which is why watching her heal and grow and learn a healthier kind of love is so, so wonderful.

In closing, I think it's worth mentioning that being critical of media does not mean that we stop enjoying the parts of it we like. There is a lot of gold to be pulled from the steaming pile of shit that is CW Supergirl, and that's why we're all here in the first place. So I really hope you can continue to enjoy it in whatever way makes you smile <3

[bookofmirth]

So I initially deleted this because I didn’t want to get into it, but I also think the question is genuine and I wanted to explain my thinking. CW for emotional and physical abuse and sexual assault.

I am tagging @silverlinedeyes​ because this ask concerns them and I don’t appreciate being vagued, whether it’s a blogger or someone answering an ask that mentions me. I try not to vague other people and I’m not perfect but... just getting this all out in the open.

So I can’t speak for everyone who was upset at the initial post comparing Ianthe and Gwyn. Personally, I kind-of grimaced and was mostly confused about what in the world they could possibly have in common and why such a comparison would be necessary. As people, they are fundamentally different. And to me, the comparison is incredibly thin. Eye color and priestesses? How many priestesses have that eye color? And to use that to connect them to a creature we’ve only read about in two sentences in the whole series, a creature we’ve never actually seen on page and know next to nothing about? Basically, the intention or purpose behind the comparison didn’t make sense to me.

Now I’ll be perfectly transparent - I didn’t read the whole post because I could tell that it wasn’t for me. I also didn’t go around vaguing it. It was mentioned in some asks that I got and I tried to limit my commentary on that post and focus on the comparisons I had made, intentionally. Because 1) I can’t speak from the position of a SA survivor, and those are the people that post concerned, and 2) I didn’t fully read it, and 3) I don’t want to vague people! This fandom is divided enough. I know I made a joke after acosf came out how we are all having separate, loud conversations in the same room and refusing to acknowledge the other conversations while somehow responding to one another. And it was kinda funny at first, but now it’s exhausting.

To me, comparing Ianthe, who is universally reviled as a r*pist, and Gwyn, who we know is a SA survivor, is unnecessary. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. Why do we need to do this? What is it telling us about any of the characters? About relationships? I know a lot of people found it anything from distasteful to downright offensive, and while I think that just about anything is fair game when it comes to fictional characters, I also personally think that the intention behind the comparison was confusing. I just personally don’t understand why we would need to talk about those characters in the same breath. What purpose does it serve? Someone who can speak from the position of a SA can please feel free to add on, if comfortable!

The reason that I compare Az and Tamlin is to analyze them as people, as characters, because I see a lot of similarities in who they are on a (currently) fundamental level - their anger, their loneliness, their attempts to restrain their destructive impulses. These are major parts of who they are as people and how they interact with the world. There were red flags present in acotar that I recognized from my personal life and that I can now see in Azriel. Frankly, it concerns me that people see Tamlin as a completely irredeemable villain, while not recognizing that Azriel shares some of the same personality traits. 

Comparing a r*apist and a SA survivor is an unequal comparison. Emotional and physical abuse, on the other hand, tends to be generational. I’m not an expert on a professional or academic level, but I did a quick search on my university’s database, and found this from “Interrupting the Intergenerational Transmission of Violence”, and please note that these lines were the context or background - this article didn’t set out to prove these statements to be true, they are already commonly accepted knowledge and so their research was looking to solve the problem:

Children exposed to domestic violence are at increased risk for a wide range of emotional and behavioural disorders. Conduct disorder, in particular, may ultimately lead to the perpetration of further domestic violence in the next generation. Parental characteristics such as warmth and positive attributions may mitigate the risk for intergenerational transmission of violence.

I think that as a fandom, people really, really tend to mischaracterize Azriel. It bothers me. He’s not soft. I’m sorry, he’s just not. We have multiple examples of him being described, using words like “rage”, “cruel”, “temper”. One of the first posts I ever made in this fandom that got a lot of attention (over four years ago) was trying to correct these mischaracterizations. They keep happening.

There was an icy rage in Azriel I had never been able to thaw. In the centuries I’d known him, he’d said little about his life, those years in his father’s keep, locked in darkness. (ACOMAF)

One moment, Azriel was seated. The next, he’d blasted through Eris’s shield with a flare of blue light and tackled him backward, wood shattering beneath them. “Shit,” Cassian spat, and was instantly there— And met a wall of blue. Azriel had sealed them in, and as his scarred hands wrapped around Eris’s throat, Rhys said, “Enough.” (ACOWAR)

Az didn’t answer. I held his gaze, though. Held that ice-cold stare that still sometimes scared the shit out of me. (ACOFAS)

Az had a vicious competitive streak... quiet and cruel and utterly lethal. (ACOSF)

Azriel stiffened, an outright sign of temper (ACOSF)

These are just a few of the examples, but we can also think about acofas when he gets angry at dinner thinking about how his mother was treated as a servant, when he can’t handle being around people who are happy on Solstice. I could make a whole post but I’m kinda sick of talking about Azriel at this point.

I have experienced an emotionally abusive relationship much like feylin was. I made myself so small, for years, because this person’s anger and anxiety and grief took up so much space in the world. I felt like I had to overcompensate, to not make them feel jealous if I was having a good day, and to not take on my negative feelings if I had a bad day. So I just stopped feeling things. For years. It didn’t go well. I’m still dealing with the aftermath. 

I have also witnessed physical domestic violence, as a child. I don’t think I need to explain further than that.

My fanfiction A Loveless Romantic deals heavily with the feylin abuse, and I only feel comfortable writing it because of my personal experiences. I’ve written posts about Nesta and alcohol and another post that I can’t currently find about why acotar is such a good book because it shows us all of those red flags for abuse before many people knew they were red flags. (If I can find it I’ll reblog.) My point is, when I go into analyses and metas like these, they aren’t just an exercise in “oh hey what if?!” It’s “here is my experience with this topic and so here’s how I read this with that background.”

The comparison between Azriel and Tamlin is deeply personal to me, and I didn’t exactly expect to have to disclose my personal history when making it, but when I see people vaguing about how the comparison “hurts people who have experienced abuse”, hi, OP knows exactly what she’s talking about on a personal level, thanks. So I’m going to keep talking about it, because I know what I’m talking about, and it bothers me that people can’t see it in fiction because I worry that they then won’t be able to see it IRL until it’s too late. I’m going to keep writing my “thinkpieces” because this is a topic I know a lot about, it’s important to me, and it’s something that I think a lot of people can and should learn more about.

[faejilly]

@oranges8hands replied to your post “hey, so, I’m working on a couple side ficlets for my BAU Malec fic…any...”

If you're still taking these -- Lydia and Alec meeting for the first time

Well. Meeting in person, anyways? Though they’d both heard of each other before this. This is well before either of them end up in the BAU. It’s even before Alec meets Jace in this ‘verse, though he and Lydia are never as close. 

This is also my @shadowhunterbingo square: ritual Relationship: Lydia Branwell & Alec Lightwood CW: Canonical Character Death 

*

Alec managed not to flinch as the shots were fired, three times in a row.

He kept his expression even during the bugle call.

He'd been here before.

It never got easier.

He hadn't seen Monteverde in person in over a year, their mutual promotions sending them in opposite directions, the gap between enlisted and officer enough to keep them careful, just a little distant, but it didn't matter.

Alec was reasonably sure the then Lt was the only reason he'd survived his first deployment, and the thought that he hadn't been there to return the favor...

He didn't think he'd ever forgive himself.

He watched the flag being folded, followed it with his eyes as it was handed to John's mother, as she was offered the official salute, soft words of some sort of comfort, and barely held in his frown. Mrs. Monteverde had been almost as crap a parent as the Lightwoods, she certainly didn't deserve the honor.

Alec's eyes flicked sideways, found the pale blonde woman standing slightly apart from the surviving Monteverdes, her hair pulled up in what looked like a painfully tight braid, her skin sallow in comparison to the black dress she was wearing.

She was the one who ought to have gotten that flag, she was the one John cared about, the one who'd cared about him.

The Army didn't recognize fiances though. She didn't count, not officially.

She was the only one who did count, unofficially.

Alec waited until as everyone else left, the Monteverdes leading the way, until it was just him, and her.

He exhaled once, hard, and went over to join her where she was still standing, staring almost blankly at the grave, the plaque propped beside it, waiting to be placed on top once the sod had been relaid.

"Ms Branwell?" Alec asked, half-a-step further away than one usually started a conversation, but he didn't want to push, not here, not for this.

She blinked, and tilted her head to look at him, her expression cool and controlled. Her eyes though, she couldn't quite hide the agony in her eyes.

It reminded him of his own face, staring into the mirror in a cheap motel room the morning after his parents had kicked him out. That was the face of someone whose entire world was gone, who couldn't quite understand why the world insisted she stay in it.

"Yes," she paused, her eyes flicking across his uniform, recognizing the shape of his stripes. "Sergeant?" She blinked, and her body sagged in something like relief when she got to his nametag. "You're Lightwood. John talks—."

She stopped entirely that time, her swallow almost a whole body convulsion.

"The Captain talked about you all the time, too, ma'am."

Her mouth quirked up into half-a-smile on one side, sorrow still heavy in the air between them. "Call me Lydia."

"Alec, then." He took that last step forward and offered a hand, managed a smile back when she took it, her grip a shade too firm to be polite. "It's nice to meet you."

"Not the circumstances any of us wanted." Her grip faded, her head turning to look back down at the grave.

"No, it's not." He squeezed her hand before letting go. "I'm so sorry."

Something in her posture sharpened, her focus on him properly for the first time. "Why does that sound more like guilt than sympathy?"

Alec blinked, and realized she was every bit as impressive as Monteverde had always claimed. Not that Alec hadn't believed him, but she was always so pretty in the pictures he'd seen, smiling at her John, laughing or eating or teasing him. It was something else to meet her in person and feel that sharp edge Monteverde had always been so proud of aimed at Alec directly.

