#as if it’s not a privilege to just Be American with nothing to claim

[theicarusconstellation]

how to not hate who you are no borax no glue

[lewmagoo]

naked poetry | ben mears

description: in which two lovers explore new heights of pleasure

pairing: professor ben mears x f!reader

word count: 7,102

warnings: 18+ only, brief mention of past trauma, unprotected p in v sex, professor/student roleplay, title kink, sir kink, oral (m receiving), begging, creampie

The setting sun cast a cozy yellow glow across the comfortable office that was home to all the writing projects and research excursions Ben Mears partook in. 

A place that was set up just the way he liked it. A simple writing desk housing an antique typewriter he picked up at an estate sale. Bookshelves boasting of both practical and fictional books, including all the ones he’d written as well. 

Front and center was his most recent book. It had taken him years to write, but it was finally published, and he was deeply proud of it. The story of a young writer and the woman he loved, overcoming the impossible when a throng of vampires reigned terror on their beloved hometown. 

No one knew the story was true. No one except you, and the young boy you’d rescued when the Lot fell. Ben supposed no one would believe either of you if you claimed the story was true. But it didn’t matter, because that time was behind you now. You’d moved on with life, and you were happy now. You were safe. 

It had been ten years since you fled from Jerusalem’s Lot with the clothes on your back, Mark Petrie in your arms, and Ben by your side. You had nothing. 

Those first few months were difficult. You lived in motels and barely scraped by. But your beloved Ben was determined to make things better for you and Mark. It took a while, but you settled down eventually, far from the charred remains of the Lot. 

The three of you focused on processing the trauma you had experienced. You found a therapist for Mark to see regularly, and you gently encouraged Ben to see one alongside you. He was plagued with terrible nightmares, and it broke you to listen to him wake up sobbing, burying his face in your chest. 

It was no walk in the park. You faced many setbacks and trials. But you had each other, and that helped. 

Eventually, Mark was re-enrolled in school. You got a job working at the local library. Ben focused on writing, but finally bit the bullet and decided to try his hand at teaching. College had never been something he enjoyed, and in his youth, he had barely gotten through a year of it before he dropped out altogether. 

Now, things were different. He had a family to think about. You and Mark were his world, and he was determined to make something of himself so that he could take care of you, and see to it that the boy had good schooling. 

And, in a way, it gave Ben a chance to honor Matt Burke, his dear friend that he’d lost during the events that took place back in ‘salem’s Lot. 

So he returned to college and completed the necessary steps to become a teacher. 

Now, years later, he’d secured a job as a professor at the local university. It paid well, and he had the privilege of teaching American literature. While his true passion was writing, he found that he enjoyed teaching more than he’d anticipated. He understood why Matt Burke had done it for so many years. 

On the side, Ben had been working on publishing his book, When Evil Lurks. His other books had seen moderate success, but he had no idea how the general public would respond to this one. 

Much to his delight, and utter relief, the response surpassed his greatest expectations. The book received critical acclaim, and secured itself on the New York Times bestseller list. He received handsome monetary gain from it. Enough to secure a comfortable life for his little family. 

It had been over ten years since you had left the Lot, and things were looking up for the three of you. With the earnings from When Evil Lurks, you and Ben were able to help put Mark through college. 

With Mark off pursuing his studies, it was just you and Ben in your quaint, but comfortable, cottage. For the first time in a decade, you found yourselves entirely alone together. All this time had been spent getting through the pain you’d experienced, raising Mark, and trying to find your way in life. 

Now, you had so much time to truly get to know each other inside and out. It felt like you were dating each other all over again, and you loved it. When you first met Ben, you had only been able to go on a few proper dates before all hell broke loose, and you had to fight for your lives. 

When it was all over, it seemed only a given that you would simply stay together. Your trauma had bonded you together forever. 

But that part of your lives was over. Not forgotten, but you had processed your grief and learned to live again.

Now you found yourselves enjoying a domestic life. You had a small vegetable garden. A few chickens. A goat. A nice, quiet portion of land in the countryside. You still worked at the local library a few days a week, but you were able to enjoy a slower, more relaxed life. It was incredibly healing. 

Ben had a nice schedule at the university. He only taught three days a week, so oftentimes, your days off would coincide, and you would be able to enjoy time together. 

Today was one of those days. 

You had enjoyed a nice, leisurely morning in bed together, kissing and touching and enjoying the warmth and softness of one another’s bodies. Then you found yourselves snuggled in the breakfast nook in the kitchen, eating a brunch that consisted of eggs from your chickens and a few of the last vegetables of the season from your garden. 

It was officially autumn, and first frost would soon come. Your garden would sleep until next spring, when the earth thawed again. Until then, you were appreciative of the last few vegetables it had given you, and had been using them in soups and stews all week. 

After brunch was eaten that morning, you floated through the day doing chores and enjoying the lovely weather. However, beneath it all was a sizzle of excitement thrumming in your veins, for you had special plans that evening. 

With your newfound alone time, you had been exploring things together. Growing more adventurous in your sexual escapades. It kept things new and exciting, and you both loved it. 

Ben took to grading papers for the entirety of the afternoon, wanting to get ahead of it so he could spend the weekend focusing solely on you. He almost couldn’t focus on his work, because he knew what was to come. 

His mind kept wandering as he scanned over each essay, and he had to continuously draw his attention back in. But how could he, when thoughts of you filled his head? And how could he, when he knew that very soon, he would have you naked on this very desk?

By some miracle, though, he finished grading the essays, albeit hastily. And just in time, too, for moments later, as the sun was beginning to set in the sky, he heard a knock at the door of his study. 

He felt like a damn teenager, sexed up and teeming with hormones. That was simply the effect you had on him. 

He cleared his throat, trying his best to keep his composure. “Come in!”

Seconds later, you were slipping into the room, and his eyes widened behind the thick frames of his glasses. You looked incredible, donning a short plaid skirt that left little to the imagination, and a blouse that he could see the peaks of your nipples through. 

His mouth went dry as your eyes flitted about the room, an air of shyness about you. 

“Professor Mears?” You innocently spoke. It sent his blood rushing south. 

Leaning back in his chair, he mustered a smile. “My office hours are actually over. Can we meet sometime next week instead?”

“Actually, I…I was hoping to talk to you now.” You stepped forward, and in your hands was a piece of paper. “See, I wrote an essay, and I was hoping you could look at it and give me some pointers on what I should change?”

How sneaky you were. He could see that you had used his typewriter to write an essay on the paper you held. “I suppose I could take a look.” He stretched out his hand, and you placed the paper in it. 

As he glanced over the content, he felt heat rising past the collar of his shirt, and his breath hitched. The words you had written were salacious. This was no essay. This was a love letter. 

Dear Professor Mears,

I’m writing this letter because I need to confess something to you. I can’t stop thinking about you. Each time I watch you teach in class, I fall more in love with you. It’s hard to pay attention, because my mind wanders. I think you’re the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, and I find myself daydreaming about what it would be like to kiss you. To feel your lips on mine. To have you touch me. I think about how big your hands are, and how they would feel on my body. I get so wet when I picture your fingers inside me. They’re so long, and I know they would fill me up so nicely. When I touch myself, I can’t help but imagine you in my head. Maybe your face is between my legs with your tongue on my pussy, or maybe your cock is inside me. It makes me cum so hard. I know this is highly inappropriate of me, but I needed to confess all of this before I combust. And maybe, some foolish part of me, hopes you’ll feel the same.

Ben stared at the words, his chest heaving slightly, his ears red, his eyes blurring. Sucking in a breath, he removed his glasses, setting your letter down and pinching the bridge of his nose. This was no more obscene than the sex scenes he’d written in his books. He considered himself very good at writing erotica, and had spent many a writing session describing sex acts in explicit detail.

Yet this? This was different. This wasn’t simply a fantasy etched into paper. This was happening in real time, before his very eyes, and he suddenly felt like a prude, even though he was far from it.

You watched him, pressing your thighs together at the sight of him reading the note. You were certain you would melt on the spot. There was something so erotic about watching him process your words. When you had discussed role playing this scene, you hadn’t revealed to him that you were going to write such a thing. His reaction was firsthand and genuine. 

Ben looked up at you. He had to fight to stay in character, taking on the role of the stern professor. “Y-young lady, this is highly inappropriate. I could have you expelled for this. In fact, I could be removed from my position here.”

You bowed your head, wringing your hands. “I’m sorry sir. I…I’ve just been tortured by these thoughts of you and needed you to know how I feel.”

“Look at me.” 

Your eyes shot up to his. Impossibly blue behind his glasses. His mouth wavered in what seemed to be a hidden smile. He tugged at the collar of his shirt, as if to loosen it. 

“I have half a mind to tell you to get out.” He rose from his chair, flattening his palms against the oak desk beneath him. Mouth parted, lashes fluttering. “But perhaps…” He trailed off, considering his next words. 

“Sir?”

His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip. “Maybe I could help…uh, help you fix this problem you’re having.” God, he was burning up. He felt ridiculous, saying such lines, but at the same time, it was exhilarating. 

“Oh, would you? I promise, once you do, I won’t ever seek you out again. I just need some sort of relief. I think I’m going crazy.” 

Might as well commit to the bit, right?

So he patted his desk. “Come here.”

You padded across the rug, body tingling with excitement as you took a seat on the edge of his desk, facing him. He leaned back in his chair, bottom lip caged between his teeth as he appraised you. Your skirt rode up, and you spread your legs for a moment so he could see that you weren’t wearing anything underneath.

He sucked in a breath, and slowly, he rose to his feet, eyeing you up as if he was a wolf who’d just sunk his teeth into the innocent flesh of a lamb. “You dirty girl. You knew I’d give into you, didn’t you? Parading around, with nothing on underneath this skirt. A single gust of wind and everyone would be able to see.” A smirk played upon his mouth. “Is that what you want? For everyone to see how desperate you are for your professor?”

You squirmed beneath the heaviness of his stare. “No, I…I only want you to see.” And then, “Sometimes I don’t wear any panties in class, because I hope you’ll look down and see.”

His fingers idly slid up your inner thigh, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “And what if I told you I have seen? I’ll catch glimpses when you cross your legs. I should’ve known you were doing it on purpose. So eager to get my attention…” 

Higher and higher his fingers went, while further and further your legs parted. “You have no idea what it does to me, seeing your sweet little pussy on display like that. I’ll admit that I’ve had to excuse myself at the end of class to take care of things.”

He ducked forward, glancing at your lips. He was so close, you could feel the heat of his body, and smell the woodsy scent of his cologne. 

“S-sir?” Innocently asking for clarification, though you knew what he meant.

Gently, he grasped your wrist and brought your hand down to his crotch, where he pressed your palm against the hardness that resided there. “Feel that? You’ve made me so hard, angel. It’s why I have to lock myself in my office after class. So when you tell me that you touch yourself to the thought of me…I’ve done the same when thinking of you.”

Which, was not an entirely fabricated statement. You were cheeky, at times, always wanting to keep things exciting between the two of you. On more than one occasion, you had slipped quite a few lewd Polaroid photos of yourself into his lunchbox. He’d learned to take his lunch in the privacy of his office so he could fully admire the pictures without anyone happening upon something that was meant for his eyes only.

He rutted against your hand, and you whined softly. “I want you so badly, Professor Mears. Please, I just want to know what it feels like when you make love to me.”

“You will,” came his reassurance. “But first, I want you to do something for me.”

“Anything.”

He stepped back, and the absence of his warmth made you shiver. You watched, already thrumming with need, as he took a seat in his chair, spreading his thighs. The golden hour sunlight cast its heavenly glow upon him, glittering in the sprinkle of premature grays that had begun to appear throughout his chestnut locks, like the intricate web of a spider. 

Those grays held a story, and had begun appearing after you left the Lot a decade ago. Evidence of what he’d been through, and how it had aged him. 

