#because they were often really interesting

[gyeomsweetgyeom]

⋆⭒˚.⋆ Self-On Kode with Haechan ⋆⭒˚.⋆

idol!Haechan x f!idol!reader

summary: what better way to promote your new music than to do an interview with your boyfriend?! Does he know that? No!

(cw: f!reader, idol!reader)

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

You were grinning widely as you sat in the pink chair. You bowed to the camera introducing yourself with an excited smile, "Hi everybody! I'm so excited to be here today. The staff and I have planned a bit of a prank today."

Your friendship with Haechan had started when you debuted. Haechan was one of the first idols around your age that you felt comfortable with. He was funny, nice, and was a good friend. He gave you a lot of advice on how to handle the long days, how to speak up with your company, and how to take care of yourself when it all got to be too much. And perhaps... taking care of yourself meant indulging in your friendship with Haechan, in private and in public.

The fans had surprisingly been pretty cool about both of you being close. It wasn't very often that fans got to see two idols from different companies have a genuine friendship. They liked seeing the two of you play around backstage, the random mention of each other in YouTube vlogs or lives, and the very few and far between posts you shared of each other.

When the edits evolved from 8 whole minutes of the two of you being the best of friends to the both of you being secretly in love for 11 minutes, maybe, just maybe, you both began to see each other in a new way. Maybe you guys went on a date to test the waters and maybe that date meant that the two of you became something more and maybe this video would be one of the first times you both directly acknowledged your romantic relationship. Well, beyond standard wordy posts that your companies put out to disclose your relationship.

You smile at the camera, "today I will be pranking my boyfriend Haechan. He thinks he's doing this interview with someone else and has no clue its me!"

Finally, on the other side of the wall, enters the set and sits himself in the blue chair, "Hello, I am Haechan from NCT. Today I will be using the screen name Sunshine and I am excited to figure out my partner is. I think I'll figure it out very easily."

On your side of the wall you, cup a hand over your mouth to suppress a giggle, "I'm going to be so annoying!"

"Hey," you type, biting your bottom lip to keep yourself from laughing.

"Oh, it's starting!" you hear Haechan exclaim. You phone vibrates with a message that reads, 'hey.'

"Geez, he's really boring isn't he? Let's make this more exciting!" You laugh, typing back something you don't think you'd ever tell your boyfriend to his face, "wow, I know this is a handsome man I'm talking to. Tell me, are you handsome?"

Haechan flushes in front of the pink wall with his jaw dropped in shock, "w-what?!"

You calm down a bit, not being as bold with your flirtation so that the both of you could progress the conversation. You both make small talk, talking about base level interests. Then comes the home screen exchange. You'd been preparing for this!

Since no one ever really saw your homescreens, you and Haechan had decided to have cute matching backgrounds, a cute couples selfie you'd taken together. What he didn't know, and you didn't tell him because he was so whiny, was that you had changed it. So he sent you an blurred version of his usual background, a picture of the two of you with you biting his cheek and his eyes screwed shut laughing. You knew the picture well, not only because you lived it but also because you had the picture that followed as your own background before you changed it for this interview.

Haechan's phone dropped from his hands, eyes blown wide in shock again. The staff were busy laughing behind the camera while you sat with a smug smile, listening for his reaction. "Is this real? Is this actually your background?" You read the message that had been sent to you.

"Why wouldn't it be?" You message him back.

Haechan doesn't even look at his phone again, he locks his screen and sets it on his thigh. He groans, rubbing his hands through his hair and over his face, "how do you turn someone down nicely?"

You bite your lip when you hear that. Your plan had worked, your precious Haechan was flushed and embarrassed. You type back, "do you know NCT Haechan? He's so talented and funny. I'm a big fan, are you?"

"Yeah, it couldn't be more obvious," Haechan grumbles, staring at the homescreen. He can't look at any of the apps or notifications because he's staring at his own face! A collage of pictures of him-- only him. Pictures of him from his debut to pictures of him from his last performance.

Maybe he was speaking to some kind of comedian, it was some kind of joke that happened to revolve around him. He'd watched some of these interviews before and it never worked out that one person knew who they were texting and the other didn't. This had to be some kind of strange coincidence.

He somehow expertly turned the conversation around, evading your question and changed the conversation into something more lighthearted. Then comes the first Would You Rather. The question: would you rather make a burping sound while farting or farting sound while burping?

You take a second to think, considering the question then finally send your answer, "I think I'd rather make a farting sound while burping."

"Really?" Haechan replies, "why is that? I mean I agree, but I'm curious to hear your reasoning?"

"Tell me yours first," you reply.

"Well mostly I don't want to feel the rumbling feeling of a burp in my butt," Haechan types out.

"He's so gross," you mutter as you read the screen, "he's such a guy." And yet you type out a message, "wow, that's so manly of you.."

Haechan runs his hand through his hair, "how would someone read that and find it attractive?"

Again, he doesn't address your flirting. He maneuvers around it, he doesn't want to be the guy that hurts yours or anyone's feelings, even a stranger's.

By the time the both of you get to the end of the interview having just sent the most recent pictures in your camera roll to each other, Haechan feels a horrible ball of anxiety in the pit of his stomach. You had sent him a picture of a flower from some bush outside and he had sent you a picture of the products that had been used on his face before the interview. (He'd sent the picture to you.) How is he going to handle this?!

He looks up from yet another flirty message with a look of unease, "you guys don't do these things with crazy fans right?"

The staff reassure him that no, they absolutely would not ever do anything to put him or anyone else in harm's way. His partner is just a silly person, a jokester.

You, on the other hand, are a ball of excitement to reveal yourself. The time comes to meet your partner, though you already know yours. You prop yourself on the wall, one hand outstretched against the wall and the other on your hip.

Haechan rounds the corner and sees you. You flip your hair, winking at him with a, "hey, handsome."

He falls to his knees, hand clutched over his heart while he lets out a sigh of relief and a loud exaggerated whine, "how could my own lover do this to me?!"

It takes both you and the staff to calm Haechan down, but you eventually get him to sit in the chair of the high top table and get the frown off his face. He's still pouty of course, and he lets you know so, "how could you do this to me?"

"With the help of my managers, your managers, the production here at Kode... duh," you answer, squeezing his knee beneath the table reassuringly.

"You're so funny," he deadpans, "but seriously, I was so stressed that I was going to have to see a real life crazy person and turn them down while maintaining my safety. Thank goodness it was a real life crazy person I already knew."

You shove his shoulder with a laugh, "so you had no clue who it was?"

"Absolutely no clue," Haechan confirms, "I did think that this was going to be easy at first, but you came on so strong that I had to mostly focus on getting us to have a normal, not flirty conversation. Did you have fun stressing me out, my menace?"

"The best time ever," you nod with a proud smile.

Haechan lets out a breathy laugh, more of a soft exhale of air as he pulls your hand up and pressed a kiss against the back of your hand, "I'm never doing an interview with you ever again."

"You say that now, but you're my biggest fan. Don't you want me to be successful? How can I be successful if even my handsome, sunbaenim boyfriend won't help me?" You tease, looking at him with a look all too innocent to be real.

"Oh right. Please make sure to check out my girlfriend's first solo debut. The music is amazing, her voice sounds like angels singing, the music videos are award winning, the outfits are out of this world and there is nothing like it in all the world. Please support her... or I will have to," Haechan states with a fake smile while looking right into the lens of the camera, letting his smile drop into a pleading face for the ending.

"Yes, please make sure to check out my solo! I appreciate it," you smile at the camera, bowing to show your gratitude. While you fulfill your promoting duties you miss the adoring look on Haechan's face. The way his eyes soften and he looks at you with a calm, serene look of love.

You look at him with a soft smile, "can you forgive me for my prank?"

He tugs you into his side, his arm wrapped around your shoulders, "I can make an exception if you promise this will be the last time you prank me."

"Well, of course," you answer too quickly. A lie, of course.

The conversation between you dwindles down and the two of you take your selfie. You smile brightly at the camera with your head tucked beneath Haechan's chin, Haechan smiles sweetly at the camera with his usual close-lipped smile. It's the first selfie as a romantic couple that anyone will see of the two of you and it makes you slightly nervous, but more than anything you're excited for people to see just a sliver of the dynamic you and Haechan share, the love that's there.

"Thank you to the team at Kode for having us and thank you to the fans in advance for all the love and support. I hope you love it," you smile at the cameras.

The video ends with the screen fading to black, but if fans listen closely, they can hear Haechan reassuring you, "everyone is going to love it, honey. How could they not love anything you do?"

[aisarete]

That is true, but also there are many things in many places that truly were never taught. I never learned any basic accounting or financial literacy in school. The only class that covered it even a little was Home Ec, which I did not take. There's lots of oversight like that, and the oversights vary from district to district.

That's not even talking about censorship! I have a lot of respect for my history teacher who closed the door and shut the blinds and told us for the next few weeks we were going to be learning about a variety of things that happened in America, such as the Trail of Tears and the Mexican-American War. The school didn't want it to be taught, and he could get in trouble, but he thought it was important for us to know.

He told us we could choose not to learn and he would move on; or we could promise not to talk about it at school and tell anyone who asked we were doing a unit on some other part of American history, I don't remember which. We voted and wanted to learn what he wanted to teach, mostly because we were rebellious teens and it sounded more interesting at the time.

