#did I mention I like fictional propaganda

[shadowsandstarlight]

Today I discovered that my social studies teacher listens to Welcome to Night Vale, and I am still in a bit of shock.

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Sexiest Podcast Character — Unscripted Bracket — Round 5

Propaganda

Glenn Close (Dungeons & Daddies):

#Propaganda for Glenn Close: one of the other PCs mentions multiple times how hot he is #Actually several characters point it out but especially Henry #Also the only person in a podcast that has to put a disclaimer about not being a BDSM podcast to have had sex during the course of the show

Young hot rocker dilf

Loyal to his dead wife <3

Does in fact smoke weed

BARD!! HES A BARD. HE WAS LEAD GUITAR IN HIS BAND (that he was kicked out of)

His band was a Christmas cover band btw.

Literally the fandom had hot Glenn summer which consisted of drawing him being incredibly hot and sexy

Anti government (ofc)

Kind of cringefail (Disney adult) (was on dilfs of disneyland)

Young and sexy not your style? Then how about HIM AFTER YEARS LOCKED IN A TIME PRISON WITH A DAMN HANNIBAL MASK ??

Lost an eye and wears a fucking eyepatch

One incredibly buff arm

Has a pet rat named after his son <3

Immeasurable amounts of trauma in this man- becomes progressively more unhinged

OH OLD HUMAN BARD ISNT CUTTING IT? FINE

HE BECOMES A FUCKING DEMON

A COOL HOT ONE-EYED DEMON WHO WANTS TO KILL HIS DAD (also sexy)

HE CANONICALLY ENDS CHRISTIAN HELL VIA CHRISTMAS

IS ALSO WAY OVERLEVELED

Becomes a demon hunter for the rest of his existence

Also nonwhite !!! We are done with cringefail whiteboys !!!!!!!!!

I can’t put into words ok just know he is the best plz love him.

Okay but Glenn made a minivan cum by talking to her so

HE HAS A BOOK THAT HE MARKS X’S AND CHECKS FOR EVERY DAY TO SEE IF THAT DAY WAS A SUCCESS OR NOT. TO SEE IF HE DID GOOD THAT DAY. ITS ALMOST ENTIRELY X’S. HE WAS CUCKED OUT OF A SON. AND A DEAD WIFE. HE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO KILL HIS DAD IN REVENGE. There’s absolutely nothing going for him except his sex appeal in his life. Nobody he loved remembers him. He lost his eye. All he has is a pet rat and friends who admit they don’t really like him that much. He was kicked out of his own band. The band was named after him. He was kicked out of the Glenn Close trio. All he could do was deez nuts the big bad and be sexy. If nothing else, then pity him. Look in his eyes. Look at his heart and soul. He did not do the BDSM episode for this I’ll tell you what. Do this for my his sake. Do it for Nick Jr, who needs the prize money to pay for his rat snacks. Do it for his son. For Morgan. Ganbatte.

Glenn is the goofiest sexiest character there is and I will die on this hill! I will ride into battle for him! what Dndads created is truly unique and Glenn is a key part of that and for that he deserves to win. I said it before and I'll say it again - GLENN SWEEEEEP

Can we talk about how he says ‘baby’ casually? Like he just calls people that?? That’s HOT. THAT IS HOT!! He’s also bilingual and knows Japanese!!!! He’s a big dumb idiot with a lot of charisma!!!!!! HE WORKED AT A BDSM PLACE FOR TWO SEPARATE ONE SHOTS. HES SO SAD BUT PLAYS IT OFF LIKE HE’S CHILL ALL THE TIME!! HE DOESN’T THINK OF HIMSELF AS SINGLE BECAUSE HE DIDN’T DIVORCE HIS DEAD WIFE!!! He’s like.. the perfect guy. We need this win.

I’d also like to add the fact I made this. Which is the first 11 episodes edited to (almost) only have Glenn in them <3 which is a level of insanity I hope to reiterate. These took hours to make. I wouldn’t do that for anyone else.

Mod Note: While I will still take "bad dads are sexy" propaganda and "bad dads aren't sexy" anti-propaganda, I kindly request no more discussion on whether or not he was a bad father. This is a sexypoll, not a parentingpoll. If you see a post you strongly disagree with, you can just not reblog it.

Mod Note 2: This tournament is about fictional podcast characters. Please do not vote for the real actress Glenn Close.

Amber Gris (The Adventure Zone: Ethersea):

Middle aged woman who punches sharks to death. My hero

If you love me you'll vote for amber gris I swear to everything holy on earth amen

Amber is butch, instant win

Amber Gris has a negative charisma modifier and she pissed her pants on purpose in order to trick a guard and knock him out. She tied up a dude. She once killed an evil magic shark (they're out for murder. not like real sharks) by punching it and then picked it up and smashed it into another shark, also killing it. She talks in a southern accent. She calls people guppy because it indicates a lack of respect. She has a big pair of magical green arms that come from her stomach. She got a fancy jacket and immediately ripped its sleeves off. She has a gay thing going on with one of the political leaders in the city. She gets in fights with people and doesnt do vulnerability and tries to lay low and not get in any social trouble she doesn't have to. She jumped through a portal into a new world because she could. She's now the god of said world, alone with only afformentioned political leader, who was previously possessed and she had to fight. She spends her time in a bar called the Cloaca. She calls people she doesn't like claspers, because it means shark penis. She and her friend, an old man named Uncle Joshy, sneak attack each other and yell VIBE CHECK! She tries to talk fancy to impress people and she's really bad at it (verily).

She’s everything and more. She’s irreverent. She punches sharks for a living. She becomes God. What more do you need in a butch.

amber gris propaganda: she is straightup the physical embodiment of "women want me, fish fear me." also she's an appalachian post apocalyptic sea captain. that's just objectively cool.

AMBER GRIS IS PUNCHES SHARKS AND IS (one of) THE MOST BADASS BLACK WOMEN PCS IN DND SHOWS IVE EVER SEEN. SHES INCREDIBLE AND A WIN FOR DYKES EVERYWHERE

amber's creator said she was based off of the type of working-class woman you commonly see in appalachia where "this is the sort of woman that you see walking past CVS, and you know that a truck could hit her and it would just split around her as she continued to go pick up whatever she had to do that day." and that's pretty hot

guys Amber becomes lesbian god of the new world with her childhood “”friend””

#amber gris is LITERALLY a middle-aged butch #she would win this entire tournament in a just world

Last time Amber got horny was when she killed that shark

"it was a savage bummer though, don't-- trust me, there's nothing that great about a history. You know? I got one. What did I do, killed a bunch of sharks? Last time I got horny, god and christ I can't even tell you-- well, it was when I killed that shark. But! Hey. We're all just kinda figuring it out."

Moonshine Cybin (Not Another D&D Podcast: Bahumia):

She's a hot elf with mushrooms growing on her. She has 1 level of barbarian. She's bisexual. She shapeshifted into a dragon and ate a god.

how tf does the post not mention Moonshine’s giant boobs her greatest asset

Moonshine has canonically gone down on a woman for a solid hour without asking for anything in return. Moonshine edged a dryad just by kissing them. Moonshine faced down someone being controlled to kill everyone in his path and told him if he still wanted to hurt her, she would take his blows as a friend. Moonshine makes jambalaya for her family and friends. Moonshine mispronounced someone’s name for a month and that woman still wanted to hook up with Moonshine. These are just a few of the reasons why Moonshine is sexy.

shes illiterate

canonically huffs dirty water from a bong

has big tatas

wears a belly chain with a demon trapped in it

almost became the queen of hell

ate a god

turned into a pregnant moose & gave birth

The woman she went down on for an hour asking nothing in return is still hung up on her, 200 years later. Moonshine is unmatched

To be clear the woman whose name Moonshine mispronounced for a month and then hooked up with is the same woman she went down on for an hour, and the same woman who is still flustered over her 200 years later. The rizz is unparalleled. She’s also incredibly kind and accepting of others, and goes out of her way to bolster her friends. The party always requests one big bed.

moonshine cybin is a druid who learned counterspell through sheer force of will. moonshine cybin turned one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse into a dolphin, flew him 60 feet up into the air, dropped him on the ground, and then spit spores into his face to kill him. moonshine cybin turned into a dragon and bit the head off of a double god. moonshine cybin was willing to confine herself to an eternal hell to save the world. moonshine cybin is a dragon rider. you know what you must do.

Amber and Moonshine Together

Look at them. They should not have to fight when they could be gay instead. Imagine the power they would have combined... Every lesbian in a hundred mile radius of the post would swoon. It may be an odd alliance, but from an Ethersea fan to Bahumia fans, i believe this will strengthen both our odds. I have always been insane about Amber Gris but through this poll I have also learned about Moonshine and come to love her too. Take my hand... We can do this together...

OKAY HEAR ME OUT MOONSHINE AND AMBER WOULD GET ALONG SO WELL

appalachian sapphic solidarity!

Art of Amber and Moonshine from @pirateknight.

[hamliet]

the notion that bnha is pro authoritarianism or social hierarchies is nonsensical not to mention acting like being pro cop is bad

Err... BNHA is pretty pro-authoritarian. I actually find it pretty disturbing. And that's even if the story turns out with the League alive at the end.

As for being pro-cop--cops are human individuals, yes. But people have in recent years in multiple countries (including Japan, by the way) protested against cops being used as tools to maintain social hierarchies wherein people who are not part of that hierarchy suffer for daring to want to be treated as human beings. When I say I'm anti-cop, I'm not saying I hate anyone on the basis of being a cop. But I am saying that the ways in which the police force are used in many countries does societal harm. Critical thinking, yo.

Honestly I feel like this whole story (BNHA) and fans reactions throughout (especially when compared to other stories) demonstrate how people are not using critical thinking. And that can have real world consequences, though it doesn't have to.

I just find it weird that people are okay with a story where the ruling class is always right and always wins. Like... how have they not? I mean, even stories that end up suggesting the ruling class isn't entirely wrong or show flaws in rebellions generally don't go hard on the authoritarianism. But Horikoshi... is doing this.

The whole thing is so weird to me personally, too, because Horikoshi's wishy-washy framing and switches in coding generally seem to be the result of him caring, deeply, what his audience thinks and feels. Too much, really, but it also seems like he genuinely doesn't want to hurt people. Except this ending--even if Tenko does reappear as New Character and saves the League--is the exact opposite. (If Tenko doesn't reappear, then everything I'm about to say is multiplied by a thousand.)

It's catering to mean-spiritedness, and while I do understand fiction isn't reality, the side he's catering to now is making the argument that fictional crimes are real crimes and thus must meet real penalties.

I can play this game too.

If people are gonna make those arguments, I'm going to say they're the problem and the reason we have wars, genocides, assaults, and more.

If you ever want a cycle of violence/abuse to stop, someone has to accept that they've taken the last punch. Not keep going until the other side is WIPED OUT.

If you equate justice with equalizing losses, then you are enacting Dazai from BSD's statement on justice: justice is a weapon. You can never heal by it.

If you want to heal, you have to stop fighting and bandage wounds. And maybe you are too injured to do the bandaging. That's okay. But someone else can, and if you try to stop them on the premise of "but no one bandaged my wounds" you're a bitter person who makes the world a worser place.

If you say a tragedy is the story, sure. But you have to set up tragedies from the start. See, Attack on Titan, which's ending I love. It began with someone crying and an ominous message to the future. You don't set up your first chapter with "this is the story of how I become the greatest hero!" spend 200+ chapters criticizing hero society and have the hero fail at the goal he'd been repeating for 200 chapters in the end and join hero society and still think you wrote a story that delivered in what you promised. You failed.

Either you wrote a tragedy and are trying to pass it off as a happy story (see how well that works usually) or your understanding of a happy story is pretty much just fascist propaganda. And yes, BNHA does have fascist themes at this point. Way more than AoT ever did. But they have smiles and cute frog girls so it's not nearly as dangerous, right? (sarcastic).

The thing is, this is where the lack of critical thinking comes in. While I've seen people talk a bit about how BNHA seems like copaganda, it's taking things much, much further than other stories usually do and into territory where I'm frankly disturbed.

Yes, BNHA started out as a clever critique of hero society and of the very idea it's now seeming to uphold: that the human instinct (which is universal in real life to) to idolize people leads to a lack of humanity for those who do not have those traits we idolize, whether their fault or not, and for people to become villains in response. But not only has it failed to deliver on this premise by upholding society (hey, Naruto and to a degree Tokyo Ghoul also failed to completely change society), it's gone so far as to endorse what it previously criticized.

It's more akin to Game of Thrones Season 8 upholding racism, sexism, and classism, than it is to Naruto or Tokyo Ghoul. GoT ended with a joke about prioritizing brothels being open, as if the misogyny was actually a good thing and not what caused a lot of the problems. There's no critical lens here. It's just like "hey, there was no point in struggling. Monarchies that abuse women, rah rah, let's go!"

BNHA seems to be going a similar route. Deku's murder of Shigaraki, Ochaco's crying over Toga, the way Shouto reaches out to Touya--it's sad, but not framed as something the audience should see as a wrong done on behalf of heroes. In fact, the heroes are not criticized at all. Frickin' Edgeshot, whom no one cares about, is fine. All of them are fine. Their statuses are generally fine, too, except maybe Enji's and even then he's not like going to face the fate of the League and die alone. His family still supports him. Hawks is completely fine and framed positively. His regret over Twice is pure lipservice. Deku really did just need to kill Shigaraki, and all his "I want to save" spiel, much like Ochaco's, is for naught. He just needed to learn to grow up and get in line.

Even if Tenko comes back, and even if Deku like... somehow knew this would happen via vestiges or whatnot (let's be real, he will if this is the case), and the message is just that society isn't ready to move forward, but at least they can live, then... I don't know, y'all. That's still depressing. I don't see how Deku is a hero for that, much less the greatest number one hero. He decided to be a hero at the cost of his own integrity, and if this was a gritty story about the realistic struggle of living in a capitalistic society where ethics are always compromised that would make sense, but... it's not. Even until the final battle, the characters were endorsing idealism.

At the very least, Horikoshi didn't deliver on his promise in the first chapter. At the very worst, he's endorsing fascist ideals.

Like, I'm sorry, but "kill this person for the good of society," the violent upholding of oppressive societal hierarchies, the importance of being a cop hero and the way the military hero brutalities are worshipped, the way heroes are lauded and everyone who doesn't get in line with this is punished, went from being criticized to being endorsed. Those are all central elements of fascism.

The little guy deserves to lose, but, but Deku is the little guy, so it can't be! Except it can be. Because it's actually pretty common irl even to trot out examples of people like Candace Owens to be like "hey, you can't possibly say Republicans are racist!"

And don't you dare say "but Japanese culture makes it unreasonable to expect a non retributive justice!" The Japanese people are not a monolith. Not to mention... Naruto, Bungou Stray Dogs, Monster, Hunter x Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho, Mawaru Penguindrum, Oshi no Ko, Dragon Ball, Attack on Titan, and Tokyo Ghoul all say hi.

I hated the TG ending, and still hate it, but I'm not going to say that it upheld the CCG as right all along because it didn't. BNHA thus far is doing that with hero society. And even if the answer is for the League be revived and to leave society or whatever, then how can we be happy Deku is a part of this society? How can we root for him, or his classmates? Is he going to work from the inside to change it? Why wasn't that emphasized beforehand as a theme or struggle?

tl;dr Horikoshi has cooked his story no matter what he does now, and I don't think it's salvageable. Either way it has themes that are disturbing especially considering real world events across the globe, and that people should be more aware of instead of focusing solely on stories that have fascism and monsters in them but don't uphold it.