You couldn’t help the swell of pride, though, that warmed your chest whenever you looked at them. You’d both come so far. Now here you were, engaging in a silly little role play in your cozy home, because you could. Because you were safe and in love and the horrors were behind you now. 

It made you smile as you pushed yourself away from his desk, and his brows furrowed in slight confusion. You surged forward, grabbing him by the collar and tugging him toward you for a kiss, which he happily reciprocated, albeit with curiosity. 

“What was that for?” He could tell you’d broken character, just by the way your body language had shifted. 

“Sorry to break character, I just love you so much and I’m really enjoying this so far,” you said with a sheepish glance cast toward him. 

His large, warm hand slid lovingly along your forearm. “I love you too, sweetheart. I’m having a great time, too.” 

Another kiss before you finally pulled away, giggling slightly as you shook your head. “Okay, okay. Back to what we were doing!”

He cleared his throat, snapping out of his lovesick daze. “Yes, yes, of course.”

You took a deep breath and melted back into your college student persona, with Ben watching in awe as you did so. 

“What would you like me to do, sir?” Hands clasped in front of you. Eyes downcast. 

He breathed in deeply. When he spoke, his voice took on a low tone. He patted his thigh and said, “Come kneel for me.”

Obediently, you lowered yourself to your knees, and you didn’t miss the way his mouth parted in surprise as you crawled the rest of the way to him. Only a few feet, but nonetheless it made his breath hitch in his chest. 

And there you knelt, your hands resting atop your thighs, looking at him expectantly. It took a moment for his mouth to catch up to his brain. 

“Good girl,” he managed. Then he leaned forward, beckoning you closer. “Think you can undo my belt yourself, or do you need my help?”

“I can do it.” Eagerly, you reached out, unbuckling his leather belt. You made quick work of the button on his pants, followed by the zipper. God, you were almost salivating at the thought of having him in your mouth. 

Ben lifted his hips slightly and let you tug his pants and underwear down. You wasted no time in yanking them completely down his legs and discarding them somewhere on the floor, to give yourself as much room as possible. 

When you looked up again, there it was. His hard cock, heavy and already leaking, flushed tip sticky with arousal. He wrapped his thick fingers around the shaft, adorned with intricate veins, framed by a gathering of dark hair at the base. 

The head was swollen, and its pink shade reminded you so much of his sweet, small mouth that you so badly wanted to kiss. But you’d have to pull away from him to do that. Instead, you bring him to your lips, kissing gently, softly, tongue darting out to taste his salty musk. 

Letting your eyes flutter shut, you took his cock in your palm and nuzzled against it, silky softness brushing against your skin. His wetness streaked across your cheek, over your lips, delightfully slick. 

Ben watched you, his hands now gripping the wooden handles of his chair. He couldn’t think of anything to say because his brain was white noise. How beautiful you looked, practically worshiping him, like this.  

Soft kisses left against the pulsing shaft, down to the base of him, over the heavy weight of his balls. If you weren’t careful, you’d lose yourself, and entirely drop the role play you’d so carefully planned out. 

“Your cock is so pretty, sir,” you confessed, open-mouthed against him. 

He grunted softly, once again wetting his bottom lip with his tongue. “You think so?” Fingers stroking lightly against your cheek before he nudged his hips forward. “Go ahead, suck it.”

There was the slightest commanding tone to his voice, and it sent a pulse of burning desire between your thighs. He certainly didn’t have to tell you twice. 

You lifted your head and swirled your tongue around his tip once more, before you closed your lips around him, humming in delight. 

Instinctively, his hand settled at the back of your head, guiding, but not pushing, as you take him deeper inside your mouth, lips stretching. “Oh, oh fuck me,” he hissed, hips shifting, fighting so hard not to abruptly thrust upward and catch you off guard. “Thats…that’s good. So good.”

Pleased, you let out a hum, which vibrated deliciously around him and made him shudder. He watched in amazement as you went further down, tongue swirling against his thickness, saliva dripping down to his balls. 

You pulled off him to catch your breath, your mouth wet with drool. “Am I doing a good job, Professor Mears?”

Good lord, you’d be the death of him. “Yes. Yes, honey. You’re doing excellent.”

With a satisfied smile, you dove back in, this time pressing your tongue to the underside of his tip, right against his frenulum. He gasped, head lolling back, Adam’s apple bobbing. 

As your hand worked the rest of him that wasn’t in your mouth, his eyes nearly rolled back in his head. You knew how sensitive he was there, right at the tip. How it made him feel like a goddamn live wire, crackling with electricity. 

“C-christ!” He cursed, knuckles white against the arms of the chair. His hips thrust forward, and you caught the rest of him in your mouth. 

In a moment of intensity, he lost control and slid to the back of your throat without warning. You gagged around him, drooling even more. You heard him swear, and in an instant, he pulled you off him. “Sorry, I’m sorry, didn’t mean to catch you by surprise,” he breathlessly apologized, “you okay?”

You couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, I’m fine,” you assured him, squeezing his thigh. You emphasized your point by leaving a kiss against his cock. 

Breathing slightly labored, his eyes narrowed before he suddenly pulled you upright. He was laying you across his desk in one fluid movement, rising to stand over you. 

“As much as I love your mouth, I’m interested to know what your sweet pussy feels like,” came his murmur, as he hovered over you. 

You let your legs fall open, and he looked down, breath hitching in his chest at the sight of you, already glistening with the evidence of your desire. He wanted nothing more than to sink into you, but first, he needed to make sure there was adequate space on the desk. 

He pulled back to move his typewriter aside, and he pushed anything else out of the way, so you could fully spread out comfortably. Then, he swiftly pulled his shirt over his head, his hair ruffling. He shoved a hand through tousled locks before he was back between your open legs. 

“Let’s get you naked, honey. Let me see this beautiful body of yours.” Careful hands unbuttoned your top. He was tempted to yank it open and send the buttons flying, but thought better of it when he pictured you having to sew each individual button back on. 

The blouse was soon discarded, sliding off the desk and onto the floor below. Your skirt, however, remained in place, but Ben shoved it up over your hips to give him full access to what awaited between them. 

Meanwhile, you were entirely distracted, gazing longingly at his cock, bobbing heavily as he moved. It was going to fill you so nicely. Your cunt pulsed in anticipation. 

“Pretty little thing,” Ben cooed, palms soothing over your inner thighs. “The thought of getting fucked by your professor has you so wet, doesn’t it?” 

You shivered. “Yes. God, yes.”

Wandering fingers tenderly parted your folds, and warmth blossomed in your lower belly at the feeling of his touch. 

He gripped his cock. “You want this?” Knowing glint in his eyes. 

“Please!”

“Say it.”

“I-I want you to fuck me.”

With the raise of a brow, he tilted your chin up. “No. I want you to admit it. What do you want? Who do you want?”

You felt as if you were going to melt under the heat of his gaze. Suddenly this silly little role play felt so real. As if you were actually his student who’d spent the entire semester lusting after him, and were now going to get what you’d been hoping for. 

You squeezed your eyes shut as your next words left your mouth. “I want my professor’s cock.”

Your heart rate quickened. The temperature of the room seemed to rise fifty degrees. You couldn’t look at him. It was too much. Too intense. Too—

“Hey.” Comforting hands holding your face. Coaxing your eyes open. Asking you to look at him. When you looked into that shocking blue, you began to relax. “You still with me, sweetheart?” Tone gentle. Even. 

You managed a smile and a nod. “Yes. Keep going, please.”

A sweet kiss to your lips before he dropped his hands and melted right back into character.

“I’ll give it to you. But if we do this, I think we both know it's not just going to be a one-time thing. You’re going to come to my class day in and day out, wearing your short little skirts, flashing your naked pussy at me. And you’re going to end up bent over my desk again and again, begging for more. So that bears the question: are you sure this is what you want?”

“I’m sure. I’ve never wanted anything so badly. I just want to know what your cock feels like inside me.” 

The way you looked at him, eyes wide and pleading, had his head spinning. “And you’ll get it.” He was surging forward to kiss you then, mouth hot and open against yours, the lingering taste of his own cock meeting his tongue as it delved into your mouth. 

His fingers were back between your thighs again, trailing through honeyed slickness, smearing it over your tender flesh. When the pads of his fingers swirled over your sensitive little gathering of nerve endings, you gasped sharply against his lips. 

Then he was dipping his middle finger inside you, deeper and deeper, until he was brushing against the spot that made your toes curl. He couldn’t help but smile at your reaction. A choked moan and a jolt of your hips. When he added a second finger, your eyes blurred with tears and your head fell back.

They slotted inside you so nicely, and he knew exactly how much pressure to apply. He had your body memorized. He couldn’t pretend like he didn’t, not even for this scene. It was engrained in him as deeply and intrinsically as his own DNA. 

He could feel you growing wetter by the minute, soaking his digits, and his cock twitched. God, he couldn’t wait to be inside you. It didn’t matter how many times he fucked you. Nor did it matter that he’d only just had you the night before. It never changed how it felt when he first slid inside you. The sensation of your anatomy stretching around him, inviting him inside, was indescribable. 

He knew he couldn’t wait another minute. So he withdrew his hand from you, soothing your whine of protest as he wrapped his slick hand around his cock, using your arousal as lubricant. Then he aligned himself with you, and your legs fell open further, granting him full access.

“I want you to say, ‘Please fuck me, Professor Mears.’”

His expression had darkened slightly. As the sun sank below the horizon, stealing the golden light away, a shadow fell upon his face. With his brow set hard, and his eyes narrow, it seemed as if he was about to devour you whole. And you would let him.

“Please fuck me, Professor Mears,” you heard yourself obediently speak, tone soft and sweet. 

“Mm, so well-mannered,” he hummed. The plush head of his cock caught against your opening. With his free hand, he held your face, urging you to look at him. “I bet you’d do anything I asked of you, just to have this inside you.”

“Anything,” you admitted.

“Later on we’ll have to test that theory out.” His voice was wrecked. He simply couldn’t draw this out any longer. So he took hold of your hips, keeping you steady as he thrust forward. Slowly at first, because he wanted to relish in the feeling. 

You squeaked slightly, one hand clamping over your mouth, the other moving to grasp the edge of the desk. The way he filled you was otherworldly. The initial stretch resulted in a strangely comforting, pinchy ache that soon gave way to complete and utter satisfaction. He was not lacking by any means; satisfying and thick, but not so much so that it hurt. You wished you had the words to describe how it felt, but nothing could come close. All you knew was that having him seated so deeply within you made your heart sing.

His voice was in your ear then, swirling through your head like hazy smoke from the pipes he liked to puff on after dinner each night. “Talk to me, sweetheart. Tell me how good it feels.” That was Ben, always wanting your verbal praise, eager to please and make you feel the most pleasure possible.

“So good, sir. Oh, you feel incredible.” You were surprised you had it in yourself to even speak. You weren’t lying, either. The way he angled his hips and filled you so nicely made you feel this all-encompassing bliss, that was almost like being bathed in sunlight and glitter.

Grunting softly, mouth open, he let his forehead rest against your own. But his gaze was focused on the place where your bodies met. The way your pretty cunt swallowed every inch of him. “We…we shouldn’t be doing this,” he whispered, the idea of this moment being risky and taboo sending a delicious surge of arousal though him. “I could lose my job, if anyone found out about this.”

“I-I know,” you peeped, eyes screwed shut, teeth sinking into your bottom lip as he began to move. Slowly at first, finding his rhythm.

His hand was holding your jaw again, mouth against yours as he spoke. “Can you imagine what they’d say, if they walked in and saw me balls deep in one of my students?”

You tried to reply, but your voice died in your throat as he offered a particularly deep thrust that punched the breath right out of your lungs. Your back arched off the desk, and you trembled, feeling like a rope that had just been pulled taut.

But he continued anyway, words pouring from his tongue and caressing your skin like velvet. “They’d say I couldn’t control myself. And they’d be right.” A low groan rumbled in his chest. “Your sweet little pussy feels so good that I just can’t help myself.”

