#and so many people miss the point so badly

[pinkandpurple360]

yikes at that anon lecturing you, but especially at this part

Paying attention to Stolas language in Murder Family, fucked up context aside, he don't bring up consequences if Blitz didn't accept the trade neither mentioned his power to threat him to accept it either, he offered and even asked if it's fair, someone as powerful as Stolas could control Blitz easily, yet he doesn't and it shows a lot about his character, but of fucking course you all don't care about that, Stolas is a big meanie.

what is it with Stolas fans and acting like what he says is the only thing that matters in that scene? saying 'fucked up context aside' is just trying to sweep away the entire problem people have with that scene

the context is what makes it unfair. the context is the threat to make Blitzo accept the deal - Stolas knew Blitzo was in danger and couldn't think straight and kept the call going anyway. there was a literal threat to Blitzo's life that Stolas was leveraging to get him to agree. the context is also where the control comes in - Blitzo needs access to the book therefore Stolas has control over him, because Blitzo has significant reason to agree regardless of whether he wants to or not to be able to keep being able to eat and house both himself and Loona. this isn't that hard to understand; it's no different than a power difference between a tenant and a landlord. except Stolas is worse because he's literal royalty and Blitzo is part of a species considered less than dirt

and Blitzo especially has reason to think there will be consequences for saying no because Stolas is showing him through ignoring all the signs he's in danger on that phone call that he does not care for his wellbeing - he called when Blitzo's life was in danger and he knew that full well. there's no 'yeah but'-ing to get out of that one. saying 'well Stolas could have been way more overt with his control!' is not a defense. Stolas is such a malicious abuser because he's the one person in the cast who isn't a mustache-twirling silent movie villain about it, because he'll do things like say 'sound fair?' when everything about the situation is weighted in his favor. this part is basically saying 'he could have been super obvious about how he was going to force Blitzo into sex but because he tried to pretend like he was being fair (even when he blatantly wasn't) that shows what a good person he is!'

also this:

This misconception you all have that Stolitz fans think all this needs to happen is Blitz to confess, and that Stolas has nothing more to improve is just wrong. Just plain wrong. I love both of these characters and I hate seeing an enormous mischaracterization of both.

I personally haven't seen the (remaining) Stolitz shippers saying this for one simple reason: I avoid their spaces. I don't like seeing posts similar to anon's where anything Stolas does wrong is the result of a misunderstanding or just Blitzo taking it badly because he's insecure or something, or worse where the very obvious signifiers of abuse on Stolas' part are handwaved away. I know that stuff will bug me so I avoid it

but anon clearly doesn't abide by the same rules. they're so bothered by a 'mischaracterization' of their faves that they're marching into people's inboxes to write long screeds about how antis are just missing the point or whatever else.

if there's only one anon or several my advice is the same: stay out of anti spaces. you clearly can't handle it and you need to stop making it everyone else's problem. if this ramping up of pestering people is some strange attempt to shut down criticism of the next ep before it even drops, you're wasting your time. the view counts on helluva show it's turned off a lot of people and you can't debate someone back into loving something that's let them down too many times

just go enjoy the show in your own spaces and block tags/people whose takes you don't want to see. trying to police people's critiques on helluva is both a losing battle and a waste of time

“Stolas is great if you just pay attention to his sad backstory and try not to think about the bad stuff he did. And attribute all the bad stuff to Blitz being a mentally ill tsundere”

Any time I am exposed to a owlizard shipper it’s always against my will despite my best efforts, because they are absolutely everywhere. The creator of the show is one of them, the entire show was thrown out to instead be catered to them and their headcanons. They make up almost the entire fan space and in fact shippers write and animate the very show itself.

But it’s still not good enough? They still have to rant about people that aren’t on their team?

[the-one-and-only-taffie]

dude it's like you and I shARE THE SAME BRAIN LIKENASKJAMA AHHHHHHH

I have already gathered so many other headcanons about them and even a possible scenerio/fic type of deal, but I shall save those for another time

Anyway, the main deal about these two is that as much as they liked to pretend, they don't actually love each other. Main reason, they are at a point in their lives where they aren't capable of it. Sentinel cause he's looking out for #1. White because she doesn't have the experience, knowledge, or probably even the ability to love in the way necessary for a functional and fulfilling romantic relationship.

What the two see in each other isn't someone they would want to spend the rest of their immortal lives with. Hell, they don't even like each other most of the time. They just see each other as a way to boost their own egos and prove to themselves their inherent superiority. Sentinel is very aware that he only sees White as an item to bolster his status, especially when he has to legitimize his rule after betraying the Primes. However, he can't help expressing fondness for her, even if it's only when she does or says something that makes him look good in front of the populous. White, however, genuinely believes she loves Sentinel. Her love language is bringing out the best in people by correcting what she believes to be their flaws. This is what she did with The Diamonds, especially Pink, and it's what she'll do with Sentinel. She knows the way she treated them was wrong and that this exact habit of hers is what led to Pink running away. This is why instead of fixating on Sentinel's flaws, as you said, she'll instead shower him with compliments and encourage the behaviors she believes is good. She doesn't at all see how this isn't better. She's doing the same thing again in a different coat of shiny paint, but hasn't yet introspected and noticed this. So she keeps on, even when it drives Sentinel to madness and brings out the worst in White.

When you mentioned that she "proved herself to be terrifying when mad," I immediately thought about a scenario where they're arguing as usual, Sentinel is fed up with White's "critiques" while White is acting like the bigger person and speaking to him like a detached, observant therapist who is only missing a writing pad and a pen. Sentinel in his foolish hubris goes for a cheap shot, maybe pointing out that she failed her own family. White in what feels like an instant, her face goes completely red and she unleashes her temper in one fit of rage. She goes off the deep end and woaaaaah the look on Sentinel's face would be priceless! Her booming voice echoing off the walls, her stomping the floor so hard as she paces around the room making it shake like an earthquake (cyberquake?). Honestly the poor bot would be knocked over by the force of White's scolding alone and she'd still keep going. Once she's done, she'd go back to being calm like nothing happened and she'd go "Whoops, hehe, sorry you had to see me like that. What I meant was I thoroughly understand you and acknowledge your input. However, my dear, I strongly disagree. I still respect you and what you have to say. I didn't spook you too much, did I?" And Sentinel is trembling as he slides himself off the floor using the wall like "Oh, nah, I'm fine, totally ok, yup, great discussion there, haha, but i got a meeting to go to so im going to go like now" and once he's back on his pedes he books it out of the room. Sentinel makes a mental note to never piss her off that badly again. White Diamond continues on as if she didn't just scold her boyfriend like an impudent child.

On a more wholesome note, YES YES DOUBLE DECKER YES to Sentinel taking White Diamond to the surface of Cybertron! She asks many questions about it, some he doesn't provide answers to for classified reasons. Speaking of classified reasons, Sentinel always has Airachnid and his drones accompany them in secret to notify him when Quintessons are near and to help him steer her clear of anything incriminating. As she enjoys the view, White laments how in her empire's conquest to spread her view of perfection, she destroyed so many beautiful sights like the one she sees on Cybertron. Sentinel tries to cheer her up by telling her the planets after being colonized by gems must look just as wonderful, if not more, than the way they did before. She just says she appreciates his attempts at comfort, but she says she's learned better than to find beauty in the destruction of life. Sentinel rolls his eyes. I bet in White's attempts to come off as humble, she frequently dismisses or shuts down Sentinel's compliments, especially in regards to her past or the parts of herself she believes are flaws.

But yea on the more silly side I find it so funny how their attraction to each other supercedes their incompatiblity. Like "This glitch/clod is annoying but at least she/he is hot" LMAO. The only time they seem to be at their most functional is when they're chilling together in silence.

Back with more White Diamond x Sentinel Prime crackship nonsense baby!!!

Ever since I first thought about these goobers, I haven't known a single day of peace (mostly cause the ideas are just racking around in my brain)

So here's a list of headcanons I came up with for Prime Diamond! If you have any questions regarding this ship, my ask box is open. Double if you have any thoughts or anything to add, go on ahead! I hope y'all enjoy!

I may make a part 2 when I come up with more lol

For this relationship to even be possible (as possible as a crackship between two characters from completely different franchises can be), it will have to take place Post-Steven Universe Finale/Future when White Diamond is in her therapy, self-help guru era. And when Sentinel Prime is... alive.