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 5 - Catholic Character Tournament

Propaganda below ⬇️

Pope Pinion IV (Cars)

HELLO. IT IS I. THE GREAT AND ALMIGHTY ITALIAN TOURNEY. PLEASEPLEASE PUT HIM IN THERE WAS SO MUCH POPE DISCOURSE ON MY ACC AND HE WAS SOLOED IN THE FIRST ROUND BY LUIGI😭😭😭💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔 PLEASE AVENGE HIMMMM

The existence of Catholicism in the Cars universe implies that there was (or at least there was believed to be) a car Jesus who died for the cars’ sins, and I for one would like to see how a car gets crucified or sins. I guess the blood/wine here would be gasoline, but what would the body/bread be? How did they sit at the last supper? What is the layout of car church? How does a car build a church? Do other human religions exist in the cars universe? How does a goddess with the body of a human and the head of a cat translate to a car? Do Buddhist cars rein-car-nate? Do cars have souls?

he lost the italian character tournament, he will win here

Harrowhark

I'm pretty sure you've already got plenty of submissions for her so I'll just say she was raised in what is basically a cult (technically a nunnery but let's be real) dedicated to keeping the body of the thing that will kill God behind the rock. One of their prayers is actually "I pray the rock is never rolled away". Harrow is extremely devout as penance for her earlier heretical actions in the tomb as a child (spoiler!) so the Catholic guilt really comes through

imagine being a catholic nun and you meet god, but it turns out he’s a twitch streamer from new zealand who became god because everything got a little bit out of hand. and just before you met him you gave yourself a diy grief-fuelled lobotomy with the help of your best frenemy. imagine how insane you’d be. now multiply that insanity by nine. that’s the fictional love of my life right there.

she meets god. she’s not inspired

she’s number one practitioner of space Catholicism. The locked tomb is chock full of Christian (catholic) imagery themes metaphors etc. just look at her she’s got a bone rosary

They're Catholicism with extra bones. Everyone is a nun. They have what is basically a rosary made from knuckle bones. They technically worship the same God as everyone else, but they're waaaay more focused on The Body in the Tomb (Mary) and we get a moment where we find out that while everyone else prays the equivilent of The Lords Prayer, they're doing the equivilent of Hail Mary. And they paint their faces with skulls.

She thinks leaving dry bread in a drawer is taking care of someone. She's in love with a 10,000 year old corpse (the same one they worship). She spent ALL NIGHT digging with her bare hands to make sure a field had bones every 5 feet so she could fight her girlfriend - I mean, greatest enemy. Spoiler territory: She's been puppeting her parents corpses since she was 8 years old. Instead of grieving her dead girlfriend, she gives herself a lobotomy. She makes soup with bone in it so she can use the bone IN THEIR STOMACH to try and kill them.

The author is/was Catholic and the entire series had heavy Catholic overtones. https://www.tor.com/2020/08/19/gideon-the-ninth-young-pope-and-the-new-pope-are-building-a-queer-catholic-speculative-fiction-canon/ A good breakdown of how it's Catholic

Anti-propaganda (spoilers)

I love the Locked Tomb series but Harrowhark has daddy issues with God, had a childhood crush on God's cryogenic partner, and is in love with God's daughter, not to mention that she's essentially a bone-bender. The religion on her home planet exists in a way that is technically against the will of the canon in-universe God, even. All of this to say, Harrowhark is heretical at minimum if not an outright witch. Terrible Catholic. Burn her.

[dinarosie]

Still, to appease the more radical purebloods and future death eaters, Snape must have internalized some of that anti muggleborn propaganda that Voldemort was spewing and the hatred his Slytherin friends were spreading. Although I'm aware that majority of the wizarding society held some superiority over muggles and I even believe many of the so called good purebloods (like the Potters) were condecensing to muggleborns sometimes, tho unknowingly, there is a difference between quiet prejudice with no ill intent and the radical bigoted beliefs that some of the wizards held. The death eaters clearly believed that muggles were human sickness and muggleborns were no better and Snape was around that rhetoric every day and later became part of its circle. I always just saw Snape as a selfish person who tried to gain more power and a sense of belonging and he was insecure enough to believe many of the bigoted beliefs that was part of Voldemort propaganda or just the overall hardcore prejudice. He called muggleborns mudbloods even when he was Lily's friend. I always imagine him as someone who would dismiss Lily's feelings about slytherins and even gaslight her about Voldemort's propaganda and her worry behind anti muggleborns rhetoric. Like he downplayed it while participating in it at the same time. We can see this with any real life prejudice existing in our world. Many people who are homophobic try to create reasons for disliking gay people and when gay people complain about their hatred, they just downplay it, make it seem like its not that big of a deal or just continue with their excuses. I can see Snape being like that. And even if his reason for joining death eaters had nothing to do with violence and hatred, he became part of it anyway and being part of something like that influences the way you think especially if you wanted to be part of it. He also became part of it during the time the violence was already known and that certainly did not stop him so he must have had some prejudices or highly ignorant beliefs towards muggleborns.

It seems like you're very determined to apply a strictly logical, real-world mindset to a fictional, fantasy world. I get that imagining a Severus Snape with deeply ingrained, extremist, anti-Muggle biases would make more sense in a real-world context and may feel more "realistic". But that wasn’t the point of Snape’s character. This is a story, and not everything needs to follow real-world logic exactly. Even in reality, not everything unfolds as expected. Snape’s character is, in many ways, an exception—he surprises audiences frequently and makes choices that don’t always align with his past actions or logical expectations. Some of these contradictions seem deliberate; Snape has to exist in this gray area for the story to hold its depth and ambiguity.

So, while Snape does associate with future Death Eaters and, at times, seems to justify their actions, that doesn’t mean he fully internalized all of their views or intended to act exactly like them. Lily did a similar thing, in a way: she mentions that she often tried to excuse Snape’s behavior or overlook his mistakes. But we wouldn’t conclude that Lily agreed with or had adopted Snape’s beliefs. Another example is Peter Pettigrew, who is almost Snape’s opposite. Peter was sorted into Gryffindor, the very house that upholds Dumbledore’s ideals and values. He surrounded himself with people destined to be future Order members, yet look at what he became. Peter didn’t just reject his friends’ beliefs; he betrayed them completely and was loyal to Voldemort for years, even plotting his friends' deaths and stayed loyal to Voldemort for years afterward, to the point of risking Harry’s life for Voldemort's return.

I don’t deny that Snape held biases and some prejudiced views, whether as a teenager or a young Death Eater. But, as I mentioned in my previous post, there’s no solid evidence that he was an extreme racist, a torturer of Muggle-borns, or someone who delighted in the idea of “cleansing” the wizarding world.

As a personal opinion, I also feel that comparing real-world homophobia to anti-Muggle sentiment in the wizarding world isn’t quite the same. Muggles and wizards have a long, tumultuous history, and at one point, Muggles persecuted wizards to the extent that they had to hide their world to ensure safety and survival. This isn’t a distant past—Hagrid even mentions in Philosopher’s Stone that Muggles would likely exploit wizards if they discovered their powers. So, while homophobia is irrational and baseless, anti-Muggle sentiments in the wizarding world, however wrong, are somewhat rooted in historical fear and survival. It’s no surprise, then, that the wizarding society hasn’t fully let go of its anti-Muggle biases, even after the wars.

[etaleah]

Absolutely sucks that your blog is ravaged with proshipping apologia. Like yeah enjoying dark subject matter in fiction doesn't mean you condone it IRL (I myself am an avid gore and kink fan and use that to express my feelings in art) but uhhh there's a difference between depicting pedophilia in a story and actively jacking it to child porn which is what most if not all proshippers are trying to justify.

The Venn diagram between proshippers and anime lolicons is a circle. "Ohhh it's not real" yeah sure technically but that's still very much a child being raped on screen you're getting your rocks off to. Being in the second dimension doesn't negate that.

Most proshippers don't actually care about properly depicting complex subject matter in art. They just wanna write their incest rape South Park fics and call anyone who calls them out on it "puritans." (I doubt any of you really understand what that word means. If not liking child porn makes me a puritan then call me the Virgin fucking Mary.) It's all excuses, excuses.

Fiction affects reality more than you think. It's why propaganda is so effective. It's why Jim Crow and minstrelsy was (and still is tbh) so harmful to African Americans. Why do you think POC care about how they're depicted in media so much? It very much influences thinking, how people see the world.

(There is an argument to be made about the rampant racism in fandom, but that's a whole other conversation.)

Don't dismiss this ask. I want you to read it very carefully and get yourself out of the echo chamber you've put yourself in. Consider the points made at the very least. Use the "critical thinking" you claim to love so much.

I have considered the points you made and read them very carefully, and I have found them incorrect, relying on faulty logic, and full of unverified assumptions and false equivalences. I now bring you a full breakdown of exactly why, though I’m putting it under a cut in case anyone wants to avoid the Discourse™ because this breakdown is a long one.

*cracks knuckles* Here we go!

You clearly have a different definition of “proship” than I do. I and those that I have reblogged or liked (as far as I can tell) are “proship” in the sense that we’re arguing for the freedom to read what you want and write what you want because thoughtcrime isn’t real, no one gets hurt inside your head, and the ability to read and write what we wish is vital to a free society. That’s my definition of “proship,” and if you have a different definition and are determined to stick to it, there’s not much I can do about that. I can only tell you what my definition is so that you know what I’m referring to when I talk about it in this post or reblog posts mentioning it.

If you’re referring to what’s on AO3 (which is what I am mainly concerned with, as I don’t talk about other fanfic sites on my blog), that is not child porn. It’s not. The term child porn refers to sexual photos and videos of real children, not text-only stories about fictional ones. AO3 does not allow users to upload videos nor does it allow users to upload photos except for their profile pictures, and it is literally written into their Terms of Service that they do not allow child pornography on their site. You couldn’t put child porn on AO3 if you tried. Text by itself with no photos or videos accompanying it is not child porn, and that’s true no matter how disgusting and immoral you find it. I don’t support or justify child porn because I don’t support or justify real children being hurt, which is what actual child porn involves and requires.

What I do support is the freedom for everyone to read and write what they want, and I am not going to stop supporting that.

How do you know that the people reading or writing a fic are “getting their rocks off to” or “actively jacking it” to what's in it? Did they tell you? Have you developed telepathic powers and read their minds? How do you know that people “don’t actually care about properly depicting complex subject matter in art?” Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them. You don’t know why someone is reading something and you don’t know why someone is writing something. I have no idea whether the person checking Mein Kampf or Birth of a Nation out of a library is a racist who agrees with everything in both works or a scholar doing research for a paper on racism or just an average joe who wants to see what’s in there for themselves and form their own conclusions, which is a perfectly fine and intellectually healthy thing to want. I don’t know which of these is the case and I’m not going to automatically assume the worst-case scenario, nor am I going to demand that the person checking out those works provide me with an explanation because they don’t owe me one. You don’t know why someone is reading or writing a rape or incest story. Maybe they find it sexy or maybe they’re a victim themselves, working through their trauma by expressing it via the written word. You don’t know which one it is, and they don’t owe you an explanation. I’d advise you not to automatically assume the worst-case scenario either.

Because you know what happens when people assume the worst of an author’s intentions and assume they know what a work is doing? You get situations like Isabel Fall’s and Lindsay Ellis’ where people were sure they knew that the former was being transphobic with her short story and that the latter was trivializing rape with her “rape rap.” They were so sure, as sure as you are in your ask, not a doubt in their minds, didn’t think it was possible for there to be any other reason or interpretation, and so they felt totally justified in harassing those women. I’m sure each of them convinced themselves they were doing this because they were an ally who just cared so much and that those authors deserved the hate they were getting because (gasp!) they wrote something bad and if you write something bad, you should expect to be called out. And then they found out—oops! Turns out Isabel Fall was a trans person and not a cis person being transphobic after all, and was actually writing a story about a subject she had plenty of experience with, and—oops! Turns out Lindsay Ellis was an assault victim herself and she was coping with her trauma in the best way she could because making a lighthearted rap about the subject made it more accessible, easier to deal with, and not as scary and she wasn’t making fun of victims after all. Whoops!

How do you know the people writing these fics you find so horrible aren’t doing something similar to Ellis and Fall? How do you know they aren’t victims working through their grief and trauma in a way that helps them? How do you know you’re not misjudging and assuming the worst of them just like Fall’s and Ellis’ haters misjudged and assumed the worst of them? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them. How do you know?

Why do you get to be the authority who decides what “properly depicting complex subject matter in art” even looks like? Maybe someone else read it and decided it was properly depicted; why does your opinion and interpretation matter more than theirs? Why is yours the correct one? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them.

I don’t know what anime lolicon is, so I’m not gonna comment on that, though I will say it disproves your point about the Venn diagram being a circle since I am technically a proshipper and yet I don’t even know what that is. I’m sure if you look hard enough, you can probably find someone using the proship label who has done something bad or supports something bad, but the same can be said about antis. You get assholes in every group. Doesn’t mean everyone in the group is a bad person.

(Also I know this isn’t the most important point here but the fact that you’re more worried about the content of South Park fanfics rather than the South Park show itself says to me that you care more about finding an easy target than about minimizing harm because that show has plenty of racist and anti-Semitic “jokes” in it that are being fed to a much larger audience than any fanfic of it could ever have, yet I don’t see you being worried at all about that. Wonder why.)

(Another less important point but one I’m still going to indulge in: I find your line about “if that makes me a puritan then call me the Virgin Mary” funny in an ironic way because in trying to claim that people don’t know what the word puritan means, you proved that you yourself don’t know what it means by implying that puritan = virgin. Puritan and virgin are not the same thing. Virgin is a state of being that could be voluntary or, if you want sex but can’t find anyone to give it to you, it could be involuntary. One could be a virgin and still be sex-positive just like one could be a religious fundamentalist with ten kids who’s had all the sex required to make those ten kids but still be sex-negative and think that only the straight married baby-making kind is okay and all other kinds are impure and gross. Unlike virginity, puritanism is a mindset, not a state of being, and therefore it is always voluntary. You can be one without being the other. Again, not a super important point, but I thought the irony of that line was funny.)

You do know that Jim Crow was a set of laws and policies set down by the government and enforced by police and courts and not, like…a dirty fanfic or book, right? You do know that? It was and still is a legal framework that’s baked into the justice system and has been the driving force behind everything from mass incarceration to drug policy to redlining and housing to voter disenfranchisement. Bitch, I fucking wish that Jim Crow was nothing more than a bad fanfic or a bad story; that would make it a hell of a lot easier to fight! Acting like any one (fan)fiction writer or any one piece of (fan)fiction has the same amount of power as the fucking US government is some insane false equivalence.

As for the representation argument, you’re misunderstanding what that movement is about and why the founders of it cared about the state of media. We Need Diverse Books and organizations like it did not start their campaigns because they were disgusted by what White writers were doing and wanted to stop them and make sure they could never do it again. They started their campaigns to empower and encourage authors of color. It began when a few Black mothers were looking for books for their kids and realized they couldn’t find any with a Black child on the cover, not because they read something a White person wrote and were so horrified by it that they had to put a stop to it. Being so horrified by something in a story that you have to put a stop to it is what Moms for Liberty does. The goal of the representation matters movement is to diversify the publishing industry since it’s still majority White, to publish more authors of color because most of the authors being published are still White, and to update school curriculums so that students of color can read about and study characters like themselves. All of which are good and reasonable goals. It is not and never was about telling people what they were and were not allowed to write or read, or saying that they’re bad people because of what they write or read.

“Influences thinking” and “affecting reality” are not the same as controlling or determining thinking and reality. If fiction really does affect how people see the real world, then why, in a time when we have more positive books/movies/TV shows/plays of and by POC and positive queer books/movies/TV shows/plays than ever before, are we still dealing with vicious racism and homophobia? If fiction influences thinking and affects reality and how people see the world so much, then why, in a time when we have Drag Queen Story Hour and trans characters are being featured positively in popular TV shows and trans actors are winning awards, are we still dealing with some of the worst transphobia we’ve ever seen? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them.

Fiction doesn’t make things happen. Playing violent video games doesn’t make a person violent. Reading or writing about an immoral act does not mean you agree with, get off to, or are going to do the immoral act. And that’s true regardless of what the immoral act in question is, whether it's gore or kink or rape or incest.

The problem with “you can read/write what you want except for X because X is gross/morally wrong” is that the bigots and mean-spirited folks of the world will find a way to make anything they don’t like into X. That’s the part antis don’t think about. But we’re already seeing it play out in school board meetings.

“We don’t want to ban Maus because it talks about the Holocaust, we want to ban it because uhhh it has pictures of naked prisoners in the camps and therefore it’s pornography.”

“We don’t want to ban Beloved because it talks about slavery, we want to ban it because uhhh it has a slave getting raped in it and therefore it’s pornography and sexually explicit and won’t someone think of the children!”

“We don’t want to ban all of these books because they have Black kids on the covers, we want to ban them because uhhh they’re critical race theory and indoctrination that teaches White kids to hate themselves!”

“We don’t want to keep drag queens out of libraries because we hate them and are transphobic, we want to keep them out of libraries because uhhh they’re sexualizing minors and teaching them to mutilate their genitals!”

Those are real examples. And they will happen to fanfiction too if we’re not careful. Someone doesn’t like Sonadow? Well they’re not against it because they’re homophobic or just don’t like the ship, they’re against it because uhhh it’s pedophilia since Shadow is 50-65 depending on how you count it and Sonic is 15. If it can happen with books, it can happen with fanfiction.

