#but that will be for another time possibly because really it was a lot of tries lol

[masaotheheckindog]

I've said it before but those spaces are actively hostile to men. It's a very 'conform or get mocked and bullied' kind of space. It requires a level of performance that you must maintain at all times, and in my opinion, earnestly trying to do that would be exhausting. A full time job.

It's frustrating to see this rhetoric get passed around by liberals yet again, because I think if you really take a moment to think about it, it falls apart.

These groups and groups like them have always existed in one form or another, and I'll say that they are not even something that is possible to enter for many, many men. That's the thing that frustrates me. A lot of men, if they tried to get into one of these groups and were okay with being indoctrinated into that kind of reactionary belief, would not be welcome.

I think maybe be skeptical of anyone who tries to make you believe that "the left is failing men". I think maybe you can deal with the fact that terf rhetoric has infiltrated SOME leftist spaces and deal with that instead.

the idea that reactionary spaces are attractive to men because they treat them kindly unlike The Left is so odd because whenever I come across that content it's essentially the same dynamic as pro ana "meanspo". if you don't know what that is, it's "motivation" based on degrading the viewer to the point where they can't "make excuses" and not become anorexic, or in this case a true Alpha Male. I feel like thisis objectively worse for someone's mental health than The Left

[dlwritings]

November 6, 2024 | Rafe Cameron

masterlist found here

pairing - Rafe x reader word count - 1,827 warnings - political talk, anti-T*ump rhetoric A/N - Who would've thought the shit show state of our world would inspire me to write again. I know for a lot of us everything feels really broken right now, and I know it may seem silly to some, but for me, writing feels like healing, even if it's just something like this. So here you all are. Rafe probably votes red, but here's a world where he doesn't. Also, if you're a T*umper, go ahead and unfollow me. I can't have any of that in my life. I'm so serious.

summary - The results of the 2024 election hit you pretty hard, and you end up taking your rage out on Rafe. Turns out, Rafe's hopes for the future looked a lot like yours.

You and Rafe didn’t talk about politics. You knew better than to broach the topic with him, because you weren’t naive. One glance at him and anyone could guess how he voted.

But that didn’t mean you had to like it.

The two of you had been dating for about six months, and for the most part, it was smooth sailing. It was gossip fuel for most people on the island for a few weeks -you being a pogue and Rafe being … who he was- but like most drama in Kildaire, it didn’t stay at the forefront of people’s minds for long before another thing came and stole back everyone’s attention.

And the thing on everyone’s mind right now was the election. The election that had you donned in blue on your way to the polls, a huge smile on your face as you filled in the bubble that would make history. Hope filled you in a way you were sure it never had before.

Until the next day.

Waking up and opening social media to see the results had already come in was enough to break your spirit completely. How could this have happened? How could the country have failed so many people?

Then again, how had you been so naive to believe in the possibility of any other outcome?

You shut yourself off from the world for most of the day. You went to work and gave polite smiles and nods to your coworkers as needed, but you did your best to spend the majority of your time locked in your office, alone. You didn’t dare to open social media, knowing every MAGA post from the bigots of the Figure 8 would bring tears to your eyes.

It wasn’t until you were at home on your couch that you decided to brave Instagram. Before scrolling through your feed, you added a black screen with a simple blue heart to your story and wrote the words, When we fight, we win.

You thought it was harmless. A simple story that showed your feelings without being overly dramatic. The last thing you wanted to do was act irrational by doing something crazy like storming the capitol. Because that would just be insane.

Unfortunately, the people who followed you saw it as anything but harmless. They saw it as an opening to send you the most heinous, revolting messages you had ever read. Your notifications blew up within minutes, and some of them were so borderline terrifying that you locked your phone and threw it across the room, once again leaving you in a puddle of tears.

You heard your front door open, and you cursed to yourself. In all the chaos of the news, it escaped your mind that it was Wednesday, and Rafe always brought pizza to your apartment on Wednesdays. You had once mentioned in passing that you liked a pick-me-up halfway through a week, and Rafe took it upon himself to provide you with that. Normally, it was one of your favorite parts of the week. Today, Rafe was one of the last people you wanted to see.

“Babe!” he called out upon his entrance. “I got your favorite!”

You met him in the kitchen, and by one look at your face, Rafe’s own expression dropped. “What’s going on?”

You swallowed back the lump in your throat. “I think you should go.”

“What?” he said, dropping the pizza on the counter and walking over to you. With each step he took toward you, you took one step back. He stopped quickly, a frown painted on his face. “What’s wrong, baby?”

The words made something snap inside you, and your fists clenched at your sides. “What’s wrong?” you repeated. “What’s wrong? How about fucking everything, Rafe! Everything’s wrong, and you not seeing that is part of the problem! You are part of the problem!”

Rafe was, in a word, flabbergasted. He ran through the past 24 hours, trying to think of something he had done wrong, but he was coming up short. “Okay, I’m-” He let out an exasperated laugh. “I’m trying to understand, but you’ve got to give me something more here. What did I do?”

“You-” You let out a huff of a breath and ended up speaking through gritted teeth. “You and your stupid fucking MAGA Kook friends voted for a convicted felon to run our country! You voted for a man who wants to throw away my rights. You voted for a man who has raped a multitude of women and brags about it!”

Rafe’s eyes were wide as he held his hands up and shook his head. “Hang on-”

“No, Rafe!” you shouted, pushing him back as he tried to get closer to you again. “For the entire time we’ve dated, I’ve danced around the talk of politics, because I knew better. I knew a rich ass white guy from the south would vote for another rich ass white guy to run our country, but I guess I naively thought it wouldn’t matter. That the poor guys would get a win for fucking once this time. For once I thought the good guys would win and that a white man would have to face the consequences of his actions. But you-” You laughed bitterly. “You of all people know that privileged ass white men never ever have to face the consequences of their actions.”

You were hitting him where it hurt, and you knew it, but you were hurt. You and every woman like you had been holding in years of pain and hurt, and for you and many others, today was the day it was all going to come out.

“Baby, if you just let me-”

“Let you?” you laughed incredulously. “You and your fellow MAGA guys have clearly shown me I don’t have to let you do anything anymore.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

You fished your phone out of your pocket, unlocked it, and shoved it in his face to show him all of the nasty messages you were receiving. Things like, “Your body, my choice,” “whomp whomp go make me a sandwich,” and “Guess what? Men win again” had flooded your DMs, and while you didn’t know it, Rafe was clocking every username and making a very specific list in his head.

“So maybe you can understand why I’m angry, Rafe,” you said, taking the phone back out of his hand and putting it in your pocket again. “I thought I could cancel out your vote, but I guess I forgot that meant you could cancel mine.”

“Ba-”

“I want you to leave, Rafe.”

“But I didn’t-”

“Fucking, go, Rafe!” you shouted. “Let me be angry and let me be alone!”

With a clenched jaw, Rafe gave a short nod. “Okay,” he whispered. “Fine.” It looked like he wanted to say more, but he refrained, instead turning around and heading out the door, leaving you in a mess of tears.

The next day, you called off from work. Maybe it was dramatic, but you didn’t care. You knew if one person even looked at you in a way you didn’t like, you’d lose any composure you had, and you couldn’t afford to lose your job for yelling at your boss.

You had the full intention to stay in bed all day, but the relentless knock at your door around 10AM proved that to be impossible. You felt some sense of relief, knowing it at least wouldn’t be another political petitioner.

Instead, perhaps just as unfortunately, it was Rafe.

You let out a heavy sigh. “What do you want, Rafe?”

He held out his hand which had a coffee cup in it from your favorite shop. “I went to your work, but your boss said you were sick,” he said. “I bought you coffee.” You took it, but didn’t say anything -just looked at him with raised eyebrows, as if to say, Anything else? “Can we please talk?” he said.

“I don’t know what there is to say, Rafe,” you sighed. Still, you stepped aside and let him in, not wanting your neighbors to bear witness to whatever argument was about to ensue. “I know we’re different -I’ve always known that- but I don’t think I can handle being this kind of different anymore.” You plopped yourself onto the sofa, expecting Rafe to sit next to you. Instead, he crouched in front of you so he was just slightly looking up at you.

“Baby, I didn’t vote for him.”

Your lips parted slightly in shock, and you felt tears instantly pool in your eyes.

“What?” you whispered.

“Yeah, of course I didn’t vote for him,” he said. He reached up to turn around the hat he was wearing backwards to reveal a Harris-Walz cap, and you let out a noise that was a mix of a gasp and a little laugh. “I know I’ve fucked up before baby,” he said. “And in other elections, yeah, I usually vote red. But this-” He shook his head and squeezed your knees. “This is different. And I know that. And I’d be an absolute moron to think that tax cuts for me are more important than basic rights for you.”

You moved to kneel on the floor next to him and held his face in your hands before leaning forward to place a soft kiss to his lips. When you pulled back, you kept your forehead against his. “I was so mean to you yesterday,” you whispered. “I didn’t-”

“It wasn’t anything I didn’t deserve,” he said. “I know that I am living in a world that was pretty much tailor made for me. And I know I should be in fucking prison for all the shit I’ve done, and so should he. And I know that none of what I’m saying right now changes the bullshit I’ve done, but I figured I should at least use all this fucking privilege I have and try to help people who don’t have it. Because you-” He paused to press a kiss to your lips. “-have taught me so much about being a good person. And I’m not going to vote against that.”

“I wasn’t a good person yesterday,” you mumbled.

“You were reacting to an unfortunately historic event,” he said. “You had every right to lose it. And you can keep losing it, and I will be by your side for every minute of it, okay?”

You nodded and gave him a soft smile. “Okay.”

He smiled back and nodded. “Okay.”

You and Rafe decided to spend the rest of the day together, sometimes talking, sometimes just sitting in the quiet. When you suggested putting on a movie, Rafe agreed. He let you choose, no complaints, and watched as you searched for the Barbie movie. You cried at all the usual parts, sometimes a bit harder than normal, but Rafe understood.

It is literally impossible to be a woman.

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

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[ven0moir]

Will had hope ... and then lost it.

He had hope that maybe, just maybe, Mike and he felt the same way. And I think it started here:

Mike expressed relief at the idea of Will not joining another party. And Will's look seems ... surprised but joyful? Like he's picking up on Something the audience is not.