Also, I have been trying to do research regarding this but since the results are so inconsistent, I'm gonna assume White Diamond is around 80 to 90 ft tall and Sentinel is around 60 (based on how he's double Orion Pax's height and apparently TF One Orion is around 33 ft tall). If you know their actual canonical heights or anything close to that, please lemme know!

As mentioned in a reblog, White Diamond would take an interest in Sentinel Prime as a sort of little DIY project. Though he tries to hide it, White with her supernatural intuitiveness can tell there's more to him than meets the eye (he's an asshole). Having been inspired by Steven to see the worth and beauty in imperfections, she wants to give someone like Sentinel a chance like Steven did for her. Though she is making genuine strides to improve upon her previous controlling and obsessive behavior regarding perfection, this aspect of her will resurface in her attempts "fix" Sentinel while in a relationship with him. She adores and finds much interest in his "positive imperfections," but helping him improve on his more negative ones wouldn't hurt, right?

Other reasons she developed an attraction to him is for the same reason all the Sentinel fangirls did: he's just so... pathetic. When he tries to impress her with stories of battles he's never fought in and gives her a tour of his treasure room full of artifacts he didn't discover, she can tell he's trying way too hard to impress her. She finds this cute and charming rather than douchey and desperate.

Sentinel Prime pursued her because, as stated in a previous reblog, "his diva ass was always going to try and seek out a gem fit for a king." He laid his eyes on an 80-90 ft giant alien rock woman and thought,"I need her." As any sane person would. She was supposed to be nothing more than another symbol of wealth for him to show off to the other elites and officials of Iacon City to further cement the royal image he works so hard to maintain. He definitely underestimated how overwhelming White Diamond can be, and I am not just referring to her height.

Sentinel would rather have his spark be extinguished than admit to this, but his stabilizing servos get wobbly at the idea of his alien girlfriend being so much taller than he is. His pride would never admit to this, nor would it accept someone taller than him accompanying him. He believes that as a "Prime," he is supposed to be much taller, bigger, and more imposing than those around them.

Whenever they make a public appearance, Sentinel insists that White shrink herself to a height more tolerable for his fragile ego. He bullshits an excuse about their buildings not being designed for a being as tall as she is. White obliges, but given how Iacon was built when the previous actual Primes were all gigantic and alive, she quickly figures his lie and confronts him about it. He'd just lie again and say he didn't want the other Cybertronians to be intimidated... by her beauty. Clearly, it's not because of some Napolean complex or something. Still, White in her patience era takes the compliment for what it is.

The "guy who doesn't like speeches" vs. "professional yapper" isn't a joke. Sentinel can't stand how much White Diamond loves to yap. She's the kind of person to have thoughts and opinions about anything and everything. Given that she doesn't breathe, she doesn't even need to catch her breath in the middle of speaking, so she can go on and on and on, much to Sentinel's annoyance.

He tries to get her to quiet down at times, but as White tends to do, she either doesn't hear him or straight up ignores him. Her monologuing, along with her height and just how shiny she is, is very overwhelming for Sentinel at times. The only good thing he finds about this aspect of his sweetspark is when she dotes on him and showers him with compliments and attention. As if a attention hungry fame whore needed any more of it.

Sentinel even allows White to indulge in her psychoanalysis, playing up the whole "tragic hero whose brothers and sisters perished in battle and now has to face the pain and weight of protecting his people alone" that she eats up. White does sometimes hit dangerously close to home, so Sentinel shuts her down before she could dig straight to bedrock and uncover the more unfavorable parts of himself he wants to stay hidden.

Speaking of staying hidden, the way White carries herself in public makes Sentinel was to keep her locked away in a jewelry box. White is excellent when it comes to using her words to inflict psychic damage or to build someone up. When it comes to social situations where charisma, relatability, and poise are needed, this is when White is at her most alien. She is not the most socially adjusted given that prior to the finale, she spent thousands of years hidden away in a world of her own delusions. She doesn't have much of a filter, something she has been working on to avoid upsetting offending others.

She has the habit of pointing out any interesting thing that catches her eye, especially about people, whether or not it's positive or negative. This has led to her unsettling the bots at best or offending them at worst. Sentinel then has to come in and use his charisma to difuse the situation and paint her behavior in a more positive light. Only for White to turn around and ask everyone if they ever noticed how Sentinel's wings move in accordance to his mood and how adorable it is. Everyone laughs. Sentinel is thoroughly pissed.

Sentinel definitely has more relationship experience than White Diamond. All of her knowledge comes from what she's heard from the gems that come to her for her advice or from that human show the little green Crystal Gem recommended (she can't remember her name). In her attempts to emulate the behavior of what she's heard of and observed, she ends up coming off as cringe at best or detached from reality. At certain points of the relationship, she even imposes certain "deadlines" on courtship behaviors she expects from Sentinel. All his previous relationships were private, casual flings. He only made this one public because bagging a bad bitch like White Diamond is an accomplishment he felt he had to show off.

This may come to bite him in the aft when her radiance catches the attention of other bots. On these occasions, he acts possessive and showers her with attention, gifts, and affection. He tells himself and Airachnid it's because he doesn't want her to outshine him in the eyes of the public. In reality, he gets jealous and doesn't want to lose her interest and, most importantly, her attention. As overwhelming and embarrassing as she can get, a twisted part of him really craves her attention.

In private, Sentinel can flip flop greatly in how he treats White. On some days he leans on her for support and wants her to pet his wings while he vents about all the dumb, annoying bots he has to fraternize with and all the boring meetings he has to attend. White occasionally interrupts him with advice or her own views on the situation, which frustrates Sentinel. On other days, he's completely detached, not even bothering to give her the time of day. He is at his most consistently sweet and romantic when they're both in the public eye, performing grand gestures of love. This intensifies when they're on camera.

They present themselves as THE Iacon couple, but Sentinel and White argue a lot about pretty much anything. More often than not, White is trying to advise him on how to improve himself and his city, and Sentinel kindly tells her to shut up and mind her own business.

They are both very prideful people who can't accept when they are wrong. White is more willing than Sentinel to admit to it and compromise. If she believes she is 100% in the right, she won't go down without a verbal fight. She has yet to figure out how to properly counter Sentinel's "NUH UH!" though. She believes this is normal and healthy as she hears time and time again how arguments are a sign of a functional relationship. White knows how in the past she never allowed anyone to express their grievances or criticize her. If they did, she'd twist their words to further force her own viewpoint or take control over their mind and body. Seeing Sentinel passionately argue back while White practices her listening skills and only sometimes speaks over him gives her hope that she isn't regressing back to her previous toxicity. No one has told her that disagreements are healthy and normal, but frequent fights and arguments are not. And the kind of hellish circles these two go in just ain't it

[kaythefloppa]

It rubs me the wrong way when people say they hate Rani solely because they sunk their ship. In fact, most of the hatred towards the character has been because Kion got with her instead of the other girls in the show.

Seeing artworks or fanfics of Rani fighting with Tiifu/Zuri/Jasiri/Fuli/Vitani for Kion's affection, or Rani being jealous of Kion's female friends for being friendly with him, or said female friends being the other way around [ok Zuri I can kinda understand but the rest], or most infamously, Kion cheating on Rani with Fuli or Jasiri just gives me the ick, [the fact that people spent 2 years harassing Ford Riley to make that type of story canon in a Season 4 still fucking sends me]. It gave me the ick back when the finale came out, and it still gives me the ick now. It lowkey reeks of misogyny to see these female characters have all of their interesting or unique traits being stripped away for the sake of shipping, or in this case, sinking a ship [which is ironically what motivated a lot of people to dislike Rani so much]. It's giving the same vibes as those early 2000s fan arts of Vitani turning into a prissy Disney-Princess/Nala/Kiara clone with all of her charm and wit removed and pairing her up with Kopa in an overtly-het relationship with him.

Now that's not to say there aren't valid reasons for disliking or hating this character. Because there are. I dislike how Rani was written, and not exactly the character herself. She was hyped up as this important character only to appear in the last 9 episodes of the season. Too much of her story amounts to leaving the audience having to do the writers' work for them, her arc is too rushed, her pre-romance relationship with Kion is inconsistent and incoherent, and the actual romance begins way too close to the end of the story, and said romance winds up stealing the spotlight away from other characters, as the final scene is dedicated to Rani and Kion's child-wedding rather than the 5 main characters themselves. None of that has anything to do with whether or not Kion gets with Fuli or Jasiri.