We’ve already seen cases of people running for board positions on AO3 who talked about “cleaning up the site,” and each time it turned out they were homophobic and were very much including queerness in what they considered “dirty.” That’s going to keep happening because antis keep falling for it and getting swept up in a manufactured moral panic without thinking through what the enforcement would be like. The whole reason AO3 has the policies that it does is because these kinds of purges happened regularly on other sites. Every time, people insisted it was “just the bad ones,” “just the immoral ones,” “just the underage ones,” etc. And it never was. And after every purge, there’d be a lot fewer queer love stories in the world.

How are you going to make sure that doesn’t happen again? How will you decide whose definitions of terms like “pedophilia,” “grooming,” “underage,” “sexualizing,” “fetishizing” get used? That’s the part antis never think about, is what enforcement of what they want would actually involve. Some people think “underage” is anyone under 25 or under 20 and some think it’s anyone under 18. Which one is right? Who gets to decide? Which country’s age of consent is the correct one that fanfic writers around the world all have to abide by regardless of where they’re from, and why is that country’s age of consent the correct one? Whose interpretation of a work is the correct one? And whoever ends up making these decisions, how will you stop this decision maker who gets to say what counts as “properly and improperly depicting complex subject matter” and what doesn’t from shifting the goalposts and abusing their power? How will you stop them from applying those negative labels to just any work they don’t like? What checks and balances will be put in place to keep whoever does the fanfiction gatekeeping from abusing that position? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them. I’ve yet to see an anti have an answer to these questions.

I know propaganda is effective because you’ve fallen for it. The idea that peoples’ ability to read and write what they want must be restricted because Think of the Children™ and because “only bad people would ever want to read/write something bad” is the same talking points used by Moms for Liberty, Ron DeSantis, the people protesting Drag Queen Story Hour, and so many others. Every single time an attempt is made to restrict the freedom to read and write, it is always couched in the paternalistic language of protection, safety, just looking out for kids, and the fearmongering language of “that stuff is freaky, dirty, and gross and only a pervert would ever have a problem with it being banned.” Every time, it is discussed with the language of protection and safety, and every time, it is a lie.

I support the right of everyone to read and write what they want because I don’t know their situation, don’t have the right to demand an explanation of their situation or a detailed account of their very private and personal traumas, and have seen what happens when people try to excuse banning and censorship of written text or harassing authors with the excuses of “it’s just the bad ones,” “we’re just protecting kids,” “we just have a few concerns,” “we’re just being good allies,” and “if I wrote something gross I’d expect to get called out!”

So. Now that I have responded to your points, I hope that you will very carefully read and consider my points at the very least and get out of your echo chamber and use some critical thinking too. The fact that you put the phrase critical thinking in quotes like it’s a fake thing that doesn’t exist instead of a real and very important skill reveals a lot more than I think you meant it to, but still I hope you try.

I’ve disabled anonymous asks because I want to see if you’re brave enough to respond without hiding behind anonymity. I’ll be interested to see if you or anyone who agrees with you actually provides thoughtful, well-reasoned, and well-articulated answers to the questions I’ve asked instead of replying with a thought-terminating ad hominem like “That was a lot of words to say that you’re a [insert bad thing here]!” or “Just say you [insert bad thing here] and go!” And if you can actually provide evidence for your claims, if you can provide non-anecdotal, verifiable studies and data that are not from a religious or rightwing think tank that prove your points about proshipping and proshippers, then I’ll really be impressed.

I’m not holding my breath though.

[dcdreamblog]

Is it true that the reason Uncle Sam and several other WWII-era superheroes disappeared even before the whole McCarthy-HUAC debacle because they went to an alternate universe where the Axis won in order to continue the fight against Fascism?

The one hand, it sounds kinda crazy, even for superheroes, but in the other it sounds in-character for Uncle Sam.

Yep. I mean like you said its fucking ludicrous, even for the kind of lives that these heroes lead but its just true in this case. The Multiverse is a really hard idea to wrap your head around outside science fiction but sometimes it will come roaring in whether we like it or not.

(Propaganda poster of the Freedom Fighters produced in 1946)

The Freedom Fighters were already a very insular and embattled part of the Squadron. Their specific mandate was to support resistance movements against fascism all over the world along the periphery of Axis territory where Uncle Sam's considerable influence could stave off the Spear of Destiny while they worked in secret. Their main ports of call for most of the war were in Burma, the Phillipines, China and the southern Mediterranean.

Because of the secretive and intensive nature of their work, they became a very opaque bubble within the Squadron, tightly bonded to one another with their locations and activities often unknown even to the Squadron at large for weeks or even months.

Soon after the war (as in, ON V-J Day) they became aware of the alternative universe you mentioned where the Axis managed to not only win the war but hold dominion over most, if not all, of the world.

During the entire period between the end of the war and the early days of the Justice League they were embattled as the main resistance in that universe, eventually turning the tide and overthrowing Nazi rule with the JLA's help, where they returned to our world. (Not the Firebrand on their team was the Earth X version of original Firebrand Rod Reilly, who died during the Pearl Harbor attacks on our world and did not survive the Fighters' final battle on Earth X)

I DO want to talk about Uncle Sam at some point though because as you implied he is a fascinating figure. (I've actually met him. Like, legit spoken to him, he comes into the museum like...once or twice a month. I think he knows my name)

[transparentkinks]

What if the pre-war government censored all information on sexual health?

You should know I wrote this with my entire p#@sy. MDNI

Nora never really considered herself sheltered. All things considered she thought she was rather open minded. Anatomy and burns never made her squeamish, she was a battle medic, and then a trauma surgeon for hell’s sake. When she served she was often praised for her ability to keep it together even in the most hellish circumstances. When it comes to injuries encountered in battle, especially in regards to prisoners of war or those left too long alone in drastic environments, Nora was who they called. When the wounds before them were so gruesome it got to even the most seasoned surgeon, Nora was one of the few members on staff that people could count on to stay composed till the patient was stable. The things she’d seen, god the things she’d smelled… and beyond just violence and gore, she’s cussed, heard locker room talk, mothered herself a child, and she’ll never really forget that time with her company crawling around in a field looking for the dismembered penis of the poor bastard who caught the business end of a pretty nasty car bomb. Despite the propaganda of her small town she liked to believe that she treated people the same no matter what they believed in or looked like. When she crawled out of that vault she managed to swallow down her grief and face the wasteland. She accepted that life would always be stranger than fiction and started collecting friends that looked like they belonged in comic books. She learned fast and adapted to a world that had changed plenty without her. 

So what the fuck were her friends talking about? 

“I mean it man, I swear to god when I went down on her that rug was braided”

“No way, who in their right mind spends time braiding down there?” Piper looked at Hancock like his ear just fell off. 

“I guess some girls in the capital are just different” Hancock shrugged with a tipsy grin before talking another sip from his beer. “Different strokes for different folks and all that.” 

“I call bullshit” Macreedy spoke up. “Some chick in the capital isn’t gonna have any more time to be so weird about her hygiene than anyone in the commonwealth.” 

“They do got that bigass water purifier down there, maybe they get to shower more and it does something weird to their brain” Deacon interjected, shit eating grin having not moved from his face since the second he sat down with the group with his bowl of stew and a bottle of whisky to pass amongst the group. In fact Nora was fairly certain his distinctive grin had only grown as the conversation got more confusing. 

“Before ze war, zhey studied people’s brainz and why zhey might do strange zhings. Some diagnozis did mention zat a persons’s environment can induze compulzive behaviors, especially vhen expozed to trauma. Most of zhe examples were concerning cleanliness and hygiene.” Curie spoke up, and finally Nora felt like she was understanding what was being said. Though, She wasn’t entirely sure how they got to their current conversation topic. “If a perzon feels such compulsizons and findz zemselves vith zhe means, zhey may indulge zhemselves even to zhe point vhere ve find zheir behavior strange.”

“Well, I guess she could be considered odd. Becoming a ghoul isn’t exactly non-traumatic, but if it really is because of the water purifier than I wouldn’t mind everyone getting a little more weird. She nearly tasted like water” Tasted??? Who tastes someone during sex? Well, she guessed Nate had liked sucking her breasts, especially after having shawn, but she thought it would probably taste more salty.  They had to be talking about sex if Preston's face was anything to go by. The man looked like he was simultaneously trying to hide behind his drink and shrink back into his coat. Hancock was looking away fondly when Cait slugged his shoulder. 

“Man I’ve seen you put a slice of cram in between two snack cakes and call it a fancy sandwich. And then ate it. I don’t trust your sense of taste” 

“Yeah!” Curie spoke up. “You zaid zath you can’t taste anyzhing since you turned ghoul!” A choir of yeah’s arose around her from Piper, Macreedy, Deacon, and Cait. 

“Those are the words of a person who has never tried a fancy sandwich.” John waggled a finger at Cait. “You should know that’s a ghoul delicacy.” 

“What are we talking about?” Danse strode over to the group following the cheers from the corner of the settlement bar. 

“Only the finest delicacies available to a person.” Hancock grinned at the synth cheekily.

“Danse you’ve been to the capital wasteland before, did girls start tasting different after that water drama?” Deacon stood to drag the synth down into the already crowded booth. Danse suddenly looked very much like he wanted to leave. 

“I’m not telling you about my sexual encounters.” Ah, so It was about sex. 

“Oh come on! You’re no fun.” Deacon laughed and shoved Danse as he squeezed into the booth. 

“You know for all your expertise on retrieving important information I'm surprised you’re withholding this essential data.” Piper jabbed, and with a wiggle of her eyebrows passed the whiskey to Danse. “No way this reporter can get a scoop?” 

“Wrong hands and all that.” Danse sniffed before taking a swig. 

“And therefore!” Hancock slammed his hands on the table and looked pointedly at Macreedy Curie and Cait. “None of you can prove that pussy did not taste different after that water debacle.” Nora was trying to put it together in her mind what they were describing looked like, fighting off a blush as her mind wandered.

“Does it even matter if there’s a difference?” Nick sighed past his cigarette, adding another puff of smoke into the already slightly opaque air of the concrete building. 

“Ov course it doze” Curie slurred. While she had yet to touch any chems beyond stimpacks and the occasional med-x after a rough fight, curie was clearly enjoying ‘zhe social ritual of zhelebratory inebriation’ as she had put it. Especially since John used his connections to find her some pot, a drug she apparently had medical reason to trust more than alcohol. The first time Curie tried a shot she spat it out and talked extensively about how it burned. Right now she was enjoying a small rum and nuka (The only way she could tolerate any alcohol) and passing a joint between herself, John, and Cait. “It could be a healtz indicator! In regardz to zex, zhis is important, yes?” 

“Or” Macreedy interjected, seeming rather done with this conversation. “Maybe we’re all a bunch of gross fucks and pussy tastes good if its hydrated. For all we know that was just basic pre-war and we’re just now catching up.” 

“Man, people really had it good pre-war if everyone tasted like that.” Hancock sighed whistfully before taking a puff of the joint as it was passed his way. 

“Vell, I guess ve vill never have the data on zhat” Curie sighed. 

“Nu-uh” Deacon spoke up, grin unmoving as he cast his gaze to Nora. Oh no.  “We got ourselves our own repository of pre-war experiences right here.” 

“Oh shit, yeah. What do you think sunshine? Do folks taste different after the bombs?” Hancock looked at her rather excitedly, and suddenly Nora felt quite a few eyes on her. What she wouldn’t give for a stealth boy right now. Or a much, much stronger drink. Speaking of… 

“Well I don’t know, I wasn’t exactly walking around licking people.” Nora huffed and snatched the whiskey bottle before it could reach its next destination. 

“What, Nate never let you get a taste of yourself? Kept you all to himself? Never told you what it was like while he was going down?” Cait jested, propping her head on her elbow and looking up at Nora with mischief written across her face. Taste herself? Going down? Nora was rapidly losing context as her anxiety grew. 

“I-... I mean not really?” Nora stuttered, floundering for something to say that wouldn’t tip off her friends that she had no fucking clue what they were referencing. Oh no, now Cait looked confused. “I mean, people didn’t really discuss sex like people do now…” She trailed off but the eyes did not leave her. Normally she relished sharing her better memories from before the war with her friends, loved how they listened to her no matter what she wanted to talk about, but this time she just wished they’d ignore her. She took another swig to buy herself some time. 

“Wait, Nate did go down on you right?” Piper spoke up, leaning forward in her seat with a look of concern and confusion. Damn her. Nora normally loved how quickly Piper could put pieces together before she could, but right now she wanted to strangle her. The table was silent. 

“I uh, that’s slang right?” Piper nodded. “I don’t really know what that means.” Cait started cackling and Nora felt her cheeks flush. 

“Girly it means eating pussy.” Cait giggled. Nora just blinked at her, embarrassment growing as she remained confused. Cait’s giggles died off, along with her grin. “Eating you out? Shit Curie you had a big word for it.”

“Cunilingus?” Curie studied her face. “Oral zex?” Curie probed fruther. How would she taste herself during a blowjob? “Providing physical pleasure to a woman by means of contact between the mouth and the vagina?” Curie clarified. When she just started at Curie confused John spoke up. 

“Hold on, you really have no clue what we’re talking about?” He looked bewildered. 

“...No” Nora wished the ground would eat her alive.

“Damn, you had that man’s kid and he never went down on you? Ever?” John looked shocked, and looking around the table she realized pretty much everyone was giving her some flavor of the same look. “Man maybe pre-war folk didn’t have it that nice of they didn’t go down on each other.” Hancock shook his head. 

“We had the notion of oral sex before the war.” Nick clarified with a furrow in his brow. “I’m sure you ended up reading about it somewhere. You were a nurse right?” 

“I mean, yeah…” Nora mumbled. “But it was mostly about ways people catch different diseases and how to identify symptoms.” The whiskey bottle was passed along, and Nora prayed the conversation would steer towards pre-war medicine. At least she could talk extensively about that. Curie suddenly looked a little mad. 

“On vhat anatomy?” She questioned with urgency. “Your medical textbookz must have explained zhe affects on men and vomen, yes?” A beat of silence passed. Shit, her textooks were basically all male anatomy. She racked her head. There were diagrams of women, she knew it. Yeah, when she was learning basic gynecology. She saw plenty of diagrams of female reproductive organs. And especially leading up to their unit on delivery. Did they talk about diseases in women? She knew they discussed pregnancy effects… 

“I mean I was first trained as a combat medic, so it was mostly male anatomy...”

“But they had women in the army.” Nick corrected. “Not just medics, they saw deployment. They were soldiers.” Nick stubbed out the last of his cigarette in the ashtray. “They didn’t really train their medics to only treat half of their army did they?” 

“Well beyond genitalia there isn’t much difference between male and female anatomy-”

“Zhat is not true!!” Curie exclaimed. She definitely looked mad now. “Surely treating soldiers so vould result in more female casualties, yes?” 

“Women in relationships were given the option to opt out of the draft, so it was a lot more men than women.” Nora explained. “And if you ask me the death toll of that war was pretty equal opportunity in the end.” 

Curie frowned. “Hold on” Hancock spoke up, tucking his tin of mentats back into his pocket as he looked at her contemplatively. Nora felt like she would not enjoy his line of questioning with those in his system. “So let me get this straight, you knew about oral sex, but not on women?” Why did he look sad?

“Yes?” Nora suddenly felt very uncertain. 

“Did you perform oral sex?” He followed her response rather quickly. If she wasn’t already clearly blushing she was certain she looked like a tomato now (Or she supposed, a tato fruit is the new word for the vegetable). She swallowed and felt like it was all too audible. 

“Yes.”

“I hope he was a good lay then, fucker better have caught up if you weren’t getting any head.” Cait grumbled, leaning her head on Nora’s shoulder. “-‘Nough men up here don’t care if a girl cums, I’did’d hoped it was different then.” Nora was silent. Girls didn’t have cum, right? She’d never produced any cum with Nate, and her teachers were very clear. Men produced semen and women produced eggs, and sex required the male to ejaculate to enable procreation. Women couldn’t produce ejaculate. Nora must have been quiet too long, or maybe she still looked confused because John spoke up again. 

“He did make you cum, right?” Nora sorta wished someone would just shoot her now and spare her this exchange. Still, they seemed willing enough to explain, right? And they were her friends, she trusted them. 

“I thought only men could produce ejaculate?” Nora clarified rather quietly.

