#before i transitioned and experienced life as a man i had no idea of certain struggles

[squid-of-anger]

It absolutely does matter that one of the first insults thrown at men is about their dick size, and also that have Big Dick Energy is seen as such a compliment. There are literal billions of men who feel ashamed or overly sexualized because of these comments. Why is it okay to body shame men about this, but no one else? We talk about how fat jokes are demeaning and hurtful, but joking about the size of someone's penis, which is COMPLETELY OUT OF THEIR CONTROL, is okay? This may be inconsequential to you but it's devastating for some people. There are so many other ways you can insult someone who's being awful that don't involve their body. Why choose something that will hurt innocent bystanders when you don't have to?

if you're genuinely bothered that greta thunberg told andrew tate his dick is small then i truly think you should cause some problems in your life to keep you busy because you clearly have too much free time to worry about shit that Does Not Matter.

[benjis-journey]

10.15/16.24 (Day 5 & 6)

I can't complain, I've been feeling relatively happy. Though I'm experiencing an influx of acne. I'm hoping it's not as severe as the acne I had in middle school. I remember having such terrible forehead acne when I was twelve that spread to my cheeks by the time I was fifteen. Other than that and the mood swings, I haven't experienced any additional side effects.

Although, I have noticed that certain things can trigger extreme anger and sadness. Before I experienced random changes in my mood that were quite drastic. But lately any drastic mood changes are triggered by certain things or people. Just today before work I had a conversation with my mother that made me so unimaginably angry. We tend to have many conversations that result in me being angry, but this felt extreme. My mood was blowing things way out of proportion because I felt angry enough to the point of trembling and shaking. I'm grateful our conversation was over text because I'd hate for her to see me that way.

I met the oddest man at work today. I thought he would eventually come in to the store and purchase a pair of glasses because he said he'd been waiting for his son. Though I got the feeling that maybe he was mentally unwell and didn't actually have a son to wait on. He kept rambling about things I couldn't possibly comment on. He spoke to me about life and how important it was to be your true self, but I'm not sure how the other topics related to this notion. He spoke about women sexually abusing him and the absence of his father. He also spoke about people bringing out the change they want to see like transgender people transitioning. He spoke about them as if transitioning was a completely new thing and it baffled me when he described it to me like I had no idea people did such things.

He seemed confused at the notion that women would ever transition into men. Trans men erasure will never cease to amaze me. When he mentioned women taking testosterone, I mentioned that I'd just started my transition a few days ago. I don't normally tell strangers that or anything that relates to my gender identity, but I think I was just happy someone mentioned the word testosterone in front of me. He said he wouldn't judge but still thought I was an "attractive young woman". I hate when people call me that. All male customers I've interacted with from any job I've ever had (ages forty to seventy) all collectively seem to say the same thing to me. "You're such an attractive young woman!" I despise the hivemind of men that seeks me out just to tell me that.

I've noticed that many adults seem to ignore the fact that I'm transgender when I tell them. They still refer to me as a girl or woman and address me only as "she". It angers me. That odd customer I met this evening did it. My doctor did it. My pediatrician did it. A high school teacher I once had did it. My identity is not something to ignore. Trans men were never meant to be ignored or erased. I detest anyone out there who willingly chooses to ignore trans men for who we really are. We are nothing less than beautiful.

—Benjiꕤ

[sinclair-enterprises]

Hearing some credible talk that if Furiosa does in fact do well next year, we could potentially get a full-blown Mad Max TV series afterwards. It appears that this would be based on “The Wasteland,” the as yet unadapted middle chapter of the Fury Road trilogy consisting of Furiosa, The Wasteland, and Fury Road.

The script for this story has had something of a fascinating history: apparently starting its life as a book, then an idea for a TV series in the 90s, becoming a full part of the Fury Road narrative in the 2000s, very likely switching to a video game (on which work began as a collaboration between George Miller and Cory Barlog), transitioning to a full-fledged film adaptation, before finally ending up as a show that is actively being worked on right now. The story will likely center around Max wandering the Wasteland while rebuilding his Interceptor, and I wouldn’t be surprised if bits and pieces of certain scenes depicted in the comics/2015 video game were adapted in it so as to definitively fulfill Miller’s vision for those events.

The Gas Town Thunderdome fight where Max wins a new engine for his rebuilt Interceptor-something we might see in The Wasteland.

Another reason for the story being told within this format is George Miller's age. The man's already 78 and isn't getting any younger, with every time he tackles a new Mad Max project taking an enormous amount of time and effort to see it through. After Furiosa took so long to get off the ground it's becoming increasingly unlikely he'll do another live action film, let alone any other projects of similar size and scope. A series would allow him to retain creative control while letting others work in his playground, so to speak. The previous foundation Miller built on this kind of collaborative approach with the original Furiosa anime and Barlog's video game adaptation should help make things work pretty smoothly in terms of this new show.

However, anyone hoping for Tom Hardy's return as Max Rockatansky is probably set to be disappointed, as it appears he won't be returning to reprise the role. Despite having signed a contract for three films (ostensibly Furiosa, The Wasteland, and Fury Road), his character is unlikely to feature prominently in Furiosa and it can be expected he'll be passed over for this new project. Apparently significant issues with Hardy on the set of Fury Road led George Miller to diminish whatever role Max might've had in the new film (which from my understanding may have been a bit bigger than originally thought). The more visible effects of this decision will almost certainly be felt in The Wasteland, where we'll get another take on Max from a new actor. I've also heard interesting discussion about the potential use of deep fake technology in Furiosa. It's said that this will be used for a Max cameo with Hardy's face superimposed over another cast member's.

In the end, much of the franchise's future-including The Wasteland and any other new productions, depends on the success of Furiosa in 2024. I'm very hopeful it'll do well and we'll continue to receive excellent new Mad Max content the way George Miller wants it to be produced and experienced.

[panics-side-blog]

I think about a certain post a lot that talked about queer intersectionality. I believe specifically the intersectionality between lesbians and trans men/masc. I know some trans men/masc are completely separated by femininity or any sort of womanhood or general thing that could allude to them as a woman. Which is completely fine of course, I'm happy for them that they found out who they are and what makes them happy.

But within the talk trans men/masc who have a bond to womanhood and lesbianism get drowned out or shamed. Which for me personally is really hard to swallow because I am one of them who have a connection to it, especially I have a complicated connection to lesbianism since I identified as a lesbian when I was very young and still love women like a butch lesbian would (I have no idea how to describe it better) and weirdly it feels right to be seen as a trans man butch when it's about sapphic love. Because my love is always gay.

Tumblr seems to have an issue (or generally queer spaces) with trans men who still identify as a lesbian or are just more complicated with their gender and sexuality. Like transitioning would erase any thoughts, feelings and experiences and they would be a man. Nothing more nothing less.

On that note I want to tell a story with a lesbian I had and my personal thoughts + feelings.

At our queer youth group a few new faces appeared, two of them where lesbians. We talked about our experience of coming out and how life is for trans people (specifically trans men and masc since no transfem/woman was there that day. Or didn't contribute to the conversation I honestly don't remember if there were any. It could be that they were in the different room) and lesbian's.

After some back and forth I decided to speak up about my experience. It all went down to the hypersexualization of lesbians specifically and how they experienced bigotry by people who wanted to "fix" them or didn't believe they were lesbians because "their too young".

I already saw some similarities since that type of talk is pretty much common among all queer youth. That someone will come to fix you or that you're too young to know.

I started to speak about sexualization and how it was for me as a teen trans boy before I started to transition and just came out to my family (that was around 4 years ago).

I told them how the daughter of my dad's GF talked behind my back, which was really weird because from day one I was EXTREMELY open about my trans identity and that people could just ask. Like even she knew that, I said it enough times but she still talke about me to her mother.

Like she could answer all her questions, which I believe the mother later on told me, that she told her, that she couldn't answer them because she is not me.

Mind you the daughter around that time was early thirties and I was a teen.

The mother ended up telling me that her daughter believed that I shouldn't transition, it would ruin my feminine body and that i should wait for a man. Specifically

" He should not transition and have sex first to see if he likes dick. Or else he would regret it"

(I also don't remember if she correctly genderd me but I remember she generally was really good at using the right pronouns that I used around that time. So I hope to God she did use the right pronouns.)

As if a dick could fix me, like a man's genitals would be so good it fix me from my transness and would make me open my eyes that I'm a girl.

One of the lesbians spoke up and told me she had the exact same experience, how people around her said that she should try dick from a man first. That she isn't a lesbian and dick would fix her.

We both talked about it how weird it is that ADULTS talk like that to minors. We both came to our conclusion that her experience as a lesbian had a lot of similarities to my experience to transition as a trans man/masc. (And also to asexuals since a asexual person also spoke up that they had something similar told to them).

It felt weirdly validating. To just bond about it.

I still didn't work through my issues with the connection to lesbianism. I constantly have in mind to read stone butch blues since I saw it recommended a lot of times.

We talked about it more in depth and there would be so much more that I wish I remembered to write it here because it just felt so good and so right. I only remember that the other lesbian later on also spoke up and told her similar experiences about such a thing.

I felt like I was home talking to people I knew for years even tho I only knew them for an hour.

Either way I have no idea what my sexuality is. I just know that I love men like a bear and women like a butch.

Sadly I don't have the courage to go into the lesbian spaces. Terfs are currently popping up more in our queer spaces and racism is pretty prominent, which is really scary for me as an indigenous Latine man/thing. The chef (?), refuses to ban people even if he personally knows and heard how disgusting some of the things are.

I don't want to go there and introduce myself as a trans man and then have to explain my complicated relationship, out of fear of rejection. I wish so dearly I could go into lesbian spaces without fear of judgement.

I can't really identify as a lesbian since it requires only loving women and non binary people and be one yourself. Or at least that was told to me.

But I love men too, I love them dearly just not the way I do with women and my relationship with manhood and masculinity is just as complicated as womanhood and femininity.

My aroace identity maybe plays in this too, or at least it feels like that.

It's weird it's hard and I wish queer spaces are more open to such complicated things. To not push you away when you're questioning yourself, like that.

The only thing I know is that I don't regret transitioning, that top surgery saved my life, I adore my scars and worship the testosterone gel like the tranny faggot I am.

Labels are there to find words for your experience, emotions and thoughts. To find community, solidarity and comfort.

But it's hard to find such a thing when you're labels are the exact opposite and shouldn't work together.

I thought about the label bi-lesbian before but I don't use it.

Either way, it's soon summer I feel it in my bones that I will have an identity crisis again around late spring and summer with how I believe I'm a lesbian, because around that time for 2 almost 3 years straight it happened to me.

I call it the summer lesbian blues.

I wish I could be a lesbian trans man.

Even if it is just for a few months when the sun shines, insects hum and flowers bloom. When I see women in all different types of shapes and forms and make me think;

"God, I'm such a lesbian,I love women so much it tears my heart apart into tiny pieces."

On those times I get Sapho, I always look at paintings of her or read a few lines of her poetry and it makes me feel seen.

The only problem is those emotions are not anymore just in summer, they are always there but show themselves stronger when everything is green and warm.

[asexual-means-no-attraction]

How did you come to the conclusion that you were trans and that transition would be right for you? If you don't want to tell it publicly I understand

Buckle up for a long post lol.

Long story short:

It was a long process involving lots of body image issues, research, and ignoring the problem to even accept the idea. And then even longer to decide what was right for me with transitioning.

Long story long:

As a kid I had a whole temper tantrum about wanting to be a boy. This isn't unusual even with cis kids. My parents got me ice cream and told me I can do anything a boy can (tho they were at a loss when I talked about being able to pee standing up). As a little kid I didn't have the words or mental ability to explain what it was I was experiencing. I just knew I wanted to be a boy. But without having a good reason I decided I was ok being a girl.

That was that for a long time. I just put the idea to the back of my head and ignored it. From there it was just a series of body image issues. Which again, isn't rare for cis people. Especially young girls.

I was very much a tomboy growing up. It's not that I didn't like girly stuff, cuz I did. But it always made me uncomfortable in a way I couldn't explain. It took a lot of effort to wear the pretty pink dress that I liked. Cuz I did like it. I love flowing dresses and clothes with big flowers. I love how certain styles of clothes fit on people's bodies. It's just so nice to look at and wear. But if I saw a mirror or looked down at myself I got spiked anxiety. I hated it. I didn't want to be there anymore. I wanted to take it off. I couldn't do it.

But when I wore clothes that covered me completely I was fine. I enjoyed boys clothes because they didn't have weird cuts and the T-shirts had big designs that didn't lay directly on my chest. I was big into girl scouts so I was rolling around in the dirt every other weekend.

With kid TV shows always showing the tomboy secretly liking girly things and being self conscious about it, I figured that was what I was experiencing. It's very easy and common to think dysphoria is literally anything else, especially body dysmorphia or body imagine issues in general.

I left it at that all throughout puberty. I hated my chest, but then again, I thought it was just my body image issues. And wearing a bigger shirt made me feel comfortable. I was able to go to school and make friends. I was happy and enjoyed myself. I was comfortable with the discomfort I had towards my body. And so I ignored it. And I ignored it. And I ignored it.

At the end of high school I finally had to address one of the problems I had. Ie. My sexuality. My dysphoria (unknown at the time) made me believe I was asexual. The idea of dating was very off putting. I didn't like being called 'girlfriend' and thinking of kissing someone made me wanna vomit. But by the end of high school my feelings towards 2 specific friends was stronger than my aversion. And after a lot of writing out my feelings through random characters I made up I figured out that what I felt was indeed attraction. I still didn't like the idea of kissing, but the idea of dating was nice. So I started id-ing as a lesbian and went on with my life.

Come college I participated in a drag show my freshman year. One of my roommates did some makeup to give me a beard and I already had a suit. The entire night people called me by my now legal name, and called me a man. I wasn't able to explain it then either, but the feeling I had that night was incredible. It wasn't just a "haha this is fun being called male." It was like I was finally myself. I was more comfortable in my body than I ever had been before. The only thing that changed was how people perceived me.

After that I couldn't stop thinking about it. Thoughts that I had previously ignored were now crowding the front of my mind. For a year I was silently obsessing over that night. I did research about drag and it wasn't until about 6 months after the drag show that I even considered being trans. Because I always thought I was comfortable being female. I had never experienced being male before, so there was no way for me to compare the two.

A good comparison: imagine you're on a train going through a tunnel. You're fine in the tunnel. You have nothing to complain about. You're content. But then you exit the tunnel and you see an amazing view. You didn't think that a view like this was possible. You were fine just being in the tunnel your whole trip but now you don't want to ever go back into the tunnel.

^^^ now you gotta be careful with comparisons but they can be helpful. And I think that one gets the idea of how I was feeling across.

I was content as a girl, but once I experienced being male I didn't want to go back. My body image issues got worse every single day. It was harder to ignore them. I finally decided to buy a binder and cut my hair. I still didn't think I was trans. But I thought it might help. And just hearing a few friends say they thought I was a boy from behind, or being called sir on accident by people was a joy. Even if they corrected themselves afterwards it was still nice. I felt, for a moment, like I was seen.

I ended up making a blog on Tumblr (not this one) where I typed out my feelings. I have a lot of side blogs and a few are for different emotions (a blog for when I'm happy vs sad for example). I ended up typing a lot of extremely depressing shit on that blog. Not quite suicidal stuff but boarder line. Like I said. My body imagine issues were still getting worse and this along with several friendships falling apart (including one with one of the girls I had a severe crush on) caused a bit of a depression spiral. I was feeling terrible.

On that blog I also talked about possibly being trans. I actually used a cake reference (cringe I know). I don't remember the exact wording but the idea was that I like vanilla cake but I love chocolate cake more. I'd be ok eating vanilla but I'd always choose chocolate over vanilla. The idea being that I was ok being a girl (I wasn't. I was just used to being uncomfortable) but I'd prefer to be a boy.