He warned us not to check out books on the topics we discussed from the school library, either, because if too many kids were reading the same things from the same class, it would come down on him. And he kept all of his presentations of a personal laptop he hooked up to the projector, and kept a full lecture on the whiteboard behind the screen so if anyone came in, he could turn off the projector and it was my job (as the person closest) to retract the screen.

He took it all very seriously. And this was in California! A place many people think of as a bastion of democracy and free speech. Maybe he was lying to get us interested. Maybe there was no admin about to come down on his head for teaching us. But he certainly acted like there was, and I know that it happens in other places in the country too.

I work at a school now, and honestly I found it weird that instead of having everyone wear red and gold or something last Thursday for Lunar New Year (we do Spirit Week pretty often), it was "anything but a backpack" day. I know of only one class who was taught anything about the festivals taking place that day, within driving distance, even! And just before the December holiday, we have Spirit Week every year that NEVER includes other cultures. There's like 20 major holidays around that time, but the entire week is Christmas themed! We have a really diverse student and teacher population, too, and we are supposed to be an International Baccalaureate school. It's a really glaring omission and it goes to show that just because something isn't being actively censored, doesn't mean it's being taught.

There really is a lot we aren't taught in school.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Anti-Villain

An anti-villain - (unlike their evil counterparts) are not complete monsters.

This makes them particularly hard to hate, despite all their terrible deeds.

In the character’s minds, they have justifiable, noble goals—how they go about achieving those goals is what eventually becomes a problem for the hero.

Their means don’t justify their desired ends.

Every villain has their own morality.

A key principle to remember is that making a decision between good and evil is never really a choice: All humans will choose good as they see it.

Your villain chooses their own good, which to readers, and the hero, appears evil in opposition.

This creates a moral dilemma at the heart of the novel’s conflict.

Types of Anti-Villains

Villainy comes in shades of gray.

One that starts out good. This anti-villain is a good person who has been pushed to the brink of their personal limits.

The one you feel for. A sympathetic anti-villain may do bad things, but they are ultimately a product of their circumstances or environment. They may have had a terrible upbringing, where people acted evil towards them as children making them evil as adults. They deserve to seek different circumstances, and were their means not so terrible, you might root for them.

The one who means well. When good intentions go crooked, and heroic qualities like tenacity and cleverness are aimed at the wrong target, you get your “well-meaning” anti-villain, who often takes things a step too far in pursuit of a noble goal. These anti-villains typically have a plan to save the world, with many, many casualties along the way in the name of the “greater good.” Think of Marvel’s “Mad Titan” Thanos and his plan to clear half the universe in order for the remaining half to thrive.

The one in the wrong place at the wrong time. This designated “villain” in name only typically falls into this category as a result of the existence of the hero. Their acts might be totally justified—vengeance for a loved one, or carrying out the corruption required of them by their job—but the protagonist doesn’t give them a free pass.

Examples of Anti-Villains

Sometimes, the only difference between the “bad guys” and the “good guys” is a point of view.

Carrie from Stephen King’s book Carrie is a sympathetic anti-villain. As a teenager in a small town, she is an outcast because of her beliefs and the way she dresses. Bullies at school make fun of her incessantly, building to the point where she turns her rage into telekinesis (mind power) to kill everyone in her school, then goes on a killing rampage through the town.

While The Joker in Batman is fairly straightforward in his villainy, it’s his tragic backstories—at different points, either driven insane by grief after the death of his wife, or disfigured after a fall into a vat of poisonous chemicals—that makes him compelling to watch. The audience suspects that if they were pushed to the edge of their sanity, they might act in the same way—and that’s all it takes to create an anti-villain worth of the caped crusader.

Anti-Villain vs. Anti-Hero

While an anti-villain might be a villain with some redeeming features, an anti-hero is a heroic character without the conventional charms.

They might do the right thing, but mostly out of self-interest.

They are often portrayed as a principled, but somewhat isolated figure, and their heroism is usually a product of their surroundings and circumstances.

In some narratives, the anti-hero may be subject to a shift of perspective—like the twist in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl that reveals the truth about Amy Dunne’s actions—that paints them as an antagonist.

Other examples of an anti-hero include:

Tom Ripley of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) by Patricia Highsmith

Huckleberry Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) by Mark Twain

Tony Soprano of The Sopranos (1999)

Walter White of Breaking Bad (2008)

Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2008) by Stieg Larsson

Source ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[ariadne-mouse]

For the "I wish you would write a fic where…" I don't know if this counts because it's not a new fic, but:

"Was? Essek? I thought you were out of town?"

Caleb wakes up with obsidian flakes of a'a in his hair and and no memory of the last few years. His very-new boyfriend has adopted his cat, there's a court case for his attemped murder, and he might have been a ghost?

A followup to The Fire Kept Closest, from Caleb's POV, filling in the timejump to the epilogue.

Thank you for the ask! It took me a minute to get to this ask game, but here we are. I am not writing exactly to the prompt, but I hope you like this 830-word slice of post-fic Volcaleb nonetheless!

-

"I would like to go, I think."

Essek paused where he had just gathered a scoop of cat kibble. The awaiting dish lay on the floor, empty. "Are you sure?"

"Ja," Caleb answered. He folded the local newspaper he had been reading in half, the headline visible: Corporate Clash: Cerberus takes the stand. "I know it's best my situation stays out of the spotlight, at least for now, but I want him to see me. To see my face, and know that I know." His expression darkened. "I want him to sweat."

At Essek's feet, Frumpkin yowled his impatience, unaware of corporations, or bureaucracy, or indeed the significance of newspapers beyond the fact that they were sometimes fun to sit on.

"Calm down, calm down," Essek tutted, and gave the beast his meal. He smoothed a hand down Frumpkin's back, thinking. "I'll go with you, if you really want to go."

Caleb smiled grimly. "Danke. I would like that. But I have an idea, also - you can help."

-

Vence Nuthaleus cleaned up well in a suit, and he knew it. It was unfortunate that the volcano on Rumblecusp had popped its top as soon as it had, but he was still safely ensconced in respectability - and more importantly, plausible deniability. Research was only as good as records available, and his land use recommendation report had been scientifically sound with the data from the island's active seismometer network.

It didn't even alarm him that he was playing a kind of mutually assured destruction game with Cerberus. They wanted to publicly shed him as a "bad actor", especially convenient given his contractor status - but if they did, he'd reveal they had been the ones to disconnect the last seismometer. He had enough leverage in writing to make the accusation compelling, and they knew it. The thing they might most want to pin on him... well, they didn't have any evidence of that. All told, it was in Cerberus's best interest to protect him. And so he wore his most approachable suit, and a polite smile, and answered questions as earnestly as he could when he was on the stand. Mardoon Estate only wanted money, after all, and Cerberus certainly had plenty of that. Vence didn't need to be scapegoat for it all to work out eventually.

The courtroom around him was full for the spectacle. The door creaked open every so often as the gawkers and media came and went, like bees buzzing on a hive. He sometimes saw familiar faces from the island: Dr. Vilya, Beauregard, Thelyss. Today the last of these was sitting in one of the back rows by himself, glaring at Vence like he always did when he was there. Too bad; being a stuck-up trust fund baby wouldn't help Thelyss here.

It was some minutes before Vence's attention was drawn by a spot in the standing room in the back that had not moved at all for some time. Even as his mouth answered the current question on autopilot, his eyes were drawn to look at the vacuum of stillness.

A dead man was looking back at him.

Vence's words curdled in his throat, choking his breath.

He was there. Caleb Widogast was there, standing among the throng.

"Mr. Nuthaleus?" prompted the examiner.

"I... I..."

The ghost - it could only be a ghost - stared at him with those eerie blue eyes, unblinking. He was dressed like he had been, for a hike on the mountain. There was even a lightweight heatsuit half-zipped and tied around his waist.

He looked exactly like he had when he had died. When--

Vence couldn't pull his gaze away. "Could- could you repeat the question?"

The examiner repeated it, and again Vence did not hear.

Nearby, Thelyss was standing up. He favored Vence with a last look of contempt before making for the double doors. The crowd parted to let him pass, but Widogast did not move. And Thelyss... walked right past him, like he wasn't there.

A chill rolled down Vence's spine and his breathing came faster. He could hear a ringing noise, his vision was narrowing.

With effort, he turned a smile to the judge. "I'm sorry, I think I need a moment."

When he turned back, Caleb Widogast was gone.

-

Outside in the hallway, Essek leaned on the wall next to Caleb, who sat heavily on a bench. The heat suit was stuffed back into a bag.

"Feel any better?"

A muscle in Caleb's face twitched, and his hand balled in a fist. "A little. I don't know. Seeing him-" His breath left him in a gust. "It was harder than I expected."

Essek touched his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.  "Come, then. Let's go. We can learn what happened later. Frumpkin is waiting for you at home."

This last tactic was always a surefire way to bring a little smile back to Caleb's face, and it proved to be so now.

“Ja,” Caleb agreed, straightening up.  “Let’s go home.”