“Fuck, man.” Hancock sighed dissapointedly, leaning back in his seat and pushing his hat back. Nick shook his head as their friends began mumbles of ‘That’s fucked up/ Damn/ Fucking pre-war assholes.’ She found the whiskey pushed back into her hands, a rather clingy Cait wrapping her arms around her as she indulged, but no explanation offered. Nora was thankful when Deacon changed the subject, content to listen to his latest exaggerated story rather than think too much about the pitying looks she kept catching from her friends. She wasn’t quite sure what to think about this newfound revelation that she had far less experience than she thought when it comes to sex. Clearly she was missing a lot. Everyone was weirdly more polite to each other and her after the whole conversation, not that Nora was complaining, but paired with the glances she kept catching between her friends it was all rather strange. 

She was one of the first to turn in, making her way to the large house she built with a room for each of her friends. Of course not leaving without everyone insisting on a parting hug, Cait planting a sloppy kiss on her cheek with a grin. It was a short but pleasant walk back to the house. She loved sanctuary and still kept a house there, but sometimes the memories were just too heavy. There was just something about the complex she built at starlight drive-in that felt so beautiful to her. Maybe because her only pre-war memories of the place were high school dates and the carnival that would come through town. Maybe it was because it had one of the best places to stargaze undisturbed. Maybe it was because it felt like she was building a new family here. 

The building was mostly concrete, with lead lining on the exterior to keep out the wastes when they came in on the winds of a radstorm. Everyone had their own room, each decked out to their own tastes. The settlement had huge walls and enough missile turrets to send a sentry bot to abu dhabi. It was safe, and cozy, but not nearly as lively and green as Nora remembered from her childhood. There were people aplenty sure, but pretty much just robots, synths, ghouls, and folks just looking for some peace for once showed up to her settlements. No kids. Nora would always lament shawn’s loss of access to many childhood cultural staples. At least he had his pip boy and her entire game collection, and what child-appropriate media she had downloaded on there before the bombs dropped.She tried to make the compound fun, but her settlers seemed to enjoy her amenities more than her son. It's one thing to build your kid a playground, it was another to get them to play on it. She really wished that ghoul family would move in, or really any family. She really hoped the cure they sent out to Macreedy’s son worked fast. It’d be nice to have him here. She guessed she couldn’t blame people for choosing not to bring a new life into this hellscape, and to not risk talking about any kids they did have outside of settlements. At least Shawn seemed content with picking up stories from residents and playing games with Ada, Codsworth and the robots Nora built. Whenever she had to take off to make sure the peace she helped build would stick, she felt a lot better knowing most of her friends would be staying behind, and they’d be looking out for Shawn. 

They understood how anxious she could get about him. Shawn wasn’t born to her, but her son never really bothered to consider the implications of what he made. Shawn did not ask to be built young, programmed afraid and terrified of abandonment. Nora had asked the railroad if they thought he could grow, mature, not be stuck as a kid for however many centuries he’d survive. No one had any clue, there were no other synths like him. She knew one day she would have to tell him, before all the years on ice caught up to her and he was stuck alone. 

Except he wouldn’t be, Nora reminded herself. Her friends, they’d listened to her on many dark nights, listening to her grief and fears and anxieties. Nick had held her, promised her that no matter what reality lay in store for Shawn, if he was functional he would be there for him. John had similar sentiments, with the addition of a few corny ghoul jokes and a radioactive punchline. Strong, well… ‘No cry!!! Crying Weak. Human not weak. Strong is Strong! Strong smash anything that try to smash tiny robot child.’ Which she supposed was reassuring at least in regards to his safety. He was good at that, any time he was stationed at the drive in he insisted on guarding the front gate. She would have thought it would be easier to get a super mutant to party, but he generally did not enjoy any situation with too many humans he couldn’t yell at. In all honesty, when it came to helping keep her kid sane she trusted curie the most. She had taken her worries so seriously that she found a new research focus after her stimpack breakthrough. 

Nora stopped by Shaun's room on the ground floor, peeking in the door happy to see him in bed, his desk still littered with nuka cola bottles and the various pieces of whatever technology he could get his hands on to fiddle with. When she had started construction he had insisted on having his own door out into the little village so he could look around for scrap without Ada or Codsworth lecturing him for tracking mud water dirt or oil into the house. It worried her sometimes, and seeing him safe and at peace always helped settle her. She knew that with Ada in charge of the household and the many robots she had built to help the community nothing would ever happen to him. Realistically, It would be really hard to even approach the settlement while presenting a threat without getting nuked to hell by the space sentry bot her son had lovingly named Jupiter. Still, she always indulged herself in checking on him before she turned in whenever she was home. 

Four floors up the complex of concrete lead and steel, her room had a beautiful view of the gardens below, beyond them the marketplace. She watched as her friends spilled out the bar, one by one. Chatting amongst themselves as they made their way back to the house. John slung his arms around Nick and Cait’s shoulders before making a broader gesture towards the top of the house. The group paused and lingered, chatting in a large circle. 

Looking down on them, Nora figured it didn’t really matter if they all were more experienced than her. None of them would think less of her for it. She trusted them not to tease her, they dropped the whole conversation when they found their answers. No one said anything teasing afterwards, and she felt more confident now that if she had questions they’d be forthcoming with answers. She felt some of the tension from earlier leave her as she changed into comfortable sleep clothes and crawled into bed. 

‘So there has to be a way for women to ejaculate by their reactions from earlier’ Nora thought. When they were talking about tasting earlier, she now realized they meant tasting a vagina. ‘There’s nothing wrong with experimentation’ She assured herself, looking up at her ceiling she had painted with yellow stars and feeling herself over her clothes. Her hand felt a little cold as she braved the elastic of her waistband, feeling herself clumsily as she remembered what Nate had tasted like when she gave him a blowjob. 

‘What do I taste like?’ She dipped one slow finger into her heat and collected what wetness she could find there. She raised her hand up out of her pants to examine her fingers in what little light that made it through the windows. They were covered in fluid, but that was lubrication, right? She sniffed her fingers, and she didn’t smell bad. A bit like water left in a metal bottle out in the heat. Bringing them to her mouth she was surprised at the flavor. She wasn’t quite sure what she expected. John had described it as water at the bar, but this was definitely not water. She wanted to say it was salty, but It had this sort of tang that tasted similar to some pre-war sour candy without any of the sweetness. It almost tasted a little meaty? Thinking back on her assessment of the smell, she supposed it tasted like salt water left out in the heat in a metal bottle. She had a pretty fancy water purifier setup at the settlement, so if that really effected taste she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be right to say it tasted ‘just like water.’ 

A knock sounded at her door and she yanked her finger away from her face with a jolt. 

“Hey blue, can we talk?” Nora sat up quickly and climbed out of bed to greet Piper. Except it wasn’t just Piper she saw when she opened the door, it looked like most everyone were settling down further along the hallway in the sitting area near the stairwell. 

“Yeah-”Piper stepped inside and just as quickly closed the door behind her, the quiet murmur in the stairwell dampening beyond audibility with the soft thump of the door. Nora could feel her face flushing again and felt grateful for the night. “Is this all about earlier?” 

“Well, yeah, and some other stuff..” Nora could feel her stomach drop as she watched Piper turn around and sit in her desk chair. Piper seemed to notice something was off with her and quickly amended. “It’s nothing bad I promise! At least I hope so. Listen, first, personally. I need you to know that its really, really fucked up that from what it sounds like, you’ve literally never cum in your life.” Piper looked at her with a question clear across her face, like she was still expecting Nora to tell her that she had actually came before, because of course she has. Except she hasn’t, and Nora really didn’t know what to say. 

Piper sighed and continued after a beat. “Things are different in the commonwealth now Blue, and I know you know that, but I don’t know if you understand the extent of it- culturally.” 

“What does that mean?” Nora questioned, having found a seat on the edge of her bed. Piper leaned over, grabbed her hand and lacing their fingers together. 

“Well Blue, for one. Not only did you walk into the commonwealth like a hurricane, but you started just helping people for no real apparent reason other than they needed help. People don’t really do that here.”

Nora chuckled. “You know Cait and I already had this talk-”

“Yeah, and we don’t think you really get it. Preston has told you something similar too. And you brushed them both off, and me just now, why?” Nora looked down at their hands. 

“I-” Nora wasn’t sure she had an answer. It had to be her past, right? She did it because she knew it was right, it was what worked. “-just, its what you’re supposed to do where… I guess when I’m from. Politically, you know, at the time. Helping people became a form of rebellion. Helping one another, building up the people around you knowing they’ll do the same was the biggest fuck you the average person could manage without risking imprisonment.” Nora couldn’t quite meet Piper’s eyes. She’d spoken plenty about good memories, favorite movies and shows and songs, dances and the relative luxury afforded most people. It still felt illegal somehow, to talk about such seditious thoughts out loud. To speak the thing that held the little neighborhood of sanctuary together until the very end. Piper nodded along. 

“So It was still dangerous then?” Piper asked. Nora chuckled and shook her head. 

“Not in the same way it is now. It was freedom on the line, not necessarily lives.” 

“Which brings me to the point, you know we all really care about you, right? Whatever you need from any of us, we’re there.” Piper squeezed her hand, placing her other hand over top of their two hands already intertwined. Nora grinned.

“Yeah, I know.” 

“Which brings me to my next point. Blue, you’re beautiful. Its some sort of crime against nature that no one has ever gone down on you. I don’t know where you are with your husband stuff, if you’ll ever really feel ready to try and be with anyone ever again. That’s gonna be all up to you. But we were talking, after you left. Commiserating, really, over i'm sorry Blue, but the tragedy that is your sex life, and we all came to the in retrospect very unsurprising discovery that we are all heads over heels for you. You don’t really flirt back, so everyone kinda thought you were still caught up over Nate.- And don’t get me wrong! If it is still is about Nate, no shame that’s just the assumption.- But now we also realize it is completely possible you just still don’t understand that we love you a lot.” Fuck, was Piper trying to give her a heart attack? “And Im not saying this with any expectations blue. We love you, and that means we’re here for you anyway you want us, especially as friends. But that also means we want you to see all the cards on the table.”

“Piper, what are you saying?” Nora’s brain felt like it was going a mile a minute and everywhere this train of logic seemed to lead was confusing and quite flustering. 

“I mean that me and everyone back there in that room, we all want you to have what’s best, we want you to be happy, and we’re happy when we’re with you. And I know this is probably insane to you, by your pre-war standards but if you wanted to be with any of us, for some forever after or one night stand or anything in between, you can, no hard feelings. No friendship lost. All you have to do is ask.” 

Nora nearly felt at a loss for words, just staring at piper. How could that many people love her like that? She’d always found them all attractive in their own ways, but it felt wrong somehow. Wasn’t she technically a single mom now? None of it felt like it made sense. “Why? How?”

“Well, apart from single handedly taking down the institute, the brotherhood, restoring the minutemen, terrorizing raider groups and wiping out packs of feral ghouls and super mutants, freeing any synth you can, being the most thoroughly loyal and kind person any of us has met, skilled enough to build huge settlements across the commonwealth and face down some of the scariest shit i’ve seen, have you looked in a mirror lately?” Nora was at a complete loss of words. 

“I know its a lot blue, we just felt like we needed to tell you. You know, you have options.” Nora nodded in awe. She realistically liked them all, and had equally squashed any notion of such relationships being possible for her. Women like her, they weren't supposed to move on, were they? Would Nate want her to move on?  Nora honestly felt she couldn’t chose to date any of her friends with a clear conscience. It’d be horrible of her to choose one relationship and then go pining after any of the others, especially since she has learned the truly meager extent of her ability to lie the hard way out on her adventures into the commonwealth. Nora was certain her face was flushed as red as could be. 

“I don’t know what to say I - Im so flattered.” Nora tried to steady her thoughts. “I just couldn’t though you’re all- You’re all really attractive.” Nora couldn’t meet Piper's eyes. Piper gave Nora’s hand another squeeze before Nora heard her giggle. 

“So you do like us?” Piper said in a teasing tone.

“I love you guys, Its just that-” Nora wasn’t sure how to phrase it. 

“Romantically?”

“Yea-Yes.” Nora stammered out. God that was so stupid to admit. Why would she-

“You mean it blue?” Piper had risen out of her seat, now gripping Nora’s shoulders. 

“Yeah, so-”

“So what?” 

“So isn’t that unfair? To be with one person and secretly harbor feelings for others?” Piper was looking at Nora now at eye level. Piper frowned at her words. 

“Who said anything about one person?” Piper smirked, a determined look in her eyes as she stood and strode to the door, opening it. “Deacon, come here right now!” 

“A please is always nice.” He teased as he made his way in the room. “What do you need me for?”

“Explain polyamory to Nora.” Piper commanded, closing the door firmly behind him. Deacon suddenly couldn’t stop smiling, looking between Piper and Nora before finally directing his thousand watt smile at Nora before taking a seat at her desk. 

“So, I know when you’re from people pretty much exclusively only dated or were romantically involved with one person at a time, and having more than one partner at a time was taboo.” Deacon was watching Nora’s face, so she nodded. 

“Well, I'm sure you noticed what was taboo then isn’t always taboo now. Being happy, even momentarily, in whatever way a person can is expected of people. You know how much people in the railroad have each other’s backs, right? A lot of people were together.” Nora looked shocked and she knew it. 

“I never noticed.” Nora mumbled. 

“Well, you know, when a hot lady busts into your base in the fanciest power armor you’ve ever seen and a goddamn plasma rifle, and instead of opening fire tells you they wanna help, you let them do what they want and leave out any details until it's pertinent or they ask.” Nora could feel herself growing flustered. Intimidation was nowhere on her mind when she strolled into railroad HQ. She’d followed the trail, and it wasn’t a safe or easy trail. Of course she wore her armor. She did walk around in power armor a lot for the fun of it, she mostly saw it as a more efficient way to traverse the Commonwealth. Before her in her time it was just another piece of military hardware like any amount of the rather absurd guns she now had access to. Stepping into that power armor felt just like the medic armor, and on the battlefield everyone knew what it meant to see medic battlearmor. She never really considered the intimidation factor. Looking back, the only people who reacted like that anymore were minutemen or settlements. It kinda made her want to laugh, thinking about a raider shiting themselves seeing her in her x-2 armor. 

“So wait, who was together?” Nora questioned. 

“Tinker tom, Carrington, Des, and I.” He paused, his grin going bittersweet. “And Glory.”

“I’m sorry Deacon.” Nora held out her hand and Deacon took it gladly. He shook his head but his grin didn’t fall completely. 

“Thank you.” He paused. Nora knew Glory’s loss was a huge hit to the railroad, she didn’t realize the extent to which it impacted its top members personally. Everyone was grieving when the institute fell. “But you see what I mean. Happiness doesn't always last long, so if someone out here wants to love someone else no matter how complex we do it, no questions asked.” Piper snorted. “Well, some questions asked.” He added. “The problem is never really the number, but prejudice is still alive and well. A person would have an easier time keeping a harem than publicly being in a loving relationship with a synth, ghoul, or any other non-humanoid.” Nora nodded solemnly. 

“Not to say that isn’t worth the risk.” He mentioned. “If you ask me any of it's worth it, however long it lasts.”

“So, Piper,” Nora started. “You’re- You’re saying that I can… or should, uh.”

“I’m not telling you to do anything Blue. I'm saying, we’re all saying, I think, that if you want something you should have it.” 

Nora took a moment to think. Did it really matter what Nate or anyone from her past really thought? If they didn’t care that she was a widowed mother from a clearly different culture than the rest of them, then why should she? 

“You think real loud Fixer” Deacon spoke up, apparently unwilling to go too long without attention on him. He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, looking at her and taking a deep breathe. His gaze seemed focused on hers, as if daring her to look away. 

“You” Nora started, shifting her jaw as she measured her words, praying her flustered mind wouldn’t say something too stupid. She turned her gaze to Piper. “-You all, feel this way?”

“Why not bring them in? Let them tell you themselves.” Piper looked pleased, and rather mischievous. Nora paused, glanced back at Deacon, and nodded. Piper strolled back to the door before throwing it open. “Why don’t you all come tell Blue what we came her to tell her. A quick shuffle of feet brought most of her friends into her room, pulling over her desk chairs and sitting on the edges of her bed and other furniture to make room in her room. 

“So,” Nora panicked a bit over what to say. She felt many gazes on her, and her eyes inevitably fell to her lap. “You all feel this way towards me?”

“What way?” Cait teased, having claimed the spot on the bed to the right of Nora. She heard Deacon snicker before Hancock spoke up. 

“Yeah sunshine, how do we feel about you?” 

Nora felt a bit conceited even entertaining the idea that this many people would fancy her, but here they all were, in her bedroom telling her as much. Damn, how did this many people like her like that? Eight people? “You like me?” She spoke it as a question. Some of them laughed at her response, Cait included. 

“Way more than like, love. You’re in my dreams, especially the naughty ones.” Cait leaned over to speak gently in her ear. 