Looking back, a lot of what I said definitely pointed at being trans. I just had a hard time accepting it. By chance, one of my friends (now gf) found my blog. It was a complete coincidence. After scrolling through it she realized that it was weirdly familiar until she got to a post were I actually had a photo of me in a binder. Even though I didn't have my face in the photo she was able to recognize me and my dorm bathroom. The shit I had on that blog was depressing and extremely concerning. And naturally, she flipped.

I woke up at 5am to her crying about how she doesn't want to make me eat vanilla cake and asking if I'm ok. She was extremely supportive but very worried. She was in the middle of researching trans stats and just read about the high risk of suicide. We've known each other since we were 12 and she felt bad for not noticing anything.

After a long cry fest from both of us I finally opened up to someone about how I was feeling. I also finally started accepting the idea that I was in fact trans. After that I slowly started coming out to more people. I started seeing a therapist. And after another few months talked to my Dr about how transitioning worked.

I got a referral to a specific LGBT department. They got me an appointment, though I had to wait a few more months. At first I thought all I would want was top surgery. I've always hated my chest so I thought that even if I realized I wasn't trans, this is something that I wouldn't regret.

I was nervous about hrt because I was already so sweaty and hairy. And I genuinely hated shaving. I didn't want to shave my face. I just wasn't sure how much of those changes I actually wanted. But the more I thought about it, the more I actually did like the idea. It was more so that I was so comfortable being uncomfortable in my body that it was hard to imagine what WOULD make me comfortable.

About a year and a half after I officially came out I started hrt. I decided to hold off for another year for top surgery since I couldn't afford it at the time. And I found that I actually did enjoy shaving my face. And I liked how much more hair I got. I didn't like the sweat or my hair thinning. But I was very happy with everything. Plus I finally started to realize I did in fact like kissing lol. Imagining myself as a girl with people wasn't appealing. But seeing myself as a man was actually enjoyable. Dysphoria be a bitch lol.

I got top surgery a few months before I graduated college. And a few months after graduation I got my name changed legally. Still working on everything else.

So technically I guess, I realized I was trans through slowly discovering myself and learning to process my feelings. There wasn't a sudden "I'm 100% sure" moment. I took it slow and figured myself out. And now that I have medically transitioned I am significantly happier and more comfortable in my body. I wasn't sure if I would ever feel this way. And I never knew I could feel this way. But the night I felt like I was actually myself at that drag show is nothing compared to how I feel now. Things got a lot better. Not just because I transitioned but also because while I was processing and accepting myself, I also worked on setting better boundaries, being more on tune with my feelings, and trying to be a better person overall. All that combined has made me happier than I ever knew possible.

Tips:

Each step in your journey is yours to take. It's ok to wait. It's ok to rush. It's your decision. Let yourself make a choice at your own pace. What worked for me might not work for you. We're all different. But if what I wrote above feels familiar, take that as a chance to explore. You don't have to be 100% sure to test the waters.

Talking with someone helps more than you'll ever realize.

Remember that you don't have to know everything right now. Nor do you need to focus on it 24/7. It's ok to take a break or focus on other parts of yourself.

I hope that's the kinda thing you were looking for. If not, feel free to send another ask.

[book-of-baba-fett]

That Kind of Fun - Jesse x Fem! Reader

A Jedi padawan is ready to go through her trials to become a Jedi Knight, but there’s one experience she wants to have before she moves onto the next phase of her life. A certain lieutenant of the 501st might end up being able to her out.

Crossposted on Ao3

Warnings: SMUT (18+), drinking, public foreplay, language, PinV intercourse (Jesse is ALWAYS prepared, so it's protected this time folks), oral (f receiving), fingering, first time, slight degradation (one line), slight use of mandoa

Notes: I think Jesse is one of the -kinkiest- clones, but I wanted to show a different side of him, showing that he can truly be whatever his partner needs. Padawan is 19 or 20. Also, Fives is bisexual.

“What about Commander Wolffe?” Your friend Jaeden suggests while he hands you a drink, his voice carrying just loud enough for you and your other friend, Shireen, to hear over the vibrating base at 79s. His head tilts back in the direction of the stoic commander, who’s sipping his own drink in a corner booth with other members of the Wolfpack.

“Ooooh that’s a good option,” Shireen joins in, her eyes sparkling as she checks out Wolffe from across the bar. “Plus, you did admit you think he’s hot.”

“Well duh, I think he’s hot, but if word ever got back to Master Plo?I don’t think I could ever recover from that.” You answer. No, your soon-to-be former Master’s Commander was a very capable soldier, but for this particular mission you needed a much less personal connection.

When you got back to Coruscant after your last mission, Master Plo told you the good news; the council was pleased enough with your growth and performance under pressure during the Clone Wars, so they decided you were finally ready to undergo the trials of the Jedi order. For all padawans, this was not only the rite of passage onto their next phase of the Jedi path, but also their final transition into adulthood. In all honesty, you’re not nervous about the upcoming change; you’ve been begging to take the trials ever since Jaeden and Shireen passed theirs. But for all the combat and force skills you’ve mastered, you can’t help but feel a bit unprepared for life in other aspects. Particularly when it comes to sex.

Sure, Jedi’s aren’t exactly known for their sex lives, but most of the padawans go through a phase when they’re about to be knighted where they experiment and let loose to have a little fun. They key part to it is no attachments, the one caveat of being a Jedi, which usually works out fine when it’s everyone just messing around. You’ve let loose a little, but only the basics and you still haven’t had sex. None of the Jedi your age really did anything for you, but then the war started and you met the clones. You couldn’t help but be physically attracted to them and mentally thank their bounty hunter donor for their genes. They’re also great men, which makes you nervous about the ‘no attachments’ part, hence your need to find a clone who you won’t work with much.

It was Jaeden’s idea to try 79s; he had heard some troopers talking about the primarily clone bar and it seemed like the perfect place. Jaeden and Shireen also wanted in on the fun. Jaeden was the most experienced of the three of you; with his beautiful Pantoran blue skin and shimmering gold tattoos, he could easily get any man he wanted with the flash of a smile. Shireen turns the heads of men and women everywhere she goes with her rich, brown skin and raven black locks (twisted up in knots tonight), but she can be a bit more selective. She would rather take her time with finding her partners than rush into a lackluster affair. You’re also confident in your looks and had noticed the attention you’ve gotten before, just lacked the conviction to follow through. Tonight you’re ready to finally see if you’re missing anything; your padawan braid is tucked away in your hair to hide the only hint of your status as a Jedi.

Under the flashing lights of the club, you can make out the colors of various different divisions decorating the armor of men enjoying their time away from the war. This makes your job easy; you want to find a man you haven’t met before so there’s less risk of being caught if word spreads around. Jaeden makes it his mission to find a suitable match for your night of fun, and he disappears into the crowd after he downs his drink. You and Shireen drink, people watch, and debate how a group of men who are literal clones of each other could somehow differ in attractiveness. Some potential takers for the evening do attempt at picking the two of you up, but Shireen waves them away.

“Those ones are too many drinks deep; the last thing I want is for you to finally get a man into your bed just for him to have whiskey dick.” She finishes the rest of her drink as she explains her actions. She pounds her glass on the table, turns around so she can scan the crowd. “Now where in force has Jaeden gone?”

You turn to join her in her surveillance of the crowd and you immediately burst out laughing once your gaze settle on a corner booth of the bar, “That little shit, he’s supposed to be helping me get laid, not find a man for himself and ditch us!”

Jaeden is sitting on the edge of a booth chatting animatedly with a clone in blue Arc Trooper armor. He must have felt you and Shireen’s stares in the force because suddenly he flips his head around, flashes a smile and waves you over.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” Shireen states as you two walk up to the table. Jaeden shrugs in response, his eyes signaling to the Arc next to him. You note the 5 tattooed on his forehead and the devilish smirk on the trooper’s face as he speaks up.

“It’s my bad ladies, your friend here was telling me the most interesting story about this cantina on Tattooine so I stole him away. If I knew he had such pretty friends I would have never left you alone.”

You can’t help but roll your eyes at the cheesiness, and you earn a chuckle from the table. Your eyes meet the warm, amber ones of a clone with a shaved head and a Republic cog tattooed on his head.

“Let me make up for my brother; sit down ladies and I’ll get you both a drink.” He says as he slides out of the booth, delicately grazing the back of your arm with his hand as he moves past you. Shireen gives you an almost imperceptible nod as she slides into the booth next to a clone with buzzed lightning patterns on his hair and a tattoo reading “the only good droid is a dead one.”

When the clone who left to buy another round of drinks for the able returns, you find out his name is Jesse. The group engages in a raucous conversation of tales of adventures and various embarrassing moments they each have had on their missions all over the galaxy. Slowly the conversation fades, because while the group was fun, everyone was suddenly much more interested in their partner. Jesse’s very quick to check in on you; seeing if you’re having a good time and making sure you don’t need another drink. He’s very gentlemanly and polite but oh boy is he a charmer. He’s genuinely kind and wants to know everything about you, and you tell him everything you can without blowing your cover. His words and the conversation is friendly enough, but his body language and the flicker in his eyes show the intention of a man who’s looking for more than just small talk in a bar, and that he’s after something else. That ‘something’ it turns out, is you.

He’s angled so his front faces you, with an arm resting on the back of the booth just behind you, but not quite touching you. When he speaks, his head bends closer to your ear so you can hear him above the noise of the crowded club and you feel his breath along your neck. You mentally try to calm the fluttering in your stomach and portray the facade of a much calmer woman, not some girl who’s already been charmed. The longer the conversation continues, the less you’re sure you’re actually aware of what the conversation is anymore. You know you haven’t had enough to drink to make you drunk, but his proximity is intoxicating. He teases you, causing you to break into laughter and rest your hand on his armored thigh, his lips just barely skimming your earlobe as he continues talking. Out of the corner of your eye you notice Shireen and Kix, the clone with the buzzcut, getting up to go and dance; it seems like Jaeden and his friend for the evening, Fives, have already left. Shireen shoots you a look that clearly asks Are you ok with this?  You wink at her and return your attention to your charming admirer.

“Hmm, it seems like our friends have ditched us,” Jesse whispers into your ear as you turn to face him again. His arm on the booth is now wrapped around your shoulders. His other hand, which had been holding a drink seconds before, is now resting on your knee, slowly circling your exposed skin with his gloved fingers.

“How rude of the them, “ You reply, leaning sideways into him on the cushion. He’s armorless from the waist up, so you use that to your advantage and shift your side into him, allowing the slightest bit of your frame contact with his muscular one.

“Between you and me,” He starts, his golden eyes leaving yours only to flicker to your lips, “I’m a lot more fun.”

His lips meet yours, tentatively at first to make sure there’s no hesitation on your end, but then the hunger grows as you eagerly accept him. You can taste the sweetness of his drink still in his mouth when his tongue sneaks past your lips and into your own. You press on hand on the back of his head, keeping him close to you as your other crawls up his chest to balance yourself there. His hand on your knee slowly makes its way up your thigh and slides up your skirt.

You gasp into his mouth as your feel his hand over your panties. He hums into you and pulls back from the kiss; his thumb teasing over your most sensitive spot. You tilt your head back into his arm, your legs spreading for him as he plays with you over your underwear. His frame is blocking you from view of the bar, but there’s still a risk anyone could walk over and see the two of you. The hungry look in his eye says clearly that this turns him on, and you realize it does the same to you. Well that’s something to explore another time, you think, maybe not for my first though.

“W- what do you say we get out of here?” You breathily suggest, just realizing you were holding your breath through his exploration of your body.

“Sure, your place?” He asks, removing his hand from your skirt. You can’t help but whine at the loss of contact but then you realize a flaw in your plan.

“Shit, no we can’t go back to mine!” You exclaim. How did you not think of this? No outside guests in temple quarters, no wonder the Jedi willing to experiment tend to sleep amongst each other. He raises a brow quizzically at you so you have to think on your feet. “Uhh I have to live with my parents right now. Can‘t exactly bring someone home this late” Shit, now he thinks you must be a loser. Great job...

He waves a hand aside clearly signaling that it’s no biggie. “I have a place we can go, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

***

“Well this is...something,” You note as you appraise your current situation. Jesse brought you back to the barracks and to a...well the best way to describe it is a supply closet. Someone had shoved what looked like a cot from the medbay into the narrow closet so it took up almost the entire space. Is this what the clones had to do to get laid? Very romantic.

“It’s not as bad as it seems,” Jesse pipes up as if he’s reading your mind.  He’s pulling a crate in front of the door - there must be no lock. “Fives made this as a makeshift nap room for when he’s hungover or trying to get some quiet time. We actually have a ‘no guests’ policy here, but I figured you could be a special exception.”

“Lucky me.” you tease back and he replies with a charming smirk. He wraps his arms around you; pulling you tight against him as he kisses your jawline, ghosting his lips down to your neck and collarbone. You feel the back of your knees bump against the foot of the cot. His lips trail back up to meet yours as his hands make their way to the zipper on the back of your dress. You feel the air conditioning of the room chill your now exposed back as he releases it. You assist him in the littlest way by shrugging your arms out of the straps, causing the dress to pool around your feet. You feel your bra unclasp with another oh-so dexterous movement of his hands and you’re bare to him, except for the lace panties that you’ve felt a wet spot forming in ever since you were in that dim booth.

His hands are on your hips as his eyes appraise you, he skims a hand up your curves back to cup your jaw so you look in his eyes. His demeanor is calm, but he’s exercising all the self control he has to not devour you in this moment.

“Maker, you’re so sexy.” He exhales as he takes another kiss, this one deep and hungry as his hand slides to grasp your hairline. You whimper under him, opening yourself to him, your hands clawing along the hem of his blacks, craving any form of skin to skin contact you can get. He chuckles as he senses your need, and pulls back from the kiss to help you pull his offending garment off his body. His chest is lean and muscular, more toned and defined than some of the other clones you’ve seen shirtless. You supposed he must work out other than the normal training routines to make him more in shape, to stand out from his thousands of identical brothers. Your hands rest along his chest, tracing the defined muscles with your delicate fingers. You like what you see, and the glint in his eyes tells you that he knows he looks good.

His hands grab your hips and suddenly you’re tossed backwards onto the cot. He’s pulling off the lower parts of his armor as his eyes hungrily scan your body, watching the way your tits bounced as you hit the mattress, the heaving in your chest from your excited pants, and the flush in your face from the anticipation of what’s about to come. He still has his lower blacks on as he crawls onto you, devouring your mouth with another kiss. He has one arm bent and propped to keep himself steady over you. His other arm wraps around your waist, pulling you closer to him as he grinds into you. That’s when you feel him: hot, heavy and thick. You can feel his clothed tip poking at your entrance as he starts to rut into you, but then he adjusts so you can feel the entire length of him grinding over your core, the friction finally giving attention to your aching clit. You moan at the sensation, but you can’t ignore the little voice in your head wondering how the hell is that going to fit in me?

“Hey, hey,” You gasp out and he pulls away to read your face, eyes softening making sure you’re still ok. You cup his face in your hand as a way of saying you’re definitely ok before you meagerly ask, “Can you go down on me?”

He chuckles as he bends down to peck your lips. “Well I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I didn’t.” His eyes fill again with that look of hunger. “Patience, sweetheart.”

His lips meet your jawline in a featherly light kiss, then he trails down to your neck and your pulse point. He sucks softly to leave a little mark, the kind that’s not too obvious to the wandering eye but enough for you to be reminded of him when this is over. His mouth openly explores your skin, leaving wet marks from his tongue and kisses to chill your skin in the cool air of the room. He reaches one of your nipples, and he circles his tongue around your erect bud, flicking over it to send electricity coursing through your nerves. His lips move and your temporary whine from the loss of contact turns into a gasp as he lightly grazes his teeth against your other nipple before he repeats the same circular motion with his tongue. He continues sucking your nipples, moving back and forth from one to the other to make sure he doesn’t neglect one side of your body for too long. He pulls out the arm that was under you, sliding his hand from the small of your back around to your abdomen, where he slowly caresses down your skin and explores under your panties. He cups your mound, his thick fingers prodding and exploring your folds. His thumb brushes over your clit and your cry tells him he’s found the sweet spot.

