#but also? those books slap

[bisansastarks]

This is such a random assortment of books I’ve read so far this year ??

[sleep-deprived-luka]

Gog au niigo for tonights doodle

[lameow-l]

GAMING IS MY SON AND IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO HIM IM GONNA KILL EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM AND THEN MYSELF!!

LOOK AT HIM HES SO CUTE

i still have hope in getting the other boys too

its ok they can be a band or smth.. at least then gaming wouldn’t have to be so disappointed in people not hiring him bc he’s just having fun with his boys…

[jacksprostate]

Things I won't forgive the fight club movie for regarding the character of Marla Singer, entry C:

The manic pixie dreamgirlification of her own struggle with life and death. The narrator gets to have a serious issue driving his alienation but Marla gets her cancer removed so her pithy statement about the tragedy of death being that she doesn't fall over dead randomly is just a bit Offbeat And Interesting And Edgy haha! She's a real tourist, really, nothing ever stated to be wrong about her. Sure she overdoses. Sure you can see she's got a shit life. But she doesn't get backstory. She doesn't get a life beyond fun little statements that, when her own reason for saying and thinking them is removed, mostly just reflect the narrator. In the book, it is very, very clear. Marla does what she does because she has cancer and is afraid of The Slow Death. The Wasting. The Struggle. By taking that away you even reduce her suicide attempt. It puts it all in this context of nothingness. Sure, you can assume a depth, but I don't think we should be uncritical about the fact that they chose to remove it. Marla Singer is more than an object that bothers the narrator out of the support groups and gets fucked by Tyler Durden. Marla Singer is a person in her own right in the book, and in the movie she's just... not.

[pettyprocrastination]

Reluctant Bride

Pairing: Ellaria Sand x Baratheon!Fem! Reader (background Oberyn Martell x baratheon!fem!reader)

warnings: description of war, derogatory description of women, forced marriage, oberyn talks lowly of the reader’s appearance and status because he’s angry he has to marry in the first place, Oberyn is a dick but he gets better, (this makes it sound worse than it is lol. Just lore building with angst and sapphic yearning lmao. 

Summary: Just months after the rebellion has ended, Ellaria Sand meets her lover’s betrothed.

word count: 1k 

_____

Ellaria was dressed in finer clothes than you on your own wedding day. 

Orange silk embroidered with golden serpents hugged her curves and fine jewels were weaved into her hair that your betrothed seemed content to twirl with his finger as he leaned in to whisper in her ear. 

You didn’t need to be told who she was. The beautiful woman by your husband’s side, you saw it plainly in his eyes. Love and devotion that could never be found in a marriage under the sept’s roof, but rather one made by affection and passion. 

Ellaria Sand was more of Oberyn’s wife than you ever thought you would be. 

But bless the poor woman’s heart, she was frightened. 

She didn’t want to come to his wedding at first. But Oberyn has all but begged her to, laying gentle kisses up her arm until he was mumbling his plea into the crook of her neck. 

“If I will be forced to wed against my will, the least you can allow me is the pleasure of having my true love by side when I am chained to another.” 

He always has a flair for dramatics, her sweet prince. 

But Ellaria felt it, as she entered Storm’s End by his side, the judgemental stares and hushed whispers when his hand did not release hers. She knew exactly what they thought of her without ever heaving to hear their voices grind against her ears. 

“He brought his whore?”

“To his own wedding, the gal!” 

“She’s a bastard too, I heard.” 

“That’s the dornish for you, debauched dogs, every single one of them.” 

But she would not flinch at their words, she knew she was a bastard since birth, Dorne may have welcomed it but the rest of Westeros had no issue reminding her and every other sand in the world of their place. She learned it well and wore it with pride. She was the lover of the Red Viper, a child of house Uller, the gossip of tittering lords and ladies did not frighten her. 

However, the Baratheons did. 

She would be a fool not to, truly. They were the ones that started the war, plunging the realm into a year of bloodshed and horror that their eldest son charged headfirst into without a second thought. 

Strong, dutiful, dangerous. 

As she entered Storm’s End, thunder echoing against its stone walls that made their grand home resemble a shadowed cave rather than a castle, she is reminded of their words. 

Ours is the fury. 

It had been the third child, who greeted them. Dressed in all black and face somber, he looked well past his age, like a soldier returning from war rather than the young man just coming to age as he was.

“It’s a great honor to have you, my prince.”

But Stannis Baratheon had suffered a siege while his brother commanded from the battlefield, he had seen the war just the same. 