Then we have this:

I know a lot of people say he meant this in a friendship way. But I don't think he did entirely. I think he was 'testing the waters' so to speak, to see Mike's reaction to him asking something like this so forwardly--an action driven in part, possibly, also by frustration. Of course their friendship was his priority but he was also Sending Mike a Message. Speaking in code, if you will. And I'm not sure if Mike picked up on it or not, but he knew what he was doing when he used the word 'us'.

Then of course we have Mike's speech to Will in episode 4. The way he slightly tilts his head to the side inquisitively after Mike said 'It's Hawkins, it's not the same without you', as if he's thinking "am I dreaming? Is he really saying this?" And not to be meta but he might even be wondering if he's being delusional here.

On top of that, the speech prompted him to gather the courage to do this:

hope again. But then his arc culminated in this:

Will's facial expressions when Mike is self-depricating ... he seems so sad. In the second one, even Mike notices and cuts himself off to apologize for bringing up this subject.

I think he, sadly, realized Mike did feel the same way as him, but not in the way he had initially hoped. Mike, like him, is struggling with not feeling good enough for the person he loves.

And Will did not want Mike to feel the same way he did. So he did what we saw him do and give the painting to Mike, which symbolizes his love for DnD, for what they do together, for their friend group, for him. His intention here was to make Mike feel better. Important. Seen. Even at the cost of his own heartbreak.

"Every smile you fake, I'll be watching you."

So to recap, at the beginning of the season, Will had been acting weird and painting for someone he liked ( according to El ). We find out very quickly that the recipient of the painting was intended to be Mike. I don't think Will ever intended for the painting to be a full blown love confession--but a start. A continuation of the 'hint dropping' they started doing at the end of S3. But of course, the whole world went to shit, and his feelings got amplified to the point where the painting's meaning took a different turn. And it became the basis of a veiled love confession.

I think this is devastating because the narrative forced them, once again, down a different path from the natural progression this would've been had Mike been allowed to enjoy a nice spring break in California.

I do believe by the end of S4, Will has completely lost the last vestiges of hope he had left that Mike would ever reciprocate his feelings, especially after Mike's love confession. I think he feels stupid for even allowing himself to believe there was a chance.

I mean, look at him. And, terrifyingly, I feel like that is exactly where Vecna needs him to be at the start of S5.

Sprinkle in some #birthdaygate and voila ... we have the perfect recipe for a horrible Vecna vision.

I don't know how they'll resolve this, but it does feel to me that the intention of Will's S4 arc was to get him to a point of loss of hope, which signifies the death of his dream.

Going into S5, he probably sees this dream now as stupid and childish--an impossibility. Adding to this, there's no way in hell Will is going to confess. Not when this happened and it was never resolved.

The ball is on Mike's court, for better or for worse.

And I think this is also another plot twist we will find out through Vecna: the fact that Will had hope that he and Mike could be together and felt the same way. And that honestly makes whatever Vecna does to Will 10 times worse because if Will had NEVER had hope, then there's nothing new there. But having hope and then having it crushed to the ground? Yeah ... my heart hurts as I type this.

[meanbossart]

Ask compilation: DU drow, Orin, Astarion, lore things and little fun facts.

Trying to make a dent in this dang inbox. As always, thank you so much everyone for your patience and curiosity! Sorry that it is straight up no longer possible for me to reply to everyone, but I will keep doing my best within reason. Enjoy!

Absolutely! I had a lot of requests for bottom Astarion on my patreon which is why I was kind of on a roll there for a minute.

Though, for the record - I am really not very invested in strict bedroom roles at all. Or clear and distinct dominant/submissive dynamics. So please don't overthink it whenever there's a switch, no pun intended.

You wanna know how often they smash? Man, I don't know, I guess fairly often considering their lifestyle post-game (very active, often on the road).

Assuming that everyone agrees that sex doesn't have to involve penetration, I'd say once every other day or less, really depends on the circumstances though. DU drow's libido is much higher than Astarion's, but he's not an animal and can hold off fine. Astarion is likely to be pickier in regards to location and how-recently-have-we-bathed status as well.

I keep meaning to draw him, but I have like... A million things I want to do 😂 so its rough!

BUT you will at least continue to see him in ANE! And I'm sure i'm bound to draw him again in the future.

[MORE UNDER THE CUT]

If you mean in his bhaalist "AU", where he has the red robe and the extra scars, I imagine he would have gotten it through killing Isobel.

I think as a changeling she probably has the ability to just... Transform her hair however she likes at will, right? And based on her attitude plus some lines we get from Sceleritas about her own former-butler, it sounds like she would be really opposed to being serviced in that way, to me at least.

I see her as pretty aggressively independent with the way she operates, which is another factor that sets her apart from DU drow, who really enjoyed lording over the other Bhaalists and making an errand boy out of Sceleritas, to the point where he practically depended on their help to function.

Neither! I wasn't willing to let anyone take either of my eyes in my first playthrough, LOL.

I have since always given the Volo eye to SOMEONE, usually Gale, but I don't consider that canonical. I don't think anyone was desperate enough to let mister frumpy-hat over there ice-pick their eyes out.

He did do them himself. It was a profoundly stupid display he got caught up in because of Gortash. Also, de-handment is kind of a theme in his life, at least inside his head.

I have a comic about it planned for the future ;)

What do you mean, that's canonical to the game and everything! He loves the cuck chair!

He is an angsty 29-year old in denial. Your interpretation is still perfectly accurate.

Hates the guy. Hates when Shadowheart Astarion people joke about him being the Drizzt of his generation. Hates the guy like literally any countercultural weirdo hates Taylor Swift or the Weeknd. If he saw him at the line in the grocery store DU drow would find a way to roll his eyes loudly just so he could notice being an asshole.

Stay tuned, I'm cooking 🧑‍🍳

If you're asking about game strats, badly, LOL. Pretty sure I died twice to her in my first run and it was a rough way of being thrown into "serious" DnD combat.

With the exception of a couple of encounters that just so happened to turn out SURPRISINGLY cinematic, I'm just realizing that I actually don't think too often about how most of the fights went in real-time! I imagine Autie Ethel's in particular wasn't one that DU drow went into of his own accord, probably rather at a companion's insistence. That's as deep as I've thought about that personally.

Now... Back to game strats. I personally try to get a surprise round on her however I can by sneaking and shooting an arrow or AOE in her general location, since she always stands on roughly the same spot while invisible. I have my companions spread about the arena so we can take her clones down as fast as possible, and as soon as I identify who the real Ethel is I just have the strongest martial characters wail on her until she begs to be let go. Hers is one of the few fights that is actually pretty dang easy at this point for me - and I SUCK at this game.

That would certainly take a while! But, Bhaalist DU drow does kind of have an end goal, actually.

That might also turn into a comic eventually, but it would a rough one.

He pretty swiftly disposed of her, DU drow doesn't like being talked down to, which Minthara very promptly does. Him (and I, by extension) had very limited exposure to her and she was just kind of a speck of dust in his story in particular. Though I have since grown to adore her character in my proceeding runs where I do recruit her!

I guess if he got an invitation and it wasn't particularly painful to arrive at the venue, sure! He would specially love to take Astarion to Gale's wedding ceremony and purposely upstage him at every at every opportunity, LOL.

Yes. He got pretty freaky with the pain-priest. This is gonna sound like a lie but I made him get naked for it without even knowing there was a buff to be gained (I didn't get it, unfortunately, I don't remember whether I failed a check or if I had camp clothes toggled on, so it didn't count as being truly nude). I wasn't taking the game very seriously and just doing dumb roleplay things to see what would happen, LOL.

And I consider that canonical. I think DU drow saw the opportunity to show off his physique And had a strange inkling that this was a practice he was... Somehow familiar with.

Imagine my joy when Astarion and Shadowheart start having a back-and-forth about my absurd display. That's when i knew those were my people, to be honest.

[8-evil-annoying-catboys]

i keep finding myself wondering.. why did she open the drawer where the gun case was hidden? i’ve seen people say it was a mercy to curly, so that maybe he could open it to use it for a quick and less painful way out, or defend himself if jim broke in.. but i can’t really believe that. she’s a nurse. she knows curly can’t even really move, let alone move with the coordination and dexterity required to open the gun case, get the gun out from it, and actually use it on anyone. plus, while jim obviously doesn’t have a lot of reservations about hurting curly, i think she knows he wouldn’t kill him, because if he would, why wouldn’t he have already done it? so i don’t think it’s for his potential self-defence.

could it be.. that she’s taunting him? here’s this case. we both already know that there’s a gun inside it. you can’t open the case. i can’t open the case. you can’t use it to defend yourself anymore. neither can i, because i never could. the same goes for hurting yourself, you can’t do that with it any more than i could, even though you’re in so much pain now that there’s no way it could hurt much more with the gun. you can’t even tell me how to unlock the case, even if you wanted me to have it now that you know so much more than you did before, back when i wished you’d have let me take it. of course, knowing you never would, i hid it. it’s been here the whole time, literally right under you, and you never knew. and, to top it off, i’m proving to you that i never would have used the gun on myself, because watch how easily i can do the same thing with tools that were directly entrusted to me, because of the nature of my job. and you’re going to watch, because.. what else can you do? you can’t even turn your head to look away.

but then, anya is so gentle, that seems like it might be out of character for her. and like, maybe the situation just got to her that bad that she’s acting this different, and i can’t really wrap my head around another possible reason, but i keep fixating on that. why did she open the drawer? like, maybe she was going to try and brute force her way into it, guessing codes at random until it opened, and she became impatient and took the pills? maybe, after taking the pills, she started to feel bad for curly since she locked him up in the room with her and she tried to open the case and give him one last act of mercy, but died before she could succeed? maybe she figured that jim would find his way in no matter what, and since her own safety was no longer at risk since she’d die anyway, she left it so he could go through with a mercy killing, trying to leave him with no option other than to step up to the plate and take responsibility as the new captain for putting curly out of his misery? maybe she thought that since swansea had the utility axe, he would be the one to break into medical and would be smart enough to brute force his way into the gun case, and take out this maniacal, incompetent tyrant of a self-imposed leader, saving daisuke and possibly himself, and putting curly out of his misery?

ultimately, we obviously can’t get a concrete answer from canon.. but does that mean i’ll stop wondering about it? no, it actually means i will never stop thinking about it.

i need everyone to understand the poetry of curly turning a blind eye to anya’s suffering only to be robbed of his autonomy and voice as she was and then forced to observe jimmy’s crimes and the abuse of his own body

[morikasan]

He is yours

Summary: Gojo’s sweet student is jealous of him and reminds him of who he belongs to

Warnings: 18+ ONLY // MDNI — fem! reader, a lot of nicknames,extremely size kink, age gap, reader’s age is 18, riding, belly bulge

“Wait here, sensei. I’ll go grab us some kikufuku, okay?” you said with a cute smile on your face

He nodded, returning the big smile and giving a thumb, “Sounds perfect! I’ll be right here~.”