You clenched around him, and he could feel you dripping, slick trailing down his shaft. He knew the effect his dirty talk had on you, he could see it in the way your eyes had gone unfocused and your mouth was hanging open. 

He spoke again, which was no surprise, because he always found that when he was inside you, he was more prone to rambling. He couldn’t help himself. That brain of his was always working, even when he was enveloped in a warm, wet pussy. “But that’s what you want, isn’t it? You want them to see. Want them to know what a dirty slut you are for your professor.”

“Ye-yes! Yes!” You cried out, barely coherent. Goodness gracious, he was hitting it so deep, and he hadn’t even picked up the pace yet. How were you already losing your ability to speak?

“Say it.” Punctuated by the heavy drag of his cock against your sensitive walls.

“I’m a slut for my professor.” You could barely utter the words, they sounded so ridiculously sinful on your own tongue. 

His hips stuttered and he lurched forward, hands pressed against the desk to steady himself. Forehead pressed against yours, he fought to keep his composure. How could he be expected to keep it together when he had you like this? So pliant and willing to do anything he asked of you. 

After taking a moment to steady himself, he tilted his face and kissed you deeply, hand coming up to the back of your head while the other fell to hold your hip. 

You whimpered, gripping at his shoulders, fingers pressing into muscled flesh. Ben hissed lowly, setting a deliberate pace that sent you writhing against the desk. Heavy rolls of his hips, deeper and deeper, so you could feel every single inch of him, dragging against that sensitive, spongy spot within you. 

The room soon filled with the harsh sounds of skin against skin, followed by the obscene squelch of your wetness. Surely you were dripping onto the surface below you, but neither of you could be bothered to care, not when pleasure was beginning to cloud your senses and primal need took over. 

“Look at yourself.” He guided you to look down at the place where he disappeared inside you. Stretched to capacity around his cock. The sight had your eyes rolling back. 

You mewled pathetically, abdomen tensing as he offered a particularly jarring thrust that sent you gushing around him. Ben gasped sharply and brought a hand between your legs, the pads of each digit pressed into your puffy, aching, clit. 

A spark had been ignited within you, fizzling and popping, spreading through your veins. Soon, it would turn into a wildfire, consuming you whole. Burning hotter and brighter with each pulse if his hips against yours. 

“Oh, oh my god, sir, I—” Words left your mouth involuntarily. Breathless, unsure of what you were trying to even say. Mind cloudy. Swirling. Whirling. Spinning out of control. 

Your lungs filled with oxygen as you took in harsh, labored breaths. He was knocking the wind out of you. Taking you apart piece by piece. 

Your body undulated beneath him, muscles in your thighs shivering like leaves in the autumn wind. Oh, you were already close. You could feel it. Building in the very core of your being, like an energy field thrumming in the center of the earth. 

Mouth open. When did Ben’s find yours again? You had no recollection, but there he was, kissing you lewdly. Tongue sliding past parted lips. The sound of your moans and whimpers mingling with his own. 

His fingers still working against your most sensitive parts, cock pistoning in and out of you relentlessly. You were going to float straight up to the ceiling, it seemed. Perhaps you might even go past it, up into the clouds, and into outer space. With the way you saw stars behind your eyes when you squeezed them shut, it felt like you were already there. 

Right there, right there, right there. Just like that. Yes, yes, yes. Don’t stop, don’t ever stop. 

Then his face was in your line of sight, his brow furrowed, mouth parted, hair falling into his eyes. Veins creased in his forehead, and he trembled from the intensity, mouth curled in an almost snarl. “I-I can feel you squeezing me, honey. You’re dripping. Just…gah, just let go, come for me. Come all over your professor’s cock.”

His words sent you plummeting over the edge. It hit you hard and fast, engulfing you, consuming you, devouring you. You heard yourself cry out his name, but it sounded disembodied, as if you were far away from yourself. 

Pulsing, trembling, muscles taut as the delicious pleasure washed over you. You buried your face against his shoulder and let yourself be as loud as you needed. There was no one around for miles. No one to hear you sob your lover’s name as he fucked you through your orgasm. 

As the molten bliss surged through you from head to toe, it seemed to last an eternity, but at the same time you were coming down from it quickly. Head clearing. Eyes refocusing. Ringing in your ears fading away. 

And there was Ben, fighting to stave off the inevitable, to keep himself together because he wanted to admire you as you came down from the throes of ecstasy. Letting out a choked, breathless moan, he fell forward, hand coming out to catch himself, braced against the desk. 

He was thoroughly surprised he’d managed to keep it together while you fell apart, spasming around his cock, evidence of your release dripping down the shaft. 

He found his voice after a moment, nuzzling his nose against yours as he spoke. “So good. Did so good for me,” came his praise. He didn’t miss the delighted smile that warmed your face. 

“Felt really good,” you said with a giggle, kissing the corner of his mouth. 

You involuntarily tightened around him as you laughed, and it pulled a grunt from his throat. “Honey, I…”

You wrapped your legs around his waist. “I know. Keep going, please. I can take it, Professor Mears.”

His lashes fluttered, eyes going unfocused for a moment. “Fuck, okay. I’ll give it to you, all of it.” 

Another desperate kiss to your mouth before he gripped your hips in his strong hands, holding you exactly where he wanted you, grip firm as he began moving again. 

What followed could only be described as using you for his own pleasure. Deep, deliberate thrusts into your slick, sensitive pussy. With each press forward, you could feel his pubic bone brush against your swollen clit, coarse hair only heightening the stimulation. 

Everything was so heightened. Overwhelming, almost. But you wanted nothing more than to feel him spill inside you, and you weren’t about to tell him to stop. So you held on for dead life, tears streaming down your cheeks as he fucked you into into the desk. 

He was losing himself. If you weren’t so delirious, you might’ve taken time to admire him. Silvery curls falling into his face. Forehead glimmering with perspiration. Jaw hard set. 

Then he was burying his face against your neck, rutting into you still, rambling about how good you felt. “Feel so fuckin’ good. You’re so wet, oh Christ your pussy feels incredible, honey. Oh, I’m so close. So—ah!—close!”

Somewhere along the way you found the wherewithal to meet his frenzied thrusts, pushing up into him, chasing the heat that had begun to spread throughout your body again, duller this time, yet somehow still so intense. 

“Wh-where so you want me to come?” Voice pinched, barely able to force the words out of his mouth. “Please honey, I’m…I need to…” Nearly sobbing. 

Throwing your head back, you let out a soft cry. “Oh! Please, please come inside me, sir!”

You knew he was so close. Could feel it in the way his cock pulsed inside you, swelling slightly from the intensity of his own desire. 

You forced yourself to open your eyes, and your gaze locked with his. His lashes fluttered. Tears gathered in his waterline. “Please, I wa-wanna be full of your cum, Mr. Mears.” 

That was his undoing. 

“Oh that’s it, that’s it.” Shaft pumping inside you, hips pressed tightly to yours so he could give you all of it. Your eyes fluttered shut and a drunk smile tugged across your mouth as you relished in the heat of his release spreading inside your fluttering cunt. 

Sated. Whole. Complete. 

“Thank you, professor,” you slurred.

His body fell lax against yours, chest heaving, head still spinning from the rush of euphoria he had just experienced. He could feel the warmth of his cum beginning to spill around the edges of his softening cock, dripping out of you. Gravity at work. 

Lifting his head, he gave you a sheepish smile, his cheeks pink. “Jeez. That was incredible, honey.” And then, a sweet kiss to your lips. “You feeling alright?”

Mirroring his elation, you nodded, arms sliding around his neck. “Oh I feel wonderful.” Another kiss. “That was even more fun than I thought it would be. We definitely need to do that again.”

Still red in the face, Ben hummed, eyes downcast. “I, uh, I’m slightly ashamed to say what hearing you call me professor did to me.”

You began toying with his soft curls. “No shame here, Benny. You know what happens between us stays between us.”

“I know.” He nuzzled his nose against yours. “I’m glad we started exploring these fantasies. Scratches an itch I didn’t realize I had.”

“Me too,” you wholeheartedly agreed. You couldn’t wait to begin exploring other scenarios to roleplay. Until then, you were much too spent to even consider drawing out your escapades. You had a feeling you would be struggling to walk once you got down off his desk. 

Ben’s hands coming up to cup your face pulled your thoughts back to him. “I love you, sweetheart. You’re so good to me.”

“I love you too.” A moment of tenderness while basking in the afterglow.

But all too soon, it was time to get cleaned up. Gently, tenderly, he eased himself out of you, lashes fluttering as he admired the way a milky white trail of his seed followed. 

“Let’s go get cleaned up, alright?” He had to snap out of it, otherwise he’d be asking for round two, and he knew you both needed some recovery time. 

Arm around your waist, he guided you out of the office and to the hallway bathroom. There, you shared the intimate act of cleaning each other up. A display of reverence to the other’s body, a display of gratitude for the pleasure experienced. 

You decided to take a bath together after the fact, and it wasn’t long before you were both enveloped in the comfortably hot water, naked bodies pressed together as you enjoyed a moment of non-sexual closeness. 

“You’re too good to me, my lovely. Thanks for entertaining my little fantasies,” Ben spoke, tone low and smooth, lips pressed against your bare shoulder. 

You leaned back, searching for his lips, pressing yours to them before you replied. “You know I’m more than happy to,” you assured him. 

It felt so good to enjoy this moment of pure, unadulterated bliss. After all you had been through, you were finally living the sweet, slow life you’d always wanted to live together. Exploring fantasies. Enjoying one another’s company. Laughing and talking and deepening your bond. 

Oh, how at peace you were. And you wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. 

[skyethel]

What does Judith Butler know about loading her son’s corpse in a cab? What does she know about the horror of turning a taxi into a hearse?

im so mad. i've been in mourning and a state of constant rage for palestine for the past few years, and these past weeks have been especially devastating. while im not palestinian myself, i have friends and family that are, and i cant help but be on edge about the things they cant afford to think about right now.

i read their 'thought piece'. its nothing new on that front, and thats why it makes me so mad. im really struggling to connect with the blind, white-american privilege of calling for non-violence in the face of a genocidal apartheid regime. the fucking gall of these so-called western intellectuals to preach how rampant anti-intellectualism has become just to turn around and buy into some colonial playbook of peace shit is hilarious. people i thought were with me on this, not only on palestinian liberation but on liberation full stop, have been a constant disappointment. i cut off so many ppl i called friends over the absolute lack of grace and empathy they handled this with. when are white western 'activists' going to stop treating us like timed bombs of irrationality?

this part in particular kept coming up and made me feel like i was going insane:

"When, however, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee issues a statement claiming that ‘the apartheid regime is the only one to blame’ for the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israeli targets, it makes an error. It is wrong to apportion responsibility in that way, and nothing should exonerate Hamas from responsibility for the hideous killings they have perpetrated...The necessity of separating an understanding of the pervasive and relentless violence of the Israeli state from any justification of violence is crucial if we are to consider what other ways there are to throw off colonial rule"

literally nobody is asking anyone to 'exonerate' hamas. hamas is a military organization fighting the US-backed israeli occupation with smuggled weapons that is active in 365 km² at best. hamas is not even in the orbit when it comes to comparisons to israel.

israel said it with its own mouth that hamas is a product of israeli occupation. this isnt a matter of opinion, right? or am i too far left to think that a brutal occupation will radicalize its victims? and they gave them the means to become a 'terrorist organization'? how are you claiming to care about palestinians if you don't bother unsubscribing from the very schools of thought that constructed the occupation in the first place?

some of you 'leftists' have been lying about what you've been reading because where are the frantz fanon quotes you like to throw around, huh? where's the malcolm x, the angela davis? where are your insta posts with chomsky's books?

holy shit WHAT OTHER WAYS?

keep our communities out of your mouth. we are not some thought experiment you can exercise your conscience on. we're watching an ethnic cleansing unfold, and instead of supporting palestinians so many of you are playing out your own little fantasies of the 'progressive' solidarity you fail to show. sometimes, you need to fucking stop and listen instead of consulting the higher morality police on whether you need to 'contextualize' your incompetence.