“I second that” Hancock raised his hand with a grin, apparently enjoying whatever look Nora had on her face while she processed perhaps the most flustering thing possible being said to her. 

“My favorite dreams are spent covering your six when you’re wearing that tight ass blue suit” Macreedy spoke from his place leaned against the wall. 

“I’ve had that same dream” Danse spoke with a smirk.

“God, don’t get me started on that suit” Piper sighed wistfully. 

“We may need to lay off before we give our poor girl an aneurysm” Nick nodded towards Nora, her eyes big, face red, and utterly speechless. Preston nodded solemnly from beside Nick. 

“We can’t overwork her” Preston warned with a tone of authority. Curie, having climbed onto the bed behind Nora, touched a cold hand to the back of Nora’s neck and Nora nearly jumped out of her skin. 

“She is greatly flushed” Curie concurred, her hand not leaving Nora's skin. 

“Oh, she’s fine” Deacon spoke, playing with her hand held between his. “She wasn’t too flustered to have some fun before we showed up. Isn’t that right Nora?” Nora tried to pull her hand back, but Deacon held it fast, pressing a kiss to the finger she had used to feel herself. She swore she felt his tongue flick out and touch her skin. 

“I just-” 

“Wanted to know what it felt like?” Deacon finished for her. The bed creaked as Hancock grabbed the footboard of the bed and leaned over it. 

“Do you want some help with that sweetheart?” Hancock asked with mirth in his voice. 

Nora felt herself work her jaw, finding the right words. “ I like you all like that, but I don’t really have the experience and I don’t know how well I’ll-” Deacon squeezed her hand as Curie wrapped her arms around her waist and began pressing kisses to the side of her neck with an excited giggle, with Cait seconds after doing her best to pull nora to her and press kisses under her chin. Nora had to fight down a rather undignified noise at the attention. 

“We don't need you to do or be anything Blue. You’ve already done a lot. We just need you to tell us what you want. Now, do you want us?” Piper walked over to Nora, fingers lifting he chin a touch to give Cait more room for her conquest. 

“Y-yes” Nora croaked out. 

“Do you want us to make you cum?” Piper looked her in the eye in a way that turned the butterflies in her chest into something warm and intense pooling in her gut. She was suddenly very aware of her heartbeat. Nora swallowed before answering.

“Yes” 

“All of us?” Piper clarified. 

“I-” Nora paused. Would doing this make her a whore? Did stuff like that matter anymore? She can’t have sex with eight people in one night, she wasn’t sure her body could take it. “I can’t have, -Can’t have sex with eight people in one night.” She spoke worridly, and suddenly felt very embarrassed at the laughter that bubbled up at her response. 

“Baby, she said make you cum, not have sex.” Cait clarified. 

Nora furrowed her brow. “What’s the difference?” Curie suddenly pulled her back onto the bed. Deacon let go of her hand in favor of leaning over and grabbing her ankle. 

“Why don’t you let us show you?” Cait leaned over and licked a stripe up Nora’s neck, forcing a gasp from her. 

“Fuck” She heard Preston mutter somewhere off to the side of her. 

She felt a sudden tug at her hair, and Cait forced her head up to lock their lips together. Cait quickly pressed a tongue into her mouth, and when Deacon leaned over and slowly pushed her shirt up she let out a particularly undignified noise into Cait’s mouth. Nora wasn’t sure when she closed her eyes, but she opened them in shock when two pairs of lips began working over her stomach. Looking down, Deacon was running his hands over her ribs, pressing kisses to her sternum and inching her shirt ever higher with his nose. She was suddenly all too aware of the noises around her.

“Fuck baby” Below him Hancock had climbed his way onto the bed and began kissing down over her belly to where the waistband of her shorts rested. Curie pulled Nora further onto the bed, lying back and resting Nora’s head on her chest. Many hands maneuvered her body into what they deemed an acceptable position. 

“Good girl” Deacon praised. Her hands were pulled over her head as her shirt was stripped from her, and with another breathtaking kiss stolen by Piper she lost her shorts and underwear. 

“So pretty Blue” Piper remarked, moving down her body and sliding a hand up her thigh. She hardly had a moment to be embarrassed at her naked state in front of her mostly clothed friends when Preston and Piper each took a leg and pulled them apart, kissing and biting as they wished at her flesh. She nearly jumped at the contact and fought back a yelp of surprise. With Cait occupied with her mouth and neck, Danse and Nick had their fun with her breasts, palming and rolling her till Nora let slip whimpers. 

“Don’t hold back that voice baby, let us hear you” Deacon encouraged. Deacon took hold of her hand once more, and she could feel kisses pressed to her fingertips. Macreedy stole her other hand, lacing his fingers with hers and running a thumb over the back of her hand. 

“I want you to sing for me sunshine” Hancock returned to his place nestled between her legs and Nora was glad for something to hold on for dear life to. Cait pulled away, yanking her head back so that Curie could kiss her forehead and so that she may return to kissing and licking Nora’s neck. Nora let out a groan, deep and gutteral and she felt herself arch into Curie’s grip around her waist.  Hancock began running a hand over her, sliding just over her entrance and back up to her clit before repeating his path, and Nora couldn’t help but whimper each time he traced his path, the movement accompanied with a wet clicking sound. 

Nora immediately felt embarrassed at her noises, doubly so when Nick pointed out her blush spread to her chest while he toyed with her pebbled nipples. However, looking up at her, well, she wasn’t sure what to call them right now, she felt a little less embarrassed when she realized they all seemed to be feeling even more aroused than her. And oh, she could see-, Danse and Preston, pleasuring themselves to her. She could hear Cait grunting against her throat and a light squelching sound that didn’t seem to be coming from what Hancock was doing to her. They were making noises right along with her. 

Hancock slid a finger into her and she couldn’t help but wiggle her hips at the pleasure he was forcing upon her. He began thrusting, sliding in another finger before lowering his head and sucking. Nora had never felt anything like it and she damn Near screamed while he hummed atop her. Piper and Preston had to force her down where her legs met her hips to stop her from bucking away from the onslaught of pleasure Hancock was causing with his every move.

“I don’t know how you can be this cute and so damn strong” Preston mused as he held down her hips. He nipped at the skin of her inner thigh in mock punishment and a shudder ran through her. Nora began registering the growing states of undress of her friends. It just wasn’t fair how hot they were. It honestly felt like they were toying with her.

“Taking this so well” Cait paused her onslaught of kisses to whisper praise behind her ear. She could feel Hancock’s tongue work at her, felt the little puffs of air over her mound as he grunted into her flesh, and damn if the noises he made didn’t make it feel all the better. Nora had never felt anything like this before. With Nate, sex, it felt intimate but without fanfare. This, Nora felt like she could hardly stand it. Her toes curled, a heat in her belly got heavier by the moment, and it left Nora damn near sobbing at the pleasure of it. She had never heard anything like the noises she was making, it was involuntary and visceral with every suck and thrust. 

“You’re shaking like a leaf doll” Nick spoke as he smoothed a hand over her ribcage. 

“You’re feeling good?” Curie questioned her. She gripped the hands holding hers with a deathgrip and moaned when Hancock added a third finger. She nodded aggressively and was rewarded with a flurry of kisses wherever she was being held down. Her legs began shaking when Hancock picked up the pace, and the heat in her stomach coiled. She had no control, nor much awareness of the noises she was making at this point. Despite being held down, with the pleasure she was experiencing and the praise from her friends rolling around in her head she almost felt like she was floating. 

“Please what?” Danse asked with a rough squeeze of her nipple. Coming back to reality a bit, Nora realized during her whimpering and moaning she had started to beg. Please what indeed. 

“I-” Nora panted through another string of moans. Hancock was too skilled at this. “I don’t know”. 

“She’s gonna cum” Cait giggled into the skin under her chin. 

“Fuck” Piper cussed, looking down her body Nora realized that everyone was either watching what Hancock was doing to her or watching her face. While holding her down, most of them were working at themselves too and she couldn’t tell if it was embarrassing or arousing.

“Cum for us baby” 

“Give us a show doll” 

“Good Girl”

 The coil building in her gut suddenly got more and more intense in a way Nora was unprepared for. She hardly had a moment to register her shock at this new bodily experience when It all came down suddenly, like being hit with a ton of bricks straight to the brain.

“Oh, Oh FUCK!” Nora screamed out, body convulsing and head flying back. Her eyes closed but her vision went white. White hot pleasure shocked through her, before turning into waves of bliss. When she opened her eyes she felt like she was floating. She felt curie tucking strands of hair behind her ears. Hancock worked her slower and lighter till she shook. Looking down she met his eyes and his hands and mouth finally left her with an embarrassing pop and a slight smirk before taking the fingers that were within her and sucking them into his mouth with a pleased groan. Nora could only whimper and close her eyes. She faintly heard the moans of some of her friends, felt Cait shake and groan into the crook of her neck. 

“So, how was the first orgasm of your life?” Deacon teased, himself sounding a bit out of breathe. All Nora could manage was a grunt in response, apparently enough for him as he and some others began chuckling. 

The world seemed to come more into focus as she took some deep breaths. What did this mean now? She’d never felt like that before, her friends went out of their way to make sure she felt like that. They enjoyed making her feel like that. 

“You did so well” Piper praised, and many kisses brought Nora out of her thought process. Piper sided up to Nora, shoving Danse out of the way. Cait took the cue to so the same to Nick, and Nora was suddenly being held by three women. 

“You guys are hogging her” Deacon whined, making movements to tug Nora his way and tuck his face into her neck. 

“Says the guy who wasn’t shoved off” Danse ran a hand over her hip.

“Are you feeling okay?” Maccredy checked in on her. Maccready sat down on the bed next to Cait and began playing with Nora’s hair. Nora nodded. She felt boneless. It felt like her veins were buzzing. Beside her, she could hear whatever kept Nick running humming loudly.

“Any words?” Preston teased, rubbing at her ankle. 

“-Wow” Was all she could manage. Giggles erupted around her. Nora tried to get her thoughts straight. “So, what now?” 

“Like I said” Piper spoke up. “Whatever you want.”

“And- You all feel like that?” Nora checked, looking around at her friends, or were they lovers now? That’s a lot of lovers. 

“Yep”

“Whatever you want baby” A chorus of agreements spoke up. Nora looked around, only to see those that were silent nodding. 

“So I guess that just begs the question Blue, what do you want?” Piper questioned, and damn was that a hard line of questioning. What did she want? Piper talked about this all like it could be a casual thing, but would they be down for what she actually wanted from them? They all had lives to live, despite what she’s built here. Nora took a steadying breathe. 

“I want us to be family” Nora spoke. “Like Shawn and Nate and I were, but bigger.” She felt a bit afraid of what they would say, suddenly very aware of her nakedness in comparison to her mostly clothed lovers. 

“Oh Blue” Piper raised a hand to Nora’s face. “That sounds perfect to me.” 

“I like the sound of that” Preston spoke with a smile. 

“Me too” Maccready. 

“Oh, vhe vill be zhe best family!” Curie spoke cheerfully, squeezing Nora around the waist. “I can make you packed lunches vith little notes and you vhill have to kiss me before you leave for vork”. Nora couldn’t help but giggle at the image. Before the war, that’s what she was expected to do. Now her synth, doctor, girlfriend? Wife? Did she just propose? How did that even work in the wasteland? 

“I can’t think of anything I would want more sunshine.” Hancock spoke with a grin. 

“Wait, did I just propose to you guys?” Nora spoke with an amount of shock. “How does this even work nowadays?” 

“Well, considering you currently are the head of government, unless you want to join a religion or go do paperwork at diamond city, if we all agree to it that’s a marriage”. Nick explained. 

“Oh god” Nora threw her head back and closed her eyes with a long-suffering sigh. “I’m the government and I married y'all after we had sex once. Why is the law like this?” Her companions quickly dissolved into laughter. 

“Well I’m definitely not complaining” Deacon reassured. 

“Me either” Spoke Nick. 

“Isn’t this fast?” Nora asked. “I mean, I’ve been unfrozen maybe four years”. 

“People feel lucky to be able to spend even a year straight at a time with those they love. People marry fast.” Deacon explained. 

“Things move slower in the brotherhood, but I’ve known you over two years, and you’ve saved my life multiple times. Unless a brother has taken a vow of chastity, that’s more than enough time to decide to marry for them, and a lot of the wasteland considers them prudes.” Danse spoke up. 

“So as long as we love you, and you love us, you could call us married. Or fiances, or dating, the label doesn't matter. I just know that I love you sunshine, I think we all do. Do you love us?” Hancock asked. 

Nora felt very warm, surrounded by people she cared for, people who made her feel safe, people she would die for. She couldn’t help the small smile creeping on her face. “I love you all too.” She sighed. “I like the sound of married. I like the promise of it. But I think I’d want to do a ceremony or something. And I- I also want what you guys want. If we’re gonna call this that, we’re in this together, right?” 

Amid many agreements and sounds of excitement and some of the best cuddles Nora had experienced in her life, Cait leaned forward to whisper in her ear; “I want to eat my wife’s pussy till she screams for me again. Care to make that happen, love of mine?” 

Nora could feel the flush all the way down her chest. “Now what did you say to her Cait?” Maccredy questioned.

[gffa]

I saw your post defending the way Jedi adopt the children/accept them into their culture, and I absolutely loved it! It was so well-informed, and you are right: It is all there in the original content!

I find it very ironic that many people spew these lies about the Jedi when that’s exactly what the Empire did. Iirc, this argument of Jedi being ���kidnappers” was actually fueled by Emperor Palpatine and the Empire in their campaign against the Jedi. They wanted to discredit them and make the people turn against them so that they could erase them all more easily. So I find it very ironic that these lies are now being upheld by some people as the truth. (Really, have people forgotten the Empire was created bases on the Nazi’s and their own racist strategies?)

You are not inmune to the Empire’s propaganda.

Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not as good at pulling examples and proof from all the SW content as you are.

Hi! Thank you for the very sweet ask! Navigating stuff in fandom like this can be difficult at times, because there has to be room for compassion and tolerance for disagreement, like it's fine if people disagree with my views, I'm not your mom, I'm not telling you want to do or say, especially since this is fiction, these are made up space stories. But there also has to be room to understand that sometimes our commentary on fictional stories are echoes of reflection of real world attitudes--we can't just go around spewing racist, sexist, homophobic commentary and be like, "It's just fiction, you can't get upset!" There's no easy line for any of this, no single hard set in stone rule for when it's truly just fiction and when it's an echo of a real world attitude, especially in Star Wars, which often draws influence from a lot of non-Western sources and traditional Western sources. (My general rule of thumb is: I think it's fair to criticize those things through the influences they have, but if your criticism is then ended with, "So that's why we shouldn't have or acknowledge any Buddhism/Black people/queer people/women in Star Wars!" then fuck right on off with that.) And I also understand a lot of the anti-Jedi attitudes (or at least what I've personally experienced of them) because I've talked a bunch of times about how I started out as pretty Jedi-critical myself! I did the whole, "They had grown stagnant and refused to evolve with the galaxy, so they needed to be wiped out." thing because nobody had framed it explicitly as what it was: a genocide. It wasn't until a friend and I were talking and they mentioned that lens of it that it just sort of crashed down on me, oh, that's literally what it was and genocide is never justifiable. I did the whole, "The Jedi failed Anakin and taught him to repress his emotions." thing as well, because I saw it all over the place in fandom and just automatically folded it into my view, until I went back and actually watched Lucas' movies and Lucas' animation (first six movies + first six seasons of TCW) and read his interviews, which blew me onto my ass when I saw Obi-Wan being supportive of Anakin, when I saw Anakin not listening to the advice he was given, when I saw that Jedi were expressing emotion all over the place, when I saw they were respecting other Force traditions in the galaxy. I can't speak to why so many people think badly of the Jedi, there's probably a thousand reasons and I'm only vaguely aware of like half of them, but I do think that it's often unpopular to promote the idea of emotional regulation already being achieved, instead of something to be struggled with. I think we're all primed by a lot of mainstream media saying that an explosion of anger is what will save the day. I think there's so much anger in the world today that we're all angry and being told to let go of it feels really insulting at times. (But, as someone who has lost years of my life when I was younger to anger, I gotta say, I am so much better off having let go of as much of that shit as I can. It was poison in my veins, carrying that anger around. I lost so many friendships and opportunities and just time to being miserably mad about stuff.)

I'm getting off topic of the kidnapping aspect about the Jedi, but a lot of it starts to swirl together in what I've experienced (especially people who try to put this stuff on my posts--thankfully, that's died down/I block the people who won't respect boundaries) and so I kind of bounce from one aspect of it to another.