You went towards the food stand, your heart fluttering with excitement. You bought a small bag of kikufuku, and you turned back to go to Gojo.

But as soon as you turned your back, you saw a woman. The kikufuku bag fell out of your hand when you saw the woman.

She was engaging in conversation with Gojo. A pang of jealousy pricked at your heart, who was she?

Approaching cautiously, you heard snippets of the conversation. The woman seemed to be asking for directions, or else she was trying to talk to your sensei and get his number under the pretext of asking for directions.

There was a possibility that he might do that because your sensei was undeniably handsome.

You couldn’t shake the feeling of unease.

Without thinking, you went to them and clung to Gojo’s arm, pressing your petite body against him. “Senseiii, I don’t feel well” you murmured dramatically, “Please take me home.” ojo turned his gaze to you, and a grin slowly appeared on his face when he saw you staring at the woman he was talking to. He wrapped his arm around her delicate waist protectively and looked at the woman again

“you heard her, ma'am, I need to be a good teacher and take my poor student home immediately~”

His grip on your waist was tightened

“Let’s get you home, my cute student~”

“S-sensei-Ah~ ”

The sound of skin slapping against skin fills the room, accompanied by moans and gasps from both Gojo and you. Both of your voices blend in a chorus of pleasure and desire.

“Y-you are mine, sensei… No other woman can touch you like that.”

With your possessive words, a wry grin spread across his handsome face, and he laughed under his breath.

“ahah~, my lovely student is really daring today, isn’t she~?”

You were so ashamed. Your cheeks were blushed. You had never ridden him before, you had never spoken to him in such a daring way before.

But you couldn’t help it, you were extremely jealous. The fact that the woman he was talking to was really… beautiful.

“Tell me you’ll never look at anyone else but me, sensei.”

The room was filled with the sounds of heavy breathing and moans of pleasure, the bed creaking under their movements.

“Fufu~, so this is what happens when my little girl gets jealous~”

Your petite body was bouncing on Gojo’s massive cock, your delicate body rising and falling. Your mouth is open in a mix of pleasure and exertion. His piercing blue eyes shifted to your delicious tits jiggling with every thrust before his eyes. It was a perfect view.

“You think I’d prefer this pretty young cunny to another woman’s, my little mochi~? Oh, only your sloppy cunt can make me so crazy~”

You were overjoyed and touched. He was genuinely in love with you. A lovely smile appeared on your delicate face, and tiny tears of delight spilled from your eyes.

“Awww~ is my pretty girl touched? Ah~ Don’t cry, cutie; your beloved sensei loves you more than you can imagine. So the only time you can cry is when I put this cock in your pussy.”

He slowly brought his hand to your delicate face and wiped away the tiny tears with his thumb. You leaned in his touch as you kept bouncing on his cock. Your slender arms gripping onto his broad shoulders as you ride him. Your body moves in a slow rhythm, your hips bouncing on his large member. Moans and gasps echo through the room.

*clap*

*clap*

His large hands slowly slid from your cheek to your plump ass and spanked your soft ass. It causes your ass to ripple and slightly flush. You squealed sweetly, and your body leaped in sweet shock and stopped for a moment.

“kya~!”

“Fufu~ go on, little girl~. Keep riding your sensei’s cock like a slut~.” Gojo’s deep voice rumbled with satisfaction.

With that, you started to bounce on his cock again, your cute moans growing louder with each movement on his big cock.

Your small hand’s grip on Gojo’s shoulders tightened, nails digging into his skin. Gojo’s large hands grip your soft hips as you rock back and forth on his big cock, his large hands enveloping your soft ass cheeks. He was guiding your movements as he revels in the feel of your soft skin against his hard body.

His eyes were a shade of blue so intense they seemed to pierce through the shadows, watching your every move with predatory interest. He could sense your approaching edge, so he slowed your pace with a firm grip, drawing out the pleasure and tormenting you with the promise of release.

He wanted you to beg for your release.

“S-Sensei~, ah~ahah~!”

He lifted you with ease to meet his powerful thrusts. The change in angle had you seeing stars, the pleasure so intense that it bordered on pain. Your breath hitched as little spots of white danced before your watery eyes. Your breath hitched in your throat, and your rhythm became more erratic as you chased your climax relentlessly.

*clap clap clap*

you whined above him, a high-pitched sound of frustration and need that was music to his ears. He smirked, white hair falling into his eyes as he decided whether to let you find sweet release or keep you teetering on the brink a bit longer.

“Please, sensei~” you gasped out, your trembling voice barely more than a series of panting breaths. “I need—”

“What do you need, my little one?” Gojo teased, his voice low and husky

you could barely form words, but your delicate, trembling body spoke volumes; it arched towards him, seeking completion.

“Y-you. I-I need you. P-please, sensei”

Tears streaming down your soft, blushed cheeks from overstimulation, sobs escaping your throat… God, you were gonna be the death of him.

His grip on your ass tightened, and his movements became more forceful, lifting you slightly and then pulling you down onto his cock with a vigor that left no room for thought—only feeling.

“I-I’m close~kyaah~”

*clap clap clap clap clap*

“Gojo… Sensei~” she gasped out between pants, her voice shaky with need. Your use of his title in such an intimate moment only made him crazy

“Let go for me, y/n”

He commanded in a low growl, contrasted with his earlier sarcastic and unserious tone. His voice was now rough with lust and edged with a raw desire that sent another wave of arousal coursing through you.

With one final thrust that reached deep within you, Gojo sent you spiraling over the edge into ecstasy. Your body shook as waves of pleasure crashed over you; you cried out his name like a sacred incantation as you clung to him.

Gojo followed soon after; his semen filled your fertile womb. There was a slight swelling in your tummy. He fell on his back on the bed and pulled you with him, wrapping his muscular arms around you and holding you tightly to him. His cock was still inside you.

You put your cheek against his chest and whispered tiredly to him as you caressed his muscular chest as you lied on his body

“I love you so much, sensei…”

his gaze softened and smiled softly. What a cute little girl, he thought.

He inhaled your scent as he placed a long, passionate kiss on the crown of your head, his arms still wrapped tightly around you.

“I love you too, y/n-chan”

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - Boyfriend Era is a Go

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

NOV 2024 Week 2

Ongoing Series - Thai

Jack & Joker (Thai Mon IQIYI) ep 9 of 12 - I have to say it, the heist stuff is stupid and all the sidekicks are idiots to the point of annoyance. But Yin and War are truly stellar at these parts. And in general in these roles. Can’t knock 'em. It’s been a year of some very good kisses and this has to have been the best. So this show is top of the standings this week for that kiss alone. Like srs boys? I mean to say, BOYS! How dare. Breaking the internet like that.

Honestly, let's be clear, these two have had killer chemistry since the En of Love and we all expected great things. And now, here we sit, suffering great things from these kings. Thank you, Sirs, may we have another?

Love Sick 2024 (Thai Sun iQIYI) ep 8 of 15 - I'm chronicling my experience with 2024 as compared to 2014 here. The Per Win story arc never interested me in 2014 and I’m not enjoying it now either. But Mick and Ohm are better in 2024. Nong Mick is a standout character, and a brilliant glow up in this version and he’s a confident little shit (affectionate). The mains are good too, but Phun and Noh always were great characters, and these actors are quite good. Possibly better than the original. 

Kidnap (Fri YT) ep 10 of 12 - More bf era delightful diabetes. They are the best boyfriends and the cutest family in the entire world. No exceptions. Next week is definitely doom tho. 

Every You Every Me (Thai Mon Gaga) ep 5 of 10 - Talk about making consent and communication sexy! *fans self* Whoah! That was unexpectedly great. The blatancy of the lust in this one was fun too. And the general casual switch nature of the relationship = delightful.

I like the little acting course we're getting from these tw. They are both quite good. I’m not sure I really enjoy the stories that they’re telling, but I do like how they are telling them.

Fourever You (Thai Thurs YT) ep 6 of 16 - Hill is the premier torch carrier of this year. My goodness. He sure nursed that crush. While I really like this main couple, I’m happy to have some of the others start to creep into the narrative at this juncture. Alone HillTer are a bit intentionally miscommunicative and saccharine. But the screen-time distribution amongst couples seems a little strange. That said, couple 2? No thank you. I really don't like North as a character at all. I find him incredibly unappealing. Ordinarily I'd be on his side because....... blackmail trope renders Johan automatically a complete arse. But at least this is 2 unlikable characters being jerks to each other?

Perfect 10 Liners (Thai Sun YouTube?) ep 2 of 24 - Say it with me Thailand: negging is NOT romantic. Frankly, Arc is just an asshole and a bully with anger issues. But…… Yay cute sides! PondSand they funny. (Book, to me = never very funny. I don’t think comedy is his bailiwick. Look, comedy is HARD ya’ll and usually not in that way.) 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Our Youth AKA Miseinen: Mijukuna Oretachi wa Bukiyo ni Shinkochu (Japan Tues Gaga) ep 1 of 11 - They’re doing some interesting stuff with the framing (both filming style and narrative) that makes this extremely old-fashioned feeling (like Takumi-kun level). I keep saying that this year, but it feels like BL is doing a lot of rediscovering its roots right now. This one even had a goldfish. And abuse. (The two, oddly, often go hand-in-hand in JBL ) And overall...... it’s a bit weird. Which I don’t mind from Japan. Japanese BL can get weird in a good way. Oh I like it. Bully meats smart loaner, total opposites attract, both are lonely and broken and NEED each other, and all that.

See Your Love (Taiwan Weds Gaga) ep 4 of 13 - Oh dear, our poor little rich boy is very broken indeed. The sides are utterly ridiculous.

My Damn Business (Korea Sat YT) eps 6 of 7 - I don’t normally like a love triangle, but I kind of like this one since it gave our uke a bit more depth and agency. And charm, quite frankly. So far he’s been a very dower character.

Eccentric Romance (Korea Weds Viki) eps 9-10 of 12 - Okay boyfriend era is a go. Goodness but they sure are adorable. 