He pulls his lips back from your nipple with a pop, his head lifting so he can look into your eyes as his thumb rubs circles around your clit. You’re trying to hold your composure together, biting your lip so that only whimpers come out in the fear that someone may overhear what he’s doing to you with just the simplest movement of his thumb. But that won’t do for Jesse. Continuing with his pressure on your clit, he pokes a single finger into your entrance. You gasp out, bringing a hand to your mouth to silence yourself. He grabs your wrist with his free hand and pins it to the side of your head, bringing his face level to yours while he continues to flick your clit and push his finger inside you.

“Come on, pretty girl, I want to hear every little noise that comes out of your sexy mouth. “

“What if..someone..hears us?” You pant out, struggling to put your words together as he fingers you. He releases your wrist so he can brush a stray hair out of your face.

“Well I’m gonna make sure you’re screaming my name, just so they know who’s doing this to you.” He pecks your forehead then pulls back so he’s sitting on his knees in between your legs. He removes his hand from your pussy, making you whine from the emptiness. He grins at you as he sticks the finger in his mouth, keeping eye contact as he sucks your wetness off himself. He quickly slides your panties down your legs. His own patience is starting to wear thin, as he wants to be inside you now, but he can tell you need to be worked up a little more. He takes off your shoes too, because they somehow stayed on when he was aggressively stripping you before. He politely places them on the ground next to your clothes, but secretly slides your panties into his pocket as a souvenir.

He climbs back onto the bed and lays down flat on his stomach between your legs and pulls one of your legs over his shoulder so he has better access. He slowly twists his finger back inside you, while his eyes flicker to your face. “Now, don’t you dare cover that mouth, or I just might have to bind your hands.”

Your pussy clenches around his finger at his words and he moans in response.

“You like the idea of that huh?” He presses the finger deeper into you causing you to moan at the pressure. “You like the idea of me tying you up and using you however I want?”

You spread your legs wider for him and he adds a second finger into your needy entrance, understanding your wordless request. You feel a slight pinch of pain from the addition but it quickly builds into pleasure as his fingers work into you, slightly stretching your tight pussy and preparing you for what is to come.

“I’ll have to keep that in mind for another time,” he continues, and before you can think on the possibility of doing this with him again, he curves his fingers inside you, hitting a sensitive spot you’ve never felt on your own explorations of your body. Your moans become more high pitched as your legs start twitching around his head. He presses his lips to the side of your thigh, his stubble meeting your soft skin. “You seemed like such a sweet, quiet girl at the club. who knew you could secretly be such a little slut?”

Your hands grasp sheets beneath you at his dirty words, and even though you know they’re definitely far from the truth, you can’t help but feel turned on even more by him talking down to you. Maybe you will need another meetup with him to explore some more of these options...

His tongue poking at your folds awakes your from your thoughts and you cry out his name for the first time that night as he immediately circles your clit. He works his fingers over and over that spongy spot inside you while he aggressively laps at your sensitive bud. Your legs were shaking before, but now they’re absolutely quaking around him, your hips gestating wildy so he needs to use his free hand to steady you as he helps you reach your orgasm.

“Come for me, mesh’la.” he growls into your skin before his tongue continues its attack of your clit and you lose it completely. Your eyes squeeze shut and Your back arches as you cry out; elecrictity waves from your core through the rest of your body. Jesse is relentless with his pace as he works you through your orgasm, only pulling his fingers from you when he feels your pussy unclench. His mouth continues exploring your folds, probing at your overstimulated and sensitive entrance as he laps up your release. You feel him shift from the bed and as your heart rate settles you reopen your eyes to the glorious sight in front of you.

Jesse’s removed his lower blacks and his thick, hard member is all you can focus on. He’s partially bent over, looking for something in his utility belt that was discarded with his armor earlier. Once he finds what he was looking for he kneels back on the bed, smirking at you staring at him and his cock. He slowly strokes himself with one hand, while the other brings a small package to his mouth to rip it open with his teeth. He tosses the package over his shoulder and slides the condom over his length and continues to stroke himself as he crawls over you, placing kisses as he makes his way up your body.

You spread your legs as wide as you can for him. You feel his cock swiping against your folds as Jesse guides it with one hand against you. He hovers over you with one forearm bent so he can prop himself up. Instinctively your arms wraps around him, your nails slightly digging into his back in anticipation. He places his head at your entrance and your breath hitches.

“You felt so good around my fingers, practically sucked them in. I can’t wait to feel you around my cock.” He kisses you softly and asks “Are you ready?”

You nod and his hips start to shift. A pinching sensation starts in your pussy as his blunt head forces its way into your entrance. You whimper from the slight pain as he places his hand on your hip to steady you, cursing and resting his forehead against you as he’s overwhelmed by your warmth engulfing him. His thickness feels as if it’s splitting open as he slowly impales you; moving into you an inch at a time just to rock his hips back after every deeper stroke. The slowly drag of his cock tears against your walls, but the pain dissipates with every repeated movement. Your grip on his back, which was vice like as he first pressed into you, starts to relax. Your pained whimpers transform into pleasured moans as your body starts to accept him. Your hips slowly rock into his, meeting the patient thrusts he was maintaining to allow you time to adjust to him. At your new state of ease, he bottoms out in one thrust, pressing himself entirely in you. You exhale in a gasp as he fills you, your body taking in what at first feels slightly uncomfortable as he hits you in places you didn’t know a person could. But the idea of him, his cock, being buried to the hilt inside your most private place is arousing. And the consciousness that he’s taking you in this hidden supply closet on the base awakens a fire in your core that spreads through your body, needing him to do more.

“You can move more, I can take it,” you encourage, your hand leaving his back to cup the side of his face. He nuzzles into your hand, pecking your wrist before he leans down to devour your lips with a kiss, his hips still rocking into you.

“Hold on, mesh’la.” You clench around him at his second use of the foreign word, and before you can heed his warning, he’s pumping into you with increased further. You cry out and your hand braces on his shoulder. He clamps a hand around the flimsy headboard of the cot to ground himself as his pace increases and uses his other arm to mold your body closer to his. His hips slam into yours, echoing in the room. The cot creaks and shakes with every thrust Jesse makes. You moan in tandem with each other, your name rolling off his lips in strings of praise.

“You’re doing so well, being such a good girl...all for me.” He moans into your ear as he nips at your earlobe. You can only moan in response, your legs wrapping around his waist to pull him deeper into you. His breath increases, wafting against your sensitive skin. The pleasure is building up in your body, every pump of his cock edges you closer and closer to another orgasm. His hand leaves the headboard to grip your hair. Jesse’s thrusts falter for a moment, as he lifts himself above you, his amber eyes locked with yours as his strokes slow to a more leisurely pace. You’re confused and frustrated as you were so close to another release; surely this isn’t it? He didn’t come, did he?

Beads of sweat have formed on his forehead, glistening over his tattoo. He smiles at the dazed look on your face, his hand playing with and twirling your hair in his fingers. Without warning, he pulls you up to him and flips you both so he’s lying back on the bed, your hands pressed onto his chest to catch yourself from the sudden movement. He stayed inside you, so the action pushed him deeper into your body, making you yelp.

“I want you to ride me,” he says, his hands moving to massage your upper thighs as you straddle him. He reads the apprehension that must have been visible on your face. “It’s alright, you can take it slow. I know I’m big.” He adds a smirk at the end, making your eyes roll (and prompting him to jut quickly into you as his own response.)

You plant your hands on his toned abs for balance as you slowly grind into him, the simple movement stretching your pussy around him. Tentatively, you rise up and down on his cock, not taking the whole length at once yet but dragging him in and out of you slowly to work up a rhythm. Once you’re comfortable with the motion, you speed up. The bluntness of this angle helps him hit a spot inside you has you keening with pleasure with every bounce on his cock.

His hips thrust up to meet yours, one of his hands grips on your hip and another palms your breast as he’s entranced by you; his mouth is slightly agape as he watches you slide up and down his cock. With him hitting your sensitive spot, you’re quick to build back to the precipice you were at before. You throw your head back, his name rolling off your lips as you beg him not to stop. Both of his hands are now latched onto your hips as he sets a bruising pace, bouncing you on top of him like a rag doll. Your heads rolls back so you’re looking at him, his face contorted in pleasure as he builds to his release. He can tell you’re close by your ragged breaths and the way your cunt is gripping him. Knowing you need just that extra push, he quickly bring a hand to your clit, circling it with his thumb as he demands another orgasm from you.

“Come on baby, cum all over my cock,” He grunts out. You’re already at the edge when he continues, “Come on, my pretty jedi, come for me.”

“FUCK!” You cry out as your orgasm courses through your veins. He knows. Your nails claw at his abs, trying to ground yourself to something as Jesse continues fucking into you. A babble of curses and praises with his name intertwined leave your lips, whether in whimpers or shouts is a mystery to you in your current state. Your body tremors as waves of your orgasm surge through you. Arms weak, you fall to his chest where he grips around your back, tightly pulling you into him as he continues to pound into you. You barely register your name leaving his lips in reverent sighs as his pace becomes sloppy and you feel his cock twitch inside you; emptying his cum into the condom.

You lay there for an unknown amount of time breathing together and still joined; it could have been 5 minutes or 5 hours. Slowly, Jesse shifts you to your side and pulls out of you, eliciting a groan from you at the empty feeling and sudden soreness you feel. He pulls the condom off, ties it and tosses it in a waste bin in the corner. He then surprises you by pulling you to him, his body turning to face you. His hands grazing up and down your curves, eyes searching your face.

“Was that ok? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He asks, his amber eyes soft and concerned.

“It hurt a little at the beginning,” you admitted, “But then it felt really good, you were great.” He laughs at that, but there’s still a question probing your mind. “How did you know - ?”

“That you’re a jedi or that you’re - were - a virgin?” That goddamn mischievous glint returns to his eyes as he sees your shocked look. “I noticed your braid when my hand was in your hair.” He nods at your hair and your hand immediately feels the padawan braid, which you thought you had secured but it appears your activities were a bit too much. You can feel the rest of your hair matted and tangled, you must look like a mess. As if sensing your self consciousness he pull you tighter to him, his nose nuzzling yours as he continues.

“As for...well the experience, I just assumed because I know jedi aren’t exactly known for their sex lives.” He gets a laugh out of you from that.

“Thanks for not judging,” You say, he opens his mouth as if he’s to interrupt you but you cut him off before he has the chance. “I just wanted to know what it felt like, so thanks for that too.”

You lean into kiss him, planning on a light peck as a ‘thank you’, but he meets you with a more passionate kiss that you feel in your stomach,

He pulls back and caresses your face as his eyes twinkle. “Well if you’re ever curious about what anything else feels like, you know where you can find me.”

“Hmmm, maybe I should request some collaborative missions with the 501st once I’m officially a general.” You tease before he kisses you again.

You spend the night, tangled in each others arms on the small cot. Jesse and you even start to explore more of what you might like as you wake up, only to hear an irritated Fives outside the door, who realized the Jesse broke the sanctity of his secret nap room.

[cowboyjen68]

hi jen! this is going to be a wild ride but i need some advice if you're willing. it seems like there's no good outcome, but i just need an outside opinion.

i've been dating my partner (he was agender) since july. we were crushing on each other for 4ish years, and we were so excited to be together, we were sure we'd grow old together, all that. around september-october i came to the realization that i was a lesbian (which to me is non-men, to each their own) after a long time of thinking, wishing i was a lesbian, disliking the idea of ever being with a man, typical finding out you're a lesbian things. we're really open & honest so i asked him if it made him uncomfortable and he said it was okay.

he came out to me as a trans man a week ago, and i'm having a really hard time with it. i love him so much, but the more i think about it the more i dislike the idea of growing old with him if he's a man. there's a reason i realized i didn't like men, y'know? not only that, but i also feel like i'm losing my whole identity and community. but i feel like if we break up i lose my soulmate and i have to reconstruct my current life and my future. it also just feels so stupid to me that something like him being a trans man is changing how i feel about him when he really does hold such a big and lovely space in my heart and my life. i don't know, none of it seems good.

thank you for taking the time to read this. i hope you have a good day/night <3

You were correct. I had to buckle up and read your ask a few times to make sure I was keeping everything in line before I answered. I am going to tell you about my personal experience with my circle of friends back in the 90's and into the 2000's. Most of the trans men I knew dated only women or each other and did not try to distance themselves from their lesbian history or connection, which most of them experienced and acknowledged.

Some sort of floated between lesbian and trans man... seeing lesbian as the biological reality but trans man as the gender identity they most embraced and felt comfortable existing as in the world.

However, things seem to have shifted and many younger trans men either feel no connection to lesbian and even distance themselves from it. Loved one or not, you lesbian connection is important and Embracing it is hard enough the first time and no one has the right to ask you to deny or shed it. Being a lesbian is your reality.

You don't exist to validate or reassure anyone of their gender identity or sexual orientation or the opinions of others about you or your partner.

All that being said, it sounds like he would not ask such a thing of you. Often when two people love each other the labels, identities and descriptors the outside world wants to define them by or hold to certain expectations of, matter not at all or very little.

Ok , lets talk reality. You are not wrong nor alone in having reservations about staying in a relationship with someone who it transitioning to be a man. Even if he only transitions socially and with no medical intervention it is very likely his interactions with they outside world and with his dynamics with you might change and they could change drastically.

If he decides to transition medically there will be changes to his body and even his emotional reactions that can be a lot to take in and deal with. As much as we would all like to believe we are able to always support the once we love not everyone is emotionally or mentally able to stay the course. 

Those that would judge you for not being able or willing to stay in a long term relationship with someone who is transitioning are not your friends. They do not have the right decide what is best for you or for him. Just like in any relationship, it is between the two involved and no one else. 

In the grand scheme of relationships, love does not always last forever and that does not mean it was not real or important. Remember... the length of a relationship does not reflect its value. I love all three women I have ever loved still. We aren’t together and that love moved into other parts of my heart but it still exists. Not being “together” does not mean you have to loose friendship. 

It sounds like you are have wonderful and trusting communication. Keep that. Most importantly and through all of this always, always  be honest with yourself. Don’t  lie to yourself, don’t try to convince yourself you can make it better or it will get easier. I have been there and it never works. If you can be truthful with how you feel and what you are thinking you will make the right decision for your health and well being. 

[zet-sway]

@the-wip-project day 35:

I don't know what today's question is but I gotta write a wall of text about what happened last night because holy shit

I was on the verge of falling asleep and, like I usually do, I decided to hunt for some spicy fanfics to read on my phone. I found one.

All my posts are long but this one is real fucking long. CW for touching on dub-con and injury mentioned in the type of context it probably shouldn't be.

It's time for me to admit that not only am I a oneshot writer, I'm also a oneshot reader. I am drawn to short fanfics. If I click on a chaptered fic, it's (usually) because it's rated E for smut and I'll go in with every intention of skimming it for the spicy bits. I'm not proud of this. I've avoided saying this for years because I don't want to disappoint people who work hard on their very long and well thought out chaptered stories. I have a short attention span, and I know what I want.

But anyway, last night I clicked on a fic with 5 chapters and some amount of words, around 30k? Long, by my standards, but I was tired and I just wanted something to read while I dozed off.

This particular fic hooked me in, though. I still skimmed it, but the writing was so unique in a way that made me writhe with writer's envy and admiration. Whoever wrote this had their own language - nothing borrowed - their own vision.

I guess I should tell the good people who read my posts (ya'll, seriously, thank you) that the fic in topic is called Fault Lines by Recidiva on AO3. I would link to it but uhhhh I may be using my work PC for "extracurricular purposes" right this moment ^^; so maybe when I get home I'll remember to add it.