"It can't be a bit of both?" He let himself shrug. "I wasn't there for him, and there was no way to be there for him, not really, but that doesn't mean I can't regret that."

"Yeah." She sighed, clearly in agreement. "Thank you."

"Can I get you some dinner, ma'a—Lydia?"

She paused, a bit of a frown between her brows as she glanced down at the grave, then back up at him.

"Monteverde wouldn't want you to be alone, but he certainly wouldn't want you to go back there." A sharp jerk of his chin in the direction Mrs. Monteverde had gone was more than enough to make the 'there' in question apparent. "And I'm reasonably sure you haven't been eating enough."

"Oh?" Her eyebrows lifted, but there was a hint of something almost like amusement softening her grief. "How on earth do you know that?"

"Monteverde used to tell me I was even worse than his girlfriend about not eating when I was upset or working, and he hadn't thought that was possible."

Lydia snorted out something that was almost a laugh. "I didn't either."

"Shall we, then?" Alec offered his elbow, and she snorted again before accepting his help, her heels not terribly well designed for walking across the stretch of damp grass between them and the path.

"Thank you," she murmured, her head tucked down as she watched where she was putting her feet rather than facing him directly.

He kept his arm steady, focusing on the ground and the path ahead of them, without trying to look at her directly either. "You're welcome."

[someinvisible-string]

Magnificent and Furious Ch. 10

Summary: After many years, rumors swirl that the Evil Queen is back and filled with more vengeance than ever. But instead of setting her sights on Snow White she goes for the thing  Snow loves most, her beloved daughter Emma. For her own safety, Emma is to be transported to safety on an unassuming merchant ship, where she meets two indentured servants hoping for a way to find their freedom

A/N: I am so so SO sorry about the late chapter update, I'm going on my 6th day in a row of opening at my job and I've been exhausted and I totally forgot to post yesterday. But I hope this extra long and action-packed chapter makes up for it! Huge props to @justanotherwannabeclassic for betaing this chapter and helping me make it as good as it can be! Also as always be sure to go to my blog and check out the chapter header @princesse-swan made!

CW: battle, but not like game of thrones level violence, more like The 100 or The Hunger Games level of violence

last chapter/ AO3

picset

Emma woke the next morning to Killian pressing soft kisses to her shoulders and collarbone, she giggled when he brushed over where her neck met her shoulder.

“Someone’s awake,” he smiled. She rolled over nestling her head on his shoulder, fingers absentmindedly trailing over his chest. The day’s plans started to sink into her. “Hey,” Killian said tapping her on the shoulder. “You’re going to be great today.”

She nodded, letting out a long breath. “Well, I guess we should get up then.”

“Hold on there,” he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, leaning into her ear and whispering. “Last night was…”

“Incredible,” she smiled.

“Aye, that it was. But I just need to know, why last night?” Emma could see his unasked question in his eyes. Did she want to make love to him because it was going to be her one and possibly only chance to?

“Because, it all clicked for me,” she ran her fingers through his hair. “You’re really in this for the long haul, and it’s a longer haul than we both expected. And I know that you’re to be with me through it all.” She took a deep breath, “And I know that I love you and that when this is over whether that be 3 months, 3 years, or 3 decades from now I will still want you by my side for whatever adventure awaits us.”

Killian’s soft smile grew larger, “I love you too and I vow that I’ll be right here with you no matter what.” He tilted her head up, his kiss was tender and soft. Emma let that kiss fortify and strengthen her for the day ahead.

“Let’s do this,” she whispered as they broke apart. He chuckled and rolled over, fetching his clothes from where they were scattered across the tent, throwing hers in her direction.

The air was still cool and the grass still dotted with dew as Emma and Killian trudged across the camp in search of breakfast. A few people from each faction had come together and restarted last night’s fire, the scent of ham smoking slowly making its way throughout the camp.

“Good morning,” Elsa smiled at them as they approached. She was perched on a log, daintily eating some fresh berries. Merida sat beside her digging into her plate of ham with gusto.  

“Morning,” Emma smiled stretched tight over her mouth. She noticed her friends’ eyes flicking over to Killian. She could practically see them putting two and two together and when Elsa and Merida looked at her with wide eyes she couldn’t help the blush rising on her cheeks. She and Killian sat down next to them, plates of food balanced on their laps as they tried to make small talk. As the sun rose more and more people gathered around them, nervous energy soon filling the camp. No one wanted to sit still, the blacksmiths worked on sharpening razor-sharp weapons, archers tested their bows and examined their arrows with frantic attention, Emma sat her knee jiggling up and down.

A loud caw broke through the hustle and bustle of the camp; Emma looked up, her raven from last night fluttered down to her, a scroll tied to his leg.

“Well, what does it say?” Merida asked as Emma unfurled the scroll.

“She’s agreed to the parlay,” Emma said, her voice shaking. This was it, it was now or never. “I’m to meet with her at the prearranged spot by midday.”

“Emma!” Roland said running up to the campfire, flanked by Robin and a few merrymen and Merida’s archers. “I have some pretty important news, we all snuck down to Regina’s castle and-”

“I didn't tell you to do that!” Emma bristled. “What if you were seen? What if Regina hurt any of you?”

“She didn’t and you said you needed us for reconnaissance so we went out and you really need to hear this. Regina has men, loads of them. Way more than she could get if she was just ripping out their hearts and controlling them.”

“She has allies? But how? Who in their right mind would ally themselves with her?” Merida asked.

“They were separated into factions,” Robin described. “One seemed to be made up of these big burly blokes with furs. Their flags had some purple and green and the soldiers seemed to be led by 13 generals.”

“The Southern Isles,” Elsa whispered. “They must have heard that Arendelle was joining you Emma and joined Regina. They have been trying to overthrow my kingdom ever since I took the throne.”

“Who’s in the other faction?” Killian asked.

“They had flags with dragons on them, a big sword down the middle with 2 on either side. But that’s all I could really get from them, I’m sorry,” Roland explained.

“That has to be Camelot,” Emma said stunned. Camelot while never a strong ally, was also never hostile with Misthaven. “Why would Arthur join Regina?”

“Perhaps they have some sort of agreement between them?” Killian offered. “He helps her here, she helps later down the line.”

“Regina doesn’t exactly work like that,” Emma bit down on her thumbnail nervously. “Something isn’t right about this but there’s not much we can do right now to figure it out. Regina agreed to the parlay but I’m not going to be so naive as to think she won’t go in without backup. I say we move out, get into the formations I went over last night.”

“Agreed your highness, all right, men!” General Abarca boomed out. Emma tried to hide her surprise at his approval. “Get ready to move out.” All around them, King Thomas’s men scurried about, some wolfing down food, others running back to their tents to get their armor on.

“Emma, I have something for you,” Elsa said taking her hand. She could feel her friend’s hand shaking, Emma squeezed her hand tight hoping to comfort her slightly. “Follow me, it’s back at my tent, Killian can come too,” she smiled knowingly. The four of them walked quickly to Elsa’s tent, Elsa still holding on to Emma’s hand tightly, Emma couldn’t tell if it was she or Elsa who was shaking.

“What is it?” Emma asked.

“You’ll see,” she said quickening her pace to put some distance between them and Killian and Merida. “Now tell me about your friend Killian.”

The question felt so out of place for what they were all planning on doing later that day that Emma couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry I just wasn’t expecting that,” she giggled and held her friend’s hand tighter. “He’s… well, I don’t quite know what to describe him as. He’s smart and kind, and he’s stuck by me throughout this whole adventure.”

“And?” Elsa said, her excitement palpable.

“And I love him,” Emma turned her head to look back at Killian who was being interrogated by Merida. He nervously scratched behind his ear but caught her looking at him and smiled softly at her.

“I’m really happy for you, Emma,” Elsa said, squeezing her hand and pushing her way through the flap of her tent. Inside was spacious, just enough room for the four of them and a blacksmith who was polishing some armor. The breastplate shone brightly, the plates extending up to cover the collar and shoulders. Matching gauntlets shone on a nearby table with a new shield polished bright enough that Emma could see her reflection in it.

“Oh, Elsa, this is beautiful,” Emma said in wonder, holding up the gauntlets for a closer look.

“You like it?”

“Of course, this work is exquisite,” Emma responded, looking down at the shield. “But these flowers, those aren’t your insignia?”

“No, they’re yours,” Elsa smiled. “It’s yours.”

“Elsa I can’t,” Emma stuttered.

“I’m not letting my best friend walking into a parlay with the queen without something to protect herself,” Elsa said firmly.

“You’d have to be daft to go in there with nothing but that vest on,” Merida piped up.

“And I can’t say I disagree with them,” Killian said.

“Killian, I didn’t know you were coming, so I don’t have anything that will be as fitted as this is,” Elsa gestured to Emma’s armor. “But I’m sure we have some pieces that’ll fit you well to give you some protection too.”

“You’re giving me armor?” he asked, stunned that someone would even feel bad for offering second-hand armor when he had nothing.

“Of course, I doubt Emma wants you down there with no protection,” Elsa shrugged.

“Can’t say I disagree,” Emma smirked.

Midday came, Emma waited in the pre-agreed spot, her eyes trained on the horizon. From atop her new steed, a bay colored mare the Merida’s camp had brought, she could see for miles. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, her nerves on edge, her mare pawing at the ground clearly feeling her rider’s tension. Emma tried not to have her new armor clink and clash against her shield and sword, it had been so long since she’d wielded a sword and shield while wearing armor that it took some getting used to. She had decided against the leg gauntlets, instead choosing to wear thick leather breeches so she’d be more mobile if she needed to make a quick dash up the mountain. She glanced over her shoulder, she knew Merida and the other Merrymen were hidden just out of sight and even further back Killian waited with General Abarca. She wished she could just look at him, she knew all her doubts and uncertainties would melt away if only she could look into his ocean blue eyes.