His eyes, dark and cutting like a hidden blade, fell onto Ellaria, for a moment she felt as if she had come to an execution, rather than a wedding. Stannis looked at her like an intrusion, before bowing his head. 

“My sister is eager to join our houses with this union. As are you, I am sure.” 

Oberyn’s agreeance was slick with mockery, teeth flashed in a grin that made the young man’s face go sour. 

“There is nothing I look forward to more.” 

He had yet to let go of Ellaria’s hand. 

The pair did not separate until they reached the sept, a grand building covered in tapestries of every dead saint and alive with hymns that speak of love and devotion. 

Two things seldom found between husband and wife. 

Oberyn walked to the altar alone, but his eyes caught hers  in the crowd and he smiled. Even from afar, she knew him well enough to catch the twitch of his thumb at his side. That despite his anger and dismissive arrogance he loves to wrap himself in like a silken robe, he was at a disadvantage. This was not his home and nor were these were not his people.  He was in the house of the family responsible for the death of his sister with no plan for vengeance, but a wedding he was forced into, just like his Elia.

Ellaria’s gaze is pulled from her lover as the grand door creaks open over the singing, where their king enters, face still laden with scars of the rebellion, of his conquest, escorting the bride by hand. 

Robert Baratheon was large in every way possible. His presence commanded respect. Even in his formal wear the bulk of his muscle was seen through as he walked. The hymns dulled to a soft hum at his entrance, head turning as his eyes cut into the crowd before they landed on Ellaria and she froze in her spot. 

For a moment, fear clenched her heart. 

Robert had unleashed a war upon the realm when Rhaegar took his betrothed, he plunged his siblings into starvation and rode against countless noble families that now bend the knee to him. He caved in the chest of the silver-haired dragon prince himself, severing the three headed dragon with his war hammer until there was nothing left of it’s legacy than two eggs, lost to the wind. 

And here she stood at his sister’s wedding, the proud lover of her betrothed. 

There’s a brief moment where she wondered if he was going to say something. Shout an order for her to be escorted out for being so bold to be at the union, but then a hand squeezed his and he pulled away from her gaze to yours. 

“Don’t.” Barely a whisper that only he could hear. No question nor plea, but an order. 

One the Usurper obeys without resistance. 

Ellaria had never seen you in person before. But Oberyn had painted a foul picture of you the moment your betrothal was confirmed to still be held after the rebellion. He spoke of your sneer and the way your lips puckered into a sour pout each time somebody spoke to you, your eyes were flat and empty of any emotion. 

“If it weren’t for her skirt I wouldn’t know which one I was marrying.” Oberyn jested as he lifted a goblet of wine to his lips. “Her or Stannis.” 

Ellaria watched you walk down the aisle to her lover, struck by your beauty. 

A hood sat atop your head that fell to embroidered lace covering your shoulders, her eyes found a stray curl that dangled by your face and wondered what it would feel like under her finger tips. Dark eyes flick over to her own if only for a second and she felt herself stopped once more, not with fear. 

But desire. 

You continued forward and she watched you walk down the aisle to the awaiting prince. 

A strong nose frames the soft line of your features, shoulders drawn back and head held high like a queen to be worshiped or a painting to be admired. 

You were regal. Looking more like a crowned ruler than the king by your side.

Your voice did not waver during your vows, she wondered if you were frightened. Any woman would be. To marry a man who loathed her family for a death you had no part in. 

But you didn’t let it show. Instead the promise to be a loyal wife echoed through the sept before you leaned forward and pressed your lips to Oberyn’s, who was just as stiff as you. 

As she watched the first kiss of an unwanted marriage, Ellaria’s chest filled with envy of her beloved prince. 

[spearxwind]

writing this apology months before it happens but i am so sorry for the person i am going to become eventually. i am getting into warhammer 40k

[jesse-cosay]

You know when someone shoves so many headcanons on a character and they become almost unrecognizable?

[themyscirah]

Ok game time which 3 series would you just DIE to get a run on ? I'm talking full creative control, can be as a writer or an artist + plotter if that suits your vibe best

My 3 are

Suicide Squad

Wonder Woman

Green Lantern Corps/Green Lanterns

(in that order)

[syb-la-tortue]

Sigh. I do very much miss your pirate stuck art, although I also miss cosplaying, haven't really had a chance since the pandemic, and nothing in this world will part me from my captain karkat cosplay lol...anyway, you mentioned in a previous post that you might put your art together and repost it somewhere, and/ or post more lore regarding pirate stuck...what about a digital artbook of sorts? Like something people could pay a fee to download? That way you'd be somewhat recompensed for the tedium of having to reupload everything. I know I'd be willing to pay, and I feel like I'm not the only one. Lol also a friend's son got us to start watching one piece and I blame part of the fact that it's begun to grow on me on you. Ps, you might not remember me, I've been off Tumblr for years.