I skimmed it - like I said above - for the spicy parts. It generally follows the plot of Bioware's canon. Thane begins as possessive and manipulative, likely uncomfortably close to dub-con for a lot of people. He kisses her and knows full well that his kiss will make her willing but intoxicated, and how he will use that to fulfil himself. But as the story progresses, he falls in love. Their relationship is what I'll call "edgy." Both of them are renegades. There's a scene where they get down in the shuttle after a fight and they're both still injured and it borders on downright unrealistic but fuck it, it's fanfic and I bought it. However their relationship develops a certain heart-wrenching tenderness. She asks him what Siha means over and over again, and eventually tells him she thinks "bitch" when he says it. But in that moment they have a playful banter, he knows full well she's probably already looked it up on the extranet, and they fall into bed together. The smut is mind-boggling.

By the time it gets to Shepard's arrest, he's taken up a place on Earth and visits her, breaks into her house arrest. There's a scene where they see each other for the first time in a while, she tells him how much she's missed his mouth and how it's not right how bad she wants him, and wants him bad enough to smother him with affection. She says something to the effect of "if you're looking to die, I'd volunteer to be the cause," implying that her lust is powerful enough to endanger his life. And it was at this moment I realized I fucked up.

It's established that I live in my own headcanon and I'm not burdened with considering the end of Thane's life as part of my fics. And the suspension of disbelief was such that I forgot he doesn't make it. So at this moment in the fic, chapter 4 out of 5, I realized "Oh shit this isn't going to have a happy ending." I skipped to the end right away, I wanted to confirm my fears.

In their final exchange, she asks him to lie to her - something that's repeated in other chapters of the story. I forget what he says, I was reading desperately, but he asks her in return to tell him something true. She kisses him and tells him she loves him, and he breathes his last breath with the lingering tingle of their kiss to carry him to the other side.

I was so entrenched in the depth of their relationship up to that point. The level of fathomless love the author conveyed, unlike anything I've ever managed to write before, but more realistic to my own understanding of love as I've experienced it. Not because they're renegades, but just the selflessness with which they feel, communicate, banter, and make love.

When I read that last paragraph, something inside me broke. That sounds dramatic but that's honestly how I would describe it. It felt like waking up from a night terror, when you bolt up in bed from a dream so bad you immediately get up even if it's 4am because nothing feels real and you're so terrified you have to get up and do something - literally anything to take your mind off it, to ease you back into reality. I put my phone down and stared into the darkness of my bedroom and told myself "it's just a fanfic, no need to get upset." And then I started to cry and I didn't stop for 30 minutes.

My husband was downstairs watching Bohemian Rhapsody and I went down there and wrapped myself around him so tight and cried. Bless this man, from the bottom of my heart - bless him - for his unfathomable kindness. I felt like a fucking fool because I was crying over fanfiction but he paused his movie and just listened while I tried to articulate how it wasn't exactly about the character death, or the characters at all, it was just the writing and how it wormed into my brain so convincingly. I felt the loss like it was my own loss. I am terrified of losing my husband. So many feelings coalesced and I realized one day I may be in that situation, kissing the man I love goodbye for the last time, never to hold him again. I'm at work right now and I'm tearing up because it's so hard.

I tip my hat to the author, but I genuinely wished I hadn't read that fanfic. And isn't it kind of funny after that grandstand I took yesterday about not wanting to write the pain of loss and grief, that I ended up reading it instead and probably fucking myself up just as badly, if not worse, than if I had tried to write it myself?

It gets worse, too. Because it got me thinking about my own writing, and how I could never hope to achieve what that author did. So I sat there crying out my painfeelings while simultaneously feeling like a shit writer and like nothing I put out matters. I got up from the couch, sat down at my PC and picked up where I left off in the Omega DLC in ME3 because video games are great for taking the mind off things. It didn't exactly help with the intensity I'd hoped for, but I managed to fall asleep, by 3am.

Fast forward to this morning. I dragged my sorry ass out of bed 4 hours later and drove to work. By some fucking miracle, no one is here right now except our field director. And I'm stewing in how this one fic really fucked me up bad, reconsidering everything. I feel like I've been put in my place.

So what changed?

Yesterday I posted about how I'm struggling to write a plotline. I know what happens, but I'm not interested in the little bits that tie it together. I want to write the romance. I think there's a way to write the plot and the romance at the same time, but it's damn hard.

I started doing this because I wanted to grow my skills as a writer, and I knew it might be more than I could chew. I'm at that moment now where I'm about ready to give up.

Even if I felt like a shit writer last night (and still kinda do this morning), I know that the stuff I've put out has value. We can't all write these epically tragic smut-romance-renegades-to-lovers tales, we'd all be sad all the damn time. There's a time and a place and - I would argue - even a need for lighterhearted fic out there. There are really no rules. I'm confident in what I know how to do.

But the plot. Fuck it, man. I think maybe I'm trying too hard to be something I'm not. I'm trying really hard to write like other people. I may have mentioned before that I saw a post about how many artists spend their time pining for the skills of others, thinking "wow, when I can draw like that, I'll have made it as an artist." That same post cautioned against this, basically saying you already have your own unique style, it's just harder to see through the lens of your own eyeballs. It's fine to challenge yourself but try to acknowledge what you do that sets you apart already. I feel like I have that something - maybe not to the extent that I wish, but I have something.

So what's the point of the plot? Why do I need to tell my readers how I cured Keprals? I'm asking myself important questions here. I like to think I've come up with ideas that no one else has, but as I said above, I don't read a lot of chaptered fics. I very well may have come to the same ideas as other writers and I'm not even aware of it. I don't know if my ideas are unique but I still arrived at them all by myself.

The challenge here - the thing I'm struggling so much with - is how to put them together with the same elegance of my fellow writers. I'm looking at you, shrios fam (yeah I'm calling you that, yall know who you are). I know I can write words, but it's like I have a bunch of pieces from completely different jigsaw puzzles and I'm struggling to make a new picture out of them. I struggle with the transitions between them.

The point here is I have to find my own way. And I have to stop taking myself so seriously. In fact this level of "seriousness" is one of the things that got me into so much angst over World of Warcraft over the last two years. At least I know how to recognize it.

I have to find my own way. I have my own things that are worth sharing. The author I read last night had a language all their own, and I have a language all my own too. Their wordplay was actually more choppy than I would ever write. I've talked before about how I'm scared of starting too many sentences with pronouns, how I maybe write too many run-on sentences, whatever. This author did that with reckless abandon. It worked for them. So if they can make that shit work, I can make my own shit work.

I have to find my own way.

My most current WIP is Thane and Shepard's first time. I've been working on it pretty nonchalantly because I hadn't intended to publish it until I built up to it. It takes place further into my timeline, and it would probably ruin the point of a slow burn if I put it out there now. There are some really memorably moments in this WIP, and there are other moments that need to be smoothed over as well. I never knew what I'd really imagined for their first time but I think I've mostly developed something that's unique in its own right, and I think will be fun for people to read.

I'm just so fucking torn over what to do with it. I feel guilty for working on it. I should be writing "other shit" leading up to it but I don't fucking want to. I actually wrote probably 2-3k words this weekend, which is a pretty staggering amount by my standards. Some of it was for this smutty WIP and some was for something I just threw together, Thane observing Shepard on Horizon and the emotional toll it takes on her. He's seeing her humanity. I don't know if it's worth it to continue but I wrote a lot of it and the words are more precise than usual for a draft, I don't know. I have so much fucking insecurity. Fuck dude. I want to write this longfic, but I don't want to write it. I want to skim to the spicy bits like I always do.

I am wracked with insecurity, of my own making. I know what I can do but I feel compelled to see this idea through. Somehow I have to find my own way.

TLDR I feel like if I don't publish something soon I'm going to burst and I don't even know what the fuck to work on first and fjslfjsojoiejrj

I would be really down for, like, a bunch of hugs and a bowl of ice cream shared over memes and fanservice.

[theywontletmebeprincipal]

can you give me drowsy headcanons, ramble, or anything please, i am so deprived. do not be afraid to make it super long, the more the better, i just love drowsy chaperone and love to hear other people (plus you’re one of the only people i’ve seen who knows a lot abt it)

ASK AND YE SHALL RECIEVE

I’ll divide this into a few different parts, going from least to most excruciatingly sad :)

1. general headcanons

2. in canon things i noticed and think about daily

3. a full analysis of man in chair’s connections with the drowsy chaperone as an in universe show (trigger warning for abuse ment, alcoholism ment, suicide ment)

SECTION ONE: HEADCANONS

- okay the chaperone is trans I don’t make the rules

- also her name is ambrosia :) she forsook her last name :)

- she’s about 12 years older than janet and kinda hung with janet’s family after leaving her own for a while . essentially she’s a big sister to janet

- aldolpho has some lines where he asks if the bride is big and/or burly and while in canon this is supposed to show he’s kind of a womanizer I like to believe it’s because he was fully prepared to fight her if needed

- speaking of which Of Course janet is ripped she does gymnastics

- my batshit crazy headcanon for this show is that dee dee allen from the prom is a descendant of roman bartelli no I will not elaborate

- is aldolpho one of those bitches with pets that definitely shouldn’t be legal? yessir

- post show kitty becomes a star okay I just want her to be happy

- the “pastry chefs” do discover a love of baking post show and now run a shop along with performing in feldzeig’s follies which might maybe be a front for some crime too

- TRIX DROWSY AND ALDOLPHO WORLD TRAVELING POLYCULE CAUSING PROBLEMS ON PURPOSE

- underling’s name is james I will not elaborate on this either

- show never says what trix does so I’ve decided she’s an explorer. she charts maps and punches colonialists and drags her stupid friends along with her, the only bitch in the show with a braincell

- drowsy was a former vaudeville child star pre transition - she left the business but was a mentor to janet

- I do have a headcanon for mic’s name but in the spirit of every actor who’s ever played him I won’t fucking tell

SECTION TWO: SHIT I NOTICED

- robert refers to himself by full name a lot of the time which is v interesting given he’s named after the writer, bob martin (whose wife is also named janet van de graaf). the real bob martin is like five feet away at all times playing mic

- idk how to describe it but the dynamic kitty and feldzeig (VICTOR felgzeig. we have a name from one (1) line) have when talking to each other is so snappy and funny and good

- aldolpho’s lines in spanish are mostly romantic bullshit but his first one hints that he has/had a wife who, if we’re taking the translation literally, refused to touch him. yeah I’ll bring this up in analysis

- the “pastry chefs” provide liquor for the wedding even though it has absolutely no relevance to their mission of stopping it :)

- drowsy is like. SUPER endearing towards janet and despite her bad social skills it’s super clear she cares a lot about her

- robert speaks fluent french apparently

- everyone says “ew” after aldolpho reveals his affair with drowsy despite her being a certified milf

- the body language of drowsy in the end of the show where she takes mic’s hands and breaks the barrier between reality and fiction is just so good. she was iconic the whole show but I honestly think this final bit is what won beth leavel the Tony in the end

SECTION THREE: OH NO

before diving into the way the drowsy chaperone affects his character, we need to understand what exactly it’s playing off of. to fully understand mic’s attachment to the drowsy chaperone, we need to outline what led him to isolating himself and living in fiction to the extent that he does.

mic’s father left his family at an early age and his semi estranged alcoholic mother was the one who began his love for theatre. mic grew up in a broken household and eventually moved on to land in a one sided marriage, which lasted a few months until he slipped up and expressed his discomfort with the situation, after which he and his wife split. nowadays, he lives alone in his apartment surrounded by records he uses to escape to a better life - his favorite of which being the one his mother gave him, the drowsy chaperone.

symbolism in the drowsy chaperone regarding mic’s life can be split into two main categories - mommy issues and internalized homophobia. there isn’t nearly as much mom symbolism as there is the latter, so I’ll cover that first.

drowsy covers both bases, but she definitely has some undeniable mom symbolism going on. drowsy marries aldolpho and mom dreams of being swept off her feet by a latin lover, both feel they’ve wasted their chances at love, both drink to forget, etc. this is where the idea of the drowsy chaperone being mic’s ideal way for things to work out, a positive parallel, comes into play. given that we don’t hear too much about mic’s mom other than her connections to major life events and the record itself, we can assume they grew apart in one way or another. the key difference is that drowsy finds a happy relationship for herself and retains her bond with janet, unlike what we’re led to assume mom was like.

further elaborating on the drowsy chaperone representing mic’s ideal fantasy version of events is the wedding the drowsy chaperone’s plot centers around. here’s a list of the things that didn’t stop that damn wedding:

- a minister not showing up

- the groom cheating on the bride with the bride

- the bride having a complete mental breakdown

- indirect mafia interference

- direct mafia interference

on the flip side, what little mic says about his wedding indicates it sucked absolute ass. he spent the entire ceremony in internal distress as he went through with a life changing event he, at that point, knew at least a bit that he didn’t want. I think he also implies he had severe diarrhea on the wedding day? it gets worse when you realize mic’s relationship before the wedding wasn’t any good for him either - he was playing along the whole time because it would be cruel not to, right?

throughout the show, mic is pretty clearly shown as an extremely repressed gay man. there are five specific instances that point at romantic and/or sexual attraction to men directly and another moment outside of his commentary that pretty much confirms it if you look a little bit deeper. thus, here is what I propose - to mic, the drowsy chaperone’s wedding plot represents a world where he was able to ignore that part of himself and have a happy marriage with his wife despite all the overwhelming obstacles thrown at him. however, bits and pieces of that internalized homophobia manage to show themselves throughout the drowsy chaperone anyway despite its happy ending. here’s a rundown on a few significant instances:

- by the end of the show, the “pastry chefs”, who had literally been planning to kill feldzeig, have left their life of crime to perform with him. this symbolizes how in mic’s ideal world he would have been able to turn away from what he perceived at the time as living wrongly - his homosexuality

- at the same time, the “pastry chefs” have this line, spoken in regards to janet: “if she gets married and leaves the show... there ain’t no show.” this is a take on mic’s subconscious concern that he might lose himself if he goes on with his marriage pretending everything is alright - of course, as we already know, he doesn’t listen

- “cold feets” is a pretty obvious instance of mic’s hesitation

- aldolpho’s line in spanish regarding the wife who won’t touch him flips to reflect on mic’s treatment of his own ex wife - she was alien to him as a lover, just as aldolpho was to this woman

- janet recalls her meeting robert at a point in the show and states “we spooned, briefly, then he proposed.” though mic’s relationship pre marriage was much longer than that, it must have felt that way to him - just as quick and nonsensical as janet describes

- just as janet is caught in showbiz but has a toxic love for it, so does mic with his own repressed life

- janet has a line in “show off” that alludes to her experiencing harassment/assault: “I don’t wanna be cheered no more/ praised no more/ grabbed no more/ touched no more/ loved no more” , which I believe represents the way mic perceived his intimacy with his wife - labeled as love yet unenjoyable for him

- “I look into his eyes... I get all woozy. and that’s... love, isn’t it?” is another very clear nod to mic’s misconception of love based off the only thing he’s ever experienced, relationships with women he’s had to fake

- this is the part where I tell you the lyrics to toledo surprise are a metaphor for actively suppressing gay thoughts. I’ll just leave you with “if it tries to rise; don’t let it”. these lyrics are not comprehensive enough to make a dish - trust me, I have tried. it’s also notable that they serve a double entendre as instructions on how to beat the shit out of someone, but several lyrics are also directed towards the singer/audience. for example: “it’s a snap/ try it folks/ whip your whites/ split your yolks” is an easy metaphor for the unhealthy mental gymnastics required to repress oneself so wholeheartedly

it’s also worth noting the obvious just for the sake of it - mic copes with all this by isolating himself in a safe spot where he can use musicals to escape and live his ideal fantasy, even if it’s only for a short time. there are plenty of nods to this throughout the drowsy chaperone as well. in “as we stumble along” drowsy notes that “the best that we can do is hope a bluebird/ will sing a song/ as we stumble along” - to mic, musicals are his bluebird. while mic mostly indulges in these fantasies, he knows to a certain extent the sheer amount of time he’s spending in them is unhealthy. the first line of the show is “I hate theatre” and I think that to an extent? he does. obviously mic loves theatre as a concept, that can’t be denied. what he hates is the way he’s allowed it to confine him.