And to be clear, you are allowed to like or dislike Rani, or praise or criticize her. But doing so for reasons such as "Oh she sunk [X] ship and angered the shippers!" is not a reason. And definitely don't go after people who like Rani's character.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Good morning, Sleepyhead.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[wutheringwavess]

"aang is such a pussy for not killing ozai"

"aang is the creator's self-insert"

"kataang is rushed and forced"

"katara and aang feel more like siblings to me ://"

"aang is a misogynist"

"kataang is just male viewers self-insert fantasy"

"aang is selfish"

GUYS. GUYS. HES TWELVEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

[hadesoftheladies]

hate going for christian weddings sometimes because i always see the prettiest women with the ugliest men, the sermon is always some shit about wives being slaves (but not like bad slavery, mutual slavery except the husband is a benevolent master which makes it okay) and making babies for their husband, the music is always lame, the mc is always weird and obnoxious, and older women keep fucking asking me when it's gonna be my turn and never take no for an answer.

[marshmellowtea]

in speaking of video essayists that lost me almost immediately i recently tried to watch verily bitchie's video on the feminism on barbie because i wanted an actually queer friendly dissection on why it falls so flat for me but after several minutes of meandering rambling with no real point in sight, a mention of the most annoying take on the beauty and the beast (that being the fucking stockholm syndrome discourse), and an uncritical mention of the riot girl movement as a paragon of countercultural feminism i just couldn't do it anymore lmao

[livefromtheloam]

The reason I don't dive too deeply into fandom is because the entire landscape is littered with people who intentionally misinterpret the message and then blame the media for not fitting nicely into their absolute stinker of a take.

[widevibratobitch]

@anon asking about the wax cylinder recordings ill get back to you when i have some more time to make a proper post i prommy i will <3

[red-dyed-sarumane]

having not played rhythm games for months and then picking up kamicity ensemble ive gotten SO bad at proseka. i was like its so over but im finally down to 5 greats it may possible to ap maximizer ex yet.

[medicinemane]

Sometimes you have something that you could say, that you think about saying, that you more or less know how you'd phrase it... but it's just not fucking worth it cause you know for a fact that people don't fucking listen

I don't know, I try to stay... if not optimistic then at least with a mind set of "doesn't matter, we've got no choice but to try and make things better"

Truthfully though I think I'm extremely pessimistic when it comes to the chances of anyone actually listening to what I say

I'm not sure if I'm just bad with words but... it seems impossible to convey even simple thoughts to people so... truthfully I've more or less given up and have just stopped trying. Especially if I don't at least know people well

So there it is

[paganinpurple]

AO3 Etiquette -UPDATED

Based on both decent and not so decent replies, I have made some changes to my original post below.

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

As well as likes, kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished it, you liked it - so kudos.

If you really liked it, you should try to comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.

No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it (so use your notes to say if you want some constructive feedback). Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. No, posting it online is not an open invitation for that. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity and just want to share. Don't ruin that for them. I've seen so many authors just stop writing coz they can't handle the negative emotions the critism brings, and it's only meant to be a fun thing shared for free (pointing out tagging errors is not included in this).

Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.

There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.

For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.

The tag exception is if you don't want to tag a million things or spoil your story, you can rate it as "chose not to use warnings," and maybe tag the bare minimum.

Don't censor tags. How can someone exclude a tag if the word isn't typed out correctly? There are no content bans for terms so don't censor them.

If the tags are mostly content/trigger warnings, especially if they are things considered very fucked up or graphic, you might want to use "dead dove - do not eat" to ensure people know that you're not messing around with tags and what they get is exactly what you've warned them about.

Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLATONIC, like friendship or family.

Nothing is banned. This is an rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.

People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.

Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite or an exchange youve written for going public). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.

Instead of deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - consider making it anonymous or orphaning it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to your name anymore. If you still want to delete it, fair enough.

It's come to my attention that metaworks ARE allowed on AO3, which is something I wasn't aware of. So if you do post an essay or theory, please tag it as such so others can choose to search for it or exclude it. Art is also allowed.

The only reason this archive works is because NON ONE PROFITS. Do not link to your ko-fi or patreon or mention monetary gain in any way or you violate the terms and risk having your account removed. If anyone does link, it leaves the archive open to people claiming it's for profit and having the whole thing removed.

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.

[mclqren]

HOW YOU GET THE GIRL ★ FC43

PAIRING ✦ franco colapinto x fem!sargeant!reader

SUMMARY ✦ with your brother's seat being taken by your admirer of the past year, you try your best to stay clear, but it's hard when franco is trying so goddamn hard to get your attention [ SMAU ]

WARNINGS ✦ cursing, very minor hate comments

REQUESTED ✦ here!

NOTES ✦ i am NOT fluent in italian or spanish so please correct me if i've messed up on either of them! i count this as the best of both worlds because i love having franco on the grid but i'm missing my goat logan. the faceclaim i've used is marissa long but feel free to picture whoever you want! my requests are open so feel free to leave a request :)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

liked by logansargeant, alex_albon, and 110,331 others

tagged logansargeant

yourusername logie, my bestest friend and the best older brother i could ever ask for. i am so so SO proud of you and the journey you have had during your formula one seasons. so many memories have been made, and i know that i will never ever forget the times we spent in the williams paddock, just having fun together (& bullying alex, obviously). the williams social media page won't be the same without me posting slips of you. trust me when i say this isn't the end, but simply the beginning. lots of love always and forever, y/n 💗

comments have been restricted

logansargeant ❤️

liked by logansargeant, francolapinto, and 94,522 others

yourusername someone hit me up with an italian man please, i love this country

view all comments

user4 oh she's taking it

user5 mother as perrrr

user6 the sargeant genetics are LETHALLL

user7 please someone tell me why is she in italy if her brother doesn't drive for williams anymore?

user8 she's the williams social media manager!! she started in the same year as logan x

logansargeant baby sis ❤️

yourusername love you sm 💗

francolapinto did you know i'm actually half italian?

francolapinto sei molto bella🙏🙏 (you are very pretty)

user9 second year running and he's after y/n AGAIN IM CRYING

user10 after taking her brother's seat too PLEASEEE he has guts i have to give it to him

user11 FRANCO'S COMMENT I'M DYINGGGG

user12 and the way she's ignoring it too oh my days 😭 it's been a year and he's still on this

imessages ( y/n )

liked by logansargeant, francolapinto, and 92,801 others

yourusername week off 🍏

view all comments

user16 farm girl???

user17 where is she 😭😭

yourusername my best friend's farm 💗

user18 multi-talented girl fr

user19 she looks like she BELONGS fr

user20 she def doesn't want to go back to the old 9-5

yourusername oh def not

yourbsf my angel 🪽🤍

yourusername best time w you alwaysss 💗

francolapinto never wanted to be a goat so badly

user21 I AM PISSING MYSELF

user22 HE IS SO BLATANT AT THIS POINTTTT

user23 @/yourusername PLEASE WE NEED YOUR THOUGHTS ON FRANCO'S COMMENTS

user24 she def won't answer but it's still so fucking funny i can't

liked by logansargeant, francolapinto, and 97,210 others

yourusername most beautiful place 💗

view all comments

user28 beautyyyy

user29 please y/n we need to see your pinterest RIGHT NOW the vibes are everything

user30 okay but...you & franco??

user31 what about letting people have some privacy, hm?

user32 oh wowwww

francolapinto not as beautiful as you 😉❤️

yourusername 🤣🤣

user33 FRANCO YOU DID IT!!!

user34 watch as franco puts y/n noticed x1 in his bio now

user35 THE WAY HE ACTUALLY DID IT. GIRL...

user34 I AM CREASING I CANNOT

lilymhe baby girl 😍

yourusername my lilypad i love you to bits!!

logansargeant are you sure you and that lion aren't twins

yourusername i'm thinking we were separated at birth??

liked by francolapinto, alex_albon, and 699,303 others

tagged francolapinto

williamsracing and just like that, mr colapinto is a point scorer in formula one, in his second ever race!! congratulations franco, take a bow 👏💗

view all comments

user38 CONGRATULATIONS FRANCOOO!!

user39 big question is...which admin posted this?

user40 one MILLION percent y/n. no doubt about it.

user41 you can tell y/n posted this bc of her signature pink heart HAHA

user42 i just know somewhere franco is kicking his feet and giggling over y/n telling him to take a bow for his performance

user43 oh franco colapinto you have won me over

user44 seeing this and lowkey feeling so sad for logan

user45 no but imagine how y/n must feel?? her brother just leaving and having to post this, she must hate franco right about now

user46 honestly, judging by the post race interview, i think y/n is fine with franco scoring points, tbh!