I do remember you!! :3 at least your username is vividly familiar to me as one I saw often back in the day in a way that gives me positive feelings toward you~

doing a digital artbook thing (or like, many artbooks) that people could download for a couple bucks is pretty much what I have in mind of doing, I just,,,,,, have to do it,,,,,,, a very hard project to start when I keep thinking of the little hurdles in the way u_u like all the piratestuck lore! which I'd love for it to not be lost to the void but as it is it only exists as dozens of asks scattered through hundreds of posts that I to be fair are saved in a sort of backup but not easily searchable @_@

[electric-plants]

i LOVE penacony’s sticker function because it means when anything in the story annoys me i can go and make its sticker really small and shove it in the corner

[landwriter]

Ten Books To Know Me

Rules: 10 (non-ancient) books for people to get to know you better, or that you just really like.

Tagged by @softest-punk, thank you for utterly derailing my afternoon into nostalgia <3 My problem is less not picking ancient books and more not picking exclusively Canadian and English children’s lit published between 1995 and 1999. (Still the first three picks all the same though because it is like, the opus within which my psyche is almost wholly contained.) This got long but I'm going to be very brave and not apologize about that at all. I love talking about books, and these are some of the books I love the most. In chronological order of arrival into my heart.

Some of the Kinder Planets - Tim Wynne-Jones This book has been a part of my life for so long I cannot remember when, exactly, I first read it - only that it was taken from my gran’s shelf; Tim had sent her a copy with a lovely inscription. It’s a short story collection which remains today (and forever) my favourite format. Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, Karin Tidbeck’s Jagannath, Karen Russell’s Orange World, Margaret Atwood’s Stone Mattress are all fabulous examples, stacked before me at my desk, but Some of the Kinder Planets itself lives (alongside my two most precious childhood stuffies) at my mum’s house, the safest place of all. The stories are kids being kids in the way you want to read as a kid yourself: clever and wondering and scared and brave. Special mention also to his Zoom trilogy, beautifully illustrated in black and white by Eric Beddows.

Skellig - David Almond Another book likely pilfered from my granny’s library. There’s a little magic in Some of the Kinder Planets, but here is ALL the magical realism, and it changed me. This book has a sickly bird-or-man-or-angel in a garage being nursed to health by a boy with an ill baby sister in hospital that he can’t help at all; the indelible image of surviving off bluebottles and then getting snuck Chinese takeaway and brown ale; nature and weird kids and William Blake poems. I will weep if I continue thinking about it.

[Not Any Book But Just A Lot Of Books] - Kit Pearson, Diana Wynne-Jones, Kenneth Oppel, Philip Pullman, Madeleine L’Engle, etc. Listen, I know this is an INSANE cop-out but if you know the authors you know more or less exactly what I mean. These are the books that made me more tender than I already was, made me believe in Good, and Kindness, and Love, in a totally immutable way I thankfully do not ever want to change, because I don’t think I could.

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett My first introduction to Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, and footnotes. Also one of the first books I did not simply pick up because it was Lying Around. I bought it because my older cousin listed it as one of her favourite books on Facebook, and she was (and is) impossibly, horribly cool. I was maybe 13 or 14 and wanted to be cool too. I’ve since read a smattering of Gaiman but I’ve yet to read Terry Pratchett on his own. I’d like to! I know I’d love it.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams Loaned to me by my best friend before we were best friends. It is, apparently, the second novel in the Dirk Gently series, and I remember nothing of it except a very good bit about a couch getting stuck in a stairwell; nonetheless it’s listed here because this is clearly actually a thinly disguised chronology of sentimentality, and also because Douglas Adams is a wonder and delight to read and I don’t need to fully remember the book to know that in my bones. I’m not sure if it’s fair but I’ll also blame Douglas Adams for my inability to be brief and to resist using semi-colons. Could’ve been someone else. But it was definitely someone English.

Sailing to Byzantium - W.B. Yeats This is not a book, but it was in my English Literature textbook in high school, so it counts. If it wasn’t, I would still count it. Why a sixteen year old girl connected with a poem that begins “That is no country for old men.” is irrelevant, as is every stanza but the third, which contains the fateful, ruinous lines: “Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is;” I remember when I read it, and I remember the chill feeling of Yeats’ spectral hand reaching all the way from his grave in County Sligo, across the whole Atlantic and the enormous landmass called Canada, to reach into my chest and cruelly grab my own heart, and I remember thinking How, and Exactly. The first thing I read that named the strangeness I felt inside of me. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of all my teenage angst. Written on my bones to this day, if I’m being honest.