Up on the hill she finally saw movement, Regina also mounted on a black steed clad in decorative chainmail. She was flanked by two guards, one on each side. Emma’s heart sank, everything inside her screamed that this parlay was going to end in battle. She held her head high, shoulders back, she was prepared. She knew Regina might do something like this, Roland’s news had basically guaranteed it,  her eyes scanned the mountain further behind Regina and sure enough, Black Knights and soldiers were picking their way through the trees and brush trying to remain unseen. If Emma could see them, no doubt Merida or Robin or even Roland could see them and hopefully send word to her foot soldiers. Slowly, painstakingly, Regina made her way to the clearing.

“Well well, the Savior in the flesh,” the queen smiled. Emma shivered, her parents had been right. There was something off with her, very off.

“Regina,” Emma said, easing her steed forward. “I believe we had the matter of my parents to discuss.”

“Yes and here’s the discussion,” the queen cleared her throat. “I will keep them alive but only just, they will suffer like I did for years but only after I tear your still beating heart out of your chest.”

“Regina you don’t have to do this,” Emma said, hoping to reason with her. “Let go of your revenge, you have the power to end a cycle of violence and abuse that started with Cora and continued with the Dark One. You can end this.”

“Don’t you dare mention my mother,” Regina bristled, bringing her hand up. A ball of fire formed and before she could even think Emma’s steed reared in fear and turned and ran towards the forest. Emma could feel the heat of the fireball before she could see it, thinking quickly she rolled sideways off her saddle and landed on her feet. She watched her horse disappear into the woods as her reinforcements began pouring in on all sides. Arrows whistled over her head from high above, several grunts told her they found their targets. Quickly unsheathing her sword Emma turned, Regina’s Black Knights running quickly towards her. She took a deep breath and raised her sword, a quiet calm falling over her as she ran out to meet them. Her sword clanged loudly against the first knight’s, he was tall and broad but relied too heavily on brute strength. Emma kept low, using her shield to obscure his vision and dancing out of his reach. The thundering of footsteps and war cries filled the air as King Thomas’s men poured in from all sides. Emma found an opening in the knight’s chainmail where his leg was exposed, she ran her sword through, trying to ignore his howl of pain. He fell to his knees, Emma ran on trying to close the space between her and Regina’s castle as quickly as possible.

“Emma!” Killian’s voice was high and panicked, Emma looked around frantically searching for him. She spotted him, dueling two knights at once, his sword a mere flash of steel as he wielded it back and forth. She sprinted over to him, terrified that she wouldn’t make it in time, that he’d take a wrong step, when an arrow spliced through the air striking one of the knights in the neck. She saw Roland drop down from above them, already pulling another arrow from his quiver.

“Thank you,” she said as she ran up to him.

“Don’t thank me quite yet,” he said, letting loose another arrow and hitting a knight on horseback. His horse whinnied as it’s rider fell, lifeless from his back, galloping on through the battle.

Killian wheeled around, heaving his sword into his opponent’s side and slashing upward. He turned and ran towards Emma and Roland, blood shining on his armor. “We need to get you to the castle,” he yelled over the din of battle.

“What about Merida and Elsa?” Emma asked she wasn’t about to ditch her friends here.

“They have to be around here somewhere, but Emma we have to make some moves if we’re going to get up to the castle,” Roland said already leading the way through the mass of fighting. As quickly as he was firing arrows he was picking them up or pulling them out of the fallen around them, Emma and Killian followed quickly behind him, cutting down any black knights that tried to get through. Emma tried to keep her eyes peeled for Merida’s mass of red curls or Elsa’s light blue armor.

A sudden coldness fell over them, Emma knew that Elsa must be close. Sure enough, Elsa was there, wielding her magic unlike Emma had ever seen before. Elsa stood with her arms outstretched, ice and snow flowing from her fingertips freezing soldiers in their tracks and shattering their steel.

Roland, Emma, and Killian called out to her, Elsa turned and nodded to them. “Hold on!” she called as she twirled her hands through the air, ice and snow swirling higher and higher until a great roar echoed across the field. Soldiers and knights turned to see a giant ice monster roaring and swiping men across the ground with a flick of its enormous wrist.

“Marshmallow, cover us,” Elsa called as she sprinted towards Emma and the boys.

“What on earth is that?” Killian said, holding his sword at the ready while Roland readied an arrow.

“Oh, he won’t hurt us-” Elsa assured them, almost drowned out by Marshmallow’s bellowing. A thick fog burst from his mouth, surrounding them with slight cover. “But he will cover for us, now let’s go!” Elsa urged. The others didn’t need telling twice, with Marshmallow in tow the men parted giving them a clear path up the mountain. Emma was getting worried, she still hadn’t seen Merida anywhere since the start of the battle.

“You fools, don’t let her get away,” Regina screamed as she spotted Emma. A flash of red was the only warning Emma had before another fireball was shot at them.

“Get down!” she grabbed Killian and Elsa and tried to reach Roland as they fell to the ground. Emma could feel her hair ripple as the fireball passed over her. Marshmallow was hit directly; with a mighty scream he bust into pieces, large pieces of ice fell all around him as he crumpled to the floor,

“Ahhhh!” Roland screamed, Emma looked up to see that his sleeve had caught fire. He quickly rolled around to get the flames out, but Emma could tell his skin was badly burned. “Go!” he yelled as they went to help him.

“No we’re not leaving you here,” Killian said, fiercely.

“Just go, you’re wasting time!” Roland’s eyes were full of fear and pain as he tried to get up. His clothes had fused to his skin, if he wasn’t trampled to death then an infection was going to do him in for sure. Marian’s sweet face swam before Emma’s vision.

“No, I’m not leaving you here, Killian help him up,” she commanded. Roland screamed as Killian hoisted him up. Emma ducked under and supported his other side, Elsa fought off any approaching guards with her magic as Emma and Killian dragged Roland off into the woods. “Lay him here,” Emma said, pointing to a boulder covered in soft looking moss. Roland was grinding his teeth together, trying not to scream as Emma bent close and inspected his burn. It was as bad as Emma expected, his skin red and raw. Flesh was burned away and what remained was now fused to his clothes.

“Please just leave me,” Roland begged, tears starting to form in his eyes.

“Not a chance,” Emma said, placing her hand on his shoulder.

“Emma,” Killian said, his voice thick and raw. “Look.” Emma looked down, her hand was glowing, a golden light coming off of it in waves. She held both her hands up to her face, both glowed, a slight warmth spread from her fingertips all the way to her chest. Instinctively Emma held her hands over Roland’s skin before their eyes the skin healed. Blisters faded and skin repaired itself. Emma withdrew her hands and Roland held up his arm to his face, blinking in disbelief.

“You have magic?” Roland looked up at her in awe.

“Yes,” Emma panted, her energy drained. She looked up to see Elsa and Killian staring at her.

“I never knew you could do that,” Elsa said, looking down at her own hands.

“Is this part of-” Killian began to ask, his voice low, raspy, and awestruck.

“I think so,” Emma nodded. The four of them stood in silence as the battle raged just beyond the trees. Emma breathed in, trying to ignore the scent of blood and burning wood that perfumed the air. “We need to get back out there, Roland are you sure you want to come with us?”

Roland took one last look at his newly healed arm before nodding, “I’m sure. Let’s go.” He got to his feet, slinging his quiver over his shoulder and white knuckling his bow, his brown eyes hardened as he faced the field. The other three followed behind him as he marched out of the woods.

“Emma,” Killian whispered as he fell into step with her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she huffed, holding her sword higher. There was no time to discuss her magic, they needed to get up that mountain, she quickened her pace to catch up to Roland and Elsa.

The sound of battle had been muted in the forest, but as they set foot back on the field the din of battle rang in their ears. Men screamed, horses whinnied and bellowed, their hooves pounding the earth, swords and shields clashed together ringing their ears. The flames from Regina’s fireballs had spread, the smoke thick and black and stung everyone’s eyes and throats.

One voice rang out over all the rest, Merida riding on her warhorse Angus firing arrows and bellowing at the other riders following her.

“Merida!” Emma yelled, pointing at her friend so that the others would follow her. She ran through the crowd, pushing and shoving people out of her way.

“Come on lassie, jump on,” Merida shouted when she saw Emma running towards her, she looked over to her other riders. “Give them your horses, make me proud!” Her men instantly demounted their horses, allowing Elsa, Roland, and Killian to quickly mount them. Emma hoisted herself onto Angus, gripping tight to Merida’s waste.

“To the castle!” she dug her heels into Angus, spurring the horse faster. The horses moved so fast it felt as if they were flying through the battle, it was all Emma could do to hold on let alone fend off any Black Knights who tried to unseat her or Merida. One growled at her as he tried to grab her by the leg, Emma kicked him and heard the satisfying sound of crunching bone as his nose broke. She looked over her shoulder and saw Elsa casting her ice magic, freezing Regina’s men in place.

“Once we reach the trees it’ll be harder for them to follow us,” Emma screamed in Merida’s ear.

“Come on Angus, just a bit further,” Merida urged her horse on and up the steep terrain. Higher and higher they climbed, the sound of war sounding more and more distant. The late afternoon sun hung low and bright in the sky, the smoke rising turning it red.

Before Emma could even properly formulate anything resembling a plan, she could see the gates of Regina’s castle. Merida pulled on the reigns, slowing Angus to a walk then stopping just out of sight of the castle.

“So what’s the plan?” Roland asked, sliding off his horse. “I counted around 20 guards still guarding the castle.”

“We’re going to need some kind of diversion,” Emma said. “Lead all or most of them to one spot while we sneak in somewhere else. Elsa, think Marshmallow is up for it?”

“It’ll be his pleasure,” she smirked, she inhaled deeply and threw her arms in front of her, ice and snow swirling higher and higher as Marshmallow formed. He roared and stomped off towards the castle, smashing trees and throwing boulders towards the left side of the castle. Emma peaked between the trees, Black Knights were running full speed towards the giant snowman leaving their posts unattended. She spotted a balcony leading to a glass door, the wall outside of it easily climbable. She pointed it out to the others.