with all that out of the way, let’s move on to the most important moment of the show. if you’ve ever seen the show, you’ll know exactly which scene I’m talking about immediately. I’m referring to, of course, the infamous “l-ve while you can” scene. as janet stands at the alter she asks drowsy for one final word of advice, which is partially obscured by aldolpho dropping his cane. “l-ve while you can.” it’s a simple moment, but mic reveals to us that he’s been agonizing over it for years - did drowsy say “live” or “leave”? it occurs to everyone eventually, whether a couple days after the show like with me, or years after like with bob martin’s replacement on broadway that the most likely answer is that she had said “love while you can”. it’s this moment, when you realize why mic had never seen that as an option, that the drowsy chaperone’s status as a musical within a comedy within a tragedy is solidified. mic had no love in his life - his parents hated each other and he was forcing himself into relationships in which he felt nothing. to him, living and leaving were options, but loving never was. so he locked himself away.

as the final note on the record is playing, all power in mic’s apartment shuts down and the fantasy is ruined. the superintendent arrives and further invades his space, breaking the private sanctity he had built up for so long. she fixes the power and before mic can stop it from happening, the final note of the record plays. and the super recognizes it as a musical. she makes a remark about how much her wife loves musicals and leaves, completely unaware of what she’s just done.

mic sits in silence for a while. and then he begins to sing. gradually, the cast members begin to echo their songs, dancing around him but never touching him. then drowsy appears and sings harmony to mic. and she takes his hands. the show ends with the entire cast, including mic, taking off on trix’s airplane as the curtain falls, drowsy handing mic his record as the plane takes off.

some people interpret the ending as mic committing suicide, finally deciding between live and leave. I don’t personally believe that and neither does writer and original mic bob martin, but it’s still a valid interpretation. the drowsy chaperone’s ending is ambiguous, yes, but not to that extent. no matter what you believe the ending means, it was brought on not by the interruption of the fantasy, but by whatever realization the super’s remark about her wife triggered. as I see it, there are two main options here.

option one - mic realizes he still has time to live and to love. when he was younger the prospect of living as himself was unthinkable to him, yet now he sees that while he was spending countless years alone the world grew. drowsy offers mic her hand, an invitation to finally become what he had admired in her - someone who isn’t anywhere near perfect, but is damn well trying and living life without regret. he accepts.

option two - mic realizes that while he spent years alone the world moved on without him and he’s isolated himself so much from social interaction that he’d no longer be able to make a meaningful connection with anyone outside. so he stays inside instead, never trying, always trapped between live and leave. drowsy offers mic her hand - at least he’ll have a tune to carry with him.

I really want to believe we got option one. I think option one is the intended, really, given mic ends the show with a joyful goodbye to the audience. but the way that the ending is still left open for interpretation makes it so that we can never really know - we as the audience only get to be privy to a small part of mic’s life, and we don’t get the answers we want because at the end of the day they’re irrelevant to us - all we can do is make our own choice.

[et-lesailes]

title: the inside scoop

pairing: chris evans x reader

word count: 2461

summary: you are a reporter with a certain favorite celebrity to interview, and you’re more than excited to talk to him about his latest movie, knives out. little do you know that your massive crush on him is actually requited.

themes: fluff

taglist: @evanstush, @tanyam93, @bval-1, @wonderwinchester, @patzammit, @rohaintahquil, @deidrashouseofpain, @sammyslonglostshoe, @jadedhillon, @bohemian-barbie, @whysparker, @sebastian-i-stan, @sebabestianstan101, @lille-kattunge, @teller258316, @peach-acid, @allsortsofinterests, @xoxabs88xox, @heyiamthatbitch, @cptn-sgrogers, @heyyouwiththeassbutt, @bangtan-serendipity, @troublermalik, @beardburnsupersoldiers, @bookish-shristi, @kind-sober-fullydressed,  @gingerninjaprincess16​, @straightforwardly​,  @denisemarieangelina​,  @frencchfries​, @xlanawriter​, @littlemoistcarrot​, @pottxrwolff​, @arianatheangelworld​, @ifuseekamyevans​, @southerngracela​, @nsfwsebbie​, @rororo06​, @savemesteeb​, @raveviolet​, @inactivewhore​, @hurricanerinwrites​

notes: this was a commissioned piece requested by @straightforwardly​​ ! thank you so much for supporting me and i hope this is everything you wanted :) ** if you are interested in my commissions, check out this post right here !

You’re quickly wrapping up with hair and makeup, looking at your reflection in the mirror trying not to smile so much. You were particularly happy to wake up for work that day, all because of who you’re interviewing today.

You’ve had the pleasure of working with Chris Evans a few times before, and while at first it was his looks that drew you in, it didn’t take long for you to simply fall in love with his entire being. The first time was a little nerve wracking. You had seen other interviews where he seemed a little grumpy, tired, and annoyed with the questions he was being asked, and so you had put as much thought into your own questions as possible. You refused to be like the other journalists and reporters, the ones who simply asked Marvel related questions or how he worked out. It was easy to see that this man had personality much deeper than that, and you were always eager to explore it. You remember how your heart had been pounding right before that first interview, but the second the two of you started talking, it was simply… amazing. Despite only having known him for minutes, you had already felt perfectly comfortable and secure with him, as if you had known him for years. You had heard from others that he had that effect on people, but you never imagined it was to that extent.

Now here you are, getting ready for your fifth interview with him. Another thing you love about Chris is that he actually remembers who you are, each and every time. It always makes you feel special, though you have to remind yourself to calm down- he’s simply considerate and personable, he probably remembers other reporters he’s seen multiple times too.

“Alright, you’re all set. Chris finished up a few minutes ago, he’s probably out there getting seated.” The stylist tells you, and you smile up at him with a nod. “Thank you!” Standing up, you take a deep breath as you inspect yourself in the mirror. You’ve become used to seeing celebrities as a part of your job, but Chris is the only one who has your heart racing and butterflies fluttering. Even interviewing Jason Momoa for Aquaman couldn’t get you as simultaneously excited and nervous as appearing before Chris; you have the biggest crush on him, but at the same time, what can you do about it? Honestly, you’re convinced he probably has a secret girlfriend- it simply makes no sense to you that a man like him is single.

‘Thank God for hair and makeup,’ you think to yourself, pleased with your appearance- it’s not too overdone, but just the right amount, mainly just so the lighting doesn’t wash you out on camera. You gather your cards and take another breath, forcing yourself to calm down before going out to where the chairs are- you were hoping to play it cool, but the second you see him, a wide smile emerges on your face. How a man can look so handsome simply sitting there wearing a long sleeve maroon sweater and fitted jeans while playing around with a water bottle in his hands, you have no idea. “Hi there! Sorry to keep you waiting.” You greet him, and he looks up, immediately grinning. “Oh, hey, Y/N!” To your surprise, he stands up and extends his arms out for a hug, pulling you in for a warm embrace as if you’re a longtime friend he hasn’t seen in a while. You’re shocked but you quickly take the opportunity to hug him back, resisting the urge to inhale how damn good he smells. His broad chest feels so warm and perfect against you, and you swear you could be in this position forever.

“How have you been?” you ask as normally as you can, finally pulling back with a smile and gesturing for him to sit as you do as well. “Oh, same old, same old. I have to say though, I’ve been looking forward to this. I love interviewing with you, you always ask such awesome questions!” he compliments you, and you’re squealing on the inside. “Ahh, now I feel so much pressure!” you joke, though give him an appreciative smile as you cross your legs. “Thank you, though. That means a lot, I really do try to avoid the questions actors seem to hear all the time.”

“I’ve noticed, and I appreciate it.” Chris replies with a smile, his blue eyes sparkling more beautifully than the goddamn ocean. It’s truly overwhelming how handsome he is; you feel as though looking at him is like staring right into the sun sometimes. “I’m glad to hear that,” you say somewhat shyly, but clear your throat, glancing towards the cameraman. “We ready to start?” 

“All good,” he replies with a thumbs up, and you wait for the signal before beginning with a smile. “Hello, everyone! I’m Y/N, and I’m here with Chris Evans today to talk a little about his latest movie, Knives Out!” Chris waves to the camera with a little smile, but almost immediately looks back towards you. “Glad to be here, Y/N.” God, you love when he says your name. ‘Hold it together, Y/N.’ You think to yourself; thankfully, your job basically consists of looking composed on the outside, and so you’ve at least had plenty of practice.

You give a brief summary of the movie to begin, then go into speaking about his character, Ransom. Looking towards him, you tilt your head slightly. “Now I know you played the ultimate golden boy when it came to Captain America, but a lot of your roles in the past have actually had a more twisted and angsty side. Curtis Everett in Snowpiercer, Syd in London, Mike Weiss in Puncture, and especially Bryce Langley in Fierce People. Was it a difficult adjustment going back to playing a more villainous character, or did you have a good time with it?”

“Wow. Even bringing out Fierce People, huh? You really did your research,” he teases, making you laugh softly before he continues to answer, looking thoughtful. “Honestly, it was pretty fun. Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing Captain America and the other lighter, comedic roles are fun too. But being a little wicked and vile is pretty entertaining as an actor. I missed it a lot, and I think I clicked with it again pretty easily.” He pauses before laughing, looking at the camera. “I make that seem like I’m just naturally an evil person. Like, ‘Yeah, it’s so easy for me to be an asshole on camera- because I am one in real life!’” he makes fun of himself, and you can’t help but laugh again as you reply playfully, “Well, you are from Boston, aren’t you? What are they called over there? Massholes?” He blinks and laughs loudly, grabbing his left pec which only makes you giggle to yourself and feel oddly triumphant at the same time. You love making him laugh. “Oh God, you’ve heard that term? Yeah, I’d say that definitely describes me pretty well.”

“Oh, c’mon, you’re not that bad.” You remark playfully, then realize you should probably stop transitioning this interview into flirtatious banter, and so you decide to move on to the next question. “Now for this particular movie, you have a variety of actors and actresses around you- some who are insanely experienced and have been in the industry for decades, and some who, while experienced, are young and only continue to climb upwards in their career. How did you feel, being a part of that? Does it bring back memories, does it influence you, do you influence or guide them?” you ask curiously, continuing, “You’re such an accomplished actor, and this cast was pretty remarkable as well- I imagine there were all sorts of different feelings working with them.” 

Chris nods as he listens carefully, smiling and even looking somewhat intrigued. “That’s a great question. Yeah, I was definitely pretty nervous actually. I really wanted this role, and I was kind of intimidated going into it all. These people are amazing, honestly. I feel like I’ve learned so much from them, from Daniel to Jaeden, and I can only hope that I’m able to be a good influence on other actors as the ones I look up to are to me. It’s interesting that you mention memories, though. Seeing younger actors and actresses always reminds me of myself when I was younger- and then proceeds to make me feel very old.” He laughs, shaking his head to himself. “But watching Jaeden and Katherine, God, they’re great. They have such drive, ambition, and they’ve already made it so far. They’re so fun and I’m pretty sure I was nowhere near as talented as them at that age, but I definitely remember having that energy.” 

You can’t help but smile as you listen to him. You’ve seen in other interviews that he wants to start a family one day, and that he’s excited to be a father. It’s adorable to you that he appreciates younger castmates so much, and even shows respect to them as actors. “You don’t think you still have that energy?” you tease, and he laughs, making an “eh” gesture with his hand. “Sometimes, but I’m telling you, I’ve gotten old. Years of action movies and stunts will do that to you,” he jokes, and you remember that he actually did a lot of his own stunts for the Captain America movies- no wonder he has such nice muscles. “Well, if it’s any consolation, you certainly don’t look old.” You can’t help but reply, but glance back down at your cards, forcing yourself to stay on track. The cameraman, one of your friends, is probably snickering to himself, and you bet you’re going to get quite interesting comments once this video is uploaded. How can you not go back and forth with him though, just a little? He makes it so easy, what with his perfect sense of humor, contagious laugh, and mere eye contact. He makes you feel like a person, a friend, not just some nosy reporter.

After a few more questions (and a teensy bit of flirting), the interview finally comes to an end. “I hope you guys are excited to watch this movie, because I’m telling you, it’s a good one- and I think everyone will be very entertained by Ransom Drysdale.” You remark with a raised brow, looking to him with a soft laugh. “Thank you for coming, Chris!” He smiles charmingly, waving at the camera. “Thanks for having me, Y/N. I had a great time.”

The cameraman signals that he’s stopped recording, but flashes you a little smirk before turning to the crew to discuss the work that needs to happen next. You blush slightly but clear your throat, looking up at him- you hate this part because he’ll have to leave soon, but you’re hoping you can squeeze in just a little conversation before that happens. “Seriously, thanks again. Honestly, you’re one of my favorite celebrities to interview,” you admit with a slight laugh, biting your lip. “You actually answer with… depth.” He laughs too, barely leaning forward. “Oh, yeah? Are you accusing celebrities of being airheads?” 

“Some of them!” you can’t help but answer bluntly, and both of you are laughing again. Now he bites his lip, suddenly looking at you a little more intensely than before- you hope your cheeks aren’t becoming as red as they feel. “Hey, Y/N. Can I ask you something?” You nod a little too fast, your curiosity piqued. “Of course. What’s up?”

“Do you, uh…” he pauses for a few moments before chuckling slightly, waving his hand. “Ah, fuggit, I’m just gonna come out with it.” His Boston accent comes out even stronger than usual as he swears, and you love and hate how attractive it sounds. “Are you dating anyone?” 

Your heart is pounding at this point, and you have to force yourself to respond in a way in which your voice doesn’t shake. “No, I’m not.” You cock your head, holding back a smile. “Why do you ask…?” He seems to look pleased about this, even visibly perking up before suddenly looking uncertain again, laughing awkwardly. “Okay. Okay, um, please tell me if this is crossing any lines. Like, please. Don’t be scared to slap me, even.” He jokes, and now you’re feeling the excitement bubbling up inside, though at the same time your brain is screaming at you not to raise your hopes up. “I have permission to slap you. Noted.” You tease in return, proud of yourself that you still somehow seem to have your wits intact. He laughs, eyes twinkling as he continues, “I know we’ve only had a professional relationship but… I was… kinda hoping I could take you out sometime. Dinner, walking the dog, a movie, ice cream, roller skating- anything. I just… man, I really want to get to know you.” He confesses, and it takes you everything to not practically jump up and down and squeal right there. You’re shocked. You truly never thought that someone as famous and attractive as him would be interested in a mere reporter.

“Chris.” You smile widely, nothing but eagerness in your sparkling eyes. “I would love that.” You blush slightly, adding, “If we’re being honest, I’ve had a crush on you for like, years now.” Chris widens his eyes, scoffing in playful frustration as he buries his head in his hands. “You’re serious? God dammit, I knew I should have asked you earlier!” He looks up at you again, sighing deeply. “I really just assumed you were dating someone. Hell, even married. I mean, look at you, you’re gorgeous, funny, smart…. And you have depth.” He refers to your previous comment, and you laugh, though blush madly as you do so. “Thanks,” you reply softly- you swear you’ve never felt this much happiness in your life. 

His manager comes up behind him, gently tapping his shoulder. “Chris, we should get going. We have another interview to get to.” He blinks, looking somewhat disappointed but nods, looking back to you. “Mind if I get your number, then? We can talk later?” 

You nod, biting your lip delightedly as he hands you his phone as if you’re a child receiving a king sized candy bar. After putting your number in, you give it back- only to be wrapped up in another hug from him. “I’ll see ya real soon,” he whispers in your ear, and you’re blushing even deeper than before, though you nod with a little giggle.

“I can’t wait.”

[dimigex]

Healing Hands - Chapter 11 - YamaSaku

Full chapter available on A03, FF. If you like what I do, feel free to support me on ko-fi!