[pyroclastic727]

The Marvels is being scathed by critics, and that's a good thing.

I finally saw The Marvels today. I'm a bit late to the party, so all I saw about the movie was the teaser at the end of Ms Marvel, and way too many critical reviews of it.

Now, obviously on Tumblr you find the good reviews, like, the cats outnumbering the white men and how Kamala Khan is, like, basically all of us. But in person, I've had someone tell me that it's bad because Rotten Tomatoes rates it 43%, which-- besides wondering why anyone would listen to Rotten Tomatoes, I'd have to wonder why the website would give it such a low rating. The easy answer is that the Tomatoes review committee is populated by white men, who, upon having no one to relate to, react badly to the movie. But I think there's more to it.

The Marvels is a revolution. Through its character-driven writing and brazen exploration of morality, it rewrites the superhero formula completely, by questioning what exactly it means to be a superhero.

The Marvels was directed by Nia DaCosta, an award-winning Harlem native and creative visionary whose approach to this film was to define these characters as humans, not as superheroes. Her approach to heroism directly addresses that the idea that a hero is not always right. A hero, DaCosta claims, is "someone who's trying their best with the information and tools they have at the time. They'll always get it wrong." Carol Danvers's arc directly addresses this, as the resolution of her subplot involves her re-igniting the sun that she snuffed out. Her heroic act is to undo the damage that she wrought.

When compared to old Marvel, this message just doesn't come through. In WandaVision, Wanda's grief is for a family that was killed by the Avengers. Yet, she is painted as a villain, even as she searches for a happy home, even as she at one point joins the Avengers. The Avengers cannot undo what they did, and don't really try. They defeat the big bad, sacrifice their lives, but nothing brings back Wanda's family. Nothing undoes that war. No one searches for Wanda after the event, to try to help her with her grief, except for Monica, and she's working against orders. Their heroics are militant, but while they excel at destruction, they leave the people they hurt in the dust.

This antiheroic plot of old Marvel is precisely what appealed to so many American audiences. Their protagonists are: a rich corporation, a super-soldier, a privileged teenager, a scientist who makes weapons, an ex-convict, a man born into godlike power, and I'm sure there are others but I don't actually care that much... (these would be iron man, captain america, peter parker spiderman, hulk, antman, thor, and etc). All these archetypes appeal to American ideals that the wealthy would sympathize with. They claim that there are people who are inherently bad and seek the power that they have, in the way that a poor person might want a job that a wealthy person wants their child to secure. They claim that it is their business to save those which cannot save themselves, and use this to get involved in wars that are not theirs, and beat up badguys whose backstory they have no way of knowing-- and they punch before they stop and listen.

They are cops in every sense of the word. The responsibility of the vigilante is to defend against evil, but part of that responsibility is to figure out who exactly is evil and who is in need of help.

The Marvels creates a team that tries to distinguish evil from good, and delves into the grey area between them. The final battle between Carol Danvers and Dar-benn has the superhero pinning the grey-haired antagonist to the ground as she begs for, then demands, that Carol fix what she damaged. Monica urges her to listen. Through this, The Marvels argues that a hero does not always beat up the bad guy and fight against unrelenting evil, but that a hero can be wrong, and that a hero can reconsider. It's kindness in the way that is revolutionary, where it's much easier to choose cruelty.

The fact that the movie is getting torn apart by critics, then, is not just because it is a "girls movie" or it doesn't have a strong white man for the white male viewer to sympathize with. The Marvels cannot appeal to Marvel fans because it rewrites the genre itself. It takes a film series whose purpose was to depict the struggles of cops, of the wealthy, of people with too much power who are trying to learn how to responsibly wield it, but don't. And it gives that power to people who have watched superheroes try and fail, who are slowly learning to be better heroes than the ones before them.

The next generation is a critique of the last, a group trying not to make the mistakes of the chosen ones that came before them, and as such, the movie exists to critique the movies that came before it. Therefore, a viewer of Marvel who would positively review it, due to sympathizing with the previous heroes and enjoying the power fantasy, would dislike it out of its existence being critical and contradictory to the films they like themselves.

The Marvels is not for Marvel fans-- at least, not those who saw the Avengers as purely heroes. Instead, the film reaches out to people who would have been against the old Avengers, who want a story that dismantles the unquestioned idealism of superheroes and writes about people trying to protect their communities and the people they care about.

So, let the critics complain. The MCU is shedding its roots as a pro-cop and pro-colonialism power fantasy, and evolving into an exploration of what it means to be a true hero.

[someone-will-remember-us]

After doing some reading in postmodern theoretical texts, several things about the theory suddenly struck me as incongruous. I have been trying to see not just what postmodern theorists say about their theory, but more importantly, how postmodern theory functions in the world–what are the effects of adopting postmodern thinking and theorizing. What became clear to me after some reading was that the overarching effect of postmodernism is to silence thinking and speaking, both personally and politically. I am aware that this is a rather outrageous statement given the attention postmodern theory pays to privileging the voices of

marginalized people, to giving voice to those previously unheard, and to investigating the silences embedded in the dominant discourse (to sling a little postmodern verbiage myself). However, in a deep reading of how postmodern theory functions, I find that these claims are little more than lip service. The important thing to see is not what postmodernism says it does, but how it actually functions.

One of the things that has made me especially curious about postmodernism has been my experience working with interns, for the most part, undergraduate college students, at off our backs. Often, as may well be imagined, in the midst of getting a mailing out, shipping out back issues, or some other tedious office chore, I tend to get involved in discussions of feminism with interns. More frequently than I wish, after offering my perspective on a particular event or theory, interns will reply to me, “You can’t say that.” My usual reply is, “I just did.” I don’t mean to be flip in my response, but I am trying to communicate that you can in fact state your opinion without self-censorship or an overexaggerated reluctance to say something that others disagree with. You can in fact state things clearly and concretely, however controversial. Others can disagree, but you do, after all, get to say things

One intern, assigned to cover an anti-choice event, became confused about how “You can’t say that anti-choicers are wrong–they have a viewpoint too. You really can’t say any viewpoint is wrong.” She actually became confused about her stand on abortion after hearing the fervent beliefs of anti-choicers. Not that she was convinced by the merits of their arguments–that would have been at least an honest mistake. It was her inability to hold any argument as being more valid than another, so that as long as there are competing positions on any topic, she seemed unable to take a stand on it. This, as I see it, is the cumulative effect of postmodern academic teachings on students of women’s studies these days. They are rendered unable to take even the most obvious of stands with any conviction.

The advent of postmodernism as the prevailing academic theory is of great significance, not only within academia but for feminist as well as progressive social movements. There are several problems with postmodernism, the first of which has to do with the way it has coopted some of the key insights of radical feminism, but stripped them of their political impact.

Radical feminism, diluted

One of the core insights of postmodernism is that everything is socially constructed–gender, race, class, personal attributes, etc. Postmodernists take great pains to elaborate on every nuance of every social system that has been constructed. There is great emphasis on constructions arising from particular places in the social order–a white rich American man will ascribe to a worldview that confirms and legitimizes his position. This is nothing new–radical feminists had this insight years ago–social systems profoundly shape and determine people’s lives in ways that don’t seem readily apparent–even intimate and personal aspects of people’s lives such as gender roles, sexuality, even their sense of self.

What is really interesting is the way postmodernists theorists write as though this is big news. Radical feminists have been saying this for years. And in a classic patriarchal reverse (a la Mary Daly), postmodernists accuse radical feminists of being essentialists, that is, believing that gender and other qualities are biological. That is precisely the opposite of what radical feminists have been saying all along–that since gender is so thoroughly socially constructed, it can be constructed differently, more equitably. Where radical feminists do part ways with postmodernists is their understanding of just what a difficult project this is to undertake. And the radical feminist view that this has not yet happened nor could it happen so facilely is why they are accused by postmodernists of being essentialist–because although it does not arise from biological differences, there is now a significant difference in the ways women and men are raised and socialized, hence there is currently a great difference in some ways. I think of postmodernists as a brand of “you’ve-come-a-long-way-baby” feminists–blithely in denial about just how deeply patriarchal conditioning runs and patriarchal institutions are entrenched.

Subverting the subordinate paradigm

In addition to the cooptation and subsequent dismissal of radical feminism, another even more insidious way postmodernism subverts the subordinate paradigm is the way some of the key insights, while claiming to allow more voices to speak, actually silence all voices, causing proponents of postmodernism to be muzzled and muddied in their speech and writing.

Postmodernism: the master’s tools

The hallmarks of postmodernist thinking are tools and methods that serve to reinforce the way things are now. Even while espousing radical politics, the cause of marginalized people, working against all oppressions, the tools of postmodernist thinking foil the project from the start. Some of the primary tools that have the effect of silencing speech are as follows:

Writing style–Although the obtuse writing style is an easy mark for criticism, it must be emphasized again that even highly educated people struggle with its nuances and meanings. As I have struggled to make it through the painfully dense and clumsy prose that is characteristic of postmodernist writers, I have discovered that the thinking underneath the layers of prose absolutely does not merit such convoluted presentation–the ideas are no more complex or complicated than ideas in progressive, marxist, feminist or other theories. This writing style is more than inconvenient and cumbersome–it has an effect.. As Katja Mikhailovich writes in Radically Speaking (see review in this issue) “My first response, and the response of many women I have talked with since, was to doubt my own intellect and ability to make meanings of these texts.” The effect (presumably unintended but effective nevertheless) is to create self-doubt in the intellectual abilities of the reader and to discourage students from theorizing about their own experiences and lives thereby making the connections necessary for radical consciousness and activism. The ability to create theory is relegated to those in authority–professors and their ilk. Even thoughtful and analytical students come to see theory making as excessively complex and out of their reach.

Another conspicuous feature of postmodern writing style is an abiding hesitancy and reluctance to say anything definitive. Witness the reflexive self-doubting parentheses and unanswered questions posed for effect. Also there is much “calling into question,” “moving toward a theory of…” and “calling for a discourse on…” in the place of definitive statements. Statements are frequently qualified out of existence. New words are made up almost daily (the old ones I presume are too precise in their meaning) which add mystique and uncertainty about what is really meant. Finally the advent of the irritating, unnecessary, and inappropriate “s” on the end of every other word rounds out the obfuscation (added even to nouns which are already plural)–”knowledges,” “discourses,” or “positionalities.”

It is ironic that with this prolific onslaught of postmodern verbiage and theory, hardly anything is in fact said. Sheila Jeffreys points out in Radically Speaking that “…in post-modernist feminist writing there is much agonising on how hard it is to speak or write.” The net effect of all this is to silence and muzzle speech and to inhibit taking a strong clear passionate stand on anything.

Denunciation of the meta-narrative–For the uninitiated, a “meta-narrative” is an explanatory statement–one that attempts to explain something as a generalizable concept rather than simply describe a specific individual situation without any generalizations. So according to postmodernists, any time someone uses the dreaded “meta-narrative,” they may be suppressing and silencing other voices. If you are willing to say something definitive, someone somewhere is bound to disagree. If you are saying something with which no one disagrees or no one feels is wrong, you are probably not challenging the status quo (or anything for that matter). It is a grave mistake, however, to conclude that you must self censor because, by speaking, you silence others’ speech.

The other feature of the denunciation of the “meta-narrative” is that it effectively subverts the meaning of the personal is the political. In postmodernism, the personal, rather than being the political, becomes only and exclusively the personal–any attempt to create bonds between oppressed individuals or to raise consciousness about how individual experiences are really reflective of larger social forces is reinterpreted as silencing other voices. Any attempt to make generalizations is seen as silencing and rendering invisible those people for whom the generalization does not apply. This defies a basic understanding of the concept of a generalization–of course it is not true for every single person in the group–it is, after all, a generalization. Exceptions alone do not, however, disprove the validity of generalizations. If I make a generalization that people stop at red lights while driving, certainly it is true that occasionally, some people do not; however it is an accurate and useful statement that people stop at red lights. It describes, with reasonable accuracy, a social phenomenon. To say that the generalization is not true simply because a few people do not fit it, is ludicrous and leaves us unable to describe or name even the most obvious social norms.