“Let’s go,” Emma darted out, running quickly towards the wall. Roland and Merida both fired arrows connected to ropes into the wall, both getting caught in between the grout of the wall. Emma tested the ropes and finding that they would hold her weight began to climb up the wall.

Up the wall, over the low balcony wall and through the glass doors, Emma and her friends made it into the castle with ease. Emma crossed the room and opened the door out on to a deserted hallway. She looked around, her sword held ready for an attack but none came.

“So which way love?” Killian asked. Emma froze; she didn’t know. She had been so focused on getting into the castle, she’d barely spent a thought about what she would do or where she would even begin to look for her parents.

“Um,” Emma bit her lip, turning and looking in all directions. “They’re probably down in the dungeons.” She started towards her right, figuring at some point they’d find a staircase that would take them down below the castle. She silently prayed the dungeons were somewhere downstairs as she raced down the hallway.

“Slow down!” Roland panted as he jogged to keep up with her. “If we make too much noise, the guards will find us.”

Emma whirled around and faced him, “I’m this close to saving my parents, I’m not slowing down until I get them the hell out of here.”

Roland looked down at his feet, hushed into silence as Emma started down the hallway once again, she opened a door she found at the end of the hallway and to her relief, she found a stairway. She hurtled herself down it, hoping that at the bottom would be the dungeons. Around and around they went, everyone silent and looking nervously over their shoulders or squinting into the darkness ahead of them.

Finally, she reached the last floor, Emma didn’t wait for the others to catch up to her; she opened the door and walked into the large entrance hall of Regina’s castle, filled with Southern Isle soldiers who all turned as she burst in.

“It’s her!” one shouted and the guards began to move towards her. Emma’s friends stood behind her, each pulling out their weapons to defend themselves. Elsa froze the floor in front of them, several guards slipped and fell but more moved around the ice and were still coming. Merida and Roland fired some arrows into the wave of knights but were only able to strike down a few of the many. Emma swung her sword as soon as one came close enough and got lost in the chaos.

“Keep her alive, the Queen needs her for later,” another guard shouted at the one fighting Emma. She took advantage of her knight’s temporary distracting, slicing him across the shoulder. No sooner had he slumped out of her way then another grabbed her from behind, Emma struggled against his grip trying to stamp on his feet.

“Emma!” Killian shouted, running towards them, his sword held high as he ran towards them. The knight held Emma close, using her as a human shield, knowing that Killian wouldn’t do anything that would hurt her. She saw Elsa discreetly froze his foot to the ground, Killian quickly maneuvered around him, ramming the pommel of his sword into the knight’s helmet. He groaned and let go of Emma as he fell to the floor, his helmet ringing with the force of Killian’s blow. He took her by the hand and began to run across the room, ducking and dodging around knights, not even sure where they were going.

“Hey princess!” a knight yelled, his voice full of self-satisfaction, Emma recognized him as Hans, the youngest of the Southern Isle princes. She whirled around and saw Merida, and Roland all behind held by several guards each. Elsa appeared to be unconscious, her guard roughly holding her head up by her hair. Emma stopped dead in her tracks, rounding on them with her sword raised. “Ah ah ah,” Hans held his hands up. “Wouldn’t want to do something that’ll get your friends hurt would you?”

“Let them go,” Emma lowered her sword but kept on her toes.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he shrugged sarcastically. “You see the Queen is very interested in these friends of yours. She needs you and at least one of your friends here alive. So I’ll offer you a deal, you come quietly with us and all your friends live or you try to fight us and we let you pick with one lives while we kill the rest, sound good to you?”

Emma hesitated for a moment, her eyes glancing at Elsa’s limp form, “All right.” Her sword clattered to the floor as she raised her hands over her head.

“Your friend too,” Hans pointed to Killian.

“Emma-” he started.

“It’s okay, it’ll all be okay,” Emma wasn’t sure if she was telling Killian that or herself. Killian dropped his sword and raised his hands over his head, mirroring Emma. Several guards ran over to them, they roughly shoved Emma’s hands behind her back and bound them with rope. “What did you do to my friend?” Emma asked, her eyes still on Elsa.

“You’ll soon find out,” a knight roughly said, as he hit her over the head. Emma felt pain bloom in the back of her head as stars danced before her eyes before it all turned to black.

[theoneandonlyocelot]

CA: CW - or, Why I Don’t Trust Tony Stark

Okay, so I’ve read a lot of MCU and CACW stuff, and I noticed a couple of things that nobody else has addressed, so here goes:

I’ll say right up front, I LOVED Iron Man 1, okay? Like, I STILL think it’s one of THE BEST superhero movies ever made. The fact that they took what could have been a very fluff  character, and took the time to take him back to square one, hold him responsible, make his transformation MEAN SOMETHING to him, I was, and still AM, VERY VERY IMPRESSED. RDJ’s performance on top of that just made that character MATTER, when by all accounts he’s not much in the comic books. When he tells Pepper he needs her help because “You’re all I have,” and a few minutes later in the conversation she reminds him to be careful because “You’re all I have too, you know,” that kills me. Be still my heart!!

BUT.

And this is a big, painful “but.”

Throughout the first movie, Tony has two or three basic character flaws that he DOES NOT address:

1) He is reckless and impulsive and DOES NOT THINK THINGS THROUGH. He is also breathtakingly egotistical. Driving 90+ mph through twisty canyon roads in a sports car when he could end up over a cliff? Not a thought. I cringed in the theater, knowing how easily that could have ended in disaster. I don’t care how good a driver you are, you are not immune to unforeseen road conditions. When he discovers, on the battle field, that he’s being shot at by his own weapons, is kidnapped, and eventually decides to make the Iron Man Prototype, he LITERALLY does not stop to think that MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, the bad guys are going to want this piece of tech, too? Like, he LITERALLY makes zero plans to make sure that his designs for the suit won’t end up in the wrong hands?? And I completely CANNOT believe that he couldn’t rig up a fail-safe mechanism to destroy everything should they have been discovered or their escape plan had failed.

And the company dealing under the table? It never seems to have occurred to him “Hmm, maybe I should go home, lay low, and do some quiet snooping UNTIL I FIND OUT WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?” No. He goes home, IMMEDIATELY ANNOUNCES TO THE WORLD THAT HE’S HALTING ALL WEAPONS PRODUCTION, and tells Obadiah what he knows. Not only does he not seem to realize that this level of double-dealing probably goes VERY, VERY HIGH up in his organization, he never takes steps to protect himself from the possible backlash. That is a level of naivete and self-absorption that would have been drilled out of most people upon being kidnapped, but one Tony clings to throughout the series.

On top of that, he never gives a thought to the people who work for him (who are now temporarily laid off until his plants can be converted). He never gives a heads-up to Rhodey, his military liason and best friend. And no matter what you might think about the military and their involvement, Stark Ind. was still under contract, and could have been sued up one side and down the other for halting production and failing to deliver, putting even more people out of work for even longer and potentially endangering soldiers. It very likely boiled down to Rhodey’s personal friendship with him that kept the military off his back for as long as it was.

And this complete failure to think things through leaves him so shockingly vulnerable that even after Oby admits “I’m the one who locked you out [of the board],” Tony never bothered to lock Oby out of his house. It leaves him so frighteningly vulnerable that he sends Pepper into the office to get evidence without giving a second thought to what Oby might do to her - and with no plan at all to keep her safe.

And this carries over into IM2, when he sees that other scientist’s name on the blueprints and doesn’t stop to think that maybe this other guy deserves some credit? Like, maybe he has family or something that Tony at least owes royalties to, because hey, THIS GUY HELPED INVENT THE THING TOO??

It carries even further in IM3, when he gives Mandarin his home address and dares him to come get him. And then he seems so baffled when his home is attacked. Like??? What did you think would happen, Tony?? This guy showed you he was a major badass, and you called his bluff cuz... why?? You thought you just had to look tough at the cameras and he would back down? (MCU’s treatment of Mandarin later in the story is another rant for another time.) And you did it when Pepper was home too. Cuz you forgot the lessons of IM1 and you didn’t think far enough ahead to ask yourself what you would do to protect her if he DID attack.

Like, I get why Pepper was pissed at you, man.

2) Tony wallows in guilt and self-pity. Like, bathes in it. Takes long, hot soaks in it like it’s a friggin’ therapeutic spa.

He was in captivity for how long? clutching the car battery to his chest and feeling sorry for himself before Yensin convinced him to fight back. It was three months total before he escaped - I get that he needed time to build the suit, and time to recover from the injuries he sustained in the attack. I give him a full six weeks, the standard recovery time for open heart surgery and a full half of the time he was gone. But the movie makes it pretty damn clear he didn’t even THINK of fighting back until WELL AFTER he was healed physically. Yensin’s pep-talk amounted to “You’re Tony Freakin’ Stark! At this point you’re only in captivity cuz you want to be, so get off your ass and DO SOMETHING!!”

And this carries over into the rest of the movie, leading partly to his instant halt in weapons production (see above), and to his whole broody-in-the-basement montages in both the first and second halves. It’s why he abandons Pepper at the party (thanks, reporter with photos!), why he takes on the Ten Rings by himself, and why, again, he didn’t see Oby coming.

It carries over into IM2, when he spends the entire, what, first third-to-half of the movie wallowing in self-pity because the arc reactor is poisoning him and it doesn’t occur to him that Nick Fury of friggin’ SHIELD might know somebody or something that could help? (That’s some next-level self-absorption right there, my friends, to believe that you are so damn smart that NOBODY could possibly know ANYTHING more than you.) And we know most of his “creative block” was self-pity, because the moment Coulson takes his toys, alcohol, and friends away, grounds him, and forces him to go looking at his stuff, and his father’s old SHIELD stuff, logically, he finds the solution rather quickly.