Hamlet - Shakespeare We got off on the wrong foot, after I was personally victimized by the line ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’, but I do love Shakespeare. I credit this to having an excellent teacher for it, and reading it aloud in a cohort of tryhards and musicians and theatre kids. A case of familiarity breeds...appreciation, actually. We did a lot of Shakespeare, but we were asked to learn 20 lines of Hamlet specifically, and rewrite them, marked down for every error. Forty lines for bonus marks. There was much grousing and it seemed like a cruel, outdated task of rote memorization, but writing this a decade later, I am belatedly realizing this was a sneaky way to get a bunch of kids to recite a soliloquy so much that they couldn’t help but find the life in it, the rhythm and meter to make it stick in our minds. And now look! I love it! I am writing fanfic in iambic pentameter! Wherefore art my fucking restraint!! I learned my lines so hideously well that when I pulled up the scene just now (2.2, from “Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal peak”), I a) noticed and b) was offended by, minute differences from the version I memorized, which I then searched out and knew the moment I found. Incredible?!  

Still Life With Woodpecker - Tom Robbins The most recent time I’ve read a work of fiction and been rearranged by it, at the tender age of 21. here I am, I wrote, in my journal, after a very good sob, happier and more rudderless than ever. This man writes with totally unfettered joy and unhinged sincerity, two things I am hopelessly into, but also with a deep distaste for institutions and conformity that I desperately needed back then: lost, returned from a year of magical realism and the sort of adulthood growth spurt that makes you feel dizzy, home and yet horribly missing the home I’d made for myself elsewhere, all my nearly-fulfilled ambitions towards security and prestigious government postings feeling sort of hollow and reeking in my hands. It comforted me that I wasn't wrong as much as it spilled my own guts into my hands, and while I went on for another year seeing things through, it planted a seed that quickly grew proper roots and pushed me right off the ledge of respectability. And it’s a love story, of course.

It’s his prose that sits glowing on the horizon to me when I try to write richly: a distant shore of orgiastic language (from which you can surely hear the wind-carried cries of people fucking day and night), towards which I, still shy and prudish, ever point my prow.

How to Be Happy - Eleanor Davis A comic collection. Sharp and wonderful and alive. Another Best Friend gift (bless those around us with impeccable taste), of which every single panel is MARVELOUS. I meant to share one of my favourites here but apparently it has! Gotten up and left!! I will buy another copy in hopes of coaxing it back out of wherever it’s hiding.

Down to Earth - Monty Don This did not rearrange anything. But it does give me a good hug about it, so to speak. A month-by-month gardening guide which is chock-full of brilliant, sensible advice, and also so cheerfully comforting in a highly specific English way that I actually feel like I’m drinking a cuppa whenever I read a page or two of it. It makes me think of my grandmother. And so we’ve come full circle, eh?

I hope some of you are now nodding thoughtfully and thinking, well, Chrissakes, that explains it. Very sorry, hope this helps, etc. Passing on the tag to @fancy-rock-dove, @chubsthehamster, @broomsticks, @wordsinhaled, @btwimkindagay, @hardly-an-escape, @xx-vergil-xx, @that-banhus, and anyone else who wants to expose themselves on main and chat about their fave books

[raddestrose]

Just the general miscommunication in this book is WILD

[crybaby-bkg]

I love you poetry I love you wide expanse ocean water imagery I love you tying in the moon and it’s strength and devotion to its water I love you big ball of fire that can hold so many metaphors within its sphere I love you otherworldly imagery I love you space analogies I love you pretty pictures made with soft words and gentle meanings I love you simple phrases that convey so much I love

[abednadirsgf]

Can I ask what are your favorite books?

gosh darn, my favourite books? Well, looky here:

1. The Outsiders by S.E Hinton. BY FARRRRRRR MY FAVOURITE BOOK EVER. STAY GOLD - STAY GOLLDDDDD - I cry everytime.

2. 1984 by George Orwell. YES I'm a sucker for this one but I've read it like 10 times and I just really like it, I just do.

3. Arc of a Scythe series by Neal Shusterman. this trilogy is like the best trilogy I've ever read. I read the first book for my waterstones book club and DAMN. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. had me in happy tears in book 3 and it has my heart ;)

4. More Than This by Patrick Ness. no words to be said but I adore it. like if I could eat this book in its entirety and then become a tree I would.