The overall effect of this turn away from “meta-narratives” is to stop people from being able to describe their social conditions, from being able to generalize about personal experiences in their lives, from being able to see the commonalities of experience that can mobilize them to see problems as political rather than personal. The net effect is a lot of women’s studies students saying, “You can’t really say that,” about even the most basic truths.

Denunciation of binarisms–Binary thinking involves thinking in dualistic mutually exclusive categories such as good or bad, gay or straight, woman or man, etc. In postmodern thinking, binarisms are bad (that in itself is an unavoidable binarism). Some theorists say that binarisms are the root of all oppression–that without them we could not oppress others. Unfortunately, without binarisms, we also cannot make a definitive statement. Making a statement, especially a political one, requires that we say one thing is better than (or worse than) in some way than another thing. If we avoid binarisms (a feat which some postmodernist writers do manage to approach in their flailingly uncertain prose), we cannot say, for example, liberation is better than oppression, being fed is better than starving, being healthy is better than being sick.

By demonizing binarisms, the effect is to stifle clear articulate speech. People become so mired in trying to avoid choosing one thing over another that they are rendered incapable of sustaining a passionate conviction on any topic.

Taking the social out of social constructionism–What is perhaps most fascinating about postmodern theory is that for all the talk of how things are socially constructed, they forgot the implications of “social” in social construction. After their supposedly new insight that nearly everything is socially constructed, they do not advocate much for transformation at the social level, ie. for changes in institutions, social norms, social structures such as the family, etc. Instead there is much attention to individual acts of transgression of conventional social norms as a way of highlighting that social norms are constructed and not natural or inevitable. This kind of rebellion in postmodernism is a very isolated activity–it consists of individuals taking it upon themselves to fight battles all alone. There is not an emphasis among postmodern theorists for building a critical mass of people united in a social movement which could begin to effect changes at the social level. There is instead a very superficial understanding of the how social forces work–a naive and libertarian emphasis on individual actions and choices as though the cumulative effect of each isolated individual choice or action will effect largescale social transformation. The net effect of such an atomization of individual activities serves to prevent rather than foster social change.

The curious timing of postmodernism

What I find most interesting about postmodernism is not what postmodernists say about it, but how it functions in the real world (and I’m assuming there is one) in terms of social change. The effects of the intimidating and obfuscating writing style, of inhibiting generalizations and so the formation of commonalities between people, of ruling out binary thinking and so eviscerating impassioned convictions, and of overemphasizing individual rather than collective action is to create a multilayered system of disconnection, silencing, and disempowerment.

What is also interesting is the timing of the advent of postmodernist theory. As Somer Brodribb and Barbara Christian point out in Radically Speaking, postmodernism came into vogue in academia just when the voices of women and people of color began to assert a significant presence there. It seems that when groups other than those in power attempt to say things, suddenly truth dissolves into meaninglessness. This is a little too coincidental for my taste.

The coincidence becomes even more striking when it becomes apparent that this is not the first time this has happened. Right after the first wave of feminism, in the 1920s, when women had made some advances, had gotten the vote, and began to gain some access to academia, another nihilistic kind of theorizing became the rage in academia–relativism and existentialism. Again, just when women were trying to gain access, and to articulate our points of view, suddenly nothing was meaningful anymore, everything was relative, and meaninglessness was lauded as high theory.

I suggest that postmodernism is nothing more than the new relativism and that relativistic theories emerge as a new line of defense when power structures are becoming threatened. It is a very insidious and crafty defense because it mouths the words of liberation while simultaneously transforming them into meaninglessness. The real agenda is masked in clever obfuscation–to preserve the status quo by rendering dissent meaningless and ineffective, unable to gather any social or political power. Notwithstanding postmodernism’s purported intention to deconstruct social norms and by so doing, make way for changes, its actual effect is to atomize peoples’ experiences, obliterate the potential for solidarity, silence articulate and forthright speech, and render passionate convictions meaningless. It leaves us unable to condemn anything as wrong or oppressive with clarity, certainty, or conviction. Furthermore, nearly all of the so-called insights of postmodernism are simply rehashed and depoliticized versions of radical feminist ideas. Postmodernism is a theory which denounces the act of theorizing, it is speech that silences voices, it is writing that stultifies and obscures, it is a position which advocates no position at all, it is a politics which refuses to take a stand on anything. And we must see the politics of that–it is a viper that women’s studies and English departments have nursed to their collective bosoms. It is a theory, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is a stealth theory that contains a virus which, once incorporated, explodes all possibility of impassioned righteous collective action for changing the conditions of our lives.

(archive)

[kvetchlandia]

I Haven't...

really wanted to engage in a rant about Luigi Mangione because the subject is just so depressing. Beyond the general issues with the Mangione case, things become even more complex because the reign of His Imperial Highness, Generalissimo, President for Life and Defender of the Faith in His Cult, Pussy Grabber I, is about to begin in just a few days and anything said against him, his cult or his knuckle-walking, mouth-breathing, hairy-palmed followers just might be cause for disappearance into the nacht und nebel, and sooner rather than later. But I figured, what the fuck, if I'm gonna be targeted, it'll be because of more years than I care to count of activism in progressive causes, in my union and in defense of science and learning against religious superstition and ignorance rather than because of a post on Dumblr. So, here I go.

I believe that the murder of corporate executives, while completely understandable, is the politics of despair. It doesn't and can't lead to change. It's just lashing out. The reasons for such lashing out are as obvious as the day is long. The man killed by Mangione, Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, was without question, a murderer himself. He was the chair of the largest private, for profit health insurance company in the United States. As has been noted countless numbers of times, American private health insurance is not a healthcare system, it's a healthcare denial system. United Healthcare had the largest percentage of denied claims of any major health insurance company in the United States, roughly 33%. There is no question that some of those 1/3 of all claims made that were denied resulted in the deaths of the claimants. That makes Thompson and his leadership team at UHC murderers, even if their murders are conducted under the color of law. Beyond that, on account of the their typically high premium rates and their low rate of payout on fully justified claims, United Health Group's revenue was $371.6 billion in 2023, an increase of 14.6% from 2022. They claimed a profit of $22 billion in 2023, a number that I believe is actually much below their real profit level but which is what was claimed after all of the legal ways their battery of highly paid attorneys and accountants legally cheat on their taxes and reduce their published profits to avoid taxation on them are factored in. Thompson himself claimed an income of $10.2 million in 2023, largely based upon his success in denying the claims of customers who'd paid for insurance services they were ultimately denied, thus increasing company profits and shareholder dividends.

Given this ugly reality, it's no wonder that the population of the United States largely applauds Mangione. Everyone understands his frustration and his anger, and many of us share those feelings. We get that his objective anger was made worse by his own subjective experience of suffering from a condition that left him in constant pain and which, from published reports, he had difficulty getting treated even though he was from a wealthy, privileged background. Hell, even a lot of MAGA scumbags speak out in defense of Mangione. I guess the only ungodly rich jerkoffs they like are their cult leader, Trump, and his evil prima donna prime minister, Elon Musk.

Murdering these corporate criminals changes nothing. It might remove an individual or two from the scenes of the crimes they routinely commit, but it doesn't change the system that allows and flourishes because of this legal criminality any more than the murders of Carmine Galante, Albert Anastasia and Joey Gallo ended the mafia. The only way to really end this criminality is to end capitalism, the system that thrives on it. There are smaller steps than complete social revolution that might ameliorate the problem without changing the system, but they're really only half steps. For example, the United States could join the rest of the industrialized world in providing fully national healthcare to the residents of this country, paid for through graduated taxation of both individuals and corporations. We could do that, but anyone who believes that a country whose government is going to be dominated by the Trump cult for at least the next 2 years, a cult noted for its greed, mendacity, racism, misogyny and xenophobia, is going to increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations in order to accomplish that probably also believes in the tooth fairy and that the earth is flat. This country is going to do exactly the opposite, most likely making the very limited gains of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") fewer and harder to receive.

So, where does that leave us? At the moment, exactly where we started out, but with much more ugliness, exploitation, oppression and misery looming just over the horizon.

Aren't I the cheery sort?

[qqueenofhades]

Extremely stupid and contradictory question that I still want an answer to, but what is it that makes people want a dictatorship with progressive values?

For that matter, why is it that nearly all dictatorships are so fundamentally built on conservative/authoritarian ideals and values?

Why doesn't genuinely good values ever end up being the core value that gets enforced with ruthless brutality instead of people twisting themselves into knots to justify always sinking to the worst possible impulses built on hatred?

Is decency just fundamentally anathema to it?

This is one of those questions where you're actually asking several different things at once, and it will take a lot of work for me to explain and contextualize everything that you're looking for. However, I do think this is important to understand, so I'll give it a shot.

First, if I may point out, you've answered a bit of your own question when you ask "why don't genuinely good values ever end up being enforced with ruthless brutality?" I think it's fair to say that if your values were actually good or something that would broadly benefit the lives of most people, they would not need to be enforced with ruthless brutality. This is the case regardless of which ideology your totalitarian dictatorship is built on; i.e. conservative Christian fascism or left-wing old-school communism/People's Republics. Because a dictatorship, no matter which values it claims to use to justify itself, never exists to benefit people. A dictatorship exists to vest supreme power in one person or system and totally disenfranchise everyone else, and it is not, regardless of what some people on the internet in 2023 seem to think, a tool of social justice. Marginalized groups who have a hard time in a traditionally white/culturally Christian Western democracy will nonetheless have an orders of magnitude worse time under a dictatorship, as will everyone else. It is not something you should wish for under any circumstances, and also represents a naïve Western privilege where, having grown up with the unpleasant consequences of late-stage capitalism, people go for the fallacy that old-school communism must be better! Except it isn't, and when you totally blow over and ignore the objections of people who actually grew up under those regimes and warn you that they're not so great, you're just straight-up projecting and wishful thinking. It has nothing to do with reality or history or what anyone should aspire to.

The idea has existed in human society for thousands of years that if you can just get a "benevolent dictator" or "merciful autocrat," who can be trusted to rule with supreme power, do what's right for everyone, and get rid of the messy and flawed process of representative democracy that never seems to quite fix society's biggest problems. However: this doesn't work, it has never worked, there have been countless wars fought over this question, and it would certainly never, ever work in a setting as complex as the globalized twenty-first century. The Online Leftists who want Bernie Sanders, an old white man, to be their all-powerful dictator -- that is, uh, not the Social Justice Flex (tm) you think it is. And as noted, a dictator of any stripe is fundamentally anathema to actual progressivism or social justice, and anyone who loudly wants one (or thinks that the American president should act like one) is exposing both their profoundly immature understanding of the situation and a worrisome thirst for tyrannical despotism as long as it has "the right ideas." This has, again, caused countless wars and numberless deaths, because "the right ideas" will never be universal, universally agreed upon, or anything else, and if they're enforced with violence, you have -- again -- a dictatorship! It's not great!

In chaotic and uncertain times, people tend to want a "strong leader" who they can trust to just fix all their problems and relieve them from the burden of governance or worrying how things are going to work out. This was first articulated in modern Western political philosophy by Thomas Hobbes, who wrote his Leviathan in the mid-17th century during the English Civil War. Basically, his idea was that the people should democratically elect an absolute monarch/leader, who would then rule with an iron fist and retain supreme power, because they couldn't be trusted to govern themselves. (Hobbes is also where we get the pessimistic description of life being "nasty, brutish, and short.") Because things are bad right now, people likewise tend to want an absolute monarch of either right or left political persuasion, but these are both very bad options and should be equally resisted.

