#cw: segregation

[wishmaker-astra]

Oh, right. Please be warned this is the mission statement of a likely hate group, potential BITE model group, and should not be looked at without caution. I have been informed they have edited and removed their original, so I am providing it here for archival purposes.

Do not look at this if you are in a bad headspace. Please. You really should only be looking at this for academic research purposes and counter-group activities.

@/aethersocietyofficial 's policy statement as of 7/20/24, Unova timezone, Astra reference below the cut for ARCHIVAL PURPOSES ONLY

CW: propaganda of probable hate group, racism potentially, discrimination against pokemon of certain classes, potential human-pokemon separatism, potential colonial imperialism

[ljblueteak]

"Paul Asks About White Australia: Beatle Paul McCartney yesterday showed an unexpected interest in the White Australia policy." From The Sydney Morning Herald, June 19, 1964.

Text of the article reads:

At a Press conference yesterday Paul was approached by a Nigerian journalist.

Paul said "Are you an aborginal?"

The journalist said he was from Nigeria.

Paul said: "I didn't think that Australia allowed coloured people to come in. I remember reading about this in geography in school which I failed, and I thought it was a bit off. I thought they were the only country in the world to do this. I saw you today and I thought: 'Hullo, we'll get onto the Government right away.'

The journalist said he was allowed to stay in Australia under certain conditions which included having a job.

He said Australia was host to more than 3,000 Asian students and he had found no discrimination whatsoever.

Paul said: "That is good because there is in Britain and in America."

He said that apart from kangaroos and koalas his biggest early impression of Australia had been "this white-only business."

"John and I were talking about it only this afternoon."

[lizardsfromspace]

As TERFs fall deeper down the transphobia hole they eventually loop around to a level of misogyny typically only seen in MRA pick-up manuals. They start out a bit concerned, and five months later they're shouting about how trans women need to be banned from chess bc AFAB brains are just not as smart as AMAB brains. They slide from "women can do anything men can!" to a level of "women are dainty and must be protected"ness that would make a tradwife blogger blush. They've successfully engineered the belief set of a Reddit incel with nothing but a parasocial relationship with JK Rowling, a incoherent urge to Own the Transes and a box of Tweets Xs

[tuttle-did-it]

Jeremiah Reeves has a horrific but crucially important story to know.

Rosa Parks was not the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. Long before her, people were fighting for change. The Civil Rights movement did not just appear into thin air one day. It was centuries of mistreatment and people trying to take a stand against it.

Almost a year before Rosa Parks refused to move on a bus, Jeremiah Reeves was a 16-year-old child, and accused of attacking and violating white women. The police tortured him to try to get a confession. Despite the NAACP trying to fight to protect this child, and multiple appeals, he was found guilty and sentenced to death.

The Civil Rights Movement was never just a single moment. It was centuries of miscarriages of justice abcs abuse that lead to those moments.

Jeremiah's story deserves to be known, especially because this treatment against Black people have never stopped.

TW- Jeremiah's story is tragic and it is heart breaking. CW for discussions on rape, police torturing a child into confessions, lynchings, death and racism. Please be aware of these triggers. There are no graphic images or graphic depictions in this video.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

trying to find diplomatic but firm ways to articulate 'hey man this is really fucked up, please reconsider' about wan/derhome--or whether to make a post about it at all--because its creators seem like the types to approach it in good faith, but i have no idea how it would go over or if they'd even see it at all. but i finally decided to take a look at it after getting it in a charity bundle last year, and as a disabled mentally ill trauma survivor god that was incredibly hurtful and upsetting, holy shit. days later i'm still not super okay over it, let alone that it won awards and is considered a masterpiece in the medium

[dove-da-birb]

I bet canadian history is more interesting...why is amerikan history so boring

...

what's canadian history like???

Okay, so it has been a bit since I've been in public school, and the most recent history course I took was a college course;

There's your standard stuff like knowing about how Canada became a country (1867), and also knowing about our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There's also the war efforts (ranging from War of 1812 to modern peacekeeping missions).

I personally do not care what some white dude did all those years ago; like the first prime minister was a massive racist. I outright do not celebrate any holiday which celebrates colonization (Victoria Day, Canada Day, Thanksgiving, etc.).

In more recent years there has been more inclusion of the history of our Indigenous people, and the genocide that happened and is still happening today. Actually, on September 30th it's the national day of Truth and Reconciliation.

As a general disclaimer before you go searching through Canada's history; you will find genocide, as North America is a colonized continent. You will find articles and survivor accounts of "Indian" Residential 'Schools', of which they are still discovering mass graves of children. These 'schools' were an act of cultural genocide and were active until 1996, and were governed by both the government and various churches.

The history of any colonized place has a history bathed in blood, but it may not be taught due to different policies (cough, racist policies, cough).

Sorry for my bit of a tangent, I'm just so tired of people ignoring the history, because the 'past' is very much still felt today.

[icreatethingsiguess]

I show my ocs again pt. 3 — character I haven't drawn in months edition (lazy art, maybe???)

Meet my girl Eliza Hopp!

⁽¹⁷ᵗʰ ᵒᶠ ˢᵉᵖᵗᵉᵐᵇᵉʳ, ¹⁸⁰² – ¹⁸ᵗʰ ᵒᶠ ᴶᵃⁿᵘᵃʳʸ, ¹⁸⁴⁸⁾

— "Eliza" is short for nothing. Her name is just Eliza. Her name is just a partner name to her mother's, "Beth."

— More about her name: she lacks a middle name (common for her species before 1837 and the mid 1800s in general, although there were cases of this happening afterwards too) and her surname, "Hopp," came from her half brother. It was originally "Hop," as he was half snowy tree cricket, but was changed to "Hopp" later on as an homage to mayor and Eliza's dearest friend, Rainn Fort.

— She's yet another butterfly puppet!! Beth is a holly blue whilst Eliza's father, Jeremy, is a brown/orange butterfly puppet of an unidentified species.

— She has two half siblings, Cassandra Flinders and Thomas Hopp, and two step-parents on both sides of her family, Crispin [step-father on mother's side] and Nyx [step-mother on father's side]. Through her half-brother Eliza has a sister-in-law named Alessandra Hopp who's a gramophone puppet (illegally built), and through her half-sister a brother-in-law named Benjamin "Ben" Flinders who's an anthro lyrebird originally from Eastern Australia. Eliza is also an aunt of seven kids thanks to Ben and Cassandra: from oldest to youngest they are Bellatrix, Samuel, Juliet, Daphne, Fiona, James, and Ashley (M). If this wasn't enough there's also a funky Scottish spirit dude named Duncan who helped nurse and raise all said kids so that they'd survive.

— Technically she has a husband named Rhys Maddox but only when their souls go and live other lives and end up meeting each other on Earth again via new lives and all that junk. They don't plan on having kids but they love each other very much. 😌

— As of mid 2023 she's no longer a resident of Nowhere And Also Everywhere aka "the afterlife," but will return once her current life passes on.

— In terms of personality, Eliza was quite the pessimist and was known to have a very low self esteem. She saw herself as not good enough to do anything but be anything but the town maid (HEAVILY influenced by her backstory) and was very quiet, only speaking to a select few people she felt like talking to: Rainn Fort, poet (and commonly credited founder of the town TLP, alongside Rainn) Matthew Milkweed, Cassandra, and Thomas were lucky enough, among others. Since being dead, her conditions improved.