yourusername 👏👏💗

francolapinto hearts ❤️

user47 I AM SOBBING THIS IS TOO CUTE??

imessages ( franco )

imessages ( y/n )

liked by logansargeant, francolapinto, and 101,989others

yourusername 🦢🦢

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user48 IS MISS Y/N OUT ON A DATE???

user49 facecard could kill.

user50 Y/N ON A DATE WHO CHEERED

user51 someone check up on franco like right now.

user52 either franco is the guy in the pictures and that's why he's not commenting, or he's entered a depressive state

user53 knowing his dramatic ass it could be either

alex_albon mystery man 👀🤑

yourusername shhhh albon

logansargeant i'll fight him if he hurts you 😁

yourusername love you too logie 🧸

imessages ( y/n )

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yourusername city break ���🇷

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user54 FRANCO CAMEO FRANCO CAMEO THIS IS NOTTTT A DRILL

user55 I AM SCREAMING

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user57 she's in his hometown...so this serious stuff now

user58 Y/N I LOVE YOU FOR THIS

francolapinto 😁❤️❤️

yourusername 💗💗

logansargeant willing to fly out to collect you if i have to 🫡

yourusername i promise you i'm fine 💗

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francolapinto 1 AÑO DESPUÉS… ¡¡TENGO A LA CHICA!! ¡¡VAMOS!! la persona más hermosa por dentro y por fuera, con el corazón más grande que jamás haya existido. estoy tan feliz en este momento que las palabras no pueden explicarlo. te amo te amo te amo ❤️ (1 YEAR LATER… I GOT THE GIRL!! COME ON!! the most beautiful person inside and out, with the biggest heart that ever lived. i am so happy right now that words cannot explain it. i love you i love you i love you ❤️)

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user59 original y/n franco fans RISE

user60 WE ARE THE REAL WINNERS!!

user61 oh he is in love for real

user62 need someone to love me how he loves y/n

user63 their love is so so special

user64 okay but how's logan feeling about all this...? must be so awkward...

user65 judging by his comment...i think he's doing absolutely fine 🤣

logansargeant hurt her and i'm at your doorstep. 😊

francolapinto will never be a problem 🫡

yourusername you're the cutest ever

yourusername FRANCO 🤣🤣

francolapinto let me share my love for you, no?

yourusername i wanna kiss you so bad rn

logansargeant keep it pg-13 please.

yourusername logan.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

TAGS ✦ @shepgurl ; @blushmimi ; @nyxx-knight ; @fall-bambi ; @suns3treading ; @wowzees ; @d3kstar ; @poppysrin ; @ailooosworld ; @joalslibrary ; @dejavuontrack ; @dripostsstuff ; @kaylassturniolo

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The true, tactical significance of Project 2025

TODAY (July 14), I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! NEXT SATURDAY (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Like you, I have heard a lot about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's roadmap for the actions that Trump should take if he wins the presidency. Given the Heritage Foundation's centrality to the American authoritarian project, it's about as awful and frightening as you might expect:

https://www.project2025.org/

But (nearly) all the reporting and commentary on Project 2025 badly misses the point. I've only read a single writer who immediately grasped the true significance of Project 2025: The American Prospect's Rick Perlstein, which is unsurprising, given Perlstein's stature as one of the left's most important historians of right wing movements:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-10-project-2025-republican-presidencies-tradition/

As Perlstein points out, Project 2025 isn't new. The Heritage Foundation and its allies have prepared documents like this, with many identical policy prescriptions, in the run-up to many presidential elections. Perlstein argues that Warren G Harding's 1921 inaugural address captures much of its spirit, as did the Nixon campaign's 1973 vow to "move the country so far to the right 'you won’t even recognize it.'"

The threats to democracy and its institutions aren't new. The right has been bent on their destruction for more than a century. As Perlstein says, the point of taking note of this isn't to minimize the danger, rather, it's to contextualize it. The American right has, since the founding of the Republic, been bent on creating a system of hereditary aristocrats, who govern without "interference" from democratic institutions, so that their power to extract wealth from First Nations, working people, and the land itself is checked only by rivalries with other aristocrats. The project of the right is grounded in a belief in Providence: that God's favor shines on His best creations and elevates them to wealth and power. Elite status is proof of merit, and merit is "that which leads to elite status."

When a wealthy person founds an intergenerational dynasty of wealth and power, this is merely a hereditary meritocracy: a bloodline infused with God's favor. Sometimes, this belief is dressed up in caliper-wielding pseudoscience, with the "good bloodline" reflecting superior genetics and not the favor of the Almighty. Of course, a true American aristocrat gussies up his "race realism" with mystical nonsense: "God favored me with superior genes." The corollary, of course, is that you are poor because God doesn't favor you, or because your genes are bad, or because God punished you with bad genes.

So we should be alarmed by the right's agenda. We should be alarmed at how much ground it has gained, and how the right has stolen elections and Supreme Court seats to enshrine antimajoritarianism as a seemingly permanent fact of life, giving extremist minorities the power to impose their will on the rest of us, dooming us to a roasting planet, forced births, racist immiseration, and most expensive, worst-performing health industry in the world.

But for all that the right has bombed so many of the roads to a prosperous, humane future, it's a huge mistake to think of the right as a stable, unified force, marching to victory after inevitable victory. The American right is a brittle coalition led by a handful of plutocrats who have convinced a large number of turkeys to vote for Christmas.

The right wing coalition needs to pander to forced-birth extremists, racist extremist, Christian Dominionist extremists (of several types), frothing anti-Communist cranks, vicious homophobes and transphobes, etc, etc. Pandering to all these groups isn't easy: for one thing, they often want opposite things – the post-Roe forced birth policies that followed the Dobbs decision are wildly unpopular among conservatives, with the exception of a clutch of totally unhinged maniacs that the party relies on as part of a much larger coalition. Even more unpopular are policies banning birth control, like the ones laid out in Project 2025. Less popular still: the proposed ban on no-fault divorce. Each of these policies have different constituencies to whom they are very popular, but when you put them together, you get Dan Savage's "Husbands you can't leave, pregnancies you can't prevent or terminate, politicians you can't vote out of office":

https://twitter.com/fakedansavage/status/1805680183065854083

The constituency for "husbands you can't leave, pregnancies you can't prevent or terminate, politicians you can't vote out of office" is very small. Almost no one in the GOP coalition is voting for all of this, they're voting for one or two of these things and holding their noses when it comes to the rest.

Take the "libertarian" wing of the GOP: its members do favor personal liberty…it's just that they favor low taxes for them more than personal liberty for you. The kind of lunatic who'd vote for a dead gopher if it would knock a quarter off his tax bill will happily allow his coalition partners to rape pregnant women with unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds and force them to carry unwanted fetuses to term if that's the price he has to pay to save a nickel in taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#tolerable-racism

And, of course, the religious maniacs who profess a total commitment to Biblical virtue but worship Trump, Gaetz, Limbaugh, Gingrich, Reagan, and the whole panoply of cheating, lying, kid-fiddling, dope-addled refugees from a Jack Chick tract know that these men never gave a shit about Jesus, the Apostles or the Ten Commandments – but they'll vote for 'em because it will get them school prayer, total abortion bans, and unregulated "home schooling" so they can brainwash a generation of Biblical literalists who think the Earth is 5,000 years old and that Jesus was white and super into rich people.

Time and again, the leaders of the conservative movement prove themselves capable of acts of breathtaking cruelty, and undoubtedly many of them are depraved sadists who genuinely enjoy the suffering of their enemies (think of Trump lickspittle Steven Miller's undisguised glee at the thought of parents who would never be reunited with children after being separated at the border). But it's a mistake to think that "the cruelty is the point." The point of the cruelty is to assemble and maintain the coalition. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the point:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

The right has assembled a lot of power. They did so by maintaining unity among people who have irreconcilable ethics and goals. Think of the pro-genocide coalition that includes far-right Jewish ethno-nationalists, antisemitic apocalyptic Christians who believe they are hastening the end-times, and Islamophobes of every description, from War On Terror relics to Hindu nationalists.

This is quite an improbable coalition, and while I deplore its goals, I can't help but be impressed by its cohesion. Can you imagine the kind of behind-the-scenes work it takes to get antisemites who think Jews secretly control the world to lobby with Zionists? Or to get Zionists to work alongside of Holocaust-denying pencilneck Hitler wannabes whose biggest regret is not bringing their armbands to Charlottesville?