Teenager Judge (Vietnam Sat YT) ep 7 of ? - The slow burn is really very slow. To the point of frustration. But I'm still enjoying the show, just not as much as I was.

Love is Like a Poison AKA Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru (Japan Tues Netflix?) 8 of 10 eps - Even Japan is going through a bf era rn I see. How unusual.

Love in the Air: Koi no Yokan (Japan Sat Gaga) ep 2 of 10 - I’m slightly less annoyed by this one than the original (but I was VERY annoyed by that). I think mame is being tempered by a few things:

There’s so much less time spent on the back-and-forth, because this is a much shorter show, so I have less time to be frustrated by it and the utter uselessness of 75% of these characters.

Also, there's that innate Japanese awkwardness of portrayal & social interaction, which makes the unpleasantness of the characters' behavior and touch more understandable.

This, in turn, is married to the natural kink factor of JBL.

There’s a clearer Dom sub from the get go with this version, makes the blackmailing a little bit more tolerable because it's clearly Play. (negotiated or not) Simply put, daddy wants his brat to beg. And honestly? So say we all.

On a completely different note, the wardrobe for this show is terrible. Like truly bad BAD.

Blue Canvas of Youthful Days (China Sun iQIYI) eps 3-4 - Well I guess that’s that disability dealt with. Meanwhile, competitive bullying art students? I am very amused. Zoo date was cute. This is unquestionably a BL (I’m even more scared now). Still, the gay boys dealing with the straight dude’s crush was truly hilarious. So much "our gay drama doesn’t have time for your het bullshit." Classy move, I smell some Taiwan in this show.

Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo (Korea Thurs Gaga) eps 4-8 end - I was reliably informed this has an HFN end so I decided to watch. Noble and self sacrificing with both of them taking the blame.

My thoughts are...... mixed.

High school student Do Hoe lives with his brutal father who runs a Taekwondo gym. When cheerful Ju Young arrives to train, they fall in love. An unexpected incident forces them apart, they reunite over a decade years later. Essentially this is a brilliant narrative about finding love at the worst possible time, surviving chronic abuse, and the way we process mental, emotional, and physical trauma overtime. Yes it’s also a romance, but that’s not primarily what this story is actually about. I can recognize its genius, but this type of narrative is not for me. I’m reminded of bittersweet painful shows like To My Star 2, or The On1y One, or even Not Me. Is this BL tangential or is it some other genre entirely? Am I questioning my own taste because I did not like its content, or because I do not like its genre? And if it’s not BL should I even render judgment? I think I have to lean into the way I approached some of those other shows, which is to say: it is not for me but I recognize that it is of an extremely high-quality that is certainly for someone else.

Recommended, but only if you like masochistic cinema. Under those circumstances 9/10

(but know that if i were rating for my personal taste? 7/10 I’m never re-watching this, and there is a small part of me that wishes I never had) 

It's airing but......

Love for Loves Sake got some kind of special supposed to air 11/9. Not sure what, why, or where. Only the rumor that it...... is. I'll believe it when I see it...... literally.

The Hidden Moon (Sat WeTV) 10 eps - I've been reliably told not to bother, so I won't.

Bad Guy My Boss (Thai Sun Gaga) 10 eps - I DNF'd at ep 7, I couldn't make it. I am weak. Life is hard enough right now, this show is making it harder. It’s not what I want from my entertainment.

Bad to Bed (Taiwan Sat YouTube) 10 eps - This is a little too low production value even for me. And just very very odd. DNF

In case you missed it

Uncle Unknown finished its run on YT. Censored Chinese BL with paralytically bad production levels. But certainly BL. Boys reunite after a break up only to discover one of them is the step-Uncle of the other. Much to my own shock and surprise I watched all 12 episodes of this. Fortunately, each episode is about 5 minutes long. Under those circumstances is it worth it? Maybe. It’s bad. But not offensive. So that's a win. And you know me, I love a weird take on the stepbrother’s trope and incest taboos. 5/20 watch it only if you have nothing better to do

Next Week Looks Like This:

Gosh there's a lot on right now.

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

November BL:

11/15 Caged Again (Thai Fri Gaga) 10 eps - Penguin escapes zoo by turning into a human. Gets trapped again and a panther falls in love with him.

11/17 Your Sky (Thai Sun iQIYI) 12 eps - A naive freshman and the campus’s popular senior agree to pretend to be a couple - but their fake deal begins to generate real feelings.

11/20 Winter Is Not The Death of Summer (Thai Weds YT) ?? eps - Criminals who meet in prison fall in love

11/20 The Heart Killers (Thai Weds YT iQIYI) 12 eps - Jojo directs FirstKhao & JoongDunk in an action romcom about assassin brothers (Khao & Joong) who meet a tattoo artist ex-booster (First) and a mechanic (Dunk). I'm highly amused that Joong plays the older brother to Khao and that we have a take on the Taming of the ShrewBL. I like that everyone is morally gray. This has all GMMTV's best chemistry in one BL and some fresh concepts that I've only seen tackled in m/m romance novels (check out Amy Lane's Racing for the Sun, thank me later). I'm excited. My only quibble is Jojo, I like his style but his characters can get unreliably messy so…... this gonna be interesting.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

The insane level of his babygirl heart eyes.

Just, have mercy.

(last week)

The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone @pickletrip @aliceisathome @urikawa-miyuki @tokillamonger @sunflower-positiiivity @rocketturtle4 @blglplus @anythinggoesintheshire @everlightly @renafire @mestizashinrin @bl-bam-beyond @small-dark-and-delicious @saezurumurmurs

[karanseraph]

Allegedly, when my dad was young, my paternal grandmother told him "all men have a dark side." I think she meant well. She was born in the early 20th century, she came over frome Ireland on boat as a child. She had a stepfather who was from another immigrant community. Families were large. There was a lot of poverty and alcohol. They were Catholic, so they also took "original sin" as a concept seriously.

I think this did my dad harm. He actually is a person who struggles with empathy. Now, it's apparent he's neurodivergent from multiple traits he has and that this probably runs in the family, but no one we knew was diagnosed back then. He views criticism as personal attacks. It's difficult for him to see difference between people (like his difference) as positive of a challenge to accept and accommodate and instead thinks (in his darkest moments) that he's broken. Or that I also am someone who needs to be fixed.

But, somehow, I'm sure from conversations most of my siblings including my brothers voted blue and genuinely are able to care about others and will try to help.

And, to clarify, my dad has done volunteer work a d actually helped some people a lot. He is in no way evil. He's human. He is a product of his time. He was indoctrinated, arguably, by nuns, and Jesuits, and the Knights of Columbus, by bullies, and every bit of 1950's US government propaganda about scary different people and the importance of conforming and being "American". He says he didn't know that he was poor as a child because everyone was like that around him. He had a moment in the late 80s where he was arguably upper middle class. But he's also one of those older people now who don't really have wealth in the oldest sense but have pension/retirement tied up in stocks market scrap and keep mortgaging their house when they need cash.

Anyway, this is long.

But what I'm trying to say is people are flawed and human and make mistakes, but they aren't born or made evil or good. I think it's more harmful to say to kids that they have darkness or sin inside them from the start than to focus on choices going forward and the possibility that when one does make a mistake they can also make amends.

So, we should try to tell kids that.

Model good behavior and choices for kids as much as we can. Communicate that humans of all ages can make mistakes. Get rid of the concept of authoritarianism and infallibility in any individual or organization. Embrace differences. Talk about our feelings when we feel hurt by another's choices or actions so we can understand or compromise.

Just do our best and be excellent to each other.

And, specifically, for those boys some are worried about - I know lack of funds can impede this - but give them lots of room to play, give them books about all different people and experiences, take them on trips to see how real people do their work, let them engage with all the dramatic play props and costumes and clothes and dolls. Let them have building toys and action figures they choose. Let them use telescopes and microscopes to shift their perspective. Let them draw and paint and write. Let them compete and measure, without focusing on the win itself.

And let all kids do those things (but above posts were about boys).

And if there's a financial struggle to provide all this, try libraries or a device that can stream old episodes of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, or Reading Rainbow, or Sesame Street, etc.

Because, going back to my dad, he wasn't really able to model the most typical social-emotional behaviours or interactions for me, but I could see Optimus Prime or Fred Rogers interact with others.

And my brothers turned out pretty OK possibly because our dad was able to provide many books but also because he decided with my mom early on that girls could play with cars and boys could play with dolls.

And how/why he decided that when he was such a product of past generations and watches a certain news channel three or four times a day now I can't explain. But he did.

So, we know, I think, how to help kids. I worked in early childcare education for a time myself. People know how to help kids. But...there's also a struggle for any service to be profitable which means the teacher-student ratios can get stretched and that teachers can get stuck with so many assessments and standardized testing requirements that they aren't just spending time with the kids.

But we know.

And, unfortunately, there are some in the world who have differing goals. Right? Like do you want healthy men who can work together with diverse groups of people in cooperating to better the world? Or do you want obedient workers? Soldiers? Slaves?

Men themselves are not the problem. Boys aren't a problem.

It's young people growing up with divisivness and poverty and war and demand of conformity and obedience, etc.

So, probably the best we can do foe young men is to try to understand that they aren't evil by nature. Probably Patriarchy hurt them. But because of that, they don't want to admit it to themselves, because that would be weakness.

We need to keep showing them that there are places for men (again, all people need attention, but above posts were about boys and men) in the society we want.

We can say it to men we know. We can say that we really liked when they did math homework with us, or played Lego with us, or played us music we liked, or organized a tabletop game, or built us a bookcase, or cooked chicken the way we like, or taught us how to draw our eyeliner, or even expressed a desire to defend us against another man. (These are just some examples from my life, yours are likely different.)

It would be nice if we didn't also have those negative influences in the world, but we do and we can't stop them overnight or by ourselves.

So, we do our best to model and encourage the behaviours we want and to protect institutions that help like our public libraries, and to ask for policies that will (actually) improve schools.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[petew21-blog]

Best tutor ever

Jimmy, 23 y.o., law student

Jimmy struggled at university, because of his model side job. He really loved it, but he also wanted to be a great lawyer.

Eventually his parents found out. His father was furious and got one of the law professors Harrison to tutor Jimmy.

Although the professor didn't really like Jimmy, he helped him to get better. To improve. And eventually he found out that this young man, he assumed was just another jock, was a great young man.

They always went over the study materials and then had some bonding time talking about school, politics, their youth.