Sakura watched the sun rise from Yamato's apartment while stifling a yawn that threatened to unhinge her jaw. The man had fallen asleep twenty minutes ago after an evening of textbook withdrawal symptoms. Yamato had spent the night vomiting, shivering on the bathroom floor, and experiencing a state of near constant anxiety that left him unable to rest. Or, maybe the insomnia came from fear of facing his nightmares. Yamato refused to talk about them, and Sakura hadn't pushed. Not that they'd had time between the trips to the bathroom.

Even though Yamato was asleep, it wouldn't be considered restful by any stretch of the imagination. He tossed and turned on the bed, clutching the blanket to his chest like a life preserver. His pale face had grown more sunken with each bout of vomiting. Sweat dappled the man's forehead, either from the recent spell of dry heaves or his body's struggle to regulate itself. Sakura hadn't asked when Yamato ate last, but it couldn't have been recently.

Since Yamato was resting for at least a few minutes, Sakura made her way to the kitchen. She hadn't been lying when she'd said that he was going to feel worse, but some sustenance might help him fight through it. At least, it would if Yamato could keep it down. The remaining beers, a couple of questionable takeout containers, and some wilted vegetables waited in the fridge. The cabinets yielded even less: a packet of rice and three protein bars that were the flavor of honeyed cardboard.

A tin on the back of one shelf caught Sakura's eye, and she shoved the rations out of the way. Four or five packages of teas were tucked away in the corner, a thin film of dust forming on the top. Sakura snorted in amusement at the unexpected find. Somehow, the idea of a man who drank herbal tea and abused alcohol didn't connect in her mind. She scanned the ingredients until she found one that had ginger near the top. The root had natural anti-nausea properties that would help with vomiting once Yamato got it into his system.

Continuing to rummage through the kitchen, Sakura came up with a tea kettle and filled it with water. While waiting for that to heat, she cleaned up the bottle tops and dirty glasses from the previous night. Sakura retrieved the sake and cup from the living room as well, and washed the latter. She considered tipping the alcohol down the drain, but decided that it wasn't her decision to make. If Yamato was serious about getting clean, he needed to take that step himself.

The whistle of the tea kettle pulled Sakura from her thoughts. Before the sound could wake Yamato, she removed it from the heat and filled a mug with hot water. When Sakura dropped the tea sachet inside, soft green and gold unfurled in the liquid. She considered making a second cup, but wasn't sure how long Yamato would sleep. It wouldn't take long to fix one when he woke, so she waited for hers to be ready and carried it to the living room.

As she settled on the couch, Sakura considered the next steps. She still had to determine the full extent of Yamato's struggles. Nightmares, alcohol, and stimulants were a given, but she was fairly certain that it went deeper than that. He had opened up a little bit, but there was more work to do. Yamato would eventually need to talk to someone, after detox. They'd made it through the first twelve hours, but the next seventy-two would be harder.

Sakura had read about addiction and recovery, of course, but not in enough detail to help Yamato as much as she wanted. She would need to stop by her office and pick up some books to help them muddle through. Even without in-depth study, Sakura knew that Yamato needed a bare minimum of a week to fully detox; she couldn't put off presenting her findings to Kakashi for that long.

While telling her former mentor about Yamato's condition should be the easiest part of Sakura's job, he was close to her patient. She couldn't ignore the pained expression on Yamato's face every time that the Hokage's name came up. While Sakura doubted that Kakashi would fault Yamato for his circumstances, she didn't blame the man for wanting to save face in the eyes of an old friend. That meant Sakura would need to be creative while keeping Kakashi away long enough for Yamato to complete his detox.

After Yamato had purged the many substances from his system, Sakura would have to transition him to more traditional therapy. Ino would probably get involved at that point, or someone like her. Sakura wasn't qualified to do a full psychological exam, as much as she wished she was. Chewing on her lower lip, she wondered if Yamato would go along with that part of his treatment. If not, Sakura would be forced to explain everything to Kakashi and let him decide the next steps.

Sakura yawned again, deciding that was a problem for another day. For now, she wanted to curl up on the couch and steal a few hours of sleep. The previous night had been a blur after Yamato woke from his nightmare. The two hours that Sakura had managed before it hadn't been enough. A headache buzzed through her temples like an angry bee, insistent and growing stronger by the moment. She thought there might be a little caffeine in her tea, but it wasn't enough to hold the pain at bay. The ginger hadn't helped the sick feeling in her stomach, either.

If Sakura pushed through, she could get a jump on her plans for the rest of Yamato's treatment. Except, she couldn't leave him alone, not yet. They hadn't talked much beyond the urgency of needing the toilet to vomit or wanting a drink to wash the taste away. Thankfully, the former had grown less frequent toward morning. Yamato's body had nothing left to spend, not that it realized that yet. The dry heaves continued in an almost predictable pattern. It had been at least an hour since the last-

As if on cue, the sound drew Sakura from her stupor of half sleep. Sighing, she drained the rest of her tea and carried her empty cup to the kitchen. The water was still warm enough, so Sakura poured another for Yamato. She found him on the bed after his latest spell of trying to empty his stomach. The man cradled his head in his hand, groaning against the pain rampaging through it. When Sakura stepped into the room, Yamato blinked at her through bleary eyes. "You're still here."

Sakura hummed in agreement and held out the cup. "The ginger will help settle your stomach until I can get you something stronger."

Yamato closed his hand around the cup without looking at the murky liquid. "Something stronger?"

The beginnings of hope stirred in Yamato's voice as he lifted the tea to his lips. He paused halfway and made a face, lowering it back to his lap so quickly that some of the liquid splashed over the rim of the cup. Apparently, his body didn't like the idea of calming tea in place of the alcohol it wanted. Sakura settled on the edge of Yamato's bed. "If you level with me about the substances you've been using and the amounts, I can find something to make the detox easier. But, you have to be honest. Prescribing the wrong thing is as likely to kill you as help you."

Yamato set the cup of tea untouched on the nightstand beside him and propped himself up against the headboard. He looked worse than Sakura had ever seen with pale, sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes. She sighed. "You're already having tremors and nausea, and they're not going to get better. In a few hours, your body will start trying to regulate itself without alcohol. Heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature will spike. You won't be able to sleep or shut down your body's hyper awareness of everything. All of that is just the alcohol detox. If there's something else—"

"I know," Yamato growled, voice rough as unpolished stones. "I told you this wasn't the first time I'd been through it."

Sensing that sarcasm would only make Yamato shut down further, Sakura held her tongue. If he already knew the hell that was detox, why was he putting his body through it a second time? She raised an eyebrow to indicate her curiosity, but remained silent. Yamato shrugged as if the words that came next were inconsequential. "I wasn't much older than you are now. Team Ro had been on a string of bad missions. I'd watched four teammates die in the course of two weeks, one of them by my command."

The words didn't match the empty expression on Yamato's face. Sakura had no idea what to say to the revelation, so she remained silent and let him finish. When the moment stretched into discomfort, he shrugged. "Kakashi pulled me back from the edge, helped me through detox, and covered for me with the Sandaime."

Understanding bloomed in Sakura's chest, followed swiftly by pity. "That's why you don't want to tell him. You don't want him to know that it happened again."

"Something like that." Yamato closed his eyes and tipped his head against the wall. Sakura was struck by how young the man beside her looked. It was more than the casual grey t-shirt and navy sweatpants, more than the lack of armor. There was something deeper, something about the vulnerability of Yamato allowing her to see him this way. If their situations had been reversed, Sakura wasn't sure she would have let him stay.

The man continued without opening his eyes. "The last one was a month long bender that I barely remember."

As the pieces began to fall into place, Sakura realized that she didn't like the picture that was forming. "And, this time?"

Yamato sighed, soft and reluctant. "The better part of two years with varying degrees."

Sakura fought to keep the surprise from reaching her face, but it didn't matter. Yamato didn't look at her; he kept his eyes shut as he made the confession. Her stomach sank. The man had been completing S-rank missions for two years while his life fell apart around him. The timeframe bothered her, but she couldn't put her finger on why.

Yamato cracked one eye open, gauging Sakura's reaction. "I used soldier pills to keep from sleeping for days at a time. When I crashed, I still had nightmares, so I drank until I passed out. It was functional."

"Functional," Sakura repeated. Her mind reeled at the word. "Functional right up to the point that you gave yourself a heart attack? How many were you using?"

To Yamato's credit, he didn't flinch away. "Enough to get the job done. One or two at first, a handful more recently."

Sakura sat stupefied, trying to understand how a man who she knew to be intelligent and conscientious could think that taking a handful of pills was a good idea. A single soldier pill was potent enough to keep a shinobi on their feet for two days before their body succumbed to exhaustion. Sakura couldn't begin to imagine the damage that five or more of the tablets could do. Except, she could. The evidence had been staring at her in Yamato's elevated blood pressure and heart rate, in his moodiness and inability to sleep. Nausea tightened its grip on her stomach.

Forcing out a breath, Sakura inclined her head. She didn't trust herself to thank Yamato for sharing that information, not yet. Wanting to confirm a theory that had been brewing in her mind, Sakura reached out and caught Yamato's wrist. He flinched back, but he didn't pull away. Nodding to herself, Sakura pressed her fingers against the man's pulse point and counted the beats. She frowned at the number. "You didn't have time to regulate your heartbeat that time, did you?"

Yamato exhaled an almost laugh that neither confirmed nor denied Sakura's theory. The rapid rise and fall of the man's heart rate during his stress test suddenly made more sense. Sakura wanted to hit him, to pummel him for using Anbu tricks to mess up her results, but she linked her fingers together and counted to five under her breath. She stifled the fear that he'd taught the trick to anyone else. One problem at a time. "Are you taking anything else?"

For a moment, Yamato considered the question. Sakura braced herself for another revelation, but he shook his head. "No, nothing else."

"Good." Sakura nodded and pushed to her feet. "Here's what we're going to do. If you're serious about getting better, you're going to dump out the rest of your alcohol, then turn over the soldier pills you have left."

Something dark flitted through Yamato's eyes, but after a moment, it passed. Struggling to his feet, he stumbled toward the dresser. Yamato opened one of the drawers, lifted out a pouch of pills, and dropped them into Sakura's palm. He slid another bag from a second drawer, then retrieved more from the backpack that leaned against the wall. Sakura followed the man to the bathroom where a package nestled in a corner of the medicine cabinet. The final bag hid on a high shelf in the kitchen.

Sakura didn't comment on the number of pills that Yamato had secreted around his apartment. It wouldn't help anything. Getting rid of the tablets seemed to give the man enough sense of purpose to hold the nausea at bay for a time. He paused by the bottle of sake that Sakura had moved to the counter. She waited in silence, letting him wrap his head around throwing out the alcohol that had been his comfort less than twenty-four hours before.

Yamato spun the top off of the bottle and tipped it over the sink. The liquid splashed into the drain, it's unmistakable scent flavoring the air. He lingered after the alcohol disappeared then sighed and emptied the beers in rapid succession. "Okay, now what?"

"Now," Sakura answered, turning the tap on to wash away the sticky residue of alcohol, "you're going to go take a shower, if you feel up to it. I'm going to the hospital to get a few things taken care of, then I'll be back to help see you through the worst of this."

Yamato let the counter take the majority of his weight as he turned to Sakura. "I'll be fine if you—"

"I'll be back in two hours at the most," Sakura interrupted. Yamato's lips pressed into a line that could have been annoyance or thankfulness as he nodded. "Try to sleep if you can, or do something to take your mind off things. I'll be back soon."

(the rest of the chapter is available on Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net (linked above))

[pagesandmagic]

folklore || mad woman

description: she left the outer banks two years ago and now she’s coming back for the summer. they haven’t seen each other since she skipped town without telling him. they’ve both hurt each other, so how do they come back from heartbreak?

warnings: swearing, angst, S L O W B U R N.

series based on songs from the album ‘folklore’ by taylor swift.

author’s note: hiiii two parts in one week?? who am i??!! thank you for all the love on the last post! this one was shorter than i expected, but i’m also not a super long writer so i guess it fits, haha! anyways, this part takes place right before she’s skipped town, so just keep that in mind. 

Part One (the 1) | Part Two (this is me trying)

her.

summer in the outer banks was unlike anything else. everything seemed brighter. the world was more carefree, and while each pogue had a job, the days seemed to last forever. 

it was the last summer before everyone was splitting up. everyone had some kind of plan for the end of summer and what they would be doing the next year. you were still a little lost, not really knowing what came next. all you knew was you wanted to spend as much time with JJ, and if that meant holding off on going to college for a year to be with him, then it was what you were going to do. your family insisted it was a bad idea to change plans for a boy, but JJ wasn’t any boy. there had always been a connected between you two. it took you both years to realize it, but when you did, it was unlike anything you had ever experienced. 

“yo, Fin,” Kiara threw a towel in your direction, taking your mind away from the blonde haired boy that always seemed to find his way into your mind. 

“what?” you shrugged your shoulders. Kiara’s father had given you a job at the wreck the minute you turned 16. he was desperate for help during the busy season, and you were desperate for money for a car. it worked well and you were thankful you didn’t have to work at any of the country clubs and be around kooks more than you already were. it was honestly exhausting to keep up. 

“what are you and JJ doing tonight?” Kie smirked, wiped down the table next to yours. 

“I didn’t know i was doing anything with JJ tonight.” 

“seriously? you’ve slept at the chateau every night for the past four nights.” she stood up straight, pointing at you, “ and i know you’re doing way more than sleeping,”

“hey now,” the topic of your sex life was nothing you wanted to talk about with anyone. you were more private about that part of your relationship, although you were sure JJ was not. “i’ll tell you right now that i did not have sex every night.” 

“oh, so only three of the nights.” Kie smirked. 

“and one morning,” you both fell into a pit of laughter as Kie made her way to the back of the restaurant to clock both of you out for the day.

you threw your bag over your shoulder, your stomach turning not knowing what to expect from the dinner JJ had planned for you. uncertainty never made you nervous before, but from the sound of his voice on your phone call earlier in the day, there was something different. 

JJ. 

he fucked up and he knew it. he also knew this dinner wasn’t going to make up for the news he was going to tell her, but he could only hope. 

he wiped his palms on his shorts before he packed away the last of their dinner into his backpack. he knew she loved the simplicity of eating meals on the dock over the ocean. if he was going to break this kind of news to her, he wanted it to be in a calming place. but he knew that no matter how many ways he tried to make the situation better, he would still be breaking the worst possible news and it wouldn’t end well.

she knocked on the door of the chateau, “JJ?” her voice echoed through the empty house and he could hear her footsteps as she made her way to the kitchen. he felt as if his heart was in his feet.

she turned the corner as his gaze met her figure. she was wearing a green polka dot skirt that stopped just before her knees, with a worn in white t-shirt and white sneakers. her hair was curled and her makeup was minimal. “god, you’re gorgeous.” he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her forehead. he breathed in the smell of her shampoo and he could feel his breath tremble thinking about the many terrible ways this night could go. and expecting them all.

“a picnic?” her voice piped in. he turned to look at the backpack, one hand staying steady on her hip. 

“all of you,” he said, kissing her temple. he was scared that he was going to lose her. out of all the girls he had been around in his lifetime, she was the one he wanted to keep. she wasn’t a typical beautiful. the outer banks was filled with girls who just cared too much. about what they looked like, who they hung out with, what their life looked like on their social media. but she was so different. over the years, she had grown into her own. her body was unlike the other girls with it’s curves and marks, but she had learned to love it. the shy girl he once knew, had turned into a woman who stood her ground in social situations, but knew when she needed to take some time a part from others. they just fit together. moreso, when they came back together after their one (and only) breakup two months ago. 

spending the last months of their senior year a part was good for both of them. they had grown up together and she never wanted to be dependent on a man, and she had become like that with JJ. while he knew they both craved more during this time, it felt like the right thing to do before they graduated and transitioned into adulthood. but there was one night of it that he regretted more than he could have ever thought. 

they had both agreed to see other people if they wanted. but neither really had any interest in anyone and knew that their break was most likely only temporary. she decided to focus on school and spending time with the pogues. JJ didn’t have an interest in any other girls than her. except the one night he mixed a little too much alcohol and a little too much weed together. 

her. 

the dock was your favorite place. growing up in the outer banks, your life was filled with the ocean and everything that came along with it. the water had always been your happy place, most of your days were spent there. 

you both finished the dinner JJ prepared, but for some reason your stomach was continuing to turn. you two had spent plenty of nights together eating on the dock so you knew it wasn’t from that. but you couldn’t shake the feeling as the night drug on, that this wasn’t a normal date. 