Which brings me back to Project 2025 and its true significance. As Perlstein writes, Project 2025 is a mess. Clocking in an 900 pages, large sections of Project 2025 flatly contradict each other, while other sections contain subtle contradictions that you wouldn't notice unless you were schooled in the specialized argot of the far right's jargon and history.

For example, Project 2025 calls for defunding government agencies and repurposing the same agencies to carry out various spectacular atrocities. Both actions are deplorable, but they're also mutually exclusive. Project 2025 demands four different, completely irreconcilable versions of US trade policy. But at least that's better than Project 2025's chapter on monetary policy, which simply lays out every right wing theory of money and then throws up its hands and recommends none of them.

Perlstein says that these conflicts, blank spots and contradictions are the most important parts of Project 2025. They are the fracture lines in the coalition: the conflicting ideas that have enough support that neither side can triumph over the other. These are the conflicts that are so central to the priorities of blocs that are so important to the coalition that they must be included, even though that inclusion constitutes a blinking "LOOK AT ME" sign telling us where the right is ready to split apart.

The right is really good at this. Perlstein points to Nixon's expansion of affirmative action, undertaken to sow division between Black and white workers. We need to get better at it.

So far, we've lavished attention on the clearest and most emphatic proposals in Project 2025 – for understandable reasons. These are the things they say they want to do. It would be reckless to ignore them. But they've been saying things like this for a century. These demands constitute a compelling argument for fighting them as a matter of urgency, with the intention of winning. And to win, we need to split apart their coalition.

Perlstein calls on us to dissect Project 2025, to cleave it at its joints. To do so, he says we need to understand its antecedents, like Nixon's "Malek Manual," a roadmap for destroying the lives of civil servants who failed to show sufficient loyalty to Nixon. For example, the Malek Manual lays out a "Traveling Salesman Technique" whereby a government employee would be given duties "criss-crossing him across the country to towns (hopefully with the worst accommodations possible) of a population of 20,000 or under. Until his wife threatens him with divorce unless he quits, you have him out of town and out of the way":

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Final_Report_on_Violations_and_Abuses_of/0dRLO9vzQF0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22organization+of+a+political+personnel+office+and+program%22&pg=PA161&printsec=frontcover

It's no coincidence that leftist historians of the right are getting a lot of attention. Trumpism didn't come out of nowhere – Trump is way too stupid and undisciplined to be a cause – he's an effect. In his excellent, bestselling new history of the right in the early 1990s, When the Clock Broke, Josh Ganz shows us the swamp that bred Trump, with such main characters as the fascist eugenicist Sam Francis:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374605445/whentheclockbroke

Ganz joins the likes of the Know Your Enemy podcast, an indispensable history of reactionary movements that does excellent work in tracing the fracture lines in the right coalition:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/when-clock-broke-106803105

Progressives are also an uneasy coalition that is easily splintered. As Naomi Klein argues in her essential Doppelganger, the liberal-left coalition is inherently unstable and contains the seeds of its own destruction:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Liberals have been the senior partner in that coalition, and their commitment to preserving institutions for their own sake (rather than because of what they can do to advance human thriving) has produced generations of weak and ineffectual responses to the crises of terminal-stage capitalism, like the idea that student-debt cancellation should be means-tested:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/03/utopia-of-rules/#in-triplicate

The last bid for an American aristocracy was repelled by rejecting institutions, not preserving them. When the Supreme Court thwarted the New Deal, FDR announced his intention to pack the court, and then began the process of doing so (which included no-holds-barred attacks on foot-draggers in his own party). Not for nothing, this is more-or-less what Lincoln did when SCOTUS blocked Reconstruction:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

But the liberals who lead the progressive movement dismiss packing the court as unserious and impractical – notwithstanding the fact that they have no plan for rescuing America from the bribe-taking extremists, the credibly accused rapist, and the three who stole their robes. Ultimately, liberals defend SCOTUS because it is the Supreme Court. I defended SCOTUS, too – while it was still a vestigial organ of the rights revolution, which improved the lives of millions of Americans. Human rights are worth defending, SCOTUS isn't. If SCOTUS gets in the way of human rights, then screw SCOTUS. Sideline it. Pack it. Make it a joke.

Fuck it.

This isn't to argue for left seccession from the progressive coalition. As we just saw in France, splitting at this moment is an invitation to literal fascist takeover:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/melenchon-macron-france-left-winner

But if there's one thing that the rise of Trumpism has proven, it's that parties are not immune to being wrestled away from their establishment leaderships by radical groups:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

What's more, there's a much stronger natural coalition that the left can mobilize: workers. Being a worker – that is, paying your bills from wages, instead of profits – isn't an ideology you can change, it's a fact. A Christian nationalist can change their beliefs and then they will no longer be a Christian nationalist. But no matter what a worker believes, they are still a worker – they still have a irreconcilable conflict with people whose money comes from profits, speculation, or rents. There is no objectively fair way to divide the profits a worker's labor generates – your boss will always pay you as little of that surplus as he can. The more wages you take home, the less profit there is for your boss, the fewer dividends there are for his shareholders, and the less there is to pay to rentiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

Reviving the role of workers in their unions, and of unions in the Democratic party, is the key to building the in-party power we need to drag the party to real solutions – strong antimonopoly action, urgent climate action, protections for gender, racial and sexual minorities, and decent housing, education and health care.

The alternative to a worker-led Democratic Party is a Democratic Party run by its elites, whose dictates and policies are inescapably illegitimate. As Hamilton Nolan writes, the completely reasonable (and extremely urgent) discussion about Biden's capacity to defeat Trump has been derailed by the Democrats' undemocratic structure. Ultimately, the decision to have an open convention or to double down on a candidate whose campaign has been marred by significant deficits is down to a clutch of party officials who operate without any formal limits or authority:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-hole-at-the-heart-of-the-democratic

Jettisoning Biden because George Clooney (or Nancy Pelosi) told us to is never going to feel legitimate to his supporters in the party. But if the movement for an open convention came from grassroots-dominated unions who themselves dominated the party – as was the case, until the Reagan revolution – then there'd be a sense that the party had constituents, and it was acting on its behalf.

Reviving the labor movement after 40 years of Reaganomic war on workers may sound like a tall order, but we are living through a labor renaissance, and the long-banked embers of labor radicalism are reigniting. What's more, repelling fascism is what workers' movements do. The business community will always sell you out to the Nazis in exchange for low taxes, cheap labor and loose regulation.

But workers, organized around their class interests, stand strong. Last week, we lost one of labor's brightest flames. Jane McAlevey, a virtuoso labor organizer and trainer of labor organizers, died of cancer at 57:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/jane-mcalevey-strategy-organizing-obituary

McAlevey fought to win. She was skeptical of platitudes like "speaking truth to power," always demanding an explanation for how the speech would become action. In her classic book A Collective Bargain, she describes how she built worker power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

McAlevey helped organize a string of successful strikes, including the 2019 LA teachers' strike. Her method was straightforward: all you have to do to win a strike or a union drive is figure out how to convince every single worker in the shop to back the union. That's all.

Of course, it's harder than it sounds. All the problems that plague every coalition – especially the progressive liberal/left coalition – are present on the shop floor. Some workers don't like each other. Some don't see their interests aligned with others. Some are ornery. Some are convinced that victory is impossible.

McAlevey laid out a program for organizing that involved figuring out how to reach every single worker, to converse with them, listen to them, understand them, and win them over. I've never read or heard anyone speak more clearly, practically and inspirationally about coalition building.

Biden was never my candidate. I supported three other candidates ahead of him in 2020. When he got into office and started doing a small number of things I really liked, it didn't make me like him. I knew who he was: the Senator from MBNA, whose long political career was full of bills, votes and speeches that proved that while we might have some common goals, we didn't want the same America or the same world.

My interest in Biden over the past four years has had two areas of focus: how can I get him to do more of the things that will make us all better off, and do less of the things that make the world worse. When I think about the next four years, I'm thinking about the same things. A Trump presidency will contain far more bad things and far fewer good ones.