But he doesn’t learn the lesson in this movie either, apparently, because there he goes again in IM3, wallowing in self-pity again. Pepper’s mad at him at the start of the movie because he tries to sidle out of responsibility for stuff, and rather than own up to it, he pouts and buys her a giant teddy bear (Seriously, Tony? How old is she, four?). And when she calls him on it again, he keeps wallowing. He wallows through his fights with Mandarin and the other dude. And when he goes on the run, hiding out in the kid’s garage, he spends most of that time wallowing in self-pity as well. I really don’t think it would’ve have taken him that long to fix the suit and find Pepper, if he hadn’t been enjoying feeling sorry for himself. I give this movie credit, though: like IM2, it gave him a villain who mirrored his self-pity - both Whiplash and whats-his-name felt that Tony owed them something (in Whiplash’s case, rightly so; in the other guy’s it was pure self-pity and bruised ego, same as Tony’s).

And this is why I can’t get behind him in CA:CW:

Viola Davis’ character has ALWAYS felt sketchy to me. She showed up at Tony’s speech, giving him a story about her son who died in Sokovia (or Africa, I forget which) helping refugees when he was killed by a falling piece of debris during an Avengers fight. But she lets it slip that she works for a US Senator. That, right there, was a huge red flag for me. WHAT SENATOR? That’s the first question Tony should have asked. Why? Because we know there are Senators who’d do anything to bring him, and the Avengers, down.

Tony doesn’t ask that question, though. Why? Because he doesn’t think that through. And he doesn’t think it through because he’s too busy wallowing in self-pity that he might - MIGHT - have caused that kid’s death.

Look, I GET IT. I GET that him and the rest of the Avengers should be more careful. I GET that Tony has been through a lot - he has trauma, PTSD, etc, etc.

But look at it this way: Tony has more resources available to him THAN ANYONE ELSE ON THE TEAM - to get therapy for his PTSD, to get surgery on his chest (which he FINALLY got in the end of IM3). But I think it’s telling that the traumatic situation he recreated during his speech, showing off his holo-tech, wasn’t any of that. He didn’t show being attacked in Afghanistan and held prisoner. He didn’t show the Battle of New York. He didn’t show catching the nuke and going through the portal. He didn’t show his battles with Whiplash, when Mandarin destroyed his house, or when he fought Guy Pierce on the ship.

He showed his last argument with his parents.

Let that sink in. 

The implication at the end of IM3 is that he dealt with his physical trauma by getting the shrapnel, and the arc reactor, removed from his chest. The post-credits scene, where he’s talking to Bruce, implies that he’s willing to get treatment for his PTSD. There’s NO REASON to believe in later movies that he HASN’T DEALT WITH HIS PTSD, or is at least getting therapy for it on an ongoing basis.

Let that sink in, please.

It means he’s not reacting to everything in CA:CW because of battle fatigue.

I GET that he looked up to his dad, he loved his mom, he felt guilty cuz their last conversation was a fight. This is all very normal, guilt-inducing stuff.

But tech he was marketing for recovering soldiers did not show a military fight.

And to equate the two is, once again, some next-level self-absorption.

It also means he carries blithely on in his lack of tactical thinking and self-pity for the whole rest of the movie BECAUSE HE CHOOSES TO.

Sokovia Accords? He is wallowing so deeply in self-pity that he MIGHT have caused V. Davis’ son’s death that he never asks if she’s telling the truth. He never asks if he’s being manipulated. He never asks if the Avengers are being manipulated. He never asks if there’s another way to handle the chain-of-command, the who’s responsible and holding-them-accountable questions.

These are all questions that Steve DOES ASK.

Steve who, DESPITE HAVING GONE THROUGH JUST AS MUCH, IF NOT MORE, personal trauma, JUST AS MUCH, IF NOT MORE BATTLE TRAUMA, who has JUST AS MUCH, IF NOT MORE PTSD, WITH FAR FEWER RESOURCES TO COMBAT IT, DOES STOP TO ASK WHY THIS IS HAPPENING SO FAST.

You’re tellin’ me Wanda genuinely had to be under house arrest “for everybody’s safekeeping” rather than going upstate to the Avenger’s compound and practicing with live ammo and explosives until she could safely contain an explosive AND keep it away from humans? You’re tellin’ me Tony couldn’t rig up a skeet-shooter to fire at her, and a safe-room where she could practice without hurting anybody? I don’t believe it. If he’d stopped wallowing for two minutes, it probably would have occurred to him, too.

But, unfortunately for the entire team, Tony continues to wallow for the rest of the movie - he wallows in grief over his parents, guilt over V. Davis’ son (tho he never seemed to show that level of care over Wanda’s and Pietro’s parents), fails to question whether or not Bucky MIGHT be innocent (what happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? guess that doesn’t count if you’ve been brainwashed by Hydra, so maybe Nat should have seen that coming too?), wallows in his anger at Bucky during the finale (iirc, he doesn’t get any proof of, or make any connection between, Bucky and his parent’s deaths until deep into the finale), and then, during the finale fight with Steve, wallows in self-pity that Steve turned on him, like Tony’s somehow not responsible for anything.

Like, I GET that you LIKE the guy. But give him the consequences of his choices. TONY CHOSE, at every possible moment, to wallow in self-pity, to take on blind faith what he should have questioned, to doubt where he should’ve trusted, and failed to consider the consequences of his actions.

He completely fails at all three, and has throughout most of the MCU.

I find it horribly, horribly telling, to compare Tony with T’Challa, whose father was also freshly murdered in the last three days and before his very eyes. Both men raised in privilege, both men crazy smart, both men react, at first, with gut-level rage. But T’Challa eventually has the presence of mind to step back and ask himself “Is my rage justified? Is my rage directed at the right target?” And when the answer is “No,” he backs off. Tony never reaches that level of awareness. He is hit, he hits back, without thought. Even when Cap’s got him on the ground beating the crap out of him, Tony never stops to ask “Did I maybe contribute to any of this? Is my rage justified? Is Cap’s?” Even when he lashes out at Cap - ”He’s my friend.” “So was I.” - it’s as if, for Tony, it’s all about himself, as if there’s no possible room for two victims, or even three (counting Steve).

Look, I LIKE the guy. The way RDJ plays him he’s charming, and brilliant, and I think most of the time he’s at least trying to keep his heart in the right place. RDJ’s portrayal is, quite frankly, the only thing keeping me from hating Tony right now. But I don’t TRUST Tony farther than I can spit because HE IS so easy to manipulate.

And with the brain, and weapons, at his disposal, that is truly terrifying.

[vtori73]

*me recalling a post someone shared on labels*

Okay... it's still bugging me so I'm going to just talk about it. So, a post I saw ON HERE not twitter or Instagram or anywhere else but HERE where I normally don't expect to see posts like this waa reblogged to my dash. Im not going to say it's necessarily all bad but I am still a bit surprised that I saw it & just... doesn't really, at least too me, make any good arguments and more so comes off as wanting to police identities & caring more about understandability then actually caring about LGBTIA+/ Queer people.

Instead of forcing you all to scroll through my whole post if you don't want to read my word vomit I'll add a read more (quick cw for brief mention of harrasment/assault):

Now the basic gist of the post was wanting people to change the conversation of if certain labels are "valid" to "are these labels necessary or useful" which... in my honest opinion I think both conversation either way are kind of... pointless. They just feel like they kind of take time away from actual important topics that we, the LGBTIA/Queer community, should be having. Why are we still bothering with this pointlessness of labels similar to how people are overly obsessed with flag discourse or slur discourse NONE OF THIS ACTUALLY MATTERS FOR FUCKS SAKE in the grand scheme of things.

I'm not saying some labels can't be problematic of course... well probably. Like, for example this one I heard someone bring up that was put on a wiki about "wanting to have pure bloodlines" or something like that but... I feel like I shouldn't have to explain ALL of the why's to why that one shouldn't count as a legit example. Anyway, I bring this up because this WAS brought up as a counter to the argument someone made about labels, most likely a pro-label argument I don't remember exactly what was being said though this was Twitter not Tumblr though so it was unrelated to the post I'm discussing here.

This tumblr post I saw just seems like the thinking/foundation for what I see a lot in the gate-keeping LGBTIA+/Queer community. Bi people who are Panphobic using similar arguments against each other or against the other lesser known mspec identities such as Omni or Poly. Or more recently the arguments against mspec lesbians or more specifically bi/pan-lesbians and usually the arguments I find being used against these labels make LESS sense then pro-labels people who go "labels are valid."

Anyway I bring this up because when it comes to people against labels, discussing the importance of legitimacy of labels, and similar arguments tends to sound exactly like the arguments people who do police identities and such like transmeds, terfs, homophobes, biphobes etc. Why do our labels NEED to be useful, need to be understood? We don't seem to care about straight, cis, allo people understanding so why should we care when it comes to people within as well? Being "understood" also seems kind of... what's the word... "Pointless?" No, not exactly what I was going for but... it's close enough. Even when non-queer people DO understand us and our labels it doesn't somehow automatically make them allies to us, even the self-proclaimed allies who understand can still work against our best interests so why are we putting importance in ANYONE understanding our labels?

For example purposes I will breakdown the arguments against the label.

Okay so, people who are doing what op said they wanted to see more of in the post I'm referencing here were basically saying (that's isn't just x is bad) "Bi lesbians are harmful to the Lesbian community because men will use it as an excuse bother us/it shows men were available to them. Bi lesbians are also bad because they are tearing down something Bi people worked hard for, to have their own separate community. Bi-lesbians also are bad because terfs created the term."

Alright, so for the first point this one isn't obvious to some but is for many other how messed up the argument is because it basically amounts to nothing more then victim blaming, basically "your asking to be harassed by men if you can possibly be attracted to them" which is a huge slap in the face to straight, but ESPECIALLY bi women who ARE statistically more often victims of abuse. Not to mention this argument makes less sense you you recall that lesbians often DO voice how men will continue to hit on them REGARDLESS of what they say their sexuality is so if straight men decided to use "bi-lesbians" as an excuse one day it only really proves how insidious they are and not the labels legitimacy.