— (Read backstory for context) Due to her upbringing she struggled a lot with mental illness, specifically depression and anxiety [PTSD and OCD are possible for her as well, but I need to look more into the former and develop her personality a lil more before I make a final judgement.) Even more well known was her maladaptive daydreaming (not a mental illness but oftentimes a symptom of one), which started in early childhood and lasted for the remainder of her life. It's very likely her maladaptive daydreaming played a major role in her untimely demise. On top of maladaptive daydreaming, it's very possible she's hyperphantasic, as I see her having a very vivid imagination.

Beautiful art by @fishyfishyfishtimes! Pieces are a couple years old:

• Here you'll notice she lacks clothing. She's depicted with a rounder segmented body above but actually has a more rectangular body type without any segments. Lack of clothing was first made popular in the 1960s and became accepted in the mainstream in following decades but with the exception of the first puppets in the 10th century, this wasn't the case. Puppets wore clothes, albeit quite raggedy (basically think "poor person in the Middle Ages") and torn, especially those that worked in manual labor. Here, Eliza's without clothes simply because she didn't have a dress design.

• Eliza with her half-siblings!! She and Thomas were very close to each other before she passed, and both were very depressed and angry at the world thanks to very very less than ideal living situations growing up. Cassandra is more of a mediator figure in the trio, see. They might not look it here in this doodle but they were actually quite close during their time together. All three of them lived together in one house and Cassandra frequently visited even when she moved out to live with her husband.

Drawings of caterpillar Eliza:

• Here's a good example of what caterpillars look like! These babies really are like insect puppies, if puppies had a more plant/fruit/vegetable based diet (too much meat for a caterpillar can cause stomach aches). They typically have 6-8 legs and having a "tail" depends on genetics. Eliza here doesn't have one! Caterpillars oftentimes have their future wing prints on their body, kinda like a fun Easter egg for what's to come. Eliza has black spots since Holly blue butterflies have small black spots on their wings :)

• A version of the doodle above except she has a dress. Nothing much to say here besides um. I don't think I can draw loose clothing on complex forms too well.

Eliza's Backstory (1802 – 2023)

CW: Backstory includes mentions of slavery, childhood trauma, segregation, and death

— This backstory is currently incomplete you can help by expanding it. Some details are still a WIP but I'd say it's coherent enough to count as a character backstory.

— A lot of the lore in the backstory was written by none other than @fishyfishyfishtimes ! She's an amazing worldbuilder so please go check her out. She only posts fish/sea creature related things (for now?) but maybe you like that too, I dunno.

Eliza was born (read as: hatched out of her egg) thanks to two puppet slave parents, Beth and Jeremy, sometime in 1802 (usually recorded as "the 17th of September" for simplicity); she was born in a household in London and spent the first couple years of her life around the house with fellow small children and even human children. Like many to-be slaves, contact with her parents was extremely limited if there was any contact at all as many children of slaves couldn't recognize who their parents were or were even allowed to interact with anyone outside their immediate field of view, or alternatively, they were to be sent off to a different household to work.

Reasonably, her living conditions for the first 35 years of life were less than ideal: like many "weaker" and more fashionable species, such as the butterfly, Eliza was resigned to do indoor tasks (most notably cleaning, given her fixation later on) and on rare occasions she would have to do garden work. She lived a life entirely at home, unaware of much of the outside world. Her time was mostly occupied by her excessive daydreaming while she slaved away.

This all changed on the 22nd of May, 1837, a day that's very well known in the (Universe) UK and around much of the world: after 8 centuries of being treated like mere "puppets," the first instance of puppets gaining personal freedoms finally occurred, on this particular day in British territory. Some human families paid royalties to those that had been treated so horribly. Puppet building was officially banned. There was only one nasty catch: instead of being integrated, both puppets and humans were now segregated by law. Thousands of puppets were grouped/grouped together themselves and left areas declared to be "human" areas (mostly big cities, such as London). Travel was allowed but heavily frowned upon by both human society and puppet society alike.

Somewhere in the midst of the chaos, Eliza got in contact with two puppets in particular, Cassandra and Thomas, who turned out to be her relatives. From 1837 – 1839, the trio traveled from developing town to developing town, eventually landing in a developing town between the counties of Kent and East Sussex, Townlocationplace ["TLP" for short]. Eliza quickly became infatuated with the mayor, Rainn Fort. The two became best friends but Eliza wasn't too content with just being friends. Unfortunately, Rainn had instead married a mute dragonfly woman named Alice Brown. This upset Eliza but she didn't push it. The pair remained good friends; Rainn helped her with literacy and even bought her new clothes to wear.

Eliza, however, remained in the cycle she was born into. If not in bed daydreaming, she would be seen wandering around the streets of the town aimlessly. On one of these trips, this proved to be an exceptionally dangerous practice.

On the night of the 17th of January, 1848, Eliza had written a love note to Rainn, wanting to deliver it to him in person. She had no clothes appropriate for going out in the snowy cold, only a gown. In the early morning hours she'd instead gotten lost and froze out in the dark.

Not too long after her soul was transported to Nowhere And Also Everywhere ("the afterlife") where she remained until finally trying to live a brand new life in the late 20th century. As of mid 2023, the present in the Universe, she's still living on Earth.

[altcvnningham]

canis major

adler x bell!reader

summary: adler doesn’t go back to berlin to forget, but he isn’t so eager to remember, either. after leaving you for dead on that clifftop in the arctic, he knows best to leave the past well alone. too bad that past seems to be alive and walking right in front of him; though where he wants to forget, it seems you’ve already beaten him to the punch. or; bell survives solovetsky and only has a hole in her head and amnesia to show for it. read on ao3

tags/cw: bell!reader, amnesia, light angst, referenced adlerbell, somehow bell survives the ending of cw, adler can't let shit go, adler is not capable of remorse but mayyybe a lil guilt?? dog symbolism always, no pairing yet but hopefully i continue this as a spicy drabble series idk wc: 2.7k

a/n: sooo this is my first fic for the cod fandom and the first fic i've posted online in a long time so hopefully this lil ramble suffices!! i've had adlerbell brainrot and wanted to get at least something out before bo6 ruins all of my headcanons so here's a snippet of something i hopefully find the motivation to continue into a mini series. enjoy :')

Sometimes, he goes back to Berlin.

Stumbling out of the muggy bar into the dank alleyway out the back, Adler fishes out a pack of cigarettes from the front of his jacket; two firm knocks of it against his palm before he plucks one out with his mouth, pockets the box, and flips open his lighter. The clink of the metal echoes into the empty around him, the sudden quiet suffused with the sounds of passing cars on the street, muffled laughter from inside the bar, and the distant barking of dogs. Strays.

The cigarette ignites, glowing a cherry red, and he gasps around the filter greedily. Upon exhale, he sighs.

Adler isn’t a sentimental man by any means. What little he clings to, he does so with a loose grip, less than happy but stolid enough to allow whatever else he deems unnecessary slip through his fingers. Places, people. Things. Memories. Tucks the important things- logic, rationality, work, duty- into orderly compartments at the forefront of his mind, archived and marked off ‘til he needs it, while the rest, the mess, gets done away with, thrown into the great black gorge of oblivion. Anything else that stays- more often than not a thorn in his side, an unbidden, wriggling tumour he can’t find let alone cut out- is sequestered to a dark aperture in the back of his mind, anchored deep where it can’t come back up. Yet somehow, some nights, they always do. The smell of his ex-wife’s hair. The day he got his scar. Vietnam. The lab. Solovetsky—

The next word, the name, forks across his mind like lightning, and he bites his tongue before he can think it. It sits at the back of his mouth, nestled like an aching cavity in his molars. A tremulous breath that he forces down with another drag of his cigarette. Out with the rest. Out with the rest.