Many people I like and trust have pointed out that they don't like Biden and think he will be a bad president, but they think Trump will be much worse. To limit Biden's harms, leftists have to take over the Democratic Party and the progressive movement, so that he's hemmed in by his power base. To limit Trump's harms, leftists have to identify the fracture lines in the right coalition and drive deep wedges into them, shattering his power base.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/#disassembly-manual

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

The "what if a cishet romantic man wanted to come to queer meetings" thing was one of the things that helped me (a trans man) see how marginalised men's masculinity is weaponised against us. Because the hypothetical cishet aro man isn't being constructed as dangerous because he's feminine or related to womanhood in any way; he's constructed because his deviance means he's "missing" something that's "supposed to keep the bad parts of men in check". This isn't to say that aro women don't get shit, they absolutely do, it was just a real turning point in my personal understanding of marginalised masculinities

yeah specifically re: the deviance factor, I remember a lot of the strawman arguments around the hypothetical cisgender heterosexual allosexual aromantic man being "allowed" in queer spaces hinged on the assumption that this man would also be a pseudo sexual predator bent on hooking up with as many women as possible and then using his aromantic status as an excuse to ghost or otherwise treat them badly. frequently this came with speculation that cishet men would falsely claim aromantic identity, so as to have a built-in excuse for such behavior and shut down any potential objections.

which is like. I mean, it's bullshit for a lot of reasons.

one of the most egregious issues to me is the audacity of people acting like hanging out in a queer space with the intent of having sex is some kind of evil invasive force, as if many queer spaces, historically, have no been organized around the principal of trying to fuck and be fucked, and as if plenty of those hookups haven't led to ghostings or breakups exactly as careless and hurtful as the proposed scenario involving our cis allo aro man would be, but it's supposedly worse because he's? a yucky man? the increasing distrust of sexual attraction in many young, allegedly left-leaning spaces is its own alarming beast and I don't want to get into the whole thing here, but jesus christ.

I just. I cannot take seriously the idea that I'm supposed to be threatened by a man who MIGHT exist and MIGHT want to have sex with someone, and make any serious decisions based on the specter of this guy possibly being out there somewhere. get a grip.

[megamindsecretlair]

Make Me Weak, Part 2

Pairing: Sex Therapist!Terry Richmond x Sub!Black!Fem!/ Plus Size reader

Warnings: 18+, Minors DNI, You are in charge of your own reading experience. Intentional use of AAVE. Cursing, mentions of depression, anxiety, and description of sex acts and sexual issues. Hair pulling, PIV, condom use. Power imbalance, Shy!reader. Dark!Terry. Dom!Terry, AU Terry, all consensual. Sorry if I missed some. I'm not a therapist and while I do not make light of therapy, this is purely for my own fun. Please seek real medical attention when necessary.

Summary: You followed Dr. Richmond’s instructions to the best of your ability. You spent so much time in your mind that willingly descending into your body was an experience that opened your eyes to how much you had neglected. Your second session forces you to confront more truths than what you were ready for. 

Terry reaches some conclusions of his own as he tries to shake whatever is ailing him by disappearing between Tasia’s thighs. Yet his mind is on you, on your thoughts and words. During the second session, he can’t help but push you beyond your limit.

Word Count: 5,018k

Part 1 | AO3 Link

A/N: I'n back babbyyyy. I got so inspired reading so many lovely fics. Plus the encouraging asks really helped. I had TOO much fun writing this and you will not hurt my feelings if you don't want to read this one. However, I must tag to keep my taglist updated. Forgive me, my loves. Toss a coin to your blogger by leaving a comment, gif, or unhinged ask.

You

Hot steam rolled out from the shower as you set it to your desired temperature. You faced yourself in the mirror, thinking over Dr. Richmond’s words. You supposed that there was some truth to what he had told you.

Most people did start by exploring their own bodies first. It must be so easy for guys. Close the door, grab some lotion, and rub one out. Girls on the other hand…your life was constantly spent in a state of panic.

Panic that anything on your person would make your mother snap. Harsh criticisms hidden behind “just talkin’ shit” that Black people liked to hide behind. You were too sensitive to jokey-joke with when you weren’t able to reciprocate. It’s not like you could talk about your mom. It’s not like you could throw insults back in her face and tell her to take it in stride.

Panic that you could be caught or exposed at any point. You were a grown woman, yes. You were also taught to believe that you needed to act as if someone was watching. You believed there was some kind of life after all this and so wouldn’t it stand to reason that someone or something would be looking at you? Or worse, someone would come flying through your door because your family lacked boundaries? 

Panic that you didn’t know what lay on the other side of an orgasm. How would you feel? How would you look? Surely something like that changed a person. Feeling that rush of relief for the first time had to be special. Had to be amazing. Otherwise, why would anyone ever be obsessed with sex? 

Panic that you’d never reach that peak and fall over. Never feel that rush of euphoria that everyone talked about. Porn, books, friend groups. You always felt left out and you didn’t want to anymore, dammit. 

You watched yourself in the mirror as steam overtook it, inch by inch. Until you were only staring at your eyes and the disbelief written all over your face. Would this even work? Were you wasting your time? 

“I need total, focused commitment from you.”

Dr. Richmond’s sultry voice skittered along your naked skin. Goosebumps raised on your flesh from the cold air moving through the house. You would be focused. You would be committed. This was something you wanted so badly, you were fucking desperate. 

So you took deep, measured breaths using the Box method a previous therapist told you about. You inhaled for a count of four, held for four, exhaled for a count of four, and then held it for four. You repeated the process, doing a full body scan. 

You focused on your head, starting with your scalp. You focused on your forehead, feeling the tension melt away and your eyebrows start to relax. You hadn’t even realized that you had it scrunched.

You brought your attention to your eyes, unfocusing them, and allowed them to close. You repeated the process, breathing the entire time, settling down into your body when your mind wanted so badly to escape. To flee. To leave the Horrors. 

When you felt your mind drift, you didn’t chastise yourself. You continued to breathe, focusing on your breaths until you continued with your scan. Your body relaxed fraction by fraction. Your shoulders lowered from up around your neck. Aches and pains became more prominent. 

Your belly expanded and you sighed. You hadn’t even noticed how often you clenched your stomach, never allowing yourself a full breath. You always had to be on edge. Never knew where the next danger was coming from. What new fresh hell you would encounter just around the corner. 

By the time you reached your feet, you felt more relaxed than you had in a long time. Your body prickled with your newfound awareness. Steam caressed your bareskin and you quickly hopped in the shower, letting the warm water cascade across your body.

The water felt different on your body. Each droplet may as well have been a tiny earthquake, popping all over your skin and making you tingle. This…wasn’t too bad. 

You lathered up your facial scrub and gently moisturized your face, soothing the stiff areas. Your jaw popped as it loosened and you moaned from the relief. 

How long? How long have you spent outside of your body? A stranger to it? A foreigner to this vessel you carried around? Had you truly loved your body when you were so alien to it? Or had you just learned to layer on the armor and pretend? 

God, you felt like crying. With one session, Dr. Richmond already had you re-thinking your entire life. Like the answer was there in your face the entire time and you just needed him to shine a light on it. 

You rinsed your face while you grabbed a washcloth and lathered up with your favorite soap. You added body wash and then took your time trailing the washcloth around your body. Starting with your neck, you worked your way down to your chest. 

You took your time feeling the rough cloth against your smooth, watery skin. You rounded the washcloth across your nipples and they beaded under the slow torture. Oh, this was new. This was very nice. 

You were focused, letting the water act as a sound machine, lulling you into a further relaxed state. You followed the washcloth with your hand, moving over and under your areolas and nipples. You pinched your nipples and gave it a tug. You gasped from the responding tug in your pussy.

You moved on, remembering Dr. Richmond’s words about not making it sexual. But fuck, how could you not? 

Heat flushed beneath your skin that had nothing to do with the hot water on your body. You washed your back and then moved lower, skirting your throbbing pussy and washed your legs and dug the cloth between your toes. 

On the way up, your fingers glided around your mound, your hips pushing forward. Your breathing turned rapid, feeling yourself getting more and more excited. Your brain turned to mush, retreating from your actions. Like it wanted to picture something else. You shook your head, and started up with your Box breathing again.

You stopped mid-shower to reorient yourself and get yourself back into that zone of ultimate calm. If Dr. Richmond were there…

You focused on what he might say. There was no rush. There was no rulebook for this sort of thing. There was no reason to chastise yourself. There was no test to pass or box you had to check in order to achieve an orgasm. You just needed to relax, dammit. 

Slowly, achingly slow, you went back to that calm. You continued lathering up your body and then rinsed the soap off. You repeated the process, adding more soap to thoroughly wash your body. To enjoy the feel of the cloth and water and soap on your skin. On your body. 

“This is the only body you’ll ever have so it’s time to think beyond simple body maintenance. Admire your body.”

This was the only body you would ever have. It was time you stopped treating it like the enemy. 

You turned off the water and then got out. The chill air hit the water on your back and you shrieked and shivered, quickly drying off. You went through your nightly routine, taking care of your teeth, face, and deodorant. You sat down on a decorated stool in your bathroom to apply your lotion.