Democracy is flawed, imperfect, slow, cumbersome, and contradictory. It can be badly hijacked and corrupted (as we've seen in the last few years) by money, misinformation, bad-faith actors, and more. It is also still always, 100%, all-of-the-time preferable to a dictatorship. People still fall for the idea that having an absolute monarch who just "makes things happen" right away without the cumbersome apparatus of congresses or senates or supreme courts of judges would be "better," and totally ignore the massive and systemic disenfranchisement it would impose on everyone else. Especially in our current misogynist white-supremacist homophobic etc. system; the dictator WOULD be a rich white dude and let's not even pretend otherwise. Even if he made a play at being "progressive," it would not be true and it would not last. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc. etc. I do not want a dictatorship. I do not want to live in a dictatorship. I don't care what Good Intentions (tm) anyone has, because I think that anyone who wants to be a dictator or to live under a dictatorship has a very different idea of Good Intentions than I, or indeed most sane people, do. The end.

Yes, America is a deeply flawed country. Yes, it is built on systemic and ongoing racial and cultural white-settler-colonial genocide. However, where modern leftists struggle the most is the idea that two things can be true, because they're so deeply sunk into black-and-white, zero-sum thinking where if one thing is true, it rejects all the others. If we have a flawed democracy, the solution is to fix that democracy, not to just throw it out the window and cavil for an absolute monarch. You can be fiercely critical of America's imperialist actions, unnecessary wars, racist violence, and everything else while also realizing that if the first and oldest presidential democratic republic in existence was dismantled or turned into a fascist autocracy, it would be absolutely terrible for many, many countries around the world, and humankind in general. You do not have to subscribe to the nonsensical, navel-gazing tankie "logic" that America is the only country with (evil) agency ever, and everyone else in the world is just its helpless pawns. You do not have to subscribe to the idea that any work within the system, or accepting basic political realities, makes you a "bootlicking neoliberal shill" or whatever they're using to insult anyone who doesn't just live in their distorted bubble of self-righteous ignorance. You don't!

As I always say, the only people who really want a dictatorship are those who know that their ideas aren't popular enough to win a free and fair election, but think they "deserve" to be in power anyway, because etc. etc. My Ideas Are Better! (Spoiler alert: they are not.) This is the same whether it's the Republicans trying to outlaw elections or the Online Leftists who sanctimoniously refuse to engage with the civic process because it's "contaminating" for their Pure Ideas to make any compromise with reality. And yet those so-called progressives are utterly dependent on us Normie Liberals who actually vote against the rabid fascists, and are (just barely) holding the line. Because yes, in a liberal democracy, they do have the right to be sanctimonious, useless, toxic, holier-than-thou ideologues who sit on their asses and contribute nothing to the actual dirty process of change. But if the Normie Liberals haughtily refused to vote in the same way the Online Leftists do, the fascists WOULD be in complete control by now, and trust me, it would be grim.

To be frank, I think most, if not all, of what calls itself "Western leftism" has categorically and completely failed as a moral, political, or practical opposing force to right-wing fascism. Much of it is dependent on savagely backbiting even those people who already agree with you, refusing to take basic steps to enact change even incrementally (i.e. voting), and attacking the establishment liberal party, i.e. the Democrats in America, while vocally supporting foreign dictatorships as long as they're "anti-American" or ancestrally "socialist." We've seen the utter failure of Western leftists at developing a moral stance on Ukraine, a consistent opposition to Trump, or pretty much anything else that requires them to come down from their high horses and accept a more complex reality than their abstract purity tests or outright nonsensical clichés. And when you're attacking the Democrats nonstop and backing foreign dictatorships, that is, uh, pretty much the exact same thing that the fascist Republicans are doing. Which means both of these groups are profoundly and dangerously anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-intellectual, and anti-humanity. There's no way around it.

In short, so-called "progressives" want a dictatorship because they too have given up on democracy, don't believe that people at large are as "smart" as they are, and don't want actual praxis or the effort of making change within a flawed democracy. They subscribe instead to the magical thinking that an absolute monarch will instantly and benevolently fix everything, which has -- as noted -- been violently disproved over and over in human history, and they think that "leftism" consists of having the most "pure" views. They do not care about or actively deplore any idea of making compromises to put them into practice, they gain moral superiority by excluding more and more people to make a smaller and smaller in-group, they refuse to accept any information, history, or factual evidence that contradicts their beliefs, and they're just as angrily anti-intellectual as the worst Christian-fascist-nutjob-right-winger, because reality has a bad habit of being complicated and not fitting into neat boxes. And if you think, as I do, that it would be a very, very bad idea to trust these mean, vindictive, constantly-want-to-punish-everyone-who-is-not-exactly-like-them people with absolute power, then you'll have to move to the idea of accepting that for all its flaws, democracy is still the best and most just system we have yet invented for governing ourselves, and the idea is to fix ours, not get rid of it entirely. So yeah.

[robotpussy]

i was just about to watch this video by Cheyenne Lin

Avatar and the Wh*te Imagination (or lack thereof)

about the limits of white imagination and how evident it is in the Avatar movies, and it just reminded me that james cameron worked with an ethnomusicologist, Dr Wanda Bryant, to make music for the na'vi because he wanted something that "would sound like nothing we’ve ever heard on earth" then he decided what was made was too otherworldly and decided that their music should just be what white people would call "alien" and ethnic, aka, whatever music exists in African, Asian and Native American cultures (and that was the final result).

Originally there were many influences coming from all over the globe, but when Cameron listened to the demos, he claimed it was too recognisable as well as too 'weird', albeit for white people and just pushed for a more 'down to earth' version. Avatar is evidence of the continuation of generalized exoticism and stereotyping still being a driving force in Hollywood

[IMAGE ID: A screenshot of a segment from the journal entry written by ethnomusicologist, Dr Bryant discussing the process of creating the music for the avatar films that reads:

"In our initial phone conversation, Horner asked me to find unusual musical sounds that “no one has heard before,” by which he really meant sounds not readily recognizable by the average American movie-goer as belonging to a specific culture, time period, or geographical location"

/END ID]

[IMAGE ID: A screenshot of a paragraph from the journal entry written by ethnomusicologist, Dr Bryant discussing the process of creating the music for the avatar films that reads:

"Through a process of elimination we came up with 25 workable possibilities, including examples of Swedish cattle herding calls, folk dance songs from the Naga people of Northeast India, Vietnamese and Chinese traditional work songs, greeting songs from Burundi, Celtic and Norwegian medieval laments, Central African vocal polyphony, Persian tahrir, microtonal works by Scelsi, the Finnish women’s group Vârttinä, personal songs from the Central Arctic Inuit, and brush dances from northern California. None was an exact blueprint of what we were seeking, but each had at least one interesting musical device or characteristic that we could utilize. In some cases, it was a timbre that we might hope to mimic; in other cases, it may have been a song structure, an ornamentational style, or interesting intonation."

/END ID]

[IMAGE ID: A screenshot of a paragraph from the journal entry written by ethnomusicologist, Dr Bryant discussing the process of creating the music for the avatar films that reads:

"Horner then met with Jim Cameron for his input on our musical ideas. Cameron is a very hands-on director and wants to be kept in the loop about all major decisions. Most of the ideas we presented were dismissed by Cameron out of hand, rejected with appropriately blue language as either too recognizable (“Oh, that’s Bulgarian”) or just “too fucking weird!” Half a dozen examples were approved as possibilities."

/END ID]

You can read the full article here:

There is also a video by sideways that discusses this (if you don't want to read):

[radfem-polls]

Hi sisters 👋

It's not a poll, I'm sorry if it's not okay to ask, but I was hoping that I could ask this to the radfem community here.

I'm struggling to understand something and I was hoping that the us black radfem could help me understand this topic.

I'm not from the us and I've never been there so I guess that's why I struggle to understand this topic.

I've seen a lot of afro Americans women claiming that white woman are equally violent and privileged as men. At first from ''random'' women then in the lgbt community, then the feminist one and also in the autistic community. (Even if there was some spreading misinformation from the latest but that's not my point.)

And lately, there was this question from and to black women that pop-up and became popular similarly as the bear or a man :

"Would you feel safer in a room full of white men or full of white women?" I think it was about in the work field but I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong).

And not a single answer was women.

So it makes me think and questions things. And I understand that women have to compete with all the other women to hope have some crumbs left from men.

So I understand that's not comfortable, we get both solidarity/sorority and competitivity/pushing eachother down from all of us. But this is not specific to black women.

And this is nothing compared to what men does to us like constant sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape every day or so etc. But still apparently white women are as violent as men towards black women and I can't find data about this. I found about black Vs white in general but not specifically from women to women.

And I didn't find this discourse? Topic? From other community that also face racism like Latinos or indigenous, just the afro descendants.

They also claim that they are the only one facing misogyny. (I was putting this on the us culture, as the USA culture is literally I'm the center of the world, me Vs the world, the world revolved around me etc but then I wonder why the Asians or other communities don't have the same speech so it just confuses me even more).

This sounds insanely and factually wrong to me from what I know and from all the data, studies etc that I've read or consulted but it can't be all wrong, especially if an entire community feel this way and collectively agree on this. So I'm hoping that you will have some answers for me because I can't ask them.

If you question this, like asking clarification, to better understand why they feel collectively this way, it's racist because you don't already know the answer and apparently you should.

Can someone please explain me what happened/is happening? This is not related to the trump election, I mean, the results of the white women votes are just an addition to it but it's something that I've seen for months, I was trying to collect enough information but obviously I still can't understand it so I'm asking you.

If someone already wrote about this, or if you're willing to help me understand it, I would be very grateful! Thanks ! 🫶

I tried to summarize this into a single question, but go ahead and read the entire ask before discussing.

-🐌

[olderthannetfic]

Americans online are claiming they won't vote after the latest news and the attitude really speaks to their privilege. The US commits genocide every day and there hasn't been a day it was not involved in an immoral war since 2001 and Americans think they can just opt out by doing nothing for an extra day every few years? Haha. Many Americans are skilled at posturing.

--

Oh, only 2001?

[describe-things]

genuine question abt your don’t vote blue post, I’m asking in good faith:

the USA is a 2 party system. most people will vote republican or democrat bc that’s just how it works there. so if Biden doesn’t win then Trump definitely will and he is a Real, Actual Fascist. the Textbook Definition of one. and he’s got the entire republican party to back him up. like, just as examples, look up project 2025 and its policies. if Trump & the republicans win, what happens then?

again, I’m purely asking this out of confusion, I’m still forming my opinion on this and trying to understand your side, please do feel free to ignore this ask if you want /genuine

Assumedly in reference to this post. (Archived link)

Let's start here:

then Trump definitely will and he is a Real, Actual Fascist. the Textbook Definition of one.

Joe Biden is literally committing genocide right now as you read this response. Think about why you have decided Trump is a "Real Fascist" but the man literally, at this moment, comitting genocide, isn't.

Genocide Joe is literally comitting genocide as we speak. Do you think comitting genocide is only a fascist action when it's happening to privileged white Americans?

If so, how about...the Covid19 crisis? Which Joe Biden has actively allowed to worsen? Lots of Americans, both privileged, white, and not, have died as a direct result of Biden's refusal to protect the public from Covid19 by brushing it all under the rug as soon as he could to pretend it was all Trump's fault.

Genuinely sit and ask yourself why you consider Trump a fascist, but not Biden, even though Biden has been openly and happily comitting genocide against Palestinians for over a year now. Ask yourself why you only think Trump qualifies as a fascist.

if Trump & the republicans win, what happens then?

What's happening right now to everyone who's not a privileged white American?

Biden is committing genocide. He has poured billions into arming Israel. He has purposefully allowed eugenics practices to become normalized and has done nothing to slow or prevent the spread of Covid19, instead choosing the exact same tactic Trump did -- deny, deny, deny. Just like he denies the genocide that Israel is comitting against Palestinians.

Nothing good will be accomplished by voting for Genocide Joe Biden. The only thing that will be accomplished by voting for him is telling every single politician, both current and future, that you are okay with genocide.