“you know i love you, right?” JJ spoke quietly after you both had come down from a fit of laughter. you never got tired of hearing those words come out of his mouth. 

you nodded and grabbed his hands across the small picnic table, “of course i do. i love-”

his words cut straight through your own, “Inez is pregnant.”

in three simple words, it felt like everything was being take from you. the entire future you thought you had with JJ was ripped apart. you loosened your grip on his hands, and slowly brought them back into your lap. unsure of what to say, unsure of what your next move needed to be. 

it was like something washed over your body in an instant that brought a certain warmness through you. was it sadness? was it anger? maybe even rage? it all didn’t seem real. JJ’s lips were moving, but his voice was coming in and out, the blood was rushing to your head. you could hear snippets of his voice, “mine, i think...it was one night...i was really faded...Fin?” 

you thought flames would come out of your mouth if you spoke, holding back all the things you wanted to say. you grabbed your bag and started walking down the dock. not sure where to go or what to do. all you knew was that JJ Maybank had unleashed something inside you that you didn’t know you had: madness. 

taglist: @jjmaybankwildtimes @hannahhh-marie​ @sloaneemily​ @coloradogirl07​ @bibliophilewednesday​

[vanilla-blessing]

Stray; or, The Paradise and The Palisades

A personal essay about Wolf’s Rain by Karin Malady (@SweetNAwful)

Rewatching a series has always spoken to my sense of time. Most of the time it seemed pointless - why watch something again when I could experience something new. To me, it was more exciting that way than going through the same emotional loop. Repeating a series over and over was the same as being trapped in the past. But, over time, I lightened up on that. I watched some of my favorite series a second time, often with a friend who hadn’t seen it before. Not only did having a fresh pair of eyes expand my view of the work but so did my accumulated experiences. After years had gone by, I’d realized I was a different person than when I first saw it. I had more of a grounding point for my experiences and knowledge. So, I was getting to see something I loved in new ways, which was important to me in itself. Last year, one of my girlfriends and I were trying to think of things to do to spend time together, as we were separated from each other by distance and a pandemic. This led to a weekly anime night of ours where we started by making our way through some of the Adult Swim sci-fi and cyberpunk shows. We started with Ghost in the Shell and moved on from there. A lot of these shows I only remembered in flashes - glimpses of random episodes fluttering through my childhood memories. I didn’t really understand how much of a connection I had with Wolf’s Rain until we got to it.

There was always something mysterious about the Adult Swim anime block. The promotion of these shows often involved cryptic phrases and stylish clips. When I was around ten, I would watch random episodes of things with my dad. I would see bits of Fooly Cooly, Inuyasha, Wolf’s Rain, Cowboy Bebop, and so many others out of context. I was deeply drawn in by the style of it all. The sense of space and action. The skeletal remains of Toga, Inuyasha’s father, loomed over the landscape much like mine did over me - giant. He was very important to me at that time in my life, even though he was someone who often scared me. My mom had just been in an accident and came back different. Something - maybe the result of an injury - changed and she didn’t seem like the same person anymore. It scared me, I felt like I lost her. So my dad got a lot of my attention - he was a jolly, funny, talkative. But he could also take things seriously and talk about deeper subjects. Not that it was all good times with him but he was more familiar. It didn’t make me sad in the same way. When my brother and I were allowed to stay up late, we watched Wolf’s Rain with him.

This is basically my father.

There was something about Wolf’s Rain that drew my dad into it. His eyes lit up so much more when he was explaining the story compared to Inuyasha or other anime. A pack of wolves wandering a desolate future, searching for Paradise - a place foretold in myth where all wolves will be free. I honestly don’t know why that idea appealed to him so much. Was he also a wounded wolf looking for Paradise? His life was told to me through a series of bar fights and near arrests. His actual arrest, his childhood, these are huge blanks in the story he told about himself. All I can really be certain is that he hurt a lot and that he never learned what to do with it. When Wolf’s Rain ended, he was disappointed with it. I don’t think he wanted the finality of death from the show. It could be because that hurt he carried was a threat to his life. I can never really know at this point in time. As I got older, our relationship got worse and recognized his abuse. I stopped talking to him after my parents got divorced and long before I started transitioning. Sometimes, however, I think back on the strange and mysterious feeling of watching Wolf’s Rain with him. There was something about the glow of the screen late at night, my dad sitting in his La-Z-Boy as a giant, lit by the blue of the TV screen.

Naturally, this means that revisiting something you’ve already seen is a form of time travel. Just thinking about the first time I experienced this anime has pulled me back into the past. But it also creates a bridge to the present as well. On my second watch, I was struck by the ways the anime could also relate to queerness. The way they form a pack and have to pass as humans to survive gave me a sense of found family and transness. And obviously Tsume is a leather daddy. We don’t see this directly in the story, of course. But, there is a possibility space where I can allow these characters to become queer. The way they are rejected can become my rejection and the way their search for safety, for a world that accepts them, can become my very same search.

Nothing will ever convince me he is straight.

Quent Yaiden stumbles around a broken world drunk and hateful. He is a bastard carried by sentimentality alone. This is a man who hunts wolves for revenge, after he believed a pack of wolves set his home town on fire and killed his family. A fire that was actually caused by the Noble’s soldiers. He spends his days wallowing in his pain, ignorant to the truth. However, he isn’t entirely alone as his trusty pet dog, Blue, guides him. It is because of him, people like him, that even brief visitations to the past become scary. If I linger here too long, I might become him. Of course, most people don’t want to become their parents. I see through Quent the ways my father had been swallowed by the world and how he could be a person who hurt me as much as he did. The truth of Quent’s tragedy isn’t the only thing obscured from him - Blue herself is half wolf. She gets scared he might find out and hid a precious part of herself from someone she cared deeply for, out of the fear that he would reject her if discovered. And he does - but this rejection is replaced by acceptance on his deathbed. I don’t know if it’s possible for me to forgive my father. Again and again, we’re told Paradise is for wolves. And Quent isn’t a wolf.

He is much better at drinking than he is hunting.

What does Paradise mean for me? Would it be a happy family, to correct my past? Or would it be something I built for myself? What Paradise was my father looking for? I’m glad that I can acknowledge his pain better, and see who he was a little clearer, even if I don’t like that person. Yet, at the same time, I don’t feel any closer to any answers. Maybe if I replayed the events again and again I could come to some new conclusion? Perhaps - and I say this treading the fear of revelation - perhaps he has already been trapped in his past, behind a palisade, and inventing a Paradise was simply the way he could escape from that. I’m not sure I will ever know. The most I can do is try to imagine a world in which people can heal and in which I can heal, and then hope to find my True Paradise. 

[dawning-games]

How would the ROs describe their relationship to their own genders and the concept of gender in general? Because as a trans person, it's definitely my experience that even people of the same gender oftentimes experience their gender very differently

An excellent question!

Malcolm, as a very feminine trans guy, is very confident about where he sees himself. He doesn't see any particular need to change himself, and what social dysphoria he does experience, he meets by being louder about whatever is on his mind. However, before he figured out all this Gender Nonsense as he'd put it, he was much more uncertain and dressed more masculine out of self preservation. He sees gender as a very helpful set of boxes you can put yourself in, but much like a cat, if you try to force him in a box you are liable to come away with a few extra holes in your skin

Scarlet-Be-Thy-Coat is much less certain about all this stuff, which is partially due to not remembering much of anything. However, Scarlet is pretty sure that male or female or some other gender don't fit very well, and is still on the hunt to find the word or words that do fit just right. In the meantime, Scarlet is pretty sure gender is more trouble than it's worth, and uncomfortable most of the time

Twelve is sort of in between these two places, as well as between words. Sometimes Twelve likes calling themself genderfluid, other times bigender seems closer. This is all very frustrating for someone who likes having strict, rigid definitions for things in xir life, and can be a source of anxiety. Twelve gets dysphoric in both the physical and social sense pretty regularly, and is not a fan. All that said, Twelve finds comfort in having proper words and definitions and labels for themself and others

As a trans woman who has cast away her original body so that she never has to deal with misgendering or being thought monstrous because of "an accident of birth" as she would put it ever again, it is pretty clear that Kreesh has had difficulties with gender. She is very firm that she is a woman, though came fairly late to it, in her forties. Before that, it was something she didn't feel comfortable acknowledging or approaching, so she didn't. These days, she is much more comfortable with herself and her place in this world she has found herself in, as well as gender as a whole. Though admittedly, she still has quite a bit of resentment towards her past self, but that's a whole other can of worms. I can say that she did transition in life, finding comfort in it

The King is also a trans woman, though she wound usually simply call herself a woman unless discussing the subject with someone she trusted. She knew she was different from a very young age, but set that aside until her late teens due to having much bigger concerns in her life to deal with. She finds gender useful for the purposes of knowing how to define herself, but does sometimes think that everything would be much easier if people were allowed to find out who they were inatead of being labeled at birth. She can best be described as simmering with low level frustration about it, but unless something comes up to make her think about it, she can forget it for days at a time

The Splintered is a cis man, but he had a period where he did a lot of self examination about it. If pressed, he would say that he's still open to the idea of being proven wrong or future reexamination, but just now he likes where he is. He feels a lot of empathy for trans/nonbinary people, not least because Twelve often talks to him about it, or more accurately, rants

Lichtenberg would currently describe himself as a cis man, finding the label helpful. However, his relationship to it is kind of more complicated than that would imply. He also went through some self examination, but his eventual decision about it was that he usually feels like a human being, one who is excited enough at the prospect of learning and experiencing new ways of being that he wouldn't mind trying out other words to see how they feel

[yubsie]

Something in the Air

Summary: Hera has her own ways of knowing how Kanan is feeling. Or, five times Kanan's pheromones were a problem and one time they weren't.

Notes: Okay. So this one actually seems like I should explain myself.Victory's Price casually mentioned Hera detecting human pheromones in the middle of a Zoom meeting. This has certain implications. And then Rogue Podron screamed "Fanfic prompt! Yubsie!" in the middle of an episode.Never underestimate my willingness to write fanfiction on a dare.

Rating: T

AO3 Link: Should you prefer

1. Attraction

Hera knew that Kanan was attracted to her when she invited him on board. She thought she knew what she was getting herself into.

She wasn’t quite ready for him being attracted to her when all the air circulated within the ship. Maybe she could improve the filters in the life support system. She hadn’t really thought about human pheromones when she was setting the standard parameters.

The flirting was one thing. It was entertaining enough some days, even if she had far too much work to do

It was the realization that he was still attracted to her when he  wasn’t  flirting that was going to drive her up the wall. They were just supposed to be eating breakfast. The basic porridge accompanied by their vastly different mugs of caf might just be the least sensual meal imaginable.

And yet, every pheromone screamed that he was thinking about her.

She wanted to say something. But what could he do? It wasn’t like he had conscious control over any of this. She could send him to take a shower, but that wouldn’t help for long.

The fact that he wasn’t flirting meant he was trying to avoid turning mealtime into an awkward situation. He couldn’t help that every pore betrayed where his true attention lay right now.

“We’ve got a job today.” Hera took another bite of the porridge. Maybe if she just focused on how incredibly beige the cooked grain was it would get both of them back down to a sensible level.

“What are we looking at?”

“Imperial fuel delivery. Should be enough to keep us flying for a few standard months and still pass on plenty to my contact.” And, of course, the further advantage of making life just a little bit more complicated for the Empire. A delivery that made this much of a difference for them was barely a rounding error to the Empire as a whole, but they were particular about these sorts of things. The local despot would still have some accounting to do for this. It might slow him down a bit.

“We hitting them in orbit?”

Hera shook her head. “We’ll be taking the Phantom down. They’ll be vulnerable in transit.”

In open air. She hadn’t planned it for this reason, but she was going to take advantage. Set the scrubbers to run an extra cycle

2. Discomfort

There weren’t many good places for a clandestine meeting on this planet—none of their usual seedy cantinas or crowded marketplaces. The spaceport wasn’t the bustling sort of place where they could do a drop in passing.

But the Empire did so like building its museums. They had a vested interest in spreading around their particular version of history. The local populace was encouraged to visit to learn the splendor of their overlords. And conveniently enough for people who were barely scraping by as a very small rebel cell, admission was free of charge for all to come learn.

She didn’t need to pick up the pheromones to know that Kanan was uncomfortable. She’d done her best to arrange the meeting as far from any Empire Day-related exhibits as she could but... it wasn’t that big a museum. He hadn’t said much when the date crept by last month, but it troubled him enough to know this was a bad idea. Who in the galaxy didn’t have their share of scars if they were old enough to remember that time?

“If you’re not feeling well, I can do this one on my own.” Having a crewmate had definitely made a lot of things go smoother, but she’d done missions on her own before. She could get out of this situation if she had to.

“No, I want to have your back. I’ll be okay.”

Every subtle signal in the atmosphere said otherwise. She was getting used to ignoring every indication that he was attracted to her. That managed to fade into generic background radiation for their lives. This feeling wasn’t just new, it was more intense. “Look, I can read you too.” She didn’t know how often he actually used the Force for that. Certainly it had been months since she’d seen him do anything flashy, but pheromones only told her so much.

Kanan sighed. “I’m not saying I like it here. But I’m not going to leave you hanging.”

“Then I’m going to need you to actually focus.” It wasn’t the first time she wished she could just send him to take a long shower. That was an even less practical solution than usual

“Let’s just get in and out.”

Hera scanned the room again, looking for the most boring exhibit possible. There had to be something full of dull economic numbers instead of numbers that turned painful events into dry figures.

The glorious cabbage industry of this planet was just what she needed. She rested a hand on his elbow and pointed him over. As an added bonus, it wasn’t very popular.

“Don’t look at any of this. Just look at me.” Maybe she could get him back to being attracted to her. That seemed to be more or less his default state. Change the balance of the feelings. “Talk to me. About anything.”

3. Anger

The seedy cantinas had problems of their own, but she was used to them. She wouldn’t have needed pheromones to be on guard against the men in these places. She knew what they saw her as. She could handle them, she’d handled them plenty of times.

It was nice to have someone else along with her though. Sitting at a table and discussing podracing while waiting for the contact to approach was a definite improvement over sitting at the bar and fending off advances.

“It’s all about having the engines perfectly in tune.” It wasn’t Kanan’s preferred form of entertainment, but he was managing to say something that sounded like he actually paid attention and wasn’t just choosing a topic of conversation that sounded innocuous to prying ears.

He was wrong, but that was perfectly acceptable in a cover story. She wasn’t going to let him just keep being wrong, though. It wouldn’t look good, for one thing. “It’s about the pilot. Give a novice too much machine and they won’t be able to handle it.”

The two humans who approached weren’t interested in subtlety. “I like a girl who knows her racing.”

Hera suppressed a sigh. This might be the usual setting for meeting their contacts, but these situations were always going to be annoying. “Not interested.” She’d been dealing with this her entire adult life and for a few years before that. Every Twi’lek girl was warned about it from a young age.

She didn’t need the stink in the air to tell her what brought them over to this table. Just eyes to see the way they both leered. “Come on sweetheart, you can do better than him.”

“Not interested.” Telling them he wasn’t along like that would only make them more persistent.

“Ah, come on. We all know you girls are just looking for the right man. Place like this, you’re looking at him.”