As instructed, you looked at your body. Every mole, every scar, every bump, and every wayward hair. Being in your body was weird to say the least. You had to disassociate to survive your childhood and you never learned to drop those defenses. Your body never realized that it wasn't at war anymore. Or perhaps it was and this was battle fatigue. You were so damn tired.

You massaged the lotion into your skin and then slipped in your panties. You pulled on an ankle bracelet you got while visiting New York once and it made you feel extra pretty, so why not. You turned on your bedside light and pulled out a notebook.

You started a new entry and wrote about the sensations and revelations you experienced. Some of it you would discuss with Dr. Richmond and some of it was never leaving your grave. It felt good to get it all out, uninterrupted.

Sometimes, venting to someone else just gave them room to talk over you. To steer the direction back to them. Brooklyn was like that. In an effort to relate, she ended up taking over the convo and made it about her situation. Then you ended up comforting her about her issue and never feeling truly heard about yours.

In a journal however, you pretended that you were just relaying it to a friend. The type of friend who allowed you to speak. To get your jumbled thoughts out without getting mad or trying overshadow you. 

Done, you collapsed against your bed as if every ounce of strength left your body. You breathed through it, allowed your body to rest for a moment. The hell kind of voo-doo shit did your therapist put you through?

Immediately, warning bells went off in your mind. Surely, you would be whisked away to some super important task around the house. Surely, your phone would ring with some awful accident you had to attend to. Surely…nothing. You were drained. You had nothing. 

You had just enough energy to put the journal up, turn off the light, and drift off to the deepest sleep of your life.

Terry

Tasia bounced like a porn star on Terry’s dick and it wasn’t doing a damn thing for him. He felt himself getting soft the more Tasia shuddered with her pleasure. At least one of them was having fun. 

Maybe he rushed this. Too intent on getting you out of his mind that he hopped immediately into Tasia’s warm heat and didn’t consider that there was no substitution. He knew it was irrational to be drawn to you so fast. After only one session. He was conflicted on that front, but it went beyond just looks. 

Your case, your assessments, your willingness to try, and your obvious smarts was a cocktail shooting through his veins and turning his body liquid. The perfect sub was dropped into his lap and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

And as a man used to getting his way in the bedroom, it stuck in his craw that he couldn’t have you. That it wasn’t your pussy that his dick disappeared inside of. Would you moan loudly? Were you shy in the bedroom? Were you enthusiastic? 

What would your mouth look like taking the full length of him? How far down could you suck him? Did that same determination translate to the bedroom?

Tasia grunted beneath him as his dick rose back to life, thoughts of you turning him harder than a brick. He could build a house with how hard he was at the moment, picturing the curves on your body. The natural handles in your waist for his big hands to wrap around. To hold.

He moaned, picturing it all so clearly. His thumbs would dig into your back. The sounds you would make. His hips jerked just thinking of pounding into you. No mercy. You weren’t some fragile flower. Your insightful thoughts were like a mirror to his own. He wanted to explore with you. And the fact that he couldn’t had him pulling Tasia’s hair back.

“Call me Dr. Richmond,” he commanded.

“Yes, D-Dr. Richmond,” Tasia moaned. It was starting to piss him off. 

“Softer,” he said.

“Yes, Dr. Richmond,” she said, bringing her voice lower, softer. It was nowhere near your voice, but it’d do for the fantasy he concocted in his head. He didn’t have time for any extra tricks tonight. He just needed to get to the other side of his nut. 

He closed his eyes and thought about your case. He wondered if you were doing as you were told. He wondered how well you would take commands in the bedroom. If he even had to give commands at all. If you’d instinctively know what he needed when he needed it. Tasia used to know that. Tasia used to have him out of breath. 

Now…she was a beautiful girl with deep mocha skin, a cute face, and wide expressive eyes. She was like a little doe in a meadow somewhere. He was attracted to the overall softness of her and of her body. The natural way she seemed to know what he needed. 

Perhaps it was him that had changed. His tastes. He was no longer interested in a casual sub-relationship. Perhaps he wanted a more permanent sub. One he could explore every single nasty fantasy with and never get bored. He was getting older, getting into his early-thirties without a significant partner.

And that was what he wanted. A partner. An equal. Someone he raced home to see or spent his days thinking about how he would break her and put her back together like a puzzle box. 

Terry groaned and came into the condom, gripping Tasia’s asscheeks for dear life. It was one of the hardest climaxes he ever experienced. His release triggered hers, causing her to fall forward as her pussy gripped his dick. 

He pulled out and immediately disposed of the condom, coming back to help clean up Tasia. 

“That was…different,” she said, using the word in place of something else. He didn’t want his reputation to slacken in that regard, but hell, this whole thing had been a mistake. He still made sure she came twice before he did, but he usually put more oomph into his sexual exploits. 

He usually had Tasia popping her pussy on his face, or contorting her like a pretzel. Now…he was just over it. Over trying to impress someone that wasn’t permanent in his life. That he couldn’t play with whenever he wanted. He was no longer excited at the prospect of making many women cum. He just wanted to make one cum over and over again. He wanted to collect each one like trophies. 

Terry grabbed Tasia’s hand and kissed the back of it. “Forgive me. Tonight should’ve probably been a gym night,” he said. He smiled for good measure, but it was a close-lipped smile.

“Oh, I’m not complaining. That dick still know how to rock my world,” she said. She stood up, pulling on her sweats and sweatshirt, and slipping on her sneakers. He sat down on the bed and watched her, not feeling an ounce of desire. 

She leaned over and grabbed his chin, making him look up at her. “You take care of yourself and whatever or whoever got you in this funk. And if you need more relief, you know my number,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with another close-lipped smile. Tasia had been one of his longest play partners, he’d be sorry to see her go. She smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek, showing herself out. 

Terry sat in his fancy bedroom in his fancy house, staring at the empty archway Tasia disappeared through. His mind and body told him that he was ready for something more. Something tangible. Something he could hold and never let go. He only hoped he found it soon.

You

You clutched your journal to your chest as you sat in Dr. Richmond’s office. Nothing about it had changed except the man himself. He chose to wear a cream colored outfit. A soft, oatmeal colored sweater and khaki pants with white sneakers. His gold rimmed glasses flashed every so often from the light overhead and you couldn’t help catching every single thing about him. If only to distract you from your racing thoughts.

It was one thing to live in your body when you were in the comfort of your own bathroom. Your mind escaped once more, retreated to the safest place you knew. Your knee bounced with nervousness. 

“You don’t have to share if you don’t want to. This is a safe space. It’s your space. You get to decide what we do here,” he said. 

You closed your eyes to the sound of his voice. If he wasn’t so damn helpful, you’d ask for someone else. Literally, anyone else. But he was the first therapist to give you a glimpse of the other side. You wanted that more than you were embarrassed.

“No, I want to share. I need to share,” you said. You licked your lips and then cracked open your journal. You skimmed over things you didn’t want to reveal just yet. Too embarrassing for a second meeting, of course.

“I think…I think my mind is safer. I am constantly on alert that I’m “doing the right thing”, as opposed to what actually makes me happy,” you said. 

When you didn’t say anything, Terry leaned back in his seat. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing the golden brown of his forearms. Your mind emptied of any other thought until he cleared his throat. “Can you expand on that?” 

You looked up into his eyes before heat rushed to your ears. You looked back at your journal, focusing on that rather than his lush, pink lips. 

You told him more about how you reached this conclusion. That there was a standard for being Black that you never quite achieved. That at any moment, multiple mobs of people were coming for your Black card. Or, you were constantly trying to over-achieve at school. You had to work twice as hard, had to be the smartest in the class, because if you came home with a B, your mom went on a long rant about being stupid and never achieving anything real in life. Or how everyone praised you at work for going above and beyond and then got mad when you couldn’t sustain it. You were constantly on the lookout for someone else’s standard.

“I have so many fucking voices in my ear, telling me to do this or do that. And I fucking hate it. Which is wild considering that that’s what I seek in a sexual partner,” you said.

Dr. Richmond smiled and nodded. “Your mind is trying to re-contextualize your upbringing. Being submissive is actually about putting yourself in the position of power. A dom is only as good as how well he treats his sub. It’s about the ultimate act of trust on the submissive’s part,” he explained.

“Yes! And how can I trust that someone isn’t going to…take what I say or want and abuse that or make fun of me for it?” You asked. You played with the corner of your journal, not willing to look at Dr. Richmond. You didn’t need to see the pathetic pity in his steel blue eyes. 