You will be telling them all loud and clear that they can do anything they want, kill as many people as they want, commit as many war crimes as they want and be as blatantly fascist as they want, as long as they have a scapegoat on the other team to claim is "worse".

Palestinians are begging people not to reward the man comitting genocide against them. Indigenous people everywhere are begging people not to reward the man comitting genocide against Palestinians. Queer people, disabled people, poor people, every minority you can imagine in both the US and outside of it, is begging you not to reward Genocide Joe for comitting genocide.

Instead of asking what would happen if Trump won, ask yourself what would happen if Biden won.

What do you think will happen if the American public loudly declares for all the world to hear that genocide is perfectly normal and acceptable?

Do you think this'll convince politicians not to commit genocide? Do you think this'll convince politicians to be less fascist? Do you think this'll convince politicians to treat minorities like people with fundamental rights?

Telling politicians that you're going to support them unquestionignly even when they literally commit genocide for all the world to see is not going to do anything to protect you or anyone you care about. The only thing it will accomplish is encouraging politicians to keep playing this game of "well at least I'm not the other guy!" even harder.

You will protect no one by voting for Genocide Joe. Not even the privileged white Americans. The only thing supporting genocide accomplishes is ensuring that the world becomes a worse place for everyone.

Do not vote for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party and then be surprised when they turn on you.

Just because the Democrats and Republicans scream from the rooftops that it's impossible for any other party to win does not mean you need to believe them. Insisting that it's impossible for a third party to win is exactly what prevents third parties from winning. You'll never move forward if you refuse to even try taking a single step.

Trump is going to keep running for President until he dies. And when he dies, there will be another boogeyman in a red hat to take his place. This game of "vote blue no matter who, because the other guy is worse" will go on until this empire falls unless people refuse to keep playing.

You can vote third party. You can protest vote. You do not have to vote for the fascist in the red hat or in the blue hat just because they tell you they're your only options.

You have to choose whether or not you're going to support genocide. Any vote for Joe Biden is explicitly a vote for genocide, and it will go down in history as such. Everyone's actions now will be remembered. You will either be one of the people who voted to continue genocide, or you will be one of the people who did the right thing.

If you consider yourself antifascist, if you consider yourself a good person, if you consider yourself anti-colonialist and anti-racist, then you cannot vote for Genocide Joe. Voting to explicitly endorse genocide, which is what voting for Genocide Joe is, is completely and utterly incompatible with being antifascist.

Trump does not have some mystical quality innate to his soul that makes him "A Real Fascist" while Joe Biden somehow doesn't.

Joe Biden is committing literal genocide right now. He is fascist. And so is everyone who votes for him.

Do the right thing, and do not vote for genocide. Do literally anything else. Do not let this system keep you trapped in a loop of "but the other guy is worse, we promise" forever. Because it will never end.

You have to break the system, because it's fucked beyond repair. It was designed that way from the start.

Anything you're afraid of Trump doing, Biden is already doing and has been since day 1. Ask anyone who's not a privileged white person.

[velvetvexations]

I'm not engaging in whataboutism when I see someone who has "death to the USA and Israel" in their header and go like, "you know there are other bad countries, right?" because I am literally just trying to ask, no seriously, why are you not concerned about literally anything else that doesn't directly affect you?

Like it sucks hard to have been so concerned and vocal about Saudi Arabia and Russia and China and Israel, for a decade now, just to see exactly one of those go viral to the point of tunnel vision.

That doesn't apply to everyone who engages in pro-Palestinian activism or critiques liberals, obviously. This doesn't even apply to everyone who hasn't gone as hard on, like, supporting Ukraine. Like, I do get that people don't have time or the capacity to talk about everything all the time. But it's just so conspicuous, you know? Where were all these people when Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2022? Actually, where were all these people when Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014? Because I was there and it felt like no one else in the West, at least not that were my age, could care less. The support Ukraine got from us in 2022 was somewhat encouraging, but it certainly wasn't a youth movement. It certainly wasn't the hardcore crowd that still dreams about a Russian dommy mommy even though the Russian Federation is the greatest example of capitalist parasitism that's ever existed.

One might say that to an extent, Israel is different because the US is tied to it. But like, we're increasingly tied to Saudi Arabia day by day, and if you want to hate Democrats, Biden shook the prince's hand - you know, the guy who famously ordered the brutal assassination of a journalist in a shockingly grotesque and gruesome way? Republicans have greatly affected aid to Ukraine and the results of the 2024 election could be game over for them if we let it.

But for as long as I've been alive foreign policy was just grown-up politics while the people who are all "voting blue means you only care about Americans" now completely ignored everything outside their window, and continue to ignore everything except this new thing that's completely taken over their brains as being what you absolutely must prioritize above all else, even doing things that would keep that issue from getting even worse.

And is that even accelerationism? Because I keep thinking "fucking accelerationists", because that's what they claim, they give it an accelerationist window dressing, but I don't think that's what it is. I think it's people who have their heart in the right place being led by lazy insincere grifters who think it makes them look smart to brag about the privilege of not having to vote because nothing will change for them personally.

So like. I want everyone to keep talking about Israel and Palestinians. I just wish they'd talk - I wish they'd give a damn - about other things too.

[yeetmeoutthewindowdaddy]

Rolan's lisp headcanons:

Inspired by this post [alt]

A/N: I am not a doctor. I am not claiming that Rolan's voice actor has a lisp IRL, nor am I speculating on the causes of his lisp IF he has one, this post is nothing more than me reaching for angst for one of my blorbo's. Does Rolan have a lisp in-game? It sounds like he does to me, but maybe he doesn't have a lisp and that's just how his accent sounds to my uncultured US American yee-haw ears. --- This specific post is not a lore breakdown, it is pure speculation and conjecture. Some actual lore-breakdowns are linked to provide the canon sources that led me to these headcanons. I posited the information below as though it is factual because it is true for my headcanons, not because it is actually canon.

Content: Angst, a nonmedical-professional speculating on medical things.

TW: physical trauma, brain/head injury, anxiety/stress, child abuse, species-targeted violence*, orphans, homelessness, real-world parallels to discrimination.

*A/N: I am taking a page from WotC and using the term "species" instead of "race" because of the real world connotations that "race" has. And frankly using real-world terms like "racially targeted violence" when discussing a fictional world seems disrespectful to the very real people who must contend with it in their actual lives. And such terms hit too close to home— I'm ethnically ambiguous and pale enough that I don't have to worry about racially motivated violence in my day-to-day life, but many of my family members and loved ones don't have that privilege.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: (Hard facts are in green, information bookended by green * is info that I'm fairly certain is factual— everything else is headcanon.)

● (Section 1) Possible reasons why Rolan has a lisp:

Rolan was was born with an articulation disorder:

Rolan's speech impairment was much more pronounced (pun unintended) when he was younger.

He taught himself how to speak Common despite his disability because he wanted to be a wizard, who needs to be able to properly pronounce the verbal components of a spell, and because he was severely bullied about it as a child— as it was yet another thing that othered him.

---

Rolan has a forked tongue that makes it difficult for him to speak Common:

(A tiefling specific physical reason why he has trouble speaking.)

A/N: (I don't think that any of the tiefling character models in game have a forked tongue. But based on what I know about tieflings, at least some of them should have a partially or fully forked tongue.)

"The speech of subjects with bifurcated tongues, while intelligible, shows a higher proportion of perceptibly atypical fricatives and significantly greater variance than seen in the control group." Source *Translated into layman's terms: While having a spilt tongue makes it noticeably harder to clearly enunciate and correctly pronounce words, people with a forked tongue are still able to be understood when speaking.*

Keep in mind that the test subjects in the above study were adults who had already learned how to speak. They already knew where and how to position their tongue when speaking, they just needed to adapt to speaking with their newly forked tongue.

Rolan had no one to teach him how to speak common with his naturally forked tongue.

A forked tongue is required to properly speak Infernal , so his lisp serves as yet another reminder of his infernal heritage.

---

It was caused by an improperly healed injury:

Unfortunately, prejudice against tieflings is very common in the realms. *Rolan grew up in* Elturel, a city that tolerated tieflings better than most (until the Decent into Avernus). *A combination of moral superiority and* strict laws enforced by the Hellriders meant that Elturel had a very low crime rate.

In a city where cursing in public could get one into legal trouble, who could ruffians take their aggression out on without penalty? Street children, specifically tiefling street children. Without any adults to look after or protect them, many orphaned/abandoned tiefling children have to resort to stealing to survive (like Mol)— which unfortunately feeds into the stereotype of tieflings being criminals.

Committing a crime against tiefling urchin would be easy to get away with. Because who is the city guard going to believe— a purportedly good and upstanding citizen who was simply defending themselves, or a gamin devil-kin thief?

Before descending into the hells overtly hateful prejudice against tieflings was kept behind closed doors and away from polite company— it would be uncouth to be openly intolerant. The holier-than-thou people of Elturel looked the other way when injustices were committed against tieflings.

After Elturel was retuned from the hells openly displaying anti-tiefling sentiments became socially acceptable and widespread amongst the non-tiefling populace of the city. *Before the tieflings were banished violence against them had dramatically increased in Elturel. (Which sadly meant that the general levels of violence tieflings faced in Elturel now matched Faerûn as a whole.)*

Rolan was abandoned by his human parents because he was born a tiefling. Even if Rolan wasn't a street urchin and had instead been taken in by an orphanage or a temple; his prospects there weren't much better, maybe even worse, than being on the streets. (Rolan was, at some point, thankfully adopted by Cal and Lia's mother.)

Rolan would have suffered because he is a tiefling— either at the hands of the orphanage's/temple's care-takers and/or from the other unwanted children (Rolan is intelligent and magically gifted, jealousy is a hell of a motivator for school-yard bullies), or from criminals/assholes who wanted an easy target, or all of the above.

All of this to say: Rolan was, likely repeatedly, subjected to species-motivated physical violence when he was a child, causing him to receive an injury that never properly healed or that permanently damaged a portion of his brain that controls speech/speaking.

"Neurological disorders, such as stroke, brain injury, or dysarthria, can affect the brain regions and neural pathways responsible for speech production. A disruption in the neurological pathways can lead to difficulties coordinating and controlling the muscles involved in speech, including those of the tongue and lips. As a result, individuals may struggle to produce specific sounds correctly, potentially manifesting as a lisp." Source "Dysarthria can be caused by conditions that make it hard to move the muscles in the mouth, face or upper respiratory system... [which] control speech. Conditions that may lead to dysarthria include... Brain injury... Head injury." Source "An injury to the tongue or teeth can also cause a lisp." Source

---

Rolan developed it as an adult due to stress:

Everybody responds to stress differently, and sometimes our bodies respond in strange and unexpected ways— such as developing a lisp.

"...anxiety and stress can cause a lisp. This is more common in adults than children." … "Stress and anxiety can surprisingly trigger or exacerbate lisping..." Source 1, Source 2

Reasons Rolan has to be stressed TF out before the events of BG3:

*Abandoned by his biological parents because he was born a tiefling.*

Grew up in an abusive orphanage/temple, in the streets, or both.

He is a tiefling, a species of humanoids in Faerûn that look like devils and are heavily discriminated against because of it.

*Rolan is the oldest and most responsible sibling.*

*His adoptive mother died, either before or during Avernus— leaving Rolan in charge of caring for his younger siblings.*

*Rolan and his family grew up poor, he knew that his magical talents could pull them out of poverty* and he trained incredibly hard to hone his skills without a teacher.

*Due to his lack of proper schooling*, and because his lisp prevents him from properly pronouncing the verbal components of spells, Rolan had to make his own versions of common spells.

He feels responsible for Cal and Lia's wellbeing, and is willing to go to extreme lengths/endure extreme things if it means he can provide a better life for them.

He doesn't truly believe that they consider him their brother/family.

Elturel, his home, was pulled into Avernus for at least a tenday.