The barking doesn’t cease. Dogs, a pair of them, he can hear a couple streets over. He pictures them from the gravelly register of their snarling- maybe German Shepherds, a Bullmastiff or a Rottweiler. Their fight enunciated by the violent rattling of chain-link fences, segregated, the only threshold that keeps teeth from necks.

But no, not a sentimental man. He tells himself that the itch to revisit Berlin every Summer is for superficial reasons, and by no means is renting out a shithole hotel room opposite a sewer-laden river considered a vacation from anything other than the luxuries he gorges himself mindlessly on at home- maybe this is to keep him humble, more than anything. It doesn’t do well to remind himself of old times, not when he’s lived the life he has. Remembering seldom accompanies itself with the bittersweetness of reminiscence, and the taste it leaves in his mouth is always acrid. He doesn’t miss Berlin any more than he misses that dismal safehouse, or that sterile room he wheeled you into, questioned- tortured- no, interrogated- well, he doesn’t care to remind himself of the picture. Or the person he strapped to the gurney. But he catches himself thinking back to the city divided more than he likes to admit, and for whatever ostensible reason it is that drags him back here, he relents to it every time.

He tells himself it’s the weather, the cool rain a nice reprieve from the scorching California heat. Or that the food is better, not so much overprocessed shit and sugars. Can take his coffee as black as he likes without the waitress turning her nose up about it and double-triple-checking if he’s sure. And it’s the people, maybe, who leave him well enough alone. Or the drinks. The views, some places. The- air.

Not like Arctic air. Not like—

The one dog’s snarl rips bloodcurdling through the night, all froth and venom, and as the chain-link fence screeches and judders in its rusted welding the other mutt quiets a moment. Cowers under the meaner dog’s ferocity. Then, like it had been wounded, it lets out a low, anguished howl, beast reduced to a scared little pup. Adler holds the smoke in his chest around a stifled breath anticipating a release. But the first dog just grumbles, the fence clinks, and there isn’t much noise after that.

But the quiet doesn’t last long- just as Adler drops his cigarette and snuffs it with a wrench of his heel, another sound resonates, yowling through the alley.

The grinding of tires upon wet asphalt crunches from just beyond the alleyway entrance. The streetlamp overhanging the entryway glares bright yellow as it bounces off of the garishly coloured taxi cab, pulling up to a groaning halt outside the bar.

He thinks nothing of it, pulling at the collar of his leather jacket. It’s getting cold, and he’s left his drink inside. Wouldn’t want to waste good beer. Adler turns, and makes for the door.

And you step out of the car.

A half-finished cigarette bounces on the sidewalk before you exit, the softened heel of your boot following soon after in a splash upon the flooded curb. Your German is rusty- always has been- but it’s easy enough to utter a quick and easy danke as you pull yourself up out of the cab. The door shuts with a slam, and you tilt your head back to gaze up at the sign above the bar- Der Fluss Lethe glaring in faded lightbox red- and you let out a contented sigh, your breath suspended in the frigid air. Pink, bitten fingers pluck at your gloves, fingerless faded green knit, shovelling them into your jacket pocket.

Adler’s fist is already curled around the handle of the back door as he clocks your presence in his periphery, a stranger like any other- but your image resembles the one that coagulates in the borders of old memory, the dried blood of you he hasn’t been able to wash his hands of since ‘81. Enough that he does a double take, his eyes wide behind tinted glasses, and he stops, his heart following suit.

He’s seen enough bodies in his time to fill the morgue in his mind twice over, and plenty ghosts to wander coldly among the unmarked graves. Vietnam alone is an unwinding cemetery stretching endless, catacombs along the inside of his skull, lined with what his old shrink would call remorse. Guilt. As if the feeling mattered. As if self-reproach could turn self-flagellation into something so incandescent as redemption. As if the bile in the back of his throat could bring back the dead.

And it couldn’t, because it isn’t… that’s not—

Bell.

It’s in the way you stand, your back rigid, that slight slouch to your shoulders, always dragged down upon you like they bore the weight of the whole world (and they did, once, do you remember?). The pelting of rain smacks off of the lapels of your jacket and ricochets like stars, caught in the light of the streetlamp overhead, but for all he knows or cares it could be raining diamond and all he sees is you- the wrinkling of your nose as you accommodate to the cold, how your cheeks flush at the chill (as they had those nights he pulled you into the darkroom, evidence of your apprehension drowned in the red glow of safelights); your hair is longer, unkempt, but still that same colour (clumps he’d find in his clenched fist when you’d argue yourselves into a wrestling match, pinning each other by the throats to dented walls in Die Landebahn); that scar upon your brow; that wavering line of your lip, pursed and hiding behind your reticence as you always did, and your eyes- your eyes—

—you feel someone watching—

—your eyes turn, and fix upon him with the startled softness of a doe, hunter betrayed by the snapping of a branch underfoot. Adler’s heel crunches against broken glass, his hand lingering right in that threadbare threshold upon the doorhandle, and he can’t speak, can’t move, can’t think—

Open the door, Bell, open the door—

—and you stop outside the cab, your breath caught in your throat. You see a shadow in the alley, in the shape of a man.

The darkness of the alley gives enough cover that you don’t see much, but what you do make out of the man prickles at a part of your mind long dormant: the haughtily broad set of the shoulders; the halo of blond tinted red just beneath the flickering exit light above the door where he stands; the shadow of a strong, clenched jaw; and in the brief glinting of passing headlights as cars rush on behind you, you see a face half gorged by a thick, forked scar, a fissure struck down his furrowed expression. A pair of dark aviator glasses hide those eyes that you know are looking at you, reflecting back nothing but your own bewilderment.

There is something you know. Deep inside that half rotted head of yours, where an incomplete recollection of your existence before you awoke bleeding on that clifftop lies, you feel a twinge of recognition. Familiarity. Something. Something stirring deep in your marrow- a fear inherited, a conditioned surrender, a faded polaroid, a kiss? Your migraine, chronic, comes clawing back with a vengeance, as it does most nights, but this time with a savage fervour that wrenches your face into an involuntary grimace. Where the hole in your head had once been all those years ago it tickles and burns, burrowing into your brain and groping greedy fingers along remnants of memory. It claws at you, digging through your amygdala to find something fresh, something old, something palpable, real, something- anything. Searching what little remains visible to you in the thick fog of your own mind to pin a meaning to this feeling, an answer to your question, a name to that face.

You’ve seen him before. You swear. Somewhere. In a dream, reoccurring, behind a red door. You don’t know how, or why you’d think you recognise him- in those dreams, the door never even opens. Your hand ever stuck on the handle, jammed and impenetrable, what sits behind it forbidden to you. Like not even your own mind wants you to know. It confines you to your ignorance, almost blissful.

Adler’s heart kicks violently in his chest. He shot you. He killed you. He’d heard your death rattle on that clifftop in Solovetsky and the sound was almost like singing, your last word, your last breath. A miserere for your short and fractured life. And he’s looking at your ghost, standing there all owl-eyed and as beautiful as the day he found you bleeding out on that airstrip. Before he took you. Before he took you and collared you and made a damned mess of things.

The only thing separating you from the Bell he knows he killed- his Bell- is the star-shaped scar split across your left temple. The only wound he never had to sit and heal as he belligerently patched you up, poking and preening you like his prize dog. Yet in spite of never seeing it before, he recognises the wound all too well. He put it there himself.

And as you stand there for that brief moment- no more than twelve seconds stretched to an eternity- he thinks for a moment that you’ve put it together. You recognise him. You see him. As he is. You’ve figured him out, Bell, as you always do. You’re the only one to have gotten away with it, nearly. Or so he thought. And now he’s watching a corpse having dug itself out of the grave he put it in, standing there, staring at him. Suppose you’ve always been a dead man walking.