She was ready for most of what she faced in a cantina like this. But she suddenly realized this hadn’t happened since Kanan had joined the crew. She suddenly detected a set of pheromones behind her that she’d never felt from Kanan before.

She’d experienced Kanan irritated plenty of times. But never angry.

“I’m just here for a drink. Which I have.” She rested a hand on Kanan’s arm. She didn’t think he’d do anything rash but.... this was new. Very new.

“I’ll get you a drink.”

Like she was ever going to take a drink from a strange man in a seedy cantina. Twi’lek girls were taught about that one from the time they could speak. They had to be.

She was used to it. Kanan wasn’t. “The lady has her drink.” She could see his hand twitch into a fist from the corner of her eye.

She should have prepared him better for this. Made a plan. Because right now, what she was sensing in the air was enough to make  her  want to punch someone. That would just mean leaving without the information. She kept her hand on her drink (just good sense) and pulled closer to Kanan. “I’ve got this,” she whispered.

They were particularly irritating, but she just needed to fend them off until their contact showed. That meant making sure she and Kanan weren’t the ones the bartender wanted gone. She’d need to get another drink eventually just to make it worth the owner’s while, but she’d navigated this situation countless times.

“You’re really picking him? There’s better quality humans all over this place.”

It shouldn’t matter if she was picking Kanan or picking to sit and drink in peace. But she needed them gone.

The sense of anger wasn’t going down. Maybe she could solve two problems at once. She slipped into Kanan’s lap, draping herself over him in an altogether familiar way. She felt the ripple of surprise through his entire body at the move. “I really am.”

Kanan pulled her drink closer to them. Very thoughtful. And she could be pretty sure he wasn’t about to start any barfights with her sitting on top of him.

“If you don’t mind, we’re busy.”

There were other pheromones in play now, but maybe she didn’t mind those ones so much after all.

4. Fear

They spent so much time getting into fights in dark alleys. It was one of the true constants of their relationship, from the very beginning. It should almost start to feel routine.

All they could do was duck. Fire. Duck again. Get another shot off.

Hera would have preferred the handoff go smooth, but a lot of things happened that didn’t necessarily align with her preferences. She could still keep the situation under something resembling control. Or at least she could keep her head.

The actual job was already done; that should count as a win. They didn’t have any suspicious packages on them. By all rights, they shouldn’t even be the interesting targets right now.

And yet. They were the ones getting shot at.

“I don’t think these guys like us, Spectre One.” They didn’t look like they were Empire. Not directly, anyway. So maybe they’d personally annoyed them somehow.

“Getting that impression, Spectre Two.” Kanan rolled behind a large trash bin and kept firing back.

They needed to find a way out of here. Hera backed as far behind cover as she could manage and pulled out her commlink. “Chop, we need a pickup five minutes ago!”

Chopper warbled some rude comments about the nature of linear time, but she trusted him to get over there as fast as actually possible.

Meanwhile, their opponents kept closing in. Did they just want them dead, was that what this was about?

Bounty hunters would want them alive. There weren’t any specific bounties on them last any of their seedier contacts had heard, but the Empire would always pay to get their hands on rebels. People who couldn’t cut it up against the big name targets might want to go to this much trouble.

Or they could have just stolen the cargo and gotten a much easier payday. Their plan didn’t make a lot of sense, and yet it was still making things incredibly difficult. “Persistent.”

They could analyze the motivations once they survived this.

A blaster bolt flew way too close to of her lekku and she had to dive on top of Kanan to avoid it. For all the flirting she never had to worry about him taking anything the wrong way in a fire fight. They both knew where they stood when they were in mortal peril. Everything got simpler then.

So she wasn’t expecting any pheromone spikes, no matter how cozy they’d just gotten. He did have  some  sense of the right moment and this was about as far as it could get from that.

They’d had plenty of time to get used to being around each other since Kanan first came on board. Kanan attracted was just a reality now.

Kanan afraid was brand new. “I’m okay. We’re both okay.”

She moved quickly, shooting back at their charming pursuers. She tried to push everything else out of her mind.

Chopper needed to hurry up.

5. Attraction, Again

The seedy cantinas were never a particularly pleasant experience, but at least they were familiar. Hera knew what they were getting into, knew the dangers and how to blend in.

These fancier events were foreign territory for both of them. The people who attended them were just as dangerous as the ones at the seedy cantinas, but they sparkled. They would still kill you if you were in their way, but they were never quite so honest as just a blaster in a back alley.

At least in the seedy cantinas, she got to wear comfortable clothes. She belonged in a flightsuit. Too bad that would make it look like she was some sort of rebel interloper here to cause trouble at the party.

Which was ridiculous; she was just a rebel interloper here to collect an intelligence drop at the party.

Fancy people at fancy parties wore slinky dresses. And if they were rebel interlopers, they tried to make sure the length could tear free to get her knees available to run in an emergency.

She could tell that Kanan was uncomfortable before he even made it out of his cabin. At least that made two of them. They’d had to borrow the formalwear from their contact. It was the right look, even if they were going to feel ridiculous the entire time.

And then he actually saw her and the pheromones became overwhelming.

“You look...” The way that men looked at her at the fancy parties would be the same as at the seedy cantinas. But coming from Kanan, she knew it was all genuine.

It was still going to be incredibly distracting. More so than from anyone else. “Like I wandered off from somewhere else.”

“I’m just saying. I’d never ask you to wear this getup, but you pull it off .” The look in his eyes finished that sentence just fine.

“You don’t look half bad yourself, you know.” Was that as distracting in the Force as the scent of human pheromones in the air were for her?

Could she even really blame it on the pheromones when she would have been interested anyway? There was more than one reason to want out of these ridiculous outfits right now.

“Trust me, no one is going to be looking at me.” Which was, of course, part of the plan. Keep every nefarious eye on her while Kanan actually took care of the handoff. She wasn’t above exploiting those exasperating tendencies wherever she went. It was a good plan. She just wanted it to be over with.

“And that is why I need you to focus .” If only so she could focus.

She was fully prepared to ditch these ridiculous shoes if she had to. Boots weren’t going to fit this look at all. Until this actually went south, she had Kanan playing the gallant escort, helping her up the step while she wrangled the skirt.

She assumed the way that he flexed his fingers after letting go was meant to be some part of the act. Kriff, that man could make it hard to focus on a job. How was  he  going to get anything done if he was projecting such an overwhelming feeling into the atmosphere?

The Force probably could do that. You certainly didn’t hear stories about the great Jedi getting distracted from their mission by a pretty face or a set of legs. They must train for it.

She, on the other hand, hadn’t. Especially not for tuning out attraction from someone she actually did feel the same toward.

“Focusing. Thinking about nothing but boring things. TPS Reports. The colour beige. That terrible holoseries Zeb loves. X-Wing fuel consumption rates.”

Not exactly sweet nothings, but having him whisper irritation in her ear was the most thoughtful thing he could have done in the moment. Endearing, but she could work with that.

And One Time They Weren't

The job had not gone well. By any stretch of the imagination. It was going to be one hell of a debriefing to work out all the specific ways it had gone wrong because she couldn’t just write “everything” in her report and call it a day. It was accurate, but it wasn’t useful.

The intel was bad. The Empire was ready for them. Their contact wasn’t where they were supposed to be. Even the weather had suddenly turned against them. Someone  not her  was going to have to figure out the particulars of how  all  of that had managed to happen at once.

For now, she just needed the kids to stop fighting. Bad enough that they were crawling through the mud trying to get back to the Ghost, it didn’t need to happen with a soundtrack. It probably wasn’t anything any of them had done that was behind all this. The mission had been doomed going in.

“You didn’t have to tackle me into the mud puddle!” Zeb did look quite the fright with his fur standing on end. She was going to have to give him first dibs on the shower, he was worse off than the rest of them.

“I could tell Sabine’s bomb was going off too soon, you’re welcome for keeping you from getting blown up!” Ezra said.

“I told you to get clear!” Sabine yelled.

Hera pinched the bridge of her nose. “All of you stop. We got through it. That’s what matters.” Not asking the kids to help with the report, that was for sure. She didn’t need their theories on who’s specific fault it was. “Go get cleaned up.”

It was going to be a pain to get the seats clean again, but she needed to get them in the air and out of here before any more company showed up. If the kids didn’t stop squabbling soon, she would set them to scrubbing it down. Or possibly the entire ship. With toothbrushes.

At least their unexpected company didn’t seem to have friends in the air to continue their ridiculous day. A few clever moves later and they were safely off the planet. Zeb was going to be in the shower for a while. Ezra and Sabine were going to be fighting for a while and Chopper would probably wade into the fray. She was just going to stay right here until they worked it out and it was her turn for the shower. No sense tromping mud anywhere else on the ship.

She felt the flicker of air as the cockpit door slid open. She didn’t need any other senses to realize who it was. For one thing, there was no accompanying argument.

Kanan slid into the co-pilot’s seat. “Well, that was a day.”

That about covered it.

There was always that standard background radiation of her life. It had been a long time since she’d actually needed pheromones to pick up on Kanan’s moods. But she still noticed them every now and then. And right now, she couldn’t help laughing. “Really? Even now?”

They were exhausted. They were covered in mud. They had bruises in places they were both going to question in the morning. The kids were at each other’s throats.

And yet, he was still actively attracted to her in this specific moment.

Apparently that was a challenge, because he decided he didn’t need to be collapsed in the seat after all. Not when kissing was an option. “Every moment you’re around.”

[im-the-punk-who]

Idk if ur the right person to send this to so feel free to ignore if you aren't but I'm beginning to realize that I might be a trans guy after years of thinking I'm enby and I'm really struggling with that? I've received a lot of the messages over the years about how men are bad and violent and I've also experienced a lot of gender based violence before I was out. I know intellectually that there's nothing wrong with manhood and yet I'm still really struggling. Idk do you have any thoughts on learning to accept your own manhood

Okay! Sorry this took a few days to answer but this is...definitely still a complicated thing for me, too.

First off I wanna say that whether you end up identifying as a binary trans man or somewhere in between that and nonbinary, that is very cool and valid and all of this can apply no matter where on the spectrum of masculinity you ultimately end up falling.

I saw a post which explains the basic thesis of what I'm gonna say, which is that your gender does not equal your morality. 

Tumblr in particular really likes to go hard on the misandry and it can be really hard not to internalize that. Especially when it comes in the form of so many jokes, and especially especially when some of it does line up with experiences you’ve had. The biggest thing to realize, is that just *being a man* doesn't make you inherently violent or toxic or bad. All of the things that Tumblr and feminism in general tends to equate to “being a man = bad” are things that are learned or encouraged over time, no matter how much terfs like to insist they are traits inherent in being born with a y chromosome. 

(And yes, these misandry arguments ALL have their basis in gender essentialism and in arguing why trans people can’t exist.)

As this relates to trans men, it becomes akin to walking a tightrope our entire lives. In both society at large and LGBT spaces we're made to fit as close as possible into gender norms to avoid violence or oppression(or the insistence we’re really just lesbians or self-hating cishets). But we also have first hand experience of the ways in which men are *socialized* to behave being harmful and don’t want to perpetuate them and be labeled a ‘bad person’. So we have to constantly walk this line of, I suppose trying to act manly enough while also trying not to cause waves (And, AS A NOTE, does that sound eerily similar to the argument most feminists say is purely a feminine experience? Is it almost like the very system that seeks to free cis women through hatred of men perpetrates those exact same systems onto other marginalized communities?)

And I will say, this is something I still struggle with. A lot. It's not going to be something you can take a magic pill for and never have to worry about again. I started transitioning almost a decade ago and I'm still trying to find the balance. Cis men can spend their *whole lives* trying to find that balance. I know quite a few - in case it feels like this is a purely trans experience. Reckoning with the way that male privilege has socialized men to harm at the same time radical feminism has socialized everyone it can that all men intentionally cause harm is a universal experience among men who are aware of it. 

It's not easy, and I guess just...if you feel like you're struggling on that front as you continue your gender journey(Laynie i hate you i hate you i hate you) try to remind yourself that you're not alone. And that what you’re fighting against is a systemic socialization, not something inherent in yourself. You’re going to screw up - that doesn't make you a bad person or a bad man.

I listen a lot to Brene Brown. 

I know people are probably sick of hearing me talk about her, but she is a shame researcher who honestly helped me a LOT in realizing why I was feeling so bad about parts of my personality or my gender expression. She’s excellent. If you find you’re having a lot of trouble reckoning with being this thing you have perceived as bad for a very long time, I highly recommend listening to some of her ted talks and other speeches. Most of them are on youtube. 

For a long time I was trying to base my gender off of what I thought people would love. I went over the top, dressed in popular styles, was WAY more feminine than I actually feel, and tried to make myself as unassuming as possible - in part because of childhood trauma but also because I was genuinely ashamed to be a man(particularly a gay man) because I had internalized the idea that men - especially gay men - were woman-haters. (And, because I hated *myself* as a woman, I thought that I also hated women, and I thought that I must be one of those Bad Gays.)

But once I stopped trying to do that? Once I was like ‘no I’m actually a gay-up man’ and stopped berating myself for not liking my feminie body and hating the parts of myself that I didn’t identify with but felt forced to perform? Once I started looking at what made *me* happy and not other people? It became so much easier to not feel those things. 

SO I guess, what I’m saying is that the best way to deal with internalized misandry is to try to forgive yourself, and recognize that the things that men perpetrated against you and that people say are ‘toxic male traits’ are not *inherent* to being a man. They are things that are taught to men(both cis and trans) by society. And also that like, these are also things that are not just inherent to men. Any toxic trait that a man exhibits a woman can too - and yeah there’s a discussion about how the general power imbalance between men and women makes it less likely a woman would cause as much damage but honestly? If you’re on tumblr you’re most likely in female dominated spaces where arguably that isn’t true, especially with the number of fucking TERFS on this website. 

Also....you do not inherit cismale privilege just by identifying as a man. No matter how far you take your transition, you are *always* going to be at a different level of privilege from a cisman. Even if you transition as far as you are able to right now and live and pass as a cisman for the rest of your life, you are not a cisman and that is going to affect how you move through the world.

(That doesn’t mean you are not a *man* because you are not cis, btw. Just that there are things that cismen don’t have to worry about that are going to affect your life - things like ovarian cancer, breast cancer, hormonal dependence, corrective abuse, medical shortages, physical differences that out transpeople - there are a hundred things that trans men have to experience throughout their lives that cismen are never, ever going to deal with. And yes, this goes for transwomen / cis women as well.)

Something that helped me become comfortable living as a man was to look at specific traits of the men in my life. Why did I feel comfortable around this man, but not others, what red flags physically or emotionally did this behavior set off in me? And then focusing on those specific *behaviors* rather than the men themselves. If you can separate the individual traits from an overarching idea of 'manhood' that might be helpful in feeling like you can inhabit manhood without being toxic. 

Basically, my best advice is to tell yourself that what makes you a man does not make you inherently toxic. In fact what makes *all* men, men, does not make them inherently toxic. Men are not trash just because they’re men, and the fight against misandry *is* a fight for marginalized people. It hurts transmasculine people in exactly the ways you are hurting. No matter what TERFs say - no matter what male-critical or whatever they’re calling themselves to not have to call themselves TERFs say - men are not born evil, or bad, or trash. 

Toxic masculinity is a learned behavior. It is not something you are given the day you start identifying as a man, and it is not something you have to perpetuate. 

Calling it anything else does a disservice to everyone who identifies as masculine of center but especially trans men, who have to reckon with this exact knowledge that in affirming who they are, certain people are going to hate them and call them monsters and tell them they are trash and unworthy of loving without hurting. 

And that shit just isn’t true. It isn’t fucking true! Men are not toxic just because they are men, and you are not a bad person just because you are a transman. That’s, I suppose, the best advice I can offer you. I hope it helps, and I also just want to reiterate that I hope you find affirmation in whatever you end up deciding. <3 <3 <3