For the second point this is normally made by Lesbians and... look im not saying you can't speak up for us but what made this even WORSE specifically was that Lesbians at the same time were saying that ONLY Lesbians can speak on this "bi-lesbian" discourse which just... voids any good will they may have had initially. You don't GET to speak about others identities & their histories while ALSO telling them to shut the fuck up because thats NOT how this shit works especially when you're spouting ahistorical nonsense. Which yeah, they were/are. The argument was not only bad because of the speaking over Bi people but it was also just legitimately WRONg... well, maybe at the least just glosses over some BIG details. Like, for example that, yes, Bi people DID work hard to make their own space BUT were you also aware that Bi people WERE apart of the Lesbian community with open arms for a time before political lesbianism became a thing & took power in the Lesbian community which resulted in kicking out anyone they didn't like because I feel leaving that out is kind of wrong but I guess it does make their argument look bad. Also not to mention that as a Bi person bi-lesbians don't bother me, they don't negativity effect Bi people just by existing so I have no qualms with them & a decent amount of other Bi people feel the same so... like I said before don't speak for a community you're not apart of, especially when you're also telling us to shut up at the same time!

The last point is also wrong, I'm not bringing up sources but basically the idea that terfs started is actually, you guessed it, due to terfs! Sorry.. that's probably confusing but actually terfs don't like the label so they started the misinformation that terfs(& similar) started it to get people against it which makes sense if you understand who terfs hate. Terfs, specifically the ones within the lesbian community are not much different from political lesbians & I wouldn't be all that surprised if thats what a lot them were or would have been if that was still a thing. I would say a closer equivalent would be "gold star Lesbians" or anyone who thinks it's a good term but ANYWAY the point was that a lot the Lesbians who hold one of these beliefs/identities TENDS to hold the other because they aren't all that much different so it's easy to see why they would want to destroy the term vs actually want it around.

I almost forgot one part of the argument though, and that was that the misinformation was that "terfs created it too separate trans lesbians from the lesbian label" which... Look I'm sorry but if you know terfs this honestly doesn't make all that much sense, yes terfs ARE mainly against trans people it's in the name but don't lie and tell me that plenty of terfs also haven't been found to be against queer, bi, & asexual people as well so I don't see them wanting to ever create the term "bi-lesbian" even if it is to be transphobic. But if we disregard that line of thinking the argument also falls flat when you immediately just... TALK to any Bi-lesbian and ask them why they use label because most who use it tend to be non-binary people who have fluid genders and thus have complicated relationships with their sexuality. Even then some just use it too mean they have strong connections to the Lesbian community for whatever reason! There are probably other reasons but my brains fried so that's all I'm listing but I feel like my point should have sank in by now anyway.

So, after having bare through my long example I hope my point has gotten through but if it hasn't I will summarize: not all labels in the end are going to be "helpful, useful, or needed" BUT that's doesn't make them bad just because of that fact and policing labels & identities in the end is more harmful to the community then not. Instead of caring whether a label is useful or not let's instead focus on making sure we don't allow harmful, bigoted rhetoric and thinking to continue to thrive and permeate our communities, whether online or not so we can keep them from overtaking our spaces... again. And if there really are ACTUALLY harmful labels popping up let's MAKE SURE they are actually harmful and then deal with them accordingly!

Note: if your curious as to why I wrote "LGBTIA+/Queer" I'm going to explain below:

Basically I do it because I feel its weird to put Queer in the middle of acronyms that fall under the queer umbrella. Not to mention that I think it makes more sense to have it be a separate thing considering plenty of queer people don't care for the term being used for them or with them/etc. I like to use Queer for all people who can fall under the term & are accepting/ok with it being used for them more then I like to use the acronym but the acronym is good for anyone who doesn't like to use Queer or for allies to use. I'm not saying it's perfect thinking or other people should change how they use the labels/acronym but that's just my reasoning and I don't see any actual negatives too it so I used it here but as always I'm open to being wrong!

[lesbitchka]

(submission)

alright so i’m gonna dump my long long club story in here (cw for q slur stuff, some mentions of prior abuse, kink, drag) this is gonna be really long, i’m sorry! my way of narration is kind of obnoxious

i’m a copresident of my campus’ lgbt group after i was asked by someone in my class to run for office during my first semester at my current college. i’d never been to a meeting before, but i accepted, honored to have been invited. in retrospect, that kind of should have been my first red flag- being asked to step in in an administrative role to a club i had absolutely no familiarity with. i’m a white, autistic trans man who is on the aro/ace spec because of my history of trauma. this will be important later on 

i showed up to the election and was elected handily, because apparently the person i was running against has a history of being abusive? i don’t know anything about that. anyway, at the same meeting, the person who had held my position before me, a nonbinary trans woman, was ousted publically and stormed out of the room, furious. at the time, i wasn’t too bothered by it. this person had a history of posting weird, intimidating right-leaning stuff about “defending someone’s right to free speech all the way up until they act on it”- that includes threats to murder and rape people, in her own words- and mocking club members for mental health problems. all around, a legitimately abusive person that i totally understood why she’d be removed. and over the summer, that was that- no further discussion. 

i moved across the country to the la area to live with my longterm partner over the summer. during that time, we lived in a disadvantaged area that was primarily latinx, close to anaheim, where over the course of the summer we heard a lot of police violence come out of, both on the news and in word-of-mouth from our (primarily trans) friend group. despite being white, this left me worried about police violence towards me for other reasons; ie, i was an unmedicated trans man in a relationship with another unmedicated trans man, subject to different types of police violence should anything happen to our home, which we were sharing with a latinx family. while nothing became of these fears, this, also, will be important 

when i got back on campus, i took up my new position and started getting involved in club affairs. i noticed from a very early point there were some small issues, but nothing that was really a dealbreaker- the club had a strong focus on kink and many board members had a tendency to be very public about their sex lives in advertisements and tabling opportunities for our group, which, while i assumed i was being oversensitive about because of my trauma, i noticed offput several prospective members who investigated our table. when campus police swept through the club fair, equipped and in full uniform, i expressed my discomfort- a holdover from my time in a troubled area, hearing about my white trans male friend face obstruction and hostility when turning to the police in a domestic violence case, having been home for less than a week- and was met by the only nonwhite member of our board explaining that he didn’t feel uncomfortable with the police there, so it was kind of ridiculous that i did and i shouldn’t. which may have been true, but jesus, felt pretty shitty to hear my feelings on the thing were bad. i also requested that we not refer to ourselves as the q*eer club when hosting events and referring to my membership and was told by the same administrator that because he is latinx and likes the word, no one else should have any reason to take issue with it, b/c he was most strongly effected by pulse��? that was his reasoning for why we should keep using the q slur. again, a bunch of small things i could easily brush off, but things that stuck out 

things didn’t get really bad until this semester. over winter break, two things happened. the aforementioned nonwhite board member we had was hired by the school and is no longer legally allowed to be involved in any club’s board. also, i started dating a member of our club, a nonbinary transfeminine person (gonna call them bug for this post) who’s two years younger than me and getting their feet in school. i was feeling really awful after a week-long hospitalization early in the semester and having my longterm partner across the country; they were facing academic difficulties and poverty that will probably keep them from returning next semester, so it arose from mutual need and desire to support one another, with mutualistic understanding of the fact that our relationship is probably on a timeline. bug came into our school hoping to get involved in lgbt activism, so when we had elections after winter break, i encouraged them to try out. 

it’s also worth mentioning that bug was and is one of only three transfeminine club members who would regularly show up to meetings. the other two, who i’ll call mercury and simone, are both older than me; mercury was part of the board before i joined, and simone joined at the same time as bug, due to our awareness of our club’s appearance due to having something like 30 regular attendees and only three transfeminine ones; even now, simone is the only one who identifies as a trans woman, not nonbinary.my roommate, who i’ll call marcie, also joined at this time, becoming our only nonwhite board member. 

so, convergence of events: bug and i start dating, and bug, simone, and marcie all join this club. things are great at first! everyone loves each other, we’re all excited to be working with our friends. i’m overjoyed to have my roommate, one of my best friends, and my brand new datemate working with me on something i’m really passionate about. 

when we try to put together our first event of the semester, though, things go HELLA south. the new director of the board, the boyfriend of the guy i had a couple issues with at the beginning of the year, asks the board what kind of shirts we want for our event: tanks or tees. bug speaks up first, saying that they don’t want a tank because tanks show their shoulders too much and make them feel dysphoric. simone and mercury echo bug’s sentiments; i, knowing that our membership has had some issues with our lack of inclusion for transfemmes, decide to go with the transfemme voices on our board. this becomes the biggest controversy we’ve yet faced as a board. the director becomes enraged, talking about how tanks make him LESS dysphoric, how for our last event he got baseball shirts that make him dysphoric and that he hates (and that he also wears almost every time i see him, hm) so we should make a concession for him to get a shirt he likes. he tells us to vote; me, bug, simone, and mercury all vote for tanks, which means that we have the majority on our seven person board. the situation is now wholly out of control, the director gets angrier and says we’re getting tees anyway, marcie says something off hand about how it’s not a dysphoria contest, which makes bug feel like shit because they brought up the topic of their dysphoria first as a reason they personally wouldn’t wear the shirt if we bought it and then was countered by our director’s claims of how dysphoric tees would make him. simone says that this invalidation of her and bug’s lived experiences and the hostility they were met with for asking for a shirt with transfemmes in mind is transmisogynistic behaviour. remember that guy who got hired by the school? he steps in now to defend his boyfriend and shuts down the conversation (yeah, he’s still in our group chat, despite that being, y'know, illegal.) everyone is furious. more than a few people are brought to tears. 

pretty fucking dumb, right? over shirts. don’t worry, though, we’re heading into some even more ridiculous shit. 