Jimmy eventually passed all exams needed. He went back to Mr. Harrison to thank him.

They went for a hug

Mr. Harrison:"Oh, Jimmy. I'm so happy. You're gonna be a great lawyer."

Jimmy:"Thank you, Mr. Harrison. You're the reason why I didn't fail. I would like to give you something. What would you like? A bottle of whiskey, vacation to Bahamas, new car? I think I owe you so much for helping me secure my future."

Mr. Harrison:"Slow down. You should only thank yourself. And do not give me anything. I'd desire to be young again as you to enjoy life, but that's not possible. So I'll at least enjoy helping young students like you to achieve their goals."

Jimmy smiled:"Ok, well I'll try to think of something"

Mr. Harrison couldn't sleep properly. It felt as if the night lasted an eternity.

He woke up the next morning. As he was used to, he would always rub his beard in the morning.

But while doing so, his fingers only traced a smooth face.

"What is this?"

His eyes opened. Something happened. He was still in his bed. But he felt different.

He looked at his arms. They were lighter, less hairy. But the skin looked tighter. He touched his left arm with his fingers and squeezed his stronger biceps.

Right at that moment, he noticed his fingers. They were longer, thinner. He knew his hands. He used them everyday at work, for everything. But these were not the hands he knew. They were younger. Different. There were no skin marks, the skin wasn't cracked. It looked young.

He looked down and noticed his lean chest. He used to be slim when he was young, but the stress from work made him gain weight and get that dad body. But this was a surprising change. His fingers traced his chest over the shirt.

Next was his belly. He was used to not be able to put some clothes over his belly. Not even being able to see his penis over it. But he even had ABS now!

He pushed away the covers. He uncovered his legs. He was so skinny now. The legs were longer than his. His legs were hairy

His knees didn't hurt. He was taken back by all of this happening.

He headed to the bathroom. He was surprised by a reflection of a young handsome man. He saw some resemblance with his younger self, but this body was different. He never had long hair.

He couldn't keep his new hands of his face, examining every part, every ridge of his face.

He still couldn't believe that this was happening. He was young again! His chin was so smooth! He was falling in love with his new appearenc.

He took of his shirt. His eyes fixated on his abs. On his nipples. His body had so many birthmarks.

He found his son's tighter shirt that would fit him better. Thanfully no one was home today. He would have a lot of trouble explaining how all ofnthi happened.

Even putting clothes on was a new surprisinf experience, it was so erotic for him to just brush over his body everytime he accidentally touched himself.

"I look amazing!" he said to his reflection

"Wow. This is my new voice. Hi, I'm Mr. Harrison. I'm young. I am young again!"

His phone vibrated. It was Jimmy.

Mr. Harrison:"Hello?"

Jimmy:"Hello there. How are you enjoying your new gift?"

Mr. Harrison:"Did you do this? How is this possible?"

Jimmy:"Don't worry about that. You wanna come celebrate with me? We could go to a beach to show of our bodies. You got long hair like me, don't you?"

Mr. Harrison:"Yeah. Well... ok. I think I'll go. But wait, Jimmy. What if I run into someone from my family?"

Jimmy:"Don't worry about it. I made sure that you'll get to enjoy everything. See you at the beach!"

Jimmy hanged up the phone. He went to his son's room and grabbed his swimshorts and a towel. He rushed down the stairs and took his son's shoes. He looked at himself in the mirror and smiled. He was ready to go, but someone spoke up behind him.

"Going somewhere?"

Mr. Harrison turned around to face an older man. He was wearing glasses, had a beard... fuck... he kind of looked like his old self. But not entirely. His eyes were different. His nose smaller. Almost as... Oh no.

Mr. Harrison:"Elijah?!"

Elijah:"Since when are you calling your father by his first name? You wanna tell me where you're headed?" He said as he sipped his morning coffee.

Mr. Harrison couldn't believe what he was seeing. His son was now old and he was young. "Beach... I'm heading to... the beach"

Elijah:"Are you ok, young man?"

Mr. Harrison:"Yeah, sorry. I... have to go... I'll be home soon. Bye."

Elijah sipped his coffee again and dialed a phone number.

"Hey. Haha. Yeah, we talked. He's confused. But don't tell him yet. Let him be confused for a while. He doesn't need to know we made a deal. He really deserves being young. Oh and try to get him to experiment. You know, he never got the chance to explore his sexuality when he was young. Ok, great. Have a great day, Jimmy."

Another anonymous story from Inbox 😊

What about a story were a really geeky teacher/professor ends up tutoring a kid and as a reward the teacher/professor is tranformed into a person the kids age.

Screenshots directly form the short f2m body swap movie on YouTube: Soliloquy of Morgan. Check it out :)

[sarahreesbrennan]

I remember reading in one of your blog entries (years ago??) that in the new book you were writing, the main character's *sister* had cancer. Does that mean that Alice was originally the main character of Long Live Evil? Was she going to go into the book to save Rae, instead of Rae going in to save herself?

How extremely kind of you to remember!

No, that was actually a YA murder mystery that I wrote while ill, revised while recovering, and sent out into the world where it died on submission. (Which means we sent it out to about 12 editors and the editor either said no, or said yes and took it to acquisitions - a group of people at the publisher including sales and marketing - and acquisitions said no.)

One editor told me she really wanted and really tried to buy it. Another person who worked in publishing (and has since changed jobs, or I wouldn’t share this) said the response at her acquisitions was - if you like this writer, find the next her (implications about health and youth were made).

I was terrified my agent was going to ditch me too, but she said ‘We’ll sell that one day, for now let’s write the next thing.’

I remember another writer telling me she missed my work that wasn’t a tie-in, and I felt ashamed to tell her it wasn’t that I wasn’t writing other things - it was that I couldn’t publish them.

The tie-ins meanwhile were paying the bills (they still are tbh!) and I was and remain so grateful for them. But I also really loved writing them - especially my Sabrina tie-ins, you don’t forget the first, and it reminded me I want to write horror and poly one day - and how they got me to love and sympathise with so many fandoms.

I see the burnout of caregivers all around me, and I wanted to write the story of one. But maybe I also wanted to take a step back from cancer. I didn’t think I did, at the time. I had a whole lot of things I tried writing before Long Live Evil, and I think some of them were really good. One of my critique partners gave me a lipstick with the same name as someone in the murder mystery. There was a romance novel another critique partner said was her favourite thing I’d ever written. But none had someone with cancer at the heart of the story.

And even though Rae isn’t much like me, maybe I had to start there. You can’t make real magic using someone else’s liver. Maybe I had to wait to be brave enough to use my own liver.

I do get requests for advice on how to cope with rejection of your writing, and I always worried I didn’t have anything else to say, but I suppose my example says - if you can, (and I know it’s hard, you feel so terrible at writing and so useless) (and you love the work you’ve done so much and you don’t see a way forward to loving the next thing) (but still, if you possibly can) write the next thing.

Even if the first thing sells, you’ll want the next thing one day. Writing the next thing is more writing practise, so it’ll make you better. Write the next thing.

Ultimately I’m really glad Long Live Evil was my comeback book. I think it needed to be. It took the time it took.

But maybe it was a shade of that past book (where the heroine’s sister with cancer was six, so not much like any of the Time of Iron characters) that made me think of the YA version of this book, which I always had in my mind as something I was intentionally hewing away from - a more straightforward book, a book that might have sold better - in which shy reader Alice was the hero. She’s the one with the suggestive hero name - Alice through the looking glass - the heroine looks, and the more projectable-upon personality. She’d get called annoying less often (though still some, because she’s a girl), partly because she is (with love, Rae knows I’m right) a genuinely less annoying person. Much kinder, much sweeter, and much better at in-depth reading! Her sister being in trouble would’ve been a backstory, a catalyst point, and - you’re totally right - a great motivation for her to get the Flower. Saving a family member is a much more sympathetic and heroic motivation than saving yourself and one I do love (the Hunger Games, Labyrinth, Mahy’s the Changeover, and I write it a lot!). I think Snarky While Tragically Dying Rae would’ve been a pretty popular side character, too. I think it would’ve been a good book! Just not mine.

I love your question because I love thinking about POV, and all the decisions that are the building blocks of a story. To me, the Alice centric Time of Iron is a version that exists. As are several versions of the Lia centric Time of Iron. And versions centring other characters exist to me, too. (Eric, absolutely.)

Speaking of POV musing, I think Rahela the wicked stepsister featured more in the musical than the book. If the Time of Iron series ever became a TV show (and at this point in time I think I’d rather a movie because it wouldn’t… get cancelled…) and I got to write it (don’t know why I would…) I would start with the beginnings for three characters about to go on a journey to somewhere strange to them: Key in the Cauldron, Rae in the hospital, and Vasilisa in the icelands. There are so many possibilities! And I really wanted the sense that there were so many possibilities, too.

But I wanted the chronically ill one to be the centre of the story, and for it to be her villain origin story, and to ask a lot of questions (hence a lot of villains!) about who gets villainised and why. And I thought hers, to my mind, would be the most fun of all the possible stories.

So that’s the one I made. But Long Live Evil has a lot of origins. Thank you for remembering one of them! I don’t think I would’ve dared tell the story, if things hadn’t worked out for me (so far, fingers crossed).

And I also tell it to be clear my publisher was taking a RISK with me and Long Live Evil, and I really appreciate that, and I’m so happy it’s worked out for them (again so far, early days, fingers crossed, etc).

I hope some writers - whether in the process of submission, rejection or making the choices that are the building blocks of story - find this helpful, and some readers find it interesting.

Let this be one of the universes in which your story is told.

[senmiyaazx]

Hi! If that's ok could i request Sol with a reader that does not fuck around? Somebody bothering? They're already swinging before the mf can finish the sentence. Someone following them? They're pulling out the hammer out the purse and start charging the person. And pretty much anything in their hands becomes a weapon.

Just curious to see his reaction lol

oo this is an interesting scenario especially in the library scene

SOL X GN READER

cw: guess what! not proofread. reader is lowkey a menace. violence obviously, but it's not that detailed.

The first time you and Sol met was a surprise. He was getting beat up, not wanting to cause a scene in the library and he's outnumbered.

Until you appear from the corner and start roundhouse kicking these bastards like stirring coffee. On top of that, you weren't even that hurt after dealing with those two bullies! Well, aside from the bruise on your cheeks.