“You have to stand resolute in what you want. You have to recognize that pleasure and sex is about give and take. Trust and acceptance. The right partner isn’t going to make fun of you, abuse you, or rush you,” he said. 

You sighed and leaned back on the brown sofa. You felt like you were chasing a unicorn. What kind of guy was willing to be dominant and care about your needs? Reassure you when you needed and took control when your body sent massive panicked waves at him? Took care of the trust you were placing in him to help you relax and cum? While also being physically attractive to you and have you be attracted to him; not a chubby chaser, not a creep, and not an abuser? 

It was impossible. Hopeless.  

“If you’re comfortable, tell me more about what you found,” he said.

You took your mind off of your dream mystery man. When the fuck was it going to be your turn? 

You scanned your journal once more, noting the sensations about actually living inside your body. “I think when I feel an orgasm approaching, I get scared. And that could be part of why I’m blocking it, but even when I’m alone, I don’t know what it feels like. Or…”

“Or…?” Dr. Richmond prompted. 

You grimaced. Fuck, this was so hard to put into words. Too hard to expose yourself like this. But did you want to reach your sixties, seventies, never having a true orgasm? Never finding your way to actual release? 

“Or, there’s no way to control the orgasm,” you said.

Dr. Richmond nodded. “The goal isn’t to control it, you know,” he said. 

“I know!” You groaned and stood up. You thought better on your feet. Or maybe when you had something to do, you were better able to regulate the jumble of emotions inside of you. No wonder your emotions were all over the place. You spent too long disassociating, too long in your mind and not enough in your body. 

“What benefit do you get from being in control all the time?” The scratch of his pen on the notebook drew your attention to him. To his pretty face, dark eyelashes, and push lips. You watched as he wrote in his notebook. Watched the lines and planes of his gorgeous face. His short curled afro. 

“If I’m in control, if I never look weak or stupid or incompetent, then I win. I win at life. And all my bullies, from school to home are all wrong. There’s nothing wrong with me because I know what to do. I know what to say. I’m not an alien,” you said, taking a deep breath at the revelation.

Whatever your insurance company was paying him, they needed to double it. You admitted things you never had in the past. Your previous therapists attacked your problem sex first, focusing on different methods you could try. Some wanted you to describe, in detail, whatever you did to get yourself off. Safe to say they weren’t practicing ever again. 

“Do you believe there’s something wrong with you?” He asked. He leaned back in his seat, giving you an unflinching stare. His face gave away nothing, revealed nothing, as you thought through his question. 

“All the fucking time. Why else do friends keep leaving me? Or guys don’t want me? Or my mom is…my mom,” you said. 

“Have you considered that you aren’t the problem?” He asked.

“How could I not be? I’m the only common denominator,” you said. You flopped back onto the couch but it wasn’t that soft. It thudded under your weight and you took a deep breath. Fuck, you wanted to cry. Tears pricked your eyes, turning them hot and itchy. You refused to cry in front of this man. 

This strange, quiet man who seemed to read you like one of the many books on his bookshelf. No wonder he had so many degrees. He could drag a full confession from a mute. 

“That may be true. But, bear with me, consider that you aren’t the problem. If you take yourself out of the equation, what are you left with?” He asked. He leaned forward on his desk and the sudden intensity of the question made your mind blank.

You had…nothing. No explanation, no back up. You were used to making yourself the problem. The issue had to be you. If it wasn’t you…

You shrugged your shoulders and looked away from him. The silence stretched on, so quiet you could hear the quiet tick of the clock on the wall. 

“Don’t shy away now, dig into it. If it’s not you, then…?” Dr. Richmond prompted. 

The question only seemed to make you clamp up. Your tongue swelled. Your throat constricted. If it wasn’t you, then what? Everyone was incapable of giving you what you wanted? Everyone just had an agenda against you? Please, that was narcissistic as hell. 

Dr. Richmond stood up from his desk and took off his glasses. He pulled out a drawer and retrieved a glass cleaner cloth. He cleaned his glasses and walked around the front of his desk.

“Consider, for a moment, that other people have deficiencies as well. That people congregate in groups because biologically, it’s safer. We seek groups to be in and when we can’t find one, we tend to think that we’re the problem. That we are outcasts, getting left out to defend ourselves. But all that means is that we haven’t found our group yet. You’re trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. You don’t belong with the squares, so no, you won’t fit in with them. 

“The same goes for sex. Everybody has their preferences. People have their kinks, their needs. When those needs aren’t meant, society teaches us to look at our own deficiencies rather than someone else’s. Perhaps the man you need sexually is far different from the men you take to bed,” he said. He waved around his glasses as he spoke, drawing attention to his massive hands. 

Seriously, they were huge. Like two lion paws that could strike down someone with one hit. He held his glasses by the frame, waving it around delicately as he spoke. You were still paying attention to his words, but fuck…he was unreal. 

“But how do I find the man that I need sexually?” You asked.

Terry

Terry inwardly groaned as you asked him that. Plenty of suggestions came to mind, each too crass to suggest. How could he tell you to go into another man’s arms? How could he send you to another man to unleash that hidden hellcat within you and he wouldn’t get to experience it? 

He needed to end this. End this before it even began. He placed his glasses back on his face and crossed a line that he never thought he would. “I think we have more work to do to adjust the way you think about sex before we get into how you attract what you’re seeking. In fact, I’d suggest you abstain from sex until we get deeper into this,” he said.

“Abstain?” You snorted and he fought a smile. Your face showed absolute disgust, like the mere thought was abhorrent. 

“Abstain. From what you’ve told me and what’s in your file, you jumped from overcoming your initial thoughts and reluctance about sex right to jumping into bed. Without really, truly exploring yourself first. Kids explore their bodies all the time right? They grow conscious of themselves and start thinking about hey, my equipment is different from someone else’s equipment,” he said.

You couldn’t help but giggle and it caused him to smirk in return. Yes, it was silly. Talking about sex was silly. But it was true. “And as you start to notice people that you’re attracted to, you start to grow conscious of hormones in your system. Brain chemistry. All the fun stuff that goes into attraction. You start to touch yourself more, explore your preferences through porn or books or experimentation.”

You cringed when he brought up experimentation. He tilted his head. “Did you go through an experimentation phase?” He asked.

You closed your eyes and sighed as if it were the last question you wanted to answer. You completely fascinated him. He had no idea what would come out of your mouth next. How you would respond to certain questions or ideas. 

He snuck a glance at the clock, he was nearing the end of the session. He flexed his jaw. This was so damn irritating. By the time you were willing to open up, it was time to end it. He wished he could carve out a month of sessions to get you to lower your defenses and let him inside. 

“No? I grew up in the wrong generation. All everyone thought about was sex and while I did too, no one was checking for the fat Black nerds unless it was a prank. And I saw everything as a prank. I was always getting pointed at, made fun of, stared at. Jesus, being exposed fucking sucks! So, no, I didn’t experiment. There was no one to fucking experiment with. 

“And it wasn’t like I could go ten feet from my mom without her up my ass about where I was going. Claiming she just didn’t want me to get snatched when all she really wanted was just to control me. To not let me end up like her. Young and pregnant,” you practically yelled, spewing way more vitriol than he expected.

He figured it was a sore spot for you by the way you grimaced, but he hadn’t been expecting…that. Again, he balled his fists thinking of every person that ever let you down. Every person that was supposed to uplift you, guide you, help you, all dropped the ball in teaching you about self love.

Every experience every kid was supposed to have was denied to you. Instead of being asked out with interest, with sincerity, boys treated it like a prank. He was wild in his youth, he wasn’t always nice to people, or he went through life like a little gremlin. But he liked to think he mellowed somewhat in high school. Treating everyone with respect. From the nerds to the jocks. He didn’t know what not trusting people’s words felt like. Like everything that someone said came laced with poisoned barbs ready to sting. 

“This is so fucking stupid,” you whispered. Your lip trembled but no tears fell down your face. 

Fuck, even now you were trying to hold everything in. Control a natural response to something painful. “When was the last time you cried?” Terry asked.

You stood up and snatched your purse and journal from the couch. “Session’s up, right?” You asked. You avoided looking at him as you rushed to the exit. The faux glass door clanged against the wall as you threw open the door and left, steps echoing on the linoleum flooring. 

He stared at the door as it lazily swung back and he wondered. And he pondered. 

Wheww, need more? The Secret Terry Richmond Files | Part 1

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