[redjennies]

*long sigh*

all right this is one of my most resurrected posts and to be quite honest, i think most people get what I'm saying here, but it could be clarified because the second it gets away from a circle of people who get it, people seem to lose the thread pretty quick. it was about a trend I noticed regarding the types of fans C3 was both attracting and whose voices were being heavily elevated within the fandom. with the campaign ending, it only feels right to say my final piece about it and be done with it.

first, this post is about whose stories and voices are centered in fandom. it is not about the cast (though having a predominantly white, culturally Christian, US American cast does influence it because they are telling stories from that lens.) it is not even really about the characters, themselves, and whether this is. it's about the fans, and specifically, it is about the lack of compassion and desire to understand, I see a particular type of white (often for lack of better word, "WASP"-y: raised middle class, culturally Christian, and/or US American/English/Canadian/etc) queer fan extend to anyone who falls out of an extremely narrow lens of "this is the default queer experience" or heaven forbid, to people who are not queer but are marginalized in other ways.

it is about how this phenomenon happens because they have been trained to see their queerness as their only identity (and therefore, in their arrogance, the only identity that matters) as it is the only thing about them that deviates from that WASP-y "default." through this lens, stories that are not relatable to that audience are largely ignored unless they are exceptional enough to be the "Academy-Approved POC Film of the Year" to be tokenized by white liberal audiences and stories that do touch on queerness but are primarily about other things like race/class/disability/etc are whitewashed into something more palatable for that hegemonic "default" audience to the point where it is practically unrecognizable from the original story. this is not unique to CR. this happens across all audiences and therefore, all fandoms.

clearly, this phenomenon leads to a problem in fandoms. if we are not extending empathy to the characters and stories that discuss perspectives that may be different than our own, than we will not be extending empathy to the real breathing humans who see their experiences (or the experiences of people they have known) in those stories. there was this post or article about why we need better POC representation that I read way back in the day and have never been able to find again that really stuck with me that said something along the lines of "we don't need representation because no black person can relate to George Costanza or Rachel Green. we already do. the problem is that white writers and audiences do not relate to black people and that shows through the kind of black characters white writers create." and I think that sentiment is relevant to what I'm getting at here. a lot of white queer fans on tumblr are often half-listening when a story is told, choosing to only pay attention when things are about them because at the end of the day, they have the privilege to do so. therefore, the fanworks they create reflects that lack of interest. the metas and fanon they write reflect that lack of interest. soon enough, the fandom itself reflects that lack of interest.

and worse yet, because queer people are an oppressed group (and to clarify, I don't want to come across like I'm saying just because we're white queers, we're not "really oppressed" or whatever), this lack of interest and compassion for people who are different than you becomes actively celebrated in fandom spaces. you have relatively privilege white queer people on tumblr loudly proclaiming characters only matter if they're gay, stories only matter if they're queer, and so on and so on. which on some level is fine if you prioritize reading and watching stories that have to do with queerness, but you do need to be aware of a massive bias you may have to what "queer stories" even are and how you are interacting with them and who you are leaving out. a great example of this is why every time there's a black bisexual male love interest in a video game, y'all keep calling him "too straight" and therefore "boring" and then getting mad and defensive when someone calls you on it. like I mean-- hit dogs holler. ¯\_(*ツ)_/¯

anyway, I was going to close with tying this concept back into CR and how there was a rot that permeated C3 and how this attitude straight up alienated a lot of fans. (god knows I got shouted out of this fandom until it got so dully unpleasant that I couldn't bring myself to give a damn anymore, and sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I hope everyone who participated in the near constant harassment I received for the great crime of maybe being annoying as I made my little jokes and shared my thoughts has a bad fucking life. fuck you. learn how to use the block button.) but @utilitycaster who has been following this campaign as well as other actual play shows a lot more closely than I have already touched on that in a pretty dead-on post that I highly recommend.

so here is what I will end on, the phenomenon I've been describing throughout this post is in no uncertain terms, a form of bigotry, and as far as the people who have to live with that oppression are concerned, a queer bigot is not any less harmful than a straight bigot, in the same way a female bigot is not any less harmful than a male bigot. so if you sincerely want to your spaces to be more inclusive and aren't just saying that to "do a leftism," you have to accept your own part in that, regardless of who you are. you have to stop and pay attention to what kind of perspectives you might be ignoring, and stop immediately shouting at people because you interpreted what they said in bad faith. you have to learn how to just shut up sometimes and be a little reflective. i'm not always great at that, but it's a skill you have to practice even if you fuck up. you can always change your mind with new information and new ideas and new perspectives, but if you instinctively chase off everyone who might be willing to talk about something you've never considered before because you're more concerned about being right than learning, you're going to get a rot in your community that is really hard to get rid of once it festers enough. because if you've been told your whole life that the rot is the default and that it is normal and that it's the way it should be, you're never going to notice it's even there.

tbh the Critical Role fandom, along with most fandoms, has a problem with centering easily digestible metaphors for white queer experiences (and even then only those that check all the boxes of the purity list) at the cost of seeing stories through the lens of race, class, mental and physical disabilities and how those can intersect with queer experiences.

for example, putting an unnecessary amount of effort into proving Jester's attraction to Fjord is compulsory heterosexuality while ignoring that Fjord and Jester were both explicitly biracial characters from different class backgrounds and how that class difference intersected with their self image. a general refusal to really interact with Chetney as a character that is heavily coded as mentally ill and uninterested in being "cured." Veth being deemed the token straight Karen despite being a young rural mother of color struggling with addiction and having an arc that was heavily coded as trans, and Ashton, a nonbinary lower class punk with chronic pain, being considered just a man when it comes to ship wars. etc, etc.

[wings-of-fire-confessions]

i actually like listener because she's a good portrayal of your average "shallow" popular girl. there's definitely a lot of mean popular girls out there, but a lot of the popular girls i knew in high school were more like listener. she does mean things (ex: insulting whiteout), but she's not out for blood. she's ignorant.

i also think her choice to befriend clearsight is interesting because clearsight doesn't really fit the mold of "popular girl's best friend" we often see in media. you'd think listener would want to bully clearsight (listener even mentions that her family is wary around seers), but listener genuinely seems delighted by her. she doesn't even take advantage of clearsight's abilities; she tells clearsight that she'd rather not know her future.

listener would probably drive me crazy if i knew her in real life, but i like her as a character for her subtle departure from popular tropes. she's also a good foil to clearsight, and her immediate disapproval of darkstalker is everything to me. (please do not take this me defending her bad actions, though)

also, i like to imagine that listener strived to be more like clearsight after relocating to the volcano island.

.

[dr-solomon]

hey, prada

(🔞) w: (soft&wild) dom!yeonkai × f!reader, anal × vaginal sex, with skirt on, praise, riding, kissing, dirt dirt dirt

You don't believe the cute guys in cheap makeup.

You believe that everyone around them is looking twice at Yeonjun and Kai, even though you've never seen a crowd before.

Their black eyeliner sharpens the gaze, which you think is already intense enough. You lock eyes with Yeonjun more often because of the slightly smoky makeup he sometimes wears. And already Kai seems to be a completely unapproachable person or simply a god. He doesn't care about his surroundings at all and it's like he has his own rules. Yeonjun is a little bit more outside the rules and you feel that he drags Kai along sometimes.

Especially after hearing the rumor that they spend more time in the locker room than anyone else.

Luckily you don't have many friends and you don't hear more of these conversations and lose sleep.

But later, when Yeonjun caught you in a dark place, you were definitely hunted.

The first time you kissed, it felt more amazing than either of you had expected. He pushed you against the wall behind you, placed his hands on the nape of your neck, and let you know how much the taste of you had enraptured him by making your tongues fight. It wasn't hard to guess that he would catch you a second time. But the third time was different. With his right hand on your waist, slowly stroking there, he said breathlessly that he wanted to introduce you to Kai.

Knowing the effect Kai had on you from afar made the offer both exciting and nervous, but it didn't stop you from accepting, even though you'd only been kissing Yeonjun for a few days.

It's a fact that no matter how noble they look and how wild they are, they somehow inspire confidence if they are interested in you. And that's probably what makes them more dangerous?

The apartment they lived in together, so elegant and simple, you weren't sure if it was their little world with little details from them or if this was really their home.

Your meeting with Kai by sitting on his lap and Yeonjun watching this scene from the other corner of the couch with his bright smile distracted you.

During the hour the three of you spent lazily in the living room, neither of them could stop telling you how beautiful you were - and you couldn't stop shifting between their mouths and laps.

They made you wet in the sweetest way you could ever experience in your entire life.

When you took off your top in front of them, your cheeks got so red that when you offered to keep your skirt on, they accepted. Anything you want.

They were usually smiling, but not when they were worshipping your body with their eyes. Not when Kai was watching your breasts, unable to help frowning with all his desire, and Yeonjun was starting to curse a little now.

Soon they were sitting in the middle of the bed, trapping you between their chests, both of your holes filled to the wettest and tightest. As you warmed them up nicely, tons of sensations coursed through your stomach, making you shiver. With every little movement, sweet sounds escaped your lips and Yeonjun is still crazy about it.

“Have you ever done anything like this before?” Kai spoke as his bottom lip brushed against your nipple and you squeezed his hair, he stuck his tongue out as he put the question mark.

“N-no.” You closed your eyes and felt his warm tongue pressing against your sensitive skin. Seeing how your back tensed, Yeonjun gently gathered your hair in his hands and pressed his lips to the nape of your neck. When you dripped some juice right afterward, you could feel the kiss turn into a smile on your skin. As you sigh, his one hand settles on your stomach, pressing your back against his chest.

“And did you like it?” Kai asked now as he lifted his head to look at your lips. His hand came up to brush the hair back from your face and when you nodded at him, his thumb slid down your cheek and pressed against your bottom lip. “Me too, sweetheart.” he watched as his fingers traced the line of your lips. “You're so beautiful...” His voice was deep and warm, going straight to your stomach. "Come on, turn toward Yeonjun for a bit." whispered as he kissed warmly under your chin.