Sol was already in love with you before, but when you held your hand out to him with a charming smile on your lips he fell harder, if that was possible. (He's already signing the marriage papers)

Since then, you've become something like Sol's protector? Sol can defend himself perfectly fine. He gets into fights all the time, it's nothing new to him. But he's absolutely smitten when you do it nonetheless, rolling your sleeves up the moment you even see someone looking at Sol the wrong way.

While your feistiness provides good benefits, such as being able to defend yourself even when he's not there, Sol wishes you could.. tone it down a little. He doesn't want you to get hurt that often. Because he'll deal with the other person one way or another. Or risk yourself hurting the wrong person (Someone from a higher class) and that wouldn't do you much good, wouldn't it?

He's happy he has such a strong and brave darling though. His eyes are filled with hearts as you walk through the hallways with your head held high and some students who recognize you scramble to get out of your way in fear of getting on your nerves.

And he loves you. He really does. But please put that hammer away— where did you even get that?! — he wasn't following you! He was he just so happened to be in the same place as you. Geez, you're scary when you get mad.

A little cute too when you furrow your brows at him, telling him to be more careful around you. Sorry pumpkin, he can't resist you.

He realized quickly you're lowkey a hazard to people when you ask him for his least favorite pen in art class and proceeded to nearly hospitalize someone who disrespected you, with it. You obviously get in trouble afterwards, but the uncaring grin you send him made his heart stop for a moment.

"Least no one's gonna bother us now." You say after getting lightly scolded by Sol.

He's pretty sure you noticed the way his cheeks flushed at that.

Since then, he makes sure you're not within any objects that could harm people. Even something as silly as a ruler. (He's seen the way you sent someone to the clinic with a book. He's not taking any risks)

Eventually, whether he does it consciously or not, he ends up protecting other people from you instead of the other way round. Sol doesn't know how it happened or when he started to give his scariest glare to anyone who even thinks about approaching you with malicious intent. It's a win-win for him. He gets to spend more time alone with you and he prevents other people from earning your wrath! The only problem is that he won't be able to do this when he's not with you.

Whatever. He hates to admit it, but hopefully that Crowe dude handles you as well as he does.

And he trusts you, too. He knows you have a goal in mind for this school and he knows you won't get yourself in enough trouble to get expelled. There are.. simply some times where you can't help but put people in their place. Which Sol respects a lot.

That doesn't stop Sol from getting paranoid, however. Oh well, at least he's the one who gets to patch you up after you get into another fight<3

[yanmuffins]

It's hilarious you made Tim be paranoid of Perry. And when the reveal of Perry being Agent P. He is going to go, I told you so to Jason.

Also, let Dr. Doofenshimertz be friends with MC (or Reader, I usually call them MC). Like, just invention buddies. Let him be a good dad friend to MC, like look at how he raised his child, Vanessa. Let MC be doted on. Also, let MC be friend with Vanessa.

the lore just creates itself, with the asks! tim being paranoid of perry is making it into the fic. he's going to feel so vindicated (maybe even more vindicated than damian when reader gets busted) when the truth about perry comes out. funny thing is, he's still the littlest bit suspicious of perry after that. he's still convinced the platypus doesn't like him and is out to get him specifically. which is too bad, because he seems to get along just fine with reader, damian and jason.

i mean, dr. doofenshmirtz is huge no-no as a friend for reader because he's a villain. a subpar villain, but still a villain! i could see reader perhaps being friendly with vanessa, maybe they go to the same school, but it would unfortunately be a short-lived friendship when the batfam intervenes. damian didn't like vanessa and he sure didn't like her dad, so he's glad that his family finally caught wind of reader's bad companions and cut them off their life (hopefully with just a warning to stay away from reader...). they don't need such bad influences in their life.

on another note,

reader after they come back from dc. vs vampires universe:

(warning: spoilers for the dc. vs vampires comic)

honestly, i'm conflicted on how tht would go because the possibilities are endless. i like the idea of reader not really existing in that reality, so when they pop into existence mid-chaos, it's very... interesting. nobody knows who they are, and not in a "oh sorry sib i forgot about you for a sec" way, they really don't know who they are! and batman couldn't be more exhausted at this point, now he has an extra child from another dimension who's stuck here while he's dealing with figuring out what this whole vampire mayhem is about.

now, whether they arrive in dc vs. vampires while batman is still alive trying to figure out who the vampire king is or after dick reveals himself and is on his way to conquer the world is difficult to decide. realistically, reader would just go back to their universe in both cases as soon as they realized they're not in their gotham. but what if their dimension-traveling device breaks and they're stuck for a while before they manage to fix it?

bonus points if damian got dragged into this bullshit and gets to meet his vampire version who's trying to defeat dick. that would be a mess of unheard of proportions.

"damian (x2), i know what we're gonna do today!" and it's defeating the vampire king.

that, or damian and reader adopt the "no interfering with other dimensions" approach and mind their own business getting back home. just a moment to see that oh, the situation here is way above our pay grade, let's leave asap.

but tbh, i think both reader and damian would be horrified by this reality and so very relieved when they get home safely, in time for dinner. nobody believes them, sure, but dick does notice they're following him around and looking suspiciously at him at lot. and he's baffled, do they really think he's a vampire? come on. he heard about kids having over-active imaginations, but that's just too much.

[seungfl0wer]

*𝙄𝙫𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙩 𝙔𝙤𝙪*

Pairing: Changbin x Reader (Fem)

Genre: Angst (Happy ending of course)

Warnings: Abusive father! Violence, Blood, Alcohol, Sick mother, Lots of cursing. Father is a real piece of shit and puts hands on reader multiple times. Sorry for any mistakes or missing tags.

Just for another warning because I think it’s important. This has content that could trigger some people. Please please read the warnings. If any of them make you uncomfortable please don’t read. Also a reminder. You’re not alone. No one ever should be laying their hands on you. I love you. You’re loved. You don’t ever deserve anything like this.

Find The Request Here

-🖤

Changbin wrapped his arms around you pulling you close to him. He kissed your neck tenderly nuzzling himself into your neck. You both were snuggled up on the couch watching a show. “My angel” he said softly before softly kissing your neck once more. When you were with him it felt like nothing else mattered like the world was alright. Your moment of happiness was short lived though seeing your phone buzzing. It was your father. Just seeing his name flash on your phone made you anxious.

After your mother had passed away your dad became an even bigger monster. He was always a good for nothing, But now not working as much as he did he stayed home drinking. Your mother had told you before the only reason she had stayed with him was because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Her family was from another country, she didn’t have much money or friends. She was such a brave woman though. You don’t know how she dealt with him so long but I guess him never really being home helped. He had gotten fired from his big job because of his drinking and anger problems. Going to work one day hungover and punching a coworker so hard it broke his nose. He had to pay a hefty fine for that. Now he has a slow job where he only works a few days.

One of your earliest memories of him being his asshole self was him telling you how he hated that you were a girl. He hated that in his words ‘that useless bitch couldn’t even give me a boy.’ He wanted a son so badly and he made sure you knew that. He never really bonded with you however he’d be damned if you didn’t respect his authority. The first time he ever laid hands on you, you were 9. You accidentally knocked over a table braking the lamp that was placed on it. He grabbed you by the wrist smacking you across the face. ‘You stupid fucking brat! Look what you did, you’re just like your fucking mother!’ He spat pushing you away from him.

After that day it just kept going. Having to wear long sleeves at school to hide the bruises. At one point you had to stay home for almost a week. You had stepped in front of him to protect your mom when he hit you square in the face busting your lip. It stayed swollen and bruised for a while. Tooth slightly cracked from the incident.

You wanted so badly to tell someone. Confide in a teacher anything. You were scared to though. Scared they’d blame your mom, put her in jail and take you away. So you endured it. As your mom started to get sick he turned more of his attacks on you. Although a complete peace of shit he wasn’t stupid. He knew if he did anything to her the doctors would see it.

After she had passed you kept yourself from the house as best as you could. Not going home as much as you possibly could. You got a job at a cafe down the road and that’s how you met changbin. He was a regular who once you started talking admitted to only coming so much to see you.

You kept your home life a secret to him as much as you could but one day you were getting intimate you forgot about the bruises. When he had lifted your shirt his smile dropped. He looked at you with wide eyes “what the fuck? Who did this to you?” He said clenching his jaw. All you could do was sob he held you in his arms rubbing your back. “I’m sorry for raising my voice I just- y/n please- what happened?” He asked.

Through your sobs you told him, you unloaded everything in a word vomit of sadness. He would and wanted to go find your father. To beat him senseless, to show him how it feels but he knew you needed him more. He held you so tightly, feeling his own heart breaking from your words. Knowing a family member could do this to someone they were supposed to protect. To love and cherish just broke him. He was such a family oriented person and now he realized why you never wanted him to meet him. Never talked about him. He asked why you couldn’t just leave explaining to him how your mother wasn’t from here, how you had no family and no one else to rely on.

“Shit- it’s my dad” you said frantically picking the phone up.

“Where the fuck are you? He spat.

“I’m- I’m just at a friend’s house” you stuttered.

He laughed “sure, you’re probably slutting around. Get your fucking ass home.”

He hung up leaving you shaking. “I gotta go.” You said picking your keys up.

“Y/n you don’t have to” Changbin said with pleading eyes.

“I’m sorry.” You said before heading to the door.

Your brain wondered what was going on. Why he needed you home. As you pulled up coming through the door you saw him slumped in his usual chair. “About fucking time” he hissed. “Do something useful and go get me some more beer” he demanded.

You stood there almost dumb founded. Before he hissed again “don’t make me say it again!”

You nodded heading down to the store and getting it for him. When you got home again you sat the beer beside him. He gave you a smirk “glad you know how to listen” he chuckled. Your nose twitched at his smell, you hated being close to him. The smell of alcohol, cigarettes and B.O. always radiated off of him. He motioned for you to leave and you did slinking back to your room to text changbin.

Him: Y/n! Text me back! I’m worried!

You: I’m fine. He just wanted beer

Him: I swear I’ll end him one of these days

You: I’m gonna go to bed ok? I’ll see you in the morning! Love you!

Him: Love you to beautiful. Text me when you wake up🖤

You fell asleep shortly after always finding peace in sleep. The next few days were the same old. Going to Changbins after work going home late when you knew he’d be passed out. Today though. You had to run home for your wallet. When you walked through the door your dad was in the kitchen. You took one look around and realized something had to have happened. Things were thrown around. Smashed. Your body froze before you could go to walk back out he saw you.

“Where do you think you’re fucking going!” He yelled. He made a bee line toward you.