[autistichalsin]

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[reidmaniac]

perfume. || spencer reid x afab!reader.

warnings: 18+ content, minors DNI. couch sex, breeding, use of pet names (baby, my love), unprotected sex, afab reader, pussy eating, fingering, riding, thigh slapping (at like one part) dom!spence. not proofread! i think that’s all, if i missed something lmk.

summary: spencer needs to leave for work, but you tried out a new pheromone perfume.

comments: i was too lazy to capitalize so it’s all lowercase, there also may be grammatical mistakes because i wrote this half asleep and didn’t proof read. this is also my first time publishing work so i hope you enjoy! reblogs, comments, and likes are appreciated!

- - -

you and spencer sat on the couch of your new apartment. you two had been seeing each other for months and had finally moved in together. you lift your head of from your book when you hear spence’s ringtone.

“dr. reid,” he answers,

“okay, be there in 30” and he puts his phone down.

“work?” you ask, head back in your book.

“i’m sorry, i asked for the weekend off. important case in new york” spence replied, a tang of sorrow in his voice.

you put your book down and crawl over to him. “it’s okay love, let me just hold you while you’re here” you say, and pull him onto your chest.

your perfume almost immediately engulfs spencer’s nose, and he begins to kiss on your neck. you giggle and wonder why he’s being so affectionate, and then you remember. you had been wearing this new pheromone perfume you bought from the store.

as spencer begins to kiss down your chest, you ask, “spence baby, why are you all over me?” a joking tone in your voice. “smells so good baby, is it new?” he says in between kisses. you go to reply when spencer lifts you up and you’re now sitting on his lap straddling him.

“yes baby, it’s new. i bought it last time i went to the store.”

he couldn’t have enough. his lips ran all over your body like a hungry animal. his hands now began to make their way towards your waistband as you entangled your fingers in his hair. his hand entered your shorts and began to rub on your soaked cunt through your underwear.

“need you spence” you said softly. his eyes made contact with yours and you knew, you were fucked (literally). with those words spence moved your underwear out the way and rammed two of his digits into you. a gasp escaped your mouth and you threw your head onto his shoulder.

spencer felt intoxicated. your smell, this new perfume, drove him insane. ‘fuck baby,” he said as his fingers continued to ram into you, “you’re so tight and wet.” you buried your head into his neck from embarrassment.

using his free hand, spencer grabbed your face and made you look at him. “uht uht my love, look at me” spence said, making eye contact.

your hips began to grind against his fingers, his pace driving you insane, and you glanced at the clock. spencer only had 25 more minutes until he needed to leave.

“spence, baby” you mumble out through moans, “you have to leave soon.”

“25 minutes is enough for me. i’ll make you feel good baby, just relax” he replied, as he lifted you up and put you on your back.

you let out a small moan when he places you down on the couch. his hands immediately removed the shorts and underwear from your body, leaving you exposed from the waist down. he puts his head between your thighs, trailing soft kisses up and stopping right before your dripping cunt. you begin to get desperate and start to move your hips. this gets you a slap on your thigh, causing you to release a moan.

“stay still y/n. i didn’t say you could move.” spencer says following the slap. “just need you spence, now” you reply, looking down and the man between your legs. that was all he needed to hear. he immediately dives down and his tongue begins to lap between your folds. your hands jump to his hair, gripping and pulling, while you let out a string of moans.

spencer’s speed does not slow as he begins to ram two fingers inside of you. “f-fuck! spence baby stop! ‘m getting close” you moan out, feeling your brain begin to go numb. “cum for me baby. please my love” spencer replies while sucking on your clit.

that was all you needed to release. you close your legs around spencer’s head and he continues at the same speed, while you ride out your orgasm. “i-i’m cumming baby, can’t take it” you yell out between moans.

spencer then sits up and you see the bulge in his pants. you instantly climb on top of spencer, and undo his belt. you remove his cock from his pants and slip it inside. spencer places his hands on your hips and guides you. “fuck baby, you feel so good” he says, as he helps you move faster.

you push your lips onto spencer’s, both of your moans drowning between. “fuck, y/n, i’m close” spencer says, finally breaking the kiss. “inside me! finish inside! please spence baby” you moan out desperately. you and spencer both climax at the same time, the sound of your sex filling the room.

you climb off of him and glance at the clock. “go get changed baby.” you say and give spencer a kiss on the forehead. he gives you a kiss on the forehead before standing up and walking to the bedroom. you simply wait on the couch for him to leave.

“okay baby, im leaving now. i love you” he says, and gives you a kiss. “i love you more. be safe baby.” you reply, kissing him again before he walks out.