Those few seconds when you move away between them and got off their cocks made you dizzy and uncomfortable. You hurriedly climbed back into their laps.

Yeonjun grabbed you around the waist. “My love...” Your sensitive holes filled as Yeonjun slowly sat you down, sliding with a wet sound. When this intense feeling of fullness hit differently this time, your forehead pressed against his. “Ah-”

Kai's hand, now reaching behind you, slowly went under your skirt and found your clit. “Ahh...” Yeonjun approached your parted mouth and licked your bottom lip. One hand tangled in your hair as you squeezed his shoulders and joined in the wet kiss. Kai rested his chin on your shoulder and began to slowly circle your clit.

Yeonjun's hand in your hair gently turned your head to the side and brought it closer to Kai. And as the two of them together licked your lips filthy, your dripping pussy clenched around them over and over again.

“I- I can't-” Your nails dug into Yeonjun's shoulders, your eyebrows furrowed with the intense feeling that was now becoming overwhelming.

“Are you close?” Yeonjun asked, looking down at your skirt for about two seconds when you nodded in approval quickly. This time Kai's little smile was against your neck. Before slowly biting it there.

At this point, Yeonjun could not resist the urge to slowly lift your skirt with both hands. His eyes first widened and sparkled with desire. Your clit, lazily circled by Kai's middle finger, and the contractions and relaxations of your pussy, which had swallowed his cock to the hilt just below... Behind it all, the wetness glistened so beautifully. “Oh, baby...”

Now you unconsciously started to squeeze them both harder because of his watching. “F-fuck...” Yeonjun hissed and Kai suddenly grabbed you with his palm, making you jump slightly.

All the deep breaths you were trying to take were interrupted by their cocks stirring your gut.

Kai's warm hands adapted to the warm surface of your waist, while Yeonjun cupped your thighs nicely and made you move slowly. You pressed your lips together and began to rock your hips slowly. As you rode them at the same time, the warm sensation spreading across all three of your stomach was unparalleled. All that fullness pumping dirty into you every time your body lifted up pressing against Yeonjun's shoulders and you looked amazing as you eagerly shake your hips against them in a sweet rhythm.

“God...” Yeonjun's grip weakened a little. “Am I r-really... not allowed to see it?" he muttered under his breath as he looked at your skirt. Inside you, they're harder and harder every time you bounce.

Kai's sharp breaths hit your back, sending goosebumps down your spine. He didn't pull his face away from your neck. “You smell so good.” he murmured against your skin and you turned your head towards him. This time your eyes met as you sat on their lap, squeezing around them madly.

You could only see Kai's eyes widen for a second as he gripped your hips so hard that your body shook and fell against Yeonjun's chest. A crying sound came out of your mouth as he immediately lifted his hips for yours and hit you from the back.

Yeonjun smiled and whispered as he combed your hair back with both hands. “You don't want to play with him.”

Taking you by the hands, he helped you sit upright again and his left hand gently cupped the back of your neck, resting his warm open mouth on your neck and licking your skin, savoring the taste he loved.

Then they hold each other's hands on either side of your body in synchronization and you put your hands on their hands and start jumping like this.

Every position you can feel like a princess.

All the praise and encouragement made the orgasm even crazier than it already was and certainly not just once.

©dr-solomon 2025 💪💪💪

[boreal-sea]

okay sorry you don’t like the word Zionist I’ll come up with a new word and it’s weirdassbitch btw and guess whatZzz ummm yeah you fit the bill. I don’t know man 😭😭😭😭 the fact you’re only posting about gofundmes when it’s about Israeli hostages or only ever being like “okay yeah what’s happening to Palestinians is bad” in conjunction with “so about this anti semitism we’ve been having…” means you’re obviously biased you’re just biased and hey… hey holds your hand it’s okay ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ We can work through this… together *looks away shyly* also I’m like Jewish like by blood. I didn’t even have to convert sorry I’m laughing converts you’re valid but boreal I guess I’m just like…. Better than you at being Jewish? Idk btw and hey maybe the reason why antisemitism is rising is because you guys are all like yeah so we deserve Israel because we lived there 1000000 years ago and if you hate Israel you’re anti Jewish soooo yeah…. Yep maybe having being Jewish synonymous with a genocidal state isn’t smart idk just my thoughts. I think having Jews live all across the world is so beautiful it brings a tear to my eye… I think shoving us all in one place is gay as hell to be frank. Whwtagevrr. I was born in USA born and raised and my family came from Ukraine. I have zero claim to a plot of land 6000 miles away just because I wanna have a sick ass vacation home. maybe that’s why you converted I’m just joshing around it would be funny though if you went through all that just to build a cute little Resort on stolen land. I don’t know boreal. I think I’d just rather have my BLEGH :P, not a :•]

I have not posted a single gofundme for Israeli victims. I’m not sure why you’d make up that lie? Please feel free to look back in my blog as far as you’d like, you won’t find one. It’s even in my blog description that I do not reblog gofundme posts.

I do post links to organizations that directly help Palestinians in Gaza. I have done so fairly often. I don’t recall ever posting a link to aid organizations that only benefit Israelis.

Do I often talk about antisemitism and Gaza at the same time? Yes. These two things are inextricably linked. What is happening in Gaza right now wouldn’t be happening without antisemitism.

Am I biased? No more than the average human being on Earth. I personally consider the folks screaming “Death to Israel!” to be a lot more biased than myself, as I am simply calling for peace between Israel and Hamas. I wanted a peaceful solution from the beginning. You can even find posts on my blog right after Oct 7th where I compare Israel to the USA after 9/11 and state my fears that Israel will have a disproportionate reaction. I loathe the political posturing of both Netanyahu and Hamas and I hate that they both dragged this out so long. Netanyahu wanted this to look like Trump’s victory, which disgusts me. And Hamas allowed their people to suffer for over a year! They’re disgusting, too. Every leader involved in this conflict failed their people.

Our personal feelings about whether or not native people like the Jews “deserve” to live in their homeland is irrelevant — Israel as a country exists here and now. Though it does bring up the interesting question: do you think if the USA just waits long enough, native Americans will also lose their landback rights? How long will that take?

Jews don’t really live “all over the world”. Nearly half live in the USA, and the other half in Israel. This is because all the other countries were so violently antisemitic to the Jews living there the Jews had to flee. In fact, after Israel was founded, a lot of countries literally forced their Jews out under threat of death.

Jews still suffer from antisemitism all around the world, and did so even before Oct 7th. The increase in antisemitism since Oct 7th hasn’t exactly made diaspora Jews feel safe. “A country you’re not even a citizen of did a bad thing, so now I’m going to firebomb your elementary school” isn’t fertile ground for cooperation, is it?

I don’t agree with everything Israel has done. I don’t have to. I think it is a country in crisis that needs major reforms, much like the USA. But I don’t scream “death to America!” either. I live here. I want to make it a better place. I want them both to be better, to live up to the ideals they espouse. To be free, and safe, and prosperous.

I want Gazans to be able to go home. I want them free from the cruelty of Hamas, which has allowed its people to die and suffer since it took power in 2005 and refused to hold any more free elections. They are tyrants. I want Palestinians in the diaspora to come home, too. I want them to have a safe, prosperous country where their culture and children can flourish!

I want peace. If that makes me a “weirdassbitch”, then so be it. I’ve been weird my whole life, anon!

[balrogballs]

This! (OP im so sorry in advance for writing an essay on your post)

I always say, as someone who writes a ton about the intersections of grief and ‘madness’, that the most compelling, interesting and devastating part of the Oath to me is the way Tolkien himself described it, according to TolkienGateway: an oath that should never have been taken.

And I think that is what adds such a tragic richness to that entire sequence, because a Fëanor who likes his fancy stones and made his children swear a dooming oath and led his people into a long, drawn out war because he wanted them back, is frankly insulting to the outstanding way said sequence is laid out:

“Then Feanor ran from the Ring of Doom, and fled into the night; for his father was dearer to him than the Fight of Valinor or the peerless works of his hands; and who among sons, of Elves or of Men, have held their fathers of greater worth? …Many there grieved for the anguish of Feanor…”

The guy went fucking insane, because the first person to have been killed in Valinor was his fucking dad. All his bullshit before was, certainly, annoying as fuck, and his decisions after were the cause of terrible violence — and tbh he’s frankly ridiculous a lot of the time, but at that moment he was clearly out of his fucking mind. The way the speech was written, the frantic, rabbit-thump prose of that entire section, you can almost see the trance state he’s in.

And that isn’t to say anything he did as a result of that was justifiable or good, this isn’t an “insanity defence” but I just think the whole Fëanor cinammon roll vs serial killer debate is so flat because, to me, someone going utterly insane with grief and doing something that dooms his own sons, is the kind of tragedy that defines the Silmarillion to me!

The entire legendarium features instance after instance (of varying severity) of desperate, impossible choices made in moments of complete mindlessness by characters rendered utterly inarticulate by grief and fear — Elwing, Isildur, Frodo, Denethor — and the long, terrible shadows of those devastating decisions none of these people should have been in the position to make.

Denethor, driven mad by grief and paranoia, walked into his son’s funeral pyre, and Fëanor walked into his father’s, leading all seven of his sons to walk into his own. The damage these choices caused are at completely different degrees, but a thing doesn’t have to cause the same amount of damage to be a similar circumstance.

It doesn’t mean the choice was good, mind you, the whole thing was an utter disaster, the Oath was the worst thing that could have happened to both ME and Valinor because there are literally zero situations in which having seven sons swear a blood oath would ever work out. Because none of the seven really seem to give a fuck about the stones and they’re all doing it for their dad, so the oath would bind them with that love, rather than their love for the Silmarils, etc.