“I’m- I’m picking up another shift at work I just came home to grab something.” You lied.

“Bull fucking shit!” He spat.

He grabbed you by your throat lifting you up against the wall. His eyes were dark, knuckles bloody from punching the wall. “I get fucking fired from my god damn job only to come home to see you running back out? For what huh? To go fucking whore around some more?” He said. “No! There’s gonna be some fucking changes!” He screamed.

He dropped you to the floor before grabbing you by your wrist dragging you to the kitchen. “You’re gonna get another fucking job, you’re gonna start paying the other bills!” He spat. “You got it!”

When you didn’t answer right away he slapped more like punched you across the face. “Answer me bitch!” He said gritting his teeth. All you could do was nod scared for your life. You felt a warmth running down, your nose was bleeding.

“You’re fucking pathetic you know that, just like your fucking mother! That bitch. That bitch fucking deserved what she got! I’m glad she’s fucking dead!” He spat. Something had come over you at that point. You shoved back making him stumble backwards. You made a dash to the door luckily in his drunken stupor he stumbled getting back up. You ran. Not even bothering getting in your car afraid it take to long.

So you ran. You ran as fast as you could until you couldn’t anymore. You hid yourself in the bushes at the park panting. Trying to catch your breath as you fumbled to call changbin. “Hey angel” he said happily but when he heard you breathing heavy his heart sank. “Y/n what’s wrong? Are you ok?” He asked.

“I’m- I’m at the- park down- down the road- please” you stuttered out.

“Stay there I’m just down the road!” He said before grabbing his keys speeding to you.

He gripped the steering wheel afraid for what had happened. “Angel? I’m here!” He yelled out.

You peaked your head out, when he got a good look at you anger filled his body. ‘That mother fucker’ he snarled. There was no time to be angry right now though. You needed him. So desperately needed him.

He sat beside you pulling you into his arms. He took his jacket placing it around you as he whipped away the blood from your nose. He noticed the handprint mark around your neck, he gritted his teeth seething. You sobbed, holding onto him for dear life. He rubbed your back “ssh sh it’s ok angel, I’m here, I got you.” He said.

He rocked you back and forth letting your sobs subside before asking you anything. “Does it hurt?” He asked lifting your face to him looking over your nose and neck. You nodded. It hurt to swallow, hurt to breathe, everything just hurt. “Can I take you to the hospital?” He asked. You were hesitant but you nodded.

The car ride there all he could do was watch over you. Scared something could seriously be wrong. Cursing at himself for not being there. He was in the process of finding a new place. A new place so you could move in with him. The only reason you didn’t live with him now was for the fact he had other roommates and if the tenant found out about you they all could be evicted. He was gonna surprise you today with the good news, that he found a place. Close to his work and close to a bakery you had wanted to work at.

When he had gotten to the hospital they all looked at him like he had done it. They checked you over asked him a million questions. The cops being called from below to ask him questions. They weren’t completely shocked when they heard your dad’s name. He was notorious for his anger outbursts and violence. He had a list of charges that had gotten one being the man he punched at his old job. They wrote everything down, took pictures of your bruises and wounds. Asking you lots of questions before leaving.

“Y/n did you know you had a broken rib at one point?” A nurse asking you.

You shook your head.

“Looks like it happened a while ago, it fused back but not properly. You ever have sharp pains?” She asked.

“Yeah, she use to complain about side pains but they kinda just stopped.” Changbin chimed in.

“How is she right now?” Changbin asked.

“Nothings broken however you’re lucky, the pressure he had around your throat bruised your vocal cords. Any harder you could be looking at serious damage”

The nurse had left to grab some papers changbin took your hand into his. He kissed your cheek softly rubbing his thumb over yours. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there” he said softly.

You shook your head “I don’t want him hurting you either” you said looking up at him.

“I’m proud of you though, pushing back and getting yourself out of there. Your mom would be proud” he said with a small smile. His words made you smile a bit. “She definitely would.”

“I had some news to tell you” he said hoping this would make you smile.

“Yeah?” You asked.

“Yeah. I’m moving. Well we’re moving” he said with a smile. When you looked at him a bit confused his smile grew “I got a place for the two of us. Wish it could have happened sooner but-“ he said.

You wrapped your arms around him hugging him tightly “we’re gonna live together? I’ll get to spend all the time with you?” You said eagerly.

“Yep! Got the keys today!”

When the door opened you thought it was the nurse however it was an officer. “Y/n we have your father in custody. Do you have a place to stay for the mean time?” He asked looking over at your boyfriend.

“I do, but can I go back and get something’s you asked.

The officer nodded “I’ll have to escort you because it’s a crime scene now.”

You nodded.

“Whenever you get discharged we can go alright?” He said before walking out.

After you went to the house grabbing your clothes, laptop and a few things you smiled saying good riddance to this place. You had the few things from your mom packed, having nothing more in this house for you.

Moving in with changbin was something to get use to. However he helped you every step of the way. You got into much needed therapy and after your father’s sentence you felt like things were going up. As a little house warming gift Changbin had surprised you with a cat. You had bonded with him with the many times he had taken you to the cat cafe. You always said how much you wanted him and now you had him. You had your little family now.

Changbin showered you in love as usual, never missing a chance to compliment you, praise you and tell you how much he loved you. You knew in your heart your mom wherever she was, she was happy. Happy seeing her little girl finally get out of the situation. To live her life to the fullest.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

💙 If you’d like to read more of my stuff you can find it Here: Master List . Thank you for reading and if requests are open or you just wanna talk feel free to send me something🩵

Taglist: @satosugu4l @do-you-remember-summer-127 @xines16 @minh0scat @troublemaker02 @tr-mha-fan @lunearta @velvetmoonlght @minghaosimp

[theculturedmarxist]

>Would a party that declares independence from the culture war even be possible?

I think so. We have to remember that the "culture war" is itself just a proxy for the class war being waged against working people.

For example, in my state a few years ago there was a bunch of bullshit over the "bathroom bill." Dem-controlled Charlotte passed a bill saying that people can use the bathroom of their presented gender, and then Rep-controlled Raleigh countermanded it with a bill of their own saying the opposite. There was a lot of gnashing of teeth over the assault on trans rights and so on, but all of this was in service of covering up what the bill was really about. The second half of the bill not dealing with bathrooms dealt with preventing municipalities from setting minimum wages, safety requirements, and other such things for contract workers.

Another example is this recent shit out of Florida and other places attacking what books school libraries are allowed to have on their shelves, generally having to do with LGBTQ&c content. It's really such nonsense, because how many children are actually being "exposed to" that kind of thing from their school libraries to begin with? But recently I saw an article that tallied up the amount schools have spent having to fight these regulations or the evangelical groups suing them into the billions of dollars. Once again the trans issue is just a cover for reactionaries to attack working people, this time by draining public schools of resources and covering them in acrimony.

Remember also that this "culture war" is happening in a more or less vacuum of working class material interests. Both parties use it as a scapegoat to prevent having to offer working people anything. In either case, if a voter isn't offered something positive to vote for, they'll at least vote against something negative. The average person probably doesn't know a trans person or deal with them in such a substantial way to really have to think about them at all, but when used as a means to threaten their child, either in the sense of "you don't want some DEMOCRAT to trans your beautiful girl into an ugly MAN do you?" or "you don't want some REPUBLICAN to KILL your beautiful trans child do you?" then it becomes a serious issue.

For the most part I really don't think the average person gives much of a shit. Returning to my state's circumstances, right now much of the Western portion is still devastated by hurricane Helene. If a trans person showed up on the remains of someone's doorstep, home destroyed, no power, no heat, no water, no food, with clothes and food and water for them and their children, do you think they're going to turn their nose up? Maybe a few, but I think most people would kiss the feet of the person that kept their children from starving.

And I think that's what we see pretty regularly—people are more concerned with having their material needs met over the ideological source of having those needs met. The average American voter isn't represented by either party because neither one materially meets any of their needs and they have no interest in trying to. In fact, I think if you described the ideal socialist program to the average American they would unequivocally support it.

To provide one such example, when the Amazon Union had its first organizational success after several failures, the union rep was interviewed and talked about what made this time succeed after all the other times failed. Basically he said that the union DID for the workers in the lead up to the vote, providing them with food and weed in addition to their ideological aspirations.

Contrast to the interview with the worker from (iirc) a failed unionization attempt at an auto plant in Kentucky. Ideologically she backed the union 100%. She wanted the union, thought it would be a tremendous help to herself and the other workers there, yet she voted against it. Essentially what she said was "I wanted the union, but I have cancer and the employer threatened to cut our healthcare if we unionized, and that would kill me."

And that's the major stumbling block for the socialist movement in the US right now is that it lacks the ability to materially provide what it ideologically aspires towards. It isn't a defect in theory or lack of zeal, it's just materially unable to. So in spite of a lot of theoretical support for socialism and its ideals, that support hasn't translated into success for the movement, in large part because even when socialists are successful at the polls, the political system as a whole is designed to make translating that success into the sort of material changes which would threaten to unseat the bourgeois parties.

One such example is that the socialists actually did win in Nevada a few years ago. Socialists within the Democratic Party managed to unseat the bourgeois party representatives, and the party responded by basically robbing and starving them of resources, and all the experienced bureaucrats the party's representatives rely on to function all quit. The result was that last year all the elected socialists got unseated in turn by Democrat regulars because they weren't able to parlay their electoral success into actual material gains.

In my opinion the threat of actual material improvements for the working class and what that would entail is what freaked the Democrats out so badly about Bernie Sanders. As much as they squealed and cried about Trump, Sanders actually terrified them. It wasn't his label as a socialist, because to Americans the "Socialist" label is meaningless, just a stand in for whatever scary Bad Thing. What horrified them was a socialist politician getting within spitting distance of having the power to actually provide people with material improvements to their lives. The Democrats aren't afraid to promise or "fight for" a $15 minimum wage or "access to health care," but they are deeply terrified of someone actually providing it.

And I think that is shown both historically with groups like the Black Panthers and the violent reaction generated by their childhood lunch programs, but more recently with the success of the Amazon Union.

The real impediment to socialist political success is that political success itself is insufficient to materialize concrete gains for the people that vote for them, and getting bogged down in "culture war" superficialities exacerbates that. That isn't to say that trans people or their needs should be abandoned, but rather that they need to be a) put in the proper context and b) can't be combated on bourgeois terms.