the next time the board talks, it’s to say that we’re obviously all very upset with each other and we shouldn’t meet in an unmediated environment. (spoiler alert: what has come to be known as shirtgate was at the beginning of february and we JUST had a group meeting for the first time ever since that this sunday…) we hold our event successfully despite the fact that half the board isn’t talking to each other. i’m feeling hurt and isolated from my friends and withdraw a bit, spending more time with bug. the board is divided into two tiers: the wider board, and the presidents’ board, which i’m on, and which, coincidentally, is basically just our regular board without transfemmes. ha. the presidents’ board meets and discusses how unacceptable the situation is, attempting to appeal to me to change “sides” because those rowdy transfemmes, right? i’m grossed out and feeling like i’ve been isolated from the group of people i have a vested interest in supporting and stand my ground, officially marking myself as no longer one of the InGroupTM. for the most part, i do nothing as a club administrator from here on out. things are magically out of my hands. hm 

our next big controversy happens when we hold a screening for moonlight, about a week after it won best picture. this is a public event, and many people who are not in our club show up; i assume that all we are providing is advertisement and prepare to enjoy the movie. here’s where me being autistic comes in. the lounge is crowded with people and i’m surrounded by some of my favourite people, including bug, who’s off their adhd meds for now and doesn’t have a lot of impulse control. my friends respond audibly to some of the scenes, cos we’re a bunch of gay kids who’ve rarely-if-ever seen representation for ourselves before. due to being in a social setting where the people around me that i trust, esp bug, are being very emotional and responsive to the film, i can’t really not join in and make noises of excitement too- it’s just the way my aspie brain works, tbh. i feel awesome! this is great! 

it’s not great. the event ends and people are furious, complaining about how the movie was ruined by the talking during a handful of scenes. the board cracks down on me and bug (and, to a lesser extent, simone) for being vocally excited. in retrospect, fair, and definitely something that means i should stay away from crowds more often. however, this was an environment of friends, i thought, not people who’d get really upset with me for unintentionally making sounds of excitement when, for the second time ever, i see gay men represented in the context of a film. marcie is furious most of all, as our only non-white board member, and goes on a facebook rant, vagueing about not just bug, simone, and i, but about our friends and members who were not quiet either. me and bug’s close friend, who i’ll call mirage, is incredibly hurt by this, as marcie uses their non-whiteness to describe why they’re frustrated by this behaviour; mirage is a nonwhite nb kid who was most vocal during a scene in the movie where the protagonist hits a bully with a chair, making an audible joke about it, which they did because they found the scene triggering after they were hit with a chair by a teacher growing up. this was also the moment of conversation marcie had the biggest issue with. bug and i are feeling pretty shitty about our neurodivergences and how the club has previously made promises to be understanding of symptoms, but this seems to only extend to depression and anxiety. the club fractures further. 

we’re basically not talking to each other unless we have to at this point, with bug, simone, and i staying close, marcie, the director, his boyfriend, and their housemate making their own group, and mercury disengaging from all of us entirely. we hold an event. it’s called kink 102 and is the sequel to an event we had in first semester that i missed during my hospitalization, where apparently the director and his boyfriend demonstrated floggers and crops on each other in front of an audience who came to learn about kink, not expecting to be part of a scene. people are very apprehensive about this, especially because we have had several meetings focusing on kink and drag- our director’s passions- and none focusing on, for example, nonbinary people and aroace-spec people in the lgbt community. this becomes a huge point of contention, as several ace-spec people approach various board members and express their discomfort with how overwhelmingly sexual many of our meetings are and how our director seems so keen to involve strangers in his sex life- he has admitted rather freely to being both an exhibitionist and a voyeur. a student makes a public post about how we’ve had two meetings about kink and none about aroace lgbt people. bug steps in and comments a bit snarkily about how much they agree, having heard me, their ace-spec boyfriend, talk a lot about how i’ve been honestly triggered by some of our events; bug is very much not an ace person and is in fact an exhibitionist and voyeur themself, but thinks the issue is this important. i step in as well as a board member, feeling the need to address a public complaint, and reassure them that i would very much like to spearhead a meeting about aroace people, including the different ways it can manifest and how it isn’t equivalent to non-heterosexuality, as the only ace-spec board member. i admit to my discomfort at the environment we often create and say that it’s something we certainly need to work on. 

shit pops off in the chat, but only at bug! not at me! hmmmm!!!! 

bug stops talking in the group chat unless prompted at this point. 

the post goes mostly unresolved; all that happens is bug (and, later, simone, who posted a rather snide comment on the same forum expressing her frustrations with the group as a whole, both backing up me and bug, and as a trans woman who’s been repeatedly involved in drag events now) get CHEWED THE FUCK OUT. simone says something about how we have way too much focus on kink and it makes it seem like we’re saying it’s equivalent to being lgbt. the director loses his shit over this, and says, quote, “Thanks for invalidating my identity. I can’t discuss this further. Erasure of my culture.” which is… a lot, as someone who was abused in the guise of kink by older, paedophilic partners. 

i go to the kink meeting with bug because i want to learn how to tie them up safely and am hoping to learn about knots, but mostly because i feel like if i don’t go, i’ll get yelled at. there is no guide for tying knots. there is a brief discussion of consent, then the director ends up topless, getting whipped against the wall of the student lounge. a friend of mine sits next to me and sucks a fucking pacifier the whole time

we still haven’t met in person in months. this sunday, we finally meet. the director reveals he is resigning and also dropping out of college and tells us it’s mostly because of simone, which, wow, okay, is a lot to hear from someone who i spent hours counceling about whether or not he should go to the inpatient i went to and take a semester off first semester, before simone was ever even involved. the meeting is mostly just that. simone doesn’t come. we have a president’s meeting after, which basically equates to us staring awkwardly at bug until they leave and mercury retreating to their room, cos we hold this at the director and his boyfriend’s house. not weird and awkward, definitely doesn’t feel like we’re having a boys’ club meeting. nope. 

by this point i am distraught. i’m feeling like complete shit because all these people, despite their previous rounds of drama and weird comments, were my friends. i was so excited to work on something i cared about with people i cared about, and now no one even talks to each other. i confess my concerns about everything to the group, and shit gets wild. the director is quick to tell me that things aren’t my fault, but that his issue is with simone and bug. and then he starts getting really shitty. i had previously mentioned how eager i was to protect the incoming freshmen, because my first year of college, i was raped by a trans woman who proceeded to manipulate her way through the lgbt club on that campus to turn people against me and keep me from speaking out, which resulted in my utter academic failure and dropping out. the director begins to tell me that, in my personal goal of keeping freshmen safe, i have made bug entirely dependent on me, that the fact that they don’t talk to half the board anymore is on me, using words and phrases i used to describe my previous abuse to say that, hey, turns out you’re abusive. which… is fuckt, coming from the person who capslocks curse words in the group chat and then has his SCHOOL STAFF boyfriend come in to tell us how justified he is. the boyfriend tells me i never should have expected us to be friends. which i guess is true, but hey, i was introduced to the group by their roommate way back last year, and really didn’t know what to expect at all. i am also told that kink is easily as important as lgbt activism in our history, that it should be considered a part of the acronym, that all these young kids uncomfortable with two three-and-five-year-older people acting out scenes under our banner at our events need to learn their history. any second now i’m expecting our name, LGBTQU+, to grow a k. hilarious that they’re concerned about history now, but me asking us not to use the q slur to describe our members is ridiculous because no one’s bothered by it anymore! 

i meekly offer to step down, but the director says that because he’s leaving and his roommate is graduating, we won’t have a board anymore if i step down, considering bug and simone are ready to leave. the boyfriend and the director lecture me for like five solid minutes about how this is the oldest club on campus and if i don’t stay, it will collapse and that will be on me, basically. so yeah. accusing me of perpetrating the same abuse my ex perpetrated against me, then guilting me into staying to keep our club active- a club that is now reputed for being more focused on kink than lgbt events, for not being welcoming to nonwhite people or trans women (forgot to mention at one point students formed a qpoc group separate from us and the boyfriend was FURIOUS and tried to overtake it, using us, the board that was entirely white except for him :) ), and for being the biggest cesspit of drama on campus. in other words, a club i would very much like to l e a v e. 

i know this wasn’t entirely mogai hell or ace discourse, but there’s shades of every kind of shit in this group, tbh. and i really just needed a place to vent about it. i know we all made mistakes, but jesus, i’m hemorrhaging friends and feeling like dirt, my pals. i just need space to whine. 

oh one more thing, forgot to mention: the director tried to use bug to tell me to get a fetlife, because bug has one, because they’re not ace. also had bug ask me to pose with them naked for one of our event posters to circumvent me talking about how i felt unconfident naked, which thankfully never happened. also seem to think that because bug and i have sex i’m not ace anymore, therefore we shouldn’t talk about ace stuff because we don’t have an ace board member? didn’t know where to put these ones, but yeah! ;) 

ok! sorry for the length of this. thank you for listening! <3 

[orionsangel86]

I need to address something I said on  this post that was taken the wrong way and found its way to the ‘destiew’ tag.

Now I make a policy ever since I once got into an argument with some anti’s to just block as soon as they start reblogging my stuff so I am not responding to the post in question (Because arguing with haters is exhausting as they will never see how wrong they are). But I feel it needs to be addressed anyway:

Now this was then followed by a longer load of bullshit by another ‘cas’ stan and destiel hater which outlined all the ways that Castiel is not in love with Dean which made me laugh it was so ridiculous and I need to address this. In absolutely no way do I think Castiel’s life and existence is “all about Dean”. This is just not true. 

I worded it badly in my previous post, but what I meant was that he was motivated by love, and that without the love, it is hard to understand many of his actions. I say this because his reasons for choosing “humanity” over everything he has ever known just don’t really cut it if you remove the love. Consider this, an angel who has never known anything other than heaven and his orders, chooses to disobey and fall because some human who he hasn’t known all that long tells him too?

Okay, so you can view this as him thinking about God’s original orders to the angels that they were to love humanity more than they loved God, and Cas thought something was up with heaven anyway. He did after all keep the whole Michael and Lucifer meat suit thing from Dean and Sam. Fair enough. No love.