But to acknowledge the circumstances the speech was made under does not negate the damage it caused. In fact it only makes it worse, the knowledge that a split-second choice caused All of That, the knowledge that a choice made in the wake of his father’s death would one day lead to all seven of his sons’ deaths. If he’d done it for memes and jewels, the following events just would not have had the same literary impact!

But yeah. It’s the worst yet most compellingly and devastatingly written part of the Silmarillion, and yet I so often see it flattened out as either “Fëanor made a great strategic choice and he was right” or “he did it because he’s a greedy fuck” and it’s just 😭😭😭

TL/DR: I was thinking about this ficlet someone requested from me a couple months back about Fëanor finding Finwë and how writing that provided such an insight into the wild place his mind must have been, and this word vomit is the result of that.

We all know Fëanor as “the guy obsessed with his Silmarils” but it’s quite something to remember that when he first discovered Morgoth had broken into his house, he wasn’t even thinking about how the Silmarils were most likely stolen. He immediately burst into tears not over the jewels, but over his dad.

[animeomegas]

I wonder what a jealous Itachi would look like ? Does he get jealous often? I tried to imagine it but for some reason my mind wouldn’t allow me to see it cause I only see him as this sweet little thing.

I think if ever was jealous, or territorial, i wouldn’t even notice cause I’d be so clouded by my perception of him ??

Itachi is quite a possessive lover, but jealously from him is pretty rare. I think you'd see the most jealously from him before you were in a committed relationship, but after he's decided he's going to pursue you. He will get very jealous about other suitors sniffing around you before you're official, but after you're official, not so much.

dfdsfgdsfg this ask did make me think about a really lovestruck alpha, who can only see Itachi through rose tinted glasses, pre-relationship, with a very jealous Itachi who has been sabotaging the other interested omegas. Alpha refuses to believe it of course, because Itachi is so sweet!!

[eternaljeon]

i just... can't stop thinking about SJM saying the next book was obvious... because it really is, and the novella showed that to us.

and what's more obvious to me, and to many others on this side of the boat, is that none of these moments between elriel were necessary if there wasn't a much deeper reason or meaning to them.

literally not a single one.

there was no reason to pair elriel together as often as she did, or mark some of those moments with hints of romance and passion. if these moments were meant to be insignificant, their deliberate framing makes little sense. if elain were meant to end up with lucien, these moments wouldn’t have been necessary.

and yet, there were significant moments between them included in the books. one fine example? a moment framed as if it were ‘saving the best for last’—when it wasn’t necessary at all if e/lucien was the obvious choice

why make a show of elain giving azriel a gift—with specific dialogue included—when her other gifts, aside from nesta's, whom we all know she loves and cares for deeply, were simply mentioned in passing?

why show us azriel laughing in a way feyre had never heard before—‘dark and joyous’—and describe his hazel eyes bright in a way she had never seen before, as ‘the hues of green amid the brown and gray like veins of emerald’ if it wasn’t significant? especially when, just moments before, feyre had witnessed him with mor—the girl he’s been in love with for centuries. and even more so when elain had just set aside the gift from her mate with little to no interest in it.

what was the point of including two varying reactions to a gift azriel received if his arc wasn’t just as important in this context? if the two gift givers—and their arcs with him—weren’t important or significant?

these things, no matter how much i have grown to love and care for them, weren't necessary to the plot in any way unless it pointed to an elriel endgame. if SJM was trying to paint a specific picture for us, a different pairing all together, she wouldn't have needed to include them.

many moments between the couple could have easily been showcased with other characters in the book, but they weren't. it was always elain and azriel being given those moments. seemingly some of elain's most significant moments—always with azriel in the background. not lucien. not her mate. azriel.

i just don't see or understand how this series could go any other way. it wouldn't make sense.

that's all, really.

i truly can't stop myself from falling further down the elriel hole.

[poppitron360]

@cometmoons so for some reason tumblr has glitched and isn’t letting me respond to the ask you sent me so I’m just gonna do it like this.

OK OK OK OK OK OK SO-

There is SO MUCH to talk about with Wouldn’t You Like. I feel like it’s hard to describe on a written post so I took the liberty of downloading a music notation app and transcribing the bits I wanted to talk about (This took me aaaages. But it was a really fun process and taught me a lot.)

Be warned this is a LONG post.

Firstly, here’s my overall take on the narrative of this song:

Odysseus is one of the smartest heroes of Greek Myth. He’s a mentee of Athena. He’s tactical. Yes, he is a fighter, but he’s for the most part a strategist and he uses diplomacy and cunning and his words to defeat his foes. Big Slytherin energy. Up until this point, that’s all he’s ever used. Eurylochus has doubted and challenged this approach, and has now come to him, saying that Circe is too powerful to defeat and that they should just run away. Odysseus “Pride is my fatal flaw��� of Ithaca is insisting on fighting Circe, but is realising that he might not be able to talk his way out of it.

Hermes has now shown up like “hey ✨dAhLiNg✨how about you try something different? DRUGS!”, offering him a taste of something he’s never had before… power.

This, in my opinion, is a big step in Odysseus’ fall from man into monster, and Jay uses music in so many different ways to convey that, so let’s start with a break down of the song one section at a time:

Intro:

For most of the song, you’ve got the Lyre/Harp playing- Hemes’ signature instrument, which is significant to him because according to myth he invented the Lyre. This is the first thing we hear in the song, immediately setting up the things you need to identify his character.

Harps and Lyres are typically used in film and videogame music to give a mystical, magical atmosphere. I love how Jay blends modern (1980s) Synthpop with more classical, eclectic instruments that don’t normally fit the style. I’m assuming for budgeting reasons he’s using a VST or some kind of sample pack and not a real harp (session musicians are EXPENSIVE), but still- you hardly ever hear a harp in this kind of music but it WORKS.

The introduction played by the harp also lays out something that is shown throughout the whole song:

AEOLIAN MODE!!!!

Modes are hard to explain bc I barely understand them myself (I said music theory was my special interest, not that I was any good at it) but according to the Wikepedia article I’m reading about them right now, they were used a lot in ANCIENT GREECE. The Aeolian mode specifically was used a lot back then. The word “Aeolian” comes from… you guessed it- the Islands of Aeolus!!!

Aeolus, being the God of the wind- Aeolian mode is this mystical, free-flowing mode that simulates the feeling of wind.

You know when you hear a high wind through a telegraph pole you get this whistling sound? That’s basically a rudimentary, naturally occurring Aeolian Harp. There’s a whole Physics lecture about sound frequencies and microtones and shit in here that I am not yet qualified to give but this kind of stuff FASCINATES me about music.

I found this 60sec short that explains Aeolian mode really well from a channel I really like: https://youtu.be/bJ6TRQ3k45Q?si=sksSz4xyf_96uMrp It’ll give a much more concise explanation than I could, but basically all you need to know is that the melodies are in this special scale.

Aeolian mode is the natural minor scale. It’s often used to feel spooky and mystical- perfect for a song like Wouldn’t You Like where this magical character is singing about a magical plant. It’s not the standard G minor scale, but something a little more twisted and not really something we’re used to hearing, giving it a mysterious quality.

This is established immediately by the harpline, and sets the entire tone of the song. We then hear his trademark giggle, and so in the first 3 seconds we know everything we need to know about who Hermes is and what he’s like.

Speaking of the giggle- I briefly mentioned Panning in my post about Scylla, and while I can’t discern any use of it just by listening, but I imagine Jay’s probably used a subtle amount of it to give the sense of Hermes flying overhead.

Panning is a thing done in audio production where you can choose how much of the sound is heard on the left or the right.

Verse 1 (“I must say”… etc.):

It’s very gentle at this point, the orchestration and vocalisation is calm and lilted. It’s very beautiful, although the minor tonality gives it a slightly uneasy feel. (Often the minor key is described as sounding “sad”, but that’s not always the case. This is a great example).

The harp melody is repetitive, giving a sense of persistence, this adds to the sense of unease. It also has elements of hip-hop, as a gentle beat comes in as the chorus starts.

Chorus 1:

Now the harp cuts out and you’ve got that synth bass-line coming in- the repetitive, insistent beats and this “four-on-the-floor” drum pattern where the bass drum (which sits on the floor) kicks on every beat (in a four-beat bar). This feeling of it almost pounding in your head on every thump.

The instrumentation is very stark, you’ve just got the vocalist, the bass, and the bass drum. This technique is used by Taylor Swift in both the songs “Look What You Made Me Do” and “Vigilante Shit”- this really makes you listen to the lyrics as there’s nothing distracting you. As this is the first time we’re hearing these words, it draws you into what he’s saying.

On the line “Wouldn’t you like to have some of the magic?”, the Lyre comes in, playing this repetitive line that goes up and down and up and down. It’s a repetitive, almost hypnotic sound.

Verse 2 (“She can turn you to an animal”… etc.):

This is when this bluesy piano comes in.

The piano is used a lot in different points of Epic- it’s an essential part of any musical orchestra pit or just a song in general, and crucial in every composers instrumentation arsenal (and was also the first instrument I ever learned to play and my first real taste of music, so it’s not like I’m biased or anything)- but it’s mostly associated with Athena as it’s her signature instrument. It’s a stretch, but my interpretation is that Hermes is trying to appeal to something familiar to Odysseus. So far the only God he’s interacted with at length is Athena, who taught him this idea of being strategic and tactical. Hermes is acknowledging that this is Odysseus’ main way of fighting, while also showing him that there could be something more to it.