You could do it, he thinks. Turn. Fling your heel round and barrel towards him with all the enmity of a cornered animal. He thinks of the strays, barking. Can picture your mouth frothing at the sides as you sink your teeth down into him- gnarled canines, hooked to your chain-link fence- which he probably deserves. Not an unfamiliar feeling by any stretch, but one faraway enough to seem almost sweet now through the hazy lens of nostalgia. If there truly is a sentimental bone in his body after all, then maybe it’s just for that. Still, he holds his breath, awaiting the killing blow he’s surely due. But it never comes.

You release your held breath, finally, tearing your eyes away from the callous faced stranger. It’s a ridiculous notion. Just an uncanny instance of déjà vu. You don’t know that man any more than you know yourself. You settle on a more rational answer- just one of those faces. And with a disgruntled sigh you rub the scar upon your temple to soothe the ache, turn around, and enter the bar alone.

Adler sighs, his heart sinking from up high in his throat back down to his chest. His hand has latched onto the doorhandle for so long it’s gone numb from the cold, bruised knuckles bluer than they were before (bar fights- not here, but another, as there will always be). He wrestles his jaw pensively, knowing he ought to take it off, keep the door closed, turn away, and leave. Slink back, tail between his legs, to that shithole hotel room to drink himself into a stupor. Let you haunt him there, instead. As you always have.

But he doesn’t. He has no idea what idiocy compels him, what soft, dewy-eyed weak link in him snags on that chain, to willingly wander back into the viper den of reminiscence, but he wrenches his fist around the handle, pushes, and lets himself back into the bar, the thick, hot air hitting him like a drug that he breathes in, tart and sour with the cloy of sweat and alcohol but still faintly- just faintly- of you. Like rain carried along the wind.

And Russell Adler is not a sentimental man.

But from across the bar he hides behind his beer glass, watches as you move about, a phantom, weaving through the faceless mass of people celebrating a championship he cares nothing to follow. You take your order at the bar with a smile he’s never seen on you before, boots folded to tip-toes as you lean over the liquor-stickied top, your perfect mouth pink and sweet and laughing and alive. The world seems to move about you in a haze, an indistinct mist of blurred faces and bottled voices and beyond all the light and life and joy that seems to burn bright around you like a halo all he sees is you.

Maybe, then, he’s a fool.

But it isn’t lost on him, how your fingers skirt across your hair in an attempt to hide the scar upon your temple. Nor is it lost on him how you wince at the feeling, the stars in your eyes dimmed for just a split second as you shiver, like a touch imperceptible running fingers down your back. Nor even the way you fight the urge to look, to follow the feeling of his eyes fixed upon you, and surely not the way you lose that fight, surrendered to it, your sweet face turning and finding him in an instant. Without so much as trying, like instinct, like something as pathetic and saccharine as fate. Your heart called to it, a lighthouse in the fog. Port in the storm. Ships passing in the night but called crashing to the same shore.

(The pieces of you are scattered everywhere, Bell. He finds you in every split seam inside himself. Splintered shrapnel dug through his temporal lobe, severing synapses ‘til they go dark. Even stars die quicker than that. Quicker than you. Is that what it felt like for you, too? When the lights went out, was it him you last saw- or the sky, waxen, over the Arctic? A waning night, a distant moon. The inconsequence of death- brief celestial ephemera.)

The stranger across the bar looks at you, offering nary a smile, eyes indiscernible behind shadowed sunglasses. And where you ought to find his apparent coldness disconcerting, instead you wring out of your chest with a white-knuckled caress a feeling like… comfort.

Sometimes, Bell, you go back to Berlin. You don’t quite know why.

[tropes-and-tales]

Too Much for You

Day 3:  Collaring (Bob Floyd x F!Reader)

(For the 2023 Kinktober event that I created on my own because I am boring and basic and am trying to keep it simple this year...found here!) 

CW:  Smut (Oral, m!receiving; oblique talk of other sex acts; oblique talk of power dynamics in the bedroom); 18+ only.

Word Count:  2865

AN:  This was requested by the lovely @callsign-frostbite!

The Hard Deck is often segregated by cliques, like a high school lunch room:  the fighter pilots post up by the pool tables and piano, the fixed wing aircraft pilots claim the stretch of the bar with the dart boards and juke box.  The bar proper is the neutral zone, but the two groups rarely mix.  

Bob Floyd falls in with the fighter pilots because he’s the back-seater for one, but he feels like he might fit in better with the darts-and-jukebox crowd.  They are more sedate, seem more confident in themselves.  There’s less of a nightly dick-measuring contest.

It doesn’t hurt that you’re part of the darts-and-jukebox crowd:  the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, poured into your uniform so it fits like a glove.  You move with that same quiet assurance as your fellow fixed wing pilots, but you’re like a bright point of light, always pulling Bob’s gaze to you.  You’re fascinating to watch:  when you’re playing darts, when you’re leaning over the jukebox, when you’re dancing a smooth two-step to the songs you pick.

Hangman is the one who first notices Bob’s puppy-dog staring, follows the WSO’s blue-eyed gaze across the Hard Deck where you and the other pilots drink and converse.  Hangman nudges Nat, who whispers in Rooster’s ear, who beckons Javi over, and within minutes, the whole crew is watching Bob watching you.

Hangman is the one who first tells Bob not to bother.

“She’s not the one for you, Baby on Board,” he tells Bob while he clasps his shoulder, jostles him a little in his seat.  “You need a shy gal.  A homebody who will greet you at the door with fresh-baked cookies.  A Betty Crocker-type.”

Nat scoffs, shakes her head.  “You make him sound like a complete square.”

“Well…”  Hangman trails off, shrugs with a wide smile.  “I mean…”

“He’s not a complete square, Bagman.”  Nat crosses her arms, and she squares up to her fellow fighter pilot.  “And anyway, what’s wrong with her?  She’s cute.”  She tilts her head in your direction.

It’s Javi who has the dirt on you, which sounds like so much of the usual Navy outlandish gossip.  He leans in close and tells Bob all about you.

“Her call-sign is Nix,” he says, and he keeps his voice low, as if you might hear over the din of the crowd.  “Because she flies one of those Poseidon recon planes.  But she’s a complete freak, man.  I served on a carrier with a guy whose roommate’s brother dated her.  She’s totally into that freaky bedroom shit.  She’d eat you alive.”

Bob swallows hard, but he can’t help the flush that breaks out across his cheeks…or the faint throb of lust that drums along with his heartbeat.

“What do you mean, freaky stuff?”  It’s Nat who asks the question; his pilot turns and watches you with frank interest now.

Javi shrugs, takes a sip of his beer.  “BDSM stuff.”  He looks at Bob, gives him another shrug.  “Sorry, man.  She’s too much for you.”

-----

After the fact, Bob bristles at his teammates’ collective verdict.

Bristling leads to simmering, which leads to outright resentment.  The days pass, and Bob teems with indignation.  How dare Bagman?  How dare Javi?  How dare any of them make assumptions about him?  Sure, he’s quiet and unassuming and a back-seater, but it grates on his nerves how they act like they know him that well. 

They don’t know him at all.

Even their dumb nickname for him:  Baby on Board.  They forget that he passed the same rigorous training they did, that he graduated from Top Gun just as they did.  He’s a goddamned grown man, and they treat him like a boy.