I do think it's good to talk about these things--both from "it's fun to analyze the content of the story on a meta level" perspective and "here's how this echoes into and from the real world" perspective, like I enjoy saying, okay, here's what's actually said in the movies/TCW, but also I think talking about how the Jedi are Buddhist influenced is important because that means they're going to have values that are meant to be reflected in that and Western fandom has a really big problem of being derisive about non-Western influences or automatically saying they're wrong. (I come from anime/manga fandoms, let me tell you, it's a big problem.)

And, yeah, in a way where it's really awful, but I think one of the most well-done things Disney's Star Wars has done is that it's really focused on showing that the Empire was a fascist one and the propaganda they used about the Jedi are ones that are super relevant to the conversation.

[physalian]

Narrative Framing Devices

This is a long one…

A story need not be told chronologically, nor does it have to be only one layer deep. There’s a ton of different ways to frame your narrative, I’m just picking a couple today, some I thought worked and some I thought didn’t, and my personal favorite.

Most people think of framing devices in terms of time travel stories or fairytales, where it may start in the present or the future and work backwards, giving up the ending before telling how we all got here. Or by chopping up the chronology and letting the audience try to puzzle out the order.

There are also those that break the fourth wall, with the narrator beginning the story directly addressing the audience but never doing so again, or the narrator opening the story telling their own story to a present audience, so we’re the audience behind the fictional audience.

The other obligatory framing device is the time-skip, a la “6 years later” or “8 months later”. I’ve already talked about those. Or the preface/preamble/prologue that may spoil some important event later in the story, or is simply an important moment or montage of moments to catch the reader up on “how did we get here”. Shoutout to Castlevania for the most efficient pilot episode I have ever seen, with a 1 year timeskip.

Also honorable mention to the “A Life in the Day” montage from Magicians, speedrunning decades of a life together between two characters stuck in a Situation, maybe 60 years? Key moments between the two having a whole romance, with a kid and grandkids, over the course of one beautiful bit of soundtrack. One of the best episodes in the show, for a sequence that only lasted a little over 5 minutes.

—

Story within a Story | Princess Bride, "Ember Island Players"

Best example I can think of, specifically the film, which is based on a book that already incepts itself. The movie opens with a regular kid being read the book The Princess Bride by his grandfather, and occasionally cutting between the kid’s reactions and the fantasy story with the actors.

There’s several moments where the grandfather either loses his place and rereads a scene that replays the same dialogue, or skips a scene in the “kissing book” because his grandson gets squirmy, and moments where the grandfather narrates over a couple montages.

Princess Bride is one of those movies that knows exactly what it is and isn’t trying to be something it’s not. It’s self-aware and loudly and proudly sincere, with one of the best revenge arcs ever put to film.

Recap episodes can either be clipshows or get really creative like ATLA, telling the series recap through the medium of a propagandized play about the Avatar's journey, performed by actors of the Fire Nation. The Gaang sits there in vague states of discomfort, horror, or in Toph and Sokka's case, thrilling enjoyment, watching their hardships and heartbreaks played for laughs. That it's the story we know, but also with the added filter of it being enemy propaganda takes what could have been just a clipshow and still told multiple layers of a story with it.

The Fourth-Wall Break | Riordan-verse, Deadpool

“Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood” defined a generation. It’s one of those fourth wall breaks that opens up the story and never appears again, though occasionally Percy will get slightly self-aware, saying things like “I didn’t know it then, but I’d never come back here”. But for PJO it almost doesn’t count.

Kane Chronicles on the other hand chose a bizarre framing device, having the two leads pretend to host a radio show, or a podcast—something where they were recording themselves and I don’t think it worked very well whenever it popped up and stopped the plot.

Shoutout to Tangled, too, for having a fairytale style fourth-wall break at the end, much like KC, where Flynn reveals that Rapunzel has been listening to him tell their story the entire time. Many fairytale stories open up with the physical book flipping open to the story, like Shrek and Shrek 2, but I don’t think those are translatable to the written medium very well.

The big one, though, is of course Deadpool. Have not seen the second one, and while ‘breaking the fourth wall’ isn’t by itself a framing device, DP & Wolverine absolutely makes it one, fast forwarding and jumbling up the sequence of events to deliver a “how did we get here?” during the opening credits.

Chronology Salad | Memento, Predestination

Have not actually seen Memento but I know the premise, working backwards as the protagonist recovers his memory of “how did we get here?” Predestination is a batshit insane time travel story that I don’t think most people have even heard of and detailing the plot at all is giving spoilers but it is the most “how the fuck did we get here??” movie I have ever seen.

Then you have stories like Twilight that open with “I’ve never given much thought to how I would die” that spoils (kind of) the ending, with the goal of the story not detailing if something bad will happen, but how. Twilight’s prologue reminds me of The Bachelor, where they’ll tease the audience with *shocking* moments completely out of context from later in the season that are way less cool when they actually come to pass (from the one time I watched with relatives out of morbid curiosity).

The point of these chronological mixups is how all the random puzzle pieces fit together, despite essentially spoiling themselves constantly, they’re so random, so out of place, meant to keep you constantly guessing until the big reveal of the picture on the box—and are extremely tricky to do well without completely losing your audience. You’d have to have a very thorough outline to not confuse yourself while trying to write it.

Honorary mention here for Inception, one of my favorite sci-fi movies, because the plot is crazy, but still told chronologically, just across different dream levels. However, the movie does open with the ending scene (though you don’t know that on your first watch). And Tenet, but I don’t know anyone who likes or cares about that movie.

Dual Timelines | Outlander

There are others I just cannot think of them at this moment. Dual timelines tell two stories simultaneously across two different eras, either decades apart or mere hours, with some relation between the two. Sometimes one timeline’s protagonist is the ancestor of the present timeline, for example.

Dual Timelines happen in sequential order, making them distinct from a flashback arc (more below) essentially two chronological plots running in tandem squished into the same book, episode, or film. They carry equal weight and try not to overshadow each other in flair or importance.

In Outlander, Protagonist Claire is already a time traveler, in a time travel story whose rules are “whatever happened, happened, and you end up causing whatever you tried to prevent”. Season 2 opens with her returning to the present, leaving the entire rest of the season with a foreboding sense of dread, wondering what will get her back to that moment.

Season 3 dangles the carrot on the stick, randomly cutting between Claire in the 60s and trying to move on with her life for… I think 20 years, while Jaime, her love interest from the past, just keeps getting kicked while he’s down. It takes forever to get these two back on screen together. And the dual timelines continue taking up screen time when Claire and Jaime’s adult daughter also eventually makes a trip to the past. Points off for being blatantly manipulative storytelling with its cliffhangers, but season 1 is still worth the watch.

Flashbacks, Flash-Forwards, and Flash-Sideways | Lost

This show’s earlier seasons were heavily framed with this device. In The first 3 seasons (up to the last episode) the framing device was exclusively flashbacks, focusing on one of the main 13 heroes for an episode, particularly in season 1.

They didn’t always answer “how did we get here” but told some story relevant to the character in the present, either a challenge they had to face or parallel relationship drama or ghosts come back to haunt them. Usually, these little flashbacks were told in sequential order, but they could hop months or years ahead at a time depending on the episode.

The flash-forwards began in season 4 and closed the gap between the “Oceanic 6” escaping the island and all the missing time while they were gone, before the infamous “We have to go back” line.

The show also had flash-sideways, which featured the main cast, many of whom had been dead for a few seasons, reprising their roles to show what could have been their lives if they never crashed. To… mixed reception.

The show also also had a time-traveling character who in-universe experienced flashes of the future and got mentally temporally displaced between two timelines for a hot minute.

Lost was… a show that demanded a dedicated following. I still love it.

Flashback Arcs | My own personal soapbox

This right here is the whole reason for this post. First you have flashback episodes and I can name a lot of those—ATLA has a couple, “The Storm” & “The Avatar and the Firelord” but both are technically “stories within a story” with characters either around a campfire telling it or reading about it. The alternate timeline takes up a majority of the runtime, only occasionally cutting back to the present characters for a reaction.

In TFP there’s an offbeat flashback episode “Out of the Past”, framed, again, as a character telling this backstory stuff to another character. Many, many vampire stories will have flashbacks to some degree, since their characters live for so long. Vampire Diaries, especially in the earlier seasons, had dozens of them filling in all the blanks back during the Civil War when the two leads, Stefan and Damon, were competing for the affections of the main villain, all leading up to how they were turned, and how she allegedly died. Once the Originals were introduced, the show then had flashbacks to a thousand years ago, when they were human, and various eras in between.

True flashback episodes don’t waste precious minutes setting up a framing device, they just dump the audience in an alternate timeline and let them figure it out on their own that something isn’t right.

But none of that comes close to the full-on Flashback Arc. I. Love. This. Trope.

I actually first saw it when Arrow was good in its earliest seasons, cutting fairly equally between a present-day Oliver back home and starting his hero journey, and him learning combat back in the past, over several episodes like a series within the series.

What you end up with is a happy medium between a full dual timeline and a random grab-bag of flashbacks as they become necessary to the plot. A flashback arc relies entirely on the existence of the A-plot to make sense, as opposed to a dual timeline where it’s essentially two self-sufficient stories rolled into one big narrative. This arc is substantially shorter than the rest of the plot, cutting the story it’s telling down to the absolute need-to-know moments and cutting all transitions between the two. These arcs tend to cover weeks, at minimum, and decades of a long life at most.

I think they're best implimented after the first book, film, or season. Not something you want to throw at your audience who barely knows or cares about these characters, so if you're stuck with ideas for a sequel, consider the Flashback Arc.

My favorite thing that I have ever written (sans ENNS) was for my sci-fi WIP, a C-plot flashback arc in 13 parts. They started out as in-universe nightmares to give credibility to when these flasbacks started occuring, framed around the character's reaction to the scene, but then took off independently to avoid redundancy.

This arc covered his time as a POW, telling the reader how he came to be the living weapon he was, and the first detail it opened with was the reveal that he wasn’t the only one of his kind, he’d lied and shouldered the blame of every atrocity to protect the others, as their numbers dwindled and it all fell into place. A truth he wouldn't tell with a gun to his head.

Because you already knew he lived, because he’s right there in the present A-plot, the arc wasn’t telling you if he’d survive the war, but what he’d do to survive, and how it all fell apart. Because it was framed up with the existing narrative, I had a lot more leeway in omitting details and dropping the reader weeks or months ahead as opposed to this being a completely fresh story with new characters. You knew immediately based on the tone that this POV was the C-plot flashback POV, and you knew the only person who could narrate it was my poor character.

Over 13 POVS, 34k words (of a total whopping 202k), I told a whole love story, established and killed off 10 characters, and gave heaps of worldbuilding lore and exposition to fill in all the blanks in the present and answer questions that this character would never, and revealed just how much he lied about and why.

All of this tied in with the A-plot, staggering the physical placement of POVS within the book to hit at the right moments tonally and as the character’s condition kept deteriorating because he refused to talk about What Happened. His reason was that he’d done all of this and suffered so much to keep their legacies pure. If he gave it up now, he would have done all this for nothing.

And this was some heavy shit. There was murder, suicide, death by giant alien super robots fond of ripping people apart, assault, mercy killing, torture, gaslighting, and psychological horror. One of my magic systems let magicians regrow limbs alchemically, which meant they could endure a shit ton of pain and just get reset to do it all over again.

It was a lot.

But because it was just in flashbacks, I gave you just enough dark shit before cutting back to something marginally lighter, not just one long slog of misery. There was also the unknown of how quickly it would end. The book would end when you hit the last page, but you had no idea which flashback POV would be the last.

And also.

I got to flex my writing skills to the fullest, writing this character’s flashback POV in a completely different tone and style to make it that much more distinct from the rest of the present book.

ENNS’ sequel is very much under construction, but the one thing already polished is a flashback episode packed into one chapter for one of my characters. It’s perfectly knife-twisty and I can't wait for people to read it.

—

There’s dozens of framing devices out there. Most important thing, I think, is not sacrificing audience understanding for the sake of something ‘cool’. Doesn’t matter how amazing the story is if your audience gets completely lost and confused trying to keep up with what’s going on.

If you'd like to check out my book, Eternal Night of the Northern Sky is available now!

[damnfandomproblems]

Posting a compilation of responses to Fandom Problem #5234

Anon:

PLEASE watch the Contrapoints video on Twilight. It is by a trans person named Natalie Wynn.

(anon includes a link to a YouTube video titled "Twilight | ContraPoints")

This video has changed the minds of tons of people who initially thought Twilight was "rape and stalking abuse", by explaining the history of where all this panic comes from and why people are drawn to dark fantasies. It changed my mind and I'm hoping it'll change your mind too.

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Anon:

going through every point bc this personally ticked me off for literally no reason but i have nothing better to do. so. sorry if this seems overly pissy /genuine. (also typed this in my notes app so sorry for the lack of italics/caps in place of italitcs) 1. not wanting to see incest/whatever isnt purity culture. blocking tags/accounts that make you uncomfortable is something that is HEAVILY ENCOURAGED. the only people i have ever seen discouraging this are antishippers. what IS purity culture, however, is saying that EVERYONE ELSE should not make something because it makes you personally uncomfortable. as someone who was literally raised within purity culture, that is exactly the kind of shit they say. 2. fiction DOES affect reality! but not in the way you think it does. yes, propaganda works! but that is because it is specifically constructed to convince people of a certain view. representation is important because people who arent cishet white men exist and deserve to see themselves in fiction. but i think the best way i can explain it is this; if you were to watch Hannibal, would you automatically assume that cannibalism is okay? what if you watched a John Wick movie or Deadpool? Is mass murder okay? the answer is obviously an astounding no, because you are able to think about the media you consume. this is expected of any media that isnt literally a show aimed at children. There's at least one media btw. i'm not entirely sure about Hannibal because i've never seen it. 3. that is literally a coping mechanism therapists recommend. those are all UNHEALTHY and SELFDESTRUCTIVE coping mechanisms. you cannot compare the two. 4. if you are getting mad about porn then that is an entirely Puritan viewpoint. 6. "make the story frown upon it." if you cannot gauge for yourself that these things are bad then you should not be engaging with those stories. 7. last point isnt a proship issue, its a jerkwad issue. people who dont tag things are dicks, at least we can agree on that. however if someone doesnt tag something it is on you to block them. YOU need to curate YOUR online experience. (it may also be worth it to KINDLY send an ask about it. its the same as tagging flashing. sometimes people just dont think about it and sometimes people are doing it on purpose to be a douche. you need to block the latter as they are not worth your time or energy.) Last point was something you did not mention so im not including it in the list itself; if you were to ask a proshipper if they supported pedophilic/incestual/abuse relationships irl, they would most likely say no. If they say yes then they are just a pedo/someone who is okay with incest/an abuser. those people are not bad people because of the fiction they consume/create. they are bad people because they want to hurt people and do not see anything wrong with it/are not willing to see why they are in the wrong. apologies for any typos, ive reread through it but i tend to miss things.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Anon:

Op really just compared writing fictional scenarios with fictional dollies, a method of processing trauma that is recommended by psychologists and actually -is- effective at helping people process stuff, to alcoholism, street drugs, and socon which can and do kill people. You ever seen someone withdraw from alcohol abuse? I have. You actually spoken to a psychologist about friends who write things to cope after being raped at a party? I have. Are you still a clueless child? Yes. So take your moral panic and shove it. You're a kid but if you want to get involved in serious adult conversations, you need to be prepared to accept discussing serious, real things. You can't even look at a rapefic without getting triggered (I use this word in the proper sense, not hyperbolic sense) and ascribing blown-out-of-proportion, emotional judgments on people who, if you passed them on the street, wouldn't stand out to you at all. Because these are normal people. This to me is a huge sign you're just not ready for this kind of conversation.

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Anon:

"...really ticks me off how someone can say "It's really fucking gross how you wanna see a minor and an adult make out" and proshippers can be like "UGH PURITY CULTURE" Like, how is not wanting to see pedophilia and incest purity culture. Especially when you're a minor. dumbass I was a minor when I wanted to se OCs modeled after myself hooking up with the hot adult leads from my shows. I wasn't stupid enough to think it was OK to happen in real life but if Dream of the Endless was in an arranged marriage with my OC for reasons I wanted to see it. Like. "Minors" have sex. A lot. And yeah, age gaps can be problematic in real life but on paper? Who cares? It's fake. It's not real. It's a story. Acting like minors are sexless little angels until the day they turn 18 is crazy. Minors want to see boning and they want to see people their own age boning, and sometimes they want to see people their own age boning That Old Man or Milfs or 1000 year old vampires or whatever. Not even gonna bother with the rest. Others can get that.