The piano plays these low-octave chords in this syncopated rhythm, which adds a layer of intensity that you didn’t have in verse one. This continues into the second chorus.

Chorus 2:

The orchestration is much more intense, pulling the audience (and Odysseus) in.

I’m gonna talk a lot about the musical “language” that Jorge has established for the universe- bits of music theory he’s tied in with themes that don’t necessarily have the same connotations anywhere else, because I think it’s genius.

Jay has said that the mythical beings (Gods, monsters, Odysseus when he kills the suitors) are all able to summon non-diagetic backing vocalists to back them up. Interestingly, Hermes doesn’t use this the first time round, speaking to Ody on his level, and is now rising up and displaying the power he’s tempting him with.

This is when we first hear the backing vocalists. There’s now a group of voices, so there’s more people urging you to taste the flower. Musically speaking, the harmony moving in the same rhythm with the same words as the soloist creates a sense of movement, congruent with Ody’s temptation.

Here is where we get to how this harmony works. This is the section that will actually answer your question.

First of all, I also struggle with overstimulation so I totally get what you’re talking about. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do backing vocals, and I know from experience that writing harmonies as complex as this takes skill and practice.

I think that’s why music is so special to me. The sensory calm certain sounds and songs give me, the good kind of stimulation and the bad kind. It has always made me so curious as to why and how the choices made in music can impact a person psychologically, make the listener feel immersed in a story, inflict specific emotions.

This is what fascinates me about music theory. Yes, it should overwhelm you. Yes, it should sound wrong. But it doesn’t. It WORKS. And what’s so interesting to me is why.

Jorge describes it as “crunchy and punchy” which is honestly perfect.

He is of course, referring to dissonance.

I have been studying music most of my life, and pretty much every music teacher I’ve ever had describes dissonance as just “sounding smushy”. It’s actually “a lack of harmony among musical notes”, usually two notes next to each other played at the same time.

But why does this sound “crunchy” and not “smushy”?

The Melody remains modal, as it has done the entire song. This is our grounding, our “Home”, but the harmony does something different. It’s moving down and up, flowing like wind, like the sea. And it’s doing this chromatically- using notes from the G minor key instead of the Aeolian mode- which creates clashes. Also known as dissonance. Also known as “smushy”.

And this is where we break out the good ol’ notation! I transcribed this myself by ear, so it might not be perfect. I can sight read tablature but not sheet music, so if this is wildly off then I’m sorry. I find it easier to explain music through annotations, but in order to make this screenreader accessible, I’m just gonna cite the lyrics and explain it in the text underneath.

In this section, “Wouldn’t you like to have some of the magic? Wouldn’t you like your outcome preferred?” The melody pretty much remains on C this whole time, only changing at the end of each two-bar phrase. This gives a forceful, repetitive, driving feeling. Hermes is being very persistent here.

For the first two-bar phrase- “Wouldn’t you like to have some of the magic”- both harmonies are the same. They then split at “Wouldn’t you like your outcome preferred?”

“Wouldn’t you”- The harmony starts on G, which is the root of G minor (the key that we are in). This is diatonic (using the notes from the key)- so it sounds nice, not “smushy”.

“Like to”- We then go down to F sharp, which is dissonant to the Aeolian mode, even though it’s the major 7th of G minor. This is why it sounds “smushy”

“Have some of the”- And here is where the “crunchiness” kicks in. It’s resolving down to the flattened 7th, which is F natural. The flattened 7th is the modal note.

“Magic”- The first two-bar phrase ends in E natural, which is dissonant to the mode. The melody also ends in D, which provides a lot of dissonance with the E as they are right next to each other, which can create clashes.

“Wouldn’t you”- This is where the two harmonies split. Harmony 1 goes back to G, which is the root of the mode. Harmony 2 goes down to E flat, which is also consonant (not dissonant).

“Like your”- Harmony 2 goes down to D, which is dissonant with the note in the melody (C) because they are next to each other. Harmony 1 goes to F sharp, which is dissonant to the Aeolian mode, as said before.

“Outcome”- Harmony 1 resolves to an F, and Harmony 2 goes back to an E flat.

“Preferred”- The last two notes “smush” as F natural (Harmony 1) and E natural (Harmony 2) are a semitone apart, then both harmonies join at E natural, which clashes with the D in the melody.

So the pattern goes from “nice” to “smush” to “nice” to “smush” to “nice” to “smush” to “nice” to “even more smush” and then when the next part of the harmony starts “deep in the night” you resolve back to the G, which is the tonic note.

Why does the dissonance work in this song?

It’s passing. Going down by step and resolving to a modal note. Passing notes that resolve don’t have that smushyness. They crunch.

Dissonance is a funny thing. Often musicians stay away from it because it sounds muddy and awkward and not great, but it can at times sound quite sweet, and with skill and knowledge you can learn how to use it effectively.

It also works here because it fits with the aesthetic and Hermes’ character. We’re already in this spooky, mysterious mode. We’re in a minor key. And Jay is using all these other musical techniques to give a slightly uneasy, hypnotic feel. The dissonance feels strange- not the sweet, diatonic harmonies we’re used to hearing. This is what makes this song stand out, and what makes Hermes such an intriguing and appealing character.

There’s this “up and down” melodic pattern that occurs throughout the song in several places. While Harmony 2 is doing that, Harmony 1 is just going down, repeatedly. I find it interesting that Odysseus isn’t rising to this power, but falling to it. It hints at Hermes’ trickster nature. These musical motifs (harmony, the harpline, the synthline, etc.) go up and down and up and down and up and down like gentle waves. We’re on the ocean. It’s lulling, compelling, hypnotic. “Come hither” whispering in the ear. It’s creepy, to be honest, and shows a darker side of the song that I will talk about later.

Bridge (“Here in the root of this flower”…etc):

Jorge has talked about how this is one of his favourite bits to sing, and musically that makes perfect sense.

Firstly, you’ve gotta hand it to Troy Doherty’s amazing performance. Hermes is so expressive even without seeing him.

Quick note about vocal techniques- YOU CAN HEAR SMILES. The act of smiling changes the shape of your mouth and thus changes the quality of your voice. You can HEAR Troy break out into a smile on the line “Though it’s only for a moment, ‘til you’ve beaten your opponent”. This is also my theory as to why the line “Penelope Whyyyy, you know I’m too shyy” is so stuck in everyone’s mind. Try singing it without smiling and then try singing it while smiling. Do you think it would’ve been that catchy if Jay wasn’t such a cutie pie?

Smiling is contagious, even if you’re only subconsciously noticing it. Hearing a smile gives you that little hit of dopamine.

When we hit the bridge, the piano, bass, and backing vocals cut out. Again, it’s just drums, harp, and lead vocals. This signifies a new section of music and also does the same trick as before- drawing you into the vocalist- but this time making you focus on the melody instead of the lyrics.

This whole bit is solely in Aeolian mode. The downward motion of the bridge increases the intensity of the song, dragging you into his words, falling into the power of the root. It’s sort of a callback to the downward motion to the second harmony line.

The constant quaver rhythm of this rising and falling conjunct “stepwise” melody gives a spiralling feeling, leading downwards. The rhythm is almost conversational, which fits with a mode like Aeolian that flows like the wind. It’s also why it’s so catchy and fun to sing. I love how Jorge composes in this uncommon scale in this particular pattern to reflect this idea.

There’s also one particular detail about the rhythm of this riff that compositionally shows something even deeper:

THIS IS IN TRIPLETS.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT TRIPLETS SYMBOLISE IN EPIC???

RUTHLESSNESS.

Ruthlessness is usually a theme reserved for Poseidon, Act 1 Athena, and Act 2 Odysseus. You wouldn’t expect a “friendly” God like Hermes to be using it. But he is. He’s being persistent, constant. He is trying every trick in his bag to persuade Ody to take the flower.

Jay is VERY deliberate about his arrangements and his composition, so this is not a coincidence. He has established this “language” of musical voices, rhythmical voices, and motivic voices to symbolise all his characters and themes. It’s fascinating to me that he made this choice for Hermes. Ever so subtly hinting that the God might not be as benevolent as he seems.

Chorus 3:

The instrumentation of this new chorus is pretty similar to Chorus 2, except…

These DRUMS.

I asked my dad about these while I was staying with my parents over the Xmas holidays, and it resulted in a 5-minuite-long infodump about a specific type of drum used in 80s pop music (yeah I totally definitely don’t see the family resemblance at all /sarcasm). Any Brit in the audience might recognise this drum sound as sounding almost identical the intro to a show called East Enders (which I never watched, but was aware of) and idk if that was Jay’s intention, but the drums apparently have a long and complicated history, which I will give you the abbreviated version. (If this is too much information you can skip the next paragraph if you so wish, I realise this can be overwhelming)

Bass drum called the Simmons’ drum- electronic drum pad- famous for being hexagonal- they were radical in that they gave an electronic palette to modern dummers- they weren’t well-built and the very earliest ones were made from the same composite materials as police riot gear- caused repetitive strain injury that became known by session drummers as “Simmon’s wrist” because it was a bit like using your drumsticks on concrete (What’s that? You don’t think music is as intense as sport? Musicians get injured just as much as footballers do)- the sound is one of the most distinctive sounds in 80s music and entirely synthetic, generated through synthesis so some poor technician had to sit and programme a synthesiser to sound like a tom-tom- in the 90s and early 00s it was seen as cheap and over-the-top but is now looked on with a sense of love and nostalgia.