The two cliques at the Hard Deck rarely mix, but halfway through a Friday night, Bob taps into his latent courage—the courage his teammates fail to recognize—and marches over to where you stand by the jukebox.  He can hear Hangman behind him, trying to urge him back before it’s too late, but you catch sight of Bob’s approach out of your peripherals and turn to watch him.  You neither frown nor smile; your expression is exactly neutral.  Bob digs deeper into his hidden reserve of courage, and he holds out a hand.

“I’m Lieutenant Bob Floyd,” he says, and he hopes his teammates can see how he doesn’t stutter, how he meets your gaze levelly because he’s a goddamned man and not a boy.  “I heard you fly the new P-8 Poseidon.”

“I do.”  You hold your hand out to shake his, and you gift him a smile that seems guarded.  “Though it’s a few years old now.”

“Still new by military standards.”

Your smile relaxes, and you drop your hand.  “Very true.  Are you a pilot?”

Bob shakes his head, tells you he’s a weapons specialist officer, and the conversation flows naturally to your respective aircrafts, the systems on each, and if Bob admired you from afar, he likes the obvious love you have for your airplane even more.

He spends the rest of the night with you, and the hours fly by like nothing.  He leaves with your number, and the feeling is better than even the confused look on Bagman’s smug face—that quiet, unassuming Bob Floyd pulled the number of an unattainable fellow pilot.

-----

If you’re into freaky bedroom stuff, it doesn’t make an appearance right away.  You and Bob take your time—it doesn’t help that you’re both active duty.  There’s a stretch of time, just as your burgeoning relationship is on its shaky new legs, where you’re both deployed on separate missions. 

Bob thinks it’ll be the end of the thing between you, but somehow strengthens your relationship.  Absence making the heart grow fonder, all that cliched stuff.  When you’re finally both back stateside, you make it official:  Bob Floyd the WSO and you, the pilot who flies surveillance missions—an official couple.

Your first month as a couple, it’s that awkward period where you’re just figuring each other out in the bedroom.  It’s clumsy at first but passionate, the two of you abandoning any pretense of coolness for the ardor that you have for each other. 

Bob loves all of it:  the time he spends between your thighs, coaxing orgasms from you with his mouth.  The time you spend on your knees doing the same for him.  All of the varied positions, you riding him, him riding you.  The quickies and the love-making where you spend entire hours reveling in each other’s bodies. 

BDSM stuff, Javi had said.  Bob only has an inkling what that may mean.  He imagines whips and chains, a gimp mask, tears of pain.  He is open to nearly anything you might want to do, but the idea of pain in the bedroom makes him wary.  He doesn’t want to hurt you, even consensually.  If it is something you demand, he might have to end things.

The thought tortures him.  Each day, he falls more in love with you.  Each night, he is slow to fall asleep at the unspoken fear that you may be too much for him and the inverse:  that he may not be enough for you.

Bob should have remembered that the Navy is little more than a hive of gossipers.  People tell tales, and truth get twisted in the retelling.

Javi and his buddy’s roommate’s brother.  Your alleged ex.  It was a ridiculous game of telephone.  The topic kinda comes up organically over dinner one night, talk about exes, and it leads to Bob blurting out his fears.  That he’s not adventuresome enough for you.  That when you inevitably ask him to tie you up and whip you, he won’t be able to satisfy you.

The look on your face is priceless.  You gaze over your plate at him and ask, “huh?”

He can’t turn back now.  He swallows hard, his mouth suddenly dry.  “BDSM stuff,” he clarifies.  “I don’t…I don’t think I’m into that.”

“Bobby—”

“But I’ll try.”  He cuts you off, and he feels sick to his stomach to have brought his silent fears to light with so little finesse.  “I’ll try, sweetheart.”

You set your fork down with a quiet clink, and you reach across the table and take his hand.  When he chances a look at your face, you don’t seem angry or disappointed.  Instead, you smile at him softly.

“You can’t believe everything you hear,” you tell him. 

-----

Javi and the gossipmongers in the Navy are half-right:  you are not into BDSM.

You are into playing with power dynamics.

Bob gets an education in an entire spectrum of sexuality he’s never even considered before.  He’d be ashamed—embarrassed, maybe, as he usually is when it came to frank discussions about sex—but you’re an amazing teacher and, well….he finds that perhaps he’s into playing with power dynamics too. 

And you’re both switches.  You’re both capable of being dominant or submissive.  The possibilities are endless.  Bob’s mind boggles at the surfeit of scenes the two of you could play out, and it boggles further to find that those scenes make him fall more and more in love with you.  It always felt hokey, talk of how sex was a way to build a connection.  Bob never had it before, but now?

Now he has it.

-----

The day goes poorly for Bob:  Hangman continues to live up to his nickname, and his rivalry with Rooster spills over to the rest of the TOPGUN pilots.  Bob and Nat get paired up with Jake during a dog-fight exercise, and they lose over and over because the man is incapable of teamwork.

Bob can’t control Jake. 

Bob can’t even control the plane.  He has to cede control to Nat, and he’s usually fine with it, but he feels extra helpless as a back-seater during exercises like this.

But Bob, if he asks nicely, can control you—so when he gets home, frustrated and irritable, he asks if he can be in charge.

You gaze at him a long moment, and your eyes get steadily darker as your pupils dilate. 

“Of course,” you tell him. 

-----

Bob in charge:  he makes you change into the sweet powder-pink lingerie he bought you.  A casual cotton dress.  He has a housewife kink, he’s found, and he likes to play around with the dynamic of pretending you’re waiting at home for him. 

Lingerie, dress.  He also helps you put on the collar, a deceptively simple silver band of metal.  Not too tight.  There’s a little hook at the end for a leash, but neither you nor Bob ever use it.  The collar is just a visual reminder of who is in charge, and who is being led.

Bob in charge:  he orders you onto all fours.  He sits on the couch, freshly showered after his shitty day.  He leans back, splays his legs wide.  He crooks his forefinger at you.

“Come here, kitten,” he says.

It’s as simple as this.  He gives you an order and you obey.  He’s in charge; he tells you to crawl to him on hands and knees and you do.  You kneel in front of him, your hands on your thighs, your eyes fixed to his face in an expression of adoration.  You wait for his next order.

There’s no frustration like with Hangman.  There’s no fickle controls like in the back seat of his and Nat’s plane.  There’s no dog-fight practice where they lose Maverick in the sun, where they have to do hundreds of push-ups on the tarmac until Bob’s arms burn and his cold fury simmers. 

“What do you want?” he asks.

“I want to make you feel good, sir,” you answer, and your voice has a deference it normally doesn’t.  Bob feels the tension of his day bleed away bit by bit, then all at once.

Bob in charge:  he orders you to put your mouth to him.  He’s already half-hard, but he loves the feeling of your warm mouth on him, coaxing him to full life with your worshipful tongue laving him, suckling against his sensitive tip until he’s hard as iron and throbbing in your mouth. 

He lays a hand on the back of your head, another tame display of dominance, but he doesn’t force you.  He shifts it to cup the side of your face as you take him to the root, your nose pressed against the sparse, coarse curls at the base of his cock.  Keeps his hand there as you bob your head, as you take deep breaths through your nose. 

You’re reverent when you’re submissive.  You always take your time.  You cup his balls lightly in one hand, and when you feel them start to draw up—a sure sign his orgasm is approaching—you back off a bit.  You release him from the warm confines of your mouth and draw the tip of your tongue over the prominent vein that runs along the underside of his cock.  You lick the tip of him, suckle there again until he’s breathing harsh, punched-out breaths.  Then you engulf him again, hollow your cheeks and actually hum against him, and the tip of him bumps against the back of your throat until your eyes water.