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Anon:

Where to even start here? I guess I should start by saying that proshipper doesn't mean what you think that it means OP! It doesn't mean that we support incest or pedophilia, it simply means that we're anti harassment. I don't like incest or pedophilia. It's weird to me, and yet one of the most popular series, Game of Thrones, features both incest and pedophilia. Romanticizing villainy? Can I ask what your definition of romanticizing is? What if the story revolves around the villain? Like Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes? Are stories like that not supposed to exist? What about the anime and manga called Overlord? What About Hannibal Lecter? What about the Joker movie? Do none of these have any value? Do you expect the villain to deadpan into the camera every 10 minutes confessing that he knows his actions are wrong but he's doing it anyways? And if the writers don't make their characters do this, are you going to accuse them of condoning their characters actions? Because I think it would be pretty dumb to make a villain out of character for the sake of, "I know this is wrong, but I'm doing it anyways!" Do you want no villains in stories? Is that what you prefer? For everything to be sunshine and rainbows all of the time? Because that would be really boring. Are there any true heroes without a villain. A bad coping mechanism? Really? So now you're a psychologist who knows everyone on the planet that knows exactly what everyone needs to get better? Coping mechanism looks different from person to person. What is important is that the coping mechanism helps you process your emotions and what happened to you and sometimes it is helpful to write your emotions out in the form of writing and sometimes that can be fanfiction. I am someone who had been diagnosed with trauma and depression and I'm currently doing therapy for this and taking medicine. You know what's helped me all of these years before I started going to therapy on a regular basis? Characters with a lot of baggage like me. They can be hero or villains. I don't care which it is. If they have a tragic back story and I'm all over that. Fiction doesn't effect reality? It can and sometimes does. You're right. But you know who's problem that is? Your parents, the school system, and whoever else never taught you that fiction is fiction. That characters aren't real. If your parents let the TV or Internet babysit you growing up instead of being a parent and teaching you right from wrong, or being able to tell fiction from reality, well then that is the fault of your parents. Do you know who's not at fault? Stranger on the Internet. We're not here to hold your hand, you are not entitled to that. It is up to you to curate your own experience and mind your own business. If you don't like something, blacklist the tag, block the person posting it or log off of that site and find something else to look at. You think you've debunked everything, but really you're just naive and living in a fantasy world. The world is not an idealistic place, nor will it ever be and that is why these stories exists to begin with. Covering up everything that is bad in the world won't ever make it go away and that is reality. Period. Let people cope the way they need to, and unless you have degrees in psychology, you have no right to tell people what they can and cannot enjoy. Again, I myself would never write or read about some of the things that you've posted about OP, but will I continue writing about my trauma? I sure will, because it is something that I am still dealing with many years after it happened and I'm sure others will do the same with the things that they've had experience with, too.

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Anon:

OP, one of your top posts is an AO3 reference and contains a link to an AO3 fic. In case you didn't know, AO3 was directly created to be a host for fanworks that got censored by other sites. Functionally, it is an archive, like a library. And like libraries, it hosts anything that is legal to host under US law. One major driving factor behind AO3's creation was the "Livejournal Strikethrough Boldthrough", an incident where "concerned parties" successfully lobbied to get Livejournal, a site that hosted writing, to remove its "yucky fics". Guess what? Gay fiction got removed in the process because, surprise, certain parties found that yucky too. (I'm talking about conservative groups who are obviously very anti-gay and anti-LGBT.) Here's one post about it: https://pretentioussongtitle.tumblr.com/post/624690560646676480/like-wathever-antis-delete-your-blogs-pls-thx So... You can't say you're okay with calling to censor things, without looking at the full picture and where it ultimately leads. You're asking for a lot of collateral damage. And like someone else said, engaging in discussions about heavy, adult topics with strange adults on the internet (and most of us are adults, OP) is very dangerous. There have been a lot of cases where someone has cried foul about certain kinds of fictional writing, only for an "anti proship" person to walk up to them and groom them, and it worked because the kid was under the pretense that the person was a "safe, good person". Please do not put yourself in danger and get out of the spaces you frequent.

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Anon:

It's interesting you use Lolita as an example of what to do "right" when it comes to depicting things. You believe tons of media must be censored or kept away from the light of day, yet Lolita is an example of what to emulate to prevent that from happening? You would be very shocked to discover Lolita is among, if not the, most notorious piece of fiction for censorship groups to attack. So I really don't know if you fully understand what it is you're arguing for, here. You're just a kid, so I'm assuming you haven't actually read Lolita. That's the first thing. The second thing is, given the fact virtually all people who are invested in censoring and banning media actually hate Lolita, but you seem to have a totally opposite, 180-degree opinion about it, I have to wonder if you've happened to find a lot of random stuff from around the internet, but have yet to actually put it all together and cross-check everything to see if it actually makes sense. There's a lot of stuff in your post that is either plain out wrong, poorly strung together, or contradictory.

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Anon:

I'm going to look real tinfoil-hatty in two seconds, but I swear some of y'all antis in the notes are following tags like "pedophilia" and "incest" and that's the only reason you found this confession. Cause I haven't seen half of you here before. And if so, that's kind of weird. I hope I'm wrong. To be fair there's no way to confirm either way but I just thought it was funny because I can see it happening if not for the antis here, than for others. Gotta get that daily dose of outrage.

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Anon:

""Fiction doesn't affect reality" So why is representation so important? Why has propaganda worked so well?" you're taking this statement too literally. fiction obviously affects reality. if you cry over your favourite character's death, well there ya go. fiction has just changed reality. it made you feel sad things. representation is important because it makes those represented feel acknowleged and because it makes their existence more known to the world. propaganda is designed SPECIFICALLY to heavily affect reality. a doujin artist does not sit down and think "hmm. today i will draw a loli hentai to turn people into paedophiles". ""Well I'm not gonna become a murderer just because I've seen people murder in pieces of media" Name one piece of media where murder was portrayed as unironically, fully okay." as someone not well-versed in shooters, fortnite. murder is encouraged in fortnite. the point of the game is to kill people. i'd also like you to name one piece of media where rape is portrayed as perfectly fine and dandy. ""I'm coping with trauma" Well that's an awful coping mechanism. If you have been traumatized by incest, abuse, or pedophilia, why are you creating/consuming content where those are all romanticized?" because the fact that they're not alone in their suffering is comforting to them? as an abuse victim, i like characters with abusive parents. it gives me a character to sympathise with and characters to absolutely loathe with all my being. now that i think about it, i like that i'm not suffering alone. other people acknowledge the things i, and other victims, have to deal with. there are other reasons, but that's one i thought up ""You're ableist for criticizing our coping mechanism!" ... You know what else is a coping mechanism? Self-harm. Alcoholism. Excessive drug use. Those are frowned upon EVERYWHERE, because they're self-destructive. So why is thinking adults and minors should be cute together (sometimes real life adults and minors, but I'm not gonna get into the whole RPF discourse because RPF is even more fucking disgusting) suddenly okay?" there is a difference between doing things that being actual harm and because the latter is harmless. besides... isn't this circular logic? this argument is based on the conclusion you draw from it. "proshipping as a coping mechanism is bad because proshipping is bad". ""Rule 34 and gross ships is always gonna exist!" In our current world, bigotry is always gonna exist. Doesn't mean we should stop getting mad about it." bigotry excludes a specific group of often-innocent people for no reason. rule 34 is just porn of fictional characters. completely incomparable ""I'm exploring unhealthy relationships in fiction!" Okay then! That's great! Don't romanticize it. Tag it accordingly. Make the story frown upon it. Lolita, the book, frowned upon the pedophilia and thought it was disgusting. Do that." nobody romanticises anything. most loli hentai just... depict a loli having sex. it doesn't depict it as this amazing thing that you should dp. most lolicons that talk nabout wanting to fuck... idk, klee from the funny gacha game don't actually wanna have sex with kids. it's omly romanticised in-universeww, if you will. it doesn't say anything about it being good to do irl. and on nhentai, we use tags. we have a lot of 'em, including the recent 'kodomo doushi'. you jujst have to take a look at the tags section of a doujin and search for any tag you may not want you can also filter them in the search bar. we tag our shit, it's just your fault for being an irresponsible fuck. "But you're not gonna do that, are you." we will. the importance of tagging can NOT be stressed enough anon, i am gonna be blunt here. you are not smart. you did not debunk shit. god will slam the pearly gates of heaven on you for this post

[ace-of-hearts-and-spades]

YOU THERE!!!!!! TUMBLR USER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are YOU tired of how Tumblr treats trans people, particularly transwomen and transfemmes? Are YOU tired of how Tumblr treats people of color, particularly black folks? Are YOU tired of fandom trying to police the madeup bullshit you like to draw, write, or read about? Are YOU tired of all this fucking AI bullshit? Are YOU looking for a new online home to settle in?

Consider Pillowfort.social!

I’m not going to go into the nitty-gritty of how Pillowfort functions, because others have talked about that and explained it much better than I can (I recommend reading @/vergesm’s post here for a more general Pillowfort overview). What I’m going to do is explain what I, personally, get out of Pillowfort and why I enjoy it.

To preface, I’m not being paid to make this post or promote Pillowfort or anything. I wouldn’t think that needs to be said, but people make things up sometimes so idk. I’m writing pro-Pillowfort propaganda because I genuinely like the place and want to see it thrive. If you want to take a look at my own fort and get a feel for the place, you can do so here.

So with that out of the way – let’s talk about it!

Pillowfort is quite a bit like Tumblr, in that it’s a blogging platform, but it’s got a few things that make it better than this hellsite imo. For one thing, you can post NSFW content there. Although I don’t draw much explicit stuff, it’s nice to be able to post art there without worrying I’ll get shadowbanned for a picture that’s just a lil too suggestive. It's nice to know that the option is there. Honestly, it’s freeing not to have to worry about that shit. And it’s also really cool that there’s a built-in system for marking certain posts as NSFW, because as well as being able to mark your own posts as NSFW, you can choose whether you want to see other people's posts marked as NSFW. And for minors, the ability to see NSFW content is automatically turned off. Pillowfort’s got a really good system for both allowing NSFW content and keeping it away from people who don’t want to see it. I really like that flexibility, and how that flexibility isn't detrimental to the users.

And speaking of being able to see or not see certain content, the content filtering is pretty solid. You’re able to block tags and even words in the body of a post, and like I said, you can control whether you want to see posts marked as NSFW. You can even control who sees your own posts! There’s blocking users, of course, but you can limit who sees your own posts even further than that. You can make them visible to anyone, visible only to logged in Pillowfort users, visible only to your followers or mutuals, or hell, even visible to you alone!! It’s cool to have that level of control, and I find it reassuring to know I have those options.

Another big appeal of Pillowfort, for me, is the userbase’s strong “don’t like don’t read” policy. A lot of the people there operate under the mindset of “as long as it’s fictional, whatever dude. I don’t have to like it, but you do you." There are still dipshits, of course, but it’s WAY better than the insane purity culture that’s developed here. I don’t have to worry about some wannabe-conservatives telling me I’m just as bad as Ted Bundy for [checks notes] sexualizing Michael Myers or some shit. Plus, this general userbase mindset is backed up by actual site policy! I’ve heard that Pillowfort is very swift in responding to reports of harassment – whether it’s fandom-based harassment or bigotry. I haven’t had any experience with this personally (and hopefully it’ll stay that way), but I’ve heard good things about it, and it makes me feel more comfortable being there.

Also, did I mention Pillowfort has an explicit anti-AI policy? AI generated images and writing are banned on the website, and staff made this decision once its userbase and community made it clear that they wouldn’t welcome that sort of shit. And GOD, does it make me feel so fucking good as a writer and artist to know that.

And that’s another thing – Pillowfort staff actually fucking listens to its userbase. The website is crowd-funded and relies on subscriptions and monthly donations to keep things running. And because it relies on its community, it relies on keeping the community happy. So complaints, bug reports, suggestions and alterations and things the users would like to see on the site – it’s all taken pretty seriously. And again, it’s just really nice to know that the staff of the place actually give a shit and are looking out for its community rather than trying to suck the dick of the biggest investor.

Really, the only problem I have with Pillowfort is the fact that it’s a bit small. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the people there are lovely. But since a lot of people aren’t happy with Tumblr, and haven’t been happy with Tumblr for some time, I thought I’d just ask you guys – maybe consider it. Consider making a Pillowfort account. Consider making your own little fort, stringing up some colored lights and cool art and making yourself cozy. Consider offering some money, if you can spare it, because it’s genuinely a really cool place that I want to spend more time in and see prosper.

So far, I’ve had a lovely time there. It’s cozy and friendly and it feels like one of the few places where a queer artist like me is actually welcome. And I think a lot of Tumblr users might really like it too.

I hope to see you there! 💜

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Sexiest Podcast Character — Unscripted Bracket — Round 3

Propaganda

Glenn Close (Dungeons & Daddies):

#Propaganda for Glenn Close: one of the other PCs mentions multiple times how hot he is #Actually several characters point it out but especially Henry #Also the only person in a podcast that has to put a disclaimer about not being a BDSM podcast to have had sex during the course of the show

PLEASASSWEEPLEASE TOU DONT HUNRERFSTABDS

GLENN GLENN GLENN ITS GLENN VOTE GLENN VOTE FOR THE BOY

We didn’t do hot Glenn summer for him to LOSE. Spoilers for his story but MORE PROPAGANDA FOR YOU:

Young hot rocker dilf

Loyal to his dead wife <3

Does in fact smoke weed

BARD!! HES A BARD. HE WAS LEAD GUITAR IN HIS BAND (that he was kicked out of)

His band was a Christmas cover band btw.

Literally the fandom had hot Glenn summer which consisted of drawing him being incredibly hot and sexy

Anti government (ofc)

Kind of cringefail (Disney adult) (was on dilfs of disneyland)

Young and sexy not your style? Then how about HIM AFTER YEARS LOCKED IN A TIME PRISON WITH A DAMN HANNIBAL MASK ??

Lost an eye and wears a fucking eyepatch

One incredibly buff arm

Has a pet rat named after his son <3

Immeasurable amounts of trauma in this man- becomes progressively more unhinged

OH OLD HUMAN BARD ISNT CUTTING IT? FINE

HE BECOMES A FUCKING DEMON

A COOL HOT ONE-EYED DEMON WHO WANTS TO KILL HIS DAD (also sexy)

HE CANONICALLY ENDS CHRISTIAN HELL VIA CHRISTMAS

IS ALSO WAY OVERLEVELED

Becomes a demon hunter for the rest of his existence

Also nonwhite !!! We are done with cringefail whiteboys !!!!!!!!!

I can’t put into words ok just know he is the best plz love him.

GLENN GLENNNNNN

Listen, I don't know this other character but I've seem some good arguments for her However Consider Glenn Close winning through no effort of his own in a bullshit way despite being a dick is the most in character thing ever. He leveled up three times and got a crab mech, we GOT to give him this win, it's fitting

I haven't dedicated the last 2 months of my life drawing Glenn close for him to lose

Vote for Glenn Close or I will make you read the parody I did of the vaporeon copypasta

I don’t regulate if minors follow me or not bc I’m a pretty chill space but I hope the world is aware that’s the only reason I haven’t been downright nasty about Glenn close. I’m down bad. I’m NOT in the boat of ‘Glenn isn’t sexy but I want him to win bc it’s my fandom’. I would estimate I have 200+ drawings of Glenn on my phone that AREN’T safe for work. Way more that are. Where did they come from? That’s MY business. But I tell you this fact to assure you- Glenn IS sexy. I’m not voting to represent my fandom I’m voting out of TRUTH AND LOVE. IF YOU DON’T GET IT YOU DON’T GET IT!!! I just think my level of feral over this man is more powerful than y’all realize. If you don’t get his sex appeal that’s okay, but don’t doubt that this is my truth.

VOTE GLENN

Glenn fuckers fought tooth and nail to get us here from like 38% dawg we DESERVE THIS. GLENN IS THE SEXIEST MAN!!! HE WAS THE FIRST FICTIONAL CHARACTER I FOUND HOT AND HE’S GONNA CONTINUE TO SWEEP!!! Your hot goat woman sounds sexy don’t get me wrong but I’m forever fighting for the man that changed my brain chemistry. Proud of our fandom tbh. I don’t think y’all understand the sheer amount of effort I have put in to get my boy where he is today but this placement feels well earned. TO GLENN SWEEP!!