This is, of course, a sample of the Simmon’s drum as I doubt Jorge owns a real one.

So what does that do for Hermes? It grounds the song it its 80s retro aesthetic, creating Hermes’ unique stylistic voice. Jorge has described how he got the idea for Hermes’ sound when he saw a retro, multi-coloured lamp that made him think of 80s music. Each character in Epic has their own soundscape, and this very particular drum sound adds to it.

It also adds intensity to this final chorus. These loud, heavy drum sounds give that adrenaline rush that the previous verses and choruses have been building to, when Odysseus finally takes the flower.

Then we get Odysseus singing the “oOOOooOoOOhHHHhs” as he eats the holy moly, then the chorus ends, and we get a repeat of the harpline from the intro as he thanks Hermes for the help.

My conclusion:

Odysseus has made a Faustian pact with Hermes, the trickster god. While Hermes’s words are friendly with no ill-intent, the composition and orchestration lean more towards this idea of “making a deal with the devil”. Gods know the game, and how it’s played. You, mere mortal, do not. When they entreat mortals to do their bidding will offer riches, money, fame, success, magic, power, but very rarely are their motives sound.

This is Odysseus’ first taste of the magic that separates gods and monsters from mortals. He is able to fight Circe as an equal, and this new development teaches him that he doesn’t always have to be strategic and diplomatic, but ruthless and relentless as well.

I know that the fandom see Troy Doherty’s performance of Hermes as “omg babygirl so slayyyy!!!” But there’s actually a deeper level to what he’s doing here. He’s a trickster God, tempting and teasing Odysseus down a path of magic and power- giving him the first taste of something that will later drive him into becoming the Monster. Hermes is almost seducing him to the dark side, using rhetorical questions, waving the Holy Moly in front of his face and saying “Come on. You know you want it. Wouldn’t you like a taste of the power? Wouldn’t you like to be victorious for once?” In his lyrics describing a “taste” of the power being something almost like a temptation. Odysseus is breaking from his norm- using magic and might instead of logic, diplomacy and reasoning. While he’s doing it to save his men, this is a major step in his descent into monsterhood, and it’s fascinating how Jay does this not only lyrically, but musically as well, using what’s called “word painting” (music and words working together) to create the sense of hypnotism and manipulation.

Hermes is being:

Ruthless (triplets),

Ceaseless (repetition),

Persuasive (rhetorical questions),

And hypnotic (lilting, lulling melody).

He’s drawing you in, forcing you to listen to him (stark instrumentation focusing on the vocals, then increasing the instrumentation as the intensity progressively increases, culminating in this big, expressive final chorus with this pwerful drum sound)

Overall Jorge uses all these techniques to show Hermes manipulating Odysseus into taking the flower. By subconsciously making you feel the temptation that Ody- the Narrator- is feeling through music and orchestration.

So anyway, those are my thoughts on “Wouldn’t you like”. I didn’t even have time to talk about “Dangerous”- perhaps I’ll make a separate post about that but no promises. Thank you so much for reading if you made it to the end!

[plaidos]

i can’t help but completely disagree? out of all of the transfeminine characters i’ve seen in fiction, i think maybe only one or two of them were at that questioning stage. almost always, in my experience, it is the reverse — presenting the already extant trans woman with little to no exploration of the radical act of gender transgression that led her there. in fact, i would argue that the mainstream media is basically totally uncomfortable addressing the fact that men can become women. in fact, the only example i can immediately think of countering this is I Saw The TV Glow. maybe that one episode of Orange Is The New Black that used Laverne Cox’s twin brother as Sophia’s pre-transition self in the flashbacks? but i don’t really think that counts because the entire show is told that way.

there’s definitely still an overemphasis to focus on the transness of characters rather than letting them have complex & interesting other traits, trans characters are often reduced to their transness exclusively — but if anything, we could probably do with more people seeing stories about transition. transition itself is basically undepicted in the wider media imo.

I feel like trans narratives are almost always centered around the coming out and the experimentation. Those are the most eventful days of our lives, I suppose. People are so focused on those early days. It's always about "guys" looking at dresses in the store window, and being nervous about the bathroom. But it's been years. I transitioned back in 2018, and I've been on hormones since 2020. That was five years ago. It's been a year and a half since my surgery, too. This isn't even a new normal anymore. It's been normal for a very long time. I don't really relate to coming out stories anymore... But people aren't as interested in this phase of the process, I suppose.

[leahkentwriter]

Hannibal but make it sapphic

Someone recommended a novella called Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson as it was apparently inspired by the tv show Hannibal. That got my attention. As did the cover art. (I kind of want to fuck the cover art, and I'm asexual.)

I feel like this is a twisted romantic horror story between a budding bisexual and a homoromantic asexual. Which I loved. More of that, please. Lesbians are great, but I like it when those of us who are a bit underrepresented are front and center.

What I will say here is that if you're a fan of the show but really wanted more of that sapphic element - this novella is worth a read. The rest of what I have to say I'll hide in case you want to pick this book up without my thoughts in your head.

This is a story about Ro, a newly appointed assistant professor of literature, and Ash, a free-spirited artisan. The story is sapphic and feminine, even when the horror is on full display - and it is on full display. There are very clear parallels into Hannibal which fans will pick up on, so those craving a sapphic version of the Will-Hannibal relationship may be interested in this story.

That said, the Hannibal references got a bit heavy-handed in my opinion. I think that in honoring every part of him, the narrative leaned in a bit too heavily. I enjoyed the elements that were unique to this particular story more than I did the tie-ins to Hannibal. Something more domestic, something that turns a certain kind of polished pastel Instagram aesthetic into horror. A protagonist that resonated with the awkward feelings and tendency to overthink that many of us experience. How well Dawson represents what obsessive feelings look and feel like.

Because this is a novella and it had to move quickly, there were things that had to be told rather than shown. That's fine - but at times, in this story, it felt clunky. There are moments where the narrator is clueless, yet it's so obvious what's going on. The literary references are sometimes great but sometimes don't pull their weight, and I wish they'd been used a bit more intentionally. The foreshadowing is at times less shadowy and more like a big blinking neon sign. Even without knowing anything about Hannibal, readers will know fairly quickly where things are going. This novella is about appreciating the journey, and what that journey looks like between queer women.

Ro is actually annoying, and I love that about her, because anyone who has ever been obsessively fixated on another person knows how your critical thinking skills suddenly shut down. She's distracted, she's fumbles, she does the wrong things for the right reasons and doesn't really listen and often knows she's not really listening, and her internal justifications are weak at best, so she's definitely not a martyr in this story. She both ignores red flags, and is a red flag herself. Both of these women have needs they're trying to sate, and have elements of toxic behavior.

Ro's awkwardness and mistakes and messy emotions and overthinking are usually relatable. She's pretty quickly out of her element and gets pushed more and more out of her comfort zone, which she at times overthinks, but at times just gives into. I did enjoy that about her.

Ash read to me as distinctly asexual. That's never overtly stated, but that was the vibe I got, which I enjoyed. And yes, there's sex in this story, because asexuals do fuck, and do even enjoy fucking (it's me. hi.) but Ash? She's a homoromantic ace. She's not getting off on the sex - there's something else driving her desire. (I'm a panromantic ace with kinks. I will die on this hill.)

Ash is an interesting predator, and any story where you've got women hunting women is going to get my attention. I've had enough of men hunting women. Women hunting men does satisfy a certain urge but I have to be in the mood.

Women hunting women is a whole different beast. And there's something Ash says toward the end of the story that felt very uniquely like something a predatory queer woman would say. We only ever see her via Ro, but it's easy to fill in the gaps that Ro doesn't (want to) see. If you're a Hannibal fan, you'll understand Ash pretty quickly. Even if you're not, her motives become clear. I think the thing I liked the best was that her desire isn't singular - by the end you realize that there were several ways this could have gone, and Ro was always the one who was going to determine that. (Of course, how much agency Ro actually has is debatable.)

I'm not sure how more hardcore Hannibal fans will like the ultimate ending - they will definitely understand where it comes from. I have mixed feelings about it simply because it does borrow from the show in a very direct way that I didn't like. I wish it had been done a bit differently. But I'm not disappointed at what it reveals about Ash.

My biggest critique is that I feel like this should have been a novel, because the things I felt were a bit clunky and heavy handed and rushed could have been easily smoothed out in a longer narrative. I also wanted to stay in this story longer. Despite my critiques, I did like it, and I feel like there's a lot more here that could have been explored. Dawson wove in lots of interesting threads.

I love stories that center women and women's spaces and feminine aesthetics, without making them seem silly or diminishing them. Stories that, like Dawson's, see the beauty and the horror without trivializing. You never get the impression that she's parodying or making fun. You see the idyllic nature of the life behind the aesthetic, as well as the gruesome realities. These are all things that are very familiar and very understandable. And that's what makes it chilling.

[clemelntine]

Heartkillers ep 10 uncohesive stray thoughts

With screenshots cuz I take to many and I'll feel like that's wasteful if I don't at least use them for a post

God, this scene reeks of codependency. But like in a good way, yknow. In an evidence of love way. They just don't want to be apart because they care. And I guess cuz they're scared they won't see each other again.

I love Fadel and his consistent morals. He'd been silent, letting Bison get his anger and revenge, cus that is not his main thing, but as soon as he hears any word of deciet or lies, he's right on his feet getting involved.