In 2020 and 2024 both, the Democrats offered trans people nothing except the threadbare hope that by voting for them, they'd be spared the worst predations of the Republicans. The proper socialist position would be that merely being spared from harm isn't enough. Trans people suffer particularly from poverty for example, so merely keeping their circumstances from worsening is insufficient, but that they needs must be improved.

In the current calculus of the American political system, this is theoretically appealing to the average voter. As long as helping trans people doesn't come at their own expense, Americans would generally support such a thing. The problem is whether explicitly known or not, voting for a socialist proposing such a thing would be a losing proposition even if they won. I frequently hear people that they intellectually support third party candidates for example, but "they can't win." Even if a socialist were able to win election to legislature, they would be hamstrung by the fact that they're an enemy of "both sides" with a material interest in seeing them ejected in short order. There are some exceptions like Sawant or Sanders, but that's the general rule.

What I think this means is that at this stage there's an overemphasis on winning political power and trying to beat the bourgeois parties at their own game. I think the social and political organization of the working class is too immature for that at this stage. Rather we must develop the sort of ecosystem of material benefit and support which solves people's problems outside of a hostile electoral system. This doesn't mean electoral politics should be abandoned completely, but rather than winning elections as an end in itself must be de-emphasized.

Returning to the problem of trans poverty for example. I think what would enhance a socialist party's success would be starting a program of partnership with amenable unions to secure trans people positions within them and their industries. This would solve multiple problems at once by providing this theoretical union with members that have incentives to participate and support it, if only out of their own self interest. They'd be indebted to the party for the assistance and if not ideologically converted at least incentivized to support the party in turn. Ideally this would also help the union and the party foster a mutually supportive relationship which would further the goals of both.

The point being, as long as socialist orgs are focused primarily on political contests they can't win, the development of broader working class organization is going to remain retarded. All the small, disparate working class elements existing in the US have to start developing networks of mutual aid and coordination, pooling their resources to in order to provide actual material support to workers outside of whatever crumbs they're able to wrest from the bourgeois state, because otherwise we're resigning ourselves to a Sisyphean political struggle we're unlikely to win.

[novastaree]

things about the hunting life no one probably thinks about because of how sam and dean hunt

all hunters are different, one hunter might dress up in disguises for hunts whilst another has trained their dogs to sniff out the supernatural

a lot of supernatural creatures were probably once hunters or were close to that life, easy for a werewolf or vampire to turn them

it's never really hunt after hunt after hunt. Hunters probably need at least a weeks rest to get better from how they were mangled by a monster or how much gory they saw this time around. And even if the hunter made it out unscathed it takes a while to find something that is even possibly a hunt

some hunters hold normal jobs and semi normal lives, they only hunt locally or in their and the surrounding states. they are most likely to know about local folk lore than overall stories and legends

since most hunters didn't just decide to hunt the supernatural one day, so a lot are vengeful and blinded by rage or grief that they dont last long in the scene

places like the roadhouse or people like Bobby knowing or being a pitstop for a lot of hunters means there is probably a system a lot of hunters use to find hunts and share advice, not all hunters use this as they aren't fond of other hunters

there are probably hunters that are not human or contented to the supernatural in some way, hunting gives them an advantage at something and an escape from the judgment of normal people

hunters outside of America probably dont habe to experience/deal with all of the world ending events Sam and Dean cause

Hunters probably have solved a few crimes or unsolved mysteries because they thought it was a case (ik there are a few spn ep's this but i love this idea so much)

not all but hunters can be kind and caring, sticking around to help the victims of the monster recover or help them seek refuge before skipping town

[corner-master]

Imagine Danny gaining at first a passive interest in bee's due to Sam talking about how she'd prefer sourcing honey from local bee farms over commercial honey makers. It technically counts as plant-based which means, given her particular brand of vegetarianism, it therefore is among the many hills she'll proudly die on to project her beliefs to the world at large.

Unfortunately for everyone during the last ghost attack one of the latest casualties happened to be the local beekeepers hives. Given the amount of loss said beekeeper's have chosen to close shop and relocate elsewhere that doesn't have a ghost infestation. Sam's a bit bummed at first, but then decides she'll start her own farm, and basically drags Danny and Tucker into her latest passion project. She even manages to buy the plot of land the bee hives used to be on for dirt cheap (possibly one of the only benefits that come out of the attacks).

Sure, at first Danny and Tucker are pretty reluctant because they're teenagers and why would they want to spend the little free time they have between school and the occasional ghost fights working? The whining only lasts until Sam tells them it's basically passive money making, and you only spend a couple days out of the year actually harvesting the honey. The rest of the time can be spent just keeping the bee's safe from pests and predators and just keeping them happy, which really isn't a lot of work. The Moment Tucker hears money, he's sold, and Danny decides that since both his friends are in he might as well join them.

This is where things start to get interesting because one of the first things they do is sit down to spitball ideas at one another on how to make this a success. Tucker's motivation in the project is purely the profits and doing a little research quickly brings up the fact that Mono-floral hives, that is hives that feed on a single species of flowers, produce honey that can be sold for more than standard wild honey. Sam immediately jumps in and says that she won't be introducing any invasive species to the area. Tuck argues that they're just flowers, and Sam counters that if they spread it could screw over the native populations, and she wasn't willing to have that particular travesty attached to her name.

Just as the two are about to get into another explosive row defending their stances Danny pipes up that he could make something to keep everything contained.

For this particular idea, I'm going off the personal head-canon that despite his academic grades Danny is in fact a Bonafide genius much like the rest of his Family. He has a particular affinity in ecto-based mechanical engineering but he's no slouch in any of the sciences. Granted, It's kind of hard not to pick up these things when your parents are disassembling the random tech parts they scavenge from the junkyard and reassembling them into semi-functional contraptions at the dining table. You tend to pick them up even faster when you have to sometimes finish fixing it up so it doesn't blow up in your face but... well, that's not what's important right now. What is important is that Danny has the ability to manufacture an ecto-plasmic barrier that can easily keep everything neatly contained.

But this is only the beginning.

A spark has been ignited and, just like every other member of his family that has come across a problem that has caught their interest, it quickly consumes him.

Over the next couple hours he dives deep into researching all the current and prior methods of beekeeping, identifying all the pros and cons and problems that these methods come across and modifying them with a little Fenton ingenuity. He quickly settles on the using the Bottle Colony method to house the hives for multiple reasons:

1: Using human safe plastic bottles are lighter and therefore easier to maneuver around, as well as allow for transparent viewing of the Hive to make it easier to identify problems that need to be addressed.

2: The actual transparency of the bottle won't be a problem either. All they'll need to do is make some slip on insulators that'll block out the light and also regulate the temperature so the bee's neither fry when it gets hot nor freeze when winter sets in, so the bee's can stay content year-round.

2: Colony degeneration often occurs because the cells used to house the larvae will grow smaller with each consecutive use, resulting in smaller and smaller bees. This may also lead the queen to start laying eggs in the upper part of the hive where the honey is stored instead of the lower parts. By swapping out the top bottles and adding fresh ones at the bottom, this will allow the hives to keep the brood down low and reuse the upper cells for honey instead.

3: Wood hives have a tendency to get wet and develop mold which can not only affect the health of the colony but affect the honey as well. And while yes, the bottles themselves can also become wet, they show a significantly much lower chance of producing mold, given that the moisture would run down the sides of the bottle to the opening at the bottom instead of absorbing into the material itself.

4: The bottle method is largely contactless, which unlike the wooden frame method would cause less disturbance to the bees. it also would reduce the chances of getting stung.

5: Unlike the wooden frame structures which usually have to make contact with the ground, bottle colonies can be left suspended in the air or attached to the sides of buildings or posts, further limiting the intrusion of smaller pests.

6: Intangibility~ while this is mostly limited to him, he could just reach into the plastic bottles and easily carve out sections of honeycomb, instead of having to cut open the bottles and then discarding the plastic waste in the recycle bin. This would also make it easy to remove the queen cells to prevent swarming.

Oh, but remember that Fenton ingenuity he mentioned? Using this particular method, he could hook up a little dispensary system that can not only spread the antibiotics and medicine that will help keep the bee's healthy, but even shoot out smoke when the time comes to harvest so the bees remain calm. Heck, they could even be used to dispense sugar syrup so the bees would have more resources to replace the honey harvested.

Not only this, but he could easily set up a containment chamber that would capture a large percentage of the drones inhabiting the hive and let him safely relocate them to be disposed elsewhere because the drones? largely useless outside of mating. They have no stingers, so they can't defend the hive. They can't even eat unless they get help from the worker bees, which means wasted resources on what is about ten percent of the population, when only a handful would actually be necessary to breed queens from foreign hives. Which could be done in an enclosed space to ensure best breeding practices.

"But what about the Bee Inspectors?" Sam Pipes up from the Couch her and Tucker have sitting on, watching Danny basically Spiral into a "Fenton™" brainstorm. "Some places require inspectors to be able to pull out the sections of hive so they can check for mites or other problems. Thats why most beekeepers use frames, since otherwise the inspectors might force them to destroy the hive."

"My parents have built any number of devices that were designed to detect ghosts..." Danny replies, after a pause to take in this unexpected road bump. "... it wouldn't exactly be hard to reprogram one or two of them to scan the hives for a more normal kind of pest."

He sighs, dragging a hand down the side of his face. "And that's assuming we'd even have to deal with any inspectors that didn't choose to treat us like a bunch of lepers the moment they saw me. Fenton, remember?" he said, waving a hand up and down himself.

Sam and Tucker both wince in sympathetic pain at the reminder of just how...well-known Danny's parent's have become in recent years.

"And if one happens to be brave enough to stick around and decides the scanner isn't good enough, we can always take one of Vlad's old bugs lying around and repurpose it to give us an inside view." Danny snorts, turning back to his notes. "At least one of the Fruitloops "gifts" could be useful for once."

"Moving on-"

As for Tuckers idea for Mono-floral honey? Vertical Flower gardens. That way there's more flowers for that hive to get nectar from in the limited space provided by the shields.

Get Tucker to set up alerts that will let them know if they needed to check up on anything and boom! All the hard work (for now) is done.

*this is also all I got for now. This is just the version where I set things up for a largely normal bee farm. this isn't even getting into the intricacies of what ectoplasmic exposure will do to these bee's or their byproducts. I'm going let someone else go down the eldritch path, for now, I'm out.*

Danny Phantom AU where he’s a beekeeper