A lone tear breaks free when you blink, and Bob shifts his hand, brushes it away.  He taps you on your chin lightly.

“Eyes on me, kitten,” he orders you, and a moment later, you look up at him. 

You look beautifully wrecked:  eyes wet and liquid as you gaze at him, your eye makeup streaked and ruined.  Your lovely mouth stretched wide around his cock.

“You look pretty as a damned picture,” he tells you, and it’s true.  He holds you in this position for a beat, wants to commit the image to memory.  He wants to carry this moment with him for future frustrating days—when TOPGUN is grueling, he wants to remember that he has this to come home to. 

Not just a gorgeous woman on her knees with her lips wrapped around him, either.  You’re that, of course, but you’re more.  You’re also the woman who orders him around, who calls him a “good boy,” who cups his face the way he’s cupping yours right now.  You’re also the woman who ties him to the bed and teases him relentlessly.  You’re also the woman who spends long, lazy Sunday mornings with him, making love in a languid, sleepy way that feels like heaven.

You’re also the woman who flies a spy plane, a lieutenant in your own right, a no-nonsense aviator who commands respect with your quiet competency in a field full of blowhards and jackasses.

Bob releases his hold on your face.  He slips his hand down to your throat, and he hooks his forefinger around the metal collar, now warmed from being against your skin.

He tugs it gently.  “I’m close,” he warns you.  “You gonna take everything I give you?  Swallow it down, kitten?”

You pull your mouth away long enough to answer.  “Yes, sir,” you tell him, and you sound just as wrecked as he does.  He knows what this game does to you.  He knows your powder-pink panties are slick with your own arousal, your pretty little pussy likely twitching and clenching around nothing, waiting for him.

He nods, and you bend your head to him again.  Your mouth is wonderfully warm, surrounding him, and you pick up your pace.  Your hand on his balls squeezes him gently, and he feels his orgasm—delayed several times now—thundering towards him.  His hips judder upward, involuntary, chasing the feel of your wet, sucking mouth, and you gag lightly against the action but you never stop.

You never stop once he’s given you an order. 

A moment later, the heavy tension in his belly snaps, turns to light and heat that crackles along his spine to the base of his skull, crackles down to where his balls pull up taut in your hand as he comes.  He groans out your name, swears as he pulses in your mouth, and each throb of his cock is answered by you swallowing against him, the slim column of your throat working to take everything he gives you.

And you clean him up at his order too, your tongue shyly running over his softening cock, and then your hand tucking him back into his sweatpants before your eyes find his face.

“Thank you,” he tells you.  He hooks his finger under your collar again, gently leads you from the floor and onto his lap, and he wraps his arms around you.  He presses his head into the side of your neck and sighs out the lingering bit of his frustration from the day, but he’s completely relaxed now.  Once he’s recovered, he’ll repay you, but for now, he wants to bask in his post-orgasm glow with you on his lap and in his arms.

And he thinks back to Javi’s words, all those months ago.  She’s too much for you, he’d said.  Which turned out to be completely untrue:  you’re just enough for him.  You’re perfect for him. 

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for yelling at my uncle for wanting to emmigrate?

cw; brief mention of animal death.

For context: I am from Brazil. São Paulo city, more specifically. Brazil is considered dangerous due to high crime rates, and my city, with over 11 MILLION habitants, is no exception. But socioeconomic segregation is pretty intense here, and if you're in a "good" class neighborhood and have a little bit of streetsmarts, you will be mostly safe. I for one have been lucky enough to be born into a middle class family and have never been so much as pickpocketed, but I know of lower income friends who have been robbed. It's still rare in our circle.

Now, I have this uncle. Him and his wife have even more money than my family – they lead a very, very comfortable life with yearly trips to Disney parks, something that's very common among Brazilian upper class. And they recently have decided they want to migrate to Florida, US, seemingly out of nowhere. Their main excuse is that they don't want to raise their 7 year old son in a "dangerous place", when they live in a safe appartment complex and they've never even been robbed.

I voiced my concerns to my uncle. I was afraid that they wouldn't be well received by a country that has such extreme anti-immigration policies, especially when none of them can speak more than a few words of english and, while his wife is white, my uncle is visibly latino. Even if they get the papers right and migrate legally, they will still face a whole lot of prejudice. Plus, they would have to quit their jobs for that, and while they both have degrees, I still think it would be quite hard for two immigrants who barely speak the language to get jobs to keep their lifestyle, and I'm not sure if that's the best way to raise a young child. It really seems to me like they're persuing a fairytale idealized dream.

But the worst part is the entire thing with my grandmother. She's in her late 70s, very emotionally frail and has had a fair share of health issues. Ever since her dog passed months ago she's been severely depressed, and because she couldn't leave the house due to the dog's separation anxiety, she doesn't have any friends and has almost no hobbies. Her favorite thing is having us over – especially my uncle's son, her youngest granchild. So of course when my uncle tried to gloss over all my points I had to bring up how terrible it would be for my grandma (he knows it will be bad, he's keeping it a secret from her because he thinks she could possibly fall ill again). But he still didn't listen.

I was so angry I started yelling at him. I brought up how he didn't even visit his mother the last time she was hospitalized (she was anaemic and could have died) but he had all the time in the world to go to Disneyland whenever he pleased and said he doesn't really care about his mom or his child, that's why he's leaving. He's just falling for his wife's Disney obsession.

Looking back on it, I think I might have taken it too far, but I meant everything I said. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[bonefall]

feel free to ignore if this question is too dark, cw themes of war and genocide (i know i’m so sorry)

how deep does thistle law go? what is the end goal of someone with that ideology? is it a permanent state of the four clans fighting forever, or is the end goal of someone who believes in thistle law to absorb all four clans into whichever clan they hail from? is there any split between thistle law thinkers on this, kind of like the splits between traditionalism and hard traditionalism? i’m curious on just a general worldbuilding level, but like i said, i know this is a super dark and heavy question, so do feel free to ignore it, i don’t want you to have a bad time. ik better bones gets pretty deep but if you’d rather steer clear of this one entirely i understand.

The stated end goal is different between every incarnation of Thistle Law. Brokenstar was explicit in that he planned for the destruction of the other three Clans, where Tigerstar called for assimilation, and Mudclaw just desired WindClan to be operated for the benefit of WindClan cats.

But it doesn't matter what they think they believe. The built-in conclusion of Thistle Law, and of ALL Fascism, is genocide. That link is to a post where I talked a bit about what would have eventually happened to RiverClan under TigerClan.

If blood can be impure, and the pure race is tainted by association with the dirty race, allowing groups to mix is an existential threat. Every birth for Them is a loss for Us. It will eventually come down to anti-miscegenation, then segregation, then mass murder.

The line between Hard Traditionalism and Thistle Law is usually some desire to begin enforcing a standard of purity, typically the elimination of the Queen's Rights. In the case of Brokenstar, this had less to do with blood and more to do with spilling it; his warriors would need to be loyal to destroy the other Clans.

Every warrior is an individual. There's some supporters of Thistle Law who have actual principles they want to stick to; but most will fall in line behind a strongman leader. The thing about authoritarians is that they HATE intellectuals and they LOVE submitting to hierarchy; so you will not find the same "width" of different beliefs within Thistle Law that you do within the Traditionalist or Fire Alone spectrums. No part of what they do is driven by rationality.

So to answer the question directly, how deep does Thistle Law go? Not very far. It's a shallow grave. Evil is deceptively simple.

[tildeathiwillwrite]

Who's Fault is It, Anyway?