Yeah that checks.

I have to wonder, tho, if Lilly is a poisoner, why were Fadel and Bisons' parents shot? And why would she train them with a gun instead of the weapon she know best?

That's not the unbelievable part dear. She seems very capable of all that. Look at what she made you do

Acting like some housewives worrying about their husbands away at war or some shit.

Imma be real with you. I wasn't paying attention for a bit, and I read this as "Why don't you try and top Fadel?" and I got a little hopeful for a bit.

We've got a comeback from the -two rings on one finger, no other jewelry- look from style. Love this energy.

For anyone wondering, the first time we saw this was in episode 6 when he was out drinking with Kant, so it might just be what he wears when he goes to get drunk with his buddy. Guess there aren't too many occasions for a mechanic to wear a mid finger index ring. It tends to get in the way a lot when moving (like manual labor). And if you dont wear a ring often, choosing to wear no other jewelry to make your specialty ring pop makes a lot of sense.

Sorry, I looked too deeply into that.

Lillys actress is so stunning. The discomfort and distaste on her face is so subtle but to perfect.

Oh, drama, Keen already knows about (one of) their lovers and tried to kill him. I wonder why he used a gun, tho. The only flashback/scene we saw of them pre assassin, while training, was to show that Keen was a worse shot than Bison and Fadel. Did he improve or was the reason he missed (only hitting styles arm, not killing him) because he still has bad aim.

Also, could the tattoo be Kants' work? It kinda reminds me of his spiderweb arm tatoo, but that doesn't mean its his style (he might not have done his arm one himself), so who knows, maybe they know each other, maybe they don't.

Fucking romantic loser, holy shit. He couldn't see gay people without thinking of his boyfriend

That's not something to be fucking proud of cassie

Nr. 1 god his hair looks fucking good like this

Nr. 2 Mister poetry over here, annoying piece of shit with his lovey dovey words

Ofc Style would instigate a cheer, like this is a cheersquad and not a murder operation

I really need him to stop mentioning it all the time, like he is proud of it or something

Oh, uniform kink. Interesting

Okay, I kinda feel bad for Keen now. Nobody seems to care about him (except Thanon ig, I hope nothing bad happens to him). Lilly didn't even care enough to use him.

Also, jesus Fadel, you're brothers. You've never put in even an hour of effort to ask about his day or some shit, rude. (I get that they are all just a product of Lillys creation but but this seems a lil excessive)

With the tattoos. That is quite a bold plan. There is like a 50/50 change they (rich ladies) are put off by the tattoos. Guess some might see it as an adventure and be into it. It's still a gamble.

Also like how does he know golfing, tho? Had he golfed before, or is Kant just good at improvising, because he looked quite knowledgable.

The way he has lowered himself to look up at her through his lashes, the fucking bitch. Once again using First height for storytelling. This time, Kant has lowered himself to make Lilly feel like she is above him and in control.

Idk if she is open-minded or if she could just smell the gay on him.

Ahw, he cares. Does he expect Keen to do that, tho? Like Fadel knows that he already tried to kill Style and has shot him. He doesn't seem likely to suddenly care about the wishes of his brother, who doesn't even care about him.

Not too sure what it means but i just noticed that Fadel has his whole head and neck angled up while Styles face is pointed to the front and he is just looking up with his eyes, through his eyelashes.

Maybe it's to show that Fadel is more confrontational while Style is more scared of Keen.

Oh, calling his bluff, cute. I dont remember if Fadel backed down when Bison pointed his gun at Style but if he did (i think so) that contrast shows very well how succesfull Lilly has been in driving them apart by making them all think Keen is less capable (mostly because she just didnt let him train)

Ofcourse he has to brag, has to lay out his success (he could have kept it to himself to use it for longer, but whatever, guess he expects to take him out right here, right now). Because Keen doesn't actually have any negative feelings towards Fadel (except maybe jealousy), he mostly just wants to prove himself to be capable. Even though he is holding the gun, it is Lilly who has her finger on the trigger. Without her constant critique, he would have felt the need to do all this. It's really her words that are driving Keen to do this, not Fadel (and Bisons) actions.

Yeah, and i feel like Keen should know that. Doesnt he know about her killing Fadels boyfriend, and he knows she wants Style dead as well, he has all the evidence he needs to see that Fadel and Bison dont have any more freedom or happiness than he does, just more tasks.

The continual cutting to Style while they talk about Fadels ex probably has to tell us something, but i honeslty can't read that much off his face. Is he jealous?

You're telling me Fadel couldn't figure that out himself. Even if he didn't think about it too much then (too sad or something), now with this new info he has about her, it shouldn't come as that much of a shock. She killed your parents and is trying to kill your boyfriend. It is not odd to think this patern is connected.

The desparation in both his eyes, his words, and his voice; it's fucking heartbreaking

Squished Fadel, perfection

Styles speech was a lil akward, but he got his point across and he has never really been a poet before. The honesty, although clunky, makes it seem more vulnerable and true, more like Style

Fav scenes

Fadel and Bisons emotional breakdown in the abandoned building. Omg the feelings..

Kant golfing was very cute.

Kant and Bison in the empty pool. Shit was stunning.

Fadel and Styles last scene. Maybe I just like Fadel crying and strong emotions.

For anyone wondering about my statistics, I took a total of 180 screenshots. 81 of Fadel and or Style, 58 of Kant and or Bison, 10 of Keen, 8 of Bison and Fadel together, 7 of Reurat, 5 of Lilly, 5 of more than two characters in a shot, 3 of Kant and Style together, 2 of Lilly and Keen together, and 1 of Babe

[unforth]

How did it feel to go from the 80’s to the explosion of acceptance around the 2010’s? In terms of being queer?

hm, interesting question. First, a couple disclaimers: I am not an expert in queer history, I was not involved in queer activism in anyway growing up, and no one in my family was queer. I was born in 1982 and am currently 42, and my mother had a lot of gay friends, but she intentionally sheltered us (my brother and I) from a lot of that once they all started dying from AIDs. For my own queerness, I worked through a lot of identities because I was an extremely confused asexual who didn't actually learn that asexuality existed until I was 30; I'm afab and was already married to a woman before I realized I was ace (I now ID as aroace, agender.).

All that said, I grew up in New York City, in a very accepting city and with a very accepting family. I knew queer people from a young age and my mom was sick of watching her friends die and got involved as she could (she was a New York City public school high school teacher; a lot of queers gravitated toward public schools because it was a stable job with decent pay and no one would care if they weren't married, in fact it was often considered a plus in the 60s and 70s for teachers to be single, and when mom got pregnant with my brother in 1976 she says multiple other teachers pressured her to quit because okay fine she was married and a teacher, but married and a teacher WITH KIDS? Appalling. needless to say she didn't quit.)

Anyway. Sorry. I lost the thread.

Honestly, the answer to this question is: utterly unbelievable.

If you had told 1990s about-to-start-high-school me that this is where we'd be in my lifetime I'd have thought you were out of your goddamn mind. I was obsessed with To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. I'd walked in AIDs walk and raised money with my mom every year starting in 1990. Mom and I saw the original off-Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and the original Broadway production of Rent. I was about as in-the-loop and accepting as a kid in that era could be, and I spent my college years thinking I was bi (I feel the same about everyone! that's bi, right? lmao, so young and clueless). And I never, never thought that nationwide gay marriage was even in the cards. I never dreamed that trans people would be able to live as openly as they do now. I didn't even really think we could do much about AIDs beyond slowing the spread.

I am only 42. I don't even consider myself middle-aged yet (though I'm definitely getting close to that particular tipping point). I grew up with my mom's even older stories, about being friends with the gay men at Cornell when she was in college in the early 60s, and her discussions of how far things had come in HER life (she's 80 now) and yet I was the one who pointed out that my great uncle, who died before I was born, was clearly mostly definitely bi and maybe gay (the look on her face when I said that and she realized I must be right. I keep meaning to post some of Natie's photographs.)

When my wife and I got married in 2013 we planned where to live, where we could travel, where we'd have kids, all around where it would be safe. My wife has health problems; if we traveled and something happened to her, we had to be sure that we were in a state where they would recognize our marriage and let me visit her, or else we wouldn't go there.

Sorry. I'm not holding the thread of narrative in this post well, I've been pretty sick with strep throat and my brain is just refusing to make this very coherent, and also it's just... so much. The amount I've seen, how far we've come, since I was a kid, is so fucking much.

I still sometimes don't believe how far we've come, nor how quickly we've done it.

And that's exactly why conservatives are shaking in their boots. These trends challenge all the things they believe true about the nature of authority and societal control. If they let up for an instant, then they'll have to accept that cis hetero white christian men actually have never been any better than anyone else, and their whole worlds will crumble, and that scares them to death because they're also old, most older than I, and they remember exactly what every queer person when I was a kid lived with. They remember Matthew Shepard, and all the hate crimes that the queer community survived, they remembered all the slurs that we've strived to reclaim and how they were used such that we had to reclaim them, and they really think that equality is a demotion for them, and that true equality would mean they're subject to the same things they've subjected us to, and that terrifies them.

Ugh, sorry, rambling again.

What I think about the changes is that they're fucking amazing, and that if I could somehow convince 13-year-old me that any of this would happen, she'd have sobbed with joy. Especially about the asexual part lmao.

We're in a down-swing of acceptance now, but the pendulum still won't go back to where we were during the AIDs crisis, much less back to where things were a hundred years ago.

We've come so far.

We're not going back.