Season 5, Cas has fallen, he is outcast and angry, he is slowly becoming human. He goes on a hunt for God. Yeah so his motivations in season 5 don’t scream love to me, more just desperation to stop the apocalypse and dedication to free will. Fair enough. No love. Just a badass motherfucker who rocks and swishes around in his trenchcoat being the best in every way. Moving on.

Season 6, now this is where it gets interesting because of 6x20. If you are a Cas stan, and you still hate Dean and think there is nothing there from Cas’s side after 6x20 then you honestly confuse the hell outta me. 6x20 basically confirms that Cas’s deal with Crowley was because he couldn’t bare to burden Dean. If he was just ‘meh’ about Dean and only saw him as a friend, then that whole arc of season 6 makes no sense because isn’t it a defining characteristic of Castiel that he is a master strategist and logical first and foremost? Therefore, wouldn’t the most logical solution to the Raphael problem be to go to the guy who stopped the apocalypse before rather than make a deal with a demon which, as an angel, he KNOWS is a bad idea?? Hmmm?? He went to Dean first of all because it was the logical choice. It was his first plan. But he stopped himself and watched the guy rake leaves instead. Tell me how that wasn’t motivated by love honestly.

Season 7. Cas wants to make it up to DEAN. He will find a way to redeem himself to DEAN. It was all about DEAN. Sorry, but that’s how they wrote him. Believe me I am the LAST person to be a Dean stan around here, but that’s how it was. Castiel’s motivations in season 7 were penance and love. (except for Crazy!Cas who wanted nothing but peace). I won’t deny that at face value Sam and Dean’s treatment of Cas in late season 7 made me angry, but since I objectively try to understand all the characters motivations and desires I can see why Dean reacted the way he did and have spoken about this previously too.

Season 8. Boy don’t get me started. you can blame 8x07 and 8x17 if you must but the fact remains that in order to get Castiel back on heavens side Naomi used DEAN (or at least copies of him). Castiel OF COURSE has other motivation throughout, mainly his need for penance and redemption. He wasn’t yet of the mindset of making things right, more of punishing himself, but his LOVE for Dean was what broke him free. Cas’s ENTIRE season 8 plot cannot be explained if Cas isn’t IN LOVE with Dean at this point.

Season 9. Cas was a “jilted lover”. Showrunners own words. Um... yeah. That. Of the whole range of human emotions and issues that our poor angel faced in early season 9, rejection was a big one. He was heartbroken. Ephraim was drawn to Castiel’s pain which was paralleled with heartbreak throughout the episode as it was the one thing all the victims had in common. Do I REALLY need to go on? 

Yes actually I will. He found himself a purpose in late season 9 because once again the angels were pulling him at all angles which is what they did constantly in season 9 and 10, Castiel was always reluctant but felt like he COULDN’T say no because of his past and his continued need for redemption as he still feels a great guilt and sorrow over his actions of season 6. However Metatron spells it out to us plainly in case you weren’t listening “He’s in love... with humanity” “you draped yourself in the flag of heaven, but ultimately it was all about saving one human.” 

At this point its impossible NOT to view it from a love perspective. No seriously. How am I supposed to take this to mean anything other than love? He didn’t chose to spare Dean’s life for humanities sake? Killing Dean would have been the best strategic choice at that point in time to stop Metatron and keep the angels on his side, but he couldn’t do it because he is IN LOVE WITH DEAN.

*breaths* 

I’m not gonna bother explaining season 10-12. From 9 onwards the show has basically made it canon that Cas is in love with Dean and I feel no need to go on. 

Basically haters, here’s the thing, I am in no way saying that Castiel is reduced to being Dean’s love interest. As much as you would LOVE for that to be my argument to make me out to be some unintelligent imbecile,  Castiel is actually a multidimensional and complex character with many facets and motivations. It just so happens that his LOVE for another character is one of the most beautiful things about him. If you are really gonna sit there and deny that love is a beautiful part of Cas’s character then I feel sorry for you.

Also, about the abuse. Fuck off. I’m done with that argument. Every character has been abusive to every other character. It’s Supernatural. They have been brainwashed into beating each other and they have been pushed to unimaginable levels of stress with what they do. I don’t romanticise abuse. That is an old and boring argument against destiel shippers that has absolutely no place in any of my discussions. Are they abusive? Not intentionally. There is no sinister twisted underlying issue between these two characters where they make each other miserable and aim to control each others lives. This ain’t 50 shades sweetheart. The show has gone out of its way to show that they are each others happy place. How can you not fucking see this? When the characters are pushed to extremes this show sometimes goes overboard and yes, those bits make me angry. It makes me angry that Sam has been canonically abused for years and it has never been addressed, it makes me angry that Cas gets treated like a tool on regular occasions to the extent that it was admitted by Cas himself to Metatron in 11x06. It makes me angry that Dean was abused as a child and now struggles to find himself in the awful position of both victim and abuser as the brothers have a fucked up toxic codependent relationship. Does Cas come into that? Sometimes yes. Most of the time no. These are things that the show sometimes struggles to address because they are deep and psychological and intelligent issues in a way that this show just can’t delve into. Its a fucking CW show for christ’s sake not bloody HBO. But at least it does try to address them.

Here’s an idea. If you don’t like it, stay out of the destiel tags and keep the hell off of my posts. Finally, I am so so sorry that you can’t see the love in the world. That must be such a sad boring existence.

I’m done.

[queerascat]

the #Jughead mess masterpost

this post marks the last time i’ll be responding to asks about / reblogs of the post i made about the fight for Jughead’s correct portrayal on the CW’s Riverdale. after 3 days of responding to nearly 15 asks / posts on the topic and the anxiety that that has caused me on top of everything else going on in my life, i’m calling it quits on that post. while i still stand by the admittedly unclear point that i was attempting to make, i do apologize to those who were hurt by my unclear wording. i’m also done with talking about asexual representation in general or fandom-related anything anymore. while i appreciate the kind words of encouragement i received, it’s not worth the cost to my mental health to talk about even my own representation anymore.

this post serves as both a future point of reference on the mess that took place on this blog and as a “self-serve” response to the future questions, accusations etc i’ll inevitably receive.

if you’re seeing this post because i linked you to it instead of actually responding to you, sorry not sorry. i’ve already tried my best and am now out of “best” to give. chances are the answer to your question(s) / response to your accusations can be found here. help yourself.

original post: what you mean is “keep Jughead true to character”

questions / accusations / responses: (quotes are not always direct)

“jughead is aro too holy shit.”

“i understand what you’re saying, but i’m upset because Jughead won’t be asexual.”

“…you trying to act like aces (and aros) are reacting to these news wrong bc they are not rejecting the idea that asexual ppl can’t do romance at all is honestly nonsense bc jughead is not only asexual, he is aromantic…” ie. why i chose not to explicitly refer to Jughead as aromantic & why my post was only about (his) asexuality.

“I appreciate that you voiced the separation between ace and aro…”

“it makes sense to shorten [keep Jugehead true to character] to “keep him ace"”

“My main concern is that the media is really bad with asexual representation, so my immediate thought is that since they’re giving him romances, it’s less of a "find yourself” journey and more of a “he’s straight now” situation.” ie. i also think CW is probably going to fuck up and portray Jughead as heteroromantic heterosexual.

the submission to Fuck Yeah Asexual by the anon i pissed off

“it is CLEAR from his wording that he means aromantic asexual and yet here you are, trying to strip this rep from us. you couldn’t have chosen a worse character to talk about while raising your flag of diverse ace rep, you arophobe.” ie. my usage of “character” was not meant to treat Jughead’s sexuality as a personality quark and i understand that aromanticism can be an intrinsic part of a person’s asexuality, but why does that forbid me from talking about only one section of that intersectionality?

“So what if aroaces want to conflate asexuality with aromanticism? How dare you demand that I be two pasted together orientations, actually.” ie. i still don’t understand how i did this and would still love to get some clarity on this (i suspect i understand, but?), but at this point am calling it quits on this particular post.

“how can you say aro aces have plenty of representation compared to romantic aces??? When have aces ever been explicitly aromantic in the media???”

“I’m not fighting for any “One True Asexual Narrative”, I’m fighting for Jughead’s Asexual Narrative. I am fighting for the narrative that could allow others to empathize with me, and give me something to relate to so I don’t feel like shit about my asexuality after watching too much TV. Please don’t attack us for wanting to see people like ourselves on TV, thanks. There is a huge difference between wanting to see someone like yourself and wanting “one true asexual narrative”–I honesetly do not understand how you came to this conclusion, this is one example, and there really are not any others in this medium? so how is there a pattern?” ie. yeah, fucked up and should have been clearer and not suggested that people are of a hivemind and are all fighting for a singular thing for a singular reason. that said, the pattern i spoke of does exist and here are some examples of it.

“You have no right to be upset, no one even did the stuff you’re claiming. Your reaction to Jughead’s erased aromanticism is “and?” You didn’t even care and that really hurt and made me feel attacked. I see the pattern you spoke of, but that has nothing to do with Jughead because he is canon ace and all those other examples are headcanons. Aces fighting for an already ace character to stay ace (in a way that includes his aromantic tendencies) is nothing like your examples.” ie.  ……once again, no matter how intersectional your or Jughead’s asexuality might be, my post was about one thing and one thing only and that was not aromanticism. it’d be nice if people would acknowledge that. also, there is a pattern with Jughead that ties into what i spoke of and the pattern affects more than just asexuals. 

“It still sounds a lot like you honestly think romantic aces are the ones being erased. My problem with this is that aro aces and especially allo aros are erased so much of the time in ace communities, yet when aro aces make something about them romantic aces scream erasure while completely ignoring the context.” ie. i do not think that romantic aces are “the ones” being erased. i was attempting to point out that more than one group of asexuals can be hurt by something, that the response to something hurtful can in and of itself also be hurtful to others if we are not careful. nothing i said was even about aromantic vs romantic aces and aces aren’t even the only ones being hurt.

or you could just browse my entire #Jughead tag in chronological order.