THE FUCK YOU MEAN GLENN CLOSE ISNT WINNING IM BOUT TO THROW HANDS FR

Okay but Glenn made a minivan cum by talking to her so

Yalll better vote glenn i swear to god

Vote Glenn or else the bird gets it🐦🛸

HOW IS MY DUDE NOT WINNING????

GLEN GELN NELG GLENNANN HE DESERVS ITTTT

HE HAS A BOOK THAT HE MARKS X’S AND CHECKS FOR EVERY DAY TO SEE IF THAT DAY WAS A SUCCESS OR NOT. TO SEE IF HE DID GOOD THAT DAY. ITS ALMOST ENTIRELY X’S. HE WAS CUCKED OUT OF A SON. AND A DEAD WIFE. HE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO KILL HIS DAD IN REVENGE. There’s absolutely nothing going for him except his sex appeal in his life. Nobody he loved remembers him. He lost his eye. All he has is a pet rat and friends who admit they don’t really like him that much. He was kicked out of his own band. The band was named after him. He was kicked out of the Glenn Close trio. All he could do was deez nuts the big bad and be sexy. If nothing else, then pity him. Look in his eyes. Look at his heart and soul. Do you think pickman needs this to feel good about herself? Can she not accept a loss for the sake of a pathetic father? Can she shake hands with the minivan fucker and his human gun and just take the L on this one? He did not do the BDSM episode for this I’ll tell you what. Do this for my his sake. Do it for Nick Jr, who needs the prize money to pay for his rat snacks. Do it for his son. For Morgan. Ganbatte.

Mod Note: While I will still take "bad dads are sexy" propaganda and "bad dads aren't sexy" anti-propaganda, I kindly request no more discussion on whether or not he was a bad father. This is a sexypoll, not a parentingpoll. If you see a post you strongly disagree with, you can just not reblog it.

Taako (The Adventure Zone: Balance):

A celebrity chef from another plane

[eowynstwin]

same anon who sent the ask abt price: MW3's writing was embarrassing tbh. i agree 100% that narratively, its the most logical and sensible for price to be the one who takes the fall. what you wrote i flat out completely agree with, and its deeply disappointing that we are stuck with an extremely poorly written and rushed story. the game was a hot steamy pile. everyone was slightly out of character, they all growled their lines like mad dogs, and the missions were ass. i cant believe no one talks about the mission where you get anti arab hate crimed. what was that??? what was the reason??? (the only thing i liked about that game were the 9 minutes of nikolai. i just find him entertaining.) i was replaying mw2019 while super high and got to the mission where you threaten the butchers wife and son and just thought to myself; that lady and that kid are gonna have nightmares about price for the rest of their lives. that room is going to come back to them again and again and again. they literally did nothing wrong except the crime of being the butchers family. what price and gaz did is never going to leave them, and gaz was right to question price on that. of course, the game doesn't care at all. they're disposable NPCS for a shock value scene. i dunno, the fact that the game doesn't really give a fuck, and seemingly even condones what happened, just kinda hit different and i had to put the game down for the evening. i guess that hit at that moment bc i had also read a fic a bit earlier where the reader was price's civvy gf and gets kidnapped by his enemies. it bent my brain a bit bc, the thing in the fic is literally a canon event perpetuated by price, portrayed as a good thing by the source material, that now price is the victim of. it was a very weird feeling for my weed addled brain to try and process. think i blue screened actually. i wanna put price in a jar and shake him vigorously. pin him to a board like a entomology insect. i want to bite him. i do love him i swear. but maybe make him actually face a single real consequence for his war crimes? (disappointing that it will never happen on screen bc these games are all gas no breaks outright propaganda. not to mention real war crimes are happening constantly in front of everyone's eyes and going completely unpunished) sorry this is really long, i have no one to talk to abt these games and i dont understand my feelings toward that British man

Yeah. The thing about Price is that he's not a good person in the slightest. We write fiction about the kind of man he can be--the best version of himself, a version we can all stomach--but the real Price is distinct from that, and the best people in this fandom recognize that.

Soap and Ghost have some plausible deniability simply because we haven't seen them doing anything other than action movie stuff. Gaz is on the road to becoming Price--Price is doing his damndest to turn Gaz into himself--but he isn't there yet. (@391780 did a GREAT analysis of the driving scene in mw19 and how Price subtly manipulates Gaz, but I can't find it.)

EDIT: Early kindly provided.

We, as the audience, are not actually supposed to worry that much about the Butcher's family, because Price is one of the Good Guys who would never let something Bad actually happen. Infinity Ward does not take the Butcher's family seriously, and does not want us to take the family seriously, because they are just a convenient vehicle with which to move the plot along. Their presence is, in the end, shock value. We are meant to stare, wide-eyed, wondering is Price really going to go that far? while in the back of our minds knowing of course he's not, because he's our hero. He's just doing whatever it takes. The family is not meant to be anything other than fodder for Price's characterization.

Same with Samara. We are not supposed to care all that much about her, personally--we're supposed to marvel over Makarov's canny brutality, his bRiLLiANcE in recognizing the obvious fact that an Arab woman would make a perfect scapegoat for a plane bombing. Samara does not matter to MW3. Only the shocking way she dies. None of these Arab characters matter to Call of Duty--only the entertainment value of their pain.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am reminded of when Price threw a man restrained into a bomb jacket off a balcony, with not a shred of remorse afterword. I'm forced to ask the question--who would Price scapegoat, then, if he felt justified enough?

And yeah, he's never going to suffer the consequences of his actions, because Infinity Ward doesn't think he's actually done anything wrong. We throw the word propaganda around a lot without actually defining it, but Price is emblematic of how the propaganda of Call of Duty works. Price does something reprehensible, and is shown to be justified in doing it--implying that real men like him are justified, too, because don't you understand how little choice Price had? Don't you get that there's no good choice to be made? This is how he has to act, and this is how all soldiers have to act, because war is a dirty business, and someone needs to be willing to do it for the benefit of the ignorant public.

The question of why any of this should be happening at all is never asked.

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 4 - Catholic Character Tournament

Propaganda below ⬇️

Harrowhark

I'm pretty sure you've already got plenty of submissions for her so I'll just say she was raised in what is basically a cult (technically a nunnery but let's be real) dedicated to keeping the body of the thing that will kill God behind the rock. One of their prayers is actually "I pray the rock is never rolled away". Harrow is extremely devout as penance for her earlier heretical actions in the tomb as a child (spoiler!) so the Catholic guilt really comes through

imagine being a catholic nun and you meet god, but it turns out he’s a twitch streamer from new zealand who became god because everything got a little bit out of hand. and just before you met him you gave yourself a diy grief-fuelled lobotomy with the help of your best frenemy. imagine how insane you’d be. now multiply that insanity by nine. that’s the fictional love of my life right there.

she meets god. she’s not inspired

she’s number one practitioner of space Catholicism. The locked tomb is chock full of Christian (catholic) imagery themes metaphors etc. just look at her she’s got a bone rosary

They're Catholicism with extra bones. Everyone is a nun. They have what is basically a rosary made from knuckle bones. They technically worship the same God as everyone else, but they're waaaay more focused on The Body in the Tomb (Mary) and we get a moment where we find out that while everyone else prays the equivilent of The Lords Prayer, they're doing the equivilent of Hail Mary. And they paint their faces with skulls.

She thinks leaving dry bread in a drawer is taking care of someone. She's in love with a 10,000 year old corpse (the same one they worship). She spent ALL NIGHT digging with her bare hands to make sure a field had bones every 5 feet so she could fight her girlfriend - I mean, greatest enemy. Spoiler territory: She's been puppeting her parents corpses since she was 8 years old. Instead of grieving her dead girlfriend, she gives herself a lobotomy. She makes soup with bone in it so she can use the bone IN THEIR STOMACH to try and kill them.

The author is/was Catholic and the entire series had heavy Catholic overtones. https://www.tor.com/2020/08/19/gideon-the-ninth-young-pope-and-the-new-pope-are-building-a-queer-catholic-speculative-fiction-canon/ A good breakdown of how it's Catholic

Anti-propaganda (spoilers)

I love the Locked Tomb series but Harrowhark has daddy issues with God, had a childhood crush on God's cryogenic partner, and is in love with God's daughter, not to mention that she's essentially a bone-bender. The religion on her home planet exists in a way that is technically against the will of the canon in-universe God, even. All of this to say, Harrowhark is heretical at minimum if not an outright witch. Terrible Catholic. Burn her.

Ronan Lynch

Uhh fun fact he saw the devil flash his father once, and that's one of the reasons he goes to church on Sundays <3

context for this scene from book 2: ronan is in church with his older brother declan, younger brother matthew, and ghost friend noah "Joseph Kavinsky isn’t someone I want you being around,” Declan added. “Don’t snort. I’m serious.” Ronan merely invested a look with as much contempt as he could muster. A lady reached over the top of Noah to pat Matthew’s head fondly before continuing down the aisle. She didn’t seem to care that he was fifteen, which was all right, because he didn’t, either. Both Ronan and Declan observed this interaction with the pleased expressions of parents watching their prodigy at work. Declan repeated, “Like, actually dangerous.” Sometimes, Declan seemed to think that being a year older gave him special knowledge of the seedier side of Henrietta. What he meant was, did Ronan know that Kavinsky was a cokehead. In his ear, Noah whispered, “Is crack the same thing as speed?” Ronan didn’t answer. He didn’t think it was a very church-appropriate conversation. “I know you think you’re a punk,” Declan said. “But you aren’t nearly as bad ass as you think you are.” “Oh, go to hell,” Ronan snapped, just as the altar boys broached the rear doors. “Guys,” Matthew pleaded. “Be holy.”

Gay Catholic streetracing farmer. Consumed by catholic guilt NOT because of the gay thing but because he can Create things in a way he thinks should be only God's business. Will literally roll up to mass on sunday morning still drunk and bloody.

THIS GOTH KID IS LITERALLY GOD. This is a god trapped in the body of a Catholic teen and if he ever stopped feeling Catholic guilt he’d end the world!!. How is your confession every week that you creating a whole new being? Babygirl the God is coming from inside the house

eldritch entity from beyond the mortal plane wants to be a Real Human Boy, becomes a real (ish!) human (ish!) boy, goes to mass every sunday

Gay boy got his crush an apartment above his church so he could have his two favorite things in one place

gay. I'm not caught up the the series but I went through the tag when the latest book came out and I remember seeing a quote that said he worried if his boyfriend would make it to heaven when he dies because of his agnostic tendencies.

Kid is like a dream warlock who creates psychic horrors and never goes to confession because why would he? and he’s gay

There are no words

basically ronan's powers are inherited from his dead father niall and it means he can bring anything from a dream into real life. so he's got this whole crisis about whether he is a living piece of blasphemy because men are not meant to have the powers of gods or whether he literally is god. which is not acceptable to him for a number of reasons but mostly because he hates himself. his love interest's name is adam and adam lives in a small apartment above a church which the book says focuses the objects of his worship neatly into one building. I love them both dearly. also, this entire page makes me feel like I'm going insane. Ronan Lynch believed in heaven and hell. Once, he’d seen the devil. It had been a low, late morning at the Barns when the sun had burned off the mist and then burned off the chill and then burned the edges off the ground until everything shimmered with heat. It never got hot in those protected fields, but that morning, the air sweated with it. Ronan had never seen cattle pant before. All of the cows heaved and stuck their tongues out as they frothed with the heat. His mother sent Ronan to put them in the shade of the cattle barn. Ronan had gone to the searing metal gate, and as he did, he’d glimpsed his father, already in the barn. Four yards away from him had stood a red man. He was not truly red, but the burned orange of a fire ant. And he was not truly a man, because of the horns and the hooves. Ronan remembered the alienness of the creature, how real it had been. Every costume in the world had gotten it wrong; every drawing in every comic book. They’d all forgotten that the devil was an animal. Looking at the red man, Ronan had been struck by the intricacy of the body, how many miraculous pieces moved smoothly in harmony, no different than his own. Niall Lynch had had a gun in hand — the Lynches had an enormous number of guns of all sizes — and just as Ronan had opened the gate, his father had shot the thing about thirteen times in the head. With a shake of its horns, the unharmed devil had presented its genitalia to Niall Lynch before bounding off. It was an image that had yet to leave Ronan. And so Ronan became a reverse evangelist. The truth burst and grew inside him, and it was laid upon him to share it with no one. No one was meant to see hell before they get there. No one should have to live with the devil. So many homilies on faith were ruined once you no longer required it for belief.

Our boy CHOOSES not to receive the Eucharist because he doesn’t believe he is worthy. The spiritual insight, the devotion, the fact that this teenager is worried he may have a mortal sin weighing on his soul…this boy isn’t just going through the motions, he’s putting work into this.

[nodutra19]

Recommendations Based Off RGU

I already cobbled together Polyphony Garden (I saw someone else do an RGU pastiche based off Othello by Shakespeare, so I hope it's a valid work), but I wanna make a whole post recommending things I think fans of the Revolutionary Girl Utena anime would like based off themes and style. It's mostly books though. And of course, I'll provide trigger warnings.

Absolute Recommendations

The Pike: Gabriele d'Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

This is a biography on a man named Gabriele d'Annunzio, a progenitor of fascism who codified not just fascist ideals, but also aesthetics, including the Roman salute which would become the Nazi salute. He was one of the first major propagandists, a spearhead in aviation and the decadent literary movement, and much more. He was initially famous as an author and poet obsessed with beauty, but he emerged from the same strains as other Europeans. He directly inspired Mussolini, and Mussolini inspired Hitler. The biography is beautifully written, if somewhat poorly paced, a great examination of masculinity, fascism, the relation between reality and art, the strength of propaganda.

I do give an SA warning for it though.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

I get the feeling most American fans of RGU have read this but I figured I should list it anyhow and for anyone not familiar with American literature, or for people who aren't readers. This is a historical fiction novel about a woman named Sethe who is haunted both by her time as a slave on a plantation and the death of her baby. It's one of the saddest but greatest books I've ever read. I would love to teach this to a class one day.

I do give several warnings for SA, racism, and bestiality.

xxxHolic by CLAMP (as translated and adapted by William Flanagan)

It's not as deconstructive, parodic, dark, or abstract as RGU, but I think most people would like this. It's about 17-year-old Kimihiro Watanuki who possesses the ability to perceive and interact with spirits. Having grown tired of this over his short life, he one day meets Yûko Ichihara, the space-time witch who runs a wish-granting shop. In exchange for the shedding of this ability, she asks for something of equal value: to work for her. And so begins his service at her shop.

I should also mention that the sequel series xxxHolic Rei has been hiatus for nearly a decade. The series also has a sister work called Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle but it's honestly not worth reading if you ask me.

We Shall Now Begin Ethics by Shiori Amase

This is an episodic series about Mr. Takayanagi, a high school ethics teacher. It's a great crash course on philosophy, although I say that as someone whose only experience with philosophy has been Camus (and now Tolstoy).

I do give TWs for SA (especially the first three chapters, and one or two later on), self-harm, and general out-of-pocketness.

Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson by Akira Hiramoto

Robert Johnson was a bluesman rumored to have made a deal with the devil. This is a fictionalized biography on him. Sadly, the series has been on hiatus for damn well a decade at this point and official copies are hard to get your hands on. But hey, the art is superb. I'm not Black, but it's refreshing to see manga portray Black characters that don't look like cartoons that Dr. Seuss grew up with.

Although seeing as how I'm not Black, I can't really judge the quality of either the official or fan translation (the image above comes from the fanscans.

I never did finish it so I can't give any TWs beyond "It takes place in the antebellum south."

And yes, it's that Akira Hiramoto.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

I want everyone U.S-born or U.S-residing, and everyone who hates car dependency to read this book, especially New Yorkers (especially especially the NY transplants). This is a biography on a man named Robert Moses who was New York's park commissioner for 39 years. Over his near-half-century tenure, he shaped much of New York. Many of the bridges, parks, and highways began with him. But over the years he cemented class and racial lines by prioritizing drivers and gutting public transit. He had "urban renewal" which displaced poor people from the few affordable neighborhoods around into "temporary housing," which he crowded with those people as he rebuilt their previous neighborhoods. By the end of the "renewal," the new housing was far out of the reach of the original tenants, and so they stayed in their new slums. This was a man who knew to maneuver the preexisting power structures and the court of public opinion. This is a book that examines not just a powerful person but the people on whom that person exercised his power. Robert A. Caro is a biographer I think Tolstoy would admire.

The only TWs I can give are for racism and general inhumanity. There's also one mention of SA iirc. Also, this book was published 1974. I guess at the time society hadn't made the complete transition to referring to African-Americans (and by extension other African diasporas and Black Africans) as "Black," so it uses the old word for them.