He and his siblings had to survive actual hell.

Tieflings were blamed for the city falling into the hells because they look like devils, *leading to violence against them.*

He, his family, and all the other tieflings were exiled from Elturel because they were tieflings.

*He had to leave behind almost everything he had worked so hard to acquire.*

Reasons Rolan has to be stressed TF out during the events of BG3:

He has been roughing it with the other refugees for gods knows how long.

If he takes too long to get to Baldur's Gate he risks his apprenticeship, *his one and (thus far/possibly) only chance to learn how to become a powerful enough wizard that he can support his siblings.*

The druids are threatening to kick them out of the grove.

If they are forced from the grove everyone will be slaughtered by goblins.

Some meddling adventurer convinced his siblings to stay and help protect the other refugees instead of making a break for it on their own.

Wyll is a devil now!?

They traversed through the Shadow-Cursed Lands.

Insane, murderous, cultists attacked the tiefling caravan intent on slaughtering them.

Zevlor (seemingly) betrayed them.

His siblings were captured by said insane, murderous, cultists *because he wasn't strong enough to protect them and the children at the same time.*

That asshole adventurer is back, and they save him and his siblings again.

Baldur's Gate is refusing the refugees entry into the city.

Lorroakan doesn't let Lia and Cal stay in the tower.

Lorroakan is an abusive fraud.

He has to help the Nightsong and the adventurer fight Lorroakan.

He is suddenly the master of Ramazith's Tower and owner of Sorcerous Sundries.

A Netherbrain is set to attack the Gate and take over the Sword Coast.

He promised his help in the fight against said Netherbrain.

He has to figure out how to get the tower's arcane cannons, *which Lorroakan had neglected and allowed to fall into disrepair,* up and running before the final fight.

Just to name a few.

● (Section 2) Rolan's lisp misc. headcanons:

Rolan's lisp gets worse when his is tired or stressed.

It is ironically easier for him to speak clearly when he's drunk (up to a point) because he's used to struggling to pronounce words.

His adoptive mother taught him where to position/how to move his tongue when speaking common with a forked tongue.

Part of the reason he speaks in such a haughty tone is because doing so makes his words more clearly pronounced/enunciated.

His siblings only teased him about his lisp once when they were children, Rolan was so distressed that they vowed to never tease him for his speech impairment again.

Lia got into several fights when she was younger with kids who made fun of Rolan's lisp.

He might as well be a wild magic sorcerer with how often his spells have gone awry because he mispronounced a verbal component.

He is deeply self-conscious about his lisp.

He holds the forks of his tongue together, even when his mouth is closed, which gives him persistent tension headaches.

Once he gets comfortable enough around a romantic partner he stops (actively) trying to suppress his lisp around them and his siblings in private.

● (Section 3) Rolan's lisp forked tongue NSFW headcanons:

Because he has adapted to speaking common with a split tongue he is able to independently control both sides of his tongue.

His tongue is strong because he constantly flexes it.

His tongue is long. While this makes it harder for him to speak, it also leaves his partner very satisfied.

You know you're fucking him real good when his begging words start to slur together.

His ahegao face is top tier.

The amount of time it takes him to recover his ability to speak after an orgasm is increased by how mind-blowing said orgasm was.

[dotthings]

Nothing says "performative support of inclusive series only when it's a Jared project" like Jared stans whining that Walker got cancelled and All American got renewed, where they dismiss All American as just some dumb show about football. As if All American doesn't deserve it and didn't earn it. They never gave it a second glance, a single thought, didn't even so much as look up scene clips out of curiosity, they truly didn't care. The privilege and the entitlement and the hollow virtue signaling and narrowness of their caring about inclusive media is showing very loudly.

They wouldn't speak about Friday Night Lights like that.

The fact that All American is a well-written drama with an all black lead cast, black writers, directors, producers, and not only centered male leads, but black women and queer black women, and that it is a powerful series that at times will rip your heart out of your chest, while being intersectionally diverse, in ways most CW shows never reach, and the writing is at levels most CW shows never reach, that should be enough to earn it better respect. And very much like Friday Night Lights, yes it's about football but it's not about football, it's about life.

And I take issue with the concept that sports stories can't be meaningful and universal. Check out Swagger on Apple TV+ if you have it. Similarly themed, but with basketball not football. All black cast. And it's about people and their lives.

But if anyone wants some cold hard math. *sighs tiredly* I'm going to have to look at some nielsen numbers again, aren't I? Okay.

Here is All American season 6 nielsen ratings. Season average: 0.09/0.387

Demo is all networks care about. It's how they set pricing on advertising slots. A18-49.

Here is Walker's season 4 nielsen ratings. Season average: 0.06/.486

The math is the math.

But Jared stan accounts being dismissive of All American as just some dumb football show and less worthy than Walker is so very in character I am not even surprised. Just chewing on the irony. Jared stans have often weaponized myths about the GA to claim that they, the Jared stans, allegedly represent what all "the people" want, now sneering against the GA, looking down at All American, backhandedly smacking at a show with an all black cast, made by black people, that is an excellent drama series that deserves far more critical recognition that it's gotten.

I deserve a trophy for the ways I am holding my tongue right now on Walker. IF I SPEAK--

[richincolor]

We have three books on our list this week! Which ones are you going to pick up?

Asking for a Friend by Kara H.L. Chen Quill Tree Books

This charming YA rom-com follows a strong-willed, ambitious teen as she teams up with her childhood frenemy to start a dating-advice column, perfect for fans of Emma Lord and Gloria Chao. Juliana Zhao is absolutely certain of a few things: 1. She is the world’s foremost expert on love. 2. She is going to win the nationally renowned Asian Americans in Business Competition. When Juliana is unceremoniously dropped by her partner and she’s forced to pair with her nonconformist and annoying frenemy, Garrett Tsai, everything seems less clear. Their joint dating advice column must be good enough to win and secure bragging rights within her small Taiwanese American community, where her family’s reputation has been in the pits since her older sister was disowned a few years prior. Juliana always thought prestige mattered above all else. But as she argues with Garrett over how to best solve everyone else’s love problems and faces failure for the first time, she starts to see fractures in this privileged, sheltered worldview. With the competition heating up, Juliana must reckon with the sacrifices she’s made to be a perfect daughter—and whether winning is something she even wants anymore.

The Lost Souls of Benzaiten by Kelly Murashige Soho Teen

A fantastical and heartfelt debut, quirky and transportive, that follows a young outcast on a journey of transformation . . . into a robot vacuum cleaner. "I wish to become one of those round vacuum cleaner robots." That's what Machi writes while praying at the altar of Japanese goddess Benzaiten. She writes it because ever since her two best friends Angel and Sunny decided they want nothing to do with her, Machi hasn't been able to speak. After months and months of online school and seeing different therapists, Machi still hasn't uttered a word, and she can no longer see the point of being human. But she doesn't expect Benzaiten to actually hear her prayer, much less offer a to show Machi all the beauty of humanity, ultimately restoring her voice. Benzaiten is enamored with the human world—possibly a little too enamored—and, as she's the goddess of love, humanity is enamored right back. Being second-best to another friend isn't helping Machi move past her trauma, and with each adventure they share, Machi is reminded of everything she's lost. It isn't until Machi starts interacting with the souls of the dead—a phenomena of spending so much time around a goddess—that she starts to understand pain can serve a purpose. And when she really stops to take a look around her, she realizes the potential for happiness, and for closure, has been there all along.

The Reckoning of Roku by Randy Ribay Amulet Books

From National Book Award finalist Randy Ribay comes a gripping new chapter—starring Avatar Roku—in the New York Times bestselling Chronicles of the Avatar series, set in the world of Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. A young Avatar Roku has only just commenced his training at the Southern Air Temple when his erstwhile friend, Prince Sozin, requests his aid in preventing the Earth Kingdom from claiming a remote Fire Nation island. Despite his inexperience, Avatar Roku slips away with the help of an irritating young Airbender named Gyatso. As the reluctant companions delve deeper into their wayward mission, they begin to realize that even greater threats lie ahead. Plagued by self-doubt but eager to prove himself, Roku fights for his life and the lives of others while ensuring that the hidden secret of the island doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. This searing fifth installment in the Chronicles of the Avatar series explores the beginning of Roku’s journey from privileged Fire Nation noble to the powerful but indecisive Avatar whose hesitancy may ultimately pave the way for the Hundred Year War.

[omgthatdress]

In the books, Nellie was an Irish-American servant girl that Samantha befriends and teaches to read. Because Samantha is nine and has had a fairly sheltered upbringing, she doesn’t quite have the understandings of class structure that separates her and Nellie, she just sees a friend. Nellie opens Samantha’s eyes to the broader world beyond Grandmary’s mansion and helps her understand the social issues facing turn-of-the century America.

In Changes for Samantha, Grandmary has finally married Admiral Archibald Beemis, and Samantha has gone to live with Uncle Gard and Cornelia in New York City. There, she finds out that Nellie’s parents have died and she is living with her uncle Mike in the city. Samantha sets out to find her, only to find that she’s been abandoned and is living in an orphanage. Eventually, she helps Nellie and her sisters escape, and they come to be adopted by Uncle Gard and Cornelia.

I always thought that felt like an unreasonably happy ending for Nellie, given her social inferiority and that adoption was actually fairly taboo in the era of social darwinism and eugenics, but I also know that rich White progressives of the era LOVED doing shit like that, so I guess it’s not completely unreasonable.

Reading the summary of the book Nellie’s Promise made me sooooooo fucking happy. It gets into all those issues of social inequality and gives Nellie a lot more agency in being more than just a lucky orphan. I especially loved the parts about how Nellie was unhappy going to Samantha’s private girl’s school where she was learning nothing practical and only being trained in how to be a rich society wife. Nellie knew she needed a practical education so that she’d be able to secure a job in the future and fulfill her promise of taking care of her sisters. In the end, she’s able to enroll in a vocational school that fits her needs. I love it. I love it so fucking much.

Before I go any further, I should probably just go ahead and say that in this era, the Irish were still very much considered White. The definition of Whiteness in the 1900s was very different from what it is today (plz read The History of White People by Nell Irvin), and some people were Whiter than others, but the Irish were White. White*, if you will. They would be listed as White on all their legal documents, and weren’t faced with segregation the way that Black people were. The Irish were never slaves (they sure as shit were slave owners, though!) and don’t ever fucking compare anti-Irish discrimination to anti-Blackness and anti-Semitism. They are all their own unique things and playing the oppression olympics does no one any good. And YES I know about the history of the colonization of Ireland by England and anti-Irish attitudes in the UK, but I’m talking about American history. Anti-Irish American history and Anti-Irish British history are very, very different.

There’s a lot of raging ongoing debate about the extent to which the Irish were discriminated against in the US, and yes, there was discrimination. But literally EVERY immigrant group in the US faced discrimination and even violence. There’s a lot of academic debate about the whole “No Irish Need Apply” thing, but it was like that for EVERYONE. Italians, Poles, Greeks, Germans, Swedes, you name it, immigrants in general were all treated as unwelcome and less-than by the Anglo-Saxon Protestant powers that be at some point, the Irish were just another part of that. The idea that the Irish were somehow unique or special in their discrimination in America is a myth.

The point I’m making is that a lot of conservative Irish-Americans LOVE to make big maudlin claims of Irish victimhood and Irish slavery (THE IRISH WERE NEVER SLAVES) that somehow means they’re somehow exempt from having White privilege and taking personal responsibility to not be a racist fuck. That is pure bullshit, Irish-Americans have been White as fuck ever since JFK.

ANYWAY. All that being said, I love Nellie’s little outfit. It’s actually super accurate! A lovely little summer dress, perfect for visiting the ice cream parlor!

(The Museum of London, credit @in-pleasant-company​)

Again, like with Samantha, the hat should be more perched on the hair and held in place with hat pins rather than fitted to the head. But that’s probably beyond your average 7-year-old’s patience, so I guess I can give them a pass.