Records of the Torrent Watchers: The Blood Moon Specter, Part 1

Whumptober Day 13 TEAM AS A FAMILY | Familial Curse | Multiple Whumpees | "Death will do us part."

Whumptober Prompts List | Masterpost

Tales from Valaria Masterpost

Next part ->

Fandom: Original Work

Words: 800

Tag List: @fourwingedsnake @whumperofworlds @pigeonwhumps @mr-orion @scaewolf

@the-ellia-west

CW: imprisoned, chained, arguing, swearing, worry, past trauma

A/N: I started a new series. Post Magician's Bait, my vision for Records of the Torrent Watchers is an episodic fantasy mystery series featuring Luc Epsilona, Reese Takari, and Damian Caenum on various adventures up and down the River Torrent.

While investigating a series of murders, the Watchers and their charge are kidnapped for reasons unrelated to their case. Or is it?

----------

“This is all my fault.”

“For the last time, Luc, you had no way of seeing this coming.”

Luc scoffed, the chains binding him to the wall rattling as he shook his head. “I can trace the exact trail of decisions that led to this point. If just one of them were different, we would not be here.”

“Celestials…” Damian groaned, “how many times must I repeat myself before the words get through your skull? You. Didn’t. Know. And even if one of those decisions were different, how do you know we wouldn’t have ended up here anyway?”

“Don’t ask me to see the damned big picture. And don’t you dare say that we are supposed to be here.”

“I wasn’t going to, but now that you mention it—”

“Your Highness, with all due respect, shut the fuck up.”

Damian narrowed his eyes at the Watcher. They were chained to opposite walls in the same cell underneath who-knows-where by who-knows-what. Luc stared at the cuff on his wrist, as if looking at it would force it to unlock, jaw clenched, hands curled into fists.

No matter how much Luc insisted otherwise, their current predicament was not his fault. If anything, it was Damian’s. He'd been the one to insist on accompanying Luc and Reese out of Caenum to investigate a string of murders. He had wanted to step away from city life for a little while, and being with a Watcher and his apprentice-who-insisted-she-was-not-an-apprentice seemed at the time the safest way to do that.

How could they have known they would get kidnapped barely a week into the journey?

“You’re worried about Reese, aren’t you?”

Luc glanced at the cell door, a thick wood slab full of splinters. “They didn’t put her with us,” he muttered, “Why didn’t they put her with us? Are the cells segregated? Is she with other female prisoners? Do they want her for something specific? Celestials, I don’t know what they’re doing with her.”

“You think they know about… y’know….” Damian’s eyes flicked to the cell door, uncertain if anyone was outside listening. If their captors didn’t know about Reese’s heritage, it would be best if they didn’t find out.

“It would explain a lot,” Luc said quietly. He ran a hand through his hair, the chains rattling ominously. “I know some of the people involved were never caught or identified. But as far as I know, we’re nowhere near Zariya. Unless they fled out towards the Torrent when the operation was shut down.”

He hissed through his teeth, eyes on the floor. “I hope they don’t. I really hope they don’t. She doesn’t tell me everything, but from what her father and de Silv said…” the blood suddenly drained from his face. “Oh celesitals… de Silv’s going to kill me if he finds out I let this happen.”

“De Silv?” Damian asked quizzically. The name sounded elven.

“Octavian de Silv. An elf who rescued her five years ago from the people who’d kidnapped her due to…” Luc gestured vaguely, indicating that he also suspected listeners. “He and I have a… complicated history. He had been missing for over a decade when he showed up at my office in Caenum when Reese and her father moved back there. He explained her situation, and asked me to take care of them as a favor.”

“Why couldn’t he do it?”

“Didn’t say. He disappeared shortly after. I haven’t seen or heard of him or his partner, a hunter by the name Draven Cozenson, since.” Luc sighed. “I swore that I’d keep her safe. And I did that by keeping track of her and training her to use that knife of hers. Which led to her following me on investigations, which led to me teaching her forensics due to her asking questions. And now everyone thinks she’s my apprentice.”

Damian raised an eyebrow. “‘Thinks’? So she’s not actually your apprentice? I thought you two were joking about that.”

“Ugh…” Luc slumped, five years of exasperation and exhaustion etched across his face. “Unofficially?”

“What does your own mentor think?” Damian asked, smirking.

“When I figured out what was happening about two years in, I sent him an apology letter for all the stress I put him through. He finds the whole thing hilarious.”

Damian chuckled. “She can handle herself. I’m sure she’s doing just fine. Perhaps she already escaped and is currently looking for us.”

“I wish I could share your optimism.”

“I can be optimistic enough for the both of us.”

Luc exhaled slowly, eyes on the door again. “If you insist.”

[aekatty]

⋆⭒˚｡⋆✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩

𝓶𝓸𝓿𝓲𝓮 𝓷𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽 !!

ft. the strawhats

masterlist

a/n: going to see ayesha erotica tonight, omg what if she signs my right tiddy

what movies do the straw hats like?

─── ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆ ───

18+ !! MINORS DNI

─── ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆ ───

cw: my headcanons, if u don’t agree that’s fine just writing them cause it’s silly, grammar lowk rn cause im crazy

tags ✮⋆˙ crack fic, i just randomly thought of this and immediately had to write it on docs lmao, if it’s ooc i lowk don’t care

luffy

not say saying this to infantalize lil bro but i see him unironically into how to train ur dragon and mostly likely watched it over 100x. but tbh, i don’t blame him bc the movies are lowk gas so.

i also see him getting riled up over king kong vs godzilla or just any action movies like marvel. oh and he would definitely headcanon the crew as different marvel characters for funsies.

probably kins brad pitt

zoro

you cannot fucking tell me bro doesn’t watch kill bill or any bruce lee movie.

definitely got scolded by nami when she found him recreating a scene from charlie’s angels.

idk i don’t got a lot to say about him bc i feel like bro’s just interests are self-explanatory. he definitely is against the whole romance sappy shit.

nami

my girl loves some cute ass rom-coms, i can feel it. she definitely eats up 13-going-on-30 or 10 things i hate about you.

oh, she eats up telenovelas…who cares if it’s in another language, if it involves love, angst, and death, she don’t care. on the wings of love~

definitely cried watching marley and me, cannot tell me otherwise

usopp

this man is watching the rom coms with nami. he unironically loves romance movies. sure, he’ll watch a few action movies but come on…bro was prolly watching the new sydney sweeney movie his bestie (nami).

nami will invite him to the library while the whole crew is asleep for silly sleepovers. they’ll put on a random rom com while gossiping and giving eachother spa days.

him and nami were holding eachother while sobbing after watching the ending to marley and me for the 10th time.

sanji

watches any movie that discusses the beauty of culinary art.

he definitely enjoyed watching the menu and became fascinated with the horror elements that complimented a “sophisticated work of art.” oh and prolly watched the american girl movie with olivia rodrigo as grace (cause she’s like a baker in the movie lmao).

*sigh* ok so like he prolly LOVES titanic and imagine rose as nami. prolly tried sneaking into usopp and nami’s sleepover but got his ass beat cause he wasn’t chill enough to come ova.

robin

ik she into them campy movies or horror but mostly psycho horror. in terms of camp, definitely the devil wears prada. for horror, she’d prolly like hereditary(?) (lemme sit on it ill prolly change it later) or she’ll like them classics and im not talking about just 80s classic, no, she prolly watching dracula before it had fucking sound.

franky

fucking top gun maverick. bro is the definition of a gen x mom. or prolly crying to a studio ghibli movie or the notebook(?) OR he can be cunty by watching legally blonde bc elle woods is SUPPERRR tbh i think bro’s taste would lowk be diverse.

chopper

mid joining usopp and nami’s sleep over and crying with them to marley and me. or he prolly watching zootopia and would be so amazed bc it’s an allegory for segregation

jinbe

watching that one lowk boring movie about stocks with christian bale. lowk fucks with that one princess diana movie with kristen stewart. yk what, fuck it, he prolly fucks with the godfather.

brook

some stupid ass movie from the 50s?? full on black and white shit. wait, ok, i did a film class and all i can remember was like vertigo which was lowk good and whats up doc.

[tamilhobbit]

CW for N word.

1970.

Mississippi versus Sesame Street

[olderthannetfic]

CW: rant about "racist fetishizing" and "exotification" as a white person, etc.

One thing that particularly drives me bonkers is when antis take issue with things that are either not obviously negative or are inextricable from things that are neutral or even positive. For example, are there situations where AAVE really is "appropriated" and used in a way that takes advantage of black culture while keeping a comfortable distance to actual black people? Sure! But my gents. 1) A random Tumblr user having absorbed a ton of AAVE into their speech patterns and saying "y'all" a lot is not it, 2) absorbing language patterns from those you socialize with is an unavoidable side effect of socialization, and I don't know how to tell this to terminally online people but it is in fact a good thing. It is a good thing that African-American people are so present and their content engaged with enough that people are passively absorbing AAVE! No, it doesn't mean racism is solved or that people who say "y'all" can't be racist, but absorbing AAVE in and of itself is a good sign!

I have a similar complaint with most accusations of "fetishization" (beside the meaningless vagueness of the term), because what it comes down to is "you find people who look like this sexy and that's BAD". Even "exotification" is not in and of itself a bad thing, when removed from the context of imperialism and colonialism, because looking at someone and thinking they're sexy because they look so different to what you're used to, i.e. "exotic", is not actually inherently a bad thing! We have some amount of sexual draw to what's different - I mean, people with blue eyes apparently all have a single common ancestor who really got around, for crying out loud.

Where this attraction becomes problematic is when due to the outside material conditions (whether on the societal scale or the single person scale), the exotified person is both desirable and lacking in power, but the exact same thing is true whatever the ethnicity of the person! (A good deal of what feminism views as "predatory" behavior in men is only really predatory against the background of economic desperation in women wherein there is some material disadvantage to turning down unwanted advances, and would be considerably more harmless in a setting where everyone is equal and living comfortably, which I daresay should be the end goal of any equality and empowerment movement).

As someone with straight hair, I think curls are sexy. As someone with brown hair, I think redheads and blond people and people with black hair are sexy. As a white person, I would probably date one of my cute Chinese co-workers if I weren't so damn ace, because something about that combination of same tone or darker skin + completely black smooth hair + the general facial features (including the monolid some people get so insecure about because Western poisoning sigh) is just gorgeous to me and I'm not afraid to say it. Saying something like this should not be taboo. People of any ethnicity deserve to have people of other ethnicities gushing about what makes them look distinct and unique! I mean, shit, people gush about white skin and blond hair and blue eyes enough.

(Disclaimer: I am once again not saying that there aren't contexts where calling out racial fetishization is appropriate, or where people desire someone for their physical differences but still consider them to be subhuman. There are many such cases, I know. I would even say that, based on observations of the heterosexual world, wanting to fuck someone and thinking they have equal value as a person can be completely and utterly uncoupled from each other. But this doesn't mean that all expressions of attraction because of the physical differences are automatically suspect, and it's no wonder that so much of pushback against "fetishizing X ethnicity" reads like a pamphlet in support of racial segregation!)

Tl;dr: Thinking someone of X ethnicity is hot and being racist towards that ethnicity can co-occur but have little to do with each other. People try to fix the latter problem by attacking instances of the former, and that's stupid, and just ends up looking like "you're not allowed to thirst outside of your own race".

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It still boggles my mind that y'all is the thing people have chosen to take as appropriation from AAVE.

[serpentface]

the gender trinary of northeastern Dain as shown thru hairstyles- women, men, and wallach of the Urswali-Dain people.

The connected cultures of the coastal northeastern Dainlands all have closely related variants of this trinary and place importance on distinction between the genders and taboos related to gender roles.

(cw brief mentions of wartime sexual violence) 

The Dain speakers of the northeastern Kelp Sea coasts and islands are related groups of semi-settled to settled agricultural peoples. These groups share very similar gender roles. They conceptualize being 'female' as the basic state of humankind, with 'manhood' being a special state of being that must be ritually attained via rites of passage and circumcision.

This creates a distinct third gender role of those designated boychildren who cannot be initiated into manhood for variable reasons (failing coming of age rites, being incapable of growing a beard, having 'feminizing' intersex conditions, etc). This is called the 'wallach', 'wollach', 'wolla', depending on the language group.

The wallach is understood as a liminal state of being, between man and woman, child and adult, placing them in a metaphysical role closer to the afterlife. Most witches and priests are thus wallach. Wallach can fill both male and female gender roles in dain society without defying social taboos, and their primary function is to bridge the gaps in an otherwise highly gender-segregated society.

Northeastern Dain cultures have an overall negative opinion on sex between men, and conceptualize being penetrated as severely emasculating and heavily taboo. The only form of m/m intercourse deemed acceptable is assault during war. This does not apply to wallach, who can have sexual relations with men without breaking taboo. Men and wallach are permitted to wed, though (as marriage is political and reproductive first and foremost) typically in conjunction with a woman wife, or in the aftermath of a divorce.

Women in Kelp Sea Dain cultures have significant autonomy, but are barred from many forms of political power. Their role is understood as managing and defending the home, land, and livestock. There is a prominent warrior culture among women, and all 'girlchildren' are taught to use weapons. Given their husbands and fathers are often away on raids, they must protect their lands and livestock against neighboring peoples husbands and fathers.

Common cattle-raiding and pillaging between neighbors is highly ritualized and prohibits the abuse of girls and women protecting their villages. A raider who defeats one in battle is expected to either spare them untouched or give them an honorable death. To do otherwise risks the wrath of the goddess Mökke (who may turn the offender into a deer and send her hounds after him, or at least curse him). This social protection is not extended to women deemed foreigners or enemies.

Highly uncommon compared to wallach, some 'girlchildren' attain manhood via special circumstances in which they complete male initiation rites.  They they take men's names and roles, often sharing wives with a brother or cousin in order to have blood-related progeny.

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Pictured here are Urswali Dains, the only contemporary extant sea-dain culture based wholly in piracy and raiding. 

Gender is expressed through hair primarily- men shave their heads and grow their beards long, women braid or mat their hair in ropes, and wallach wear women's hairstyles (with a small, trimmed beard when capable).

Urswali pirates proudly wear full body tattoos, with geometric patterns on the limbs, clan identification on their chests, and depictions of their battles and triumphs along their backs. Many tally their (claimed) successful raids with tattoos on their shaved scalps. These tattoos are only permitted to be worn by raiders as a sign of their elite status, though foreign names for the Urswali Dain vary on the theme of 'Painted Ones' (due to the pirates being more often encountered). Full body tattooing traditions are found elsewhere in the dainlands, though more commonly on women and for non war/raiding based purposes. 

The Urswali Dain have superstitions against bringing women on raiding boats. Some wallach are brought instead as sea-wives, who perform women's roles aboard the galleys (sewing, weaving, knitting, slaughtering of livestock, cooking) and may have sexual relations with sailing men.

Example of Dain pirate tattoos, one of Nhodda the Songbird's sons. Image cropped to spare tumblr the terror of a flaccid peanus